February 01, 2013: Volume LXXXI, No 3

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KIRKUS V O L . L X X X I , N O.

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REVIEWS Also In This Issue

Traveling to the Inventive Land of Hokey Pokey p. 98 Nick Flynn and The Reenactments: Why I Wrote It p. 58 The Revolution Was Self-Published p. 132

Jess Walter Kirkus Q&A: We Live in Water (and Stumble to the Ground) p. 14

CHILDREN’S & TEEN

Exclamation Mark

by Amy Krouse Rosenthal Existential angst has never been funnier, nor so meticulously punctuated. p. 115

NONFICTION

Cooked

by Michael Pollan A delightful chronicle of the education of a cook who steps back frequently to extol the scientific and philosophical basis of cooking p. 71

FICTION

A Tale for the Time Being

by Ruth Ozeki Ozeki masterfully contemplates the meaning of life. p. 24 Photo by Geraint Lewis

Anniversaries: Pride and Prejudice B Y G RE G O RY MC NA M EE

Chairman H E R B E RT S I M O N # President & Publisher M A RC W I N K E L M A N Chief Operating Officer M E G L A B O R D E KU E H N mkuehn@kirkus.com

Ja n e Au s t e n wa s t h a t m o s t c u r i o u s o f c r e a t u r e : a woman who wanted to write and, moreover, had the wherewithal and the education to pull it off.

Jane would have appreciated, we might suspect, the labors of the sociologist Erving Goffman, who was renowned in his day for creeping people out at parties by producing a notebook, eyeing them up and down, and then recording his observations about them without bothering to disguise his actions. Her notebook was her novels, and the party she attended was the great late Georgian/ Regency swirl, a time in which all Britain knew that change was coming—the American colonies, after all, had just thrown off English rule, and France had just had its revolution—even as its aristocracy, major and minor, was doing its best to pretend that the ancien regime was well in charge: primogeniture held sway, arranged marriages kept lineages and inheritance orderly, and great fortunes were kept out of circulation even as ordinary people slogged away like medieval serfs.

In 1794, young Jane, who hailed from a family on the lower edge of the upper crust, went to visit her brother at his home in Kent, a reasonably modest place as estates went but still an estate, the stage for the things that happen when wealthy people gather, whether japeries à la Wodehouse or the grim dramas of Dickens. Matching good humor with sharp observational skills, she wrote a slender novel about her time there. Jane made a halfhearted try at publishing it but then, when rebuffed, put the manuscript in a drawer for a dozen years. When she returned to it, now with other books written and released, she did so with heightened skills, and that early effort became Pride and Prejudice, first published 200 years ago, on January 28, 1813.

Jane Austen’s subject was that most pressing of gentrified concerns, as her opening sentence declares: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” Fitzwilliam Darcy (think Bridget Jones), bearer of a proud Anglo-Norman pedigree, is 28 and very wealthy. He is also smart and good-looking, though a bit of a chump and, due to his aloofness (thus “pride”), not well-liked. Elizabeth Bennet can be a touch frivolous and relies on first impressions (thus “prejudice”), but she’s a hit wherever she goes. She’s also 20, drifting into old-maid territory, and there’s some desperation surrounding her family’s wish to see her marry well.

Can she overcome Darcy’s pride? Can Darcy convince her that he’s not entirely a horse’s ass?

Therein lie the twists and turns of Austen’s lively novel, which, though a fairy tale of a kind, also delivers a smart critique of class and wealth that readers have found beguiling ever since—so much so that Pride and Prejudice regularly turns up high atop lists of the best novels ever written in English.

Downton Abbey has its pleasures, as its viewers well know. But Jane Austen is the real deal, and even if it’s a touch worn around the edges, Pride and Prejudice holds up admirably after all these years.

for more re vi e ws and f eatures, vi si t u s on l i n e at kirkus.com.

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This Issue’s Contributors

Elfrieda Abbe • Maude Adjarian • Mark Athitakis • Michael Autrey • Joseph Barbato • Amy Boaz • Lee E. Cart • Derek Charles Catsam • Dave DeChristopher • Gregory F. DeLaurier • Kathleen Devereaux • Bobbi Dumas • Daniel Dyer • Lisa Elliott • Gro Flatebo • Peter Franck • Bob Garber • Sean Gibson • Faith Giordano • Amy Goldschlager • Robert M. Knight • Christina M. Kratzner • Paul Lamey • Louise Leetch • Judith Leitch • Angela Leroux-Lindsey • Elsbeth Lindner • Joe Maniscalco • Don McLeese • Gregory McNamee • Chris Messick • Carole Moore • Clayton Moore • Chris Morris • Liza Nelson • Mike Newirth • John Noffsinger • Sarah Norris • Mike Oppenheim • Jim Piechota • William E. Pike • Gary Presley • Karen Rigby • Erika Rohrbach • Lloyd Sachs • Bob Sanchez • Sandra Sanchez • William P. Shumaker • Rosanne Simeone • Elaine Sioufi • Wendy Smith • Margot E. Spangenberg • Andria Spencer • Sarah Suksiri • Matthew Tiffany • Claire Trazenfeld • Steve Weinberg • Rodney Welch • Carol White • Chris White

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contents fiction

The Kirkus Star is awarded to books of remarkable merit, as determined by the impartial editors of Kirkus.

Index to Starred Reviews........................................................ p. 5 REVIEWS............................................................................................. p. 5 Q&A WITH jess walter..............................................................p. 14 Mystery.......................................................................................... p. 30 Science Fiction & Fantasy......................................................p. 40

nonfiction Index to Starred Reviews......................................................p. 43 REVIEWS...........................................................................................p. 43 Nick Flynn and The Reenactments.................................... p. 58

children’s & teen Index to Starred Reviews......................................................p. 81 REVIEWS...........................................................................................p. 81 Jessie Grearson on Jerry Spinelli’s Hokey Pokey..... p. 98 interactive e-books...............................................................p. 123

indie Index to Starred Reviews.....................................................p. 125 REVIEWS..........................................................................................p. 125 Matt Domino on Alan Sepinwall’s The Revolution Was Televised........................................... p. 132

Michael Moss delivers a shocking, galvanizing manifesto against the corporations manipulating nutrition to fatten their bottom line.

See the starred review on p. 69. |

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on the web but also has a story to tell: When they began, it was the dawn of reality TV, and they track the rise and rise of this revolutionary genre through their modest triumphs and abysmal failures, sharing their passion for telling the stories of those on the margins of society.

w w w. k i r k u s . c o m Check out these highlights from Kirkus’ online coverage at www.kirkus.com 9

Comedic writer Tyler Stoddard Smith sits down with fellow funnyman Jason Mulgrew to ask Mulgrew about his new book, 236 Pounds of Class Vice President: A Memoir of Teenage Insecurity, Obesity, and Virginity. In 236 Pounds, Mulgrew recalls enrolling in a private high school in an exciting new neighborhood (North Philly, murder center of the city), where he finds himself displaced into a world of privilege and strict standards. His classmates, whose parents are lawyers and bankers, live in houses with yards and pools. Mulgrew, whose longshoreman father bought him a motorcycle upon completion of his driver’s test, struggles to relate in this wider world, fighting his way through the gauntlet of high school as an awkward, sexless giant.

You are passionate about books and so are we. Visit the Kirkus Book Bloggers Network to find current commentary on your favorite genres.

From celebrity to sci-fi, we cover it all.

Tara Conklin is a talented debut novelist whose The House Girl is about two remarkable women, separated by more than a century, whose lives unexpectedly intertwine. Kirkus writer Jaime Netzer will ask Conklin about the inspiration behind the new book. In 2004, Lina Sparrow is an ambitious young lawyer working on a historic class-action lawsuit seeking reparations for the descendants of American slaves. In 1852, Josephine is a 17-year-old house slave who tends to the mistress of a Virginia tobacco farm—an aspiring artist named Lu Anne Bell. It is through her father, renowned artist Oscar Sparrow, that Lina discovers a controversy rocking the art world: Art historians now suspect that the revered paintings of Lu Anne Bell, an antebellum artist known for her humanizing portraits of the slaves who worked her Virginia tobacco farm, were actually the work of her house slave, Josephine.

For the latest new releases every day, go online to Kirkus.com. It’s where our editors and contributing blog partners bring you the best in science fiction, mysteries and thrillers, literary fiction and nonfiction, teen books and children’s books, Indie publishing and more.

And be sure to check out our Indie publishing series, featuring some of today’s most intriguing self-published authors, including Courtney Milan and Alan Sepinwall. Each week, we feature authors’ exclusive personal essays on how they achieved their success in publishing. It’s a must-read resource for any aspiring author interested in getting readers to notice their new books.

Kirkus writer Tom Eubanks will reveal the antic creativity behind World of Wonder production studio in Los Angeles. “World of Wonder is a rank, twisted Bauhaus of perverse creativity, dedicated to celebrating everything which is squalid and marginal,” according to noted wit Simon Doonan. “It is the ultimate antidote to the smarmy, prosaic naff-ness of redcarpet Hollywood.” The World According to Wonder, the new coffeetable book about World of Wonder, discloses the history and secrets behind their original programming, including Million Dollar Listing, RuPaul’s Drag Race, The Fabulous Beekman Boys, Party Monster, The Eyes of Tammy Faye and more. Written by co-founders and award-winning filmmakers Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, the book is not only a celebration of 21 years of production and people,

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fiction HARVARD SQUARE

These titles earned the Kirkus Star:

Aciman, André Norton (304 pp.) $25.95 | Apr. 8, 2013 978-0-393-08860-1

A WEEK IN WINTER by Maeve Binchy............................................ p. 7 LAST FRIENDS by Jane Gardam..................................................... p. 13

Two immigrant outsiders hang out in cafes near Harvard. One vents, the other listens, in this third novel from the Egyptian-born Aciman (Eight White Nights, 2010, etc.).

With the students gone, Cambridge in August is a sleepy place. But the nameless narrator does not have the wherewithal to leave town in 1977. He’s a graduate, sweating over his dissertation on 17th-century literature, with last-chance exams looming. The 26-year-old is scraping by on library work and tutoring French. His background is sketchy: He’s a Jew from Alexandria, Egypt by way of Paris; these autobiographical details are fleshed out in Aciman’s well-received 1994 memoir Out of Egypt. He’s drawn to the tiny Café Algiers by its French-Arab flavor and finds it dominated by a new arrival, a beret-wearing guy in his 30s who holds forth in French about white Americans’ addiction to “all things jumbo and ersatz.” His rapid-fire delivery has earned him the nickname Kalaj, short for Kalashnikov. He’s a Berber from a Mediterranean town in Tunisia, driving a cab while applying for a green card; that bid is in jeopardy because his American wife is divorcing him. Kalaj has an immediate appeal for the narrator (he is his id, his unexpressed anger), and the two become friends. The purpose of Kalaj’s rants is to attract women; they are also a defense mechanism, should America reject him. His success with the ladies rubs off on the narrator. In short order, he beds a very rich Persian graduate student, a Romanian baby sitter and another rich graduate student, a white American, plus his always available neighbor Linda. These flings might have been more credible if Aciman had not placed their lovemaking off limits. As for Kalaj, this should have been his story, but he has not been developed into a picaresque hero, which is why Aciman shifts our attention back to his colorless narrator.

A rather modest addition to immigrant experience literature. (Author tour to New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.)

FEVER by Mary Beth Keane............................................................ p. 18 A TALE FOR THE TIME BEING by Ruth Ozeki..............................p. 24 THE SHELTER CYCLE by Peter Rock...............................................p. 26 THE INTERESTINGS by Meg Wolitzer............................................ p. 30 THE RETROSPECTIVE by A.B.Yehoshua........................................ p. 30 SHATTERED PILLARS by Elizabeth Bear.......................................p. 40 WRITTEN IN RED by Anne Bishop..................................................p. 40 QUEEN VICTORIA’S BOOK OF SPELLS by Ellen Datlow; Terri Windling..................................................................................p. 41

A week in winter

Binchy, Maeve Knopf (336 pp.) $26.95 | Feb. 14, 2013 978-0-307-27357-4

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“Provocative, entertaining and beautifully written.” from life after life

WHAT THE FAMILY NEEDED

or she can flourish and blossom; she can be wealthy, or she can be a fugitive; she can be the victim of rape, or she can choose her sexual destiny. All these possibilities arise, and all take the story in different directions, as if to say: We scarcely know ourselves, so what do we know of the lives of those who came before us, including our own parents and—in this instance— our unconventional grandmother? And all these possibilities sometimes entwine, near to the point of confusion. In one moment, for example, the conversation turns to a child who has died; reminds Ursula, our heroine, “Your daughter....She fell in the fire,” an event the child’s poor mother gainsays: “ ‘I only ever had Derek,’ she concluded firmly.” Ah, but there’s the rub with alternate realities, all of which, Atkinson suggests, can be folded up into the same life so that all are equally real. Besides, it affords several opportunities to do old Adolf in, what with his “funny little flap of the hand backward so that he looked as if he were cupping his ear to hear them better” and all.

Provocative, entertaining and beautifully written. It’s not quite the tour de force that her Case Histories (2004) was, but this latest affords the happy sight of seeing Atkinson stretch out into speculative territory again. (Author tour to San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Milwaukee, Kansas City and Austin)

Amsterdam, Steven Riverhead (272 pp.) $26.95 | Mar. 21, 2013 978-1-59448-639-5

What this fictional family needs, according to Amsterdam, are surreal and fantastic interventions that give each member the strength to go on.

Although the story spans 30 years, the weirdness starts when 15-year-old Giordana escapes with her mother, Ruth, and brother, Ben, to her aunt and uncle’s house to elude her father’s abuse. Aunt Natalie and Uncle Peter have a house of their own with their children, Giordana’s cousins Alek and Sasha. Alek, whose age is inferable by his Superman underpants, is thrilled to see his cousins and impulsively asks Giordana whether she’d rather fly or be invisible. Somewhat bewildered, she chooses the latter, in part to placate the insistent Alek, but she is even more astonished to discover that she actually does develop the ability to disappear. This allows her to eavesdrop on conversations about her father’s mistreatment of her mother, conversations Ruth doesn’t particularly want to share with her daughter. The chapters focus on a different character in the family and on an astonishing capacity each develops. Alek starts to become recalcitrant in school, and Natalie takes refuge in swimming, but she begins to have times that compete with college swimmers half her age. In her capacity as a nurse, Ruth begins to hear the thoughts of her patients. After Natalie dies of an aneurysm, Peter discovers some astonishing abilities to bend reality to his will. The novel ends with the adult Alek, who’s always been the estranged one in the family, claiming that “Anything can happen, anywhere”—and the events of the novel have proved his observation true.

While Amsterdam is not exactly working in the style of magical realism, he develops his own kind of reality that has more than a tinge of fantasy.

CRUEL CITY

Beti, Mongo Translated by Higginson, Pim Indiana Univ. (200 pp.) $20.00 paper | $16.99 e-book Mar. 4, 2013 978-0-253-00823-7 978-0-253-00830-5 e-book A persuasive, even gripping study of a spiteful, naïve character, from Cameroonian writer Beti (1932-2001).

Though written in the third person, we spend an uncomfortable length of time listening to the grinding logic of protagonist Banda’s grudges. Banda (no last name) is from the village of Bamila. His father is dead, his mother dying. Banda travels to the nearby city of Tanga to sell a year’s worth of cacao to the Greeks.

Set in the 1930s, it appears as if Greeks control the colonial economy. While this may be the case, we see the world from Banda’s perspective and receive Banda’s version of events. Coming from a part of the country that requires he pay a future father-in-law for his daughter, he cannot marry without money, and he cannot bear to disappoint his mother, to fail yet again. When the sale does not go as expected, Banda begins to ruminate, to plot. Banda meets Odilia, a young woman from another part of the country, at a bar. Odilia needs help; her brother Koumé is in serious trouble with the colonials. Whether Banda’s decision to help Odilia and Koumé reflects his better judgment is debatable. The book’s conclusion is unexpected and amounts to a failure of Beti’s—not Banda’s—nerve. The book includes “Romancing Africa,” one of Beti’s many essays, and a useful introduction by translator Higginson; while recognizing the book’s historical importance, he equivocates about its quality.

LIFE AFTER LIFE

Atkinson, Kate Reagan Arthur/Little, Brown (544 pp.) $27.99 | Apr. 2, 2013 978-0-316-17648-4 If you could travel back in time and kill Hitler, would you? Of course you would.

Atkinson’s (Started Early, Took My Dog, 2011, etc.) latest opens with that conceit, a hoary what-if of college dorm discussions and, for that matter, of other published yarns (including one, mutatis mutandis, by no less an eminence than George Steiner). But Atkinson isn’t being lazy, not in the least: Her protagonist’s encounter with der Führer is just one of several possible futures. Call it a more learned version of Groundhog Day, but that character can die at birth, 6

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“A strange destiny: to always suffer.” This book explores that truism from a singular, compelling perspective.

help renovate Stone House, she hires her childhood friend Nuala’s son, Rigger, whose history of delinquency has made Nuala desperate to remove him from Dublin, where she’s raised him as a single mother. Soon, Rigger is morally reformed and in love.

To run the business end, Chicky hires her niece Orla, whose life in London has soured. Together, they get the place ready for the first week of paying guests: 34-year-old nurse Winnie arrives trapped into a vacation with her boyfriend’s sophisticated, disapproving mother. A famous American actor takes advantage of a missed flight connection to escape the trappings of stardom for a week. Married doctors come for a respite from their crippling if unwarranted sense of responsibility for the terrible deaths they have witnessed. The heir to a Swedish accounting firm, who has set his father’s expectations above his own love of music, comes to Stoneybridge to look up a musician friend. A husband and wife, whose lives together revolve around entering contests, consider their week at Stone House a disappointing consolation prize compared to the trip to Paris they didn’t win.

A retired girls’ school principal receives the Stoneybridge vacation as a retirement gift she refuses to enjoy. And a clairvoyant

A WEEK IN WINTER

Binchy, Maeve Knopf (336 pp.) $26.95 | Feb. 14, 2013 978-0-307-27357-4

The beloved, prolific Binchy’s posthumous last novel is classic Binchy (Minding Frankie, 2011, etc.), peeking into the lives of characters from various walks of life brought together at a newly opened inn on the West Coast of Ireland.

After 20 years in America and pretending she’s been widowed by an American husband she never actually married, Chicky returns to her hometown of Stoneybridge to turn an elderly spinster’s run-down cliffside mansion into an inn. To

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BREAKING POINT

librarian in love with a married man comes for a week to recover from her broken heart and avoid her second sight.

While Binchy’s stories are sketchier than usual, perhaps understandably rushed, her fans will find solace as hearts mend and relationships sort themselves out one last time.

Box , C.J. Putnam (384 pp.) $26.95 | Mar. 12, 2013 978-0-399-16075-2

WHERE TIGERS ARE AT HOME

Wyoming Fish and Game Warden Joe Pickett, who attracts trouble the way carcasses attract maggots (Force of Nature, 2012, etc.), gets in the line of fire between an old friend and the Feds.

When two EPA agents, sent all the way from Denver to take contractor Butch Roberson into custody, are shot to death, Butch himself is the obvious suspect. But Joe, who saw Butch only hours before he disappeared, can’t help wondering why the EPA was so interested in Butch, whose attempt to build a new house for his family in Aspen Highlands blew up in his face, and why the new, race-baiting EPA regional director Juan Julio Batista has taken such a personal interest in the case. Joe has no time for any speculations, though, before he’s pressed into service to lead an ill-equipped EPA party searching for Butch up the mountain where he was last seen. Little does Joe know that he’s not the only one on the hunt. His old nemesis, ex-sheriff Kyle McLanahan, has heard the rumor of a big reward for bringing in Butch and has gotten Dave Farkus, a clueless employee Butch fired, to lead him and Jimmy Sollis, the no-account brother of slain deputy Trent Sollis, to Butch first. Box doles out complications and misfortunes with masterly control; each time you’re convinced things can’t get any worse for Butch or Joe, they do, usually in unexpected ways.

And every twist tightens the analogy between the shiftless vigilantes pursuing Butch and the Feds determined to capture or kill him, two parties that are not only equally villainous, but villainous in exactly the same way.

Its basis in a real-life conflict makes Joe’s 13th case one of his most tendentious, but it’s Box who makes it one of his most exciting.

Blas de Roblès, Jean-Marie Translated by Mitchell, Mike Other Press (725 pp.) $32.50 | Mar. 5, 2013 978-1-59051-562-4

Psychodrama meets history meets mystery—vintage Umberto Eco territory, as practiced by French philosophy professor turned novelist Blas de Roblès.

Athanasius Kircher is Eco territory, too. That is to say, in many interviews centering on his bibliophilia, Eco cites his vast collection of material written by and relating to the 17th-century Jesuit polymath. He presumably won’t mind that Blas de Roblès has appropriated his great hero and precursor, for there are no derivative notes in this inventive story, a sort of dream voyage into both present and past. Eléazard von Wogau, a French expat in Brazil, has been digging deep into the work of Kircher “with the same obsessiveness as some people collect bottles of whisky or cigarette packets long after they’ve stopped drinking or smoking.” As he does, his orderly life begins to dissolve ever more completely; his wife leaves him, his daughter disappears, and von Wogau himself begins to lose track of the dividing line between Kircher’s life and time and his own, Kircher’s biography steadily filling the space in which his own story might have been told. It’s a perfectly fitting setup, given, as Blas de Roblès notes, that in his day, Kircher faced accusations “of black magic by some simple or jealous people.”

This densely woven tale is anything but simple, however, and the reader approaching it should be prepared for abundant shape-shifting and time-shifting. The payoff is not just the enjoyment of a craftily written historical novel with detectivestory undertones, but also plenty of cocktail-party-worthy trivia: “Zoroaster was not a man but a title, the one given anyone who concerned himself with knowledge of the arcana & magic.” “[A]ccording to Servius, the word for elephant in the Punic language is ‘kaïsar.’ ” “A chicken, Caspar, a poulet, a pou-let!

Don’t you get it?”

If you’re a fan of Foucault’s Pendulum and its kin, you’ll enjoy Blas de Roblès’ concoction.

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THE WISDOM OF HAIR

Boykin, Kim Berkley (304 pp.) $15.00 paper | Mar. 5, 2013 978-0-425-26105-7

A wistful coming-of-age tale in which a South Carolina mountain girl finds escape at beauty school.

Zora Adams could get into college, but the idea of it is too big to fit into the life she’s had. Life on the mountain with Mama has been no picnic; since Daddy died, Mama has imagined herself as a rural Judy Garland, donning the clothes and all the bad habits of her icon. After watching booze, rough men and grinding poverty destroy Mama, Zora is leaving. She has won a grant to the Davenport School of Beauty, in a town near the |

A pleasure to read, especially for those who collect giant pineapples, roller coasters and other roadside attractions.

coast, a world away. Housing has been arranged for her—she’s to live in an apartment above the garage of professor Winston Sawyer and cook his dinner in exchange for board. For Zora, it is love at first sight. A young widower, Winston has devoted himself to drunkenness. While her nights are spent watching Winston through the window, her days are surprisingly happy.

Zora has a knack for hair (and unlike Mama or Winston, she can transform the people in her chair), and she finds a best friend in fellow student Sara Jane, a pretty girl whose wealthy family welcomes Zora into their life. Zora tries to put all her love in the dishes she delivers Winston, but he is insensible to all but the bottle. Sara Jane has better luck when she falls in love with Winston’s yard boy, Jimmy, a Mexican immigrant whose existence will infuriate Sara Jane’s father. The novel takes a surprising turn when Winston seduces Zora. She hopes for romance, but all he can manage is silence and sex. While Zora keeps hoping to redeem Winston, Sara Jane, with her father’s hard-won approval, is to marry Jimmy in the biggest wedding of the year.

When Zora becomes pregnant, and then her mother shows up begging her to return to the mountain, Zora has to make some grown-up decisions about who she wants to be.

Well-drawn characters and depth lie beneath the beauty treatments in this affecting debut.

THE BLUE-RIBBON JALAPEÑO SOCIETY JUBILEE

Brown, Carolyn Sourcebooks Landmark (336 pp.) $14.99 paper | Mar. 1, 2013 978-1-4022-8126-6

Ruthless gossip, philandering husbands, flawless makeup, hunky bartenders and true friendship bring Cadillac, Texas, into vivid focus.

Brown (Just a Cowboy and his Baby, 2012, etc.) brings her cowboy-romance writing talents to bear on this hilarious tale of women in a gossipy small town. The social bully and queen of the town’s jalapeño club, Violet Prescott, may look ridiculous in her pantyhose and bottle-black hair, but

PALISADES PARK

Brennert, Alan St. Martin’s (432 pp.) $25.99 | $12.99 e-book | Apr. 9, 2013 978-0-312-64372-0 978-1-250-02433-6 e-book A literate, thoughtful saga covering half a century in the life of a family whose world centers on a New Jersey amusement park.

As Brennert (Molokai, 2003, etc.) opens his tale, with its plentiful shaggy-dog moments, we find something approaching Eddie Stopka’s idea of paradise: a swimming pool “packed with hundreds of swimmers, the beach overrun by sunbathers and toddlers wielding toy shovels.” A few pages and years later, and Eddie’s world has been transformed: The Great Depression has wiped happiness from the land, and he’s taken to riding the rails—though, careful as ever, isn’t actually as broke as his fellow hobos. Eddie is nothing if not goal-oriented, and he makes his way back to the shore and talks his way onto the crew, promising that he’s “torn down Ferris wheels and put ’em back up again.” One thing leads to another, and in time, Eddie’s a dad—though therein lies a story that’s not shaggy in the least. As the years roll by, Eddie and his offspring face a changing world in which—gasp—African-Americans expect to enter the park and—gasp—Richard Nixon takes national office. For all its exotic setting, Brennert’s tale is a universal one, pointing to the travails of family life. But there are differences between the lives of his characters and ours: As one stunt diver says, smiling, of a particularly stunning feat, “Ah, that’s nothing.

Wait’ll you see me do it when I’m on fire.” |

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“Classic Cussler...” from the striker

she has spent her nearly 80 years on Earth controlling every woman in town. Dominating the other 20 women in her club, Violet insists on pantyhose and frames every blue ribbon won at the annual jubilee—blue ribbons that rightfully belong on the walls of Miss Clawdy’s Café, since Claudia Andrews concocted the soil in which the prize-winning peppers have grown for the last 40 years. But this year, she may have gone too far. Claudia’s daughters, Marty and Cathy, and their best friend, Trixie, run the Café. Cathy is engaged to Ethan, Violet’s lukewarm son with political aspirations. Faced with a prenuptial contract but no “I love you,” Cathy is beginning to reassess her plans, particularly after Violet arranges for the town to reconsider the Café’s zoning status. Having a weekly tryst with her no-good ex-husband is turning out to be more dangerous than Trixie bargained for. She’s less worried that Anna Ruth (Andy’s histrionic, hyperorganized new girlfriend—and most recent addition to the jalapeño club) will find out than that Cathy and Marty’s Aunt Agnes will shoot any man in her bedroom dead. It’s a good thing Darla Jean—former hooker turned preacher and savior of abused women—lives across the street, ready to run interference at a moment’s notice. Fast-paced, the intertwined tales collide along a bumpy road toward a surprising calamity at the jalapeño jubilee.

A high-spirited, romantic page turner. (Agent: Erin Niumata)

story—a subtle psychic aspect to the plot, for instance, as well as the complicated relationship among the three men—they are never fleshed out fully or developed in a gripping way that truly enhances the plot. And Lindsay, who believes an invitation to sexual fantasy is a joke set up by her best friend but never confirms the theory before she shows up, leaves us suspicious of her intelligence and common sense from the get-go.

Lots of hot, sexually edgy content and the promise of a romantic happily-ever-after may satisfy some readers in the intended erotic-romance audience.

THE STRIKER

Cussler, Clive; Scott, Justin Putnam (384 pp.) $27.95 | Mar. 5, 2013 978-0-399-16177-3 Cussler and company add to his fifth series, following the handsome young investigator Isaac Bell as he goes solo for the first time on a case for the Van Dorn Detective Agency.

The year is 1902, and Bell is undercover in West Virginia investigating sabotage in a mine owned by ruthless John “Black Jack” Gleason, owner of the Gleason Consolidated Coal & Coke Company. The tall, blond-haired Bell stands out among hard-worn immigrant mining crews, all the more so since he is nearly killed while attempting to stop a runaway train of tipple cars. Cussler and Scott dig up interesting historical scene-setting factoids, including references to esoteric classic automobiles, Pittsburgh’s posh Duquesne Club, and the history of massacres and brutal strikebreaking as unions begin to organize. The action shifts from the dangerous depths of a coal mine to Wall Street, to a confrontation in a tunnel being dug for the New York subway and to a riverboat battle between two paddle-wheelers. There are deft characterizations—Bell’s detective crew, Kisley and Fulton, explosives and muscle; Wish Clarke, a “crack sleuth” occasionally in the bottle; Bell’s nemesis, Henry Clay, illegitimate offspring of a bohemian artist, rejected Van Dorn protégé and now an amoral double agent; Jim Higgins, pacifist union organizer, and his beautiful, firebrand radical sister, Mary; and Archibald Angel Abbott IV, master of disguise—and the requisite hard-boiled dialogue like, “[You’ll] be waiting in Hell for the next batch to come down and tell you who was laughing. Drop ’em and elevate!” Clay morphs into Claggart, agent provocateur allied with nefarious monopolist manipulator Judge James Congdon, and Bell ricochets from West Virginia to Pittsburgh, New York City and Cincinnati, leaving in his wake gun battles, knife fights and explosions—it helps that he’s heir to a Boston banking fortune, has friends with private railcars and need not rely on expense accounting—working to prevent Clay-ClaggartCongdon from instigating a war that will wipe out striking miners and their families.

Classic Cussler, offering action in an interesting setting.

ILLICIT

Carew, Opal St. Martin’s Griffin (288 pp.) $15.99 paper | Feb. 26, 2013 978-0-312-67462-5 Lindsay is invited to experience a weekend of sexual fantasy.

Weeks after Lindsay tells her best friend about the three sexy men she saw and fantasized about—in spine-tingling, toe-curling detail—in an elevator, she receives an invitation to experience a weekend of pure, sensual pleasure, including directions and a keycard. Convinced it’s a joke Jill is playing on her to lure her to a girls’ weekend, Lindsay shows up at the appointed time and place and is shocked to discover the three men from the elevator, who are interested in satisfying her every whim for 48 hours. At first uncertain, Lindsay is convinced by Erik—the most compelling of the three—to try, and she experiences pleasure like she’s never known. But Lindsay’s feelings for all three men—Erik, Connor and Travis, who share an apartment, strong, committed relationships and bisexual tendencies—grow remarkably strong in so short a time, and she’s devastated when Erik tells her one weekend is all there is. Connor and Travis know Erik likes Lindsay, but all three men are wary of throwing their unorthodox relationship off balance. Not for the faint of heart, this book has numerous graphic sexual scenes, and with three men and one woman, you would guess correctly that not all of the scenes are heterosexual.

Carew is known for adding a compelling emotional dimension to erotica, and while there are hints of such factors in the 10

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relations tactician, is forced by her partners to leave the firm she created, she offers her talents to Clan Owen, a formidable entity on the West Coast. Reaching out to Others across the country, Molly forms an alliance among paranormals, but as she increasingly becomes the face of this united front, her safety is severely threatened. Gage Garrity, a Hunter in charge of security, is tasked with keeping Molly safe, escorting her across the country as she speaks on behalf of the Others whose safety and rights are being compromised. As death threats flood in, and more than one attempt is made on her life, Gage realizes that keeping Molly alive is no longer a professional responsibility, but a personal necessity—he can’t imagine life without her, but he’s not sure he can risk loving her either. In her third Bound by Magick novel, Dane creates a fascinating character in Molly, who takes the weight of her world on her shoulders as she watches, frustrated, while a mean-spirited, close-minded small percentage of the human population tries to hack away at the rights and privileges of her kind. Hers is a welldeveloped, textured plot that reflects a frightening yet believable scenario and creates a taut, dangerous backdrop for the rising passion between Molly and Gage.

Dane, Lauren Berkley (320 pp.) $7.99 paper | Feb. 5, 2013 978-0-425-26210-8 When Molly Ryan is “outed” as a witch and ousted from the PR firm she built from the ground up, she takes her skills to the powerful Clan Owen, where it’s Gage Garrity’s job to keep her safe; but as anti-Other sentiment rises and violence escalates, Molly and Gage realize the stakes are getting higher—and passion is growing.

The Others—paranormal beings who live on Earth—have survived the onslaught of the Magister, a murderous, shadowy creature who slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Others practically overnight. Still reeling from the battle, Others are now under attack from a rising tide of violence from human anti-Other hate groups. When Molly Ryan, a genetic witch and a brilliant public

NIKO PERREN THE

GLASS SKY In

2012

“An exciting, well-written and compassionate eco-thriller, with real heroes and a mission worth caring about.”

Hurricane Sandy slammed the East.

KIRKUS REVIEWS

Weʼll call these the GOOD times.

Heat waves and drought charred the West.

A record melt changed the face of the Arctic.

In

2050

Publishing rights are available.

THE GLASS SKY ◊ ISBN 978-0987913609 NikoPerren@gmail.com

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THE FIVE ACTS OF DIEGO LEÓN

A thought-provoking, creative paranormal scenario coupled with a sexy, intelligent love story make this book an absorbing success.

Espinoza, Alex Random House (320 pp.) $26.00 | Mar. 12, 2013 978-1-4000-6540-0

THE IRON KING

Druon, Maurice Harper Voyager (356 pp.) $14.99 paper | Mar. 26, 2013 978-0-00749126-1 Series: The Accursed Kings, 1

A poor Mexican man crosses the border and becomes a star in 1930s Hollywood in this superficial second novel that follows Still Water Saints (2007).

The boy is dancing at a religious festival. The priest has taught him the steps, but the kid improvises; the crowd loves it, clapping and cheering. In his tiny Mexican village, 11-year-old Diego León experiences the joy of the performer before his life changes drastically. It’s 1917. Six years earlier, his peasant father rode off to fight in Mexico’s revolution. He returned a broken man. Unable to raise his son, his wife dead, he sends him to live with his in-laws in Morelia. Diego’s grandparents, prosperous bourgeois, erase the boy’s indigenous ancestry and invent a European father for him. Diego goes along with the program, works in his grandfather’s office and consents to an arranged marriage, though attracted to men. But on the eve of the wedding, he bolts. His train north is set on fire by religious fanatics. Here and elsewhere, Espinoza fails to feed the scanty historical details smoothly into his narrative. Impulsively, Diego heads to Los Angeles (he’s seen silent movies already). He finds a cheap boardinghouse and works as a busboy. Charlie, a genial fellow lodger also trying to break into movies, takes him to Central Casting. Diego betrays him. Now, anything can happen.

A book weakened by a lack of plausible character development. (Agent: Elyse Cheney)

Sex, intrigue and betrayal in the last days of the reign of Phillip the Fair of France.

After losing a lawsuit to his aunt, the Countess Mahaut, 14th-century French nobleman Robert III of Artois feels cheated out of lands and a title that he feels should rightfully be his. He decides to take revenge against his aunt via her two daughters and her young cousin, who are married to the king’s three sons. Unfortunately for them, Robert is aware that Marguerite, Mahaut’s cousin, and Blanche, her daughter, are currently having affairs with two young gentlemen at court, while Jeanne, another daughter, helps to facilitate their trysts. Robert hatches a plot to expose the affairs, aided by his cousin Isabella, who also happens to be Phillip the Fair’s daughter, unhappily married to King Edward II of England. But if the plot succeeds, the succession of the throne of France, and thus the realm itself, could be thrown into chaos. Hanging over all of this is the curse of the Grand Master of the Order of Knights Templar, Jacques De Molay, who, while burning at the stake, used his dying breath to curse his tormentors, including King Phillip, to die by the end of the year. Druon, who himself died in 2009, captures the times in this, the first of a seven-book series about the descendants of Phillip the Fair and the start of the Hundred Years’ War, which was originally published in French in the 1950s and ’60s. The level of historic detail is astounding, and Druon masterfully brings his characters to life. Much of this book is presumably designed to set the stage for the rest of the series, and as a result, dozens of players are introduced, which can be overwhelming. Druon helpfully includes a detailed list of characters, though, as well as a family tree, to help readers untangle the often complicated familial and political relationships. Readers who do so will be richly rewarded.

Historical fiction that reads like epic fantasy. Great stuff.

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LIGHTHOUSE BAY

Freeman, Kimberley Touchstone/Simon & Schuster (432 pp.) $16.00 paper | Apr. 9, 2013 978-1-4516-7279-4 Freeman’s romance (Wildflower Hill, 2010) weaves together the stories of two women, separated by a century, who finally move to embrace their futures.

When Isabella Winterbourne accompanies her wealthy husband on a voyage from England to Australia in 1901, she’s still grieving the death of their infant son a few years earlier. She despises her authoritarian husband, Arthur, and his family, renowned for their jewelry empire. The couple is accompanying a piece of great value, a jewel-encrusted gold mace, which was commissioned by the queen as a gift for the Australian Parliament. But the ship sinks off the Australian coast during a storm, and Isabella is the only survivor. She saves the chest that contains not only the mace, but a small bracelet she’s hidden there, the only remaining memento of her son. Barely alive when she reaches Lighthouse Bay, she’s cared for by Matthew, the lighthouse keeper, who |

buries the mace after Isabella retrieves the bracelet. Isabella, desperate to travel to America to be with her sister, adopts an alias to avoid detection and finds work as a nanny for a local family whose son was born on the same date as her late child. She hopes to earn enough money for her passage, but her plans are delayed. In a slightly less interesting account and over 100 years later, Libby Slater, distraught over the death of her married lover, returns to her hometown and settles into a cottage adjacent to the same lighthouse that once was a haven to Isabella.

Libby’s dead lover, Mark, was Arthur Winterbourne’s greatgrandnephew. Her sister, Juliet, runs a B&B nearby, but the two are estranged because of a tragedy that occurred 20 years earlier. Libby’s unsure about her future, but she accepts work from Mark’s widow and considers an offer that would make her quite wealthy, a proposal she knows will put her at further odds with her sister. Smoothly transitioning between the two tales, Freeman establishes a believable link between Isabella and Libby and allows each storyline to play out to a reasonable resolution.

And although her attempt to build suspense is weak, the author’s description of the beautiful Australian coastline will linger with readers long after they finish the book.

Those who’ve read the first two books in the series will no doubt relish the opportunity to gain insight into the life of the third key player in the love story, but they’ll also feel deeply moved by Dulcie and Fiscal-Smith, two relics of the old guard who recall a time in England when one’s class restrictions were difficult to circumvent and surnames were of ultimate importance— regardless of accomplishments or financial circumstances.

Impeccably written.

LAST FRIENDS

Gardam, Jane Europa Editions (304 pp.) $16.00 paper | Apr. 2, 2013 978-1-60945-093-9 Award-winning British author Gardam completes her superb Old Filth trilogy—Old Filth (2004) and The Man in the Wooden Hat (2009)—with Sir Terence Veneering’s story.

This third—and final—book about a love triangle involving two bitter rivals is exquisitely expressive. When Sir Terence and Sir Edward die within months of each other, only a few people at their memorial services can personally recall the details of the venerable yet tumultuous lives they led. But old Dulcie, widow of judge William Willy, and Sir Frederick Fiscal-Smith, perennial houseguest of the upper class, share fleeting recollections of earlier lives through reminisces that are clouded with the haze of old age. The author’s two previous books focused on the stories of Sir Edward “Old Filth” Feathers and his wife, Betty. Gardam completes the trilogy by telling bits and pieces of Sir Terry Veneering’s rise from an impoverished childhood to a life of distinction. Terry, born the son of Florrie, a coal vendor, and Russian-born Anton, a former acrobat and dancer whose career is cut short when he suffers an injury, is an intelligent youngster with an affinity for languages and a love of the sea. While roaming the beach one day, he meets a lawyer who helps him further his education. A fortuitous last-minute decision and some devastating news sends Terry to Ampleforth College and subsequently to sharing top honors on the bar exam finals with Sir Edward. Their rivalry, fired when they represent opposing sides in court and fueled by Sir Terry’s love of Betty, endures until the twilight of their lives. |

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We Live in Water (and Stumble to the Ground) b y

We Live in Water: Stories

Walter, Jess Harper Perennial (192 pp.) $14.99 Feb. 12, 2013 978-0061926624

b r i d g e t t e

b at e s

If you are one of the many fans of last year’s best-seller and critical hit Beautiful Ruins, you’ll be happy to know that Jess Walter has not left his readers in the usual five-or 10-year gestational lurch.

His new book, We Live in Water, a pithily wrought collection of short stories (and short short stories), is a first for the genre-stretching author, who began his career as a journalist. He has since written six novels, one nonfiction book, and a few screenplays and poems for good measure, but needing a writing break from the expansive breadth of Beautiful Ruins, Walter escaped into these stories. The result? A shared consciousness permeates the two books. From characters haunted by the past to not-so-subtle references to cannibalism, both heart and humor become a guiding force through the Pacific Northwest, fatherhood and addiction.

Diverging from Beautiful Ruins’ fairy-tale– esque storylines of unrequited love and Hollywood celebrity, We Live in Water is firmly rooted in a less glamorous reality. Walter proves himself to be one of today’s most empathetic voices by confronting head-on the hard subject of poverty. Through grace and wit, he makes social injustices approachable—bringing the character of a homeless man holding a sign to life, Walter does not look away.

I spoke to Walter about how We Live in Water ultimately landed on its own shore.

Q: There are many overarching similarities that resonate in the two books. Are these similarities unintentional, or do they stem from deeper-rooted concerns?

A: Imagine the way that anyone sees the world—they see everything around them, and the one thing they can’t see is themselves. Writers are sometimes surprised by some of the things that bubble back up, but there are some things that I know I’m writing about all the time because I’m thinking about them all the time. Usually, when I start, I have the most basic idea of voice, or a bit of a character or part of a story. Then often, I’ll be finishing a first draft, and I’ll look back and say, “Oh, this story seems to be about this.” We Live in Water corresponded with a time when I was volunteering at a low-income school, and I had just seen so much poverty around me in my city.

A: I don’t see any difference between the basic longings of people in all kinds of situations. A story like “Don’t Eat the Cat,” which is looking at a near postapocalyptic future, is really about a bad boyfriend.

When I was writing “The Wheelbarrow Kings” 14

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Q: That quote is one of the saddest lines I’ve ever read, yet so many of your characters could have uttered it. Are such epiphanies a necessary part of a character’s journey?

A: I don’t think of it in craft terms, but in character terms. In “Wheelbarrow Kings,” when those two characters have been on this great adventure and they started laughing, as I was writing that scene, I was laughing because one of the guys compares the guy with the remote control to a Jedi with a lightsaber.

At that moment, I was laughing, but I was still wishful about their lives. That line comes to you because it’s a real connection to the characters; it’s one of the mysterious, transcendent parts of writing that I live for but doesn’t happen very often. Those moments are bigger than the language choices because they feel holy in some way.

Q: What is the importance of comedy in your writing?

From “Thief,” where a father sets a trap in his closet to find out which of his kids is stealing, to “Virgo,” where a demented newspaper editor re-writes the horoscopes to sabotage his ex-girlfriend, there is a laugh-out-loud pleasure that ebbs and flows with the emotional wave of the more serious moments.

A: More than anything, I have to check myself to make sure it’s not just funny. The same thing happens when I’m writing something suspenseful—it still has to connect in some character way. That’s usually the weight that I’ll fall back on. I try to entertain myself while writing, but the general idea of humor goes more to how I look at the world: I generally see the world as a place where we trip over our own vanities and stumble to the ground.

9 Bridgette Bates is a writer and editor who lives in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in the Boston Review, Fence, American Letters and Commentary, and elsewhere.

For an expanded version of this interview, visit kirkus.com.

ph oto by Ha n n a h A s s o u l in e

Q: In several of the stories, characters walk the thin line between hopelessness and hope, between moral bankruptcy and redemption. What compels you to place such high stakes on your characters?

(which is about two meth tweakers who have an almost Homeric adventure trying to sell a TV), I reached the point of the story where one of them said, “I guess remembering is better than living.” I remember thinking that myself at one point, being lost in some reverie of memory.

“...low-key yet wrenching story...” from the mothers

THE MOTHERS

her earliest memory, which she read to her class. Humiliated by her peers’ laughter when she recounted how her mother chased running beans throughout the kitchen, thereafter Meg rejected any element of make-believe and turned toward science as an orderly, logical way to view the world. Now grown, Meg leaves her studies at Leeds University to care for Val during the final stages of her cancer, and she realizes that this may be her last chance to learn the truth about her past. But Valerie won’t even admit she’s ill, much less acknowledge that her tales are nothing more than fantasy. A story about understanding and compassion and how people often distort the truth to protect themselves and others, Goodin’s narrative contains moments of eloquence, wit and sensitivity, but it’s difficult to ignore the overall saccharine tone of the novel and its fairy-tale characters: Ewan, the pure-hearted hero who communicates with plants and animals; Meg, the beautiful young damsel in distress who finds herself slowly drawn into Ewan’s orbit; Mark, the unpleasant, regimented and controlling boyfriend who pushes Meg to confront her mother; Val, the free-spirited, generous and loving woman who lives in her own world; the members of the band Chlorine; the buffoonish, lovable dwarves—er, men—who’ve never grown up.

Somewhat enjoyable.

Gilmore, Jennifer Scribner (288 pp.) $25.00 | Apr. 9, 2013 978-1-4516-9725-4 The low-key yet wrenching story of a Brooklyn couple who, after cancer and failed fertility treatment, endure more, different pain in their fixation to achieve parenthood.

“What is a mother?” asks Gilmore (Something Red, 2010, etc.) in her third novel, a tale of desperation and adoption so lifelike in its rawness and agonizing detail it could easily pass as autobiography. Answers include the female parents of Jesse and Ramon, the couple thirsting for a baby. Jesse’s mother, Jewish and political, contrasts sharply with Ramon’s tightly wound, traditional Italian mother. But other kinds of mothers feature too—peers, repositories of her story, even abstract mothers via memories and emotional bonds. And finally there are the U.S. birth mothers on whom Jesse and Ramon depend if they are to adopt, since her cancer history makes foreign adoption harder. The book’s plot, such as it is, is the chronology of undergoing the “open” adoption process, a route that adds its own unique pressures, with Jesse and Ramon’s relationship often creaking under the strain as they attend training, write their birth-mother letter and create their online profile. And then, once the pregnant women who might choose them start to call, narrator Jesse discovers she has additional lessons to learn about waiting and hoping.

Heartbreak occasionally spiced with hilarity characterizes this persuasive docu-novel that scrutinizes mothers with limited sentimentality.

TIRZA

Grunberg, Arnon Translated by Garrett, Sam Open Letter (452 pp.) $16.95 paper | Feb. 19, 2013 978-1-934824-69-6 An aging man loses his daughter and regains his wife, which strikes him as hardly a fair trade.

Jörgen, the sullen, irascible hero of this novel, is in late middle age and hitting the skids. He’s been forced into early retirement at the publisher where he’d edited unprofitable novels in translation, his two daughters are distant, and his estranged wife is insinuating herself back into his tidy Amsterdam home. A large investment of his vaporized after 9/11, and the book is something of an allegory about how post-terror anxiety undoes middle-class certainties and unlocks our latent violence. The plot centers on a graduation party for Jörgen’s eldest daughter, Tirza, who is planning a trip to Namibia with her boyfriend, who reminds Jörgen of Mohammed Atta, the lead 9/11 hijacker. Jörgen is suffering from the hectoring of his shallow, judgmental wife, and his daughters haven’t always shown shrewd judgment. (He caught his youngest daughter, Ibi, having sex with a tenant in his home when she was 15.) But it’s also clear that something is broken within Jörgen himself, and the closing pages clarify just how tragic the break is. The latter third of the novel is set in Namibia, where Tirza has fallen curiously silent, and during his search, he befriends an impoverished 9-year-old girl whose waiflike wanderings mirror his own. To his credit, Grunberg (The Jewish Messiah, 2008, etc.) convincingly renders this unlikely

FROM THE KITCHEN OF HALF TRUTH

Goodin, Maria Sourcebooks Landmark (400 pp.) $14.99 paper | Apr. 9, 2013 978-1-4022-7948-5

Goodin’s debut about a woman who prefers to look at the world through rose-colored glasses and a daughter who views everything in terms of black and white blends humor and inspiration but may leave some readers feeling half-full.

Meg May recalls few specifics about her early childhood, but she does remember the whimsical details provided by her mother, Valerie. According to her mom, Meg is the daughter of a pastry chef who died in a terrible pastry-mixing accident; Meg clucked like a chicken when she was born; the small scar on Meg’s face was caused by a crab cake, which bit her; and when she was a year old, she climbed into a freezer and had to defrost in a tub of hot water for two hours. Meg believed these and many more stories until she was 8 years old and wrote about |

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“An imaginatively sculpted collection...” from sightings

scenario, though the book never quite settles into either a character study or a cultural study. The author at times positions Jörgen as a thin archetype of contemporary racism and bourgeois rage, but the book is redeemed by the clarity of the prose and the intensity of its core mystery, leaving Tirza’s fate uncertain while her father’s becomes lamentably clear.

Despite its contrivances, an important and suspenseful addition to post-9/11 literature.

There’s even a sasquatch to be found in the title story by award-winning essayist Hollars (Creative Writing/University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire; Thirteen Loops, 2011). Along the way, the author uses a clever array of monstrosities and startling imagery to cast an eerie light on the tropes of coming-of-age. The first story is the most subtle, as “Indian Village” finds a band of suburban teens at war with an invading tribe. “Schooners” is a finely-spun confessional whose main point seems to be its punch line. Other stories are laden with broad comedy laced with just a little sadness. “Westward Expansion” tells the story of a boy whose father is obsessed with a distant relative who traversed the Oregon Trail and delivers much suffering onto his family in the name of Manifest Destiny. “Sightings” and “The Clowns” also make much hay out of traditional nightmares. In the former, a true-to-life sasquatch is recruited to the local basketball team and even gets to take a girl to the prom. In the latter, a family of nose-honking, big-shoed jesters is forced to move in with relatives after the death of their son. Other missing children figure prominently in the last two stories. “Robotics” finds a boy building a mechanical replica of his dead brother out of a vacuum. “Missing Mary” is the story of a disappearance—the awful, senseless absence of a girl—with a leaden final passage: “Years later, as Mary’s sister sits silently in chemistry class, science will give her an answer: My sister has simply turned soluable,” Hollars writes. “A moment there and then gone.” All of these stories represent a talented tightrope walk between genres and a gentle lesson in craftsmanship for aspiring storytellers.

An imaginatively sculpted collection of absurdist concepts applied liberally to the equally preposterous notion of growing up.

RESOLVE

Hensley, J.J. Permanent Press (248 pp.) $28.00 | Mar. 15, 2013 978-1-57962-313-5 After a female student who has made sexual advances toward him is found dead, Pittsburgh criminology professor and former cop Cyprus Keller conducts an independent investigation to clear his name and solve the murder.

A marathon runner, Keller recalls the circumstances of the case as he competes in a long-distance run through Pittsburgh. The opening tease is that one of the other runners isn’t going to make it to the finish line because Keller, knowing what he now knows, is going to kill him. Did Keller’s graduate assistant, who attacks the professor with a crowbar, kill the girl? Did the nasty dean of academic affairs, who suspends Keller without cause, have something to do with her death? Or was it one of the other teachers at Three Rivers University? The murdered student, we learn, had her own hidden motive for coming on to Keller. This first novel by Hensley, himself a former police officer and marathoner, is a seductive love letter to Pittsburgh: The author is at his best describing its neighborhoods and scenic appeal. Marathon runners will find much to enjoy in the book, which charts, mile by mile, the experience of participating in one of these races. But as a mystery, the book is humdrum, boasting a starchy plot and unfortunate sentences such as, “When I unleashed all of my strength into his neck, his feet left terra firma and his head cartwheeled toward it.”

The city of Pittsburgh is the best character in this workmanlike mystery.

MARKET STREET

Hughes, Anita St. Martin’s Griffin (288 pp.) $14.99 paper | Mar. 26, 2013 978-0-312-64333-1 Ten years ago, just out of college, San Francisco department store heiress Cassie Blake chose a life in Berkeley as a professor’s wife and a volunteer in an educational organic garden; now her husband might be cheating, and her mother is luring her back to Fenton’s with a gourmet food emporium.

When Cassie Blake discovers her husband, an ethics professor, has cheated on her at least once, she flees Berkeley to stay in a Presidio Heights mansion with her best friend, Alexis, the rich, bored wife of a hedge fund manager who constantly flies all over the world. Cassie’s mother, Diana Fenton, takes the opportunity to press Cassie back into the family business, asking her to oversee the store’s conversion of a full floor into a high-end gourmet food market. When once Cassie would have declined out of hand, her unsettling marriage situation leads her to agree to managing the design and the grand opening. More troubling is the quick attraction she feels toward James, the architect of the project, and the increased tension she feels with

SIGHTINGS Stories

Hollars, B.J. Indiana Univ. (136 pp.) $16.00 paper | $13.99 e-book Mar. 21, 2013 978-0-253-00838-1 978-0-253-00846-6 e-book Mischievous Native Americans, melancholy clowns and zealous history reenactors are just a few of the strange and curious denizens of this debut short story collection.

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SINNERS AND THE SEA

her husband, who resents her work and puts pressure on her to forgive him for his small indiscretion and come home. With the life she loved crumbling, Cassie must ask herself some unwelcome questions about who she is, what she wants and what’s worth fighting for. Set against the backdrop of glamorous highsociety San Francisco, this is an entertaining, satisfying women’s fiction novel that reads like a reverse fairy tale but still ends happily. Hughes has a witty, charming writing style and the ability to create characters that are both larger than life and down to earth (Alexis, in particular, and her motley crew of ultrarich society scions). There is humor, wit and style, all of which enrich the arc of Cassie’s journey to true, authentic happiness.

A warm, sparkling and heartfelt novel that explores the power of second chances in life, in love and in following our dreams.

Kanner, Rebecca Howard Books/Simon & Schuster (336 pp.) $22.99 | Apr. 2, 2013 978-1-4516-9523-6 Noah and his wife take on a boatload of animals and family members—and the close quarters lead to situations that would try the patience of Job…but that’s another story.

Kanner’s debut novel is based on the Old Testament story of Noah’s wife, an unnamed woman who’s been shunned since birth for the mark of a demon, a raspberry birthmark, she bears on her forehead. Her mother is long gone, but her father does his best to shield her from harm and arranges for his 19-year-old daughter to marry Noah, a taciturn man dedicated to preaching about the God of Adam. He takes his wife to Sorum, the town of exiles, where prostitutes, murderers and others sinners run

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A memorable biofiction that turns a malign figure of legend into a perplexing, compelling survivor. (Author tour to Boston, Chicago, New York and San Francisco)

rampant. Old Noah’s sight and hearing aren’t what they used to be, but he’s surprisingly frisky for a more than 600-year-old man. He sires three sons: Shem, who often clings to his mother; Japheth, who prefers fighting to settle scores; and Ham, the funny son with the sharp wit whom his mother favors. Noah’s wife also develops a fondness for Herai, a young girl with mental limitations. She tries to convince Noah that Herai will be a good match for one of their sons, but Noah, fearing that his grandchildren will be similarly afflicted, refuses to permit the marriage. When Noah claims that God is sending a flood to destroy mankind and has chosen his family to build an ark, ride out the storm while tending to the animals they are tasked with saving, and repopulate the Earth once the floodwaters have receded, he’s the subject of ridicule in the community. But the family does as Noah instructs, and as the rains begin, they embark on their voyage. Sibling rivalries become more pronounced aboard the vessel now that each brother has a wife (Ona, Herai and Zilpha), and their mother proves her strength and character as she tries to protect her family from each and from the outside forces that threaten.

Kanner successfully undertakes a formidable task retelling a familiar religious story through the eyes of Noah’s wife. The narrative’s well-articulated, evenly balanced and stimulating—but it’s definitely not the familiar tale that’s so frequently illustrated in children’s books.

SNAPPER

Kimberling, Brian Pantheon (224 pp.) $24.95 | Apr. 16, 2013 978-0-307-90805-6 A sad-sack ornithologist navigates the wilds of southern Indiana and its quirky denizens.

Kimberling’s debut is a collection of linked stories narrated by Nathan Lochmueller, a smart but mostly luckless man who stumbles into a job monitoring bird patterns. The pay is awful, and Nathan is conflicted about how his unfaithful girlfriend, Lola, helped him get the gig. But at least the job introduces him to a colorful, if occasionally scarifying, array of characters: He meets diner patrons who reply to kids’ letters to Santa Claus, would-be mushroom-hunters, ersatz Klansmen and dimwitted bureaucrats who legislate on the environment without knowing the first thing about it. As Nathan notes, southern Indiana is an odd mix of levelheaded Midwest culture and oddball Southern folkways, and Kimberling’s prose nicely evokes this culture clash: His unusual scenarios are rendered with a wry, self-deprecating wit. Violence abounds on Nathan’s turf—a snapping turtle takes off a friend’s thumb (hence the title), a drunk friend takes a two-by-four to a few parking meters, a stoner pal is stabbed, and Nathan himself gets pushed down a flight of stairs—but more as evidence of life’s absurdity than of its tragedy. Kimberling’s stories have depth, but he never forces a message on them; a chapter in which Nathan comes across a human bone in a graveyard is handled with easy humor instead of ponderous metaphor. This book has enough of a story arc that the fact that it’s not a full-fledged novel is somewhat frustrating: We learn about Lola’s romantic wanderings but not enough to suggest their full impact on Nathan, and while Nathan’s emotional evolution in the closing story is a pleasant surprise, it’s a jarring one—a more intricately structured tale could give his character more resonance.

A well-turned debut that airdrops its characters into an appealingly off beat milieu. (Author tour to Bloomington, Chicago, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, New York, Portland and Seattle)

FEVER

Keane, Mary Beth Scribner (320 pp.) $26.00 | Mar. 12, 2013 978-1-4516-9341-6 A fictional portrait of Typhoid Mary, the Irish immigrant cook who spread disease and death among the cramped, unsanitary streets of turn-of-the-century New York.

Opening with the arrest of Mary Mallon in 1907, Keane (The Walking People, 2009) moves back and forth across several decades to flesh out the famous plague carrier’s character against a detailed social panorama. Mallon’s arrival in 1883; her work ethic and ambition to rise from laundress to cook; her peculiar loyalty to work-shy Alfred Briehof, the alcoholic who refused to marry her—all these provide context as Keane explores Mary’s treatment at the hands of the Department of Health. Quarantined first in a hospital and later on North Brother Island for two years, the “Germ Woman” eventually finds a sympathetic lawyer who works for her release on condition she never cooks for others. Liberated, Mary returns to laundry work in the city. Plague carrier she may be, but Keane’s Mallon is a fiercely independent woman grappling with work, love, pride and guilt. Exhausted by the laundry and yearning to cook, Mary becomes a baker but is discovered by her nemesis, Dr. Soper. On the run, reunited with now morphineaddicted Alfred, she starts cooking at Sloane Maternity Hospital until realization and responsibility become unavoidable.

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THE NIGHT RAINBOW

his wife, Caroline, after discovering she is pregnant with a lover’s child. Righteous though it may be, his implacable anger has ruinous long-term consequences. He immediately moves from Savannah to Camp Pendleton, San Diego, ostensibly to save teenage daughter Ellie from the shame of growing up near her disgraced mother and her illegitimate half sibling. (Abortion, of course, is never brought up, nor is the question of contraception.) Ellie is devastated: She’ll leave behind Nolan, her closest childhood friend, a promising basketball player whose moves are described with a sportswriter’s skill. The teenagers, both 15, are chastely awakening to love, and before Ellie departs, they bury letters confessing their true feelings under a favorite tree.

They make a pact to return on June 1st, 11 years hence, to dig up the box and read the letters. Cut to the present. Caroline is raising her son, John, and writing weekly letters to Ellie, which go unanswered. Long estranged from Alan, Ellie has forsworn college, has an illegitimate child of her own, daughter Kinzie, and works as a beautician. Nolan, a superstar with the Atlanta Hawks, is far out of her league: There are paparazzi-perpetrated rumors of girlfriends galore. When Alan shows up to beg forgiveness for a shocking transgression, it’s only Kinzie’s faith that causes Ellie to relent. But as June 1st approaches, can she undo 11 years of miscommunication and bad luck? Since deus ex machina is Kingsbury’s go-to plot device, nothing, particularly redemption, is left to chance. Unfortunately, putting everything in the Almighty’s hands leaves mere mortals with little to do, which makes for tedious reading.

Will appeal mainly to Kingsbury devotees, as well as lovers of religious tracts…and basketball.

King, Claire Bloomsbury (272 pp.) $15.00 paper | Apr. 9, 2013 978-1-60819-944-0

Technically accomplished debut chronicles a difficult summer in the south of France from the point of view of a lonely 5-year-old.

Her English-born mother named her Peony, her French father called her Pivoine, but her nickname—Pea—seems most appropriate for this little girl tightly enclosed in a pod of her own anxieties and imaginings. She has few reasons for cheer, we learn in the opening pages of her artless narration. Last summer, “Maman came back from the hospital…changed from fat to thin, but she didn’t bring back the baby like she promised.” This past spring, shortly after Maman got pregnant again, Papa died in a freak accident; “he was driving his tractor on a hill and he fell off it and was squashed.” Reeling from her losses, feeling isolated and unwelcome in this small French community—Papa’s mother, Mami Lafont, openly wishes she would just go away—Maman now hardly ever leaves the house, or even her bedroom. Pea and her 4-year-old sister Margot are left to roam the countryside, attracting the attention of a kindly neighbor named Claude who has losses of his own to mourn. King accurately captures the speech rhythms and partial understandings of a small child as she unfolds the array of disasters large and small that befall Pea in the months before her brother Pablo is born; her descriptions of the French landscape and animals are exact and lovely.

But as grown-up issues begin to loom large in the narrative, and as readers slowly sense that something is not quite right about Margot, the author’s decision to restrict us to Pea’s point of view comes to seem like a mistake. Revelations of adult complexities are couched in frustratingly simplistic language, and the resolution of Maman’s conflict with Mami Lafont, viewed through Pea’s eyes, lacks emotional depth.

Hampered by a limited perspective, though well-written and sometimes quite moving.

CRYSTAL COVE

Kleypas, Lisa St. Martin’s Griffin (336 pp.) $14.99 paper | Feb. 5, 2013 978-1-250-01175-6 A love story that draws on all the senses, including the proverbial sixth.

There is magic, there is insight— “the best part of the relationship wasn’t all the things they agreed on—it was when they disagreed, when they helped each other to look at things in a new way”—and there is humor: “I would only go out with a guy if he had a good personality, a decent body, and a job. Now I’d settle for a man who isn’t currently married or incarcerated.” The smart, funny and sensitive Justine Hoffman was born shortly before her father died. Losing the great love of her life was so hard on Justine’s mother, Marigold, that Marigold cast a spell on her daughter to protect her from the pain of finding and then losing that kind of love.

What her mother did based on a loving desire to protect her child, grown-up Justine views as a curse that needs to be lifted.

Marigold is a witch and raised her daughter in the pagan tradition. She wanted Justine to join her coven, but Justine preferred to run a B&B at Friday Harbor in the state of Washington, the one place she and her nomadic mother have ever stayed long

THE CHANCE

Kingsbury, Karen Howard Books/Simon & Schuster (352 pp.) $22.99 | Mar. 5, 2013 9781-4516-4703-7 Another weeper from Christian-fiction diva Kingsbury, this time featuring a prayerful NBA star and his long-lost first love.

Kingsbury appears to concede that a slavish adherence to the sterner side of Christianity can subvert that religion’s founding principles, as happens when Alan Tucker, a Marine drill instructor, casts off |

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“A deeply emotional story...” from orphan train

THE PASSIONS OF DR. DARCY

enough for Justine to feel at home. Her business partner, Zoë, a distant cousin, encourages Justine to continue looking for “Mr. Right,” but Justine feels that unless she can reverse the curse that leaves her unable to feel that kind of love, she wouldn’t recognize Mr. Right, and has maybe already found him without knowing it. But when a famous video game creator books the B&B, there is no mistaking the sparks that fly. When this man searching for his soul meets this woman searching for her heart, the drama hits the ground running.

A witty, moving and entertaining read.

Lathan, Sharon Sourcebooks Landmark (432 pp.) $14.99 paper | Apr. 2, 2013 978-1-4022-7349-0

Volume 8 of the Darcy Saga—a Pride and Prejudice spinoff series—devotes itself to the exploits both professional and, especially, romantic of Dr. George Darcy, a gifted medic working in colonial India.

Making token gestures toward the family and country estate of Jane Austen’s indelible hero, Lathan’s novel pursues a tangential branch of the line, the life history of Uncle George, who, heartbroken at the death of his twin brother, quit England in 1789 to work for the East India Company. Arriving in Bombay, he meets a villainous boss, a friendly colleague and an important Indian mentor, Dr. Ullas. More importantly, there are encounters with significant women. Although apparently unlucky in love, George has his fair share of passionate—and sexually explicit—encounters. But after the early death of Ullas, it’s with his widow, Jharna, that George finds a measure of longterm, if unmarried, happiness. Traveling the subcontinent over almost three decades, he learns much about healing and Indian society, but returns occasionally to England and eventually, after tragedies, retires there, only to find love one last time.

Forget Jane Austen. This romance/historical chronicle offers immense length and devoted application in lieu of plot or wit. For fans of Volumes 1 to 7.

ORPHAN TRAIN

Kline, Christina Baker Morrow/HarperCollins (288 pp.) $14.99 paper | $9.99 e-book Apr. 2, 2013 978-0-06-195072-8 978-0-06-210120-4 e-book Kline (Bird in Hand, 2009, etc.) draws a dramatic, emotional story from a neglected corner of American history.

Molly is a troubled teen, a foster child bounced from one unsuitable home to another. Vivian is a wealthy 91-year-old widow, settled in a Victorian mansion on the Maine seashore. But Vivian’s story has much in common with Molly’s. Vivian Daly, born Niamh Power, has gone “from cobblestoned village on the coast of Ireland to a tenement in New York to a train filled with children, steaming westward through farmland, to a lifetime in Minnesota.” Vivian’s journey west was aboard an “Orphan Train,” a bit of misguided 1900s-era social engineering moving homeless, destitute city children, mostly immigrants, into Midwest families.

Vivian’s journey wasn’t entirely happy. She was deposited with the Byrnes, who wanted only child labor in a dressmaking enterprise.

Then, as the Great Depression began, Vivian was dumped into the Grote household, where she suffered neglect and abuse. Only after the intervention of a kind teacher did Vivian find a home with a decent, loving family. The story unfolds through chapters set in the present day, with Molly, caught in a minor theft, forced into community service work and agreeing to help Vivian clean an attic. Other chapters flash back to the period from 1929 through World War II. In those decades, Vivian travels West, endures the Byrnes and Grotes, finds a loving home with the Nielsens, reconnects with Dutchy, another orphan-train refugee, marries and is widowed when Dutchy dies in the war. Molly’s life story unfolds in parallel—a neglected half–Native American child, whose father was an accident victim and whose mother drowned in drugs and crime—and Molly slowly opens up to Vivian. Kline does a superb job in connecting goth-girl Molly, emotionally damaged by the “toll [of] years of judgment and criticism,” to Vivian, who sees her troubled childhood reflected in angry Molly. The realistic narrative follows characters as they change and grow, making a poignant revelation from Vivian entirely believable, as is Molly’s response to Vivian’s dark secret.

A deeply emotional story drawn from the shadows.

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THE ENCHANTED WANDERER And Other Stories

Leskov, Nikolai Translated by Pevear, Richard; Volokhonsky, Larissa Knopf (608 pp.) $35.00 | Mar. 26, 2013 978-0-307-26882-2

A welcome new translation of Leskov’s grand metaphysical romp, a hallmark of 19th-century Russian literature.

Leskov (1831–1895) is less well-known in this country than his near-contemporaries Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and even if Anton Chekhov claimed him as a literary ancestor— and that’s saying something—Leskov’s masterpiece doesn’t often figure on reading lists. Pevear and Volokhonsky, late of War and Peace, Anna Karenina and Dr. Zhivago, may remedy that with this accessible translation, which does a good job of preserving some of Leskov’s well-known wordplay while not being pedantic. Pevear and Volokhonsky are known for preferring to use only English words in circulation at the time of a given book’s original publication, so the tone has the slightest patina to it, as with sentences such as “I chose as a pretext that I supposedly had to go buy medicine from the herbalists for the |

BLUE WHITE RED

horses, and so I went, but I went not simply, but with a cunning design.” That said, the stories gathered here, all lightly linked in the way that those of the Canterbury Tales are, remain marvels of narration, sacred and profane—for, as the translators note, the Russian word strannik “can mean anything from a real pilgrim to a simple vagabond.” The opener is a stern study in the dangers of adultery; then come other pieces set in “Wooden Russia,” the old heartland south of Moscow, with all its elaborate prejudices against Gypsies, Jews, Ukrainians and the other outsiders who so often figure in Leskov’s pages. One takeaway: Leskov admonishes us not to fear ghosts, for they “behaved themselves much more light-mindedly and, frankly speaking, stupidly, than they had shown themselves in earthly life.”

A literate delight, and a book to look forward to reading more than once.

Mabanckou, Alain Translated by Dundy, Alison Indiana Univ. (168 pp.) $17.00 paper | $14.99 e-book Mar. 11, 2013 978-0-253-00791-9 978-0-253-00794-0 e-book A coming-of-age story of immigration and disillusionment that begins in post-colonial Congo.

