November 15, 2012: Volume LXXX, No 22

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

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REVIEWS

Also In This Issue British novelist Howard Jacobson on being the Jewish Jane Austen p. 2524 Q&A With Yael Kohen on We Killed: The Rise of Women in American Comedy p. 2566 In the Children's & Teen Section: 2012 Pop-up Round-up p. 2608

CHILDREN’S & TEEN

Courage Has No Color

by Tanya Lee Stone The Sibert Medal winner uncovers the inspiring, infuriating history of America's first black paratroopers. p. 2604

NONFICTION

The Big Truck that Went By

by Jonathan M. Katz A top-notch, trailblazing account of Haiti’s recent history p. 2569

FICTION

Enemy of Mine

Olivier Tallec

by Brad Taylor Terrorists challenge good guys in Taylor’s latest. p. 2537

Discussing Waterloo & Trafalgar p. 2606 Photo by Joy Sorman

Anniversaries: E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web 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 certain school of thought in the study of animals holds that it’s an insult to all concerned to give them human qualities—the lion courage, for instance, or the hyena cunning. Considering that most humans are merely chimps with guns, that seems a reasonable objection to the practice of anthropomorphism, but it cuts rather deeply at the possibilities of literature, from a good moral-laden Aesopian fable down to the ultramodern pleasures of Frankenweenie.

Though an inveterate collector of notes taped up to every surface in sight, Elwyn Brooks White must not have received the memo nixing human qualities in animals. His beloved book Charlotte’s Web, which turns 60 this year, is full of the interplay of humanlike animals—and sometimes animalian humans—the wisest and best of whom is a barn spider, Araneus cavaticus, named Charlotte.

The book opens on a horrific note that must have sent eyes opening wide way back in the innocent day, with a tiny piglet named Wilbur seemingly destined to become a can of deviled ham until saved by proverbial farmer’s daughter Fern Arable. (Farmer. Arable. No subtlety in White.) Fern is a vision of civilization in a place studded with hooks and scythes and guns, and Wilbur grows happily beyond runtdom. It is in his comfy barn that he becomes acquainted with Charlotte, who, of course, talks.

Charlotte will soon prove herself the best friend a pig could have, though she’s not so very pacific herself. So discovers a fly that unhappily wanders into her eponymous web. “Of course, I don’t really eat them,” proffers Charlotte. “I drink them—drink their blood. I love blood.” (Take that, Bram Stoker!) White punctuates his pleasant story with more than a little carnage but also with some gently introduced science calculated to convert an arachnophobe into an arachnophile. Careful readers will know, for instance, that a spider’s leg has seven sections: “the coxa, the trochanter, the femur, the patella, the tibia, the metatarsus, and the tarsus.”

White was a pensive man who fled as often as he could from New York to a Maine farm, equipped with a barn, pigs and abundant spiders. He was also a superb naturalist, and he took to heart instructions from a 19th-century New England cleric: “The modern nature writer...must collect his facts, at first hand if possible, and then he must interpret the facts as they appeal to his own head and heart in the light of all the circumstances that surround them.” That cleric added that it would be the facts of the story that would eventually turn a child’s interest to science—thus those seven sections of a spider’s leg—but of course the story mattered, too. White brooded about that as well, confessing, as Michael Sims notes in his excellent book The Story of Charlotte’s Web (Walker, 2011), “My fears about writing for children are great—one can so easily slip into a cheap sort of whimsy or cuteness.”

White shunned whimsy and cuteness, turning in a story with a hauntingly sad ending—and against all advice from his editor at that. It worked, and his creation, Charlotte’s Web, remains a beloved classic of children’s literature today.

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

Editor E L A I N E S Z E WC Z Y K eszewczyk@kirkus.com Managing/Nonfiction Editor E R I C L I E B E T R AU eliebetrau@kirkus.com Children’s & Teen Editor VICKY SMITH vsmith@kirkus.com Mysteries Editor THOMAS LEITCH Contributing Editor G R E G O RY M c N A M E E Senior Indie Editor KAREN SCHECHNER kschechner@kirkus.com Indie Editor RYA N L E A H E Y rleahey@kirkus.com Assistant Indie Editor M AT T D O M I N O mdomino@kirkus.com Editorial Coordinator CHELSEA LANGFORD clangford@kirkus.com Copy Editor BETSY JUDKINS Director of Kirkus Editorial P E R RY C RO W E pcrowe@kirkus.com Director of Technology E R I K S M A RT T esmartt@kirkus.com Marketing Associate DUSTIN LIEN dlien@kirkus.com Advertising Sales Associate A M Y G AY H A RT agayhart@kirkus.com #

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This Issue’s Contributors

Elfrieda Abbe • Maude Adjarian • Mark Athitakis • Joseph Barbato • Amy Boaz • Lee E. Cart • Dave DeChristopher • Gregory F. DeLaurier • Kathleen Devereaux • Bobbi Dumas • Daniel Dyer • Lisa Elliott • Gro Flatebo • Peter Franck • Bob Garber • Sean Gibson • Faith Giordano • Amy Goldschlager • Robert M. Knight • Christina M. Kratzner • Paul Lamey • Louise Leetch • Judith Leitch • Peter Lewis • Elsbeth Lindner • Raina Lipsitz • Joe Maniscalco • Don McLeese • Gregory McNamee • Chris Messick • Brett Milano • Carole Moore • Clayton Moore • Chris Morris • Liza Nelson • John Noffsinger • Sarah Norris • Mike Oppenheim • Jim Piechota • Christofer D. Pierson • Gary Presley • David Rapp • Kristen Bonardi Rapp • Karen Rigby • Erika Rohrbach • Bob Sanchez • Sandra Sanchez • Michael Sandlin • William P. Shumaker • Rosanne Simeone • Clea Simon • Elaine Sioufi • Margot E. Spangenberg • Andria Spencer • Claire Trazenfeld • Steve Weinberg • Rodney Welch • Carol White • Chris White • Homa Zaryouni • Alex Zimmerman

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contents fiction Index to Starred Reviews...................................................p. 2515 REVIEWS........................................................................................p. 2515 Q&A WITH Howard jacobson.............................................p. 2524

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

Mystery......................................................................................p. 2540 Science Fiction & Fantasy..................................................p. 2548

nonfiction Index to Starred Reviews...................................................p. 2551 REVIEWS........................................................................................p. 2551 Q&A WITH yael kohen............................................................p. 2566

children’s & teen Index to Starred Reviews................................................. p. 2589 REVIEWS...................................................................................... p. 2589 Q&A WITH olivier tallec......................................................p. 2606 Pop-up round-up...................................................................p. 2608 interactive e-books.............................................................p. 2617

indie Index to Starred Reviews...................................................p. 2623 REVIEWS........................................................................................p. 2623 Q&A with william rewak.................................................... p. 2630

Terrorists challenge good guys in Brad Taylor’s latest. See the starred review on p. 2537.

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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.

When young Indian journalist Aman Sethi set out to undertake a study of New Delhi’s working poor, he could hardly have dreamed up a better case study than Mohammed Ashraf—a day laborer by profession, but a philosopher and raconteur at heart. For six years, Ashraf allowed Sethi to play Boswell to his Johnson, giving him unfettered access to all aspects of his life. The result, A Free Man: A True Story of Life and Death in Delhi, explores the ups and downs Ashraf and his friends experience as members of the Indian working class, as well as giving voice to the concerns of those living in poverty worldwide. Kirkus’ contributing editor Karen Calabria speaks with Sethi about the difficulties of narrative nonfiction, unreliable narrators and the far-reaching effects of urbanization around the world.

“I like my stories to be like mini-novels,” Emma Donoghue told Kirkus’ Jim Piechota when he caught up with her to chat about her new short story collection, Astray. Donoghue, author of the gripping international best-seller Room, straddles genres once again to produce this seamless collection of 14 tales populated by far-flung wanderers in search of true meaning.

The author, an Irish emigrant now residing in Canada and known for her brilliant historical fiction, discusses the allure of the aimless, the short story process, how history molds her themes and how Room still gets mistakenly compared to several gruesome kidnapping cases of the past. “Some stories fizzle out in the writing and I had to discard those,” she confessed. “You never quite know what’s going to happen.”

Cece Bell’s newest book, a chapter book called Rabbit & Robot: The Sleepover, is a straight-up tribute to one of children’s literature’s most beloved author/illustrators. “This book was my attempt to be a smidgen like Arnold Lobel,” she told Kirkus columnist Julie Danielson, “who is arguably still the greatest chapter book writer and illustrator of all time. He brought some really interesting psychological things into his work that really make you want to linger over his books longer.” While it can be extremely challenging to pull off such a tribute, it’s even more difficult to make the book one’s own. In this case, give a tip of the hat to Bell, who honors the master of the chapter book form and brings her own voice to every page. She’s done it and done it well.

And, finally, don’t forget to check out our Indie publishing series featuring some of today’s top self-publishing authors, including Boyd Morrison and Travis Thrasher, as well as signed authors like Margo Lanagan and Tammara Webber. Each week, we feature authors’ exclusive personal essays on how they achieved their success in publishing. It’s a must-read resource for any aspiring author interested in getting their books out there.

For the latest news releases every day, please go online to Kirkus.com.

It’s where our editors and contributing blog partners bring you the best in science fiction, mysteries and thrillers, literary fiction and nonfiction, teen books and children’s books, Indie publishing and more.

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fiction DANCING TO THE FLUTE

These titles earned the Kirkus Star:

Amin, Manisha Jolie Atria (320 pp.) $15.00 paperback | Feb. 5, 2013 978-1-4516-7204-6

THE PAINTED GIRLS by Cathy Marie Buchanan...................... p. 2520 Y by Marjorie Celona................................................................... p. 2522 SOMEBODY TO LOVE by Kristan Higgins.................................... p. 2528 GHOSTMAN by Roger Hobbs.......................................................p. 2529 THE MISSING MANUSCRIPT OF JANE AUSTEN

by Syrie James................................................................................p. 2531 VAMPIRES IN THE LEMON GROVE by Karen Russell.............. p. 2536 ENEMY OF MINE by Brad Taylor.................................................p. 2537 NARCOPOLIS by Jeff Thayil....................................................... p. 2538 THE CHILD’S CHILD by Barbara Vine........................................ p. 2538 THE LOVE SONG OF JONNY VALENTINE by Teddy Wayne..... p. 2539 UNNATURAL HABITS by Kerry Greenwood.............................. p. 2543 DREAMS AND SHADOWS by C. Robert Cargill.......................p. 2548 IMAGER’S BATTALION by L.E Modesitt Jr................................p. 2549 MECHA ROGUE by Brett Patton..................................................p. 2549 THE PAINTED GIRLS

Buchanan, Cathy Marie Riverhead (368 pp.) $26.95 Jan. 1, 2013 978-1-59448-624-1

Spun from the lush, rich culture of India, Amin debuts with the story of Kalu, who finds his destiny in raag.

Raag is music, a classical expression of India’s soul, and Kalu is a boy who arrives in the village of Hastinapore with no memory of family or home. To survive, Kalu accepts any chore. Ganga Ba, a widow, begins watching over him, and her servant girl, Malti, becomes Kalu’s surrogate sister. Then, a night creature bites Kalu’s foot, causing it to swell, fester and reek of infection. Unable to work, lurking half-starved in a banyan tree, Kalu rolls up a leaf and plays a musical note of absolute purity. Vaid Dada, an itinerant healer resting in the shade, hears the music. When he discovers young Kalu, Vaid Dada treats the injured foot and leaves Kalu to recuperate in Ganga Ba’s house, telling Kalu that upon his return, he will ask for payment.

While Vaid Dada is absent, Kalu slips away to a cave beneath an old tree. There, he finds a large curved black stone, a shiv-ling, a symbol of Lord Shiva. He begins practicing with a little plastic flute. One day, he mesmerizes a magnificent cobra into dance.

Afterward, Kalu unearths a beautiful rosewood flute. Vaid Dada returns and tells Kalu his payment will require Kalu to follow him to the mountain retreat of Vaid Dada’s brother, a reclusive musician who retired when “applause and adulation became more important than…the music itself.” As the tale unfolds, Kalu becomes surrogate son to his mentor, Guruji, blossoming, learning to experience all that is real and true through music. In a secondary narrative focusing on the changing place of India’s women, Amin follows Malti into an unhappy arranged marriage, then divorce and independence. Delicate, sometimes meditative and rich with allusions to India’s spirit as expressed through music, the novel offers readers color and culture, poverty and riches, through every sensory perception.

A lyrical meditation on love, friendship and finding bliss in destiny.

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“As exhaustingly inventive and jokey as Dan’s debut.” from unnatural acts

UNNATURAL ACTS

Anderson, Kevin J. Kensington (336 pp.) $15.00 paperback | Dec. 24, 2012 978-0-7582-7736-7 Another full caseload for Dan Shamble, the zombie detective who was just warming up when he solved his own murder in Death Warmed Over (2012).

Dan’s reputation in the Unnatural Quarter has made him the shamus of last resort for any number of monsters. A golem named Bill begs him to help emancipate a hundred of his fellow golems from their servitude making toys for Maximilian Grubb, aka Maximum Max. The ghost of bank robber Alphonse Wheeler wants the help of Dan’s partner, still-human lawyer Robin Deyer, in making sure he can live off the money he served 20 years for stealing. Neffi, the mummy who runs the Full Moon brothel, summons Dan to find some rent-a-goons to protect her establishment from the violent followers of conservative Sen. Rupert Balfour, whose Unnatural Acts Act threatens the rights of all the undead. Dan’s old nemesis Harvey Jekyll insists that Robin file an anti-discrimination suit when he’s barred from moving out of the Unnatural Quarter. An actor who insists that his name is William Shakespeare hires Dan to find the person who set his outdoor theater on fire, and crusading social worker Hope Saldana asks him to help her zombie assistant, Jerry, track down the heart and soul he pawned to Snazz, the gremlin owner of Timeworn Treasures. It’s this last case that produces a fresh corpse when Dan breaks into Snazz’s cluttered shop, intending to look over the ledger that identifies the party who purchased Jerry’s heart and soul, and finds the pawnbroker strangled to death under circumstances that look very awkward indeed for the zombie sleuth.

As exhaustingly inventive and jokey as Dan’s debut.

Think of the entire first season of True Blood on fast forward. (Agent: John Silbersack)

THIN SLICE OF LIFE

Arceneaux, Miles Stephen F. Austin University Press (300 pp.) $18.95 paperback | Sep. 25, 2012 978-1-936205-84-4 The triumvirate writing as Miles Arceneaux (aka Texas authors Brent Douglass, John T. Davis and James R. Dennis) debuts with a hurricane-ravaged thriller in the atmosphere-and-action mode of Sue Grafton’s Santa Teresa and James Lee Burke’s Cajun country.

Charlie Sweetwater, vagabond owner of a small Mexican diving resort, picks up the phone and hears his brother say “drive up here….I want you to meet somebody.” Brother Johnny runs the family’s fishing fleet, having remained on the Texas Gulf 2516

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after their father’s death. Charlie arrives, but Johnny is missing at sea. Thus begins an adventure among shrimpers, fisherman and edge-of-law folks sailing around the fertile bay waters near Port Aransas, and it all plays out before, during and after a devastating hurricane called Lana. It’s 1979, and trawlers harvesting the Texas Gulf Coast’s bounty are largely crewed by ambitious and hardworking Vietnamese refugees. That’s good. What’s bad is the market’s controlled by Sea-Tex, a shadowy corporation owned by “Colonel” Nguyen Ngoc Bao, a man who has “the sort of attitude for his adopted home that a crocodile reserves for a poodle.” The storm, plus gunrunning, drug smuggling and the hardy denizens of the Shady Boat and Leisure Club, give the novel a hold-onto-your-seat cinematic narrative. Add filmready characterizations like Llewellyn “Pinky” Cudihay (cast John Goodman, certainly), who is a corrupt state senator, and O. B. Hadnott (give Tommy Lee Jones a Stetson), a West Texas Ranger assigned to investigate the shooting of the senator’s aide, and it’s a page turner. The authors also do a commendable job with Hispanic and Vietnamese characters. There’s menacing Miguel Negron, former gangbanger, prisoner and now cook/ bartender, and Marisol Cavasos, Miguel’s childhood friend and current parole officer. Then there’s beautiful Trinh An Phu, once a Saigon bar girl, who captures the taciturn Ranger’s heart.

And that’s not counting young Raul, who attaches himself to Tío Carlito. Fights, stabbings and gunplay carry the narrative until the good guys win out and get the girls.

An engaging crime caper. This book hits the mark.

KIND OF KIN

Askew, Rilla Ecco/HarperCollins (432 pp.) $25.99 | $13.99 e-book | Jan. 8, 2013 978-0-06-219879-2 978-0-06-219881-5 e-book An Oklahoma-centric novel about the “crime” of harboring illegal Mexican workers.

Georgia Ann “Sweet” Kirkendall is distressed—her father, Robert John Brown (emphasis on the second two names), has been arrested and charged for the felony crime of “transporting, harboring, concealing, and sheltering undocumented aliens in furtherance of their illegal presence in the state of Oklahoma,” as the legalese goes. Brown doesn’t deny the charge but rather embraces it, for he sees it as part of his Christian duty to help others. Sweet doesn’t quite see it the same way as her father, however, and she has a number of other things to worry about, including her son, Carl Albert, and most especially her nephew, Dustin, who’s only 10 but shows considerable empathy toward both his grandfather and the plight of the Mexican workers. In fact, he runs away, causing further worry and grief for his aunt. (His mother had died a few years before.) Brown’s situation is exacerbated since it becomes something of a local cause célèbre when Sheriff Arvin Holloway begins to rail against “criminals” like Brown— Holloway has no sympathy for the justification of “doing one’s |

Christian duty.” State Representative Monica Moorehouse also wants to make political hay, for she’s sponsoring a “get tough on illegal aliens” crime bill and fears her political ambitions might be hurt if sympathy builds for Brown.

Askew deftly weaves all this together in a narrative that foregrounds a number of important contemporary issues: religion, immigration, the economy and the effect of all of these on family life. (Author appearances in Kansas City, Oklahoma City, Tulsa and Wichita)

FRANCES AND BERNARD

Bauer, Carlene Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (208 pp.) $23.00 | Feb. 5, 2013 978-0-547-85824-1 Debut novelist Bauer pens an epistolary novel whose protagonists lead insular, self-absorbed and very dull lives.

When Frances and Bernard meet at a writers’ colony in 1957, they develop a tentative friendship. Frances, a middleclass young woman from a loving, boisterous family, is stoic and undemonstrative. Bernard, the product of a privileged background and a Harvard alumnus, is unpredictable and outgoing. While seemingly polar opposites, they remain connected through their letters and spend years discussing everything from their tastes in music to their religious beliefs, their lives and the books they write. Bernard’s a poet while Frances writes fiction; they describe themselves as the epitome of square, but

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their letters, while boring and full of obscure references and stilted wording, come off more as condescending and pretentious than square. Both write as if they’re throwbacks to the Victorian era—at one point Frances informs Bernard that she retires to her chamber at night while her family watches television—which might explain their attraction to each other. Frances eventually moves to New York City, and Bernard visits her.

Together, they explore the city. Then Bernard makes a huge mistake: He catches Frances off guard and kisses her, and she’s not exactly pleased. It takes several more letters and a breakdown on Bernard’s part before Frances finally admits she loves him.

But both face difficulties and waste a lot more ink as Bernard struggles with mental illness and Frances copes with family crises before the final letter is completed. There’s no doubt Bauer is well-educated and passionate about her religious views, her love of literature and her characters, but her attempts to create stimulating spiritual and intellectual dialogue feel forced. The characters are too wrapped up in themselves and totally ignore anything outside their narrow personal spheres. How can they not once mention one word about the space race, Elvis, the Beatles, JFK’s assassination or Vietnam (just to name a few of the social and political events that occurred) during their 11 years of correspondence?

Disappointing.

THE LOST ART OF MIXING

Bauermeister, Erica Putnam (288 pp.) $25.95 | Jan. 24, 2013 978-0-399-16211-4

A Seattle chef and her circle of friends cope with life’s pivotal moments.

In this follow-up to The School of Essential Ingredients (2009), Chef Lillian continues to run her small restaurant, which has become a hub for people in transition.

In what is essentially a collection of linked stories, the following characters have their say: Al, Lillian’s accountant; her sous-chef, Chloe; Isabelle, an elderly woman with whom Chloe is staying; the lanky and taciturn dishwasher, Finnegan; Louise, Al’s tightly wound wife; Lillian’s new boyfriend, widower Tom; and Isabelle’s daughter Abby, a stickler for order. Chance dictates these characters’ interactions, as does mutual attraction or dislike. Miscommunication is a major theme, at times blunted by almost farcical misunderstandings, as when Louise assumes Al is having an affair with Chloe, while Al assumes Louise no longer wants his affection. Lillian has just discovered she is pregnant and cannot bring herself to tell Tom, who later will take offense that Isabelle found out before he did. Isabelle knows that she is sliding into possible Alzheimer’s, and Abby (one of the more realistic portrayals) is exasperated that her younger siblings aren’t joining her in pressuring their mother to sell the family cabin to pay for her longterm care. At Isabelle’s behest (when she’s not forgetting things, she’s a wise woman), Chloe goes out with Finnegan, who encourages her to keep a notebook. She’s beginning to think he might 2518

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be soul-mate material until she sees his trunk full of notebooks by other girlfriends, a disturbing find that Finnegan must explain in his own chapter. Lush descriptions of food, including the smells that provoke Lillian’s telltale morning sickness, tie it all together.

Although the art of uncrossing all these mixed signals (a bit too neatly) is not lost on Bauermeister, the narrative, carried by so many disparate points of view, never quite comes into focus.

So robust and resilient are Bauermeister’s characters that readers may wish she had challenged them with thornier dilemmas. (Agent: Amy Berkower)

SCENT OF DARKNESS

Berwin, Margot Pantheon (240 pp.) $25.00 | Feb. 5, 2013 978-0-307-90752-3

The bequest of a mysterious vial transforms a woman into a scent seductress.

Evangeline, whose grandmother Louise has just died, does not consider herself particularly beautiful or talented.

Louise, who was known to practice dark arts, leaves Evangeline her house in upstate New York (Louise moved from New Orleans years before). When Evangeline enters a room she vowed never to unlock, she discovers a small bottle of perfume, which, when applied, imparts an irresistible scent. Suddenly, Gabriel, a man previously out of her league, is her lover, and together, they move to New Orleans where he is a medical student. Once there, Evangeline encounters all manner of signs and omens, such as a dire tarot-card prophecy that she will spread evil and break hearts. The city itself, forever hot and steamy, echoes Evangeline’s turbulent state of mind as she finds herself inexorably drawn to Gabriel’s friend, Michael Bon Chance, a charismatic but mediocre painter who seeks to exploit Evangeline’s fragrance to catapult him into the upper echelons of the art world. At Michael’s triumphant show, consisting mainly of nudes of Evangeline painted without her knowledge, Gabriel walks away in disgust. Before Evangeline can explain, a dog bites her, and the wound festers. (Bringing out aggression in dogs is an unfortunate side effect of her pheromone-rich aura.)

Now she must rely on the quirky 14-year-old son of a neighbor she has never met to take her to his grandmother, who practices her own version of the dark arts. Evangeline soon finds that her olfactory attractiveness does not compensate for the yawning void in her soul, but she will be hard-pressed to learn the lesson Louise intended to impart with her gift. Although evoking the peculiar exoticism of New Orleans with precision, Berwin’s prose labors hard to impart profundity to what is basically a pastiche of gothic staples (the forbidden room, the never-seen invalid mother, etc.).

An overly stylized parable with intermittent flashes of pleasant spookiness. (Author tour to Miami, New Orleans and New York)

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BLOOD OF WAR

Bond, Larry; DeFelice, Jim Forge (320 pp.) $25.99 | Jan. 22, 2013 978-0-7653-2140-4 Series: Larry Bond’s Red Dragon Rising The final installment in Bond and DeFelice’s four-book Red Dragon Rising series sees China moving inexorably toward its conquest of Vietnam, while those in the know in the United States government and security services work behind the scenes to stop the Chinese juggernaut in its tracks.

In the Red Dragon Rising series’ version of 2014, climate change has brought the world to the brink of chaos. As the fourth and final book in the series opens, the Chinese army is preparing to sweep through Vietnam as part of a famine-ravaged China’s quest to conquer the smaller nation, primarily as a source of food. Maj. Zeus Murphy is still in country, and he’s

come up with a plan to stall the Chinese advance, but in order to put it in motion, he’s going to need to work with the Vietnam People’s Army as well as some of the darker elements of the CIA. Back at home, President George Greene, who believes China should be stopped sooner rather than later, and whose approval is necessary to set Murphy’s plan in motion, is facing a political crisis which may tie his hands. Meanwhile, while Josh MacArthur, the scientist who presented the world with proof that China’s justification for going to war was fabricated, is cooling his heels in rural Ohio and pining for CIA agent Mara Duncan, a Chinese assassin is lurking nearby, waiting for an opportunity to strike. Naturally, Bond, who co-authored the quintessential military techno-thriller Red Storm Rising with Tom Clancy, is at his best depicting the technological components of modern warfare. He displays an encyclopedic knowledge of modern weapons systems and tactics, and he knows how to use his knowledge to full advantage without bogging things down in military acronyms and technobabble, thus creating exquisite tension during action scenes. When actual human emotions figure into the plot, though, as love does in several

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“Buchanan does a masterful job of interweaving historical figures into her plot….” from the painted girls

instances in this book, things read a little bit off, but few will notice or particularly care thanks to the novel’s steamroller plot and tense action sequences.

Bond and DeFelice conjure a chillingly all-too-believable near future global conflict.

THE WINTER WITCH

Brackston, Paula Dunne/St. Martin’s (352 pp.) $24.99 | Jan. 29, 2013 978-1-250-00131-3 I married a witch, discovers the kindly Welsh widower making a marriage of necessity to a mute dairymaid.

There’s a whiff of Harry Potter in the witchy conflict—a battle between undeveloped young magical talent and old malevolence—at the heart of this sprightly tale of spells and romance, the second novel from British writer Brackston (The Witch’s Daughter, 2011). Eighteen-year-old Morgana Pritchard, silent by choice since childhood, doesn’t know the extent of her magical powers until new husband Cai’s housekeeper, Mrs. Jones, a witch herself, starts to teach her and also introduces her to the power of the well on Cai’s land. What Morgana does know—because she can smell it—is that there is powerful evil in the community, soon identified as Isolda Bowen, a witch intent on ruining Cai and getting the well for herself. After a cattle drive during which a man is killed, the couple returns home to discover that with Isolda’s encouragement, the locals have turned against Morgana, calling her the Winter Witch. But it is when Isolda curses Cai that the young witch must summon all her knowledge and resolve to fight for both their lives.

Love of landscape and lyrical writing lend charm, but it’s Brackston’s full-blooded storytelling that will hook the reader.

YESTERDAY’S SUN

Brooke, Amanda Harper/HarperCollins (336 pp.) $14.99 paperback | Feb. 12, 2013 978-0-06-213183-6

Brooke’s novel, set in the countryside near London, captures the heartbreaking dilemma of a woman who must choose between saving her own life and that of her unborn child.

Holly is an artist who spent her childhood longing to get away from her parents—a drunken, abusive mother and a distant, uninvolved father. Once both are dead and she is on her own, she meets the man of her dreams, Tom, a television journalist from a close-knit family. When they purchase the gatehouse of a large, burned-down estate, Tom tries to talk Holly into starting a family. She isn’t sure about becoming 2520

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a mother, especially when her own was so terrible, but slowly starts to consider his proposition when she has an otherworldly encounter with what turns out to be an ancient “moondial” in the couple’s garden. In this encounter, Holly sees the daughter she will have and learns she will also die delivering her. After meeting and befriending Jocelyn, who once lived with her own family in the same house, Holly discovers that the older woman has had a similar experience with the mysterious stone. Confiding in Jocelyn, Holly discovers her dilemma is even worse. Holly knows she must find a way around the moonstone’s death sentence or she will never live to see her precious baby. Although the plot shows promise and creativity, and Brooke delivers a solid yet fanciful storyline, the overall execution is clumsy. The book is riddled with clichés: Holly, Tom, Jocelyn and the rest of the book’s characters never simply say anything; in Brooke’s world, they gurgle, they beam, they gush, they whisper, they sob and they wink, while wading through buckets of adverbs and torrents of sugary dialogue.

The innovative, quirky plot and author’s old-fashioned overwrought style will appeal to some readers, but others will find the syrupy prose overwhelming and wish the book had been subjected to a more strenuous edit.

THE PAINTED GIRLS

Buchanan, Cathy Marie Riverhead (368 pp.) $26.95 | Jan. 10, 2013 978-1-59448-624-1

Buchanan (The Day the Falls Stood Still, 2009) brings the unglamorous reality of the late-19th-century Parisian demimonde into stark relief while imagining the life of Marie Van Goethem, the actual model for the iconic Degas statue Little Dancer Aged Fourteen.

Marie is the middle Van Goethem sister, the plain one who loves reading. Seven-year-old Charlotte has the looks and charm, while street-wise 17-year-old Antoinette is burdened with raising her sisters because their widowed mother spends most of her meager income as a washerwoman on absinthe.

Kicked out of the Paris Opera ballet school but earning a little as an extra, Antoinette arranges for Marie and Charlotte to enter the school—dance is a way to avoid working in the wash house. Soon, Marie attracts the attention of the painter Degas.

When he asks her to model for him, she jumps at the chance, both for the money and the attention. Through Degas, she meets Monsieur Lefebvre, one of the wealthy men who “adopt” ballet students of promise. Soon, she is able to quit her parttime job at the neighborhood bakery where she has captured the heart of the owner’s son. Meanwhile, Antoinette gets a tiny part in Zola’s controversial play L’Assommoir and falls in love with another extra, Émile Abadie. As the story progresses, the sisters come dangerously close to self-destruction.

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Buchanan does a masterful job of interweaving historical figures into her plot, but it is the moving yet unsentimental portrait of family love, of two sisters struggling to survive with dignity, that makes this a must-read. (Agent: Dorian Karchmar)

EDGE OF SANITY

Butcher, Shannon K. Signet Eclipse/NAL (368 pp.) $7.99 paperback | Dec. 4, 2012 978-0-451-23881-8 Butcher’s latest entry in the Edge series (Living on the Edge, 2010, etc.) features dangerous, dark Clay and the young woman who brings out both the best and worst in him.

Clay Marshall awakens covered with blood, and that scares him: Not because Clay’s afraid of violence—he’s a violent man in a violent profession—but because the blood isn’t his, and he doesn’t remember anything about the night before. This isn’t the first time this has happened, either. As an employee of a high-level private security firm, the Edge, Clay is a top-notch professional. He’s smart, capable and hardened to the jobs he’s called upon to do. But he can’t explain the frightening blackouts he’s been having, and he’s worried that they might put his friend and fellow employee, Mira, in danger. When he contacts Mira with questions about dead bodies and murders from the previous night, she’s immediately suspicious and notifies Payton, a man used to handling these kinds of situations. Payton brings in Leigh, a beautiful red-haired doctor whose own two brothers have suffered fates similar to Clay’s, and the two are sent to a secluded home where they are instantly drawn to one another. However, their growing attraction isn’t the only thing that’s happening; the people responsible for Clay’s blackouts are close on his trail, and they don’t need Leigh around. Butcher’s story, which revolves around a mind-control scheme and science gone askew, covers little if any new ground, and the plot seems to serve only as a vehicle to bring Clay’s throbbing manhood and Leigh’s heaving bosom into close proximity. The characters, from the two protagonists to the evil scientists, fail to register much in the way of complexity, while the romance angle is strictly by-the-numbers, featuring lots of street slang for the naughty bits and sex that reads like a 14-year-old boy’s wildest daydreams.

Melodramatic situations and clichéd characters populate this standard erotic romance, which will probably please Butcher’s die-hard fans but will make casual readers want to tell Clay and Leigh to “get a room.”

Caldwell, Megan Morrow/HarperCollins (416 pp.) $14.99 paperback | $9.99 e-book Dec. 26, 2012 978-0-06-218836-6 978-0-06-218843-4 e-book Can a 40-year-old divorced mom find happiness with a rich, dashing pastry chef? Surprisingly not, in this pleasing debut of single parenthood, temp jobs and literary desserts.

Molly’s story is sadly familiar: While helping her husband, Hugh, through law school, Molly put her career on hold and then gave it up entirely when Aidan was born. Now that Hugh has run off with a younger woman and lost his job with an investment bank, Molly is without child support, health insurance or much of a future. Thankfully, her friend John throws some copy-editing work her way, but when he calls with a bigger

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project, it may be the thing to re-establish her career. Celebrity chef Simon is opening a bakery across from the New York Public Library and needs a clever theme to tie the world of fatty delights to old, fat novels. Molly barely hears the assignment, mesmerized as she is by Simon’s green eyes, thick hair and roguish charm. And he’s flirting with her. In a British accent. Molly is soon coming up with pithy dessert names—A Room of One’s Scone, A Raisin in the Bun, Tart of Darkness (the menu descriptions begin each chapter)—allowing her love of punning to finally pay off. Too bad she has to work with Simon’s American partner, Nick, a bad-tempered businessman who seems permanently disappointed in Molly. As she juggles work, Aidan (she’s the kind of real-world mom whose parenting includes a few too many hours of TV mixed with liberal bribes of Pokémon) and now her bankrupt mother, who has moved in, Molly tests the dating waters with Simon. Simon may be hot, but it turns out he is also obnoxious, self-centered and controlling. Molly’s friends encourage her to sleep with him anyway, but she’s beginning to have feelings for Nick, who is not as forbidding as he seemed.

Caldwell’s light intrigues and bevy of supporting characters cast an old-fashioned spell on her modern Brooklyn romance.

BEWITCHED, BOTHERED, AND BISCOTTI

Cates, Bailey Obsidian (336 pp.) $7.99 paperback | Dec. 31, 2012 978-0-451-23898-6

Bakery owner Katie Lightfoot uses light witchcraft and investigative skills to solve a murder she stumbles across, but the mystery also takes her deeper into a romantic triangle, a secret society and her own power in ways she may not

be ready for.

Katie loves her new life: Being the owner of a bakery in Savannah, finding out she’s a hereditary witch and learning what that means for her and the circle of women around her who share her interests and magical potential are all satisfying, and sometimes surprising, elements of the adventure she chose when her life in Ohio fell apart six months ago. Slightly problematic are the two men she can’t choose between and her newfound penchant for becoming involved in murder investigations. When she and firefighter friend-who-wants-more-thanfriendship Declan have a picnic and find a dead body in the bushes, Katie discovers that the victim has links to a magical society of powerful men in Savannah, all of whom are suspects.

Unfortunately, another man who has links to the group is Steve Dawes, the third side to Katie’s romantic triangle, a fact which throws a number of wrenches into the investigation, her friendships and her love life. But, as the mystery heats up, not even the people who love her best can protect her from a malevolent force, and she’ll discover that she has untapped power that could be life-changing. She’ll also find that when it comes to 2522

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Steve and Declan, nothing is easy, and the road to love is full of unexpected curves. Cates is a smooth, accomplished writer who combines a compelling plot with a cast of interesting characters that are diverse and engaging without falling into simplistic stereotypes—though at times keeping up with the abundant cast is tricky. Overall, a light, clever and engaging read.

Cates’ second Magical Bakery mystery is a charming addition to the food-based cozy mystery repertoire, while the story’s magical elements bring a fun, intriguing dimension to the genre.

Y

Celona, Marjorie Free Press (272 pp.) $24.99 | Jan. 8, 2013 978-1-4516-7438-5

As a newborn, Shannon is abandoned at the local “Y”—and then spends much of her young life asking “Why?” The cards seem stacked against Shannon as she tries to piece together the fragments of her life. Celona reconstructs the story with an almost Faulkner-ian complexity as Shannon moves back and forth through the chronology of her life but also through her imaginative vision of her parents’ relationship. Along the way, she confronts the most painful question one can ask: Why was I abandoned? It turns out, there’s an eyewitness, Vaughn, who saw Shannon being deposited on the steps of the Y, and eventually, Shannon seeks him out to get one perspective on her story. (For one thing, she wants to know whether her mother kissed her before she abandoned her.) Shannon eventually discovers a complex and troubled family history that involves a variety of dysfunctions, including drinking and drugs. As a child, Shannon moves through several foster homes, each with its own issues, before she settles in with Miranda, a single mom with a daughter, Lydia-Rose. As one might expect, Shannon’s relationship with both stepmother and stepsister is rocky—and Shannon is not, after all, the easiest child to raise.

Shannon’s birth mother, Yula, is herself a teenager when Shannon is born, and her father, Harrison, does drugs. Eventually, Shannon develops curiosity about her birthparents and seeks them out, leading to yet more emotional trauma.

Celona writes movingly about basic questions of identity, questions exacerbated by the unhappy circumstances of Shannon’s birth. (Agent: Claudia Ballard)

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“Christopher delivers well-drawn and convincing characters in all their screwed-up glory.” from tiger rag

MRS. LINCOLN’S DRESSMAKER

Chiaverini, Jennifer Dutton (352 pp.) $26.95 paperback | Jan. 15, 2013 978-0-525-95361-6 From the intimate domestic circles of the political elite, a dressmaker witnesses the upheavals of 19th-century America.

Chiaverini (The Giving Quilt, 2012, etc.) sets aside her Elm Creek Quilts series for this historical novel about Elizabeth Keckley. Drawing upon the rich milieu of Civil War America, as well as Keckley’s own memoir (published in 1868 as Behind the Scenes), Chiaverini weaves the story of a woman who lived as both slave and freedwoman. Elizabeth learns her trade by making clothes for her fellow slaves, and once freed, she plies her needle so skillfully that the wives of Republicans and Democrats clamor for her designs.

Varina, the second wife of Jefferson Davis, even seeks to take Elizabeth with her to Montgomery when the South secedes and her husband becomes president of the Confederacy. Despite her desire to journey with Varina, Elizabeth decides to stay in Washington, since traveling further South will erase most of her freedoms. Her decision leads to her new position as Mary Todd Lincoln’s modiste. Elizabeth not only designs and sews Mary’s clothes, but she also arranges her hair, helps her dress, cares for her children at times and becomes her confidante. As others nearly shun Mary for her extravagances during wartime, not to mention her mercurial personality, she relies more and more heavily upon Elizabeth. Their relationship affords an interesting perspective for viewing the cultural and social turmoil of the times, for no matter how much Elizabeth is respected for her skills and no matter how intimately Mary trusts her with her confidences, Elizabeth remains a former slave, and she must be reminded of her place.

While the backdrop is strikingly vivid, Chiaverini’s domestic tale dawdles too often in the details of dress fittings and quilt piecings, leaving Elizabeth’s emotional terrain glimpsed but not traveled.

Christopher captures this long-whispered moment perfectly, as Charles “Buddy” Bolden and his boys lay down three inspired recordings of a song known as “Number 2”—aficionados know it as “Tiger Rag” today—before fading into the night. From this point, the author folds this rumored bit of jazz history into a modern-day search for the lost cylinders. His protagonist is Ruby Cardillo, a hot mess of a divorcee who’s taken to only wearing purple and downing numerous bottles of Bordeaux.

She recruits her daughter, jazz pianist and recovering addict Devon, to drive with her to New Orleans so that Ruby can deliver a speech about anesthesiology. In New York, they meet with music dealer Emmett Browne, who believes that Devon’s grandfather Valentine Owen was a compatriot of Bolden’s who may have squirreled away the legendary recordings. The manic Ruby and damaged Devon’s journey makes for fine drama, and Christopher delivers well-drawn and convincing characters in all their screwed-up glory. But the book’s wonder comes from Bolden’s downward spiral into alcoholism, schizophrenia and dementia, even as Christopher captures one brief moment of clarity. “In 1931 Charles Bolden picked up where he had left off

TIGER RAG

Christopher, Nicholas Dial Press (288 pp.) $26.00 | Jan. 1, 2013 978-1-4000-6921-7 The story of history’s most enigmatic jazz trumpeter becomes a touchstone for a troubled doctor and her daughter.

Talented poet and novelist Christopher (The Bestiary, 2007, etc.) returns to the rich vein of early-20th-century American history for his elegiac and expressive sixth novel. The book opens on a hotel room in New Orleans circa 1904, where seven musicians huddle over their instruments in stifling heat. | kirkus.com

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k i r ku s q & a w i t h h owa r d ja c o b s on

ZOO TIME

Jacobson, Howard Bloomsbury (384 pp.) $26.00 Oct. 16, 2012 978-1-60819-938-9

Howard Jacobson has been around for a good while, a student and creator of fine literature, but it seems as if he burst onto the literary scene only recently with a spate of rollicking novels about quotidian life in modern Britain, mostly as lived by men of a decidedly, well, schlemazel tenor. Those novels, among them No More Mr. Nice Guy, The Mighty Walzer, and The Finkler Question, have been famously wellreceived both commercially and critically, the last earning Jacobson the Man Booker Prize.

His newest, Zoo Time, continues Jacobson’s travels into the picaresque that lies behind the periurban doors of London. Funny and elegiac at once, Jacobson explores the world of a writer, Guy Ableman, that is visibly crumbling on all sides, a condition that he does his best to contend with by adapting to the times to be bigger, faster and better—writing to beat the market if not always the band. The change exhausts Ableman, but it pays off in the end, even if it finds him apologizing at times for moral shortcuts in his work along the way: “I had to cheat a bit to get the Holocaust in, but a dream sequence will always make a chump of chronology.”

Yet Guy Ableman, our Everyman, endures.

And Howard Jacobson thrives, a master of that oldfashioned thing called the comic novel, spruced up for the new century. Kirkus caught up with him at home in England to ask about his work.

Q: You once called yourself “a Jewish Jane Austen.” Granted, “a man without a wife can be lonely in a big black Mercedes, no matter how many readers he has,” a lovely line of yours, has a nicely Austen-ian sense (and sensibility). Since your characters don’t usually turn up in manor houses or fret about marrying into society, what do you mean by that?

Q: The Finkler Question turns on the idea of what it means to be Jewish in a time when “the Holocaust had become negotiable,” as you put it. Do you think of yourself as 2524

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A: I see myself as first and foremost an English writer. The Jewish writers you mention matter to me, but Dickens has influenced me more, as have Doctor Johnson, D. H. Lawrence, and Henry James (who counts as English when it’s either that or being Jewish). That I often feel at war with English sensibility—in particular that overrefinement that makes the comedy of the grotesque, the obscene, the satirical, etc., such a trial for them—makes me no less an English writer. I recognize and do battle with that timidity in myself. Some of my novels are that battle.

I like to think that the Jewishness of my subject matter, like the Jewish hyperbole and exuberant fatalism of my comedy, is my gift to the English novel; an addition rather than a departure.

Q: Many of your stories turn on miscommunications, or perhaps mismatched priorities, between men and women. Zoo Time adds chimps and other critters to the mix. Is Guy Ableman an alter ego of Howard Jacobson? Are there clefs to be found in your romans?

A: I probably find myself more interesting than I should. Call it solipsism if you must, but don’t call it vanity; I am not enamored of what I see when I look within. But there is nobody one knows better than oneself, and if one would be a student of “human nature,” the self is the best place to start. You’re in trouble, though, I accept, if that’s all the human nature you allow yourself to encounter.

Guy Ableman isn’t me. He’s reduced to writing sentimental pap, and so far, I’ve been able to resist that. And I’ve never thought about having an affair with the mother of my wife. But I have burdened him with all I know of the indignities of the writing profession, while denying him—because Zoo Time doesn’t pretend to be a balanced novel—its privileges and satisfactions. He is worst-case writer working in worst-case situation, i.e., the dying of the word.

Worst-case or not, I concur with many of his prognostications. This is not a novel about the death of the novel. I happen to think the form is in good shape. But who in the future will care or know how to read it? Who will have the time? Who will have the education? Who, in an age of ideology, attitude and blunt statement, will be able to get a joke, attend to tone or remember what a work of the imagination is?

Sounds gloomy, but it’s exhilarating to touch bottom, and only comedy can do it.

–By Gregory McNamee

p hoto by JE N N Y JAC OB S ON

A: “How do you feel about being described as the English Philip Roth?” I was once asked. “Flattered,” I said, “but I am more accurately the Jewish Jane Austen.” A spontaneous, reactive quip, designed to release me back into English literature—for I am more English than anything else—though I guess the “Jewish” didn’t exactly help drive that home.

You’re right about manor houses, but if you hear Austen-ian sense (and sensibility) in my periods, I’m happy, sentences being more important to me than setting or story. Jane Austen’s description of the novel in Northanger Abbey as a work in which “the greatest powers of the mind are displayed…the most thorough knowledge of human nature…the liveliest effusions of wit and humour” is one to which I enthusiastically subscribe. She is at her most serious when funny, and never light. May that be said of me.

a specifically Jewish writer? Perhaps better put, if Sholem Aleichem (or Philip Roth, for that matter) is at one end of the fulcrum, Isaac Babel in the middle, and Franz Kafka at the other end, where does your work fit into the great tradition of Jewish literature?

in 1906, just that once stepping back into real time by way of his music, which had thrived in the outside world while he himself was wasting away,” he writes. “It was as if, for a few minutes, without being remotely aware of it, much less imagining the possibility in such grand terms, he had been allowed to participate in his own immortality.”

Red hot and cool. (Agent: Anne Sibbald)

NOSE

Conaway, James Dunne/St. Martin’s (336 pp.) $24.99 | Mar. 12, 2013 978-1-250-00684-4 Conaway (Vanishing America, 2008, etc.) pens a lighthearted novel centering on oenophiles cavorting in a lush, grapegrowing California valley.

Conaway’s catalyst for his winecountry appreciation is an unlabeled bottle of Cabernet. The bottle ends up on the sampling table of Clyde Craven-Jones, known to wine lovers as CJ, head of the mega-influential Craven-Jones on Wine. CJ is a British expat and something of a corpulent, self-absorbed snob. His wife is the younger, winsome Claire Craven-Jones, who escaped Arkansas trailer-living by marrying the wine expert. It’s Claire to whom Clyde has assigned the task of determining the origin of the unlabeled bottle—“Big nose, briary, just enough forward fruit.

Fine tannins”—the first California Cab he believes worthy of 20 points, a rating never before awarded by Craven-Jones on Wine.

To trace the bottle’s origins, Claire hires Les, farm boy turned reporter, out of work and unable to settle his bar tab, and so he’s pretending to be an investigator, thanks to recommendations from ponytailed Ben, owner of the Glass Act, a decrepit bar stocked with expensive, exotic wines. There’s Sara Hutt Beale, daughter of Jerome, a less-than-scrupulous developer now deep in debt after turning a valley vineyard into Hutt Family Estates, a modern high-end wine factory. Sara’s own land adjoins that of melancholy Cotton Harrell, a river ecologist turned philosopher turned vintner, mourning the death of his lover. Like blending Merlot-Malbec grapes for the perfect Bordeaux, Conaway uses this cast, and an assortment of quirky supporting players, to weave multiple narratives into a cozy, no-murder and not-quite mystery, all set in motion after CJ accidentally dies when he becomes stuck in a giant metal tank of wine. Les helps the conservative Claire reenergize Craven-Jones on Wine—and her love life—while simultaneously using an anonymous blog to decant murky wine-country secrets, the most damaging of which is Jerome’s machinations to turn part of the Hutt Family Estates vineyard into a forest of McMansions.

The cheerful complexity of Conaway’s novel rivals the richest, most nose-worthy, palate-pleasing Cabernet.

NANO

Cook, Robin Putnam (448 pp.) $26.95 | Dec. 4, 2012 978-0-399-16082-0 A medical/scientific thriller from Cook (Vital Signs, 1991, etc.).

Nanotechnology operates at the onebillionth of a meter level, and at such a scale, the tiniest details matter. In things medical, nanobots can swarm inside your body and fix all sorts of things—but then, as anyone who recalls the old Raquel Welch vehicle Fantastic Voyage will immediately twig, there are dangers attendant. Enter sexy Pia Grazdani, who last turned up in Cook’s Death Benefit (2011) and who is now taking her medical education in new directions as a researcher at Nano LLC, a think-tank-ish lab out west. There are sequelae attendant from that last book, too, not least of them a classmate with a nasty head wound, which, given that antibiotics and

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“multiple surgical debridements” haven’t done much good, has prompted Pia to seek teeny, tiny cures. Her new boss is both dreamy and creepy, and he’s nothing but one big wolf whistle whenever he’s around her. But that’s not so often, since he’s always jetting off somewhere or another to cut deals with sometimes shadowy figures—and by the end of the story, Cook has involved Mafiosi from Eastern Europe, Chinese Olympic officials, and various and sundry industrial espionage types. Can Pia discover what she needs to without stumbling into some trade secret and getting herself killed in the bargain? Will she wind up “in a drugged state” in some petro-tycoon’s harem? Will Zachary Berman ever shake his hangover and become the good guy we know he can be?

A by-the-numbers thriller with no surprises but with the usual satisfactions.

THIS IS THE WAY

Corbett, Gavin Faber & Faber/Farrar, Straus and Giroux (240 pp.) $26.00 | Mar. 5, 2013 978-0-86547-891-6 Corbett’s latest (Innocence, 2004) examines one side of modern, workingclass Ireland but with mixed results.

Seldom does a novel come along where a reader of average intelligence finishes the last page and asks, “What did I just read?” This is the way Corbett’s second novel comes across. Narrator Anthony Sonaghan is the product of two feuding families, the Gillaroos and the Sonaghans. Anthony is a peaceable young man who makes his way through Dublin, on the run from Gillaroos, who want him killed. People are going from door to door, hunting Anthony apparently because of his family ties, although “I says to myself I am part of no breed...I didn’t want to be killed, not by the Gillaroos not by no man for nothing.”

So he wants to keep his head down, to survive. Meanwhile, he must watch over his colorful uncle Arthur, whose thumb has been severed and replaced by his big toe. Beyond that, the plot is muddy. Who specifically is after him or Arthur? Is there any motivation for trouble beyond a Hatfield vs. McCoy-style family feud? Anthony narrates his story in a local dialect, writing the way he speaks, lending a strong and presumably authentic flavor. Yet, the same feature often makes it hard to follow—the nonstandard English usually works well for the story, but the punctuation poses a problem. Corbett is stingy with commas that might help make the narrative make sense. Also, the incessant “I says” dialogue tic rapidly goes from engaging to annoying. Those reservations aside, the novel is strong on atmosphere and detail. The reader certainly gets the feeling of a young man in trouble in the middle of Dublin.

Read this book for its quirky style and flavor. Though probably not for everyone, readers are likely to remember it.

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SEMPER FIDELIS A Novel of the Roman Empire Downie, Ruth Bloomsbury (352 pp.) $26.00 | Jan. 8, 2013 978-1-60819-709-5

The subtitle of this novel is important—“A Novel of the Roman Empire”— lest we think it’s about the Marine Corps.

Downie’s narrative unfolds in a remote outpost of the empire, along the northern border of England (or more accurately, Britannia). Although the 20th Legion is stationed along the frontier, untoward things have been happening—like the deaths of recent recruits to the Roman army, deaths that might be suicides except they’re occurring with alarming frequency. Legionnaire Gaius Petreius Ruso, a medical doctor, starts to investigate why these deaths have come about, and he uncovers some rather sordid imperial activity. Geminus, one of the Roman centurions, has been promoting fights to the death among Roman soldiers, for example, and having the legionnaires bet on the outcomes.

Ruso’s wife, Tilla, a native of Britannia and hence somewhat suspect to the other Roman soldiers, is also wondering why this has been happening and wants to help her husband’s investigation.

Tension ratchets up when two things happen: Geminus is found murdered and Hadrian, the emperor, is coming to inspect how the empire is faring along the periphery. Because of his curiosity about Geminus’ role in the deaths of the young soldiers, Ruso becomes a prime suspect in the murder, so he’s arrested on what seems a trumped-up charge. Hadrian visits this corner of Britannia since, after all, there’s a wall to build.

Downie injects a modern who-done-it twist into the imperial action.

PERCIVAL EVERETT BY VIRGIL RUSSELL

Everett, Percival Graywolf (256 pp.) $15.00 paperback | Feb. 5, 2013 978-1-55597-634-7

Over the course of a prolific career, Everett (Assumption, 2011, etc.) has conditioned readers to expect the unexpected, but this novel is not only his most challenging to date, it sheds fresh light on his

previous work.

The title would seem to suggest that this is a novel about the author by a fictitious pseudonym, but the main significance of “Percival Everett” is the dedication to the author’s father, who died in 2010 at the age of 77. And there is an unnamed character in the novel of that age, whose son is an artist. Or a doctor. And who has different names over the course of the novel.

And who may in fact be writing the narrative about his father.

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“Gerard takes the reader on an emotionally complex yet actionpacked roller-coaster ride of romance and conflict….” from killing time

imagining what the other would write. Or, as the novel explains, “I’m an old man or his son writing an old man writing his son writing an old man.” Within that narrative labyrinth, the novel is much more than an academic exercise (the author is also a Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California), as it searches for the possibility of meaning in life as well as narrative and meditates on the process of aging and the inevitability of death. “This whole process of making a story, a story at all, well, it’s the edge of something, isn’t it?

Forth and back and back of forth, it’s a constant shuttle movement, ostensibly looking to comply with some logic, someone’s logic, my logic, law, but subverting it the entire time,” writes the author (or someone). It’s audacious for such literary playfulness to engage such serious themes as meaning and mortality, but the novel proceeds to try the reader’s patience with some extraordinarily long sentences and dense chapters.

An ambitious novel in which the formalistic chances taken by the author are often stimulating and occasionally exasperating.

yet action-packed roller-coaster ride of romance and conflict, capitalizing on both sexual and situational tension. Mike and Eva leap off the page as smart, resourceful yet damaged characters who find solace and sanctuary in each other and their shared journey toward truth and redemption.

Gerard hits the mark with this addition to her unique and successful brand of special-ops romantic suspense.

KILLING TIME

Gerard, Cindy Pocket (416 pp.) $7.99 paperback | Jan. 22, 2013 978-1-4516-0683-6 Eight years ago, Mike Brown was railroaded into taking the blame for a military operation in Afghanistan gone horribly awry, and he’s spent every day since then trying to forget. CIA attorney Eva Salinas suspects both foul play and Mike Brown; she’s determined to get some answers, though she may get them both killed trying.

When a mysterious file shows up on Eva Salinas’ desk with information that directly contradicts the official report of her husband’s death, it leads her to more and more questions and finally to Mike Brown, one of only three survivors of the fatal engagement and the one on whom the whole disaster was pinned. She doesn’t trust the guy, but she’s pretty sure his story is closer to the truth than the military version. All she wanted was a few answers, but what she gets are an attempt on her life and the realization that some very important people want her— and Mike Brown—dead. Thankfully, Brown has some valuable connections (tie-ins from Gerard’s Bodyguards and Black Ops Inc. series), since by unearthing dangerous secrets, Mike and Eva are sudden targets of a powerful villain who’d like to keep his past and present crimes deeply buried. Bringing the traitor to ground will take Eva and Mike from Lima, Peru, to Washington, D.C., to a remote paramilitary compound in Idaho, and it will force each of them to face some difficult truths and confront an unwelcome sizzling attraction. Romantic suspense favorite Gerard is known for her fast-paced, special-ops–based books, and this is the first in her new One-Eyed Jacks series.

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THE MINIATURE WIFE And Other Stories Gonzales, Manuel Riverhead (320 pp.) $26.95 | Jan. 10, 2013 978-1-59448-604-3

Imaginative stories elevated by creative renderings of tropes from genre fiction.

Debut author Gonzales, executive director of The Austin Bat Cave, a nonprofit writing and tutoring center, offers up a collection of 18 sparely constructed stories, rife with ingenuity and beholden to few rules. The opening story, “Pilot, Copilot, Writer,” finds a journalist attempting to make sense of the fact that his hijacked plane has been circling the Dallas skyline for two decades. The title story is about a scientist who, after shrinking his wife to nearly microscopic size, finds himself at war with her. This leads to laugh-out-loud lines like this one, about his wife’s paramour: “So what else could I do but cover him in honey and seed and then feed him to the bird?”

“One-Horned & Wild-Eyed” explores the rivalry that explodes between two friends—over the unicorn they’re keeping in a backyard shed. Still other stories infuse real emotion into nightmarish scenarios. “Life on Capra II” depicts a futuristic solider who pines for his lost love, even as he blasts away at swamp monsters and killer robots. In “All of Me,” we meet the zombie lurking inside an office drone, who wishes for nothing more than a date with a married co-worker and to devour the obnoxious guy down the hall. Others, such as “Wolf!” and “Escape from the Mall,” are more traditional takes on the monsters of our nightmares. But then Gonzales nails the reader with a roundhouse kick like “Farewell, Africa,” about a famous speech delivered in concert with the actual sinking of continents. The author also peppers his collection with five sinister obituaries that are quite fun, if superfluous to this inspired string of off-key hits.

Delightfully eerie tales from the dark side.

A COLD AND LONELY PLACE

Henry, Sara J. Crown (304 pp.) $24.00 | Feb. 5, 2013 978-0-307-71841-9

Henry’s second novel once again follows Troy Chance, a freelance writer and news reporter who lives in the Adirondacks and frequently stumbles upon stories that need telling and people who need saving.

Troy, who lives just outside Saranac Lake, is perfectly at home with the frozen winters and snowdrifts that characterize the area she has chosen to call home. Working for a tiny local newspaper, Troy writes about local sports and rents out rooms in her house to a succession of young people, particularly athletes training for the Olympics. One roommate, Jessamyn, is 2528

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a mysterious and seemingly rootless girl who spends her time with Tobin Winslow, a young Princeton dropout who comes from a wealthy family. When Tobin disappears and is later found frozen in a block of ice carved from the lake, Troy and Jessamyn decide to find out who the real Tobin was and determine what happened to him: Did he accidentally wander onto the lake, was he murdered, was it a suicide? To add to the mystery, Tobin’s truck has disappeared, but he left his cabin with all of his belongings intact. When Tobin’s sister, Jessica, who goes by the nickname of “Win,” shows up, she and Troy start trying to piece together Tobin’s last days, talking to those who knew him well and those who only thought they knew him. Henry, a former newspaper staffer, nicely sets the sense of place and creates some interesting, although fancifully named characters, drawing in the Canadian cast from her first novel and adding the residents of Saranac Lake to the mix. However, rather than weaving an intricate and interesting story, the plot just seems to meander around, yanking open random literary drawers and peering inside, like an unplanned burglary instead of a suspenseful, well-thought-out, cohesive tale. There’s very little that’s thrilling in this tepid, but nicely written, story of a young man haunted by the events of his past and his tragic death.

The unanticipated ending will mesmerize some readers, while others will find themselves annoyed by the anticlimactic conclusion. (Agent: Barney Karpfinger)

SOMEBODY TO LOVE

Higgins, Kristan Harlequin (432 pp.) $7.99 paperback | Apr. 24, 2012 978-0-3737-7658-0 When heiress Parker Welles learns she’s lost everything due to her father’s insider trading scheme, she hopes renovating a cabin in Maine will be a partial answer to her financial woes; the last thing she wants or needs is daddy’s attorney and right-hand man, James, helping her salvage her inheritance—or her heart.

Parker Welles has known nothing but wealth, privilege and success, so when the bottom drops out of her world in one fell swoop, she’s unprepared for the reality of being a broke and homeless single mom. It wouldn’t bother her quite so much if she didn’t have a young son to take care of, but she does, and so wallowing in self-pity or standing still like a deer in headlights simply aren’t options. Packing her son off for a summer vacation in California with his father and stepmother (Ethan and Lucy from The Next Best Thing, 2010), Parker heads to Maine in hopes of selling her last remaining possession, a small house in Gideon’s Cove (location of Catch of the Day, 2007), which turns out to be a falling-down shack. But life is what happens when you’re making other plans, and sometimes a curve in the road— even one that threatens to throw you off a cliff—turns out to be just what you need to understand who you really are and what can make you happy. Parker will learn things she never expected |

“Hobbs has mastered the essentials of a contemporary thriller: a noirlike tone, no-nonsense prose and a hero with just enough personality….” from ghostman

to want or need to know. Things like how to clean mold out of cabins in Maine and how beautiful the sky can be when you’re sitting on a dock next to the water. She’ll also learn that people aren’t always what they seem and that James Cahill, the man she loves to hate, has a few secrets of his own. Maybe, for Parker, losing everything is the only way to truly have it all. Great writing, well-drawn, realistic and likable characters, and a plot that keeps the audience engaged and rooting for James and Parker despite their missteps, make this an entertaining, romantic read. Higgins fans will love revisiting familiar favorites in secondary characters.

Romance star Higgins pens a near pitch-perfect blend of comedy and touching emotion with this delightful winner.

GHOSTMAN

Hobbs, Roger Knopf (288 pp.) $24.95 | Feb. 5, 2013 978-0-307-95996-6

DR. BRINKLEY’S TOWER

Hough, Robert Steerforth (424 pp.) $16.99 paperback | Jan. 2, 2013 978-1-58642-203-5

Hough fictionalizes the real-life exploits of charlatan Brinkley, known both for his radio broadcasts from Mexico (across the U.S. border) and for his goat-gland implantation procedure to cure male impotence.

It would be hard to make this stuff up, and fortunately Hough doesn’t have to since Brinkley is a larger-than-life character, oozing the American entrepreneurial spirit in a way that is simultaneously entertaining and disgusting. Ironically, he’s somewhat at the periphery of this novel, for Hough centers his work in the sleepy Mexican town of Corazón de la Fuente, where we meet the sweet and hapless Francisco Ramirez. He’s besotted with love for Violeta Cruz, a village coquette, though Brinkley eventually

An ice-in-his-veins fixer trawls Atlantic City for a missing bundle of cash in this watertight debut thriller.

Jack Delton, the hero of this novel— and, presumably, more to come—is a “ghostman,” an expert at disappearing and helping others disappear. He’s a free agent with a full armory of skills that help him kill a man, cross borders, take on entirely new personalities and be smugly unimpressed with criminal overlords. But his botch of a big-money bank heist in Kuala Lumpur five years ago means he owes a favor to one of those honchos, Marcus, who’s looking for a bag of cash that disappeared with a gunman when a casino robbery went sour.

The clock’s ticking: The bundle is a “federal payload” containing a packet of indelible ink set to explode in 48 hours. Jack is a superb sleuth and an entertaining explainer of the variety of ways one can torment or kill somebody (a jar of nutmeg can be terrifyingly deadly, it turns out), and Hobbs ensures he’s in a heap of trouble fast: Marcus is watching closely, and Jack is also in the cross hairs of an FBI agent and a rival criminal, the Wolf, who’s guarded by Aryan Brotherhood thugs. Straight out of the gate, Hobbs has mastered the essentials of a contemporary thriller: a noirlike tone, no-nonsense prose and a hero with just enough personality to ensure he doesn’t come off as an amoral death machine. Jack loves Ovid, hates heroin and cripples his pursuers—but not so badly that they won’t have a chance to come back in a future installment. The federal payload deadline gives the plot its essential urgency, but Hobbs is even better in the Kuala Lumpur interludes—heart-stopping scenes that illustrate how small mistakes can turn catastrophic.

