June 01, 2013: Volume LXXXI, No 11

Featuring 287 Industry-First Reviews of Fiction, Nonfiction and Children's & Teen

KIRKUS VOL. LXXXI, NO.

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JUNE

2013

REVIEWS

CHILDREN'S & TEEN

The Long, Long Line

by Tomoko Ohmura Think waiting in line is no fun at all?

Think again. p. 99

NONFICTION

The Way of the Knife

by Mark Mazzetti A well-reported, smoothly written book for anyone who wants to understand contemporary American military might p. 64

FICTION

The Truth

by Michael Palin With passion and flair, Palin details a journalist’s quest to discover the truth about a reclusive environmental activist. p. 25

Kate Christensen

and the other stars of 2013's summer reading bounty p. 54

INDIE

Amanda Hocking: How the Self-Publishing Superstar Found Success p. 122 Photo by Michael Sharkey

Anniversaries: The Long Good-bye 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

A g o o d b y e c a n b e l o n g because it stems from a lingering kiss. It can be long because someone takes his or her sweet time in committing suicide by means of, say, hamburgers or highballs. It can be long because it closes a long, gruesome death through some terrible illness.

In the case of Raymond Chandler, who published his novel The Long Good-bye 60 years ago, in 1953, the lingering kisses were few. Chandler, a veteran of World War I, was no stranger to death, and certainly not to alcohol, and by the time he published the novel, he was in his mid-60s and had lost many friends. As he wrote it, too, he was losing his wife to a long, painful illness that would finally take her life the next year, whereupon Chandler turned definitively to the bottle and sank into a lasting depression.

The novel opens with that bottle, inside of which a hapless World War II veteran has crawled.

“Terry Lennox made me plenty of trouble,” Chandler’s private detective hero, he of the knightly name Philip Marlowe, tells us at the outset. Terry is a poet of the barroom, smitten by the afternoon light of Los Angeles as it falls on bottles, by the clink and thump of glasses and mugs, by the first taste of an expertly mixed cocktail.

The problem is, he can never limit himself to that one taste, and he brings Marlowe plenty of trouble as a result—including being arrested on suspicion of murder. Meanwhile, the characters with whom Chandler populates his story begin dropping like flies, while threats begin swarming Marlowe from all sides, delivered by gangsters, cops and even a novelist.

Like his namesake Christopher, Philip Marlowe is a knight errant outside of his time. Chandler always depicted him as a man ever close to being defeated, often perplexed, always world-weary— but always willing to pick himself up and do the job. He is quick to learn along the way, too, truths such as this: “The law isn’t justice. It’s a very imperfect mechanism. If you press exactly the right buttons and are also lucky, justice may show up in the answer.”

In The Long Good-bye, he is all of those things and more, and it is for that reason that so many critics consider Chandler the greatest of mystery novelists and this his greatest novel. Even Edmund Wilson, who roundly disliked detective stories in general, considered him an excellent writer, though, to protect his thesis, he insisted that Chandler was not a writer of detective stories but instead of “a novel of adventure that has less in common with Hammett than with Alfred Hitchcock and Graham Greene.”

And as for the story? The body count mounts, Chandler’s writing soars, but by the end, not a huge amount has happened. Chandler was not worried. He said that it didn’t matter what the novel was about and what took place in it. What mattered was the writing: “The only fiction of any moment in any age is that which does magic with words.”

Chandler’s story still effects that magic, 60 years on. It mixes a mean cocktail as well.

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

Editor E L A I N E S Z E WC Z Y K eszewczyk@kirkus.com Managing/Nonfiction Editor E R I C L I E B E T R AU eliebetrau@kirkus.com Children’s & Teen Editor VICKY SMITH vsmith@kirkus.com Features Editor C laiborne S mith csmith@kirkus.com Mysteries Editor THOMAS LEITCH Contributing Editor G R E G O RY M c N A M E E Senior Indie Editor KAREN SCHECHNER kschechner@kirkus.com Indie Editor RYA N L E A H E Y rleahey@kirkus.com Indie Editor D avid R a p p drapp@kirkus.com Assistant Indie Editor M AT T D O M I N O mdomino@kirkus.com Editorial Assistant CHELSEA LANGFORD clangford@kirkus.com Copy Editor BETSY JUDKINS Director of Kirkus Editorial P E R RY C RO W E pcrowe@kirkus.com Director of Technology E R I K S M A RT T esmartt@kirkus.com Marketing Communications Director SARAH KALINA skalina@kirkus.com Designer ALEX HEAD #

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This Issue’s Contributors

Maude Adjarian • Mark Athitakis • Michael Autrey • Joseph Barbato • Adam benShea • Amy Boaz • Derek Charles Catsam • Dave DeChristopher • Gregory F. DeLaurier • Kathleen Devereaux • Ruth Douillette • Bobbi Dumas • Daniel Dyer • Lisa Elliott • Megan Fishmann • Peter Franck • Bob Garber • Alan Goldsher • Amanda Hocking • Jeff Hoffman • BJ Hollars • Robert M. Knight • Megan Labrise • Paul Lamey • Louise Leetch • Judith Leitch • Peter Lewis • Elsbeth Lindner • Georgia Lowe • Joe Maniscalco • Don McLeese • Gregory McNamee • Carole Moore • Clayton Moore • Liza Nelson • Mike Newirth • John Noffsinger • Sarah Norris • Mike Oppenheim • Jim Piechota • Christofer D. Pierson • Gary Presley • Kristen Bonardi Rapp • Lloyd Sachs • Bob Sanchez • Sandra Sanchez • William P. Shumaker • Rosanne Simeone • Elaine Sioufi • Arthur Smith • Wendy Smith • Margot E. Spangenberg • Andria Spencer • Matthew Tiffany • Claire Trazenfeld • Steve Weinberg • Carol White • Chris White

you can now purchase books online at kirkus.com

contents fiction Index to Starred Reviews............................................................5 REVIEWS.................................................................................................5 SUMMER READING: FICTION............................................................14

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

Mystery.............................................................................................. 33 Science Fiction & Fantasy......................................................... 40 Romance............................................................................................41

nonfiction Index to Starred Reviews..........................................................43 REVIEWS...............................................................................................43 Summer reading: nonfiction...................................................58

children’s & teen Index to Starred Reviews..........................................................75 REVIEWS...............................................................................................75 summer reading: middle grade.............................................80 summer reading: teen................................................................86 Back-to-school picture books..............................................107 interactive e-books...................................................................112

indie REVIEWS..............................................................................................115 amanda hocking makes her voice heard......................... 122

When young Sophie adopts a squash at the farmers market, she learns a lesson about love—and gardening. Read the review on p. 97.

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on the web 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

Photo Courtesy Alexis Schaitkin

City of Ambition: FDR, La Guardia, and the Making of Modern New York is debut author Mason B. Williams’ history of the New Deal and the remarkable collaboration between Franklin Roosevelt and Fiorello La Guardia, a case study in creative political leadership in the midst of a devastating depression. Roosevelt and La Guardia were an odd couple: patrician president and immigrant mayor, fireside chat and tabloid cartoon, pragmatic Democrat and reform Republican. But together, as leaders of America’s two largest governments in the depths of the Great Depression, they fashioned a route to recovery for the nation and the master plan for a great city. Williams is revealing on the Kirkus site the five most titanic ego clashes that shaped New Deal–era New York City.

In The Alley of Love and Yellow Jasmines, Oscar nominee and Emmy Award–winning actress Shohreh Aghdashloo shares her journey—from a childhood in Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s Iran to the red carpets of Hollywood—in this memoir of family, faith, revolution and hope.

Enchanted by the movies she watched while growing up in affluent Tehran in the 1950s and ’60s, Aghdashloo dreamed of becoming an actress despite her parents’ more practical plans. When she fell in love and married her husband, Aydin, a painter 12 years her senior, she made him promise he’d allow her to follow her passion. In this moving, deeply personal memoir, Aghdashloo shares her story: It is a tale of privilege and affluence, pain and prejudice, tenacity and success.

She writes poignantly about her struggles as an outsider in a foreign culture—as a woman, a Muslim and an Iranian—adapting to a new land and a new language. She shares behind-the-scenes stories about what it’s really like to be a Hollywood actress—including being snubbed by two of Tinseltown’s biggest names on Oscar night. We interview Aghdashloo in June.

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Clyde Edgerton has four kids ranging in age from 5 to 30 years old. After three decades of fatherhood, there are certain things he has learned during his tenure. His way of raising his children involves, of course, lots of humor (don’t curse near a mimicking child) but also the sound advice of a lifelong educator (you can’t start reading to a baby too early). With Papadaddy’s Book for New Fathers, Edgerton shares his wisdom with other dads, young and old alike. Writing from experience, observation and his vivid imagination, Edgerton conveys both caution and joy—mostly joy. Edgerton talks to Kirkus about the new book in June.

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 best-seller Rachel Van Dyken. 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.

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fiction THIS IS HOW YOU DIE Stories of the Inscrutable, Infallible, Inescapable Machine of Death

These titles earned the Kirkus Star: LOOKAWAY, LOOKAWAY by Wilton Barnhardt.................................5

Ryan North; Bennardo, Matthew; Malki, David—Eds. Grand Central Publishing (512 pp.) $18.00 paper | Jul. 16, 2013 978-1-4555-2939-1

ARCHANGEL by Andrea Barrett.......................................................... 6 AMOR AND PSYCHO by Carolyn Cooke............................................10 THE CROCODILE by Maurizio de Giovanni......................................10 BLOOD & BEAUTY by Sarah Dunant..................................................12 THE SIGNATURE OF ALL THINGS by Elizabeth Gilbert..................12 THE SKULL AND THE NIGHTINGALE by Michael Irwin.................16 SOMEONE ELSE’S LOVE STORY by Joshilyn Jackson....................... 17 CRAZY RICH ASIANS by Kevin Kwan.............................................. 20 THE NIGHT GUEST by Fiona McFarlane............................................23 THE SON by Philipp Meyer................................................................. 24 THE HUSBAND’S SECRET by Liane Moriarty................................. 24 PAINT THE BIRD by Georgeann Packard........................................... 24 THE TRUTH by Michael Palin..............................................................25 THE ROSIE PROJECT by Graeme Simsion......................................... 28 THE ENGAGEMENTS by J. Courtney Sullivan................................. 28 A FATAL LIKENESS by Lynn Shepherd...............................................39

In this anthology, contributions from authors across a spectrum of genres yield stories about a fantastical Machine of Death, “which can predict anybody’s ultimate fate based on a simple blood test.”

This is the follow-up volume to the popular self-published anthology Machine of Death (2010). To recap, in 2007, Bennardo, Malki and North solicited stories from contributors, with one caveat: Each story had to involve the Death Machine, a device that would analyze a drop of blood, then would generate a slip of paper telling the person how he or she would die. In this second volume, the editors narrowed over 1,700 submissions down to 31 stories, punctuated by 13 comics. While readers might expect a wide swath of sci-fi, the entries (with names like “Bite Wound,” “Got Too Extreme” and “Massive Blood Loss”) are more diverse than that. “Apitoxin” unreels a classic Sherlock Holmes whodunit, while “Lazarus Reactor Fission Sequence” is old-school sci-fi in the flavor of Harry Harrison or Martin Caidin. One of the great stories, “Cancer,” tells the tale of a woman whose cells hold a secret à la Henrietta Lacks, and “Your Choice” offers a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure mortality story. Whether the cause of death is “Screaming, Crying, Alone, and Afraid,” “Blunt Force Trauma Delivered by Spouse,” “Peacefully” or “Old Age,” none of the stories unravel in the way one might think.

Funny, frightening, clever; no one in these stories emerges unscathed.

LOOKAWAY, LOOKAWAY

THE LAND OF DREAMS by Vidar Sundst�l.......................................39

Barnhardt, Wilton St. Martin’s (368 pp.) $25.99 | Aug. 20, 2013 978-1-250-02150-2 Barnhardt’s fourth novel is a revelation: witty, savage and bighearted all at once, it is the Southern novel for the 21st century.

The Jarvis-Johnston clan is a Charlotte, N.C., family of distinction; they |

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“Barrett’s stories rank with the best.” from archangel

have all that matters to society: money, pedigree and manners enough to keep secrets buried. But, as each family member is revealed (spanning a decade, every character has their own chapter), the ruin of the family becomes imminent. When Jerilyn Johnston heads off to Chapel Hill, she seems the one child who will live up to her mother Jerene’s exacting standards. But when she pledges Sigma Kappa Nu, filled with rich, surgeryaugmented party girls who hope to raise spring-break money by starting their own online porn site, Jerilyn falls into the abyss, which is a place her uncle Gaston Jarvis frequents with pleasure.

Though in his youth he was a Young Turk of the literary world, for the last two decades he has churned out a regrettable Civil War series featuring the adventures of Cordelia Florabloom.

The books have made him rich and bitter, his only solace a bar stool at the club. The great Southern novel he wanted to write, Lookaway Dixieland, conceived with his comrade in arms Duke Johnston, serves as a treacherous reminder of his wasted life.

Jerene and Duke’s other children—Annie, the much-married left-wing rebel; Josh, who spends his evenings trolling for black men on the down low; and Bo, a Presbyterian minister who despises his congregation—are all beyond their parents’ control, contributing to the mother of all Christmas dinner disasters.

Perhaps most poignant is patriarch Duke Johnston: the golden boy beloved by everyone, offered the world but who, in the end, locks himself away in his Civil War library, fixated on an insignificant battle, shielded by history.

Barnhardt masterfully reimagines the Southern gothic: There is every kind of sordid deed committed, but there is also an abundance of humanity and grace.

ARCHANGEL

Barrett, Andrea Norton (224 pp.) $24.95 | Aug. 19, 2013 978-0-393-24000-9 The award-winning author returns with another collection of stories distinguished by uncommon scope and depth.

Having won the National Book Award with Ship Fever (1996), Barrett has continued to command fictional territory all her own. Her latest collection of five stories finds her fiction typically steeped in science, rich in ideas, set in the historical past, and filled with characters who share the excitement, and some of the fear, of discovery. Framing the collection are two stories featuring the same protagonist, Constantine Boyd, as a boy of 12 from Detroit in “The Investigators,” set in 1908, and as a soldier amid the madness of war in the concluding title story, set in 1919 Russia. The first story is a masterwork of misdirection, as the boy investigates a world rife with discovery—of evolution, flight, family, identity, self (away from home, he flirts with calling himself “Stan”)—while the reader discovers the underlying story of the protagonist’s home life, the reasons why the boy spends summers with one uncle or another. Other stories delve deeply into the debates initially surrounding evolution, the popular but subsequently discarded 6

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notion of ether, and the darker implications of genetics (with the rise of Nazi Germany as a backdrop). Yet the characters are never secondary to (or mere mouthpieces for) the provocative ideas, as the stories explore relationships among mentors and students, scientific rivals, romantic attractions. She writes not only of someone “who still appreciates the poet’s wonderment in these days at the marvels of science,” but as someone who can recapture that wonderment decades after such marvels have been embraced or refuted. And she recognizes throughout the collection “how the theories seized on with such enthusiasm by one generation might be discarded scornfully by the next.”

Barrett’s stories rank with the best.

MEMORIES OF A MARRIAGE

Begley, Louis Talese/Doubleday (208 pp.) $25.95 | Jul. 9, 2013 978-0-385-53746-9

Autumn turns to winter in this novel about an author of the novelist’s own generation, who reflects upon (among other things) the complex relationships between fiction and life, memory and truth.

The latest from the venerable Begley (Schmidt Steps Back, 2012, etc.) lacks the scope and dark humor of his multivolume “Schmidtie” saga, but it is nonetheless as sharply observed and subtly nuanced as most of his writing in its focus on class distinctions and destiny among the Eastern elite. It could pass as a novel from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s later decades, if Fitzgerald had lived so long. Its protagonist is Philip, an author of previously greater note, a widower who dearly misses his late wife, who was also a writer. Attending a ballet, he runs into an heiress whose reputation was compromised by her wild, erratic streak and whose ex-husband had died in an accident after a divorce that still left her bitter. Her name is Lucy, and Philip had once slept with her, which seems like a minor plot detail, because everyone had. The bulk of the narrative finds Lucy telling her version of her troubled courtship with and marriage to Thomas Snow, who was then her social inferior but later eclipsed her as a renowned businessman and economist. Both their son and the younger, prettier woman Thomas married after divorcing Lucy provide far different perspectives on the relationship, and those conflicting memories obsess Philip, who wants to fill in the blanks, untwist the contradictions and likely even write a novel with this marriage as raw material. (Perhaps even this very novel that Begley has written?) “But the book would be a novel,” he assures Lucy, “not a memoir or reportage...a mosaic, made of slivers of glass or stone, some picked up as I went along and some I had fabricated.” Since most of this novel is narrated through paraphrase—the protagonist’s spin on what he heard the other characters say—the reader must decide how much he can trust the narrator, a man in despair over “the utter futility of my existence, the books I was writing included.”

Less interesting as a novel than as insight into the mind of a novelist. (Author events in New York and Bridgehampton)

THE LION SEEKER

Bonert, Kenneth Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (576 pp.) $28.00 | Oct. 15, 2013 978-0-547-89804-9 South African–born Canadian writer Bonert serves up a latter-day Exodus in this debut novel.

“A tayter nemt mir nit tsoorik foon besaylem.” The dead never return from the grave. So says a hearse driver, knowingly, at the outset of Bonert’s saga, set in a “pinprick of [a] village” somewhere in Lithuania. The horizon expands almost incomprehensibly when a Jewish family makes its way from the shtetl to a rough but very different South African township, where immigrants from Eastern Europe and South Asia, in order to avoid persecution, become the persecutors themselves. Isaac Helger—each element of his name, each element of every name, has meaning—is a born troublemaker, always

pushing and testing, always just shy of landing in the grave or in prison himself. The consummate outsider, he nonetheless has no difficulty lording it over the Zulu workers alongside whom he toils. “They a bunch of tsotsis and gunovim, man,” grumbles Isaac—which raises the modest caveat that it’s helpful to have some knowledge of Zulu, Afrikaans and Yiddish to appreciate a book that were it a film would come with subtitles. Bonert plays with conventions: Here the novel is a generational saga along the lines of Roots or, yes, a Uris novel, while there it assumes the contours of a cross-class love story, with a shiksa to die for adding to Isaac’s deep-in-the-bone angst. And still farther on, it becomes something of a moral fable as Isaac, ever more aware of what is happening to the Jewish people back in Europe, slowly awakens to the terrors of the apartheid system whose noose is tightening around him. He is also happily precise with a phrase, an image: “He prayed as he always did, concentrating on each word as if it were the smallest broken cog in a tiny wristwatch.”

Too long by a hundred pages, but a promising first step.

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THE LOVEBIRD

ELEVEN DAYS

Brown, Natalie Doubleday (336 pp.) $24.95 | Jun. 18, 2013 978-0-385-53675-2

Carpenter, Lea Knopf (288 pp.) $24.95 | Jun. 19, 2013 978-0-307-96070-2

In Brown’s first novel, an impressionable young woman drifts into animal rights terrorism, goes on the lam and reinvents herself with the help of noble Native Americans and true love.

After her Lebanese-born mother dies in childbirth, Margie grows up under the gentle but distant care of her usually drunk father. A waiflike beauty, she is so sensitive that her left ovary aches when she is stressed. As a lonely college freshman, she falls in love with her Latin professor, Simon, a middle-aged widower with a motherless 7-year-old daughter.

Simon introduces her both to sexual passion and to the animal rights movement through his organization H.E.A.R.T., which pulls off small illegal acts like freeing birds from their pet-store cages to protest for animal rights. Then Simon dumps Margie and quits H.E.A.R.T., suggesting to the group’s typically quirky and diverse members that they put Margie in charge. For a girl who is always sighing about her shyness, Margie has no trouble dancing naked at a party or leading H.E.A.R.T. to burn down a restaurant that proudly serves exotic meat. No one is hurt, but afterward, an undercover policeman nabs Margie, not for arson, but for incendiary speech, when she gives an educational lecture on how to commit arson to prospective H.E.A.R.T. members. Before her trial date, H.E.A.R.T. member Bumble helps her flee to Montana, where she hides out with an Indian family whose matriarch, Granma, was friends with Bumble’s mother back during the AIM uprisings in the 1960s. Now, Granma lives off the land with her granddaughter Cora, whose mother is in jail for drugs, and with Cora’s dad, Jim, who works at a printing company. Soon enough, Granma and Jim have given Margie a new appreciation of nature and an understanding of the spiritual relationship that can exist between humans and the animals they hunt for food. Then Simon shows up and forces Margie to decide where she really belongs.

Self-important pretensions don’t deepen the shallow emotional waters in which these predictable characters swim. Brown is no Louise Erdrich. (Promotion in Iowa City)

A mother considers the fate of her son, a Navy SEAL, with equal measures of intellect and heartbreak in this debut.

Carpenter introduces Sara, the lead of this assured novel, in a state of high anxiety: Her son, Jason, has been missing after a mission went awry, and though his fellow soldiers and military brass are supportive, details are scarce. With too much time to think, she considers her affair with Jason’s father, a high-ranking diplomat, and her son’s unlikely transformation into a top-tier warrior. Carpenter alternates between Sara’s perspective and Jason’s, the latter allowing her to display the depth of her research into brutal special-ops training and the curious equipoise that great soldiers possess. Indeed, the novel contains a lengthy bibliography, underscoring the story’s chief flaw: Its descriptions of life in the Special Forces at times obscure Jason’s character. Yet Carpenter isn’t piling on factoids à la Tom Clancy, and her prose throughout is elegant and considered. When Sara’s wait for news ends, the story picks up more drama and tension, but the emotional temperature ticks up only a degree or two; this is ultimately a novel about how everyone, from soldiers to diplomats to parents, semisuccessfully attempts to keep their balance amid the wild inexplicability of war. In the process, Carpenter explores the mythmaking elements of warfare, from training folklore to the dissembling that authorities reflexively engage in. In that regard, the relative coolness is an odd but welcome shift in the war novel. Stripped of either satire or extreme violence, it lingers on the cold inevitabilities of conflict, which makes it a highly moral anti-war novel without noisily announcing itself as such.

Though clinical at first glance, this well-turned story packs plenty of emotion. Among the smartest of the batch of recent American war novels.

MY EDUCATION

Choi, Susan Viking (304 pp.) $26.95 | Jul. 1, 2013 978-0-670-02490-2

The sexual initiation of a graduate student, who learns how much she does not know, in a novel that somehow feels both overstuffed (style) and undernourished (substance).

From the reference in the first sentence to “a highly conspicuous man,” one of “scandalous, noteworthiness, and exceptional, even sinister, attractiveness,” Choi (A Person of Interest, 2008, etc.) makes it obvious to the reader that the novel’s rites of passage won’t be confining this 8

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education to the classroom. Yet what seems inevitable, particularly after the narrator becomes the teaching assistant to the man of such scandalous, sinister attractiveness, turns out to be anything but, as her attraction to her mentor is mere prelude to complications involving the professor’s wife, the professor’s nannies, the narrator’s roommate, and one alcohol-drenched party and another even more drunken happy hour. Throughout, Regina Gottlieb seems as clueless and directionless as she is articulate (or at least verbose; she expresses herself in convoluted sentences and paragraphs that test the reader’s endurance). She thinks and writes (for, ultimately, she becomes a writer) like this: “Even I, who had never before had a female lover; much less one who was married; much less married to my own former mentor; much less a professor herself at the school at which I was a student—even I who, due to all this complicated inexperience...,” and so on. Her orgasms require expressions almost as choppy: “I seemed to come right away, with a hard, popping effervescence, as if her mouth had raised blisters, or an uppermost froth; but beneath, magma still heaved and groaned and was yearning to fling itself into the air.” Flash forward 15 years, when she informs, succinctly, “Reader, I grew up,” and her education has now extended to her own marriage (“an intricate code of reliance”) and middle age (when “the least reconcilable times of one’s life would in fact coexist until death” and “I didn’t live thoughtlessly in my flesh anymore”). Yet her past improbably returns as more than flashbacks, and her education leaves her by the end knowing even less than when she had started.

There seems to be a happy ending here, though it’s hard to be certain for whom.

grieving Julie has been having an affair with Jamie’s widower. In England, whiny Asha, who resents drama queen Anna Page’s closeness to Allison, finds Allison’s journal in which Beatrix Potter figures prominently, as if the dead author were still alive— passionate appreciation of Beatrix Potter is required to enjoy this novel. Asha also discovers both Allison’s secret about her own heritage and her secret relationship with wealthy neighbor Graham. Meanwhile, Anna Page manipulates bookish, guilt-ridden Julie into a seemingly unlikely relationship with boatman Robbie, who is really a poet from Ireland on his own secret mission concerning his dead wife. Anna Page, who has a tendency to hand nice men over to others and keep jerks for herself, also tries to set up her visiting mother with Graham. But the men, handsome and sensitive as they may be, are really not the point, since the message is that these women solve each other’s problems and know each other best.

Contrived and convoluted in effecting feel-good spirituality. (Agent: Marly Rusoff)

THE WEDNESDAY DAUGHTERS

Clayton, Meg Waite Ballantine (304 pp.) $26.00 | Jul. 30, 2013 978-0-345-53028-8

This sequel to The Wednesday Sisters (2008) follows a second generation of sensitive friends as they travel to a cottage in England’s Lake District to uncover secrets and bond, as Clayton’s female characters are wont to do.

Asha, a 40-ish lawyer also called Hope by her friends, has come to the cottage where her mother, Allison, an unpublished writer of children’s stories about animals, spent a lot of time before her recent death. Asha is accompanied by Anna Page, a 51-year-old heart surgeon and the daughter of literary editor Kath; and 48-year-old librarian Julie, the daughter of Linda and sister of recently deceased Jamie. Each woman has issues: Asha, whose maternal grandparents had nothing to do with her because her father was Indian, is facing a crisis in her marriage to Kevin, who wants to start a family; never married Anna Page loves to play matchmaker for her friends, and even her mother, but has always avoided commitment/intimacy herself, probably because she was scarred by her father’s long-term adultery; |

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“A wonderfully suspenseful novel in which de Giovanni restores life to the cliché of the world-weary detective.” from the crocodile

MEET ME AT THE CUPCAKE CAFE

Colgan, Jenny Sourcebooks Landmark (432 pp.) $14.99 paper | Jul. 2, 2013 978-1-4022-8180-8 A funny novel about friendship, food and love, from British author Colgan.

Issy grew up helping her grandfather in his bakery in northern England. He always told her that bread was life and baking was love, and each chapter opens with one of his recipes. The book opens with Issy visiting him in an assisted living facility in London. Her mother, Marian, has long since moved to America. Issy works for a property development company and has a crush on her boss, the hot and ambitious Graeme.

When Graeme announces the company must downsize, Issy is among those given a severance check, and she feels distressed at having lost both her job and her love. With her severance pay and a loan approved by another handsome bachelor, Austin, she reaches for her dream: opening a bakery/cafe. Among the women Issy hires to help her bake and serve cakes are a single mom and another woman going through a breakup with her child’s father. Here, the business of relationships is examined in tandem with the business of baking.

Readers with an interest in baking will love this book.

Those who can’t bake can skip the recipes and enjoy the humor.

AMOR AND PSYCHO

Cooke, Carolyn Knopf (192 pp.) $24.95 | Aug. 9, 2013 978-0-307-59474-7

Erotic, whimsical, profound—almost all of Cooke’s stories illustrate what Matthew Arnold terms “the eternal note of sadness.”

In “Francis Bacon,” the narrator hangs out at “Bob’s House...the largest private residence in Manhattan,” an obvious allusion to Bob Guccione, founder of Penthouse magazine. He’s hired the narrator to shape up the quasi-erotic ramblings of the feckless Laya, who breathlessly serves as the “grand prize” in a contest Bob dreams up. “Aesthetic Discipline” introduces us to Karim Brazir, the narrator’s “alluring, sexy, [and] passionate” lover, who takes her to visit his home in Hell’s Point, Long Island, for a weekend or two. There, she comes up against the sensibility of Karim’s ultramodernist parents, who inhabit a house with black bathrooms and minimalist furniture. Although the relationship with Karim doesn’t last, the narrator is in equal parts fascinated by and empathetic with Karim’s father, who’s suffering from a terminal illness. One of the best stories in the collection is the eponymous “Amor and Psycho,” which features a pair of 10

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memorable adolescents. Psyche, who renames herself “Psycho” during her freshman year of high school, is a poet who freestyles brilliantly, though she readily admits her friend Harald Bugman is even “more whacked and brilliant” than she is. After she accidentally runs over a baby in her car, Psycho does community service, which she loves, since “corrupting youth was the best and purest thing in her life.” The second part of the story features Georgie, the best friend of Harald’s mother, Babe, who’s trying to hang onto a life in which she deals with cancer and chemo.

Cooke writes with passion, empathy and considerable humor as her characters face life-changing issues of divorce, illness, self-destruction and impending death.

THE CROCODILE

de Giovanni, Maurizio Translated by Shugaar, Antony Europa Editions (336 pp.) $17.00 paper | Jul. 2, 2013 978-1-60945-119-6 A wonderfully suspenseful novel in which de Giovanni restores life to the cliché of the world-weary detective.

Inspector Giuseppe Lojacono has been tainted with rumors that he informed on the Mafia, so he’s transferred from Sicily to Naples to work a desk job, which for him consists of playing online poker. But a methodical serial killer is on the loose, and Lojacono’s bumbling colleagues have no idea how to solve the case, so they have no choice but to turn to him for help. Particularly eager to help solve the mystery behind the murders is the attractive, no-nonsense Assistant District Attorney Laura Piras. She slowly develops confidence that Lojacono is the only one who’ll be able to catch the murderer, dubbed “The Crocodile” by the media because he seems a ruthless killing machine.

Three murders have recently been committed, each of the victims an only child of a single parent, and that seems to Lojacono to be a significant clue. His colleagues on the police force seem to think the Mafia-like Camorra might be responsible, though Lojacono knows the M.O. of the Camorristas and doesn’t see a connection. The psychologically shrewd inspector eventually concludes that the children murdered are perhaps not the “real” victims but that the killer is trying to get revenge on the parents in a twisted and horrifying way. Although estranged from his adolescent daughter, Lojacono has a father’s sense that the worst possible pain that can be inflicted on a parent is the death of a child, so he methodically starts to look for connections among the parents of the three victims, and eventually, he uncovers a bond...but he also finds another potential victim: a 6-month-old infant.

In this crisply translated novel, de Giovanni explores Lojacono’s loneliness and vulnerability while simultaneously revealing his brilliance as a detective.

SHORECLIFF

DeYoung, Ursula Little, Brown (352 pp.) $26.00 | Jul. 23, 2013 978-0-316-21339-4 Oxford Ph.D. DeYoung’s debut novel about an extended family’s summer at the Maine shore in 1928 captures the mood and morals of a bygone era but intermittently stalls in the telling.

Thirteen-year-old Richard Killing II’s retrospective account of a family gathering at Shorecliff, his mother’s old family home, is filled with longing, love and regret as he remembers a fateful summer in a house filled with relatives. Richard is the youngest of 11 cousins, an only child who longs to join in the easy camaraderie that exists among the others, but he often feels invisible because of his youth and awkwardness. Thrilled to be spending the summer with them—a period of time that some of the older cousins resent,

as they’re dragged away from their friends and other activities at home—Richard and his mother travel to Shorecliff, where he takes up residence in a small attic room. His father, a dour, judgmental attorney, doesn’t accompany them, much to Richard’s relief, although he shows up for a few days later in the summer.

Richard’s happy to spend time with his Uncle Kurt and cousin Pamela, who’s only a bit older than he, but he desperately wants to be noticed and accepted by the older cousins. They recognize that Richard has a valuable—if dubious—skill: He eavesdrops on conversations. And it’s not too difficult to get him to spill the beans since, in those moments, he gets to bask in the spotlight. Richard not only snoops on his uncles and aunts, he also observes and mentally records his cousins’ activities: Tom, the golden boy, becomes besotted with a local girl; beautiful, spirited Francesca enlists malleable Charlie to become part of her rebellious escapades; Delia and Cordelia (the Delias) plot to release a tamed fox into the wild. As the summer wears on, Richard’s narration sometimes becomes mired in too much detail, but he always manages to get back to the heart of his affecting story. Some of his revelations seem innocent enough,

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but others are bombshells that change the dynamics of the family, shift individual perspectives and serve as catalysts for the events that follow.

DeYoung’s engrossing conclusion and exquisite tone make wading through the extraneous passages worth the effort.

BLOOD & BEAUTY

Dunant, Sarah Random House (560 pp.) $27.00 | Jul. 16, 2013 978-1-4000-6929-3 The big, bad Borgia dynasty undergoes modern reconsideration in the best-selling British author’s epic new biofiction.

Eclipsing her earlier period novels in scope, Dunant’s (Sacred Hearts, 2009, etc.) latest is an impressively confident, capable sweep through the corrupt politics and serpentine relationships of a legendary family. Marshaling a mass of material, including contemporary research, Dunant delivers a colorful, sensual and characteristically atmospheric account of Rodrigo Borgia’s ascent to the papacy as Alexander VI in 1492 and his subsequent tireless efforts to build a power base through the strategic use of his four children. Cesare is the sly, shrewd son, a match for his father in guile but with a colder heart, who moves ruthlessly from cardinal to soldier as politics and advancement dictate. Beloved daughter Lucrezia makes one strategic marriage after another while nursing a powerful attachment to Cesare. Two more sons play similarly useful roles, forging alliances. The politics are complicated, but Dunant’s clear account is balanced by oddly affectionate character portraits informed by her interest in the psychology of these larger-than-life figures.

Closing at a bittersweet moment that fuses family fortunes and realpolitik, the author promises a second volume.

Dunant’s biggest and best work to date, this intelligently readable account of formative events and monster players has Hilary Mantel–era quality best-seller stamped all over it.

ASK BOB

Gethers, Peter Henry Holt (320 pp.) $24.00 | Aug. 6, 2013 978-0-8050-9331-5 In his latest novel, Gethers (Norton, the Loveable Cat that Travelled the World, 2011, etc.) spins a modern tale of betrayal and reconciliation, failure, forgiveness and family.

Dr. Bob Heller has done well for himself, especially considering he’s from a family suffering from “repressed neuroses, disappointment and...unfilled 12

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expectations.” His grandfather was a prosperous manufacturer.

His father rebelled, studied acting, found work in a soap opera but turned complacent. His older brother, Ted, much admired as Bob grew up, has somehow evolved into a narcissistic sociopath. College student Bob met beautiful and generous Anna while vacationing in Europe. They married. Shortly after graduating veterinary school, Bob was offered a job in Greenwich Village, with a free upstairs apartment, by a worthy mentor, Dr. Marjorie Paws. Dr. Bob even became a television personality and a newspaper columnist. Life is perfect, until Anna dies of stomach cancer. Phil, Bob’s lifelong friend, believes someday we’ll learn “life, at its core, was one grand, miserable, painful, ecstatic joke.” Now Bob thinks that may be true. Gethers sketches perfectly the character and motivations of Bob’s father and the evolution of Bob’s brother from hero to hustler. However, Bob’s mother remains unformed, at least until the narrative’s latter portion, where her character blossoms to reflect Bob’s deepening maturity. As he approaches 40, widowed Bob meets Camilla, an English-born physician serving with Doctors without Borders. The romance that ensues is passionate and volatile, with Camilla, full of anger and emotionally isolated, becoming one of the novel’s strongest figures. Another is Hilts, Bob’s nephew, crippled by Ted’s manipulations and left “too disconnected and too self-protective and too...sad.” Dr. Bob is likable enough as a protagonist, but his actions at a critical point in the story seem counterintuitive. The novel is rendered from Bob’s point of view, with extracts from his “Ask Dr. Bob” column; his remarks there about animal behavior are intended to mirror elements of the narrative.

A melancholy yet redeeming story of life and love, loss and redemption.

THE SIGNATURE OF ALL THINGS

Gilbert, Elizabeth Viking (512 pp.) $28.95 | Oct. 1, 2013 978-0-670-02485-8

Gilbert’s sweeping saga of Henry Whittaker and his daughter Alma offers an allegory for the great, rampant heart of the 19th century.

All guile, audacity and intelligence, Whittaker, born in a dirt-floored hovel to a Kew Garden arborist, comes under the tutelage of the celebrated Sir Joseph Banks.

Banks employs Whittaker to gather botany samples from exotic climes. Even after discovering chinchona—quinine’s source— in Peru, Henry’s snubbed for nomination to the Royal Society of Fellows by Banks. Instead, Henry trades cultivation secrets to the Dutch and earns riches in Java growing chinchona. Henry marries Beatrix van Devender, daughter of Holland’s renowned Hortus Botanicus’ curator. They move to Philadelphia, build an estate and birth Alma in 1800. Gilbert’s descriptions of Henry’s childhood, expeditions and life at the luxurious White Acre estate are superb. The dense, descriptive writing seems lifted

“An unpredictable farce.” from mystery girl

from pages written two centuries past, yet it’s laced with spare ironical touches and elegant phrasing—a hummingbird, “a jeweled missile, it seemed, fired from a tiny cannon.” Characters leap into life, visible and vibrant: Henry—“unrivaled arborist, a ruthless merchant, and a brilliant innovator”—a metaphor for the Industrial Revolution. Raised with Dutch discipline and immersed in intellectual salons, Alma—botany explorations paralleling 19th-century natural philosophers becoming true scientists—develops a “Theory of Competitive Alteration” in near concurrence with Darwin and Wallace. There’s stoic Beatrix, wife and mother; saintly Prudence, Alma’s adopted sister; devoted Hanneke de Groot, housekeeper and confidante; silent, forbidding Dick Yancey, Henry’s ruthless factotum; and Ambrose Pike, mystical, half-crazed artist. Alma, tall, ungainly, “ginger of hair, florid of skin, small of mouth, wide of brow, abundant of nose,” and yet thoroughly sensual, marries Ambrose, learning too late he intends marriage blanc, an unconsummated union. Multiple narrative threads weave seamlessly into a saga reminiscent of T. C. Boyle’s Water Music, with Alma following Ambrose to Tahiti and then returning alone to prosper at Hortus Botanicus, thinking herself “the most fortunate woman who ever lived.”

A brilliant exercise of intellect and imagination.

After an ill-advised liaison with the girl, she throws herself off a cliff. Then we’re off to the races as Lonsky and Sam pledge to solve the mystery of the girl. Gordon throws in everything but the kitchen sink, including a reclusive filmmaker of horrible art films, Mexican gangs and resurrected victims, but he somehow manages to set it all right in the end.

An unpredictable farce.

MYSTERY GIRL

Gordon, David Amazon/New Harvest (320 pp.) $25.00 | Jul. 16, 2013 978-0-544-02858-6 A failed novelist on the verge of divorce is drawn into a murky murder mystery at the behest of an unconventional mastermind.

I’m a Lebowski, you’re a Lebowski, and fans of the famous Coen Brothers film may find many of their favorite aspects mirrored in this dark comedy, the sophomore novel from Gordon (The Serialist, 2010). The sad sack at the heart of this follow-up is Sam Kornberg, an unemployed bookstore clerk and creatively bankrupt novelist who is half out of his mind. His Mexican wife, Lala, is fed up with his tube-watching, couch-surfing ways and has flown the coop. Besides pining for Lala, the only thing that breaks up Sam’s usual routine are movie-watching marathons with his bro Milo, including the classic The Big Lebowski, which serves as the spiritual touchstone for Gordon’s novel. “It is a comedy of course, a light film compared to the Coen bros darkies, like Fargo or their great masterpiece, Miller’s Crossing, but it is a sad movie too, sad in the way only comedy is sad, and brimming with the tender love we save for life’s losers,” Sam opines. In a rare deviation from his lethargy, Sam answers an advertisement titled simply, “Private Detective Requires Assistance.” A phone call leads him to the inner sanctum of one Solar Lonsky, a Sherlock Holmes–like figure who displays equally bewildering behaviors. Without revealing too many details, Lonsky commands Sam to follow the titular Ramona Doon. |

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SUMMER READING

Fiction

LEXICON

Ladies’ Night

Mary Kay Andrews $26.99 | 464 pp.

Jun. 4, 2013

Max Barry $26.95 | 384 pp.

Jun. 18, 2013

Andrews (Spring Fever, 2012, etc.) presents a delightful novel about love, revenge and more love. Lifestyle blogger Grace Davenport Stanton is required to attend divorce group counseling sessions after driving her husband’s expensive Audi into their swimming pool in a fit of rage. But who can blame her for acting out? Worried about her husband’s whereabouts, Grace discovers Ben and her very nude and much younger assistant, J’Aimee, in a compromising position in the front seat of the car. The author provides a wonderful blend of action, repartee and offbeat characters in a just-plain-fun story. Humorous and witty and as entertaining as a good night out.

The Broken Places: A Quinn Colson Novel

Ace Atkins $26.95 | 352 pp.

May 30, 2013 A small-town Mississippi sheriff fights criminals and corruption. Former Army Ranger Quinn Colson returned to Tibbehah County and took over the sheriff ’s job from crooked Johnny Stagg. Now his sister, a former wild child who recently returned home to reclaim her son and her life, is dating Jamey Dixon, who’s been pardoned for murdering his wife. The third in Atkins’ acclaimed series (The Lost Ones, 2012, etc.) is a high-tension thriller with a hero to rival Jack Reacher.

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Modern-day sorcerers fight a war of words in this intensely analytical yet bombastic thriller. In a deft narrative move, Barry parallels two distinct storylines before bringing them together with jaw-dropping surprises. An up-all-night thriller for freaks and geeks who want to see their wizards all grown up in the real world and armed to the teeth in a bloody story.

No One Could Have Guessed the Weather

Anne-Marie Casey $25.95 | 288 pp.

Jun. 13, 2013 A subversively charming debut about a group of happily imperfect New Yorkers from Dublin-based Casey, wife of novelist Joseph O’Connor. The novel is bookended by Lucy’s story: After the financial crash, Lucy, Richard and their two small boys are forced out of their posh London lives and move to Manhattan, where Richard makes due at a reduced salary, and they take over the apartment he kept for business. Each chapter feels like a well-composed short story, and the collected whole is fresh and bright with characters that defy expectations. Clever and witty: the best kind of summer book.

BIG BROTHER

THE WORLD OF THE END

Ofir Touché Gafla; Translated by Mitch Ginsburg $24.99 | 368 pp.

Jun. 25, 2013 The first appearance in English translation for Gafla’s first novel (2004), and it’s a weird and effective blend of adventure/ fantasy, whodunit and romance. Ben Mendelssohn styles himself an epilogist—he writes endings to stories for people who are unable to. After the death of his beloved wife, Marian, under “bizarre aeronautical circumstances,” inconsolable Ben struggles through another 18 months of existence before putting a bullet through his brain. With thousands of others who died in the same instant, he wakes in the Other World.

Simultaneously heartwarming and heartbreaking, handled with sublime assurance, astonishingly inventive, funny and totally fascinating.

Lionel Shriver $26.99 | 384 pp.

Jun. 4, 2013 A woman is at a loss to control her morbidly obese brother in the latest feat of unflinching social observation from Shriver. Pandora, the narrator of this smartly turned novel, is a happily settled 40-something living in a justso Iowa home with her husband and two stepchildren and running a successful business manufacturing custom dolls that parrot the recipient’s pet phrases. Her brother, Edison, is a New York jazz pianist who’s hit the skids, and when he calls hoping to visit for a while, she’s happy to assist. A masterful, page-turning study of complex relationships among our bodies, our minds and our families.

A Hundred Summers

The Good Luck Girls of Shipwreck Lane

Kelly Harms $24.99 | 304 pp.

Jul. 9, 2013 When Janine Brown of Cedar Falls, Iowa, is announced as the winner of a dream home in Maine, two women who share the same name may just be what the other needs for a brand new lease on life. When these women collide on the doorstep of 1516 Shipwreck Lane, confusion and antipathy arise.

A perfect recipe of clever, quirky, poignant and fun make this a delightful debut.

Last Summer of the Camperdowns

Elizabeth Kelly $25.95 | 400 pp.

Jun. 3, 2013

Beatriz Williams $26.95 | 368 pp.

May 30, 2013 A candidate for this year’s big beach read—the period story of a derailed love affair seen through a sequence of summers spent at Seaview, R.I. It’s not “Whodunit?” that drives Williams’ (Overseas, 2012) latest but “What went wrong?” between Lily Dane and goodlooking-but-Jewish Nick Greenwald, whose love for each other seemed unstoppable. How, seven years on, can Nick be married to Lily’s BFF Budgie Byrne while Lily herself is single and accompanied by her 6-year-old sister, Kiki? An elegant if somewhat oldfashioned delayed-gratification seaside romance with a flavor of Daphne du Maurier.

Kelly’s new novel is just as scathingly witty as her best-selling debut but better plotted and even more emotionally harrowing, as narrator Riddle Camperdown looks back two decades to the disastrous summer of 1972. Kelly skillfully builds almost unbearable tension, slipping in plenty of dark laughs en route to a wrenching climax that leaves in its wake some painfully unresolved questions— just like life. More fine work from a writer with a rare gift for blending wit and rue. |

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BEAUTIFUL DAY

Hilderbrand, Elin Reagan Arthur/Little, Brown (416 pp.) $28.00 | Jun. 25, 2013 978-0-316-09978-3 Hilderbrand’s surprisingly original take on the wedding disaster novel.

A wedding weekend is a timehonored literary pretext for exploring family dysfunction, and Hilderbrand’s version combines gentle irony with astute observation. The Carmichael family has vacationed at their rambling summer abode on Nantucket Island for almost a century. Now, the house will be the site of high-profile divorce attorney Doug Carmichael’s youngest daughter Jenna’s nuptials. “The Notebook,” left by Jenna’s mother, Beth, who died of cancer six years ago, has planned the wedding down to the last detail. The weekend, which will include a rehearsal dinner, Saturday ceremony and reception, and Sunday brunch, has drawn the Carmichaels and their entourage into the ideal arena for emotional fireworks. Doug’s 40-yearold daughter, executive recruiter Margot, hopelessly enamored with her father’s rakish older law partner, Edge (one of many nicknames right out of the preppy handbook), regrets her one ethical lapse at her lover’s behest, involving a more age-appropriate romantic prospect, Griff. Doug, who married second wife Pauline too soon after Beth’s passing, now contemplates divorce. Pauline, sensing Doug’s withdrawal, hopes that her daughter Rhonda’s service as a bridesmaid will finally earn her genuine entry into the Carmichael clan. Ann, the groom’s mother, a consummate politician, has miscalculated the personal toll of asking statuesque blonde Helen, her husband’s former mistress and mother of his love child, Chance, to the wedding. Crises small and large loom: Edge, though not married, refuses to make his and Margot’s relationship public; a historic tree named Alfie must be pruned to accommodate the wedding tent; Chance suffers a severe allergic reaction to mussels; Doug’s son Nick appears to be involved with a married bridesmaid. The populous cast makes establishing a coherent throughline difficult, and the first 200 pages are mainly prologue. But Hilderbrand’s casually tossed-off zingers, and her gift for eliciting sympathy for even the most insufferable of her characters, keep the pages turning until the disaster unfolds in earnest.

A wedding readers won’t be able to resist crashing.

THE VIOLET HOUR

Hill, Katherine Scribner (368 pp.) $26.00 | Jul. 16, 2013 978-1-4767-1032-7

In Hill’s debut, members of a troubled family converge to celebrate a milestone, with unexpected results.

Rheumatologist Abe Green loves sailing, but his wife, Cassandra, a sculptor, does not. When the couple and their daughter Elizabeth, newly accepted to Harvard, go sailing one day in San Francisco Bay, Abe reveals during an argument that he knows about Cassandra’s affair with a gallery owner, then leaps from the boat and swims away. Eight years later and divorced, Cassandra and her siblings, Howie and Mary, gather at their parents’ home in Maryland to celebrate their father’s 80th birthday; Elizabeth, in her final year of medical school, joins them and brings her boyfriend, Kyle, to meet her grandparents. Howard and Eunice Fabricant live above the familyowned funeral home and have raised their three children over the rooms where corpses await final preparations. On the eve of the big party, tragedy strikes, and instead of birthday festivities, the family prepares for a funeral for one of their own. As Cassandra deals with her grief, she recalls moments that have defined her life: both her fascination with dead bodies and her feelings of repulsion; her rejection of her mother’s desire that she one day assume the reins of the family business; the initial heady feelings of love for her former husband and their increasing alienation—emotions both Abe and Cassandra explore through a haze of marijuana when he shows up for the funeral.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth’s pain causes her to push Kyle away and question their relationship. Although the author’s early prose is a bit florid, as the story progresses the writing becomes more subdued and more suited to the multifaceted study. Hill has produced an unusual retrospective of a family torn apart by divorce and infidelity and so keenly affected by the immediate events in their lives that they are only barely aware of what’s transpiring around them, namely Hurricane Katrina’s ravaging of the Gulf Coast.

A bleak and disturbing story but one that offers a glimmer of hope.

THE SKULL AND THE NIGHTINGALE

Irwin, Michael Morrow/HarperCollins (416 pp.) $25.99 | Aug. 1, 2013 978-0-06-220235-2 A Faustian bargain drives the narrative in Irwin’s novel, but the devil’s identity is ambiguous.

In this 18th-century treatise of manners and manipulation—think Fielding’s 16

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bawds and beds—Richard Fenwick has returned from a grand tour of Europe sponsored by his godfather, James Gilbert, wealthy owner of Fork Hill estate. Gilbert assumed care of Richard upon his parents’ deaths. He’d envied the elder Fenwick’s bonhomie, his willingness to embrace life. Gilbert’s own nature was circumscribed and full of unexpected consequences.

Now he proposes an intellectual experiment. Gilbert wants to “taste, vicariously, the pleasure of a young rake,” and so he offers Fenwick an allowance so that he might pursue all that he, Gilbert, had so feared: “the Passions: Vanity, Greed, Avarice, Rage, Lust....” Thus begins the moral exploration, steps sometimes chronicled via letters between London and Fork Hill, with Fenwick and Gilbert slowly stripping away pretension and pretext.

Fenwick is by turns ambitious, hedonistic, lazy, blind to evil and brutal in manner despite perceiving himself of “amiable disposition—certainly neither callous nor cruel.” Obviously, Gilbert is Machiavellian, manipulative not only of Fenwick, but also of those to whom he offers patronage, including a failed poet, a lackadaisical scientist and another landowner, a boor whose wife he inveigles Fenwick to seduce. Amid Irwin’s spot-on descriptions of 18th-century England’s squalor and splendor, the masquerades and dinner parties, this passion play mostly rests between the sheets where Lust lies. Fenwick reports to Gilbert as he beds a promising actress while simultaneously setting sights on Sarah, a childhood companion neglected during his sojourn. Sarah’s now married to a stolid diamond merchant whom Fenwick’s eager to cuckold. Irwin’s secondary characters also fascinate: Horn, more gentlemanly than his loutish tavernhopping would have him appear; Crocker, grossly obese, rejecting fleshly pleasures for beauty and companionship; and Mrs. Jennings, Gilbert’s contemporary, playfully cynical and sardonic.

At the end, “the ceaseless reciprocal traffic between the intellectual and animal self” ends in accidental death and a surprising choice.

A tale of morals, intriguingly told.

suffered a tragic loss and finds herself fighting both his memories of happier times and his best friend, Paula, who makes it clear she wants Shandi out of the picture. However, Shandi is coping with a dilemma she thinks William can help her resolve: discovering the identity of the man who fathered her child.

Shandi conceived Natty after being raped at a college party years before and still has enough of his DNA to possibly deduce his identity. William, a research scientist, has both the tools and the know-how to narrow down, if not figure out, just who her attacker might be. Jackson draws on her own Southern roots to paint this pitch-perfect portrait of a girl from a small town in Georgia. She traces Shandi’s struggles to figure out what, if anything, William really means to her. Wrapped in a thoughtful, often funny and insightful narrative that brings Shandi and those in her satellite to life, Jackson presents the reader with a story that is never predictable and is awash in bittersweet love, regret and the promise of what could be.

A surprising novel, both graceful and tender. You won’t be able to put it down.

SOMEONE ELSE’S LOVE STORY

Jackson, Joshilyn Morrow/HarperCollins (352 pp.) $26.99 | Nov. 19, 2013 978-0-06-210565-3 Jackson’s novel perfectly captures the flavor and rhythm of Southern life as a young woman preparing for college finds herself caught up in a real-life drama.

Shandi has a miracle baby. His name is Nathan, but she and her BFF, Walcott, call the precocious 3-year-old genius Natty. As Shandi moves out of her mother’s home to her successful physician father’s condominium in Atlanta, she, Walcott and Natty become caught up in an armed robbery. It’s during this robbery that Shandi meets William Ashe, a giant of a man with a palpable, lingering sorrow. When William takes a bullet during the robbery, Shandi decides to take on William and starts caring for him on the day he leaves the hospital. In due course, she discovers that William’s |

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“...unmistakably engaging debut.” from the curiosity

THE CURIOSITY

Kiernan, Stephen P. Morrow/HarperCollins (432 pp.) $25.99 | Jul. 9, 2013 978-0-06-222108-7 Last seen in 1906, a frozen explorer, thawed by a scientist/entrepreneur, confounds present-day Boston.

When a modern Arctic expedition, at the behest of megalomaniac Nobel-seeker Erastus Carthage, discovers a man encased in “hard-ice” (a supercold, cryogenically fortuitous iceberg), all hell breaks loose. The man, dubbed Subject One, is brought back to Boston, revived in Carthage’s top-secret lab facility and gradually introduced to 21st-century America. The “specimen” is soon revealed as a native of nearby Lynn, Mass., Jeremiah Rice, a district court judge who had tagged along on a doomed Arctic expedition. The story relays from Rice to Carthage, a bloviating tyrant with a hand-sanitizer fetish. Narrators also include the smarmy second-tier journalist Daniel Dixon (a type recognizable from Tom Wolfe novels), who has somehow wangled an exclusive on the “re-awakening,” and Kate Philo, Ph.D., a biologist who wants to remove Jeremiah from the prison of clinical observation to give him a chance at a normal life. The suspenseful plot hinges largely on three questions: How many colleagues can Carthage ruin without fouling his own nest; will the chaste courtship of Rice and his protectress, Philo, morph into actual carnal relations; and, most compelling, when does Rice’s new lease expire? Working feverishly, some of the nerdier members of the revivification team have discovered that every life form similarly resuscitated has expired within days—after a brief honeymoon period, the organism goes on endocrine overdrive and self-destructs. Rice seems to have beaten these odds, and a methodical British staffer is closing in on a way to arrest this deadly metabolic frenzy—until Carthage fires him. As Rice issues his gentle jeremiads about the violence, profanity, licentiousness and overall insanity of our world as compared with that of the world at the turn of the 20th century, other, more intriguing lines of inquiry go unexplored, e.g. the impact on Rice’s descendants, if any. The ending, if not exactly ingenious, is at least fitting and somewhat touching.

A derivative but unmistakably engaging debut.

MOONRISE

King, Cassandra Hyperion (400 pp.) $14.99 paper | Jul. 23, 2013 978-1-4013-0178-1 After divorcing her abusive husband, Helen Honeycutt is proud of her newfound independence, and marriage to charismatic Emmet Justice is the last thing she wants. A whirlwind romance, however, sets the stage for the naïve bride to confront Emmet’s past.

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A rhododendron tunnel leading to a beguiling ancestral home, the strange death of a first wife, an increasingly confused heroine—King’s (Queen of Broken Hearts, 2007, etc.) latest alludes heavily to Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca. After finding an album filled with photographs of Emmet’s late wife’s home, Moonrise, Helen becomes obsessed with seeing the mansion and its gardens of night-blooming plants. Once ensconced in Rosalyn and Emmet’s former bedroom, however, Helen begins to regret her decision as she hears bumps in the night and spies shadowy figures in turret windows. She is eager to fit into Emmet’s social circle, yet constant reminders of Rosalyn’s elegance make her only more keenly aware of her own shortcomings. The glamorous set includes kindly Linc, who recently suffered a stroke, and his shrewish wife, Myna, a Pulitzer Prizewinning poet who spends most of her time in New York. Willa, a childhood friend, tends to the properties as well as to Linc’s physical therapy, bonding over lessons in lepidopterology. Tight as lovers, Tansy and Noel are only friends. Lastly, there’s Kit, Rosalyn’s best friend, who likes to needle Helen by obliquely questioning Emmet’s faithfulness. Each chapter shifts perspective, from Helen’s hand-wringing to Tansy’s suspicions to Willa’s struggle to hide the secret of her drunken, abusive boyfriend.

These narrative shifts, however, deflect attention from Helen’s mounting fears, deflating du Maurier’s haunting psychological thriller into a predictable tale of romantic obstacles.

The reader may well wonder who is gaslighting Helen, but the Gothic echoes of Manderley and the first Mrs. de Winter set up unfulfilled promises.

THE GODDESS CHRONICLE

Kirino, Natsuo Translated by Copeland, Rebecca Grove (320 pp.) $24.00 | Aug. 6, 2013 978-0-8021-2109-7

Kirino recounts the beauty and terror of a traditional Japanese myth, one reminiscent of Demeter and Persephone.

The opening of the narrative is both realistic and dreamlike. Kirino introduces us to Namima and her older sister Kamikuu, the latter of whom is particularly beautiful. On her 6th birthday, Kamikuu finds out she is destined to become an Oracle, and from that moment, the fates of the two sisters diverge, for Namima begins to wait upon her sister daily, carrying a basket of food in honor of Kamikuu’s sacred and privileged life. Although Kamikuu never finishes each day’s meal, Namima is forbidden to touch the food, an irony in that many of the islanders are in want. As time passes, a handsome young man named Mahito becomes enamored of Namima and persuades her to eat some of the sacred food. He also impregnates Namima and convinces her to leave the island. Shortly after giving birth to a daughter, Namima is startled to find Mahito choking her. In fact, he murders her and sends her to the underworld, where she assists Izanami, goddess of the Realm of the Dead. Burning with desire

to know what has happened in the land of the living since her death, Namima returns as a wasp, only to find that Mahito has married Kamikuu. In a rage, Namima stings her lover between the eyes, sending him to the land of the dead. Kirino continues with a narrative about Izanami and Izanaki, gods of male and female desire, whose lives (insofar as gods have mortal lives) intertwine with the fates of Namima and Kamikuu.

Kirino writes lyrically as she spins a magical and ethereal tale.

YOU SHOULD HAVE KNOWN Korelitz, Jean Hanff Grand Central Publishing (686 pp.) $26.00 | Mar. 18, 2014 978-1-4555-9949-3

Jason Bourne meets Martha Stewart in another of Korelitz’s woman-of-a-certain-age-in-crisis dramas. The author’s 2009 novel, Admission, is now a film starring Tina Fey. Well, not quite Jason Bourne. But Grace Reinhart Sachs is almost as resourceful. She lives the perfect life—or so she thinks—with a rich, famous doctor for a husband and a satisfying if hurried professional life as a therapist, pop psychologist and now author of a book called, yes, You Should Have Known, a book that’s “apparently about to snag the Zeitgeist.” With said snagging comes her ascent to public personhood, or, as Grace puts it in psychologese, “[t]hus completing my public infantilization.” Her book urges women to take charge

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and exercise due diligence with regard to potential life mates, though in her own case, she had “absolutely just known, the first time she had lain eyes on Jonathan Sachs, that she would marry and love him for the rest of her life.” Mistake. Karma being what it is, it only stands to reason that the perfection of her life—the great kid, happy marriage, stunningly appointed city apartment and country home—will fall apart at the mere hint of scandal. And so it does, so that when Grace discovers that he’s not everything that he’s cracked up to be—emphasis on cracked up—she swings into action to uncover every dirty bit of laundry that’s hidden in that oak-paneled walk-in closet.

Korelitz writes with clarity and an unusual sense of completeness; she doesn’t overdescribe, but neither does she let much of anything go by without observing it, which slows an already deliberately paced narrative. She is also an ascended master of the psychologically fraught situation, of which Grace experiences many as she stumbles on but then rises above the wreckage of her life.

A smart, leisurely study of midlife angst.

CRAZY RICH ASIANS

Kwan, Kevin Doubleday (416 pp.) $25.95 | Jun. 11, 2013 978-0-385-53697-4

Jane Austen, or maybe Edith Wharton, goes to Singapore, turning in this lively, entertaining novel of manners.

You’ve got to like any novel set in Asia that includes, among many splendid one-liners, this amah’s admonition: “Don’t you know there are children starving in America?” Of varying ethnicities but resolutely members of the 1 percent or aspiring, one way or another, to be so, Kwan’s characters are urban sophisticates par excellence, many of them familiar with the poshest districts of London, Paris, New York and Hong Kong. Many of them are also adrift, with soulless consumerism replacing society: It’s Less Than Zero without all the coke.

When socialite Astrid, for instance, is in a mood, as she so often is, she goes shopping in boutiques haunted by “the wives of Persian Gulf sheikhs, Malay sultans, and the Indonesian Chinese oligarchs.” Not half-bad company, but then Astrid moves in a rarefied circle around the richest of the rich. At its center is 32-year-old Nicholas Young, whose ABC girlfriend—American-born Chinese, that is—Rachel Chu, has come to Singapore to meet the family. To Nick’s credit, she is taken aback by just how phenomenally wealthy they are. “It’s like any big family,” Nick assures her. “I have loudmouth uncles, eccentric aunts, obnoxious cousins, the whole nine yards.” Well, and then some.

Rachel discovers that the position of being Nick’s intended isn’t an easy one—not only are there other would-be plutocrats gunning for the spot, but the family also doesn’t make things easy, either. A diverse set of characters and a light, unstrained touch move Kwan’s story along. Yet, even though one feels for Rachel, there’s a point—right about at the spot where one of her new 20

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girlfriends is showing off the yoga studio inside daddy’s new jet—that one gets the feeling that Ho Chi Minh might have had a point after all.

An elegant comedy and an auspicious debut.

THE VILLAGE

Lalwani, Nikita Random House (256 pp.) $26.00 | Jul. 9, 2013 978-1-4000-6649-0 A young British-Indian woman faces a moral crisis while filming a BBC documentary, in Lalwani’s follow-up to Gifted (2007).