This first novel from Mabanckou (Memoirs of a Porcupine, 2012, etc.), published originally in 1998, received the Grand Prix Littéraire de l’Afrique Noire. Growing up in a small town in the Congo, Massala-Massala lives in the shadow not of France so much as France personified by those who return from there to his community. Moki is worldly, wealthy, stylish, successful and a physically present epitome of Paris. When he returns, the community is in a frenzy: Moki has supplied his family with two cars they use as taxis and funds to construct a villa. More important than actual wealth is Moki’s style. Moki wears major labels, purportedly purchased in designer boutiques; these outfits, and how he wears them, make the man.

During one visit, Moki agrees to accompany Massala-Massala to France, and a year is spent preparing. At the end of his next visit home, they leave together. The book’s second half dwells on Massala-Massala’s profound culture shock, on the truth of life as a “débarqué,” a newly arrived illegal immigrant. He learns that Moki is not who he appears to be; Moki’s success is a beautiful illusion, assiduously cultivated as celebrity. In order to obtain his residency papers, Massala-Massala must undergo a sort of initiation: prove his value in the black market where Moki and his friends thrive.

A novel of few surprises, it must be seen for what it is: the uneven debut novel of a significant author with a growing reputation.

A MAP OF TULSA

Lytal, Benjamin Penguin (272 pp.) $15.00 paper | Mar. 26, 2013 978-0-14-242259-5 A sensitive young college student is haunted by his hometown and the girl he never quite managed to leave behind.

The homecoming novel is such a tricky business—all that aching pining, the pregnant pauses, the glossy remembrances of truly ordinary moments. It’s all here in the deftly composed but emotionally sodden debut novel by essayist and literary critic Lytal. This go-round is sincere to the point of exasperation, while the whole story is trying so hard to be something weightier than its parts. Young Jim Praley has come home from the big city to visit his parents in Tulsa, a hometown that Praley delights in spinning into fables for his friends, his “Tulsa stories.”

At a party, Jim meets Adrienne Booker, the bright beating heart of the Tulsa art and music scene, who ruthlessly and casually sleeps with him. They spend a summer kind-of together, barring the bisexual advances of Adrienne’s BFF Chase Fitzpatrick. Eventually, the romance simply fizzles out, and Jim returns to the East Coast to finish college and work at a small literary press. Drowning himself in parties and work years later, Jim is startled when he gets word from Chase that Adrienne has been seriously injured in a drunken motorcycle accident. Unfortunately, the narrative falls off a cliff in this second half as Jim reconnects with friends, fences with Adrienne’s family and contemplates staying in Tulsa with his broken ex-girlfriend. Lytal writes with compassion, but the long poetic sequences about walking around a city get a bit melodramatic over time. “I had used downtown as the backdrop to a love story—but most people aren’t so willful. At their roots, the skyscrapers are dumb,” he writes. Neither offbeat enough to keep readers’ attentions nor poignant enough to justify its lingering melancholia, the whole sad affair winds up feeling like a halffinished love letter at the bottom of a drawer.

An off-key Midwestern reminiscence with a self-pitying air of despondency.

HUNTING DAYLIGHT

Maitland, Piper Berkley (560 pp.) $9.99 paper | Feb. 5, 2013 978-0-425-25069-3

Half-vampire Carol Barrett faces familiar-seeming perils as well as romance in the second of a series of paranormal thrillers.

Caro’s vampire biochemist husband, Jude, vanished in the jungles of Gabon after accepting a dubious commission from the pharmaceutical corporation Al-Dîn. Caro now raises their daughter Vivi alone, hiding her from the vampire cabal that believes that Vivi is the prophesied child who signals the end of their race. As Caro slowly accepts that she will not see her husband again, she allows herself to |

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“...a gem.” from the fever tree

The best of Marklund’s books to be published in the U.S., this work sets readers up for the next installment of the Annika Bengtzon series, A Place in the Sun, with a tantalizing last-minute revelation.

fall in love with Raphael, an ancient vampire playboy. Meanwhile, Al-Dîn’s operatives embark on a murderous search for Vivi, whose genome could hold the key to permitting vampires to withstand the sun. Maitland knows how to write tight action and steamy sex scenes, as well as vividly describe exotic locations. She’s also got some definite insight into the mind of the teenage girl. Sadly, though, Book 2 of this series (Acquainted with the Night, 2011) seems remarkably like a retread of Book 1, just with different players. In both novels, Caro moves beyond her tragic romantic past to seize love and have transcendental sex.

She also spends each volume on the run from a pharmaceutical company that employs vampires who are so selfishly, uncontrollably violent that they murder people essential to fulfilling their or their employer’s goals. It’s refreshing to encounter vampire antagonists who are simply nasty, as opposed to magnetically attractive in a sinister way; however, most of them behave so shortsightedly and short-temperedly it’s incomprehensible how they manage to survive their decades of undeath, let alone accomplish anything of substance.

Above the common run of vampire fiction, but not all that it could be.

THE FEVER TREE

McVeigh, Jennifer Amy Einhorn/Putnam (432 pp.) $25.95 | Apr. 4, 2013 978-0-399-15824-7 South Africa’s corrupt and diseaseriddled diamond industry in the 1880s serves as a gritty setting for newcomer McVeigh’s historical novel about a young English woman’s journey toward self-enlightenment.

When Frances Irvine’s father dies and leaves her penniless, she reluctantly accepts a distant cousin’s marriage proposal. She considers Dr. Edwin Matthews a cold and unemotional man who’s socially beneath her, but Frances hopes Edwin’s practice in South Africa will one day provide her with the lifestyle to which she’s accustomed. Besides, no one else has volunteered to take her in, except for an aunt who expects Frances to work as a nanny in exchange for lodging. Sharing a small second-class cabin with two other girls, 19-year-old Frances sets sail for her new home, but during the voyage, she falls in love with William Westbrook. She’s convinced he loves her, too, but Frances eventually resigns herself to marrying Edwin when William fails to follow through on their plans to be together after the voyage. When she arrives at her new home, she’s dismayed to discover Edwin lives in a remote area in a hovel. There are few comforts—save for a piano Edwin bought her as a wedding present—and Frances unhappily refuses to adapt to her new life. In fact, Frances views her husband with scorn and doesn’t understand his preoccupation with a smallpox outbreak, which he claims is of epidemic proportion, or his defense of the rights of South African natives who work in the mines; she remains more concerned about the discomfort she faces each day due to her husband’s lack of financial ambition. After they move to Kensington, though, Frances slowly realizes there’s more to her husband than she first assumed, and she discovers that many people respect him, not only for his work as a medical doctor, but as a human rights advocate. Still, she believes that William, not Edwin, represents her path to happiness. Forceful and direct, yet surprisingly lyrical, McVeigh’s narrative weaves top-notch research and true passion for the material with a well-conceived plot.

Readers might argue that the ending’s a bit weak when compared to the boldness of the rest of the story, but that’s a minor issue. Overall, this story’s a gem.

LIFETIME

Marklund, Liza Emily Bestler/Atria (384 pp.) $25.00 | Apr. 9, 2013 978-1-4516-0697-3 Swedish tabloid reporter Annika Bengtzon investigates the murder of a legendary police detective whose unstable wife has been wrongly charged for the killing. Meanwhile, the brash Annika is investigated for the firebombing of her own house following the departure of her cheating husband.

The murdered cop, David Lindholm, who was shot in the genitals, was a TV celebrity known for his brilliant handling of a hostage crisis. But he was no hero to his wife, Julia, a former cop he subjected to years of psychological abuse. Experts say she suffers from multiple personality disorder, but she swears she saw another woman leave the murder scene after grabbing her now-missing 4-year-old son. Annika, who has two young children of her own, must get them resettled while digging into the Lindholms’ shadowy past. Dragged into an alley by thugs who cut her with a knife and threaten to do worse to her kids if she doesn’t back off, Annika finds a reluctant ally in a cop, Nina Hoffman, who has been friends with Julia since their days at the police academy but is mysteriously mum about David. The missing boy gets short shrift, and Marklund’s use of italicized lines to punch up her characters’ inner thoughts is annoying.

But the plot is smart and suspenseful. The agreeably flawed Annika’s personal story, which avoids clichés even as her husband falls into one in taking up with a beautiful blonde, draws us in. And Marklund knows her journalistic turf: Her rendering of the methods, internal politics and economics of newspapers is spot on.

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THE SUPREMES AT EARL’S ALL-YOU-CAN-EAT

tight leash he has maintained on every detail of their existence, is heady indeed. Acquainting themselves to relatives they never knew, they are easily convinced to head into London to get a taste of sophisticated city life. Valentine becomes embroiled in an affair with a married woman who leads him in a merry dance on the edges of propriety, entangling him in murky debts and pushing him into events that could have devastating consequences. Meanwhile, Louisa, who finally has the ability to refuse the man her father expected her to marry, dips her toes into romance and begins to realize that freedom has pros and cons.

As circumstances grow complicated and sinister, Valentine and Louisa revisit what matters most and understand the value of having friends they can depend on, even from surprisingly familiar quarters. This book is a witty, intelligent, Regency-set light romance that is reminiscent of such writers as Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer. The language and storyline are clever and highly polished, though almost too much so; often it seems that the distinctly historical tone and cerebral style get in the way of moving the story forward. While the characters are engaging even as they embroil themselves in situations that make the reader want to reach into the book and shake them, they don’t have the compelling qualities for which Austen or Heyer characters are famous, and therefore, the ironic, detached narrative style seems at times annoying and obstructive rather than charming. This entry misses the mark of Morgan’s previous forays into historical romantic fiction.

Many modern romance readers will find the book slowmoving and florid, while others may find the core of the story too lightweight.

Moore, Edward Kelsey Knopf (320 pp.) $24.95 | Mar. 12, 2013 978-0-307-95992-8

Well, not Florence, Mary and Diana, but rather three close friends from Plainview, Ind., who, from their adolescence to their maturity, meet to gossip and consolidate their friendship at a local eatery.

Odette, Clarice and Barbara Jean have been inseparable since the late 1960s, when they met in high school. Although Barbara Jean was at first an outsider, she quickly bonded with the other two, and they began calling themselves—and being called by others—the Supremes. The novel opens some 40 years after their salad days, when Odette hears of the death of Big Earl, founder of the eponymous black-owned-and-operated restaurant. (We also find out that this news has been conveyed to Odette by her mother, who’s been dead for six years.) Through both Odette’s narrative and a more neutral third-person perspective, we learn of the trio’s personal problems and the rise and fall of their relationships. Odette, for example, is married to the patient and long-suffering James, and recently, she’s discovered she has cancer. Clarice has long been married to Richmond, a charming cad who’s serially and terminally unfaithful—and she needs to decide whether to leave him or not. And Barbara Jean, who married her husband, 42-year-old Lester, the day after she graduated from high school, is now dealing with his death and confronting the alcoholism that struck unforgivingly with the earlier death of her young son. Throughout the Supremes’ intertwined stories is one constant—meeting and eating at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat, now run by his son Little Earl, a place where relationships are forged, scandals are aired and copious amounts of chicken are consumed.

A novel of strong women, evocative memories and deep friendship. (Author tour to Atlanta, Chicago, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, New York and Washington, D.C. Agent: Barney Karpfinger)

MOTHERLAND

Nicholson, William Simon & Schuster (368 pp.) $25.00 | Apr. 9, 2013 978-1-4516-8713-2 A wartime love story in the tradition of Atonement—and perhaps The Winds of War, and perhaps Gone with the Wind....

The opening pages of screenwriter (Gladiator, Shadowlands) and novelist (I Could Love You, 2011, etc.) Nicholson’s modestly pitched saga frame the problem beautifully: A granddaughter does not know her grandmother, just as her mother does not know her own grandmother—and the members of the Greatest Generation, whose story this is, scarcely know themselves. In the early years of World War II, Kitty Teale, who simply adores driving, rushes off to volunteer for service as an ambulance driver. She is class conscious, but less so than her hoity-toity pal Louisa, who grumbles assonantly, “I don’t mind being bossed about by lesbians in trilbies...so long as they’re my own class.” Class enters into things when those wary winds buffet Kitty into the arms of Royal Marine commando Ed—though, to complicate matters, fellow warrior Larry, no slouch himself, emerges as a good candidate for a spirited snogging. What’s a girl to do? Well, when Ed returns from the front

A LITTLE FOLLY

Morgan, Jude St. Martin’s (416 pp.) $25.99 | Mar. 12, 2013 978-1-250-02227-1 Released from their domineering father’s strict expectations by his unexpected death, siblings Valentine and Louisa decide to explore life beyond his rigid boundaries.

Heading to London, they are tested by their newfound freedom. When their father seems to die from an actual fit of apoplexy, Valentine and Louisa are, for the first time in their lives, free to do as they please, which given the |

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THE BEST OF US

a much decorated hero, the decision seems fixed—save that, in postwar India (one wants to pronounce it In-juh, of course), and in a milieu where Ed is hell-bent on drinking his memories of battle away, Larry’s still ripe to enact his realization that “time is so short, death comes so soon....We must love each other.”

Or, to echo Auden, die—and there’s some of that, too. The best moments of this well-written if predictable story come when Ed and Larry are interacting: Their relationship is fraught, intimate, wary (“Time to beat a retreat,” says Ed, meaningfully.

“Back to the boats and sail away.”) and affecting.

The rest of the story is well-told, though we’ve seen most of it before: Just add gin to your favorite wartime romance and stir.

Pekkanen, Sarah Washington Square/Pocket (352 pp.) $15.00 paper | Apr. 9, 2013 978-1-4516-7351-7 To celebrate her billionaire husband’s 35th birthday, Pauline has arranged the party of a lifetime. With his best friends from college (and their spouses) at a noexpenses-spared resort in Jamaica, what could possibly go wrong?

Well, everything. Pauline herself is a controlling robot, determined to anticipate every need and extravagant desire, from arranging helicopters rides to elegant beachside picnics, replete with masseuses and hot tubs. She wants everything perfect for Dwight—after all, without him, she and her mother could never have paid her sister’s medical expenses.

But Dwight can never know the truth about Therese’s illness.

Luckily, Allie is there. Cheerful Allie, who always knows how to smooth feathers. But Allie, too, has a secret. Her biological father may have died of ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease), but she cannot bear to tell Ryan, her husband. Perhaps she could confide in Dwight, but what does that choice imply about the strength of her marriage? Exhausted and overwhelmed from raising four children, Tina is determined to relax and enjoy herself. Why not? Allie’s mother is taking care of all the kids, and Tina’s husband, Gio, still finds her attractive, despite her more matronly figure. And then there’s Savannah, separated from her husband, Gary (who cheated on her with The Nurse), and hell-bent on showing off her assets to every man on the island, including her friends’ husbands. Pekkanen details every menu, catalogs each event’s luxuries and narrates each woman’s inner turmoil. The men, even the birthday boy, are merely props for the women’s troubles—that is, until Gary’s sudden arrival and a Category-2 hurricane begins bearing down on the group.

Another tale of female friendships conquering all, wrapped in luxury and faux danger. (Author appearances in Baltimore and Washington, D.C.)

A TALE FOR THE TIME BEING

Ozeki, Ruth Viking (432 pp.) $27.95 | Mar. 12, 2013 978-0-670-02663-0

Ozeki’s magnificent third novel (All Over Creation, 2003, etc.) brings together a Japanese girl’s diary and a transplanted American novelist to meditate on everything from bullying to the nature of conscience and the meaning of life.

On the beach of an island off British Columbia’s coast, Ruth finds a Hello Kitty lunchbox containing a stack of letters and a red book. The book contains 16-year-old Nao’s diary, bound within the covers of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time—and that’s no accident, since both funny, grieving Nao and blocked, homesick Ruth are obsessed with time: how it passes, how we live in it. Nao wants to “drop out of time”; so does her father, a computer programmer who spent 10 years in California’s Silicon Valley before the dot-com bust apparently sent the family back to Tokyo and subjected Nao to vicious bullying at school. Ruth moved from New York City to Canada since it was an easier place to care for her sick husband and dying mother but now feels the move was “a withdrawal” and is finding it hard to write. She plunges into Nao’s diary, which also includes the stories of her 104-year-old great-grandmother, Jiko, an anarchist and feminist turned Buddhist nun, and Jiko’s son Haruki, a philosophy student forced to become a kamikaze pilot during World War II. The letters in the lunchbox are Haruki’s, and his secret army diary begins the book’s extended climax, which transcends bitter anguish to achieve heartbreaking poignancy as both Nao and Ruth discover what it truly means to be “a time being.”

Ozeki faultlessly captures the slangy cadences of a contemporary teen’s voice even as she uses it to convey Nao’s pain and to unobtrusively offer a quiet introduction to the practice and wisdom of Zen through Jiko’s talks with her great-granddaughter. The novel’s seamless web of language, metaphor and meaning can’t be disentangled from its powerful emotional impact: These are characters we care for deeply, imparting vital life lessons through the magic of storytelling.

A masterpiece, pure and simple.

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THE CLOVER HOUSE

Power, Henriette Lazaridis Ballantine (416 pp.) $15.00 paper | Apr. 9, 2013 978-0-345-53068-4 Happily ensconced in Boston with her fiance, Jonah, Callie’s only real trouble is her hesitancy about marrying him.

That is, until her cousin Aliki phones from Greece to tell her that her beloved Uncle Nestor has died, and the funeral is in two days. So why didn’t her mother tell her sooner?

Power’s debut novel traces Callie’s trip to Greece, where she must not only sort through her uncle’s effects, but also unravel the mystery of her mother’s past. Like her mother, Clio, Callie is |

“...sexy, well-crafted paranormal romance...” from mating instinct

MATING INSTINCT

named for a muse, and her full name is Calliope Notaris Brown.

In shortening her name, she has rejected her Greek heritage.

Yet, her mother has rejected her American heritage for her; in fact, for the first weeks of her life in America, Clio papered over the windows of her marital home. Perhaps discovering why her mother kept the news of Nestor’s death from her may, in turn, explain why her mother always hated living in America, why her family lost its livelihood during World War II and why her aunts hold her mother responsible for that loss. Callie arrives in Patras, Greece, just in time for carnival, whose ecstatic abandon leads Callie into toying with a liaison of her own, as she uncovers her mother’s and uncle’s secrets. During the confusing time of the Italian and then German occupation of Greece, every possession could be confiscated, every plan could lead to betrayal, and every love could lead to disaster. Power’s tale fluidly shifts among Callie’s investigation into her family’s past, her search for her own place—is it with Jonah?—and Clio’s wartime experiences. Memories inhabit the present, easily holding a mirror between Callie’s and Clio’s choices in different times, different circumstances.

Well-paced and filled with likable, plausibly flawed characters. (Agent: Kent D. Wolf)

Reus, Katie Signet Eclipse/NAL (368 pp.) $7.99 paper | Mar. 5, 2013 978-0-451-23960-0 Lupine shifter Jayce Kazan left Kat Saburova in order to protect her from a perilous, immortal existence, despite his passion for her. Now that she’s been turned, can he forgive himself for not being there when she needed him most, while keeping her safe from the people determined to kill them all?

As an ancient law enforcer for the otherworldly shifters, Jayce has kept his passions in check and his involvement with humans to a minimum, until he meets Kat Saburova. No woman—human or shifter—has ever tantalized him like Kat does, but when he refuses to make their relationship permanent, she leaves him. A year later, Kat is kidnapped by an anti-shifter hate group, and her injuries are so life-threatening that a shifter friend saves her by turning her. Jayce can’t forgive himself for not keeping her safe and for not being the one to turn her. Now that she’s a shifter, he’s determined to hone her skills so she’ll always be safe, while also convincing her that she can depend on him and share her life with him. Jayce is the sexiest thing Kat has ever encountered, and as willing as she is to hop back into his bed, she knows she can’t trust him. As a brand new shifter, she’s angry and vulnerable yet determined never to be a victim again, which is a good thing, since there’s a serious threat on the loose, and it has shifters and Kat in particular in its cross hairs.

Katie Reus’ third book in the Moon Shifter series is a fast-paced page turner that keeps her romantic suspense/paranormal audience engaged and intrigued. Jayce is a mega–alpha male, both enthralled and infuriated by his intrepid mate, who is bravely facing the trauma of her recent kidnapping experience and the reality of her new life.

A sexy, well-crafted paranormal romance that succeeds with smart characters and creative worldbuilding.

THE WHITENESS OF THE WHALE

Poyer, David St. Martin’s (336 pp.) $26.99 | Apr. 2, 2013 978-1-250-02056-7

Poyer’s thriller takes fans on a frightening ride that will have them reaching for their Dramamine.

Primate behaviorist Dr. Sara Pollard joins a small crew on the sailboat Black Anemone that plans to disrupt Japanese whaling in the Antarctic seas. Vessels called kill ships fire harpoons with exploding heads that leave their targets little chance of escape or survival. The hunters will not stop until there are no more whales to hunt, so Black Anemone sails from the tip of Argentina to points south with the promise: “We’re gonna do some good out there.” As they search for whales, they encounter turbulent waves, wind and icebergs—along with seemingly infinite solitude and unending sunlight. The stage is meticulously set before the first encounter with their adversary. Poyer describes sea and ice in gorgeous detail. Everything seems hostile and deadly, with one exciting scene after another, as when a Japanese crewman jumps (falls? is thrown?) overboard into the frigid water and will die without immediate help, or when a woman tries to help a harpooned sperm whale. That whale keeps trailing them, apparently bent on vengeance against humans. Through every threat, Pollard and crew must worry about their fuel supply and their ability to stay afloat. Can Black Anemone make landfall in Australia, 4,000 miles away?

Poyer spent a great deal of his life on the ocean, and it shows. This is a fine thriller.

AMITY & SORROW Riley, Peggy Little, Brown (320 pp.) $25.99 | Apr. 16, 2013

The eponymous title refers to the daughters of Amaranth, the first wife (out of 50) of Zachariah, messianic leader of a doomsday cult.

The novel opens with Amaranth on the lam with her two daughters, trying desperately to put some distance between herself and Zachariah, who’s recently tried to burn down the compound where they all lived. Exhausted after four days of travel, Amaranth crashes the car in rural Oklahoma, while at the same time |

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Sorrow experiences a miscarriage. It eventually becomes clear that Zachariah sees himself as God and is also trying to father God, and Sorrow—also known as the Oracle—is the holy vessel to accomplish this task. Sorrow wants nothing more than to “go home” to Zachariah (she makes weird threats to Amity, such as “The devil will fork your tongue and fry you”), but Amaranth has recently become so spooked by Zachariah’s growing megalomania that she feels she no longer has a home. The car crash occurs near an almost-abandoned gas station and farm owned

by Bradley, whose wife has left him. Although Amaranth is slow to share information about her past, Bradley picks up some negative vibes and at first wants the three of them off his property.

Through flashbacks, we get glimpses into the lives Amaranth, Sorrow and Amity have led with Zachariah, shielded from the world and subject to his apocalyptic paranoia. Zachariah’s 39th wife is a “daughter of Waco” and so knows something about government persecution of religious cults, and Amaranth had suspicions that Zachariah might have been leading the women and children to a Jim Jones–style Kool-Aid annihilation. Bradley and Amaranth ultimately—perhaps inevitably—become lovers and begin to build a new family, all the while fearing Zachariah will catch up with them.

Simple in style but complex in tone, this book raises troubling questions about the power of doom-laden cults and their leaders and followers.

the one she shares with her husband. With that setup, the novel then alternates among different types of chapters: a document Francine writes in remembrance of her experience with the church—perhaps to make sense of her life for her unborn child or even for herself, but found by Wells after Francine disappears—as well as ones that trace the pilgrimage of her friend Colville, the flight of Francine, the mysteries that Wells must resolve and the appearance of some sect leaders, at least one of whom suggests a divine purpose that strains the reader’s credulity but makes perfect sense to Colville. And to Francine? She finds “the Teachings still inside her, waiting to be brought into practice, to surface,” as “here she was again, circling back, a person with a person inside her.”

Written with a matter-of-fact flatness, the novel becomes indelibly unsettling as it progresses.

MISS JULIA STIRS UP TROUBLE

Ross, Ann B. Viking (368 pp.) $25.95 | Apr. 9, 2013 978-0-670-02610-4

The 14th installment of the Miss Julia series offers the usual fare: some meddling, a light mystery and a reliable set of down-home Southerners.

Hazel Marie (the one-time mistress of Miss Julia’s dastardly late husband and mother of their love child, Lloyd) is now happily married to Mr. Pickens and tireless mother to their infant twins and the teenage Lloyd. When their cook, James, injures his ankle and arm, thankfully Miss Julia is there to come to the rescue. Miss Julia sets upon a scheme to teach the once-glamorous Hazel Marie to cook until James has recuperated. She marshals the ladies of Abbotsville to contribute their favorite recipes and a cooking demonstration. Into the crowded house is thrown the disreputable Brother Vern Puckett, Hazel Marie’s sanctimonious uncle, who intends to stay awhile. None of this—the ladies in and out with their cooking lessons, Uncle Vern’s selfishness, James’ ill-tempered whining—sits well with Mr. Pickens, which may be driving him into the arms of other women. At least that’s what Miss Julia thinks when she spots him in an empty parking lot with an unidentified blonde. Miss Julia knows how to stop a cheating husband—she arranges for Hazel Marie to have a full makeover at the beauty salon. Thankfully, Granny Wiggins has been added to the carnival atmosphere of the Pickens’ household to help take care of the twins. Adding to the chaos is the hot water Lloyd and James have gotten into, investing all of James’ money in an Internet scam. It doesn’t seem possible Miss Julia can fix all these problems, but she certainly tries.

Ross’ tale seems to belong to another age: one in which women need to beautify to hold onto their cheating husbands and a teenager isn’t the most Internet-savvy person in town.

THE SHELTER CYCLE

Rock, Peter Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (224 pp.) $23.00 | Apr. 2, 2013 978-0-547-85908-8 A metaphysically haunting, shapeshifting novel that keeps the reader off balance and can’t be fully appreciated until its climax.

In the “Acknowledgments” following the novel, Rock (My Abandonment, 2009, etc.) calls this “a more interpersonal, bewildering, educational and emotional experience than anything I have ever written.” Readers will likely not only understand those feelings, but share many of them. Like his previous novel, this one reflects considerable research on the fringes of society, specifically the apocalyptic sect of the Church Universal and Triumphant, which preached that the world would end in the late 1980s. It didn’t. Yet fortified underground survival shelters remain, as do some believers. The novel reunites a man and a woman who were close as children when raised within the church. Francine is married and pregnant, with her present life with her husband, Wells, seeming to have little connection with her childhood past. A neighbor girl goes missing and is feared dead, and Francine helps with the search. Inexplicably (at least with no explanation that Wells or the reader can initially accept), the friend she hasn’t seen for decades appears seemingly from nowhere to help with the search, and her bond with him quickly seems stronger than 26

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the Attavianos settle in with relatives in nearby Lawrence. The nephew of a Civil War hero, Ben Shaw is animated and passionate about bananas, his desire to build a canal in Panama to promote international trade and, once he sets eyes on her, 14-year-old Gina. Harry Barrington is the polar opposite of Ben. The son of a wealthy property owner, he’s quiet and bookish and has been dating Alice, the daughter of his father’s business partner, for years. When Ben invites Gina to attend anti-imperialistic meetings sponsored by his feminist mother, Gina sneaks to Boston each week—but it’s neither the politics nor Ben that interest her. She’s attracted to Harry and does everything in her power to spend time with him, including convincing Harry to invest in two restaurants. Although Harry’s increasingly drawn to Gina, he still tries to do as society dictates, and he and Gina eventually go their separate ways as Ben heads to Panama to work on the new canal. In the ensuing years, Harry pursues his doctorate while maintaining his relationship with Alice, but a chance meeting with Gina steers his life in a new direction. The two begin to attend speeches given by anarchist Emma Goldman, socialist Eugene Debs, and other political and social activists, and Harry starts to reassess his own thoughts and feelings; so much so, in fact, that random fragments of the protestors’ speeches run willynilly through Harry’s thoughts as his own life changes course.

Unfortunately, Simons misses a good opportunity to present a strong romance and clearly connect its characters to many of the prevalent issues in early-20th-century America; although the love story is adequate, the sociopolitical elements in the narrative are too random to be meaningful.

Shafak, Elif Viking (352 pp.) $26.95 | Mar. 11, 2013 978-0-670-78483-7 Turkish novelist Shafak again explores sociopolitical issues within a deeply human context in this tragedy about how traditional Turkish Muslim attitudes toward women impact a family that has immigrated to England.

“My mother died twice,” is the novel’s telling first line, spoken in 1992 London by educated, assimilated Esma on her way to pick up her brother Iskender from the prison where he’s been incarcerated since 1978 for the murder of their mother, Pembe.

The killing is a given. The drama lies in what led to such violence, which Shafak explains through the history of Pembe and her husband, Adem, with whom she moved to London, of their three children who have grown up in England, and of Pembe’s twin sister, Jamila, who has stayed behind in rural Turkey. Pembe has always been the more adventurous sister, Jamila the dreamy, spiritual one. Originally, Adem falls in love with Jamila, but she is already promised to an elderly man from the family that kidnapped her and therefore compromised her honor. Seeing him as a means of escaping to a larger world, Pembe convinces Adem to marry her instead. They move to London. By the late 1970s, Adem has gambled away their savings and deserted Pembe to live with his mistress. To make ends meet, she takes a job at a hair salon and begins to blossom. Bookish Esma and handsome Iskender struggle as teens to find their place in British society, but British-born 7-year-old Yunus is thoroughly British. A magical child, innocent yet wise beyond his years, Yunus becomes the mascot for a group of hippies in a nearby squat. Then Pembe meets a nice man and falls in love. Never mind that Adem is living with his mistress; Iskender feels compelled to save the family’s honor. But 14 years later, Iskender and Esma must come to terms with past actions.

Shafak turns what might seem a polemic against honor killing in lesser hands into a searing but empathetic and ultimately universal family tragedy.

ANGEL’S GATE

sturges, p.g.

Scribner (368 pp.) $25.00 | Feb. 26, 2013 978-14767-1297-0 The Shortcut Man is back once more, and he quickly becomes mired in more than one case of sex, drugs, blackmail and—what else?—murder.

Ex-cop Dick Henry enjoys helping innocent victims recoup their losses in inventive ways. Whether he’s showering indoor plants with body fluids or sending in a man whose noxious fumes cause people to hurl their breakfast burritos, shady characters promptly get the message and do his bidding. In this latest noir thriller, Henry’s hired to find a woman who disappeared six years earlier. His investigation takes him to Ivanhoe Productions, a legit movie company with a sleazy special talent program designed for owner Howard Hogue’s pleasure. (He has a thing for tall, busty blondes.) When one of the girls is brutally assaulted

by Hogue’s star director, Eli Nazarian, Henry steps in to help “housemother” Devi Stanton when she calls him for assistance.

Before you can say apple cheese danish, Nazarian and Hogue’s lackey, Melvin Shea, are found tied together, sans pants, in a refrigerator box behind Dunkin’ Donuts, and neither has any

CHILDREN OF LIBERTY

Simons, Paullina Morrow/HarperCollins (432 pp.) $15.99 paper | Feb. 26, 2013 978-0-06-210323-9 A love story about two people from vastly different worlds gets off to an excruciatingly slow start in Simons’ prequel to The Bronze Horseman trilogy.

When Sicilian-born immigrants Gina and Salvo Attaviano arrive in Boston with their mother in 1899, the family meets a couple of 21-yearold entrepreneurs who provide food, lodging and advice before |

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“Beguiling and bright...” from the house at the end of hope street

DEATH ON A PALE HORSE Sherlock Holmes on Her Majesty’s Secret Service

clue how they—or the dead dog between them—got there.

With big bucks and reputations at stake, Shea, Nazarian and a crooked doctor try to cover some very dirty tracks, as Henry uncovers the details of a murder that took place at Hogue’s mansion years earlier, an act that could bring down a famous actor and the movie mogul himself.

Sturges (The Tribulations of the Shortcut Man, 2012, etc.) piles on the chuckles, throws in a host of extreme characters and provides readers with nonstop action. And he does so with enough finesse to compensate for the novel’s weaknesses.

Thomas, Donald Pegasus Crime (400 pp.) $25.00 | Mar. 12, 2013 978-1-60598-394-3

Spurred on by a well-informed war veteran, Sherlock Holmes revisits several homicides in war-torn South Africa and India.

As both a useful historical note and an intolerably overextended prologue illustrate, the record is clear: Two weeks after the 1879 assassination of Louis Napoleon, Prince Imperial and claimant to the throne of France, by rebels in Natal, Capt. Jahleel Brenton Carey, commander of the prince’s bodyguard, was court martialed. The reversal of the verdict merely dragged out Carey’s life four more years until he died in India under suspicious circumstances. Not long after Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John H. Watson have taken rooms together at 221-B Baker Street, Watson gets his own case. Rev. Samuel Dordona, who was with Carey when he died, is convinced that his friend’s death was murder and that the Prince Imperial’s death bears closer examination by a qualified veteran like Watson. Since Holmes’ brother Mycroft, permanent secretary for Cabinet Affairs, has an unofficial finger in every government pie, Holmes quickly assumes a leadership role in the case.

The murder of Capt. Joshua Sellon in London implicates Col. Rawdon Moran—the older brother of the infamous Col. Sebastian Moran, whom the faithful will recall from Conan Doyle’s tales of Sherlock Holmes—and incidentally provides a chance for Holmes to do what he does best: investigate crime scenes, make lightning inferences, unmask secrets and propose explanations as dazzling as they are logical. Unfortunately, Holmes the detective, who’s enjoyed a vigorous afterlife in Thomas’ pastiches (Sherlock Holmes and the Ghosts of Bly, 2010, etc.), is upstaged by Holmes the secret agent for the final act, which finds Moran behind yet another historical outrage.

Thomas’ attempt to intertwine the Holmes saga with the political fortunes of the empire is more ingenious than convincing, unless your idea of Holmes is Errol Flynn.

BRISTOL HOUSE

Swerling, Beverly Viking (416 pp.) $27.95 | Apr. 8, 2013 978-0-670-02593-0

An intricately woven plot with voices from the past give Swerling’s latest historical thriller an otherworldly aura.

Annie, a recovered alcoholic, has been hired by a Jewish foundation, spearheaded by a controversial and very wealthy man, to spend three months in London looking for evidence of an elusive historical figure known as the Jew of Holborn.

She moves into a flat whose owner is visiting her son in another country and almost immediately is confronted by the ghost of a Carthusian monk in the back bedroom. Frightened and worried that the vision could be the result of hallucinations from years of drinking, Annie begins her research on specific ancient Jewish artifacts, all of which are holy to the Jewish people. In the meantime, Annie meets Geoffrey, a famous British television news personality, who joins forces to determine whether she is indeed on the right track to finding those artifacts, the Jew of Holborn and the identity of the monk who keeps appearing to her. But when Geoffrey introduces her to his mother, Maggie, a brilliant Jewish woman who worked as a codebreaker for England during World War II and was brought over at the beginning of the war as a child, both Geoffrey and Annie begin delving deeper into the Jew of Holborn and what they believe may be a code that will lead them closer to conspiracies both past and present. The author writes well, but readers have a lot to swallow when it comes to gullibility, particularly when no one who finds out about Annie’s ghostly visions, which only she can see, bats an eye. The story is also weighted down with so much historical minutiae that readers will both find themselves lost and wondering on occasion.

This latest effort by Swerling is nicely penned but also ponderous and overloaded with out-of-place sexual vernacular, an overabundance of detail and a tired, evil Catholic Church conspiracy.

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THE HOUSE AT THE END OF HOPE STREET

van Praag, Menna Pamela Dorman/Viking (304 pp.) $25.95 | Apr. 8, 2013 978-0-670-78463-9

Each lost woman may stay for 99 nights. That’s just enough time to heal a broken heart, face a demon or redirect one’s entire life.

A despairing victim of academic shenanigans, Alba Ashby finds herself rather inexplicably in front of a gorgeous house. Alba is gifted with the ability to see |

the colors of emotions, bubbles of laughter and sparks of love.

The proprietress, Peggy Abbot, invites her into a most magical place. For nearly 200 years, the house has stood invisible to most people, dropping its enchanted veil only for women who have lost hope. It offers sanctuary, advice (in the form of cryptic messages dropped from above), gifts (everything from birthday cakes to pianos to never-ending wardrobes) and advice from famous previous visitors—including Dorothy Parker, Daphne du Maurier and Caroline Herschel—each of who speaks from her photograph on the wall. This summer, the house’s residents include Greer, a glamorous but failed actress reeling from her fiance’s infidelity; Carmen, a sultry Portuguese singer who has buried something dangerous under the morning glories; Alba, who must face not only her ruined career, but also her horrible family when she receives word that her beloved, but mad, mother has died. At the reading of the will, Alba is given a box of love letters written between her mother and Alba’s real father.

Can she find him? Will Stella, the ghost in the kitchen, help her?

And why does the house, with its magical bookshelves, force her to get novels from Zoë, the pixielike librarian? Peggy herself is troubled this summer. The house has informed her that today is her last birthday. Has she squandered her life helping other women when she ought to have married Harry?

Beguiling and bright, van Praag’s (Happier Than She’s Ever Been, 2011, etc.) third novel delights with deft writing and charming characters.

contemporary African novel. Kamal has returned to find Saida, the guilty love of his life. Her elderly aunt is reluctant to tell him what she knows, but he persists. Excerpts from Mzee Omari’s poetic history of Tanzania are laced throughout, but the poet’s own story is more complex than it at first appears. In fact, nothing here is as straightforward as it seems: Who was/is Saida, why did Kamal’s mother send him away, and what lies at the source of Mzee Omari’s poetry? And then there is Kamal’s own ambivalence toward his history.

An ambitious, passionate work about racial identity, deracination and the unsolvable mysteries of the human heart. (Author tour to New York and Washington, D.C.)

TIME ON MY HANDS

Vasta, Giorgio Translated by Hunt, Jonathan Faber & Faber/Farrar, Straus and Giroux (320 pp.) $15.00 paper | Apr. 2, 2013 978-0-86547-937-1 A political parable that operates on various levels, from suspense to polemic.

Originally published in the author’s native Italy in 2008, this debut novel details the events of 30 years earlier, when the Red Brigades kidnapped the leader of the Christian Democratics, committed murder and wreaked terror upon the country. Against that political backdrop (which recedes as the novel progresses), three 11-year-old boys from the Sicilian city of Palermo find their lives transformed by the inspiration of the Red Brigades and the cultural critique that its seemingly senseless violence has visited on their homeland. “I was an ideological, focused, intense little boy, a non-ironic, anti-ironic, refractory little boy—a non-little boy,” writes the narrator, who has taken the name Nimbus, in solidarity with his comrades, led by the oddly charismatic, reductively ruthless Flight. The three of them (Radius completes the trio) escalate their fantasy subversion from coded language and assumed identities into crimes with real consequences—arson, kidnapping, murder. “We must abandon identity, relinquish the ego in favor of the group,” proclaims Flight, who is also prepared to relinquish morality and basic human values for the sake of a greater good, which is never really defined, either by the three boys or by the Red Brigades they aspire to emulate.

Yet, says the narrator after watching a film, “it was the epitome of 1978, its mannerisms and its poses: wandering around aimlessly while claiming to have a strategy, indulging in lachrymose self-criticism, and continually regurgitating the same tired language.” Language in the novel is variously an epidemic, a crime, a tool, a means of exile, a boundless existence. Ultimately, the precociously innocent, language-obsessed narrator must make a choice between the inchoate ideology that has given him new life and identity and a girl he barely knows: “Whenever I looked at her I felt a religion form within me, a need for tenderness— the very need that the struggle daily excluded.”

Deftly plotted though occasionally heavy-handed, as the boys shoulder more symbolic weight than 11-year-olds should.

THE MAGIC OF SAIDA

Vassanji, M.G. Knopf (320 pp.) $25.95 | Mar. 6, 2013 978-0-307-96150-1

Vassanji (The Assassin’s Song, 2007, etc.) employs dense yet splintered prose to mirror the dense yet splintered identity of his multicultural/multiethnic protagonist, a successful Canadian doctor who was born in Tanzania to an African mother and Indian father.

When the novel opens, Kamal lies delusional and near death in a hospital in Tanzania. As he recovers, his new Tanzanian acquaintance, a local publisher, unravels the mystery of what made Kamal so sick. Kamal has returned to Tanzania after 35 years abroad, haunted by his memory of the girl he loved as a child growing up in the village of Kilwa. The girl’s name was Saida, and she was the granddaughter of a local poet of renown, Mzee Omari Tamim, who highly revered Kamal’s Indian grandfather. He and Saida shared the innocent love of childhood, but then, at the age of 11, his mother abruptly sent him away to be raised by Indian relatives in the city; fortunately they turned out to be a loving family, but Kamal has never recovered from his sense of abandonment. The story of Kamal’s childhood in 1950s Africa as a mixed-race child cuts away to his return to presentday Kilwa, where he stays in a ramshackle hotel owned by an expat British owner—the retro echoes of Graham Greene and W. Somerset Maugham play with readers’ expectations in this decidedly |

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THE INTERESTINGS

Yair Moses and his longtime companion, Ruth, are visiting Santiago de Compostela for a three-day retrospective of his long career. It’s appropriate that the screenings be in Santiago, for Moses is also making a pilgrimage of sorts, viewing early work he hasn’t seen for 40 years. Ruth was his major actress in these early films and at the time, was the lover of Trigano, a brilliant screenwriter and former student of Moses—though they had a falling out about a delicate scene in a film and for years have barely talked to each other. Much of the first part of the novel is taken up by Moses’ complex and sometimes bewildered reaction to his films from the ’60s, for in those films, he had an “absurdist” aesthetic that he’d later gotten away from. He’s both bemused and perplexed to see his films dubbed in Spanish, a language he doesn’t understand. He’s also fascinated almost to the point of obsession by a painting in his hotel room, a 17th-century Dutch work depicting an ancient Roman story of Cimon being nursed by his daughter Pera, a scene eerily reminiscent of a segment he’d cut from an earlier movie, the very scene that caused the break between Moses and his screenwriter. Upon his return to Israel, Moses feels the need to get in touch with the prickly Trigano, who feels he’s largely responsible for Moses’ early success.

Yehoshua’s intelligent and refined novel recalls once again Faulkner’s famous dictum that “the past isn’t dead.

It isn’t even past.” (Author tour to New York, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Boston and Chicago)

Wolitzer, Meg Riverhead (480 pp.) $27.95 | Apr. 9, 2013 978-1-59448-839-9

Wolitzer (The Uncoupling, 2011) follows a group of friends from adolescence at an artsy summer camp in 1974 through adulthood and into late-middle age as their lives alternately intersect, diverge and reconnect.

Middle-class suburban Julie becomes Jules when a group of more sophisticated kids from Manhattan include her in their clique at Camp Spirit-in-the-Woods in upstate New York. Her lifelong best friend becomes beautiful Ash, an aspiring actress.

Ash’s older brother is sexy bad-boy Goodman. Cathy, who wants to dance, becomes Goodman’s girlfriend. Jonah, the ethereally handsome, slightly withdrawn son of a famous folksinger, is musically gifted. And then there is Ethan: homely, funny and a brilliant cartoonist. Although he and Jules are immediately soul mates, she rejects his physical advances, unable to work up any sexual attraction. After this first idyllic summer, the novel cuts to 2009 when Jules, now living a modest middle-class life as a therapist married to a medical technician, receives her annual Christmas letter from Ethan and Ash, who are married and wildly successful. As she looks back, the reader follows the evolution of the group. While still in high school, Cathy and Goodman break up in disastrous fashion; they both disappear from the group but not without causing permanent repercussions. For one thing, to Jules’ surprise, Goodman’s grieving sister Ash and Ethan become an unlikely but devoted couple.

Jonah, who evolves as the inevitable sympathetic gay character in a novel tracing social mores through the last decades of the 20th century, gives up music for engineering. Ash becomes a feminist director and marries Ethan, the true genius of the group, who experiences major creative and financial success with his long-running animated series. Jules, who has given up acting to become a therapist and has married sweet but unambitious Dennis, tries not to envy her friend’s success. Secrets are kept for decades among the six “Interestings”; resentments are nursed; loyalties are tested with mixed results.

Ambitious and involving, capturing the zeitgeist of the liberal intelligentsia of the era.

m ys t e r y PEACH PIES AND ALIBIS

Adams, Ellery Berkley Prime Crime (304 pp.) $7.99 paper | Mar. 5, 2013 978-0-425-25199-7

Ella Mae LeFaye is settling into the routine of owning her own pie shop, as well as her newly discovered magical powers; not the best time to investigate a string of murders, but she’ll have to, since the enemy behind them threatens everything she holds dear.

Having returned to her hometown after a disastrous marriage, Ella Mae loves the new life she’s building, even if it means juggling her business, her newfound talent for enchantment, a fledgling romance with her oldest crush, and her beloved but bustling magical family and friends. Business is booming, and when she goes to check out a used Jeep to buy as a delivery truck, it turns into a serendipitous trip: She meets a local cheese producer, some potential catering clients and a possible new helper for the Charmed Pie Shoppe. Life seems wonderful, but she barely has time to take a breath from her productive excursion when she and her Aunt Dee discover a friend dead in her home, and only days later, when Ella Mae is catering an

THE RETROSPECTIVE

Yehoshua, A.B. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (352 pp.) $26.00 | Mar. 5, 2013 978-0-547-49696-2

An elegant and graceful translation of Yehoshua’s 2011 Hesed Sefaradi, a novel about an aging Israeli director reviewing both his films and his life.

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DEADLY VIRTUES

event, another friendly acquaintance winds up dead, too. While seemingly unconnected, and even accidental, Ella Mae’s mother and aunts are convinced the deaths are murder and that they are attempts to block a critical magical ritual set to take place during the upcoming harvest. The more Ella Mae is swept into the investigation, the more she realizes how little she knows about her magical history or the deep mystical heritage she’s a part of. But the murders are designed to shut down the enchanted community of Havenwood for good, and Ella Mae can’t let that happen. As her powers blossom, it becomes clear that there’s something peculiar and special about her experience, and as the menacing figure gets closer to Ella Mae, some long-held secrets and magical mysteries will unfold, changing life as she—and all of Havenwood—knows it.

An original, intriguing storyline that celebrates women, family, friendship and loyalty within an enchanted world, with a hint of romance, an engaging cast of characters and the promise of a continued saga of magical good confronting evil.

Bannister, Jo Minotaur (272 pp.) $24.99 | Mar. 19, 2013 978-1-250-02344-5

After 10 years of enviably low criminal activity, things are about to heat up for the town of Norbold.

Apart from his inability to do anything about local drug lord Mickey Argyle, Chief Supt. John Fountain, of the Meadowvale Police, has reduced crime statistics to the vanishing point and kept them there. But those days end abruptly when the police arrest law student Jerome Cardy for leaving the scene of a car accident and he’s beaten to death

by Barking Mad Barclay, a violent racist who’s been arrested that same night. The crime might seem like the product of the victim’s massive bad luck, but Constable Hazel Best, a probationary officer in her first posting, doesn’t see it that way.

Neither does Nye Jackson, the senior reporter for the Norbold News. They’re struck by the accuracy with which Jerome evidently foresaw his own death and the intensity with which he insisted on passing on a cryptic message—“Othello”—shortly beforehand to Gabriel Ash, a harmless local character dubbed Rambles with Dogs who’d been placed in Jerome’s cell for observation after he was savagely beaten by a bunch of bored teenagers. The fragile relationship that grows between Hazel and Gabriel may remind longtime fans of Bannister of her nine tales featuring private investigator Brodie Farrell and her damaged assistant Daniel Hood (Liars All, 2010, etc.). Once Hazel and Gabriel decide that the danger to Jerome came not from outside but from inside the Meadowvale Police Station, however, the stakes rise for Norbold.

Even so, Bannister (Death in High Places, 2011, etc.) keeps the focus on her memorable, if not entirely original, characters rather than the town they share or the plot—its opening moves piquantly surprising, its later surprises more predictable—that brings them together.

TAINTED MOUNTAIN

Baker, Shannon Midnight Ink/Llewellyn (360 pp.) $14.99 paper | Mar. 8, 2013 978-0-7387-3422-4 The future of an Arizona ski resort hangs in the balance as its owner fights environmentalists, Native American activists and uranium miners for the right to make snow.

It should be clear sailing for Nora Abbott, owner of Kachina Ski, now that she’s won a lawsuit permitting her to use artificial snowmaking equipment. But minutes after the decision, a mysterious figure slashes Nora’s ankle.

Days later, someone pushes her husband, Scott, off a mountainside trail, killing him. Next, Scott’s mistress, Maureen, dies in a car crash. The police suspect Nora, even after an explosion destroys her ski lift and her house is firebombed. Nora enters a shaky partnership with Barrett McCreary, who’s seeking the rights to extract uranium from Kachina. And her stylish mother, Abigail, is ready to forge an even more personal relationship with McCreary. Still, representatives of the local Hopi press on with their media campaign to stop Nora from making snow, and their fears for Mother Earth resonate with local environmentalists. McCreary’s minion Cole Huntsman is strangely protective of Nora, just as her friend Charlie Podanski bristles with concern over Abigail. Will the Hopi, led by a shaky Sioux agitator named Big Elk, stop Kachina Ski, or will Nora succumb to one of the many “accidents” someone has planned for her?

Lots of explosions, fires and crashes, but despite its exotic location, Baker’s debut offers no local color and little suspense.

THE FAMILY WAY

Bowen, Rhys Minotaur (320 pp.) $24.99 | Mar. 5, 2013 978-1-250-01163-3

Neither retirement nor pregnancy can put a good detective out to pasture.

Molly Murphy Sullivan has promised her police captain husband, Daniel, that she’ll quit investigating and settle down to become a housewife. Restless and uncomfortable in the heat of a New York City summer, she gets a letter addressed to her old agency: A couple from Ireland want her to find their niece Maureen O’Byrne, who worked for the Mainwaring family before she went missing. Surely Daniel |

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“A twisty fourth case...” from final settlement

THE WOMAN WHO WOULDN’T DIE

won’t mind her asking a few innocent questions? But her husband is furious when she witnesses a baby kidnapping—one of the cases he’s working—while visiting a domestic agency in search of a maid. He wants her to travel to cooler Westchester, stay with his mother and give up detective work. Daniel would be even more angry if he knew that Molly had gone back to the agency, trying to track down the Mainwarings, and bumped into her younger brother Liam, who’s on the run from the English and illegally in the country on business for the Brotherhood, which will do anything to gain independence for Ireland. Molly agrees to go to Westchester when she learns that the Mainwarings live nearby. She asks her two neighbors to come stay at a nearby inn so that she’ll have an excuse to get away from her mother-in-law and keep sleuthing, a decision that will put her life in danger.

Feisty Molly (Hush Now, Don’t You Cry, 2012, etc.) unravels another knotty case while providing insight into life just after the turn of that other century.

Cotterill, Colin Soho Crime (320 pp.) $25.95 | Feb. 19, 2013 978-1-61695-206-8

Thailand’s crustiest coroner smells a rat when a mysterious woman returned from the dead begins making prophetic proclamations.

October, 1978. Madame Used-To-Be has earned a reputation in her Lao village for dispensing bits of wisdom and accurate predictions, warming the hearts of all who visit her. What sets her apart from other prognosticators is that when she was known as Madame Keui, she was shot and killed in a burglary; villagers even saw her corpse burn on a pyre.

Elderly Dr. Siri Paiboun (Slash and Burn, 2011, etc.) is drawn to this odd woman quite by accident. He’s settled into marital bliss with the colorful Madame Daeng, but the government has abruptly closed his workplace, the Mahosot Hospital morgue.

So Siri keeps busy with pet projects like smuggling refugees to safety. He isn’t afraid to thumb his nose at Communist authorities. In fact, a judge dubs him the “cordon bleu of blackmailers” due to his ability to leverage scandals about the regime to achieve his ends. That’s very awkward for Siri’s tart-tongued former sidekick, Nurse Dtui, who’s married to dutiful police inspector Phosy. When Siri is dispatched to the Lao village to supervise the excavation of the corpse of a prominent general’s brother, he becomes intrigued with Used-To-Be, and it’s anyone’s guess whether he’s as rapt as the humble villagers or simply ferreting out a mystery.

After Cotterill’s hiatus to launch another series set in Thailand (Grandpa, There’s a Head on the Beach, 2012, etc.), the return of that glorious curmudgeon Dr. Siri for a ninth escapade is bliss.

SWEET TEA REVENGE

Childs, Laura Berkley Prime Crime (336 pp.) $25.95 | Mar. 5, 2013 978-0-425-25288-8 Being a bridesmaid has its dangers.

Theodosia Browning, the one and only bridesmaid for Delaine Dish’s wedding, watches her friend’s special day get off to a less-than-auspicious start.

The beautiful city of Charleston cowers under a nasty squall, and the bride is more than a mite testy.

The groom, wealthy lawyer Dougan Granville, is the man of Delaine’s dreams, but the wedding isn’t living up to her high expectations. The venue is a run-down inn, the bride’s sister is late, and Dougan wants to cut the honeymoon short. When Theodosia goes in search of the tardy bridegroom and finds him dead; the overwrought Delaine begs her to find his killer. Luckily, Theodosia and the helpers at her Indigo Tea shop, perfectionist tea-blender Drayton and pastry chef Haley, are no strangers to murder (Scones & Bones, 2011, etc.). Dougan’s law partner is cagey about his assets, a former girlfriend keeps popping up, the ATF is investigating the Granville cigar store, looking for smuggled Cubans, and a team of ghost hunters wants Theodosia to help them communicate with the recently departed. Theodosia, pressed by Delaine into catering the garden tour at Dougan’s magnificent home, has her hands full. But her bump of curiosity refuses to give up on the ever more complicated mystery.

Enough suspects to hold your interest, although the best features are the local Charleston lore and the appended recipes.

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FINAL SETTLEMENT

Doudera, Vicki Midnight Ink/Llewellyn (336 pp.) $14.99 paper | Apr. 8, 2013 978-0-7387-3428-6 A winter wedding in Maine brings both joy and tragedy.

Realtor Darby Farr (Deadly Offer, 2012, etc.) has returned to the island of Hurricane Harbor with mixed feelings. Since running away from her difficult childhood there years ago, she’s come back only once before returning this time to serve as a bridesmaid for her friend Tina Ames. Darby arrives just in time for Police Chief Charles Dupont, an old family friend, to ask for help. Lorraine Delvecchio, a former employee of the department, is dead. The neighboring police have written off her demise as an accidental fall from a sea wall into the frigid water. But Charles thinks |

SCRATCHGRAVEL ROAD

otherwise, and no wonder: Lorraine was evidently a blackmailer who preferred to identify her marks only by initials. Meanwhile, Darby discovers a diary in a box hidden in the attic of her house, which once belonged to her Japanese mother. The diary, written in Japanese, may exonerate her grandfather of World War II atrocities. Darby shows it to a Japanese chemist who claims to just be in the neighborhood. When her boyfriend, British journalist Miles Porter, arrives, his observation that several pages have been cut from the diary prompts Darby to call the FBI. She’s just starting to enjoy her old home when Charles is shot dead. Even though her investigation puts her own life in danger, she continues to hunt for the mysterious killer and search for more information about her family.

A twisty fourth case that strikes close to the bone for a complex, likable sleuth.

Fields, Tricia Minotaur (288 pp.) $24.99 | Mar. 5, 2013 978-1-250-02136-6

Welcome to West Texas, where a nuclear plant is being dismantled, a young lady takes a walk in the desert in 104-degree heat, and a corpse is dumped along the route usually favored by drug mules and coyotes.

Artemis Police Chief Josie Gray has her hands full. Rain-fed floods menace the Feed Plant, the abandoned nuclear waste facility Beacon Pathways is cleaning up. Cassidy Harper nearly succumbs to heat stroke but won’t admit why she was reconnoitering the area near the Hollow. And Officer Marta Cruz is having trouble controlling her daughter Teresa, who bails out her meth-addicted boyfriend. Unfortunately, matters are about to get worse. A body is found with no identification but wearing protective boots issued to employees cleaning up the nuclear site. Putrid lesions run up his arms, and an autopsy reveals that his gastrointestinal tract has been eaten away. Diego Paiva, plant supervisor, insists that his safety measures are top-notch, but could there have been a lapse in security for those men working on the vitrification project in Unit Seven? The dead man’s wallet winds up in Cassidy’s car, his last wages turn up in her boyfriend’s secret bank account, and the co-worker who drove him to the job every day develops similar burn marks on his wrist. But the questions of who killed the unlucky Juan Santiago and why will have to wait while Chief Gray illegally crosses into Mexico to retrieve a rebellious teen and returns to deal with the torrential flooding that threatens to demolish the Feed Plant, spewing toxic waste everywhere.

As in Fields’ Tony Hillerman Prize–winning debut (The Territory, 2011): carefully integrated red herrings, a tinge of romance and dead-on descriptions of West Texas weather— oppressive heat, weeklong downpours and earth-obliterating mudslides.

SAFE FROM HARM

Evans, Stephanie Jaye Berkley Prime Crime (368 pp.) $15.00 paper | Mar. 5, 2013 978-0-425-25346-5 Bear Wells, a Church of Christ minister, and Baby Bear, the family’s 180pound Newfoundland puppy, must cope with teenage daughters.

Sugar Land, Texas is a nice community to grow up in unless your divorced mother dies from esophageal cancer and you’re forced to move there and live with your dad, his twin sons, and Liz, the stepmother from hell, who suggests suicide as a nice lifestyle change. Teenager Phoebe Pickersley’s solution is to dress goth, pierce herself from brow to lip and insinuate herself into the more idyllic Wells household, where she monopolizes 15-year-old Jo Wells’ mom’s time, manipulates Jo into doing what she wants, flirts with Jo’s boyfriend, Alex, and finally so aggravates Jo that she ends the relationship. One day, Jo returns home and finds Phoebe dead in her bedroom. The fact that his daughter is suspected of supplying Phoebe with drugs sends Bear into a tailspin. He insists that Jo couldn’t have done this since he knows everything about her. But he doesn’t know a thing about that tattoo on her neck, her leaving the house by her bedroom window or her skipping ballet classes to take lessons in Catholicism. While Bear twists slowly in the wind, Liz, on a romantic picnic with her husband, dies from anaphylactic shock from ingesting tuna. Phoebe’s alcoholic grandfather sobers up long enough to redeem an insurance policy on his granddaughter. At length, Jo gets down to sleuthing and Bear to taking long walks along the levee with Baby Bear and his secretary’s curly tailed pugs as he tries to puzzle out life.

As charming and wry as Evans’ bright debut (Faithful Unto Death, 2012), filled with reasons to own dogs, love your children and your wife, and have faith.

RED VELVET CUPCAKE MURDER

Fluke, Joanne Kensington (304 pp.) $25.00 | Feb. 26, 2013 978-0-7582-8034-3

All of Lake Eden is agog when the police chief ’s secretary takes a tumble from the penthouse of a condo complex.

Fabulously wealthy Roger Dalworth has pulled out all the stops for the grand reopening of the Albion Hotel, his new luxury condo project. A caterer from Minneapolis! Red Velvet Surprise Cupcakes from The Cookie Jar for dessert! The evening is so grand that The Cookie Jar’s owner, Hannah Swensen (Cinnamon Roll Murder, |

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ICE COLD KILL

2012, etc.), in eye makeup and pantyhose, decides to tour the Albion’s posh penthouse, complete with its outdoor garden.

Hannah is luckier than Barbara Donnelly, whose own tour of the penthouse ends in a headfirst plunge to the parking lot.

Barbara survives, much addled, leaving amateur sleuth Hannah to decode her ramblings about her brother (Barbara is an only child) and a furry white monster that lurks in her hospital room.

Hannah soon has her own worries. She finds Dr. Bev Thorndike, her former rival for local dentist Norman Rhodes’ affections, in her red Maserati at the bottom of Miller’s Pond. Even though Dr. Bev has recently become engaged to Roger, her death puts Hannah very much on Detective Mike Kingston’s radar screen.

Can Hannah find the real culprit before Mike ends the discussion of whether he or Norman will be the one to wrestle her to the altar by putting her in the slammer instead?

Even when she’s in pantyhose, Hannah’s grit and quick thinking once more save the day. (Includes 26 recipes, not sampled)

Haynes, Dana Minotaur (368 pp.) $25.99 | Mar. 26, 2013 978-1-250-00963-0 Daria Gibron, the former Israeli Shin Bet agent now operating as an onewoman destruction crew for the FBI, eludes every secret intelligence agency in the world but catches a recombinant RNA virus in the process.

John Broom, the CIA analyst who wrote the background report on Gibron, insists that she’s no threat to American security even though she has plans to meet Maj. Khalid Belhadj, a 15-year veteran of the Mukhabarat (the Syrian Military Intelligence Directorate), in New York. The last time they met, Daria tried to kill him. Oddly, she’s warned off the rendezvous, causing a brouhaha within the CIA that sets Gibron on the run with Belhadj. Meanwhile, Will Halliday, a Secret Service turncoat, is helping Asher Sahar, reactivated by the Group, an unauthorized Israeli dirty-tricks squad, to steal a canister full of some lethal stuff from Denver. When analysts decide that the tie-in between the superspies, now code named Pegasus A, has as its target the U.S. president, a geopolitical chase for them begins, hopping from country to country before they can target the world leaders attending a summit meeting. The chase winds up outside Paris, where two groups of snipers confront each other on a rooftop while Sahar hunkers down in a room created within a room within another room below. Gibron, who’s known Sahar since they were children sequestered with host families while the Mossad trained them, infiltrates his lair and decides to stop him but becomes contaminated by the canister’s contents. Sahar heads for an escape tunnel while sundry intelligence agencies shell the building, but Gibron catches him and severs his spinal cord, leading to a face-off between her and her temporary ally Belhadj.

Enough intelligence agencies, bad guys and gruesome viruses for a month of nonstop massacres. When Haynes runs out of guns and knives to put in the hands of superheroine Daria (Breaking Point, 2011, etc.), he turns oxygen tanks into missiles for her to launch.

A DYING FALL

Griffiths, Elly Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (400 pp.) $26.00 | Mar. 5, 2013 978-0-547-79816-5 A forensic archaeologist, a policeman and a druid pool their skills to find a murderer.

Ruth Galloway’s quiet routine of teaching and raising her daughter Kate, the fruit of her short affair with DCI Harry Nelson, is interrupted by the shocking news of her university friend Dan Golding’s death. A posthumous letter from Dan asking her to examine the bones of an exciting discovery he has made and hinting at unnamed problems prompts Ruth (The House at Sea’s End, 2012, etc.) to ask Nelson to inquire more closely into the case. It turns out that Dan’s laptop and cellphone are missing, and the police are already treating his death as suspicious. When someone from Dan’s university asks her to look at the bones, Ruth, Kate and her druid friend Cathbad all head to a rented cottage in the north of England, where Nelson is visiting his mom in Blackpool. Cathbad’s local druid friend, Pendragon, greets them with a gun and a tale of fear, possibly of the White Hand, the right-wing group terrorizing the university campus. The bones, which Dan was sure were those of King Arthur, have mysteriously vanished. All that remain are some samples Dan had sent to a lab in the States. When these samples indicate that King Arthur was part black, Kate and the police both look to the mysterious White Hand for answers.

Another gem packed with offbeat, well-developed characters and a quirky, challenging mystery.

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THE GREEN LADY

Johnston, Paul Creme de la Crime (256 pp.) $28.95 | Feb. 1, 2013 978-1-78029-034-8 Greek-Scot missing persons specialist Alex Mavros, whose fourth case (The Silver Stain, 2012) raced from one felony to the next with reckless abandon, goes even further in his fifth, reaching all the way back to the rituals of Demeter to root his latest discoveries in Greece’s sordid almost-present.

Angela Poulou isn’t exactly close to her husband, wealthy businessman Paschos Poulou. So, instead of asking him if he |

has any idea what might have happened to their missing daughter Lia, she lets three months pass without hearing a hint of a ransom demand and then hires Alex, warning him that he can’t question any of Lia’s friends or anyone who might know anything about the case. It’s a decision that’s not only baffling, but perilous, since Alex’s previous adventures have been more notable for multiplying rather than resolving mayhem. And so it goes again, this time against the backdrop of the 2004 Athens Olympics. Alex soon links Lia’s disappearance, at least to his own satisfaction, to pagan sacrificial rituals, contemporary smuggling, a ring of child molesters so well-connected that they’re untouchable, and a series of grisly murders whose victims are marked by carefully placed pomegranate seeds.

Since readers know as well as Alex who’s committing these murders—a vengeful assassin dubbed the Son with whom he’s already tangled, at some cost to them both—the leading mystery is whether Johnston will tie these monstrous crimes together to the satisfaction of anyone but Alex.

“Ancient artifacts and modern underage girls,” sniffs Alex’s old friend Yiorgos Pandazopoulous, aka the Fat Man. If that combination sets your heart racing, Alex is your man.

Bernie are besieged, the cellphone goes silent, and Caitlyn deals with family perfidy and becomes a TV sensation.

Lyons, who used Caitlyn as a secondary character in Blind Faith (2012), is currently juggling four different series, all hyperventilating on drama, romance and overindulgent plotting. Someone out there must be a fan, and you know who you are.

THE BULL SLAYER

Macbain, Bruce Poisoned Pen (282 pp.) $24.95 | $14.95 paper | $22.95 Lg. Prt. Mar. 5, 2013 978-1-4642-0108-0 978-1-4642-0110-3 paper 978-1-4642-0109-7 Lg. Prt. Far from Rome, mass murder complicates a provincial governor’s fight against local corruption.

In A.D. 108, Gaius Plinius Secundus ventures east with his young wife, Calpurnia, and an entourage to the province of Bithynia-Pontus, on the Black Sea, where resentment against the empire runs high. Newly appointed as governor, Pliny’s feted at the home of Marcus Vibius Balbus, the Fiscal Procurator of the province, and senses unrest there. His instinct proves correct when Balbus goes missing, as does his chief accountant, Silvanus. Nearly two weeks later, Balbus’ partially decomposed body is found in a deep gully, transforming Silvanus into the prime suspect in his murder. Embezzlement of some kind is suspected of either or both of the men. Although the locals are inclined to blame everything on the infidel Persians, Pliny is neither so gullible nor so bigoted as to adopt this view. Pancrates, a slick, fraudulent fortuneteller who seems to exert a Rasputin-like control over several powerful locals, becomes a key figure in Pliny’s investigation. So do the unctuous orator known as Diocles the Golden Mouth, who seems to pop up around every crime scene, and Glaucon, a hotheaded magnate who used to be a wrestler. On the personal front, Pliny struggles to deal with marital incompatibility; Calpurnia, who is prone to spontaneous outbursts, would rather play with her maid Ione than her husband.

Packed with colorful characters and a strong sense of history, Pliny’s second adventure (Roman Games, 2010) takes its time developing its whodunit but consistently entertains along the way.

BLACK SHEEP

Lyons, C.J. St. Martin’s (368 pp.) $7.99 paper | Feb. 26, 2013 978-1-250-01534-1 Rule-breaking FBI agent Caitlyn Tierney goes partners with a leopard and a tattooed biker.

When a shiv to the gut dispatches Eli Hale, jailed since confessing to the murder of Cherokee tribal elder Tommy Shadwick 26 years ago, his last words to FBI Supervisory Special Agent Caitlyn Tierney, the daughter his best friend had before committing suicide, are “Find Lena.”

His daughter Lena’s gone missing, possibly abducted. Caitlyn, who remembers Lena as a toddler, tracks her last appearance to a biker clubhouse, the Pit Stop, in Evergreen, N.C. The bikers, however, have lost the girl. Bernie, a would-be club member, has decided to save her from Poppy, the group leader, and Weasel, the meanest biker in the club, who want to kill her.

He’s sequestered her in an abandoned hunting lodge where he’s stashed chimps, a lion, a leopard and more, rather than letting the Club charge sportsmen to use them for target practice.

After two near-death experiences at work, Caitlyn’s mom wants her to quit the FBI. So does her inamorata, Paul, a physician.

Caitlyn, however, perseveres, leaving them to dine with Uncle Jimmy at the casino he manages. She keeps bumping into the club enforcer, Goose, as she tries to make sense of an old parchment that deeds some Native land to released slaves. Is Lena entitled to casino revenue? Is Uncle Jimmy laundering money for the bikers? Will Caitlyn and Goose canoodle on a beach?

Absolutely, but not before the leopard gets loose, Lena and |

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“A scorching, humane first novel...” from rage against the dying

RAGE AGAINST THE DYING

customer at the restaurant where she works, she happily accepts a position at a travel agency, where her new boss, Janine, offers to share her apartment. When Jefferson Andrewes, who makes his living untangling fraudulent schemes for a bank, arrives to book a trip and Kate suggests South America, she does not know that his own mother had also died there in an auto accident. Jefferson’s parents had been divorced and his mother remarried to a wealthy man whose source of income has always been mysterious to Jefferson. Meanwhile, Janine’s wealthy older lover, whose own business raises question marks for Janine, asks her to look at his books, as he suspects that he’s being ripped off. When Kate is kidnapped and held captive by Stefan, both Janine and Jefferson report her missing, but the police do little to help. What do these characters’ disparate pasts have to do with their present problems, and what do those problems have to do with each other?

Moody (Dancing in the Dark, 2012, etc.) concocts an addictive, ironic and darkly suspenseful combination of mystery and romance.

Masterman, Becky Minotaur (320 pp.) $24.99 | Mar. 12, 2013 978-0-312-62294-7

Masterman’s gangbusters debut sets a retired FBI agent who thinks she’s seen it all against a serial killer who provides new horrors she’s never seen.

Before shooting an unarmed suspect back in Georgia sent her into early retirement in Tucson, Brigid Quinn had earned a reputation as a brave sex-crimes undercover agent and a skilled investigator.

