Featuring 260 Industry-First Reviews of Fiction, Nonfiction and Children's & Teen
KIRKUS VOL. LXXXI, NO.
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REVIEWS FICTION
The Luckiest Lady in London by Sherry Thomas A beautifully written, exquisitely seductive, powerfully romantic gem of a romance p. 40
INDIE Dinosaurs, a Machine of Death and No. 1 on Amazon Ryan North's happy publishing career p. 112
CHILDREN'S & TEEN
Angel Island
by Russell Freedman The Newbery, Sibert and Wilder winner pens a characteristically cogent history of "the Ellis Island of the West." p. 86
NONFICTION
The Bully Pulpit
by Doris Kearns Goodwin A notable, psychologically charged study in leadership p. 52 Inside: Picture Books for Black History Month p. 99
on the cover
Amy Tan loves to explore, but she wasn't expecting the stunning
family secret she uncovered while researching her new novel. p. 14
Stranger in a Strange Land 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 m a n r e c e i v e s a t e l e g r a m . Fr o m i t, h e l e a r n s h i s m o t h e r h a s d i e d. The telegram requests that he travel to a nursing home 50 miles away to attend to the details of her burial. Reluctantly, spitefully, he makes the trip, then returns home as quickly as he can to spend time with his girlfriend, for whom he has no feeling. Thus opens Albert Camus’ debut novel, The Stranger (1942), a book that exemplifies that old saw about idle hands and the devil’s work. Meursault, a young French Algerian, lives, works and loves without passion or sensation. He does not care about anything, but he is curious enough about that lack of caring to kill another young man, an Arab, as an intellectual exercise: Can he kill a stranger without anger? Meursault is arrested for the crime, and during the novel’s long courtroom sequence, he hardly bothers to defend himself. He explains to the jurors that what he feels in the place of regret is mere annoyance at the inconvenience of having to stand before them. He is condemned to die, not for killing an Arab in colonial Algeria, but to honor Camus’ thesis, as he wrote in his 1955 preface to the novel, that “in our society, any man who does not weep at his mother’s funeral runs the risk of being sentenced to death.” The Stranger was first published in an underground edition during the Nazi occupation of France, while Camus edited the Resistance newspaper Combat, while millions of Meursaults killed without anger or remorse. It profoundly shocked its earliest readers—Jean-Paul Sartre, for one, who admired the novel but called it “unjustified and unjustifiable.” For many French readers, then and now, Meursault lay bare their country’s notorious accommodation to fascism and anti-Semitism and, several years later, its ugly role in the Algerian civil war of 1954–61, during which some half a million Arabs were killed. Camus, whose centenary fell on Nov. 7, made enemies over his book and his other philosophically charged novels, such as The Plague (1947) and The Fall (1956). Right-wing French politicians scourged him as a traitor, priests as an atheist, and communists as a subtle but deeply effective critic of totalitarianism. (Pablo Neruda, the Chilean poet, was one of the writers who denounced him.) When Camus died in an auto accident on a frigid January day in 1960, just two years after being awarded the Nobel Prize in literature and just 46 years old, some suggested that it was no accident at all. Czech writer Jan Zábrana claimed that he had heard that the KGB had arranged for Camus’ death in revenge for his criticism of the Soviet suppression of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution: “They damaged a tire on the car using a sophisticated piece of equipment that cut or made a hole in the wheel at speed.” “I had tried to draw in my character the only Christ we deserve,” Camus reflected in his 1955 preface. We are still owed nothing better, and for that reason, Camus’ pessimistic novel endures as a portrait of the evil that surrounds us and that altogether too many of us simply try to ignore.
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Maude Adjarian • Mark Athitakis • Michael Autrey • Joseph Barbato • Adam benShea • Amy Boaz • Lee E. Cart • Derek Charles Catsam • Marnie Colton • Dave DeChristopher • Kathleen Devereaux • Bobbi Dumas • Daniel Dyer • Lisa Elliott • Tom Eubanks • Julie Foster • Peter Franck • Bob Garber • Amy Goldschlager • Jessie Grearson • Michael Griffith • April Holder • Robert M. Knight • Christina M. Kratzner • Paul Lamey • Louise Leetch • Judith Leitch • Angela Leroux-Lindsey • Peter Lewis • Elsbeth Lindner • Georgia Lowe • Joe Maniscalco • Don McLeese • Gregory McNamee • Chris Messick • Carole Moore • Clayton Moore • Liza Nelson • Jaime Netzer • Mike Newirth • John Noffsinger • Sarah Norris • Mike Oppenheim • Jim Piechota • Christofer D. Pierson • Signe Pike • Gary Presley • Karen Rigby • Lloyd Sachs • Leslie Safford • Bob Sanchez • Rosanne Simeone • Linda Simon • Elaine Sioufi • Arthur Smith • Margot E. Spangenberg • Andria Spencer • Matthew Tiffany • Claire Trazenfeld • Pete Warzel • Rodney Welch • Gordon West • Carol White • Chris White • Alex Zimmerman
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contents fiction
The Kirkus Star is awarded to books of remarkable merit, as determined by the impartial editors of Kirkus.
Index to Starred Reviews............................................................5 REVIEWS.................................................................................................5 The family secret at the heart of Amy Tan’s new novel....................................................................14 Mystery............................................................................................. 29 Science Fiction & Fantasy.......................................................... 35 Romance............................................................................................36
nonfiction Index to Starred Reviews..........................................................41 REVIEWS...............................................................................................41 If it moves, Dana Goodyear has eaten it............................56 Johnny Cash, warts and all.................................................. 60
children’s & teen Index to Starred Reviews..........................................................77 REVIEWS...............................................................................................77 We watch Marie Lu say goodbye to her smash hit trilogy.........................................................................94 Picture Books for Black History Month...........................99 interactive e-books.................................................................. 101
indie Index to Starred Reviews........................................................ 105
Pulitzer Prize winner Doris Kearns Goodwin returns with a swiftly moving account of the friendship between Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft. Read the starred review on p. 52.
REVIEWS............................................................................................. 105 Ryan North has a knack for being at the center of an eclectic zeitgeist........................................................................ 112
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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 Peter Yoon
Gifted fiction writer Laura van den Berg tackles little slivers of crime from the points of view of young women on the verge of self-discovery with her latest, The Isle of Youth. From a newlywed caught in an inscrutable marriage to private eyes working a baffling case in South Florida to a teenager who assists her magician mother and steals from the audience, the characters in these bewitching stories are at once vulnerable and dangerous, bighearted and ruthless; they will do what it takes to survive. Kirkus Reviews calls her prose “as crisp and cool as that of Richard Lange or Patricia Highsmith.” The Isle of Youth is a mesmerizing collection of stories about the secrets that keep us. Laura van den Berg speaks to Kirkus writer Amy Goldschlager in November.
White Girls by Hilton Als contains meditations, appraisals, fictions and personal inquiries about sex, race, art and more from the longtime New Yorker staff writer and cultural critic. His follow-up collection to The Women (1996) proves to be equally as daring and nearly as experimental as his audacious debut. Gathering his diverse subjects under the umbrella term “white girls,” which he applies equally to Malcolm X, Truman Capote and Flannery O’Connor, Als assembles something of a greatest hits of his own strengths, which are considerable. Leapfrogging from straightforward journalism to fiction written in other personas, the author demonstrates a practiced combination of cultural perception, keen self-awareness and principled self-assurance. Als’ work is so much more than simply writing about being black or gay or smart. It’s about being human. Hilton Als talks to Kirkus this month.
Hild is a historical novel of early medieval England to do T.H. White proud, based on the real life of the “Anglisc” girl who would become Saint Hilda of Whitby. The lacuna affords Nicola Griffith (Stay, 2002, etc.) the opportunity to put her well-informed imagination to work while staying true to the historical details, over which she lingers with a born antiquarian’s love for the past. Hild is a young woman at the heart of the violence, subtlety and mysticism of the early Middle Ages—all of it brilliantly and accurately evoked by Griffith’s prose. Working from what little historical record is extant, Griffith brings a beautiful, brutal world to vivid, absorbing life. Read our interview with Nicola Griffith this month on the Kirkus site.
9 And be sure to check out our Indie publishing series, featuring some of today’s most intriguing self-published authors, including writer David Vinjamuri. Each week, we feature authors’ exclusive personal essays and reported articles 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 AN UNNECESSARY WOMAN
These titles earned the Kirkus Star:
Alameddine, Rabih Grove (304 pp.) $24.00 | Feb. 4, 2014 978-0-8021-2214-8
AN UNNECESSARY WOMAN by Rabih Alameddine.........................5 WARLORD by Angus Donald.................................................................8 TRIESTE by Daša Drndic; trans. by Ellen Elias-Bursac....................... 9
A 72-year-old Beiruti woman considers her life through literature in an intimate, melancholy and superb tour de force. Alameddine has a predilection for highly literary conceits in his novels: I, the Divine (2001) is constructed out of the discarded first chapters of its heroine’s memoir, while his 2008 breakthrough, The Hakawati, nests stories within stories lush with Arab lore. This book has a similarly artificial-seeming setup: Aaliya is an aging woman who for decades has begun the year translating one of her favorite books into Arabic. (Her tastes run toward the intellectual titans of 20th-century international literature, including W.G. Sebald, Roberto Bolano, Joseph Roth, Vladimir Nabokov and Fernando Pessoa.) Though, until its climax, there’s little action in the course of the day in which the novel is set, Aaliya is an engagingly headstrong protagonist, and the book is rich with her memories and observations. She’s suffered through war, a bad marriage and the death of a close friend, but most exasperating for her are her pestering mother and half brothers, who’ve been lusting after Aaliya’s apartment. As she walks through the city, she considers these fractures in her life, bolstering her fatalism against quotes from writers and the tragic histories of her beloved composers. Her relatively static existence is enlivened by her no-nonsense attitude, particularly when it comes to contemporary literature. (“Most of the books published these days consist of a series of whines followed by an epiphany.”) And though Aaliya’s skeptical of redemption narratives, Alameddine finds a way to give the novel a climax without feeling contrived. Aaliya is an intense critic of the human condition, but she never feels embittered, and Alameddine’s storytelling is rich with a bookish humor that’s accessible without being condescending. A gemlike and surprisingly lively study of an interior life. (Agent: Nicole Aragi)
IN THE MEMORIAL ROOM by Janet Frame........................................10 CASSANDRA by Kerry Greenwood....................................................12 LOCAL SOULS by Allan Gurganus......................................................12 MOTHERLAND by Maria Hummel.....................................................18 AFTER I’M GONE by Laura Lippman................................................ 20 DANGEROUS WOMEN by George R.R. Martin; Gardner Dozois—Eds...........................................................................21 THE MAN WHO LOVED DOGS by Leonardo Padura; trans. by Anna Kushner........................................................................ 24 THE SPINNING HEART by Donal Ryan............................................ 26 ARCANUM by Simon Morden..............................................................36 THE PERFECT MATCH by Kristan Higgins........................................ 37 THE SUM OF ALL KISSES by Julia Quinn..........................................38 DARK WITCH by Nora Roberts............................................................39 THE LUCKIEST LADY IN LONDON by Sherry Thomas.................... 40 MOTHERLAND
Hummel, Maria Counterpoint (400 pp.) $26.00 | Jan. 14, 2014 978-1-61902-237-9
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THE DARING LADIES OF LOWELL
Sotatsu makes his living buying and selling thread in the village near Sakai. But young Sotatsu fell in with a bad character, Sato Kakuzo, and a girl named Jito Joo. In premise, it sounds simple. “He and Kakuzo made a wager,” Ball writes. “The wager was that the loser, whoever he was, would sign a confession. Kakuzo had brought the confession. He set it out on the table. The loser would sign it, and Joo would bring it to the police station.” For this mistake, Sotatsu is convicted of the “Narito Disappearances,” the alleged murders of eight elderly people. Ball projects himself into the story as a journalist, which allows him to build his novel from a whirling collage of court transcripts, family interviews, photographs, and confessions both false and true. Through it all, Sotatsu keeps his silence, while Ball delves into the mystery of Jita Joo’s role in this tragedy. Ball may or may not explain himself in the end, but there’s no denying the fascination his aberrant storytelling inspires.
Alcott, Kate Doubleday (304 pp.) $24.95 | Feb. 25, 2014 978-0-385-53649-3
The violent death of her best friend leaves steadfast Alice Barrow trapped between loyalty to her co-workers at the Lowell cotton mill and love for the boss’ son, in a gritty historical romance from Alcott (The Dressmaker, 2012). Workers’ rights in the early 19th century underpin Alcott’s second novel, which, like her best-selling debut, is based on actual events, in this case, the murder of New England mill girl Sarah Cornell in 1832. Alcott’s Cornell, known as Lovey, is the lively but reckless young woman who shows newcomer Alice the ropes. Working conditions at the mill are harsh and dangerous, and the hours are long, but there is a powerful camaraderie among the young female loom operators. The mill-owning Fiske family seeks to pacify growing unrest, and Alice is chosen as intermediary, her dignity and bravery impressing eldest son Samuel Fiske. But when Alice returns to Lowell after the meeting, she learns Lovey has been found hanged. The rest of the novel divides itself between the murder trial and the growing relationship between Alice and Samuel, against a backdrop of trouble at the mill. After Samuel’s father derails the trial to save his family’s reputation, leaving the workforce mutinous, can Alice and Samuel ever find common ground? Despite a misleading title and a near-superfluous romance, this spirited story of young working women making hard choices has a compelling core.
OUT TO LUNCH
Ballis, Stacey Berkley (432 pp.) $15.00 paper | Dec. 3, 2013 978-0-425-26549-9 Ballis (Off the Menu, 2012, etc.) delves again into foodie women’s lit with flavorful results. For all of Jenna’s adult life, her best friend, Aimee, has been by her side. Inseparable as college roommates, they became wildly successful by their early 40s, building and then selling an events and catering company. They talked every day, ran a hobby cookbook shop and had planned to sail through the rest of their lives together, until Aimee’s untimely death cut that plan—and Jenna’s life as she knew it—short. Emotionally stranded, Jenna finds ways to fill the days. She sees a therapist. She cooks and bakes for her warm and enthusiastic bookstore family. She tentatively begins a new romance. She cares for her dachshund. And she tries to deal with Wayne—Aimee’s widower and the one part of her best friend’s life Jenna never understood. Thanks to Aimee’s will, they are stuck together on a financial front, and Jenna must figure out what elegant Aimee saw in her Star Wars– obsessed, criminally clumsy husband. It isn’t easy. Jenna resents Wayne and the fact that she has to deal with him when she doesn’t know how to deal with her own grief. Unsurprisingly, it’s when Jenna and Wayne begin to see each other as people in their own right, and not in relation to Aimee, that the healing begins. Some of the story’s pleasure derives from the sheer Pinterest-quality abundance of goods—cookies, cashmere and Chicago restaurants abound. A recipe index is offered for aspiring chefs. But Ballis has real things to say about relationships and grief, and at its best, this book is honest and touching. A cozy meal, with dessert.
SILENCE ONCE BEGUN
Ball, Jesse Pantheon (256 pp.) $23.95 | Jan. 28, 2014 978-0-307-90848-3
“Jesse Ball” investigates a series of disappearances, a wrongful conviction and a love story in modern-day Osaka, Japan. “I am trying to relate to you a tragedy.” So begins the fourth novel from Ball (The Curfew, 2011, etc.), who makes readers’ heads spin yet again with a darker but more tempered version of his strange, almost whimsical multimedia creations. It’s worth remembering that the author started as a poet, and he is as interested in visual mediums as he is in narrative ones. It’s also worth remembering, even as the author says this work of fiction is partially based on fact, that Ball has been known to teach classes on the art of lying. This somewhat noirish thriller has more in common with Ball’s uncommon thriller Samedi the Deafness (2007) than his more recent experimentations. It starts with a lost bet over a card game. A young man named Oda 6
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CUT TO THE BONE
slice off fingers. With each horrendous crime, he takes a step closer to Brockton’s family. This book takes its time in the early parts, filling us in on each of the victims’ lives before they unknowingly climb into Satterfield’s vehicle. Brockton also gets opportunities to discuss the future of forensics with his assistant, explaining how studying insects removed from corpses will enable investigators to determine exact time of death. But if the pace of this prequel is sometimes leisurely, Bass (forensic anthropologist Dr. Bill Bass and science writer Jon Jefferson) is better than most at making the subject compelling. And when it comes time to turn up the intensity, he does that with satisfying efficiency, spreading the tension among a solid cast of supporting characters. There’s nothing especially original about the plot, but Bass is more comfortable working in his own backyard than he is chasing exotic secrets on foreign soil. (Author appearances in Atlanta, Florida, Huntsville, Knoxville and Nashville)
Bass, Jefferson Morrow/HarperCollins (368 pp.) $26.99 | $26.99 Lg. Prt. | Sep. 24, 2013 978-0-06-226230-1 978-0-06-227846-3 Lg. Prt. Having explored the mysteries surrounding the Shroud of Turin in The Inquisitor’s Key (2012), the seventh book in his Body Farm series, Bass is back on home turf, tracing the origins of forensic anthropologist Dr. Bill Brockton’s research facility. It’s the summer of 1992. Brockton is the young head of the anthropology department at the University of Tennessee. When prostitutes start turning up dead, all killed by similar means, their bodies deposited in the countryside, he becomes aware of the possibility that the killings resonate with a case from his past. The brainy murderer, Satterfield, who provides his own narration, favors particular cutting tools and likes to
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“In the tradition of the classic detective novel, a fun and action-filled read.” from the mongolian conspiracy
THE MONGOLIAN CONSPIRACY
manuscripts about medieval art, Richie meets and begins an affair with Noor, a Canadian journalist with a strikingly beautiful aunt, Haneen Husayni. Like his father, Richie has developed a fascination with the medieval period and begins to tease out some information about the “true cross.” Meanwhile, Noor is kidnapped by a terrorist group, since she’s actually a spy rather than a journalist, something unknown to Richie. With elaborate twists and turns, Richie eventually learns that Noor is his half sister, so when she is rescued from her captors, their relationship is now forbidden. Cartwright alternates chapters of Richie’s gradual discoveries about historical secrets involving the “true cross” with historical information about Saladin and Richard the Lionheart—and he even gives us some poetry in the language of Occitan (thankfully providing translations). Uneven but nonetheless fascinating, especially for history and The Da Vinci Code fans.
Bernal, Rafael Translated by Silver, Katherine New Directions (192 pp.) $14.95 paper | Nov. 25, 2013 978-0-8112-2066-8 A new translation of a 1960s Mexican noir novel. Bernal (1915-1972) was a prolific writer of novels and plays. Silver’s translation of what is considered his literary masterpiece, El Complot Mongol (1969), allows a new generation of readers to discover his writing. The tarnished hero is Filiberto García, a Mexico City assassin whose unique skills make him an indispensable tool for the Mexican government. Yet, his propensity to shoot (or stab) first and ask questions later also makes him an uncomfortable reminder of the more tumultuous time of the revolution. The tension between Filiberto’s volatile individuality and the government’s increasing bureaucracy comes to a head when he is tasked to work alongside FBI and KGB agents to prevent an assassination of the American and Mexican presidents. While he’s working with his American and Soviet counterparts in the seedy underworld of Mexico City’s Chinatown, his investigation turns up evidence that the plot may, in fact, be much closer to home. In the process, Filiberto meets a girl whose presence causes him to reassess his long-held views on manhood and compassion. Along the way, he discovers that, much to his chagrin, he carries a conscience. As in the pulp novels of yesteryear, through sparse narrative details and fast-paced dialogue, Filiberto endears himself to the reader as that street-hardened detective who can just never shake his sense of justice. In the tradition of the classic detective novel, a fun and action-filled read.
WARLORD
Donald, Angus St. Martin’s (432 pp.) $27.99 | Nov. 12, 2013 978-1-250-04081-7 Part of Donald’s Robin Hood series (King’s Man, 2012, etc.), this book is a bloodcurdling tale of medieval greed, cruelty and honor. In A.D. 1194, young Sir Alan Dale is a faithful disciple of Robin Hood. Both serve England’s King Richard the Lionheart in his continuous battles across Normandy. Richard wants to recover land lost during his imprisonment, and France’s King Philip stands in his way. Richard’s warriors fight for king and loot, lopping off heads, disemboweling foes and turning limbs into bloody stumps. Alan does not share Robin’s lack of scruples or disdain for religion, but he admires everything else about him. Alan wants to marry the beautiful Godifa, “Goody,” for whom he preserves his virginity, but fealty to Robin and to King Richard keep delaying the union. Another obstacle is the hideous and crazed Nur, whom Alan had once loved until a fiend butchered her face. She will curse Alan and Goody should they go through with the wedding. Much of the plot is driven by Alan’s desire to identify the killer of his father—could it be the hated Mercadier or even Robin Hood? And might they find the Holy Grail, thought to have once held the blood of Christ? Donald writes in a “Historical Note” at book’s end that he has been fascinated with the era since childhood, a claim supported by the richness of detail he provides in every scene. While protagonist Alan is a sympathetic and honorable man, he is also a ferocious and skilled warrior not averse to cleaving skulls before asking for God’s forgiveness. Many of the fight scenes show the thrusts and parries in detail, as though the author were a witness. In between are vivid depictions of 12th-century life, but the battles are what make the book thoroughly entertaining. A fast-paced and exciting story unsuitable for the squeamish.
LION HEART
Cartwright, Justin Bloomsbury (352 pp.) $27.00 | Mar. 4, 2014 978-1-62040-183-5 What starts as a mild interest in a father’s obsession turns into a quest for the “true cross” by his son. Alaric, the father of Richard “Richie” Cathar, has recently died, and Richie must come to terms with this loss. The depth of Alaric’s obsession with the Lionheart is evidenced by his having named his son after the medieval king as well as by changing his name from “Carter” to “Cathar.” Richie informs readers that his father was frequently on drugs and that he was ignominiously dismissed from Oxford. Richie is trying not only to figure out his relationship to his father, but also figure out his relationship to Emily, his girlfriend, who’s becoming enamored with someone else. During a trip to Jerusalem to examine some 8
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“A brilliant artistic and moral achievement worth reading.” from trieste
THE GUTS
TRIESTE
Doyle, Roddy Viking (336 pp.) $27.95 | Jan. 27, 2014 978-0-670-01643-3
Drndic, Daša Translated by Elias-Bursac, Ellen Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (368 pp.) $27.00 | Jan. 14, 2014 978-0-547-72514-7
In this entertainingly chatty novel, the Irish author revisits some characters from the well-received debut that launched his career, but he isn’t quite sure what to do with them. The publication of The Commitments (1987) established Doyle as a master of the Irish vernacular, earning its place on the short shelf of great rock novels and inspiring a movie that reached an even wider audience. The prolific author has since written some novels that are even better than the first, though his recent output has been more erratic. This represents a return to form, not quite a sequel to that debut and not quite as good but a novel that shows how the musical generation he chronicled earlier is now dealing with mortality, family, nostalgia and all sorts of issues of getting older but not necessarily smarter (or, in some cases, happier). Protagonist Jimmy Rabbitte, who formed and managed the Commitments, is still a musical hustler, but now his racket is reuniting and reissuing music from bands of that earlier era, many of whom he holds in great contempt. It seems that even in the midst of an economic downturn, “[t]he middle aged are still finding the money to fund their nostalgia.” There’s a hilarious middle-aged, punk-rock duo—a married couple who break up (the band at least) during every session—and there’s another very funny episode about Jimmy’s response to one of his more popular musicians and the affair that musician seems to be conducting with a young staffer—which requires a series of apologies when Jimmy discovers that he has misjudged the relationship entirely. Much of the book is very funny, audaciously so, considering that Jimmy is suffering from bowel cancer, undergoing chemo (while reading Chemotherapy & Radiation for Dummies), cheating on his saintly wife and watching while the country’s entire economy goes down the toilet. Yet, it is full of loose ends—a reconciliation with his brother, the attempt to fake a recording from 1932—that the author never ties together, perhaps since Jimmy’s is not the sort of tidy life. Whatever its novelistic flaws, the rock criticism and pop-culture insights are sharp throughout.
An epic, heart-rending saga from the Croatian novelist about a forgotten corner of the Nazi Holocaust. The author offers no traditional novel. Its heart is the fictional story of Haya Tedeschi, daughter in a near-assimilated Jewish family from Gorizia, Italy, near Trieste. Interwoven with Haya’s tale are brutal historical facts of bloodletting during World War II. One chapter, “Behind Every Name There is a Story,” is simply “[t]he names of 9,000 Jews who were deported from Italy, or killed in Italy or the countries Italy occupied between 1943 and 1945.” There are photographs. There are war crime trial transcripts and poetry excerpts, from Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, Jorge Luis Borges and others crying out
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FRIEND ME
against “the deafness that presses upon the earth.” Haya’s story begins as the family moves from their home in Italy to Albania and finally back to Gorizia as refugees. There, young Haya begins work as a store clerk. Haya’s seduced and becomes pregnant by Kurt Franz, an SS officer and death camp participant who ultimately reveals he knows Haya’s ethnicity, whispering “[m] y little Jewess, we can’t go on like this....Besides, my fianceé is waiting at home.” Their child, Antonio, is soon kidnapped and spirited away to Germany to be raised as an ideal Aryan by a German couple. Antonio reappears at narrative’s end as Hans Traube, a photographer, a metaphor for all consumed in the conflagration of the Holocaust. Offering “no mercy for the pathological debris of humanity,” the author rains bitter condemnation on the International Red Cross, the Swiss, the Roman Catholic Church and the passive complicity of the German people. A brilliant artistic and moral achievement worth reading.
Faubion, John Howard Books/Simon & Schuster (368 pp.) $14.99 paper | Feb. 4, 2014 978-1-4767-3872-7 Advances in social media technology beg the question “Who’s watching?” So, watch out. Faubion’s thriller is a timely novel about the risks to privacy inherent in Internet communication; its pornographiclike capabilities to watch and interact from afar; and the social repercussions for a family experiencing the typical economic strain of our times. Melissa Montalvo is a software architect with some seriously disturbing personality traits. The book begins with a murder and her rise in the ranks of Virtual Friend Me, a company that takes avatars to a new level by creating a lifelike image of a “friend” who learns about the user through interaction and becomes more human in the process. Scott Douglas and his wife, Rachel, are distancing themselves through work and marital stress. They each create a “friend” through the website and spend more and more time with their virtual others, ignoring the issues in their life together. Behind the screen is Melissa, intercepting emails and stalking her perfect man, Scott, electronically. Fantasy becomes psychopathic, and Melissa emerges in the real world physically working to rid Scott of Rachel and creating the life she imagines with him, regardless of the murderous events needed to get there. The story is current and captivating but with a purpose: Faubion fills the pages with biblical quotations and Christian teachings. The book captures well our insidious addiction to social media, but the novel’s pace is slowed by morality lessons and a predictable conclusion.
UNDER YOUR SKIN
Durrant, Sabine Emily Bestler/Atria (368 pp.) $25.00 | Feb. 4, 2014 978-1-4767-1623-7 Durrant, whose work includes novels aimed at both children and adults, returns with a dark psychological thriller that’s very different from her forays into chick lit. Gaby Mortimer, a presenter (the British term for a television host) on a London morning show, is out jogging when she comes across the body of a young woman. She calls the police, but before they arrive, she manages to contaminate the scene by touching the body. When investigators ask her about it, she denies having done it, but one officer, a detective named Perivale, doesn’t believe her. Soon, she finds herself besieged by the press, who line up outside the door of the upperclass and pricey residence she shares with her coldly distant husband, Philip, and precocious daughter, Millie. But hounding by the media isn’t the only problem she faces: Philip has gone off on a business trip to Singapore; Perivale is determined to arrest her and make her face the music; and the producers on her show have replaced her with a young woman who’s been edging into her job for months. Barricaded against the world, Gaby leans on her best friend, Clara, but it’s a freelance journalist who wants to write a story about her who ends up helping her find evidence in connection with the case. Durrant’s story is meticulous and detail-laden, with plenty of red herrings planted in order to keep readers bouncing from suspect to suspect. In addition, Gaby proves an interesting central character: a woman whose husband abandoned his marriage long ago and who now leads a privileged existence. However, the author’s tendency to overwrite evolves into a failure to leave enough to the reader’s imagination to make this a truly memorable read. A decent story and probably Durrant’s best to date, but her decision not to explain the plethora of British references could prove a distraction to American readers. 10
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IN THE MEMORIAL ROOM
Frame, Janet Counterpoint (208 pp.) $23.00 | Dec. 10, 2013 978-1-61902-175-4
A strange, resonant, Nabokov-ian novel about the plight of Harry Gill, a New Zealand writer on a six-month fellowship in France, struggling to write his first imaginative fiction. Works by Frame (1924-2004), the New Zealand novelist and autobiographer, continue to appear. Never published during her lifetime, this book is marvelous experimental fiction. Up until now, Harry (his name comes from the title of a William Wordsworth poem) has written historical novels. Receiving the Watercress-Armstrong Fellowship, and admitting he is not funny or adventurous, he sets out to write a “comic novel in the picaresque tradition.” In fact, he is so shy and compliant as to |
TEMPTING FATE
be almost anonymous. Arriving in Menton, expatriates besiege him; they want to possess the recipient of their little fellowship, created to honor a dead writer who worked in the town. The book Harry writes is this one, a journal about trying to find peace and quiet and time to write a book, a comedy of errors both physical and metaphysical. The local doctor Harry visits, afraid that he is going blind and, again, when he goes deaf, is Dr. Rumor. The good doctor opines that Harry’s symptoms are a species of hysteria: He fears going blind because he’s afraid he is invisible. The humor is bone-dry and crackling. Harry, observing his predicament: “One does not always quote fiction as a good example for life but, I told myself, I would never have let this happen in fiction—a man going blind who instead becomes deaf.” Frame’s sentences are marvels, winding like narrow alleys through hill towns: They open spectacular vistas. Brilliant.
Green, Jane St. Martin’s (352 pp.) $25.99 | $12.99 e-book | Mar. 18, 2014 978-0-312-59184-7 978-1-4668-4203-8 e-book An affair threatens a woman’s marriage, yet it also forges unexpected bonds that transcend the narrow definition of family. At 43, Gabby is certain the best years of her life are behind her. Eighteen years of marriage to Elliott, a highly successful gastroenterologist, have given her two lovely daughters and a secure future, but she’s feeling anything but sexy. While her friends dress to the nines for a girls’ night out, Gabby dresses simply, hoping to camouflage the more womanly curve of her hips. As her friends desperately chat up older men, Gabby finds herself drawn into a deeply flirtatious conversation with a gorgeous man 10 years her junior. Matt listens avidly
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“A witty and soulful trio of novellas by master storyteller Gurganus...” from local souls
HAZARDOUS DUTY
to her thoughts, making her feel desirable and even beautiful. Soon, several martinis as well as the witching hour have passed. Although Gabby hasn’t been literally unfaithful, as her friendship with Matt intensifies over the coming weeks, it is only a matter of time. Their one night of passion splashes cold water on Gabby’s face: How could she risk her marriage and family for a fling with a man who may appreciate her but could never build a life with her? Her infidelity, however, can’t stay hidden for long. The next year is fraught with anxieties and epiphanies, as her marriage falters and her daughters struggle to forgive her. Green (Family Pictures, 2013, etc.) charts a broad emotional terrain, ranging from frustration and desire to shame and resignation. Gabby’s transgression may detonate a bomb in her personal life, yet out of the wreckage emerges a love more flexible, more tolerant and more inclusive. A Scarlet Letter for the 21st century.
Griffin, W.E.B.; Butterworth IV, William E. Putnam (480 pp.) $27.95 | Dec. 31, 2013 978-0-399-16067-7 Griffin (Covert Warriors, 2011, etc.) takes a shot at humor in his eighth Presidential Agent adventure. Lt. Col. Charley Castillo has retired from black ops. Castillo left the service after new president Joshua Ezekiel Clendennen made a bad decision. Castillo went rogue, saved the day and left the president with egg on his face. Now, needing good PR for a re-election campaign, Clendennen, regarded by Washington insiders as “absolutely bonkers,” orders Castillo recalled. Clendennen wants Castillo to gut Mexican drug cartels and sweep the seas free of Somali pirates. In the meantime, the president’s intent on renaming special-ops forces “Clendennen’s Commandos” and trading green berets for clan kilts. Griffin attempts a sendup of politicians, spotlight-hungry reporters, fumbling dictators and bumbling exKGB ghouls. Griffin’s heroes are Delta Force, SEAL, Special Forces, Marines, “dinosaur” CIA agents, and former KGB and Spetsnaz tough guys and gals who’ve seen the light. Allied with the secretary of state, director of Central Intelligence, and other movers and shakers, Castillo’s intent on preventing unnecessary bloodshed while humoring the deluded Clendennen, whose more pressing worries include coping with his wife, Belinda-Sue, who wants to be nominated vice president, an ambition complicated by her mother’s escape from the Ocean Springs Baptist Assisted Living Facility in search of “Mason jars full of Mississippi’s finest 140-proof white lightning.” Characters are interchangeable, like patriotic moneymen who secretly finance covert operations, Secret Service agents studying The Godfather trilogy for leadership tips, aristocratic and well-placed foreigners, and Vladimir Putin–pursued Russian émigrés who own Argentinian estates and Cozumel-based cruise ships. This SNL-meets–Spy vs. Spy story isn’t Carl Hiaasen laugh-out-loud funny, but Griffin draws what humor he can from once-upon-a-time deeds of derring-do, complex plans to divert a president’s lunacies, Gulfstream V continent-hopping and zero action.
CASSANDRA
Greenwood, Kerry Poisoned Pen (250 pp.) $24.95 | $14.95 paper | $22.95 Lg. Prt Nov. 5, 2013 978-1-4642-0205-6 978-1-4642-0207-0 paper 978-1-4642-0206-3 Lg. Prt. The fall of Troy as viewed by participants in the horrors. Cassandra and her twin brother, Eleni, the children of King Priam and Queen Hecube of Troy, are a priestess and priest of Apollo the sun god. When a bored Aphrodite makes a wager with Apollo for a golden apple, the lives of Cassandra and Achaean healer Diomenes, called Chryse, are forever changed as they become pawns of the gods. Cassandra is cursed with the gift of prophecy. She cannot tell what she knows about the future of Troy. While Cassandra is growing and learning in Troy, Chryse is becoming a gifted healer whose life is forever changed when he is called upon to treat his first love, Elene of Sparta, the most beautiful woman in the world. Though she’s married to Menelaus, Elene is nevertheless sought by many powerful men, and a war will soon be fought over her. When Elene runs off to Egypt with Cassandra’s arrogant brother Pariki, the Achaeans have the perfect excuse to declare war on Troy even though they know that the Trojans would gladly have given her up had she not remained in Egypt. Under the excellent leadership of Cassandra’s brother Hector, the Trojans withstand a long siege while the Achaeans are picked off by disease and useless forays. Cassandra and Chryse meet when he rescues her twin and returns him to Troy. What the Achaeans cannot achieve by battle, they achieve by following a plan conceived by the clever Odysseus. The second in Greenwood’s Delphic Women series (Medea, 2013) offers a far different premise on a familiar story, crammed with well-researched detail, fascinating characters and erotic scenes.
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LOCAL SOULS
Gurganus, Allan Liveright/Norton (347 pp.) $25.95 | Sep. 23, 2013 978-0-87140-379-7 A witty and soulful trio of novellas by master storyteller Gurganus (Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All, 1989, etc.), who claims his place here as the laureate of the Southern cul-de-sac. Falls, N.C.—the setting of Widow and a significant place in other moments of Gurganus-ian geography—is hicksville-turned–gated suburb, the milieu of |
sometimes-haunted, often dissatisfied souls with secrets to keep. Some of them, nestled among the dogwoods and carefully clipped yards, have seen more than they should. Some have found redemption of a kind, as with the protagonist of a story nested within a story in the opening piece, Fear Not, in which the gentle daughter of a local worthy learns of the son that she had to give up for adoption after having been raped by her godfather. She knew nothing about the child, “one taken without her even discovering its sex,” but now, years later, she knows something of life—and all that is packed within just the first “act,” as Gurganus calls it. Gurganus manages the neat hat trick of blending the stuff of everyday life with Faulkner-ian gothic and Chekhov-ian soul-searching, all told in assured language that resounds, throughout all three novellas, in artfully placed sententiae: “Some people’s futures look so smooth, only sadists would bother delivering even temporary setbacks.” “I soon learned: journalism and motherhood are two fields jet-fueled by frequent triage caffeine blasts.” This being the South, the Civil War figures in sometimes-odd ways, from a subject of fiction to a matter of quotidian life; in the second novella, indeed, it’s recapitulated in the struggle between exes on opposite coasts. Race figures, too, as Gurganus writes of the well-heeled duffers of Falls’ premier country club as having “secret kinsmen hidden one or two counties away,” a case in point, in a fine “A Rose for Emily” moment, being a “clay-colored” man who now stands among them. Whatever their subject, and told from widely different points of view—male and female, young and old—the novellas have a conversational tone and easy manner that are a testimony to the author’s craftsmanship. A gem, like Gurganus’ previous collection of novellas, The Practical Heart (2002). Readers will eagerly await the next news out of Falls.
housekeeper, then moves into a commune and becomes pregnant again. This time, the father is unexpectedly killed. Stella is a caring mother yet a prickly character—suspicious, private, critical. Eventually, she does find some success. Yet life remains stormy, with new chapters continuing to open. Hadley is a fine, insightful writer, but this memoir of a restless, bookish woman coping with a sequence of variable male figures while playing the hand life has dealt her lacks momentum.
CLEVER GIRL
Hadley, Tessa Harper/HarperCollins (272 pp.) $25.99 | Mar. 4, 2014 978-0-06-227039-9 One relatively ordinary life, chronicled from the 1950s to the 1990s in England, mirrors enormous shifts in style, attitude and choice, especially for women. Domesticity of many kinds—rich, poor, hippie, straight—forms the connective tissue in Hadley’s (Married Love, 2012, etc.) fifth novel, narrated by Stella, a girl of her times. Growing up in the postwar decade without a father (Stella is told he has died, although that’s not true), she experiences a childhood bound by convention and a shortage of cash. When her mother remarries, Stella finds herself in competition and conflict with her stepfather. But friends sustain her, notably Valentine, her soul mate, a boy with rebellious modern ideas and drugs. Sex only happens between them twice, but Stella falls pregnant and becomes a single mother herself, a choice which derails her hopes for college. Instead, she becomes a |
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INTERVIEWS & PROFILES
Amy Tan
The best-selling writer uncovered a stunning family secret while researching her new novel By Jaime Netzer Remainders. Plus, the courtesans set fashion trends in China at the turn of the 20th century, which everyone then imitated. But then a scholar told her that the clothes in the photo really were particular to courtesans. “That sent me into a complete spin about what I had been told about my grandmother, who was supposed to be an old-fashioned, stay-at-home woman,” Tan says. “So then I thought, if that was true, what were the circumstances that led her there?” And it was this question that inspired the central idea her new novel, The Valley of Amazement, explores: “It made me think about who we are as a result of our circumstances,” Tan says. “I’ve always been interested in questions of self-identity, how we see ourselves, which may be different than how society sees us or how our parents see us.” Tan restarted the novel she’d already been at work on for more than four years. The first story was set in a remote Chinese village and dealt with the nature of accidents and responsibility. She took an element of that original story—a girl being separated from her mother and changing greatly as a result of her circumstances in the process—and applied it to her new obsession: the life of courtesans in Shanghai in the early 1900s. It wasn’t hard for Tan to walk away from that initial version of the story, because she never feels like time spent writing is a loss. “Believe it or not, it’s not hard for me to part with things,” she says. “I think the best part of writing is the act of writing, actually being there and imagining things and playing with the words.” Of course, she says, she cares about the receptions of her books (“I hope that I’m not humiliated”), and she wants them to sell well for the publisher. But the editing process never bothers her; nor does the fact that the first version of her book won’t be shared with readers: “I still have the experience of having written it. It’s not
Photo courtesy Rick Smolan
Amy Tan was already at work on a novel when a photo turned the book, and her understanding of her family’s past, upside down. At an Asian art museum exhibit in Shanghai, Tan came across an illustration of courtesans entertaining men among Western furnishings. Inspired, she decided to include a courtesan in the novel. She bought a book on courtesan culture, and it was in this book that she found an illustration called “The 10 Beauties of Shanghai.” “Five of these 10 beauties had clothes that were identical to what my grandmother had worn in my favorite photo of her, and I was stunned,” Tan says. She didn’t want to make assumptions—after all, she explains, Tan herself wears the clothes of a dominatrix when she plays with her band, the literary all-star Rock Bottom 14
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wasted; it’s still there. I have it written down, I have it in my experience.” That healthy attitude toward darling-killing led Tan to cut more than 100 pages from The Valley of Amazement, under the gentle but confident direction of her editor, Daniel Halpern of Ecco. When asked if she was under pressure after the publication of her last novel, she laughs and responds that the reason for the eight-year gestation period between Saving Fish from Drowning and The Valley of Amazement is actually the opposite: “The problem is that I didn’t get a lot of pressure. I didn’t get a lot of people saying to me, ‘We must have it by this certain date.’ ” She was also working without an editor; after Faith Sale passed away in 1999, Tan says she was “scared to find another editor.” But two and a half years ago, she connected with Halpern, who had mentored under Sale, and that’s when the work sped up considerably. If left to her own devices, Tan often tunnels into rabbit holes of research, most of which is motivated by curiosity. “It’s a flaw,” Tan says. “I have to stop because it gets obsessive. I want to know everything.” Case in point: When researching what toilets would’ve been like at the time, Tan found herself wondering whether toilet paper would’ve been used. She did some research and discovered that the Chinese actually invented toilet paper in A.D. 400. “I thought, ‘OK, this is too much,’ ” Tan says. “We don’t need to know all of that.” Tan relied on library research, some Googling and travel to get the time and setting details right in the novel. She looked at a lot of photographs, she visited archives, she talked with people who’ve taken opium. Her research is also often deeply connected to her own life. This novel is not autobiographical, but many elements of Tan’s life enter into it nonetheless: Her grandmother may have been a courtesan, which inspired much of the plot. Her grandfather took part in the 1911 revolution, which led to the 1912 overthrow of the Ching dynasty, and so the revolution makes its way into the story. He also died in the third wave of the Spanish influenza pandemic; that too is woven into the story. But it’s not just history that creeps in: “All the bad men [in the book] are modeled after my mother’s first husband.” And Tan draws from her own life as well. A harrowing scene in the book comes straight from Tan’s own experience of being nearly impaled by a rock when climbing the Great Wall. In fact, Tan says, her fiction encompasses much of her life, even if the correlations are not direct. “I
incorporate what happens almost daily,” she says. “It’s like a little diary to myself, that whole act of writing and just incorporating who I am that day and what happened, and it’s my little diary that I was alive and I had these thoughts on this day at that time, and that’s why it’s wonderful to write.” 9
Jaime Netzer is a writer and editor living in Austin, Texas. Her fiction has been published in Twelve Stories and Corium Magazine and is forthcoming in Parcel. She’s at work on her first novel.
The Valley of Amazement was reviewed in the July 15 issue of Kirkus Reviews.
THE VALLEY OF AMAZEMENT Tan, Amy HarperCollins (608 pp.) $29.99 | Nov. 5, 2013 978-0-06-210731-2 |
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THE ORPHAN CHOIR
condition and our collective predisposition to insanity. In fact, Heivoll has created himself as a character, letting himself play the narrator, a successful modern-day writer who was born just before the first blaze. At an Italian literary festival, this character, long estranged from his homeland, falls ill, and his fevered mind transforms the audience into the dead of Finsland, his hometown. And so, Heivoll the narrator launches into the work of exploring those frightening days and nights of fiery destruction. Other segments are sickeningly frightening descriptions of the fires themselves: “The whole room was ablaze,” Heivoll writes in his first chapter. “The floor, the walls, the ceiling; the flames were licking upwards and wailing like a large wounded animal.” Other times, the narrator poetically imagines the firestarter at his work: “He tiptoed in, went to the bathroom and washed, stood for a moment studying some cuts and grazes to his forehead; his fingers still smelled faintly of petrol. His eyes were radiant and the tiredness was gone. There was grass in his hair. He shut his eyes and saw the swallows circling in the smoke under the roof.” It’s revealed early on that the narrator is wellacquainted with the real identity of the madman; he’s just more interested in the question “why?” than whodunit. Closer in tone to François Traffaut’s Shoot the Piano Player or a Tom Waits song/story than an airport mystery novel.
Hannah, Sophie Picador (288 pp.) $25.00 | Jan. 28, 2014 978-1-250-04102-9
British author Hannah’s latest novel explores the psyche of a woman whose life is troubled by a noisy neighbor and the enforced absence of her own small child. Louise Beeston has been battling her neighbor for ages. The man she calls “Mr. Fahrenheit” likes to crank up the music when his friends visit, and Louise has had it with those interruptions to her sleep. What makes it even worse is that she misses her son Joseph, who is in a prestigious boys choir. Joseph attends an exclusive private school in Cambridge, and as an elite member of the choir, is required to board at the school. That means Louise and her husband, Stuart, only see Joseph at services when the choir performs and during breaks when he is allowed to come home. Adding to Louise’s consternation is the fact that Stuart is insisting they have their Victorian townhome sandblasted in order to clean the brick. To accomplish this means the place will be swathed in plastic for weeks, including the windows. Louise wants to get away from it all and create a paradise for her family, and she thinks she may have found this in an ad for second homes in a gated country community. But there’s a fly in the ointment: She keeps hearing the voices of singing children, a choir like Joseph’s, wherever she is. And it appears no one else can hear the choir but her. Hannah, who specializes in psychological thrillers, places the burden of the storytelling on Louise’s shoulders. In the end, this proves problematic since the character is portrayed as so relentlessly miserable, bad-tempered and unlikable that few who read the book will care what happens to Louise or her family. A difficult story about a terrible, selfish and deluded woman with a disagreeable personality and a spineless husband.
UNDER THE WIDE AND STARRY SKY
Horan, Nancy Ballantine (496 pp.) $26.00 | Jan. 21, 2014 978-0-345-51653-4
Horan (Loving Frank, 2007) offers another fictionalized romantic biography, this time of Robert Louis Stevenson and his American wife, Fanny. In 1875, 35-year-old Fanny Osbourne arrives in Europe with her three children—16-year-old Belle, 7-year-old Sammy and 3-year-old Hervey—ostensibly to study art but really to escape Sam, her perpetually unfaithful husband. After Hervey dies of tuberculosis in Paris, grieving Fanny decamps to a rural inn, where she encounters “Louis.” He has been hiking the countryside alone, despite fragile health, to celebrate earning a law degree to please his father, although he plans never to practice law. For Louis, 10 years Fanny’s junior, it is love at first sight. Initially, she resists—he is too boisterous and sickly—but she is eventually won over, as every reader will be, by his love of life and pure spirit as well as his genius. They live happily more or less together in Paris until Sam arrives from California and begs Fanny to reconcile. For the sake of her kids, Fanny returns to the U.S., but soon, Sam begins philandering again. Meanwhile, Louis has taken his famous donkey ride in the Cévennes, then heads to California to win Fanny back, arriving at her doorstep deathly ill from his arduous journey. Sam agrees to a divorce, and the lovers marry in 1880; Fanny is 40, Louis 29. While Louis’ parents accept her as family, his literary friends, with the exception of the stalwart Henry James,
BEFORE I BURN
Heivoll, Gaute Translated by Bartlett, Don Graywolf (336 pp.) $26.00 | Jan. 7, 2014 978-1-55597-661-3 One of Norway’s most famous writers investigates a strange series of fires not by examining the ashes, but by looking in the mirror. This is not a crime novel. Except for being labeled a novel, it’s not even clear that this ambitious experiment by European best-seller Heivoll qualifies as anything less than the purest metafiction. The author treats his subject (a series of fires started by a serial arsonist in rural Norway in the 1970s) as a highly complex meditation on the human 16
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BOY IN THE TWILIGHT Stories of the Hidden China
consider her an American rube and are increasingly jealous of Louis’ success. The Stevensons begin a life of travel: Scotland, Switzerland, France, Bournemouth, Colorado, the South Seas. Frequently bedridden, Louis is always writing, and this novel shows the germinating seeds of his classic works. While the retelling of the Stevensons’ lives is rather pedestrian, Robert Louis Stevenson comes through as utterly irresistible.
Hua, Yu Translated by Barr, Allan H. Pantheon (192 pp.) $24.00 | Jan. 21, 2014 978-0-307-37936-8
Thirteen new translations of stories by one of China’s most outspoken critics of the Cultural Revolution. Hua (China in Ten Words, 2011, etc.) can be hard to put into context since his work comes out in fits and starts due to the peculiarities of translation. These stories date from the mid-1990s and examine the lives of modern Chinese men and women through the prism of cynicism and violence. That subtext of violence appears in several stories, including the title story, where a boy’s finger is broken, and the final story, “Friends,” which ends with a no-holds-barred fistfight. Drunken revelry marks “Mid-Air Collisions.” “What a
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“Heart-rending and chilling.” from motherland
wonderful time that was, when we walked forever through the streets, singing our heads off; when we muttered dirty remarks as we checked out the pretty girls; when we smashed the street lamps all along the block; when we knocked on doors in the middle of the night and ran away...” Hua writes. The stories about relationships between husbands and wives are harder to take. “Why There Was No Music” finds cuckolded husband Horsie visiting a friend, Guo Bin, while his wife, Lü Yuan, is out of town. Horsie borrows three videos: a romance, a thriller and a pornographic video that turns out to feature Lü Yuan and Guo Bin. “Victory” finds a woman driven to the verge of divorce from the simple discovery of a hidden key, while “Why Do I Have to Get Married?” finds a young woman trying to serve as marriage counselor to a savagely fighting couple. The stories are spare and minimalist and quite well-composed, but the punctuation of violence and mistrust in them give them a disquieting tension. Menacing vignettes from a crowded, hardhearted corner of the globe.
Myrddion Merlinus; his apprentice Nimue; the scrappy former slave Bedwyr; and the noble Targo—is fully drawn, with secrets, desires and often noble hopes. The dialogue fittingly shifts from stilted formalities to raw insults. A saga dark in aspect, rich in detail and mythic in dimension.
MOTHERLAND
Hummel, Maria Counterpoint (400 pp.) $26.00 | Jan. 14, 2014 978-1-61902-237-9 Inspired by family letters, Hummel chronicles the existence of an ordinary middle-class German family in the waning days of the Third Reich. Any author writing about German life during the Nazi regime has one primary challenge: how to address the Holocaust. Or, as Hummel succinctly puts it in her afterword, “What did [my characters] know and when did they know it?” She has opted not to use hindsight to impute either heroic resistance or conscious complicity to her characters. The two principal narrators are Liesl, a kindergarten teacher at a medical spa in the remote town of Hannesburg, and her husband, Frank, a surgeon who married Liesl in haste—mainly since she is good with children—after his first wife died giving birth to son Jürgen. Frank is called to a military hospital in Weimar, where he works as a reconstructive surgeon, repairing horrific battle scars and studying new skin-graft techniques. When a guard from nearby Buchenwald presents symptoms of typhus, Frank is too overworked to ponder conditions at what he thinks is a prison camp for criminals. Back home, Liesl, who once revered Hitler but by now is disillusioned, is preoccupied with keeping her new family fed and safe. Two refugee families are billeted in her house; her oldest son, Hans, is a budding black marketeer; baby Jürgen has a fever; and middle son Anselm has somehow contracted lead poisoning. The Nazi doctor she consults threatens to send “Ani” to the notorious Hadamar asylum if he does not improve. In desperation, she writes to Frank in code, asking him to desert and come home. These characters appear to have, at best, blinders on and, at worse, to be in denial about the fate of their missing Jewish neighbors and what is actually going on at camps like Buchenwald. However, these all-too-human failings are so honestly rendered that a stark question emerges: Who among us, faced with similar circumstances, would have acted differently? Heart-rending and chilling.
WARRIOR OF THE WEST
Hume, M.K. Atria (512 pp.) $16.00 paper | Jan. 7, 2014 978-1-4767-1520-9 Series: King Arthur Trilogy, 2
Even during wartime, the more dangerous enemies do indeed sleep within King Arthur’s own household. The second in Hume’s (Dragon’s Child, 2013) King Arthur trilogy (previously published outside the United States between 2009 and 2010) begins on the battlefield but ends on the more treacherous field of the court itself. The first half is rife with tales of warriors, vengeance, bloodthirsty deeds and clever military strategizing. Artor (as he’s called in the book) fights to regain lands lost to the Saxons and to unite Briton. He must overthrow Glamdring Ironfist, whose rash, brutal behavior contrasts sharply with Artor’s thoughtful attention to both tactical trickery and political acumen. Glamdring believes that his possession of the Arden knife will bring him victory. Little does he know that the true knife is a living man, a slave within his own fortress. The second half of Hume’s tome is a tale of domestic troubles, jealousies and cruelties. Urged to produce an heir, Artor must stifle memories of his beloved first wife and marry the vain Wenhaver. The appearance of the shadowy and deliciously evil figure of Morgan on the eve of their betrothal ratchets up the tension. Wenhaver’s explosions of temper, however, threaten not only the marriage bed, but also Artor’s tenuous hold over the kingdom. Yet, an even more sinister force roams the kingdom, viciously assaulting animals, children and women. Artor must find the villain and punish him without compromising his own honor or resurrecting the memory of his evil father, Uther Pendragon. As with her Merlin trilogy, Hume’s passion for legend begets a deep text. Each character—including the imposing 18
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THE BLOODING OF JACK ABSOLUTE
him. The mother intervenes. Addison must be raised in isolation. As he grows, he takes to the woods, almost able to fend for himself. At age 8, near self-sufficient, his mother forces him to leave and then kills herself. Addison treks to a metropolis (think New York City), each stranger he meets attempting to kill him. In the city, he meets a man he will call Father, so like Addison that one glance at his face sparks murderous intent. The two lurk beneath the city, venturing out only at night, but 18 years later, Father’s murdered as the two frolic on seemingly blizzard-isolated streets. Enter Gwyneth, heir to an immense fortune, isolated by “social phobia.” Addison meets Gwyneth while night-exploring a magnificent library. Gwyneth’s being pursued by Ryan Telford, a sexual pervert who also purloined millions from her father. Koontz’s tale is no “Beauty and the Beast.” Laced with fantastical mysticism, it’s an allegory of nonviolence, acceptance and love in the face of adversity. Addison and Gwyneth are the driving characters, their tales spinning out from Addison’s introspective point of view. Each has a tenuous link to Teague Hanlon, former Marine, parish priest and catalyst for the denouement sparked when a virus is deliberately released by a rogue state. The narrative is intense, with an oldfashioned ominousness and artistically crafted descriptions like “[t]he fallow soil of loneliness is fertile ground for self-deception.” Koontz’s allegory on morality and love (agape rather than sensual) probes the idea that evil is woven through humankind. Koontz fans shouldn’t be disappointed, especially with an optimistic and unexpected conclusion mirroring his theme. Something different this way comes from Mr. Koontz’s imagination. Enjoy.
Humphreys, C.C. Sourcebooks Landmark (304 pp.) $14.99 paper | Nov. 5, 2013 978-1-4022-8224-9 Forced to flee England after a duel, young scamp Jack Absolute becomes a soldier as he fights with the British army during the French and Indian War, in this prequel to Humphreys’ Jack Absolute series. Jack takes full advantage of all the seedy delights available to a young student in 18th-century London. He spends late nights carousing and gambling with his friends, and, when not attempting to woo his young French tutor, he finds time to pursue an affair with another man’s kept mistress. Eventually, though, a series of dangerous misadventures find Jack engaged in a duel with his rival and cousin, Craster, while his father, Sir James Absolute, is compelled to duel with Jack’s mistress’s powerful lover in order to preserve the family honor. In the aftermath of the duel, Jack and his father are forced to flee, Sir James to Germany and Jack to Canada, to deliver messages to the British commander in chief, Gen. Wolfe. Jack arrives just in time to help Wolfe take Quebec from the French, but as the battle winds down, he is captured by a group of Native Americans who have allied themselves with the French. Enslaved and held prisoner in the wilds of Canada, Jack must find a way to escape and then make his way through the wilderness to rejoin the British army. The hero Jack Absolute started life as a character in Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s 1775 play The Rivals, and Humphreys, who once played Jack onstage, transformed him into a swashbuckling soldier and spy in his previous novel, Jack Absolute (2003), to which the current book is a prequel. While the plot, being fairly standard for the genre, yields no big surprises, the action sequences more than compensate. The dialogue is especially well-done, full of wit and style that feel true to the period. There is enough period detail to help draw the reader into the time but not so much as to be distracting. Welcome and well-done back story for Humphreys’ likably roguish character.
THE WIFE, THE MAID, AND THE MISTRESS
Lawhon, Ariel Doubleday (320 pp.) $25.95 | Jan. 28, 2014 978-0-385-53762-9
Lawhon (Eye of the God, 2009) offers a fictional solution to the never-solved disappearance of New York Supreme Court Judge Joseph Crater in 1930, a headline story in its day. For 38 years, the judge’s widow, Stella, makes annual visits to toast him at Greenwich Village’s Club Abbey, the mobsterowned speak-easy frequented by Joe Crater in 1930. Dying of cancer in 1969, she invites Jude Simon, the detective assigned the Crater case, to join her and tells him what really happened. Cut to 1930: Joe cuts short his visit to Stella at the couple’s Maine cottage to return to NYC alone after receiving a mysterious phone call. The Craters’ maid, Maria, coincidently married to Jude, is cleaning their Fifth Avenue apartment when she walks in on Joe’s mistress, a showgirl everyone calls Ritzi, naked in the conjugal bed. Joe warns Maria to keep her mouth shut before he and Ritzi head out. After having dinner with pal William Klein, Joe and Ritzi end up in a Coney Island hotel. When there’s a knock on the door, Ritzi hides in a cabinet under the
INNOCENCE
Koontz, Dean Bantam (352 pp.) $28.00 | Jan. 10, 2014 978-0-553-80803-2 In a shift from his usual exploration of the fantastical and supernatural, Koontz’s (Odd Apocalypse, 2012, etc.) new book contemplates an apocalyptical confrontation between good and evil. In an isolated cabin, Addison Goodheart is born to a drug-and-alcohol-addled mother. The midwife takes one glance at the newborn and attempts to smother |
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AFTER I’M GONE
bathroom sink while two men savagely beat Joe before taking him away. She and Klein claim they spent the night together to give each other alibis when questioned. Stella returns to NYC briefly and finds a stash of money and documents that Maria knows Jude, of all people, placed in the Craters’ bureau (but he doesn’t know she knows). Stella hides from the grand jury when it convenes. Ritzi, newly pregnant, tries to hide from the mobster who controls her. Maria and Jude hide their secrets from each other. An author’s note at the end explains who was real and who is fictional in the labyrinth of what ifs, but only Ritzi’s story (she was real, but her storyline is imagined) carries any dramatic weight. There is some cheesy fun to be had here with Prohibition mobsters and politicians, but the plot and prose are pedestrian.
