Best Fiction & Children's Books of 2012

KIRKUS

BEST FICTION & CHILDREN’S BOOKS OF

2012

REVIEWS SPECIAL ISSUE

THIS ISSUE: 100 BEST FICTION & CHILDREN’S BOOKS

Also In This Issue

Gillian Flynn

The Best-selling Crime Writer on Gone Girl, Toxic Marriages and Film Adaptations p. 24

The Top 25 Fiction Books of 2012 p. 43 The Top 25 Children’s Books of 2012 p. 82 Utopias, Dystopias and Arcadia: A Conversation with Lauren Groff p. 12

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REVIEWS................................................................ p. 3 Q&A WITH lauren groff................................ p. 12 Q&A WITH gillian flynn................................ p. 24 Top 25 Fiction Books...................................... p. 43

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Q&A with R.J. Palacio.................................... p. 62 Top 25 Children’s books............................... p. 82

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This Issue’s Contributors

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Mark Athitakis • Gerald Bartell • Kelli Daley • David Delman • Kathleen Devereaux • Bobbi Dumas • Lisa Elliott • Peter Franck • Michael Griffith • Paul Lamey • Elsbeth Lindner • Don McLeese • Gregory McNamee • Carole Moore • Clayton Moore • Liza Nelson • John Noffsinger • Gary Presley • Lloyd Sachs • Bob Sanchez • Elaine Sioufi • Wendy Smith • Margot E. Spangenberg • Andria Spencer

fiction The 100 books on this year’s fiction list encompass a range of categories. Debuts, story collections, thrillers, mysteries, translations, science fiction, fantasy, romance, historical fiction-there’s something for every taste.

Among the highlights of 2012: Ben Fountain’s superb first novel Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (read this book, tell your friends!); French author Philippe Claudel’s The Investigation, a moody (and funny) tale for Kafka fans; and master artist Chris Ware’s Building Stories, a gorgeous book that you’ll piece together like a detective. We hope you enjoy them all.

—Elaine Szewczyk

BILLY LYNN’S LONG HALFTIME WALK

Fountain, Ben Ecco/HarperCollins (320 pp.) $25.99 May 1, 2012 978-0-06-088559-5

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AMERICAN DERVISH

Akhtar, Ayad Little, Brown (368 pp.) $24.99 | Jan. 9, 2012 978-0-316-18331-4

Actor/playwright/filmmaker Akhtar makes a compelling debut with a family drama centered on questions of religious and ethnic identity.

In 1980s Milwaukee, 10-year-old Hayat Shah lives in a troubled Pakistani-American household. Father, a determinedly secular neurologist, has no use for the ostentatiously devout local Muslim community; his best friend is a Jewish colleague, Nathan, and he cheats on his wife with white women, a fact Hayat’s angry mother is all too willing to share with her son.

The arrival of Mina, Mother’s best friend from home who has been divorced by her husband for having “a fast mouth,” brings added tension. Mina, a committed but nondogmatic Muslim, introduces Hayat to the beauties of the Quran and encourages him to become a hafiz, someone who knows the holy book by heart. But Hayat’s feelings for his “auntie” have sexual undercurrents that disturb them both, and his jealousy when Mina and Nathan fall in love leads him to a terrible act of betrayal that continues to haunt him as a college student in 1990. Akhtar, himself a first-generation Pakistani-American from Milwaukee, perfectly balances a moving exploration of the understanding and serenity Islam imparts to an unhappy preteen with an unsparing portrait of fundamentalist bigotry and cruelty, especially toward intelligent women like Mina.

His well-written, strongly plotted narrative is essentially a conventional tale of family conflict and adolescent angst, strikingly individualized by its Muslim fabric. Hayat’s father is in many ways the most complex and intriguing character, but Mina and Nathan achieve a tragic nobility that goes beyond their plot function as instruments of the boy’s moral awakening. Though the story occasionally dips into overdetermined melodrama, its warm tone and traditional but heartfelt coming-of-age lesson will appeal to a broad readership.

Engaging and accessible, thoughtful without being daunting: This may be the novel that brings MuslimAmerican fiction into the commercial mainstream.

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“Brutal, irreverent and very funny.” from hope: a tragedy

BLASPHEMY New and Selected Stories

Whether recent or from his earliest period, these pieces show Alexie at his best: as an interpreter and observer, always funny if sometimes angry, and someone, as a cop says of one of his characters, who doesn’t “fit the profile of the neighborhood.”

Alexie, Sherman Grove (480 pp.) $27.00 | Oct. 2, 2012 978-0-8021-2039-7

HOPE: A TRAGEDY

Sterling collection of short stories by Alexie (Ten Little Indians, 2003, etc.), a

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master of the form.

The reader can take his or her pick of points where the blasphemy of Alexie’s title occurs in this multifaceted assemblage, for there are several solid candidates. One falls about two-thirds of the way in, when a hard-boiled newspaper editor chews out a young Indian writer who might be Alexie’s semblable. By that young man’s count, the editor had used the word “Jesus” thrice in 15 seconds: “I wasn’t a Christian and didn’t know much about the definition of blasphemy,” Alexie writes, “but it seemed like he’d committed some kind of sin.” In Alexie’s stories, someone is always committing some kind of sin, and often not particularly wittingly. One character, a bad drinker in need of help to bail out some prized pawned regalia, makes about as many errors as it’s possible to make while still remaining a fundamentally decent person; another laments that once you start looking at your loved one as though he or she is a criminal, then the love is out the door. “It’s logical,” notes Alexie, matter-of-factly. Most of Alexie’s characters in these stories—half selected and half new—are Indians, and then most of them Spokanes and other Indians of the Northwest; but within that broad categorization are endless variations and endless possibilities for misinterpretation, as when a Spokane encounters three mysterious Aleuts who sing him all the songs they’re allowed to: “All the others are just for our people,” which is to say, other Aleuts. Small wonder that when they vanish, no one knows where, why, or how. But ethnicity is not as central in some of Alexie’s stories as in others; in one of the most affecting, the misunderstandings and attendant tragedies occur between humans and donkeys. The darkness of that tale is profound, even if it allows Alexie the opportunity to bring in his beloved basketball. Longtime readers will find the collection full of familiar themes and characters, but the newer pieces are full of surprises.

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Auslander, Shalom Riverhead (304 pp.) $26.95 | Jan. 12, 2012 978-1-59448-838-2 A family man suffers from money woes, a judgmental spouse and a hectoring mother. But things don’t get really funny until he discovers Anne Frank living in his attic.

Auslander’s debut novel is a scalding, uproarious satire that rejects the idea that the Holocaust can’t be mined for comedy—he just knows that a book has to be very good to pull it off. The story’s hero is Solomon Kugel, an eco-friendly–goods salesman who’s moved his wife and toddler son to a rural Northeast town for some peace and quiet. No such luck: An arsonist is at large, the tenant they’ve taken on to help make ends meet won’t stop complaining, and Kugel’s mother, supposedly at death’s door with a terminal illness, isn’t going anywhere.

Indeed, she eagerly pursues her beloved hobby of imagining herself a Holocaust victim, slipping images of the death camps alongside family photos in scrapbooks. Investigating a tapping sound he hears in the ducts, Solomon discovers an elderly, sickly, foulmouthed Anne Frank living in his attic, working on a sequel to her famous diary. The metaphor is punishingly obvious: The Holocaust is an unshakable, guilt-inducing fixture in the life of any self-aware Jew, and living with its legacy can be a burden. What’s remarkable is how far Auslander (Beware of God, 2005, etc.) is willing to push the metaphor and how much pathos he gets from the comedy. Lampshades, grim historical photographs and Alan Dershowitz are all the stuff of laughout-loud lines, and Solomon’s therapist delivers statements that turn received wisdom on its head— Utopia is dystopia, hope is tragic. Auslander’s pithy, fast-moving prose emphasizes the comedy, but no attentive reader will misunderstand that he’s respectful of the Holocaust’s tragedy, only struggling to figure out how to live in its shadow.

Brutal, irreverent and very funny. An honest-to-goodness heir to Portnoy’s Complaint.

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THE UNDERTOW

Baker, Jo Knopf (352 pp.) $25.95 | May 15, 2012 978-0-307-95709-2

The architecture of a family, constructed over decades, through relationships, wars and secrets, is assembled with fine detail and insight in an exceptional 20th-century saga.

Long, intricate but never dull, English novelist Baker’s U.S. debut is a four-generational span of extraordinary history and ordinary lives, eloquent about the unshared interior worlds of individuals even when connected by the closest of bonds. Starting in London in 1914, it introduces young sweethearts William and Amelia Hastings, married just as World War I begins. Amelia, pregnant with Billy, will always stay faithful to William’s memory, tending the album of postcards he sent her, and when shipmate George Sully—a malevolent, recurrent, familycurse character—threatens, Amelia and Billy see him off together.

Billy has a talent for cycling, but his prospects, as his own son’s will be, are clouded by issues of money and class, and then World War II intervenes. Billy survives to marry Ruby, a stylish Jew who also encounters George Sully but never tells her husband. The couple’s first child is Will, partly disabled by Perthes disease, whom Billy struggles to love. Clever Will achieves academic success at Oxford but marries unhappily. It’s with his artistic daughter Billie that the book reaches its understated yet moving conclusion.

Immediate, poignant and rarely predictable, this searchingly observant work captures a huge terrain of personal aspiration against a shifting historical and social background. Impressive.

KINGDOM COME

Ballard, J.G. Liveright/Norton (304 pp.) $24.95 | Mar. 5, 2012 978-0-393-08178-7 Ballard (1930–2009) creates a world reminiscent of A Clockwork Orange and V for Vendetta in this novel of suburban fascism.

At the heart of the narrative is the Brooklands Metro-Centre Mall, a monstrosity that feeds excess and consumerism. In a recent incident, not atypical of the violence that pervades this vision of modern British life, a man has been shot and killed at the mall. Held for his murder is Duncan Christie, a mental patient who was on day release when the incident occurred. This seems to be a cut-and-dried case, even to Richard Pearson, narrator and son of the victim, but a few anomalies crop up. For example, three witnesses emerge who claim that Christie was at one of the entrances to the mall at the time of the shooting…and these witnesses just happen to be Christie’s physician, his psychiatrist and one of his former teachers. Pearson is not |

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wrong in assuming this to be overly coincidental. In addition to the loss of his father, Pearson has other problems, for he has recently lost his job, pushed out of his position in an ad agency by his own wife. Pearson watches with some amazement the rise of quasi-fascist elements in this quasi-suburban setting that’s starting to create its own reality, for “leafy Surrey” is no longer a suburb of London, but rather a suburb of Heathrow. Troops dressed in St. George’s shirts march in the streets, encouraging hooliganism and attacks against immigrant businesses; riots break out in sports arenas; and Pearson finds out his father might have had sympathies with the brown-shirted St. George’s movement.

Ballard writes brilliantly about the nightmarish underside of modern life, and this novel makes us poignantly aware of the loss of his voice.

THE HYDROGEN SONATA

Banks, Iain M. Orbit/Little, Brown (496 pp.) $25.99 | Oct. 9, 2012 978-0-3162-1237-3 Addition to Banks’ wonderful spaceopera series (without the middle initial, he also writes impressive mainstream novels) about the far-future galactic Culture (Surface Detail, 2010, etc.), a liberalanarchic, multispecies civilization guided and sustained, more or less invisibly, by Minds, artificial intelligences that take such physical forms as spaceships and habitats.

Vastly more intelligent than humans, millions of times faster and mostly benevolent, Minds are truly godlike entities. (Asked “Is this what gods would actually be like?” Banks replied: “If we’re lucky.”) Now, the Gzilt civilization, an almost perversely peaceful military society whose precepts arise from the Book of Truth, an ancient tome containing technological and intellectual predictions nearly all of which have proved correct, are preparing to Sublime, or vanish, into a set of higher dimensions where existence is thought to be almost infinitely rich and complex. As the Gzilt make their preparations, several rather primitive scavenger species gather nearby (one ship comes into orbit, as Banks puts it, with the “warpengine equivalent of loud clanks and clouds of black smoke”), ready to grab whatever goodies the Gzilt leave behind. But then, a sudden, devastating attack destroys the Gzilt Regimental High Command. The reason seems to involve a shattering secret about the Book of Truth and the establishment of the Culture 10,000 years ago. One of the few survivors, reserve Lt. Cmdr. Vyr Cossont, a bewildered four-armed musician with, self-confessedly, no military skills, receives orders to locate and question Ngaroe QiRia, possibly the Culture’s oldest living person and the only one who might have some idea why the Book of Truth is so important and what really happened 10 millennia ago. Problem is, even assisted by Berdle, a powerful Mind avatar, and an erratic battle android who’s convinced everything’s merely a simulation, can she survive long best fiction and best children ’s books of 2012

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“Gripping, perfectly balanced and highly recommended.” from range of ghosts

enough to complete her mission? Scotland-resident Banks’ Culture yarns, the science-fiction equivalent of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels, brim with wit and wisdom, providing incomparable entertainment, with fascinating and highly original characters, challenging ideas and extrapolations, and dazzling action seamlessly embedded in a satirical-comedy matrix.

Sheer delight.

RANGE OF GHOSTS

Bear, Elizabeth Tor (336 pp.) $25.99 | Mar. 27, 2012 978-0-7653-2754-3

Beginning of a new historical-fantasy trilogy, set in the same Mongol Khanate– style universe as the short novel Bone and Jewel Creatures (2010).

Along the Celadon Highway, the empire of the Great Khagan is embroiled in civil war. A grandson, Temur, supported his defeated elder brother in terrible battles against his usurping uncle Qori Buqa.

In the country of the Eternal Sky, a moon sails in the heavens for each of Mongke Khagan’s sons and grandsons. Once there were over a hundred, now less than a third remain, Temur’s Iron Moon among them. Though badly wounded, Temur survives, attaches himself to one of the wandering clans of the steppes and takes Edene as his woman. Meanwhile Qori Buqa allies himself with al-Sepehr, an ambitious renegade blood-sorcerer cultist of the Uthman Caliphate. Al-Sepehr raises an army of ghosts to kill Temur, but fails; instead the sorcerer snatches Edene and brings her to his stronghold of Al-Din. Meanwhile, Samarkar, a wizard of Tsarepheth in the Rasan Empire, where another, less bloody, power struggle is going on, learns of sorcerous doings in the city of Qeshqer and travels to investigate.

Here she meets Temur, who’s searching for Edene. They will be joined by Hrahima, a huge human-tiger Cho-tse, who has traveled from Ctesifon with more bad news. The Khagan Empire is Temur’s to claim—if he can survive the plots of Qori Buqa. This lean, sinewy, visceral narrative, set forth in extraordinarily vivid prose full of telling detail, conveys a remarkable sense of time and place, where the characters belong to the landscape and whose personalities derive naturally from it. Though the book is not self-contained, Bear provides this opener with enough of a resolution to satisfy while whetting the appetite for more.

Gripping, perfectly balanced and highly recommended.

(Agent: Jennifer Jackson)

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LAZARUS IS DEAD

Beard, Richard Europa Editions (272 pp.) $16.00 paperback | Sep. 25, 2012 978-1-6094-5080-9 In this alternative theological novel, Jesus does more than weep...and Lazarus does more than die.

Beard engages in much plausible speculation here, for example, that Jesus and Lazarus grew up as best friends and then drifted apart. Lazarus seized an opportunity to become a businessman, buying sheep from the local farmers and reselling them at a profit to the temple, for according to strict Jewish practice, many sheep had to be sacrificed. But just about the time his former childhood friend performed his first miracle, Lazarus began to come down with a strange and mysterious illness, one that is more than merely an inconvenience that gets in the way of his sexual relationship with the prostitute Lydia and his engagement to Saloma. Beard invests this illness with a mythic quality by having Lazarus contract all of the seven major diseases of ancient Israel, and his symptoms combine those of smallpox, tuberculosis and dysentery, for his death has to be as certain as his resurrection. At first, he calls upon Yanav the Healer, a local dispenser of herbs, but it soon becomes clear that Lazarus’ physical decline is too severe for Yanav to handle. Lazarus’ sister, Mary, then pleads with him to call upon Jesus, whose reputation for performing miracles is growing, but Lazarus is adamant that his former friend not be summoned. The mythic power of the story remains constant, of course, so Lazarus does in fact die, and Jesus does resurrect him, but the Romans, especially in the vicious form of Cassius, immediately begin to persecute Lazarus, feeling his resurrection has reinforced the extraordinary political power of Jesus. Throughout the narrative, Beard schools the reader in literary and artistic treatments of Lazarus to give the story a cultural and intellectual framework.

Beard’s take on Lazarus is nothing less than astonishing—and he respects the reader by taking religion and religious questions seriously.

CITY OF THE LOST

Blackmoore, Stephen DAW/Berkley (224 pp.) $15.00 paperback | Jan. 3, 2012 978-0-7564-0702-5 A remarkable debut, LA noir with eye-bulging refinements, from a poet and short-story writer who says of himself: “As a writer he strives to be a hack.

Hacks get paid. He’s not sure if hacks talk about themselves in the third person, though. That might just be a side effect of his meds.”

Joe Sunday, bad knees, weary resignation and all, is a legbreaker for English gangster Simon Patterson when his buddy |

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and partner-in-crime Julio Guerrera starts acting weird in a bar then rips his own throat out with a busted bottle. Seems that Simon sent Julio to steal a MacGuffin from Chicago mobster Sandro Giavetti. Soon, Joe confronts Giavetti, who strangles him. Joe wakes up to find he’s in perfect health—except he’s now room temperature and doesn’t need to breathe. Giavetti, too, is immortal. “Well, maybe not so much Fountain of Youth as Fountain of Not Staying Dead.” The only drawback as far as Joe is concerned is that he falls apart zombie-style every 24 hours and needs to chomp living flesh in order to return to being healthily undead. Oh, and the fact that the MacGuffin, an egg-shaped gemstone, has vanished, and lots of folks want it. The basically indescribable plot involves said MacGuffin and encounters with, among other beings, a mysteriously wellinformed but unforthcoming femme fatale, a lecherous demon who tends bar in his own private universe, a do-gooder Latina bruja who wants to help homeless vampires, a diabolical Nazi wizard and a midget with teeth like a shark.

A head-shakingly perfect blend of zombie schlock, deadpan wit, startling profanity, desperate improvisation and inventive brilliance.

THE SANDCASTLE GIRLS

Bohjalian, Chris Doubleday (320 pp.) $25.95 | Jul. 17, 2012 978-0-385-53479-6

The granddaughter of an Armenian and a Bostonian investigates the Armenian genocide, discovering that her grandmother took a guilty secret to her grave.

Laura, the narrator of Bohjalian’s latest, is doing genealogical research, attempting to learn more about a fact that has always intrigued her: Her Boston Brahmin grandmother, Elizabeth, and her grandfather, Armen, were brought together by the Armenian genocide. Flash back to 1915.

Elizabeth has journeyed to the Syrian city of Aleppo, along with her father, on a mission sponsored by an American relief group, the Friends of Armenia. They have come in an attempt to deliver food and supplies to the survivors of the Armenian massacre. The Turks are using Aleppo as a depot for the straggling remnants of thousands of Armenian women, who have been force-marched through the desert after their men were slaughtered. Elizabeth finds the starved women, naked and emaciated, huddled in a public square, awaiting transports to Der-el-Zor, the desert “relocation camp” where, in reality, their final extermination will take place. Elizabeth takes in two of these refugees, Nevart and an orphan Nevart adopted on the trail, Hatoun, who has been virtually mute since she witnessed the beheading (for sport) of her mother and sisters by Turkish guards. By chance, Elizabeth encounters Armen, an Armenian engineer who has come to Aleppo to search for his wife, Karine. Armen has eluded capture since murdering his former friend, a Turkish official who had reneged on his promise to protect Armen’s family. Despairing |

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of Karine’s survival—and falling in love with Elizabeth—Armen joins the British Army to fight the Turks. Among archival photos viewed by Laura decades later is one of Karine, who did reach the square mere days after Armen left Aleppo. How narrowly did Karine miss reuniting with Armen, Laura wonders, acknowledging that, but for tragic vagaries of fate, the family that produced her might never have come to be.

A gruesome, unforgettable exposition of the still toolittle-known facts of the Armenian genocide and its multigenerational consequences.

ACCIDENTS OF PROVIDENCE

Brown, Stacia M. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (272 pp.) $25.00 | Feb. 14, 2012 978-0-547-49080-9 Brown’s first novel is a heart-poundingly vivid, intellectually provocative account of the legal case against a fictional woman condemned to death for secretly burying her dead, illegitimate newborn in Cromwell’s England.

In 1649, Cromwell has taken power after the beheading of Charles I. Politics is in turmoil, suspicion and paranoia the mood of the day. But the law still must be upheld as aging and ailing criminal investigator Thomas Bartwain reluctantly builds his case against Rachel Lockyer, an unmarried glovemaker’s apprentice, for breaking the 1624 “Act to Prevent the Destroying and Murdering of Bastard Children.” No one questions that Rachel buried her infant daughter; the case hinges on whether the child was born dead. Humorously Rumpole-like, with a wife who keeps him morally on pitch, Bartwain is increasingly uneasy, especially when he finds a flaw in the law. Meanwhile, Rachel remains largely silent out of her confused sense of guilt and because she does not want to expose William Walwyn, who has been her adulterous lover for three passionate years—the author provides great, unsentimental sex scenes that feel true to the era. With his crony Richard Lilburne, Walwyn is a wellknown leader of the Levelers, a human rights advocacy group that originally supported Cromwell but has turned against him and is now under attack. William is also the father of 14 legitimate children, and his wife Anne watches and waits for her husband to return his heart to his marriage, not passive but patient.

Rachel’s true friend and supporter is feisty and outspoken Elizabeth Lilburne, who has recently lost two small sons to smallpox and remains loyal to husband John despite her impatience with his political posturing. Events in the plot are based on historical incidents, and one of the book’s many joys is the way fictional (Rachel, the Bartwains) and historical figures (the Walwyns, the Lilburnes) weave seamlessly together; everyone’s motives and reactions are richly complex.

A romping good read that is character-driven yet intellectually provocative on issues of law, religion and morality—historical fiction at its best. best fiction and best children ’s books of 2012

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TELL THE WOLVES I’M HOME

Brunt, Carol Rifka Dial Press (368 pp.) $26.00 | Jun. 19, 2012 978-0-679-64419-4

Brunt’s first novel elegantly pictures the New York art world of the 1980s, suburban Westchester and the isolation of AIDS. Fourteen-year-old June and 16-yearold Greta travel to Manhattan every few Sundays to be with Finn, their uncle. Finn is a renowned artist, dying of a largely unknown disease, and claims he wants to give them this last gift, though more likely it is the contact he craves. June and Finn have an intense relationship—he is charismatic and brilliant and takes her to special places; he is part magic and part uncle, and June adores him. Greta is jealous; she feels Finn favors June and stole her away. When he dies, June is devastated.

At the funeral, they see the one not to be mentioned: Finn’s lover, Toby. June’s mother refuses to admit him to the service and blames him for her baby brother’s disease. Slowly, June and Toby develop a secret friendship, indulging their grief and keeping Finn alive through the exchange of memories. What she thought was simply Finn’s apartment she discovers was their shared space, and much of what she loved about the place, and Finn, belongs to Toby. As she and Toby embark on Finn-worthy adventures, Greta is slowly falling apart, hiding in the woods drunk, sabotaging her chance at a summer stint on Broadway.

Finn’s portrait of the girls, worth nearly $1 million, is kept in a bank vault, and every time June visits (only she and Greta have keys), she notices additions to the painting that could only come from Greta. With Toby dying and Greta in danger, June lifts the covers off all of her family’s secrets.

There is much to admire in this novel. The subtle insight on sibling rivalry and the examination of love make for a poignant debut. (Agent: Mollie Glick)

TARNISHED KNIGHT

Campbell, Jack Ace/Berkley (400 pp.) $26.95 | Oct. 2, 2012 978-1-937077-82-2 Series: The Lost Stars

Beginning a sort of spinoff series taking place, chronologically, between Campbell’s last two outings (Beyond the Frontier: Dreadnaught, 2011, and Beyond The Frontier: Invincible, 2012) wherein the influence of “Black Jack” Geary is palpable, though he makes no actual appearance.

The brutal, ruthlessly hypercapitalist rule of the Syndicate is faltering thanks to its inability to defend the people against either Geary or the alien enigmas. The Midway system, with its numerous 8

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hypergate passages to other Syndicate systems, is pivotal. Most citizens and even some CEOs are weary of being terrorized by the Gestapo-like political police, or snakes. Exiled CEO Artur Drakon, having long plotted rebellion, now launches an all-out effort to seize control of Midway’s planets and exterminate the snakes. But he doesn’t control what’s left of Midway’s space forces: for that, he needs an alliance with fellow-exile and would-be rebel CEO Gwen Iceni. In a carefully coordinated action, Iceni commandeers some of the warships and attacks those forces who remain loyal to the Syndicate or are dominated by snakes. After initial successes, both Drakon and Iceni declare independence. But their Syndicate heritage isn’t so easily shaken off; neither can afford to trust the other, yet disaster looms if they don’t. Both must maintain this delicate balance while rooting out nests of snakes and traitors and dealing with ambitious underlings. Campbell maintains the military, political and even sexual tension with sure-handed proficiency. In previous volumes, the emphasis leaned toward battles; here, while not neglecting them, Campbell focuses on the human element: two strong, well-developed characters locked in mutual dependence, fumbling their way toward a different and hopefully brighter future. What emerges is a fascinating and vividly rendered character study, fully and expertly contextualized.

All the more impressive for being a significant departure from previous entries. (Agent: Joshua Bilmes)

A LAND MORE KIND THAN HOME

Cash, Wiley Morrow/HarperCollins (320 pp.) $24.99 | Apr. 17, 2012 978-0-06-208814-7 Up beyond Asheville, near where Gunter Mountain falls into Tennessee, evil has come to preach in a house of worship where venomous snakes and other poisons are sacraments.

Cash’s debut novel explores Faulkner/O’Connor country, a place where folks endure a hard life by clinging to God’s truths echoing from hardscrabble churches. With Southern idiom as clear as crystal mountain air, Cash weaves the narrative from multiple threads. Jess Hall is the 9-year-old son of Ben and Julie and beloved younger brother of gentle Stump, his mute, autistic sibling. Clem Barefield is county sheriff, a man with a moral code as tough, weathered and flexible as his gun belt. Adelaide Lyle, once a midwife, is now community matriarch of simple faith and solid conscience. Carson Chambliss is pastor of River Road Church of Christ. He has caught Stump spying, peering into the bedroom of his mother, Julie, while she happened to be entertaining the amoral pastor. Julie may have lapsed into carnal sin, but she is also a holy fool. Chambliss convinces Julie to bring Stump to the church to be cured by the laying on of hands.

There, Stump suffers a terrible fate. Cash’s characters are brilliant: Chambliss, scarred by burns, is as remorseless as one of his rattlesnakes; Addie, loyal to the old ways, is still strong enough to pry the church’s children away from snake-handling |

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“A spare, dystopian fable.” from the investigation

services; Barefield is gentle, empathetic and burdened by tragedy. Stump’s brother Jess is appealingly rendered—immature, confused and feeling responsible for and terrified by the evil he senses and sees around him. As lean and spare as a mountain ballad, Cash’s novel resonates perfectly, so much so that it could easily have been expanded to epic proportions.

An evocative work about love, fate and redemption.

HELL OR HIGH WATER

Castro, Joy Dunne/St. Martin’s (352 pp.) $25.99 | Jul. 17, 2012 978-1-250-00457-4

Salvaging lives in post-Katrina New Orleans is no picnic.

Nola Céspedes is fed up with the puff pieces she’s assigned at the Times-Picayune.

So when she’s given a shot at a major feature story—how well do rehabilitated sex offenders do when released back into the community?—she goes all-out, even nudging her friend Calinda over in the district attorney’s office for unpublicized details concerning the recent rape and mutilation of a young tourist. Her choice of which serial rapists to interview is as dangerous as her choice of one-night stands.

Nola is so driven, argumentative and protectively secretive about her upbringing in the tawdry Desire Projects that her gay housemate Uri suggests therapy. But she’s too busy preparing for a wedding and meeting her mother’s female lover for the first time.

Her stress escalates when another young girl goes missing, and she becomes even more promiscuous, more argumentative, more out of control and more worried about one of her interviewees, a former vice principal who seems overly interested in the young girl she’s mentoring and the female students playing in the school courtyard across from his apartment. Nola’s final attempt to deal with the sordidness surrounding her brings death and a start at reclaiming her own past.

Castro’s first mystery is fierce and intense, with both harrowing depictions of New Orleans after Katrina and psychological mayhem for its troubled heroine, who crawls under your skin and lingers there long after you’ve finished reading. A sequel is in the works.

TELEGRAPH AVENUE

Chabon, Michael Harper/HarperCollins (480 pp.) $27.99 | Sep. 11, 2012 978-0-06-149334-8 An end-of-an-era epic celebrating the bygone glories of vinyl records, comic-book heroes and blaxploitation flicks in a world gone digital.

The novelist, his characters and the readers who will most love this book all share a passion for |

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popular culture and an obsession with period detail. Set on the grittier side in the Bay Area of the fairly recent past (when multimedia megastores such as Tower and Virgin were themselves predators rather than casualties to online commerce), the plot involves generational relationships between two families, with parallels that are more thematically resonant than realistic. Two partners own a used record store that has become an Oakland neighborhood institution, “the church of vinyl.” One of the partners, Archy Stallings, is black, and he is estranged from his father, a broken-down former B-movie action hero, as well as from the teenage son he never knew about who has arrived in Oakland from Texas to complicate the plot. The other partner is Nat Jaffe, white and Jewish, whose wife is also partners with Archy’s wife in midwifery (a profession as threatened as selling used vinyl) and whose son develops a crush on Archy’s illegitimate son. The plot encompasses a birth and a death against the backdrop of the encroachment of a chain superstore, owned by a legendary athlete, which threatens to squash Archy and Nat’s Brokeland Records, all amid a blackmailing scheme dating back to the Black Panther heyday. Yet the warmth Chabon (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, 2000, etc.) feels toward his characters trumps the intricacies and implausibilities of the plot, as the novel straddles and blurs all sorts of borders: black and white, funk and jazz, Oakland and Berkeley, gay and straight. And the resolution justifies itself with an old musicians’ joke: “ ‘You know it’s all going to work out in the end?’ ” says one character. “ ‘No....

But I guess I can probably fake it,’ ” replies another.

The evocation of “Useless, by James Joyce” attests to the humor and ambition of the novel, as if this were a Joyce-an remix with a hipper rhythm track.

THE INVESTIGATION

Claudel, Philippe Translated by Cullen, John Talese/Doubleday (240 pp.) $25.00 | Jul. 10, 2012 978-0-385-53534-2

A spare, dystopian fable that examines how closely contemporary life has caught up to Kafka since the publication of The Castle.

No one comes to meet the nameless Investigator when a train lets him off at a nameless city.

So it’s long after dark by the time he arrives at the Enterprise, where he’s been sent to look into a series of 20 suicides over the past year. A disembodied voice refuses to admit him so late and declines to give him any information about where he might pass the night. Left to his own devices, the Investigator finds the mordantly misnamed Hope Hotel, where a Giantess forces him to review an exhaustive list of hotel policies before she gives him the key to a room where he collapses for the night. In the morning, the Server at the hotel restaurant won’t give him tea, toast or orange juice, and the Policeman he meets over his nonbreakfast ends up questioning him. When he arrives at the Enterprise, predictably without the identification he left at the best fiction and best children ’s books of 2012

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Hope, he gets little cooperation from the Guard, the Guide and especially the Manager, who’s cordial enough but also insecure, delusional and prone to hysterical fits. After spending a second night passed out in the Enterprise, the Investigator finds all the functionaries who posed such obstacles yesterday so solicitous that the effect is even more disturbing. By this time, Claudel (Brodeck, 2009, etc.) has long since made it clear that in this investigation, it’s better to travel hopefully than to arrive.

A technocratic Kafka nightmare—heavy on surreal diagnosis of the world’s ills, light on the traditional rewards of storytelling—crossed with Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and a hint of Buster Keaton.

THE ORCHARDIST

Coplin, Amanda Harper/HarperCollins (448 pp.) $26.99 | Aug. 21, 2012 978-0-06-218850-2 Set in early-20th-century Washington state, Coplin’s majestic debut follows a makeshift family through two tragic decades.

“You belong to the earth, and the earth is hard,” 9-year-old Talmadge heard from his mother, who brought him and his sister Elsbeth to Washington in 1857 to cultivate an apple orchard after their father was killed. Their mother died three years later, and Elsbeth vanished five years after that, leaving Talmadge with a load of guilt that grew alongside his orchards. So when two starving, heavily pregnant teenage girls, Jane and Della, turn up on his land in 1900, he feels protective toward them even before he learns their history. They have run away from Michaelson, a monstrous opium addict who stocks his brothel with very young girls whom he sexually and physically abuses. When he turns up shortly after the girls have given birth, a shocking scene leaves only Della and Jane’s baby, Angelene, alive to be nurtured by Talmadge and his close friend Caroline Middey, an herbalist who warns him that Della is likely to disappear as his sister did. Sure enough, Della soon heads off for a peripatetic life of hard drinking and aimless wandering, driven by the hatred and fear instilled by her youth with Michaelson. Angelene grows up devoted to Talmadge and the orchard, worried by the knowledge that he still pines for Della and Elsbeth. Della sees her erstwhile tormentor being led off in handcuffs when Angelene is 13, setting in motion a disastrous chain of events that engulfs Talmadge and everyone he cares for. “Why are we born?” wonders Della, a question that haunts all the characters. Coplin offers no answers, only the hard certainties of labor and of love that are seldom enough to ease a beloved’s pain. Yet the novel is so beautifully written, so alive to the magnificence of the land and the intricate mysteries of human nature, that it inspires awe rather than depression.

Superb work from an abundantly gifted young writer.

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CALIBAN’S WAR

Corey, James S.A. Orbit/Little, Brown (624 pp.) $15.99 paperback | Jun. 1, 2012 978-0-316-12906-0 Series: The Expanse, 2 Part two of the top-notch space opera begun with Leviathan Wakes (2011), from Corey (aka Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck).

Previously, a dangerous alien protomolecule was weaponized by an amoral corporation and field-tested against a habitat in the asteroid belt, bringing Earth, Mars and the Belt to the brink of war.

Thanks to whistle-blowing Belter spaceship captain Jim Holden, all-out war was averted and the habitat diverted to Venus. Now, the protomolecule has taken over that planet and appears to be building a gigantic, incomprehensible device, a development viewed with alarm by the great powers. Then, on Ganymede, a creature able to survive unprotected in a vacuum, immune to most weapons and hideously strong, wipes out several platoons of Marines. Fighting breaks out, and the great powers teeter on the brink of war. Mysteriously, just before the monster’s appearance, somebody kidnapped a number of children who all suffered from the same disease of the immune system. Botanist Prax Meng, the father of one of the children, asks for Holden’s help in finding his daughter. As Ganymede’s fragile ecosystem collapses, Holden flees with Prax. Meanwhile, on Earth, fiery old U.N. bigwig Chrisjen Avasarala realizes she’s been outmaneuvered by forces in league with the corporation that thinks to control the protomolecule. The characters, many familiar from before, grow as the story expands; tension mounts, action explodes and pages turn relentlessly.

Independently intelligible but best appreciated after volume one—and with a huge surprise twist in the last sentence.

A VIOLET SEASON

Czepiel, Kathy Leonard Simon & Schuster (272 pp.) $15.00 paperback | Jul. 10, 2012 978-1-4516-5506-3 A mother and daughter discover empathy, courage and autonomy in this powerful first novel by Czepiel.

Set in the Hudson Valley in 1898, this brilliantly written story explores the lives and relationships of Ida Fletcher and her 16-year-old daughter, Alice, who exist within the confines of a restrictive society. Struggling to repay husband Frank’s longstanding debt to his older brothers, Ida and her family reside in a tenant house on the family-owned violet farm. It’s a bleak existence, and the family barely makes ends meet. Ida works as a wet nurse (in fact, she bore her youngest child, Jasper, in order to lactate), and Alice has been taken out of school to assist with the family income. Frank, a hotheaded, taciturn man, displays

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little affection for his family and expects them to accept his authority without question. After 23 years of marriage, Ida reflects upon their years together and ponders whether this has always been the case. Frank brings more babies into the household for Ida’s care, and he secures employment for Alice, which puts her in a precarious position and jeopardizes her dreams of a future with Joe Jacobs, the local preacher’s son. Frank’s actions result in life-shattering revelations for both Ida and Alice: Ida, her love for her children first and foremost, chooses to make a move that is almost unprecedented for a woman of her time and circumstances. And Alice, a strong young woman in her own right, must overcome her own past and learn to forgive her mother. A vivid portrait of life at the turn of the last century, the story is rich with historical detail and strongly defined characters. Czepiel portrays the often unpleasant aspects of Ida’s and Alice’s lives with reverential care and affords readers a finely tuned study in human endurance.

An excellent debut. (Agent: Lisa Bankoff)

THE BOOK OF JONAS

Dau, Stephen Blue Rider Press (272 pp.) $24.95 | Mar. 15, 2012 978-0-399-15845-2

In Dau’s debut fiction, Younis, a perceptive, observant boy in a nameless Central Asian land, is caught up in the war on terror.

His village has been destroyed, his family killed, and now he must remake himself as Jonas Iskander, refugee. A charity sends Jonas to live with the Martins, an evangelical family in Pennsylvania. There he attends high school, an outcast, haunting the library to seal himself “inside a bastion of knowledge.” There he is also bullied, until he finally responds to an ugly attac­k by beating the bully senseless. The school mandates counseling, and the psychologist pressures Jonas to explore the trauma that destroyed family and home. Emotionally trapped between past and future, Jonas only remembers “half dreams that flicker.” Later admitted to the city’s university, Jonas meets a beautiful pre-med student from India and befriends other refugee students. He also begins to drink to the point of blackout. As the psychologist pushes Jonas to uncover suppressed truths about an American soldier who saved his life, the young refugee’s fractured recollections lead the counselor to connect Jonas’ story with that of Rose Henderson, whose son, Christopher, went missing while in combat in Jonas’ home country. To Rose, trapped in a limbo of loss, Jonas reluctantly tells his story—of the attack on his village and of his mountain cave sanctuary where he was found by the soldier, “adding and subtracting, substituting what should have been said for what he fails to remember accurately.” While leaving one minor narrative thread dangling, Dau sketches Jonas brilliantly, empathetically, writing with spare, clear language in the third person, a point of view encompassing the distance necessary for emotional clarity. Rich with symbolism, marvelously |

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descriptive in language—“the expression of a young boy playing poker with grown men”—Dau’s novel offers deeply resonating truths about war and culture, about family and loss that only art can reveal.

A literary tour de force.

A WOMAN OF CONSEQUENCE

Dean, Anna Minotaur (336 pp.) $24.99 | Apr. 10, 2012 978-0-312-62684-6 A clever Regency sleuth is much like Jane Austen with her ability to see that the mundane things of life are more important than they seem.

Due to a family reversal of fortunes, Dido Kent is residing with her brother Frank and sister-inlaw Margaret. Although Margaret does not treat her well, the neighborhood provides plenty of entertainment for her active mind, especially the residents of Madderstone Abbey, which is reputed to be the home of a ghost known as the Grey Nun. Although one of Dido’s acquaintances, the beautiful Penelope, is hurt in a fall at the ruined abbey, it is the shocking discovery of a body in the ornamental lake that arouses Dido’s curiosity.

The property owners are the Harmon-Footes, and the body proves to be that of Miss Fenn, a governess who had vanished years ago. The coroner’s jury declares Miss Fenn a suicide, the minister has refused her burial in the churchyard, and Mrs. Harman-Foote begs Dido to look into the case, refusing to believe her beloved governess killed herself. Dido ponders the strange behavior of a naval man who seeks to attach himself to both the lovely Penelope and the wealthy Lucy, the landscape architect who drained the lake without permission and the local doctor who conducts strange experiments. Dido is also dealing with a marriage proposal from Mr. William Lomax (A Gentleman of Fortune, 2011, etc.), a man she could love but fears she cannot marry because he disapproves of her independent ways as dangerous.

Dido manages to solve a very complicated mystery, but can she find happiness with her suitor?

The third in Dean’s series is another delight, complete with perfect Regency prose and an excellent mystery.

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k i r ku s q & a w i t h l au r e n g r o f f

ARCADIA

Groff, Lauren Voice/Hyperion (304 pp.) $25.99 March 1, 2012 978-1-4013-4087-2

Arcadia is a place somewhere up in the northern woods. Perhaps it’s around Chautauqua, where 19th-century communards read each other poetry while fussing and feuding. Or maybe it neighbors the vales of the Burnt-Over District, where a dozen dissenting American religions sprang up. No matter the specifics, Arcadia is a place where you can feel the wind blowing from a distant Great Lake, a place where you can feel every barometric shift in the air of personal relations. It’s paradise, and it’s sometimes scary and weird—ripe ground, that is to say, for a skilled storyteller such as Lauren Groff, whose latest novel, Arcadia, like its predecessor The Monsters of Templeton, looks behind the idyllic curtain to find moments that are sometimes not so pretty, but always real.