Ray, 27, has received a plum assignment for a relative rookie: She will direct a television documentary about a noble experiment in Indian corrections—Ashwer, a prison camp in the form of a small village where the convicts live with their families and work for a living, either at day jobs on the outside or in cottage industries of their own devising. Ray’s crew—Serena, a seasoned producer, and Nathan, a parolee who did time in a conventional English prison—are difficult to manage: They have their own ideas about the direction of the film, although they grudgingly depend on Ray, a Hindi speaker, to act as interpreter and mediator for the villagers. All of the people sentenced to Ashwer are murderers whose crimes were committed under extenuating circumstances, such as self-defense against spouse abuse.

After a marijuana-fueled late-night seduction attempt foiled largely by Ray’s determined virginity, Nathan gives up on her and turns to Serena. Their alliance thus strengthened, the crew rebels against Ray’s ethical scruples and attempts (with some prompting from the home office) to inject sensational elements into the film. They insist on arranging and filming an encounter between an inmate, Nandini, and her ex-husband, who had starved her while pregnant and tried to burn her. (She killed his mother while trying to escape.) Then there is the segment in which another inmate, in front of his wife, is given an instant-read HIV test on camera. Fearing that she has betrayed the trust that she has built up with the villagers, Ray must make a painful choice. The language, gorgeous and evocative, occasionally waxes florid, as overheated as the tropical atmosphere it describes. Extraneous detail about the technical aspects of TV production slows the action.

And Ray, a passive character who acts impulsively if at all, lacks the courage of the author’s convictions.

A flawed gem.

DISSIDENT GARDENS

Lethem, Jonathan Doubleday (468 pp.) $26.95 | Sep. 10, 2013 978-0-385-53493-2

A dysfunctional family embodies a dysfunctional epoch, as the novelist continues his ambitious journey through decades, generations and the boroughs of New York.

Having scaled the literary peaks of Motherless Brooklyn (1999) and the Chronic City (2009) of Manhattan, one of America’s premier novelists sets his sights on Queens, though the title of the opening section, “Boroughphobia,” suggests that this is a place to escape—or at least for a daughter to escape from her mother. The mother is Jewish, strong-willed, contrarian Rose Zimmer, a Communist booted from the cell because of her relationship with a black policeman. (“Everyone thought it was an affair between Jew and black SavingParadise_KirkusReviews_ad.pdf

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but it wasn’t. It was between cop and Commie.”) Her husband had returned to Germany as a suspected spy, leaving Rose to raise Miriam, a red-diaper baby transformed by the ’60s, a “Bolshevik of the five senses” who became irresistibly sexy, “not for her bodily self but for her appetite: she devoured the ripe fruit of the world.” The setup of this novel is so frequently funny that it reads like homage to classic Philip Roth, yet the book, like the end of the 20th century, takes a darker turn, as hippie naïveté leads to more dangerous activism, illusions shatter, and old age takes its toll. Following “the unashamed homosexual bacchanal that had become possible in the historical margin between Stonewall and disease,” funerals would supplant parties as social gatherings. The novel’s social realism finds ’60s folk fixtures such as Dave Van Ronk and the Rev. Gary Davis mixing with Miriam and her eventual husband, Tommy Grogan, a musician who moves from a traditional Irish family trio to protest songs, a career eclipsed (like so many others) by the rise of Bob Dylan. But it also features Archie Bunker (if only in Rose’s mind) and a devastating record review by P.K. Tooth (from Chronic City, in tribute here to the late Paul Nelson). In “a

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“...an absorbing world that draws in readers...” from the arrivals

New in Paperback ONE LAST THING BEFORE I GO

By Jonathan Tropper $16.00, 352 pp.

Drew Silver is dying in many ways: His marriage has been over for seven years, his ex-wife is getting remarried, his career as a rock drummer is long past, his 18-yearold daughter is pregnant, and he has a life-threatening heart condition. Tropper finds unexpected humor in all of these incongruous elements.

BRING UP THE BODIES

By Hilary Mantel $16.00, 432 pp.

Second in Mantel’s trilogy charting the Machiavellian trajectory of Thomas Cromwell. She succeeds, mostly by portraying Cromwell as acutely aware that one misstep could land “him, Cromwell,” on the scaffold. The inventiveness of Mantel’s language is the chief draw here; the plot, as such, will engage only the most determined of Tudor enthusiasts.

THE DOG STARS

By Peter Hellerl $15.00, 336 pp.

A post-apocalyptic novel in which Hig, who only goes by this mononym, finds not only survival, but also the possibility of love.

Hig lives in an abandoned airplane hangar and keeps a 1956 Cessna, which he periodically takes out to survey the harsh and formidable landscape. Although Heller creates with chilling efficiency the bleakness of a world largely bereft of life as we know it, he holds out some hope that human relationships can be redemptive.

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city gone berserk,” pretty much every character struggles with identity, destiny and family.

Not Lethem’s tightest novel, but a depth of conviction underlies its narrative sprawl.

THE ARRIVALS

Marr, Melissa Morrow/HarperCollins (336 pp.) $24.99 | Jul. 2, 2013 978-0-06-182696-2 In this novel, Marr’s alternative universe is the Wastelands, a place inhabitants believe is probably somewhere between life and death, where the forces of good are rapidly losing their struggle against the forces of evil.

The last thing Chloe remembers is falling off the wagon. Now, she’s waking up in a strange land that is so full of weirdness she’s thinking just maybe she’s hallucinating. The people here are varied: Kitty, the former saloon girl who can both fight and cast spells; Kitty’s handsome, tough older brother, Jack, the leader of a small band of decent but flawed people who are resisting the temptation to give in to evil; Edgar, a former rumrunner from the Prohibition era who loves Kitty but understands she can’t be boxed in; the strange and seemingly ditzy Melody, who is straight out of the 1950s; and Francis, a man who has done every drug imaginable and has ended up stranded, like everyone else, in the Wastelands. Chloe is the newest of the Arrivals, which is what newbies are called. Each time someone in the Wastelands dies, another one appears to take his or her place. Except, of course, when that person comes back to life, which is what happens some of the time. If an Arrival stays dead after six days, then they’ve moved on. Where, no one knows, but Jack sure hopes it’s a better place, and, face it, just about anything is better than the Wastelands, an unforgiving countryside where strange animals roam and the people who band together to serve the evil Ajani are out to destroy or convert the Arrivals. Now, Jack and the other Arrivals have formed an allegiance with a creature known as Garuda to kill Ajani and make the Wastelands safe. But they find the final battle they face holds no easy answers.

Marr creates an absorbing world that draws in readers, but the ending feels rushed and tacked onto what is otherwise an engrossing tale.

THE GOOD LORD BIRD

McBride, James Riverhead (432 pp.) $27.95 | Aug. 20, 2013 978-1-59448-634-0

In McBride’s version of events, John Brown’s body doesn’t lie a-mouldering in the grave—he’s alive and vigorous and fanatical and doomed, so one could say his soul does indeed go marching on.

The unlikely narrator of the events leading up to Brown’s quixotic raid at Harper’s Ferry is Henry Shackleford, aka Little Onion, whose father is killed when Brown comes in to liberate some slaves. Brown whisks the 12-year-old away thinking he’s a girl, and Onion keeps up the disguise for the next few years. This fluidity of gender identity allows Onion a certain leeway in his life, for example, he gets taken in by Pie, a beautiful prostitute, where he witnesses some activity almost more unseemly than a 12-year-old can stand. The interlude with Pie occurs during a two-year period where Brown disappears from Onion’s life, but they’re reunited a few months before the debacle at Harper’s Ferry. In that time, Brown visits Frederick Douglass, and, in the most implausible scene in the novel, Douglass gets tight and chases after the nubile Onion. The stakes are raised as Brown approaches October 1859, for even Onion recognizes the futility of the raid, where Brown expects hundreds of slaves to rise in revolt and gets only a handful. Onion notes that Brown’s fanaticism increasingly approaches “lunacy” as the time for the raid gets closer, and Brown never loses that obsessive glint in his eye that tells him he’s doing the Lord’s work. At the end, Onion reasserts his identity as a male and escapes just before Brown’s execution.

McBride presents an interesting experiment in point of view here, as all of Brown’s activities are filtered through the eyes of a young adolescent who wavers between innocence and cynicism.

THE NIGHT GUEST

McFarlane, Fiona Faber & Faber/Farrar, Straus and Giroux (256 pp.) $26.00 | Oct. 1, 2013 978-0-86547-773-5 An enrapturing debut novel that toys with magical realism while delivering a fresh fable.

One night, Ruth hears a tiger in her home. This reminds her of her childhood in Fiji, where her parents were missionaries, though there were no tigers in Fiji. Nor are there tigers where Ruth abides, alone in a seaside home on the southern coast of Australia, her children grown and living in other countries. The morning after Ruth hears the tiger, Frida appears as if from the sea. She explains that she is a government “carer.” A spot opened up, she

says, and Ruth was on their waiting list. Ruth is not sure she needs a carer—she’s only 75—but Frida looks like she’s from Fiji, and a few hours a day couldn’t hurt. Initially, it seems that Frida is exactly what Ruth needs: a no-nonsense, larger-than-life presence who keeps Ruth company and her floors shining and sandfree. Ruth doesn’t hear the tiger again for some time. But other strange things begin to happen, things that test Ruth’s sense of reality with increasing frequency and, eventually, give rise to an unshakable foreboding. Ruth has reasons not to trust Frida. We have reasons not to trust her either, some that will be explained and some that will remain a mystery. McFarlane’s rendering of Ruth’s interior is quiet and exacting, and she builds suspense so gently that the danger is, at first, hardly noticeable. Frida, seen through Ruth’s eyes, is as compelling as she is enigmatic. By the time Ruth hears the tiger again, she and Frida are allied in a spiral of love and dependency that will dictate both their futures.

A pleasurable novel, with turns of plot and phrase both startling and elegant.

WHO ASKED YOU?

McMillan, Terry Viking (400 pp.) $27.95 | Sep. 17, 2013 978-0-670-78569-8

The years pass, and McMillan’s (Waiting to Exhale, 1992, etc.) characters have moved from buppiedom to grandmotherhood.

Betty Jean is not having a good day when we first meet her. She’s in the kitchen, frying chicken, when her wayward 27-year-old daughter, Trinetta, calls, begging for money and adding, “the good news is I might have a job and I was wondering if I could bring the boys over for a couple of days.” Trinetta admits to taking a pull or a snort every now and again, but to nothing stronger. The problem is, drugs have swept across Trinetta’s generation (“all drugs, not just some...will fuck you up every time and make you do a lot of stupid shit and you won’t get nowhere in life except maybe prison”), leaving it to the elders to pick up the pieces—and when it’s not drugs, then it’s some other form of culture destroyer, for Betty Jean’s eldest child is a chiropractor in Oregon, “where hardly any black people live, which has made it very easy for him to forget he’s black.” Betty Jean’s sisters, Arlene and Venetia, are formidable, too, and with troubles of their own—though in Venetia’s case, there’s an attractive young man, white at that, who’s constantly making goo-goo eyes at her, making her forget that she’s married and of a certain age. Naturally, complications ensue at every turn. Moving from character to character and their many points of view, McMillan writes jauntily and with customary good humor, though the sensitive ground on which she’s treading is not likely to please all readers; even so, her story affirms the value of love and family, to say nothing of the strength of resolute women in the absence of much strength on the part of those few men who happen to be in the vicinity.

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THE SON

Meyer, Philipp Ecco/HarperCollins (592 pp.) $27.99 | May 28, 2013 978-0-06-212039-7 The sins of the fathers are always visited upon the sons—and in Meyer’s sweeping, absorbing epic, there are plenty of them.

As the first child born in the new Republic of Texas, or so it’s said, Eli McCullough fills big shoes. Yet he stands in the shadow of his older brother, who reads books and has a strange attachment to his sister—one that will be cut short when Comanches descend and, in a spree worthy of Cormac McCarthy, put an end to all that: “My mother had not made a sound since I woke up, even with the arrows sticking out of her, but she began to scream and cry when they scalped her, and I saw another Indian walking up to her with my father’s broadax.” Years living in semicaptivity with the Comanches teaches Eli a thing or two about setting goals and sticking to them, as well as a ruthlessness that will come in handy when he begins to build a cattle empire and accrue political power. His son is less deft; caught up in the cross-border upheaval of the Mexican Revolution, he finds himself out of place and adrift (“You’re a big man,” says one ranch hand to him, “and I don’t see why you act like such a small one”) and certainly no favorite of his ever-demanding father. Meyer’s sophomore novel deftly opens with entwined, impending deaths across generations, joining tangled stories over three centuries, the contested line between the U.S. and Mexico, and very different cultures; if sometimes it hints of McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove and Ferber’s Giant, it more often partakes of the somber, doomed certainty of Faulkner: “There had been one grandson everyone liked, who had loved the ranch and been expected to take it over, but he had drowned in three feet of water.”

An expertly written tale of ancient crimes, with every period detail—and every detail, period—just right. (Author tour to Austin, Boston, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, Oxford/Jackson, San Antonio and San Francisco)

THE HUSBAND’S SECRET

Moriarty, Liane Amy Einhorn/Putnam (416 pp.) $25.95 | Jul. 30, 2013 978-0-399-15934-3 There are more than enough secrets to go around in the intertwining lives of three women connected to a Catholic elementary school in Sidney.

Australian Moriarty (The Hypnotist’s Love Story, 2012, etc.) experiments with the intersection of comedy and tragedy in her slyly ambitious consideration of secrecy, 24

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temptation, guilt and human beings’ general imperfection.

Superorganized, always-on-the-go Cecilia is a devoted mother who constantly volunteers at her daughters’ school while running a thriving Tupperware business. Not quite as perkily perfect as she seems, 40-year-old Cecilia yearns for some drama in her life. Then, she finds a sealed envelope from her husband that is to be opened only in the event of his death. John-Paul is very much alive, but the temptation to read the contents is understandably strong. Once she does, she can’t erase the secrets revealed. Meanwhile, in Melbourne, 30-something Tess’ husband breaks the news that he’s fallen in love with Tess’ first cousin/best friend/business partner. Furious, Tess moves to her mother’s house in Sydney. Enrolling her 6-year-old son at St. Angela’s, Tess runs into former lover Connor, and sparks re-ignite. Formerly an accountant, Connor is now the school’s hunky gym coach and is crushed on by students, teachers and parents like Cecilia. One holdout from the general adoration is widowed school secretary Rachel. Connor was the last person to see her 17-year-old daughter Janie before Janie was strangled in 1984. Still grief-stricken and haunted by a belief that she could have prevented Janie’s death if she hadn’t been 15 minutes late to pick her up, Rachel is increasingly convinced Connor is the murderer. As the women confront the past and make hard decisions about their futures (the novel’s men are pale and passive), their fates collide in unexpected ways.

Moriarty may be an edgier, more provocative and bolder successor to Maeve Binchy. There is real darkness here, but it is offset by the author’s natural wit—she weaves in the Pandora myth and a history of the Berlin Wall—and irrepressible goodwill toward her characters.

PAINT THE BIRD

Packard, Georgeann Permanent Press (240 pp.) $28.00 | Jul. 28, 2013 978-1-57962-317-3 Packard (Fall Asleep Forgetting, 2010) searches the shadowy landscape of love and family.

Betrayed by her husband and best friend, the Rev. Sarah Obadias finds herself “this less-than-married minister.”

After a church conference brought on by a crisis in faith, Sarah’s at loose ends in lower Manhattan. She retreats to a restaurant/ bar, there meeting Abraham Darby, renowned painter, a virile, self-obsessed colossus. Sarah and Darby are marked with the “refinement of age.” She’s 69; he’s slightly older, but their attraction is intense, immediate. Cocktails, food and then bed follow.

The next morning, she finds herself with Darby in Brooklyn at the funeral of Yago Darby Díaz, Darby’s son, dead of AIDS. Sarah’s shocked when Darby stands to eulogize his son and rages that “[h]e stopped sharing his life with me when he joined this... culture?” Lives quickly become intertwined, Sarah with Darby, the two then with Johnny, Yago’s spouse, and their son, Angelo, and Allyssa, Angelo’s biological mother. Johnny is settled, owner

of a small restaurant, and Yago, blithe spirit in life and death, had partied regularly around the bar circuit. The narrative moves to Darby’s summer house at Orient, Long Island, where Alejandra, Yago’s sensual and flamboyant artist mother, joins the moveable wake, and then back to the city, where Darby tumbles into a deep depression. Faith broken by doubt, Sarah’s left to confront her fractured life alone. Packard’s book layers symbolism on its pages, but it’s also an entrancing exercise in employing language to explore and define the nature of love and the meaning of life framed against death. The lyrical narrative edges toward the surreal when Yago speaks from the hospital gurney where he lies dead, then addresses Darby in the car on the way to his beach house, and finally approaches Sarah on the beach. However, beginning to end, the novel is a deeply poetic meditation “About life, about trust. About God. About death.”

Brilliantly imagined and rendered.

DOOMED

Palahniuk, Chuck Doubleday (336 pp.) $24.95 | Oct. 8, 2013 978-0-385-53303-4 Well, what do you know? Little Maddy Spencer got out of Hell. God help us all.

Palahniuk (Damned, 2011, etc.) is rarely known to revisit characters in the manner of Irvine Welsh. But after the heavily experimental voices in Snuff, Pygmy and Tell-All, maybe a little more blasphemy by way of Judy Blume is an acceptable compromise. The author’s muse, 13-year-old Madison Spencer, may be a lot of things—chubby, dead, virginal and sarcastic to the point of sadism—but she’s often quite funny in her most shocking moments. To catch up, Maddy woke up in Hell. It turns out that Hell has a hell of a lot of rules, and Maddy broke every one of them trying to figure out her predicament—the last when she overstayed a visit to Earth on Halloween. Now, she’s stuck here as a ghost. As a notoriously unreliable narrator, Madison can grate on the nerves, but it’s sort of peek-between-your-fingers interesting to learn more of her gruesome back story. First, Maddy runs into her dead grandmother, then discovers her billionaire father shagging her rival from Hell. So there’s that to fix. For better or worse, Madison is guided by Crescent City, a Ketamine-addicted paranormal detective who can see her during his frequent binges. Oh, remember those rules we discussed?

Farting, cussing and picking your nose are all grounds for eternal damnation—except little dead Maddy told her diva of a mother that they were requirements for ascendancy to Heaven, and now Mommy Dearest has founded a new religion based on all of her daughter’s grossest behaviors. The book’s other revelation—other than a long-hatching conspiracy about Maddy’s role in the End of the World—turns out to be the real reason that Madison Spencer believes she was damned in the first place.

If you only read one book this year about a dead teenager posting on message boards about playing supernaturalist and tempting Satan’s wrath, let it be this one.

THE TRUTH

Palin, Michael Dunne/St. Martin’s (272 pp.) $24.99 | Aug. 13, 2013 978-1-250-02824-2 With passion and flair, Palin (of Monty Python fame) details a journalist’s quest to discover the truth about a reclusive environmental activist.

Once, London journalist Keith Mabbut was an award-winning crusader, exposing chemical polluters, but now he’s just another hack, working on company vanity projects while mourning his separation from his Polish wife, Krystyna, who’s just announced she wants a divorce (she’s met somebody else). The good news is that a top publisher wants him to do a book on Hamish Melville, the elderly, widely admired environmentalist; the media-averse Melville works below the radar, encouraging native peoples to confront corporate power, so Keith must run him to earth. The publisher, hard-charging Ron Latham, will pay big bucks; he’s chosen the 56-year-old Keith for his integrity. Krystyna’s new beau, a well-connected one-time friend of Melville, gives Keith his first lead: The old boy is in Kalinga, East India. Palin ramps up the suspense as Keith arrives. He finds Melville with surprising ease before the canny agitator disappears. On his trail again, Keith is abducted by some Naxalites (Indian Maoists) who threaten to kill him: It’s Melville who rescues him. Keith slowly gains his trust: Melville is as impressive as he’d hoped but also playful and irreverent. Keith is given a tour of the tribal areas. The indigenous people are threatened by a giant mining company that wants their bauxite. At the heart of the novel is the question: Can they assimilate change without losing their identity? Melville gives his blessing to the book, while limiting future contact. Keith meets his deadline, but Latham is not happy. Where’s Melville’s dark side, the dirt that will sell the book? There’s an old adversary who may have damning evidence against him. The suspense continues as Keith is challenged by new revelations, some concerning the publisher’s sinister corporate parent.

It’s been a long time since Palin’s first novel (Hemingway’s Chair, 1998). The wait for this compelling book has been more than worth it.

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“...cleareyed, warmly funny tale.” from the yellow eyes of crocodiles

THE YELLOW EYES OF CROCODILES

Pancol, Katherine Translated by Rodarmor, William; Dickinson, Helen Penguin (400 pp.) $16.00 paper | Nov. 1, 2013 978-0-14-312155-8 As a knife accidentally slices into her wrist, Joséphine realizes she would be glad to simply slip away from her life.

At that moment, Joséphine understands that her husband, Antoine, will never find work. He’ll carry on with his mistress, and she’ll have to put food on the table. As a medieval historian, her financial prospects are slim. Out of the blue, her chic sister, Iris, offers her a Faustian bargain: Write a novel set in her beloved 12th century, but allow Iris to claim authorship. Joséphine will get the money, but Iris will get the fame—the spotlight has always been Iris’ preferred residence. Once a promising film student, Iris staggered everyone 10 years ago by marrying Phillipe, a staid French attorney, settling into a posh lifestyle and abandoning her ambition. So Joséphine sets to work. She’s complemented by a richly drawn cast of supporting characters, including the darkly handsome Luca, whom she befriends at the library, and her haughty teenage daughter, Hortense, who alternates between disdainfully humiliating her mother and shamelessly wooing her wealthy Aunt Iris. Meanwhile, Marcel, Iris and Joséphine’s stepfather, cavorts with his beloved secretary. And below the equator, Antoine manages a crocodile farm in Kenya, where he spends his evenings gazing into their hypnotic yellow eyes, looking for the answer to his problems. An international best-seller, this is the first of Pancol’s novels to be translated into English and the first in a trilogy following Joséphine’s family.

Aside from introducing a few contrived plot twists, Pancol deftly manages the constellation of characters in a cleareyed, warmly funny tale.

REVIVER

Patrick, Seth Dunne/St. Martin’s (416 pp.) $25.99 | Jun. 18, 2013 978-1-250-02170-0 In Irish-born Patrick’s tantalizing debut sci-fi thriller, criminal investigations feature a new breed of specialists with the ability to briefly resuscitate murder and accident victims and ask them whodunit (or what-dunit).

Young Jonah Miller is the top-rated reviver—the most skilled at bonding with the dead and the most sensitive in ensuring that family members get a chance to say goodbye to their loved ones. But Jonah’s special abilities make him vulnerable to dark forces that leave him with frightening visions.

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He and his colleague at the Forensic Revival Service also must contend with mortal opponents, including the afterlifers, who regard revivals as desecration, and a secret conspiracy poised to take revivals to a dangerous extreme. And then there is the military’s secret policy of killing suspected terrorists so revivers can interrogate them. Patrick depicts the world of revivers in vivid detail. Jonah must take a special drug in increasing doses to alleviate the physical aftereffects of connecting with the dead and wipe out the psychological “remnants” of such encounters.

The touch of a reviver can cause a nonreviver to experience a “chill”—at its worst, “a taint of death and a deep fear.” Revivers are required to take periods of downtime called “tails” to ward off burnout. The book features an alluring femme fatale in Tess, a beauty Jonah fell for as a teenager who mysteriously appears out of nowhere, and another strong romantic interest in Annabel, a reporter investigating the murder of her father, who wrote a best-seller about the first reviver a decade ago. When Patrick ramps up the supernatural component in the book, it becomes a more ordinary thriller.

This first installment in a planned trilogy is great in the setup and not so great in the home stretch, which may not bode well for Books 2 and 3.

HELL OR RICHMOND

Peters, Ralph Forge (544 pp.) $25.99 | May 7, 2013 978-0-7653-3048-2

Swift-moving fictional reconstruction of the terrible Overland Campaign of 1864, which must have seemed to its participants to be never ending.

“If historical fiction is properly done,” Peters notes in the Author’s Note that closes this novel, “it can bring history to life.” Following on his novel Cain at Gettysburg (2012), Peters picks up the story that properly begins with Lee’s rout and George Meade’s failure to pursue and destroy the Army of Northern Virginia. Instead, it was up to a different commander a year later, as Ulysses S. Grant moved in from the west to assume command of the Union Army and pursue that goal. As Peters makes clear, Grant, though not unreflective, was not shy about sacrificing vast numbers of soldiers: They could be replaced on the Northern side far more quickly than could their Southern counterparts. As Peters also makes clear, Grant was sensitive to the politics that affected his conduct of the war: If the South was not soon defeated, Lincoln might not be re-elected, and his successor might well declare peace and leave the Union asunder; if Grant were victorious, conversely, he had a bright political future ahead of him, which was one reason not to alienate the aforementioned Meade. Peters’ harrowing account begins and ends in the ocean of blood spilled between the Rappahannock and Cold Harbor.

He writes with a fine balance of historical accuracy and drama, turning in telling portraits not just of the generals, but also of the privates from German farms and backwoods Appalachian

huts who met and died on those Virginia battlefields. Occasionally, he is so swept up in events that his writing goes a little awry (“Grinning as wide as Galway Bay in the gloaming”), but more often it is right on the mark (“They had gone in a circle, blindfolded mules in a mill”).

Not quite in the class as Michael Shaara or Shelby Steele, but a solid work of historical fiction all the same.

THE WISHING HILL

Robinson, Holly NAL Accent/Berkley (400 pp.) $15.00 paper | Jul. 2, 2013 978-0-451-41594-3 To love or not to love, and how? And just exactly what is love, anyway?

Those are the questions 40-year-old Juliet Clark faces when she gets a call from her brother asking her to return home to care for their aging mother, who is recovering from a broken hip. Juliet is in the throes of a divorce she didn’t want, and she’s pregnant, to boot—although not by her soon-to-be ex—and doesn’t much like her mother anyway. But she loves her brother, and his lawyerly persuasion prevails. She leaves her freewheeling artist’s life in Mexico for a Massachusetts winter with her self-centered, demanding, theatrical mother. Desiree hasn’t changed, and the pair resume bickering as if Juliet hadn’t lived away for decades. Thus begins what at first appears to be a typical mending-a-mother/daughter-relationship story. Thankfully, about a third of the way through, a series of small revelations lifts the book out of its potential slide into predictability. There are relationship twists aplenty: relationships rearranged and reassessed, relationships that grow and others that die, and brand new relationships to explore.

When Juliet finds the answer to her question about love, it leads her to make tough decisions about the course of her life.

Robinson’s fiction debut is a good beach read for those who like to reflect on the complexity and messiness of family relationships.

CORRUPT PRACTICES

Rotstein, Robert Seventh Street/Prometheus (330 pp.) $15.95 paper | Jun. 11, 2013 978-1-61614-791-4 Not content with ruining a Los Angeles law firm financially, a powerful religious cult now seems intent on killing off the firm’s former partners.

Parker Stern was never close to Richard Baxter, and when Rich left Macklin & Cherry and took the lucrative business of the Church of the Sanctified Assembly with him, bringing the firm to its knees, Parker wrote him off. But he can’t refuse to take on his

defense when Rich phones him from prison after the Assembly accuses him of embezzling millions—even though Parker’s had an incapacitating case of situational glossophobia that’s prevented him from speaking in court ever since the suicide of his mentor, Harmon Cherry, several weeks ago. When Rich, a former true believer who’s made wild accusations concerning the Assembly’s own sins and insisted that Harmon Cherry was murdered to cover them up, misses his initial court appearance because he’s apparently hanged himself in his cell, Parker wonders if two suicides are two too many—whether both Harmon and Rich were murdered by agents of the Assembly. And when Rich’s father, Raymond, hit by the Assembly with a multimillion-dollar suit over Rich’s estate, asks Parker to take the case, he hands him the perfect base from which to launch his assault against oily PR chief Christopher McCarthy, hired legal gun Louis Frantz, film star–turned-Congressman Lake Knolls and everyone else in LA County. But first-timer Rotstein, an entertainment lawyer, isn’t content with that battle; he spices the mix with Parker’s past as a child actor, his turbulent relationship with his mother, who grabbed his earnings years ago and donated them to the Assembly, and his unlikely and unethical romance with one of the law school students helping him on the case. Not to mention the question of whether he’ll ever be able to raise his voice above a squeak before the bench.

A sinister cult, political payoffs, hard-core sex tapes, stories about child abuse and one of the most stressed-out attorneys you’ll ever see. It’s hard to imagine what Rotstein has kept in reserve for the sequel.

FIN & LADY

Schine, Cathleen Sarah Crichton/Farrar, Straus and Giroux (288 pp.) $26.00 | Jul. 2, 2013 978-0-374-15490-5 In her newest, about a young boy raised by his madcap half sister, Schine (The Three Wiessmanns of Westport, 2010, etc.) joins the spate of recent authors attempting to capture the zeitgeist of

the 1960s.

In 1964, after 11-year-old Fin’s mother dies, he leaves the Connecticut farm where he’s lived since his father’s death to live in Manhattan with his new guardian, his father’s daughter from his first marriage. Although she is Fin’s only living relative, the last time they were together was six years earlier, when he went with his parents to Capri, where Lady had run away to avoid a socially acceptable marriage. Now 24, Lady is a mix of Auntie Mame and Holly Golightly—beautiful, effervescent and emotionally wounded. Whether carefree or careless, she is luckily extremely rich. She moves Fin into a hip but far from shabby Greenwich Village brownstone and enrolls him in a progressive school without desks or grading. She throws wild parties, drives a convertible, roots for the Mets and dabbles in leftist politics. She also puts Fin in charge of finding her a suitable husband. She has three suitors: |

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Tyler, the fiance she jilted at the altar as a pregnant 18-year-old, has become the still besotted if bitter lawyer in charge of Fin’s financial estate; handsome, not-too-bright jock Jack’s appeal lies in his preppy shallowness; then there is Fin’s choice, Biffi, a Hungarian Jew who survived World War II to become an art dealer of genuine kindness and wit. But the deep-seated sorrow peaking up through Biffi’s charm scares Lady off. Loved by all three men, she’s unable to love anyone except Fin and their black housekeeper, Mable, a character who defies conventional stereotypes and thus personifies the upheavals in the decade’s civil rights movement. Then she returns to Capri and discovers the joy and danger of being in love herself.

Schine offers up a bittersweet lemon soufflé of family love and romantic passion.

THE ROSIE PROJECT

Simsion, Graeme Simon & Schuster (304 pp.) $24.00 | $10.99 e-book | Oct. 1, 2013 978-1-4767-2908-4 978-1-4767-2910-7 e-book Polished debut fiction, from Australian author Simsion, about a brilliant but emotionally challenged geneticist who develops a questionnaire to screen potential mates but finds love instead.

The book won the 2012 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an unpublished manuscript.

“I became aware of applause. It seemed natural. I had been living in the world of romantic comedy and this was the final scene. But it was real.” So Don Tillman, our perfectly imperfect narrator and protagonist, tells us. While he makes this observation near the end of the book, it comes as no surprise—this story plays the rom-com card from the first sentence. Don is challenged, almost robotic. He cannot understand social cues, barely feels emotion and can’t stand to be touched. Don’s best friends are Gene and Claudia, psychologists. Gene brought Don as a postdoc to the prestigious university where he is now an associate professor. Gene is a cad, a philanderer who chooses women based on nationality—he aims to sleep with a woman from every country. Claudia is tolerant until she’s not. Gene sends Rosie, a graduate student in his department, to Don as a joke, a ringer for the Wife Project. Finding her woefully unsuitable, Don agrees to help the beautiful but fragile Rosie to learn the identity of her biological father. Pursuing this Father Project, Rosie and Don collide like particles in an atom smasher: hilarity, dismay and carbonated hormones ensue. The story lurches from one set piece of deadpan nudge-nudge, wink-wink humor to another: We laugh at, and with, Don as he tries to navigate our hopelessly emotional, nonliteral world, learning as he goes. Simsion can plot a story, set a scene, write a sentence, finesse a detail. A pity more popular fiction isn’t this well-written. If you liked Australian author Toni Jordan’s Addition (2009), with its math-obsessed, quirky heroine, this book is for you.

A sparkling, laugh-out-loud novel.

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ANGEL CITY

Steele, Jon Blue Rider Press (528 pp.) $27.95 | Jun. 4, 2013 978-0-399-15875-9 Series: Angelus, 2 What if they gave an apocalypse and everybody came?

Steele’s sequel to The Watchers (2012), the middle volume in his Angelus Trilogy, is rather less neatly constructed than its predecessor. It opens with a tossed-off episode within the walls of Montségur fortress, HQ of the Cathar uprising, the haunt of armor-clad fellows who talk less like John Cleese than Humphrey Bogart: “Can’t blame them. The King offered safe passage to all who promise to become good little Frenchmen.” The Cathars figure in the tale all the same for some neat little reliquary gadgetry that falls into the way of supercop Jay Harper. Readers of the inaugural volume will remember that Jay and high-ticket fille de joie Katherine Taylor only recently whispered sweet nothings to each other within earshot of Lausanne Cathedral while attempting to keep assorted demons and their earthly minions at bay. Katherine’s now across the pond back home, but Jay’s not far from her mind, especially since they’re both under the aegis of the elite Swiss Guard, whose boss is given to growling at Jay such tendernesses as, “If you’d prefer me to remind you that you are not a creature of free will, then I’ll be more than happy to do so.” It’s predestination, then, it seems, that sends a bateau full of bad guys down the Seine into the middle of Paris with a nuclear device and a threat to turn the City of Lights into a bonfire—an eventuality that, naturally, only Jay has the wherewithal to deal with. Does he succeed? Only the sewer rats beneath the city streets can say—and, oh, yes, a weird wraithlike chap named Astruc, and his boon companion, and all those Swiss Guards, and the terrorists, and Katherine, and....

If you read only one supernatural thriller with Albigensian overtones this year, this ought to be it.

THE ENGAGEMENTS

Sullivan, J. Courtney Knopf (400 pp.) $26.95 | Jun. 11, 2013 978-0-307-95871-6

Is a diamond really forever?

So Sullivan (Maine, 2011, etc.) asks in her third novel, which explores the familiar territory of people who can’t quite find the old connections but keep looking for them all the same. Frances Gerety, a real person whom Sullivan enlists at the outset of her tale, had a daunting task way back in 1947: She had to cook up an advertising tagline for De Beers that would convince Americans to purchase diamond engagement rings, hitherto “considered just absolutely money down the drain.” Sullivan’s story takes off

from there, diamonds forming a leitmotif in ingeniously connected stories that span generations. As B. Traven advised in his grand tale of gold, precious objects can cause people to do very bad things; so they do here, enacted by a principal character who, though a bit of a sad sack, does what he can to resist temptation until it overwhelms him. That character speaks to the most modern emanation of maleness: He’s been laid off, his wife earning more than he when he does work, regretful because he “had failed to live up to his potential.” But then, in Sullivan’s depiction of the world, every character harbors regrets over roads not taken. Some are stronger than others, and many are devoted to things more than people: One watches Fox News and says hateful things about President Barack Obama in order to be more like her well-to-do husband, adopting his politics “along with his interest in skiing and his love of the Miami Dolphins”; another hints at wanting more children just to be more like the trendy couples on the Upper East Side, as if to say: “We can afford to raise this many children at once in the most expensive city on earth.” Does money ever buy any of them happiness? Not really, but it does score a few carats.

A modern update of The Spoils of Poynton; elegant, assured, often moving and with a gentle moral lesson to boot. (Author tour to Boston, Cape Cod, Chicago, Martha’s Vineyard, Portland (Maine), Portland (Ore.), San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C.)

SHADOW PEOPLE

Swain, James Tor (352 pp.) $25.99 | Jun. 11, 2013 978-0-7653-2995-0

Swain’s latest thriller featuring magician and psychic Peter Warlock.

Having survived the previous thriller Dark Magic (2012), Warlock would clearly prefer to stick to his magic shows, where he excels. The trouble is that shadow people from the spirit world seem determined to give him grief.

Are they evil? They certainly seem so. He gets pulled through a dark mirror into a different place and time, where the devil’s deputies mean him only the vilest of fates. Luckily, he has his faithful girlfriend, Liza, to try pulling him back. The plot requires suspension of disbelief, as characters die in one world and un-die in the other. Horrible things happen and then unhappen. One minute, Warlock is in his bedroom, and the next minute, he’s on the other side facing Dr. Death on a lonely dirt road. And then he’s back again. One minute, a man’s head is severed, and the next minute, it’s reattached. Though not exactly a superhero, Warlock is reminiscent of Peter Parker of Spiderman fame, with those special powers that are both his blessing and his curse and a girlfriend who tries to ground him in the here and now. This comparison is hardly a criticism, as many readers like to lose themselves in a well-crafted alternate reality. Warlock is a likable and multilayered hero, a good man who must face his dark childhood secrets and his own capacity for

evil. He is lucky to have Liza, whose humanity saves him from himself more than once. But Holly, a witch, loves him too. Will she ruin his life? Swain is a master storyteller who fills his scenes with action. The book stands alone quite well, but fans will be glad to know that it carries the virtual promise of a sequel. The battle against evil never ends.

A fine read for lovers of escapist fiction.

THE WIDOW’S STRIKE

Taylor, Brad Dutton (384 pp.) $26.95 | Jul. 16, 2013 978-0-525-95311-1

Taylor’s latest Pike Logan thriller.

A lab technician dies a quick and ugly death after exposure to an experimental virus. Nefarious Iranian forces get their hands on both the limited supply and its preventive vaccine, with the goal of reshaping humankind. Their plan is to inoculate Iranians and kill off the rest of humanity. To this end, they recruit a Chechen woman—a “Black Widow”—who is willing to martyr herself by taking the virus to the infidels. Along the way, Pike is surrounded by obstacles ranging from a fearsome antagonist to obstructive colleagues. Alongside him is tough-as-steel Jennifer Cahill. Their friendship is more than platonic and less than sexual. After surviving rough setbacks, Pike faces the ultimate challenge on his way to saving the civilized world. The themes of Islam and terrorism are timely, and Taylor does not burden the reader with technical descriptions of military hardware. The pace is quick, with plenty of point-of-view switches to show what the bad guys are up to.

Don your hazmat suit, prop up your feet, and enjoy a good yarn.

TRAVELING LIGHT

Thalasinos, Andrea Forge (368 pp.) $24.99 | Jul. 16, 2013 978-0-7653-3302-5

Ashamed of her marriage, uninspired at work, Paula Makaikis’ only interest is feeding the birds on the ledge outside her office window. That is, until fate forces her to open the door to her own cage.

Once the gifted, formidable head of the Center for Immigrant Studies at NYU, lately she’s been content to let ambitious, younger colleagues take the reins. Ten years ago she’d married Roger only to have his hoarding push her out of his bed and out of his life. An urgent phone call from her childhood friend Celeste irrevocably redirects Paula’s life.

Celeste needs Paula to translate for an elderly homeless man who speaks only Greek, has lost his beloved dog to Animal |

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“...a welcome debut.” from girls i know

Control and has only hours to live. Paula races to the hospital to find she recognizes this man—as a child, she’d called him Theo, but her mother mysteriously refuses to tell Theo’s real name or his true connection to Paula. Promising Theo that she will take care of his dog, Paula becomes the owner of a wolf hybrid named Fotis (“light” in Greek). Spontaneously, Paula and Fotis hit the road, traveling north, ending up at a wildlife rehabilitation center on the Minnesota shores of Lake Superior. She is intuitively adept at handling fierce birds since she, too, knows what it means to have one’s freedom clipped. As she helps heal wild eagles, Paula, of course, heals herself. She has the guidance of some new friends, including Rick, an attorney who left his own smothering job and unhappy marriage to found the refuge.

Like her debut (An Echo Through the Snow, 2012), Thalasinos’ sophomore novel beautifully evokes the emotional resonances of broken hearts and disappointed dreams. Yet the connection between damaged birds and damaged humans, although metaphorically neat, is too easy.

Loose ends and overdrawn symbols mar this richly written tale.

LILLIAN AND DASH

Toperoff, Sam Other Press (400 pp.) $15.95 paper | Jul. 16, 2013 978-1-59051-568-6 A canny exploration of the long affair between writers Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961) and Lillian Hellman (19051984), which endured alcoholism, war and McCarthyism.

Toperoff ’s earlier novels strived to drill into the psyches of Marilyn Monroe (Queen of Desire, 1992) and James Dean (Jimmy Dean Prepares, 1997), and the lives of Hammett and Hellman give him similarly rich fodder. When they met, Hammett had left behind family to pursue a career as a screenwriter, and Hellman was a rising playwright in a perfunctory marriage. The early chapters stumble as Toperoff strains to establish their individual backgrounds and voices, as if the novel will be an awkward oral history, but the tone soon settles, and the focus turns squarely on their affection for each other. The two were on different career trajectories when they met: Hammett’s best work, like The Maltese Falcon, was behind him, while Hellman would gain celebrity with her 1934 play The Children’s Hour. And they were separated often, as Hellman covered the Spanish Civil War and Hammett drank heavily and tinkered with scripts. Yet the two completed each other both romantically and editorially, and Toperoff captures the writers’ interior anxieties well, as Hammett struggled with stark minimalist autobiographical sketches and Hellman absorbed brickbats from her critics. (Some of the book’s sweetest scenes feature their back and forths over their latest writing projects.)

The need to become each other’s cheerleader becomes more pronounced in the later chapters, as the House Un-American Activities Committee comes after both of them; Hellman’s 30

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petty harassment at the hands of U.S. and British authorities, and the ballooning sense of injustice that ensues, is particularly well-turned. Toperoff credits numerous biographies and collected letters, but the novel never feels like a studiously researched museum piece.

Toperoff locates the private passions in an intense, public and ultimately tragic love story without indulging in glitz or melodrama.

GIRLS I KNOW

Trevor, Douglas SixOneSeven Books (320 pp.) $15.95 paper | May 7, 2013 978-0-9831505-3-4 Affecting novel of love, coming-ofage and theistic ontology.

Walt Steadman, the protagonist of Trevor’s (English/Univ. of Michigan; The Thin Tear in the Fabric of Space, 2005) sometimes picaresque tale, refuses to grow up. He’s the super of a Boston condo simply in order to get free rent, though he doesn’t really know how to fix anything; he’s obsessed with poetry but can’t get a handle on the dissertation he’s supposed to be writing at Harvard; he has two pairs of shoes, one of which he doesn’t wear, and a single pair of grownup pants. Walt spends his mornings at a little diner so far away from home that it takes him a couple of transfers to get there; he’s studying the generous form of its sole waitress, Flora Martinez. When a bright young trust-funder philosophy major moves into the building, Walt takes a rare break from the cafe to help her with a project interviewing women about meaning in their lives, “[s]omething Aquinas might have written if he had been a Women’s Studies major.” When tragedy strikes, as it must to even so resolutely unkempt and adolescent a life as Walt’s, he is forced to grow up—some, anyway. That tragedy is skillfully worked into the narrative, both unexpected and inevitable; suffice it to say that every one of Walt’s assumptions is overturned, just as Aquinas might have wanted. In its more whimsical moments, Trevor’s book is reminiscent of Michael Chabon’s Wonder Boys and Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity, and if Trevor isn’t quite in their league, he has a solid sense of storytelling and the mot juste—and his characters are likable and believable as well.

As much a love song sung to Boston as a conventional novel, and a welcome debut.

IDENTICAL

Turow, Scott Grand Central Publishing (416 pp.) $28.00 | Oct. 16, 2013 978-1-455-52720-5 Much-practiced legal proceduralist Turow (Innocent, 2010, etc.) steps onto Joseph Campbell turf in his latest mystery.

Turf is everything in the world Zeus Kronon—a charged name, that—has carved out for himself in Kindle County, turf that, of course, figures in Turow’s oeuvre as Yoknapatawpha County figures in Faulkner’s. Rolling in drachmas, he has just one problem: a wild maenad of a daughter, full name Aphrodite (“There have not been many occasions he has seen Dita when she is not smashed”), who has eyes not just for one of a pair of twin brothers, Paul and Cass Gianis, but both. That spells trouble, as twins in mythology always do. Fast-forward a few decades. Cass has been doing time for her murder, while Paul, “followed by two scrubbed young underlings,” re-enters the scene as a legal whiz and rising politico. Enter the Sapphic former FBI agent Evon Miller, who, working for real estate magnate Hal (that is, Herakles) Kronon—and who minds mixing Shakespeare with Aeschylus?—is determined to get to the bottom of whether Cass or Paul did poor Dita in so brutally. It would spoil the story to do more here than whisper the name Medea in what she eventually turns up. Turow has obvious fun with his mythological conceit, giving, for instance, a local GOP power the sonorous, if unlikely, name Perfectus Elder; and if sometimes the joke wears a little thin, the process of discovery takes nice and sometimes unexpected twists. Amid the supermodernity of DNA tests, the austerity of case law and the tangles of contemporary politics (Hal, horrors, even threatening to vote for Obama), Turow never loses sight of the ancient underpinnings of his story, with a conclusion that places Hal, Zeus, Hermione and Aphrodite in the vicinity of Olympus, their true neighborhood.

Classic (in more senses than one) Turow.

THE CLEANER OF CHARTRES

Vickers, Salley Viking (304 pp.) $26.95 | Jun. 1, 2013 978-0-670-78567-4

Enigmatic Agnès Morel provokes intense responses in the people around her, but is she an innocent, a savant or a violent criminal?

A foundling whose own illegitimate baby was removed from her at birth, Agnès is a character hung about with sadness, mystery and suppressed emotion. In British novelist Vickers’ (Dancing Backwards, 2010, etc.) accomplished moral fable set in the French cathedral city of Chartres, Agnès is a blank canvas on whom

others inscribe their own kind or less generous behavior. Abbé Paul treats her with concerned warmth; Professor Jones detects her illiteracy and teaches her to read; but malicious widow Madame Beck works busily to vilify her reputation. Twenty years earlier, before arriving penniless in Chartres, Agnès had spent time in a secure psychiatric hospital, suspected of attacking the nanny of an adopted baby which Agnès perhaps thought was her own lost child. Now, with her striking looks, quiet demeanor and high reputation as a reliable worker, Agnès has friends and a home. But the unanswered questions about her past and her silence are about to resurface unpleasantly. Sometimes whimsical, other times dryly witty, Vickers’ story features simple characters and an uncomplicated, even predictable storyline while exploring deeper themes of parenting, sin and guilt before reaching a sweet, neat conclusion.

A skillful miniature psychodrama delivered with humor and knowing restraint.

THE COLLINI CASE

von Schirach, Ferdinand Viking (208 pp.) $25.95 | Aug. 5, 2013 978-0-670-02652-4

Because the murderer makes no attempt to hide his crime, the mystery is the motive in this concise legal thriller.

Caspar Leinen is a new lawyer; smart, hardworking, burdened with a sense of justice, even righteousness, but not fool enough to think this will excuse him from having to make a living. His first case is a sensational murder. Fabrizio Collini has killed a man: He admits as much, and the evidence is all over him. When Leinen learns he has a personal connection to the victim, he attempts to back out, but an older colleague, the famous Richard Mattinger, dissuades him. Mattinger is the victim’s lawyer, the auxiliary counsel for the prosecution. It is not necessarily a matter of virtue that persuades Leinen to stay on the case. We know what will happen—the question is how: Evil is in the devil, the devil in the details. The pleasures of the book are its particulars: of the law and how it is practiced in Germany, the anecdotes that give agency and motive to the characters, fascinating tidbits about detonators, the description of an autopsy. This is the stock and trade of crime fiction. All the conventions—even a love interest—are present; a regular reader will check boxes off a list, and yet this book works magic.

Von Schirach, prominent defense attorney in Germany, author of two highly regarded short story collections (Guilt, 2012, etc.), is renowned for his tone, the evenness with which he treats his facts, the unforced suspense that unnerves his readers.

It is the care von Schirach takes with history, with the return of the repressed, that makes this short book remarkable.

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CHIMERA

Wellington, David Morrow/HarperCollins (448 pp.) $24.99 | Jul. 23, 2013 978-0-06-224877-0 This Wellington novel takes onearmed hero Jim Chapel on a wild cross-country chase to find a group of mysterious creatures that have been sent off to kill.

War hero Chapel lost an arm in Afghanistan. Even though the high-tech replacement arm he has is top-notch, he still doesn’t feel like the man he used to be.

So, when he’s summoned to embark on a complicated journey for a powerful yet shadowy admiral who is at odds with a top CIA official, Chapel is both mystified and gratified to finally be back in action. A former member of the Army’s Special Forces, he’s a highly trained and lethal operative, but when the admiral, Hollingshead, and his spy counterpart, Banks, send Chapel off, they only give him bare-bones information. Chapel’s been told that a group of chimeras, men who are mostly human but also contain the DNA of certain other species, who were once part of a special project, has broken loose from their camp and is on their way to kill certain people. His instructions are to stop them at all costs. But when Chapel, aided by a beautiful veterinarian and a mysterious, sexy hacker with a sultry voice and known only to him by the name Angel, sets out to stop the chimeras, he finds that there’s more at play than first meets the eye. Is it a government conspiracy? And, if so, how deep does it run? Wellington stretches the bounds of belief with this fanciful tale that takes readers from New York to Atlanta and places both north and west in order to find the chimeras and make certain their intended victims are safe. But the writing is good, and Wellington knows how to sustain interest, although the hero’s ability to take a licking and keep on ticking will strain the credence of even the most ardent fan of the genre.

This book is sure to score with those who like a little touch of science fiction with their action thrillers.

THE WARRIORS

Young, Tom Putnam (336 pp.) $26.95 | Jul. 11, 2013 978-0-399-15847-6

Twenty years after the slaughter of 100,000 people in Bosnia, Serbian war criminal and arms dealer Viktor Dusic is intent on re-igniting the campaign against Muslims through acts of terrorism and coldblooded murder.

Air Force Lt. Col. Michael Parson, who flew missions in Bosnia and Kosovo, must spring back into action to prevent further atrocities. Parson has just settled into what he had hoped would be a low-key existence as safety officer at Manas Air Base 32

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in Kyrgyzstan. Then, a C-27 cargo plane from Afghanistan containing a huge shipment of opium crashes in front of him. To investigate this unlikely event, he reunites with Sophia Gold, a battle-scarred ex-Army friend now working for the United Nations as an expert Pashto interpreter. With the help of Dragan, a University of Chicago–educated Serbian internal affairs cop, and Irena, a young Air Force enlistee who was born in Sarajevo, he infiltrates Belgrade to douse the threat. Young, a decorated former flight engineer with the Air National Guard who served in Kosovo and Bosnia as well as Iraq and Afghanistan, has plenty of real-life experience to draw upon. He is an assured stylist with a gift for subtle characterizations and tightly controlled action scenes. The novel has moral depth as well, shadowing current events with dark moments from the past, notably the tragic 1993 killing of a young couple known as “the Bosnian Romeo and Juliet”—a Muslim and a Christian. Parsons, introduced in Young’s stellar debut, The Mullah’s Storm (2010), is not the most charismatic hero, but his steady intelligence makes him good company.

An expertly rendered tale of lingering hostilities rooted in the former Yugoslavia.

THE NEVER LIST

Zan, Koethi Pamela Dorman/Viking (320 pp.) $27.95 | Jul. 16, 2013 978-0-670-02651-7 Ten years ago, Sarah Farber escaped a madman’s cellar in Portland, Ore., where, for three years, she and her best friend, Jennifer, and two other girls were raped, tortured and starved.

Now 31, the psychologically frail Sarah rarely budges from her supersecure New York apartment, where she goes by the name Caroline Morrow. But after she receives an insinuating letter from her imprisoned abductor, a college professor who was convicted only on kidnapping charges and may soon be paroled, Sarah risks re-entry into the world to find evidence that he murdered the still-missing Jennifer. Inspired by the stories of real-life abductees, including Jaycee Lee Dugard, Zan affectingly puts us inside the damaged Sarah’s skin. The book depicts with harrowing efficiency the professor’s sick brainwashing experiments involving mutilation, starvation, beatings and stabbings. We have to wonder whether someone still recovering from post-traumatic stress disorder would be so bold (or dumb) as to return to the scene of the atrocities and put herself in harm’s way in investigating a bizarre BDSM cult with links to the evil professor. The title of the book is taken from a list of no-nos Sarah and Jennifer drew up before they were trapped in a cab and abducted: Never hitchhike, never enter parking garages at night, etc. Sarah handily overcomes other fears by flying around the country in search of answers after recruiting her other former cellar mates, edgy goth punk Tracy and oddly readjusted investment banker’s daughter Christine. The cast of characters keeps the plot afloat.

“...features an appealingly off-beat set of characters...” from jump the gun

COLD KILLING

There certainly is something to be said for a mystery that features as many strong females as this one.

Zan’s first novel is a haunting depiction of the emotional scars left on women held in captivity.

m ys t e r y JUMP THE GUN

Zoe Burke Poisoned Pen (250 pp.) $24.95 | $14.95 paper | $22.95 Lg. Prt. Aug. 6, 2013 978-1-4642-0161-5 978-1-4642-0163-9 paper 978-1-4642-0162-2 Lg. Prt.

Mystery meets romance meets noir meets caper in this overstuffed debut.

Beatrice Annabelle Starkey—Bea to her dearly departed grandmother, Muffinhead to her beloved parents in Palo Alto and Annabelle to most everyone else—is something of a faithful sidekick in the movie of her own life. When she meets Mickey Paxton outside a run-of-the-mill work convention, Annabelle has a feeling she’s about to make the transition to leading lady, especially when he spirits her off on a whirlwind trip to Las Vegas. No sooner have the two hit the strip than they are terrorized by Jake, a mysterious thug who holds them at gunpoint.

Since Annabelle and Mickey have just met, neither knows which of them is the object of this unwelcome interest, and Jake isn’t forthcoming in answering questions. The two make a narrow escape in time to meet a series of kooky supporting characters, none of them clearly friend or foe, none of them what they seem. Especially after Annabelle’s quick call home indicates that even her San Francisco apartment is no longer safe ground, she and Mickey feel forced to uncover the reason for their recent rough treatment. A farcical series of events follows as Annabelle and Mickey put their new relationship to the test with their lives.

Though Annabelle’s obsession with movies does the story no favors, Burke’s debut features an appealingly offbeat set of characters caught up in a manic plot that’s likely to either charm readers or drive them crazy.

Delaney, Luke Morrow/HarperCollins (448 pp.) $14.99 paper | May 21, 2013 978-0-06-221946-6 A serial killer stalks London.

One might think that whoever stabbed rent boy Daniel Graydon 77 times would have left DI Sean Corrigan of the Serious Crime Group South a wealth of clues to work with. But except for two measly traces—a sole fingerprint on a doorknob and a shoe imprint on the victim’s body—the crime scene was unhelpfully tidy. Still, Corrigan, whose experience with rape and brutality is not limited to his job—his father taught him firsthand about depravity—senses that this killer’s rampage has barely started. Supervising old-timer DS Dave Donnelly, DS Sally Jones and anyone else he can corral, Corrigan locates James Hellier, a married financier who met up with Graydon at the Utopia nightclub, and intuitively recognizes him as a monster in posh clothing. The battle is on: Will Hellier or Corrigan triumph? Hellier’s boss, Sebastian Gibran, is eager to keep the firm of Butler and Mason International Finance out of the tabloids. But that hardly seems possible when police records link Hellier’s methods to those of Stefan Korsakov, a perp whose mug shot and prints have mysteriously vanished from the prison system. Hellier outwits numerous surveillance teams and withstands Corrigan’s interrogations, and it’s possible a bent copper is helping him. Even so, Corrigan links him to more gruesome murders. An almost fatal attack on DS Jones finally lands Hellier in custody, but a major, albeit unlikely, plot twist unveils another possible killer, setting Hellier free to do his worst in far-off climes.

A plodding debut with lip-smacking, bloody reminiscences from the perp and dreary foul-ups from the cops.

VAMPIRES, BONES AND TREACLE SCONES

Dunnett, Kaitlyn Kensington (304 pp.) $24.00 | Jul. 30, 2013 978-0-7582-7267-6

The owner of a Scottish emporium turns sleuth once more when a local murder has family connections.

Liss MacCrimmon, now Ruskin, has barely returned from her honeymoon with her husband, Dan, when she’s dealing with another body.

Luckily, this time, the body is a manikin Liss is preparing for a Halloween haunted house at the old Blackie O’Hare place, which has been owned by the town of Moosetookalook ever since its namesake owner died while in prison for murder. It seems the perfect place for Liss to transform into a real haunted house with the help of her Halloween committee, especially since tales of |

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where Blackie’s fortune might be buried still provide a tantalizing mystery for the townspeople. When mysterious noises and flashing lights are seen in the house, some suggest there might be a real haunting at work, though Liss suspects overzealous use of the home by a committee member—perhaps young Boxer Snipes, whose family is known for roguish behavior. The fears of foul play in the mansion are confirmed when the body of Liss’ cousin Ned Boyd is found posed in a spooky Halloween scene. Ned’s mother, Liss’ Aunt Margaret, isn’t sure what to think of Ned’s death; she didn’t even know he’d been released from prison. But Liss knows what to do: avert the suspicion falling on the Snipes family by uncovering what the police cannot.

Though Liss’ love life seems to have nowhere left to go, the ongoing saga of Moosetookalook (Bagpipes, Brides, and Homicides, 2012, etc.) gives readers a chance to catch up with old friends and meet new ones. (Agent: Christina Hogrebe)

THE DEVIL LAUGHED

Finger, Gerrie Ferris Five Star (300 pp.) $25.95 | Aug. 21, 2013 978-1-4328-2697-0

An ex-cop and her ex-partner reunite to solve a complex crime.

Moriah Dru left the Atlanta Police Department to run Child Trace, an agency specializing in missing children. Her former partner and current lover, Richard Lake, still investigates homicides on the Atlanta force. While visiting their friend, tough, irascible judge Portia Devon, Dru spots the remains of the Scuppernong, a sailboat that vanished almost four years ago along with the four people on board. A drought has lowered the lake level enough to allow Dru to see the boat, whose mysterious disappearance sparked a major investigation and tabloid headlines. Evangeline Broussard, an intelligent but annoying 13-year-old, hires Dru to find her mother, Candice Browne, one of the people who vanished with the Scuppernong. Since no bodies can be found aboard the craft, Dru and Richard head for the small Georgia mountain community where it was last seen. At a diner there, Dru meets a very young girl whose mother has also vanished. All too soon, the police find the mother’s body in the lake. The Browne and Cocineau families who were partying on the sailboat when it disappeared had been at odds over a vineyard in Cape Fear, N.C. When Dru follows the trail there, her visit leads to another death and uncovers money laundering and other criminal doings.

When all is said and done, however, it is the closemouthed, closely knit mountain community that holds the answers.

Dru’s third (The Last Temptation, 2012, etc.) provides plenty of quirky characters and surprising revelations but leaves a few loose ends.

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GOOD MAN FRIDAY

Hambly, Barbara Severn House (256 pp.) $29.95 | Jun. 1, 2013 978-0-7278-8255-4

Benjamin January, free man of color, leaves New Orleans for the iniquities of Washington City.

Desperate for work, Ben (Ran Away, 2011, etc.) agrees to accompany Henri and Chloë Viellard north to search for their vanished friend, mathematician Selwyn Singletary. Also included on the trip are Henri’s mistress (and Ben’s sister), Dominique, her daughter Charmian, her maid and many trunks of silk petticoats. Upon landing in Washington, the blacks settle into a rooming house while the Viellards establish themselves at a whites-only hotel. Nobody, however, has seen hide nor hair of Singletary for the months since he arrived from England. Not Oldmixton, the British embassy secretary; not Luke or Rowena Bray. But Bray’s valet, Mede, admits that the man entrusted him with a ledger, though he can’t decipher what it says: It’s just a series of numbers that make no sense. While trying to puzzle out matters, Ben must avoid the Fowlers, notorious slave snatchers, waylay grave robber Wylie Pease and learn a rudimentary form of baseball, which is illegal for blacks to play. Edgar Poe, a Baltimore gentleman come to Washington in search of work, is staying at Ben’s boardinghouse. Poe, who thrives on solving codes, joins Ben in pursuit of Singletary. They end up combating a spy ring that plots trouble for Canada and visiting a private mad asylum where doping is the rule of the day.

Before all is resolved, Ben will be wounded in a skirmish with the slave snatchers, Dominique will be kidnapped, Mede will have his throat cut, and a woman will try to murder her husband and claim his death a suicide.

Mid-19th-century sexism and racism galore, presented with Hambly’s usual verve and historical accuracy.

RUNAWAY MAN

Handler, David Minotaur (272 pp.) $24.99 | Aug. 20, 2013 978-1-250-01162-6 Introducing private eye Benji Golden, part nebbish, part mensch, who’s surrounded by women with bountiful racks and wriggly tushes.

Abby Golden, boss of Golden Legal Services since the death of her husband, Meyer, used to be known as Abraxas, the only Jewish pole dancer in New Yorker. Her assistant, Lovely Rita of the massive mammaries, is a former lap dancer who took up computers to keep herself busy while her husband, Clarence, does a stretch in Rahway State Prison. Twenty-something Benji, called Bunny by his mom, Abby, has long eyelashes, a

bashful manner, a baby face and a frame so insignificant that he can tail suspects up close without being made. When Peter Seymour, partner in the high-toned law firm of Bates, Winslow and Seymour, needs help in locating Canterbury College student Bruce Weiner because an anonymous benefactor has willed Bruce big bucks, Benji lands the case. With a brief time out for shtupping the curvaceous Sonya, a young lady he bumped into at shul, Benji locates Bruce, but someone’s gotten there first with a Glock. Why kill Bruce? Perhaps to force his lover, basketball phenom Charles “In Charge” Willingham, to stay in the closet. Bruce’s little sister Sara, who has a big crush on Benji, shares some family secrets with him but not quickly enough. Benji is shot at. Others die. And there are tawdry revelations about the Kidd family, which includes a starchy matriarch, a suicidal daughter and a son who may be stymied in his run for governor. There’s more shtupping, more murder, one plot twist that most readers will see coming and another that will surprise everyone but Lovely Rita.