A smart entry into the modern thriller pantheon, at once slick and gritty. (Author tour to Los Angeles, New York, Portland, San Francisco and Seattle)

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seduces her away from Francisco by giving her a job at his radio station. He claims to see in her the makings of a seer, so he sets her up with her own radio show, where she tries to help callers with their personal problems. Along the way we meet a variety of small-town characters, like cantina owner Carlos Hernandez, who develops a problem with impotence; Madame Félix, owner of the local bordello, “The House of Gentlemanly Pleasures”; and Miguel Orozco, the mayor of Corazón de la Fuente, who senses Brinkley chipping away at his political power. Hough manages to take all of these characters beyond stereotypes and invest them with humanity and humor. Eventually, Brinkley impregnates Violeta and then takes it on the lam back to North Carolina, leaving her both seduced and abandoned.

Hough slyly presents a cast of characters largely taken in by their own folly and gullibility.

PRINCE OF THE WORLD

Howard, Christopher Seven Stories (240 pp.) $16.95 paperback | Jan. 8, 2013 978-1-60980-438-1

Howard (Tea of Ulaanbaatar, 2011) returns with a collection of seven short stories.

Howard’s imaginative and mortalityobsessed collection opens with “Darkstar,” a pre-apocalyptic tale set in dank, dystopian Dublin. Mankind awaits a star’s Earth-destroying gamma-ray burst. In lushly descriptive writing—“The web was backlit by the sunset and beads of moisture glistened along its quivering, intricate symmetry”—a young man called Sailor scrounges, nearly starves, becomes half-blind and finds love, solace and understanding only from Liz, a leg-brace–wearing girl whose appliance is surely symbolic of something twisted.

“Intelligent People Speaking Reasonably” and “How to Make Millions in the Oil Market” separately explore angst, loss and PTSD. In the first, Chavez and Berryman, wounded Iraqi War veterans awaiting discharge, contemplate their captain’s death.

In the second, a contract security guard survives a firefight in Iraq, the culmination of which haunts him past divorce and into the arms of a young college student. “Space Is Kindness” follows a jaded reporter as he visits the plane crash site where a state governor has died. His rain-soaked journey becomes a trip through cynicism and ennui shadowed against his companion’s nihilism. “Son of Man,” fourth in the collection, finds taciturn Vietnam veteran Buzz working as a mechanic for the murderous Manson family. Buzz is a narc, a missive from a phantasmagoric government agency that realizes Charles Manson is the unintended spawn of an experiment gone rogue. The collection concludes with “Prince of the World,” a McCarthy-Blood-Meridian-brutal American frontier tale. In 1818, Labelle, half-breed “manchild” of “a scrubber of floors and a beggar and pickpocket and other things,” treks north from New Orleans after his mother’s death. He encounters mayhem, murder, lynchings at the hands of city mobs, trappers, rogue Shawnees, boatmen and 2530

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river pirates before he’s finally caught up in a merciless, barbarous tribal war—“leaking red waistcoats…limbs mangled in impossible poses.”

Literary stories exploring the dark, cruel borders of realism.

BATTLE OF KINGS

Hume, M.K. Atria (480 pp.) $16.00 paperback | $9.99 e-book Jan. 1, 2013 978-1-4767-1512-4 978-1-4767-1513-1 e-book Series: The Merlin Prophecy Along an isolated shoreline, a brutal rape is committed. The rape, which results in pregnancy, steals the girl’s sanity and unleashes a chain of events that will topple thrones.

Branwyn, granddaughter of Melvig ap Melwy, king of the Deceangli tribe, rescues a man from the sea, and dreaming that he is a gift for her, she secretly tends to his wounds. But the eerily beautiful man violently turns on her. Claiming that she was raped by a demon, Branwyn gives birth to her son but immediately rejects him. Her mother, Olwyn, priestess to the goddess Ceridwen, raises the boy as her own, dedicating him to, and naming him for, the sun god: Myrddion. So, Myrddion (Merlin) begins his life, bullied for being a Demon’s Seed yet destined for greatness. Myrddion is apprenticed to Annwynn, a healer, and he quickly shows his skill. Yet the greed of others will push Myrddion into a pawn’s plight. Far away, the brutal High King of the northern Britons of Cymru, Vortigern, has been advised by his two sorcerers that only the blood of a Demon’s Seed can hold together the stones of his great tower at Dinas Emrys. Myrddion is seized and brought to the king by Saxon mercenaries. On his journey, he uses his skill as a healer to befriend the mercenaries, establishing a bond that will one day both save and brutalize lives. Navigating a world of battling tribes—Picts, Celts, Saxons and Romans—Myrddion encounters tyrants, rebels, healers and quacks. Hume (Prophesy: Death of an Empire, 2012, etc.) brings the bloody, violent, conniving world vividly to life.

Merlin’s story, in this first of The Merlin Prophesy trilogy (and previously published outside the United States as Prophesy: Clash of Kings), will appeal to those who thrill to Game of Thrones and other tales of intersecting, ever-warring, noble lineages.

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“A standout addition to the crowded archive of Austen homages.” from the missing manuscript of jane austen

THE THIRD BULLET

Hunter, Stephen Simon & Schuster (416 pp.) $26.99 | Jan. 8, 2013 978-1-4516-4020-5 Bob Lee Swagger comes out of retirement to solve the murder of John F. Kennedy.

Lots of people are killed in hit-andrun accidents, but Jean Marquez isn’t so sure that her husband was one of them.

In the weeks before his untimely death, James Aptapton, an alcoholic writer and gun fanatic whose hero, Billy Don Trueheart, will surely ring a bell for fans of Hunter (Soft Target, 2011, etc.), had been bitten by the JFK conspiracy bug, and his widow has come to Idaho to ask Swagger what he thinks. He thinks he’ll pass until she drops one last detail: The ancient raincoat found in an elevator mechanism compartment in the Dal-Tex Building, just yards from the Texas Book Depository, showed signs of being run over by a bicycle. Hunter is at his best in unmasking problems with the evidence against Lee Harvey Oswald as the lone gunman—why did the third bullet he allegedly fired at the president explode without leaving any recognizable traces? Why did Oswald cock his rifle once more after the kill shot? Why, after shooting Officer J.D. Tippit three times, did he stop to administer an unnecessary coup de grace?—and proposing an alternative scenario that provides logical answers.

But neither the conspiracy he invents nor the people who act it out, from Russian gangsters and oligarchs to a rogue CIA officer determined to protect the nation from Kennedy’s policies and the tight little crew he gathers around him, are credible for a moment, and his decision to alternate sections of the chief conspirator’s tell-all journals with Swagger’s dogged pursuit of him produces less tension than bemusement. If it weren’t for the promised firepower at the showdown, all but the staunchest conspiracy buffs would give up midway.

An uneven thriller that’s unpersuasive as revisionist history but has its points as a hard-knuckled critique of conventional wisdom on the assassination and a portrait of the hapless Oswald. (Agent: Esther Newberg)

THE MISSING MANUSCRIPT OF JANE AUSTEN

James, Syrie Berkley (432 pp.) $15.00 paperback | Dec. 31, 2012 978-0-425-25336-6 An American librarian discovers a never-published Jane Austen manuscript.

Samantha has accompanied her cardiologist boyfriend, Stephen, to London.

While he attends a medical conference, she explores the environs of Oxford University, where she had

pursued a doctorate in English literature before abandoning her studies to care for her dying mother. While browsing in a musty bookstore, Sam comes across a volume of poetry which contains an unfinished letter that her practiced eye (she’s now a rare-books librarian) identifies as having been written by Jane Austen to her sister Cassandra. The letter mentions an early manuscript, circa 1802, which the then-unknown future authoress had mislaid at a Devonshire country house called Greenbriar. Anthony, a venture capitalist and the latest heir to Greenbriar, is happy to help locate the manuscript, particularly if its auction proceeds can save Greenbriar from creditors and fund his own startup. The manuscript, entitled The Stanhopes, is found in a secret compartment, and Sam and Anthony sit down to read the novel in its entirety, along with the reader. The Stanhopes is a very passable Jane Austen facsimile, with believable period locutions, much shorter sentences and more melodrama. (It would, after all, have been Jane’s first novel.) The plot details the fortunes of a village pastor, the Rev. Stanhope, whose wealthy patron casts him out of his parish, home and livelihood on a charge of gambling away church funds. When Stanhope is supplanted by the patron’s own nephew, the reverend’s clever, beautiful and musically gifted daughter, Rebecca, correctly smells a rat. Nevertheless, until his innocence can be proven, father and daughter must embark on an itinerary of exile during which they are reduced to relying on the at-times-dubious charity of close or distant relatives. This richly imagined Jane Austen “road novel” is such a page turner that the frame story, with its obvious but far less dramatic parallels to Rebecca and Stanhope’s plight, seems superfluous.

A standout addition to the crowded archive of Austen homages.

THE UNINVITED

Jensen, Liz Bloomsbury (320 pp.) $24.00 | Jan. 8, 2013 978-1-60819-992-1 The children have turned murderous and the adults become suicidal saboteurs in Jensen’s (The Rapture, 2009, etc.) compelling apocalyptic literary thriller.

U.K.-based Hesketh Lock may be both a babe magnet and an outstanding behavioral pattern expert, but he’s a man slightly at odds with the world or even a “robot made of meat,” according to his exgirlfriend, Kaitlin. Hesketh has Asperger’s syndrome, which makes him both brilliantly focused and obsessive (he collects paint charts and does mental origami), as well as lousy at relationships. When a pandemic of economic and social destruction breaks out—young children killing family members; adults wreaking economic sabotage and then killing themselves— Hesketh is invited to join the team trying to understand and stop the mayhem. But events become personal when Kaitlin’s son Freddy, whom Hesketh came to love and now misses badly, causes his mother’s death. Freddy has become one of the wild

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children, and Hesketh must step in to parent him, while also observing firsthand this frightening new tribe of feral, self-sufficient primitives. As social order breaks down, Hesketh tries to piece together what is happening and where it will lead—a future in which the children respond to the damage caused by their parents.

An intricate, intelligent, nightmarish eco-prophecy delivered in pacey fictional form.

THE FALL OF THE STONE CITY

Kadare, Ismail Grove (176 pp.) $24.00 | Feb. 5, 2013 978-0-8021-2068-7

An ironic, sober critique of the way totalitarianism rewrites history, from an Albanian author who’s long been the subject of Nobel whispers.

The novel opens in 1943, as the Nazis are poised to move into Albania, retaking the country from Italy and invading the city of Gjirokastër. The locals are understandably restless, and an advance party is fired upon. Hostages are taken, and bloodshed seems inevitable. But in an effort to calm tensions, a leading doctor, Gurameto, meets with the Nazi commanding officer, Col. Fritz von Schwabe, who also happens to be an old college classmate. The loose plot of Kadare’s novel (The Accident, 2010, etc.) turns on the question of what exactly happened at that meeting. Various theories circulate among the citizenry: the invasion was all about locating and handing over a prominent Jew, Gurameto was angling for a governorship, the Albanians were being punished for their own incursions into Greece, and so on. Through these stories, Kadare explores the way people project their own nationalistic anxieties and prejudices onto every situation; the lyrics of a local bard turn the events into a kind of folklore. Kadare’s omniscient view emphasizes political processes at the expense of characterization, but if we don’t get to know the doctor, the colonel or the residents very well, Kadare is still a potent storyteller, and as the story jumps to 1944 and then to 1953, he reveals the grim consequences of dictatorships on identity. The tail end of the novel focuses on Stalinist interrogators’ efforts to bully and torture the truth about the meeting out of Gurameto, and his refusals don’t symbolize heroism so much as resignation—a realization that the facts will never be clear in the face of antidemocratic thuggery.

A harsh but artful study of power, truth and personal integrity. (Agent: Andrew Wylie)

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BACK TO YOU

Kaye, Robin Signet Eclipse/NAL (384 pp.) $7.99 paperback | Dec. 31, 2012 978-0-451-41355-0 Storm Decker returns to Red Hook, Brooklyn, to care for the man who raised him like a son and face the woman he loved with all his heart; can they overcome the oceans that separate them and the walls they’ve built to protect themselves, or is it even a good idea to try?

When Storm gets word that Pete, the man who took him in as a child, is sick and needs help running his tavern, he takes the first flight out from New Zealand, sneaking into the house in the middle of the night—only to be met by Breanna Collins and a smack to the head with a frying pan. Not a revenge smack, but a survival one—Bree thinks he’s a burglar. And not that he doesn’t deserve a revenge smack, since he abandoned her midkiss-that-was-definitely-leading-to-something-else 11 years ago and never once looked back. Bree wouldn’t mind if she never saw Storm again, but she needs his help with Pete and Nicki, the 10-year-old girl Pete’s taken in, so she’ll put up with him.

For now. And she’ll do everything in her power to deny the sizzling attraction they both feel and the sense of unfinished business that lingers between them. After all, he’s made it clear he’s headed back to his life and his business halfway across the globe and that the quicker he gets out of Red Hook the happier he’ll be. But the neighborhood has changed, and the woman who holds it all together with fierce love and loyalty is more compelling than ever. Storm left her once for her own good. He’s not sure he can do it again. And the more time he spends in Red Hook with Bree, the less sure he is he even wants to.

Fluid storytelling, convincing characters and an arc that is both passionate and poignant make for an emotionally gratifying contemporary romance.

THE COMFORT OF LIES

Meyers, Randy Susan Atria (336 pp.) $25.00 | Feb. 12, 2013 978-1-4516-7301-2

Meyers follows up her successful debut novel with this tale of three women and the little girl who ties them all together.

Tia’s married lover, Nathan, dumps her after she reveals that she is pregnant with his child. A happily married college professor who lives in the suburbs, Nathan wants nothing to do with her or the child she carries and urges her to have an abortion. Instead, Tia has a little girl and gives it to an upscale couple, Peter and Caroline, who can’t have children of their own. Every year, Caroline sends photos and a brief update on the child’s progress, but this |

year when Savannah turns 5, Tia decides to contact Nathan.

She sends him a letter with the photos in it, which Nathan’s wife, Juliette, intercepts. Although Nathan confessed the affair, Juliette, who is mother to Nathan’s two sons, didn’t know about the baby. Meyers tells the story of Nathan and Tia’s love child and the three women who cross paths in their quest to become more involved in her life. The narrative also includes chapters told from Nathan’s point of view. The stories of the lovelorn Tia, who spends her days working with elderly people who have lost hope, Juliette, the cosmetics mogul, and Caroline, the doctor who is desperately unsuited to be a mother, are chronicled with warmth and depth. Although the reader may find some of the choices made by the characters hard to understand, this is still a believable tale, and the characters crackle with both intelligence and wit.

Meyers’ women resonate as strong, complicated and conflicted, and the writing flows effortlessly in this sweet yet sassy novel about love, women and motherhood.

FIGHT SONG

Mohr, Joshua Soft Skull Press (272 pp.) $15.95 paperback | Feb. 12, 2013 978-1-59376-508-8 A midlife crisis takes a handful of surreal turns in Joshua Mohr’s (Damascas, 2011, etc.) latest novel.

Bob Coffen has two kids, a suburban home, an athlete wife whom he adores and a successful career building violent video games. But as his marriage begins to crumble, Bob’s life becomes unhinged in sometimes amusing, sometimes poignant ways. The story opens on a bad day for Bob: He’s been insulted by his boss and nearly run over by his neighbor, Schumann, a macho type who’s never gotten over his football-hero past.

Then, his wife, Jane, drags him to a marital seminar held by magician Bjorn the Bereft, whose conjuring tricks literally put Bob’s marriage on thin ice. When Jane throws him out of the house, Bob enlists Schumann as his coach and begins a quest to pull himself together. He first bonds with Tilda, a waitress at his favorite fast-food joint who has a profitable sideline doing phone sex through the takeout intercom. His other new friend is Ace, a janitor at his company who moonlights in a Kiss tribute band that sings everything in French, hence their name, French Kiss. While Bob designs a bestiality-themed game, Jane trains to set a world record for treading water. Mohr has a clever imagination, and this book’s elaborate jokes sometimes overdo the cleverness: Schumann, who speaks entirely in football-coach lingo, can be too much of a cartoon. But the story also hinges on some universal issues, namely, Bob’s struggles to rekindle his romance, recapture his creativity and regain control of his life.

To the book’s credit, Mohr never loses the story’s emotional heart. (Author events in San Francisco and Los Angeles)

THE WOMAN FROM PARIS

Montefiore, Santa Simon & Schuster (432 pp.) $25.00 | Feb. 5, 2013 978-1-4516-7668-6

David Frampton, heir to the family fortune and position, has guarded his heart for years. But then he spots beautiful Phaedra Chancellor. Could he actually find love at his own father’s funeral?

British novelist Montefiore (The Mermaid Garden, 2011, etc.) sets her latest romance in Hampshire, England. In their Jacobean mansion, Antoinette Frampton weeps over the sudden death (while extreme skiing in the Swiss Alps) of her beloved husband, George, the patriarch of the family. Her open display of grief arouses only contempt from her icily dignified mother-in-law, the Dowager Lady Frampton. Yet, the dignity of the day itself implodes with the stunning news that Phaedra has come all the way from Paris to deliver. With encouragement from the rather unctuous Julius Beecher, George’s lawyer, Phaedra announces that she is George’s illegitimate daughter from a liaison preceding his marriage to Antoinette. To the shock of avaricious daughter-inlaw Roberta, Phaedra further reveals that George has rewritten his will not only to include her, but also to present her with the fabulous family sapphires. Bombs dropped, the fallout brings each character’s weakness into relief—from Antoinette’s insecurities about George’s love to Lady Margaret’s fear of emotion to youngest son Tom’s tightly locked grief. Roberta remains suspicious, however, and begins to investigate Phaedra’s past. Yet, Phaedra becomes the catalyst to heal deep family rifts. Even snooty Roberta eventually melts under her kindness. Uneasily, Antoinette notices David and Phaedra growing ever more attracted to each other, despite their bloodlines’ frustrating any hope for love. All is not as it appears, however, and love can never be counted out of the equation. The book is filled with glamorous characters discreetly hiding their emotions and motivations. The mystery of Phaedra Chancellor winds up tame rather than sensual, predictable rather than shocking.

Often clichéd and sometimes simply leaden prose smothers this tale. (Agent: Sheila Crowley)

RATLINES

Neville, Stuart Soho Crime (368 pp.) $26.95 | Jan. 2, 2013 978-1-61695-204-4 In a divided country on the brink of the Cold War, the hunt for a Nazi killer is more complicated—and more dangerous—than it seems.

It’s 1963, and the world is heating up. President John F. Kennedy, already wary of Castro, is coming to Ireland for a state visit. The entire

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“[A]lthough the stories may be perceived as gruesome, the author paints each tale exquisitely.” from revenge

country is excited, not only because of Kennedy’s heritage, but because of the implied endorsement of the American leader in the country’s continuing conflicts with the British. Therefore, when an Austrian refugee is shot point-blank in a small, rural Irish guesthouse, Dublin wants it handled quickly and quietly.

The fact that the murderer left a threat for another former SS officer, one who has moved into Irish politics, cannot get out at all, and when intelligence officer Albert Ryan is brought in, he is warned that discretion may be more important than the law. Lt. Ryan is a good choice for the assignment since he’s an outsider, his own loyalties both convoluted and conflicted. The son of a small-town shopkeeper, Ryan had enlisted in the British army as a teen, an act that continues to cause his family trouble. But even though his homeland remains at least partially ambivalent toward the Germans—as well as the victorious British—he knows how to put his head down and solve a murder. As his dogged, thorough police work brings him into an underworld where war criminals and politicians mingle, however, he will find that nothing is that simple. As he did in Ghosts of Belfast (2009) and its sequel, Collusion (2010), Neville shows how the past is linked to the present, particularly in the brooding Ireland of his noir thrillers. In a setting of dampness and poverty, he creates a world where grudges may last for generations and blood feuds full of the kind of pervasive detail that makes this grim world real persist.

Another moody winner mixes Nazis into Neville’s usual Irish noir.

REVENGE

Ogawa, Yoko Picador (176 pp.) $14.00 paperback | Jan. 29, 2013 978-0-312-67446-5 Ogawa (Hotel Iris, 2010, etc.) crafts 11 interlocking short stories with eloquent prose that belies the nature of the tales she spins.

A mother walks into a bakery to buy two strawberry shortcakes for her son’s birthday, a child who’s been dead for 12 years. A girl asks a classmate to accompany her to a meeting with her father as her mother lies in a hospital bed dying of cancer. What appears to be a collection of sympathetically worded, yet familiar, short stories then veers into the unexpected. With dark calm and disquieting imagery, the author leads readers on a journey of the macabre in a progression of tales that resound long after the last page is turned. An aspiring writer discovers that her landlady, who grows carrots shaped like hands, is a murderer. A cabaret singer whose heart developed outside her body asks a bag maker to sew a special one to house the heart, making it less cumbersome to carry, but she then tells him she’s having a surgical procedure to have the heart placed in her chest. A beautician tours a museum that houses torture devices and imagines using tweezers to pluck out her boyfriend’s hair, strand by strand, as he watches in a mirror, bound and helpless. Ogawa’s writing is 2534

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simple and effective, and her technique for merging the tales demonstrates her mastery of the written word: A dead hamster tossed into a trash can in one story is glimpsed by a character in another; an uncle who invents a brace to lengthen the body becomes the caretaker of a museum, which then becomes the setting for other narratives. And although the stories may be perceived as gruesome, the author paints each tale exquisitely.

Well-written.

THE STORY OF MY PURITY

Pacifico, Francesco Farrar, Straus and Giroux (304 pp.) $26.00 | Mar. 5, 2013 978-0-374-27044-5 Whatever happened to sex? A married right-wing Catholic rediscovers chastity in this slow tease of a novel from the Italian author.

At some point after 9/11, a young Roman called Piero Rosini returned to the religion of his childhood. “[F]ear of the Apocalypse, together with an immense need of love, restored [him] to the flock of the eternal children of Jesus.” There is no elaboration of this moment, though it drives the novel. Piero didn’t just get right with Jesus, he championed sexual abstinence. As for his fiancee, Alice, “our engagement had been desexed, by mutual agreement.” When we first meet Piero in Rome, now married and pushing 30, it’s late 2005. He’s an editor at a right-wing Catholic publishing house marked by a “sophisticated antiSemitism” that will flower with its forthcoming book The Jewish Pope, a bizarre take on John Paul II. In a jarring transition, but with the support of his wife, Alice, who chooses to stay behind, Piero moves to Paris to work for a similarly reactionary publisher. Sampling the night life, he meets four “bobos” (bourgeois bohemians), young women who talk dirty, do drugs and sleep around. Despite himself, Piero is intrigued by them, especially

by Clelia, who’s Jewish, and her uncle Leo, who makes Piero his protégé, Judaizing him, calling him Rosenzweil. The Italian stays chaste, however, passing up many opportunities to make love to the more than willing Clelia, and what might have been the entertaining story of a prude undone by Parisian fleshpots is something less: a portrait of a passive, pampered individual unable to resolve his conflicts. Though Pacifico makes a show of using four-letter words, he won’t write about sex. When the long-suffering, barely characterized Alice visits Paris and makes love to her husband, the astonishing development is dismissed in a sentence. It’s no surprise that the closing section is a chaotic cop-out.

A rambling satire that fails to clearly identify its targets.

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THE TWO WEEK WAIT

Rayner, Sarah St. Martin’s Griffin (432 pp.) $14.99 paperback | Dec. 24, 2012 978-1-250-02148-9 Love doesn’t always follow the rules.

Should creating a child be any different?

Rayner (One Moment, One Morning, 2011, etc.) gently disentangles the lives of men and women (including the main characters from her previous novel) brought together by the desire to have a baby. All of these lives converge through the alternative parenting movement. Recovering from ovarian cancer, Cath realizes that she truly wants a child with her devoted husband. For his part, Rich had always dreamed of a family with Cath, a dream that had seemed to fade from view during her illness. But without ovaries, and rejecting adoption, they will need another generous woman to donate eggs. Once that hurdle is past, they’ll need to deal with Cath’s judgmental mother and sister-in-law, who wields alternative medical advice like a weapon. Lou, recovering from her own brush with a cancer scare, faces a different obstacle. Her partner, Sofia, has no interest in settling down. Furthermore, her mother—who seems stuck in the 1950s, devoutly ignoring her daughter’s lesbianism—and sister have never considered Lou mother material. Finding the courage to face family bullying proves more difficult than getting pregnant. Once connected through the network of alternative parenting sites, both Cath and Lou do become pregnant—Cath, through the generosity of Lou, who shares her eggs, and Lou, through the lucky arrival of Adam on the scene. A gay doctor who wishes to be a real dad, not just a sperm donor, Adam meets Lou through a mutual friend, and the two negotiate a truly alternative and kind plan for parenting their child. Despite filling her story with so much heartbreak and conflict, Rayner deftly avoids sounding clichéd.

Her characters ring true, their concerns are realistic and their emotions guileless.

Ripe for filming, this novel is both poignant and authentic.

THE LAST GIRLFRIEND ON EARTH And Other Love Stories

Rich, Simon Reagan Arthur/Little, Brown (224 pp.) $19.99 | Jan. 22, 2013 978-0-316-21939-6

A collection of short, tight stories about love and consequences.

The stories in the latest (Elliot Allagash, 2010, etc.) from Rich, whose writing credits include Saturday Night Live, follow the vagaries of love, and while the stories are smooth, the path is decidedly not. The 31 stories are divided into three sections: “Boy Meets Girl,” “Boy Gets Girl” and “Boy Loses Girl.” While most can be a little tart, Rich takes a sweeter | kirkus.com

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approach with some. The opener, “Unprotected,” follows the misadventures of a well-worn but still sealed condom. “Occupy Jen’s Street” follows the rise and fall of a very personal protest movement to get a girl back. “Scared Straight” parodies the 1970s documentary with equally dire warnings about relationships: “A random hookup, a couple of dates. The next thing I knew, I had a drawer for her clothes in my apartment. Then one day, I looked up and I was here. Trapped in a Park Slope brownstone for the rest of my goddamn life.” Like Rich’s second novel, What In God’s Name (2012), some stories wring the funny out of the plights of deities, while “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” colors the old novelty song in a darker shade. While some of the stories have the qualities of a comedy sketch—Alex Trebek gets to rib his ex-wife in one story, and an astronaut suggests a bawdy science experiment in another—those who enjoy the author’s fleeting, warmly acerbic sense of humor will find much to like here.

Now we know what happens to all those SNL sketches that Lorne Michaels shoots down. (3 line drawings)

SEA GLASS WINTER

Ross, JoAnn Signet Eclipse/NAL (400 pp.) $7.99 paperback | Dec. 31, 2012 978-0-451-23893-1 A fast-paced novel about romantic relationships, parent-child relationships and teacher-student relationships.

In addition to demonstrating an impressive grasp of the psychology of these relationships, the author spices up the various stories with interesting facts gleaned from an impressive knowledge of the glass-blowing art, culinary arts, physics and the game of basketball, as well as the business of finding and defusing bombs in Afghanistan. She appears to have firsthand experience, or perhaps has listened carefully to people who have had firsthand experience, with every kind of highly specialized activity her characters perform. The primary story involves the romance between Claire Templeton, an artist and single mother of a budding basketball star, and Dillon Slater, an ex-Marine who returned from Afghanistan, entered a program called Troops to Teachers, and began teaching high school physics and coaching basketball. Woven into this main story are the equally interesting and authentic subsidiary stories of the women Claire meets in the small Oregon town of Shelter Bay, where she moves with her son from Los Angeles in order to remove him from bad influences there. One woman has escaped an abusive husband with the help of an underground group dedicated to helping battered women. Another character runs the no-kill shelter for dogs where Claire eventually adopts a couple of canine companions, much to her son’s delight. The descriptions and dialogue seem absolutely real. The narrative voice has a humor and rhythm that is fun to read; the teenagers walk the walk and talk the talk of real teenagers, and the conversations among the adults are witty, kind and meaningful.

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“A consistently arresting, frequently stunning collection of eight stories.” from vampires in the lemon grove

A CHRISTMAS FOR KATIE

Dillon Slater, who possesses a high level of ethics and intelligence and a completely charming humor, is easy to fall in love with.

VAMPIRES IN THE LEMON GROVE Stories

Russell, Karen Knopf (272 pp.) $24.95 | Feb. 12, 2013 978-0-307-95723-8

A consistently arresting, frequently stunning collection of eight stories.

Though Russell enjoyed her breakthrough—both popular and critical— with her debut novel (Swamplandia!, 2011), she had earlier attracted notice with her short stories (St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, 2006). Here, she returns to that format with startling effect, reinforcing the uniqueness of her fiction, employing situations that are implausible, even outlandish, to illuminate the human condition. Or the vampire condition, as she does in the opening title story, where the ostensibly unthreatening narrator comes to term with immortality, love and loss, and his essential nature. Then there’s “The Seagull Army Descends on Strong Beach, 1979,” about a 14-year-old boy’s sexual initiation during a summer in which he is so acutely self-conscious that he barely notices that his town has been invaded by sea gulls, “gulls grouped so thickly that from a distance they looked like snowbanks.” Perhaps the most ingenious of this inspired lot is “The New Veterans,” with a comparatively realistic setup that finds soldiers who are returning from battle given massages to reduce stress. In one particular relationship, the elaborately tattooed back of a young veteran provides a narrative all its own, one transformed by the narrative process of the massage. The interplay has profound implications for both the masseuse and her initially reluctant patient; both discover that “healing hurts sometimes.” The two shortest stories are also the slightest, though both reflect the seemingly boundless imagination of the author. “The Barn at the End of Our Term” finds a seemingly random group of former presidents in denial (at both their loss of power and the fact that they have somehow become horses), and “Dougbert Shackleton’s Rules for Antarctic Tailgating” presents the “Food Chain Games” as the ultimate spectator sport. With the concluding “The Graveless Doll of Eric Mutis,” about a group of teenage bullies and an urban scarecrow, the fiction blurs all distinction between creative whimsy and moral imperative.

Even more impressive than Russell’s critically acclaimed novel. (Author tour to Boston, Florida, New York, Philadelphia, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C.)

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Shepard Gray, Shelley Avon Inspire/HarperCollins (128 pp.) $4.99 e-book | Nov. 20, 2012 978-0-06-224254-9 The story of a precocious 6-year-old, Katie, whose Christmas wish list is not for toys and gifts for herself, but rather for good things to happen to people she cares about.

She also wishes for a newer, fresher Nativity scene to replace the cracking, peeling plastic figures outside the town library since, as she explains to the adults who question her, the Nativity scene is very important. As the story unfolds, the sad librarian who once dated and loved Katie’s older brother, only to be rejected by him when he decided he must marry within his Amish faith, finally finds true love and is able to forgive the man who broke her heart. After a bit of a scare, the wife of another of Katie’s older brothers delivers a healthy, happy baby that the couple decides to name in honor of Katie. The dilapidated Nativity figures begin to disappear somewhat mysteriously, but in the end, the whole town comes together in a live reenactment of the important Nativity scene just as Katie imagined and hoped that they would. The author was a schoolteacher before she started to write best-selling fiction, which probably explains why the character of Katie, while unusually precocious, comes across as credible. The adult characters are also believable and likable.

This brief novel is appropriate for children (as long as they are as precocious as Katie) as well as young adults and older adults intrigued by the often surprising wisdom and insight of young children.

LAST KISS GOODNIGHT

Showalter, Gena Pocket (400 pp.) $7.99 paperback | Dec. 26, 2012 978-1-4516-7159-9 When otherworlder Solomon Judah wakes up as a main attraction in an evil circus, his first thought is to escape and kill everyone involved in running the place. That is, until he meets Vika, the owner’s daughter. She should be his enemy, but somehow every instinct tells him she’s his soul mate—and salvation.

An attack on a secret Black Ops unit renders agent Solo Judah incarcerated in a dark menagerie run by Jecis, an adherent to the black arts. Jecis has no regard for human or otherworldly life, and he rules his circus with a ruthless iron fist. As the primary caretaker for the interplanetary captives, Jecis’ daughter Vika wants nothing more than to release her charges safely and disappear herself, but the reach and savagery of her father’s power is insurmountable. When she tried once before, |

her father killed the escapees and beat her until she was deaf.

She’s not sure why she’s drawn to newcomer Solo, but the more she watches and interacts with him, the tighter their bond becomes—until Jecis decides to use it against them. For once, his brutishness misfires. He’s underestimated Solo’s strength and Vika’s fierceness and the overarching spiritual principle that good always conquers evil in the end. The launch of Otherworld Assassins, a new paranormal romance series from author Showalter, this book is a roller-coaster ride of a story, with plot twists aplenty and character arcs that draw you in with visceral force. The fervency of the romance is a little sudden, and the brutality can be hard to traverse, but Showalter is a strong storyteller and a convincing writer who uses conflict to great effect.

A slightly overhanded “good vs. evil” spiritual message—complete with biblical phrases introducing each chapter—might be a little off-putting to some, but ultimately, it doesn’t negatively impact the overall success of the book, and for readers with a similar mindset, it is an interesting fusion of paranormal concepts and metaphysical tenets.

A fast-paced, intense paranormal romance that offers original, dynamic characters, vivid, compelling worldbuilding and a powerful “love prevails” narrative.

A CONVENIENT BRIDE

Smith, Cheryl Ann Berkley Sensation (336 pp.) $7.99 paperback | Dec. 31, 2012 978-0-425-26065-4 Through a series of misunderstandings and miscalculations, headstrong Lady Brenna Harrington propositions, seduces and weds Lord Richard Ellerby; can they overcome emotional and physical pitfalls to find happiness?

When Brenna mistakes Ellerby for a highwayman, she proposes to pay him to court her in order to appease her father, who’s determined to marry her off to an unpalatable choice. Ellerby, shocked but intrigued, sends her away then writes to her father to tell him of Brenna’s dangerous overture. Meanwhile, Richard is hunting for his beloved sister, convinced she’s eloped with a known womanizer. Brenna follows him on his trek to Scotland, determined to convince Richard to enter into a marriage of convenience. When she finds him in an inn, they are both overcome by an electric attraction and wind up sleeping together. This sets in motion a series of actions and reactions that see the couple ambivalently married, with an obstacle course of people, events and misperceptions designed to keep them apart physically and emotionally.

Unfortunately, the plot zips from conflict to conflict without the emotionally satisfying exposition or textured dialogue that would allow the story to unfold. Also, the choices the two main characters make are occasionally so ridiculous that by the end of the book, we’re not convinced we care what happens to them.

(For instance, there is a female houseguest who continually disrespects Brenna and constantly throws herself at Richard,

and neither of them ever demands that the irritating woman leave. When Brenna expresses her anger and distress over the distasteful behavior, Richard is shocked, simply shocked, that his wife could ever feel threatened by the other woman.) Smith is a smooth writer, and the book has an engaging beginning with an appealing series concept. But there are too many plot elements, and the complicated story is further bogged down by poor pacing and characterization, awkward construction and a jerky narrative that drops details that should be emotionally processed throughout the book, but which only gracelessly resurface when it’s apparently time to revisit them for the sake of the next strained plot twist.

Disappointing execution of an intriguing Regency hook.

ENEMY OF MINE

Taylor, Brad Dutton (400 pp.) $26.95 | Jan. 15, 2013 978-0-525-95310-4

This is Taylor’s third Pike Logan thriller, and it’s a good one.

The United States government has secretly brokered a peace deal between Israel and Palestine, and terrorist forces plan to subvert it. Logan heads a clandestine Taskforce team that’s determined to identify and root out the threat while there is still time. Logan’s team must prevent an assassination in Qatar, facing down two adversaries. One is an Arab known as the Ghost, and the other is an American named Lucas Kane, who would murder his own mother for the right price. Logan knows him only too well, while Kane sees both men as killers at heart. Is Kane right, or does Logan have a moral core that sets him apart? He certainly gains the reader’s sympathy as he struggles to balance being a rule-bending badass with being a human who has emotions extending beyond rage.

In the past, Logan suffered a horrible personal loss that bears directly on his motivation, yet surprisingly, his climactic action hinges more on what happens to a colleague. The story moves along at a rapid clip, using short chapters and at least four points of view to grab and hold the reader’s attention. The terrorists are smart, capable enemies, very much an even match for Logan’s team.

Satisfies from start to finish. (Agent: John Talbot)

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“Few come into that dark corner of the world willingly, Thayil lets us know, and few ever leave.” from narcopolis

NARCOPOLIS

Thayil, Jeff Penguin Press (304 pp.) $25.95 | paperback $16.00 | Apr. 12, 2012 978-1-59420-330-5 978-0-14-312303-3 paperback A tightly packed saga, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, of drug-ruled lives in the back streets of Mumbai, which longtime resident (and former addict) Thayil insists on calling Bombay.

Do not call him Ishmael, though he is a castoff and exile.

Of the narrator of this descent into the subcontinental demimonde, we know little, at least at first: A disembodied voice says, “since I’m the one telling it and you don’t know who I am, let me say that we’ll get to the who of it but not right now...these are nighttime tales that vanish in sunlight, like vampire dust.”

Very well, then. The vampires in question are the denizens of opium dens and brothels in the megacity’s back alleys, along roads choked with feces and animal corpses, with the “poor and deranged.” The time is the 1970s, drifting into later decades, and the narrative spotlight soon falls on one such resident, Dimple, a girlish eunuch who, having grown up in a brothel, is now both a prostitute and a sort of moral center; more important, Dimple expertly packs the opium pipes that are consumed in Rashid’s den, sucked up by an avid clientele. As time goes on, the cast of characters enlarges: One of particular interest is a Chinese exile, Mr. Lee, who has had a dangerous falling out with a prominent leader back home but wants nothing more than to return there, whether alive or otherwise. As time goes on, too, pipes give way to needles, and the city changes its tenor as the drug diet changes, never for the good. Asks Dimple: “Tell me why Chemical is freely available when there are no tomatoes in the market.” The answer: “Because...the city belongs to the politicians and the crooks and some of the politicians are more crooked than the most crooked of the crooks.” Few come into that dark corner of the world willingly, Thayil lets us know, and few ever leave.

Lyrical, poignant and pensive; challenging for its abundant Indian-isms (“She told only one girak that she was leaving, a pocket maar who always smoked at her station.”) but also for its moral bleakness.

CHANCE OF A LIFETIME

Thomas, Jodi Berkley (336 pp.) $7.99 paperback | Dec. 31, 2012 978-0-425-25052-5

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true if they can shake off the past and embrace uncertain but promising futures.

Emily loves her library, and she’ll do everything she can to help it thrive and keep it safe from budget cuts. Starting a writing group is meant to help increase traffic, but it also opens the door to an old friendship and a life she’d thought lost forever.

When it becomes clear someone is trying to kill attorney Rick Matheson, it’s his own personal wake-up call. Being threatened brings out the best in him, and vowing to live a more purposeful life might be just what he needs to win the respect of, and a future with, U.S. Marshal Trace Adams. Young musician Beau Yates has his sights on Nashville, but as he watches small-town life flow by him, he realizes that every person has a story, and it doesn’t take a big city to offer drama and redemption. In her newest addition to the Harmony series, Thomas introduces us to romance and intrigue in the small Texas town, past and present. While the overall arc of the story makes sense and will satisfy many fans, more discerning readers might be annoyed by some of the details that don’t quite add up: like how such vicious attacks seem decidedly “big city” yet don’t seem to have a more potent impact on the small town; how they can happen in the middle of the day with no one noticing; the rather weak motivation for the ones that are ultimately explained; or the creaky “we’re just friends, s/he can’t really want me” motif that is extended far beyond any reasonable adult’s suspension of disbelief.

Thomas keeps the pace moving along in a decent story, and if romance readers and Thomas fans don’t ask too many questions, they won’t be disappointed.

THE CHILD’S CHILD

Vine, Barbara Scribner (320 pp.) $26.00 | Dec. 4, 2012 978-1-4516-9489-5

Vine’s 14th (The Birthday Present, 2009, etc.) is a novel within a novel—well, within a novella, anyway—in which both tales revolve around a straight woman’s unexpected relationship with a gay man.

Unexpectedly pregnant after a onenight stand with James Derain, her brother’s lover, Ph.D. student Grace Easton takes refuge from her troubles—her brother Andrew’s cool reception to the news, his and James’ involvement as witnesses to a brutal hate crime—by rereading The Child’s Child, a novel written by her architect friend Toby’s late father, Martin Greenwell. Although Martin had been the wellregarded author of 12 novels, The Child’s Child, written in 1951, lay unpublished for half a century, unpublishable for much of that time because of its frank (for then) account of homosexual passion. The passion in question is Bristol biology teacher John Goodwin’s selfless love for office clerk Bertie Webber, a love that dare not speak its name in 1929. Hopelessly besotted with Bertie, John vows to give him up in response to a crisis in his family: his 15-year-old sister Maud’s pregnancy by a friend’s |

forgettable brother. When their parents banish Maud from their home, John matches an ingenious solution to her troubles: He’ll take her to his new place in Dartcombe, introduce her as his wife and shield her from reprobation. Readers would sense the impending approach of unwanted complications even if Vine weren’t really Ruth Rendell (The St. Zita Society, 2012, etc.). Suffice it to say that Bertie proves miserably unworthy of John’s devotion; the pressures of Maud’s uneventful life have a profound impact on her character; and the brief return to the present-day story of Grace Easton provides just the right sense of balance and conclusion. The overwhelming sadness of the events in both stories is leavened by the matter-of-fact firmness with which Vine measures them out.

Not even fans who expect more felonies will be able to put this one down.

THE LOVE SONG OF JONNY VALENTINE

Wayne, Teddy Free Press (304 pp.) $24.99 | Feb. 5, 2013 978-1-4767-0585-9

A provocative and bittersweet illumination of celebrity from the perspective of an 11-year-old pop sensation.

In his second novel (Kapitoil, 2010), Wayne once again sees American culture through the eyes of an exceptional outsider—in this case, a prepubescent pop star managed by his mother and exploited by everyone involved with his life and career. As the novel’s narrator, Jonny is a complex character who is both wise beyond his years (in the areas of marketing, merchandising and branding) and more naïve in relating to others his age and the world beyond show business. He seems most at home either onstage or in the video game that becomes a metaphor for his life. And if the novel has a weakness, it’s that Wayne seems a little too fond of the telegraphed punch of such symbolism, as when Jonny must write a paper for his tutor about slavery and discovers (surprise!) that much of what he has learned applies to him.

Yet, Jonny is such an engaging, sympathetic character that his voice carries the novel, from what he does know (“that was the whole point of becoming a rock star for a lot of guys. I didn’t know that when I started out, but once you see seriously ugly bassists backstage with models, you figure it out”) to what he doesn’t (crucial details about his mother, father, family and career). Rather than turning Jonny into a caricature or a figure of scorn the way some of his critics do (“a cult of personality swirling around a human being who...may not be in possession of...an actual personality”), the novel invites the reader inside Jonny’s fishbowl, showing what it takes to gain and sustain what he has and how easily he could lose it. Best of all is his relationship with an artist who made it through this arduous rite of passage, the Timberlake to Jonny’s Bieber, who teaches him that “The people with real power are always behind the scenes. Talent gets chewed up and used. Better to be the one chewing.”

A very funny novel when it isn’t so sad, and vice versa.

(Author appearances in Boston, Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco)

GRAY

Wentz, Pete with Montgomery, James MTV/Pocket (240 pp.) $24.00 | Jan. 8, 2013 978-1-4165-6782-0 A young rock star marinates himself in psychotropic drugs, ruminates on life on the road and pines away for his girl.

If this debut novel by former Fall Out Boy bassist and tabloid-fodder Wentz (The Boy with the Thorn in his Side, 2004), with MTV News’ James Montgomery, is as autobiographical as it’s made out to be, this young man has some issues to work out. Fortunately, the fictionalized rock star who narrates this dreamy version of horrible events has a distinctive voice, even if he’s going nowhere fast. The unnamed guitarist is the shooting star of a fast-rising rock band, surrounded by groupies, managers and guys with names like “the Disaster.” Drugged out and emotionally vacant, he spends his lonely hours in indistinguishable hotel rooms longing for the equally unnamed Her. “I owe it all to Her. Her. She made me, she put me here. We fought about that. We fought about a lot of things, but I still miss Her. She is Chicago to me, the humid summers and the Lake-Effect winters. When I’m homesick, it’s for Her.” And that’s pretty much it for the next 200-plus pages of stream-of-consciousness unraveling, punctuated by bar fights, suicide attempts, stints in rehab and uncomfortable confessions: “I’m nothing more than a frightened child, a scared little boy with tough-guy tattoos and a hollow snarl, and that no matter how much I like to think of myself as a die-hard romantic, I’d never have the guts to actually die for love.” Even though nothing really happens, the prose is quite sharp, and the despair of the main character is evocatively portrayed. It all makes for an interesting inside look at the circus, especially for those who think that knowing a little magazine gossip means you know someone.

Accomplished, though the mean-spirited denouement may put off some readers, and the lead’s lack of transformation gives it a dark undercurrent.

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WASH

Wrinkle, Margaret Atlantic Monthly (400 pp.) $25.00 | Feb. 5, 2013 978-0-8021-2066-3 Wrinkle bears witness to the inhumanity of slavery in this chronicle of a Southern family in the early 19th century.

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comes out of that experience in debt and unwilling to resume his previous life, so after the war, he begins to acquire several slaves. Although he’d just been looking for males, one female, Mena, catches his eye, and he purchases her as well. She bears a son, Wash (or Washington), who grows up under Richardson’s watchful eye. It becomes a shocking but natural progression for Richardson to analogize breeding farm animals to breeding slaves, for to Richardson both are simply valuable commodities.

Because the worth of a female slave is enhanced when she has children, Wash becomes a “stud” slave. Amid this unimaginable dehumanization, Wash tries to hold on to the West African legacy he’s inherited from his mother, and he takes up with Pallas, a healer who’s also holding on to her African heritage. Wrinkle moves us effortlessly through narratives recounted by Pallas, Wash and Richardson, so we get three perspectives on the events. She also recounts much of the narrative through a more distancing third-person point of view, a perspective that helps put all three major characters in the same frame. It’s a measure of the evil of the system of slavery that Richardson is accounted a “good” owner. As he reflects, “Even a fool knows that whipping is best avoided. Makes them harder to sell. But if it needs to be done, I’ll do it myself.” His stubbornness is matched by that of Wash himself, who manages to maintain and assert his dignity in an environment that systematically tries to deprive him of it.

A moving and heart-rending novel.

m ys t e r y BEST PLACE TO DIE

Atkins, Charles Severn House (224 pp.) $28.95 | Jan. 1, 2013 978-0-7278-8208-0

A pair of lesbian lovers must uncover the dark secrets of a picture-perfect village to solve a murder.

Lillian Campbell, widow of a respected local physician, and Ada Strauss, another widow who has relocated from New York City, are slowly exploring a budding relationship when disaster strikes. Both own condos in a beautiful Connecticut retirement community. Ada’s mother, Rose, has recently and reluctantly moved to nearby Nillewaug Village, a well-regarded assisted living complex. Her reservations are tragically justified when a fire breaks out at Nillewaug. Parttime journalist Lil records the horrifying scene as they search for Rose. They find her helping Alice, an Alzheimer’s patient whose grandson is one of the nurses on duty, and also stumble upon the body of administrative director Delia Preston, who 2540

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appears to have jumped from the roof. Once her unfortunate accident is rebranded as murder, suspicion spreads that the fire may have been arson started in the overcrowded apartment of Dr. Norman Trask. The story becomes more complicated when the FBI arrests the complex’s CEO, Jim Warren, for Medicaid fraud just as he’s about to flee the country. One of three football heroes who had put their town on the map with a series of state championships, quarterback Warren and his less mentally gifted friends have become wealthy and respected men. But when Lil starts to investigate, she discovers a dark past that the locals would rather forget. As they continue to dig for clues, Lil and Ada are both outed and put in physical danger.

The second in Atkins’ new series (Vultures at Twilight, 2012) provides plenty of suspects, some complicated crimes and a conflicted pair of sleuths.

LAST DINER STANDING

Austin, Terri L. Henery Press (294 pp.) $14.95 paperback | Dec. 3, 2012 978-1-938383-08-3 A waitress helps a friend charged with assaulting her worthless ex-husband.

Rose Strickland (Diners, Dives & Dead Ends, 2012) is having a hard time getting into the holiday spirit this year. As always, her mother is full of advice about the careers she could pursue if she just had the ambition to do more than sling hash at Ma’s Diner. Meanwhile, Ma’s stepped up the pace by going head-to-head with Rudy’s Roundup. Since Rudy’s been muscling in on Ma’s early morning business, Ma abandons her breakfast-only policy, producing a dizzying array of lunch specials that run Rose and her best friend, Roxy Block, off their feet without generating an extra dime in tips. Then, Janelle Johnson, Rose’s study buddy from Huntingford City College, calls to say that someone beat up her ex-husband right after Janelle came by to hit him up for child support and throw a little furniture around too. Now, Sheik “Asshat” Johnson is in a coma, and Janelle’s in the slammer. Rose looks for other suspects, starting with Crystal Waters, the stripper whose appearance in Janelle’s bed sent her marriage to the showers. She unearths many prospects, including Crystal’s other boyfriend, Sheik’s other lovers and the other lovers’ boyfriends. The clue that sends Rose careening, though, is a pile of pictures stashed at Sheik’s apartment of Thomas Sullivan, the bad boy who makes Rose’s pulse beat faster. Rose is convinced that Sheik’s criminal connections, not his ex’s wrath, put him out for the count. But convincing hard-assed Officer Andre Thomas and cute Officer Mike Goedecker may be even harder than convincing Ma to go back to bacon and eggs.

Austin’s second course has the menu of feisty underemployed gal detective with a side order of romance down pat.

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MARGARET TRUMAN’S EXPERIMENT IN MURDER

Bain, Donald Forge (368 pp.) $24.99 | Nov. 27, 2012 978-0-7653-2610-2

Bain, longtime ghostwriter to TV sleuth Jessica Fletcher (Murder, She Wrote: Domestic Malice, 2012, etc.), emerges from the shadows to tell how the hitand-run murder of a D.C. psychiatrist leads a clinical psychologist to a vast CIA-funded brainwashing project in this Margaret Truman Capital Crimes novel.

Every morning, Dr. Mark Sedgwick walks across Virginia Avenue from his apartment on one side of the busy street to his office on the other. One morning, a woman in a white car takes deadly aim and runs him down. The Metro Police Department traces the car to Sheila Klaus, who just happens to be a patient of Dr. Sedgwick’s. Betty Martinez, Dr. Sedgwick’s receptionist, reluctantly reveals that the psychiatrist took his patient on several trips to the Lightpath Psychiatric Clinic in San Francisco.

But, his companion was ticketed as Carla Rasmussen. Sheila’s insistence that she knows nothing about Lightpath, Carla or Sedgwick’s death rings so true to Dr. Nicholas Tatum, a psychologist who works part time at the MPD’s Criminal Behavior Unit, that he convinces his friend, attorney Mackensie Smith (Monument to Murder, 2011, etc.), to represent her. Nic sees Sheila as a “Dionysian”—a highly suggestible hypnotic subject—and suspects Lightpath’s director, Dr. Sheldon Borger, of using her to kill Sedgwick. But Borger has still bigger fish to fry.

Working with funding provided through CIA operative Colin Landow, Borger recruits Iskander Itani, a Lebanese boxer with chronic pain and a grudge against Israelis. Under the guise of curing his headaches, the hypnotherapist grooms Itani to assassinate presidential contender George Mortinson, whose progressive agenda annoys Borger. Whether Nic can connect the dots from Sedgwick to Borger to Itani is nobody’s guess.

What starts as a pedestrian accident ends up as pedestrian storytelling that not even a CIA-sponsored, hypnotically induced, politically motivated murder can jazz up.

(Agent: Bob Diforio)

TO LOVE AND TO PERISH

Bork, Lisa Midnight Ink/Llewellyn (288 pp.) $14.99 paperback | Dec. 8, 2012 978-0-7387-2337-2 A cautionary tale of one man’s inability to escape a shady past and the friend who uncovers his dirt.

Although Watkins Glen’s Vintage Grand Prix Festival was meant to be a fun day out for her family, Jolene Parker finds herself in the middle of a police investigation when she’s

presumed to have witnessed a man push another in front of a speeding car. Jolene and her foster son, Danny, didn’t see what really happened, but when the alleged murderer turns out to be Brennan Rowe, Jolene (In Sickness and in Death, 2011, etc.) is pressed to investigate further. Brennan is the first man to make Jolene’s friend Cory, the mechanic at her shop, truly happy, and Jolene can’t help giving Cory a hand in finding the truth, even though her sleuthing irks her husband, Ray. It’s not long before the teammates discover that Brennan was the driver in a crash that killed the dead man’s sister years ago. The roots of Brennan’s long back story may go back to his high school days, when he was quite a different person, and he’s not sure he can tell Cory the truth about himself. Still, another problem for Jolene is that Danny’s bail-jumping father is in town, and Ray’s determined to have him arrested, no matter what it would do to Danny.

Bork isn’t afraid to develop ongoing characters beyond standard storylines, though the main story this time is a tad complex.

FOOTPRINTS IN THE SAND

Clark, Mary Jane Morrow/HarperCollins (320 pp.) $25.99 | $12.99 e-book | Jan. 8, 2013 978-0-06-213544-5 978-0-06-213546-9 e-book Actress/baker Piper Donovan (The Look of Love, 2012, etc.) travels to Sarasota for another homicide-laced wedding at the best beach in America.

Piper has been chosen as maid of honor by her cousin Kathy Leeds, who’s marrying Dan Clemens of the Mote Marine Lab. But it’s impossible for the bridal couple to hold center stage when they’re competing with so many corpses. The first victim is Shelley Hart, Kathy’s colleague at the Whispering Sands Inn, whose murderer buries her in the sand and tells Levi Fisher, an Amish teen who caught him in the act, that he’ll kill Levi’s sister Miriam if he doesn’t keep mum.

The second is Levi, who hangs himself and leaves behind a suicide note confessing to the murder rather than condemning Miriam to unending threats. He’s followed the same night by Jo-Jo Williams, an observant cocktail waitress whose brief stint as a blackmailer comes to a predictably swift end. The police assume that Levi is the killer, both before and after his death.

But Clark duly implicates Dan’s best man, Brad O’Hara, a kayak concessionaire with a troubled past; Levi’s uncle Isaac Goode, the Whispering Sands wedding planner who’s been shunned by the Amish ever since renouncing his faith; and developer Walter Engel, whose bare-knuckled tactics for expanding the Whispering Sands strike some homeowners as uncomfortably menacing.

The behavior of both the killer and the hapless Levi, who falsely confesses to the murder but leaves behind a cryptic clue to the real miscreant, defy belief, but fans of Clark’s more famous ex-mother-in-law will be pleased to see that the line distinguishing the two has virtually disappeared. (Agent: Jennifer Rudolph Walsh)

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“Coyle’s coffeehouse series…captures the New York experience, from high-society parties to gritty back-street deals.” from holiday buzz

HOLIDAY BUZZ

Coyle, Cleo Berkley Prime Crime (384 pp.) $7.99 paperback | Dec. 4, 2012 978-0-425-25535-3 Jingle bells, beautiful displays, scrumptious treats: Holiday season in New York City has it all, including murder.

Clare Cosi, part owner of the Village Blend coffeehouse, is enjoying the season even though her lover, NYPD detective Mike Quinn, is spending most of his time in Washington, D.C., on a job he can’t talk about. Claire’s happy to be doing the coffee service for the Great New York Cookie Swap, a huge charity event taking place in Central Park, until she finds the battered body of Moirin, an Irish immigrant and baker’s assistant Claire had been sharing with her friend Janelle, a pastry chef, during the busy holiday season. The cop who catches the case is utterly dependent on DNA evidence and has no use for fancy theories, forcing Clare to do some investigating of her own. Moirin, generally known as M, led a very private life, and it’s hard to track down her boyfriend, the mysterious Dave. Clare enlists her uber-chic business partner to dress down and visit a Brooklyn nursing home, where Madame finds that Dave is a 60ish former rocker who was M’s landlord and her inspiration in the music business. Now, Clare has to decide if M’s death was one in a series of murders of young women and whether the motive for her murder has to do with her past in Ireland or her present in New York.

Coyle’s coffeehouse series (A Brew to a Kill, 2012, etc.) captures the New York experience, from high-society parties to gritty back-street deals. The fine mystery is followed by some holiday recipes that will even pack the pounds on readers who are only browsing them.

TAXED TO THE MAX

Dale, Cheryl B. Five Star (238 pp.) $25.95 | Dec. 19, 2012 978-1-4328-2600-0

The down-home tale of a young girl in over her head when she gets drafted to replace the murdered tax commissioner.

Corrie Caters is a one-woman disaster area. She’s working at the tax office in Ocosawnee County, Ga., as an autotag clerk, trying to earn enough money to replace the kitchen and garage at her parents’ house, though she swears neither accident was her fault. Since there hasn’t been much going on for her since her ex-fiance, Bodie, left her at the altar, Corrie’s biggest goal is to get through her college night classes and forget about her past and the tax office. When notorious Billy Lee Woodhallen shows up at her job, Corrie’s relieved that he’s there to argue with her boss, Mr. Jethro, and not with her or her 2542

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surly co-worker “Demon” Delores. The next day, however, Corrie finds Mr. Jethro in his office, dead. That’s obviously a problem for him, but for Corrie too, in ways she can scarcely imagine.

Soon enough, she’s persuaded to assume the office of tax commissioner, an assignment she accepts specifically because Bodie thinks it’s a bad idea. He’s convinced that whoever was after Mr. Jethro may go after Corrie next. Sure enough, Corrie finds herself tracked by around-the-clock deputies before she knows what’s happening. Convinced that Billy Lee is the killer, Corrie wants to find a fast way to deal with his delinquent tax case but not with him…ever.

As full of folksy charm as an Alabama tick, Dale’s mystery debut will have readers laughing while they cringe at the idiosyncratic characters’ antics.

DYING ON THE VINE

Elkins, Aaron Berkley Prime Crime (304 pp.) $25.95 | Dec. 4, 2012 978-0-425-24788-4 Yet another lecture/vacation junket, this time in Tuscany’s wine region, turns into a murder investigation for forensic anthropologist Gideon Oliver and his unexpectedly helpful wife, Julie.

Eleven months after he disappeared during his routine monthly retreat to a cabin in the hills, Sardinian-born vintner Pietro Cubbiddu’s skeletonized remains are discovered at the bottom of a steep cliff by a passing hiker, along with those of Nola, his wife of 25 years, who’d vanished soon after. Elderly police pathologist Dr. Melio Bosco pronounces the case a murder-suicide: Pietro shot Nola to death then sent her over the edge and followed both steps himself. Luckily, Gideon Oliver happens to be on hand to give a forensic seminar and visit Julie’s old friend Linda Rutledge, whose husband, Luca, is one of Pietro’s three sons and successors. In short order, Gideon determines that nearly everything about Dr. Bosco’s reconstruction of the deaths is wrong. That turns out to be an important finding since a good deal depends on who died first and how, especially since Cesare, a son of Nola’s first marriage, is suing his stepbrothers—Luca, Nico and Franco, the eldest son who’s now running the winery—for financial and emotional losses. Nor can anyone be quite certain whether Pietro, on returning from the sabbatical he never completed, was going to accept a German brewer’s offer of €5.5 million for the family company, which certainly would have strained family ties.

A lot less tension for all hands than the unusually suspenseful The Worst Thing (2011). It’s nice to see Gideon back in southern climes enjoying the good life, even if he’s never cared for osso buco.

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“Justice triumphs, but for Harvey, this hardly constitutes a happy ending for all.” from good bait

SAFE HOUSE

Ewan, Chris Minotaur (448 pp.) $25.99 | Dec. 11, 2012 978-1-250-01256-2 A London private eye helps a distraught accident victim prove his implausible story.

Rob Hale wakes up in a hospital on the isolated Isle of Man with little memory of the motorcycle accident that landed him there. As his mental fog clears, he asks about his friend Lena, who was with him and whom he saw being taken away by the first ambulance on the scene. A pair of slightly patronizing police detectives question Rob the next day, but they clearly believe that he’s delusional or lying. True, Rob has been emotionally unsteady since the unexpected death of his sister, Laura, who recently drove off a cliff near London. Nor does it help that in his description, Lena bears a strong resemblance to Laura. Luckily, Rob’s parents have hired a tough London investigator, Rebecca Lewis, to look into the circumstances surrounding Laura’s death. She comes to the island to question Rob and, refreshingly, believes him. Meanwhile, the reader learns that Lena indeed exists, held captive aboard a boat by a creepy pair, Menser and Clarke. With local police unable or unwilling to pursue any leads, Rebecca and Rob team up. They fly to London, getting their first solid bit of evidence from wealthy but suspicious Erik Zeeger, owner of SuperZ Oil. Their trail is twisty, leading them through many offbeat characters to a connection between Laura and Lena, whose life hangs by a thread.

Ewan (The Good Thief’s Guide to Venice, 2011, etc.) delivers with an amped-up first-person narrative from the appealing Rob and a swift, if shaggy, plot.

UNNATURAL HABITS

Greenwood, Kerry Poisoned Pen (304 pp.) $24.95 | paper $14.95 | Lg. Prt. $22.95 Jan. 1, 2013 978-1-4642-0123-3 978-1-4642-0125-7 paperback 978-1-4642-0124-0 Lg. Prt. Australia’s answer to Lord Peter Wimsey takes on white slavers and the Catholic Church.

The Honorable Phryne Fisher and a friend are on their way to the Adventuresses Club when they see a lone woman about to be attacked by several thugs. After the minions of Phryne’s lover, Lin Chung, chase them off, Phryne finds she that she’s rescued an ambitious, rather ungrateful young reporter named Polly Kettle who’s investigating the disappearance of three women, pregnant and unmarried, who’d been working in the Magdalen Laundry at the Abbotsford convent. Late in their

pregnancies, they were to be sent to a nursing home where the babies would be delivered and immediately taken away. According to Polly, the police have no interest in the case. When no bodies turn up, Phryne embarks on what will be a dangerous quest to learn the women’s whereabouts. Although she’s certain that the local brothels wouldn’t be interested in such pregnant females, she discovers that an employment agency seems to be collecting very young women and shipping them overseas, never to be seen again. The police, in the person of Phryne’s friend Jack Robinson, are forced to investigate when Polly is kidnapped. After calling on the laundry, whose working conditions are much less pleasant than those in the brothels she’s visited, Phryne, who cannot abide injustice and cruelty, goes up against some well-armored antagonists in an attempt to find Polly and the other missing girls.