Kirkus caught up with the author to talk about her book, one of our favorite novels of 2012.

Q: Utopias-become-dystopias figure in a rich literature, from Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance to PD James’s Children of Men. Did you have any literary forebears in mind as you set to work on Arcadia?

A: Oh, yes, and thank you so much for this question. I had in mind both books you mentioned but also many others, Utopian and dystopian, and some mix of the two. Some of the more foundational ones (and I will kick myself for not remembering more in about an hour) were Utopia by Sir Thomas More, Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy, The News From Nowhere by William Morris, The City of the Sun

by Tommaso Campanella, Plato’s Republic, Paradise Lost by John Milton, and of course, Middlemarch by George Eliot, which is far more subtle than all of the others above, and you’d have to stretch a bit to call it a “Utopia become dystopia,” but I’d argue it is.

Q: Sex, drugs, Victorian literature, melting polar ice caps— your book offers a taste of just about everything, taking us through many moods, decades and lives. Is there any moment in the book that stands out as a favorite—that brought you particular pleasure, perhaps, or some epiphany as you wrote it?

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Q: Our reviewer pointed out that Arcadia presents something of a “structural conundrum,” coming full circle while ending at a very different place from the beginning. Had you thought this ambitious structure out in advance, or did it evolve as the story did?

A: I knew the very general arc of the story, which is unusual for me. I generally begin with a character and hang on desperately as they begin to gallop along and only find out much later where it is we’re going. But from the beginning, I was most drawn to the idea of how a person who is raised in such a tight community, in such idealism, would handle the world beyond as an adult, and I knew Bit had to lose Arcadia and live outside in the world. Now that I look at the book— years after I finished it, and so from what feels like a vast distance—I see it almost as a figure eight or infinity sign in structure, which makes lovely metaphorical sense but was done more out of intuition than intention.

Q: Et in Arcadia ego, runs the old Latin tag: ‘Even in Arcadia you’ll find me’—“me” being Death. There are plenty of somber moments in your book but also some resoundingly cheerful turns. Does the world hold good things in store for Bit Stone? The last words of the book, hopeful and lovely, suggest so. Still, you leave the possibility of a Duane’s Depressed–like sequel…

A: Duane’s Depressed—ha! I love Bit Stone. I love him like a son, and I mourn the fact that I can’t spend my days with him anymore. I miss him. I will never write a book with him in it again. But, like every parent of any child ever born, I know that he has to live his own life beyond me and that the life he will live will include moments of tremendous beauty as well as moments of terrible heartbreak. Bit is sensitive and deeply empathetic. Being empathetic means that you suffer for other people’s pain, as well as your own. So, yes, the world holds more good things than Bit can ever imagine. And it holds more sorrow, too.

That’s life.

–By Gregory McNamee

9 For the full interview, please visit kirkus.com.

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p h oto by S a r a h M cKu n e

A: I knew I was going to be able to finish this book when I wrote the scene where my main character, Bit Stone, and his family finally leave Arcadia, and we see the world beyond the few hundred acres where he’d lived for almost all his life. His knowledge of the world beyond existed almost entirely in stories—told by people who had come to Arcadia to live and told in the books he’d read. Seeing the lives of real people outside of his little fishbowl showed him at last how vast the world is and how viscerally real it is, as well.

I don’t think it ever really struck him before, though he knew the world outside was real intellectually.

That moment was the subdued earthquake—all else that came later was aftershock. I knew better how the book ended after I wrote that.

CLIFF WALK

DeSilva, Bruce Forge (352 pp.) $24.99 | May 22, 2012 978-0-7653-3237-0 Fresh from the Most Corrupt State competition comes a second persuasive entry that links pretty much every citizen of Providence to a child-snuff-porn ring.

Cosmo Scalici, convinced that he deserves more respect as a waste recycler who mainly feeds trash to pigs, is less than happy when one of his hogs beats him out for the child’s hand that he’s just glimpsed.

Soon after a post-slaughter autopsy confirms Scalici’s find, along with his dim prospects for respect, someone—State Police Capt.

Steve Parisi won’t confirm whether it’s Salvatore Maniella, Rhode Island’s premier pornographer—gets shot to death and takes a thoroughly disfiguring header off Newport’s scenic Cliff Walk.

The two incidents are obviously linked, but in order to connect the dots, reporter Liam Mulligan, of the dying Providence Dispatch, will have to wade through a pit of waist-high filth: an online ring of child pornographers, a vigilante who’s riding around town executing same, an interchangeable series of pole dancers coming on to him (who knew prostitution was legal in Rhode Island until 2010?) and bodyguards warning him to quit hassling Sal Maniella’s daughter Vanessa, queen of the city’s strip clubs, and of course Mulligan’s estranged wife, Dorcas, who phones him every time she goes off her meds. The high-casualty plot is a mess. But the epic, warts-and-all portrait of the city is scathing; ulcer-ridden wiseacre Mulligan (Rogue Island, 2010) is never less than compelling company; and the analogies between the newspaper business and the porn business are spot-on.

As in Mulligan’s hard-nosed debut, the real star here is Providence, which the author knows intimately.

FALLEN ANGELS

Dial, Connie Permanent Press (296 pp.) $28.00 | Apr. 1, 2012 978-1-57962-274-9 She’s a wife, a mom, an LAPD captain and compelling no matter what she does.

Meet Capt. Josie Corsino, a good cop.

She’s been that for two decades plus, is proud of her achievement, remains passionate about the work, regards it as a high calling and hates bent cops. Unfortunately, she’s about to confront a mess of them. The complex, frequently embittering case that flushes them out begins in the Hollywood Hills and centers on the murder of Hillary Dennis, a teenage movie star with connections going every which way: to a powerful, eminently dislikeable city councilman, to his wayward son, to organized crime and, yes, to the upper reaches of the LAPD. As murder follows murder, Josie battles a variety of |

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dubious agendas while trying desperately to protect embattled colleagues—often as not from their own self-destructive behavior. Meanwhile, trouble looms on her domestic front. After 20 years of marriage, her husband is suddenly restive. Her beloved, quixotic son—who may, incidentally, have been closer to Hillary Dennis than was wise—also has issues with her. “You really don’t give an inch, do you?” David says, “You look and talk like other mothers, but you’ve got the heart of a gunnery sergeant.” He’s right, and he’s wrong, which is, of course, part of what makes Josie remarkable.

A veteran cop herself, Dial (The Broken Blue Line, 2010, etc.) does authenticity to the max, and readers will like that. But it’s tough, vulnerable, never-say-die Josie that they’ll love.

THIS IS HOW YOU LOSE HER

Díaz, Junot Riverhead (240 pp.) $26.95 | Sep. 11, 2012 978-1-59448-736-1

From the author of Drown (1996), more tales of Dominican life in the cold, unwelcoming United States.

Eight of the collection’s nine stories center on Yunior, who shares some of his creator’s back story. Brought from the Dominican Republic as a kid by his father, he grows up uneasily in New Jersey, escaping the neighborhood career options of manual labor and drug dealing to become an academic and fiction writer. What Yunior can’t escape is what his mother and various girlfriends see as the Dominican man’s insatiable need to cheat. The narrative moves backward and forward in time, resisting the temptation to turn interconnected tales into a novel by default, but it has a depressingly unified theme: Over and over, a fiery woman walks when she learns Yunior can’t be true, and he pines fruitlessly over his loss. He’s got a lot of other baggage to deal with as well: His older brother Rafa dies of cancer; a flashback to the family’s arrival in the U.S. shows his father—who later runs off with another woman—to be a rigid, controlling, frequently brutal disciplinarian; and Yunior graduates from youthful drug use to severe health issues. These grim particulars are leavened by Díaz’s magnificent prose, an exuberant rendering of the driving rhythms and juicy Spanglish vocabulary of immigrant speech. Still, all that penitent machismo gets irksome, perhaps for the author as well, since the collection’s most moving story leaves Yunior behind for a female narrator. Yasmin works in the laundry of St. Peter’s Hospital in New Brunswick; her married lover has left his wife behind in Santo Domingo and plans to buy a house for him and Yasmin. Told in quiet, weary prose, “Otravida, Otra Vez” offers a counterpoint to Yunior’s turbulent wanderings with its gentle portrait of a woman quietly enduring as best she can.

Not as ambitious as Díaz’s Pulitzer Prize winner, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007), but sharply observed and morally challenging.

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THE SCAR

Dyachenko, Sergey; Dyachenko, Marina Tor (336 pp.) $24.99 | Feb. 28, 2012 978-0-7653-2993-6 First English translation of a work written in Russian in 1997, from an award-winning Ukrainian husband-andwife team now resident in Moscow.

This book is actually the second in a tetralogy that began three years earlier with The Gate-Keeper— so, when bringing translated works to an Anglophone audience, why not begin at the beginning? truly the ways of publishers are strange—which introduced, or, better, created, the enigmatic and powerful mage known as the Wanderer, the key figure in the series. Egert, a supremely skilled, arrogant member of the elite guards, is also a bully and heedless philanderer from a culture that encourages, even extols, such behavior. When a young student, Dinar, and his stunningly beautiful fiancée, Toria, arrive in town seeking rare books on magic, Egert decides he must have Toria, and torments poor Dinar into a duel. Unskilled, Dinar is easily dispatched, but the mysterious Wanderer, a witness to Dinar’s cruel end, challenges Egert in turn. The Wanderer, who could easily have killed Egert, instead contents himself with slashing the guard’s face, leaving Egert with a painful scar.

Worse, Egert finds that the scar has drained his confidence, leaving him an abject coward, too terrified even to commit suicide. Deserting his regiment, Egert journeys far, eventually arriving in the city where Toria lives with her father, Luayan, a mage and Dean of the University. Taking pity on Egert, Luayan finds him lodging and offers him the chance to attend classes.

Somehow, through his shame and degradation, Egert must find a way to face Toria, deal with his own problems, confront the evil designs of a secretive cult of wizards and face the Wanderer’s inevitable return. Rich, vivid, tactile prose, with a solid yet unpredictable plot—and an extraordinary depth and intensity of character reminiscent of the finest Russian literature.

A truly spellbinding work even audiences jaded by standard U.S./U.K. fantasy will devour. Kudos to the publishers for taking the plunge—but what took them so long?

A HOLOGRAM FOR THE KING

Eggers, Dave McSweeney’s (328 pp.) $25.00 | Jun. 19, 2012 978-1-936365-74-6

A middle-aged man scrapes for his identity in a Saudi Arabian city of the future.

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giving away money; this one features a hero stuck in one place and desperate to make a bundle. Alan Clay is a 50-something American salesperson for an information technology company angling for a contract to wire King Abdullah Economic City, a Saudi commerce hub. Alan and his team are initially anxious to deliver their presentation to the king—which features a remote speaker appearing via hologram—but they soon learn the country moves at a snaillike pace. So Alan drifts: He wanders the moonscape of the sparely constructed city, obsesses over a cyst on his back, bonds with his troubled driver, pursues fumbling relationships with two women, ponders his debts, and recalls his shortcomings as a salesman, husband and father. This book is in part a commentary on America’s eroding economic might (there are numerous asides about offshoring and cheap labor), but it’s mostly a potent, well-drawn portrait of one man’s discovery of where his personal and professional selves split and connect. Eggers has matured greatly as a novelist since Velocity: Where that novel was gassy and knotted, this one has crisp sentences and a solid structure. He masters the hurry-upand-wait rhythm of Alan’s visit, accelerating the prose when the king’s arrival seems imminent then slackening it again. If anything, the novel’s flaws seem to be products of too much tightening: An incident involving a death back home feels clipped and some passages are reduced to fablelike simplicity.

Even so, Eggers’ fiction has evolved in the past decade.

This book is firm proof that social concerns can make for resonant storytelling.

THE GARDEN OF EVENING MISTS

Eng, Tan Twan Weinstein Books (352 pp.) $15.99 paperback | Sep. 4, 2012 978-1-60286-180-0 The unexpected relationship between a war-scarred woman and an exiled gardener leads to a journey through remorse to a kind of peace.

After a notable debut, Eng (The Gift of Rain, 2008) returns to the landscape of his origins with a poetic, compassionate, sorrowful novel set in the aftermath of World War II in Malaya, where the conflict was followed by a bloody guerilla war of independence. Chinese-Malayan Judge Teoh Yun Ling, who witnessed these events when younger, has been diagnosed with aphasia, which will shortly strip her of her mind and memory. So she returns to Yugiri, in the mountains, to record her memories of the place she visited 34 years earlier and to persuade ex-Imperial Japanese gardener Aritomo to make a garden in memory of her sister. The sisters had spent four years in a horrific Japanese slave labor camp, sustained by memories of the gardens of Kyoto. Aritomo turns down Yun Ling’s request; instead she becomes his apprentice, then lover.

Aritomo is an enigmatic figure, steeped in art and wisdom, perhaps also a spy. Only years later, when Yun Ling finally pieces together his last message to her, can she reconcile her grief and guilt as the sole survivor of the slave camp.

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“Elegant and multifaceted.” from the stockholm octavo

Grace and empathy infuse this melancholy landscape of complex loyalties enfolded by brutal history, creating a novel of peculiar, mysterious, tragic beauty.

THE STOCKHOLM OCTAVO

Engelmann, Karen Ecco/HarperCollins (432 pp.) $25.99 | Oct. 23, 2012 978-0-06-199534-7 Elegant and multifaceted, Engelmann’s debut explores love and connection in late-18th-century Sweden and delivers an unusual, richly imagined read.

Stockholm, “Venice of the North,” in an era of enlightenment and revolution is the setting for a refreshing historical novel grounded in a young man’s search for a wife but which takes excursions into politics, geometry (Divine and other), numerology, the language of fans and, above all, cartomancy—fortunetelling using cards. Emil Larsson, who “came from nothing” and now works for the customs office, is under pressure to marry. Offered advice by the keeper of a select gaming room, Mrs. Sparrow, he is introduced to the Octavo, a set of eight cards from a mysterious deck representing eight characters he will meet who will help him find the fiancee and advancement he seeks. As they appear, these characters each have their own story to tell, like Fredrik Lind, the gregarious calligrapher, and the Nordéns, refugees from France who fashion exquisite fans. But Emil’s Octavo overlaps with Mrs. Sparrow’s own, and his ambitions become enmeshed in a larger scenario involving a plot against King Gustav himself. Another of Emil’s characters, an apothecary fleeing a violent fiancee, who is taken on and groomed by a powerful but cruel widow, holds the key.

The setup is wonderfully engrossing; the denouement doesn’t deliver quite enough. But this is stylish work by an author of real promise. (b/w art throughout.

Agent: Amy Williams)

WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT ANNE FRANK Stories

Englander, Nathan Knopf (224 pp.) $24.95 | Feb. 15, 2012 978-0-307-95870-9

Parables of emotional complexity and moral ambiguity, with lessons that are neither easy nor obvious, by a short-story master (For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, 1999, etc.).

The title story that opens the collection (evoking in its title both the Holocaust and Raymond Carver) is like so much of |

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the best of the author’s narratives, with a voice that evokes a long legacy of Jewish storytelling and the sharp edge of contemporary fiction. It presents the reunion of two women who had been best friends as girls but who have married very different men and seen their lives take very different paths. One is now living an “ultra-Orthodox” family life in Israel, with a husband who insists that “intermarriage...is the Holocaust that is happening now.” The other lives in South Florida and has married a more secular Jew, who narrates the story and whose voice initially invites the reader’s identification. Yet a change in perspective occurs over the course of the visit, both for the reader and the narrator: “It is the most glorious, and silliest, and freest I can remember feeling in years. Who would think that’s what I would be saying with these strict, suffocatingly austere people come to visit our house.” Every one of these eight stories casts light on the others, but perhaps the most revelatory is “Everything I Know About My Family on My Mother’s Side,” in which a writer named Nathan, described as “completely secular” and called “an apostate” by his older brother, insists that this story is “true....Not true in the way fiction is truer than truth. True in both realms.” It’s the story of how a family stays together and a relationship falls apart, told in 63 numbered sections of a paragraph or two. Like so much of this volume, it seems to exist in a literary sphere beyond the one in which the ambitions of postmodern fiction have little to do with the depths of existence beyond the page.

The author at his best.

ABSOLUTION

Flanery, Patrick Riverhead (400 pp.) $26.95 | Apr. 12, 2012 978-1-59448-817-7 In Flanery’s debut literary fiction, Sam Leroux has a publisher’s assignment to write the biography of a famous South African author, Clare Wald, imperious, reticent, evasive about her writing and disinclined to discuss her catastrophic personal life.

A native South African, Sam is a writer and scholar residing in the United States. Sam flies to meet the reluctant Clare, who resides in his native Cape Town, a fractious city where have-nots confront razor-wire–topped walls behind which the rich have imprisoned themselves. Told from alternating points of view, the novel shifts from unsettled present to bloody past, from today’s fractured economic and social environment to the historic struggle to end apartheid. That ugly fight for democracy consumed the lives of Clare’s sister and daughter and Sam’s parents. Guilt, fear and regret keep Sam and Clare from confronting their mutual history of loss and love, deceit and despair. Unbeknownst to Sam, Clare has already written Absolution, a “fictionalized memoir,” which will be published only because the circumspect Clare agreed to an official biography. Ghosts hover each time Sam and Clare meet, and Clare’s cathartic expulsion of her truths comes in

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CANADA

flashes. Flanery has constructed a haunting labyrinth of mirrors, fact reflecting remembrance, lie reflecting evasion.

Complex in theme, complex in narrative, this is a masterful literary exploration of the specter of conscience and the formidable cost of reconciliation.

GONE GIRL

Flynn, Gillian Crown (432 pp.) $25.00 | Jun. 5, 2012 978-0-307-58836-4 A perfect wife’s disappearance plunges her husband into a nightmare as it rips open ugly secrets about his marriage and, just maybe, his culpability in her death.

Even after they lost their jobs as magazine writers and he uprooted her from New York and spirited her off to his childhood home in North Carthage, Mo., where his ailing parents suddenly needed him at their side, Nick Dunne still acted as if everything were fine between him and his wife, Amy. His sister Margo, who’d gone partners with him on a local bar, never suspected that the marriage was fraying, and certainly never knew that Nick, who’d buried his mother and largely ducked his responsibilities to his father, stricken with Alzheimer’s, had taken one of his graduate students as a mistress. That’s because Nick and Amy were both so good at playing Mr. and Ms. Right for their audience. But that all changes the morning of their fifth anniversary when Amy vanishes with every indication of foul play. Partly because the evidence against him looks so bleak, partly because he’s so bad at communicating grief, partly because he doesn’t feel all that griefstricken to begin with, the tide begins to turn against Nick.

Neighbors who’d been eager to join the police in the search for Amy begin to gossip about him. Female talk-show hosts inveigh against him. The questions from Detective Rhonda Boney and Detective Jim Gilpin get sharper and sharper. Even Nick has to acknowledge that he hasn’t come close to being the husband he liked to think he was. But does that mean he deserves to get tagged as his wife’s killer? Interspersing the mystery of Amy’s disappearance with flashbacks from her diary, Flynn (Dark Places, 2009, etc.) shows the marriage lumbering toward collapse—and prepares the first of several foreseeable but highly effective twists.

One of those rare thrillers whose revelations actually intensify its suspense instead of dissipating it. The final pages are chilling.

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Ford, Richard Ecco/HarperCollins (432 pp.) $26.99 | May 22, 2012 978-0-06-169204-8 A great American novel by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author.

This is Ford’s first novel since concluding the Frank Bascombe trilogy, which began with The Sportswriter (1986), peaked with the prize-winning Independence Day (1995) and concluded with The Lay of the Land (2006). That series was for Ford what the Rabbit novels were for Updike, making this ambitious return to long-form fiction seem like something of a fresh start but also a thematic culmination. Despite its title, the novel is as essentially all-American as Independence Day. Typically for Ford, the focus is as much on the perspective (and limitations) of its protagonist as it is on the issues that the narrative addresses. The first-person narrator is Dell Parsons, a 15-year-old living in Montana with his twin sister when their parents—perhaps inexplicably, perhaps inevitably— commit an ill-conceived bank robbery. Before becoming wards of the state, the more willful sister runs away with her boyfriend, while Dell is taken across the border to Canada, where he will establish a new life for himself after crossing another border, from innocent bystander to reluctant complicity. The first half of the novel takes place in Montana and the second in Canada, but the entire narrative is Dell’s reflection, 50 years later, on the eve of his retirement as a teacher. As he ruminates on character and destiny and ponders “how close evil is to the normal goingson that have nothing to do with evil,” he also mediates between his innocence as an uncommonly naïve teenager and whatever wisdom he has gleaned through decades of experience. Dell’s perspective may well be singular and skewed, but it’s articulate without being particularly perceptive or reflective. And it’s the only one we have. In a particularly illuminating parenthetical aside, he confesses, “I was experiencing great confusion about what was happening, having had no experience like this in my life. I should not be faulted for not understanding what I saw.”

At the start of the novel’s coda, when Dell explains that he teaches his students “books that to me seem secretly about my young life,” he begins the list with The Heart of Darkness and The Great Gatsby. Such comparisons seem well-earned.

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BILLY LYNN’S LONG HALFTIME WALK

Fountain, Ben Ecco/HarperCollins (320 pp.) $25.99 | May 1, 2012 978-0-06-088559-5 Hailed as heroes on a stateside tour before returning to Iraq, Bravo Squad discovers just what it has been fighting for.

Though the shellshocked humor will likely conjure comparisons with Catch-22 and Slaughterhouse Five, the debut novel by Fountain (following his story collection, Brief Encounters with Che Guevara, 2006) focuses even more on the cross-promotional media monster that America has become than it does on the absurdities of war. The entire novel takes place over a single Thanksgiving Day, when the eight soldiers (with their memories of the two who didn’t make it) find themselves at the promotional center of an all-American extravaganza, a nationally televised Dallas Cowboys football game. Providing the novel with its moral compass is protagonist Billy Lynn, a 19-year-old virgin from small-town Texas who has been inflated into some kind of cross between John Wayne and Audie Murphy for his role in a rescue mission documented by an embedded Fox News camera. In two days, the Pentagonsponsored “Victory Tour” will end and Bravo will return to the business as usual of war. In the meantime, they are dealing with a producer trying to negotiate a film deal (“Think Rocky meets Platoon,” though Hilary Swank is rumored to be attached), gladhanding with the corporate elite of Cowboy fandom (and ownership), and suffering collateral damage during a halftime spectacle with Beyoncé. Over the course of this long, alcohol-fueled day, Billy finds himself torn, as he falls in love (and lust) with a devout Christian cheerleader and listens to his sister try to persuade him that he has done his duty and should refuse to go back. As “Americans fight the war daily in their strenuous inner lives,” Billy and his foxhole brethren discover treachery and betrayal beyond anything they’ve experienced on the battlefield.

War is hell in this novel of inspired absurdity.

THE BEDLAM DETECTIVE

Gallagher, Stephen Crown (256 pp.) $25.00 | Feb. 7, 2012 978-0-307-40664-4 Monsters, actual and metaphorical, are at the heart of this superbly crafted thriller.

Gallagher has been called a horror writer, a fantasy writer, a non-fantasy writer, a writer for big screens and smaller ones, a writer whose considerable talent has enabled him to slip in and out of genres precisely as if those tidy little boxes didn’t exist—as indeed they don’t for his character-driven books. In this one, Sebastian Becker (The Kingdom of Bones, 2007, etc.), his |

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fast-track career abruptly derailed, contemplates an uncertain future. Now that the Pinkertons have sent him packing, he faces 1912 back in his native England, employed as the special investigator to the Masters of Lunacy. Englishmen of property deemed too loopy to look after anyone’s property face Bedlams of one sort or another, their property removed from their care.

It’s up to Sir James Crichton-Browne, acting for His Majesty’s Government, to render judgments informed by evidence his special investigator Sebastian provides. The job pays poorly but is nuanced enough to be interesting. And it gets even more so when Sebastian meets Sir Owain Lancaster, a scientist who’s been widely respected until he blames the failure of his lavish Amazonian expedition on a series of attacks by horrific monsters only he can see. No longer respected but still exceedingly rich, he becomes grist for Sebastian’s mill. Is Sir Owain really crazy? Or, much worse, is he himself a monster?

Gallagher loves character development but respects plotting enough to give it full measure. The result is that rare beast, a literary page turner. (Agent: Howard Morhaim)

SIMPLE

George, Kathleen Minotaur (336 pp.) $24.99 | Aug. 21, 2012 978-0-312-56914-3 George’s Pittsburgh cops (Hideout, 2011, etc.) investigate a robbery/murder that’s a lot less routine and more sordid than it looks.

Gubernatorial hopeful Michael Connolly can’t keep his hands off Cassie Price, a new paralegal in his father’s law firm. But as he tells Todd Simon, his campaign manager, his need to maintain a squeaky-clean family image means that he can’t acknowledge her either. So Simon takes Cassie out for a margarita to find out how dangerous she is.

By next morning, she’s no danger at all, because she’s been killed in the house she’s been fixing up in the low-income neighborhood of Oakland. Witness accounts and other evidence send Detectives Coleson and McGranahan to Cal Hathaway, the son of the Connolly housekeeper. Damaged as a child by a concussion and subject to blackouts, Cal seems tailor-made for the role of Cassie’s killer, and after hours of interrogation, he says he did it, or he didn’t, or he can’t remember. That’s good enough for the cops, who lock him up and get ready to move on. But Cmdr. Richard Christie, dissatisfied with the case against Cal, keeps playing devil’s advocate, urging that Detectives John Potocki and Colleen Greer look at other scenarios and other suspects. As they painstakingly build a second case against an unsurprising suspect, Cal makes friends and enemies in jail, raising the distinct possibility that even if the police arrest someone else, his vindication will be posthumous.

George’s all-too-familiar story is so richly observed, subtly characterized, precisely written—her syncopated paragraphs are a special delight—and successful in its avoidance of genre clichés that you’d swear you were reading the first police procedural ever written. (Agent: Ann Rittenberg)

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“An astonishing novel.” from arcadia

BLOODLAND

CITY OF WOMEN

Glynn, Alan Picador (352 pp.) $16.00 paperback | Feb. 1, 2012 978-0-312-62128-5

Gillham, David R. Amy Einhorn/Putnam (400 pp.) $25.95 | Aug. 7, 2012 978-0-399-15776-9 In his debut about 1943 Berlin, Gillham uses elements common to the many previous movies and books about World War II—from vicious Nazis to black marketeers to Jewish children hiding in attics to beautiful blonde German women hiding their sexuality inside drab coats—yet manages to make the story fresh.

The blonde beauty is Sigrid, a stenographer living alone with her unpleasant mother-in-law while her husband, Kaspar, serves on the eastern front. Sigrid’s Berlin is a grim city full of suspicious, fearful citizens barely coping with shortages and almost nightly air raids, people not above turning each other over to the Gestapo for unpatriotic behavior. But Sigrid is mostly consumed in pining not for Kaspar but for Egon, the Jewish black markeeter with whom she carried on a passionate affair before he went into hiding. At first, Sigrid resists when Ericha, a rebellious teenager living in her building, involves her in an underground network hiding Jews, but iconoclast Sigrid soon finds that her experience as Egon’s occasional “bagman” serves her well as she delivers supplies and humans to a safe house. At the same time, she befriends new neighbors, two sisters and their wounded-officer brother, Wolfram, whose impeccable German credentials are not what they seem. Sigrid finds herself wondering if a particular Jewish woman with two daughters in hiding might be Egon’s wife. But when Egon reappears in her life, she doesn’t bring up her suspicions. Instead she hides him in her neighbors’ apartment, an awkward situation given that she has recently begun what she considers a purely sexual affair with Wolfram. The wounded and embittered Kaspar’s return only complicates the situation. With her underground activities as intricate as her love life, Sigrid can trust no one, yet must trust a dangerously wider circle of acquaintances until the hold-yourbreath suspense ending.

World War II Germany may be familiar ground, but Gillham’s novel—vividly cinematic yet subtle and full of moral ambiguity, not to mention riveting characters—is as impossible to put down as it is to forget.

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A plot-twisting, page-turning humdinger in which collateral damage gets a murderous spin.

Alive, actress/model Susie Monaghan snagged her allotted 15 minutes of fame and then some. Dead, she became an absolute sensation. She was gorgeous, yes. Talented, maybe. A head case, no question: a beautiful, outrageous flake who did drugs unabashedly and went through boyfriends carnivorously. A fatal helicopter crash off the coast of Ireland rocketed her to the top of the A-list, where she hovered indefinitely like some headline-hungry ghost. People couldn’t stop talking about her, which is OK with a certain young Dublin journalist. Jimmy Gilroy, recently downsized, has received an unexpected and most welcome book deal. He’s charged with immortalizing Susie Monaghan, an assignment he’s prepared to take very seriously given his straitened circumstances, plus the attractive added inducement of Susie’s lovely sister, whose input he deems integral to the project. But then the worrisome phone calls from longtime friend and benefactor Phil Sweeney commence, suggesting ever more forcefully that he back off. Other voices join in. It’s from an obviously unnerved and deeply depressed former prime minister of Ireland, however, that he hears the phrase “collateral damage” applied to Susie. Five others died when the helicopter went down. Jimmy knew that, of course, but now he gets his first sulfuric whiff of something rotten being covered up.

His prose spare but spirited, Glynn (Winterland, 2011, etc.) spins an all-too-likely tale of secrets, lies and power corrupted. Chilling.

THE KINGMAKER’S DAUGHTER

Gregory, Philippa Touchstone/Simon & Schuster (432 pp.) $26.99 | Aug. 14, 2012 978-1-4516-2607-0 The latest of Gregory’s Cousins’ War series debunks—mostly—the disparaging myths surrounding Richard III and his marriage to Anne Neville.

Anne and her sister Isabel are both used without hesitation as political bargaining chips by their father, Richard, Earl of Warwick. True to his sobriquet, “Kingmaker,” Warwick engineered the downfall of the Lancastrian King Henry VI after Henry succumbed to mental illness and supplanted him with Edward IV, scion of the Yorkist-Plantagenet claims to the English succession. Increasingly disenchanted by the degree to which Edward is allowing his queen, Elizabeth Woodville, to dole out favors to her large

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“A darkly brilliant mystery.” from the thing itself

family, Warwick marries Isabel off to George, Duke of Clarence, Edward’s brother, on the theory that George, next in line for the throne, can dislodge his older brother. When George fails at this, Warwick gives Anne, barely 14, in marriage to Henry’s son, Edward and, together with his former enemy, Margaret of Anjou (Henry’s exiled consort), attempts a coup that fails miserably, bringing us to the time period chronicled in Shakespeare’s Tudor/Lancaster-biased take on events. With her father and new husband slain in battle and mother and mother-in-law either in prison or otherwise defanged, Anne is left penniless.

Her brother-in-law, George, and her own sister have taken her inheritance and are keeping her a virtual servant. King Edward’s youngest brother, Richard, rescues Anne, marries her and uses some unorthodox means to regain her inheritance (while ensuring that it all belongs to him). The marriage, unlike the sinister seduction depicted by Shakespeare, is presented as a genuine love match (aside from some doubt about that tricky prenup).

The chief threat to the realm is not Richard but Queen Elizabeth: A reputed witch with a grudge against Warwick’s daughters (Warwick killed her father and brother), she will not be happy until Isabel, Anne and their progeny (and if necessary her brothers-in-law) are dead.

Although their fates are known, Gregory creates suspense by raising intriguing questions about whether her characters will transcend their historical reputations.

ARCADIA

Groff, Lauren Voice/Hyperion (304 pp.) $25.99 | Mar. 1, 2012 978-1-4013-4087-2 An astonishing novel, both in ambition and achievement, filled with revelations that appear inevitable in retrospect, amid the cycle of life and death.

As a follow-up to Groff ’s wellreceived debut (The Monsters of Templeton, 2008), this novel is a structural conundrum, ending in a very different place than it begins while returning full circle. At the outset, it appears to be a novel of the Utopian, communal 1960s, of a charismatic leader, possibly a charlatan, and an Arcadia that grows according to his belief that “the Universe will provide.”

It concludes a half-century later in a futuristic apocalypse of worldwide plague and quarantine. To reveal too much of what transpires in between would undermine the reader’s rich experience of discovery: “The page of a book can stay cohesive in the eyes: one sentence can lead to the next. He can crack a paragraph and eat it. Now a story. Now a novel, one full life enclosed in covers.” The “he” is Bit Stone, introduced as a 5-year-old child of that commune, and it is his life that is enclosed in these covers. Following a brief prologue, representing a prenatal memory, the novel comprises four parts, with leaps of a decade or more between them, leaving memory and conjecture to fill in the blanks. At an exhibition of Bit’s photography, a passion since his childhood (documented in some shots), those who had known |

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him all his life realized, “What they found most moving, they told him later, were the blanks between the frames, the leaps that happened invisibly between the then and the now.” The cumulative impact of this novel is similar, as the boy leaps from the commune and subsequently his parents, becomes a parent himself, deals with the decline of his parents, and finds his perspective both constant and constantly changing: “He can’t understand what the once-upon-a-time Bit is saying to the current version of himself or to the one who will stand here in the future...worn a little more by time and loss.”

A novel of “the invisible tissue of civilization,” of “community or freedom,” and of the precious fragility of lives in the balance. (Agent: Bill Clegg)

THE THING ITSELF

Guttridge, Peter Severn House (256 pp.) $28.95 | Oct. 1, 2012 978-0-7278-8081-9

An ice-cold case heats up.

Disgraced former Chief Constable Bob Watts has never given up his hope of solving the 1934 Brighton Trunk Murder.

Upon the death of his father, well-known author and former police constable Victor Tempest, Watts finds a treasure trove of new information in his papers. Back in the present, DS Sarah Gilchrist, who’s still living down the trouble she’s been in over the Milldean Massacre that brought Watts down, finds herself in even hotter water for giving an illegal weapon to her friend, reporter Kate Simpson, who uses it to a kill a rapist. And Jimmy Tingley, exSAS and friend of Watts, is in Europe on the trail of the Balkan gangsters who’ve been trying to take over the Brighton crime scene (The Last King of Brighton, 2011, etc). The information his father left Watts, which reaches all the way back to his grandfather’s World War I experiences and death, details Tempest’s life as a police constable, a member of Oswald Mosley’s fascist organization, and a friend of both Ian Fleming and a long string of lawbreakers. It’s no secret to Watts that the lives of the constabulary and the criminals of Brighton have long been deeply intertwined, but as he continues to investigate, the information becomes steadily more shocking.

Guttridge’s third Brighton thriller is so well-written that it would be well worth your time even if it were not such a darkly brilliant mystery.

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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 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.

EXPEDITION TO THE MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON

Hodder, Mark Pyr/Prometheus Books (400 pp.) $16.00 paperback | Jan. 24, 2012 978-1-61614-535-4 Third entry (The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man, 2011, etc.) in Spain-resident Englishman Hodder’s time-travel/alternatereality/steampunk saga; though originally billed as a trilogy, the ending here leaves considerable scope for further augmentation.

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In 1840, a time traveler known as Spring Heeled Jack arrived in order to prevent his ancestor, Edward Oxford, from assassinating young Queen Victoria. As a result, reality was wrenched into an alternate steampunk universe. Also arriving in 1840, sent back from a ghastly 1919 wherein a rampant Germany, led by a psychic-powered Friedrich Nietzsche and armed with horrid biological weapons, has all but defeated the British Empire and its black-mesmerism-wielding avatar, Aleister Crowley, is famed explorer and polyglot Sir Richard Burton, whose task is to prevent both the assassination and Spring Heeled Jack’s perversion of history. Meanwhile, in the same universe in 1863, British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston—the crown is vacant, since no acceptable heir could be found—instructs Burton, ostensibly to seek the source of the Nile, actually to recover a third set of psychoactive diamonds left by a now-extinct nonhuman race, by which means Palmerston hopes to defeat Germany before the world is engulfed in war. In 1914, Burton arrives in East Africa, where an appalling conflict already rages, again hurled through time, but this time with few memories and little idea of who he is or what he’s supposed to do. And, rest assured, all this isn’t the half of it. The narrative features a host of other historical characters in unfamiliar roles, such as the engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel inhabiting a steam-powered robot body, poet Algernon Swinburne as Burton’s 1861 sidekick and war correspondent H.G. Wells in 1914. Remarkably enough, the plot hangs together, and Hodder, with an encyclopedic grasp of period detail, tellingly brings these disparate, oddly familiar yet eerily different worlds to fecund life.

Enthralling, dizzying and as impressive as they come.

THE SURVIVOR

Hurwitz, Gregg St. Martin’s (416 pp.) $25.99 | Aug. 21, 2012 978-0-312-62551-1 Hurwitz demonstrates his mastery of the thriller genre.

Nate Overbay stands on an 11th-story building ledge as gunshots erupt inside.

Curiosity overcomes his suicide plan as he looks through the bank window and witnesses a robbery in progress. He climbs back inside, shoots five criminals dead and saves the day. Thus, instead of splattering himself on top of a Dumpster, Nate becomes an unwilling hero. He suffers from ALS and simply wants to spare himself the agonizing end that is only months away. The trouble is, now he has angered Pavlo, the Ukrainian mobster who had directed the heist. Pavlo is an unusually sadistic sort who plans to make Nate pay in the worst possible way—through Nate’s daughter. The book opens as dramatically as a reader could hope for and doesn’t relent. That Nate must die is inevitable, given his fatal illness. The question is whether he dies on his own terms.

Nate’s been a hero once before, but he’s also been weak. Now he must protect and re-bond with his estranged family in the face of vengeful monsters. Hurwitz’s writing is crisp and economical,

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and he steers clear of hackneyed phrases and one-dimensional characters—Nate’s and Pavlo’s back stories are well-crafted, although the ghost of Nate’s dead friend Charles seems inspired by a James Lee Burke novel.

A fine thriller that succeeds on every level. How often do you read about a hero who just wants to die in peace?

THE BROKEN ONES

Irwin, Stephen M. Doubleday (368 pp.) $26.00 | Aug. 7, 2012 978-0-385-53465-9

In the strange, devastating aftermath of Gray Wednesday, when the Earth’s poles suddenly switched, the world is in even greater chaos, climatic distress and financial ruin than it is now.

Not only are people struggling for survival, most of them are shadowed by a ghost. In most cases, it’s the ghost of a relative or friend, but for tormented Australian cop Oscar Mariani, the specter is an unknown 16-year-old boy. The son of a storied cop, Mariani works for forever dank and gloomy Brisbane’s special Nine-Ten unit, which determines whether a homicide suspect was driven to commit the crime by the maddening presence of a ghost. If so, it’s a pardonable offense. Oscar has a vested interest in solving the grisly killing of a girl found ripped apart in a sewage plant, a weird religious symbol carved into her stomach. He has never gotten over the guilt of maiming another teenage girl when he swerved to avoid a boy in the road—the boy, as it turns out, who is now haunting him. When Oscar’s dirty superiors order him to back off the case, which involves the abduction, torture and murder of disabled girls from a nursing home, he goes rogue, losing his loyal female partner on the force in the process. It’s not enough for him to get beat up, shot and hailed on. In a frightening scene, huge, vulturelike creatures maul him. In the striking retro future of this novel, bizarre and familiar comfortably coincide.

A flawlessly assembled thriller. (Agent: Selwa Anthony)

ZOO TIME

Jacobson, Howard Bloomsbury (384 pp.) $26.00 | Oct. 16, 2012 978-1-60819-938-9 Bad-boy funnyman Jacobson waxes pensive and topical—but no less mirthful—in his latest assault on the foibles of modern life.

These days, grumbles Guy Ableman, “one has to apologize for having read a book, let alone for having written one.” That’s bad for old Guy, who’s a reader and a writer, the author of smart literary fictions of very modest success who suddenly realizes that his bookish |

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world is crumbling around him. It doesn’t help that his agent commits suicide rather than negotiate yet another e-book deal or that his wife, voluptuous and wonderful, has decided that she’s going to write something of her own or that his wife’s mother is sending decidedly un-mother-in-law-like vibes his way: Guy is in a bad existential state, and the world of publishing is going down the tubes with him. The obvious solution?

Why, to craft an irresistible best-seller, a dumb and juicy confection that twists all the right knobs. It’s a lovely setup, one that affords Jacobson, never shy about skewering modern mores, plenty of opportunities to lampoon modern trends in the litbiz.

He gets in digs at just about everything, in fact; for instance, we learn, courtesy of Guy, that novels about single fatherhood sell well in Canada “because Canadian women were so bored with their husbands that the majority of them ran off sooner or later with an American or an Inuit.” So fast and furious are the jibes that one wonders if Jacobson will have anything left to lampoon, but of course, the world has a way of providing targets for the careful satirist, and he’s an ascended master. His latest is more fun than Lucky Jim, and if some of its tropes are more ephemeral, Jacobson is willing to take some big risks in the service of art, as when Guy muses of one of his confections, “I had to cheat a bit to get the Holocaust in, but a dream sequence will always make a chump of chronology.”

Guy’s not a lucky guy, to be sure, but if there’s justice, Jacobson will enjoy best-sellerdom in his place with this latest romp.