Lippman, Laura Morrow/HarperCollins (352 pp.) $26.99 | $15.99 e-book | Feb. 11, 2014 978-0-06-208339-5 978-0-06-208340-1 e-book The disappearance of a Baltimore gambling lord sends shock waves through his community, his business and his family. Felix Brewer always knew the odds were rigged. So, with the feds poised to put him away for 15 years, he has girlfriend Julie Saxony drive him to Philly in her sister’s horse trailer to hop a plane to Montreal and then disappear. He knows that his best friends, lawyer Bert Gelman and bail bondsman Tubby Schroeder, will close down his business. And he trusts his wife, Bambi, to take care of herself and his three daughters, Linda, Rachel and Michelle. But how could Felix leave it all—the place he made for himself at the heart of Baltimore’s Jewish community, the luxury and respectability he bought with every illegally bet dollar, and most of all, the love of his life? Since the night he’d crashed a high school dance, Bert, already an established businessman, knew Bambi Gottschalk would be the center of his world. And she was, despite Julie and the string of girls who preceded her. The story of Bambi and her daughters unfolds: struggles, successes, good marriages and bad. Then the discovery of Julie’s body in Leakin Park brings it all back to Felix. Who intercepted Julie, whose success parlaying the modest coffee shop Felix left her into a bed-and-breakfast positioned her to open a destination restaurant, on her way to Saks? Sandy Sanchez, an ex-cop who specializes in cold cases, hopes to find out. Coaxing the inevitable out of the improbable, Lippman (And When She Was Good, 2012, etc.) is a bet you just can’t lose.
ROSARITO BEACH
Lawson, M.A. Blue Rider Press (352 pp.) $26.95 | Dec. 31, 2013 978-0-399-16573-3 For sexy Drug Enforcement Administration agent Kay Hamilton, arresting the drug kingpin was nothing compared to making sure he stays in custody long enough to face justice. Kay left the agency’s Miami office under a cloud of controversy. She let a big-time drug dealer seduce her, then became his live-in girlfriend for months, gathering evidence all the while. Eventually, he found out she was a cop, and when he tried to kill her, she shot him dead. Case closed. Now, she’s starting fresh in San Diego, but she’s still playing fast and loose with the rules. But again, she’s getting results—namely, the arrest of Tito Olivera, whom Kay caught murdering a rival on video. But now that Tito is in custody, his half brother Caesar will leverage all the force he can muster to free him, and as the head of a powerful Mexican cartel, he can leverage quiet a lot of force indeed. Maybe even enough to spring Tito out of his cell in the brig at Camp Pendleton, the Marine base where he’s being held. When someone close to Kay returns to her life, the cartel realizes they now have a powerful opportunity to make Kay do what they want. But Kay isn’t one to be pushed around, especially when the person doing the pushing is a drug lord. Despite a few interesting ticks, Lawson (House Odds, 2013, etc.) turns in a fairly standard thriller here. There’s plenty of action and a variety of sleazy drug lords and conflicted cops, just as one would expect. Unfortunately, the characters fall flat, pulled straight from central casting. Even Kay mostly reads as a standard tough-guy lawman, only with a tacked-on sexual side. The plot has its merits, though, focusing as it does on keeping the bad guy, as opposed to catching him, and the twists and turns don’t strain the reader’s credulity. A few interesting details pull this thriller just barely above the pack.
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THE FIRST TRUE LIE
Mander, Marina Translated by Twilley, Stephen Hogarth/Crown (144 pp.) $13.00 paper | Jan. 21, 2014 978-0-770-43685-8 A slim but elegantly carved look into the inner life of an orphaned child. An abrupt and ambiguous ending dents but fails to spoil this experimental novella by Italian writer Mander (A Catalogue of Goodbyes, 2010, etc.). The story is narrated by Luca, a young boy of indeterminate age who is forced to grow up in a matter of weeks. He’s smart enough to know that the string of “fathers” that his mama trots through the house are only there for sex, and he’s thoughtful about things, if a fair bit foulmouthed in the vein of Holden Caulfield. However, he isn’t smart enough to know what to do when his mother dies in the middle of the night at the age of 36. In his traumatized imagination, he can’t decide if his mother is an angel or will become a zombie or will rise in three days like Jesus Christ. Instead of |
the frontier and relating of the hard task of the law make for an appealing read that, the author says, took 30 years to write.
letting an adult know, Luca leaves her dead body in bed and starts foraging for himself and his cat, Blue. Mander captures the childlike attitude and voice very well, as Luca struggles to make sense of what has transpired. “You put things in a row and make a story of it,” Luca says. “Stories put things in their places. Then you’re more relaxed. The stories you invent are your personal lullabies. Even when they’re horrible, they don’t scare you anymore because you’re the one who invented them. That’s what this is too. This story is only a secret I told myself to see if I’m able to keep a really secret secret.” His motivations and actions are easy to understand from the start; when Luca refers to himself as a “half-orphan,” it’s clear that he is not only close to his mother, but terrified of being left alone. An interesting protagonist makes this worth a look, but the novel doesn’t so much end as stop.
DANGEROUS WOMEN
Martin, George R.R.; Dozois, Gardner—Eds. Tor (784 pp.) $29.99 | Dec. 3, 2013 978-0-7653-3206-6
Bold and deadly female characters of many genres stride through the pages of this massive anthology. When genre collections include this many big-name authors, they’re typically a grouping of series outtakes and Easter eggs. Readers who want to know how Molly got that cool apartment in Jim Butcher’s Cold Days; meet Shy South as a young fugitive before the open of Joe Abercrombie’s Red Country; get a glimpse of Quentin Coldwater after the events of Lev Grossman’s projected Magicians trilogy; or encounter Jamie Fraser as an inexperienced (in several senses) but still clever mercenary soldier prior to meeting Claire in Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander will surely be satisfied by these and other entries (which of course include a bloody slice of history from Martin’s own blockbuster A Song of Ice and Fire universe). But the stand-alones in this smorgasbord of fantasy, science fiction, noir, historical fiction and paranormal romance are also worthy of notice, particularly Megan Abbott’s chilling “My Heart is Either Broken,” concerning a young mother’s socially inappropriate response to her daughter’s kidnapping; Megan Lindholm’s sadly believable “Neighbors,” in which a lonely widow becomes ever more alienated from her daily routine, her family and her neighborhood; and Brandon Sanderson’s gripping “Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell,” about an innkeeper/bounty hunter who must defeat rapacious ghosts, brutal outlaws and greedy bureaucrats to keep herself and her daughter safe and free. Everyone will find something to like here.
WORTHY BROWN’S DAUGHTER
Margolin, Phillip Harper/HarperCollins (384 pp.) $26.99 | Jan. 21, 2014 978-0-06-219534-0 Legal thriller writer Margolin (Sleight of Hand, 2013, etc.) turns back the clock to confront murder, deceit and slavery in frontier Oregon. It’s 1860. Matthew Penny’s established a hardscrabble law practice in bustling Portland, but Matthew isn’t happy. On the trail from Ohio to Oregon, his wife, Rachel, drowned during a river crossing. Haunted by her death, Matthew throws himself into cases he finds in taverns, farms and settlements, like Phoenix. Matthew’s there to try a civil case against Ben Gillette, Oregon’s richest man. Before that trial, however, the judge compels Matthew to defend a salesman against theft charges brought by a beautiful, mysterious traveler from San Francisco, Sharon Hill. Matthew loses, but before that trial, he had been approached by Worthy Brown, a former slave. Worthy warns him that Ben’s attorney intends to fix the Gillette jury. For that information, Worthy wants Matthew’s assistance in freeing his daughter from indentured servitude. Ben’s attorney, Caleb Barbour, came to Oregon from the slave state of Georgia. Caleb’s reneged on a promise to free the pair after arrival in Oregon. Margolin’s novel draws on historical elements, but midnarrative, he strays from legal confrontations over slavery. The story becomes historical fiction encompassing murder and romance, albeit one peopled with sympathetic characters, major and minor. Margolin shines in recreating pioneer life, especially as Matthew rides the court circuit, traipses mud-bogged Portland streets and sails to gold-rush–rich San Francisco. There, Matthew confronts a crooked lawyer conspiring to loot the Gillette empire. In the end, there’s legal wrangling, murder and romance, set against the backdrop of race and frontier life. Margolin’s dialogue is sometimes affected, sometimes faintly anachronistic, but his scene-setting, knowledge of
THE GHOST OF THE MARY CELESTE
Martin, Valerie Talese/Doubleday (320 pp.) $25.95 | Jan. 28, 2014 978-0-385-53350-8
Martin (The Confessions of Edward Day, 2009, etc.) offers a complex, imaginative version of historical fiction, playing literary hide-and-seek with the unsolved mystery surrounding an American cargo vessel found abandoned in the Azores in 1872. Martin follows a linear chronology. In 1860, Benjamin Briggs, who will become the Mary Celeste’s captain, courts his cousin Sallie Cobb, somewhat to the chagrin of her younger |
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sister Hannah, a spiritual rebel who drifts into reveries during which she has visions. In 1872, the ship is found seaworthy but abandoned, with no sign of the crew, the captain or his wife and infant daughter, who accompanied him on the voyage. In 1884, Arthur Conan Doyle, a young doctor and aspiring author, writes a fictional (and racist) solution to the mystery of what happened to the Mary Celeste that is heavily colored by his own less than happy trip to Africa three years earlier. The story, which captures the public’s imagination and launches his career, is assumed factual by many but not by Philadelphia medium Violet Petra, who readers will immediately realize is Hannah Cobb, who long ago ran away from home and assumed a new identity. Violet is being dogged by reporter Phoebe Grant, who initially wants to expose Violet as a Spiritualist fraud but finds the young woman more victim than victimizer. On an American tour in 1894, the now famous Conan Doyle meets Petra, and she impresses him with a message from his long-dead father. He invites her to London. She disappears en route but not before giving Phoebe a document that only complicates the mystery of what happened to the Mary Celeste. And really, that mystery is the least compelling element of a novel that sheds unromantic but not unsympathetic light on 19th-century New-Age spirituality and feminism while beaming a less sympathetic focus on brilliant but highly unlikable Conan Doyle. It is Violet, the lost soul, whom readers will not be able to forget. Martin has wound the disparate threads of her novel into a haunting personal drama.
novel, with its layerings of wealth, class and star-crossed love (“how could she possibly see someone like Taro except behind her parents’ back?”), has all the inevitability of its Georgian predecessor. Structurally, it’s as clever as Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84; and if it has echoes of classical Japanese literature (“A longing to visit Nagano again left him restless”), it owes as much in some ways to The Great Gatsby as it does to Brontë. Whatever its inspirations, and whatever use it makes of them, Mizumura’s book is an elegant construction, fully creating and inhabiting its fictional—its truly fictional—world.
CAUGHT
Moore, Lisa Grove (322 pp.) $25.00 | Feb. 4, 2014 978-0-8021-2212-4 An escaped prisoner, locked up for a drug deal gone bad, hopes for a few lucky breaks across Canada and South America. The hero of the latest novel from Moore (February, 2009, etc.) is David Slaney, who has a quintessential case of warring instincts. As he breaks out of a Nova Scotian prison (how isn’t quite clear), he wants to build a stable, upstanding life for himself, but to do it, he needs to cross Canada and catch up with his former (only lightly punished) partner and arrange one more drug deal. As he hitchhikes and hustles his way west, Moore deploys clipped yet lyrical prose to depict Slaney’s past failures, both in terms of romance and in marijuana smuggling, and introduces Patterson, the undercover detective tasked with tracking him down. Given Patterson’s ease in staying two steps behind his prey (not to mention the novel’s title), Slaney’s fate is never really in doubt. If this book lacks the suspense of a traditional thriller, though, at moments, it smartly captures the sense of alienation that comes with life on the lam. And the book picks up some energy as Slaney journeys to Colombia for a drug run with a drunk captain, his impossibly pretty girlfriend in tow. Moore’s skill at describing Slaney in isolation tends to falter when he interacts with others; the dialogue is generally flat or, in the case of the woman David left behind, overly dramatic. Moore is an established literary novelist taking a stab at a more plot-driven tale, and it’s not a mistake in itself that this doesn’t hew to convention. But the book never quite reconciles Moore’s efforts to complicate Slaney’s character with the stock feel of the surrounding characters and plot lines. An interesting but often ungainly attempt to blend mood piece and page-turner.
A TRUE NOVEL
Mizumura, Minae Translated by Carpenter, Juliet Winters; Sherif, Ann Other Press (876 pp.) $25.00 paper | Nov. 12, 2013 978-1-59051-203-6 A smart, literate reimagining of Wuthering Heights, moved from the Yorkshire moors to seagirt Honshu, Japan, by way of Long Island. The Heathcliff of the piece—less a tracing of Emily Brontë’s novel than an homage, for Mizumura brings plenty that is absolutely her own to this aching story—is an absolute outsider named Taro Azuma who appears in the novelist’s life (for Mizumura writes herself into the story, whence its title) as a supremely shadowy figure even as she herself is living in “three separate worlds,” somewhere between Japan and the United States, between childhood and adulthood. The trope of insider/outsider is important to Brontë’s original and no less so to Mizumura’s; Taro becomes phenomenally wealthy and successful, but he can never quite completely attain his Catherine. But then, no one in Mizumura’s fictional world seems content or absolutely at home; this is postwar Japan in a time of economic boom (“There used to be nothing but mulberry bushes,” says one character. “And now, all of a sudden, we have a huge elevated highway running through it”), but a pall of death and shame still hangs over the land. Mizumura’s novel within a 22
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“A bracingly intelligent work, though ultimately a prisoner of the genre’s conventions.” from the dismal science
THE DISMAL SCIENCE
dissipate her psychological fog, but she ends up in a literal one (“The Wadden Sea”). The 35-year-old in “She Frequented Cemeteries” may have met the man of her dreams, or she may be living in a fantasy world; Nors artfully leaves both possibilities open. Annelise, in the title story, makes bad choices with men, ignoring red flags, but her revenge on the sexual sadist Carl Erik is a last-sentence shocker. The disturbed female narrator of “The Heron” has given up on human contact; she would settle for proximity to a tame bird. These stories are, in varying degrees, arresting. “Flight,” which contrasts actual and metaphorical space as it sketches a woman after a breakup, is more banal, as is “The Winter Garden”: Here, after his parents’ divorce, their self-possessed son realizes his dad is the truly needy one. Not all the stories adhere to this isolation/connection model. “The Big Tomato,” set in Manhattan, pokes fun at excess. A wealthy Danish couple, expats, receives a 4-pound tomato from their online grocer, to the bemusement of their Mexican cleaner and Albanian laundryman on the other side of the class divide. Another New York story, “Nat Newsom,” is much darker. The eponymous Nat, a panhandler, retains his optimism despite physical handicaps and hard knocks. A Columbia professor, researching naïveté, eyes him as a subject, then contemptuously dismisses him as “too odd.” It’s a chilling look at the academic hustle. Nors is just as mordant in her treatment of a self-aggrandizing charlatan who reinvents himself as a Buddhist to become head of an aid organization, which he then rips off (“The Buddhist”). These amuse-bouches are a fine introduction to the author’s work.
Mountford, Peter Tin House (288 pp.) $15.95 paper | Feb. 11, 2014 978-1-935639-72-5
A savvy, fast-paced second novel about an economist’s midlife crisis. Vincenzo D’Orsi is a senior economist with the World Bank in Washington, D.C. The 54-year-old Italian has responsibility for Latin America. In 2005, the radical Evo Morales is a shoo-in to win the presidency of Bolivia, and only Vincenzo has the authority to change bank policy toward that country. The U.S. representative at the bank tries to bully him into an aid cutoff. Not only does Vincenzo resist, he goes public, giving an interview to his old friend Walter, veteran Washington Post reporter. It is a pivotal moment; the move ends his long career at the bank, yet Vincenzo is unsure why he has acted so drastically; he still admires the bank, for all its defects. Mountford manages all this very well: The economics are delivered crisply, and Vincenzo’s impulsive exit rings true. The format for the midlife-crisis novel calls for professional and personal self-destruction, and on the personal level, Mountford is less sure-footed, as was also apparent in his 2011 debut (A Young Man’s Guide to Late Capitalism). There can be no blowup with his wife, for Vincenzo is a widower. His beloved Cristina was killed in a traffic accident some two years earlier, so it’s his relationship with their grown daughter, Leonora, that must speed his self-destruction. He loves her dearly but loathes her boyfriend, which causes his not-entirely-convincing break with her. One welcome tweak to the format comes with Ben, a young black man, who Vincenzo believes is a CIA operative, who shows up out of the blue to threaten Vincenzo if he exacerbates U.S. relations with Latin America; the Italian has no green card and could be deported. But the die has been cast; at the invitation of Morales, Vincenzo travels to Bolivia (the setting for Mountford’s debut) with Walter. His required meltdown occurs when he delivers a boozy speech to a large audience in La Paz. A bracingly intelligent work, though ultimately a prisoner of the genre’s conventions.
I ALWAYS LOVED YOU
Oliveira, Robin Viking (352 pp.) $27.95 | Feb. 4, 2014 978-0-670-78579-7
Oliveira (My Name is Mary Sutter, 2011) draws from research and imagination to recreate the years when two impressionists—Mary Cassatt and Edgar Degas—engaged in an on-again, offagain relationship. Cassatt, the daughter of well-to-do Philadelphians, is a determined woman whose first stay in Paris is interrupted by the Franco-Prussian War. Following her return and mild success with portraiture, she’s ready to pack her brushes and leave France behind a second time after her submission to the Paris Salon exhibition is rejected. However, an arranged meeting with admirer Degas and his invitation to exhibit with a group of independent artists are all the incentives Cassatt needs to stay. Although the relationship is often contentious, and Degas’ promises leave much to be desired, Degas introduces Cassatt to his inner circle of friends, a socially prominent group that includes writer Émile Zola and artists Édouard Manet and his paramour, Berthe Morisot, who’s married to Manet’s brother, Eugene. Degas, frustrated with increasingly poor eyesight and possessing a cruel and insensitive demeanor, becomes Cassatt’s
KARATE CHOP Stories
Nors, Dorthe Translated by Aitken, Martin Graywolf (112 pp.) $14.00 paper | Feb. 4, 2014 978-1-55597-665-1 The first English publication of this Danish author of five novels consists of 15 oblique, very short stories, many of them about isolated people struggling to connect. A depressed actress abandons the artifice of Copenhagen, searching for authenticity in a remote part of the country to |
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“Cuban writer Padura delivers a complex, ever deepening tale of politics and intrigue worthy of an Alan Furst or Roberto Bolaño.” from the man who loved dogs
DUST
mentor and, at times, tormentor. Often at odds, they send missives back and forth. Cassatt discovers a passion for vivid colors and embarks upon a productive period painting women and children; Degas studies the human form and strives to replicate his observations in his paintings and other renderings of ballerinas. Although sometimes they’re completely alienated, they remain linked through their art and (although Degas is almost loath to admit it) love. The book is accomplished and wellresearched, but the relationship between Cassatt and Degas isn’t as engaging as the secondary story: the love affair between Morisot and Manet. Readers may come away with little understanding of what made Cassatt and Degas click; nevertheless, they’ll gain a better understanding of impressionism.
Owuor, Yvonne Adhiambo Knopf (368 pp.) $25.95 | Jan. 31, 2014 978-0-307-96120-4 A brutal death in Nairobi prompts a reunion of the victim’s family and unlocks a host of troubling memories. The center of Owuor’s moody debut novel is Ajany, a young woman who returns to her family’s northern Kenya homestead from Brazil after learning that her brother Odidi has been gunned down in the midst of post-election violence. (The novel is set in 2007, when the turmoil there left hundreds in the country dead and tens of thousands displaced.) As their father and estranged mother reconvene in Wuoth Ogik (“the journey ends”), their efforts to mourn in peace are soon upended. Chief among the disruptions is Isaiah, an Englishman whose father’s books fill the house in Kenya. Both he and Ajany’s father provide an opportunity for Owuor to explore the previous generations’ violence in the country, which she evokes in harrowing detail (family members’ military adventures in Burma in particular). But the novel’s strength is in the present, particularly as Ajany travels to Nairobi to uncover the circumstances behind Odidi’s murder. And there, Owuor explores how layers of corruption threaten to overwhelm the sense of social justice among its citizens and how Westerners oversimplify the country’s predicament. Ajany’s character might be more effective were her back history in Brazil less sketchy, but Owuor intentionally keeps the novel’s tone impressionistic and indirect. Though that can make it harder to keep the plot lines straight, the prose has an appealingly rough-hewn poetry, built on clipped sentences and brush-stroke evocations of the dry landscape. (“The Kalacha dusk will soon descend in colors borrowed from another country’s autumn.”) Owuor, the 2003 winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing, has style to spare, which more than compensates for the looseness of the narrative.
MARSHLANDS
Olshan, Matthew Farrar, Straus and Giroux (176 pp.) $23.00 | Feb. 4, 2014 978-0-374-19939-5 An eerie, dreamlike atmosphere pervades this novel of struggle and oppression. Olshan divides the novel into three parts and moves backward chronologically, so the second part is set 21 years before the first and the third, 11 years before the second. This narrative strategy makes events and characters somewhat clearer the more readers progress into the story, though the ambience remains decidedly murky. At the center is Gus, a physician who, at the beginning of the novel, has been released from prison, a broken man after years in his cell. He wanders aimlessly to a park and to a mall in a nameless city and then is picked up by a museum worker who takes him home, sees that he gets medical care and provides a change of clothes. Shortly thereafter, he finds himself at a clinic treating “marshmen,” social pariahs who inhabit all three sections of the novel. The role of the marshmen is essentially to serve as “the other,” objects of hatred persecuted by the military establishment. The museum worker who takes Gus in turns out to be Thali, daughter of the Magheed, a local potentate who had befriended Gus earlier. Part two shifts to Gus’ point of view, and readers learn there of his relationship to Betty, a “tent girl” who, for a while, stayed with Gus while he was working as a surgeon at a field hospital. Readers also meet the arrogant and ruthless Gen. Curtis, who’s determined to wipe up the marshmen’s habitat by creating levees and hence changing the prevailing ecosystem. In the final section, readers meet the earlier versions of both Gus and Curtis, now merely a major, and also get acquainted with the early stages of the relationship among Gus, Thali and her father, the Magheed. Strange, otherworldly and somewhat sinister.
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THE MAN WHO LOVED DOGS
Padura, Leonardo Translated by Kushner, Anna Farrar, Straus and Giroux (592 pp.) $35.00 | Dec. 3, 2013 978-0-374-20174-6 Cuban writer Padura delivers a complex, ever deepening tale of politics and intrigue worthy of an Alan Furst or Roberto Bolaño. Best known as a writer of literate procedurals, Padura turns to a deeper mystery, and one that is fraught with danger in most of the communist world—namely, the 1940 assassination in Mexico City of the dissident Bolshevik Leon Trotsky. To tell |
the story, Padura inserts roman à clef elements: A writer much like him, Iván Cárdenas Maturell, has run afoul of the regime for supposedly counterrevolutionary thought, and now, he has been hustled off in a quiet corner to edit a veterinary publication. Ironically, he remains the true believer of his past, ascetic and convinced that the socialist path leads to heaven: “[T]here is nothing closer to communist morality,” he remarks, “than Catholic precepts.” Now unmoored, he meets an old man who owns a brace of hounds and who, it turns out, was the assassin who did Trotsky in. As Iván and the dying Ramón Mercader, who has lived a life “so full of tremendous convulsions,” develop something that approaches a friendship, they chart the differences between the revolutionary generations of the 1930s and the 1960s, the point of view shifting back and forth to examine what might have worked and what certainly failed in the Soviet experiment. Trotsky, hounded by his longtime rival Josef Stalin, figures prominently in the narrative, querulous but rightfully aggrieved as he endures a life on the run; he can scarcely believe that “once the socialist dream was achieved, it would be necessary to call upon the proletariat to rebel against their own state.” Yet, until his appointed destiny with Mercader, that is just what he busies himself doing, causing a schism that persists—and one in which Padura’s aims will no doubt be argued over. Long but without excess; philosophically charged but swiftly moving. A superb intellectual mystery.
bit—telling all the details of a medical procedure and including inside physician jokes can be boring to civilians looking for nothing more than a great yarn. And his main character, Mitchell, can be pretentious and self-absorbed, particularly when he weighs the harm that knowledge of GG’s future murders can do alongside his own personal disgrace. He proves to be a character that is almost as dislikable as the villain. Nicely paced action, but Parsons clumsily sidesteps the most obvious solution to the evil GG problem, vastly weakening the book.
ALENA
Pastan, Rachel Riverhead (320 pp.) $27.95 | Jan. 23, 2014 978-1-59463-247-1 This gentle homage to du Maurier’s Rebecca teleports the story from a gloomy English mansion to an avant-garde Cape Cod art gallery. Pastan’s first-person narrator (as in Rebecca, never named) is a young, penniless art history graduate from the Midwest. In Venice, where she is serving as factotum to overbearing art maven Louise, the narrator meets wealthy Bernard Augustin, who owns a storied gallery called Nauquasset on Cape Cod. As in Rebecca, the narrator escapes her thankless job by following Bernard home but as his new head curator, not his wife. (Bernard is gay.) Once at Nauquasset, the narrator finds she has some capacious shoes to fill: Bernard’s best friend and former curator, Alena, disappeared one night while swimming, but the entire gallery staff seems to be still in her thrall. Like the passive aggressive servants at du Maurier’s Manderley, headed by the forbidding Mrs. Danvers, Nauquasset’s team undermines their new boss at every turn, and Mrs. Danvers’ doppelganger, Agnes the bookkeeper, treats her with undisguised contempt. Bernard is mostly absent on various business trips as the narrator struggles to establish her authority by launching a new show of shell sculptures by aptly named Cape Cod artist Celia Cowry. Here, she commits her first error: Not only were Bernard and his employees rooting for a transgressive installation by a wounded Gulf War vet, but Celia, at first grateful to be recognized after years of obscurity, is proving to be impossibly high-maintenance. Love interest is provided by hard-bitten local police chief Chris Passoa, who is investigating Alena’s disappearance. Although offering a wry, perceptive commentary on the contemporary art world, the novel lacks the creeping sense of dread pervading du Maurier’s classic. Nor does the narrator’s relationship with Bernard raise the dramatic stakes, not merely due to the fact that a curatorship is inherently less fraught than a marriage, but since Bernard, after launching the action, disappears from it almost as completely as Alena herself. However, unlike Alena, Bernard, when gone, is easily forgotten. A technically able but rather tepid reimagining of the gothic staple Rebecca.
DOING HARM
Parsons, Kelly St. Martin’s (368 pp.) $25.99 | $12.99 e-book | Feb. 4, 2014 978-1-250-03347-5 978-1-250-03346-8 e-book Parsons, a surgeon, writes a convincing thriller about a med student who’s a bad apple and the evil game in which she engages at a major medical school and teaching hospital. Chief resident Steve Mitchell, a urology surgeon who is hoping to work at University Hospital once he finishes his residency, meets medical student Gigi, nicknamed “GG.” Leggy and beautiful, GG is a quick student and brilliant, but she has one other notable characteristic—she’s a psychopath. And she’s decided to draw the happily married, although impossibly self-centered, Mitchell into her “game.” GG ropes Mitchell into playing the game following a pair of disastrous surgeries that result in serious and unforeseen complications. Both times, Mitchell made grave errors, and patients were the ones to suffer. After sabotaging one of Mitchell’s patients and then seducing the young doctor, GG lets Mitchell in on what is happening and tells him that unless he tries to figure out whom she is going to kill next, she’ll proceed with her next victim. Distraught and unsure about how to stop GG, Steve confides in his junior resident, Luis, a former Marine who is both battle-wise and street-smart, and together, they decide to stop her. Parsons knows his subject and does justice to the medical side, although he needs to hold back a |
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THE SPINNING HEART
separate spheres but that each is shot through with the other. Through the (largely sedentary and intellectual) misadventures of his alter ego Signor Dido, Savinio provides a series of gently comic, softly sardonic meditations on family life, art, class and the ravages of age. The pieces are urbane, allusive (especially to classical mythology), graced occasionally with divine nonsense and absurdity. Savinio deftly balances introspection and journalistic observation, and always behind them are a fierce intelligence and an awareness of vanity in all its guises. There’s no overarching narrative here, certainly, and this may be more a cabinet of curiosities than a major work, but being in Savinio’s company provides a series of small, persistent pleasures.
Ryan, Donal Steerforth (160 pp.) $15.00 paper | Mar. 4, 2014 978-1-58642-224-0
Irish author Ryan’s debut takes readers to the “heart” of hardscrabble life in Ireland in the era after the economic boom and bust of 2008. The novel received Book of the Year honors at the Irish Book Awards. Reminiscent of Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, this book gives readers a story—or rather stories—told from multiple perspectives, each chapter using a different voice. The initial encounter is with Bobby Mahon, a builder who’s been burned by the economic machinations of Pokey Burke. Bobby is married to Triona and is generally looked up to by everyone as an honest man, showing rare integrity in a world of rascals and swindlers. Later, we find out that he had been having an affair with Réaltín, though Triona was so in love that his peccadillos didn’t matter. At the core of Bobby’s existence is his hatred for his father, a man who frittered away the family inheritance and constantly belittled his son. Through other characters later in the novel, readers find out that Bobby has supposedly murdered the old man. Is it true? The composite picture from these memories and anecdotes is bleak indeed. Readers learn of Réaltín’s groping by her egregious boss; Timmy’s having been flattened by a shovel by an irate victim of Pokey’s real estate fraud; Seanie Shaper’s constant desire for women; a reminiscence from beyond the grave by Bobby’s father; and finally there’s Triona’s calm, earth-mother voice and a moving meditation that ends, “What matters only love?” Disturbing and unnerving but ultimately beautiful. (Agent: Marianne Gunn O’Connor)
A WELL-TEMPERED HEART
Sendker, Jan-Philipp Translated by Wiliarty, Kevin Other Press (320 pp.) $15.95 paper | Jan. 21, 2014 978-1-59051-640-9
In the German novelist Sendker’s sequel to The Art of Hearing Heartbeats (2012), a Manhattan attorney returns to Burma 10 years after her first visit for further lessons in love. When she was 28, intellectual property lawyer Julia traveled to Burma, where she learned of her Burmese father’s early life and his reunion with the love of his life, whom he’d left behind before moving to America and marrying Julia’s American mother. While there, she became close to the saintly half brother, U Ba, she never knew existed. Since her return to New York, she has meant to return to Burma but never got around to it. Now, shortly after breaking up with her boyfriend and receiving a letter from U Ba, Julia begins to hear a voice asking her questions. A psychiatrist prescribes drugs to quell the voice. Instead, she visits a Buddhist center, where a Burmese monk clarifies that another woman’s soul is trapped inside Julia’s body. Soon, Julia is winging her way to Burma, where she quickly finds U Ba, who takes her to visit Khin Khin, an elderly woman who tells the story of her dead half sister, Nu Nu, whose voice haunts Julia. (In his first novel, Sendker used the similar technique of framing one story inside another.) Nu Nu’s crisis was that she loved her first son more than her second. The second son, Thar Thar, grew up aware he was unwanted by his mother. Nevertheless, after his loving father’s early death, Thar Thar cared well for his mother and brother, but when Burmese soldiers forced Nu Nu to make a “Sophie’s choice,” she didn’t hesitate in deciding to save her favorite. So, 12-year-old Thar Thar was forced into the army. As Julia and U Bar discover what became of Thar Thar, Julia learns about the power of love and realizes where her own heart truly belongs. Sendker can be a mesmerizing storyteller, but his high quotient of romantic spiritualism is hard for even the mildly skeptical to take seriously.
SIGNOR DIDO Stories
Savinio, Alberto Translated by Pevear, Richard Counterpoint (176 pp.) $24.00 | Jan. 14, 2014 978-1-61902-238-6 Savinio—composer, journalist, playwright, painter and younger brother of Giorgio de Chirico—died in 1952, and this, his final book, wasn’t published in Italian until 1978. The book is a collection of 28 brief newspaper bagatelles that the author composed under deadline in the final years of his life (the last was turned in to his editor a mere four days before he died). But these short pieces often transcend those origins. Wry, epigrammatic, and with a mordant and playful wit he doesn’t hesitate to turn on himself, these pieces exemplify Savinio’s sense that the mundane and the fantastic aren’t 26
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“The tale is ripe with symbolism and peopled by riveting characters.” from house of purple cedar
RAW
draws BTC’s notice when he employs exotic particle states to create a gravity mirror. Grady’s kidnapped by the BTC, but he refuses to cooperate and employ his knowledge of manipulating gravity for their shadowy purposes. Grady’s relegated to Hibernity, BTC’s prison, and BTC co-opts his technology. The book is premise-driven, with characters running to type. The wizard nerd, Grady, has avuncular advocates like Dr. Bertrand Alcot, supportive retired professor, and Archibald Chattopadhyay, nuclear physicist and a fellow Hibenity prisoner, as guides. Hedrick, BTC chief, is self-important, an authoritarian under a benign shell. Morrison, BTU security, former military special ops, employs his squabbling clones as staff. Alexa, with altered DNA that “give[s] her longevity, intelligence, and perfect form,” is BTC’s biotech wonder. A self-appointed prophet, Cotton, head of the Winnowers, wants to halt technology’s progress. With BTC under scrutiny of a new U.S. director of intelligence and Hedrick coping with breakaway BTC elements gone rouge in Russia and Asia, Grady escapes Hibernity and sets out to bring BTC down. The story is atomic-weighted with science terminology from college-level texts, but the narrative is easily understandable. There’s a thread left unraveled and a plot hole related to a character’s scientific and technological capabilities, but the narrative rockets along right up to a good-versus-evil battle that would be better resolved on the IMAX screen than the page. Fun tech-fiction wrapped in black helicopter conspiracy.
Smith, Mark Haskell Black Cat/Grove (352 pp.) $14.00 paper | Dec. 3, 2013 978-0-8021-2201-8 LA writer Smith is back with another frothy satire (Moist, 2007, etc.). This time out, the focus is on America’s most beloved abs, which belong to Sepp Gregory, a reality TV star who parlayed conspicuous muscle and a broken heart on a show called Sex Cribs into a follow-up series and then glossy-magazine and tabloid celebrity. Now, he’s written— or at least is purported to have written—an autobiographical novel called Totally Reality. He’s making shirtless appearances in thronged bookstores everywhere but also struggling with a secret case of impotence; it turns out that behind that rockhard six-pack is a sweet and simple soul who needs to be in love in order to perform. Enter Harriet Post, a ferociously snobby (but, natch, demurely lovely) literary blogger and wannabe novelist who sees, in the blindly ecstatic reception of the novel, all the signs of impending apocalypse. She vows to out the ghostwriter and expose the vapid Sepp. After a scene of steamy fourway farce in the Playboy Mansion’s library—a scene featuring Sepp, Harriet, the ghostwriter and the surgically enhanced belle dame sans merci who seduced and then abandoned Sepp on Sex Cribs—there’s a terrible accident, and Harriet and Sepp find themselves on the lam in the desert, where what starts as a case of lust threatens to blossom into something more. Smith plays it fast and very, very loose in his sendup of celebrity culture, TV and literary publishing, and a good bit of this is just cheerful porn wearing the scantiest fig leaf of wit. Satire doesn’t get any broader or easier, but that doesn’t mean that the book’s not at least fitfully fun. (Agent: Mary Evans)
HOUSE OF PURPLE CEDAR
Tingle, Tim Cinco Puntos (192 pp.) $21.95 | $16.95 paper | $16.95 e-book Jan. 14, 2014 978-1-935955-69-6 978-1-935955-24-5 paper 978-1-935955-25-2 e-book In Tingle’s (How I Became a Ghost, 2013, etc.) haunting novel, the Trail of Tears is a memory, but the Choctaw people of Oklahoma still confront prejudice and contempt. It’s 1896. At Skullyville settlement, New Hope Academy for Girls has been destroyed by fire. Twenty Choctaw girls die. Tingle’s story spans the months following the fire as experienced by Rose Goode, a student. Rose goes home to her parents and to beloved Pokoni and Amafo, her grandparents. Shortly thereafter, Amafo visits Spiro, a town nearby, with Rose and her little brother. There, he’s viciously assaulted by town marshal Robert Hardwicke, who’s in a drunken rage. That night, Choctaw people gather, both fearing attack and planning revenge. But then, stoic, dignified Amafo says, “I will do this, speak friendly words to him and tip my hat to him, till one day he will turn away from me and they will see who is afraid.” In quiet, often poetic language drawn from nature’s images and from Choctaw ethos, Tingle sketches Amafo, a marvelous character both wise and loving. Tingle writes of cultures clashing, certainly, but hatred from nahullos (whites) like Hardwicke is counterbalanced by the goodwill of others like
INFLUX
Suarez, Daniel Dutton (384 pp.) $26.95 | Feb. 20, 2014 978-0-525-95318-0 In his latest, Suarez (Kill Decision, 2012, etc.) follows the adventures of eccentric genius Jon Grady, who has run afoul of the Federal Bureau of Technology Control. The BTC is a Cold War relic, an agency spawned by the supersecret government nether world. Cold fusion, artificial intelligence, quantum computing with holographic presence, an immortal strand of DNA and countless other advances are quarantined—but employed—by the BTC, which theoretically is “assessing their social, political, environmental, and economic impacts with the goal of preserving social order.” That means Jon Grady, a self-taught researcher without think-tank or university backing, |
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John Burleson, railroad stationmaster, and one-legged store clerk Maggie Johnston. Despite assimilating elements of white culture, including Christianity, Tingle’s Choctaws maintain mystical connections to the land and its creatures. The tale is ripe with symbolism and peopled by riveting characters. A lyrical, touching tale of love and family, compassion and forgiveness.
much to Lady Isobel Dilberne’s chagrin. Since Lord Robert is actively involved in the government now, not to mention with his new mistress, she is the one who is burdened with installing new plumbing and heating and completely redecorating their large but antiquated home. At the moment, son Arthur, the car enthusiast, is living at the estate with his wife, Minnie, and their two young sons. Arthur married Chicagoborn Minnie for love, not the money she stands to inherit from her rich but crude Irish-American parents, and despite knowing she was an “experienced” bride. But, devoted to his auto manufacturing company that has yet to produce a commercially viable vehicle, Arthur now takes Minnie for granted. Lonely, homesick for the United States and oppressed by Lady Isobel’s interference in her children’s upbringing, Minnie assumes the worst when she walks in on Arthur with a female journalist in an apparent state of undress. Minnie decamps to stay with Arthur’s sister Rosina. Recently returned from Australia a wealthy widow, with her finished manuscript on the sexual habits of the Aborigines ready to publish, Rosina has joined the literary and sexually liberated set on Fleet Street, Weldon’s satiric swipe at the Bloomsbury crowd. Will Minnie succumb to the temptations of Fleet Street or reunite with Arthur? Will Rosina find passion with her editor’s sister? Will Lady Isobel become romantically involved with the handsome, much younger police inspector assigned to arrange security in preparation for the royal visit? Will that visit end in triumph or disaster or both? Funnier and nastier than the two earlier volumes but still lukewarm and without much fizz.
THE SECRET OF RAVEN POINT
Vanderbes, Jennifer Scribner (320 pp.) $26.00 | Feb. 4, 2014 978-1-4391-6700-7
When her beloved brother is declared missing in action, smart, flinty Juliet Dufresne, training to be a nurse, goes to Italy to find him, in an empathetic, oblique take on the layers of damage done during war. Part mystery, part coming-of-age tale, part World War II novel, Vanderbes’ (Strangers at the Feast, 2010, etc.) overlong but incrementally moving latest is written from the perspective of a bright Southern teenager who is forced to become an adult too soon. Losing her mother at age 3 has left Juliet especially close to her brother Tuck, so when he disappears while fighting in Europe, she forges her birth certificate so she can enlist immediately after graduating from the Cadet Nurse Corps. Soon, she is tending injured men on the Italian front, one of whom is Barnaby—a deserter who has attempted suicide— who was in the same squad as Tuck. Working with the attractive psychiatrist Dr. Willard, Juliet tries to discover what Barnaby knows about Tuck’s last movements while all around her, young men and even her colleagues are being wounded and destroyed. With Barnaby sentenced to death, Willard and Juliet find themselves involved in a wild effort to save him, a journey which leads to truths Juliet will fully understand when the war ends. What begins as formulaic turns unusual and affecting as the emotional depths of Vanderbes’ story slowly emerge. (Author tour to Boston, New York, Madison, Conn., and San Francisco)
BREAD AND BUTTER
Wildgen, Michelle Doubleday (320 pp.) $25.95 | Feb. 11, 2014 978-0-385-53743-8
In Wildgen’s (But Not For Long, 2009, etc.) latest, three foodie brothers find themselves in a stew. Britt worked in advertising until brother Leo persuaded him to join in operating Winesap, an upscale restaurant in Linden near Philadelphia. Amid oyster fritters and pork rillettes, Britt runs the front of the house, and Leo manages money and vendors. Single mother Thea has become an outstanding executive chef, although pastry genius Hector has turned fickle, like others of his ilk. Then Harry, the not-prodigal but still unsettled son, comes home. Harry’s younger, has advanced degrees and blue-collar chops, and now, he’s opening a restaurant in a not-yet-gentrified neighborhood. What results isn’t sibling rivalry but rather a friendly competition that shifts and expands sibling loyalties. Call it family drama set against the backdrop of an insider’s take on big-ticket dining. Britt’s stylish, poised and vaguely discontented. Leo’s head-down, plow-ahead and stoically unhappy. Harry’s left his dissertation in limbo, worked fishing trawlers and canneries,
THE NEW COUNTESS
Weldon, Fay St. Martin’s (320 pp.) $25.99 | Sep. 17, 2013 978-1-250-02802-0
Weldon (Long Live the King, 2013, etc.) completes her Edwardian trilogy, a lightweight amalgam of Downton Abbey and her own Upstairs Downstairs, as Lord and Lady Dilberne prepare for a visit from King Edward VII. Three years have passed since the last installment. Edward, now king, has invited himself and his entourage, including his mistress, to the Dilberne estate for a hunting weekend, 28
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LEAVE TOMORROW BEHIND A Stella Crown Mystery
cooked at an isolated resort, and he harbors a secret threatening his restaurant’s success and the siblings’ bonds. Wildgen’s kitchen characters are Food Network archetypical, right down to the cutthroat competition and post-shift dive-bar drinking. Thea reflects a new chance for Leo, one that tempts him to violate the cardinal rule of a happy professional kitchen: An owner doesn’t dip into the chef ’s soup. Britt, conversely, may find happiness with Harry’s friend, enigmatic restaurant consultant Camille. Wildgen plates one dazzling dish after another on nearly every page and turns many a tasty phrase, as when a rival restaurateur is seen as “menacing them with a glass of grappa.” Not a literary banquet but far better than fast-food fiction.
Clemens, Judy Poisoned Pen (250 pp.) $24.95 | $14.95 paper | $22.95 Lg. Prt. Dec. 3, 2013 978-1-4642-0202-5 978-1-4642-0204-9 paper 978-1-4642-0204-9 Lg. Prt.
A folksy fair turned deadly forces an unconventional dairy farmer to solve more than just a murder to save the day. Planning a wedding is what most girls dream of, but dairy farmer Stella Crown isn’t most girls. She’s much more involved with helping young protégés like her employee Zach make a good showing at the 4-H competition at the county fair. Stella leaves the wedding planning to Miranda, her future sister-in-law, who’s happy to help even if she isn’t too impressed by Stella as her brother Nick’s intended. Although Stella loves Nick with all her heart, Miranda’s convinced that Stella is only after the family money, a theory that appears to be increasingly supported by Stella’s ongoing financial hardships. Stella’s hopes that the 4-H competition can take her mind off the trouble on the homefront are thwarted when the Gregg family enters the fray. Known for buying their wins in the calf competition, the Greggs are prepared to do whatever it takes to get the top prize, and Zach knows that he doesn’t stand a chance despite his hard work. Soon after Stella, Nick and their friends try to take their minds off the situation by spending the evening listening to new country singer Rikki Raines, they find the young singer’s dead body. Stella wants to get to the bottom of things, partly since she wants to relieve herself of potential blame and partly due to the fact that, for an amateur sleuth, she isn’t half bad. Unfortunately, the intended wit and quirkiness with which Clemens (Flowers for Her Grave, 2011, etc.) attempts to endow her characters often misses the mark, leaving Stella less interesting than she’s supposed to be.
m ys t e r y THE PRICE OF INNOCENCE
Black, Lisa Severn House (240 pp.) $28.95 | Nov. 1, 2013 978-0-7278-8291-2
A series of routine suicide probes turns deadly for a Cleveland crime scene investigator. Fresh from a murder at the site of the planned Cuyahoga County jail (Blunt Impact, 2013, etc.), forensic scientist Theresa McLean and her cousin, homicide detective Frank Patrick, have just finished checking out the self-inflicted wounds on a body in the Bingham, a chic condo complex in the gentrified Warehouse District, when the whole trendy building explodes. The next morning, a quickly recovered Theresa is checking another self-shooter on Lake Shore Boulevard when the uniform with her, 15-year vet Marty Davis, gets shot in a drive-by. Oliver, the medical examiner’s toxicologist, identifies the explosive that took down the Bingham as nitrogen triiodide, and the coroner identifies one of the victims as Nairit Kadam, a Middle Easterner with ties to Georgian radicals. So, the Bingham explosion is starting to shape up as a terrorist attack. But then some of Marty’s old pals turn up. Lily Sampson is hoping to inherit some of her old boyfriend’s loot to feed her drug habit. And Ken Bilecki, who’ll smoke just about anything that can be ignited, isn’t far behind. Now, the Bingham looks more like a meth cook gone bad. But before Theresa can decide whether to call Homeland Security or the Drug Enforcement Administration, another explosion at Bruce Lambert’s research lab suggests that there may be a third, even more complex explanation. Once again, Black constructs a puzzle that weaves old crimes with new, always leaving room for one more twist.
MITIGATING CIRCUMSTANCES
Corrigan, Dawn Five Star (236 pp.) $25.95 | Dec. 18, 2013 978-1-4328-2779-3
Corrigan’s Mitigating Circumstances is billed as a thriller, but it’s told with a light touch. Gail LaRue is a junior city planner for Gulf Breeze in Florida’s panhandle. Her hands are full dealing with code violations such as the rash of illegal signs that pop up everywhere in the middle of the night. The signs refer to land mitigation, the process of creating new wetlands equal to the amount of wetlands being destroyed by developers. Meanwhile, an environmentally active woman named Karen Baretta is kidnapped—not |
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THE DINOSAUR FEATHER
for ransom or sex, but for a more creative reason. Still, her life is in danger. Can Gail help authorities rescue her? This is mostly Gail’s story, with a good deal of Karen’s point of view included. Gail is smart, funny and tough when circumstances call for it. Instead of using profanity, she and co-worker Em express exasperation by exclaiming the names of dead writers: “Edna St. Vincent Millay!” “John Greenleaf Whittier!” Near and dear to Gail’s heart are “The Girls,” which she calls her breasts. This becomes important when one of The Girls plays a creative role in resolving the story. The humor is gentle, often evoking smiles or chuckles but not gut-busting guffaws. Now and then, Gail’s explanations of rules and regulations get a tad wonky, but those digressions are mercifully short. So this isn’t your typical thriller where the tension and the body count continue to build—they don’t. Or where the fate of Western civilization hangs in the balance—it doesn’t. We’re just talking Gulf Breeze here. This is simply an enjoyable read with strong, likable women holding center stage. Less serious than Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone, Gail LaRue is more like Janet Evanovich’s heroine. Think Stephanie Plum without the wackiness. Corrigan clearly had fun writing this. Fans of light mysteries and strong women will have fun reading it.
Gazan, S.J. Translated by Barslund, Charlotte Quercus (448 pp.) $24.95 | Nov. 5, 2013 978-1-62365-066-7
This Danish debut manages to combine white-hot academic debates, wellnigh universal family dysfunction and murder most foul. It’s always an anxious time when your dissertation defense draws near, especially if you’re the single mother of a 3-year-old whose adviser has always been distant and unsupportive. But all those traumas pale for University of Copenhagen graduate student Anna Bella Nor when her unloved supervisor, professor Lars Helland, is found dead in his office, his freshly severed tongue sitting on his chest. How did Helland die, and why has his tongue been removed? Superintendent Søren Marhauge, whom Anna dubs the World’s Most Irritating Detective, ought to be the person answering those questions, but he’s sorely distracted by the loss of all those he loved the most and, more recently, by his sins against his ex-lover Vibe. Despite his preoccupation, Søren soon finds someone with a perfect motive for murder, if indeed Helland was murdered: professor Clive Freeman, whose long-running argument with Helland over the question of whether birds are modern dinosaurs (Helland) or the descendants of a common ancestor (Freeman) had long since turned both antagonists into zealots. But Freeman, whose rivalry with Helland has poisoned his friendship with his cherished student Jack Jarvis, was thousands of miles away in Vancouver when Helland died. A second suspicious death deepens the mystery and makes it seem ever more unlikely that all the strands will ever be tied together. Gazan’s approach to the genre—everyone serves as his or her own detective searching for the solution to his or her own mystery—is more Fyodor Dostoevsky than Agatha Christie. The results are uneven, and the ending is inevitably anticlimactic, but the journey there is a revelation.
THIS ONE DAY
Delaney, K.A. Five Star (308 pp.) $25.95 | Dec. 18, 2013 978-1-4328-2724-3 A mortally stricken PI struggles to help a poor little rich boy in this bleak debut. A dwindling bank account, a blank job log, a lonely apartment in Darlington, Conn., and a diagnosis of esophageal cancer with a 20 percent survival rate don’t exactly encourage Max Tyger to get out of bed in the morning. Nor does his cop girlfriend, Helen Baxter, who recently threw him out of her condo. But at least she proves she doesn’t hate him when she hands him a case. Margaret Harrington, a private school teacher, is worried about one of her students, Tommy Lewis, whose father owns New England’s last working textile mill. Margaret arranged for Tommy’s transfer to an artists’ retreat in West Texas, and now he may be missing. Even after Tommy resurfaces, no thanks to Max’s well-intentioned but ineffectual efforts, the boy makes it clear that he doesn’t want to go back to his parents’ Tudor mansion. Tommy’s plight, Helen’s support and a supposedly accidental death distract Max from his grueling cancer treatment and deteriorating physical condition. His championing of Tommy is admirable, but much as Max claims to reject people’s pity, he seems to invite it—and the reader’s guilty impatience as well. Focusing more or less equally on cancer and crime, Delaney evokes an atmosphere as wintry as that of the New England mill town where the dying hero tries to win back his soul.
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THE RED POLE OF MACAU
Hamilton, Ian Picador (336 pp.) $15.00 paper | Dec. 31, 2013 978-1-250-03231-7
A forensic accountant proves once again that a cool head, a steady nerve and a thorough training in martial arts can shift the balance in an uneven fight. Ava Lee is both dismayed and surprised when her half brother Michael phones to ask for her help with a deal gone bad. Michael is her father’s older son by a first wife, and Ava barely knows him. Her desire to keep the extended Lee family intact, however, sends her from her Toronto home to Hong Kong. Ava quickly realizes |
“The most conventionally plotted of Nina’s three adventures, and the one in which she has the least to do, is still required reading for fans of the burgeoning field of new Nordic suspense.” from death of a nightingale
DEATH OF A NIGHTINGALE
that Michael and his business partner, Simon To, are in over their heads in a real estate deal in Macau, the Las Vegas of the East. The majority shareholders are triad—members of what was once a society with strict codes, now degenerated into cutthroat gangs. When a red pole, or gang enforcer, kidnaps Simon and holds him for ransom, Ava has to call on Uncle Chow, her elderly business partner and a former triad chairman, to help form a risky plan for rescuing Simon and saving the family honor. Even readers inclined to quibble about the many descriptions of meals and fashion accessories will doubtless appreciate the respite they offer from the intense and occasionally graphic action scenes. Hamilton (The Disciple of Las Vegas, 2013, etc.) delivers colorful snapshots of Hong Kong and Macau, a well-paced plot, and a smart and capable heroine who’ll make you see accounting in a whole new light.
Kaaberbøl, Lene; Friis, Agnette Translated by Dyssegaard, Elisabeth Soho Crime (368 pp.) $26.95 | Nov. 5, 2013 978-1-61695-304-1
The third installment of the Nina Borg trilogy (Invisible Murder, 2012, etc.) shuttles back and forth between a nerveracking present and an unspeakable past. Now that she’s been arrested for trying to stab her abusive fiance, Michael Vestergaard, to death, what else can go wrong in Natasha Doroshenko’s life? Hours after she escapes the police officers transferring her from her prison cell to a Copenhagen station for questioning, someone succeeds in killing Vestergaard, and police commissioner Mona Heide is convinced it’s Natasha. Only Nina Borg, a nurse who observed Natasha and her daughter Katerina, 8, at the CoalHouse Camp, believes that she escaped to take her daughter away from the camp, not to finish the job on her former lover. As Natasha, Nina and the police, with the unwanted assistance of a mysterious pair of Ukrainian cops, work at desperate cross-purposes in the present, trouble is brewing in Ukraine during the famine of 1934. Olga Trofimenko’s father, Andreij, who has brought his wife and children—Olga, her older sister, Oxana, and their younger brother, Kolja—to Mykolayevka so that he can manage the collective farm there, abandons his family to take up with another woman, throwing them on the dubious mercies of their doctrinaire schoolteacher, Comrade Semienova, and Uncle Stalin. Sooner or later, of course, this grim past will collide with the troubled present, and trying to imagine how they’ll come together, and whether their connection will justify all the threatened coincidences and loose ends, is the chief pleasure this ice-cold thriller offers. The most conventionally plotted of Nina’s three adventures, and the one in which she has the least to do, is still required reading for fans of the burgeoning field of new Nordic suspense.
RUIN VALUE
Jones, J. Sydney MysteriousPress.com (302 pp.) $14.99 paper | $14.99 e-book Oct. 1, 2013 978-1-4804-2691-7 978-1-4804-2687-0 e-book At the tail end of World War II, a serial killer cuts a bloody swath through the streets of Nuremberg, with Allied soldiers as his victims. Nathan Morgan, a captain in the U.S. Volunteers Army in Germany and a hard-boiled detective back home, is dealing with the anarchy that the abrupt end of the war has brought and itching to get home when Soviet corporal Sasha Orlov dies from multiple slashes to the throat. Among the criminal prisoners in Jones’ charge is hard-bitten Beck, who also has a law enforcement background. He surprises Morgan by speaking English and impresses him with his grit. When Intelligence needs a tough and resourceful operative, duty calls. Morgan goes to London, where he has a random but crackling encounter with flashy Kate, then back to Nuremberg, where Orlov’s killer is striking again and again with brutality and fetishistic precision. One of his victims is Beck’s fellow prisoner Rollo, who’d recently been hatching a dangerous escape plan. Gen. “Wild Bill” Donovan, who’ll later be part of the Nuremberg prosecution team, assigns Morgan to ferret out the killer, and Morgan assembles his own detective squad, enlisting Beck as a sidekick. A coded message provides the first solid clue in the case, which is tied to the burgeoning black market. When Morgan and Kate cross paths again, the attraction remains, but now there’s also something mysterious about her. This departure from Jones’ popular turn-of-the-century Vienna mysteries (The Keeper of Hands, 2013, etc.) boasts equally close attention to historical detail and a large cast of vividly depicted characters.
THE MANGLE STREET MURDERS
Kasasian, M.R.C. Pegasus Crime (320 pp.) $24.95 | Feb. 6, 2014 978-1-60598-539-8
A Victorian detective solves a mystery but meets his match in his independent-minded young ward. Although March Middleton, the orphaned daughter of an army doctor, had an unconventional upbringing, she’s still not quite prepared for a new life in London with her godfather and guardian, renowned detective Sidney Grice. Vain, arrogant and dapper, with a glass eye and a sardonic tongue, Grice has little |
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Readers who pick up Lee’s latest should be prepared to miss their favorite television shows, since they won’t put this book down long enough to watch them.
use for Mrs. Grace Dillinger, a prospective client who can’t afford his fees. When she pleads on behalf of her son-in-law William Ashby, an ironmonger accused of stabbing his wife to death, March offers to foot the bill if she’s allowed to accompany Grice in his investigation. The unlikely duo explore the back alleys of London, examine corpses and blood spatter, interview an Italian opera singer, and evaluate the result of a recently developed blood test that proves to Grice’s and a jury’s satisfaction that Ashby is guilty. When a missing knife and a recovered wig suggest that Grice is wrong, he pursues the case even more relentlessly. He triumphs, but March still gets the better of him: the biggest satisfaction in a tale rich in gory detail and glass-eyeball gags. Kasasian’s debut is an unflinching look at the darker side of Victorian London and a portrait of a heroine strong enough to stand up to a thoroughly disagreeable detective. Clever plotting, morbid humor and colorful characters are a greater treat for the mind than the heart—or the stomach.