So what if Handler, best known for his Berger and Mitry series (The Blood-Red Indian Summer, 2011, etc.), isn’t the keenest plotter in the genre? He definitely knows his way around adorable, cute and schmaltzy.

ODD MAN OUT

Hebert, Brandon Five Star (312 pp.) $25.95 | May 15, 2013 978-1-4328-2699-4 A federal agent and a petty criminal team up, sort of, to break up a hydraheaded drug ring.

It looks like Christmastime for Max Bradford, of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

South Florida cops have busted Darnell Sims for making terrorist threats, and Max, who’s got Darnell’s old jacket for cigarette smuggling in front of him, figures he can make Darnell an offer he can’t refuse: Come to work for Uncle Sam informing on your old boss Johnny Stanz and his associates and digging up new info, or we’ll throw away the key. The new partnership gets off to a rocky start when Max’s car is run off the road by a pair of guys brandishing serious firepower. The gunmen, Billy Poe and Lester Long, work for Raoul Garcia, a drug lord who’s still holding a grudge against Darnell over the little matter of half a million dollars that vanished three years ago. Instead of going into hiding after the abortive hit, however, Raoul doubles down by hiring Armando “the Vulture” Hernandez to mop up the loose ends that seem to be constantly expanding to include every other cast member. In such a combustible atmosphere, it’s every man for himself. And every woman too, since Raoul’s mistress, Gloria, and masseuse, Alondra Ayala, who maintains that she’s neither Darnell’s girlfriend nor a working girl, are playing their own angles as they urge their men to further mayhem. Whether the salt-and-pepper pair of Max and Darnell will fit into the campaign Max’s partner, Tom Mako, has dubbed

Operation Prime Time is perhaps the least interesting question in this three-course banquet of felonies.

The follow-up to Hebert’s bright debut (My Own Worst Enemy, 2009) features so many casual double crosses that it would be foolish to take any of them personally.

THE FLINCH FACTOR

Kahn, Michael A. Poisoned Pen (300 pp.) $24.95 | $14.95 paper | $22.95 Lg. Prt. Jun. 4, 2013 978-1-4642-0140-0 978-1-4642-0142-4 paper 978-1-4642-0141-7 Lg. Prt. Back from a 10-year sabbatical, ebullient St. Louis attorney Rachel Gold (Trophy Widow, 2002, etc.) is faced with a Frankenstein civil suit that just won’t be settled.

Nick Moran, the dishy contractor who did great work for Rachel and, evidently, every other eligible female in Missouri, has been found dead in his truck along Forest Park’s Gay Way, his pants down, his manhood exposed, a lethal dose of heroin in his veins. Since his sister Susannah Beale is certain that he wasn’t using or gay, she wants Rachel to find out how he really did die. The only lead Rachel and her old buddy, raffish Professor Benny Goldberg, can dig up concerns a man whose truck, labeled Corundum, was spotted at the scene. Their search for that man sparks an unexpected connection with Rachel’s other big case: the suit she’s pressing on behalf of Muriel Finkelstein et al., who don’t want to leave their great neighborhood and its great schools so that developer Ken Rubenstein’s Ruby Productions, fortified by taxpayer dollars, can bulldoze it, put up luxury homes and sell them at an obscene profit. Rubenstein has offered Rachel’s clients 10 percent over the appraised value of their homes. Then he offers 15 percent and intimates that he’s willing to go even higher. The residents refuse until Rubenstein offers to walk away from the development entirely if only Rachel will promise not to initiate any legal actions against him in the future. Who could turn down an offer so clearly to her clients’ advantage? Only Rachel, who makes a counteroffer that gives her just enough wiggle room to drive both cases to an eminently predictable but highly satisfying climax dependent on the peculiar judicial gifts of the Honorable Howard Flinch.

The tale sags as it lumbers toward its foreordained conclusion, but it’s all worth it to hear Judge Flinch tell a witness who’s taking the Fifth: “You’re plenty incriminated already.”

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“...nifty period whodunit...” from the mannequin house

SUMMER DEATH

Kallentoft, Mons Atria (464 pp.) $25.99 | Jun. 4, 2013 978-1-4516-4254-4

A Swedish summer is no kinder than winter to Malin Fors, her colleagues in the Linköping police department or the young girls who’ve become the targets of a murderous stalker.

Josefin Davidsson, 15, is found wandering naked and bleeding in the Horticultural Society Park.

Though she’s evidently been sexually assaulted with a foreign object, she can’t remember anything about how she was taken or by whom or what happened. Since every police officer who can escape the record-breaking heat has taken a holiday, the case falls to Malin and her partner, Zeke Martinsson. Only a day later, Theresa Eckeved is reported missing, and both her boyfriend, Peter Sköld, and her friend Nathalie Falck stonewall the police. So do Ali Shakbari and Behzad Karami, who were acquitted of gang rape recently. When the only developments in the case come when a new victim is discovered or when the police are accused of harassing first immigrants, then lesbians, Malin and Zeke wonder whom to interview next, and Malin can only cry in exasperation, “Which one do you think would have air-conditioning at home?” Gradually, more revealing cutaways to the stalker’s point of view reveal a troubled soul with a long history of abuse determined to rescue young girls by turning them into “summer angels.” Malin longs for the safe return of her 14-year-old daughter, Tove, away on vacation with Malin’s ex, Janne, little knowing what every reader will suspect: that Tove will become the inevitably climactic victim of the stalker’s solicitous attention.

Like Malin’s debut (Midwinter Blood, 2012), this second of four seasonal procedurals is evocative, atmospheric, ingenious and overlong.

MURDER, SHE RODE

Menino, Holly Minotaur (288 pp.) $24.99 | Aug. 13, 2013 978-1-250-01651-5

Piqued at not being able to ride her prize mount in an international threeday event, a Brandywine Valley horse breeder sticks her patrician nose into a murder.

It’s hard to tell what Tink Elledge is most peeved about: her first two husbands’ numerous infidelities, her own stupidity at marrying unfaithful jerk No. 2 not once but twice, her inability to bear children, her current husband Charlie’s refusal to divulge the source of his obviously substantial income, or said husband’s opposition to her continuing to ride following an accident that caused her substantial nerve damage. She spends 36

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equal time whining about all five of the above, sometimes in real time and sometimes in flashbacks. Whatever the combination of ingredients, it’s obviously tough to be “able to treat privilege and expensive surroundings as if they were mundane matters of course, her everyday due.” Win Guthrie has it even tougher. His horse, Quick Fix, burns up in a truck fire along with trainer Joe Terrell. Still, he has three entries in the Brandywine International Three-Day, including Secret Formula, Quick Fix’s sister. Tink worries that her own Exit Laughing, piloted now by young Alejandra Delgado, won’t stand a chance against Guthrie’s horses. But as race day grows closer and Tink heads down to Maryland—which has inexplicably moved directly below Philadelphia—she starts to mull over the fire and the subsequent disappearance of young apprentice Patty McLaren, Alex’s roommate. Soon Tink is swiping house keys and rifling through tack rooms, all in search of a killer who wants to ensure that she doesn’t reach the finish line.

Menino, who knows a lot more about horses than about geography or police procedure, gets hopelessly snarled in basic stylistics—narrative vs. flashback, first person vs. third person—in antipathetic Tink’s inglorious debut.

THE MANNEQUIN HOUSE

Morris, R.N. Creme de la Crime (224 pp.) $28.95 | May 1, 2013 978-1-78029-038-6

A locked-room mystery disrupts a prestigious London department store, an insular world of salacious secrets.

April 1914. The House of Blackley is in the midst of a fashion parade for Lady Ascot when disaster threatens via the absence of nonpareil mannequin Amélie Dupin. Nervous new staffer Arbuthnot is dispatched to her rooming house, where the starchy landlady, Miss Mortimer, helps him gain access to discover Amélie strangled with a red silk scarf. The door is locked from the inside, and the room’s only other occupant, a monkey, apparently the lone suspect. Meanwhile, at New Scotland Yard, unconventional DI Silas Quinn of the Special Crimes Department (Summon Up the Blood, 2012, etc.) suffers a dressing down from the commissioner, Sir Edward Henry, for his maverick ways and a rebuff from Sir Edward’s secretary, Miss Latterly, whom he fancies but is too shy to court. The Dupin killing falls to Quinn to investigate. Once inside the murder scene, Quinn impresses new colleague DCI Coddington with his Sherlockian observations, though disapproving rival DS Inchball is loath to give credit where credit is clearly due. Quinn begins to question the colorful Blackley staff, but the escape of the monkey and a fatal melee triggered by a false cry of “Fire!” sets him back, calls him onto Sir Edward’s carpet again and threatens his career. The lengthy coroner’s report casts the case in a new light: Quinn discovers bitter rivalries, hidden identities and more murder on the way to finding Amélie’s killer.

A nifty period whodunit packed with flamboyant characters and brisk dialogue.

THE LAST WHISPER IN THE DARK

Piccirilli, Tom Bantam (336 pp.) $26.00 | Jul. 9, 2013 978-0-345-52900-8

The last remaining son of a family of Long Island thieves and grifters tries to turn his life around. It’s not easy.

Terrier Rand has recently seen his brother Collie executed for murder and buried his uncle Greyhound in the backyard, where his other uncle, Malamute, was murdered. (Only the family dog, JFK, is named after a person.) Terry’s grandfather has Alzheimer’s, and his father, Pinscher, is in the early stages. Terry and his teenage sister Airedale are trying to make something of their lives, but shadows from the past draw Terry back into trouble.

Kimmy, the love of his life, has married Chub, his former best friend. Although he runs a successful garage, Chub can’t keep away from the thrill of helping to plan robberies and provide getaway cars. For Kimmy’s sake, Terry keeps an eye on Chub, but when he provides the car for a robbery that goes wrong and three cops are killed, Terry sees that he’s in over his head. Surprisingly, that may be the least of his problems. His mother’s nephew John shows up with a request for her to visit her family—the same family that turned their backs on her when she married Pinscher. Taking her to a nearby mansion, Terry finds that his grandfather, uncle and cousin John are all involved in the movie business. He also discovers that his talented sister Dale has been making underground movies that could get her arrested. His dying maternal grandfather wants him to kill a man he thinks is stealing from him, involving Terry in a business rife with thievery and drug dealing. Terry will do anything to help Kimmy, but the mob and assorted drug dealers all warn him off in violent ways.

This second look at Piccirilli’s dog-centric family (The Last Kind Words, 2012) is so well-written that the considerable violence is dovetailed seamlessly into the story of a sympathetic young man who fights demons real and imagined. (Agent: David Hale Smith)

CLEVER FOX

Pirro, Jeanine Hyperion (304 pp.) $19.99 | Jul. 2, 2013 978-1-4013-2458-2 The only female Assistant District Attorney in a men’s world may be getting set up as a scapegoat.

New Year’s Eve 1979. Dani Fox is in New York City with her boyfriend, reporter Will Harris, when she’s called to examine the badly mutilated body of a young woman in Westchester County. The superintendent of the building identifies the

victim as Vicky and reports that she meets someone who arrives in a limo several times a week and was last visited by someone with a scar on his face. The apartment was rented by the law firm of Gallo & Conti, whose only client is the facially scarred Mafia boss Nicholas Persico, aka The Butcher. Dani’s politically savvy boss gives her the case, much to the dismay of a colleague who specializes in the mob but is way too friendly with obnoxious FBI agent Jack Langhorn. Working with Langhorn is charming, ambitious agent Walter Coyle, whose team has been following Persico.

Coyle identifies Persico as the man who spent several hours with Vicky, who turns out to have been the daughter of a New Jersey boss whose mob family has been locking horns with Persico over the lucrative refuse business. Everyone is eager to arrest Persico for the murder, but Dani has a gut feeling that he’s not the killer.

Meantime, Dani’s affair with Will is roiled by conflicts involving his reporting on the sensitive case and his jealousy over Coyle, who’s romantically pursuing Dani. It will take help from the FBI profiler unit to solve a case in which only her pal Detective O’Brien has Dani’s back.

The latest from Pirro (Sly Fox, 2012, etc.), a judge and analyst with her own show on the Fox News Channel, showcases her knowledge. The writing may be slightly dry, but she provides lots of local color and insider dope.

DEVIL’S NIGHT

Ritter, Todd Minotaur (368 pp.) $25.99 | Aug. 20, 2013 978-1-250-02853-2 Who’s burning down the historical buildings in Perry Hollow, Penn.?

Police Chief Kat Campbell is awakened by a call notifying her that the Historical Society building is ablaze. As she arrives, she thinks she sees former local reporter Henry Goll, who almost died with her while investigating the Grim Reaper murders (Bad Moon, 2011). Inside the badly damaged building, Kat discovers the body of curator Constance Bishop. Whoever killed Constance with a blunt instrument left her body resting on a trunk filled with old bones. Kat and her little police department have no dearth of help from the state police and her old pal, former state police officer Nick Donnelly, who produces his girlfriend, a forensic pathologist, to help identify the bones. They discover that Constance had been researching the case of a woman burned for witchcraft 300 years ago and had found the resting place of her body. In the meantime, Henry, who tries to avoid Kat, is in town trying to find out more about the flamboyant Italian financier who just bought a local tract of land for unknown purposes. The next building to attract the arsonist’s attention is the inn where Henry is staying. He barely escapes with his life as the building collapses. Nick, less lucky, is hospitalized in critical condition. An exhausted Kat continues to drive herself to identify the killer and the motive for what seem like senseless crimes before the town loses all its historical buildings. |

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Kat’s third shakes up her love life and offers a twisty mystery with enough suspects to keep you guessing to the bitter end.

A DANGEROUS FICTION

Rogan, Barbara Viking (336 pp.) $26.95 | Jul. 29, 2013 978-0-670-02650-0

A literary agent discovers that dealing with authors can be murder.

Jo Donovan, widow of the great American novelist Hugo Donovan and sole partner in the Hamish and Donovan literary agency since cancer forced the retirement of Molly Hamish, is being kicked to pieces by life. A biographer is snooping around her philandering husband’s possible dalliances. A stalker insists that he’s a fabulous writer and she must become his literary muse, as she was for Hugo. And a series of escalating blows is about to demolish her agency. Clients have received emails, supposedly from her, proclaiming fabulous sales to television and the movies and frontpage raves in the New York Times Book Review. A spurious press release outlining her reasons for quitting her agency has been sent to publishing bigwigs. And the mainstay of her agency, a best-selling author, has been murdered, followed by Molly’s death five weeks later. The only clue is a mysterious message left corpseside: “Do you hear me now?” Detective Tommy Cullen, Jo’s former lover, is assigned the stalker/murder cases, and other protectors rush in, including a former FBI profiler, now an author of thrillers, and a writer raising attack dogs who lends her Mingus, a German shepherd with big teeth and killer manners. Jo’s staff seems determined to shield her, but one member really wants to sleep with her, another plans to team up with an employee she fired, and a third is so placid, so frumpy and so very organized that readers will immediately suspect this toady as the villain.

Rogan, who has never recouped the fame brought on by Suspicion (1999) with any of the titles that followed, clearly knows the publishing milieu very well, from authors’ egos to Manhattan lunch places. But a smidgen less romance and a dollop of suspense would have been welcome.

THE THIRD EYE

Seewald, Andrew; Seewald, Jacqueline Five Star (256 pp.) $25.95 | Aug. 21, 2013 978-1-4328-2698-7 A young man does his level best to prevent his mother from being arrested for murder.

Jim Spencer, whose family has moved to the Pine Barrens of New Jersey, is 38

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entering his first year in high school. Jim is an extrovert, bright but sensitive about his height, while his brooding older brother Raven is protective and quiet. Their mother, who calls herself Ariel, is an artist who used to live in the Pine Barrens. Her past is shrouded in mystery, and she has repressed many memories.

But now she’s returned hoping for answers. Jim meets his distant cousin Mary on a bus, and they quickly become friends.

While out for a walk, they discover the body of Nora Butler, housekeeper for the reclusive Mr. Sawyer, who’s living in the Pine Barrens to be eligible for an inheritance. Jim is shocked to learn that Nora was Ariel’s mother. The estrangement between the two makes Ariel the number one suspect. While sleuthing, Jim learns a lot about the history of the Pine Barrens, including tales of the Jersey Devil and other mythical creatures that haunt the area. As Ariel reluctantly consults a psychiatrist in the hope of resolving her past issues, her family does everything possible to keep her out of jail.

Veteran Seewald (Death Legacy, 2012, etc.) is joined by her son Andrew for this weak mystery that nevertheless presents some interesting characters and historical tidbits about the Pine Barrens, its real star.

CLOSE KNIT KILLER

Sefton, Maggie Berkley Prime Crime (272 pp.) $25.95 | Jun. 4, 2013 978-0-425-25839-2 Fort Connor gets its collective knickers in a knot when a con man returns to the Colorado town after serving his time.

Jared Rizzoli’s Ponzi scheme casts a broad net, ruining many lives. Indigent Malcolm lost his home, his wife and his money in Rizzoli’s scam. Barbara, one of the spinners at Mimi Shafer’s House of Lambspun, lost her dad, a financial planner who killed himself when he discovered that Rizzoli had lost all of his clients’ money. So when Rizzoli turns up dead in Mimi’s driveway, the police don’t think they have far to look for the killer. Accountant Kelly Flynn (Cast On, Kill Off, 2012, etc.), who shares the yarn shop’s driveway, thinks otherwise and starts to hunt for alternatives to the cops’ prime suspect. But her sleuthing is interrupted by an emergency: Good friend Pete Wainwright’s father, Ben, is hospitalized in Denver after a heart attack, leaving his niece Cassie without a guardian.

As Pete and his girlfriend, Jennifer, prepare a home for Cassie in Fort Connor, Kelly, Mimi, physical therapist Lisa Gerrard and alpaca rancher Jayleen Swinson all pitch in to provide activities to ease the 11-year-old’s transition to small-town life. Like no adolescent on Earth, Cassie proves sweet, amenable and interested in everything, leaving Kelly plenty of time to track down the real culprit in Rizzoli’s murder.

Once again, the Lambspun gang shows the power of friendship and fiber arts to triumph over greed and self-interest.

“...lyrically descriptive and mystical.” from the land of dreams

POISONED POLITICS

Sefton, Maggie Midnight Ink/Llewellyn (240 pp.) $14.99 paper | Aug. 8, 2013 978-0-7387-3129-2 A scandal in the nation’s capital forces one friend into hiding while drawing out another who’s keen to know what’s at its root.

Growing up in D.C. political families, Molly Malone and Samantha Calhoun have long understood the Machiavellian motivations of politicians. While Molly’s used her expertise to secure a spot working for Sen. John Russell, Samantha’s chosen a less traditional way of reaching out to politicos: mentoring young men in the office and outside. When her latest project, married Rep. Quentin Wilson, is found dead, overdosed on pills in Samantha’s house, Molly is naturally determined to come to Samantha’s aid.

Though Samantha insists that she has an alibi for the evening of Quentin’s demise, she refuses to release the name of her “friend” lest he too be thrust into the unwelcome spotlight. As Molly tries to clear her best bud’s name, she suspects that what has happened is somehow related to the murder of her niece and the elusive Epsilon Group that inner D.C. circles can only whisper about. Meanwhile, Molly’s also investigating the chemistry between herself and her former flame Danny, hoping there is still something to be found between them.

Fans of the capital city may be dismayed at the overly romantic portrayal of everything from the heat to the work hours. And given its lack of resolution, Sefton’s latest (Deadly Politics, 2012, etc.) may not be worth the time of some readers.

A FATAL LIKENESS

Shepherd, Lynn Delacorte (384 pp.) $26.00 | Aug. 20, 2013 978-0-345-53244-2

A detective in Victorian England takes a case involving several renowned and infamous literary figures.

Charles Maddox has taken over the detective agency once run by his famous great-uncle, who now suffers from agerelated mental illnesses. Charles is hired by the son of the famous poet Percy Bysshe Shelley to find and acquire some family papers they believe to be in the possession of Claire Clairmont, stepsister to Mary Godwin Shelley. To his surprise, Charles discovers that his great-uncle had once worked for the Shelley family, though the usual meticulous notes he took are nowhere to be found. Charles finds a way to get into Claire’s house, but when she catches him reading her papers, she tells a totally different story than the one he had from Percy, his wife and Mary Shelley. Like his great-uncle before him, Charles

becomes ensnared in the family’s horrifying story. But finding the truth proves to be elusive. Did Shelley cause the death of his first wife and some of his children, or was it Mary? Both she and Claire, who was also mistress to Lord Byron, were madly in love with the poet, and it seems that Mary would do almost anything to keep him by her side. When Charles does find his uncle’s papers, they provide answers and raise even more questions about the tragic history of the haunted poet.

Lynn (The Solitary House, 2012, etc.) takes the familiar story of the Shelley family and fills in the holes in the historical record by turning it into a clever, imaginative and literate mystery.

THE LAND OF DREAMS

Sundstøl, Vidar Translated by Nunnally, Tiina Univ. of Minnesota (344 pp.) $24.95 paper | Sep. 1, 2013 978-0-8166-8940-8

A police officer fears that his brother is guilty of murder.

Lance Hansen may be a police officer for the U.S. Forest Service, but his real love is the history of the area where he grew up: Cook County, Minn., on the shores of Lake Superior.

Hansen’s job, which is usually limited to ticketing people for illegal fishing or camping, gives him plenty of time to peruse the historical society records he keeps in his house. Like most of his neighbors, he is of Scandinavian descent; in his case, Norwegian. Hansen’s peaceful life comes to an end when he discovers the savagely beaten body of a Norwegian canoeist and his near-catatonic friend. Crack homicide detective Eirik Nyland is sent from Norway to confer with Bob Lecuyer, the FBI agent in charge of the investigation. When they realize that the two men were gay, they decide that the surviving partner is the most likely suspect. Hansen is concerned because his brother, who was close to the Cross River at the time of the murder, almost killed a gay fellow student back when he was in high school. But he has not gone to the police with any testimony nor mentioned his background to anyone. Hansen makes another connection between the recent death and the story of one that took place generations before, when Joe Caribou, an Ojibway Indian, vanished in the same vicinity but may have been murdered by Hansen’s ancestor. Now Hansen imagines that he’s seeing the earlier victim as he travels the area. Hansen can’t bring himself to identify his brother as a suspect, but the guilt of covering up his story is killing him.

The first of Sundstøl’s Minnesota trilogy to be published in the U.S. is literate, lyrically descriptive and mystical. The next can’t come too soon.

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THE SEVENTH TRUMPET

science fiction and fantasy

Tremayne, Peter Minotaur (352 pp.) $25.99 | Jul. 23, 2013 978-0-312-65862-5

A king’s sister investigating a murder uncovers a plot against her brother.

Though she’s well-respected throughout ancient Ireland for her skills as an advocate of the Brehon Law, Fidelma of Cashel (Behold a Pale Horse, 2012, etc.) is chagrined that she hasn’t been appointed Chief Brehon. A murder investigation may be just what she needs to divert her mind. The body of a young man who appears to be of noble birth is found near Cashel, home of Fidelma’s brother, the king of Muman. The king, who’s busy entertaining his future wife, is happy to have Fidelma and her companion, Brother Eadulf, set off, accompanied by two warriors, to trace the man’s identity. Many of the areas nearby have recently been beset by the burning and pillaging of unknown raiders, but Fidelma and her friends have no problems at first. All too soon, however, they come across another murdered man, and Fidelma is abducted along with Torna, a young bard they’ve met camping along a river.

Eadulf and a warrior follow the trail and find Fidelma, who’s been left to die in a warehouse, but Torna is gone. Their attempt to find him leads them into ever more trouble and unearths a conspiracy that may involve several of the nearby rulers in the lands surrounding Muman. Fidelma’s ability to solve difficult problems stands her in good stead when she has to untangle a complicated plan to overthrow her brother.

Fidelma shines once more in a scholarly, clever and eminently readable historical mystery.

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THIEVES’ QUARRY

Jackson, D.B. Tor (320 pp.) $25.99 | Jul. 2, 2013 978-0-7653-2762-8

Follow-up to the dark urban historical fantasy Thieftaker (2012), from an author who also writes as David B. Coe. In the rough, tough pre-Revolutionary Boston of 1768, former sailor and ex-convict Ethan Kaille uses magic, or “conjuring,” in his current profession of thieftaking, tracking down stolen goods for reward. His great rival is the lissome Sephira Pryce and her gang of thugs, who all too often reach Ethan’s quarry before he does. Tension and unrest in the city, aroused by resentment against taxes, has prompted the British to anchor a substantial fleet in Boston Harbor and prepare to send the redcoats ashore. Though loyalists like Ethan are in the majority, the impending occupation is causing some to have second thoughts, and while revolutionaries like Samuel Adams do not advocate violence, their support is growing. Furthermore, many people consider conjurors to be witches who should be burned. Thanks to Ethan’s hitherto supercilious brother-in-law, Geoffrey Brower, who suspects Ethan’s secret talents, Royal Navy Lt. William Senhouse asks Ethan to investigate a chilling incident: the mysterious, simultaneous deaths of more than 100 men aboard one of the British ships. Like City Sheriff Greenleaf, another of the witch-burning faction, Ethan soon grasps that a powerful spell murdered the men. But what was the motive behind the crime? When Sephira Pryce turns out to be involved, Ethan knows that money—a large amount of it—lies at the root. Can Ethan unravel the case without falling victim to a conjuror of vastly greater power while avoiding condemnation as a witch himself? Splendid period detail and spell-casting in church Latin combine felicitously with the contemporary gumshoe-noir tone, even if the plotting turns out rather more mundane than the intriguing backdrop promises.

An unusual series of great promise.

MIST

Krinard, Susan Tor (384 pp.) $13.99 paper | Jul. 16, 2013 978-0-7653-3208-0 First of a series about the return of the Norse gods, from the popular author of fantasy and romance yarns (Bride of the Wolf, 2010, etc.).

San Francisco resident Mist seems like a normal person, with a job, a boyfriend and an apartment, and doesn’t care to think about the past: She’s a Valkyrie, and her task is to guard the invincible spear Gungnir. But during a bitterly cold winter, a frost giant attacks her in a public park, she befriends a homeless man who turns out to be an elf, Dainn, and her boyfriend, Eric, reveals himself as the trickster god Loki—and he proves it by stealing Gungnir and vanishing. Dainn explains that after Ragnarok, the gods became stuck in Ginnungagap, the void, and only now have discovered bridges to Midgard, aka Earth. Loki, who has the usual ambitions to rule the world, has the backing of the frost giants and soon hires himself a piratical entourage to do his bidding. But the bridges that should have enabled the other gods to come to Midgard have disappeared, so it looks as if Mist and Dainn will have to handle Loki and the giants all by themselves. Among all this, Krinard introduces characters—a pair of homeless kids with psychic powers, a Japanese-American lawyer—but doesn’t give them anything meaningful to do. The plot churns mightily without any particular conviction, and amid the hustle and bustle, there are lots of battles with magic and swords. It all has an air of being phoned in.

Still, Krinard has a large following, and the fans will probably want to check it out.

r om a n c e THE SHE-HULK DIARIES

Acosta, Marta Hyperion (336 pp.) $14.99 paper | Jun. 18, 2013 978-1-4013-1101-8

Unassuming yet powerhouse attorney Jennifer Walters and her secret alter ego, the publicity-loving She-Hulk, must learn to coexist and balance their physical and intellectual skills while fighting crime and injustice in the courtroom and on the streets, and possibly reclaiming the love of Jennifer’s life.

On the first day of the year, Jennifer prepares a list of Valentine’s Day Resolutions (New Year’s Resolutions being too cliché and statistically difficult) in order to conquer the fact

that she has no job, no home and is persona non grata within her Avengers community, thanks to raucous She-Hulk. As a world-class attorney, she finds a job pretty quickly, taking on an inventor who’s allegedly created a faulty product that is killing people. Unfortunately, the senior partner of her new firm is the father of Ellis, the man Jennifer hooked up with years ago and has never forgotten; and the man accused of unleashing the faulty product is Ellis’ best friend. If that isn’t enough, Jennifer is supposed to submit to counseling when it’s She-Hulk who has the problem, and who has time for that when she’s litigating a high-profile case with her brand new job? Oh, and one of the attorneys she’s supposed to be working with is Ellis’ cold witch of a fiancee. Publisher Hyperion is staking a claim on a comic book–romance crossover market with popular Marvel characters, and She-Hulk (along with X-Men’s Rogue) is their first attempt to capture a comic-book sensibility in fiction form with a major romantic arc. Acosta has created an interesting and intriguing character study of the seemingly mismatched Jennifer and She-Hulk and has introduced a powerful past-love romantic storyline that somehow makes sense for both sides of the personality equation. It’s not clear how close to traditional canon the characters are and, therefore, how the purists of the comic-book universe will feel, but despite a few annoyances in the storyline (e.g. why would you not make a second call to the man you’re madly in love with?), it’s an engaging success.

A fun, escapist romantic romp with superheroes—who can resist?

IF THE SHOE FITS

Mulry, Megan Sourcebooks Landmark (320 pp.) $14.99 paper | Jul. 2, 2013 978-1-40227-000-0 Despite being warned against him in no uncertain terms, American luxury shoe designer Sarah James is attracted to the compelling Devon Heyworth, younger brother to a duke, and decides to pursue a short-lived affair with him.

Sarah, maid-of-honor in her best friend’s wedding, meets Devon, best man and younger brother to the groom, who happens to be a duke. Attraction flares between the two, and Sarah decides to have an uncharacteristic affair with him. Given the man’s love-’em–and–leave-’em reputation, plus the fact that he lives in London and she’s in the U.S., Sarah feels the decision is pretty risk-free. So she is stunned when Devon pursues her to the States and shocked at her own intense reaction to him.

She’s too busy to fall hard for anyone and too inexperienced to trust such combustible emotions. After all, how could a worldfamous playboy fall so quickly and ardently for her? Vulnerable and skeptical, Sarah is unsure of both of their emotions and chooses to let a misunderstanding come between them. Devon, meanwhile, proves to be significantly more than anyone gives him credit for, and Sarah is newly attracted to his enigmatic choices. The two must navigate their very real insecurities, as |

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“The author delivers a romantic, action-packed plot that is imaginative and emotionally textured.” from rogue touch

well as their sudden and explosive attraction and emotional connection, which neither of them has ever experienced nor believed possible. The path is fraught with dramatic misunderstandings and breathtaking reconciliations, but ultimately, love conquers all in this modern-day fairy tale that has a few flaws but none that can ultimately smother the wit, style and romantic high notes the book offers.

Both flirty and intense, and combining a luxury fashion setting with the English aristocracy, this love story will elicit many a contented sigh among romance fans.

ROGUE TOUCH

Woodward, Christine Hyperion (288 pp.) $14.99 paper | Jun. 18, 2013 978-1-4013-1102-5 Discovering she can’t touch anyone without potentially killing them, a young woman goes on the run and meets a mysterious man who harbors a few lifechanging secrets of his own.

Anna Marie has left the only home she’s ever known, settling into a lonely existence with minimal human interaction since leaving her high school boyfriend in a coma after kissing him. One night, on her way to her job as a night baker, she notices a man watching her, and she is both frightened and intrigued by his odd, otherworldly manner.

When circumstances occur that force her to flee the city, the enigmatic stranger rescues her with a car and the means to get her out of town. The two travel across the country, discovering each other’s secrets and a soul-deep connection that takes them both by surprise. Dodging the law, as well as some seemingly interplanetary pursuers that he evades explaining, the couple finds refuge in a series of locations that allow them to grow stronger in their individual powers, newfound convictions and commitment to each other. Settling into new identities and new names—Rogue for her, Touch for him—the two race toward a future that can hold them both and allow them to truly hold on to one another, literally and figuratively. Woodward uses popular Marvel superhero Rogue as a launching point for a complex and conflicted romance set against a class war in a technologically advanced yet socially unstable society and Rogue’s well-documented gift and affliction that bars her from human contact.

The author delivers a romantic, action-packed plot that is imaginative and emotionally textured.

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nonfiction THE CENTER HOLDS Obama and His Enemies

These titles earned the Kirkus Star:

Alter, Jonathan Simon & Schuster (448 pp.) $30.00 | Jun. 4, 2013 978-1-4516-4607-8

A VERY SHORT TOUR OF THE MIND by Michael C. Corballis....... 48 RETURN OF A KING by William Dalrymple..................................... 49 THE TENDER SOLDIER by Vanessa M. Gezari................................... 53

A veteran author, journalist and commentator chronicles the campaign that assured President Barack Obama a second term and cemented a consensus among Americans stretching back to the

TO AMERICA WITH LOVE by A.A. Gill............................................. 53 THE GREAT DISSENT by Thomas Healy............................................56

New Deal.

The 2012 election was neither the referendum on the president and the ailing economy as the GOP had hoped, nor simply a choice between the president and his opponent as Obama had wished. Rather, Bloomberg View columnist Alter (The Promise: President Obama, Year One, 2011, etc.) insists, it was a judgment on the Republicans and their mean-spirited billionaire backers, right-wing media cheerleaders, proponents of voter suppression and “clown car” of primary candidates. As he explores the many infirmities and outrages of the president’s opponents and details Obama’s many virtues, it’s clear that, for the author, the “center” of our politics lies decidedly to the left. This obvious bias impairs his analysis throughout, prompting him too often to offer opinion and speculation as fact. For example, he insists the vitriol directed toward the president exceeds anything in our recent history and claims that the president’s contempt for his opponent accounted for his lackluster first debate performance. He goes so far as to wonder if maybe the president threw the debate “because he wanted the game to be a little more challenging?” When he sticks to straight reporting, however, Alter shines. In always fluid, sometimes arresting prose, he tells the inside story of the bartender who surreptitiously taped Romney’s infamous 47 percent remark, offers sharp miniportraits of numerous campaign operatives, and brilliantly deconstructs the “Big Data” component of Obama’s Chicago headquarters, describing their technological innovations and smooth manipulation of social media that set a new standard for future campaigns.

The president’s supporters and, really, all political junkies will love this. Republicans, not so much.

DIFFICULT MEN by Brett Martin...................................................... 64 THE WAY OF THE KNIFE by Mark Mazzetti.................................... 64 MARGARET THATCHER by Charles Moore........................................67 IDENTICALLY DIFFERENT by Tim Spector........................................72 ALEXANDRIA by Peter Stothard.........................................................72

TO AMERICA WITH LOVE

Gill, A.A. Simon & Schuster (272 pp.) $25.00 Jul. 9, 2013 978-1-4165-9621-9

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“A lively, contrasting study of hubris and humility.” from lawrence in arabia

LAWRENCE IN ARABIA War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East

of: Timbuktu. The source of legends, Timbuktu is in the heart of Mali, a region not easily traversed by the Western traveler— only 1,000 people a year visit the city—and it’s this remoteness that inspired the author. Some of the strongest moments of the book occur early on, when Antonson chronicles his ride on a “ghost train” across Mali. He offers cringe-worthy descriptions of the filth and tight quarters of the train and colorful portraits of the boisterous villages at which they stopped. Most movingly, he shows the trust and friendships that developed between him and his roommates. Once off the train, Antonson made his way to Timbuktu to attend a world music festival, then spent a single, anticlimactic day in the city itself. Here, he learned of the thousands of ancient manuscripts in need of saving, a cause he later took up upon returning home. The author intersperses historical details of the region and fascinating portraits of previous Western explorers. In the last third of the book, Antonson recounts his walking trek through the Dogon region with an amiable guide. At times, there’s an aloofness to the author’s interactions with the Africans he meets. He seems most concerned with whether they would help him with his travel plans and appears overly insistent on getting his way. He spends quite a few pages on Mohammed, his swindling tour guide, who, while intended to seem devious, actually comes across as quite comic.

The book was originally published in 2008, and this second edition includes an afterword by the author about the recent violence in Mali and the threat to Timbuktu.

Not just for the armchair traveler, this book would serve as a useful guide for those interested in exploring Mali.

Anderson, Scott Doubleday (592 pp.) $28.95 | Aug. 6, 2013 978-0-385-53292-1

A well-fleshed portrait of T.E. Lawrence (1888–1935) brought in burnished relief against other scoundrels in the

Arabian narrative.

American novelist and journalist Anderson (Moonlight Hotel, 2007, etc.) is evidently taken with the story of the brash, contradictory, ultimately unknowable personality who managed to galvanize the Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire “because no one was paying much attention.” The “Great Loot” brought out mostly the worst in those characters, portrayed with verve by Anderson, who were attracted to the lawless gain in the exotic Middle East. These included New England aristocrat William Yale, who embarked on a top-secret prospecting mission for Standard Oil in the Holy Land, and the German spy and Turkish adviser Curt Prüfer, among others. In contrast, Lawrence was profoundly moved by the Arab plight and what was increasingly viewed as Western manipulation and duplicity, revealed in the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916. Steeped in the tales of King Arthur’s court as a child, the product of secretive parents in hiding from his father’s divorce scandal, Lawrence was small, shy and exceptionally bright, with ferocious self-endurance and self-sufficiency, an ideal candidate as an Oxford student to latch on to David Hogarth’s archaeological dig at Carchemish in 1911.

As mapper and “Syria hand” for British intelligence in Cairo with the outbreak of war, Lawrence learned the lay of the Ottoman Empire and its diverse peoples. Once he offered himself as the man on the ground to render logistical aid to the leader of the Arab Revolt, Emir Hussein, and his sons, Lawrence was in a unique position; he added to his elusiveness by adopting Arab dress. Anderson thoroughly explores the making of the Lawrence legend, from the effortless taking of Aqaba to “the fantasy of the ‘clean war’ of Arab warriors.”

A lively, contrasting study of hubris and humility.

FANTASY LIFE The Outrageous, Uplifting, and Heartbreaking World of Fantasy Sports from the Guy Who’s Lived It Berry, Matthew Riverhead (400 pp.) $27.95 | Jul. 16, 2013 978-1-59448-625-8

Fantasy sports: more fun to play than to read about.

Rotisserie baseball, which began as a bunch of overly intelligent baseball nerds in New York playing with numbers, has since blossomed into a multisport, multimedia phenomenon.

Before the Internet, the typical fantasy league pulled its statistics from the newspaper, after which its members ran the numbers by hand; now, numerous Web outlets have programs in which the masses can draft their teams and let the technology do the stats work. One of the most notable is, unsurprisingly, ESPN, and ESPN.com offers not only online services as a repository for league stats, but also advice columnists, the best of whom is Berry, aka the Talented Mr. Roto. In his debut book, the author combines memoir, history and cultural study in what was likely intended to be the definitive volume on fantasy sports; however, the topic is too thin for this much study and analysis. A genial gent, Berry relates his entry into fantasy

TO TIMBUKTU FOR A HAIRCUT A Journey Through West Africa

Antonson, Rick Skyhorse Publishing (288 pp.) $16.95 paper | Jul. 1, 2013 978-1-62087-567-4

A journey through some of the least traveled sections of Africa.

When Antonson (Route 66 Still Kicks, 2012) had a month free from work, he decided to travel alone to the remotest place he could think 44

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Creativity emerges from behind a number of guises, and Boyd and Goldenberg’s structured approach fits the bill with so many familiar examples that many readers will wonder, “why didn’t I think of that?” (b/w images throughout)

sports, touches on fantasy’s roots and presents numerous case studies—i.e., stories from fantasy leagues around the world.

Unfortunately, the autobiographical sections are less than compelling, the roots-of-fantasy stories have been told time and again, and the case studies are simply uninteresting. In addition, the long, trying-too-hard-to-be-clever chapter titles begin to grate—e.g., “The Benefits of Fantasy in the Work Place, or ‘No One Seems to Realize That Adrian Peterson Isn’t a Parishioner.’ ” Berry’s fantasy advice columns on ESPN.com and his ESPN on-air work are flat-out enjoyable, so his many fans may be disappointed with this earnest yet tepid effort, which makes it clear that fantasy sports commentary is best left for the online world.

Berry gave it the old college try, but the ultimate fantasy sports book has yet to be written—then again, it’s possible that such an entity is a pipe dream.

GERALD R. FORD An Honorable Life

Cannon, James Univ. of Michigan Press (500 pp.) $35.00 | Jun. 28, 2013 978-0-472-11604-1

An advisor to President Gerald Ford (1913–2006) pens an admiring biography of America’s most anomalous and, possibly, most underrated chief executive.

In 1974, America was led by a president and vice president for whom no one had voted. The first in our history appointed to the vice presidency by means of

INSIDE THE BOX A Proven System of Creativity for Breakthrough Results Boyd, Drew; Goldenberg, Jacob Simon & Schuster (272 pp.) $28.50 | Jun. 11, 2013 978-1-4516-5925-2

Thinking outside the box is hardly the only spur to innovation, write marketing professors Boyd (Univ. of Cincinnati) and Goldenberg (Hebrew Univ. of Jerusalem) in this bouncy yet grounded nod to the creative impulse.

Indeed, readers are less likely to find inspiration and exercise creativity outside the box than in. The authors discuss systematic innovative thinking: searching for underlying patterns and logic that are hidden in plain sight and looking for resources close at hand. “We believe that you’ll be most creative when you focus on the internal aspects of a situation or a problem—and when you constrain your options rather than broaden them,” they write. The authors outline some primary concepts to consider: Subtraction— remove something, even something thought to be essential; think of Apple products, but removing screens on anesthesia machines is also relevant. Multiplication—e.g., multipleblade shavers. Division—e.g., tracks in a music recording.

Task unification: “force an existing feature (or component) in a process or product to work harder by making it take on additional responsibilities”—like backpack straps energizing shiatsu points. Attribute dependency—e.g., information and geosynchronicity in smartphones. The point is to resist implicit assumptions and false contradictions, “breaking the blind spot that is Structural Fixedness, the tendency to see objects as a whole.” You can work backward as well—function follows form—though with a specific challenge, that is more complicated. Still, the authors do not prove that creativity is a science, and their optimism can be jarring: “By following method, you can create new and exciting things—or conceive new and exciting ideas—on demand.” |

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“This personal collection of tales, yarns and folklore may not be enough to cure readers’ wanderlust, but it does provide a diverse and acutely observed portrait of our country.” from the longest road

the 25th Amendment, Ford became president when Richard Nixon resigned, as Vice President Spiro Agnew had before him, in disgrace. Throughout the course of his administration, Ford faced a country torn by the Watergate scandal, exhausted by the war in Vietnam and mired in an economic depression.

Still, even with Congress in the hands of the Democrats, Ford managed to reassure the nation and restore some measure of trust in government. Cannon (Apostle Paul: A Novel, 2005, etc.) moves swiftly over Ford’s early life, education and legal practice, even his distinguished 25-year congressional career. Nor, except for a brief treatment of Ford’s 1980 flirtation with joining the Reagan ticket, is there much about the Michigander’s 29-year post-presidency. Cannon focuses on the Constitutional crisis that brought Ford to high office, the man’s exceptional character, how he dealt with the major issues and how he managed the presidency, particularly the members of his Cabinet. Although Cannon has Ford confessing to a few political sins—a misguided crusade during his congressional years against Supreme Court Justice William Douglas, the cowardly dumping of Vice President Nelson Rockefeller from the ’76 ticket—and faults him for failing to win election in his own right, this insider account persuasively demonstrates that the man was a far better president than campaigner and that, at a particularly low moment in our history, we were perhaps luckier than we knew to have him.

Prior to his career in government service, Cannon (who died at 93 in 2011) spent years as a journalist, and that training shows in this smoothly readable account. (17 b/w halftones)

author records his conversations with both tourists and townsmen—though the historical footnotes often distract from the primary narrative. From chatting with West Virginia missionaries in Key West, to volunteering with the Red Cross in tornadoravaged Tuscaloosa, to bartering his lawn-mowing services in exchange for room and board on a Meramec Valley horse farm, Caputo creates captivating portraits of a wide variety of communities. His most gripping discussions include his interviews with couples that were forced to downsize, teens that would rather work the land than work online (“you hear more about Lindsay Lohan than you do about crop prices”), and restaurant owners struggling to survive in obsolete towns. Although Caputo doesn’t stumble upon a shared consensus from all his interviewees, he eventually learns that America thrives on both optimism and second chances.

This personal collection of tales, yarns and folklore may not be enough to cure readers’ wanderlust, but it does provide a diverse and acutely observed portrait of our country.

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JACK THE RIPPER In His Own Words, the Confession of the World’s Most Infamous Killer Carnac, James Sourcebooks (320 pp.) $14.99 paper | Sep. 3, 2013 978-1-4022-8058-0

THE LONGEST ROAD Overland in Search of America, from Key West to the Arctic Ocean

James Willoughby Carnac admits in his autobiography that he is Jack the Ripper; but it is the curator of the Montacute TV, Radio, and Toy Museum in Somerset, Alan Hicken, who has brought the book to light.

Hicken acquired the manuscript in a bundle of memorabilia from the family of S.G. Hulme-Beaman, creator of a popular British children’s cartoon character, Larry the Lamb. HulmeBeaman was Carnac’s executor and apparently was unable to publish the manuscript per Carnac’s wishes, even after expunging the lurid evisceration descriptions. The story here is accompanied by a lengthy, almost line-by-line analysis by journalist and noted Ripper-ologist Paul Begg (Jack the Ripper: The Facts, 2005, etc.). The analysis is repetitive, tedious and unnecessary; readers can decide for themselves on the believability of this tale. The Ripper’s story, and his obsession with knives and blood, make for interesting reading, as it deals with the man and his stalkings more than his atrocious acts. Whoever wrote it seems to understand the mind of this killer, certainly a madman, who murdered solely for the love of killing. His parents’ murders/suicides seem to be the beginning of his bloodlust, and his desire to cut flesh naturally followed. The six Whitechapel murders committed in 1888 began and ended with no cause, no clues and no conviction. Here is the man who admitted to hearing voices and had a vision of a man who assured him he’d never be caught. The bizarre dream of his ancestors as hangmen and torturers lining the streets of London show a man possessed.

Caputo, Philip Henry Holt (320 pp.) $28.00 | Jul. 16, 2013 978-0-8050-9446-6

Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Caputo (Crossers, 2009, etc.) chronicles his journey with a vintage Airstream trailer from the southernmost point of the United States to the northernmost reachable point in Deadhorse, Ala., in hopes of discovering what keeps this country united.

Whether he’s panning for gold in the Arctic Circle campground, taking pictures of buffalo in Theodore Roosevelt National Park or riding gaited horses through the Meramec Valley, one thing’s for certain: This reporter has more stamina in him than your average 21-year-old. A few months shy of his 70th birthday, Caputo became re-inspired to discover America by driving cross-country (accompanied by his wife and dogs). In this hybrid memoir/history lesson, Caputo muses on such topics as immigration, foreclosure, and the pros and cons of technology’s influence when traveling (“when [it] was in GPS mode, [the android phone] removed the elements of unpredictability that made travel an adventure”). In the strongest sections, the 46

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ANOTHER AMERICA The Story of Liberia and the Former Slaves Who Ruled It

Throughout the book, as he insists on his obsession with knives cutting flesh, readers may wonder why he didn’t become a coroner or an anatomy teacher, dissecting bodies all day long. Also included are facsimiles of the original manuscript and some brief information on the victims.

Fiction or not, a decent book, easily read and worth it for the ending.

Ciment, James Hill and Wang/Farrar, Straus and Giroux (320 pp.) $29.95 | Aug. 13, 2013 978-0-8090-9542-1

LOUDMOUTH Tales (and Fantasies) of Sports, Sex, and Salvation from Behind the Microphone

The 19th-century story of the pursuit by free African-Americans to found and govern the Republic of Liberia.

Independent scholar Ciment (Atlas of African-American History, 2007, etc.) recounts the rarely told tale of Liberia’s formation. Reminiscent of the Mayflower journey 200 years before, in January 1820, a small contingency of free African-Americans set sail aboard the Elizabeth in an effort to form a new nation in Africa. At the encouragement of the American Colonization Society—a group fearful of the effects of free blacks on the established order—90 or so willing participants left their old

Carton, Craig Simon & Schuster (288 pp.) $24.99 | Jun. 4, 2013 978-1-4516-4570-5

“The Howard Stern of Sports Radio” offers a mishmash of intermittently interesting anecdotes and biographical sketches.

Once Don Imus uttered the fateful words “nappy headed hos,” he was gone from New York City’s WFAN, soon replaced by the Boomer [Esiason] & Carton Show. It became an instant hit, not for its sports talk but for Carton’s personality, which he describes as “a super self-confident, fun-loving guys’ guy.” His voice on the page is similar to his voice on the radio: irreverent, scatological, sexist. Raised by parents who didn’t seem to like him much—nor he them—Carton was forced to face such indignities as moving from playing soccer in high school to playing in the marching band. From all this, it seems, he developed a sense he was on his own and would succeed only by being his uncensored self. Here, he ponders such topics as whether or not Tim Tebow is a virgin, why men “used to tolerate a hairy bush” and why pro athletes should not sleep with underage girls (with specific reference to former NFL star Lawrence Taylor’s incident with a 15-year-old prostitute). Carton eventually settles down and traces the history of his rise to radio stardom, from his humble beginnings on Buffalo’s WGR, through successful gigs in Cleveland, Philadelphia and New Jersey, to today.

Along the way, he regularly irritated bosses with his uncensored radio broadcasts; while in New Jersey, the governor at the time threatened, apparently quite seriously, to kill him. Still, while Carton does seem an intriguing personality, there is very little here that is revealing or captivating.

Guys’ guys may enjoy, but they could just as easily listen to Carton’s radio show. (chapter opener photos throughout)

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world behind to try their luck overseas. Motivated by evangelism, economics and the chance to escape the “indignities, inequities, and outright dangers free black men and women faced in a white man’s country,” the pioneers were soon disheartened to learn that luck was not with them. Faced with disease and poverty, several years passed before they found their footing.

Yet even upon ratifying Liberia’s “Declaration of Rights” in 1847, it was soon apparent that the new country maintained the same shortcomings as the one they’d left behind. “In combining higher ideals with self-interest,” Ciment writes, “Liberia’s founders were not so different from the framers of the American Constitution.” Self-interest became a scourge for the fledgling nation, proving that greed, ambition, corruption, bribery and extravagance transcend oceans and color barriers. By the 20th century, Liberia further deteriorated due to its growing dependence on foreign loans, allowing for European encroachment on the once-sovereign land. In 1980, a violent coup destabilized the country further, prompting Ciment to deem Liberia “a noble experiment that had ended awfully”—and that got even worse with the terrifying reign of Charles Taylor.

A scholarly yet accessible examination of Liberia’s tumultuous history that gleans new insight into America’s own struggles with democracy.

of excitement around cold fusion, the give and take of public funding to fusion research, and the frustrations that jeopardize that work—for example, $450 million going to the National Ignition Facility to “investigate why there was a divergence between simulations and measured performance.”

A compelling case for continued, even increased, fusion research. (25 b/w illustrations)

A VERY SHORT TOUR OF THE MIND 21 Short Walks Around the Human Brain

Corballis, Michael C. Overlook (112 pp.) $17.95 | Jul. 11, 2013 978-1-4683-0662-0

A wise old psychologist collects a lifetime of neurological pearls.

Corballis (Psychology, Emeritus/Univ. of Auckland; The Recursive Mind: The Origins of Human Language, Thought, and Civilization, 2011) writes a column for New Zealand Geographic: short, ingenious, four to five page essays on his specialty. Is our brain the largest? No; larger animals have larger brains. Is it the largest in relation to body size? No; mice and small birds do better. Corballis turns up measurements that place the human brain at No. 1 but admits that the most impressive fact is that we are the only species investigating the problem. The usual myths fall by the wayside. No one knows who first claimed that we use only 10 percent of our brain, but no imaging study detects areas that remain silent as if waiting to perform. The belief that our right brain governs creativity while the left sticks to boring rationality is not likely to disappear, despite Corballis’ skepticism. He explains why humans are skilled at recognizing faces but not shoulders, feet or names.

As for our vaunted memory, the author points out that nature designed it to plan future actions, not to record the past (which has no evolutionary value). As a result, accuracy has a low priority, and human memory is wildly unreliable. Swearing is more common in extroverts and the uneducated, less so in introverts and religious people. Often a mark of coolness today, religious, excretory and sexual obscenities have lost their impact; racial epithets remain the only major taboo.

A thoroughly enjoyable exploration of questions even astute readers may not have thought worth asking.

A PIECE OF THE SUN The Quest for Fusion Energy Clery, Daniel Overlook (320 pp.) $27.95 | Jul. 1, 2013 978-1-4683-0493-0

A surprisingly sprightly tour d’horizon of the pursuit of fusion energy, from Science deputy news director Clery.

Fusion is all, writes the author: “Every atom in your body, apart from the hydrogen, was created by fusion in a long-dead star.” If fission is the evil twin, then fusion is what we want as a source of energy: the melding of two nuclei to make a larger one, producing heat as a byproduct—without the wealth of other nasty byproducts that fission leaves in its wake. However, at the same time, the nuclei repel each other, unless under terrific pressure. We have not even achieved a break-even point yet: More energy is pumped into provoking the reaction than is produced, and plasma’s notorious instabilities have made it too furtive to harness.

Clery walks readers through the history of fusion study, from Lord Kelvin, Albert Einstein and a large cast of peculiar physicists, to all manner of international politics—e.g., the darts and feints of the Cold War, the braces applied by OPEC in the wake of the 1973 war among Israel, Egypt and Syria. Clery negotiates the hard science with aplomb, though there are times when it takes considerable focus to follow the proceedings: “In a tokamak, the horizontal toroidal field and vertical poloidal field combine to produce helical magnetic field lines.” Yet even such dark matter slowly becomes accessible, and both the promise and the pity of fusion take shape. Clery taps into the whirlwind 48

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“A rich excavation of both British and Afghan sources, with gorgeous colored reproductions of Muslim and romantic renderings of the action and characters.” from return of a king

RETURN OF A KING The Battle for Afghanistan, 1839-42

a Louisiana-born, peripatetic pastor, drifted away from faith with no such drama, just a gradual whittling away of his former beliefs—and while dramatic moments are relatively few in most people’s lives, they do help keep a story moving along. In this instance, a death of a cousin helped rattle DeWitt’s nerves, as did a long spell of disappointing encounters with prophets ultimately suspected to be false (“my shaky, tentative faith in the fanatical, me-first teachings of Brother Goodwin was shored up by more practical, Earthly concerns”). DeWitt’s repudiation of hard-shell Protestantism is one thing; his neighbor’s resulting repudiation of him and the joblessness and divorce that accompanied his fall from grace complete the package.

What is more interesting to nonevangelical readers is not really DeWitt’s journey into the wilderness but instead his encounter of the business of preaching—and business it is, as his early hero Jimmy Swaggart well knew. The author notes that there’s a difference between mere preaching and tent-show revivalism (“as a preacher at a revival it is your job to evangelize to the congregants and then they, in turn, evangelize to their community”).

Indifferently written and slow-moving, DeWitt’s testimonial is

Dalrymple, William Knopf (560 pp.) $30.00 | Apr. 16, 2013 978-0-307-95828-0

An intensively focused study of the ill-begotten launch of the Great Game in Afghanistan.

Who would gain control of the portal to India: Britain, France, Russia, the Sikhs or the Afghan tribes themselves? And was there really cause for alarm at imperialist advances or a “dysfunctional” intelligence gathering by both the British and Russians? In his exciting, exhaustive study, British historian Dalrymple (The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty: Delhi, 1857, 2007, etc.) sheds light on the enormously convoluted rationale for the First Anglo-Afghan War, ostensibly provoked by Britain in order to reinstall the compliant Shah Shuja ul Mulk (chief of the Sadozai clan) to power in Afghanistan over Dost Mohammad Khan (chief of the Barakzais), who supposedly favored the Russians. In truth, the war exposed the greediness and ignorance of all sides: protecting the interests of the East India Company and catering to the competing ambitions of major players like Sikh ruler Ranjit Singh, Polish agent Ivan Vitkevitch, William Hay Macnaghten and Scottish agent Alexander Burnes. The British garrison was soon outnumbered 10-1 by the rebel forces of Akbar Khan, Dost Mohammad’s able, ferocious son; forced to surrender and retreat in ignominy back to India, the British left Shuja to fall to Dost’s assassins in April 1842 and gained virtually nothing save a more defined border. Dalrymple sagely points out that while the Afghans learned a valuable lesson from this early conflict, namely a firm rejection of foreign rule and a sense of nationalist integrity, the Western powers did not and, indeed, still perpetuate a policy of folly and waste.

A rich excavation of both British and Afghan sources, with gorgeous colored reproductions of Muslim and romantic renderings of the action and characters.

HOPE AFTER FAITH An Ex-Pastor’s Journey from Belief to Atheism DeWitt, Jerry with Brown, Ethan Da Capo/Perseus (288 pp.) $25.99 | Jun. 25, 2013 978-0-306-82224-7

Middling account of an evangelical’s 180, written with the assistance of co-author Brown (Shake the Devil Off: A True Story of the Murder that Rocked New

Orleans, 2009, etc.).

Saul required a vision from Yahweh and a fall from a donkey before trading in his publican job for sainthood. DeWitt,

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REAL TALK FOR REAL TEACHERS Advice for Teachers from Rookies to Veterans: “No Retreat, No Surrender!”

a test of patience. There is one valuable takeaway, though: his reckoning that “the majority of ministers that I have learned to love over the last twenty-five years of my life in the church are actually agnostic but don’t really know it.”

For true believers only—in atheism, that is. Students of the business of religion will find only occasional pearls.

Esquith, Rafe Viking (336 pp.) $26.95 | Jul. 16, 2013 978-0-670-01464-4

THE RED MAN’S BONES George Catlin, Artist and Showman

Award-winning teacher Esquith (Lighting Their Fires: Raising Extraordinary Children in a Mixed-up, Muddled-up, Shook-up World, 2009, etc.) shares the ups and downs of his career.

The only classroom teacher to receive the National Medal of the Arts, the author has taught fifth and sixth grade for more than 25 years at Hobart Elementary, an inner-city Los Angeles school where few of the parents speak English, poverty is rampant, and too often children lack supervision at home. Many of his students become high achievers, going on to college and professional jobs, but Esquith explains that his main aim is to give the children he works with a moral foundation—“to teach kids to be honorable in a world where dishonor stares them in the face constantly.” The values he teaches are simple (self-respect, kindness, strong work ethic, etc.), and the author stresses the importance of the teacher consistently modeling these for students. Despite daily provocations—noisy, disrespectful students, interfering parents, narrow-minded school administrators—it is the teacher’s responsibility to remain calm and professional, speaking quietly and injecting humor where possible. The author describes how he treats students with respect; his classroom is always immaculate and attractively decorated, and he has a mix of extra projects available as rewards for good work—e.g., creating a multicolored rug from assorted pieces of wool or engaging in a scientific experiment.

Esquith also freely gives his time for extracurricular activities, including early-morning math teams, a top-notch after-school Shakespeare program and an annual visit to Washington, D.C. Children voluntarily come to class early and stay late, and the author spends 11 hours on the job.

Teaching is a tough job, but Esquith shows that its rewards can be profound.

Eisler, Benita Norton (432 pp.) $29.95 | Jul. 22, 2013 978-0-393-06616-6

A welcome new evaluation of a significant American artist honed by the Wild West spirit and hucksterism of the age.

Biographer of Byron, Chopin, George Sand and others (Naked in the Marketplace: The Lives of George Sand, 2007, etc.), Eisler now turns her considerable research talents to fleshing out the life and work of Pennsylvania-born artist George Catlin (1796–1892), whose sympathetic portraits of the Native Americans he sought out and lived among render an incalculable record of (and tribute to) a vanished people. Trained as a lawyer, Catlin fled the tediousness and drudgery of the profession by immersing himself in drawing, specifically miniatures. Largely self-taught, he nonetheless had some formal training at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia in the early 1820s, under Thomas Sully and Charles Willson Peale, and he made his way as a journeyman artist. His portraits of Gov. DeWitt Clinton garnered some attention, but he was always in need of official patronage.

Perhaps inspired by Charles Bird King’s portraits of tribal leaders in Washington, Catlin struck out West and attached himself to Gen. William Clark, governor of the Missouri Territory. Portraying the Indians of the Southwestern plains became Catlin’s passion, and during the 1830s, over numerous visits embedded among the tribes, he painted hundreds of careful portraits; he often bought the Indians’ garments and artifacts to display later with the work as proof of his eyewitness. Much of the rest of his restless life was spent roving among London, Paris and Brussels, displaying his traveling Indian Gallery (and making a living from it), toeing that precarious line between artist and impresario. The author thoughtfully explores the complicated bleeding of empathy into exploitation.

Eisler’s fine, thorough work begs for a fresh reappraisal of this pioneering artist. (8 pages of color, 8 pages of b/w illustrations)

COOL WAR The Future of Global Competition

Feldman, Noah Random House (240 pp.) $26.00 | $35.00 CD | May 21, 2013 978-0-8129-9274-8 978-0-385-36214-6 CD

A brief consideration of the current state of Sino-American relations.

In his sixth book, Bloomberg View columnist Feldman (International Law/Harvard Univ.; The Fall 50

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and Rise of the Islamic State, 2008, etc.) analyzes the increasingly fraught relationship between the United States and China in the 21st century. Although some may wonder whether or not this slim book might have been better justified as a work of long-form magazine journalism or as a scholarly journal article, Feldman is a sensitive and incisive observer of what he has coined the “Cool War” between the two countries. The author explains that the Cool War manifests itself in the form of tense mutual economic interdependence and tendentious struggles for geopolitical power. A crisp writer, Feldman has a fine eye for telling anecdotes, which he uses to frame nearly every chapter. He breaks the book down into three sections. In the first, “Cool War,” he lays out the paradox of Chinese-American relations. In the second, “The Sources of Chinese Conduct,” he effectively provides a primer of contemporary Chinese politics for the overwhelmingly American audience that will make up his readership. In the third section, “Global Competition,” he examines the main sources of conflict that we will face in the future. Neither overly optimistic nor pessimistic, Feldman lays out a compelling case for why the neither-allies-nor-enemies standing between the two powers is tenuous but not necessarily doomed to topple into hot war.