Now that she’s living the good life with her bridegroom, Carlos DiForenza, a priest turned professor, she thinks that’s all behind her, from the adrenaline rushes to the scandal. But she couldn’t be more wrong. When long-haul trucker Floyd Lynch confesses to being the Route 66 killer who killed eight women over a dozen years—the eighth of them being Jessica Robertson, who’d been working as bait under Brigid’s supervision— Laura Coleman, a Tucson FBI agent who’s always admired Brigid, shares her suspicion that Lynch’s confession is bogus and asks Brigid to work the case with her. There are only three complications: Brigid isn’t entitled to work any cases anymore; Coleman disappears shortly after getting eased off the case herself; and Brigid shortly has her hands full covering up her own killing of murderous rapist Gerald Peasil. Readers who can accept the coincidence of two sex killers sharing the same zip code and Brigid’s unconvincing explanation of why she doesn’t just report Peasil’s death, which would manifestly be covered by a self-defense plea, are in for a ride as thrilling as they can find outside the pages of Jeffery Deaver (who’s regularly invoked here), in the company of a heroine whose cleareyed disillusionment gives each wisecrack a trembling sense of mortality.

A scorching, humane first novel that reads as if Masterman’s been sitting for a long time on some truly ugly secrets.

THE GOOD COP

Parks, Brad Minotaur (352 pp.) $24.99 | Mar. 5, 2013 9781-250-00552-6 Genial reporter Carter Ross, who never met a wisecrack he didn’t like, goes up against every police officer in Newark in defense of a dead cop’s good name.

Detective Sgt. Darius Kipps’ widow, Mimi, assures Carter that her husband was a good guy, and Carter, not normally one to be suckered by sentiment, believes her. So why did Kipps get roaring drunk and shoot himself in the 4th Precinct station? The short answer is that he didn’t. He never drank the bourbon he must have been force-fed on the last night of his life, and even the most cursory look at his corpse—which Carter gets courtesy of some highly improbable help from Powell, a well-placed party buddy of his punk librarian girlfriend, Kira O’Brien—reveals ligature marks on his wrists and ankles dating from shortly before his death. So why have Newark’s finest, from Capt. Denise Boswell on down, closed ranks behind the story of his suicide? Clearly because they’re not so fine after all, a conclusion that becomes even more obvious when Kipps’ partner, Mike Fusco, becomes a second suspicious suicide after blurting out an unlikely confession that he killed his partner. Targeted for death by a gun-selling concern whose tentacles reach deep into the Newark Police Department, Carter can only pray that his luck holds out till he’s rescued by somebody more powerful than he is.

The combination of Borscht-Belt dialogue, ebullient first-person narration, and mean Jersey streets with lots of menace but very little mystery, makes Carter (The Girl Next Door, 2012, etc.) a strong contender for the title of best Stephanie Plum male impersonator.

LOOSE ENDS

Moody, Susan Severn House (248 pp.) $28.95 | Apr. 1, 2013 978-0-7278-8227-1 The puzzle of a long-past accident brings together a diverse group of survivors and suspects.

Ten years ago, waitress Kate Fullerton survived her father, stepmother and stepsister in a suspicious auto accident in South America. Kate, who remembers little of the accident, married and divorced an attractive con artist who spent her inheritance. Kate moved in with her brother Magnus Lennox, an attractive but vague college professor immersed in Russian history, who encourages her to go back to school or find a better job. After being constantly harassed by Stefan, a frequent 36

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THE BOYFRIEND

around town. Dan’s not one to give up, however, and when he finds an abandoned house where local student Steffy McCall whiles away her school hours, he senses that he may be onto something. His hunch is confirmed when a meditative session in the house makes him feel as though he’s communing with past inhabitants, although the message they’re sending him isn’t clear. He’s even more thrown off his stride when he realizes that the residents not only recognize him, but have been trying to hide their own connections to his mother. Now Dan must figure out why.

Parceling out her story among numerous narrators, Reed (Enclave, 2009, etc.) focuses less on suspense or surprise than on serving condign justice.

Perry, Thomas Mysterious Press (288 pp.) $25.00 | Mar. 5, 2013 978-0-8021-2606-1 The creator of the murderous Butcher’s Boy (The Informant, 2011, etc.) and vanishing enabler Jane Whitefield (Poison Flower, 2012, etc.) summons a new hero to track down a killer with a penchant for strawberry-blonde escorts.

Catherine Hamilton may have been a call girl, but her parents are devastated by her murder. They offer LA shamus Jack Till $100,000 to find her killer. Jack, whose background is limited to his years as a homicide cop and whose private life, to an adult daughter with Down Syndrome and an ex-wife who left him right after Holly was diagnosed, quickly discovers that Catherine’s death was only the latest in a pattern that includes at least five earlier victims in cities across the country, all strawberry blondes, all available online and all, Jack concludes, shot by the same boyfriend who’d moved in with them for at least a month apiece. Why does he kill, what makes him treat his victims as he does, and how can Jack catch him before he kills again? As Jack’s figuring out the answers to these questions, Perry reveals them directly to his readers via a series of flashbacks to Joey Moreland’s early years, his criminal apprenticeship and his wholehearted embrace of his lethal vocation. He makes it clear, however, that the very limited amount Jack can learn about his flexible, resourceful, well-financed quarry won’t be enough to anticipate his next move.

The ending is a letdown, the same way waking up from a brutally suspenseful dream is a letdown. But there’s all the pleasure a master craftsman can provide every inch of the way there. (Agent: Robert Lescher)

THE CHERRY PAGES

Ruffin, Gary Overlook (352 pp.) $26.95 | Mar. 7, 2013 978-1-59020-235-7

A small-town cop hits the big time acting as bodyguard for a famous film star.

Life is good for Gulf Front, Fla.’s police chief, Samuel “Coop” Cooper (Hot Shot, 2010). In his sleepy seaside town, big trouble is hooking a bicycle tire instead of a redfish on one of his rod-and-reel outings. But now his friend Neal Feagin needs his help. Neal’s just signed on to guard the curvaceous body of British film sensation Cherry Page, who’s coming to Atlanta for a location shoot, when he busts his ankle getting thrown from a horse and must ask Coop to sub for him. To Coop’s surprise, his girlfriend, Penny Prevost, is totally in favor of the gig, even agreeing to fill Coop’s shoes as chief in his absence and stipulating only that Coop bring the star to meet her in Gulf Front. Penny doesn’t know that Cherry’s going to fall for Coop in a big way. Now, Coop has two beautiful women vying for his affections. Instead of being rivals, though, Penny and Cherry become fast friends when Coop fulfills his promise to bring the actress to Gulf Front. Still, Coop doesn’t quite know which way to turn. Not only does he have to protect Cherry from “not_so_shy_guy,” a maniac who kills people and steals their computers and who emails the screen star, promising to free her soul through a sacrifice to Baal, but he also has to decide which of his comely admirers to spend the rest of his life with.

Like Surf City, Gulf Front offers two girls for every boy, turning the two-suitor chick-lit standby on its head.

SON OF DESTRUCTION

Reed, Kit Severn House (240 pp.) $28.95 | Mar. 1, 2013 978-0-7278-8232-5

A reporter’s cover story on spontaneous human combustion hits uncomfortably close to home.

Apart from a faded photograph he once found hidden in her room, reporter Dan Carteret knows next to nothing about his mother, Lucy. Now that Lucy has passed away, the photograph is all Dan has to guide him through her past. Pretending to be tracking a story about three ancient, unexplained cases of spontaneous combustion in Lucy’s hometown of Fort Jude, Fla., he plans to uncover his roots. When he rolls into town, he’s greeted by a close-knit community that appears friendly and welcoming, even though no one seems to have information about the men in the picture Dan’s been showing |

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SCRATCH DEEPER

shelter deal with a young raccoon that keeps getting into a new, shoddily constructed condo unit. The condo manager, someone Pru has disliked since her high school days, would rather see the raccoon dead than rehabilitated. When the scared animal bites Pru, she has to worry about rabies. Every animal, from her own cat to Frank the ferret, seems to be giving her advice about the nursing home and the condo development. After a second nursing home patient almost succumbs to a drug overdose and she finds a connection to the undersold condo units, Pru realizes that she’d better listen to her animal friends, and her police officer boyfriend, before she becomes the next victim.

Although Randolph is a hoot, Pru’s third (Dogs Don’t Lie, 2011, etc.) is an average mystery that may be too cutesy for all but the most dedicated animal lovers.

Simms, Chris Creme de la Crime (256 pp.) $28.95 | Feb. 1, 2013 978-1-78029-035-5 A lowly Detective Constable newly appointed to the Greater Manchester Police Force’s Counter Terrorism Unit follows her unpromising assignment to a nest of deadly terrorists.

Sgt. Jim Stephens, her ex-colleague and ex-lover, thinks Iona Khan got the plum assignment over him because of her skin tone. Iona, half-Scottish, half-Afghan, is determined to prove him wrong. Even though her introduction to her new position is the most routine chore imaginable— checking out the identity of a young foreigner who evidently used a false identity in cozying up to the Sub-Urban Explorers, a raffish group of amateurs who spend their spare time in the extensive network of tunnels beneath Manchester—she does her level best both to collect any evidence that might identify the man who calls himself Muttiah and to follow any leads that indicate he may be trouble. Iona succeeds so well in tying her quarry to both the murder of Law Lord Reginald Appleton in far-off Mauritius and the upcoming Labour Party convention in Manchester that she’s soon seeing threats everywhere. Jim is duly impressed. Not so for Supt. Paul Wallace, her boss at the unit, who waxes increasingly impatient at Iona’s independent streak. The day of the convention dawns to reveal an unexpected speaker whose presence will raise the stakes for everyone involved.

Simms (Cut Adrift, 2011, etc.) launches a new series with an appealing heroine whose every move, so surprising to her and her boss, seems eminently predictable by genre fans.

DANCER IN THE FLAMES

Solomita, Stephen Severn House (240 pp.) $28.95 | Feb. 1, 2013 978-0-7278-8228-8

A nothingburger murder committed by an associate leads Brooklyn police detective Boots Littlewood into a wild maze of felonies past and present.

Sure, Frankie Drago killed his sister.

But it’s not as if he meant to push Angie down the basement stairs or harm her in any other way, even though he took the trouble to strip the body, fake an abduction and strangling, and dump it in Prospect Park. Since Boots has been availing himself of Drago’s bookmaking services to place bets on the Yankees for years, the least he can do is cut Drago some slack in return for information on a much more juicy homicide: the execution of Capt. Christopher Parker. Drago names a witness, car thief Vinnie Palermo, who saw the killing go down. When Boots, newly partnered with Detective Jill Kelly, digs up Palermo and turns him over to his boss in the 64th Precinct, Homicide Lt. Carl Levine, Levine’s superiors respond by stitching up Palermo for the murder and closing the case. What’s not closed is Boots’ sense of justice, his personal safety—people begin shooting at him as if it were opening day of hunting season—or his lust for the wild woman he’s been paired with. Together, the two salt-and-acid partners trace a spreading pool of police corruption back a decade to the case of the Lipstick Killer and forward to a series of coverups that implicate nearly every Brooklyn officer who’s ever donned a uniform.

Solomita, who made his bones as a noir stylist (Angel Face, 2011, etc.), keeps the sex as gritty as the violence. By the fade-out, you may feel in need of a hot shower.

PARROTS PROVE DEADLY

Simon, Clea Poisoned Pen (250 pp.) $24.95 | $14.96 paper | Apr. 2, 2013 978-1-4642-0102-8 978-1-4642-0104-2 paper 978-1-4642-0103-5 Lg. Prt. The constant chatter of animals can be both annoying and enlightening.

While she’s working toward her certification as an animal behaviorist, Berkshire-based Pru Marlowe is making some money as a dog walker and trainer. Her latest client is an African gray parrot whose owner has just died in an upscale nursing home. The client’s daughter can’t keep the foulmouthed Randolph, and her brother doesn’t want him around his children, so Pru is asked to retrain him to help find him a new home. Since Pru can hear what animals are thinking, she realizes that Randolph, while he doesn’t always think very clearly, is hinting that all is not well with his owner’s death. In addition, she’s helping a friend at the 38

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JEWELRY FROM A GRAVE

abruptly goes down with him and Tomlinson aboard. It’s an obvious case of sabotage, Dan tells the other survivors, but who’d want to sabotage such a mission? Well, says Tomlinson, there’s Kondo Ogbay, the Haitian drug lord he’s run afoul of, and Cressa Arturo, the married woman currently sharing his bed. The list of suspects soon expands to include Cressa’s wealthy younger husband, Rob, and her crazy brother-in-law, Dean Arturo, Luke Smith of Adventure World Productions and Brazilian import/ export CEO Alberto Sabino, aka contract killer Vargas Diemer.

These amiably assorted worthies take turns—sometimes solo, sometimes in teams—alternately cozying up to Doc and his pals and drawing down on them. The search for Flight 19 doesn’t exactly get forgotten in the tangle of subplots, but it loses so much urgency that it’s a pleasing surprise when it finally gets wound up.

A lesser adventure aimed at action fans who agree with Raymond Chandler that a great story is a succession of great scenes.

Taylor, Caroline Five Star (276 pp.) $25.95 | Mar. 20, 2013 978-1-4328-2687-1

When a former skip tracer’s roommate goes missing, it turns out she may have had a secret life, or she may have been investigating too many of someone else’s secrets.

Now that she’s finished with the private-eye business—or, more accurately, finished impersonating a private eye—P.J. Smythe (What Are Friends For?, 2011) thinks her life will settle into a routine organized around her new adult job with Chatham Confidential Investigations and her boyfriend, Leo, the more forensically minded of the couple. How hard can it be to punch a clock and run simple background checks on folks who have never crossed the line in their lives? Unfortunately, P.J. soon finds out the answer to that question when her roommate and co-worker, Yolanda Branson, mysteriously disappears. P.J., who’s always considered Yolanda a Black American Princess, is more than a little surprised when her boss, Gray Dalton, offers her a bounty for tracking down Yolanda. P.J.’s had some experience with the princess lifestyle, since her lifelong friend Alicia is a Caucasian member of the species. She’s sure there’s a logical explanation for the disappearance until a DEA agent breaks into her house and insists that Yolanda’s involved in a drug ring. A mysterious file labeled “FUNNY BUSINESS” that P.J. finds in Yolanda’s office makes her wonder whether there’s more to her roommate than she assumed. The stress of her suspicions, combined with a vindictive ex, sends P.J. running from place to place uncertain whom to trust.

Disjointed writing makes it hard to follow, and harder to care about, P.J.’s current shenanigans.

LEAVING EVERYTHING MOST LOVED

Winspear, Jacqueline Harper/HarperCollins (352 pp.) $26.99 | Mar. 26, 2013 978-0-06-204960-5

Between the wars, the shooting death of an Indian woman is not high on the priority list of the British police.

Psychologist and private investigator Maisie Dobbs has been trying to find a missing teen, until a visit from DI Caldwell immerses her in a case that will change her life. As her wealthy upper-class lover, James Compton, whom she’s steadfastly refused to marry, prepares to leave for Canada, Maisie yearns to travel to India in the footsteps of her mentor and benefactor, Maurice Blanche. So when Caldwell arrives with Mr. Pramal, an Indian who served with distinction in the British Army in World War I, Maisie is intrigued by the unsolved murder of his sister. Usha Pramal had come from India as a governess but had more recently found herself living in a hostel and taking on cleaning jobs for a living.

Usha—beautiful, spirited, educated and unusually independent for an Indian woman—may have left India after falling for an Englishman whose clumsy approach to her family put him off limits. Maisie discovers that Usha had amassed far more money for her dream of starting a school for girls in India than her cleaning jobs would account for. Her income may have been derived from her talent for healing, both by medicinal mixtures and the laying on of hands. When Usha’s friend Maya Patel is murdered in the same way as Usha, Maisie and her staffers, Billy and Sandra, pull out all the stops to solve the case.

Not the strongest mystery in Maisie’s ongoing saga (Elegy for Eddie, 2012, etc.), but one that delves deeply into her complicated relationships and hints at a compelling future.

NIGHT MOVES

White, Randy Wayne Putnam (368 pp.) $26.95 | Mar. 5, 2013 978-0-399-15812-4 Sanibel Island’s most swashbuckling marine biologist goes in search of five Navy bombers that vanished nearly 70 years ago and finds both more and less.

Marion D. Ford (Chasing Midnight, 2012, etc.) is a sucker for derring-do and friendship. So it’s easy for Dan Futch, the best pilot Doc Ford knows, to enlist his help, and that of his hipster wingman Tomlinson, in tracing Flight 19, which took off from Fort Lauderdale in December 1945 and vanished without a trace—unless you count a telegram lost radioman George Paonessa apparently sent his brother three weeks later. The real-life mystery went far to fuel myths about the Bermuda Triangle that Doc would just as soon dispel. But he’s the one who’s nearly dispelled when Dan’s plane |

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“A must for fans...” from written in red

WRITTEN IN RED

science fiction and fantasy

Bishop, Anne NAL/Berkley (448 pp.) $26.95 | Mar. 5, 2013 978-0-451-46496-5

For her latest dark fantasy series, Bishop (Twilight’s Dawn, 2011, etc.) invents an entire Earth-like world, Namid, populated by a fascinating array of supernatural Others—and the humans who are their prey.

On the continent of Thaisia, humans are tolerated for their technical and inventive talents, but they tread very carefully, knowing that if they transgress, they’ll be lunch for shape-shifting wolves, raptors, bears, vampires or worse. Into the northeastern city of Lakeside, in the middle of winter, staggers Meg Corbyn, freezing, friendless and desperate. A cassandra sangue, or blood prophet, Meg Corbyn sees the future when her skin is cut—for her, the result can be agony or ecstasy. She and a number of like young women were slaves of the Controller, whose rich clients pay well for their visions. Naïve but resourceful Meg escaped and now seeks refuge in the Lakeside Courtyard, the business district operated by the Others. Against his wolfish instincts—Meg is human, but doesn’t smell like prey—Simon Wolfgard hires her as Human Liaison, a job that entails running the local delivery office. And Meg proves adept at looking after Sam, Simon’s orphaned nephew, so traumatized by his mother’s death that he’s locked in wolf form. Simon has other problems too: pushy Asia Crane, secretly a spy for the mysterious Bigwig; disturbing and unaccountable reports from out west of humans and Others running berserk and slaughtering both each other and their own kind; and the human police, who have been instructed to urgently locate someone who looks very much like Meg Corbyn. It all adds up to a stunningly original yarn, deeply imagined, beautifully articulated and set forth in clean, limpid, sensual prose.

A must for fans desperate to move beyond boilerplate urban fantasy.

SHATTERED PILLARS

Bear, Elizabeth Tor (336 pp.) $26.99 | Mar. 19, 2013 978-0-7653-2755-0

Second entry of a complex and beautifully rendered historical-fantasy trilogy (Range of Ghosts, 2012).

Prime mover in all the churning plots and intrigues here is ambitious necromancer and blood-sorcerer alSepehr, head of the Nameless assassin cult. He has arranged to install usurper Qori Buqa as ruler of the nomad horse-warrior Khaganate Empire, although he failed to kill Temur, the true heir and Qori Buqa’s nephew. Having captured Edene, Temur’s woman, al-Sepehr conveyed her to his remote, impregnable fortress, Ala-Din. Resourceful Edene, however, stole a mysteriously powerful green ring and escaped—though Temur doesn’t yet know this. Edene flees to Erem, capital of a long-extinct empire whose magic was feared by all, where now heavily pregnant, she’s declared queen by the nonhuman ghuls because of the ring. Hoping to rally the horse-clans to his cause, Temur sets off with his companions, Samarkar the wizard and Hrahima, a huge human-tiger Cho-tse warrior, to rescue Edene. Al-Sepehr sends his daughter and agent, Saadet—she carries in her head the mind of her slain brother, Shahruz, previously slain by Temur—to beguile and bamboozle Qori Buqa, his supposed ally.

Meanwhile, al-Sepehr studies the magic of Erem, forcing slavewomen to read aloud from books of magic so powerful that the mere act of reading them causes blindness. And the Rasan Empire, riven by internal politics and treachery, suffers a lethal plague whence tiny demons hatch in the lungs of its victims. All this is less tightly woven than the first volume, and in one or two places, Bear forgoes logic for furious action and writes herself into a corner. Still, these are minor blemishes amid the meticulously detailed cultural and geographic backdrop.

A compelling follow-up that no fan of Book 1 will want to miss.

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THE DAYLIGHT WAR

Brett, Peter V. Del Rey/Ballantine (656 pp.) $28.00 | Feb. 12, 2013 978-0-345-50382-4 Third in Brett’s once-projected five-installment—now swelled to six— Demon Cycle.

The demons in question, called “corelings,” are the bad fruit of a world that has descended from enlightened civilization to darkness, which ought to be meaningful to anyone who pays attention to the news. These corelings— they come from inside the Earth, whence their name—are sort of like vampires, but with lots more magic, and if you’re |

a human, you want to be endowed with or at least around someone with magical powers: Arlen Bales, say, who sports demon-fending body paint, or the desert warrior who sports a magical spear and is now assembling an army to battle the demons once and for all. Hmmm. World-ending battle driven by an object imbued with magical properties: LOTR, anyone? Brett’s debts to Tolkien are many and obvious, though there’s some Frank Herbert mixed in, too: “Soli was... still young to be wearing the robes of a full dal’Sharum, the black cloth still deep with fresh dye.” “The ring seemed a simple silver bauble, but it was etched with tiny wards and powered by a half pebble of demon bone at its center.” It has some surprises, too, as when Brett channels Thomas Hardy (“ ‘He ent bluffing,’ Elona muttered. ‘Been with him near thirty years, and still ent got a clue.’ ”) Ents? Orcs? No, but there’s even some satisfying bodice-ripping to keep the story rolling (“She moved higher, pressing his face into her breasts as she pulled harder, and that seemed to help”).

Obvious ancestry aside, and though the book is dense and a touch too busy, it’s capable fantasy. (Agent: Joshua Bilmes)

THE SHAPE STEALER

Carroll, Lee Tor (352 pp.) $18.99 paper | Mar. 5, 2013 978-0-7653-2599-0

Third entry in Carroll’s urban fantasy series, following the somnambulistic The Watchtower (2011).

This time, the pace picks up to a frantic pitch, with so much going on it’s hard to follow, let alone become involved.

First-person narrator and Watchtower Garet James, heir to a sort of anti-evil witch coven, succeeded in bringing her love, poet Will Hughes, from 17th-century London to 21st-century Paris. Unfortunately, he’s the wrong version—she really wanted the charismatic vampire that young Will, 400 years later, will become. However, we soon learn, through numerous omniscient narrative threads, that elder Will is also around, having become de-vampired, and now is a well-known and highly proficient currency trader. But with both Wills in the world at the same time, elder Will’s losing his immunity to the sun, while young Will’s in danger of becoming destabilized in time.

Throw in some fairies, Johannes Kepler (don’t ask), the Institut Chronologique—whose Knights Temporal can travel through time and whose mission is to preserve the current timeline— and bad guys ranging from evil sorcerer John Dee and his boss, the monstrous vampire and Babylonian ex-god Marduk, to the Malefactors, time travelers intent on changing things around to suit themselves. You can imagine the size and shape of the plot necessary to accommodate all this, let alone the effort needed to determine if it adds up. Swaggering, pill-popping Marduk, twanging his fangs and twirling his mustachio (well, figuratively, anyway), would have been a star on the vaudeville stage. Instead of poetry, we’re served limp doggerel. |

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More and more scattershot, as memories of the firmly grounded, tightly knit, charming series opener recede into the murk. (Agent: Loretta Barrett)

QUEEN VICTORIA’S BOOK OF SPELLS

Datlow, Ellen; Windling, Terri —Eds. Tor (352 pp.) $15.99 paper | Mar. 19, 2013 978-0-7653-3227-1 Eighteen tales of Gaslamp Fantasy, that is, historical fantasy set in an alternate 19th century where magic worked or supernatural events occurred, together with an extensive and informative introduction from editor Windling tracing historical roots and adding context.

A majority of the tales here use historical events or biography as their foundation. Delia Sherman, then, portrays Queen Victoria as a highly effective wizard. Genevieve Valentine probes a highly unsavory aspect of London’s 1851 Great Exhibition. Elizabeth Wein spins a tale of writer-designer William Morris and artist Edward Burne-Jones. Kaaron Warren writes movingly of a house where unwanted women are confined and how they gain revenge. Dale Bailey takes an actual case of spiritualism and fakery and demonstrates how it is not always clear which is which. Veronica Schanoes strikes sparks both real and figurative in her account of the unionization of the all-female workforce at a lucifer-match factory. And Jane Yolen reimagines the relationship between Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli and Queen Victoria. Other tales take their inspiration from Victorian literature. Catherynne M. Valente, for instance, revisits the fantasies of the Brontë children. Tanith Lee offers a steampunk variant on the Frankenstein’s Monster theme. In Gregory Maguire’s continuation of A Christmas Carol, Scrooge marries and has children, and Tiny Tim’s life takes an unexpected turn.

And Theodora Goss offers up an existential literary-games scenario à la Jasper Fforde. Elsewhere (via Jeffrey Ford, Ellen Kushner and Caroline Stevermer, Maureen McHugh, Kathe Koja, Elizabeth Bear, James P. Blaylock and Leanna Renee Hieber), the fiction is purer, the surprises no less welcome.

Splendid tales that illuminate a bygone era’s darker corners.

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HOUSE RULES

reasons, than the Hermitage museum in St. Petersburg? The egg, it emerges, contains the secret to an elixir that may prove decisive in the struggle against the Nephilim. Another key to the elixir is found in an old album of jottings and pressed flowers left by Rasputin, but some of the plants mentioned in the recipe are now extinct. But wait! Fortunately, Noah didn’t just pack all the animals aboard his ark, he also grabbed plants and seeds! So, while Verlaine climbs aboard the train to Siberia to rescue Evangeline, his colleagues head for the Black Sea, where settlements flourished before Noah’s flood. The plot, of which the foregoing is barely a hint, twisting itself into knots trying, and failing, not to contradict itself, and upon which an ordinary world beyond eggs, floods, documents, battling angels, pressed flowers and what-all barely impinges. Despite the frequent violence, the action consists largely of antagonists whose main objective, seemingly, is not to defeat, kill or seriously inconvenience their opponents. Expect pages and pages of abstruse discussion about Fabergé eggs, Noah, genetics and angelic anatomy.

Even Angelology addicts likely face disappointment.

Then again, maybe not.

Neill, Chloe New American Library (368 pp.) $15.00 paper | Feb. 5, 2013 978-0-451-23710-1 Merit, Sentinel of one of Chicago’s vampire enclaves, Cadogan House, and her boyfriend, Ethan, co-Master of that House, face murder, dastardly politicking and romantic discord in the seventh Chicagoland Vampires (Biting Cold, 2012,

etc.) novel.

As Cadogan House prepares to secede from the Greenwich Presidium, the vampire ruling body, the latter is determined to make that separation as acrimonious as possible.

Lacey, a visiting vampire Master, is supposed to be easing the tensions of the process, but instead devotes most of her energy to attempting to replace Merit as Ethan’s girlfriend.

Meanwhile, a serial killer is beheading pairs of vampires, and the local vampire community calls on Merit and Ethan to investigate. There are a lot of plot ideas in here, but the author doesn’t really trouble to flesh them out fully, wrapping them up neatly before any storyline can become more than a sketch.

This best-selling series has an incredibly solid fan base, so it’s doubtful that any reviewer’s opinion could shake it. Nevertheless, some may find it hard to distinguish this urban fantasy from countless others that mix conspiracy, racism/speciesism, crime-solving and gorgeous supernatural beings having awesome sex into a now-familiar stew.

As Willow of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (a series at least partly responsible for kick-starting this genre) says, “Bored now.”

ANGELOPOLIS

Trussoni, Danielle Viking (320 pp.) $27.95 | Mar. 26, 2013 978-0-670-02554-1 Sequel to the best-selling Angelology (2010), wherein a dedicated cadre of Angelologists battle the beautiful yet sadomasochistically evil angel-human hybrids who’ve controlled human affairs since Noah’s flood.

In Paris, angel hunter V.A. Verlaine searches for former nun Evangeline, once a normal, wingless, red-blooded human, now somehow metamorphosed into a winged, blue-blooded, angel-powered Nephilim. Evangeline presents Verlaine with a fabulous Fabergé egg before allowing herself to be captured by Eno, the blackhearted, lesser-angel servant of the Grigori family, the most powerful Nephilim. Since Eno will convey Evangeline to the panopticon, the Grigoris’ vast prison/research center in Siberia where she will face torture and experimentation, the egg is an important clue. Where better to research the egg, Verlaine 42

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nonfiction KEEPING HOPE ALIVE One Woman—90,000 Lives Changed

These titles earned the Kirkus Star: FINDING FLORIDA by T.D.Allman................................................p. 45

Abdi, Hawa with Robbins, Sarah J. Grand Central Publishing (272 pp.) $26.99 | Apr. 2, 2013 978-1-4555-0376-6

OVERBOOKED by Elizabeth Becker................................................p. 47 WAVE by Sonali Deraniyagala......................................................... p. 53 MR. WRIGLEY’S BALL CLUB by Roberts Ehrgott.......................... p. 56 AFTER VISITING FRIENDS by Michael Hainey............................. p. 61 JULY 1914 by Sean McMeekin.........................................................p. 68 SALT SUGAR FAT by Michael Moss.................................................p. 69 COOKED by Michael Pollan............................................................. p. 71 THE BATTLE OF BRETTON WOODS by Benn Steil....................... p. 76 OPEN HEART by Elie Wiesel........................................................... p. 80

FINDING FLORIDA

Allman, T.D. Atlantic Monthly (528 pp.) $27.50 Mar. 5, 2013 978-0-8021-2076-2

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With the assistance of Robbins, Nobel Peace Prize nominee Abdi chronicles the ravages of the ongoing civil war in Somalia and her efforts to establish a safe haven amid the destruction.

The author begins in 1960, when, at the age of 13, she witnessed the end of colonial occupation. She describes the first years of independence as a glorious time. After a border war with Ethiopia and severe drought, corruption and civil strife emerged, and people turned to their clans for protection. Violence followed as warlords clashed and rampaged across the land. “An entire generation has grown up without law and order,” writes the author, providing fertile ground for Muslim fundamentalism to take hold. Against this backdrop, Abdi’s accomplishments are remarkable. Although raised in a traditional male-dominated society, she liberated herself and got a formal education, receiving a scholarship abroad to train as a physician.

Returning, she was one of only 60 physicians in Somalia, 35 of whom worked in the hospital to which she was assigned. She married, and she and her husband moved to land on the outskirts of Mogadishu that was owned by her family. Abdi continued working at the hospital while starting a clinic for mothers and children on the property, and her husband farmed the land.

As the political condition in the country deteriorated, the farm provided food and a haven for refugees. Despite threats to her safety and her husband’s desertion, she stayed and organized support from international organizations. In 2010, the enclave of the farm, which by then sheltered 91,000 people, was overrun and destroyed. She was forced to live abroad, where she continued her advocacy for the people of her homeland.

A poignant account of personal bravery, love, and loss and a chronicle of the tragedy of our times.

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THE BANKERS’ NEW CLOTHES What’s Wrong with Banking and What to Do about It

Admati, Anat; Hellwig, Martin Princeton Univ. (392 pp.) $27.95 | Feb. 24, 2013 978-0-691-15684-2

How to rebuild the banking system on a safe foundation and ensure it stays there.

Admati (Finance and Economics/ Stanford Graduate School of Business) and Hellwig (Director/Max Planck Institute for Collective Goods), authorities in the fields of financial and capital regulation, aim “to demystify banking and explain the issues to widen the participants in the debate.” They accomplish the first objective by demolishing the arguments made by the representatives of the banking business against various regulatory reforms that have been proposed since the financial crisis of 2008. They show how banks seek to maintain their status as short-term, leveraged borrowers by obfuscating the meaning of words like “capital” and “capital requirements” and insisting, as the former head of Deutsche Bank Josef Ackermann did, that “higher equity requirements…reduces growth and has negative effects for all.” Relying on equity as opposed to leverage, write the authors, was a well-established banking practice in the past and does not affect economic growth. They show that banks can build equity by re-investing profit rather than distributing gains to shareholders. As for the promised explanation of “the issues,” they elucidate the subsidy that tax payers provide to banks directly, through deposit insurance, and indirectly, through the assumption of forthcoming bailouts. They also clarify the distinction between liquidity crises and solvency crises and assess the risk levels still tolerated and remaining within the financial system. They insist that “concerns about hidden insolvencies have still not been addressed.”

An important book for readers interested in what has been done, and what remains to be done, when it comes to safeguarding financial institutions.

MISSION TO MARS My Vision for Space Exploration

Aldrin, Buzz with David, Leonard National Geographic (160 pp.) $26.00 | May 7, 2013 978-1-4262-1017-4 The moonwalking astronaut offers a passionate but not always persuasive manifesto encompassing space tourism and the inevitability of inhabiting Mars within a couple of decades.

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the future. For the author, who wrote the book with the assistance of veteran space journalist David, the moon is the past, at least as an American governmental priority—“a dead end, a waste of precious resources”—while Mars is the future. His vision for bringing space exploration back to the launching pad includes international cooperation rather than competition, private enterprise augmenting public subsidy, and space travel within the reach of citizens who win a lottery, a game-show competition or have deep pockets—“the pay-per-view seat price is $200,000,” he writes of one proposed expedition that has already attracted “hundreds of customers.” Aldrin envisions a cruise-ship model of commercial space travel: “Loop around the Moon, return to Earth, sling-shot around the Earth, and return to the Moon again.

The round trip will take just over a week. And every time the Lunar Cycler swings by Earth, it’s met by a supply ferry, maybe even restocked with champagne, and boarded by a fresh group of travelers.” Maybe this seems feasible, but he then proceeds to his more audacious proposal: settling Mars as an outpost of human habitation, not merely exploration. It would be a six-month, oneway trip, and he sees no reason to provide those initial explorers with a return ticket: “What are they going to do…write their memoirs? Would they go again? Having them repeat the voyage, in my view, is dim-witted. Why don’t they stay there on Mars?”

What he terms the “deposit, no return” nature of those voyages awaits a generation ready to go where no man has ever gone before…and to stay there.

You may say that he’s a dreamer; celebrate him as a visionary, or dismiss this as futurist fantasy.

THE BLACK RUSSIAN

Alexandrov, Vladimir Atlantic Monthly (304 pp.) $25.00 | Mar. 5, 2013 978-0-8021-2069-4

Beginning his account with a daring escape from 1919 Russia to Constantinople, Alexandrov (Slavic Languages and Literature/Yale Univ.; Limits to Interpretation: The Meanings of Anna Karenina, 2004, etc.) promises a wild life of intrigue, deception and beating the odds for his subject.

Immediately following Frederick Bruce Thomas’ arrival in Turkey as a refugee without a country, the author moves back to the 1870s to examine Thomas’ childhood as the son of freed slaves in Mississippi. Though his parents were successful farmers and businesspeople after the end of the Civil War, rampant racism made life difficult, and Thomas left shortly after his father’s death. He made his way to Chicago and New York and in both cities took jobs in what Alexandrov calls “the elegant service industry,” gaining experience in the hospitality trade. After leaving New York, he traveled through Europe, continuing to work in the industry until he finally made his way to Russia and settled there. He eventually built his own entertainment empire in Moscow, becoming a rich man in an environment mostly free of racial prejudice. However, his success was interrupted by the |

“A splendid rendering of the messy human story of our fourth-most populous state.” from finding florida

events that begin the book: the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and the subsequent pillaging of the wealthy. With Thomas’ life in danger in Russia and his family fragmented due to the war, the second half of the book focuses on his attempt to rebuild his life amid the political upheaval in Turkey. The obstacles to success were far greater in Constantinople, and this part of the book showcases the most difficult years of his life. Thomas’ story is certainly interesting, particularly since he was able to thrive in Europe in a way most African-American men of his generation couldn’t dream of. However, the author never recreates the prologue’s sense of urgency, and the narrative suffers from pacing issues throughout, with some parts reading like a novel and some like a history text.

Though sometimes dry, a good choice for those who enjoy reading about life’s underdogs.

FINDING FLORIDA

Allman, T.D. Atlantic Monthly (528 pp.) $27.50 | Mar. 5, 2013 978-0-8021-2076-2 A rich and lively history of Florida, minus the Disney gloss.

“To find the real Florida you…must tear up the picture postcards! Get rid of the plumed conquistadors and Confederate cavaliers!” writes veteran journalist and native Floridian Allman (Rogue State: America at War with the World, 2004, etc.). In this colorful, sometimes angry account, he shatters five centuries of mythmaking to tell the real story of a soggy, inhospitable place with few resources, whose most memorable events are often fabrications and whose real history has been hidden by boosters and historians. Ponce de León did not discover Florida. Nor was he searching for the legendary Fountain of Youth, popularized by Washington Irving. But the courtier Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, since airbrushed out of history, did secure Florida for Spain in 1565, slaughtering Frenchmen near St. Augustine. In 1816, on Gen. Andrew Jackson’s orders, Americans committed “one of the worst massacres in American history,” killing hundreds of civilians in the Indian, black, and mixed-race community known as Negro Fort, now the Fort Gadsden Historic Recreation Center. A turning point in the U.S. acquisition of Florida, the massacre was followed by years of inhumane policies toward Indians and blacks. The author lambasts the work of historians who have whitewashed Florida’s unseemly moments in the apparent belief that people do not like to be reminded of unpleasant things. Much of his gripping narrative focuses on key figures like Seminole resistance leader Osceola, who later became a celebrity Indian chief; industrialist Henry Flagler, one of the indefatigable promoters who made waterlogged land seem like real estate; and go-getter Walter P. Fraser, who turned St. Augustine into a travel destination and precursor of Florida theme parks.

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BOLIVAR American Liberator

Arana, Marie Simon & Schuster (544 pp.) $35.00 | Apr. 9, 2013 978-1-4391-1019-5 Inspired biography of the great Latin American revolutionary, with great depth given to his fulsome ideas.

Like the recent biography by Englishman Robert Harvey, novelist and memoirist Arana’s (Lima Nights, 2008, etc.) work is bold and positively starry-eyed about her subject. She plunges into the tumultuous life of the Great Liberator, from the moment he thundered into the capital of the Spanish viceroyalty, Santa Fe de Bogotá, on August 10, 1819, at age 36 and at the height of his power, sure at last that his revolution “stood to inherit all the abandoned riches of a waning empire.” Arana reconstructs the wildly erratic, early character development that led to Bolívar’s apotheosis, a career forged by his own will and wrought by experience, from his aristocratic roots in Caracas through wide-ranging travels to Europe and America. From his mother’s thwarted efforts to secure a title of nobility for her sons, Bolívar learned early on about the racial inflexibility of the Spanish overseers, cognizant that Latin America, with its rich ethnic layers, was unlike the makeup of European and American society and therefore was incompatible with their models of government.

Bolívar would effectively build on important insurrections before him: by Indian leader Túpac Amaru II in Peru in 1781; by the famously egotistical Venezuelan rebel-in-exile Francisco de Miranda, from whom Bolívar learned the fatal consequences of indecision; and by José de San Martin in Argentina and Chile.

Disgusted by the corruption and venality of the Spanish crown and feeling betrayed by North America’s refusal to aid the Latin American revolutionaries, Bolívar embraced revolution wholeheartedly, declaring freedom for Spanish-American slaves, proclaiming war to the death and ruling by an authoritative style that won many detractors.

Arana ably captures the brash brilliance of this revered and vilified leader.

CARRIED IN OUR HEARTS The Gift of Adoption: Inspiring Stories of Families Created Across Continents

Aronson, Jane Tarcher/Penguin (288 pp.) $25.95 | Apr. 18, 2013 978-0-399-16105-6

True stories of creating loving families despite long odds.

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with biological children or without. The decision to adopt can stem from a variety of motivations: inability to conceive, a mission to help those less fortunate, a desire for a larger family.

Regardless of the reasons behind the action, each of these succinct narratives puts the adoptive child at the forefront, with the adoptive parent(s) expressing their love and devotion to their new child. Each mini-essay is a picture of what Aronson calls the “ ‘leap of faith’ required when creating a family.” One mother writes about being “so thankful” she ignored her fears and “took that leap”; she and her new daughter “are the perfect team.” In addition to families in the United States, the author profiles children from countries around the world, including Ethiopia, Russia, China and Guatemala. Some parents elaborate on the endless mountains of paperwork involved in the adoption process and the months, sometime years, of waiting. Others focus on the health issues, known and unknown, of their new child and the heartache and angst of caring for a child with AIDS or one with severe behavioral issues. All the parents agree that despite the setbacks, adopting one or more children is the best process that could have happened to these children and their new parents.

With more than 150 million orphans in the world today, these stories provide encouragement to those contemplating the adoption process.

Short, sweet, eye-opening thoughts on adoption and mixed-race parenthood.

TRAVELS WITH PUFF A Gentle Game of Life and Death

Bach, Richard NiceTiger (232 pp.) $27.99 | $9.99 e-book | Mar. 19, 2013 978-1-937777-03-6 978-1-937777-04-3 e-book

The author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull and numerous volumes about flying returns with an account of a crosscountry flight in his new SeaRey amphibious plane.

In 2012, Bach suffered a near-fatal crash in this craft right after he submitted the manuscript to his publisher, so the text overflows with torrents of dramatic and other ironies, especially in his characteristic effervescent homilies about how “you call down your angels, and somehow they see you through your storms.”

The journey the author describes—from Florida, where he bought the plane he named Puff, to Seattle, his home—took 62 hours in the air and was punctuated by minor mechanical problems, multiple landings on water, many conversations with his plane (yes, the aircraft replied), some hassles with storms, and some rhapsodizing about geology, rivers, lakes, the wilderness and feathers. Bach saw feathers several places and decided they signified something. Many chapters (all are brief) conclude with a sentence that begins, “If I’ve learned one lesson in all my days…,” a sentence completed with some banality that will appear soon in a Facebook meme—like “True for others isn’t true for me.” Bach shows an odd insensitivity to people who have not 46

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made a fortune writing best-sellers. On one remote lake, he sniffs: “These places are a few miles from where some folks live, stressed in I-have-to lives. To get from there to here you need a quest, and a way to travel.” Not to mention lots of money.

Greeting-card philosophy, as light and common as feathers.

SHAKESPEARE SAVED MY LIFE Ten Years in Solitary with the Bard Bates, Laura Sourcebooks (304 pp.) $14.99 paper | Apr. 1, 2013 978-1-4022-7314-8

The unorthodox bonding of a Shakespeare instructor and a convicted murderer.

Beginning in 2003, English professor Bates (Indiana State Univ.) began an inaugural group-study program in a solitary confinement prison space, much to the chagrin of the university department chairperson, who found the foray into criminal education a risky venture. The author’s history with prison education extends back to 1983, when she volunteered at Chicago’s Cook County jail while studying for her doctorate. She then taught English classes and Shakespeare studies at Indiana’s supermax Wabash Valley Correctional Facility, an institution housing her home state’s most dangerous criminals. There, she taught an inmate who became the first to seriously frighten her, even after many years boldly volunteering in solitary confinement. The prisoner was “caged beast” Larry Newton, a nefarious yet intellectually sharp murderer serving a life sentence without parole for crimes committed as a teenager.

Bates inherited her mother’s “mix of fearlessness and fearfulness,” which fostered the way into the maximum security penitentiary to host an intellectual discussion on Shakespeare’s plays.

The author emerges as a selfless tutor dedicated to education without reservation, and she fought hard to educate Newton and other surprisingly charismatic inmates, whom she profiles with a dignified mixture of pride and humanitarianism. The 10 years spent in supermax became a transformative journey for students and teacher alike.

An eye-opening study reiterating the perennial power of books, self-discipline and the Bard of Avon.

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“An in-depth and compelling disclosure of the changes needed to protect the world’s travel sites while maintaining a good profit margin.” from overbooked

OVERBOOKED The Exploding Business of Travel and Tourism Becker, Elizabeth Simon & Schuster (432 pp.) $28.00 | Mar. 12, 2013 978-1-4391-6099-2

“In 2012 the world passed the 1 billion mark for international trips,” writes former New York Times correspondent Becker (America’s Vietnam War, 1992, etc.), who provides an extensive exposé on the benefits and detriments of tourism.

Travel is the largest global industry in the world, with poor countries ranking the business just behind oil and energy development as the means to end poverty. Magazines and newspapers are filled with glamorous photos and comprehensive reports of the best beaches, hotels and restaurants in the world, but until now, there have been few significant reports about the effects on these sites. Becker holds nothing back as she describes the

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destruction and pollution created by the hordes that crowd the ancient cities, seashores and national parks of the world. The desire to see, touch and experience foreign cultures has brought jobs to millions and revenues that support many countries, but it has also caused water shortages, the destruction of shorelines, billions of pounds of garbage and raw sewage, and an increase in sex trafficking worldwide. Hotels and restaurants bring needed jobs to poverty-stricken regions, but the hours are long and the wages low; many workers, like those toiling in the construction industry in Dubai, are forced to live in labor camps, crammed a dozen or more to a room. Cruise ships offer every amenity and an excess of shopping opportunities while dumping sewage and oily bilge water and spewing forth toxic levels of exhaust. In the tourism industry, image is definitely everything, but Becker shows readers the flip side of all this luxury and play, exposing the seedy underbelly of a business gone haywire from Cambodia to the United States.

An in-depth and compelling disclosure of the changes needed to protect the world’s travel sites while maintaining a good profit margin.

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TRAVELING HEAVY A Memoir in Between Journeys Behar, Ruth Duke Univ. (240 pp.) $23.95 | Apr. 25, 2013 978-0-8223-5467-3

A Cuban-born academic re-creates a moving emotional journey from Cuba to America.

A cultural anthropologist whose first love was writing poetry and fiction, Behar (Anthropology/Univ. of Michigan; An Island Called Home: Returning to Jewish Cuba, 2007, etc.) is a stylish writer. Her probings about her complicated Jewish Cuban ancestry and family’s immigration to America mine compelling, relevant issues about identity and belonging. Her love of travel first took root at age 5 with her emigration from Havana with her mother, father and small brother in 1962. The family settled in the Ashkenazi section of Forest Hills, Queens, making ends meet selling “fabric, envelopes and shoes.” The young author was thrown, sink or swim, into first-grade, though she knew no English. Bookish and assertive, Behar wanted to pursue her education despite the injunctions imposed by her authoritarian father, and she eventually became a cultural anthropologist, able to use her Spanish for field work among farmers in Spain and Mexico. Her essays meander among these decisive events of her life, circling always back to the place where she began and longed to return: Cuba. She was able to return to her homeland in various capacities over the years, especially as a visiting academic. In “The Freedom to Travel Anywhere in the World,” Behar delineates the glaring discrepancy between her own privileged comings and goings from Michigan, with suitcases laden with plentiful American products, and the dire shortages of and restrictions on her friends and family in Cuba. Yet always, touchingly, she is accorded by her compatriots “political innocence, [and] welcomed with tenderness.”

A heartfelt witness to the changing political and emotional landscape of the Cuban-American experience.

SAUL BELLOW’S HEART A Son’s Memoir Bellow, Greg Bloomsbury (256 pp.) $26.00 | Apr. 23, 2013 978-1-60819-995-2

There is love within this memoir by the son of the Nobel Prize–winning novelist, but there is even greater distance.

A Freudian psychotherapist and academic, the author generally resists the temptation to analyze his famous father in the manner of a psychobiography. But neither does he add much revelation to what readers already knew or suspected, mainly that the writer 48

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who was arguably the greatest novelist of his generation could be difficult and selfish as a family man. He also used his failed marriages as grist for the mill of many of his greatest novels, with the son (who read those novels in succession before writing this memoir) showing where he thinks the voice and experience of the fictional narrators were very much the novelist’s.

As the only child of Bellow’s first marriage, the author admits that “Saul’s departure split my life in two,” and that the divide deepened as the battles intensified between his parents (largely over money during the course and aftermath of the divorce).

As someone who remained true to the leftist politics that his father famously repudiated (and from which his mother never wavered), he makes a distinction between the “young Saul” with whom he identified and the increasingly conservative, repressive, death-obsessed man his father became. The culture wars from the 1960s onward found father and son on opposite sides, while personal affronts (an ailing Saul’s failure to attend his granddaughter’s wedding, the antipathy between his final wife and widow and his sons) deepened the gulf. The author writes from what he says is a need “for a portrait that reveals Saul’s complex nature, one written by a loving son who also knew his shortcomings.”

Ultimately, the memoir reveals more about how it felt to be the son of such a father than it does about the novelist.

MASTERS OF THE WORD How Media Shaped History

Bernstein, William J. Grove (448 pp.) $27.50 | Apr. 1, 2013 978-0-8021-2138-7 978-0-8021-9344-5 e-book

Financial historian Bernstein (A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World, 2008, etc.) shifts gears slightly to focus on communication as an engine of change.

In the author’s hands, “media” is a broad term, encompassing the invention of writing and the development of a workable alphabet, as well as such better-known innovations as the printing press, telegraph, radio, TV and Internet. Bernstein emphasizes the control of information as the decisive factor in all struggles for power. In societies like ancient Egypt, where only a small number of people could read and write, the ability to communicate over distances enabled the creation of vast empires. Increasing literacy brought increasing democracy in Greece. Early Christian dissidents, like John Wycliffe, did not have the world-shaking impact that Martin Luther did, since Luther’s criticism of the Catholic Church swiftly spread through Europe via multiple copies made possible by the printing press. Bernstein does a nice job explaining the technical issues that made Gutenberg’s process so revolutionary and later does the same for the Web. The Catholic Church may have lost control of the dissemination of information, but nation-states like England and France initially did better in muzzling newspapers, and authorities in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union |

“Genuinely insightful through and through—a must-read for anyone interested in the trans experience.” from stuck in the middle with you

harnessed radio to their totalitarian ends. Bernstein makes the fascinating point that photocopying has played a vital role in making public materials that the powers that be very much want to keep to themselves—e.g., the Pentagon Papers. With the rise of the Internet, he points out, Daniel Ellsberg could have made those documents available to millions with a few computer keystrokes. Dire warnings about the destructive impact of blogging, etc., on responsible journalism “are simply the age-old howls of communications elites facing the imminent loss of status and income.” The author touches only briefly on the role of social media in the Arab Spring, which in this context, is merely a further development in historic trends capably delineated throughout his provocative book.

A smart take from an unusual angle on a much-discussed media trend.

AUSTERITY The History of a Dangerous Idea Blyth, Mark Oxford Univ. (224 pp.) $21.95 | Apr. 3, 2013 978-0-19-982830-2

A relevant primer on why the economic policy of the day has been proven to be wrongheaded.

Blyth (International Political Economy/Brown Univ.; Great Transformations: Economic Ideas and Institutional Change in the Twentieth Century, 2002, etc.) recognized that austerity measures as the accepted response to the financial crisis of 2008 did not “pass the sniff test,” and thus he was prompted to fashion this toned-down, “modular” work for lay readers. The punitive measures to reign in wanton state spending as proposed by conservatives have gained ground, despite the fact that the so-called sovereign debt crisis is really a banking crisis. Austerity shifts the burden of payback on those most reliant on government-produced services—i.e., the bottom 40 percent of the income distribution, leaving “no winners, only losers.” The austerity measures that have been propounded by the Germans as the way to fix the European Union mess (save more, spend less) are clearly not working since everybody can’t be saving at the same time: Debt is someone else’s asset. Austerity may have worked for Germany, in the form of ordoliberalism (“order-based”), and select other countries in the 1930s and 1980s, but Blyth shows how conditions are respectively unique and results hardly perfect. Most fascinating is the author’s discussion of the historical underpinnings of austerity, first formulated by Enlightenment thinkers Locke, Hume and Adam Smith, around the (good) idea of parsimony and the (bad) idea of debt.

Ultimately, writes Blyth, austerity is a “zombie economic idea because it has been disproven time and again, but it just keeps coming.”

A clear explanation of a complicated, and severely flawed, idea. (6 illustrations)

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STUCK IN THE MIDDLE WITH YOU A Memoir of Parenting in Three Genders Boylan, Jennifer Finney Crown (320 pp.) $24.00 | Apr. 23, 2013 978-0-7679-2176-3

The warm, engaging memoir about how a transsexual woman and her family came to terms with her transition from

male to female.

Best-selling author Boylan (English/Colby Coll.; I’m Looking Through You: Growing Up Haunted, 2008, etc.) started out life as a boy named James. She began cross-dressing as a young teen and kept her struggles with gender identity a secret throughout her adolescence and young adulthood. As James, Boylan believed that if a woman could love her deeply enough, she “would be content to stay a man.” She eventually did marry and became the father of two boys. But when Boylan turned 40, she knew that she had to make “the thing [she] felt on the inside visible” to the world and decided to undergo the painful process of gender transition. Remarkably, the woman she married decided to stay rather than seek “the love of some nice man,” and her two sons accepted her as their parent with little difficulty. Boylan knew that she and her family had been “very lucky” to be able to maintain strong, loving relationships with each other throughout her strange and difficult journey. The more she embraced her new identity and life, however, the more she found herself questioning received notions of mother- and fatherhood. In an effort to broaden her understanding of these and related issues, Boylan talked to fellow writers (including Augusten Burroughs, Edward Albee and Ann Beattie), former students and others from across the straight-trans-gay spectrum about their experiences with marriage, family and parenting; she includes these interviews in what she calls “Time Outs” from her memoir. This informal investigation and her touchingly funny and always candid story work together to reveal the book’s ultimate truth: that “to accept the wondrous scope of gender is to affirm the vast potential of life in all its messy, unfathomable beauty.”

Genuinely insightful through and through—a mustread for anyone interested in the trans experience.

FDR AND THE JEWS

Breitman, Richard; Lichtman, Allan J. Belknap/Harvard Univ. (448 pp.) $29.95 | Mar. 19, 2013 978-0-674-05026-6 A thorough revisiting of the record concludes that Franklin Roosevelt’s actions on the “Jewish Question” were mostly too little, too late.

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War Criminals, U.S. Intelligence, and the Cold War, 2011, etc.) and Lichtman (Predicting the Next President: The Keys to the White House, 2012 Edition, 2012, etc.) pursue several telling currents in FDR’s record, namely the president’s ability to keep the private separate from the public, his reliance on Jewish leaders and his evolving enlightenment toward Jewish issues as he neared the end of his life. The authors trace “four Roosevelts” who emerged as the conditions of his presidency changed depending on the priorities of economy or war. In his first term, FDR was consumed by domestic pressures to repair the economy, thereby putting political expedience before the pressure to speak out against Nazi virulence or ease immigration restrictions against refugees. The second, more activist Roosevelt emerged after the landslide of 1936, openly backing Jewish settlement in Palestine, encouraging and offering incentives for immigration (to a point), and being the only world leader to recall the ambassador to Germany after the events of Kristallnacht. The third FDR set his focus on the war effort and passed his Lend-Lease program, keeping his work for refugees on the back burner. The last FDR created the War Refugee Board and supported immigration to Palestine despite Britain’s obstacles. However, the contradictions abound throughout—e.g., his long-lasting reliance on Jewish advisers like Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, yet failure to either inform the public about Hitler’s Final Solution or bomb Auschwitz.

A well-organized, accessible study finds FDR “neither a hero of the Jews nor a bystander to the Nazis’ persecution and then annihilation of the Jews.” (27 halftones)

CATS & DAUGHTERS They Don’t Always Come When Called Brown, Helen Citadel/Kensington (304 pp.) $16.95 paper | Apr. 1, 2013 978-0-8065-3606-4

An intimate memoir about one woman and her relationships with her cat and her family.

How do you deal with planning a wedding, being diagnosed with breast cancer and having a daughter who wants to become a Buddhist nun all at the same time? You get a high-strung, high-maintenance new kitten. Or at least this is how best-selling author Brown (Cleo: The Cat Who Mended a Family, 2010) coped with the stresses of her life. Amusing passages swirl among details of Brown confronting her illness: “Getting three surgeons to show up in the same operating room at the same time was like arranging for Lady Gaga, Angelina Jolie, and Queen Elizabeth II to attend the same charity event.” Meanwhile, her daughter needed time and space to find her own identity in a Sri Lankan monastery. The author writes eloquently about the bonds that exist between women of all ages, as she crisscrosses the path between caretaker and needy patient. Woven in between are the antics of Jonah, the new 50

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kitten whose existence in the house was questioned from day one: “Jonah hesitated for a moment, as if considering the invitation,” she writes. “But he narrowed his eyes and took flight like a trapeze artist, launching himself through the air to land on top of the kitchen dresser….What I hadn’t counted on was a berserk kitten hurling himself on top of the upper cabinet. The glasses trembled ominously as he struggled to find his balance.”

The author amiably recounts the ups and downs of owning a cat and integrating the animal into her life.

For cat lovers, a pleasant and moving story of love and identity among mothers, daughters and felines. Non–cat lovers need not apply.

DIRT WORK An Education in the Woods

Byl, Christine Beacon (256 pp.) $24.95 | $24.95 e-book | Apr. 16, 2013 978-0-8070-0100-4 978-0-8070-0101-1 e-book

A young woman’s account of life on trail crews in two national parks.

In her debut, Byl, who now operates an Alaska trail-design business with her husband, celebrates the satisfying rituals of work in the wild. Right out of college, she spent 15 years clearing downfall, building bridges, sinking signposts and otherwise maintaining trails in Montana’s Glacier National Park and Alaska’s Denali National Park. Initially the skinniest and least-muscled of her cohorts, she was soon able to swing an axe and run a chain saw. She imitated the veteran workers, especially the women: “I studied them, envied their tight-veined hands, tanned wrinkles shooting from their eyes, their easy cussing and the way they strode in their logging boots.” During long workdays that included up to 20 miles of hiking, Byl learned how to work with men, how to fell a tree and how to speak the language of mules. While friends and family wondered when she was going to get a real job, the author was lured ever deeper into the woods by the wild’s siren of impermanence. Much of her evocative book recalls pranks, projects and camaraderie; the tools essential to outdoor labor; and trailside moments, from singing the “Montana Cowgirl’s Mating Song” (“Get it up, get it in, get it out, don’t muss my hair-doooooo!”) to eating her favorite outdoor sandwich (ham, cheddar cheese, heavy on the mayo). Along the way, she found her “inner dirtball,” married her boyfriend and made a home in Healy, Alaska, north of Denali, where she and her husband live in a yurt with two sled dogs, an outhouse and WiFi and often go dip-netting for red salmon on the Copper River.

A beguiling journey of self-discovery.

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“Yes, Chu concludes in his revealing book, Jesus really loves him. Other Christians? The jury’s still out.” from does jesus really love me?

GLOBAL TILT Leading Your Business Through the Great Economic Power Shift Charan, Ram Crown Business (336 pp.) $28.00 | Feb. 26, 2013 978-0-307-88912-6

Business consultant Charan (The Talent Masters: Why Smart Leaders Put People Before Numbers, 2011, etc.) offers his view of where the world economy is headed in the next 20 years, along with his prescriptions for success.

Despite often heard concerns about stagnation in Europe and Japan and slow recovery in the United States, the author attempts to drive home a sense of a bigger picture, in which the economies of what he calls “the south” (the developing world, including China and India) will continue to grow at a pace fast enough to support world growth at around 3 percent per annum.

This translates into trillions of dollars of new business. Future economic success stories will belong to those who have developed the knowledge and leadership that enable them to tap into the wealth portended in the author’s growth forecast. The author anticipates that the world’s middle class—those who can spend $10-$100 per day—will grow to around 5 billion by the year 2030. He recommends a twofold approach for leaders whose ambitions will lead them into the competition for that market: They need to be able to think from what he calls “the outside in” and “the future back.” The former involves being able to conceptualize how another culture really works, rather than importing prevailing assumptions from the outside, and the latter, the ability to conceptualize a goal over time, then working back to the present to define the steps required to secure its implementation. To further elaborate on his overall approach, the author examines the case studies of Bharti Airtel, a leading Indian wireless company, and China’s Haer consumer appliance manufacturer, which have both risen to international leadership in very short time frames.

A thought-provoking presentation about already discernible global trends.

DOES JESUS REALLY LOVE ME? A Gay Christian’s Pilgrimage in Search of God in America Chu, Jeff Harper/HarperCollins (256 pp.) $26.99 | Apr. 1, 2013 978-0-06-204973-5

A gay Christian’s exploration of homosexuality in the American church.

Curious as to why Christians in America take such radically differing stances on the issue of homosexuality, Chu set off on a yearlong quest for answers, |

meeting and interviewing many people from across the range of viewpoints on this issue. Though the author introduces readers to his personal story, the narrative is focused on the people he encountered on his journey. Chu provides ample commentary about those he meets, but he does a good job appearing as their interlocutor, not as the center of attention. At the conservative end of the spectrum, the author visited rabidly anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church, where he was surprised by the affability and near-normalcy of many parishioners. His candid meeting with Westboro founder Fred Phelps is a highlight of the book.

Chu also explored Harding University in Arkansas, where he learned what it is like for students who are gay on one of America’s most conservative college campuses. At the other end of the spectrum, Chu visited two primarily gay Metropolitan Community Churches in San Francisco, which he found “more focused on people than on God” and where he was hit on for the only time in his journey. He also explored a Lutheran church expelled from its denomination over the issue of gay ordination.

Between these two extremes, Chu met many individuals whose stories are compelling—e.g., former evangelist leader Ted Haggard, people who lost their faith after coming out, a celibate gay clergyman and a straight woman who knowingly married a gay man. Chu’s writing is informal, sometimes overly hip, but the stories he relates are intriguing.

Yes, Chu concludes in his revealing book, Jesus really loves him. Other Christians? The jury’s still out.

THE SLEEPWALKERS How Europe Went to War in 1914

Clark, Christopher Harper/HarperCollins (736 pp.) $29.99 | Apr. 2, 2012 978-0-06-114665-7 A massive, wide-ranging chronicle of the events, personalities and failures of the run-up to World War I. Clark (Modern European History/ Univ. of Cambridge; Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600–1947, 2006, etc.) lays out the long and violent history of Serbian nationalism, the confusion in the dying AustroHungarian empire and the struggle for dominance between the British and Russian empires. While explaining the irredentist mindset of Serbia then, the author also illuminates the causes of the Balkan unrest that erupted again in the 1990s. Surely he read every journal, letter, accounting and government document related to every nation and player in this period; indeed, there are points where some readers may wonder if this is a case of research rapture. Patience will be necessary to wade through the myriad details. However, given the vast amount of available material on World War I and the daunting task of trying to produce a readable account, Clark has succeeded admirably.

The most remarkable fact about the crisis that led to this war is that none of those involved had any clue as to the intentions of not only their enemies, but also their allies. In fact, they weren’t kirkus.com

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absolutely sure who the enemy would be. Consequently, many, including Czar Nicholas II and Kaiser Wilhelm II, tried to head off the conflict right up to the end, each waiting for someone to do something as the world stumbled into war.

For readers who seek a quick overview of one of the most convoluted periods in history, look elsewhere. For those who enjoy excellent scholarship joined with logical composition and an easy style of writing, save a (wide) spot on your bookshelf for Clark’s work. (b/w illustrations throughout; 7 maps)

DISCOVERING THE CITY OF SODOM The Fascinating, True Account of the Discovery of the Old Testament’s Most Infamous City Collins, Steven; Scott, Latayne C. Howard Books/Simon & Schuster (304 pp.) $26.00 | Apr. 2, 2013 978-1-4516-8430-8

The story of the author’s claim to have found long-lost Sodom, the world’s most wicked city.

Following the path of Abraham, Lot and Lot’s unfortunate wife, as directed primarily by Genesis, Collins (Dean of the College of Archaeology and Biblical History/Trinity Southwest Univ.; The Defendable Faith: Lessons in Christian Apologetics, 2008, etc.) places the ancient, prototypical sin city on the eastern side of the geographic flatland surrounding the Jordan River before it feeds into the Dead Sea. As those who have read the Bible know, the Sodomites, evil in charitable and financial matters as well as more lewd practices, were obliterated by a celestial catastrophe. Writing with the assistance of co-author Scott (Latter-Day Cipher, 2009, etc.), biblical archaeology maven Collins fixes the event in the Middle Bronze Age at a site in today’s Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan called Tall el-Hammam, where he and his crew have been digging for years. There, well north of the spot unfortunate Sodom has been located by others, they discovered the foundation walls of a considerable city and some peculiar artifacts. Moreover, there appears to have been no evidence of life for an intervening 700 years. There was not much else, but it was enough to convince Collins that a cosmic event was visited there four millennia ago, just where awestruck Abraham could have seen it. If only on the strength of Collins’ personal conviction that he’s found the right place with the right date, architecture and artifacts, many readers may be convinced, too. Others may want to wait for more. Collins punctuates the impassioned narrative with overly novelistic “backstories” mostly depicting “Dr. C.” (an appellation he seems to enjoy) in a kind of Indiana Jones mode.

Scripture and science meet in a pop-archaeological text; Scripture prevails.

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TRAVELING THE POWER LINE From the Mojave Desert to the Bay of Fundy

Couch, Julianne Univ. of Nebraska (240 pp.) $19.95 paper | Mar. 1, 2013 978-0-8032-4506-8

A Wyoming-based journalist and essayist chronicles her visits to nine electrical power stations across the country, examining the pros and cons of the fuel sources used at each site.

In a book that is part travelogue and part news report, Couch lucidly confronts the specter of what she calls the “new energy crisis.” Her project began as a way to learn about the major methods of electrical production, including those that involved wind, water, geothermal, solar and nuclear power.

Between 2008 and 2010, Couch traveled around Wyoming and then to Nebraska, Iowa, Utah, Nevada, Texas, Kentucky and Maine to talk to “scientists, engineers, policy advocates, environmental activists, industry experts and the folks who work in or live around various sites of energy production.” The result is a study that shows both the positives and negatives associated with nine different fuel types—excluding oil, which Couch associates with transportation rather than household or industrial needs—from which electricity is generated in America. She shows that none, including those that seem the greenest and the safest, are without some cost to use. For example, although the sun is an inexhaustible source of energy, its power can only be harvested for large-scale use in certain parts of the country.

Moreover, a solar plant currently needs “seventeen times as much land as a nuclear [one] to generate the same amount of electricity.” Couch does not offer any opinions on which fuels are ultimately best for an energy-hungry America. Instead, she presents information clearly and objectively to help readers better discern “the difference between numbers meant to impress, stories meant to persuade, and facts that prompt action.”

Fair, thoughtful and balanced.

CRONKITE’S WAR Walter Cronkite’s World War II Letters Home

Cronkite IV, Walter; Isserman, Maurice National Geographic (352 pp.) $28.00 | May 7, 2013 978-1-4262-1019-8 978-1-4262-1020-4 e-book

A charming series of letters from a young Walter Cronkite (1916–2009) to his wife, Betsy, chronicles his rising star as a war correspondent.

Sent by the UP wire service to London and elsewhere as a foreign correspondent from early 1943 until the end of the war, Cronkite recorded his long months away from his Kansas City |

“Excellent. Reading her account proves almost as cathartic as writing it must have been.” from wave

home through copious, effusive letters, collated here by his grandson, Cronkite IV, an associate producer at CBS News, and Isserman (History/Hamilton Coll.; co-author: America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s, 1999, etc.). As Cronkite aimed to use his dispatches as a record of his early professional experience, the letters demonstrate the young correspondent’s eye for journalistic detail, but they mostly reveal touching day-today details of the hardworking, frequently lonely and uncertain reporter, and his tremendous love for his wife. From his first dispatch in early September 1942 covering the convoy Task Force 38 aboard the U.S.S. Arkansas and early reports from Operation Torch in North Africa, to being embedded in the air war over Europe as part of the celebrated so-called “Writing Sixty-Ninth,” Cronkite was steadily making a name for himself as a capable, trustworthy reporter. He lived cheek by jowl alongside other UP reporters Jim McGlincy, Harrison Salisbury and Bob Mussel and became friendly with fellow newspapermen such as Homer Bigart of the New York Herald Tribune, writing warmly of their gags and drinking bouts. Cronkite’s journalistic breakthrough occurred when he flew in a B-17 bombing raid over Germany in February 1943: His account hit the front page of the New York Times and made Cronkite famous, garnering an offer to join “Murrow’s Boys” at CBS Radio at twice his UP salary. (Cronkite turned it down!)

An extraordinary journey with the most trusted man in America.

HENRY FORD

Curcio, Vincent Oxford Univ. (304 pp.) $24.95 | May 1, 2013 978-0-19-531692-6 A nuts-and-bolts biography of the great American visionary portrays a character of enormous contrasts.

Curcio (Chrysler: The Life and Times of an Automotive Genius, 2000, etc.) certainly does not whitewash Ford’s troubling character flaws, manifested in periods of parochialism, anti-Semitism and megalomania, but the author does a fine job delineating the staggering influence Ford wrought on the modern industrial landscape. His system of mass production revolutionized life for the average worker, creating a new social class that could also enjoy the goods that it made; on the other hand, Ford’s urbanization helped destroy the agrarian life that he so nostalgically valued. Curcio covers several important currents that shaped the leader Ford would become: his resolve early on, with the death of his beloved, supportive mother, to keep his own counsel, which both worked toward his enormous success, as he followed his egalitarian business instincts, and blinded him to the wounds inflicted by his anti-Semitic editorials in the early 1920s; his ability to attract the best and the brightest in the industry, such as the Dodge brothers, accountant James Couzens and “father of the assembly line” Clarence Avery, among many others; and his lack of a formal education, which |

Curcio speculates had something to do with his inability to check his attraction to some wacky and hurtful ideas strangely at odds with his overarching views about happy, peaceful, harmonious workers. Yet Ford could also admit when he was licked, as evidenced by his apology in 1927 to Jewish lawyer Aaron Sapiro, a retraction of his attacks on Jews and his concession to the unionizing of Ford’s River Rouge plant in 1941.