DEAD MAN’S FANCY
McCafferty, Keith Viking (336 pp.) $26.95 | Jan. 6, 2014 978-0-670-01469-9
A rescue attempt gone wrong teams up a Montana sheriff and a part-time private eye. Martha Ettinger, sheriff of Hyalite County, is searching for the employee of a local dude ranch when she discovers a member of her rescue party draped over an elk carcass and impaled on one of the antlers. The distraction of the man’s death brings Ettinger no closer to finding the ranch hand, Nanika Martinelli, the Fly Fishing Venus, who’s famous for her coppery hair and her affinity with wolves. Emerging from his tepee to help out with the case, Sean Stranahan—fishing guide, artist and detective—gets shot at when he investigates Nanika’s abandoned home. Even after a long red hair found in wolf scat suggests that a wolf ate Nanika, her sister Nadina, also known as Asena after the legendary blue-furred wolf, hires Stranahan to keep investigating. A biker calling himself Amorak, a woman with orange eyes, a cult centered on a three-toed wolf and another murder lead the tough, laconic Ettinger and the enigmatic Eastern transplant Stranahan on a twisty path toward resolution. The leads’ circumspect dance around each other is only one of the many satisfying elements in Stranahan’s third case. McCafferty (The Gray Ghost Murders, 2013, etc.) knows his country and his characters, who have a comfortable, lived-in feel and yet shine as individuals. Although the plot takes its own time to unfold, it doesn’t drag; McCafferty’s understated prose deserves to be savored.
RUNNER
Lee, Patrick Minotaur (352 pp.) $24.99 | Feb. 18, 2014 978-1-250-03073-3 Lee amps up the tension in this nonstop, action-packed thriller that teams two unlikely protagonists: a former soldier with a special skill set and a 12-yearold girl in desperate need of help. Unable to sleep, Sam Dryden stumbles across Rachel while taking an early morning run in his coastal California neighborhood. Rachel’s only 12, but Sam senses there’s something special about the girl, and not simply because a group of highly trained, heavily armed men are chasing her. When Sam agrees to help her, he finds there’s more to Rachel than he or anyone else would first guess, since she’s able to read the thoughts of others. Rachel tells him she’s sure there’s more to her story, but she can’t remember anything else other than that she escaped from someplace where she was being held against her will and that those people are out to kill her. Sam believes her, and after she demonstrates her ability to “hear” his thoughts, decides he will help her, no matter what the personal cost. The two then start on two journeys: a physical one to evade the people who want to kill them and a personal crusade to discover what the mysterious men are trying to hide. In Dryden, Lee has created a hero who is skilled, believable and human at the same time, while Rachel comes across as sympathetic and genuine. The action is nonstop and takes place at breakneck speed with no downtime. Lee’s writing is smooth and uncontrived, and with this book, he enters the ranks of the best action-thriller writers, all of whom got that way by eschewing coincidence, instead making both characters and readers work through every roadblock while searching for any advantage that can be had. 32
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DANDY GILVER AND A BOTHERSOME NUMBER OF CORPSES
McPherson, Catriona Minotaur (336 pp.) $25.99 | Nov. 19, 2013 978-1-250-02890-7
Dead bodies and mysterious disappearances provide a difficult case for a pair of well-born sleuths. Aristocratic Dandy Gilver and her partner Alec Osborne’s abilities to range outside their elite circle in 1920s Britain are facilitated by Dandy’s skill in masquerade. When her childhood friends Pearl and Aurora Lipscott ask her to find out how their sister Fleur is doing teaching at a girls school in coastal Scotland, Dandy, mistaken for a schoolmistress, goes |
More introspective than action-oriented, Perry delivers an intriguingly emotional and unconventional debut.
undercover at St. Columba’s while Alec stays at the local inn. Dandy can’t imagine that wealthy, flighty, imaginative Fleur could possibly be teaching at a remote school. When a body washes up on the shore, Dandy goes with Fleur to see if it’s Miss Beauclerc, the missing French mistress. It isn’t, but before Fleur vanishes from St. Columba’s, she seems to admit that she murdered five people. Dandy and Alec are forced to dig into Fleur’s past even after they’re fired by Fleur’s family, who know more than they’re willing to share. Dandy, certain that there’s something fishy about the school, is asked to leave soon after finding both Fleur’s and the missing Miss Beauclerc’s luggage. A trail that leads to Fleur’s house in Scotland lands the sleuthing duo in extreme danger. The latest of McPherson’s delightful pastiches of golden-age British mysteries (Dandy Gilver and an Unsuitable Day for a Murder, 2012, etc.) offers loads of red herrings to keep readers guessing.
NO MAN’S NIGHTINGALE
Rendell, Ruth Scribner (288 pp.) $26.00 | Nov. 5, 2013 978-1-4767-4448-3
Chief Inspector Reginald Wexford (The Vault, 2011, etc.) may have retired from the Kingsmarkham Police, but murder keeps finding him, this time by invading his own neighborhood. Having a new vicar who’s an unmarried Irish-Indian mother has scandalized old-guard warden Dennis Cuthbert and quite a few members of the St. Peter’s congregation. But would any of them really have hated Sarah Hussain enough to have strangled her? Detective Superintendent Mike Burden invites Wexford, his old boss, to accompany him on his rounds of questioning. One promising line of inquiry ends with the suicide of a suspect who confesses to unhappiness and bad behavior but not to murder; another, to a split between two old colleagues when Burden arrests gardener Duncan Crisp, who Wexford believes is innocent. It’s hard carrying on an investigation with no warrant card after the case has been officially closed, but Wexford has a secret weapon: Maxine Sams, the superlatively gossipy cleaner he shares with several neighbors. Maxine, among the most sharply realized of all Rendell’s characters, is essentially a comic figure, but there’s nothing comic about her son Jason, a supermarket manager whose dodgy relationship with his landlord, Jeremy Legg, goes seriously awry with the unexpected return from Europe of Jeremy’s ex-wife, Diane Stow, whose council flat Jeremy has been illegally renting out. Still more subplots (who fathered Sarah’s daughter Clarissa?) and hints of old sins (how did her husband, Leo, really die?) filtered through unreliable memories and personalities give the neighborhood a sense of thick and vibrant life, though they virtually guarantee that the revelation of Sarah’s killer will be only one more in a series of revelations that come not with a triumphant flourish but a dying fall. The insistence on plumbing the past makes this sedate, quirky whodunit read like an uneven collaboration between Rendell and her doomy alter ego Barbara Vine (The Child’s Child, 2012, etc.).
THE INNOCENT SLEEP
Perry, Karen Henry Holt (336 pp.) $26.00 | Feb. 18, 2014 978-0-8050-9872-3
Accomplished Irish authors Karen Gillece (The Absent Wife, 2008, etc.) and Paul Perry (Paranormal, 2012, etc.), writing as Karen Perry, collaborate on a dark mystery about unimaginable loss and irrevocable choices. It’s difficult at first to sympathize with Harry, an artist who’s spent the past five years mourning the disappearance and presumed death of his son in an earthquake in Tangier. Leaving 3-yearold Dillon alone in the apartment in a drug-induced sleep in order to retrieve a gift for his wife, Robin, Harry returns minutes after the entire building vanishes, apparently along with his son. Years of recrimination, mental imbalance and uncontrollable grief have plagued Harry since their return to Ireland, where he develops a reputation as an established artist, cloaks himself in a haze of alcohol and meaningless affairs, and explores otherworldly beliefs in search of answers. Robin, unable to continue her art, becomes an architect and tries to help both of them heal. Now, it seems their lives are moving on: The couple is living in Robin’s grandmother’s drafty, old home, which Robin plans to renovate, and Harry has agreed to move his studio there as a cost-saving effort. Robin also discovers she’s pregnant again and hopes the birth of their child will signify a fresh beginning. But Harry’s reaction seems forced. At first reluctant to share his news with Robin, Harry believes he’s sighted Dillon, now older, on a crowded street in Dublin. His quest to track down the young boy—lying to Robin about a trip to London, trying to obtain answers from an ill friend from Tangier, watching hours of surveillance videos—consumes him, and he finally confesses his obsession to Robin, who’s horrified. As the initial slow-moving explorations of characters, relationships and events gain momentum and move toward a well-constructed conclusion, the co-authors create an atmosphere that’s both murky and disturbing. |
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“...chillingly descriptive and packed with suspense, secrets, violence and nonstop action.” from die - off
THE WHISPERING OF BONES
of Master Larcher, who makes the pilgrim badges that are the main source of Ryehill’s income. Also in town are a large number of pilgrims and a nosy wine merchant who’s asking too many questions about the king’s upcoming visit. One of the pilgrims, a wealthy widow, has kindly attached herself to Eleanor, who’s still in pain from walking the last mile of her pilgrimage barefoot. Thomas is disgusted when Father Vincent blames a young orphan, starving on the streets, for her own rape, and Prioress Ursell seems none too charitable either. Danger awaits Eleanor and Thomas, who can’t tell whom to trust in the search for Sister Roysia’s killer and a clever assassin who plots to kill the king. The wealth of historical information and the minutiae of daily life often upstage relatively weak mysteries in Eleanor’s adventures (The Sanctity of Hate, 2012, etc.), but this one pulls in enough red herrings to keep even nonmedievalists interested.
Rock, Judith Berkley (336 pp.) $15.00 paper | Nov. 5, 2013 978-0-425-25366-3
A former soldier–turned–Jesuit scholar solves a series of mysteries during the reign of Louis XIV. When Maître Charles du Luc and his confessor, Père Auguste Dainville, make a pilgrimage in late 1687 to the crypt of a Carmelite church in Paris, the shock of finding a young man’s body in the well chamber gives the aged Dainville a fatal stroke. Charles, a proud scion of the minor nobility, wants justice for Dainville, his mentor on the difficult road to priesthood. Then, Charles’ resentful cousin, who fought with him in the Battle of Cassel, intrudes on his theological studies and reveals that another veteran of Cassel, Amaury de Corbet, has also embraced the Society of Jesus. Charles suspects that his former comrade in arms is trying to assuage his guilt rather than following a true vocation. While dealing with issues of religious life, Charles also helps the chief of police find the murderer of the young man in the crypt. A contraband book, a political conspiracy, a woman with a questionable connection to Amaury, the disappearance of two of Charles’ fellow scholars and a goatherd/seer lead to a giddy dénouement strangely at odds with an otherwise leisurely, sometimes-pedantic tale. Rock (A Plague of Lies, 2012, etc.) has painstakingly recreated 17th-century Paris, although with a decidedly modern emphasis on guilt as a prime motivator. A strong, sympathetic protagonist, however, atones for both the author’s lapses and his own in this latest case file of an aspiring priest.
DIE-OFF
Russell, Kirk Severn House (256 pp.) $28.95 | Nov. 1, 2013 978-0-7278-8283-7 A nefarious plot to kill off native species is just one of the cases a California Fish and Game officer must crack. Lt. John Marquez is on the trail of Rider, a large-scale trafficker in live animals and animal parts who may be hiding in northern California or Oregon while he plies his lucrative business. An anonymous female caller offers a tip to the murders of two young women, friends of Marquez’s stepdaughter, who were brutally slain near the Klamath River while campaigning for dam removal. The caller claims that the murder weapon can be found buried near the White Salmon River, where the Condit Dam is about to be blown up. The gun is found before the area is flooded, but his involvement lands Marquez in trouble with Rich Voight, a homicide investigator who deems Marquez a person of interest in the murder case, and his boss, the politically ambitious sheriff who wants him arrested to generate publicity for his re-election. When a truck carrying fingerling fish overturns near the Sacramento River, the driver dies in the hospital and the fish are identified as northern pike, a rapacious species that would kill off the native salmon and trout. Marquez has been getting calls from Hauser, a scientist who works for ENTR, a corporation he claims is secretly raising the pike in a long-term effort to control Western water supplies. But Hauser can’t or won’t provide evidence. Marquez puts his life in danger by refusing to back away from investigating the old murder, the well-hidden hatcheries, and the secretive, coldhearted animal trader—all cases that may have links to past and present crimes. Marquez’s fifth (Redback, 2011, etc.) is chillingly descriptive and packed with suspense, secrets, violence and nonstop action.
COVENANT WITH HELL
Royal, Priscilla Poisoned Pen (250 pp.) $24.95 | $14.95 paper | $22.95 Lg. Prt. Dec. 3, 2013 978-1-4642-0193-6 978-1-54642-0195-0 paper 978-1-4642-0194-3 Lg. Prt. A visit to a famous shrine entangles a prioress and her companion in murder and treason. In 1277, King Edward, who plans to invade Wales, may be stopping at the East Anglian shrine where Prioress Eleanor of Tyndal and Brother Thomas are making a pilgrimage. Prioress Ursell of Ryehill and her priest, Father Vincent, are eager for them to leave, especially once Sister Roysia falls to her death from the bell tower. After all, Eleanor’s reputation for investigating crimes may make it more difficult for Ursell and Vincent to have Roysia’s death ruled an accident. The situation is made even more delicate by rumors that Roysia was the lover 34
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THE GOOD BOY
Schwegel, Theresa Minotaur (368 pp.) $25.99 | $12.99 e-book | Nov. 5, 2013 978-1-250-00179-5 978-1-250-02243-1 e-book A series of unlucky coincidences drops a boy and his dog down the rabbit hole of Chicago’s meanest streets. Butch isn’t really Joel Murphy’s dog. The shepherd-Malinois mix, whose specialty is sniffing out drugs, is the partner of Joel’s father, Officer Pete Murphy. Although Joel doesn’t know it—he’s only 11, and his parents don’t share every bit of the family’s bad news with him—Butch is already in trouble for attacking Ja’Kobe White, a gangbanger Pete had pulled over in a serious error of judgment. Now David Cardinale, White’s bulldog lawyer, is suing the Chicago Police Department, and Pete’s under serious pressure to change his story about the stop so that the case can go away. All this intrigue is part of the long, long buildup before the fateful night when Joel, worried about his big sister McKenna’s involvement with some violent bullies, follows her to a party, taking along Butch as backup. The dog follows his nose to a stash, and in the resulting excitement, someone fires three shots, one of which ends up in Aaron Northcutt, one of the bullies. Fearful that Butch will have to be “youth-nized” for his breach of the peace, Joel takes it on the lam. With no money to speak of, no experience of the streets, and no one to turn to but Katherine Crawford, the judge whose involvement with Pete Murphy was the backdrop to Pete’s current troubles, Joel has his work cut out for him. Despite his fear and vulnerability, however, the kid turns out to be as cool under pressure as Alice in Wonderland and as resourceful in his way as Odysseus sailing the Aegean. If only the same were true of the father looking for him. The air of constant menace depends on too many muddled subplots. But when Schwegel (Last Known Address, 2009, etc.) keeps the focus on Joel and his father, you won’t be able to look away.
DRAWN INTO DARKNESS
Springer, Nancy New American Library (304 pp.) $14.00 paper | Nov. 5, 2013 978-0-451-23976-1
A neighborly social call turns nightmare in the Florida panhandle. After a painful divorce, Liana Clymer hopes that dyeing her hair red and moving to a fuchsia-painted cottage in Maypop, Fla., will give her a new start. Perky colors can’t save her, however, when she stops by the house across the street to introduce herself and sees an ad about a missing boy flashing on the neighbor’s TV screen. The boy, Justin, is right across the room from Liana, and his captor, Steven |
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Stoat, becomes Liana’s as well. Across the state line in Alabama, Justin’s parents, Chad and Amy, have been driven apart by the strain of their son’s disappearance until Chad’s father, who abandoned him years before, comes back into his life and offers the couple hope. Meanwhile, Liana’s two grown sons, feeling guilty about not keeping in better touch with their mother, come down for a visit and find in her pink shack a gruesome clue that life in the Sunshine State hasn’t been altogether kind to Liana. In fact, she’s caught up in a cat-and-mouse game that you almost want the cat to win, just so the excruciating series of near misses and not-quite-successful escapes will finally end. Springer (Dark Lie, 2012, etc.) has a flair for setting and characterization but not for integrating different plotlines and viewpoints. The result is a muddle of mawkishness, arch humor and gross details that drags on at least 50 pages too long.
science fiction and fantasy THE LAST DARK
Donaldson, Stephen R. Putnam (592 pp.) $35.00 | Oct. 15, 2013 978-0-399-15920-6 The Thomas Covenant series comes to a lumbering halt after four decades. Donaldson (Against All Things Ending, 2010, etc.) opened the 10-book series in 1977 with Lord Foul’s Bane, Lord Foul being, as his name suggests, a decidedly not-nice fellow whose job it is to bring misery to the Earth and The Land, the latter a place that exists if you click your heels together three times or otherwise believe. Like so many fantasy series of the era, Donaldson’s labors under the heavy shadow of J.R.R. Tolkien, and at times, it reads like a lost million or so words from the Lord of the Rings as filtered through H.P. Lovecraft, who never met an eldritch sentence he didn’t like. And Donaldson’s series and this last book are as eldritch as they come, populated by the likes of magic-shunning warriors called Haruchai; horsemen, and not Japanese noodle makers, called Ramen; and Ravers, not MDMA-partaking hipsters but very, very unpleasant evil spirits whose nastiness is tempered only by the will of old Lord Foul himself. Thomas Covenant is an unusual hero to the extent that he’s not really very likable, though he’s got an interesting CV, including having survived a fearful bout of leprosy and every demon The Land could throw at him. Donaldson brings this tale to a close with an epic showdown between Lord Foul and Covenant, and it moves from Tolkien Lite to Tolkien Heavy: “Barnl...passed Bluntfist and science fiction & fantasy
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“An enthralling read for aficionados of intelligent, impeccably rendered fantasy.” from arcanum
r om a n c e
Stonemage, drifted like a shadow among the Cavewights. With the rippled edges of his longsword, he seemed to reap creatures all around him. Howls became shrieks. Bodies fell.” It’s the standard good-versus-evil yarn, save that if evil is always evil, good is not always good. It goes without saying that a reader who enters the series without the benefit of the preceding volumes will be utterly lost. Definitively of a piece with what has come before; if you’re a fan of Donaldson, this is indispensable. If not, of course, not.
NO PLACE FOR A DAME
Brockway, Connie Montlake Romance (360 pp.) $12.95 paper | Dec. 1, 2013 978-1-4778-0858-0
The latest from RITA award recipient (The Bridal Season, 2001, etc.) and Minnesota resident Brockway. After Avery Quinn, his father’s brilliant protégée, saves him from an unwelcome marriage, Giles Dalton, the Marquis of Strand, feels honor-bound to help her infiltrate the male-only British Astronomical Society and gain credit for her discovery of a comet, despite his deep reservations about the plan, including his attraction to the girl. It’s been years since Giles visited Killylea, his estate in Cornwall, and he’s not terribly thrilled to be bringing his bride-tobe with him on this trip. Sophie and her father have entrapped him in an engagement, but as wrong as the match seemed in London, it seems even more so in his beloved Killylea. Resentful yet resigned to the marriage, he is amused and surprised when Avery, the eccentric, brilliant scholar who lives on the estate, manages to trick Sophie into calling off the engagement. Avery is too educated for the working class yet too common for any hope of marriage within the nobility. Giles has resigned himself to taking care of her for the rest of her life, allowing her to pursue her studies on the remote estate. However, Avery is determined to take her academic achievements to London and earn credit under her own name for the discovery of a comet— a complicated endeavor, since the Astronomical Society is male-only. Leveraging Giles’ gratitude, she convinces him to take her to London disguised as a man and introduce her to the right crowd in order to earn entry to the august institution. Giles is just audacious enough to take on the mission, and he has a few plans—and secrets—of his own to sort out. He’s spent years cultivating a reputation as a dandy to hide some covert activities, but perhaps the time has come to let his true nature, and his heart, be known. At least to Avery. Brockway is a master of the wounded alpha hero. She delivers a unique, engaging historical storyline with fun, intriguing elements and with a delicious arc of two star-crossed misfits who share a deep love and deserve an exceptional future. Clever, sexy, fun and breathtakingly romantic.
ARCANUM
Morden, Simon Orbit/Little, Brown (688 pp.) $17.00 paper | Jan. 28, 2014 978-0-316-22010-1 Medieval fantasy from the author of The Curve of the Earth (2013), developed from a single question: What if a civilization that relied on magic was suddenly deprived of it? A thousand years after the fall of Rome, the German-speaking palatinate of Carinthia depends entirely on the magic provided by its hexmasters for trade and farming, defense, even lighting for the great library. In exchange, the hexmasters claim one-half of Carinthia’s wealth. Peter Büber, Prince Gerhard’s huntmaster, is disturbed by his discovery of not one, but two unicorn’s horns, with no sign of the beasts they were attached to; equally odd, he witnesses a band of wild giants defeat and kill an Italian wizard. Meanwhile, Teuton warriors demand passage across Carinthia; when Gerhard refuses, they move downriver to attack and occupy a town. As the princes have done for 1,000 years, Gerhard dons his magical armor, buckles on his magical sword and, not expecting to fight—an activity for which his forces are quite unsuited—summons the hexmasters, anticipating a blast of magic and an easy victory. Instead, only Nikoleta Agana, a mere adept, answers Gerhard’s call: Apparently, she is the only person still able to wield magic. Soon, wagons shudder to a halt; barges float with instead of against the current; and the lights go out. Only in the Jewish quarter, where magic is shunned, does life proceed normally. The stellar cast also features rebellious, extremely capable and unfortunately unwed Sophia Morgenstern, her despairing father, Aaron, librarian Frederik Thaler, usher-turned-spymaster Max Ullmann, and Felix, Gerhard’s 12-year-old son. The fading-magic scenario has become something of a trope, but Morden, against a gritty, utterly convincing backdrop, anticipates every consequence and wrings out surprise after surprise. An enthralling read for aficionados of intelligent, impeccably rendered fantasy.
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“Another delightful, funny, yet heart-wrenching mustread romance from Higgins.” from the perfect match
LOOKING FOR TROUBLE
THE PERFECT MATCH
Hickman, Trice Dafina/Kensington (336 pp.) $15.00 paper | Oct. 29, 2013 978-0-7582-8723-6
Higgins, Kristan Harlequin (384 pp.) $7.99 paper | Oct. 29, 2013 978-0-373-77819-5
An old woman who can see the future worries for her grandson and an as-yetunborn great-great-granddaughter—whom she connects with through their mutual gift—who are dealing with problems in their love lives. The latest from Washington, D.C., resident Hickman (the author’s Unexpected Interruptions won the Southeastern Virginia Arts Association’s 2008 Literary Award for Best New African American Voice) concerns the 90-year-old widow of a sharecropper, Allene Small. Allene has lived a long, fulfilling life, helped along by a psychic gift, a deep faith in God and a connection to an ancestor who shared the gift and showed her how to use it to help the people she loves. This weekend, she will need to bring as much wisdom and guidance as possible to her grandson John as he navigates love and deception on a trip back from Manhattan to his small Southern hometown. Allene will also make a psychic connection for the first time with Alexandria, John’s yet-to-beborn granddaughter, who is just coming into the strength of her own gift in the future. Both John and Alexandria are in the midst of romances with the wrong people, and Allene must help them get on track with the people they were meant for, who will help them follow their dreams and fulfill their destinies. Hickman’s hook and story arc are interesting, with a number of plot twists and surprises. However, it takes a few chapters to understand who is who and what takes place when since the dual narratives progress simultaneously—John’s sometime in the 1970s, Alexandria’s in the present day—and aren’t quite clear at the start. Also, despite Hickman’s attempts to explain some of the characters’ choices, readers may find many of them inconsistent or unrealistic. John’s visiting girlfriend, Madeline, is ludicrously villainous, and his would-be girlfriend, Elizabeth, is too virtuous, while his womanizing is somehow supposed to reflect his virility until he finds The One. At times, Alexandria seems either dishonest or wishy-washy. And we are never quite sure why Allene worries about the present when the future she sees indicates everything has already worked out. A bold and intriguing effort that ultimately misses the mark, though some readers may enjoy the originality of the storyline. (Agent: Janell Walden Aygeman)
After proposing to her “best-friendwith-benefits” and being summarily rejected, Honor Holland meets professor Tom Barlow, who needs a green card, and the two agree to a marriage of convenience, risking jail time, their reputations and their hearts. When Honor turns 35, she takes the bull by the horns and proposes marriage to her lifelong best friend, Brogan, a successful sports photographer who enjoys a casual sexual relationship with Honor. Humiliated when he rejects her, Honor admits she wants marriage and children but doesn’t have a lot of choices in tiny Manningsport, N.Y. She is surprised when her elderly grandmother connects her with a local professor who needs a green card since his college didn’t renew his work visa. Tom desperately wants to stay in the country for his unofficial stepson, Charlie, whose mother Tom was engaged to but died before they were married. Charlie is an angry, bitter teenager who now lives with his indifferent grandparents, so trying to reach him is difficult. Things start to improve when Charlie and Tom spend time with Honor’s large extended family, and real affection seems to spring up among everyone involved. On the other hand, Brogan has hooked up with Honor’s best girlfriend, Dana, and now, they’re over the moon because Dana is pregnant, and Dana is unpleasantly smug toward Honor, whom Dana basically betrayed. Honor is coming to realize that Tom is the true catch, though trying to convince him her feelings are sincere gets more complicated, what with Immigration investigating, Charlie’s father back on the scene and Honor’s family creating their typical havoc on her otherwise well-ordered life. Higgins takes the familiar marriage-of-convenience trope and modernizes it with her consummate skill in combining tender insight, bright humor and flawless character development. This, the second of the Blue Heron series (The Best Man, 2013), shines with Higgins’ capacity for creating complicated layers ultimately laid bare to the most elemental emotions. Another delightful, funny, yet heart-wrenching mustread romance from Higgins.
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UNDER THE JEWELED SKY
damaged characters, heartache and new beginnings. Hoping to find the right successor on the eve of her 85th birthday, Lavender Willis summons members of the Foodie Four to a celebration at her Oregon farm. Lavender’s worried her nephews will sell the land to the wrong person after her death, and she wants to ensure the continuation of her organic enterprise. Although she feels healthy, something (perhaps those visions of her late friend?) is urging her to action. Her friends wish to honor their eldest member, so each blogger packs her emotional baggage, hitches up her trailer and heads to Lavender Honey Farms. There, the group interacts, engages in deep thoughts/discussions/soul searches, offers sage advice, cooks and plans for the party. Ruby, the pregnant youngest member who’s first to arrive, is a childhood leukemia survivor and strict vegan. She’s mourning the abrupt end of a relationship when she meets Noah, the military veteran who manages Lavender’s property. Former prima ballerina Valerie and her teenage daughter Hannah arrive next. They’re moving to San Diego to start anew after losing the rest of their family in a plane crash, and Hannah’s having a hard time coping with survivor’s guilt. Ginny, a housewife whose treatment by her family and friends reinforces her low self-esteem, arrives last. Craving independence, she embarks on the trip with her dog, but she soon discovers a few days’ practice hauling her vintage Airstream on flat Kansas roads near her home is poor preparation for the mountainous journey. Along the way, Ginny encounters treacherous elements, becomes ill and meets an intriguing trucker. O’Neal’s gentle narrative is sprinkled with gratuitous sexual content that seems out of character and context, but with the exception of a few head-scratching passages (a vegan recipe that includes Worcestershire Sauce, for example), those searching for an undemanding read will find this feel-good story satisfying. Rather predictable, but it rings all the right bells. (Agent: Meg Ruley)
McQueen, Alison Sourcebooks Landmark (420 pp.) $14.99 paper | Jan. 21, 2014 978-1-4022-8876-0
In this ill-fated romance between a British girl and an Indian boy during India’s independence, the author opens the doors to a maharaja’s palace, follows the bloody massacres of partition and uncovers the sordid secrets of the diplomatic community in Delhi. In 1947, Sophie finds herself in a maharaja’s palace, a far cry from the privations of postwar England. While her physician father is kept busy tending to the hypochondria of the first and second maharinis and her mother stays in their rooms to avoid the “heathens,” Sophie explores a wonderland. The vast rooms and gardens are beautiful but lonely until she meets Jag, the maharaja’s bearer’s son, who shows her the palace’s hidden passages. A romance develops between the two teens, one consummated under the fireworks of India’s independence celebration. When their relationship is discovered, Jag and his father are forced to leave the palace. Then, Sophie discovers she’s pregnant, and her broken family (her parents despise each other, and her mother has beaten Sophie since childhood) splinters apart. Sophie is sent to a home for “girls like her,” her mother returns to England, never to be heard from again (save for one venomous meeting), and her kind father begins to work at the refugee camps that have sprung up in the wake of partition. After her baby is born and left for adoption, Sophie goes to England and meets her future husband, Lucien, a diplomat in need of a wife, particularly one who has lived in India, the jewel of foreign assignments. Back in India, Sophie is miserable, constrained by life in a diplomatic colony, ignored and abused by a husband who is worse than her mother, and longing for her first love. Jag is close by, having tracked Sophie to Delhi, a secret waiting for her at his home. McQueen has a fine sense of place and character—the one flaw is the odd organization; the narration jumps back and forth in time indiscriminately, dampening the emotional impact of this historical tear-jerker. A richly imagined story of love, politics and fate, but one with a sometimes-jerky narrative pace.
THE SUM OF ALL KISSES
Quinn, Julia Avon/HarperCollins (384 pp.) $7.99 paper | Oct. 29, 2013 978-0-06-207292-4 Sarah Pleinsworth and Hugh Prentice have good reasons for disliking each other, so neither expects the attraction that springs up when they’re forced to spend time together; however, there are a wealth of secrets and obstacles they must overcome to win happiness. Sarah has nursed her antipathy toward Hugh for years. After all, he wrenched her family apart one horrible night when he forced her cousin into a duel that ultimately sent him into hiding. Now, Daniel is back, apparently due to some secretive dealings on Hugh’s part, but that doesn’t mean Sarah should like him. Daniel is getting married, and his fiancee, Honoria, asks Sarah to keep Hugh company during the reception, since Hugh’s leg
THE ALL YOU CAN DREAM BUFFET
O’Neal, Barbara Bantam (400 pp.) $15.00 paper | Mar. 4, 2014 978-0-345-53686-0
A diverse group of bloggers become fast friends, sharing their passion for food and their thoughts via email. RITA award winner O’Neal (The Garden of Happy Endings, 2012, etc.) features the bloggers’ stories in a contemporary romance about 38
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was injured during the duel, and he is now lame. To her extreme consternation, the more time she spends with Hugh, the more she likes him, and as the couple—not to mention most of London’s ton—moves from Daniel’s wedding to another wedding of mutual friends, Sarah and Hugh find themselves moving from rapprochement to affection to love. However, there is much more to the story of Daniel’s flight after the duel, and dark shadows from that time will reappear once it becomes clear Sarah and Hugh may be headed for a match. Quinn brings her signature style and wit to yet another late-Regency romance, with some character favorites fans have met before in both the highly popular Smythe-Smith and Bridgerton series. Hugh’s mathematical brilliance combined with a self-imposed wariness toward his companions make for an enigmatic hero. Sarah’s and Hugh’s overcoming their mutual dislike as they open up to one another is a winsome choice that makes perfect sense for the relationship arc and works well for the storyline, especially once they face Hugh’s dark past and the specter that threatens their happiness and Daniel’s life. Charmingly romantic, with compelling edges of dark conflict and sexual tension. (Agent: Steve Axelrod)
her A-game to this textured, expertly plotted magical romantic adventure. The author manages to create a flawed heroine who must learn she deserves the best from love, not a man who doesn’t know what to do with her magic, which is as much a part of her as her ability to work with horses or her newfound love of Ireland. Fans will be thrilled with the author’s return to Ireland and with the magical themes. Magical, romantic, compelling and appealing—Roberts at her best.
CAPTIVE The Forbidden Side of Nightshade Robertson, A.D. Dutton (320 pp.) $25.95 | Oct. 22, 2013 978-0-525-95411-8
Sarah, a young soldier in the Witches War, is captured on a reconnaissance mission after trying to learn the secrets held in an enemy stronghold, but Tristan, the noble Keeper who lives there, is ultimately captivated by her. After centuries of fighting to overcome the Keepers, witches who have embraced Dark Magic, the Searchers have hit an impasse. When their intelligence leads them to a practically impenetrable fortress off the coast of Ireland, they send Sarah, a gifted climber, in the hopes she can scale the rocky cliffs around the castle and gather even more information on what it protects. Unfortunately, she is captured by the incubus guard and is sent to be interrogated by the nobleman who lives on the remote island. Tristan has lived a lonely existence of wealth, power and privilege, so he is more intrigued than threatened by his lovely captive. Convinced he will learn more from Sarah by gaining her trust and seducing her, both emotionally and physically, than he will by torture, he goes about treating her as an honored guest rather than a detested enemy—much to the disgust of the resident incubus and succubus, who feed on negative emotions. In the end, though, it is Tristan who is intrigued and seduced by Sarah’s intelligence, courage and compassion, as well as by her egalitarian ideals—a novelty in the highly hierarchical Keeper society. After Tristan falls in love with Sarah, he must decide between the only world he’s ever known and the specter of freedom and love he glimpses through Sarah’s eyes. YA best-selling author Andrea Cremer expands her Nightshade series under the pseudonym A.D. Robertson and adds a sexual edge to the storytelling. With a Gothic, old-world sensibility mixed with modern characters, Robertson has created a bewitched fairytale arc complete with ancient prophecies, star-crossed lovers, a magical war and a full spectrum of enchanted creatures, and she’s introduced a well-built, spellbinding world that will captivate paranormal romance fans. Engaging and intense—though with sexual overtones that never quite bridge into the eroticism it hints at—the book is an intriguing, sexy read.
DARK WITCH
Roberts, Nora Berkley (368 pp.) $17.00 paper | Oct. 29, 2013 978-0-425-25985-6 Series: Cousins O’Dwyer Trilogy, 1 Seven hundred fifty years after an evil sorcerer attacks the Dark Witch Sorcha and leaves her children orphans, he comes back, and her descendants must depend on magic, friendship and love to repel him. Iona Sheehan has sold most of what she owns and left everything she knows behind in America, convinced that Ireland is where she belongs. Her beloved Nan has directed her to County Mayo and the cousins she has there after filling her ears and imagination with tales of magic and family legends of an ancient, evil enemy. Once she meets her cousins Branna and Connor, they all realize that she is the final piece of an ancient power triangle designed to confront the magical enemy Cabhan, who killed their ancestor Sorcha, the Dark Witch, but only after she vanquished him for a time and imparted her power to her three children. Now, centuries later, when the three cousins are united, it is clear that they are each powerful in the ways Sorcha’s children were, and they have identical animal guardians. Something about Iona’s appearance seems to beckon Cabhan, and Branna, Connor and their three best friends will work to teach Iona everything she needs to know about magic in order to fight Cabhan when he confronts them—an event they can all feel is coming. At the same time, one of those friends, Boyle McGrath, may just be the man Iona’s been waiting for all of her life. If only she can convince him he loves her and they can both stay alive to savor a long and happy future. Roberts brings |
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“Thomas delivers a masterpiece of attraction, seduction, mistrust and masks...” from the luckiest lady in london
TIME FOR ME TO COME HOME
THE LUCKIEST LADY IN LONDON
Shackleford, Dorothy with Thrasher, Travis New American Library (208 pp.) $19.95 | Oct. 29, 2013 978-0-451-46837-6
Thomas, Sherry Berkley Sensation (304 pp.) $7.99 paper | Nov. 5, 2013 978-0-425-26888-9
A country music star finishes a tour in New York City and is summoned home to Oklahoma for Christmas by his mother, but to get there, he’ll face a string of travel disasters and meet a fellow voyager who just might be the woman of his dreams. Heath Sawyer has reached the pinnacle of his career, ending a long, successful tour at Madison Square Garden just days before Christmas. Contemplating a tropical vacation for the holiday, his plans change abruptly when his mother calls him and gently but firmly tells him it’s time to come home. Managing to squeak on a last-minute flight, he gets to the airport in time to see the plane grounded, but in the midst of the chaos of stranded passengers, Heath meets Cara, a quirky accountant and problem-solver who is also trying to get back to Tulsa for Christmas and fails to recognize him, much to Heath’s wry amusement. The two reroute to Chicago, where they hit a blizzard, and it’s anyone’s guess whether they’ll actually make it home in time, despite Cara’s resourcefulness and best efforts. Along the way, Heath finds himself drawing strength from and enjoying the forced company of his fellow holiday vagabond, and by the end of the bizarre journey, he is pretty sure he can’t live without her. Now, if only he can convince her he’s worth the risk, it just might be the best Christmas ever. Shackleford— mother of country music superstar Blake Shelton—joins with celebrity collaborator Thrasher to create a storyline around Shelton’s Christmas ballad of the same name. A kind of homage to tried-and-true country song elements—the star who drinks too much, the escape from the big city to the purity of nature and home, the refreshingly normal girl-next-door heroine who knows a relationship with The Big Star will never work—combined with a Planes, Trains & Automobiles, everything-that-cango-wrong-will sensibility. Nothing great or earth shattering, but a sweet, if clichéd, romantic Christmas tale that will warm some hearts. Fans of country star Blake Shelton and his author-mother take note.
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Felix Rivendale, Lord Wrenworth, has spent his adult life burnishing his reputation as the most sought-after gentleman in England, so he is flummoxed when Louisa Cantwell—an unknown nobody—captures his attention and his interest; he’s not concerned about his heart, however, since he’s convinced he doesn’t have one. Every man and woman in London is besotted with Lord Wrenworth, considered by one and all to be The Ideal Gentleman. So lofty are his wealth, manner and reputation that Louisa, attending her first season at age 24 and with almost nothing to recommend her beyond her wit, even temper and formidable preparation, has never even truly considered him as a possible catch. Yet, astonishingly, in one breathtaking and heartbreaking moment, she meets him and catches his attention, simultaneously convincing herself that he remains unattainable yet wishing with all her heart he wasn’t. From that moment, Louisa and Felix enter into a seductive courtship that quietly breaks many straight-laced Victorian rules without anyone knowing about it, keeping them explosively attracted to each other. Louisa is always suspicious of Felix’s motives, and Felix is determined to protect himself from anyone’s capacity to get close enough to see beneath his purposefully constructed perfection. This becomes even more problematic once he actually offers for her and makes her his wife. Thomas delivers a masterpiece of attraction, seduction, mistrust and masks, beguiling readers with two people who are so perfect for each other, they can’t even trust their own emotions, since they both know how deceptive and dangerous the other can be. A beautifully written, exquisitely seductive, powerfully romantic gem of a romance.
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nonfiction DIARIES OF AN UNFINISHED REVOLUTION Voices from Tunis to Damascus
These titles earned the Kirkus Star: CARELESS PEOPLE by Sarah Churchwell.........................................45
Al-Zubaidi, Layla; Cassel, Matthew; Roderick, Nemonie Craven—Eds. Translated by Moger, Robin; Collins, Georgina Penguin (304 pp.) $17.00 paper | Jan. 1, 2014 978-0-14-312515-0
WOODEN by Seth Davis..................................................................... 46 THE BULLY PULPIT by Doris Kearns Goodwin..................................52 THE NEW YORK NOBODY KNOWS by William B. Helmreich........54 DANCING FISH AND AMMONITES by Penelope Lively...................62 FOR THE BENEFIT OF THOSE WHO SEE by Rosemary Mahoney...63 IF ONLY YOU PEOPLE COULD FOLLOW DIRECTIONS by Jessica Hendry Nelson......................................................................65 THE LETTERS OF ARTHUR SCHLESINGER, JR. by Arthur Schlesinger Jr...................................................................... 69 BEETHOVEN by John Suchet............................................................... 73 DANCING FISH AND AMMONITES A Memoir
Lively, Penelope Viking (224 pp.) $26.95 Feb. 10, 2014 978-0-670-01655-6
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The Arab Revolution rendered in intimate vignettes from the young people organizing, demonstrating and suffering for their yearning for freedom. Born in countries experiencing revolutionary turmoil from Algeria to Yemen, many of these Arab-language journalists and writers were forced out of their respective countries by political oppression in order to pursue educational opportunities elsewhere. Editors Al-Zubaidi, Cassel and Roderick have effectively elicited the raw emotion from these voices—e.g., journalist Yasmine El Rashidi, who left her native Cairo at age 19 in 1997 for the dazzle of America, then was gradually pulled back in 2008, despite the inertia that had paralyzed the Egyptians for so long, by the sense of an unfolding, the “possibility of a romance.” In Tunisia, where the revolution dawned, Malek Sghiri had been expelled from university for his political activism against the government of President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. Sghiri’s father had been imprisoned years before, and as unrest began to gather in Sidi Bouzid in the wake of Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation, Sghiri and his friends felt themselves take revolutionary “fire,” united by a sense of comradeship and purpose that carried them through demonstrations, imprisonment and beatings, and into freedom. Self-conscious about her accent, Saudi-born filmmaker Safa Al Ahmad writes poignantly about the oppression toward women in her country and its shadowy “interests” that are “beyond the reach of the average citizen.” Reading these accounts, which also emerge from Bahrain, Algeria and Libya, one gets the sense that only the first steps have been boldly taken. Unfortunately, the essays mostly conclude by 2011, while efforts to endure fear and division enforced by the governments, for example by President Bashar al-Assad in Syria, result in ongoing violence. While there have been numerous good works chronicling the revolution, this adds an emotional, personal layer to the myriad voices.
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“No matter how they feel about his politics, readers of this memoir should find the author’s humanity irresistible.” from public enemy
PUBLIC ENEMY Confessions of an American Dissident
Ayers, Bill Beacon (240 pp.) $24.95 | $24.95 e-book | Nov. 12, 2013 978-0-8070-3276-3 978-0-8070-3293-0 e-book
The one-time Weather Underground fugitive talks about his life as a political bogeyman. While Ayers (Teaching Toward Freedom: Moral Commitment and Ethical Action in the Classroom, 2004, etc.) may be just as radical in his politics as ever, in temperament, the years, fatherhood and a distinguished career as a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago seem to have mellowed him—a bit. “I’m genetically wired to speak up and speak out, and not always with considered judgment,” he admits. However, it’s not his outspokenness against militarism, racism, imperialism and other isms associated with the status quo that has drawn Ayers often unwittingly (not to say, unwillingly) into the national political spotlight. Oftentimes, fate has played a hand— on September 11, 2001, for example, when the New York Times by chance ran an article on Ayers’ then newly published memoirs of his radical past Fugitive Days under the title “No Regrets for a Love of Explosives.” The appearance of the article the morning the Twin Towers fell saddled Ayers in the minds of an influential portion of the media (both liberal and conservative) with the epithet “unrepentant terrorist” and made him too hot to handle for many bookstores, education conferences and college campuses. During his first presidential campaign, Barack Obama’s proximity to Ayers as a neighbor and occasional colleague was brutally, albeit ineffectively, cited by both Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin as evidence of the future president’s own alleged dangerous radicalism. Despite his notoriety earning him death threats, canceled invitations and the indignity of being denied the honorific “emeritus” by his university upon his retirement, the author is surprisingly bemused, and often charmingly amusing, about his predicament. His writing is thoughtful, penetratingly insightful and marvelously lacking in self-pity. No matter how they feel about his politics, readers of this memoir should find the author’s humanity irresistible.
SONG OF SPIDER-MAN The Inside Story of the Most Controversial Musical in Broadway History Berger, Glen Simon & Schuster (416 pp.) $25.00 | Nov. 5, 2013 978-1-4516-8456-8
A dishy take on the successful yet calamity-prone Broadway production of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. 42
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As a script collaborator on the unprecedented project, Emmy Award–winning TV writer Berger looks back on the six tumultuous years he spent on the increasingly tangled and mismanaged Spider-Man theatrical “undertaking,” a production plagued with technical snafus, poor critical reception and countless script overhauls. Though meticulously documented, from the show’s origins in 2005 to its nerve-wracking press previews and strained opening-night curtain call, some details seem glossed over in favor of anecdotal notes on the author’s regrettably disintegrated relationship with Julie Taymor, the show’s headstrong director. “Even now, I still carry the dream with me every day—to make up with her,” writes Berger. This sentiment hovers over the narrative, even as the author launches into an avalanche of mishaps along Spider-Man’s serpentine path to the stage. At the core of the dysfunction, he writes, was a general lack of confluence among the production team, which included Irish producer Tony Adams, “puckish” lead producer Michael Cohl, and U2’s Bono and the Edge, musical collaborators who seemed mismatched for the project. Berger’s version of events spotlights Marvel Entertainment’s continual disapproval of the material’s treatment and the undermining and swift firing of Taymor, an event Berger himself contributed to with the formulation of “Plan X,” an alternate, lighter script version written without Taymor’s knowledge. A threatened lawsuit simmered and came to pass when book-writing royalties were withheld from Taymor. The author found little consolation in the eventual resolution of Taymor’s litigation, and his tone at the onset and conclusion of the book still seems to yearn for reconciliation as the show continues to cash in. Berger delivers the inside scoop with ample melodrama and star-crossed folly.
THE OTHER MOTHER A Rememoir
Bruce, Teresa Joggling Board Press (416 pp.) $27.95 | Nov. 5, 2013 978-0-9841073-9-1
Affecting memoir of intergenerational friendship. Bernice Rosalie Miller, aka Byrne, was a pioneer of modern dance, a graduate of the school of hard knocks and the burlesque stage who grew comfortably old with a struggling-writer husband, Duncan, both fixtures in the cultural life of Beaufort, S.C. It was there that Bruce, a dancer and gymnast–turned–TV reporter looking for a different path, met them. Bruce was involved in a difficult relationship, complex as only difficult relationships can be, and still wounded by the tragic death of a young brother years before, so that friendship with the Millers came at just the right time, as Byrne became the voice of experience and “other mother” that Bruce needed. The author traces their stories separately and together, marking, in understated prose, the points where roads were not taken and fateful decisions were made. The Millers’ love story is invigorating and often |
charming, if now a touch old-fashioned; the modern Don Juan does not tug away a woman’s scarf and say, “Hold nothing back, my love….Every part of you is too stunning to subdue.” The narrative occasionally drags in earnestness, and the players are sometimes less scintillating than Bruce might wish; not everything they do and say is drenched in genius. In particular, Byrne’s apothegms (“Monogamy is overrated. Honesty is imperative”) become tiresome—Harold and Maude without the Harold. However, Bruce does a good job of weaving divergent stories into one, and there are some nice moments of emotion and drama, as when a manuscript of Duncan’s confronts Byrne with some uncomfortable truths (if disguised as fictions) at the same time that Byrne’s daughter decides to do the very thing that would shock her bohemian parents the most: enlist in the Marines. Pleasant and sympathetic, even in its darker moments— of particular interest to readers schooled at the barre.
Although readers will encounter many usually canonized suspects, Buell’s scope is wide enough to encompass the varieties of novelists’ imaginations and to consider the implications of multiculturalism and globalism in redefining the future of American fiction.
WAKING FROM THE DREAM The Struggle for Civil Rights in the Shadow of Martin Luther King, Jr. Chappell, David L. Random House (288 pp.) $27.00 | Jan. 14, 2014 978-1-4000-6546-2 978-0-8129-9466-7 e-book
Astute contemporary history of the civil rights movement in the years after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
THE DREAM OF THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL
Buell, Lawrence Belknap/Harvard Univ. (500 pp.) $39.95 | Feb. 3, 2014 978-0-674-05115-7
A history and investigation of a literary concept that has “refused to die.” The idea of the Great American Novel (nicknamed GAN by Henry James) as a writer’s golden quest seemed to Buell (American Literature/Harvard Univ.; The Future of Environmental Criticism, 2005, etc.) to have devolved from its 19th-century origins to become a media cliché not worth more consideration than “a brisk, short narrative.” However, the author became intrigued as he looked at some of the works proposed for the honorific. Could any novel, as novelist John W. De Forest asked in 1868, capture “the American soul”? That question reflected anxieties about “national cultural legitimacy” when expansionism and post–Civil War reunification raised nettling concerns about the nation’s identity. These questions, Buell contends, are still worth asking, even though the country’s “fractious heterogeneity” has led to the idea of plural GANs. What, he asks, can thinking about GANs reveal “about how the novels in question work, about national culture generally, about novels as carriers or definers of cultural nationality, and about what value to set on all that—whether it’s cultural asset or cultural baggage”? He responds by proposing that a GAN needs to meet one of four criteria: to be reimagined by later authors (e.g., The Scarlet Letter); to trace the life of a typically American type (e.g., The Great Gatsby); to consider the impact of social, ethnic or racial divisions (e.g., Uncle Tom’s Cabin; Beloved); or to reflect on the complications of democracy and “the imperiled social collective” (e.g, Dos Passos’ U.S.A.). Buell, whose major scholarship has focused on transcendentalism and, more recently, environmentalism, takes a conversational and sometimes-humorous tone as he offers perceptive analyses of novels and their receptions, especially by those who championed their choices as GANs. |
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“A bold account of how a professionally trained chef found his calling in the return to simpler, homestyle cooking that bridges cultures and appeals to everyday customers.” from l.a. son
Though many books have focused on the period from 1954 to 1968, bookended by Brown v. Board of Education and King’s tragic death, there has been less emphasis on the period after 1968. Chappell (Modern American History/Univ. of Oklahoma; A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow, 2004) helps to provide a corrective by delivering what could be considered a series of linked essays covering a range of themes on the continuing fight for racial equality in the last four-plus decades. Beginning with the largely overlooked Civil Rights Act of 1968, or Fair Housing Act, which Congress enacted just a week after King’s death, Chappell shows how for a few years the movement seemed unmoored and leaderless even as there were real efforts to continue the work of the so-called “Classical Phase” of the struggle. By the late 1970s and into the ’80s, issues such as full employment and the establishment of a Martin Luther King Jr. Day took central stage. During this time period, former King confidant Jesse Jackson worked tirelessly to become the pre-eminent black leader in America. Chappell takes Jackson seriously as a historical figure, reminding readers that his two presidential campaigns in the ’80s were more than just sideshows. This book will hopefully serve to push other historians to pick up where Chappell has left off. The author oddly leaves out any serious discussion of the American anti-apartheid movement against South Africa, and he overlooks significant developments in the history of Black Power and the Black Panther Party. Nonetheless, as a foray into still largely unexplored terrain, Chappell’s book is vital. The movement did not die with King. Chappell effectively shows how the struggle continued even as the message seemed to fragment. (16-page photo insert)
THE EXPLORER GENE How Three Generations of One Family Went Higher, Deeper, and Further Than Any Before
Cheshire, Tom Marble Arch/Simon & Schuster (288 pp.) $24.99 | Dec. 3, 2013 978-1-4767-3027-1
The saga of a family of record-breaking explorers who, over three generations, were first to travel to the stratosphere, penetrate the depths of the ocean and circumvent the globe in a nonstop balloon flight. In the foreword, adventurous director James Cameron pays tribute to Auguste, Jacques and Bertrand Piccard, the latter a personal friend, and he describes the challenges facing modern explorers. They not only pit their bodies against the elements, but must also create manned vehicles capable of supporting life in extreme conditions. Cheshire, the associate editor of the U.K. version of Wired, suggests that there might be an element of genetic heredity involved: the so-called “explorer gene” or D4DR, which was identified in 1996. However, since no member of the Piccard family has been tested for this gene, the author uses the term metaphorically. He integrates the scientific quest of each of the three Piccard family members—beginning with Auguste, who, in 1931, was “the first human to enter 44
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the stratosphere, in a balloon he had designed and built himself ”—with the close family ties that bound them. Auguste’s purpose was to determine the origin of cosmic rays, and he was also the first to see the Earth’s curvature from a vantage point miles above the surface. His son, Jacques, worked with Auguste to create the first bathyscaphe and, in 1960, touched the bottom of the Mariana Trench, at a record depth of nearly 36,000 feet. Today, Auguste’s grandson, Bertrand, is a pioneer of solarpowered air flight. Some of the many challenges they faced, writes Cheshire, included finding sponsorship and financing, testing new materials and training on-the-ground teams for the crucial function of mission control. A page-turning account of a remarkable family and their many groundbreaking ventures.
L.A. SON My Life, My City, My Food
Choi, Roy with Nguyen, Tien and Phan, Natasha Photos by Fisher, Bobby Anthony Bourdain/Ecco (352 pp.) $29.99 | Nov. 5, 2013 978-0-06-220263-5 Street-wise, honest in its admission of trials and punctuated with vernacular swagger, Choi’s debut pays tribute to family and his enduring fascination with the melting pot of Los Angeles. Named Best New Chef by Food & Wine in 2010, the author is the co-founder and co-owner of Kogi BBQ, Chego! and other restaurants. With co-writers Nguyen and Phan, Choi recounts key moments during his childhood and teenage years as the son of Korean immigrants who ran the Silver Garden restaurant and whose path from apartments in Koreatown to a mansion in Mission Viejo was marked by turmoil and adventuresome forays in the jewelry trade. Choi’s experiences of love, success, failure, duty and the culture shock of upward mobility during the 1980s set the stage for drug experimentation and gambling addiction. Later chapters detail the sudden realization that led him to the Culinary Institute of America in New York, his apprenticeship and his rise in the restaurant industry. Choi presents the impressive turnaround with gratitude and panache, which balance an otherwise casual tone rife with expletives. Dozens of recipes range from indulgent cheap eats, such as instant ramen with sliced cheese, to more complex fare, including duck breast and beef medallions. From deli-style pecan pie to eggplant curry, kimchi jjigae to carne asada, Choi’s eclectic selections are not intended to showcase his finest repertoire; they represent tried-and-true comfort foods that have sustained him at varying stages during his life. Using memory as a guide, this highly personal tour of LA and New York reveals pockets of ingenuity in vibrant, sometimes-rough neighborhoods. A bold account of how a professionally trained chef found his calling in the return to simpler, homestyle cooking that bridges cultures and appeals to everyday customers. |
CARELESS PEOPLE Murder, Mayhem, and the Invention of The Great Gatsby
Churchwell, Sarah Penguin Press (432 pp.) $29.95 | Jan. 27, 2014 978-1-59420-474-6
The Great Gatsby floats on a limpid river fed by myriads of autobiographical, cultural and historical tributaries. Churchwell (American Literature and Public Understanding of the Humanities/Univ. of East Anglia; The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe, 2004, etc.) has written an excellent book on a novel that remains a favorite in English courses in American high schools and colleges. Surprisingly, she even manages to find fresh facts that escaped previous scholars, including one of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s own published comments about his novel, a book that, as Churchwell notes, neither sold well nor received uniformly favorable reviews. Churchwell
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weaves together a variety of strands: a summary of the novel (including its earlier drafts), a biographical account of the years Fitzgerald was working on the novel (including the time he and Zelda were living and partying in Great Neck, near the novel’s setting), and an account of a sensational New Jersey murder case in 1922 (the year that Gatsby takes place), an investigation that resulted in arrests and a trial but no convictions. Churchwell also digs deeply into the architecture of the novel—looking, for example, for the relevance of specific details Fitzgerald mentions. She also examined Simon Called Peter, a novel that Nick Carraway picks up early in Gatsby; she read countless New York newspaper and magazine files looking for items in 1922 that may have found their way into the novel (car wrecks, wild parties and the like). She haunted the rich Fitzgerald archives at Princeton and elsewhere and, employing the clarity of hindsight, chides most of the early critics who missed what Fitzgerald was up to. At times, Churchwell attempts Fitzgerald’s lyrical style—one chapter-ending sentence alludes to “the vagrant dead as they scatter across our tattered Eden”—she’s earned the right to play on his court. Prodigious research and fierce affection illumine every remarkable page.
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“Wooden has long stood as a giant in the world of college sports. In revealing the real man behind the legend, Davis has done honor to the legacy of a true gentleman.” from wooden
WOODEN A Coach’s Life
Davis, Seth Times/Henry Holt (608 pp.) $35.00 | Jan. 14, 2014 978-0-8050-9280-6
A comprehensive and crisply written biography of a legendary coach. John Wooden (1910–2010) may well be the closest the sports world has had to a secular saint in the last half-century. Widely venerated for both his accomplishments as an athlete and coach and for his stature as a human being, Wooden remained a universally admired figure for the remainder of his life. Sports Illustrated senior writer and CBS Sports studio analyst Davis (When March Went Mad: The Game that Transformed Basketball, 2009, etc.) delivers a massive biography that manages to bolster its subject while reminding readers that for all of Wooden’s greatness, he was a human being with human failings. Utilizing myriad interviews and an impressive array of published sources, the author traces Wooden from his humble childhood in Indiana through his overlooked playing career, which garnered him entry into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1960, to the coaching career that brought him his greatest glory. Wooden began coaching (and teaching English, his first love) at the high school level and spent two years coaching at Indiana State before moving on to UCLA, where he became quite likely the greatest college coach in history. Davis admires his subject, which is apt, since Wooden was unquestionably admirable. However, a true biographer strips away legend as much as burnishes it, and Davis is unflinching in doing so where necessary. Early in his coaching career, Wooden, widely respected for his views on race during his UCLA tenure, still could have done more for his sole black player at Indiana State, who faced Jim Crow on a number of occasions with Wooden’s tacit acquiescence. Long lauded for his personal integrity, he nonetheless clearly turned a blind eye to boosters who flouted NCAA rules in providing benefits to UCLA’s star players. Wooden has long stood as a giant in the world of college sports. In revealing the real man behind the legend, Davis has done honor to the legacy of a true gentleman.