Among Phryne’s pleasantly dashing adventures (Dead Man’s Chest, 2010, etc.), this one stands out for its emphasis on sexual orientation and institutional coverups.

GOOD BAIT

Harvey, John Pegasus Crime (384 pp.) $25.00 | Jan. 9, 2013 978-1-60598-378-3 Forget what you had planned for today; the new Harvey comes first.

What possible connection could the teen’s body found on Hampstead Heath have with the woman’s remains splattered over the Finsbury Park subway tracks? As DCI Karen Shields soon learns, the 17-year-old, a native of the Republic of Moldova, had been romancing a girl whose father, a career criminal, disapproved. DI Trevor Cordon, plodding along down in Cornwall, finds himself personally involved in the tube tragedy when it turns out that the dead woman had asked his help in locating her vanished daughter and, when he demurred, went up to London to find her herself.

With an assist from private eye Jack Kiley, Cordon locates the missing Letitia and her son and resolves to protect them from a cadre of Ukrainian brothers, the worst of them, Anton Kosach, involved with drugs, prostitution, slave trafficking, gunrunning and more—a laundry list of felonies clearly familiar to whoever killed the Hampstead Heath victim. Shields, a black woman constantly confronting sexism and racism in the force, and Cordon, a divorced loner yearning for a relationship with Letitia, never actually meet, but their cases collide in the halls of power where heavyweights from the Metropolitan Police, the Serious Organized Crime Agency and the Secret Intelligence Service are planning to take down a consortium of Eastern Europeans brutalizing Great Britain. Justice triumphs, but for Harvey, this hardly constitutes a happy ending for all.

The remarkable output of Harvey, whose 100-plus titles (Far Cry, 2010, etc.) have earned him the CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger Award, represents the best of British crime writing.

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SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE QUEEN OF DIAMONDS

Hayes, Steve; Whitehead, David Hale/Trafalgar (224 pp.) $29.95 | Jan. 1, 2013 978-0-70909-478-4

Yippee-ti-yi-yo, Watson! Sherlock Holmes meets Jesse James.

When Thomas Howard, a brawny, well-armed man from Missouri, defends Countess Elaina Montague’s jewels, and very likely her honor, from Blackrat Lynch’s gang of East End ruffians, she thinks the least she can do is move him from his seedy digs to Montague Hall as her guest. Her husband won’t mind, she assures him, because he’s dead—tactfully not adding that his fall down a flight of stairs has been deemed suspicious by no one less than Sherlock Holmes. In order to repay her debt to Howard, Elaina takes him to her bed and introduces him to Holmes and Watson, who she feels certain are just the right men to help Howard find his missing brother, Hank. But the great detective and his prospective client are soon (literally) at swords’ points with each other, and Holmes, whose lightning deductions are the best thing in this lark, informs Howard that Hank is no more than a red herring for the real purpose of Howard’s visit to London. The revelations that follow put Holmes and Watson, demoted from narrator to walk-on, in the middle of a fight to the finish between celebrated outlaw Jesse James and Cage Liggett, the Pinkerton man so determined to apprehend him that he set fire to his family home, crippling his mother and killing his young brother. Clearly, the game is afoot.

Western specialists Hayes and Whitehead (Under the Knife, 2011, etc.) make Holmes, who “normally slept till noon,” less Conan Doyle than Robert Downey Jr. and Howard as painfully American as only the English can do.

Strictly for sightseers who’ve pined to see the Wild West come to a vaguely Victorian London.

JAIL COACH

Locke, Hillary Bell Poisoned Pen (258 pp.) $24.95 | paper $14.95 | Lg. Prt. $22.95 Dec. 1, 2012 978-1-4642-0024-3 979-1-4642-0026-7 paperback 978-1-4642-0025-0 Lg. Prt.

An insurance employee gets stuck guaranteeing the behavior of a Hollywood big shot.

Former National Guardsman Jay Davidovich thinks he’s no longer in the business of protecting anything. Now that he’s out of the military, his most fearsome role is looking out for assets as a loss prevention specialist for insurance agency Trans/ Oxana. Unfortunately for him, that translates into looking out for one of the agency’s biggest assets, Hollywood bad boy Kent 2544

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Trowbridge. Early into the insurance contract, Trowbridge’s behavior earns him a short prison sentence, and Davidovich is pressed to hire someone to teach him how to behave in the clink: a prison coach. The coach Davidovich picks, Katrina Thompson, comes with a little more baggage than her foldable motorbike. First, there’s her young daughter “Lucky” Luci, who turns out to be more of a treat to the crew than a hindrance. A more serious problem is her ex, Stan Chaladian, a violent man who’s used to getting his own way. Jay’s personal life is haunting him too, as his kind-of-wife, Rachel, a pain in the neck whose flaws he can’t see, still can’t decide whether she wants to be a part of his life. Jay struggles to focus on getting Trowbridge through the insurance contract alive by any legal means.

The latest from Locke (But Remember Their Names, 2011) still has zippy characters but sometimes takes a preachy turn that can be heavy-handed.

UNUSUAL USES FOR OLIVE OIL

McCall Smith, Alexander Anchor (224 pp.) $13.95 paperback | Dec. 26, 2012 978-0-307-27989-7

Prolific McCall Smith, who’s unaccountably neglected Professor Dr. Dr. (honoris causa) (mult.) Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld ever since the trilogy that ended with At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances (2004), presents five more adventures for the eminent but clueless philologist.

“Adventures” is a relative term, for von Igelfeld’s life, like Kant’s, is so regulated that the slightest departure from his normal routine or the comfort zone circumscribed by his advanced but recondite knowledge of Portuguese irregular verbs can be traumatic. Merely reading over an announcement that Professor Dr. Dr. DetlevAmadeus Unterholzer, his incomparably less-celebrated colleague in Regensburg’s Institute of Romance Philology, has been shortlisted for an award is enough to launch him in an unaccustomed direction—this time to Berlin, where he asks the Director of the Leonhardt Stiftung as delicately as he can whether there might possibly have been some mistake among the nominating committee. Subsequent episodes bring von Igelfeld together with Kitty Benz, the well-heeled widow to whom his colleague Professor Dr. Dr. Florianus Prinzel and his wife, Ophelia, are bent on introducing him, and then to an intimate lunch with Frau Benz at Schloss Dunkelberg, the modest home that features a ceiling painted with a scene depicting her late husband’s entrance to heaven. Although this episode (spoiler alert) leaves von Igelfeld as unmarried as ever, he undergoes a different and utterly unexpected sort of change when he takes a group of graduate students on a study trip to an Alpine retreat—an experience that makes him a celebrity invited to give an after-dinner talk to a gathering of Hamburg businessmen in the final (for now) story.

Gently but invincibly obtuse, von Igelfeld is too much an elephantine cartoon to inspire the love readers have given Precious Ramotswe and Isabel Dalhousie.

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“Oldham, who surely belongs in the pantheon of noir stylists, throws punches with the best of them.” from fighting for the dead

SNOW WHITE MUST DIE

Neuhaus, Nele Minotaur (352 pp.) $24.99 | Jan. 15, 2013 978-0-312-60425-7

It takes a village to concoct an alibi.

Now that Tobias Sartorius has come home to Altenhain after 10 years in the German prison system for the murders of Stefanie, who threw him over, and her pal Laura, his former girlfriend, much has changed. His parents have divorced, the family cafe has gone out of business and the family home is in such disrepair that no self-respecting rat would live in it. What remains is the enmity of those who will never forgive him for what he did to those teenage girls, whose bodies have never been found. Tobi is shunned, then beaten with bats. And he still has no memory of what he’s done—probably because, as police detectives Oliver von Bodenstein, going through a rocky patch in his marriage, and Pia Kirchhoff, fighting off the legal demolition of her farm, come to realize, he may not have actually done anything. The only villager who believes in him is newcomer Amelie, waitress at the Black Horse, who eavesdrops on conversations that hint at who may have just pushed Tobi’s mother off an overpass, who ambushed him and why they seem to be overly beholden to local nabob Terlinden, whose favors always have a catch. Terlinden’s son Lars used to be Tobi’s best friend. His twin, Thies, an autistic mute, now seems enamored of Amelie and shares his secret paintings with her. Do they implicate the cultural minister in past crimes? Or Tobi’s old pals, including former tomboy Nadia, now a gorgeous cinema star? While Oliver’s marriage crumbles and Pia scrambles to cover his lapses on the job, Amelie disappears, then Thies, and all the village secrets must be uncovered before the innocent can be redeemed.

This emotional page turner, fueled by unexpected plot twists, marks the American debut of Germany’s best-selling suspense writer, whose targets include the bourgeois, the overly solicitous and the rationalizations that lead to tragedy.

FIGHTING FOR THE DEAD

Oldham, Nick Severn House (224 pp.) $28.95 | Jan. 1, 2013 978-0-7278-8213-4

DS Henry Christie and ex-copper Steve Flynn almost become friends.

When Joe Speakman unexpectedly retires from the force, his cases are distributed among the Lancashire constabulary. Henry Christie is assigned the brutal murder of an unidentified victim whose dental work marks her as an Eastern European. He’s barely begun work on the case when he’s called to the River Lune, where Canary Islands sport-fishing guide Steve Flynn, now in England to help a friend undergoing

cancer treatment, has pulled a dead woman from the estuary.

Immediately thereafter, two men in ski masks attack Christie, cracking his cheekbone, then have a go at Flynn, setting fire to the houseboat he’s staying on. Both times, the goons are clearly intent on recovering some property the drowned woman may have had on her. But what is it? The chase will lead to Cyprus, cause the murder of a detective supervisor and his wife and daughter, and force Flynn to save Christie’s life twice and Christie to watch while his love, Alison, her face so pummeled she’ll need reconstructive work, is abducted on orders from a bent copper. Christie and Flynn, whose relationship’s been strained ever since Flynn left the police service under a cloud and was later exacerbated by Christie’s jealousy over Flynn’s attentions to Alison (Facing Justice, 2011, etc.), grudgingly begin to respect each other and move toward accommodation, if not actual friendship.

Oldham, who surely belongs in the pantheon of noir stylists, throws punches with the best of them. And there’s not a woman alive who wouldn’t want to romance Flynn now that Christie is off the market.

MANDARIN GATE

Pattison, Eliot Minotaur (320 pp.) $25.99 | Nov. 27, 2012 978-0-312-65604-1

A brutal killing in Tibet draws a veteran investigator out of the safety of his new bureaucratic job and into a complicated tangle of political interests and deadly alliances.

Shan Tao Yun’s journey to an abandoned convent, one supposedly filled with ghosts, infects him with memories of his many encounters with death, as well as imaginative nightmares that blur the line with the flesh-and-blood present.

Shan has recently secured a safe, boring position as an inspector of irrigation and needs to keep a low profile if he wants to hold onto it. At the convent are a litter of corpses, including that of his friend Jamyang, who figures prominently in his nightmares. He retreats to a mountain perch from which he watches police swarm the site.

The curiosity of the veteran investigator (The Lord of Death, 2009, etc.) is acutely piqued. He locates his philosophical old friend Lokesh, an official in the Dalai Lama’s government before the Chinese invasion, who has also appeared in Shan’s nightmares as a sage. Shan finds Lokesh nursing a frail, elderly lama. This man, who somehow knows about the killings at the convent, suggests that Jamyang was protecting something. Once Shan finds a list of Tibetan towns in Jamyang’s pocket, he is pulled irresistibly into another intricate puzzle. Shan’s probe requires him to reconstruct Jamyang’s life, encounter bizarre characters like Genghis (who lives up to his famous namesake), and with Lokesh as Watson to his Holmes, walk a politically sensitive path.

Casual readers be warned: Pattison’s seventh Inspector Shan thriller is another hypnotic immersion in a fascinating culture.

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THE FIRST MURDER

The Medieval Murderers Simon & Schuster (416 pp.) $27.95 | Jan. 1, 2013 978-1-84983-736-1 A play written in 1154 in hope of winning greater glory for Oseney Priory brings disaster in its long, long wake.

Before The Play of Adam can be performed for the first time, one of the Oseney brothers is murdered while rehearsing the part of Abel, but the prior covers up his death.

In 1199, two warring factions on their way to Wales arrive at Oseney, and the Brothers decide to stage the play as a distraction. One group consists of Prior Dunstan from Canterbury and his secretary, along with two knights who guard them. The other includes Gerald de Barri, bishop-elect of St. Davids, and two canons of his cathedral. The Archbishop of Canterbury has refused to issue the charters needed for de Barri to become bishop. Another death is written off as a seizure before both groups depart for Carmarthen, where their bitter enmity becomes a problem for the castle’s constable, Sir Symon Cole, and his pregnant wife, Gwenllian. Cole is concerned about a sudden rash of accidents on the building sites of the castle, which is being rebuilt in stone. Robert, sent from Oseney to help the Canterbury group, suggests that they stage the play, again as a distraction. Once more there is an unnatural death that Gwenllian must solve to save her husband’s position. In 1361, the townspeople of Ely fear that a demon has been set loose by a performance of the play, and murder strikes again.

Over 200 years later, a bitter playwright tries to ruin William Shakespeare’s reputation by releasing a script purporting to be by the Bard of Avon that contains part of the cursed play. Actor Nick Revill confronts secret agents of the Privy Council as he works to prevent damage to Shakespeare. Finally, an academic group stages the play during WWII with unexpected results.

The eighth annual round robin co-authored by wellknown historical mystery writers Susanna Gregory, Bernard Knight, Karen Maitland, Ian Morson and Philip Gooden. Like the others (Hill of Bones, 2011, etc.), it’s uneven but generally entertaining.

THE LLAMA OF DEATH

Webb, Betty Poisoned Pen (270 pp.) $24.95 | paper $14.95 | Lg. Prt. $22.95 Jan. 1, 2013 978-1-4642-0066-3 978-1-4642-0068-7 paperback 978-1-4642-0067-0 Lg. Prt. A Renaissance Faire provides both the setting and the weapon for a murder.

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job of supervising kiddie rides on Alejandro, the grumpy llama who luckily loves children. It is Alejandro’s screams that direct Teddy and other Faire workers to the dead body of the Rev. Victor Emerson, who is acting as King Henry VIII. It looks as if Alejandro has stomped him to death, but closer scrutiny reveals a crossbow dart buried in his neck. Unluckily for Teddy and everyone else, her fiance, Sheriff Joe Rejas, is in Virginia on a Homeland Security training session, and the man who’s doing his job, Deputy Elvin Dade, destroys all the evidence at the scene. He then arrests Teddy’s mother, Caro, a much-married socialite who threatened to kill Emerson. With Joe unreachable and Elvin too stupid to find the real murderer, Teddy starts sleuthing. As it turns out, the Reverend was not only not a minister, but he was also an escaped murderer and blackmailer. His several vocations provide entirely too many suspects, including Elvin’s prissy wife, who’s not pleased to discover that her marriage isn’t legal. When Teddy’s father, wanted for embezzlement, secretly flies in from Costa Rica to help his jailed former spouse and the blonde bombshell who was playing Anne Boleyn is murdered, the pressure is on Teddy to discover the killer before he adds her to his list.

Webb’s zoo-based series (The Koala of Death, 2010, etc.) is informative about the habits of the zoo denizens and often amusing, even when the murderer is as easy to spot as in this outing.

REVENGE OF THE CRAFTY CORPSE

Winston, Lois Midnight Ink/Llewellyn (288 pp.) $14.99 paperback | Jan. 8, 2013 978-0-7387-2586-4

A crafts editor’s endless streak of bad luck entangles her in yet another murder.

Anastasia Pollack’s spouse compounded his lying and cheating by dying and leaving her and her two boys with piles of unpaid bills and the mother-in-law from hell. Now, Lucille Pollack, an old-line Communist, is recovering from brain surgery at Sunnyside, an assisted living and rehab center. No sooner does she arrive than she threatens to strangle her motormouth roommate, Lyndella Wegner, a 90-something Southern belle with a real talent for crafts. When Lyndella is duly found strangled, Anastasia has to start sleuthing even though her life would be easier with Lucille in jail. Luckily, her decision to substitute for a pregnant friend by taking a part-time job as leader of arts and crafts at Sunnyside has put her right on the scene.

The Sunnyside director is rude and overbearing, but most of Anastasia’s students are remarkably talented and almost all of them hated Lyndella. A careful reading of Lyndella’s craft journals, which Anastasia recovers before they can be thrown in the trash, reveals an amazing past. Lyndella was a prostitute and then a madam with a long list of high-profile customers. Thanks to hormones and Viagra, she was still enjoying an active sex life with just about every male patient at Sunnyside. Anastasia gets

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support from her hunky tenant, just back from a photo session in Africa, but her own live-in mother, on the hunt for another husband, ignores the family’s struggles as she spends her money on new clothes. Soldiering on after the arrival of her husband’s hitherto unsuspected half brother, Anastasia puts herself in danger to catch a killer.

Winston (Death by Killer Mop Doll, 2012, etc.) provides a long-suffering heroine, amusing characters, a pretty good mystery and a series of crafting projects featuring cloth yo-yos.

COLLATERAL DAMAGE

Woods, Stuart Putnam (320 pp.) $26.95 | Jan. 8, 2013 978-0-399-15986-2

The sister whose brothers died only weeks earlier in their attempt to plant an atomic bomb in Stone Barrington’s new Los Angeles hotel (Severe Clear, 2012) resolves to follow in their footsteps.

Jasmine Shazaz doesn’t have access to any nuclear devices, but she has serious potential as a vengeful terrorist. When her latest contact tells her, “Welcome to New York….Do you need to sleep?” she replies, “I need to blow up something.” That exchange tells you all you need to know about the geopolitical nuances behind Jasmine’s vendetta against MI6, the CIA, President Will Lee and his wife, Katharine, director of the CIA, Assistant Director Holly Barker, and especially Holly’s frequent lover, Stone Barrington, now a CIA consultant. Starting in London, Jasmine blazes an explosive trail to the New World, making a mockery of the devices and protocols designed to protect England and America from the likes of her. Back in the U.S.A., Katharine Lee’s CIA types, long familiar with the Whack-a-Mole approach to containment, agonize over where the unknown terrorist will emerge next, and Holly schemes to keep a lid on Kelli Keane, the Vanity Fair writer who knows a lot more than the American public needs to know about the attempted bombing in LA. All hands take their jobs so seriously that there’s hardly any time for on-screen sex, and Stone makes not a single new conquest. But wish-fulfillment fantasies still blossom—Holly gets another promotion; Katharine Lee, her eye on a new plum, plans to resign the CIA directorship; and Stone’s best friend, New York cop Dino Bacchetti, proposes marriage—as Jasmine sets her sights on Stone’s building in Manhattan’s Turtle Bay neighborhood.

Agatha Christie’s reputation as a puzzle-master survived the long series of spy thrillers that culminated in Passenger to Frankfurt, and Woods will no doubt survive his anti-terrorist confections, along with all his regulars, at least till the inevitable next round.

THE DOCTOR OF THESSALY

Zouroudi, Anne Reagan Arthur/Little, Brown (272 pp.) $24.99 | Dec. 4, 2012 978-0-316-21787-3 No one on the Greek island of Arcadia can keep a secret from the comforting and apparently harmless investigator known as the fat man.

Strange and seemingly unrelated events plague the little village of Morfi.

Bride Noula angrily casts her wedding garlands into the sea when her groom is a no-show. Hard-drinking Adonis Anapodos discovers a doctor in a local churchyard, beaten and blinded and left for dead. The victim speaks fluent Greek but with a decidedly French accent. Evangelia, a chatty and self-involved trattoria owner, is regaling an alert and mysterious “fat man” with the sad story of the aborted wedding when Adonis carries the injured doctor in and the emergency service is called. Bringing his Mercedes in for repairs, the fat man, grandly introducing himself as Hermes Diaktoros of Athens, stirs the pot with visits to the post office (a hub of local power) and Adonis’ home to question him more closely about his rescue of the unnamed doctor. At length, we learn that the victim’s name is Louis and he is the fiance of Chrissa, the sister of the jilted bride, Noula.

News of the fat man’s presence spreads, but still the locals readily open up to him, helping him move steadily to a solution.

A plus-sized Poirot with a more puckish personality, Hermes (The Taint of Midas, 2011, etc.) may be a bit twee for conventional whodunit fans. But his droll interactions with hapless locals, along with Zouroudi’s intricately detailed depictions of small-town dynamics, should hold readers’ interest.

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“[T]he whole impressive enterprise moves smartly along through a fairy culture with a structure and motivations sharply different from that of humans.” from dreams and shadows

DREAMS AND SHADOWS

science fiction and fantasy COLD DAYS

Butcher, Jim ROC/Penguin (496 pp.) $27.95 | Nov. 27, 2012 978-0-451-46440-8 After several months being mostly dead (Ghost Story, 2011, etc.), Chicago wizard Harry Dresden’s back in his body…and of course, back in trouble in the 14th Dresden Files novel.

Harry’s attempt to have himself killed and thus avoid becoming Queen Mab’s champion/assassin, the Winter Knight, has failed, and his first target is Mab’s daughter, Maeve. That means he must figure out how to kill an immortal faerie while defending himself against the vicious, treacherous nobles of the Winter Court and the suspicions of the Summer Court. Harry also learns the disturbing true nature of Demonreach, the sentient island in Lake Michigan now under threat from the demonic Outsiders. If he is to surmount these multiple crises in the next 24 hours, he’ll have to regain the trust of his old friends and allies and master the skills and unsettling desires associated with the Winter Knight’s mantle.

Harry’s struggle to reconnect with his friends, in the wake of their devastation at his death, the progress they’ve made without him, and their fear of what he’s become, are very real and poignant. Butcher also plots a long, long game, beautifully integrating small elements from the very first installment onward and gradually revealing their significance. But given that he tries to be so careful about these details, it is a shame that he isn’t assisted by more rigorous copy editing to clean up the continuity errors which continue to riddle the series. For example, it would be lovely if Butcher would explain how faeries, for whom the merest touch of iron and its alloys causes searing pain, can drive/ride in cars and operate various types of guns.

None of that, however, will stop readers from grabbing ringside seats the next time Harry Dresden goes forth to stop the apocalypse.

Cargill, C. Robert Harper Voyager (448 pp.) $24.99 | $11.99 e-book | Feb. 26, 2013 978-0-06-219042-0 978-0-06-21944-4 e-book Contemporary fairies-among-us yarn; screenwriter and film critic Cargill’s debut.

Baby Ewan Thatcher, abducted by fairies and taken to live in the Limestone Kingdom, a magic realm outside Austin, Texas, has little idea who he really is and no idea at all why the fairies grabbed him. Young Colby Stephens, meanwhile, meets Yashar the djinni and obtains the usual three wishes, the most important of which is that Yashar make him a wizard. Yashar doesn’t tell Colby that he’s under a curse such that all the wishes he grants come to bad ends. The changeling left in place of Ewan, a repulsive and viciously vindictive creature named Knocks, causes Ewan’s parents to kill themselves.

Later, in fairyland, Knocks hatches unpleasant schemes to injure or kill Ewan, particularly after Ewan unwittingly steals Mallaidh, the fairy girl Knocks erroneously believes to be his.

On the day Ewan is assured he will become a fairy, Colby and Yashar are on hand, and when they understand the fairies’ true intent, they intervene. Ewan is cast out of the Limestone Kingdom and ekes out a living in Austin as a second-rate musician, with only vague memories of his time among the fairies. But this is just the beginning of a relationship that continues over the years—it’s not possible to enlarge further without giving the game away—involving Austin, all manner of strange fairy creatures, hard-drinking fallen angels, Ewan’s parents, Coyote the trickster god and hell itself. Exceptional worldbuilding, sure-handed plotting and well-rounded characters, even the nasty ones, abound, and the whole impressive enterprise moves smartly along through a fairy culture with a structure and motivations sharply different from that of humans.

A mesmerizing and highly original debut. (Agent: Peter McGuigan)

JAINA PROUDMOORE: TIDES OF WAR Golden, Christie Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster (352 pp.) $26.00 | Aug. 28, 2012 978-1-4165-5076-1 Series: World of Warcraft

Golden (Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi: Ascension, 2011, etc.), who has also previously written novels set in the Star Trek, Star Wars and Starcraft II universes, returns with another World of Warcraft entry.

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multiplayer online role-playing game world, this novel largely follows Lady Jaina Proudmoore, a human sorceress and the leader of the city of Theramore. As the novel opens, it is discovered that the Focusing Iris, an ancient magical artifact, has been stolen from the blue dragons by unknown enemies. The leader of the dragons, Kalecgos, in his humanoid form, approaches Jaina to help recover it, claiming that nothing less than the fate of the world of Azeroth is at stake. Meanwhile, the orc Garrosh Hellscream, leader of the Horde, has a plan to attack the Alliance and specifically, to target Theramore as an early step in an all-out war of conquest. Jaina gathers allies to aid in her city’s defense, but Garrosh has a horrific surprise planned that will change everything. The novel, as part of a long-running fantasy series, assumes some back story knowledge on the reader’s part, but attentive newcomers should have relatively few problems getting their bearings. Though the prose style tends toward the verbose at times, and some names (Bloodhoof, Sparkshine, a battle-ax named Gorehowl) may be distracting to the uninitiated, the plot and action are straightforward. The grand and sweeping battle sequences in particular—featuring rampaging molten giants made of rock, a wide range of other creatures and plenty of magic—will likely satisfy World of Warcraft newbies and aficionados alike.

A well-crafted installment in the World of Warcraft saga.

KALIMPURA

Lake, Jay Tor (304 pp.) $27.99 | Jan. 29, 2013 978-0-7653-2677-5 Third fantasy outing for narrator Green, now 16 years old, a warrior in the service of the Lily Goddess (Endurance, 2011, etc.).

To confront her bitter enemy, the scheming, vicious Surali, the priestess who has taken over the Lily temple by plotting with evil sorcerers and misogynistic cultists to achieve ends that are never very clear, Green must leave Copper Downs, where she has won over the local council and a suite of local gods, and return across the sea to Kalimpura, the decadent city-state where the Lily Goddess resides. Here, Surali is holding two hostages, children of Green’s allies. From Blackblood, the god of pain, Green acquires a pair of irresistible knives and from a more natural source, infant twins whom she must frequently breastfeed. After a hair-raising sea voyage during which Green invokes supernatural assistance to save the ship from an unnatural storm, she finds a place to hide while she sizes up the situation. To defeat Surali, it emerges, Green must seek help from the mysterious Red Man, a powerful but much-abused renegade from a cult of vicious misogynists, the Saffron Tower. What holds the interest here are Green’s constant distractions in caring for her twins, rather than the minimal and often uninteresting plotting, weak or obscure motivations and intermittent bursts of violence. At least the religious digressions are held to a minimum. | kirkus.com

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The barely credible narrative stands in strange contrast to the backdrop’s persuasively gritty details and Green’s far more absorbing personal dilemmas.

IMAGER’S BATTALION

Modesitt Jr., L.E. Tor (512 pp.) $27.99 | Jan. 22, 2013 978-0-7653-3283-7

Third part of a prequel fantasy series (Princeps, 2012, etc.) wherein wizards are known as “imagers,” since the work involves the intense, precise and accurate visualization of the magic’s objective.

Previously, scholar, imager and now soldier Quaeryt almost single-handedly defeated the invasion of Telaryn by the megalomaniac Rex Kharst of Bovaria. Recognizing that the only way to bring peace is to annihilate Rex Kharst, Lord Bhayar of Telaryn orders his armies to invade Bovaria. Though not in command, Quaeryt will be a key figure in the action; what ensues is less a plot than a series of set pieces that offer both characters and readers much to ponder. While coming to terms with his own mysterious antecedents, Quaeryt will learn how to cooperate with the professional soldiers above and below him in the chain of command, each engagement bringing fresh challenges in defeating the enemy while protecting his pitifully small and inexperienced imager corps.

As long as Bhayar is satisfied with progress, Quaeryt will be able to press his own long-term agenda­—the establishment of a collegium where imagers and scholars, shielded from the hostility and skepticism of the general population, can develop their skills and knowledge in safety. Somehow, too, he must thwart the conspiracies of Bhayar’s old-guard senior commanders, who view Quaeryt and his imagers as a threat to their own power and privileges. He thinks often of his beloved wife, Vaelora, Bhayar’s sister, and their unborn child. Most important of all, he must survive: Imaging takes a dreadful toll, not only on the imager’s own body but in bearing responsibility for his part in the slaughter.

Few surprises, but nevertheless a wholly absorbing entry in this highly addictive series.

MECHA ROGUE

Patton, Brett ROC/Penguin (368 pp.) $7.99 paperback | Dec. 4, 2012 978-0-451-46490-3 In style and violence, a hybrid of the movies Transformers and Independence Day: the sequel to Mecha Corps (2011).

Capt. Matt Lowell is the interstellar Union’s finest Mecha Corps warrior, not least because of his total recall—he

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“Planck has a real imagination and the knack of investing the protagonists with real depth.” from kassa gambit

calls it his Perfect Record—and his ability to merge his Mecha’s sensory interface, effectively his consciousness, with those of other Mecha pilots. The Mecha are huge, massively powerful, morphing robotic machines developed by Dr. Salvatore Roth to combat the Union’s enemy, the Corsairs. Previously, Matt joined the Mecha Corps in order to hunt down and kill Rayder, the genetically engineered HuMax superman who murdered his father. Matt’s latest mission is to destroy a secret lab on a remote planet where more HuMax are being created. But, to his horrified astonishment, he discovers that the Union is behind both the lab and the HuMax, and the mission involves exterminating essentially helpless beings. Unable to stomach the pointless slaughter, he turns rogue and flees with his Mecha to the Corsairs, a vastly more disparate and advanced group than he had been led to believe. And this is just the first of a series of surprises that will cause Matt to question everything he has been told. The narrative moves at a thousand miles an hour, with just enough depth to the backdrop to avoid obvious pitfalls, and makes worthy efforts at character development, though the plotting’s as far-fetched as you might expect, with Matt able to summon up still another battle-winning superpower whenever he needs it.

Slam-bang action with never a dull moment: imagine a 21st century Lensman series, if anybody still remembers E.E. “Doc” Smith, without the latter’s lofty black-andwhite moral tone and awful prose.

THE KASSA GAMBIT

Planck, M.C. Tor (288 pp.) $24.99 | Jan. 8, 2013 978-0-7653-3092-5

Alien invasion yarn that turns out to be something else, from newcomer Planck.

Having destroyed Earth’s ecology, humanity perforce has spread through the galaxy discovering and colonizing hundreds of planets, none with indigenous life more complex than bacteria. The powerful League has established dominance and brought relative peace and prosperity at the expense of what a small but vigorous resistance faction regards as loss of liberty.

Young Prudence Falling, captain of a tramp freighter eking out a not always entirely legal living in defiance of League-approved shipping concerns, arrives at the remote farming planet Kassa, only to find the scattered communities bombed to destruction by a mysterious force from space. Prudence does what she can for the survivors while sending an immediate plea for assistance to League HQ on Altair Prime. Sooner than seems possible, a League warship arrives; aboard and in charge is Lt. Kyle Daspar, an officer of the political police who’s secretly a double agent working for the resistance. What follows is superbly handled psychological intrigue: While they must work together, Prudence regards Daspar as exactly what he appears to be, a League operative determined to subvert and destroy her independence, 2550

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while Daspar suspects Prudence of being a highly trained League agent assigned to expose him. The mistrust runs deep, even when they discover what seems to be a crashed alien spaceship. Prudence thinks Daspar knows more about the alien that he’s telling, while Daspar secretly learns that he was dispatched from Altair Prime before Prudence sounded the alarm. The rest of the plot doesn’t quite live up to the captivating setup, but Planck has a real imagination and the knack of investing the protagonists with real depth. Still, it’s a highly auspicious debut.

One of those rare yarns, a one-off that would have served better as a series opener. (Agent: Kristin Nelson)

SCOUNDRELS

Zahn, Timothy Del Rey/LucasBooks (256 pp.) $27.00 | Dec. 26, 2012 978-0-345-51150-8 Series: Star Wars, Zahn (Judgment at Proteus, 2012, etc.) returns once again to the Star Wars universe with a heist tale featuring classic characters from the original film series.

The author—who has many sci-fi works to his credit, including the recent Quadrail space-opera series—is best known for his several well-regarded novels in the Star Wars expanded universe, from his best-selling 1990s Thrawn trilogy to 2011’s Star Wars: Choices of One. This time out, his novel is set between the films Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back and includes fan favorites Han Solo, Chewbacca and Lando Calrissian. Solo is approached by a disfigured human, Eanjer, who tells him that 163 million credits were stolen from him by gangsters, and he wants Solo to get them back. In return, he offers to split the recovered credits with Solo and whomever he gets to help him. With Jabba the Hutt’s bounty still on his head, it’s too good a potential payday for Solo to turn down. So he and Chewbacca round up some friends and associates, including tech whiz Rachele Ree, twin thieves Bink and Tavia, and charming con man Calrissian, among others, for a mission to get the credits from the crime boss Villachor’s massive estate. Soon, the plan becomes more complicated and dangerous, involving the powerful Black Sun crime syndicate and secret blackmail files. For readers familiar with the original film trilogy—and few sci-fi fans aren’t—this installment will be fairly easy to follow, as it doesn’t require in-depth knowledge of the complex Star Wars expanded universe. Although there are some nods to the trilogy that longtime fans will appreciate—including a late-breaking reveal involving a popular character—casual fans will also enjoy this well-constructed story.

A crisply told Star Wars adventure.

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nonfiction THE EDGE 50 Tips from Brands that Lead

These titles earned the Kirkus Star: THE GIRL WHO FELL TO EARTH by Sophia Al-Maria............. p. 2552

Adamson, Allen P. Palgrave Macmillan (288 pp.) $27.00 | Jan. 22, 2013 978-0-230-34224-8

SMUGGLER NATION by Peter Andreas...................................... p. 2552 SEX AND THE CITADEL by Shereen el Feki................................ p. 2559 THE SEARCHERS by Glenn Frankel........................................... p. 2562 THE BIG TRUCK THAT WENT BY by Jonathan M. Katz.......... p. 2570 A GRAND COMPLICATION by Stacy Perman.............................p. 2577 USEFUL ENEMIES by Richard Rashke....................................... p. 2578 THE REBELLIOUS LIFE OF MRS. ROSA PARKS

by Jeanne Theoharis...................................................................... p. 2585 P.G. WODEHOUSE by P.G. Wodehouse....................................... p. 2587

A GRAND COMPLICATION The Race to Build the World’s Most Legendary Watch

Perman, Stacy Free Press (304 pp.) $26.00 Feb. 5, 2013 978-1-4391-9008-1

A leading marketing expert summarizes the ABCs of building brands.

Adamson (BrandDigital: Simple Ways Top Brands Succeed in the Digital World, 2008, etc.) smoothly preempts anticipated laugh lines by confessing at the outset that, “like many people in the marketing business,” he enjoys watching Mad Men. The author makes use of the series as a productive foil to develop his own case that there is as much difference between building brands and advertising them as there is between the business of advertising and its televised image. Adamson makes no bones about his own interest. He has worked for some of the companies he discusses, like Proctor and Gamble, Verizon and PepsiCo. The author shows that advertising a product or company is the end result of a different kind of process, branding, which involves many different aspects. He discusses the importance of recognizing what’s missing in the market place—e.g., Proctor and Gamble’s 2008 jump into dry cleaning with Tide Dry Cleaners—and the involvement of consumers in the development of the brand— e.g., General Mills’ popular Box Top University, where consumers mail in coupons and the company donates to education. As a veteran in the business, Adamson’s discussion with Faith Popcorn (CEO of marketing company BrainReserve) on the way young women “are influencing society, the economy and our culture” is particularly illuminating, as are the author’s views on social networking for self-activating consumers and branding.

Aimed at readers in search of specialist expertise, but ordinary consumers will also find the book informative and entertaining.

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“An Arab-American woman’s riveting coming-of-age story.” from the girl who fell to earth

THE GIRL WHO FELL TO EARTH A Memoir

Al-Maria, Sophia Perennial/HarperCollins (288 pp.) $14.99 paperback | Dec. 1, 2012 978-0-06-199975-8 An Arab-American woman’s riveting coming-of-age story.

Born in Washington state to an American mother and Bedouin father, Al-Maria explores the contrasting worlds that brought her parents together and eventually spurred her to choose between them, opting at a young age to live with her father’s extended family in Qatar. The author’s father, Matar, came to the United States at age 19, outfitted in a used polyester suit and possessing little more than a desire to pursue the American dream. Soon after his arrival, Matar met and married Gale; within three years, Al-Maria and her sister were born, and Matar then decided to return to Qatar to ride the wave of economic development in the region. Two years later, Matar sent his young family in Washington a video of the prosperity in Doha that, for then-5-year-old Al-Maria, “permanently cracked the world into two halves.” After venturing to Doha with her mother and sister for about a year and then returning to Washington for about six years after Gale found Matar had taken a second wife, Al-Maria’s differences with her mother then prompted her parents to send her back to Doha at age 12. It is from here that the author’s account of living with her extended family and noting class differences really shines. From an intimate vantage point, Al-Maria sees and translates challenges that the Bedouin, who lived for ages in the desert navigating by the stars, now face in the era of big cities and washers and dryers. What makes Al-Maria’s story unique is not only its rare insider’s glimpse of modern Bedouin life, but the outsider’s sensibility that magnifies her exquisite observational gifts.

Frank, funny and dauntless.

SMUGGLER NATION How Illicit Trade Made America

Andreas, Peter Oxford Univ. (448 pp.) $29.95 | Feb. 1, 2013 978-0-19-974688-0

Andreas (Political Science/Brown Univ.; Blue Helmets and Black Markets: The Business of Survival in the Siege of Sarajevo, 2008, etc.) explores American history and its relationship with smuggling and illegal trade and “how these illicit flows—and the campaigns to police them—defined and shaped the nation.”

In this well-researched history, the author examines illegal commerce in the United States from its earliest days into the modern era. In colonial times, citizens strenuously and at 2552

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times violently resisted attempts to curb widespread illegal trade of such products as molasses and wine, and even landmark events such as the Boston Tea Party were influenced by smuggling issues. Andreas shows how American history has been profoundly affected by the subtle (and sometimes, as in the case of Prohibition, not-so-subtle) effects of illegal trade and by government attempts to control it. The author is most engaging when he focuses on key events, such as when Gen. Andrew Jackson recruited smuggler and pirate Jean Laffite to help defend New Orleans during the War of 1812. The section on complexities of the slave trade is especially eye-opening. The final third of the book, focusing in large part on drug smuggling and America’s long-running drug war, is skillfully presented and contextualized: “[F]ar from deterring the drug trade,” writes the author, “American-led supply suppression campaigns ended up mostly dispersing and rerouting it.” Though Andreas’ prose is occasionally a bit on the academic side, he makes a strong case that America is not only a smuggler nation, but also “an ever-expanding police nation.”

An illuminating look at the historical impact of America’s illicit economy. (43 b/w halftones)

MAE MURRAY The Girl with the Bee-Stung Lips

Ankerich, Michael G. Univ. Press of Kentucky (392 pp.) $40.00 | Dec. 5, 2012 978-0-8131-3690-5 An extensively researched look at the life of silent-movie star Mae Murray (1885–1965).

Ankerich (Broken Silence: Conversations with 23 Silent Film Stars, 2011, etc.) structures this biography chronologically, beginning with Murray’s birth to poor German immigrants in New York City’s Lower East Side. As an adult, Murray offered little to no factual details about her childhood, shrouding “her own birth date and her early years in a veil of secrecy.” Early on, she lost her father to alcohol-related complications; before she was 18, she cut off all contact with her mother and her brothers, one of whom showed up years later demanding money and threatening to reveal Murray’s sordid family story to the press if she didn’t pay up. Passionate about dancing, the teenage Murray lingered around stage doors and got her start in theater, dancing and singing. Ankerich tracks Murray’s multiple failed marriages and her lucrative career in Hollywood, including the dramatic back stories of such films as The Merry Widow. Her penchant for hiding the truth about her life revealed itself yet again when she secretly gave birth to a son in 1926. Five months later, despite her love for the man she described as her “soul mate,” Rudy Valentino, Murray wed David Mdivani, an aspiring filmmaker who falsely identified himself as a Georgian prince. Shortly thereafter, Valentino died, leaving Murray devastated. Her marriage to Mdivani unraveled with endless fighting and a custody dispute as Murray struggled

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MIRACLES OF LIFE Shanghai to Shepperton, an Autobiography

with financial problems that would plague her for the rest of her life. In 1965, she died of a stroke. Ankerich’s studied biography leaves no stone unturned, and he integrates hundreds of quotations and sources, grounding Murray’s life with fascinating facts.

Will appeal to film buffs and readers interested in the rise and burnout of long-ago Hollywood stars. (97 b/w photos)

THE INVENTOR AND THE TYCOON A Gilded Age Murder and the Birth of Moving Pictures Ball, Edward Doubleday (496 pp.) $29.95 | Jan. 22, 2013 978-0-385-52575-6

National Book Award winner Ball (Writing/Yale Univ.; The Genetic Strand: Exploring a Family History Through DNA, 2007, etc.) returns with a complex story about railroad tycoon Leland Stanford and the murdering man who for a time was his protégé, pioneering photographer Eadweard Muybridge.

Muybridge, as he writes, altered the spelling of his name about as often as a bored high school student. He sometimes went by “Helios.” (One name he didn’t use, but would have fit, was Edweird.) Ball fractures conventional chronology like a dry twig, rearranging the pieces into an appealing display. He begins on January 16, 1880, the day that Muybridge first displayed for Stanford and his guests the moving pictures of a running horse on a device Muybridge called a zoogyroscope, a device that projected images on a revolving disc. Ball tells the stories of Stanford (who rose from grocer to railroad magnate), the multiple careers of Muybridge, the technology of moving images—and, of course, the murder. Muybridge married Flora Downs in 1870, but his photography business took him away for lengthy periods, and Flora, back home, had needs—which she satisfied with Harry Larkyns (whose story Ball also relates), a handsome womanizer whom the jealous husband shot in 1874. Muybridge went on trial, but a sympathetic jury found him not guilty—despite witnesses and his confession. Ball charts Muybridge’s subsequent return to favor with Stanford, who hired him to photograph his new San Francisco mansion and who endowed his research into the science of the motion picture. But they eventually fell out (two large egos), and Muybridge tumbled into obscurity after Thomas Edison’s technology eclipsed his own.

A skillfully written tale of technology and wealth, celebrity and murder and the nativity of today’s dominant art and entertainment medium.

Ballard, J.G. Liveright/Norton (288 pp.) $25.95 | Feb. 4, 2013 978-0-87140-420-6

The unpredictably serene memoir from one of the most daring voices in fiction.

Ballard (Kingdom Come, 2012, etc.), who died in 2009, was not just a revolutionary. He also demonstrated his extraordinary talent with a narrative range that ran from autobiographical fiction to the psychosexual antics of Crash. His 1969 collection The Atrocity Exhibition was so controversial, in fact, that Doubleday pulped the entire first print run.

This autobiography, first published in the United Kingdom four years ago, was widely expected to be a revelation. Many were surprised to find that the book is instead a warm, nostalgic and kind remembrance, if lackluster in portraying the richness of the author’s work. For fans of Empire of the Sun, the first half of the book portrays Ballard’s experiences in the Lunghua internment camp near Shanghai during World War II and sheds light on his relationship with his parents. He also describes the tragic death of his wife, just after he started to establish himself as a writer, and to a lesser degree his unconventional relationship with lifelong partner Claire Walsh. Ballard reserves much of his affection for his children, for whom the memoir is named and who inspire unexpected humor. “Some fathers make good mothers,” he writes, “and I hope I was one of them, though most of the women who know me would say that I made a very slatternly mother, notably unkeen on housework, unaware that homes need to be cleaned now and then, and too often to be found with a cigarette in one hand and a drink in the other—in short, the kind of mother, no doubt loving and easy-going, of who the social services deeply disapprove.” The author pays surprisingly little attention to the work itself. He gives cursory mention to the firestorm that surrounded The Atrocity Exhibition, while he frames other novels in indistinct memories of their Hollywood adaptations.

An affectionate, incomplete recollection of life’s rich pageant. (12 illustrations)

THE BOOK OF GIN A Spirited World History from Alchemists’ Stills and Colonial Outposts to Gin Palaces, Bathtub Gin, and Artisanal Cocktails Barnett, Richard Grove (304 pp.) $24.00 | Dec. 4, 2012 978-0-8021-2043-4

Gin and tonic? Gin rickey? Gin gimlet? Stop being so prissy: In this lively history, Barnett (Medical London, 2008, etc.) notes | kirkus.com

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that the way to drink gin is neat, “with perhaps an occasional dash of bitters to soften the rough edge of pot-still spirit.”

You don’t have to be British to like gin—indeed, writes the author, most of the output of the Tanqueray plant, now located in Scotland, is sent to the United States. However, though invented in its more-or-less modern form in Holland (or perhaps Belgium), gin is a very British thing to drink. Readers of Robert Hughes’ book The Fatal Shore (1986) may remember its opening gin-soaked pages, public drunkenness being one cause for so many Cockneys to be sent packing to the Antipodes.

Londoner Barnett pays homage to Hogarthian visions of the streets of the British capital, but he’s as much interested in the chemistry of the sauce as he is in its (mostly deleterious) social effects. Accordingly, he offers a kind of prehistory of gin that takes us through cultures that have found interesting things to do with juniper, including the Finns and their sahti, “a beer flavored with juniper berries instead of hops, and filtered through juniper twigs,” and the ancient Romans, whose physicians counseled applying crushed juniper berries to the genitals in order to chase away unwanted offspring. Barnett charts the rising and falling fortunes of gin, from poor man’s swill to retro-lounge hipster’s beverage of choice, and he closes with a personal and highly provisional catalog of favorite gins, from stalwarts such as Beefeater to more bespoke lines such as Wees Distillery Very Old Geneva and the British-Icelandic hybrid Martin Miller’s Westbourne Strength Gin. A toper’s pleasure, though perhaps it should come with a warning label.

THE PERFECT MEAL In Search of the Lost Tastes of France

Baxter, John Perennial/HarperCollins (368 pp.) $14.99 paperback | Mar. 1, 2013 978-0-06-208806-2

Memoirist and critic Baxter (The Most Beautiful Walk in the World: A Pedestrian in Paris, 2011, etc.) chronicles his exploration of France through its cuisine.

After an unsatisfying dinner at the Grand Palais, the author wondered what happened to the traditional French cuisine of 50 years ago. Did anyone still know how to roast an ox, and were recipes handed down from generation to generation still remembered? Baxter decided to create a menu for a meal that matched the grandeur of the Grand Palais’ architecture, a meal that would be the traditional French repas that UNESCO thought worthy of preserving. The food was to be served in several courses, and Baxter sampled and critiqued the liquor to be served at the aperitif with the same rigor and attention with which he selected the food. He began the quest with a stack of old menus he found in a flea market, then he traveled to different parts of Paris to sample the traditional dishes. He first went to Illiers to find the madeleine cookie that inspired Marcel Proust. He then traveled to Périgord to find truffle mushrooms 2554

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and to Sète to taste bouillabaisse. Baxter’s narrative is mostly engaging, though his tangents about French culture and the people he met during his journey are more interesting than his thoughts on food. The author also sprinkles historical stories throughout the book—e.g., the story of the chef Francois Vatel, who committed suicide during a visit from King Louis XIV. The section on how different types of coffee took hold in different countries is fascinating as well. In the end, Baxter compiled a menu to serve to his family and friends. There was no actual feast, however, which feels like a letdown after 350 pages about his hunt.

A fun read for Francophiles, but lacks cohesiveness.

CONTAGIOUS Why Things Catch On

Berger, Jonah Simon & Schuster (224 pp.) $26.00 | Mar. 5, 2013 978-1-4516-8657-9

A marketing professor at the Wharton School explains how fads are generated and why certain products, ideas and behaviors gain social currency.

Berger suggests that the secret lies in generating a buzz by turning a product into a conversation piece. Facebook and Twitter can play a role in this, but surprisingly, writes the author, “only 7 percent of word of mouth happens on-line.” Berger uses the acronym STEPPS to describe the attributes of a product or an idea that goes viral. The author has assembled a team of collaborators who analyze why some products market themselves while others, which seem equally promising, are duds. Social currency is achieved when the item is memorable. One of Berger’s examples is a cheesesteak sandwich, made with Kobe beef and lobster, that sells for $100.

Triggers can be fortuitous associations. The sale of Mars bars peaked in mid-1997, he explains, when the Pathfinder landed on Mars and NASA was in the news. Emotional content that stimulates arousal heightens memory. Happy or sad associations are less likely to be shared than something funny. Public refers to the way average consumers are reassured by the popularity of an idea or item. Practical value is essential—it’s why infomercials are effective and discounts and coupons are good selling points. Lastly, the package must be embedded in a good Story.

Throughout the book, Berger provides a number of entertaining, illustrative examples in the vein of Malcolm Gladwell or Freakonomics.

A provocative shift in focus from the technology of online transmission to the human element and a bold claim to explain “how word of mouth and social influence work... [and] can [be used to] make any product or idea contagious.”

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TOUGHNESS Developing True Strength On and Off the Court

Bilas, Jay NAL/Berkley (272 pp.) $26.95 | Feb. 5, 2013 978-0-451-41467-0

Former Duke basketball player and current ESPN college hoops analyst Bilas surveys an all-star cast of athletes and coaches to define the true meaning of toughness—and suggest how it can be developed.

In a sports landscape increasingly dominated by chestthumping, trash-talking prima donnas, the word “tough” is casually and repeatedly thrown around by commentators and athletes alike. The author, however, thinks that somewhere along the way, people lost sight of the proper meaning of the word. After penning a well-received, basketball-focused article on the topic for ESPN.com, he set out to rectify the problem on a wider scale. Through a series of anecdotes and insights shared by the likes of Bilas’ own college coach, Mike Krzyzewski, as well as other luminaries, including Bob Knight, Roy Williams, Tom Izzo, Jon Gruden, Grant Hill, and a number of Bilas’ former teammates (including Mark Alarie and Tommy Amaker), the author offers his own conception of toughness. Rather than being defined by tough talk and intimidation, it includes characteristics ranging from courage and persistence to commitment and resilience—and not just on the court. Through the use of stories from his own upbringing, college and pro playing days, career as a lawyer and experience as a broadcaster, Bilas provides personal examples of the lessons imparted by the coaches and players he quotes throughout the narrative. His clichéd reverence for his parents is predictable (though still touching), and many of the lessons imparted by the book’s interview subjects are redundant. Still, for the less cynical, there is wisdom to be gleaned from Bilas, and by the end, it’s easy to believe that the only obstacle to improved toughness is one’s own unwillingness to work at it.

A better fit for the article format, but there’s enough here to toughen up even the softest players.

MARTIN AMIS The Biography

Bradford, Richard Pegasus (456 pp.) $26.95 | Dec. 12, 2012 978-1-60598-385-1

Indifferently written bio of “the best prose stylist in English…in the closing decades of the last and the opening of this century.”

Martin Amis is, of course, the famed one-time bad boy of British letters, son of Kingsley, the leader of the sort-of school of British writers numbering the likes of

Ian Hamilton, Salman Rushdie, Julian Barnes, Clive James and Christopher Hitchens—not a woman in the lot and for reasons that a survivor of the 1970s will probably understand. (Men did not become enlightened until later, if then.) Bradford (English/ Univ. of Ulster; Poetry: The Ultimate Guide, 2010, etc.) does a yeomanlike job of wrestling this Amis to the ground, and though an academic, he is sensible enough to realize that readers will want not just the 411 on the making of, say, Dead Babies and London Fields, but the really juicy stuff: the famous (or infamous) split with his former literary agent for an American counterpart dubbed “the Jackal,” his contemporaneous exchange of a longsuffering wife for a younger and more exotic one, his expensive dental work, etc.—in short, all the gossipy items that Amis may, regrettably, be better known for than for his actual work. Bradford’s book comes alive when he shifts from life to that work, as when he writes that Amis’ middle-period novels are “exceptional partly because of their intransigent refusal to conform to the predominant tenor of his own fiction or to discernible precedents elsewhere.” The biographical material, on the other hand, is humdrum, rendered in a commaless and sometimes breathless British English that isn’t always revealing.

Just serviceable. Readers interested in all things Amis will want to refer to the roman à clef The Information and anxiously await an autobiography. (8 pages of b/w photographs)

SARAH OSBORN’S WORLD The Rise of Evangelical Christianity in Early America

Brekus, Catherine A. Yale Univ. (448 pp.) $35.00 | Jan. 8, 2012 978-0-300-18290-3

A rigorous examination of the unsettling life and writing of a deeply pious woman in mid-18th-century America.

In looking closely at the life of this colonial evangelical woman and rare published author, Brekus (American Religious History/Univ. of Chicago; The Religious History of American Women, 2007, etc.) presents an illuminating window into early American religious sects and how deeply engrained they were in the everyday lives of all people. Osborn, born in 1714 to strict Congregationalist parents who settled in Newport, R.I., was one of the first women who published in America and was allowed to teach her Christian experience—a loaded Enlightenment word meaning what she came to know strictly firsthand. Having defied her parents at age 17 to run off with a sailor, widowed soon after with a baby and returning as the prodigal to her hometown, Osborn nearly joined the Anglicans before her mother guilt tripped her into returning to the fold. Then she had a born-again experience and resolved to write about it for the benefit of others. A deeply personal relationship with God and an urge to spread the gospel characterized the socalled revivalists emerging from the more strict reformist faiths that had seen the early founding of America. The evangelicals that Osborn gravitated toward at Rev. Nathaniel Clap’s First

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“A woman’s compelling memoir of her unusual career.” from an intimate life

Church in Newport believed strongly in good works, human goodness and free will, although they were also extremely selfabasing. Her memoir was published, with the implicit approval of male church elders, as a way of preaching the Gospel, leading to popular prayer meetings at her home that included slaves.

Brekus’ thorough work reveals by degrees how Osborn’s excruciatingly heartfelt faith was also responding to cataclysmic changes taking place in colonial life, ushering in what we now call capitalism, individualism and humanitarianism.

Authoritative, accessible study of Osborn’s rare early work by an expert scholar of her writing and time.

A HISTORY OF FUTURE CITIES

Brook, Daniel Norton (352 pp.) $27.95 | Feb. 25, 2013 978-0-393-07812-1

An intimate, canny comparative study of four of the great world cities— St. Petersburg, Shanghai, Mumbai and Dubai—in terms of the imposition of Western influence and onslaught of modern currents.

All built from the outside in, rather than by organic native forces, and gradually transformed for better or worse by their situation within the “global crossroads,” these four cities all exhibit the tensions and contradictions of the exciting modern metropolis. Brook (The Trap: Selling Out to Stay Afloat in WinnerTake-All America, 2007, etc.) is not an academic, thus imparting a more accessible, entertaining generalist’s perspective on considerable research that goes only so deep. In each case, he traces the models on which construction of the city drew: Peter the Great fashioned his entirely new city after Amsterdam, infusing it with Western technology he had learned himself, industry and diversity—yet it was built by thousands of serfs and was essentially feudal and autocratic. Shanghai became a coastal trading post wrested from Chinese restrictions by the British East India Company and other interests, for whom “extraterritoriality” meant impunity to operate their enterprises in segregated concessions. The archipelago of Bombay attracted a stunning diversity of people and adopted a luxurious lifestyle that was harnessed by Sir Henry Bartle Frere in fantastic imperial construction design that achieved Britain’s urbs prima in Indis. Dubai, a laissez-faire trading center in the Gulf, only took off in the 1960s with the discovery of oil, guided by the Westernizing autocratic design of Sheikh Rashid to become a free-wheeling boomtown where “96 percent of the population came from somewhere else.”

Revolution, world war, emigration and the financial bubble-burst would by turns devastate and help regenerate these cities. Brook looks at these metropolises as a testament to human imagination and as a barometer of future promise.

An enormously elucidating and relevant study. (12 illustrations; 4 maps)

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REFORMING DEMOCRACIES Six Facts About Politics that Demand a New Agenda

Chalmers, Douglas A. Columbia Univ. (192 pp.) $29.50 | $28.99 e-book | Jan. 22, 2013 978-0-231-16294-4 978-0-231-53105-4 e-book

A political scientist identifies six aspects about modern democracy that require examination and revision.

Chalmers, who has co-edited a number of books (The New Politics of Inequality: New Forms of Popular Representation in Latin America, 1997, etc.), presents the edited texts of his Leonard Hastings Schoff Memorial Lectures at Columbia in 2007, and his text retains the general structure, technique and tone of its original incarnation. Introductions, enumerations, repetitions, summaries and conclusions appear throughout. The author begins by identifying problems—even threats—to democracy, including inequality and corruption, then lists some conventional ways of dealing with them—new policies and revolutions of various sorts. He declares that a democracy must establish “political processes [that] lead to public welfare”—a point he continually reiterates. He then examines various models of representative institutions that have existed, and he devotes a major section to the concept of the “people” in a democracy—who’s included, who isn’t. He also explores the notion of “quasi-citizens,” people who are here but aren’t official citizens, and he urges their formal involvement. Next: how to connect the people to the decision-makers. Chalmers views what he calls “personal networks” as essential (though in need of control) and urges an emphasis on deliberation. He sees the Iraq invasion as a failure of deliberation. Finally, he discusses the necessity of multiple levels of decision-making. The author intends to identify problem areas, not to suggest anything more than a generic sort of solution (we “need to establish principles”), but he recognizes that traditional democracy must move more quickly in the digital age.

The rub of conventional writing against novel ideas produces enough friction for some intellectual fire.

AN INTIMATE LIFE Sex, Love, and My Journey as a Surrogate Partner

Cohen Greene, Cheryl T. Soft Skull Press (224 pp.) $15.95 paperback | Jan. 15, 2013 978-1-59376-506-4

A woman’s compelling memoir of her unusual career.

Being a surrogate partner is not a profession most people would choose, but as Cohen Greene points out in this moving account, it’s not uncommon for someone to require a surrogate’s assistance.

“My ultimate aim,” she writes, “is to model a healthy intimate relationship for a client, and that involves much more than

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intercourse.” First developed by William Masters and Virginia Johnson in the 1960s, surrogate partners help men and women, singles and couples, with sexual issues. Whether it is premature ejaculation, lack of desire or experience, a poor body image, or a lack of knowledge regarding genitalia, surrogates help a person “address some of the most deeply personal, anxiety-provoking issues that they…face.” Over a series of six to eight visits, a surrogate uses deep breathing and relaxation techniques to help a person reconnect with his/her sexual self. As the two become more intimate, hands-on exercises eventually lead to sexual intercourse. Growing up Catholic, where her frequent masturbation and sexual activity at age 14 were major topics during confession, Cohen Greene had some major hurdles to cross before becoming a surrogate, but coming-of-age during the sexual revolution of the 1970s and a move to the San Francisco Bay area helped. The author adroitly twines stories of her own life with tales of compassionate care for a wide variety of clients, including the physically handicapped and a 70-year-old virgin.

Baring it all in a sexually explicit but clinical, non-erotic way, Cohen Greene opens a door onto an intimate life of some of the more than 900 partners she has worked with over the course of four decades. Her work with one handicapped man is the basis of the film The Sessions, starring John Hawkes and Helen Hunt.

An illuminating revelation of the unfamiliar.

CAPTIVE AUDIENCE The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age

Crawford, Susan P. Yale Univ. (320 pp.) $30.00 | Jan. 8, 2013 978-0-300-15313-2

A telecommunications policy expert draws parallels between today’s Internet providers and late-19th-century monopolies.

In most parts of the country, the choices for cable TV and/ or high-speed Internet are extremely limited. This inherent lack of options, Crawford writes in her debut, “is the communications equivalent of Standard Oil.” For readers not well-versed in the history of monopolies and antitrust legislation, the author begins by detailing how monopolies arose in a number of industries (railroads, oil and steel among them) in the late 1800s and how President Theodore Roosevelt used the Sherman Antitrust Act to divide the Northern Securities Company railroad trust. Looking at the present day, Crawford claims that “all stages of the railroad story are repeated today in the context of Internet access.” As the country’s largest cable and Internet provider, Comcast is held up as a case study for all communications companies. Crawford examines Comcast in minute detail, from its founding to its recent merger with NBC/Universal. However, at times, this comes across as more grudge match than reasoned examination, particularly when the author takes swipes at Comcast’s founders and executives.

“The Roberts family, like the Gilded Age families of the late

nineteenth century,” effectively controls Comcast, and Crawford shoehorns in references to their Martha’s Vineyard home and penchants for playing squash. However, the author makes many important points. For example, Americans in large cities pay more money for slower Internet speeds than consumers in Japan or South Korea, while Americans in rural or poor areas are lucky to get high-speed access at all. This online inequity means “America will stagnate, while other countries rocket ahead.” Unfortunately, the book is continually weighed down by its prose. Loaded with technical details of Internet traffic and descriptions of federal regulations, Crawford’s otherwise salient points become inaccessible to most lay readers.

Important themes obscured by jargon-filled writing.

THE WISDOM OF COMPASSION Stories of Remarkable Encounters and Timeless Insights

Dalai Lama; Chan, Victor Riverhead (272 pp.) $26.95 | Jan. 1, 2013 978-1-59448-738-5

Tales of kindness and understanding from the Dalai Lama.

The authors—Chan previously co-wrote The Wisdom of Forgiveness (2004) with the Dalai Lama—bring forth numerous stories of empathy and consideration that they have personally witnessed. Believing that a person’s goal in life is to be happy, and that the causes of unhappiness are primarily internal bouts of anger, attachment and ignorance, the Dalai Lama has spent more than 50 years practicing and promoting his wisdom to millions of people around the world. From watching the Dalai Lama interact with young children with serious illnesses to recording the wise words of his good friend, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Chan portrays a rarely seen, intimate side of the Dalai Lama, whose life is full of wit and lightheartedness balanced by wisdom and compassion. Regardless of religious beliefs, readers will gain a deeper understanding of human nature and our capacity to show consideration and benevolence to those around us as they follow Chan and the Dalai Lama on a global tour. “For the Dalai Lama,” writes Chan, “compassion and wisdom are the fundamental building blocks of society. In our homes and in our schools, he believes, we should systematically nurture a culture of warmheartedness, a culture of kindness. They are essential elements, critical to having a happy life.” The first place this bond of compassion is formed is when a baby nurses on her mother’s milk; as such, women are by nature compassionate “life-givers.” Throughout, the authors’ message is uplifting, if occasionally repetitive and not always wholly convincing.

Although readers may not be able to spend five hours a day in meditation and prayer like the Dalai Lama, they will come away with a better sense of the importance of communication, forgiveness and empathy, regardless of the circumstances.