An evenhanded study by an author determined to cover all the bases.

WAVE

Deraniyagala, Sonali Knopf (240 pp.) $24.00 | Mar. 5, 2013 978-0-307-96269-0 A devastating but ultimately redemptive memoir by a survivor of the 2004 Sri Lankan tsunami, who must come to terms with the deaths of her husband, her young sons and her parents from the natural disaster that somehow spared her.

Deraniyagala is an economist, and her matter-of-fact account is all the more powerful for its lack of literary flourish, though the craft and control reflect an exceptional literary command. Every word in these short, declarative sentences appears to have been chosen with great care, as if to sentimentalize the experience or magnify the horror (as if that were possible) would be a betrayal of all she has lost. It’s no surprise when the first and strongest acknowledgment goes to her therapist: “This book would not exist without his guidance and persuasion. With him I was safe, to try and grasp the unfathomable, and to dare to remember.” “The water was pulling me along with a speed I did not recognize, propelling me forward with a power I could not resist,” she writes of what she later learned was “the biggest natural disaster ever,” one that would claim a quarter of a million casualties. “I had to surrender to this chaos…,” she continues. “My mind could not sort anything out.”

Eventually, the numbness of her survival gives way to profound guilt (she should have done something, she should never have brought them there), rage, a refusal to sleep (lest she awake to the fantasy that her family was still alive), an attempt to avoid any experience or memories she shared with them and an obsessive pull toward suicide. And then, as miraculously as her rescue, she eventually reached the point where “I want to remember. I want to know.” The more she remembers about their life before the tsunami, and in greater depth and detail, she writes “I am stunned. I want to put a fist through these last six years and grab our life. Claim it back.”

Excellent. Reading her account proves almost as cathartic as writing it must have been.

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CONCEALING COLORATION IN ANIMALS

ASTONISHED A Story of Evil, Blessings, Grace, and Solace

Diamond, Judy; Bond, Alan B. Belknap/Harvard Univ. (274 pp.) $29.95 | Apr. 9, 2013 978-0-674-05235-2

How differences in coloration within a species reveal new dimensions in the operation of natural selection.

“Studying animal coloration is an exercise in time travel, illuminating the conditions of the past that have produced the diversity of the present,” write Diamond (Curator/Univ. of Nebraska State Museum; World of Viruses, 2012, etc.) and Bond (Center for Avian Cognition/Univ. of Nebraska), who follow their earlier collaboration (Kea, Bird of Paradox: The Evolution and Behavior of a New Zealand Parrot, 1999) with this exploration of how the coloration on bird feathers, fish scales and fur are a response to a complex array of factors. Primary among these is the extent to which coloration allows prey to deceptively merge into the background, providing an edge against predators in the struggle for survival. Equally important is patterning, “the arrangement of splotches, speckles, stripes, and shading that make up an animal’s visual appearance.” In a fascinating sidelight, the authors examine how Abbott Henderson Thayer, a prominent American landscape painter, applied his observations about animals to the problem of military camouflage during World War I. Diamond and Bond cover modern research on the change in the numbers of light and dark moths in response to the amount of air pollution and explain how fish have evolved darks scales on top and light underbellies to create the appearance of a flattened object. The deceptive practices of prey also affect the cognitive evolution of predator species, which learn to closely observe their targets, detecting small motions and searching for giveaway signs in order to detect them. This in turn provides an evolutionary advantage to prey that can learn to hide distinguishing features and maintain a still posture. Combining a naturalist’s eye with scientific rigor, the authors report on modern experiments on the mechanisms of the selective process that support these observations.

An intriguing study encompassing “a convergence of disciplines ranging from population ecology and animal behavior to genetics, molecular biology and biophysics.” (52 color illustrations)

Donofrio, Beverly Viking (240 pp.) $25.95 | Mar. 7, 2013 978-0-670-02575-6

Donofrio (Looking for Mary, 2000, etc.) recounts her survival from rape at age 55 and subsequent spiritual journey.

Best known for Riding in Cars with Boys (1990), her first memoir about her teenage pregnancy and single motherhood, the author was raised Catholic. As an adult, following years without religious practice, Donofrio developed a deep love for and affinity with the Virgin Mary and returned to Catholicism. In 2006, while living peacefully as an expat in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, Donofrio awoke to find herself held at knife point by the town’s serial rapist. “I did not want to believe in a God that would let this happen,” she writes at the book’s beginning. After the man was caught weeks later, Donofrio remained unsettled, wrestling with feelings of having been violated and spiritual questions concerning good and evil. In search of stillness and safety, she planned to leave for six months to visit five places, most of which were monasteries. The bulk of the narrative follows this pilgrimage, which included stays with the Trappists at St. Benedict and the Carmelites at Nada Hermitage, both in Colorado, and at a friend’s Missouri retreat center. Donofrio devoted her days to prayer and meditation, as well as the study of spiritual writings, which she lists in the narrative. Her story is one of reconciliation; she felt herself grow closer to Jesus while shedding some of her decades-old protective holding patterns and bitterness toward men. She considered, then decided against, becoming a nun. The conclusion of her journey, following her torrent of questions for and about divine power, lies in her realization that her faith is unshakeable and her attack, ultimately, showed her the heart of God. Honest, engaging and cathartic.

LAW AND DISORDER The Legendary FBI Profiler’s Relentless Pursuit of Justice Douglas, John; Olshaker, Mark Kensington (320 pp.) $25.00 | Mar. 1, 2013 978-0-7582-7312-3

From a pioneer of behavioral analysis, a look at notorious murder investigations marred by controversy.

Well-known FBI profiler Douglas has co-authored several books with Olshaker on this specialty (The Cases that Haunt Us, 2000, etc.). Here, he focuses on diverse cases that share one commonality: Either the investigation developed around false leads with disastrous results, or the actual killer was targeted yet saw justice confounded by similar 54

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procedural issues. “The role of the profiler is to redirect or refocus an investigation and to help police narrow and analyze their suspect list,” he writes. The cases he discusses here are those he did not address as an active-duty agent, and he often wonders if he would have fared better as an investigator. In at least two cases, he reluctantly argues that wrongful convictions led to miscarriages of justice. William Heirens served a life sentence as Chicago’s “Lipstick Killer,” yet Douglas believes him innocent: “I would have considered him too young to…make the leap from petty burglaries to violent rapes and murders.”

He also argues that Texas executed Cameron Todd Willingham for the arson murders of his children based on scientific theories that were disproven well before the execution. The author devotes long sections to two notorious cases: the murder of JonBenet Ramsey and the wrongfully convicted West Memphis Three. He consulted in both cases and remains convinced that shoddy evidence management, prosecutorial overreach and media frenzies led to false accusations with dreadful consequences. Douglas remains fascinated by the nitty-gritty of advanced investigation, and he smoothly explains key evidentiary details and psychological twists, though he becomes impatient with those who question his conclusions. Yet, his thesis remains bifurcated: He both agonizes over the prospect of an innocent person being executed and strongly argues that the death penalty ought to protect society from the “worst of the worst,” sadistic repeat offenders like Ted Bundy.

The prose is mostly workmanlike, but in a culture besotted with serial killers, Douglas can claim a rare authenticity regarding the evil that men do.

ON THESE COURTS A Miracle Season that Changed a City, a OnceFuture Star, and a Team Forever

Drash, Wayne Touchstone/Simon & Schuster (288 pp.) $26.00 | May 7, 2013 978-1-4767-1021-1

The story of former NBA star Anfernee “Penny” Hardaway’s return to the mean streets of his youth to lead a team of disadvantaged middle schoolers to basketball glory.

Even the schmaltziest made-for-TV sports movie would be hard-pressed to squeeze in all of the clichés packed into the tale of Hardaway’s homecoming to the rough-and-tumble Memphis neighborhood of Binghampton: the local boy done good who returns to help underprivileged youth at the request of a cancerstricken friend; the emotionally scarred, delinquent boys who turn their lives around when the star athlete becomes the father figure they never had; the rival gangs who call a truce during the season and unite to make sure the team stays out of trouble.

And yet, each of those elements rings true in CNN.com writer Drash’s debut. The author leverages shared geographical and basketball roots to chronicle Hardaway’s transformation from |

NBA All-Star (a career unfortunately derailed by a series of injuries) to middle school basketball coach in one of the toughest neighborhoods in the country. Hardaway originally took the job to help out the school’s coach, childhood friend Desmond Merriweather, when Merriweather was diagnosed with late-stage cancer, but stayed when he saw the opportunity to be a positive role model for an unruly group of boys who were growing up, as he had, with very little. The troubled but talented team quickly transformed into a state title contender, and the combined influence of Hardaway and Merriweather helped them maximize their potential both on the court and in the classroom.

Despite the paint-by-numbers narrative arc, there are genuinely touching moments, and it’s always uplifting to see a wealthy superstar give more than just money to help his community.

A feel-good story that begs for a where-are-they-now follow-up in 10 years. (b/w photos throughout)

THE THIRD COAST When Chicago Built the American Dream Dyja, Thomas Penguin Press (544 pp.) $29.95 | Apr. 18, 2013 978-1-59420-432-6

A readable, richly detailed history of America’s second city—which, laments novelist/historian and Chicagoan Dyja (Walter White: The Dilemma of Black Identity in America, 2008, etc.), has become a third city, perhaps even less.

One reason: Until the very end of the 1950s, most people traveling from coast to coast did so by way of Chicago, where they changed trains and often spent a little layover time. On January 25, 1959, all that changed when transcontinental air service was inaugurated between New York and Los Angeles, making Chicago and the rest of the land “flyover country”; as Dyja laments, “the newly minted ‘jet set’ would never need to change trains in Chicago again.” Nevertheless, Chicago remained an innovator on several cultural and commercial fronts, the home of Playboy magazine and Chess Records, even as it settled into the strange boss politics of Richard Daley, whose rise to power Dyja carefully records. Daley wielded that power in ways that a modern tyrant might envy, using what came to be known as “The Machine” to capture the minority vote that had become important by the 1950s after the explosive growth of the nonwhite population as a result of immigration and internal migration. However, writes Dyja, it was just one node of power, the other two central ones being the Catholic Church and organized crime, all working against each other as they “protected their power above the needs of the people they served.” In the end, Los Angeles and other cities stole much of Chicago’s thunder, and Chicago “never became the city it could have been, the city it should have been.”

A valuable contribution to the history of Chicago, worthy of a place alongside William Cronon’s Nature’s Metropolis (1991).

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“An absolute must for any baseball fan’s library.” from mr. wrigley ’s ball club

MR. WRIGLEY’S BALL CLUB Chicago and the Cubs During the Jazz Age

Ehrgott, Roberts Univ. of Nebraska (504 pp.) $34.95 | Apr. 1, 2013 978-0-8032-6478-6

A baseball historian recaptures Chicago’s most notorious era and the city’s love affair with one of baseball’s most

colorful teams.

As the 1920s crashed into the unforgiving wall of the Depression, chewing-gum magnate William Wrigley assembled a team so wondrous as to outdraw even Babe Ruth’s Yankees. Clever team president Bill Veeck supercharged ballpark attendance, perfecting the idea of Ladies’ Day and helping to pioneer radio broadcasts of games. The Second City couldn’t get enough of this team of assorted alcoholics, teetotalers, brawlers, carousers, fitness buffs and gamblers that captured two pennants and featured numerous eventual Hall of Famers: Joe McCarthy, Rogers Hornsby, Grover Alexander, Gabby Hartnett, Kiki Cuyler and Hack Wilson. Former Saturday Evening Post editor Ehrgott draws memorable portraits of these immortals and lesser Cubs like Jolly Cholly Grimm, whose ashes would one day be spread on Wrigley Field, and shortstop Billy Jurges, shot (not killed) by his showgirl lover. Other Windy City personalities—corrupt Mayor Big Bill Thompson, first citizen Al Capone and iron-eyed commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis—enliven a bulging narrative that effortlessly emerges from a world where Hupmobiles cruised the roads and Jelly Roll Morton’s hot jazz filled the air, where flappers crushed on athletic gods and disgruntled fans tossed mildewed lemons at slumping players, where mob hits were common and pro football still a novelty, and where sporting legends like Jack Dempsey’s Long Count arose alongside Ruth’s called shot in the 1932 World Series. That home run crushed the Jazz Age Cubs’ last chance for a championship, but as Ehrgott deliciously demonstrates, it barely dented their lasting, slashing swagger.

An absolute must for any baseball fan’s library. (24 photographs)

VAGOS, MONGOLS, AND OUTLAWS My Infiltration of America’s Deadliest Biker Gangs

Falco, Charles with Droban, Kerrie Dunne/St. Martin’s (272 pp.) $25.99 | Mar. 12, 2013 978-0-312-64014-9 978-1-250-02108-3 e-book

Fevered yet strangely generic account of a lawbreaker who came to enjoy a high-risk occupation: infiltrating outlaw motorcycle gangs.

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It’s hard to know who to root for in this true-crime narrative: duplicitous career criminal Falco (who co-wrote this with attorney Droban, author of two books on these gangs) or the violent, ritual-obsessed gangsters he pursued. Falco was not a natural biker, but a drug dealer who agreed to infiltrate the Vagos after establishing himself as a confidential informant for the DEA following a 2002 plea agreement. “Having lived so long as a criminal, it was hard to remember I was a good guy now,” he writes. Falco infiltrated the Vagos easily, but he was sucked into their lifestyle of drug use, abuse of women, criminal schemes and random violence, portrayed in a series of choppy vignettes; he even wound up incarcerated while undercover. By 2006, Falco had helped law enforcement gather sufficient evidence to charge numerous Vagos with serious crimes (though most pled out and received shorter sentences). Yet, even after entering witness protection, Falco was evidently addicted to the informant’s lifestyle; he then helped two ATF undercover agents set up an entire fake chapter of the Outlaws motorcycle gang (“infinitely more brutal and unpredictable”), pursuing further indictments in another long investigation. Although the author’s approach aspires to be specific rather than general, the prose tends to be overheated and often sleazy, and the narrative becomes increasingly confusing. Despite Falco’s proximity to the “one-percenters” he ensnared, he offers little insight into their character or motivations or the tangled history of these gangs.

A blur of pulpy violence that may appeal to those who romanticize the biker lifestyle. The book is quite similar to George Rowe’s Gods of Mischief (2013). (8-page b/w photo insert)

EVERYBODY OUGHT TO BE RICH The Life and Times of John J. Raskob, Capitalist Farber, David Oxford Univ. (416 pp.) $27.95 | May 3, 2013 978-0-19-973457-3

A comprehensive but unfortunately arid biography of John Jacob Raskob (1879–1950), whom Farber (History/Temple Univ.; The Rise and Fall of Modern American Conservatism: A Short History, 2010, etc.) depicts as a progenitor of modern capitalism.

Solidly Catholic and small-town conservative, Raskob was as close to a Horatio Alger character as the Jazz Age might allow.

He came to head first the DuPont chemical concern and then, in an early exercise in cross-fertilization (or at least cross-corporatization), General Motors. As Farber writes, he was a pioneer of the hostile takeover, the credit market and the application of big money to the political process. Moreover, he was a kind of Napoleon Hill/Dale Carnegie popularizer of business and money who urged ordinary Americans to invest in the stock market and thereby grow rich—advice that, fortunately, most Americans ignored, given that the crash and the Great Depression were just around the corner. That loss of credibility and |

the decline of the supermoneyed class in the age of the New Deal—and here Farber’s discussion makes the book timely— sent Raskob’s reputation into eclipse in his own time (though Sonora, Texas, is nowhere as bad as Farber makes it out to be).

He has since been largely forgotten. Granted that Raskob did not have the worldly appetites or scandal-attracting abilities of fellow Catholic conservative Joseph Kennedy, this life seems a touch dutiful, carrying its subject’s stolid, businesslike manner into its pages. Still, no other book covers the same ground—a curious lacuna, given Raskob’s undeniable importance in economic history.

A thoroughly researched book that will appeal mostly to a scholarly rather than general audience.

DOOMED TO REPEAT The Lessons of History We’ve Failed to Learn Fawcett, Bill Morrow/HarperCollins (336 pp.) $13.99 paper | Mar. 12, 2013 978-0-06-206906-1

In this search for guidance from the past, pop historian Fawcett (Trust Me, I Know What I’m Doing: 100 More Mistakes that Lost Elections, Ended Empires, and Made the World What It Is Today, 2012, etc.) surveys disparate issues ranging from terrorism and pandemics to unemployment and recessions. However, any book that attempts to derive lessons from history must first get the facts right.

This one is replete with falsehoods and fantasies that startle and amaze. Among the author’s more astonishing assertions: Ethiopia successfully repelled the Italian invasion of 1935; in 1915, Turkish troops killed 27,000 Armenians in Monastir, Tunisia; on October 9, 2002, the stock market crashed, and Yahoo stock lost 90 percent of its value in less than two days.

The first assertion is sadly false, while the other two are pure fabrications. Perceptive readers will quickly lose confidence in any of the author’s purported statements of fact and thus, with any conclusions that might be drawn from them. Even when Fawcett correctly recognizes a historical trend, the lessons he perceives are generally both obvious and useless. Afghanistan is a fractured nation that resists foreign occupiers and central government. Africa must overcome tribalism and corruption if it is to prosper. Hyperinflation can be ruinous. And the even less helpful: “What history seems to give us today are questions, not solutions.” Fawcett sees America going the way of the British and Roman empires if we don’t, well, do something, like strengthen the middle class. How? Neither history nor Fawcett seems to know.

Superficial analysis and a rash of factual errors combine to drain this volume of any value it might otherwise have had.

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DOWN THE UP ESCALATOR How the 99 Percent Live in the Great Recession

Garson, Barbara Doubleday (304 pp.) $26.95 | Apr. 2, 2013 978-0-385-53274-7

How the economic recession is reshaping peoples’ lives and prospects.

Garson (Money Makes the World Go Around: One Investor Tracks Her Cash Through the Global Economy from Brooklyn to Bangkok and Back, 2001, etc.) combines her skills as a dramatist with her activist’s conscience in this study of the economic issues confronting individuals and families in different parts of the country. With brutal clarity, the author shows how job categories have been redefined and wages and salaries cut, often in half, as skilled workers find themselves replaced by temps and other contingent hires working for the minimum wage. Whether it is the members of New York City’s “Pink Slip Club” or graduate professionals who have joined the ranks of the long-term unemployed, Garson powerfully highlights the similarities within the differences. She also shows how the transformation to contingent, or temporary, status has affected workers in upscale services and the financial industry, including hedge funds. Interestingly, the author profiles some of the technicians whose models caused the financial crash, many of whom continued to find employment on credit default swaps and other derivative products few understand. Garson also takes up household finance and the effects of the collapsed bubble on homeowners and investors.

The author traces each step of the foreclosure process through individual case studies, which allow her to identify and dramatize the pitfalls set for the unknowing and the villains preying on the unaware. She does not exclude speculators, who fell victim to their own get-rich schemes.

A skillful presentation that lifts the veil too often hiding areas that should be brought to light.

WHERE THE PEACOCKS SING A Palace, a Prince, and the Search for Home Gee, Alison Singh St. Martin’s (288 pp.) $24.99 | Feb. 19, 2013 978-0-312-37878-3 978-1-250-02837-2 e-book

In this coming-of-age memoir, Los Angeles–based journalist Gee examines her transformation from social-climbing material girl to loving mother after falling in love with a fellow journalist.

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The Reenactments: Why I Wrote It

b y

The Reenactments: A Memoir

Flynn, Nick Norton (320 pp.) $15.95 Jan. 7, 2013 9780393344356

n i c k

f ly n n

The book is called The Reenactments— on one level it is about my experience of a seven-year run which ended with being on the set while another book I wrote (Another Bullshit Night in Suck City) was made into a film (Being Flynn). In some ways, The Reenactments—a book about making a film about a book—wrote itself. I say this because making a film is a process which involves a lot of dead time—lights must be moved, cameras set up, lunch—and in this dead time I filled seven notebooks. The seven-year run leading up to this was the time it took for the cameras to start rolling, which is understandable, perhaps, for the book is about homelessness and alcoholism and suicide, but it is also about a father and a son trying to come to terms with the death of a mother. The film reenacts these moments, these events (hence the title), yet it became, in the writing of the book, a meditation on what it means to re-enact anything. Or perhaps it questions why anyone would want to, or whether we do anything but re-enact every moment of our lives, continually, through this thing called “memory.”

As we were filming, in my downtime, I was reading these books on neuroscience—Damasio, Ramachadran, Eagleman—and what they were saying seemed to line up with what I was experiencing. The neuroscientists refer to consciousness as “the movie in the brain,” that our experience of memory is like “watching a film.” They have located a point in the brain—the amygdala—that records traumatic “flashbulb” memories in a way that is unique to that type of memory. I read how Ramachadran created an experiment to treat sufferers of “phantom limb syndrome,” where he placed the subject into a specially constructed mirrored box, which would reflect his body back to him, restored. Where the limb was gone, the intact limb would take its place—this is what the mind would see, the mind that had never been able to comprehend that the arm was gone.

I began to see the film we were making as my own mirrored box, where my mother would be returned to me, if briefly—for some years I’d been lost in a sea of incomprehensibility over her suicide. Once these two panels—the making of the film, the neuroscientists and their talk of memory—emerged, I had a

sense of the structure of the whole.

I felt it needed to be a triptych, and I knew that the third panel would be something I’d been working on for years—a meditation on an exhibit known as “The Glass Flowers.”

Julianne Moore on the set of Briefly, for those of Being Flynn. you who have yet to stand before them, “The Glass Flowers” is a collection at Harvard of just that—a Borges-ian dream of every flower in the world, gathered, and then remade, out of glass. I had spent many hours there, in that strange and dusty museum, both as a child and then later—each of these flowers is another type of re-enactment.

I don’t know if I am answering the question by telling you all this, the question of why I wrote the book—I’m simply telling you how it came to exist.

I don’t think I can say why, beyond the fact that it’s simply what I do at this point—I write. And a big part of that, for me, is being attuned to what is being offered as I am finding my way through a project. I thought I was reading Ramachadran simply because my wife was reading it and said it was good, and so I was surprised when it seemed to speak directly to my project. The same with “The Glass Flowers,” which I’d been wrestling with for years, trying to make sense of Paul Dano reacts to Nick Flynn, them, of why they who he portrays in Being Flynn. are so eerie. Many people asked, while the film was being shot, and now, after, what it was like to see De Niro as my father. It must have been strange, they say, or it must have been thrilling, or it must have been a trip, or it must have been wild. I have no simple answer to that question, I never did, and so I wrote a book.

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Robert De Niro during the filming of Being Flynn.

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p hpoto © by and re w cRop h oto J oyce avpa id

Nick Flynn is also the author of Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, winner of the PEN/Martha Albrand Award, and The Ticking Is the Bomb, among other titles. He divides his time between Houston and Brooklyn.

the way to happiness. “All my life I had gotten the message that ‘making it’ meant being rich, pampered, and beautiful,” she writes. So she left the States after college to pursue her dream of “making it” as a features writer in Hong Kong, where she sparkled among the glitterati while being doted on by a British fund manager. But the trappings of that “swish, fragrant existence” began to lose their luster when the author met her husband-to-be, Ajay Singh, a “kind, handsome soulful man” who, after brief workplace encounters, wooed her from his home in India through old-fashioned correspondence. Six months after moving to Hong Kong to be with Gee and their subsequent engagement, Singh revealed that his family still lived in the childhood home built by his great-grandfather at the turn of the 20th century. Though having expressed no prior interest in meeting her future in-laws, within weeks of her fiance’s revelation, she sought to visit the “grand hundredroom” outside New Delhi. While much of the memoir’s narrative focuses on the reconciliation of contrasting worlds as Gee strove for acceptance by the Singhs, one wonders whether the capitalistic tendencies the author slowly disavowed represent the emotional truth of the period depicted here or are merely heightened for dramatic effect.

Gee provides interesting details on the changes in her outer world but not much depth or introspection on her inner growth. (8-page color photo insert)

THE ANTI-EDUCATION ERA Creating Smarter Students Through Digital Learning Gee, James Paul Palgrave Macmillan (256 pp.) $17.00 paper | Feb. 12, 2013 978-0-230-34209-5

Thinking about thinking in education and the digital age.

The subtitle suggests that the primary focus of the book would be the roles technology can play in the classroom. Gee (Literacy Studies/Arizona State Univ.; What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, 2003) has a larger agenda, as he gives ancillary consideration to the technology involved and instead takes a broad look at ways of thinking and learning. He weaves over the line between the ills and the benefits of technology, finding examples of rapid collaboration and increased agency through online forums, social media, webcams video games, search tools, virtual worlds and similar connections. At the same time, he considers the shifting relevance of traditionally defined expertise as noncredentialed “amateurs” leverage the Internet to produce expert-level work. Gee’s anecdotal stories are worthy examples of “thinking outside of the box”—e.g., the project to make modifications to the popular game The Sims in an effort to use it to simulate the life of a poor, single mother. The prevailing tone around these anecdotes, however, leans toward a frustrated lecture about these innovative ideas being the exception to the rule. For the most part, it seems, we have become a |

culture of nincompoops with the cognitive tools necessary to become smarter, but we’re either misusing them or disregarding them. “Do we have the will to save ourselves?” asks the author in conclusion. “Will we each sink in our own boat, however large or small it is, or will we bail water together in a journey to a better future?”

Gee makes a compelling case for reframing methods of teaching and learning, but the pedantic tone may put off some readers.

MANOLOGY Secrets of Your Man’s Mind Revealed

Gibson, Tyrese; Run, Rev Touchstone/Simon & Schuster (288 pp.) $24.99 | Feb. 5, 2013 978-1-4516-8184-0 An unlikely bromance between two reformed playas becomes the source of an in-depth look at the ways of philandering men.

Few took greater advantage of their celebrity than the authors of this provocative, often controversial self-help book focusing on modern relationships between the sexes. Not too long ago, Run-D.M.C. founder Rev. Run (Words of Wisdom, 2006, etc.) and singer/actor Gibson (How to Get Out of Your Own Way, 2011) were the kind of guys fathers were advised to warn their daughters about. Today, both men have daughters of their own and therefore have the best incentive of all to help women everywhere understand how their boyfriends and husbands think and why they cheat. However, although the authors are united in their objective, they differ, often hilariously so, on numerous issues. For instance, Gibson contends that men will cheat for a variety of paper-thin reasons that seem justifiable in their own minds. Run, on the other hand, blames the unfaithfulness of male partners on an overabundance of temptation.

Interestingly, both seem to indicate that some men are basically unable to control themselves. Gibson comes to his particular insights through intense retrospection. Run, meanwhile, relies on Judeo-Christian Scriptures. He is so wary of possible temptation that he refuses to ever be alone in a room with a woman who is not his wife. While explaining the motivations of the cheating male mind, the authors take great pains to explain that they are not condoning unfaithfulness, just helping women understand why certain things might be happening in their relationships. Despite their earnestness, the authors will no doubt be accused of unconscious chauvinism. Many men, in turn, will be unhappy that the authors spend so much time telling women how to spot and catch an unfaithful spouse or boyfriend.

Entertaining and enlightening for suspicious minds.

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THE TRUE SECRET OF WRITING Connecting Life with Language

Goldberg, Natalie Atria (256 pp.) $25.00 | Mar. 19, 2013 978-1-4516-4124-0 978-1-4516-4126-4 e-book

A uniquely delivered Eastern Zen approach to the craft of writing.

The popularity of Buddhist Goldberg’s best-selling literary guidebook Writing Down the Bones (1996) furthers a legacy of directing new and established writers toward becoming more creatively productive. Here, she employs the inwardly focused “sit, walk, write” concept, incorporating meditation and mindfulness into the process and encouraging creativity through connective intention. Goldberg interestingly juxtaposes the extremism of her 1960s upbringing with today’s challenging yet essential integration of work and family. Goldberg gets personal in chapters describing a bout with the flu or her irritation with a neighbor’s barking dogs; this characteristic transfers well into her sage, encouraging advice for writers of any age. Other sections liberally reference poetry, book excerpts, and the works of inspirational authors and her students. She sees writing as an expression of the innermost self, and when performed with a clear mind and a quiet core, the author believes her students’ best work can become cathartic. Sharing this ideal has made her seminars popular by way of a slower approach to writing through breathing, walking and deliberate authorship of personal material, whether shared with a group or contemplated in silence. Goldberg demonstrates that writing can be a calming, clarifying experience and, perhaps most importantly, one that incorporates a “taste of the joy—and lucky fun” that can develop from authoring the written word.

A pleasantly meditative, intuitive writing guide—though some aspiring writers may find too few nuts and bolts.

SEEDS OF HOPE Wisdom and Wonder from the World of Plants

Goodall, Jane with Hudson, Gail Grand Central Publishing (300 pp.) $26.99 | Apr. 2, 2013 978-1-4555-1322-2

A wonderful introductory guide to the plant kingdom from one of the world’s leading naturalists.

Well-known for her pioneering work with primates, Goodall (Hope for Animals and Their World: How Endangered Species Are Being Rescued from the Brink, 2009, etc.) is now lecturing and encouraging young people to make a difference. With the assistance of Hudson, the author provides a comprehensive overview of the massive diversity of plants and 60

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mankind’s relations with them, but she always brings her subject back to her own love and enthusiasm for nature. Goodall discusses the origins and history of trees and the importance of forests, and she offers an outline of the development of mankind’s knowledge of plants. Her love for nature combines with outrage. She exposes how orchid poachers plunder the areas where the beautiful plants grow and how Western pharmaceutical interests are attempting to subject medicinally useful plants to intellectual property and patent constrictions, despite the fact that the plants have been used by mankind for probably thousands of years. Goodall shows how Monsanto and other genetic modifiers of agricultural seeds have set up a vicious cycle that ultimately leads to increased use of damaging chemicals but does not increase productivity. The author is critical of the effects of corporate and plantation-type production, and she promotes alternative methods of food production. Goodall bolsters her narrative with discussions of the healthy benefits that can be derived from plants, as well as the harm that can be done.

Personal warmth and enthusiasm increase the charm of this celebration of the “beauty, mystery, and complexity” of the plant world.

EIGHTY DAYS Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland’s History-Making Race Around the World

Goodman, Matthew Ballantine (480 pp.) $28.00 | Mar. 5, 2013 978-0-345-52726-4

A richly detailed double narrative of the adventures of two young women journalists in a race against time, each striving to be the first to travel around the world in 75 days, outdoing the fictional Phileas Fogg’s 80 days.

Goodman (The Sun and the Moon: The Remarkable True Account of Hoaxers, Showmen, Dueling Journalists, and Lunar Man-Bats in Nineteenth-Century New York, 2008, etc.) provides a clear picture of not only Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland, but also of journalism in the 1890s and women’s place in that field. Their roles were very different: Bly was a plucky investigative journalist for Joseph Pulitzer’s daily newspaper the World, while Bisland wrote features and book reviews for the Cosmopolitan, a monthly magazine. Pulitzer’s goal for the stunt was to raise circulation for his newspaper, and it succeeded, as readers followed the story and millions submitted their guesses for the exact time of the race’s finish. As the winner, arriving back in 72 days, Bly briefly became a national figure, but fame ended her career in undercover journalism, and she struggled to make a living until her marriage to a 70-year-old millionaire, whose firm later declared bankruptcy. Bisland came in five days later and promptly disappeared from the public eye; however, she continued to write and married and lived well, which prompts the author to raise the question: Who was the real winner? Goodman’s depiction |

“Part elegy, part mystery and wholly unforgettable.” from after visiting friends

THE EYE OF THE MAMMOTH Selected Essays

of the swashbuckling Bly, whose self-regard often seemed larger than her regard for the truth, is somewhat less sympathetic than his portrait of the now-forgotten Bisland. The author also examines the shenanigans of the press, the vicissitudes of travel and the global power of the British Empire in the Victorian era.

A tad overlong, but entertaining and readable throughout.

AFTER VISITING FRIENDS A Son’s Story

Hainey, Michael Scribner (320 pp.) $25.00 | Feb. 19, 2013 978-1-4516-7656-3

A young reporter goes in search of his long-lost, deceased father.

“There’s lots of stories you haven’t heard,” said the narrator’s mother when he asked about an unfamiliar family anecdote. But GQ deputy editor Hainey wanted to hear them all. When his father died suddenly one spring day in 1970, he left behind two boys, a wife and a trail of questions that no one wanted to answer for Hainey.

For years, the family danced silently around the subject of his father, until the author decided to track down whatever true story was left of him. It was the obituary that set him off: His father allegedly died “after visiting friends,” but who were they?

Who was with him in his final hours? With medical records and a few shaky, secondhand accounts from his father’s former co-workers, a tight-lipped crew of old-time Chicago newspapermen, Hainey hoped to fill the gaps between what he had always been told and what it seemed might actually be true. His personal investigation took him across the country and into strangers’ lives, but the most difficult and hard-won part of the journey was his gradual, intimate understanding of his mother and brother. Hainey’s writing is balletic, nimbly avoiding both sentimentality and sensationalism, making grief and absence into powerful and fully felt forces. His short scenes appear like flashes of memory, prose poems of what once was, and he skillfully weaves a narrative that transcends his own and spans generations. From family history to Chicago lore, Hainey searches the deepest fissures of memory and finds a hidden and entire “world of men, of stories, of knowledge” that wasn’t there before.

Part elegy, part mystery and wholly unforgettable.

Harrigan, Stephen Univ. of Texas (316 pp.) $29.95 | Apr. 15, 2013 978-0-292-74561-2

A Sooner-born, Longhorn-raised writer offers a rich selection of pieces originally published in Texas Monthly and elsewhere.

A veteran screenwriter and novelist (The Gates of the Alamo, 2000, etc.), Harrigan displays in abundance the trait all great essayists possess: curiosity. Not to mention an enviable travel budget. The peripatetic writer is everywhere: Big Bend National Park, a Mexican desert, Padre Island, the Houston Zoo, Galveston Bay, Rocky Mountain and Mesa Verde national parks, and Monte Carlo, among others. He assembles natural history, some quirky characters and details (on Padre Island he spotted a decapitated turtle), and some personal history (we gradually learn about his boyhood, youth, college years and more), and he displays throughout an appealingly self-deprecating voice. The early sections deal principally with his travels—including the bizarre story of a tiger’s killing a zoo employee—and later sections focus on history. He offers a grim piece about Cortés in Mexico (read this one on an empty stomach) and a good summary about the Stone Age man found in that alpine glacier in 1991.

He enlightens us about the Comanche, who survive but have no reservation, and visits the ruins of Jack London’s Wolf House.

He also dives into the whirlpool of controversy about the death of Davy Crockett, enlightens us about the filming of Lonesome Dove and notes a family connection to outlaw Frank James. The final pieces are reflective ones about Texas, homesickness and his screenwriting career.

Like sitting next to a loquacious, genial and informative passenger on a slow trans-Texas train.

PANIC 2012 The Sublime and Terrifying Inside Story of Obama’s Final Campaign Hastings, Michael Blue Rider Press (176 pp.) $4.99 e-book | Jan. 15, 2013

A semigonzo, often funny, occasionally revealing look at the daily business of conducting a presidential campaign.

It’s not quite Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72 or The Boys on the Bus, but Rolling Stone contributing editor Hastings owes something more than just inspiration to Hunter Thompson and Timothy Crouse. Or perhaps it’s in the nature of the beast: Every campaign needs a boozing, ill-kempt, confrontational goat, and Hastings is just right for the part. On one instance where candidate Barack Obama is about to wade into a crowd of reporters for a friendly |

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off-the-record beer, for instance, Hastings recalls a Washington Post writer sidling up to him, eyeballing his shorts and T-shirt and saying, “You might want to, you know, put on something nicer.” Well-dressed or not, Hastings knows how to ask hard questions, for which reason he was often shunted from top-tier accommodations to barely on the bus, much less the campaign plane—not at the president’s behest, mind you, but at the hands of ticked-off staffers, from the high-ranking (David Plouffe et al.) to the barely out of high school. Hastings dishes dirt, little of it deeply scandalous; his title, it seems, comes from the fact that every perceived swing in mood, every gaffe, every poor moment at the microphone set those staffers on edge. And not just the Dems: Hastings matches the endless moments of terror with moments of elation when Mitt Romney stuck silver foot in mouth. One payoff: Though Hastings did in fact agree to go off the record at points, that doesn’t keep him from reporting on his fellow reporters.

An entertainment, though not much more to ordinary readers. Aspiring politicos and their staffers, though, will want this for its astute look at the tricks of the trade.

AN AMERICAN CADDIE IN ST. ANDREWS Growing Up, Girls, and Looping on the Old Course

Horovitz, Oliver Gotham Books (336 pp.) $26.00 | Mar. 14, 2013 978-1-592-40729-3

The experiences of an American caddie at golf ’s most sacred locale.

In the middle of his high school graduation ceremony, Horovitz received a phone call from Harvard telling him that he was accepted from the waiting list but would have to wait a year before he could enroll. The author chose to spend a year at the University of St. Andrews, which is located in the town that stands at the epicenter of golf ’s history. A devoted golfer, Horovitz decided to caddy at the Royal and Ancient Golf Club and especially, at the most famous loop of all, the Old Course.

It is this experience—his attempts to fit in, to please a dour and exacting old guard, and the ongoing allure that St. Andrews held even as he wound his way through Harvard and beyond—that is at the heart of this intermittently affecting book. Horovitz is at his most effective conveying the atmosphere in the caddie shack and the difficulties, insecurities and triumphs that he confronted.

But his attempts to interweave the rest of his life can be selfindulgent. His returns to Harvard after each summer make for lackluster reading, as do most of the sections on his dating life.

But an exception to this off-course banality comes with Horovitz’s relationship with his octogenarian great uncle, who has long lived in St. Andrews and who, over the years, became one of his best friends. These scenes provide the story’s most powerful and poignant moments. Had the author alternated between his experiences carrying the bag and his visits with Uncle Ken and cut out the extraneous fluff, this would be an even better book.

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Not everyone can get to St. Andrews, but with Horovitz’s memoir, they can get somewhat of an insider’s view.

CHASING GIDEON The Elusive Quest for Poor People’s Justice Houppert, Karen New Press (288 pp.) $26.95 | Mar. 19, 2013 978-1-59558-869-2

A journalist explores the quality of indigent defense 50 years after Gideon v.

Wainwright mandated adequate counsel for any person charged with a felony.

Washington Post Magazine contributing writer Houppert (Home Fires Burning: Married to the Military—for Better or Worse, 2005, etc.) concedes that her book is an update on the nonfiction classic by Anthony Lewis, Gideon’s Trumpet (1964). Houppert focuses on four defendants represented by appointed lawyers. One of those cases is that of Clarence Earl Gideon, who appealed for defense counsel despite his poverty after his 1961 arrest in Panama City, Fla. The other cases are more contemporary: teenager Sean Replogle in Spokane, Wash., after he was charged with vehicular homicide; Gregory Bright in New Orleans, where he was convicted of a 1975 murder he did not commit; and Rodney Young in Georgia, where he was sentenced to death despite his apparent mental retardation. Houppert demonstrates that most public defenders are dedicated lawyers but face severe disadvantages due to overwhelming case loads, inadequate budgets for expert witnesses and the like, as well as the nature of the criminal justice system, which often emphasizes the desirability of a plea bargain instead of taking a case to a full trial by judge or jury. While Lewis sounded optimistic about the development of high-quality defense representation for the indigent in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling, Houppert is more pessimistic. Her research shows that defendants are regularly being denied their legal right to a strong lawyer with enough time and resources to function at the highest level. After all, indigent defendants do not have an organized lobbying group to compete for meager local, state and federal government resources, especially in recessionary eras.

A well-researched and -written investigation that shows the inadequacies in stark human terms rather than as an abstraction.

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FRESH OFF THE BOAT A Memoir Huang, Eddie Spiegel & Grau (288 pp.) $26.00 | Feb. 5, 2013 978-0-679-64488-0

Up-and-coming celebrity chef Huang serves up a raw memoir recounting his life as an angry young man chafing under generations of stifling Chinese tradition and all-encompassing American “whiteness.”

Three things inform the multitalented restaurateur’s identity: food, basketball and hip-hop. Although not necessarily in that order, each is infused in virtually every sentence, many of which are laugh-out-loud funny. All three provided the socially conscious author with the succor he needed to make it as an Asian “OutKast” growing up in the Deep South. The son of a former Taiwanese gangster father and a money-obsessed mother, Huang spent his formative years posting up with his style-obsessed buddies and generally bucking authority and the status quo. The author renders his portraits of his many colorful friends and family as vividly and spectacularly as his recipe for beef noodle soup. Huang may have an opinion on everything from religion to RZA, but his deeply contemplative nature deflects any accusations of self-righteousness. His history of violence is more problematic, however. Physical violence both on the streets and inside the home punctuated the author’s younger years, and while the latter is thoughtfully unpacked and explored, the former is too often glorified. It could have all easily gone quite differently for Huang. At one point, he was arrested after driving a car into a crowd of threatening rivals and was packed off to Taiwan in order to escape punishment. However, he used the opportunity to reconcile his Asian heritage and focus his unrelenting energy on the things he really wanted out of life. The inspiring result became his trendsetting East Village eatery, Baohaus.

A unique voice with a provocative point of view.

SERVING VICTORIA Life in the Royal Household

Hubbard, Kate Harper/HarperCollins (432 pp.) $29.99 | May 1, 2013 978-0-06-226991-1

Mining the record left by six intimate Victorian servants, Hubbard (Rubies in the Snow, 2007, etc.) discovers a great deal about the British monarch, wife and mother.

Discretion, self-reliance and the stamina to endure staggering periods of immobility and ennui marked the duty of the reliable courtier of stalwart Queen Victoria, who acceded to the throne at age 18 in 1837 and reigned until 1901. In this nuanced study, the author meticulously picks her way through |

the lives of the women and men carefully chosen to serve as Victoria’s intimates over her long life: ladies of the bedchamber, maids of honor, lords-in-waiting, grooms-in-waiting and equerries, drawn from a low-aristocracy pool and serving the queen in rotation. Lady Sarah Lyttelton, a 50-year-old widowed lady-in-waiting, was new to the game in 1838, charmed by the young and still-single sovereign. She was in charge of keeping an eye on the maids of honor and making sure the new regime was not besmirched by the “doings” of the previous Hanoverians. The “frank and fearless” Victoria married her cousin Albert in 1840, and he proceeded to reorganize the household into a tight system of efficiency; soon the babies arrived like clockwork and Lyttelton was put in charge of the nursery. Charlotte Canning, an ace artist and young wife who became lady of the bedchamber, found her duties essentially companionable and social: accompanying Victoria on her open-air afternoon rides.

Dining with the queen meant jawing an infinite parade of platitudes with an injunction on broaching politics. In other chapters, Hubbard highlights maid of honor Mary Ponsonby and her adviser husband, Henry Ponsonby, physician James Reid and Windsor chaplain Randall Davidson, who all endured a stultifying monotony of duty and probity, weddings and funerals, systems of etiquette and middlebrow refinement.

A touching portrait of Victoria offstage and unguarded.

(Two 8-page b/w photo inserts)

WORLD PEACE AND OTHER 4TH-GRADE ACHIEVEMENTS Hunter, John Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (240 pp.) $25.00 | Apr. 2, 2013 978-0-547-90559-4

A veteran educator’s uplifting account of how he introduced schoolchildren to global problems through a visionary game that charged them with saving the world.

In 1978, Hunter decided that he wanted to teach his innercity students about global issues in such a way that “they could experience the feeling of learning through their bodies.” So he developed the “World Peace Game” and used a three-dimensional structure to represent the entire planet “in four layers: undersea, ground and sea, airspace, and outer space.” Hunter plunged children into a complex matrix of problems and forced them to face such crises as nuclear proliferation; ethnic, religious and political tensions; and climate change and environmental disasters. His goals were twofold: He wanted to get his students to learn how to think in meaningful ways about difficult issues, and he hoped they could overcome petty hostilities and ego and organize themselves into a larger collective. Every class discovered a unique way to save the world, and no game ever ended without at least a few students walking away more aware of their own hidden strengths and weaknesses. Hunter also examines what the World Peace Game taught him. Creative entities, such as the collectives his students forged, moved kirkus.com

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I CAN BARELY TAKE CARE OF MYSELF Tales from a Happy Life Without Kids

through identifiable stages, some of which he admits have caused him profound anxiety. But as a teacher, he learned that his duty was to work in harmony with the group rather than seek to control either the participants or their responses, knowing that, “like adults in the real world, they might fail.”

Inspired, breath-of-fresh-air reading, especially for those who have ever questioned what the public school system can do for American children.

IN THE CITY OF BIKES The Story of the Amsterdam Cyclist Jordan, Pete Perennial/HarperCollins (448 pp.) $14.99 paper | Apr. 16, 2013 978-0-06-199520-0

A history of bicycles and cycling in Amsterdam.

Jordan (Dishwasher: One Man’s Quest to Wash Dishes in All Fifty States, 2007) begins with his move to Amsterdam, which he undertook in order to study urban planning as it pertains to cycling. Continually fascinated by the overwhelming number of people riding bicycles through the streets, Jordan eventually began to chronicle the city’s history of cycling. Pulling together information from guidebooks, newspaper accounts and other sources, the author pieces together a thorough history, from the introduction of bicycles in the 1890s to the present. Jordan clearly loves bikes and everything associated with cycling culture, which produces some truly laugh-out-loud moments, particularly as he embraces both the ridiculous and the commonplace. The author doesn’t ignore less-glamorous storylines—e.g., the general nonchalance of cyclists toward traffic laws or the fact that bike regulations sparked more public outcry than anti-Jewish policies during the Nazi occupation. The chapter dealing with the Nazi occupation is particularly interesting. Jordan mentions Anne Frank but spends the bulk of the section detailing how citizens were affected by German policies targeting bikes and cyclists. While this is no memoir, Jordan includes his own personal interactions with cycling in the city, which makes what could have been a straightforward history into something more special: history that doesn’t feel like history—just an enjoyable story from start to finish.

An excellent choice for bikers and those who appreciate how a city’s history can be changed by the simplest of passions.

Kirkman, Jen Simon & Schuster (256 pp.) $15.00 paper | Apr. 16, 2013 978-1-4516-6700-4

A comedian’s memoir belabors the point about her never wanting to have children.

It’s a credit to the author—a comedian and comedy writer best known for her work with Chelsea Handler and on the Internet series “Drunk History”—that her debut book is more ambitious than the usual attempt to extend the brand by transferring bits into print. Except for the parts that she directly quotes from her stand-up routine, this book stands on its own, and the best of it provides engaging reading even for those who have never seen or heard of the author. The problem is that its main hook—“The way most people feel about loving being a parent is exactly how I feel about not being a parent”—is made early and repeated often, as if the author feels the need to defend her childlessness against a constant barrage of criticism.

Though she does show that strangers and casual acquaintances sometimes equate childless with “selfish,” none of those close to her seem to question her decision. Her parents support her, her sisters (one childless) support her, her husband and in-laws (now ex-) are fine with it, and her friends and fellow comedians have often reached the same conclusion. So whatever support this broadside might offer to those similarly committed to not having children, it really seems more like a peg for a book proposal, something that might aid publication and promotion of a work by a comedian less renowned than so many other comedians who have written books. As she admits in her thanks to Chelsea Handler, “Let’s be honest. Nobody was buying my book ideas before I became part of your show(s).” Kirkman attempts to interweave the manifesto with memoir, which is particularly appealing during its early, naïve, rites-of-passage stages.

The author seems likable enough, but her basic premise could have been condensed into a magazine article. For childless readers who fear that others think they are selfish.

MY MOTHER’S BIBLE A Son Discovers Clues to God Kirn, Walter Byliner (50 pp.) $1.99 e-book | Dec. 27, 2012

In what reads like a Bible blog—a literary, layman’s interpretation—the author comes to terms with the death of his mother and a whole lot more after discovering her biblical notes and annotations.

As a highly respected literary critic, essayist and novelist, Kirn (Lost in the Meritocracy: The 64

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Undereducation of an Overachiever, 2009, etc.) inherited more skepticism than faith from his mother. He had not read the Bible until he discovered, after his mother’s death, that she had not only read it, likely more than once, but had taken copious notes. In those notes and the Scripture that inspired them, he discovered “my mother’s ghost. It swirled up out of the margins of her Bible and granted my wish to hear her voice again.” Thus motivated, Kirn began to read the Bible through the eyes of his “freethinker” mother and to confront the God who imbued mankind with sin and mortality—the God who let his mother suffer in her final stages. “Maybe because my first motive was love, I’m afraid there’s a lot of anger in what I’ve written,” he admits. “How could there not be? The half-shaved head. The morphine. The Bible stories themselves, so harsh and violent.

Most of the anger is mine. Some is my mother’s. But all of it belongs to God in some way. It came from him; why not return it?” The entries are as short as they are provocative, frequently assuming an accusatory familiarity that fundamentalists might well find blasphemous.

If Kirn has continued reading the Bible, he should continue writing about it, for his responses to Job and the New Testament (as well as his mother’s) might well be even pricklier than what he offers here.

GRAND AMBITION An Extraordinary Yacht, the People Who Built It, and the Millionaire Who Can’t Really Afford It Knecht, G. Bruce Simon & Schuster (256 pp.) $26.99 | Mar. 5, 2013 978-1-4165-7600-6

A meticulous account of the building of one of the largest American-made yachts since the Gilded Age. Royal families have long enjoyed large pleasure vessels, writes former Wall Street Journal senior writer Knecht (Hooked: Pirates, Poaching, and the Perfect Fish, 2006, etc.). In modern times, yachts have been the playthings of Russian oligarchs, Greek shipping magnates and Arabian sheiks. In the United States, the leisure vessels became a hallmark for a new kind of nobility, including J.P. Morgan, in the gilded 1890s and remain so for today’s self-made entrepreneurs. This readable account tells the story of a former milkman’s son, Doug Von Allmen, now a successful private equity investor in his late 60s, and his experience building a mammoth $40 million, 187-foot yacht. Knecht vividly renders the construction process. He describes the work and lives of the shipfitters, welders and others who joined thousands of pieces of metal in a noisy Gulfport, Miss., yard; the yacht owner’s dealings with the boat designer and builder; and the complex steps required to install air conditioning, finish surfaces, create a huge mural for the stairwell, etc. Beyond his tale of luxury shipbuilding, the author provides an intriguing study of the wealthy and overreaching Von Allmen, who hoped to |

make the Lady Linda the “best-ever American-built yacht” and the “ultimate embodiment of his success.” As the investor contemplated interior designs two years into the project, the 2008 financial meltdown imposed serious new constraints. While cutting expenditures in his Manhattan and Florida residences, Von Allmen tried to overcome losses by investing (and losing) more than $100 million in an elaborate Ponzi scheme. He now hopes to sell or charter the yacht, delivered three years late.

Revealing and well-written.

LIGHT WITHOUT FIRE The Making of America’s First Muslim College Korb, Scott Beacon (240 pp.) $25.95 | $25.95 e-book | Apr. 16, 2013 978-0-8070-0163-9 978-0-8070-0164-6 e-book

The inaugural class of the first Islamic college in America share their hopes and dreams with a visiting journalist.

NYU instructor Korb (Life in Year One: What the World Was Like in First-Century Palestine, 2010, etc.) respectfully dogged the dozen or so students, founding teachers and imams of the fledgling Zaytuna College during the course of its first year in 2010-2011 as it drew closer to accreditation, balanced a curriculum between classical and modern teachings, and navigated a complex mission of educating Muslims in America. Attracting a startling diversity of Muslims, reflecting essentially the American makeup, Zaytuna (“olive,” named for the fruit that requires curing by human hands before being palatable and whose oil “offers light without fire”) was originally a Muslim seminary located in Hayward, Cal., since the mid-1990s, started

by Sheikh Hamza Yusuf and Imam Zaid Shakir and others and originally modeled on a traditional Islamic madrassa. Evolving over time to encompass a permanent four-year college, Zaytuna embarked on a particularly precarious mission in the wake of a recent spate of Muslim violence (e.g., Fort Hood) to embrace a pious Muslim identity while finding “the good in the principles of American liberal arts.” Korb discovered that this was a difficult task, especially since most students hadn’t a clue how to pray or speak Arabic. Moreover, the bias against Muslims still simmered since 9/11, and suspicions about Muslims’ true loyalties in America were rampant. The charismatic directors maintained a high, idealistic approach to education, and they reminded skeptics that Harvard, Yale and Princeton all began as religious schools. In a blandly detailed narrative, Korb confronts the criticism lobbed continuously at the college around attitudes of Muslim allegiance, jihad and indoctrination.

A brief look at what may surely be a historic class in American educational history—a subject worthy of deeper exploration.

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THE REAL NORTH KOREA Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia

Lankov, Andrei Oxford Univ. (304 pp.) $27.95 | May 8, 2013 978-0-19-996429-1

Examination of North Korea’s misery-producing dictatorship, why it cannot last and how to replace it.

A Russian historian who spent time in North Korea as an exchange student and lived through his own country’s break with Soviet authoritarianism, Lankov (History/Koomkin Univ., Seoul; North of the DMZ: Essays on Daily Life in North Korea, 2007, etc.) offers an astute look into the lethal absurdities of the North Korean regime, from the time of Great Leader Kim Il-sung to grandson Kim Jong-un. To understand the current ossified system, Lankov looks back to the establishment of North Korea as a Soviet “client state” in 1945, when the obscure guerrilla captain Il-sung was installed as leader and the standard Soviet satellite model adopted. The Korean War only solidified the leader’s grip, leading to purges and “a nearly perfect garrison state.” Yet with enormous guile and manipulation, North Korea was able to extract the aid from the Soviet Union and China that helped spur the economic growth of the late 1950s. This cynical manipulation has continued in the ongoing nuclear brinkmanship used by North Korea to extract concessions (and aid) from the United States and China. Until fairly recently, the state has been able to maintain control over the lives of its citizens in a fashion remarkable even by Soviet standards, while the cult of leadership and vilification of South Korea (and the U.S.) contribute to the cohesive repression. While somewhat erratic in his organization, Lankov covers a tremendous amount of ground, lingering in his last thoughtful chapters on how to manage the North Korean crisis that is surely coming. Sanctions won’t work, neither will strikes nor a ground offensive, but only the gradual awakening by the oppressed North Korean populace to the outside world.

A well-reasoned survey by a scholar who excels at longterm thinking.

BUTTERFLY PEOPLE An American Encounter with the Beauty of the World Leach, William Pantheon (416 pp.) $32.50 | Apr. 23, 2013 978-0-375-42293-5 978-0-307-90787-5 e-book

An expansive historical account of the 19th-century figures whose enthusiasm and perseverance shaped natural history studies on butterflies.

Leach (History/Columbia Univ.; Country of Exiles: The Destruction of Place in American Life, 1999, etc.) meticulously examines 66

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butterfly collecting, once a pastime enjoyed across social strata and once viewed as a means for bridging art and science. He presents an appealing if controversial view of collecting as a direct appreciation of and engagement with nature’s beauty, while also acknowledging that it sometimes turned into a competitive expression of man’s dominion, resulting in harsh consequences and strife in relationships between collectors. Through portraits of William Henry Edwards (a West Virginian entomologist known for his voyage to the Amazon), Herman Strecker (a collector, author and illustrator), Augustus Grote (director of the Buffalo Museum of Natural Sciences), William Doherty (entomologist and tropical collector), Samuel Scudder (entomologist and paleontologist) and William Holland (director of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh), Leach details conflicts in the field during the mid- to late-1800s, including concerns over the destruction of natural resources; the ethics of killing, selling and trading butterflies; debates on systematics, taxonomy, naming and considerations of butterfly habitats; creationist vs. Darwinist views; and the line between advancement of science and selfish amassment. The book’s closing chapters on dealings between butterfly men in the Gilded Age is especially fascinating.

For general readers, the esoteric minutia may overwhelm. For naturalists and butterfly buffs, however, this is an unusual, pinpointed slice of American life enlivened with fragments of correspondence and reproductions of plates from classic books of the period.

THE UNPREDICTABLE SPECIES What Makes Humans Unique

Lieberman, Philip Princeton Univ. (248 pp.) $29.95 | Apr. 21, 2013 978-0-691-14858-8

Lieberman (Emeritus Linguistics/ Brown Univ.; Toward an Evolutionary Biology of Language, 2006, etc.) examines the unique creative potential of the human brain.

While fully supporting natural selection, the author argues against a narrow approach that overemphasizes genetic determination, a shortcoming that he attributes to evolutionary psychologists such as Steven Pinker and Richard Dawkins. Lieberman seeks to establish the basis for the superiority of human cognitive abilities over those of chimpanzees, although 99 percent of their genes are similar to our own. “The human brain has evolved in a way that enhances both cognitive flexibility and imitation, the qualities that shaped our capacity for innovation, other aspects of cognition, art, speech, language, and free will,” he writes. In his zeal, the author sometimes creates straw men out of his chosen opponents, exaggerating and misrepresenting their points of view. Describing himself as an evolutionary biologist rather than a psychologist, Lieberman deconstructs the complex nature of human speech, which depends on unique biological features. A fascinating example is the human tongue, which descends into our throat in the first years after birth, allowing us to enunciate clear vowel sounds while also conferring |

“A fun, enlightening read for writers and book lovers alike.” from why we write

the disadvantage that we are at risk of choking on food. Offering evidence from CT scans, Lieberman dismisses the notion that language ability is localized in the brain. He calls attention to the role of neural circuits and basal ganglia buried deeply in the brain, which link cortical areas “that act as the brain’s sequencing and switching engine.” These circuits, controlled by a specific gene, are present in other primates. Lieberman suggests that it may be the specifically human variant (the FOXP2Human gene), that “supercharg[es] the circuits that confer [our] cognitive flexibility.”

A fascinating though occasionally crotchety scholarly presentation of the relationship among biology, genetics and culture. May be difficult going for some general readers.

THE FOOD POLICE A Well-Fed Manifesto About the Politics of Your Plate Lusk, Jayson Crown Forum (240 pp.) $24.00 | Apr. 16, 2013 978-0-307-98703-7

Lusk (Agricultural Economics/Oklahoma State Univ.) argues against the zeitgeist of buying organic and local and avoiding processed foods.

The author positions “farmers who want to work, and consumers who want to eat, as they please” against “self-proclaimed saviors of the food system, who want to make decisions for us.”

Who are these food elites? Chief among them, writes Lusk, are Michael Pollan and New York Times food columnist Mark Bittman, who advocates for organic, locally grown food. In general, the “food police” are a shadowy group who want more government control over our food decisions. The author argues that so-called “fat taxes” are designed to bring in revenues to grow the size of government, and pesticides and genetically modified foods are not as harmful to our health or the environment as the food police would have us believe. Lusk, who has published papers on food economics and consulted with agribusinesses and the government, makes his most salient points on the economic consequences of growing organically, buying locally and increasing food regulations. While he agrees that “using fewer pesticides, eating more veggies, or supporting a local farmer can all be good things in their own right,” he cites “tough tradeoffs”—e.g., foods are more expensive and less accessible to a large portion of the population. Buying local limits diversity in our diets while modern transportation methods bring a wide range of fruits and vegetables from other areas to market at a low cost, and the high yields of large-scale farming benefit a hungry world.

Whether or not readers agree with Lusk’s views on agriculture and the politics of food production, he will make you think about your food choices.

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WHY WE WRITE 20 Acclaimed Authors on How and Why They Do What They Do Maran, Meredith—Ed. Plume (256 pp.) $16.00 paper | Jan. 29, 2013 978-0-452-29815-6

A rich, informative essay collection based on interviews with 20 prominent authors seeking to answer the question: “Why do writers write?”

Whether as an avocation or a profession, writing “promises only poverty, rejection and self-doubt,” writes veteran book critic and author Maran (A Theory of Small Earthquakes, 2012, etc.). As the editor points out, however, this fact does not stop people from writing and trying to publish their manuscripts, only 1 percent of which will ever see print. So what drives individuals to engage in this constantly frustrating endeavor? Maran posed the question to writers who seemed to have what every writer could ever want: “[m]illions or billions of fans worldwide . . . [and] full creative freedom.” Isabelle Allende and David Baldacci write from an obsessive need to tell stories. Kathryn Harrison explains that “it’s the only thing I know that offers the hope of proving myself worthy of love.” Armistead Maupin writes that “it’s a way of processing my disasters, sorting out the messiness of life to lend symmetry and meaning to it.” Maran’s subjects include authors who have received both popular and critical acclaim, and she includes details about how each author found a place in the literary sun. She also delves into how they approach the task of recording their stories and presents their writing tips. The wisdom these luminaries offer sometimes, and perhaps inevitably, borders on the obvious or banal: “You have to simply love writing,” writes Susan Orleans. But more often than not, that wisdom is as sharp-eyed and candid as Sue Grafton’s observation that “[b]anging out a single book, then thinking you’re ready to give up your day job and be a full-time writer, is the equivalent of learning to play ‘Three Blind Mice’ on the piano and then expecting to be booked into Carnegie Hall.”

A fun, enlightening read for writers and book lovers alike.

MARGARET FULLER A New American Life

Marshall, Megan Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (448 pp.) $30.00 | Mar. 12, 2013 978-0-547-19560-5

A deeply sympathetic life of an exceptional mind, protofeminist and revolutionary.

Embedded in the Emersonian milieu as biographer (The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism, 2005) and professor (Emerson Coll.), Pulitzer finalist Marshall is perfectly suited kirkus.com

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“Tuchman remains irresistible, and David Fromkin’s Europe’s Last Summer is the best modern history, but McMeekin delivers a gripping, almost day-by-day chronicle of the increasingly frantic maneuvers of European civilian leaders” from july 1914

to her material, so much so that she frequently takes on the highhanded, emotive tone of her subject. Margaret Fuller (1810–1850) was the close colleague of Ralph Waldo Emerson, fellow editor of the transcendentalist journal The Dial, teacher and author of the groundbreaking feminist study Woman in the Nineteenth Century. The oldest daughter of a tyrannical lawyer and congressman in Massachusetts, Fuller demonstrated early on her abundant intellectual gifts. However, instead of attending Harvard, she had to sublimate her “unfocused striving and rankling frustration over family obligations” and teach her smaller siblings. When her father died in 1835, it fell on Fuller to take care of her mother and siblings, as a teacher and fledgling writer, yet his death also freed her to pursue her personal journey. Initiated into reformist ideas while teaching at Bronson Alcott’s Temple School and plunged into Emerson’s circle, Fuller moved from Providence to Boston to New York, working on translations, leading a series of conversation classes with women and assuming editorship of the transcendentalist organ, before restlessly moving on to Horace Greeley’s New-York Tribune. Marshall’s discovery of a late-life journal reveals Fuller’s last beatific years in Rome as a correspondent, when she met the younger Giovanni Angelo Ossoli during the perilous revolutionary era of 1848. Bound home with their young son, the family perished together in the wreck of the Elizabeth off the coast of Fire Island in 1850. Friend of intellectual lights of the day, cultural emissary and author in her own right, Fuller had finally attained her own destiny.

Lively, intuitive study of a remarkable American character. (22 images as part openers and endpapers)

JULY 1914 Countdown to War McMeekin, Sean Basic (480 pp.) $29.99 | Apr. 9, 2013 978-0-465-03145-0

McMeekin (History/Koç Univ.; The Russian Origins of the First World War, 2011, etc.) treads familiar ground but delivers a thoroughly rewarding account that spares no nation regarding the causes of World War I, although Germany receives more than its share of blame.

Historians love to argue about who started World War I. Blaming Germany fell out of fashion soon after the Armistice succeeded, replaced by an interpretation that blamed everyone, exemplified by Barbara Tuchman’s classic 1962 Guns of August. Within a decade, German scholars led another reversal back to their own nation’s responsibility. Russia, huge and backward but rapidly modernizing, was the key. German military leaders led by Helmuth von Moltke, chief of the General Staff, believed Russia would attack Germany as soon as it felt confident of victory and that only a preventive war could save the nation. Austrian Archduke Ferdinand’s murder by a Serbian terrorist proved a godsend. Austria yearned to crush Serbia, the 68

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pugnacious Balkan nation stirring up the Slav minority in Austria-Hungary’s rickety empire. Von Moltke decided it was time to set matters right since Austria’s cooperation was guaranteed.

Russia’s refusal to stop mobilizing in support of Serbia allowed him to warn that it was about to attack and that Germany had to strike first. It did so by invading Belgium on August 4, the act that made war inevitable.

Tuchman remains irresistible, and David Fromkin’s Europe’s Last Summer (2004) is the best modern history, but McMeekin delivers a gripping, almost day-by-day chronicle of the increasingly frantic maneuvers of European civilian leaders who mostly didn’t want war and military leaders who had less objection.

THE LADY AND HER MONSTERS A Tale of Dissections, RealLife Dr. Frankensteins, and the Creation of Mary Shelley’s Masterpiece Montillo, Roseanne Morrow/HarperCollins (336 pp.) $26.99 | Feb. 5, 2013 978-0-06-202581-4 978-0-06-223588-6 e-book

A cultural biography that explores how Mary Shelley came to write her gothic classic.

Montillo (Literature/Emerson Coll.; Halloween and Commemorations of the Dead, 2009) discusses how Shelley’s world, as well as her life, informed the creation of Frankenstein. The basic story of how the novel came to be written—during an informal ghost-story competition among Mary, husband Percy, Lord Byron and assorted friends—is the stuff of legend. Perhaps less known is how the idea of bringing the dead back to life was already common currency. Well before Shelley’s birth, Italian scientist Luigi Galvani (source of the word galvanized) was hooking up electrical charges to dead frogs. His nephew, Giovanni Aldini, took matters further by conducting experiments on a dead felon. Percy Shelley, whose poetry had long been absorbed with immortality, was fascinated by this trend in science, which he would pass on to Mary. Entwined with the history of the idea is the history of the couple, which was tumultuous from the day married Percy met William Godwin’s brilliant young daughter; their lives would be rocked by infidelities, jealousies and the early death of a child. “Dream[t] that my little baby came to life again,” Mary wrote in a journal, an idea that may have helped inspire her future novel. Resurrection was in the air, both among doctors and artists. Montillo occasionally loses focus, getting a little overly involved in peripheral scandals and sensational tales, but the book is never dull. Mary Shelley lived in dramatic times, when life was too short to be boring.

Light fare as cultural histories go, but a pleasant stroll through the Romantic imagination. (b/w illustrations throughout)

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“A shocking, galvanizing manifesto against the corporations manipulating nutrition to fatten their bottom line— one of the most important books of the year.” from salt sugar fat

TO SAVE EVERYTHING, CLICK HERE The Folly of Technological Solutionism Morozov, Evgeny PublicAffairs (432 pp.) $28.99 | Mar. 5, 2013 978-1-61039-138-2

More righteous technological contrarianism from Morozov (The Net Delusion, 2011, etc.).

Can technology solve social problems? To an extent, perhaps, writes the author. But for every Utopian application of a computer, dystopia awaits: Technology may afford hitherto disenfranchised or at least undercounted people an equal voice, but inside the world of clicks, likes and read-throughs lurk dragons. Morozov, who calls himself a “digital heretic,” doesn’t offer fully fleshed solutions to the problems a detechnologized world poses, but he dislikes the thought of the “frictionless future” all the same, even if its contours are sometimes vague. Having had experience with totalitarianism, Morozov is bothered by the prospect of social engineers having ever brighter and shinier tools at their disposal: “All will be tempted to exploit the power of these new techniques, either individually or in combination, to solve a particular problem, be it obesity, climate change, or congestion.” It’s not that those problems aren’t real; it’s that,

by Morozov’s account, what underlies them are things human and not technological, requiring human solutions. Thus it is, he writes, that the brave new world of online education may be exciting to many, but it overlooks a strong component of academic success—namely, the face-to-face (F2F, that is) access students have to their professors. And as for a disintermediating site such as Rate Your Professors? It’s just another avatar, writes Morozov, of the introduction of “the consumerist mentality into education.”

Healthy skepticism dealt with a sometimes too-heavy hand, and a useful corrective for those who believe that we’ll somehow engineer ourselves out of our current mess.

THE WRATH OF COCHISE The Bascom Affair and the Origins of the Apache Wars Mort, Terry Pegasus (400 pp.) $27.95 | Apr. 1, 2013 978-1-60598-422-3

Second-tier, oddly old-fashioned military history by former naval officer Mort (The Hemingway Patrols, 2009).

In February 1861, a young Anglo boy disappeared from a ranch near the borders of New Mexico, Arizona and the Mexican states of Sonora and Chihuahua, territory that was home to several Apache bands. Suspicion fell on the closest of them, led by the well-known fighter Cochise, who had |

long distinguished himself in battle against the Mexican army.

An American officer named George Bascom questioned Cochise and, not believing what he heard, took several of Cochise’s family members hostage. Cochise escaped in a hail of gunfire.

It turned out that Cochise’s band was not at fault after all, but the damage was done, and the Bascom Affair touched off the Apache Wars, which would last off and on for more than half a century. The Bascom Affair is a fixture in every history of those wars, and Mort doesn’t turn up much that is new. Indeed, his approach reads as if written half a century ago, before ethnohistorical research helped establish the Apache point of view on such matters; his bibliography lacks some central texts, and so it is that he is given to pat explanations—writing, for instance, that the Apaches raided because “they simply liked it,” and not, as Grenville Goodwin and other anthropologists have observed, because it was an enterprise as much cultural as economic and military in nature. Just so, he perpetuates tales about gruesome torture that have long been revealed to be canards—although, to be sure, ugly behavior took place on both sides. Mort’s history, overall, is of the Zane Grey school, readable enough but more yarn than true history.

Readers with an interest in the subject would do better to begin with David Roberts’ far superior Once They Moved Like the Wind (1993).