THE ARIADNE OBJECTIVE The Underground War to Rescue Crete From the Nazis Davis, Wes Crown (304 pp.) $26.00 | Nov. 12, 2013 978-0-307-46013-4
Davis (editor: An Anthology of Modern Irish Poetry, 2010) tells the story of the Cretan soldiers who struck a blow to German morale during World War II. Highlighted in a recent biography by Artemis Cooper, the life of Patrick Leigh Fermor was romantically restless, as he 46
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demonstrated early on when he resolved to walk across Europe at age 18. With the breakout of World War II, his knowledge of Greece landed him in a special-ops mission to the Germaninvaded Crete in order to carry out British espionage. Leigh Fermor cooked up the plot to abduct the occupying German Gen. Friedrich-Wilhelm Müller from the bath; he and his fellow agents had been deeply distraught by the crisis of Cretan occupation, brutally carried out by Müller. After being dropped by parachute on a plateau near the village of Kritsa in 1944, Leigh Fermor rendezvoused with the Cretan patrols and fellow British agent Billy Moss, after many setbacks, and waited for the opportune moment. Even though Müller had been replaced as general, the plan went forward by April. Wearing smuggled German military police uniforms, the two Englishmen, along with a ragtag group of locals, took up position on the route taken by the new general, Heinrich Kreipe, from his residence at Villa Ariadne, near Knossos, to his headquarters near Heraklion. As the two mock Germans stopped the car as part of a routine checkpoint, with Leigh Fermor speaking solid German, the general was seized, the driver knocked out and the car commandeered. After a long trek through goat trails in the mountains, hiding out from the enraged Germans, the group was finally picked up and conveyed to Cairo. It was an amazing abduction and rescue, offering the valiant Cretans renewed hope for liberation. An exciting, earnestly narrated World War II story.
THE FISHING FLEET Husband-Hunting in the Raj
de Courcy, Anne Harper/HarperCollins (352 pp.) $26.99 | Jan. 7, 2014 978-0-06-229007-6
A British biographer finds lively fodder from the accounts of Victorian women venturing to India to find a spouse—and the men who scooped them up. De Courcy (Snowdon, 2010, etc.) fleshes out the stereotypical portrait of the wilting English gentlewoman who functioned chiefly as a means of perpetuating the imperial status quo across the British empire. The women she chronicles in this vigorous study, sent to India to find a husband mostly during the Raj period (roughly 1850 to 1950), faced hardships with equanimity and purpose. Fortunes were to be had for the intrepid young men who flocked to India to work in the East India Company, Indian Civil Service, and other trading, government and army ventures, although diseases and an unfamiliar climate rendered their work perilous. The depletion of the marriage pool back in England left many English girls, those without fortunes, beauty or good connections, facing spinster futures during a time when marriage largely defined women, who had few other prospects. However, in India, men outnumbered women four to one, de Courcy estimates, increasing a woman’s chances of finding a mate. Yet these were not passive women, and as the author |
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“Sharply honed life of the only American Indian leader to definitively beat the United States in war, short-lived though the defeat might have been.” from the heart of everything that is
delves deeper into their diaries and letters, she finds that voyaging to India allowed many women an exciting outlet they did not have in England. However, the arduous voyage took many months and required hardiness, as did weathering illness and oppressive heat. After hasty marriages to eager, lonely men, the wives were often obliged to pull up stakes and move constantly as their husbands’ jobs required or live out in the jungles where their plantations were located. Moreover, they often faced long separations from their children, sent back home to boarding schools. De Courcy offers numerous, richly detailed accounts. An expert researcher brings the romantic Raj era to colorful life. (Three 8-page b/w photo inserts)
THE HEART OF EVERYTHING THAT IS The Untold Story of Red Cloud, an American Legend Drury, Bob; Clavin, Tom Simon & Schuster (400 pp.) $30.00 | Nov. 5, 2013 978-1-4516-5466-0
Sharply honed life of the only American Indian leader to definitively beat the United States in war, short-lived though the defeat might have been. Popular military historians Drury and Clavin (Last Men Out: The True Story of America’s Heroic Final Hours in Vietnam, 2011, etc.) offer a battle-and-skirmish account of Sioux leader Red Cloud’s war on the whites who invaded the Great Plains, though their narrative is strong on ethnohistorical matters as well. When a white officer sputtered “Horseshit” against Red Cloud’s claim that the Sioux had an ancestral claim to the Black Hills, for instance, the authors are able to explain that, be that as it may, the Sioux had developed an emergence story to back up their case—one that, as it happened, had its first mention on the Sioux calendar “the summer before America’s Founding Fathers signed the Declaration of Independence.” Drury and Clavin frame their story with what has been called the Fetterman Massacre (here, better put, the Fetterman Fight), in 1866, when an unfortunate Army officer led his command into a trap that led to their deaths, but they pack it with details taken from many episodes in the early history of Sioux relations with the whites, as well as with other tribes. They credit Red Cloud with forming a powerful alliance of peoples, among them the Cheyenne and Shoshone, the only way the Indians could resist white encroachment into their homeland. Even so, as the authors note, when Red Cloud was invited to Washington to sign a peace treaty and was taken to a federal arsenal to see the assembled weaponry available to his enemy, he recognized that the days of his people’s suzerainty were numbered, even as he continued to mount “the most impressive campaign in the annals of Indian warfare,” which lasted from 1866 to 1868. A well-researched and -written account of an often overlooked figure in the history of the Indian Wars.
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LAST NIGHT AT THE VIPER ROOM River Phoenix and the Hollywood He Left Behind
Edwards, Gavin It Books/HarperCollins (288 pp.) $24.99 | Oct. 22, 2013 978-0-06-227315-4
Twenty years later, the overdose death of a promising young actor doesn’t seem to be quite enough to fill a book, even one as well-written as this one. River Phoenix (1970–1993) was only 23 when he died, and though he’d shown a precocious talent as a child actor and singer, he’d only made two movies of note (Stand by Me and My Private Idaho) before an addict’s carelessness let him swallow something he shouldn’t have. A veteran pop-culture writer for magazines, Edwards (’Scuse Me While I Kiss This Guy and Other Misheard Lyrics, 1995) has the makings of a solid article in this commemoration of the actor’s death, life and career, but the context he provides feels like padding: the career progressions of other actors of the same generation, production details of films best forgotten, speculation on what he might have achieved if he hadn’t died, and the history of the Viper Room and its owner, Johnny Depp, whose connection with Phoenix otherwise seems tenuous at best. The book is more researched than reported, relying on other books and magazines as well as a few interviews with those who were mainly on the periphery of the actor’s life. The early material about his parents, hippies who succumbed to a sexually promiscuous religious sect, makes for fascinating reading, but his descent into drugs is familiar and sad, a decline further undermined by denial. In the tick-tock narrative of his final hours, his brother Joaquin responded, after others were alarmed by the sidewalk seizures and suggested he call 911, “He’s fine, he’s fine.” Depp apparently didn’t recognize the figure causing the commotion outside his club. But the strict vegan with the warm heart, strong work ethic and increasingly debilitating drug excess needed help long before that. For Phoenix fans who want to relive that night and mourn what might have been.
DEAD MOUNTAIN: The Untold True Story of the Dyatlov Pass Incident Eichar, Donnie Chronicle (288 pp.) $24.95 | Nov. 19, 2013 978-1-4521-1274-9
An American documentary filmmaker drops into the well of one of Soviet Russia’s greatest mysteries. Eichar, who has shot everything from short documentaries to TV pilots, applies a documentarian’s eye to this thorough but inconclusive investigation into one of the East’s most controversial tragedies. “The |
Dyatlov Pass Incident” is quite famous in some circles, especially in Russia and the Baltics, but little-known outside the former Iron Curtain. In 1959, nine young hikers suddenly disappeared in the northern Ural Mountains. When the group was finally found, six had died of exposure, while three were found to have traumatic, blunt-force injuries. One girl was missing her tongue. None were fully dressed, as if they had fled suddenly in the dead of night. It was a gruesome scene, made more so by a flood of conspiracy theories. Were they murdered by the military after witnessing some kind of secret test? Was it UFOs or just an avalanche? The final report by investigators, which is murky at best, blames “an unknown compelling force.” Eichar marries the short story of the students’ lives with the procedural tale of the official investigation and then integrates his own amateur investigation. In an interesting twist, the author managed to track down Yuri Yudin, the sole survivor of the expedition, who had turned back due to his rheumatism, saving his life. Yudin, who passed away earlier this year, was mischievous with the serious young scholar: “Do you not have mysteries in your own country that are unsolved?”; “Which picture do you want to paint? The one rooted in the Revolution, or that of the Iron Curtain?” The author deftly explores theories common and uncommon, the most off-putting being an infrasonic wave known to cause hallucinations and disorientation. It’s not a revelatory portrait of the incident, but for Western readers, it’s a well-told and accurate whodunit. A sad tale of tragedy and investigatory enigmas from the wilds of Soviet Union.
BARGAIN FEVER How to Shop in a Discounted World
Ellwood, Mark Portfolio (272 pp.) $26.95 | Oct. 17, 2013 978-1-59184-580-5
Journalist Ellwood (The Rough Guide to Miami and South Florida, 2008, etc.) offers an in-depth account of how American consumer culture has become permanently discount-driven. Opening with a joke that his name should have been “Markdown” instead of Mark due to his parents’ love of bargains, the author continuously interweaves levity and behind-the-scenes stories into his report on what he calls “Shopping 3.0.” He claims that this phase in retail shopping stems from oversupply and underdemand; “another fitting name for bargain fever,” he writes, “could be Too Much Stuff Syndrome.” One highlight includes research proving that buying something for a discount spikes the brain’s production of dopamine, thereby boosting happiness. Ellwood also explains that stores often display a few items with staggering price tags for the sole reason that the contrast leads customers to view everything else as more affordable. In addition to price consulting, the author examines the impact |
of coupons, from the first one (“Free Tickets” presented by Coca-Cola) to the cultlike community of “extreme couponing.” He touches on subjects ranging from sample sales of high-end fashion, both in person as well as online, to what paved the way for Groupon’s e-commerce success and the company’s effects on small businesses. He personalizes statistics underscoring this climate of increasingly savvy shoppers and merchants with myriad tales from around the world that entertain and inform in equal measure, and he successfully argues that there’s never been a better time to be a buyer and examines how best to evolve from here, from both a shopper’s and a seller’s perspective. “No one should pay full price for anything, ever again,” he writes in conclusion. “Yes, that includes you.” An eye-opening, readable examination of the world of bargain shopping in today’s retail world.
DR. J The Autobiography
Erving, Julius; Greenfeld, Karl Taro Harper/HarperCollins (448 pp.) $27.99 | Nov. 5, 2013 978-0-06-218792-5
The NBA’s most transformative player submits an unusually revealing autobiography. During the 1970s, when officials still bothered to call traveling and palming violations, the high-flying Erving arrived and, nevertheless, managed to do things with a basketball no one had ever seen. For years, basketball’s best-kept secret, “Dr. J” (“more moves than Dr. Carter has liver pills”) played his college ball at lowprofile UMass and then for five years with the fledgling ABA, a league with no national TV contract. When the ABA merged with the NBA, Erving signed with the Philadelphia 76ers and played another 11. With Greenfeld’s aid (Triburbia, 2012, etc.), he covers the basketball triumphs, the especially crazy days of the ABA, the All-Star games, the MVP awards and the championships, and he comments throughout on some of his better-known mentors (Bill Russell, Walt Frazier, John Havlicek), teammates (Daryl Dawkins, Moses Malone, Maurice Cheeks) and opponents (Larry Bird, Magic Johnson). Fans will appreciate his surprising takes on players like Pete Maravich, Bernard King and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Erving’s own assessment of the evolution of his game, and his tales of mixing with a black elite that included the likes of Bill Cosby, Arthur Ashe and Miles Davis. They might not expect the attention he devotes to struggle and loss: the premature death of an already absentee father; the spare poverty of his Long Island childhood; the early death of a younger brother to asthma and, later, of an older sister to cancer; the family visits to the Jim Crow South and the adult encounters with the modern civil rights movement; the delinquency of his children and the death of a son; his lifelong struggle with fidelity. Erving’s reverence for rules and order and his simultaneous passion for improvisation have played out in his private life as well, not always to good effect. kirkus.com
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KENNEDY AND REAGAN Why Their Legacies Endure
A good enough treatment of the phenomenon called “Dr. J” and an especially thoughtful account of the man, Julius Erving. (two 8-page color inserts)
ALL AMERICAN Two Young Men, the 2001 Army-Navy Game and the War They Fought in Iraq Eubanks, Steve Morrow/HarperCollins (304 pp.) $27.99 | Nov. 1, 2013 978-0-06-220280-2 978-0-06-220283-3 e-book 978-0-06-227840-1 Lg. Prt.
Veteran journalist Eubanks (To Win and Die in Dixie: The Birth of the Modern Golf Swing and the Mysterious Death of Its Creator, 2010, etc.) follows the careers of two young men: one a cadet at West Point, the other a midshipman at the Naval Academy, from 9/11 to the present. This paean to patriotism and a fiercely focused definition of manhood and patriotism has all the subtlety of a Fourth of July parade or a halftime show on Veterans Day. The author gives us the backgrounds of his two principals (Chad at West Point, Brian at Annapolis), beginning with a moment in the 2001 Army-Navy game (played only months after 9/11), when linebacker Brian tackled quarterback Chad—their first meeting. Then Eubanks alternates the stories of the two, celebrating along the way the traditional virtues of manliness and patriotism that these two young men embody. To the author’s credit, we do get glimpses of the men’s warts. Brian survived a court martial for sexual assault against a female officer; Chad acted like a pig on spring break in Florida (though the author can’t quite bring himself to characterize it as such). Both eventually end up in Iraq; the author does not question America’s involvement but does celebrate the heroism of his principals, both of whom won—deservedly—battlefield honors. Eubanks also describes the love lives of each man, both of whom eventually left the military. Chad tried a few things before becoming an FBI agent, a position he eventually left for the private security sector; Brian became an accomplished cage fighter then segued into running his own fight-training enterprise. Along the way, the author revisits subsequent Army-Navy games and delivers some play-by-play—of action on the gridiron and on the streets of Fallujah. Long on heroism, short on analysis and critical acumen. (16-page b/w photo insert)
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Farris, Scott Lyons Press (336 pp.) $27.95 | Nov. 5, 2013 978-0-7627-8144-7
An engrossing “comparative biography” of two presidents who remain enduringly popular. Veteran political journalist Farris (Almost President: The Men Who Lost the Race but Changed the Nation, 2011, etc.) recounts the striking, sometimes-surprising similarities between John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) and Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) and their presidencies. In a smooth, well-written chronological narrative, the author explores and compares each stage of their lives, seeking to explain the continuing appeal of these disparate men, both of whom are frequently ranked in polls as being among the great presidents. Although one was a Democrat and the other a Republican, both are remembered as handsome, charismatic, vigorous men of ideas who set the bar (the “Kennedy aura,” the “Reagan mantle”) for the qualities sought in a presidential candidate. Both were shot (and became beloved), shared Irish heritage, had rakish fathers and pious mothers, loved books, felt antipathy toward communism, exuded sex appeal that bolstered their political appeal, dealt serenely with crises, and shared a weakness for cloak-and-dagger behavior that ended badly (the Bay of Pigs, the Iran-Contra Affair). Kennedy was “America’s first ‘movie-star president,’ ” and Reagan, “the first movie star to become president.” Both did more than any other president to ally Washington, D.C., and Hollywood, and both used the actor’s trick of playing the persona they had developed for themselves. Starting out as reserved boys, they “engaged in lifelong reinventions of themselves, working to form themselves into the men they wished to be, the masculine, rugged, charming presidents they became.” Farris covers the major issues in both presidencies, and he speculates that neither man could win his party’s nomination for the presidency today. Having governed during years of Cold War clarity, they would fare poorly as presidents in a current climate marked by both political divisiveness and the murkiness of the war on terrorism. A fresh, welcome view of two much-revered leaders. (8-page photo insert)
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“A worthy, fun way to enjoy ancient myths while learning some pure philosophy.” from the wisdom of the myths
THE WISDOM OF THE MYTHS How Greek Mythology Can Change Your Life
Ferry, Luc Translated by Cuffe, Theo Perennial/HarperCollins (416 pp.) $15.99 paper | Jan. 7, 2014 978-0-06-221545-1
Ferry (Philosophy/Sorbonne; A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living, 2011, etc.) brilliantly illustrates the basis of Greek philosophy in the structure of its myths. “Mythology is at the core of ancient wisdom,” writes the author, “the foundation for that great edifice of Greek philosophy that would subsequently sketch out, in conceptual form, the blueprint of a successful life for human kind, mortal as we are.” His retelling of Greek myths is impressive, and his true gift is his exploration of all the poets, including, but not limited to, Homer, Appollodorus, Ovid, Nonnus and Pindar, all of who have added to these myths. The cosmic order evolved from chaos to the cosmos. The myths explore the creation of the universe and of man, how man fits into the greater order and what happens to those who defy the gods out of hubris, as well as those who fight to maintain that order. The first four gods, Chaos, Eros, Gaia and Tartarus, are not individuals but forces of nature. The stories of the clashes of their children show the need for justice and order, accord and identity. Thus, hubris in defying the gods shows the underlying truth. You cannot have harmony without discord; you cannot have life without death. The philosophical messages of the myths are the harmonious order of things: justice, or the agreement with order, and hubris, or the resistance to order. The author shows that Greek myths explore life beyond theology, thus giving birth to philosophy. The most important legacy of the myths is the essential question of how to achieve a good life. A worthy, fun way to enjoy ancient myths while learning some pure philosophy.
HOW TO READ A NOVELIST
Freeman, John Farrar, Straus and Giroux (384 pp.) $15.00 paper | Oct. 8, 2013 978-0-374-17326-5
Flattering profiles of modern novelists by an astute, occasionally fawning reader. Despite the idle boast of the title, this collection by Granta editor in chief Freeman (The Tyranny of E-mail: The FourThousand-Year Journey to Your Inbox, 2009) doesn’t really cut it as literary criticism, but it is definitely literary appreciation. Over the past 15 years, the author has gotten the book-chat interview down to a science. He plays the perfect host to each of these 55 novelists, doing his homework, asking questions his subjects |
like hearing and, despite one chilly encounter with John Updike, neither alienating his subjects nor requiring them to think too deeply. Occasionally, he’ll strike silver, if not gold, such as when Haruki Murakami announces that the imagination feeds on a repetitious life. Generally, though, it’s Freeman who does the heavy lifting. Having gleaned a lot of precise assessments from reading his subjects in depth, he tends to be more interesting in describing his subject than they are about themselves. E.L. Doctorow has “the folksy charm of an afternoon radio host.” Aleksandar Hemon’s fiction “beats like a heart with two ventricles, one of them Chicago, one of them Sarajevo.” John Updike’s hands “are pink and somewhat gnarled, as if he has spent a lifetime vulcanizing words, rather than twisting them into shape on the page.” At times, Freeman slips into hyperbole (David Foster Wallace); at others, he is entirely too impressed by a writer’s commercial value (John Irving). Admittedly, he does an impressive amount in a tight space, but the articles don’t leave much behind. As typical Sunday magazine fodder, they are pleasant enough to read. Stacked together, they only underscore his formulaic approach to his subjects. A box of literary bonbons: addictive in spurts, but after a while, they all taste the same.
THE NEW DEMOCRATS AND THE RETURN TO POWER
From, Al Palgrave Macmillan (288 pp.) $28.00 | Dec. 3, 2013 978-1-137-27864-7
Democratic Leadership Council founder From provides a deep insider’s view of the council’s agenda-setting evolution and the guiding of Bill Clinton into the White House. Before Clinton’s 1992 election, the Democratic Party had been irrelevant in the previous six presidential election cycles, with the exception of Jimmy Carter riding the Nixon debacle. Still, From refused to participate in the death spiral, choosing instead to resuscitate fundamental elements of the party identity: opportunity and responsibility, lack of special privileges, no-nonsense internationalism, tolerance, inclusion, national service and community. The author begins with the pre-DLC strategizing, moves through its formative years with Charles Robb and Sam Nunn, and closely follows Clinton’s ascendency. He offers an advanced course in political maneuvering, an often messy affair with countless incidents of treachery and backfiring. He discusses how to promote civil rights but not alienate the Southern vote, how to counter the influence of party bosses and interest-group leaders, how to captivate important audiences outside the Congress (press, political strategists, intellectuals, policy wonks), and the importance of a policy institute and regional chapters. Though the author occasionally paints in broad strokes, he provides useful examples throughout. From is a results man and likes to sink his teeth into problems, ranging from combating inflation to the prickly issue of Clinton’s kirkus.com
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“It’s no small achievement to have something new to say on Teddy Roosevelt’s presidency, but Goodwin succeeds admirably. A notable, psychologically charged study in leadership.” from the bully pulpit
alleged paramour Gennifer Flowers, though he is not averse to a bit of chest-thumping (“Over the next three years, [Ed] Muskie, with me at his side, sowed the seeds for what would grow into the important underpinnings of the New Democratic movement”). From’s main interest, however, is the continued tuning of the DLC platform, including “spending reductions, modernizing entitlements, and increasing revenue by reforming the tax code.” A well-detailed guide to the organizational and philosophical workings of one successful political strategy. (8 pages of b/w photos)
An evenhanded yet grim assessment of the growing consensus regarding “the lethal presidency.”
THE BULLY PULPIT Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism
Goodwin, Doris Kearns Simon & Schuster (960 pp.) $40.00 | $16.99 e-book | $39.99 CD Nov. 5, 2013 978-1-4165-4786-0 978-1-4516-7379-1 e-book 978-1-4423-6570-4 CD
KILLING MACHINE The American Presidency in the Age of Drone Warfare Gardner, Lloyd C. New Press (304 pp.) $26.95 | Nov. 12, 2013 978-1-59558-918-7
Straightforward, rigorous account of how President Barack Obama’s embrace of high-tech militarism is changing the parameters of the presidency. Gardner (Emeritus, History/Rutgers Univ.; The Road to Tahrir Square: Egypt and the United States from the Rise of Nasser to the Fall of Mubarak, 2011, etc.) presents a deeper narrative than the title implies, essentially utilizing the George W. Bush administration’s decision to pursue war in Iraq at the expense of the Afghanistan campaign necessitated by 9/11 as a flash point that altered our ability to respond to terrorist threats. Thus, though the author concurs that Obama the constitutional scholar “fell into the embrace of Reaper and Predator drones by circumstances beyond his control,” he still holds responsible the president and his various high-end deputies for blithely advocating their increased use in controversial environments like Pakistan and Yemen. Gardner excels at presenting a lucid narrative that focuses on both dramatic military events—such as the pursuit of the U.S.-born firebrand preacher Anwar al-Awlaki, put on the drone “kill list” after the 2009 “underwear bomb” attempt against an American airliner—and the complex ballet of political calculations that underlie America’s aggressive foreign policy stance. Attentive to the issue’s legal and moral complexities, the author depicts the insidious qualities of drones’ attractiveness to both Obama and his many advisers, beyond the threat of imminent terrorism embodied by al-Awlaki: “Fighting insurgencies was supposedly a different matter altogether, and there was the rub.” Ultimately, the high-tech lethality and legal obfuscation of drone warfare both suggest a handy metaphor for American power and a terrifying portent of the global future: By 2011, following American dissatisfaction with the ground war in Afghanistan, it seemed “the drone had replaced counterinsurgency.” And even though the increased reliance on drones appeared cost-free, “Obama found himself in danger of losing control of the momentum of drone warfare” as he looked past his own second term. 52
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Swiftly moving account of a friendship that turned sour, broke a political party in two and involved an insistent, omnipresent press corps. Cantor and Boehner? No: Teddy and Taft. Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Goodwin (Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, 2005, etc.) may focus on the great men (and occasionally women) of history, but she is the foremost exponent of a historiographic school that focuses on the armies of aides and enactors that stand behind them. In this instance, one of the principal great men would revel in the title: Theodore Roosevelt wanted nothing more than to be world-renowned, change the world and occasionally shoot a mountain lion. His handpicked successor, William Howard Taft, was something else entirely: He wished to fade into legal scholarship and was very happy in later life to be named to the Supreme Court. The two began as friends of what Taft called “close and sweet intimacy,” and the friendship ended—Goodwin evokes this exquisitely well in her closing pages—with a guarded chance encounter in a hotel that slowly thawed but too late. A considerable contributor to the split was TR’s progressivism, his trust-busting and efforts to improve the lot of America’s working people, which Taft was disinclined to emulate. Moreover, Taft did not warm to TR’s great talent, which was to enlist journalists to his cause; problems of objectivity aside, they provided him with the “bully pulpit” of Goodwin’s title. She populates her pages with sometimes-forgotten heroes of investigative reporting—Ida Tarbell, Ray Blake, Lincoln Steffens—just as much as Roosevelt and Taft and their aides. The result is an affecting portrait of how networks based on genuine liking contribute to the effective functioning of government without requiring reporters to be sycophants or politicians to give up too many secrets. It’s no small achievement to have something new to say on Teddy Roosevelt’s presidency, but Goodwin succeeds admirably. A notable, psychologically charged study in leadership.
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AMERICAN HERETICS Catholics, Jews, Muslims and the History of Religious Intolerance
FRENCH WOMEN DON’T GET FACELIFTS The Secret of Aging with Style & Attitude
Gottschalk, Peter Palgrave Macmillan (256 pp.) $28.00 | Nov. 12, 2013 978-1-137-27829-6
Guiliano, Mireille Grand Central Life & Style (272 pp.) $25.00 | Dec. 24, 2013 978-1-4555-2411-2
A short, discriminating story of melting-pot religion depicting some of the deadly perils of nonconformist faith in
the land of the free. Our Puritan fathers, who sought religious freedom in the New World, were eager to hang professed Quakers as schismatic cultists who entertained Satan. And so it went, as Gottschalk (Religion/Wesleyan Univ.; Religion, Science, and Empire: Classifying Hinduism and Islam in British India, 2012, etc.) reminds us. Catholics (especially the Irish) were seen as fostering world domination by obeisance to the pope; in 1834, a convent was burned down in Charlestown. Not much later, members of the Sioux tribe, regular victims of broken treaties, were forbidden to perform their ghost dance. Following their own homegrown faith, Mormons were branded dangerous heretics. In the 20th century, true American Henry Ford excoriated Jews with his own malevolent writings as well as wide dissemination of the notorious hoax The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Throughout American history, Muslims both foreign and domestic have been and continue to be objects of distrust and scorn. Mistaken for followers of Islam, Hindus and Sikhs are often abused. Gottschalk demonstrates the national penchant for prejudice with representative examples over the centuries, when religious differences could be capital offences. That was the case 20 years ago in the apocalyptic massacre of the Branch Davidians. The group was called a cult, as, it seems, nascent religions might be termed. Just what a cult may be is not easy to explain; perhaps the age of the movement is pertinent. (In regard to cults as religions, Gottschalk has little to report about Christian Science or Dianetics.) Against tenacious prejudice, the author makes a scholarly case for tolerance, a virtue we purport to celebrate. “Celebrating the idea of secularism proves far easier,” he writes, “than establishing a society based on it.” If it helps, he offers a bit of instructive history. Eclectic examples from the ample album of bigotry in American democracy.
A new book from the author of French Women Don’t Get Fat (2004). Former Clicquot Inc. CEO Guiliano’s (The French Women Don’t Get Fat Cookbook, 2010, etc.) new book is subtitled “The Secret of Aging with Style & Attitude.” Readers will be forgiven if they think of “The Golden Girls,” and if you are old enough to remember the show, you’re probably the target audience for this book. The idea is that French culture has some unique cultural standards that enable French women to cheat the entropy of aging. Guiliano stresses the importance of attitude, and she devotes most of the first chapter to it; how we look at aging, she writes, can shift the effect it has on us. What would have made for a useful article in a magazine at this point devolves into “The Secret of Aging for Those with Lots of Disposable Income.” From consideration of what top fashion designers can do to help you dress younger to touting expensive argan oil for the skin, Guiliano’s target audience shrinks drastically. She tepidly raises concerns about Botox for wrinkles but then admits these concerns center mainly on the availability of top-tier doctors, wondering what could come of Botox treatments from the doctors the rest of us might use— and then, nudge-nudge, wink-wink, can’t exactly say she’d rule it out. The author also includes recipes, and there’s little to argue with in terms of her suggestions for eating healthier and avoiding fad diets. The author only makes brief mention of the media’s unhealthy infatuation with the cult of youth, which drives women to feel self-conscious and obsessed with finding ways to look younger. Mostly frivolous reading—which is not to say it won’t sell well.
NOVEMBER 22, 1963 Ordinary and Extraordinary People Recall Their Reactions When They Heard the News...
Hansen, Jodie Elliott; Hansen, Laura—Eds. Dunne/St. Martin’s (304 pp.) $27.99 | Nov. 5, 2013 978-1-250-03748-0 A chorus of fascinating and mostly thoughtful voices reflects on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Kentucky native Hansen, a retired emergency room nurse and grandmother of 11, joins forces with her daughter, Laura, in the assembly of responses to a letter the elder Hansen |
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“Native New Yorker and CUNY sociology professor Helmreich investigates all five of the city’s boroughs on foot, tracking therobust and ever-changing entanglements between New York and its inhabitants.” from the new york nobody knows
dispatched in 1978 as a “quirky and idiosyncratic” homage to the Kennedy tragedy. The missive invited thousands of addressees to submit their thoughts on that fateful day and how the event impacted their lives. The response was overwhelming. Presented as graphically reproduced originals on the page, the book highlights the best of these letters. Canvassing such a wide spectrum of “famous, infamous, and ordinary people” resulted in a kaleidoscope of opinions and memories as well as a nostalgic glimpse back to an age of hand- and typewritten communication. Leading the anthology is poignant poetry contributed from a member of the Oglala Sioux Indian tribe, followed by vivid reminiscence from such luminaries as Edward Albee, Steve Allen, Ed Koch and Mary Tyler Moore. These sit alongside heartfelt verbatim exchanges from Minnie Pearl and prolific Southern author Erskine Caldwell and lighter moments from Walter Matthau and Nobel laureate Roger Wolcott Sperry, who heard the news as he was performing experimental brain surgery on a test monkey. The authors curiously include a lesssincere form letter from then–Vice President George H. Bush and omit a delusionary handwritten rant received from Charles Manson. They include dismissive declinations from Art Buchwald and William F. Buckley Jr. and a rather indifferent reaction from Academy Award–winning costume designer Edith Head. An unexpectedly riveting paragraph from Julia Child joins somber remembrances from state senators, governors, mayors, college students and distinguished actors such as Foster Brooks, George Burns, Claudette Colbert and Danny Thomas. With profound respect, the Hansens offer posthumous appreciation for an iconic American leader taken too soon. Other contributors include Arthur C. Clark, Ned Beatty, Hal Holbrook, Bob Hope and Pete Seeger. A moving, wistful, uniquely entertaining tribute.
LETTERS TO AN INCARCERATED BROTHER Encouragement, Hope, and Healing for Inmates and Their Loved Ones Harper, Hill Gotham Books (400 pp.) $27.50 | Nov. 5, 2013 978-1-59240-724-8
Sage, dignified adjuration for the imprisoned. Alarmed by the massive explosion of the prison population in recent decades, best-selling author and TV actor Harper (The Conversation: How Black Men and Women Can Build Loving, Trusting Relationships, 2009, etc.) believes that, visible or not, the prison populace is part of the fabric of America and shouldn’t be dismissed as merely a blight on humanity. Though his criticisms of the penal and prison systems label them as malevolent, for-profit cauldrons of unregulated private companies bent on manipulating criminals, the author is adamant about creating a solution to what he views as a mushrooming “hyper incarceration crisis.” With stern, direct advice 54
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and direction on real-life issues (and focusing on the AfricanAmerican incarcerated population), Harper coaches readers through the fear of prison life and how to stay focused and hopeful and resist gang recruitment. The author writes in the form of unique and heartfelt answers to letters he received from prison inmates in response to his first book, Letters to a Young Brother (2006). In counsel delivered through relatable and colloquial prose, Harper encourages his readership to prepare a mental “escape plan” in anticipation of an inevitable re-entry into society armed with motivation, responsibility and clarity. With frequent references to the spiritual lessons of Deepak Chopra, the author shares pages of positive reinforcement, encouraging inmates to “beat the odds and avoid returning” to the cellblocks after release. His affirmations of hope and humility resonate throughout this unique display of compassionate humanitarianism for those residing behind prison walls and those who wait patiently for their release. The closing section—a useful, wellrounded “Owner’s Manual”—begs for an expanded edition. An inspiring jail companion guidebook brimming with straight-talking tough love.
THE NEW YORK NOBODY KNOWS Walking 6,000 Miles in the City
Helmreich, William B. Princeton Univ. (456 pp.) $29.95 | Nov. 1, 2013 978-0-691-14405-4
Native New Yorker and CUNY sociology professor Helmreich (What Was I Thinking?: The Dumb Things We Do and How to Avoid Them, 2011, etc.) investigates all five of the city’s boroughs on foot, tracking the robust and ever-changing entanglements between New York and its inhabitants. Spanning four years, 6,000 miles and nine pairs of shoes, the author’s chronicle traces a richly detailed ethnography— and the first sociological study of the city as a whole—in his exploration of one of the most culturally diverse places in the world. Anchored by hundreds of personal stories collected from every corner of every neighborhood, this unique book provides an intimate look at how the city is at once a united populace of proud New Yorkers and also a collection of distinct communities that retain small-town values. Myriad factors, including gentrification, immigration, sense of belonging, public spaces and crime rate, play a role in how these communities form and disperse, sometimes within a single day—for example, the communities of workers who commute into Manhattan from outer boroughs or the communities of children who come together to learn from educators and each other. At the same time, a sentiment like post-9/11 solidarity supersedes localized boundaries and brings the city’s residents together as one. Helmreich argues that the dynamics behind these constantly evolving human choreographies make New York a city unparalleled in its historical and contemporary impact. From a housing complex |
in Crown Heights to a garden in Staten Island to a restaurant in Kew Gardens, every space—and every person—contributes to a city that is “the epitome of the twenty-first century.” The author exudes great love and admiration for his hometown on every page, and this collection of anecdotes brings New York to life with unprecedented humanity and detail. This book is pure joy; even the most dyed-in-the-wool New Yorker will learn something new about this vibrant city.
BURNING THE REICHSTAG An Investigation into the Third Reich’s Enduring Mystery Hett, Benjamin Carter Oxford Univ. (416 pp.) $29.95 | Jan. 2, 2014 978-0-19-932232-9
A fresh investigation into responsibility for the Reichstag fire, from historian and former trial lawyer Hett (History/ Hunter Coll.; Crossing Hitler: The Man Who Put the Nazis on the Witness Stand, 2008, etc.). The fire broke out on the night of February 27,1933, just a few weeks after Hitler became chancellor; the hysteria created by the Nazis around it, blaming the communists, allowed him a convenient way to dissolve civil liberties, persecute his enemies (lists had already been drawn up) and launch the beginning of the Nazi police state. In the flaming building, one crazed Dutch-German émigré, Marinus van der Lubbe, was arrested and confessed to being the lone arson, yet experts then and now are fairly convinced that such a fast-moving fire could not have been set without the aid of flammable substances like kerosene, which van der Lubbe did not possess. Hett carefully sifts the record, examining the many contradictory accounts by witnesses, firemen, police, government leaders, Nazis, communists and prisoners, at the time of the fire, as well as the subsequent trial of van der Lubbe and three Bulgarian Communists picked up as accomplices (the latter three were acquitted). The author also follows the story for many years following the event, after denazification had prompted the altering of public opinion and cleansed personal records. These denazified ex-officials received new life with the publication of Fritz Tobias’ Der Spiegel articles in the winter of 1959-60, in which he argued for the lone arson theory and absolved Hitler and the Nazis of plotting the fire for political gain. Tobias’ account was accepted ever since as the “dominant narrative,” at least in Germany, now challenged with authority by Hett. This painstaking new examination of evidence surrounding the Reichstag fire lays blame squarely with the ascendant Nazis and underscores deeper notions about nationalism, complicity and guilt. (15 b/w illustrations)
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BEST FOOD WRITING 2013
Hughes, Holly—Ed. Da Capo Lifelong/Perseus (400 pp.) $15.99 paper | Nov. 1, 2013 978-0-7382-1716-1 Longtime editor Hughes once again compiles a tasty collection of culinary essays for those who love to eat, cook and read about food. “With such an insatiable audience,” she writes in her introduction, “there are more outlets for food writing than ever, in print and on-line and on the airwaves. It’s an embarrassment of riches, not unlike those overstuffed CSA bags of produce.” Hughes scoured bookstores, magazines, newspapers, newsletters and websites, including GQ, the New York Times, Edible San Francisco, the Chicago Reader, Tin House, Fire and Knives, Graze and GiltTaste. com before selecting the essays included here. Together, they represent the diverse tastes, quirks and passions of America’s burgeoning food culture. Organized within categories such as The Way We Eat Now, Farm to Table, The Meat of the Matter, Home Cooking and To Be a Chef, the essays surprise, educate and highlight the trends within the food movement. A short sampling includes: the merits of seasonal eating; celebrating Thanksgiving on the Chesapeake Bay; how saying grace can offer a different take on a meal; the rigors of tossing pizza; how to make real New England clam chowder; food trucks in Hawaii; the Southern pleasure of combining cola and salted peanuts; and the demise of Hostess Bakeries. Michael Pollan opines on the chemistry and heavenly benefits achieved while sautéing aromatic vegetables. Investigative journalist Tracie McMillan explores the stories we tell ourselves about the joys of home cooking. Houston Press writer Katharine Shilcutt bemoans America’s industrialized agriculture and food production systems and deconstructs her first taste of a McDonald’s McRib sandwich. “I felt so hollow afterward,” she writes, “that it was as if my stomach had shifted outside my body, as though my abdominal cavity was rejecting it in shame.” Other contributors include Edward Behr, Gabrielle Hamilton, Rowan Jacobsen and Eddie Huang. A literary trek across the culinary landscape pairing bountiful delights with plenty of substantive tidbits.
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INTERVIEWS & PROFILES
Dana Goodyear
Beyond the shock value of ingesting ant pupae, Anything That Moves probes the real heart of the foodie movement By Jessie Grearson
Photo courtesy Gertrude & Mabel
In her new book, Anything that Moves: Renegade Chefs, Fearless Eaters, and the Making of a New American Food Culture, Dana Goodyear offers readers a voyeuristic journey into the offbeat world of adventurous, exotic eating, where horse, brains and bugs are on the menu and pigs’ ears—once noteworthy conversation starters at restaurants—are now nearly cliché, even moving into the realm of comfort food. Though much of what makes Anything that Moves such a memorable read is what we witness people eating, Goodyear is quick to point out that this is not really so much a book about food, but its implications. Food, she explains, offers an important lens through which to observe culture: “What is the meaning of what we’re eating, and… 56
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why does so much of it seem oriented around risk, taboo, challenge and disgust?” The answers she uncovers are complicated; the characters we meet in this strange world are complex, hard to sketch in quick or certain terms. Are the foodies she portrays gluttons, driven by a kind of gastronomical conspicuous consumption to eat the increasingly rare, even endangered species, or are they environmentalists who, scorning waste, eat their meat nose to tail? Are they novelty seekers sampling grasshoppers and stinkbugs or forward-thinking pragmatists who acknowledge that 80 percent of the world already eats insects? Are they driven by curiosity or snobbery? Motivated by a desire to transform restaurant menus or to challenge what they perceive as oppressive food regulations? Goodyear’s essays are part in-depth profiles (meet Pulitzer Prize–winning food writer Jonathan Gold, whose “fringy” and dauntless approach to eating has made him the “patron saint of foodies”), part history lesson (witness today’s edgy raw-food movement as it clashes with regulations rooted in Pasteur’s research) and part vivid sensual description (go ahead, vicariously taste with her those ant pupae popping like baby corn in your teeth). The book’s three sections (“Squishy or Swank?,” “Down the Rabbit Hole” and “Discomfort Food”) trace Goodyear’s journey wading into this brave new food world, offering a smorgasbord of humorously disquieting food adventures seasoned with a serious attempt to understand not just what people are eating, but why. Though Goodyear says it’s hard to pinpoint any kind of monochromatic position in the food movement (“that’s what makes the conversation between chefs and diners and everyone involved in this movement so incredibly lively!”), she does |
conclude that foodies share an attitude of “food as an adventure.” And that, Goodyear says, is new in America, where our food supply has become increasingly “standardized and industrialized.” The foodie movement that Goodyear tracks reflects a growing democratization. “So many self-identify, and from every background,” she says. “There’s no way to stereotype the demographic profile of a foodie.” Despite their diversity, Goodyear says the characters she met on her journey to the foodie underworld were uniformly forthcoming, “exuberant” and helpful. They enthusiastically revealed “all of their methods, from getting to serving to selling,” she says. “It’s a very open yet occasionally dodgy group of people.” A “spirit of insouciance” pervades this world, a sense of excitement and discovery. “This thing that you may think of as slimy and disgusting and inappropriate for eating, but when I dress it up this way and sprinkle beautiful purple borage flowers on it, not only does it look magnificent, it tastes magnificent, and aren’t you changed by it, and isn’t the world changed a little by this?” Some extremes in adventurous eating, Goodyear believes, are driven by a sense of the future as increasingly uncertain, one clouded with doubts about food security. “The reason we’re seeing so much of this high-end food that has aspects of survival eating (eating into the deepest parts of an animal or foraging for berries) has to do with an American anxiety about where we are in history, what our place in the world is,” she says. “We’re looking to these historically more resourceful cultures for clues about how we might eat in a time when maybe corn is not so available.” She pauses, then notes with irony: “At this same moment, China is embracing the American diet.” During many of her food adventures, Goodyear was pregnant but still participated gamely as a fearless eater (mostly fearless; see sidebar)—and often found herself delighted by what her taste buds encountered. That included escamoles (ant pupae), which she found “absolutely delicious. And those frog fallopian tubes I had in that ice cream sundae? Those were actually lovely…they tasted just like lychees—very sweet.” She also found the grasshoppers “very tasty.” In keeping with her role as amateur anthropologist, Goodyear doesn’t embrace being labeled a foodie. “With foodie-ism, I am trying to write about something I see happening in front of me. And I’m trying to write with an objective attitude toward my |
subjects. I don’t…feel wholeheartedly, ‘Oh, these are my people.’ I didn’t find my tribe. That’s why I hold that word at arm’s length for myself. I don’t 100 percent identify with any of the subcultures or people I wrote about—though I admire lots of them, and I had a blast with all of them.” She pauses. “You know, I eat a lot of granola.” 9
Jessie Grearson is a writer and graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop living in Falmouth, Maine. Anything that Moves was reviewed in the Aug. 1 issue of Kirkus Reviews. ANYTHING THAT MOVES: RENEGADE CHEFS, FEARLESS EATERS, AND THE MAKING OF A NEW AMERICAN FOOD CULTURE Goodyear, Dana Riverhead (272 pp.) $27.95 | Nov. 14, 2013 978-1-59448-837-5
Down the Hatch!
Even Goodyear had her limits while researching Anything that Moves. “I really, really tried to eat a century egg,” she says. “That’s a sort of fermented egg that’s buried in the ground, packed in a kind of ash…until it rots and ferments.” The insides look like avocado and smell like sulfur. “Just so repulsive. Anyway, I really tried….I lifted the fork to my mouth and tried to make it go in, and I honestly couldn’t. I thought I would retch. It was just not possible to get that egg in my mouth.” - J.G.
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“A well-rounded, absorbing narrative of entrepreneurship, wine and the extraordinary man who made it all happen.” from a man and his mountain
A MAN AND HIS MOUNTAIN The Everyman Who Created Kendall-Jackson and Became America’s Greatest Wine Entrepreneur Humes, Edward PublicAffairs (336 pp.) $26.99 | Nov. 5, 2013 978-1-61039-285-3
How a midrange California chardonnay captured the market and transformed the wine industry. Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Humes (Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash, 2012, etc.) explains how Jess Stonestreet Jackson (1930–2011) became “one of the four hundred richest men in the world,” quoting Jackson’s own estimate of his astonishing success as a vintner: “We did in wine what [Starbucks] did in coffee.” The author tells the quintessentially American rags-to-riches story of this remarkable man who worked from the age of 9 and put himself through college and law school and was still working 14-hour days when he died at age 81. Humes describes a man who loved taking risks, but his admiration for his subject does not prevent him from presenting a rounded portrait of this quirky, sometimes-ruthless man, a loving but demanding husband and father who arrogated all decisions to himself. Jackson had an enormous capacity for hard work and a brilliant mind capable of absorbing a massive amount of detail without losing the bigger picture. He began a legal career in 1955, working for the California Highway Department to establish a fair market price for condemned properties. From there, he reversed gears, going into private practice as the representative of developers. He became an expert in assessing real estate and accumulated a considerable fortune from his own investments. Twenty-five years later, he bought a small vineyard as a retirement property. After finally achieving a bumper grape crop, a glut in the California grape market threatened to wipe him out. Rather than give up, he opened a winery, mortgaging his assets in order to expand. Jackson positioned Kendall-Jackson to capture the middle market by mass-producing a quality line of blended wines, and he worked further to become expert in viticulture and in marketing. A well-rounded, absorbing narrative of entrepreneurship, wine and the extraordinary man who made it all happen.
THE COMPLEAT MEMOIRRHOIDS
Katz, Steve Starcherone Books (392 pp.) $23.00 | Nov. 12, 2013 978-1-938603-05-1 978-1-938603-15-0 e-book For less than $3,000, you, too, can publish your eccentric memoirs. Actually, just $2,540 is the exact number that 44 backers pledged to produce this Kickstarter-backed memoir/diary/travelogue from surrealist novelist Katz (Kissssss: A Miscellany, 2007, etc.). Make no mistake, this selection of 137 sparsely composed entries—alphabetized, no less, from “Almost Moves” to “Your Pants,” followed by the “Inadequate Thematic Index”—is a beast to read. Here’s one example, from the “Coda” that falls on page 65: “This distant past always emerges more clearly as emblems, icons, glyphs. Yesterday has no shape yet, remains dull, a broken line, as yet too amorphous for language. It takes many changes of weather for a memory to ripen into the present.” On the laundry list from “Ingredients Now,” we get, “Steve Katz? PRESENT! Two feet. Five toes each foot. Hammer toes bunch back against high metatarsal, then high longitudinal arch.” From “Now and Then,” “Son of a bitch. There’s no way I’ll ever write this. I haven’t got the metaphysical chops.” As one would expect from a long life, there’s much kvetching about family, quite a lot of travelogue and endless navel-gazing about the art of writing. Even the celebrity-studded stories are dull, as Katz relates an episode about a characteristically sloshed John Berryman and another about a convergence of geniuses that ends with the couplet, “That was how I didn’t get to know Kurt Vonnegut. So it went.” “Name Dropping” is another superfluity of excess, with thrilling moments like riding in an elevator with Janis Joplin and using the urinal next to James Brown (all celebrity names appear in bold). Fans of Katz’s surrealistic, hyperkinetic style may be interested in the method behind the madness, but presented on their own, these stories are as unremarkable as they are ostentatious. A gratuitous and unnecessary remembrance that lands with a dull thud.
STRONG BOY The Life and Times of John L. Sullivan, America’s First Sports Hero Klein, Christopher Lyons Press (336 pp.) $26.95 | Nov. 5, 2013 978-0-7627-8152-2
Historian and travel writer Klein (Discovering the Boston Harbor Islands: A Guide to the City’s Hidden Shores, 2008, etc.) delivers a well-researched, enjoyable biography of boxing’s first heavyweight superstar, John L. Sullivan (1858–1918). 58
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In the late 1800s, boxing matches were little more than “savage human cockfights.” Though prizefighting had rules, few participants followed them; moreover, the sport itself was mired in corruption and always on the run from the law. All that began to change when “Boston Strong Boy” Sullivan stepped into the ring in the late 1870s. A wondrous “ ‘engine of destruction’ manifest in flesh in blood,” Sullivan drifted into boxing at age 19 after demonstrating his prowess in impromptu brawls that caused him to lose jobs as a day laborer. He began his career by taking part in local matches around his native Boston. In 1880, Sullivan met his first two championship-level opponents and demolished them both. He traveled all over the country to take part in exhibition fights, and he earned a reputation as a fearsome opponent who never lost a match. Two years later, Sullivan finally had his much-desired shot at the heavyweight title in a bare-knuckle, illegal brawl. He defeated the reigning champion and then began another successful fight, outside the ring, to require that prizefights be conducted under Marquess of Queensberry rules, under which contestants had to wear gloves and put an end to such practices as head butting and wrestling. Attentive as he is to historical details, Klein’s storytelling gift is most evident in how he depicts “John L.” as a beloved hero who was eventually undone by ego and who had a legendary appetite for food and drink. Though largely forgotten, Sullivan was the great “American Hercules” who ruled the late-19th-century boxing world and helped usher it into the modern sporting age. A lively, consistently entertaining sports biography. (8-page photo insert)
MY CRAZY CENTURY
Klíma, Ivan Translated by Cravens, Craig Grove (576 pp.) $30.00 | Nov. 4, 2013 978-0-8021-2170-7
From the Nazi concentration camps to the communist show trials, Klíma (No Saints or Angels, 2001, etc.) shines a vibrant light on the machinery of oppression and the struggles of artists and intellectuals to subvert government control. For decades, the author was one of Czechoslovakia’s most prolific and influential writers of samizdat, but he has never told his own story in such detail. After miraculously surviving Theresienstadt, he enthusiastically joined the Communist Party (“It was as if the walls of the fortress where I had been forced to spend part of my childhood had hindered me from seeing the world in its true colors”) and decided to pursue writing. The travails of his father, an engineer prosecuted for running a factory that failed to meet its production quota, and the growing sense of paranoia in the literary and publishing communities in which he was beginning to establish himself gradually opened his eyes to the futility of communism, “a nefarious confederacy that in the name of grand objectives stole the property of society and destroyed what it had taken |
generations to create.” More than a memoir, the book is the intellectual history of a city and a memorial to its inhabitants, who, laboring underground, kept the idea of democracy alive after the Prague Spring. Encompassing all the major journals, movements and personalities who shaped Prague’s cultural and artistic life in the latter half of the 20th century, the author also touches on some of the themes—tension with Slovakia, postwar depopulation and stagnation of the countryside, the ongoing struggle to integrate gypsies and other minorities— that continue to shape the Czech Republic’s identity. A fitting capstone to a distinguished literary life and an exposition of one of the main flaws of communism—that “the betrayal of intelligence leads to the barbarization of everyone.”
THE TRIP TO ECHO SPRING On Writers and Drinking
Laing, Olivia Picador (352 pp.) $26.00 | Jan. 1, 2014 978-1-250-03956-9
What can we learn from the sodden stories of six gifted but alcoholic writers? Much—and maybe not enough. Freelance journalist Laing, (To the River: A Journey Beneath the Surface, 2011), who has a history of alcoholism in her own family, provides an enlightening look at the struggles of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, John Cheever, John Berryman and Raymond Carver—six men (she explains why she included no women) whose careers and lives were shaken and shortened by their addiction to alcohol. She notes that she selected them, among other things, because their lives intersected in places. Laing, who lives in England, decided to visit key sites in these writers’ lives and to do so, as much as possible, by train. Throughout, she comments—sometimes quite eloquently— about the scenery in and outside her rail car. Laing also evinces great familiarity with the principal texts of her writers, including their published and unpublished journals, letters and other relevant documents. She also instructs us about the effects of alcohol on the brain (including the devastating destruction of memory) and the rest of the body, as well as the social behavior of heavy drinkers, and she sketches the history and strategies of Alcoholics Anonymous and of other ways to battle the disease. Since we know the sorry fates of all these writers, there is an almost unbearable poignancy about Laing’s journey to sites of meltdowns and suicides. She wanders into bars the writers had frequented, looks at their residences in New York, New Orleans, Key West, Port Angeles and elsewhere, and continually tries to imagine the men in these settings. She ends in kind of a hard place: with the axiomatic message that alcoholics need to take charge of their lives and just stop. These six guys didn’t find that too easy. A provocative, evocative blend of memoir, literary history and lyrical travel writing. kirkus.com
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Johnny Cash, Warts and All The singer didn’t appoint an authorized biographer, but Robert Hilburn fits the bill By Claiborne Smith Those of us who write about books are used to receiving press releases from publishers pointing out that the writer of the book being pitched has been working on said book for what seems like an unduly long time. An author has been writing the Photo courtesy Christopher Morris book for 12 years, the press release may brag; another release boasts about a sevenyear gestation. The intent, of course, is to wow critics and readers with the awesome, epic undertaking the writer has accomplished. Then you read the book, and you think: What took you so long? That’s not necessarily because the book’s a stinker, though. When a publicist tees up a reader’s expectation by calling attention to how long it took to write the book, it’s difficult for a writer to live up to the hype. So it’s refreshing to know that Robert Hilburn’s new biography, Johnny Cash: The Life, exacted a measly three and a half years of its author’s time. Hilburn was the chief music critic and pop music editor at the Los Angeles Times for more than three decades. Don’t let those three and a half years fool you, though: Hilburn first met Cash backstage in 1967. He followed Cash’s career ever since, begging the Times to let him write about the musician’s 1968 Folsom Prison concert (Hilburn sensed that the man who sang “Folsom Prison Blues” would produce a memorable show there), even though he was just a freelance writer eager to get on staff at the newspaper. “We don’t want to give any space to that drug addict,” the editors told him (in 1965, Cash’s guilty mug had been splashed in hundreds of newspapers after he was caught with more than 1,000 amphetamines he bought in Ciudad Júarez, just across the border from El Paso). Hilburn pushed back and nabbed the assignment. 60
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Hilburn packed a lot into the three and a half years of researching and writing about Cash’s life. Johnny Cash will be the definitive bio of the tortured, truculent but often generous singer. Hilburn patiently wades through Cash’s many bouts with pills and alcohol, profiling those nearest Cash about the mental and physical effects of his addiction (this book features a lot of cars overturned by Cash). He penetrates the heart of Cash’s artistry; Cash came of age at the intersection of country, rockabilly and burgeoning rock ’n’ roll at Sun Records in Memphis, Tenn. The behind-the-scenes stories Hilburn unearths from those early days are engrossing for anyone interested in American roots music. Hilburn traveled to tiny Dyess, Ark., Cash’s cotton patch of a hometown, three times to fully sense what the singer’s upbringing was like. Cash didn’t appoint an authorized biographer, but Hilburn may as well be it. Several months before Cash died, Hilburn visited him and his wife, June Carter Cash, in Tennessee. “After June went to bed,” Hilburn recalls, “we stayed up and talked for a long time.” Cash was having trouble talking because of his asthma. “He kept saying, ‘I want people to know everything that happened in my life, all the stumbles, and that way they can see that I overcame them,’ ” Hilburn says. “Even if he found it difficult to tell some of the stuff, his own life was his greatest message.” 9
Claiborne Smith is the features editor at Kirkus Reviews. Johnny Cash: The Life (978-0-316-19475-4) received a starred review in the Sept. 15th issue of Kirkus Reviews. |
“A pertinent, wide-ranging comparative study of the unleashing of the ‘monster’ of private property, which has both enriched and enslaved populations.” from owning the earth
THE GREAT DEBATE Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left
Levin, Yuval Basic (304 pp.) $28.99 | Dec. 3, 2013 978-0-465-05097-0
A conservative journalist traces our current sharp political schism back to the writings of conservative Edmund Burke (1729–1797) and liberal Thomas Paine (1738–1809). Despite his conservative credentials, National Affairs founder and editor Levin (Imagining the Future: Science and American Democracy, 2008) maintains a generally disinterested balance throughout—although at times it reads like an earnest term paper from a talented, assiduous student: standard comparison-contrast organization, lots of lengthy block quotations. He begins by noting how Burke and Paine first met (they dined together in 1788), their early amiable relations and their later fierce exchanges in print. Levin then provides a biographical sketch of each (adding more as the argument advances) before commencing to compare their philosophical and political positions. Paine, he shows, believed in man as a natural creature—and that governments should be more consistent with his nature and should rest on principles derived from reason. Burke, by contrast, argued that we must learn from the past, continue what works and gradually change what doesn’t. These two basic approaches reoccur throughout the other topics Levin discusses: justice (the two men had very different notions of equality), obligation (Paine believed choice was more important), reason and prescription, revolution and reform, and our obligations to all generations, not just to the new, revolutionary one. Concluding, Levin chides both sides in today’s acrimonious climate, pointing out weaknesses in their positions and emphases. The author has done a tremendous amount of research and seems to have read every major work by both figures, doing his best both to state their positions clearly (and fairly) and to note their relevance in today’s America. He consigns to endnotes some of the subtleties and ambiguities of their positions. Some arresting reminders of our political past—would that Levin’s prose featured some of the fire flaring from his principals’ pens.
TO THE BONE
Liebrandt, Paul; Friedman, Andrew Photos by Sung, Evan Clarkson Potter (288 pp.) $30.00 | Dec. 3, 2013 978-0-7704-3416-8 978-0-7704-3417-5 e-book Acclaimed chef Liebrandt and Friedman (Knives at Dawn: America’s Quest for Culinary Glory at the Bocuse d’Or, the World’s Most Prestigious Cooking Competition, 2009) collaborate in a “literary tasting menu,” chronicling the chef ’s bumpy yet supersonic rise in the culinary world and the prestigious chefs who influenced his career. Packed with a bounty of dazzling recipes and photos and told chronologically, Liebrandt’s story begins in London. At the age of 13, the author began washing dishes in a new restaurant, prophetically called New York, New York. By the age of 24, Liebrandt had become the youngest chef to receive a three-star review from the New York Times, for his work at Atlas in Greenwich Village. The author recounts his stints with the famous chefs he apprenticed under while sharpening his skills, always pondering his next move. “It was no small thing to have worked for Marco Pierre White, Richard Neat, Raymond Blanc, and Jean-Georges Vongerichten all by the age of twenty-two,” he writes. “The Big Question in my life was as enticing as it was daunting: What next?” By 1999, Liebrandt’s desire to continue his innovative style and his outspoken personality propelled him to New York, where he finally moved to the next level. “I was only twenty-four. Relatively young to be handed the keys to the kitchen of a place like Atlas. But something told me I could handle it,” he writes. The author’s recipes reflect his idiosyncratic approach to “The Food,” which serves as “the object of an existential quest, to be pursued at the expense of just about everything else,” and they are not for the timid. Adventurous cooks can indulge their tastes and test their culinary skills with Duck Leg Torte, Beer Brined Pork Shoulder, Beet HibiscusGlazed Foie Gras or White Truffle Gnudi with Abalone Butter, among other decadent dishes. For those addicted to following the rise, fall and eventual resurrection of celebrity chefs, Liebrandt’s story will be an essential ingredient on their reading menu.