AEROGRAMMES

James, Tania Knopf (192 pp.) $24.00 | Apr. 5, 2012 978-0-307-26891-4

A well-turned set of stories defined by emotional and physical separation, particularly in the Indian-American diaspora.

James’ fine debut novel, Atlas of Unknowns (2009), was a continenthopping tale that tracked the divergent lives of two Indian sisters with wit and a lightly comic touch.

Her debut story collection displays a similar approach, and she enthusiastically tests how her style can function in a variety of settings. The two most inventive stories study human emotions in nonhuman contexts. “What to Do With Henry” follows a chimpanzee’s travels from Sierra Leone to the United States, where he builds an uncanny bond with a woman and her adopted daughter; as the chimp struggles for his place in a zoo’s pecking order, James crafts a clear (but unforced) allegory of our own human strivings. Likewise, the closing “Girl Marries Ghost” imagines a society where people who are desperate for companionship can marry ghosts, who are eager to spend a little time back in the real world; James’ portrait of one such marriage is a seriocomic exposé of our craving for order set against our inability to let go of our messy pasts. The other stories deal in culture clashes, mostly featuring Indian Americans, but for

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“An instant classic.” from istanbul passage

James, ethnicity isn’t the sole source of conflict. The Indian dance teacher in “Light & Luminous,” for instance, is defined as much by her sense of personal pride as her growing feeling that her art is out of step with the times. In the title story, the protagonist (who has the evocative last name of Panicker) is deciding whether his fellow nursing home residents are more embracing than his family.

At every turn, James’ prose is crisp, observant and carefully controlled; unlike the narrator of “Escape Key,” who grows increasingly aware of his fiction’s shortcomings, James projects a deep emotional intelligence.

THE KILLING MOON

Jemisin, N.K. Orbit/Little, Brown (448 pp.) $14.99 paperback | May 1, 2012 978-0-316-18728-2 New ancient Egypt–flavored fantasy from the New York resident author of The Broken Kingdoms (2010, etc.).

In the city and state of Gujaareh, the Hetawa temple is dedicated to Hananja, goddess of dreams, and its priests harvest the people’s dreams to create dream-magic to heal wounds and cure ailments. The Hetawa’s elite Gatherers also ease the passage of the dying—and kill those judged corrupt. When Gatherer Ehiru is ordered to kill Charleron, a corrupt outlander, somehow his flawless technique goes awry; Charleron dies in agony but not before hinting that something is gravely amiss in the Hetawa. Shaken, Ehiru finds he can no longer function as a Gatherer and goes into seclusion, watched over by his young apprentice, Nijiri—until Ehiru receives orders to kill Sunandi Jeh Kalawe, the “corrupt” ambassador from neighboring Kisua.

Sunandi bravely defends herself and reveals that her predecessor and adoptive father passed to her a dreadful secret involving war, murder and, perhaps, Eninket, Prince of the Sunset Throne— who happens to be Ehiru’s brother. Though all the signs point towards the Hetawa—innocent dreamers are being murdered by an insensate, renegade Reaper—Ehiru cannot believe that the priesthood itself is corrupt. Nevertheless he agrees to help Sunandi unravel the conspiracy. Though a little too heavily dependent on the intricate details of Gujaareh’s religion, Jemisin’s patient worldbuilding and extraordinary attention to detail help frame and propel the complex plot, and she weaves subtle, emotionally complex relationships between the main characters. The text includes a useful glossary but, alas, no maps.

Tends toward the claustrophobic at times, but superior and fulfilling.

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THE 100-YEAR-OLD MAN WHO CLIMBED OUT THE WINDOW AND DISAPPEARED

Jonasson, Jonas Hyperion (400 pp.) $15.99 paperback | Sep. 11, 2012 978-1-4013-2464-3 A Swedish debut novel that will keep readers chuckling.

Allan Karlsson has just turned 100, and the Old Folks’ Home is about to give him a birthday party that he absolutely doesn’t want. So he leaves out his window and high-tails it to a bus station, with no particular destination in mind. On a whim, he steals a suitcase and boards a bus. The suitcase’s owner, a criminal, will do anything to get it back. This is the basis for a story that is loaded with absurdities from beginning to end—the old coot has plenty of energy for his age and an abiding love of vodka. The story goes back and forth between the current chase and his long, storied life.

From childhood, he has shown talent with explosives. This knack catches the attention of many world leaders of the 20th century: Franco, Truman, Stalin, Mao and Kim Il Sung, to name a few of the people he meets. Want to blow up bridges?

Allan’s your man. Want much bigger explosions? Just pour him a drink. He’s neither immoral nor amoral, but he is certainly detached, and he is absolutely apolitical. In the past, he insults Stalin (luckily, the translator faints), learns Russian in a gulag and walks back to Sweden from China, barely surviving execution in Iran along the way. In the present, he meets a strange and delightful collection of friends and enemies. Coincidence and absurdity are at the core of this silly and wonderful novel.

Looking back, it seems there are no hilarious, roll-on-thefloor-laughing scenes. They will just keep readers amused almost nonstop, and that’s a feat few writers achieve.

A great cure for the blues, especially for anyone who might feel bad about growing older.

ISTANBUL PASSAGE

Kanon, Joseph Atria (416 pp.) $26.00 | May 29, 2012 978-1-4391-5641-4

In 1945 Istanbul, Allied veteran Leon Bauer is running spy missions under the cover of a U.S. tobacco-importing business.

With the war over, U.S. operations are closing up shop in the neutral capital, but Leon has one last big job: to take possession of a Romanian defector in possession of important Russian secrets and get him flown to safety. The rub is the defector, Alexei, was involved in a heinous massacre of Jews four years earlier. Kanon (The Good German, 2001, etc.) extends his mastery of the period novel with this coiled tale of foreign intrigue.

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Though not much happens, plotwise, in this dialogue-driven book, Leon hardly has a moment to relax, immersed in a world of moral and political upheaval. When he first arrived in Istanbul with his wife, Anna, the city was a paradise with its scenic river view, cultural riches and feeling of mystery. Now, badly injured in an accident, Anna lives in a nursing home, awake but uncommunicative, leaving Leon to contend with a circle of friends and associates he can’t trust. After shooting rather than getting shot by his duplicitous supervisor in a tense late-night encounter along the river, he can avoid suspicion only so long before the brutal secret police, Emniyet, are onto him and the secretly stashed Alexei. There is little about the novel that is not familiar, but this is comfort fiction of the smartest, most compelling and nonpandering kind. Even as he evokes classics such as Casablanca, The Quiet American and A Perfect Spy, Kanon shows off his gift for morally gripping themes, heart-stopping suspense and compelling characters.

With dialogue that can go off like gunfire and a streak of nostalgia that feels timeless, this book takes its place among espionage novels as an instant classic.

THE INFINITE TIDES

Kiefer, Christian Bloomsbury (320 pp.) $26.00 | Jun. 19, 2012 978-1-60819-810-8

In Kiefer’s debut literary novel, astronaut Keith Corcoran returns from the International Space Station to a house populated by a bare mattress, random canned goods and a gray leather sofa.

The astronaut’s beloved and gifted daughter is dead after a car accident, and his wife has left him, all while he spent months aboard the ISS. In a house in an economy-stalled suburb, Corcoran contemplates his world, and he is haunted by his near-metaphysical, unquantifiable experience in space. Corcoran’s life has always been measured by the fluidity of equations (he’s a math genius), which he believes can explain nearly everything. Now the numbers no longer add up.

Empathetically drawn by Kiefer, Corcoran is a splendid protagonist, isolated from his lifelong ambition to be an astronaut by grief and migraines. “Everything in his life had telescoped into guilt and bereavement and a kind of emptiness he still did not entirely understand.” Kiefer also develops an imaginative and intriguing cast of characters: Barb, Corcoran’s wife, who initially supported the ambitious and driven man she married; Quinn, Corcoran’s daughter, the first in his world who also saw numbers as colors, as having emotions and characters; and Jennifer, the neighbor with whom he has a brief and unsatisfying affair. Most compelling are Peter and Luda, Ukrainian immigrants lost in America’s consumer culture. Peter grieves for his former profession as an astronomy technician, and Luda, quiet and beautiful, displays a moral intelligence that may right Corcoran’s world. Kiefer’s work is deeply symbolic, with Corcoran’s appreciation for the order and perfection to be found in |

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equations and algorithms being contrasted against the chaos and entropy of his personal life. The narrative is straightforward and masterfully accomplished.

A wonderfully executed debut novel, so rich as to inspire rereading, right down to its inevitable resolution, both ironic and existentialist.

I’VE GOT YOUR NUMBER

Kinsella, Sophie Dial Press (448 pp.) $26.00 | Feb. 14, 2012 978-0-385-34206-3

Plucky bride-to-be makes an unexpected connection after she appropriates a stranger’s cellphone.

For Poppy Wyatt, losing her priceless antique engagement ring during a boozy pre-wedding brunch at a fancy hotel is bad enough without the added indignity of having her phone nicked by a drive-by bike mugger. All is not lost, though, as she discovers a perfectly good phone in the trash in the hotel lobby. Anxious to get the ring back without alarming her fiance Magnus, she gives out the new number to the concierge and her friends. But the phone, it turns out, belonged to the short-lived assistant to Sam Roxton, an acerbic (but handsome) young executive in a powerful consulting firm. Given to one-word correspondence, with little patience for small talk and social niceties, Sam understandably wants the company property back. But Poppy has other ideas and talks him into letting her keep it for a few more days, offering to forward him all pertinent messages.

In spite of Sam’s reticence, the two strike up an oddly intimate text correspondence, with Poppy taking a way too personal interest in Sam’s life—including his odd relationship with his seemingly crazy girlfriend, Willow. Sam, for his part, confronts Poppy over her fears that she is not good enough for Magnus’ highly-educated family. Misunderstandings ensue, with Poppy’s well-intentioned meddling causing multiple headaches. But when Sam gets embroiled in a corporate scandal, Poppy jumps in to help him in the only way she can. Meanwhile, a scheming wedding planner, and Poppy’s conflicted feelings for Sam, threaten to derail the planned nuptials. Cheerfully contrived with a male love interest straight out of the Mr. Darcy playbook, Kinsella’s (Twenties Girl, 2009, etc.) latest should be exactly what her fans are hankering for. And physical therapist Poppy is easily as charming and daffy as shopaholic Rebecca Bloomwood—minus the retail obsession.

Screwball romance with a likable and vulnerable heroine.

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k i r ku s q & a w i t h g i l l i a n f ly n n

GONE GIRL

Flynn, Gillian Crown (432 pp.) $25.00 June 5, 2012 978-0-307-58836-4

“When I think of my wife, I always think of her head.”

So opens Gillian Flynn’s novel Gone Girl, creepily enough. The tale of a disappearance and the web of suspicion it casts over a small town and its apparently orderly citizenry, Flynn’s novel has met with both strong sales and critical praise.

Kirkus praised it as “one of those rare thrillers whose revelations actually intensify its suspense instead of dissipating it.” We recently caught up with Flynn to chat about her book and its frightmaking qualities.

Q: By all appearances and reports, you’re a nice, welladjusted young woman. How did this tale of mayhem and all-around bad behavior come to you?

A: I think because I’m a (relatively) nice and (relatively) well-adjusted (relatively) young woman, I’ve always been interested in what makes people do bad things; what forces of personality and chance come together to create a storm of nastiness? My characters are usually, to some degree, challenging. Sometimes [they’re] downright awful. With my first two books, I explored isolation. My characters had a deep inability to connect, a deep loneliness that created and nurtured dark impulses and events. With Gone Girl, I knew I wanted to go the opposite direction.

What happens when you do deeply connect… and it still goes wrong? I wanted to look at marriage at its most toxic, yet still make it recognizable. I wanted anyone who is in a long-term relationship to look at their partner and get a little afraid, which I suppose undermines the whole “well-adjusted” thing.

Q: On that note, you tell the story from different points of view. Did you have any trouble getting inside your characters’ heads?

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Q: Our reviewer called out the final pages of Gone Girl as being especially chilling. That’s true enough, but do you have a favorite part of the book, something, perhaps, that especially pleased you (or scared you, even) as you were writing it?

A: Well, thanks. I love the final pages, but they’ve certainly been controversial. As I mentioned, I did love that “Cool Girl” diatribe—I was particularly pleased with myself after that, and writers are rarely particularly pleased with themselves. And I do always giggle at Go’s suggestion for what Nick’s anniversary present to his wife should be. But I suppose what I’m proudest of is just telling this fairly wild story and yet still having people be able to connect with it and even side with characters.

Team Nick, Team Amy—I love it.

Q: People go missing all the time in this world, and we remember so few of them, even as bad guys like Drew Peterson drift in and out of public consciousness. Did you have any real-world cases in mind as you were writing Gone Girl?

A: I didn’t have specific cases, but I am certainly familiar with the cases that do get national attention. The woman is pretty, the husband is handsome, some interesting back story usually surfaces, and timing is a key. So I wrote accordingly: Amy and Nick are blond, blue-eyed, gorgeous people.

Amy is the model for the children’s book series Amazing Amy that her parents wrote. She disappears on her five-year wedding anniversary. I don’t think there is anything wrong with being caught up in true-crime cases. We’ve been interested in true crime for centuries; it’s what the penny press was built on. As human beings, we clearly find some meaning in these cases. But I think we need to remember that we are basically consuming someone else’s tragedy, and we should be responsible consumers and turn off the TV or put down the book when it crosses the line from journalism to exploitation.

–By Gregory McNamee

9 For the full interview, please visit kirkus.com.

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p hoto by HEID I JO B ra dy

A: Once I decided to tell the story using dueling first-person narrators—husband and wife—I got nervous. They would each have to sound very, very genuine and very unique and separate from each other, or there was no point. So I took a long time getting inside their heads—and probably even longer getting back out, but that’s a different story. I did a lot of old-fashioned writing exercises, stuff I learned back in college. I’d write a scene with Amy or Nick as a child, knowing I wouldn’t use it. I’d write magazine essays from their points of view, since they’re both writers. That’s actually where Amy’s “Cool Girl” diatribe came from, a writing exercise. But I liked it so much, I knew it had to be in the book, and I’m glad I kept it, because it’s one of the things readers mention to me the most. With Nick, aside from possibly being a killer, he’s not far off from me, biographically: We’re both Missouri kids who headed to New York

and wrote for magazines and loved pop culture. After 10 years working at Entertainment Weekly, it was fun to do a book where I could let loose my pop-culture obsession a bit.

RAINSHADOW ROAD

Kleypas, Lisa St. Martin’s Griffin (336 pp.) $14.99 paperback | Feb. 28, 2012 978-0-312-60588-9 A little romance and a little magic make for a surprising page turner as a glass artist falls for a vintner on an island in the Puget Sound.

It comes as quite a shock when Kevin tells Lucy their relationship is over. It’s even worse when he tells her she needs to quickly move out, as his new girlfriend will be moving in. And then it’s devastating when he confesses that the new girlfriend is her younger sister Alice. Criminal, but all of a piece—ever since a childhood bout of meningitis left her fragile, Alice has always gotten her way; her parents spoiled her into a beautiful, unbearable young woman. Reeling from the news, Lucy takes a walk on the beach and runs into Sam Nolan, a handsome, rakish grape grower and confirmed bachelor. The two strike up a saucy friendship but agree that anything more would be disastrous given Lucy’s recent breakup and Sam’s admittedly cynical perspective on all things love. Sam’s romantic skepticism has deep roots: his parents were the town drunks, raging and embarrassing to their four children, creating in each a fatalism that encourages superficial relationships. The exception is Holly, Sam’s niece whom he and his brother Mark are raising after the death of their sister. The three live in a rambling Victorian attached to Sam’s vineyard, and soon enough (due to an accident that leaves her leg temporarily immobile), Lucy moves in. They both resist the sexual energy but then confess their deepest secrets: Lucy can convert glass into living things (like fireflies), and Sam can will plants to grow. Will Sam admit he’s in love with Lucy? Will Kevin and Alice really marry? Will Lucy take the art grant in New York or stay pining for Sam? Happily, everyone gets exactly what they deserve.

Strengthened by characters with depth and something interesting to say, this winning first installment in a trilogy is sure to thrill fans of modern romantic fiction.

DEAD ANYWAY

Knopf, Chris Permanent Press (248 pp.) $28.00 | Sep. 15, 2012 978-1-57962-283-1 Nothing in Knopf ’s reflective, quietly loopy Hamptons mysteries starring Sam Acquillo and Jackie Swaitkowski (Ice Cap, 2012, etc.) will have prepared his fans for this taut, streamlined tale of a man investigating his own murder.

The hit man who invades the Cathcarts’ upscale home in Stamford, Conn., tells Florencia Cathcart that if she doesn’t write down the answers to five questions, he’ll kill her husband. |

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When she complies, he shoots them both anyway. Florencia dies, but Arthur merely hovers in a coma for months. Convinced upon his return to life that his killer’s been monitoring his progress with a view to finishing him off, he persuades his neurologist sister, Evelyn, to have him declared dead. She agrees, although she’s signing on to a long list of potential charges for conspiracy and insurance fraud, and Arthur, once he’s erased from the grid, is free to assume the identity of one Alex Rimes and go after the hit man and his employer. He tires easily, he limps badly, and his vision is poor, but his skills as a freelance researcher turn out to be surprisingly useful, though he can’t imagine why anyone would order the execution of either himself or Florencia, who owned a successful insurance agency. The trail to the killers leads through a wary arrangement with a retired FBI agent, an elaborate precious-metals scam and a society party to die for before Arthur finally confronts his quarry in a sequence that manages both to satisfy readers’ bloodlust and to point toward a sequel.

An absorbing update of the classic film, D.O.A., that finds its author so completely in the zone that not a word is wasted, and the story seems to unfold itself without human assistance.

THE PROPHET

Koryta, Michael Little, Brown (432 pp.) $25.99 | Aug. 7, 2012 978-0-316-12261-0 Friday Night Lights meets In Cold Blood in this powerful tale of distant brothers whose torment over the murder of their sister when they were teens is compounded by the murder of another targeted teenage girl—a killing one of the brothers is determined to avenge even if that means committing murder himself.

Adam Austin, a physically imposing bail bondsman and sometime private investigator in the small town of Chambers, Ohio, has never gotten past the guilt of letting his little sister Marie walk home from a football game alone. He drove off with his new girlfriend, Chelsea, and never saw his sister again. He still talks to Marie in her spotlessly maintained old room but is barely on speaking terms with his religiously rehabilitated younger brother Kent, the venerated coach of the football team they once played on together, who forgave the man who killed Marie. After Adam unknowingly sends a 17-year-old client to her death by telling her where she can find a letter-writing ex-con she thinks is her father, the past eerily collides with the present.

Dark, spiraling events unmoor the already unstable Adam and his chances of happiness with Chelsea, who is back in his life with her no-good husband serving a long prison sentence. Kent, who seemed headed to his first state championship before the murder of the teen, his star receiver’s girlfriend, turns to his brother when his family is threatened. The question is whether Adam is beyond turning to anyone for help. Koryta, who drew

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acclaim with his 2011 supernatural thrillers, The Ridge and The Cypress House, returns to crime fiction with a gripping work.

This book succeeds on any number of levels. It’s a brilliantly paced thriller that keeps its villains at a tantalizing distance, a compelling family portrait, a study in morality that goes beyond the usual black-and-white judgments, and an entertaining spin on classic football fiction. A flawless performance.

A compulsively readable novel about brothers on opposite sides of life.

DEFENDING JACOB

Landay, William Delacorte (432 pp.) $26.00 | Feb. 1, 2012 978-0-385-34422-7

Landay does the seemingly impossible by coming up with a new wrinkle in the crowded subgenre of courtroom thrillers.

Assistant District Attorney Andy Barber is called to a gruesome crime scene after Ben Rifkin, a 14-year-old boy, has been brutally stabbed in a city park. One suspect seems likely, a pedophile who lives nearby and is known to frequent the park, but suspicion turns quickly to another, much more unlikely, suspect—Andy’s son Jacob, one of Ben’s classmates. It seems Ben was not the paragon of virtue he was made out to be, for he had a mean streak and had been harassing Jacob...but is this a sufficient motive for a 14-year-old to commit murder?

Some of Jacob’s fellow students post messages on Facebook suggesting he’s guilty of the crime, and Jacob also admits to having shown a “cool” knife to his friends. When Andy finds the knife, he quickly disposes of it, but even he’s not sure if he does this because he suspects his son is innocent or because he suspects his son is guilty. Complicating the family dynamic is Laurie, Jacob’s mother, who’s at least half convinced that her son might indeed be capable of such a heinous act—and it turns out Andy has concealed his own past from Laurie because both his father and grandfather have been murderers, and he fears he may have both inherited and passed down to Jacob a gene associated with aggressive behavior in males.

Landay is yet another lawyer-turned-writer, and it’s inevitable that he’ll be compared to Scott Turow, but this novel succeeds on its own merits.

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EDGE OF DARK WATER

Lansdale, Joe R. Mulholland Books/Little, Brown (288 pp.) $25.99 | Mar. 25, 2012 978-0-316-18843-2 The author of the prize-winning Hap and Leonard series (Devil Red, 2011, etc.) charts a course that may remind you of a distaff Huck and Jim. Paddling a makeshift raft down the Sabine River, they flee East Texas, a New York minute ahead of their pursuers. There are four of them: tough-minded Sue Ellen Wilson, at 16, the stuff of natural leaders; Jinx, Sue Ellen’s lifelong black friend who, if she knows anything at all, knows she’s better than the bigotry she’s endured all her life; angry, resentful Terry, not wholly reconciled to the fact that he’s gay; and Sue Ellen’s alcoholic mom, Helen, who’s quite forgotten how pretty she still is. Flagrantly ill-treated, consistently undervalued, they’ve been brought together by a murder. May Lynn Baxter, “the kind of girl that made men turn their heads and take a deep breath,” is pulled from the river, her bizarre death clearly no accident. It’s an event that provides the restless four with both a mission and a pretext. May Lynn always wanted to go to Hollywood. They will usher her ashes there, a task that provides them with a more or less credible reason for doing what they’ve been longing to do: run.

The river, the raft, a stash of money coveted by bad guys, nonstop adventures that edify, terrify and deepen the bond between Sue Ellen and Jinx. A highly entertaining tour de force.

THE PROFESSIONALS

Laukkanen, Owen Putnam (384 pp.) $25.95 | Mar. 29, 2012 978-0-399-15789-9

A fast-moving debut thriller with enough twists to fill a pretzel bag.

They aren’t bad people. It’s just that times are tough in Michigan, and none of these young friends can find a decent job. So Pender, Sawyer, Mouse and Marie decide that kidnapping a few rich people for quick, modest ransoms would solve their financial woes and let them live out their lives on a beach in the Maldives. No one gets hurt, no one gets greedy, and they all stay professional. They just need to grab some rich businessmen, make a few quiet deals and walk away with a $60,000 payoff each time. One victim even complains he’s worth way more, but $60K is enough for them. The plan works beautifully until they mess with the wrong guy and their great retirement plan goes insanely haywire. Meanwhile, state cop Kirk Stevens and FBI agent Carla Windermere team up to investigate the crimes. The characters are as much fun as the

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plot. Stevens is happily married and faithful, and Windermere has a beau, yet when they work together, the sexual tension between them is obvious. They are the real pros in this case as they try to nail the criminals and stop the mayhem that spirals out of control. And for all the danger, Stevens and Windermere tell each other they’re having so much fun they wish the case would go on forever. The kidnappers, however, enjoy themselves somewhat less while they learn that some things may be more important than money—like staying alive, for example.

Let’s hope Laukkanen writes more thrillers like this one.

LENIN’S KISSES

Lianke, Yan Translated by Rojas, Carlos Grove (592 pp.) $27.00 | Oct. 2, 2012 978-0-8021-2037-3 Sprawling, sometimes goofy, always seditious novel of modern life in the remotest corner of China.

Set Rabelais down in the mountains of, say, Xinjiang, mix in some Günter Grass, Thomas Pynchon and Gabriel García Márquez, and you’re in the approximate territory of Lianke’s (Serve the People!

2008, etc.) latest exercise in épatering the powers that be. Oh, and then there’s Friedrich Dürrenmatt, too, whose The Visit afforded the lesson that you should never mess with little people in the high country. Deep inside the Balou Mountains, Lianke imagines, lies a Macondo-like village inhabited by a great heroine of the Long March, broken of leg and frostbitten of toe, along with her cohort of—well, let one of them tell it: “thirty-five blind people, forty-seven deaf people, and thirty-seven cripples, together with several dozen more who are missing an arm or a finger, have an extra finger, stunted growth, or some other handicap.” These odd folks would seem an impediment to the grand plans of the local Communist leadership, smitten by dreams of revolutionary capitalism, who have a grand plan even for the hamlet of Liven, a place that prompts one of them, Chief Liu, to complain, “Fuck, I simply can’t believe it could possibly get too cold for me.” Cold is the least of his concerns in fulfilling his dream, which is to promote tourism and investment in order to turn the mountains into a Red Disneyland featuring the embalmed corpse of V.I. Lenin himself, to be bought from an ungrateful Russia and turned into a tourist attraction. Needless to say, the bureaucrats’ plans get turned on their heads, and the Cloud Cuckoo-Land that emerges isn’t quite what they bargained for. Lianke writes long, but there’s not a wasted word or scene. And who can resist a book with characters with names the likes of Grandma Mao Zhi, Little Polio Boy and One-Legged Monkey?

A satirical masterpiece, very funny for all its footnotes.

You can bet the authorities in Beijing are scratching their heads about it. (Agent: Laura Susijn)

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AND WHEN SHE WAS GOOD

Lippman, Laura Morrow/HarperCollins (320 pp.) $26.99 | $12.99 e-book | Aug. 14, 2012 978-0-06-170687-5 978-0-06-220161-4 e-book Lippman (The Most Dangerous Thing, 2011, etc.), who specializes in tales of feckless parents and their luckless kids, puts a madam at the center of her latest

dysfunctional family.

At first, nothing could be more conventional than the Lewis family saga. Helen’s father, already married with two children to his credit, knocks up her mother, Beth, a 19-year-old carhop.

He moves in with Beth but hangs around his ex-wife Barbara enough to give Helen a half sister, Meghan, only six months younger. As Beth and Barbara tussle over worthless Hector, he focuses on tormenting Helen, telling her that she has “a nothing face,” breaking her record albums and forcing her to get a job that interferes with her schoolwork. It’s while waitressing at Il Cielo that she meets Billy, the owner’s stepson, who lures her to Baltimore with promises of marriage. Instead, he turns her out, making her earn money to feed his drug habit by doing lap dances at a local strip club. That’s where she meets Val Deluca, whose red hair matches his fiery temper. Val offers Helen a nice house and a better class of client, all for doing what she’s already doing. He also gives her the chance to be something she’d never dreamed of: a mother. That’s when Helen’s tale goes off the beaten path. Before he learns about Helen’s delicate condition, Val is jailed for murder, and Helen reinvents herself as Heloise Lewis, running the business at a level Val had never achieved.

She recruits college girls with delicately worded ads for escorts and serves clients who include state legislators, all while presenting herself as a lobbyist for the Women’s Full Employment Network. But when another suburban madam turns up dead, Heloise realizes that the safe, comfortable life she’s crafted for herself and her beloved son, Scott, in affluent Turner’s Grove is at risk.

Like Mary Cassatt, Lippman studies families with a different eye than her male contemporaries, showing the heartbreaking complexity of life with those you love.

YOUNG PHILBY

Littell, Robert Dunne/St. Martin’s (288 pp.) $24.99 | Nov. 13, 2012 978-1-250-00516-8 A dizzying “what if” take on (in)famous British spy Kim Philby.

In 1963, Kim Philby, a member of British Intelligence, was exposed as a double agent working for Russia. The case continues to provide a mother lode for spy

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novels, and in this latest, Littell (The Stalin Epigram, 2009, etc.) spins the story even further, building to a finish that suggests the story still offers at least one more stunning “shoe drop.” Littell’s narrative follows the outlines of Philby’s private and public lives, which here are inextricably linked. The story unfolds in a series of first-person accounts from friends, lovers and contacts who knew Philby at key junctures in his career as an agent. There’s Litzi Friedman, who first puts callow but wary Philby in touch with the Russians when he visits Vienna; Guy Burgess, Philby’s flamboyantly gay classmate at Cambridge, whom Philby enlists as a spy for the Soviets; Frances Doble, a film star who romances Philby as he reports on the Spanish Civil War for the London Times; and Philby’s father, Harry St John Bridger Philby, aka “the Hajj.” From these narratives emerges a mural of the history of espionage before, during and after World War II, as well as an indepth portrait of Philby, who becomes a canny informant despite his fear of the sight of blood. The narrators speak with distinctive voices, yet the chapters are unified by the dark lens of Littell’s mordant take on spies and their craft. As in The Company (2002), Littell shows particular skill at recreating pulse-quickening epic scenes of conflict—the Russian-backed uprising against Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss, the war against fascist dictator Francisco Franco, and the horrors of Stalin’s kangaroo courts and of Moscow prisons. Veteran Littell remains unbowed by commercial pressures to speed up the text. Elegantly written paragraphs and speeches running to half pages distinguish his work.

A Cold-War spy novel for the top shelf.

RIZZO’S DAUGHTER

Manfredo, Lou Minotaur (288 pp.) $24.99 | Mar. 13, 2012 978-0-312-53807-1

In Manfredo’s tender and terrific latest, a burned-out cop can’t quit because he’s also a devoted dad.

NYPD Detective Sgt. Joe Rizzo (Rizzo’s Fire, 2011, etc.) suspects he’s been on the job too long. It’s not that he’s lost effectiveness. In terms of sheer professionalism, he’s probably as good as ever, maybe even better. It’s just that time and bitter experience have rubbed off the gloss since the days when he loved being a cop, replacing it with a pervasive existential heaviness best expressed by Rizzo’s mantra: “There is no right. There is no wrong. There just [obscenity] is.” For a while now, Rizzo has been promising his wife, Jen, that resignation is just around the corner, a plan that seems eminently feasible until suddenly it isn’t. Carol Rizzo, their youngest daughter, announces—in terms as strong as Rizzo himself once used—that she too has opted for blue. Long-suffering Jen is terrified. Rizzo understands that and shares some of her very sensible anxiety while taking a certain guilty pride in his daughter’s decision. Carol’s choice, however, means that seasoned, savvy Rizzo must stay on in order to protect his beloved child as much as possible. But how much will that be?

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Good cops, bent cops, tormented and demented cops, cops of every description inhabit Rizzo’s world, all of them utterly believable and intensely interesting. For readers compiling a short list of crime fiction, here’s an essential.

BRING UP THE BODIES

Mantel, Hilary Henry Holt (432 pp.) $28.00 | May 22, 2012 978-0-8050-9003-1

Second in Mantel’s trilogy charting the Machiavellian trajectory of Thomas Cromwell.

The Booker award-winning first volume, Wolf Hall (2009), ended before the titular residence, that of Jane Seymour’s family, figured significantly in the life of King Henry VIII. Seeing through Cromwell’s eyes, a point of view she has thoroughly assimilated, Mantel approaches the major events slantwise, as Cromwell, charged with the practical details of managing Henry’s political and religious agendas, might have. We rejoin the characters as the king’s thousand-day marriage to Anne Boleyn is well along. Princess Elizabeth is a toddler, the exiled Queen Katherine is dying, and Henry’s disinherited daughter Princess Mary is under house arrest. As Master Secretary, Cromwell, while managing his own growing fortune, is always on call to put out fires at the court of the mercurial Henry (who, even for a king, is the ultimate Bad Boss). The English people, not to mention much of Europe, have never accepted Henry’s second marriage as valid, and Anne’s upstart relatives are annoying some of Britain’s more entrenched nobility with their arrogance and preening. Anne has failed to produce a son, and despite Cromwell’s efforts to warn her (the two were once allies of a sort), she refuses to alter her flamboyant behavior, even as Henry is increasingly beguiled by Jane Seymour’s contrasting (some would say calculated) modesty. Cromwell, a key player in the annulment of Henry’s first marriage, must now find a pretext for the dismantling of a second. Once he begins interrogating, with threats of torture, Anne’s male retainers to gather evidence of her adulteries, Mantel has a difficult challenge in keeping up our sympathy for Cromwell. She succeeds, mostly by portraying Cromwell as acutely aware that one misstep could land “him, Cromwell” on the scaffold as well. That misstep will happen, but not in this book.

The inventiveness of Mantel’s language is the chief draw here; the plot, as such, will engage only the most determined of Tudor enthusiasts.

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“A sweetheart of a novel.” from office girl

THE BUZZARD TABLE

Maron, Margaret Grand Central Publishing (320 pp.) $25.99 | Nov. 20, 2012 978-0-446-55582-1

Every family has secrets. Some are even worth telling.

Deborah Knott never admitted to her husband, Dwight, how she got her judgeship. Dwight never told her what happened in Germany when he was a company man. And his son, Cal, fessed up to Deborah that he wanted to be adopted only after a pal ratted him out and she confronted him about it.

But these little evasions pale in comparison to the big one that’s motivated Martin Crawford to come to Colleton County, N.C., and settle in a tenant house owned by his ailing aunt, who’s marshaling all her remaining Southern charm to entertain two other visiting relatives, NYPD Lt. Sigrid Harald and her mother, Anne, the Pulitzer Prize–winning photojournalist. Because Martin spends most of his time taking pictures of vultures—at least, that’s what he says—he happens to be in the vicinity of the trash site where someone has dumped an all too promiscuous realtor. He also happens to be nearby when teenager Jeremy Harper is bashed into a coma. And unfortunately for Martin, he happens to have followed the vultures to the local airstrip, where he may have entered a pilot’s motel room and snapped his neck. Is Martin responsible for all the mayhem, or are the attacks and murders unrelated? Sheriff ’s Deputy Dwight, with an assist from Sigrid, a memory that resurfaces for Anne and an alibi that disintegrates, finally assigns the right motives—jealousy and revenge—to the right persons, discomfiting a philandering husband and unsettling the FBI and the CIA. Maron (Three-Day Town, 2011, etc.) adroitly melds ugly American (open) government secrets with classic whodunit intrigue and stirs the pot by itemizing domestic travails that will touch readers’ hearts.

THE CASSANDRA PROJECT

McDevitt, Jack; Resnick, Mike Ace/Berkley (400 pp.) $25.95 | Nov. 6, 2012 978-1-937008-71-0 This first collaboration from McDevitt (Firebird, 2011, etc.) and Resnick (The Doctor and the Kid, 2011, etc.), developed from a 2010 story by McDevitt (spoiler alert: don’t read the story first), takes the form of a conspiracy involving the moon landings. And no, Stanley Kubrick didn’t fake them.

By 2019, the U.S. economy is still grinding along the fringes of recession. Jerry Culpepper, NASA’s public affairs director, loves his job and still believes in its mission, even though the |

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only foreseeable future is one of continuing slow decline. But then a routine release of background material from the late 1960s turns up an oddity. Before Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, there were two dress-rehearsal moon shots, both of which orbited the moon but did not land. Yet, a recording of a chat between Houston and Sydney Myshko, captain of the first of the test missions, shows Myshko apparently preparing to descend! And Aaron Walker, on the mission after Myshko, wrote in his diary that he landed on the moon. Both men are now dead and cannot be questioned. But was there a coverup?

Of what, and for what possible reason? Multibillionaire entrepreneur Morgan “Bucky” Blackstone sees a chance to goose the complacent Washington establishment and, not coincidentally, whip up enthusiasm for his own, strictly private enterprise, planned moon landings. As other evidence, suggestive yet inconclusive, trickles in, Jerry tries to keep a lid on things. Meanwhile, POTUS George Cunningham, an essentially decent man with a strong interest in NASA but hampered by intractable budgetary constraints, finds himself in a bind: If there was a conspiracy and he didn’t know, he’s out of touch and an idiotic dupe; if he did know, he’s a liar and part of the coverup. Against the solid and affectionately rendered NASA backdrop, the authors expertly crank up the tension and maintain it throughout via a suite of thoroughly believable characters.

A top-notch, edge-of-the-seat thriller in which there are no villains, only mysteries.

OFFICE GIRL

Meno, Joe Akashic (224 pp.) $23.95 | paper $14.95 | Jul. 17, 2012 978-1-61775-075-5 978-1-61775-076-2 paperback Sometimes things just don’t work out, no matter how hard we wish they would. But there’s irony, so we have that going for us. Right?

The talented Chicago-based Meno (The Great Perhaps, 2009, etc.) has composed a gorgeous little indie romance, circa 1999.

The titular protagonist is Odile, the arty, brazen and fearless 23-year-old who loves graffiti, the Velvet Underground’s “After Hours,” riding her bicycle around the city and the married guy she can’t have. She’s also chronically unemployable, generous to a fault and susceptible to dumb mistakes like offering a sexual favor to a co-worker who can’t keep his mouth shut, forcing Odile to quit and go take a crap job in customer service. Jack is a few years older and a spiraling tragedy of his own making. An art school graduate with no creative traction, he’s devastated by his abrupt divorce from Elise, to whom he was married less than a year. To fill his soul, Jack records things, and Meno turns these fleeting sounds into mini-portraits. “Everything is white and soft and dazzling,” he writes. “And Jack, in front of his apartment building, can’t help but stop and record as much of it as he can. Because it’s a marvel, an explosion, a cyclone of white and silver flakes.” The encounter between these two creative iconoclasts is less courting

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and more epiphany, as they discover the amazing and transformative effects of love with a joy as naïve as that of children. Their story can be artificially cute, with secret messages scrawled on city walls and dirty magazines awash with surrealistic Polaroid snapshots. But when things Get Weird as things do when we’re young, Meno is refreshingly honest in portraying the lowest lows and not just the innocent highs.

A sweetheart of a novel, complete with a hazy ending.

THE YEAR OF THE GADFLY

Miller, Jennifer Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (384 pp.) $24.00 | May 8, 2012 978-0-547-54859-3 Journalist Miller (Inheriting the Holy Land, 2005) makes her fiction debut with a smoldering mystery set in a New Eng-

land prep school.

Iris Dupont’s parents have relocated to western Massachusetts, ostensibly so she can attend the prestigious Mariana Academy, but really because they’re worried about Iris. Her best friend Dalia recently committed suicide, and Iris has been observed talking to a wall—actually, she confides, she’s talking to her idol, Edward R. Murrow, and, yes, she knows he’s dead; but their imaginary conversations help smart, ambitious Iris sort out her feelings and remain focused on her goal of becoming a great journalist. She gets plenty to investigate, beginning with a science book containing a mysterious inscription that she finds in the bedroom of Lily Morgan, daughter of Mariana’s former headmaster. The Duponts are temporarily staying in the absent Morgans’ house, a rare contrived premise in an otherwise well-plotted tale that mingles first-person narrations by Iris and biology teacher Jonah Kaplan, who was once a student at Mariana, with the grim story of Lily’s ordeal and departure from Mariana in 2000. The novel occasionally recalls Donna Tartt’s The Secret History (1992), with its tale of a covert student group (Prisom’s Party in this case) up to no good, but it’s far less pretentious, and Miller’s portrait of the way basically decent kids get sucked into destructive behavior is more credible. Prisom’s Party does engage in some very ugly antics, however, and as Mariana’s scandal-racked history unfolds through Iris’ detective work, we see that Jonah was implicated in past wrongdoing as well. The author skillfully ratchets up the tension as Iris (and the reader) finds it harder and harder to tell who the good guys are, particularly after Prisom’s Party sends an appealing boy to recruit her. It’s scarily possible that she will come to share Jonah’s guilt and grief, as she is manipulated into the sort of betrayal that shattered Lily’s life.

A gripping thrill ride that’s also a thoughtful comingof-age story.

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DEAR LIFE Stories

Munro, Alice Knopf (336 pp.) $26.95 | Nov. 13, 2012 978-0-307-59688-8 A revelation, from the most accomplished and acclaimed of contemporary short story writers.

It’s no surprise that every story in the latest collection by Canada’s Munro (Too Much Happiness, 2009, etc.) is rewarding and that the best are stunning. They leave the reader wondering how the writer manages to invoke the deepest, most difficult truths of human existence in the most plainspoken language. But the real bombshell, typically understated and matter-of-fact, comes before the last pieces, which the author has labeled “Finale” and written in explanation: “The final four works in this book are not quite stories. They form a separate unit, one that is autobiographical in feeling, though not, sometimes, entirely so in fact.

I believe they are the first and last—and the closest—things I have to say about my own life.” The “first” comes as a surprise, because her collection The View from Castle Rock (2006) was so commonly considered atypically autobiographical (albeit drawing more from family legacy than personal memory). And the “last”? When a writer in her early 80s declares that these are the last things she has to say about her life, they put both the life and the stories in fresh perspective. Almost all of them have an older character remembering her perspective from decades earlier, sometimes amused, more often baffled, at what happened and how things turned out. Most pivot on some sort of romantic involvement, but the partners are unknowable, opaque, often even to themselves. In “Train,” a character remarks, “Now I have got a real understanding of it and it was nobody’s fault.

It was the fault of human sex in a tragic situation.” In “Leaving Maverley,” she writes of “the waste of time, the waste of life, by people all scrambling for excitement and paying no attention to anything that mattered.”

The author knows what matters, and the stories pay attention to it.