SALT SUGAR FAT How the Food Giants Hooked Us

Moss, Michael Random House (480 pp.) $28.00 | Mar. 12, 2013 978-1-4000-6980-4

A revelatory look at America’s increasing consumption of unhealthy products and at how the biggest food manufacturers ignore health risks, and employ savvy advertising campaigns, to keep us hooked on the ingredients that ensure big profit.

In an era where morbid numbers of people are living with diabetes, obesity and high blood pressure, New York Times Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter Moss (Palace Coup, 1989) discovers through ardent research—much of it interviews with current and former executives of Kraft, PepsiCo and other massive conglomerates—that there is shockingly little regulation of the processes behind the design and sale of foods purposely laden with dangerous levels of salt, sugar and fat. As the average American works longer hours and spends more time outside of the home, the demand for easy-to-cook and tasty meals has skyrocketed.

In response, food giants provide an enormous slate of processed food options, almost all of which require immense amounts of salt, fat and/or sugar to cover the taste of poor-quality ingredients. Pulling no punches, the author points out that the recent trend of “healthy” items is no loss for these food manufacturers, who capitalize on creating new lines of spinoff products labeled “low-salt” or “sugar-free,” when in fact those products kirkus.com

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require a significant increase in one of the other triad of flavors to remain palatable. Many products are laden with these ingredients in ways that would surprise the consumer: A single cookie, for example, might require several servings’ worth of undetectable salt to retain its irresistible crunch, while it also contains up to five teaspoons of sugar. Moss breaks down the chemical science behind the molecular appeal of these foods, as well as behind the advertising strategies that are so successful in getting consumers to buy not only the “healthier” versions of popular foods, but the originals, as well. If this trend is to be reversed, he argues, it might take a social revolution of empowered consumers, a goal within reach if accurate information is available and pressure is put on these companies to dramatically alter the contents of its processed foods.

A shocking, galvanizing manifesto against the corporations manipulating nutrition to fatten their bottom line— one of the most important books of the year.

THE ART OF CONTROVERSY Political Cartoons and Their Enduring Power

Navasky, Victor S. Knopf (256 pp.) $27.95 | Apr. 10, 2013 978-0-307-95720-7

The veteran journalist offers a survey of political caricature, international in scope, but a little sketchy in its short biographical summaries.

As the former editor and publisher of the Nation, Navasky (Columbia University School of Journalism; A Matter of Opinion, 2005, etc.) at least twice faced open revolt from staffers at the liberal magazine for caricatures that he published, including a famous one by David Levine that shows Henry Kissinger raping (or at least sexually dominating) the world. Most of the outrage came not from the right but from the left, from feminists who decried the sexual stereotype of a man having his way with a submissive female, who protested in a group letter that “a progressive magazine has no business using rape jokes and sexist imagery (he screws, she is screwed) to make the point that Kissinger revels in international dominance. Kissinger is a man, but the globe is not a woman.” The incident underscores many of the points made in the book: that there can be a big difference between the way a caricature is conceived and perceived, that images have a different and often greater power than words, and that “unfairness, by the way, is the point—there really is no such thing as a balanced or objective caricature….Caricatures by definition deal in distortion.” Admitting that “my methodology was anything but scholarly,” the author presents a variety of theories on how and why caricature derives its communicative power before proceeding through an “unguided tour” of more than four centuries of political caricature and a gallery of more than 30 caricaturists and publications, most represented by a couple pages of text and a couple pieces of work. Where even a master of the form such as Ralph Steadman dismisses 70

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caricature as “low art…nothing but a cheap joke,” the imprisonment or even murder of some whose work has offended suggests how severe the consequences can be.

Generally engaging and often illuminating, but the study might better have gone deeper rather than wide. (76 b/w illustrations and 4 pages of color)

MOJO HAND The Life and Music of Lightnin’ Hopkins

O’Brien, Timothy J.; Ensminger, David Univ. of Texas (304 pp.) $29.95 | $29.95 e-book | Apr. 1, 2013 978-0-292-74515-5 979-0-292-75302-0 e-book

Unsatisfying biography of the Texas blues original.

Journalist Ensminger (Visual Vitriol: The Street Art and Subcultures of the Punk and Hardcore Generation, 2011, etc.) completed the work of his colleague O’Brien after the latter’s death in 2011. Singer/guitarist Lightnin’ Hopkins’ (1912–1982) prolific recorded output revealed one of the most distinctive of blues talents. Born Sam Hopkins into a rural sharecropping family, he began playing guitar at the age of 8, picking up his older brother’s instrument. He lit out from home early and was an itinerant musician by his teens, learning at the feet of legends like Blind Lemon Jefferson and Texas Alexander.

He settled in Houston’s rough Third Ward; the ghetto neighborhood remained his home until he died. The trajectory of Hopkins’ career was similar to those of many of his blues contemporaries. After years of local renown, he recorded for a number of independent R&B labels in the late 1940s and ’50s. As the ’60s turned, he cut records for folk labels catering to the growing white folk-blues market; by late in the decade, he was playing Europe, colleges and the rock ballroom circuit. Hopkins’ enormous discography and improvisatory, stream-of-consciousness style led to his lionization before his death. The authors interviewed some 130 subjects and compiled a mountain of research, but Hopkins’ essence proves elusive. The authors detail the illiterate and mistrustful musician’s affection for liquor, gambling and hard cash, but they fail to plumb his inner life. Too often, the book settles into a frustrating pileup of concert itineraries and reviews, descriptions of recording sessions, nightclub back stories, musings on Southern race relations and long-winded source quotes in need of serious pruning. Hopkins’ combative relationship with his longtime producer, manager and agent, Mack McCormick, is the only interpersonal tale spun in any depth. The interior source of his remarkable and poetic gifts remains a mystery.

The blues master emerges more as a cliché than a living artist.

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“A delightful chronicle of the education of a cook who steps back frequently to extol the scientific and philosophical basis of this deeply satisfying human activity.” from cooked

SECRETS OF SILICON VALLEY What Everyone Else Can Learn From the Innovation Capital of the World

Piscione, Deborah Perry Palgrave Macmillan (256 pp.) $27.00 | Apr. 2, 2013 978-0-230-34211-8

Solid overview of the world’s “global innovation capital.”

Formerly a congressional staffer and lobbyist, Piscione moved to Silicon Valley seven years ago, started three media companies and became a zealous booster of the renowned high-tech region. In this brisk examination of the valley’s “ecosystem and culture,” she draws on interviews with innovators, venture capitalists and others to describe the genesis of this unusual creative hub, its main characteristics and how others can apply lessons learned there to innovative endeavors elsewhere. Named for the silicon-chip manufacturers who dominated the region in the 1970s, Silicon Valley is now the home for many leading global technology corporations (Apple, Google, etc.), which thrive in “a meritocratic culture that rewards innovative ideas, independent thinking, and hubris.” Piscione considers the major factors behind the region’s rise—Moffett Field, a former naval air station now owned by the NASA Ames Research Center; Stanford University, a force for innovation that has helped spawn 6,000 firms; the development of the electronics and semiconductor industries; and the availability of venture capital—the seminal roles of Stanford leader Frederick Terman and inventor William Shockley, and the convergence of engineers, scientists and people with an entrepreneurial mindset. Constantly adapting to new ideas, the region has long welcomed skilled immigrants—37 percent of the population is foreign-born, and most of those are from Asia. “Entrepreneurship is Silicon Valley’s sport, its religion, and there is no greater place in the world to be an entrepreneur,” writes Piscione. The author leaves few aspects of life in the valley unexamined; she even includes a rundown of hot spots like Buck’s of Woodside, a restaurant where entrepreneurs and venture capitalists meet.

A valuable glimpse of a mecca of innovation.

COOKED A Natural History of Transformation Pollan, Michael Penguin (480 pp.) $27.95 | Apr. 23, 2013 978-1-59420-421-0

Having described what’s wrong with American food in his best-selling The Omnivore’s Dilemma (2006), New York Times contributor Pollan (Journalism/ Univ. of California; Food Rules, 2012, etc.) delivers a more optimistic but equally fascinating account of how to do it right. |

The author mixes journalistic encounters with tales of skilled, often relentlessly obsessive cooks who demonstrated the art of transforming the products of nature into tasty food and then tried, with spotty success, to teach him to do the same.

Four sections describe this transformation with the four classical elements: fire, water, air and earth. Humans cooked with fire first. Preparing meat over an open flame retains its appeal in the ritual of the backyard barbecue, but Pollan illustrates the original in its purest form, working with pit masters of the Old South to roast pigs very slowly over a smoldering wood fire. Cooking with liquids came later when human invented pots, and cooking moved indoors. After musing on the exquisite Zen boredom involved in chopping onions, Pollan discusses his work with an enthusiastic Chez Panisse chef, who schooled him in the subtleties required for perfect stews, braises, soups, sauces and stocks.

Air plus grain equals bread; earth provides bacteria and yeasts to perform the alchemy of brewing, fermenting, pickling and cheese-making. Turning food preparation over to corporations saves the average family 30 minutes per day in exchange for an avalanche of extra sugar, salt, fat and chemicals that costs more and tastes worse.

A delightful chronicle of the education of a cook who steps back frequently to extol the scientific and philosophical basis of this deeply satisfying human activity.

DEATH IN THE BALTIC The World War II Sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff Prince, Cathryn J. Palgrave Macmillan (256 pp.) $27.00 | Apr. 9, 2013 978-0-230-34156-2

The story of the worst maritime disaster in history—and it wasn’t the Titanic.

Former Christian Science Monitor reporter Prince (A Professor, a President, and a Meteor: The Birth of American Science, 2010, etc.) pursues the little-known sinking of the German cruise liner Wilhelm Gustloff off the Polish coast in 1945 by Soviet torpedoes, to the incredible loss of some 9,000 lives, mostly refugees from East Prussia. Fleeing the Soviet Red Army advance on the Baltic coastline in late January, the German refugees were crammed aboard a converted pleasure cruiser as part of Adm. Karl Donitz’s operation to help save military personnel and civilians from the Soviet onslaught.

However, the effort came late: The Nazis forbade inhabitants of the eastern provinces to vacate before 1945, and soon, escaping by land would be impossible and by sea, frequently catastrophic.

Thousands of refugees swarmed the port at Gotenhafen, waiting for days before boarding one of the available vessels, of which the Wilhelm Gustloff was the largest. Prince has scoured the planet for survivors, treating their harrowing stories with gentle empathy, from the first sickening bolts of the torpedoes to the chaos and terror of the ship’s swift sinking as passengers fell into the freezing water, clambered for lifeboats and watched kirkus.com

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RADICAL Fighting to Put Students First

loved ones disappear in the tumult. Prince’s detail extends to the experience of the troubled Soviet captain of the S-13 submarine, Alexander Marinesko, considered a hero for having “destroyed the symbol of Nazism itself.”

An engaging study of a shocking tragedy, in which the author takes pains to view all sides.

MY FOOT IS TOO BIG FOR THE GLASS SLIPPER A Guide to the Less Than Perfect Life Reece, Gabrielle with Karbo, Karen Scribner (224 pp.) $25.00 | Apr. 16, 2013 978-1-4516-9266-2

Practical advice on mothering and being a wife.

When beach-volleyball star and fashion model Reece (Big Girl in the Middle, 1998) became a mother, she tackled it just like she did everything else in her life: headon and with no baloney. With the assistance of Karbo (How Georgia Became O’Keeffe, 2011, etc.), Reece blends simple wisdom on being a mom, wife and friend with personal anecdotes. The end result is mostly a series of platitudes on life—“exercise is the key to everything,” “spending time with couples who are making their marriages work ups the odds that you’ll make yours work, too,” “eating well is not complicated,” “if you want your partnership to last, you better plan on being naked and smiling”—with humorous comments on being a new mom and wife. Reece covers birthing, exercise, diet, sex, commitment and the need for community service, but most of the information is similar to what can be found in many women’s magazines. Reece advocates for less computer and electronic-gadget time—get outdoors and enjoy the scenery, she writes—stresses the importance of children knowing who’s in charge while allowing them time to become their own independent selves, and encourages women to take time for themselves, even for an hour. The end result is not that women have it all, but that they are the queens of their domains; if they have the kindness, generosity and work ethic to reach for that goal, then they “will live interestingly ever after.”

Often-heard, occasionally useful advice on how to be a successful mom and partner.

Rhee, Michelle Harper/HarperCollins (304 pp.) $27.99 | Feb. 5, 2013 978-0-06-220398-4

An education-reform manifesto from Rhee, StudentsFirst founder and former chancellor of Washington, D.C., public schools.

The author’s account of her rise as an educational policy advocate is as notable for what it lacks as for what it contains. The moments of inspiration are impressive, and it is easy to be incensed at the corruption and incompetence she describes. Rhee is at her most convincing when she relates problems with the D.C. school bureaucracy, which was so inefficient that its mismanagement kept a warehouse full of books, desks and school supplies from reaching students.

At other moments, the sustainability of the reforms she champions seems more doubtful. The author lionizes teachers who spend their own time and money to help students. Though she notes that these are the kinds of teachers we need, she does not explain how that level of personal spending or uncompensated time is sustainable for older teachers with significant family obligations. While serving as chancellor, Rhee’s teacher-evaluation system rewarded high performers with increased pay. However, the money that paid for the eye-popping merit amounts she was able to offer certain teachers (one teacher saw an increase of over $20,000) was raised externally. Though this is undeniably compelling, Rhee does not explain how this strategy would scale to school districts across the nation. She responds, briefly, to accusations that the rise in test scores under her tenure as chancellor were fueled by cheating on the part of teachers, who allegedly erased wrong answers and replaced them with correct ones. Her defense is unlikely to be convincing to many in light of the recent revival of the allegations.

Rhetorically soaring but somewhat lacking in substance.

GODS OF MISCHIEF My Undercover Vendetta to Take Down the Vagos Outlaw Motorcycle Gang Rowe, George Touchstone/Simon & Schuster (352 pp.) $25.99 | Feb. 12, 2013 978-1-4516-6734-9

Brash account of a reformed bad boy’s decision to help the federal government take down “Green Nation,” the Vagos outlaw motorcycle gang.

Rowe, currently enrolled in the Witness Protection Program, makes no bones about his sinful past as a street-fighting drug dealer and convicted felon: “On [methamphetamine] my ego was out of control....I became a feared man about town.”

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Yet it was just this reputation that allowed him to infiltrate the Vagos, after concluding that the gang had become a violent plague upon his hometown, the hardscrabble Southern California city of Hemet. “Through fear and intimidation, the Hemet chapter demanded respect...making life miserable for everyone in town,” he writes. Rowe linked up with an ATF agent involved in the “One Percenter Task Force,” devoted to targeting OMGs. Although his local Vagos had previously tried to recruit him, Rowe still endured a humiliating period of hazing and servitude as a “prospect.” Even after he became a “full patch” member of the gang, ATF’s investigation ground on for nearly three years, allowing Rowe to record himself buying guns and drugs from fellow gang members. Still, the author felt an obvious affinity for the bikers, or at least those who avoided brutalizing civilians: “the Vagos offered a family where the misfit toys could find common ground and belong to something greater than themselves.” Rowe writes clearly, with a lighter touch and a more grounded specificity than in many reformed-gangster memoirs.

However, he focuses more on the personal strain created by his undercover life, and his long-term romance with a volatile heroin addict, than on developing a full, specific narrative of the Vagos’ misdeeds. Thus, the story becomes less compelling, even as the task force’s operation reaches its climax, resulting in 40 arrests and several convictions for murder and other offenses.

Plausible yet incomplete account of biker criminality, delivered with more grime than romanticism.

AMERICAN JEWS AND AMERICA’S GAME Voices of a Growing Legacy in Baseball

Ruttman, Larry Univ. of Nebraska (560 pp.) $34.95 | Apr. 1, 2013 978-0-8032-6475-5

An idiosyncratic collection of interviews with American Jews on, off and some barely near the field of baseball.

By interviewing the descendants of Hank Greenberg, baseball’s first Jewish superstar, and contemporaries of the famously reclusive Sandy Koufax, Ruttman (Voices of Brookline, 2005) checks off the two most important names on anyone’s list of Jews who have made a mark in the national pastime. Of course, there’s room for plenty more: MVP Al Rosen; Ken Holtzman, the Jewish pitcher with the most career wins; Ron Blomberg, the game’s first designated hitter; today’s stars like Kevin Youkilis and Ian Kinsler. Surely there’s a place among these pages for baseball executives like Commissioner Bud Selig (who provides the foreword), owner Jerry Reinsdorf, longtime front-office man Randy Levine, and the youngest GM ever, Theo Epstein.

It’s also easy to make a case for many of the talented Jewish writers who’ve memorably covered the game, among them Ira Berkow, Roger Kahn and Murray Chass. More than a few of Ruttman’s choices are eccentric, but prove worthy inclusions: for example, two women from the defunct All-American Girls |

Professional Baseball League or the man who came up with the idea of Jewish baseball cards. However, by the time the author gets around to Jeffrey Maier, who as a 12-year-old authored a tiny footnote by interfering with a ball in play during the 1996 ALCS, and certainly to the likes of merely well-known fans Barney Frank and Alan Dershowitz, Ruttman stretches the notion of Jewish “voices” in baseball about as far as it can go. Nevertheless, this longtime attorney remains a gentle, always enthusiastic questioner, interested in his subjects’ love for the game, their experiences with anti-Semitism and their connection to their faith. Other subjects include Marvin Miller, Marty Appel, Donald Fehr and Gabe Kapler.

Almost always charming, occasionally enlightening and sometimes just plain odd. (75 photographs; 2 drawings)

SHRINK A Cultural History of Psychoanalysis in America Samuel, Lawrence R. Univ. of Nebraska (288 pp.) $34.95 | Apr. 1, 2013 978-0-8032-4476-4

A cultural historian chronicles the dominant role that Freudian psychology has come to play in our culture.

“From the early 1920s through the early 1960s, psychoanalysis helped to reprogram the American mind by shifting our orientation from civic interests to personal ones in all spheres of everyday life,” writes Samuel (The American Dream: A Cultural History, 2012, etc.). As sources, the author relies primarily on films, magazine articles, newspapers and popular literature. He cites a 1925 description of Edward Bernays by the New York Times, in which he was called the “father of public relations.” Freud’s double nephew, Bernays orchestrated many lucrative advertising campaigns. One of the most famous, undertaken for Lucky Strike cigarettes, involved New York City debutantes smoking in public during the Easter parade. In its early days, following World War I, psychoanalysis was restricted to members of the social elite able to afford the time and money for up to six sessions per week, but its influence spread. Evident in such films as Hitchcock’s Spellbound (1945), its popularity was amplified when Cary Grant, Marlon Brando and other celebrities endorsed it. The human potential movement of the 1960s reshaped Freudian psychology for a broader audience, with offshoots such as group therapy, sensitivity training and the Esalen Institute’s encounter sessions. In the author’s view, the dominance of consumerism in our society ensures its place in our “cultural vocabulary,” even though it is no longer dominant in therapeutic practice.

A lively, if narrow, look at the American century that underplays other aspects of the cultural revolution of the 1960s and ’70s.

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“Well-constructed history of the politics and personalities of weather.” from storm kings

LEAN IN Women, Work, and the Will to Lead

STORM KINGS The Untold History of America’s First Tornado Chasers

Sandberg, Sheryl Knopf (240 pp.) $24.95 | Mar. 12, 2013 978-0-385-34994-9

Facebook COO Sandberg (ranked fifth in Forbes’ 2011 list of the most powerful women in the world) reveals how gender discrimination still operates against her and other less-fortunate women.

When she learned about the list, she reports, “I felt embarrassed and exposed.” Even in her position, she still felt the pressure of social conditioning, the expectation that women should subordinate themselves to men. Taking examples from her own experience, Sandberg shows how expected gender roles work against women seeking top jobs, even though they now earn “63 percent of the master’s degrees in the United States.” Not only are women forced to juxtapose family and job responsibilities, but they face more subtle pressures. From early childhood, females are discouraged from being assertive. “Aggressive and hard-charging women violate unwritten rules about acceptable social conduct,” writes the author. While it is assumed that men who are committed to their families can have successful careers, for women, the choices are more difficult due to the fact that they will usually be the primary caregivers. The failure of social provisions—extended family leave, flexible working hours, etc., which are the norm in many European countries—make life especially difficult for middle-income families (and single parents) due to the high cost of good child care. Women internalize this, frequently making career decisions to accommodate their expectation of the demands that will be imposed by having a family in the future. In Sandberg’s case, this involved rejecting a desirable international fellowship. She argues the need for a redefinition of gender roles so that men expect to share primary responsibility for child care, parents receive social support to accommodate work and family responsibilities, and stereotyping of male and female behavior is recognized as pernicious.

A compelling case for reforms that support family values in the continuing “march toward true equality.” (First printing of 400,000. First serial to Time. Author tour to New York, San Francisco, Washington, D.C.)

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Sandlin, Lee Pantheon (304 pp.) $26.95 | Mar. 5, 2013 978-0-307-37852-1 978-0-307-90816-2 e-book

Sandlin (Wicked River: The Mississippi When It Last Ran Wild, 2010, etc.) offers a lively account of early investigators who, through both “grinding stupidity and unaccountable insights,” eventually came to understand and learned to coexist with—but never tame—the furious force of tornadoes.

Today, SUVs laden with all sorts of gizmos, plus many “weather tourists,” travel the roads of Tornado Alley (Oklahoma, Kansas, Iowa), part of a deep American “tradition of obsessive hunting” for the elusive twister. More elusive was hard information beyond folk tales on why tornadoes were so destructive, wiping out towns and killing hundreds in a minute. Sandlin starts his tale with Benjamin Franklin and his casual fascination with “whirlwinds.” But the real story begins with James Espy, America’s first official meteorologist. In the 1830s and beyond, Espy came up with ideas both accurate and silly: Tornadoes might be caused by convection, warm air rising to meet cold air.

Therefore, the climate of the continent could be controlled by the judicious building of very large fires. Espy feuded with other early tornado devotees over matters trivial and substantive before yielding to a younger generation just as contentious. In the late 1800s, John Park Finley and the military’s Signal Corps developed a system of weather forecasts. Yet Finley feuded with Henry Hazen, who believed massive dynamiting would destroy tornadoes. All involved seemed to have feuded with Washington politics and bureaucracy, to the point that while America’s heartland became increasingly populated, and tornadoes a greater threat, in the first decades of the 20th century, the federal government kept no records of tornadoes at all. While later investigators with more sophisticated technology made significant gains in our understanding of tornadoes, Sandlin’s story is really one of how science gets done amid, and despite, clashes of ego and political interference.

Well-constructed history of the politics and personalities of weather. (16 pages of b/w illustrations)

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MY FOREIGN CITIES A Memoir

Scarboro, Elizabeth Liveright/Norton (288 pp.) $24.95 | Apr. 8, 2013 978-0-87140-338-4

A poignant memoir that first appeared as a thoughtful essay in the “Modern Love” column of the New York Times.

In that essay, Scarboro (Phoenix, Upside Down, 1996, etc.), a happily married mother of two, had been informed by a university that it was holding a vial of frozen sperm from her deceased first husband, Stephen—what did she want done with it? The memoir that grew out of her essay is a frank account of her love for and her young marriage to Stephen, who, having been born with cystic fibrosis, had a life expectancy of 30. He made it, but barely. Scarboro writes about the vacations, the camping out and the hiking, as well as the emergency room visits and hospital stays, the surgical procedures, the feeding tube, his addiction to painkilling drugs and her bout with depression. When Stephen had a double-lung transplant, the 30 medications needed to keep him alive required sorting and storing in a large tackle box. The effect of all the medications was dramatic and disheartening. He developed food cravings, gained 50 pounds and shopped impulsively, and his thoughts, writing and words became rambles. Stephen kept a journal during this time, as they were planning to write a book together about living with cystic fibrosis; she includes a single excerpt that records his perception of these changes. Death was hovering over their young lives, but sometimes it was pushed to the background, letting them imagine a future in which they’d live into their 80s.

Scarboro’s writing is marked by honesty, and although a new love appears for the young widow at the end, there’s no doubt of the warmth of her love for Stephen in the years they had together.

BUSINESS BRILLIANT Surprising Lessons from the Greatest Self-Made Business Icons

Schiff, Lewis Harper Business (272 pp.) $28.99 | Mar. 19, 2013 978-0-06-225350-7

An engaging look at “realigning our career-development practices with the world we live in today.”

Inc. magazine’s Business Owners Council executive director Schiff (The A to Z Money Book from Armchair Millionaire, 2005, etc.) presents research on the differences in outlook between two groups: those with net worths in the range of $1 million to $10 million and those with net worths between $50,000 and $80,000. “The starkness of the gap between the two groups was |

stunning,” he writes—as was “the conflict” between the ideas of those who have achieved success and those who haven’t. The author presents the research along with case studies and arguments against popularly held misconceptions about how people get rich. Schiff takes issue with experts like Suze Orman who recommend savings and frugality as the path to riches; the author argues that it distracts from the goal of making more money. He examines the origins of the financial success of Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, and he is also concerned with establishing the importance of taking ownership and responsibility for financial and life decisions. He emphasizes repeatedly the importance of asking and learning negotiating skills. Most new hires, he writes, do not negotiate salaries and terms with their employers, leaving thousands of dollars on the table because of it. Schiff also discusses how to formulate negotiating strategies and put together financial plans, and he provides a list of “essentials” for becoming business brilliant, including: “Write Down Your Goals,” “Commit to What You Do Best,” “Get a Coach” and “Don’t Procrastinate.”

Not necessarily groundbreaking, but a mostly intriguing, different kind of take on the self-help moneymaking genre.

PEPPER A History of the World’s Most Influential Spice Shaffer, Marjorie Dunne/St. Martin’s (320 pp.) $26.99 | Apr. 2, 2013 978-0-312-56989-1

Science writer and former business reporter Shaffer traces the actionpacked, often bloody trail of black pepper from its uses in ancient times as a cure-all to the intense rivalries among the Portuguese, Dutch and English to control the pepper trade in Indonesia to the rise of 19th-century American pepper merchants.

This is not so much a culinary history as it is a compelling account of commerce and power that laid the groundwork for empire building. Common on every household table today, pepper was more valuable than gold or silver in the Middle Ages.

Europeans loved it, but only the wealthy could afford the pungent seasoning. It wasn’t until the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama sailed around the Cape of Good Hope in 1498 that a sea route to India and China opened up the pepper trade to Europeans, leading to what Shaffer describes as the “pernicious twined branches, colonialism and imperialism,” perpetuated by the English and Dutch East India companies. Using first-person accounts from journals and ships’ logs, Shaffer crafts a textured story of exploration, danger, wealth and greed. Readers will find adventures on the high seas, pirates, ambitious Jesuits, sultans living in opulence and the plunder of what was once considered a “Garden of Eden.” Like all good stories, Shaffer’s has its honorable and dishonorable characters, including the English pirate William Dampier, who couldn’t stomach the cruel treatment of the “Malayans” by the British; Jan Pieterszoon Coen, kirkus.com

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the “brutal governor-general” of the Dutch trading company; and the English traveler Peter Mundy, whose journals and drawings captured the people and exotic beauty of Sumatra. The author also discusses the botanical and medicinal characteristics of the pepper plant. The included maps are most welcome, but some readers may also want a current world map at hand for reference.

A vividly told story of a common spice’s uncommon history. (8-page color photo insert; 5 maps)

NICE COMPANIES FINISH FIRST Why Cutthroat Management Is Over—and Collaboration Is In

Shankman, Peter with Kelly, Karen Palgrave Macmillan (256 pp.) $25.00 | Apr. 2, 2013 978-0-230-34189-0

A corporate consultant argues that kinder, gentler corporate leaders and corporations are winning out over older, tougher images of take-no-prisoners leadership.

Shankman (Can We Do That?!: Outrageous PR Stunts that Work—and Why Your Company Needs Them, 2006) associates the older view of the ineffective leader with what he calls “A Hopeless Jerk” and offers nine “warning signs” of such a leader, including “Uninterested in Feedback,” “Takes Sides Unfairly and Openly” and “Wants a Castle in the Sky.” As a replacement, the author provides nine traits for more effective leadership, including the “The Accessibility Factor,” “Strategic Listening” and “360 Loyalty.”

The author buttresses these traits with case studies drawn from the corporate world. The uniting theme is Adam Smith’s view of human functioning as “enlightened self-interest.” Shankman contrasts some failed top dogs with others who now represent success. Al “Chainsaw” Dunlap, the former CEO of Sunbeam, was an example of the former. His reputation rested on a “gleeful appetite for job cuts,” and he eventually flamed out and drove the company into the ground. Another example is Wolfgang Schmitt of Rubbermaid, who refused to consider the views of others. On the positive side is Chris McCormick of L.L. Bean, a company famous for its service and “treating customers like human beings.”

PJ Bain, of PrimeRevenue, a supplier of digital factoring services to international corporations, stands for the development of skills and abilities of his employees through special training programs and other activities.

A smoothly put together business leadership primer that could use further, deeper elaboration.

POSEUR A Memoir of Downtown New York City in the ’90s Spitz, Marc Da Capo/Perseus (368 pp.) $15.99 paper | Feb. 12, 2013 978-0-306-82174-5

There is lots of name-dropping and post-punk heroin hipster cliché in this memoir by a rock journalist who seems to be a legend in his own mind.

More of the self-deprecation suggested by the title would have benefitted the manuscript. Though Spitz has published biographies with titles such as Jagger: Rebel, Rock Star, Rambler, Rogue (2011), he’s mainly familiar as a writer for Spin, where he jumped the sinking ship “in 2006 after nine years and fourteen cover stories.” His account of the Spin years shows panache, as he rose from website blogger to gossip columnist to feature writer—where he developed a friendship and rivalry with the more successful Chuck Klosterman. He describes his first encounter with a reporter for that magazine, who described her beat as “a cool hunter…I spot trends and I write about them,” and then he proceeds to gush that “Spin magazine was, in the late eighties and early nineties, a glorious thing. Running into a real Spin writer was akin to brushing up against a senator or congressman. These were people with real power.” Ultimately, Spitz ascended to what he terms “a privileged view,” interviewing rock artists and attending concerts for free. Beyond the scope of the subtitle, there is plenty about college, heroin addiction, unpublished poetry and novels, unproduced LA screenplays and an email friendship with Courtney Love. An opening disclaimer admits that “certain names and descriptions of individuals have been altered”—which is fine when referring to a generic junkie buddy as “Hazy Jane” but inexplicable in repeated references to a well-known scenester who signed the MC5 and the Stooges and inspired the Ramones’ “Danny Says.”

Many of those who look for their real names here will feel they could have written a better book.

THE BATTLE OF BRETTON WOODS John Maynard Keynes, Harry Dexter White, and the Making of a New World Order Steil, Benn Princeton Univ. (456 pp.) $29.95 | Feb. 24, 2013 978-0-691-14909-7

The director of international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations revisits the 1944 conference that created “the new global monetary architecture” for the postwar world.

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“A stimulating modern rejoinder to Joseph Schumpeter’s notion of creative destruction.” from antifragile

gathered in Bretton Woods, N.H., to hammer out the ground rules for international economic equilibrium following the defeat of the Axis powers. The American delegation, led by Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau and his right-hand man for international affairs, Harry Dexter White, pressed for a “New Deal for a new world,” looking to strengthen government control of monetary policy and central banking and to install the dollar as the “world’s sole surrogate for gold.” The war-shattered British, mindful of their historic prerogatives, opposed the White plan, but their only leverage lay in the intellectual brilliance of John Maynard Keynes, the 20th century’s most influential economist, and the possibility that they might simply walk away and, thereby, cripple any agreement. Steil (co-author, Money, Markets, and Sovereignty, 2009, etc.) sets the stage for this contest between the cuttingly eloquent Keynes and the acerbic, technocratic White— neither man tailored for diplomacy—with especially deft potted biographies of each and a look at the infighting between the U.S. State and Treasury departments in the lead-up to the conference.

For general readers, the author masterfully translates the arcana of competing theories of monetary policy, and a final chapter explains how, while some of the institutions created by Bretton Woods endure—the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund—many of the conference’s assumptions were swiftly overtaken by the Marshall Plan. Throughout Steil’s sharp discussion runs the intriguing subplot of White’s career-long, secret relationship with Soviet intelligence.

A vivid, highly informed portrayal of the personalities, politics and policies dominating “the most important international gathering since the Paris Peace Conference of 1919.”

WHO WAS DRACULA? Bram Stoker’s Trail of Blood

Steinmeyer, Jim Tarcher/Penguin (288 pp.) $26.95 | Apr. 4, 2013 978-0-14-242188-8

Steinmeyer (The Last Greatest Magician in the World, 2011, etc.) reveals the variety of influences on Stoker’s most (some would say only) memorable work of fiction.

The author posits that the four greatest influences on Stoker were Walt Whitman, Oscar Wilde, Jack the Ripper and the actor Henry Irving. Stoker was Irving’s general factotum and “acting manager” over a period of 30 years, and his influence would be obvious. Whitman was a childhood hero, and Jack the Ripper’s murders in London at that time piqued everyone’s interest. The city in the 1890s was rife with characters like Wilde, who affected the tastes of that golden age, and most crossed paths with Stoker.

Just as 1920s Paris housed a vast menagerie of writers, actors and other artists, so Stoker’s life working for Irving at the Lyceum Theatre brought him into contact with all of the era’s adventurers and storytellers. They met after productions in the Lyceum’s Beefsteak room with their own tales of travel, discovery and |

absurdities; many of these tales found their way into Stoker’s story of the Transylvanian vampire. Oddly, Stoker was obsessive about making sure his facts were correct, right down to the landscape of Yorkshire, tides and London train schedules, but he never visited the Carpathians, where the novel takes place. Further, his notes never mentioned Vlad the Impaler, the historical figure most identify as the inspiration for Dracula. Steinmeyer takes us inside the genesis of the novel, “a swirl of nightmarish images that had been borrowed from real heroes, villains, heightened dramas, and theatrical tragedies.”

The author does a solid job analyzing the birth and development of Dracula and illustrating the character traits Stoker cherry-picked from his wide circle of friends.

ANTIFRAGILE Things that Gain from Disorder Taleb, Nassim Nicholas Random House (544 pp.) $30.00 | Nov. 27, 2012 978-1-4000-6782-4

Engineer and trend-watcher Taleb builds on his best-selling hit The Black Swan (2007) to limn a world of uncertainty and chaos.

The world is a fragile place, full of surprises. Humans—and especially their markets—hate surprises in general. Small wonder, then, that we spend so much effort trying to make our buildings earthquake-proof and our computers virus-proof, that things prophylactic (no, not that) occupy so much of our thoughts. Taleb calls this “antifragility,” writing, “Just as we cannot improve health without reducing disease, or increase wealth without first decreasing losses, antifragility and fragility are degrees on a spectrum.” This being a book meant to solve big-picture problems that may or may not be real for most readers, Taleb urges that many of our efforts are misguided, if understandable. He scorns the “fragilistas” so afraid of their own shadows that they put systems into place “in which the benefits are small and visible, and the side effects potentially severe and invisible.” His current tract is meant as a corrective, and it’s mostly successful at what it aims to do, if sometimes a little daunting—readers are asked, for instance, to grapple with terms such as “apophatic,” “hormesis” and “Mithridatization,” all useful but thorny all the same. In what a college comp instructor might mark as a shift in diction, however, he throws in more familiar language: “Redundancy is not necessarily wussy; it can be extremely aggressive.” And good thing, too. Touring the landscape of uncertainty, Taleb conjures up a few first principles and praises a few models, not least of them Seneca, the great Stoic philosopher who also “happened to be the wealthiest person in the Roman Empire.” Mostly, though, the book is an accumulation of small examples and counterexamples, more suggestive than prescriptive.

A stimulating modern rejoinder to Joseph Schumpeter’s notion of creative destruction. kirkus.com

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BADASS Ultimate Deathmatch: SkullCrushing True Stories of the Most Hardcore Duels, Showdowns, Fistfights, Last Stands, Suicide Charges, and Military Engagements of All Time Thompson, Ben Morrow/HarperCollins (416 pp.) $16.99 paper | Mar. 12, 2013 978-0-06-211234-7

History for the Ted Nugent set—a follow-up to Badass: A Relentless Onslaught of the Toughest Warlords, Vikings, Samurai, Pirates, Gunfighters, and Military Commanders to Ever Live (2009).

In order for a historical moment—in amateur historian Thompson’s hands, almost always a desperate battle—to be worthy of consideration in this catalog of mayhem, it has to involve high stakes, impossible odds and a blaze of glory. On the last point: “The difference between a heroic victory, a valiant last stand, and a crushing defeat is often measured by the badly outnumbered side’s ability to launch a balls-out attack at exactly the right moment.” That’s probably not the way they’d phrase it at West Point, but Thompson’s compendium includes some sterling examples of bravery under fire, some very little known.

One, for instance, involved a Russian paratroop unit that fought nearly to the last man in Chechnya, taking out nearly 10 foes for every paratrooper lost. “The Chechens were so impressed by this bold act of bravery,” writes Thompson, “that they named a street after the Russian unit in the Chechen capital of Grozny— no small gesture considering how much these two groups hate each other.” True enough. Many of the author’s other case studies leave their names emblazoned on streets and other places, from Alcibiades to Napoleon to Wyatt Earp, but others are nearly forgotten—e.g., the Nazi fighter ace who later became a consultant to the U.S. Air Force and the unfortunate participants in what Thompson judges to be “history’s dumbest battle,” evidence of which the grand vizier of the Ottoman Empire later discovered and was “left trying to piece together…like those dudes in The Hangover.”

The maundering rhetoric, all “dudes” and “balls-out” and “badass,” gets old fast, but Thompson’s grasp of history is solid. Think of it as Thucydides for video gamers. (b/w illustrations throughout)

THE WRONG DOG DREAM A True Romance

Vandenburgh, Jane Counterpoint (384 pp.) $26.00 | Apr. 9, 2013 978-1-61902-120-4

Novelist and memoirist Vandenburgh (Architecture of the Novel, 2010, etc.) tells the story of her relationships with two family dogs while exploring her own inner emotional landscapes.

Whistler came into the author’s uprooted life after she and her husband moved to Washington, D.C., from California. But the English springer spaniel soon went from being “two warm and fluffy handfuls of the purest joy” to “a fearful mass of jitters.” Vandenburgh attributed the nervousness to his pedigreed background, until she realized that he may have been picking up and mirroring her own anxieties. Living apart from all she had known, including her own teenage children, she felt fearful, lonely and as though “[she’d] lost some element in [her] sense of cosmic usefulness.” The author began seeing a therapist and then took Whistler to a trainer to help him overcome his problems. “Thousands of dollars” later, her dog evolved into an excellent companion upon whom she and her husband doted.

When Whistler died tragically, the grief-stricken couple immediately adopted a puppy from an animal shelter and named him Thiebaud. From the start, this new dog seemed to revel in the simple joy of being alive. Vandenburgh and her husband eventually moved back to California, where Thiebaud shattered their fragile, hard-won peace by unexpectedly attacking another dog and plunging the family into conflict with the town’s residents. Vandenburgh’s work is strongest in its depiction of the sometimes-intense, life-changing bonds that can form between humans and dogs. A lack of sustained reflection on the author’s internal conflicts, however, undermines the narrative’s impact on readers.

Sincere and at times even lyrical, but not especially compelling.

ALWAYS APPRENTICES The Believer Magazine Presents Twenty-Two Conversations Between Writers

Vida, Vendela; Heti, Sheila; Simonini, Ross—Eds. Believer Books/McSweeney’s (352 pp.) $16.00 paper | Mar. 12, 2013 978-1-938073-25-0 Editors at The Believer magazine present an eclectic series of interviews.

Some of the writers are household names—at least in the households of serious readers: Don DeLillo, Paula Fox, Maureen Howard, Will Self and Joan Didion among them. Others in 78

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“A well-researched, nonpreachy, worthwhile read.” from pandora’s lunchbox

the collection are known more to the literati or to small legions of zealous fans. But all have provocative things to say about writing, reading and readers, and most of the conversations are amiable, although Julie Hecht comes off as curmudgeonly and caustic at times. Several of the writers talk about their writing spaces and processes, and several say they write either longhand (Mary Gaitskill) or on a typewriter (Barry Hannah, Joy Williams). Virtually all of them reveal their biases and/or idiosyncrasies. Gary Lutz talks passionately about commas (he likes their precision); Chimomanda Ngoza Adichie points out the power of storytelling; Michael Ondaatje says he never thinks about an audience. Although most of the writers have nothing ill to say of their colleagues, Sarah Schulman zings Rick Moody and Jeffrey Eugenides (among others) but expresses gratitude to Grace Paley, Tillie Olsen and Edmund White for career help. In the whatever-happened-to category, Bruce Jay Friedman, now in his 80s, appears to wax wise and express gentle humility: “I’m really surprised by how little I know,” he says. A number of the authors complain about the demands of teaching and about the reluctance of writing students to read, and very few issue canned comments—though Mark Leyner’s “Fate is the primordial plot device” could qualify.

A motley assortment of writers eloquently demonstrate that there is no single “writing process”; there are myriad.

PANDORA’S LUNCHBOX How Processed Food Took Over the American Meal

Warner, Melanie Scribner (256 pp.) $26.00 | Feb. 26, 2013 978-1-4516-6673-1

The story of what happens to processed foods before they reach our plate.

What is lost from, or added to, factory-produced food in the quest for uniformity, flavor, cohesiveness, moistness and the ability to withstand temperature extremes? To answer this question, journalist Warner examined Kraft prepared-cheese product, Subway’s sandwich bread, breakfast cereals, soybean oil, chicken tenders and other foods. The author clearly explains the procedures and chemicals used to keep mass-produced food consistent and unspoiled, and she identifies the paradox of the food-processing industry: “that nutrition and convenience are sometimes deeply at odds with one another.” The problem, she writes, with the “wholesale remaking of the American meal is that our human biology is ill-equipped to handle it.” Our bodies metabolize food much as they did in the Stone Age, long before the plethora of new ingredients that make meal preparation easier. While we assume the FDA regulates the estimated 5,000 food additives used in processed foods, the food industry is innovating so fast, it is hard to keep up. Warner outlines the loopholes and gaps in a regulatory system in which only several hundred additives are researched and controlled. Americans also now get more synthetic nutrients in their diets than |

naturally occurring ones. These vitamins may not be as beneficial since they lack the suite of natural compounds found in whole foods. Warner includes chapters on soy and the changing world of fats, meat extenders, flavorings, and early pioneers in food testing and regulation. Some of the chapters meander a bit—e.g., an excellent chapter on regulating food additives ventures off into enzyme use in baking. Warner’s take-home message is to seek out the least-processed of the processed foods.

A well-researched, nonpreachy, worthwhile read.

WHAT ARE THEY THINKING?!

The Straight Facts about the Risk-Taking, SocialNetworking, Still-Developing Teen Brain

White, Aaron M.; Swartzwelder, Scott Norton (208 pp.) $15.95 paper | Apr. 15, 2013 978-0-393-06580-0

Health scientist administrator White and Swartzwelder (Psychiatry, Psychology, and Neuroscience/Duke Univ.; co-author, Buzzed: The Straight Facts About the Most Used and Abused Drugs from Alcohol to Ecstasy, 1998) propose that behavioral changes in teenagers are not only hormonal, but due to significant changes in brain wiring and that risk-taking acts during the teen years are essential for achieving independence as well as mastering practical, social and emotional adult skills.

The authors consider common problems and some of their effects, organized by broad subjects (Teens and Their Brains, Mental Health, Food, Sleep, Driving, The Digital World, Sex and Sexuality, etc.) and further subdivided by issues such as eating disorders, the effects of caffeine and sugar, stress, pornography and others. The book is not intended as a comprehensive guide; some topics, such as social media and texting, presume access and a certain degree of affluence. In addition, the effects of particular cultures/religions as tempering moral agents that influence behavior do not come into play, resulting in a tendency for teens to emerge as subjects at the mercy of biology, though the authors are careful to note that multiple experiences and outcomes are possible. When explicating brain anatomy, the authors shine, presenting information with readable examples.

When offering opinions or suggestions, however, the results are occasionally tepid or expected—e.g., considering violence and the harm that results from becoming desensitized toward it, the authors conclude with the easy summation: “It’s healthy to be appalled by violence. If playing violent video games makes kids less appalled by violence, this would be a bad thing for society as a whole.” On bullying: “Bullies and those they bully also experience other problems, not only in the present, but in the future as well.”

Valuable as encouragement for caregivers to empathize with the turbulent years, but remains uneven and not far-reaching enough as an amalgam of science and parenting advice.

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“Having survived the Holocaust and Bernard Madoff, Nobel Prize–winning novelist and memoirist Wiesel faces mortality in this slender, elegant meditation.” from open heart

OPEN HEART

Wiesel, Elie Knopf (98 pp.) $20.00 | Dec. 4, 2012 978-0-307-96184-6 Having survived the Holocaust and Bernard Madoff, Nobel Prize–winning novelist and memoirist Wiesel (Hostage, 2012, etc.) faces mortality in this slender, elegant meditation.

A few days short of the beginning of summer in 2011, Wiesel, complaining of acid reflux, went to see a gastroenterologist, who immediately pronounced, “It’s your heart.” There was no time to waste, he added, though Wiesel, with characteristic resolve, took a few hours to cancel appointments and otherwise clear his calendar against the possibility that he might never return to it. Wheeled to the operating room, he instructed the anesthesiologist to wait until he recited the Shema Yisrael, upon finishing which he said, in a small voice, “Now I am yours.” The procedure, a matter of opening the chest to expose and repair the heart, went without incident, though it left Wiesel weak for a long time thereafter—and made him walk, he complains, like an old man, grumbling, “after all, I am only eighty-two!” It is mostly the metaphysical and not physical aftereffects that concern him here, though: He wrestles with God while remembering to say his prayers (and the one-word exchange he proposes to hold with God on their encounter is worth reading this small book to get to); he wrestles with the events of the years and with his regrets, not least of which, touchingly for a longtime professor, is having to cancel class on account of illness. Though he recognizes that the clock is ticking, the conclusion of Wiesel’s little book is eminently hopeful and, indeed, as inspirational as anything he has ever written.

His pains linger, Wiesel writes, but “if I forget them for a while, they quickly remind me of their presence.” Just so, a most memorable book.

when he was ultimately forced out as director. Woods (History/ Univ. of Arkansas; LBJ: Architect of American Ambition, 2006, etc.) looks at a complicated individual who was at heart a liberal activist, schooled in the ideas of unconventional warfare championed by his father, a military man and instructor. An only child in a deeply Catholic family, Colby also gravitated toward the Army. From key training in World War II’s Jedburgh Operation, Colby became part of the newly minted CIA, swept up in the “mortal danger” presented in Soviet communism, and sent first to Scandinavia, Italy, then Vietnam by 1959, when the “people’s war” was heating up. Covert action against North Vietnam was approved by President John F. Kennedy and carried out enthusiastically by Colby and others in a “counterinsurgency think-tank” in Saigon, ultimately undermined by the military ascendancy in Washington. An increased compartmentalization of the CIA led to clandestine operations around the world, encouraging a rogue atmosphere within the agency. Woods carefully sifts through Colby’s involvement in the Phoenix Program and his short-lived tenure as DCI, where he implemented reforms that would ultimately get him fired by Henry Kissinger.

A nuanced treatment spirals through the crucial years of CIA operations.

SHADOW WARRIOR The Life of William Egan Colby

Woods, Randall B. Basic (560 pp.) $29.99 | Apr. 9, 2013 978-0-465-02194-9

A thorough biography of “the ultimate subversive” that probes the shadowy U.S. intelligence efforts through the Vietnam War. Arguably part of the problem or part of the fix, CIA operative William Colby (1920–1996) was intimately involved in the questionable clandestine practices of the U.S. intelligence service in Southeast Asia, as well as instrumental in the reforms stemming from the “family jewels” revelations of 1974-1975, 80

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children’s & teen INFATUATE

These titles earned the Kirkus Star:

Agresti, Aimee Harcourt (416 pp.) $17.99 | Mar. 5, 2013 978-0-547-62615-4 Series: Gilded Wings, 2

BEING HENRY DAVID by Cal Armistead....................................... p. 83 HOLD FAST by Blue Balliett............................................................p. 84 LOOK UP! by Annette LeBlanc Cate................................................p. 91 EARTH GIRL by Janet Edwards....................................................... p. 93 A GOOD TRADE by Alma Fullerton; illus. by Karen Patkau.........p. 96 NOWHERE TO RUN by Claire J. Griffin........................................p. 99 PENNY AND HER MARBLE by Kevin Henkes............................. p. 101 HERO ON A BICYCLE by Shirley Hughes..................................... p. 103 THE SUMMER PRINCE by Alaya Dawn Johnson.........................p. 104 red hat by Lita Judge..................................................................p. 104 MOUNTAINS BEYOND MOUNTAINS by Tracy Kidder; adapt. by Michael French............................................................... p. 105 pieces by Chris Lynch..................................................................p. 109 THE BIG BAD WOLF GOES ON VACATION

by Delphine Perret.......................................................................... p. 114 A GIRL CALLED PROBLEM by Katie Quirk................................. p. 114 EXCLAMATION MARK by Amy Krouse Rosenthal; illus. by Tom Lichtenheld.................................................................p. 115

This sequel to the well-imagined Illuminate (2012) falls off slightly but continues the mostly interesting story.

After the fall of the insidious Lexington Hotel, Haven, her boyfriend, Lance, and her friend Dante head off to New Orleans, where they’ll ostensibly become high school volunteers on numerous projects. Recruited and led by Connor, they really join a group of angels-in-training, volunteering by day but strengthening their powers at night. Each of them will face a challenge that may tempt them to abandon their angel status and join the devils.

Early on, they encounter a raucous group called the Krewe, which goes on bloody rampages at night. Clearly, these are the devils they’ll have to fight, but Haven has other problems. In the haunted mansion next door, Haven meets Lucian, the devil from the Lexington Hotel who nearly captured her heart and who now needs her help to escape the underworld. Agresti again focuses on Haven’s developing powers and on her relationships, but the battles with the devils that introduced action in the previous book seem less suspenseful this time, as readers see them mostly from afar. This time, although said to be much stronger than before, they emerge only as an occasional threat and so feel less dangerous. The plotline with Lucian stands out as the most interesting part of the story.

Nevertheless, this stands atop the current heap of angel books. (Paranormal suspense. 12 & up)

STARRING JULES (AS HERSELF)

DR. BIRD’S ADVICE FOR SAD POETS by Evan Roskos.............. p. 116

Ain, Beth Scholastic (160 pp.) $14.99 | $9.99 e-book | Mar. 1, 2013 978-0-545-44352-4 978-0-545-52047-8 e-book Series: Starring Jules, 1

WHEN STRAVINSKY MET NIJINSKY by Lauren Stringer......... p. 120 PAUL THURLBY’S WILDLIFE by Paul Thurlby............................ p. 121

Seven-year-old Jules has been asked to audition for a television commercial.

But she needs help. Will she turn to her know-it-all ex-best friend for it?

Debut author Ain introduces a new chapter-book darling |

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“Is it a lesson in the joys of reading or a warning about mob rule, at least as it pertains to demented chicks, or perhaps a homily about trusting wise and loving parents? It’s all there...” from i’m not reading!

with pizzazz and quite a stage presence. But Jules is in the middle of a mean fight with her former best friend, Charlotte.

Charlotte and two other friends went on vacation to a snooty resort together without Jules, leaving her feeling left out from all their newfound sophistication. But with the opportunity of a lifetime four days away, Jules doesn’t have the time to stay angry with Charlotte. With a first-person perspective similar to Junie B. Jones, this list-making little girl’s voice seems forced in places. A catalog of clothing decisions, from overalls covered in red poppies to argyle knee socks sounds nearly logical instead of feeling free-spirited or even youthful. It is also a wee bit disheartening to see such young girls fighting with cable TV–worthy vitriol, with fancy hotel towels and manicures as the cause.

The storyline firms up once Grandma Gilda is called and travels to be by Jules’ side. The audition provides great tension with a hilarious outcome that leads to real emotion and a satisfying end.

Though not as distinctive as Clementine, Jules eventually settles, becoming a vulnerable and likable heroine. (Fiction. 6-9)

GHOULISH SONG

Alexander, William McElderry (176 pp.) $16.99 | Mar. 5, 2013 978-1-4424-2729-7

A young girl confronts her own death in the river city of Zombay with its ancient magic and new gearwork in a stand-alone companion to National Book Award–winning Goblin Secrets (2012).

Young Kaile, the baker’s daughter, is separated from her shadow when she lets the bone flute given her by a goblin performer play its own tune. “You might…try to discover whose bone that once was,” the goblin tells her. But Kaile is forced to leave her home—she watches as her family holds a funeral for her and refuses to acknowledge her presence, convinced that the unshadowed are newly dead. Kaile, with Shade, her shadow, in tow, seeks the secret behind the bone flute.

For some reason, it will only reliably play the well-known tune about a girl rumored to have drowned herself for love by leaping from the bridge into the River. And the impending River flood sounds a threatening note through everything in the city, creating the kind of urgency that has a sailing captain telling Kaile “we haven’t time for pissing and whistling.” When at last Kaile confronts the River’s power and the collective grief of the bones of the drowned, she saves herself along with the bridge that spans the River and connects the two halves of Zombay.

Alexander’s storytelling is compelling and clever, and this tale of courage is by turns humorous, poignant and convincing. (Fiction. 9-12)

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I’M NOT READING!

Allen, Jonathan Illus. by Allen, Jonathan Boxer/Sterling (32 pp.) $16.95 | Mar. 5, 2013 978-1-907967-44-3

Baby Owl’s plan to read a story to his toy, Owly (not the delightful comic-book character, but adorable just the same),

turns viral.

Tiny Chick promises to sit quietly if he can listen also. But here come his brothers and sisters, followed by his cousins, all jumping on poor Baby Owl’s lap, pushing and shoving and all but pulverizing him. He protests and demands quiet, but when even more chicks join in, all his good intentions are brought crashing down by the frightening over-exuberance of his audience, and he calls for help. Dad comes to the rescue, and along with the chicks’ mom, he brings order to the chaos so Baby Owl can read the story without further ado. Allen’s latest adventure starring the endearing Baby Owl displays a nice mix of charm and mayhem, but that moment when Owl disappears in the crowd of crazed chicks is downright terrifying. So what will young readers find here? Is it a lesson in the joys of reading or a warning about mob rule, at least as it pertains to demented chicks, or perhaps a homily about trusting wise and loving parents? It’s all there, and Allen’s sharp, bright digital cartoons make it all work.

Even the endpapers are filled with those goofy little chicks, not appearing the least bit threatening. A sweet, cozy ending suggests a perfect bedtime story.

Fun and reassuring. (Picture book. 3-6)

IN SEARCH OF GOLIATHUS HERCULES

Angus, Jennifer Whitman (350 pp.) $17.99 | Mar. 1, 2013 978-0-8075-2990-4

In this Victorian adventure, Henri discovers that he can talk to insects and decides to travel to British Malaya to find his father and capture the elusive, man-eating insect, Goliathus hercules.

Henri’s father had disappeared in British Malaya some years earlier, coincidentally in the same area that Goliathus hercules has been spotted. Where other searchers have failed, Henri is certain his newfound talent will lead to success. He joins a colorfully depicted traveling flea circus, planning to make his way from America to Southeast Asia. On his three-year quest, Henri acquires friends both human and insect, the support of the scientific community, and a villainous rival, Mrs. Black. Unfortunately, an underdeveloped back story and poor plotting mar this debut. The human characters are stock, especially Mrs. Black, whose evil master plan is never made clear. However, Angus, an artist who creates installations using bugs, excels with her

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insect characters. They liven things up with their often-humorous commentary and fierce loyalty to Henri. In a cleverly creepy but inexplicable development, Henri’s increasingly heightened senses—is he undergoing a metamorphosis?—aid him in his hunt. Archival images are used to add interest. Many readers will guess the link between Henri’s father and Goliathus hercules long before Henri does, but the final twist may surprise all.

An uneven effort, but bug enthusiasts may latch on.

(Fantasy. 8-12)

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BEING HENRY DAVID

Armistead, Cal Whitman (312 pp.) $16.99 | Mar. 1, 2013 978-0-8075-0615-8

When Hank wakes up in Penn Station, the only clue to his identity is the book he’s clutching, Walden, so he adopts Henry David Thoreau’s name and iconic work to guide him on his journey to self-discovery.

After a stabbing ends his brief stint as a homeless teen, Hank flees to Walden Pond, where he meets Thomas, a gentle park docent, and bonds with a girl, gifted singer Hailey. His festering knife wound forces him to confide in Thomas and accept help, but Hank’s pleasant discoveries (he’s good-looking, a runner and a musician) are overshadowed by returning memories that evoke dread and shame. What’s driven him, Hank realizes, is desperation to escape his past, not to recover it. Accepting and

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moving on is hard for Hailey, too; she is afraid to enter a band competition since her last experience ended badly. Thomas, who’s made peace with his own closet skeletons, mentors Hank but can’t spare him the tough choice: whether to keep running or face the music. Hank earns sympathy and respect from readers, but Armistead doesn’t let him off easy. Rescue is not an option, but Thoreau’s spare words, focusing on what truly matters, lighten the darkness.

This compelling, suspenseful debut, a tough-love riff on guilt, forgiveness and redemption, asks hard questions to which there are no easy answers. (Fiction. 13 & up)

HOLD FAST

Balliett, Blue Scholastic (288 pp.) $17.99 | $17.99 e-book | Mar. 1, 2013 978-0-545-29988-6 978-0-545-51019-6 e-book Eleven-year-old Early Pearl holds fast to her family’s dream of a home of their own even after her father disappears, their apartment is ransacked, and she and her brother and mother are forced

to move to a shelter.

Taking her title from a Langston Hughes poem, the author of Chasing Vermeer (2004) weaves a moving story of homelessness, family, and the love of words and books. This mystery opens promisingly with a wintertime bike accident, a man’s disappearance and a series of numerical coincidences. A warm family circle of four is broken; there’s a violent burglary; the three remaining flee to Helping Hand. Early and her 4-year-old brother, Jubilation, play at being spies, but the fifth-grader does real detective work, researching in the Chicago Public Library, where her father worked, and enlisting the help of some sympathetic adults. Gradually she, and readers, come to realize that her dad has been caught up in an international crime operation and that all of them are in danger. Early’s family reads; her father is such an admirer of Langston Hughes that the poet’s The First Book of Rhythms is a family treasure and plays a vital role in the solution of this intricate tale. Chapters are identified by word definitions (possible clues) and line patterns reminiscent of those in Hughes’ book.

Enthralling and satisfying. (Mystery. 9-13)

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I REPRESENT SEAN ROSEN

Baron, Jeff Greenwillow/HarperCollins (336 pp.) $16.99 | $9.99 e-book | Mar. 19, 2013 978-0-06-218747-5 978-0-06-218749-9 e-book Thirteen-year-old Sean has an innovative concept that he believes will transform the entertainment industry.

Sean’s goal is to present his concept to a major entertainment company.

Baron’s wryly humorous tale depicts how the determined eighth-grader approaches this endeavor, reviewing the thicket of hurdles facing industry newcomers. When Sean discovers that major entertainment companies are nearly inaccessible to those without representation by either an agent or manager, he is undeterred. Instead, he becomes embroiled in a comical, although improbable, series of events in which he masquerades as his own manager. To further complicate matters, another prestigious entertainment company responds to Sean’s inquiry and expresses interest in his impromptu movie idea. Suddenly, Sean must deal with industry executives and bewildering legal contracts. Through Sean’s misadventures, Baron examines such issues as navigating the complex world of movie screenwriting and maintaining artistic integrity. He deftly juxtaposes these scenarios with Sean’s ordinary life. Interspersed throughout the tale, Sean’s reflections and witty observations regarding middle school life and friendship add a pragmatic yet humorous note.

An engaging and educational primer on the workings of the movie industry. (Fiction. 10-14)

NIGHTHAWK!

Bastedo, Jamie Red Deer Press (246 pp.) $12.95 paper | Mar. 30, 2013 978-0-88995-455-7 A rebellious young nighthawk sets out to see the world and lead his flock to the Arctic promised land in this animal adventure.

When a fire forces Wisp from his school-top home and separates him from his family, Wisp flies south in search of the Refugium, the nighthawks’ winter home. Like any curious teenager, Wisp picks up tricks and tales from the other birds he befriends on the way, though his first journey is regrettably glossed over. Rather than admire Wisp’s adaptability or rejoice at his arrival, the other nighthawks at the fascistic Refugium demand that Wisp accept his place as a Plebian Navigator for the larger and bullying Guardians—the one role he cannot fulfill. After escaping from the enclave, Wisp flies north for the legendary Tundra, accompanied by his whiny sister Willo and Gonzo, a voracious crow with a stereotypical Hispanic accent, and pursued by the megalomaniacal Guardian, Flare. Bastedo portrays Wisp as all bird, complete with animal

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“Mystery and anticipation build to the very end of the story, much of it caused by wondering if the clueless American parents will discover their children’s nightly absences.” from through the skylight

behavior, but relies on trans-species omniscience and human teenage slang to tell the tale, making for a sometimes disconcerting but ultimately satisfying blend of science and action.

An entertaining and even educational read. (Adventure.

12 & up)

THROUGH THE SKYLIGHT

Baucom, Ian Illus. by Gerard, Justin Atheneum (400 pp.) $16.99 | Mar. 19, 2013 978-1-4169-1777-9

Six kids—three from the modern-day United States, three from Venice in the late Middle Ages—struggle to right ancient wrongs in this engaging fantasy adventure.

American siblings Jared and Shireen and their younger sister, Miranda, are two months into their semesterlong stay in Venice.

There while their university-professor father does research, the excitement of living abroad has grown old. After they accept presents and an ancient book from an elderly Venetian bookseller, they are compelled by the magic in the gifts and the story in the book to rescue the other three—Rashid, Francesca and Maria—from the clutches of an unbalanced and fanatical monk. Interspersed “translations” from the gift book provide a vague historical setting and keep the plot moving while producing maximum suspense and excitement. Mystery and anticipation build to the very end of the story, much of it caused by wondering if the clueless American parents will discover their children’s nightly absences. The occasional false note—some didacticism and weaknesses in the fantasy mechanics—will not bother young readers; the action and exotic creatures will keep them engrossed in the story. Having teen characters as well as younger girls may help attract a broad audience of genre fans.

A likable fantasy, the author’s first for children. (blackand-white spot art; not seen) (Fantasy. 10-14)

THE MISSING CUCKOO CLOCK A Mystery About Gravity Beauregard, Lynda Illus. by Helmer, Der-shing Graphic Universe (48 pp.) $6.95 paper | $21.95 e-book $29.27 PLB | Apr. 1, 2013 978-1-4677-0733-6 978-1-4677-0980-4 e-book 978-1-4677-0167-9 PLB Series: Summer Camp Science Mysteries, 5

Summer-camp kids get (scientifically) physical.

Falling between a boxed definition of gravity and explanations of how that force interacts with others, the story is largely a framework for nonstop real-life demonstrations of gravity in |

action. Readers see it at work on clock weights, dripping water, a beach ball, random falling objects—and horse-mad new camper Megan, who falls a hair below the height requirement to ride in the afternoon, but (after a night spent lying down) measures a half-inch taller the next morning. Helmer supplies brightly colored cartoon panels featuring a multicultural crew of young campers engaged in general horseplay or watching in wide-eyed wonder as a counselor explains how a mechanical clock works or concocts simple physics demonstrations. Even the titular cuckoo clock swings past as just a MacGuffin for showing how a pendulum works.

Predominantly instructional, but light enough not to sink beneath the weight of its purpose. (glossary, instructions for two experiments, URL for supplementary material) (Graphic fiction/nonfiction hybrid. 8-10)

THE WHISPERING LAKE GHOSTS A Mystery about Sound

Beauregard, Lynda Illus. by Torres, Germán Graphic Universe (48 pp.) $6.95 paper | $21.95 e-book | $29.27 PLB Apr. 1, 2013 978-1-4677-0734-3 978-1-4677-0981-1 e-book 978-1-4677-0168-6 PLB Series: Summer Camp Science Mysteries, 6 The latest graphic Summer Camp Science Mystery fills readers in on the ups and downs of acoustics—but not without sounding some sour notes.

A pair of thunderstorms provide opportunities for camp counselors to explain the rule of thumb for approximating lightning’s distance and to reveal the cause of mysterious murmurs heard down by the lake. (They aren’t ghosts but noises carrying across from another camp on the opposite shore.) In between, young campers see how an umbrella can be turned into an amplifier for an old cassette recorder, encounter bats, learn how a sonar fish finder works and make cardboard-tube flutes as another counselor tells an unsourced (Lakota, she claims) legend about the instrument’s invention. Also, in what amounts to a direct tutorial in risky behavior, two children linger at the water’s edge as the second storm rolls in, then flee into the woods in panic until they are lost and plunge blindly into a dark cave for shelter. They are quickly rescued, and a weak joke leaves everyone laughing. Interspersed with explanatory glosses, Torres’ dispensable panels depict bug-eyed figures looking over one another’s shoulders and pointing.

A weak outing in a worthy series, with camp safety plainly playing second fiddle to science instruction. (glossary, recap, experiments) (Graphic fiction/nonfiction hybrid.

8-10)

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“Marketing-driven high concepts can shape stories into lifeless, literary topiary, but this one’s less gimmicky than advertised.” from the look

THE LOOK

Bennett, Sophia Chicken House/Scholastic (336 pp.) $17.99 | $17.99 e-book | Mar. 1, 2013 978-0-545-46438-3 978-0-545-52063-8 e-book Two sisters face vastly different futures—one as the world’s next top supermodel, the other as a lymphoma patient.

Ted (short for Edwina), 15, feels awkward and plain next to stylish Ava, 17, with her gorgeous looks and hot surfer boyfriend. Each resents having to share a bedroom in the cramped apartment the family now occupies, thanks to their father’s job loss. Everyone’s surprised when Ted, not Ava, draws attention from a modeling scout. The same night, Ava’s swollen glands draw her parents’ attention. Soon, Ted’s enjoying a major makeover and tons of attention, including from the intriguing artist son of a London modeling maven, while Ava struggles with chemo-induced nausea and hair loss.

Ted narrates with humorous insight, though her incredulity that others find her attractive quickly palls. Ava’s a more harmful stereotype: Cancer transforms her from bitch-in-training to selfless angel, though her touching determination to remain in control—both liability and asset—is skillfully portrayed. So too are Ted’s evolving feelings about their relative fortunes and her view of the high-fashion world. Marketing-driven high concepts can shape stories into lifeless, literary topiary, but this one’s less gimmicky than advertised. However, readers should know this is Ted’s story; Ava’s cancer is seen through her eyes.

A good bet for readers with a taste for glam fashion and boldface names. (Fiction. 12 & up)

STRIKE THREE, YOU’RE DEAD

Berk, Josh Knopf (256 pp.) $16.99 | $10.99 e-book | $19.99 PLB Mar. 12, 2013 978-0-375-87008-8 978-0-375-98726-6 e-book 978-0-375-97008-5 PLB

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NIGHTY-NIGHT, SLEEP TIGHT

Berne, Jennifer Illus. by Walker, David Sterling (24 pp.) $9.95 | Mar. 9, 2013 978-1-4027-8088-2

A young tot in mauve footed pajamas tucks into bed with a good book. So begins this off-to-bed journey that provides glimpses of sleepy animals around the world.

Rhyming couplets introduce both familiar and somewhat exotic creatures preparing to sleep in their cozy habitats. Moose in Maine, a Bahamian iguana, prairie dogs in Utah, Peruvian scarlet macaws, Galapágos turtles (called turtles, but depicted as tortoises), Australian kangaroos, Malaysian tigers, walruses in Russia and African chimpanzees all appear quite cuddly in soft smudgy acrylics and pencil as they share each page with the child and her tiny white dog. Calm blue-hued backgrounds cue the coming nighttime. A soothing refrain adds a lullabylike quality to the cadenced text: “High on mountains in China, / with a full moon in view, / the pandas curl up / in their beds of bamboo. / Dreaming dreams / under blankets of stars. / Sweet dreams / under blankets of stars.” As the bedtime tale comes to a close, the final spread shows the menagerie of animals—imaginary or toy—surrounding the sleeping child in her bed. They “send a nighty-night kiss to their sleepy friend….You.” This gentle bedtime book is sweet enough, but it doesn’t exactly break new ground. (Picture book. 2-5)

LITTLELAND

Twelve-year-old Lenny Norbeck thought the contest to win a chance to broadcast one inning of a Phillies game would be fun. But it is murder. Literally.

The Armchair Announcer contest should have been a dream come true for Lenny. He’s “the boy with the golden voice,” who’s always narrating his life: “And Lenny Norbeck puts ANOTHER piece of pepperoni into his mouth. The crowd goes wild!

Ahhhh-ahhhh-ahhh!” Maybe becoming a baseball announcer would be his thing. He’s not especially smart or athletic or handsome, but he can do this. And he does. He wins the contest, and on July 29th, he’s in the announcer’s booth. But it all goes downhill quickly. The Phillies’ pitcher collapses on the mound 86

and dies, and Lenny never gets to do any announcing. He does have a mystery to solve, though. Was it a heart attack? Murder?

Though the story is too scattered and, at times, implausible to be an effectively developed mystery, it is a fast-paced tale, an ode to the pleasures of the game—the dreams, the disappointments, and the trials and tribulations of being a fan.

An enjoyable baseball story that young fans will follow all the way to the bottom of the ninth. (Fiction. 8-12)

Billet, Marion Illus. by Billet, Marion Nosy Crow/Candlewick (32 pp.) $14.99 | May 14, 2013 978-0-7636-6550-0 Pastel collage scenes of small animals at work and play offer the Oshkosh set opportunities aplenty to interpret and respond to visual busyness.