Current affairs books always run the risk of going rather quickly from the New Releases shelf to the remainder bin, but Feldman’s book carries enough insight to warrant serious attention from anyone interested in what may well be the defining relationship in global affairs for decades to come.

consistently positive and galvanizing, fused with advice derived from more than 20 years of work experience and episodes of her own long-overdue soul-searching and efficacious networking.

Gale offers decluttering techniques to maximize efficiency and activity variations to promote and increase opportunities. The pages of personal profiles are entertaining and relatable, and they contain the most accessible business-friendly lessons. The author also discusses how to network offline using the triedand-true face-to-face approach. Gale stresses that although utilizing social media outlets and honing creative potential are paramount to career fulfillment, breaking old habits is just as important. While the author’s steps toward achieving a networking transformation are hardly revolutionary, they are smart and straightforward and provide a healthy reminder about the relatively simple things professionals can do to stimulate their motivational processes and achieve even greater success in today’s competitive marketplace.

A useful guidebook for those desiring success through shrewd networking.

YOUR NETWORK IS YOUR NET WORTH Unlock the Hidden Power of Connections for Wealth, Success, and Happiness in the Digital Age

Gale, Porter Atria (304 pp.) $25.00 | Jun. 4, 2013 978-1-4516-8875-7

Effective networking modalities for a hyperconnected world.

Energetic international public speaker and entrepreneur Gale displays passionate determination in her promotion of ways in which both established and novice businesspeople can improve their chances for success. Her message of strengthened connectivity from effective networking is delivered with the measurement of one’s “social capital” (interactively systemic net worth) and in real-life profiles of entrepreneurs and business professionals who have found great value in what others would consider failures, like a job loss. Gale’s advice is grounded in the power she believes can be achieved when a synergistic balance is struck between professional productivity and quality of life. A positive attitude and a willing mindset are key, she writes, to successfully identifying and overcoming the personal barriers that stunt professional growth. Her theme is |

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“A poetic tale of a personal medical crisis.” from the moonlight sonata at the mayo clinic

THE MOONLIGHT SONATA AT THE MAYO CLINIC

the condition (called optic neuritis) could destroy her vision. “I dropped out of the world I lived in,” she confesses. “It was like falling into Oz.” What ensued was a slew of consultations with one specialist after another, during which the author received conflicting advice that included the suggestion to have her eye removed. She was eventually referred to Minnesota’s Mayo Clinic. Groggy from prescribed steroids and anxious about the strain that this ordeal placed on her marriage, Gallagher began a deeply introspective journey that led to, among other shifts, a foundational change in her faith and religious outlook. In her book, the author navigates the complex American health care system, the fear and mystery surrounding her search for medical answers and healing, and her renewed appreciation for the necessity of vision: to read, to write and to view the world.

A poetic tale of a personal medical crisis.

Gallagher, Nora Knopf (224 pp.) $24.00 | May 22, 2013 978-0-307-59298-9

Memoirist, essayist and novelist Gallagher (The Sacred Meal, 2009, etc.) explores the series of events set into motion by the startling diagnosis that she suffered from a condition causing blindness.

Now in her 60s, the author has written extensively about her faith, including her attraction to Episcopal liturgy and, for a time, to the church’s priesthood and the fundamental questions about the religion and its administration. Gallagher opens by explaining that her initial interest in Christianity, as an adult, stemmed from a need to fit her life into a “larger story.” In the same chapter, the Californian describes how a 2009 routine doctor’s visit, which she almost skipped, resulted in the discovery that her right optic nerve was dangerously inflamed and that

THE TRIAL OF POPE BENEDICT Joseph Ratzinger and the Vatican’s Assault on Reason, Compassion, and Human Dignity Gawthrop, Daniel Arsenal Pulp Press (220 pp.) $15.95 paper | Jun. 26, 2013 978-1-55152-527-3

Why Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI, became the first pope to be cited for crimes against humanity.

Gawthrop (The Rice Queen Diaries, 2005, etc.) focuses on the complaint before the International Criminal Court to explore the deeper roots of the crisis within the Catholic Church. The author shows how resurgent opposition to discussions of reform initiated during the pontificate of John XXIII—e.g., birth control, abortion, ordaining female priests—provided the ground under which the now-exposed coverups of priestly rape and sexual abuse could take root. Because Ratzinger’s rise within the church’s hierarchy spans 30 of the 50 years that have elapsed since John XXIII’s reign, Gawthrop forcefully establishes that he had the power to stop the abuse. The author traces the origins of the coverup back to 1962, when John XXIII commissioned the policy document Crimen Sollicitationis. Key in this was the maintenance of “pontifical secrecy…the utmost confidentiality… permanent silence.” There were no provisions for investigation, no acknowledgment of crime and no suggestion about turning offenders over for prosecution by the criminal authorities. As head of the Congregation for the Defense of the Faith, Ratzinger continued this policy and ensured that all cases were referred to him personally. Detailing specific cases where Ratzinger intervened and how he affected their outcomes through stalling, delay and other means, Gawthrop shows how the succession of investigations and the arrogant responses of the hierarchy contributed to bring things to a head. The author also thoroughly documents the broader context of the hierarchy’s theological and political commitment to overturn the legacy of Vatican II. An eye-opening account of corruption and secrecy.

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WRONG TURN America’s Deadly Embrace of Counterinsurgency

the Human Terrain System, a program designed to bring social science to the battlefield.

Launched in 2006, each HTS team ostensibly consists of a scholar to gather data on an area’s culture, politics, demographics and needs. Other team members integrate this information and pass it on to the local American military unit, allowing it to resolve disputes, identify problems before they turn violent, and avoid causing needless offense. Gezari begins with one team’s disastrous experience. A young woman anthropologist, dedicated and popular, was talking with a young Afghan when he suddenly doused her with gasoline and set her afire. He was captured, and a distraught team member killed him. The team member was convicted of the murder. Attempting to comprehend the offender, the author interviewed his fellow villagers. All denounced the crime, but their explanations were oddly contradictory. Understanding foreign cultures is difficult. Gezari points out that America contains too few scholars familiar with Afghanistan, so many teams are clueless. Members often serve for the wrong reasons, since the civilian contractor earns $250,000-$350,000 per year. The Defense Department remains enthusiastic, but few claim that matters in Afghanistan are going well.

Although his subject was Iraq, Peter Van Buren covered the same ground in his hilarious We Meant Well (2011).

Gezari eschews humor but delivers a gripping report on another of America’s painful, surprisingly difficult efforts to win hearts and minds.

Gentile, Gian New Press (208 pp.) $24.95 | Aug. 1, 2013 978-1-59558-874-6 978-1-59558-896-8 e-book

“The story on which the current practice of [counterinsurgency] depends…is a myth [and] a recipe for perpetual war,” insists Gentile (Securing the Snake’s Head: The Question of Air Power as a Political Instrument in the Post Cold-War Security Environment, 2012, etc.), a former Iraq War commander and director of the military history program at West Point.

The author takes a spirited, polemical approach in support of his argument against “the simplistic idea that the U.S. can intervene to rebuild entire societies if the tactics are just right and the right general is put in charge.” What he calls “the story” is a view of the history of wars in Malaya, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, which he considers to be tendentious at best and downright wrong at worst. Though many believe that gifted generals, like David Petraeus in Iraq, learned the lessons from Vietnam and corrected the mistakes of their fumbling predecessors, Gentile disagrees. Sifting through the countless reports that were filed, he shows just where this mythical narrative is flawed. In each case, there was no transforming succession of methods of warfare, and there was no redefining shift in leaders. Nor, he insists, are the wars referred to in the official narrative comparable, whether in scale, context or scope. The strategy adopted to force a negotiated settlement in Vietnam was not applicable in Iraq, and the Iraqi surge was less of a discontinuity than it is usually portrayed to have been.

For Gentile, it is the political circumstances that are the most important elements, as well as political leadership looking for what Petraeus’ predecessor Gen. George Casey called “something that appeared different.”

A forcefully presented, corrective analytical approach to today’s headline-grabbing orthodoxy.

TO AMERICA WITH LOVE

Gill, A.A. Simon & Schuster (272 pp.) $25.00 | Jul. 9, 2013 978-1-4165-9621-9 An ardent mash note to the vast, vital nation that confounds and beguiles its European cousins in equal measure.

Gill (A.A. Gill Is Further Away, 2012, etc.) celebrates America’s natural bounty, its lack of pretention and hidebound tradition, the dizzying diversity of its people and its startling capacity for invention in a series of witty, discursive considerations of the national character, as reflected by such American signifiers as guns, skyscrapers, movies and moonshine. The author provides engrossing accounts of historical events, including the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the Scopes Monkey trial, distinguished by richly drawn portraits of the familiar figures involved and Gill’s erudite but accessible prose style, which flits from arresting profundity to cheeky humor to wrenching pathos. The collection alternates memoir with examinations of American history and institutions; Gill’s tales of his encounters with Appalachian moonshiners and Harlem barbers are warmly funny and rendered with the attention to detail of a fine short story. The author never condescends to his subjects or settles for juicy anecdotes; his brief is an appreciation of America as an

THE TENDER SOLDIER A True Story of War and Sacrifice Gezari, Vanessa M. Simon & Schuster (336 pp.) $25.00 | Aug. 13, 2013 978-1-4391-7739-6

Having discovered (again) that superior firepower does poorly against guerrillas, America’s military adopted its current counterinsurgency doctrine, an object of almost universal praise. Not all was deserved, writes journalist Gezari (Narrative Nonfiction and War Reporting/ Univ. of Michigan) in this insightful but disturbing account of |

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Serving Up a Blue Plate Special

expression of the sublime, a transcendent emotional response to the world that goes beyond the studied, safely curated idea of “beauty” as idealized by Old World European culture. Gill finds the sublime in American thought, writing and art, in its love of talk and argument, in its refusal to venerate the past above the promise of the future, in all of its lunatic variety and conflict and ambition. It’s a passionate, richly literary love letter to a place and idea that remains unique in the history of the world.

A stirring, funny, thought-provoking appreciation of the place, the idea, the experiment, the United States of America.

Food book? Sure—but so much more. Novelist Kate Christensen’s Blue Plate Special: An Autobiography of My Appetites, released on July 9, is the great American memoir, a family chronicle suspended from fork and knife. From a domestic dispute over soft-boiled eggs to heralding a new love for raw oysters, steaks and Provençal rosé, food marks time. It sustains, comforts, beguiles and delights. For Christensen, a PEN/Faulkner Award winner for The Great Man (2008), dual insatiabilities for food and words awakened early. “I loved eating, and thinking about food, as much as I loved reading and writing, and somehow all these passions were connected for me, on a deep level,” she writes. She began food blogging in 2011, and the series of personal essays evolved into Blue Plate Special, a comprehensive chronological retelling of an eater’s life: from Berkeley beginnings, through Arizona and the Hudson River Valley, France, Reed College in Oregon and Brooklyn, New York, to a cozy New England farmhouse via Italy. Recipes extend the narrative at chapters’ ends. Though Christensen lays no claim to professional chefdom, she is an expert enthusiast, always seeking new dishes, new words, new worlds.

“When I give dinner parties, I serve people too much food,” she says. “My novels are pretty packed full.

I’m not a writer of restraint and understatement or minimalism.” Spread on the page or the table, what she gives is a smorgasbord that satiates, sure—but one that inspires a hunger for much more.

DOC A Memoir

Gooden, Dwight and Henican, Ellis Amazon/New Harvest (304 pp.) $27.00 | Jun. 4, 2013 978-0-544-02702-2 Pitching great Gooden tells the story of his spectacular baseball career and the loss of it all through a devastating cocaine addiction.

By age 21, Gooden had won Rookie of the Year and the Cy Young pitching awards, become the youngest player ever named an All-Star, and pitched on the 1986 Mets World Series winners. Yet, he missed the victory parade for the Series win because of an all-night cocaine binge. So begins this saga, written with the assistance of Newsday columnist Henican (Damn Few: Making the Modern SEAL Warrior, 2013, etc.), of a brilliant athlete bent on self-destruction. Raised by a loving yet volatile family, Gooden learned to pitch at an early age under the gentle tutelage of his father. But, as a 5-year-old, he witnessed his sister’s husband shoot her five times. Drafted by the Mets at 17, he began a meteoric rise to the big leagues and, eventually, cocaine addiction. For Gooden, cocaine was “love at first sniff.” While he pitched for 16 years, his life was, before and after baseball, constant turmoil: failed drug tests leading to a year’s suspension from baseball, in and out of rehab, multiple arrests ultimately leading to him becoming a fugitive from the police, for which he went to prison. Gooden tells his story straightforwardly and seemingly honestly, and he mixes in entertaining stories of his encounters with baseball luminaries from Pete Rose to George Steinbrenner, who supported and never gave up on Gooden. He talks in detail of his often strained relationship with fellow troubled Met Darryl Strawberry. Gooden finally kicked his habit on the TV show Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew. Now two years straight, he seems to have his life in order, and he emerges in these pages as a good guy who did dumb things.

Better than your average memoir of rise, fall and redemption.

—Megan Labrise 54

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RELENTLESS From Good to Great to Unstoppable

WEAR YOUR DREAMS My Life in Tattoos Hardy, Ed withJoel Selvin Dunne/St. Martin’s (304 pp.) $26.99 | Jun.18, 2013 978-1-250-00882-4

Grover, Tim S. with Wenk, Shari Lesser Scribner (320 pp.) $26.00 | Apr. 16, 2013 978-1-4767-1093-8

Hardy’s memoir/cautionary tale about art, commerce, skin and ink, written with the assistance of San Francisco Chronicle music writer Selvin (co-author: Peppermint Twist: The Mob, the Music, and the Most Famous Dance Club of the ’60s, 2012, etc.).

In the relatively closed world of tattoo artists, Hardy was a groundbreaking figure, tattooing sailors and longshoremen in states where the artistry was illegal. Sadly, most people know Hardy’s name from the ubiquitous brand foisted upon a specific demographic of young men by French fashionista Christian Audigier. (See comedy duo Garfunkel and Oates’ “This Party Took a Turn for the Douche” and “#124 Hating People Who Wear Ed Hardy” from Stuff White People Like.) It is an unfortunate cross to bear since much of Hardy’s story details crosscultural experiences that are unique and fascinating. After studying at the San Francisco Art Institute, Hardy fell in with other famous artists like “Sailor Jerry” Collins. Inspired by 19thcentury Japanese printmaking, Hardy traveled to Japan in 1973 to become one of the first Western artists to study with Japanese masters. Hardy’s work changed from trite tattoos of anchors on rough-hewn sailors to the dramatic images of skulls, devils and samurai that worked their way into California biker culture and eventually onto rock stars and masters of industry. What limits Hardy’s memoir is his plainspoken, slow-but-sure storytelling.

While the culture of tattoo art is clearly bold and sometimes risky, Hardy admits he would have become an academic if he hadn’t plied his trade in this different medium. A coda about Audigier admits Hardy’s inner conflict about the deal as he tells a friend, “This guy is at ground zero of everything that is wrong with contemporary culture,” before ultimately taking the deal.

“I just wanted to get paid and to be left alone,” he says. Be careful what you wish for.

The lesson in this surprisingly heartfelt memoir by an iconic American tattoo artist is that the man is not always the brand.

Sports performance authority Grover argues that one of the main things holding people back is their inability to accept that they have “zero limitations.”

The old joke: A taxi driver, when asked, “Can you tell me how to get to Carnegie Hall?” answers, “Practice.” The new joke, as outlined here: How does one get to the World Series, the NBA finals or the Super Bowl? Be relentless. Though recently named the director of sports performance for USA basketball, Grover doesn’t exactly make guarantees of Michael Jordan– or Kobe Bryant–level achievements. He has Bryant himself do that in the foreword: “If you took the guys who trained Secretariat and Man o’ War and combined them into one barbarian, that’s Tim training Michael and me.” As a trainer, the author has built a respectable career, honing the talents of Jordan, Bryant, Charles Barkley, Dwyane Wade, Ken Griffey Jr., Alex Rodriguez and many other athletes who have gone on to perform at the highest levels of their respective sports. It’s unlikely that any of these world-class athletes would waste their time with an ineffectual trainer, so Grover’s understanding of what’s needed for particular athletes is likely a safe bet. There’s immense value in the lesson that the greatest athletes got to their pedestals not only through astonishing innate talent, but also a willingness to put in the time needed to hone that talent. Young players who think they are above that effort could take some important lessons from Grover. Still, “be relentless” is as clean and direct as “practice,” and the majority of this book, though inspiring in some ways, is just too riddled with clichés and cheerleading.

What is the counterargument against something so obvious and simplistic?

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“An exceptional account of the development of the Constitution’s most basic right and an illuminating story of remarkable friendships, scholarly communication and the conservative justice who actually changed his mind.” from the great dissent

THE GREAT DISSENT How Oliver Wendell Holmes Changed His Mind—and Changed the History of Free Speech in America

The American century is over, and we’re in a funk—and it’s our own fault, or at least the fault of our rulers. Thus is it ever the case with empires, which rise until they gobble up as much of the world as they can and then collapse like so much soufflé, except that soufflé doesn’t kill people when that happens. “[T]he existential threat to great civilizations is less barbarians at the gates than self-inflicted economic imbalance within,” write Hubbard, dean of the Columbia Graduate School of Business, and Kane, chief economist of the Hudson Institute. Charting the decline of great powers, such as Imperial Spain and the Ming dynasty, the authors identify the chief threat to the U.S. as not external but domestic and, more specifically, the financial, as symbolized but not wholly encapsulated by the recent fiscal cliff episode. The only reason we are getting away with wanton, record deficits, they assert, is that Europe’s deficits are worse; the only reason the economy chugs along, they add, quoting economist Tyler Cowen, is that the U.S. “is still enjoying the benefits of growth based on the low-hanging fruit of the previous century.” At blame in the collapse of empires is the ruinous cost of war, free spending and what economists call “moral hazard,” the penchant for taking risk when there are no apparent negative consequences—that is, when bailouts and social safety nets exist.

The authors’ tone is less alarmist than, say, David Stockman’s, but there’s not much room for good news here, either. “We might be wrong,” they write. “History has yet to be written, after all.” But if they’re right, then there’s plenty of cause for worry.

Healy, Thomas Metropolitan/Henry Holt (336 pp.) $28.00 | Aug. 20, 2013 978-0-8050-9456-5

The writings of Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes are the basis of today’s interpretation of freedom of speech, but it took many great minds to convince him of its value. Seton Hall Law School professor Healy tells the engrossing tale of how it happened.

In his debut, the author traces the evolution of Holmes’ opinion away from the view that you may say what you like, but you will be liable for prosecution. Holmes could not accept that the right of free speech was absolute, and he sought to define its limits. Those who influenced him were the best intellects of the time, including Justice Louis Brandeis and future justice Felix Frankfurter. The author deftly follows the progression of Holmes’ changing view without descending into incomprehensible legalese. Justice Learned Hand’s decision in Masses Publishing Co. v. Patton (1917) was the first step in convincing Holmes that unacceptable views could be tolerated, and Harvard instructor Harold Laski, as near a son as possible, was the greatest influence on the justice. Laski, along with Zechariah Chafee and Herbert Croly, were in the vanguard of those who fought against the persecution of dissenters instituted by the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918. These two acts produced the cases that would completely change interpretation of the First Amendment.

Holmes’ opinions, especially in Schenck (1918), show his growing recognition that only a “clear and present danger” can curtail freedom of speech. It was when he wrote his dissent for Abrams (1919) that he truly outlined the free marketplace for ideas and defended our right under the Constitution to express an opinion.

An exceptional account of the development of the Constitution’s most basic right and an illuminating story of remarkable friendships, scholarly communication and the conservative justice who actually changed his mind. (8-page photo insert)

BROTHERS AT WAR The Unending Conflict in Korea Jager, Sheila Miyoshi Norton (608 pp.) $35.00 | Jul. 29, 2013 978-0-393-06849-8

A protracted chronicle of the northsouth conflict in Korea and the ultimate yearning for peninsular peace.

Jager (East Asian Studies/Oberlin Coll.; Narratives of Nation Building in Korea, 2003, etc.) provides a well-grounded understanding of the evolution of the paranoid, isolated North Korean state as it emerged from Soviet protection and attempted to enforce its legitimacy across the entire peninsula by waging war on the South. She posits the war as the galvanizer for American militarization during the Cold War and the tool for bolstering Mao Zedong’s leadership in China and giving new impetus to the “resisting America” theme that would carry through the subsequent Vietnam War. The lessons of the Korean War were acute, if not always heeded, resulting in the lack of a clear victory, the militarization of American society in the forms of a large standing army and huge defense expenditures, and the newfound confidence of China, which spooked both the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Despite the North’s continued aggression and early economic supremacy in the 1960s,

BALANCE The Economics of Great Powers from Ancient Rome to Modern America Hubbard, Glenn; Kane, Tim Simon & Schuster (320 pp.) $28.00 | Jun. 11, 2013 978-1-4767-0025-0

The enemy is at the wall—but no worry, since the city inside is pretty well destroyed already.

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AMERICA’S OBSESSIVES The Compulsive Energy that Built a Nation

the impoverished South gained as a beneficiary of American aid, grew its military after the Korean War and contributed massive manpower to the U.S. during the Vietnam War, a fact that is not widely acknowledged. The South’s rapprochement with Japan and America’s with China also threatened the North and fueled the long-running competition between leaders Kim Il-sung and Park Chung-hee. Jager presents a thorough look at this deadly fraternal power struggle, the North’s persistent pattern of provocation to tip the hand of the larger powers and the deep heartsickness the division has caused the Korean people.

An authoritative record of the divided Korean peninsula to go alongside Victor Cha’s The Impossible State (2012).

(95 illustrations; 16 maps)

Kendall, Joshua Grand Central Publishing (304 pp.) $27.00 | Jun. 25, 2013 978-1-4555-0238-7

Kendall (Associate Fellow/Trumbull College, Yale Univ.; The Forgotten Founding Father: Noah Webster’s Obsession and the Creation of an American Culture, 2010, etc.) returns with a collection of minibiographies of obsessive personalities who transformed American life.

The author begins with Steve Jobs (whom he calls “a tad mad”), then moves on to some other “fragmented individuals” to see where they came from, how they functioned and how they contributed. And what a motley crew: Thomas Jefferson, Henry Heinz, Melvil Dewey, Alfred Kinsey, Charles Lindbergh, Estée Lauder and Ted Williams. Kendall immediately notes the difference between obsessive compulsive disorder and obsessive compulsive personality disorder; his subjects are among those with the latter, though the two disorders are “cousins.” Throughout, the author’s diction fluctuates between the clinical and the conversational. Instances of the latter include Kinsey was a “neatnik,” Ted Williams, “an emotional basket case.” Readers will delight in the weirdness that the author has unearthed. Jefferson was an obsessive organizer and tinkerer; Heinz insisted on absolute cleanliness; Dewey was in love with numbers—and with nubile librarians; Kinsey had orgies in his house at Indiana University; Lindbergh had four separate families (several in Germany); Lauder could not keep her hands off people’s faces and was secretive about her background; Ted Williams did well in high school typing class and was guilty of “nonstop nonsensical chatter.” Kendall ends with some conventional comments about how we should admire what’s admirable about these folks—and that America has benefitted and will benefit from the obsessives among us. Based on the evidence here?

Probably not a good idea to marry one.

Do we care if a professionally successful person is a psychological mess? Not, it seems, if we get out of it a great smartphone or a well-organized library. Kendall delivers a mostly engaging history of a handful of America’s “obsessive innovators.”

UNGIFTED Intelligence Redefined

Kaufman, Scott Barry Basic (272 pp.) $26.99 | Jun. 4, 2013 978-0-465-02554-1

Cognitive psychologist Kaufman (Psychology/New York Univ.; co-author: Mating Intelligence Unleashed: The Role of Mind in Sex, Dating and Love, 2013, etc.) describes how he overcame a learning disability and defied expectations despite doing poorly on IQ tests.

At the age of 3—after finally being cured of a series of ear infections that had impeded his hearing—the author was left with a central auditory processing disorder that slowed his understanding of speech. As a result, Kaufman was set on the special education track, where he remained until middle school, when he convinced his parents and teachers that he could succeed in a normal classroom. The author admits that children with learning disabilities need special help to develop alternative learning strategies and work at their own pace, but he is sharply critical of special ed classes that set the bar too low on achievement and use IQ tests to label children. Kaufman makes a convincing case that stereotyping students is not only unsupported by research, but also discriminatory. He emphasizes how lowered expectations of slow learners causes them to develop low self-esteem, diminishes their motivation and becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, magnifying the effects of early learning disabilities—which, with proper education, can be overcome. In Kaufman’s case, cello lessons helped him maintain his self-esteem. The author aligns himself with evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker on the need to redefine intelligence more broadly. Coupling his own experience with that of Temple Grandin and Daniel Tammet, who describe how they think using images, he suggests that the development of expertise, associative thinking and pattern recognition are aspects of creative intelligence not revealed by IQ testing.

An inspiring, informative affirmation of human potential combined with an overview of historical developments in standardized tests, cognitive psychology and current research. (26 b/w illustrations) |

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SUMMER READING

Nonfiction

MARY AND LOU AND RHODA AND TED

BLUE-PLATE SPECIAL: An Autobiography of My Appetites

Jennifer Keishen Armstrong $26.00 | 320 pp.

May 7, 2013

Kate Christensen $26.95 | 368 pp.

Jul. 9, 2013

The juicy, entertaining and informative behind-the-scenes story of a great American sitcom that left a lasting influence on popular TV. In this delicious history of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, former Entertainment Weekly writer Armstrong seems to have had the cooperation of just about everyone involved in the show’s making, and the results are riveting. For any fan of the show or TV history in general, this book is pure pleasure.

A novelist’s deliciously engrossing exploration of her life through the two major passions that have defined it: food and writing. For Christensen, memory and food are inextricably intertwined. Middle aged and unwilling to try out the “strange new world of hookups and sexting,” she found unexpected love with a man 20 years her junior who fed her soul with the peace she had craved all along. A Rabelaisian celebration of appetite, complete with savory recipes, that genuinely satisfies.

The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics

The Emerald Mile: The Epic Story of the Fastest Ride in History Through the Heart of the Grand Canyon

Daniel James Brown $28.95 | 432 pp.

Jun. 4, 2013

Kevin Fedarko $30.00 | 432 pp.

May 7, 2013

The nine young Americans who made up the University of Washington rowing team in the Husky Clipper emerged from the harsh realities of the Depression, as Brown delineates in this thorough study of the early rowing scene. A touching, fairly uncomplicated portrayal of rowing legends.

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Man’s indomitable need for adventure is the only thing more impressive than the awesome power of nature and the brilliance of technology described in this lovingly rendered retelling of one of the most remarkable events ever to occur inside the Grand Canyon. In 1983, at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, a confluence of unlikely events provided three unique characters with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to become the fastest to ever race through that singular marvel in a rowboat. An epicsized true-life adventure tale that appeals to both the heart and the head.

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games. This is fairly common knowledge, but Obst’s book is more than the complaints of someone left out of “the New Abnormal.” Depth of detail and shrewd illustrative examples make this a must-read for anyone interested in the movie business.

THE JOKER: A MEMOIR

Andrew Hudgins $25.00 | 352 pp.

Jun. 11, 2013 An acclaimed poet proves his versatility in his gut-busting memoir on jokes.

Hudgins recounts his evolution from grade school clown to college-age clown to married (and later divorced) clown, but he’s at his best when moving beyond himself and providing the historical context for his punch lines. While tightrope walking along the perilous subject of racial jokes, Hudgins’ true contribution comes from his commentary on growing up in the segregated South. A humorous, cerebral and daringly written memoir.

OUTLAW: Waylon, Willie, Kris, and the Renegades of Nashville

Michael Streissguth $26.99 | 304 pp.

Jun. 4, 2013 An exposé of Nashville’s revolutionary musical period in the late 1960s, when it was overtaken by the renegades of song. A biting, in-depth chronicle of Nashville’s most tumultuous era told through the voices of iconic artists who used their music to accomplish significant changes in the music industry.

CLASS A: Baseball in the Middle of Everywhere

Lucas Mann $26.95 | 336 pp.

May 7, 2013

THE LAST TRAIN TO ZONA VERDE: My Ultimate African Safari

In the tradition of football’s Friday Night Lights, a young writer spends a year (and more) following the fortunes of a baseball team: the Class A Clinton, Iowa, LumberKings. In this impressive debut, University of Iowa writer-in-residence Mann has a busy agenda. He writes frequently about his own doubts, insecurities (he was not much older than his subjects) and failures (in sports, in barrooms). Swimming just below the surface is the dark story of the death of his brother, whose presence emerges periodically to whisper messages of mortality and disappointment.

Paul Theroux $27.00 | 368 pp.

May 7, 2013 In what he terms his “ultimate African safari,” Theroux manages to incorporate—rather than avoid—the general viewpoints of literature about the continent. He revels in the simple, historical life of the bush but acknowledges its basis in fantasy. He decries the chronic ailments of governments and citizens and still appreciates the vast expanses of beauty, but without the wide-eyed wonder of so many travelers. In this intensely personal book, Theroux honestly confronts racism, stigma, privilege and expectations.

Sleepless in Hollywood: Tales from the New Abnormal in the Movie Business

Lynda Obst $26.00 | 272 pp.

Jun. 11, 2013 When the author arrived in Hollywood in the early 1980s, it was still possible to make smart commercial films based on original screenplays, like Sleepless in Seattle and The Fisher King, both produced

by Obst. Now, she writes, studios depend on “tentpoles” based on familiar comic books, fairy tales or video

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“A fine return to form for Klosterman, blending Big Ideas with heavy metal, The Wire, Batman and much more.” from i wear the black hat

PILGRIM’S WILDERNESS A True Story of Faith and Madness on the Alaska Frontier

In 1939, much of the country was unwilling even to think about going to war again. The legacy of the previous world war hung heavy on industry, which had created costly productive capacity that proved to be unnecessary and was then vilified as profiteer and punished by boneheaded tax policies. Even after Pearl Harbor, it was difficult to persuade companies to expand plants and completely retool to produce unfamiliar products like tanks, while unions viewed mobilization as a pretext to roll back gains of the previous decade. By 1942, the military, arms industries and civilian economy had to compete for access to increasingly scarce materials like oil, rubber and steel. Balancing demands for manpower was a constant problem, as was keeping prices from ballooning out of control. The Roosevelt administration attempted to manage these challenges as it had the Depression: through an alphabet soup of boards and bureaus, often with overlapping mandates and vague powers, resulting in confusion, frustration and inefficiency. Much of Klein’s book is taken up with the constant reshuffling of these agencies and their battles with each other and the armed services; they seem ultimately to have succeeded in putting the country on a war footing almost in spite of themselves. Throughout, the author demonstrates the astonishing complexity of mobilization and illuminates the difficulties of attempting to impose central planning on a modern economy outside of a fully totalitarian system, which Roosevelt, to his credit, resisted creating.

Thoroughly researched, objective and authoritative in tone, this is likely to be the definitive work on this topic for years to come, though it is likely too detailed for casual readers.

Kizzia, Tom Crown (336 pp.) $25.00 | Jul. 16, 2013 978-0-307-58782-4

A journalist’s gripping account of a modern fundamentalist Christian pioneer family and the dark secrets that

held it together.

Robert “Papa Pilgrim” Hale, his wife and 15 children came to the remote little town of McCarthy, Alaska., convinced that it was God’s will they settle there. Claiming that he and his family wanted nothing more than “to live our old-time way and be left in peace,” Pilgrim bought privately owned acreage that happened to be surrounded by lands managed by the National Park Service. McCarthy residents fell in love with the idealistic, Godfearing family members and marveled at how they “could light up any space” with their idiosyncratic brand of American roots music. But when Papa Pilgrim decided to clear a road that ran on public land to the property he christened Hillbilly Heaven, residents became enmeshed in a bitter battle that ensued between their neighbors and the Park Service. On assignment from his newspaper, Kizzia (The Wake of the Unseen Object: Travels Through Alaska’s Native Landscapes, 1998) successfully solicited the mediawary Pilgrim for an interview. What he learned—that Pilgrim was the son of a rich Texas family with links to the FBI—was only a small part of the whole story, which came out only after Pilgrim’s eldest children ran away from home. The real Papa Pilgrim was a deluded megalomaniac who physically and emotionally brutalized his wife and children. He was also a sexual deviant who coerced his eldest daughter, Elishaba, “to keep his flesh working” so that he could bring forth the 21 children he believed God wanted him to have with Elishaba’s mother. The horror at the heart of this story about religious extremism on the fringes of the last American frontier is slow to reveal itself, but when that horror fully emerges, it will swallow most readers.

Provocative and disturbing.

I WEAR THE BLACK HAT Grappling with Villains (Real and Imagined)

Klosterman, Chuck Scribner (224 pp.) $25.00 | Jul. 9, 2013 978-1-4391-8449-3

Of John Rawls and Keith Richards: Klosterman (The Visible Man, 2011, etc.) returns with a pop-culture–laden meditation on the bad guys of the world and

what they mean.

Philosophers call it the “problem of evil.” Though he holds down the lofty post of ethicist for the New York Times Magazine, Klosterman’s take is guided less by the wisdom of the ages than his own gut feeling. In the linked essays here, he’s grappling less with supervillains such as Adolf Hitler and Pol Pot (though both figure) than with such less-fraught specimens as Snidely Whiplash, of Dudley Doo-Right fame, and Morris Day, who dared oppose Prince for the love of a righteous woman and top stakes in the battle of the bands. That most of his subjects are from the pop-culture realm, whether Andrew Dice Clay or Chevy Chase or the Eagles, does not diminish the underlying sophistication of Klosterman’s guiding questions: Why is it that grown-ups are more comfortable with the grays of a black-and-white world while being drawn to the dark side of the force? Which is to say, why do kids love Luke Skywalker

A CALL TO ARMS Mobilizing America for World War II

Klein, Maury Bloomsbury (912 pp.) $40.00 | Jul. 16, 2013 978-1-59691-607-4

Klein (History, Emeritus/Univ. of Rhode Island; Union Pacific: The Reconfiguration: America’s Greatest Railroad from 1969 to the Present, 2011, etc.) delivers a sprawling account of the struggle to mobilize the moribund American economy for World War II. 60

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READY FOR A BRAND NEW BEAT How “Dancing in the Street” Became the Anthem for a Changing America

while adults secretly cheer for Darth Vader? Well, not all adults do, of course—just as not all adults will forgive Klosterman his roundabout defense of Newt Gingrich as a Very Bad Guy who doesn’t give a monkey’s backside for what other people think of him. Still, there are some fruitful exercises in the author’s brand of such forgiveness: quantifying, say, who was to blame in the Monica Lewinsky affair (“The larger vilification was ultimately split five ways. Mr. Clinton, of course, was first against the wall”) and running through the moral calculus to determine whether, à la Jeffrey Lebowski, we should not all deem the Eagles the most evil band in history—as, it seems, we should.

A fine return to form for Klosterman, blending Big Ideas with heavy metal, The Wire, Batman and much more.

Kurlansky, Mark Riverhead (288 pp.) $27.95 | Jul. 11, 2013 978-1-59448-722-4

Fascinating but flawed, the latest from Kurlansky (Birdseye: The Adventures of a Curious Man, 2012 etc.) suggests that not only was the Martha and the Vandellas’ hit the anthem for a time of profound change, but a call to arms for rioting militants in its “invitation across the nation.”

The author is on solid ground when he keeps a tight focus on Motown, Berry Gordy and the hit machine the mogul established in Detroit along the lines of the city’s automobile industry: “A bare frame of a street singer could go through the Motown plant and come out a Cadillac of a performer.” He shows how Gordy got rich, his artists got famous, and his studio musicians and some of his songwriters got shafted. He explains how Motown’s changes reflected a changing America, as dreams of integration shattered with the King assassination, the rise of Black Power and the rioting in the streets. “It was also suggested that the popularity of the song ‘Dancing in the Street’ had encouraged people to take to the streets,” writes Kurlansky in an oddly passive construction that proceeds to cite a “rumor” that the hit was banned from the airwaves. Plainly, change was in the air, and to overload this one hit with too much revolutionary significance in a 1964 that also gave the world “The Times They Are A-Changin’ ” and “A Change Is Gonna Come” blurs cause and effect. And then there are all the nit-picky errors: that “(Michael) Bolton achieved stardom in the 1980s with his hard rock band Black Jack [sic],” that the sophisticated, debonair Chuck Berry was “a wild-looking black man…who hopped around the stage madly,” that Elvis Presley’s “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” was “swing.” Perhaps the book’s biggest howler lies in the understatement that “many people were affected by the King murder.”

An ambitious thematic arc, but the devil’s in the details.

THE SKIES BELONG TO US Love and Terror in the Golden Age of Hijacking Koerner, Brendan I. Crown (336 pp.) $26.00 | Jun. 18, 2013 978-0-307-88610-1

A chronicle of the 1972 skyjacking of Western Airlines Flight 701.

Wired contributing editor Koerner (Now the Hell Will Start: One Soldier’s Flight from the Greatest Manhunt of World War II, 2008) explores the story of the longest-distance skyjacking in American history.

Motivated by anger toward America (as well as his newfound interest in astrological omens), embittered Vietnam War veteran Roger Holder, along with his girlfriend, Cathy Kerkow, skyjacked a flight en route from Los Angeles to Seattle. An alleged briefcase bomb forced the airline to make good on Holder’s demands, which included money and safe passage to Algeria. In addition, he demanded the freedom of Angela Davis, a communist-sympathizing philosophy professor at UCLA who had lost her position due to her political beliefs and was arrested soon after for her connection to a shootout. A delusional Holder believed it his duty to rescue her, adding a new twist to the skyjackers’ usual requests for money and a rerouted flight. “Then he would fly the Communist philosophy professor to North Vietnam,” Koerner writes, “where the nation’s grateful prime minister would grant her political asylum.” Yet Holder’s carefully hatched plan soon required various split-second decisions, and while Holder and Kerkow eventually touched down in Algeria (without Davis in tow), they hardly achieved the celebrity status they’d imagined. While Koerner focuses on this unlikely plot carried out by an unlikely duo, he expands beyond this single instance to draw attention to the skyjacking epidemic that plagued commercial airlines throughout the early years of flight travel. Between 1961 and 1972, 159 U.S. flights were skyjacked.

By making mention of so many skyjackings, Koerner paints a complex portrait of a war-torn and racially charged country, one whose dissenters often took to the skies for revenge.

A riveting, highly readable tale of terror in the skies. (8 b/w photos) |

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DEAL WITH THE DEVIL The FBI’s Secret Thirty-Year Relationship with a Mafia Killer

TOWER OF BASEL The Shadowy History of the Secret Bank that Runs the World

Lance, Peter Morrow/HarperCollins (672 pp.) $29.99 | Jul. 2, 2013 978-0-06-145534-6 978-0-06-224889-3 e-book 978-0-06-226327-8 CD

LeBor, Adam PublicAffairs (336 pp.) $28.99 | Jun. 4, 2013 978-1-61039-254-9

Searching, provocative history of the most secretive—and globally influential— of Swiss banks, “the most important bank in the world and predates both the IMF and the World Bank.”

Ben Bernanke is a governor, as is the head of the Bank of England, the head of the Bank of China and the heads of the central banks of Germany, Brazil and Spain. Altogether, 60-odd banks make up the membership of the Bank for International Settlement, headquartered in Basel, Switzerland—a town specifically chosen for its quiet and orderliness. Financial journalist LeBor (The Believers: How America Fell for Bernard Madoff ’s $65 Billion Investment Scam, 2010, etc.) traces the evolution of the bank from useful instrument of establishing international financial stability in post–World War I Europe to an amoral institution that is closely implicated in both the establishment of the euro zone and its fraying at the zone’s edges in places like Greece, Cyprus and Spain. In the time between, the BIS, by LeBor’s account, was politically evenhanded in all the wrong ways: Although putatively one of the “new multilateral institutions run by apolitical technocrats,” its directors in fact gave information to the Third Reich on Allied logistics (and vice versa), even as the bank served as a bulwark of capitalism in the Cold War—and even if the combatant nations were moving funds back and forth among themselves.

Particularly in the latter sections dealing with the unification of the currency and the sink-or-swim social Darwinism of austerity, LeBor’s account has a bit of a conspiracy-theory feel to it, but one backed up by solid reporting and interviews with bank players, all that Swiss secrecy notwithstanding. The author closes with recommendations for how the bank could better serve the world instead of itself, including greater transparency and lifting the “legal inviolability” accorded to it by international treaty.

Wonkish at times, but a real eye-opener.

ABC news correspondent Lance (Triple Cross: How bin Laden’s Master Spy Penetrated the CIA, the Green Berets, and the FBI, 2009) delivers an exhaustive examination into the life and crimes of Mafia capo Gregory Scarpa Sr. and his questionable decadeslong relationship with the FBI. The author reveals that Scarpa, a notoriously violent killer, received tens of thousands of dollars from the FBI for feeding them information that would help indict several of his rival gangsters. Yet despite his claims that he had killed more than 50 people, Scarpa never spent more than 30 days in jail. In addition, writes Lance, Scarpa was known to J. Edgar Hoover and was recruited to assist the Feds when their methods failed—most notably, in the “interrogation” of a Mississippi Ku Klux Klan member who was involved in the murder of three civil rights workers in 1964. But Lance is most interested in the relationship that developed between Scarpa and his handler, Agent Lindley DeVecchio. He asserts that over many years, DeVecchio supplied classified information to Scarpa, which in turn led to the deaths of several of Scarpa’s adversaries. DeVecchio was eventually indicted on multiple counts of murder, although the case was dropped before the trial concluded. Lance delves into the details of the trial through newly released court records to prove DeVecchio’s involvement in Scarpa’s nefarious activities.

The book is extensively researched, using personal interviews, letters, court documents and declassified FBI files. At more than 600 pages, it could use some editing, however, especially toward the end, when Lance attempts to connect the story of Scarpa and DeVecchio to larger issues of international terrorism.

It’s often difficult—if not downright overwhelming— to keep track of the many players in this story, but aficionados of Mafia history and those concerned with FBI corruption will find this thorough investigation satisfying.

TOTALLY UNOFFICIAL The Autobiography of Raphael Lemkin

Lemkin, Raphael Frieze, Donna-Lee—Ed. Yale Univ. (320 pp.) $35.00 | Jun. 18, 2013 978-0-300-18696-3

A previously unpublished biography of a pioneer in the field of international law who is responsible for inventing the word “genocide” and defining legal terms for preventing future genocidal acts.

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When Nobel Peace Prize nominee Lemkin died in 1959, the manuscript of his biography was near completion. However, it is only recently that Jewish historian Frieze digitized Lemkin’s manuscript and, in the process, pulled the biography together into a readable narrative. The story of Lemkin’s life begins with recollections of his early years on a farm in Lithuania (b. 1900), where he became engrossed with the natural world surrounding him and, also, began a fascination with reading about historical instances of group persecution. As the deputy public prosecutor of Warsaw, the Armenian genocide drove Lemkin toward a focus on the prevention of government attempts at destroying a collective identity. For Lemkin, the act of genocide did not just target the lives of a particular group, but it also aimed to destroy the cultural identity of the persecuted minority. The realities of genocide became personal when Lemkin was forced to flee Nazi-occupied Poland, while his family back in Poland fell as victims of the Holocaust. After making it to America, Lemkin sacrificed his physical health, the comforts of family life and the financial stability associated with faculty appointments at Duke and Yale to dedicate his life to alerting the world to the dangers of genocide. His dedication bore fruit when the United Nations ratified the Genocide Convention, but Raphael would spend the rest of his life alone and in poverty. Although the particulars of the inner workings of the U.N. can be overwhelming, the story is enriched by Lemkin’s keen eye for describing the environment and characters that he encounters.

An engaging account of one man’s determination to overcome personal, financial and bureaucratic obstacles in his quest to pass a landmark law that would protect collective cultural life and identity.

up after he left Michigan without a degree. He started by covering “cops and courts” for the Alpena News in Michigan, then moved on to the Post Register in Idaho, where he began covering political news. A corporate buyout impelled Manning to seek work at the Missoulian in Montana, where he wrote a series of articles condemning the logging industry that caused him to lose his job. In the meantime, the fundamentalist parents with whom he had little contact slowly receded into “an increasingly eccentric world of their own.” His terminally ill mother put her fate in God’s hands and died a horrific death while his father became a lunatic vagabond whom Manning tracked to the jungles of Panama. The story is as compelling as the parallels the author draws between it and the rise of Christian fundamentalism and right-wing politics in America. However, Manning also tends to intellectualize and shies away from probing the interpersonal dynamics of his family too deeply.

Intriguing, but at times dry and not entirely satisfying.

ATTEMPTING NORMAL

Maron, Marc Spiegel & Grau (240 pp.) $26.00 | Apr. 30, 2013 978-0-8129-9287-8

A comedian’s life is no laughing matter in this memoir of short chapters that examine the author’s source of material as a series of open wounds.

Rarely has an entertainer’s account of his life been so lacking in self-glorification.

“There really is no business like show business,” he told a group of his peers as the keynote speaker for the 2011 Just for Laughs Comedy Festival in Montreal. “Except maybe prostitution. There’s a bit of overlap there.” The speech provides the penultimate chapter of Maron’s first book and shows why he enjoyed the respect of so many better-known comedians even before he resurrected his career by shifting it from the comedy club to his garage with his popular podcast WTF with Marc Maron. In his introduction, he explains the development of the cyberseries, which appeared to be a last-ditch effortand which went viral through the host’s interviews with guests such as Conan O’Brien. Though he’d appeared on O’Brien’s show more than 40 times, he treats that exposure like an afterthought, as he explains the secret of success that O’Brien shared with him and which he now believes explains his own: “ ‘Get yourself in a situation where you have no choice.’ And that’s what I’m doing, because I had no choice. I was broke and broken and lost when I started WTF.” If such desperation pushed the comedian beyond his comfort level (presuming he had one), his book might do the same for readers, as Maron recounts his dysfunctional childhood, his two failed marriages (and his part in each split), his addictions, recovery and sobriety, and his ambivalence toward pornography (which he both likes a lot and really doesn’t). In that same speech, he says, “we comics are out there on the front lines of our sanity. We risk all sense of security and the possibility of living stable lives to do comedy.”

In a blood sport littered with casualties, this is an account of an unlikely survivor.

IT RUNS IN THE FAMILY A Memoir Manning, Richard St. Martin’s (320 pp.) $25.99 | Jul. 2, 2013 978-0-312-62030-1 978-1-250-03136-5 e-book

A journalist’s memoir of how he escaped the Christian fundamentalism that shaped, and distorted, both his and his parents’ lives.

Manning (Rewilding the West: Restoration in a Prairie Landscape, 2009, etc.) grew up on a farm in Michigan, the son of a workingclass man with “a work ethic so deeply ingrained, it was not an ethic any more than breathing was.” His Christian fundamentalist mother “saved” his father, and the pair attempted to raise their children as Baptists. But as a teenager, Manning’s faith quickly “dissolved under logic.” A scholarship to the University of Michigan freed him from his parents’ fundamentalism.

Ravenous for knowledge and “the sweep of big ideas,” Manning studied political science and philosophy. Yet it was folk music that made him realize that what the common person had to say was perhaps even more important. Mesmerized by the populism of Bob Dylan, Manning pursued journalism, which he took |

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“A well-reported, smoothly written book for anyone who wants to understand contemporary American military might and the widespread hatred for the U.S. that has been the result.” from the way of the knife

DIFFICULT MEN Behind the Scenes of a Creative Revolution: From The Sopranos and The Wire to Mad Men and Breaking Bad

THE WAY OF THE KNIFE The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth Mazzetti, Mark Penguin Press (400 pp.) $29.95 | Apr. 9, 2013 978-1-59420-480-7

Martin, Brett Penguin Press (288 pp.) $27.95 | Jul. 3, 2013 978-1-59420-419-7

Pulitzer Prize–winning New York Times national security correspondent Mazzetti demonstrates in horrifying, persuasive detail how the new-style warfare approved by both George W. Bush and Barack Obama has led to controversial assassinations by the U.S. government and blowback yielding new terrorists determined to harm American citizens.

The author pulls together the strands from the White House, CIA and Department of Defense, operating especially in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia to explain how the CIA shifted from a usually nonlethal spy agency to a “killing machine, an organization consumed with man hunting.” At the same time, the DOD, which has traditionally run the combat wars, has assumed numerous other spying activities. Although the complete cast of characters is understandably numerous, Mazzetti focuses primarily on 20 warriors at the CIA, 10 at the DOD, two attached to the White House (including John Brennan, recently nominated by Obama as the new CIA director), 13 in Pakistan, six in Somalia and four in Yemen. Using wisely selected narratives within the big picture, Mazzetti juggles all those characters skillfully, opening the book, for example, with the capture of an American spy named Raymond Davis within Pakistan after a lethal roadway incident in the city of Lahore.

Davis was a private contractor hired by the CIA to infiltrate Pakistan. His arrest by the Pakistanis took an especially ugly turn after American officials, including President Obama, lied to their allies about Davis’ mission. Mazzetti includes plenty of context about the run-up to the new ways of American warfare by recounting the circumstances surrounding 9/11, as well as U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. However, since those sagas have been told so often at book length, Mazzetti wisely provides little-known coverage of the campaigns in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen.

A well-reported, smoothly written book for anyone who wants to understand contemporary American military might and the widespread hatred for the U.S. that has been the result.

The new golden age of television and how we got there.

GQ contributor Martin traces the sea change in American television of the past decade and a half, which saw the medium evolve from a repository for numbing mediocrity (with some notable exceptions) to a venue for material that enjoys artistic parity with the best products of film, theater and literature.

While the author clearly lays out the financial and technological conditions that made such high-quality, idiosyncratic TV possible—the proliferation of cable stations demanded more content, and more nuanced demographic targeting by advertisers and the relative indifference to ratings enjoyed by subscription channels made niche programming profitable—his real interest is in the protean creators (“showrunners,” in industry parlance) who brought highly personal, genre-redefining, boundary-pushing series to the small screen. That’s a wise strategy, as they are a singularly compelling group—The Sopranos creator David Chase, pathologically morose and embittered; The Wire’s David Simon, the fire-breathing investigative reporter intent on exposing the corruption in American institutions; David Milch, the mystical, oracular literary prodigy who redefined the Western with Deadwood; and Matthew Weiner, the abrasive, loquacious, obsessive mind behind Mad Men—that’s as complex and fascinating in Martin’s account as their antihero protagonists are on the screen. Shows like these (and Breaking Bad, The Shield, and Six Feet Under) have dominated the recent cultural conversation in the way that movies did in the 1970s, engendering a passionately engaged and intellectually stimulated audience eager to debate, parse obscure details and evangelize about their favorite programs. Martin thrillingly explains how and why that conversation migrated to the erstwhile “idiot box.”

A lucid and entertaining analysis of contemporary quality TV, highly recommended to anyone who turns on the box to be challenged and engaged.

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SURGEON IN BLUE Jonathan Letterman, the Civil War Doctor Who Pioneered Battlefield Care

McKersie (Business, Emeritus/MIT Sloan School of Management) and his wife moved to Hyde Park in 1959, where he very quickly became involved in human rights issues, initially through his church. Even at the time, he knew he was caught up in something significant, so he began the files and the journal that inform this mixture of memoir, social history and academic analysis. The author focuses on a handful of issues—employment, education, housing and minority businesses—but he also highlights some significant personalities, including notables Martin Luther King Jr. and Jesse Jackson (with some glimpses of Dick Gregory) and also those not as well-known outside the city and the times: Al Pitcher, Tim Black and Alex Poinsett. He offers a tribute to each of them near the end. The author notes continually his various frustrations and anxieties (“I shuddered at the thought of being arrested,” he writes)—and, in one violent march, his fears. He recognized—even at the time—the tension between the black and white leaders. He noticed the virtual absence of women among the leadership. He often wondered about the tactics employed, especially the many marches to the home of Mayor Daly and the focus on removing from office Superintendent of Education Benjamin Willis—an effort that proved futile. McKersie maintains a refreshing tone of selfdeprecation, too, noting on one occasion his “small, weak voice” at a meeting. The best, most engaging parts are his personal memories—sitting on lawns, marching in the streets, worrying and wishing. He appends some useful maps and a timeline.

Invaluable for scholars of the era, though many readers will yearn for more of the author’s warm, human voice. (34 illustrations)

McGaugh, Scott Arcade (320 pp.) $25.95 | Jul. 1, 2013 978-1-61145-839-8

The first full treatment of the father of battlefield medicine.

The carnage of the Civil War has been vividly rendered in the photography of Mathew Brady and the field-hospital writings of Walt Whitman. USS Midway Museum marketing director McGaugh (USS Midway: America’s Shield, 2011, etc.) offers a solid, well-researched life of Jonathan Letterman (1824-1872), a Pennsylvania-born physician who, as medical director of the Army of the Potomac, instituted bold and far-reaching reforms to alleviate the suffering of men wounded in battle. At a time when Army medical care was chaotic and almost an afterthought—nearly 3,000 wounded lay unattended on the battlefield for three days after the Battle of Bull Run—Letterman provided “more humanitarian and effective care.” He created a chain of command for medicine, established an ambulance corps, overhauled battlefield evacuation, and improved camp hygiene and diet standards. During three years of war, his medical corps treated more than 60,000 casualties in battles from Antietam to Gettysburg, introducing a new era in battlefield care. Against the moans, mangled bodies and putrid odors of the war, McGaugh shows how Letterman, a quiet, private man with an analytical mind, reformed his medical corps. Through systemization and accountability, he spurred his several hundred physicians and others to reliably deliver medical care and supplies where they were most needed. The author also details Letterman’s earlier years serving on isolated outposts and his later careers as a failed wildcatter on California oilfields and a coroner in San Francisco. For all his medical acumen, however, Letterman misdiagnosed an illness that killed his wife.

A nicely crafted biography that also offers Civil War buffs an unusual ambulance-wagon view of the great conf lict.

THE BEE GEES The Biography

Meyer, David N. Da Capo/Perseus (352 pp.) $26.99 | Jul. 9, 2013 978-0-306-82025-0 978-0-306-82157-8 e-book

A valiant but unsatisfying effort to reappraise a band loved by the masses and loathed by critics.

The Bee Gees, Manchester-born brothers Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb, had been performing around Australia for nearly a decade before bursting onto the British scene in 1967 with the Beatles-esque lament “New York Mining Disaster 1941.” Within a year, they rivaled their idols for top spots on charts around the world. Addictions and sibling rivalry between eldest (and arguably most talented) brother Barry and the more volatile Robin caused the band to implode within three years. After reconciling, the Gibbs scored a couple more hits (including “How Do You Mend a Broken Heart?”) in the early 1970s before sinking briefly back into obscurity, only to resurface in a big way with a wholly new sound rooted in the subversive beats of disco with “You Should Be Dancing” (1975).

With their association with the monster hit Saturday Night Fever, the Bee Gees never had to look back—at least as far as

A DECISIVE DECADE An Insider’s View of the Chicago Civil Rights Movement During the 1960s McKersie, Robert B. Southern Illinois Univ. (288 pp.) $29.95 | Aug. 1, 2013 978-0-8093-3244-1

A veteran academic recalls his involvement in the meetings, demonstrations and civil unrest at the dawn of his career at the University of Chicago. |

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the public was concerned. Critics, however, have always considered them imitators and also-rans. Meyer (Twenty Thousand Roads: The Ballad of Gram Parsons and His Cosmic American Music, 2007, etc.) convincingly argues that the band innovated (e.g., by inventing the drum loop on their huge hit “Stayin’ Alive”) as much as they imitated. Oddly, his narrative stalls when the Bee Gees are on its stage, mainly since he quotes decades-old interviews by other journalists. The book comes alive when tracing the history of disco that led to the making of SNF and telling the tragic tale of the youngest Gibb, Andy, whose growing up in public foreshadowed the reality TV culture of today. Otherwise, the history drags and repeats itself. The Gibbs quotes and connecting narrative could have used a tighter edit.

This inelegant argument won’t change many minds among critics or the public. (16 pages of b/w photos)

red. The reportage takes on added significance given the fact that the college crew’s final cards have yet to be played.

Fast-paced and wildly chaotic.

HALDOL AND HYACINTHS A Bipolar Life

Moezzi, Melody Avery (288 pp.) $26.00 | Aug. 5, 2013 978-1-58333-468-3

An Iranian-American political activist and writer’s memoir of how she came to terms with her bicultural heritage and bipolar disorder.

When Huffington Post and Ms. blogger Moezzi was born in the United States in 1979, her fate was sealed—at least, according to theocrats who took over the country her Iranian doctor parents left behind.

“I was both Westoxified (in the Ayatollah’s words) and highly inclined to lose my mind,” she writes. Unlike the children of those parents who stayed in Iran, Moezzi grew up affluent and surrounded by a huge extended family of other Persian exiles.

But at 18, when her “westoxified” body rebelled against her for two years, Moezzi was forced to deal with both a life-threatening case of pancreatitis and what appeared to be a case of depression. Surgery seemed to cure her of both ailments, and her life resumed its charmed course. Moezzi traveled to Montana to spend a joyful summer (“I was sure that if God lived anywhere, it had to be Montana”) reconnecting with her Muslim faith, unaware that her euphoria was a manifestation of mania. She graduated from college and went to law school, where she developed an interest in the politics of Islam and also attempted suicide. Moezzi’s battles with her “mutinous mind” were far from over, however. While campaigning for Barack Obama in 2008, she experienced an even more severe mental breakdown that stemmed from full-blown mania. The author’s candor about her experiences in and with the medical establishment is bracing.

Physical illness elicits sympathy, cards and flowers; however, she writes, “if you have mental illness, you get plastic utensils, isolation and fear.” Yet Moezzi knows that she has been lucky. Life in Iran—and possibly in and out of the Iranian jails that make “American psychiatric hospitals look idyllic”—would have been far worse.

A bold, courageous book by a woman who transforms mental illness into an occasion for activism.

STRAIGHT FLUSH The True Story of Six College Friends Who Dealt Their Way to a Billion-Dollar Online Poker Empire—and How It All Came Crashing Down . . .

Mezrich, Ben Morrow/HarperCollins (288 pp.) $27.99 | $27.99 Lg. Prt. | Jun. 1, 2013 978-0-06-224009-5 978-0-06-224011-8 e-book 978-0-06-225367-5 Lg. Prt.

Mezrich (Sex on the Moon: The Amazing Story Behind the Most Audacious Heist in History, 2011, etc.) returns with a breakneck retelling of how a bunch of closely knit fraternity brothers built an online poker empire and how fate’s final hand dealt them all a wicked blow.

Before the passing of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006, the world of online poker was like the Wild West: virtually lawless and flush with easy cash for those audacious enough to grab it. By bringing the casino table into the American living room, top-grossing sites like PokerStars and PartyPoker were able to rake in massive amounts of money. AbsolutePoker, the site hatched among the frat brothers, was right there with the online poker kings, earning its principals staggering sums of money in an incredibly short period of time. While largely nondescript collegiate types, the characters represent the kind of youthful American archetypes that engenders them with empathy. Before long, the frat boys had successfully established their online outpost in the jungles of Costa Rica and were signing up new subscribers almost faster than they could comprehend. Predictably, they also began driving too fast, drinking too much and sleeping with way too many women. Still, thanks to the author’s mostly adept hand, they essentially remain the same sympathetic dreamers they were before their worlds started to turn increasingly nightmarish. As the author gleefully hurtles the hapless band of entrepreneurs into that final hairpin turn on the highway, readers are left to wince, the RPMs of this rapid-fire narrative running high in the 66

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“Well-balanced, though not likely to sway either detractors or admirers one way or another. We look forward to the planned sequel, covering the years of Thatcher’s political decline.” from margaret thatcher

MARGARET THATCHER The Authorized Biography: From Grantham to the Falklands

community, consisting not just of those at the top—the professionals and executives who control golf organizations—but also the millions who play, either on private or public courses throughout the country, as well as spectators of the professional game. This idea of a community, one of many such that formed in response to the upheavals and modernizations of the 20th century, is one of several themes Moss develops as he traces the sport’s evolution from a pastime of American nobility, imported from Scotland in the late 1800s, to a significant part of today’s cultural landscape. Others include the game’s everpresent, often class-based dichotomies: private versus public, professional versus amateur, and “snobs versus slobs” (Caddyshack). The author also covers gender and race, perennial hotbutton topics for the sport, as well as the impact of technology, including not only equipment, but, just as important, the rise of the automobile and, later, the golf cart and TV. As one would expect from a historian, the author provides detailed information from period sources and locates developments within the social, cultural and political context of their time. Though Moss includes stories of noteworthy individuals and events, his emphasis on facts and historical analysis rather than narrative makes the reading experience a bit more like playing from the rough and hazards than an easy stroll from fairway to green, and Moss’ occasional inclusion of a first-person aside adds to the feel of listening to a college lecture.

A valuable survey of U.S. golf history, but a bit too dry and academic for casual readers.

Moore, Charles Knopf (912 pp.) $35.00 | May 21, 2013 978-0-307-95894-5

The authorized, remarkably evenhanded biography of the grimly divisive, late Iron Lady of Britain.

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013), by Fleet Street journalist and debut author Moore’s account, was not one for the examined life.

Like her friend Ronald Reagan, she acted and then moved on, stopping only for an occasional moment of self-criticism for, say, not having been better prepared for a Parliamentary question-andanswer session. And act she did, introducing schemes of privatization and austerity, busting unions, giving aid and comfort to white apartheid regimes in southern Africa—though, Moore hastens to note, her written reference to a “nigger brown” frock was just a garden-variety expression of the time. One feels for the author, given his subject’s lack of self-reflection and paucity of written records, for Thatcher was no writer save for heavily underlined, exclamatory do-this and do-that directives on pieces of paper handed to her. Nonetheless, Moore acquits himself well in this respectful but certainly not hagiographic account. If it’s not entirely wartsand-all, it reckons with some of the darker aspects of her time in power, including her habit of conducting periodic purges to weed out the ideologically suspect within her ranks, as well as some poor and even possibly criminal decisions, such as the sinking of the Argentine ship Belgrano in the early days of the Falklands War. That Thatcher enjoyed far from universal popular support was clear in the aftermath of her recent death, but Moore is correct to note that the relentlessly self-made, all-controlling leader enjoyed a great boost thanks to the Falklands War, which “established [her] personal mastery of the political scene, and convinced people of her special gifts of leadership.”