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“A timely reminder that money is neither good nor evil, but its uses reveal a lot about a person’s choices and values.” from the good rich and what they cost us

THE GOOD RICH AND WHAT THEY COST US

Dalzell, Jr., Robert F. Yale Univ. (208 pp.) $28.00 | Jan. 8, 2013 978-0-300-17559-2

What America’s wealthiest have done, and are doing, with their money.

Dalzell (American History/Williams Coll.; co-author: The House the Rockefeller’s Built: A Tale of Money, Taste and Power in Twentieth Century America, 2007, etc.) reaffirms the importance of giving back and shows how philanthropy has always been part of the American way. The author combines studies of four individuals from different times in America’s history—Robert Keayne, reputed to have been one of the Massachusetts colony’s richest traders in the 17th century; George Washington; Amos and Abbott Lawrence, the brothers who built the textile industry in Massachusetts; and John D. Rockefeller, the founder of Standard Oil—examining the different ways that wealth accumulation has been accompanied by philanthropy. He also looks at how wealth is perpetuated over generations and how philanthropy is organized. Last wills and testaments provided the principal means by which wealth was transmitted to descendants.

Keayne’s was disputed through the courts, while Washington’s was shaped by his changing views of slavery and by an insistence on equity and fairness for all members of his family. The Lawrence brothers took different paths: Amos just gave away goods during his daily activities, while Abbott contributed to longer-range projects like building up Harvard.

Dalzell credits the founder of the Rockefeller dynasty with the elimination of hookworm in the South and the promotion of educational projects such as Spelman College and the University of Chicago. Dalzell also discusses what the richest are doing today, tracing the efforts of a group, headed by Warren Buffett and Bill and Melinda Gates, intent on organizing members of the Forbes 400 to pledge at least half of their assets to philanthropy.

A timely reminder that money is neither good nor evil, but its uses reveal a lot about a person’s choices and values.

THE U.S. SENATE

Daschle, Tom and Robbins, Charles Dunne/St. Martin’s (208 pp.) $19.99 | Jan. 22, 2013 978-1-250-01122-0 Series: Fundamentals of American Government 2 In the second in the publisher’s Fundamentals of American Government series, former Senate Majority Leader Daschle (Getting it Done, 2010, etc.) and excongressional staffer Robbins collaborate to explain the Senate.

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The authors contrast the rules under which the two legislative branches operate to illustrate their separate functions.

They explain why even without the current partisan gridlock, the House of Representatives and the Senate are frequently at odds and how this was deliberately built into the Constitution by the Founding Fathers as a way to temper direct democracy.

As part of the checks and balances built into the system, the functions of the two branches are complementary. For example, the Senate bears responsibility for confirming declarations of war and treaties and for the acceptance or rejection of presidential nominations for federal office, but in the case of an Electoral College tie, it is the House that chooses the next president.

The rules and traditional practices of the two branches have evolved over time but still reflect their differently perceived functions. Daschle and Robbins show how this is exemplified by the role of speaker of the house, as compared to that of the Senate majority leader. The House functions as a collective body in which majority rule prevails, and the speaker controls the agenda and floor time allowed to representatives during a debate. Senate rules guard the privileges of each senator, encouraging prolonged debate, including the filibuster, in order to achieve compromise, holds on legislation, etc. The authors cover a wide range of topics, including committee and subcommittee structure and the role played by congressional staffers in shaping legislation.

Primarily intended for high school seniors and college freshman, but also a useful primer for a broader audience interested in learning about a government institution that is suffering from record-low approval ratings.

THE ESSENTIAL HOMEBIRTH GUIDE

Drichta, Jane and Owen, Jodilyn Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster (352 pp.) $16.00 paperback | Feb. 12, 2013 978-1-4516-6862-9

Professional midwives Drichta and Owen present a comprehensive and easyto-read guide to lead mothers through each phase of pregnancy and home birth.

The authors organize the book in a question-and-answer format, with heartfelt testimonials interspersed throughout.

Their goal was to open the range of experience and exposure for pregnant women so when they “make decisions regarding where and how to birth, [they] will be making truly informed ones.” Drichta and Owen stress that midwives focus on the mother and family—developing a strong relationship, educating the mother and creating a birthing plan tailored to the mother’s preferences. The authors’ relationship-centered chapters walk readers through each step of pregnancy and delivery, including nutrition, prenatal testing, home birth after a cesarean and 10 common pregnancy-related issues. The authors also discuss special circumstances such as twins and breech babies.

In addition, Drichta and Owen instruct readers on how to

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“A surprisingly open, extremely timely examination of the sexual coming-of-age for Egyptian youth.” from sex and the citadel

prepare their home for birth (a clean bathroom is key). They also admit that not every birth can take place at home, counseling mothers to have a written plan if they must transfer to a hospital. The authors back up their assertions with statistics, and each chapter is footnoted. Appendixes include questions to ask when choosing a home-birth attendant, a home-birth reading list, websites for childbirth education and support, and resources for high-risk births. A foreword by Dr. Christiane Northrup, author of Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom, encourages mothers to access their innate birthing wisdom.

A strong, helpful resource for anyone considering a home birth. (36 b/w photos)

SEX AND THE CITADEL Intimate Life in a Changing Arab World

el Feki, Shereen Pantheon (368 pp.) $28.95 | Jan. 29, 2013 978-0-307-37739-5

A daring new study finds the newly liberated Egyptians poised to demand more sexual freedom in the face of religious fundamentalism.

The Arab Spring has brought the Egyptians in particular to the brink of a sexual revolution not unlike the movement that struck the West 40 years ago, writes Economist and Al Jazeera English journalist el Feki, who is trained in molecular immunology and serves as vice chair of the U.N.’s Global Commission on HIV and Law. However, Egypt’s new order maintains a liberal minority and a conservative majority (e.g., the Muslim Brotherhood), and the push back against sexual liberation, especially as demanded by women, is daunting and unsure. El Feki, born in England and raised in Canada by an Egyptian father and Welsh mother, embarks on her subject with healthy doses of humor and irony, offering a selected look at erotic classical Arabic writings that flourished famously during the Abbasid period from the 8th to 10th centuries in Baghdad. Arab culture traditionally celebrated sexuality as compatible with elements of the Islamic faith, but what gradually occurred in Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab world was that sexuality was equated with the “licentiousness” of the imperialists. The response to colonial occupation meant returning to the basics, to Islamic fundamentalism and the Salafi movement, the latter allowed to emerge openly after the recent Arab Spring. With personal stories bolstered by facts and figures, el Feki looks at the tensions between what is halal (permitted under Islamic law) and haram (forbidden) or zina (downright debauchery). She also discusses sex education, abortion, pornography, homosexuality, and even lingerie and cross-dressing. As a daughter of the region, el Feki is also deeply engaged in and hopeful for greater democratization in personal relations.

A surprisingly open, extremely timely examination of the sexual coming-of-age for Egyptian youth.

LEE MARVIN Point Blank

Epstein, Dwayne Schaffner Press (344 pp.) $27.95 | Feb. 19, 2013 978-1-9361-8240-4 A generous biography of Oscar-winning actor Lee Marvin (1924–1987), best known for his roles in The Dirty Dozen and Point Blank.

Epstein, journalist and frequent writer on Hollywood, considers Marvin—who often played supporting roles as henchmen, soldiers and other characters in Westerns—through a prism of aggression. With ancestors that included Robert E. Lee, George Washington and Ross Marvin (a member of the Robert Peary Arctic expedition), the author proposes that Marvin inherited “the characteristic of the violence-prone male,” which manifested as a bristling spirit often besotted with problems, what is now known as PTSD and alcoholism—all of which Marvin channeled through villains who allowed him to go beyond the range of the acceptable in real life. Epstein recounts how tension at home and frequent expulsions from school eventually led Marvin to enlist as a Marine in World War II and to turn toward the stage, Hollywood and TV in the ensuing years. The author effectively chronicles the actor’s long path from breaking out of niche roles to wider acclaim. Though he does not refrain from including a handful of coarser anecdotes about the actor’s behavior, along with trials in his romantic life, Epstein balances such moments with commentary on Marvin’s kindness, talent and professionalism.

Remarks from interviews conducted with Marvin’s longtime agent, Meyer Mishkin, and with Marvin’s first wife, Betty Marvin, especially illuminate the man who “etch[ed] interesting portraits of humanity’s dark side.” Epstein’s admiration for his subject is clear yet never too heavy-handed.

A well-paced, thoughtful examination of a singular corpus of work that influenced film portrayals of violence in subsequent decades. (24 b/w photos)

THE SECRETS OF HAPPY FAMILIES Improve Your Mornings, Rethink Family Dinner, Fight Smarter, Go Out and Play, and Much More

Feiler, Bruce Morrow/HarperCollins (352 pp.) $25.99 | Feb. 19, 2013 978-0-06-177873-5

New York Times columnist Feiler (Generation Freedom: The Middle East Uprisings and the Remaking of the Modern World, 2011, etc.) explores new ideas on family dynamics.

Impressed by the amount of innovative thinking in the business world about how people work best in small groups and “[t]

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rend-setting programs from the U.S. military to professional sports” on being resilient in the face of setbacks, the author was also frustrated by the emphasis of psychologists on the happiness of individual family members. For him, this was not just an intellectual pursuit. He and his wife were struggling to balance the needs of their daughters, demanding jobs and elderly parents. Feiler was in search of an answer to the question: “What do happy families do right and how can the rest of us learn to make our families happier?” His quest began in Silicon Valley, where he sat in on a family meeting patterned on agile development, a cutting-edge program popular in the automotive industry that delegates top-down management-authority for getting a job done.

Software engineer David Starr had successfully adapted aspects of the program to his own family. Following his lead, Feiler instituted formal weekly meetings and daily quick reviews with his wife and daughters to evaluate how well his family was functioning. Next, they worked on a mission statement for the family (another idea from the corporate world)—“May your first word be adventure and your last word love”—and a celebrity chef suggested making breakfast the family meal. Feiler picked up ideas from many sources, but in the end, he found the secret to a happy family—not in a set of nostrums or procedures, but in flexibility and a willingness to keep trying.

A good addition to the self-help bookshelf.

THE PERFECT GAME How Villanova’s Shocking 1985 Upset of Mighty Georgetown Changed the Landscape of College Hoops Forever

Fitzpatrick, Frank Dunne/St. Martin’s (320 pp.) $25.99 | Jan. 22, 2013 978-1-250-00953-1

A veteran Philadelphia sportswriter revisits the thrilling 1985 NCAA national championship basketball game.

Knowledgeable commentators agreed that eighth-seed Villanova would have to play a perfect game to defeat defending champion juggernaut Georgetown. Though the Wildcats were not flawless on that April Fool’s night in Lexington, Ky., they did manage to shoot almost 79 percent and beat the Hoyas 66-64 to pull off the most improbable victory in basketball history. As the narrative proceeds through each team’s season, builds toward their tourney selection—the field expanded to 64 teams that year—and progresses to the Final Four, Fitzpatrick (Pride of the Lions: The Biography of Joe Paterno, 2011, etc.) sketches some of the important players in the drama: Villanova’s tourney MVP Ed Pinckney, dynamic point guard Gary McLain, inspirational, longtime trainer Jake Nevin and Georgetown’s imposing center, Patrick Ewing. The author handles the coaches especially well: the Wildcats’ Rollie Massimino, not quite the “linguini and clams” teddy bear everyone supposed, and the Hoyas’ John Thompson, not entirely the heartless intimidator. And though he never quite delivers on the 2560

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promise of his subtitle, Fitzpatrick expertly paints the Reagan-era college basketball landscape, a time without a shot clock, threepoint baskets, or drug testing for tourney players. The pedigrees of these two private Catholic universities, the flowering of ESPN, the glory days of the Big East and the historic pull of Philadelphia’s Big 5 rivalries are all part of Fitzpatrick’s story. In particular, he insightfully deconstructs the racial framework surrounding the game, the appalling bigotry aroused by Thompson’s disciplined, unsmiling, walled-off Georgetown team, and he reminds us of the cultural impact of the Hoya-inspired boom in athletic merchandising and the merger of hip-hop and basketball.

An unforgettable game recalled in all its glory, but with its warts remembered too.

THE TINKERERS The Amateurs, DIYers, and Inventors Who Make America Great Foege, Alec Basic (272 pp.) $26.99 | Jan. 2, 2013 978-0-465-00923-7

A celebratory exploration of American tinkerers and the spirit of innovation that moves them.

Thomas Edison may be the most famous tinkerer of all, but as former Rolling Stone and People contributor Foege (Right of the Dial: The Rise of Clear Channel and the Fall of Commercial Radio, 2008, etc.) points out in this lucid meditation on innovation, invention alone is a far different thing from tinkering. Tinkerers grab things that already exist and find clever ways of making them better or putting them to uses never before imagined. To illustrate his point, the author looks at great American tinkerers and finds that the compulsion to tweak existing technologies in unique and exciting ways is a hallmark of the American experience. Tinkering today, however, does have its challenges.

For one thing, technology is a lot more complex than it was in Benjamin Franklin’s day. Most people simply do not have the technical knowledge necessary to access the computerized world of virtual tinkering that predominates much of modernday engineering. That wasn’t the case in the past, when “gear heads” had far more tangible materials with which to work.

Then there’s the problem of the corporate state. Foege finds that it is choking truly creative inspiration in favor of immediate financial gains, and he effectively argues that real tinkerers need their own space and the freedom to fail. Coming up short is how tinkerers ultimately succeed. However, tinkering alone isn’t a virtue; there’s a dark side as well. In addition to Edison, readers also learn about the not-so-great men (and women) found tinkering in places like the military industrial complex and financial services industry - and how they almost brought the nation to its knees with their harebrained ideas. Still, tinkering remains a force to be reckoned with in the 21st century.

Mostly laudatory history mixed with a provocative treatise on creating neat new things.

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50 LICKS Myths and Stories from Half a Century of the Rolling Stones

Fornatale, Pete with Corbett, Bernard and Fornatale, Peter Thomas Bloomsbury (288 pp.) $17.00 paperback | Feb. 26, 2013 978-1-60819-921-1

A numbingly familiar look back at the Stones’ 50-year career.

Pete Fornatale (Back to the Garden: The Story of Woodstock and How It Changed a Generation, 2010, etc.), who died in April 2012, was a longtime host at New York’s WNEW, an FM radio power with access to some of the biggest names of the classic-rock era.

Old on-air interviews with most of the Stones conducted by the author and his colleague Dave Herman serve as the foundation for this fawning oral history, much of which will be old news to fans of the band. The biggest problem with any rehash of the group’s career at this point is that nearly everyone with a tale to tell has already told it at full length. Band members Keith Richards, Bill Wyman and Ronnie Wood have all published their own books, some of which are excerpted here. Mick Jagger hasn’t taken pen in hand yet, but he is already a past master of the interview that says nothing. A lengthy sit-down with Pete Fornatale, conducted in 1989 on the launch of the Stones’ clothing line, is a main attraction here, and it could not be more vacuous. Is there anything new to be gleaned about the band’s early history from Andrew Loog Oldham or Marianne Faithfull after their fine memoirs? Can journalist Robert Greenfield offer any fresh insights about the band’s 1972 tour not found in his definitive report STP? At the other end of the interview spectrum, the writer offers wince-inducing recollections from the hoi polloi: co-author Bernard Corbett on his junior high years as a Stones fan, radio engineer Jeremy Rainer on his duty as an extra in the concert movie Shine a Light. Dully told and messily designed, the book is a dutifully assembled piece of anniversary product that does little to illuminate the Stones’ saga.

The Stones’ dog-eared story is better told in a dozen other accounts. (4-color throughout)

NANCY The Story of Lady Astor Fort, Adrian St. Martin’s (400 pp.) $25.99 | Jan. 22, 2013 978-0-312-59903-4

Fort (Archibald Wavell, 2009, etc.) presents a life of Nancy Astor (1879– 1964), a Southern belle and the first woman elected to the House of Commons of the British Parliament.

Marriage to Waldorf Astor cast Nancy Langhorne into a Gilded-Age society already well populated by many American

“dollar princesses.” The difference was, rather than bringing wealth, she married it. She was brash and had a knack for infuriating people, but she was still the political hostess of the generation. Dinner invitees included politicians, artists, writers and royalty—as long as they were interesting. Nancy, a teetotaler and Christian Scientist, made no bones about her dislikes, which were myriad: music, trade unionists, alcohol, Catholics, Jews, communists, socialists and others. Still, she managed to be elected to Parliament for Plymouth, taking her husband’s place in the Commons when he inherited his father’s title. Fort gracefully interweaves the immense changes that took place in England in those years with the Astors’ efforts to foster the needs of their constituents. Nancy was considered too liberal by her contemporaries, especially in relation to her promotion of women’s and children’s issues. At the same time, her attitude toward government intervention would suit today’s conservatives well. She was assertive to the point of bullying and had a caustic wit; she said whatever was on her mind. Her antics keep this book moving briskly, and the author’s keen knowledge of the early 20th century is impressive. Nancy was a loose cannon who, in spite of herself, managed to aid the English in their struggle through the Depression and two world wars.

Not the usual gossipy tale of the rich and famous, but rather a wonderful history of tumultuous times. (8-page b/w photo insert)

IKE AND DICK Portrait of a Strange Political Marriage

Frank, Jeffrey Simon & Schuster (384 pp.) $30.00 | Feb. 3, 2013 978-1-4165-8701-9

Novelist and former New Yorker and Washington Post editor Frank (Trudy Hopedale, 2007, etc.) delves into political biography, focusing on the complicated relationship between President Dwight Eisenhower and his two-term vice president, Richard Nixon.

Though both private men from similar backgrounds, Eisenhower and Nixon differed in many ways. When Eisenhower chose Nixon, then a senator from California, as his running mate in 1952, it seemed to be more the choice of his advisers and one of political expediency, as a way to satisfy the right wing of the Republican Party. As Frank demonstrates, the pair’s long relationship was marked by “a fluctuating, unspoken level of discomfort,” and they were never close (even after Eisenhower’s grandson and Nixon’s daughter married in 1968).

Frank points out how the eager Nixon felt “like a junior officer” in the presence of the war-hero president, who disliked Nixon personally and rarely enthusiastically supported him. Indeed, the author portrays Nixon’s vice presidency as often frustrating and stressful. In one engaging section, Frank describes how Eisenhower seriously considered removing Nixon from the reelection ticket, but he expressed it to Nixon in an unclear and

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“A simply told account that reminds us of the awesome weight accompanying this signal honor.” from living with honor

passive-aggressive fashion; meanwhile, the president’s health issues made a Nixon succession a real possibility on multiple occasions. Throughout, Frank highlights the major events of the Eisenhower presidency, the following presidential elections and beyond, filtering them effectively through the lens of the Eisenhower-Nixon dynamic. The author does a fine job delineating the complex personalities of both men, and he provides novelistic touches befitting his background. At one point, he describes the colorful political figure Clare Boothe Luce as “beautiful, charming, and slightly mad,” and, at another, he thoughtfully compares Nixon to an Anthony Trollope character.

A well-researched and -written history that will satisfy both Eisenhower and Nixon aficionados. (8 pages of b/w photographs)

THE SEARCHERS The Making of an American Legend Frankel, Glenn Bloomsbury (416 pp.) $28.00 | Feb. 19, 2013 978-1-60819-105-5

A gracefully presented narrative of the 1956 John Ford film The Searchers, which was based on a 1954 novel that was based on an actual Comanche kidnapping of a white girl in 1836.

Pulitzer Prize–winning former Washington Post reporter Frankel (Journalism/Univ. of Texas; Rivonia’s Children: Three Families and the Cost of Conscience in White South Africa, 1999, etc.) focuses on the American Southwest and the relationships between American Indians and whites. The author begins in 1954 with a shocking moment—director Ford, well into his cups, punching Henry Fonda in the nose. And away we go on a remarkable journey from Hollywood to Monument Valley and into the past as Frankel digs into American cultural history, unearthing some gold. He spends many pages telling the story of Cynthia Ann Parker, the kidnapped girl. The Parkers searched hard for her afterward, but it was not until 1860 that she was re-captured in the bloody Battle of Pease River. By then, she was in every way but genetically a Comanche. Her transition back to white society was painful, and after some moments of celebrity, she fell into obscurity. One of her Comanche children, though, who came to call himself Quanah Parker, emerged as one of the principal spokesmen for American Indian causes. Frankel pursues Cynthia Ann’s and Quanah’s stories with gusto then, nearly 200 pages later, shifts his attention to Alan LeMay, author of The Searchers and nearly a score of other novels. Then it’s on to John Ford and the making of the film with John Wayne. An epilogue deals with the amicable reunions of the Parker descendants and relatives, white and Comanche.

A thoroughly researched, clearly written account of an obsessive search through the tangled borderland of fact and fiction, legend and myth.

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ON THE MAP A Mind-Expanding Exploration of the Way the World Looks Garfield, Simon Gotham Books (368 pp.) $27.50 | Jan. 1, 2013 978-1-592-40779-8

A vivid foray into the romance of maps.

This is a roughly chronological survey of choice moments in cartography, with Garfield (Just My Type: A Book About Fonts, 2011, etc.) keeping his focus trained on maps that present not just the lay of the land, but that transport and move us—maps that have something to say about who we are at some particular historical point in time. Although he starts with Eratosthenes, Strabo and Ptolemy, the author digs into the mysterious allure of maps after the strange interruption in mapmaking that followed Ptolemy for more than 1,000 years. Longer chapters provide lively histories of great maps, cartographic phantoms like the Mountains of Kong in Africa or the detective work of Dr. Snow’s London cholera map. Garfield is equally at ease with treasure maps, where the loot is guarded by dangerous reefs, angry birds and an army of land crabs, or when ruminating on the great blank spots in 19th-century maps of Africa, suggestive of empty territory for the imperial taking. The author punctuates these chapters with colorful cartographic squibs on, for example, Churchill’s map room or how Kit Williams’ jeweled hare was found (not by a close reading of Williams’ book Masquerade). Always present is a concern for how maps touch us: “We may detect the emotional state of the amateur cartographer through the graphite and the nib of hand-drawn markings, and because we know we are witnessing history as it happens.” Garfield also looks at maps in the movie Casablanca, which brought us to northwest Africa, how the game Monopoly made us familiar with Atlantic City and how GPS has such a hold on our everyday lives.

A fine, fun presentation of the brand of cartography that continues to whet our imaginations.

LIVING WITH HONOR A Memoir

Giunta, Salvatore with Layden, Joe Threshold Editions/Simon & Schuster (320 pp.) $26.00 | Dec. 4, 2012 978-1-4516-9146-7

The first living Medal of Honor winner since the Vietnam War tells his story.

For his conspicuous gallantry on October 25th, 2007, in Afghanistan’s dangerous Korengal Valley, 22-year-old Giunta received the military’s highest award for bravery. To hear him tell it, he did only what he was trained to do, no more than many others

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who behaved so courageously that day. With an assist from Layden (co-author, with Ace Frehley: No Regrets: A Rock ’n’ Roll Memoir, 2011, etc.), Giunta’s conversational narrative builds to the ambush on Honcho Hill that slaughtered two buddies and marked him as a hero. But then: “How can I be so great if I allowed two of my friends to get killed?” An indifferent Iowa schoolboy, Giunta was sitting in his high school chemistry class on 9/11. Two years later, at loggerheads with his father, he joined the Army looking for excitement. After two tours in Afghanistan, he found plenty, but he also acquired a well-earned, cruel brand of wisdom. Self-effacing throughout, unstinting in his praise of his fellow warriors, Giunta remarks on the difference between the exhilaration of combat and the tedium of war. He comments on the effects of adrenaline in battle, the underappreciated role of luck and timing, the emotional distance required to fight effectively, the shocking disposability of life and the decidedly atypical character traits that mark the combat soldier. Candid, confessional, sometimes politically incorrect, Giunta’s tale is at once mundane and remarkable. He has come to terms with the Medal of Honor, largely because he recognizes its inspirational effect on others, but he cannot recall the day he earned it without feeling sadness and loss, without shame that he somehow let down his brothers in battle.

A simply told account that reminds us of the awesome weight accompanying this signal honor.

CATASTROPHIC CARE How American Health Care Killed My Father—and How We Can Fix It

Goldhill, David Knopf (384 pp.) $25.95 | Jan. 10, 2013 978-0-307-96154-9

A media executive’s take on our health care system’s flaws and plan for a totally different approach.

When Goldhill witnessed the death of his father from a hospital-borne infection, he decided to analyze the industry to understand how such a tragedy could occur, concluding that it does not live up to the standards of other industries in our economy. Contrary to the views of acclaimed economists Ken Arrow and Paul Krugman, Goldhill, who has not worked in the health care industry, asserts that the reason the industry provides poor customer service at unaffordable prices and gets uneven results is in large part because market forces are not at work. Patients have ceded their role as consumers to big intermediaries, including insurance companies, Medicare and Medicaid. As in other businesses, he argues, demanding consumers (i.e., patients) can affect quality of services, prices and safety. Goldhill proposes a system that combines a national insurance plan with a marketbased system. His plan has three components: mandatory cradle-to-grave catastrophic health insurance with low premiums and a very high deductible; health savings accounts to which individuals would be required to contribute payments based

on their age; and health loans, which would enable individuals to borrow against future contributions to their health savings accounts in the event of a costly but not catastrophic illness or accident. The author acknowledges that transitioning into a system that makes each individual a purchaser of his or her own health care might take a couple of generations, but he provides some guidelines for easing into it gradually.

Highly readable presentation of one businessman’s solution, likely to provoke discussion if not agreement.

(First printing of 50,000)

AMPLIFY How the Rise of the Social Economy Empowers Us All

Gorbis, Marina Free Press (256 pp.) $26.00 | Jan. 8, 2013 978-1-4516-4118-9

In her first book, futurist Gorbis offers a compelling yet somewhat unconvincing manifesto on how new technologies are facilitating a nascent revolution in which hierarchical institutions will be replaced by self-directing, online, social networking communities.

In the past, the economy, education and other societal institutions were directed and controlled by large, undemocratic institutions. Today, writes the author, older forms of organization are beginning to be replaced by “steadily building villagelike networks on a global scale,” which are “empowered by communication and communication technologies.” She calls this process “socialstructing.” This new world is filled with “amplified individuals” who contribute their expertise to the collective intelligence of the social network, producing knowledge and value in a democratic process, without the dehumanizing effects of bureaucracy and a market economy based on the commodification of everything. Gorbis offers a series of possible scenarios in which, for instance, money and material reward are replaced by the nonmonetary rewards of sharing and contribution, where alternative currencies facilitate rather than negate social connections. She envisions similar socialstructing revolutions in education, governance, science and health care.

While offering much food for thought on where we are heading, too often Gorbis’ work fails to adequately grapple with complex current social problems. For instance, while she acknowledges that there is a current crisis in funding public education, rather than address this crisis, she too readily assumes that socialstructing—learning via social networks—will simply replace public education. Still, the possibilities she suggests are intriguing and useful precisely because they are provocative.

Flawed but challenging, and well worth reading and considering.

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ENCOUNTERING AMERICA Humanistic Psychology, Sixties Culture, and the Shaping of the Modern Self

Grogan, Jessica Perennial/HarperCollins (416 pp.) $14.99 paperback | Jan. 1, 2013 978-0-06-183476-9

Grogan reveals the seminal, but frequently overlooked, influence of the postwar humanistic psychology movement in creating what is sometimes described as today’s “therapy culture,” which includes employee retreats, seminars on sensitivity training, the proliferation of support groups and more.

The author traces the movement back to the enhanced role of psychologists during and after World War II, when they worked with the military to profile recruits and deal with problems faced by veterans. They were unwilling to take a back seat to Freudian psychoanalysts, who dominated the practice of psychotherapy, and the empirical behaviorists, who were hegemonic in academic psychology. Pioneers in the field of humanist psychology, such as Abraham Maslow, advocated an alternative approach that was “oriented around ideas of personal growth and the infusion of values” into therapy. Grogan shows how the perception of alienation in the social climate of the 1950s, as exemplified

by David Riesman’s widely read The Lonely Crowd, supported their critique. At the same time, Carl Rogers revolutionized the practice of nondirective therapy by engaging in a dialogue with patients that emphasized their ability to achieve personal growth.

The influence of the movement was enhanced in the ’60s when humanist psychologists initially joined Timothy Leary in endorsing the use of LSD, the encounter-group therapy practiced in California’s Esalen Institute, meditation and spiritual practices as valid avenues for self-actualization. The women’s liberation movement also owes a debt to humanist psychologists, who pioneered techniques such as consciousness-raising—although Maslow expressed doubts about their goals.

An illuminating cultural history.

SHIP IT HOLLA BALLAS! How a Bunch of 19-Year-Old College Dropouts Used the Internet to Become Poker’s Loudest, Craziest, and Richest Crew

Grotenstein, Jonathan and Reback, Storms St. Martin’s (320 pp.) $25.99 | Jan. 15, 2013 978-1-250-00665-3 A brisk history of Internet poker through the eyes of a group of teens who aced it.

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teenagers who cashed in on the online-poker phenomenon in the early 2000s. Through online chat rooms at popular poker strategy-sharing sites, Orange County–born medical student “Irieguy” met “Raptor,” a college baseball star turned card shark, who then connected with Canadian 20-something “Apathy” and 19-year-old video game aficionado “Good2cu.” Each of them eventually converted and converged their experiences and endless free time into hard cash with games both online and at casino poker tables. The authors astutely explore the history, intricate gaming strategies and psychologies employed by the successful “Ship It Holla Ballas” crew (“Ship It” is exclaimed after a big win in the poker world). As more young, high-stakes card sharks join the narrative, the authors keep the action moving as the Ballas sweep their enthusiasm and increasing expertise off the computer screen to go live in Las Vegas and beyond, entranced by big bucks, opulent amenities and, eventually, the mainstream media spotlight. The cards eventually folded for the worldwide gaming community and the “still under thirty” millionaire Ballas with an unprecedented governmental crackdown on online gambling in 2011.

A catchy chronicle primarily geared toward poker and online-gambling fanatics. (8-page b/w photo insert)

THE SECRET RACE Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France: Doping, Cover-ups, and Winning at All Costs Hamilton, Tyler; Coyle, Daniel Bantam (306 pp.) $28.00 | Sep. 5, 2012 978-0-345-53041-7 978-0-345-53043-1 e-book

With the assistance of Coyle (Lance Armstrong’s War, 2005, etc.), Olympic gold medalist and former professional cyclist Hamilton dishes the dirt on the clandestine culture of doping so endemic to his sport.

“I’m good at pain,” writes the author, who was a longtime U.S. Postal cycling squad teammate of Lance Armstrong. Readers soon learn that this addiction to pain is an absolute requirement to survive his pressure-cooker life as a professional cyclist, a masochistic existence that makes the physical risks run in sports like football and pro boxing look trivial. Hamilton’s story is also partly the story of once-revered cycling celeb (and now disgraced doper) Armstrong, as the two were rivals for years. Hamilton chronicles the entire rise-and-fall arc of his professional career, going from his beginnings as a clean-living anti-doping idealist in the early 1990s to becoming a slave to the intense competitive pressure to ingest a chemical smorgasbord of performance-enhancing substances just to keep up with everyone else. Any notions of cycling as a clean sport go out the window immediately. Hamilton’s unsparing account of the damaging (and often dope-fueled) physical and mental toll that top-level cycling takes on its practitioners, not to mention the constant pressure to evade drug testers and beat the drug

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tests themselves, is a decidedly bleak and unglamorous portrait of the sporting life. For Hamilton, compounding this maniacal all-or-nothing quest for victory was the fact that he had to constantly deal with Armstrong, who comes off as Stalin on a bike: a sociopathic rage-prone prima donna who went to great lengths to destroy the lives of those who threatened his reputation.

Fascinating, surprisingly disturbing look at the layers of corruption behind the sleek facade of professional cycling.

THE GENIUS OF DOGS How Dogs Are Smarter than You Think Hare, Brian; Woods, Vanessa Dutton (384 pp.) $27.95 | Feb. 5, 2013 978-0-525-95319-7

Hare (Evolutionary Anthropology/ Duke Univ.) and Woods (Bonobo Handshake: A Memoir of Love and Adventure in the Congo, 2010) delve into the rich cognitive world of dogs and how they domesticated themselves through natural selection.

Dogs are the authors’ special subjects—Hare founded Duke’s Canine Cognition Center, and Woods is a research scientist there—and they examine the scientific studies of dogs’ communication skills (from visual signals to categorization), their empathy and cooperative talents, and their ability to infer, find solutions and display flexibility. But one question the authors tackle with the greatest vigor: Why the dog at all?

If dogs evolved from wolves—which were threats and competitors of humans in the carnivore guild—why did domestication become an option? What forces drove it? Hare and Woods clearly reintroduce readers to the old garbage-eater-on-theoutskirts-of-camp theory of wolves and man finding common ground but from a very specific angle. It was the friendliest of the wolves, those that could coexist with humans, that benefitted from this stable food supply. A relaxed wolf, one that had come to understand the communicative intentions of human behavior, was a wolf with more offspring. It wasn’t long before wolves started to change physiologically. Their breeding cycles changed, their heads became smaller, they became distinctive to the human eye and could be ignored or encouraged.

“Humans did not set out to domesticate wolves,” write the authors. “Wolves domesticated themselves. The first dog breed was not created by humans’ selection or breeding but by natural selection.” Interestingly, the same anatomical signatures that differentiate dogs from wolves are seen in bonobos and chimpanzees and humans and their forebears.

A well-presented investigation into how dogs came to be. (8-page color insert)

CONTAGION How Commerce Has Spread Disease

Harrison, Mark Yale Univ. (400 pp.) $38.00 | Jan. 8, 2013 978-0-300-12357-9

AIDS probably began in Africa and the influenza of 1918 in Europe. Modern transportation spread them across the world, but pre-modern transportation did the same with surprising efficiency, according to this detailed, scholarly examination of the politics of pandemics.

Harrison (History of Medicine/Oxford Univ.; Medicine and Victory: British Military Medicine in the Second World War, 2009, etc.) begins in the 14th century with bubonic plague, carried west from central Asia by sea and land commerce. He also examines yellow fever, carried from Africa by slaves after 1500. No other disease appears until the author reaches the 19th century, when cholera first appeared. Steam-powered ships, railways and then airlines accelerated the spread of human, as well as plant and animal, diseases, leading to our century’s increasing collection of oddities, from SARS to mad cow disease to AIDS to the mundane but often-deadly influenza, hepatitis and malaria. Until a century ago, quarantines seemed vital, so the subject dominates the book’s first half. Traders hated to lose money, and their governments were often sympathetic, so science—even when correct— still often took a back seat to national interests. Thus, during the mad cow disease panic, countries prohibited beef imports with an eye to eliminating competition with local ranchers. Harrison devotes little time to the diseases themselves, focusing more on public health tactics (usually useless until the late 19th century) and how governments and traders responded.

While a valuable contribution to the history of epidemiology, the book contains more than average readers may want to know about sanitary laws over the centuries and the accompanying diplomatic and medical quarrels.

THE FIRST MUSLIM The Story of Muhammad Hazleton, Lesley Riverhead (336 pp.) $27.95 | Jan. 24, 2013 978-1-59448-728-6

A longtime reporter on the Middle East, Hazleton (After the Prophet: The Epic Story of the Shia-Sunni Split in Islam, 2009, etc.) carefully delineates the great events in the life of the “first Muslim,” who, like the Christian prophet Jesus, was chosen as the “translator” of God’s message to mankind.

The author sifts through and synthesizes many differing and conflicting sources for a gently reverential and ultimately winning study of a humble soul in search of his identity. Hazleton

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WE KILLED:

The Rise of Women in American Comedy Kohen, Yael Sarah Crichton/ Farrar, Straus and Giroux (336 pp.) $27.00 Oct. 16, 2012 978-0-374-28723-8

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A: Absolutely. And even today it’s considered unattractive to be funny, so a lot of women don’t want to go out and make cracks in front of other people. It probably does come from that. What I also find to be an issue is if women are talking about men’s things, then men will think they’re funny. But if women are talking about women’s things to women, people are like, Oh, buhbuhbuh, she’s not funny. Sometimes the way women talk to women is very different than how they talk to men.

But it is as you say; it’s definitely not considered attractive to be funny. I think that’s changing, though.

If you look at some of the comics today, they’re incredibly attractive; it’s one of the big shifts in stand-up. Personally, I think it’s a positive. However, if they’re only looking for good-looking comics, then you’ve basically taken another entertainment field and made it exclusively for good-looking women. But what’s good about it is we can now hear jokes from these good-looking women. You’re not just saying a pretty face is just a pretty face, but someone who can make us laugh. I think it’s probably changing the polite aspect of being funny.

Q: Where do you think this “are women funny” debate comes from?

A: My guess is there are fewer women who go out for comedy, and within that, you’re going to have a certain proportion that just isn’t going to be funny, which could make the lack of funny women seem more exaggerated. Another reason a lot of comics and bookers mention is, because so few women have what it takes, they get booked to certain shows before they’re really ready. Comedy, particularly stand-up, is a skill that’s developed over time. And part of the debate probably comes from stereotypes. With the Christopher Hitchens piece, he says he’s talking about everyday women, not comedians—although you can go back and forth on that—but I always got the sense it was the sort of women he was attracted to. If you read the piece, I think it said a lot more about who he wanted to date than anything it said about women. The man has passed, and I feel bad saying it, but I think this comes from cultural stereotypes. There are a lot of men who don’t say this. Richard Belzer from Law & Order for instance; he made a number of women’s careers.

The other thing a lot of women talk about is how people will say, Oh, you’re funny for a girl. One of the things I hope you come away with from the book is how all these women, who are supposedly the exception to the rule, happen to be a lot of people—it’s not like two comics! I don’t know why this idea is out there and why we’re talking about it now, but it’s not like it hasn’t come up before. At a certain point, you hope we’re going to stop talking about it, but you wonder if it’s going to happen. It makes a good headline, you know.

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Q: Many comics you speak to refer to “the truth.” What role do you think authenticity plays in their acts?

A: What makes comedy good and what resonates is the truth behind it. I think that’s what audiences like about it, but I don’t think everybody does it well.

Sometimes you can sense that somebody is saying something where you’re going, Yeah, right. When that happens, you have a harder time succeeding. Some of the people I talked to said the younger comics today say what they think is funny, not what is true to them, and it doesn’t work. I’ve been told that a lot of women are going for sexy potty mouth, which isn’t necessarily true to who they are and isn’t successful. In that way, it’s not true, but it’s also about point of view; that’s the other thing people talk about that makes one comic stand out from another. Like Tina Fey has a point of view about something, and that’s what comes through in her jokes. You see it in sitcom, too; I think people like their comedy, whatever its form, to be relatable.

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Q: Something that occurred to me is perhaps it comes from the old Emily Post–type dictum that it’s impolite for women to laugh.

In her first book-length study, Marie Claire contributing editor Yael Kohen takes a serious look at women in the funny business. Carol Burnett descended the stair draped with a curtain rod, Phyllis Diller and Joan Rivers lamented the throes of living with Fang and Edgar, Mary Tyler Moore tossed her beret into the Minneapolis sky, Lily Tomlin’s Ernestine set the switchboard alight, Roseanne Barr revealed the plight of the working-class ‘Domestic Goddess,’ Ellen DeGeneres came out on national television. And yet, in 2007, Vanity Fair published the late Christopher Hitchens’ now infamous article, “Why Women Aren’t Funny.” Kohen uses that incendiary piece as a springboard for We Killed: The Rise of Women in American Comedy, providing a riveting oral history told by the over 200 comics, writers and producers she interviewed. Here, she takes a moment with Kirkus to offer her own thoughts on the challenges facing America’s leading funny women.

effectively fleshes out the iconic events of the messenger’s life.

Left fatherless as a baby, shunted to a wet nurse who cared for him and brought him up in the Bedouin ways, Muhammad grew into a capable, hardworking caravan agent for his uncle in Mecca before making an advantageous match with a wealthy widow 16 years his elder, Khadija, who would prove a steady companion and his first convert. Muhammad first made a name for himself as the arbitrator in the collective repair of the damaged sacred sanctuary of Kaaba; his altered state atop Mount Hira at age 40 was an experience of “poetic faith,” Hazleton explains, resulting in beautiful verses flowing from his lips. He spoke urgently of social justice and reform, and he spoke in Arabic. Exiled from Mecca by the ruling elite, he again proved a natural, masterly negotiator among tribes in Medina, appealing to a higher authority to solve their disputes and drawing up a binding contract of monotheism. Hazleton explains that he resorted to violence only after a passive resistance got him nowhere—the troublesome precedent of jihad. The author writes poignantly of the evolution of the public messenger from the private man.

A levelheaded, elegant look at the life of the prophet amid the making of a legend.

RAISING GLOBAL IQ Preparing Our Students for a Shrinking Planet

Hobert, Carl F. Beacon (232 pp.) $26.95 | $26.95 e-book | Feb. 12, 2013 978-0-8070-3288-6 978-0-8070-3290-9 e-book

Hobert, a Boston educator, proposes grading America’s schools on how well curricula are training students in areas such as conflict-resolution skills and foreign languages, and encouraging travel abroad and service-related activities.

“We have to use curricula in US schools to build bridges not moats,” he writes. The author explains that at the time of 9/11, he was teaching French and Spanish in a Boston secondary school.

He was dismayed by President George W. Bush’s speech naming Iran, Iraq and North Korea as an Axis of Evil and distressed when suicide bombers in Jerusalem killed schoolchildren. This led him to create the nonprofit organization Axis of Hope. After reading the headline about the bombing, he decided to scrap his lesson plan for the day and conduct discussions with his classes on how the U.S. and other governments might intervene to defuse violence and lay a foundation for global peaceful coexistence. This spur-of-the-moment workshop was transformative. He decided that his vocation was to teach students how to think globally and to help create curricula for schools and community groups.

Under the auspices of Axis of Hope, Hobert began conducting conflict-resolution workshops for middle and high school students and educators and teaching a course (Educating Global Citizens) at Boston University School of Education. Since the U.S. has the third-largest Spanish-speaking population in the world, and Mandarin Chinese is spoken by a majority of the world’s

population, the author proposes that these be incorporated in primary-through-secondary school education. Hobert weaves in a number of entertaining anecdotes about his own experience to illustrate his points. He describes traveling abroad with his parents, shepherding high school student trips and conducting a workshop about conflict resolution.

A persuasive call for updating educational standards to meet the challenge of globalization.

HEARTS ON FIRE Twelve Stories of Today’s Visionaries Igniting Idealism into Action Iscol, Jill and Cookson, Peter W. Random House (160 pp.) $15.00 paperback | Jan. 15, 2013 978-0-8129-8430-9 978-0-8129-9390-5 e-book

Iscol and Cookson bring together 12 stories of activists who made an impact on a population through philanthropy, activism and businesses focused on the well-being of others.

Iscol has been involved in many philanthropic and governmental organizations, and Cookson is an experienced educator who founded an education-consulting company, Ideas Without Borders. The featured activists used different methods to put their idealism into action. Examples include the journalist who leads the Man Up campaign, a doctor who created a floating clinic in Lake Tanganyika (between Congo and Tanzania), founder of the Freelancers Union and a CEO whose company enables people to run their own “microwork factories.” One of the redeeming values of this book is that the authors opt for lesser-known names rather than humanitarians who receive plenty of publicity. They show that changing the life of a population can be done on a smaller, less-publicized scale. However, though the characters are admirable, the book itself is dull, and the disjointed narratives become repetitive rather than inspiring. Part of the problem is the writing. Each activist writes his or her own story, and not all have the storytelling skills to bring their journeys to life. Also lacking is a strong thread to piece the narratives together and deliver a singular conclusion or moral.

Iscol writes in her conclusion that the goal of this book is to inspire people to commit to making the world a better place, but her call to action is too vague and not very impactful.

Some inspiring content packaged in a generic, unengaging way.

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THE GREAT AGNOSTIC Robert Ingersoll and American Freethought

Jacoby, Susan Yale Univ. (256 pp.) $25.00 | Jan. 8, 2013 978-0-300-13725-5

Veteran journalist Jacoby (Never Say Die: The Myth and Marketing of the New Old Age, 2011, etc.) pens less a biography than a series of sympathetic essays on the ideas of Robert Ingersoll (1833–1899), a Gilded-Age media superstar whose speeches entertained vast audiences even of those who disagreed with his agnosticism.

Enthusiastic followers included Mark Twain, Andrew Carnegie, Eugene Debs, Thomas Edison, Clarence Darrow and W.C. Fields, yet he has largely vanished from history. At the same time, religion—in America uniquely among developed nations— remains almost universally respected and politically influential if sometimes distressingly anti-intellectual. Largely self-educated, Ingersoll passed the Illinois bar at age 21, rising in Republican state politics to become attorney general in 1867. Despite the atheism that put elective office out of reach, his brilliant oratory kept him influential in the party, whose deference to conservative Christian beliefs did not appear for another century. While Ingersoll’s atheism filled auditoriums and provoked outraged sermons and editorials, many public stances were far ahead of his time. He denounced racism, discrimination against blacks and anti-immigration laws. He spoke out for the equality of women—not merely for the vote which preoccupied activists at the time—but for birth control and equality in marriage, education and jobs: positions no man and few women of his generation advocated. Nineteenth-century unbelievers tended toward pseudo-scientific social Darwinism, but not Ingersoll, who supported social reforms, free public education and workers’ rights.

More earnest than truculent, Jacoby writes for a readership of freethinkers, but believers who stumble upon the book will find it hard to deny that, irreligion aside, Ingersoll was a thoroughly admirable figure.

THE DOUBLE V How Wars, Protest, and Harry Truman Desegregated America’s Military James Jr., Rawn Bloomsbury (336 pp.) $28.00 | Jan. 22, 2013 978-1-60819-608-1

An expansive history of AfricanAmericans in the U.S. military, fighting for fair treatment as they risked their

lives at war.

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D.C., lawyer with a deep family military tradition. His grandfather, Cornelius James Sr., served in a racially segregated U.S. Army during World War II, hoping that his sons might serve in a less prejudiced environment. One son became an Army colonel, another became an Army major and a third became a Navy commander. In clear but often flat prose, the author skillfully examines how the Caucasian-dominated military, with a few notable exceptions in the top ranks, treated African-American members as second-class citizens. James shows convincingly that the interplay of African-American status in the military and in civilian life affected one another, for better and for worse. He opens the book with a scene from World War I, then harks back as far as the Revolutionary War to bring the mostly upsetting saga forward. The most important individual of the book, in terms of positive change, is President Harry Truman. Although not by inclination a civil rights activist, on July 26, 1949, Truman issued Executive Order 9981, which commanded desegregation within all branches of the armed forces. Positive change proceeded slowly after that. Though it appeared Truman would lose the 1948 presidential election, he won, and after the election, he supported the executive order in vigorous, concrete ways.

An inspiring story spanning parts of five centuries as African-Americans pushed back against the powers that be to achieve more-or-less equal treatment inside the military.

SPREADABLE MEDIA Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture

Jenkins, Henry; Ford, Sam; Green, Joshua New York Univ. (352 pp.) $29.95 | Feb. 15, 2013 978-0-8147-4350-8

A wide-ranging examination of the contemporary media environment as individuals increasingly control their own creation of content.

Jenkins (Communication and Journalism/Univ. of Southern California; Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, 2006, etc.) and digital strategists Ford and Green collaborate in a book combining abstract academic theory, how-to advice for businesses and popular-cultural anecdotes for lay readers. The basic message is simple—“If it doesn’t spread, it’s dead.”—but the authors express their theories with language that will feel unfamiliar to nonspecialist users of digital media. Even most Luddites probably know that circa 2012, content circulates from grass-roots sources as well as corporate sources. But why that is happening, and exactly what it means for corporate bottom lines, nonprofit think tanks and individual consumers, is less evident. The authors attempt to provide a framework for understanding the phenomena involved, going beyond the bits-and-bytes technology to the elusive democratization of communication throughout global society. The outcomes of a networked culture are not inevitable; without the predictions of further change, the authors write that their book would be pointless. In the introduction, the authors aid general understanding

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by sharing the example of Susan Boyle, the remarkable songstress who rose from obscurity through YouTube. The case study helps explain not only the spread of entertainment content, but also the spread of news content, overtly political and religious messages, advertising and branding. In the past, Boyle’s fame could have theoretically spread slowly through individuals sharing newspaper clippings by snail mail, but she never could have become an international celebrity within a week of her singing debut without the power of networked culture.

May serve as a useful handbook for digital media strategists and marketers, but this dense tome will take a major effort for nonspecialists to fully understand.

ALL NATURAL A Skeptic’s Quest for Health and Happiness in an Age of Ecological Anxiety Johnson, Nathanael Rodale (352 pp.) $26.99 | Jan. 29, 2013 978-1-60529-074-4

In his debut, journalist and This American Life contributor Johnson examines aspects of medicine, food and the environment to encourage informed decisions among readers caught between the nature-vs.-technology argument.

The author personalizes his topics by filtering them through accounts of his upbringing during the 1980s as the son of thencountercultural parents who embraced natural living and through his journey into parenthood. Though he admits to a romanticism that favors a “natural aura,” he remains open to contrary evidence and allows that both camps can be valid at different times.

Johnson examines controversies with choice anecdotes, research and interviews, including: the success of midwifery at reducing maternal deaths in comparison to births aided by common obstetrical interventions; the belief that raw milk carries harmful pathogens while pasteurized milk is safer; the back-to-the-land school of thought when it comes to nutrition versus the results of industrialized chemistry; the purported dangers of sugar consumption; risks and benefits related to vaccination; homeopathic and allopathic approaches to medicine; and large-scale and sustainable farming. The most intriguing sections feature studies on human milk and on anthropological findings in remote areas, while sections that recall the author’s childhood perspective border on the indulgent. Johnson surmises that nature and technology could coexist—a balanced and perhaps obvious view unlikely to satisfy the fringes—but he presents a refreshing optimism that neither extolls the organic to the point of supporting pseudoscience nor negates the value of scientific advancements.

Not intended as an exposé, but as an overview, the book strikes at the heart of hot-button issues with an Everyman appeal.

THE BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY OF POPULAR MUSIC From Adele to Ziggy, the Real A to Z of Rock and Pop Jones, Dylan Picador (912 pp.) $28.00 | Nov. 1, 2012 978-1-250-03186-0

Not the comprehensive reference the title promises, but a long-winded volume of music criticism by journalist Jones (When Ziggy Played Guitar: David Bowie and Four Minutes that Shook the World, 2012, etc.), editor of the U.K. version of GQ. The author has written a number of books about music and musicians, mostly of the rock variety. Coming-of-age just about when punk and new wave livened up the music scene in Britain and around the world, Jones shows off his intricate familiarity, particularly with London scenesters from ABC to X-Ray Spex. His tastes, though, seem to have grown more conservative and a bit broader to encompass some jazz, hip-hop and schmaltzy pop. “Like many critics, I tend to have an aversion to any hysterical celebration of the new and the fashionable,” writes Jones in the opening of his entry on Gary Numan, “often choosing to be contrary just for the hell of it.” This self-conscious awareness of how his words will be taken continues throughout the book, which is not so much a biographical dictionary of popular music as an autobiographical dictionary about pop music’s relationship to Jones. The hapless buyer who takes the title seriously and expects a reference book will learn this, and only this, about Crosby, Stills & Nash: “A varnished log cabin.” The next entry, for Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, reads in its entirety, “A varnished log cabin with an unvarnished door.” On Genesis: “ ‘The Carpet Crawlers’ and ‘Los Endos’ are officially the two Genesis songs you’re allowed to like.” Jones is witty and enjoyable enough in small doses, but the book is filled with odd choices. One of the longest entries is on actress Shirley MacLaine, who gets 13 pages, while Aretha Franklin receives no mention (other than brief appearances in the entries on Michael Hutchence and Dave Stewart).

Some choice nuggets hidden among an uneven “reference” book.

THE BIG TRUCK THAT WENT BY How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster

Katz, Jonathan M. Palgrave Macmillan (320 pp.) $26.00 | Jan. 8, 2013 978-0-230-34187-6

A top-notch account of Haiti’s recent history, including the January 2010 earthquake, from the only American reporter stationed in the country at the time.

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“Vividly captures the controversy and pain that accompanied this reopening of a dark chapter in American history.” from a misplaced massacre

Katz broke the story of how the deadly cholera outbreak, which spread in the months after the earthquake, was brought to the region by infected Nepalese U.N. peacekeepers and spread by inadequate sanitation. In his debut, the author chronicles his many investigations during his years living in and writing about Haiti. Unlike coverage by other writers on the island’s recent history, Katz’s recounting of the earthquake disaster, and the international mobilization that followed, is part of an ongoing story. This account complements those of others who have written of their direct experiences with the aftermath of the earthquake, but Katz’s position on the ground when the disaster struck makes this book unique—“it allowed me to understand both sides of the divide, between those who seek to improve how aid is given, and those who have been trying to improve their own lives for so long.” His contacts and local knowledge gave him special insight into the way the relief operation developed. Katz shows in detail how well-meaning actor Sean Penn (who lacked expertise) fed media hype about flooding dangers and diphtheria scares, which got in the way of efforts by qualified experts such as epidemiologist Paul Farmer.

The author reports how promised aid funds didn’t arrive and NGO relief funds were misspent, while Haitians, presumed to be corrupt, were shut out of involvement in relief efforts. He also examines the involvement of the Duvalier clan.

An eye-opening, trailblazing exposé.

A MISPLACED MASSACRE Struggling Over the Memory of Sand Creek

Kelman, Ari Harvard Univ. (384 pp.) $35.00 | Feb. 11, 2013 978-0-674-04585-9

A historian unravels the tangled story behind the establishment of the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site.

On November 29, 1864, with almost six months of bloody fighting remaining in the Civil War, U.S. Army Col. John Chivington and a force of Colorado militia attacked a Cheyenne and Arapaho village about 40 miles from Fort Lyon. For Chivington, the engagement was heroic, a defeat of likely Confederate sympathizers, Indians who had terrorized the frontier. For his subordinate, Silas Soule, the “battle” was a slaughter of defenseless women and children, and he ordered his men not to fire or take part in the atrocities that ensued.

For George Bent, witness and survivor, the massacre at Sand Creek constituted a cultural catastrophe. These three competing narratives developed in the immediate wake of Sand Creek, and they persist more than 140 years later. Kelman (History/ Univ. of California, Davis; A River and Its City: The Nature of Landscape in New Orleans, 2003) frequently harks back to them as he recounts the effort to bring the site under the supervision of the National Park Service. Instead of the much-wished-for “healing” and “reconciliation,” in publications, in public meetings and on the Internet, old conflicts were renewed among 2570

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constituencies—private landowners, the tribes and the federal government—jostling to seize control of the Sand Creek narrative. Notwithstanding broad agreement on the geographical dimensions of the site, interpreting events proved remarkably contentious. Traditional historians, ethnographers, archaeologists and cartographers all figured into the effort to memorialize Sand Creek. While Kelman makes his sympathies clear, he mostly plays it straight in presenting the various clashing viewpoints. The Sand Creek Massacre, he notes, had its origins in the fight for control of the West. The tortured cultural and political struggle to properly remember it resulted in the 391st unit of the National Park Service.

Vividly captures the controversy and pain that accompanied this reopening of a dark chapter in American history. (12 halftones; 7 maps)

MAGICAL JOURNEY An Apprenticeship in Contentment

Kenison, Katrina Grand Central Publishing (288 pp.) $24.99 | Jan. 8, 2013 978-1-4555-0723-8

A collection of soul-searching reflections by a woman coming to terms with the three major challenges of midlife: change, loss and death.

After sending her troubled youngest son to boarding school to pull himself together again, writer and editor Kenison suddenly realized that her life “as a mother of children at home” was over. All she had so painstakingly built in the first half of her life was starting to come apart. But rather than succumb to despair, the author decided to turn her focus inward and use the opportunity to begin what mythologist Joseph Campbell called “the hero’s journey.” Campbell’s archetype was based in male experience, but it was still a useful starting point for Kenison, who speaks directly about the transformational midlife experiences that are unique to women—e.g., menopause. As she dealt with the physical “depletion[s]” of aging, the unaccustomed silence of an empty home and the sometimes-uncomfortable shifts in her marriage, she also had to cope with a close friend’s terminalcancer diagnosis. It was yet another rite of initiation along a new, unmarked path. While mourning for her friend, Kenison began to understand the power of gratitude and take even more profound pleasure in everything she had ever taken for granted, from “a night of peaceful sleep” to “[her] husband’s embrace.”

She also realized that in loss was a freedom that would allow her to explore meaningful ways to experience life. No longer bound to the hearth, she immersed herself in the practice of yoga at a training center away from her home, and she learned the healing art of reiki, which allowed her to connect more deeply with others around her.

Warm and wise.

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THE GIRLS OF ATOMIC CITY The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II

Kiernan, Denise Touchstone/Simon & Schuster (400 pp.) $26.00 | Mar. 5, 2013 978-1-4516-1752-8 A fresh take on the secret city built in the mountains of Tennessee as part of the Manhattan Project during World

War II. Kiernan (co-author: Stuff Every American Should Know, 2012, etc.) examines the construction of what became known as Oak Ridge, Tenn., a city built as part of the atomic bomb program. She has worked intensively with surviving women members of the work force and with local residents to put together the oral history on which this account is based. In the two years after the federal government took ownership of around 80,000 acres of mountain woodland and farm sites, the population rose to 75,000, and consumption of electric power from the nearby generating plant outpaced New York City. Many of the workers recruited were young women from farm backgrounds whom project administrators judged to be particularly suitable to the kinds of work that needed to be done, under the veil of secrecy that was imposed. The security and discouragement from talking about work becomes a pervasive feature of Kiernan’s narrative. Those who violated guidelines were speedily removed, never to be seen around the site again. The author parallels her account of the construction of Oak Ridge with chapters on the development of the science that made nuclear fission possible, and she shows how Oak Ridge became a city and community after the war.

An inspiring account of how people can respond with their best when called upon. (16-page b/w insert)

IS GOD HAPPY? Selected Essays

Kolakowski, Leszek Basic (352 pp.) $28.99 | Feb. 5, 2013 978-0-465-08099-1

A collection of essays by the Polish philosopher Kolakowski (1927–2009), viewed by some as one of the intellectual progenitors of Poland’s Solidarity movement.

Respected internationally for his opposition to Marxism, as reflected in his three-volume study Main Currents of Marxism, the author was expelled from Poland’s United Workers’ Party in 1956 and fired from his philosophy chair at the University of Warsaw in 1968. The present collection has been assembled and edited by his widow and collaborator, Agnieszka Kolakowska, and includes some essays published for the first time in English.

There are three sections. The first part includes selected writings on Marxism, communism, socialism, totalitarianism and

ideology in general. In her introduction, Kolakowska explains their current relevance because of Kolakowski’s warning that “the spectre is stronger than the spells we cast on it. It might come back to life.” In the second part, the author focuses on religion, and most of the pieces have not appeared in English before. In the third part, Kolakowski takes up the philosophical issues that preoccupied him for much of his life. More than 20 years after the fall of the Soviet Union, fears about the revival of Marxism may seem anachronistic, but Kolakowski’s views on God, religion and truth show his thinking about totalitarian ideology and its relation to Marxism in a fresh light. He addresses common features of Marxism, Nazism and Mussolini’s brand of fascism, attempting to identify what was common and particular to the three, as well as how the Holocaust and Stalin’s gulag system can be compared. As a believer in God and a humanist, he affirms “the main ideas of the Enlightenment [which]… have their historical origins in Christianity.”

Stimulating and provocative.

MASTERMIND How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes

Konnikova, Maria Viking (288 pp.) $26.95 | Jan. 7, 2013 978-0-670-02657-9

A psychologist’s guide to mindful thinking in the vein of Sherlock Holmes.

“You see, but you do not observe,” says Holmes to Dr. Watson in Arthur Conan Doyle’s story “A Scandal in Bohemia.” Once again, the ever-sharp fictional detective explains his habits of thought—constant mindfulness, close observation and logical deduction—to his friend and assistant. Drawing on a lifetime immersion in the Holmes tales and the latest findings of neuroscience and psychology, Konnikova, the “Literally Psyched” columnist for Scientific American, debuts with a bright and entertaining how-to aimed at helping readers engage in the awareness described by psychologists from William James to Ellen Langer. Holmes offers “an entire way of thinking,” and not just for solving crimes. With practice, writes Konnikova, Holmes’ methodology can be learned and cultivated. Describing the workings of the “brain attic,” where the thought process occurs, the author explains: “As our thought process begins, the furniture of memory combines with the structure of internal habits and external circumstances to determine which item will be retrieved from storage at any given point.” With clear delight, Konnikova offers examples of Holmes’ problem-solving, from how he deduces that Watson has been in Afghanistan (A Study in Scarlet) to his use of pipe-smoking (“a three-pipe problem”) as a way to create psychological distance from the conundrum in “The Adventure of the Red-Headed League.” She notes that walking and meditation can also be useful exercises for clearing the mind. “The most powerful mind is the quiet mind,” she writes.

Will enthrall Baker Street aficionados while introducing many readers to the mindful way of life.

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“Pieces that reveal a fine mind, a creative imagination and, sometimes, an idiosyncratic notion of fact.” from oral pleasure

ORAL PLEASURE Kosinski as Storyteller

Kosinski, Jerzy Grove (432 pp.) $26.00 | Dec. 4, 2012 978-0-8021-2033-5

A collection of interviews, speeches and essays by the late author, whose literary reputation plummeted after a 1982 article in the Village Voice accused him of plagiarism and employing ghostwriters.

Kosinski (1933–1991) won the National Book Award for his 1968 novel Steps, and before his 1982 plummet, he seemed to be everywhere, especially in magazines and on TV (numerous appearances with Johnny Carson). His widow (now also deceased) assembled these pieces, often transcribing recordings she’d made of his appearances. Neither Kosinski nor his editors (including Lupack) makes much of a defense for him; his editor relies on the frail argument that “the underlying truth” of his stories trumps factual accuracy. “Most of the charges were unproven,” says the editor, neglecting to mention which ones were. The editor has arranged the pieces in large categories (“The Practice of Fiction,” “On the Holocaust” and so on) and generally adheres to chronology within categories. So we hear Kosinski in a 1982 radio interview describing his boyhood in Poland, a boyhood that sounds a lot like the boy’s in The Painted Bird. Kosinski had the capacity to say arresting things. In a 1973 letter to his publisher, he mentions how “the imagination creates molds into which experience can fit.” He also wrote that a writer’s function is to be a “detonator” and that language is “the translation of man’s original weapons.” Unsurprisingly, there is some repetition. Twice he mentions that the writer’s task is to pause and reflect, and he repeatedly blasts TV for its numbing effects on the American mind. He also wishes that Jews would think more of the future, less of the Holocaust.