THREE STRONG WOMEN

NDiaye, Mary Translated by Fletcher, John Knopf (304 pp.) $25.95 | Aug. 7, 2012 978-0-307-59469-3 The three women personifying the complicated relationship between France and Senegal in French-born NDiaye’s tripartite novel, winner of France’s Prix Concourt in 2009, need all the strength they can muster as they struggle to survive.

The novel opens with 38-year-old lawyer, Norah.

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Half-Sengalese, she was raised in France by her French working-class mother after her businessman father returned to his native Senegal, taking with him her beloved younger brother, Sony. When her once-powerful father asks her to visit, she drops everything to return to Senegal, where she finds him a seemingly broken man. Sony is in prison, charged with murdering the old man’s newest wife, the mother of two small girls he keeps locked in a room with a nursemaid named Khady. Soon, Norah’s Parisian live-in lover, whom she no longer trusts, shows up in Dakar with Norah’s little daughter, Lucie, and Norah is increasingly overwhelmed by conflicting pulls and loyalties. In the second section, Fanta is a Senegalese woman seen only through her French husband Rudy’s eyes. Rudy’s father ran a Senegalese vacation resort, possibly with Norah’s father, although the timeline and specifics remain vague. A bookish intellectual, Fanta was a successful teacher in Dakar before they married, but she has moved with him to France, where she finds herself unemployable. NDiaye follows Rudy, an emotionally damaged, abusive husband (not unlike Norah’s father and not unsympathetically drawn), through a disastrous day that shows the precarious position into which he has placed Fanta and their child as immigrants. The third section focuses on Khady. No longer caring for Norah’s nieces and suddenly widowed after a short marriage, Khady is forced to live with her in-laws. They don’t want her and pay a stranger to get her headed to France, supposedly to live with her cousin, Fanta. On the overland trip to the boat that will supposedly take her overseas, Khady faces one calamity after another. She thinks she has found a protector in a young man, but his desperation to escape Senegal proves greater than his affection or loyalty.

Unrelenting in its anger, pain and sorrow, but hard to put down.

PHANTOM

Nesbø, Jo Knopf (384 pp.) $25.95 | Oct. 2, 2012 978-0-307-96047-4 The internationally popular detective series by the Norwegian author builds to a blockbuster climax.

The Nesbø phenomenon has transcended “next Stieg Larrson” status. In practically every comparison except books sold (and, with millions to date, Nesbø’s catching up), he’s superior to his late Swedish counterpart: more imaginative, better plotting, richer characters, stronger narrative momentum, more psychological and philosophical depth. No, he doesn’t have an androgynously attractive tattooed girl, but he does have Harry Hole: long an Oslo detective who specialized in (increasingly gruesome) serial killers, now a recovering alcoholic involved in some shadowy pursuits in Hong Kong while trying to reclaim his soul. Only the most powerful lure could bring Harry back to the dangers and temptations he faces back home, and that lure is love. Readers of earlier books (and some |

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back story is necessary to feel the full impact of this one) will remember his doomed relationship with Rakel and the way he briefly served as a surrogate father to her son, Oleg. That innocent boy has now become a junkie and an accused murderer in a seemingly open-and-shut case, with Harry the only hope of unraveling a conspiracy that extends from a “phantom” drug lord through the police force to the government. The drug is a synthetic opiate called “violin,” three times stronger than heroin, controlled by a monopoly consortium. The murder victim (whose dying voice provides narrative counterpoint) was Oleg’s best friend and stash buddy, and his stepsister is the love of Oleg’s life. As Harry belatedly realizes, “Our brains are always willing to let emotions make decisions. Always ready to find the consoling answers our hearts need.” As all sorts of fatherson implications manifest themselves, the conclusion to one of the most cleanly plotted novels in the series proves devastating for protagonist and reader alike. Hole will soon achieve an even higher stateside profile through the Martin Scorsese film of Nesbø’s novel The Snowman (2011), but those hooked by that novel or earlier ones should make their way here as quickly as they can.

Where earlier novels provide a better introduction to Hole, this one best takes the full measure of the man.

SOMETHING RED

Nicholas, Douglas Emily Bestler/Atria (336 pp.) $25.00 | Sep. 18, 2012 978-1-4516-6007-4 Award-winning poet Nicholas (Iron Rose, 2010, etc.) treks into the wilds of medieval England in his first novel, a saga vibrant with artful description.

Maeve, known as Molly in England, is an Irish warrior queen, musician and healer. Exiled, she leads a caravan populated by Jack, once a crusader, now her companion; Nemain, her granddaughter; and Hob, an orphan put in her care by an aging priest. In baleful winter weather, Molly’s troop travels toward Durham, taking refuge first at St. Germaine de la Roche, a mountain monastery. An ominous atmosphere descends when one of the guardian monks, Brother Athanasius, is discovered dismembered nearby. Nicholas adeptly creates the medieval world, intriguingly populated by guilders, knights and wayfarers from faraway Lietuva. The group next stops at a vibrant country inn, a near-fortress against bandits, run

by Osbert atte Well. Nicholas’ language, its relevance to ancient times in syntax and vocabulary, and his extensive research into medieval England, bring this book to life in a brilliant fashion.

Nicholas’ descriptions of life at the inn and later at the redoubt of the Norman, Sir Jehan, the Sieur De Blanchefontaine, are superbly realistic. With religious pilgrims tagging along, Molly’s troop is attacked by bandits after they leave Osbert’s inn and are forced to return to its safer confines. But the inn has been destroyed, every creature massacred. Both Molly and Nemain know something wicked haunts the North Country, but it isn’t

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“An inventive, impressive and witty book.” from i am an executioner

until they seek shelter from a blizzard in Castle Blanchefontaine that the two seers understand a shape-shifter, a beserker, runs amok. Nicholas’ portrayal of Blanchefontaine and its inhabitants, from castellan to page, rings with authenticity. It slowly unfolds that the shape-shifter lurks among the castle refugees, and an epic battle unfolds. Nicholas’ final chapters wind down the story and set young Hob on the path to become the warrior consort of Nemain, destined to return triumphantly to Eire.

A hauntingly affecting historical novel with a touch of magic.

THE COLDEST NIGHT

Olmstead, Robert Algonquin (304 pp.) $22.95 | Apr. 3, 2012 978-1-61620-043-5

It’s extremes that rivet us in Olmstead’s searing seventh novel: the heaven of first love; the hell of the battlefield.

Henry Childs grew up in the mountains of West Virginia, raised by his grandfather and his sweet-natured mother Clemmie. (The mystery of his never-mentioned father is a late-revelation shocker.) His forebears were soldiers and horsemen, but they’ve lost their land, and Clemmie must move with Henry to the city, Charleston. In 1950, Henry is a high school junior with a passion for horses and baseball. He helps out at some stables where he meets Mercy. She comes from money and is university-bound, while Henry seems headed for a factory. The attraction between these virgins is mutual and overwhelming; from the outset, their sex is a rapt communication. Henry is warned off by her father and brother. The lovers elope to New Orleans, where an apartment is waiting for them, courtesy of Mercy’s accommodating aunt. They make it their Eden. Father and brother come to expel them, abducting Mercy, giving Henry a final warning. Though underage, he enlists as a Marine and is sent to Korea. He does recon with Lew, a gruff World War II vet. Quite unsentimentally, a bond develops, a wise-guy routine. The cold is arctic. The Chinese come at night, waves of them. It’s kill or be killed; answer atrocity with atrocity.

In New Orleans we ached because we feared what was happening had to end; in Korea we ache because we fear it never will.

Olmstead’s extraordinary language gives us new eyes.

An exceptionally fine study of love, war and the doubleedged role of memory, which can both sustain and destroy.

Prize-winning material.

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CHILDREN IN REINDEER WOODS

Ómarsdóttir, Kristín Translated by Smith, Lytton Open Letter (198 pp.) $14.95 paperback | Apr. 17, 2012 978-1-934824-35-1 A literary allegory filled with truths and absurdities about the human condition.

An unspecified army invades an unspecified country. Three soldiers arrive at a farm that is also a “temporary home for children” named Children in Reindeer Woods. Without apparent motive, they murder everyone except an 11-year-old girl, Billie. Then the soldier named Rafael murders his comrades. Now he wants to stop killing and become a farmer.

Billie is oddly unmoved by the killings and becomes his (platonic) companion as he tries to remake himself into a peaceful human being. Meanwhile, puppet masters on another planet pull strings as they try to manipulate events on Earth. This novel, translated from the Icelandic, takes getting used to. Many phrases are repeated numerous times, giving the story a strange cadence not often seen in Western literature. The characters are not from a particular country or a particular culture; they are from everywhere or anywhere or nowhere. Rafael wants to transform himself from everysoldier to Everyman. Can he go from blowing up bombs to helping Billie play with her Barbies? Others pass through Reindeer Woods, such as the wandering nun who stays overnight and either sleeps with Rafael or doesn’t. Rafael shoots off one of his toes every time he fails to live up to his own standards, but pain, bleeding and infection seem not to hobble him as he tends his cows and sheep. Despite all the bodies Rafael buries, there is also humor buried in the tale—not hilarity, but perhaps a few wry smiles at mankind’s foibles.

This is the first of Icelandic author Ómarsdóttir’s novels to appear in English, and it shouldn’t be the last. Somewhere in the reader’s mind, Catch-22 echoes faintly.

I AM AN EXECUTIONER Love Stories

Parameswaran, Rajesh Knopf (272 pp.) $24.95 | Apr. 10, 2012 978-0-307-59592-8

A debut story collection from Parameswaran.

The book opens with “The Infamous Bengal Ming,” narrated by a tiger who expresses affection for his keeper in the only language available to him, a fatal combination of mauling and love-biting; he then escapes the zoo to commit other acts of mayhem, under which lies a misunderstood tenderness. This tour de force sets the tone and the stage for these dark, rollickingly imaginative stories in which the powers of love and savagery are

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loosed upon each other again and again. In the title story, a semiliterate (and also fancily semi-literary) hangman tries to seduce his new wife despite her disgust at discovering the way he makes his living. Meanwhile, he tries to negotiate between the equal and opposite forces of compassion and brutishness within himself. In “The Strange Career of Dr. Raju Gopalarajan,” a fired computer salesman, an Indian-born American who believes deeply—too deeply—in the immigrant dream of self-reinvention, checks out anatomy texts from the public library and sets up shop in an exurban strip mall, claiming to be a doctor. Other stories feature a panopticonic security state in which everyone seems to be a government agent spying on everyone else; an elephant composing a memoir (in “Englaphant, that strange tongue native to all places of elephant-human contact,” we’re told); an Indian woman soldiering on with Thanksgiving plans despite the fact that her husband lies dead on the floor. The stories—some published in journals like McSweeney’s, Granta and Zoetrope—can sometimes be arch and tricksome, and they’re not for everyone. But Parameswaran is a dazzlingly versatile stylist, and the conceits and voices here are varied and evocative.

An inventive, impressive and witty book.

THE GIRL NEXT DOOR A Mystery

Parks, Brad Minotaur (336 pp.) $24.99 | $11.99 e-book | Mar. 13, 2012 978-0-312-66768-9 978-1-4299-4999-6 e-book

No one’s supposed to hate the girl next door.

Nancy Marino is sweet-natured, genuinely friendly, endlessly selfless, the quintessential nice girl. How can you possibly not like her? So when she meets sudden death, struck by a black Cadillac early one morning on a deserted street in suburban Newark, the universal reaction is shock and anger at a hit-and-run. But nobody for a moment considers malice—except for Carter Ross, ace investigative reporter for the Newark Eagle-Examiner, and even he doesn’t get there right away. Moved by the sheer tragedy of it, Carter at first sees his news story as a simple tribute, something owed to a remarkably good woman. Only then do the famous Carter Ross instincts kick in. Not that Carter looks much like a guy with game-changing instincts. He looks like what he is: a 32-year-old WASP male with “absolutely no interest” in being taken for anything else. Yet he has a highly developed ability to sniff out what’s dark in man’s relationship to man, or to a good woman. And if acting on instinct puts him in mortal danger, Carter has a theory about that. Whatever doesn’t kill him makes him a better newspaperman.

With his third featuring brash, breezy, unflappable Carter (Eyes of the Innocent, 2011, etc.), Parks propels himself to a niche shared by only a handful of others: writers who can manage the comedy-mystery.

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HAPPINESS IS A CHEMICAL IN THE BRAIN Stories

Perillo, Lucia Norton (224 pp.) $23.95 | May 7, 2012 978-0-393-08353-8

A prize-winning poet (and MacArthur Fellow grant recipient) extends her literary mastery with a debut story collection.

While these stories reflect the poet’s plainspoken virtuosity and elliptical compression, they are very much rooted in her experience in the Pacific Northwest. Perillo (Inseminating the Elephant, 2009, etc.) majored in wildlife management and worked summers at Mount Rainier National Park. Not that she idealizes or sentimentalizes the natural world, but it puts her very human characters in perspective: “There was beauty… and also decay, and the years were just a factory for changing one into the other.” The opening and closing stories (“Bad Boy Number Seventeen,” “Late in the Realm”), as well as one in the middle (“Saint Jude in Persia”), have the same first-person narrator, a young (initially), spirited woman whose love life is undermined by her limited possibilities, as she deals with a sister with Down syndrome and a mother embittered by the husband who deserted them. Funny and sad in equal measure, the stories find the narrator admitting, “I haven’t always proved to be the shrewdest judge of human nature. My romances have left me with a recurring dream in which I’m slashing tires and the tires’ blood is spilling out.” Throughout the fiction, blood ties are tenuous, commitment is provisional, and fate is arbitrary: “She packed her things and headed west, and when she hit the ocean and could go no further she tossed a coin and made a right-hand turn.” Thus do so many of the characters in these stories find themselves in the area around the Puget Sound, which more often seems a last ditch than a last chance. These are characters with grit and survival instincts, but ones who ask, “What was sadness, after all, but the fibrous stuff out of which a life was woven? And what was happiness but a chemical in the brain?”

Emotionally unflinching stories of considerable power, wonder and humor.

POISON FLOWER

Perry, Thomas Mysterious Press (288 pp.) $24.00 | Mar. 1, 2012 978-0-8021-2605-4 Jane Whitefield’s latest attempt to hide someone other people are looking for puts her in even more danger than usual, and that’s not easy.

Jane has so little trouble breaking James Shelby, framed for murdering his wife, out of police custody at the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal

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Courts Building in Los Angeles that you just know something’s going to go wrong. But the mishap this time is remarkably fast and unexpected: Three hard types who’ve been tracking Shelby go after Jane instead. Driving her to a remote desert location, they torture her, seeking information about her client, then realize that they can make a queen’s ransom by auctioning her off to one of the many criminals she’s outwitted by spiriting away their victims or enemies and settling them in new identities (Runner, 2009, etc.).

Jane manages to escape and takes refuge in a battered women’s shelter in Las Vegas, where she acquires yet another fugitive who must be hidden away. (“I guess I have a knack for making friends” is her laconic comment.) It would be unfair to reveal more about a story whose appeal depends so completely on Perry’s ability to keep you from seeing a single inch around the next corner. Suffice it to say that both Jane and the fake cops will put a great many more miles on vehicles they’ve rented or stolen before Jane confronts the brains behind the frame-up of Shelby in the nation’s heartland in a satisfyingly one-dimensional showdown.

A tour de force with no room for subtle characterization, complicated moral dilemmas or descriptions of anything that’s not instantly material to Jane’s job—just an hourslong jolt of pure, adrenaline-fueled plot. (Agent: Robert Lescher)

THE GREAT ESCAPE

Phillips, Susan Elizabeth Morrow/HarperCollins (432 pp.) $25.99 | July 10, 2012 978-0-06-210606-3 This highly anticipated book delivers Phillips’ fans a charming, satisfying answer to the question “So what does Lucy do?”

Lucy Jorik knows how lucky she is.

Saved as a young teen by the woman who would become the first female president of the United States, Lucy has spent her life since then being the eldest daughter of the perfect first family. But on the day she’s supposed to marry her perfect mate, she bolts from a life she feels she has fallen into, rather than one she really wants. Accepting a ride from the church on the back of a motorcycle with a perfectly inappropriate man, Lucy embarks on a journey of self-discovery that will take her from Texas to the Great Lakes, while forcing her to face her fears, inadequacies and issues of personal power.

Despite his warm-fuzzy name, Panda is tough, surly and sexy as hell, and like most of the world, knows all about Lucy and her story, while giving absolutely nothing away about himself.

The two share an electric attraction, but Panda is determined to keep Lucy at arm’s length and his secrets—not to mention his heart—well-protected. Lucy has run away from her life with a vengeance, and she’s not ready to go back anytime soon. As the world searches for her and the media condemns her, she’ll take on a disguise, a new persona and a brand new community of damaged, struggling people who are looking for their own lifeaffirming answers. Lucy finds comfort, friendship and authenticity on the shores of Lake Michigan in a rambling, shabby, 34

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formerly grand house with amazing potential that reflects Lucy’s desire to synthesize her past and present into a future as the woman she was meant to be, with the perfectly imperfect Panda by her side.

Offers humor, heart and characters you’ll cheer for.

Romantic women’s fiction at its best.

MY FIRST SUICIDE

Pilch, Jerzy Translated by Frick, David Open Letter (276 pp.) $15.95 paperback | May 15, 2012 978-1-934824-40-5 A set of loosely concatenated stories that don’t quite add up to a novel but are nonetheless rich in character and in the exploration of contemporary urban life in Poland.

In the title story, a man reminisces about a time 40 years before, when at the age of 12 he first had the impulse to take his life. He’s heard from Pastor Kalinowski (one of the recurring characters) about the “other world” and has some curiosity about the passage from This World to That. The possibility of his own self-destruction curiously liberates the narrator, so he gives himself permission to violate some taboos—like watch an adult film and read a forbidden book he’s found at the bottom of a cupboard. Pilch manages to inject a great deal of humor into the story—as well as tragedy, for it’s also about the narrator’s relationship to his drunken and dissolute father. “The Most Beautiful Woman in the World” announces its subject grandly, though the narrator is forced to admit she might only be in the top ten—or the top 100. He’s nevertheless pleased to have found her, though his sexual fantasies about her turn out to be at one and the same time both indulged in and quashed.

In “The Double of Tolstoy’s Son-in-Law,” the narrator develops an obsession about an old photograph of Tolstoy playing chess, while in “A Chapter about a Figure Sitting Motionless,” the obsession is with Anka Chow Chow, a virginal soccer fan who has a weakness, or perhaps a fetish, for girls with backpacks.

It’s hard to do justice to the outré and eccentric but gorgeous quality of Pilch’s prose. Here he manages to pull off some neat literary tricks, frequently and self-consciously undermining the seriousness of his subjects with pricks of irony.

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THE YELLOW BIRDS

Powers, Kevin Little, Brown (224 pp.) $24.99 | Sep. 11, 2012 978-0-316-21936-5

A novel about the poetry and the pity of war.

The title comes from an Army marching chant that expresses a violence that is as surprising as it is casual. Pvt. John Bartle’s life becomes linked to that of Pvt. Daniel Murphy when they’re both assigned to Fort Dix before a deployment to Iraq. Murph has just turned 18, but at 21, Bartle is infinitely more aged. In a rash statement, one that foreshadows ominous things to come, Bartle promises Murph’s mother that he’ll look out for him and “bring him home to you.” The irascible Sgt. Sterling overhears this promise and cautions Bartle he shouldn’t have said anything so impulsive and ill-advised. In Iraq nine months later, the two friends go on missions that seem pointless in theory but that are dangerous in fact. They quickly develop an apparent indifference and callousness to the death and destruction around them, but this indifference exemplifies an emotional distance necessary for their psychological survival. As the war intensifies in Nineveh province, they witness and participate in the usual horrors that many soldiers in war are exposed to. As a result of his experiences, Murph starts to act strangely, becoming more isolated and withdrawn until he finally snaps. Eventually he, too, becomes a victim of the war, and Bartle goes home to face the consequences of a coverup in which he’d participated.

Powers writes with a rawness that brings the sights and smells as well as the trauma and decay of war home to readers.

THE COVE

Rash, Ron Ecco/HarperCollins (272 pp.) $25.99 | Apr. 10, 2012 978-0-06-180419-9 Lonely young woman meets mysterious stranger. What might have been trite and formulaic is anything but in Rash’s fifth novel, a dark tale of Appalachian superstition and jingoism so good it gives you chills.

Three miles out of town, in the North Carolina mountains, a massive cliff rears up. Beneath it is a cove, gloom-shrouded and cursed, so the locals believe, though all the out-of-state Sheltons knew was that the farmland was cheap. The story takes place in 1918. Both parents have died, and their grown children, Hank and Laurel, are trying to cope. Hank is back from the war, missing one hand. Laurel has a purple birthmark; she has been ostracized by the townsfolk of Mars Hill as a witch. Rash’s immersion in country ways and idioms gives his work a rare integrity. One day, Laurel hears a stranger playing his flute in the woods; the sound is mournful but mesmerizing. The next time, |

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she finds him prone, stung by hornets, and nurses him back to health at the cabin. (What the reader knows, but Laurel doesn’t, is that he’s on the run from a barracks.) A note in his pocket tells her his name is Walter and he’s mute. Laurel can live with that.

She has low expectations, but maybe her life is about to begin.

Hank hires Walter to help him fence the pasture; he proves an excellent worker. Laurel confesses her “heart feelings”: Walter is encouraging; Laurel cries tears of joy. Meanwhile, in town, Sgt. Chauncey Feith, a bombastic, deeply insecure Army recruiter and faux patriot, is stoking fear of spies in their midst as local boys return from the front, some in terrible shape. Eventually, Laurel learns Walter’s identity; his back story is fascinating, but only a spoiler would reveal more. Let’s just say the heartbreaking climax involves a lynch mob led by Feith; perhaps the cove really is cursed.

Even better than the best-selling Serena (2008), for here Rash has elevated melodrama to tragedy.

IN THE SHADOW OF THE BANYAN

Ratner, Vaddey Simon & Schuster (336 pp.) $25.00 | Jul. 31, 2012 978-1-4516-5770-8 Ratner’s avowedly autobiographical first novel describes her family’s travails during the genocide carried out by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia in the late 1970s.

Despite the lingering effects of childhood polio, 7-yearold Raami is living a charmed existence. Her father is a minor royal prince and a sensitive, even saintly, poet, a member of the wealthy intelligentsia. Raami and her baby sister, Radana, are cared for by their beautiful young mother and a household of kindly, devoted servants in an atmosphere of privilege and also spiritual grace. Then comes the government overthrow. At first Raami’s father is hopeful that the new leaders will solve the injustice, but soon, the new government’s true nature reveals itself. Like most of the city’s residents, Raami’s extended family, including aunts, uncle, cousins and grandmother, are soon ordered out of Phnom Penh. They seek refuge at their weekend house but are driven from there as well. Part of the mass exodus, they try not to draw attention to their royal background, but Raami’s father is recognized and taken away, never to be seen again. Raami, her mother and Radana end up in a rural community staying in the primitive shack of a kindly, childless couple. There is little food, and the work is backbreaking. During monsoon season, Radana perishes from malaria, and Raami blames herself because she did not protect her adequately from the mosquitoes. Raami and her mother are ordered to another community. For four years, one terrible event follows another, with small moments of hope followed by cruelty and despair.

But her mother never stops protecting Raami, and although both grieve deeply for their lost loved ones, both find untapped stores of resilience. While names are changed (though not

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“This book will grab readers from page one and not let go.” from say you ’re sorry

ILLUMINATIONS A Novel of Hildegard von Bingen

Ratner’s father’s name, which she keeps to honor his memory) and events are conflated, an author’s note clarifies how little Ratner’s novel has strayed from her actual memory of events.

Often lyrical, sometimes a bit ponderous: a painful, personal record of Cambodia’s holocaust.

SAY YOU’RE SORRY

Robotham, Michael Mulholland Books/Little, Brown (432 pp.) $24.99 | Oct. 2, 2012 978-0-316-22124-5 Australia-based writer Robotham’s insightful psychologist Joe O’Loughlin once again tackles a tough case involving crimes that, at first blush, do not seem related.

Two young girls from a small English village disappear one night after attending a local funfair. Gorgeous, promiscuous Tash and quiet, athletic Piper had little in common, but became fast friends. Tash was brilliant, but underachieving. Her lower-middle-class family was troubled, and she attended a prestigious private school on scholarship, while Piper’s mismatched former-model mother and wealthy banker father lived in the area’s toniest neighborhood. While their disappearance initially sparked teams of searchers and outrage from the local citizenry, it simmered down once the police become convinced the girls were runaways. Three years later, the girls are still missing. In the meantime, O’Loughlin and his teenage daughter are trying to rebuild their fractured relationship, damaged by his estrangement from his wife. While attending a conference, police seek out the savvy profiler and ask for his help in solving a terrible double murder. As investigators wade through the blood bath of a crime scene, they learn that the home is connected to the girls’ disappearances. In fact, while the couple killed was no relation to Tash, the home in which it occurred was where she’d lived before she vanished.

While police puzzle through the homicide, another body is found, but this time, it’s an unidentified young woman found frozen in the ice of a nearby pond. O’Loughlin wants no part of either case but is soon sucked into helping police while racing against the clock to prevent another tragedy. Robotham’s writing ranges from insightful to superb, and he has no qualms about burdening his hero, O’Loughlin, with not only a broken personal life, but also a broken body courtesy of a case of Parkinson’s, making him not only more human, but more likable.

Subtle, smart, compelling and blessed with both an intelligent storyline and top-notch writing, this book will grab readers from page one and not let go until the final sentence.

Sharratt, Mary Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (288 pp.) $25.00 | Oct. 9, 2012 978-0-547-56784-6

A fictionalized biography of medieval mystic Hildegard von Bingen. Its publication will coincide with her appointment as a Doctor of the Church by Pope Benedict.

Eight-year-old Hildegard, a knight’s daughter, accompanies teenage Jutta, a countess’ daughter, as both are imprisoned in an anchorage, a tiny enclosure adjoining a Benedictine monastery chapel in the German hamlet of Disibodenberg. The girls are consecrated as “oblates,” an extreme form of cloistered nun. Their parents have ulterior motives for consigning each child to this sacred interment: Hildegard’s visions embarrass her family, and Jutta, a victim of incest, is unmarriageable. For the next 30 years, Hildegard, with the help of a monk named Volmar, manages to gain an education in music, languages and medicinal arts while Jutta starves herself and mortifies her flesh until she dies. Since the anchorage must now be unbricked for Jutta’s funeral, Hildegarde convinces the Abbot of Disibodenburg to allow her and two other oblates to remain free. Soon, Richardis is brought by her noble mother to serve Hildegard. Richardis is mute, but Hildegard correctly divines that her embrace of religious life is voluntary. When she speaks, it is to defend Hildegard’s visions and writings, which Richardis has helped to illustrate on parchment. This miracle affords Hildegard some credibility at Disibodenburg. Then, word comes that Pope Eugenius wants to scrutinize her first manuscript, Scivias. With the help of Volmar and her beloved brother, Rorich, who serves the Archbishop of Mainz, she is cleared of heresy and is even dubbed “God’s Sybil” by the pope. Now, Hildegard is free to fulfill her destiny, which she first fully realized at the age of 42, as a writer, healer, composer and abbess. But further hurdles await.

Sharratt brings the elusive Hildegard to vivid life, underscoring her ability to evade or transcend Church censure while espousing a protofeminist agenda.

The ideal companion to the elevation of Hildegard by the pontiff who rebuked American nuns for their outspokenness, an irony the saint herself might have relished.

THE SOLITARY HOUSE

Shepherd, Lynn Delacorte (352 pp.) $26.00 | May 1, 2012 978-0-345-53242-8

Shepherd’s latest detective story (Murder at Mansfield Park, 2010) is a Victorian tour de force that borrows characters from Charles Dickens’ Bleak House and Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White.

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Ever since Metropolitan police officer Charles Maddox was dismissed for insubordination, he’s eked out a living as a private detective. He currently has two cases. The first is finding the grandchild of a man who had cast out his pregnant daughter years before. The second is identifying the writer of threatening scrawls for Edward Tulkinghorn, a powerful attorney who represents the interests of the wealthy and highborn. Charles has learned a good deal from his great uncle. Now that this brilliant detective and mentor is slipping into the dark world of age-related mental illness, Charles, moving into his home to supervise his care, benefits from his meticulously kept case notes. At length, he realizes that his work for Tulkinghorn is leaving in its wake a string of corpses, many of them evidently connected to the horrific murder of several women. In 1850s England it is no easy task to confront the noble clients Tulkinghorn is protecting, but Charles is determined to discover the truth no matter where it leads. He is savagely attacked and even arrested. Can he rely on Inspector Bucket’s assurances that he is on Charles’ side? The enterprising sleuth’s life may depend on the answer when his two cases come together in a horrifying denouement.

Shepherd offers an intricate plot and a thousand details of the least-admirable side of Victorian life. A must-read.

(Agent: Ben Mason)

THE FALLEN ANGEL

Silva, Daniel Harper/HarperCollins (416 pp.) $27.99 | July 17, 2012 78-0-06-207312-9 Fast-paced action thriller from old hand Silva (Portrait of a Spy, 2001, etc.), whose hero Gabriel Allon returns in fine form.

As Silva’s legion of fans—including, it seems, every policy wonk inside the Beltway and Acela Corridor—knows, Gabriel is not just your ordinary spy. He’s a capable assassin, for one thing, and a noted art restorer for another, which means that his adventures often find him in the presence of immortal works of art and bad guys who would put them to bad use. This newest whodunit is no exception: Gabriel’s in the Vatican, working away at a Caravaggio, when he gets caught up in an anomalous scene—as a friendly Jesuit puts it with considerable understatement, “We have a problem.” The problem is that another Vatican insider has gone splat on the mosaic floor, having fallen some distance from the dome. Did she jump, or was she pushed? Either way, as the victim’s next of kin puts it, again with considerable understatement, “I’m afraid my sister left quite a mess.” She did indeed, and straightening it up requires Gabriel to grapple with baddies in far-flung places around Europe and the Middle East. It would be spoiling things to go too deeply into what he finds, but suffice it to say that things have been going missing from the Vatican’s collections to fund a variety of nefarious activities directly and indirectly, including some ugly terrorism out Jerusalem |

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way. But set Gabriel to scaling flights of Herodian stairs, and the mysteries fall into place—not least of them the location of a certain structure built for a certain deity by a certain biblical fellow. The plot’s a hoot but a believable one; think of a confection

by Umberto Eco as starring Jonathan Hemlock or a Dan Brown yarn intelligently plotted and written, and you’ll have a sense of what Silva is up to here.

It’s a grand entertainment to watch Silva putting Gabriel Allon’s skills to work, whether shedding blood or daubing varnish. A top-notch thriller.

WE’RE FLYING

Stamm, Peter Translated by Hofmann, Michael Other Press (384 pp.) $15.95 paperback | Aug. 14, 2012 978-1-59051-324-8 Beneath the surface placidity of Swiss life, undercurrents of spiritual turmoil and existential despair charge this powerful collection of provocative stories.

Renowned in European literary circles, Switzerland’s Stamm didn’t achieve his stateside critical breakthrough until his last novel (Seven Years, 2011, etc.). This story collection is even better, with pieces that read like the Zurich equivalent of Camus or Kafka, occasionally laced with a bit of Ibsen or Ingmar Bergman. Not a lot happens in these stories and what does mainly takes place internally, in the psyches of characters who don’t seem to have much control over their destinies or understanding of their motives and whose essential mysteries—to themselves and to the reader—could be described as the human condition. The American publication combines two separate story collections, the first published in 2008, the second in 2011, yet the stories themselves are timeless, like fables or parables, with the plainspoken translation reinforcing the stark, spare essence of the fiction. Some of these stories deal with the awkwardness of adolescence and sexual initiation, but the protagonists of many more are innocents as well. In “Children of God,” the longest story here, a minister navigates between sin and divinity as he falls in love with a young girl who insists that her pregnancy is an immaculate conception. In the process, he consults a doctor, one who was “not even an atheist, he believed in nothing, not even that there was no God.” The following story, “Go Out into the Fields...,” concerns a landscape artist—identified in the second person as “you”—who learned to paint when “you learned to see,” who “kept painting dusks, as if you wanted to stop time, to escape the certainty of death,” and who approaches his work with “a passionate indifference.” Another protagonist, a young girl who lives “In the Forest,” survives through “alert indifference.” Such a perspective might be considered Zurich Zen, and Stamm is its master.

For those who have an affinity for metaphysical fiction written with a surgeon’s precision, this collection will spur readers to seek out everything else by its author.

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THE BOOK OF MISCHIEF New And Selected Stories

Stern, Steve Graywolf (352 pp.) $26.00 | Sep. 4, 2012 978-1-55597-621-7

“Mischief ” is indeed the operative term here, for Stern’s characters are subtle, slyly humorous and at times poignant.

Stern’s geographical range is impressive, with most of the stories unfolding in The Pinch, the Jewish section in—of all incongruous places—Memphis, Tenn. In “The Tale of a Kite,” the opening story, Rabbi Shmelke is alleged to be able to fly.

While this fascinates the narrator’s son Ziggy, the narrator himself is less naïve and more skeptical, especially since the rabbi has a reputation for being on the “lunatic fringe” of Judaism.

In “Lazar Malkin Enters Heaven,” the narrator’s father-in-law untowardly refuses to die and thus causes untold embarrassment to his family. In fact, even when an angel appears to take him up to paradise, Malkin refuses to believe that the angel is real and snorts that “there ain’t no such place.” The angel becomes understandably offended but counters: “We’re even.

In paradise they’ll never believe you’re for real.” “Zelik Rifkin and the Tree of Dreams” features the title character who, testing his mother’s lack of attention, announces that he robbed a bank and killed a teller. “ ‘Just so you’re careful,’ ” she distractedly replies. After the first eight stories, Stern moves us out of Memphis and transports us to the Lower East Side of Manhattan at the turn of the 20th century. There, Prophet Elijah the Tishbite finds that after millennia of commuting between heaven and earth, and after being “translated to Paradise in a chariot of flame while yet alive,” he’s become a voyeur. After Manhattan, Stern shifts his narratives to Europe before returning to America for the final story, set in the Catskills.

Stern weaves an intricate and clever web of stories steeped in both sacred and mundane Jewish culture.

KINGS OF MIDNIGHT

Stroby, Wallace Minotaur (304 pp.) $24.99 | Apr. 10, 2012 978-1-250-00037-8

Chasing her retirement number, superthief Crissa Stone (Cold Shot to the Heart, 2011, etc.) fills bunches of money bags. And body bags.

Crissa Stone is a one-woman larceny machine—smart, resourceful and, above all, careful, which explains an enviable success rate. But she’s reached the point where it makes sense for her to leave the life behind. Her exit will require a really big final score. Fortunately, opportunity knocks in the guise of ex-mobster Benny Roth.

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Hidden deep in a witness protection program for longer than anyone can remember, Benny’s been doing an exemplary job of going straight. He has a job he likes, he has friends, and he has Marta. Benny’s 62, she’s in her 20s, yet the feeling between them is clearly genuine. Love and tranquility, however, come to an abrupt end with the intrusion of three wise guys from the East. Not only do they remember Benny, but they recall his connection to a certain vanished haul pegged at $8 million to $10 million. They want Benny to help recover what’s been lost.

Marta in tow, he wriggles free of them and, through a mutual friend, makes his way to Crissa. The aging racketeer and the slick young highway person form an unlikely partnership. Will it be strong enough to withstand their predators while they hunt for lost treasure? Or will thieves fall out?

Once again, Stroby demonstrates how adept he is at making readers empathize with the essentially unworthy.

THE APOCALYPSE CODEX

Stross, Charles Ace/Berkley (336 pp.) $25.95 | Jul. 3, 2012 978-1-937007-46-1

Fourth in the series (The Fuller Memorandum, 2010, etc.) about the Laundry: a weirdly alluring blend of superspy thriller, deadpan comic fantasy and

Lovecraftian horror.

In the universe Stross has conjured up, supernatural nasties are real, so naturally the British government has a department to deal with them. (The U.S. equivalent is known as the Nazgûl.) The Laundry, a department so secret that anybody that stumbles upon its existence is either compulsorily inducted or quietly eliminated, seems quintessentially British: the executive offices, known as Mahogany Row, remain eerily empty; forms must be signed in blood; and there are grandiloquent code names for everything. Applied computational demonologist Bob Howard has been fast tracked into management, having survived a series of dangerous and unpleasant encounters.

His boss, James Angleton, an Eater of Souls (Don’t ask. Really.), worries about CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN, but there’s a more immediate problem: Raymond Schiller, a supernaturally charismatic American televangelist, has grown uncomfortably chummy with the prime minister, but by convention and statute, the Laundry may not investigate the office they answer to.

So Bob finds himself working with “Externalities” in the shape of Persephone Hazard, an extremely powerful witch, and her sidekick Johnny McTavish, who has particular experience with creepy religious cults. Equipped with an unlimited credit card and a camera that doubles as a basilisk gun, Bob jets off to Denver to investigate and runs into an organization run by parasitic brain-sucking isopods—which turns out to be the least of his worries. Stross’ irreverent, provocative, often unsettling and undeniably effective brew seethes with allusions to other works of literature, film, music and what-all—it’s integral to the fun.

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“Utterly compelling.” from the coldest war

HAND ME DOWN

Readers familiar with Stross’ dazzling science fiction should relish this change of pace and direction.

Thorne, Melanie Dutton (320 pp.) $25.95 | Apr. 12, 2012 978-0-525-95268-8

WISH YOU WERE HERE

Swift, Graham Knopf (336 pp.) $25.00 | Apr. 17, 2012 978-0-307-70012-4

A novel as contemporary as international terrorism and the war in Iraq and as timeless as mortality, from one of Britain’s literary masters.

“The past is past, and the dead are the dead,” was the belief of the strong-willed Ellie, whose husband, Jack, a stolid former farmer, is the protagonist of Swift’s ninth and most powerful novel. As anyone will recognize who is familiar with his prize-winning masterworks (Last Orders, 1996, etc.), such a perspective on the past is in serious need of correction, which this novel provides in a subtly virtuosic and surprisingly suspenseful manner. It’s a sign of Swift’s literary alchemy that he gleans so much emotional and thematic richness from such deceptively common stock.

Jack and Ellie have grown up together in the British farm country, and their marriage is practically inevitable once both are on their own. Jack’s mother died when he was a boy; Ellie’s left home for another man. Jack’s brother, Tom, eight years younger but in many ways more worldly and self-assertive, forsakes the farm life to join the army as soon as he can. The fathers of Jack and Ellie both die; Tom remains out of contact for more than a decade. At Ellie’s insistence, they sell their property in order to run a seaside vacation park she has inherited. Every winter the childless couple takes a Caribbean vacation. When Tom dies in Iraq, Jack must deal with the arrangements. He cancels the annual vacation, and his marriage all but unravels. The minister who had handled the funeral of Jack’s father and now his brother knows that the eulogy needs to be “as little and simple as possible…as simple as possible being really the essence of the thing.” Swift somehow cuts to the essence of both a family’s legacy and the modern malaise through the reticent Jack, who comes to terms with the realization that “all the things that had once been dead and buried had come back again.”

Profound empathy and understated eloquence mark a novel so artfully nuanced that the last few pages send the reader back to the first few, with fresh understanding.

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First-time author Thorne wears her heart on her sleeve in this semiautobiographical tale about a 14-year-old who juggles equal amounts of hope and despair in her chaotic daily life.

Liz and younger sister Jaime have learned they can only count on one another after their mom, Linda, marries a convicted sex offender. Terrance, who parades around the small apartment half-dressed and leers at Liz, makes it clear that if she complains he’ll take it out on her sister. But when Terrance’s parole officer receives a tip that the ex-con is in violation of parole by living with the two girls, their mom’s solution is to farm the girls out to other family members. Jaime moves in with their dad, a lying drunk who mercilessly beat Linda during their marriage, while Liz is farmed out to Terrance’s brother, Gary, and his wife. Liz worries she’s missing too much school and is haunted by the fear that their father will repeat history and drive drunk with Jaime in tow. Liz continues to narrate her journey with prose that vibrates with intelligence and passion. Although she is just beginning her freshman year of high school, Liz manages to carry around with her a heavy burden of responsibility for her sister. Thorne writes Liz as world-weary and mature in ways children should not have to be.

From the mother who willingly throws over her children for the promise of marriage to a man who uses her, to the well-meaning Aunt Deborah, who offers Liz a home she cannot accept, Thorne populates her pages with characters who are fascinating and sharply drawn.

Failed by the adults in her life and forced to be the grown-up when she should be experiencing first dates and football games, Liz is a wise, wry, wonderful heroine.