Well-balanced, though not likely to sway either detractors or admirers one way or another. We look forward to the planned sequel, covering the years of Thatcher’s political decline. (24 pages of photos. First printing of 100,000)

STORY OF MY PEOPLE

Nesi, Edoardo Translated by Shugaar, Antony Other Press (176 pp.) $19.95 | May 7, 2013 978-1-59051-554-9

Novelist and translator Nesi’s lament for the passing of the way of life that helped Italy recover from the legacy of fascism, now available in English. The book won the 2011 Strega Prize, the most prestigious literary award in Italy.

Along with his brothers, the author was meant to be the third generation to lead his family’s textile weaving company, founded in Prato, Italy, by his grandfather in 1920. Instead, he became the one who had to sell the company in 2004, an act that marked the conclusion of a way of life. Nesi tells the story of the rise and fall of his family’s business as part of the small-business world that supplied beautifully made parts and materials for the producers of consumer and capital goods throughout Europe. The author demonstrates a rich literary verve and a novelist’s passion, as literary and cinematographic references work their way into his unfolding lament. His descriptions of the materials and manufacture of the cloth—“yarn-dyed, with a KD finish, rendering its pile unalterable and capable of withstanding the assault of Germany’s acid rains and morning frosts”—and designers like Sergio Carpini, “who felt he had the right to perform alchemy with fabrics,” help

THE KINGDOM OF GOLF IN AMERICA

Moss, Richard J. Univ. of Nebraska (408 pp.) $34.95 | Jun. 1, 2013 978-0-8032-4482-5

Moss (History, Emeritus/Colby Coll.; Eden in the Pines: A History of Pinehurst Village, 2005, etc.) presents a study of golf ’s development in the United States.

In this painstakingly thorough review of the history of golf in America, the author categorizes it as a |

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“Illuminates Orwell’s political convictions and gives fleeting but vivid glimpses of his personal qualities.” from george orwell

THE WET AND THE DRY A Drinker’s Journey

carry the story. Nesi shows how box-store price cutting and government tax policy combined to prevent businesses from making profits and instead created “the latest and most peculiar of the Prato businessman: the non-profit entrepreneur.” The author mocks economist promoters of globalization as “sorcerers and wizards and haruspices”; their predictions were wrong, and the empty mills and silent businesses of what had been part of Italy’s once-thriving economy show the results.

A tour de force that spares no one.

Osborne, Lawrence Crown (240 pp.) $25.00 | Jul. 23, 2013 978-0-7704-3688-9

A cosmopolitan and prodigious drinker conducts a tour to selected locales where alcohol flows easily and to others where such spirits are strictly forbidden.

Peripatetic imbiber Osborne (The Forgiven, 2012, etc.) recounts getting drunk in many places and recalls libations from hospitable venues like his British home, Brooklyn and Sweden. He also discusses arid Islamic precincts like Islamabad and the Bekaa. We visit Cairo, under the Brotherhood, and southern Thailand, where they host Malaysian Muslims seeking sex and whiskey. Osborne makes an ardent, artful contribution to a great body of literature on booze. Though he had difficulty scoring some bubbly for his girlfriend on a New Year’s Eve in Muscat, Osborne is still a debonair drinking partner, one who knows the authentic bars and pubs of the West and the wet oases in the parched lands of the Islamic Levant and Orient. Kota, he reports, “was a much nicer city than Sungai Kolok or Hat Yai.” In the meyhanes of Istanbul’s Istiklal, we learn, you will “down your raki with plates of borek, and slowly realize that you are an alien.” Adept of Dionysus and Bacchus, Osborne provides a convivial discourse on how liquor is made and marketed in exotic places. There are thoughts on the history and politics of potent drink and the Muslim antipathy to satanic Western ways. In the bars of the West and the speakeasies of Araby, the author celebrates intemperate alcoholic befuddlement and also the hangover after too many drams of distinctive distillations and fine fermentations, of Pernod, Jim Beam, Cutty Sark and Stoli.

For tipplers or teetotalers, an extended essay on drink in some precincts where it is welcome and others where it is criminal—rakish, rich and nicely served.

GEORGE ORWELL A Life in Letters

Orwell, George Davison, Peter—Ed. Liveright/Norton (560 pp.) $35.00 | Aug. 12, 2013 978-0-87140-462-6

A representative selection, culled from the 20-volume Complete Works, which Davison co-edited, of correspondence by and to 20th-century England’s fiercest literary opponent of totalitarianism.

There are very few letters from the childhood of Eric Blair (Orwell’s real name) and none from the years as an imperial policeman in Burma that formed his anticolonial and socialist views; the collection really begins in 1934, not long after the publication of Down and Out in Paris and London introduced the 31-year-old author under the pen name George Orwell. Most are

by Orwell himself, but gaps in the historical record are filled by correspondence from others. The letters of his first wife, Eileen O’Shaughnessy, are particularly valuable; livelier and much more personal than the author’s, they give intimate glimpses of the couple’s home life and sometimes-fraught relationship. Their warmth makes palpable the awful loss inflicted by 39-year-old Eileen’s death during surgery in 1945, a trauma only hinted at in Orwell’s dignified, reticent account of the event. In general, he is a brisk, businesslike correspondent; among the few exceptions are affectionate references to his adopted son and a few emotional 1946 letters to his London neighbor Anne Popham, which add some nuance to the 2007 controversy over charges that Orwell’s wooing style was aggressively close to rape. Readers seeking insights into the creation of Animal Farm or 1984 will find only a few scattered sentences, and nonfiction, such as The Road to Wigan Pier, is similarly referred to mostly in passing.

The correspondence does convey Orwell’s strong, principled political positions, especially his revulsion against fellow leftists who “set up a double standard of political morality, one for the U.S.S.R. and the other for the rest of the world.” Grim letters chronicling the worsening tuberculosis that killed him remind us how prematurely we lost this ardent voice for a single standard of truthfulness and common decency.

Illuminates Orwell’s political convictions and gives fleeting but vivid glimpses of his personal qualities. (28 illustrations)

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KISSING THE SWORD A Prison Memoir Parsipur, Shahrnush Translated by Khalili, Sara Feminist (240 pp.) $15.95 paper | Jul. 9, 2013 978-1-55861-816-9 978-1-55861-817-6 e-book

An acclaimed Iranian novelist’s harrowing account of the decade she spent in and out of prisons in post-revolution-

ary Tehran.

When Parsipur (Women Without Men, 1998, etc.) returned to Iran from France in 1980, she knew the country she had fled was in turmoil. She remained on the political sidelines, reading |

newspapers and magazines from the different factions vying for power just to stay informed. Her democratic neutrality did not save her, however. In 1981, she was jailed after the revolutionary guards who ransacked her home discovered a letter she had written but not sent that expressed her misgivings about the political situation in Iran. With a self-possessed simplicity that cuts straight to the heart, Parsipur details the nearly five years of what would be the first of three incarcerations. Fundamentalist Islamic dress and religious rituals were de rigueur for all prisoners, and solitary confinement or death awaited “nonconformists” like Parsipur. Kindness existed, but barbaric behavior among both inmates and the keepers with whom they often colluded was as much the norm as torture and random executions. “Fear had created monsters willing to do anything and go against any principal to survive,” she writes. What Parsipur found most disturbing of all was the fact that most of the prisoners and “officials” were barely out of their teens. After her release, her activities as a writer—and in particular, her novelistic writings on female virginity—led to two subsequent arrests and incarcerations. Harried to the point of illness and eventual mental collapse by the Iranian morality police, Parsipur left the country permanently.

Stark and haunting, this book stands as a powerful testament to not only the devastations of an era, but to the integrity and courage of an extraordinary woman.

work for a rural school trying to lift girls out of poverty. Some of the author’s “problems” may occasionally induce eye-rolling for some readers—in one chapter, he details how his need for “periodic respites from…driving past beggars and slums and sidewalk-sleeping laborers” meant taking a room in a five-star hotel so he could indulge in sushi for brunch at “one of the few places [he] trusted the fish.” These flaws aside, Prager is a solid storyteller, and the book is an enjoyable tour through an overwhelming and irresistible city.

A cute memoir of living in India with some advice for expatriates as well.

YOU DON’T KNOW ME BUT YOU DON’T LIKE ME Phish, Insane Clown Posse, and My Misadventures with Two of Music’s Most Maligned Tribes Rabin, Nathan Scribner (272 pp.) $16.00 | Jun. 11, 2013 978-1-4516-2688-9

The head writer for the Onion A.V. Club goes native with Phishheads and Juggalos.

Where many writers might have picked one band to follow on tour and focused on the band itself, Rabin (The Big Rewind: A Memoir Brought to You by Pop Culture, 2009, etc.) thought it would be intriguing to cover two bands from the perspective of their fans. And what better fans to explore than the most reviled and fanatic ones in popular music, those who follow jam band Phish and those in the shadow of Detroit’s lumpen Insane Clown Posse? On the face of it, the bands and their fans seem irreconcilably different. Phish, a quartet co-founded and led by guitar god Trey Anastasio at the University of Vermont, appeals largely to middle-class kids with some college education. The duo ICP, brainchild of a ninth-grade dropout named Joseph Bruce who calls himself Violent J, appeals mainly to young, working-class males. But both bands are steeped in their unique mythologies. Along the way, Rabin ran into people who defy the stereotypes—MAs among the Juggalos and straight-edge people among the Phishheads, for example. Each group’s tours also create anarchic carnival atmospheres (ICP quite deliberately) that celebrate and create the illusion of unending childhood. But Rabin got more than he bargained for when, midtour with Phish, he had something resembling a nervous breakdown.

The steady ingestion of psychotropic drugs, one accouterment both camps had in ready supply, may not have helped his mental state. Rabin’s personal misadventures, instigated by a tendency toward manic depression and irritated by paranoia over his beautiful girlfriend’s feelings for him, may seem an irrelevant distraction, but many will find that his gonzo approach to journalism makes him a spiritual kin of Hunter S. Thompson and Matt Taibbi.

A wild rock ’n’ roll ride.

DELIRIOUS DELHI Inside India’s Incredible Capital

Prager, Dave Arcade (416 pp.) $17.95 paper | Jun. 1, 2013 978-1-61145-832-9

The story of the author’s move from New York to Delhi.

After living in Brooklyn for years, Prager (co-author: Poop Culture: How America Is Shaped by Its Grossest National Product, 2007) and his wife took up his company’s offer to move to India for 18 months.

Leaving behind their Park Slope brownstone, Prager immediately fell in love with Delhi—at least for a while. “Five months later,” he writes, “I hated it.” The couple would “vacillate back and forth between the two extremes—love India, hate India, love India, hate India”—before finding a balance between the best and worst their new home had to offer. Prager structures the book as a guide for other expatriates, with chapters on food, shopping, workplace culture and transportation (especially Delhi’s traffic, about which Prager seethes). More than just a how-to guide, the book is an appealing memoir, as the author recounts his social blunders and interactions with curious neighbors. There are a few unsatisfactory moments along the way—e.g., his snarky swipes at New Yorkers and living in New York City feel dated and out of place. Prager’s wife never quite comes across as genuine, and readers learn more about her misadventures with India’s health care system than her |

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“Aptly titled, this bittersweet scrapbook demonstrates the kind of steely fortitude necessary to remain afloat through a lifetime of stormy weather.” from unsinkable

SECOND SUNS Two Doctors and Their Amazing Quest to Restore Sight and Save Lives

fitting arrival at “a point in her life where she can see farther and better than ever before.” The memoir, co-authored by former CBS late-night programming director Hannaway, greatly reflects this sentiment. Reynolds writes with regretless candor, fondly reflecting on a grand life in the Hollywood spotlight yet also recognizing the tarnish of imprudent romantic and financial decisions. Reynolds highlights many of her failures, the result of either sheer naïveté or gullibility, yet she remains continually nonplussed at the deceptiveness of people (particularly when hoodwinked by her second husband, con man Harry Karl). A promising business endeavor to purchase an aging Las Vegas hotel to house her opulent Hollywood costume collection ended up drilling Reynolds ever further down into debt left over from the Karl fiasco.

Reynolds bravely admits to poring over dozens of boxes of litigation paperwork just to write comprehensively about that heartbreaking period when she was eventually forced to auction off the hotel and many of her prized memorabilia and costumes, including the unprecedented $5.5-plus million sale of Marilyn Monroe’s original subway dress. The memoir’s second section brings much needed levity to Reynolds’ escapades and details her current life as a prideful octogenarian brimming with vigor. Perhaps the most compelling portions of the book are the pages of candid, insider commentary from each of the famed actress’ films.

Aptly titled, this bittersweet scrapbook demonstrates the kind of steely fortitude necessary to remain afloat through a lifetime of stormy weather.

Relin, David Oliver Random House (432 pp.) $27.00 | Jun. 18, 2013 978-1-4000-6925-5 978-0-679-60356-6 e-book

The tortuous route of two intrepid eye doctors, one Nepalese, one American, in their journey to eradicate preventable blindness in the Himalayas.

Journalist and co-author of another inspiring story of humanitarian accomplishment, the best-seller Three Cups of Tea, Relin, who died last year, pursued the two founders of the Himalayan Cataract Project, over several years as they established their partnership and shared mission. Sanduk Ruit, a Nepalese-born ophthalmologist, was profoundly unsettled by the high rates of preventable blindness in Nepal and returned to apply advanced techniques in microscope-directed cataract surgery he had gained under unconventional Australian eye doctor Fred Hollows. Modeling his eye-care mission for the legions of rural poor on Hollows’ groundbreaking work among the Aboriginal population, Ruit pioneered the use of mobile units and surgical camps in Nepal’s underserved rural areas to bring quick and efficient cataract surgery to the many poor people whose lives were ruined by preventable blindness. Attracting talented doctors from all over the world, notably the hyperactive mountaineer and Harvardeducated ophthalmologist Geoffrey Tabin, Ruit ignored his critics, who claimed the facilities were unsanitary or too costly to maintain, mastering the delicate surgery in an average of four minutes per patient, at a fraction of Western costs. Along with charitable funds from USAID and others, Tilganga, launched in 1992, expanded in 2009 and became self-sustaining by producing intraocular lenses; it has continued to thrive despite Maoist insurgency and massacre within the royal Nepalese family in 2001. The author, who evidently became a favorite of the doctors, even assisting in the hospitals, fashions a detailed, heartfelt account of the work of these dedicated pioneers.

Doubly moving in light of Relin’s own untimely death.

BRICK BY BRICK How LEGO Rewrote the Rules of Innovation and Conquered the Toy Industry

Robertson, David C. with Breen, Bill Crown Business (320 pp.) $26.00 | Jun. 25, 2013 978-0-307-95160-1

How LEGO, the closely held, familyowned Danish toymaker, rose to world leadership in its business class, flirted with bankruptcy collapse and recovered to stake its claim to global leadership once again.

Wharton School professor Robertson (co-author: Enterprise Architecture as Strategy: Creating a Foundation for Business Execution, 2006) and Fast Company founding member Breen (coauthor: The Responsibility Revolution: How the Next Generation of Businesses Will Win, 2010, etc.) map the history of the company in relation to the principles that currently underlie business thinking about how to organize innovation successfully for the long haul. Founded in 1932 by master carpenter Ole Kirk Christiansen in Billund—where its world headquarters and manufacturing facilities are still located—he company’s name is a play on the Danish leg godt, which means “play well.” Christiansen’s son, Godtfred, bought their first plastic-injection molding machine in 1947 and developed an “Automatic Binding Brick”

UNSINKABLE A Memoir

Reynolds, Debbie; Hannaway, Dorian Morrow/HarperCollins (320 pp.) $28.99 | Apr. 2, 2013 978-0-06-221365-5

The multitalented Reynolds nostalgically expands on a fruitful career and a chaotic adulthood.

The introduction, written by daughter Carrie Fisher, is appreciative and nods toward her mother’s impeccable memory and 70

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Will satisfy true-crime readers interested in the grimy realities behind Mafia glamour and undercover work.

(8-page b/w photograph insert)

by 1951. It was not until 1958, however, after years of experimentation, that they hit on the small hollow brick and its distinctive “clutch power” when the bricks are snapped together, that the company was propelled to world success. The authors show how chasing short-term popular trends in the 1990s alienated the customer base and sapped revenues, but LEGO recovered stronger than before, as their now-grown-up customer base stepped forward and helped transform the company’s world position with the volunteered designs and criticisms that went into successful products like the LEGO Mindstorms NXT robot. Turning back to their traditional base with things like Henrik Andersen’s 2004 design for a LEGO fire truck and products like LEGO Architect, also helped.

A lively account of a company whose products will be familiar to most readers.

THE DISTANCERS

Sandlin, Lee Vintage (224 pp.) $14.95 paper | Aug. 13, 2013 978-0-345-80676-5 A Midwestern journalist shakes his family tree and discovers a crop of distinctly American characters.

Not far from St. Louis is the hamlet of Edwardsville, Ill., where “you’d swear that nothing had ever happened there more dramatic than a passing thunderstorm.” For the forbears of Sandlin (Storm Kings: The Untold History of America’s First Tornado Chasers, 2013, etc.), it was their town, and the old house on Second Avenue built by great-grandfather “Bosh” Sehnert, scion of mid-19thcentury immigrants from Germany, was their refuge. Bosh was a bit odd; great-grandmother Agnes was stolid. She had been the best chambermaid in Bosh’s Sehnert Hotel, now long gone.

Resident in their house adjacent to the railroad tracks was brother George, a talented brewmaster. There, Bosh and Agnes boarded their grandchildren through the bucolic summers for many memorable years. There, Hilda and Mary kept the house through successive years of Independence Days and Decoration Days, Christmases and Easters. Wars came and passed, and eventually, electricity, radio and indoor plumbing arrived. The quotidian, mundane stories, the births, marriages and deaths, are augmented by precisely drawn character sketches, town gossip and household yarns. At bottom all about everyday folk, the stories are related with a fine elegiac sensibility. A parking lot is where the house once stood. In a synthesis of family lore and popular culture, Sandlin expands his genealogy of a conventional family into something considerably more.

A bit of general Americana and the ghosts of one family that settled comfortably for a while in a place between Chicago and the Mississippi provide an amalgam that now and again buttresses important matters known to all of us.

UNDERCOVER COP How I Brought Down the Real-Life Sopranos

Russell, Michael with Picciarelli, Patrick W. Dunne/St. Martin’s (320 pp.) $25.99 | Aug. 6, 2013 978-1-250-00587-8 978-1-250-02111-3 e-book Memoir of infiltration of the New Jersey Mafia, told with bluster and bravado.

In 1982, Russell—who co-authored this book with Picciarelli (co-editor: Bronx Noir, 2007, etc.)—was a state trooper trying to infiltrate organized crime in Newark, when a dispute over a pilfered briefcase led to Mafia associates shooting him in the head. His superiors realized his survival enhanced his undercover credibility, so they directed him toward an ambitious plan: pose as “owner of a small oil-delivery business and try to work my way into the good graces of the Gambino or Genovese crime families.” Having learned that “getting close to the wiseguys required that you be subtle,” he ingratiated himself with a Genovese captain. Known to the gangsters as “Mikey Ga-Ga,” Russell soon began working for “made member” Joe Zarra, “a greedy bastard [who] would want to capitalize on my earning possibilities.” The strict Mafia hierarchy of autonomous “crews” made Russell’s brazen undercover work easier; he even opened an office next to Zarra’s social club, allowing him to record the crew on audio and video. This proximity led to numerous close calls, on top of Russell’s concern that Newark’s mobconnected cops might finger him. The stress actually forced him to resign from the investigation, yet he soon returned as a civilian contract employee, ultimately earning his supervisor’s accolade: “One lone Irishman took down an entire Mafia crew.” The book’s strength is its specificity: Russell details his encounters with many notorious figures in New York’s “Five Families” and provides a good sense of the nitty-gritty tradecraft involved in undercover investigations. Yet, the plausible narrative is undercut by Russell’s braggadocio: He so often portrays the mobsters as stupid, and his own perfidy as overt, that he never really seems to be in danger.

WALKING WITH JACK A Father’s Journey to Become His Son’s Caddie Snyder, Don J. Doubleday (352 pp.) $25.95 | Jun. 11, 2013 978-0-385-53635-6

Novelist and memoirist Snyder (The Winter Travelers: A Christmas Fable, 2011, etc.) returns with the overwrought story of his training to be a caddie so he could help his son, who hopes for a PGA career. |

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“Don’t try to categorize this book; just read it and let it flow over you.” from alexandria

Written in the form of a journal, the book proceeds from late 2006 to early 2012, when the author’s son, Jack, after a winter’s discontent with tournament golf, decided he would surrender his athletic dreams. Snyder begins by declaring he wants to stay close to his son because he never wanted “to lose him the way my father had lost me.” He describes his 2007 decision to go to Scotland, where he lived frugally, often out of contact with his wife, son and daughters, to learn caddying. Jack made the golf team at the University of Toledo but was dropped from the team (poor grades), greatly disappointing the author, who wrestles throughout with this turn of events. Snyder, a talkative father, rarely misses an opportunity to preach to his son.

The clichés flow in an endless stream—keep trying, don’t give up, life is a struggle, “it’s the mistakes that really determine the shape of our lives.” Often more telling than the words are the silences. The author rarely mentions his daughters (what do they think of all this?) and writes little about his wife, even though she didn’t see him for months. The author is not shy about selfpromotion—we hear continually about his writing and how often his true grit has paid off—and he delivers some anti–Tiger Woods rants, as well.

A golf-is-life allegory that fails to make the cut.

surprises. Most readers will squirm to learn that upbringing exerts remarkably little influence on how children turn out.

They are far more likely to emulate their friends than their parents, however competent and loving. Abusive parents are a different matter; crime, abusive behavior and mental illness have a disturbing tendency to run in families.

A delightfully thought-provoking overview of the nature-vs.-nurture debate.

ALEXANDRIA The Last Nights of Cleopatra Stothard, Peter Overlook (400 pp.) $26.95 | Aug. 1, 2013 978-1-4683-0370-4

A thoroughly enjoyable combination of history, autobiography, travel and general musings about Alexandria.

Times Literary Supplement editor Stothard (The Spartacus Road, 2010, etc.) started writing about Cleopatra when he was in elementary school, and this book is the eighth version of his work. A vacation interrupted by weather landed the author in Alexandria, the Egyptian city of the Ptolemys. He was somehow adopted by two very peculiar guides—or guards—who did their best to lead, or mislead, his quest to finish the story.

Cleopatra was the last of her line; her oft-told story of intrigue, lust and no small amount of genius now has deeper background.

There is no way to trace the steps of Caesar or Marc Antony as they wooed her. The great library burned down, and the lighthouse is at the bottom of the sea, as are most of the buildings of old Alexandria. Stothard’s journey through prep school, public school, Oxford and Fleet Street is the curious history of his attempts at fully grasping Cleopatra’s story. The unusual findings of his schoolmates as they combed through the classics— e.g., Antony’s drunkenness, odd red tents of mermen—intrigue readers, but not as much as the players with which most are unfamiliar. Aulus Hirtius, one of Caesar’s continuators (extending the legend), is but one of the characters Stothard uses effectively to provide a sharper picture. It is these writings of poets and historians from 2,000 years ago that bring together the Greek and Roman influences that made Alexandria great. It is a joy to watch the classically trained mind assemble the story.

Don’t try to categorize this book; just read it and let it flow over you.

IDENTICALLY DIFFERENT Why We Can Change Our Genes

Spector, Tim Overlook (288 pp.) $26.95 | Aug. 1, 2013 978-1-4683-0660-6

Genes dictate our anatomy, emotions and behavior, except when they don’t, according to this ingenious account of how inheritance and environment—including our parents’ environments—vie to make an individual.

Physician and TV commentator Spector (Genetic Epidemiology/King’s Coll. London; Your Genes Unzipped, 2003) fills his book with entertaining anecdotes of identical twins (he is director of the world’s largest twin registry) and examples from popular culture to make a convincing case that inheritance is more complicated than we think but no less fascinating. The idea that genes make us what we are ruled for half a century, until the 1960s, when a revolutionary generation insisted that our environment makes us what we are. Nowadays, scientists agree that both have an influence, but Spector cautions that DNA does not hardwire our lives. It turns out that actions can physically alter genes and that—despite what we learned in biology class—we can pass acquired traits to our children or even grandchildren. This process, epigenetics, means, for example, that a person who overeats transmits the risk of obesity for several generations. Genetics turns up in surprising places. Identical twins raised apart have remarkably similar personalities, sharing qualities such as optimism, empathy and a sense of humor (or lack thereof). Environmental factors also deliver plenty of 72

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HOW TO MAKE A ZOMBIE The Real Life (and Death) Science of Reanimation and Mind Control

“Governments can delay an economic disaster by printing money,” writes the author. “Physics, to avoid the bankrupting of its theories, can resort to experiments with ever-higher energies.” Unzicker buttresses this statement with further accusations, taking special aim at peer reviewers who black ball “ ‘risky’ ideas that run contrary to established views…while boring, technical papers are usually waved through.” While carefully separating himself from cranks who deny special relativity or quantum theory on the one hand and religious fundamentalists on the other, the author offers a broad dismissal of modern theoretical physicists, whom he accuses of having “gotten lost in bizarre constructs that are completely disconnected from reality, in a mockery of methods that grounded the success of physics for 400 years.” Unzicker also targets the massive expenditures of funds on high-energy particle accelerators. Unfortunately, the author’s invectives are not matched by equivalent scientific depth. He simplifies the complexities of quantum physics and the Schrödinger equation to a “sophisticated technique, which boils down to the same math one uses to measure how springs—just like your Slinky—oscillate in three dimensions,” and he ridicules attempts to explain anomalies in astronomical data by inferring the existence of dark matter and dark energy, comparing them to Ptolemy’s use of epicycles to describe planetary orbits. He also disparages the failure of modern science to explain the discrepancies in size of fundamental forces such as gravity and electromagnetism.

Unzicker unsuccessfully attempts to bolster the credibility of his own sweeping generalizations by claiming the mantle of esteemed physicists such as Roger Penrose and Lee Smolin, who seriously question the direction of current theory.

Swain, Frank Oneworld Publications (256 pp.) $15.95 paper | Jul. 9, 2013 978-1-85168-944-6 978-1-78074-099-7 e-book

“This is not a book about fictional zombies. This is a book about what happens to the zombie when it crawls off the page and out of the screen and into our world,” writes SciencePunk founder Swain at the beginning of this thoughtful, colorful, slow poke through the world of zombiedom.

The slow pacing works both for and against the stories, alternately bringing a good and ominous feel and then letting things drift a bit. But no one will nod off during this grand tour of sorcerers, necromancers, secret societies, and people who mess with brains and the black market in body parts. By zombies, Swain is not specifically referring to the characters who traipse around in tattered clothing with their hands raised in front of them. Rather, he wonders about those of us with the glazed, undead look, sometimes doing others’ bidding in a violent manner, or especially, those who have been reanimated—brought back from the dead. To that end, Swain has a juicy cast of contenders responsible for such activities, and he presents them with point-by-point progress, leaving the facts to wow readers but providing both moody and electric atmosphere. The author explores the effects of keeping organisms— like humans—organically functioning after death (as eminent biologist J.B.S. Haldane said, “technique is everything”); the autojerker, which was more successful at delivering oxygenated blood than the teeter-totter, a seesaw device that tried to rock circulation back into action. Certainly, the unknowns are many, but the degree of scientific research into zombies will leave you agog—zombielike.

In this enjoyable and authoritative text, Swain will have readers wondering exactly how many zombies they brushed past today. (7 b/w line illustrations)

THE SOUL OF ALL LIVING CREATURES What Animals Can Teach Us About Being Human

Virga, Vint Crown (240 pp.) $25.00 | Jul. 9, 2013 978-0-307-71886-0

A veterinarian who specializes in behavioral medicine examines the spiritual bond between humans and their pets.

In the early years of Virga’s career, when he specialized in emergency medicine, he was struck by the way his animal patients responded to the warmth of human contact. He experienced a life-changing moment while treating a dog in shock, and that led him to change his specialty. Exhausted, he slumped down beside the animal, and as the dog nuzzled against him, its vital signs improved. In the years that followed, Virga came to believe in the deep roots of our human connection to animals. “What I see in their eyes is my own reflection…we share much more than we recognize,” he writes. Two out of three Americans own pets, which they treat as members of their family, best friends and confidants. In addition to broadening our

BANKRUPTING PHYSICS How Today’s Top Scientists Are Gambling Away Their Credibility Unzicker, Alexander; Jones, Sheilla Palgrave Macmillan (288 pp.) $28.00 | Jul. 30, 2013 978-1-137-27823-4

With assistance from science writer Jones (The Quantum Ten, 2008), theoretical physicist and neuroscientist Unzicker compares the current state of theoretical physics to a bubble economy. |

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“A must-read for any couple contemplating fertility treatments.” from cracked open

CRACKED OPEN Liberty, Fertility and the Pursuit of High-Tech Babies

perspective, they “embrace a part of our human nature that’s as vital to us as our hearts and minds.” Virga, who describes numerous instances from his practice, is convinced by his own experiences and modern research that “animals’ neurons are very much the same as ours, generating images, emotions, memories and thoughts.” That animal neuroses are also similar to those of humans—e.g., dogs with obsessive-compulsive disorder who obsessively bite their tails—is further proof. The kinship that we feel with animals, writes the author, “comes from our souls connecting with theirs.” They help us focus on the moment and experience the “heights of joy as well as heartwrenching depths of sorrow,” and they make us feel more connected to “the greater world in which we live.”

An insightful affirmation of our love of animals.

Zoll, Miriam Interlink (288 pp.) $20.00 paper | Jun. 1, 2013 978-1-56656-923-1

A scathing attack on the fertility industry in the form of a memoir by a woman whose experience was marked by repeated disappointment and physical and emotional trauma.

Zoll, founding co-producer of the Ms. Foundation for Women’s annual Take Our Daughters (and Sons) to Work Day, married at age 35 and began to think about having a baby at age 40. The fertility industry, she asserts, sells hope to women like her who have chosen careers over parenthood. The author seeks to reveal what she sees as the deception practiced by this largely unregulated industry, whose inflated claims for the wonders of assisted reproductive technologies have led women to believe that they can delay childbearing past the normal fertile years. After four attempts at in vitro fertilization failed, doctors told her that she could try again with a new drug, go for a donor egg or adopt. After some debate, she and her husband chose the donor egg route, but many thousands of dollars later, that method, too, failed to produce a baby. At age 46, years after embarking on this venture, she became a mother through adoption. Zoll compares the emotional toll of her expensive rollercoaster ride with assisted reproductive technology to the five stages of grief—denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance—proposed by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. Blended into Zoll’s account of her personal experience with this high-tech world are family stories and stories of her on-again,off-again romance with the man who later became her devoted and supportive husband. Reinforcing her claims about the fertility industry are statistics about its rates of success, which, had she known them earlier, would have convinced her to “never have set foot in an IVF clinic.”

A must-read for any couple contemplating fertility treatments.

IT’S ONLY ROCK ’N’ ROLL Thirty Years Married to a Rolling Stone

Wood, Jo It Books/HarperCollins (336 pp.) $26.99 | May 21, 2013 978-0-06-228061-9

Long-suffering rock-’n’-roll wife spills the dirt on life inside the world’s longest-running musical circus.

When Pamela Des Barres, the world’s most famous groupie, published her tell-some biography I’m with the Band in 1987, it opened the floodgates on a spate of titillating autobiographies from the likes of Bebe Buell, Pattie Boyd and Angela Bowie. The problem—in this case, the world of the Rolling Stones—is that plying these kinds of name-droppers against serious tomes like Stanley Booth’s fantastic The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones (1985) or even Keith Richards’ superb autobiography Life (2010) can be more than revealing about their true intent.

This time, we hear from former model and entrepreneur Jo Wood, who recounts 30-odd years as the girlfriend and subsequent wife of Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood. Wood keeps it light for the first half of the book, describing the enormity of the Stones in their heyday and the gossamer madness of living inside the world’s biggest band. Sure, there are a few groaners: “It’s no wonder that sex and rock ‘n’ roll go together like Jack Daniel’s and coke.” But her descriptions of the drug abuse she both suffered and enabled are startling graphic—e.g., the moment the author describes seeing the sun shining through Ronnie’s deviated septum. The guitarist, unsurprisingly, comes off as a grade-A narcissist who cheated on his wife with a bevy of beauties that included Kelly LeBrock and Ekaterina Ivanova. As the author began to build success with her own organic products, she made a breakthrough decades in the making: “In Ronnie’s eyes, I think there was room for just one star in the family—and that was Ronnie Wood.” There are a few gems here for Stones completists, but Wood’s story lacks the pathos of similar autobiographies like Marianne Faithfull’s.

Yet another point of view on the long saga of the Stones, this memoir reads like it has an agenda to tick off. (16-page color photo insert) 74

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children’s & teen BONE QUILL

These titles earned the Kirkus Star:

Barrowman, John ; Barrowman, Carole E. Aladdin (304 pp.) $16.99 | Jul. 9, 2013 978-1-4424-8928-8 Series: Hollow Earth, 2

JOURNEY by Aaron Becker.................................................................76 MASHA AND THE BEAR by Lari Don; illus. by Melanie Williamson................................................................83 GOOD NIGHT, SLEEP TIGHT by Mem Fox; illus. by Judy Horacek.......................................................................... 84 VORTEX by S.J. Kincaid...................................................................... 90 THE RISE OF A LEGEND by Kathryn Lasky..................................... 92 SYLO by D.J. MacHale.........................................................................93 SOPHIE’S SQUASH by Pat Zietlow Miller; illus. by Anne Wilsdorf..........................................................................97 COWBOY BOYD AND MIGHTY CALLIOPE by Lisa Moser; illus. by Sebastiaan Van Doninck..........................................................97 THE LONG, LONG LINE by Tomoko Ohmura.................................... 99 THE BLESSING CUP by Patricia Polacco..........................................100 FOLLOW YOUR MONEY by Kevin Sylvester; Michael Hlinka....... 103 WICKED CRUEL by Rich Wallace......................................................105 123 VERSUS ABC by Mike Boldt....................................................... 107

The magic—and confusion—of Hollow Earth (2012) continues in this befuddling sequel.

Opening recaps remind readers of twins Matt and Em Calder’s abilities to “draw,” or animate, themselves into paintings; of their mother’s disappearance; and of the evil plan of their father, now trapped in a painting, to open Hollow Earth and unleash its monsters and demons upon the world. Solon, the 15-year-old novice monk who inhabits their same Scottish island during the Middle Ages, plays a larger role in the story’s alternating chapters this time.

As the twins continue to test their magical abilities and plot to find their missing mother, Solon tries to puzzle out why a band of rebel monks wants him dead and wants possession of the Book of Beasts, an unfinished manuscript, and the bone quill used to write it. He discovers that whoever can use the bone quill to complete the Book of Beasts may unlock Hollow Earth. Again and again, Matt and Em travel back to Solon’s time, hoping to discover the manuscript first and keep the future safe. With the sophistication of the worldbuilding, the authors lose readers in the convoluted specifics. Even a concluding glossary fails to add clarification. The clunky, cliffhanger ending, in turn, whimpers rather than wows.

Those looking for a detailed magical world should just stick with Harry Potter. (Fantasy. 8-12)

THE BEST THING ABOUT KINDERGARTEN by Jennifer Lloyd; illus. by Qin Leng................................................................................109

45 POUNDS (MORE OR LESS) Barson, K.A. Viking (272 pp.) $16.99 | Jul. 11, 2013 978-0-670-78482-0

YOU’RE WEARING THAT TO SCHOOL? by Lynn Plourde; illus. by Sue Cornelison.......................................................................110 OLIVER AND HIS ALLIGATOR by Paul Schmid............................... 111 THE SKULL IN THE ROCK by Lee R. Berger; Marc Aronson; dev. by National Geographic.............................................................. 112

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Ann has a weight problem and a mother problem—and the two issues are likely connected.

A rising high school junior, Ann has fought (and lost) the weight battle since early childhood. Getting hilariously stuck in a too-small dress she tries on at the mall surely proves it. She clearly has a dysfunctional relationship with food, eating way too much whenever she’s troubled—which is to say quite

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“White pages highlight action..., but most spreads deliver fantastically intricate pen, ink and watercolor architectural illustrations that remain playfully engrossing.” from journey

often—and blithely rationalizing her behavior. Unwisely determined to lose 45 pounds in two months in order to look good in a bridesmaid’s dress when her aunt marries her girlfriend, Ann buys a diet program from an infomercial. Her account of suffering horrendous exercise videos and bad food is both funny and sad, and she falls off the wagon several times. She and her thin, driven mother don’t, at first glance, seem to have much in common. But when Ann sees her 4-year-old stepsister telling her teddy bear he’s too fat, she realizes both she and her mom have serious food issues that threaten her sister’s wellbeing. That recognition, presented in an authentic first-person voice, gradually paves the way for believable changes as Ann reevaluates failed friendships, her own role in consuming secretly spiked drinks at a party, and the potential for a relationship with a nice—and attractive—guy.

While lessons are offered, they are deliciously coated in readable prose and a compelling plot. (Fiction. 12 & up)

INVISIBLE

Bates, Marni Kensington (300 pp.) $9.95 paper | Jun. 25, 2013 978-0-7582-6938-6 Wit is the order of the day as the good girl who never fights back learns to do just that when she’s forced to defend her friends in this high school takedown.

Jane Smith feels invisible not only in school, but too often to her own friends.

But when the football hero insults her equally shy friend, Isobel, Jane literally punches him on the nose. The school counselor punishes her but not the hero. To make matters worse, she is assigned a hard-hitting front-page story for the school newspaper by the bullying editor and intimidating teacher—with pushy photographer Scott as her collaborator. When Jane’s story appears in the paper, everything goes wrong in a way that readers easily will predict. Of course the plot is absurd; it’s a comedy.

The author continues the formula she concocted for her previous books (Awkward, 2012, etc.), keeping the wit dialed up to 11 in a comedy of errors. Constant quips about school, life and current situations will delight readers. Nearly everything works for laughs, but Jane also learns some solid life lessons about bullying and courage, and she teaches some lessons about friendship to her own circle as well. Some romance, also transparent from the start, adds interest.

Next to be featured? The school queen bee. Readers who like Bates’ formula will want to stay tuned.

(Comedy. 12 & up)

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JOURNEY

Becker, Aaron Illus. by Becker, Aaron Candlewick (40 pp.) $15.99 | Aug. 6, 2013 978-0-7636-6053-6

Ignored by her digitally distracted family, a girl draws a red door on her bedroom wall and steps through.

A lush green forest twinkles with lanterns and strung lights; a dizzying castle towers, its gates, turrets and halls linked by complicated waterways; a hovering aircraft festooned with propellers and wheels holds an imprisoned purple-plumed bird.

Amid these marvels, the girl appears markedly ordinary with her common pageboy haircut, minimal facial features and simple clothes. She could be anyone, really, and readers will easily appropriate her journey as their own. Putty-colored grays and flat, boxy city shapes defined the girl’s urban reality, but here, color rules, modulating from mossy greens to slate blues to dusky purple—all punctuated with her crayon’s brilliant red and the yellow of a golden bird cage. White pages highlight action (the girl’s crayon whips up a boat, a hot air balloon and a magic carpet when needed), but most spreads deliver fantastically intricate pen, ink and watercolor architectural illustrations that remain playfully engrossing. They conjure contextual questions with no clear answers, or perhaps with so many answers one’s imagination finds itself opening door upon door and crossing thresholds, just as the girl did to escape loneliness. After freeing the bird, she needs its help for a quick escape through a small purple door back to her everyday street and back to a boy who wields an equally powerful purple crayon (an obvious and moving homage).

An imaginative adventure story whose elaborate illustrations inspire wonder, careful examination and multiple reads. (Picture book. 2-6)

UNDERCURRENT

Blackwell, Paul HarperTeen (320 pp.) $17.99 | $9.99 e-book | Jul. 23, 2013 978-0-06-212350-3 978-0-06-212351-0 e-book A potentially deadly trip over a waterfall turns out to be the least of teenage Cal’s problems.

Callum “Cal” Harris has survived the falls, a journey few others have. But the town of Crystal Falls in which Cal wakes to find himself is vastly different from the one he remembers. Cal is feared at school, he has a hot girlfriend, his best friend seems to hate him, and his beloved older brother is comatose. Struggling to adapt to this new reality, Cal feels hunted by an unknown presence that seems bent on thwarting his attempts to fit in. Blackwell’s debut for teens attempts to explore the concept of the multiverse,

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how the past shapes the present and the perception of reality, but it does none of it well. There’s no narrative tension, no character development and no compelling reason to turn the page.

Callum is an incessant whiner, which is understandable given that he has jumped universes and woken in completely new circumstances, but it also makes it difficult to generate any sympathy for him or his plight. While the multiverse has potential as a narrative device, Blackwell simply falls into the tired evil-twin trope and leaves it half finished.

The framework never jells, leaving the plot points suspended in the mist of the falls themselves. (Thriller. 14 & up)

LOVE IN THE TIME OF GLOBAL WARMING

Block, Francesca Lia Christy Ottaviano/Henry Holt (240 pp.) $16.99 | Aug. 20, 2013 978-0-8050-9627-9 Block’s latest can’t decide if it’s allegory, tribute or classical fairy tale.

Is Penelope the last person left alive in the world? The floodwaters that slammed through her Los Angeles neighborhood took her mother, father, brother and even her dog.

While she journeys across the ravaged land, myth-loving readers—such as Penelope herself, who reads Ovid for fun and tells her friends stories about “Odysseus, Aeneas, and Achilles”— might notice familiar themes. (Despite the title’s nod to García Marquez, the direct Homeric references dominate.) Penelope blinds a one-eyed giant in a chapter called “The Cyclops,” escaping by calling herself “Nobody.” In the Lotus Hotel, she meets addicts high on euphoric juice squeezed from flower petals.

The parallels to The Odyssey become even more obvious when Penelope meets a sexy young man in black motorcycle boots whose favorite book is The Odyssey itself and who entertains Penelope by reading from the section of Homer’s epic about the Lotus Eaters. The continuing allusions, sometimes explicitly remarked upon by Penelope and the fellow adventurers she gathers along the way, are unsubtle but not entirely clear. But that may not matter so much: Block’s trademark magical realism works best in a brief, dreamy journey such as this one, even if the destination is uncertain.

Mishmash or no, there’s something encouraging about seeing four queer kids on an epic journey across the postapocalyptic American Southwest. (Fantasy. 14 & up)

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THE GLASS PUZZLE

Brodien-Jones, Christine Illus. by Santoso, Charles Delacorte (336 pp.) $16.99 | $10.99 e-book | $19.99 PLB Jul. 9, 2013 978-0-385-74297-9 978-0-307-97993-3 e-book 978-0-375-99087-8 PLB Cousins Zoé and Ian must find the key to a glass puzzle or risk the destruction of their Welsh town.

Zoé Badger loves summering with her cousin, Ian, at their grandfather’s house in small, seaside Tenby. But things take an unexpected turn when they find an antique glass puzzle and unwittingly release Scravens—evil creatures with a craterous third eye and massive wings—into Tenby. The cousins, in turn, are magically transported to Wythernsea, an island long submerged underwater, whence the Scravens come. There they learn that Scravens are taking over the bodies of Tenby inhabitants—as well as terrorizing Wythernsea—and that they must save both towns from the creatures. To a gratingly earnest thirdperson narration, readers follow the adventures of Zoé, Ian and their friends as they attempt to defeat the Scravens. Adults either too daft or unwilling to be much help, and who behave in erratic ways, shake the credibility of this far-fetched fantasy.

Spot illustrations by Santoso are reminiscent of Mary GrandPré’s art for the Harry Potter series but lack her accurate representation of characters.

The interesting premise is bogged down by narration that doesn’t seem to fully trust readers’ intelligence and by characters who defy credibility, keeping it from rising above the bevy of middle-grade fantasies. (Fantasy. 9-12)

TUG-OF-WAR

Burningham, John Illus. by Burningham, John Candlewick (32 pp.) $16.99 | Aug. 6, 2013 978-0-7636-6575-3 Burningham charges up selected and rearranged illustrations from one of his early works with a new text that adds considerable bite.

Retold in the 1968 version (titled The Extraordinary Tug-ofWar) by Letta Schatz from an Ethiopian tale, the story features a clever hare who challenges scornful Hippo and Elephant to a tug of war, then puts them on opposite ends of the same rope.

Burningham does away with the original’s now-stodgy folklorese: “And Elephant would bellow, billowing with laughter, ‘Ho, Hare! I hear you are called “Big Ears!” Big Ears! You! Please look at me!’ ” He replaces it with contemporary, and much more abusive, language: “And Elephant would say, ‘Hare, you really are a feeble idiot, with your twitching nose and whiskers. That’s all you have.’ ” By the time the animal dupes discover the deception

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and vow revenge (“Let’s get the little runt!”), Hare is long gone.

In contrast to the sharp tone of the text, though the trim size of this new edition is only about an inch more all around, the spattered, scribbly illustrations look overly enlarged, with diffuse lines and dimly lit, indistinct details. No matter: They still serve to convey the thwarted bullies’ bulk and rage.

Young audiences will relish the outcome of this simple trickster tale and likely be startled into laughter by its edgy language. The little runts. (no source note) (Picture book/folktale. 5-8)

AWAKEN

Cabot, Meg Point/Scholastic (352 pp.) $17.99 | $17.99 e-book | Jul. 2, 2013 978-0-545-28412-7 978-0-545-53905-0 e-book Series: Abandon, 3 The third in Cabot’s kinda-sorta reimagining of the Persephone myth takes the trilogy to an appropriately Sturmund-Drang conclusion.

As the story opens, 17-year-old Pierce has embraced both immortal boyfriend John, lord of the Underworld, and an eternity by his side. All is not well in the land of the dead, though, as the Fates who watch over the Underworld have apparently abandoned it, leaving it vulnerable to the malevolent Furies.

A gumming-up of the movement of recently deceased souls through the Underworld to their final destinations has resulted in a “pestilence” that threatens both the land of the dead and Pierce’s mortal home, Isla Huesos (an alternate Key West). And then John is killed….With a posse that includes her kickass friend, Kayla, and her recently killed-but-resurrected cousin, Alex, along with some of John’s Underworld cohorts and a few doughty, newly dead souls, Pierce ascends to the surface to try to set things right. Plotting is not this book’s strength, as the rules governing the Underworld and the web of vendettas that fuels Isla Huesos’ maladies feel more than a little arbitrary; moreover, the frequent descents into classic paranormal-romance angst tire rather than titillate. But Cabot’s characterizations are mostly sharp, and when she indulges her talent for snappy dialogue, the book wakes up.

Though unlikely to win new fans to the trilogy, this closer offers its enthusiasts some moments to enjoy. (Paranormal romance. 14 & up)

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THIS STRANGE AND FAMILIAR PLACE

Carter, Rachel HarperTeen (272 pp.) $17.99 | $9.99 e-book | Jul. 1, 2013 978-0-06-208108-7 978-0-06-208110-0 e-book Series: So Close to You, 2

The mystery deepens as time-traveling Lydia struggles to set right the past that she inadvertently altered—driving her beloved grandfather insane six years before her birth.

Lydia knows the Montauk Project is no crazy conspiracy theory; her family’s been victimized by it twice now. Worse, she doesn’t know if she will ever see her beloved Wes, a Montauk “recruit,” again. Readers won’t be remotely surprised when he appears and whisks her back to 1989—the year her grandfather in this altered timeline was committed to Bellevue and then disappeared—so they can investigate and perhaps learn how to set history right. Oh, and kiss swooningly, of course. In 1989, Lydia poses as a recruit assigned to investigate, with Wes, a New York City politician who—gasp—has some connection to her grandfather. (How this top-secret, technologically advanced, hyperregulated operation fails to notice the black sweatpants and hoodie she wears instead of standard-issue shiny black spandex is just one of the many details this novel hand-wavingly dismisses.) The plot juggles three elements: Lydia’s quest to right her timeline; the Montauk Project’s cruelly sinister exploitation of homeless children as time travelers; and Lydia and Wes’ irritating pushmi-pullyu romance, in which either Lydia or Wes continually worries the other’s undying love has suddenly died—a ham-handed contrivance that does not noticeably amp romantic tension.

Guess what: There’s another cliffhanger. Stay tuned.

Or not. (Science fiction/romance. 12 & up)

GABY, LOST AND FOUND

Cervantes, Angela Scholastic (224 pp.) $16.99 | Aug. 1, 2013 978-0-545-48945-4

Gaby Ramirez Howard faces the same ups and downs as any 11-year-old girl, but they are made more complicated by her mother’s absence.

Three months ago, the factory where Gaby’s mother worked was raided, and she was deported to Honduras, a country Gaby has never seen.

Though she lives with her dad, Gaby basically parents herself with the help of her friend Alma’s family. Her physical and emotional needs are barely met at home. Gaby’s world brightens when her class begins a long-term volunteer project at the Furry Friends animal shelter. Like her mom, Gaby is an animal lover, and she develops her writing talent by crafting adoption

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“Clark’s debut is refreshingly bonkers.” from what we found in the sofa and how it saved the world

profiles for the cats and dogs. Although bullies torment her with taunts of “illegal” and “alien,” caring adults in the community and strong friendships empower the resilient Gaby to find her voice. Readers from many backgrounds will empathize with Gaby’s struggle to do what is right for the animals she has come to love at Furry Friends, as well as with her suffering, as she wonders if and when her mother will make the journey back to the United States. Cervantes’ debut novel presents young readers with an age-appropriate glimpse of what happens when immigration status separates families.

A timely, touching and nuanced portrayal of real-life challenges experienced by children in mixed-status families. (Fiction. 8-12)

WHAT WE FOUND IN THE SOFA AND HOW IT SAVED THE WORLD

Clark, Henry Illus. by Holmes, Jeremy Little, Brown (368 pp.) $16.99 | Jul. 2, 2013 978-0-316-20666-2

Can a crayon save the world? Maybe with the help of a domino and a sofa….

River lives with his aunt Bernie outside the town of Cheshire. He and his friends Freak and Fiona live in the last three houses still inhabited in the Sunnyside development. The rest were abandoned or obliterated by the local coal-seam fire that’s been burning for 12 years…long enough to get its own name: Hellsboro. When a beat-up green sofa appears at their bus stop in front of Old Man Underhill’s house, the three make use of it as a lounging spot…until they find a rare zucchini-colored crayon between the cushions and discover that the Underhill house has a new and more than slightly bizarre occupant. Alf (and his sentient sofa) enlist the trio’s help in trying to stop a takeover of Earth by a dictator from another realm. What do the local chemical plant, mysterious flash mobs and the deaths of River’s parents have to do with the dictator’s plans for Earth? Clark’s debut is refreshingly bonkers. It offers thinking kids humor that is neither afraid of the potty nor confined to it. Most of the characters (and some of the furniture) have their quirks, but there is a realism at the core that readers will respond to.

Puns and wordplay abound in this droll science-y/fantasy adventure that’s sure to please...and is, one hopes, the first of many from Clark. (Humor. 9-14)

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A REALLY AWESOME MESS

Cook, Trish; Halpin, Brendan Egmont USA (288 pp.) $16.99 | $16.99 e-book | Jul. 23, 2013 978-1-60684-363-5 978-1-60684-364-2 e-book A group of teens at a live-in institution for troubled young people bond, pull off a caper and overcome their issues in an amusing but overly rosy two-narrator tale.

Emmy, adopted from China by white parents, feels out of place and unwanted in her family. She is sent to Heartland Academy after retaliating against a tormentor at school, though readers will quickly come to understand that she also has an eating disorder. Justin, who resents his father’s absence, comes to Heartland following a suicide attempt and after being caught receiving oral sex from a girl he met earlier that day. Both Emmy and Justin speak to readers with engaging degrees of sarcasm and emotional honesty, and the interactions between the two narrators and among the other members of their anger-management group provide both action and moments of comedy.

Where the narrative missteps, however, is in the teens’ speedy recoveries. A field trip leads the group to reveal to each other the roots of many of their issues, and the pact they make for the afternoon—the anorexic girl will eat; the compulsive liar will tell the truth; the girl with selective mutism will speak—is implausibly successful. Final revelations, both of which involve the teens’ coming to understand or forgive their parents, read more like what adults wish Emmy and Justin would feel than what teens in their situation might actually experience.

Funny and fast-moving—but too much of the healing rings hollow. (Fiction. 14-18)

PECK, PECK, PECK

Cousins, Lucy Illus. by Cousins, Lucy Candlewick (32 pp.) $15.99 | Aug. 6, 2013 978-0-7636-6621-7

The young woodpecker featured in this tale is a quick study: After one lesson from his daddy, he’s ready to practice pecking on his own.

With her signature palette of bold primary colors, Cousins’ gouache world of familiar objects is a toddler’s delight. There are a variety of household and backyard items to identify, colors and patterns to find and things to count. The thick, handlettered, black text lends itself to pointing out key words. The fledgling starts his tutorial with a single die-cut hole in a tree and ultimately becomes a bit dizzy as he finishes with 53 on a page; the scene is a laundry room peppered with pecks. A few of the rhymes are a bit bumpy: “So off I flew— / I couldn’t wait— / across the grass / and onto the gate.” Children, however, will be so busy finding the openings, sized just right for little fingers,

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SUMMER READING

Middle Grade

ROBOT FRENZY

PLAYING WITH FIRE

Erik Craddock; illustrated by Erik Craddock $6.99 | 96 pp.

Jun. 25, 2013

Bruce Hale; illustrated by Brandon Dorman $15.99 | 320 pp.

Jun. 25, 2013

Stone Rabbit and friends face their most frightening nemesis yet right in their own hometown: a ginormous shark robot! In his eighth graphic adventure, Stone Rabbit and his friends Henri Tortoise and Andy Wolf help Judy the (genius) bird make a float for the parade. The bright, action-packed panels and goofy story are just right for reluctant readers, as is the glossary at the close. Readers new to the series will clamor for Stone Rabbit’s other outings; his fans will greet it eagerly.

(Graphic fantasy. 6-10)

Thirteen-year-old fosterling Max Segredo knows he’s just one stop away from juvie. Luckily, that stop turns out to be the Merry Sunshine Orphanage, where the third floor is off-limits due to a secret science project.

Max fits in nicely, until coded messages suggesting that his father, a spy himself, is still alive spark an urgent need to escape. This lightweight kid-spy romp should find some eager readers. (Adventure. 11-13) BO AT BALLARD CREEK

Kirkpatrick Hill; illustrated by LeUyen Pham $15.99 | 256 pp.

Jun. 25, 2013

ESCAPE FROM MR. LEMONCELLO’S LIBRARY

Chris Grabenstein $16.99 | 304 pp.

Jun. 25, 2013 When a lock-in becomes a reality game, 12-year-old Kyle Keeley and his friends use library resources to find their way out of Alexandriaville’s new public library. Starting with the premise that billionaire game-maker Luigi Lemoncello has donated a fortune to building a library in a town that went without for 12 years, Grabenstein cleverly uses the tools of board and video games to enhance this intricate and suspenseful story. Full of puzzles to think about, puns to groan at and references to children’s book titles, this solid, tightly plotted read is a winner for readers and game-players alike. (Mystery. 9-13)

A warm tale set in an Alaskan gold-mining town in 1929-30. Bo, a 5-year-old girl, was adopted as a newborn by two gruff but tenderhearted blacksmiths who’ve toiled in the mining camps of the Yukon for years. These unlikely fathers smoke a bit and swear a bit, but they love Bo with all their hearts. Events unfold at a leisurely pace in this narrative that’s enriched by authentic details that make the time and place come alive.

Some may find this overly sweet, but Bo is an endearing Pollyanna in a parka. (Historical fiction. 8-12) BORIS GETS A LIZARD

Andrew Joyner; illustrated by Andrew Joyner $15.99 | 80 pp.

Jun. 1, 2013 Boris, an ugly but somehow truly winsome warthog, is back for another outing. Though he already has lots of pets, Boris is determined to get himself

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a Komodo dragon. Does it matter to him that these oversized lizards might not make good pets since they have sharp teeth and poisonous spit? Not at all. When his parents don’t provide the desired pet, he hatches a scheme to get the local zoo to bring theirs to his house for a vacation. A fun romp with an anthropomorphized swine will leave beginning readers “hog wild” at their accomplishments. (Early reader. 5-7) THE THING ABOUT LUCK

Cynthia Kadohata $16.99 | 288 pp.

Jun. 4, 2013 Twelve-year-old Summer and her JapaneseAmerican family work every harvest season to earn money to pay their mortgage. But this year, they face unprecedented physical and emotional challenges. Among other strange occurrences, Summer was bitten by a stray, diseased mosquito and nearly died of malaria, and her grandmother suffers from sudden intense spinal pain. Now her parents must go to Japan to care for elderly relatives. So Summer, her brother and their grandparents must take on the whole burden of working the harvest and coping with one emergency after another.

Readers who peel back the layers of obsessions and fears will find a character who is determined, compassionate and altogether delightful. (Fiction. 10-14) BOWLING ALLEY BANDIT

Laurie Keller; illustrated by Laurie Keller $12.99 | 128 pp.

Jun. 11, 2013

ASK MY MOOD RING HOW I FEEL

Diana López $16.99 | 336 pp.

Jun. 11, 2013 A funny and heartfelt story about a girl dealing with the trials of middle school and her mother’s breast cancer. Readers feel the weight of the worry and stress overwhelming Erica as she narrates her struggle to balance a heavier academic load, increased household chores and caring for her 2-year-old brother so that her mother, exhausted from chemotherapy treatments, can rest. Balancing the heavy subject matter with generous doses of humor and an authentic young teen voice, López crafts a story that blends family and middle school drama successfully. (Fiction. 11-14) PI IN THE SKY

Wendy Mass $16.99 | 256 pp.

Jun. 11, 2013 Astrophysics and cosmology play around with haphazard cheer in an experimental comedy that could be a Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy for kids. Joss is 13 (well, “more like a few billion and thirteen”) and lives in The Realms, a huge place “inside what you call dark matter.” As seventh son of the Supreme Overlord of the Universe, Joss’ job is to deliver pies. Science and absurdity frolic together to gleeful effect. (Fantasy. 8-12) THE HIDDEN SUMMER

A bowling tournament gives the rolling raconteur introduced in the 2003 picture book Arnie the Doughnut fresh scope for wisecracks and wild misadventures. Arnie goes to the bowling alley weekly to meet his cheesy triangular friend Peezo and belt out hits (from “Livin’ la viDOUGH loca!” to “DOUGHNUT make my brown eyes blue”) at the karaoke machine for admiring crowds while his (human) buddy Mr. Bing hits the lanes. Their visits slide into a scurry of sleuthing when Mr. Bing’s new ball, Betsy, inexplicably starts heading for the gutter rather than the pins on every roll. Like triumphant Mr. Bing, Keller walks off with a “Stiffy Stu McShiny” award for this yummy chapter-book series opener. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 7-10) |

Gin Phillips $16.99 | 208 pp.

Jun. 13, 2013 A muted fairy-tale–like story about two 12-year-old girls who spend their summer days at an abandoned mini-golf course.

Neither Lydia nor Nell feels loved or appreciated at home; perhaps because of this, they are best friends and each other’s support system. When Lydia’s cold, self-involved mother has a tiff with Nell’s moody, perpetually dissatisfied mother, she forbids Lydia to see Nell. A satisfying psychological journey. (Fiction. 10-15)

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“Concise lines and brief poems—two to three pages at most— mirror [Kasienka’s] tentative steps in an alien world, offering snapshots of her experiences and thoughts.” from the weight of water

they are not likely to care. The final pecks, sans holes, are loving kisses from a proud father.

From the sunny, see-through cover to the final bedtime snuggle, this day in the life of an overachiever (naughty by human standards) is sure to generate chortles and great interest. (Picture book. 2-4)

THE WEIGHT OF WATER

Crossan, Sarah Bloomsbury (224 pp.) $15.99 | Jul. 23, 2013 978-1-59990-967-7

In this taut portrayal of the immigrant experience, 12-year-old Kasienka moves with Mama from Gdansk, Poland, to Coventry, England, to find Tata, her father.

The adjustment is difficult. At school, Kasienka is ostracized. At home, she questions why they are searching for a man who ran from them. When Kasienka complains, Mama questions her love. Kasienka feels powerful only when she swims at the pool—something Tata taught her to do.

That is also where William, a schoolmate, first notices her. Narrating in image-rich free verse that packs an emotional punch, Kasienka describes what life is like for a new arrival while also exploring universal themes of abandonment, loyalty, bullying and first love. Concise lines and brief poems—two to three pages at most—mirror her tentative steps in an alien world, offering snapshots of her experiences and thoughts. Her story is broken into three parts, emphasizing the stages Kasienka goes through, with the last providing “starting blocks,” as it were. Sweetheart William encourages her to swim; through swimming, Kasienka reconnects with her father; she and Mama make peace; and the school bully is rendered powerless in the face of Kasienka’s hard-won happiness. It is fitting that some of the last poems are entitled “Metamorphosis” and “Forgiveness.”

The Epilogue, “Butterfly,” offers good advice for living: “[P]ull, / Push, / Recover.”

Memorable. (Verse fiction. 10-14)

DOZENS OF COUSINS

Crum, Shutta Illus. by Catrow, David Clarion (32 pp.) $16.99 | Jul. 2, 2013 978-0-618-15874-4

races toward the right side of the cover, inviting readers to follow. Title-page art then brings readers back in time to the car trip to the reunion, but then the copyright and dedication pages mysteriously zoom in on restful hens. The story’s beginning explains this artistic deviation as the chickens scatter with the exuberant arrival of carloads of family members and their descent on the homestead. Artistic embellishments such as this and the matter-of-fact inclusion of a multicultural cast of characters enhance the joyful text in which cousins mischievously romp through their time together under the patient and tolerant eyes of the adults who love them so. In this sense, the picture book as a whole (words and art) feels much more akin to Gammell’s humorous, energetic art in The Relatives Came than to Rylant’s nostalgic, bittersweet, moving text. The result is a seamless, though in comparison, perhaps less complex or powerful, treatment of family.