Pieces that reveal a fine mind, a creative imagination and, sometimes, an idiosyncratic notion of fact.

THE LITTLE BOOK OF HEARTBREAK Love Gone Wrong Through the Ages

Laslocky, Meghan Plume (272 pp.) $15.00 paperback | Jan. 1, 2013 978-0-452-29832-3

Fun but uneven collection of essays on the love troubles of historical and cultural figures.

TV producer Laslocky emphasizes that though these dramatic breakups may have happened centuries ago and on different continents, “the lives of others…illustrate the universal ways in which we cope with love gone wrong.” She examines heartbreak from a variety of perspectives, dividing the book 2572

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into sections: History, Culture, Music and Art, Film and Literature, Conclusion and Practical Advice. Many of the stories may not be well-known to readers—e.g., the courtroom drama of Renaissance Italian lovers Giovanni della Casa and Lusanna Nucci or Austrian painter Oskar Kokoschka’s decision to create a life-sized puppet version of his ex-lover, Alma Mahler. Though the bulk of the book is made up of essays focusing on a particular person, movie or song, the “Culture” section includes essays on psychology, history and cultural practices such as arranged marriages. The most compelling essays are lengthy enough to be satisfying but short enough to be easily digestible. However, the end of the book, particularly the section on music, is uneven— e.g., two-page throwaways on Morrissey and Carly Simon follow a 12-page chapter on Franz Liszt. These drastic shifts in length and level of detail and research frustrate the expectations of readers hoping to learn more about subjects she only briefly mentions. It is easy to imagine a reader wanting more information about the “quintessential breakup album,” Joni Mitchell’s Blue, to which the author devotes only one page.

Most of the essays are intriguing and detailed, but others will leave readers wanting more.

A NORTH COUNTRY LIFE Tales of Woodsmen, Waters, and Wildlife Lea, Sydney Skyhorse Publishing (320 pp.) $24.95 | Jan. 1, 2013 978-1-61608-863-7

Now nearing his 70th birthday, Vermont poet laureate Lea (A Hundred Himalayas: Essays on Life and Literature, 2012, etc.) meditates on the role of people and place in his life and pays tribute to the many woodsmen (and women) who were his guides and mentors.

“I’ve always been intrigued by the blending of natural and human worlds—or rather by the dramatic illustration of that blending,” writes the author in this account of a number of the salty characters, many now deceased, who played a part in his life, many of whom he has described in previously published essays. Here, their stories help him chronicle his life and share his deep love for the northern New England woodlands and his passion for hunting and fishing. He describes with gusto his epic combats as a fly fisherman when he was a “hyper-hormonal young man,” and he is unapologetic about his love of hunting, which he describes as a “life-long passion.” Lea disparages what he describes as “the rants of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals,” who don’t understand the “sacramental” value of hunting, and he expresses great regard for the woodsmen who mentored him and accompanied him on his adventures.

However, he is cleareyed in his appraisal of how much poverty and alcohol abuse were also a part of that bygone way of life.

While he himself no longer traps animals, he pays tribute to the trappers who “know things about the ways of nature that our Staples-and-Domino’s culture is largely unaware of.” Lea is

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THE NOIR FORTIES The American People from Victory to Cold War

involved in an effort to create a 1 million-acre wildlife preserve on the border between Maine and New Brunswick that will be managed according to green guidelines.

While his uncompromising views are—and are intended to be—provocative, the author’s love of nature and his tender evocation of a way of life that is dying out have appeal.

MAY I BE HAPPY A Memoir of Love, Yoga, and Changing My Mind Lee, Cyndi Dutton (272 pp.) $25.95 | Jan. 24, 2013 978-0-525-95384-5

A yoga expert charts her path to centered serenity.

From the opening pages of her memoir, the founder of Manhattan’s renowned OM yoga center is outspokenly quick to correct misconceptions about yoga instructors, who are assumed to be “always chill and never grumpy.” Lee’s (Yoga Body, Buddha Mind, 2004, etc.) life has been a mix of long-sought-after wellness and the trials of caring for an increasingly frail mother fraught with a merciless diagnosis of Lewy body disease, “which presents as a cruel combination of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.” She reminisces about an upbringing greatly influenced by her father, a Protestant minister, and momentous visits from Gloria Steinem at her high school in the 1960s. Dancing and a steady interest in yoga buoyed Lee through an obsession with her physical image, which bloomed into a dogged “body grudge” and chronic low self-esteem that plagued her into adulthood. Several trips to India helped her comprehend that it wasn’t her body being “the real troublemaker,” but her mindset. Lee beautifully describes the yin and yang of an all-encompassing yogic lifestyle. Sprinkled throughout are short (but sweetly sage) anecdotes from the veteran yoga instructor’s classes. The author writes that her beloved mother’s firm direction on “how to be ladylike and strong at the same time” still resonates with her today and pretty much sums up the tone of this distinctively Zen autobiography.

A reassuring treat for the yoga set and inspiration for flexible newcomers.

Lingeman, Richard Nation Books/Perseus (368 pp.) $29.99 | Dec. 4, 2012 978-1-56858-436-2

Paranoia and anomie in late-1940s America.

As World War II drew to a close, American liberals hoped that the New Deal and a win-the-war culture would culminate in an era of peace and cooperation, advancing the interests of the common man. Instead, the nation got the Cold War and the McCarthy era. The Nation senior editor Lingeman (Double Lives: American Writers’ Friendships, 2006, etc.) attempts to explain the transition in national mood during the time, from the euphoria at the end of the war to the anti-communist paranoia that followed.

This was the heyday of film noir, inexpensive productions dealing in themes of violence, obsession with chance and death and existential despair. Lingeman attributes these films’ popularity to a correlation between these themes and the contemporary national psyche, elegantly using them as an accessible window into the spirit of an era struggling to digest the horrors of war, the dislocations of conversion to a peacetime economy and anxieties about the Soviet Union. As he surveys the politics of the period, Lingeman’s sympathies are clearly with the left. He gives much attention to union activity but struggles with the role of domestic communism, cheerfully asserting that “the most militant and effective unions in the South were Communist-led ones,” but bristling at denunciations of “alleged Communist infiltration of unions.” He describes at length the quixotic third-party candidacy of Henry Wallace in 1948, doomed in part because it welcomed communist participation, and the slow demise of various peace groups. Lingeman appears to view American foreign policy in this period as a lost opportunity in which progressives like Wallace could have forged a lasting peace with the Soviet Union had they not been sidelined by hard-liners in both parties, while he excuses or minimizes Stalin’s provocations in Europe and Korea.

The film criticism is more rewarding than the doctrinaire leftist exposition of the period’s history.

TAP DANCING TO WORK Warren Buffett on Practically Everything, 1966-2012

Loomis, Carol Portfolio (304 pp.) $27.95 | Nov. 21, 2012 978-1-59184-573-7

A collection of articles on economics and investing from and about one of the wealthiest men in the world.

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“A useful collection of bracing thoughts and sinuous sentences.” from to show and to tell

unfamous hedge fund, Buffett Partnership Ltd., and the controlling shareowner and de facto CEO of a small New England textile company, Berkshire Hathaway, with $49 million in annual revenues,” writes Fortune senior editor at large Loomis, as she discusses more than 80 articles covering the investing history of Warren Buffett. “By 2011, Berkshire was No. 7 in the Fortune 500, with $144 billion in revenues.” Serious investors as well as those interested in the history of Berkshire Hathaway and the philanthropic ideas of Buffett will enjoy these revealing pieces extracted from the Fortune archives. Having written many of the original articles herself, Loomis offers new insights into the various phases and actions of her close personal friend.

Chronologically arranged, the commentaries begin in 1966, when Buffett was first mentioned in Fortune (an article in which his name was misspelled) and move through his latest thoughts and actions on philanthropy based on a dinner held for the uber-rich in 2010. The editor also includes an excerpt from the 2012 version of the annual letter to shareholders. Several of the pieces are written by Buffett, providing readers with personal insights from one of the greatest investors in history, and one piece by Bill Gates illuminates how these two men can look at the same idea from totally different angles—not only between themselves, but different from the rest of the world as well.

Although a bit dry in places for general readers, Fortune subscribers and those interested in investing will enjoy this multifaceted, well-balanced compilation.

TO SHOW AND TO TELL The Craft of Literary Nonfiction

Lopate, Phillip Free Press (240 pp.) $16.00 paperback | Feb. 12, 2013 978-1-4516-9632-5

One of the Earls of Essay returns with a collection that illustrates both his knowledge of the genre and his considerable skill in practicing it.

Some of these pieces have appeared earlier, and they range in nature from struggles to define the genre, to pedagogical strategies he’s tried (and recommends), to reviews of the essays of other writers—living (Ben Yagoda, whose chin is the target for some Lopate left hooks) and not (Lamb, Hazlitt, James Baldwin). Lopate (Graduate Nonfiction/Columbia Univ.; At the End of the Day: Selected Poems and an Introductory Essay, 2010, etc.) is both at ease and ill at ease with the definitions of “creative nonfiction,” “memoir” and “lyric essay,” and he continually revisits his discomfort. He confesses that he’s neither a philosopher nor a professional rhetorician, so he sometimes has difficulty articulating precisely what he means. Most readers will disagree. Lopate also repeatedly uses moments from his own classroom to illuminate his points, mentioning struggles that students have finding a “voice,” defining the “I” they will use, figuring out how to organize and how to end a personal essay. He urges all to ignite the curiosity and follow its flames.

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In the piece “The Essay: Exploration or Argument?” he somewhat softens his earlier view that the personal essay contains no argument. We learn that he’s kept a journal since age 17 and that he recognizes, though grates, at the lower status nonfiction inhabits in academe. He takes a little poke at Facebook (though he fears no real evil from it) and expresses great admiration for Emerson and Baldwin, “the most important American essayist since the end of World War II.” A useful collection of bracing thoughts and sinuous sentences.

AMERICAN HONOR KILLINGS Desire and Rage Among Men

McConnell, David Akashic (240 pp.) $15.95 paperback | Mar. 3, 2013 978-1-61775-132-5

A graphic recounting of a series of gruesome murders involving young males.

Lambda Literary Society co-chair McConnell (The Silver Hearted, 2010, etc.) explores “a shadowy and explosive tension...in the minds of young men,” which he considers to be the “prime mover of violence” in certain cases identified by lawyers and activists as “hate crimes” and “gay panic.” The author equates that tension with a fear of real or apparent exposure of unmanliness or homosexuality, and thus, he believes the killings he discusses resemble vengeance-driven “honor killings.” While his conclusion may be questionable, McConnell convincingly shows how fluid terms like “gay” and “straight” can actually be. One such example is the case of Darrell Madden, a former homosexual porn star who became an anti-gay neo-Nazi and murdered a homosexual in 2007. This was one of five cases where young men, with homosexual pasts or fears, killed homosexuals, or suspected homosexuals, in crimes discussed as hate crimes.

The author compares these to the Wyoming killing of Matthew Shepard or the murder of African-American James Byrd Jr. by white supremacists. “Hatred was a critical factor in these murders. It would be poisonous to pretend otherwise,” he writes, but it is not the whole story. In McConnell’s opinion, a review of the perpetrators, victims and circumstances indicates more—“hatred often seems to exist prior to its having a clear object.” The author’s case studies reflect an intensive investigation into the economic and cultural backgrounds of a wide variety of extremist cultures, research that involved interviews with law enforcement officials, families of victims and the convicted criminals themselves.

A shocking look at the subculture of violent crime, not for the fainthearted.

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BAD INDIANS A Tribal Memoir

Miranda, Deborah A. Heyday (240 pp.) $18.95 paperback | Jan. 1, 2013 978-1-59714-201-4

Miranda (English/Washington and Lee Univ.; The Zen of La Llorona, 2005, etc.) blends narrative, poetry, photos, anthropological recordings and more into a mosaic of memory of her own life and that of her people, the California Indians.

“The arc of leather, sharp edges of cured hide, instrument of punishment coming from two hundred years out of the past,” writes the author about yet another beating of her brother by her violent, alcoholic father. She ties this personal violence to the historical violence of the padres of the California missions, who, through beatings, torture, rape and enslavement, decimated and broke the California Indians. Miranda rails against turning this saga into a “Mission Fantasy Fairy Tale,” and through history, contemporary accounts and newspaper clippings, she reveals the brutality behind the myth. And what of the legacy of this brutality? Was her father, from whom she inherited her Indian blood, blindingly violent as the only way he knew how to survive? To survive the padres’ past, need the victims become destroyers? Neglected, abandoned, terrorized, raped (by a neighbor) as a child, Miranda slowly found her way through writing and through the work and hope that the surviving California Indians might rebuild in creative new ways their lost lives. This is not a linear narrative; present and past weave together, historical account leaves off for poetry and lyrical fantasy, the personal and political collide. This is confusing at times and does not always work, but such weakness is overcome by the bold beauty of Miranda’s words.

A searing indictment of the ravages of the past and a hopeful look at the courage to confront and overcome them.

DECLARING HIS GENIUS Oscar Wilde in North America Morris Jr., Roy Belknap/Harvard Univ. (264 pp.) $26.95 | Jan. 7, 2013 978-0-674-06696-0

A spirited account of the young Wilde’s inspiring 11-month tour of America.

Morris (Lighting Out for the Territory: How Samuel Clemens Headed West and Became Mark Twain, 2010, etc.) chronicles a year in the life of Irish dandy and belletrist Wilde, who, at age 27, was bent on invading America the way Dickens had a generation before. An Oxford graduate, poet, student of John Ruskin and Walter Pater, and enthusiastic and visible proponent of the aesthetic movement in England, Wilde was, by January 1882, when he arrived

in New York, already famous, though few could say why. Wilde was a self-promoting genius, Morris writes, “created, cultivated and commodified,” like celebrities today. He hadn’t yet written his famous works or openly embraced gayness, but in his elaborate, precious outfits, sporting sunflowers and lilies, dropping affected bons mots for journalists to scoop up as he instructed American audiences with authority on “The Beautiful” and “The Artistic Character of the English Renaissance,” Wilde was challenging traditional notions of masculinity and also creating his celebrity. Morris goes step by step in this, drawing on Matthew Hofer and Gary Scharnhorst’s book of newspaper interviews Oscar Wilde in America (2010) for a record of his decidedly uneven reception, from rapturous audiences in New York, where Napoleon Sarony took his famous photographs of Wilde in various guises; to Chicago, where he insulted his Midwestern audience for their ugly waterworks; to Denver, San Francisco, the South and Canada. He met Walt Whitman, Ambrose Bierce, Jefferson Davis and Ulysses S. Grant and generated “verbal donnybrooks” all along the way. In the end, Wilde and America shared a mutual affection.

A fondly erudite look at a young, likable celebrity in the making. (27 halftones)

FOR THE LOVE OF LETTERS The Joy of Slow Communication

O’Connell, John Marble Arch/Simon & Schuster (192 pp.) $20.00 | Jan. 1, 2013 978-1-4767-1880-4

A former Time Out writer harks back to the days of handwritten letters.

O’Connell covers the book world for a number of British newspapers. Now 40, he describes himself as having been an inveterate letter writer before the days of email. Like everyone else, he admits, he was seduced by the speed and ease of email communications, but now he is rethinking the question. For him, texting and Twitter were steps too far. “[P]eople have to understand,” he writes, “we’ve been sold this idea of progress and it’s…wrong.

Just because you develop a new thing, it doesn’t mean earlier versions of that thing have to become obsolete.” The physicality embodied in a handwritten letter carries meaning, especially after the passage of time. O’Connell writes that a handwritten condolence letter he received after the death of his mother set him on this track. He also believes that a collection of letters trumps biography: Letters “encapsulate [a life] more effectively.”

The author is at pains to make clear that typewritten letters are just as bad as email. Another of his bugaboos is the round-robin missive that shares family news, whatever its medium of communication. “It’s one of the tragedies of the modern world,” he writes, “the way the round-robin has survived, like some demonic post-apocalyptic cockroach.” One might think this aggressive nostalgia is a bit of tongue-in-cheek British humor if not for the fact that O’Connell devotes much of the book to

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excerpted correspondence by literary and political figures—e.g., Sir Walter Scott, Jane Austen, Winston Churchill, H.G. Wells and others.

Quirky, crotchety and unconvincing.

THE ATLANTIC OCEAN Reports from Britain and America

O’Hagan, Andrew Mariner/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (368 pp.) $15.95 paperback | Jan. 22, 2013 978-0-15-101378-4

Assorted opinions on literary and cultural matters by critic and novelist O’Hagan (The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog, and of His Friend Marilyn Monroe, 2007, etc.).

The best of these pieces are not about books, though most of the author’s new collection is built on essays occasioned by them. One highlight is a searching piece that looks at the parallel lives and deaths of two soldiers in Iraq, an American Marine and a British guardsman who fell on the same day; both seem like Icarus dropping into the sea in Brueghel’s famous painting, ignored by the plowmen—and feuding relatives—surrounding them. A piece on gardening opens on a slyly Proustian note: “For a long time, England used to go to bed early.” That was, of course, before the English came over all postmodern and ironic about gardening, which O’Hagan sorts out nicely: “Scots get into trouble for not being flowery enough, although they are catching the bug; and the Welsh prefer vegetables.” Other pieces are less fresh, especially the reviews disguised as essays. An examination of Lee Harvey Oswald yields only stagnant Mailer-isms; Mailer, who figures in the piece in question, could have handled that duty himself. And does anyone need still another piece on the cultural phenomenon that was the Beatles (“Even people who don’t care about popular music…are conscious of how these English songwriters may have harnessed the properties of their own time”)?

A mixed bag with some very good lines (if often spoken by others) jumbled up with some rather stale ephemera.

POUND FOOLISH Exposing the Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry

Olen, Helaine Portfolio (304 pp.) $26.95 | Dec. 27, 2012 978-1-59184-489-1

Dishy dirt on the “financialization” of American life and the hordes of carrion-pickers who swarm us in the hope of lifting still more dollars from our pockets.

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entirely well-planned-out. The IRA, for example, was intended as a supplement to other retirement measures, whereas “what we today think of as the natural retirement planning landscape started as an accident, a 1978 shift in the tax code designed to clarify a few highly technical points about profit-sharing plans offered by many corporations to high-ranking employees.” Lest it make you feel cuddly to think that your retirement account has its source in something meant for the rich and powerful, Olen observes that it’s a mook’s game these days: Whereas in the 1950s, only 5 percent of Americans were in the stock market, by 2000, that had gone up to fully half, with a vast industry peeling off dollars in the form of management fees, commissions and so forth. The stock market and its ancillaries received promotion as “a way to gain wealth we could not gain through conventional savings or earnings strategies.”

Unconventional means risky, as a generation of shorn investors has recently come to appreciate, but that risk doesn’t stop us from wanting to try our luck again—and that brings in a bunch of Olen’s bugaboos, including the “wealth creation seminar business” and people like Suze Orman, “whose riches came from…lecturing the rest of us on our inability to manage our funds.”

A nice takedown, particularly in its acknowledgement that the deck is always stacked against “participants in a vast experiment” of the deregulated marketplace— namely, the little guys.

A GRAND COMPLICATION The Race to Build the World’s Most Legendary Watch Perman, Stacy Free Press (304 pp.) $26.00 | Feb. 5, 2013 978-1-4391-9008-1

A unique competition between two scions of the Gilded Age is the driver for this fresh look at the mores of the rich and powerful.

The aim of the competition was to acquire the world’s most complicated timepieces. The contenders were Ward Packard, founder of the eponymous luxury automobile brand, and Henry Graves, a financier whose family’s money was made in railroads, coal, cement and lumber. Packard commissioned pieces to his own specification, while Graves desired to be the owner of the best. Former Time writer Perman (In-N-Out Burger: A Behind-the-Counter Look at the Fast-Food Chain that Breaks All the Rules, 2010, etc.) applies her investigative skills and attention to detail to a sharply focused but wide-ranging account of the behind-the-scenes struggle as it was waged through the precision engineering and technical expertise of Europe’s greatest watchmaking establishments, such as Patek-Philippe, Breguet and Vacheron Constantin. The author also includes a history of time-keeping and watchmaking, through the invention of mechanical action and the later competition to locate longitude. Perman documents how America’s wealthy replaced Europe’s royalty and aristocrats as patrons of the watchmakers.

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“Courtly, engaging, down-to-earth letters by a kindly English aristocrat of the old school.” from counting one’s blessings

COUNTING ONE’S BLESSINGS The Selected Letters of Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother

She effectively combines these different strands, providing a compelling social history, especially during the years before and after the stock market crash of 1929, as the collections were assembled, then dispersed and are now being reconstituted by the very companies that first made them.

A masterful approach to composition combines with a fascinating plot and makes its subject entertaining as well as compelling.

SWOON Great Seducers and Why Women Love Them

Prioleau, Betsy Norton (288 pp.) $26.95 | Feb. 4, 2013 978-0-393-06837-5

A fun, frothy complement to cultural historian Prioleau’s Seductress: Women Who Ravished the World (2003).

Between the numerous literary examples of famous lotharios, the author inserts plenty of reallife lady-killers and analyzes what it is about them that attracts women so avidly. Prioleau also dispels some of the myths about these roués—e.g., that they are in some way malevolent or that rakes are all rich and gorgeous. In fact, she writes, like the real Casanova, they are most often witty conversationalists, funny and truly fond of women. They might even be a little androgynous, like Gary Cooper, “more beautiful than any woman except Garbo,” and not even handsome, like British statesman Duff Cooper, who was “plump and saucer-faced with an oversized head.” “Rather than hackneyed, mustache-twirling stage villains,” writes the author, “they’re a mixed breed…who magnetize women to them.” Prioleau even delves into evolutionary psychology and cites wisdom from a variety of sources, including Darwin, who claimed that women are attracted to alpha males for mating purposes. A successful rake has a combination of traits like charisma, courage, a nice voice, the ability to listen and spout poetry, and he must convey his interest in the lady in question at all costs. In the final chapters, Prioleau offer some rather perplexing advice on how babe magnets keep their relationships fresh—e.g., “For lasting passion, an inexhaustible, expansive identity is the penultimate spell.”

A merrily readable literary history/dating manual. (12 illustrations)

Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother Shawcross, William—Ed. Farrar, Straus and Giroux (688 pp.) $30.00 | Nov. 27, 2012 978-0-374-18522-0

A lifetime of letters by the beloved queen mother reflects a tumultuous century in England.

Edited by Shawcross (The Queen Mother: The Official Biography, 2009, etc.), these letters by Elizabeth Bowes Lyon (1900– 2002) move from the gushing expressions of a young privileged person to a grasp of sobering responsibility and mature conviction as world events began to shape her future. The vivacious youngest daughter to Lord and Lady Strathmore, growing up amid a big, happy family on their country estates, Elizabeth reveals her early sunny disposition in letters to her mother and rather disorganized education but keen mimicry of the Scottish dialect as written to her favorite brother, David. Evidently wellloved and popular, she attracted many suitors, including the stammering, awkward second son of George V, called Bertie, whom she politely rebuffed for two years but then accepted in January 1923 (“I feel terrified now I’ve done it…in fact nobody is more surprised than me”). Fourteen years as the Duchess of York followed fairly happily, during which Elizabeth (“Lilibet”) and Margaret were born. The untimely death of George V and the stunning abdication of Edward VIII delivered back-to-back blows, and Elizabeth reveals an authentic loyalty to her husband (“I am terrified for him…do help him,” she wrote to her reprobate brother-in-law) and growing confidence bolstered by religion and a sense of being in touch with the British people.

Her natural touch helped gain the crown enormous support during World War II, as revealed in her radio appeals to British and American women.

Courtly, engaging, down-to-earth letters by a kindly English aristocrat of the old school.

SEARCHING FOR ZION The Quest for Home in the African Diaspora

Raboteau, Emily Atlantic Monthly (320 pp.) $25.00 | Jan. 8, 2013 978-0-8021-2003-8

Rather than a simple analysis of where scattered Africans ended up geographically, Raboteau (The Professor’s Daughter, 2006) dissects the search for home as a search for belonging.

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way, she gives the diaspora both historical and contemporary context. As a mixed-race woman, Raboteau embodies the quest for a sense of self, and she explains her personal dilemma early on. “I didn’t think of myself as the ‘tragic mulatto,’ straight out of central casting,” she writes. “The role was an embarrassing cliché from a dusty, bygone era, but I struggled against it all the same. If Barack Obama could transcend it, why couldn’t I? I belonged nowhere. I wasn’t well. Was the sickness my own, my country’s, or a combination of the two?” Stories of her disaffected youth spent with a Jewish friend lead easily into the beginning of the author’s global search party. Her first travels took her to Israel, where she learned of a large community of black Jews from Ethiopia. From Israel and the Jewish faith, she moved to explore the Rasta faith in Jamaica and then in Africa.

Raboteau explored other issues of identity in Africa, as well, including African-Americans who settled in African cities and the genesis of trans-Atlantic slavery. The author never shies away from the difficult questions surrounding her—e.g., the Rasta worship of a dictator or the inherent double standards of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Her head-on confrontation of these subjects makes the book easier to digest, and her treatment of the issues results in the unwritten conclusion that none of the communities she visited truly accomplished what they set out to do. In the end, the author found her answers in a way that many will see coming, but Raboteau approaches the conclusion from a fresh perspective that keeps it from feeling stale.

An excellent choice for readers interested in religion, philosophy and the elusive concept of home.

USEFUL ENEMIES John Demjanjuk and America’s Open-Door Policy for Nazi War Criminals Rashke, Richard Delphinium (640 pp.) $29.95 | Jan. 1, 2013 978-1-8832-8551-7

After World War II, why did the United States admit many high-level exNazis for a variety of purposes (the space program, anti-Soviet espionage) but relentlessly pursue prison guard John Demjanjuk?

Rashke (Trust Me, 2001, etc.) follows the bizarre, jagged trajectory of the various trials of Demjanjuk, a retired autoworker from Cleveland whose tangled experiences in the war sent him from courtrooms and jails in Ohio to Tel Aviv to Munich, sites where he was variously accused of being the heinous Ivan the Terrible of Treblinka (a charge ultimately dropped) to serving as a guard at the Sobibor death camp, a charge of which he was ultimately convicted when he was 90 and dying. But Rashke, whose research is prodigious, has a much busier agenda than just the Demjanjuk case. He also describes the numerous other cases of ex-Nazis brought to America, many quietly under the aegis of the FBI, the State Department or the CIA, war criminals (in many cases) who escaped prosecution because of their usefulness in the U.S. Some 2578

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were high profile (rocket scientist Werner von Braun at NASA); others flew totally below the radar until Soviet and American archives opened decades later. Throughout, Rashke raises moral questions (is it conscionable to employ ex-Nazis?) and draws distinctions (what’s the difference between working for and working with an occupying force?). His accounts of Demjanjuk’s various legal proceedings are swift but also enriched by much relevant quoted testimony. The author also explores the profound passions of all involved—from the families of those whose relatives suffered and died in the camps to the Demjanjuk family and their Ukrainian-American neighbors who never believed the accusations.

A richly researched, gripping narrative about war, suffering, survival, corruption, injustice and morality. (16-page b/w insert)

RADIO CONGO Signals of Hope from Africa’s Deadliest War

Rawlence, Ben Oneworld Publications (320 pp.) $15.95 paperback | Feb. 1, 2013 978-1-85168-965-1

A firsthand report from deep inside Congo.

Covering much of the center of Africa, Congo is “[b]lessed with deposits of ninety percent of the world’s minerals”—gold, tin, copper, diamonds and more—worth trillions of dollars. These considerable resources have led to multiple conflicts between Congo and its neighboring countries, as well as strife within. With Congo at peace for less than a decade now, Rawlence, a senior researcher on Africa for Human Rights Watch, was finally able to explore the country, and he describes Congo as nothing less than “the most fascinating, beguiling, and…misunderstood country on the continent.” After looking back on his own introduction to Congo, the author gives readers a cursory introduction to the complex history of the nation before launching into his exploration. In a narrative that is part travelogue and part reportage, Rawlence crisscrosses the country, describing the Congolese he meets with vivid and often lyrical prose. He describes a former militia captain, who may or may not have committed unspeakable atrocities during wartime, now “sitting in the sunshine with a child on his knee,” as he “rubs the head of his son while his wife laughs and smiles and winnows the rice with her hard and wrinkled hands.” However, such beauty is overshadowed by the problems that still plague the country: former refugees returning to find that “Congo does not have enough schools even for those who are already here,” food shortages and runaway inflation. Rawlence also points out that “[t]he incidence of rape in eastern Congo is the highest in the world.” Some readers may find it difficult to see the titular “signals of hope” amid so much sadness.

A distressing but important read.

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“An exciting, comprehensive chronicle of one of the most pivotal events in mob history.” from mafia summit

MAFIA SUMMIT J. Edgar Hoover, the Kennedy Brothers, and the Meeting that Unmasked the Mob Reavill, Gil Dunne/St. Martin’s (304 pp.) $26.99 | Jan. 22, 2013 978-0-312-65775-8

How honest New York State Trooper Ed Croswell crashed a special meeting of gangster elites in 1957 and exposed organized crime to a dozing American public.

Screenwriter and playwright Reavill (Aftermath, Inc.: Cleaning Up After CSI Goes Home, 2007, etc.) vividly recreates that miasmic era of ignorance and innocence with all the blunt-end aplomb befitting coldblooded killers and crooked lawmen. In the fall of 1957, a cadre of “fourteen-karat hoodlums” decided to meet and talk business at the rustic estate in Apalachin, N.Y. It was a mistake that would forever cost the mob its coveted mask of anonymity. Much has been written about how the authorities managed to find out about the secret Apalachin gathering, but Reavill argues that none of the complex conspiracy theories involving insider betrayals and double crosses are true. Instead, the author constructs a compelling case that the landmark bust was all due to a little luck and one man simply doing his job.

Lively, detailed reporting sets intriguing characters on both sides of the law on an inexorable crash course for the sleepy woodlands of upstate New York. Some of the intimate portraits stretch back before World War II and from as far away as Sicily, but the colorful writing makes the events as accessible and immediate as if they were unfolding today. In addition to requisite stories of bloody mob hits and ruthless grabs at power, there are shocking reversals of fortune, incredible examples of collusion between the mob and the U.S. government, and an eye-opening look at how the Mafia built its highly durable and lucrative narcotics trade. While none of that came to a screeching halt on that fateful day in Apalachin, Croswell’s dogged determination forced law enforcement agents to confront the mob like never before.

An exciting, comprehensive chronicle of one of the most pivotal events in mob history. (8-page b/w photo insert)

LET THE PEOPLE IN The Life and Times of Ann Richards Reid, Jan Univ. of Texas (464 pp.) $27.00 | Oct. 3, 2012 978-0-292-71964-4

A lucid biography of the Texas politician who briefly mounted the national stage, only to be swept aside by the events of two decades past.

Readers who recall when Texas was Democratic will certainly remember Ann Richards (1933–2006), the tough-talking, motorcycle-riding governor who drove the Bush family to distraction. At the 1988 Democratic National Convention, she famously said of Bush’s gaffes, “He can’t help it—he was born with a silver foot in his mouth.” Bush senior laughed it off, but Bush junior swore vengeance, unseating her as governor and effectively retiring her politically. Reid (Comanche Sundown, 2010, etc.), a former Richards staffer, does a solid and evenhanded, if surely partisan job of recounting Richards’ rise from a politically interested but unconnected, thoroughly liberal homemaker to chief executive of one of the nation’s most important states. The road was rocky, complicated by Richards’ drinking and drug use—a little marijuana here, a few prescription pills there (“But Ann was an alcoholic,” said one intimate.

“She had a vodka problem, she didn’t have a drug problem”). Texans generally had no problem with Richards’ habits or friendships with the likes of Lily Tomlin and Willie Nelson, though one particularly ugly Republican smear campaign accused her of bisexuality—and that was before Karl Rove got into the game. Reid notes the considerable curiosities of Texas politics, in which more real power seems to rest with the lieutenant governor than the governor, and the railroad commissioner seems to answer only to God. Richards was nothing if not colorful, but she made dangerous enemies, one of whom would use her supposed indifference to educational excellence to become The Decider.

Politics junkies—particularly students of strange doings in the Lone Star State—will revel in this sturdy life.

(64 b/w photos)

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THE HONORED SOCIETY The History of Italy’s Most Powerful Mafia Reski, Petra Translated by Whiteside, Shaun Nation Books/Perseus (304 pp.) $16.99 paperback | Jan. 8, 2013 978-1-56858-973-2

Journalist Reski personalizes her longtime coverage of the Italian Mafia in this short recent history of the organization.

The author, who grew up in Germany, prefaces the book with an account of what she calls the “German mafia massacre,” which she claims brought the Mafia’s presence outside of Italy into the spotlight. The night when six Italian men were murdered in a German town sparked her writing of this book, which was published in Germany in 2008; Reski was immediately sued due to its contents. The trial resulted in some redacted passages, left as such for this American release. The blacked-out paragraphs are frustrating, a visible reminder of missing information that seems more tantalizing for its absence. The subject matter is mostly engrossing, but the treatment leaves something to be desired. The narrative is disjointed throughout, with a structure that leads to confusion for those not already familiar with the events. Reski covers major changes in law enforcement and the Mafia, not chronologically but in a series of insert-memory-here asides. While each memory’s story is pertinent to an understanding of the many Mafia branches firmly rooted in Italy, it is easy to lose track of the history, particularly because many of the stories are intertwined.

Will appeal to those interested in the Mafia, but casual readers may get caught up looking for the story and have a hard time absorbing the material.

I STILL BELIEVE ANITA HILL

Richards, Amy; Greenburg, Cynthia--Eds. Feminist (320 pp.) $21.95 paperback | Jan. 29, 2013 978-1-55861-809-1 The proceedings of a symposium of human rights activists, political analysts, legal experts and artists who came together in 2011 to commemorate Anita Hill’s courageous testimony at Justice Clarence Thomas’ confirmation hearing 20 years earlier.

The contributors spoke about the lasting impact of her groundbreaking testimony before the Senate that Thomas had sexually abused her. The incidents related by Hill (Law/ Brandeis Univ.; Reimagining Equality: Stories of Gender, Race and Finding Home, 2011, etc.) had occurred in 1981 when Thomas was chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. She accused him of using his position as her supervisor to coerce her into having sexual relations. Lani Guinier—the first black tenured professor at Harvard Law School—writes about 2580

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how she and Thomas were among the few blacks at Yale Law School. She explains how, after the hearings, there was animated debate about the conflict between racial solidarity and a black woman’s right to defend herself. A majority of Americans at the time accepted Thomas’ claims that Hill was lying. Dorothy Samuels—a member of the New York Times editorial board since 1984—explains the liberating impact of Hill’s revelations: “It was soap opera, and a riveting social, legal, and political history lesson all rolled into one….the issue of sexual harassment was out of the shadows.” Harvard law professor Charles Ogletree, a volunteer on Hill’s legal team, describes a campus rally in 1990 (demanding tenure for “women of color”) addressed by Barack Obama, then president of the Harvard Law Review. Yale law professor Judith Resnik points out that Thomas, then as now, was “against affirmative action, against abortion, against stateprovision of assistance.” Hill, looking to the future, wonders “what equality is going to be like in the twenty-first century.”

A well-pulled-together collection from Richards (Opting In, 2008, etc.) and Greenburg.

NEVER GOIN’ BACK Winning the Weight-Loss Battle for Good

Roker, Al NAL/Berkley (288 pp.) $26.95 | Jan. 1, 2013 978-0-451-41493-9

Beloved TV weatherman Roker (coauthor: The Talk Show Murders, 2011, etc.) explains how he went from “morbidly obese” to fit and healthy.

The author seems like a genial man, a devoted father and the possessor of an exciting career that has provided him with plenty of stories to tell. His tale of triumph over a serious weight problem that plagued him since childhood might provide inspiration, or at least comfort, to the millions of Americans who continue to struggle with their own weight. However, the writing is lazy and, at times, downright cringe-worthy; most readers would probably rather not know as much as Roker wishes to share about his sex life, his bowel movements or the size of his penis. Clearly, the author intends to come across as funny and relatable, but too much forced folksiness renders even his best anecdotes flat. His desire to be universally appealing leaches his story of specificity and vitality; he mentions his race a couple of times, but in general, he is so desperate to play the role of an Everyman that he conveys little sense of who he is as a person, beyond the fact that he “loves life, [his] family and good music.” Roker, who wasn’t born rich, is now a wealthy man, and many of his well-meant suggestions betray the cluelessness that often results from becoming accustomed to having money. Among other things, Roker advises those who undergo gastric bypass surgery, as he did, to hire a home health care aide for the first two weeks after the operation. Given that such care is unaffordable for millions, this is a “great tip” of limited value.

Worth skimming only if you are struggling to lose weight and considering gastric bypass surgery.

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“A work of contradictions, subversions, depression, humor and singular awareness.” from how literature saved my life

CHINA GOES GLOBAL The Partial Power Shambaugh, David Oxford Univ. (320 pp.) $29.95 | Feb. 1, 2013 978-0-19-986014-2

A formal, severe dressing-down of China’s global influence.

A prominent scholar of contemporary Chinese studies, Shambaugh (Political Science and International Affairs/George Washington Univ.; China’s Communist Party, 2008, etc.) fashions an academic framework on the state of Chinese global relations, concluding from ample evidence that China’s impact is far more limited than alarmist predictions have maintained. The historical Chinese sense of the nation’s centrality and superiority continues to create conflicts within and abroad. China has no allies, writes the author, rarely takes an active role in solving world problems and maintains a political system no one wants to emulate. Its “soft power” in terms of its cultural exports is weak, except perhaps in tourism, cyberhacking and art purchasing. The Chinese government’s conflicted sense of how to engage in the wider world is revealed in its sense of insularity, paranoia and desire to “hide its brightness” on the one hand, and need to take on wider global responsibilities as the world’s second largest economy on the other. Although an economic superpower, “a workshop of the world,” chiefly in exports of “low-end consumer products,” Shambaugh finds China’s “economic footprint” in terms of trade, energy and investment fairly limited. The author finds China admirably evolving from “passive actor to a selective activist” since the 1980s, yet it is still uncomfortable accepting “liberal norms” generally agreed on by other leading nations. Shambaugh examines in depth the various schools of thought about how to manage China over the decades—e.g., nativist, realist and globalist—and he asserts that the most effective approach is to continue to integrate China within the liberal institutional infrastructure of the international community.

A mostly academic look at why China’s “rise” is only partial.

NINJA INNOVATION The Killer Strategies of the World’s Most Successful Businesses

Shapiro, Gary Morrow/HarperCollins (240 pp.) $25.99 | $20.99 e-book | Jan. 8, 2013 978-0-06-224232-7 978-0-06-224232-7 e-book

Lessons from the tactics and strategies of ninja warriors applied to international and domestic battles in consumer electronics.

Consumer Electronics Association CEO Shapiro (The Comeback: How Innovation Will Restore the American Dream, 2011) writes that his views of what constitutes a “successful person,

company, and organization” are shaped by the discipline and habits of martial arts. The author provides an overview of many different fields of combat, and his narrative makes clear that the ninja model is not just a metaphor. The different battlefields are united by the rapid pace of technological innovation, which has driven the consumer-electronics business to $200 billion of U.S. factory sales in 2012 and worldwide sales in excess of $1 trillion.

Shapiro recounts in detail the battles involving the development of HDTV, which required not only outpacing Japanese competition, but also uniting different domestic business and political interests behind the proposed solutions. Shapiro’s approach is based on many of the tenets of the ninja: a commitment to victory, the development of resources for success through teamwork, a lack of fear about operating clandestinely and stealthily behind enemy lines. Their tradition is very different than the one the author attributes to the more rule-bound and feudalistic samurai warriors. The CEA is a trade group, not a lobby, organized around annual conventions and efforts to promote its members’ businesses. These events have brought Shapiro into close contact with innovators like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, among others, and provided him with additional insight into business and its leaders. The author is a proponent of strengthening consumers’ rights and an opponent of efforts to restrict innovation.

A different perspective that brings out commonalities between business competition and combat.

HOW LITERATURE SAVED MY LIFE

Shields, David Knopf (224 pp.) $25.95 | Feb. 8, 2013 978-0-307-96152-5

Essayist and fiction writer Shields (Reality Hunger: A Manifesto, 2010, etc.) turns quotation, memory, anecdotes and considerations of film, literature, love and death into a collage that enables

introspection.

The author, who stuttered throughout childhood, initially regarded writing as an ideal outlet; now, in his mid-50s, he writes “to feel as if, to the degree anyone can know anyone else,” he has connected with his readers. With a frequently self-deprecating yet engaging tone, the author employs the act of accrual in hopes of guarding against “human loneliness,” and in doing so, creates a personal, modern version of the medieval commonplace book. For the bibliophile, references to authors such as Ben Lerner, E.M. Cioran, Jonathan Safran Foer, Annie Dillard, Sarah Manguso and David Foster Wallace, among others, will appeal as voices intersecting on the page. For fellow creativewriting practitioners, how Shield fashions his own anxieties and persona into brief essays provides an alternative model for writing on selfhood, revealing the author’s struggle in oblique ways. Concerned as much with methods of construction and questions of genre as with subject, Shields meters out nuggets

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of revelation amid explications of both classical and popular subjects, from Prometheus to Spider-Man. The author’s circuitous approach may frustrate some readers. However, it is the sometimes-failed attempts to articulate the ways in which “life and art have always been everything” to him that prove fascinating. The book defies easy categorization (as have others of Shields’ works): It is both a paean to the power of language and a confrontation with the knowledge that literature can’t, after all, fulfill deeper existential needs.

A work of contradictions, subversions, depression, humor and singular awareness; Shields is at his finest when culling the work of others to arrive at his own well-timed, often heartbreaking lines.

FROM GODS TO GOD How the Bible Debunked, Suppressed, or Changed Ancient Myths and Legends Shinan, Avigdor; Zakovitch, Yair Translated by Zakovitch, Valerie Univ. of Nebraska (368 pp.) $27.95 paperback | Dec. 1, 2012 978-0-8276-0908-2

A meticulously researched primer on the Hebrew Bible’s role as part of an evolving theological and political discourse.

Although the Bible is often read as if it exists in isolation, the import of its stories cannot be fully grasped without an understanding of the pre-biblical literature and traditions that held sway at the time of its creation. The transition from paganism to a monotheistic, recognizably Jewish belief system played out over centuries, and the biblical canon encompasses dozens of individual campaigns to reinforce, suppress or transform pagan views and philosophies that were common in the ancient Middle East. Biblical scholars Shinan and Zakovitch (both of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem) argue that many passages can be read as miniature polemics aimed at reinterpreting pre-existing legends in order to make them more compatible with a monotheistic theology. In closely argued and densely footnoted academic prose, the authors present 30 examples, from the reasons for eating matzah to the proper etiquette for relationships between men and women. In demonstrating how the Bible “actively argues against ancient traditions that were deemed unsuitable to the biblical writers for inclusion in their great work,” Shinan and Zakovitch paint a richly nuanced portrait of the biblical literature as an interlocutor in the debates of its day, but their language may alienate nonspecialist readers. Many points rely on a close reading of the Hebrew and Aramaic texts as well a familiarity with multiple modes of exegesis, and although capably translated, the book can be occasionally bewildering to those without the requisite background.

Not for general readers, but an illuminating, challenging look at the original significance of many of the Bible’s stories. (6 tables; glossary)

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COOLIDGE

Shlaes, Amity Harper/HarperCollins (576 pp.) $35.00 | Feb. 12, 2013 978-0-06-196755-9 President from 1923 to 1929, Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) is traditionally dismissed as an honorable mediocrity, but journalist Shlaes (The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, 2007, etc.) argues that he was better than that.

The author makes a convincing case, but readers who don’t share her conservative views may not agree that he was superior to FDR, whom she skewered in The Forgotten Man. Raised in rural Vermont, Coolidge practiced law in Massachusetts.

His celebrated New England reserve describes him accurately, but he was popular and flourished in Republican state politics.

Progressive at first, he steadily grew less so, backing William Howard Taft against Theodore Roosevelt in 1912. As governor, he achieved national fame and the vice presidency by crushing the 1919 Boston police strike. Taking over after President Warren Harding’s death, Coolidge set to work reducing federal taxes, expenses and personnel. By contemporary standards, he was a moderate. His opposition to business regulation and social programs provoked only modest controversy. Times were prosperous, and he got the credit and became very popular.

Clearly an admirer, Shlaes stresses that, under Coolidge, the budget was balanced, tax cuts reduced the top rate by half, the national debt fell, and unemployment remained below five percent. Wages rose and interest rates fell, as well, so the poor had jobs and could borrow money more easily. Most historians portray the 1920s as a simpler time, but the author maintains that Coolidge’s hands-off, minimal government, free-market approach remains ideal.

Republican VP candidate Paul Ryan provides an enthusiastic endorsement, and like-minded readers will find Shlaes’ well-researched but highly opinionated biography deeply satisfying. (16-page b/w photo insert)

THE TASTE OF ASHES The Afterlife of Totalitarianism in Eastern Europe Shore, Marci Crown (384 pp.) $27.00 | Jan. 15, 2013 978-0-307-88881-5

Shore (Intellectual History/Yale Univ.; Caviar and Ashes: A Warsaw Generation’s Life and Death in Marxism, 19181968, 2006, etc.) gathers reflections of her intellectual journeys through the deeply scarred, still-grieving lands of Eastern Europe from the mid-1990s to the present.

The author’s various academic studies and research projects

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brought her to Eastern Europe to study the tensions and contradictions among the intelligentsia of post-totalitarianism. Vaclav Havel called the years after 1968 a time of living “as if,” when no one really believed in communism any more, but it was enough to go through the motions “like a dog chained to his house who doesn’t want to upset his master.” Shore began in Prague, where she traced some of the signatories of the influential Charter 77, a collectively authored text defending human rights as put forth in the Helsinki Accords and which prompted numerous intellectuals in then-Czechoslovakia to be blacklisted for the next decade. She found, rather surprisingly, that many of the former signatories of the charter that had helped bring down the regime in 1989 were former Communist Party members who had hoped a new revolution would bring “socialism with a human face.” From Prague, where she took Czech language courses while teaching English, Shore visited Bucharest, where former dissidents of the Ceausescu regime made her aware of unsettling problems with the current democracy and ethnic discrimination. In Warsaw, the author scoured archives of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising and remnants of postwar Jewry as it splintered into communist and Zionist sympathies before being snuffed out by Stalinism. Shore also explored records in Vilnius and Moscow and interviewed survivors and their descendants, offering numerous stories of heartbreak, betrayal and “the impossibility of closure.”

A fascinating grab bag of the author’s dogged research and personal interviews.

ARTFUL

Smith, Ali Penguin Press (220 pp.) $25.95 | Jan. 28, 2013 978-1-59420-486-9 Acclaimed Scottish novelist Smith (There but for the, 2011, etc.) considers the places where art and life intersect, sometimes collide and meld.

The guide on this extraordinary journey is a woman who, after “twelvemonth and a day” of mourning, sees her dead lover before her. She offers the apparition tea and begins to ask questions, but the responses are garbled and confused. Smith’s storytelling facility and critical eye are evident in the fact that this ongoing conversation—adapted from a series of lectures at St. Anne’s College, Oxford—about time, memory, loss, longing, love, art and nature stirs the mind and heart all the more because it takes place between the imagination and reality. In the essay “On time,” Smith reminds us of Shakespeare’s “Devouring Time, Time’s pencil, Time’s fell and injurious hand, Time’s scythe, Time’s fickle glass.” Even books, she writes, are “tangible pieces of time in our hands…they travel with us, they accompany us from our pasts into our futures….” In each of the essays, the woman continues her struggle with grief and letting go. Her lost lover returns again and again in an alarming state of increasing decay, and she regrets the failings of her imagination to call up

an odorless, less-ragged form. Smith seamlessly connects the narrator’s smart, funny, regret-infused observations to an expansive discussion of aesthetics, metaphor, the tension between form and fluidity, what it means to be on the edge in life and art, the power of Oliver Twist (in all its forms) and Alfred Hitchcock movies, and the acts of giving and taking. On this quest, the author goes into the “margins that burn with the energy of edit” to shed light on the human spirit through art. But does the grieving woman ever let go of her lover’s spirit and move on? It’s all beautifully revealed.

A soulful intellectual inquiry and reflection on life and art, artfully done.

SHE MATTERS A Life in Friendships Sonnenberg, Susanna Scribner (288 pp.) $24.00 | Jan. 8, 2013 978-1-4391-9058-6

The intimate, often unsparing reflections of a woman writer on a lifetime of friendships with other women.

Early on, essayist Sonnenberg (Her Last Death, 2008) learned, from the troubled mother who thought nothing of snorting cocaine in front of her and her sister and then confiding to them about her sexual exploits, that women were not only “fierce, supreme and capable,” but also “devious and cunning.” The other girls and women who entered Sonnenberg’s life would have other lessons for her. One of the first friends she made as a child taught her that it was possible to have “no drama at all” in a relationship with another female. Others, like the girls she met in boarding school, became role models, comforters and confidantes.

They helped Sonnenberg navigate a turbulent adolescence that included an affair with a married teacher and other sexual betrayals. Two young women brought the author into an awareness of females as objects of desire. As an adult, Sonnenberg had many passionate friendships, only to either outgrow them or be outgrown by them. When she married and became a mother, the challenges she faced in her relationships with other women increased. Not only was she still trying to fulfill her yearning for lasting connections with other females who also lived complicated lives, she was also confronted with having to “rewrite… my previous definition of motherhood” and grow beyond the example her own mother had set for her.

With heart-rending precision, Sonnenberg offers an eloquent narrative that not only exposes but embraces the fraught nature of women’s relationships with each other.

(Author tour to Missoula, Mont., New York, San Francisco, Sun Valley, Idaho)

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“Mature, life-affirmative musings from a venerable life shaped by tenacity and pride.” from my beloved world

MY BELOVED WORLD

Sotomayor, Sonia Knopf (320 pp.) $27.95 | Jan. 15, 2013 978-0-307-59488-4

Graceful, authoritative memoir from the country’s first Hispanic Supreme Court justice.

As a child in South Bronx public housing, Sotomayor was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes. Her Puerto Rican parents’ struggles included a father’s battle with alcoholism that would claim his life when Sotomayor was 9, leaving her mother, a former Women’s Army Corps soldier turned nurse, to raise her. Time spent with her cousin, Catholic school friends and her beloved grandmother helped to calm the chaos of life in the projects. As Sotomayor entered adolescence, her mother’s strong belief in education spurred the author to thrive in school and develop an appreciation for justice and the law. The author vividly narrates her scholarly adventures at Princeton, where she advocated for Latino faculty, and Yale Law School, where she dealt with smaller cases in preparation for the complexities of work in the district attorney’s office. In 1992, she received an appointment to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The author’s text forms a cultural patchwork of memories and reflections as she mines the nuances of her parents’ tumultuous relationship, fondly recalls family visits in Puerto Rico and offers insight on a judicial career that’s just beginning when the memoir ends. Sotomayor writes that her decision (a shrewd one) to close her story early is based on both a political career she feels is “still taking shape” and a dignified reluctance to expand upon any recent high court “political drama,” regardless of the general public’s insatiable curiosity.

Mature, life-affirmative musings from a venerable life shaped by tenacity and pride. (First printing of 200,000.

Author tour to Austin, Baltimore, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, San Diego, San Francisco, Washington, D.C.)

ROD The Autobiography

Stewart, Rod Crown Archetype (400 pp.) $27.00 | Oct. 23, 2012 978-0-307-98730-3 978-0-307-98731-0 e-book

In which Roderick David Stewart, aka Rod the Mod, bares all—not least the secrets of spiky hair.

If Keith Richards is the dangerous old man of rock ’n’ roll, Rod Stewart is the standards-crooning nice old geezer. Even in his down-and-dirty days—for example, snorting mounds of cocaine with pal Elton John—he was a nice guy, unless, perhaps, you were married to him. This memoir sails 2584

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from one mostly amiable anecdote to another, quickly revealing an odd factoid: Like recent memoirist Neil Young, Stewart is a model-train fanatic (“In December 2010, I reached a major career milestone. I appeared on the cover of Model Railroader magazine for the second time. Getting on the front of Rolling Stone had nothing on this”). Unlike Young, Stewart is no motor geek. He admits to liking to drive cool cars without feeling the need to know anything about them, instead reserving his major store of passion for models (female, not railroads) and soccer. Stewart charts his rise from unwashed beatnik poet to lead singer with the Faces, a position fraught with politics and intrigue. He is surprisingly modest about the three great solo albums that marked his work in the early 1970s, though he does reveal the secret of how “Maggie May” came to be written, and he is nicely cheeky about his decline later in the decade (“I may have lost the thread a couple of times in that period”).

Even so, he professes to being somewhat mystified by his being named the enemy of all things punk in the ’70s, since the likes of the Sex Pistols worshiped the Faces. He pulls off a nice and not too heavy-handed bit of comeuppance, though, even while compounding his enemy status with the runaway commercial success of his four albums of grandpa-era standards, which is perhaps forgivable in a man approaching 70.

A likable, mostly generous and well-written look back at the days of bedding starlets and destroying hotels.

THE FORCE OF THINGS A Marriage in War and Peace Stille, Alexander Farrar, Straus and Giroux (384 pp.) $28.00 | Feb. 12, 2013 978-0-374-15742-5

Based on memory, parental revelations, published material and uncovered correspondence, New Yorker and New York Times contributor Stille (The Sack of Rome: How a Beautiful European Country with a Fabled History and a Storied Culture Was Taken Over by a Man Named Silvio Berlusconi, 2006, etc.) considers his forebears.

The author’s mother, Elizabeth, was a bright, pretty girl, a bit flighty in her youth. Her father was a self-made, wellregarded, WASP-y law professor. Stille’s grandfather was a clever, philandering dentist, and his name, Kamenetzki in the Russian shtetl, became Cammenschi in prewar Italy. The family immigrated to New York when Mussolini enacted antiJewish racial laws. After service in Italy during the war, their son, Mikhail (Misha to the family), found his calling as the American correspondent for the leading Italian newspaper.

His pen name, “Stille,” became the family name. At a party (for Truman Capote), Elizabeth encountered Misha (aka Ugo Stille), prompting her to leave her feckless husband for her new, sophisticated suitor. The author examines the relationship between these charming and brainy people from disparate upbringings, noting how she was neat and organized, while he was irascible and sloppy. There were sexual tensions

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“Theoharis has discovered the soul of Rosa Parks, and it’s not that of a docile, middle-age seamstress.” from the rebellious life of mrs. rosa parks

in their world of literati and hipsters, and Elizabeth struggled mightily with her decision to stay in the marriage, which often descended into separations. The author presents a history of considerable scope, exploring in the process the relationship between life and literature: “Life is infinitely complex and messy, and literature works the opposite way: through the distilling and fixing of things into a limited number of words and pages that then (one hopes) takes on a life and meaning of its own.” Though Stille’s rare stabs at humor may be a bit wan, he depicts the histrionic partners in a truly mixed marriage with sharp insight and affection.

A memorable study in contrasts, recounted with understanding and verve.

THE UNTOLD HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES

Stone, Oliver and Kuznick, Peter Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster (784 pp.) $30.00 | Oct. 30, 2012 978-1-4516-1351-3

Zinn-ian conspiracy theories, propounded engagingly and energetically by filmmaker and gadfly Stone and Cold War scholar Kuznick (History/American Univ.).

If you’ve read Howard Zinn—or if, like Jeff Lebowski, the Port Huron Statement is still current news for you—then you’ll have at least some of the outlines of this overstuffed argument.

Premise 1: Though the United States may pretend to be a nice, cuddly sort of democracy, it’s the font of much trouble in the world. Premise 2: When, post-9/11, neocons began pondering why it wouldn’t be such a bad idea for the U.S. to become an imperial power, they were missing a train (or Great White Fleet) that had pulled out of the station long ago. Premise 3: We like European fascists better than Asian fascists, as evidenced by propaganda posters depicting our erstwhile Japanese foes as rats and vermin. Premise 4: War is a racket that benefits only the ruling class. Premise 5: JFK knew more than he had a chance to make public, and he was gunned down for his troubles. And so forth. Layered in with these richly provocative (and eminently arguable) theses are historical aperçus and data that don’t figure in most standard texts—e.g., the showdown between Bernard Baruch and Harry Truman (“in a colossal failure of presidential leadership”) that could only lead to a protracted struggle between the U.S. and the Soviet Union for post–World War II dominance. Some familiar villains figure in as well, notably the eminently hissable Henry Kissinger and his pal Augusto Pinochet; the luster of others whom we might want to think of as good guys dims (George H.W. Bush in regard to Gorbachev), while other bad guys (George W. Bush in regard to Saddam Hussein) get worse.

Preaching to the choir, perhaps, but an invigorating sermon all the same.

THE REBELLIOUS LIFE OF MRS. ROSA PARKS

Theoharis, Jeanne Beacon (360 pp.) $27.95 | $27.95 e-book | Jan. 29, 2013 978-0-8070-5047-7 978-0-8070-5048-4 e-book Theoharis (Political Science/Brooklyn Coll.; co-author: Not Working: Latina Immigrants, Low-Wage Jobs, and the Failure of Welfare, 2006, etc.) has discovered the soul of Rosa Parks (1913–2005), and it’s not that of a docile, middle-age seamstress.

The author successfully goes “behind the icon of Rosa Parks to excavate and examine the scope of her political life.” Parks learned to stand up for her rights as a child; she never backed down from black or white, rich or poor when she knew she was right. She began working for civil rights early in her life and was the first secretary of the Montgomery NAACP in 1947. She also wasn’t the first to refuse to relinquish her seat on the bus, but the strength of her character and a push too far by the local police made her the poster child for the struggle. Her arrest was the impetus for what began as a one-day Montgomery Bus Boycott. That, in turn, united the black population, which had been deeply divided by class and education. While her refusal wasn’t planned in advance, the bus boycott was no spontaneous action. Parks continued to work for equality after she and her husband moved to Detroit, where racism was as bad, if not worse, as that in the South. How Theoharis learned the true nature of this woman is a story in itself. Parks always stood in the background, never volunteered information about herself and eschewed fame. There were no letters to consult; even her autobiography exposed little of the woman’s personality. She hid her light under a bushel, and it has taken an astute author to find the real Parks.

Even though her refusal to give up her bus seat sparked a revolution, Rosa Parks was no accidental heroine. She was born to it, and Theoharis ably shows us how and why.

KILL ANYTHING THAT MOVES The Real American War in Vietnam Turse, Nick Metropolitan/Henry Holt (384 pp.) $28.00 | Jan. 8, 2013 978-0-8050-8691-1

An investigative journalist indicts the leadership of the American military for war crimes in Vietnam.

Turse (The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives, 2008, etc.) has a reputation for rooting out perceived misdeeds on the part of the U.S. government and has plied his trade investigating drone strikes, arms sales and operations by Special Forces. Here, the author attempts to fold

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more than a decade of research about the Vietnam War into a not-so-neat package, with mixed results. His thesis is that incidents like the shameful My Lai massacre were not isolated anomalies, but rather the inevitable result of a systemized, operational directive to slaughter the population of Vietnam. In reconstructing the 1967 blood bath at Trieu Ai, Turse finds common elements.

“Here was the repeated aerial bombing and artillery fire, pounding the rural population on an almost daily basis and forcing them into underground bunkers,” he writes. “Here was the deliberate burning of peasant homes and the relocation of villagers to refugee camps, where their movements were strictly controlled by the government. And here, too, was the inevitable outcome of the soldiers’ training: all the endless chants of ‘kill, kill, kill,’ the dehumanization of the ‘dinks, gooks, slopes, slants,’ and the constant insistence that even women and small children were to be regarded as potential enemies.” Turse’s research is thorough enough to warrant more than 80 pages of notes, but his assembly of the data available has a manipulative sheen to it. The book also treads a lot of previously covered ground, like the 1969 “Operation Speedy Express,” during which the military claimed more than 10,000 enemy combatants dead but recovered less than 800 weapons—an incident that drew fire as early as 1972. Relying heavily on declassified documents and interviews with survivors, the book reads more like the extension of a predisposed agenda than straight-up journalism.

The imperfect defense of a controversial perspective on the hell that is war. (Two 8-page photo inserts; map)

THE PINECONE The Story of Sarah Losh, Forgotten Romantic Heroine—Antiquarian, Architect, and Visionary

Uglow, Jenny Farrar, Straus and Giroux (352 pp.) $28.00 | Jan. 15, 2013 978-0-374-23287-0

This elegant biography of a littleknown Cumbrian landowner, builder and local daughter captures the rural and industrial changes in Georgian England.

Accomplished British historian Uglow (A Gambling Man: Charles II and the Restoration, 2010, etc.) ably depicts the picturesque landscape of Carlisle, just south of the Scottish border. As the eldest daughter of deep descendants of the Wreay landed gentry, who pioneered the iron and alkali works feeding the Industrial Revolution, Sarah Losh (1785–1853) and her beloved younger sister, Katharine, did not feel compelled to marry and relinquish their independence. Rich from their father’s and uncles’ early industriousness, well-educated, strong-willed and bookish, the daughters were able to travel to Italy and elsewhere to study art and architecture, and they brought their ideas home to “improve” their estate and local structures such as the Carlisle school and church. After the death of her sister in 1834, Sarah threw herself into the work of building, combining her love of poetry, 2586

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antiquities and her ancient land into a distinct, original style that was not Gothic, but that melded simple, rustic elements of the old Saxon and Norman, what she considered Lombard Romanesque. Employing in the woodwork designs of available flora and fauna like eagles and pine cones, Sarah embarked on work as a sculptor herself. With a light touch, Uglow integrates greater historical developments—e.g., the Napoleonic wars and the development of Romanticism—within an intimate bucolic story of people whose life was the land.

A writer who knows her subject intimately creates a fully fleshed portrait of an England that would soon vanish with the advent of the railroads.

SOLDIER OF CHRIST The Life of Pope Pius XII

Ventresca, Robert A. Belknap/Harvard Univ. (400 pp.) $35.00 | Jan. 15, 2013 978-0-674-04961-1 Another close scrutiny of the pope excoriated for his silence during World War II and no nearer to redemption.

Ventresca (History/King’s University Coll.; From Fascism to Democracy: Culture and Politics in the Italian Election of 1948, 2004, etc.) does a thorough job sifting through the evidence of the complicated life and papacy of Pius XII, while keeping an open mind to the conclusion. Was the condemnation of the wartime pope as uncaring and remote at a time when Jews and others were being exterminated across Europe really justified? Indeed, Ventresca’s laborious examination of evidence makes for painful reading. Eugenio Pacelli was the first Roman chosen as pope in a good century: Hailing from the “black nobility,” meaning, for generations his family had been employed by the Holy See and thus insiders, he was first appointed by Pius XI as his secretary of state, known for his probity and capacity for hard work.