(Agent: Trena Keating)

THE COLDEST WAR

Tregillis, Ian Tor (352 pp.) $25.99 | Jul. 17, 2012 978-0-7653-2151-0

Independently intelligible sequel to the dark fantasy Bitter Seeds (2010), something like a cross between the devious, character-driven spy fiction of early John le Carré and the mad science fantasy of the X-Men. Previously, during World War II, the Nazis developed warriors with devastating psychic powers. To combat them, British warlocks used their inherited lore to summon the Eidolons, irresistible demons beyond time and space, whose price for cooperation is extracted in the blood of innocents. Now, in 1963,

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after the Soviet Union defeated the Nazis and took over their horrid experiments, their empire stretches from the Pacific to the Atlantic save only for a narrow coastal strip west from Paris—America never entered the war and is still mired in a four-decades-long depression. Gretel and her younger brother Klaus, Nazi products captured by the Soviets and forced to cooperate with their experiments, escape from a prison camp and make their way to England where they insist on contacting former spy chief Raybould Marsh who, beset by personal tragedy, has turned into a belligerent drunk barely holding on to his job as a gardener. Marsh’s erstwhile colleague, the aristocratic Will Beauclerk, wracked with guilt over his part in summoning the Eidolons and subsequent slaughter of innocents, has betrayed the whereabouts of England’s warlocks to the Soviets, who are quietly assassinating them. It will be Marsh’s task to unmask Will’s treachery, learn what greater designs the Soviets have and counteract them, and deal with the seemingly untouchable Gretel, a psychic so formidable that she has foreseen all possible futures and is manipulating everybody toward an end only she knows. Despite the jaw-dropping backdrop and oblique plotting, the narrative is driven by character and personal circumstance, the only possible drawback being certain important developments that annoyingly take place offstage.

Grim indeed, yet eloquent and utterly compelling.

THE DREAM OF THE CELT

Vargas Llosa, Mario Translated by Grossman, Edith Farrar, Straus and Giroux (368 pp.) $28.00 | Jun. 12, 2012 978-0-374-14346-6 The Celt in question is Sir Roger Casement, who advocated on behalf of oppressed natives of the Congo and of Amazonia, but when he turns his attention to the Irish Troubles in 1916, the British feel he’s gone too far, so he’s caught, tried and executed.

Originally published in 2010 and now lyrically translated, the novel focuses on the three major stages in Casement’s life.

As a young man, he travels to the Congo, and while at first he’s enamored with the European “mission,” he soon has a Conradian epiphany about the exploitation of rubber workers, who are brutalized beyond belief. (Conrad, in fact, briefly appears in the novel.) Casement’s report about this exploitation garners him much acclaim in England. Next he turns his compassionate vision toward Amazonia, that section of Peru in which the indigenous peoples are once again being savagely misused by a multinational corporation—in this case, the Peruvian Amazon Company, whose board, Casement discovers, comprises a number of prominent Englishmen, but in his role of British consul, he courageously speaks out against the atrocities he finds there and once again publishes a devastating report; this time, his findings ironically lead to his being knighted by the British. In the final phase of his life—he died at the tragically 40

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young age of 51—he supports independence for his native Ireland, naively working with the Germans during World War I against an England he now hates. At the Easter Rising, he’s caught and four months later is executed at Pentonville Prison in London. Although politically and morally committed to his causes, Casement feels poor in love, for his “relationships” consist solely of fleeting and furtive homosexual liaisons. Vargas Llosa speculates that the so-called Black Diaries Casement left are authentic but that he uses them to record sexual fantasies as much as sexual reality.

A dazzling novel of great intensity and power.

THE AGE OF MIRACLES

Walker, Karen Thompson Random House (288 pp.) $26.00 | Jun. 26, 2012 978-0-8129-9297-7

In Walker’s stunning debut, a young California girl coming-of-age in a dystopian near future confronts the inevitability of change on the most personal level as life on earth withers.

Sixth-grader Julia, whose mother is a slightly neurotic former actress and whose father is an obstetrician, is living an unremarkable American middle-class childhood. She rides the school bus and takes piano lessons; she has a mild crush on a boy named Seth whose mother has cancer; she enjoys sleepovers with her best friend Hanna, who happens to be a Mormon. Then, one October morning, there’s a news report that scientists have discovered a slowing of the Earth’s rotation, adding minutes to each day and night. After initial panic, the human tendency to adapt sets in even as the extra minutes increase into hours. Most citizens go along when the government stays on a 24-hour clock, although an underground movement of those living by “real time” sprouts up. Gravity is affected; birds begin to die, and astronauts are stranded on their space station. By November, the “real time” of days has grown to 40 hours, and the actual periods of light and dark only get longer from that point. The world faces crises in communication, health, transportation and food supply. The changes in the planet are profound, but the daily changes in Julia’s life, which she might be facing even in a normal day, are equally profound. Hanna’s family moves to Utah, leaving Julia without a best friend to help defend against the bullies at the bus stop.

She goes through the trials and joys of first love. She begins to see cracks in her parents’ marriage and must navigate the currents of loyalty and moral uncertainty. She faces the sickness and death of loved ones. But she also witnesses constancy and perseverance. Julia’s life is shaped by what happens in the larger world, but it is the only life she knows, and Walker captures each moment, intimate and universal, with magical precision.

Riveting, heartbreaking, profoundly moving.

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“A superb romp.” from beautiful ruins

BEAUTIFUL RUINS

Walter, Jess Harper/HarperCollins (352 pp.) $25.99 | Jun. 12, 2012 978-0-06-192812-3 Hollywood operators and creative washouts collide across five decades and two continents in a brilliant, madcap meditation on fate.

The sixth novel by Walter (The Financial Lives of the Poets, 2009, etc.) opens in April 1962 with the arrival of starlet Dee Moray in a flyspeck Italian resort town. Dee is supposed to be filming the Liz Taylor–Richard Burton costume epic Cleopatra, but her inconvenient pregnancy (by Burton) has prompted the studio to tuck her away. A smitten young man, Pasquale, runs the small hotel where she’s hidden, and he’s contemptuous of the studio lackey, Michael Deane, charged with keeping Dee out of sight. From there the story sprays out in multiple directions, shifting time and perspective to follow Deane’s evolution into a Robert Evans–style mogul; Dee’s hapless aging-punk son; an alcoholic World War II vet who settles into Pasquale’s hotel to peck away at a novel; and a young screenwriter eagerly pitching a dour movie about the Donner Party. Much of the pleasure of the novel comes from watching Walter ingeniously zip back and forth to connect these loose strands, but it largely succeeds on the comic energy of its prose and the liveliness of its characters.

A theme that bubbles under the story is the variety of ways real life energizes great art—Walter intersperses excerpts from his characters’ plays, memoirs, film treatments and novels to show how their pasts inform their best work. Unlikely coincidences abound, but they feel less like plot contrivances than ways to serve a broader theme about how the unlikely, unplanned moments in our lives are the most meaningful ones. And simply put, Walter’s prose is a joy—funny, brash, witty and rich with ironic twists. He’s taken all of the tricks of the postmodern novel and scoured out the cynicism, making for a novel that’s life-affirming but never saccharine.

A superb romp.

BUILDING STORIES

Ware, Chris Pantheon $50.00 | Oct. 2, 2012 978-0-375-42433-5

A treasure trove of graphic artworks—they’re too complex to be called comics—from Ware, master of angst, alienation, sci-fi and the crowded street.

At 44, Ware (The Acme Novelty Library, 2005, etc.) is old enough to remember the day when you could stick a few dollars in an envelope, send it off and have a box full of strange goodness come to your door—a mystery box, that is, with puzzles, games, gag items and maybe one or two things |

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worth keeping. Opening the oversized box that contains the many pieces of this book is a kindred experience: It’s not quite clear what’s inside, save for brightly colored paper in various forms, from foldout poster to ultrathin, small notebook to sturdy hardcover. Each package contains a story set, as the title suggests, in or near a teeming city. How the reader reads these seems not to matter, for the box is like a river, if that’s not too mixed a metaphor, into which one steps where the current seems safest; there’s no beginning to it and no end. One thing is clear: Not many of Ware’s characters are happy, even if they live in buildings that are overstuffed, like this box, with things. One young woman, for instance, recounts, “There were whole stretches of days where I never even left the house at all...never saw or talked to another human being...I just ordered pizzas, watched TV, and read books....Of course, I went grocery shopping, and a couple of times I walked to the ‘downtown’ of the suburb and ate dinner by myself, just for variety’s sake.” That’s a humdrum existence by any measure—especially the being stuck in the suburbs part— but considering the likely fate of the little honeybee, Branford, who is the hero of one of the little books, it’s not to be dismissed.

And anyway, try finding a four-room flat for $650 a month in the city these days—one in a building that, in Ware’s surreal inventory, has seen 13,246 light bulbs, 725 roasted turkeys and 158,854 lighted matches—all of which add up, one suspects, to the number of ways in which one can read this puzzling tome.

A dazzling document, beautifully if most idiosyncratically drawn; in this iteration, sure to become a collector’s item, though one that begs for an easier-tohandle trade edition.

THE NEWS FROM SPAIN Seven Variations on a Love Story

Wickersham, Joan Knopf (224 pp.) $24.95 | Oct. 11, 2012 978-0-307-95888-4

Elegantly structured, emotionally compelling fiction from novelist/memoirist Wickersham (The Suicide Index, 2008, etc.).

The seven pieces here tell seven different stories, though each has the same title. “The News from Spain” is also a touchstone phrase in each, its meaning transformed by the characters’ experiences. In the first tale, a woman whose longtime marriage has been rocked by a single infidelity sits on the beach with her friend, a man marrying for companionship and hoping his bride-to-be doesn’t want sex; they listen to “the news from Spain” roaring in a seashell, a recollection of simpler times. The phrase encapsulates a daughter’s discovery of her profound love for her dying mother; the excitement a teacher brings into a student’s life; betrayal, tragedy and the eternal sameness amid varieties of love. Four pieces are pure fiction, but Wickersham is particularly interesting when she rings changes on history.

A very long tale insightfully examines the real-life marriage of

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choreographer George Balanchine and ballerina Tanaquil Le Clercq, stricken by polio and forced to accept her husband’s unfaithfulness; but it is just as nuanced and shrewd about Le Clercq’s relationship with her gay caregiver. The collection’s best story imagines modern odysseys for the Countess in The Marriage of Figaro and Elvira from Don Giovanni, interpolating the memoirs of their creator, librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte; what could have been a gimmick is instead a beautiful meditation on art, love and friendship. The final piece is slightly bumpier, as it interweaves memories of a platonic adultery that may or may not be fictional with the story of a New York doctor beloved by both a president’s widow and a female journalist (unnamed, as were Balanchine and Le Clercq, but clearly Eleanor Roosevelt, Martha Gellhorn, and David Gurewitsch). Yet, here too Wickersham dissects the human heart with precision and restraint that make her work all the more moving.

Short stories don’t get much better than this, and for once, the overarching framework strengthens rather than dissipates their effectiveness.

HOSTAGE

Wiesel, Elie Translated by Temerson, Catherine Knopf (224 pp.) $25.95 | Aug. 24, 2012 978-0-307-59958-2 Wiesel takes us on a journey through dream, memory and especially storytelling in his latest novel, which concerns Shaltiel Feigenberg, who in 1975, is captured and imprisoned for 80 hours in a basement by two captors.

Feigenberg is politically unimportant and practically unknown before his capture, but soon thereafter he becomes front-page news, though his plight is reported in wildly different ways by the world press. His captors represent divergent political realities. One, Luigi, is an Italian political revolutionary with no particular animus against Jews, while the second, Ahmed, is a passionate advocate for Palestine with an intense hatred for the “Zionist cause.” Perhaps predictably, a “bad cop–good cop” dynamic develops as they tend to Feigenberg, Luigi gradually freeing him from restraints while Ahmed rails with fanatic fervor against all that Feigenberg represents to him. Luigi and Ahmed are motivated by “humanitarian” concerns—they demand that three Palestinian prisoners be freed in exchange for Feigenberg’s freedom—rather than materialistic ones. Feigenberg is mystified by his captivity, for he’s simply a professional storyteller with a special fondness for spinning his tales to children and the elderly. This forced period of darkness ironically provides him with an extended period of enlightenment, as he has time to reflect on his life—the death of his grandmother at Auschwitz, his frequently absent but observant father, his initial meeting with Blanca (the woman who eventually becomes his wife), and the growing Communist sympathies of his older brother. He begins to frame the narrative of 42

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his life in much the same way he frames the stories he makes up to entertain others. Even the Israeli government—a government that notoriously does not negotiate with terrorists—gets involved in trying to track down the elusive captive.

Nobel Peace Prize winner Wiesel continues to remind us of the brilliant possibilities of the philosophical and political novel.

THE HERMETIC MILLENNIA

Wright, John C. Tor (400 pp.) $25.99 | Dec. 24, 2012 978-0-7653-2928-8

Second installment of Wright’s ferociously dense and convoluted far-future space opera involving hyperintelligence, aliens and artificial evolution (Count to a Trillion, 2011). Warning up front: Read the first book first.

Thanks to the discovery of an alien storehouse of knowledge and source of energy, former Texas gunslinger Menelaus Montrose transformed himself into a supergenius. Unfortunately, so did his colleagues, who, led by Zimen “Blackie” Del Azarchel, desire only to rule the Earth. Menelaus tried but failed to prevent them. However, aliens known as the Domination of Hyades regard themselves as Earth’s overlords, and in 8,000 years, they will arrive to take ownership. Blackie and company, then, intend to force the development of a suitably advanced yet compliantly slave-worthy population. Menelaus’ wife, meanwhile, is heading at near-light speed for a remote globular star cluster in order to confront the Hyades’ bosses’ bosses. She will, of course, arrive back at Earth 50,000 years too late to prevent the Hyades’ occupation, so somehow Menelaus must prevent the slavers from exterminating humanity until she arrives. Menelaus arranges to enter cryonic suspension, with instructions to wake him periodically so he can gauge what Blackie and his co-conspirators have been up to and, hopefully, counteract them. When he wakes, however, Menelaus discovers that the tombs where he and others were preserved have been ripped open and plundered by Blackie’s Blue Men minions—merely the latest example of Blackie’s efforts to create ideal subjects for the Hyades. So: An impressive torrent of information, factual, extrapolative and speculative, explicated via a series of dazzlingly erudite conversations that build weird post-humans into recognizable characters. Oh, and a plot that goes nowhere at all.

Astonishing stuff that leaves readers with plenty of work to do.

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top 25 fiction books

BLASPHEMY

TELEGRAPH AVENUE

LAZARUS IS DEAD

Sherman Alexie Grove

Richard Beard Europa Editions

HOPE: A TRAGEDY

THE SANDCASTLE GIRLS

Shalom Auslander Riverhead

Michael Chabon Harper/HarperCollins

THE INVESTIGATION

Philippe Claudel Talese/Doubleday

Chris Bohjalian Doubleday

KINGDOM COME

A HOLOGRAM FOR THE KING

TELL THE WOLVES I’M HOME

J.G. Ballard Liveright/Norton

Dave Eggers McSweeney’s

Carol Rifka Brunt Dial Press

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THE GARDEN OF EVENING MISTS

Tan Twan Eng Weinstein Books

GONE GIRL

Gillian Flynn Crown

CANADA

Richard Ford Ecco/HarperCollins

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top 25 f i c t i o n b o o k s ( c o n t. )

BILLY LYNN’S LONG HALFTIME WALK

Ben Fountain Ecco/HarperCollins

THE 100-YEAR-OLD MAN WHO CLIMBED OUT THE WINDOW AND DISSAPEARED

ZOO TIME

Howard Jacobson Bloomsbury

BEAUTIFUL RUINS

Ron Rash Ecco/HarperCollins

Jess Walter Harper/HarperCollins

WISH YOU WERE HERE

Chris Ware Pantheon

Jonas Jonasson Hyperion

ARCADIA

Lauren Groff Voice/Hyperion

THE COVE

DEAR LIFE

Alice Munro Knopf

THE COLDEST NIGHT

Robert Olmstead Algonquin

Graham Swift Knopf

THE AGE OF MIRACLES

Karen Thompson Walker Random House

BUILDING STORIES

HOSTAGE

Elie Wiesel Knopf

AEROGRAMMES

Tania James Knopf 44

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children’s As I write this, I have moved firmly into 2013; the shelves are, metaphorically at least, empty. But just a few weeks ago, they were groaning—near collapse, even. All year long, I save up books that have received starred reviews, and then, right after Labor Day, I look at them to assemble my year’s best lists.

This process is far from easy. I solicit input from my crackerjack corps of reviewers and do a fair amount of solitary navelgazing on the subject. I want to make sure I assemble a healthy mix—picture storybooks, informational picture books, poetry, graphic novels, novels, nonfiction, early readers, books for boys, books for girls….You get the picture. And I agonize over my inability to include every book that I have come to love.

I spread my agony around, too—this year I asked for an extra couple of days for dithering: I begged for “time to wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat because I forgot something critical. I guarantee this will happen at least three times.” It did.

But at the end of it all, having whittled the year’s output down to 100 titles, I am struck again at the astonishing talent and dedication of the creators and publishers of children’s books. Here we have books that will inspire, comfort, inform, delight, provoke and amuse; books for babies through upperelementary students. Books that welcome children into the world and help them get ready for what is to come. All that agony is definitely worth it.

— Vicky Smith

THE MIGHTY MISS MALONE

Curtis, Christopher Paul Wendy Lamb/Random (224 pp.) $15.99 | PLB $18.99 Jan. 10, 2012 978-0-385-73491-2 978-0-385-90487-2 PLB

THE TOWN MOUSE AND THE COUNTRY MOUSE

Aesop Illus. by Ward, Helen Templar/Candlewick (48 pp.) $16.99 | Sep. 11, 2012 978-0-7636-6098-7 In this splendid retelling of Aesop’s familiar fable, a country mouse leaves his bucolic existence to sample the glitz and glam of the city, only to discover there’s absolutely no place like home.

Country mouse “live[s] a quiet life among the seasons.” He is perfectly content until his “fine, sleek” town cousin comes to visit, criticizes the mud and dangerous wildlife (a sleeping fawn, in the illustration), and boasts about the city’s “rich, exotic foods.” Urging his cousin to see the wonders of the city for himself, town mouse departs, leaving country mouse discontent and with “a longing for new sights and sounds.” Country mouse hitches a ride to the city, where he discovers electric lights and towers of glass and stone. His cousin’s apartment is indeed luxurious and the food delicious, but country mouse soon yearns for the simple pleasures of home. The elegant, simple text contrasts the natural beauty of the countryside with the artificiality of the city. Sumptuous watercolor illustrations enhance the rural/ urban juxtaposition with luminous close-ups of country mouse immersed in the seasonal flora and fauna of the English countryside and overwhelmed by the “noise and bustle and hum” of a 1930s-era city at Christmas. The richly detailed illustrations invite and reward close inspection.

A visual stunner. (Picture book. 4-7)

THE ONE AND ONLY IVAN

Applegate, Katherine Illus. by Castelao, Patricia Harper/HarperCollins (320 pp.) $16.99 | PLB $17.89 | Jan. 17, 2012 978-0-06-199225-4 978-0-06-199226-1 PLB How Ivan confronts his harrowing past yet stays true to his nature exemplifies everything youngsters need to know about courage.

Living in a “domain” of glass, metal and cement at the Big Top Mall, Ivan sometimes forgets whether to act like a gorilla or a human—except Ivan does not think much of humans. He describes their behavior as frantic, whereas he is a peaceful

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“Bang’s art is richly kinetic, with its whorls and stipples indicating plant and animal life in profusion, from the swirling microscopic creatures to graceful large fish and whales.” from ocean sunlight

artist. Fittingly, Ivan narrates his tale in short, image-rich sentences and acute, sometimes humorous, observations that are all the more heartbreaking for their simple delivery. His sorrow is palpable, but he stoically endures the cruelty of humans until Ruby the baby elephant is abused. In a pivotal scene, Ivan finally admits his domain is a cage, and rather than let Ruby live and die in grim circumstances, he promises to save her. In order to express his plea in a painting, Ivan must bravely face buried memories of the lush jungle, his family and their brutal murder, which is recounted in a brief, powerful chapter sure to arouse readers’ passions. In a compelling ending, the more challenging question Applegate poses is whether or not Ivan will remember what it was like to be a gorilla. Spot art captures poignant moments throughout.

Utterly believable, this bittersweet story, complete with an author’s note identifying the real Ivan, will inspire a new generation of advocates. (author’s note) (Fiction. 8-12)

FIFTY CENTS AND A DREAM Young Booker T. Washington

Asim, Jabari Illus. by Collier, Bryan Little, Brown (48 pp.) $16.99 | Dec. 4, 2012 978-0-316-08657-8

A former slave fulfills his quest for an education and much more in this superbly designed tribute to an oft-maligned African-American educator and author.

The young Washington, who learned his letters from a spelling book his mother gave to him, hears about Hampton College in Virginia, over 500 miles away. With the help of neighbors who share their precious coins, he travels, mostly on foot, from West Virginia with hunger, cold and weariness as constant companions. Asim’s lyrical text transforms the journey into a spiritual awakening for a young man who had “a dream in his soul.”

Collier is in brilliant Caldecott Honor style, using his signature watercolor paintings and cut-paper collage to incorporate elements from Booker’s life and visions into each illustration. A map route is a design on his shirt, and letters and words from the speller he cherished decorate the pages. Each tableau is beautifully composed and balanced with textured colors and patterns. The cover display type and the endpapers, which are taken from Webster’s American Spelling Book, embellish this ode to book learning. Washington’s was not a life filled with anger and fiery oratory. Rather, Asim and Collier laud his steadfast determination and lifelong dedication to learning.

An outstanding achievement and a life worthy of note. (additional facts, author’s note, illustrator’s note, bibliography) (Picture book/biography. 4-8)

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OCEAN SUNLIGHT How Tiny Plants Feed the Seas

Bang, Molly; Chisholm, Penny Illus. by Bang, Molly Scholastic (48 pp.) $18.99 | May 1, 2012 978-0-545-27322-0

An awe-inspiring lesson in photosynthesis goes under the sea.

As in this pair’s previous Living Sunlight (2009), the sun addresses readers to explain the role of solar energy in supporting the chain of life—this time in the ocean. A summary of the process of photosynthesis occupies the first few spreads.

Warm yellow sunlight suffuses these pages, and small insets accompany the textual explanation of how plants make sugar from water and carbon dioxide. Then the focus moves to the sea, first near the surface, where phytoplankton grow and multiply, and then to the depths, where nutrient-rich marine “snow” sifts down to feed creatures who live away from sunlight. The transformation of sunlight, water and carbon dioxide into phytoplankton (“the great invisible pasture of the sea”), on which feed zooplankton and progressively larger animals, is set against background paintings of rich marine blues and greens. The churning and recycling of these nutrients is shown again to be a gift of the sun: “My sunlight powers winds that build great storms and mix the water layers of the seas.” Bang’s art is richly kinetic, with its whorls and stipples indicating plant and animal life in profusion, from the swirling microscopic creatures to graceful large fish and whales.

Readers will want to visit more than once to capture both the science and the abundant sense of celebration here. (Informational picture book. 5-11)

EXTRA YARN

Barnett, Mac Illus. by Klassen, Jon Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins (40 pp.) $16.99 | Jan. 17, 2012 978-0-06-195338-5 A little girl in a town of white snow and soot-blackened chimneys opens a small box and discovers a never-ending gift of colorful yarn.

Annabelle knits herself a sweater, and with the leftover yarn, she knits one for her dog, and with the yarn left over from that, she knits one for a neighbor and for her classmates and for her teacher and for her family and for the birdhouse and for the buildings in town. All and everything are warm, cozy and colorful until a clotheshorse of an archduke arrives. Annabelle refuses his monetary offers, whereupon the box is stolen. The greedy archduke gets his just deserts when he opens the box to find it empty. It wends its way back to Annabelle, who ends up happily sitting in a knit-covered tree. Klassen, who worked on the film Coraline, uses inks, gouache and colorized scans of

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“Bryan’s Bethlehem, a ‘rich and verdant land,’ seems an enchanted place where something mysterious and wonderful could happen….” from who built the stable?

a sweater to create a stylized, linear design of dark geometric shapes against a white background. The stitches of the sweaters add a subdued rainbow. Barnett entertained middle-grade readers with his Brixton Brothers detective series. Here, he maintains a folkloric narrative that results in a traditional story arc complete with repetition, drama and a satisfying conclusion.

A quiet story of sharing with no strings attached. (Picture book. 4-7)

Z IS FOR MOOSE

Bingham, Kelly Illus. by Zelinsky, Paul O. Greenwillow/HarperCollins (32 pp.) $16.99 | PLB $17.89 | Mar. 1, 2012 978-0-06-079984-7 978-0-06-079985-4 PLB A wry twist on an alphabet story makes for laugh-out-loud fun.

Poor Moose. He tries to get into the alphabetic act on every letter page from D to L, but Zebra, who’s directing the assemblage, insists it’s not his turn yet and that he must move off the page. When it IS time for M, Zebra decides to go with Mouse, and Moose flips his antlers—well, his lid. Zebra tries to console the despondent moose, telling him he can still be in the book even though the only letter left is Z. Solution? Z becomes “Zebra’s friend, Moose.” How perfect that Z-elinsky is the illustrator. His often-elegant style turns comedic here, with brightly colored borders framing each letter in a simple scene. The borders become a design device for Moose, as he pokes his head over the edges or stomps the scene within angrily. In others, Moose tries to camouflage himself, as when he squeezes behind an Ice-cream cone or hitchhikes a ride in the Kangaroo’s pouch.

Dialogue balloons express Moose’s eagerness, asking, “Now?” and declaring (mistakenly), “Here it comes!” Zebra, wearing a referee’s black-and-white striped shirt and carrying a clipboard, answers, “NO, not yet!” Kids who are learning their ABCs or have just learned them will find this hysterical, and it has great potential for storytimes.

Just label it F for funny. (Picture book. 4-6)

WHO BUILT THE STABLE? A Nativity Poem

Bryan, Ashley Illus. by Bryan, Ashley Atheneum (40 pp.) $16.99 | $12.99 e-book | Oct. 2, 2012 978-1-4424-0934-7 978-1-4424-5458-3 e-book

or starlight. Striped borders frame double-page spreads showing layered scenes of the carpentry shop, the stable and the surrounding countryside, a place of lush plants and huge trees. The boy who builds the stable serves as a shepherd, caring for the family’s animals, but he is also a beginning carpenter, apprenticed to his father. The boy builds the stable himself and takes care of the animals there each morning and evening. When he sees Mary and Joseph outside at night with no place to sleep, the boy asks if they need help and offers them his stable. He sweeps the floor, puts fresh hay in the manger, provides a blanket and water, and leaves his dog behind to watch over the sleeping couple. At dawn, the boy meets the new baby, proclaiming that this child will also be both a carpenter and a shepherd. Bryan’s Bethlehem, a “rich and verdant land,” seems an enchanted place where something mysterious and wonderful could happen, especially with a huge, twirling star illuminating the night sky.

Brilliant. (Picture book. 4-8)

JIMMY THE GREATEST!

Buitrago, Jairo Illus. by Yockteng, Rafael Translated by Amado, Elisa Groundwood (52 pp.) $18.95 | $18.95 e-book | May 15, 2012 978-1-55498-178-6 978-1-55498-206-6 e-book

In a thought-provoking twist on the usual immigrant story, a village lad elects to stay put.

Though Jimmy’s town is just a scattering of shacks on a broad beach, there is a tiny gym, owned by Don Apolinar. He gives Jimmy a box full of books and clippings about Muhammad Ali that sparks a yen in the boy to become a boxer. Yockteng depicts the tall, dark-skinned lad running across a sun-drenched landscape at the head of a gaggle of laughing children. He shadowboxes and demonstrates his strength by letting a goat butt him in the chest, carrying huge loads of fish and other feats. But when Don Apolinar departs for the big city, where there are “real jobs,” Jimmy decides to stay, taking over the gym and adding a library to it. “Maybe one day he’ll get a match,” the narrative concludes, but then it gives Jimmy the last words: “Listen to me. / This is my town. / … / We dance and we box / and we don’t / sit around waiting / to go someplace else.” Idealized as it may be, the idyllic setting and smiling, bright-eyed faces on view in the illustrations make his choice easy to understand.

Eye-opening inspiration in this unassuming import from Colombia. (Picture book. 6-8)

Bryan’s Christmas offering combines a poignant poem about a shepherd boy who builds his own stable with exuberant paintings in a masterful melding of rhythmic text and dazzling art.

His illustrations, in vibrant, glowing hues, fairly leap off the page with swirls of color in stained-glass tones lit by sunshine 48

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A year of SHINING STARS from Chronicle Books!

A ROCK IS LIVELY

HOW MANY JELLY BEANS?

By Andrea Menotti Illustrated by Yancey Labat $18.99 HC 978-1-4521-0206-1

★ “[A] fresh approach to

WATER SINGS BLUE

huge numbers.”

By Kate Coombs Illustrated by Meilo So

—Booklist, starred review

$16.99 HC 978-0-8118-7284-3

★ “Utterly delightful.”

—Publishers Weekly, starred review

★ “Evocative.”

By Dianna Hutts Aston Illustrated by Sylvia Long $16.99 HC 978-1-4521-0645-8

★ “Another beauty ...Eye-catching and eye-opening.” —School Library Journal, starred review

IT’S A TIGER!

By David LaRochelle Illustrated by Jeremy Tankard $16.99 HC 978-0-8118-6925-6

★ “A participatory storytime winner.”

—Publishers Weekly, starred review

—School Library Journal, starred review

★ “A unique and interesting perspective.”

—School Library Journal, starred review

★ “An excellent source of

UNUSUAL CREATURES

verse for reading aloud.”

—Booklist, starred review

GOOD NEWS BAD NEWS

★ “Playful and powerful.”

By Jeff Mack

—Library Media Connection, starred review

$16.99 HC 978-1-4521-0110-1

★ “Share this admirable appreciation with a wide audience.”

—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

★ “Flat-out hilarious.”

★ “Hugely entertaining and just as informative.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review

★ “An instructive and

—Kirkus Reviews, starred review Art © 2012 by Meilo So from Water Sings Blue:

THE TEMPLETON TWINS HAVE AN IDEA Book #1

By Ellis Weiner Illustrated by Jeremy Holmes

$16.99 HC 978-0-8118-6679-8

★ “A page-turning and funny tale.”

Ocean Poems written by Kate Coombs

kirkus.com

$16.99 HC 978-1-4521-0467-6

—Publishers Weekly, starred review

entertaining primer on the art of friendship and the complexity of joy.”

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By Michael Hearst Illustrated by Jelmer Noordeman

—Shelf Awareness, starred review

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ELECTRIC BEN

Byrd, Robert Illus. by Byrd, Robert Dial (40 pp.) $17.99 | Sep. 13, 2012 978-0-8037-3749-5 A beautifully realized labor of love and affection brings to life one of our brightest founding fathers.

Ben Franklin’s multiple geniuses might be too large to be contained in a simple narrative, but Byrd finds a way to convey with warmth and enthusiasm an appreciation for the long and influential life that Franklin lived as printer, inventor and statesman. Byrd’s sparkling marriage of text and illustration lowers the barriers to comprehending the brilliance, energy, passion and inventiveness of this early American phenom. Four generously wide columns across each opening offer a space for the straightforward, clear-voiced narrative accompanied by full-color, captioned artwork—sometimes several illustrations on a page—along with charming, brief inset quotations from Franklin’s writings. The design evokes the twocolumned early newspapers that Franklin might have known.

Byrd’s prose is respectful of his young readers and sophisticated at the same time, providing historical and cultural context for events and significant moments in Franklin’s life and selecting from a very big life the stories that best convey a sense of the personality and character of the man. The artwork and distinctive design must stand as markers for readers who want to return to specific places in the text, as there are neither page numbers nor an index. However, a comprehensive timeline and bibliography will serve young scholars well, and the author’s notes add to an understanding of both Franklin and the historical record about him.

A work of breadth and energy, just like its subject; engaging and brimming with appeal for a wide audience.

(Biography. 8-14)

HEROES OF THE SURF

Carbone, Elisa Illus. by Carpenter, Nancy Viking (40 pp.) $16.99 | Apr. 1, 2012 978-0-670-06312-3

Based on a true story of shipwreck and rescue, Carbone’s tale is leavened with narration by Anthony, a venturesome lad whose penchant for playing pirates helps him through the harrowing event.

It’s 1882, and the steamship Pliny, bound for New York City from Brazil, founders in a storm off New Jersey. Anthony and his friend Pedro run onto the deck to gauge whether New York is near. Instead, they face life-threatening conditions, as towering waves splinter lifeboats and the engines die. In the gray dawn, the boys see land, men and—a cannon. Before there’s much time to ponder pirates, a rescue line is launched from shore to 50

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ship, followed by the breeches buoy: “It comes swinging toward us hanging from the rope: a life preserver with a pair of short pants attached.” One by one, passengers are hauled along the line to safety ashore at Deal Beach. Carbone’s text conveys a compelling “you are there” tone as Anthony prepares to ride the breeches buoy: “I swing out into open space. Below me, waves crash and twist like angry snakes. Will the ropes hold?” Carpenter’s pictures beautifully capture both historical detail and the event’s inherent drama. A seagoing palette of blue, gray, brown and ochre, crosshatched in black, thoroughly suits the period.

Riveting reading, well-timed for the centennial of the Titanic’s sinking. (afterword) (Picture book. 4-8)

QUESTION BOY MEETS LITTLE MISS KNOW-IT-ALL

Catalanotto, Peter Illus. by Catalanotto, Peter Richard Jackson/Atheneum (40 pp.) $16.99 | Feb. 7, 2012 978-1-4424-0670-4 An irresistible force meets an immovable object with hilarious results.

The superheroes that populate this town are no match for Question Boy. With his insatiable need to know, he can make Garbage Man, Oil Man and Wonder Waitress run for cover to escape his incessant queries. Then he meets Little Miss KnowIt-All, who answers all his questions and then some, peppering him with one factoid after another until he is supine on the grass, seemingly defeated. Dizzy with victory, she starts to leave in triumph, when Question Boy raises the most unanswerable question of all, the all-purpose “Why,” screaming it over and over until she is driven to give the only possible response.

Used most often by exasperated adults, her answer settles the matter convincingly, at least for the present. Thus the contest is done, and to the cheers of the onlookers, the two rivals walk off together as friends. These precocious characters are instantly recognizable, and Catalanotto brings them to life with tenderness and humor in rapid-paced action and dialogue. The text, boldfaced and widely spaced, is set in the delightfully and appropriately named “CC Yada Yada Yada.” Extra-bright and colorful watercolor paintings of various sizes, shapes and perspective perfectly complement and enhance the tale.

Grown-ups beware. Youngsters might have their own questions and answers after this romp. (Picture book. 4-8)

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“As in Chin’s previous volumes…, gorgeous watercolor illustrations lure readers into the scientific story.” from island

ISLAND

Chin, Jason Illus. by Chin, Jason Neal Porter/Flash Point/Roaring Brook (40 pp.) $16.99 | Sep. 18, 2012 978-1-59643-716-6 A beautifully made picture book presents the story of the Galápagos Islands for young readers.

It’s not easy to present the story of island formation, species colonization and evolution in a picture book, but Chin succeeds admirably, challenging intelligent young readers with sophisticated concepts but presenting them in a way that will allow readers not only to understand them, but to marvel at them, as well. As in Chin’s previous volumes, Redwoods (2009) and Coral Reefs (2011), gorgeous watercolor illustrations lure readers into the scientific story. Chin is careful to point out in his author’s note the necessity of speculation and educated guesses, given

how far in the past the story takes place. But the work is topnotch narrative nonfiction, based on the best current scientific research. An eye-catching variety of horizontal panels, thumbnails and full-bleed pages makes science visual. Especially effective is the discussion of how species change over time: The finches’ beaks become larger, tortoises’ shells change shape, and cormorants’ wings shrink. In the epilogue, after millions of years of evolution, a ship appears, and a man comes ashore, pen and notebook in hand. It’s Charles Darwin, as explained in the backmatter, where his theory of evolution by natural selection is explained and further information on the Galápagos Islands and their indigenous species is presented.

Another superb contribution to scientific literature by Chin. (Informational picture book. 8-12)

KIRKUS BEST OF 2012

DREamIng Up: a Celebration of Building

DRUmmER BOy OF JOhn JOhn

by Christy Hale

by Mark Greenwood, illus. by Frané Lessac

Ages 2–8 • $18.95, hardcover 978-1-60060-651-9 ★ “At once groundbreaking, child-friendly and marvelously inclusive.”

Ages 5–10 • $18.95, hardcover 978-1-60060-652-6 ★ “A joy to read.”

— starred review, Kirkus Reviews

“A clever introduction to architecture.”

— School Library Journal

— starred review, Kirkus Reviews

“[An] upbeat celebration of creativity.”

—School Library Journal

Lee & Low Books, 95 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016

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IT JES’ happEnED: When Bill Traylor Started to Draw

by Don Tate, illus. by R. Gregory Christie Ages 6–11 • $17.95, hardcover 978-1-60060-260-3 ★ “Astonishing in both its biographical facts and how they are depicted.”

—starred review, Booklist ★ starred review, School Library Journal ★ starred review, Kirkus Reviews

About everyone ~ For everyone leeandlow.com

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“Art lovers of all ages will revel in this vivid, wonderfully affecting book, which is almost as ingenious and memorable as Close himself.” from chuck close: face book

CHUCK CLOSE: FACE BOOK

Close, Chuck Abrams (64 pp.) $18.95 | Apr. 1, 2012 978-1-4197-0163-4

A magnificent interactive “face book” portrait of the artist.

This book grew out of a studio visit/ conversation between Close and a dozen Brooklyn fifth graders. Through the kids’ simple questions and the artist’s forthright answers, readers eavesdrop on the event and witness the ongoing dialogue between an artist and his unforgettable, iconographic work. Close discloses struggles with childhood ill health and severe dyslexia. He tells how his early artistic promise was nurtured by caring parents and teachers and how he adjusted for his prosopagnosia (face blindness) by sketching the faces of his students. He also shares how the steady progress of a rewarding career and warm family life was nearly derailed by his near-total paralysis after the 1998 collapse of a spinal artery.

He also discloses the many “hows” of his astonishing technique: how he uses gridded photos to build his faces and how he works from his wheelchair and wields his brush with less-abled hands.

Readers witness his discipline and see how he works in a dizzying variety of media. At the book’s brilliant center is the irresistible opportunity to “mix ’n’ match” various eyes, noses and mouths among 14 of the artist’s arresting self-portraits.

Art lovers of all ages will revel in this vivid, wonderfully affecting book, which is almost as ingenious and memorable as Close himself. (timeline, glossary, list of resources and illustration credits) (Nonfiction. 8-12)

WATER SINGS BLUE Ocean Poems

Coombs, Kate Illus. by So, Meilo Chronicle (32 pp.) $16.99 | Apr. 1, 2012 978-0-8118-7284-3

Twenty-three poems and evocative watercolor paintings pay tribute to the wonders of the ocean world.

The versatile Coombs shows she’s as adept at poetry as she is at concocting or adapting fairy tales (Hans My Hedgehog, 2012, etc.). She invites young readers into her celebration with an opening “Song of the Boat” and ends with the message of the “Tideline.” “ ‘Don’t forget me— / I was here, / wasss h e r e / wasssss h e r e …’ ” Varied rhyme and rhythmic patterns and surprising connections characterize these relatively short poems, which read aloud well and stick in the memory. There’s humor, interesting language and intriguing imagery, as when the Gulper Eel’s “astronomical maw” is compared to a black hole.

Thoughtful organization and placement of text on the page and So’s wavery, watery illustrations extend the poems’ meaning. A series of couplets describing “What the Waves Say” is 52

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illustrated with panels of varying water-surface patterns. Three different jellyfish poems share a double-page spread; another spread emphasizes the size of a blue whale with its vertical orientation and a shipwreck lying at the bottom. Sand-colored endpapers show objects washed up on shore: a shell, a feather, a crab’s claw and what might just be the remains of a footprint.

Share this admirable appreciation with a wide audience. (Picture book/poetry. 4-10)

HOMER

Cooper, Elisha Illus. by Cooper, Elisha Greenwillow/HarperCollins (32 pp.) $16.99 | Jun. 1, 2012 978-0-06-201248-7 Stories of patiently waiting dogs have been around for just about forever, or at least since Homer wrote about faithful Argos recognizing Odysseus after a 20-year absence. In Cooper’s touching story, the patient pup is an aging yellow Lab named Homer, whose love for his family is as deep and wide as the ocean outside their cottage.

At daybreak Homer is already lying on the front porch, looking out over a field and beach, as well as the sea beyond. As the family members (including three more dogs) pass by Homer on their way out, they all invite him to come along to play in the water, dig in the sand or bike to the store. Homer replies to each in turn that he is happy to stay right there on the porch, watching and waiting. His family returns, and the pleasant day winds down, with Homer finally curling up in a cozy armchair for the night, content because “I have everything I want.” Soft-focus watercolor illustrations effectively convey the seaside atmosphere with a combination of formats, including some pages with consecutive panels and wordless double-page spreads showing a wide view of the cottage and beach and the inside of the home with the family getting ready for bed.

Soothing and satisfying; perfect for reading on the porch on a summer evening, preferably next to a dog. (Picture book. 3-7)

THE MIGHTY MISS MALONE

Curtis, Christopher Paul Wendy Lamb/Random (224 pp.) $15.99 | PLB $18.99 | Jan. 10, 2012 978-0-385-73491-2 978-0-385-90487-2 PLB Deza Malone had a brief appearance in Curtis’ multiple–award-winning novel, Bud, Not Buddy (Newbery Medal and Coretta Scott King Author Award, 2000).