OWNING THE EARTH The Transforming History of Land Ownership Linklater, Andro Bloomsbury (496 pp.) $30.00 | Nov. 12, 2013 978-1-62040-289-4
A pertinent, wide-ranging comparative study of the unleashing of the “monster” of private property, which has both enriched and enslaved populations. |
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“An insightful book of self-reflection from the acclaimed novelist.” from dancing fish and ammonites
English historian Linklater (Why Spencer Perceval Had to Die: The Assassination of a British Prime Minister, 2012, etc.) focuses on the history of land ownership as driving human activity from the earliest ages and being the key to the creation of democracy. Were people merely custodians of the land, which belonged to God first and deputized to his representative on Earth, the monarch? Indigenous societies across North America, the Australian Outback and African savannah believed the land was communally owned and used, while in most of the rest of the world—e.g., Russia, China and India—“peasants worked, landlords possessed, but ultimately the earth was deemed to belong to its creator.” Evolving from the collision of crown and chief barons that resulted in the Magna Carta, the impetus for owning land gained steam in the 1500s in England with the land revolution, which displaced subsistence farming via the feudal system in favor of a few rich owners profiting from the buying of land and increasing yields. Enclosures went up, Henry VIII seized monastic land, populations grew and the Pilgrims, flung across the sea in their biblical experiment, decided that possession of New England was earned by the human toil put into it. Linklater pursues the clarification of the rights to private property through writings by Richard Overton, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, among others, and the emergence of “two capitalisms”: one, the Dutch model, top-heavy and feudal; the other, unregulated and guided by the “invisible hand” of supply and demand à la Adam Smith. Yet what makes Linklater’s study truly useful is his comparative global view, exploring conditions within Russia, Poland, the Ottoman Empire to China and India, and through the present real estate market crash. Vast, evenhanded and worthy of rumination.
DANCING FISH AND AMMONITES A Memoir
Lively, Penelope Viking (224 pp.) $26.95 | Feb. 10, 2014 978-0-670-01655-6
An insightful book of self-reflection from the acclaimed novelist—“not quite a memoir,” she writes, but “the view from old age.” Every few years since the 1970s, British author Lively (How It All Began, 2012, etc.) has published a slim, delicious novel, mixing sympathy and satire with a Chekhov-ian focus on time, mortality and wasted opportunities. Born in Cairo in 1933 and raised in World War II–era Egypt, she described her childhood in Oleander, Jacaranda (1994), but this insightful reflection on her life is not merely the second volume of her memoirs or, as she notes, even much of a memoir at all. Autobiographical details appear, but for the most part, Lively ruminates on a handful of subjects of universal interest on which a perceptive 80-yearold can speak with authority. She remains the person she has always been, encumbered by various indignities and disabilities but less preoccupied by death than concern that young people 62
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take for granted that the elderly are boring. Readers will share her amazement at society’s seismic changes since the mid-20th century. When he learned of the 14-year-old’s crush on a distant relative, an uncle warned that he was “queer,” and Lively was mystified. Learning about Oscar Wilde during a theater outing, her granddaughter exploded, “I don’t believe you! He went to prison because he was gay?!!” The faithful will recognize the author’s love of archaeology, and many will keep a pen handy to record titles and authors, since reading is one activity age has not diminished, and Lively is not shy about musing over her favorites. Readers will share her relief that dementia has not made an appearance. Although they will long for her next novel, few will regret that she has taken time off to write this unsentimental, occasionally poignant meditation on a long life, mostly well spent.
IAN FLEMING
Lycett, Andrew St. Martin’s (512 pp.) $29.99 | Oct. 1, 2013 978-1-250-03798-5 An exhaustive and exhausting biography of Ian Fleming (1908–1964), the creator of secret agent James Bond. Lycett (The Man Who Created Sherlock Holmes: The Life and Times of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 2008, etc.) offers an overwhelming wealth of detail covering every facet and period of Fleming’s life: the privileged yet turbulent boyhood, including school days at Eton (where Fleming excelled athletically if not academically), his distinguished service with the British Naval Intelligence Division in World War II, his tenures as a journalist and stockbroker (mixed results), and his phenomenal success penning the adventures of Bond. Throughout, Lycett copiously explicates Fleming’s habits, social connections, many romantic affairs, tempestuous relationships with his wife and mother, housing circumstances and academic pursuits. The sheer volume of biographical detail simultaneously impresses and oppresses the reader, as a portrait of a rather unpleasant, even cruel man emerges from the vast thickets of names, dates, clubs, houses, appointments and general ephemera. Lycett’s emphasis is squarely on Fleming, not his famous creation, and the subject ultimately fails to justify the author’s intense attention and industry. As presented here, Fleming was a cold and callous product of privilege, a diffident man of diffuse talents. Lycett studiously reports on Fleming’s writing habits, research gathering and the business aspects of the Bond books, but he doesn’t offer much in the way of literary analysis or a consideration of Bond’s place in popular culture. This is a densely detailed book about a man who, in the course of many other activities, wrote popular novels about a spy, not a reckoning with the creator of an enduring modern myth. Fleming scholars will find this a useful resource, but Bond aficionados won’t find much to compel them. |
FOR THE BENEFIT OF THOSE WHO SEE Dispatches from the World of the Blind
A solid scholarly biography with little to savor for general readers. Lycett’s subject remains an aloof, disagreeable enigma. (8-page b/w photo insert)
Mahoney, Rosemary Little, Brown (288 pp.) $27.00 | Jan. 14, 2014 978-0-316-04342-7 978-0-316-24870-9 e-book
FLAPPERS Six Women of a Dangerous Generation
Mackrell, Judith Sarah Crichton/Farrar, Straus and Giroux (512 pp.) $28.00 | Jan. 14, 2014 978-0-374-15608-4
Biography of six women who declared their independence during the Jazz Age. British heiresses Diana Cooper and Nancy Cunard, Russian artist Tamara de Lempicka, AfricanAmerican entertainer Josephine Baker, actress Tallulah Bankhead and aspiring writer Zelda Fitzgerald were daring women who defied expectations about what a woman’s life should be. Calling them “flappers,” British dance critic Mackrell (Bloomsbury Ballerina: Lydia Lopokova, Imperial Dancer and Mrs. John Maynard Keynes, 2009, etc.) notes how they were sexually promiscuous, reckless and given to “provocative exuberance.” As Dorothy Parker put it: “All spotlights focus on her pranks. / All tongues her prowess herald. / For which she may well render thanks / to God and Scott Fitzgerald.” It was Fitzgerald, after all, whose short stories publicized boyishly slim young women in short skirts and slinky gowns, drinking gin fizzes and falling giddily into love affairs. He modeled his flappers, he said, on his wife, Zelda, who once remarked, “I think a woman gets more happiness out of being gay…than out of a career that calls for hard work, intellectual pessimism and loneliness.” Although Mackrell’s subjects took advantage of postwar hedonism, unlike Zelda, the others showed no reluctance to work hard. Cooper became a respected actress; Cunard, a poet, publisher and political activist; Bankhead devoted herself tirelessly to her acting career; Lempicka, who had fled Russia after the revolution, reinvented herself as a painter; Baker hired tutors to shape her as a performer. Zelda was deeply unhappy: Her writing career never took off; her marriage was blighted by anger, infidelity and alcohol; and finally, she succumbed to recurring mental breakdowns. Mackrell ties her subjects together by asserting that they all struggled “with the quintessentially contemporary conundrum: how to combine career and family, self-interest, marriage and love,” but readers of this gossipy collective biography are unlikely to identify with their struggle. What these women shared most strongly were the glittering allure and tragic consequences of celebrity. (8 pages of b/w illustrations)
A spiritual odyssey into the world of the blind. In 2005, Mahoney (Down the Nile Alone: In a Fisherman’s Skiff, 2007, etc.) visited Braille Without Borders, Tibet’s first school for the blind, founded by German educator Sabriye Tenberken, who herself is blind. It offered classes in “Braille, Chinese, English, computers, mathematics and navigational skills,” to blind young Tibetans, many of whom were illiterate and had been living in deplorable conditions in their impoverished villages, where they were a burden to their families and were shunned and bullied by their peers. At first, the author viewed the trip with trepidation, believing the typical stereotype that the blind were deprived of “their real enjoyment of life, their effectuality, and their potential.” Mahoney was astonished to see the students’ levels of joy and accomplishment. Being blind, many of them said, had given them the opportunity to leave the hardscrabble existence in their villages and attend this wonderful school where they were being educated and making new friends. For the author, the experience was a revelation. Four years later, she volunteered to teach English at a new school that Braille Without Borders was opening in India, attended by adult students from Africa and Latin America as well as Asia who wished to work on behalf of the blind in their own countries. The diversity of the students greatly enhanced the vibrancy of the community, and Mahoney was impressed by their intellectual and spiritual depths. She observed that they navigated the heavily trafficked streets of Kerala with ease. They gathered information about their environment from their other senses in order to recognize people and places, and they lived in a world “dominated by thought rather than appearance and visual details.” After all, she writes, “it’s the ability to reason and communicate that make us extraordinary.” A beautiful meditation on human nature.
REIMAGINING INDIA Unlocking the Potential of Asia’s Next Superpower
McKinsey & Company Simon & Schuster (432 pp.) $28.00 | $14.99 e-book | Nov. 19, 2013 978-1-4767-3530-6 978-1-4767-3532-0 e-book From the proficient team that put together Reimagining Japan comes another concise, timely compendium.
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McKinsey Asia editor Clay Chandler and senior partner Adil Zainulbhai have gathered a rich array of voices on what makes India both so incredible and so frustrating. Written by foreign policy experts, CEOs, journalists and professors, the essays are grouped into themes and inevitably bleed and overlap. Topics include politics and policy, business and technology, challenges (e.g., hindrances to growth), culture, soft power and India’s place in the world. All of these enthusiastic writers agree on the fabulous richness of India’s diversity, its vigorous democracy, strong social fabric and work ethic, and joy with its reformed economy, yet they rue the nation’s underachieving status on the world stage. India is not going to grow at the rate of China, despite its “breakout” in the early 1990s. Half of its 1.2 billion people are under the age of 25, and while most of the nation’s wealth is generated in cities, the bulk of its population still resides on the land and is extremely poor, often lacking toilets and electricity. In the first part of the collection, offering overviews by some of the big-picture thinkers, the contributors point at the harm of “crony capitalism” (Ruchir Sharma) and the need for a “robust rule of law” (Gurcharan Das). Bill Gates chronicles the country’s stunning achievement in eradicating polio. The business section—comprised of pieces by the CEOs of Starbucks, Coca-Cola, Tesco, etc.—mostly reads like product advertisements, while other authors impart terrific insights into the potential of new technology in terms of infrastructure, digital, biotechnology, renewable energy sources and education. Thoughts on the Bollywood “dream machine” and what successful Indian émigrés in America can impart to those back home round out this clear, illuminating study for all readers, business and academic.
1963 The Year of the Revolution: How Youth Changed the World with Music, Art, and Fashion Morgan, Robin; Leve, Ariel It Books/HarperCollins (256 pp.) $25.99 | Dec. 1, 2013 978-0-06-212044-1
A hit-and-miss oral history of the “youthquake” year, from a predominantly
British perspective. Former Sunday Times Magazine editor in chief Morgan and Leve (It Could Be Worse, You Could Be Me, 2010) show how the advent of the birth control pill, the ascent of youth-oriented designers and models and photographers, the sex scandals that rocked the British government (but barely registered in the States), and the general feeling that life as well as youth were short were all integral elements of this seismic shift. Maintains Andrew Loog Oldham, former manager of the Rolling Stones, “It wasn’t the Beatles and it wasn’t the Rolling Stones, it was Vidal Sassoon, it was Mary Quant, David Bailey, the models, they were the start of it.” All are represented here, along with musicians who have covered this period more colorfully in 64
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their own books (Keith Richards, Bill Wyman, Eric Clapton) and a smattering of Americans, including journalists Robert Christgau and Gay Talese, both of whom could undoubtedly write books on the topic with greater depth and insight. “If I write my book, if it will be about anything, it will be about the Beatles and the Stones and the Supremes in ’64,” says Christgau, referencing the year that much of what is detailed in this book had more impact in America. He also testifies to his part in the sexual revolution: “I was having sex at least every two weeks throughout that entire period.” The authors mostly disappear from the text after proclaiming that “[i]n just one year, the landscape of our lives, loves and looks changed forever.” However, there’s no indication of when these interviews took place, whether they were all for this specific book or why these particular people were selected (Stevie Nicks in a book about 1963?). Whatever the nuggets of interest, this reads like an endless magazine article in need of editorial shaping and some kind of organizing principle. (b/w photo inserts)
WELLINGTON The Path to Victory 1769-1814
Muir, Rory Yale Univ. (744 pp.) $38.00 | Dec. 3, 2013 978-0-300-18665-9
First of a two-volume life of Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, covering his first 45 years, a time in which he became a military legend and major political figure. Wellesley was, writes historian Muir (Salamanca, 1812, 2001, etc.), “arguably, the greatest and most successful of all British generals.” He played a major role in the British subjugation of India and had risen to leadership when Napoleon Bonaparte decided to follow in the footsteps of Alexander the Great. The French proved a tough and battle-hardened enemy—as Muir notes, during the Peninsular War, an account of which forms much of this book, the French were perhaps not the best in battle but were certainly great at getting from one place to another and being prepared for it—against which Wellington honed his own British forces to be the best in the world at the time. The author argues that Wellington was directly responsible for elevating Britain to the head of the list of world powers, where it would remain for the next century and more. Interestingly, he was not an uncontroversial figure; as an Irish-born politician, he had plenty of enemies in Parliament, while he came under criticism during the early campaigning in Portugal for allowing a French army to escape—and not only that, but for helping it evacuate back to France. Some of Wellington’s early biographers were among those who advanced these criticisms, and one of the virtues of Muir’s book is its political evenhandedness, as well as its understanding of the late-18th- and early-19thcentury context. He is not above finding fault with his hero, either; as he writes, Wellington “could, on a bad day, be harsh |
“An unforgettable debut.” from if only you people could follow directions
IF ONLY YOU PEOPLE COULD FOLLOW DIRECTIONS A Memoir
and unjust, and his deep-seated conviction that he was invariably in the right did not make mending fences easy.” Next up, Waterloo. A welcome biography, particularly for students of European geopolitics.
TAKING DOWN THE LION The Triumphant Rise and Tragic Fall of Tyco’s Dennis Kozlowski Neal, Catherine S. Palgrave Macmillan (288 pp.) $28.00 | Jan. 7, 2014 978-1-137-27891-3
Neal (Business Ethics and Law/ Northern Kentucky Univ.) debuts with an investigation into the riches-to-rags career of Dennis Kozlowski, the former CEO of Tyco International who was convicted for grand larceny and other crimes and is still serving an indeterminate sentence in prison. The narrative features interviews with the principals in the case (which took off following the Enron scandal), including, for the first time, Kozlowski himself, former New York District Attorney Robert Morgenthau and members of his prosecution team, and executives from Tyco, and the author raises many questions about the prosecution and its results. Cross-checking her findings with trial transcripts and regulatory filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Neal explores how Kozlowski could have stolen money he appeared to have been entitled to by actions of the corporation’s board. She asks whether the DA’s office was not as scrupulous in prosecuting as it might have been—e.g., in observing the defendant’s rights. She also notes that Kozlowski’s associates at Tyco might have been open to indictment for allowing their chief such privileges as his almost open-ended pay agreement. She contends that this affected their role as witnesses for the prosecution. Additionally, Neal points to the role of the press in shaping the climate in which the prosecution unfolded, with lurid stories about Kozlowski’s luxurious lifestyle of excess. The evidence on which these questions are based seems to be substantial. Kozlowski, from jail, is able to say that he never had a chance to put up a proper defense and offers, nearly eight years after his conviction (subsequently upheld by higher courts), his claim to innocence. The author’s concluding refusal to “assign blame or attribute bad motives” strengthens the questions raised. A controversial airing of business issues from a decade ago.
Nelson, Jessica Hendry Counterpoint (256 pp.) $25.00 | Jan. 1, 2014 978-1-61902-233-1
It takes a virtuoso writer to make another familial memoir of addiction seem as vital and compelling as this stunning debut does. Where most memoirs have more of a novelistic, chronological continuity, Fiddleback senior nonfiction editor Nelson structures this book as a series of autobiographical essays, most of which could stand on their own; they are the nonfiction equivalent of a series of interconnected short stories. That form perfectly suits her story of a family in which “the roles have been pre-prescribed, written into our DNA.” The father will die young after long absences in jail or rehab or another relapse after a short stretch of sobriety. The mother will also self-medicate as she tries to sustain the illusion of family, one that is always falling apart. The son will inherit “the dead father’s legacy, this disease,” and is often missing and feared dead. The older sister will write this memoir after studying abroad, falling in love, earning her MFA in creative writing, teaching college, publishing in a number of highly regarded journals and maintaining a facade that masks her genetic code: “We are an imperfect people, full of contradictions. Do as I say, not as I do. That sort of thing. Outsiders see me as the most put together, but I harbor a secret: I am just better at faking it. I make it through the day.” Yet some days have been a whole lot tougher to make it through, to sustain a sense of “my real life, the one outside the theater of my brother’s addiction.” As it does in the cycles of recovery and relapse, prison and release, chronology jumbles, and verb tenses shift. The book’s excellent centerpiece, “A Second of Startling Regret,” unravels the family dynamic and illuminates the “self-sabotaging brain.” Even the occasional misstep into writerly precocity—“There is something heroic about fishermen— all that faith in the dark”—can’t compromise the author’s unflinching honesty and her story’s power. An unforgettable debut.
AMERICAN HEROES On the Homefront
North, Oliver; Hamer, Bob Threshold Editions/Simon & Schuster (272 pp.) $30.00 | Nov. 5, 2013 978-1-4767-1432-5 True stories of the men and women who put their lives in danger to defend the United States from terrorists. Combat-decorated former Marine North (Heroes Proved, 2013, etc.) and former Marine and FBI agent Hamer take readers on a tension-filled ride from the battlefields of Afghanistan
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and Vietnam to the living rooms of the American men and women who serve and protect their fellow Americans. “This book is about celebration, not devastation,” writes North. “It’s about men and women and even children who triumphed over their individual tragedies.” What the authors reveal are the personal stories told by the enlisted and their spouses and families as they prepare to leave on long deployments as well as what happens upon their return. Trained to sweep for IEDs, the soldiers conduct some of the most dangerous work in Afghanistan, where any disturbed dirt might hide an IED. Living in sweltering heat and eating dried rations, each day on patrol is taut, and each story places readers on edge as the tension builds toward the inevitable, that one step that changes everything. The men and women venture out “whole” only to return missing one or more limbs or, in some cases, not to return at all. Often newly married or with a baby on the way, these warriors are suddenly confronted with new challenges as they face painful surgeries and amputations, months of hospital stays and rehabilitation, and the process of learning to live with multiple handicaps. Despite all this, they often agree to do it again. Supplemented by color photographs, the stories are straightforward, honest testimonials to the courage American troops display on and off the battlefield. Authentic narratives of the men and women of the armed forces who have sacrificed for their country. (4-color photos throughout)
KILLING JESUS
O’Reilly, Bill; Dugard, Martin Henry Holt (306 pp.) $28.00 | Sep. 24, 2013 978-0-8050-9854-9 Conservative commentator O’Reilly, working with frequent collaborator Dugard (Killing Kennedy, 2012, etc.), settles on yet another liberal victim of politically motivated killing. Though O’Reilly has protested that Jesus Christ is above politics when the question turns uncomfortably to giving away everything to the poor, he’s quite happy to suggest that Jesus was killed because, among other things fiscal, “he interrupted the flow of funds from the Temple to Rome when he flipped over the money changer’s tables.” It probably didn’t help that he proclaimed himself to be the son of God, but, write the authors, it’s more that the lineage of Jesus and Annas the bad priest had been bound up for generations, the one hardworking and steadfast, the other a debauched class of bureaucrats who took a cut of the temple action in the form of “taxes extorted from the people of Judea,” sending a hefty cut back to the bosses in Rome. Jesus was the original tea party protestor, and never mind all that rendering unto Caesar business (or, for that matter, the Sermon on the Mount). O’Reilly has said that the Holy Spirit directed him to write this book, and we must suppose that that particular tine of the Trinity has it in for the Pharisees, whom religious historians are inclined 66
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these days to treat more sympathetically than do the authors. A virtue of the book is that O’Reilly and Dugard employ a broad range of ancient sources; a detriment is that they seem to regard these sources overly credulously and follow them into long asides (including enough of a recap of events to break this book into two: Killing Jesus and Killing Julius Caesar). Otherwise, the book has some novelistic, noirish touches, as if the New Testament had been mashed up with some lost pages of Erle Stanley Gardner. A pleasing read if you’re inclined toward the authors’ selective views. Otherwise, the four Gospels will do just fine.
JESUS The Human Face of God Parini, Jay Amazon/New Harvest (192 pp.) $20.00 | Dec. 3, 2013 978-0-544-02589-9
An insightful illumination of the life and significance of its subject, but this is more of a compact summary than a spark for fresh discussion. As a prolific poet, novelist and English professor, Parini (The Passages of H.M., 2010, etc.) doesn’t have much of a theological ax to grind, though neither fundamentalists nor atheists are likely to find themselves in accord with his stated attempt to find “balance between the literal and the figurative, giving full weight to the concrete meaning while relishing the mythic contours of the story.” This volume launches the publisher’s Icons series and might best be classified as interpretive biography, aimed at the lay reader rather than the scholar, yet summarizing the scholarship and shifting currents of thought that have led to such diverse and divergent beliefs on who Jesus was and what he meant. The context within which the author places him suggests that he was a literate man, a devout but reform-minded Jew, well-aware of the spirit that shaped Buddhism and the teachings and work of other prophets, at a time when miracles were more commonly accepted. “Jesus never meant to found a formal church with rituals and organized practices, to ordain priests, or to issue doctrinaire statements that formed a rigid program for salvation,” writes Parini. “Other than ‘follow me,’ his only commandment was ‘to love one another as I have loved you.’ ” He also “had little interest in damning anyone, and he certainly had no concept of hell as a place for perpetual torment.” Yet the author does not discredit the possibilities of miracles or resurrection, the divinity that makes Jesus more than a radical teacher. Those who believe that the essence of Jesus’ message involves “a change of heart” and “a shift into a larger consciousness, a life-enhancing awareness of the mind of God” will find a view of Christianity that embraces the mystery. This “big tent” version of Christianity proceeds from a generosity of spirit rather than didactic argument.
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“Flaws aside, Robb has broken significant new ground in this deep, fastidiously researched exploration into the ingenuity of the ancient Celtic people.” from the discovery of middle earth
HOUSE HOLD A Memoir of Place
Peters, Ann Univ. of Wisconsin (272 pp.) $26.95 | $15.95 e-book | Jan. 8, 2014 978-0-299-29620-9 978-0-299-29623-0 e-book
Recollections of place evoke ghosts, shadows and nostalgia. Peters (English/Stern Coll., Yeshiva Univ.) grew up in Wisconsin in a quirky house designed and built by her father. Perched on a hill overlooking woods and farms, the house reappears as the central image in the author’s lyrical memoir—not just of her family and childhood, but of her lifelong struggle to reconcile “the call to take root, the call to set forth.” After leaving Wisconsin, Peters lived in New York City, bringing with her expectations gleaned from movies, TV and, most of all, books. Her search for an apartment, for example, prompted memories of reading William Dean Howells’ A Hazard of New Fortunes; her walks down Fifth Avenue recalled Henry James’ The American Scene. Sinclair Lewis, Willa Cather, Edith Wharton, Theodore Dreiser, William Maxwell and, most movingly, New Yorker writer Maeve Brennan all hover, as Peters considers what place meant to them and how their rendering of homes, landscapes and cityscapes shaped her responses. Living on her own in New York, she moved often: Real estate became an obsession, and each space she inhabited became a text to parse. When newly married, she and her husband found a charming apartment in a Brooklyn brownstone, where Peters quickly steeped herself in the history of the building and the neighborhood. Although her mother exhorted her to “live in the healthy present,” Peters felt drawn powerfully to the past. “Before you even walk in a room, you’re remembering it,” her husband once remarked. The author confesses that her veneration of history has led to some “back in the day” complaining, but she has come to understand that despite attachment to a home or intimacy with a beloved landscape, she is, inevitably, a transient—“a steward, not an owner” of place. Nostalgia is a complicated version of love, Peters reveals in this elegiac memoir, which can threaten to fade the vivid present to a sepia-toned past.
THE DISCOVERY OF MIDDLE EARTH Mapping the Lost World of the Celts
Robb, Graham Norton (448 pp.) $28.95 | Nov. 4, 2013 978-0-393-08163-3
When planning a bicycle route through the Alps of central Europe, Robb (The Discovery of France, 2007, etc.) discovered a sophisticated ancient Celtic landscape that called for nothing short of a revision of ancient history. |
The author is a refreshing new voice in a canon of outdated, barbaric perceptions of an ingeniously advanced society and endlessly recycled quotes from Tacitus, Caesar or Cicero. “Tribes who used perishable materials where Romans used stone, and who recorded their histories in nothing more durable then brain tissue, are unlikely to be seen as sophisticated precursors of the modern world,” writes the author. However, through use of celestial mathematics, etymology, geometry, mapping and a charming measure of common sense, Robb reveals a clear picture of a culture that has been buried by the Roman conquest. He shatters the misconception that Rome built the first roads in Gaul and Britain, describing the well-maintained long-distance routes used by the Celts to move around their territories. They demonstrated a sophisticated understanding of astronomy and celestial movements, and they made mathematically inspired art. They also created one of the most prestigious universities in the ancient world (12 centuries before the Sorbonne) and laid out their cities, towns and sacred places via a series of meticulously ordered geometric and astronomical lines, imposing an intriguingly spiritual map on a very real terrestrial landscape. The dizzying array of tribal and place names—not frequently enough given modern geographical reference—and the occasionally tedious explanations of the mathematical/geometrical calculations may be necessary, but they are the weakest links in this otherwise gripping text. Some readers will also wonder if the title itself is a play to win readership from Tolkien fans, most of whom would find the book too dry for their tastes. Flaws aside, Robb has broken significant new ground in this deep, fastidiously researched exploration into the ingenuity of the ancient Celtic people. (50 illustrations)
HONOR AND BETRAYAL The Untold Story of the Navy SEALs Who Captured the “Butcher of Fallujah”—and the Shameful Ordeal They Later Endured Robinson, Patrick Da Capo/Perseus (400 pp.) $26.99 | Nov. 5, 2013 978-0-306-82308-4
Blustery, angry account of three Navy SEALs who snared a vicious Iraqi terrorist and were then ensnared by flimsy allegations of prisoner abuse. Writing “with the cooperation of ” two of the accused, Robinson (co-author: Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10, etc.) sees this odd case as an indictment of the military’s desire for political correctness and its complex relationship with its elite warriors: “The US Navy SEALs belonged to the nation, not to a few yellow-braided officers.” By 2009, the special-ops mission in Iraq was directed toward capture-or-kill missions against specific insurgents, like Ahmad al-Isawi, responsible for the notorious mutilation slayings of four American contractors in Fallujah. When the SEALs finally seized him, he accused one of kirkus.com
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bloodying his lip, a ploy literally out of the al-Qaida handbook. The fear of abuse scandals following Abu Ghraib caused commanders to lose perspective on the reality of how such counterterrorism operations were conducted. Unfortunately, the court martial of the SEALs became a public embarrassment for the military. The whole affair was carried all the way to Baghdad; after considerable expense, all three were quickly acquitted. Robinson ably discusses the intricacies of military justice, but his style is repetitive: Readers are constantly advised that “[t]he Navy had somehow jumped all over an unreliable statement from a stressed-out kid…acting as though a heroic SEAL platoon did not have an honest man among them.” Since the case against the SEALs seems like an update of Catch-22, Robinson’s frequent assertions that each accused warrior “wore the flag of the United States both on his battle dress and on his heart” become extraneous. Perhaps inadvertently captures the folly and resource drain of the Iraq War, though its emphatic style should appeal to conservative readers.
OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE Growing Up at Leeds Castle
Russell, Anthony St. Martin’s (336 pp.) $26.99 | Nov. 26, 2013 978-1-250-00601-1 978-1-250-03137-2 e-book
The “manifold glories” of growing up rich and entitled in England. Born in 1952, Russell was raised between Egerton Terrace, in Knightsbridge, London, and two castles belonging to his grandmothers: “Granny A” had a restrained castle in Dunguaire, Galway Bay, Ireland; “Granny B” had the very grand Leeds Castle, in Ken, England. This rather humble memoir is low-key, and the author sometimes sounds as amazed or bemused to be enjoying his privileged childhood as we are to read about it. His lineage is absolutely mystifying for American readers, but suffice it to say that Granny A was Lady Ampthill, who caused a great scandal in the 1920s for a trial she eventually won over the legitimacy of her son; Granny B, Lady Baillie, was related to the wealthy American Whitneys and actually bought Leeds Castle in 1926 for $874,000, renovated it luxuriously and ran the place in a lock-step feudal system, surrounding herself with courtly homosexual admirers and former members of Parliament. For young Russell, Leeds proved an idyllic weekend retreat, where his beloved Nanny stood in for elusive parents (“Our family connection to Leeds had lasted seventy-five years, one of the longest associations in the history of one of England’s oldest and most romantic ‘stately homes’ ”). He relished the oldworld rituals, like the launching of the ducks, wherein Granny B would preside at the pond and christen each new baby duckling to polite applause, and the fox hunt, naturally, which got underway in earnest at Dunguaire every year, with Granny A riding gracefully in sidesaddle. Eventually, the grim exigencies 68
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of a wider world intruded, such as having to go away to boarding school, first to St. Aubyns, then to Stowe, where the scions of England attended as a matter of course. Nostalgic reading for die-hard fans of English royal life. (16-page b/w photo insert)
WHERE WERE YOU? America Remembers the JFK Assassination Russo, Gus; Moses, Harry—Eds. Lyons Press (288 pp.) $26.95 | Nov. 5, 2013 978-0-7627-9456-0
The companion volume to a forthcoming NBC documentary on the Kennedy assassination. Investigative TV reporter Russo and prime-time producer Moses collaborated on canvassing a wide range of personalities, including politicians, news correspondents, actors, best-selling authors, photojournalists and widowed spouses. Participants were surveyed with key questions on how the Kennedy shooting impacted life personally and nationally with the resulting essays condensed from hourlong personal interviews, then divided into sections on the event’s location (Dallas), its politics, culture, and the ensuing controversy and speculation. A majority of these anecdotes and recollections are moving and powerful and will greatly fortify the televised coverage of this somber anniversary. Newsman Dan Rather writes that Kennedy’s untimely demise made him a more skeptical reporter, yet the president’s legacy as a whole renewed his sense of patriotism and “love of country.” Marie Tippit, widow to a Dallas policeman caught in Lee Harvey Oswald’s crossfire, reflects painfully on her loss, as do political duo Richard and Doris Kearns Goodwin, who jointly reflect on the unkind fate that befell the Kennedy family. With vivid narration, Robert Grossman recounts the sad, grueling hours he’d spent as one of the attending neurosurgeons searching for signs of life inside the president’s slain body. Former U.S. presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton offer nods to Kennedy’s humanitarian, pro-peace administration, while Pat Buchanan brusquely admits that Kennedy’s presidency was hardly “one of the greats.” Thought-provoking conspiracy theories amplify an already emotionally charged landscape but are soon smoothed over with memories offered by distinguished celebrities Robert DeNiro, Tom Hanks, Jay Leno and Jane Fonda, who fondly refers to the Kennedy clan as being “as close as we’ll ever get to royalty.” The themes of remembrance and appreciation remain constant throughout these pieces—all relevant and compiled with care. An engrossing, politically charged accompaniment to a TV event commemorating the 50th anniversary of the assassination. (b/w photos throughout)
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“A treasure trove that enriches understanding of some of the men and women who helped shape events from World War II to the present.” from the letters of arthur schlesinger, jr.
ROY WILKINS The Quiet Revolutionary and the NAACP
THE LETTERS OF ARTHUR SCHLESINGER, JR.
Ryan, Yvonne Univ. Press of Kentucky (296 pp.) $40.00 | Dec. 5, 2013 978-0-8131-4379-8
A solid biography of the man who headed the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People for nearly a quarter of a century. What began as a doctoral dissertation for Ryan, managing editor of the Economist’s annual World In publication, is now a full-blown portrait not just of Roy Wilkins (1901–1981), a man “more comfortable walking the corridors of power than demonstrating on sidewalks,” but also of the NAACP under his leadership. A founder and driving force behind the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, a powerful coalition of civil rights, labor and religious groups that coordinated lobbying efforts in Washington, D.C., Wilkins worked behind the scenes to get major civil rights bills through Congress in the 1950s and ’60s. Ryan details the conflict between activist groups and the conservative Wilkins, who was convinced that the integration of blacks into American society was best achieved not through violence and demonstrations but through legislation and the courts. In his view, the militancy of the Black Power movement and the havoc of ghetto riots drove away white support, and when Martin Luther King Jr. advocated merging the civil rights movement with the peace movement, Wilkins argued against it. His problems with other civil rights leaders were mirrored by struggles within the NAACP, where tensions and feuds led to a bruising battle over his retirement and a bitter last year in office for the reluctant-to-go Wilkins. His story is full of conflict with those who differed with him, but Ryan notes that a kind of synergy was operating as well: Favorable legislation and legal rulings were necessary but no guarantee of compliance, while the moral force of protestors created an environment for legal changes. Further, the author points to the survival of the NAACP as the greatest legacy of Wilkins: While once-prominent civil rights groups have shrunk or vanished completely, the mainstream NAACP is still going strong. Brings deserved attention to the accomplishments of a dedicated, savvy man. (13 photos)
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Schlesinger Jr., Arthur Schlesinger, Andrew and Schlesinger, Stephen—Eds. Random House (656 pp.) $35.00 | Nov. 1, 2013 978-0-8129-9309-7 An insightful, unique view of the multiple Pulitzer-winning liberal icon Arthur Schlesinger Jr. (1917–2007). Serving as their father’s editor, Schlesinger’s sons—former ABC News documentary writer Andrew (Veritas: Harvard College and the American Experience, 2005, etc.) and former Time contributor and World Policy Journal publisher Stephen (Act of Creation: The Founding of the United Nations, 2003, etc.)—mined more than 60 years of his correspondence and worked through the thousands of letters held at the New York Public Library and other collections. They also drew from his wide-ranging and varied correspondents to produce a worthy follow-up and companion to their Journals: 1952–2000 (2007). The letters selected here provide a clear picture of the multifaceted talents of their father. Schlesinger’s credentials provided standing for the advice he addressed to Democratic presidential candidates Walter Mondale in 1984 and Bill Clinton in 1992. He helped them run effective campaigns and noted that they should avoid the temptation to “out-Republican the Republicans.” The letters also include exchanges with close friends, like socialite and political supporter Marietta Tree and economist John Kenneth Galbraith, as well as complete strangers. Schlesinger and National Review founder William F. Buckley Jr. corresponded over many years, each welcoming the other’s latest publication efforts and disputing the historical significance of such figures as Joseph McCarthy. The editors also do a good job of representing Schlesinger’s relations with the Kennedy family over the years, and there are sharply penned rebuttals of critics of the Kennedy brothers’ Cuba policy—e.g., Christopher Hitchens and Joseph Califano—in which Schlesinger’s attention to detail predominates. Pen portraits of Eleanor Roosevelt, Jimmy Carter, Richard Nixon and Alger Hiss add to the mix, and the book also includes the author’s fears about the consequences of Ronald Reagan’s term and the war in Iraq under the George W. Bush administration. A treasure trove that enriches understanding of some of the men and women who helped shape events from World War II to the present.
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THE SIEGE 68 Hours Inside the Taj Hotel
Scott-Clark, Cathy; Levy, Adrian Penguin (352 pp.) $28.00 | Nov. 7, 2013 978-0-14-312375-0
Well-researched account of the 2008 terrorist attack in Mumbai, with plenty of firsthand detail. Starting with a group of 10 young fidayeen fighters approaching Mumbai by water on the night of the attacks, journalists and documentarians Scott-Clark and Levy (The Meadow, 2012, etc.) document everything possible, from the blow-by-blow account of the many hours the hotel was under siege to the recruitment and rigorous training of the Pakistani men who volunteered for jihad, however doubtfully. They even recount the story of the man who scouted targets for Lashkar-e-Toiba and, they believe, was acting as a double agent for the United States at the time. This has the benefit of providing a full, rounded picture and gives helpful background and context, most of which pulls readers deeper into the intrigue. Still, the sheer amount of detail can be overwhelming. Though the main focus is what happened at the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, nothing is left out. The authors also recount events at a nearby cafe, a Jewish center, a smaller hotel and elsewhere around town. All the information from those who survived the attacks is compelling and well-written. With more guests present than the other targets, there were many stories to tell, and the authors make palpable the fear and despair of the guests and employees. They also bring attention to the many mistakes made by police and hotel security in the months leading up to the offensive—there were many warnings that such an attack might be coming—and on the ground while it was happening. Important and enlightening, these parts of the book are perhaps more terrifying than the rest. Through it all, though, there are just enough moments to applaud. A great read that gives readers a better understanding of a terrorist attack from many points of view.
THIS LAND THAT I LOVE Irving Berlin, Woody Guthrie, and the Story of Two American Anthems Shaw, John PublicAffairs (288 pp.) $26.99 | Nov. 5, 2013 978-1-61039-223-5
The juxtaposition of two of America’s most enduring national anthems. The beginning of this provocative history of Woody Guthrie’s persistent folk song and elementary school staple “This Land is Your Land” and Irving Berlin’s overly sentimental “God Bless America” is a visceral scene. Writes music and theater critic Shaw, “Woody Guthrie was worried he might freeze to death. Twenty-seven years old and almost completely 70
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unknown, he was hitchhiking to New York and had been stuck outside Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, standing for hours in a snowstorm, waiting for someone, anyone, to pick him up.” It’s also a supposition, one of many that the narrative is built around: “Some people say that it was when he was freezing on the side of the road that he started thinking about a rebuttal [to “God Bless America”], a song that would give vent to his leftist politics.” What people, exactly? From there, this is a by-the-books (lots of books, with little original research) retelling of a story most folk-music fans know already. Shaw tries hard to weave tenuous threads between Berlin, the wealthy, internationally famous songwriter, and Guthrie, the singer/songwriter with a chip on his shoulder and a bunch of Carter Family melodies in his head. Berlin’s story doesn’t resonate well here; even 40-something years gone, Guthrie casts a very long shadow. Shaw does unearth an interesting alternative version of “This Land is Your Land” from the Woody Guthrie Archives. Written in the 1950s, it loses much of its politics, substituting mystical imagery about fertility and joy. For readers who want to delve deeply into one of these two specific songs, this book is a pleasant, harmless diversion. More casual readers would be better served by Joe Klein’s 1980 biography or, better yet, Woody’s own 1943 story, Bound For Glory. Shaw tries to pull off the same trick here as Alan Light did with Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” in The Holy or the Broken (2012), but there’s too little weight here to justify the act.
RENEWABLE The World-Changing Power of Alternative Energy Shere, Jeremy St. Martin’s (304 pp.) $25.99 | Nov. 26, 2013 978-0-312-64375-1 978-1-250-03822-7 e-book
A bright, accessible account of renewable energy and its role in our lives. In this jargon-free blend of history and reporting, science writer Shere explores the current states and possible futures of biofuel, solar cells, wind power, hydrothermal technology and other alternative energy sources. The future of renewables is “uncertain but full of promise,” writes the author, speculating that by 2075, our homes may include biofuel machines and hydrogen fuel systems. For now, scientists, researchers and entrepreneurs continue to struggle to overcome technical and logistical issues to produce quality alternative fuels as cheaply as possible. They do so in the face of many political obstacles. In considering each renewable, Shere tells the stories of early pioneers: Henry Ford and his dream of making auto fuel from plants; French inventor Augustin Mouchot and his solar engines of the mid-1800s; and Cleveland tinkerer Charles Brush, who, in 1888, built an 80,000-pound windmill to generate electricity. Modern interest in renewables was spurred by the 1973 OPEC oil embargo, only to dwindle when oil prices fell in the mid-1980s. In contrast, writes Shere, current interest may last: Production of conventional oil is nearing its peak, while the main |
“Skidmore does a fine job of telling a complicated story....” from the rise of the tudors
impediment to the rise of renewable energy—cost—is receding as economies of scale reduce the price of solar panels, wind turbines and other technologies. After interviews with experts and visits to a solar farm, a geothermal power plant and an exposition of wind power companies, among others, Shere concludes that “no one technology or idea or grand vision is a sure bet.” Each faces daunting challenges. Solar energy now accounts for less than 1 percent of annual U.S. power consumption; wind produces 2 percent of global electricity products. However, wind, solar and biofuels are gradually becoming “legitimate energy players.” One day, alternative sources will provide most of our energy. A solid overview of an important, often misunderstood topic.
BRAINSTORM The Power and Purpose of the Teenage Brain Siegel, Daniel J. Tarcher/Penguin (288 pp.) $27.95 | Jan. 1, 2014 978-1-58542-935-6
Siegel (Psychiatry/UCLA School of Medicine; Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation, 2010, etc.) tenders approaches to making adolescence work for parents rather than tearing them apart emotionally and psychologically. Although adolescence is often appreciated as a hormonal experience, the author examines it as a brain-change experience in which the brain is more integrated through the testing of boundaries, seeking independence but nurturing an interdependence that will offer both safe harbor and a launching pad to overcome the qualms of the unknown. For every bright side of the adolescent road, Siegel adds, there is typically a downside, so he endeavors to exercise the positive and minimize the negative impacts. Self-awareness and empathy are critical aspects of the process. The neuroscience involved can sometimes feel a bit wobbly. Regarding his “mindsight” skill, was it really necessary that he needed “some word to remind me that seeing the mind, being empathetic, compassionate, and kind, were important”? Must the process of tapping into “our own and others’ inner workings [to]…understand the outer behavior of ourselves and of others” now be called the inside-out approach? Siegel emerges as a bighearted writer, fully convinced that we all possess the fundamental virtues to navigate the choppy waters of adolescence, and he is eager for us to set them loose, working with adolescents to cultivate the positive aspects—and he is hugely convincing of the intense engagement and creativity that often accompany this time period in a person’s life. However, no new buzzy nomenclature is needed; it’s distracting. Still, those twin pillars he presents to imbue life with meaning and joy—to savor and serve—really can’t be beat. Smart advice, if unnecessarily repackaged, on providing the most supportive and brain-healthy environment during the tumultuous years of adolescence. |
THE RISE OF THE TUDORS The Family that Changed English History Skidmore, Chris St. Martin’s (464 pp.) $29.99 | Jan. 14, 2014 978-0-312-54139-2
An engrossing, probably definitive background to one of the most powerful dynasties in British history. Americans vaguely remember the 1485 Battle of Bosworth Field—with Richard III crying “My kingdom for a horse!” as Henry Tudor’s army closed in—but in England, it occupies the place of our Gettysburg. Richard III’s cry is Shakespeare, not reality, and British historian and Member of Parliament Skidmore (Death and the Virgin Queen: Elizabeth I and the Dark Scandal that Rocked the Throne, 2011, etc.) delves into the archives to tease out the facts. Emphasizing the Tudor family, this is a history of 15thcentury English kings, which began brilliantly with Henry V’s 1415 defeat of the French at Agincourt but descended into civil war after the 1422 accession of his son, Henry VI, who was weak, probably insane and long-lived. For more than 50 years, two parties, the Lancasters and the Yorks, fought for the power the king was incapable of wielding. Owen Tudor (1400–1461), a minor Welsh noble, married Henry V’s widow. This gave his grandson a distant claim to the throne, but the deaths of so many royal Lancasters made him the leading claimant when he defeated Richard III at Bosworth, and his marriage to Elizabeth of York united the families, bringing relative peace. Even educated readers will flinch at the relentless deceit, betrayal, treason and bloodshed that characterized 15th-century English politics, and they may have difficulty distinguishing the cast of characters since nobles passed the identical title to their heirs and women tended to be named Margaret or Elizabeth. Skidmore does a fine job of telling a complicated story that ends happily as Henry, now Henry VII, founded the Tudor dynasty that included his son, Henry VIII, and granddaughter, Elizabeth.
WELCOME TO PARADISE, NOW GO TO HELL A True Story of Violence, Corruption, and the Soul of Surfing Smith, Chas It Books/HarperCollins (256 pp.) $25.99 | Dec. 1, 2013 978-0-06-220252-9
The clown prince of “trash prose” cracks the coconut-wireless wide open in a hip exposé of Hawaii’s North Shore surfing culture. Each year, the best surfers in the world converge on Oahu’s North Shore for a chance to get “barreled” by the world-famous Bonzai Pipeline. There are riches to be won and legends to be created for all those fortunate enough to survive the monster kirkus.com
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wave’s curling caress. But that’s only the frothy, foamy surface of this story. According to Smith, ex–war correspondent and adventure writer and current “editor-at-living-large” of Surfing magazine, a much grimier truth exists far beyond dreamy visions of swaying palm trees and hula girls dispensing fragrant leis to wide-eyed tourists. Basically seen through the lens of a single day covering a high-stakes surfing showdown, Smith paints an oppressive, although darkly amusing, landscape of ramshackle frat houses and hair-trigger Hawaiians with punishing “Toyota Land Cruiser–sized” arms. The ultimate insider, the author spends his days tiptoeing around the island’s nativist elite and trying hard to remember the etiquette that will spare him from being “slapped” or “choked out.” The droll personal narrative, evocative of Hunter S. Thompson at times, entertains, while superior reporting informs and illuminates much about the surf industry’s peculiar machinations, its cavalcade of sunbleached heroes and the troubled history of Hawaii itself. “I will always remember that first trip to the North Shore,” he writes. “It seemed run down. It seemed unkempt. It seemed used. It seemed rotten. It was not the gilded expanse of my imagination. It was rough and dirty.” Effortlessly shifting from the profound to the profane, and back again, Smith is alternately self-reverential and self-mocking in tone but totally engrossed in the “madness” that ensues every winter when “the pipe is pumping.” A boozy and often funny investigation into a littleunderstood corner of America.
27 A History of the 27 Club Through the Lives of Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, and Amy Winehouse Sounes, Howard Da Capo/Perseus (384 pp.) $26.99 | Nov. 15, 2013 978-0-306-82168-4
In his latest pop-cultural study, Sounes (Fab: An Intimate Life of Paul McCartney, 2011, etc.) offers a stern corrective to the adage that it’s better to burn out than to fade away. The author takes a refreshingly skeptical view of the belief that a conspiracy accounts for the deaths of Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse, dismissing urban legends and murder theories to reveal the similarities among them. All six struggled with parental divorce and/or disapproval, began abusing substances in adolescence, and held conflicting, ambivalent views about fame. By the time they each died, Sounes argues, they had been pursuing self-destructive paths for so many years that they essentially all committed suicide, although Cobain is the only one whose death is officially designated as such. Indeed, the levels of degradation to which each performer sunk is truly alarming, especially Winehouse, who regularly drank herself into seizures and blackouts and whose legendarily addled performances were captured for posterity on YouTube. Perhaps the most unsettling 72
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information that Sounes reveals, however, is the lack of interest that all six had in recovering and moving on with their careers. Media outlets and fans alike have traditionally lamented these deaths as tragic due not only to the performers’ youth, but also to the promising paths that lay ahead of them. Not so, according to the author: They had all peaked at the ripe age of 27 and were suffering from such intense psychological pain that their early deaths were inevitable. In the case of Winehouse, writes Sounes, she “made a big impact on popular music in a short career without doing very much or going very far.” Equally depressing, they all spent their last days surrounded by hangerson who seldom had their best interests at heart or who denied the magnitude of their addictions. A compelling examination of the effects of sudden fame on mentally fragile artists. (16 pages of b/w photos)
NEWTON’S FOOTBALL The Science Behind America’s Game
St. John, Allen; Ramirez, Ainissa G. Ballantine (272 pp.) $26.00 | Nov. 19, 2013 978-0-345-54514-5
Journalist St. John (Clapton’s Guitar: Watching Wayne Henderson Build the Perfect Instrument, 2005, etc.) and former Yale engineering professor Ramirez (Save Our Science: How to Inspire a New Generation of Scientists, 2013) use scientific principles to give a greater understanding of the spectacle of competitive violence that is American professional football. The authors’ down-to-earth examples make for an unexpectedly engaging book, as they reveal the surprising fact that professional and college coaches of the sport’s early years were themselves students of higher learning who designed the game as a way to find order in chaos, albeit by pummeling opponents. St. John and Ramirez boldly propose that legendary Green Bay Packers head coach—and former high school math teacher— Vince Lombardi was as much a man of science as Sir Isaac Newton and mathematician John Nash, of A Beautiful Mind fame. (Lombardi’s film of his coaching philosophy, his “manifesto,” was titled “The Science and Art of Football.”) Throughout the book, the authors demonstrate the sport’s intellectual underpinnings. As in meteorology, seemingly minor or random events—or changes in strategy—can determine outcomes in unexpected, far-reaching ways, as seen in the revolutionary “West Coast Offense” developed by former San Francisco 49ers head coach (and widely regarded offensive mastermind) Bill Walsh. The authors also show that the zone blitz is a perfect example of physicist Werner Heisenberg’s uncertainly principle. In fact, many football fans are, perhaps unknowingly, familiar with chaos theory through the scheme of the no-huddle offense. Though some of the chapters could have been shortened and folded into others without weakening the premise, what makes this book so enjoyable is the authors’ revealing of how academic disciplines such as Boolean algebra and paleontology are |
“A comprehensive, moving biography of arguably the world’s greatest and most well-known composer.” from beethoven
THE VENETIANS A New History: From Marco Polo to Casanova
present in such a brutish sport—and it never comes across as a sleep-inducing college lecture. Both self-proclaimed geeks and the sports-averse can appreciate this “gridiron version of the scientific method.”
THE CROOKED MIRROR A Memoir of Polish-Jewish Reconciliation
Steinman, Louise Beacon (240 pp.) $26.95 | $26.95 e-book | Nov. 5, 2013 978-0-8070-5055-2 978-0-8070-5056-9 e-book A writer/literary curator explores the anguished, often contentious topic of Polish Jewry through the lens of her own
family history. For centuries, Jews “had been part of Poland’s body and soul,” writes Steinman (Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities/Univ. of Southern California; The Souvenir: A Daughter Discovers Her Father’s War, 2001). But during the Holocaust, their Christian neighbors did the unthinkable and allowed millions of Jewish people to die in Nazi death camps. The maternal side of the author’s family was so marked by this horror that family history disappeared into a “black hole” of silence. Aching from this loss of connection to her past, Steinman traveled to a Polish interfaith retreat looking for answers. She left realizing how little she knew, not just about her family and personal prejudices, but also about Polish history. For the next decade, she returned to Poland to recuperate lost family history and understand the relationship between Jews and Christians. As the author pieced together the fragments of her family’s past, she came into contact with Poles of all ages and faiths who had dedicated their lives to not only studying Polish Jewish history, but opening a dialogue about both the Holocaust and Polish anti-Semitism. Steinman discovered how cities throughout Poland and Eastern Europe had once been home to thriving multiethnic communities. When war expunged the Jews and their culture from those populations, the cities became flattened shells of what they had once been. The rise of Nazism was to blame for this mass genocide, but as Steinman learned, Israel also helped to perpetuate anti-Polish sentiment by highlighting only what happened during Hitler’s reign of terror and ignoring everything else. Steinman’s elegiac book is a powerful reminder of how ideologies can become “crooked mirror[s]” that distort reality and destroy lives, cultures and nations.
Strathern, Paul Pegasus (368 pp.) $27.95 | Dec. 15, 2013 978-1-60598-489-6
The story of the spirit of the Most Serene Republic of Venice. Novelist and nonfiction author Strathern (The Artist, the Philosopher, and the Warrior: Da Vinci, Machiavelli, and Borgia and the World They Shaped, 2011, etc.) points out that Venice was, for hundreds of years, a commercial republic, a trade center happy to flaunt her wealth, and highly pragmatic in her politics, diplomacy and religion. Her navy was world famous, and with good reason; the most famous condottiere, Bartolomeo Colleoni (1400–1475), actually dragged ships over a mountain to Lake Garda to relieve Brescia from Milanese forces. Strathern deftly weaves the history of the near-continuous wars with Genoa and Milan into short biographical sketches of the Venetian giants of the arts and sciences. She fostered so many innovations, they’re difficult to list. Her bureaucracy was second to none, and it served as the birthplace of statistics, double-entry accounting and the concept of the assembly line (which could outfit a galley in the time it took to eat dinner). It was the home of the first journalist, satirist Pietro Aretino (1492–1556), and, thanks to the printing press, the first regular newspaper. The presses were also able to spread the music of opera, and the first tourist guide was published in 1581, 16 years after “Il Catalogo…(The Catalogue of All the Main and Less Honoured Courtesans of Venice).” Venice also served as the bulwark against the Eastern empires, but when her powers weakened, the Ottomans and, finally, Napoleon put an end to her greatness. After the French army left, writes the author, “[t]he 1,000-year-old Republic of Venice was no more.” The great artists, explorers and scientists of the period are well-noted, but La Serenissima is the true subject of this book, and a better inducement to visit would be hard to find.
BEETHOVEN The Man Revealed
Suchet, John Atlantic Monthly (400 pp.) $30.00 | Dec. 10, 2013 978-0-8021-2206-3 978-0-8021-9291-2 e-book A comprehensive, moving biography of arguably the world’s greatest and most well-known composer, Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827). For the many readers lacking the proper background in musical theory, British broadcaster and Beethoven authority Suchet’s explanations of Beethoven’s music sing to us almost as
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if we could hear it. Knowing of Beethoven’s deafness—his hearing began to deteriorate in his mid-20s—teaches us that the truly great can hear music in their brains. For the rest of us, we rely on exposure to the joy of hearing the music and the kindness of those who will explain it to us without impugning or offending our intelligence. To suggest that Beethoven was eccentric is being kind. He was unkempt to the point of slovenliness, and his unpredictable temperament and manic gestures and yelling during his walks were only accepted because of his well-known brilliance. At the same time, nothing impeded his creativity, as he produced some of his best work in times of war, ill health and extreme poverty. Only the years of legal battles over the guardianship of his nephew taxed his powers, a situation that was never really resolved, only postponed. Suchet examines Beethoven’s creative process over the years, especially in regard to the writing of his only opera, Fidelio, which premiered in 1805. The author’s moving description of the heart-rending melody in one of the legendary composer’s works brings us to a greater appreciation of the man: “It is a lift, marked sotto voce, which seems to take the soul with it. After a development, the first violin then falls a sixth. It is heartrending. When you believe Beethoven cannot increase the intensity any more, he writes pianissimo quavers for three strings, and then the first violin… weeps.” In the postscript, Suchet writes that “musicologists know where the source material is,” but he provides a brief list of recordings for curious lay readers. Kudos to the author for this deeply moving, outstanding biography.
THE GAP The Science of What Separates Us from Other Animals Suddendorf, Thomas Basic (352 pp.) $29.99 | Nov. 12, 2013 978-0-465-03014-9
A reader-friendly examination of the great gap that exists between human beings and the rest of the animal world and an explanation of how our minds came to be unique. In his debut, Suddendorf (Psychology/Univ. of Queensland) first looks at what we have learned about the mental capacities of other primates, describing numerous experiments and both lean and rich interpretations of data. The author’s words for these differing interpretations are “killjoy” and “romantic,” respectively, and he takes a position midway between them. His descriptions of the many ingenious tests to assess the capabilities of various species and of human children make for fascinating reading. In language, intelligence, theory of mind, culture and morality, humans are set apart by the ability to imagine and reflect on different scenarios and by the desire to link their scenario-building minds together. Thus, while animals have communication, humans have an open-ended language; while they demonstrate problem solving, humans have abstract reasoning; 74
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while they have memory, humans have mental time travel; while they show evidence of traditions, humans have cumulative culture; and while they display empathy, humans have morality. As to how this gap came to exist, the author posits that Homo sapiens are just one branch of the various species of hominids that once existed and that our ancestors may have played a major role in eliminating their closest relatives on the family tree. “The reason the current gap between animal and human minds seems so large and so baffling, then,” writes the author, “may be because we have destroyed the missing links.” He warns that the gap will widen as humans drive the great apes into extinction, but in a surprisingly hopeful conclusion, he notes that humans are capable of choosing and creating a desirable future for ourselves and for our closest relatives. A fine example of science made accessible for general readers, combining history, personal anecdotes, clear accounts of research and a broad picture of human evolution. (37 b/w illustrations)
STRINGER A Reporter’s Journey in the Congo Sundaram, Anjan Doubleday (288 pp.) $25.95 | Jan. 7, 2014 978-0-385-53775-9
The former Associated Press stringer in Kinshasa details his year of living dangerously amid the chaos of post-Mobutu Congo. Sundaram was working toward a doctorate in mathematics at Yale when, suddenly tired of abstraction, he began craving a taste of hard-edged reality. He got his wish. A New Haven bank employee with Congolese roots arranged for him to live with her relatives, a married couple and their infant daughter, in a modest house (by Congo standards) in the rough-and-tumble Victoire section of that country’s capital. Sundaram, who had turned down a job with Goldman Sachs for the opportunity, arrived with a few thousand dollars and the quixotic idea of becoming a freelance correspondent. After some misadventures, including the theft at gunpoint of his entire bankroll, the author managed to get a gig with AP, which was looking for someone to help cover the upcoming election in 2006 between Joseph Kabila, son of the assassinated rebel who deposed longtime strongman Mobutu in 1997, and his vice president, JeanPierre Bemba. Sundaram weaves back and forth between his strange personal odyssey and the country’s tortured history and politics, with his own experiences and sensations meriting most of the attention. Much of the time, while encountering ordinary Congolese and expatriate merchants, journalists and U.N. employees, he waited for something to happen. Finally, he went in search of news, taking arduous trips into the rain forest, where he found pygmies losing ground to greed and globalization, and to the east, where warlords and militias threatened local villages and U.N. forces. |
“Old-school journalism that has plenty to say about the new media and how we absorb information today.” from dogfight
EMPIRE OF SECRETS British Intelligence, the Cold War, and the Twilight of Empire
Books by journalists usually keep the focus outward, but Sundaram has more of a novelist’s interior sensibility and a talent for describing anxiety and ennui. Readers may be tempted to compare him to Conrad and Naipaul, but he has a strong, unique style all his own.