His early posts to Munich and Berlin put him at the center of shattering world events, and he developed certain biases that would influence his decisions during the rest of his life, namely his hatred of Bolshevism (and Jews were often viewed as indistinguishable from the revolutionary leaders). Moreover, during his influential time in Berlin, he took up key German advisers who would continually dissuade him from public denunciations of the government, while his 40-year household employment of the autocratic and frequently resented Mother Pascalina set an alarming tone. Cerebral, diplomatic and shortsighted, Pius XII simply could not overcome his habitual discretion and propriety in grasping the gravity of Nazi misery, all of which he was informed about early on. Ventresca’s study damns him as a man mired in the conventions of his time.

An authoritative study of a deeply flawed and tragic figure of history. (20 halftones)

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“Editor Ratcliffe’s generous annotations and judicious edits give scope to a rich, brilliant, happy, oblivious life.” from p.g. wodehouse

DATA, A LOVE STORY How I Gamed Online Dating to Meet My Match

P.G. WODEHOUSE A Life in Letters

Wodehouse, P.G. Ratcliffe, Sophie—Ed. Norton (624 pp.) $35.00 | Jan. 28, 2013 978-0-393-08899-1

Webb, Amy Dutton (304 pp.) $25.95 | Jan. 31, 2013 978-0-525-95380-7

A female journalist/digital media strategist’s wry account of how she used mathematics, data analysis and spreadsheets to find the love of her life.

Time was running out for 30-something Webb, who desperately wanted to get married and start a family. So she followed the advice of friends and family and tried online dating “to cast a very wide net” and find “the perfect man.” Unfortunately, her computer matches were less than inspiring. Some blatantly misrepresented themselves; others were bores, dorks, egotists, mooches, sex fiends or married men on the make. Webb finally realized that she wasn’t getting better responses for two reasons: her own lack of specificity about what she wanted in a potential spouse and the absence of a personal system to help her determine which matches would make good dates. She developed a list of 72 desirable characteristics, which she then boiled down to 25, ranked and numerically weighted according to importance. Webb then went to work revamping her online profile in order to get the most responses from the best possible matches for her. To get the data she needed to do this, she created several profiles for fictional men with the characteristics she sought. All of the females who responded seemed shallow, but Webb also saw that they were among the most popular with the most attractive and successful men. Then she had a flash of insight: Regardless of their real-world accomplishments, “these women were approachable [and] seemed easy to date.” Armed with this knowledge, the author recreated her online image to market herself as “the sexy-girl-next-door” rather than a competitive, neurosis-stricken workaholic. Ultimately, she got her man, “a storybook wedding” and the longed-for child. But some readers may wonder how the things Webb “discovers” about successful dating through her research could have eluded her in the first place.

Pleasant, geeky fun.

The life and times of the creator of Bertie and Jeeves, as told to friends and family.

Although they don’t reveal him at his stylish, polished best, these letters by P.G. Wodehouse (1881– 1975) are casual, funny and revealing asides from a prolific and successful career. Although he began his working life in a dull banking firm, it wasn’t long before writing would make him rich.

By the 1920s, he was getting top dollar. “I have just signed a contract with the Cosmopolitan for eighteen stories at $6500 each (including English rights),” he wrote Ira Gershwin in 1928. “Also a serial for Collier’s for $40,000.” As one of the most popular writers (and Broadway lyricists) of his day, he kept up an indefatigable pace. (A typical progress report from 1932: “I’m writing like blazes. A novel and eight short stories in seven and a half months.”) Wodehouse was constantly on the lookout for stories, and he didn’t mind using retreads (“I have only got one plot and produce it once a year with variations”). Evelyn Waugh noted that Wodehouse characters live in a perpetual Eden; their creator was a similar case of arrested development. At the age of 51, he wrote, “I sometimes feel as if I were a case of infantilism.”

Taken prisoner by the Nazis while living in France, he made broadcasts over German radio in hopes of letting his readers know he was OK; it took years of postwar damage control to convince them he had been a “Silly Ass,” not a Nazi stooge. To wife Ethel (“precious angel Bunny”) and stepdaughter Leonora (“Snorky”), he was affectionate; to fellow writers and readers— he always answered fan mail—he was instructive, gossipy and supportive, sometimes financially.

Editor Ratcliffe’s (On Sympathy, 2009) generous annotations and judicious edits give scope to a rich, brilliant, happy, oblivious life. (16 pages of photographs)

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“A memorable account of training, service and heroism.” from for crew and country

FOR CREW AND COUNTRY The Inspirational True Story of Bravery and Sacrifice Aboard the USS Samuel B. Roberts

Wukovits, John St. Martin’s (352 pp.) $26.99 | Jan. 29, 2013 978-0-312-68189-0 978-1-250-02124-3 e-book

World War II historian Wukovits (“Bull” Halsey: The Life and Wars of the Navy’s Most Controversial Commander, 2010, etc.) commemorates the heroism and sacrifice on board the USS Samuel B. Roberts.

Named for Samuel Booker Roberts, who sacrificed his life to save others at the Battle of Guadalcanal in 1942, the destroyer escort and its crew rose to the challenge of trying to screen the protecting aircraft carriers from an oncoming Japanese heavy cruiser task force. The escort ship, loaded with radar and sonar equipment, was not designed for battle, but for locating airborne and underwater hostiles for others to engage. Nearly half of the crew’s 200 men lost their lives during the battle and afterward, while survivors were fighting to stay alive in the ocean.

Debate about how the events occurred began promptly, with attention focusing on the absence of forces assigned to the protective screen, which was chasing after a Japanese aircraft carrier task force. The debate still continues, and Wukovits weaves the discussion into his battle narrative. The author prepares his ground with an account of the recruitment and training of the ship’s crew and its officers, and he spotlights the leading contribution of Lt. Cmdr. Robert W. Copeland, whose insistence on the highest standards of training for combat readiness prepared the crew and ship for what lay ahead. Wukovits worked with survivors and their family members compiling detailed accounts of the lives of as many of the junior officers and enlisted men as possible. The author also includes a chronology and list of the crew.

A memorable account of training, service and heroism.

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KANGAROO AND CROCODILE My Big Book of Australian Animals

These titles earned the Kirkus Star:

THE WATER CASTLE by Megan Frazer Blakemore....................p. 2590

Bancroft, Bronwyn Little Hare/Trafalgar (48 pp.) $19.99 | Jan. 1, 2013 978-1-921714-25-2

LOVE AND OTHER PERISHABLE ITEMS by Laura Buzo......... p. 2591 GINGERSNAP by Patricia Reilly Giff.........................................p. 2594

Australian animals are ever-intriguing, and this large-format picture book provides a visually stunning experience for young armchair travelers and their elders.

Most of the double-page spreads feature two often-related animals (bottlenose dolphin and great white shark, for instance), although a few splendidly concentrate on one animal. There are also several spreads with four different animals. Bancroft, an Aboriginal artist who has created textiles, fashions, paintings and illustrations in many picture books, uses eye-popping colors, concentric circles, pointillist dots, zigzagging lines and other elements of Australian indigenous art to portray animals and their environments in highly stylized forms. An undulating ribbon of changing color runs through the book, uniting the pages; each animal’s name appears on this wide stripe that cuts each page in two. Occasionally, as on the cockatoo and galah spread, readers may be confused by the labels, as both pages include examples of each avian species. The kangaroo and wallaby page is also difficult to decipher, as the animals are similar, and the illustrator has mixed them together. More sophisticated readers may enjoy the visual puzzle. Descriptions of each animal, in alphabetical order, are given at the end, but the two or three sentences sometimes do not provide enough information, as in the case of “reef life,” and should be supplemented with other sources.

Striking illustrations, but sometimes light on factual details. (Informational picture book. 3-7)

THE LOST KING by Ursula Jones................................................. p. 2597 SAILING THE UNKNOWN by Michael J Rosen ; illus. by Maria Cristina Pritelli.............................................................................p. 2601 USES FOR BOYS by Erica Lorraine Scheidt...............................p. 2602 COURAGE HAS NO COLOR by Tanya Lee Stone...................... p. 2604 NAVIGATING EARLY by Clare Vanderpool.................................p. 2605 THE GOLDILOCKS VARIATIONS by Allan Ahlberg ; illus. by Jessica Ahlberg..........................................................................................p. 2609 THE HAPPY LITTLE YELLOW BOX by David A Carter............p. 2610 HIDE AND SEEK by David A. Carter.........................................p. 2610 IS THAT YOU, WOLF? by Steve Cox...........................................p. 2610 ITSY BITSY SPIDER by Richard Egielski.................................... p. 2611 RIDING IN MY CAR by Woody Guthrie; illus. by Scott Menchin..................................................................p. 2612 ONE SPOTTED GIRAFFE by Petr Horácek.................................p. 2612 LOVE AND OTHER PERISHABLE ITEMS

NOBODY

Buzo, Laura Knopf (256 pp.) $17.99 | $10.99 e-book PLB $20.99 Dec. 11, 2012 978-0-375-87000-2 978-0-375-98674-1 e-book 978-0-375-97000-9 PLB

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Barnes, Jennifer Lynn Egmont USA (400 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 22, 2013 978-1-60684-321-5 In a fast-paced and simply told action story, Claire, who has spent her life being ignored, teams up with Nix, the boy raised to kill her.

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“Weaving legacy and myth into science and magic, old into new and enemies into friends, Blakemore creates an exquisite mystery.” from the water castle

DANCE OF SHADOWS

of Claire’s constant loneliness and next of Nix’s certainty that she is a dangerous Null who must be hunted and killed. When the two teens meet, their worlds change: Nix realizes that the Society that raised him as a weapon has been lying about his targets being evil. Claire experiences the terror of being hunted and then the joy and relief of discovering that somebody—Nix— can see her. Both teens, it turns out, are Nobodies, beings whose power lies in their ability to escape notice and whose lives the Society wants to control. Short, emphatic sentences, dramatic repetition and strategic line breaks shuttle readers through the action and worldbuilding. If there were much of a pause in the action, readers might have time to question some of the story’s premises (they don’t know, for instance, how Claire escaped the Society’s notice until now or whether there are others like her). As written, however, it’s a pleasurable ride through chases, escapes, sinister memories and romantic tension.

Gripping, with a dramatic climax and just enough room for a sequel. (Science fiction. 12 & up)

Black, Yelena Bloomsbury (304 pp.) $17.99 | Dec. 24, 2012 978-1-59990-940-0

An overheated debut mixes highstakes ballet education with the occult.

Fifteen-year-old Vanessa, though astonishingly gifted, didn’t apply to the ultraprestigious New York Ballet Academy because she wants a career in dance—she did it in the hope of finding her older sister, Margaret, who disappeared from the school after being cast as the Firebird as a freshman three years ago. Once at NYBA, she draws the attention of choreographer Josef and two senior boys, the obnoxious Justin and the lustrous-eyed Zeppelin (a name so hilariously unballetic it could only have been meant ironically— except it seems not to be). It will surprise no one except the catty senior girls that Vanessa is cast as the Firebird, just as her sister was before….Vanessa’s investigation proceeds in fits and starts; irritatingly, an early mystical warning she receives during a hazing incident is dropped. That she does not recall this while rehearsing the mysterious “Danse du Feu” in an underground studio whose charred walls are interrupted only by the white silhouettes of dancers, one of whom resembles Margaret and that sometimes seem to dance with her, will have readers grinding their teeth. A lengthy midsection devolves into a rushed and chaotic conclusion that turns out to be little more than a setup for a sequel.

Care and attention to details of the ballet cannot compensate for slipshod plotting; both balletomanes and urban-fantasy fans should look elsewhere. (Urban fantasy.

13-16)

THE BLACK ROSE

Bartholomeusz, James Medallion Press (260 pp.) $9.95 paperback | Dec. 1, 2012 978-160542537-5 Series: Seven Stars Trilogy, 2 Evil cultists, magic shards, goblins and elves.

Book 2 of The Seven Stars Trilogy follows British student Jack Lawson and his band of fellow peacekeeping Apollonians in a race against time to find a series of magical shards before the evil priests and priestesses of the Cult of Dionysus use them for nefarious purposes, namely world domination. Just as in the first installment of the trilogy, this is full of references to heroic literature, time travel, excitement and danger. Bartholomeusz, a teenager at the time of publication of the first book, pens a fast-paced page turner with mostly believable dialogue. The worlds inhabited by his characters seem patched together at times, however, and he’s much better at crafting scenes that take place in more familiar territories than the ones he makes up. For example, whereas a hunt for a shard set in a forest of fairies reads clearly and succinctly, some of the more conceptual backdrops, like the Nexus where the cult resides, feel less fully realized. Bartholomeusz also has a tendency to throw in lots of imaginary creatures and objects without explanation or connective tissue, which might confuse readers. This doesn’t really hamper the plot, however, and once readers are hooked, they’ll most likely plow right through the oddities.

An author worth watching. (Fantasy. 12 & up)

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THE WATER CASTLE

Blakemore, Megan Frazer Walker (352 pp.) $16.99 | Jan. 8, 2013 978-0-8027-2839-5

Weaving legacy and myth into science and magic, old into new and enemies into friends, Blakemore creates an exquisite mystery.

Crystal Springs, Maine, “isn’t on the map,” but it’s still where Price, Ephraim and Brynn’s mother brings their family when their father has a stroke. The “looming stone house” with hidden floors and impossible rooms, owned by their family (the Appledores) for over a century, was once a resort that claimed its spring water had healing properties—possibly a fountain of youth. Ephraim struggles to fit in at Crystal Springs’ peculiarly overachieving school; his classmate Mallory steels herself against her mother’s recent departure and her teacher’s assignment to study Matthew Henson (“He just assumed she would want to do him, |

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because Henson was black too”). While Mallory, Ephraim and another sixth-grader named Will unravel the castle’s secrets (each for different reasons, all serious) and confront age-old hostility among their families, a 1908 storyline unfolds: Young Nora Darling (Mallory’s relative) assists old Orlando Appledore in feverish scientific research. Peary and Henson’s Arctic expedition features in both timelines; science, history and literature references glow; Nikola Tesla visits Nora and Orlando. With keen intelligence and bits of humor, the prose slips calmly between narrative perspectives, trusting readers to pick up a revelation that Ephraim and Mallory don’t see—and it’s a doozy.

This one is special. (Fiction. 10-14)

leading a ragged but distinctly nonfearsome crew.

Billy and Belle are playing pirates at the beach. Transformed into swashbuckling buccaneers by the flip of a half-page, they proceed to offer ingenuous disquisitions on the nature and history of piracy (“Did you know many pirates steal from other people because they are very poor?”). They also cover piratical dress, behavior, shipboard tasks and lingo, followed by a spot of smoky but nonviolent plundering. Then it’s time to go ashore for a quick chantey, a matching game that encourages drawing lines between pirate heads and hats, and a set of review questions (“What’s the leader of a pirate ship called?”). The text isn’t much more than inconsequential ballast (“It is considered bad luck for girls to be on board a pirate ship. That’s why girl pirates dress up as boys”). Nevertheless, the cleanly drawn, brightly hued cartoon illustrations—climaxed by a double-gatefold cutaway view of a capacious ship crewed by cheery idlers—sail along airily enough to keep budding buccaneers entertained.

A lubberly addition to the fleet, kept afloat by its pictures. (Informational picture book. 6-8)

SHADOW BREAKERS

Blythe, Daniel Chicken House/Scholastic (256 pp.) $16.99 | $16.99 e-book | Jan. 1, 2013 978-0-545-47979-0 978-0-545-52064-5 e-book

LOVE AND OTHER PERISHABLE ITEMS

A fresh and often funny paranormal mystery for the middle school set.

Twelve-year-old Miranda May, who has been plagued with disturbing dreams featuring a menacing shadow, has just moved with her family to Firecroft Bay, a sleepy town on the English coast steeped in fog and mystery. Miranda is soon drawn into a group of students who, she is surprised to discover, meet in a secret lair to hatch their plans to bring high-tech gadgetry, smarts and telepathy to bear on the paranormal elements in their midst. The group enlists Miranda’s help in subduing the Animus, the ominous shadow that has been haunting Miranda and wreaking havoc in the town. The trouble is that Miranda doesn’t quite trust this merry band of spook hunters, or perhaps it is they who don’t quite trust her. The only sure thing is that something is not what it seems.

While the focus is a bit scattered initially and the dramatic tension is slow to build up, confusing character arcs and plot elements begin to coalesce about halfway through the story and then hum along to a satisfying ending.

A relatively tame paranormal mystery with interesting and likable, if not memorable, characters, this one is a good choice where demand for the genre is strong—which will be just about everywhere. (Paranormal suspense. 9-12)

Buzo, Laura Knopf (256 pp.) $17.99 | $10.99 e-book | PLB $20.99 Dec. 11, 2012 978-0-375-87000-2 978-0-375-98674-1 e-book 978-0-375-97000-9 PLB A sweet and scathingly funny love story (kinda) from Australia.

Amelia is thoroughly crushed out on Chris. Chris pines for Michaela, though he does think Amelia is interesting. Amelia lives for her evening and weekend shifts at the local supermarket, aka “the Land of Dreams”; Chris lives for his post-work and -class benders and the hope of sex. As Chris says, “[Y]ou are fifteen and I am twenty-two, we have nothing in common socially and are at completely different stages in our lives.” Well, they are and they aren’t.

Amelia is “in [the] no-man’s-land between the trenches of childhood and adulthood,” and really, so is Chris. About to finish his sociology degree, he still lives with his parents and avoids planning beyond university. Amelia tells her side of the nonromance in a smart, wistfully perceptive present tense, while Chris’ story unfolds in his journals, written with savage, self-deprecating, foulmouthed ferocity. These accounts are interleaved, though staggered chronologically so readers move back and forth in time as the relationship develops—a brilliant juxtaposition. Alcohol-drenched encounters outside of work are, with one exception, almost irredeemably sordid (though as funny as the rest of the book); the Land of Dreams becomes a weird haven for them both, where they discuss Great Expectations and school each other in third-wave feminism.

The exactly right conclusion eschews easy resolution, though there’s plenty of hope as they flounder into the future. (Fiction. 14 & up)

PIRATES

Boshouwers, Suzan Illus. by Hund, Marjolein Clavis (30 pp.) $16.95 | Dec. 1, 2012 978-1-60537-135-1 Series: Want to Know Light scrapings of pirate lore are delivered by two children dressed to the hilt for their roles and | kirkus.com

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POISON

first-person narration makes liberal use of exclamation points, an irritant that some readers may find mitigated by the cool scifi language. Readers of Mark Fearing’s Earthling! (2012), Aaron Reynolds and Andy Rash’s Superhero School (2009) and Dave Roman’s Astronaut Academy (2011) may feel a sense of déjà vu, but there’s more than enough eye candy to compensate.

A visually polished print debut—with a teaser on the front flap for the app version in place of a blurb. Unsurprisingly, also in development as a film. (Picture book. 7-9)

Cochran, Molly Simon & Schuster (368 pp.) $17.99 | Dec. 4, 2012 978-1-4424-5050-9 Series: Legacy (Molly Cochran), 2 When three cowen—nonmagical— girls at the Ainsworth School fall prey to a mysterious illness and Katy takes the blame, it’s clear that evil forces have returned to Whitfield (Legacy, 2011).

To clear her name, she embarks on a dangerous mission, using her powers to journey between worlds to stop them from claiming any more innocent lives. Little does she know that it will mean facing some of witchcraft’s greatest legends.

It’s a lonely quest, as Katy’s boyfriend, Peter, is wrapped up in his own family drama, her friends have written her off, and the close family of witches she came to know in the previous book is almost completely missing in action. Her isolation only worsens as the story progresses, and Katy discovers that even if her loved ones were around, her very presence might kill them.

While Katy is a likable-enough heroine, the noticeable lack of meaningful interactions with other characters will frustrate readers attempting to connect to the story on an emotional level. This is especially problematic when it comes to Peter and Katy. Their professions of undying love for each other feel shallow, given they are hardly ever in the same room at the same time. Fortunately, the introduction of Arthurian legend is intriguing, and the last few chapters are real nail-biters.

Whether that’s enough to keep fans reading the series remains to be seen. (Paranormal romance. 13 & up)

SECRETS OF MERCY HALL

Edwards, Garth Illus. by Stasyuk, Max Inside Pocket (192 pp.) $7.99 paperback | Dec. 1, 2012 978-0-9567122-5-7 Series: The Thorn Gate Trilogy, 2

Economic woes force the Victorianera orphans of Mercy Hall into a second expedition to the technologically advanced land beyond their magical hedge (Escape from Mercy Hall, 2012). This time they return with not only more treasure, but jet packs too!

Their treasury emptied by the failure of their local bank, Milly, George, Singer, Charlie and Drago the talking dog reluctantly reopen the gateway to the dangerous but diamondrich world introduced in the opener. The expedition quickly devolves into a series of attacks and chases by the nefarious techno-priestly Robes, who are eager to discover the gateway’s location. Luckily, the misleadingly named “NoGoodLands” turn out to be well-stocked with hospitable talking allies, from Polly trees and kangaroolike Jambucks to green-skinned, warlike, humanoid Waterlanders. Thanks to these new friends and their own powers, such as Singer’s ability to turn invisible at will and Milly’s superstrength, the orphans not only survive numerous narrow squeaks, but pull off a raid on the Robes’ own headquarters to steal some “rocket rucksacks.” Stasyuk’s rare, small vignettes add bits of visual detail.

Like the first episode, thoroughly predictable and free from more than momentary suspense or danger—but quick of pace at least, and unchallenging of language. (Fantasy. 10-12)

THE OTHERWORLDLY ADVENTURES OF TYLER WASHBURN The New Kid

Cole, Dylan Illus. by Cole, Dylan with Aldoori, Ahmed Design Studio Press (48 pp.) $19.95 | Dec. 1, 2012 978-1-9334-9277-3

Hypercool paintings featuring alien school kids and elaborately detailed planetscapes juice up this weakly plotted tale of a young tinkerer transported to a galactic academy.

Tyler is mostly given to the sort of smarmy inventions that let him spy into his sister’s bedroom or splatter his dad with paint. Despite this, Tyler is promoted to an extremely multicultural orbiting school where he has a (sometimes literal) blast learning to use a jet pack and taking field trips to exotic planets. Cole, a digital artist with a hefty film résumé, plants an unrepentant smirk on his bright-eyed protagonist, surrounds him with heavily made-up but basically humanoid schoolmates, and places him in a series of atmospheric, dazzlingly finished high-tech or extraplanetary settings. Tyler’s overly expository 2592

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HEROES OF MERCY HALL

Edwards, Garth Illus. by Stasyuk, Max Inside Pocket (208 pp.) $7.99 paperback | Dec. 1, 2012 978-0-9567122-6-4 Series: The Thorn Gate Trilogy, 3

Collapsing in a tangled heap of dangling subplots and unlikely resolutions, this trilogy closer sends a group of |

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“A small, witty portrait gallery of colds…” from never catch a cold

NEVER CATCH A COLD

superpowered Victorian-era orphans on one last venture to a magic land within a bubble of “light enriched zenna molecules” crafted by space aliens.

The orphans pass easily back and forth through a thorn hedge that was previously nearly impenetrable and multiple self-contained, page-count–padding set pieces. They contrive to rescue a family of chimps as well as three kidnapped nonhumans from a circus and then to save the blue-skinned Waterlanders, who are surprised when the oversized spiders they had been wantonly killing launch reprisal attacks. The discovery of a talking (and talkative) library of alien superscience then leads to a climactic battle with the bad-guy Robes in which the Waterlander women dress as men in order to be mistaken for real warriors. This is followed by several convenient revelations and the immediate reconciliation of the land’s four warring human and humanoid races (the numerous nonhumanoids just drop out of sight).

A trilogy already largely composed of off-the-shelf elements rushes to an end amid a welter of muddled plotting, meaningless technobabble and astronomical gaps in logic.

(Fantasy. 10-12)

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François, André Illus. by François, André Creative Editions/Creative Company (88 pp.) $15.99 | Dec. 15, 2012 978-1-56846-231-8 A small, witty portrait gallery of colds, originally composed in French for a pharmaceutical company’s ad campaign.

François opens by explaining that children are urged never to catch one, which is why there are so many when other ancient creatures like the “Dogter” and the “Jam-Eating Frog” have disappeared. He then portrays over a dozen types—from “Head Cold” and “Hay Fever Cold” to the massive “Big Bad Cold” and the diminutive (but, as the author notes, “You still have to go to school”) “Sniffles Cold.” Portrayed as just loosely brushed black silhouettes in the minimalistic illustrations, the various colds look for the most part like tailless dogs with ducklike bills and ingratiatingly angled heads. Appealing looks notwithstanding,

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“Rex’s oil paints showcase lights, darks and textures while populating the scenes with droll-looking animals and fine details to pore over.” from chu ’s day

however, the author goes on to solidify his message that it’s never a good idea to have one around by pointing out that they can be “complicated” (depicted on a psychoanalyst’s couch being interrogated by Sigmund Freud) and hard to get rid of.

Despite its sponsor, the mildly cautionary theme proceeds to its conclusion without mention of medication.

A bit of Gallic foolery, just in time for cold season. (Picture book. 5-7)

plot with a longing for family—and make it all believable.

When Jayna’s brother leaves for submarine duty, she’s left to stay with their cranky landlady (their parents died in a car accident). She remembers an old, blue recipe book inscribed with a name and address in Brooklyn and becomes convinced the woman in a photo standing in front of a bakery named Gingersnap (her nickname) is her grandmother. With her pet box turtle, Theresa, in a cat carrier and the recipe book in her suitcase, she takes a bus into New York City and the subway to Brooklyn. Through a series of misfortunes, she finds the bakery and its owner, Elise. Is Elise her grandmother? Will Rob return from the war? Who is the ghost wearing Jayna’s toenail polish with only her hands and feet visible, and can she connect with Rob? Will Theresa survive? Jayna’s eight tasty soup recipes befit the circumstances as they unfold: Don’t-Think-About-It Soup, Hope Soup, Waiting Soup and so forth. The author’s note to readers refers to her own childhood war memories, lending dimension to the characters and plot. Unfortunately, the cover image of a girl with a suitcase walking by brownstone houses won’t entice readers, though the story itself is riveting.

While the outcome is foreseeable, Jayna’s journey is a memorable one. (Historical fiction. 9-12)

CHU’S DAY

Gaiman, Neil Illus. by Rex, Adam Harper/HarperCollins (32 pp.) $16.99 | Jan. 1, 2013 978-0-06-201781-9 A modest yet richly colorful day in the life of a small panda who may or may not sneeze, which may or may not be calamitous.

“When Chu sneezed, bad things happened,” portends the opening. Chu is an adorable panda kid in a striped T-shirt and aviator hat. Mellow white space surrounds him and his panda parents except when they arrive at the day’s three destinations: the library, a diner and the circus. These settings are sumptuous spreads. Rex’s oil paints showcase lights, darks and textures while populating the scenes with droll-looking animals and fine details to pore over. A circus turtle flies on a trapeze; library mice sit inside old-fashioned card-catalog drawers working on miniscule computers. Due to the library’s “old-book-dust,” Chu’s mother knows to check: “Are you going to sneeze?”— “aah-aaah-Aaaah- / No, said Chu.” That comical buildup and take back spreads across three pages, including a suspenseful page turn. At the circus, readers finally behold the power of a nasal expulsion. The climax is visually realistic yet dreamlike, with a nice, slyly deadpan ending that finds Chu’s family somewhat better off than the rest of their town. The single problem with this book—potentially a deal breaker—is the use of this particular Chinese name for the sake of a sneeze pun.

Weigh great art and clever story against the exploitation of the old, unfortunate cliché that Asian names sound funny. (Picture book. 2-5)

THE SLITHER SISTERS

Gilman, Charles Quirk Books (176 pp.) $13.99 | $6.99 e-book | Jan. 15, 2013 978-1-59474-593-5 978-1-59474-594-2 e-book Series: Tales From Lovecraft Middle School, 2 Ancient squirming evil from dark dimensions beyond threatens to take over the world—starting with the student-council presidency.

In series opener Professor Gargoyle (2012), Lovecraft Middle School seventh-grader Robert Arthur and his former nemesis, Glenn Torkells, saved their new school from the eldritch demon inhabiting Professor Goyle’s body. Now, crazed physicist Crawford Tillinghast, currently trapped in another dimension, is attempting to take over Lovecraft Middle School by gaining control of the student council with his minions, two snakehaired demons disguised as popular girls Sarah and Sylvia Price.

Can Robert and Glenn defeat the dimension-hopping monsters with the help of ghost girl Karina and slightly creepy librarian Ms. Lavinia, or will the cthulhu hordes overrun us all? Gilman’s second entry picks up where the first left off and adeptly sets up the third, to be released two months hence. It’s another slightly creepy, often funny read that doesn’t require much of its audience (least of all knowledge of the works of H.P. Lovecraft). Occasional action-packed and monster-filled black-and-white illustrations and another motion-activated lenticular cover add eye-catching zest. Though it can stand alone, much is set up in the first book.

Worth a look for fans of Spiderwick and the ever-living Goosebumps. (Humorous horror. 9-12)

GINGERSNAP

Giff, Patricia Reilly Wendy Lamb/Random (160 pp.) $15.99 | $10.99 e-book | PLB $18.99 Jan. 8, 2013 978-0-375-83891-0 978-0-307-98029-8 e-book 978-0-375-93891-7 PLB Giff is one of few writers who can entwine an odd lot of characters, set them in Brooklyn during World War II, flavor the story with soup recipes, add a ghost and infuse the 2594

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THE CROSSING

Colby’s body and demands to know her killer, Jade must solve the mystery. In this first-person page turner, it’s soon clear that underneath Kayla’s beauty and intelligence was a coldhearted manipulator whom many would have liked to have seen out of the way. Plenty of red herrings keep the story lively and fastpaced. Although excerpts from Kayla’s secret diary offer clues along the way, readers will keep trying to guess the real murderer until the final pages. Jade’s inherited interest in gems adds another layer of appeal and a way to deal with her unresolved grief.

Downright, satisfyingly creepy. (Supernatural mystery.

13 & up)

Hager, Mandy Pyr/Prometheus Books (280 pp.) $16.95 | Jan. 8, 2013 978-1-61614-698-6 Series: Blood of the Lamb, 1 Post-apocalyptic religious exploitation in Micronesia forms the theme of this dystopia.

Maryam has waited almost all her life for her Bloods to come, so she can fulfill her destiny in the Holy City. Ever since the Tribulation that churned the sea and destroyed the power sources, the people of her Pacific island—roughly based on the nation of Kiribati, according to the author’s note—have followed the guidance of the white-skinned Apostles of the Lamb. As a tiny child, Maryam was taken from her birthparents when a blood test showed she was one of the Lord’s Chosen. The religious experience she’s been dreaming of, however, is more like a nightmare. The white-robed and white-skinned Apostles enslave the “native” servers, keeping them hungry and sexually exploited, drunk and pregnant, and constantly in superstitious terror. Maryam learns to trust nobody (except, perhaps, for the requisite sympathetic, handsome boy). Maryam’s perspective isn’t as tightly drawn as it could be, with viewpoints that seem to come more from an Apostle or even a contemporary reader, rather than an islander raised among other islanders. Nonetheless, her struggle to recognize and fight exploitation that’s been reinforced by religious faith is compelling. Perhaps one day Maryam will cast off her Chosen name and reclaim the name of her birth, the name given to her by her own people.

This trilogy opener will be just the thing for those readers still hungry for dystopias. (Dystopian romance. 13-16)

33 MINUTES

Hasak-Lowy, Todd Aladdin (224 pp.) $15.99 | Jan. 1, 2013 978-1-4424-4500-0 Brainy seventh-grader Sam Lewis actually takes 1 hour and 35 minutes to let go of the idea that he and former best bud Morgan Sturtz can still be friends.

First, there’s the agonizing wait for the fight Morgan has promised at recess.

Sam has done something quite stupid, though readers don’t learn exactly what that is until well into his narrative. Chapters headed by the time of day describe a tedious social studies class, an epic cafeteria food fight ending with a salad-bowl blow to Sam’s head, a fire drill that turns out to be real and, finally, a solid right to Sam’s chin. Though the details are specific—and funny—the sad situation is not unusual. In middle school, Morgan has shot up physically and found his place on the football team; Sam, still short and skinny, stars at math. Six elementary school years together and an amazing day of shared video game mastery is not enough to sustain their friendship. New neighbor Chris Tripadero fans the flames. This realistic picture of early teen life includes at least one aware teacher who counsels patience and advises Sam that he won’t be there forever. Readers will probably appreciate the message.

Occasional hand-lettered black-and-white sketches add to the appeal of this satisfying school story.

(Fiction. 10-13)

THE DEAD AND BURIED

Harrington, Kim Point/Scholastic (304 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 1, 2013 978-0-545-33302-3

Harrington returns to the genre of Lois Duncan with spine-chilling results.

Jade Kelley, 17 named for one of the gemstones her deceased jewelry-setter mother collected, is thrilled that her family (father, stepmother and younger stepbrother, Colby) is finally moving from its rural surroundings to the bustle of the Boston suburbs. Their new home definitely offers more activity—paranormal activity that is. An instant source of gossip at school, Jade discovers that the most popular girl, Kayla Sloane, died from unnatural causes—a push down the stairs—the previous year in the same home her family purchased. Although never charged, the prime suspect has always been emo artist Donovan, Kayla’s last boyfriend and the same guy Jade finds attractive. When Kayla takes possession of | kirkus.com

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GRUMPY GOAT

ensnared by a gang involved in prostitution. In a defiant firstperson voice, Jade Moon describes the desperate lives of Chinese immigrant women as she relies on her Fire Horse persona to save herself. Period details about American anti-Chinese sentiment and the hidden side of Chinatown provide historical context to Jade Moon’s disturbing story.

Perilous, page-turning adventure in old Chinatown. (author’s note) (Historical fiction. 12-18)

Helquist, Brett Illus. by Helquist, Brett Harper/HarperCollins (40 pp.) $16.99 | Jan. 1, 2013 978-0-06-113953-6 An out-of-sorts goat goes back and forth between grumpy and happy in this slight tale with a murky message.

Formerly a friendly farm, Sunny Acres changes with the arrival of Goat, who has never had a friend before. “He was hungry. He was grumpy. He didn’t want to share.” He spurns the other animals’ friendly overtures and focuses on scowling and eating. But the lone dandelion in full bloom at the top of Sunrise Hill stops him in his tracks—it “remind[s] him of something.”

He provides water and keeps the grass around it trimmed neatly.

Most notably, when the other animals approach, he doesn’t chase them away or scowl, finally making friends. But his melancholy returns when the dandelion turns into a fragile puff that disappears in the breeze. Unable to cheer him up, his farmyard friends keep him company…until those scattered seeds bear fruit, bathing the hillside in yellow-flower sunshine. Helquist’s acrylic-and-oil illustrations fail to take advantage of the obvious interplay of emotions, the palette remaining overly dark throughout most of the pages. The cartoonish animals speak volumes with their comical facial expressions, though this adds to the facile treatment of Goat’s moodiness.

The book fails to address the roots of Goat’s bad temper or his turnaround, equating them with dandelions in the wind, and may leave readers feeling grumpy with the lack of a true problem or solution. (Picture book. 4-7)

THE GIRL IN RED

Innocenti, Roberto; Frisch, Aaron Illus. by Innocenti, Roberto Creative Editions/Creative Company (32 pp.) $19.99 | Dec. 15, 2012 978-1-56846-223-3 A modern, urban, dream-and-nightmare scenario for Red Riding Hood, with a television-show ending.

The story is told by a tiny woman knitting in a pool of light, surrounded by children, possibly in a classroom or play group. Sophia lives with her mother and sister in a high-rise apartment, and her mother sends her off with honey and biscuits in her backpack for her grandmother on the other edge of the forest—the “forest” being a gritty urban environment with echoes of the seedier ends of London or New York. Innocenti creates a darkly fabulous urban landscape full of traffic, litter, graffiti and raucous advertisements in many languages. When Sophia reaches The Wood, a Times Square–like habitat where “[a]lmost anything you want can be had,” she finds her favorite shop, full of action figures and heroines, but loses her way.

A motorcycle gang surrounds her, but she is rescued by a dark figure who takes her most of the way to her grandmother’s and then….The final scene finds Nana’s trailer surrounded by police cars and reporters, and the scarf the teller has been knitting is much, much longer.

Older children, and perhaps even teens, might find this tale much to their liking; some, however, might find its darkness a little too unmitigated, despite the closing sign that says “Happy End.” (Picture book. 8-12)

THE FIRE HORSE GIRL

Honeyman, Kay Levine/Scholastic (336 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 1, 2013 978-0-545-40310-8

Hoping to escape the curse of being a Fire Horse girl, a Chinese teen emigrates to San Francisco in 1923, where she encounters deceit, disappointment and danger.

Chinese girls born in the year of the Fire Horse are ruled by their fiery temperaments. A Fire Horse girl, 17-year-old Jade Moon’s temper, stubbornness and selfishness ensure that she is scorned and single in her rural village. When handsome, smooth-talking Sterling Promise appears, professing to be her uncle’s adopted son, he convinces Jade Moon and her father to go with him to America to make their fortunes. Wary of but attracted to Sterling Promise, Jade Moon sees this as her chance to begin a new life. Arriving in San Francisco, they are detained in prisonlike barracks on Angel Island—where Jade Moon discovers that her father and Sterling Promise have betrayed her. To avoid returning to China, Jade Moon poses as a man and slips into Chinatown, where she’s 2596

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THE BOX

Janssens, Axel Illus. by Janssens, Axel Clavis (30 pp.) $15.95 | Dec. 1, 2012 978-1-60537-134-4 All those anecdotes about how children prefer playing with a big empty box instead of the present inside pop up in this earnest little tale translated from

the Dutch.

Leo has a new red bike, of which he is very proud. While riding it around the schoolyard, however, he crashes into a |

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“A violent, madcap, frequently entertaining scramble.” from the lost king

LOUISA MAY’S BATTLE How the Civil War Led to Little Women

big cardboard box that Kenny is sitting in. Leo falls and is pretty annoyed, but Kenny announces that he was hiding in the box to escape a rhino. The box transforms into a car to aid Kenny’s escape, but the jungle presents tough terrain, so it turns into an elephant, with Kenny’s box a basket on its back.

The box continues its transformations as Kenny’s stories get even more elaborate. Each time Leo declares the impossibility of a transformation, Kenny calmly refutes it. Eventually all the children want to join Kenny in his adventures in the box, and even Leo decides the box is way more fun than his shiny red bike. The illustrations seem to be photographs of threedimensional figures and collage, with the children, beasts and objects molded from some kind of claylike substance. Kenny has wild, stand-up hair, and the group of children is ethnically mixed. The endpapers are a close-up image of a corrugated cardboard box—just right.

The art is striking, even if the text is a little too preachy.

(Picture book. 5-8)

Krull, Kathleen Illus. by Beccia, Carlyn Walker (48 pp.) $16.99 | Mar. 5, 2013 978-0-8027-9668-4

During the Civil War, Louisa May Alcott served as a volunteer nurse, caring for Union soldiers in Washington, D.C., between December 12, 1862, and January 21, 1863. This well-researched biographical vignette explores the brief but pivotal episode in Alcott’s life.

An abolitionist, Alcott longed to fight in the Union Army, but she did her part by serving as a nurse. Alcott met the female nursing requirements: She was 30, plain, strong and unmarried.

Krull describes her challenging solo journey from Massachusetts by train and ship and her lonely arrival in Washington at the “overcrowded, damp, dark, airless” hospital. For three weeks she nursed and provided “motherly” support for her “boys” before succumbing to typhoid fever, forcing her to return to Massachusetts. Krull shows how Alcott’s short tenure as a nurse affected her life, inspiring her to publish letters she sent home as Hospital Sketches. This honest account of the war earned rave reviews and taught Alcott to use her own experiences in her writing, leading to Little Women. Peppered with Alcott’s own words, the straightforward text is enhanced by bold, realistic illustrations rendered in digital oils on gessoed canvas. A somber palette reinforces the grim wartime atmosphere, dramatically highlighting Alcott in her red cape and white nurse’s apron.

An insightful glimpse into a key period in Alcott’s life and women in nursing. (notes on women in medicine and the Battle of Fredericksburg, sources, map) (Picture book/ biography. 9-11)

THE LOST KING

Jones, Ursula Inside Pocket (349 pp.) $9.99 paperback | Dec. 1, 2012 978-1-9084-5812-4 After years hiding out in plain sight, a royal heir sparks a revolution in his conquered city.

Despite brutal repression, rebellion is already simmering in Khul, renamed “Slave City” after the bloody invasion by the lighter-skinned Policy Makers six years before. When the arrival of the Policy Makers’ imperial Roc and his 13-year-old daughter, Fidelis, on a state visit sets off a coup attempt by his own subordinates, events escalate. The whirl of intrigue and increasing tensions catches up young Avtar—disguised since the murder of his royal parents as a flour-covered “Ghosty Boy” in the castle bakery—and culminates in a wild series of attacks, betrayals, chases, revelations, encounters on hidden staircases and improbable alliances. Just for fun, Jones also stirs in a flatulent lap dog and a prank that sends most of the Roc’s entourage hustling for the toilets, as well as providing amusing interchanges aplenty (“ ‘Did he really call me an untrusting cow?’…

‘Who’d call you untrusting?’ he asked. ‘Or a cow?’ he added, just in time”). There are also a massive climactic storm and so many extremely convenient coincidences that it’s obvious some unseen supernatural player is at work. Sequels are certain, since the closing détente leaves almost everything unresolved.

A violent, madcap, frequently entertaining scramble.

(Fantasy. 11-14)

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THE ADVENTURES OF A SOUTH POLE PIG

Kurtz, Chris Illus. by Reinhardt, Jennifer Black Harcourt (288 pp.) $16.99 | Jan. 8, 2013 978-0-547-63455-5

Out of the way, Wilbur and Babe: Your cousin Flora has “adventurous hooves”!

As a piglet on a farm that raises sled dogs, Flora, who’s always been more curious than her brothers (much to her mother’s chagrin), wants nothing more than to take her place in the line of dogs pulling a sled. Her best friend, Luna the cat, tells Flora that the adventures she seeks are nothing but trouble; and trouble will find her whether she looks for it or not. Trouble lands Flora in the hold of a ship, where she’s mystifyingly called “ham bone” and “sausage” by Amos the cook. Thanks to rat-catching lessons from Luna, Flora can assist new cat-friend Sophia. She |

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“Explosions, aerial dogfights, betrayals, bionic limbs and passionate kisses: the ingredients of a great action adventure.” from prodigy

likes being useful this way, but why is Flora on a ship headed for the South Pole if not to help the sled dogs? When tragedy strikes, the whole crew counts itself lucky to have such a courageous pig along for the expedition. Kurtz’s plucky piggy tale may stretch believability on occasion, but it will greatly satisfy fans of Dick King-Smith and E.B. White looking for something similar. Reinhardt’s black-and-white, pen-and-ink illustrations are perhaps a bit too cartoon-sweet for a title featuring realistic rat slaughter and an existential desire not to be food, but every spot illustration will elicit a smile.

Engaging fantasy adventure for preteen pig pals.

(Adventure. 8-12)

After their escape from Republic forces at the end of Legend (2011), popularly beloved rebel Day and Republic darling June need help. They lack both friends and money, and Day’s wounds are festering. There’s no help for it: They’ll have to throw their lot in with the revolutionary Patriot forces. Day, whose own rebelliousness takes a playful, Robin Hood–esque approach, has always avoided the Patriots, with their cavalier attitude toward life and death. But with his life at risk from injury and no leads in his quest to find his missing baby brother, he has few options.

After a too-lengthy buildup, Day and June find themselves embroiled in a dangerous assassination plot. They just want to protect their few remaining loved ones while saving their country—is that so wrong? The pathos of Day and June’s erstwhile romance shines through without detracting from the tension of their rebellion; both riveting action and entertaining characterization keep their quest engaging (in one scene June apologizes through both ruthless tactical training and “the tragic slant of her eyebrows”). Meanwhile, the heroes’ confusion when faced with the mores of the world outside their own Republic shines a worrying lens upon our own world.

The slow build culminates in a satisfyingly cinematic climax. (Science fiction. 13-16)

MAX & MILO GO TO SLEEP!

Long, Heather Illus. by Long, Ethan Aladdin (32 pp.) $14.99 | Jan. 1, 2013 978-1-4424-5143-8 Series: Max & Milo

Brothers Max and Milo have totally different approaches to bedtime.

Neat Max is calm and ready to sleep. Messy Milo is too energetic and impatient to fall asleep easily. He wakes Max repeatedly for helpful suggestions, greeting each one with a variation of “good idea, Max.” Then he proceeds to make things worse. “Why don’t you read a book?” is followed by a noisy search for the right title. When the lamp won’t work, Max is awakened again and suggests a flashlight. Milo rigs it in a Rube Goldberg–esque contraption and proceeds to read his book amid loud bursts of laughter.

And so it goes. Even with the whirring of a fan and the slurping of water, still Milo can’t sleep. And of course, neither can Max. When he finally loses his temper, it falls on deaf ears—for Milo is sound asleep and Max is left wide awake in a delightfully predictable conclusion. The tale is told visually within cartoon panels of varying sizes and configurations with balloons of brief, simply stated dialogue. The cartoon elements are brightly colored and heavily outlined in black on a purple background. By the way, Max and Milo are totally goofy, big-eyed, orange beavers. Young readers will surely recognize the trials of sibling relationships in the exaggerated comical situations.

Laugh-out-loud fun. (Picture book. 4-8)

YESTERDAY AGAIN

Lyga, Barry Scholastic (352 pp.) $16.99 | $16.99 e-book | Jan. 1, 2013 978-0-545-19654-3 978-0-545-52032-4 e-book Series: Archvillain, 3

Can’t solve your problem in the present? Try time travel, superhero-style!

Fresh from his disastrous collaboration with the insane villain Mad Mask (2012), 12-year-old Kyle Camden, aka Azure Avenger (in his mind) and aka Blue Freak (in the minds of everyone else in Bouring, N.Y.), concocts a new scheme to expose vacuous, probablealien Mighty Mike as less than the good guy he pretends to be.

Kyle uses his superintelligence (obtained from an encounter with space plasma) to create a time machine so he can videotape Mike emerging from the plasma, thus proving to the world he’s not human. Things go wrong in the present (zombies!) and the past (Kyle ends up in 1987 instead of a couple months ago).

His chronovessel fried, Kyle tries to make the best of the situation, but who knew there was no Internet in 1987?! He finds that some allies can’t be trusted and some enemies are more than they appear...and learns a few things about his dad and his grandfather, all on the way to saving the world...AGAIN! Lyga’s third fun and furious Archvillain tale is somewhat slower and brainier than the others, but it solves many mysteries and opens up a few more. Characters grow, the technobabble is funny, and the time travel is nicely thought through.

It stands alone well enough, but it will be best enjoyed by established series fans. (Fantasy. 9-12)

PRODIGY

Lu, Marie Putnam (384 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 29, 2013 978-0-399-25676-9 Series: Legend, 2 Explosions, aerial dogfights, betrayals, bionic limbs and passionate kisses: the ingredients of a great action adventure.

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CASUALTIES OF WAR

a storyline that, if implausible at its techno-thriller resolution, seems entirely acceptable leading up to that point. Liv’s high school relationships, especially her conflicts with the popular girls and her first dealings with romance, ring nicely true.

Intriguing. (Romance/thriller. 12-16)

Lynch, Chris Scholastic (192 pp.) $16.99 | Jan. 1, 2012 978-0-545-27023-6 Series: Vietnam, 4

STRONG DEAF

Lynch’s Vietnam War series concludes with the final narrative of four friends caught in the chaos of war.

Morris, Ivan and Rudi have told their stories; it’s Beck’s turn. Beck, now in the Air Force, was always the smart one, the one bound for college.

Upon discovering Beck’s plan to enlist, his father had said, “The universe has better plans for you.” And in Vietnam, Beck does feel as if he has “just been handed the keys to the universe itself.”

He is, literally, above it all, as he watches the war from on high in his C-123 aircraft, his goal somehow to not kill anyone as he defoliates forests with Agent Orange. He finds the countryside gorgeous and rues the “danger and destruction in all its variety and in every direction.” Beck’s hope is that when the friends get back together, no matter what else has happened, “the universe will tilt back where it belongs.” This volume lacks the sharp character development and pacing of its predecessors, as much of the narrative concerns all four players and how to contrive the requisite reunion. When it does occur, it brings disastrous results and an abrupt ending to the series.

An excellent war saga that will leave readers feeling they have been through something monumental. (Historical fiction. 10-14)

McElfresh, Lynn Namelos (122 pp.) $18.95 | Dec. 1, 2012 978-1-60898-126-7 Sibling rivalry is complicated by conflicting cultures in this realistic novel of a hearing girl and her deaf sister.

Most of 12-year-old Jade’s family can’t hear. Her parents, one set of grandparents and older sister Marla are all deaf and so belong to a world she can never truly inhabit. This hasn’t apparently caused much difficulty for Jade, but as her relationship with Marla becomes more contentious, the frustrations between them are amplified by this fundamental difference.

McElfresh uses alternating first-person narration by Marla and Jade to tell the story. She works hard to give readers an authentic glimpse of deaf culture, including a subplot about a protest at Gallaudet University, along with descriptions of the girls’ experiences at home, on the softball field and on a brief but momentous family vacation. Brilliantly, Marla’s sections are written as if they are transcriptions of American Sign Language. (Unfortunately this interesting and creative approach could backfire, as some readers may not recognize this and will assume that Marla is incapable of using standard English grammar.) The potential impact and appeal are diluted by underdeveloped secondary characters and a plot that too often feels contrived. McElfresh’s intentions are clearly positive, as is the message she conveys; unfortunately her purpose is so obvious that it may threaten its ability to reach and enlighten young readers.

Nevertheless, this stands as a valuable inside peek into a marginalized culture. (Fiction. 10-14)

ALL THE BROKEN PIECES

Madsen, Cindi Entangled Teen (304 pp.) $9.99 paperback | Dec. 11, 2012 978-1-62061-129-6

This interesting story of a girl who can’t remember her earlier life (or perhaps lives) ends up as science fiction but works best as a portrait of a girl’s first encounters with high school relationships and romance.

Liv’s physician parents tell her that she’s never before been to school. She wouldn’t know; a car crash wiped out her memory.

But she keeps hearing voices and remembering scenes from the lives, apparently, of two different girls whose voices intrude into her daily life at inopportune times. Nevertheless, she struggles to fit in with the students at her new high school. At first, she falls into the popular crowd, although alpha girl Sabrina grows increasingly hostile toward her when Liv makes friends with Sabrina’s old boyfriend, Spencer. Spencer is sympathetic to Liv, but he has problems of his own that cause him to behave in a mercurial fashion toward her. Once her up-and-down relationship with Spencer finally grows into a romance and the two can work together, Liv at last confronts her past. Madsen presents | kirkus.com

THE FARM

McKay, Emily Berkley (432 pp.) $9.99 paperback | Dec. 4, 2012 978-0-425-25780-7 After six months on a Farm where teens are raised to feed the vampiremutant Ticks, Lily has a plan to escape with her autistic twin sister, Mel. Unbeknownst to Lily, her plan is doomed. Luckily, Carter, a boy she knew in the Before, shows up in the nick of time to tell her what to do instead. The story is narrated in three voices. Lily’s voice gets the lion’s share. Mel’s voice—less the voice of a genuine autistic |

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THE BEAUTIFUL LADY Our Lady of Guadalupe

person and more florid riddle-talk—narrates a few short snippets. In Carter’s chapters, which are, disconcertingly, written in third person, readers hear that Lily has the special thoughtcontrolling powers of an abductura, though the nature of those powers and the dubious sources of Carter’s information take a long time to be revealed. At every turn, Lily is punished for being self-reliant: Not only do readers learn her escape plot would have failed, but the actions she takes in self-defense, such as breaking one of Carter’s tranquilizer darts after he has shot her with another, consistently backfire. A few tense action scenes and some by-the-book romantic tension aren’t enough to outweigh the book’s distasteful message: Do as you’re told, girls, and leave the planning and fighting to the boys.

Nothing new here. (Science fiction. 12-16)

Mora, Pat Illus. by Johnson, Steve; Fancher, Lou Knopf (40 pp.) $16.99 | PLB $19.99 | Dec. 11, 2012 978-0-375-86838-2 978-0-375-96838-9 PLB Mora retells the story of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

On a cold day in December, Rose and her friend Terry are visiting Rose’s Grandma Lupita. After teaching Terry how to make paper flowers, the older woman begins telling them the story of the Lady of Guadalupe. The author keeps the tale simple enough for the book’s intended early-elementary audience, as she relates how the poor Juan Diego first met the Lady on Tepeyac Hill, outside of what is now Mexico City. Juan Diego follows the Lady’s request to go to the bishop and “ask him to build a special church for her on the hilltop.” The bishop requests a sign, which the Lady eventually provides to Juan Diego in the form of roses and her image on his tilma (cloak). The story returns to the present day, and Grandma Lupita and the girls share rose cookies in her kitchen. Although framing the famous Mexican story within a modern-day setting may appeal to some readers, doing so also removes some of the tale’s potency and leaves the text riddled with quotation marks. While vividly colored, the artwork by Johnson and Fancher often falls flat in the frame story, though placing the illustrations of the tale-withinthe-tale within colorful borders is a nice feature.

An average version of an extraordinary tale. (author’s note) (Picture book/religion. 5-8)

IF THE SHOE FITS

Mlynowski, Sarah Scholastic (174 pp.) $14.99 | Jan. 1, 2013 978-0-545-41567-5 Series: Whatever After, 2 Intrepid siblings Abby and Jonah continue their adventures through the realm of fairy tales in this comical story (Fairest of All, 2012).

Having recently returned—via magic mirror—from Snow White’s world, 10-year-old Abby is searching for answers. She longs to discover why she and her brother were sent into the fairy tale. However, her investigation quickly goes awry when, instead of receiving an explanation, the duo is suddenly transported through the mirror and into a different tale. Once there, an accident involving Abby, the iconic glass slipper and Cinderella’s foot alters the course of the traditional story. Soon, the siblings are racing against time to restore the fairy tale and return home. Once again Mlynowski cleverly revises a classic fairy tale, offering a fresh interpretation of Cinderella’s story and giving it a modern update. In this version, a feisty fairy godmother challenges Cinderella to rely upon her own ingenuity—not a handsome prince—to remedy her situation, and a formerly mean stepsister becomes quite sympathetic and remorseful. Despite many humorous mishaps and a surprising transformation, the ever-resourceful Abby’s savvy wit and Jonah’s enthusiastic assistance overcome all obstacles.

Readers bewitched by this lively series will enjoy this adventurous sequel. (Fantasy. 9-12)

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SHADOWS IN THE SILENCE

Moulton, Courtney Allison Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins (480 pp.) $17.99 | $9.99 e-book | Jan. 29, 2013 978-0-06-200239-6 978-0-06-220301-4 e-book Series: Angelfire, 3 This conclusion of the Angelfire trilogy takes readers to Armageddon.

Ellie actually is the Archangel Gabriel, apparently female and currently incarnated in Detroit as a teenage girl. Reincarnated many times, Ellie loves Will, her angelic guardian, although he ranks far lower on the heavenly scale than an archangel. After 500 years of unrequited love, Ellie and Will finally consummate their relationship, a decision that lands Will in serious trouble. Their earthly task is to defend humans from demons and to defeat the fallen angels Sammael and Lilith, thus ridding Earth of their evil and saving every human soul from Hell. To effect this, Ellie searches for a powerful relic that will call the angel Azrael for assistance. She learns that if she succeeds, she may never return as a human and even |

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“In a first-time collaboration between father and son, the Paulsens supply alternating chapters of this attractively depicted road trip with a strongly upbeat yet never didactic message.” from road trip

may die. Can Ellie bring herself to sacrifice not only her eternal life, but also her love in order to save the world from damnation?

Moulton’s prose moves along fairly quickly as she intersperses action-packed battle scenes, each more impossible than the last, with romance, family relationships and a few friendships from the earlier books. The lead and supporting characters come across as standard-issue romance heroes: strong and pure, with emotions, though a few of the minor characters stand out.

Of a piece with the rest of the angel books—fans will be happy. (Paranormal romance. 12 & up)

Fourteen-year-old Ben is, reluctantly, on a journey with his dad and border collie, Atticus, to rescue a border collie puppy.

Ben is barely speaking to his dad as his father drops one bombshell after another on him: He’s quit his job and started flipping houses for a very uncertain living, and Ben probably won’t be able to attend a promised summer hockey camp that he worked for all year. Along the way, they begin to collect lightly sketched but nonetheless vividly portrayed characters: Ben’s friend Theo, who is facing some low-security jail time but is trying hard to get his life together; Gus, a pithy car mechanic who has a talent for judging people and engines correctly; and attractive Mia, a waitress and wannabe actress who has been fending for herself but barely getting by. To amp up the action, Theo is being pursued by a career criminal with evil intentions. Chapters are told in the believable, alternating first-person voices of Ben and Atticus. Dog lovers will especially enjoy the amusing glimpses into the wise dog’s mind.

Given its notable brevity and Ben’s age-appropriate, oft-times snarky, attitude, this should be an easy sell for reluctant readers. (Fiction. 10-14)

PROPHECY

Oh, Ellen Harper/HarperCollins (320 pp.) $17.99 | $9.99 e-book | Jan. 2, 2013 978-0-06-209109-3 978-0-06-20911-6 e-book Series: The Dragon King Chronicles In a magical ancient Korea, a demonslaying princess defends her family and her kingdom.

Kira may be the king’s own niece and Hansong’s lone female warrior, but that doesn’t make her popular. Her yellow eyes and demon-hunting abilities make the citizenry fear her; her male clothing and fighting skills make the nobility loathe her. At least in her role as bodyguard to the heir, her young cousin Taejo, she has a purpose in the court. Hopefully that purpose will be enough to convince her parents not to marry her off to the attractive but vicious nephew of the king’s advisor, Lord Shin. Despite all her suspicions, which are aided by prophetic visions, Kira doesn’t foresee treachery soon enough. Lord Shin lets Yamato soldiers into the castle—many of whom are possessed by demons only Kira can see. She flees with Taejo, and thus begins a prophecy-driven quest to take back their kingdom from the Yamato and avenge their lost.

Muddling through on equal parts martial arts and stubbornness, Kira finds new allies and gains desperately needed magical skills.

Fans of Kristin Cashore’s Graceling (2008) will be drawn to the despised warrior princess; fans of Cindy Pon’s Silver Phoenix (2009) will love the setting. (Fantasy. 13-16)

SAILING THE UNKNOWN Around the World with Captain Cook

Rosen, Michael J. Illus. by Pritelli, Maria Cristina Creative Editions/Creative Company (40 pp.) $17.99 | Dec. 15, 2012 978-1-56846-216-5

Nicholas Young, 11, circles the globe in this gorgeously illustrated seafaring adventure loosely based on journals of 18thcentury explorer Capt. James Cook.

Seasoned children’s poet Rosen here creates the likable character of young protagonist Nick through spare journal entries describing his travels aboard Cook’s first ship, Endeavour, which set sail from Plymouth, England, on August 19, 1768, on a voyage of over 1,000 days. A young delinquent enlisted to serve aboard this exploratory vessel, Nick chronicles life as Endeavour’s youngest sailor, tasked with menial jobs including care of the ship’s milk goat, Navy. The voyage takes Nick and Cook’s sundry crew of sailors and scientists to then-uncharted “Australis,” stopping en route at the Canary Islands, the Equator—where crew members not having crossed before were “thrice dunked” in the sea—and Rio de Janeiro, as the Northern Hemisphere’s summer morphs to the Southern’s snowy winter.

Further southwest, Nick is the first to spy New Zealand, where the ship is immediately beset by a rain of spears from the local Maori. Throughout this exotic discovery tale, Pritelli’s finely wrought acrylics capture both the action and the otherworldly allure of strange lands, peoples and endless sea by casting them often in a milky blue, deep and mysterious as Picasso’s.

Visually stunning and packed with sophisticated language and intrigue, this young sailor’s log is sure to hook any budding explorer. (Picture book. 8-12)

ROAD TRIP

Paulsen, Gary & Paulsen, Jim Wendy Lamb/Random (1287 pp.) $12.99 | $9.99 e-book | PLB $15.99 Jan. 8, 2013 978-0-385-74191-0 978-0-375-98857-8 e-book 978-0-375-99031-1 PLB In a first-time collaboration between father and son, the Paulsens supply alternating chapters of this attractively depicted road trip with a strongly upbeat yet never didactic message. | kirkus.com

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“Robot apocalypse done right—sequels can’t come fast enough.” from revolution 19

REVOLUTION 19

emotional voltage ramps up too, as characters grapple with betrayal, loss and temptation. The relationship between Aria and Perry, however, soars on a nearly unbroken trajectory throughout the story, dampening the excitement for readers with its predictability.

Though it takes too long to get started, it delivers compelling drama in the end; whether that’s enough to keep fans engaged for Into the Still Blue (coming in 2014) is debatable. (Dystopian romance. 14 & up)

Rosenblum, Gregg Harper/HarperCollins (272 pp.) $17.99 | $9.99 e-book | Jan. 8, 2013 978-0-06-212595-8 978-0-06-212598-9 e-book In 2051, the robot soldiers stopped fighting; the next day they took over the world.

Fourteen years later, free humans are scattered through the wilderness in Freeposts, where they live off the land, communicate via pigeon and try to avoid bot raiding parties. In the Cities, humans live under strict robot control. Just as the adults are discussing whether to move the Freepost, 17-year-old Nick’s home is attacked and destroyed. He and his 13-year-old, tech-loving brother Kevin and adopted 15-year-old sister Cass escape and head for the shelter their family set up in the north, hoping to find their parents there. After waiting there for several days, the trio decides to head to the nearest City in hopes of rescuing their parents. The City is vastly different from the stories they’ve heard all their lives, and when they meet Lexi, they find her ideas of the wilderness are just as different from reality. Even with Lexi’s help, can they survive in the City long enough to save their parents?

Debut novelist Rosenblum’s series kickoff (movie already in the planning stages) is an exciting, dystopian page turner. Conceived by the minds behind the Final Destination movies and the TV series Homeland and 24, this is sure to have legs.

Robot apocalypse done right—sequels can’t come fast enough. (Science fiction. 12 & up)

USES FOR BOYS

Scheidt, Erica Lorraine St. Martin’s Griffin (240 pp.) $9.99 paperback | Jan. 15, 2013 978-1-250-00711-7 A teen girl grapples movingly with maternal abandonment, sexuality and identity.