Now, she is the dynamic and engaging heroine of her own story.

Deza takes great pride in being the best student in school and the champion of her musically gifted but challenged older

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brother. Although the Malones are barely surviving the Depression in Gary, Ind., Deza has a strong sense of self and hope for a better life. As she writes in her school essay, “We are the only family in the world, in my ken, that has a motto of our own!

That motto is ‘We are a family on a journey to a place called Wonderful.’ I can’t wait until we get there!” Despite severe economic and racial restrictions, the strength of their familial bond remains strong, but even that connection is sorely tested when Mr. Malone returns to his hometown of Flint, Mich., seeking work. Deza, her brother Jimmie and their mother set out to find him as their situation becomes dire. With his distinctive style of storytelling that seamlessly presents the hardships and finds the humor in tough circumstances, Curtis forges the link between characters and readers. The fluidity of the writing, the strong sense of place and time combined with well-drawn characters will captivate and delight.

Deza is one great heroine in her own right, a fitting literary companion to Bud Caldwell. (Historical fiction. 9-12)

A BLACK HOLE IS NOT A HOLE

DeCristofano, Carolyn Cinami Illus. by Carroll, Michael Charlesbridge (80 pp.) $18.95 | $9.99 e-book | Feb. 1, 2012 978-1-57091-783-7 978-1-60734-073-7 e-book Oh, my stars! As the cover proclaims, a black hole may not be an actual hole, but readers will be glad they fell into this book.

The volume guides readers on a (literally) out-of-this-world tour, dealing with topics and concepts that, in the hands of a less-gifted writer, might have remained obscure and unclear.

DeCristofano handles the material with wit, style and singularly admirable clarity, frequently employing easy-to-understand and, yes, down-to-earth ideas and scenarios to help make complex principles comprehensible to readers of all ages. Carroll’s illustrations, diagrams and charts, along with superb telescopic photographs (many courtesy of NASA) are splendid and filled with the drama and excitement of the limitless vastness of space.

The handsome design and visuals greatly enhance the text and add much to readers’ grasp of the subject. Stargazers will be entranced, and even those not especially attuned to matters celestial will come away feeling smarter, awestruck and with a sense of finally understanding this fascinating, other-worldly phenomenon. An excellent resource.

Hole-y astronomy! (timeline, glossary, author’s note, bibliography, image credits, index) (Nonfiction. 8-12)

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NEVER TRUST A TIGER

Don, Lari Illus. by Williamson, Melanie Barefoot (48 pp.) $7.99 paperback | Sep. 1, 2012 978-1-84686-776-7 Series: Animal Stories, 2

Does one good turn deserve another?

A merchant stops to free a tiger stuck in a hole by lowering a tree trunk to it, and what does he get for his trouble? A growl and a show of sharp teeth from the hungry tiger, who is planning to make a meal of him! Taken aback, the merchant protests that this is not fair. At first, the tiger says, “I don’t want to be fair. I only want to be full!” But he finally agrees to a test, if only to quiet the merchant down so he can be eaten up. Colorful, energetic acrylics work together with the carefully selected vocabulary, lucid text and generous repetition to make this Korean folk tale a strong choice for early readers. In the end, the deciding vote is left to a hare, who seems confused by the quandary and asks that the two show him what happened, so the tiger gets back in the hole. The hare advises the merchant to leave immediately, and as to whether a good deed should follow a good deed, the hare says, “That all depends on who you help!”

Young readers will be drawn in by the measured suspense and leave with a chuckle.

An excellent addition to both the folk tale genre and the early-reader shelf. (Folk tale/early reader. 4-7)

A GREYHOUND OF A GIRL

Doyle, Roddy Amulet/Abrams (208 pp.) $16.95 | May 1, 2012 978-1-4197-0168-9 Twelve-year-old Mary O’Hara is surrounded by good-humored women…her mum at home, her mum’s mum, who is dying in Dublin’s Sacred Heart Hospital, and her mum’s mum’s mum, who has just materialized as a ghost on her street.

That’s four generations of Irish women, all whirling about in some state of consciousness or another, and it’s enough to make Mary dizzy. Mary is a cheeky girl, like many almostteenagers, but she’s levelheaded enough to embrace the ghostly visits from her great-grandmother Tansey, who looks young but “talks old” because she died at age 25 in 1928. Tansey’s spirit is sticking around for her dying daughter, Mary’s granny, to reassure her “it’ll all be grand” in the great beyond and, as it turns out, to join her family for one last tearful, mirthful midnight road trip. Doyle divides up the novel by character, giving readers first-hand glimpses into the nature of each woman through time. In a lovely, lilting Irish dialect, he deftly explores the common threads of their lives through story and memory, from

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family-owned racing greyhounds to the traumatic dropping of an egg. On the subject of mortality, Mary says, “…it just seems mean.” Her mother agrees. “It does seem mean. Especially when it’s someone you love.” Indeed.

A warm, witty, exquisitely nuanced multigenerational story. (Fiction. 10-14)

THE SANTA TRAP

Emmett, Jonathan Illus. by Bernatene, Poly Peachtree (32 pp.) $15.95 | Oct. 1, 2012 978-1-56145-670-3

A beady-eyed brat sits in a red, thronelike chair, glaring out of the cover in this hilarious, bizarre holiday story.

What’s that machinery behind him, and what is that kid up to?

That’s Bradley Bartleby on the throne, and he’s bad, bad to the bone. He terrifies his “immensely rich” parents, mistreats his pet elephant and demands a huge list of presents every Christmas. But Santa brings him just one gift each year, a pair of socks. So the outraged Bradley builds a Santa trap in the chimney, planting dynamite at the bottom. He extends his trap to all the chimneys and adds tigers, guillotines and trapdoors. His parents decamp to a hotel, leaving Bradley alone on Christmas Eve, when he inadvertently falls into his own trap. But he is not forgotten by Santa, who still leaves him a pair of socks, along with a box of bandages and some antiseptic, in a slam-dunk conclusion that finds Bradley inside his own metal cage. The cleverly constructed plot unfolds with perfect comedic timing and dry wit, complemented by digitally produced mixed-media illustrations that have a suitably sinister, magnetic charm. Bernatene’s artwork uses dark colors, shadows and cinematic perspectives to bring Bradley’s world into believable focus.

Now, some will find these devilishly delinquent developments positively beyond the bounds of good taste. But many others will say, “Naughty. But nice.” (Picture book. 5-9)

THE WILD BOOK

Engle, Margarita Harcourt (144 pp.) $16.99 | Mar. 20, 2012 978-0-547-58131-6

A young girl tackles a learning disability and the uncertainty of daily life in early-20th-century Cuba.

Ten years old at the tale’s opening, Josefa “Fefa” de la Caridad Uría Peña lives with her parents and 10 siblings on their farm, Goatzacoalco. Diagnosed with “word blindness” (a misnomer for dyslexia), Fefa struggles at school and in a home rich with words, including the writings of Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío. Discounting a doctor’s opinion that “Fefa will never be able / to read, or write, 54

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/ or be happy / in school,” her mother gives her a blank diary: “Let the words sprout / like seedlings, / then relax and watch / as your wild diary / grows.” Basing her tale on the life of her maternal grandmother, Engle captures the frustrations, setbacks and triumphs of Fefa’s language development in this often lyrical free-verse novel.

Her reading difficulties are heightened when bandits begin roving the countryside, kidnapping local children for ransom: “All I can think of / is learning how / to read / terrifying / ransom notes.” The author gives readers a portrait of a tumultuous period in Cuban history and skillfully integrates island flora, fauna and mythology into Fefa’s first-person tale. This canvas heightens Fefa’s determination to rise above the expectations of her siblings, peers and society.

A beautiful tale of perseverance. (author’s note) (Historical fiction. 10-14)

WE MARCH

Evans, Shane W. Illus. by Evans, Shane W. Neal Porter/Roaring Brook (32 pp.) $16.99 | Jan. 17, 2012 978-1-59643-539-1 An African-American family awakens before dawn to prepare for the historic March on Washington in August, 1963.

In this stirring companion to Underground (2011), Evans captures a pivotal event in the struggle for equality and civil rights in America. The family joins neighbors to pray at their church, paint signs and travel by bus to Washington. They walk and sing and grow tired but “are filled with hope” as they stand together at the Washington Monument to listen to Dr. King speak of dreams and freedom. With just one line per page, Evans’ text is spare but forceful. The March has become synonymous with Dr. King’s grandiloquent speech, but Evans reminds readers that ordinary folk were his determined and courageous audience.

The full-page paintings depict a rainbow of people holding hands and striding purposefully. One illustration in particular, of the father holding his son high on his shoulders, echoes a painting in Underground, in which a father holds his newborn child high up toward the sky. The strong vertical lines used for the arms of the marchers mirror the intensity of the day.

Share with readers of all ages as a beautiful message about peaceful protest and purposeful action. (author’s note) (Picture book. 4-8)

EAST DRAGON, WEST DRAGON

Eversole, Robyn Illus. by Campbell, Scott Atheneum (40 pp.) $16.99 | Jan. 3, 2012 978-0-689-85828-4

In this variant of “The City Mouse and the Country Mouse,” two dragons learn to appreciate each other’s talents and milieus.

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“There couldn’t be a more likable family of thieves.” from the vengekeep prophecies

Sophisticated East Dragon lives in the emperor’s palace with eight siblings. He dabbles in brush painting; a double-page spread of his family reveals skills ranging from sushi preparation and Kabuki performances to landscaping and storytelling. Whimsical caricatures hint at desktop Zen sand gardens and Pueblo storyteller dolls, anachronisms creating an additional level of enjoyment. West Dragon’s habitat is a “boy cave.” Surrounded by a tricycle, soccer ball, television set and books, he endures regular intrusions by the king’s knights: “Nothing made a cave smell nastier than roast knight.” While the dragons snub each other from their respective corners of the world, truth be told, each fears the other. It isn’t until West Dragon’s plot to distract the bothersome knights backfires, and he nearly drowns at the hand of marauding pirates, that their paths cross. Having just admired his counterpart’s great wingspan and ability to fly, East Dragon swims swiftly to the rescue. All ends very well at a party complete with karaoke, pizza and a piñata. Eversole’s spare narrative mixes tongue-in-cheek exaggeration, childhood fears and adventure, inspiring Campbell to contrast the rough and the refined, designing detailed watercolor worlds brimming with humor and beauty.

This primer on friendship wrapped in hijinks is paced for maximum pleasure. (Picture book. 3-7)

THE VENGEKEEP PROPHECIES

Farrey, Brian Illus. by Helquist, Brett Harper/HarperCollins (400 pp.) $16.99 | $9.99 e-book | Oct. 23, 2012 978-0-06-204928-5 978-0-06-204930-8 e-book

There couldn’t be a more likable family of thieves.

The tightknit, affable and affectionate Grimjinx clan is trouble in Vengekeep.

They steal (not from anyone poor or weak) and nimbly avoid prosecution. Ma’s a master forger, Da an expert thief. Little sister Aubrin (terrific nickname: Jinxface) is an ace pickpocket.

But 12-year-old Jaxter, the narrator, is clumsy. Lock-picking

Kirkus’ Best Books for Children 2012 “Riveting, significant work of nonfiction.”

—New York Times

“Even with the many fine books out there about the role of young people in the Civil Rights era, this highly readable photo-essay will hold YA readers with its focus on four young people who participated in the Birmingham Children’s March...”

—Booklist, starred review “This photo-essay stands out for its engrossing content, excellent composition, and riveting use of primary-source material...it's also just plain thought-provoking reading about a time that was both sobering and stirring...”

—School Library Journal, starred review “The most compelling component is Levinson’s dramatic re-creation of the courageous children’s crusade and the change it helped bring about in the face of widespread prejudice and brutality.”

—Publishers Weekly, starred review “A moving record of young people rising at a pivotal historical moment, based on original interviews and archival research as well as published sources.”

—Kirkus, starred review

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“The cleverly constructed plot unfolds with perfect comedic timing and dry wit, complemented by...illustrations that have a suitably sinister, magnetic charm.”

—Kirkus, starred review “Bernatene’s...illustrations work wicked magic with Emmett’s darkly comedic prose... An ideal Christmas present for children who prefer Halloween.”

—Publishers Weekly, starred review

www.peachtree-online.com 35 Years of Extraordinary Fiction and Nonfiction

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k i r ku s q & a w i t h e l i n k e l s e y Elin Kelsey is an award -winning author and an international leader in the field of environmental science and education. Her new book, You Are Stardust, offers readers engaging scientific insights that Kirkus said will spark “adult and child conversations about our place in the universe.”

We recently had a chance to catch up with Kelsey, and she shared her thoughts on the pleasures and inspiration of writing for children.

YOU ARE STARDUST

Kelsey, Elin Owlkids Books (32 pp.) $18.95 Sept. 15, 2012 978-1-926973-35-7

Q: I confess that I never saw my sneezing, breathing family as pollinators before! How did you choose what science to include? Did you have to cut interesting facts for space purposes?

A: We had to take out a lot. As a science writer, I was really taken by the science behind the ideas.

In earlier drafts, there was a big chunk of science content behind the poetic terms that introduced ideas. But…the editor I worked with for most of the book had a strong sense that it was the power of the poetry that would best convey the ideas and that we had other places (like the associated website) where we could explain the nitty-gritty of how the science worked. The more I tested the book with young readers—every Thursday, I have a gang of kids come over to my house…and I run the ideas past them—the more I thought she was right. The details of the science, though compelling to kids, were in some places working against the flow of the book.

Q: The illustrations—three-dimensional shadow boxes—look handmade rather than computer generated.

What was your reaction to the illustrations, and how do they help convey your message?

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Q: It’s clear how your scientific background informs your writing for children. How does the work you do with children affect your environmental consulting?

A: It does in lots of ways! The way we relate to the environment is dominated by a gloom-and-doom narrative: that things used to be fantastic on Earth, and now they’re really wrecked. That’s far too limiting a view. Whenever you have one narrative, it’s dangerous. And we see this same one reinforced over and over in environmental films and curriculum….We need to move beyond this single story of doom and gloom to much more diverse narratives around hope and resiliency and creativity.

[For example], scientists now are finding in certain areas of coral reefs, if the pressure of overfishing is removed for five to seven years, you see an amazing recovery in just that short a time. Resilience science is a big area that I’m really interested in.

My work with children keeps me very committed to this idea: How do I keep the creativity, the resiliency of children, the idea of hope and multiple narratives in the work I do with scientists and policymakers? That’s really something that comes more easily to me because I am so engaged with these same ideas with the children I’m working with.

Q: With Not Your Typical Book About the Environment, you said you wanted to write a “hopeful” book about the environment. How would you characterize your mission with this new book?

A: I wanted You Are Stardust to build on that hopeful theme. There’s been a real movement worldwide concerned with the increasing disconnect between children and the natural world. I wanted to get across the idea that, no matter how we intellectualize it, we simply are nature. The poetic, ephemeral tone of the book encourages not only a knowledge of that idea, but really a feeling of that intimate connection. That’s what I hope the book does.

–By Jessie Grearson

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ph oto COURTE SY E L IN K E L S EY

A: I hope that the…illustration style and the poetic language subtly reinforce the idea that if we’re interested in sustainability on Earth, it will not come just through technological knowledge, but from our ability to release our creative beings to becoming open to the breadth and magnificence of the imagination. I really love the illustrations, their handmade quality—and [Soyeon Kim’s] use of natural materials, like the flowers dried from her own garden that she strung for the scene of “Your breath is alive with the promise of flowers.”

It’s really important to bring the intimacy of these grand ideas home.

I also loved the way she used materials we’d find in our everyday lives, like the wool and the yarn she spun, in order to get across the idea “You started life as a single cell. So did all other creatures on planet Earth.” There’s simple pieces of yarn moving from the illustrated paper pieces of stardust and threading through the paper of a tiny

developing cell and then wrapping around a young whale and then unfurling into a beautiful illustration of the whale. The scientific underpinning is there, but the handcrafted aspect of the illustrations makes the leaps in ways that are far easier for a young child to understand.

“Stead wisely withholds [the boy’s] features, letting Fogliano’s babbling stream of small worries and staggeringly sharp imaginings flesh him out.” from and then it’s spring

evades him. “Every year it became clearer: I really wasn’t a very good thief.” Jaxter excels at “beating magic with nonmagical means,” though: His carefully mixed plant/herb pastes dissolve magical protections on locks and loot. When a tapestry meant to predict Vengekeep’s future reveals, astonishingly, that the Grimjinxes are “saviors,” readers will giggle as the con emerges.

And then the con becomes deadly. The (faked) tapestry’s fabric is “fateskein,” which means its ominous images will come true. Woe is Ma, who unknowingly used fateskein in the weaving; woe is Vengekeep, now truly destined for lethal plagues.

Can Jaxter traverse enough land beyond his familiar town-state to gather the plants and spiderbat milk that might dissolve the fateskein? He’s no crackerjack thief, but he has heart and unflagging humor. This funny and serious series opener features action, twists and pleasingly original vocabulary, such as the swear “zoc” (as in “Zoc that”) and the expression “bangers,” which means, roughly, “awesome.” Immediate danger is averted, intriguing questions hover for next time, and Jaxter’s headed down a fresh path.

Bangers! (Fantasy. 8-12)

ON THE DAY I DIED Stories from the Grave

Fleming, Candace Schwartz & Wade/Random (208 pp.) $16.99 | Jul. 10, 2012 978-0-375-86781-1 Nine creepy tales told by dead teens and positively tailor-made for reading— or reading aloud—by flashlight.

Fleming uses a version of “The Vanishing Hitchhiker” as a frame story and draws inspiration from several classic horror shorts, monster movies and actual locales and incidents. Within this frame, she sends a teenager into a remote cemetery where ghostly young people regale him with the ghastly circumstances of their demises. These range from being sucked into a magical mirror to being partially eaten by a mutant rubber ducky, from being brained by a falling stone gargoyle at an abandoned asylum to drowning in a car driven by a demonic hood ornament. Tasty elements include a malign monkey’s paw purchased at a flea market, a spider crawling out of a corpse’s mouth and a crazed florist who collects the heads of famous gangsters. Amid these, the author tucks in period details, offers one story written in the style of Edgar Allan Poe (“As I pondered the wallpaper, its patterns seemed to crawl deep inside me, revealing dark secrets…

No!”) and caps the collection with perceptive comments on her themes and sources.

Light on explicit grue but well endowed with macabre detail and leavening dashes of humor. (Horror/short stories. 10-13)

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OH, NO!

Fleming, Candace Illus. by Rohmann, Eric Schwartz & Wade/Random (40 pp.) $17.99 | PLB $20.99 | Sep. 11, 2012 978-0-375-84271-9 978-0-375-94557-1 PLB With text that begs to be read aloud and sumptuous illustrations made by a master printmaker, this picture book reads like an instant classic.

Jacket art populated by several animals that appear in the story establishes the Asian jungle setting: A toothsome tiger lurks, while a loris, mouse and frog cower on front and back boards. The palette is rich with shades of brown, green, orange and bluish-gray, and the cover’s scene carries over on to endpapers that show Tiger stalking Frog. The chase continues across frontmatter pages until the first spread reads: “Frog fell into a deep, deep hole. Ribbit-oops! Ribbit-oops!” Dramatic visual perspective captures Frog’s fall, and the following spread shows Tiger settling in for his next move on his prey. As Tiger waits, a speech balloon heralds the titular cry, “Oh, no!” Clearly, Frog is in trouble, and on ensuing pages, several animals make rescue attempts, only to fall into the hole as well. Finally, a trumpeting, stomping elephant arrives and uses its trunk to save almost all of the trapped animals: Tiger (who had tried to get to the animals with dinner rather than rescue on his mind), falls into the hole on a prior spread, and after the elephant’s valiant rescue, they all cry “Oh, no!” when he cries for help.

Oh, yes! This is a terrific new picture book. (Picture book. 2-6)

AND THEN IT’S SPRING

Fogliano, Julie Illus. by Stead, Erin E. Neal Porter/Roaring Brook (32 pp.) $16.99 | Feb. 14, 2012 978-1-59643-624-4 A boy plants seeds in late winter’s brown, barren earth and vigilantly watches for green sprouts alongside his companions (a dog, turtle, rabbit and bird).

Rambling narration, elasticized with many ands, thats, commas and a boy’s earnest concerns for his seeds, runs on, leaving readers waiting and waiting and waiting—just like the child gardener. The boy’s oversized glasses, his tilted, blank face (we never see his eyes) and tiny chin melt hearts instantly. Stead wisely withholds his features, letting Fogliano’s babbling stream of small worries and staggeringly sharp imaginings flesh him out. Silly bears might tread on the plantings, unaware of signs that read “please do not stomp here— / there are seeds / and they are trying.” Germinating seeds issue “a greenish hum / that you can only hear / if you put your ear to the ground / and close your eyes.” This elaborate inner world and darling voice reverberate in muted woodblock prints and empathetic pencil illustrations as well, its timbre and tone unchanged. Delicate lines run like fine veins, describing animals, trees, plants and fences with

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“In this slim volume, Freedman makes a narrative challenge look effortless.” from abraham lincoln and frederick douglass

intricate and intentional specificity. Sizable, scalloped cloud formations, whose flat panes of white widen double-page horizons, offset both the scrupulous linework and abundant regions of brown and blue. Their simplicity ventilates these pictures, allowing readers to note amusing secondary animal activities in the dirt. Many treasures lie buried within this endearing story, in which humor and anxious anticipation sprout alongside one another.

This sweet seedling will undoubtedly take root and thrive. (Picture book. 3-8)

BOOT & SHOE

Frazee, Marla Illus. by Frazee, Marla Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster (40 pp.) $16.99 | $12.99 e-book | Oct. 9, 2012 978-1-4424-2247-6 978-1-4424-5706-5 e-book This gem about canine siblings goes from peaceful routine to funny mayhem to erroneous bereavement—and relief.

Littermates Boot and Shoe are small, white dogs with black tails and fur flopping over their eyes. Only their leg coloring differs, giving rise to their names. Boot spends daytime on the back porch, Shoe the front, a habit “perfect for both of them”; they share supper bowl, dog bed and a specific tree for peeing on. Gouache and black pencil create warm vignettes and sturdy spreads with a vibe both lively and mellow. Creamy, speckled paper matches organic, hand-lettered text. One day, a chattering squirrel gets “all up in [their] business,” and the dogs go berserk. To symbolize two dogs and one squirrel in a mad dash, upward of 80 squirrel figures race around the yard and over the roof with a similar number of dog figures in hot pursuit. Post-chase, exhausted, each dog finds himself on the wrong porch. Tragically in sync, they circle the house simultaneously to find each other, preventing their own success. Each progresses from patience—hunger, rain, waiting overnight—to true grief, sure the other’s gone. Dog posture, value and composition create poignant pangs—and stunned joy as the dogs reunite when (and where) nature calls. Frazee conveys painful and soothing depth with ease, which is especially impressive given that Boot and Shoe’s eyes can’t be seen.

Read unhurried, in a lap, again and again. (Picture book. 4-7)

ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND FREDERICK DOUGLASS The Story Behind an American Friendship Freedman, Russell Clarion (128 pp.) $18.99 | Jun. 19, 2012 978-0-547-38562-4

Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass met only three times, but their friendship changed a nation.

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Lincoln was white and president of the United States; Douglass was black and a former slave. Yet they were kindred spirits: Both had risen from poverty to prominence, both were self-educated men and both had a book in common: Caleb Bingham’s The Columbian Orator. In fact, 12-year-old Douglass was secretly reading the book of speeches and dialogues in Baltimore at the same time Lincoln was reading it in Illinois, and the appendix here presents an excerpt, “Dialogue between a Master and Slave.” When they first met, in 1863, the nation was at war. Lincoln struggled to keep the nation together, while Douglass welcomed war as a first step toward ending slavery; Douglass was ever the voice of moral conscience, nudging Lincoln to do the right thing on behalf of the enslaved. In this slim volume, Freedman makes a narrative challenge look effortless.

He tells the stories of two prominent Americans, traces the debate over slavery from the Missouri Compromise to the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the Dred Scott decision, and explains how these events created a momentum that pushed the nation toward war. He does all of this in a lucid and fascinating narrative that never sacrifices depth and intellectual rigor.

A marvel of history writing that makes complicated history clear and interesting. (selected bibliography, notes, picture credits) (Nonfiction. 9-14)

STEP GENTLY OUT

Frost, Helen Photos by Lieder, Rick Candlewick (32 pp.) $15.99 | Mar. 13, 2012 978-0-7636-5601-0

Breathtaking photos and an exquisite poem capture a bug’s-eye view of nature.

One can only hope the present collaboration will be the first of many between nature photographer Lieder and Frost (Hidden, 2011, etc.), one of the most gifted, versatile children’s poets writing today, for the synthesis of word and image in this short picture book is so finely wed that the final page turn leaves one begging for more. While Frost’s lightly rhymed declarative verse encourages children to experience the natural world with care and openness to the tiny wonders of insect life around them, Lieder’s richly colored intimate close-ups offer every reason why. “Step gently out,” Frost advises, pointing out how “the creatures shine with stardust, / they’re splashed with morning dew. / In song and dance and stillness, they share the world with you.” Golden-hued endpapers catch a honeybee and firefly mid-flight; the volume also spotlights the less-frequently spied praying mantis, katydid and damselfly, alongside more common insects. For precise readers wishing to know, for example, that the fuzzy, stoplight-colored creature twisting around a blade of grass happens to be a tussock moth caterpillar, the volume’s endnotes include brief descriptions of the featured species.

A dazzlingly poetic photo album of the insect world for tots on up. (Picture book. 2 & up)

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DAY BY DAY

Gal, Susan Illus. by Gal, Susan Knopf (40 pp.) $16.99 | PLB $19.99 | Jul. 10, 2012 978-0-375-86959-4 978-0-375-96959-1 PLB Day by day, brick by brick, a community is built in this winning tribute to fellowship and family.

Across a golden prairie, a family of pigs heads west. Their small actions grow in significance as bricks become a house, beloved paraphernalia create a home, neighbors are welcomed and friendships begin. With each handsome spread, the author rephrases the proverb she was inspired by: “little by little, the bird builds its nest.” Words flow on a curvature that matches the lyrical nature of both text and artwork. Sophisticated, digital illustrations done in a pastel color palette dazzle the senses, allowing readers to feel the vastness of sky, the heat of summer; to smell the scent of flowers and fields; and to hear the slow

dance-floor melody as they safely drift to sleep. Gal skillfully employs the computer to create a handmade, collage aesthetic.

Through her application of textures, she creates a world that’s rich in pattern, color and, most of all, love. As pigs gather around a table, under a festive tree at twilight to enjoy the bounty they have grown, they give thanks.

A luminous celebration of family, food and home. (Picture book. 4-9)

We are all nature. We are all stardust.

A Kirkus Reviews Best Books of 2012 book

“This is a work that demands to be read and reread, studied and examined, and thoroughly digested. It is perfect for sparking adult and child conversations about our place in the universe. A remarkable achievement.” ~  Kirkus Reviews

“Don’t miss this one, which begs to be shared intimately with children. Gather together, be still, and learn how we are stardust.” ~ Julie Danielson, Kirkus Reviews Book Blog Network

Also available 978-1-926973-35-7 HC • $18.95 as an App! Distributed by PGW 1-800-788-3123

www.owlkidsbooks.com Made possible with the support of the Ontario Media Development Corporation.

Available at www.owlkidsbooks. com |

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FISH HAD A WISH

Garland, Michael Illus. by Garland, Michael Holiday House (24 pp.) $14.00 | Apr. 1, 2012 978-0-8234-2394-1 Series: I Like to Read

Take a conventional story, add a new art technique—and voilà, a striking picture book is born.

Fish has a wish to be some creature other than what he is: a bird, so he can fly high in the sky; a turtle, so he can nap on a sunny rock; a skunk, so he can make a big stink; or a bobcat, a bee, a beaver, a butterfly or a snake. But when a mayfly lands on the water, Fish eats it in one bite and declares: “That was so good!…I wish to stay a fish.” Part of the publisher’s I Like to Read series, the book’s eye-catching artwork will fascinate young readers (and adults). The double-page spreads have wood-grain backgrounds that dramatically grab attention and appropriately evoke Fish’s woodland pond environment. Some of the “digi-wood” illustrations are more invigorating than others, but all of them are captivating. Striations and hashes of color create patterns and textures. This technique is new for Garland, and he has cast his net with vigor and aplomb.

From the beaver’s coat to the tiger lily’s petals to the snakeskin, this fish tale is a keeper. (Picture book/early reader. 4-8)

IN A GLASS GRIMMLY

Gidwitz, Adam Dutton (336 pp.) $16.99 | Sep. 27, 2012 978-0-525-42581-6

The author of A Tale Dark and Grimm (2010) starts over—sending young Jack and Jill on a fresh quest for self-knowledge through trials and incidents drawn (stolen, according to the author) from a diverse array of European folk and fairy tales.

Foolishly pledging their lives to finding the long-lost Seeing Glass, cousins Jack and Jill, with a three-legged talking frog to serve as the now-requisite comical animal sidekick, set out from the kingdom of Märchen. They climb a beanstalk, visit a goblin market and descend into a fire-belching salamander’s lair (and then down its gullet). In a chamber of bones (“It gave new meaning to the term rib vaulting”), they turn the tables on a trio of tricksy child eaters. Injecting authorial warnings and commentary as he goes, Gidwitz ensures that each adventure involves at least severe embarrassment or, more commonly, sudden death, along with smacking great washes of gore, vomit and (where appropriate) stomach acid. Following hard tests of wit and courage, the two adventurers, successful in both ostensible and real quests, return to tell their tales to rapt children (including one named “Hans Christian,” and another “Joseph,” or “J.J.”) and even, in the end, mend relations with their formerly selfabsorbed parents.

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Not so much a set of retellings as a creative romp through traditional and tradition-based story-scapes, compulsively readable and just as read-out-loudable. (source note) (Fantasy. 11-14)

NOW

Gleitzman, Morris Henry Holt (192 pp.) $16.99 | Jun. 5, 2012 978-0-8050-9378-0 Once and Then (2010, 2011) blend into Now in today’s Australia as Dr. Felix Salinger, 80, relates his childhood and shows his present to his 11-year-old granddaughter, narrator Zelda.

What occurs in their todays smoothly links the old story of Felix’s horrific childhood in Nazi-controlled Poland with sometimes-happy, sometimesunpleasant events in a small bush town. The girl is staying with Felix because her physician parents are in Darfur to help its people through a modern genocidal catastrophe. Local girls bully Zelda in the opening scene, and readers should be shocked and frightened by this experience. When Felix meets the bullies, in his anger he says, “Don’t you know anything?”—a sharp echo of the very young Zelda of decades ago. Today’s Zelda is named for her, but it is a weight, since the girl of the present feels she cannot live up to that other, long-dead girl, hanged by the Germans for an act of defiance that allowed Felix to escape the noose. A bush fire of horrendous size, fury and speed tests the mettle of the two, and Gleitzman’s description of it is brilliant in its realism. Readers of the first two books will recognize a great deal, and those who have not should read them to gain a fuller picture of the years before and those in which we live.

A fine, taut novel full of understanding. (author’s note) (Historical fiction. 9-12)

WHAT’S THE TIME, MR. WOLF?

Gliori, Debi Illus. by Gliori, Debi Walker (32 pp.) $16.99 | Oct. 2, 2012 978-0-8027-3432-7

Readers check in on Mr. Wolf every hour of his birthday, but it seems like the poor guy just can’t catch a break on his special day.

Four-and-twenty blackbirds wake him up (at 7 a.m.), asking him the titular question. His grumpy answer? “It’s time for blackbird pie.” His porcine neighbors keep him from a snooze by slamming their doors on their way to work (“time for bacon sandwiches”). And the day continues in this vein: The letter carrier (a girl in a red hood) skips his house, his cupboard is bare, it rains on the way to the store, and every hour, fairy-tale and nursery-rhyme characters check in on Mr.Wolf, asking him for the

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“Lessac’s gouache paintings pulsate with sun-drenched island colors and often resemble a folk-art quilt.” from drummer boy of john john

time. But readers won’t need to ask for the time. A marvelous mix of timepieces is scattered throughout the text and includes analog and digital clocks of all sorts: a sundial, a pocket watch, a wristwatch and a cuckoo clock, among others. By the time the hapless birthday boy is awoken from his nap by a fiddle-playing cat, observant readers will have guessed the “surprise” ending.

But the time-telling practice and literary references aren’t even the best treasure here. Gliori’s watercolor-and-ink illustrations are both detailed and delicately executed, charming and wowing at the same time.

There is much to enjoy here, and the illustrations and allusions beg for repeat readings. (Picture book. 4-8)

SPIRIT SEEKER John Coltrane’s Musical Journey Golio, Gary Illus. by Gutierrez, Rudy Clarion (48 pp.) $17.99 | Oct. 23, 2012 978-0-547-23994-1

In attuned counterpoint, Golio and Gutierrez present a portrait of John Coltrane’s lifelong quest to discover and share his spiritual truth through music.

Beginning with John’s 12th year, Golio traces his religious roots: Grandfather Blair, a Methodist minister, headed a household that included John’s parents, aunt and cousin. Within two years, his grandparents, father and uncle died, splintering the family. In one bright spot, a pastor began a community band, leading to a borrowed sax and lessons for John. His musical gift bloomed amid loneliness and setbacks. Touring’s pressures led to alcohol and drug dependence. Golio continuously weaves such biographical details into the tapestry of spiritual longing that characterized Coltrane’s life. “He began falling asleep onstage. Or showing up late, only to be fired. Part of him stood in the darkness, while another part was searching for the light.”

Gutierrez’s full-bleed acrylic paintings pulse with emotional intensity and iconic religious images; Coltrane is often shown with a halo or wings. Expressionist color channels Coltrane’s psychic life: His hobby-filled childhood is sweet potato pie– sunny; a scene of drug withdrawal is moonlit black. Portraits of jazz influences—Dizzy, Duke, Bird—appear throughout. Coltrane’s spiritual apex, a vision coinciding, Golio notes, with the development of his masterwork, A Love Supreme, is depicted with John meditating, Buddha-like against glowing pink.

Lyrically narrated, resplendently illustrated, and deeply respectful of both subject and audience. (afterword, author’s and artist’s notes, bibliography, discography) (Picture book/biography. 8-12)

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DRUMMER BOY OF JOHN JOHN Greenwood, Mark Illus. by Lessac, Frané Lee & Low (40 pp.) $18.95 | Sep. 1, 2012 978-1-60060-652-6

Winston, a boy in Trinidad, wishes that he could play in a band and win free rotis, the delicious island specialty prepared by the Roti King and presented to the best performers at Carnival.

In the weeks before Carnival, the people of the Caribbean island are busy sewing costumes, and bands are busy rehearsing with their gourds, bamboo sticks, bottles-and-spoons and drums. Winston hears the sounds that his mango pit makes when he chucks it into a junkyard. Inspired, he tries out different cans and tins, listening carefully to their different notes.

More experimentation follows, and soon, he is performing for his neighbors. Friends join him to form a band made up of “pots and pans, tins and cans in a rainbow of colors.” The sounds are winningly irresistible, and Winston and his fellow musicians soon enjoy their “folded pancakes filled with chicken and secret herbs and spices.” Greenwood’s story is based on the childhood of Winston Simon, the 20th-century musician credited with the invention of the steel drum. The text is filled with a cacophony of musical words that are fun and challenging to read aloud. Lessac’s gouache paintings pulsate with sun-drenched island colors and often resemble a folk-art quilt.

A joy to read. Play calypso music and celebrate! (author’s note, glossary and pronunciation guide, author’s sources) (Picture book/biography. 3-8)

DREAMING UP A Celebration of Building Hale, Christy Illus. by Hale, Christy Lee & Low (40 pp.) $18.95 | Oct. 1, 2012 978-1-60060-651-9

Hale turns her educated eye to modern and contemporary architecture and produces a book that is at once groundbreaking, child-friendly and marvelously inclusive.

With a celebratory tone, Hale cleverly structures this unusual picture book by matching a series of lively concrete poems and vignettes of young children at play (creating simple structures of all types) with carefully selected photos of complementary, emblematic 20th- and 21st-century structures. Mud pies are compared to Hassan Fathy’s all-earthen New Gourna Village (Luxor, Egypt); beachfront sand castles to Antoni Gaudí’s soaring La Sagrada Família Basilica (Barcelona, Spain); busy LEGO® projects with Moshe Safdie’s modular Habitat 67 housing (Montréal, Québec); cardboard-tube models to Shigeru Ban’s amazing Paper Tube School (Sichuan Provence, China); tongue-depressor/

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wonder

Palacio, R.J. Knopf (320 pp.) $15.99 Feb. 14, 2012 978-0-375-86902-0

q & a w i t h pa l a c i o

Wonder’s August Pullman is just your average 10-year-old boy, except that he’s never gone to school before, and his face doesn’t look like other kids’. When his parents decide that fifth grade might be a good starting point for his public education, Auggie is both excited and horrified.

Nothing prepares him, though, for the relationships—both good and bad—he finds there and the intensity he experiences just being a face in the crowd. Here, R.J. Palacio talks about the little girl at the ice-cream shop who started it all.

Q: What was your inspiration for Wonder?

A: When my sons were 11 and 3, we had an encounter with a little girl in front of an ice-cream store.

I was out front with my younger son, and my older son went inside for a chocolate milkshake, and I realized that sitting next to me was a little girl who looked very much like Auggie in the book. And I panicked because I knew the moment my 3-yearold saw her, he was going to say or do something that would hurt her feelings. And that’s exactly what happened. He started to cry. I tried to get him away from the situation; I grabbed my older son, and his chocolate milkshake spilled all over the place, and it was a big scene—exactly what I hoped wouldn’t happen, happened.

As we were leaving I heard the girl’s mother say in a very sweet voice, “Okay girls, time to go,” and my heart just broke for them. I was so disappointed in my reaction; I wished that instead of responding out of fear—not fear for myself, but that my son would hurt her feelings—I had responded from a point of kindness. I should have turned to her and started a conversation.

The rest of that day, I kept obsessing about how I could have responded differently. That night the song “Wonder” by Natalie Merchant came on the radio, and something about the joyful optimism in that song and the incident that happened earlier just jelled, and I started writing the book that night.

Q: Why did you use several different points of view in your book?

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Q: Auggie never describes his face, but his sister does— what does that show about them?

A: It’s all about self-preservation. Auggie has learned to deal with his face, and he tries not to dwell on it; He tries not to see it. He looks in the mirror and worries about his hair. He worries what his hearing aids are going to make him look like.

It’s the exact opposite case with his sister.

She’s had to deal with it every day, and she’s very analytical; She tells things the way they are—she’s very bold. Her way is to deal with things head-on.

Almost like a scientist.

Q: Julian’s parents were not kind—why include them?

A: Julian’s mother gets a really bad rap, and I guess it’s deserved, but to me she’s a very human character. I think she is one of those parents who’s blindly in love with their children to the point they want their kid to have everything perfect, they want the school picture to be perfect, they want the year to be perfect and their child to be popular and wellliked. I do think she’s misguided and ultimately selfish. She puts her kids above being kind, which is something we should never do.

Q: In addition to Auggie’s extreme problems, you cover a lot of “normal” problems—parents splitting up, changing social circles, etc. Why? A: I hoped readers would see themselves in the characters and realize—without being too hammered over the head with it—that we all have problems. Auggie’s are the most obvious, but every single person has baggage. Things are surmountable. Seeing Auggie’s issues puts things into perspective, and I think perspective is really important for kids that age. They tend to think whatever they have is the worst out there.

The obvious theme of the book is this boy dealing with facial defects, but the underlying theme is kindness. If you learn to have your automatic response to every situation come from a point of kindness, you can never go wrong.

–By Andi Diehn

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p h oto russ ell g or d on

A: Because I really wanted to tell Auggie’s complete story. He’s a lovable character, and I adore him, but he’s limited in what he knows. He’s very adapted to how people react to him, but I don’t think he sees the big picture—he’s too young and too humble and too sheltered. For me to tell his complete story, I realized I had to leave his head.

And so I had two rules: one, [these other characters] had to propel the narrative, and two, they had to tell Auggie’s story; they couldn’t hijack it. For

me to be able to tell it in its complexity, I felt I had to go beyond him.

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“The artwork, simple in its appearance yet interwoven with the text with utmost sophistication, playfully offers the easiest and funniest lesson on homophones possible…” from cat tale

Popsicle-stick and white-glue crafts with the vertical slats of David Adjaye’s Sclera Pavilion (London, England); and the “soft forms / tumble making / ever-changing / caverns, secret spaces” of pillow forts with Frank Gehry’s curvilinear Guggenheim (Bilbao, Spain). Well-organized and accessible backmatter contains the photo, name and location of each of the 15 highlighted structures, a brief biography of and a telling quote from each structure’s architect, and Hale’s own portrait of each designer.

This extraordinary new picture book masterfully tackles the complex task of contextualizing seemingly complex architectural concepts within a child’s own world of play.

(Informational picture book/poetry. 2-8)

CAT TALE

Hall, Michael Illus. by Hall, Michael Greenwillow/HarperCollins (40 pp.) $16.99 | Sep. 1, 2012 978-0-06-191516-1 Hall cleverly plays with homophones in this diverting word adventure.