An ebullient celebration of family. (Picture book. 3-6)

HAROLD FINDS A VOICE

Dicmas, Courtney Illus. by Dicmas, Courtney Child’s Play (32 pp.) $16.99 | Jul. 1, 2013 978-1-84643-550-8

Harold, a plucky parrot living in Paris, loves to imitate every sound that he hears—but can he find a voice of his own?

In apartment 4B, Harold can “flussshh” like the toilet, “vrrrrrrmmm” like the vacuum and even “bweeeee” like the blender. But surely the city has even better sounds. He slips out an open window and can’t believe his ears. In an onomatopoetic adventure, he meets the big voice of an ocean liner (“OOOOOOOH!”), the tiny voice of a snail (“shlurrp!”) and everything in between. But as beautiful as all of these sounds are, Harold grows tired of imitation. He longs to find his own voice. He takes a deep breath, opens his beak as wide as he can… and lets out a screeching “RAWK!” How embarrassing. But that unsightly sound just may bring him a flock of new friends.

Debut author/illustrator Dicmas shares a worthy tale, but her use of bright colors and bold brushstrokes are what make Harold really soar. With cocked head, wide eyes and feet that hardly ever touch the ground, this parrot is irrepressibly charming.

Children will relate to Harold’s struggle of growth and self-acceptance, but as a read-aloud, the sound effects will gleefully trump all. (Picture book. 3-6)

Reminiscent of Cynthia Rylant and Stephen Gammell’s Caldecott Honor book, The Relatives Came (1993), Crum and Catrow’s collaboration delivers a spirited, loving depiction of extended familial bonds.

Jacket art squarely identifies the child cousins, rather than aunts, uncles, grandparents or other grown-ups, as the focus of this story about a joyous family reunion, as a bevy of kids 82

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FAMOUS LAST WORDS

Doktorski, Jennifer Salvato Christy Ottaviano/Henry Holt (288 pp.) $17.99 | Jul. 2, 2013 978-0-8050-9367-4 An aspiring journalist finds romance and adventure in the newsroom.

Sixteen-year-old Sam D’Angelo has a dull summer internship writing the obituary column for the Herald Tribune, the local newspaper where she lives in northern New Jersey. In spite of the efforts of her friend, partygirl Shelby, to get Sam to take a break from her strictly workfocused routine, Sam remains chained to her desk, a dedicated newspaper writer but a miserable failure in the social sphere. As she puts it, “my own metamorphosis from ugly duckling to swan stalled out in the Cornish-game-hen stage.” Sam turns out to have a significant talent for writing, and she gets a break when a Holocaust survivor chooses her to record his story, which then makes the front page. An even bigger break comes when she decides to do a bit of sleuthing to help a fellow reporter trying to expose the local mayor, whom he suspects of corruption.

Together with her boyfriend, fellow intern AJ, Sam is on the case. Something of a love note to print journalism, the story is nevertheless snappy and contemporary, furthered by Sam’s wry, self-deprecating narration and convincingly colloquial dialogue.

Cleverly titled, realistically written, and on the whole engaging and sympathetic, this story rings true. (Fiction.

13-17)

MARIA HAD A LITTLE LLAMA / MARÍA TENÍA UNA LLAMITA

Dominguez, Angela Illus. by Dominguez, Angela Henry Holt (32 pp.) $16.99 | Aug. 20, 2013 978-0-8050-9333-9

Mary had a little lamb, and now María has a little llama in this bilingual presentation of a classic children’s rhyme,

for school to end, or make up their own stories about what is happening on the wordless spread of the town square as María makes her way to school. Though readers may desire a less abrupt ending, the setting choice and spirited illustrations make up for this lack of creativity in the text.

A fresh and enjoyable reimagining of a traditional children’s rhyme. (Bilingual picture book. 3-7)

MASHA AND THE BEAR

Don, Lari Illus. by Williamson, Melanie Barefoot (48 pp.) $7.99 paper | Aug. 1, 2013 978-1-84686-874-0 Series: Animal Stories, 4

Who’s afraid of a big bad bear?

This new addition to the fresh, new Animal Stories early reader series presents young readers with another folkloric delight. When young Masha enters a Russian forest to gather berries for her hungry brothers and sisters, she goes a little too far and gets very, very lost. A seemingly helpful bear offers to take her home, but unfortunately, he means to his home!

Trapped in a cave and forced to sweep the floor and make pies, the very resourceful Masha must devise a plan to outsmart the bear and find her way back to her family. An excellent choice for early readers with some confidence, this selection also makes a fine read-aloud, though a bit of background on the tale would add to the whole experience. Stylized, colorful illustrations brim with appeal, and occasional speech bubbles echo the story’s gentle humor. Controlled vocabulary, with just enough repetition to help young readers along, blends nicely here with the accessible plot, pitch-perfect timing, and clever, satisfying ending. Will Masha manage to return to her family? Will the bear have to learn to bake his own pies? Tune in to this cheery, engaging tale to find out!

Wit, humor and a resourceful heroine come together in an irresistible folk tale for early readers and young listeners to savor. (Early reader/folk tale. 4-7)

set in rural Peru.

Dominguez presents a straightforward version of the familiar rhyme, adding just enough new elements to transform it into a story. The text flows rhythmically in both the English and the Spanish, which are placed together on the page with the English in bold and positioned above the Spanish. The amount of text per page is brief and appropriate for a bilingual read-aloud.

The landscape and imagery transport the readers to Peru, a part of the world not often seen in picture books. The warmly affectionate gouache-and-ink artwork uses bold outlines and an earthy palette. Shifting perspectives and amusing details encourage investigation before turning the page. For example, readers can explore the map of Peruvian landmarks that María visits, count the hours on the floating clocks as the llama waits |

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THE HUNGRY WOLF

Don, Lari Illus. by Williamson, Melanie Barefoot (48 pp.) $7.99 paper | Aug. 1, 2013 978-1-84686-872-6 Series: Animal Stories, 3 There’s nothing as tasty as lamb for dinner….

A determined and rather hungry wolf meets a lovable and very crafty lamb in this North American trickster tale retold just for early readers. As with the other offerings in the series, this selection is right on target, with charming, colorful illustrations; crisp, clear sentences; memorable and entertaining characters; and a laughout-loud plot. In each chapter, the clever lamb thwarts yet another of the wolf ’s attempts to eat her for dinner, using her wits in innovative and surprising ways. She persuades the wolf her relatives are nearby, tells him she’s not yet fat enough and convinces him she must be accompanied by cheese. The writing features repetition to help youngsters practice—and succeed— as well as vocabulary nicely selected for readers who have just passed the rookie stage. Though a bit more information about the origin of the story would have been a nice addition, readers will thoroughly enjoy this selection and root wholeheartedly for the heroic lamb. A nice twist at the end shows a sheep who lives to laugh another day and helps her own lambs do so as well.

Excellent for home and school reading.

Youngsters will laugh along with the lovable lamb in this Wile E. Coyote prototype. (Early reader/folktale. 5-7)

SHADOW OF THE MARK

Fallon, Leigh HarperTeen (320 pp.) $9.99 paper | $8.99 e-book | Jul. 9, 2013 978-0-06-212800-3 978-0-06-212801-0 e-book In this sequel to her debut, Carrier of the Mark (2011), Fallon assumes readers have nearly complete knowledge of her previous book, but if new readers can figure out its basic premise, they’ll

muddle through.

Four teens gathered in a small town in Ireland have control of the elements: earth, air, fire and water. Druids and knights who protect the elements, but not necessarily their human carriers, help when they’re not fighting with one another, and members of the evil Knox family try to thwart everything. Protagonist Megan, the carrier of air, is permanently and completely in love with handsome Adam, the carrier of water, except when she’s almost irresistibly attracted to Rían, the carrier of fire. However, whenever Megan and Adam kiss, she inadvertently draws his element from him, coming close to killing him, except for the times that doesn’t happen. It’s quite a dilemma for poor 84

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Megan, who only wants to be young and in love. Young she certainly is. Whenever someone tells Megan not to do something, be sure that she will do it as soon as the whim strikes. As thin as the air Megan controls, the book’s major entertainment value lies in various suspenseful episodes, and the author handles these fairly well. Characterizations, emotional encounters and dialogue plumb all the depths of the common TV soap opera.

Light—very light—entertainment for the Twilight crowd. (Paranormal romance. 12 & up)

GOOD NIGHT, SLEEP TIGHT

Fox, Mem Illus. by Horacek, Judy Orchard (32 pp.) $16.99 | Aug. 1, 2013 978-0-545-53370-6 Bedtime diversions and traditional rhymes are a winning combination here.

When Bonnie and Ben’s favorite baby sitter, Skinny Doug, offers a bedtime salute of “Good night, sleep tight. / Hope the fleas don’t bite!” he embarks on a command performance of seven traditional rhymes. The not-very-sleepy duo keeps him going, as he recites from his personal repertoire: “ ‘We love it! we love it!’ said Bonnie and Ben./ ‘How does it go? Will you say it again?’ ” This catchy refrain follows each of the resourceful baby sitter’s rhymes. To their entreaties to repeat each one, Skinny Doug replies, “I’ll tell you another / I learned from my mother.”

After “Good night, sleep tight,” Skinny Doug offers “It’s raining, it’s pouring,” “This little piggie,” “Pat-a-cake,” “Round and round the garden,” “This is the way the ladies ride,” and “Star light, star bright.” The engaging, economical framing text is memorable and sweetly appealing, sure to encourage little listeners to participate. The finite number of rhymes introduced before the baby sitter hustles Bonnie and Ben off to sleep is just right: It’s enough for one sitting, where larger collections bring the inevitable negotiation about where to stop. Horacek’s simple, solid lines and primary colors are friendly, cheery and almost exuberantly inviting.

Sure to be requested and welcome for lapsits and reciting together any time of day. (Picture book. 1-5)

HOW TO BE HUMAN Diary of an Autistic Girl

Frenz, Florida Illus. by Frenz, Florida Creston (40 pp.) $12.99 | Jul. 1, 2013 978-1-939547-01-9

A teenage author addresses others with autism with a mix of expressive drawings and insights from her own experiences intended to help “give your brain the right tools to reconfigure its hardware.”

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“Here’s hoping the finale will be a return to the thrills and surprises of the first installment and not more love among the hackers.” from don’t look now

Her advice is presented in 23 not-really-sequential, illustrated “Steps.” These trace her progress from learning to “Figure Out Faces” and “Figure Out Feelings (your own first of all)” to tolerating imperfections in self and in others, balancing freedom with responsibility and, finally, accepting that “I’m just as human—and alien—as everyone else!”

The pictures are interspersed throughout the text, which is printed in a handwritten-style typeface (with a nod to author/illustrator and, here, her publisher, Marissa Moss).

They include a chart equating colors with moods, figures and tableaux with creatively spelled dialogue and captions, and paired “inside” and “outside” self-portraits on good days and bad. To judge from the long tribute her therapist appends, Frenz has received enviable quantities of parental and professional support from kindergarten on. Still, she’s the one who had to do the work of figuring out how to make her way in the world, and readers with or seeking to understand autism will find her matter-of-fact observations both savvy and easy to absorb.

A distinctive addition to the chorus of writers who are proving that “spectrum disorders” do not equal “silence.”

(Self-help. 10-14)

DON’T LOOK NOW

Gagnon, Michelle Harper/HarperCollins (336 pp.) $17.99 | $10.99 e-book | Aug. 27, 2013 978-0-06-210293-5 978-0-06-210295-9 e-book Series: Don’t Turn Around, 2 Hackers Noa and Peter step up their undercover battles against pharmaceutical giant Pike & Dolan as danger escalates for them both (Don’t Turn Around, 2012).

Pike & Dolan continue Project Persephone, their secret and deadly research ostensibly to end the PEMA epidemic striking teens across the country, despite having one of their labs exposed to the authorities by the teens. Peter has stayed with his parents in Boston even after discovering their involvement with P&D, while Noa has joined the Southwest-based Persefone’s Army, made up of freed subjects of P&D’s labs working to liberate others before they’re killed. Peter helps Noa via a secret chat group online while worrying that his ex-girlfriend Amanda might have contracted the always-fatal PEMA. Noa deals with internal problems within the army as she plans their next mission. In an attempt to find the new servers for P&D’s main computers, Peter increases his surveillance of Mason, a ruthless P&D agent, only to be drawn into Mason’s plotting; meanwhile, Noa grows suspicious of new recruits to her cause. Gagnon’s second in the Don’t Turn Around trilogy inches the tale forward with a few thrills concentrated at the volume’s close, but she spends far too much time examining from every side the various love triangles and quadrangles among its characters. Here’s hoping the finale will be a return to the thrills and surprises of the first installment and not more love among the hackers. |

Worth it to get fans from here to there; not of much interest as a stand-alone. (Thriller. 12-16)

WHALES AND DOLPHINS

Ganeri, Anita Illus. by Bull, Peter Kingfisher (32 pp.) $10.99 | Jul. 16, 2013 978-0-7534-6815-9 Series: Explorers

This collection of topically organized factoids about the whale family shares the flaws of others in the publisher’s Explorers series: an overbusy design; unrealistic, digitally assembled photo pastiches; and a series of useless “buttons” that purport to lead readers on a topic trail.

Two by two, the double-page spreads introduce cetaceans (a word not used in the book) as mammals, their ocean home, food, birth and family life, migration, river dolphins, and watching and saving whales. On each page are paragraphs of information, text boxes and a photo riddle; on pages with photo montages are numbered captions. Except for the pages on the birth of a whale, which feature sperm whales, these spreads include a variety of species. The composite illustrations show scenes that would be improbable in real life: Gray whales leap and spyhop over a leatherback sea turtle, a manta ray and a school of anchovies; whale watchers see, all at once, minke and right whales, a breaching humpback, dolphins and harbor seals.

The photographs come from a variety of commercial libraries, but there are no sources offered for the information nor suggestions for further research. The index is extensive but doesn’t include every animal mentioned.

For elementary school readers, there are plenty of better introductions than this concoction, including Caroline Arnold and Patricia J. Wynne’s Super Swimmers (2007). (Nonfiction. 7-10)

THE DARK BETWEEN

Gensler, Sonia Knopf (352 pp.) $16.99 | $10.99 e-book | $19.99 PLB Aug. 27, 2013 978-0-375-86702-6 978-0-375-89733-7 e-book 978-0-375-96702-3 PLB Three Victorian teens in 1901 Cambridge, England, become perilously embroiled in the Society for Metaphysical Research’s deadly investigations of paranormal phenomena.

After masquerading as a spirit apparition for a charlatan medium, 14-year-old Kate Poole finds herself on the street when society members expose her employer’s fraudulent practices. Desperate and pragmatic, Kate arrives at Summerfield

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SUMMER READING

Teen

BORN OF ILLUSION

A MOMENT COMES

Teri Brown $17.99 | 384 pp.

June 11, 2013

Jennifer Bradbury $16.99 | 288 pp.

June 25, 2103 The partition of India and Pakistan, based on a border drawn by British civil servants, rarely appears in Western literature, much less fiction for teens. Bradbury pens a careful, respectful—but fictionalized—account of the final days before the line between the countries was announced, recounting it in the voices of three teens.

Historical fiction that brings its history to bloody, poignant life: rare and notable. (glossary) (Historical fiction. 14 & up) SIEGE AND STORM

Newly arrived in the exciting Jazz Age– era New York City world of mentalists, mediums and séances, can Anna Van Housen hide her gifts from her jealous mother, even as her visions become more frightening? And is she really Harry Houdini’s illegitimate daughter? Sixteen-year-old Anna, capable of tricks of illusion and escape and aware of her own growing extrasensory powers, is tired of being an assistant to her mother, Marguerite—a fraud who wants to be the world’s most famous medium. With an eye-catching jacket cover, this wordy mix of magic, history and romance will appeal to fans of Libba Bray. (Historical fantasy. 13 & up)

Leigh Bardugo $17.99 | 448 pp.

June 11, 2013

THE PIRATE’S WISH

The Grisha Trilogy turns from bildungsroman to political thriller in its second installment. Sun Summoner Alina and former Ravkan army tracker Mal, once her childhood friend and now her would-be love, are on the run. All they want is to put Ravka and the megalomaniacal Darkling far behind them. Scheming and action carry readers at a breathless pace to an end that may surprise them and will definitely leave them panting for the series’ conclusion.

(Fantasy. 13 & up)

Cassandra Rose Clarke $9.99 | 320 pp.

June 4, 2013 Clarke entertainingly modernizes a classic pirate tale by including steampunk machines in naval battles, employing clever wordplay— the man-eating, beastly manticores really eat only men— and giving the requisite evil magician a femme-fatale makeover. Thrilling action combines with surprising character revelations in this satisfying sequel. (Fantasy. 13 & up) REALITY ENDS HERE

Alison Gaylin $4.99 (e-book) | 250 pp.

June 11, 2013 Sixteen-year-old Estella Blanchard is the eldest sister in the hit reality TV show Seven Is Heaven. But it is not until she receives a mysterious Christmas present hinting 86

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that her deceased father might be alive that things really start to get real. The nods to familiar Hollywood and music-industry figures will quickly date this story, but reality-show lovers and haters alike will enjoy the behind-the-scenes perspective. (Mystery. 12 & up) PROXY

Alex London $17.99 | 384 pp.

June 18, 2013

spectral presence of those caught in the Zwischenraum between mortal life and the hereafter. Jacob Grimm has been a constant presence since Jeremy was 6, a stand-in for Jeremy’s absent mother and his absentminded father. Readers who love spotting allusions will appreciate this intelligent book’s robust vocabulary, its inclusion of French, German and Swedish words, and the real scholarship behind it. (Fantasy. 11-15) WITCH FIRE

Sixteen-year-old Syd is a good guy; but he’s “proxy” to a “patron,” so Syd has to pay for someone else’s crimes. In a post-apocalyptic, near future, gay teen Sydney Carton was a “swampcat” orphan from the eastern wastes of what was once America. The Benevolent Society rescued him, named him after the Dickens character and charged him for the rescue as well as his future education. Whipping Boy + Blade Runner with a sprinkling of The Hunger Games (plus, of course, a dash of A Tale of Two Cities) = a treat for teen SF fans. (Science fiction. 12 & up) CATCH RIDER

Jennifer H. Lyne $16.99 | 288 pp.

June 4, 2013 Powerful writing propels a well-plotted horse story in Lyne’s impressive debut.

Sidney Criser might still be 14, but that doesn’t stop her from driving the junk car her uncle gave her an hour over mountains to clean stalls at a rich woman’s barn. Sid grew up tough, and she can ride anything, but times are desperate. Everything comes together here—setting, dialogue, horse details and, most impressively, voice—so that the near–fairytale ending works; like the rest of the book, it feels absolutely true. A standout. (Fiction. 14 & up) FAR FAR AWAY

Tom McNeal $17.99 | 384 pp.

June 11, 2013 “Listen, if you will,” whispers the ghost of Jacob Grimm to Jeremy Johnson Johnson and to the readers of this delightful, modernday fairy tale. Jeremy has the rare ability to sense the |

Laura Powell $17.99 | 336 pp.

June 4, 2013 In this largely successful sequel to Burn Mark, Lucas and Glory, trained in the use of their considerable fae powers to fight witchcrime, pose as students to investigate Wildings, an elite Swiss boarding school believed to have terrorist ties. Each is restless, conflicted and awkwardly aware of their growing mutual attraction. Connected to a leading coven/crime family, Glory’s not entirely happy to be working for a government whose centuries-old Inquisition once terrorized witches and continues to marginalize them. Smart, suspenseful and delicious.

(Urban fantasy. 14 & up) GOLDEN BOY

Tara Sullivan $16.99 | 368 pp.

June 27, 2013 Some call Habo a zeruzeru—a zerozero—nothing. Others willingly pursue the riches his albino body parts will bring on the black market in Sullivan’s intense debut.

With his white skin, shaky, blue, unfocused eyes, and yellow hair, 13-year-old Habo fits nowhere in his chocolate-brown Tanzanian family—not with his brothers, who shun him, nor even with his mother, who avoids his touch. Did this bad-luck child even cause his father to abandon him at his birth? A riveting fictional snapshot of one Tanzanian boy who makes himself matter. (Fiction. 12-16)

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“Haydu’s debut novel for teens is not for the emotionally faint of heart, but those who can withstand it won’t ever regret accompanying Bea... on a profoundly uncomfortable and frenetic journey” from ocd love story

College, where society member Oliver Thompson discovers she’s the illegitimate daughter of his late friend and offers her a temporary job. Here, Kate meets Thompson’s impulsive niece, Elsie Atherton, and skeptical Asher Beale, son of Thompson’s American colleague. Elsie suffers from seizures, during which she sees and hears spirits of the recently deceased, while Asher’s estranged from his father and at loose ends. When several dead bodies surface on campus, raising disturbing questions, Kate, Elsie and Asher bond as they explore how far society members will go to test their theories of near-death experience. Gensler captures the suspenseful atmosphere of a time when people were obsessed with the paranormal and loosely bases many characters on historical figures prominent in psychical research during this period.

Lovers of intrigue should enjoy this lively Victorian mystery whose teen heroes experience danger, romance and ethical dilemmas as they delve into “the dark between.” (author’s note with references) (Historical fiction. 12 & up)

LEARN TO SPEAK FILM A Guide to Creating, Promoting & Screening Your Movies Glassbourg, Michael Illus. by Kulak, Jeff Owlkids Books (96 pp.) $22.95 | $14.95 paper | Aug. 15, 2013 978-1-926973-84-5 978-1-926973-85-2 paper Series: Learn to Speak…

A quick overview of how movies are made, offering encouragement and generic advice rather than specific information.

Glassbourg, a veteran instructor of film and TV production, breaks the process of creating a movie down into simplified steps—from gathering ideas, creating a script, and learning how to think pictorially with still photography and storyboarding to production management, editing and marketing. Unfortunately, though he drops big names, uses recent and classic films as examples, and gathers comments from working professionals in the industry, the visuals are not stills or shots of actual sets or equipment but retro, graphic-style figures done in a limited range of solid hues that add color but only rarely any useful detail. He presents an almost dizzying array of film-related occupations, but his brief notes on what such arcane folk as location managers, production coordinators, Foley editors, key grips and other specialists do are unlikely to enlighten readers. Moreover, the vague references to CGI (confusingly dubbed “VFX,” which is actually an older, broader term encompassing more than just digital wizardry), electronic press kits, sound design, social media and other topics similarly just skim the surface.

Readers may come away knowing how to talk the talk, as the title promises, but little more. (Nonfiction. 11-13)

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OCD LOVE STORY

Haydu, Corey Ann Simon Pulse/Simon & Schuster (352 pp.) $16.99 | Jul. 23, 2013 978-1-4424-5732-4 Haydu’s debut novel for teens is not for the emotionally faint of heart, but those who can withstand it won’t ever regret accompanying Bea, a high school senior recently diagnosed with OCD, on a profoundly uncomfortable and frenetic journey dominated by her increasingly manic compulsions.

When Bea kisses a strange boy during a blackout at a school dance, it’s clear she’s a little eccentric, but it isn’t until her therapist slips several pamphlets about OCD into Bea’s hands that readers will recognize her more extreme tendencies for what they truly are. Haydu is a masterful wordsmith, and readers will likely find themselves ready to crawl out of their skin as Bea’s need to perform certain rituals, even at the risk of alienating those she loves, becomes all-consuming. The one bright spot in Bea’s life is a budding romance with Beck, the boy from the school dance, who resurfaces in Bea’s group-therapy sessions.

He’s plagued by issues of his own, and Bea finds comfort in a new relationship with someone who also has “one foot outside the border and into crazytown.” They are about as dysfunctional a pair as two people could be, but they’re also heartbreakingly sweet and well-suited for one another.

A raw and well-crafted alternative to run-of-the-mill teen romances that also addresses tough mental health issues head-on. (Fiction. 14 & up)

THE TIME FETCH

Herrick, Amy Algonquin (320 pp.) $16.99 | Aug. 13, 2013 978-1-61620-220-0

A hodgepodge quartet of Brooklyn teens joins forces to defend against the unraveling of time.

Edward prefers invisibility to eighthgrade social echelons. Feenix is a gangly queen bee who dishes up acidic insults and trickery. Painfully shy Brigit has been rendered mute by a familial tragedy. Athletic Danton is the goodwill ambassador and friend to all. When they each touch a peculiar stone, they become the only ones capable of preventing the destruction of time. The stone is a Time Fetch, containing time foragers who, under the right command, gather bits of unused time. In the wrong hands, they spell a fast-forward destruction of the world.

With four starkly different eighth-grade archetypes, readers are likely to find themselves somewhere in the mix. Each character is interesting enough (though Edward’s pagan aunt is generally more intriguing than all four combined), and the book isn’t without quirky moments: three gruesome sister witches,

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panthers stalking in Prospect Park, a shape-shifting villain with backward thumbs. Hope for a fluid narrative is stalled by theorizing and philosophizing about time, and occasional choppy phrasing is equally off-putting.

Mostly fun for confirmed fantasy fans, and even their enthusiasm will be diluted by what feels less like narrative and more like lesson. (Fantasy. 12-14)

WEIRD SEA CREATURES

Hoyt, Erich Firefly (64 pp.) $19.95 | $9.95 paper | Jul. 1, 2013 978-1-77085-197-9 978-1-77085-191-7 paper

much, dear, / right from the start.” Love at first sight deepens as the pages turn, becoming that special relationship of mutual devotion unique to a grandmother and grandchild. While this displays no shortage of greeting-card syrup in its sentiment, its gentleness will make for nice initial read-aloud sessions for the intended audience and an appropriately thoughtful gift from any new grandma to grandchild (as blank lines for inscription, a “special letter” to the grandchild and a picture of grandmother and grandchild attest).

An unabashedly idealized but nevertheless wholehearted hymn to grandmotherhood (Picture book. 2-4)

THE WHOOPIE PIE WAR

Close-up photos of 50 creatures— gathered, mostly, from ocean deeps—demonstrate that even our own planet’s residents can look really, really alien.

The main event is prefaced by an introductory essay explaining the photographers’ methods as well as the mechanisms of bioluminescence and other adaptations to deep sea conditions.

The following picture gallery features full-page side or front views of animals ranging from bulbous sea cucumbers and sea anemones to an exaggeratedly toothy viperfish, a writhing benthic octopus and a furry crustacean evocatively dubbed a yeti crab. Captions note each creature’s diet, habitat, scientific name (if any—several are too newly discovered to have an official one) and physical characteristics. As the specimens were all photographed not in natural settings but on the surface under controlled conditions, each is suspended against a solid black background and brightly, evenly lit. Though it’s impossible to tell which parts glow naturally, subtle colors shine, and complex surface features are thrown into high relief. The portraits all look about the same size, though the original subjects were between 3 feet and 1/24th of an inch in length.

Eerie, riveting eye candy for budding biologists and casual browsers alike (though it is a shame there is no bibliography). (index) (Nonfiction. 7-11)

GRANDMA LOVES YOU!

James, Helen Foster Illus. by Brown, Petra Sleeping Bear Press (32 pp.) $14.99 | Jul. 1, 2013 978-1-58536-836-5

Jenkins, Emily Illus. by Bliss, Harry Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins (160 pp.) $14.99 | $8.99 e-book | Jul. 23, 2013 978-0-06-180226-3 978-0-06-220843-9 e-book Series: Invisible Inkling, 3 A whoopie-pie truck threatens the Wolowitz family ice cream business in this third adventure starring fourth-grader Hank and his invisible bandapat friend, Inkling.

While Hank’s father desperately tries to compete with the interloper, whose whoopie-pie ice cream filling is not local or organic but whose pumpkin cake is delicious, Hank has his own struggles. His one-time friend Patne now spends more time with Henry Kim. And unlike his neighbor Chin and the two boys he calls his half-friends, he’s been relegated to the Neons, the beginner section in swim class. Inkling tries to help him, but it’s hard to learn swimming moves from someone invisible. And it’s still important to keep Inkling’s existence a secret. For readers new to this (mostly) realistic series set in the author’s own Brooklyn, Hank and Inkling offer background in the opening chapter. Those who’ve been with the two since the beginning of the school year will be pleased to see Hank developing focus and to see them both finding friends. The first-person narrative moves along briskly, with plenty of dialogue and Bliss’ grayscale illustrations to break up the pages. (Final art not seen.)

With humor and sympathy for her appealing protagonist and his secret friend, Jenkins continues a strong series for readers of short chapter books. (Fantasy. 7-10)

The arrival of a new grandchild is joyously celebrated in this grandmotherly ode to their new life together.

Tenderhearted affection is displayed through the softly hued watercolors of furry, cuddly rabbits and is combined with gushing verse recited by one delighted grandmother bunny to her sweet and innocent grandbaby. “The moment I saw you, / I fell in love, / Honey, my bunny, / my sweet turtledove. // Wiggling and giggling, / you captured my heart. / I loved you so |

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NORTH OF NOWHERE

Kessler, Liz Candlewick (272 pp.) $15.99 | Aug. 6, 2013 978-0-7636-6727-6

Thirteen-year-old Mia tries to solve the mystery of her grandfather’s disappearance and make a friend in this timetravel adventure exploring the lasting bonds of family.

When Mia’s grandfather vanishes without explanation from the remote seaside town of Porthaven, Mia and her mom rush to Gran’s side. Missing her beloved Grandad yet unhappy at spending her term break in a place with neither Internet nor friends, Mia finds a diary aboard a docked fishing vessel and begins a correspondence with Dee, a potential friend. Why are all their plans to meet thwarted?

Peter, on vacation with his family, attempts to go to Luffsands, the island where Dee lives, to bring her to the mainland—only to go missing himself as the boat and its odd compass travel back and forth between times 50 years apart. Kessler nicely captures Mia’s teen relationship with her mom and the thawing of her cool relationship with Gran. The storm that topples Luffsands’ homes into the sea resonates with today’s natural-disaster news. However, the time-travel logistics are confusing; the conclusion, although upbeat, is difficult to comprehend; and Mia’s attraction to Peter, once readers understand exactly who he is, is unsettling.

The story does not measure up to its intriguing title and inviting cover. (Fantasy. 10-14)

VORTEX

Kincaid, S.J. Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins (400 pp.) $17.99 | $9.99 e-book | Jul. 1, 2013 978-0-06-209302-8 978-0-06-209304-2 e-book Series: Insignia, 2 Kincaid’s sequel to Insignia (2012) moves beyond derivative fun to real depth.

Ever-rebellious Tom Raines has advanced with his pals Vik and Wyatt to Middle Company at the Pentagonal Spire. They’ve reached the level where they need to cultivate corporate sponsors in order to join the elite virtual warriors who conduct the ongoing space-based war between the Russo-Chinese and Indo-American alliances for control of the moon. Tom may be preternaturally great at virtual-war skillz, but he is horrible at sucking up and almost immediately alienates every single multinational corporate head he needs to impress. Meanwhile, Tom continues to pursue his odd but intense secret relationship with crack RussoChinese combatant Medusa and begins to suspect that Yuri, their Russian friend at the Spire, whom Wyatt “unscrambled” 90

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in the first book, may not be as innocent as they had thought.

Kincaid lays a lot down, twining her increasingly complex plot and characterizations with Tom’s growing awareness of the poisonous “military-industrial-media complex.” As Eisenhower feared, it has made war a way of life that enriches a very few and impoverishes the many—one corporate head has bought Yosemite as his own private playground, one of many unsubtle but all-too-plausible symbols Tom contemplates. Action fans, fear not: For all the deep thinking Tom and readers undertake, pace, adventure and fun are not compromised one whit.

A surprisingly and satisfyingly rich middle volume in a trilogy that exceeds popcorn expectations. (Science fiction. 13-16)

MY DADDY, DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

King III, Martin Luther Illus. by Ford, A.G. Amistad/HarperCollins (40 pp.) $15.99 | Aug. 1, 2013 978-0-06-028075-8

His oldest son remembers the civil rights leader with affection and pride.

Called Marty as a child, Martin Luther King III spent his childhood learning difficult lessons about segregation, jail and protest marches. He and his sister were eager to go to an amusement park until their parents finally told them that it was only for white people. When he and his brother received toy guns for Christmas, they were told that guns are destructive weapons and watched as their parents burnt them in a bonfire. In the third grade, the author reluctantly integrated a school and faced taunts, relatively mild in the book, as the only African-American in his class. As importantly, Dr. King was a loving and playful father to his children. Adults sharing this title with young readers can make a connection between the words of Dr. King’s landmark “I Have a Dream” speech on August 28th, 1963, and their own family memories.

Ford’s full-page color paintings bring to mind photographs of the period in their depiction of family scenes and civil rights marches. Final art not seen.

An effective title to introduce young readers to Dr. King’s message of peace and equal rights; though it’s hardly the only picture book about the slain leader, the child’s-eye view is a valuable one. (afterword) (Picture book/biography 4-7)

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“The authors, an acclaimed writer for teens and a doctor well-known for her medical journalism, do a remarkable job incorporating both riveting sports action and sobering medical facts in the narrative.” from second impact

SECOND IMPACT

Klass, David; Klass, Perri Frances Foster/Farrar, Straus & Giroux (288 pp.) $16.99 | Aug. 6, 2013 978-0-374-37996-4 Carla Jenson, sports reporter for her school paper, convinces Jerry Downing, star quarterback and excellent writer, to blog about the team’s season—a novel idea with unexpected repercussions.

Carla, an athlete in her own right, is somewhat of an outsider to the working-class community and school. Jerry has always been a centerpiece of the team, with one exception: a suspension caused by his involvement in a booze-filled party and a serious car accident. Since his punishment and return, he has been set on redemption. A torn ACL disrupts Carla’s athletic career and causes her to focus on the physical vulnerabilities of players. This awareness drives Carla to pursue the sensitive issue of sports-related concussions even though she is opposed

by Jerry and practically everyone else in the school and town as the controversy escalates. The story unfolds through their blog posts, comments to the posts and email exchanges, and readers learn about both characters and how much the adults in the school and community have invested in the issues. The authors, an acclaimed writer for teens and a doctor well-known for her medical journalism, do a remarkable job incorporating both riveting sports action and sobering medical facts in the narrative.

Most of all, the passion that Carla brings to telling her story and the desire Jerry has for his team’s success will resonate with aspiring journalists and teen sports fans alike.

(Fiction. 12 & up)

HYPNOTIZE ME

Korman, Gordon Scholastic (240 pp.) $16.99 | $16.99 e-book | Aug. 1, 2013 978-0-545-50322-8 978-0-545-50327-3 e-book Series: Hypnotists, 1 An unsettling premise and wildly escalating threats jump-start Korman’s newest series.

Jackson Opus is uneasy about his ability to, sometimes, make people do exactly what he tells them to—until he’s invited to join a training program at the mysterious Sentia Institute, where he learns that he’s an uncommonly gifted member of a rare but not unknown breed of natural-born “mind-benders.” Initially dazzled by the glittering promises of world-changing powers offered by Sentia’s founder, Elias Mako, Jax soon gets the feeling that Mako has a hidden agenda. That feeling becomes a certainty after Jax meets the Sandman’s Guild, an underclass of benders struggling with the ability’s addictive lure, and records a video for, supposedly, experimental purposes |

that hypnotizes anyone who sees it. Despite such tongue-incheek highlights as a guild meeting modeled on an AA support group and a “Sorcerer’s Apprentice”–style scene in the wake of a string of badly worded hypnotic commands, the story takes a suspenseful turn. Jax discovers that his own parents have been implanted with a deadly posthypnotic command to keep him in line and that Mako has “bent” the leading U.S. presidential candidate.

There’s action aplenty, and belly laughs too—though the implication that benders have played significant roles in history and are among us now may leave readers feeling queasy. (Suspense fantasy. 10-13)

OVERPOWERED

Kruger, Mark H. Simon & Schuster (432 pp.) $16.99 | Aug. 27, 2013 978-1-4424-3128-7 Four very different teens team up to fight the corporation that owns their too-perfect town.

Sixteen-year old Nica has traveled the world with her journalist mom since she was a baby. Sophisticated and selfsufficient, she resents her mother’s decision to send her to live with her doctor father in his little Colorado town. At first, the kids in her new high school treat her with almost too much friendliness, except for Jackson, the handsome bad-boy loner who cruises the streets at night in his classic Mustang GTO. She quickly becomes friends with nerdy Oliver, and then they find a link that brings Jackson to their side: All three have developed superpowers as a result of a strange atmospheric disturbance that occasionally engulfs the town. However, heavy security at Bar Tech Industries forces the trio to keep their investigations discreet, especially when Nica discovers that her father works with Bar Tech, doing tests on the town’s high school students.

When unstable Maya also develops a superpower and joins the group, no one can be sure that she’ll keep quiet. In his first novel, screenwriter Kruger keeps tension high as he folds superpowers into a standard but exciting beat-the-evil-corporation plot. Characterizations are varied and not too deep, and there’s some romantic tension foreshadowed for the sequel.

Readers looking for suspense will find it and should enjoy the ride. (Science fiction. 12-16)

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“As in The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls (2012), Legrand shows twin knacks for creating creepy supernatural elements and thoroughly scary experiences for her central characters.” from the year of shadows

THE RISE OF A LEGEND

Lasky, Kathryn Scholastic (304 pp.) $16.99 | $16.99 e-book | Aug. 1, 2013 978-0-545-50978-7 978-0-545-50980-0 e-book Series: Guardians of Ga’Hoole, 1 The Guardians of Ga’Hoole gets a prequel, with the history of one of the Great Tree’s rybs, Ezylryb.

Lyze, a young whiskered screech owl, is born into the Northern Kingdoms, where war is as much a part of life as a young owl’s First Meat ceremony. His parents, veterans of the battle against Bylyric and his Ice Talons, expect their young hatchling to grow up to be a soldier, but Lyze is reluctant to step into that role. The death of his beloved younger sister in a raid changes everything. He begins to apply his mind to the finer points of war, focusing on the elements of weather and battle strategy. He further suggests adding snakes and snow leopards to their ranks. However, Lyze quickly learns that victory comes at a heavy price. Lyze’s journey from egg to warrior to ryb enriches the mythology of Ga’Hoole, but it also serves as an unflinching commentary on the ravages of war. While this will undoubtedly appeal to the ardent followers of the series, Lyze’s story can be read easily as a stand-alone tale.

Both thoughtful and action-packed, this adventure illuminates the fantastical world that exists between dusk and dawn. (Fantasy. 8-12)

CHARMED VENGEANCE

Lazear, Suzanne Flux (408 pp.) $9.99 paper | Aug. 8, 2013 978-0-7387-3302-9 Series: Aether Chronicles, 2

This second book in the Aether Chronicles takes to the air with, fortunately, a far more even balance between steampunk and romance than the previous installment (Innocent Darkness, 2012).

Sixteen-year-old Noli has escaped from the fairyland Otherworld and returned to Los Angeles, where she lives with her mother in an alternate-history 1901. Her sweetheart, V, a prince of the Otherworld, breaks off their romance on orders from his awful mother, the queen, who then sends V and his brother on a quest to find a unique new toy for her. Meanwhile, mechanically inclined Noli signs on as engineer to her brother Jeff ’s pirate airship. Her path will cross with that of V and Kevighn, a huntsman from the Otherworld. However, Noli was joined with a little sprite in the previous book, and the silly thing takes her over at inopportune times, making Noli appear frivolous at best and crazy at worst. Lazear has not yet achieved a mature writing style and at times displays extremely awkward phrasing. However, her imagination soars as high as her airship, and it will have readers hooked.

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Yes, it could use some tightening up, but it’s still plenty of fun. (Steampunk. 12 & up)

THE YEAR OF SHADOWS

Legrand, Claire Illus. by Kwasny, Karl Simon & Schuster (418 pp.) $16.99 | Aug. 27, 2013 978-1-4424-4294-8

Already saddled with a major father issue, young Olivia Stellatella acquires ghost problems too after she’s forced to live in the backstage rooms of a decrepit concert hall.

Contemptuously referring to her father—loser of wife, house and, as conductor of an orchestra on the skids, probably job—throughout as “the Maestro,” Olivia sets new standards for unlikability as she nurses feelings of abandonment in the wake of her mother’s abrupt disappearance. Notwithstanding concerted efforts to alienate everyone, though, she acquires several friends who prove sturdy allies when needed. Not only does the town mayor deliver an ultimatum to increase ticket sales 1,000 percent or face dissolution, but the concert hall proves to be haunted by both a quartet of friendly ghosts and a number of mindlessly malicious shades. Olivia resolves to lay the ghosts to rest even though that requires allowing them to inhabit a living mind to re-experience their deaths. As in The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls (2012), Legrand shows twin knacks for creating creepy supernatural elements and thoroughly scary experiences for her central characters. Though here she forces an overly tidy resolution, she also cleverly integrates the storylines to leave the ghosts, the orchestra’s future, and her rude, surly but also admirably courageous protagonist in happier places.

Ultimately a feel-good story, though readers will wade through tides of bad, angry, heartbroken and horrorstruck feelings to get there. (Horror/fantasy. 11-13)

NO EASY WAY OUT

Lorentz, Dayna Dial (480 pp.) $17.99 | Jul. 16, 2013 978-0-8037-3874-4

Over 1,500 people die from a flu strain released into an air vent in a crowded shopping mall, and the quarantined survivors descend into chaos in this protracted second installment of the story begun in No Safety in Numbers (2012).

As in the first, four ethnically and economically diverse teens share an alternating third-person focus. Lexi, the geeky daughter of a high-powered senator, is arguably the most sympathetic as she struggles with her relationship with her powerhungry mother. She becomes interested in Marco, who has

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forged an uneasy alliance with a pair of jocks who were his tormenters before the mall locked down. He is preoccupied with impressing Shay, who is filled with hopelessness and angst that is perhaps understandable given the circumstances, but many may lose patience with her. Shay is also the object of desire for Ryan, an athlete with principles that guide him to take care of two orphaned children. A great deal of time is spent in developing the characters, but they still come off as somewhat stiff.

Inauthentic teen dialogue (“Well, frak him right in the ass”) is also likely to pull readers out of the story.

Ostensibly an adventure tale, the slow pacing leaches energy from the central mystery of the virus, its cause and the horrors surrounding it, making it more of a snoozer than a thriller. (Thriller. 14 & up)

MELTDOWN MADNESS

Lubar, David Illus. by Loveridge, Matt Branches/Scholastic (96 pp.) $15.99 | $4.99 paper | $4.99 e-book Jul. 1, 2013 978-0-545-49603-2 978-0-545-49604-9 paper 978-0-545-49686-5 e-book Series: Looniverse, 2 It’s all about the chocolate in this episode, but Ed’s struggles with the literal-minded magic coin he found in the series opener (Stranger Things, 2013) continue.

Ed unwisely chooses a carton of chocolate bars to sell for a school fundraiser and then compounds the error by urging a helpful friend to carry them out of the hot sun “as fast as possible!” Ed arrives home to discover that traveling at just under the speed of light has melted the bars into unsalable mush. As if that’s not pickle enough, thanks to the magic coin in his pocket, references to certain well-known proverbs leave money talking and the temperature zooming up and down after Ed’s little brother Derwin does something about the weather by making a cardboard thermostat (instead of just complaining about it).

Even mentioning “pigtails” and a “ponytail” to his sisters has livestock leaving messes under the kitchen table—and “bangs” nearly results in a catastrophe. Easy of language and liberally endowed with jokes, twists and comical line drawings, the tale scrambles its way energetically to a chocolaty resolution based on an old saw about lemons and lemonade.

A goofy romp through suddenly fungible reality, not as self-consciously clever as the previous episode and all the better for it. (Fantasy. 7-10)

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SYLO

MacHale, D.J. Razorbill/Penguin (416 pp.) $17.99 | Jul. 2, 2013 978-1-59514-665-6 Series: SYLO, 1 This riveting novel starts with a question: How safe is it to remain uninvolved?

At 14, Tucker Pierce is all about fitting in and going with the flow. While his friends talk about going out into the world and doing great things, he prefers to dream small. He likes life on tiny, fictional Pemberwick Island, Maine, and hopes to take over his father’s landscaping business eventually. For now, warming the bench at the weekly football games is just fine with him. But when the island is quarantined by the U.S. Navy, things start to fall apart, and Tucker can’t stand aside for long. People start dying. The girl he wants to get to know a whole lot better, Tori, is captured along with Tucker and imprisoned behind barbed wire. The country-club golf course has been converted into a military camp run by a division of the military they’ve never heard of: SYLO. There’s no communication from the mainland to the island and no way to get word of what’s happening out to the world. Tucker and Tori need to get to the mainland to tell their story. Can they get past the naval blockade?

Can they survive the sky-borne attack on the blockade? Whom can they trust? Who—or what—is SYLO? And who is fighting whom? MacHale knows boy readers and delivers, giving them an action-packed plot with a likable, Everykid protagonist and doling out answers with just the right amount of parsimony to keep the pages turning.

This first installment in a proposed trilogy is absolutely un-put-down-able, more exciting than an X-Box and roller coaster combined. (Adventure. 10-16)

VICKS, THE POLAR BEAR CUB

Mack Illus. by Mack Clavis (32 pp.) $15.95 | Jun. 1, 2013 978-1-60537-154-2

The first year of life for the Rotterdam Zoo’s new resident, born in 2010.

So small you can barely see him, newborn Vicks (named for the company that sponsors him) lies curled up with his mother, Olinka. There are a dozen large color photographs as well as small illustrations peppered throughout. Interesting facts (“Polar bears have white fur, but they actually have black skin”) are tucked into page corners below the story of Vicks’ growth.

Nourished by his mother’s milk, Vicks is soon big and strong enough to leave the cozy den and explore. And is he curious!

But every new thing is also a little scary. A crow sends him diving into the water and the safety of his mother’s arms. When he wants to get dry, he shakes like a dog. For food, he has to learn

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how to catch fish with his paws. He grows quickly; the big rocks that used to daunt him are now his favorite places to play and laze. He can also run, growl, climb and dive. At 2, Vicks will be mature enough to find a mate and have a cub of his own. The evocative photos capture the cub in a way that’s sure to beguile readers; the information is presented in an age-appropriate, conversational manner that occasionally suffers from forced enthusiasm.

A mostly winning combination of information and entertainment. (Informational picture book. 4-8)

THE TRUTH OF ME

MacLachlan, Patricia Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins (128 pp.) $14.99 | $15.89 PLB | Aug. 6, 2013 978-0-06-199859-1 978-0-06-199860-7 PLB Robbie, perhaps 9 or 10 years old, is a bit of a sobersides, a solemn young narrator, given to adult tone and phrasing in his spare, first-person, present-tense account of an unexpected adventure.

Robbie seems to withhold something of himself, unsure whether to trust his feelings even as he resents and longs for his similarly contained, talented mother. Robbie’s parents leave him and Ellie, his well-behaved dog, with Maddy, his grandmother, as they depart for a concert tour with his mother’s string quartet. Maddy has the ability to attract and communicate peacefully with the wild creatures of the forest, and it troubles Robbie that his parents find her eccentricity worrisome.

And though the dog remembers Maddy’s doughnut dinner, apparently Maddy has forgotten ever meeting the dog when she quizzes Robbie about Ellie before their arrival. The stay at Maddy’s house becomes an inadvertent test of Robbie’s ability to trust as well as to meet a challenge when his grandmother is injured on an overnight camping trip and a bear comes close to camp. In learning that he can rely on his own strengths (“small truths,” as Henry puts it) Robbie also finds that he is able to be generous with his love.

Some readers may find the gentle pace lacking in excitement, but for others, Robbie’s quietly affecting observations will feel like truth. (Fiction. 8-10)

NIX MINUS ONE

MacLean, Jill Pajama Press (296 pp.) $21.95 | Jul. 1, 2013 978-1-927485-24-8 Writing in free verse from the perspective of 15-year-old Nixon “Nix” Humboldt, acclaimed Canadian author MacLean (Home Truths, 2010, etc.) presents an intriguing coming-of-age story 94

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set in rural Newfoundland and centered on the love-hate relationship between siblings.

Quiet and a bit of a loner, Nix takes respite from the taunting of class bullies and from bearing the occasional brunt of his gregarious older sister Roxy’s wrath by helping out in his father’s woodworking shop, where the various boxes, frames and birdhouses he creates help to express the inner feelings he often has difficulty verbalizing. Sixteen-year-old Roxy, on the other hand, drives her teenage angst outward by pursuing the most popular (though shady) senior in high school, experimenting with alcohol and repeatedly defying her parents’ wishes. Where Nix admits “The first time / I came across the word / introversion / was the first time / I recognized myself,” Roxy struggles to come to terms with who she is, appearing at one point in Nix’s estimation both “overfed and ravenous / cranky and smug / hyper and exhausted” after blowing her curfew one night. And yet the siblings’ deep-seated love for each other cannot be denied when tested by their overprotective parents, immature classmates or in the wake of grave tragedy.

Well-crafted and intense, an engrossing family drama in which both young and old learn what it means to grow up. (Verse novel. 12 & up)

THE GREEN BATH

Mahy, Margaret Illus. by Kellogg, Steven Levine/Scholastic (40 pp.) $16.99 | Jul. 1, 2013 978-0-545-20667-9 A very imaginative boy has the bath adventure of a lifetime.

While his lucky neighbors score a speedboat from the flea market, Sammy’s dad comes home with a green claw-foot bathtub. Before his get-ready-yourgrandmother-is-coming-to-visit bath, Sammy thinks he sees some strange things about the tub, and he is proven right when he gets in: As he sings while relaxing in the tub, the tub jiggles and jumps along before breaking free of the bathroom. The two make their way to the shore, where the green bath enters the sea. Mermaids, a sea serpent, Treasure Island and some buccaneers figure in the duo’s adventures. A fierce battle ensues before Sammy, the sea serpent and the green bath emerge victorious. The wet pair make their way back home on the bath’s claw feet, Sammy’s family none the wiser—except for the huge treasure chest. Throughout, read-aloud master Mahy dabbles with alliteration. Kellogg’s familiar style fills the pages with details aplenty, the fantasy coming alive before readers’ eyes.

The pages with the buccaneers are especially busy.

A rumpus in the bathroom that readers are sure to try to emulate, even if only in their imaginations—lay down some towels before filling the tub! (Picture book. 4-8)

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“If the first volume’s thematic scope concerned how to move past the tragedies and privations of one’s past, this one looks at the things one must let go of for the greater good….” froms raven flight

THIS IS NOT A WRITING MANUAL Notes for the Young Writer in the Real World

Majors, Kerri Writer’s Digest Books (208 pp.) $14.99 paper | Jul. 9, 2013 978-1-59963-688-7

Advice on writing from an experienced writer.

Majors, founder of YARN, the Young Adult Review Network, an online journal of YA essays, poetry and short stories, offers a series of essays on writing for aspiring writers. Essentially a memoir, the volume is earnest and practical in tone, covering every angle of writing, from buying a planner and revising to finding an audience and learning from mistakes. More philosophical concerns include what to do for a living before hitting the big time, deciding whether writing is a hobby or a job, and dealing with hating friends who find success before you do. Finally, for those committed to publishing, helpful advice is offered on dealing with agents, editors and publishers, discovering the right journals and finding inspiration. The best advice of all is to write for pleasure, even if the ultimate goal is publication. Clearly, Majors knows what she’s talking about, and readers will recognize they’re getting advice from someone who knows. However, considering that the author says, “I prefer to think of this book as therapy for writers,” it’s not always clear if this is really therapy for herself or for aspiring newbies already becoming intimidated and discouraged by the whole process.

An upbeat and honest guide for teens already considering writing careers. (Nonfiction. 13 & up)

RAVEN FLIGHT

Marillier, Juliet Knopf (416 pp.) $16.99 | $10.99 e-book | $19.99 PLB | Jul. 9, 2013 978-0-375-86955-6 978-0-375-98367-2 e-book 978-0-375-96955-3 PLB Series: Shadowfell, 2

scope concerned how to move past the tragedies and privations of one’s past, this one looks at the things one must let go of for the greater good: If Neryn and Flint love each other, they may doom the rebellion, but denying human connection is a high price to pay for peace. By the end, more pieces have fallen into place—including a hint that there’s a worse villain yet to come— and the slow start has given way to a sad, satisfying ending.

Marillier’s many fans will be pleased to see the threads continue to unroll and will eagerly anticipate the battle to come. (map) (Historical fantasy. 13 & up)

MAKE THE GRADE Everything You Need to Study Better, Stress Less, and Succeed in School

Martin, Lesley Schwartz Zest Books (144 pp.) $14.99 paper | Jul. 9, 2013 978-1-936976-38-6

Help is on the way for teens wanting to do better in school.

Following her Where’s My Stuff: The Ultimate Teen Organizing Guide (2010), Martin offers help for the too-busy, overscheduled teenager. Assuming such teens are organized enough and motivated enough to seek out this kind of help, there is much here for them. Advice on setting goals, managing time, getting organized and being more efficient in the classroom will help teens be more aware of themselves as learners and, thus, be able to better take charge of their academic lives. Teens who look up long enough from the iPhones, iPads and video games will even find a section discouraging studying in bed with the television on and the iPhone within reach. Though the design is dense, a variety of charts, worksheets, case studies, sidebars and checklists offers visual relief and plenty of additional information. Though not likely a book high school students will pick up on their own, this can be a valuable guide for tutors, academic coaches and teachers of study-skills courses looking for a systematic and informative handbook.

An earnest, comprehensive and “everything-you-need” compendium. (index, author’s note) (Nonfiction. 12 & up)

The second volume of Marillier’s Dark Ages fantasy picks up right where the first (Shadowfell, 2012) left off.

Neryn’s time among the rebels has left her stronger and healthier but no closer to grasping her power and becoming a true Caller. When a potential ally sets a time limit for rebelling against tyrannical King Keldec, Neryn can no longer hide and sets off to find the Hag of the Isles and the Lord of the North. As in the first volume, the fantasy stands rooted in the folklore of the British Isles; the details of time and place ring true, and even the magical folk come across as commonplace despite being limned in power. If the first volume’s thematic |

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“In less-skillful hands this offering would come across as saccharine, but Milgrim pulls it off with witty aplomb.” from some monsters are different

HOW TO LOSE EVERYTHING

Mattheis, Philipp Zest Books (224 pp.) $14.99 paper | Jul. 23, 2013 978-1-936976-40-9

Outside of Munich in the summer of 1994, four teenage boys find a fortune that changes their lives.

Boredom and anomie define the lives of Jonathan, Sam, Schulz and Eric. They want to get out of the suburbs, maybe get an apartment in the city. They know their lives aren’t that great—skateboarding, getting stoned, playing video games, hating school. Then they break into an abandoned house and find old, yellowing envelopes stuffed with money, lots of money. What do the boys think to do with their sudden good fortune? Well, thinking things through isn’t really how they proceed. At first, it’s just buying everything on the McDonald’s menu, buying (and stealing) tons of T-shirts and hoodies, and having plenty of cigarette money. But things devolve into partying, drug dealing and thoughts of car theft— there are no reasonable plans for putting the money to good use. Translated from German, the story really happened, at least in its basic plot and main events, and Mattheis effectively delineates four teenagers’ lives of quiet desperation, tracing the effects of an unearned fortune on their dreams of something better. Choosing to have Jonathan relate the story several years later gives the narrative a much-needed perspective, a chance for a character to reflect on the significance of the events he’s lived through.

A nuanced character study with no easy answers. (Historical fiction. 14 & up)

THE APPLE ORCHARD RIDDLE

McNamara, Margaret Illus. by Karas, G. Brian Schwartz & Wade/Random (40 pp.) $15.99 | Jul. 9, 2013 978-0-375-84744-8

In this follow-up to How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin? (2007), a field trip to an apple orchard presents an occasion for daydreaming Tara to solve a riddle posed by her teacher, Mr. Tiffin.

While she and her classmates learn about various kinds of apples from Farmer Hills, they also puzzle over the titular riddle: “Show me a little red house with no windows and no door, but with a star inside.” After several wrong guesses, the class gives up, but contemplative Tara comes up with the correct answer: an apple. The “star inside” is the group of little seeds at the heart of the apple that Tara spies when she cuts hers in half at the middle. How is an apple a house? It can be a house for a worm, as, after all, “In a riddle, anything goes,” according to Mr. Tiffin. Throughout the book, the children enjoy cider and 96

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doughnuts, while also seeing how they are made. Paired with Karas’ distinctive, stylized pictures rendered in gouache, acrylic and pencil of the class’ trip, the simple story is ideal fodder for teachers to use in anticipation of their own apple-orchard field trips, particularly since it includes backmatter devoted to “Apple Orchard Facts.”

A sweet, slice-of-school-life story. (Picture book. 5-7)

SOME MONSTERS ARE DIFFERENT

Milgrim, David Illus. by Milgrim, David Henry Holt (40 pp.) $14.99 | Jul. 9, 2013 978-0-8050-9519-7

Interesting how being yourself is championed, yet at the same time, most kids are keenly aware of the pressure to fit in and not be too different. In this slim title, Milgrim pairs his brief text with hilarious illustrations to celebrate a charmingly diverse group of monsters.

Digital ink and pastels brighten the pages featuring creatures in a wide range of tropical hues popping against stark white backgrounds. Opposing traits are contrasted, but each is portrayed with humor and respect. “Some monsters are afraid” shows a large, pink, polka-dot monster clutching its tail and shouting “Aggggggggggh!” at the sight of a small, green worm.

The following spread—“Some are not”—depicts a blue-andpurple, toddlerlike, snaggletoothed tyke smiling as it holds the worm in its hand. “Some monsters will eat anything” zooms in on a table filled with platters full of striped beetles and other squirmy, prickly foods about to be devoured by a lip-licking character. But turn the page, and both children and their parents will relate to the small monster taking a bare nibble off the tip of a pizza slice that has been plucked clean of any spice or extra topping: “Some are picky.” Whether monsters (or people) are talkative or quiet, love to dance or just watch, like it outside or prefer staying inside, all “are absolutely, positively, completely, perfectly wonderful… / just the way they are!”

In less-skillful hands this offering would come across as saccharine, but Milgrim pulls it off with witty aplomb.

Share with a pack of monsters to spark conversations about individuality. (Picture book. 3-6)

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SOPHIE’S SQUASH

Miller, Pat Zietlow Illus. by Wilsdorf, Anne Schwartz & Wade/Random (40 pp.) $16.99 | Aug. 6, 2013 978-0-307-97896-7 Miller’s debut, in which a little girl affectionately adopts a butternut squash, is a winner.

After her parents buy that squash for dinner at the farmers market, Sophie commandeers it, giving it a face with markers. It proves just the right size to hold, bounce on her knee and love.

“I call her Bernice,” Sophie says. “I’ll call for a pizza,” says her mother. Throughout the fall, Sophie coddles her veggie, attending library storytimes, visiting other squash at the farmers market and practicing somersaults near the garden. Her parents do their gentle best to suggest alternatives for the moldering squash, from a trip to the toy store to a donation to the food pantry. Sophie will have none of it. “Bernice will last forever.”

When even Sophie notices changes in Bernice, she asks a farmer what keeps a squash healthy. Her unique interpretation of his advice (“Fresh air. Good, clean dirt. A little love”) yields, next spring and summer, delightful twin surprises. Wilsdorf ’s amusing ink-and-watercolor illustrations alternate between full-bleed spreads and spots. From her bouncy braids to her red shoes, Sophie’s vibrant, determined nature shines forth charmingly.

This season-spanning turn with high-spirited Sophie offers endearing lessons about nurture and regeneration.

(Picture book. 3-8)

COWBOY BOYD AND MIGHTY CALLIOPE

Moser, Lisa Illus. by Van Doninck, Sebastiaan Random House (40 pp.) $17.99 | Aug. 27, 2013 978-0-375-87056-9 A cowboy and his rhino (yes, rhino!) defy convention in this fresh and funny tale.

Van Doninck and Moser transport readers into the American West as their heroes—silhouetted by the rising sun—ride toward the Double R Ranch hoping to find work and a home.

Yet something about this idyllic picture is amiss. Calliope, as the ranch hands invariably note, is different. Unfamiliar with rhinoceroses, everyone mistakes her for a horse, leading to some misplaced expectations. Boyd, however, is an ever-faithful friend, always noting his four-legged pal’s positive qualities.

His one-sided view and her different skill set cost them their jobs one by one, until the cattle get loose and Calliope saves the day. Digital illustrations feel handcrafted, and the details offer a tactile sensibility that gives the animals weight and warmth.

The characters are also loose and spontaneous, and a warm palette echoes the desert setting. Visuals perfectly match text, and adult readers may find a Sam Elliott lilt inflicting their voices. |

Phrasing and use of onomatopoeia also contribute to the story’s comedic moments, accentuated by a design that integrates images with text. The silly situation bolsters the themes of kindness, friendship and acceptance, as the characters learn to have a strong belief in each other.

A ten-gallon hat full of fun, with a heartfelt message to boot. (Picture book. 3-7)

THE GINGERBREAD MAN LOOSE ON THE FIRE TRUCK

Murray, Laura Illus. by Lowery, Mike Putnam (28 pp.) $16.99 | Jul. 1, 2013 978-0-399-25779-7

When the class goes on a field trip to the fire station, the Gingerbread Man is carried along in a child’s backpack. He falls, unexpectedly, onto the snout of the firehouse dog, Spot the Dalmatian.

In emergency mode, the well-known cookie streaks athletically through the firehouse, with the hungry pup at his heels. “I’ll run and I’ll dodge, / As fast as I can. / I’m not a dog bone! I’m the / Gingerbread Man!” He runs past his classmates, who are trying on all the firefighting gear. The chase continues with an up-close view of the truck, the crew’s tightly made beds, the five-alarm chili cooking in the kitchen and, of course, the fire pole. When a true alarm blares, the little man jumps onto the fire truck for more adventures.