DOGFIGHT How Apple and Google Went to War and Started a Revolution
Vogelstein, Fred Sarah Crichton/Farrar, Straus and Giroux (272 pp.) $27.00 | Nov. 12, 2013 978-0-374-10920-2
The backbiting true story of the smartphone wars, as told from the point of view of the guys in the trenches. The shadow of fellow Wired alum Steven Levy looms large over this new history by contributing editor Vogelstein, but in his debut nonfiction account of the spectacular meltdown between Apple and Google, the author takes a refreshingly different approach. Where Levy is always one of few journalists trusted with a new device before launch, much of Vogelstein’s account comes not from the storied minds of Steve Jobs, Larry Page or Sergey Brin, but from the engineers, fixers and financiers who put their careers on the line in the name of those individual visions. Rather than tracking the entire history of Apple like Walter Isaacson, Vogelstein opens with the second revolution, “The Moon Mission,” with Apple’s engineers sweating through one of Jobs’ famous live demonstrations of the iPhone. Most people outside the industry won’t remember that Apple and Google were actually in partnership for many years. Vogelstein painfully recalls the betrayal that Jobs felt when Google began moving into the sector and Jobs’ vehement reaction: “Apple did not enter the search business. So why did Google enter the phone business? Google wants to kill the iPhone. We won’t let them. Their Don’t Be Evil mantra? It’s bullshit.” This unhealthy competition makes for juicy reading, to be sure, but the author makes some very salient points about a post-tablet world and the future of the media. “It’s not just that two of the biggest, most influential corporations in their worlds—Apple and Google—are fighting each other to the death,” he writes. “It’s that the mobile revolution they set off has suddenly put nearly $1 trillion in revenue from half a dozen industries up for grabs.” Old-school journalism that has plenty to say about the new media and how we absorb information today. (8 pages of b/w illustrations)
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Walton, Calder Overlook (432 pp.) $35.00 | Nov. 14, 2013 978-1-4683-0715-3
A fresh exploration of MI5’s role in the prickly process of extricating Britain from its colonial grip. Having worked closely as a research assistant on Christopher Andrew’s official history of MI5 (Defend the Realm, 2009), historian Walton introduces much newly declassified information for a startling look at the Security Service’s role in smoothing the transition of power as Britain began, after World War II, to relinquish (or lose) its hold over its colonial empire. Unlike Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6, in charge of gathering intelligence from foreign (non-British) sources, the domestic MI5 was also delegated as Britain’s imperial intelligence service, in charge of counterespionage, countersabotage and countersubversion across the colonial empire. Walton is certainly an expert in sifting through these layers of official distinctions, and he writes with methodical authority, first examining how the services were formed in 1909 during peacetime in response to fears about Britain’s “colonial frailty” in the aftermath of the Boer War, considered by some as the first blow to the British colonial bulwark. Gradually, in the 1930s, MI5 began posting officers to British territories overseas, moving from a skeleton crew to a growing force of career professionals, especially after World War II as the Cold War kicked in and terrorism in the Middle East ramped up. From here, Walton moves from one hot spot to another, tracing MI5’s counterterrorist measures in Palestine, the Malayan Emergency, and insurrection in African colonies like the Gold Coast, Nigeria and Kenya. These measures were more brutally executed than the British record had previously allowed—e.g., the quelling of the Mau Mau insurgency of 1952. MI5’s mission was to keep former British colonies from drifting into the Soviet orbit and to vet newly elected leaders of communist tendencies. A good first step at clarifying decades of official lies and failures. (16-page b/w insert)
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“Despite its overreach, this is an ambitious portrait of a young actress whose best films are still ahead of her—a first volume that should whet readers’ appetite for the second...” from a life of barbara stanwyck
AMERICA’S GREAT GAME The CIA’s Secret Arabists and the Shaping of the Modern Middle East
Wilford, Hugh Basic (384 pp.) $29.99 | Dec. 3, 2013 978-0-465-01965-6
By turns admiring and critical playby-play of CIA Arabists as they directed the Cold War’s Middle East chessboard. As the blowback from America’s meddling in the Middle East continues to return in the form of the toppling of dictators long supported by Washington, Wilford (History/California State Univ., Long Beach; The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America, 2008, etc.) spotlights the activities of several prominent CIA Arabists who helped manipulate the Cold War regimes in Egypt, Iran, Syria, Jordan and others, often to contradictory and devastating effect. Grandsons of Theodore Roosevelt, raised cavorting around Long Island, and educated at Groton, Archie and Kermit “Kim” Roosevelt, close in age, both gravitated toward action in North Africa and the Muslim world during World War II under the aegis of the Office of Strategic Services (the precursor to the CIA) in Cairo. With the British imperial presence in the region on the wane, the U.S. officers moved to fill the gap: These included the Roosevelts, Miles Copeland, Stephen Penrose, Harold Hoskins and others, who were steeped in Arabic and resolved to encourage a more nationalistic, anti-Zionist approach in Palestine. Working with the American oil industry and Jewish groups like the American Council for Judaism, they attempted to galvanize U.S. public opinion against Zionism. This was defeated, however, by President Harry S. Truman, who, facing re-election, instantly recognized Israel in 1948. Wilford tracks the Arabists as the Cold War ensued from capitals in Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, as the “crypto-diplomats” worked to put in place nationalistic strongmen who were supposed to be pro-Western and anti-Communist but often proved problematic and intractable, culminating in the Iranian coup of 1953 and the Suez Crisis. A mostly insightful examination of these “Mad Men on the Nile.” (36 b/w illustrations)
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A LIFE OF BARBARA STANWYCK Steel-True 1907-1940
Wilson, Victoria Simon & Schuster (1056 pp.) $40.00 | Nov. 12, 2013 978-0-684-83168-8
The toughest broad in Hollywood gets the Robert Caro treatment. It’s perhaps beside the point to say that Knopf vice president and senior editor Wilson’s massive biography of Barbara Stanwyck (1907– 1990) makes too much of its subject. The first of two volumes, it weighs in at more than 1,000 pages and only takes the subject up to the age of 33. This first installment is as much about the legendary actress’s life as her times: the lavish world of Hollywood as well as the Depression-era reality of people who flocked to see their favorite stars. By placing Stanwyck in this larger context, Wilson seems to be suggesting that she was a key figure of the 20th century, which is, at the least, a bit of a stretch. However, Wilson provides a very real sense of Hollywood as experienced from the inside. Born Ruby Stevens and orphaned at an early age, Stanwyck emerges here as every bit the scrapper she played on screen, an all-consuming whirlwind whose costars would be so awestruck that they would often forget their own lines. She wasn’t necessarily the classic beauty; she was the sexy gal who said, “Now get out!” In married life, her toughness varied. She loyally suffered at the hands of her mentor, Frank Fay; on the rebound, she both nurtured and dominated Robert Taylor. While Wilson can lay on the research a bit thick—no salary or household expense gets past her—she deeply scrutinizes every Stanwyck performance up to 1940, letting us see the actress work and, in some key roles—e.g., The Miracle Woman, The Bitter Tea of General Yen and Stella Dallas—really sweat. The author also includes an extensive, mostly helpful series of appendices comprising stage, film, radio and TV chronologies. Despite its overreach, this is an ambitious portrait of a young actress whose best films are still ahead of her—a first volume that should whet readers’ appetite for the second, provided they have the stamina to stay with it.
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children’s & teen THE FORBIDDEN STONE
These titles earned the Kirkus Star:
Abbott, Tony Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins (432 pp.) $16.99 | $9.99 e-book | Jan. 7, 2014 978-0-06-219447-3 978-0-06-219445-9 e-book Series: The Copernicus Legacy, 1
THE FORBIDDEN STONE by Tony Abbott.......................................... 77 PAINT ME A MONSTER by Janie Baskin........................................... 80 BAD KITTY DRAWN TO TROUBLE by Nick Bruel............................ 82 SUPERWORM by Julia Donaldson; illus. by Axel Scheffler.............. 84 FIREBORN by Toby Forward...............................................................85 OPHELIA AND THE MARVELOUS BOY by Karen Foxlee................ 86 ANGEL ISLAND by Russell Freedman................................................ 86 FIRSTBORN by Lorie Ann Grover......................................................87 A DANCE LIKE STARLIGHT by Kristy Dempsey; illus. by Floyd Cooper........................................................................... 99 JOSEPHINE by Patricia Hruby Powell; illus. by Christian Robinson................................................................100 JOSEPHINE The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker
Powell, Patricia Hruby Illus. by Robinson, Christian Chronicle (104 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 14, 2014 978-1-4521-0314-3
Four precocious preteens and a distracted astrophysicist travel to Europe to unravel a mystery that has already
claimed several lives. The arrival of a coded email reveals that 12-year-old Wade Kaplan’s antique star map is not just a beautiful artifact, but a key. Unfortunately, as Wade, his astrophysicist father and his stepbrother, Darrell, discover, the map is only the first of many clues. The three would-be adventurers are joined by Wade’s technophile cousin, Lily, and her bookish friend, Becca. The five follow the clues to Berlin, where Dr. Kaplan discovers that he is the only remaining member of the Asterias, a group run by his murdered mentor. The academic quest quickly becomes deadly as a ruthless group competes for the 12 hidden relics that can save the world and unlock the Copernicus Legacy. Filled with riddles and ciphers, this first of 12 installments will keep readers intellectually stimulated as well as entertained. The stepbrothers’ bond, a budding crush and a mystery that plays off of real historical figures and facts make this more than a pedestrian whodunit. With engaging characters, a globe-trotting plot and dangerous villains, it is hard to find something not to like. Equal parts edge-of-your-seat suspense and heartfelt coming-of-age. (Mystery. 8-12)
AESOP’S FABLES
Aesop Illus. by Ayano Imai Minedition (32 pp.) $17.99 | Nov. 1, 2013 978-988-8240-52-4
Is there any way to make a collection of Aesop’s fables feel fresh? Yes—turn it into a calendar. The 90-degree rotation of the opening combines with the horizontal layout of the 12 fables to make the book look like a calendar; though there are no dates or monthly labels, the palette and mood of the fables modulate seasonally as they progress. The unusual format (akin to Tops and Bottoms by Janet Stevens, 1995) is a creative |
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“…Hayley’s strong, wryly vulnerable voice carries the narrative toward a resolutely imperfect, hopeful conclusion.” from the impossible knife of memory
way to present these moralistic tales. The white-bordered paintings are placed on the top page; the story faces it on the bottom page, which is dotted with spot art that adds surrealistic accents. For example, in “The Cockerel and the Jewel,” a hungry rooster wears a bib and holds a fork as it eyes a large pearl ring. The spot art below shows three white plates holding jewelry, a fork twining a necklace spaghettilike around its tines next to one of them. The last line is: “I’d much rather have found a grain of corn to eat than all the jewels in the world,” and indeed, that necklace does not look very tasty. The cover depicts two jackdaws in front of a mirror, each in the process of transforming itself à la the two fables about the bird. From the familiar “The Lion and the Mouse” and “The Hare and the Tortoise” to the lesser-known “The Ox and the Frog” and “The Stag at the Pool,” this sophisticated collection will take readers beyond single-volume treatments. An assortment of fables fabulously illustrated and strikingly presented. (Picture book/fables. 3-7)
THE IMPOSSIBLE KNIFE OF MEMORY
Anderson, Laurie Halse Viking (384 pp.) $18.99 | Jan. 7, 2014 978-0-670-01209-1
A family struggles to hold itself together in the wake of war. Hayley Kincain and her father, Andy, a decorated veteran, have returned to their small upstate New York hometown after years of unschooling and long-haul trucking. Ostensibly, they’re back so Hayley can have a typical senior year of high school, but it’s clear that Andy’s untreated PTSD has made it impossible for him to make a living as a trucker. Both Kincains are bright, sarcastic loners plagued by agonizing memories that won’t quite stay repressed, despite their best efforts, and that punctuate the narrative in counterpoint: Andy’s experiences during his four tours in Iraq and Afghanistan appear fully formed, while Hayley’s childhood recollections are more fragmented and less reliable than they at first seem. As Andy’s mental and physical health deteriorate, Hayley is forced deeper into the role of caretaker. It’s a part she’s been playing so well for so long she doesn’t even realize how much she resents the unfairness of it all until her sweet, bantering boyfriend, Finn, points it out. Anderson sensitively addresses the many problems—physical recovery, grief and survivor’s guilt, chemical dependency, panic attacks and suicidal tendencies—that veterans can face when trying to reintegrate. This is less a bravura performance than a solid one, but Hayley’s strong, wryly vulnerable voice carries the narrative toward a resolutely imperfect, hopeful conclusion. A characteristically honest and deeply felt exploration of the lingering scars of war. (Fiction. 14 & up)
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THE GIANT PANDA PARTY
Arbuthnott, Gill Illus. by Nethercott, Joanne Floris (32 pp.) $11.95 paper | Dec. 1, 2013 978-086315-951-0
Sunshine’s best friend (or possibly mate) goes to great lengths to ensure that the grumpy panda’s birthday is not only not forgotten, but auditorily memorable in this Scottish import about the pandas of the Edinburgh Zoo. After pondering the problem of how to make Sunshine’s birthday wonderful, the resourceful Sweetie picks the lock on her enclosure and pays a visit to each of the other zoo denizens. Night gradually falls as she checks to be sure each can sing, encouraging each out loud but often thinking dismissive thoughts to herself: “Sweetie was tempted to put her paws over her ears.” She then whispers her plan to the enthusiastic animals and moves on to the next cage, cleverly depicted in Nethercott’s cartoon illustrations to look as natural as possible. The enclosures are mostly hinted at by a single wall or fence; the puzzled but clueless zookeeper stands just outside, almost catching Sweetie at one point. The next day, the cacophonous riot of “Happy Birthday” almost deafens the zookeeper, but Sunshine is thrilled, which pleases Sweetie. The pandas’ facial expressions are nicely done, though thankfully, Sweetie’s rarely matches what she is thinking as she listens to the zoo animals’ singing. While this is a “sweet” tale of friendship, the simplistic plot ultimately falls flat, especially given Sweetie’s unkind thoughts. (Picture book. 4-7)
AVALON
Arnett, Mindee Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins (432 pp.) $17.99 | $9.99 e-book | Jan. 21, 2014 978-0-06-223559-6 978-0-06-223561-9 e-book Action-packed space opera tells the laws of physics to sit down and shut up, to no particular detriment. Seventeen-year-old Jeth and his band of thieves operate under the iron thumb of interstellar crime lord Hammer, who treats traitors and resisters to brutal beatings and mind-erasing brain implants. Pulling jobs for Hammer is Jeth’s only way to buy back his late parents’ spaceship and keep his 13-year-old sister out of prostitution. The current assignment requires retrieving a missing spaceship from a Bermuda Triangle–ish area of space where ships malfunction and disappear. Jeth’s crew travels there via “metaspace,” but this is no hard science fiction: “Metatech” and “metadrives” receive an eventual explanation that’s mostly hand-waving, while things that should be difficult (rerouting power from one ship to another) or dangerous (a character moves through open space by pushing off a spaceship “as if
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he were diving”) are easy-peasy. Arnett’s fast-paced plot spotlights gun battles, twists and memorably grotesque damage to spaceships and bodies. As Jeth makes unsavory deals and repeatedly finds himself betrayed, a threat to billions of lives connects with his personal mission. Thoughtful readers (or anyone who’s seen Star Trek) will wonder whether the implied sequel will address a core moral atrocity at the root of metatech that this volume ignores. There’s no subtlety and barely any science in this science fiction, but there is lots of action. (Science fiction. 14 & up)
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TOP 10 FOR BOYS
Ash, Russell Firefly (320 pp.) $24.95 | Dec. 1, 2013 978-1-77085-223-5
A great dose of catnip for the mob of world-records enthusiasts. Terry has amassed here a busy collection of top 10s that run a gamut of topics: machines (like trains, planes and automobiles), animals, stars (those that dazzle in the heavens), stars (those that dazzle on stage), sports, freaks of nature, buildings, the mind and body—with multiple top 10s within each topic. (All games and movies referred to are rated for 12 and under.) Though the title claims these chart busters are “for boys,” there is no reason to think that girls wouldn’t find them equally irresistible (“This is the first ever T-10 that is exclusively for boys!” barks the “Welcome” page). Each page buzzes with lists and boxed items and dizzies with slews of photographs and fact squibs. Readers are
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also given opportunities to shuffle various top 10s to fashion their own selections and checklists to notch off those they’ve seen. This is described as “interactive,” a generous use of the term. Still, this collection rarely fails to shock and awe, offering up the gentleman who rode a motorcycle at nearly 400 mph, the highest-earning solo artist of 2012 (Madonna!) and the most fatal riot (took place in Constantinople in A.D. 532)—not to mention the thrill of imagining being one of the select 1,000plus who annually get ripped apart by saltwater crocodiles. A worthy addition to the ranks of Ripley and Guinness. (Nonfiction. 9-15)
BLAST OFF!
Ball, Nate Illus. by Pamintuan, Macky Harper/HarperCollins (144 pp.) $15.99 | $4.99 paper | Jan. 21, 2014 978-0-06-231491-8 978-0-06-221623-6 paper Series: Alien in My Pocket, 1 Fourth-grader Zack McGee’s plans for his new school year change drastically when a 4-inch-tall blue alien crashes into his bedroom and asks for help to return to his home world. First in a series combining scientific facts, projects and alien-invasion stories, this is an agreeable introduction. Zack’s desperate efforts to conceal his new friend and to build a replacement launching system for his space ship provide both suspense and humor. He can’t hide Amp from neighbor and best friend Olivia, but that’s a good thing. She helps him construct a bottle rocket that soars satisfyingly high though not far enough to send Amp back into space. Unlike the rest of his scientific family, Zack has been a less-than-stellar performer in school, more interested in baseball. This provides plenty of opportunity for both Olivia and Amp to explain things to him and to readers along the way. Step-by-step instructions for constructing a rocket using a 2-liter soda bottle, a rubber stopper, duct tape and a bicycle pump are appended. Short chapters and blackand-white comic-style illustrations add reader appeal. A sequel, The Science Unfair (978-0-06-231494-9), will be published simultaneously, and a third, Radio Active, is scheduled for May 2014. A pleasing combination of fact and fancy, the Alien in My Pocket series will be welcomed by science-minded middle-grade readers. (Science fiction. 7-11)
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DUCK, DUCK, MOOSE!
Bardhan-Quallen, Sudipta Illus. by Jones, Noah Z. Disney Hyperion (32 pp.) $16.99 | Jan. 7, 2014 978-1-4231-7110-2
Two ducks plus one moose equals mayhem, mischief and true friendship. The three words of the title are the only three words used in the text (aside from a couple of signs in the illustrations). A sequence of scenes depicts the two ducks going about their tasks with care and attention. They clean, they paint, they blow up balloons, they bake—they are planning a party for the moose. And the moose? He clumsily messes up all of their work. Remorseful, he sits on a log until his two good friends coax him home for a festive party. Jones’ cartoon artwork tells the story with detailed, precise drawings of the ducks outlined in black against a clean white background. The moose’s antics, in contrast, are chaotic, with colors and spillage abounding. All three faces are wonderfully expressive. Neat hand lettering used for “duck” and “duck” becomes demonstrative Magic Marker scrawls accented with exclamation points for “MOOSE.” Emerging readers will easily join in the fun. The page design allows for a well-paced and entertaining read-aloud, and kids will love seeing how the traditional children’s game gets a funny new setting with “moose” taking the place of “goose.” Fun, fun, fun! (Picture book. 3-6)
PAINT ME A MONSTER
Baskin, Janie Scarlet Voyage/Enslow (352 pp.) $18.95 | Jan. 1, 2014 978-1-62324-018-9 Baskin’s first novel spans 13 years in the life of an artistic girl torn between perfection and loving herself as she is. Three-year-old Margo renames herself Rinnie after Rin Tin Tin, “the smartest, fastest, strongest dog in the world.” Rinnie’s family appears to be the perfect wealthy nuclear family of the 1950s, complete with housekeeper and cook, but life in the Gardener home—particularly Rinnie’s—is far from idyllic. Her younger brother is coddled and her older sister held up as an example, while Rinnie, the “monster,” struggles for their mother’s love and approval. After her parents divorce, her brother moves in with Dad, leaving Rinnie and her sister to stay behind to endure Mom’s abuse, often aimed at Rinnie. As Rinnie loses control, she restricts her food intake and keeps track of every bite, convincingly chronicled in her obsessive, present-tense narration. If she can be perfect, she’ll reclaim her parents’ love. The school counselor encourages 16-year-old Rinnie to trust herself to save herself, and with his help, Rinnie paints the monsters of her past to begin the journey toward a future of hope, trust and freedom. Rinnie’s voice is honest and
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“...readers who warm to Tate’s levelheaded independence will cheer her on as she finds her buoyancy and begins to move forward.” from my so - called ruined life
unflinching, gradually maturing from a 3-year-old’s singsong to that of a well-spoken, intelligent teenager. Readers will fall in love with Rinnie; Baskin has crafted a beautiful story about the complexities of family, selfrespect and human connection. (Historical fiction. 14 & up)
KNOCK KNOCK My Dad’s Dream for Me
Beaty, Daniel Illus. by Collier, Bryan Little, Brown (40 pp.) $18.00 | Dec. 17, 2013 978-0-316-20917-5
does and doesn’t achieve her aims. She learns to swim, makes an attempt at veganism, and falls in love while coming to terms with her fears and regrets. The tough yet self-deprecating teen survives and thrives with the help of her quirky best friend, Kale, and Greta, the more-like-a-friend aunt who takes her on outdoor adventures in the western landscape that provide Tate with a much-needed outlet and perspective. The convenient plot twists—Tate solves the case by finding a clue the police missed, and her financial difficulties are resolved instantly by a generous gift from an unexpected source—strain the bounds of credulity and detract from the authenticity of Tate’s voice. Nevertheless, readers who warm to Tate’s levelheaded independence will cheer her on as she finds her buoyancy and begins to move forward. (Fiction. 12 & up)
A heartfelt effort to transform Beaty’s celebrated monologue into a picture book undermines the source material’s power, despite the contributions of Collier’s stunning collage-and-watercolor artwork. A father and son play “KNOCK KNOCK” every morning, Papa knocking on the door to awaken him and the boy jumping into his arms. Both picture book and monologue open with this recollection and then reflect on the boy’s profound loss when his beloved father is suddenly gone; but while the latter text explains that this is due to the father’s incarceration, in picture-book form, his absence is unexplained until an author’s note in the backmatter. Not only is this potentially confusing and alarming, it also robs the text of one of its most powerful elements: when the boy visits his father in prison and must “KNOCK KNOCK” on the glass between them. In the monologue, Beaty says that he had to learn to father himself and give himself the words his father didn’t give to him. In this adaptation, the boy’s mysteriously absent father writes a loving letter filled with fatherly advice, but it omits the monologue’s lines about fighting poverty and racism and not allowing a father’s choices to define the child. Absent the critical back story, this picture book feels incomplete. A valiant effort that falls short of its source’s fearless honesty and passion. (Picture book. 4-8)
MY SO-CALLED RUINED LIFE
Bishop, Melanie Torrey House Press (229 pp.) $14.95 paper | Jan. 14, 2014 978-1-937226-21-3 Series: Tate McCoy, 1
Yet another tale of a plucky girl who overcomes the obstacles—but this one floats. Texan Tate McCoy is only 16 when her estranged, alcoholic mother is bludgeoned to death and her adoring, playful father is arrested for the murder. While he stands trial, Tate does her best to stay safe and sane with a list of goals that essentially outlines the major plot points. In a witty, world-weary, wise narrative, Tate |
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“...the nuttiest writing guide ever.” from bad kitty drawn to trouble
JINX’S MAGIC
Blackwood, Sage Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins (300 pp.) $16.99 | $9.99 e-book | Jan. 7, 2014 978-0-06-212993-2 978-0-06-212995-6 e-book Series: Jinx, 2
It’s hard not to like a fantasy that is set in an argumentative magical forest, but Blackwood squanders the promise of her debut (Jinx, 2013) with a sequel that just spins its wheels. Though he’s repeatedly assured that he doesn’t know who he is or what he’s doing, 12-year-old wizard-in-training Jinx continues to explore the nebulous extent of his burgeoning magical powers. He does this both at a school in the city of Samara, where he discovers a new style of magic, and in the Urwald, where he can draw huge amounts of raw power from the trees—but his ability to hear and speak to them is a mixed blessing. Meanwhile, his crabby mentor, Simon Magus, is recaptured by the Bonemaster, an affable archnemesis who has also taken to exterminating the Urwald’s scattered human communities, and Simon’s scholarly wife, Sophie, has been imprisoned. Further complicating matters, Reven (aka Prince Raymond) has given the whole forest fantods by promoting a profitable lumbering operation on the way to reclaiming his throne. Blackwood drops hints of a larger conflict looming and continues to throw her protagonist into dangerous situations. At odds with this are tongue-in-cheek plot elements, such as Jinx’s ability to see thoughts as pink puffy clouds or other shapes, cryptic remarks delivered at odd moments by elves and an oddly rational werewolf. Typical of middle volumes: much backing and forthing to not enough purpose. (Fantasy. 10-12)
BAD KITTY DRAWN TO TROUBLE
Bruel, Nick Illus. by Bruel, Nick Neal Porter/Roaring Brook (128 pp.) $13.99 | Jan. 7, 2014 978-1-59643-671-8 Series: Bad Kitty (chapter book), 7 Bad Kitty takes on her greatest foe: Sillier than Puppy, mightier than Uncle Murray, scarier than a bath…it’s her
creator! For her seventh chapter-book outing (and her 10th appearance overall), Bad Kitty ups the meta-hybrid ante by telling a story that includes her author/illustrator while it also teaches its audience some fundamentals about the writer’s craft. At the outset, Bruel introduces himself and invites readers to smell the paper (or download a paper-smelling app if they are reading electronically) and then draws a mirror so that readers can see 82
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how handsome he is. He teaches them to draw Bad Kitty, leaving white space so that they can follow along (unless they are reading a library book, but it’s OK to draw on the screen). What follows is the nuttiest writing guide ever. Bruel uses Bad Kitty (who’s obviously reluctant to play along) to explain the concepts of character, plot, theme and conflict. Uncle Murray helps out with a few definitions. Poor Puppy and giant octopuses (or is that octopi…?) pop in as antagonists. When Strange Kitty (Bad Kitty’s fellow feline) points out similarities between this and the Looney Tunes cartoons Rabbit Rampage and Duck Amuck, Bruel admits they inspired him and hopes Bad Kitty will inspire the audience to write their own stories. Surprisingly (and sneakily) instructional, totally hilarious…and worth every penny. (glossary, recipe) (Graphic/nonfiction hybrid. 7-10)
GIRL TO GIRL Honest Talk About Growing Up and Your Changing Body
Burningham, Sarah O’Leary Illus. by Arnold, Alli Chronicle (136 pp.) $12.99 paper | Nov. 26, 2013 978-1-4521-0242-9
For preteen girls, here is a lively, entertaining invitation to the wonders
and perils of puberty. Adopting the stance of a big sister and assuring readers, “You are meant to be just the way you are,” the author of two previous books for teens (Boyology, 2009, etc.) gently leads her younger sisters through both inside and outside changes. Stressing the variety in growth schedules, she covers the usual changes—breasts, body hair, pimples, menstruation, and emotional ups and downs—but steers clear of sexual feelings and sex talk. Conversational text and cheery illustrations provide explicit instructions for tooth-brushing, leg and underarm shaving, the use of deodorant and the insertion of a tampon. Occasional features called “Girl Talk” offer personal advice about problems from sweat stains, bed wetting and chlorine-greened hair to being an early bird or late bloomer. Along the way, Burningham provides recommendations from experts for fitting a bra, taking care of teeth with braces, eating healthily, using makeup and skincare. A chapter on healthy habits includes an explanation of eating disorders. The author encourages talking with parents and other adults and stresses wearing a smile. Cartoon-style illustrations in color add to the light tone. This relaxed guide, full of useful information and sound advice, would be good company throughout the journey. (acknowledgements, index) (Nonfiction. 8-12)
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LEONCE AND LENA
Büchner, Georg Illus. by Zwerger, Lisbeth Translated by Wilson, David Henry NorthSouth (64 pp.) $19.95 | Dec. 1, 2013 978-0-7358-4141-3 A retelling of an early-19th-century German satirical play in which royalty, mistaken identity, rebellion and angst all play out in a fairy-tale setting requires leaps of comprehension beyond its intended audience. Prince Leonce and Princess Lena have never met but share a sense of dissatisfaction with their places in life. When it is decreed that they must marry, they separately attempt to escape their fates. But a chance encounter at an inn results in love at first sight. Meanwhile, back at the castle, the King (Leonce’s father) has prepared for the marriage celebrations, and thanks to the machinations of Leonce’s confidant Valerio, the nuptials proceed with disguises and surprises. Amann reimagines the original work, employing wildly varying language and syntax. There are flowery, esoteric descriptions, metaphoric allusions and contemplative moments, along with comedic pronouncements and some modern twists. Zwerger’s imaginative, watercolorand-collage illustrations incorporate changing perspectives and are filled with unexpected and delightful touches that shed some light on the confusion inherent in the text. Young readers for whom the work is evidently intended will be more puzzled than intrigued (the publisher is recommending an age range of 4-8). It might be more successful with an older audience that has adult guidance, although many adults will be hard-pressed to explain the call for a workless society at the conclusion. Strange and disconcerting. (biographical material, bibliography) (Play. 10-12)
TULIP LOVES REX
Capucilli, Alyssa Satin Illus. by Massini, Sarah Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins (32 pp.) $17.99 | Dec. 23, 2013 978-0-06-209413-1 Wince-inducing platitudes lace this saccharine story of loving and being loved. Tulip loves to dance. All the time. Her parents think she’s wonderful, and everyone smiles vacuously. All the time. Tulip’s smiling parents bring her to the park, where she befriends a large, unaccompanied dog with a note on his rope collar that says his name is Rex and that he is “not quite like other dogs.” After ordering him to fetch, sit and catch, none of which he does, she tells him that she doesn’t “mind a bit. We all have something we love to do. We just have to discover what it is.” It appears he loves romping with Tulip. When it’s time to go home, Tulip cavorts some more and discovers that on the back of Rex’s note is a plea: “Will you take me home?” Tulip’s doting parents |
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allow this. By the end of the book, Tulip proclaims that “there’s nothing quite like sharing love….” Tulip may resolutely dip, twirl, gallop and pirouette through each earnest, well-meaning page, but the story itself putters flatly along until, with a tired sigh, it ends. The illustrations, while colorful, add no other layers, simply mirroring what the text relates. A self-consciously didactic story that deals blandly with its theme. (Picture book. 3-5)
MORE THAN GOOD ENOUGH
Chappell, Crissa-Jean Flux (216 pp.) $9.99 paper | Jan. 8, 2014 978-0-7387-3644-0
A bright biracial teen on a downward spiral moves in with his alcoholic father on Florida’s Miccosukee reservation. A gifted bass player, Trent, 17, has been ejected from his music magnet school and is failing in public school until he runs into Pippa, the loyal friend he hasn’t seen since middle school. They team up on a class filmmaking project: documenting each other’s home lives. Pippa becomes his anchor in a sea of troubles: an untrustworthy sometimegirlfriend, neglectful English immigrant mother, and abusive, alcoholic father, recently released from prison. Trent’s misery, though tinged with self-pity, is compelling and emotionally nuanced, and amplified by the closely observed Everglades setting, it has a moody power. “Dad grew up on the Rez. He had to move out once he hooked up with Mom, who is one hundred percent London hippie chick,” Trent says. “That makes me half native, half white, and one hundred percent nothing.” In fact, it makes him the updated, YA version of the tragic mulatto: an ancient mixed-race stereotype that refuses to die. Discovering and embracing his missing Miccosukee family and heritage sets Trent on the path to wholeness (and tribal membership, evidently bypassing actual Miccosukee tribal-enrollment requirements). His complicated white heritage, including the status and privileges it still confers, remains invisible, unexamined and unintegrated. An atmospheric, if downbeat, character portrait. (Fiction. 14 & up)
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THE COUNTRY OF WOLVES
Christopher, Neil Illus. by Pérez, Ramon; Gies, Daniel Inhabit Media (100 pp.) $29.95 | Dec. 1, 2013 978-1-927095-04-1
A graphic-novel rendition of an Inuit folk tale tells of two brothers who cross into another world and the lengths to which one goes to get back home. When food becomes scarce, two brothers journey out to hunt and find themselves lost and adrift upon the sea. The younger brother questions their fate, and the older assures him, “I will get us home! I will see my wife again.” Arriving in a strange village, they split up to find its inhabitants. The older brother happens upon an old woman who warns him that he is in “the country of wolves,” where “hu-mans” are “not safe.” Thanks to the advice she gives him, he narrowly escapes from the Country of Wolves back to his home and his wife, as he had sworn—only without his brother. While intriguing, this richly drawn offering treads a bit too lightly over some aspects of Inuit culture for those who do not share it. There is no glossary of Inuit words, for instance, to help non-Inuit readers understand and contextualize their meanings. Christopher tells readers that “ancient tales tell of magical events that happened before the modern world invaded the hidden places”; however, some additional material explaining this tale’s particular significance may help modern audiences, particularly those not of the culture, relate. A DVD with an animated version is also included and is not to be missed. Dark, sparse and compelling. (Graphic folk tale. 13 & up)
THE TRUE ADVENTURES OF NICOLÒ ZEN
Christopher, Nicholas Knopf (304 pp.) $17.99 | $10.99 e-book | $20.99 PLB Jan. 7, 2014 978-0-375-86738-5 978-0-375-89786-3 e-book 978-0-375-96738-2 PLB Accomplished poet and novelist Christopher delivers a debut for teens thickly woven with 18th-century Venetian intrigue and metaphysical magic. Nicolò Zen, a mason’s son, possesses an enchanted ivory clarinet—acquired by his father through barter—along with an innate talent for reading and interpreting music. His rustic life on the tiny island of Mazzorbo is sundered when a malaria epidemic fells his parents and three sisters. Aided by a neighbor, the 14-year-old orphan survives his own fever and heads to Venice. After several uneasy nights on the street, Nicolò auditions for an orphanage’s esteemed orchestra, overseen by the Master, Vivaldi himself. The catch: Nicolò must disguise himself as a girl. Despite his tenuous charade, he befriends several girls and the cook but soon confronts the Ospedale della 84
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Pietà’s sinister backdrop of human trafficking and conspiracy. Nicolò’s first-person narration is delivered, memoirlike, from a mature perspective. This limits the in-the-moment impact of a teen boy’s adventures, which include sexual initiation and first love. Happy endings click into place for the good guys and girls here, with a sequel intimated even as Nicolò and his bride settle down in Modena. As Nicolò morphs from street kid to orphanage crasher to Europe’s foremost solo clarinetist, abetted by a fascinating pair of magician brothers, engrossed readers should gladly ride the plot’s twists and turns. (Fantasy. 12 & up)
THE ELK HUNT The Adventure Begins
Dahlstrom, S.J. Paul Dry Books (101 pp.) $7.95 paper | Dec. 1, 2013 978-1-58988-087-0 Series: Adventures of Wilder Good, 1
At 12, Wilder Good is off to bag his first elk with hunting partner Gale Loving, a friend and mentor, in this straightforwardly simple recounting of their day in the Colorado foothills. While the two bantering partners are used to each other and have hunted a lot together, it’s also clear that Gale, who is in his 70s and a member of the church, is in charge. Wilder is the amateur, though he’s working hard on his skills. “The way to learn…, Wilder had observed, was to charge in and figure it out as he went. Mistakes would be forgiven; cowardice was not.” Obviously, he needs to do more than just learn how to use his grandfather’s handed-down Winchester rifle—he needs to understand all the nuances of preparation and behavior during the hunt. Given the dearth of material on the topic and the readability of the text, this slim novel will be appreciated in those rural communities where hunting is a big deal. The focus is on action, not social or emotional depth: Wilder’s mother’s breast cancer is merely mentioned, as is Wilder’s attraction to a girl. For kids who’d rather be out stalking prey than reading about it. (Fiction. 8-12)
SUPERWORM
Donaldson, Julia Illus. by Scheffler, Axel Levine/Scholastic (32 pp.) $16.99 | Jan. 28, 2014 978-0-545-59176-8 Toads and insects give a shout, and Superworm will help you out! “Superworm is super-long. / Superworm is super-strong. / Watch him wiggle! See him squirm! / Hip, hip, hooray for SUPERWORM!” When a baby toad jumps into the road,
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“Lyrical prose of lapidary precision and restraint etches a character-driven narrative of intimate enchantments….” from fireborn
Superworm becomes a lasso and saves his bacon. When the bees become bored, Superworm makes a perfect jump-rope. When a beetle falls down a well, Superworm can fish her out. But what happens when the evil Wizard Lizard and his servant crow wormnap Superworm and cast a spell to make him do Wizard Lizard’s bidding? “Action! Quickly! At the double! / Superworm’s in frightful trouble! / We must help him if we can. / We must hatch a cunning plan!” All the garden creatures band together to capture Wizard Lizard and send him to the garbage dump, ensuring that Superworm will be back indeed to help his buggy friends in need. The British duo behind the Gruffalo books and Stick Man (2009) reteam to tell a tale of friendship and cooperation. The unlikely superhero with his googly eyes and winning smile will be hit, and the rhythmic rhyme will have audiences chanting along by the end of the story. At this point in their collaboration, Donaldson and Scheffler know exactly how to complement each other’s work. Silly and slimy—superfun! (Picture book. 5-8)
MAX MAKES A CAKE
Edwards, Michelle Illus. by Santoso, Charles Random House (32 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 28, 2014 978-0-449-81431-4
Edwards offers a story about Passover, but it might be a bad idea to read it during the holiday—particularly toward
LITTLE FROG’S TADPOLE TROUBLE
Feeney, Tatyana Illus. by Feeney, Tatyana Knopf (32 pp.) $16.99 | $19.99 PLB | Jan. 7, 2014 978-0-385-75372-2 978-0-385-75373-9 PLB Little Frog becomes a big brother and learns to adapt in this predictable sibling tale. Life is good for Little Frog—that is, until nine new tadpoles join the family. Suddenly, his parents are preoccupied, and resentment sets in. But when the tadpoles turn into frogs, the siblings play together and Little Frog becomes the “best big brother to them all.” A pat ending to a rote storyline. Feeney’s short text and simple illustrations appear to be for a very young audience, yet the protagonist calls his siblings “stupid,” a term that seems more likely to fall from the lips of older children. While the author tries to use the careless phrase as a teachable moment, parents should ready themselves to deal with it as well. Well-composed images, done in pencil with a three-color design, offer an enjoyable layout. Still, while the design is interesting and the linework precise, both the text and artwork are missing a consideration that would have given this tale more substance. A recycled plot for an already-full new-sibling bookshelf. (Picture book. 2-4)
the end. It’s Mama’s birthday and the first night of Passover, and Max is intent on baking her a cake. Max’s dad is busy with the new baby, and he doesn’t have time to help. Max comes up with a novel solution: He stacks pieces of matzo into a huge pile and covers them with jam and cream cheese. He even finds a tiny candle and places it on top for his mother’s birthday. A piece of matzo—as Jewish readers will know—is a flat, tasteless cracker, which Jews eat on Passover as bread is forbidden during the holiday. The holiday lasts for more than a week, so as inventive as Max’s solution is, observant Jews may think: There is nothing less appetizing than a giant stack of matzo. Readers will admire Max’s creativity, no matter how they feel about unleavened bread. They may be less happy with the stilted dialogue. Max tells his sister, “A long time ago, the Jews were slaves in Egypt. When Pharaoh freed them, they had to hurry, hurry, hurry away with their bread on their backs.” Max’s zeal is charming, but readers may find themselves thinking, more than once: No child has ever said that sentence. Well-intentioned but, alas, as dry as matzo. (Picture book. 3-6)
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FIREBORN
Forward, Toby Bloomsbury (432 pp.) $16.99 | Dec. 3, 2013 978-1-59990-889-2 Series: Dragonborn, 1 Prequel to Dragonborn (2012), this haunting fable interweaves stories about magic with the magic of stories. When even the simplest spells turn feral, wizard apprentice Cabbage and his master, Flaxfield, search for the origin of this deadly “wild magic.” Their hunt leads to Bee, an apprentice whose immense potential has been secretly leeched for years by her abusive master, distorting the natural order of magic. When he steals her wizard name, the explosive blowback looses a terrible evil, and it’s up to the pair of apprentices to seal it. Despite the cataclysmic stakes, this is no standard epic adventure, all quests and derring-do. There are dread abominations and ghastly slaughters (all the more nightmarish for their elliptical portrayal), but nothing is more monstrous than human selfishness, cowardice and vanity. Against these, no heroic exploit stands more valiant and glorious than the small acts of kindness, loyalty and trust that take place within a quiet library, a humble inn and a wounded spirit. Lyrical prose of lapidary precision and restraint etches a character-driven narrative of intimate enchantments, evoking terrible beauty from blazing infernos, subtle whimsy |
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“Armed with her inhaler, practical Ophelia proves a formidable heroine in a frozen landscape.” from ophelia and the marvelous boy
from nonsensical banter, bone-chilling horror from slithering beetles, and soul-piercing wonder from a simple “Yes.” Although it stands fully on its own, knowledge of the companion novel will enrich appreciation of this tale, and the revelations here will cast new light upon the former; readers of both will long for the story’s resolution. Terrifying, moving, inspiring and enthralling. (Fantasy. 12 & up)
OPHELIA AND THE MARVELOUS BOY
Foxlee, Karen Knopf (224 pp.) $16.99 | $10.99 e-book | $19.99 PLB Jan. 14, 2014 978-0-385-75354-8 978-0-385-75357-9 e-book 978-0-385-75354-8 PLB Eleven-year-old Ophelia faces her fears to help a nameless boy imprisoned in a surreal museum by the evil Snow Queen in this contemporary fairy tale. An asthmatic girl who believes in science and eschews fantasy, Ophelia’s curious but admittedly not very brave. Grieving her mother’s recent death, Ophelia arrives in a snowy “foreign city” with her father and sister. While her curator father organizes an exhibition of swords, Ophelia wanders the vast museum until she discovers “The Marvelous Boy,” trapped by the Snow Queen for three centuries in a hidden room. A spell preventing the Snow Queen from killing the boy expires in three days, when he will die and the world will freeze unless Ophelia can free him, locate his magical sword and identify the “One Other” to defeat the Snow Queen. Though she’s unsure she believes the boy’s fantastical story, Ophelia gradually heeds an inner voice urging her to follow her heart. Alternating between Ophelia’s bizarre quest to save the boy and the retelling of his story, the intense plot moves Ophelia beyond grief to fulfill what she realizes is her destiny. Armed with her inhaler, practical Ophelia proves a formidable heroine in a frozen landscape. A well-wrought, poignant and original reworking of Andersen’s “The Snow Queen.” (Fantasy. 8-12)
ANGEL ISLAND Gateway to Gold Mountain
Freedman, Russell Clarion (96 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 7, 2014 978-0-547-90378-1
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Opened to enforce exclusion laws, the Angel Island Immigration Station, often called the Ellis Island of the West, served as the primary gateway to the Pacific Coast between 1910 and 1940. Over half a million people from more than 80 different countries were processed there, the majority of them from China. In telling the history of Chinese people in the U.S., the author doesn’t hold back on the racial discrimination these immigrants faced, including the passing of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act. Despite that, immigrants came, but they faced interrogations and long periods of detention on Angel Island. Here, the experience is made most vivid and poignant when Freedman weaves in the recollections of detainees, including “picture brides” and refugees, taken from books and videos. The historical photos of Angel Island life, notably the poems expressing frustration carved in Chinese calligraphy into the barracks walls (gracefully reproduced as design accents on frontand backmatter), bring depth and perspective to a dark period in American history. In this case, the walls do talk. As immigration continues to be a major issue in America, this introduction to the Angel Island experience is overdue and, most of all, welcome. (source notes, selected bibliography, acknowledgments, picture credits) (Nonfiction. 9-14)
DAISY AND JOSEPHINE
Gilbert, Melissa Illus. by Kuo, Julia Paula Wiseman/Simon & Schuster (32 pp.) $17.99 | $12.99 e-book | Jan. 28, 2014 978-1-4424-4578-9 978-1-4424-4579-6 e-book Daisy’s new puppy may refuse to play fetch, chase or catch, but she’s a fashionista who soon wins Daisy’s heart. Daisy’s father’s a famous entertainer and her “all-together favorite person.” Even though Daisy travels everywhere with her father, she’s lonely and longs for a friend. One day, her father surprises Daisy with a funny-looking puppy named Josephine, with “no tail, giant ears, and a smooshy nose” and protruding bottom teeth. When the little girl tries to play with Josephine, the puppy refuses, prompting a frustrated Daisy to ask, “What do you want do?” To Daisy’s surprise, French-speaking Josephine explains that she is a French bulldog: “And I just love clothes! Oh, please, won’t you help me find something stylish to put on?” Soon, Daisy and Josephine bond as together they create “très chic” outfits. Unremarkable digitally colored pencil illustrations rely on line and pale color washes to highlight Daisy’s loving relationship with her father, her transformation from shy to confident girl, and Josephine’s ultrafeminine, humorous, fashionably attired persona. Daisy’s marked overbite provides a droll contrast with Josephine’s prominent lower fangs. A canine penchant for French couture adds unexpected verve to this otherwise fairly ordinary tale of a lonely girl. (Picture book. 4-8)
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FAKE ID
Over the course of the year, Tiadone comes to recognize and deconstruct the carefully crafted lies that his life has been founded on and eventually finds a strength, peace and freedom he never dared hope for. Through the beautifully drawn Tiadone—whom readers will come to care for and relate to—Grover questions both gender norms and gender conformity in an honest, light-handed manner. An engrossing story with welcome depths. (Fantasy. 12 & up)
Giles, Lamar Harper/HarperCollins (320 pp.) $17.99 | $9.99 e-book | Jan. 21, 2014 978-0-06-212184-4 978-0-06-212186-8 e-book It’s not easy being a teen. But what if that fake ID in your pocket isn’t just a convenient way to score beer; it’s your key to survival in a witness protection program? Nick has a true identity crisis: His father’s past as bookkeeper to a mob figure has placed the family in WitSec. Now, Dad’s reluctance to stay firmly on the side of the law is again an issue, Mom is running out of patience, and Nick (aka Steven/Logan/Tyler/Tony) is once again struggling to fit in without standing out. When new friend Eli, editor and lead investigator for the school newspaper, mentions “Whispertown,” he’s soon dead. Suicide? Not according to Eli’s superhot cheerleader sister, who goads Nick to action. A mysterious car accident and explosion; a solo, scary ride with the mayor; bullying; local criminals, sketchy adult figures galore—all find a place in this mystery/thriller. Nick is an engaging protagonist caught among parents, cliques, and worlds both legal and not so much. Quickwitted and just street-wise enough, he is a survivor and as narrator, offers readers believable teen conversation and interactions, including the contemporary world of text messaging. Fast action, judicious plot twists, and sufficiently evil teens and adults should keep thrill-seeking readers awake long into the night. (Thriller. 13-18)
FIRSTBORN A Novel
Grover, Lorie Ann Blink (287 pp.) $15.99 | Dec. 23, 2013 978-0-310-73930-2
A fantasy that reads like a lost history tome and deftly examines issues of gender. Tiadone is the first declared male in his R’tan village, though he was born female: Tiadone’s father declared him male to save him from abandonment and certain death on the Scree, as is the fate for all firstborn R’tan females, as dictated by the oppressive rule of the Madronians. Soon, Tiadone, along with his best friend, Ratho, and their “twined” rapions (birds of prey bonded to R’tan companions), travels to the Perimeter. During their mandatory year of service in Perimeter Defense, they will protect their people from invaders, desert cats and sandstorms. Once there, Tiadone chronicles the ways he must cope with the scorn of the other boys, the cruelty of the Madronians in power and his own changing body and blossoming sexuality—all as he struggles with his feelings surrounding being a declared male. |
THE STORYBOOK OF LEGENDS
Hale, Shannon Little, Brown (304 pp.) $14.99 | Oct. 8, 2013 978-0-316-40122-7 Series: Ever After High, 1
What’s a girl to do when her mother is the fairy-tale world’s worst evil queen? Follow in her footsteps? Never! At the beginning of this series opener, it’s the first day of school at Ever After High, where the offspring of famous fairy-tale characters begin their second year. For these students, Legacy Day beckons, at which time each will sign the Storybook of Legends and take the pledge to replay their parents’ roles. Once they ink their names, the stories they spring from will be safely preserved, but if one does not, rumors have it that the tale—as well as the student—will vanish in a posthaste “poof.” Most are all aflutter to fulfill their requisite destinies, but Raven Queen, the daughter of the exquisitely wicked Evil Queen, doesn’t have an evil bone in her body. If she signs, she is duty-bound to poison Apple White (Snow’s daughter), but she wants to create her own future. When Raven discovers that two fairy-tale sisters long ago broke their pledges, she enlists the sleuthing skills of her wacky roommate, Madeline (as in Hatter), and Apple herself to unravel the sisters’ ultimate fates. Hale has created a delightfully revamped, newly fashioned cast of fairy-tale characters (and in hipper clothes no less—unsurprising, as the book introduces a new line of Mattel dolls) and gives readers a terrific protagonist to root for. Magic and humor abound, and fairy-tale wordplay flies. Royal good fun. (Fantasy. 8-12)
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A BREATH OF FROST
Harvey, Alyxandra Bloomsbury (496 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 7, 2014 978-0-8027-3443-3 Series: Lovegrove Legacy, 1
This lengthy but constantly entertaining series opener set in 1814 invents a large society of witches comprising much, it seems, of the British aristocracy. Although witches appear to be equally common in the underclasses, only witches from the nobility go |
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to school to hone their magical skills. Danger strikes when the evil Greymalkin Sisters, long dead, come back as powerful ghosts and kill witches all over London. Emma, one of three cousins descended from the disgraced but powerful Lovegrove family, comes into her powers unexpectedly at the very beginning of the novel. Cormac, a magnificently handsome young lord who previously kissed Emma, works for the Order of the Iron Nail, an organization of male witches who control the entire witch society. The Order suspects Emma in the murders, but even though she’s always around when someone dies, Cormac believes she’s innocent. Harvey balances a large cast with an intricate plot with flair, freely drawing on Regency romance tropes. Emma and Cormac, who has the expected “chiseled features,” dance around their mutual romantic attraction, but the plot’s emphasis centers on the witchy murders. The little time Harvey spends with scrappy little Moira, an urchinlike witch girl called a Madcap, may make some readers wish the book had focused on the other end of society; perhaps they will see more of Moira in sequels. A successful blend of Regency and paranormal romance. (Paranormal suspense. 12 & up)
YELLOW IS MY COLOR STAR
Horacek, Judy Illus. by Horacek, Judy Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster (32 pp.) $16.99 | $12.99 e-book | Jan. 7, 2014 978-1-4424-9299-8 978-1-4424-9300-1 e-book
A bright and breezy appreciation of yellow (and other colors too). “Yellow is my favorite color,” declares a girl holding generous bunches of yellow balloons. Over the next few spreads, rhymes sneak in and rhythm builds. “I like red too, / and also blue.” “Red” is enormous rose bouquets and a rose crown; “blue” shows the girl swimming in an ocean. Scansion varies, sometimes an infectious Seuss-ian patter (“Which color do you love the most? / Which color could you eat on toast?”), until rhyme vanishes again near the end. The most engaging of these cheerfully simple watercolor illustrations highlight just one color, such as when the girl, green-clad, swings through a landscape of green trees and grasses. Her jubilant, blocky profile and open-mouthed grin make her exuberance easy to share. Two middle spreads have little to offer (a dull field of flowers; some leaping frogs). When a multiethnic group of playmates joins the white protagonist, two unsettling details appear. While pink and brown people have eyes drawn in simple dots or dots surrounded by whites, one girl’s eyes are a single line each—a reductive shortcut connoting “Asian” that makes those eyes look inappropriately closed. Another girl’s skin is plain black watercolor; lacking any brown or warm undertones, she seems ghoulish alongside the others. Somewhat inconsistent, but when highlighting a single color, sunny as yellow. (Picture book. 2-5)
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MINDERS
Jaffe, Michele Razorbill/Penguin (400 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 30, 2014 978-1-59514-658-8 This highly original science-fiction thriller sends a privileged, overachieving girl directly into the mind of an angry, poor boy who seems to be her polar opposite. Sadie comes from a wealthy family in the suburbs of Detroit in a nebulous near future. She wins a coveted spot as a Minder in an experimental program that connects her mind with that of an unsuspecting subject. As she rests in stasis for six weeks, she literally lives inside the mind of Ford, a boy from inner-city Detroit, seeing through his eyes and watching his thoughts and emotions. Ford has a job tearing down Detroit’s old buildings, but he tries to save what he can of beautiful architectural elements. However, he’s also trying to learn who killed his brother—a dangerous proposition. As Sadie watches from within, she begins to fall for Ford. She becomes so involved that she begins to make connections with him that have never before been achieved by Minders and in fact cannot tear herself away. Jaffe creates an absorbing experience not only for Sadie, but also for readers, as they immerse themselves in her thoughts. Her worldbuilding includes timely, topical dystopic elements: In place of police, Detroit has the Serenity Services, and the streets have been named after corporations and their products. The thriller plot combines with contemporary class concerns for a thought-provoking and suspenseful read. (Science fiction. 12 & up)
FREDDIE & GINGERSNAP
Kirsch, Vincent X. Illus. by Kirsch, Vincent X. Disney Hyperion (40 pp.) $16.99 | Dec. 10, 2013 978-1-4231-5958-2
Dinosaurs and dragons don’t usually mix, but when little Gingersnap’s wings fail her up in the clouds, she crashes right into Freddie down on the ground. A face-off transpires. Bobbleheads, overbites and almost identical bodies make the impending fisticuffs immediately comedic and cute. Gingersnap’s minuscule bow, holding a single lock of purple dragon hair, doesn’t hurt either. The scrawny tykes feud and fight across a spiky, barbed world of primordial plants, big-eyed bugs and fanged lizards. Readers will eagerly explore this densely populated environment while giggling at Freddie and Gingersnap’s silly skirmish. Finger and toe claws “click” and “clack”; teeth “snip” and “snap.” Lively onomatopoeic action words run throughout, appearing within the artwork in purple and green block letters that correspond nicely with Freddie’s mossgreen and Gingersnap’s plum-purple bodies. A dramatic foldout
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“…a superhero story for the post-punk era….” from hero worship
depicts these little bodies clinging together at the edge of a precipice and then landing (“PLIP! PLOP!”) in a thorn patch. Freddie’s encouragement helps Gingersnap get her wings moving, and the two of them make their way out of the brambles. To children who scowl at the opposite gender (Are they a different species or what?), Freddie and Gingersnap’s rivalry makes perfect sense, as does the way it evolves quickly into a blurred angry/fun game of chase and eventually into a mutual adventure. A light look at childhood friendship and the complicated, primitive feelings that often accompany any relationship. (Picture book. 3-6)
A HUNDRED HORSES
Lean, Sarah Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins (224 pp.) $16.99 | $9.99 e-book | Jan. 7, 2014 978-0-06-212229-2 978-0-06-212237-7 e-book Eleven-year-old Nell is frustrated and unhappy. A loner, she’s miserable in the busy life her mother has crafted for her. Now her mom is leaving her for a long holiday with her aunt Liv, who works a small farm. She secretly takes with her a case full of the parts of an almost-magical toy merry-go-round her long-gone father created, the only bit of him not expunged from their house. Right after her arrival, a strange girl—Angel— on a large horse steals the case. Nell decides the only way to get it back is to find her. But Angel has a reputation for lying and stealing, so when a nanny goat and a few other things— including a horse—go missing, she’s blamed. Rita, Liv’s recently widowed and grieving neighbor, holds keys to the mystery of Angel’s background, information that is disclosed at a deliberate pace that heightens the sense of mystery and enhances the gradual reveal. Only Angel and Nell together have the power to put the many problems right, if they can find a way to cooperate. Although Nell’s voice sometimes feels a bit too adult for her age, it’s a minor flaw. As in A Dog Called Homeless (2012), Lean effortlessly stitches a moving tale right to the very edge of fantasy without ever tearing the satisfying believability of her story. (Fiction. 10-14)
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HERO WORSHIP
Long, Christopher E. Flux (264 pp.) $9.99 paper | Jan. 8, 2014 978-0-7387-3909-0 This is a superhero story for the postpunk era: Live fast, die young, and take over the world. Unfortunately, it feels like a book with several chapters missing. In one scene, Marvin is training to join The Core, an elite group of superpowered heroes, and then, within a few dozen pages, he’s the most wanted criminal in the entire city. Characters sleep together and then try to kill each other. It’s hard to fault a book for being too exciting or having too many surprises, but this is the rare fantasy novel that could use a few more blocks of plot exposition. One of the biggest secrets in the book is revealed offstage, between the last chapter and the epilogue. The novel has the same fast pacing, actually, as an early superhero comic, although older comic-book fans may be shocked at the sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll packed into a 264-page story. One character has the power to send a person into an altered state, and she has a steady stream of customers looking for a fix. Another is a Paris Hilton–esque socialite who hardly bothers with a secret identity—perhaps it would slow down her lifestyle. While these characters might not be patient enough to read a 264-page book, they’re so memorable that readers might wish their story could have lasted a little longer, at least another chapter or two. (Adventure. 12-18)
CLUELESS MCGEE GETS FAMOUS
Mack, Jeff Illus. by Mack, Jeff Philomel (288 pp.) $12.99 paper | Jan. 9, 2014 978-0-399-25751-3 Series: Clueless McGee, 3
PJ McGee is on the case when his autographed cowboy hat is stolen. Woods Road Elementary fifth-grader PJ McGee is famous; he saved the principal and was in the newspaper. Why doesn’t anyone want his autograph? He practices signing (all over the walls of the house…in permanent marker). When he attempts to sell his John Hancock, he gets no buyers—but he does discover that the scribble on the back of his cowboy hat is an actual autograph from Junior McFiddle, singer of the superpopular country song “Love Pony.” PJ’s suddenly the center of attention again until his hat’s stolen. PJ is sure the mysterious Nasty Ned, who has been putting up posters around the school made from letters cut out of magazines, is behind this nefarious crime. His sidekick (and the actual brains behind their “detective” successes), third-grader Dante, isn’t. PJ makes |
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“Apparently, it takes a jungle to raise a child….” from jungle of bones
a new hat…and that’s stolen too. He vows to track down the culprit so he can be just like his absent father, who’s on a “secret mission” in Nashville. Mack continues the frenetic adventures of the enthusiastically clueless PJ in this third heavily illustrated chapter book (Clueless McGee and the Inflatable Pants, 2013, etc.). Told in a series of comic-strip–filled letters to his father, PJ’s tale is again a mix of slapstick grossness and silly naïveté, with a surprising sprinkle of complex humor. Big Nate and Wimpy Kid fans will be right at home. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 7-11)
BOOKS!