Three curious cats, propelled by their imaginations, bring books to life as they traverse spacious, white spreads. Together they “flee a steer,” “steer a plane,” “plane a board” and “board a train.” Each sentence or scenario offers hints of what’s to come. Discerning compositions and a rhyming text further drive the momentum until, alas! The words’ many meanings confound these friendly felines. Humorous permutations ensue as the kitties try to untangle their tales. After they successfully “shoo a truly naughty gnu,” (it’s munching shoes—truly naughty indeed!), things go sadly awry. “They use their paws to rock a squashberry!

Rock a squashberry?” Once back on track, they befriend a bear, sail a whale and ultimately find comfort and contentment in words. Digitally collaged illustrations with appealing characters pop from the page. The artwork, simple in its appearance yet interwoven with the text with utmost sophistication, playfully offers the easiest and funniest lesson on homophones possible, inviting repeat readings and likely inspiring continuing silliness.

Smart and accessible, charming and witty, this is one for educators and adventurers alike. (Picture book. 3-5)

SADIE AND RATZ

Hartnett, Sonya Illus. by James, Ann Candlewick (64 pp.) $14.99 | Mar. 27, 2012 978-0-7636-5315-6

Sadie and Ratz, Hannah’s menacing hands, help her to handle her sibling rivalry in this piercingly intelligent foray into chapter books by much-awarded teen author Hartnett. |

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Hannah lives with her parents and her stick insect, Pin. She would like to have a real pet, but all she has is the disappointing Baby Boy, who is the object of Sadie and Ratz’s anger. When he does the things little brothers do (going into her room, changing the channel or using markers), Sadie and Ratz wake up, jump onto Baby Boy’s head and rub his ears off. One day, the game is changed when Baby Boy starts acting like a crafty 4-year-old. He spills milk, writes on the wall and breaks a valuable timepiece but blames everything on his sister’s naughty hands. When Pin is found missing a leg after Hannah sends her hands on vacation, the parents start to see the truth. The tale is accompanied by warm, expressive gestural charcoal drawings on every page that add much to the story, drawing readers’ eyes to the characters’ real feelings. Ending on the hopeful note that Baby Boy’s hands and Hannah’s hands are going to be friends, this is one story of sibling rivalry that seems realistic. The kids might not be friends, but their naughty hands can be! For big sisters and Baby Boys adjusting to each other.

A real slice of family life, the sweet with the bitter. (Fiction. 5-8)

LEGENDS OF ZITA THE SPACEGIRL

Hatke, Ben Illus. by Hatke, Ben First Second/Roaring Brook (224 pp.) $12.99 paperback | Sep. 4, 2012 978-1-59643-447-9 Lovable Zita returns in a charmingly dashing interplanetary adventure to save yet another doomed planet from

impending peril.

After saving both a planet and her best friend, Zita has achieved renown as an intergalactic hero and is greeted with adulation wherever she travels. In the midst of her fame, a lone, archaic Imprint-o-Tron—a robot that was built for companionship but took its “imprinting” too far—spies a Zita poster and immediately takes on her likeness. The bot’s mimicry is so exact that it quickly becomes difficult to tell the real Zita from the impostor. A sudden turn of events leads to the real Zita making a felonious—although necessary—decision, instantly transforming her public image from that of hero to outlaw. Faced with saving another planet, the real and fake Zitas must find a middle ground and work together, redefining what it really means to be a hero when they set out to rescue the Lumponians from the cutely named but very deadly Star Hearts, villainous parasites capable of destroying entire planets. Hatke’s arrestingly vibrant art commands instant adoration of its reader. Zita’s moxie is positively contagious, and her adventures are un-put-downable.

Readers would be hard-pressed to not find something to like in these tales; they’re a winning formula of eye-catching aesthetics and plot and creativity, adeptly executed.

Imaginative and utterly bewitching. (Graphic science fiction. 9-12)

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“Oxenbury’s pencil-and-watercolor illustrations are infused with softness and warmth, depicting the loving bond between boy and dog.” from charley ’s first night

PENNY AND HER DOLL

Henkes, Kevin Illus. by Henkes, Kevin Greenwillow/HarperCollins (32 pp.) $12.99 | Sep. 1, 2012 978-0-06-208199-5 Series: Penny, 2 Following Penny and Her Song (2012), Henkes delivers an even stronger slice of anthropomorphic mouse life for beginning readers.

The story opens with Penny chatting amicably with her mother in the garden. Penny smells the roses while Mama weeds, and then the mailman delivers a package from Gram. Inside is a doll for Penny, with a note reading, “I saw this doll when I was shopping. I thought you would love her. I hope you will.” And, she does. The fly in the ointment is Penny’s struggle to name the doll. Her parents make suggestions, but none seem right, and they reassure her, “Try not to think too hard….Then maybe a name will come to you.” Sure enough, after taking her doll on a tour of the house and then into the garden, the perfect name arises: “[T]his is Rose!” she announces. Henkes always excels at choosing just-right names for his characters (see Chester, Wilson, Lilly, Sheila Rae and, of course, Chrysanthemum and her “absolutely perfect” moniker), so this story seems particularly at home in his oeuvre. The familiarity of Henkes’ mouse world, as well as the expertly paced and controlled storytelling for new readers, mark this as a new classic, earning Penny a firm place alongside the not-so-creatively-named Frog, Toad, Little Bear and that celebrated Cat in the Hat. A doll of a beginning reader. (Early reader. 5-7)

CHARLEY’S FIRST NIGHT

Hest, Amy Illus. by Oxenbury, Helen Candlewick (32 pp.) $15.99 | Nov. 1, 2012 978-0-7636-4055-2

The tenderness a child feels for his new puppy seeps from the pages of a book sure to be instantly beloved.

“I carried him in my old baby blanket, which was soft and midnight blue, and we were new together and I was very, very careful not to slip in the snow and I thought about his name.”

Charley Korn is the puppy; the young narrator is Henry Korn.

Hest’s stream-of-consciousness sentences are interspersed with short, declarative statements and bits of dialogue, creating a dreamy, lyrical cadence. Oxenbury’s pencil-and-watercolor illustrations are infused with softness and warmth, depicting the loving bond between boy and dog. Even the design of the book, with text and pictures set within wide borders on each page, inspires a feeling of intimacy. Once home, Henry shows Charley around (“This is home, Charley”) and recounts his parents’ 64

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expectations, including the one where Charley will sleep in the kitchen—alone—forever. Henry dutifully arranges Charley’s bed, but the nighttime crying begins. After the second rescue, Henry shows Charley his room, where Charley wants to be put on Henry’s bed—or so Henry interprets. Thus the two spend the night, predictably the first of many, cuddled together.

Be forewarned: Youngsters will find Charley as irresistible as Henry does and will no doubt beg for puppies of their own. (Picture book. 4-8)

THE AMAZING HARRY KELLAR Great American Magician

Jarrow, Gail Calkins Creek/Boyds Mills (96 pp.) $17.95 | Jun. 1, 2012 978-1-59078-865-3 A first-rate visual presentation accompanies a fascinating biography of the first dean of the Society of American Magicians, a man Houdini regarded as a mentor.

The son of German immigrant parents, Harry Keller (later Kellar) lived in his hometown of Erie, Penn., only until he was 10, when he hopped aboard a train bound for Cleveland, Ohio, in 1859. He apprenticed to a performing magician a couple of years later. Kellar’s career in magic and illusion led him to South America, England and Australia before he achieved recognition and success in the United States. Kellar’s meticulous attention to detail in the building of his illusions and in the staging of his performances led to his success. Traveling magic shows and established theatrical illusionists were a widespread entertainment in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, incorporating aspects of spiritualism (Kellar demonstrated that he could replicate anything a medium could do) and mechanical wonders like automatons in their performances. Kellar and his team borrowed from other well-known performers, and he worked to polish and improve the illusions to perfection. Few secrets of the illusions are revealed here, but Jarrow makes it clear that it was Kellar’s art that made them seem like real magic.

Dozens of spectacular Kellar posters along with a dramatic book design nicely support this well-constructed look at a consummate showman. (timeline, bibliography, annotated sources) (Biography. 10-14)

THE BEETLE BOOK

Jenkins, Steve Illus. by Jenkins, Steve Houghton Mifflin (40 pp.) $16.99 | Apr. 3, 2012 978-0-547-68084-2 Jenkins’ splendid array of beetles will surely produce at least one budding coleopterist.

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The colors and patterns of this ubiquitous insect (one out of four creatures on the planet is a beetle, Jenkins tells readers) are fascinating, as are the details about the various adaptations that beetles have made over millennia in response to their environment, diet, and predators. “Perhaps the innovation that has been most helpful to the beetle is its pair of rigid outer wings.” Beautiful book design and a small but clear freehandstyle type contribute to readers’ appreciation of the elegant structure and variety of these creatures. Deep, bright hues in the torn-and–cut-paper–collage illustrations set each beetle with its own singular pattern and colors against generous white space. Actual-size silhouettes allow the detailed, larger illustrations to be matched with a realistic appraisal of each beetle’s dimensions. A list of the several dozen featured beetles along with their Latin names and their principal geographic locations appears on a two-page opening at the back. Only a couple of quibbles: The author’s claim that without the dung beetle “the world’s grasslands would soon be buried in animal droppings” begs for a little further explanation; and the absence of a bibliography seems like an oversight.

Otherwise, distinguished both as natural history and work of art. (Nonfiction. 7-12)

THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF JOHN SMITH, JR., AKA HOUDINI

Johnson, Peter Harper/HarperCollins (176 pp.) $15.99 | Jan. 24, 2012 978-0-06-198890-5

A middle-schooler writes a kids’ novel; an author writes an engaging, amiable read—and, presto, a tale about a boy nicknamed Houdini turns out magical.

When your name is John Smith, you need to have something going for you. What this 13-year-old—alas, no relation to the dude of Pocahontas fame—has is a fascination with the master escape artist. After an author’s visit to his classroom, John creates a novel, formed from the very novel kids are reading, and devises a series of lists to guide him. He also relies on adventures with his two best buds; a misunderstood Vietnam vet and his pit bull; and the neighborhood bully. By turns poignant and downright hilarious, Houdini’s story/novel is delivered in a voice that’s wonderfully authentic. Johnson expertly handles real male middle school friendships, issues and angst and doesn’t avoid some tough contemporary realities: Domestic troubles, the prospect of Dad losing his job and the pain arising from his older brother going missing in Iraq are handled realistically but sensitively.

In the end, Houdini realizes that writing has changed him and altered his perspective on people and life. Readers will feel the same way. And just try to get kids not to make their own lists or attempt their own novels. (Fiction. 9-12)

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ZOMBIE MAKERS True Stories of Nature’s Undead Johnson, Rebecca L. Millbrook/Lerner (48 pp.) $22.95 e-book | PLB $30.60 Oct. 1, 2012 e-book 978-1-4677-0125-9 PLB 978-0-7613-8633-9

Solid (sometimes writhing) proof that the scariest zombie flicks have nothing on Nature.

To demonstrate that there are indeed real zombies—“closer than you think”—Johnson (Journey into the Deep, 2010; iPad app, 2011) introduces a select set of fungi, worms, viruses and wasps that invade the bodies and take over the brains of their victims.

Enhanced by large and often deliciously disturbing color photos, her descriptions of each parasite’s life cycle is both specific and astonishing; not only does the fungus O. unilateralis force a carpenter ant to clamp itself to a leaf (before sending a long reproductive stalk out of its head) for instance, it even somehow strengthens the ant’s mouth muscles. The author tracks similarly focused physical and behavioral changes not just in insects, but in other creatures too, including rabies-infected mammals. Lest human readers feel left out of the picture, she mentions the protozoan T. gondii, which causes rats to engage in reckless behavior and also has infected up to a quarter of all the adults and teens in this country. In each chapter, Johnson reports back on conversations with scientists engaged in relevant research, and she closes with a quick look at telling signs in the fossil record.

Science writing at its grossest and best, though as the title (not to mention the blood-spattered pages) warns, not for the squeamish. (author’s note, glossary, notes, bibliography, further reading, index) (Nonfiction. 10-13)

YOU ARE STARDUST Kelsey, Elin Illus. by Kim, Soyeon Owlkids Books (32 pp.) $18.95 | Sep. 15, 2012 978-1-926973-35-7

We are made of earth and water and air and stardust, and we are more related to animals and plants than we ever imagined.

Everything about us is found in the natural world. Our atoms are from ancient stardust, and the water and salt that flow within us are part of the unchanging cycle that goes back to the beginning of time. We breathe pollen that, when released, may actually create a plant. We grow at night and seasonally shed and grow hair, in similar fashion to animals. We are also a living planet for millions of microorganisms. Kelsey doesn’t lecture or overcomplicate the information. She speaks directly to readers in a way that opens minds to big ideas and paves the way for thoughtful questions of their own. The litany of facts comes

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alive in vivid, descriptive language, lending a philosophical, elegant and mystical aura to current scientific findings. Kim’s incredibly unusual illustrations are sublime. Employing varied painting techniques, vivid colors, multidimensional cutouts, unexpected materials and unusual textures, she creates a view of nature that is at once real and otherworldly. This is a work that demands to be read and reread, studied and examined, and thoroughly digested. It is perfect for sparking adult and child conversations about our place in the universe.

A remarkable achievement. (Picture book. 5-12)

I HAVE A DREAM

King, Martin Luther Illus. by Nelson, Kadir Schwartz & Wade/Random (48 pp.) $18.99 | PLB $21.99 | Oct. 9, 2012 978-0-375-85887-1 978-0-375-95887-8 PLB An award-winning artist captures the passion and purpose of this most notable 20th-century American speech in beautifully realized oil paintings.

Nelson begins with the concluding paragraphs spoken on August 28th, 1963, with the Lincoln Memorial standing vigil over the massed assemblage. Dr. King’s opening paragraphs, with their urgent and specific references to America’s broken promises, slavery, discrimination and injustice, along with an acknowledgement of a “marvelous new militancy” are not often quoted; they are specific to the time. The words of his “dream,” in contrast, are universal, timeless and still needed. Dr. King evoked Scripture, an American hymn and an African-American spiritual in his sermon. Nelson mirrors that religiosity in his paneled montage of American mountains rising high from New Hampshire to Pennsylvania, Georgia, Mississippi and California. His stately portraits of adults and children stand out against white and blue backgrounds as they march, listen and hold hands. A glorious double-spread likeness of Dr. King against a black background imparts both majesty and sorrow. And how perfect that white doves, symbols of hope and faith, soar at the conclusion. The entire speech is reproduced in print and on a CD (not heard).

A title for remembrance and for re-dedication to the dream, published in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington. (Informational picture book. 5 & up)

THIS IS NOT MY HAT

Klassen, Jon Illus. by Klassen, Jon Candlewick (40 pp.) $15.99 | Oct. 9, 2012 978-0-7636-5599-0

fish). This time, first-person narration follows the thief, whose ego far outstrips his size, as he underestimates the big fish’s tracking abilities. Meanwhile, much of the art follows the big fish on his hunt, creating a pleasing counterpoint with the text.

For example, a page reading “…he probably won’t notice that it’s gone” shows not the thieving piscine narrator, but the big fish looking up toward the top of his own bare head; he clearly has noticed that his hat is gone, and the chase is on! Sublime book design exploits the landscape format, with dogged movement from left to right across the double-page spreads. This culminates in a page reading “I knew I was going to make it,” as the little fish disappears on the recto into plants evocative of Leo Lionni’s setting in Swimmy (1963), while a narrow-eyed big fish enters the verso. The little fish is clearly doomed—a fact coyly confirmed by wordless page turns revealing the big fish swimming away, now from right to left, hat firmly on head.

Hats off! (Picture book. 4-8)

BEACH FEET

Konagaya, Kiyomi Translated by Kaneko, Yuki Illus. by Saito, Masamitsu Enchanted Lion Books (32 pp.) $14.95 | Jun. 1, 2012 978-1-59270-121-6 Series: Being in the World, 2 In this newest installment in the Being in the World series, Japanese collaborators Konagaya and Saito offer a lovely account of a day in the life of a child at the beach.

Cover art depicts pudgy toes scrunching down into the sand, and the book opens to a first-person, stream-of-consciousness text detailing the child’s seaside experience. It’s never clear whether this child is a boy or a girl, but this doesn’t matter, as from page to page those feet from the cover art feel the heat of sun-baked sand, the coolness of the ocean waters and the hard pressure of a seashell underfoot. Succinct, moment-by-moment narration delivers the child’s experiences in brief snippets of text that exult in the sensuous experiences of the surroundings. Throughout, Saito’s pastel illustrations make the most of cool and warm shades to convey the juxtaposition of water and sand and sun, while spontaneous linework depicts the exuberance of the child’s movements and the ebb and flow of the sea.

Together, words and pictures combine to create a slice-of-life picture book that is more about setting than character and less a story than it is a mood piece.

A quietly sublime depiction of a child at play by the sea.

(Picture book. 2-6)

Klassen combines spare text and art to deliver no small measure of laughs in another darkly comic haberdashery whodunit.

While not a sequel to I Want My Hat Back (2011), the story does include a hat, a thief (a little fish) and a wronged party (a big 66

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“Wonderfully dry humor, vivid sensory descriptions of the mountain town and a genuinely appealing protagonist make this a standout.” from the case of the deadly desperados

THE CASE OF THE DEADLY DESPERADOS

Lawrence, Caroline Putnam (272 pp.) $16.99 | Feb. 16, 2012 978-0-399-25633-2 Series: Western Mysteries, 1

Twelve-year-old P.K. “Pinky” Pinkerton was born with a poker face—he can’t show or read emotion—but it’s not until he lands in Nevada Territory’s silver-mining country that he comes to terms with the hand he’s dealt.

This fast-paced and deadpan-funny Wild West adventure is Pinky’s first-person account, scrawled out as “last words” on ledger sheets in a mine shaft while three desperados hunt him down.

These outlaws, seeking something valuable Pinky’s Sioux ma had left behind, murdered his foster parents. Pinky narrowly escapes, jumping a stage to “Satan’s Playground,” or Virginia City of 1862, with its colorful mix of greedy gunslingers, “Celestials,” “Soiled Doves” and even Sam Clemens with the occasional jarring witticism. Best of all, he runs into Poker Face Jace, who teaches him how to read people’s feet, “the most honest part of a man’s body.” Pinky is likable. A wannabe detective, he’s resourceful and smart, gutsy but not foolhardy… and partial to black coffee. Jace’s detailed lessons in human “tells” drag on a smidge, but readers will fully grasp how thirsty Pinky is for this information that’s more precious to him than silver. Wonderfully dry humor, vivid sensory descriptions of the mountain town and a genuinely appealing protagonist make this a standout.

A rich vein of wisdom runs through this highly entertaining, swashbuckling series debut. (1862 map of Virginia City, glossary) (Historical fiction. 10-14)

WE’VE GOT A JOB The 1963 Birmingham Children’s March Levinson, Cynthia Y. Peachtree (176 pp.) $19.95 | Feb. 1, 2012 978-1-56145-627-7

Triumph and tragedy in 1963 “Bombingham,” as children and teens pick up the flagging civil rights movement and give it a swift kick in the pants.

Levinson builds her dramatic account around the experiences of four young arrestees—including a 9-year-old, two teenage activists trained in nonviolent methods and a high school dropout who was anything but nonviolent. She opens by mapping out the segregated society of Birmingham and the internal conflicts and low levels of adult participation that threatened to bring the planned jail-filling marches dubbed “Project C” (for “confrontation”), and by extension the entire civil rights campaign in the South, to a standstill. Until, that is, a mass exodus from the city’s black high schools (plainly motivated, at least at first, almost as much by the chance to get out of school as by any social cause) at the beginning of May put thousands of young people on the streets and in the |

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way of police dogs, fire hoses and other abuses before a national audience. The author takes her inspiring tale of courage in the face of both irrational racial hatred and adult foot-dragging (on both sides) through the ensuing riots and the electrifying September bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, then she brings the later lives of her central participants up to date.

A moving record of young people rising at a pivotal historical moment, based on original interviews and archival research as well as published sources. (photos, timeline, endnotes, multimedia resource lists) (Nonfiction. 11-15)

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC BOOK OF ANIMAL POETRY 200 Poems with Photographs That Squeak, Soar, and Roar!

Lewis, J. Patrick--Ed. National Geographic (192 pp.) $24.95 | PLB $28.90 | Sep. 11, 2012 978-1-4263-1009-6 978-1-4263-1054-6 PLB

Gathered by the United States children’s poet laureate, 200 (mostly) lighthearted poems from the likes of Basho and Ben Franklin, Leadbelly, Jack Prelutsky and Joyce Sidman share space with eye-popping animal photographs.

A well-stirred mix of old and recent limericks, haiku, short lyrics, shaped poems and free verse, the poetry ranges far and wide.

There are rib ticklers like Gelett Burgess’ “Purple Cow” and Laura E. Richards’ “Eletelephony” (the latter’s line “Howe’er it was, he got his trunk / Entangled in the telephunk” dated in these days of cellphones but still hilarious to read, especially aloud). Others are more serious, such as Tracie Vaughn Zimmer’s graceful tribute to an indoor centipede—“a ballet of legs / gliding / skating / skimming / across the stage of white porcelain”—and David McCord’s elegiac “Cocoon.”

All are placed on or next to page after page of riveting wildlife portraits (with discreet identifying labels), from a ground-level view of a towering elephant to a rare shot of a butterfly perched atop a turtle.

Other standouts include a dramatic spray of white egret plumage against a black background and a precipitous bug’s-eye look down a bullfrog’s throat. Lewis adds advice for budding animal poets to the excellent bibliography and multiple indexes at the end.

A spectacular collection—“And,” the editor notes with remarkable understatement, “the pictures are pretty nice too!” (Poetry. 7-12)

TRAINS GO

Light, Steve Illus. by Light, Steve Chronicle (16 pp.) $8.99 | Feb. 1, 2012 978-0-8118-7942-2 There’s more than just “choo-choo” along this track.

Eight different trains capture attention with their dramatic

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“…as the final volume in [the] iconic quartet, it holistically reunites characters, reprises provocative sociopolitical themes, and offers a transcending message of tolerance and hope.” from son

sounds. The engines (from the freight to the diesel) exude an exuberant variety of “bings,” “wo woos” and “zoooshes” as their speed intensifies. Onomatopoeia distinguishes one example from the next; the old steam train “toots” along while the big steam train “chuggas” with a vengeance. For all the apparently straightforward approach, Light indulges in some sly whimsy, too. Echoing the Billy Goats Gruff and repeating for emphasis, the “mountain train goes, / TRIP TRAP FUFF PUFF / TRIP TRAP FUFF PUFF / TRIP TRAP FUFF PUFF/ TRIP TRAP FUFF PUFF!” The elongated pages allow each train to stretch out magisterially. People take a back seat to the machines; the occasional conductor remains a distant and darkened figure. Variations in font accent each pointed syllable. Frantic lines push the cars to a formidable speed, and loose watercolor splashes explode with visual intensity.

Sheer, fabulous power. (Board book. 1-3)

SON

Lowry, Lois Houghton Mifflin (400 pp.) $17.99 | Oct. 2, 2012 978-0-547-88720-3 Series: Giver Quartet, 4 In this long-awaited finale to the Giver Quartet, a young mother from a dystopian community searches for her son and sacrifices everything to find him living in a more humane society with characters from The Giver (1993), Gathering Blue (2000) and Messenger (2004).

A designated Birthmother, 14-year-old Claire has no contact with her baby Gabe until she surreptitiously bonds with him in the community Nurturing Center. From detailed descriptions of the sterile, emotionally repressed community, it’s clear Lowry has returned to the time and place of The Giver, and Claire is Jonas’ contemporary. When Jonas flees with Gabe, Claire follows. She later surfaces with amnesia in a remote village beneath a cliff. After living for years with Alys, a childless healer, Claire’s memory returns. Intent on finding Gabe, she single-mindedly scales the cliff, encounters the sinister Trademaster and exchanges her youth for his help in finding her child, now living in the same village as middle-aged Jonas and his wife, Kira. Elderly and failing, Claire reveals her identity to Gabe, who must use his unique talent to save the village. Written with powerful, moving simplicity, Claire’s story stands on its own, but as the final volume in this iconic quartet, it holistically reunites characters, reprises provocative sociopolitical themes, and offers a transcending message of tolerance and hope.

Bravo! (Fiction. 12 & up)

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CASTLE How It Works

Macaulay, David with Keenan, Sheila Illus. by Macaulay, David David Macaulay Studio/Roaring Brook (32 pp.) $15.99 | paper $3.99 | Sep. 18, 2012 978-1-59643-744-9 978-1-59643-766-1 paperback Hooray for the launch of a new nonfiction series for newly fledged readers!

Macaulay’s compact, clear and engagingly illustrated explanation of how a castle is built to thwart potential intruders (you, the reader, in this case) is the right length and depth for readers who have progressed beyond beginner books. His trademark pen-andink lines reveal the structural purpose of each part of the medieval stone fortress, while color wash adds appeal. Clearly among the first of a series, this title is labeled “Level 4,” and the sentences are just complex enough: “Beneath the ground floor is the dark, damp dungeon.” The narrative is well supported by the illustration—and vice versa: An intriguing drawing has the essential details mentioned in the accompanying passage. Readers will encounter new challenges with text set against dark backgrounds on a few pages, but the font size and line spacing are just right. The length of the book—32 pages, including glossary—seems thoughtfully calculated to bestow a sense of accomplishment. The basics get covered here in fascinating detail: the guard who stops to use the toilet; a cross section of a battering ram. Added riches: a glossary, an index and a list of resources for further study, in small type but nicely focused.

And will a young scholar read it again and look for more? You bet—it’s great fuel for the imagination. (Nonfiction early reader. 4-8)

MAN FROM THE LAND OF FANDANGO

Mahy, Margaret Illus. by Dunbar, Polly Clarion (32 pp.) $16.99 | Oct. 23, 2012 978-0-547-81988-4

There’s fun for all when the man from Fandango comes to call.

An unnamed and silent boy and girl paint a colorful figure that jumps right off the paper, bringing excitement, happy games and music. He cavorts and flies and dances with a bear and a bison, while a baboon plays a bassoon accompaniment. A frolicsome kangaroo and a dinosaur join in the rumpus along with the ecstatic children. The action races along at a breathless pace as words both real and created sing the rhymed tale that “bingles and bangles and bounces,” as they all “tingle and tongle and tangle.” The text winds and moves in arcs across the pages in the very aptly named Heatwave typeface. Watercolor-and-collage illustrations work with the shaped text, curving and swirling in hills and

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valleys. Every animal and human is joyful and fully engaged in the moment. The bison sports red high-fashion shoes, and there are bubbles and stars and all sorts of brightly hued shapes flying about, along with the magical man who dances and juggles without reference to gravity. The late Mahy’s New Zealand syntax and humor are on fine display here, and young readers will wish that the Fandango man would appear more than once in 500 years.

Wonderfully exuberant and completely delightful. (Picture book. 3-8)

THE REVOLUTION OF EVELYN SERRANO

Manzano, Sonia Scholastic (224 pp.) $16.99 | Sept. 1, 2012 978-0-545-32505-9

Set in 1969, Manzano’s first novel offers a realistically mercurial protagonist struggling with her identity in Spanish Harlem.

Fourteen-year-old Rosa María Evelyn del Carmen Serrano is frustrated with life in El Barrio. Tired of working for her mother and stepfather in their bodega, she takes a job at a five-and-dime and hopes to trudge through the rest of the summer. Everything changes when her abuela arrives, taking over Evelyn’s bedroom and bearing secrets of the family’s involvement in Puerto Rico’s tumultuous history. When a group called the Young Lords begins working to bring positive changes to the neighborhood, some residents are resistant, including Evelyn’s mother. Led by her grandmother’s example, Evelyn begins to take an interest in the efforts of the activist group. As the months pass, the three generations of women begin to see one another’s perspectives, and Evelyn realizes the importance of her Puerto Rican heritage. Like most real-world teens, she changes subtly, rather than through one earth-shattering epiphany. The author effectively captures this shifting perception in the dialogue and Evelyn’s first-person narration. Secondary characters of surprising dimension round out the plot and add to the novel’s cultural authenticity, as do the Spanish and Spanglish words and phrases sprinkled throughout the text so seamlessly that a glossary would be moot.

A stunning debut. (author’s note, recommended reading) (Historical novel. 12 & up)

SQUEAK, RUMBLE, WHOMP! WHOMP! WHOMP!

Marsalis, Wynton Illus. by Rogers, Paul Candlewick (40 pp.) $15.99 | Oct. 9, 2012 978-0-7636-3991-4

Marsalis and Rogers, who collaborated on the scintillating Jazz ABZ (2005), reunite for this sonic celebration for the younger crowd. |

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Marsalis contributes 10 three-line verses that crackle with invented sound words. Most verses link a couple of everyday sounds with one made by a musical instrument: “Big trucks on the highway RRRRUMBLE. / Hunger makes my tummy GRrruMBle. / The big bass drum goes “Bum! Brrrum! BRRRUMBLE!!!!” Rogers’ digitally colored ink drawings depict a New Orleans setting.

The narrator, an African-American boy in white high-tops, exudes curiosity and cool (and plays trumpet). Those onomatopoeic words, elegantly red-dressed in Caslon 540 Italic, will challenge readers and delight listeners. Marsalis’ choices seem just right: “Chrrrick chrrrick chrrrick chrrrick—buttering my toast.” An upright bass emits “Doom, Doom, Doom, Blap! Doom, Doom, Slap!” Rogers’ hip, playfully cartoonish spreads pop with clever visual allusions to jazz tunes and players. Hand-lettered lyrics to a popular funeral song blow out of a church band’s instruments; indeed, the tuba’s bell forms the “O” for “O[h] didn’t he ramble.” An ambulance’s side reads “U.M.M.G. Ambulance,” a brilliant reference to the Billy Strayhorn tune whose titular acronym means “Upper Manhattan Medical Group.” The final spread rounds up a cacophony of sounds, from “Squeak” and “Schuk-chuk” to “BAP!” Loud and clear, the creators show how tuning into everyday sounds can inspire music. Clap, clap, CLAP! (Picture book. 3-7)

LITTLE WHITE DUCK A Childhood in China

Martínez, Andrés Vera; Liu, Na Illus. by Martínez, Andrés Vera Graphic Universe (96 pp.) $9.95 paperback | $21.95 e-book PLB $29.27 | Oct. 1, 2012 978-0-7613-8115-0 978-0-7613-7963-8 e-book 978-0-7613-6587-7 PLB

A striking glimpse into Chinese girlhood during the 1970s and ’80s. Beginning with a breathtaking dream of riding a golden crane over the city of Wuhan, China, Liu Na, recounts her subsequent waking only to discover that Chairman Mao has passed away.

The 3-year-old finds this difficult to process and understand, although she is soon caught up in the somber mood of the event.

From there, her life unfolds in short sketches. With this intimate look at her childhood memories, Liu skillfully weaves factual tidbits into the rich tapestry of her life. In the section titled “The Four Pests,” she explains about the four pests that plague China—the rat, the fly, the mosquito and the cockroach (with an additional explanation of how the sparrow once made this list, and why it is no longer on it)—and her stomach-turning school assignment to catch rats and deliver the severed tails to her teacher. In “Happy New Year! The Story of Nian the Monster,” she explains the origins of Chinese New Year, her favorite holiday, and her own vivid, visceral reflections of it: the sights, sounds and smells. Extraordinary and visually haunting, there will be easy comparisons to Allen Say’s Drawing from Memory (2011); think of this as the female counterpart to that work.

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Beautifully drawn and quietly evocative. (glossary, timeline, author biography, translations of Chinese characters, maps) (Graphic memoir. 9-12)

CHLOE

McCarty, Peter Illus. by McCarty, Peter Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins (40 pp.) $16.99 | PLB $17.89 | May 1, 2012 978-0-06-114291-8 978-0-06-144292-5 PLB Who wouldn’t want to put on a monster show in a big, cardboard box or pop bubble wrap at rapid-fire speed?

After a new television ruins “family fun time,” Chloe, the middle bunny in a brood of 21, tries to pull her brothers and sisters from its glowing grip. Colored-ink drawings hover on lush, creamy paper, offering delightfully dreamy details: the bunnies’ fur, pert mouths and dewy eyes, their clothes’ stripes and patterns, their bodies clustered together around the house.

On one dizzying double-page spread, Chloe levitates at the epicenter of the domestic swirl, her family circling swiftly around her. McCarty says simply and directly to middle children everywhere, “Chloe was in the middle.” The narrative maintains perfect pacing throughout, speeding up with long sentences and slowing down with abbreviated lines that allow readers to linger on the soft, mesmerizing artwork (so many bunnies!). A bustling dinner scene shows the family nibbling on every kind of spring veggie; readers’ eyes roam from one end of the table to the other and back again, studying each whiskered face and plate. Fashion (eyeglasses, dresses, shirts) and minute tweaks in expression individualize each rabbit, while Chloe always manages to shine. McCarty captures the tensile ties strung among siblings, parents, genders and ages in every household.

Beautifully benign illustrations conjure powerful familial feelings. (Picture book. 3-6)

BELLY FLOP!

McCranie, Stephen Illus. by McCranie, Stephen Philomel (224 pp.) $9.99 paperback | Dec. 6, 2012 978-0-399-25658-5 Series: Mal and Chad, 3 It’s hard not to like a main character who brings a lab coat and briefcase to elementary school.

In one panel of this third outing for Mal and his talking dog, Chad, a boy is wearing a hat shaped like a giraffe. This is never explained, except that he’s auditioning for the talent show. The real reason for the hat, of course, is that McCranie likes to draw giraffes. It’s the same reason there’s a giant bust of Albert Einstein on the lawn of Mal’s school. Mal is a boy inventor, which gives the artist a chance to draw a clock 70

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with a robot hand popping out of it. “Why not invent an alarm clock that wakes you up gently…?” Mal asks rhetorically. The hand, he notes, “tenderly pats you on the head until you wake up.” Kid inventors are not popular at Einstein Elementary.

Mal’s crush, Megan, won’t even invite him to her birthday party.

Sometimes Mal will glance at her across the room, and she doesn’t look back. These scenes are drawn with as much skill as the giraffes and robots, and they are heartbreaking. In another panel, Mal sees Megan and skips into the air with joy. He’s a foot off the ground, and the tiny picture shows exactly how it feels to be in elementary school and in love.

This emotional honesty alone is a reason to buy this book; the giraffe and Einstein are the icing on McCranie’s cake. (Graphic fiction. 8-11)

LULU AND THE DUCK IN THE PARK

McKay, Hilary Illus. by Lamont, Priscilla Whitman (104 pp.) $13.99 | Sep. 1, 2012 978-0-8075-4808-0 Series: Lulu, 1

A warmhearted beginning to a new chapter-book series delights from the first few sentences.

“Lulu was famous for animals. Her famousness for animals was known throughout the whole neighborhood.” So it begins, revealing its bouncy language and its theme, illustrated by a cheery image of Lulu with bunnies at her feet, a parrot on her shoulder and a mouse in her hair. Lulu’s best friend is her cousin Mellie, who is famous for several things but most notably losing sweaters, pencils and everything else. Her teacher in Class Three is Mrs. Holiday, who endures the class guinea pig but does not think it needs animal companions, not even Lulu’s dog.

When the class goes to Tuesday swimming at the pool by the park, however, and Lulu finds a duck egg, which she takes back to class—that is not an animal, right? Well, not yet. What Lulu and Mellie do to protect the egg, get through class and not outrage Mrs. Holiday is told so simply and rhythmically, and so true to the girls’ perfectly-logical-for-third-graders’ thinking, that it will beguile young readers completely. The inclusion of the kid who always gets a bloody nose and a math lesson on perimeter only adds to the verisimilitude and the fun. Lulu’s classroom is full of children of all colors, and Lulu and Mellie are the color of strong tea with cream, judging from the cover.

Utterly winning. (Fiction. 7-9)

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“Digital layering produces a fantastic fusion of painterly textures, soft patterns and fine outlines, yielding ethereal illustrations with dappled colors that shine like light through a leaf.” from hide & seek

ONE TIMES SQUARE A Century of Change at the Crossroads of the World

keeps the antsy energy going. Digital layering produces a fantastic fusion of painterly textures, soft patterns and fine outlines, yielding ethereal illustrations with dappled colors that shine like light through a leaf. So many undulating components could easily turn into roiling confusion on the page, but here each element coheres beautifully, rendering a sweetly swirling, tie-dyed rain forest awash in reds, yellows, greens and blues.

Ready or not! Here comes a book worth finding. (Picture book. 2-5)

McKendry, Joe Illus. by McKendry, Joe Godine (64 pp.) $19.95 | Sep. 6, 2012 978-1-56792-364-3

An unexpected history of a very famous intersection.

Millions of people begin each new year mesmerized by the ball drop atop One Times Square. But before all the glitz and flashing lights, Times Square was filled with carriages, livery stables and coal yards. It is a stark contrast that’s difficult to imagine.

McKendry (Beneath the Streets of Boston: Building America’s First Subway, 2005) takes readers on a journey through 100 years of shifts and changes to this well-known New York City landscape.

Beginning in 1904 when the New York Times headquarters was built and forever changed the name of this small plot of land, McKendry accompanies the text with a spectacular painting of the Square from a specific point of view. This same perspective is used repeatedly throughout the narrative, simultaneously grounding readers and letting them watch in awe as buildings and technology sprout and change. Interspersed with the Square’s history—during both thriving years and sordid ones—are fascinating tidbits such as the inner workings of billboards, the arrival of the Motograph News Bulletin (or the “Zipper”) and, of course, the exact number of light bulbs found in the 2000 Millennium ball. Cross sections, diagrams and stunning double-page spreads show how these few tiny streets have changed in very large ways.

Just like Times Square itself, the pages are filled to the brim. (sources) (Nonfiction. 10-14)

HIDE & SEEK

Na, Il Sung Illus. by Na, Il Sung Knopf (32 pp.) $15.99 | May 8, 2012 978-0-375-87078-1 Expert hide-and-seekers will hear the hushed scuttles and feel the quickened pulses as a group of animals plays a rain forest game of hide-and-seek.

Elephant counts while his animal friends scurry. Butterflies flutter around the crouching little elephant, a new one joining in with each page turn, adding up to a swarm that equals each giddy announcement: 1, 2, 3! Meanwhile, flamingo, chameleon, giraffe, rhino, monkey, tortoise, the starlings and bush babies hasten to get hidden. Momentum mounts as readers alternate between an animal wondering, for example, “Can I hide behind this rock?” (on left-hand pages) and the elephant’s escalating counting (on the right). Na also directs readers’ eyes up into the canopy and down into the underbrush, where creatures look for cover, getting them to crane their heads and look at the forest from every angle. Text size swells and reduces, indicating emphasis, and |

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WHAT LITTLE BOYS ARE MADE OF

Neubecker, Robert Illus. by Neubecker, Robert Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins (32 pp.) $14.99 | Apr. 1, 2012 978-0-06-202355-1 “What are little boys made of?” In Neubecker’s hands, the answer is a whole lot of fun!

From “Moons and stars and rockets to Mars” to “Wings and tails and dragons with scales,” this rhyme’s half-pint hero imagines his way through most boys’ obsessions. Astronaut, sports star, knight, dinosaur-tamer—they’re all there, presented in action-packed, energetic illustrations. Done in pen or pencil, then digitally colored, the artwork has a raw freshness as spontaneous as the lad’s revelry. Neubecker skillfully uses the text and compositions to build upon each other. Each verse begins with the boy and his toys in a plain and simple environment.

But in resolving the verse (“That’s what little boys are made of ”), gorgeous, visually complex, full spreads are offered, giving readers insight into the boy’s rollicking fantasies. It’s a wonderful juxtaposition—the density of the imagined merriment on one spread after such a sparse one—reinforcing the innocence of the child’s real-life play. The illustrator also pays homage to a certain visual aesthetic for each of the youth’s adventures. As a pirate, readers may recall old naval illustrations; as a dragonslayer, illuminated manuscripts; and as a jungle explorer, the wild things of Maurice Sendak. To complete the picture, the author also shows the quiet and loving side of boys, as they are also made of “A kiss and a hug, a snuggle and LOVE.” One romping celebration of boyhood to read again and again. (Picture book. 3-8)

GEORGIA IN HAWAII When Georgia O’Keeffe Painted What She Pleased

Novesky, Amy Illus. by Morales, Yuyi Harcourt (32 pp.) $16.99 | Feb. 27, 2012 978-0-15-205420-5

An appealing and slightly humorous portrayal of O’Keeffe’s artistic vision and determination, along

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“[Obed’s] language shimmers and sparkles; it reads like poetry.” from twelve kinds of ice

with a peek at the Hawaii of over half a century ago.

During her several-weeks sojourn in the Hawaii Territory in 1939, Georgia O’Keeffe painted some of her most lovely work.

Though it was the Hawaiian (later Dole) Pineapple Company that underwrote her trip in exchange for a painting of a pineapple, O’Keeffe refused to paint the picked fruit the company offered.