Murray’s vigorous rhythms stay at full speed throughout, keeping up with Lowery’s action-filled illustrations. This duo debuted with The Gingerbread Man Loose in the School (2011), and this sequel doesn’t disappoint. With illustrations done in pencil, screen printing and digital color, the new makeover for the speedy gingerbread man succeeds despite a completely stereotypical fire station. Thankfully, female Fire Chief Anne rewards the little hero and his classmates with helmets from Company Four.

This rapid-fire reboot of a traditional favorite will be a requested read-aloud for high-energy listeners. (Picture book. 4-7)

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OH, SNAP!

Myers, Walter Dean Scholastic (128 pp.) $17.99 | $17.99 e-book | Aug. 1, 2013 978-0-439-91629-5 978-0-545-53910-4 e-book Series: Cruisers, 4 The fourth installment of the Cruisers series finds Zander Scott and friends unwittingly involved in an international

investigation.

Zander, Bobbi, LaShonda and Kambui are middle school students at Harlem’s Da Vinci Academy for the Gifted and Talented. Their alternative newspaper, The Cruiser, came in third on the School Journalism Association’s list of best school newspapers. Good for them, not so good for Ashley Schmidt, editor of Da Vinci’s official newspaper, The Palette, which received no recognition. “I’m going to bury you and your stupid newspaper!” hisses Ashley, who’s planning on a monthly reprinting of 200 words from the British newspaper the Guardian to borrow a bit of glory. Zander decides to do the same and somehow thinks it’s a good idea to tell the folks at London’s Phoenix School about the pictures Kambui took that place their “Genius Gangsta” friend Phat Tony at the mall when a robbery occurred there. Tony denies being at the mall, and the Cruisers haven’t told anyone else about the pictures, so the British school contacts Scotland Yard, and now Zander and company may be in big trouble. As with the previous three installments, this sparkles with intelligent dialogue and clever banter, all while advancing a story in which Zander ponders journalism, academics, girls, and even the Fibonacci sequence and the grand design of the universe.

Myers once again offers a story of smart kids living out their middle school days as Cruisers “on the high seas of life.” (Fiction. 9-13)

LINUS THE VEGETARIAN T. REX

Neubecker, Robert Illus. by Neubecker, Robert Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster (40 pp.) $16.99 | Jul. 9, 2013 978-1-4169-8512-9 This dino with a penchant for greenery means well, but his tale is clearly hampered by its confusing message.

If you want to know anything about dinosaurs, then the kid to talk to is Ruth Ann MacKenzie. A whiz at everything related to residents of the Cretaceous, she visits a mysterious new museum exhibit that plants her firmly in the past and within the protective sphere of Linus, a polite, blue T-Rex who wouldn’t dream of eating meat. After watching him munch on plants and pal about with every creature he meets, Ruth Ann decides to set the sweet guy straight. Fortunately, her misguided attempts are 98

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interrupted by two hungry velociraptors who are put in their place by a clearly ferocious Linus. Conclusion? “I’m just me—a very big, very brave, very VEGETARIAN Tyrannosaurus rex!”

Children may have a hard time determining what lesson they are to take from this. Are they meant to learn that vegetarianism doesn’t make you a wimp? Or that it will win them hordes of adoring friends and fans? Or just not to make assumptions?

(Kids like Ruth Ann will note Linus’ many pointy teeth and wonder how he’s going to negotiate that carrot….) Where the story falters, the art leaps and soars. From the many-colored eyes of the iguanodons to the velociraptors hidden on almost every page, the book is a visual treat.

Though they may have fun with it, readers’ attempts to sink their teeth into this story will find them gummed up with uncertain conclusions. (Picture book. 3-7)

THE LEGEND OF THE JERSEY DEVIL

Noble, Trinka Hakes Illus. by Kelley, Gerald Sleeping Bear Press (32 pp.) $16.99 | Jul. 1, 2013 978-1-58536-837-2

A delightfully spooky picture-book rendering of the famed Jersey Devil legend.

From a state rife with disreputable characters, Noble here depicts perhaps its most otherworldly resident, the Jersey Devil, whose existence dates back to colonial folklore of 1735.

On an archetypally dark and stormy night in the remote Pine Barrens, a coastal region distinguished by “black swamps and murky bogs” fed by brackish water, as Mother Leeds is in labor with her 13th child, she curses, “Oh let it be a devil!” With requisite lightning and thunderclap, she gets her wish: A monstrous creature—with a horse’s head, horns, bat wings, cloven hooves, forked tail and glowing eyes, and capable of breathing fire—is born, destined by its parenting and chimeric looks to become an outcast. Kelley’s arresting watercolors heighten the ghoulish drama, with vivid facial expressions and atmospheric tendrils of lightning and mist. From a callous mother who doesn’t want her child and a town that reviles difference to a scheming preacher, businessmen and bounty hunters looking to profit from a freak of nature, Noble’s mythological subject must struggle to overcome humanity at its worst, blending psychology with the stuff of ghastly legend. Overcome it he does, eventually winning the hearts of the people of the Pine Barrens, who adopt him for their own.

Suspenseful, with captivating illustrations. (Picture book/folktale. 6-10)

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“Peck binds this unlikely romp together with his characteristically witty and precise prose, flavored by an endearing blend of humility and superiority that only a British foundling mouse can muster.” from the mouse with the question mark tail

THE LONG, LONG LINE

Ohmura, Tomoko Illus. by Ohmura, Tomoko Owlkids Books (40 pp.) $17.95 | Aug. 15, 2013 978-1-926973-92-0

If the line is long, there’s bound to be something good at the end, right?

The tale starts opposite the title page with a small frog, marked #50, looking up at a sign that requests “Please line up in single file.” Turn the page, and animals #49, lizard, through #37, porcupine, stand politely, clearly wondering what’s at the front of the line. As the numbers decrease, the size of the animals increases: #4 is hippo. Turn the page after #1, elephant, to a gatefold sign: JUMBO COASTER. Open the gatefold, and all of the animals are revealed standing in order on top of a whale as it performs a series of jumps and somersaults in and out of the water! Their ride ends just like a more conventional carnival ride, with various reactions: #3, the rhino, declares, “I’m getting back in line!” Humorous comments add to the fun throughout.

The armadillo, #39, stuck behind the skunk, #38, complains, “It stinks!” The kangaroo, #19, has a baby in her pouch that cries, “Are we there yet?” Totally engaging, the book offers multiple forms of participation: the word chain game that #17, the panda, starts; counting; guessing which animal belongs to the tail that appears at the edge of the page on the right (revealed seamlessly with a page turn); size concept; good old anticipation.

It’s a whale of a fun ride! (Picture book. 4-7)

RULES FOR GHOSTING

Paquette, A.J. Walker (272 pp.) $16.99 | Jul. 9, 2013 978-0-8027-3454-9

Dahlia’s solitary, ghostly existence is disrupted by the sudden arrival of living and nonliving visitors.

Confined for decades to Silverton Manor and its grounds, the forever12-year-old is overjoyed to meet Mrs. Tibbs, a very proper ghost sent to engineer Dahlia’s release.

However, their plans are interrupted when a living family moves into the manor. Although his parents were hired to watch over Silverton while it is being renovated for auction, Oliver yearns to make it their permanent home. When a nefarious schemer arrives at the manor masquerading as a handyman in order to trap a ghost and gain fame, Dahlia’s very existence is placed in peril. To prevent any further tragedies, Oliver and Dahlia must find a way to collaborate to determine the source of the rumors surrounding the manor and the cause of Dahlia’s death.

Chapters alternate between Dahlia’s and Oliver’s perspectives, and Paquette creates vividly detailed depictions of a ghostly existence. She delves into the practicalities of being a ghost, offers a hilarious interpretation of a ghost-run bureaucracy, and |

describes fanciful ghost-tracking and -trapping gadgetry. As Dahlia and Oliver search for answers, surprising plot developments will keep readers re-evaluating the clues until the story’s thrilling conclusion.

Paquette’s high-spirited tale featuring a benign, goodnatured ghost offers readers an imaginative, intriguing mystery. (Mystery. 9-12)

THE MOUSE WITH THE QUESTION MARK TAIL

Peck, Richard Illus. by Murphy, Kelly Dial (240 pp.) $16.99 | Jul. 2, 2013 978-0-8037-3838-6

Peck returns to the parallel mouse society he introduced in the effervescent Secrets at Sea (2011) for a rodent’s-eye view of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee.

Readers first meet the titular mouse, the book’s narrator, in the Royal Mews. A foundling, he’s been brought up by his “aunt” Marigold, who is fond of aphorisms. “Nameless is Blameless” is one of her favorites, used whenever her young charge asks who he is. Blameless he may be, but that doesn’t keep him out of scrapes. On the run from a couple of school bullies, he finds himself exposed, in his school uniform, on the floor of the royal riding school, where he is noticed by a human—most definitely not the done thing. In short order, he goes from this disgrace to refuge in a horse’s manger to a daylong stint as a Yeomouse of the Guard to the private chambers of Queen Victoria, where he blunders into secret upon secret, including, at the end, his identity. Peck binds this unlikely romp together with his characteristically witty and precise prose, flavored by an endearing blend of humility and superiority that only a British foundling mouse can muster. Details of the mouse world that bustles around and under the human world will enchant lovers of animal fantasy, and clever running jokes provide both humor and continuity (our poor hero is repeatedly asked, “Are you not yet full-grown, or just short?”).

This mouse-sized identity quest sparkles. (Animal fantasy. 8-12)

EARTHBOUND

Pike, Aprilynne Razorbill/Penguin (352 pp.) $17.99 | Jul. 30, 2013 978-1-59514-650-2 A supernatural adventure blends a present-day manhunt with a 200-yearold romance.

At 18, Tavia realizes that after her miraculous escape from a plane crash that killed everyone onboard, including her parents, there is little chance of returning to normal, especially

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“Polacco has a gift for turning her own family stories into picture books that can touch the hearts of all.” from the blessing cup

with the media overeager to capture her survival story. So after relocating to New Hampshire to escape the reporters and live with her aunt and uncle, Tavia is lying low. She spends most of her time shuttling among rehab, her therapist and the library— although at the library, she is more interested in Benson, a hot library clerk, than the best-sellers. As Tavia’s relationship with Benson heats up, she begins having visions of the distant past.

Although she can’t quite place these visions, she is drawn to know more, especially about the mysterious character Quinn Avery, whom she can’t help falling for despite her love for Benson and the sense of foreboding that warns her to stay away. Pike builds a world that, once established, is captivating but that does not come clear until quite late, running the danger of alienating readers. Readers might also get tangled up in the text’s purple prose; while adding to the overall romance, it can be distracting.

A mostly promising start to a new series that offers history, romance and action to patient readers. (Fantasy. 14 & up)

MARTIN & MAHALIA His Words, Her Song

Pinkney, Andrea Davis Illus. by Pinkney, Brian Little, Brown (40 pp.) $17.99 | Aug. 6, 2013 978-0-316-07013-3

A well-illustrated and meticulously researched story of the inextricably intertwined lives of two important African-American historical figures.

From its opening poem, “You Are Here,” printed on a simple watercolor map of a road, to its backmatter about the history and art behind the story, this historical account of civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. and spiritual contralto vocalist Mahalia Jackson delivers inspiration and information equally. Focusing on the gift that each had for gospel, Andrea Davis Pinkney emphasizes the vocal and musical talents that each gained through the church as young people. Brian Pinkney renders Martin’s pages in greens and blues, Mahalia’s pages in oranges and reds, and the scenes where they come together, as they did in the 1968 March on Washington, in purples and oranges, blending their respective colors to represent their unity and the merging of their talents for the sake of social justice. The visual motif of the white dove, which appears throughout, stands in contrast to the opposition and conflict their work often sparked. Maps of curved streets with directional arrows on which appear words such as “segregation” and “This way to freedom” give the visually rich pages a sense of constant motion.

Sure to become an indispensable part of annual Black History Month celebrations and library nonfiction collections on important African-Americans. (Informational picture book. 6-12)

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THE BLESSING CUP

Polacco, Patricia Illus. by Polacco, Patricia Simon & Schuster (48 pp.) $17.99 | Aug. 27, 2013 978-1-4424-5047-9 Polacco has a gift for turning her own family stories into picture books that can touch the hearts of all.

The Keeping Quilt is now 25 years old. In this brand-new companion, Polacco turns to her great-grandmother Anna’s story of how she came to America. The pictures, vibrant and brilliantly suggestive of movement, are mostly black-and-white, shaded with her signature use of color to highlight certain details. Devotees of The Keeping Quilt will recognize Anna’s babushka, which became the border of the quilt, on the young Anna when the czar’s soldiers come to their Russian town to burn the temple and expel all the Jews. The family packs up its most precious possessions, including her papa’s sewing machine and the beautiful china teapot and cups that were a wedding present. Even as they travel, they continue the ritual of drinking from the cups for God’s blessing, breaking bread so they will never know hunger and using salt so that their lives will have flavor. When Anna’s papa’s health breaks down from hauling the cart with all their possessions, a widowed doctor takes the family in and cares for them until, once again, they are forced to leave. In gratitude for the doctor’s care and for his supplying them with passage to America, they leave him the tea set, save for one cup. Polacco closes with the journey of that particular cup to the present day.

History, religious persecution, immigration, and the skeins of faith and love that connect a family are all knit together in this powerful, accessible and deeply affecting story. (Picture book. 6-10)

JIMMY THE JOEY The True Story of an Amazing Koala Rescue Rose, Deborah Lee; Kelly, Susan Photos by Kelly, Susan National Geographic (32 pp.) $16.95 | Jul. 9, 2013 978-1-4263-1371-4

After being hit by a car, an orphaned 6-month-old joey is rescued, rehabilitated in a koala hospital and then a home, taught to climb and live outside with other koalas, and finally returned to the wild.

This heartwarming, true story of an irresistible marsupial, not a true bear but with all a bear cub’s appealing qualities, is illustrated with photographs taken during the filming of a documentary about the Koala Hospital in Port Macquarie, Australia. While recording the joey’s growth and development in the smoothly told narrative that accompanies the photos, the authors also weave in some general information about the species: where they live, what they eat, how they grow first inside their mothers’ pouches. The design suggests a scrapbook of

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the joey’s life, decorated with traditional Australian Aboriginal designs and using the colors of eucalyptus bark and patterns of eucalyptus leaves as page backgrounds. The illustrations focus on the joey; people, though vital to the animal’s recovery, are mostly out of the picture. Final pages include maps, a few facts about koalas, a photographer’s note and extensive suggestions for learning more about this iconic but little-known species.

Unfortunately, these don’t include Sandra Markle’s more informative Finding Home, illustrated by Alan Marks (2008).

Stories of animal rescue abound, but the cuteness factor here gives Jimmy’s story special appeal. (Informational picture book. 4-8)

IS IT BIG OR IT IS LITTLE?

Rueda, Claudia Illus. by Rueda, Claudia Eerdmans (26 pp.) $14.00 | Jul. 1, 2013 978-0-8028-5423-0

A mouse flees a cat in a striking sequence of opposite pairs.

A lively rodent—so simply depicted in solid black that he is practically only ears, bright eyes and whiskers—grasps one end of what is seen on the title page to be a very large, orange ball of yarn. When the cat arrives—also solid black and all long legs, paws, tail and menacing eyes—the mouse takes off in a brief and spirited sprint through several different perspectives and their opposites. A wade through deep water for the mouse is a shallow splash for the pursuing cat. In a leap from a height, the mouse and a leaf as parachute seem light, but a row of tiny ants bearing the leaves aloft suggests the leaves could be heavy. And when the chase is nearly over, the cat having reached the mouse, the orange yarn plays a role: “Is it the end… / …or is it the beginning?” The limited palette and plenty of blank space serve to keep the story in motion: The solid black and orange forms of mouse, cat and yarn pop from the page with energy and pizzazz, while gray appears in the form of solid planes, water, rocks and the third character: a toothy bulldog.

Fun and uncomplicated as a story and concept book but sophisticated in visual impact, this is agreeably stylish graphic design for the very young.(Picture book. 2-5))

LET’S GO NUTS! Seeds We Eat

Sayre, April Pulley Illus. by Sayre, April Pulley Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster (32 pp.) $16.99 | Apr. 28, 2013 978-1-4424-6728-6 After tributes to veggies (Rah, Rah, Radishes, 2011) and fruit (Go, Go, Grapes, 2012), Sayre delivers another peppery blend of upbeat, celebratory rhymes and photos taken at local grocery shops and farmers markets. |

This time, the spotlight’s on seeds. After the initial, twocouplet overture (“Bravo, black beans! / Rah, rah, rice! / Seeds are meals. / They’re snacks. They spice!”), Sayre leads readers successively though arrays of legumes, nuts, grains and spices.

The photographs show nuts and beans in decorative containers or juxtaposed in bins. Navy beans mingle near red ones, with a handful of runner beans scattered on top; almonds are shown in the shell and out, blanched, slivered and whole. The focus on real-life produce stands and markets yields many images of packaged and hand-labeled items: The grains section begins with a photo of bagged breads, pastas, and wheat and rye berries. While some of the pictured items won’t be readily identifiable by children, the combination of short, pithy verse and artfully displayed food provides an excellent aid for classroom or family learning. To that end, Sayre (a veteran of school visits) provides an afterword that answers questions about the science and nutrition of seeds, nut allergies, cultural connections through food, and more.

Another cheery, useful overview of real food from a first-rate science writer. (Informational picture book. 4-8)

SPACEHEADZ SPHDZ 4 LIFE!

Scieszka, Jon Illus. by Prigmore, Shane Simon & Schuster (192 pp.) $15.99 | $5.99 paper | Aug. 27, 2013 978-1-4169-7957-9 978-1-4169-7958-6 paper Series: SPHDZ, 4 With the evil SPHDZ in control of the Brainwave, is there any hope left for mankind…or hamsterkind?

Brooklyn fifth-grader Michael K., his human friends Venus and TJ and their alien buddies Jennifer, Bob and Major Fluffy are at a total loss. They reached their goal of recruiting 3.14 million earthlings to be SPHDZ, but the chief of the Anti-Alien Agency turned out to be an evil alien. He stole the brainwave they had collected. Now, the group, along with unlikely allies Agents Umber and Hot Magenta of the AAA, DarkWave X agents Delta, Tango and Foxtrot, and Mom K., Dad K. and Baby K., lives in fear that he will use it to bllrrp the planet Gonf and then turn off Earth. They can’t figure out why the chief hasn’t used it yet, and they have gone through plans A through Y to try to recover it. When the chief ’s plan is revealed, it’s going to take the whole biosphere to cut him down to size. The madcap conclusion to Scieszka and Prigmore’s delusionally frenetic and fantastically silly series will delight SPHDZ across the land, but it probably isn’t a great place to start this Internet-integrated, highly illustrated quartet. Start youngsters with the first, and they will be SPHDZ (and readers) for life.

Secret codes…science and math tidbits…hamstertranslation websites…and the odd flying whale. ULTRA FRESH! (Humorous science fiction. 7-10)

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THE ALCHEMIST WAR

Seven, John Illus. by Philips, Craig Capstone Young Readers (160 pp.) $9.95 paper | Aug. 1, 2013 978-1-62370-011-9 Series: Time-Tripping Faradays, 1 Two free-range 25th-century children get into and out of pickles while tagging along with their research-scientist parents to various past eras.

In this series opener, a prank involving Hannibal’s elephants and a mouse lands the Faradays in hot water with their employer, the Cosmos Institute. They are consequently sent for punishment to 1648 Prague to educate Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand III about fashions in footwear. Instantly bored for understandable reasons, teenage sibs Dawkins and Hypatia fall in with Jan Richthausen, an alchemist who actually can turn mercury into gold—using found technology more advanced than the Faradays’ own. Somebody is meddling dangerously.

In sharp contrast to most authors who try their hand at timetravel tales, Seven has plainly thought out consistent and (reasonably) plausible ways for his characters to interact with the past without causing paradoxes or catastrophic changes to the future. Though everyone in every era speaks the same colloquial English and the source of the futuristic devices and substances is never revealed in this setup episode, the author does propel Dawk, Hype and his other lively characters through a rousing multicentury chase that loops back around to close with tantalizing hints of adventures to come.

A flying start for a series that puts in a strong bid for Magic Treehouse grads. (Science fiction. 10-12)

A PUPPY FOR KEVIN

Slegers, Liesbet Illus. by Slegers, Liesbet Clavis (32 pp.) $13.95 | Jun. 1, 2013 978-1-60537-144-3

Aimed at very young readers, a book that’s all about caring for a new best friend.

Kevin is very anxious to pick up his new puppy, though he understands that he has to wait a bit for the pooch to be old enough to leave his mother. Kevin marks the big day on his calendar and buys several doggy things with Mommy: a basket, bowls, a collar and a leash. Finally, the big day arrives. The new puppy, whom Kevin will call Ruff, is sitting in a big basket with his mother and siblings. Kevin thinks he’s the sweetest of them all. The vet declares Ruff completely healthy and gives some care instructions. Ruff sniffs everything in his new home, then surprises Kevin by doing “number one” on the floor. Mommy spreads out newspapers so that they can teach Ruff before letting him go to the bathroom outside. Kevin and Ruff play together, go for walks with the new leash and collar, and learn 102

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a lot at training school. He teaches Ruff to offer his paw for a shake and uses a special shampoo to give Ruff a bath. “Ruff ’s my sweet dog and my best friend,” he declares. From the kidfriendly language to the use of rainbow colors to the extrasturdy pages and smallish trim size, Slegers maximizes appeal for a very young readership, offering many lessons in an entertaining way.

A sweetly positive new-pet primer. (Picture book. 3-6)

PATCH

Slonim, David Illus. by Slonim, David Roaring Brook (32 pp.) $15.99 | Jul. 9, 2013 978-1-59643-643-5 Patch is a perky pup who provides plenty of companionship to a little towheaded boy in this simple but satisfying story of the love between a boy and his dog.

The unnamed narrator recounts three episodic tales of life with Patch, each told with just one or two short sentences per page. The episodes recount encounters with rabbits while on a walk, an outbreak of fleas and a contest of dog tricks. Patch has his problems, chasing after a forbidden rabbit, suffering through the flea treatments and failing to complete any tricks at the competition. With each disappointment, the boy soothes Patch’s injuries or hurt feelings, reassuring his pet that they can try again and that they are “buddies through thick and thin.” The story may seem slight at first, but it deftly addresses deep concerns common to young children: that they will still be loved after disobedience or poor performance in the outside world, that their basic needs, injuries and emotional concerns will be all be tended to, and that they will still be loved “no matter what.” Cartoon-style watercolor-and-pencil illustrations complement the humor of the story and provide an impressive variety of expressions for the irrepressible pooch.

A short, funny tale that will resonate with preschoolers and new readers, as well as older children who need simple but meaningful stories. (Picture book. 3-8)

I AM THE WORLD

Smith Jr., Charles R. Photos by Smith Jr., Charles R. Atheneum (48 pp.) $17.99 | Jul. 9, 2013 978-1-4424-2302-2 Once again, Smith offers appealing portraits of children in an effort to express the value of diversity (My People, by Langston Hughes, 2009, etc.).

Unfortunately the photographs are of varying quality, the brief text is often banal and repetitive, and some design choices obscure the artwork. Each picture, whether on a single page or double-page spread is captioned with a sentence that begins “I

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“For any kid paying attention, this book will be a shocker.” from follow your money

am....” In some cases, the words that follow are evocative and the images compelling: “I am the thread in kente cloth” accompanies a photo of a young, black woman gazing unsmiling into the camera. In others, the words chosen seem odd or inconsequential. Two of the weakest descriptions, “I am the snap in biscotti” and “I am the tradition in pierogi,” fail to effectively convey anything about the cultures they are meant to represent, and the playful, obviously posed photos wind up looking peculiar. On most pages, crisp, clear, white letters stand out against the black background with some words, usually one per page, printed in color to add visual interest. On a few pages, however, words printed across the faces of the children are distracting and difficult to read. Finally, while the appended glossary does offer basic definitions of the words and phrases used, it fails to effectively explain their pronunciation.

Well-intentioned and superficially attractive, this celebration of children and culture ultimately fails to educate or entertain. (glossary) (Picture book. 4-7)

DINOSAUR KISSES

Stein, David Ezra Illus. by Stein, David Ezra Candlewick (32 pp.) $15.99 | Aug. 6, 2013 978-0-7636-6104-5

Chomping and stomping come naturally to an exuberant dinosaur hatchling. Kissing? That takes practice.

Emerging from her egg at a run, Dinah STOMPS her fat legs and CHOMPS weeds with her sharp teeth. Kissing, though, turns out to be a challenge. After sending one hapless victim flying with a head butt and another inadvertently down the hatch (“Whoops,” she says. “Not good”), she returns to the hatchery…just in time to welcome a new sib with kisses—the sort that involve chomping, stomping and delighted head butts (“WHOMP!”). Drawn in thick outlines with a huge grin, wide eyes and a mottled yellow hide, Dinah stumps her way through minimally detailed prehistoric landscapes populated with anxious-looking smaller creatures. Children who groove on wimpy little butterfly kisses had best look elsewhere.

A kissing cousin to Bob Shea’s Dinosaur vs.… series.

(Picture book. 3-5)

DRAGONWITCH

Stengl, Anne Elisabeth Bethany House (400 pp.) $14.99 paper | $14.99 e-book | Jul. 1, 2013 978-0-7642-1027-3 978-1-4412-6146-5 e-book Series: Tales of Goldstone Wood, 5 The fifth volume in the acclaimed Tales of Goldstone Wood series keeps the mythic storytelling coming.

To meet her fiance, Alistair, the nephew and heir of Earl Ferox, Lady Leta travels to Gaheris Castle, where she begins taking reading lessons from the Chronicler, a reclusive dwarf who urges her to think for herself.

She practices her reading with old nursery rhymes that, to her horror, begin to come true. On his deathbed, the earl makes a game-changing announcement, recognizing the Chronicler— Florien—as his son and rightful heir just as demons arrive intent on annihilating the House of Gaheris. Soon, a small band of travelers—Florien, Alistair, Mouse (a young woman on her own spiritual quest) and Eanrin (an immortal being)—sets out to make the nursery rhymes–turned-prophecies come to pass.

Florien is to reclaim his ancestor’s sword and use it to slay the evil Dragonwitch. Readers will need to be patient, as the ambitious plot develops unhurriedly, and characters’ true identities and motivations are only gradually unraveled. Plot development is prioritized here, yet there is some admirable character development, particularly in Leta and Mouse, and explorations of the themes of destiny and forgiveness.

This complex tale with subtle Christian subtexts is best for fantasy fans who appreciate watching each unique piece of an enormous puzzle fall precisely into its place.

(Fantasy. 13 & up)

FOLLOW YOUR MONEY Who Gets It, Who Spends It, Where Does It Go?

Sylvester, Kevin; Hlinka, Michael Illus. by Sylvester, Kevin Annick Press (64 pp.) $24.95 | $14.95 paper | Jul. 1, 2013 978-1-55451-481-6 978-1-55451-480-9 paper Ka-ching! The sound says it all, but it is only the end of a long journey, as Sylvester and Hlinka explain.

You buy a baseball hat. Easy enough: You mowed the neighbor’s lawn, they gave you $5, and you gave that $5 to the store for the hat. But there is a lot more going on behind the scenes—the harvesting of the cotton for the hat, its construction (domestic, foreign), the cost of getting it to market, advertising, storage, etc. It’s a web of economic connections that Sylvester and Hlinka spell out with clarity in this primer on how your money gets divvied when you slap down that fiver. For any kid paying

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“High drama so compelling middle school readers won’t realize they’re being exposed to a lesson in ethics.” from too cool for this school

attention, this book will be a shocker. Sylvester and Hlinka build from fundamentals: What is value and worth, what is a salary (from the Latin for salt, when wages were paid in salt), what are costs, what is that thing called tax, and what does it buy? Sylvester and Hlinka are not out to overthrow capitalism, but simply by explaining how a credit card works or why energy companies make a dollar on seemingly every transaction, they spur readers to wonder about transparency and the ownership of natural resources.

Knowing why something costs so much might make you appreciate it, and the people who get it to you, more— and, perhaps, to act on that knowledge. (Nonfiction. 10-14)

PREP SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL

Taylor, Kara Dunne/St. Martin’s Griffin (304) $9.99 paper | $9.99 e-book Jul. 30, 2013 978-1-250-01759-8 978-1-250-01760-4 e-book Series: Prep School Confidential, 1

A fast-moving murder mystery with preppy overtones and a determined heroine.

When things get a little too hot at her tony New York City prep school and Anne Dowling is expelled for an accidental mishap that turns into arson, her parents ship her off to complete junior year at the Wheatley School. Just outside of Boston, Wheatley appears to be a stereotypical boarding school for the children of elite New Englanders ranging from senators to diplomats. Although determined to keep her head down and get back to New York as soon as possible, Anne is surprised to find that Wheatley really isn’t that bad—until she becomes entangled in a grisly murder mystery that involves her new roommate, Isabella. Never one to shy away from a challenge, Anne digs into the details of the crime, determined to locate the killer. However, when Anne takes up the mantle of sleuth, she quickly learns that the role comes with major risks, as she finds herself embroiled in a plot twisted with elements of international intrigue, political scandal and, of course, romance.

Although Anne’s uncanny ability to evade almost every jam stretches credulity, her no-nonsense personality and adventuring spirit carry the text and prime readers for the next Anne Dowling adventure, clearly signaled at the end.

Heavy overtones of Nancy Drew combine with a sassy boarding school spin for a fizzy read. (Fiction. 14-18)

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THE VERY BIG CARROT

Tone, Satoe Illus. by Tone, Satoe Eerdmans (26 pp.) $12.00 | Jul. 1, 2013 978-0-8028-5426-1

Decorative design? Yes. Scintillating story? Not so much.

The small trim size (6 inches by 8 inches) makes a slightly larger-than–life-sized carrot seem very big indeed; it never actually fits on the double-page spreads. Six puffy rabbits with indistinguishable personalities find the vegetable and then wonder what to do with it—five times. The repetitive syntax and vocabulary make the text sound like it escaped from an early reader: “What else could they do with the very big carrot? Maybe they could….” After making it into a boat, airplane, sky garden and house, they eat it. The end. Tone has an eye for pattern and composition. The cover is indicative of her style: Six white rabbits sit in a row on top of a circular orange base. They are shaded by a triangular, fringed canopy of carrot leaves. Delicate green fronds fill every inch around the base, while circular, veined leaves in shades of tangerine and peach, dotted with white stars, bleed off the top of the jacket. This will likely appeal to adults who appreciate adorned surfaces. For engaging storytelling, stick with Margaret Wise Brown’s The Runaway Bunny or try Aaron Reynold and Peter Brown’s Creepy Carrots (2012).

There is not enough humor, emotion, action or conflict, nor are there sufficient details for children to notice in the visual narrative, to encourage repeated readings. (Picture book. 3-5)

TOO COOL FOR THIS SCHOOL

Tracy, Kristen Delacorte (288 pp.) $16.99 | $10.99 e-book | $19.99 PLB | Aug. 6, 2013 978-0-385-74070-8 978-0-375-89984-3 e-book 978-0-375-98962-9 PLB It’s not easy being cool.

Especially in the sixth grade. Lane Cisco is pretty sure grade six is going to be a smooth ride. She has the right clothes, the right friends and the right secret boyfriend. She’s even chosen to be a class officer, which means pizza meetings and planning all the dances.

Life is pretty great until her parents announce an extended visit from her cousin, Mint, who lives in Alaska. Mint turns out to be the kind of girl who revels in the unconventional, and Lane and her friends quickly realize that Mint is less an embarrassment and more of a threat. Tracy delivers a compelling read about problems many early-adolescent readers will find familiar. Lane and her friends are believable and recognizable, if a little interchangeable, and their dialogue among themselves rings true.

The adults in the novel are less lucky; teachers are either absent or stiff, and Lane’s parents display a curious lack of empathy

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when they require Lane to share her life with a girl who’s essentially a stranger. Nevertheless, their emotions will ring true with readers, no matter how far in the past middle school lies.

High drama so compelling middle school readers won’t realize they’re being exposed to a lesson in ethics. (Fiction.

10-13)

SHIFTY BUSINESS

Trine, Greg Illus. by Dormer, Frank W. Harcourt (112 pp.) $12.99 | Jul. 2, 2013 978-0-547-80796-6 Series: the Adventures of Jo Schmo, 3

forms. Still curious, she brings out her binoculars and watches from a Ferris wheel as they jitterbug, hip-hop and boogie-woogie. Donning a top hat, she runs in to join them, but they are as still as “penguin Popsicles.” Still determined, she designs a perfect penguin costume and enlists Hippo as her partner. The penguins stand motionless. At long last, Julia achieves success when she teaches the penguins how to cha-cha. Now it is “[t]ap, flap, cha-cha-cha,” all around the ice. Valiant has crafted a fastpaced and entertaining tale of zoo shenanigans. Her watercolor paintings are fluid, swirling about the page with dance-floor fluidity. She plays with perspective and page design to present an eye-catching array of dance moves and colorful attire that could grace any ballroom floor or penguin habitat.

Fans of penguins and fans of dance and movement alike will enjoy this humorous romp. (Picture book, 3-7)

Defending San Francisco is a busy job for fourth-grade girl superhero Jo Schmo, who faces a cunning villain in this third

book in the series.

Numb Skull is a retired boxer who “used to be a good guy, or at least an okay guy, but every time he was smacked in the head in the boxing ring, he lost a little of his good-guyness and his okayguyness, until there was nothing left to do but pursue a life of crime.” He schemes to blow up a cruise ship carrying gazillionaires so that when it sinks, he can, via his submarine, steal the gazillionaires’ priceless jewels. In order to keep Jo Schmo from interfering, he runs her ragged by organizing a “crime tsunami,” which is more crime than a crime wave, which in turn is more than a crime ripple. Jo finds more difficulties in her attempts to master a new superpower, shape-shifting, which happens uncontrollably when she sleeps or sneezes. The convoluted time structure, slipping back and forth between flashbacks and current action, occasionally confuses, which will keep the target early-elementary audience on its toes. The playful illustrations have an anything-goes feel to them that matches the text’s punchy puns, wordplay and occasional fourth-wall breakage.

While there’s no doubt that Jo Schmo will eventually bring Numb Skull to justice, there’s enough hilarity and unexpectedness in the zany, quick jokes to keep readers guessing how. (Adventure. 6-9)

PENGUIN CHA-CHA

Valiant, Kristi Illus. by Valiant, Kristi Random House (40 pp.) $17.99 | $20.99 PLB | Aug. 27, 2013 978-0-375-87072-9 978-0-375-97072-6 PLB

WICKED CRUEL

Wallace, Rich Knopf (208 pp.) $16.99 | $10.99 e-book | $19.99 PLB Aug. 6, 2013 978-0-375-86748-4 978-0-375-89800-6 e-book 978-0-375-96748-1 PLB Welcome to Cheshire Notch, N.H., “a town where kids grow up aware of the many spirits in their midst.”

“It’s no rumor,” a character states in the opening pages. “I heard it from….Well, I don’t remember where I heard it. But from somebody reliable.” That’s how urban legends work, whether it’s the story of the finger in a Big Mac, a fried rat in a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken, or the drowned kid whose body thrashing in the pond can still be heard on dark, quiet nights. Nobody ever seems to have actually witnessed the event in question but hears it related by “my friend’s barber’s cousin in Chicago.” Three ghostly stories explore urban legends—actually rural New England legends—and how they changed lives.

A bullied boy moves away and dies from a brain injury, yet he is seen in a music video after his death. A team of horses drowns in a flooded brickyard, but on certain rainy nights, they run free. Five farm children die young, but one mysteriously communicates with a young boy who may be as afraid of girls as of ghosts. Ghosts may not have substance, but these brief novellas do, with their themes of bullying, loneliness, guilt, atonement, life and death.

Well-crafted, eerie tales of the bonds between the dead and the living. Wicked good. (Ghost stories. 10 & up)

Julia devises a plan to dance with penguins at the zoo.

Sharp-eyed Julia is perched high up in a tree watching a human dance troupe perform when she notices penguins stealing away with a boa, hats and fans. She follows them back to Penguin Cove, but all she sees are immobile black-and-white |

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UNDER THE EMPYREAN SKY

Wendig, Chuck Skyscape (368 pp.) $17.99 | $7.99 e-book | Jul. 30, 2013 978-1-4778-1720-9 978-1-4778-6720-4 e-book Series: Heartland Trilogy, 1

A chilling post-apocalyptic adventure set on an Earth devastated by poor agricultural practices.

For teenager Cael, a good day might be killing a shuck rat for dinner and sailing a land-boat above ultraengineered cornfields to scavenge parts from a wrecked motorvator. A bad day is watching the girl you love become Obligated to your archrival. Welcome to the Empyrean world, where the haves hover above ruined Earth in luxurious flotillas and the have-nots toil below in the Heartland, told whom to marry and what to grow—those “endless…everything” fields of corn that threaten to swallow towns and must be beaten back with “Queeny’s Quietdown,” an ominous herbicide. It’s all just “[l]ife in the Heartland,” resigned citizens say of violent “piss-blizzard” pollen storms, stillborn babies and the tumors that grow like strange fruit on their bodies. When Cael and his friends discover a trail of precious, prohibited vegetables growing deep in the corn, they stumble on a secret that may save them—or get them killed. Wendig offers vivid glimpses of authentic teen emotion and snappy, profanity-laced dialogue set in a grim-yet-plausible wrecked world. With last pages that offer more late-breaking revelation than resolution, this story’s dangling threads will no doubt entice readers to reach for the next book in the Heartland Trilogy.

A thoroughly imagined environmental nightmare with taut pacing and compelling characters that will leave readers eager for more. (Science fiction. 14 & up)

THE DISTANCE BETWEEN US

West, Kasie HarperTeen (320 pp.) $9.99 paper | $9.99 e-book | Jul. 2, 2013 978-0-06-223565-7 978-0-06-223566-4 e-book Caymen is 17 and on the cusp of college when she meets Xander and discovers there’s more to a guy than his bank-account balance.

Caymen and her mom are barely making a living with their porcelain-doll shop. They live in a town where there are the rich and those who cater to them.

When Xander comes into the shop one day and “beckons” her over, he confirms her opinion of the wealthy. Xander, however, is charmed by Caymen’s rapier wit, and she finds herself moved by his Ken-doll looks. He courts her with muffin deliveries, and the ride in his private jet is exhilarating. Xander chafes at his parents’ mandate that he take over the family hotel chain, and 106

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Caymen is indecisive about her future, so they begin a series of playful career dates and gradually overcome their preconceived notions of each other. There are a few hiccups and misunderstandings but plenty of gooey romantic stuff, too: “He tastes good, like salty chocolate.” Meanwhile, the shop is failing, and Caymen’s mother is acting dodgy. When her mom is hospitalized, and Xander unveils a gigantic surprise, Caymen has to give some consideration to Xander’s encouragement: “You have as many options as you give yourself.”

An antidote to dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction, this Cinderella story is sweet and hopeful. (Fiction. 12-17)

TUKI AND MOKA A Tale of Two Tamarins Young, Judy Illus. by Madsen, Jim Sleeping Bear Press (32 pp.) $16.99 | Aug. 1, 2013 978-1-58536-795-5 Series: Tales of the World

When animal hijackers capture his favorite tamarins, a young boy living near the Amazon rain forest in Ecuador comes to the rescue in this latest in the Tales of the World series.

Traveling by river to their camp in the rain forest, Eduardo and his father earn their living as castañeros, gathering heavy pods from Brazil nut trees and chopping them to collect the nuts. Eduardo has bonded with two playful tamarins called Tuki and Moko and a family of scarlet macaws that nest near the camp. The morning Eduardo and his father return to town with a boatload of nuts, they find the macaws, Tuki and Moko missing. Eduardo’s father suspects animal poachers. When Eduardo arrives at the town market, he follows the sound of familiar chattering into a tent where he discovers Tuki, Moko and macaws in cages and must use his wits to free them. With its pedagogical focus, the text touches on Brazil nut harvesting, unique rain-forest animals and rare-animal trafficking, and the author’s note elaborates on each. Smooth, photorealistic illustrations appear digitally rendered and effectively capture the drama of the rain forest and its verdant flora and exotic fauna through an arresting use of light, shadow, color and perspective.

This animal-poaching tale provides a purposive, engaging-enough introduction to Ecuador’s rain forests. (author’s note) (Picture book. 7-10)

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“On a scale from one to 10, what’s your favorite color of the alphabet?” from 123 versus abc

back-to-school picture books 123 VERSUS ABC

Boldt, Mike Illus. by Boldt, Mike Harper/HarperCollins (32 pp.) $17.99 | Jul. 1, 2013 978-0-06-210299-7 On a scale from one to 10, what’s your favorite color of the alphabet?

This book can’t decide whether it is a number book or an alphabet book—literally. Its anthropomorphized letters and numbers argue over which is more important for readers to learn—numbers that “count and measure and add and subtract” or letters that enable readers to “spell and read.” As they prepare to duke it out, their facial expressions (eyebrows, eyes, lips, teeth and tongues) and white-gloved fists and jabbing fingers speaking volumes, one alligator arrives. The number 1 and the letter A each use this as evidence to support their own case.

As proof for both continues to crowd (literally) the pages, the letters and numbers begin to take things in stride. By the end, they present the letters from A to Z and the numbers from one to 26 as a team, concluding that, “This is a book about Numbers…and Letters”…until the last page reveals a new character. “I’m a little lost. I’m supposed to be in a book about colors.”

Boldt’s digital illustrations are zany enough to pull off the plot.

Pointy numbers vie with rounded letters, while the animals that arrive are cartoonishly realistic-looking (though their actions and accessories are anything but).

Readers won’t care whether it’s about letters or numbers—they will be too busy poring over the artwork and laughing. (Picture book. 4-7)

PEPPA PIG AND THE BUSY DAY AT SCHOOL

Candlewick Press Candlewick (32 pp.) $12.99 | Jun. 11, 2013 978-0-7636-6525-8 Series: Peppa Pig

A busy school day gives the Peppa Pig licensing team an opportunity to cram every bit of learning and labeling they can into this based-on-a-British-TV-show title.

It’s not just any school day, though, it’s Special Talent Day, and Peppa has yet to decide which of her many talents she will share—singing, dancing, jumping rope.

After a “good pancake breakfast,” it’s off to school. Before the students can share their talents, there are all sorts of things to learn and do: counting from one to 10, naming an object that begins with each letter of the alphabet, playing store, painting, lunchtime and recess, and music class (aka |

name-a-bunch-of-instruments-and-their-sounds class). Finally, it’s time to share their talents. But what will Peppa do when she realizes not one of her talents is unique? She shows her class just what she (and every stereotypical pig) is good at, and they join in. The cartoon digital illustrations are bright and colorful and reflect the TV show’s aesthetic, but they are not without their flaws. It’s a good thing that characters’ names include their species, since some are rather difficult to identify. Also, children may wonder why the larger and older Peppa is in the same class with her little brother, George, and what appear to be other younger siblings.

There is not much here to make it stand out from other school-themed titles. Only for Peppa Pig devotees. (Picture book. 2-5)

A DAY AT SCHOOL

Cordier, Séverine Illus. by Lacroix, Cynthia Owlkids Books (48 pp.) $16.95 | Aug. 15, 2013 978-1-926973-95-1

This French import is a confusing miss for youngsters looking for reassurance on their first days of school.

The end of the holidays means the start of school for a family with three children. With their mother, they go shopping for school supplies and shoes and get haircuts and their pictures taken. On the first day, vignettes show the myriad things the family members do to get ready—shaving, tying shoelaces, squeezing oranges for juice, putting on makeup, brushing teeth, etc. Dad takes the oldest two to school, while Mom drops off the toddler at day care. The pages then follow the three children through their days, but it is difficult to keep track of them among the other, similarly drawn children, especially after they take off their jackets, removing an easy identifier. Singleand double-page spreads alternate with vignettes, which are sometimes labeled like a list, making the pages visually busy.

Indeed, with its spareness of text, the story is experienced more through the softly colored illustrations and the body language of the people. The rosy-cheeked children are a nice mix of races and genders (the baby sitter is black), and the scenes are ones that will be universally familiar.

While this may illustrate a typical family day, there are lots of blanks that readers (and listeners) will have to fill in for themselves…maybe too many. (Picture book. 2-4)

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“Most especially, enthusiastic kids will appreciate the message that there is a time and a place for everything—they needn’t stay cool �round the clock.” from clark the shark

CLARK THE SHARK

off one another, and the similarity to real human plights—to this early reader, continuing the trio’s adventures for kids just striking out on their own.

When will Fly and Spider get their own school stories?

(Early reader. 5-7)

Hale, Bruce Illus. by Francis, Guy Harper/HarperCollins (32 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 25, 2013 978-0-06-219226-4 Clark’s enthusiasm for school, while admirable, is a little too much for his classmates.

On its own, Clark’s zeal wouldn’t be so bad, but he is the largest and strongest student at his school, so his actions are more than a little intimidating to his smaller friends. He goes too fast during games of spinna-ma-jig, eats other kids’ lunches and cannot seem to use an indoor voice. Eventually, his classmates stop playing, eating and sitting with him. His teacher, Mrs. Inkydink, helps him figure out what’s wrong, but her advice to “stay cool” doesn’t sink in—until Clark starts making rhymes to help himself remember. “Only munch your own lunch.” “Easy does it, that’s the way. Then my friends will let me play.” His plan works, and everyone appreciates the new, improved, subdued Clark— especially the large new kid, who needs some help of his own.

Francis’ watercolor illustrations give Clark a rather goofy and endearing personality that is somewhat offset by the fact that he towers over his classmates. He manages to convey the emotions of the fish mainly with eye and mouth positions, and their nervousness around Clark is obvious.

Most especially, enthusiastic kids will appreciate the message that there is a time and a place for everything— they needn’t stay cool ’round the clock. (Picture book. 4-8)

DIARY OF A WORM Teacher’s Pet

Houran, Lori Haskins Illus. by Nez, John Harper/HarperCollins (32 pp.) $16.99 | Jul. 1, 2013 978-0-06-208705-8 Series: Diary of a Worm

Cronin and Bliss’ droll humor come to the early-reader set courtesy of Houran and Nez. Mrs. Mulch is the best teacher Worm has ever had. So, when they have a substitute so she can take the day off for her birthday, Worm just has to think up a present that will be more spectacular than those of his classmates. His best friends, Spider and Fly, try to help, but their ideas just aren’t appropriate for worms. But when they take him kite flying (literally) to cheer him up, they spy an apple from their vantage point.

Will it be rotten enough? Will they be able to get it to Worm’s school? Will Worm be able to pull a birthday card out of thin air? Nez’s illustrations in the style of Bliss entertain, his characters sporting accessories and facial expressions that will be quite familiar to readers. Houran and Nez have transferred all the elements that made the Diary series so successful—the slightly gross humor, the three friends and their talents playing 108

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EVERY COWGIRL GOES TO SCHOOL

Janni, Rebecca Illus. by Avril, Lynne Dial (32 pp.) $16.99 | Jun. 27, 2013 978-0-8037-3937-6

It is easy to misconstrue everything that happens on a not-so-good first day of school when a new girl upsets the balance between two friends.

Cowgirl Nellie Sue is excited about the brand-new day of school ahead of her. But starting with the bus ride, her day goes downhill. Her friend Anna is sitting (and talking!) with some other girl. And Anna and the straight-laced Maya seem to be best buds all day long—from their seats next to each other and their giggling and whispering to Maya’s stepping on Nellie Sue’s shoelace and causing her to fall—leaving poor Nellie Sue to feel left out. When Maya’s attempt to reach out to Nellie Sue backfires, Maya then seeks her out, and the two immediately become fast friends. While the girls’ detente is way too easy and somewhat unrealistic, Nellie Sue’s spirit and determination remain consistent with her previous outings, and her message is an important one: “It was a brand-new day, and I decided it would go just my way.” Avril’s watercolor and gouache illustrations capture the girls’ emotions, and she nicely shows the three friends’ different personalities through their clothing choices, hairstyles and the five things they have added to their “allabout-me” bags.

Girls having friendship troubles may not find the solutions they seek here, but Nellie Sue does have a can-do attitude that will resonate with readers. (Picture book. 4-7)

GUS, THE DINOSAUR BUS

Liu, Julia Illus. by Lynn, Bei Houghton Mifflin (32 pp.) $12.99 | Jul. 9, 2013 978-0-547-90573-0

In an odd mix of Syd Hoff ’s Danny and the Dinosaur (1999) and Steven Kellogg’s The Mysterious Tadpole (1997, 2002), Liu and Lynn team up to present the tale of Gus, a dinosaur whose bus duties are not appreciated by all the townspeople.

Kids in this city don’t ever pretend to be sick and are quick to be ready for school on time—they can’t wait to ride Gus, the dinosaur bus. The apartment dwellers just slide down Gus’ neck—no need to go downstairs. But while the children all love

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Gus, he is not without his problems. Though the city builds him his own road, Gus still sometimes fouls the phone lines, bumps the overpasses and knocks down traffic lights. And that’s not even considering the damage his tail does. The school can’t continue to pay the bills; the principal sidelines Gus, who cries huge, bathtub-filling tears. And just like that, the children discover a new role for Gus that pleases everyone. Muted blues, reds and greens give the illustrations a retro feel that contrasts with Lynn’s scribbly style. The rough, watercolor-and-pencil artwork may just inspire readers to pick up art materials of their own, though it does make it difficult to make out details in the larger spreads, in which people often get lost in the lack of definition.

Dinosaur lovers may be enchanted, but others will want to stick to Gus’ predecessors. (Picture book. 4-8)

THE BEST THING ABOUT KINDERGARTEN

Lloyd, Jennifer Illus. by Leng, Qin Simply Read (36 pp.) $16.95 | Jun. 18, 2013 978-1-897476-82-6

On graduation day, a patient teacher leads her class through a guessing game about what has been the best thing about kindergarten.

Mrs. Appleby is proud of her class. They’ve made hats and decorations and learned a special song to sing for their parents.

But kindergarten is not over quite yet—there is time for one last, and most important, lesson. “Who can guess what is the best thing about kindergarten?” The students come up with lots of good answers—calendar time, the playhouse center, the block corner, arts and crafts time, math time, the writing center, storytime, recess—but none is correct, although Mrs. Appleby kindly reinforces the accomplishments and enjoyment her students have gained from each of these activities. The guessing game is interrupted by the graduation ceremony, which goes without a hitch, the proud students each doing their parts and receiving their diplomas. And at the end, she finally shares the answer: “You, my students, are the best thing about kindergarten.” The hurried, scribbly feel of Leng’s illustrations lend them the busy, hectic reality of a kindergarten classroom, especially on the exciting last day of school. She neatly captures the messiness and creativity that characterize young children, and her kindergarteners are a nice mix of races and genders.

The best thing about this book? Its reassuring look back at all the things the happy and successful students have enjoyed about kindergarten—equally valuable at the beginning and the end of the school year. (Picture book. 3-5)

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CHAMELIA AND THE NEW KID IN CLASS

Long, Ethan Illus. by Long, Ethan Little, Brown (40 pp.) $16.99 | Jul. 2, 2013 978-0-316-21042-3

The unique Chamelia is back, but this time her antics and loud outfits aren’t enough to make her the center of attention, a position that has been stolen by the new kid in school, Cooper.

The chameleon diva is singing and dancing through her rendition of her summer vacation for her enraptured classmates when Mrs. Knight introduces the interloper. Not only is this the end of her show, it is the end of Chamelia as the standout in class. His portraits have the other kids clamoring to be drawn in art, his team wins at soccer, and his after-school games enthrall everyone—except Chamelia, who’s not used to coming in second place in anything. Finally, Chamelia decides that his run needs to end: She sabotages his show-and-tell presentation. But when her plan works too well, “[s]uddenly, being the best felt the worst,” and she changes her attitude and actions to “show the class what it really meant to be a star.” As in her eponymous first outing (2011), Long makes Chamelia, and now Cooper as well, pop off the pages with collaged, fabric-patterned clothing, in contrast to the other chameleons’ solid, pastel outfits. His characters are expressive to the nth degree, their eyes (and eyelids) and mouths showing emotion, while their body language leaves no doubt as to their feelings—Chamelia’s upturned snout speaks volumes.

Giving up the starring role isn’t easy, but readers may appreciate Chamelia’s example. (Picture book. 4-7)

SEA MONSTER AND THE BOSSY FISH

Messner, Kate Illus. by Rash, Andy Chronicle (40 pp.) $16.99 | Aug. 1, 2013 978-1-4521-1253-4

Sea Monster’s second outing finds him with his first-day resourcefulness intact (Sea Monster’s First Day, 2011).

When Sea Monster learns of a new student in his class, he goes out of his way to be kind to him. But instead of cowering and being shy, as Sea Monster did on his first day, the new fish is something of a braggart, always comparing (negatively) his old school with this new one. He also turns out to be quite bossy, selfish and unkind. On his second day, he starts the Fresh Fish Club (he’s president, of course) for all the cool fish, passing out sunglasses for the members. Sea Monster is quite pleased with his new shades…until he sees that not everyone is wearing them. “Suddenly, my cool new shades felt heavy on my snout.” He ponders a way to include everyone, and the Friend Fish club is started. The members wear buttons and do good deeds for one another. Proving his worth as a diplomat, Sea

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Monster kindly deflects the new fish’s declaration that he’ll be president, asking the newcomer to instead use his drumming talent for the good of all. The tale ends with a rhyming song about the new club and their friendly mission. Rash’s artwork is a hoot, filled with humorous and hidden details (don’t miss the book titles in the library).

Sea Monster keeps delivering important messages in fun ways. What issue will he tackle next? (Picture book. 4-7)

JOE AND SPARKY GO TO SCHOOL Michalak, Jamie Illus. by Remkiewicz, Frank Candlewick (48 pp.) $15.99 | Jun. 11, 2013 978-0-7636-6278-3 Series: Joe and Sparky

It’s not Mary’s little lamb, but Joe the giraffe and Sparky the turtle who go to school one day in this third installment of Michalak and Remkiewicz’s early-reader series.

When Joe and Sparky spy a field trip at Safari Land, “the famous cageless zoo,” Joe can’t resist getting a closer look at the school bus, which is big, yellow and loud, just like him. With Sparky perched atop his head, Joe sidles up to the bus, and the turtle inadvertently ends up speeding away on the bus’ roof.

Ever loyal, Joe leaps onto the back of the bus to save his friend.

In the second chapter, they arrive at the school, where the teacher, Miss Hootie, steps on her glasses. Her sight compromised, she mistakes Joe and Sparky for a student (presumably one that’s wearing a hat), much to her real students’ delight and amusement. Try as they might, the animals can’t quite master the class routines, and Joe is woefully disappointed, as he wants to earn a star from Miss Hootie. Happily, Sparky finds ways to affirm his friend, and they end up back in Safari Land by book’s end. While the story feels rather forced and reliant on slapstick, and the pictures not always great at providing context cues for new readers, fans of the earlier, stronger series installments will be pleased to revisit its characters.

Onward Joe and Sparky! (Early reader. 6-8)

YOU’RE WEARING THAT TO SCHOOL? Plourde, Lynn Illus. by Cornelison, Sue Disney Hyperion (32 pp.) $16.99 | Jun. 25, 2013 978-1-4231-5510-2

A hippo with her own sense of style shows her 1-year-older, uptight, mouse best friend that it’s important to be true to yourself.

Penelope is over the moon to be starting school, but her best friend, Tiny, seems more reticent about his first day back: “Oh, Penelope, you have so much to learn.” And he’s not talking about academics. Penelope’s sparkle rainbow outfit will cause everyone to stare, and what will they think of her picnic lunch and her Hugsy Hippo for show and tell? Tiny helps her pick out the perfect outfit, lunch and item for show and tell—all of them boring, ordinary and plain in Penelope’s eyes. But you can’t keep a happy hippo down, and in the morning, Penelope dons her sparkle rainbow outfit and packs her picnic lunch and Hugsy Hippo anyway. Tiny is uncomfortable with the other kids’ stares at the bus stop, reluctant to sit with Penelope on the bus and worried that his friend will have a bad day. But when they meet up again in the lunchroom, he realizes that his fears were unfounded. Penelope not only has a great day, she makes the day better for all the kids around her, Tiny included. Plourde’s dialogue includes lots of give-and-take between Penelope and Tiny, encouraging children to join in, and Cornelison’s illustrations positively revel in Penelope’s outré glee.

Penelope joins the ranks of some other popular nonconformists, including Ian Falconer’s Olivia, David Shannon’s Camilla Cream and Victoria Jamieson’s Bea. (Picture book. 4-8)

TONY BALONEY School Rules

Ryan, Pam Muñoz Illus. by Fotheringham, Edwin Scholastic (40 pp.) $6.99 | Jul. 1, 2013 978-0-545-48166-3 Series: Tony Baloney Tony Baloney doesn’t have to worry about sibling problems today—it’s the first day of school. But will he be better

able to behave there?

Four chapters take children transitioning between early readers and longer books through Tony’s day, from getting ready and learning the teacher’s rules through the school day and back home again. As those familiar with Tony would suspect, the little penguin has some trouble with the rules (Tony Baloney, 2011).

He calls out in class, pushes a friend too enthusiastically during a game of tag and excitedly runs to a seat at lunch. Finally, he interrupts his teacher’s group time for something not on the list of “B Emergencies” (bathroom, bandage, belly-upset). But the 110

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“Retro pinks, yellows, blues and greens highlight details in the otherwise gray-and-white illustrations, while the three stripes on the alligator (and his never-open mouth) give him an appealing, nonthreatening look.” from oliver and his alligator

teacher and class quickly concur that “Bob is buried beneath the blocks!” is indeed a valid B Emergency, and they expand the list (quite humorously). While Tony doesn’t get to be Line Leader on the first day as his big sister did, he is crowned a Friendship Ambassador for helping the buried Bob. As in his first outing, Tony’s superego, aka Dandelion, his stuffed bird, gives him sage advice and helps him process the whole experience. Fotheringham’s digital illustrations pop with bold colors.

The penguins’ droll facial expressions and body language will certainly be familiar to young readers This is likely to soothe the fears of those similarly nervous about their ability to follow the school rules. (Early reader. 5-7)

OLIVER AND HIS ALLIGATOR

Schmid, Paul Illus. by Schmid, Paul Disney Hyperion (40 pp.) $15.99 | Jun. 25, 2013 978-1-4231-7437-0 Going into the darkness beyond Petunia Goes Wild! (2012), Schmid enters the tongue-in-cheek metaphorical alligator/ crocodile waters of Candace Fleming (Who Invited You?, illustrated by George Booth, 2001) and Joe Kulka (My Crocodile Does Not Bite, 2013).

Oliver isn’t too sure about starting school—will his “brave” be big enough?—so he stops by the swamp and picks up his own tough: an alligator. “Just in case things got rough.” When he is asked his name by a lady (not his mom) and can’t remember, two little words take care of the difficulty: “Much, munch!” The same happens to a friendly little girl when Oliver’s answer gets stuck.

A classroom full of noisy kids? Decorations that intimidate with all Oliver must learn? Not a problem for the now-rotund alligator. But now the problem is, “School is maybe kind of a little boring.” But where is that singing and laughter coming from?

And can Oliver solve his newest quandary? Munch, munch! The simple, spare pastel pencil and digitally colored illustrations masterfully use both white space and the page turn to add to the humor. Retro pinks, yellows, blues and greens highlight details in the otherwise gray-and-white illustrations, while the three stripes on the alligator (and his never-open mouth) give him an appealing, nonthreatening look.

On the first day, both the light and the dark sides of kindergartners will go to school, their kissing hands clutching a stuffed alligator, self-confidence soaring. (Picture book. 4-7)

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DOG-GONE SCHOOL

Schmidt, Amy Photos by Schmidt, Ron Random House (40 pp.) $16.99 | Jul. 9, 2013 978-0-375-86974-7 Series: Loose Leashes

Author Schmidt has crafted 16 poems, in different forms, about school, and aside from a couple of canine-specific outliers, any of these could be about a child’s school day.

For children and dog lovers alike, Illustrator Schmidt’s photographs of dogs and adorable puppies will be the biggest draw here. Posed in school scenes, sometimes with props, many of his pups express their emotions with their eyes and ears, even if only to communicate to the photographer, “Why are you doing this to me?” The verses offer readers a mix of poetic forms, some of which will be well-known and others that will be new: acrostic, cinquain, quatrain, climbing rhyme, haiku and monorhyme among them. They focus on common school-day routines— from riding the bus, using the hallway pass, lunch and recess to academic subjects (spelling, math, reading, science, geography) and specials (art, music, library). There are even some naughty “students”—one who ate his homework and two suspects in a shoe-chewing incident.

Though some may dub the collection doggerel, dog lovers beginning school will be enchanted. (Picture book/poetry.

3-7)

MY NEW TEACHER AND ME!

Yankovic, Al Illus. by Hargis, Wes Harper/HarperCollins (40 pp.) $17.99 | Jul. 1, 2013 978-0-06-219203-5

A by-the-rules teacher and a tall-tale– telling student don’t see eye to eye on the first day of school in Yankovic’s rhyming salute to the power of the imagination.

Observant readers will notice right away that Mr. Booth is an uptight kind of guy: The rules everywhere are a big clue. Sure enough, the teacher singles out narrator Billy immediately, asking why he is so filthy. The answer? Billy was digging to China and unearthed a dinosaur skull. When Mr. Booth calls him on his bluff, Billy goes on to relate more stories, each more elaborate and far-fetched than the last. But in the end, Mr. Booth gets some proof that maybe Billy isn’t telling such tall tales after all, proof that he hangs on the wall as a reminder. While kids will certainly get into the spirit and fun of the book, Billy gets a bit preachy, though nonetheless inspirational, toward the end: “I’ll bet every great thinker and leader we’ve got / Could see all kinds of things other people could not! / So then why get upset if somebody like me / Tries to look at the world just a bit differently?” The ending is just open-ended enough to make readers wonder about the veracity of Billy’s tales. Hargis’ watercolor,

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“Enhancements include an introductory video that uses Google Earth to zero in on Berger’s dig sites outside of Johannesburg, another, nifty video that gives a “3-D” look at the titular skull….” from the skull in the rock

THE WATERMELON VENDOR

pencil and digital acrylic illustrations are brightly colored and full of tiny details for readers to pore over.