The activities are captioned by a mix of descriptive comments and leading questions (“They can’t wait to eat their breakfast. Have you noticed that they all like to eat different things?”) and supplemented by strips of labeled details to spot. The story, such it is, describes a commune of 10 anthropomorphized

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animals who rise together and then go on to eat, play, visit a grocery store and a farm, and at last get ready for bed. Billet dresses her stylized, bright-eyed puppy, sheep, koala and other nursery schooler stand-ins in human clothing, places them against pale, flattened natural or urban backdrops, and surrounds them with easily identifiable tools, toys, foodstuffs, wildlife and other figures. Nine selected items parade across each spread’s bottom with a “Can you see…?” challenge and one-word (mostly) identifiers.

Sugary, but just the ticket for tykes not yet up to more teeming I Spy–style panoramas. (Picture book. 2-4)

WEIRDZONE: SPORTS

Birmingham, Maria Illus. by Bennett, Jamie Owlkids Books (128 pp.) $22.95 | $12.95 paper | Apr. 15, 2013 978-1-926973-60-9 978-1-926973-6106 paper The title says it all.

There will certainly be the temptation to ask if some of these endeavors are sports at all. Rolling down a hill in a plastic ball (aka “zorbing”)? Professional-grade pillow fighting? Lawnmower racing, or rushing about in a toilet bowl? Extreme ironing (that’s with an ironing board and laundry, up high on some radical rock spire)? But, ultimately, this collection of odd-fellow sports is good fun. You can see it on the faces of the participants pictured here—just joy, or terror or complete flabbergastation, though thoroughly in the moment. Each sport gets a two-page spread, and its depiction can be somewhat hectic and haphazard. Yet the photographs and artwork are sharp and nicely illustrative of the strange happenings. The text is bell-clear as well, if a little overloaded with exclamation marks: “Inuit even skip rocks on ice!” Birmingham has done her homework, however, and come up with some of the most bizarre sporting stories to be told, including a football game during which the fog got so dense, the players couldn’t see the ball and the baseball game that lasted 33 innings (only 19 fans were in the bleachers at the end).

Any sports aficionado will easily be lost in these pages.

(Nonfiction. 8-12)

WRITE THIS BOOK A Do-It-Yourself Mystery Bosch, Pseudonymous Illus. by Ford, Gilbert Little, Brown (288 pp.) $16.99 | Apr. 2, 2013 978-0-316-20781-2

Offering “a book written by you that’s already published,” “Bosch” follows his own title page with a blank alternative one, then goes on to sketch out a 88

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fragmentary plotline filled with options to circle and dotted lines to fill in (guaranteeing that any library copy won’t stay unmarked for long).

The “story” involves two children, A____ and Z____, who are searching for vanished writer I.B. Anonymous. In fits and starts, the author provides generic arcs for noir, fantasy and gothic stories that all lead in the end to I.B. Anonymous’ reappearance to congratulate his supposedly unwitting collaborators. With frequent pauses for technical advice, dubbed “Pseudo-intelligence,” writerly “Pseudo-assignments,” and forms for creating villains and other characters—not to mention squabbles with a smart-mouthed rabbit typist, off-topic footnotes and distractions for procrastinators—the emphasis is on amusement rather than instruction. Sample jacket-flap word lists give readers a taste of self-marketing. Two features in the appendix—the “Parental Obituary Section” and notable first lines—bridge the gap between theory and practice. Ford supplies accusatory eyes on blank pages and like visual commentary.

Would-be wordsmiths will come away with a marginally useful toolkit and, if not “hack writing of the highest order” as promised, at least a finished practice piece. (writing tips, self-awards) (Nonfiction. 11-14)

THE WORLD BELONGS TO YOU

Bozzi, Riccardo Illus. by Zagnoli, Olimpia Templar/Candlewick (48 pp.) $14.99 | Mar. 12, 2013 978-0-7636-6488-6

High on style, but rather low on substance, this reads like a wannabe inspirational graduation gift.

Opening with the simple, titular text, “The world belongs to you,” on the verso and a green circle on the recto, ensuing pages hold that “you belong to the world” and describe how this mutual belonging bestows freedoms and limits. Strong graphic art is more or less successful in interpreting the text, though some of the musings—“You are free to be loved. Or not,” for example—suggest a more sophisticated audience than the picture-book form usually implies. The text quoted above is illustrated with a window holding a pot with three plants to express being loved, and then the same window shuttered without the pot to show “not,” just one instance where word and image interdependence is weak. Other pages are perhaps too literal: The page with text saying that learning can hurt sometimes has a big pink bandage above a red droplet of blood.

Ultimately, the book endeavors to send a message of hope and inspiration to its readers, but it ends up looking and reading more like a greeting card than a good picture book. Stick with Marla Frazee’s Walk On (2006), Dr. Seuss’ perennial best-seller Oh the Places You’ll Go (1990), or even Sandra Boynton’s more successful picture-book–cum– greeting-card Yay You! (2001). (Picture book. 4-7)

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“A percussive refrain, fun to read and hear, pops up as part of the Spanish text but resonates in either language: ‘¡Tum Tica! / ¡Tac Tic! / ¡Tum Tic! / ¡Tom Tom!’ ” from tito puente, mambo king / tito puente, rey del mambo

TITO PUENTE, MAMBO KING / TITO PUENTE, REY DEL MAMBO

Brown, Monica Illus. by López, Rafael Rayo/HarperCollins (32 pp.) $17.99 | Mar. 1, 2013 978-0-06-122783-7

Brown and López, who previously teamed for the awardwinning My Name Is Celia (2004), collaborate anew in this energetic bilingual tribute to the salsa drummer and band leader extraordinaire.

Brown’s narrative, simply phrased and peppered with exclamation points, takes her preschool and primary audience from Tito’s toddlerhood, banging “spoons and forks on pots and pans,” through childhood loves: drum lessons, dancing and stickball on the streets of Harlem. Bouncing through the musician’s adulthood, Brown highlights early gigs, a Navy stint (where he learned to play sax) and regular shows at the Palladium in New York City. Puente’s dream of heading his own band comes true in a single page turn (though López’s depiction of the now white-haired drummer does attest to time’s passage). A percussive refrain, fun to read and hear, pops up as part of the Spanish text but resonates in either language: “¡Tum Tica! / ¡Tac Tic! / ¡Tum Tic! / ¡Tom Tom!” López’s pictures, layered acrylics on prepared wooden boards, convey salsa’s rhythmic exuberance via a riotous palette that includes electric orange, chocolate brown, pale teal and touches of pink and purple. Multihued swirls and plumes emanate from Tito’s timbales and drumsticks; Celia Cruz (a frequent collaborator) soars in a costume whose fuchsia feathers seem to morph from the sea green waves below.

A vibrant, reverent celebration of the godfather of salsa. (biographical note; brief musical notation for rumba beat included in the text) (Bilingual picture book/biography. 4-8)

MY COLD PLUM LEMON PIE BLUESY MOOD

Brown, Tameka Fryer Illus. by Evans, Shane W. Viking (32 pp.) $16.99 | Mar. 7, 2013 978-0-670-01285-5

In a free-wheeling style and going far beyond the usual pairings of colors with moods, Jamie describes his day’s emotional path.

He begins on the sofa, bopping to music from his headphones: “I’m in a mood… / A being kind of mood… / A purple kind of mood / Cold-plum eating / Grape-juice drinking / On the couch / Bobbing to the beat kind of mood.” Pushy, mocking older brothers send Jamie stomping into “a gray kind of place / Storm brewing inside / That I hide / ’Cause I don’t want any trouble space / Dark and swelling / Looming / Gloomy gray kind of place.” But at the basketball court, Jamie’s competence reigns: “Fake left, slide right / Swish! and swish! / Sweet orange mood.” |

Evans’ digital collages, made with oil paint and graphite, buzz with motion and angle. Figures have lively eyes and eyebrows but awkwardly immobile mouths. Most spreads emphasize multiple versions of one hue (cool and warm purples; cool and warm yellows), while clothing and the browns of skin and hair provide highlights. A cheerful family meal and some peaceful dishwashing bring Jamie back full circle to his “living, breathing / Cold-plum eating / Being kind of mood,” a realistically complex combination of pleasure, security and centeredness. This isn’t the easiest scansion to read aloud, but it’s worth it.

Figurative and grounded—a nicely sophisticated exploration. (Picture book. 4-8)

WILLOW FINDS A WAY

Button, Lana Illus. by Howells, Tania Kids Can (32 pp.) $16.95 | Mar. 1, 2013 978-1-55453-842-3 Series: Willow

Shy Willow stands up to a mean girl in her primary-grade classroom.

Kristabelle is the boss of the class that Willow is in, and when she invites everyone to her birthday party, Willow is thrilled. But if a classmate won’t sit at her lunch table or play what she wants at recess, she will cross them off her birthday list. Mateo won’t give up his turn as Line Leader, so Kristabelle crosses him off; Julian won’t wear pink when Kristabelle demands it, so the blonde, curly-headed girl crosses him off, too.

Willow then bravely crosses her own name off, and so do all her friends, leaving Kristabelle alone. But Willow sits with the formerly mean girl when no one else will. Kristabelle apologizes to the whole class, and everyone comes to her party and has a fine time. The illustrations, brightly colored on white backgrounds, with figures sketched in the simplest of lines and dots, depict an ethnically mixed classroom of children. Putting aside the sexism inherent in only boys being blacklisted (or at least, the only ones willing to stand up to Kristabelle), it’s all too easily resolved, even for the second-graders this seems to be aimed at.

There is meanness and bullying at every level in schools, and it needs to be addressed in stories as well as in real life, but they must be honest stories in which the lesson does not outweigh the tale. (Picture book. 4-8)

DREAM FRIENDS

Byun, You Illus. by Byun, You Nancy Paulsen Books (32 pp.) $16.99 | Feb. 21, 2013 978-0-399-25739-1 A little girl’s “dream friend” assuages her loneliness after a family move.

Every night Melody ascends a spiral staircase from her

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“Hal’s authentic voice and realistic 12-year-old sense of humor will hook Wimpy Kid fans, and the idea that history is more than facts and quotes comes across nicely without seeming forced.” from cartboy and the time capsule

bedroom to her dreams, where she plays with a giant, fluffy white dog sporting a red bow tie. He surprises her “with lovely things,” and they play hide-and-seek and watch fireworks together. But Melody must leave her idyllic dream world during the day, and in the “real world,” she languishes in loneliness on the playground—“she was too shy to talk to the other children.” “Coax[ing]” her dream friend into the real world doesn’t work, but one day on the playground, she imagines dancing with him, attracting the attention of a friendly girl in overalls.

“Melody taught her the dance she learned from her friend. Soon everyone on the playground was dancing with them.” While newcomer Byun’s story is a little on the bland and idealized side, her illustrations entrance. Delicate lines and a retro pastel palette create a friendly, surreal dream world and an appealing neighborhood playground filled with a multiethnic cast of chubby-cheeked children. The sequence in which Melody tries to convince her dream friend to come into the world is particularly funny; she sets a trail of cupcakes and tries with main force to squash him through her door, among other stratagems.

Readers will want to go to sleep right away in hopes of summoning their own dream friends. (Picture book. 4-7)

CARTBOY AND THE TIME CAPSULE

Campbell, L.A. Illus. by Campbell, L.A. Starscape/Tom Doherty (208 pp.) $12.99 | Apr. 3, 2013 978-0-7653-3317-9 Bad enough history class is so boring; now it’s keeping Hal from getting his own room.

Sixth-grade history teacher Mr. Tupkin is making everyone keep journals for a time capsule to inform people 100 years from now about daily life in the 21st century—so history even makes the future lame. Hal’s historybuff dad says that he won’t move his fix-it business out of the spare room (so Hal can move in) unless Hal’s D in history becomes a B. Hal’s doomed to share a room with his baby sisters forever. Mom’s no help; she’s too busy studying acupuncture, forcing veganism on the family and taking in hand-me-downs from a bully for Hal to wear. His best friend, Arnie, is unsympathetic and, incredibly, more interested in the middle school dance than in important stuff like getting to level 13 on RavenCave. A fight with Arnie and a blowout with Dad make sixthgrade the worst year ever…can anything save it? Can anything save Hal? Campbell’s debut is fast and funny and dotted with drawings, labeled pictures and goofy timelines. Hal’s authentic voice and realistic 12-year-old sense of humor will hook Wimpy Kid fans, and the idea that history is more than facts and quotes comes across nicely without seeming forced.

A certain series starter (thankfully), given the promise of an interesting summer in the final pages. (Fiction. 8-12)

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RISE

Carey, Anna Harper/HarperCollins (320 pp.) $17.99 | $9.99 e-book | Apr. 2, 2013 978-0-06-204857-8 978-0-06-204859-2 e-book Series: Eve, 3 The conclusion of the Eve trilogy begins with Genevieve trapped in the City of Sand.

Although her father has made himself the dictatorial king of The New America after a plague, Genevieve continues to side with the rebels determined to bring him down. To do so, she may have to murder her own father. Complicating matters, she’s in a loveless marriage to Charles but is pregnant by Caleb, the love of her life, who was killed in the previous book. Now, after failing in her attempt to poison her father, she escapes from the City of Sand (formerly Las Vegas) with girls she rescues from the prisonlike schools her father has established with the intention of forcibly impregnating them to boost the population. The story then takes readers on an exciting trek to “Califia,” although Carey never explains how the group moves so quickly on foot across the forbidding landscape, focusing instead on the threats they experience during their stopovers. When they reach San Francisco Bay, Genevieve suddenly decides to return to the City of Sand and complete the task of assassinating her father. Character development remains sketchy, although Genevieve’s relationship with her estranged but devoted husband could be interesting.

The author doesn’t take up any themes such as societal freedom or individual liberty that might be provoked by the dystopian setting, focusing instead on entertainment value.

Shallow but exciting. (Dystopian romance. 12 & up)

THE GODDESS INHERITANCE

Carter, Aimée Harlequin Teen (320 pp.) $9.99 paper | Mar. 1, 2013 978-0-373-21067-1 Series: Goddess Test, 3

This ill-begotten series conclusion offers ample proof (evidently some is needed) that genocide and category romance don’t mix.

Imprisoned by Calliope (Hera), Cronus’ partner in pantheonic crime, pregnant Kate gives birth while Cronus looks on lustfully. Calliope, besotted with Kate’s husband, Henry (Hades), is intent on eliminating their newborn son, Milo, so Kate offers herself to Cronus in exchange for his protection. (Olympian incest—Cronus is Kate’s grandfather and Henry, her uncle—is unsettlingly clear but not discussed.) When Kate’s rescued and forced to leave Milo behind, the bargain collapses. Cronus expresses his disappointment by eliminating Athens. Millions die. (Vague descriptions of the

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collateral damage mainly serve to show Kate’s compassion.)

Soon Cronus will be free to pursue his long-term goal: wiping out humanity and his Olympian children. Walter (Zeus) convenes the council, who lament how dire things are, while Kate demonstrates spunk and her commitment to Henry, repeatedly in need of rescuing, by taking action. In numbing detail, the immortals obsess over one another’s passions. The humorless navel-gazing and endless meetings in Olympus’ floating boardroom grow drearily claustrophobic (maladroit writing doesn’t help). Comfortably distant from the mayhem below, endowed with eternal youth, beauty and superhero powers, these immortals lack a vital attribute: the human interest that makes readers care.

Strictly for dedicated category-romance fans. (Fantasy.

12 & up)

GUSTAV GLOOM AND THE NIGHTMARE VAULT

Castro, Adam-Troy Illus. by Margiotta, Kristen Grosset & Dunlap (248 pp.) $12.99 | Apr. 18, 2013 978-0-448-45834-2 Series: Gustav Gloom, 2

In a sequel that cycles around the same track as the opener, Castro sheds light on the past and nature of the aptly named Gloom mansion and the saturnine lad who lives there alone with armies of animate shadows.

Just as in Gustav Gloom and the People Taker (2012), Fernie What, recently moved into the house across the street, joins her new friend Gustav in a long flight through the eerie mansion’s seemingly endless halls and rooms. They are pursued this time by October, a relentless shadow- (and people-) eating creature disguised as a decrepit ice-cream man (spooky!) who is after the hidden, ominously named Nightmare Vault. Despite quick visits to a Gallery of the Almost Famous, a prison for evil shadows and like quirky locales, the chase turns tedious as the children pass through dozens of doorways and up or down more dozens of flights of stairs on the way to a climactic, predictably resolved face-off. Along the way, between moments of contrived melodrama, Gustav drops needlessly strung-out revelations that explain the house’s origins, his lack of parents and other mysteries.

A die-cut cover scene and Margiotta’s chapter-head views of huge-eyed gamins posing in canted settings add to the pervasive air of strangeness, but it’s still a slog. (Fantasy.

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LOOK UP! Bird-Watching in Your Own Backyard

Cate, Annette LeBlanc Illus. by Cate, Annette LeBlanc Candlewick (64 pp.) $15.99 | Mar. 12, 2013 978-0-7636-4561-8

A chatty, appealing introduction to observing these easiestto-see of all wild creatures.

Amusing scenes of loquacious birds and occasional human observers fill these busy pages. The pen-and-ink–and-watercolor cartoons are reminiscent of Roz Chast, with speech bubbles carrying much of the information. Where it would be informative, birds are labeled. Their variety is astounding; the page on coloration alone shows 60 different species from across the country. Cate’s enthusiasm is catching, but she starts simply.

She talks about looking at birds in one’s backyard and neighborhood, with no special tools except for a sketch book—not since drawing is easy but since the effort requires close attention to details. She addresses color, shape and activities before moving on to using field marks to distinguish similar-looking birds. A comical central spread shows a sparrow fashion show, with the different species sporting their distinctive decorations.

She discusses plumage variations, sounds and the use of field guides. The fact that birds look different because they live in different places and behave in different ways leads to consideration of habitat, range and migration. Finally, an explanation of classification includes an introduction to scientific names. The bibliography has good suggestions for birders of any age.

Small and accessible, this is jam-packed with accurate information likely to increase any potential birder’s enthusiasm and knowledge. (index, drawing, tips) (Nonfiction. 8-15)

UH-OH, BABY!

Coffelt, Nancy Illus. by Nash, Scott Aladdin (40 pp.) $16.99 | Mar. 19, 2013 978-1-4169-9149-2 Coffelt and Nash (Catch That Baby, 2011) join forces again to give readers another glimpse into the topsy-turvy world of an endearing toddler named Rudy.

In this offering, readers watch as shaggy-haired little Rudy attempts to give his mother a special surprise—a ladybug.

When the ladybug flies away, he tries (with the help of his family members) some other strategies to impress her, creating a gigantic tower of blocks, a sculpture made of flowers and an enormous portrait. Each time he’s ready to reveal his surprise, however, the family dog, which is still after the ladybug that got away, destroys Rudy’s creations in a mad, bug-chasing frenzy.

Rudy keeps trying, finally wowing Mom with a big, pink cake.

Words are minimal here, appearing in square dialogue bubbles;

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the story is conveyed through the appealing art, which, with its understated palette and quaint-looking characters, evokes the feel of an old-fashioned comic strip. Children will enjoy studying the pictures to figure out the sequence of events, spotting the ladybug as it careens across the pages and rooting for Rudy to finally succeed.

A sweet, simple story featuring a tenacious tot who is easy to love. (Picture book. 4-8)

CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG AND THE RACE AGAINST TIME

Cottrell Boyce, Frank Illus. by Berger, Joe Candlewick (240 pp.) $15.99 | Mar. 12, 2013 978-0-7636-5982

More of a romp through time than a race against it (though a race does figure in), this second authorized sequel sends the reconstructed car with a mind of its own careening from the Cretaceous to the Jazz Age, Venezuela to the Wild West, while folding in references and tributes to Ian Fleming’s classic tale.

The Tooting family—Mum, Dad, Jem, Lucy and Little Harry—is again largely along for the ride, landing in the Cretaceous almost immediately when the car breaks down. The madcap escape from a pack of T. Rex becomes complicated when archvillains Tiny Jack and Nanny phone from the Tooting house far in the future. The race to support them leads to encounters with Counts Basie and Zborowski (the latter a racing enthusiast and the car’s original owner), two 16th-century queens of fabled El Dorado (who sheathe Chitty in gold before switching to a fudge-based economy) and, ultimately, the Potts clan from the original story. Berger festoons margins and full pages with monochrome sketches that nicely capture the helter-skelter pacing of Cottrell Boyce’s round of chases, kidnappings, narrow squeaks and mildly daring references to guns, liquor and “[t]hose leaves that make your head feel funny when you chew them.”

The wild ride leaves the Tootings in 1966, carless and in midpredicament. Expect further episodes. (Fantasy. 10-12)

BENJAMIN BEAR IN BRIGHT IDEAS!

Coudray, Philippe Illus. by Coudray, Philippe TOON/Candlewick (32 pp.) $12.95 | Mar. 26, 2013 978-1-935179-22-1 Series: Benjamin Bear

A companion to Benjamin Bear in Fuzzy Thinking (2011), 27 more wise and witty minimalist fables drawn (with 92

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added dialogue and other minor changes) from French cartoonist Coudray’s original series.

Presented, mostly, in three to six cleanly drawn panels, each mini-tale features Benjamin (Barnabé in the original French) and one or more smaller animals interacting in outdoorsy settings. Most of the storytelling is visual, with just an occasional comment in a balloon, and many of the single-page episodes have an Aesopian flavor. In “Can I Get a Ride?” he picks up one woodland hitchhiker after another until, in the last panel, tables turn and they have to carry him. In “See-Saw,” he “helps” a fox carry a log (and demonstrates a principle of physics) not by lifting the long end, but by hopping onto the short end. In response to a rabbit’s philosophical proposition that you can’t make “Something out of Nothing,” he makes a hole and a pile of dirt: “TWO things!” In a deft comment on narcissism, Benjamin agrees to let the rabbit paint his portrait around the trunk of a tree—so that the image ends up staring at its own butt.

Emergent readers won’t be the only audience delighted by these winning combinations of humor and thought-provoking twists. (Graphic early reader. 4-6)

HOOP GENIUS How a Desperate Teacher and a Rowdy Gym Class Invented Basketball

Coy, John Illus. by Morse, Joe Carolrhoda (32 pp.) $16.95 | $12.95 e-book | Mar. 1, 2013 978-0-7613-6617-1 978-0-7613-8723-7 e-book This picture-book basketball history spotlights how James Naismith came to invent the game now played around the world.

Stylized illustrations in tones resembling tinted sepia prints depict riotous students playing indoor sports, accumulating more injuries with each page turn. The text asserts that they “had already forced two teachers to quit. / [Naismith] didn’t want to, but nobody else would teach that class,” setting the scene for Naismith’s realization, seemingly self-prompted, that a new game with less physical contact was needed. Memories of childhood games lead to his eureka moment. However, with so little context provided, readers may question where this class was being held, why the “boys” look like men the same age as Naismith and how Naismith came to work with them. The original rules of “Basket Ball” are printed on the end pages, and the players’ enthusiasm for the game is evident, but details such as court dimensions and where baskets were hung are not included. Perhaps in a nod to Title IX, youngsters learn that Naismith taught the game to a group of women, and the book ends with a note about the game’s inclusion in the 1936 Olympics.

Given its limited scope, both hoops fans—who will be familiar with this story from rule and sports-history books—and newbies may feel this book has left them circling the rim. (author’s note; selected bibliography) (Informational picture book. 5-10)

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“The storyteller’s voice is augmented by frequent repetition and onomatopoeia, making this story a pleasure to read aloud.” from grandma and the great gourd

GRANDMA AND THE GREAT GOURD

Divakaruni, Chitra Banerjee Illus. by Waters, Susy Pilgrim Neal Porter/Roaring Brook (32 pp.) $17.99 | Mar. 5, 2013 978-1-59643-378-6

Retelling a story from her childhood, well-known Bengali-American writer Divakaruni uses lively language, nonsense syllables and traditional rhythms.

When Grandma sets out to visit her daughter and grandchildren, she must cross the jungle in between their villages.

She leaves her faithful dogs home to tend her garden. Along the way, she meets a fox, a bear and a tiger that all want to eat her, but she persuades the predators that she will be fatter, plumper and juicier on her way back. She approaches her return journey with trepidation, but the inventive mother and daughter create a plan for a safe trip. The old woman is soon ensconced inside a giant, hollowed-out gourd. When the daughter has sealed her in with stitches and rice glue, she starts the gourd rolling toward her mother’s village. First the tiger and then the bear approach the gourd in hopes of finding something to eat. They are each fooled by the grandma singing out and asking for a push. At last, the crafty fox realizes the trick, but by then, Grandma is so close to home the dogs are able to rescue her. The storyteller’s voice is augmented by frequent repetition and onomatopoeia, making this story a pleasure to read aloud. Intensely colored and patterned collages on glossy paper boldly advance the plot.

This fresh new version will soon have young listeners and readers telling the story themselves. (Picture book/folktale. 6-8)

THE CULLING

dos Santos, Steven Flux (421 pp.) $9.99 paper | Mar. 8, 2013 978-0-7387-3537-5 Lucian “Lucky” Spark has run out of luck; he’s been selected as a candidate for the Recruitment, a series of brutal tests designed to be a fast track to military leadership for a few of the most promising individuals of society.

But there’s a catch—one of the four recruits Lucky is pitted against is Digory Tycho, a charming young man for whom Lucky is developing a strong attraction. When Lucky and Digory are assigned as each other’s Incentives—effectively, as hostages to ensure cooperation and competition within the trials—they must choose where love and loyalty lie. Except for the gay romance, dos Santos’ debut is a by-the-numbers dystopian: An overwhelming divide separates rich and poor; the harsh government crushes resistance; vicious death matches result in lots of gore. Lucky’s concern for his little brother (who is initially held by the government to ensure Lucky’s cooperation), his |

gradual embrace of the resistance movement and his sudden survival skills are all familiar tropes as well. There’s a certain appeal to dos Santos’ depiction of LGBTQ characters—Lucian is treated harshly for being a traitor, not for being gay, and samesex marriage is routine. None of the supporting characters are developed beyond their flaws, and the gruesome nature of the death traps borders on gratuitous.

Entirely derivative from start to finish, it will probably nonetheless appeal to those still obsessed with the torture genre and stands as a rare dystopia in which gay characters exist. (Dystopian romance. 12 & up)

EARTH GIRL

Edwards, Janet Pyr/Prometheus Books (276 pp.) $17.95 | Mar. 5, 2013 978-1-61614-765-5 A disabled teen archaeologist works in fascinating, hazardous conditions on a far-future Earth.

It’s 2789. Humanity lives on numerous planets. Transportation, including between star systems, merely requires stepping into a portal—even schoolchildren do a “mass offworld kiddie commute” daily. But off-world atmospheres are fatal for the rare babies born Handicapped, who are portalled to Earth within minutes and must stay forever. Parents tend to disappear, unwilling to live on Earth just to raise a “throwback.” Earth provides those on its Handicapped wards full care, education and career choice, but Jarra’s bitter that “exos” (nonHandicapped norms) consider her an “ape,” “the garbage of the universe.” Enrolling in a Pre-history course that’s taught on Earth but administered by an off-world university, Jarra plans to quench her thirst for history while teaching some exos a lesson. Terrific nitty-gritty details limn her team’s excavations of a high-risk dig site that was once Manhattan. Although readers won’t see disabilities they recognize, Edwards successfully shows that being physically unable to partake in society’s core structure equals disability. Jarra slides temporarily—implausibly—from matter-of-fact first-person narrator to a character in denial of her reality, but more important are perilous rescues, Jarra’s skills, a solar superstorm that closes portals and endangers hundreds of Military, and some humorous romance with sparkling chemistry.

Action, rich archaeological detail and respectfully levelheaded disability portrayal, refreshingly free from symbolism and magical cures, make this stand out. (Science fiction. 11-16)

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“Foreman’s minimal text sometimes tumbles and dances across the page, and his watercolor-and-pastel illustrations capture both motion and dumbstruck faces hilariously.” from oh, if only

THE DAY MY MOM CAME TO KINDERGARTEN

venti-size flagons of mead (“Breakfast of champions”) add spice.

A delicious confection for fans of the previous operettas, reminiscent in tone and content to Patricia Wrede’s Enchanted Forest Chronicles. (Fantasy. 11-13)

Fergus, Maureen Illus. by Lowery, Mike Kids Can (32 pp.) $16.95 | Mar. 1, 2013 978-1-55453-698-6

OH, IF ONLY...

Mom manages to make about every mistake in the kindergarten book when she visits school one day.

Mom looks a little woebegone when she drops her daughter off at kindergarten, so her daughter invites her to come for the day. But Mom doesn’t know the rules, so she neglects to take off her outdoor shoes (“I was SHOCKED,” says her daughter), talks out of turn (“VERY EMBARRASSING, Mom”), spills crumbs from her sandwich, blabs during storytime and grumps when her art project doesn’t turn out. But she gradually gets the hang of things, and by the end, she is almost a kindergartener, though the chairs really are too small. Fergus has provided a fun poke at role reversal, with the mother as the utter miscreant and the daughter striking an admonitory note. It has a nice, natural touch, and it should be a solace for any kid who worries about entering kindergarten: Mistakes are not the end of the world. Lowery provides a strong supporting background with strong lines and great fields of color in his illustrations. The artwork also squares readers to the kindergarten setting: You can almost smell the crayons and feel in the cubbies for your shoes.

A well-observed kindergarten whimsy. (Picture book. 3-7)

THRICE UPON A MARIGOLD A Royal Kidnapping Caper Ferris, Jean Harcourt (256 pp.) $16.99 | Apr. 16, 2013 978-0-547-73846-8 Series: Marigold Trilogy, 3

A royal kidnapping leads to romance for the rescuers and justice for the culprits in this airy series’ latest episode.

Court librarian Phoebe and bookish young blacksmith Sebastian have only just met when evidence emerges that their evil fathers—ex–torturer-in-chief Boris and former official poisoner Vlad, respectively—are responsible for newborn Princess Poppy’s disappearance. The news sends them, along with King Christian and Queen Marigold, in hot pursuit into the local magic forest. Much blundering about ensues for pursuers and pursued alike as various tricks, traps and reversals of fortune play out to an intrepid rescue, a summary comeuppance and a round of newly minted friendships. The adventure closes with a grand Welcome Party for Poppy with Cinderella, Santa Claus and various fairies in attendance. As before, the author dishes up a tale well-stocked with broadly drawn characters and fairy-tale conventions knocked slightly askew. Both cogent side comments (“Nobody ever gets enough appreciation, even kings”) and throwaway references to, for instance, 94

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Foreman, Michael Illus. by Foreman, Michael Andersen Press USA (32 pp.) $16.95 | $12.95 e-book | Apr. 1, 2013 978-1-4677-1213-2 978-1-4677-1214-9 e-book Take one playful dog, add a red ball, and the result is mischief.

A blond boy in a striped shirt and white tennies tells his woeful but hilarious tale, which begins when he encounters an eager mutt with a little red ball in its mouth: “If only...I hadn’t met that dog....” The duo plays a bit, then the ball bounces down a hill and into a gang of stray cats being fed by a kindly old lady in a funny hat. The unsettled cats frighten a flock of birds, who disrupt a parade of uniformed horsemen. Both mounts and men take a tumble, and worst of all, they upset the Queen in her carriage. The dog continues to chase the ball past sentries and servants and into the palace, wrecking carpets and a birthday cake and “lots of fancy stuff.” The dog returns the ball to the little boy, and the whole mess is caught on camera and telecast around the “WHOLE WIDE WORLD.” The boy’s cheeks turn red with embarrassment. If only he’d stayed home….But if he had stayed home that day, he’d never have met this great dog!

Foreman’s minimal text sometimes tumbles and dances across the page, and his watercolor-and-pastel illustrations capture both motion and dumbstruck faces hilariously.

A blithe romp. (Picture book. 3-6)

THESE SEAS COUNT!

Formento, Alison Illus. by Snow, Sarah Whitman (32 pp.) $16.99 | Mar. 1, 2013 978-0-8075-7871-1

When Mr. Tate’s class helps with beach cleanup, they learn about the importance of the ocean and listen to a tally of sea creatures, from one to 10.

A friendly sea captain meets the group on a trash-strewn shore and encourages them to listen to the sad sea. From one whale breaching to 10 dolphins leaping, the sea introduces some of its inhabitants. This counting exercise, appropriate for very young readers, is followed by an explanation of why oceans matter, including the role of phytoplankton in the food chain and atmosphere and a poem about the water cycle. (Happily for tots in over their heads, the successful beach cleanup is followed by a boat trip.) This well-meant but muddled picture book seems to be addressing two different audiences: preschoolers who

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might enjoy the counting exercise (and not be bothered by sea turtles who “surf ” through kelp or slow-moving seahorses who “gallop”); and elementary school–aged children ready for more complicated explanations and for the sad reality of oil and sewage spills and dead animals. Snow’s digital collages effectively show how out of place human trash is on a sandy beach. The story pattern will be familiar to readers of this pair’s earlier environmental field-trip descriptions of trees and bees.

The information is important, but the presentation is depressing. (Picture book. 4-8)

HOW TO READ LITERATURE LIKE A PROFESSOR For Kids

Foster, Thomas C. Harper/HarperCollins (176 pp.) $16.99 | $6.99 paper | $5.99 e-book Apr. 22, 2013 978-0-06-220086-0 978-0-06-220085-3 paper 978-0-06-220087-7 e-book

The New York Times–best-selling How to Read Literature Like a Professor is redacted for teachers of young readers.

The premise behind Foster’s works is that there’s a “grammar of literature…a certain set of patterns, codes, and rules that we can learn to use when we’re reading a piece of writing.” If students learn that grammar, they can read better and appreciate more about what’s going on in the books they read. Short essays offer insights into myth, symbols, setting, Shakespeare, the Bible, quests and various themes. The author shares a “big secret: there’s only one story”—all stories grow out of other stories and contribute to the mix, and what students are doing as they learn to read more widely and insightfully is joining a conversation between old books and new. The title and cover, though—actually, the whole premise of this volume—are misleading: This will work best as a guide for teachers of young people, providing many interesting insights into a range of children’s and young-adult literature, from Green Eggs and Ham to Twilight, along with adult literature accessible to younger readers, such as Dracula, A Raisin in the Sun, and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

An upbeat and engaging guide to literature for English teachers working with young readers. (reading list, acknowledgments, index) (Nonfiction. 12 & up)

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ARCTIC AESOP’S FABLES Twelve Retold Tales Fowler, Susi Gregg Illus. by Fowler, Jim Sasquatch (32 pp.) $10.99 paper | Feb. 5, 2013 978-1-57061-861-1

Twelve classic fables are more or less successfully transposed to northern climes by an Alaskan author and illustrator.

Conscientiously acknowledging her sources by pairing each tale in the table of contents with the original fable on which it is based, the writer switches cast members where appropriate but sticks closely to the older versions’ plots and morals. “Hare and Tortoise” becomes “Hare and Porcupine,” for instance, and “The Tortoise and the Eagle” changes to “The Arctic Ground Squirrel and the Sandhill Crane.” Big, broadly brushed illustrations place the feathered or shaggy actors in nearly treeless but far from barren settings, creating a luxuriant sense of place. This is enhanced by frequent, sometimes fulsome, references in the text to subarctic flora, fauna or the landscape in general (carried high above the tundra, the ground squirrel sees “caribou moss, saxifrage, clumps of willow, bearberries, and more”). Distracting as these interpolations may be, the stories’ universal moral themes remain clear and intact.

A distinctive, respectful selection from the Aesopian canon. (Picture book/folktales. 6-9)

NO BATHS AT CAMP

Fox, Tamar Illus. by Vasquez, Natalia Kar-Ben (32 pp.) $17.95 | $7.95 paper | $6.95 e-book Mar. 1, 2013 978-0-7613-8120-4 978-0-7613-8121-1 paperback 978-1-4677-0989-7 e-book Max insists that he never took a bath the entire time he was at summer camp.

When Mom announces bathtime, Max gives her a complete account of all his adventures, with lots of grimy details, from Sunday to Saturday of each week. There’s rock climbing, theatrics, marshmallow roasting, canoeing and swimming, painting and barefoot dancing. This particular camp focuses on Jewish traditions. They perform scenes from the Old Testament, dance the hora, and on Friday night observe Shabbat, lighting the candles, saying the blessings and eating a special meal. Saturday is spent quietly with walks, stories and conversations until sundown, when they say goodbye to the sweetness of the Sabbath. Max narrates his story in simple descriptive language and syntax, joyfully emphasizing that there were no baths on the schedule. Vasquez’s double-paged, bright, textured illustrations clue readers into Max’s misleading assertions. He may not have taken baths, but there he is washing at the water pump, splashing in the spray from the hose, having a jolly water-balloon fight

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and happily taking a shower and shampoo before sundown on Shabbat. Of course Max takes his bath, albeit reluctantly, obliging his Mom. Fox maintains a light, nonpreachy touch, weaving details of children’s participation in Jewish traditions with the universal fun of summer camp.

Charming, funny and appealing. (Picture book. 4-8)

BARRY’S BEST BUDDY

French, Renée Illus. by French, Renée TOON/Candlewick (32 pp.) $12.95 | Mar. 12, 2013 978-1-935179-21-4

Bored Barry’s buddy has a surprise for him, but when will they get to it?

Snaggle-toothed, big-nosed Polarhog (who looks like a big, white groundhog) knocks on the door of his friend Barry, a small, big-headed blue bird, waking him from a lovely nap.

Polarhog has a surprise for Barry somewhere. On the way to the surprise, they pass a hat store. Despite Barry’s insistence that he doesn’t like hats, Polarhog buys them both hats...but that’s not the surprise. It’s not the ice cream Polarhog buys his buddy, nor is it the meatball Polarhog finds (don’t ask where). They return to Barry’s house to find it gloriously painted and decorated for Barry’s birthday by the ants the friends have been passing throughout their long walk. French, winner of several comics industry awards for her trippy, often disturbing work for adults, releases her first children’s title not under the “Rainy Dohaney” pseudonym. As a “level 1” comic for emergent readers, it will likely confuse children more than entice them to the format.

The full-bleed illustrations have no panels. The friends walk a continuous path in the illustrations and appear multiple times on the two-page spreads. At one point, they stand outside the hat shop, and on the same page, their voices also come from within. This nice story of friendship breaks too many rules of the format for readers just starting out.

A rare miss for this innovative imprint. (Graphic early reader. 5-7)

MALLORY AND MARY ANN TAKE NEW YORK

Friedman, Laurie Illus. by Kalis, Jennifer Darby Creek (160 pp.) $15.95 | $11.95 e-book | Mar. 1, 2013 978-0-7613-6074-2 978-1-4677-0962-0 e-book Series: Mallory, 19

She and Mary Ann pinky swear that they will find a way to share the glory. First Mallory’s mother is persuaded to include Mary Ann and her mother in the foursome instead of Mallory’s dad and brother. This accomplished, they enjoy the excitement of the big city, meeting Fashion Fran and preparing for the big TV event. Mallory seems unable to come up with a workable way for including Mary Ann, though, and a rift develops between them. Of course all is forgiven when Mallory’s brilliant new idea allows her friend to have her own moment on the runway.

Mallory, now 10 1/2, narrates her adventures in an easy, breezy manner. Kalis’ black-and-white cartoon illustrations pleasantly complement the proceedings. Friedman aims her tale at an audience of middle graders, and this undemanding entry will please the series’ fans. There is a disquieting acceptance and admiration of bratty behavior and manipulation in the girls’ antics that will probably not be addressed or even noted by young readers.

Slight and formulaic. (Fiction.7-10)

A GOOD TRADE

Fullerton, Alma Illus. by Patkau, Karen Pajama Press (32 pp.) $19.95 | Mar. 15, 2013 978-0-9869495-9-3 On his trek to get water for the day, a Ugandan boy sees a treasure in an aid truck, and he finds just the right gift to trade for it.

This moving story is so understated that readers and listeners in this country may need some help to understand Kato’s situation. For a barefoot boy from a small village in a struggling country, brightly colored new sneakers are a treasure. For an aid worker in a war-torn world, a single flower can give joy.

The illustrations, apparently digital collage, spread across two pages, showing the tiny village in a vast countryside. The round houses have conical, thatched roofs; chickens peck in the courtyards. Armed soldiers stand guard at fenced-in cattle pastures.

Kato carries his water from a faraway pump, one heavy jerrycan expertly balanced on his head, another hanging from his hand.

At the end, he and his friends dance, though one wears his new shoe on the end of a wooden leg. On each spread, a few lines of spare text carry the story in a predictable pattern, a pleasure to read aloud. Page by page, verbs describe Kato’s experience as he wakes, skips, races, treks, fills, hauls, dawdles, hurries, runs, kneels, weaves, gives and dances.

Expertly crafted, Fullerton’s first picture book reminds readers of the pleasure of small things. (Picture book. 5-9)

Mallory’s friendship with Mary Ann is tested in this latest installment of the long-running series.

The girls enter a fashion design contest, and Mallory wins both a trip for four to New York City and a chance to model her outfit on the TV program that sponsored the competition.

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“Never terribly fraught or demanding, but with a twisty plot and death-defying action, this romance delivers teen yearning with martial arts kicks.” froms enshi

THE EAGLES ARE BACK

George, Jean Craighead Illus. by Minor, Wendell Dial (32 pp.) $16.99 | Mar. 21, 2013 978-0-8037-3771-6

George, who chronicled the return to America’s wild places of wolves and buffalo in two similar titles, now celebrates the comeback of the American bald eagle with a combination of fact and imagination.

Her slight story stars an unnamed boy and eagles known as Uncle Sam and First Lady and is set years ago, when eagles were disappearing, their eggs cracking because of DDT in the food chain. The boy helps the eagles, their own eggs broken, raise an eaglet from a transplanted egg by throwing fish he catches to the parents. Not only does the boy watch the pair brood the egg and nurture the hatchling he calls Alaska, he sees it take flight.

Later, as an adult watching 30 eagles over the Hudson River, he can tell his son that he contributed to the eagles’ return. Though presented as true, the incident is undocumented and the threat to eagles in the contiguous 48 states statistically oversimplified. (The vast majority of the half-million eagles here when the Puritans came lived in Alaska, where they were never threatened.) Nonetheless, readers will be cheered by this inspiring picture book, illustrated with Minor’s dramatic gouache-andwatercolor paintings, which portray close-up eagle portraits, vignettes and vast landscapes.

A heartwarming culmination to a distinguished career.

(Picture book. 5-9)

SENSHI

Gibsen, Cole Flux (408 pp.) $9.99 paper | Mar. 8, 2013 978-0-7387-3261-9 Rileigh, or Senshi as she was once known, is a sassy high school girl in love with her boyfriend, Kim. It just so happens that her relationship with Kim has spanned 500 years—Rileigh is a powerful, reincarnated samurai warrior.

What begins as a date with the love of Rileigh’s many lives suddenly turns into a booty-kicking battle against ninjas. Next, Rileigh’s samurai nemesis, Whitley, whom she left for dead in the last book, Katana (2012), starts lurking around. Moreover, her friends seem to be in the grip of sinister mind control as Rileigh finds herself having to fight off surprise ninja attacks at every turn. But the real tragedy is that Kim suddenly dumps her for his thought-to-be-dead betrothed from the 1400s. Riding the subplot of teen romance, the story’s forward motion occasionally gets bogged down by repetition. Most interesting are the infrequent flashback chapters of Senshi in Japan when she’s on the verge of becoming a 15th-century courtesan. Eventually, the mastermind behind the havoc is discovered, and Rileigh |

must join forces with friends she thought foes and foes she thought friends in order to destroy the villain and save her life and her love.

Never terribly fraught or demanding, but with a twisty plot and death-defying action, this romance delivers teen yearning with martial arts kicks. (Paranormal romance. 12 & up)

HEART OF GLASS

Gould, Sasha Delacorte (336 pp.) $17.99 | $9.99 e-book | $20.99 PLB Mar. 12, 2013 978-0-385-74152-1 978-0-375-98541-6 e-book 978-0-375-99008-3 PLB After solving her sister’s murder in Cross My Heart (2012), 16-year-old Laura once again becomes perilously implicated in the secrets and scandals of 16th-century Venice when her fiance is accused of murder.

Laura’s blissfully betrothed to the doge’s handsome son Roberto. As a member of the Segreta, a clandestine society of upper-class women who trade secrets to protect Venice, Laura’s given her first solo assignment. The same night, an unidentified woman is murdered in Roberto’s rooms, leading to his arrest.

Convinced Roberto’s innocent, Laura seeks help from the Segreta, but she finds herself distracted by the attentions of rakish Prince Halim, who’s heading a diplomatic mission from Turkey. When Halim identifies the murdered woman as his sister and threatens to attack Venice unless Roberto dies, the doge’s rivals seize power. As Laura works to save both Roberto and Venice, she discovers a link among the murder, Halim’s visit, Venice’s political takeover and a vengeful plot by an old enemy determined to punish Laura and the Segreta. Once again, feisty, fearless, feminist Laura narrates her story in the present tense, giving it a breathless pace, nail-biting excitement and female insight as she sashays along the canals and corridors and through the slums and palaces of Venice, unraveling secrets and breaking hearts.

Romance, revenge, treachery and intrigue. (Historical fiction. 12 & up)

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FORCE OUT

Green, Tim Harper/HarperCollins (288 pp.) $16.99 | $9.99 e-book | Mar. 5, 2013 978-0-06-208959-5 978-0-06-208961-8 e-book Two sixth-grade Little Leaguers and best buddies find their friendship tested on and off the diamond.

Zach is Joey’s best buddy on and off |

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Traveling to the Inventive Land of Hokey Pokey b y

Hokey Pokey

Spinelli, Jerry Knopf (272 pp.) $15.99 Jan. 8th, 2013 9780375831980

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g r e a r s on

“In a sense, Hokey Pokey began with my longtime desire to write a science fiction book,” says Newbery Medalist Jerry Spinelli. The author, who has an abiding interest in astronomy and nuclear physics, says he’d been making notes on an idea for weeks, trying to “scratch this science fiction itch,” but kept getting bogged down. Then one day, he says, “I found myself just veering to the left and writing pretty much the words that you see now on the first page.”

Though this “practically unconscious musedonated first page” surprised him, looking back, Spinelli suspects he was already at work on Hokey Pokey without knowing it. He’d overheard a little girl at one of his events ask her dad, “what does tomorrow mean?” and marveled at being so young that the future was an unfamiliar concept, a reminder that “our more adult-centric idea of the linear day-to-day nature of time is not necessarily a given.” The familiar phrase that kids “live in their own little world” began to make a kind of conceptual sense to him.

What if, Spinelli mused, childhood was an actual place? And what if he could depict the bittersweet passage out of that place not in a time span encompassing years, but just a single day?

Plotting such a work seems daunting, but Spinelli says that he followed his usual creative process, trusting the story to tell him how to proceed.

“The story,” he says, recalling the words of Madeleine L’Engle, “knows more than the writer.

So the question becomes how to execute the idea in the best way that I can.” Spinelli says he likes to “take an idea out to lunch” and interview it. “ ‘What makes you tick? Where do you want to go? How can I best dramatize you?’ When an idea gives me answers, I am on my way.”

In this case, the way led to the land of Hokey Pokey, a dreamy, dusty Old West–style world where bikes roam the hills like wild ponies and children hoprock, sneakerski and dropflop from one completely absorbing activity to another from jubilant dawn to tuckered-out dusk, with adult voices removed to a low rumble like distant thunder.

Here, main character Jack and his beloved bike Scramjet rule the world of youngsters–until something nearly imperceptible starts happening.

The book’s inventive language (Kirkus noted its “stunning turns of phrase”) creates a poetic intensity that captures the vivid experiences of childhood and artfully pinpoints the moment things begin to change. Spinelli says one “source point” of the particular style he uses, though he’s not sure everyone will recognize it for that, is the old florid melodramatic language of the ’20s and ’30s pulps. “That felt like the right fit, invoking that style.” |

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The physical landscape of Hokey Pokey can be easily traced to his hometown of Norristown, Pa. (to which the book is dedicated). “For the writer who wants to write about childhood, you’ve already got the resources–they’re called memories.” Spinelli says Hokey Pokey “resembles an area in the West End, beyond the dead end of George Street with its train tracks and red hills and creek and where, in fact, many decades before there was a pony in the back field….That pony became a herd of bikes in this storyteller’s lopsided head.” Scramjet is based on Spinelli’s own beloved Roadmaster bike, a favorite Christmas gift that he “lived on for five years” and still thinks of as, “love, leaning on a kickstand.” And the Hokey Pokey man, the only “materially present” adult in the story, who appears once a day to grant children an ice treat in any flavor imaginable? “That’s a description of the guy… who pulled his cart by hand all around town,” Spinelli says. “He offered us this treat we would now call snow cones…it just felt right to bring him back to make an appearance once a day.”

When asked about the book’s ideal reader, Spinelli says he is never overly concerned with writing for a particular audience. His allegiance is to the story, to its best execution. “I hope it will in time (that word again!) find a happy audience, and that readers, enough of them, will be patient enough to see what’s there.” After all, though the book’s premise is fanciful, Spinelli believes he’s left enough “crumbs on the trail” (a map of Hokey Pokey, definitions, section titles) to orient the reader to the story’s wildly imaginative landscape.

“I set my book like a bowl of milk on the edge of the porch and then walk away,” he explains. “I don’t stand there and call the cats. I go back in the house and see who comes to drink.”

A review of Hokey Pokey appeared in the December 1, 2012 issue of Kirkus Reviews on p. 2726.

9 Jessie C. Grearson is a freelance writer and writing teacher living in Falmouth, Maine. She has co-authored two books and is a graduate of The Iowa Writer’s Workshop.

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the baseball field, so when Zach needs to get out of a science field trip that’s scheduled on the same day as the Little League championship game, the sixth-graders are in it together. But their scheme comes back to haunt them when Zach makes the all-star team instead of Joey, and Joey has to wonder whether he might have won the spot if Zach had gone on the field trip.

A cute girl might like only one boy, too. Though Green is no stylist, he does a better job of avoiding the sports fantasy and sticking to real life than usual. There’s plenty of play-by-play for those who want the sports to be the focus, but the interactions off the field are never shortchanged. For example, Joey has an obnoxious younger brother, his parents don’t always agree, and he learns that trying to dance to a fast song can be as embarrassing as your first almost-kiss.

A slice of life for middle school readers who know that their sport is a microcosm of the larger world. (Fiction. 9-13)

NOWHERE TO RUN

Griffin, Claire J. Namelos (111 pp.) $18.95 | Mar. 1, 2013 978-1-60898-144-1

From the first taut page, it’s clear that this isn’t going to be a happy story.

Calvin, a senior and track star at a Washington, D.C., public high school, has gone to confront Norris, a thug who’s trying to extort protection money from Calvin’s mom. Confident that he can outrun Norris, he hasn’t given the potential outcome enough thought, a mistake Calvin often makes. He’s only saved from violence when his best friend, Deej, comes to his rescue. The deal Deej makes with Norris will come back to haunt Calvin: Norris now “owns” the runner’s knees. The threat is implicit—if Calvin doesn’t cooperate, Norris will destroy his running career. Calvin is aided by his strongly supportive mother and his longtime employer, Albert, both of whom provide powerful, much-needed guidance. He also gains strength from his quietly depicted developing relationship with Junior, a fine student from a supportive family. But as Deej makes increasingly bad decisions, it seems likely Calvin, ever loyal and too often a pawn, will be dragged down with him. The deliberately ambiguous conclusion will leave engrossed readers weighing Calvin’s options and making their own hard decisions for him. Dialogue, situations, relationships and issues all ring pitch perfectly but ever so discouragingly true.

This brief debut packs a serious punch and will leave readers stunned with Calvin’s grim options. (Fiction. 12 & up)

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ARIOL Just a Donkey like You and Me Guibert, Emmanuel Illus. by Boutavant, Marc Papercutz (124 pp.) $12.99 paper | Feb. 19, 2013 978-1-59707-399-8 Series: Ariol, 1

Scenes from the life of a middle-grade Everydonkey.

Aside from a few tears after being suddenly struck by the expressions “dumbass” and “dumb as a donkey” (his mother gently joshes him out of his funk), Ariol travels a relatively gentle emotional landscape in this series opener. Giggle-inducing episodes usually involve Ariol’s friend Ramono the pig, who sets off a nose-to-nose, no-hands game of “pass the tissue” at school and later brings fake vomit on a class outing (“My dad had bought it to play a joke on my mom, before their divorce”). Other experiences range from providing commentary for a triumphant tennis match against illusory opponent Stevie McFailure to cutting up in gym and, in the finale, suffering a nightmare in which he has to choose between class crush Petula the cow or becoming an interstellar knight with beloved equine superhero Thunder Horse. Boutavant arranges the all-animal cast in large sequential panels that never look crowded even when the dialogue balloons multiply.

Definitely on the Wimpy Kid bandwagon, but less vicious with the satire and therefore all the more welcome.

(Graphic novel. 8-10)

BRAMBLE AND MAGGIE GIVE AND TAKE

Haas, Jessie Illus. by Friend, Alison Candlewick (48 pp.) $14.99 | Apr. 9, 2013 978-0-7636-5021-6

This delightful first chapter book improves upon its predecessor (Bramble and Maggie, 2012) from the same author/ illustrator pair.

Bramble, an opinionated mare, isn’t about to be taken advantage of. For instance, she knows all about rides: “The rider sat in the saddle. The horse did all the hard work.” Young Maggie, as always, has Bramble’s number, and with a little judicious bribery (give-and-take, thinks Bramble), they are soon having adventures together, Maggie in the saddle, Bramble content.

But with Maggie at school and her parents working all day, Bramble feels lonely. She copes by harassing their neighbor, Mr. Dingle, whose beloved garden is threatened both by Bramble and by his own recalcitrant hen. Mr. Dingle thinks he has a solution—revealed only in the illustrations—and with a little more give-and-take, everyone is happy. Haas combines realistic horse adventures and grade school pony love like no one else. Bramble

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“Simple sentences and single-word captions propel the action through crunching and munching to the abrupt, explosive but ultimately happy ending (which will undoubtedly seem especially hilarious to preschoolers schooled in polite behavior).” from dino bites

is sassy but never scary; Maggie persistent and cheerful, but not all-knowing. Friend’s enticing gouache illustrations appear on every page, a help to children just moving into longer books.

Young readers will eat it up. (Fiction. 5-8)

DINO BITES!

Hall, Algy Craig Illus. by Hall, Algy Craig Boxer/Sterling (32 pp.) $16.95 | Mar. 5, 2013 978-1-907967-50-4 More of a snack than a full-course meal, this brief, briskly-paced adventure will nonetheless capture the attention of the very youngest dinosaur fans—and give the adults reading aloud a good giggle too.

Cartoon-style illustrations of three kinds of dinosaurs and a dragonflylike insect gallop, dart and swoop in a primitive portrait of a basic food chain that quickly pivots to become a prehistoric take on the old lady who swallowed a fly. A great, green T. Rex looks forward to gobbling a smaller, purple-plated dinosaur. Meanwhile the purple-plated dinosaur plans to snack on a little blue guy who’s busy chasing that big bug. Simple sentences and single-word captions propel the action through crunching and munching to the abrupt, explosive but ultimately happy ending (which will undoubtedly seem especially hilarious to preschoolers schooled in polite behavior). Broad humor may distract readers from the cleverness of the text, which features amusing internal rhymes and parallel sentences that punch up the joke. Variations in font mirror the differences between the characters, heavy black outlines make the creatures pop against brightly colored pages, and the simply drawn eyes and mouths are remarkably expressive.

This may be slight, but it’s also tasty fun that goes down easily and is sure to provoke demands for seconds (and thirds and…). (Picture book. 3-5)

LAST CUT

Handman, Wren Lorimer Press (144 pp.) $16.95 | $9.95 paper | $8.95 e-book Apr. 1, 2013 978-1-4594-0188-4 978-1-4594-0187-7 paper 978-1-4594-0189 e-book A short but gritty story finds a teen stymied by her relentless pursuit of her dream.

Seventeen-year-old Caitlin desperately wants to be an actress, defying her parents to skip three weeks of school when she’s cast in a real movie. That means she’ll have to give up what she’s sure will be the lead in her high school production of West Side Story, while a bright and talented 100

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new girl both gets the part and befriends Caitlin’s neglected best friends. She also won’t be able to spend quality time with her boyfriend, Mark, as he pursues his music career. Caitlin pours out lie upon lie to deceive her parents, who forbid her to take the movie job. The production schedule is so heavy that Caitlin finds she can’t keep up with her homework, and when the director bullies her into doing a topless scene, she keeps it secret from everyone. Mark gets a real chance in his music career, but Caitlin remains too consumed with her own difficulties to notice. Finally, everything falls into chaos. Handman chooses a subject sure to attract her target audience and guides them into their own realizations about Caitlin and what happens when fantasy meets reality. Her characterizations ring true, adding even more punch to this alluring character study and morality tale.

Short but punchy and highly effective. (Fiction. 12 & up)

IT’S MONDAY, MRS. JOLLY BONES!

Hanson, Warren Illus. by Tusa, Tricia Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster (32 pp.) $16.99 | Mar. 19, 2013 978-1-4424-1229-3 Mrs. Jolly Bones has a chore for every day of the week…but readers can be sure they’ve never done chores quite the way she does.

“It’s Monday, Mrs. Jolly Bones. / There’s laundry to be done. // So gather up the dirty clothes / and sort them, one by one. // Wash them, / dry them, / iron them, / and fold them nice and neat. / Then fling them out the window… // so they brighten up the street!” Tuesday is gardening day—Mrs. Jolly Bones takes care of her balcony garden…and then “polka[s] through the posy patch” with brio. Cleaning the house is on the docket for Wednesday, finishing with a bath in a most unusual place.

Thursday’s shopping day—quite a list!—while Friday is for baking. Saturday’s for play, er wrestling, and Sunday is a day to rest.

Tusa’s watercolor-and-ink illustrations are largely grayscale with splashes of pastel-colored highlights. While Mrs. Jolly Bones’ approach calls for energetic illustration, the busy spreads are perhaps too chaotic, and small things get lost on the pages. This is a shame, as the small things add so much delight: Mrs. Jolly Bones has a menagerie of animals that surround/help her.

Amelia Bedelia may come to mind, but Mrs. Jolly Bones’ unconventional behavior reflects her originality and flair rather than a lack of intelligence; would that more people flaunt their individuality…but maybe not in the toilet. (Picture book. 3-6)

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HOMO

Harris, Michael Lorimer Press (144 pp.) $16.95 | $9.95 paper | $8.95 e-book Mar. 1, 2013 978-1-4594-0192-1 978-1-4594-0191-4 paper 978-1-4594-0193-8 e-book Out of the closet and into a relationship.

Closeted wallflower Will knows he’s gay, but no one else does until he’s outed by a Facebook post written by a classmate at his small-town Canadian high school. Still, Will doesn’t dive headfirst into the world of gay right off. His first foray is a trip to the gayborhoods of Vancouver, where he visits a coffee shop. He refrains from the dating scene until he creates a profile on an online gay social network (a thinly disguised Manhunt.net). There he meets Riley, a 23-year-old realtor. The two connect: Riley teaches Will how to swim and how to party, and soon Will finds himself enveloped in his world. Things go awry, however, with Riley’s ill-timed revelation of a secret. Harris’ work swiftly explores coming out and gay culture in an unflinching way that may be refreshing to readers who’ve grown tired of the chaste, heavyhanded LGBT novels of the past few years. He packs in lots of raw language and scenes, including one in which Will loses his virginity. The Boys in the Band and other emblems of gay culture run rampant. The only fault in the novel is its length; Harris creates several other intriguing secondary characters who could use more fleshing out, and the ending feels rushed.

An abbreviated coming-out story for the 21st-century teen. (Fiction. 14 & up)

A PERFECT HOME FOR A FAMILY

Harrison, David L. Illus. by Angaramo, Roberta Holiday House (32 pp.) $16.95 | Mar. 1, 2013 978-0-8234-2338-5

A raccoon couple searches for a new home in this amusing, succinct story with a plot that’s short enough for younger preschoolers and comical enough for older kids.

Mama Raccoon is anxious to find a new home before her twin babies arrive. Their old home in a hollow tree has become too noisy (baby blue jays) and crowded (a huge opossum family).

So with the help of a realtor, the raccoons investigate other possible homes, eventually moving to the attic of a house inhabited by a family with a crying baby and a barking dog. Mama is horrified by the noises below them, and the raccoons return to their original home in the hollow tree (conveniently vacated) just in time for the birth of their twins. The expertly paced text uses short, pithy phrases to tell the tale, with brief dialogue conveyed |

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in humorous, deadpan style. The front cover shows the grinning raccoon family inviting readers into the story, and the large trim size and cheerful, bright illustrations in double-page-spread format make this a fine choice for reading aloud to a group.

A fresh take on the familiar theme: “There’s no place like home.” (Picture book. 3-7)

MONEY RUN

Heath, Jack Scholastic (256 pp.) $17.99 | Mar. 1, 2013 978-0-545-51266-4 Ashley and Benjamin are two teen partners in crime—real crime, as in major heists—who rely on their youth to avoid suspicion.

A foiled attempt in the prologue makes it seem that they might be inept, but nothing could be further from the truth. Ash is the frontwoman, and shy retiring Benjamin stays connected from his home base, at all times advising, monitoring and supporting.

The advising part only happens when Ash lets him, as she has a tendency to act first and talk later. As for romance, there isn’t any, as each time Benjamin asks for a date, Ashley smilingly refuses. It’s part of their game. Their prey today happens to be a billionaire businessman who has sponsored an essay contest with a prize of $10,000 (Ash has won with an essay ghostwritten by Benjamin), but that’s peanuts compared to the $2 million they hope to loot. Like a good movie thriller, the caper includes a villain or two, a somewhat clueless cop and nonstop techno gadgets that make the derring-do possible. It is reminiscent of adventure movies also in that thinking is not only not required, it would hinder the fun. In particular, readers should not look for character depth, realistic settings or even any particular logic to be at work. It’s not that kind of book.

Take a deep breath, go with it, and never look back.

(Adventure. 10-16)

PENNY AND HER MARBLE

Henkes, Kevin Illus. by Henkes, Kevin Harper/HarperCollins (48 pp.) $12.99 | $13.89 PLB | Mar. 1, 2013 978-0-06-208203-9 978-0-06-208204-6 PLB Series: Penny, 3 Whose marble is it?

In this third early reader about a little anthropomorphic mouse named Penny, Henkes continues to plumb the emotional world of childhood as few author/illustrators can. The story begins with Penny taking a walk and pushing her beloved doll, Rose, in a stroller. She heeds Mama’s admonition that she “[o] |

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nly go as far as Mrs. Goodwin’s house,” and when she arrives there, she spies a shiny blue marble at the edge of the lawn.

Though unsure whether she should do so, Penny pockets the glinting little orb and scurries home. Later, Penny’s conscience bothers her, and the marble hidden in her drawer adopts a presence akin to Poe’s telltale heart. She can’t bring herself to tell her concerned parents what is bothering her, and after a fitful night’s sleep, she goes for another walk to return the marble.

Hoping to make a quick getaway after surreptitiously replacing it, Penny is worried when her neighbor approaches. Will Mrs. Goodwin be angry that she took the marble? As it turns out, Mrs. Goodwin purposefully put the marble on her lawn in the hope that someone would find it and take it home as a little treasure. Reassured, Penny thanks Mrs. Goodwin and walks home, imagining herself beside a sea as blue as her new marble.

Henkes’ characteristically meticulous vignettes both expand the story and provide picture clues to help new readers along.

Another gem. (Early reader. 5-8)

WILFRED

Higgins, Ryan Illus. by Higgins, Ryan Dial (32 pp.) $16.99 | Mar. 21, 2013 978-0-8037-3732-7 Wilfred is big. Wilfred is hairy. Wilfred is lonesome.

In this odd little story, Wilfred takes his big, hairy, lonely self to a nearby town where he hopes to make a friend. It turns out that the townspeople he encounters just happen to be bald: “They didn’t have a single hair on their heads. Not even the ladies.” Unfazed, Wilfred longs to join the bald children in their play, but all except one boy run away from him, and they end up having a great time together. Meanwhile, instead of maintaining fear of the giant, the other people take an interest in him since winter is coming and they want to take his hair to make wigs for themselves. They convince Wilfred he must shave himself in order to maintain his friendship—but now he is too cold to leave his cave. As the story twists and turns through its forced plotline, a now-hairless Wilfred ends up emerging as a hero when he rescues the little boy who initially befriended him.

In gratitude, the townspeople remove their wigs and sew them into a large, hairy suit for Wilfred to wear, accepting him into their community. The pen-and-ink illustrations with digital colorization have an appealing cartoonish quality to them, but they can’t make up for the lackluster story.

Other, stronger picture books about friendship abound.

(Picture book. 3-5)

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PRAIRIE CHICKEN LITTLE

Hopkins, Jackie Mims Illus. by Cole, Henry Peachtree (32 pp.) $15.95 | Mar. 1, 2013 978-1-56145-694-9

Mary McBlicken is one panicky prairie chicken.

While out on the grasslands one day, Mary the prairie chicken hears a terrible rumbling and grumbling. Sure it’s a stampede, she runs away lickety-split to warn Cowboy Stan and Red Dog Dan; they’ll know what to do. Along her pellmell flight, she meets in turn Jeffrey Snog the prairie dog, Beau Grabbit the jackrabbit and June Spark the meadowlark, and Mary succeeds in freaking them all out. Everyone runs until they meet Slim Brody the coyote. He says he knows a shortcut to the ranch. A few quick turns lead to a suspicious-looking tunnel. The friends know something’s up, and their squawking attack brings Cowboy Stan and Red Dog Dan running. The two (horse and Chihuahua) chase away that nasty coyote …and the whole crew discover what the rumbling and grumbling really was: Mary’s stomach! It’s supper time. Hopkins’ prairie take on “Chicken Little” is made storytime perfect by Cole’s characteristically hysterical, watercolor-and–colored-pencil cartoons of goggle-eyed critters. It’s also a nice twist that Mary and her friends save themselves from the coyote rather than ending up as lunch or requiring outside assistance. The prairie animals (some not mentioned in the text) make this a nice addition to cross-curricular libraries, though it’s too bad there is no additional information as a backmatter bonus.

Nevertheless, good fun to share in a lap or with a group.

(Picture book. 3-7)

I WILL KEEP YOU SAFE AND SOUND

Houran, Lori Haskins Illus. by Brown, Petra Scholastic (32 pp.) $16.99 | Mar. 1, 2013 978-0-545-19751-9

Spare text in rhyming couplets and a soothing refrain provide young readers with a cozy glimpse of animal babies and their parents enjoying their natural habitats.

Houran chooses language that describes the scene in a succinct but quiet manner: “Gators in the shade / While the sun burns high / Squirrels in the log / While the hawk sails by / Dolphins in the cove / While the wild waves pound / I will keep you safe and sound.” Brown bears, rabbits, robins, beavers and ponies complete the cast of creatures featured in Brown’s soft-hued watercolor, gouache and pencil illustrations. Each spread features a full-bleed picture on the left paired with a spot illustration and the text on the right. Only the ending offers a slight break from this pattern as a lost kitten (after a slightly dramatic page turn) quickly reunites with its mother under the glowing full moon. The design and flow seem best suited for the very kirkus.com

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“...the dangers and the realities of war are always tangible in this fine novel.” from hero on a bicycle

young—the most likely audience to be charmed by the singsong cadence and the relative sweetness of the title.

Though well-intentioned and decently executed, nothing new or exciting lies within. (Picture book. 1-4)

HERO ON A BICYCLE

Hughes, Shirley Candlewick (224 pp.) $15.99 | Apr. 23, 2013 978-0-7636-6037-6

Thirteen-year-old Paolo Crivelli dreams of being a hero in Nazi-occupied Florence.

It’s a tricky business living in an occupied city. The Allies are advancing from the south, Paolo’s father is missing (thought to be fighting for the Partisans), and the Crivelli family is caught between the Nazi occupiers and the sometimes ruthless Partisans. This first novel by acclaimed children’s picture-book writer and illustrator Hughes expertly captures the tension in the Crivelli home, as Rosemary tries to raise her two children and keep them safe while covertly supporting the Partisan cause. Not so easy with a son like Paolo, who risks sneaking out at night on his bicycle, looking for his own way to be a hero for the cause. There are plenty of heroes here, as layers of resistance to the Nazis are carefully delineated—the obvious bold resistance of the Partisans in the countryside, Rosemary’s agreement to house escaped prisoners of war in her cellar, a lifesaving tip from the captain of the local military police and even a sympathetic member of the Gestapo who conveniently finds nothing when searching the Crivellis’ cellar. The townspeople, a dog and even Paolo’s bicycle play a role in the resistance movement, though the dangers and the realities of war are always tangible in this fine novel.

A superb historical thriller. (Historical fiction. 10-14)

THE GIRL WITH A BRAVE HEART

Jahanforuz, Rita Illus. by Mintzi, Vali Barefoot (40 pp.) $16.99 | $7.99 paper | Mar. 1, 2013 978-1-84686-929-7 978-1-84686-931-0 paper A girl who is beautiful within becomes beautiful without, but her mean stepsister cannot follow her path.

An Iranian-born author uses a “Toads and Diamonds” base for her original tale. Shiraz, Cinderella-like when her father dies after marrying a woman with a daughter, goes to find a red ball of yarn (left by her own mother) when it blows into a strange neighbor’s garden. She meets an old woman, who, curiously, asks Shiraz to further destroy the neglected house and garden, |

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and then to cut her tangled hair short, but the compassionate girl disobeys and makes everything perfect. The old lady gives her the wool and directs her to bathe in two pools. When Shiraz returns, her stepfamily is amazed by her beauty. The stepmother insists that Monir visit the woman, but the stepsister cannot muster Shiraz’s goodness. She follows the instructions literally and destroys everything. After greedily immersing herself in the pools more times than directed, she comes home bedraggled and ugly. Mother and daughter demand to understand this very different result, and Shiraz reveals her secret.