Anna is the center of her young mother’s world: “Now I have everything,” she tells wee Anna repeatedly. Eventually, her devotion to single motherhood proves insufficient to address her own abandonment issues. Anna’s mom begins to date, marry and divorce a series of faceless men in a depressing and self-defeating cycle that leaves her pre-pubescent daughter totally unmoored. Now middle school–aged, Anna is alone for days at a time in an empty suburban house, and she drifts into a series of precociously sexual encounters that she thinks will give her the “everything” she wants so badly. As much a user of boys as she is used by them, Anna is often sad but rarely self-pitying, finding ways to cope with loneliness and the self-sufficiency her neglectful mother has thrust upon her: stretching the grocery money, keeping the television on for company, building an enviable thrift-shop wardrobe. Friendship with Toy, a similarly wounded connoisseur of fashion and boys, leads Anna to look for something bigger and better in her relationships. The final third of the story moves a bit fast, but it works, and Anna is so compellingly flawed and quietly winning that readers won’t quibble.

Haunting, frank and un-put-downable. (Fiction. 14-17)

THROUGH THE EVER NIGHT

Rossi, Veronica Harper/HarperCollins (352 pp.) $17.99 | $9.99 e-book | Jan. 8, 2013 978-0-06-207206-1 978-0-06-207208-5 e-book

Rossi returns to her dystopia, in which main characters Aria and Peregrine fight for survival in the face of unpredictable forces (Under the Never Sky, 2012).

An orphan now living outside of her domed home, Aria is dependent on her new allies, the same people she once regarded as incorrigible savages. Having defeated his brother in the first book of the series, Perry is now Blood Lord, but he has yet to earn the fierce loyalty he yearns for from his people. Rossi splits her storytelling between each of these two characters’ perspectives, but the resulting narrative is less engaging than readers may expect. Reminders of what has already passed are sparse; readers may have trouble orienting themselves. Driving action is limited during the first half of the book, until an incident in which Aria falls victim to treachery. This critical moment precedes a second half that is rife with twists and turns. The 2602

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FALLING FOR YOU

Schroeder, Lisa Simon Pulse/Simon & Schuster (368 pp.) $16.99 | Jan. 1, 2013 978-1-4424-4399-0 Abuse victim Rae, now on the brink of death, recounts the events that led her to such circumstances.

Trying to fit in, Rae never lets on that money is tight, that her stepfather is cruel and narcissistic, and that her mother turns a blind eye to his atrocities. When handsome |

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A YEAR WITH FRIENDS

Nathan Sharp arrives at her school, she accepts his offer of a date. Immediately, it is clear that Nathan isn’t quite right, with his extreme neediness and intensely possessive behavior. Rae is achingly slow to pick up on these blatant red flags, but that seems understandable, taking into account her home life. There, her stepfather’s abuse escalates as he loses his job and begins to dabble in shady enterprises. Through all of this darkness, Rae finds solace in writing poetry, which she shares anonymously in the school paper, and comfort with Leo, the shy, kind boy who works at the coffee shop. Important issues are examined, but the plot threads are many, and some seemingly important ones fizzle out dully, and the resolution of Nathan and Rae’s relationship is far too tidy.

Many of the elements of contemporary realistic fiction are present and accounted for—poetry, abuse, love triangles—however, this ends up reading like a not-as-romantic version of Gayle Forman’s If I Stay (2009). (Fiction. 13 & up)

Seven, John Illus. by Christy, Jana abramsappleseed (32 pp.) $14.95 | Jan. 1, 2013 978-1-4197-0443-7

While lots of books about seasons are available, this one is as fresh and crisp as a cool fall breeze.

Each month is jauntily illustrated with a two-page spread of panels and one pertinent line: “January is time for rolling down hills”; “February is time for snuggling.” A boy and a girl (both Caucasian) alternate in the scenes from January through July up to August, when they meet at the beach, build a sand castle and become friends for the remaining months. “April is time to get messy” is depicted with the boy in a yellow slicker and red boots jumping in a puddle. In July, the girl carries popcorn and a blanket as she and her dog walk to a grassy spot to watch fireworks. The narrative ends: “A new year is time for fun with new friends!” The charm is in the narrative’s simplicity and the breezy, soft-edged artwork that captures the special wonder of each month. There are lots of ideas for displays and monthly themes for storytimes.

This expressive childhood tribute to the joys of nature throughout the year warmly conveys the message that anytime is best when shared with a friend. (Picture book. 3-5)

THE ARCHIVED

Schwab, Victoria Disney Hyperion (336 pp.) $16.99 | Jan. 22, 2013 978-1-4231-5731-1 A refreshingly angel-free departure in afterlife fiction, this gripping supernatural thriller features nuanced characters navigating a complex moral universe.

After her brother’s death, Mackenzie’s parents seek a fresh start, moving into an apartment in the Coronado, a former hotel, to start a new coffee shop. Mac’s good at keeping secrets: her grief, the psychic gifts she inherited from Da, her training and four years as a Keeper most of all. Keepers are tasked with keeping Histories—the recorded lives of human beings—from leaving the mysterious Archive, where they’re filed and stored after death.

Tended by Librarians, most Histories sleep, but a few awaken and panic, a process called “slipping,” and escape into the Narrows, the passage separating the Archive and the living world.

Returning violent Histories to the Archive, always dangerous, has gotten harder. The Librarians’ vague explanation— “technical difficulties”—doesn’t satisfy Mac. The mysteries extend beyond the Archive; records of former Coronado residents are missing in both worlds. Seeking answers, Mac forms an unsettling alliance with the guyliner-wearing boy who haunts the Coronado, but the handsome boy who saves her from a murderous History in the Narrows haunts her dreams.

Suspense builds to the riveting climax, though discerning readers will spot loose threads when the dust clears.

Never mind—that’s what sequels are for. (Paranormal thriller.

12 & up)

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ONE STEP AT A TIME A Vietnamese Child Finds Her Way Skrypuch, Marsha Forchuk Pajama Press (128 pp.) $17.95 | Jan. 1, 2013 978-1-927485-01-9

New in Canada and unable even to understand the language, Tuyet faces a painful operation to straighten an ankle bent by polio years earlier in Vietnam.

Skrypuch continues the story she began in Last Airlift: A Vietnamese Orphan’s Rescue from War (2012), but it’s not necessary to have read the first to appreciate this true story of healing.

Drawing on her subject’s reminiscences, the author describes Tuyet’s operation and subsequent recovery with sympathy and respect. Although this takes place in 1975, it seems immediate.

Seven-year-old Tuyet secretly dreams of being able to kick a ball and play with other children. As long as she can remember, she has only been able to watch. Shortly after her adoption by the Morris family, a Vietnamese-speaking woman comes to explain that she will be having an operation. After, another Vietnamese speaker visits her in the hospital and gives her a piece of paper with Vietnamese and English words she can point to when she needs something. Otherwise, this brave child endures this frightening experience without the ability to communicate.

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Readers of this moving refugee story will celebrate as well. (Nonfiction. 9-12)

the story’s distressed narrator and protagonist, she leaves a message on Adrienne’s cellphone and then disappears. Is it suicide, as a note seems to indicate, a voluntary act or something more sinister? Adrienne, who when readers first meet her seems fairly normal, is initially shaken by the alpha girl’s disappearance, a feeling that is complicated by the guilt of having not immediately responded to her ex-friend’s call. Together with the similarly fixated-on-Dakota Julian, Dakota’s band mate and sometime boyfriend, Adrienne begins to look into the mystery, an exercise that affects her relationship with devoted boyfriend Lee and worries new best friend Kate. The action, which becomes repetitious, moves in spurts and starts, and while the protagonist’s emotional journey from stasis to obsession to freedom rings true, readers may find it hard to connect with the one-note heroine. A plot twist near the three-quarter mark gooses the story, which then picks up speed and glides smoothly to a satisfying finish, though a blackmail scene may leave readers feeling ambivalent.

This believable portrait of teenage obsession is hampered by a dull protagonist. (Fiction. 14 & up)

COURAGE HAS NO COLOR The True Story of the Triple Nickles: America’s First Black Paratroopers Stone, Tanya Lee Candlewick (160 pp.) $24.99 | Jan. 22, 2013 978-0-7636-5117-6

The fascinating untold story of the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion, America’s first black paratroopers.

While white American soldiers battled Hitler’s tyranny overseas, African-Americans who enlisted to fight for their country faced the tyranny of racial discrimination on the homefront. Segregated from white soldiers and relegated to service duties and menial tasks, enlisted black men faced what Ashley Bryan calls in the foreword “the racism that was our daily fare at the time.” When 1st Sgt. Walter Morris, whose men served as guards at The Parachute School at Fort Benning, saw white soldiers training to be paratroopers, he knew his men would have to train and act like them to be treated like soldiers. Daring initiative and leadership led to the creation of the “Triple Nickles.” Defying the deeply ingrained stereotypes of the time, the Triple Nickles proved themselves as capable and tough as any white soldiers, but they were never used in combat, serving instead as smoke jumpers extinguishing Japanese-ignited forest fires in the Pacific Northwest. Stone’s richly layered narrative explores the cultural and institutional prejudices of the time as well as the history of African-Americans in the military.

Her interviews with veterans of the unit provide groundbreaking insight. Among the archival illustrations in this handsomely designed book are drawings Bryan created while he served in World War II. An exceptionally well-researched, lovingly crafted and important tribute to unsung American heroes. (photographs, chronology, sources note, bibliography) (Nonfiction.

10 & up)

PIRATES AT THE PLATE

Summers, Mark; Frisch, Aaron Illus. by Summers, Mark Creative Editions/Creative Company (32 pp.) $17.99 | Dec. 15, 2012 978-1-56846-210-3 Cowboys and Pirates aren’t just team names in this brangle on the base paths.

With the “score knotted at 47 runs” each in the 22nd inning, Long John Silver uncorks a long fly to center: “The Cisco Kid’s gonna have to giddy-up if he wants to catch this ball!” Using scratchboard with oil glazes, Summers portrays melodramatically posed figures in lavishly detailed costuming. He even mounts both infielders and outfielders on charging horses and gives literal expression to such terms as “on deck” (ship’s deck, that is) and “bullpen.” It looks like the stage is set for a rousing, benches-clearing brawl after Silver’s attempt to steal second base and the ensuing exchange of insults (“Yer boys play like Barbies,” sneers the Pirates’ captain, Capt. Hook). Thankfully, a summons to dinner forces the lad who has been heretofore invisibly orchestrating it all to reluctantly abandon his suddenly tiny action figures.

“Another game called on account of spaghetti.” Aarrrgh.

Or conversely, yup, git along. Good fun, regardless of the dialect. (Picture book. 5-7)

THEN YOU WERE GONE

Strasnick, Lauren Simon Pulse/Simon & Schuster (224 pp.) $16.99 | Jan. 1, 2013 978-1-4424-2715-0 A girl becomes obsessed with her former best friend’s disappearance.

Almost every teenage girl experiences the particular brand of heartbreak caused by a special friend’s desertion.

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“…Newbery Medalist Vanderpool delivers another winning picaresque about memories, personal journeys, interconnectedness—and the power of stories.” from navigating early

THE 13TH SIGN

his guests’ drawings hanging all around and his Daddy’s present in his hand, Ricky knows it’s been a magic, if rather arbitrary, day. Van Genechten’s childlike, black-outlined illustrations present the day with good cheer, but the lengthy text feels out of step with both toddler-level content and look.

Bland. (Picture book. 3-6)

Tubb, Kristin O’Donnell Feiwel & Friends (272 pp.) $16.99 | Jan. 8, 2013 978-0-312-58352-1 When a teen accidentally unlocks the lost 13th zodiac sign, everyone’s personality shifts, and she must confront 12 Keepers of the zodiac to restore global order.

Visiting a fortuneteller in her hometown of New Orleans, skeptical 13-year-old Jalen finds an ancient horoscope book called The Keypers of the Zodiack. Unlocking the serpent clasp, she releases Ophiuchus, the 13th zodiac sign.

Personalities suddenly shift, and chaos ensues. No longer under Sagittarius, Jalen’s now ruled by Ophiuchus, who possesses tremendous healing powers humans will seek and abuse. Unless she can find and restore Ophiuchus to the heavens within 23 hours, all personality changes will be permanent. To do this, Jalen must destroy 12 Keepers who protect Ophiuchus. Armed with a new personality and forced to overcome her own fears, Jalen frantically dodges and outwits the wily, outrageous Keepers who morph out of nowhere. Scorpio stings, Gemini confuses her, Sagittarius launches arrows, Taurus tries to crush her, and Virgo plays on her emotions. Racing the clock across New Orleans, Jalen knows more is at stake than restoring altered personalities if power falls into the wrong hands. An original, action-packed plot, a resilient heroine, a twist ending and 12 sly, angry Keepers will hold readers on edge.

The ultimate astrological fantasy. (Fantasy. 10-14)

NAVIGATING EARLY

Vanderpool, Clare Delacorte (320 pp.) $16.99 | $10.99 e-book | PLB $19.99 Jan. 8, 2013 978-0-385-74209-2 978-0-307-97412-9 e-book 978-0-385-99040-3 PLB Returning to themes she explored so affectingly in Moon Over Manifest (2011), Newbery Medalist Vanderpool delivers another winning picaresque about memories, personal journeys, interconnectedness—and the power of stories.

Thirteen-year-old Jack enters boarding school in Maine after his mother’s death at the end of World War II. He quickly befriends Early Auden, a savant whose extraordinary facility with numbers allows him to “read” a story about “Pi” from the infinite series of digits that follow 3.14. Jack accompanies Early in one of the school crew team’s rowing boats on what Jack believes is his friend’s fruitless quest to find a great bear allegedly roaming the wilderness—and Early’s brother, a legendary figure reportedly killed in battle. En route, Early spins out Pi’s evolving saga, and the boys encounter memorable individuals and adventures that uncannily parallel those in the stories. Vanderpool ties all these details, characters, and Jack’s growing maturity and self-awareness together masterfully and poignantly, though humor and excitement leaven the weighty issues the author and Jack frequently pose. Some exploits may strain credulity; Jack’s self-awareness often seems beyond his years, and there are coincidences that may seem too convenient.

It’s all of a piece with Vanderpool’s craftsmanship. Her tapestry is woven and finished off seamlessly. The ending is very moving, and there’s a lovely, last-page surprise that Jack doesn’t know but that readers will have been tipped off about.

Navigating this stunning novel requires thought and concentration, but it’s well worth the effort. (author’s note, with questions and answers, list of resources) (Historical fiction. 10-14)

RICKY’S BIRTHDAY

van Genechten, Guido Illus. by van Genechten, Guido Clavis (30 pp.) $16.95 | Dec. 1, 2012 978-1-60537-119-1 Ricky’s birthday can’t be perfect without his best friend there to share it.

When Ricky the rabbit wakes up bright and early, he knows it’s going to be “a perfect day.” After putting on his overalls, he helps his mother put up decorations and make the special birthday pancakes. He can hardly wait for his guests. Smiling bunnies in a variety of “ethnicities” arrive, shouting “Happy Birthday, Ricky!” Everyone brings a drawing or handmade present. Ricky should be happy, but where’s his best friend, Annie? Mommy reads a special note from Annie with a challenge: Follow the blue arrows to find her.

It’s like hide-and-seek! They follow arrows to a wood, a bridge, a thicket of trees. Annie pops out from behind an enormous pine tree to give Ricky three kisses and a glittering birthday crown that she made herself. “Time for pancakes!” Mommy shouts.

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k i r ku s q & a w i t h o l i v i e r ta l l e c Olivier Tallec, a Frenchman, named the protagonists of his wordless picture book, Waterloo & Trafalgar, for two failed Napoleonic battles.

He painted one in blue and the other in orange so they’d be “immediately identifiable and unmistakable.” To hear Tallec tell it, his story was inspired by the walls that come between people and the walls between countries.

WATERLOO & TRAFALGAR

Tallec, Olivier Enchanted Lion Books (64 pp.) $17.95 Oct. 9, 2012 978-1-59270-127-8

Q: We loved that you could see blue in the lens of orange Trafalgar’s telescope and orange in the lens of blue Waterloo’s telescope. Even the flowers near Trafalgar are orange and the butterflies close to Waterloo blue. Did that idea of staking out territory come to you early on?

A: These little details came to me gradually [as] I was working on the illustrations, and the idea of territory came to me. When walking through the countryside in France, I have always found myself confronted by the notion of property. People build walls to define what belongs to them.

Also, for a long time, I have wanted to work on a story about a wall. [Then] when I was listening to the radio during the war in Libya, a journalist was recounting how the two sides had been advancingretreating-advancing-retreating for months, and currently the situation was stagnant. It was at that moment that I said to myself, there’s something to be done with this!

Q: For much of your career in picture books, you have invented characters and scenes from other people’s words.

Here, you tell a story but do not use words. Does that free you up?

Q: Trafalgar takes a childlike pleasure in designing activities for a snail. Only after Waterloo cooks the escargot (and tosses the empty shell back to Trafalgar) do they have their first real battle—of words.

A: The moment when the snail gets eaten is the crucial moment of the book. Until this moment, it’s status quo, with each observing the other. But from the moment one takes what belongs to the other—it’s war. Children function in the same way: From the moment that I take your toy without asking, it’s trouble!

Q: Their next big argument happens in the spring, over music.

A: This is because at the moment, I have a neighbor who listens to his music very loud. When he does that, I’m ready to explode! At times, lived experience makes its way into books!

Q: At the end, we see that Trafalgar and Waterloo have walled themselves in. The animals and trees outside the walls are harmoniously integrated in orange and blue.

Was the world outside always harmonious? Or is it harmonious because Trafalgar and Waterloo are at peace?

A: For me spiritually, the world has always been harmonious on the outside. But these soldiers never trouble themselves about it because they are too absorbed to see it and think only about themselves and their little war.

But I love books that have several possible readings, so we also can imagine that the harmony in the outside world is a result of the peace between Waterloo & Trafalgar.

–By Jenny Brown

Q: Most of Waterloo’s and Trafalgar’s time is spent watching each other. Do you believe that people who want to make war are simply looking for an opportunity to start one?

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p h oto JOY S ORM A N

A: I love entering into other people’s stories! Illustrations should show those things that are not in the text, and inversely, there should be things in the text that are not in the illustration. I often say that the illustrator is the co-author.

When I began Waterloo & Trafalgar, I already had a story in mind, so I began by trying to write it.

But I quickly understood that that was not going to work; I wasn’t going to find the space between the text and image that is so important to me. I imagined it as an animated film—in sequences of images. The book also alludes to silent films and to an Italian cartoon series by Osvaldo Cavandoli called La Linéa (The Line), which I adored as a child. It’s about a character made from a simple line for whom a ton of things happen without a word.

A: Above all, it’s the idea that these two poor soldiers don’t know why they are there. Perhaps at one time they knew, but they have forgotten why they are fighting. They have been told that they are enemies. Several years ago, I found myself at the border between North and South Korea. The soldiers who were watching each other at a distance of several meters made a deep impression on me. It was both an absurd and dramatic situation.

These soldiers are exactly the same! They are several meters apart, they could cross the dividing line and try to play a card game!

NIGHTMARE OF THE IGUANA

narrative are particularly effective, illuminating aspects of their journeys and evoking the movement of the waves. Both pictures and text offer enough variety to overcome the potential dullness of the repetitive aspects of the tale.

Whether familiar with the tale or not, young readers and folklore students alike will enjoy this latest (but likely not last) retelling. (Picture book/folk tale. 5-8)

Vernon, Ursula Illus. by Vernon, Ursula Dial (208 pp.) $12.99 | Jan. 29, 2013 978-0-8037-3846-1 Series: Dragonbreath, 8

Tasked with driving a fearsome Dream Wasp away from Wendell, their nerdy reptilian buddy, Danny Dragonbreath and Suki the salamander crawl into his sleeping brain.

Eeeww.

So exhausted from lack of rest that he gets an A- on a test and reluctant to seek help from his New-Age mother (“No, Mom, not the kelp!”), Wendell turns in desperation to Danny’s wise if mythological great-grandfather Dragonbreath for advice.

Thus it is that Danny and Suki, with a “baku” (dream eater) in tow, are soon on their way. They stumble through dream chambers stuffed with mounds of unappetizing health food, run from monstrous school bullies and search zillions of books (Reasons That I Will Die of Shame if Suki Ever Finds Out I Like Her) on the way to climactically vanquishing the giant Wasp (eek) and smashing her slime-filled eggs (yuck). As in episodes past, Vernon tells the tale in a running mix of prose and green-highlighted drawings with dialogue balloons, slides in wisecracks galore and closes with a teaser for the next chapter (something involving “mutant thieves”).

“It’s impossible! It’s unnatural! It’s weird!” exclaims Suki. Readers will echo Danny’s response: “Good enough for me!” (Graphic hybrid fantasy. 8-11)

STICK DOG!

Watson, Tom Illus. by Long, Ethan Harper/HarperCollins (192 pp.) $12.99 paperback | $9.99 e-book Jan. 8, 2013 978-0-06-211078-7 978-0-06-211079-4 e-book Nothing’s better than a grilled burger on a hot summer day in Picasso Park, but how’s a pack of mutts going to get some?

Stick Dog (so named not because he loves sticks—though he does—but because narrator Tom can only draw him like a stick figure) lives in an empty pipe under Highway 16. He and his friends—Poo-Poo the poodle, Stripes the Dalmatian, Karen the dachshund and Mutt the…well, mutt—are all hungry, and they smell burgers on the grill in a nearby park. They race over…

OK, their race is interrupted by Poo-Poo’s obsessive hatred of squirrels…and find a family grilling. Each pup puts forth a plan to nab the burgers. Biting ankles? No. Stealing their car? No. Cliff diving? Uh, no. Stick Dog has a brilliant burger-snitching plan, but things don’t go exactly as planned. Watson’s retelling and extension of his self-published Stick Dog adventure, re-illustrated by Long, is full of silly, slapstick doggy humor.

Stick Dog is slightly smarter than his eminently distractible ADHD canine pals, and young readers or listeners will enjoy his repeated use of reverse psychology to get them where they need to be. Three to four sentences in large type on fake notebook paper with ample stick drawings make this an enticing package for those just starting chapter books.

A welcome canine entry in the metajournal genre.

(Graphic/fiction hybrid. 7-10)

NO YEAR OF THE CAT

Wade, Mary Dodson Illus. by Wong, Nicole Sleeping Bear Press (32 pp.) $16.95 | Dec. 1, 2012 978-1-58536-785-6

A perennially popular pourquoi story gets a fresh, if not entirely necessary, update.

Over the last two decades, many explanations of the Chinese calendar have been published. Bare-bones retellings contrast with others that offer embellishments like a framing story or list of the zodiac signs and their attributes. All, of course, wind up with the same 12 years. Despite the stiff competition, Wade manages to create an engaging narrative, one that feels traditional yet offers unique details. Her Jade Emperor wants to name the years so he can celebrate and remember the birth of his son. He has three amusing advisors who repeat his every utterance and who scurry to arrange the race of the animals.

While the outcome is never in question, the perils of the race are clearly conveyed, along with the pride of those who triumph and the cat’s (eternal) frustration at being tricked by the wily rat.

Wong’s watercolor illustrations offer lovely vistas and appealing portraits. The framing pictures that surround each animal’s | kirkus.com

TRAVELING BY AIRPLANE

Winters, Pierre Illus. by Meirinck, Tineke Clavis (30 pp.) $16.95 | Dec. 1, 2012 978-1-60537-137-5 Series: Want to Know

Everything a youngster might want to know about air travel.

Henry and Kate are going on vacation with their parents.

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“…the book offers a lot of fast-paced fairy-tale fun, and Aliera is both admirable and easy to relate to for her fierceness and foibles.” from curses! foiled again

THE EMILY SONNETS

spreads charts the history of flight, from Icarus through biplanes to the modern jet, then Winters takes readers onto the plane to check out every part from nose to tail. Another spread depicts one boy’s (puzzlingly, not Henry) fascination; he makes a paper airplane and flies a remote-control helicopter before building his own toy plane out of wood and finally piloting a small plane himself. A double-gatefold provides a panoramic view of the airport, illustrating aspects of airport security. Then readers meet the various airport personnel, pictured and described. Henry and Kate hold their boarding passes as they wait in line to get on the plane. All along the way are additional tidbits or reader challenges in little bubbles. Winters closes with a pair of poems about flight and a handful of quizzes (matching pictured baggage to owners, for example) and craft projects, like making a travel notebook. The illustrations look a bit too old-fashioned for the hipness of the text, but it’s still a solid, if busy introduction for new fliers.

An impressive amount of useful information in an inviting format, studded with humor. (Picture book. 4-8)

Yolen, Jane Illus. by Kelley, Gary Creative Editions/Creative Company (40 pp.) $19.99 | Dec. 15, 2012 978-1-56846-215-8 A sonnet sequence encapsulates the biography of one of America’s most intriguing poets, Emily Dickinson.

Loosely following Shakespearean and the occasional Petrarchan rhyme schemes, Yolen cleverly adopts personae of important figures in Dickinson’s life—including the voice of the poet herself—to reveal key elements of her biography. Aiming to “tell the truth” of Dickinson’s life, Yolen effectively conveys the importance of family and nature, privacy, imagination and independence in Dickinson’s famously unconventional existence.

Averse to traditional schooling and organized religion, the poet reveals: “I learned the spelling of the bee, / The mathematics of the rose / … / I found more in the books of air; / My higher education won / From every bird found flying there.” Yolen also offers a sympathetic portrait of Dickinson’s reclusiveness—“What need for me an open door / When in myself is so much more?”—and idiosyncratic dress: “sometimes a white dress is only that, / It keeps the daily choices few.” Accompanying the sonnets, Kelley’s dark and chunky pastels underscore Dickinson’s interior life.

Occasionally, attempts to echo Dickinson’s poetic surprises yield muddled results, as in “Hedges,” where Yolen’s Dickinson depicts her shrubs as: “My soldiers, steady in a row, / Their helmets verdigrised by God, / Wearing epaulettes of crow.”

Overall, though, these poems, illustrations and substantial notes combine well to lend a rounded portrait of this American poet every young reader needs to discover.

(Picture book/poetry. 10-14)

CURSES! FOILED AGAIN

Yolen, Jane Illus. by Cavallaro, Mike First Second/Roaring Brook (176 pp.) $15.99 | Jan. 8, 2013 978-1-59643-619-0 En garde! Gear up for more sword fights and trolls as well as an appearance from Baba Yaga in this swashbuckling sequel.

Picking right up where Foiled (2010) left off (though with enough back story for new readers to comfortably jump in), Aliera Carstairs, the sassy, sword-fighting, take-no-prisoners heroine, is still battling trolls as the last Defender of Faerie.

Avery Castle, the hottie who turned out to be a troll—literally—is now bound to Aliera as her vassal, causing her more headaches than heart flutters. The unlikely pair must find and battle the Dark Lord, whose identity, when revealed, isn’t quite the shocking twist it was set up to be. Cavallaro keeps the stylized sensibility he established in the previous volume, rendering our world a washed-out grayscale landscape and juxtaposing it against the vibrant—though invisible to humans—world of Faerie. Given that each chapter is named for a type of fencing move, it’s too bad there is no glossary to help those unacquainted with the sport understand what is undoubtedly a careful authorial nuance. This minor flaw aside, the book offers a lot of fast-paced fairy-tale fun, and Aliera is both admirable and easy to relate to for her fierceness and foibles.

A mysterious prophecy of things to come at the conclusion results in raised eyebrows and impatience for Volume 3. (Graphic fantasy. 12 & up)

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pop-up round -up MATTER MATTERS!

Adams, Tom Illus. by Flintham, Thomas Templar/Candlewick (18 pp.) $18.99 | Aug. 14, 2012 978-0-7636-6096-3 Series: Super Science Lots of flaps and the occasional pull-tab or pop-up don’t make these swift passes at chemistry any less superficial.

The book skims in no particular order over atoms and elements, states of matter (covering only three), water, air, chemical reactions, acids and bases, biochemistry and radioactivity.

Each single-topic spread offers a jumble of cartoon figures and shaped or generic flaps—many of which are hinged to provide |

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additional space for such less-than-rigorously-factual observations as “Soap molecules have long tails that love grease. Their heads love water. They clean by surrounding grease blobs and sticking their tails into them.” Similar tidbits scattered on and around the flaps and a scanty assortment of other movable parts offer chemistry basics, introductions to a handful of famous scientists and a few easy demonstrations like the messy but tired Mentos-and–diet-soda geyser.

Younger flapoholics are unlikely to absorb much of the content, and older lab rats will do better with more systematic surveys. (Informational novelty. 7-10)

young cast members (including one in a red hood) and lots and lots of sticky buns.

Being a “cheeky girl,” Goldilocks thinks nothing of following up her destructive visit to the Three Bears’ cottage by messing around in the seemingly similar “cottage”—which expands to a tall apartment house with the pull of a tab—of the 33 Bears.

Then, in 2076, inviting herself into the trood (spaceship) of the Three Bliim for a taste of spootz (“porridge, sort of ”) and a nap in the smallest woodootog (bed). In further outings, Goldilocks encounters dishes and other furnishings with minds of their own, plays lead in a theatrical romp presented in an inset booklet containing a script and a pop-up stage, and at last finds a number of unexpected houseguests sleeping in her bed. The very small, very finely drawn figures and households insist on (and reward) close looks, and they are enhanced by an array of surprises revealed beneath flaps or through die-cut windows.

The frequently distributed buns aren’t all that’s delicious in this exhilarating suite of variations on a classic.

(Pop-up/fractured fairy tale. 5-9)

AESOP’S FABLES

Aesop Illus. by Baruzzi, Agnese Tango Books (16 pp.) $18.99 | Jun. 1, 2012 978-1-85707-895-4 Seven fables are blandly retold, accompanied by unambitious pop-ups likely to spark only fleeting moments of attention from readers.

Baruzzi adds to the usual suspects (“The Lion and the Mouse,” “The Fox and the Grapes” etc.,) the less-familiar “Dog and His Bone” and a mildly unusual version of “The Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing” in which the disguised wolf is by chance chosen to be a shepherd’s dinner. Any violence in the episodes has been left out or dialed down—particularly in “The Bear and the Beehives,” which in traditional versions has the muchstung Bear tearing his skin off, but here only ruefully licking his wounds. Each fable comes with an explicit if not always wellphrased moral (“It is better to walk away from one hurt than to stay around and hurt more”) and is contained in a small booklet glued onto a richly colored and patterned collage illustration.

Along with low-relief pop-up figures, the pictures include one or two limited-motion swivels or pull-tabs that will, for instance, propel the Hare a partial step or move an industrious Ant a few inches along a slotted path. Two fables are squeezed into an apparently arbitrarily chosen spread, making the overall design as undistinguished as the writing and the paper engineering.

Next to the magisterial pop-up Aesop’s Fables of Kees Moerbeck et al. (2011), not to mention the plethora of livelier non–pop-up collections, an also-ran. (Pop-up/fables.

6-8)

THE PRINCESS AND THE PEA

Andersen, Hans Christian Illus. by Pixley, Pippa Tango Books (16 pp.) $18.99 | Jun. 1, 2012 978-1-85707-816-9

The ever-popular (and controversial) “princess” test gets a handsome retelling amid a series of large-scale tableaux.

These appear on successive spreads that show to best effect when opened flat. In them, the prince wearily makes his way home beneath a multicultural gallery of rejected princesses, finding a suitable mate after a bedraggled blonde waif comes to the castle door and spends an uncomfortable night atop a tall, 3-D bed. Pixley uses color more than explicit visual details to suggest the stormy forest, the castle’s stonework and the furnishings in her illustrations, but faces are drawn with fine lines and show at least a limited range of expressions. Furthermore, the pop-ups unfold into expansive scenes with multiple layers and tongue-in-cheek notes—notably the pervasive recurrence of a pea motif and at the end, a display case with a pea that “vanishes” when the lid is raised.

A good “starter” version, though younger children may need some prodding to see how silly the whole premise is.

(Pop-up/fairy tale. 6-9)

THE GOLDILOCKS VARIATIONS

Ahlberg, Allan Illus. by Ahlberg, Jessica Candlewick (40 pp.) $17.99 | Oct. 23, 2012 978-0-7636-6268-4

A familiar old tale is taken for a terrific spin with more bears, three pigs, assorted woodland animals, space aliens, additional | kirkus.com

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“The panjandrum of paper engineering offers six dazzling new constructs…” from hide and seek

THE HAPPY LITTLE YELLOW BOX A Pop-up Book of Opposites

MAISY’S BAND

Cousins, Lucy Illus. by Cousins, Lucy Candlewick (16 pp.) $17.99 | Sep. 11, 2012 978-0-7636-6044-4

Carter, David A. Illus. by Carter, David A. Little Simon/Simon & Schuster (12 pp.) $12.99 | Jul. 10, 2012 978-1-4169-4096-8

Budding musicians and singers can join in the rehearsals as Maisy gets her band and backup chorus together for a house concert.

Being particularly big and sturdy, the pull-tabs should survive the workout (for a while, at least) as Maisy beats on a drum, Charlie the crocodile energetically “strums” his double bass, and other band mates warm up on piano, trumpet and triangle. With the notable exceptions of a twang from Charlie’s bass (thanks to an internal elastic) and a great whack produced as Eddie the elephant whales away on his triangle, the instruments themselves don’t sound off. Nevertheless, each spread’s large-type caption features onomatopoeic words—“Plinketyplonk! Tallulah plays the pink piano”—and exclamation points! that will encourage audiences to bring the noise in high volume.

A huge pull-down flap on the final spread reveals the whole ensemble, onstage and ready to…well, not rock as the band’s strictly acoustic, but at least belt out some hot folk or pop tunes.

An effervescent companion to Maisy’s Show (2010).

(Pop-up/picture book. 2-5)

A smiling square demonstrates eight pairs of opposites thanks to a sturdy array of pull-tabs, nested flaps and pop-ups.

Though the title conjures up echoes of Lane Smith’s satiric Happy Hocky Family (1993), this is really no more (and no less) than a straightforward concept item. Against solid black backgrounds, a smiling box and a minimal set of props or figures drawn in simple white lines demonstrate “outside” and “inside,” “open” and “close,” “near” and “far,” and like relationships identified by straightforward captions. Starting out as a hinged flap, the box goes on with aid from sliders, pull-tabs and artfully angled supports to represent a variety of things. A helicopter flies “[h]igh and low with the Happy Little Yellow Box,” an apartment building’s electric lights flash “[o]ff and on with the Happy Little Yellow Boxes,” and a garage door, a truck and an elevator are put through their paces. On the final spread, the smiling box opens into a “[l]arge” cube that contains a “small” version of itself visible through a window.

A small gem, elegantly simple from patterned text to creatively engineered moving parts. (Pop-up/concept book.

2-4)

IS THAT YOU, WOLF?

Illus. by Cox, Steve Barron’s (22 pp.) $12.99 | Aug. 1, 2012 978-0-7641-6560-3

HIDE AND SEEK

Carter, David A. Illus. by Carter, David A. Tate/Abrams (20 pp.) $25.00 | Sep. 1, 2012 978-1-84976-101-7

Tactile terrors await anyone intrepid enough to insert little hands into the raised pockets of this nighttime ramble.

Sure that there’s a wolf hiding on the farm, brave Little Piglet scouts barn and byre. At each stop/spread, readers are invited to “[s]lide your hand in if you dare…Wolf may be lurking so BEWARE!” Inside the pockets, invisible to the eye, are patches of fur, jaggedly cut pieces of (soft) plastic, swatches of rough or sticky material and other thrilling surprises—all of which, after a momentary frisson, turn out to belong to innocuous farm animals. Though shadowy, the cartoon illustrations send a contrastingly nonscary message, with cleanly drawn, harmonious-looking rural scenes populated with smiling livestock… and, of course, it’s all a setup for a big, toothy, shriek-inducing pop-up wolf on the climactic final spread.

Perhaps not the best choice for naptime or bedtime (bwa ha ha), but certain to elicit audience demand for multiple re-reads and sturdy enough to stand up to them. (Novelty picture book. 4-7)

The panjandrum of paper engineering offers six dazzling new constructs—each hiding a handful of small cutouts or printed shapes to find.

Tantalizing tallies along the margins invite viewers to spot a “yellow splat, a red vine, a car and a star. / …A sleepy head, in bed, with a red thread on his forehead” and like prizes. These are attached to, dangling from or hidden within the bursts of paper swirls, interlocking mazes and geometrical structures that rise up as each spread opens. The just-barely concealed seek-andfind objects are almost incidental to the fun. It’s impossible to resist closely exploring (with eyes or even gentle fingers) the long, looping curves, glimpsed inner spaces and bright concatenations of form and color just for themselves. Each spread has a separate, distinct look, and each offers a fresh opportunity to encounter, respond to and enjoy Carter’s brilliant artistic gifts.

More playful work from a rare master of abstract design, both rich enough and sturdy enough to support repeat visits. (Pop-up/picture book. 5-10, adult) 2610

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THE LORAX POP-UP!

pieces large and small that rise or slide sequentially into place as the spreads widen.

Like the song itself, this terrific miniepic bears, and demands, repeating. (Pop-up/nursery rhyme. 4-7)

Dr. Seuss Adapt. by Carter, David A. Robin Corey/Random (18 pp.) $29.99 | Jan. 10, 2012 978-0-375-86035-5

MY POP-UP WORLD ATLAS

Though looking a little tightly packed in just eight spreads, Dr. Seuss’s cautionary environmental fable takes on fresh energy (and urgency) thanks to Carter’s simple but largescale pop-ups.

At the prompting of a little boy, the never-seen Once-ler, standing in for all blindly greedy entrepreneurs, relates the melancholy tale of how he turned the Truffula Trees into Thneeds (“a Fine-Something-That-All-People-Need!”). As he does so, the color scheme goes from vivid green to dismal gray as an idyllic grove is exploited in stages until it’s just a polluted wasteland.

Featuring an open design in which the (painfully) small-type text tends to fill up the ground, each spread contains a large central pop-up with several smaller ones at the edges or under shaped gatefolds. In contrast to the radiant burst with which the habitat’s guardian Lorax appears from the stump of the first felled Truffula Tree, views of the smoking, increasingly noxiouslooking Thneed factory soon take center stage until, at the end, the Lorax soars off through a putrid cloud, leaving only a tantalizing “UNLESS” behind.

A corner flap opens to the resolution, in which the Once-ler passes the last Truffula seed and the responsibility for nurturing it on to the next generation. Good luck, Gen Z. (Pop-up/picture book. 6-9)

Ganeri, Anita Illus. by Waterhouse, Stephen Templar/Candlewick (16 pp.) $18.99 | Sep. 11, 2012 978-0-7636-6094-9

Mountains, buildings and other landmarks—not to mention the entire Scandinavian peninsula—rise up dramatically as each singlecontinent spread opens in this dense but legible atlas.

In a flat, brightly colored cartoon style, Waterhouse lays out simplified landmasses and scatters them with small but clear images of characteristic flora, fauna, human figures in festival costume, major cities, notable structures and industrial products. National borders aren’t always marked, but each country is placed with a name and a tiny (usually, but not always, colored) flag. Along with basic facts about each continent on flaps, slotted wheels and pull-down sliders, Ganeri adds dozens of labels and captions on each map to point out distinctive local features. Overall, the look is invitingly full but not overstuffed, and despite occasional flubs such as a simplistic claim that “rainforests grow near the equator,” the barrages of verbal and visual data will give younger geographers a solid overview.

A quick planetary once-over, more suited to browsing than sustained study but with a level of detail likely to leave children intrigued rather than overwhelmed. (Pop-up/nonfiction. 6-9)

ITSY BITSY SPIDER

Illus. by Egielski, Richard Atheneum (12 pp.) $19.99 | Sep. 25, 2012 978-1-4169-9895-2

LET’S LACE

Illus. by Gardner, Marjory Barron’s (10 pp.) $8.99 | Mar. 1, 2012 978-0-7641-6492-7

Slight of text but ingenious of art and paper engineering, this iteration of the familiar hand rhyme creates a storyline and a humming urban neighborhood in six pop-up spreads.

Depicted as a brown-skinned, overalls-clad child with extra sets of arms and legs, the tiny spider is barely noticeable at the outset as he strolls along past a pop-up apartment house and a storefront—each of which offers engrossing glimpses through a doorway and windows of a busy, mixed population of people and bugs. Subsequent openings pull up the requisite drain spout, then bring out puffy clouds (with faces) dispensing a flurry of raindrops (ditto), leading to the washout, a big sun rising up and, at last, the spider’s delayed arrival at a homey rooftop web. Egielski fills every square millimeter with bright colors and crisp, often-fanciful detail—some of the buildings in his streetscape are constructed from jars and kitchen appliances— and plays with scale by adding, in some scenes, full-sized leaves or human pedestrians. The visual rhythms are enhanced by | kirkus.com

For footwear DIYers, an elementary hands-on exercise with a long purple and yellow lace, holes punched through multiple bright, simple cartoon scenes and, to the side, a pop-up cardstock sneaker for further practice.

Catering to multiple learning styles, the instructions employ printed directions, numerals, arrows, animal guides and sequential groups of flowers to walk young learners through lacing skills. They proceed in steps through simple versions of both ladder and crisscross lacing then move on to tie three different kinds of looped bows. Plainly visible labels indicate starting points, and each project ends with a view of the finished product. The pop-up shoe is made from thinner stock than the rest of the production and isn’t designed to hold a real foot, but it will survive a certain amount of rough or repeated lacing-up. |

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“…adding a graceful visual surprise to each spread, a side flap bearing the appropriate numeral lifts to reveal a second, pop-up version artfully crafted from the featured creature.” from one spotted giraffe

There are dozens of ways to lace shoes, but even for the most fashion-conscious preschoolers, this makes a good first step. (Instructional pop-up/board book. 3-5)

a flat-bottomed but reasonably finely detailed model.

Wrapped in flimsy covers held shut with an elastic band, this has a homemade look that may draw DIYers—but all in all, it’s a familiar tale told yet again. (Pop-up/nonfiction.

8-11)

RIDING IN MY CAR

Guthrie, Woody Illus. by Menchin, Scott Little, Brown (16 pp.) $17.99 | Mar. 27, 2012 978-0-316-05216-0

ONE SPOTTED GIRAFFE A Counting Pop-up Book Horácek, Petr Illus. by Horácek, Petr Candlewick (20 pp.) $15.99 | Sep. 11, 2012 978-0-7636-6157-1

A canine family takes a road trip across the United States, with the titular song’s cheerful nonsense for a soundtrack.

Menchin slips in occasional lines from “This Land Is Your Land” but takes his tourists from east to west rather than the other way. He opens with a departure from New York City, closes with a lively hoedown beneath the Golden Gate Bridge, and in between pauses for glimpses of the White House, Mount Rushmore, farms, highways, mountains and desert. In keeping with Guthrie’s free-association lyrics—“Trees and the houses walk along. / Trees and the houses walk along. / A truck and a car and a garbage can, / take you riding in my car”—the illustrations overlay composite color photos of each sight with raised wheel- or tab-driven cartoon scenes. As the floppy-eared travelers stop to marvel, beneath glued flaps readers can find such random snippets of background as the length of Route 66 or tiny photos of Guthrie and his childhood home.

An affectionate tribute to a great American songsmith as well as an impressionistic snapshot of a land made for you and me, fitted out with appropriately homespun movable parts. (Pop-up/picture book. 5-8)

With faultless simplicity Horácek squires viewers from the titular giraffe, “[t]wo striped zebras” and “[t]hree speedy cheetahs” up to “[t]en swimming fish.”

Still channeling Eric Carle, the illustrator creates big, friendly-looking, harmoniously posed animal figures sporting luminous blends of brushed pattern and hue. He positions them against plain white backgrounds or pale color fields, gazing up to make eye contact with viewers. There’s a pleasing variety to the coloration of his subjects that helps to create an additional visual rhythm, the one- or two-color animals giving way to four different, bright types of snakes, toucans in a lush rain forest and a school of brilliant tropical fish. All are more or less realistically colored, except for the cheekily psychedelic chameleons.

As the animal assemblages grow, their members either form sinuous visual patterns for eyes to trace or easily parsed groupings: one, two and two sets of three for “[n]ine leaping lemurs,” for instance. Furthermore, adding a graceful visual surprise to each spread, a side flap bearing the appropriate numeral lifts to reveal a second, pop-up version artfully crafted from the featured creature.

A real pleaser for the diapered brigade: bright but not busy, unfussily interactive, predictable but never monotonously so. (Pop-up/counting picture book. 1-3)

THE TITANIC NOTEBOOK

Hawcock, Claire Illus. by Carter, Stuart Jackson; Walton, Garry Insight Editions (8 pp.) $24.99 | Mar. 1, 2012 978-1-60887-072-1

CREEPY CRITTERS A Pop-up Book of Creatures That Jump, Crawl, and Fly

For Titanic completists, a standard account of the ship’s building and sinking enhanced by pop-ups and capped by a model to be assembled from several dozen punch-out pieces.

Though wrong in claiming that the liner was the first to have a swimming pool (that honor goes to the Adriatic, built in 1907), the descriptive notes are laudably dense with technical data and factual information. They are extended by a well-chosen mix of painted reconstructions and (more often) contemporary photos, prints and documents. There are also flaps and booklets, a miniature poster in a pocket and pop-ups of the Titanic’s bow, a lifeboat and Robert Ballard’s submersible Alvin and its remotecontrolled robot Jason Jr. A pouch at the rear holds a folded instruction sheet and several sheets of pre-punched card stock that, with care and judicious use of glue, can be worked up into 2612

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Keith, Helen Illus. by Hawke, Richard; Boutell, Robin Abrams (14 pp.) $15.95 | Mar. 1, 2012 978-0-8109-8942-9

Six big—really big—bugs rise in extreme close-up from the spreads of this uneven but arresting early introduction to insects and arachnids.

Though crustaceans and myriapods (centipedes and millipedes) get introductory mentions, the featured cast just includes a ladybug, a honeybee, a grasshopper, a beetle, a spider and a cockroach. Only the last two really go for the gusto by flinging |

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oversized legs or antennae toward viewers’ faces; the rest are posed at more sedate angles that won’t engender startled shrieks but do, usually, show off overall shapes and body parts more clearly. Along with identifying each bug’s particular species, Keith systematically provides basic facts about its general clan’s distinctive physical features, diet, size and life span. From an informational point of view, the paper engineering is below par: The beetle, bee and ladybug are all billed as having two pairs of wings, but only on the beetle are they modeled as four distinct parts, and on the ladybug they’re not visible at all (there’s a small side illustration instead). Nevertheless, the art’s bright colors and models’ unusual scale will rivet audiences large or small.

A quick buzz through buggy biology, equally suitable for reading or exhibition. (Pop-up/informational picture book. 4-6)

spreads punctuated by tiny identifiers (“No Plates to eat off ”), foldouts and larger pop-ups. The left-hand, lower corner of each spread gives a time frame (“12,000-4,000 YEARS AGO”) as readers and humanity move from pointy stones as tools to fire to civilizations, freely dispensing gags along the way. Did the ancient Greeks really invent the hula hoop? “Wheels are wheely useful!” Noting the invention of champagne by Dom Perignon is a nice touch for adult readers. “Ye Book of ye Middle Ages” centers on Europe of course, with a nod toward China for the invention of gunpowder. Perhaps the most amusing paperengineering effect is the steam engine, which makes a chuggachugga sound while smoke billows and three bearded guys bounce around behind. At the end, bigger and faster engines give way to smaller and faster microchips. There are several images of this title in various places within the text—very meta indeed—but no references and a lot of generalities. One might say that there is little gender or ethnic mix, but the figures are so abstract or cartoony that it may not matter. There isn’t a lot of matter here, period.

Curiously uninvolving, but it may get children to thinking about stuff and maybe inventing some gizmos of their own. (Pop-up/nonfiction. 5-7)

SOPHIE’S BALLET SHOW

Kightley, Rosalinda Illus. by Kightley, Rosalinda Barron’s (10 pp.) $14.99 | Mar. 1, 2012 978-0-7641-6508-5

SLEEPY OR NOT, MR CROC?

Kightley recasts Emily’s Ice Dancing Show (2010) as a ballet school triumph— changing her main character’s hair color but keeping the sparkles on the cover and most of the movable effects.

In the perfunctory plotline, little Sophie Pavlova comes away from her first day of ballet school knowing so much that the next day she receives an invitation to star in a production of Sleeping Beauty. Other stubby-limbed, button-eyed girls demonstrate (labeled) pliés, jetés and pirouettes in the pastel pink and blue scenes as, with pulls on tabs, Sophie demonstrates each of the five positions and also makes “an amazing leap!” Turning a pair of wheels allows viewers to “help” Sophie try on a succession of costumes, and the final spread opens a grand view of a multilevel stage on which she spins with pulls on a string as the corps de ballet behind her sways and kicks. “I love being a ballet dancer!” laughs Sophie. Insulin alert.

Not to mention the absence of more than a hint that there might be a certain amount of work involved. (Pop-up/ picture book. 5-7)

Lodge, Jo Illus. by Lodge, Jo Hodder Children’s Books/Trafalgar (7 pp.) $11.99 | Nov. 1, 2012 978-0-34096-002-8 Series: Mr. Croc

Mr. Croc takes a little longer to go to bed than first glances and pulls on the tabs might hint.

Though when glimpsed through a window Mr. Croc seems to be nodding off, in fact, as a turn of the page reveals, he’s actually dancing and playing guitar. Not looking a bit sleepy, he proceeds to lie on the floor to draw, enjoy one bedtime snack under the covers and then rise to raid the fridge for more. Using thick lines and saturated colors à la Lucy Cousins, Lodge depicts a simply drawn croc in PJs who alternately lurks behind flaps and then responds to variations on the titular query with tab-driven wriggles and blinks. Mouth mostly closed or smiling throughout, he cuts a cozy figure—until the final spread, from which he suddenly rears up with jaws (“SNAP! SNAP!”) agape in a “snappy dream.”

A “jump” tale for the diapered set, startling on first gothrough but scary-fun on subsequent visits. (Pop-up/picture book. 3-5)

THE STORY OF THINGS

Illus. by Layton, Neal Adapt. by Fletcher, Corina Trafalgar (22 pp.) $19.99 | Jun. 1, 2012 978-0-340-94532-2

Early humans about 3 million years ago had “no things,” and Layton wants to show us how they— we—got them.

The artistic style is squiggly and agitated, with occasional collage photos and other overlays. Pictures run in double-page | kirkus.com

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“Even casual or nonfans will be open-mouthed at the gloriously rococo paper engineering…” from star wars

EYE MAGIC! Fantastic Optical Illusions: An Interactive Pop-up Book

which viewers get a glimpse of Anakin Skywalker’s scowling visage before Vader’s armored helmet snaps into place.

A fragile but awesome tribute. (Pop-up/movie tie-in.

7-11, adult)

Lodge, Yvette Tango Books (10 pp.) $22.99 | Nov. 1, 2012 978-1-85707-845-9

POP-UP LONDON

Maizels, Jennie Illus. by Maizels, Jennie Candlewick (12 pp.) $19.99 | Mar. 22, 2012 978-0-7636-5787-1

A literal spin through some common optical effects, from moiré patterns and illusory 3-D figures to shadow puppetry and mirror distortions.

This survey employs pull-tabs, embedded wheels, pop-up models and a handful of separate cards and clear plastic overlays stored in a sturdy rear drawer to demonstrate the perils of believing only what we see. Most of the effects work well enough, though there are several that require using easily lost loose pieces to function. Moreover, an image of John Tenniel’s Alice fails an apparent size change as she slides over lines of perspective that are supposed to make her look larger or smaller, and a faux kaleidoscope doesn’t allow in enough light to make clear reflections. Other less-than-successful elements include an op-art square on one spread that physically pops up for no evident reason and mirrors on another that are both placed on a confusingly abstract pop-up construct and accompanied by uselessly vague directions for using “mirror cards” from the rear drawer.

The “magic” is on display, but only fitfully, and even when it does work, it often comes off as labored. (Pop-up/ nonfiction. 7-11)

Deucedly clever paper engineering allows young visitors to spin the London Eye, raise Tower Bridge for a ship’s passage and more in this spit-spot tour along the Thames.

Two landmarks (the aforementioned Eye and the building aptly dubbed “The Gherkin”) require manually folded tabs to stay upright, but no other assembly is required. With infectious enthusiasm, Maizels squires viewers from Kew Gardens to Olympic Park—pausing along the way to toss out famous names, physical and historical facts, ghost stories and “findthis” challenges. Opening each of the five spreads raises a grand array of selected structures crowded along the winding river’s banks. These are depicted in fine but clear detail and, mostly, printed on both sides so that turning the display around affords glimpses of interiors as well as additional boxed factlets. Glued flaps on every spread lift to reveal introductory comments and one-sentence introductions to famous Londoners of (mostly) the past, while small images of taxis, corgis, Trafalgar Square pigeons and Union Jacks add dashes of local color.

A grand panorama, though because the geography is, to say the least, creative and the stately buildings are barely even a representative sampling of what London has to offer, this is more a keepsake than a tourist’s guide. (Pop-up/nonfiction. 6-10)

STAR WARS A Galactic Pop-Up Adventure Lucasfilm Illus. by Reinhart, Matthew Scholastic (6 pp.) $36.99 | Oct. 16, 2012 978-0-545-17616-3

LOTS OF LAMBS

Teeming with pop-ups capped by a wonderfully menacing Darth Vader wielding a glowing light saber, this companion to Star Wars: A Pop-Up Guide to the Galaxy (2007) makes a memorable keepsake for fans of The Phantom Menace film and its two sequels.

With only glancing reference to the interstellar epic’s storylines, Reinhart introduces flurries of major and minor worlds, characters, spacecraft and alien races. Each broadly topical spread (example: “Slick Tech and Astromechs”) features both a big central figure or tableau that rears up to an unlikely height and, in at least two corners, nested pop-up constructs that open or unfold in layers. The art’s watery colors and indistinct lines don’t recall the vivid realism of the movies, and the bland accompanying commentary underwhelms (“…weaponry can mean the difference between victory and defeat”). That’s hardly the point: Even casual or nonfans will be open-mouthed at the gloriously rococo paper engineering—particularly the multiarmed, insectile droid Gen. Grievous and the final spread, in 2614

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Numeroff, Laura Illus. by Munsinger, Lynn HMH Books (20 pp.) $9.99 | Nov. 6, 2012 978-0-547-40206-2 This insipid ovine litany pairs a monotonous, uninspired rhyme with poorly designed extras and bland scenes of clothed sheep at play.

Singly or in groups, the partly dressed woolly baa-baas in Munsinger’s illustrations adopt unimaginative, low-energy poses to demonstrate a long succession of “Morning lambs, / Nighttime lambs, / Lambs in a plane. // Sitting lambs, / Standing lambs, / Lambs in the rain,” and so on, and on. Additions to the right sides of each spread provide some interaction. Flaps with easily torn hinges, for instance, allow the die-cut “plane” (which isn’t even printed on both sides) to move slightly more than an |

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inch; there are also a “snowlamb” coated in blue-grayish sparkly plastic in a winter scene and a kite with a limp segment of real string in a spring scene.

A possibility for bedtime use, considering the soporific verse and routine (at best) “enhancements.” (Novelty. 2-5)

they do fill an entire spread with flaps of carefully detailed, seemingly-life-size-but-not-really eggs. Furthermore, though painted in bright, subtly blended colors, most of the avian portraits do not show finer details of skin or plumage, and so limited is the range of angles and poses (none are posed in flight), that the visuals tend toward monotony.

Impressive–but only at first glance. (Pop-up/nonfiction.

4-8)

THE SUN IS YELLOW

Pacovská, Kveta Illus. by Pacovská, Kveta Tate/Abrams (32 pp.) $24.95 | Sep. 1, 2012 978-1-84976-064-5

CINDERELLA A Three-Dimensional FairyTale Theater Ray, Jane Illus. by Ray, Jane Candlewick (12 pp.) $19.99 | Sep. 25, 2012 978-0-7636-6175-5

With help from flaps, slotted wheels and die-cut holes, a frog and, later, a clown named Kasper introduce a weepy snail to the wonders of color shades, blends and combinations.

Silencing the snail’s “Boo-hoo, hoo! Oh, if only I had a bit of green!” (or red, yellow, orange, etc.) with an “Oh, give it a rest!” the frog leads its monochrome companion past a multilayered wheel of colors and promises a “red moon” to contrast with the “cold” white and silver-foil one. Instead, on comes Kasper to expand the options with multicolored showers of rain against a white background and a variegated wheel of colors against a dark one. The plotline isn’t really the thing here, though. Most of the high-gloss, card-stock spreads are wordless or virtually wordless fields filled with daubs, bars, arcs and streaks of diverse hue. In her modernist, heavily stylized paintings, Pacovská crafts beaked figures that are either relegated to the role of observers or serve as vehicles for abstract color effects and changes that viewers are invited to discover and, with the moving parts, create themselves.

Children who enjoy watching colors at play may be drawn in, and the album also makes a rewarding technical study for developing artists. (Pop-up/picture book. 5-9)

A pretty but undistinguished rendition of the tale in six layered tableaux.

Opening to a more than 90-degree angle, each spread offers a multileveled stage setting framed with starry curtains, in which figures in 18th-century dress are posed amid elegant surroundings. Ray recycles the almond-eyed beauty and her dusky-skinned royal swain from the similarly designed Snow White (2009). Though the details of clothing and architecture are drawn with a fine precision, the same cannot be said of the figures—whose hands are consistently misshapen and whose features, particularly in the lead characters, have a remote, frozen look. The text, stripped down to a plot summary that allows the stepsisters to keep their feet unchopped and ends with Cinderella’s “Yes!” in response to the prince’s proposal, is hidden beneath flaps in the wings but will most likely be superfluous anyway.

Not entirely trite, as it does feature a biracial couple, but overall, a bland, phoned-in follow-up to a more successful previous outing. (Pop-up/fairy tale. 6-8)

BIRDS OF A FEATHER

Pittau & Gervais Illus. by Pittau & Gervais Chronicle (18 pp.) $24.99 | Oct. 1, 2012 978-1-4521-1066-0

RUMBLE! ROAR! DINOSAURS! A Prehistoric Pop-up Illus. by Reinhart, Matthew Robin Corey/Random (12 pp.) $6.99 paperback | Aug. 7, 2012 978-0-307-97643-7

A lift-the-flap picture album of birds—memorable for its large, folio trim size at least, if not so much for artistic quality or informational content.

As in their Out of Sight (2010), Pittau and Gervais hide technically accomplished animal portraits (some of which are small pop-ups) behind large, shaped or die-cut flaps. Each image is paired to a comment on the subject’s behavior, habitat or physical features. These comments are often unhelpful, leaving readers in the dark about just why flamingos turn pink as they age or how eating caterpillars turns a great tit’s belly yellow, for instance. The authors seldom indicate their birds’ sizes—but | kirkus.com

Making up in drama for what it lacks in numbers, this slender paperbound gallery of dinos features pop-up or pull-tab surprises on each of its five spreads.

Within, seven popular types of prehistoric monsters depicted in vivid, high-contrast colors rear up with ferocious scowls to attack, defend or, in the case of Apatosaurus, simply to pose above treetops in lordly majesty. The captions that accompany the images combine emphatic sound words with action clues—“Stomp! Rumble! Roar! Hungry Tyrannosaurus rex stalks forward and snaps his powerful jaws” (very smoothly, once |

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readers pull on its tail, which doubles as a pull-tab). Reinhart closes with a pronunciation guide and for added value, supplies melodramatic outline figures inside the front and rear covers for young artists to color.

A quick fix for younger dinosaur devotees, from the coauthor of the spectacular Encyclopedia Prehistorica (20052007). (Pop-up/informational picture book. 4-6)

beneath flaps and, often, accompanied by envelopes or folders that hold modified (but smaller than standard-size) playing cards, plastic widgets and other helpful—if easy to lose—items.

The series’ high-bandwidth website offers additional tricks and entertainments.

Though most of professional magic’s last 100 years pull a vanishing act, a beguiling mix of wonders and practical advice. (bibliography, many detachable or already detached pieces) (Novelty/nonfiction. 10 & up)

A PRINCESS LIKE ME A Royal Pop-up Book

WOLF, ARE YOU THERE?

Reinhart, Matthew Illus. by Reinhart, Matthew Robin Corey/Random (12 pp.) $6.99 paperback | Aug. 7, 2012 978-0-307-97644-4

Thuillier, Eleonore Illus. by Thuillier, Eleonore Auzou Publishing (7 pp.) $14.90 | Apr. 1, 2012 978-2-7338-1952-4

A candy-coated burst of high-fructose goo, saturated with pink and equipped with pop-ups on every page.

Reinhart lays it on with a trowel: “Good morning, good morning! What a busy day it will be. / There’s so much to do for a princess like me!” Once the pet unicorn is fed, of course, planning a party tops the to-do list. Every spread or page features a pop-up, pull-tab or flap that, for instance, transforms the wide-eyed young royal’s plain pink gown into something more froufrou and even pinker and, in the culminating tableau, poses her with a distinctly multicultural array of slightly less-dressy peers. Coloring pages inside the paper covers provide outlined fashion plates for dewy young designers. Hearts are, naturally, everywhere in the sunny, pastel-hued scenes.

Insipid. (Pop-up/picture book. 4-7)

A big button, a short zipper, a pair of small side-release buckles and other types of fasteners may keep little fingers busy “helping” a wolf dress for school, but the accompanying pictures, storyline and swatches of fabric are only a vehicle for the dry goods.

As Little Red Riding Hood and other potential prey look on quizzically, a wolf (“very far away,” according to the verse, but hardly so in the accompanying picture) buttons his pink shorts, snaps up a “polo shirt,” buckles on “dungarees” (overalls), dons sneakers with Velcro straps and zips closed a quilted, sleeveless “coat.” The various fasteners are attached to small cloth or plastic backings that not only lack appropriate tailoring, but seldom even match the colors of the painted garment into which they’re embedded. Evidently just to keep it all entirely nonsensical, Daddy Wolf (so identified by a tiny label on the rear cover) poses on the front cover in another outfit, wearing a mitten (painted) on one paw and a shoe (with punched-out holes and a bit of real shoelace) on one foot.

A superfluous alternative to real clothes. (Instructional board book. 4-6)

ILLUSIONOLOGY

Schafer, Albert Illus. by Wyatt, David; Pinfold, Levi; Tomic, Tomislav Candlewick (30 pp.) $19.99 | Mar. 13, 2012 978-0-7636-5588-4 Series: ‘Ology

HOW TO BE A DETECTIVE Search for Clues, Analyze the Evidence, and Solve the Case!

Leaving no square inch of page space unpurposed, the latest in the ’Ology series wraps directions for over two dozen simple sleight-of-hand tricks in thick skeins of history and mystery.