Sure to feed imaginations. (Picture book. 4-8)

Carajal, Lizardo Translated by Purdy, Renée Illus. by Carajal, Lizardo LuaBooks $4.99 | Dec. 22, 2012 1.1; Jan. 14, 2013

interactive e-books THE SKULL IN THE ROCK

Berger, Lee R.; Aronson, Marc National Geographic $9.99 | Apr. 23, 2013 1.0; Apr. 23, 2013

Advances in paleoanthropology are given a bracing, clearsighted overview in this enhanced e-book from Berger and Aronson, based on the 2012 print book

of the same name.

Many easily recognize the discovery of 3-million-year-old Lucy as a vital moment in the human progress. But except for articles published in rarified journals, the general public hasn’t heard nearly enough from the paleoanthropological front since her discovery, and this work helps to set that record straight. It uses the findings of co-author Berger and his son as a hinge to learning from the fossil record; of “training your eye to see what you need to see” out in the field. Using the National Geographic Society’s trademark crack photography and layman’s language, the book takes readers from Lucy through a very helpful timeline of famous fossil finds in Africa and the introduction of dating techniques. It constructs a braided evolutionary trail that includes a member Berger named sediba, who had traits quite separate from chimpanzees and may prove to be a link to the deep past. Enhancements include an introductory video that uses Google Earth to zero in on Berger’s dig sites outside of Johannesburg, another, nifty video that gives a “3-D” look at the titular skull, enlargeable photos that often appear in swipeable galleries, and active hyperlinks from Web-based resources in the bibliography, allowing galvanized readers instant, direct access to further information.

A terrific piece of paleoanthropology, with a smart blend of scientific sobriety and narrative verve. (Nonfiction enhanced e-book. 10 & up)

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A tender, incoherent childbirth tale much in need of further editorial and design work.

A watermelon seller lovingly pats his wife’s swelling belly before going off to work. He then spins a news item about a Japanese researcher who has developed cubical melons into a story about a man born round. The man in the watermelon vendor’s story is so effectively forced into the mold of his square world that he’s later shocked, like his square wife, to learn that “their seeds, like watermelon seeds, will always produce round humans and round watermelons.” Though the narrating vendor admits that his daughter “will be added to the national population statistics as a little square,” he closes with the assertion that “our circle has grown” with her birth. Looking like paper dolls in the illustrations, cartoon figures nod, gesture and sometimes slide across simply drawn backgrounds as soothing music tinkles loudly enough to, at times, almost drown out the optional narration. As if the patchwork story isn’t distraction enough, there are several typos, along with page turns that frequently require multiple swipes to respond. Furthermore, though the text is available in eight languages, the audio narration only comes in two; rather than being linked, the audio options and the printed text must be set separately to match.

Sweet and soothing on a quick pass, but closer attention just reveals a confusing jumble. (iPad storybook app. 5-8)

CAMP MYTH

Carter, Chris Lewis Chris Lewis Carter Apr. 11, 2013 1.0; Apr. 11, 2013 At summer camp, a gathering of faes and elves, sprites and pixies, cyclops and kitsunes and leprechauns see what they can do about the birth of an unhappy dragon—that is if the hydra and sirens and dryads, cockatrice and basilisk and kraken don’t make a mess of things.

At Camp Myth, mythological creatures get together each summer to take strength in numbers, as mythological creatures are fewer on the ground and not getting the respect they ought from the modern world. Here, they—and readers—will get acquainted with the range of strange beings, some enticing, some dicey, some like the lovable jerk in high school (yes, the cyclops). The story is a straightforward affair in which the fae and the kitsune try to handle a newborn dragon, along with a supporting cast of unnaturals. The backgrounds are handsome,

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and the characters have a ’tude that ranges between bohemian and babe. But those wishing for energetic engagement with the story will be disappointed, as there is little but a linear progression through the plot, with a trunk line running off here and there. The characters roll in from stages left and right as if on dollies, and the speech bubbles so dominate the screen that they obliterate the settings. The narrative, however, has a creepy/ comic momentum that will keep the screen active by users.

Much of this story has yet to be told or even released; maybe it will flesh out some. (iPad storybook app. 6-10)

FARELLAS, THE LEGEND OF A GIANT

Corbera i Padró, Núria Illus. by Corbera i Padró, Núria Jordi Martín i Forns $2.99 | Apr. 6, 2013 1.0; Apr. 6, 2013

Though easy on the eyes and fun to tap, this simple tale of a good giant who fights a bad one could really use both a better translation and a more developed storyline.

At the urging of a passing lad, a kindly Catalan giant known as Strong Farell, or Farellas, sets out to free Barcelona from a mean giant. Rather than leave peaceably, said meanie demands that Farellas “fight against me to kick me out of the city.” After a quick feast “to recover strenght [sic],” Farellas tosses his adversary up into the sky so that he “flew over the roofs of Barcelona and got lost far away the sea horizon,” then strolls home past cheering crowds. Taps on the brightly colored, multitextured cartoon collages trigger mild, pleasing interactions. Night changes to day, roosters crow, small animals pop out of hiding, and the smiling, flannel-shirted giant traverses woods and city streets. These and other animations play out as rather loud strains of background music sound and, at times, clash. The unnarrated text can be read in English, Spanish or the original print version’s Catalan.

Language issues aside, more a story outline than a finished work, but there’s something sweetly appealing about Farellas for all that. (jigsaw puzzle) (iPad storybook app. 6-8)

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LOOPY LOST HIS LETTUCE

Pixelflip Studios Pixelflip Studios $1.99 | Oct. 12, 2012 2.0; Feb. 3, 2013

A crocheted calico snail loses sight of a coveted head of lettuce and must creep through a tremendously laborious story to try and find it.

Loopy the snail and Mumma Butterfly are fashioned from a wide variety of yarns—fuzzy, smooth and patterned textures in an assortment of vibrant colors. In fact, crocheted creatures and surroundings populate every illustration. They’re creative and cute. All of the other app components, however, are significantly lacking. The story, read by a sweet enough but monotone-voiced Australian girl, is told in pedestrian rhyme that regularly strong-arms the narrative to fit the meter. Not only are the page transitions and animations—well, snaillike, the story lumbers on and on. Just when he thinks he’s going to find his lettuce, poor Loopy has to help other creatures with their tasks—games that range from endurable to mind-numbing—before they’ll help him with his. The difficulty-level options at the app’s launch correspond with the games, not the text. Tap-activated interactions perform fine (though they’re often repetitive and dull), but the tilt and shake features are often inconsistent and frustratingly slow. By the time Loopy finds his lettuce, readers will have gotten a visual tutorial of the seasons and a few gratuitous interactive thrills, but they might also be covered in cobwebs.

This yarn could definitely use a tighter weave. (iPad storybook app. 2-5)

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WHY BEGINS WITH W A Lesson in Murder Schulte, Leo; Schulte, John PANGEA $3.99 | Apr. 8, 2013 1.0; Apr. 8, 2013

A light scattering of digital inserts doesn’t raise the grade of this mannered tale of high school murder, published on paper in 2009.

Framed as transcribed entries from a found journal, the open-ended tale begins with the discovery of a (supposed) murder-suicide and ends with the further death of a (purported) witness. In between, the unnamed narrator intersperses the account of the investigations with low opinions of fellow students, teachers, school lunch, Hemingway and like adolescent targets. A clutch of ambiguous incidents, inscrutable clues and unreliable-sounding witnesses all remain so at the end and shed no more light on what’s going on than do the bombastic side comments (“Intelligence is gender neutral, but stupidity is a bitch”) that appear when the antique woodcut vignettes scattered throughout are clicked. Nor are readers likely to be engaged by the narrator’s teasing refusals to reveal his or her gender (a reference to a boys’ gym class is probably an authorial mistake rather than a deliberate clue). A jumbled Blair Witch Project–style video trailer is tacked to the front end.

Ambitious, but seriously lacking polish—and also a reason to read any sequels. (Enhanced e-book mystery. 12-14)

This Issue’s Contributors # Alison Anholt-White • Kim Becnel • Elizabeth Bird • Marcie Bovetz • Connie Burns • Timothy Capehart • Ann Childs • Julie Cummins • GraceAnne A. DeCandido • Dave DeChristopher • Elise DeGuiseppi • Lisa Dennis • Andi Diehn • Brooke Faulkner • Laurie Flynn • Judith Gire • Jessie C. Grearson • Heather L. Hepler • Megan Honig • Julie Hubble • Shelley Huntington • Kathleen T. Isaacs • Laura Jenkins • Betsy Judkins • Deborah Kaplan • Megan Dowd Lambert • Angela Leeper • Peter Lewis • Lori Low • Wendy Lukehart • Lauren Maggio • Michelle H. Martin PhD • Jeanne McDermott • Kathie Meizner • Lisa Moore • John Edward Peters • Susan Pine • Kristy Raffensberger • Lesli Rodgers • Erika Rohrbach • Leslie L. Rounds • Ann Marie Sammataro • Katie Scherrer • Dean Schneider • Stephanie Seales • Chris Shoemaker • Karyn N. Silverman • Rita Soltan • Deborah D. Taylor • Bette Wendell-Branco • Gordon West • Monica Wyatt • Melissa Yurechko

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indie WEE THREE KINGS

FACE THE MUSIC

Anderson, Brent L. CreateSpace (198 pp.) $12.99 paper | $3.99 e-book Sep. 16, 2012 978-1-4751-4459-8 In Anderson’s warmhearted, familyfriendly debut Christian novel, ceramic figurines of the three wise men come to life at Christmastime and work small miracles of faith with far-reaching consequences.

A Christian Chinese factory worker’s impulsive blessing imbues a Nativity set’s three wise men and their camel with consciousness. After the figurines (Uncle, Chip, Harold and the camel, Thunder) arrive at a London gift shop, an angel tells them that the Lord has plans for them: Each year, from December 12 until sunrise on Christmas Eve, the foursome will be able to think and reason, and for the duration of Christmas Eve, they will come fully to life. As Christmases come and go, the figurines are passed from place to place: an orphanage, a military submarine, a naval hospital, a retired couple’s home, a pastor’s house and others. They use their once-a-year gift of life to aid and comfort human beings young and old, rich and poor, black and white. In the book’s dramatic finale—a confrontation with the demonic forces of darkness and despair—the angel reappears and shows the little wise men how their seemingly unrelated small acts of faith over the years were all connected. Anderson leavens this Christian book’s evangelism with deft humor, likable characters and a buoyant sense of magical adventure. His small heroes are fully realized individuals with appealing quirks, questioning minds and humble compassion, and they grow toward spiritual maturity. As they “learn about human characteristics of love, devotion, tenderness and kindness,” they reach their own happy ending. The epilogue’s sly little cautionary surprise is also a nice touch.

A well-written, frankly religious tale for all ages.

Anderson, Joe West Butte Books (358 pp.) $14.99 paper | $3.99 e-book Apr. 4, 2013 978-0-9890251-1-9 In Anderson’s novel, a musician rehabilitates himself and has one last go at success, culminating in an appearance at the Grammy Awards.

At the Grammy Awards in 1997, Zack Fluett, keyboardist with the band Cultural Wasteland, makes headlines when he punches his co-writer and lead singer, Lark Dray, in the nose, breaking his hand in the process. The novel toggles back and forth in time, cataloging the events leading up to the punch and Zack’s post-Grammy fall from grace and his eventual, song-by-song rise to a position of respectability in the music community once again. We see Zack at various key moments in his life: meeting Lark at a party in 1991 and forming the band that will eventually become Cultural Wasteland; his marriage to Claudia Rankin, a publicist whose Philadelphia high-society upbringing is at odds with Zack’s childhood, spent on a ranch in Billings, Mont.; his building a recording studio at his home outside Aspen as a way of getting reacquainted with his muse. The framing device for the story is the Grammy Awards broadcast in 2008, where, a decade after his last infamous appearance, Zack finds himself nominated for song of the year and reckoning with the demons from his past. An entertainment lawyer, rock musician and record label owner, the author writes knowingly about the music scene. His story is as old as rock ’n’ roll itself—a cautionary tale of how sex, drugs and rampant ego can torpedo a career. What redeems it is the wit and honesty with which Zack narrates his story and the author’s eye for detail, as manifested in his faux discographies, Billboard charts and newspaper articles that begin every chapter. Although the ending is pat, there are enough jagged edges for this rock novel to qualify as the real deal.

A familiar story made new by the empathetic main character and an authentic rock ’n’ roll universe.

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“By stretching a bit past reality, these stories reveal it.” from before and afterlives

SHATTERED PARADISE Memoirs of a Nicaraguan War Child Araguti, Ileana J.G. Publishing (268 pp.)

Jul. 1, 2013 978-0-9884025-3-9

In her debut work, Araguti recalls her childhood in Nicaragua against the backdrop of the country’s revolutionary war.

Born in 1973, Ileana entered the world when the Nicaraguan revolutionary war raged. The last of eight children, she was “raised by a sobbing mother, a womanizer father, unyielding school nuns, and a tantalizing landscape filled with landmines and grenades camouflaged between the canopies of cloud forests and humid soil.” Like her father, she felt most at home on the family farm in the cloud forest, with its “toucans, elusive quetzals, ocelots, macaws…perfumed by vibrant frangipanis, stubborn ferns and humid moss.” Her mother, “a dedicated teacher who taught Papa how to read and calculate,” insisted on returning to town for the school year, where Ileana is taught manners and ladylike etiquette—“NO TREE CLIMBING!” Still, summers on the farm were paradise—until the revolution intensified, with the family enduring bombings and other horrors. In a particularly traumatic episode, Ileana witnessed a man being shot to death right in front of her. Two brothers finally left for the U.S. to escape war and the draft; Araguti, then a young teenager suffering from some kind of stress disorder, joined them along with her mother. Araguti colorfully portrays the richness of all she loves about Nicaragua, from animals, birds, plants, folklore and customs to the delicious meals. Her memoir includes photographs and several recipes with instructions: “14. Eat without utensils! 15. Enjoy!” The story feels somewhat skimpy, however, perhaps since the title suggests an even more harrowing experience. Araguti, with her fairly affluent family and protective mother, isn’t a “war child” in the same sense as, say, Emmanuel Jal. Title aside, more attention to Araguti’s experiences adjusting to America would have added an interesting, more matured perspective, and the book could also use an editorial cleanup and some narrative tightening as well.

Wonderfully evokes Nicaragua’s enchanting beauty and the enormity of its loss.

BEFORE AND AFTERLIVES Barzak, Christopher Lethe Press (242 pp.) $15.00 paper | $6.99 e-book Mar. 20, 2013 978-1-59021-369-8

In his latest short story collection, Barzak (Birds and Birthdays, 2012, etc.) charmingly yet disturbingly juxtaposes fantastic and gritty realities.

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The 17 stories collected here bring readers into worlds where mermaids beckon to the sea, where a boy wrapped in barbed wire becomes wrapped up in love, where the end of the world is just another way to find yourself, and where ordinary characters meet extraordinary circumstances. Barzak takes what readers know (or think they do) and skews the view, exposing a new side of reality. In “A Mad Tea Party,” ex-druggie Alice is trapped in a psychotic wonderland of emotional confusion, and in “The Other Angelas,” a woman literally splits herself apart to handle an emotionally abusive husband. In an elegant, stylistic example of second-person narration, one of the shorter stories, “A Beginner’s Guide to Survival Before, During, and After the Apocalypse,” showcases Barzak’s fluid, uncomplicated and provocative craftsmanship: “At night, build a small fire out of moss and straw and twigs. Do not risk the luxury of true warmth and light.” As the varied characters move from apathetic to desperate, hopeful to curious, they deal with subject matter so fantastic, the importance of a solid foundation becomes paramount.

Here and there, an out-of-place phrase or a slip in narrative voice may take readers out of the carefully constructed stories, but fortunately, those instances are few and far between. Instead, readers will eagerly follow Barzak as he utilizes his natural storytelling talents. Fans of speculative fiction especially will enjoy this ride through the fantastic worlds Barzak conjures.

By stretching a bit past reality, these stories reveal it.

THE VERSATILE HUSBAND

Benn, Peter CreateSpace (120 pp.) $19.95 paper | $3.99 e-book | Jan. 17, 2013 978-1-4810-9967-7 A straightforward, practical guide for men in heterosexual relationships who’d like to explore sex with other men.

In this slim, accessible book, Benn aims to reach the “typical sexually restless married male.” For him, this man is likely between 40 and 60 years old, and though married for more than 10 years, he secretly longs for man-to-man contact, perhaps including sex. While maybe not quite ready for, or even interested in, leaving his wife and family, he can no longer hide his desires. That’s where Benn steps in. In sympathetic, nonjudgmental prose, he advises readers on how to conduct private relationships with other men, exploring first why certain men may want to stray from their normal path. He’s encouraging and yet realistic, letting men know that while they’re hardly alone in their gay fantasies, acting on these fantasies will likely wreak havoc on their marriages. Nevertheless, the decision is up to them. The book will be particularly useful to those looking for practical advice about how to enter into a gay lifestyle, with chapters on where to meet men—including sex shops, adult cinemas and gay bars—how to react if you encounter a man from your “other life” in one of these locations and how to engage in safe sex. In a time when gay lifestyles are increasingly accepted, the book has a slightly retrograde feel to it. One wonders why

“Whether it’s providing a list of 10 useful steps readers can employ to deter identity theft or offering an easy formula for evaluating a nest egg, the author’s counsel seems to be right on the money.” from make your money last a lifetime

Benn didn’t simply write a manual about coming out, as he writes so emphatically about the relief and joy of unearthing the desire. Most likely, it’s due to the fact that Benn appreciates how difficult it can be to turn away from the notion of a traditional marriage. “He doesn’t want to hurt anybody, least of all his wife or children,” Benn writes. There are also other practical concerns, like finances, that may make it even harder to change.

To Benn’s credit, he acknowledges that committing adultery is an ethical decision not to be taken lightly.

Frank, honest and understanding.

POETRY LESSONS

Beshid, Fred Booklocker.com, Inc. (246 pp.) $15.95 paper | $6.99 e-book | Feb. 1, 2013 978-1-62646-316-5 In Beshid’s debut novel set in mid1990s Los Angeles, a minimalist poet tries to find love with a junk-collecting artist.

Rootless military brat Henry David Kieller was named for Thoreau (his hippie mother was a fan), and one of his few possessions is a dog-eared copy of Walden. Like his namesake, Henry has pared down his life to the essentials. He makes a living as a professional house-sitter, so he doesn’t need to pay rent, and although he raises money for his father’s charitable foundation, he donates back almost all his salary. In car-worshipping Los Angeles, he rides the bus. His poetry, too, is minimalist— the three lines and 17 syllables of haiku. When Henry’s barber/ spiritual adviser, Ken, introduces him to Maggie, an artist, the mutual attraction is immediate; not only is she “independent, attractive, funny, bright, and creative,” she also has “the Ken seal of approval.” But she’s also, Henry discovers, somewhat of a hoarder who lives in a “cavernous warehouse” stuffed with “tractor tires, baseball bats, broken dishes, books, lamps, old clothes, car parts, the wooden frame of a couch, bicycle parts, salvaged doors, a barrel full of puzzle pieces” and much, much more. For Maggie, these are possible art projects; for Henry, it’s his “worst nightmare”—and that’s before Maggie asks him to move in. Henry has to figure out whether it’s worth giving up some of his freedom to make a home with Maggie. Beshid displays a nice touch with his narrator, who can be priggish, critical and more adolescent than his 30 years would suggest. His flirtations with Maggie—“I have some universal truths I would like share. I can also offer poetry lessons”—can sound insufferable, but he’s also affectionate, funny and insightful. Henry’s love for father-figure Ken does much to balance his didacticism, too.

Henry’s discomfort with the realistically portrayed business side of selling paintings also makes for an interesting conflict that helps develop his relationship with Maggie.

A believable, likable and well-balanced story about putting down roots while staying true to oneself.

MAKE YOUR MONEY LAST A LIFETIME

Bourke, Kevin CreateSpace (162 pp.) $14.99 paper | $9.97 e-book Aug. 3, 2012 978-0-9847895-2-8 An eminently readable, authoritative little book that offers sensible advice about major financial decisions.

Financial planner Bourke proves a bit of wisdom goes a long way as he tackles such weighty topics as whether parents should financially assist their children, what happens to assets when someone dies, the importance of budgeting, investment strategies and identity theft. He examines these topics with precision and an economy of words, keeping the jargon to a minimum. His writing is as easy to read as an advice column, and he conveys key concepts in everyday language. Even his chapter titles will hook readers: “How to Invest like a Billionaire” is a smart yet utterly simple discussion of asset allocation, while “Diworsification” demonstrates the faulty thought process behind splitting assets between two or more financial advisers. When discussing fluctuation in the stock market, for example, he writes simply: “If you panic, you will make mistakes.” He follows this with a story of a couple in their 40s who panicked during the 2008 recession and moved most of their investments from the stock market to fixed income investments. As a result, when the S&P recovered by the end of 2009 with a nearly 65 percent gain, the couple missed out on an opportunity to recoup their losses. “It’s like watching someone step on a nail in slow motion,” writes Bourke.

The two could have left their investments alone, he adds, and “enjoyed the rebound.” Whether it’s providing a list of 10 useful steps readers can employ to deter identity theft or offering an easy formula for evaluating a nest egg, the author’s counsel seems to be right on the money. In his conclusion, Bourke’s motivation for writing this book becomes evident: “Finances, for many, are in a black box that seems impenetrable. Money can be mysterious, difficult to manage, difficult to understand, and difficult to hold on to.” While clearly not intended to replace a financial planner, his book elegantly makes the case for the necessity of financial planning.

Invaluable for anyone with an interest in preserving capital over the long term.

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DOWN TO HEAVEN

TAYLOR STREET FILE OF RED CIN

Canter, Mark CreateSpace (380 pp.) $14.00 paper | $5.99 e-book Dec. 24, 2012 978-1-4810-7431-5

Cerny, JoBe CreateSpace (348 pp.) $12.99 paper | Feb. 21, 2013 978-1-4819-8816-2

A convincing sci-fi thriller about a pair of modern-day scientists who discover an ancient Chinese colony in the jungles of South America.

In Canter’s (The Bastard, 2012) fastpaced thriller, Mason Drake and Tree Summerwood—longtime friends, former lovers and fellow scientists—have their work cut out for them. As they study the biodiversity of the Amazon rain forest, their work is dramatically interrupted when they become the only survivors of a helicopter crash on one of the 3,000-foot tepuis that form the jungle’s remote highlands, where “only the deep trenches of the world’s oceans had seen fewer humans.” It’s not long before they discover evidence of a long-lost colony founded by the 15th-century Chinese explorer Zheng-He, “the Magellan of China.” The colony has become a thriving, hidden civilization composed entirely of women, ruled over by a forbidding empress. Mason and Tree meet the exotic Hsiang K’un-Chien (“Perfume of Earth-Heaven”), who possesses a remarkable physical ability that allows her to get to know both Drake and Summerwood, which gives the book’s second half an unexpected, deftly written erotic charge. In search of their missing mission colleagues, the pair must negotiate both their feelings for each other (Mason, scarred by his recent past, is wary of Tree’s feelings for him) and the strange ways of K’un-Chien’s people. Canter expertly sharpens his narrative with humor and action; vicious piranhas, a clutch of menacing Komodo dragons, swarms of killer bees and weirdly intelligent monkeys are only some of the oddities Mason and Tree encounter as the plot builds momentum. They’re also caught in a sexual power struggle among the hidden tribe, and when they prepare themselves to escape, the book’s tempo increases even further.

Canter masterfully allows the scientific exposition to flow naturally in the narrative; like books from Michael Crichton and James Rollins, the story is both informative and exciting. Fortunately, the bit of clichéd dialogue is more than countered by thought-provoking digressions into the sources of sexuality and sexual fidelity, all while suspense holds until the very last page.

A striking sci-fi adventure.

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A beautiful young heiress hires suspended Chicago police detective Frankie Turk and his partner in love and sleuthing, Lola Lahti, to find her husband’s killer in this engaging murder mystery.

Lahti and Turk, who had been married to one another, are on disciplinary leave from the police force. As the only residents of Taylor Street, an unofficial safe house for Chicago detectives who are temporarily sidelined, they have plenty of privacy for amorous antics when they aren’t on the clock as private investigators. Turk’s newest client, Cin Ahmen, lost a limb when the bullet she fired in an attempt to save her husband ricocheted into her knee. And that was just the latest in a series of disastrous events since her teenage years in rural Maine. Self-preservation led her to seduce a wealthy Chicago judge who was fly-fishing in the woods near her home. He died, too, albeit of natural causes.

Her second husband used some of Cin’s inheritance to open a swanky club called Club Red. Turk discovers that a Chinese national had been supplying the club with martini glasses whose stems contained something other than glass. It’s starting to look like Cin’s second husband might have run afoul of the Chinese mobster, who’s also providing upscale clubs with prostitutes from mainland China. But there are many more shadows in this story, largely because Cin hasn’t shared everything she knows with Turk and Lola. The tension intensifies when an unknown assailant brutally attacks Cin at her own club, sparking in Turk and Lola a fear that the next attack will be fatal. A revelation involving the true identity of the murdered husband lends poignancy to the investigation, and there are more surprises to come. Initially appearing to be some sort of femme fatale, Cin emerges as something else as the story unfolds. Since she’s ultimately a sympathetic character, and since Turk and Lola are quite likable themselves, the pursuit of Cin’s tormenter has a compelling resonance. The dialogue sometimes tilts to the saccharine but doesn’t unduly slow the progress to an unexpected, memorable conclusion.

A sharp murder mystery held together by likable characters.

THE DEATH OF EAST PRUSSIA War and Revenge in Germany’s Easternmost Province Clark, Peter B. CreateSpace (610 pp.) $20.95 paper | Jan. 17, 2013 978-1-4819-3575-3

A thorough history of East Prussia during and after World War II. Clark (New Look at Exchange Rate Volatility and Trade Flows, 2004) moves away from economics with this history. East Prussia was, until the end of World War II, part of Germany. While its earlier conquerors simply absorbed the region’s inhabitants, 20th-century Soviet and Polish rulers instead exercised a policy of ethnic cleansing. During World War II, East Prussia largely avoided the violence that plagued the heart of Germany, but the region eventually saw a Red Army invasion in 1944, accompanied by widespread rape and pillaging. After the war concluded, Allied leaders agreed that this region of Germany should be annexed, with the southern two-thirds of the region given to Poland and the remainder to the Soviet Union. Prussians in the Polish section were forcibly removed from their homes; those in the Soviet-controlled territory were exploited as forced laborers before being expelled.

Clark balances recorded political history with eyewitness accounts that put a human face on events. For example, Clark relates Hannelore Schwokowski’s heartbreaking story, from her memoir, of the events that led to the death of her mother, Lotte, at age 47. The book is heavily researched, drawing on previous historical volumes and primary source documents. That said, this isn’t a completely unbiased account; Clark acknowledges that his wife’s East Prussian background inspired him to write the book, and his sympathies definitely lie with this population when he describes an expulsion that “was hardly orderly or humane.”

A clearly written, extensively researched book and an important contribution to World War II history.

GIRAFFES OF TECHNOLOGY The Making of the TwentyFirst-Century Leader Glover, Hubert; Curry, John CreateSpace (134 pp.) $14.99 paper | $7.99 e-book Feb. 11, 2013 978-1-4793-4922-7

A CEO-turned-professor’s debut business book advocates a leadership style for the social media age.

Many business books have been centered on animal motifs, from cats to dogs to sharks, chameleons and penguins. Arguably, the metaphor is overdone, but readers may want to make room for one more in the menagerie, as Glover’s (Accounting/

Drexel Univ.) giraffe allegory holds up well. Unlike many business-book peers who hire ghostwriters, Glover openly shares authorship with Curry, whose writing credits range from documentary projects to short fiction. It’s fitting, as Glover’s message is all about increasing transparency, flattening hierarchies and replacing top-down management with true dialogue in order to achieve shared goals. Glover rose from humble beginnings—his great-grandmother was a slave; his father, a school janitor. Nurtured by parents and church members who emphasized education, hard work, humility and patience, he overcame racism and tradition to become CEO of an Atlanta PricewaterhouseCoopers subsidiary in 2000, and he later started his own consulting company, Rede, Inc. After a foreword by Bill Cosby, Glover explores, in six compact chapters, how technology and changing cultural norms have come to favor leadership traits reminiscent of the giraffe, a nonpredatory herbivore and gentle giant known for farsightedness. A giraffe also rises up after dramatically falling at birth, skillfully avoids lions while constantly moving forward to feed and peacefully interacts with diverse herds (an analogy for social media strategy). Glover assembles trends and transformational concepts that aren’t new—and, in fact, are well-sourced—but his book’s organization and presentation are entirely original. Some readers may find that his praise for multinational giants such as Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, PepsiCo and Wal-Mart lacks critical balance, but he doesn’t aim to comprehensively analyze any one company; he presents examples of the leadership style he favors. It works best when he uses anecdotes from his personal life and professional career, which he does often; he also draws from poetry, Scripture, music, sports and popular media to cast additional light on his argument and on his own life.

A serious business book with a light touch, a clear message and much wisdom.

GNOSIS

Hoffmeister, Mark S. CreateSpace (472 pp.) $18.49 paper | $3.99 e-book | Jan. 8, 2013 978-1-4801-7114-5 Two friends find a previously undiscovered cave, an extraordinary crystal and a foreboding message from an ancient civilization in Hoffmeister’s sci-fi debut.

While Mike and Jim are spelunking, they come across an otherworldly dome. Inside, there’s a crystal and a metal plate with a very specific note with Mike’s name, the day’s date and a directive to show the crystal to someone named Eli. The plate contains another digitally stored message left by a woman from an advanced, ancient society. This information is so significant it piques the interest of Homeland Security and another, more sinister agency. Hoffmeister allows his sci-fi premise to unfold slowly. It’s some time before Eli can pull the digital code to play the message, and there are obstacles, like getting the car (where the metal plate is stashed) out |

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of the police impound lot. The author smartly reveals the woman’s message in pieces rather than all at once; these are some of the book’s best moments and include details of a civilization establishing a colony on the moon, problems with genetically altering animal DNA and time travel. But eventually, the bad guys appear and pave the way for a number of surprisingly heady action sequences, including a gunfight without gravity. Perhaps the thriller’s most inspired parts are the insertion of well-known songs during integral scenes (e.g., Mike hears a song while bullets are flying). The popular tunes will likely stick in readers’ heads; Hoffmeister has essentially scored his novel like a movie.

The book also maintains an unsettling mood—characters vanish; a shadowy organization sanctioned by the president operates in the background; and a strange man, who’s been keeping an eye on the protagonists, easily dispatches a trio of thugs to do his bidding. And for good measure, there’s the occasional bout of humor—misunderstanding a woman’s offer of “brown sugar” reaps a comic payoff.

A worthy action-adventure/thriller devoted to its sci-fi theme; fans of either genre will be more than content.

MEMOIRS OF TEACHING: THE GOOD,THE BAD AND THE INAPPROPRIATE With Strategies for Teaching to Children and Not Tests Iaccarino, Catherine CreateSpace (254 pp.) $12.00 paper | Mar. 20, 2013 978-1-4793-0520-9

A well-balanced combination of classroom anecdotes and educational strategies.

In this debut work, Iaccarino draws upon three decades of experience, primarily at the elementary level, with occasional forays into that special wilderness also known as middle school.

The author recognizes her own early sources of inspiration, most notably a high school history teacher who selected her to participate in a Saturday lecture and discussion program at Yale University, despite lackluster grades. By means of this rare opportunity, Iaccarino came upon an insight that ended up guiding her entire teaching philosophy: Apathy is the real enemy. This book is not a treatise on educational reform, but the author is not shy about commenting on the changes—both positive and negative—that she has witnessed over the past 30 years. Certainly among the veiled criticisms is the notion of standardized testing as the ultimate indicator of student achievement and teacher effectiveness. Throughout the text, Iaccarino employs self-deprecating humor and parenthetical asides, keeping the tone light and breezy, without minimizing the importance of her subject matter. She offers practical, tongue-in-cheek advice: If one is going to employ the “talking stick” method for maintaining classroom order, lightweight cardboard materials are preferable in the event of violent outbursts. She also recounts her experiences using Shakespeare, medieval English history and Native American cultures to motivate students, helping 120

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them make connections between schoolwork and overarching themes that would shape their own lives. The section on the six basic syllable types is not to be missed, as Iaccarino employs narratives that will resonate with children and enable them to learn pronunciation rules. Observe how “Secret Agent Silent E” furtively appears at the end of a word and allows the previous vowel to speak its own name: “at” versus “ate.” Parents can use this valuable resource not only to familiarize themselves with challenges faced in the classroom, but also to reinforce beneficial educational habits at home.

Recommended reading for all educators, from starryeyed neophytes to seasoned veterans.

HAUNTED CATTLE DRIVE Creepers Mysteries, Book 1 Kingrey Anderson, Connie Movies for the Ear, LLC (98 pp.) $2.99 e-book | Jan. 20, 2013

Debut author Kingrey Anderson presents a not-too-scary debut children’s ghost story that includes a script for creative young readers.

This first book in the Creepers Mysteries series introduces Gillian, Harry and Arvin, three kids on a bus headed to a dude ranch to take part in a good old-fashioned cattle drive. It’s not long before an unexpected supernatural encounter occurs: The ghosts of a swaggering cowboy and a toothless prospector suddenly appear on the bus. The kids watch in amazement as the specters rehash a feud that seems to revolve around missing money and then disappear.

The kids solve the mystery of the ghosts’ identities when young Harry recognizes Dead Man Jack from a stack of wanted posters on the bus’s front seat. Bus driver and ranch hand Smokey Joe reluctantly tells them the story of Jack and bounty hunter Silver Dollar Dan, two larger-than-life figures straight out of a spaghetti Western. Intrigued by the ghosts and the tantalizing prospect of hidden treasure, the kids go on a brief but entertaining adventure—in which they encounter the restless spirits several more times—before the mystery comes to a satisfactory conclusion.

Kingrey Anderson does a masterful job of providing an engaging, age-appropriate ghost story for elementary school kids that offers creepy, but not terrifying, elements. While the main characters might have been fleshed out in more detail, Smokey Joe and the other secondary characters are a quaint throwback to the days of the Old West. The book also includes a “Movie for the Ear” script of the tale, a play to encourage children to further engage with the story. In an innovative approach to interactive storytelling, young readers are prompted to recruit their friends and family as cast members and develop their own imaginative approaches to sound effects and character development. Overall, the story translates beautifully into a creative opportunity for kids.

A fun first installment in a unique, promising kids’ mystery series.

“An appealing examination of a turn-of-the-century woman who valiantly strives for personal and political change.” from for the love of ireland

FOR THE LOVE OF IRELAND Leslie, Judy CreateSpace (314 pp.) $14.95 paper | $5.95 e-book Mar. 15, 2013 978-1-4812-5867-8

Debut author Leslie’s sweeping historical romance examines the increasingly complex role of women in marriage, politics and the workplace at the end of the 19th century.

Irish by birth and American by temperament, Margaret Sullivan is a rising star in the Chicago newspaper scene (using male pseudonyms) who’s not afraid of the world of men. In fact, she marries her husband, Alex, not for love or obligation, but as a career move—a way to enter certain social circles. On a solo voyage to Ireland to research the country’s turbulent history, she begins an emotional affair with Michael Davitt, a daring Irish rebel, that skirts the line of propriety. As Michael’s fundraising and boycotting efforts earn him notoriety abroad, Alex rises to prominence in Chicago as the head of the Clan na Gael, a group working closely with the Irish Republican Brotherhood to secure Irish independence. Quick-tempered Alex soon becomes increasingly violent toward Margaret, and she must eventually make a critical choice between Alex, with his powerful but dangerous allies, and the elusive Michael, with his intoxicating charm. Which would be best for Ireland, the land of her ancestors? This well-developed and complex, if slightly soapy, novel uses historical details to create an educational and quite enjoyable read that raises complex themes. For example, Alex doesn’t object to Margaret’s job, yet he—and shockingly, Margaret herself—believes that it’s his right as a husband to dominate her with violence. The modern-day mindset cringes at the thought, but Margaret’s internal conflict between freedom and confinement fuels the plot and adds an additional layer of intrigue.

Readers can opt to be carried on waves of romance as Margaret copes with her unhappy marriage while longing for a dashing escape, or they can elect to dive into an examination of her precarious position as a determined woman in a male-centric world.

An appealing examination of a turn-of-the-century woman who valiantly strives for personal and political change.

EMIL FACKENHEIM’S QUEST From Philosophy to Prophetic Theology McRobert, Laurie CreateSpace (440 pp.) $39.95 paper | $15.99 e-book Jan. 23, 2013 978-1-4791-1056-8

A detailed study of German-born Jewish philosopher Emil Fackenheim’s thought.

Philosopher McRobert (Appearances: Genetic Mythology and Cosmic Instincts, 2011, etc.) presents a thorough chronological analysis of Fackenheim’s writings.

Fackenheim (1916–2003) was a Holocaust survivor, philosopher and rabbi. His work developed from his preoccupation with medieval philosophy and the works of philosophers Friedrich Schelling, Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig toward a search for existential foundations in the works of Georg Hegel and Søren Kierkegaard. Fackenheim’s study of Immanuel Kant’s works, McRobert writes, provided him with the means to pose theological issues philosophically. The author concludes that Fackenheim eventually went beyond philosophy and, in his major work, To Mend the World (1982), moved toward prophetic theology. She sets out to show how the philosopher’s early work prepared the way for this change by asserting that evil was an absolute and by providing “prophetic symbols” for his philosophy and theology.

Fackenheim, McRobert explains, ended up seeing the Holocaust as an event of transcendent absolute evil that forever fragments meaning—one that must be kept alive in the witnesses’ minds in order not to give Hitler any posthumous victories. The philosopher also came to see Israel as a necessary “secular-religious truth” to resist evil. This book provides a serious examination of philosophical and theological issues and is meant for scholarly, not casual, readers; it’s best suited for graduate students in philosophy. Students of contemporary Jewish thought, particularly those interested in ethics and theology in the light of the Holocaust, will likely be drawn to this detailed study, and readers of Fackenheim’s work, in particular, may also find it a helpful guide.

A comprehensive inquiry into the central tenets of Fackenheim’s philosophy.

LOST AMONG THE DEAD AND DYING Mears, Michael CreateSpace (350 pp.) $10.50 paper | $2.99 e-book Dec. 15, 2012 978-1-4792-9078-9

A search for a wayward daughter in 1927 Paris leads to an investigation into a series of murders in Mears’ (Chasing Dietrich, 2011) latest mystery featuring Pinkerton detective Michael Temple.

Temple has an assignment in Paris that seems like a walk in the park: deliver a father’s letter and bring Anne Johnson home to Ohio. The detective has trouble finding her, but he meets plenty of other people along the way. The novel has a slow, deliberate build, with Temple leisurely hunting in Parisian cafes and having a romance in Luxembourg with Anne’s friend and British doppelganger, Jane. But what appears to be a tour of Europe escalates into a powerhouse whodunit on a grand scale. Temple is framed for murder, roughed up and tossed in jail repeatedly; as soon as he seems cleared of one crime, another body is found.

Temple searches for the truth to clear his name in a time of communists, cons and killers. The story’s historical backdrop is richly textured: Temple is a veteran who’d only previously been to Paris during the war; there’s a strong Russian communist presence in the city; and Ernest Hemingway’s missing papers and a |

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INTERVIEWS & PROFILES

Amanda Hocking

Why the Indie Star Kept Fighting to Make Her Voice Heard

By Amanda Hocking

The first time a novel I wrote was rejected by a publisher or an agent, I was 17. I didn’t know very much about the publishing industry, and I didn’t know enough about writing either. But I always knew I was a writer.

I went on to write a dozen novels. Initially, they were in varying genres, but I eventually narrowed my scope to young adult because it was something I loved that I felt I wrote well, and it’s fairly popular. In that time, I’d been editing and taking any writing class that was nearby that I could afford.

I submitted my completed manuscripts to every agent I thought might be interested.

After eight years of this, I felt like I’d hit a brick wall. I’d tried everything I could think of to get published, and all I’d managed to do was 122

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accumulate hundreds of rejection letters and a stack of unpublished novels.

I knew I had to try something different. This was the only thing I’d ever really wanted to do with my life. Since the moment I learned how to write, I’d been doing it. But I didn’t want to waste my entire life chasing a dream that would never come true. I’d given myself the arbitrary deadline that if I wasn’t published by the time I was 26, I would give up and move on with my life and focus my efforts on a more stable career.

Then in February 2010—five months shy of my 26th birthday—I discovered self-publishing.

I’d heard of it before, of course, but it had always been derided as vanity publishing. Everyone knew that only hacks self-published, and they only sold 10 copies to their family, if they were lucky.

But with the advent of the digital age and electronic publishing, authors were actually making a go of it. Authors like J.A. Konrath were making more money than they ever had with traditional publishing. Karen McQuestion had her self-published novel optioned for film. Elisa Lorello’s Faking It made it to No. 1 in the Kindle Store.

For the next month, I spent all my free time learning absolutely everything I could about selfpublishing online. Then, with nothing to lose, I uploaded my first book in March 2010. My hope was to reach a few readers and maybe make a few hundred bucks so I could see a Jim Henson exhibit in the fall.

The first few weeks, I sold 45 books. In May, I sold over 600 books. Readers began sending me emails letting me know they’d posted reviews of my books on their blogs, and this was my entrance to the book blogging community that went on

to catapult my career.

Without their support and the word of mouth they generated, my books never would’ve sold the way they did.

It wasn’t until later that I realized the eight years I’d spent struggling to get published hadn’t been the waste I’d thought they were.

In that time, I’d built up a backlog of books that enabled casual readers to become fans. I’d also learned to take criticism and deal with rejection and matured as both a person and a writer.

In the first 12 months that I had self-published my books, I sold over a million e-books.

A lot of people ask me what the secret is to my success, what magic trick I used to make it all happen. The truth is that there isn’t one. By my best estimate, I’ve written over 3 million words in my life so far. I kept and still do keep in contact with my readers as much as I can. My writing has and always will be one of the biggest priorities in my life. I can’t imagine my life without it, whether I’m published or not.

Currently, some of my books are self-published, and others are published with St. Martin’s Griffin. Many, many times during all of this, my path seemed hopeless and impossible, and I wanted to give up. But now, I feel like I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be, and I wouldn’t change a single thing, no matter how difficult the journey may have been.

The third book in Amanda Hocking’s Watersong series, Tidal, will be published June 4.

The State of Indie Publishing

Amanda Hocking is the latest indie star to transition from self-publishing to being published by a traditional house. Playwright David Mamet recently announced that he will be the one to publish his next book, and Britain’s Folio Prize is now open to indie writers. With those changes in mind, Kirkus’ senior Indie editor, Karen Schechner, recently wrote an article for our site about where things stand in indie publishing. Here are a few excerpts:

• Well-known authors still cite control as their reason to publish independently; the number of indie books continues to explode (in an inverse proportion to their discoverability); and any remaining traces of stigma are waning.

• Discoverability—a problem traditional publishers also face—is only going to get trickier. While getting noticed might be one of the biggest hurdles, writing a book worth discovering may be the biggest. Still, many booksellers, including Sarah Bagby, owner of Watermark Books and Cafe in Wichita, Kan., and Matt Miller, manager of Tattered Cover in Denver, Colo., have found and sold standout indie books, many of which fill niches too small for most publishers. In the process, they’ve created sustainable business models for working with local writers.

• Many people read eclectically, and sooner or later, their wish lists will probably include unconventionally published work. Besides, it’s a kick to discover someone before they’ve been signed or become another self-pubbed phenom. And given that about one-quarter of books sold by Amazon last year were selfpubbed, book buyers are already reading more widely than ever.

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letter by Lenin become central to the plot. (The detective even questions Hemingway’s ex-wife, Hadley, who has to explain a Freud reference to him.) The fine-tuned dialogue is a particular highlight, from a rotund writer’s hilarious speech, interspersed with wheezing and throat clearing, to Temple’s comment that he returned home after a night of drinking “early by Paris standards, and drunk by anyone’s standards.” But the book’s most engaging quality is Temple’s adamant refusal to quit; when the police believe they’ve found the solution, all the detective sees are loose ends—which he attacks fervently. In scenes that bookend the novel, an 89-year-old Temple travels to Paris, still wanting answers to questions that are more than half a century old.

A solid historical detective story with a tenacious detective, unanticipated twists and an ample supply of suspects.

TOWN RED

Moss, Jennifer Black Opal Books (310 pp.) $11.99 paper | $3.99 e-book Aug. 31, 2012 978-1-937329-56-3 A Windy City cop works a high-profile murder case, but his feelings for a suspect complicate the investigation.

One morning, a husband and wife turn up dead—she at their home in the tony Lincoln Park neighborhood, he at the office of Town Red Media, the ad agency they owned and ran with an iron fist.

Ryan Doherty, the “top detective in Chicagoland,” is on the case, and if he can’t nab the killer quickly, his job is on the line.

Assembling a list of possible suspects is easy since Scott and Carly Redding made a lot of enemies as they built their business. But could any of them have pulled off the crime? At first, it seems that both victims died of natural causes; there’s little evidence at either scene, so if someone killed this power couple, they were smart enough to thoroughly cover their tracks.

One person who might be able to help uncover the truth is Catharine Lulling, a former Town Red executive, now holed up in a lavish North Shore mansion. She left the company under unpleasant circumstances but retained stock options that made her a millionaire. Doherty finds it hard to believe that the enigmatic, “eccentric” Catherine (she claims to be psychic) could have anything to do with her ex-bosses’ deaths.

But there’s a chance Doherty’s attraction to Catharine blinds him to the truth. Is she hiding the killer’s real identity or something else? Moss’ page-turning debut novel is engrossing, with natural dialogue and a mystery that plays out in a mostly believable fashion, though the novel’s paranormal elements never quite mesh with the more realistic aspects of the book.

Overall, the story is more fluffy than gritty, but with a hero as compelling as Doherty, few readers—especially those who have a soft spot for tough cops with sensitive souls—are likely to complain. Dashes of humor balance the darker moments in the engaging whodunit, which will leave readers guessing until the end.

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Clever and fast-paced, this cocktail of romance and mystery goes down smooth with a nice finish.

COVERT THE NOT KNOWN Nedwick, Jerry CreateSpace (356 pp.) $15.50 paper | $9.99 e-book May 23, 2011 978-1-4565-9048-2

A gruesome wartime memoir written by a bad boy who found himself in the Marines and Vietnam.

Nedwick prided himself on being a decent family man and a successful businessman; in Vietnam, it was different. As Nedwick writes it, his story is straight out of The Dirty Dozen, but “it is up to the reader to determine fact from fiction,” since, he says, the material comes from flashbacks and recovered memories after the military administered drugs and electroshock therapy to wipe his brain. While in the brig for having murdered a fellow soldier, he was plucked from a likely date with the gallows to serve in an ultrasecret force of seven men set to drop behind enemy lines and do the dirtiest of the dirty work. They were all “derelicts, renegades and rejects,” but the barbarous acts they committed left most of them thoroughly dehumanized. Some of the men “do” entire villages: torturing, raping, murdering, burning them flat in an exercise they thought would besmirch the Vietnamese guerrillas, who, Nedwick suggests, did the same to keep the population in line. “Sandies [jet fighters] were napping [napalming] the fuck out of those slant-eyed scum bastards,” Nedwick writes. “We were close enough to see the skin melting off the face of one of the dinks.” There are plenty more descriptions like this, reflecting a repulsive trail of hate, misery and mayhem for which Nedwick has paid the price: “[W]e were barbaric, sadistic, merciless killers and, we live with it everyday [sic].”

His ingenuous memoir introduces readers to that dark place: a mind unhinged, then trained to do the most despicable of crimes.

In his unvarnished way, Nedwick brings it home, proving war is hell no matter how many Geneva Conventions.

Kaleidoscopic, nightmarish images that don’t paint over the horror.

MAIDIN IRON

Padilla, Ana AuthorHouse (236 pp.) $27.99 | $16.95 paper | $3.99 e-book Apr. 20, 2012 978-1-4685-6694-9 A bold, inspiring debut memoir by the first female ironworker in the state of New Mexico.

Padilla is the second of nine children raised in a “humble two-bedroom home” by hardworking parents without high school diplomas. She recalls

“Overall, this collection conveys the trauma of homelessness with artful simplicity.” from the year i lived in my car

the Spanish culture in her upbringing: “women usually learned at an early age that one important role in their lives was the care of family, especially the men.” Independent, ambitious and determined, Padilla had no intention of letting her gender dictate her career. At 26, despite opposition from men and women alike, she became an apprentice under Ironworkers Local 495. Her desire “to learn a skill and have a title with responsibilities” propelled her through the difficulties of her first post as “one female among twenty-five-hundred [men] at the power plant.” A talented ironworker, Padilla developed an excellent reputation and the respect of most of her colleagues.

Though her personal life isn’t at the forefront of her story, she describes her unsuccessful first marriage and her wonderful second one. She’s also generous with praise for peers as well as herself—a tendency that occasionally weakens the narrative. It’s clear that her colleagues’ admiration of her is well-earned, but there are times when the repeated references to this err on the side of boasting: “I worked hard and did a good job, making it look easy.” Nonetheless, her awe for the craft is unwavering: “[I]ronworkers are artists—make no mistake about that.” The descriptions of workplace conflict grow tedious—“I had again to prove that I was up to the task”—perhaps since Padilla repeatedly faces the same obstacles. She sustains two significant injuries during her career, the second of which occurs during a negative experience in which she faces “cliques…just as in high school,” forcing her to stop “work[ing] in iron.” Although the final pages show an ugly underside of the “brotherhood,” the overall tone is one of good cheer. “I knew I would face many firsts,” Padilla writes.

“I just hoped I lived to talk about them.”

A confident, witty tale of triumph and sacrifice.

THE YEAR I LIVED IN MY CAR Peters, Anya Self (141 pp.) $2.99 e-book | Jan. 31, 2013

Collected blog entries from Peters (Abandoned, 2009), who, in 2005, became homeless.

The author, who endured significant childhood trauma, later lost control of her life after the failure of a relationship. With little warning, she found herself destitute on the streets of Brighton, England, with her car as her only major possession. After living in her vehicle for five months and failing to find work in the seaside town, she drove to London in search of job opportunities. There, on a deserted laneway surrounded by trees, she found a parking place that effectively became her home. Venturing into the city, the author was drawn into a library, where she decided to start a blog about her hand-to-mouth existence using the name WanderingScribe. The blog connected her with the wider world and provided her with raw material for this, her second book. In apparently unedited entries, the author describes the fear and vulnerability she felt when sleeping in her car, including the excruciating pain of lying contorted on uncomfortable seats and the horrific thought of being murdered in the night. The blog entries chart her unsteady path into dislocation and mental illness as she became increasingly paranoid.

They’re also a testament to the author’s indefatigable resilience,

as even the most rudimentary of tasks, such as her daily religious ablutions, were fraught with difficulty. At one point, she describes how she attempted to disguise herself as an orderly in order to use a hospital’s showers. This is a very real story of not being able to find warmth or afford the price of a cup of tea, and the blog entries’ erratic style reflects the increasing urgency of the author’s situation as she fluctuated between hope and despair. Overall, this collection conveys the trauma of homelessness with artful simplicity.

A homeless blogger’s moving search for salvation.

PARENTING WITHOUT DISTRACTION The Attunetion Approach

Pierce, Craig The Attunetion Approach (112 pp.) $19.95 paper | $9.95 e-book | Feb. 8, 2013 978-0-615-70360-2 Pierce’s guide for teaching parents how to manage their own and their children’s daily distractions.

Founder and president of the Southwest Family Guidance Center and Institute, Pierce encourages parents to reconsider how to manage the interruptions of smartphones and computers in an effort to form healthier and happier relationships with their children. The author coined the term “Attunetion”—a combination of “paying attention” and “tuning in”— and throughout the book, he encourages parents to do both. “[N]o one knows your kids and what they need better than you do,” he says. Pierce offers solutions to day-to-day problems that most parents encounter—from finding more time to give children focused and sincere attention to the impact on families of technological distractions like social media. As part of this solution-based approach, Pierce emphasizes the importance of developing empathy for a child’s emotional health. In order for a child to feel compassion, the author believes, he or she needs to be treated with compassion. The wide-ranging guide comprises 12 chapters, including “Raising Perfect Kids? Careful What You Wish For,” which discusses the benefit of allowing your child some autonomy; “Maxed Out Minds: The Impact of Technology on Growing Kids”; and “When ‘Good’ Kids Behave Badly.”

Pierce understands the significance that technology plays in the lives of children growing up today but wants parents to understand that “[w]hatever rules you make for your family, the goal is to teach kids how to master technology without it mastering them.” Pierce believes that giving a child more attention can be something that helps the entire family. His suggestions are straightforward—don’t text while your child is talking to you, for example, and make time to spend with your teenagers rather than expecting them to schedule you into their routine—but that’s what makes them so helpful and manageable. One of the book’s main strengths is that Pierce acknowledges, without judgment or condemnation, the many distractions that both parents and kids face in this modern technological age. The author doesn’t point fingers or belittle the reader but rather offers encouragement and support.

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DARK SECRETS Choosing Your Child’s Sports Coach Reid, Suziann Self (110 pp.)

A competitive runner’s instruction manual for young athletes and their parents.

Internationally ranked runner and professional sports advisor Reid, in her debut, presents an upbeat, thoroughly detailed guide for parents who dream of shepherding their children into the world of professional sports—or who already have a child entering that world. Using charts, photos and inspirational quotes, Reid takes her readers through the basics of body growth, nutrition and training practices. She also provides an insider’s look at the process of developing a varied training regimen, maintaining a positive outlook (she points out that most of the worst obstacles a young athlete may face will be mental, not physical), creating a well-balanced diet, and, as the book’s title indicates, researching and selecting the right coach. As a complement to coach selection, she also provides parents with a knowledgeable guide to the various illegal performance-enhancing substances that haunt the professional sports world; the dangers and side effects of steroids, stimulants, diuretics and others are given a complete rundown. The brief book also provides common-sense instructions for more advanced athletes who face the prospect of hiring professional managers. The book’s tone is optimistic and avowedly Christian throughout (many section headings are biblical quotations), and its focus is highly specialized: Reid admits that her book was “written to encourage you as parents in how to support and guide your upcoming superstar athletes,” and the book shows little interest in young athletes who don’t aspire to “an Olympic or a professional career.” Some parents may object to Reid’s assertion that “without competition, there wouldn’t be sports” or her declaration that “winning is about an athlete asserting superiority in an event—demonstrating it, publicly.” That said, even parents who primarily want their children to enjoy sports, rather than single-mindedly focus on them, will likely find a wealth of useful information in these pages.

A focused, goal-oriented handbook for young prosports hopefuls.

EXCUSE ME...I’M NOT DEAD YET! A Wake Up Call for Baby Boomers Rocco, Nola CreateSpace (244 pp.) $14.99 paper | $9.99 e-book Feb. 19, 2013 978-1-4802-5749-8

Rocco (The Hollywood Facelift, 1995) offers a kind of Sex and the City for the baby boomer generation in this highly amusing and surprisingly clever romantic comedy.

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Suzanne Robins, an early morning traffic reporter in San Francisco, has a serious problem: She keeps imagining her own death. As she approaches 60, a monumental birthday, she begins to have terrible nightmares about her demise. When she seeks professional advice, her psychiatrist tells her to try planning her own funeral. Rather than focus on the morbid, Robins goes in another direction—she cuts her hair and starts caring about her makeup, clothing, fitness and overall style. With the help of her transgendered best friend, Jill (formerly Phil), Robins enters the latter part of her life with new optimism and a sense of self that she’d abandoned when her marriage ended, her daughter grew up and her life settled into a predictable routine. Rocco, a Sausalito, Calif.–based screenwriter, has a keen sense of dialogue, with fun, rapidly paced and detailed exchanges: “[Jill] scrutinizes each pair of my shoes. ‘These might be worth something, look at that heel! They’re borderline vintage.’…‘What if it comes B-A-C-K?’ I cry.” Each chapter features new twists, such as Robins’ trying online dating or considering cosmetic surgery. Rocco makes Robins’ tiny triumphs, like trying on a pair of Jimmy Choos, important to readers, and she has a sense of humor that’s affectionate yet tough on her characters. She also has a strong sense of how mature women think and communicates Robins’ thoughts so well that readers will likely feel as if Robins is a confidante. Although the novel’s cover art is subpar, the words inside are sassy, fresh and full of vitality.

An engaging novel about one woman’s journey from faded to fabulous.

THE CHA CHA CLUB DATING MAN-IFESTO Winters, Sophie Self (99 pp.) $2.99 e-book | Oct. 22, 2012

Winters’ debut dating and relationship guide teaches women that it’s important to love yourself before you can find love with someone else.

The author wrote this book after ending a two-year relationship. She admits that her qualifications as a dating expert are limited to “a desire to learn from the past” and having spent “hundreds— no thousands—on CDs, books and videos in an effort to improve [her] relationships and become smarter about men.”

However, readers who pick up Winters’ guide may feel they’re getting a bargain. While her advice may not be revolutionary, it provides a kind, practical kick in the pants for any woman unlucky in love and feeling down on herself. At just 99 pages, Winters’ “man-ifesto” can be read in one sitting and gives the comforting impression of having an extended conversation with a trusted friend. Her tone is funny and self-deprecating, a key element for a book that aims to build women’s self-confidence, and she never comes across as scolding or condescending. The book’s general message—that women should find a partner who can appreciate, rather than complete, them— feels refreshing and modern. Winters suggests that readers

“[I]t’s hard to imagine a better introduction to Grindr or a more straightforward look at how technology is changing courtship, cruising culture and everything in between for queer men and everyone.” from meet grindr

learn how to “date themselves” by going on weekly dates alone to the movies or a favorite restaurant before searching for a partner. She encourages readers to explore online dating and offers several tips for anyone venturing into this world for the first time, including why it’s best to avoid chat requests and why it’s a waste of time to exchange too many emails before meeting someone in person. In the weakest sections of the book, the author attempts to bring in the male perspective by quoting men she knows, but their comments aren’t particularly useful or insightful; readers may feel they can trust Winters’ warmth and humor, but they’re less likely to listen to someone identified only as “Joe, 30s, married.”

Women looking for help finding and maintaining a healthy relationship should strongly consider becoming members of the Cha Cha Club.

imagine a better introduction to Grindr or a more straightforward look at how technology is changing courtship, cruising culture and everything in between for queer men and everyone.

An impressive commentary on how technology continues to change the way people connect, which isn’t as niche as its subject matter might seem.

MEET GRINDR How One App Changed the Way We Connect Woo, Jaime Self (134 pp.) $19.00 paper | $2.99 e-book Feb. 8, 2013 978-0-9918702-0-2

An examination of the geosocial networking app Grindr and the impact it and similar technologies are having on queer culture.

As smartphones have become ubiquitous, so have software applications that take full advantage of Internet connectivity to bridge the gap between actual and virtual space. Popular among these apps is Grindr, an online program geared toward gay, bisexual and sexually inquisitive men. Using mobile devices’ GPS capabilities, the app helps its millions of users discover other users who happen to be nearby. Though Grindr has developed a reputation primarily as a facilitator of random hookups, its heavily moderated interface also caters to a user base of men not just looking for casual sex. Woo gives a crash course in Grindr etiquette, along with addressing privacy and personal safety concerns, while also considering the gamelike atmosphere it promotes (perhaps unintentionally) in an online community where physical gratification is often more accessible than emotional connection. With a charming sense of humor that doesn’t mind digressing, Woo’s book has a refreshingly sex-positive stance with a casual tone even when discussing dry statistics. Also included are numerous infographics, and though black and white, each is visually pleasant and consistently welldesigned. Though clearly a fan of the application, Woo shows little bias, critiquing the service while comparing it with other services to better illustrate what the titular program does and doesn’t do. The book’s greatest strength—its thrift—can also be an occasional weakness, as it touches only briefly on some of the interesting questions it raises about consent and entitlement in online-based relationships. Additionally, citation is poor, at times making the information presented feel overly anecdotal, and Woo seems almost hesitant to make concrete statements about topics like social acceptability. Nonetheless, it’s hard to

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Who will save our books?

Our bookstores?

Our libraries?

If there are no bookstores, no libraries, no serious publishers with passionate, dedicated, idealistic editors, what will happen to our literature?

Who will discover and mentor new writers? Who will publish our important books?

What will happen if there are no more books like these?

All the President’s Men

by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein

American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur, 1880-1964

by William Manchester

The Armies of the Night

by Norman Mailer

Different Seasons by Stephen King Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury A Fan’s Notes by Frederick Exley The Forever War by Dexter Filkins Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald Herzog by Saul Bellow The Hours by Michael Cunningham I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Beloved by Toni Morrison The Best and the Brightest

by David Halberstam Black Boy by Richard Wright

by Maya Angelou Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy In Cold Blood by Truman Capote The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao The Invention of Hugo Cabret

by Junot Díaz

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller The Catcher in the Rye

by J.D. Salinger

The Color Purple by Alice Walker The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

by Brian Selznick

Maus by Art Spiegelman The Natural by Bernard Malamud The Path Between the Seas

by David McCullough

Silent Spring by Rachel Carson

Sometimes a Great Notion

by Ken Kesey

Sophie’s Choice by William Styron The Sound and the Fury

by William Faulkner

The Sun Also Rises

by Ernest Hemingway

Their Eyes Were Watching God

by Zora Neale Hurston

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee Underworld by Don DeLillo The Wapshot Chronicle

by John Cheever

A Wrinkle in Time

by Madeleine L’Engle

The Year of Magical Thinking

by Joan Didion

The Years of Lyndon Johnson

by Robert A. Caro

“The Federal Government has stepped in to save banks, and the automobile industry, but where are they on the important subject of books? Or, if the answer is state and local government, where are they? Is any state doing anything?

Why are there no impassioned editorials in influential newspapers or magazines?

Who will save our books? Our libraries? Our bookstores?”

—James Patterson