The gouache paintings with their bold color blocks and scribbly lines provide a picture of a timeless Tehran and a girl who is a whirlwind of energy.

Despite a little too much emphasis on its moral, a satisfying story of just rewards for just actions. (Picture book. 6-9)

THE RED RUBY

Jakobsen, Lars Illus. by Jakobsen, Lars Graphic Universe (48 pp.) $6.95 paper | $20.95 e-book $27.93 PLB | Mar. 1, 2013 978-1-4677-0729-9 978-1-4677-0976-7 e-book 978-0-7613-7914-0 PLB Series: Mortensen’s Escapades, 3 A quirky little Danish graphic-novel import doesn’t quite deliver the goods.

From first glance, the premise of this third volume is extremely intriguing: A debonair time traveler in search of a purloined gem travels between the 19th and 20th centuries, landing in the midst of history—and on the Titanic. Mortensen, the tuxedoed time traveler, is in search of the Red Ruby, a rare and priceless piece thought to be cursed. Along the way, he engages in exciting chases through Versailles, brushes with gangsters and murderers, and many games of chess. Jakobsen’s narrative is disjointed and jumpy, though, and even readers paying close attention can get confused about when and where they are within the story; this seems a silly flaw for a graphic work, which could easily use its visual stylings to locate readers.

Though recommended by the publisher for a middle-grade audience, it would be difficult to find a readership in that age range: This would be better suited to a patient, older crowd who could enjoy the noirish feel. With a vague and disappointing ending that leads readers know where and without resolution in subsequent volumes, this episodic offering is wholly unsatisfying.

This ruby is definitely not a hidden gem. (historical notes) (Graphic adventure/science fiction. 13 & up)

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“Their love triangle, in a city with no gender-based limitations on romantic or sexual partnerships, is multifaceted, not the usual heroine-chooses-between-two-boys dynamic.” from the summer prince

THE SECRET MUMMY

Jakobsen, Lars Illus. by Jakobsen, Lars Graphic Universe (48 pp.) $6.95 paper | $20.95 e-book $27.93 PLB Mar. 1, 2013 978-1-4677-0730-5 978-1-4677-0977-4 e-book 978-0-7613-7915-7 PLB Series: Mortensen’s Escapades, 4 The jauntily scarved Mortensen returns in his fourth timebending adventure.

Mortensen, an agent dedicated to relentlessly fighting the ever-cresting wave of nefarious time-traveling criminals, now faces vampires in 19th-century Transylvania. Jumping uneasily through time from Prague to Transylvania to Bosnia and Paris, this wayward hero follows a creepy count thought to be a villainous vampire and the shadowy sarcophagus that seems tied to him. The threads in this offering—as in the previous volumes— are many, and readers familiar with them should be ready to apply the patience needed to slowly untangle the tenuous web.

Jakobsen’s art, utilizing a dark, earthy palette of muted tones, does help create moody atmospherics, a pleasant complement to the foreboding European backdrop. Historical notes provide some interesting background on the subjects covered, from the function of human kidneys (which do indeed play a vital role) to the Bosnian War to the history of Vlad the Impaler. A premise with promise falls short again, for this slim volume feels too crowded, packing in seemingly arbitrary historical events like sardines; a fatal flaw for this series as a whole.

A stronger story than its predecessor (The Red Ruby, 2013), but with so many other, excellent series to choose from, why bother starting with a fourth volume? (maps, historical notes) (Graphic science fiction/adventure. 13 & up)

THE SUMMER PRINCE

Johnson, Alaya Dawn Levine/Scholastic (304 pp.) $17.99 | $17.99 e-book | Mar. 1, 2013 978-0-545-41779-2 978-0-545-52077-5 e-book An art project, a rebellion and a sacrifice make up this nuanced, original cyberpunk adventure.

June, 17, remembers the last sacrifice of the Summer King, nine years before.

In a future Brazil, after climate change, wars, natural disasters and plague have devastated the world, Palmares Três is a peaceful and just city, technologically supported with holos, nanohooks and bots. Beneath the city’s glittering facade, however, there’s another reality. Youth is stifled while the governing Aunties keep Palmares Três static in a class-stratified society centuries behind the rest of the developed world. June and best friend Gil, both relatively privileged artists, happily spend their spring 104

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dancing, creating public art and voting for the newest Summer King to be sacrificed for the city’s prosperity after a year. When gorgeous, dark-skinned Enki is elected, both June and Gil fall for him—but it’s Gil he takes as a lover, and June he takes as an artistic collaborator. Their love triangle, in a city with no gender-based limitations on romantic or sexual partnerships, is multifaceted, not the usual heroine-chooses-between-twoboys dynamic. As the trio dances—often literally—around one another, June must negotiate between the extremes of stasis and post-humanism, learn to see beyond herself, discover the meaning of integrity, and maybe even save her rotten-at-thecore and best-beloved city.

Luminous. (Science fiction. 14-18)

LOTTIE PARIS AND THE BEST PLACE

Johnson, Angela Illus. by Fischer, Scott M. Simon & Schuster (32 pp.) $16.99 | Mar. 5, 2013 978-0-689-87378-2 Librarians get out your order pads; this picture-book homage to libraries is a charmer.

Lottie Paris’ dad takes her to the library, where she looks for books on planets and stars. Carl’s sister drives him to the library, where he finds dinosaur books. For both, the library is “the best place in the world.” Lottie Paris knows the rules: no dogs, no yelling, no coloring on the pages. Carl knows not to blow bubbles in front of the librarian, not to eat yogurt or to read books under the table while pretending people’s feet are dinosaur snacks. Naturally, Lottie Paris and Carl meet when they are looking for their favorite books and discover that not only is the library the best place to find books, it’s also the best place to be friends. The mixed-media illustrations (gouache, linocuts, stamping and airbrush) inject exuberance into the simple storyline. Carl is redheaded and freckle-faced, and Lottie Paris is African-American with a brown Afro. The scenes extend off the pages, drawing attention to the details that embellish the text.

Bound to be a favorite for storytimes, classroom sharing and pre-library visits. After all, libraries are the best place. (Picture book. 5-8)

RED HAT

Judge, Lita Illus. by Judge, Lita Atheneum (40 pp.) $16.99 | Mar. 5, 2012 978-1-4424-4232-0 One red hat plus a troop of enthusiastic animals equals trouble!

Young fans will love reading and rereading this nearly wordless continuation of the adventure of the hat from Judge’s marvelous winter tale, Red Sled (2011). It’s spring-cleaning time now, kirkus.com

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so the child washes the red hat and hangs it out to dry. Yellow flowers are blooming, little bunnies are hopping, butterflies are flittering, and the sun is shining. When the critters spy the hat pinned to the line, the cub speaks for everyone: “Hrmmm?”

At first, an energetic game of keep-away breaks out, with the accompanying sounds and exclamations of pursuit and merriment. Readers will feel the thrill of the game until the illustrations show that things might have gotten out of control. The expressive words—Whoa, shwooop, eeeeeeeeeeeeep—become Wutwhoa and Uhmm-mrr, signaling the animals’ realization that the hat is now just one long red strand of yarn with a white pompom on the end. Readers will laugh out loud at the caption when the guilty animals shuffle away from the clothesline, whistling innocently: “Doot-do-doo.” Luckily, the little child is a clever one, able to make everything better than before. The watercolorand-pencil illustrations are deceptively simple and strike the perfect chord of energy and emotion that is the definition of a curious and accidentally naughty preschooler.

Crossing fingers for more seasonal “red” tales. (Picture book. 2-7)

BOT WARS

Kade, J.V. Dial (368 pp.) $16.99 | Mar. 21, 2013 978-0-8037-3860-7 The Bot Wars are over, but the robot menace still exists…or does it?

Twelve-year-old Trout St. Kroix has been living with his one-legged brother Po for two years, ever since their father went MIA. Trout hasn’t given up hope, and he hatches a plan to get their story on the Net with classmate Tellie Rix’s help. The video-message upload has unintended consequences. Trout finds himself on the run with a robot headed for the robot territories, while forces within the District government capture Po. Unbeknownst to Trout, their father is leader of the Meta-Rise, a robot equal rights movement started in the wake of the wars. Learning why his father kept so many secrets is just the beginning of Trout’s story, and he’s out to prove himself his father’s son. Kade (who has just released Altered, also 2013, under the name Jennifer Rush) manages to be both naïve and condescending in this short-on-thrills adventure.

Set in a future that is as laughable as it is improbable, the tale features lame slang that wears thin early on and “science” that is more convenient to the tale than accurate. The characters are flat, and the prose is replete with awkward and unintentionally funny similes. SF-starved readers should look elsewhere.

Sequels are promised…few will be waiting for them.

(Science fiction. 9-12)

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THINGS I CAN’T FORGET

Kenneally, Miranda Sourcebooks Fire (320 pp.) $9.99 paper | Mar. 1, 2013 978-1-4022-7190-8 Series: Hundred Oaks, 3

A struggle for self-identity forms the core of this crowded novel, the latest entry in Kenneally’s Hundred Oaks series.

Kate is spending her summer working as a counselor at a church-run camp. She’s still reeling from her decision to help her best friend Emily get an abortion and hopes that in the mountains of Tennessee, she will get a sign that God forgives her. With a camp director who singles her out unfairly, counselors who don’t act very Christian in Kate’s judgmental opinion and the end of her friendship with Emily, there’s only one thing that’s going right: Kate’s blossoming relationship with Matt, the boy who gave Kate her first kiss years ago at camp. Matt is charming, sweet and clearly crazy about her. But the way Matt makes Kate feel contradicts everything she’s learned in church. If Kate wants to have friends and love, she’ll have to decide what she believes. Kate’s sheltered worldview is well-drawn, and the hesitant first steps on her spiritual journey are handled sensitively. There are more characters than necessary, especially with characters from Kenneally’s other books making appearances, as well as too many issues, such as abortion, parental abuse and gay relationships, giving the story a kitchen-sink feel.

That said, Kate’s growth will keep readers, Christian or otherwise, reading. (Fiction. 14 & up)

MOUNTAINS BEYOND MOUNTAINS The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World

Kidder, Tracy Delacorte (228 pp.) $16.99 | $11.99 e-book | $19.99 PLB Apr. 9, 2013 978-0-385-74318-1 978-0-307-98088-5 e-book 978-0-375-99099-1 PLB The story of a doctor’s quest to heal the sick in a poor Haitian community and beyond.

Dr. Paul Farmer is one of those characters the world could use a few more of, which is why it is great to have this book to put in as many young hands as possible. He saw something his conscience simply could not abide—the medical neglect of poor people—and then went and did something about it, setting up a clinic to serve the medical needs of an impoverished Haitian neighborhood. But he is everywhere else as well, from Peru to Russia, a powerhouse for medical good. He has a wonderful way |

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of screwing down on some of the worst behaviors of humanity— how we habituate ourselves to the misery of others, the absurd self-regard of the medical profession—while (mostly) not coming across as churlish or self-righteous. French has done a fine job of adapting Kidder’s book for young readers, almost invisibly tinkering with the original storytelling while not dodging any of Farmer’s obsessive characteristics or forceful arguments.

The power of the story, of the need to just get things done since there are always resources to tap if the cause is just, pours forth as Kidder intended.

An important story that feels like it breathes a dose of virtuous oxygen right into readers’ heads. (Nonfiction. 12-16)

SAM AND CHARLIE (AND SAM TOO!)

Kimmelman, Leslie Illus. by Tambellini, Stefano Whitman (48 pp.) $13.99 | Mar. 1, 2013 978-0-8075-7213-9

Not even the worthy subject matter can overcome the herky-jerky writing in this rare glimpse into everyday Jewish life.

Over four short chapters, a boy and a girl become good friends in spite of misunderstandings. When Sam overhears that the new kid next door is named Charlie, he’s initially thrilled to find a playmate. To his surprise, he discovers that both Charlie and her little sister Sam (or “Sam Too”) are girls.

That makes little difference, though, since Charlie’s a stellar buddy. The chapter on “Sharing” tests that new friendship when both Sam and Charlie crave the last prune hamentaschen. They’re closer after Sam aims to cheer up Charlie on “Sick Day,” but “The Bad Haircut” undoes that good with a callous comment.

Finally on “I’m Sorry Day,” aka Yom Kippur, the two apologize, and hilarity ensues. The text’s level of difficulty is ideal for the emerging reader taking baby steps into chapter books, but even the great subject matter (the everyday lives of Jewish kids) can’t make up for abrupt transitions between those chapters, lines like “Friendship is the best medicine,” and odd lessons on losing on purpose to keep a friendship going. Tambellini’s illustrations complement the action beautifully but cannot save the weak writing.

Nevertheless, it fills a gap in the marketplace, hopefully paving the way for stronger fare. (Early reader. 6-8)

999 FROGS WAKE UP

Kimura, Ken Illus. by Murakami, Yasunari NorthSouth (48 pp.) $17.95 | Mar. 1, 2013 978-0-7358-4108-6

The froglets who once were 999 Tadpoles (2011) wake from hibernation for an 106

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eventful spring.

First, big brother oversleeps. Then, the band of brothers and sisters set out to wake others to enjoy the season and the cherry blossoms. They rouse turtle, then lizard and then a mass of ladybugs. But, oh-oh, the next creature is a big red snake.

This sequel is just as child friendly as its predecessor—simple and satisfying. Artful page turns add suspense even before the scary snake wakes up. The story moves along briskly, carried in dialogue as well as narrative. Mother Frog saves the day, and the turtle, grateful at being awoken in time for spring, removes the threat. Murakami’s yellow-eyed frogs are surprisingly expressive.

Gray-spotted shapes of green against a clean white background, they bounce across the pages, sometimes standing around in a group and sometimes scurrying off. When big brother recognizes the snake, his little pink mouth widens into a terrified grimace. Brown Mother Frog is different in color and size. Big brother is larger, too. The other 998 are largely indistinguishable. Murakami’s landscape is only suggested; the imagination supplies the details.

Like its predecessor, this Japanese import is an excellent storytime choice. (Picture book. 3-7)

HOLLYWOOD, DEAD AHEAD

Klise, Kate Illus. by Klise, M. Sarah Harcourt (144 pp.) $15.99 | Apr. 2, 2013 978-0-547-85283-6 Series: 43 Old Cemetery Road, 5

This fifth hilarious excursion to Seymour Hope’s address in Ghastly, Ill., takes the little, idiosyncratic family to Hollywood when an unscrupulous movie mogul decides to film their stories.

Young Seymour and ghost Olive can’t wait to become movie stars, while crotchety Ignatius remains cautious. Pushed into it by majority rule, Ignatius signs the lengthy contract, only to learn later that he has signed away all rights to the trio’s books, past and future, for no compensation whatsoever. When they arrive in Hollywood, everything goes wrong. Ignatius becomes consumed with his image makeover, especially his new teeth.

Seymour auditions to play himself in the movie and wins the part, but Olive fumes because the movie company ignores her (she is invisible, after all). They find an ally in Ivana Oscar, the 92-year-old former star tapped to play Olive when Ivana learns that her contract demands her death in order to boost profits for the film. As always, the comedy depends on deliberately awful puns, especially in the characters’ names, such as Moe Block Busters, Hugh Briss and Phillip D. Rubbish. M. Sarah Klise’s exuberant drawings contribute half of the book’s content. Kate Klise delivers the text in the form of letters, memos and newspaper articles, with humor stuffed into every corner.

Another winner for this inventive series. (Humor. 8-12)

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“Mallory’s appealing, sarcasm-tinged first-person narrative voice sculpts a likable teen mildly reminiscent of Louise Rennison’s Georgia Nicolson.” from going vintage

AWESOME ADVENTURES AT THE SMITHSONIAN The Official Kids Guide to the Smithsonian Institution Korrell, Emily B. Smithsonian Books (128 pp.) $14.95 paper | Mar. 12, 2013 978-1-58834-349-9 The

Smithsonian—it

isn’t

GOING VINTAGE

just

rocket science.

This spiral-bound guide is a modestly hefty piece of work, but that is due to the fact that we often forget that the Smithsonian isn’t just where they store the Spirit of Saint Louis and the lunar module. It is also home of the national museums of natural history and American history, as well as the air and space museum. And the collections are, in a word, spectacular. Korrell has a good mix going, with plenty of archival and contemporary photographs and illustrations accompanied by punchy text.

Both Korrell and museum professionals have contributed the latter, with only a little oversimplification—“Geology is about understanding what we see around us.” It is predominantly straightforward—a good combination of earnest and bouncy— with bracing touches of humor: “Robotic spacecraft aren’t as particular as human space explorers…they do what they are asked to do without grumbling.” Always, Korrell keeps readers engaged with some simple quizzes—you can write right in the “guide”—and hide-and-seek games that challenge readers to find various objects somewhere in the rooms, as well as other activities.

A serious introduction to the national museums that does not take itself too seriously. (Nonfiction. 8-12)

THE ANGRY LITTLE KNIGHT

Langen, Annette Illus. by Gehrmann, Katja NorthSouth (32 pp.) $17.95 | Apr. 1, 2013 978-0-7358-4110-9

An insubstantial offering about a young knight who finds real adventure better than make-believe.

Young Sir Henry Oliver Theodor Herbert Egbert Albert Dewinterbottom, commonly known as Sir Hothead, is a little noble who takes great pleasure in poking things—mostly inanimate ones—with his considerable collection of swords, lances, spears, halberds, what-have-you. He slashes and reams his various targets with abandon and would be content to for quite some time, until he hears the dragon’s roar echoing through the forest: It’s time for true engagement. He has a mildly comical joust with the baby beast, cures its hiccups and gets covered with soot. All good fun; all rather unabsorbing. There is no quickening of the blood as Hothead races across the drawbridge, no worry about the damage the dragon might inflict. Benign is the word, not only in the story, but in the artwork as well, which, |

except for the dragon, has a palette as personality-free as frosting without food coloring. And the lesson here of trial by fire and finding friendship is perhaps too thin to discover in the story, even ironically.

Evaporates nearly as completely as the smoke from a dragon’s breath. (Picture book. 4-8)

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Leavitt, Lindsey Bloomsbury (320 pp.) $16.99 | Mar. 19, 2013 978-1-59990-787-1

After discovering her boyfriend has a serious online relationship with another girl, Mallory very publicly dumps him on his social media site.

She complicates the situation by deciding to try to fulfill a to-do list her grandmother crafted at the beginning of her junior year of high school in 1962, a time Mallory thinks must have been much simpler than today. That means giving up the 21st-century technology she’s accustomed to relying on—going vintage—and also becoming secretary of the pep club (that doesn’t exist), sewing a dress for homecoming (she doesn’t sew) and finding a steady boyfriend, among other challenges. She’s aided by her loyal younger sister, Ginnie, and the growing affection of her ex’s cousin, charming Oliver. Adding another level of concern to Mallory’s bumpy ride is Ginnie’s conviction that their shallow though earnest mother is having an affair and her misguided efforts to fix their parents’ marriage. Mallory’s appealing, sarcasm-tinged first-person narrative voice sculpts a likable teen mildly reminiscent of Louise Rennison’s Georgia Nicolson.

Although a far-too-convenient event proves Mallory was wrong about her grandmother’s simpler life, that fails to derail an otherwise admirable look at the advantages, and the downsides, of modern technology—and serious relationships.

A funny and even thoughtful look at boyfriends, high school angst and the importance of finding oneself. (Fiction.

11-16)

THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF JACK LIME

Leck, James Kids Can (160 pp.) $16.95 | $8.95 paper | Apr. 1, 2013 978-1-55453-364-0 978-1-55453-365-7 paper

More high school noir, centered on a humorless amateur gumshoe for whom a punch in the nose is all in a day’s work.

Jack’s face is still damaged after the capers in the previous casebook (The Adventures of Jack Lime, 2010). It takes further poundings as he tails the boyfriend of |

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“Long contrasts the bright daytime farm scenes with the deepest darks of night to heighten the drama, for Otis must first cope with his own fear of the dark before rescuing his friend.” from otis and the puppy

a slinky classmate to a forbidden dodgeball game run by local gangbangers and shortly afterward is pressed into service to recover a stolen comic by a punk collector with a violent temper. Being slower on the uptake than he should be, he is also repeatedly framed by a smooth operator—to the point that the school’s football team is treating him like a pinball in the halls and Principal Snit is on the verge of expelling him for good. Surrounded by a typical teen crowd of molls, geeks, plug uglies and people who are smarter than he is, Jack nonetheless manages to hold his own thanks to relentless focus, a sharp eye for clues and the occasional flash of insight. By the end, more than one murky scheme has been exposed, though a wild twist signals that Jack’s labors aren’t over yet. Jack’s advanced age notwithstanding, this is just the ticket for upper-elementary and middle school mystery lovers.

A winning formula, replete with wince-worthy contretemps reported in properly poker-faced prose. (Mystery.

10-12)

FACE BUG

Lewis, J. Patrick Illus. by Murphy, Kelly Photos by Siskind, Frederick B. Wordsong/Boyds Mills (36 pp.) $16.95 | Mar. 1, 2013 978-1-59078-925-4 For kids who love bugs! Gruesome but fascinating photomicrographs of 14 different bugs are the focus of this unusual science book that combines poetry, line drawings and scientific facts to bring bugs alive for curious children.

The bad puns flow relentlessly as a collection of small bugs, illustrated in rather dated-looking black-and-white line, visits the Face Bug Museum, where they learn to drill like a carpenter bee, experience the stinkbug’s stench, sip on nectar at the snack bar and measure the speed of the green darner dragonfly. The insects on display at the “museum”—the hickory horned devil, goldenrod stowaway moth, praying mantis and other exotica— are portrayed in superb, full-color micrographs by renowned nature photographer Siskind. The large close-up of the “Clydesdale of all flies,” the American horsefly, is particularly impressive. Humorous poems by U.S. Poet Laureate Lewis describe each insect; of the dogday harvestfly cicada, he writes, “What?!

Two faces / On this mutt? / Creepy. Never / Mind his butt.” Four pages of backmatter give the insects the opportunity to “narrate” a little more information about themselves. The insect jokes keep going all the way to the author bios, so determined is the book to remain light and accessible.

The attempt to present science in a humorous way is a well-meaning one, but the effect seems rather lame for today’s visually sophisticated kids and might work better as an app than a book. (Picture book/poetry. 6-10)

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WE GIVE A SQUID A WEDGIE

London, C. Alexander Illus. by Duddle, Jonny Philomel (384 pp.) $7.99 paper | Apr. 3, 2013 978-0-399-25609-7 Series: Accidental Adventure, 3

Celia and Oliver are beginning to wonder if destiny will ever stop lobbing accidental adventures their way.

On New Year’s Eve, 11 (and 1/2)–yearold twins Celia and Oliver Navel want what they always want: to sit in front of their new cable TV and eat snack cakes…but both their parents are world-renowned explorers. In fact they live on the 4 1/2th floor of the Explorer’s Club, and they have to attend the Club’s New Year’s Gala. When a squid attack (don’t ask) brings an abrupt end to the festivities, they return home to find ichthyologist Chris Stickles waiting with a message from their (intermittently) missing mother: She needs their help to find Plato’s map and maybe Atlantis, and maybe the Lost Library of Alexandria. Thankfully (well, not in the twins’ opinion) teen heartthrob Corey Brandt is there to offer his boat for the expedition. The reluctant adventurers are off again on a wedgie- and Pirate Chicken (err, Rooster)–filled quest. London’s third in the series does not let up on the Saturday-morning-cartoon goofiness, and the sibling rivalry heats up a bit, too. Duddle’s occasional black-and-white illustrations are a plus in this openended romp that will definitely satisfy fans.

High-seas hijinks with more laughs (and groans and squids) than adventure. (Humor. 9-12)

OTIS AND THE PUPPY

Long, Loren Illus. by Long, Loren Philomel (40 pp.) $17.99 | Mar. 12, 2013 978-0-399-25469-7

Lovable Otis the tractor is back for a third adventure, in which he overcomes his fear to help out a new canine friend.

Otis and his animal buddies, including the calf and bull from previous titles, play hide-and-seek after working on the farm. With a “one-putt, two-puff, three-puttedy four-chuff,” Otis begins his turn as “it,” which he especially likes. One day, the farmer brings an adorable young pup to the farm, and he immediately wins the hearts of all with his wriggling and wagging and an abundance of wet kisses. But after night falls, the puppy whimpers when he is left alone in his very dark doghouse outside the barn. Otis invites him inside to sleep next to him, and a special friendship forms. The story takes a turn when the puppy, instead of hiding as he is supposed to, gets distracted.

In this spread, Long separates the text from what he depicts in the classic-feeling illustrations in gouache and pencil. While the language describes Otis discovering his friends in their kirkus.com

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silly hiding places—bull is “behind a lone dandelion”—a series of spot images shows the pup following a butterfly until he becomes hopelessly lost in the dark forest. Long contrasts the bright daytime farm scenes with the deepest darks of night to heighten the drama, for Otis must first cope with his own fear of the dark before rescuing his friend.

Fans of Otis will not be disappointed with the satisfying ending that results in a creative solution and a most happy reunion. Seek this out—“game on!” (Picture book. 4-7)

PTEROSAUR TROUBLE

Loxton, Daniel Illus. by Loxton, Daniel; Smith, Jim W.W. Kids Can (32 pp.) $16.95 | Apr. 1, 2013 978-1-55453-632-0 Series: Tales of Prehistoric Life, 2 A fishy breakfast almost turns fatal for huge, winged Quetzalcoatlus—the Spruce Goose of the Late Cretaceous.

Inspired by the recent discovery of a fossil bone of the immense pterosaur (probably the largest flying creature who has ever lived, the author notes) scored with small tooth marks, the episode pairs a sketchy plot with eye-widening illustrations.

Quetzalcoatlus lands by a stream and is attacked by a pack of needle-toothed raptor Saurornitholestes as a herd of Triceratops looks on in alarm. Placed in lifelike poses in front of or, in the better-fashioned scenes, within modern landscape photos, the prehistoric creatures sport feathers, wrinkles, teeth and scales that are all rendered with hyper-realistic clarity and sharpness.

Despite the ferocity of the attack and references to bites and slashing claws, there is no blood or explicit violence to be seen, though extreme close-ups and low angles of view artfully capture the incident’s drama as well as Quetzalcoatlus’ awesome size.

Dino devotees may be disappointed by the lack of a bibliography, but they will devour this eye candy with relish. (afterword) (Picture book. 6-9)

PIECES

Lynch, Chris Simon & Schuster (176 pp.) $16.99 | Mar. 5, 2013 978-1-4169-2703-7 A teenage boy seeks connections with the people who received his beloved brother’s donated organs in this darkly humorous novel by the author of Inexcusable (2005).

A year after his 20-year-old brother Duane died in a diving accident, 18-year-old Eric still can’t seem to move forward. In an attempt to keep the “nothingness that is filling the Duane space” from taking hold, he reaches out to three of the donors who received his brother’s “pieces.” After |

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meeting shy, redheaded Phil, brassy Barry and sweet single mom Melinda, Eric finds himself constantly asking the questions, “Who are these people? Who are they, to me? Who am I, to them?” Duane’s outspoken and softhearted ex-girlfriend Martha dispenses advice and comic relief as Eric puzzles out the answers and tries not to fall for beautiful Melinda, who is eight years his senior. As these unusual relationships take root, Eric realizes that what the donors are to him is a freshly minted family that helps ease the pain of the one that he lost. Each character springs fully formed off the page, and Lynch’s irreverent, inventive dialogue crackles, turning what could have easily been a maudlin soap opera into a sharply observed story of real human connection. Readers will be pleasantly reminded of the snarky stylings of John Green and Ned Vizzini.

Exceptional. (Fiction. 12 & up)

WHICH IS ROUND? WHICH IS BIGGER?

Mamada, Mineko Illus. by Mamada, Mineko Kids Can (24 pp.) $16.95 | Mar. 1, 2013 978-1-55453-973-4

Playful or confusing? The illustrations by Japanese designer Mamada in this comparisons book are charmingly naïve, but their conceptual twists tend to beg more questions than they answer.

The premise is that nothing is as it appears. An apple is round until it is half-eaten; a pangolin, while not normally round like an apple, becomes round when it curls into a ball. A duck is bigger than a small peacock—until the peacock is in full display mode. The cat is higher up the tree than the mouse—until the tree bends and the cat is lower. This could lead to an interesting discussion with a 3-year-old—or could cause endless confusion, especially since some of the concepts are not really accurate. A snake is still longer than an ant, even when many ants form a long line. In one spread, “Which one is faster,” a dog beats the snail walking up the hill, but the snail rolls down the hill faster than the dog can walk. The response might challenge the reasoning abilities of even the smartest 2- to 4-year-olds and lead to a sense of dissatisfaction. Used in an elementary classroom, however, it could prompt fruitful discussion.

Ultimately, the book presents concepts that are too mature for its apparent age group to grasp without guidance. (Picture book. 4-6)

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FREE BOY A True Story of Slave and Master McConaghy, Lorraine; Bentley, Judy Univ. of Washington (104 pp.) $18.95 paper | Feb. 1, 2013 978-0-295-99271-6

Shedding light on a truly obscure historical incident, a hybrid account of “the first, last, and only known fugitive slave to travel the tiny Puget Sound Under-

ground Railroad.”

A single-passenger “Underground Railroad” isn’t the only reach here. Filling in a scanty documentary record with substantial amounts of invented dialogue (“I don’ wanna leave here.

Why I gotta go?”), imputed actions and outright speculation, the authors present a double portrait: of James Tilton, surveyor general of Washington Territory, and of Charlie Mitchell, a mixed-race child in Tilton’s household who may well have been the Territory’s only enslaved person. Born on a failed Maryland plantation around 1847 and taken by Tilton as a favor to a relative, Mitchell arrived in Olympia in 1855—not so far from Victoria (a boomtown on the southern tip of Vancouver Island) and freedom. In 1860, he fled to Canada, sparked a kerfuffle recorded in court documents and newspaper articles, and then, aside from a few tantalizing census records, dropped from history. Along with a broad analysis of Tilton’s typically (for his class and times) paternalistic racial and political views, the authors fill in the blanks with details of his experiences as a soldier in the Mexican War and later (futile) attempts to run for office.

They also include references to larger events, the area’s general history and its loose community of free African-Americans.

An intriguing piece of scholarship, despite the unnecessary inventions (and lack of footnotes). (afterword, bibliography) (Fiction/Nonfiction blend. 11-14)

JANE AUSTEN GOES TO HOLLYWOOD McDonald, Abby Candlewick (336 pp.) $17.99 | Apr. 9, 2013 978-0-7636-5508-2

This modernization of Sense and Sensibility follows the classic book’s basic plot, with the action set mostly in today’s Hollywood.

Grace is steady and hopes for a career in science; Hallie’s determined to become an actress and routinely gives in to her volcanic emotions. Their father has just died without a will, leaving the girls’ socialite stepmother in complete control of the considerable fortune. She cuts the family off without a penny. The girls and their impractical artist mother move into the guesthouse owned by their TV–movie producer cousin in Beverly Hills. By then, sensible Grace has 110

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fallen for her stepmother’s brother, now out of reach at Stanford. Emotional Hallie meets musician Dakota and falls massively, almost catastrophically in love. McDonald’s update to Austen’s plot works. Broken into five parts, the story alternates between Grace and Hallie as lead characters. Readers can laugh at Hallie’s excesses and despair at Grace’s reticence, but both characters come across as admirable in the end.

Readers familiar with the original will enjoy seeing McDonald’s spin, and those who are not will get the benefit of the tried-and-true plot all the same. (Romance. 12 & up)

LULU AND THE DOG FROM THE SEA

McKay, Hilary Illus. by Lamont, Priscilla Whitman (112 pp.) $13.99 | Mar. 1, 2013 978-0-8075-4820-2 Series: Lulu, 2

Lulu and Mellie, 7-year-old cousins and best friends, share a summer outing with lots of doggy goodness.

The cottage by the sea is not exactly what Lulu’s parents had envisioned—it is rather far from the beach, there are only two cups and two glasses, and the caretaker is grumpy and warns them about a stray, savage dog. The girls, however, are delighted, especially when Lulu, who loves animals, spots a very unkempt dog. Restaurant folk and the ice-cream-stand people know about the dog, too. Soon readers meet him, and they learn that he was born behind the Golden Lotus restaurant, that his mother and sisters were taken by the dogcatcher, and that he survives by stealing from picnics and garbage cans and by avoiding grown-ups. Lulu has brought Sam, her elderly dog, on vacation, too, but that does not stop her from finding ways of feeding and encouraging the stray “dog from the sea.” When the kite that has been Mellie’s vacation project leads the girls out at dawn and into some difficulty, it is the dog from the sea who overcomes his fear of adults and leads them to the lost and frightened girls. Thus, Lulu’s menagerie grows as the vacation week ends, and two dogs come home.

Whether they live with dogs or not, readers will absorb some truths about family vacations and the true care of animal companions in the company of Lulu and Mellie, who are as utterly charming and as completely age 7 as possible. (Fiction. 7-9)

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“Amusing illustrations rely on precise ink outlines with watercolor and gouache washes to give Snippet, his family and his insect pals a comic charm.” from snippet the early riser

AND RED GALOSHES A Story About a Rainy Day Millard, Glenda Illus. by Bentley, Jonathan Little Hare/Trafalgar (24 pp.) $16.99 | Mar. 1, 2013 978-1921541469

SNIPPET THE EARLY RISER

A pair of bright red galoshes inspire a small girl and her little brother’s entertainment on a windy, rainy day.

The palette is pale and muted (except for those cherry red overshoes) and the line simple, with lots of white space, as the two children toss leaves, almost lose their kite and use their umbrella as a boat after the rain starts. Occasional adults similarly float by, with properly adult accoutrements like a briefcase or a cane, in their own upside-down umbrellas. Each rhymed phrase ends in the title: “splishing, sploshing, soggy washing… and red galoshes. / Mudpies and moats, umbrella-boats…and red galoshes.” The galoshes serve as paddles, as ballast, even as a place for the dog to sit, and readers discover it is grandma’s red galoshes that the children have admired and so utilized. At the end, “A warm feather bed, two sleepy heads…and red galoshes” find children tucked into bed, the dog asleep at its foot and the galoshes under the mattress just waiting for the next adventure.

First published in Australia in 2011, this import’s gentle whimsy should find a warm welcome on these shores. (Picture book. 4-7)

MARCO IMPOSSIBLE

Moskowitz, Hannah Roaring Brook (256 pp.) $15.99 | Mar. 19, 2013 978-1-59643-721-0

Moskowitz (Gone, Gone, Gone, 2012, etc.) again explores the experiences of a gay teen, in this humorous take on a teenage rite of passage—the prom—but with a twist.

Eighth-graders Stephen and Marco long have been best friends. Marco, a happily out gay kid, is small and bullied; Stephen sees himself as Marco’s protector. The boys fancy themselves crime solvers; they uncovered Stephen’s father’s infidelity, leading to his divorce. Now they plan one more caper before middle school ends: crashing the senior prom so Marco can announce from the stage his crush on exchange student Benji, bass player in the prom band. The story, told in Stephen’s voice, focuses primarily on their harrowing yet hilarious attempt to get to the prom, complete with bus disasters, tux problems and getting beat up. Also uncovered is the boys’ complicated friendship as they wrestle with fears of separation and of growing up at different paces. While best friends argue, this relationship seems too dysfunctional to believe, though. As a victim of hate crimes, Marco elicits empathy, but it’s confusing that sweet Stephen would continue to be friends with such an obnoxious, self-centered kid—he’s as “impossible” |

as the title states.

A less-insufferable protagonist and more-likely friendship would strengthen this gay-boy prom story. (Fiction.

11-14)

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Murguia, Bethanie Deeney Illus. by Murguia, Bethanie Deeney Knopf (40 pp.) $15.99 | Mar. 12, 2013 978-1-582-46460-2

A little snail takes drastic measures to get his mother, father and sister to wake up earlier in the morning.

Just an “ordinary snail” who likes to draw on the sidewalk, create leaf sculptures, play soccer and take piggyback rides, Snippet’s definitely an early riser. Unfortunately, his mother, father and sister love “to snooze all morning” and barely stir when Snippet tries knocking, hollering and turning on the shower to wake them and relieve his boredom. Grasshopper suggests jumping on the bed. Cricket suggests chirping. Ant suggests pushing everyone out of bed. Firefly suggests flashing his light. Stinkbug offers to roust them with his stench. Snippet desperately tries it all (almost—he wisely rejects Stinkbug’s idea). Nothing works until Snippet finds a creative solution to lure his family to the breakfast table. Amusing illustrations rely on precise ink outlines with watercolor and gouache washes to give Snippet, his family and his insect pals a comic charm. Readers view Snippet from a bug’s-eye perspective as he ingeniously works to wake up the sleepyheads. Lighthearted endpapers introduce facts about snails critical to the storyline: They sleep a lot, wake slowly, pull up to 200 times their weight, enjoy piggyback rides and have eyes in different locations.

Early risers will identify with Snippet’s dilemma. (Picture book. 2-6)

THE CARE & KEEPING OF YOU 2 The Body Book for Older Girls

Natterson, Cara Illus. by Masse, Josée American Girl (103 pp.) $12.99 paper | Mar. 1, 2013 978-1-60958-042-1

A straightforward explanation of growth and changes in puberty aimed at girls approaching their teens.

A pediatrician who also serves as an online expert for several parenting sites offers sensible descriptions of and answers to common questions about body basics, physical, emotional and mental changes, and relationships with family and friends in this latest self-help title from the American Girl group. The target audience for this follow-up to The Care & Keeping of You |

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“Worldbuilding is critical at the beginning of a series, and this world is close enough to Earth for new readers to identify with but alien enough to keep their attention.” from hello nebulon!

(1998) is clearly the upper end of the company’s publishing focus (ages 8-12), but the information provided about puberty is generally similar to that in the previous title, which covered girls’ good health more broadly. There are clear instructions for breast self-examination and for inserting a tampon. (Shaving one’s legs and determining bra size return from the earlier book.) The text does not include sexual feelings among its set of physical and emotional changes. In the diagram of the vagina, the clitoris is shown but not labeled. Parents will be particularly pleased by the author’s repeated reminder that parental rules rule. Preteen readers will appreciate the positive, personal tone.

Sure to be welcomed, and especially useful for families and collections where the more explicit It’s So Amazing, by Robie Harris and illustrated by Michael Emberley (1999) would be unacceptable. (Nonfiction. 9-12)

STRANDS OF BRONZE AND GOLD

Nickerson, Jane Knopf (352 pp.) $16.99 | $10.99 e-book | $19.99 PLB Mar. 12, 2013 978-0-307-97598-0 978-0-307-97606-2 e-book 978-0-375-97118-1 PLB A bloodless retelling of the Bluebeard tale finds its setting in antebellum

Mississippi.

When her father dies, 17-year-old Sophia is taken in by her godfather, the mysterious Bernard de Cressac. Sophie soon finds out that not only is her guardian a widower, but there have been three wives before the last. Wyndriven Abbey had been brought over, stone by stone, from France and rebuilt and added to, and it has a full complement of British, Chinese and French servants and plantation slaves. Sophie is first charmed, then puzzled, then frightened by Monsieur Bernard, who is mercurial in his moods and unyielding in his demands. Sophie is plucky and occasionally wise, but she also has a foil and a hope in the local minister, and she finds strength in prayer. Nickerson describes clothing, architecture, woods and gardens in lovely detail, but even though Sophie tells her tale in the first person, there is no depth or nuance. Indeed, for a story with murders, attempted rape and slave-beating, no sense of horror or fear comes off the page, nor does any sort of erotic tension or longing. The language is modern for so old a story, although the slaves and free blacks take their dialogue directly from Joel Chandler’s Uncle Remus: “Laws-a-mercy yes. I loves company!

Have a blessed day.” The end is both predictable and partakes of a distressing white-savior mentality.

Skip it. (Historical fantasy/fairy tale. 14-18)

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FOREST, WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE?

O’Garden, Irene Illus. by Schories, Pat Holiday House (32 pp.) $16.95 | Mar. 1, 2013 978-0-8234-2322-4

Performer and poet O’Garden’s jubilant dialogue between sweet-natured children and a personified forest offers an apt blend of lush imagery and bare-bones kid-ness, set to a read-aloud rhythm.

On the book’s final page, O’Garden’s author’s note explains how the idea for the book blossomed in Garrison, N.Y. “Gowned as Mother Nature, I asked each child to tell me how the forest might answer the question: Forest, what would you like? From their four hundred responses, to which I added answers of my own, I distilled a ten-page poem,” melding the voices of the children with her own. The effect is a seamless grassy green ribbon of fun with flora and fauna. “Forest, what would you like? / I would like friendship, fruit, song, / and all the spicy smells of Fall: / acorns, seeds, and crispy needles. / I would like my leaves to turn different colors / and a whole bunch of birds to fly through me.” Schories expertly captures the conversation between children and nature. She sets the forest scenes in large, full-bleed panels that occupy whole pages or most of a spread, representing the children’s voices with a multiethnic group of tots who populate the white space. A green-clad, elfin child personifies the forest, romping in the trees or sitting contemplatively by a wintry river.

It is poetry set to the life cycle of nature—through the words of children. (Picture book. 3-7)

HELLO NEBULON!

O’Ryan, Ray Illus. by Jack, Colin Little Simon/Simon & Schuster (128 pp.) $14.99 | $4.99 paper | Apr. 2, 2013 978-1-4424-5387-6 978-1-4424-5386-9 paper Series: Galaxy Zack, 1 Moving is always hard, especially if you are 8 years old and your new home is a new planet.

The year is 2120, and Zack Nelson and his twin sisters, Cathy and Charlotte, are moving to Nebulon. Zack will especially miss his dog Luna and friend Bert. Zack’s vivid fear of the future is explored in a dream sequence in which he imagines his new classmates to be monsters who eat bug-covered pizzas. The reality is quite different, and Zack ends up making a new friend on the first day. Worldbuilding is critical at the beginning of a series, and this world is close enough to Earth for new readers to identify with but alien enough to keep their attention. The cars are actually like tiny spaceships, and the houses are shiny white with rounded edges. Best of all is Ira, short for Indoor kirkus.com

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Robotic Assistant. Ira makes meals, provides wake-up music, adjusts the shower temperature and makes living on Nebulon pleasant for nervous Zack. More Jetsons than Star Trek, this light tale for new readers is illustrated in a cartoon style that allows readers to feel Zack’s pain but happily anticipate the strange new world ahead of him.

Zack feels like a new best friend, even if he lives light years away. (Science fiction. 5-9)

CHEESECAKE FOR SHAVUOT

Ofanansky, Allison Photos by Alpern, Eliyahu Kar-Ben (32 pp.) $15.95 | $8.95 paper | $6.95 e-book Mar. 1, 2013 978-0-7613-8126-6 978-1-4677-1411-2 paper 978-1-4677-0990-3 e-book

An appealing photo essay follows Israeli children as they work in their school garden and kitchen.

Color photographs, in close-up detail, capture a teacher and her middle-grade students as they plant wheat in the fall and watch it grow with the help of winter rains. In the spring, the grains are harvested, and the stalks are dried in the sun. Threshing, winnowing and grinding follow. The class brings the gleanings to a petting zoo and feeds them to some goats. They then use their wheat, along with cheese from goats’ milk, to prepare a cheesecake and decorate it with strawberries from the school garden. As explained in an afterword, the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, “weeks” in Hebrew, is celebrated in late May or early June as the time that Jews were given the Torah. The biblical story of Ruth (who gleaned wheat) is read at this time. And why a cheesecake? Shavuot is also a celebration of both the grain harvest and fruit harvest. In addition, mother goats have more milk in the spring, which makes eating dairy products a holiday tradition. Children who participate in community and/or school gardening projects will find kindred spirits and useful information here. Recipe included.

A holiday-cum-gardening-cum-food adventure in one neat package. (afterword) (Informational picture book. 4-8)

RISE AND SHINE A Challah-Day Tale

Ostrove, Karen Illus. by Scott, Kimberley Kar-Ben (24 pp.) $17.95 | $7.95 paper | $6.95 e-book Mar. 1, 2013 978-0-7613-7499-2 978-0-7613-7500-5 paperback 978-1-4677-0997-2 e-book

Sammy and Sophie’s dress-up playtime in the attic uncovers, in the pocket of an apron, a crumpled piece of paper with strange lettering. Interested in finding out about this “language from long, long ago,” the children bring it to their Grandma Gert, who lives at Shalom House and successfully explains that it belonged to her own Grandma Bess. It is indeed a family recipe that could easily be made today; the children, Grandma Gert and her fellow residents bake the challah in the communal kitchen. Cartoon illustrations created in pencil, pen and ink and finished with computer-aided design reveal the scheduled group-residence life of a great-grandparent crowd (exercise day includes bending, stretching and kvetching). A simple though cumbersome rhyming text narrates the tale, including the traditional weekly ritual of baking the bread with all the seniors in the galley. The intergenerational setting presents a not-oftenseen view of family involvement.

Children who visit their grandparents in senior housing may find this especially welcome. (recipe) (Picture book.

3-5)

BABY PARADE

O’Connell, Rebecca Illus. by Poole, Susie Whitman (24 pp.) $15.99 | Mar. 1, 2013 978-0-8075-0509-0 This story will make more than one child parade across the house.

It really ought to feel repetitive. Every page is phrased the same way: “Wave to the baby in the bright yellow backpack” or “Wave to the baby in the purple socks and purple sneakers.” Even the pictures look the same. Each face is an oval with two dots for eyes, like a child’s drawing. And yet, the babies look nothing alike. One child is about to stomp on his cupcake.

Another is methodically walking his toy duck. Every detail suggests an entire personality and family history. (It takes a daring parent to dress a baby in purple socks and purple sneakers.) A quick glance at the last few pages, with nearly a dozen babies parading across a lawn, might make a person think that Tolstoy was wrong: Every happy family is happy in its own way. It may be impossible for readers to walk down a busy street without thinking they are part of a parade after reading this book. The final pages of the book show the babies “[c]rawling,” “[s]tanding” and then “walking!” It feels like a real triumph.

This book is a great choice for anyone who’s ever felt like they deserved a parade. (Picture book. 1-5)

An old recipe written in Yiddish inspires a visit to the local Jewish senior residence to translate its directions for making challah. |

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OPERATION OLEANDER

Patterson, Valerie O. Clarion (192 pp.) $16.99 | Mar. 5, 2013 978-0-547-24437-2

Good intentions go horribly wrong when American soldiers dropping off donations at an Afghanistan orphanage are viciously attacked.

She was the one who organized the donation project, Operation Oleander, collecting money and school supplies on the Florida Army base where her family lives while her father is deployed to Afghanistan. With the somewhat reluctant help of the base commander’s son, Sam, and her best friend, Meriwether, she ran the volunteer operation. Jess’ father was seriously injured in the attack, but even worse, Meriwether’s mother was killed, along with several orphans. Now Jess has to deal with her own grief and concern over her father’s condition, as well as rejection by Meriwether, who blames her for what has happened. In her debut, Patterson uses attractively descriptive language to spin her tale; unfortunately, it often feels more like the author’s perspective than the authentic thoughts of this rising high school freshman: “My voice is tight, taut as Sam’s sailboat rope when the wind pushed the mainsail.” While other characters are largely predictable and lightly sketched, their shortcomings are less critical to the believability of the story than Jess’ imperfect inner voice, as she ultimately finds a way to cope with the tragedy.

Although it deals with an important topic, this effort fails to fully live up to its potential. (Fiction. 10-14)

THE BIG BAD WOLF GOES ON VACATION

Perret, Delphine Illus. by Perret, Delphine Sterling (64 pp.) $12.95 | Mar. 5, 2013 978-1-4027-8633-4

Bernard, the Big Bad Wolf who lives in Louis’ closet, is back (The Big Bad Wolf and Me, 2006). Huzzah!

Bernard is pretty much under control, and he’s even vegetarian (except for fish), so why shouldn’t he go on vacation with Louis and his grandpa? It’s not as easy as one might imagine.

Grandpa takes to the talking wolf quite easily, although Bernard hates pretending he’s a dog. He can’t help choose sandwiches, for example, since Louis is afraid the wolf will forget to walk on four legs and not to talk. “I am wounded by your lack of trust” says Bernard haughtily. They even argue over who will be first in the water (it turns out to be grandpa). Twelve chapters are done in comic-book style, with multiple squiggly sketches that seem artless but are vividly funny. Human figures are blue, the elongated and angular wolf is brown and solid (everyone else is linear), and the occasional crab or cow is done in rust or maroon.

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The language remains simple, accessible, charming and quite funny in this nifty follow-up.

Readers may find metaphors about imaginary friends, taming one’s fears or having special fun with grandparents, but mostly, they will go from giggles to guffaws with this disarming trio. (Graphic novel. 5-10)

LIFE AFTER THEFT

Pike, Aprilynne HarperTeen (352 pp.) $17.99 | $9.99 e-book | Apr. 30, 2013 978-0-06-199900-0 978-0-06-209934-1 e-book “There’s something about having a fight with a ghost that makes you paranoid in the morning.”

On his first day at an exclusive private high school in Santa Monica, freshman Jeff Clayson discovers that he is being stalked by the ghost of a former student who drowned two years earlier. Jeff can see and hear Kimberlee Schaffer loud and clear, but to everyone else she is invisible. Apart from disappearing through walls when it suits her, she behaves like any other kleptomaniac teenage brat. Kimberlee has a mission for Jeff. She wants him to help her atone for her past sins so that she can move on to the place with bright lights where she believes the peaceful dead end up. It takes Jeff a while to realize what a bizarre drama he has let himself get involved in. Finding the love of his dreams, who, it turns out, has played a significant role in Kimberlee’s criminal past, only complicates matters further. In a refreshing departure from her plant-based paranormal-romance series (Destined, 2012, etc.), Pike develops the pleasantly fractious relationship between Jeff and Kimberlee in Jeff ’s earthy, humorous first-person as he only initially reluctantly takes the high road to help her.

Aside from its heavenly premise, this brisk, down-toearth thriller should appeal equally to male and female readers. (Paranormal mystery. 12 & up)

A GIRL CALLED PROBLEM

Quirk, Katie Eerdmans (256 pp.) $8.00 paper | Apr. 1, 2013 978-0-8028-5404-9 Thirteen-year-old healer Shida (Swahili for “problem”) can’t save 6-year-old Furaha (“happiness”) from an untimely death in the Tanzanian village of Njia Panda that its inhabitants label cursed.

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“How does an exclamation mark learn his purpose?” from exclamation mark

beliefs. A budding healer, Shida is blamed for her father’s death, which occurred at Shida’s birth, and this weighs heavily on her. Since that time, her mother has wallowed in self-pity and refused to work. When President Nyerere asks Shida’s village to become a model of ujamaa (familyhood) for the country by moving to Njia Panda and farming communally, Shida eagerly anticipates what she has never had: an education and a nursing mentor. After the move, however, the cotton crop mysteriously fails overnight, the villagers’ prize possessions, their cattle, escape from their pens, and Furaha dies of fever. With the help of Shida and her cousin Grace, Babu, their grandfather and the village elder, unearths the truth. The novel offers a captivating introduction to Tanzanian life, culture and language (both Swahili and Sukuma), while the mystery of who has cast the “curse” keeps readers intrigued.

A mesmerizing read that expands young readers’ worldview even as the pages turn. (glossary, author’s note) (Historical fiction. 10-14)

MIRAGE

Reese, Jenn Candlewick (368 pp.) $16.99 | Mar. 12, 2013 978-0-7636-5418-4 Series: Above World, 2 In this sequel to Above World (2012), best friends Aluna and Hoku pursue their quest to prevent power-mad Karl Strand from controlling a futuristic world in which genetically modified races live in the oceans, skies and deserts.

Ocean-dwelling Kampii, Aluna and Hoku travel across the desert to Mirage with winged Calli and Dash, an exiled Equian, to warn Equian High Khan Onggur about Strand. They arrive too late. Onggur has allied with Strand, whose cunning clone daughter, Scorch, is now eager to eliminate Aluna, Hoku, Dash and Calli. Dash is condemned to death for breaching his exile, while Aluna, Calli and Hoku will be delivered to Scorch after the Thunder Trials unless they find a way to save Dash and thwart the alliance. Preparing to compete in the Trials, Aluna secretly worries about her legs, which are fusing into a Kampii tail, threatening her ability to fight on land. Ever resourceful, the companions use their differences to their advantage, allying with the half-snake Serpenti to form their own unique tribe.

A strong, seemingly indestructible warrior, Aluna discovers she must rely on her friends to survive as the battle to save Above World continues.

A powerful sequel with sustained themes of friendship and honor. (Science fiction. 10-14)

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THE ART OF WISHING

Ribar, Lindsay Dial (320 pp.) $17.99 | Mar. 21, 2013 978-0-8037-3827-0

The craze for paranormal romance has encompassed vampires, warlocks and werewolves, and now it moves on to a genie like no other.

Margo McKenna knows how good her audition for the lead in the school musical was; it was perfect. When she’s assigned a secondary role, she tries to overcome her disappointment and make the best of it, something she’s gotten used to at home as well as at school. It isn’t until she finds an old ring in the girls’ room and meets Oliver that she finds out that there’s real magic in today’s world. Determined to make the most of her three wishes, she takes her time, wanting to make wise decisions. But her genie is a genie on the run, and he needs her to hurry up before he is assassinated. As Margo gets to know Oliver better, she become even more hesitant to make her wishes, as completion of the third wish means Oliver will move on—and out of her life forever. The pressure is on. What is more magical: a genie’s power or true love? This lighthearted book is a well-rounded combination of humor, romance and paranormal suspense, with likable characters and easy-to-believe dialogue.

Though about as substantive as magical smoke, it makes for a pleasant afternoon read. (Paranormal romance.

12-16)

EXCLAMATION MARK

Rosenthal, Amy Krouse Illus. by Lichtenheld, Tom Scholastic (56 pp.) $17.99 | Mar. 1, 2013 978-0-545-43679-3

Punctuation with pizzazz.

How does an exclamation mark learn his purpose? Prereaders and readers alike will giggle and cheer to see the process. The setting is a warm yellowish beige background with a faint pulpy pattern and repeating horizontal lines with dotted lines halfway between them—penmanship paper. Each bold, black punctuation mark has a minimalist yet expressive face inside its circular dot. “He stood out,” explains the first page, as the titular protagonist looks on doubtfully. He tries hanging around with periods, but squishing his extension down into a spring doesn’t really work; even prostrate, “he just wasn’t like everyone else. Period.” (Hee! Rosenthal gleefully puns instead of naming any punctuation.) Mournful, “confused, flummoxed, and deflated,” the exclamation mark’s line tangles and flops.

Then someone unexpected arrives. “Hello? Who are you?” queries the newbie, jovially pummeling the exclamation mark with 17 manic inquiries at once. “Stop!” screams the exclamation mark in enormous, bumpy-edged letters—and there’s his |

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“James’ intense first-person narration, which includes imagined therapy sessions with a pigeon he calls Dr. Bird, both flares with frenetic silliness and sinks heavily into despair, realistically depicting his mood swings.” from a christmas goodnight

identity! The outburst’s anxious vibe dissipates immediately (and the question mark is undaunted by being yelled at). Finally, the protagonist has “[broken] free from a life sentence.” Snapping up usages that match his newfound personality, he zooms back to show the other punctuation marks. The zippy relationship between exclamation mark and question mark continues beyond the acknowledgements page.

Funny and spirited (and secretly educational, but nobody will notice). (Picture book. 4-8)

DR. BIRD’S ADVICE FOR SAD POETS

Roskos, Evan Houghton Mifflin (320 pp.) $16.99 | Mar. 5, 2013 978-0-547-92853-1

Self-deprecating humor abounds in this debut novel that pulls no punches about the experience of depression and anxiety for its teen protagonist.

The words of Walt Whitman provide solace for 16-year-old James, whose mental health struggles are exacerbated by living with abusive parents and agonizing over what he could have done differently to prevent his older sister, Jorie, from being thrown out of the house. James’ intense firstperson narration, which includes imagined therapy sessions with a pigeon he calls Dr. Bird, both flares with frenetic silliness and sinks heavily into despair, realistically depicting his mood swings. At times contemplating suicide, he’s aware of the gravity of his situation, even as his parents react with heartbreaking ambivalence: “Therapy isn’t what you need....You’re just at that age where you think everything is so horrible and terrible.” His self-awareness makes him an enormously sympathetic character. Readers will root for him to win over Beth, the editor of his school’s literary magazine, and forgive him for going over the top (“I know that they’re all just going to pretend like I’m not here trying to tear the walls down with my fucking barbaric yaawwwwwppppp!”) when he rages at a woman who has been carrying on an affair, with his best friend Derek, behind the back of her fiance.

Captivating introspection from a winning character.

(Fiction. 14 & up)

YUMMY! Good Food Makes Me Strong!

Rotner, Shelley; Kelly, Sheila M. Photos by Rotner, Shelley Holiday House (32 pp.) $16.95 | Mar. 1, 2013 978-0-8234-2426-9

U.S. Department of Agriculture also replaced the food pyramid with an initiative called MyPlate. This title aims to teach children to make healthy food choices based on these guidelines.

Kids pour their own milk, make their own shakes and crack eggs all by themselves. (Depicting solo use of blenders and knives, however, may cause concern for some.) With bold background colors, staged photographs of youngsters in every shape and skin tone cover the pages in a simple layout. The diversity of faces is the book’s strongest point. The text, however, cannot decide if the audience is children or their adults. Captions repeatedly exclaim, “Good food makes me strong!” while each sidebar provides a tip for caregivers. “Buy pastas that are high in protein, legumes, and multigrains.” Contradictorily, the photo shows both wheat and white pasta, while other pages clearly show white flour and rice choices. The endnote contains information on the five food groups, along with the link to the new MyPlate initiative.

Even with adorable children playing with healthy food, choose another for teaching the new dietary guidelines.

(Informational picture book. 3-6)

BEAR AND BEE

Ruzzier, Sergio Illus. by Ruzzier, Sergio Disney Hyperion (48 pp.) $14.99 | Mar. 19, 2013 978-1-4231-5957-5 When a bear wakes up hungry from his winter nap, a beehive and its honey seem to be the perfect answer to his problem—but what about the bee?

While Bear has never seen a bee, he knows they “are terrible monsters! They are big, and they have large teeth, and they have sharp claws, and they never share their honey!” He explains this to a nearby bee. (The “bees” Bear imagines are green alien-looking creatures sporting horns and curling proboscises.) But as Bee points out, one quality per spread, Bear shares all those characteristics with bees, at which point Bear dissolves into tears: He’s a bee! Bee quickly corrects Bear’s mistake and reveals what he is, lack of teeth and claws and all. And as for sharing honey…he is happy to. Short sentences with simple vocabulary and lots of repetition make this a good choice for beginning readers, who can use the illustrations’ clues to puzzle out more challenging words. Front endpapers and the dedication and copyright pages make a pleasing visual beginning to this story. Best of all, Ruzzier’s pacing is impeccable, adding to the suspense of Bear’s discovery and the sweet start of the duo’s friendship. The digitally colored pen-and-ink illustrations are simple and uncluttered, keeping the focus on the two expressive friends and making this a great choice for sharing with groups.

The correction of misconceptions has never been so much fun. (Picture book. 2-5)

A photo essay depicts children preparing and eating healthy food.

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NUGGET AND FANG Friends Forever—or Snack Time?

Sauer, Tammi Illus. by Slack, Michael Harcourt (40 pp.) $16.99 | Mar. 19, 2013 978-0-547-85285-0

Nugget, aptly named, is a tiny minnow, and Fang (even more aptly named) is a shark. One can already begin to predict the conflict.

In the beginning, however, Nugget and Fang are oblivious to societal norms. All they know is that they have fun together.

What could be wrong with that? But when Nugget starts school, he learns the truth about sharks…in every single lesson. Sauer slyly slips shark warnings into reading, science and even math class: “What if there were ten minnows and a shark came along and ate four of them? How many minnows are left?” Nugget is dumbfounded. Fang would never do that. Would he? It all comes down to the ultimate lesson: “Sharks are toothy. Sharks are scary. Sharks and minnows can’t be friends.” Fang—who normally has the biggest, goofiest grin on his face—slumps in dejection. He must, somehow, get his best buddy back. Slack’s bright undersea world, teeming with a variety of creatures, is an ideal backdrop for these two googly-eyed swimmers.

Not the first interspecies friendship tale (and likely not the last), but it’s darn near impossible to resist such an earnest, toothy hero. (Picture book. 3-6)

100 ANIMALS ON PARADE!

Sebe, Masayuki Illus. by Sebe, Masayuki Kids Can (24 pp.) $16.95 | Mar. 1, 2013 978-1-55453-871-3

Make that over 500 animals—and practice aplenty both in counting and in spotting tiny details.

A bear band, armies of “Piggy Chefs” and carpenter beetles, a rabbit circus and a flight of birds march single file in succession along a winding path as other creatures look on. Each troupe or group is 100 strong, and each (except for the birds, which are relatively generic) is composed of small, smiling, brightly colored cartoon figures bearing different instruments, dishes, tools or other distinguishing items. Sebe slips in comical byplay to track and also adds lines of parade chatter and captions that invite viewers to keep count. They are challenged to look for “girl bears” (presumably the marchers with the long eyelashes), the bear carrying the piano, a piggy that loves carrots, a can of blue paint and dozens of like features. Not all 100 of each creature appear on any one spread; instead, they snake along over page turns. The challenge is mitigated by occasional place-holding markers and a declaration on the part of the last of each animal of its kind that it’s bringing up the rear. At the |

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end, the author crams all of the marchers into a teeming spread with a handful of new objects to pick out.

Sexist note aside, it’s a delight for children with obsessive tendencies…and even those with shorter attention spans may find it hard to put down. (Picture book. 4-6)

WHO PUT THE COOKIES IN THE COOKIE JAR?

Shannon, George Illus. by Paschkis, Julie Henry Holt (32 pp.) $16.99 | Mar. 5, 2013 978-0-8050-9197-7

Shannon and Paschkis provide a charming multicultural answer to the title question, creating in the process a confection that, while it may be most appreciated by socially conscious adults, will tempt young appetites as well.

The brief text is composed of rhyming couplets that appear as two phrases on facing pages or as several short sentences across multiple pages or double-page spreads. The actions described may be quite different, but many of the simple sentences start the same way, keeping the focus squarely on the workers and their contributions: “Hands that make the cookie sheet”; “Hands that feed and milk the cow.” While some of the locations may seem exotic, the mother and child busy baking in their cozy kitchen will be familiar to many young readers.

Paschkis’ folk-art–inspired gouache illustrations suit the simple language and the sentiment conveyed perfectly. Brightly colored, graphically appealing cookies on the cover invite readers to sample the story within, while the repeating motifs of sunshine, flowers, birds and butterflies that decorate the cookie jar appear again dancing in the blue sky and decorating the fertile land. Shannon ends with a recipe for sugar cookies, just in case readers are inspired to bake a few themselves.

Purposive but pleasing, this gentle lesson in diversity, diligence and the dignity of hard work offers an appealing balance of art and information. (Picture book. 5-9)

STARSTRUCK

Shukert, Rachel Delacorte (352 pp.) $17.99 | $10.99 e-book | $20.99 PLB Mar. 12, 2013 978-0-385-74108-8 978-0-375-98425-9 e-book 978-0-375-98984-1 PLB Intrigue and ingénues abound in this delightfully frothy period drama.

Teeny-bopper Margo Sterling (born into Pasadena society as Margaret Frobisher) spends her days mooning over Hollywood’s A-list celebs until a chance encounter at a soda fountain starts her whirlwind transformation |

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into Tinsel Town’s new it girl. Along the way, she meets Gabby Preston, a former child actress who will do whatever it takes to get the role of her dreams, and Amanda Faraday, a gorgeous, up-and-coming actress who wants to escape her shadowy past and find true love. But in 1930s Hollywood, secrets run deeper than the pockets of the studio executives, and nothing is what it appears to be. Shukert’s foray into the teen market is well-plotted and carefully nuanced; historical details are crisp and vivid without being too obtuse; the narrative is tight and masterful, mixing just the right amount of cattiness and salaciousness with secrets that reveal themselves one after another. The result is a compulsively readable piece sure to appeal to fans of Anna Godbersen and Judy Blundell. Though there is no mention of a sequel, some plot threads are left swinging like the fringe on a flapper’s gown: Expect readers to clamor for more.

Historical fiction that’s both smart and sassy. (Historical fiction. 13 & up)

UNDER SHIFTING GLASS

Singer, Nicky Chronicle (320 pp.) $16.99 | Mar. 1, 2013 978-1-4521-0921-3

Jess Walton witnesses life, death and seemingly magical events in this slowmoving novel that’s light on plot but heavy with philosophy.

After her great-aunt Edie dies, Jess inherits a bureau full of secrets. Though Jess had hoped for Edie’s piano so she could lose herself in music, when she discovers a glass flask hidden in the bureau, she takes it as an omen for her new baby brothers’ birth. Clem and Richie are conjoined twins, and Jess believes that the flask holds a spirit that will allow her to control the boys’ fates. With her mother and stepfather at the hospital, her grandmother mourning Edie’s death and her irritatingly exuberant friend Zoe preoccupied by a boy, Jess drifts through the stages of grief—both for Edie and, prematurely, for her newborn brothers. Jess’ behavior and experiences vacillate between magical realism and delusion, leaving the nature of the flask up to readers to determine. Just as Jess seeks meaning in coincidences, the novel strains to connect an intimate and specific situation with grand meditations on life, death, friendship and divine power. Rather than exploiting the conjoined twins for shock value, Singer goes to the opposite extreme, making them miraculous symbols of the interconnectedness of life.

More cathartic than captivating, a thoughtful piece about birth, death and everything in between. (Fiction. 10-14)

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TRINKETS

Smith, Kirsten Little, Brown (288 pp.) $17.99 | Mar. 12, 2013 978-0-316-16027-8 Collecting stolen loot leads to collecting friends.

Shy transfer student Elodie, popular “princess” Tabitha and tough-looking, “burnout” Moe (short for Maureen) cross paths unexpectedly when each is forced to complete a 12-week Shoplifters Anonymous program. Hiding their association by day among their clique-driven social circles, the three high school juniors secretly meet outside of their Portland, Ore., school to brag and compare notes about their pilfered swag. In the process of learning about their shoplifting addiction, Elodie, Tabitha and Moe discover they have even more in common when it comes to family, relationships, sexuality, body image and self-esteem problems. Smith gives each young woman a distinct voice, emphasized through Elodie’s verse form, Tabitha’s prose and Moe’s diary entries. As they become less concerned with appearance and more interested in filling the voids in their lives with healthy choices, the teens make their unconventional friendship public.

Although the storyline is predictable from the start, a few slight twists, realistic encounters, romances all around and a just-right ending will make this a hit with fans of Sarah Dessen, Deb Caletti, Elizabeth Scott and other venerable chick-lit authors. (Chick lit. 14 & up)

PHOEBE & DIGGER

Springstubb, Trisha Illus. by Newman, Jeff Candlewick (32 pp.) $16.99 | Mar. 26, 2013 978-0-7636-5281-4

Phoebe overcomes new-sibling qualms and fear of a playground bully in this emotive and playful story.

“When Mama got a new baby...Phoebe got a new digger.”

Comical illustrations and text play this dynamic out as the baby cries, eats and poops; Digger (a toy backhoe), controlled by Phoebe, is equal in attention-seeking behavior, knocking over trash, chasing the cat and pulling tablecloths down. An outing to the park becomes the perfect distraction, as Digger enjoys real dirt and Phoebe her imagination. Parental misinterpretation of behavior lands Phoebe in timeout-a perfect representation of Phoebe’s feelings regarding the injustice of the family’s latest change. When play resumes, a bully snatches Digger.

Phoebe tries to get him back, but to no avail. When she’s on the brink of tears, Mama reassuringly steps in. With Digger back in Phoebe’s arms, and Phoebe back in Mama’s arms, the heroine once again feels safe and loved. With a new connection to her sibling made, a frozen treat shared and her world restored, all kirkus.com

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“Stevenson keeps the tone light but the story serious as Jack copes with his own grief and his family’s distress.” from record breaker

ends happily. Newman’s expressive drawings, done in a loose and economical style, serve the story well. His artwork, from the way he considers perspective to the interesting and emotionally truthful portrayals of the characters, allows readers (and parents!) to identify with this feisty yet sensitive heroine.

Nuanced and humorous, this is a worthy addition to the new-sibling shelf. (Picture book. 3-6)

MY EPIC FAIRY TALE FAIL

Staniszewski, Anna Sourcebooks Jabberwocky (224 pp.) $6.99 paper | Mar. 1, 2013 978-1-4022-7930-0 Series: My Very UnFairy Tale Life, 2 Just-turned-13 Jenny continues her adventures in fairyland but finds that she can’t always win (My Very UnFairy Tale Life, 2012).

Jenny knows she’s going on a dangerous mission this time, but she can’t bring herself to say no to best friends Trish and Melissa when they insist on coming along. Despite life-threatening dangers, the two friends remain enchanted about visiting the land where fairy tales originate, even though the evil witch Ilda has drained the land of its magic. If she is to restore the magic and save fairyland, Jenny must complete three impossible tasks in only three days. She manages to finish the first two with the help of Trish and Melissa. Jenny has never before encountered failure, but she has to cope with it when she can’t complete the final impossible task. But can Jenny really give up?

Staniszewski again keeps her tone light and frothy with plenty of wry humor. A polite troll, keeper of the second impossible task, informs the girls, “Incidentally, my name is Irwin. I think we should be properly introduced before I suck the meat off your bones.” Middle school friendships offer a nice theme, as does Jenny’s casual acceptance of her fantasy life. The humor is balanced with a poignant subplot when Jenny learns that her long-lost parents disappeared from this very place, leading her to believe that she might be able to find them.