McCain, Murray Illus. by Alcorn, John Ammo (42 pp.) $17.95 | Dec. 1, 2013 978-162326020-0 Designed in a vertical format reminiscent of Victorian billboards and using a plethora of wood typefaces amid a surfeit of magenta and yellow, this book purports to answer the question “What is a book?” The author highlights with ponderous humor some of the unique characteristics of books, starting with their physical appearance and construction, how they are designed and, finally, their content. Any child able to read at this level would respond with a big “Duh” to some of the simplistic statements, such as “A long time ago, books were put together by monks who copied each one by hand. That was a good way to do things too.” A list of books and book topics consists mainly of seemingly random titles that would be more familiar to a middle-aged British adult than a contemporary American child. Similarly, a perfunctory description of the role of punctuation employs the Briticism “full stops” without translation for American readers, and erratic capitalization may mystify. Modern children might prefer to read an actual book rather than a poorly designed, nostalgic reverie about books that they are unlikely to have encountered. Garish colors, dated feel, unclear audience. This book is annoying rather than informative. (Informational picture book. 6-10)
JUNGLE OF BONES
Mikaelsen, Ben Scholastic (224 pp.) $16.99 | $16.99 e-book | Jan. 28, 2014 978-0-545-44287-9 978-0-545-6332-8 e-book
Dylan Barstow, “major screw-up from Wisconsin,” finds his life changed by a trip to Papua New Guinea. Dylan has been in trouble with the law many times, even though he’s just going into the eighth grade; he has “a file as thick as a phone 90
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book.” Last time, it was for stealing candy bars; this time, he stole a car and took a joy ride through a planted field, tearing down the fence and wrecking the car. Since his father, a war correspondent, was killed covering the genocide in Darfur, Dylan has been an angry young man, disaffected and thumbing his nose at the world. His mother has had enough and unloads Dylan on Uncle Todd, who takes him to Papua New Guinea to locate the B-17 bomber Dylan’s grandfather crashed in the jungle during World War II. Uncle Todd figures an encounter with the jungle, swamps, 14,000-foot mountains, crocodiles and snakes just might make a man of Dylan. The third-person perspective is appropriate here, as a narrative in Dylan’s voice would be dripping with his anger, cynicism and self-absorption. The story weaves a father’s letter, the grandfather’s journal entries and plenty of hallucinatory jungle-survival scenes to make this a fast-paced adventure with quick resolutions. Apparently, it takes a jungle to raise a child, and Dylan’s story will connect with readers seeking adventure. (author’s note) (Adventure. 9-13)
DOUBLE DIGIT
Monaghan, Annabel Houghton Mifflin (192 pp.) $16.99 | Jan. 7, 2014 978-0-544-10577-5 Mathematics genius Digit is back, although her adventures this time aren’t quite as much fun as in A Girl Named Digit (2012). Starting college at MIT and a longdistance relationship with boyfriend John leaves Digit struggling. School is good, but when John breaks up with Digit with the excuse that his feelings for her throw him off balance, she goes off the rails. Digit hacks into the Department of Defense to bypass the usual protocols and make time to go to a toga party, but she attracts the attention of the National Security Agency—and worse. Jonas Furnis, Digit’s old enemy, kidnaps her, along with John. Furnis wants Digit to work with him to enact eco-terrorism against the United States. And if she doesn’t cooperate, it’s not just her life on the line—it’ll be John’s and millions of civilians’, too. Digit might be able to use her brain to save the day, but will she be able to repair her relationship with John? While it was easy to suspend disbelief and enjoy the giddy fun in Monaghan’s first novel, it’s not so easy here. The plotting is needlessly complex, with one too many near-death experiences for Digit. More distasteful is the way the men in Digit’s life—John, Digit’s father and John’s father—try to control her romantic life, with little genuine resistance from Digit. Sadly, readers won’t get double the pleasure in this second installment. (Thriller. 14 & up)
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DAISY’S BIG DIG
Morgan, Angie Illus. by Morgan, Angie Frances Lincoln (32 pp.) $17.99 | Nov. 1, 2013 978-1-84780-208-8 Community and cultivation mix and mulch in a sweet, but not cloying, British
import. Young Daisy may get a kick out of conversing with the neighbors on her street, but she seems to be the only one who does. Though everyone from old Mr. Hofmeister to the perpetually baking Mrs. Benjamin is friendly, folks keep to themselves. When Mr. Hofmeister confesses to Daisy that he’s hurt his back and can’t work his garden, the intrepid little girl devises a brilliant solution. Next thing anyone knows, she’s invited the whole neighborhood to a digging party with the added incentive of “hidden treasure.” The party’s a hit, with lonely widows pairing well with overtaxed mothers, a home-schooled genius bonding with a local professor, and even the university students hitting it off with normally grumpy Mr. Hofmeister. Now everyone’s happier and healthier, though it’s up to child readers to determine the secret treasure. Cheery watercolors and collage give the plot a special perk, and adults will dig (pun fully intended) as many tiny details as their children. Though allusions to the “hidden treasure” threaten to border on the insipid, the book deftly avoids the usual perils Straddling the line between cute and down-to-earth, this is one gardening book that will strike its readers as blooming lovely. (Picture book. 3-7)
WARRIOR
Oh, Ellen HarperTeen (336 pp.) $17.99 | $10.99 e-book | Dec. 31, 2013 978-0-06-209112-3 978-0-06-209114-7 e-book Series: Prophecy, 2 In the sequel to Prophecy (2013), demon slayer Kira searches for a second ancient treasure to protect her cousin and her homeland. Only days have passed since the Iron Army, led by Kira’s uncle, King Eojin, defeated the Yamato invaders and liberated Hansong. Unfortunately, their triumph is short-lived: Assassins murder Eojin at a royal banquet, fracturing the fragile alliance that had united the Seven Kingdoms under one leader. To defend her cousin, Prince Taejo, from those who contest his claim to the throne, Kira embarks on a quest with her most trusted companions to find a jeweled dagger, the second of three magical treasures mentioned in an ancient prophecy. Their action-packed journey provides ample opportunities for Kira to demonstrate her fighting prowess and explore her growing feelings for the handsome, haunted Jaewon. Unfortunately, |
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the brisk pacing doesn’t entirely compensate for the stock characters and the weak worldbuilding. It’s difficult to understand Kira’s strong senses of duty and loyalty when her most important relationships feel perfunctory. Meanwhile, though Oh weaves many details from Korean history and folklore into her story, her inconsistent prose—which veers from contemporary snark to stilted formality—prevents her from establishing a convincing sense of time and place. A run-of-the-mill quest fantasy, despite its uncommon setting. (glossary, map; not seen) (Fantasy. 13-16)
IN DREAMS
Orloff, Erica Speak/Penguin (304 pp.) $9.99 paper | Jan. 9, 2014 978-0-14-242407-0 Orloff mixes suspense, romance and Greek mythology to tell the tale of a 16-year-old girl who learns that her dreams might kill her. When Iris falls asleep, she always has the same dream: She walks down an endless hallway with doors stretching to infinity in both directions, searching for a boy she knows is there somewhere. It turns out that these dreams are real and that Iris has a strong connection to several of the Greek gods, who also turn out to be real. She finally meets Sebastian, who she’s sure is her soul mate, in her dream, but he’s trapped there unless he’s willing to risk his life to cross into the mortal world. However, a war is breaking out among the gods, and Iris finds herself caught in the middle of the action. Epiales, the god of nightmares, takes the fight directly into the mortal world, trashing Iris’ house and threatening her entire family. Among the gods on Iris’ side is Aphrodite, marvelously drawn as an overweight diva with zest for life and lust for the local Greek pastry baker, who sashays into Iris’ house to protect her. Orloff heads each chapter with a quotation related to dreams from writers as diverse as Shakespeare and Ruth Rendell. These reinforce the thematic emphasis on the importance of dreams and dreaming, neatly executed without sacrificing excitement or humor. Solid. (Paranormal thriller. 12 & up)
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THE BURNING SHADOW
Paver, Michelle Dial (304 pp.) $16.99 | Jan. 16, 2014 978-0-8037-3880-5 Series: Gods and Warriors, 2
Bronze Age Greece is a dangerous place, filled with angry spirits, vengeful warriors and uncertain alliances. Hylas, a young goatherd and Outsider, must navigate this mysterious world as he searches for his missing younger sister, Issi. Missing his friends, Pirra, the daughter of the High Priestess, and Spirit the dolphin, Hylas is once again alone in his quest (Gods and Warriors, 2012). His journey is cut short when he is snatched by slavers and forced to labor in the mines of Thalakrea, a volcanic island. Twelve-year-old Pirra’s fate is no less suffocating: Her mother has once again promised her in marriage. Pirra bribes a seer to help her escape, but the old woman has other plans. Fate brings Pirra to Hylas’ island prison, where they meet a spirit-touched lion cub. Together, they must confront the dangerous prophecy hanging over Hylas’ life. This second volume is a vast improvement over the first. The historically accurate and opulent setting has receded, becoming the backdrop for the fast-paced adventure. Well-developed characters populate a time and place where the veil between the real world and the spiritual realm is thin. Maps and an author’s note enrich the text. Well-crafted historical adventure. (Historical fantasy. 10-14)
MOONKIND
Prineas, Sarah Harper/HarperCollins (272 pp.) $16.99 | $9.99 e-book | $17.89 PLB Dec. 31, 2013 978-0-06-192109-4 978-0-06-228560-7 e-book 978-0-06-192110-0 PLB Series: Winterling, 3 The finale to a low-key middle-grade fantasy trilogy falters under the weight of
Rook is an appealing foil as he struggles with unexpected feelings of friendship and loyalty. Unfortunately, the remaining characters are barely sketched, with their personalities changing to serve the convenience of the plot. Too many fortuitous twists and nick-of-time rescues drain the narrative suspense, and the climactic confrontation is less inspiring triumph than wince-inducing bathos (spoiler alert: All you need is love). Still, in a genre overstuffed with grim dystopias and angst-y Chosen Ones, there’s pleasure to be found in a quiet, gentle—if excessively well-meaning—adventure tale. (Fantasy. 10-14)
WHEN I WAS THE GREATEST
Reynolds, Jason Atheneum (240 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 7, 2014 978-1-4424-5947-2
A literary story of growing up in Brooklyn. Ali, 15 going on 16, lives in Bed-Stuy with his mom, a social worker, and his little sister, Jazz, who has a knack for markers. He hangs out on the stoop with his two BFFs, brothers nicknamed by his sister: Noodles and Needles. Needles, the older, suffers from Tourette’s syndrome, and Noodles and Ali look out for him. In the lead plotline, the three boys crash an illegal party in the basement of a nearby brownstone and then deal with the fallout. Action notwithstanding, the story actually reads more like a character study of Ali and his sister and friends and a tender homage to this seemingly dangerous neighborhood. Even though Reynolds thoughtfully (and most likely truthfully) depicts the neighborhood as one where guns and drug transactions are seen regularly, readers don’t necessarily feel the danger due to the tender and deeply protective relationships of the characters, who are realistically if not exquisitely drawn. The plot, though compelling, takes back seat to them, and what unfolds is a moving and thoughtprovoking study of the connectivity among a family and friends that plays upon and defies readers’ expectations. An author worth watching. (Fiction. 12 & up)
earnest moralizing. Fer is now the true Lady of the Summerlands, oath-bound to serve her people. But there are other Lords and Ladies who would rather rule than serve, and by forswearing their oaths to remove their mesmerizing “glamories,” they have brought a deathly sickness to their realms. Only the half-human Fer can stop the spreading curse of the “stilth,” and that will require trusting in Rook and his brother-pucks—whose very nature is to lie and betray. The magical lands are small and contained, drawn with exquisite attention to detail, which makes the creeping ruin all the more horrifying. Fer remains a likable heroine, having outgrown much of her earlier naïveté while retaining her compassion, bravery and unwavering sense of right and wrong. 92
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“…Riordan doesn’t stint on action or laughs (fart jokes abound, and a tart-tongued Calypso is a special treat)….” from the house of hades
THE HOUSE OF HADES
Riordan, Rick Disney Hyperion (608 pp.) $19.99 | Oct. 8, 2013 978-1-4231-4672-8 Series: Heroes of Olympus, 4
Having plunged into Tartarus at the end of the last book, The Mark of Athena (2013), Percy and Annabeth struggle toward the Doors of Death, while their friends hurry to meet them on the other side at the titular House of Hades. Riordan is most successful in his evocation of Tartarus and its hellish, monster-infested landscape. Without lightening his heroes’ miseries in any way, the author provides a helper and necessary mood-lifter in the person of Iapetus/Bob, the Titan whose memory Percy had obliterated with the waters of Lethe in a previous adventure. Now Hades’ janitor, Bob, along with a skeletal saber-tooth kitten he names Small Bob, joins Percy and Annabeth on their trek, causing them both to plumb unexpected moral depths. Meanwhile, on board (and off) the Argo II, Jason, Piper, Leo, Hazel and Frank similarly must come to understand themselves better in order to accomplish the tasks set before them (though not to equal extents). Though Riordan doesn’t stint on action or laughs (fart jokes abound, and a tarttongued Calypso is a special treat), readers may find themselves appreciating these moments of contemplation all the more for the depth of characterization they reveal. The denouement finds the demigods poised for the final battle with Gaea and her minions; they have exactly 14 days to save the world. In this adventure, victories are hard-won and the essence of bravery nuanced, making the journey as satisfying as it is entertaining. (Fantasy. 10-14)
FUGITIVE X
Rosenblum, Gregg HarperTeen (272 pp.) $17.99 | $9.99 e-book | Jan. 7, 2014 978-0-06-212597-2 978-0-06-212600-9 e-book Series: Revolution 19, 2 Can Kevin, Nick and Cass survive apart in a robot-controlled world? Fresh from an unsuccessful attempt to free their parents from the robot-controlled City (Revolution 19, 2013), 13-year-old technology expert Kevin, his adopted older sister, Cass, and his older brother, Nick, set out to find a robot-free Freepost like the one where they grew up, as well as their liberated City friends, Lexi and Farryn. After a disagreement, Kevin is abducted by robots who seem friendly. Chasing them, Cass suffers an accident that brings her to the brink of death. Nick can only watch as City robots take her away. Still trying desperately to find Kevin, Nick accepts the help of enigmatic Erica, but bots dog their every step. Kevin |
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discovers an enclave where robots and humans work together; Cass is brainwashed and returned to her birth family; and Nick joins the rebels as he continues his search for his siblings. Will the trio be able to reunite and find their friends? Picking up where the first left off, Rosenblum’s second could stand alone, but it’s best read as a sequel. There’s no great character development or innovative plotting, but good action sequences and an interesting future milieu make this fine pleasure reading. Devised by the minds behind 24 and Homeland, can a TV series be far behind? A sequel isn’t. (Science fiction. 12-16)
INTO THE STILL BLUE
Rossi, Veronica Harper/HarperCollins (400 pp.) $17.99 | $11.99 e-book | Jan. 28, 2014 978-0-06-207209-2 978-0-06-207211-5 e-book Series: Under the Never Sky, 3 This conclusion to the Under the Never Sky trilogy begins as increasingly destructive electromagnetic Aether storms ravage the landscape. Desperate, Perry and Aria decide to use hovercraft to transport the surviving members of the Tides tribe and the Dweller population to the mythic Still Blue, a region rumored to be free of storms. Hijacking the hovercraft from the bloodthirsty rival Horn tribe leader’s control will require combining Aria’s Dweller technological knowledge with Perry’s Tides wilderness survival skills. But uniting the Dwellers and Tides demands painful personal sacrifices from the two inexperienced young leaders. Here, the inventive worldbuilding of the first two novels is replaced by a heavy reliance on contrivances—the origin of the Aether storms is too easily explained, yet the improbable existence of the Still Blue remains mysterious. The novel focuses largely on Perry’s and Aria’s struggles to balance their personal feelings with their leadership responsibilities. Unfortunately, their increasingly repetitive inner monologues, while believable, offer few surprises for returning readers. The attempts at increasing suspense by injecting jealous tension between Perry and Aria falls flat, as the previous novels so firmly established their strong commitment to each other. Several other emotional moments, including a revelation about Aria’s father, feel more distractingly melodramatic than necessary. In spite of the shortcomings, loyal fans will still enjoy the (predictably) happy ending. (Science fiction. 12-18)
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INTERVIEWS & PROFILES
Marie Lu
The writer’s smash Legend trilogy is about to come to an exhilarating close By Gordon West
Conceived from a union of mental invention and keen observation, a manuscript begins with a spark. Through weeks, months, years, it gestates. Unforeseen alterations transpire—expansions here, reductions there—and after days of nervous anticipation and nights of potent coffee, it is born. Is it a golden child of vigorous praise? A bad seed destined for shadows? Or is it both? Marie Lu’s debut book, Legend, is arguably of the golden persuasion. It scored accolades from critics, 94
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garnered then survived media hype and ultimately evolved into a trilogy. With the finale, Champion, set for release a few days from now, ends are being tied in the meticulously realized, action-packed world Lu has created. There are likely requisite nervous knots that come with hoping to meet the final expectations of fans, editors, publishers and agents, but what is it really like to say goodbye? Unless it’s to houseguests with no boundaries or a Form 1040 en route to the IRS, bidding farewell generally isn’t sunshine and daisies. “It’s definitely emotional in weird ways,” Lu says. It’s the day before her book tour begins in Los Angeles, and we’re chatting from opposite coasts. She sounds cool, friendly, precise and not at all freaked out that a huge part of her life has reached The End. “A part of me is really relieved because I’m like, ‘Oh my god, I managed to finish it without killing myself or without disappointing my publisher.’ It’s a little bit of a relief because you feel like you’re sending your kids off to college, and they’re off to mingle with the public, and my work is done. But it’s also kind of sad because it feels like the empty nest….It’s this weird mix of blissfulness that I’m left with at the end.” Bliss is something Lu has likely become wellacquainted with while spinning the Legend trilogy. On top of her critical and commercial success, CBS Films holds the rights to Legend. If a film project were given the green light, would she cringe at the thought of character-butchering or just enjoy the potentially fruitful Hollywood ride? “Translation to screen is such a tricky thing, and I’m always amazed that it can even happen at all,” Lu says. “For Legend, I always told myself, as long as the characters and their essences kirkus.com
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stay intact, I really don’t mind if they have to change the plot around.” Day and June are the trilogy’s two central characters. Day is a rebel-cum–high-ranking military figure of hope, and June is a brainiac-turned– government darling. Their stories intertwine in the Republic, Lu’s realization of a tumultuous future where classes rumble and corruption is pandemic. As in the previous books, Champion’s first-person narrative alternates between the two starkly different characters. Is flip-flopping any easier by Book 3, or is there still mental turbulence? “It was definitely a lot smoother than when I first started writing Legend,” Lu says. “With Legend, I had a lot of trouble getting into June’s head. In Champion, it started to come a little bit easier. June was starting to change a little bit as a character, so she doesn’t speak in as many analytical parentheses as she does in Legend and Prodigy. Her changing personality has started to appear in her chapters as well.” Perhaps the increased ease also came from the music used as a creative lubricant. Lu has posted playlists for Champion’s two older siblings, so I ask what was in stereo while Lu wrote the baby of the family. “Mad World” is the song that sticks with her, “because I feel like it fits with the general idea of the Republic,” Lu says. “And then ‘Do You Hear the People Sing?’ from the Les Misérables soundtrack; I put that one in because the song really fits with the revolution and people standing up for their rights and also because it hearkens back to the origins of Legend. I came up with the story of Legend from watching a Les Mis movie, so I felt like I had to put in my playlist some song from the Les Mis soundtrack.” In her acknowledgments, Lu mentions a heart’s protected, golden space and the hope that one of her books can hold that coveted space for readers. But surely there’s a character for whom Lu has a protected golden space? “The book that I read when I was a kid that really led me onto the path of permanently being a fan of science fiction and fantasy was the Redwall series by Brian Jacques,” says Lu. “It’s basically set in this fantasy world populated by mice and squirrels and what have you, and every year, there are these invading hordes of wild cats that are trying to take over their little abbey, and they have to defend themselves.” She calls the concept behind Redwall “adorable.” The one character that stuck out to her is |
the mouse named Mattimeo. “He was so spunky and optimistic and mischievous,” she says. “I’ve always liked those spunky characters. I think that may have been the first character I ever read who was like that.” As the Legend trilogy concludes, Lu has something else of importance on her horizon: marriage. “We got engaged earlier this year, and I have a blue sapphire ring. Sapphire is one of my favorite stones,” she says. “I would love a paper clip ring, though.” Paper clip? That’s right. Just read the book, and you’ll understand the sentiment. 9
Gordon West is a writer and illustrator living in Brooklyn. He is admittedly addicted to horror films and French macarons. Champion was reviewed in the Oct. 15 issue of Kirkus Reviews.
CHAMPION Lu, Marie Putnam (384 pp.) $18.99 | Nov. 5, 2013 978-0-399-25677-6
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GLITTER GIRL
Runkle, Toni; Webb, Stephen Sourcebooks Jabberwocky (256 pp.) $7.99 paper | Dec. 3, 2013 978-1-4022-8557-8 A fashion-savvy eighth-grader’s blog garners the attention of a major company. Due to her skill in discerning forthcoming fashions, Kat is selected to be an Alpha Girl. As one of 50 throughout the country, Kat is chosen to have a sleepover party featuring a new line of teen products and entered into a contest to become the “Face of Glitter Girl.” However, Kat’s fantastic opportunity soon illuminates the differences between her and best friend, Jules, who is skeptical of the project. It also creates tension in Kat’s developing romance with Jules’ older brother, Kyle. Events culminate in a crisis when Kat discovers that the party to reveal the winner of the contest coincides with Jules’ 14th birthday party. Runkle and Webb’s narrative convincingly conveys the emotions of the characters, allowing readers to consider both sides of Kat and Jules’ conflict. They address dilemmas familiar to young adolescent readers, such as friends growing apart and the longing for acceptance. The authors also include more lighthearted milestones, adeptly portraying the giddiness of first dates and first kisses. By the story’s resolution, Kat demonstrates maturity in evaluating her priorities and accepting responsibility for her choices. Runkle and Webb deliver an empowering message about striving to be true to oneself for middle school readers. (Fiction. 11-14)
ERASED
Rush, Jennifer Little, Brown (288 pp.) $18.00 | $8.89 e-book | Jan. 7, 2014 978-0-316-19715-1 978-0-316-25189-1 e-book Series: Altered, 2 Anna and the boys are still on the run from the Branch, the mysterious organization that shaped them into human weapons of mass destruction (Altered, 2013). Grocery shopping and training for combat, they hide out in a cozy cabin like a heavily armed Snow White and three dwarves, their uneasy domesticity troubled by flashbacks of pre-Branch life. Anna’s primary concern is with the family she’d forgotten: her sister, Dani, and their parents. Learning that Dani is alive and held by the Branch, Anna seeks help from Trev, the fourth boy, admitted Branch agent and questionable ally, to free her. As flashbacks proliferate, the dizzying plot twists and turns (or, like Anna and Nick’s intense relationship, is left dangling). Key developments pivot on characters readers haven’t met or are delivered in lumps of “while you were sleeping” exposition. Combat aside, Anna’s fairly passive: 96
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experiencing flashbacks, reading files, listening to witnesses describe events that occurred long before the story’s present timeline. The frantic pacing and underdeveloped characters are dizzying, distancing, occasionally boring—like hearing a detailed account of someone’s dreams—so dramatic events (and an accumulating body count) that should move readers have little emotional resonance. Building suspense is Rush’s strong suit, but, less earth-shattering than foreshadowed, the tidy resolution feels like false advertising. Lowering the stakes and piling on the violence makes for a disappointing sequel. (Science fiction. 12 & up)
THE SNOWMELT RIVER
Ryan, Frank P. Quercus (720 pp.) $15.95 | $9.99 e-book | Nov. 12, 2013 978-1-62365-048-3 978-1-62365—49-0 e-book In this Celtic-flavored crossover brick, four modern teenagers are summoned to another world to save it. Borrowing freely from Tolkien, C.S. Lewis and Irish legend in general, Ryan assembles orphaned Alan Duval (or “Duuuvaaalll,” as he is often dubbed by assailants), Kate, Mark, and Mark’s stammering, half-aboriginal sister, Mo, for a quest. He sends them to the magical world of Monisle, formerly known as Tír, where, 2,000 years after the last invasion attempt, the Tyrant of the Wastelands is sending out his Death Legions for a third time. Along with a prophecy, riddles, magical crystals, a giant eye and like standard-issue elements, the author folds in various nonhuman races. These range from the shape-changing Shee—being, as the author puts it with typical hyperbole, “Great cats turning into women, armed with swords!”—to the dwarven Fir Bolg, whose warriors are all long dead but not, climactically, gone. Amid many vague references to their “fate” and “destiny,” the four sail up the mighty titular river on a ship that turns out to be both sentient and a shape-changer itself to do battle with an army led one of the Tyrant’s Septemvile, or inner circle. The end is just as busy as the rest, leaving its heroes poised for sequels. The author doesn’t make much effort to look beyond the canonical bandwagon for inspiration. (Fantasy. 12-15)
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“Skinner’s debut pairs authentic gaming action with old-school, sophisticated science-fiction concepts to create a twisty, reality-warping ride.” from game slaves
IT’S A FEUDAL, FEUDAL WORLD A Different Medieval History
Shapiro, Stephen Illus. by Kinnaird, Ross Annick Press (48 pp.) $24.95 | $14.95 paper | Dec. 1, 2013 978-1-55451-553-0 978-1-55451-552-3 paper
A waggishly illuminating pictorial tour of the Middle Ages. Medieval history is full of good stuff—the Silk Road, the bubonic plague, Vikings—and Shapiro touches on a fair amount, concentrating on the area that became known as Europe and the Near East, with brief forays to Cathay. Kinnaird deploys infographics to give readers a sense of numbers: of Viking travels, weapons of warfare or women in the workplace. Shapiro infuses the 1,000-year period with both the foreign and the familiar. Readers may know about diseases, but the scope of the Black Death boggles the mind; medieval class structure—“The life of a young peasant was like that of an old peasant, only poorer”— finds echoes in today’s inequities of wealth. He lays it out well, and Kinnaird provides crisp artwork with a comic-book look and touch of humor. The book gets below the surface on more than one occasion to give depth to such circumstances as rules governing the behavior of nonbelievers and how the plague was spread by Mongols catapulting their dead soldiers—along with their attendant fleas—into cities under siege. A rangy but concise slice of history, it’s likely to encourage readers to take the next step in learning about medieval times. (Nonfiction. 9-12)
DON’T PLAY WITH YOUR FOOD!
Shea, Bob Illus. by Shea, Bob Disney Hyperion (40 pp.) $16.99 | Jan. 7, 2014 978-142316807-2
Buddy is one cranky, hungry monster. He yells at the mountains, the trees and even the sun. “You’re not so hot, SUN!” But whom does he like to yell at the most? Bunnies! He’s going to eat them up. “No, please, no!” the bunnies quiver. “We were about to make cupcakes!” Buddy, not one to fall for trickery, declares, “Cupcakes first. Bunnies for dessert.” But of course, after eating nine cupcakes, he’s far too full to eat another bite. He promises to return for the bunnies the next day. Thus, the manipulation continues. The bunnies take him swimming so he’s too tired to eat them. Then they form the Stripey-Stripe Club—in honor of Buddy and his orange stripes! Buddy is having so much fun with the bunnies that he forgets the old adage: Don’t play with your food. Well, now he can’t eat the bunnies because they have become… his friends! Buddy, the chubby little monster, looks suspiciously similar to a certain red dinosaur (Dinosaur vs. Bedtime, 2008, |
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etc.) and has the bravado to match. The ending goes a beat too far, but Shea’s storytelling still shines. Children often see themselves as the underdog in an adultcentric world; they’ll be rooting for the bunnies (all three…no wait, 72 of them). (Picture book. 3-6)
GAME SLAVES
Skinner, Gard Harcourt (336 pp.) $16.99 | Jan. 7, 2014 978-0-547-97259-6 Self-aware nonplayer characters, here video game enemies, try to escape the digital world. Phoenix leads the “next-generation, cutting-edge, biggest, baddest group of kickass NPC AI mother-crushers that ever played game” across premier game company BlackStar’s genres and titles. BlackStar dominates the market through enemy AIs—artificial intelligence—as clever enemies make games challenging and unpredictable. But latest-generation Dakota malfunctions—she doesn’t want to fight and is convinced she “can’t just be a computer program.” The characters slowly develop through fast-paced, genre-hopping video game excursions—while clear action descriptions are accessible to readers who don’t game, those in the know will identify subtle nods. Dakota slowly convinces Phoenix’s team that they’re more than clever programs, forges an alliance with a programmer’s children and leads the team out of the game world. It’s a demotion, though, going from tough virtual personae to weaklings who’ve been living in liquid-filled tanks. Worse, post–energy crisis, society’s collapsed and reorganized into corporate-controlled city-states. While better than the cannibals outside, the city’s wracked with hopeless income inequity, a major theme. Games are the opiate of the masses. Phoenix’s team battles physical hardships while evading BlackStar’s desperate attempts to reclaim them. Light characterization is overcome by the mystery surrounding the origins of the characters, and a delightful final twist hits a perfect note. Skinner’s debut pairs authentic gaming action with old-school, sophisticated science-fiction concepts to create a twisty, reality-warping ride. (Science fiction. 12 & up)
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“The moving and authentic portrayal of Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters will engage readers with an interest in the history of the women’s movement.” from a mad, wicked folly
SURVIVE! INSIDE THE HUMAN BODY The Digestive System
Song, Suk-young Illus. by Han, Hyun-dong No Starch Press (184 pp.) $17.95 paper | Nov. 1, 2013 978-159327-471-9 Series: Survive! Inside the Human Body, 1
In a mix of comic-book panels and print, a wild ride through the digestive system is positively clogged with scientific information. Opening a trilogy originally published in Korean, the tale puts fussbudget Dr. Brain and reckless young Geo aboard a virus-shaped experimental craft that, à la The Fantastic Voyage, shrinks to microscopic size just in time to be inadvertently gobbled down by Phoebe—a cast member with dark skin, “jungle instincts” and a huge appetite. With Dr. Brain explaining in detail both anatomical features and what’s coming next, he and Geo view extreme close-ups of Phoebe’s mouth, esophagus and stomach as she chews and swallows. Then it’s “ONWARD TO THE DUODENUM!” Narrowly surviving hazards from peristalsis to indigestion as they go, and blasting potential menaces from H. pylori bacteria to slavering hookworms, the voyagers nearly make it to Pheobe’s anus before they’re absorbed into the intestinal wall to set the stage for the next episode. Interspersed among the pages of high-action, manga-style pages of comic art are frequent spreads of conventional text that repeat and expand on Dr. Brain’s adjacent lectures. The interlocking infodumps not only provide overviews of each stage of digestion (with side notes on topics like proper nutrition, sanitary practices and common diseases), but also identify, for instance, the three types of salivary glands, the specific anthelmintic drug for hookworm infestation, and fecal indicators of disease. Typecast characters aside, this heavy but nourishing banquet of facts will slide down easily thanks to the art’s mix of often gross physical comedy and recognizably rendered anatomy. (index) (Graphic nonfiction. 11-14)
THE SCAR BOYS
Vlahos, Len Egmont USA (256 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 28, 2014 978-1-60684-439-7 Harry is used to making people squirm. When others see his badly scarred face, there is an inevitable reaction that ranges from forced kindness to primal cruelty. In this first-person tale written as an extended college entrance essay, Harry has no intention of sparing readers from this discomfort. He recounts the trauma of his young life spent recuperating from the act of childhood bullying that left him a burn victim. In middle school, he meets 98
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Johnny McKenna, the first person to seem to offer him genuine friendship. Over the years, Harry finds strength by Johnny’s side, following along with his decisions, from the arbitrary to the lifechanging, and together, they form a punk-rock band called the Scar Boys. With the band on tour as high school ends, the true dynamic of their friendship, Johnny’s less-than-altruistic need for Harry, and Harry’s ownership of himself in all his disfigured glory begin to emerge. This leads up to a heartbreaking tragedy that bonds the two boys in understanding. Though the use of the college essay to present the story may seem trite, the unflinching honesty of the narrative and subtle development of the compelling characters make up for the use of this device. Etches its way onto the heart and leaves a mark. (Fiction. 14 & up)
A MAD, WICKED FOLLY
Waller, Sharon Biggs Viking (448 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 23, 2014 978-0-670-01468-2
Vicky Darling is the rebellious, artistically talented daughter of a wealthy plumbing magnate, coming of age in Edwardian England at the height of the women’s suffrage movement. The title ironically references Queen Victoria’s condemnation of “… this mad, wicked folly of ‘Women’s Rights’ with all its attendant horrors on which her poor feeble sex is bent, forgetting every sense of womanly feelings and propriety.” Vicky’s personal struggles to become a respected artist are paralleled with those of the suffragists with whom she becomes closely involved when her arranged marriage with a wealthy scion of a well-bred family falls apart and she is cut off from the family finances. Vicky finally finds true reward when she is accepted into the Royal College of Art on her own merits. Her lower-class lover and sometime “undraped” art model, police constable Will Fletcher, finally agrees to an artistic partnership publishing the “tuppenny novelettes” he writes and she illustrates. Although the modern dialogue is jarring at times and the plot somewhat implausible, the narrative moves swiftly along, and the historical background is painted credibly and with a light touch. The moving and authentic portrayal of Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters will engage readers with an interest in the history of the women’s movement. Author’s notes at the end of the book on Edwardian life, the women’s movement and the Pre-Raphaelite art movement, on which much of the fine art thread in the book is based, are helpful in establishing the context of the novel. An enjoyable historical romp. (Historical fiction. 12 & up)
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ROOMIES
Zarr, Sara; Altebrando, Tara Little, Brown (288 pp.) $18.00 | $9.99 e-book | Dec. 24, 2013 978-0-316-21749-1 978-0-316-21752-1 e-book
picture books for black history month
Two college roommates begin to influence each other’s lives before they even meet in this co-authored contemporary drama. EB Owens is an independent Jersey girl trying to break free of a boyfriend she’s outgrown while steering clear of her single mom’s messy dating life. Lauren Cole is a San Francisco native who helps out with her five younger siblings while working two jobs and worrying constantly about money. When University of California, Berkley’s studenthousing office matches them as roommates the summer before freshman year, they begin an email correspondence that leads to confessions, misunderstandings and epiphanies. EB thinks Lauren is too judgmental about her mom’s love life, while Lauren is upset when EB accidently reveals a secret to Lauren’s best friend in a misfired email. EB is sensitive about her divorced gay dad, while Lauren is touchy about dating a boy from a different race. Even though readers might wonder why these two never avail themselves of Skype, the narrative reliance on email means there is real tension as fall approaches. Will EB and Lauren be able to overcome their differences before their move-in date? The main characters’ back stories are engaging, and the large supporting cast of friends and family members (especially Lauren’s sweet brothers and sisters) are well-developed and integral to the girls’ growth. The novel’s deeply embedded theme of transition will have tremendous appeal for any teenager coping with change. (Fiction. 12-18)
A DANCE LIKE STARLIGHT One Ballerina’s Dream
Dempsey, Kristy Illus. by Cooper, Floyd Philomel (32 pp.) $16.99 | Jan. 2, 2014 978-0-399-25284-6
Dreams do come true for a Harlem girl in the 1950s. Mama works hard sewing costumes for the ballet dancers at the old Metropolitan Opera House, and her daughter delights in trying them on and whirling around in front of a mirror. She even receives special permission from the Ballet Master to take class. But dreaming may not be enough. The skies over New York City are not clear enough to see the first star, the wishing star, and—more to the point—“Could a colored girl like me / ever become / a prima ballerina?” Then, one special night, the little girl and her mama attend a performance featuring Janet Collins, the first African-American dancer at the Met. Collins first danced there on November 13, 1951. Dempsey’s expressive free verse is full of longing and dreams, all in the very believable voice of a ballet-loving girl. Cooper employs his signature style of textured art to lovingly capture Harlem in the ’50s. His little dancer is equally beautiful waiting for a city bus or elegantly soaring as high as the lights of the theater in a pas de deux with Collins. A warm, inspirational collaboration that will resonate in the hearts of all who dream. (author’s note) (Picture book. 3-7)
WE SHALL OVERCOME The Story of a Song
Levy, Debbie Illus. by Brantley-Newton, Vanessa Disney/Jump at the Sun (32 pp.) $16.99 | Dec. 17, 2013 978-1-4231-1954-8
An inviting introduction to a spirited and spiritual anthem. Levy traces the evolution of this iconic song from its beginnings as black church music during slavery through its emergence as a labor protest song in the 1940s to its stirring place of pride in the civil rights movement at lunch counters, on picket lines and at the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington. President Lyndon Johnson invoked its words prior to the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. So powerful were the |
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music and words that they later traveled to East Germany, South Africa, India and Czechoslovakia. It is still being sung today, as it was on the day that Barak Obama was elected. The free-verse text is informative and engaging. Equally effective is the mixedmedia and collage design from Brantley-Newton, which depicts men, women and children holding hands and raising their many voices as one. Their multihued faces and colorful attire stand out against a white background decorated with soft, marbled swirls of color. Verses of the song, presented in bold type, provide visual appeal and should encourage children to listen to the many recordings available and sing along. A slice of musical Americana celebrating community protest against injustice. (timeline, sources, recommended Web recordings, bibliography) (Informational picture book. 6-10)
JOSEPHINE The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker Powell, Patricia Hruby Illus. by Robinson, Christian Chronicle (104 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 14, 2014 978-1-4521-0314-3
A life devoted to self-expression through dance and racial harmony is celebrated in this lavish, lengthy picture book. Writing in free verse, former dancer Powell pays homage to the fabulous Josephine Baker. Baker rose from a childhood of poverty and race riots in St. Louis, Mo., to dance in New York and Paris, the city where she finally achieved fame and escaped American segregation and racism. Grateful to the French, she worked as a spy during World War II and later adopted 12 children from around the world: She called them her Rainbow Tribe. The author excels at describing Baker’s innovative and memorable dance routines and her fantastical life in Paris, where she walked her pet leopard, each adorned with a diamond choker. The book is arranged as stage acts, each covering a segment of her story. With this device, Powell and Robinson create an air of expectancy before the curtain rises and a time to reflect and admire as it falls in front of a stage strewn with flowers. Robinson’s stunning acrylic paintings depict elongated figures and recreate Baker’s movements and costumes with verve and dynamism. The page design features well-placed text, occasional quotes and vibrant hues, further complementing its striking subject. An extraordinary dancer and woman is here celebrated with style and empathy. (author’s note, artist’s note, further reading, quotation sources) (Poetry/biography. 6-12)
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MALCOLM LITTLE The Boy Who Grew Up to Become Malcolm X
Shabazz, Ilyasah Illus. by Ford, A.G. Atheneum (48 pp.) $17.99 | $12.99 e-book | Jan. 7, 2014 978-1-4424-1216-3 978-1-4424-3304-5 e-book The childhood of the controversial African-American activist was shaped by parental love and white racism. Writing with the fervor and intensity of a motivational speaker, Shabazz recounts her father’s early years, which were filled with the loving support and teachings of his parents as well as the hate and destruction of the Ku Klux Klan. His mother nurtured a love of learning and nature, and his father—a follower of Marcus Garvey—taught him self-pride before being murdered by the KKK. Shabazz concentrates her lengthy text on her father’s youth; she writes about his racist English teacher but does not mention his imprisonment, work for Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam or conversion to Islam anywhere in the text or in her three-page author’s note. With the passion of a preacher, she celebrates love, respect, tolerance and education without restraint, producing an overwritten text laced with an excess of flowery images. In a description of the garden that Malcolm’s mother shared with her children, she writes that it “was a testament to true and unconditional brotherhood from the earth on up to the sky, a daily lesson in acceptance and equality.” Ford’s oil paintings, framed on the page, are lush and filled with detail. A daughter’s proud but overwrought tribute to her father and his parents. (Picture book/ biography. 7-10)
UNDER THE FREEDOM TREE
VanHecke, Susan Illus. by Ladd, London Charlesbridge (32 pp.) $16.95 | $9.99 e-book | Jan. 7, 2013 978-1-58089-550-7 978-1-60734-634-0 e-book
In 1861, three slaves escape from Confederate Virginia and find freedom. When their owner demands their return under the Fugitive Slave Act, Union Gen. Frank Butler declares that since Virginia has just seceded, the men are “contraband of war.” Many other escaped slaves join them and build a community called Slabtown. A year into the war, another town called Grand Contraband Camp arises from the ruins of Hampton, Va. While former “chattel” spend their days working for the Union Army, their evenings are devoted to learning letters and numbers from missionary teachers standing under a live oak. The year 1863 brings the Emancipation Proclamation, read aloud under what the community calls the Freedom Tree. A precedent was set as, according to the author’s note, the kirkus.com
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“Delinois’ full-bleed paintings are heroic in scale, richly textured and vibrant” froms mumbet’s declaration of independence
land grew into Hampton University. The Emancipation Oak, that Freedom Tree, is now part of a National Historic Landmark District. VanHecke’s free-verse narrative is compelling, informative and emotive, telling the story by year from 1861 to 1863. Ladd uses acrylic and pastel paints with colored pencils to present a realistic depiction of events, the danger that the men faced while escaping and the jubilation felt as they listened to the words that freed them. A valuable addition to the expanding canon of books on slaves escaping to freedom. (bibliography) (Informational picture book. 6-10)
MUMBET’S DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
Woelfle, Gretchen Illus. by Delinois, Alix Carolrhoda (32 pp.) $17.95 | $12.95 e-book | Feb. 1, 2014 978-0-7613-6589-1 978-1-4677-2399-2 e-book
With the words of Massachusetts colonial rebels ringing in her ears, a slave determines to win her freedom. In 1780, Mumbet heard the words of the new Massachusetts constitution, including its declaration of freedom and equality. With the help of a young lawyer, she went to court and the following year, won her freedom, becoming Elizabeth Freeman. Slavery was declared illegal and subsequently outlawed in the state. Woelfle writes with fervor as she describes Mumbet’s life in the household of John Ashley, a rich landowner and businessman who hosted protest meetings against British taxation. His wife was abrasive and abusive, striking out with a coal shovel at a young girl, possibly Mumbet’s daughter. Mumbet deflected the blow and regarded the wound as “her badge of bravery.” Ironically, the lawyer who took her case, Theodore Sedgwick, had attended John Ashley’s meetings. Delinois’ full-bleed paintings are heroic in scale, richly textured and vibrant. Typography becomes part of the page design as the font increases when the text mentions freedom. Another slave in the Ashley household was named in the court case, but Woelfle, keeping her young audience in mind, keeps it simple, wisely focusing on Mumbet. A life devoted to freedom and dignity, worthy of praise and remembrance. (author’s note, selected bibliography, further reading) (Picture book/biography. 5-8)
interactive e-books DUCK TAKES A RIDE An Art Story Harris, Kristin Kristin Harris $0.00 | Sep. 17, 2013 1.0; Sep. 17, 2013
This imaginative portrayal of ancient animal figures does not realize its full potential. Using high-quality photographs on a background of decorative and textured paper, this interactive story introduces nine ancient Chinese and Egyptian artifacts. The story and interactive elements prompt young children to imagine these creatures coming to life. “When Ibis wants to have fun, she hops up and down.” With a tap, the photograph of the ibis moves, extending its legs to jump up before sitting back down. This combination of realistic photography and interactive animation will help fuel young children’s imaginations as they prepare for museum visits. Each animal has written a letter to young readers. Hedgehog writes, “I was made in Egypt a very long time ago. I am made out of a special kind of clay a beautiful color of blue.” He further informs readers that he resides in the Brooklyn Museum. Unfortunately, the story that develops is stiff and lackluster. One by one, the animals gather together in a cumulative tale. “When Duck and Hedgehog take a ride on Horse’s cart, Ibis wants ride too.” A final page provides detailed information about each artifact, but it misses an easy opportunity by not providing hyperlinks to the specific pieces in the museum collections. This would have made reaching further reading easy for interested children and families. Though visually pleasing, this app fails to provide children with an engaging story. (iPad storybook app. 4-12)
CUDDLEFISH FRIENDS An Underwater Interactive Adventure
Knoebel, Anna Illus. by Section Studios SuperBot Entertainment and Section Studios $2.99 | Sep. 22, 2013 1.1; Sep. 27, 2013
Light washes of natural science flavor this hypersweet tale of a polka-dot cuttlefish and friends at play on a coral reef. Cecil the cuttlefish, “wig-wagging past the sea anemones, over the tunicates,” meets his royal friend, Justin the sea horse, and other playmates at the Grand Palais de Coral. There, they “pal around among the gentry” and have a sleepover after enjoying “the best plankton shakes this side of the prime meridian!” |
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“…the app explores phonetic sound as well as rhyme, with highlighted words to assist emergent readers.” from axel scheffler’s flip flap farm
Depicted Finding Nemo style in glowing colors with rounded, babyish bodies and anthropomorphic faces, the aquatic figures change color, throw sand, belch or giggle at a tap as they float through elaborately finished marine settings and palace chambers. Along with a spirited (optional) audio reading, tapping any word in the scrolling text produces a vocalization—though not a definition: Readers hazy on, for instance, the differences between “sea anemones” and “tunicates” will need to look elsewhere. Moreover the screen blacks out briefly (except for a seashell “loading” icon) between illustrations, and there is no index to allow selecting scenes or starting over. Transitions aside, a smoothly designed diversion, with plenty of child appeal and definite vocabulary-building potential. (iPad storybook app. 3-6)
CHLOE THE YOGI GOES TO THE AMUSEMENT PARK
Land , Lara Illus. by Scanlon, Michael Adventures in Yogaland, Inc. $0.99 | Aug. 15, 2013 v001; Aug. 15, 2013
A young fox (with a human face) does yoga poses to help her take on the challenges of going to an amusement park. Chloe is superexcited about her visit to the amusement park. Knowing she needs to take the excitement level down a few notches, she does Suryanamaskara, a series of yoga poses also known as sun salutations. Throughout the day Chloe turns to yoga to help her deal with her frustrations, disappointments and fears, inviting readers to join her. With the exception of a video on the first page, there’s not much other interaction here. There are minor animated gestures in the poses as well as a few nondescript movements sprinkled throughout the book, but they’re pretty rudimentary. Still, the story concept is great and will no doubt appeal to those who hope to introduce little ones to a yoga lifestyle. Navigation transitions are lightning fast, but unfortunately, they’re a little confusing. Tapping any of the rides on the third screen takes readers to that part of the story. But from there, readers either have to go back to the third screen (and select another area of the park) or move forward from that point (which means probably skipping several pages). This first installment in a planned five-part series is a cute, valuable contribution to the app landscape. But it could use a little design help. (iPad storybook app. 3-7)
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AXEL SCHEFFLER’S FLIP FLAP FARM
Nosy Crow Illus. by Scheffler, Axel Nosy Crow $0.99 | Sep. 18, 2013 1.0.0; Sep. 18, 2013
A silly introduction to sounds and rhyme. This quadruple-screen “flip book” with 121 possible combinations uses the first letter or phonetic sound of an animal’s top half combined with the name of a different animal’s bottom half to create such creatures as a “purkey” (a pig/turkey—a greedy animal that can’t fly, of course) or a “dicken” (a dog/chicken, which herds the other animals and is great at laying eggs). As readers slide either half from side to side, they create new creatures and also new rhyming descriptions, with one quatrain for each half. In this way, the app explores phonetic sound as well as rhyme, with highlighted words to assist emergent readers. Subtle background music never interferes with the narration, and each poem is engagingly read by child actors with British accents—details users have come to expect with Nosy Crow creations. With the exception of the “For Grown-ups” button, which is purposely difficult to open, all of the interactions are quick and responsive. Page flips are quite easy, but young readers must wait for the poems to finish being read before they are able to tap the animals for sound. At that point, both animal halves can be tapped simultaneously, combining their noises and making for some pretty silly fun that will appeal broadly. Scheffler’s bright, colorful illustrations combine with wordplay for a winner. (iPad storybook app. 2-5)
VEGGIE BOTTOMS Red Card Studios Red Card Studios $0.00 | Apr. 9, 2013 1.51; Sep. 23, 2013
A lowest-common-denominator approach to getting kids to eat their fruits and veggies. Many a parent has employed special tactics to convince picky kids to eat their broccoli and blueberries. But this may be the first time the selling point is bottoms. As in butts, rear ends, derrières. Yes, this storybook app aims to interest kids in fruits and vegetables by focusing on the shapes, textures and sizes of their heinies. All but one of the book’s 16 pages focus on one fruit or vegetable, accompanied by a few facts and a description of its butt. Thomas P. Coconut, for example, has a hairy bottom. Gus Phineas Asparagus has a skinny bottom, and he warns that if you eat him, he’ll make your pee stink. Forelle Pear has a large, spotted bottom, and so on. Two of the four icons at the base of each page are navigation tools, one prompts narration, and the kirkus.com
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fourth causes characters to spin around and show their rumps. Some of the swipe and shake features are clever: With a few of the characters, narration is muffled until the shell, skin or pod is opened. Kids may learn a thing or two about fruits and vegetables here. But selling it to them via potty humor seems rather desperate. (iPad storybook app. 4- 7).
THE LITTLE WITCH AT SCHOOL SlimCricket SlimCricket $1.99 | Oct. 3, 2013 1.0; Oct. 3, 2013
runaway wagons, removing rocks from a collapsing mine tunnel, laying new track, speed training and other like activities. Actions are clearly defined and repeatable, and badges earned are on display at the back of the book. The lack of storyline doesn’t lessen the fun thanks to well-executed design, effects and sound throughout. Those unfamiliar with the video series might want to begin there for the Chuggington back story, but as is, this entertaining train ride is worth the ticket. (iPad storybook app. 2-5)
BLUE BERNARD
Slacker elf classmate in tow, a young student witch takes final exams in this involved set of number, memory and word games. Receiving lengthy instructions from teacher Miss MacSpider as she goes, the little witch negotiates five tests with readers’ help. These include coloring in a paint-by-matching-numbers portrait and navigating a “concentration”-type maze through an ogre’s stomach. Witch and readers are also quizzed on general knowledge (“What animal roars?”) by a grumpy “genealomagic” tree. Ultimately, she passes by bringing her “cuddly toy” bat to life and then turns a rude classmate into a toad. An optional multivoice audio track in English or French is animated enough to compensate, mostly, for a text that only appears a few lines at a time and for the figures’ twitchy undulations, fixed expressions and unnatural gestures in the cartoon illustrations. Each screen features multiple pans and dissolves, plus any number of incidental tap-activated transformations or sound effects. The tests in the tale (and more in a separate “Surprise” section) are available at three selectable levels of difficulty (the question above is rated “Medium”). Forced of animation and perfunctory of plot but wellenough stocked with interactive features and challenges. (iPad storybook app. 5-8)
CHUG PATROL Ready to Rescue
StoryToys StoryToys $4.99 | Sep. 7, 2013 1.0.0; Sep. 7, 2013
Tousnakhoff, Nathalie Illus. by Roussell, Matt Square Igloo $2.99 | Sep. 19, 2013 1.0; Sep. 19, 2013 Series: Colorful World The second in an app series called Colorful World, this follow-up to Zoe’s Green Planet (2013) follows Bernard, who is “blue from head to toe” on an all-pink planet. Bernard’s blue family seems fine with the situation, living happily in a pink house and watching all-pink television, but Bernard is not. After a failed attempt to paint himself pink to fit in with his bullying classmates, Bernard meets a visitor from another planet. It’s Zoe, on her way to visit her friend on the faraway red planet. Zoe and Bernard become friends as they repair Zoe’s ship, and the story ends with the two preparing to fly away together. As with the first app, the star attraction here is the papier-mâché artwork, which lends startling depth and texture to the subtly moving backgrounds and animation. Games integrated into the story (a maze; a fish-sorting challenge) can also be accessed from the main menu, along with options to display text, mute ambient sounds or enable narration. The story feels stale, though. Bernard learns the same lesson—that people of different colors are similar after all—that Zoe did in her app, and ending this volume without the catharsis of space flight disappoints. Taken as a whole with future Colorful World chapters, the series may add up to something greater. Bernard’s story alone is lovely to look at with too few shades between its primary hues. (iPad storybook app. 4-8)
Train-obsessed preschoolers become rescue-patrol trainees in this engaging pop-up adventure. In the railroad world of Chuggington, trains Wilson, Brewster, Koko and Chug Patrol chief Jackman are always “ready to roll,” eager to fulfill their locomotive duties at a moment’s notice. Although designed to mimic a pop-up book, this engaging app is more game than story. Here, Chug Patrol trainees (aka readers) earn merit badges catching |
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SOMEONE STOLE MY BELLY BUTTON
Yu, Derek Illus. by Yu, Derek Derek Yu $1.99 | Sep. 25, 2013 1.0; Sep. 25, 2013
Considerably more polished of software design than art, story or orthography, this bilingual episode features a thoroughly cute ninja panda who discovers the peril of napping outdoors without covering up. The story first sends the little blue-and-white panda out “to play with his friends today!!! yippee!!!” After lunch, little ninja panda ignores a warning from a pink ninja playmate and “kept his tummy out while taking a nap”—whereupon bored “thunder boy,” floating by on a cloud, zaps the outie off with a thunderbolt. A fruitless search and a tearful night ensue. Happily, not only does the nabbed navel arrive in the next morning’s mail with an apologetic note from thunder boy’s dad, Mr. Thunder, but a vague final scene reveals that the whole thing was either a bedtime story or perhaps a dream. Along with tilt-responsive loose apples, tap-activated sparkles, and a large number of other interactive animations and sound effects, the very simple silkscreen-style illustrations feature a stubby-limbed, all-panda cast depicted in various sugary colors. Simple navigation features shuriken-shaped icons to tap for page turns and a ubiquitous panda button to return to the home screen. The tale is related in English over Japanese narrative blocks that change in point size from screen to screen. The instantly monotonous clip of tinkling background music can, thankfully, be switched off; otherwise, there is no audio track. A bit rough around the edges, but any mention of “belly button” will reliably elicit gales of giggles from younger readers and listeners. (iPad storybook app. 4-6.)
This Issue’s Contributors # Alison Anholt-White • Elizabeth Bird • Sophie Brookover • Timothy Capehart • Ann Childs Julie Cummins • Elise DeGuiseppi • Carol Edwards • Robin L. Elliott • Omar Gallaga • Judith Gire • Faye Grearson • F. Lee Hall • Heather L. Hepler • Jennifer Hubert • Shelley Huntington • Kathleen T. Isaacs • Laura Jenkins • Betsy Judkins • Joy Kim • K. Lesley Knieriem • Megan Dowd Lambert • Peter Lewis • Lori Low • Meredith Madyda • Joan Malewitz • Hillias J. Martin • Shelly McNerney • Daniel Meyer • Deb Paulson • John Edward Peters • Susan Pine • Melissa Rabey • Rebecca Rabinowitz • Kristy Raffensberger • Nancy Thalia Reynolds • Melissa Riddle Chalos • Leslie L. Rounds • Ann Marie Sammataro • Katie Scherrer • Mary Ann Scheuer • Dean Schneider • Hillary Foote Schwartz • Stephanie Seales Jennifer Sweeney • Jessica Thomas • Monica Wyatt
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indie A TALE OF TWO AVRAHAMS
These titles earned the Kirkus Star:
Avi-hai, Avraham Appletree Publishing (252 pp.) $17.95 paper | $8.18 e-book | Jul. 24, 2013 978-0-9894169-0-0
DEMOCRACY’S MISSING ARSENAL by Michael B. King; John M. Bredehoft..............................................................................109 DIALOGUES OF A CRIME by John K. Manos..................................110
A fictional investigation of Jewish identity that tracks the parallel efforts of two men to live as Jews in an inhospitable world. This is Avi-hai’s (Danger: Three Jewish Peoples, 1997, etc.) first novel. His other books were nonfiction analyses of Jewish theological and political affairs. A Canadian-born journalist who immigrated to Israel in 1952 and an Israeli civil servant, his life seems to have revolved around the historically nettlesome question of Jewish identity. The novel itself is really two novellas, each meant to mirror and illuminate the other. Both follow characters named Avraham. Like the author, the first Avraham is a Canadian-born journalist who immigrated to Israel out of solidarity with the Zionist cause. From the very beginning, Avraham finds himself in peril. He has stumbled upon rampant corruption among the ultra-Orthodox rabbi extremists, the very same rabbis who “sanctioned” Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination after he signed the Oslo Accords. These rabbinical ideologues are entangled in an embezzlement scheme, and Avraham has gathered enough evidence to prove it. Under threat of death, he flees to Greece, pays for an ersatz passport and makes his way to Italy. On his way, he is entrusted with a very old manuscript of undetermined provenance in order to determine its value and negotiate its sale. The manuscript turns out to be the story of another Avraham, an Italian writing circa 1600. As the shared names suggest, both narrators experience morally comparable challenges, attempting to maintain their Jewishness in the face of relentless persecution. The Renaissance Avraham runs from the Inquisition. The prose sometimes slides into the melodramatic, but the story remains a philosophically serious engagement with a historically significant theme: the tension between Judaism and a modern world “infected with ideological viruses.” A thoughtful, provocative novel that artfully examines political obstacles to Jewish spirituality.