This outing is intended both to give budding prestidigitators a starting kit and to fill them in on their avocation’s basic principles and greatest early practitioners. Each heavily, atmospherically illustrated spread is packed with topically related disquisitions on subjects from optical illusions to how Hofzinser, Thurston, Robert-Houdin and other iconic figures of the 19th and early 20th centuries performed some of their most awesome, elaborately staged feats. Though properly warned away from trying sword swallowing, ox decapitation and like hazardous pursuits themselves, readers are encouraged to tackle the step directions for (reasonably) easy hidden coin and other small-scale tricks. These are offered in booklets or hidden 2616

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Waddell, Dan Illus. by Smith, Jim Candlewick (24 pp.) $19.99 | Sep. 6, 2012 98-0-7636-6142-7

A superficial look at the basics of criminal forensics and investigation, addressed to young Sherlocks but more likely to draw soul mates of the great detective’s resolutely sedate brother Mycroft.

The manual thoughtfully supplies amateur sleuths with a perfunctory “kit” consisting of a tiny ink pad and a nearly useless periscope with brushed foil reflectors. It then proceeds to |

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“Slapdash, inconsistently styled and needlessly grim, this off-putting take on the traditional tale is an unwelcome slog through cold mud.” from three little pigs classic

interactive e-books

lay out procedures for gathering hair, fingerprints and like evidence from a living room or other “crime scene.” Succeeding spreads cover surveillance techniques, interviewing “witnesses” and “suspects,” profiling (readers are encouraged to keep a card file on friends and family—an enterprise that cannot end well), handwriting analysis and using codes while working with partners. Other tangential or seemingly random elements include a made-up crime on a folded poster at the front that receives no further mention, a spread on spycraft and a set of loose cards with mix-and-match facial features. Much of the content on nearly every page is pointlessly printed on or covered by glued flaps, and the cartoon illustrations are strewn with an eye-glazing array of ordinary household items and generic figures in static poses.

Waddell properly trumpets the importance of sharp observational skills, but he doesn’t provide budding detectives with much impetus to develop them. (Pop-up/nonfiction. 8-10)

THREE LITTLE PIGS CLASSIC

ADS Interactive ADS Interactive $0.99 | Sep. 26, 2012 1.1; Oct. 4, 2012

Slapdash, inconsistently styled and needlessly grim, this off-putting take on the traditional tale is an unwelcome slog through cold mud.

Because it’s in the public domain, many app developers have gone hog-wild with “The Three Little Pigs.” While the ADS Interactive version may not be the worst of a large lot, it’s one of the most puzzling. Strange design choices include making the storybook display in portrait mode instead of landscape, with no option to change the orientation, the inclusion of lengthy text passages in a gigantic font on most pages, and instances where objects like hammers or pieces of wood can be flung around the screen to no effect. The artwork has a split personality, with illustrations of the main characters taken from the L. Leslie Brooke 1904 edition and placed against crudely rendered backgrounds. The text is a lightly revised rendition of the same book; the pigs who build their homes of straw and wood are gobbled up by the wolf, and the brick-building pig eventually boils and eats the wolf for dinner after a series of interminablefeeling mind games. The image of that pig chowing down at the dinner table, head bobbing, will be more than most parents will want to share with young readers.

With so many superior versions of the same story available for the iPad, it’s difficult to recommend such an unpleasant, halfhearted effort. (iPad storybook app. 4-7)

PUFF THE MAGIC DRAGON POP-UP BOOK

Yarrow, Peter; Lipton, Lenny Illus. by Puybaret, Eric Sterling (16 pp.) $26.95 | Jan. 1, 2012 978-1-4027-8711-9

The magic dragon rides again, this time incarnated in a pop-up.

In 2007, this artist and publisher did quite a nice picture book of the lyrics to the song written by Yarrow (of Peter, Paul & Mary) and Lipton. This is pretty much the same version, gussied up a little with pop-ups. Mostly, they take Puybaret’s gentle, smooth-edged, muted greens, browns, and blues and layer them three-dimensionally. Dolphins with mortarboards and gondolier shirts frolic, as do the peopleflies instead of dragonflies. In the end, it is a little girl (perhaps Jackie’s daughter, as he isn’t present) who comes to Honalee to awaken Puff once again to frolic in the autumn mist. A CD with four tunes is included, two of them versions of “Puff ” but neither of those the original: One is a much-less-spirited version with Yarrow and his daughter Bethany singing; one is an instrumental. The other two numbers, also on the less-energetic side, are “Froggie Went A-Courtin’ “ and “The Blue Tail Fly.” The latter, although sung by generations of children, does have historical lyrics with ambiguous meanings related to slavery, and one wonders about its inclusion here.

While this pop-up version adds little to Puff’s enduring charm, at least it does not distract. (Pop-up/picture book.

3-6)

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THE UGLY DUCKLING

Andersen, Hans Christian Stanislav Ustymenko Sep. 20, 2012 Series: Fairy Tales for Clever Kids 1.0; Sep. 20, 2012 A stripped-down version of the classic tale that is all about its gimmick: An action is required on each screen in order to advance to the next.

Available in four European languages—English, Russian, German and French but not, curiously, Danish—the story is paired to pedestrian cartoons of animals floating slightly over generic country or farmyard scenes. The English translation is notably awkward (“The wind howled in his wings which were much more strongly than before”). A question or direction at the bottom of each screen requires readers to move or tap a visual element in order to advance. These are usually either |

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“What this app lacks in originality it makes up for in cuddly familiarity. Bear enchants, even wordlessly…” from the very itchy bear

arbitrary, like “Take the smallest egg to the basket” (the largest would have been more logical, considering the context), or no-brainers, such as “With what did the girl kick the duckling?” There are no other interactive features; no animations, audio narration, music—not even a page index. The story ends where it should but abruptly, with a “next” arrow leading to a link for purchasing other, presumably similarly repurposed tales in the series.

Proof positive that not every ugly hatchling is a swan. (iPad storybook app. 5-7)

they’re widely known. But for the uninitiated: A troll threatens three billy goats and ends up mortally thwarted. Narration plugs along at a (very) measured pace, but just when readers might be tempted to catch some shut-eye, a little jingle (accompanied by groovy finger snaps) pops up unexpectedly to aid the goat in crossing the bridge: “Trip, Trap Trippity Trap / A Trip Trap Trippity Trap Uh, Uh, Uh.” It’s catchy to a fault. On the next page, the troll breaks into a full-blown rap, complete with a drum loop and turntable drags. Each time a goat crosses the bridge both ditties are repeated, and they’re infused with so much gusto and silliness they lift the app out of mediocrity.

It’s unfortunate that in “read myself ” mode there are no sound effects, as they could have helped kids hone their rhythm and syncopation skills. The most glaring oversight, however, is that there’s no way to start the story over or navigate through pages without either going forward or backward through every screen or rebooting the app.

This goes to show that a little creativity and funkiness go a long way. Rock on. (iPad storybook app 3-5)

THE VERY ITCHY BEAR

Bland, Nick Illus. by Bland, Nick Wheelbarrow $4.99 | 1.1; Sep. 11, 2012

Employing similar techniques as The Very Hungry Bear (2012), which features the same titular ursine, this story about a persistent flea offers flashes of humor and a neat lesson about scale.

Big, brown Bear must deal with an unwelcome companion, a freeloader named Flea, who is “about to bite, / but not because he’s impolite.” Using effective snippets of animation, broad sound effects and a neat technical trick of zooming in and out on the tiny Flea when he’s tapped, the app is invitingly playful.

The illustrations are comical and well-detailed, even if the animation, as in the previous app, feels a little erratic and bouncy.

Sometimes the zooming feature requires a bit of work to activate. But Bear’s expressions continue to be priceless, and the floating-objects-on-water effects when he lands in the sea are impressive. In fact, a bonus game at the end of the story allows players to build a boat and then sail it on that body of water, a variation on the igloo-building feature of the earlier title. While the app doesn’t feel particularly new, the story wraps up nicely with Bear and bitty Flea becoming friends after a rescue.

What this app lacks in originality it makes up for in cuddly familiarity. Bear enchants, even wordlessly, and is coming into his own as an app star young readers will be happy to see again. (iPad storybook app. 2-6)

FRANKENWEENIE

Disney Publishing Worldwide Disney Publishing Worldwide Applications Sep. 28, 2012 1.0; Sep. 28, 2012 An elaborate teaser for the stopmotion feature film offers slide shows, video clips and opportunities aplenty for

additional purchases.

The enhanced e-book is composed of stills, developmental “sketch to screen” slide shows, snippets of video and bitesized passages of bland descriptive text. Successive chapters offer introductions to Tim Burton’s work (including the early short film that inspired this feature version), the new release’s suburban setting, a traveling exhibition of props and its cast.

This last ranges from nerdy young Victor and his classmates to the beloved dog he revivifies, a mummy hamster and other featured creatures. The several further “chapters” are thinly disguised links to movie-ticket vendors and more print and music spinoffs. An interactive collage maker at the beginning is crudely designed, and later 3-D views of selected characters are slow to turn and heavily pixelated. Still, page swipes and tap-activated close-ups work smoothly, as do the native dictionary and search features. Moreover, the plethora of visual material does provide a clear sense of the film’s stylized look and appeal, plus glimpses of how stop-motion puppets are constructed and convincingly photographed.

More a commercial-minded keepsake than a movie storybook, with barely a mention of either plotline or filmmaking techniques. (Enhanced e-book. 6-9)

ROCKIN’ THREE BILLY GOATS

de Las Casas, Dianne Illus. by Jolet, Stefan Story Connection $2.99 | Sep.11 , 2012 1.0.1; Sep. 11, 2012

Interaction is very minimal, illustrations are featureless, and navigation is clunky, but there’s one distinct element that makes this retelling of the Norwegian folk tale worth the price of admission.

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LALOO THE RED PANDA

and rhythm work quite well in this silly story (though they are not written as verse but in short paragraphs), whether readers choose the British narration, the “record me reading” option or just read it aloud. Double-clicking brings up a rather glitch-y navigation menu. The illustrations are almost too sketchy and simple, though they are in keeping with the sparse but humorous animations, like the rubber-band effect when Crow is pulling up a worm from its hole, or the round-and-round screen chase with Fox. This good-natured fable sends home an important message. (iPad storybook app. 2-6)

Freeman, Lauren Laloo LLC $3.99 | Sep. 12, 2012 1; Sep. 12, 2012

The adventure of a lost, rare red panda cub trying to find his way home is expertly packed with Indian culture, energetic artwork and engaging

characters.

Laloo, who looks more like a fox than a traditional, burly, black-and-white panda, loves bugs, to the puzzlement of those around him. One day, a poacher traps and takes Laloo, but the cub is able to escape. From there, Laloo tries to get back to his family and is aided by a famous dog actor named Scrilla and his friends. The journey is made entertaining by its settings: Laloo crashes the set of a Bollywood movie, runs through a market where the vendors are “selling silk scarves and spicy eggs in sizzling pans,” and travels home on a decorated purple train. He also collects bugs he finds along the way; readers tap the bugs to add them to a collection. The text could be cleaner in terms of punctuation and grammar, but the story itself is fun, the narration is sprightly and Laloo’s persistent worry that he doesn’t fit in is certainly universal. But it’s the presentation of life in India that makes the app most worthy of recommendation.

The clean, beautifully colored artwork is vibrant and inviting.

Laloo’s world has lots of characters, perhaps too many for one story. Some barely get a page or two, leaving room for further tales of Laloo and his friends.

It’s likely young readers who pick up this well-made app will be learning about both Bollywood and red pandas for the first time—and they will be glad they did. (iPad storybook app. 3-8)

CARS

kidEbook kidEbook $0.99 | Aug. 23, 2012 1.0; Aug. 23, 2012 A bit too stripped down for curious pre-readers, this picture book of transportation doesn’t really go anywhere.

It has all the potential of other picture books aimed at toddlers obsessed with all things transportational. But unlike similar apps, this vivid color-block book doesn’t offer much in terms of exploration or discovery. There are 12 different vehicles: a dump truck, a taxi, a tow truck, a fire truck and more. Little ones can tap each for sound effects and minimal action. But that’s it. Toddlers can’t make the cars go with the swipe of a grimy finger, nor are there any interesting characters driving these cars. There are plenty of comical bells and whistles and pop sounds when pages are turned, but the interactivity level here is a flat tire. To make matters worse, reading/listening or playing options are also nonexistent, as is a page index. There are no memory games or puzzles to help prereaders learn the words that go with the cars. The saxophone/ percussion/piano jingle at the beginning will leave parents grateful that it doesn’t play throughout. And why, among all the cars, is the ambulance laughing?

With the plethora of imaginative digital books on cars and other things that go, this app just isn’t there yet. (iPad informational app. 1-3)

THE GREEDY CROW

Harris, Jason Illus. by Harris, Jason Jason Harris $0.99 | Aug. 2, 2012 Series: Beau Crow 1.0; Aug. 2, 2012

SAINT NICK AND THE SPACE NICKS

A satisfying tale about greed and gluttony.

“One morning time, young Beau Crow felt terrible rumbles from his tummy below… / It was only an hour since breakfast at most, when Beau had gobbled grubs on toast.” So Crow flies off to find a field of worms and starts gorging himself. Hare and Mouse tell Crow to stop being so greedy and selfish, and Badger warns him that he will get so fat he won’t be able to fly, but he keeps on eating. Sure enough, when Fox saunters by, Crow can’t get off the ground to escape the predator. A chase ensues, and he finally gets enough exercise to slim down and lift off. The fable ends with an admonition: “After his journey Beau had reduced in size, and promised to be more healthy and wise.” The rhymes | kirkus.com

Mears, Richard Chase Illus. by Westerfield, Bill Stubborn Pixel $1.99 | Oct. 12, 2012 1.0; Oct. 12, 2012

Earthly Santa meets a host of alien counterparts in this well-meant holiday tale.

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from Jupiter and a teeming crowd of other aliens garbed in red and white fur to help Venick from Venus finish delivering toys until “Christmas shined wonderously before morning’s bright light.” Years later, the aliens return to rescue Christmas on this planet, then sail off singing “Merry Christmas Good Earth, and a Happy New Year!” in “voices of gold.” Much in need of editorial work, the text is not only clumsily modeled on “The Night Before Christmas,” with some Seussian influences, but does not always match the optional audio reading. The cheerily colored, roughly brushed art makes a better impression, as do the tapactivated digital additions—which range from waving pseudopods and whirling stars to Santa’s hearty “Ho-Ho-Ho”s (plus one bellowed “GREAT CAESAR’S GHOST!”) and a variety of chortles.

A promising premise and appealing pictures—but no great improvement over the obscure 2004 print version. (thumbnail index, five savable coloring pages) (iPad holiday storybook app. 6-8)

this simple, if wordy, original tale.

Having become attached to the single tangerine tree that grows near his house in the evergreen forest, Little Fox ventures out past dark woods and a steep ravine to reach its distant citrus siblings. He brings back a sweet tangerine and plants the seeds nearby, contentedly leaving them to dream their “orangetangerine dreams” beneath the snow until spring. Infused with sunny oranges and yellows except for in the single scene depicting Little Fox’s courageous excursion into the darker forest, the cartoon art gives this elementary episode a bright mood overall. This is enhanced by tap-induced showers of flowers, stars, strawberries and sparkles that are accompanied by chimes and bird song on most of the dozen pictorial screens. The text is available in several languages with an optional, very distinctly pronounced audio reading in (so far) English and Russian only.

Though lengthy and not always smoothly translated, the narrative is confined to separate, undecorated, easily skipped screens that appear between the pictures and can even be toggled off entirely.

Natural history concerns aside (Tangerines? In a pine forest?), a visually appealing story with an easy-to-grasp emotional base and uncomplicated interactive effects. (iPad storybook app. 3-5)

MY ANIMAL SAFARI

Monkey Experience My Animal Safari $0.99 | Aug. 10, 2012 1.0; Aug. 10, 2012

I’M HAVING A BATH

In this elementally simple app, over 50 cartoon animals pose in succession on a daisy-strewn hillside and respond in silly ways to successive touches.

Arranged in an endless loop that picks up at a seemingly random spot when the app is loaded (after a title page that disappears with a touch), the animal figures slide into view with taps on prominent arrows pointing left and right. They proceed with further taps to bulge, hop, loop the loop and sound off with a (human-made) gurgle, chirp or other noise. The animals appear in roughly geographical sequences—kangaroo is followed by platypus, echidna and koala, for instance—and each comes with a large, one-word label that is pronounced by a narrator in a British accent. There is no menu or index, and both the sunny background scene and the sprightly background music remain the same throughout.

A one-trick pony—but it’s a good trick, likely to keep toddlers entertained for an extended period as it adds lots of new animals to their mental menageries. (iPad informational app. 8 mos-3)

Palmer, Stuart Illus. by Artayudianto, Caroline Tobytek $1.99 | Sep. 11, 2012 1.0; Sep. 11, 2012 Everyone knows that bathtime is fun, but when was the last time your tub became a zoo?

At first glance, this toddler app appears to be an interactive bathtime primer, with quacking rubber ducks and bubbles to pop. But it’s not about all the interesting things a toddler can learn about bathing. It’s about a bubbly tub that soon fills up, in turn, with a giraffe, a cow and her calf, a cat, a dog, a rabbit, a frog and a bird. The story is conveyed in a playful, rhyming, call-and-response format in which an unseen parent indulges the (also unseen) child’s imaginings. “ ‘- a calf and a cow? / – but where? But how?’ / ‘They’re in here right now / and the cat says miaow!’ ” The text appears on one screen, and on the next, readers see the tub with a splotch-shaped button topped by a label for the last-named animal. Tap that, and the animal appears in the tub. Yes, it could be fun to host a zoo in the tub, but the story itself doesn’t really go anywhere. There is no escalating, cumulative foolery until the final page. Although the animals make noises, there is no narration, leaving adult caregivers to navigate the text.

In the end, this tub just isn’t full enough. (iPad storybook app. 1-3)

WATERCOLOR TALE

Osika, Ru Illus. by Demenkova, Nana Zhe $1.99 | Mar. 10, 2012 1.3; Jun. 6, 2012

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“Elaborately crafted pans, zooms and touch-controlled dialogue trick out this tale of the origins of the magic mirror and the evil queen’s enmity.” from snow white

PANCAKE PANDEMONIUM

sounds like he’s at the bottom of a well. The last couple of pages find the bear sporting a tiny koala smile and having a cuddlefest with the boy who made it possible.

This DIY book isn’t half bad, but the price tag is sure to snatch a few smiles. (iPad storybook app. 18 mos.-5)

Pouroulis, Anita Illus. by Bonson, Tom Digital Leaf Sep. 30, 2012 1.0.1; Oct. 10, 2012

SNOW WHITE The Prequel

Polly’s passion for pancakes is surpassed only by how far her imagination will take her to get the ingredients.

Eight-year-old Polly’s pancake pursuit begins not in the kitchen over a griddle, but in a cave with a pancake-hoarding dragon. Back from the dragon to her woefully stocked pantry, Polly hatches a scheme (or is it a dream?) of an endless, buttery stack of delight come true. Stacked high with whimsical sounds and special effects, and whimsically illustrated by Bonson, the tale is chock-full of most everything an app needs to keep kids coming back for more: 24 pages of interactive fun, reading/ narrator options, animated surprises and games. Readers can restock the pantry shelves, tap the menacing vacuum cleaner and see what happens to the family cat, tap the hens and the cow and watch them produce, and much more. But there are a few lumps in this batter. The aforementioned beginning bears little logical connection to the story that follows, the verse is clunky, and imagination runs amok (the idea that using Mum’s credit card over the phone could get Polly what she needs might give adult readers pause).

Still, when whisked together with a lesson in pancake origins and playful narration, this tale of pandemonium turns out not too bad. (iPad storybook app. 4-8)

Silicon Beach Software Silicon Beach Software $1.99 | Aug. 31, 2012 1.0; Aug. 31, 2012

Elaborately crafted pans, zooms and touch-controlled dialogue trick out this tale of the origins of the magic mirror and the evil queen’s enmity.

It’s all the fault of the eighth dwarf, Grimly, who winds up trapped himself in the mirror by his student sorceress Hilda.

The spark of jealousy Hilda feels when handsome prince Erik falls in love with her stepsister Rose Red fans itself into rage against the royal couple’s daughter. All of the 31 story scenes pan both automatically and manually (some up to 360 degrees) for a 3-D effect and can also be magnified by tapping an icon.

The richly dressed figures floating in each scene look over one another’s shoulders with frozen stares and move with awkward twitches and jerks. Tapping them repeatedly, though, calls up changing sets of comments and exclamations, from Grimly’s “This is my most prized possession. Seriously, I can get any answer,” to Hilda’s “Oh no, I need a serious fashion makeover.”

A tap after this last transforms her dress into a gown that looks “seriously” susceptible to a wardrobe malfunction. Other touchactivated effects range from controllable lights and a recurring roaring bear to showers of sparkles.

Good for a few chortles, particularly from fans of cheesier video games. (iPad storybook app. 7-10)

A SMILE FOR ELLIOT

Sarfati, Maya Illus. by Sarfati, Maya Touchoo $3.99 | Sep. 14, 2012 1.0; Sep. 14, 2012

WONDERFUL ABC BOOK

A sweet but bland story about the imaginings of a boy and his koala bear.

Touchoo Creator is a book-app– authoring tool for anyone who aspires to publish a digital book for kids. Much like building a Wordpress blog, authors can upload graphics and sounds, place text, and choose from various audio and interactive options. This particular book is a good example of the interface’s limited scope. The story is about a bear who’s lost his smile, so the little boy who narrates starts prompting his fluffy pal to imagine things that will turn his frown upside down. The story is told against a backdrop of minimalist illustrations and languid interactive elements: Drums beat, trains move and say “choo-choo!,” but no one’s going to write home about any of them. Perhaps the best interactive (and teachable) moments are found on a screen that allows little fingers to change the scenery according to season.

Many do-it-yourself book apps have substandard audio, and this one is no exception. The levels are great, but the young narrator | kirkus.com

TinyMagnet Studio Tiny Magnet $2.99 | Aug. 21, 2012 1.0; Aug. 21, 2012

This very basic ABC book features attractive art but lacks enhancements that take advantage of the tablet technology.

Each screen in this ABC book features one letter, a picture of an animal and an object, and a word label. Touching the image causes the label to toggle back and forth between animal and object. A hippo strums a harp, an octopus juggles oranges, a turtle talks on a telephone and so on. There are no animations, sound effects or music. A narrator voices the letter and both words on the page. The design is clean and harmonious, and the illustrations feature whimsical, agreeable critters set on a |

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variety of background textures, patterns and colors. A pop-up menu on the bottom of the screen offers an easy way to navigate to any letter of the alphabet. There is a quiz section where kids can practice sight-word recognition by choosing the correct word that matches the illustration. But this really doesn’t do much that a good alphabet book doesn’t do as well or far better.

Not really very wonderful after all. (iPad alphabet app.

2-6)

FRANKIE FOR KIDS

Yellow + Blue Yellow + Blue $4.99 | Oct. 2, 2012 1.2; Oct. 22, 2012

Mary Shelley’s classic gets a colorful but clumsy app treatment.

How to make this legendary horror story appealing for young readers? The creators of this app emphasize moody sounds (thunderstorms are abundant) and splashy line art that makes Frankenstein’s monster eerie but unintimidating—indeed, the creature looks a little cartoonish. But problems abound here, starting with the story itself. The default language for the app, created by a Brazilian company, is Portuguese, and the English version reads like a poor translation, full of inelegant phrasing and the occasional ungrammatical tangle. (“My professor would go on saying if mankind is able to name the stars, forge lightning and control the tides, it’s because at some point their.”) The plot is loyal to the original, tracking the doctor and monster’s travels through Europe and to the North Pole, but it’s an artless retelling, thick with plot summary and spasms of melodrama. One wonders why they did not simply abridge Shelley’s original, public-domain text. The obvious opportunities to interact with the app are limited and not especially stimulating: open a letter, unroll a map. The not-so-obvious opportunities border on comical: Readers can move around a specimen jar containing a human kidney, and clicking on Dr. Frankenstein’s head on one page makes him lament, “No, no, no.” On another page, tapping the monster’s head elicits a “bwah-ha-ha!” cackle, replacing any chance of scares with B-movie hokum.

For all its good intentions, terrifyingly mediocre. (iPad storybook app. 10-12)

This Issue’s Contributors # Mark Athitakis • Kim Becnel • Sophie Brookover • Timothy Capehart • Julie Cummins • GraceAnne A. DeCandido • Dave DeChristopher • Lisa Dennis • Laurie Flynn • Omar Gallaga • Judith Gire • Carol Goldman • Melinda Greenblatt • Megan Honig • Kathleen T. Isaacs • Laura Jenkins • Betsy Judkins • Deborah Kaplan • Robin Fogle Kurz • Angela Leeper • Joan Malewitz • Hillias J. Martin • John Edward Peters • Rebecca Rabinowitz • Shana Raphaeli • Nancy Thalia Reynolds • Melissa Riddle Chalos • Erika Rohrbach • Leslie L. Rounds • Ann Marie Sammataro • Mindy Schanback • Dean Schneider • Edward T. Sullivan • Shelley Sutherland • Jennifer Sweeney • Monica Wyatt

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indie 117 BPM Beats, Bashings, and HIV Dementia

These titles earned the Kirkus Star: TULIPANO by Walter De Hoog .................................................. p. 2624

The Invisible Man CreateSpace (456 pp.) $15.80 paperback | Jul. 23, 2012 978-1475201659

THE PIG WAR by Mark Holtzen................................................ p. 2625 MARGINAL MORMONS by Johnny Townsend.......................... p. 2631

TULIPANO A Story of Wartime Italy 1944-45

De Hoog, Walter CreateSpace (226 pp.) $12.75 paperback | $9.75 e-book Aug. 29, 2012 978-1477472880

A gay ol’ time with disco, disease and, most importantly, the Dark Arts.

Ever since Sappho in the ancient days, gay lit has been able to get away with things the straight-laced establishment just could not abide. In the last century, queer writers (the Beats, Eileen Myles, Kate Bornstein) and writers writing queer (Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of Salt, Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex, Michael Chabon) have been at the forefront of an array of literary developments.

This new book fits right in. The title is the tempo of disco diva Laura Branigan’s “Self Control,” an ’80s gay anthem. (You might also remember her 1982 hit “Gloria.”) In this wild, imaginative and possibly allegorical tale, that reference, like many others, doesn’t really matter. Swinging between the ’60s and ’70s, four young men—“in gay denial,” swears the pseudonymous author—live their lives on the town. Clad always in pointy boots and paisley tops, they call themselves “gauchos,” and their interests are purely prurient. A chance meeting with occult powers convinces these droogs that they’re the reincarnation of a particularly brutal “gay basher,” the aptly named Rod, and violence ensues. The Naked Lunch narrative thickens when one of the gauchos, an ex-Scientologist now known as Dark Damien, sets out to carnally prove his theory that Asian males have an extra chromosome that allows them to give birth. Spurred by dementia from his promiscuity-delivered HIV, Damien stakes out an S&M dungeon frequented by Asian men. He enters to find one waiting for him in a sex swing. This isn’t a tale for the faint of heart, but for readers ready to rock, it’s a heady trip indeed.

A beguiling tale that gets the juices flowing.

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“A lush, unsparing narrative that honors history and emotion.” from tulipano

THE W BOOK About People and Their Jobs

the physical body, the mind and the spirit, with goals of spiritual insight and self-transformation. That being said, a tantric practitioner may experience moments of ecstasy that don’t lead to wisdom. Bjonnes delves into the history of yoga and tantra, explains the terms and offers reflections on how to practice them in daily life—how to meditate, what to eat, how to be consciously engaged in life, etc. Each of the brief chapters, most about three pages long, stands on its own as an essay centered on a particular topic, such as spirituality, philosophy, diet, activism, meditation or the mind–body connection. The chapters originally appeared as columns in Elephant Journal, an online journal about yoga and spirituality, and they read like semirelated reflections that anyone could randomly dip into, despite some repetition of concepts. Spiritualists of all levels will find something to appreciate here, but before reading the early chapters on the history and meaning of tantra, anyone unfamiliar with it may want to start with the final section of the book, which focuses on “the spirit of practice.”

An insightful, balanced approach to the frequently misunderstood pursuit of spiritual growth and personal well-being.

Beveridge, Jeanne CreateSpace (276 pp.) $11.95 paperback | Mar. 19, 2012 978-1469941172

A straightforward text designed to help ESL students learn the language and culture associated with many American jobs.

Beveridge, a certified ESL instructor, compiled her first book in response to requests from many English language learners who wanted to know more about the American workforce. She consulted a diverse range of more than 100 people in North America about their lines of work.

She asked each person six simple questions: What their job entails, where they do it, when they work, why they chose it, which part is their favorite and finally, “Who are you?” Each profession is revealed on the opposite page. Beveridge copied each answer exactly as it was given to her, which conveys to students a realistic conversational tone. The book is divided into 17 different job categories including Art, Manufacturing, Medical, Office and Travel. By reading each job description answered in informal English, students not only learn about an assortment of professions, but also improve their conversational vocabulary. Additionally, students will gain a deeper understanding of American culture by learning the many reasons why many people do what they do—a strong desire to help people (firefighter) or wanting to have the summers off for traveling (teacher)—and their favorite parts, such as an early morning ride when the sun comes up (cyclist) or knowing they don’t have to work overtime (secretary). Since they remain consistent from person to person, the questions act as a controlled variable, which is helpful for those learning a new language. The book’s simple layout allows for many opportunities for classroom use, but it would be equally valuable for independent study.

Simple and casually informative.

TULIPANO A Story of Wartime Italy - 1944-45

De Hoog, Walter CreateSpace (226 pp.) $12.75 paperback | $9.75 e-book Aug. 29, 2012 978-1477472880 This meandering but mesmerizing memoir details the political and social turmoil of World War II through the eyes of an intrepid courier for the headquarters of the Italian resistance movement.

De Hoog’s journey begins and ends at Mauthausen, the site of a concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Austria. It was to Mauthausen he was taken on January 8, 1945, “four murderous months before the end of WWII,” in a cattle car barreling through the snow-dressed peaks. Sent there after he and other top resistance leaders were arrested by the Gestapo, he escapes by leaping from the train and finding his way back to Bolzano. He becomes involved in the Italian resistance in 1944, participating in life-or-death missions and raids. De Hoog’s memoir recounts anecdote after anecdote of wartime chaos: Among many other things, he comments on the “abiding personal hatred” the Nazi SS guards displayed for their prisoners, the “Calvary path” of stone steps the prisoners were forced to climb at Mauthausen and the censored correspondence from his sister Caroline about the miseries of German occupation in Amsterdam. De Hoog, who used the code name Martino in honor of his brother, a soldier who perished in the Dutch army, illustrates not only the frights of upheaval, but its small miracles and unexpected blessings. He writes, for instance, of a conservative resistance leader staging a raid to free a member of a more

SACRED BODY, SACRED SPIRIT A Personal Guide to the Wisdom of Yoga and Tantra Bjonnes, Ramesh Innerworld Publications (198 pp.) $16.00 paperback | $7.99 e-book Nov. 1, 2012 978-1881717157

This introduction to the history, practices and wisdom behind tantric yoga aims to show that it’s not all about sex.

Bjonnes’ debut is less a how-to manual than a series of reflections on wisdom gleaned from the practices of yoga and tantra. Dispelling the popular notion that tantra is all about sex, he instead describes it as a form of meditation that involves 2624

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liberal sect. As the volume concludes, it’s revealed that a 1983 trip to Mauthausen prompted the author’s recollection of terror. While large-scale accounts of WWII will provide a more comprehensive overview of its conflicts, De Hoog’s firsthand version teems with humanity not often found in such surveys.

It’s written with the same measures of ethical commitment and intelligence that seem to have helped him outpace his German persecutors.

A lush, unsparing narrative that honors history and emotion.

AN EYE DOCTOR ANSWERS

Driscoll, Richard A. Physician’s Publishing Group (254 pp.) $19.95 paperback | $6.98 e-book Jun. 15, 2012 978-0984847204 An optometrist answers patients’ frequently asked questions regarding eye diseases and conditions.

Driscoll notes in his foreword that he typically ends his eye exams by asking patients, “Do you have any more questions?” Many people forget what they meant to ask when they made an appointment or simply can’t think of anything. This book attempts to address the most common questions patients do ask, or should ask, when visiting an eye doctor. Organized into sections that cover the parts of the eye, from eyelids to retina, it deals with a host of eye ailments ranging from routine nearsightedness to the more serious diabetic retinopathy. Most answers are brief, with extended sections on LASIK and other surgical procedures, giving basic information for the average patient. Occasionally, the book introduces medical terms that most people might not readily understand. The book usually explains such terms later—in some instances, many pages later. The word “amblyopia” appears on page 22 in an answer to “What is Farsightedness?” but the book doesn’t define it until page 166. Consistent cross-referencing within the text would have helped readers.

Some of the pictures don’t work well in this black-and-white format, especially when the text says: “Notice the red area in the center.” Readers can see the color images by downloading the e-book, but not all may be interested in that step. Driscoll’s wife, Diana, contributes an addendum on complications of Ehlers-Danlos syndrome that has helpful information, though the book does not include the question, “What is Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome?” Despite these minor shortcomings, this logically organized and helpfully indexed reference book makes a useful resource for people who have questions about their eyes.

A valuable, authoritative consumer health guide.

THE QUEEN OF WASHINGTON Hamit, Francis Brass Cannon Books (309 pp.) $24.95 paperback | Oct. 6, 2011 978-1595951717

This exhaustively researched historical fiction examines Civil War–era spies and geopolitics.

Hamit’s (Shenandoah Spy, 2008) second novel focuses on the life and career of Mrs. Rose Greenhow, a rich 19th-century widow whose services as a spy may have gone beyond her years of work for the Confederacy—she may have also been in the pay of British and French intelligence. The story provides impressive period atmosphere and painstakingly researched details of Greenhow’s life in the 1850s and ’60s, as she exerts an invisible influence over the Mexican War and then builds a mostly female spy ring for the South. Some consideration is given to her marriage and personal life, though it’s generally overshadowed by the larger business to which she’s dedicated. Hamit steers clear of larger-than-life historical figures in his invention, making better use of famed detective/spy Allan Pinkerton and his agency. This is fitting, as the book maintains a sense of grave seriousness and devotion to truth, which the random appearances of colorful characters would diminish. Even the opening pages include a grim prison photograph of the real Mrs. Greenhow and her young daughter, cementing the truthin-fiction tone. Along with the author’s first novel, the story of Rose Greenhow is meant to be part of a massive “super-novel” that will amount to a broad portrait of the era. The text’s conclusion accounts for the arrangement, but it’s also distracting.

There’s a sense that this is only a chapter taken out of another story, as if some of the super-novel’s energy is held in reserve for other volumes. The skulduggery is scrupulously realistic, yet as a result, it can sometimes lack verve. Poetic license is exercised but always with the greatest economy.

Historical cloak-and-dagger with only a quiet spark.

THE PIG WAR

Holtzen, Mark CreateSpace (146 pp.) $7.99 paperback | $6.99 e-book May 26, 2012 978-1475051360 A boy’s summer with his grumpy grandfather turns into a fun adventure on an island in the Pacific Northwest in this contemporary middle-grade novel.

In his fiction debut, third-grade teacher Holtzen captures the attention of young readers with a tale inspired in part by a historical event: the Pig War, an 1859 boundary dispute between the U.S. and Great Britain. Kell and his younger sister, Grace, must spend their summer with a grandfather they’ve never met on Mobray Island in the San Juan | kirkus.com

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Islands, an archipelago in the state of Washington, after political unrest abroad disrupts their parents’ travel plans. The boy takes one look at his grandfather and his primitive cabin and decides his summer is going to be terrible; but he soon finds an old pistol and a 19th-century diary. While trying to keep an eye on the rambunctious Grace, Kell becomes absorbed in solving the mystery of the artifacts. Life on Mobray Island turns out to be more fun than he first expected, and when he reunites with his parents, he’s sorry to say goodbye to the island and his grandfather. Kell is a likable character, and many young readers will identify with his frustrations about life on the isolated island.

Children may also relate to his early disappointment about having to visit an older relative, which emerges when Kell becomes annoyed with his grandfather and thinks, “All you do is make weird sounds with your mouth.” The mystery of the journal and gun, as well as Grandad’s mysterious “fishing” trips, will keep readers turning the pages to find out what happens next. Readers in the Pacific Northwest will especially appreciate this novel, while a dash of suspense and adventure give it a broader appeal.

Clarity, engaging characters, and a surprise or two make for a delightful tale for young readers.

about the Scriptures’ botanical references, the book will appeal to those interested in botany, archaeology, history and botanical illustration. It would also be a useful addition to the library of anyone interested in the role of plants in folklore.

Beautiful illustrations and fascinating insight into understanding the role of plants in biblical times.

INTO FAIRYLAND A Treasure Chest of Fairy Stories Light, Diane Illus. by O’Brien, Daniele J. CreateSpace (64 pp.) $15.99 paperback | Aug. 14, 2012 978-1478104285

Fairies flit between heaven and Earth invisibly spreading love and all that is good to imaginative children.

The fairies of Irish folklore are often feared for their mischievous, dangerous antics, but in this illustrated poetry book, the Gaelic-speaking fluttery spirits are sweet and playful. You can’t touch them or catch them in a jar, nor can you see them (though dogs and cats can), save for quick glimmers and glints.

Yet their influence is everywhere: Snow is the result of their midnight magic, as are early spring blossoms and most other weather phenomena; common household dust is fairies sprinkling their cheer; and they watch over you when you sleep, turning your teardrops into stars. Children who wish to join in on all the fairy fun—go windsurfing in the sky, attend a musical festival, open a treasure chest—can do so in their dreams. The author explains fairy ways in singsong-y rhyming poems split into four sections, one for each season of the year. Illustrations are whimsical and full of color, but their style and allure varies from page to page. Some drawings—rosy-cheeked children, castles, longlashed flying fairies—were clearly done by hand, but those delicate, beautiful sketches sit beside garish computer graphics that resemble Microsoft Paint doodles. While far from masterly (and with too many exclamation points), the simple, earnest poems should satisfy most pre-k readers. Only one poem, about a fairy queen searching for her king, has a plot and characters, and although those literary features are welcome, they’re also out of place among the other, one-dimensional poems.

Tooth fairy and Tinkerbell fans will enjoy learning more about this breed of magical creature.

PLANT WORLD OF THE BIBLE Jensen, Hans Arne AuthorHouse (198 pp.) $65.93 paperback | $3.99 e-book Aug. 3, 2012 978-1456788353

Biblical botany meets archaeology with lovely visuals.

Agronomist and botanist Jensen (Bibliography on Seed Morphology, 1998, etc.) brings to an English-speaking audience a translation of his 2004 Danish book, Bibelens Planteverden. The 98 entries cover plants that are mentioned in the Bible and have been found in archaeological digs in Israel and the environs, arranged alphabetically by their English names. Each entry includes the botanical name, the current English name and the name as given in the New Revised Standard Version, Anglicized edition of The Holy Bible. Next comes a miniconcordance of biblical references to the plant, a short botanical description and pertinent archaeological and/ or cultural references. Where needed, Jensen discusses translation issues: For example, despite certain translations of Jeremiah 10:5, cucumbers are in fact native to Northern India and their cultivation in Ancient Egypt is not documented. The 20 color images from the Codex Vindobonensis Medicus Craecus I, created from the first to third centuries, benefit from their large, 8.5-by-11 cut size and acid-free paper and are thus particularly interesting because of their date of origin. An additional 111 black-and-white illustrations show botanical details and artifacts from the region that employ botanical elements, such as coins and wall decorations. The book has a detailed, academic approach, including careful annotations for the text and the illustrations, as well as a bibliography and index. Beyond its obvious allure for Bible readers who wish to understand more 2626

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“In the glut of vampire-themed novels now on the market, Lyon’s debut stands out for its skillful integration of authentic, fascinating myth with the political events of the early 1990s.” from kiss of the butterfly

KISS OF THE BUTTERFLY

Lyon, James Amazon Digital Services (333 pp.) $3.99 e-book | Jul. 22, 2012 As Yugoslavia disintegrates, an American bent on investigating Balkan vampire folklore becomes caught up in evils both supernatural and political.

In Yugoslavia on a scholarship to study Balkan ethnography, graduate student Steven Roberts finds his research being directed toward vampires, which have a rich folkloric history in the region. Vampires, he learns, aren’t what Bram Stoker, Anne Rice and Hollywood said they were. For example, the folklore suggests that only newly made vampires are nocturnal, meaning that older ones should be harder to spot—though one of Steven’s professors notes that in 1992 Yugoslavia, it might be hard to tell the vampires from the thugs: “Haven’t you seen all the black jeeps and limousines with darkened windows? If I were a vampire, that would be the ideal way to travel around during daytime.” As Steven delves further into crumbling archives and into an underground labyrinth hiding vampiric secrets, he and his friends get caught up in a perilous confluence of events. Steven must confront his past, his loss of faith and how he might regain it, and his attraction to a mysterious, dangerous woman. He learns the truth about his professor Slatina, who in turn faces a crucial decision that will affect not just vampires but all of the Balkans. In the glut of vampire-themed novels now on the market, Lyon’s debut stands out for its skillful integration of authentic, fascinating myth with the political events of the early 1990s. Linking the horror of the supernatural with the horror of human violence is an inspired idea, and Lyon executes it perfectly. He evidently knows the area, its history and its languages, giving the reader vivid details not just of longago history but of the 1990s Balkans: socialist-chic shabbiness, ever-present cigarette smoke, the way every Serb that Steven meets has a cousin in Chicago, and the corrupt Milosevic government. “Slobo keeps prices low so people won’t complain,” a character nicknamed Bear says. “It’s okay if we don’t have gas, just so the gas we don’t have is cheap.” Steven can be irritatingly slow on the uptake, and the ending is less satisfying than it could be, since Lyon is apparently leaving room for sequels. Still, it’s a highly promising start with an engaging cast of characters.

No capes, no glitter: a vampire novel for readers who value sturdy mythology and a sophisticated understanding of history, along with warmblooded, human connections.

EXOPHOBE

Mellott, D. Kenton Self (434 pp.)

A zippy sci-fi adventure that keeps both the narrator and the reader on their toes.

Usually on a Friday night, blogger Enoch Maarduk would be out with his buddies, drinking beer and trying his luck with the ladies. But on the one night he decides to stay home, his life changes forever: A representative—Phoebe, who happens to be beautiful—from a shadowy organization called PHANTASM shows up at Enoch’s door with an offer and a mission. PHANTASM claims that Enoch’s theoretical, unproven work on electromagnetic energy is far from fantastical; in fact, it presents real potential for—and danger to—the future of mankind. As Enoch and Phoebe embark upon an investigation into a colleague’s mysterious death, they discover a global network of electromagnetic beings that can manipulate another creature’s volition as a means of achieving their own nefarious ends. As Enoch and Phoebe dig deeper, they uncover a plot that brings the revelation unsettlingly close to home—humans may be the next target. Mellott blends high-tech sci-fi with rapid-fire dialogue, making for an appropriately high-energy reading experience. Told from Enoch’s point of view, the narrative balances the action with its protagonist’s inner thoughts and witty asides. Occasionally, Enoch is a bit too clever for his own good, posturing for the reader and for Phoebe, but he’s just as often cut down to size by his own folly and boyish arrogance via sharp one-liners delivered by the flinty Phoebe. Readers will delight in Mellott’s flights of imagination as well as in his feel for emotional slapstick.

Steeped in cutting-edge neuroscience, literary arcane and comic-book culture, this action-packed tale will satisfy readers looking for entertainment with substance.

A COLORFUL JOURNEY THROUGH THE LAND OF TALKING LETTERS

Nyssen, Mary Jo--Ed. Illus. by Motz, Mike MOM-BA BOOKS, LLC (38 pp.) $11.99 paperback | Nov. 4, 2010 978-0615386430 This unique picture book features a talking, multicolored alphabet teaches basic sounds, from Andy and his apples to Zelda the zebra.

English has many quirks, but Nyssen’s sunny ABC book keeps things simple by addressing only single letters. Except for the co-dependent “qu,” other letter pairings—such as “ay” and “ea” and “ch”—have not been included. With characters such as Andy, April, Alma, Grandpa Goose and George the giraffe, the differences in the oft-changing pronunciation of some letters | kirkus.com

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“A terrific resource for March Madness fun.” from a method to madness

becomes obvious. For example, through “Yolanda the yellow yak,” “Lynn” and her “cymbals” and “Kyle’s pig sty,” Nyssen clearly explains the letter “y” and its mysterious ability to make three sounds and be both a consonant and a vowel. Beginning in simple, sporadic rhyme, Nyssen opts for an alliterative and more effective free verse for most of the book. The real strength is her novel color scheme for letters that shows, for example, the short “a” in green letters, the long “a” in red and its “third sound” in brown. The biggest problem, however, is the similarity of colors: the red signifying the long “a” in “angel” looks too much like the brown “a” in “all,” which may cause confusion. Similarly, Nyssen’s “cuddly calico cat, Cleo” has a pink “c” that resembles the orange used for the soft “Cynthia” enjoying “cereal, cinnamon and cider.” Additionally, one could argue that “x” has more than one sound than the “ ‘ks’ as in fox.” Nyssen also fails to mention the powerful role of some letters to remain silent and how some, like the split vowel “e,” can make the “a” in “lemonade” long and the “a” in “obstinate” a short “i.” Regardless, Motz’s inventive illustrations radiate charm and imagination, greatly helping to distinguish Nyssen’s book from other early reader alphabets.

An excellent study guide with clever illustrations to assist with the basics.

Hackberry Campbell had “two burros—one carried grub, the other, whiskey. Sidekicks said he often ran out of the first but never the latter.” For Reynolds, the Lost Adams legend “helps define the history of the deepest corner of the great Southwest,” and he skillfully follows the historical threads, including the Apache wars that coincided with the expeditions of Brewer and Adams. The Apaches, he says, attacked the miners not for their gold, but for their supplies, particularly guns. Reynolds, a native of the Mogollon Breaks, has been researching the diggings for 60 years. While he hasn’t found the mother lode from which the placer deposits came, he’s struck gold with his tale of “blood and guts, hope and hardship, dust and disappointment.”

With a memorable cast of characters and telling detail, the author explores the “greatest lost-mine tradition of North American history.”

A METHOD TO THE MADNESS: 2013 A Guide to March Madness Basketball Sams, Erik CreateSpace (250 pp.) $15.99 paperback | $9.99 e-book Jul. 27, 2012 978-1478129769

DIE RICH HERE The Lost Addams Diggings

A joyous outpouring of numbers aimed to soothe the jangled nerves of those caught up in the great, late-winter college basketball tournament.

Sams has marshaled a dizzying array of statistics in a variety of original concatenations to help navigate March Madness—the annual college basketball championship series. The “madness” is a result of the sheer number of teams at play that are slowly winnowed down throughout the month. Sams wants to make some sense of the process, perhaps glean a theme or pattern; if nothing else, he will have tidy histories of team performance that may reveal tendencies. This book is a very straightforward item, mostly bare of narrative (all of which is contained in its brief, explicatory introduction). Its purpose is to present team statistics since 1985 (the first year with a field of 64 teams), which he has arranged alphabetically. For each winning team of the 64 invited to the tournament, Sams provides scads of information, including records for each round of play, team success (or failure) depending on how highly they were ranked going into the tournament and how well teams did against opponents from different regions throughout the country. Even readers without a jones for statistical analysis can get caught up in the almost hallucinatory experience of trying to make something of all the figures. And thanks to the barebones presentation, each team—from the Air Force Academy to Xavier, from big guns to derringers—exerts its own fascination. Kentucky, Duke, Kansas and the like have pages of material, while Long Island, Long Beach and Liberty pass quietly under the radar.

A terrific resource for March Madness fun.

Reynolds, Ralph Trafford (152 pp.) $20.99 | paper $10.99 | $3.99 e-book 978-1466952249 978-1466952256 paperback Reynolds’ account of a lost-mine legend of the Old West and the gold fever it has sparked.

The Old West is a mother lode of colorful nonfiction, truth often obscured by layers of myth. Reynolds taps a particularly rich vein of lore in his riveting recap of “what has become the greatest, most vexing, and persistent lostmine tradition of North American history.” The Lost Adams Diggings are named for John R. Adams, who, in 1864, escorted by “a half-breed Mexican-Indian with a crumpled ear,” led an expedition of 21 miners that apparently found nuggets of placer gold somewhere in the remote Mogollon Breaks straddling the border of New Mexico and Arizona. Apache raiders slaughtered 19 of the miners, leaving only Adams and one other man to tell the tale. According to Reynolds, another prospector, John Brewer, was actually the first to find the gold deposit three years earlier. His party, guided by the same “half-breed,” also fell afoul of the Apaches. In the 1880s, Reynolds says, he returned to the diggings and mined out what was left, making himself a tidy fortune. But ever since, a parade of gold seekers has been gripped by “Adams fever”; many have met an untimely end in the wilderness. Reynolds memorably chronicles this cast of characters with an eye for detail. The quest of Capt. Mike Cooney ended in November 1915, “his tongue as stiff as a piece of jerky.”

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“An intense work of history that sharply outlines a period of violent injustice in America’s history.” from our southern home

TALES OF CLAY

OUR SOUTHERN HOME Scottsboro to Montgomery to Birmingham: The Transformation of the South in the Twentieth Century

Shen, James CreateSpace (228 pp.) $15.00 paperback | Jul. 16, 2012 978-1460991824 Two murders, without a mystery, punctuate this centuries-long story of rare antiques, a great sweep of Chinese history and a conclusion like a piece of seamless jade.

Shen’s debut novel is in two parts: Part 1, in the present day, focuses on Sir John Wu, a titan of commerce and industry who lives in Hong Kong. He and his wife are enjoying a stroll in New York City when Wu sees two huge matching vases in the second-story window of Puccini Antiques. He must have them—in front of his Hong Kong villa, they’ll be the envy of the neighborhood. But to get them, he must deal with Angelo Puccini. Despite Wu’s comically short stature, he’s the epitome of success and power. Puccini, on the other hand, is a giant of a man but a complete, feckless failure in life. In a rage at being rudely treated, Wu smashes several antiques that come to hand; returning the rage, Puccini kills Wu and his wife and stuffs their dismembered bodies into the two large vases, later committing suicide. There are a few awkward spots in this section, particularly with the characterization of Angelo: He’s often portrayed as a comic buffoon, so his murderous rage comes as perhaps too much of a surprise.

Nick, a young shop clerk, has many pages devoted to his personal misadventures, but—unlike his fellow clerk, Jim Hawkins, who receives a well-plotted reappearance later in the novel—he disappears from the text. Shen may need to rein in a few of the plot threads, although his storytelling enthusiasm serves him well in Part 2, when the story slips back several centuries to the time when the works of art from the shop, including the two huge vases, were made. The objets d’art travel down through the centuries: For example, the huge vases were made as offerings to a Buddhist temple in the 13th century and were then owned by one illustrious family or another as the families’ fortunes waxed and waned. Finally, the artworks find their way to Marcus Puccini, Angelo’s late father, a true lover of antiquities. Antiques, the narrator eloquently ruminates, are more than well-wrought trinkets: “[I]f you hold an antique object in your hands long enough, you may begin to feel as though you were fumbling with your fingers back through the dark corridors of years.” Families and dynasties emerge and fade away in China’s long, turbulent history, but the objets d’art seem to remember.

A well-written, engaging tale through time.

Taylor Jr., Waights McCaa Books (430 pp.) $19.95 paperback | $9.99 e-book Oct. 7, 2011 978-0983889205

Taylor combines the story of his own family’s history with the infamous trials of the Scottsboro Boys and the burgeoning activism of Rosa Parks in the racially segregated and tumultuous South.

In 1931, nine young black men were accused of gang raping two white women on a freight train traveling from Chattanooga to Memphis, Tenn. Taylor (Literary Ramblings, 2010) presents a richly detailed account of the events that led to the arrest and subsequent trials of those men, who later became known as the Scottsboro Boys. In addition to highlighting issues of Constitutional rights, human rights and racial prejudice, the case illuminated the tensions between North and South, still evident six decades after the Civil War. Publicity of the case laid bare the racial attitudes of the post-slavery era, which Taylor recounts with remarkable finesse. He’s critical without being harshly judgmental, and he takes care to discuss the rich soil where the roots of prejudice took hold and flourished. Taylor is also profoundly respectful as he explains his refusal to use the N-word, even though “historical purists, grammarians and educators may fault me.” As the seemingly endless series of trials and appeals drags on, Taylor also follows the life of Rosa Parks and his own father, Waights Taylor Sr., who Taylor discovers had a brief connection to the case. Noting that Clarence Norris (one of the Scottsboro Boys), Rosa McCauley Parks, and Waights Taylor Sr. were eighteen years old on the day the Scottsboro events began, Taylor uses their life stores as the book’s unifying arc to tie together the historical events described in the book. It’s an engrossing tale that marries fine attention to detail with a creative, engaging writing style. It’s no mere retelling of history, as Taylor uses meticulous research to breathe vibrant life into the major players.

An intense work of history that sharply outlines a period of violent injustice in America’s history.

TEMPTATION

Thrasher, Travis David C. Cook (432 pp.) $9.99 paperback | $7.69 e-book Apr. 1, 2012 978-1434764171 In the third volume of the Solitary Tales, the face of evil shows itself.

The noose is tightening on beleaguered teen Chris Buckley. Previously, he relocated from Chicago to his mother Tara’s hometown of Solitary, N.C.—a major mistake and part of | kirkus.com

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k i r ku s q & a w i t h w i l l i a m r e wa k THE RIGHT TAXI

Rewak, William J. CreateSpace (116 pp.)

June 21, 2012 $11.00 paperback $10.00 e-book 978-1475187489

The mention of “religious poetry” might conjure somber sermons, staid devotions, and in darker turns, a few dashes of some good old-fashioned fire and brimstone. But for William Rewak, a Jesuit priest, godly verse isn’t nearly as dramatic, direct or damning.

In The Right Taxi, Rewak’s debut collection of poems, religion has a much more practical, personal hold. The playful verse refers to martini-guzzling rhinos, a pasta-ordering egret and a God who may or may not drive a taxicab. In short, it’s the type of “religious poetry” you might expect from a priest who also has a Ph.D. in literature and has served as a university president, chancellor and poetry professor.

We caught up with Rewak, currently the chancellor of Santa Clara University, to discuss religion’s place in the magical and mundane, his relationship with both animals and death, and the inspiration for the subtle imagery that drives The Right Taxi.

Q: In the book’s opening poem, you mention “the nagging imp” that implores you to write. When did you start hearing it, and what’s kept you from abandoning it?

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A: Well, to some extent, that imp has been with me all my life, in some form or another. I remember my sister and I, in our early teens, creating a loose-leaf book about Roman gladiators: I did the writing, she did the pictures. But poetry developed into an academic interest, actually from my high school reading of Shakespeare, and I taught it for many years. However, I didn’t start writing it until I was 40. Definitely a late bloomer in that regard. I could never give it up now, though there’s always the niggling fear, when I sit down at a blank computer screen, that it may give me up. When you find something you love, something that gives you pleasure and something that wells up inside without your calling for it, you cannot walk away from it.

Q: In the book’s description, you note that “these poems find their meaning, ultimately, in a God...,” yet the poems themselves don’t mention God outright as often as one might expect. Was it a conscious decision to keep the theme indirect?

A: It was. I wanted the reader to approach the poems without any preconceptions, to be caught up in the argument, or the personality, or the imagery, and then to be led to an unexpected consideration—the possibility, or even the certainty, that a transcendental reality suffuses our lives. If it comes unexpectedly, as a surprise, it makes a greater impact. However, I do write poems more obviously about God, about Jesus, about the events in the Bible, and some of them will appear in a second volume. My fellow Jesuit poets, Jim Torrens and Thomas Flowers, write beautiful religious poetry that is respectful, tough and heartwrenching, and I would like to follow their example.

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I’m jealous, too, of how Mary Karr and Franz Wright handle the realization of God in their lives. No pious sentimentality there! They remind me of Hopkins and John Donne.

Q: These poems mention boredom several times and often use imagery of waiting for—or between—events. Do you see boredom and routine as having a significant effect on your life or, in turn, your poetry?

A: It’s interesting you point that out. I think I would say there is a difference between waiting for something and being bored. Waiting is a condition of human life: We wait to grow up, we wait to see whom we’ll marry; I spent years waiting (and studying) to be ordained a priest. We wait, in a real sense, for death. For those who believe, we wait through what St. Paul calls the “groaning of creation” to arrive at a full birth of joy. But if we don’t understand that such waiting is a part of who we are, then we can become bored; we give in to the humdrum and routine instead of using the wait time to good advantage. It may be a trivial example, but I always carry a book with me when I go to the doctor’s office. Or the DMV. Or the barber’s. Whatever. And once in a while, I sit and scribble a poem while I’m waiting.

Q: What were some other inspirations for the books’ subject matter? Were there poets who inspired the style?

A: Well, to some it may seem ghoulish, but death has always been for me both a personal and literary interest. And I’m sure I’m not alone in this; we all have to confront it sooner or later, and it’s best to confront it before it arrives, unexpectedly, on our doorstep. I did my doctoral dissertation on the idea of death in James Agee’s work, and from there, I moved on to the great Whitman elegy on Lincoln, his “Lilacs” poem. Donne’s holy sonnets, Emily Dickinson’s frightening “Because I could not stop for death,” Dana Gioia’s wonderful “Planting a Sequoia.” So it’s an important part of the book: Poems on the death of my father and mother are there. “The Day” is very explicit, as is “The Practice.” Poets who have inspired my style? I’ve liked Denise Levertov’s ideas about the importance of the line and letting the poem grow organically. I’ve shamelessly copied A.R. Ammons’ later couplet structure for many of the poems. I try to make them flow easily and seamlessly from line to line, like John Donne’s “At the round earth’s imagined corners” sonnet or Mary Oliver’s delightful “Making the House Ready for the Lord.”

– By Robert Bieselin

the reason Tara self-medicates with alcohol. Angry and grieving at the sacrificial death of his friend Jocelyn, Chris stabbed the complicit Pastor Marsh in the chest; yet the not-so-right reverend lives on, blissfully delivering his perverted Sunday sermons.

In this volume, Chris’s former employer Iris remains missing since her inn, the Crag’s Head, burned to the ground, and fellow student Oli dies from drowning, although Chris fears he was murdered for defecting from the camp of bully Gus Staunch. While attending summer school at Harrington High, Chris befriends an Atlanta transplant, lovely senior Lily, who helps him forget sweet Kelsey Page from his art class. Lily is confident, poised and definitely interested. Although he wants to be a typical teen hanging out with his gorgeous girlfriend, compassionate, conflicted Chris is disturbed by nightmarish visions of people in extreme distress, sometimes covered in blood. The dynamics of his relationship with his tippling mother aren’t making anything better—he’s more or less the parent now—yet he refuses to ask for help from his born-again-Christian dad. In this, the third of four books in the series (the final volume, Hurt, is due for release in 2013), the pacing and plotting have significantly intensified. Tension ratchets up, suggesting that a major showdown of biblical proportions is on the horizon. Several key revelations, including the truth of Chris’s heritage, begin to partially explain the strange brew that is Solitary, and some resolution is reached by novel’s end, although many unanswered questions remain. As in preceding books, Thrasher plumbs multiple layers of teenage Chris’ life: a romantic and potentially sexual relationship with Lily; the claustrophobic creepiness of his adopted hometown and the ongoing mystery of its absentee residents; patriarch Ichor Staunch, whose word is God to the locals; peculiar, pixilated Aunt Alice; and Chris’s own destiny, which intertwines with that of Solitary. At the book’s core is Chris’ escalating moral crisis (the titular “temptation”), well-illustrated by a pricey, enticing gift from the very man he most deeply distrusts. So far, the three volumes have sustained an impressive level of suspense and artfulness; the last chapter should be no different.

An engrossing, well-plotted third volume that whets the appetite for the series’ finale.

MARGINAL MORMONS

Townsend, Johnny Booklocker.com, Inc. (246 pp.) $15.95 paperback | $2.99 e-book Jul. 31, 2012 978-1621417378 An irreverent, honest look at life outside the mainstream Mormon Church.

Townsend’s (Mormon Bullies, 2012, etc.) timely book presents a number of touching vignettes focused on quirky characters struggling to reconcile their own beliefs with the rigid doctrines of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He focuses much of his attention on the struggle between homosexuality and acceptance within the faith, providing a number of stories focused on gay men who have fallen away from the

church. These men have been excommunicated because of their lifestyle, yet they find themselves unable to completely cut ties and walk away from the belief system in which they’d spent years being indoctrinated. Other characters are also struggling with alternate life choices that have placed them outside the mainstream faith. One couple struggles with the decision to remain childless; a devout man questions his own relevance within the church after being overlooked for a higher calling; a depressing LDS singles cruise leads a desperate man to realize he may be too far outside the norm to truly fit into the Mormon community.

Townsend touches on family, addiction, sex and love, concepts that should resonate with all readers. Throughout his musings on sin and forgiveness, Townsend beautifully demonstrates his characters’ internal, perhaps irreconcilable struggles. As appropriate for a compilation of stories that present real characters in gritty reality, nothing is black and white. Townsend condemns facets of the religion yet manages to present conflicted viewpoints with balance. Rather than anger and disdain, he offers an honest portrayal of people searching for meaning and community in their lives, regardless of their life choices or secrets.

A perfect read for the election season, though its appeal will endure.

MARSHALL THE MIRACLE DOG Willenbrock, Cynthia Illus. by Heimbaugh, Lauren The Marshall Movement (40 pp.) $16.95 978-0615666259

Willenbrock’s heartwarming debut picture book is the autobiographical story of how she came to share her home with a special shelter dog.

Told from the perspective of Marshall, Willenbrock’s dog, this tale tells of his unpleasant life in the home of a dog hoarder, where food for the dogs was so scarce that they fought each other at mealtime. In one of these fights, Marshall’s front leg was broken and his face was badly bitten. When animal rescuers finally found out about the animal hoarder and took the dogs away, Marshall was in such sorry shape that they didn’t know if he would make it. He ended up losing his damaged front leg and his face remained badly scarred, yet he describes the compassion of the humane society workers who helped him learn how to walk and run on three legs. He meets his new “mom” (owner) and adjusts to a life of freedom with her and her other dog, Mooshy. Though life is good, Marshall is insecure and nervous about how other dogs and people will react to the fact that he has only three legs and a big scar on his face, but he’s pleasantly surprised by the kindness of others. Heimbaugh’s realistic colored-pencil illustrations help bring Marshall’s story to life. Due to wordiness and the use of some bigger words—celebrity, socialize, limitations—this book will most likely work better as a read-aloud with school-age children. It also lends itself to discussions about the humane treatment of animals and discussions about bullying.

An enjoyable picture book that addresses important issues in a kid-friendly way without being preachy. | kirkus.com

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