Flippant fantasy fun. (Fantasy adventure. 9-13)

MORGAN GETS CRACKING

Staunton, Ted Illus. by Slavin, Bill Formac (64 pp.) $14.95 | $5.95 paper | $4.95 e-book Apr. 1, 2013 978-1-4595-0075-4 978-1-4595-0074-7 paper 978-1-4595-0076-1 e-book

do? He and his best friend, Charlie, are just two ordinary kids, but unfortunately, they have to endure noogies from Aldeen and showing off from Curtis on a daily basis, even outside of school! In this continuation of the series (Music by Morgan, 2011), straightforward sentences with basic vocabulary describe Morgan’s mild misadventures, from a school trip to a chicken farm to schoolyard games and a block party that promises fun for all (or does it?). While the characters are only minimally developed and the plot a trifle simplistic, young readers will appreciate the accessible text, action-filled black-and-white illustrations, discrete chapters that end on suspenseful notes and a slight twist on the usual bully fare, as chubby Morgan tries to find a way to stand up to the daunting Aldeen, who may not be quite as evil as she appears. A quick, solid read for youngsters just ready for longer chapters but not quite prepared for Wimpy Kid books, this selection mines a similar vein and includes some good chuckles, a likable protagonist and an anti-bullying message that doesn’t take itself too seriously.

A good choice for transitioning readers looking for a splash of humor. (Fiction. 6-9)

RECORD BREAKER

Stevenson, Robin Orca (152 pp.) $9.95 paper | Mar. 1, 2013 978-1-55469-959-9 It’s 1963, and 12-year-old Jack struggles to cope with his mom’s depression after his baby sister’s sudden death.

Jack was interested in The Guinness Book of Records even before he found his baby sister Annie dead in her crib, but since then, he’s been determined to break a record, any record, in an effort to distract his mother from her severe depression.

She spends most days in bed even though Annie died over a year ago, and his dad tries to keep the family going. Jack first decides to rock a rocking chair for three days, then to eat a record number of sausages far too quickly, failing both times. However, he meets Kate, a new girl in his small Ontario town, and starts working on a new project: With help from Kate’s music-teacher mom, he’ll sing his mom’s favorite Perry Como song. Stevenson keeps the tone light but the story serious as Jack copes with his own grief and his family’s distress. The recent historical setting, which includes newly introduced color television and the Kennedy assassination, helps to grant some distance to readers from the heavy emotions surrounding the baby’s death. Jack’s growth as he makes a new friend and works on his performance caps this sensitive exploration with charm.

Perceptive and quite lovely. (Historical fiction. 9-12)

Life as a third-grader can be very trying….

Between Aldeen, the Queen of Mean, and Curtis, the nearly perfect new kid, Morgan has his hands full. What’s a boy to |

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“Springer winningly plays with the symmetry of the two names in her rhythmic text and dynamic page design. The vibrantly saturated colors of her paintings pulse with energy.” from when stravinsky met nijinsky

NOBODY ASKED THE PEA

Stewig, John Warren Illus. by Van Wright, Cornelius Holiday House (32 pp.) $16.95 | Mar. 15, 2013 978-0-8234-2224-1

An extraordinarily arch and campy version of “The Princess and the Pea” is told from multiple points of view.

It opens with a cast of characters, each with a distinctive voice and typeface in the narrative, starting with Patrick the Pea, growing “rounder and firmer each day” and extremely pleased with himself. Queen Mildred hectors her son Harold about getting married, pronto, and she is the perfect stereotype of a controlling, nagging and obnoxious mother. Harold, meanwhile, just wants to hang around and hunt. A few princesses are met and sent away, until Princess Lucy appears in the castle hall, soaking wet and disheveled, and cannot sleep a wink on the pile of mattresses with Patrick the Pea hidden under them. Harold is kind of delighted to find an outdoorsy girl who loves to hunt, Queen Mildred is pleased to outshine the other queens in wedding planning (especially Queen Estelle, “who couldn’t plan a trip to the privy by herself ”). The watercolor-and-pencil pastelhued illustrations reveal deeply caricatured and exaggerated figures (including the mice and the horses, as well as Patrick the Pea).

Not for young children, but good fun for middle-grade fans of fractured fairy tales as well as highly useful in classrooms. (Picture book. 8-12)

WHEN STRAVINSKY MET NIJINSKY Two Artists, Their Ballet, and One Extraordinary Riot Stringer, Lauren Illus. by Stringer, Lauren Harcourt (32 pp.) $16.99 | Mar. 5, 2013 978-0-547-90725-3

A composer and a choreographer collaborate on a 20th-century masterpiece and cause a riot.

In 1913 Paris, two Russians, Igor Stravinsky the composer and Vaslav Nijinsky the dancer/choreographer, took the western European art world by storm when the Ballet Russes premiered The Rite of Spring. Each returned to his Russian roots for both music and movement, leaving far behind the melodic strains and gorgeous balletic movements of Swan Lake. The new sounds, more harsh and dissonant, and the new steps, more earthy and folkloric, left the audience both wildly cheering and jeering. Springer winningly plays with the symmetry of the two names in her rhythmic text and dynamic page design. The vibrantly saturated colors of her paintings pulse with energy.

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premiere fill the pages. Humorous details abound, notably an appealing dog and cat who watch the artistes create. Springer also incorporates moments from Stravinsky’s earlier ballet Petrouchka, which featured Nijinsky as the tragic puppet, as well as a full measure of onomatopoeia and visual references to contemporary painters. The music is familiar not only to concert goers, but also to fans of the fiery volcanoes and fearsome dinosaurs in Fantasia. Said Nijinsky to Stravinsky: “What an uproar and what a delight!”

Music and dance made entertaining and joyous. (author’s note, sources) (Picture book. 5-8)

HOW ZOE MADE HER DREAMS (MOSTLY) COME TRUE

Strohmeyer, Sarah Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins (304 pp.) $9.99 paper | $8.99 e-book Apr. 23, 2013 978-0-06-218745-1 978-0-06-218746-8 e-book

Lured by the promise of a large cash prize and the opportunity to work as a costumed intern at a destination fairytale theme park, 17-year-old Zoe Kiefer struggles to earn the approval of the eccentric and manipulative Queen of the park.

Zoe’s duties as lady-in-waiting seem straightforward: obey Her Majesty’s orders to the letter; improve her mood with compliments and by slipping sugar secretly into her strict diet; take good care of Tinker Bell, her minute, caviar-guzzling, fluffball mutt; excise from the Queen’s reading material all mention of the hated “Mouse” (of the Mickey variety). But try as she does to do her job well and abide by the rules of Fairyland (all 270 of them), events get away from Zoe. She finds herself in several compromising and angst-ridden situations, mostly brought about by her well-meaning desire to promote her cousin Jess’ interests. In spite of the efforts of various princes, charming and nefarious, to aid or thwart her desires, she wins out in the end. The chatty tone of Zoe’s narration is pitch-perfect, laced as it is with teen humor and obsessions with relationships, clothing and makeup. The narrative, always hard to follow, ends in a madcap maelstrom of conflicting interests, improbable revelations and multiple personality changes in which believability is cheerfully sacrificed in the interest of allowing Zoe’s dreams to (mostly) come true.

But credibility probably has no place at Fairyland Kingdom….Wow!TM anyway. (Fiction. 12-18)

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17 & GONE

Suma, Nova Ren Dutton (320 pp.) $17.99 | Mar. 21, 2013 978-0-525-42340-9 Visions of missing girls—all of them 17 years old—haunt a fellow teen, driving her to behavioral extremes.

When Lauren Woodman notices a poster announcing Abby Sinclair’s disappearance from the nearby Lady-of-thePines Summer Camp for Girls, it ignites an internal spark, a sense of urgency. Lauren instinctively knows to keep quiet about it as she doggedly pursues every clue about Abby’s fate. Slowly, other missing girls intrude on Lauren’s radar: First, Fiona, her evil-tempered former baby sitter, then all sorts of girls, all seemingly forgotten, their cases cold to everyone but Lauren. As the missing girls visit Lauren’s dreams and waking life, giving her instructions and warnings, readers will quickly realize the serious mental health implications, but Lauren is smart and crafty enough to hide the truth from her loving mom and concerned boyfriend until a serious crisis erupts. As in her masterful highwire act Imaginary Girls (2011), Suma explores the boundaries of perception, reality and mental health, but with far less assurance and skill. Overreliance on heavy foreshadowing, telling rather than showing and incremental plotting—particularly in the book’s first half—nearly overwhelm the crisper storytelling of the second half.

Suma’s exquisite sentence-level writing and fine eye for creepy detail are in abundant evidence, however, giving readers hope for a stronger, more tightly edited outing next time. (Psychological thriller. 14-18)

THE MENAGERIE

Sutherland, Tui T.; Sutherland, Kari Harper/HarperCollins (288 pp.) $16.99 | $9.99 e-book | Mar. 12, 2013 978-0-06-078064-7 978-0-06-220290-1 e-book Series: Menagerie, 1 Numerous books have successfully built on a premise of human interaction with mythical creatures, but this one is overstuffed and convoluted.

When Logan and his father move to the small town of Xanadu, Wyo., he becomes involved in the search for six missing griffin cubs from the Menagerie. The action is as wild and wooly as a mammoth, with those prehistoric beasts, unicorns, mermaids and hellhounds and other creatures appearing around every corner. In the space of one day, Logan complains, “my clothes have been set on fire by a phoenix, drowned by a kelpie, rolled on by a mammoth, clawed and nibbled by griffin cubs, and drenched in kraken ink.” Can he help classmate Zoe and her family save the Menagerie from being shut down by SNAPA |

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(SuperNatural Animal Protection Agency)? Driven by the plot, the characters lack depth; the creatures provide heft, but there are too many, too conveniently introduced. Pop-culture references—The Hunger Games, the Pirates of the Caribbean films, Wheel of Fortune—feel like pandering and will date the book.

One clever touch is Logan’s ability to communicate with the opinionated griffin cubs. Book 2 will pick up from the last sentence of the abrupt ending: “Someone had murdered the goose who laid the golden eggs.”

Unfortunately, the story itself lays an egg. For a really magical book about mythical animals, readers should try The Forgotten Beasts of Eld, by Patricia McKillip (1974). (Fantasy.

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PAUL THURLBY’S WILDLIFE

Thurlby, Paul Illus. by Thurlby, Paul Templar/Candlewick (32 pp.) $17.99 | Mar. 12, 2013 978-0-7636-6563-0 Fans of Thurlby’s recent distinguished entry on the crowded alphabet-book shelves (Paul Thurlby’s Alphabet, 2011) won’t be disappointed by this clever follow-up.

Deceptively simple at first glance—or even first reading— this collection of short phrases paired with bold illustrations and basic facts rewards close examination. From the striped tiger on the cover, peering at potential readers through binoculars, through single-page portraits of other animals—among them a partially green polar bear, Travolta-esque bee (circa Saturday Night Fever), and wary dolphin—and finally to an inquisitive little boy, Thurlby packs the pages with humor. The bee, like all the other illustrations, is accompanied by two captions: “Express yourself ” and “Bees talk to one another by dancing in patterns.” The first appears on the picture and in most cases is a familiar phrase, whether transcribed exactly, in pun form or created using homonyms. The second offers a bit of information about the animal pictured as well as providing the inspiration for the artwork. Digitally created, the pictures incorporate elements of painting, collage and printmaking and in some cases include (almost) hidden words or images. Visual jokes, such as a shovel-bodied mole, a nearsighted rabbit’s ears (which look like glasses) and a sunbathing goldfish, further enrich the fun.

Wordplay, visual jokes and strong design combine to create another winner for Thurlby—and readers. (Picture book. 5-9)

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FOREST HAS A SONG

Vanderwater, Amy Ludwig Illus. by Gourley, Robbin Clarion (40 pp.) $16.99 | Mar. 26, 2013 978-0-618-84349-7

Twenty-six poems with varied structures offer quiet observations of the natural world.

Vanderwater’s studies are spare and sometimes personal. Loosely cast as a series of forest visits at different times of the year, they focus both on the large, as in the opening “Invitation,” and the small—fiddleheads, lichens, a cardinal, a squirrel. The poet’s imagination invites readers and listeners inside her subjects’ heads. A chickadee considers taking food from a child’s hand; an owlet worries about its first flight. She listens to the voices of snowflakes and maples. Some poems describe the forest visitor’s actions: In one haiku, she plays with a rotting branch; in another, she marvels at the taste of wintergreen. Two children enjoy the surprise of a mushroom puffball. Listeners will appreciate language play like the tree frog’s: “Hoping. / Hopping. / High above. / Crooning. / Plopping. / Finding love.” The imagery is fresh and original; it’s accessible, too. Watercolor images of each poem’s subject add to the appeal.

Some are vignettes, others show a child or a family enjoying the out-of-doors. Although the same young girl appears in these pictures, her clothing and apparent age vary, implying a series of encounters over many years.

Readers, too, may want to return to these explorations over and over. (Picture book/poetry. 5-10)

THE MURMURINGS

West, Carly Anne Simon Pulse/Simon & Schuster (384 pp.) $16.99 | Mar. 5, 2013 978-1-4424-4179-8 Sophie worries that she may wind up in a mental institution like her sister Nell when she starts hearing the same ghostly whispering that doomed Nell.

Was Nell crazy? Is Sophie? Or do both sisters have an ability to hear things from beyond the grave? Worse, does their ability put them in danger? Sophie’s new love interest, Evan, wants to help find out what happened to Nell when she died after escaping from the Oakside Behavioral Institute. Sophie and Evan investigate Nell’s death, meeting Adam, the former Oakside worker who helped Nell escape. Ignoring, of course, both Adam’s and Evan’s advice to stay away from Oakside, Sophie goes there anyway and becomes trapped when an unethical doctor convinces her alcoholic mother to commit her. It seems the doctor has his own reasons for getting “seers” under his control. Now Sophie must find a way to escape from Oakside on her own. For a short time, West flirts with the possibility that Sophie’s “murmurings” 122

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might be psychological rather than paranormal but drops that mystery in favor of pure suspense. The plotting is effective, including secret prowling around the institute at night, surreptitious meetings with a sympathetic ally, fun with mirrors and heart-thumping encounters. A steady pace helps to compensate for an overlong story.

Some decent frights will keep the pages turning. (Paranormal suspense. 12 & up)

PUG And Other Animal Poems

Worth, Valerie Illus. by Jenkins, Steve Farrar, Straus and Giroux (32 pp.) $16.99 | Mar. 19, 2013 978-0-374-35024-6

Jenkins again provides stunning collage illustrations for a posthumous collection of poems by esteemed poet Worth, following Animal Poems (2007).

This collection features 18 free-verse poems about the animal kingdom, including insects, fish, birds, wild animals and three pets: a dachshund, a prowling cat and the titular pug, shown in an appealing head-on view on the cover. Some of the animal subjects are less than engaging (a dead mouse left on the doorstep, a rat surrounded by garbage), but Worth finds tiny details and meaningful observations in each animal she examines, asking readers to accept any animal as a worthy subject for poetic examination. A few of the poems will be accessible to younger children, but most are more appropriate for children in upper-elementary grades or middle school; some will demand an adult’s help in interpretation. Jenkins provides illustrations in his dazzling paper-collage format with impressive results, from a luminous firefly to a snarling tiger. There is no thematic flow or organization of the poems, so readers hop about the animal world in a slightly jarring manner, though the illustrations are captivating whatever the subject.

Another welcome collection. (Picture book/poetry. 6-13)

POISON

Zinn, Bridget Disney Hyperion (288 pp.) $16.99 | Mar. 12, 2013 978-1-4231-3993-5 Don’t let the title or cover fool you!

No grimdark teen fantasy or angst-y heroines here; just a frothy confection of a fairy tale featuring poisoners, princesses, perfumers and pigs, none of whom are exactly what they appear (except maybe

the pigs).

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her best friend Princess Ariana. But Kyra’s newly awakened (if unwanted) prophetic visions have revealed that if the princess lives, the kingdom dies. Against this dreadful future Kyra pits her impressive martial training, her formidable skill with poisons, an infallible (and adorable) tracking pig, and the equally adorable (if infuriating) Fred, rogue and companion-of-the-road.

Can Kyra survive long enough to execute Ariana? And can she live with herself if she succeeds? Ignore the ridiculously contrived plot and shaky worldbuilding; the sheer bravura charm of Kyra’s voice will sweep away any reservations. More troublesome are a weakness for telling over showing and the distressing tendency to equate moral virtue with physical beauty.

Still, this is good silly fun—a refreshing antidote to a genre overflowing with grit and gloom. (Fantasy. 11-14)

I WISH I HAD...

Zoboli, Giovanna Translated by Mathews, Leslie Illus. by Mulazzani, Simona Eerdmans (27 pp.) $16.00 | Mar. 1, 2013 978-0-8028-5415-5 The unseen and unnamed narrator of this Italian import wishes for many lively and thoughtful things.

That child wishes for the eyes of a blackbird, so to see every blade of grass in the meadow, the “forest of thoughts” that a deer listens to in the woods and the wings of a goose on the first day of flight. The narrator wants to have the “quick heart” of a mouse escaping the cat, the voice of the whale and the gaze of the owl. While these many wishes are sometimes awkwardly phrased in English and don’t have much music behind them, the pictures go a long way toward capturing the magic. The blackbird, a dark matte shape across two pages, is in a meadow of feathery grass fronds and delicately sketched wildflowers.

Two mice sip from tiny glasses of orange juice while two others alertly try to hide from the oncoming cat. The lemurs swing from branches that are actually urban apartments. The last wish is for the ears of an elephant “to hear what the heavens say,” and that elephant has images of animals, trees, birds and flowers sketched all over his body, like gossamer tattoos.

Images to return to again and again, with the text a jumping-off point to a sweet philosophy. (Picture book. 4-8)

interactive e-books EVERYTHING’S ROSIE BEDTIME APP

Egmont UK Egmont UK $4.99 | Nov. 25, 2012 1.0; Nov. 25, 2012

A none-too-interesting detour before bedtime, this app based on a British children’s show exhibits frustrating navigation quirks and not nearly enough personality.

One of two apps simultaneously released featuring a ribbonand-button–tressed little girl and her friends (some of whom happen to be animals), this one involves a disturbance at a slumber party. The coed/cospecies sleepover is interrupted by a loud moaning sound that Rosie and her friends investigate. Not to spoil the mystery, but the app could have been called, We Heard a Noise; It Was an Anthropomorphic Oak Tree That Was Drying Out. Complicating things is a fussy design that expects readers to remember what different kinds of icons do (a star versus a star with a circle around it, for instance) and to follow the dialogue by tapping on word balloons that appear as the next character is ready to speak. Some pages have big, gaudy borders around them, others don’t. Some pages are fully animated, others are text-heavy. Sometimes there’s a delay when a button is pressed, and sometimes virtual objects take too long to respond to touch, like a watering can that can take a few tries to pick up and use.

Rosie’s nighttime app is a rote story done no favors by very inconsistent design.

For fans, this could be a must-download, but for the uninitiated, there’s not much in Rosie’s bedtime adventure to make them curious for more. (optimized for iPad 2 and above) (iPad storybook app. 3-7)

THE WORLD OF SAM

Jansem, Sophie Illus. by Jansem, Sophie Avant-Gout Studios $2.99 | Oct. 21, 2012 1.2.0; Oct. 21, 2012

A well-balanced interactive story chronicles the life of a whimsical little pig.

In the opening scene of this sweet tale, Sam is rifling through his mother’s purse. Much like a clown car at the circus, the bag appears to have no bottom, and Sam keeps pulling items out of it as long as readers keep tapping him. The other 19 pages offer similar interactions, all of which offer clues about what makes Sam unique.

He likes to read and sleep in on Sunday mornings, and he insists on kicking a soccer ball around the house (the last activity eventually results in a “cracked” tablet screen). Of particular interest |

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is his affinity for playing dress-up in women’s clothing and his love of dance; both Sam and his parents seem completely and refreshingly comfortable eschewing gender stereotypes. Illustrations are soft, uncluttered and washed in muted colors, an approach that leaves room for the straightforward interactions and the story itself. Each page has a distinctive audio presentation (music/sound effects) and can be narrated or read in English, French or Russian. The only negative is that the story ends abruptly. Readers will likely look for a way to turn the page, as there’s no visual or textual signal that the story is over.

Flawed ending aside, it’s an admirable first effort. (iPad storybook app, 18 mos.-5)

GRIMM’S PUSS IN BOOTS 3D Interactive Pop-Up Book StoryToys StoryToys $4.99 | Dec. 12, 2012 1.0.0; Dec. 12, 2012

A simplified adaptation of a Grimm Brothers version of the more familiar French rendition of an old tale, with 10 interspersed screens of pop-up “fun” and “games.”

Despite all the filtering, the text differs from Perrault’s rendition only in minor details—leaving the putative “Count of Carabas” unnamed, for instance, and having Puss deliver animals to the king for the royal menagerie rather than his dinner table. The story is presented either in silent mode or by an expressive narrator (in a choice of four European languages). It pauses at too-frequent intervals for screens that not only drift when tilted for a 3-D effect, but feature touch-activated animations ranging from a game of whack-a-mouse and spinnable wheels to a wardrobe of cowboy, astronaut and other alternative garb for Puss. Like the cartoon art overall, the cat, though sporting the customary Three Musketeers–style floppy hat and footgear, is unmemorably generic. Despite smooth, easy navigation, the story moves in fits and starts thanks to the oversupply of sometimes only marginally relevant distractions.

One of a crowd, and not close to being a front-runner. (iPad storybook app. 6-8)

LETTER IN A BOTTLE

Suqoon Project Suqoon Project $5.99 | Dec. 3, 2012 1.0; Dec. 3, 2012

A young girl receives a mysterious invitation to afternoon tea.

This app has a lot going for it. The illustrations are crisp, creative and colorful; the narration is top-notch; the navigation is brilliantly simple. However, there are two elements that drag it down: a weak conclusion and lackluster interaction.

In the story, the girl finds a bottle that contains an anonymous invitation to tea. The bulk of the tale follows the girl’s vivid imagination as she wonders who might have invited her. As she’s fretting over what to wear, a sea gull swoops down and snatches the invitation. Without the mysterious summons, she immediately gives up and heads for home, which leaves readers completely stranded. Since the invitation didn’t have a name or address on it, why should the loss of the piece of paper dampen her curiosity and determination to find the party? It’s superdisappointing when a major plot element suddenly drops off a cliff without any further mention. The story is mildly animated, but there aren’t many touch-and-response opportunities, which may prove frustrating for readers who want to be more a part of the story.

The well-done components of this app are really good, but its few oversights and missteps interfere with what would otherwise be a pleasant reading experience. (iPad storybook app. 4-8)

This Issue’s Contributors # Alison Anholt-White • Kim Becnel • Elizabeth Bird • Marcie Bovetz • Kimberly Brubaker Bradley • Sophie Brookover • Connie Burns • Timothy Capehart • Julie Cummins • GraceAnne A. DeCandido • Dave DeChristopher • Elise DeGuiseppi • Lisa Dennis • Carol Edwards • Brooke Faulkner • Omar Gallaga • Judith Gire • Melinda Greenblatt • Julie Hubble • Jennifer Hubert • Kathleen T. Isaacs • Laura Jenkins • Betsy Judkins • Deborah Kaplan • K. Lesley Knieriem • Megan Lambert • Angela Leeper • Peter Lewis • Ellen Loughran • Lori Low • Joan Malewitz • Hillias J. Martin • Michelle H. Martin PhD • Jeanne McDermott • Kathie Meizner • Daniel Meyer • Lisa Moore • R. Moore • John Edward Peters • Susan Pine • Melissa Rabey • Rebecca Rabinowitz • Kristy Raffensberger • Nancy Thalia Reynolds • Lesli Rodgers • Leslie L. Rounds • Ann Marie Sammataro • Dean Schneider • Chris Shoemaker • Robin Smith • Rita Soltan • Jennifer Sweeney • Bette Wendell-Branco • S.D. Winston • Monica Wyatt • Melissa Yurechko

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These titles earned the Kirkus Star:

Alexander, Deidre Trafford (108 pp.) $19.77 | $9.77 paper | $3.99 e-book Sep. 24, 2012 978-1466945500

A PRAYER FOR THE DEVIL by Dale Allan...................................p. 126 BROTHERS AND BONES by James Hankins............................... p. 129

A poet explores her inspirations and creative growth in this debut collection.

The author looks at how poets get their start in this autobiographical set of poems and commentary. Alexander recognizes that inspirations and influences come from a variety of sources, and she divides the book up into eight sections, each exploring a different angle in her development as a poet. Each section starts with a brief introduction explaining the conditions under which each poem was written, giving the reader enough information to understand her inspirations. The author shows how her experiences translate directly into her verse and how her style has developed. Alexander highlights a wide range of poems, from a study of Abraham Lincoln which she wrote as a college sophomore to verse about her hobbies during her early college years and two poems about significant loves, among other selections. Religion is a major theme; in “Self-Acceptance,” she writes, “What is self-acceptance? / Contentment with the way things are. / The absence of inner conflict and bitterness toward others. / ‘Being myself,’ not trying to put on a façade. / Submission to authority, without interference.” The poem shows how Alexander’s religious journey paralleled her discovery of herself as a poet, and she pinpoints the significant events that led to these discoveries. Readers may find themselves distracted by the numerous typefaces used throughout the text, as some of them are difficult to read; Alexander’s poetry can stand on its own without such embellishment.

A strong collection of poems, and an engaging chronicle of a writer’s beginnings.

BROTHERS AND BONES

Hankins, James Amazon Digital Services (399 pp.) $0.99 e-book Oct. 25, 2012

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A PRAYER FOR THE DEVIL

Michael, the most gorgeous guy ever, who takes a sudden interest in Ariel that sometimes verges on being bipolar (although that’s explained later). Ariel continues to be randomly attacked, which leads her to force some answers out of Michael. She finds out that she was adopted and that Michael is a Descendant, a half-human child of an Exile, or fallen angel. The angels that fell from heaven split into two groups—those still following Lucifer and those who realized their mistake. Ariel learns that her biological mother found the family’s Piece of Home, and the angels believe Ariel now has it. The book’s fast-paced action is easy to follow while still being suspenseful, and despite some one-note duds, most of the characters feel natural and help add depth to Ariel’s adventure. Especially likable is Barnaby, the goblin she befriends in the Exiles’ sanctuary, who watches her back mostly via text message. Smart, strong Ariel is fairly likable, although she has an annoying habit of making acronyms out of seemingly everything. Her supposed love of complicated vocabulary isn’t particularly flattering since she tends to use big words sparingly, like someone trying to impress friends with words he or she doesn’t quite understand. Michael, on the other hand, is a stiffer character, and some of his actions don’t seem to make much sense. For this volume, their budding romance stays in an awkward stage that doesn’t really affect the plot, although that’s sure to change as the story progresses. Some solid twists and turns make for a quick, enjoyable read that promises to grow deeper in the next chapters.

An intriguing premise navigated by an affable heroine.

Allan, Dale Emerald Book Company (320 pp.) $23.95 | $8.99 e-book | Oct. 1, 2012 978-1937110345 In Allan’s debut thriller, a priest aims to find the people responsible for his brother’s murder, whatever the cost.

An explosion at a political rally kills a popular presidential candidate, a Muslim reformist and a lawyer who had Senate aspirations. However, authorities are baffled as to which person was the intended target of the terror attack. The lawyer’s twin brother, Luke Miller, a Catholic priest raised in a Jewish household, becomes a media celebrity in the aftermath of the tragedy, and he spends much of his day dodging paparazzi. The press’ fascination is understandable; after all, Luke wears his brother’s clothes, drives his brother’s car and goes out in public with his brother’s widow.

He decides to look into the bombing on his own, even though his investigation may ultimately put other people’s lives in jeopardy. Allan’s novel is a blistering tale with all the right ingredients for a mystery—for example, Luke’s prodding reveals more questions, such as why Luke’s brother had been carrying a gun.

But the author’s multifaceted characters are what give the book distinction. Luke is a bracingly ambiguous character, prone to violent retorts and wracked with guilt over the fact that he and his brother had not been on the best of terms. The novel also addresses Luke’s ties to the cloth, as his need for retribution makes him question his faith. The story is full of complex relationships; for example, Luke is indisputably attracted to both his sister-in-law Deborah, and the Muslim reformist’s sister Jami. Luke encounters many dead ends and red herrings, but they always feel like steps closer to a solution rather than throwaway pieces of a puzzle. The book’s stellar ending addresses a lingering uncertainty and leaves much for readers to ponder.

An engaging mystery, and a sizzling debut.

EX-RICH GIRL TELLS ALL My Truth Behind Closed Doors Corban, Kami CreateSpace (286 pp.) $12.50 paper | $7.99 e-book Dec. 3, 2012 978-1479395569

A woman starts over after losing her sense of security in this gritty memoir of survival and growth.

Corban’s brutally honest, revealing story follows her physical and emotional journey when she reaches an unforeseen impasse. Growing up as one of four privileged children, she had seemingly every opportunity open to her. Her parents’ wealth afforded her a sense of security and even royalty, but it didn’t mask her parents’ unhappiness. The night before her graduation from Duke University, Corban was shocked to discover—via a postscript at the end of a note from her mother—that her parents would be divorcing. Mind reeling, Corban escaped to London, where her boyfriend, Tucker, had just moved and where she hoped to find her own happy ending. But, Corban discovered, running from one relationship to another didn’t provide the comfort she craved; in fact, her boyfriend and supposed future husband had moved in with someone else. As the doors slammed around her, she learned to take care of herself in ways she never had to before. Corban’s explorations include a devastating stay in a cold convent, a disastrous

SIREN SONG Book 1 of the Siren Song Trilogy Blackwood, B.A. CreateSpace (264 pp.) $11.99 paper | $2.99 e-book Nov. 14, 2012 978-1479141364

In this trilogy opener, Blackwood pulls readers into the world of fallen angels through the eyes of Ariel, a spunky

college freshman.

Blackwood starts the action almost immediately, barely introducing Ariel before she’s attacked by someone demanding she give him something called the Piece of Home. She’s knocked out during the encounter and wakes up in a hospital to find 126

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“In revealing the complicated inner workings of Johnny, Dignan delivers a novel of psychological insight.” from race from the finish

RACE FROM THE FINISH

waitressing job at a high-end hotel in England and a stint as a resident director at Western Carolina University. But as she moves from job to job and state to state, one thing remains with her: the haunting sense that her family left her with wounds that won’t heal until she faces them. Set against the blunt backdrop of family conflict, Corban’s story resonates as a comingof-age tale that looks at finding the wherewithal and strength to provide for yourself when no one else will. Told in a straightforward, plainspoken manner, this smooth read unfurls with moments of humor, pathos and inspiration.

An honest, affecting journey of self-discovery.

Dignan, D.T. AbbottPress (248 pp.) $14.95 paper | $4.99 e-book 978-1458205650

Dignan’s debut fictional account of a man who works to realize a passionate boyhood dream: to be a winning race car driver.

The novel opens with an elderly John Powers at the end of his life alone in a hospital, then flashes back to tell the story of one life gone wrong before ending on the more positive note of a second chance. The teenage Johnny—aka “Powerhouse”—loves and cares for his younger sister with Down syndrome, adopts a lost puppy and forms a deep bond with family friend “Pop,” who serves as his mentor.

The writing is unvarnished and the dialogue realistic. Early on we get a glimpse of Johnny’s competitive instinct: “Johnny peered up derby hill and made a crucial decision. From that point on, he would accept nothing short of winning.” But he keeps the need to be first from dominating his personality.

Johnny’s likable. When he suffers the tragic loss of his sister, he suffers profoundly—he mourns her and the fact that he didn’t get to say goodbye or tell her he loved her. But when he becomes a father before he’s ready, his personal need for glory takes over.

He loves and wants to marry his high school sweetheart, but his passion for racing comes first. Always on the road, following the racing circuit, he allows this passion to interfere with his responsibilities to his family. When he allows his passion for winning to push him into doing serious lasting harm to another racer on the track, the scene is heart-wrenching. In revealing the complicated inner workings of Johnny, Dignan delivers a novel of psychological insight.

A moving, well-written novel about love, sacrifice and NASCAR.

WILDFIRE!

Davis, Trisha iUniverse (112 pp) $20.95 | $10.95 paper | $3.99 e-book Aug. 23, 2011 978-1462016150 Davis’ lively YA debut introduces a courageous boy who discovers that you can’t run away from your past, especially when it’s in your blood.

Buddy’s mother died in a car accident after a heated fight with her drunken father, Sebastian. Ten years later, the incident—complete with visions of the old man hurling “halfbreed” and “mongrel” epithets—still haunts 13-year-old Buddy, his older brother and their bear-tracking “phD Dad,” even though the three moved to the Alaskan bush to escape the disturbing memories. Eventually, a letter arrives from Sebastian, now sober and looking to make amends. At first, Buddy’s reticent, too bitter and confused to accept his grandfather’s entreaty, but he eventually goes back to Montana to spend the summer on the Flathead Indian Reservation. When asked what he’d like to be called, Buddy tells Sebastian, “Call me James, like people that don’t know me.” But as time passes and the two bond over their respect for nature and a love of fishing, Buddy capitulates and begins to enjoy his time with the Native American side of his family and his newfound friends, including cute, redheaded Emerry and “careless,” misunderstood Dave. As a hot, dry July encroaches, wildfires force an evacuation, and the sudden disappearance of Emerry calls for Buddy and Dave to become men. In Buddy, Davis has created a convincing, winning narrator whose voice captures the inequities and insecurities of childhood. His reflections on nature conjure a touching reverence for the unspoiled Northwest, and his first encounter with Emerry humorously engages the reader while setting up the book’s delightful leitmotif: Buddy’s recurring dreams, seemingly infiltrated by spirit animals who warn of impending danger and heighten the book’s growing tension. In another clever device, Buddy desires to increase his vocabulary, choosing a new word each month and using it whenever he can. In the spirit of his self-imposed lesson plan, this “superb” novel is “risible” and full of characters with “tenacious” hearts.

A fresh take on a hero’s journey that all kids will enjoy.

HASHIMOTO BLUES

Dupeyron, Sarah CreateSpace (254 pp.) $11.99 paper | $2.99 e-book Jun. 23, 2012 978-1477476253 A plainspoken hero stars in Dupeyron’s debut, a crime thriller/romance.

“I took one last peek inside the box.

As horrible as it was, I couldn’t stop looking,” says Ellie Fox, who speaks and thinks clearly and doesn’t spare her own feelings. She narrates with no extraneous details or poetic musings. By introducing Ellie’s crisis immediately, but not sharing too many details, Dupeyron jumpstarts her novel. Ellie’s a sympathetic but tough character, a teenage runaway whose path takes her into some dark places. She smuggles drugs and journeys into increasingly serious criminal activity. She’s honest about being a criminal and acknowledges |

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“Readers who enjoy gentle satire and slyly humorous experiments in children’s literature, will find this genre-bending book a fun read. ” from little trouble in tall tree

An infectious, open-minded point of view and superior skills in spinning a yarn make for a companionable, captivating guide.

that her lifestyle has its risks, but she’s somebody whom readers will probably like since she isn’t a bad person, just a law-breaking one. After running away from home, she was raised by her mentor, who just happened to be a thug. She learns to smuggle drugs and is very good at it too. Along the way, she meets Max Cameron— a fellow protégé of Ellie’s mentor—with whom she easily falls in love. Unfortunately, his plan to steal something very valuable from a crime lord backfires, and the two of them must go on the run. The antagonist, Hashimoto, is the sort of villain that sends packages with gruesome contents, and he stays off-screen for a large portion of the book. This shows good judgment on the part of the author, and Hashimoto becomes a scarier monster since nobody knows whom he might be. The lesson of not messing with ruthless people might be an old one, but Dupeyron keeps it lively with the romance and banter between Max and Ellie. There are a few small typos, but these aren’t enough to distract.

For fans of romantic thrillers and adventures with looming bad guys.

LITTLE TROUBLE IN TALL TREE A Baby Noir Mystery Fertik, Michael Tall Tree Enterprises, LLC (41 pp.) $2.99 e-book | Nov. 9, 2012

In his debut children’s book, Fertik offers a tale of baby gangsters that will appeal to many adults.

Fans of classic mysteries are likely to find these Baby Noir stories especially entertaining. The book’s twist-laden plot gently satirizes both the classic noir of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett and contemporary child care fads among middle- and upper-class families. After the book’s brooding baby narrator is lured into a big caper by baby mob boss Squeezy the Cheeks, he meets a “knockout” baby redhead with a secret at storytime. Will he be double-crossed by this mystery girl, who’s being followed by an unknown pursuer? Will he survive the menacing Squeezy’s big milk-stealing job despite the threat from the rival Poopypants Gang, led by Harry the Rash? Can he handle his big job at Lactation Class and the mess in his diaper at the same time? The book’s many illustrations of slouching, trench-coated gangster babies are delightful, with a classic style reminiscent of midcentury mystery stories. The dialogue, too, has a decidedly hard-boiled tone that is similar to the 1930s-era gangster-speak of actors James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson. The book is also filled to the brim with jokes about modern parenting culture and topics such as breast-feeding, baby yoga and “preppie babies.” Readers who enjoy gentle satire and slyly humorous experiments in children’s literature, will find this genre-bending book a fun read.

A consistently clever children’s book with moxie to spare, aimed at readers of all ages.

MYSTICAL EXPERIENCES Wisdom In Unexpected Places From Prisons to Main Street Farrell, Jack P. CreateSpace (228 pp.) $12.95 paper | Oct. 10, 2012 978-1475268393

A conversational, inviting catalog of encounters, abilities and phenomena that aims to elevate mundane existence

into a mystical realm.

Psychologist Farrell has taken to heart Hamlet’s admonition: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Compiling anecdotes from his patients’ experiences, his own life, archaeology and history, Farrell lays out evidence that “more” is and has always been going on, no matter what country, culture or century. Without sensationalism, preaching, passing judgment or forcing conclusions, he explores the unbidden (visitations from the dead, protection by nonphysical forces), the intentional (voodoo, shamanism, meditation, energy healing) and elements of nature (animals, crystals, stone circles). Many of his tales come from addicts and/or prisoners who were under his care, an impressive percentage of whom improved their lives after undergoing a mystical experience. The discussions of meditation practices and healing techniques expand from simply describing examples to efficiently explaining how to perform them, including some that aren’t widely known, such as a simple relationship-healing exercise that involves breathing the energy of love in and out of the heart. Farrell comes across as a trained scientist who has found himself marveling at spiritual experiences, which he openly seeks and embraces in his own life. His agenda here is to demonstrate the universality of what he has discovered and collected throughout his practice and life, as he explores intersecting paths between physical and mystical existence. In this compelling book, that journey becomes everyone’s.

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BLUE CAB COMPANY Gingolaski, Steve Manuscript (289 pp.)

In Gingolaski’s debut sci-fi novel set 71 years in the future, a cab driver/contract vigilante gets in over his head when he rescues a mysterious young woman.

Richard Vandercar works for the Blue Cab Company in Philadelphia. In 2084, that means being more of a freelance cop than a chauffeur. Cab companies compete for contracts from private citizens and the government for killing bad guys (“a standard vermin termination contract”), prisoner transportation and even rescuing kidnapped children. On one job, Vandercar encounters Jeannie Aiken, a pale-skinned young woman with wild black hair and large dark eyes. Sometimes she |

seems childish—Vandercar even suspects that she has brain damage—but when she’s threatened, she acts like a trained soldier. Vandercar isn’t the kind of man who rescues a girl out of the goodness of his heart. However, he has a strange ability: He can see when someone’s lifeline ends, and Jeannie’s lifeline terminated months ago. “On a few levels that scared the hell out of me and I needed to understand how it was possible,” he explains. When a contract goes out to apprehend Jeannie, Vandercar finds himself in the middle of a dangerous conflict involving a secret government program. Gingolaski writes in the hard-boiled, cynical vein of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler; his protagonist inhabits a corrupt world and a dirty city, whose river “is so packed with trash that when local organized crime wants to dump a body in the river, they take along two shovels and a pickaxe….In Philly, even the water is tough.” Everyone is compromised; no one is clean. Readers may find much of this subject matter familiar—not just from the detective genre, but from other pop-cultural sources, such as the films Blade Runner (1982) and The Fifth Element (1997) and, especially, the TV and film work of Joss Whedon. Nevertheless, Gingolaski makes the story his own, bravely refusing to let romanticism win out. In particular, his final sentence is devastating and perfect.

A snappy, exciting novel with plenty of action, sex, cool technology and moral quandaries.

legalism playing off Bonz’s unself-conscious violence and practicality. Hankins surrounds them with a crackerjack cast of bristling thugs, weaselly lowlifes and beady-eyed feds, and he ties the story together with pitch-perfect dialogue, mordant humor and action scenes poised exquisitely between menace and chaos. At times the plot’s scheming and counterscheming gets a bit over-the-top, but readers will likely be having too much fun to notice.

A complex, entertaining thriller.

THE INDOMITABLE SPIRIT OF EDMONIA LEWIS A Narrative Biography Henderson, Harry; Henderson, Albert Esquiline Hill Press (565 pp.) $9.99 e-book | Sep. 8, 2012

A new volume celebrates the life and work of African-American sculptor Edmonia Lewis, oppressed during her lifetime and almost forgotten by history.

This biography—the product of years of research and constructed over several decades by historian Harry Henderson (co-author: A History of African-American Artists from 1792 to the Present, 1993) and Albert Henderson— helps redeem the tribulations that Lewis experienced during her life as an artist. An internationally respected sculptor with a studio in Rome, she “raided a male profession…only recently disturbed by well-to-do white women.” Born in 1844 to an African-American father and a Chippewa mother, Lewis attended Oberlin College in Ohio, a racially integrated haven for abolitionists; later, while in Boston, she encountered a large, magnificent statue of Benjamin Franklin that would inspire her to become a sculptor. Although she was excluded from the upper echelons of elite society while living in Rome, Lewis there constructed a bust of poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow without having her subject pose for her; instead, she made use of her own sightings of the man on the streets of the city. The Hendersons’ monument of research and craftsmanship seeks to give Lewis the consideration that she has been denied—not dissimilar to the artist’s own commitment to proving her competitors and critics wrong, demonstrating that a minority could take on the hegemonic tradition of fine arts. The book provides crystalline accounts of Lewis’ feuds and mentorships, as well as rich illustrations of the works being discussed throughout. Overall, the authors deliver a well-constructed mix of primary resources, critical analysis and literary flourishes.

A useful biography for anyone interested in a more complete history of African-American art and artists.

BROTHERS AND BONES Hankins, James Amazon Digital Services (399 pp.) $0.99 e-book | Oct. 25, 2012

A prosecutor and a homeless man team up against a murderous conspiracy in this rollicking thriller.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Charlie Beckham is thrown for a loop when a deranged man on a subway platform addresses him by a nickname known only to his long-lost brother Jake. The problem is that Jake’s been presumed dead for 13 years. Charlie scours Boston’s back alleys for the elusive vagrant and finds a grizzled amnesiac named Bonz with the grooming of a sasquatch, the fighting chops of a Navy SEAL and serious mental instability. Soon, Charlie’s life collapses: He blows the biggest case of his career, a colleague, Angel, is found dead in his apartment, and Charlie finds himself on the run from the law with Bonz as his only ally. To get clear of the wreckage, the pair must solve a labyrinthine mystery—one that knits together Jake’s fate, Bonz’s foggy past and a missing audiotape. The two also contend with some formidable bad guys, one of whom specializes in hammering nails into his victims’ heads.

Hankins’ sly buddy adventure contrasts two unlikely comrades.

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DEPRIVATION; OR BENEDETTO FURIOSO An Oneiromancy

with deep roots in Detroit’s “Greektown” enclave; she was raised there by her gruff father, Gus, after the death of her mother and the institutionalization of her mentally impaired brother. She joins her detective partner, Albert Wong, and begins the investigation into Parker’s disappearance and death, all the while juggling the demands of her outspoken, extended family and her hapless boyfriend, Alex, (Gus, we’re told, is “resigned to the fact that his only daughter would probably never leave this sad and broken man”). Jill brings her dogged professionalism to the investigation, along with an acute instinct that she’s comfortable chalking up to a touch of extrasensory perception. “Being Greek,” Jenkins writes, “living above the family grocery store, having a mentally retarded brother, a dead mother, and a little ESP cemented Jill’s outcast standing in the community.” She’s a skilled detective, however, and as she tells her father, she’s “not just another pretty face.” After a series of well-deployed plot twists, Jill zeroes in on the culprit. Jenkins complicates and expands the domestic and detecting halves of the plot with a deft, sure touch, and her portrayal of Gretchen Parker’s final day is unflinchingly stark. Jenkins also expertly captures the exotic sights, sounds and smells (oregano, mint, garlic, feta, olive oil, tomato, etc.) of the neighborhood.

An effective, memorable police-procedural whodunit.

Jeffers, Alex Lethe Press (314 pp.) $18.00 paper | Feb. 28, 2013 978-1590210925

Fascinated by an idealized version of Italy he imagines from literature and art, a young gay man goes through the motions of a mundane life in the 1990s, while sleep deprivation causes vivid dreams that blend strangely with reality.

Jeffers’ fuguelike story elevates everyday people and places to the fantastical with beautifully evocative language and detailed descriptions. In passages that move smoothly between being microscopically focused and dreamily abstract, the fantastical elements are grounded by the language’s simplicity, leaving the reader equally intrigued by an Italian child prince and a bar near Fenway. Various people—some more real than others—try to guide and control rootless Ben: dark, beautiful Dario and his siblings, who moved from a Boston warehouse to Dario’s small apartment in Providence; bike messenger and artist Neddy, who claims Ben as his lover after running into him; straight friend Kenneth, who offers Ben a place to live in Boston as well as a strangely shifting intimacy; Ben’s mother, who caricatures their family in her novels; his father, who comes out to Ben and begs for support as his marriage falls apart; and his old Spanish teacher Paulo, whose upcoming visit to Boston causes Ben to re-evaluate their connection. At the same time Ben is perhaps creating these people, they help define him. Everyone seems to have moments when they’re real and moments when they’re fantasy; even dreams have agendas and needs to push upon Ben. Jeffers’ story achieves its goal of being a literary, selfaware novel about living reactively and without agency, and it only occasionally falls into academic strangeness or aimlessness.

An exquisite flow of language ensures that the narrative doesn’t get lost even as Ben drifts.

A gorgeous journey to nowhere.

THE COLUMN RACER Johnson, Jeffrey Amazon Digital Services $2.99 e-book | Nov. 5, 2012

First-time author Johnson gives his first installment of a planned two-part fantasy adventure.

Fourteen-year-old Areli Roberts is the new racer of dragons in Emperor Ailesh’s coliseum, but what originally seems like an honor turns out to be a curse. The evil emperor is in the midst of a hunt for Degendhard the Great, an aspiring usurper who is growing in popularity among the emperor’s impoverished subjects. (The psychopathic emperor makes for an excellent villain, first appearing shirtless in a blue trench coat, exuding the perfect combination of lechery and violent mania.) Areli’s father takes in Talon, one of Degendhard’s messengers who is badly injured. Areli quickly falls in love—the way teenagers are prone to do—and after heartbreak and separation, though they don’t spend much of the novel together, their love influences much of the rest of the story, even when a new romantic interest comes into Areli’s life. Johnson’s novel grabs attention from the very first scene, piling intense and suspenseful situations on top of each other.

This is also a book full of secrets and surprises. Just enough information is withheld to keep the reader curious, an effective storytelling technique that is not often pulled off as well as in these pages. The writing tends to be spare and does not dwell on lengthy descriptions or expositions, though the author has a knack for a good one-liner. Johnson skillfully navigates adventure but sometimes flubs the love scenes with clichéd dialogue

THE GREEKS OF BEAUBIEN STREET Jenkins, Suzanne CreateSpace (368 pp) $15.75 paper | $5.99 e-book Nov. 7, 2012 978-1479311743

A murder investigation unfolds inside Detroit’s tightknit Greek community.

The brutal rape and murder of a young woman, Gretchen Parker, sparks the plot of this appealing mystery from Jenkins (Family Dynamics, 2012, etc.). Detroit’s police dispatch calls detective Jill Zannos, a longtime veteran 130

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“Wonderful stories abound; Gertie questions why God didn’t uphold his promise to Noah never to bring another ruinous flood to Earth and, in another scene, holds a burial for her broken Barbie doll in the backyard.” from when the hurricane came

WHEN THE HURRICANE CAME

or seen-it-before subplots. Still, this is an enjoyable read. The story never dulls or drags, and the thrilling, suspenseful plotting keeps the pages turning.

A dark, well-plotted fantasy adventure.

Liss-Levinson, Nechama CreateSpace (138 pp.) $7.99 paper | $5.99 e-book | Apr. 12, 2012 978-1470082536

EUROPEAN SON

In Liss-Levinson’s (Cookie the Seder Cat, 2011, etc.) fine children’s book, a girl and her family are forced to flee their home to escape Hurricane Katrina.

Gertie, a 9-year-old Jewish girl growing up in New Orleans, loves to eat cookies and sponge cake with her brother Jonah at parties at the synagogue; on Wednesdays, she visits her Grandma Rose at a nursing home and calls out numbers for the bingo game. But when Katrina heads toward the city, Gertie and her family must evacuate. Gertie’s mother instructs her to pack up enough clothes, books and toys for a two-day stay at her aunt’s house in Memphis, Tenn., until the storm passes. Once there, Gertie feels safe but worries about her grandmother, her house, her friends and her father—a dedicated doctor who stays behind to help. Due to the overwhelming disaster, the two-day stay stretches into weeks, and Gertie finds herself having to attend a new Jewish school and make new friends. Much of the book’s success lies in Gertie’s memorable first-person voice. As Gertie relates her struggle to adapt to her new life—and then to return to her old, but substantially altered one—the reader witnesses a character’s slow, beautiful evolution. Gertie learns to compromise, to feel gratitude for the little things and to help those less fortunate than she is. The author manages to capture Gertie’s endearing naïveté as well as her adeptness in making connections and thoughtful choices. Wonderful stories abound; Gertie questions why God didn’t uphold his promise to Noah never to bring another ruinous flood to Earth and, in another scene, holds a burial for her broken Barbie doll in the backyard.

When Gertie attempts to surprise her family by concocting a noodle-pudding recipe for Rosh Hashana (with leftover spaghetti and hard-boiled eggs), her brother complains, and she comments, “Jonah, you don’t know any better, because you are only a five year old chef. And I am almost ten. So I have better taste than you. Now and forever. So there. And Happy New Year to you too.” The author includes a helpful glossary of pertinent Jewish terminology and a list of addresses for donating books to organizations throughout the world.

An excellent children’s novel featuring a captivating, charming young girl.

Levy, Barry Stewart CreateSpace (158 pp.) $10.00 paper | $2.99 e-book Oct. 26, 2012 978-1478104988 Levy debuts with an elegiac novella featuring a troubled young narrator on a dangerous journey to satisfy his needs for control and sexual vengeance.

In 1989, as the story begins, the unnamed narrator turns 27. But far from celebrating the event, he becomes increasingly alienated from those closest to him.

He pitches himself from a leafy suburb of New Haven, Conn., onto continental Europe, beginning in London and Amsterdam, then moving on to the French Riviera, sidling among the couples enjoying romantic liaisons sur la plage. But the narrator isn’t interested in romance, at least not with any one person.

He’s obsessed with triangulation and always in the most oblique form. Consigned to an orphanage at age 7 after the simultaneous deaths of both parents, he was finally adopted at 14 by older parents with a teenage daughter, Ann. His sense of disjunction was exacerbated by Ann’s inappropriate interest in him and by an early realization of his same-sex attraction. Ann’s impact on him and her ability to manipulate him is at the heart of the novella. The action in Nice, plaited with flashbacks and standalone poems, is elliptical and intense. Like Patricia Highsmith’s infamous Ripley, the narrator insinuates himself into situations and relationships, becoming both an object of desire and revulsion. There’s an air of mystery surrounding the events rather than any real mysteries. The book’s brevity leaves little time for suspense to linger; most questions are answered within a few pages. The narrative refers directly to some weighty and controversial works of art such as Pier Pasolini’s films Teorema and Porcile and Roman Polanski’s Knife in the Water. Their recurrent themes of handsome interlopers wreaking havoc on couples and of erotic acts tinged with violence appear throughout the novella. The author’s arcane knowledge of midcentury film often misses the mark, as the allusions are not readily evident and add little to the effort. Levy’s poetry is generally successful, and he demonstrates lyrical talent, with occasional off notes, such as “a dream of Poe-etic justice.” Not a coming-out story or solely about sexual attraction between individuals, the book’s conclusions are unnerving as are many of the scenes portrayed.

Levy’s laconic style is often very effective in this ambitious, chilling tale of psychopathology and exploitation.

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The Revolution Was Self-Published b y

The Revolution Was Televised: The Cops, Crooks, Slingers and Slayers Who Changed TV Drama Forever

Sepinwall, Alan What’s Alan Watching?

(306 pp.) $16.99 Nov. 12, 2012 978-0615718293

K i rk us M e di a L L C # President M A RC W I N K E L M A N Chief Operating Officer MEG LABORDE KU E H N Chief Financial Officer J ames H ull SVP, Marketing M ike H ejny SVP, Online Paul H offman # Copyright 2013 by Kirkus Media LLC. KIRKUS REVIEWS (ISSN 1948-7428) is published semi-monthly

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If you like watching television, then you are most likely familiar with the television critic Alan Sepinwall; and if you’re not, then I suggest you start reading his work right away. Sepinwall has been writing about television for nearly 20 years.

He started out as a columnist for the Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J., while also maintaining his own blog, What’s Alan Watching? In 2010, he started writing full time for the website HitFix, where he writes about nearly every show on television. Following Sepinwall on Twitter and reading his website religiously—both of which I do—it is amazing how he illuminates each show he covers.

This past year, Sepinwall wrote his first book, The Revolution Was Televised: The Cops, Crooks, Slingers and Slayers Who Changed TV Drama Forever, a study of the “television revolution” of the past 10 to 15 years that succinctly profiles the creators and stories behind shows such as The Sopranos, Oz, Lost, The Wire, Deadwood, Mad Men, Breaking Bad and more. The book displays all of the qualities of Sepinwall’s online writing that have gained him rabid followers—the ability to make layered, objective analyses about shows he obviously takes personal enjoyment in; the references to and appreciation for television’s evolving canon; and an insider’s view of all the people involved in the creation and production of a television series.

In a surprising move, Sepinwall decided to selfpublish his book in November. Self-publishing has certainly gained popularity over the past five years, but someone with Sepinwall’s following surely could find a traditional publisher.

“I looked into the traditional publishing route but didn’t receive a lot of interest based on my initial pitch,” Sepinwall says. He did garner one offer from an editor whose bosses weren’t as enthusiastic about Sepinwall’s book as the editor himself was. Sepinwall’s friend Ken Levine (a former TV writer) had self-published a few of his own books, so Sepinwall felt encouraged to try it himself.

Sepinwall wrote the bulk of the book this past summer and went through the editing and formatting process over a few weeks last fall. “I didn’t trust myself to edit,” he says, “so I hired a friend of mine who is a professional editor to catch typos and tell me where I went off the rails. I also hired a cover artist and a formatting company called 52 Novels, and when I got the files back and was pleased I hit the button and we were ready to go.”

Once the book was published, Sepinwall took to Twitter and to his various media contacts in order to spread the word.

“I did some blog posts and reached out to people I knew in the business and asked, ‘Hey, could you mention that I wrote this book?’ I sent them copies and reached out to a few publications and

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then all of a sudden I had the surprise of the New York Times running a very positive review of it.”

Based on his sizable Internet following and network of friends, word did spread. In fact, a college contacted Sepinwall and asked how they could purchase his books to use in a for-credit course on television.

That kind of inquiry certainly makes sense.

Sepinwall’s voice and tone are entirely authoritative. In The Revolution Was Televised’s prologue, Sepinwall provides a dazzling history of the television shows from the 1980s and 1990s (Hill Street Blues, St. Elsewhere, NYPD Blue, among others*) that paved the way for the shows and television landscape we have known for the past decade. In the space of seven or eight pages, Sepinwall manages to fit in a wealth of knowledge and appreciation for the early pioneers of the form that he holds dear. It is the kind of tactful, economic prose that any professor would be wise to include in a syllabus, whether the course is on television or nonfiction writing in general.

Even though Sepinwall has been pleased with the results of his self-published book, last month he made a deal with Touchstone Books for the rights to The Revolution Was Televised. He is working with his editor at Touchstone on some slight revisions and additions, but he wants to make sure that there is a seamless transition between the versions. “I want it to be that one day you are ordering the self-published version on Amazon and then the next you’re ordering the Touchstone version,” Sepinwall says. He is hopeful that the Touchstone edition will be released during the first quarter of this year.

The publishing world is in flux—that fact is evident. However, it should be encouraging that a writer such as Alan Sepinwall, with an ideal mixture of a large online following and a history in traditional print media, can still feel dissatisfied with established publishing routes and get creative. The fact that Sepinwall’s creativity led to a book deal on his own terms should be even more promising.

In publishing, there is no “right” answer. * If you want a tip from Sepinwall, then watch Homicide: Life on the Street. He believes that it’s the drama that still holds up the best from the first wave of edgy prime-time dramas on the 1980s and 1990s.

9 Matt Domino is the assistant Indie editor at Kirkus Reviews.

THE ARARAT ILLUSION

IN ARMS AND IDLENESS

Minier, David D. Self (342 pp.) $12.95 paper | $9.99 e-book Oct. 1, 2011 978-0615531939

Slake, Emmett E. Publish Green (290 pp.) $6.99 e-book | Sep. 21, 2012

Through the eyes of conflicted Americans and war-ravaged locals, Slake’s compelling debut novel focuses on the “sordid side of garrison life” in post–WWII Japan and the absurdities in Korea that followed.

Twenty-one-year-old Pvt. David Ricksen, from Lincoln, Neb., has been stationed in Japan for six months, but he’s already acquired an attractive lover named Keiko. He also has an inconvenient relationship with a fellow GI—and proud grifter—Michael Hurley. When Ricksen is transferred to Korea, a raid of Russian tanks and North Korean soldiers decimates his unit and leaves him wandering a foreboding landscape and hoping deep down the Army will look out for him. Meanwhile, Hurley, who paid to stay behind in Yokohama to run his moneylending operation, kills a fellow soldier over $30, and as he sinks to the depths of hell to atone for his sins, he receives an unexpected offer from the malevolent Cpl. Faust—and his frightening flunky, Tomoda. Captivating USO worker Patricia Sorensen, troubled, beautiful prostitute Rie Hara and blackmailed Maj. Paul Nathan fill out the remaining slots of Slake’s sexual and tragic roundelay. Evocative descriptions recreate bustling Yokohama, with its ox carts, pachinko parlors, “bars and sex pits,” the brutal, impromptu battlefields of the Korean countryside, and in a touching coda, the Louvre. With strong and steady language, not devoid of poetry, Slake’s observations and intertwined plots reveal a raw vision of the beginning of the Korean conflict that defies its main “beneficiaries”: flawed Gen. MacArthur, the overblown efforts and narrow scope of the Marines and the triviality of M*A*S*H. Although he tallies the tedium and travesties, such as Ricksen’s travails aboard the Shinano Maru en route to Korea, Slake never loses his sense of humor or humanity. His multidimensional characters, flawed in all-too-human ways, remain true to the insensitive racial and sexual stereotypes of the day—and not even the most secondary of characters, such as the exciting, mysterious Madame LeClerc, suffers from a lack of uninteresting back story.

An unflinching picaresque of finding love and sanity in a place that was anything but The Land of the Morning Calm.

A fast-paced political thriller set during the Reagan presidency.

In Minier’s debut page turner, Vietnam veteran Lt. Michael Page works a fairly routine job with the Santa Barbara Police Department until someone murders the American ambassador to Turkey.

When Michael first became a cop over a decade ago, he was called to a hotel where two Turkish consuls were murdered.

The connection to the recent event is not lost on him, and soon he receives notes from the unknown madman, threatening to assassinate more federal officials. Dubbed the Poet Killer for his foreboding notes sent to police, this terrorist, who signs his notes Antranik, delights in the morbid game he plays and seeks a place in history. Antranik looks to be retaliating against Turkey’s Armenian genocide of 1915. Persistent Michael tries to decipher Antranik’s poems to figure out where he plans to strike next so he can catch the assassin before more casualties occur.

After another prominent figure falls victim, the stakes climb even higher. Even the president isn’t immune to the dangerous Antranik as the suspense rages on in this what-could-havehappened roller-coaster ride based on the actual assassination of two Turkish diplomats in 1973. As the manhunt continues, Antranik’s allegiances and reasons come into question, and his connection to the Russians causes panic among government officials who fear nuclear war. The investigation brings Michael to Lela Drew, a disappointingly one-dimensional love interest who is a graduate student of Armenian history. When romantic feelings develop between them, their lives become entangled, putting them both in danger. The characters are a bit clichéd and predictable, but they are appropriate in this cop drama.

It is clear that Minier knows his characters and their world, effectively conveying their nuances, with the exception of Lela.

Minier’s simple, engrossing style works well with a narrative rich with historical details. The author skillfully weaves a substantial web of deceit, murder and mystery.

A gripping ride-along with a small-town detective in the midst of a national security crisis.

FIFTY SHADES OF FUNNY Hook-ups, Break-ups and Crack-ups Stanfa, D.C. Pandora’s Boxes (210 pp.) $14.99 paper | $6.49 e-book Oct. 31, 2012 978-0615679174

A collection of essays about the intricacies of life, love and sex.

Composed of short stories penned by bloggers and comedy writers, and expertly edited by comedy |

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“Stark sets the stage for his wild style of storytelling, in which he marvelously toys with point of view, the timeline and the novel’s internal reality to envelop the reader in alternating layers of acuity and confusion….” from the final appearance of america’s favorite girl next door

writers Stanfa and Reinhardt, this collection takes readers on a hilarious journey through the trials and tribulations of sex and intimacy. In “Spirited Engagements,” the nightly noises of a young couple in love at an inn are presumed to be the paranormal racket of a resident ghost; in “The Thing at the End of a Sentence,” a young woman visiting the Ukraine receives a painfully public, embarrassing gift of tampons. The stories tend to dig into those most intimate moments while sharing tales of humility and humor. In particular, Lisa Brower’s story about trying to please her military husband upon his return home from duty offers some knee-slapping, laugh-out-loud comedy. Per her husband’s fantasy, she decides to surprise him by donning a rubber outfit, which goes terribly wrong: She “was starting to resemble a breaded cutlet, and the powerful rubber stench of the dress was making me dizzy.” Though authored by different writers— the majority of whom are female—the stories are seamlessly woven together and flow smoothly in tone from one essay to the next, which should appeal to anyone who’s traversed the world of dating and relationships. Despite some of the outlandish premises, most of the dexterously crafted stories are highly relatable and will resonate with readers of all backgrounds.

Sure to induce chuckles for adult readers looking for a good laugh.

layers of acuity and confusion—the exact feelings Ellen and Michael experience in the Black Box. That seemingly impossible technological masterpiece is central to Stark’s dig into Ellen’s head; the contraption allows Ellen to enter an unknown world that even Michael, its creator, isn’t sure is real.

An intense, unexpected mind-meld in a captivating blend of technology and romance.

DAYNIGHT

Thomason, Megan CreateSpace (320 pp.) $8.99 paper | $3.99 e-book Nov. 26, 2012 978-1480226555 A sci-fi adventure with a sweet YA love story at its center.

Kira Donovan is enjoying high school with her boyfriend, Tristan, and her best friend, Bri. She’s had to take all these weird intellectual, psychological and physical tests, but she’s got an end-of-the-year party to look forward to. Searching for Tristan among the partygoers, she runs into Ethan, who has eyes too blue and a face too handsome to ignore. After a terrible tragedy that evening claims the lives of her friends, Kira and the school loner, Blake, find themselves on a harsh but habitable planet called Thera, which is governed by mysterious powers.

There are nightly doctor’s visits, hours of computer-led classes and strange ways of getting around, like zip lines and skateboards. As roommates at school, Kira and Blake are expected to “Cleave,” or mate for life. But Blake, having grown up with the hardship of alternating between Earth and Thera, has his own agenda, one that includes revenge upon the brutal Theran leaders who destroyed his family. When Tristan, Bri and Ethan all show up, with no memory of their past lives or deaths, Kira and Blake feel the stakes of their joint mission—and of their romantic expectations—rise even higher. Author Thomason rotates the chapters through different characters’ perspectives, allowing their distinctive voices and conflicting motivations to round out her thoroughly described world. The narrative perfectly captures the cadences and nuances of teen speech, blending with a richly imagined alternate world in which breaking the rules can result in being “Exiled” to certain death—but sticking to the rules may be just as bad.

Sure to win over YA readers looking for a dangerous, dystopian adventure story balanced by emotion.

THE FINAL APPEARANCE OF AMERICA’S FAVORITE GIRL NEXT DOOR Stark, Stephen Geekvoodoo (371 pp.) $14.95 paper | $5.99 e-book Dec. 6, 2012

A celebrity tries to find herself with help from her dead lover’s reality-bending invention.

Somewhere between her early days scraping by doing stand-up in New York clubs while wearing an assless tutu and her current multimillionaire, Hollywood lifestyle as the star of a popular sitcom, Ellen Gregory stopped recognizing herself. Her 17-year-old self that carried a dream and ran away from home no longer exists. Neither does she know Ellen from the wildly popular TV show Girlfriends, who now makes a home on tabloid covers. So Ellen runs away again, except this time, back to her childhood home. While hiding from the world in Iowa, she meets Michael Webster, a man she falls in love with; only weeks later, though, he dies in a shark attack while the two are on vacation. Michael, a Ph.D. student, had invented the Black Box, a piece of unintentional brilliance that intertwines the human brain with a computer interface in a way that opens new windows into reality. The novel starts with the shark attack, thrillingly throwing the reader into the depths before the narrative slowly pieces together the psychological puzzle of Ellen’s world. In starting so dramatically, Stark (Second Son, 2011, etc.) sets the stage for his wild style of storytelling, in which he marvelously toys with point of view, the timeline and the novel’s internal reality to envelop the reader in alternating 134

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HURT

off: Alabaster Black has reclaimed her place in the covert government agency known as “Rendition,” though she’s far from trusting them completely. While embroiling herself in the scientific affairs of a dubious pharmaceutical technology company owned by the wealthy Cyril Sargent, she realizes that the past she left behind in Rome has not been fully forgotten. Again, Valjan successfully conflates multiple sophisticated narratives that bring the past and present together, which the archaeological theme of the last novel also helps accomplish. Old friends and love interests, as well as Mafiosi and Bulgarian hit men, infuse this novel with vital excitement and suspense. Black is a capable heroine and a good balance against an overabundance of Italian machismo and Irish-American testosterone. Though often aided by stereotypical “intuition,” Black’s decision-making process isn’t patronizing, especially since her intuition is more than a mystical feminine feeling; it’s actually rooted in levelheaded logic.

Although Valjan proves himself to be a capable writer, some of the novel’s many twists and turns fall flat due to too much foreshadowing. Also, some details become bothersome and superfluous; in a crime thriller, intricacy is essential, but some details, such as a paragraph-long description of a cellphone powering up, are glaringly unnecessary. That said, the many diverging storylines come together quickly, and the mood and pace remain consistent throughout this thrilling page turner.

Black is back and just as entertaining as ever.

Thrasher, Travis David C. Cook (496 pp.) $9.99 paper | Jan. 1, 2013 978-1434764164 Teenager Chris Buckley makes his stand in the town of Solitary in the fourth and final book in Thrasher’s (Temptation, 2012) Christian-oriented Solitary Tales series.

After leaving his father’s home in Chicago, Chris returns to the strangeness of Solitary, N.C.—confronting disturbing visions, a lifelike mannequin that looks like a deceased former friend and continuing threats against the life of his mother, Tara Kinner.

Although Chris wants to save his mother, he has no idea where she is; meanwhile, evil town patriarch Ichor Staunch informs Chris that, although Staunch can’t kill him, he can still hurt him in numerous ways. Staunch and others seek to manipulate, threaten and frighten Chris into renouncing God and coming over to their side before the ailing head of the Kinner clan, Walter Kinner, makes his exit; the date is set for Chris to officially become part of the Kinner clan on Memorial Day. Chris’ emotionally wounded Uncle Robert notes that the Kinner clan sees Chris as “their Luke Skywalker.” Chris also grows closer to sweet Kelsey Page and her loving family; he begins attending her church, which—unlike that of demented local pastor Jeremiah Marsh—is founded on Christian principles. Gradually, Chris’ belief in God deepens. However, Chris can’t shake the feeling that he’s risking Kelsey’s life by associating with her. Meanwhile, an FBI agent arrives to investigate the disappearance of Jocelyn Evans—from the series’ first book, Solitary (2010)— who was ritualistically sacrificed about a year ago. Other characters from past books reappear, including Poe, Jared and Newt, to address past plot points; Thrasher also adds the 42-year-old, 250-pound Mounds, a lively, hippie-ish ghost hunter who hires Chris as his assistant. The author skillfully depicts the horror of living in creepy Solitary as Chris works to ensure his own safety and that of his loved ones. Throughout, the author gently leads the reader toward a conclusion that hints of hope and a vital transformation to come.

A fine, fitting end to a soulful series.

WASP’S NEST

Valjan, Gabriel Winter Goose Publishing (294 pp.) $16.99 paper | Dec. 2, 2012 978-0-9881845-3-4 Valjan’s second novel in the Roma trilogy finds Alabaster Black, a covert government analyst, in Boston on the run from a mysterious assassin.

Valjan’s latest quickly picks up from where the author’s last novel, the intricately plotted speleological thriller Roma,Underground (2012) left |

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