THE FALL OF VENTARIS by Neil McGarry; Daniel Ravipinto...... 111
DIALOGUES OF A CRIME
Manos, John K. Amika Press (300 pp.) $15.95 paper $4.95 e-book Jul. 26, 2013 978-1-937484-13-2 |
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THE HIGH HUNT The Orion Guild: Book One
revitalize the self. Many people see one’s golden years as a time of deteriorating health and alienation from society, and some retirees with depleted pensions have been forced to return to work to make ends meet. However, the author views life’s last trimester as an opportunity to embrace a holistic lifestyle. His suggestions include exercising with weights, eating more plantbased foods and avoiding genetically modified organisms, taking probiotics to improve one’s mood, and drinking hot water or tea to cleanse one’s system. He even suggests expanding one’s vocabulary and writing a memoir. Establishing new habits, and thus creating new neural pathways, he asserts, can lead to greater happiness and a renewed sense of purpose. Although self-help books for the elderly abound, few comprehensively cover their myriad concerns as well as Courter’s guide does. Informative, user-friendly and brimming with advice, its tone is neither preachy nor condescending. Appropriately, the author relates his own experiences, including a notable golf story, with compassion and humility, and his upbeat, enthusiastic approach may persuade many readers to see their circumstances in a more positive light. However, although the book briefly mentions the subject of sexual dysfunction, it doesn’t adequately explore sexuality in the senior years. It also occasionally provides unclear statistics, as when it claims that two-thirds of the U.S. population is overweight and one-third is obese; is no one underweight or at the ideal weight? However, these are minor quibbles given the abundance of worthwhile information here. An inspirational manual designed to make seniors’ last years their best ones.
Connell, Adam Self (326 pp.) $3.99 e-book | Jul. 24, 2013
Energetic, edgy sci-fi with a Game of Thrones bent. Connell (Total Secession, 2012, etc.) returns to the stars after two earthbound sci-fi thrillers, but like his debut novel, Counterfeit Kings (2004), this one mines a rich vein of darker, grittier genre fiction. This novel moves at a breakneck pace with short chapters primed for quick reading. The central conflict is between Lansing—the current (and only) Grand Marksman of a union of professional big-game hunters known as the Orion Guild—and a disgraced former Grand Marksman named Bledsoe, who has been expelled from the same group for hunting human beings. When Lansing returns to Wildernesse, his home planet, to carry out an important mission, he’s teamed with volatile upand-coming hunters who possess hazardous ambitions. His situation becomes even more dangerous when an unscrupulous rival organization arises, recruiting the fallen Bledsoe as a weapon against Lansing. The Orion Guild—which, due to its mission to control dangerous wildlife, is important to the expansion of human colonization of planets—holds to a strict code of behavior, but Bledsoe and his sponsors will stop at nothing to beat Lansing and the guild at their own game. Sex, violence and swearing are graphic and intrinsic to the story but not gratuitous. Nonetheless, squeamish readers may be turned off; others will enjoy the charged narrative. There are occasional bits of awkward dialogue—a character named Frog says, “Didn’t know your eyes were cockazoot, you cur. You only see in shades of gray, like your furry friends?”—but not enough to kill the engines on this fast-moving sci-fi adventure. Explosive action in the far future.
I WANT WHAT SHE’S HAVING, NOW!
Cullip, Tora; Richards, Donna BalboaPress (210 pp.) $33.95 | $15.99 paper | May 30, 2013 978-1-4525-7293-2 This credible self-help book outlines a sustainable weight-loss program organized around three core areas to ensure lifelong success: mindset, motivation and metabolism. Co-authors Cullip and Richards (Pocket Guide to Weight Loss, 2012) share their personal dieting struggles and ultimate success in a succinct guide to weight loss. Their expertise includes a combined 30 years of experience helping others, primarily women, achieve their “confident weight.” Cullip and Richards encourage readers to find a weight that makes them “feel good in their own skin” instead of striving for the ultrathin model look. Cullip, a qualified counselor and health coach, overcame anorexia nervosa; Richards, now a facilitator and coach, ended her pattern of cyclical dieting and weight gain/loss brought on during her career as a corporate trainer. In straightforward language, their insights are woven throughout the book, as are personal stories from clients who have achieved their ideal weights and life goals. Much of the advice is undoubtedly familiar: Take care of yourself; eat regular meals of whole, fresh foods; and exercise
THE BOOMER SURVIVOR KIT An Indispensable Guide for Yourself * Your Relationships * Your Life Courter, William Boomer Health Institute (576 pp.) $19.98 paper | $5.99 e-book Jun. 23, 2013 978-0-9888542-0-8
Physician and Boomer Institute founder Courter, in his debut, offers a general self-help book for seniors. The author crafted this guide, he writes, in order to help enhance the quality of life of millions of aging baby boomers. Drawing on years of medical experience, he addresses several key areas, including emotional and physical health and activity; mental focus and spirituality; and new habits to redefine and 106
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“Fischer provides an engaging glimpse into the interpersonal relationships that enriched his life and career.” from me and murder, she wrote
regularly. Yet, Cullip and Richards have gathered impressive research on chronic dieting and fitness plans as well as the psychology of dieting. They present their practical weight-loss plan in 11 well-organized chapters that conclude with useful summaries of key points. While the material is occasionally redundant, the PowerPoint presentation style and summary outlines make for a flexible read. Like most self-help books, there are frequent opportunities for readers to identify and set goals, devise meal and exercise plans, etc. Their ideas seem practical and include support strategies to bolster the weary. The authors consistently advocate a wholesome approach to dieting that encompasses physical and mental health. The guide helps readers determine why they want to lose weight. Truly understanding one’s own motivation to shed pounds, say Cullip and Richards, brings greater success than relying on willpower and packaged diet plans. A little popular psychology coupled with hype-free nutrition advice and useful fitness tips make this a worthwhile read.
verbatim, including some dead and absent links, and its practice of beginning almost every paragraph with an italicized subheading is hardly noticeable in a blog but somewhat tedious in a nearly 500-page book. However, the book sensitively does what it sets out to do, documenting a complicated and too-littlediscussed struggle in order to help others dealing with similar challenges. This account provides both the practical advice of an insider and the compassion and wisdom of a loving parent. A must-read for parents of special needs children nearing adulthood.
ME AND MURDER, SHE WROTE Fischer, Peter S. The Grove Point Press (248 pp.) $18.95 paper | $8.99 e-book Sep. 15, 2013 978-0-9886571-3-7
An award-winning television writer and producer reflects on his prolific career. Throughout the 1970s and ’80s, many of the biggest hits on network television were mystery programs. Longrunning shows such as Columbo and Murder, She Wrote commanded large audiences week after week, and even short-lived shows such as the 1975 series Ellery Queen had devoted cult followings. In this autobiography, mystery novelist Fischer (Pray For Us Sinners, 2013, etc.) recounts his time as a writer and producer for these and other programs and discusses the many people he met along the way. The author focuses primarily on his career in Hollywood, starting with his early success as the writer of a 1971 TV movie of the week called The Last Child and ending with his retirement shortly after a long tenure as a TV writer and producer. The narrative flows briskly as Fischer tells of writing episodes of famous programs such as Marcus Welby, M.D. and winning an Edgar Award and two Golden Globes for Murder, She Wrote. The author also discusses his work on other promising but less-successful shows; the chapters dealing with The Eddie Capra Mysteries from 1978 and the 1987 series The Law and Harry McGraw (starring Jerry Orbach) offer insights into how programs’ fates can be guided by both ratings and network politics. Overall, Fischer provides an engaging glimpse into the interpersonal relationships that enriched his life and career; for example, the camaraderie Fischer shared with TV stars Angela Lansbury and Peter Falk developed into long-standing friendships. Fischer further pays homage to his love of film and television by including a trivia question at the end of each chapter. A warm, affectionate autobiography that will likely appeal to TV history buffs.
THIS CRAZY QUILT Parenting Adult Special Needs One Day at a Time Edelman, Jill Self (519 pp.) $22.95 paper | $11.99 e-book Feb. 27, 2013
In a year’s worth of blog posts, a mother goes through the complex process of helping her special needs daughter make the transition from childhood to independent adulthood. In the introduction to her debut work, Edelman quotes a journalist friend: “This is a story that nobody is telling.” From bookstore to blogosphere, there are many accounts of raising special needs children but fewer about caring for a developmentally disabled adult child. Edelman explains that her topic is “the parents’ quest to bring their child to the threshold of adulthood, safely and successfully” and to “provide something of a map for others to use.” As Edelman describes with impressive specificity, there’s a lot of bureaucracy involved—in her case, most of it centered on her daughter’s return home from boarding school and turning 21. At that age, she “ages out” of the Connecticut public school system and other state resources and segues into a whole new frontier of need-based services, of which Medicaid is probably the least complicated. There’s a mass of jargon and acronyms and a crazy quilt of service agencies, all of which Edelman, a licensed social worker, explains fluently. She writes with equal assurance when describing her conflicting emotions: gratitude and frustration with the system and hesitation about when to help her daughter and when to stand back. She writes of her unmistakably heartfelt love for her child and honestly portrays the difficulties of dealing with her disability. The transition of this material from blog to book, however, is somewhat less well-handled. The text seems to have been transferred |
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Cover Me Boys, I’m Going In Tales of the Tube from a Broadcast Brat
4 to 16 Characters Hourihan, Kelly Lemon Sherbet Press Nov. 7, 2013
Hirshland, Keith H CreateSpace (530 pp.) $19.99 paper | Aug. 8, 2013 978-1-4827-6052-1
The Internet acts as a teen’s saving grace in this angst-y but sweet YA novel. Jane Shilling is a sullen teenage girl with an alcoholic father and no friends; but on the Internet, nobody knows that. Told exclusively through online sources—from digital journals to inboxes and instant messages—this is the story of Jane’s living more than one life. She’s created multiple personalities for herself, including the popular Rachel, a 20-something woman with a perfect family and happy life. While Jane would be content to spend her days as Rachel, writing fan fiction for a beloved sci-fi show and interacting with other sci-fi fans online, the adults in her life would like to pull her back to reality. Ever since Jane’s mother died, her therapist has been hounding her to open up, and a new math teacher harasses her for missed assignments. A school bully targets her online quirks, but Gary, a skee-ball champion and student at Jane’s school, befriends Jane both on and off the screen. He may be one of the only people Jane can open up to, along with Nora Acton, a new therapist who’s resourceful enough to chat with Jane online during their sessions. When Jane’s online personas begin to fall apart, she’ll need the help of Gary and Nora to speak her truth. This Internet narrative is surprisingly compelling and effective. Readers gain a portrait of Jane’s deceased mother in a short series of emails sent before her death; it’s a simple reply chain among Jane, her mother and her then-sober father about what to make for dinner than night, but it speaks volumes about why Jane’s life is so wrecked in the wake of her mother’s death. The sci-fi fan fiction is a bit hard to contend with, but it also works as a means to show Jane’s dissociation from the pain in her life. Readers should be prepared for total chat-speak immersion, from actions expressed between double colons to Gary’s abbreviation-happy communiqués. Throughout it all, though, Jane is a dynamic heroine, smart, angry and heartwarming in all the right ways. An IM straight to the heart of teenagers who love texting more than talking.
Hirshland looks back at his 30 years in the broadcasting business, including the births of ESPN2 and The Golf Channel. Packed with behind-the-scenes information, anecdotes and insight, this memoir offers a firsthand look at sports broadcasting from an industry veteran. Hirshland is a self-proclaimed “broadcast brat”: his father was co-owner of the third local station in Reno, Nev., KTVN Channel 2. As children, Hirshland and his brothers watched hours of soap operas—instead of their favorite shows—so they could help their father by keeping the station’s official commercial logs. The author began his career in television at 19, filming local high school games with a Super 8 camera, learning his trade at various stations and, later, as a producer with Ohlmeyer Communications and on ESPN2’s SportsNight. Finally, he helped launch an ambitious new venture called The Golf Channel: “Never before had a television network devoted exclusively to one sport been conceptualized, funded, staffed, programmed, and sold.” Golf, he explains, is especially challenging to cover: Most sports have “one ball (or puck)…[but] golf features not one, but as many as seventy-eight balls.” Although Hirshland sometimes includes a bit too much detail, readers learn the nuts and bolts of TV sports productions while also getting his insights on the personalities in front of and behind the cameras. He acknowledges Keith Olbermann, for example, as “smart, clever, and funny” but also calls him “a contrary, sometimes petulant perfectionist with an ‘I’m better than you’ attitude.” Golfer Lee Trevino, he writes, was a particularly difficult interview: “ ‘How much are you going to pay me?’ he’d ask, only somewhat facetiously. ‘I’m the top dog out here and you want me to bark for free?’ ” Overall, Hirshland comes across as admirably hardworking and dedicated, feeling lucky to do what he loves. An engaging memoir by a true TV sports insider.
SuperGal vs. GOD
Hynson, Lori Broken Shoe Press (370 pp.) $13.95 paper | $7.99 e-book | Jun. 18, 2013 978-0-9890790-0-6 A woman’s faith is sorely tested in this sprightly, tragicomic novel of redemption. Lori is a middle-aged working woman and mother who prides herself on riding to the rescue of everyone around her. Alas, she also leads an 108
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“Hamilton’s inner progress toward heroism feels touchingly genuine, and there are plenty of good comic moments to keep the story moving.” from the starlight chronicles
unfulfilled life in a loveless marriage—a problem that not even her “Supergal” persona can fix. However, she gets her groove back after she joins the choir at an ebullient new Baptist church, dumps her disapproving lump of a husband and meets a handsome tenor named Ben. Lori, resplendent in her trademark cute pumps and frilly pink boa, thinks that she’s engineered these triumphs on her own, due to her own nobility, so God decides to teach her the meaning of “blessing.” (God is an embodied character here, along with his emissary, the Holy Spirit, and his foil, Satan, who are all forever whispering competitively in Lori’s ear.) Soon, Ben is stricken with an epic, terrifying illness that proceeds from gallbladder problems to gastrointestinal collapse, a drug-resistant staph infection and kidney cancer. In full Supergal mode, Lori struggles ever more frantically and impotently to manage Ben’s deteriorating condition until the ultimate question—“Why me, God?”—shakes her belief in a benevolent deity. Hynson’s drolly feminine update of the story of Job, based in part on true events, conveys lessons about swallowing pride, being honest about one’s feelings, abandoning delusions of control and self-sufficiency, and putting oneself in God’s hands while giving him glory. As a theodicy, however, it’s no more satisfying than Job’s tale; God can seem downright callous when he plans out spiritual edification via misery, heartache and astronomical hospital bills. Still, in Hynson’s deftly comic prose, Lori is a charming protagonist—good-hearted but a bit conceited, her hubris deflated by self-consciousness and punctured by pratfalls. As readers watch her do battle with God, they may not be able to help siding with the underdog. A winsome, entertaining and occasionally inspiring story of bad things happening to pretty good people.
gruffly agrees to tutor him in his new reality. Elysian explains that there are two otherworldly realms vying for control of all time and space, but these worlds have shades of gray between them: “Light and dark are not natural enemies.” Hamilton learns that his destiny is to fight the Sinisters with his newfound powers. The news is not welcome; the teenager mainly wants to go to college, maybe get a law degree and become a government worker. Instead, he finds himself fighting the forces of evil in Apollo City as the superhero known as Wingdinger, although most of this first volume consists of flashbacks showing the hero’s origin. Johnson fills these chapters with the kind of zesty overwriting typical of current YA fiction, and the ordinaryteen stuff (homecoming games, school plays, dating jealousies) feels forced the longer it continues, despite supernatural beings popping up everywhere. But Hamilton’s inner progress toward heroism feels touchingly genuine, and there are plenty of good comic moments to keep the story moving. Percy Jackson fans will eagerly await the next volume in the series. A fast-paced, effective teen-paranormal outing.
Democracy’s Missing Arsenal
King, Michael B.; Bredehoft, John M. Westbow Press (206 pp.) $24.95 paper | $19.95 e-book Nov. 1, 2013 978-1-4841-0094-3 In the first of their planned three-volume alternative American history, King and Bredehoft expertly plot the effects of the South’s victory in the Civil War. This history starts with Lee’s triumph at Gettysburg, a “point of divergence” clinching the nation’s division into the USA and the CSA—Confederate States of America. The countries form competing international alliances: While the CSA partners with Germany and Britain, the USA forms tightknit friendships with France and Russia. Border conflicts erupt near Mexico and Canada, which the Yukon Gold Rush renders appealing to would-be U.S. colonizers. With Britain entangled in the “Irish Question,” Russia advancing into India and Afghanistan, and the CSA and Japan planning to attack the Philippines, the stage is set for an altered World War I in 1898. Global warfare catches most great powers unprepared, both technologically and ideologically. The CSA, however, is an able aggressor: Hoping to annex Maryland and Delaware, it leads devastating attacks on New York and Washington, leaving the capital in ruins. Indeed, this bleak picture coincides with the narrator’s present-day setting: Writing in 1963, an unnamed, former U.S. president surveys a post-apocalyptic scene while cowered in a primitive New England outpost, with New York City having been destroyed by Germany’s atomic missiles. He attempts to pinpoint where everything went wrong, inspired by “duty to make an honest accounting at history’s bar.” At first, Confederate victory may have augured a better world, but as the slave trade and the accelerated cycle of war continued, things grew
The Starlight Chronicles Slumbering Johnson, C. S. Westbow Press (206 pp.) $33.95 | $17.95 paper | $3.99 e-book Dec. 28, 2012 978-1-4497-7913-9
A sci-fi/fantasy series about a teenager with superpowers. In Johnson’s debut, the first book in a projected series, Hamilton Dinger is a handsome and popular 16-year-old football star at Apollo Central High School in Ohio, tolerating school, enjoying hanging out with friends playing video games and basking in the adulation of his peers. He’s affable if a bit conceited (“My life had always been about me,” he reflects early on), but his life changes when a mysterious meteorite strikes town. It nearly kills him, and it leaves him hearing celestial music nobody else hears and dreaming about mysterious supernatural creatures. When one of those creatures—a deadly being named Maia—shows up in waking life and starts killing people, Hamilton suddenly finds himself caught between ancient, warring mystical beings. He meets Elysian, “a kind of lizard-snake or mutated eel,” who |
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worse, especially as the USA restricted freedom of speech to prevent dissent. King and Bredehoft seamlessly weave genuine and conceivable historical happenings: The Dreyfus Affair and Boxer Rebellion are juxtaposed with imagined but entirely plausible assassinations or invasions. Omissions, such as the Boer War and Lincoln assassination—he decided against seeking re-election, leaving the job to William H. Seward—come with faultless justification. Throughout, there is an impressive level of detail as the authors follow minute chronological swerves to their logical conclusions, illustrating “the highly contingent nature of history.” A flawless blending of actual and potential events, aided by an engaging narrator.
thought, including some personal worksheets in Appendix 5, as well as photos and real-life examples of people who have successfully harvested water for sustainable use. For example, Zephaniah Phiri Maseko, an African farmer, feeds his family in a drought-prone area thanks to his handmade reservoirs and “fruition pits.” Likewise, the Howells of New Mexico have lived on rainwater alone for over 20 years. While not everyone will want to live completely off the grid, readers interested in preserving natural resources can apply Lancaster’s time-tested ideas to any lifestyle. Valuable environmental insight—a conservationist’s delight.
DIALOGUES OF A CRIME
Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond Volume 1, 2nd Edition Guiding Principles to Welcome Rain into Your Life and Landscape
Manos, John K. Amika Press (300 pp.) $15.95 paper | $4.95 e-book | Jul. 26, 2013 978-1-937484-13-2 In Manos’ crime drama, Michael Pollitz must decide whether to protect the mobster who has protected him. When Mike, a college student in 1972 Illinois, is arrested on drug charges, his father insists he use a public defender. His childhood friend’s father, Dom Calabria, head of the Outfit in Chicago, wants to help Mike by providing a first-rate lawyer, but Mike goes with his father’s wishes. The outcome is a plea bargain for a short stay in Astoria Adult Correctional Facility—but after he’s brutally beaten and raped by three inmates, Mike spends most of his sentence in the infirmary. He doesn’t give up his assailants’ names but threatens their lives right before he’s set to be released. When Mike is picked up by the head of the mob, people notice. Flash forward to 1994, when Detective Larry Klinger begins investigating the murders of two former Astoria inmates who were violently killed shortly after being released. An informant—the third man who beat Mike—tells Klinger that the murders were committed by Calabria, the kingpin whom Klinger would like to see taken down. Klinger investigates, coming in contact with Mike, and the two form a friendship. When Klinger realizes that Mike will never give up Calabria, he begins to wonder whether it’s even worth investigating the murders of such evil men. Manos is extremely deft at allowing the characters to reveal the story and what motivates them. Klinger captures this particularly well; he ponders his role in the reality of crime and punishment, and Manos allows him to grow in the process: “Interviewing scumbags has to be the most tedious damn thing in the world, Klinger thought, as Bobby Andrews jumped back and forth over the same explanations, tripping over one lie after another.” The characters are rich in their speech, experiences and motivations, which the measured, purposeful writing only enhances. A character-driven crime novel ruled by complex men facing the past.
Lancaster, Brad Rainsource Press (304 pp.) $29.95 paper | Jul. 1, 2013 978-0-9772464-3-4
Lancaster’s (Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, 2007, etc.) combination reference manual, how-to guide and environmental manifesto offers a wealth of information about “water stewardship” for gardens, landscaping and everyday household use. Novices need not be intimidated by this revised edition’s abundance of charts and diagrams or its lengthy appendices: The material is simple to understand, and Lancaster’s friendly, conversational tone is accessible for all readers. Using eight common-sense principles as a guide—e.g., “Always plan for an overflow route, and manage that overflow water as a resource”—the author makes a cogent case for water conservation; namely, it’s ethical, and it saves money. He also details integrated permaculture practices, including the importance of understanding the sun’s angles for passive cooling and heating. According to Lancaster, it’s always best to plan drainage at the highest point of a watershed and then work down, allowing the water to spread to optimal locations—a method that can be achieved through thoughtful observation of the land. Careful planting of native vegetation also plays a crucial role, and the author suggests that “water-needy” fruit trees be placed close to the house, as they can easily be nourished by roof runoff or graywater from sinks, showers and washing machines. Readers who live in wet climates may feel underrepresented in this book—Lancaster lives on an eighth of an acre in Tucson, Ariz., and uses an average of less than 12 inches of rainfall annually—but his principles can be adapted to fit any terrain or climate. Though there are many practical ideas contained within these pages, readers shouldn’t expect A to Z gardening instructions laid out in an easy-to-flip format; instead, Lancaster presents design ideas and plenty of engaging food for 110
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“The authors...skillfully examine and confront issues of race, class, gender and sexual orientation in a way that’s rarely, if ever, done in medieval fantasy.” from the fall of ventaris
THE FALL OF VENTARIS Book Two of the Grey City
THE LEADERSHIP GPS Your Turn by Turn Guide to Becoming a Successful Leader and Changing Lives Along the Way
McGarry, Neil; Ravipinto, Daniel Peccable Productions (442 pp.) $13.99 paper | $5.99 e-book Sep. 21, 2013 978-0-9850149-1-9
McLaughlin, Denis G. CreateSpace (154 pp.) $19.99 paper | $9.99 e-book | Jan. 5, 2013 978-1-4792-6354-7
In the second installment of McGarry and Ravipinto’s (Duchess of the Shallows, 2012) fantasy series, a young woman seeks to find balance between her past life as a scholar’s daughter and her new life as a rising star among criminals. Newly accepted into the Grey, a secret society of thieves, Duchess strikes up a business partnership with Jana, a singularly gifted weaver. Jana has been forced to work on the outskirts of town after being denied entry into the weavers’ guild due to her race, class and outsider status. Duchess is certain that with Jana’s skills and her own connections and unorthodox business savvy, they can build a profitable partnership—but only if Duchess’ calculated scheme to secure Jana’s admittance into the guild is successful. Meanwhile, she also wants to employ the bodyguard services of Pollux, the empress’s former servant and lover, who’s incarcerated for acknowledging his parentage of the empress’ son. As part of an elaborate and hazardous scheme, Duchess plans to break Pollux out of jail by faking his death. As she pursues her plans, Duchess makes a few new enemies along the way. She’s also confronted with the past she left behind as the daughter of the late hero and scholar Marcus Kell, as she forms a reluctant acquaintance with Darley, a long-forgotten childhood rival and the daughter of her father’s best friend. As she uncovers secrets of days gone by, she feels torn between her well-established life as a cunning thief and clever businesswoman and the very different life she might have had. Readers unfamiliar with the series’ first book may find some details of the world’s social structure to be unclear, but the intricately plotted schemes stand alone in most other respects, and newcomers will likely find them easy to follow. The authors, through their powerful portrayals of strong-willed characters, skillfully examine and confront issues of race, class, gender and sexual orientation in a way that’s rarely, if ever, done in medieval fantasy. In a manner that’s both modern and timeless, they examine the ways that strong women forego niceties to fight for the respect so easily granted to men. Overall, the novel is an engaging account of a young woman’s quest to succeed because of her outsider status, rather than in spite of it. A thrilling story of thievery and self-discovery.
McLaughlin’s debut self-help guide offers an allegorical tale that intertwines the concepts of leadership and driving automobiles. Brian Alden is a lead programmer at SBC Technology who recently received a promotion to manage the company’s smallbusiness accounting software products. He’s a great coder but has no management experience, so he quickly finds himself adrift. On a whim, he types the phrase “SUCCESSFUL LEADERSHIP” into his car’s GPS device. To his amazement, his grandfather’s voice congratulates him on taking the first step to becoming a great leader. It turns out that his grandfather, who gave Brian the GPS after teaching him to drive, had also recorded a series of lessons to teach him leadership skills. His grandfather compares each stage of leadership to the process of driving a car: The first phase of leadership, Relationship, is like planning for a successful road trip; the second, Understanding, is like teaching someone else to drive; and the third, Knowledge, is like taking care of one’s passengers and driving defensively. Brian absorbs these lessons, applies them to his job and helps his friends with their own career struggles. Other characters represent various archetypes from the business world, such as visionary former manager Lloyd and ultraconservative boss Arthur. Although the book’s use of analogy can be heavy-handed at times, its leadership lessons are on point and lavishly illustrated with stories of great leaders past and present, from Michelangelo to Steve Jobs. McLaughlin’s storytelling format brings each stage of leadership to life as Brian applies them in common, real-world scenarios. Brian’s friends apply the leadership lessons to their own widely varying industries, demonstrating how they can succeed or fail in different situations. Although many business books fail to give readers a clear idea of how to apply their principles, this book provides readers with a solid template. An engaging, unusual business book full of practical advice.
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Interviews & Profiles
Ryan North
The funny comics creator is at the center of an eclectic zeitgeist By Tom Eubanks His reaction to To Be or Not to Be as a publishing experience is expectedly forward-thinking. North believes that as far back as perhaps five years ago, publishing companies realized they were simply “gatekeepers to the market.” The way it stands currently, North says, “if you have a really great book, or not even a really great book, just a book, you can bring it to market without them.” North’s seemingly happy-go-lucky confidence as a publisher hasn’t accompanied him throughout his career, however. North is perhaps best known as the creator of Dinosaur Comics, a funny Web-based comic strip that features a droll T-Rex spouting urbane advice. The T-Rex proposes the idea of a device, the Machine of Death, that “delights” in predicting “ironically vague deaths.” After testing your blood, it “spits out a piece of paper that says ‘exploded’ or ‘drowned’ or ‘poisoned apple.’ ” Archived on qwantz.com and available as a series of books (such as the 2006 book Dinosaur Comics: Dudes Already Know About Chickens), the strip unintentionally launched the meteoric rise of Machine of Death–themed fiction. The subsequent buzz and mass participation that grew around the “MoD”— also known, among numerous incarnations, as “the Oracle,” “the Pronto Tester,” “the Death Machine,” even an 18th-century “automaton” named Isaac—led to the successful indie publication of Machine of Death in 2010, which in turn brought about Grand Central Publishing’s This Is How You Die in July of this year. Kirkus called the latter “funny, frightening, clever.” “It was just another comic, just a concept I thought was cool,” says North from his home office in Toronto. After the strip went online, many of the writers, illustrators and fans that make up North’s loose creative collective responded immediately.
Photo courtesy Randall North
Ryan North’s September book, To Be or Not to Be, reveals what a trailblazer the 32-year-old Canadian writer, webcomics creator and computer programmer is. A highly ambitious, multioptional narrative based upon Hamlet, with 110 possible death scenarios illustrated by 65 artists (“a lot of them are friends, so it wasn’t too hard,” North quips), To Be or Not to Be was met with a blank stare when North presented it to his agent, who warned that “choose-your-own-adventure books are really unpopular, and it’s not going to be an easy sell.” So North turned to Kickstarter with an initial goal of raising $20,000. The day he reached $100,000, his agent emailed, “Dude, you would have never received an advance that big!” North had taken the right gamble. Phenomenally, the Kickstarter outreach to make To Be or Not to Be raked in $580,905 from 15,352 backers. Because of this, says North, “it’s a hefty book.” Weighing in at 2.7 pounds, the 776-page undertaking contains 90,000 words, 650 links and 450 “nodes.” 112
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Eventually, David Malki !, the author of the influential comic Wondermark, and accomplished scifi writer Matthew Bennardo convinced North that compiling an anthology of Machine of Death–themed stories would be “fun.” They called for submissions and received 675, from amateurs and professionals alike, spanning five continents and every genre. After narrowing down their favorites, the trio compiled what would become Machine of Death, their first book, which their agent shopped around for “several frustrating years,” North says. North says that every publisher he and his colleagues approached said something along the lines of, “We love it, it’s really cool, but it’s an anthology and doesn’t have a big name in it. We can’t possibly sell this.” Undaunted, North, Malki ! and Bennardo released the 452-page volume on their own. On the day it launched on Amazon, it shot to No. 1, where it remained for about 26 hours. “Ironically and ‘satisfactorily,’ ” declares North, “we had a bunch of publishing companies say, ‘We should talk.’ Finally, people were coming to us with offers, instead of [us] getting shot down.” North notes that at least one good thing sprang from the arduous process of getting the book to print. When a publisher suggested adding pictures, they ran with the idea. “We made sure we had a picture for every story,” he says. “And the publishing company still passed.” Their follow-up, the traditionally published This Is How You Die, also owes a great deal of its appeal to the gifted illustrators assembled, adding, appropriately enough, a number of clever comic strips to the Machine of Death formula. Working on the second anthology with Grand Central Publishing, North says, “has been super interesting. It was like, ‘This is how the other half lives!’ ” Reading the anthologies, one gets the feeling Rod Serling might appear at any moment, but the true impetus for the Machine of Death’s mass-produced mythology comes from Dr. Emmett Brown, Marty McFly and a souped-up Delorean. “I saw Back to the Future at a young age, and I’ve spent a lot of years thinking about it and how time travel works,” says North, who studied computational linguistics (a field of artificial intelligence) at the University of Toronto while producing Dinosaur Comics.
It’s fitting that a man obsessed with time travel and alternate realities would have an intuitive grasp on the future of the newly exploited nexus of online, self- and traditional publishing. Having worked with a division of Hachette, North admires the “well-oiled machine” that traditional publishers have created “to get books to market as efficiently and successfully” as possible. “In a world where you can get a book to market without having to (or getting to) go through a publisher,” he says that the future of publishing will be “really interesting and cool. I don’t know exactly what it looks like, but I’m excited to find out.” 9
Tom Eubanks, a freelance writer, editor and consultant, has worked in magazine and book publishing for 25 years. He lives in New York City. To Be or Not to Be has not been reviewed by Kirkus Reviews. This Is How You Die: Stories of the Inscrutable, Infallible, Inescapable Machine of Death was reviewed in the June 1 issue.
To Be or Not to Be: A Chooseable-Path Adventure North, Ryan Breadpig (768 pp.) $28.95 | Sept. 10, 2013 978-0-9828537-4-0 |
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THE PLUTO ENIGMA
ESCAPE HOME Rebuilding a Life after the Anschluss
Oddo, Nick CreateSpace (420 pp.) $14.95 paper | Jul. 31, 2013 978-1-4825-4213-4
Paterson, Charles DoppelHouse Press (570 pp.) $29.95 | Sep. 25, 2013 978-0-9832540-1-0
In Oddo’s sweeping debut novel, the first in a sci-fi trilogy, a man awakens from nearly a millennium of hibernation to discover his old life is gone but not forgotten. At the turn of the 22nd century, a brilliant astrobiologist named Andrew Jackson volunteers to test his prototype for a hibernation system, technology that will eventually be deployed in a space program. Andy departs with his loved ones for a four-year sleep, but after his subterranean location is lost during a catastrophic earthquake, he wakes 900 years later than anyone had planned. As can be expected, the world is a very different place, and this installment of Oddo’s Children of the Nan trilogy is primarily concerned with Andy’s adjustment to his surroundings. Fortunately for Andy, the future isn’t such a bad place: The world is unified, and, thanks to biotech enhancements, humans are unable to harm each other. But the titular Pluto enigma perplexes even the greatest minds—and sentient computers. Oddo’s vision of the future is complex but finely detailed, and he uses Andy’s natural curiosity to reveal the history and advancements the unwitting time traveler missed. (There’s a pervasive reverence for the past, especially Scottish heritage and Native American culture.) Oddo brings an abundance of characters to assist Andy as he acclimates to his new reality, which in turn explains the new world to readers, too. But each of these characters is so helpful, and this projection of the future so utopian, there’s hardly a moment of conflict. There’s romantic tension and Andy’s heartbreak for the past he didn’t mean to leave so far behind, but for an experiment with such disastrous consequences, things don’t appear incredibly dire. Here, it seems Oddo is mostly setting the stage for the next installments, which are certain to contain more adventures, memorable characters and, hopefully, some answers to the Pluto enigma. A love story 900 years in the making drives this first book in what’s poised to become an epic series.
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The title of Paterson’s debut memoir carries a dual meaning. As a child, the author fled the Nazis for a new life; as an adult, he created sanctuaries for others. Until the German annexation of Austria, “Karli” and his sister, Doris, had a seemingly enchanted childhood in Vienna. Their progressive parents, Eva and Stefan Schanzer, raised them in “a social experiment in Modern living,” the Werkbundsiedlung, which touted utility and functionality above ornament and artifice. Eva’s sudden death—from what appeared to be scarlet fever—and the escalation of Jewish persecution spurred Stefan into action. In order to save his children from the Nazis, he arranged to have them adopted by the sympathetic Paterson family in Queensland, Australia. Baptized before fleeing Europe to make their lives easier in their adoptive country, the children were separated from their father, who set out on a courageous bicycle journey through the French countryside and a daring escape into Portugal. As Karli Schanzer became Charles Paterson, certain things remained. His gift for design and architecture and his connection to his uncle, the renowned Adolf Loos, came to fruition as he apprenticed to Frank Lloyd Wright. Paterson became a U.S. citizen and built a lodge in Colorado and was reunited with Stefan in New York. Written with his daughter, Carrie, Paterson’s detailed narrative veers between intimate and scholarly. With footnotes and a lengthy index, it’s a labor of love: a dossier of letters, mementos, documents, photographs, recipes and the contemporary reflections of family members. Beginning with ancestors in Hapsburg-era Vienna, the Patersons explore the death of Old Europe and the birth of what we’ve come to regard as American architecture. They also contend with the attempted annihilation of their bloodline and celebrate the courage and perseverance of those who survived. With enough material for at least three books, the authors are determined to fit it all into one. Patient readers will be rewarded. An encyclopedic and epistolary family history, a eulogy for pre-Reich Vienna and an ode to midcentury modernism.
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“Funny anecdotes about such luminaries as Woody Allen, Steve Martin and Ingmar Bergman...provide readers with rare glimpses of these famous figures’ unique personalities.” from musts, maybes, and nevers
MUSTS, MAYBES, AND NEVERS A Book about the Movies
BY PROXY
Regnery, Katy Boroughs Publishing Group $3.99 e-book | Sept. 22, 2013
Picker, David V. CreateSpace (332 pp.) $16.95 paper | $7.99 e-book Aug. 10, 2013 978-1-4826-4992-5
A wholesome contemporary romance set in small-town Montana. Debut novelist Regnery presents a sweet tale of young schoolteacher Jenny Lindstrom; her world is turned upside down the day Sam Kelley walks into her life. Jenny and Sam meet in connection with the unusual wedding of Jenny’s best friend, Ingrid, to Sam’s cousin Kristian, neither of whom is present for their own wedding. Kristian is serving a tour of duty in Afghanistan, and Ingrid is serving at an Army hospital in Germany. Kristian and Ingrid seize on a little-known Montana law that allows couples to marry by proxy, meaning that if the couple finds people to stand in their place and recite marriage vows before a judge, they can be legally married. Enter Jenny and Sam. When Sam arrives for the proxy wedding, he’s so late that the judge has already left for the weekend. Sam is forced to stay in Montana for a few days if he wants to make good on his promise to Kristian. Jenny takes an immediate dislike to Sam’s seemingly pompous behavior, but she also sees there’s something intriguing behind his pretty face. Despite the dressing-down he receives from Jenny, Sam admires her simple beauty and her unaffected manner. After profuse apologies and some teasing banter, Sam wins Jenny over and convinces her to entertain him for the weekend. While bringing these characters to life, Regnery shows each beginning to fall for the other. She also infuses the story with information about Montana’s history and contemporary culture. As Sam begins to surrender to Jenny, he contends with the many obstacles that stand in his way: Jenny’s protective older brothers, his beautiful ex-girlfriend, the local principal who pines after Jenny and the fact that his stay is so brief. A chaste story as far as romances go, this adorable novel will disappoint readers looking for steamy sex scenes. The swift pacing of the narrative, however, and quick wit of the characters provide an undeniable appeal. For those focused on lasting emotional connections reached through good conversation, this book is a winner.
A major motion-picture executive tells stories of his work on some of the 20th century’s most famous films. Picker, a former president of United Artists, was born into a family renowned for its substantial contributions to the film industry. His father worked as chief booker and buyer for the Loew’s New York City theater chain, affording young Picker complete and free access to all movies released in its theaters. After spending his college years studying and working in the film industry, the author joined his uncle, a film executive, at United Artists in 1951. Picker humbly describes his quick ascent from intern to assistant to executive and then describes his experiences on various major films, including stories about industry people, business transactions and production. Throughout, Picker’s passion for movies, and his respect for the artists who create them, is endearingly evident, and he frequently states how thankful he is for his experiences. He even reflects positively, if a little remorsefully, about movies that United Artists didn’t pick up, calling them “the ones that got away,” such as The Graduate (1967) and Planet of the Apes (1968). At times, the abundance of business and financial details may be confusing to readers who aren’t well-versed in film industry jargon. However, most will likely enjoy Picker’s insider stories about the production of such films as Midnight Cowboy (1969), The Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night (1964) and the James Bond franchise. His appropriately cinematic tone carries readers through fast-paced, dramatic stories, and his colorful, opinionated descriptions of those he encounters are highly entertaining. Funny anecdotes about such luminaries as Woody Allen, Steve Martin and Ingmar Bergman, for example, provide readers with rare glimpses of these famous figures’ unique personalities. A thoroughly entertaining look at how artistic visions, strong personalities and business acumen can create great films.
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THREE SISTERS PONDS My Journey from Street Cop to FBI Special Agent from Baltimore to Lockerbie, Pakistan and Beyond
SLOW MOON, RISING Rudolph, Charles CreateSpace (368 pp.) May 9, 2013 978-1-4810-4614-5
Reid, Phillip B. J. AuthorHouse (278 pp.) $28.99 | $19.95 paper | $3.99 e-book Jun. 26, 2013 978-1-4817-5459-0
In this novel of self-discovery set against the backdrop of a turning point in China’s history, a middle-aged man comes to terms with his bicultural identity and finally learns a sense of integrity and responsibility. Abandoned by his Chinese mother shortly after World War II, Dan Young was brought up in Connecticut by an American father who took little interest in his son. Dan’s only ally in his youth was his English teacher, Bernie Fales, but Bernie’s mentoring did little to counteract the influences of parental neglect and racial hostility. After his relationship with a Native American woman violently ends, Dan gives up the last of his altruism and ideals and focuses his efforts on looking out for himself. One divorce, many failed relationships and a layoff later, he leaves a successful career in finance to spend six months teaching English at a Beijing university, hoping to learn about his mother and the Chinese heritage he never knew. Through his Chinese students and international colleagues, he learns about the challenges and complexities of life in modern China, especially the conflicts that ultimately bring him to Tiananmen Square. Rudolph (The Ashes of Santorin, 2012) presents a convincing picture of 1980s China, particularly the differences between the way locals and foreigners experience the country. However, the number of minor errors in the text—Spanish phrases are misspelled; one character leaves for the U.S. embassy in Taiwan, which had been closed for a decade—might lead readers to question its overall accuracy. Dan’s transformation at the end seems a bit too pat, particularly the sudden change in his relationships with women and his dubiously earned redemption. The story as a whole is engaging, though, and the fast-moving events that shape Dan’s journey will keep the pages turning. An effective novel of recent history that rises above its flaws on the strength of a well-told story.
Reid’s debut memoir traces the 36-year arc of his impressive law enforce-
ment career. Taking its title from the spot where the author had personal epiphanies as a young police officer, Reid’s book explains how he put himself on course to achieve his “share of the American Dream.” Born in segregated Baltimore and reared in one of its largest African-American communities, he learned early on that “self-reliance generated a strong black entrepreneurial spirit.” After his parents divorced, he and his three brothers were raised by their mother, who proudly eschewed public assistance as she worked toward her college degree and struggled to keep food on the table. Learning to swim competitively at a local YMCA gave Reid, a “rogue” altar boy, the opportunity to accept challenges and create a fulfilling life. He credits The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965) as a seminal work that changed his attitude and gave him a thirst for knowledge. While secretly overcoming dyslexia, Reid worked his way through advanced degrees, rose in the ranks of the Baltimore Police Department and eventually joined the FBI in 1977. In 2005, after his involvement in numerous far-flung operations from Alaska to Karachi, including a small role in the Kobe Bryant rape case and a much larger one in the Lockerbie bombing investigation, the author retired as a special agent in charge in Denver before serving as head of security for Boeing. At times, Reid’s writing can feel as dry as police reports, but his determination never fails to inspire, and his pacing never lags. When he writes about his youth—and in the poems sprinkled between chapters—his depth of character shines. Justly proud of his success, Reid pauses in the action to reflect on moments of great luck and fortune. The only way he can explain it is divine intervention—remarkable modesty in a career full of heroism and “limitless aspirations.” A straightforward, inspirational autobiography geared to those looking to investigate a life in law enforcement.
EPOCH DAWNING
Sadaphal, C.H.E. Self (204 pp.) $9.99 paper | $7.99 e-book | Jul. 11, 2013 978-0-9892233-0-0 A sci-fi variation on the story of Adam and Eve. In Sadaphal’s post-apocalyptic tale, a spacecraft pilot named Asher Grant, “a misplaced journeyman without a map and a sense of direction,” returns to Earth only to find it radically changed: The cities are in ruins; the countryside is a wasteland; and there are corpses everywhere. After a short, harrowing interval, he spots a living figure in the distance,
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and they run toward each other. Evelyn Coble tells Asher she awoke to find herself in the ruins and has been wandering for days. He shares rations with her from his ship, but even as they’re tentatively getting to know each other, they’re vaguely aware that each is keeping secrets from the other and that those secrets involve the catastrophe that reduced the world to rubble. In a series of intricate flashbacks, readers learn that complicated back story piecemeal. It’s a tale involving the global power grab by a small group of “technocrats” who initially used tools such as the media, bioengineered foods, aerosols in the air, medicated water and cybernetic mind control (called the Collective) to subjugate the masses. When a desperate man named Linus Benjamin manages to shut down the Collective, on which the whole world has come to rely, global chaos swiftly follows. Evelyn’s hidden past connects her with Linus Benjamin, just as Asher’s past connects him with something called The Omega Strain, a weird synapsedestroying infection that is equally lethal to humans, animals and complex machines. In the flashbacks, we see Asher and Evelyn in their pre-disaster lives, and in the book’s present, we see them grappling with their bleak new world, attempting to find other survivors and trying—with comically little success—to warm up to each other, since they’re nothing alike. Sadaphal is a sharply observant narrator with a fine sense of pathos, and he paces his story with several well-turned surprises. An involving, well-constructed sci-fi tale of survival.
undertone of nostalgia but never false sentimentality. He fills his memoir with the songs, TV shows and catchphrases of the mid1970s but also with bittersweet recollections of his earlier self (“I read and read, pedal, run, swim, read, killing time, wanting to get back to school so terrifically”). Even the story’s climax, a frighteningly cinematic scene in which young Scariano is sucked into a sewage tank and nearly drowns, is turned skillfully back toward comedy. Although the era the author describes has now all but vanished, he brings it vividly back to life in these pages. A smart, ribald and often provocative memoir.
Bessie’s Pillow
Silbert, Linda Bress Strong Learning Publications (266 pp.) $16.95 paper | $3.99 e-book | Jul. 26, 2013 978-0-89544-203-1 At the turn of the 20th century, a young Lithuanian woman flees the Pale of Settlement in Lithuania to begin a new life in New York in Silbert’s (Why Bad Grades Happen to Good Kids, 2007) tragic, affecting Jewish-immigrant narrative. Aware of the anti-Semitic mood on the streets of Glubokoye, Lithuania, Boshka’s father sacrifices his calling as a rabbi to sell pots and buckets—a means of accruing sufficient funds to secure his daughter’s passage to the safety of the New World. Eighteen-year-old Boshka finds herself on a train station platform in Vilna, waiting to board a train to Hamburg, where she’ll set sail for New York. As her family exchanges final goodbyes, they’re approached by a woman from their hometown who asks Boshka to carry an embroidered feather pillow to her son, Nathan, in New Rochelle, N.Y. Boshka agrees and finds comfort in the pillow throughout her arduous journey. In the Receiving Hall on Ellis Island, she’s given the name Elizabeth (later shortened to Bessie), her birth name being difficult for the American tongue. Bessie travels to the Upper West Side to stay with her sister Lillian but rejects the offer when she discovers that Lillian’s wealthy husband intends to employ her as a maid. She instead goes to live with family friends in Washington Heights, in the northern part of Manhattan. Eager to forge a profession for herself in the city, she first takes on work at a tough Lower East Side factory before working at a millinery store and at an outlet that sells paint and wallpaper. Her position, juxtaposed with the snobbery of high society, allows her a key viewpoint on the destitution of Manhattan’s immigrant slums. Romance finally enters Bessie’s life when she finds Nathan to deliver his mother’s pillow, yet this tale primarily remains a mournful look at the struggle of a resilient Jewish diaspora punctuated with personal tragedy and loss. These events—based on conversations the author had with her mother and grandmother—are presented with an agreeable fluidity and ease. Though engaging, the narrative thins somewhat toward the end, becoming more a chronology of tragic events that neglects to consider the ongoing emotional evolution of the principal characters. Despite this flaw,
Marsh Township Sanitary District
Scariano, John Kevin AuthorHouse (122 pp.) $23.99 | $14.95 paper | $3.99 e-book Jun. 19, 2013 978-1-4817-6288-5 A man recalls his teenage years working a horrible job in the 1970s in this debut memoir. “Summer is a romantic season, not one for us poor flatlanders to squander in the cold, bleak upper Midwest,” Scariano writes at the beginning of his mordantly funny and sometimes-moving remembrance. In 1975, the author’s father called in a favor to get Scariano a job in order to teach him the value of a dollar and the virtue of good, honest work. But the author admits that he might have fled the jurisdiction if he’d known that the job involved working at the Marsh Township Sanitary District—a sewage treatment plant that processes “industrial waste and sewage flushed down fifty thousand toilets in the homes and factories of Chicago Heights, Illinois.” The teenage Scariano fails to see the personal-improvement benefit of exposing himself daily to a wide array of toxins and carcinogens. The author tells the story in a series of precisely realized vignettes that vary from raucous, disgusting adventures with his colorful co-workers to surprisingly challenging tales of encountering racism, intolerance and corruption. Other scenes dramatize his first fumbling experiences with drinking and romance, and he presents them with a sweet |
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“The book brims with pop-culture references and, at times, peculiar and funny meditations on topics ranging from contemporary American sexuality to O.J. Simpson’s murder trial.” from a redlight woman who knows how to sing the blues
The Watergate Memoirs of Gordon Walter
however, the author’s storytelling skills offer laid-back prose that will convince readers to care about Bessie from the start. An intimate story of fortitude and finding independence.
Walter, Gordon; Thistle, Alaric—Ed. Christopher Matthews Publishing (178 pp.) $16.95 paper | $7.95 e-book Mar. 20, 2013 978-1-938985-09-6
A Redlight Woman Who Knows How to Sing the Blues My Life in White Institutions
The fictional, humorous life and times of Gordon Walter, Richard Nixon’s top-secret right-hand man. During World War II, Walter met young Lt. Richard Nixon in the Navy. While stationed in the South Pacific, Walter proved his worth by helping Nixon make off with a few cases of an admiral’s whiskey for a party. From that moment on, whenever he needed a little covert help behind the scenes, Nixon turned to his old friend. As Nixon’s political career took off, he found himself calling on Walter’s services again and again, especially after he became president. Among other things, Walter secretly oversaw the Plumbers—“a group that we can pin the blame on if things go wrong, so people will have someone and won’t go digging for us”—babysat a deliciously inept Spiro Agnew, helped orchestrate the buildup to a manufactured (ultimately unnecessary) war with Albania and was there throughout the Watergate scandal, which, as Walter explains, was a huge mix-up from the start. As edited by Alaric Thistle, this debut fictional memoir is an uproarious take on the Nixon years as seen from the inside. There are ample laughs throughout the book, but some sections stand out, especially Walter and Agnew’s covert trip to England and Germany to bolster the vice president’s foreign policy–making skills and Walter’s experience tailing Nixon’s burglars while they attempt to nab Ellsberg’s psychiatric file from his doctor’s office. Walter and Nixon’s imagined plotting lends a humorous slant to real-life historical events, and Walter himself is a great character—wry, licentious but with a stubborn loyal streak. Similarly, Nixon’s voice is captured perfectly: Readers will all but hear his jowly baritone. While the tone is satirical, the high level of historical detail adds a layer of richness. Although bound to amuse even casual readers, those more familiar with the politics, personalities and scandals of the Nixon years are likely to especially appreciate this irreverent take on the era. Sharp, snooping political satire.
Sisney, Mary CreateSpace (510 pp.) $17.43 paper | $3.00 e-book | May 9, 2013 978-1-4827-0725-0 Retired English professor Sisney’s (Growth Through Fiction: Short Stories for the Basic Reader, 2008) improbably comic memoir about a black woman’s career in white-dominated academia. Born into a working-class African-American community in Kentucky during the waning Jim Crow years, Sisney traversed a veritable cultural minefield to get her doctorate and a tenured professorship. In five decades at “white institutions,” including 30 years at California Polytechnic State University, Sisney faced formidable sexism and racism. The author blends seriousness and humor when documenting life as a doubleminority professor in the 1970s, ’80 and ’90s. She gives fellow professors entertaining pseudonyms such as Superfly, a white male professor who worked overtime to convey his coolness via “some kind of jive talking, black hip language.” She occasionally switched to black vernacular to “fix his old white ass,” a typical example of the author’s wry way of coping with insufferable colleagues. Sisney critiques culture and politics with similar hilarity, describing, for instance, her desire to administer a “No Fool Left Behind” test to former President George W. Bush to assess his literary aptitude. Even plentiful parentheses, a couple of long-running chapters and overly detailed accounts of academic committee meetings fail to dampen the farcical spirit that animates the book. Beneath all this humor, however, is an unflinching account of the serious discriminatory practices that fester in the supposedly enlightened ivory tower. Although primarily about her career, the narrative also touches on Sisney’s personal life, with particularly poignant reflections on her fraught relationship with her mother. The book brims with pop-culture references and, at times, peculiar and funny meditations on topics ranging from contemporary American sexuality to O.J. Simpson’s murder trial. With allusions to the black literary canon and chapter titles drawn from African-American music, Sisney’s tragicomic memoir speaks to a diverse audience.
This Issue’s Contributors # Richard Becker • Allie Bochicchio • Julie Buffaloe-Yoder • Darren Carlaw • Stephanie Cerra Wendy Connick • Steve Donoghue • Tom Eubanks • Rebecca Foster • Jackie Friedland Courtney Gillette • Ivan Kenneally • Judith B. Long • Mandy Malone • Ingrid Mellor • Chris Messick • Judy Quinn • Jackson Radish • Sarah Rettger • Jessica Skwire Routhier • Benjamin Samuel • Kathy Stump • Carrie Allen Tipton
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SACRED FALL
Jeri Halston, 26, has a master’s degree in economics, but after the shock of her father’s death, she seems content to tend bar at Joe’s Last Chance Saloon in Flagstaff, Ariz. Someone starts mailing her long, witty love letters from all over the world, always including a Polaroid of the writer (face obscured) wearing a Joe’s Last Chance Saloon T-shirt and a P.S.: “Don’t order dog.” Tom Coleman, a germophobic Homeland Security agent who couldn’t qualify for the CIA, becomes intrigued by the letters (posted on the bar’s bulletin board) and decides to investigate their places of origin and dates. When he brings his alarming discoveries to his supervisor, Tom soon finds himself a pawn in a territory (and budget) fight between Homeland Security and the CIA. Meanwhile, the mysterious letter writer appears to be an assassin, involved in chemicals, explosions and hinted-at, grisly-sounding “packages.” The true nature of the anonymous writer, his actions, his letters, his associates and the packages will keep readers guessing until late in the novel. Wente is a skilled if sometimes-unpolished writer, weaving an exciting story to a surprising conclusion filled with insider-y details about his far-flung settings and secretive organizations. It’s only after putting the novel down that the reader may realize how needlessly elaborate some of these shenanigans are, especially in times of instant anonymous communication. Wouldn’t Internet cafes, throwaway phones, WikiLeaks and the like have been a lot easier? Sure, but not nearly as much fun. Also, though Jeri is meant to be the protagonist (the book is billed as Jeri Halston Series, Volume 1) she doesn’t get to do much but pour drinks and tuck locks of hair behind her ears. Let’s hope she’s more prominent in her next outing. A fiendishly tricky (sometimes-overcomplicated) thriller with a brain, a sense of humor and a promising heroine.
Weafer, Jack CreateSpace (388 pp.) $16.95 paper | $4.99 e-book Jun. 10, 2013 978-1-4823-5913-8 A psychotherapist and longtime athlete recounts his spiritual discovery and growth following his traumatic fall into a 50-foot ravine. Weafer is a successful psychotherapist, athlete, husband and father. A high achiever, he was used to being in control. But while doing heavy yard work alone on the grounds of his Westchester County, N.Y., home, he fell into a 50-foot ravine and was trapped alone for more than two hours. Afterward, suffering great pain due to his debilitating physical injuries, he entered a vulnerable state—somewhere he’d never been before. While tempted to simply give up, Weafer began to embrace the changes in his life, a positive attitude hugely informed by the blessed presence he felt while alone in the ravine. Prayer became a guiding force, and he opened himself to having deeper, more significant relationships with his family and, particularly, with his caregivers and his father. He also connected more to his inner child (Jackie versus Jack) and feminine side: In art therapy, he found himself drawing a picture of a goddess. Nine months after his accident, Weafer was back walking and even running, participating in a triathlon, a milestone goal in his physical recovery. However, in Weafer’s transformed existence, such athletic competition isn’t as large a part of his life. His heartfelt account of physical recovery and spiritual awakening may be an inspirational guide to anyone recovering from traumatic injury. Male readers in particular will likely relate to Weafer’s experience with the emotional walls many men face and create. Rather than imposing a strict spiritual doctrine on readers, his discussions of God are of a gentle, New-Age variety. Occasionally, however, Weafer can be overly focused on certain aspects of his life or, at other times, distractingly digressive regarding details that could have been pruned to make his narrative more succinct and compelling for general readers. A highly personal story of a physical and spiritual recovery, with sage advice on how to embrace trauma, fear and uncertainty.
K i rk us M e di a L L C # President M A RC W I N K E L M A N Chief Operating Officer M E G L A B O R D E KU E H N Chief Financial Officer J ames H ull SVP, Marketing M ike H ejny SVP, Online Paul H offman
DON’T ORDER DOG
Wente, C.T. CreateSpace (466 pp.) $18.95 paper | $9.99 e-book Jun. 30, 2013 978-1-4823-5913-8
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Anonymous love letters sent to a young bartender catch the attention of a Homeland Security agent in this debut thriller.
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