She did not actually paint a pineapple until she returned to New York, and readers may be able to find her pineapple painting hiding in the pages. But, as Novesky tells here, O’Keeffe discovered flowers, landscapes and Hawaiian feathered fishhooks that captured her artist’s eye. Morales’ luscious full-page illustrations— digitally assembled edge-to-edge acrylic paintings—seem to glow softly in scenes filled with rich colors and that create an intimate relationship between the figure of Georgia and her surroundings.

Labeled illustrations of nine different Hawaiian blossoms cover the endpapers. In one striking spread, a canvas close-up shows Georgia’s just-painted waterfall, with a feathered lure and a shell hanging from the corners, while just beyond Georgia, a striking black lava formation reaches into the ocean. Morales captures Georgia’s intelligent and occasionally formidable look; she also captures what O’Keeffe saw, gracefully echoing, not reproducing, O’Keeffe’s work.

Accessible, unfussy and visually charming. (author’s and illustrator’s notes; sources) (Picture book/biography. 6-10)

TWELVE KINDS OF ICE

Obed, Ellen Bryan Illus. by McClintock, Barbara Houghton Mifflin (64 pp.) $16.99 | Nov. 6, 2012 978-0-618-89129-0

Winter on a Maine farm offers the joys of ice in all its forms.

Icy childhood memories glisten in this magical series of nostalgic vignettes. From the first skim on a pail to the soft, splotchy rink surface at the end of the season, Obed recalls the delights of what others might have found a dreary season. The best thing about ice is skating: in fields, on a creek or frozen lake and, especially, on the garden rink. In a series of short scenes presented chronologically, the author describes each ice stage in vivid detail, adding suspense with a surprising midwinter thaw and peaking with an ice show. Her language shimmers and sparkles; it reads like poetry. Readers will have no trouble visualizing the mirror of black ice on a lake where their “blades spit out silver,” or the “long black snake” of a garden hose used to spray the water for their homemade rink.

McClintock’s numerous line drawings add to the delight. They show children testing the ice in a pail, a father waltzing with a broom, joyous children gliding down a hill in a neighbor’s frozen field. One double-page spread shows the narrator and her sister figure skating at night, imagining an admiring crowd. The perfect ice—and skating—of dreams concludes her catalog.

Irresistible. (Memoir. 6-9)

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HADES Lord Of The Dead

O’Connor, George Illus. by O’Connor, George Neal Porter/First Second (80 pp.) $16.99 | paper $9.99 | Jan. 31, 2012 978-1-59643-761-6 978-1-59643-434-9 paperback Series: Olympians, 4 A tempestuous mother-daughter relationship makes up the centerpiece of O’Connor’s latest carefully researched and simultaneously fresh and funny Olympian portrait.

Snatched down to the Underworld in the wake of a screaming fight with her mother Demeter (“Butt out of my life!!” “You ungrateful brat”), raging adolescent Kore (meaning, generically “The Maiden”) initially gives her quiet, gloomy captor Hades a hard time too. After grabbing the opportunity to give herself a thorough makeover and changing her name to Persephone (“Bringer of Destruction”), though, she takes charge of her life— so surely that, when offered the opportunity to return to her remorseful mom, she lies about having eaten those pomegranate seeds so she can spend half of each year as Queen of the Dead.

O’Connor expertly captures both the dramatic action and each character’s distinct personality—Demeter in particular, with her big hair and temper to match, is a real piece of work—in easy-to-follow graphic panels. Effortlessly folding in other familiar and not-so-familiar tales of figures associated with his title character, he opens with an eerie guided tour of Hades’ realm, closes with fact boxes about each of the major players and in between ingeniously preserves the old tale’s archetypal quality without ever losing sight of its human dimension.

An outstanding addition to a first-rate series. (notes, study questions, resource lists) (Graphic mythology. 8-14)

THE SPINDLERS

Oliver, Lauren Illus. by Bruno, Iacopo Harper/HarperCollins (256 pp.) $17.99 | Sep. 18, 2012 978-0-06-197808-1 Liza must venture Below to rescue her little brother’s soul, stolen by evil, power-hungry spider people called spindlers, in this refreshingly creepy, intricately woven tale.

A concealed hole in the wall behind a narrow bookcase in her family’s basement is her entry, and amid loud scratching noises, Liza trips, falling down into the darkness Below. Mirabella, a giant rat who wears newspaper for a skirt, becomes her trusted guide to the spindlers’ nests, which Liza must reach before the Feast of the Souls. But things are never what they seem in Oliver’s vividly imagined world....An arduous, dangerous and fantastical journey ensues. As in the author’s first

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terrific book for middle-grade readers, Liesl & Po (2011), there is a smorgasbord of literary references, including strong echoes of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. It is laced with humor and engaging wordplay, as well as riddles and death-defying tests and enchantments. Wholly original creatures populate the tale, some reassuring and wise, like the nocturni and lumer-lumpen, others wonderfully macabre (and ferocious), like the queen of the spindlers and the shape-shifting scawgs. In the course of her episodic quest, Liza discovers she is resourceful and brave; she sees things differently than before.

Richly detailed, at times poetic, ultimately moving; a book to be puzzled over, enjoyed and, ideally, read aloud.

(Final illustrations not seen.) (Fantasy. 8-12)

WONDER

Palacio, R. J. Knopf (320 pp.) $15.99 | $10.99 e-book | PLB $18.99 Feb. 14, 2012 978-0-375-86902-0 978-0-375-89988-1 e-book 978-0-375-96902-7 PLB After being home-schooled for years, Auggie Pullman is about to start fifth grade, but he’s worried: How will he fit into middle school life when he looks so different from everyone else?

Auggie has had 27 surgeries to correct facial anomalies he was born with, but he still has a face that has earned him such cruel nicknames as Freak, Freddy Krueger, Gross-out and Lizard face. Though “his features look like they’ve been melted, like the drippings on a candle” and he’s used to people averting their eyes when they see him, he’s an engaging boy who feels pretty ordinary inside. He’s smart, funny, kind and brave, but his father says that having Auggie attend Beecher Prep would be like sending “a lamb to the slaughter.” Palacio divides the novel into eight parts, interspersing Auggie’s first-person narrative with the voices of family members and classmates, wisely expanding the story beyond Auggie’s viewpoint and demonstrating that Auggie’s arrival at school doesn’t test only him, it affects everyone in the community. Auggie may be finding his place in the world, but that world must find a way to make room for him, too.

A memorable story of kindness, courage and wonder.

(Fiction. 8-14)

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SUMMER OF THE GYPSY MOTHS

Pennypacker, Sara Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins (288 pp.) $15.99 | Apr. 24, 2012 978-0-06-196420-6 Desperate times call for desperate measures indeed when, one summer afternoon on Cape Cod, 11-year-old Stella finds her sole caretaker, her greataunt Louise, dead in her chair.

Stella, who’s been abandoned by her mom, and Louise’s 12-year-old foster child, Angel, know the second they call 911 they’ll be hauled off by the authorities… and the thought of having to leave a good home for who knows where is too much to bear. So they bury Louise in the garden. The suspense escalates.

How long will Stella and Angel be able to keep Louise’s death a secret in a small community? Will dogs dig up the body? Will the girls be able to pull off the task of assuming Louise’s duties as manager of the Linger Longer Cottage Colony? How long can they survive eating relish, stale croutons and “Froot Loop dust”? The unfolding story is both deliciously intense and entertaining. Stella, an order-seeking girl whose oracle is Heloise (of hint fame), not only knows how to keep a corpse from smelling (Febreze), she employs old pantyhose and Crisco to keep the gypsy moths off Louise’s beloved blueberry bushes. Stella’s poetic, philosophical observations of the world are often genuinely moving, and tough-on-the-outside Angel is her perfect foil.

A suspenseful, surprising novel of friendship and family from the creator of the popular Clementine series. (Fiction. 9-12)

HAND IN HAND Ten Black Men Who Changed America Pinkney, Andrea Davis Illus. by Pinkney, Brian Disney Hyperion (256 pp.) $19.99 | Oct. 23, 2012 978-1-4231-4257-7

Addressing the appetites of readers “hungry for role models,” this presents compellingly oratorical pictures of the lives and characters of 10 African-American men who exemplify a “birthright of excellence.”

Each of the chronologically arranged chapters opens with a tone-setting praise song and a commanding close-up portrait.

From Benjamin Banneker, whose accusatory letter to slaveholder Thomas Jefferson “socked it straight / to the secretary of state,” to Barack Obama, who “turned Yes, we can! into a celebration call,” the gallery is composed of familiar names. Instead of rehashing well-chewed biographical fodder, though, the author dishes up incidents that shaped and tested her subjects’ moral and intellectual fiber along with achievements that make her chosen few worth knowing and emulating. Carping critics may

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quibble about the occasional arguable fact and an implication that Rosa Parks’ protest was spontaneous, but like Malcolm X, Pinkney has such “a hot-buttered way with words” that her arguments are as convincing as they are forceful, and her prose, rich as it is in rolling cadences and internal rhymes, never waxes mannered or preachy.

A feast for readers whose eyes are (or should be) on the prize, in a volume as well-turned-out as the dapper W.E.B. Dubois, who was “more handsome than a fresh-cut paycheck.” (timeline, index, lists of recommended reading and viewing) (Collective biography. 10-15)

MY SISTER LIVES ON THE MANTELPIECE

Pitcher, Annabel Little, Brown (226 pp.) $17.99 | Aug. 1, 2012 978-0-316-17690-3

Jamie lives in a bizarre world, where a sister can die in a bombing, and the only way to bring Mum and Dad together is by auditioning for Britain’s Biggest Talent Show.

Five years after her death, Rose remains foremost in his parents’ minds, “living” in her urn on the mantelpiece. His parents barely know Jamie, nor are they able to recognize Rose’s twin, Jasmine, as an individual. Capturing the confusion of an optimistic but sensitive child navigating a tough situation without guidance, Jamie’s narration is by turns comic and painful. His only friend is Sunya, whose headscarf billows behind her like a superhero cape and who helps Jamie fight the class bully. Yet Jamie cannot tell Sunya how his parents have abandoned the family: his mum to an affair; his dad to alcohol. The fact that Sunya is Muslim and therefore, according to Jamie’s dad, responsible for Rose’s death, is a brilliant counterpoint and an issue that Jamie must work through. Each character is believably flawed, and readers anticipate the heartbreaking scene when Jamie’s plans for a family reunion fail. However, the final triumphant chapters of this striking debut demonstrate that even as Jamie’s sorrows increase, so too, does his capacity for understanding, courage and love. Mum is gone, but Dad may recover, and Jasmine and Sunya are in Jamie’s corner.

Realistic, gritty and uplifting. (Fiction. 10-14)

SHADOW ON THE MOUNTAIN

Preus, Margi Amulet/Abrams (304 pp.) $16.95 | Sep. 1, 2012 978-1-4197-0424-6 A teenage boy becomes a spy in Nazioccupied Norway.

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school, Scouts and soccer games to delivering underground newspapers. Gradually, he advances to transporting secret documents via bicycle or skis and spying on Gestapo locations for the intelligence branch of the Resistance. Along the way, he navigates relationships with a beloved best friend who has joined the Nazis, his younger sister and peers who share his passion for opposition, as well as a budding romance with Solveig, who wears a red stocking hat signaling displeasure with the new regime. Newbery Honor winner Preus (Heart of a Samurai, 2010) infuses the story with the good-natured humor of a largely unified, peace-loving people trying to keep their sanity in a world gone awry. Based on a true story, the narrative is woven with lively enough daily historical detail to inspire older middlegrade readers to want to learn more about the Resistance movement and imitate Espen’s adventures. A selectively omniscient narrator moves from sister Ingrid’s diaries to the inner thoughts of Espen’s nemesis, Aksel. Preus also incorporates a Norse myth about Odin to shed light on what it means to be wise, the possibility of knowing too much and how to resist shadowing the mountain of hope.

A morally satisfying page turner. (author’s note, archival photographs, maps, timeline, selected bibliography) (Historical fiction. 10-14)

THE DOGS OF WINTER

Pyron, Bobbie Levine/Scholastic (320 pp.) $16.99 | $16.99 e-book | Oct. 1, 2012 978-0-545-39930-2 978-0-545-46985-2 e-book An orphaned boy in Russia survives as a member of a pack of dogs.

Ivan is only 4 years old when he runs away to the streets of Moscow. At first, he is taken in by a scruffy group of children under one adult’s control. They live in the subway stations, begging and stealing food. He soon befriends and is adopted by a small group of dogs and becomes one of them. They survive on the trains in the winter and in the forest during the summer. Ivan keeps a button belonging to his (probably dead) mother as a talisman and remembers the fairy tales she read to him. Increasingly, his time with the dogs provides nourishment for both his hungry belly and his soul. Threats are ever present in the form of police, gangs of teens and wild animals in the forest. Two years later he is captured, and after months of care, he regains his humanness.

Pyron has based her story on magazine articles about a Russian feral child, one of hundreds of thousands whose lives were disrupted by the dissolution of the Soviet Union. She presents Ivan’s story as a first-person narrative in beautifully composed writing enhanced by Ivan’s visual acuity and depth of emotion.

Terrifying, life-affirming and memorable. (author’s note, bibliography) (Adventure. 10-14)

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“Readers are carried aloft by Rusch’s exciting, clear prose and the rovers’ exceptional photos sent Earthside.” from the mighty mars rovers

COLD CEREAL

Rex, Adam Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins (432 pp.) $16.99 | Feb. 7, 2012 978-0-06-206002-0 A motley assortment of human experimental subjects and faerie exiles take on a New Jersey cereal company run by eldritch management for nefarious purposes.

With an off-the-wall sensibility that fans of the author’s True Meaning of Smekday (2007) will recognize with delight, Rex kicks off a planned trilogy. He brings together sixth-grade outsider Scottish Play Doe (an actor’s son, surprise), young genius Erno Utz and his even brighter supposed twin Emily, a crusty old leprechaun and like unconventional allies to be hunted by agents of the huge Goodco Cereal Company—producers of Burlap Crisp™, Honey Frosted Snox™. These and similar products enjoy a wild popularity that can be ascribed to the literal truth of the company motto: “There’s a Little Bit of Magic in Every Box!” The author tucks in portrait illustrations and hilariously odd TV-commercial storyboards, along with a hooded Secret Society, figures from Arthurian legend, magical spells and potions, a certain amount of violence, many wonderful throwaway lines (“Yeh may have a tarnished glamour about yeh, sure. Like a celebrity’s daughter.”) and tests of character with often surprising outcomes.

All in all, it’s a mad scramble that culminates in the revelation of a dastardly plot that will require sequels to foil.

A massive explosion at the end only sets that evil scheme back a bit; stay tuned for further strange and exhilarating developments. (Fantasy. 11-13)

THE MIGHTY MARS ROVERS The Incredible Adventures of Spirit and Opportunity Rusch, Elizabeth Houghton Mifflin (80 pp.) $18.99 | Jun. 18, 2012 978-0-547-47881-4

What’s it like to explore Mars? Did life ever exist on Earth’s red neighbor? To find out, readers need only soar along with this enthralling account of the adventures of two rovers designed to seek evidence on Mars of water that could have once supported life.

Expected to last three months, the indefatigable Spirit and Opportunity incredibly carried out their missions for more than six years. In the process, lead scientist Steve Squyres and his team learned more about and probed more terrain on Mars than anyone before. Readers are carried aloft by Rusch’s exciting, clear prose and the rovers’ exceptional photos sent Earthside. Along with the team, young people celebrate every thrilling moment of success—yes, there once was water on Mars!—and accept failures and disappointments. This is edge-of-your-seat reading as |

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the author explains how setbacks were handled. Readers are not only drawn in by the dedication, hard work and emotions of the people involved, but they will also, like the scientists themselves, feel proprietary toward the rovers—and, fortunately, there’s an update about them. One quibble: the ample backmatter has little specifically for children. Another stellar outing in the consistently excellent Scientists in the Field series.

How extraordinary to visit Mars in Spirit; readers will be very glad of the Opportunity. (sources, chapter notes, glossary, index) (Nonfiction. 10-14)

THE IMPOSSIBLE RESCUE The True Story of an Amazing Arctic Adventure

Sandler, Martin W. Candlewick (176 pp.) $22.99 | $22.99 e-book | Sep. 11, 2012 978-0-7636-5080-3 978-0-7636-5969-1 e-book

Sandler brings to life an extraordinary true adventure tale set on the treacherous Arctic terrain.

In September 1897, eight whaling vessels became icebound near Point Barrow, Alaska, the northernmost point in America, and 265 men faced starvation. Acting on orders from President McKinley, Secretary of the Treasury Lyman Gage sent Capt.

Francis Tuttle and his ship, the Bear, on a rescue mission. He would take the Bear as far north as possible, put three officers ashore and send them over 1,500 miles overland to aid the men.

Using a combination of dog-powered and reindeer-drawn sleds, herding 400 reindeer and living off the land along the way, the three-man rescue team, with immense help from indigenous people, succeeded in their journey through the Arctic winter, arriving 103 days after leaving the Bear. Remarkable photographs, many taken by one of the rescuing officers, grace just about every spread, and even the captions are fascinating. The narrative’s excitement is heightened by the words of the participants, drawn from their actual letters, diaries, journals and other personal reminiscences. Maps are well-drawn, documentation is meticulous, and the backmatter includes a section on what happened to the key players and a useful timeline.

Outstanding nonfiction writing that makes history come alive. (source notes, bibliography, photography credits, index) (Nonfiction. 10 & up)

This Issue’s Contributors # Marcie Bovetz • Timothy Capehart • Julie Cummins • GraceAnne A. DeCandido • Elise DeGuiseppi • Lisa Dennis • Barbara A. Genco • Judith Gire • Carol Goldman • Ruth I. Gordon • Shelley Huntington • Kathleen T. Isaacs • Betsy Judkins • Robin Fogle Kurz • Megan Lambert • Nina Lindsay • Lori Low • Wendy Lukehart • Joan Malewitz • Jeanne McDermott • Kathie Meizner • Daniel Meyer • Lisa Moore • John Edward Peters • Susan Pine • Rebecca Rabinowitz • Kristy Raffensberger • Erika Rohrbach • Ronnie Rom • Mindy Schanback • Dean Schneider • Paula Singer • Meg Smith • Robin Smith • Karin Snelson • Jennifer Sweeney • Deborah D. Taylor • S.D. Winston

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“An exceptional life; a stunning achievement.” from monsieur marceau

SPLENDORS AND GLOOMS

Schlitz, Laura Amy Candlewick (400 pp.) $17.99 | Aug. 28, 2012 978-0-7636-5380-4

Two orphans, a witch and a girl who laughs at death: Each shares the lens of protagonist in Newbery winner Schlitz’s fully satisfying gothic novel.

Parsefall and Lizzie Rose assist a wicked puppeteer, Grisini, with his London street shows in exchange for board and crumbs in a Dickensian boardinghouse complete with quirky landlady and ill-behaved dogs. Clara Wintermute is a privileged girl living in the shadow of her siblings, who all died from eating diseased watercress (picky Clara made her twin eat hers). Clara demands the puppet show for her birthday, and shortly after the ominous performance, she becomes trapped in some form she can’t fathom. Grisini is suspected, and the orphans are drawn into a dangerous ploy orchestrated by a dying witch who needs a child to steal something precious from her. Each character is a little horrible: Parsefall is a selfish thief, but this neediness gives him a keen empathy and daring. Lizzie Rose is bossy, but her yearning for her lost family keeps them together. Clara is egotistical, but her steely will saves them all. The witch is more horrible than good, but she is a little bit good, like the chocolate in the box that only grown-ups like. The shifting perspective among these characters and cumulative narrative development (echoing Dickens’ serials) create a pleasingly unsettling tension.

Schlitz’s prose is perfect in every stitch, and readers will savor each word. (Historical fantasy. 9-13)

MONSIEUR MARCEAU Actor Without Words

Schubert, Leda Illus. by DuBois, Gérard Neal Porter/Flash Point/Roaring Brook (40 pp.) $17.99 | Sep. 4, 2012 978-1-59643-529-2

Audiences thrilled to his mesmerizing performances, in which he spoke through his expressive body without uttering a single word.

Marceau was the world’s most popular and beloved mime.

Born in France, he grew up watching and imitating Charlie Chaplin, star of silent films. World War II intruded and turned the Jewish teen into a war hero. At war’s end, he created Bip, his alter ego, who with makeup and costume “walks against the wind, but there is no wind.” Schubert’s spare text is both poetic and dramatic. DuBois’s oil paintings are brilliantly executed and saturated, with textured nuances. Images of Marceau fly across the page, delighting the eye, while close-ups highlight his extraordinary facial expressions. Ordinary paper morphs into stage settings as Marceau dances against white or black 76

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backgrounds. One double-page spread depicts a costumed fish with sinuously expressive hands and feet. Another presents seven views of Marceau in movement, updating a series of views of Marceau as a child. The pages set during World War II, in contrast, are a somber palette. Don’t turn the pages too quickly; rather stop and feel the joie de vivre with which the master filled people of all ages all over the world.

An exceptional life; a stunning achievement. (afterword, source notes, further reading) (Picture book biography. 4-10)

GREEN

Seeger, Laura Vaccaro Illus. by Seeger, Laura Vaccaro Neal Porter/Roaring Brook (40 pp.) $16.99 | Mar. 27, 2012 978-1-59643-397-7 In lush paintings outfitted with cleverly positioned die cuts, Seeger’s latest explores the color green.

In four simple quatrains, two-word lines each suggest a kind of green, introducing a scene that might show natural, domestic or built elements: “forest green / sea green / lime green / pea green.” Two die-cut leaves on a tree in the forest’s foreground become, with a page turn, two fish swimming in a sea turtle’s wake. At “jungle green,” a tiger crouches, peering from thick undergrowth. The page turn yields “khaki green” and a lizard whose pale, spotted body is camouflaged against similarly speckled and splotched earth. The rectangular die cut shared by the tiger and lizard spreads reveals that the words “jungle” and “khaki” are each embedded in the painted scenes: The die cut facilitates the discovery. “[G]low green” shows twilit children chasing tiny circles—luminescent fireflies—near a deep-red barn; with a page turn, the circles are now apples in a tree. The last quatrain—“all green / never green / no green / forever green” spans spreads that conclude in the orchard, near the red barn, with tiny die-cut leaves: on a new plant; on a mature tree. Seeger’s paintings vary in perspective and even in perspicacity: For example, flowers and trees are stylistically more naif than animals.

In all, lovely, inventive, engrossing and interactive.

(Picture book. 2-6)

A STICK IS AN EXCELLENT THING Poems Celebrating Outdoor Play

Singer, Marilyn Illus. by Pham, LeUyen Clarion (40 pp.) $16.99 | Feb. 27, 2012 978-0-547-12493-3

Turning the adage that sticks and stones may break one’s bones on its ear, picture-book titans Singer and Pham team up to entice young readers to go where most Generation Xbox angels fear to tread: outside.

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Here Singer presents the full spectrum of outdoor activities in rhymed poems consummately animated by Pham’s vibrant drawings. No matter the diversion—playing with the dog, balancing on the curb, running through a sprinkler, making stone soup with friends—Singer’s entreaty to get out and play is unmistakable. While many of the snappy lyrics show off the pleasures of moving—“Everything’s a blast / when you do it really fast!”concludes a piece extolling the virtues of running, puddle-jumping and skateboarding—a real strength of the collection is its engagement of the imagination. For example, in the title piece, what an ordinary stick in the hand can become— a royal scepter, pen, magic wand, drumstick—is limited only by its holder’s creativity. Pham’s evocative artwork heightens the imagination’s importance in play, with her digitally colored pencil-and-ink renderings so finely textured that they radiate a warmth as arresting as Ezra Jack Keats’.

A thrilling integration of verse and image, motivating all to serious fun. (Picture book/poetry. 3-8)

“WHO COULD THAT BE AT THIS HOUR?” Snicket, Lemony Illus. by Seth Little, Brown (272 pp.) $15.99 | Oct. 23, 2012 978-0-316-12308-2

Young Mr. Snicket seems to always ask the wrong questions.

In the basin of a bay drained of seawater, where giant needles extract ink from octopi underground, sits Stain’d-by-the-Sea, the mostly deserted town where 12-year-old Lemony Snicket takes his first case as apprentice to chaperone S. Theodora Markson. They have been hired by Mrs. Murphy Sallis to retrieve a vastly valuable statue of the local legend, the Bombinating Beast, from her neighbors and frenemies the Mallahans. Nothing’s what it seems…well, the adults are mostly nitwits…and Snicket is usually preoccupied with someone he left in the city doing something he should be helping her do. With the help and/or hindrance of girls Moxie and Ellington, can Snicket keep his promises and come close to solving a mystery? Author Snicket (aka Daniel Handler) returns with a tale of fictional-character Snicket’s early years, between his unconventional education and his chronicling of the woes of the Baudelaires. Intact from his earlier series are the gothic wackiness, linguistic play and literary allusions. This first in a series of four is less grim and cynical and more noir and pragmatic than Snicket’s earlier works, but just as much fun.

Fans of the Series of Unfortunate Events will be in heaven picking out tidbit references to the tridecalogy, but readers who’ve yet to delve into that well of sadness will have no problem enjoying this weird and witty yarn. (Mystery. 8-12)

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COLD SNAP

Spinelli, Eileen Illus. by Priceman, Marjorie Knopf (40 pp.) $17.99 | Oct. 9, 2012 978-0-375-85700-3 A community caught under the pall of a weeklong cold snap comes together in this cozy, old-fashioned story that is high on both charm and appeal.

The Toby Mills cold snap begins innocently enough on a Friday, with snow angels, sledding and an icicle on the nose of the statue of the town founder. On Saturday, soup and stew are popular menu items at the diner, and the icicle is chin-length. On Sunday, the heavily clothed townspeople shiver through church services.

Wednesday is so cold that the mayor wears his robe and pink bunny slippers…at work. By Friday, the statue’s icicle reaches the ground, along with everyone’s patience. But the mayor’s wife has just the solution—a warm winter surprise that brings out the best in everyone and makes them forget the cold. The quaint details in Spinelli’s text that are brought to life in Priceman’s gouache illustrations make this book stand out, giving it the air of an old-fashioned seek-and-find. “Franky Tornetta stopped whining about his itchy woolen socks and put on three pairs,” and there he is in the picture, green socks layered over red and yellow. Boldly colored vignettes and spreads that depict the small-town setting and round-headed, pink-cheeked characters enhance the retro feel of the book.

This may not be the most exciting or enthralling winter tale, but it is perfect for sharing during readers’ own cold snaps—calming, reassuring, charming. (Picture book. 4-8)

A HOME FOR BIRD

Stead, Philip C. Illus. by Stead, Philip C. Neal Porter/Roaring Brook (32 pp.) $16.99 | Jun. 5, 2012 978-1-59643-711-1 Vernon is both a toad and a forager for found objects. Ambling along with his latest haul, he chances upon a creature he seeks to know and then to help.

Observant children will have noticed (next to the copyright information) the overloaded “Careful Moving Co.” pickup truck barreling down the road, where a bump releases a cuckoo from its clock spring. On re-readings, additional story elements will be discovered in the truck. Vernon observes that “Bird is shy…but also a very good listener,” when he introduces Bird to his friends. He and his pals conclude that Bird is lost and unhappy, so the thoughtful, resourceful amphibian readies a teacup boat for the journey to help this quiet stranger return home. They check out a birdcage, birdhouse, mailbox, nest and telephone wires—to no avail, but “Vernon was a determined friend.” After the weary pair seeks refuge inside a familiar farmhouse clock, Vernon wakes to a cheery “Cuckoo!” and all is well. Stead’s loose gouache strokes and crayon scribbles

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create a disheveled world just right for suggesting a junk-collector’s paradise. Wide lines mix with thin curves, and wet and dry strokes commingle for a dappled, breezy setting; blue and green canopies often frame the page borders. Stead’s sensitive telling and white background create space for contemplation.

A deeply satisfying story that speaks to the universal desires to be nurtured and to find a home. (Picture book. 3-8)

BEAR HAS A STORY TO TELL

Stead, Philip C. Illus. by Stead, Erin E. Neal Porter/Roaring Brook (32 pp.) $16.99 | Sep. 4, 2012 978-1-59643-745-6

Within a gentle tale of hibernation and renewal, the Steads’ second collaboration (after Caldecottwinning A Sick Day for Amos McGee) explores a second, internal theme: the nature of the storytelling narrative itself.

Increasingly sleepy, Bear pads through the fall landscape with “a story to tell” before winter’s sleep. Mouse, Duck, Frog and Mole are well into their own winter preparations and cannot listen. Months later, when the reunited friends gather beneath a full moon, Bear can’t remember his story. Helpfully, his friends suggest a protagonist (“Maybe your story is about a bear”), a plot (“Maybe your story is about the busy time just before winter”), and supporting characters (themselves). Thus, Bear begins his story as this one ends: The first line of his story is both the last line of the book and its first. Erin Stead’s pictures quietly appeal: Pencil line and shading define basic features of animals and trees, while washes and smudges of paint suggest seasonal colors, Bear’s rotund mass, and the brushy cobalt expanse of starlit skies. Sharing an affinity with Jerry Pinkney yet evoking the sparer 1960s work of Evaline Ness and Nonny Hogrogian, Stead’s compositions exude an ineffable, less-is-more charm.

The Steads’ work adopts a folkloric approach to cooperative relationships; the affectionately rendered animals that stand in for humans convey a nurturing respect for child readers. (Picture book. 3-7)

LIAR & SPY

Stead, Rebecca Wendy Lamb/Random (208 pp.) $15.99 | Aug. 7, 2012 978-0-385-73743-2 A seventh-grade boy who is coping with social and economic issues moves into a new apartment building, where he makes friends with an over-imaginative homeschooled boy and his eccentric family.

Social rules are meant to be broken is the theme of this bighearted, delightfully quirky tale, and in keeping with that, Stead creates a world where nothing is as it seems. Yet the surprises are meticulously foreshadowed, so 78

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when the pieces of the puzzle finally click in, the readers’ “aha” moments are filled with profound satisfaction. When an economic downturn forces Georges’ family to move out of their house and into an apartment, it brings Georges into contact with Safer, a home-schooled boy about the same age, and his unconventional but endearing family—and a mystery involving their possibly evil neighbor, Mr. X. At school, Georges must grapple with another type of mystery: why his once–best friend Jason “shrugged off ” their lifelong friendship and suddenly no longer sits with him at lunch. Instead, Jason now sits at the cool table, which is controlled by a bully named Dallas, who delights in tormenting Georges. It would be unfair to give anything away, but suffice it to say that Georges resolves his various issues in a way that’s both ingenious and organic to the story.

Original and winning. (Fiction. 10-14)

THE QUIET PLACE

Stewart, Sarah Illus. by Small, David Margaret Ferguson/Farrar, Straus & Giroux (40 pp.) $16.99 | Sep. 18, 2012 978-0-374-32565-7 As in Stewart and Small’s previous The Gardener (1997) and The Journey (2001), letters to a loved one become the vehicle for a girl to explore what she sees, feels and comes to understand upon leaving home for the first time.

In this title, a family of four is moving from Mexico to America in 1957. Their poignant, pre-dawn departure starts on the endpapers. Small’s imaginative use of color and masterful variation of line combine to focus attention on Isabel’s expressive face while developing other characters and creating a convincing period with Formica countertops and big-finned cars. Silent spreads allow readers time to ponder her predicament and imagine their own reactions. As the epistles to Auntie Lupita chronicle Isabel’s encounter with snow, feelings about her new teacher and time spent at the children’s parties her mother caters, they also indirectly portray a family sensitive to a child’s well-being. When Isabel requests the big boxes left over from the parties, her family supports her special sanctuary as needed; decorated with paint, origami and cardboard rainspouts reminiscent of the clay gutters back home, her quiet place turns into a panorama of festivities on her birthday, when a double gatefold reveals many new friends.

A warm, gentle portrait of an immigrant’s isolation and the ways that creativity and a loving family can offer both a safe haven and a bridge. (Picture book. 4-8)

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“An exceptionally seamless blend of action and philosophy, two elements that usually do not mix easily; TenNapel handles this masterfully.” from cardboard

DISCOVERING BLACK AMERICA From the Age of Exploration to the TwentyFirst Century

Tarrant-Reid, Linda Abrams (244 pp.) $29.95 | Sep. 1, 2012 978-0-8109-7098-4 This handsome, engaging study of African-American history brings to light many intriguing and tragically underreported stories.

This is a comprehensive approach to African-American history, beginning with accounts of black explorers before the settlement of North America. The straightforward narrative includes major historical events but places emphasis on unusual aspects.

For example, during the segment on the American Revolution, there is good discussion about those who fought for both the Patriots and the Loyalists. Another section of distinction is the period following the Civil War and Reconstruction, including the role of blacks in the West and an intriguing look at the differing views of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois. The societal changes brought on by World War II and the civil rights movement receive their due. Little-known exchanges between Malcolm X and Martin Luther King are the kinds of detail that lift this narrative above the standard history text. Not surprisingly, the story concludes with the election of President Barack Obama and the challenges facing the first black president. This is a well-researched, readable overview with an attractive layout that will engage young readers. There are few pages that are not accompanied by an interesting sidebar or image, many archival.

From attractive page design to an afterword that encourages readers to search for their own history, there has been much attention to detail in this handsome volume. (notes, bibliography, art credits, index) (Nonfiction. 10 & up)

IT JES’ HAPPENED When Bill Traylor Started To Draw

Tate, Don Illus. by Christie, R. Gregory Lee & Low (32 pp.) $17.95 | Apr. 1, 2012 978-1-60060-260-3 Tate and Christie capture the spirit behind the work of Bill Traylor, “one of the most important self-taught American folk artists of the twentieth century.”

Traylor went from slavery to sharecropping to raising his family in rural Alabama. In his early 80s, having outlived his family, he moved to Montgomery, sleeping on sidewalks and in doorways and alleys. In his loneliness, he dwelt upon “the saved-up memories of earlier times,” and with the sidewalk as his studio, began drawing. He drew cats, cups, snakes, birds and what he saw around him in Montgomery: the blacksmith’s shop, people walking dogs, men in tall hats and women in long dresses. Christie must feel |

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himself a kindred spirit to Bill Traylor, his acrylic and gouache illustrations sharing Traylor’s palette of rich color, whimsical humor and sense of play with the human form. In his debut as a picture-book author, Tate crafts prose that is clear and specific, the lively text sometimes surrounded by playful figures cavorting off the pages as Traylor draws them. Though an author’s note is provided, an artist’s note would have been welcome.

An important picture-book biography that lovingly introduces this “outsider” artist to a new generation. (source notes, afterword) (Picture book/biography. 6-11)

CARDBOARD

TenNapel, Doug Illus. by TenNapel, Doug Graphix/Scholastic (288 pp.) $24.99 | paper $12.99 | Aug. 1, 2012 978-0-545-41872-0 978-0-545-41873-7 paperback An out-of-the-box story of golems, guys and guts.

Though dealing with the recent death of his mother, Cam and his father are trying to make the best of a difficult time. Currently unemployed and virtually penniless, Cam’s father buys him the only birthday present he can afford: a cardboard box. From the get-go, it is apparent that this is no ordinary cardboard: It comes with a list of rules, which Cam’s father casually dismisses. In an attempt to make the bland box more exciting, his father fashions a cardboard man, a boxer he names Bill, who undergoes a Pinocchiolike transformation and becomes a loyal friend. The animated man catches the interest of menacing Marcus, a well-off, wideeyed, fish-lipped bully, who steals the cardboard for his own malicious intent. When Marcus’ plans go horribly, terribly awry, he discovers that he needs one thing that money can’t buy: a friend to help him. TenNapel’s story is edge-of-your-seat exciting, but what really drives home this clever outing are the added complexities and thought-provoking questions it asks of its reader, specifically examining what constitutes “good” and “bad,” and how to change how one is labeled. The result? An exceptionally seamless blend of action and philosophy, two elements that usually do not mix easily; TenNapel handles this masterfully.

Utterly brilliant. (Graphic fantasy. 10 & up)

THE SEVEN TALES OF TRINKET

Thomas, Shelley Moore Farrar, Straus and Giroux (384 pp.) $16.99 | Sep. 4, 2012 978-0-374-36745-9 Like her main character, Trinket, Thomas clearly loves storytelling, and she has a real talent for it, too.

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“Though it’s filled with incident, emotion, magic and adventure, what stands out most is Trinket’s clear voice and loving heart, both of which will endear her to readers.” from the seven tales of trinket

Seven interlinked episodes follow a brief exposition. The distinctness of these episodes keeps the text from seeming overlong, particularly since the smooth flow and intriguing elements will easily capture readers’ interest. Unusual characters (a gypsy princess, fairy queen and ghostly highwayman, among others) add excitement and suspense, while the overarching tale, which effectively connects the disparate characters and individual events, features a quest of sorts. Eleven-year-old Trinket recently lost her mother to a fever. Her father, a wandering bard, abandoned the family five years ago when he failed to return as promised from a storytelling sojourn. With no one to care for her, Trinket sets out with a friend to discover what became of her father—and to collect some stories to tell. Hardships abound, and the two often go hungry, but they persevere in their search. Readers familiar with Celtic folklore will recognize the outlines of some of the sections.

But even those for whom selkies and banshees are brand-new will appreciate the clever way Thomas weaves together traditional elements and her fictional creations.

Though it’s filled with incident, emotion, magic and adventure, what stands out most is Trinket’s clear voice and loving heart, both of which will endear her to readers. (Fantasy. 8-12)

INTO THE WOODS

Torres, J. Illus. by Hicks, Faith Erin Kids Can (100 pp.) $17.95 | paper $9.95 Sep. 1, 2012 978-1-55453-711-2 978-1-55453-712-9 paperback Series: Bigfoot Boy, 1 Mom said there was magic in the woods…she probably didn’t mean anything like this.

Ten-year-old city boy Rufus is staying at his grandmother’s house on the edge of a forest for a few days without his parents.

Grammy’s idea of fun is prune juice and soap operas, so Rufus decides to explore the woods. He meets a girl named Penny, but she’s as friendly as a rock. Her older sister, Aurora, tells Rufus Penny’s friendlier than she seems, so he doesn’t give up on her. When looking for her in the woods, Rufus finds a glowing necklace in a tree. After reading the word on the back, he turns into Bigfoot!

Not only is he big, red and hairy, but he can also talk to animals.

Sidney the flying squirrel helps him get home. There’s danger in the forest as well as magic, and when Penny disappears, Rufus (and Sidney) use the totem to effect a rescue. Canadian author Torres’ first in a new series of graphic novels has magic, humor and just a hint of menace. Easy-reading text, all in speech bubbles, will appeal to a wide range of readers. Hicks’ bright and glossy cinematic panels are full of action; readers will almost smell the green of the trees. This one gets everything just right.

Be prepared for young Sasquatch fans roaring for more.

(Graphic fantasy. 6-11)

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THREE TIMES LUCKY

Turnage, Sheila Dial (320 pp.) $16.99 | May 10, 2012 978-0-8037-3670-2 What do you get when you combine Because of Winn-Dixie’s heart with the mystery and action of Holes? You get an engaging, spirit-lifting and unforgettable debut for young readers.

Turnage introduces readers to the homey yet exotic world of Tupelo Landing, N.C., well-populated with one-of-a-kind characters. A stranger with justice on his mind has just arrived in town, and Hurricane Amy is on its way. Rising sixth-grader Mo LoBeau leads the cast through a series of clues as the whole town tries to figure out who among them might be a murderer. The novel’s opening lines reveal the unflappable Mo LoBeau as a latter-day Philip Marlowe: “Trouble cruised into Tupelo Landing at exactly seven minutes past noon on Wednesday, the third of June, flashing a gold badge and driving a Chevy Impala the color of dirt.”

This is the first of many genius turns of phrases. Pairing the heartbreaking sadness of children who don’t get their fair share from parents with the hilarity of small-town life, Turnage achieves a wickedly awesome tale of an 11-year-old girl with more spirit and gumption than folks twice her age. Mo LoBeau is destined to become a standout character in children’s fiction.

Readers may find they never want to leave Tupelo Landing. (Mystery. 10-14)

I SAW A PEACOCK WITH A FIERY TAIL

Urveti, Ramsingh; Yamakami, Jonathan Tara Publishing (56 pp.) $17.50 | May 15, 2012 978-93-80340-14-2

Creative worlds collude and collide in this contemporary rendering of a wellknown 17th-century English poem.

Seldom does a book review address a book’s design, but in this visual stunner from publisher Tara, the literal setting of the words is as key to the volume’s success as are its text and illustrations. Urveti, an acclaimed artist from Madhya Pradesh in central India, chooses for his subject an oftanthologized anonymous circa-1665 “trick” poem, depicting the wily text with ravishingly detailed black-and-white pen-and-ink drawings in a style typical of Gond tribal art. The other third of this global collaboration is Brazilian designer Yamakami’s exquisitely thoughtful setting of the 12-line poem, which highlights the reflexivity of the six couplets. The meanings of these couplets can be gleaned reading each line with the rhyme from beginning to end, or—the tricky part—against it, from the middle of one line to the middle of the next. Take, for example, the

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poem’s opening: “I saw a peacock with a fiery tail / I saw a blazing comet drop down hail / I saw a cloud….” Through the use of intricate die cuts, Yamakami subtly leads readers from a spread featuring a plumped-up peacock to the image of a comet with its “fiery tail” of metaphorical “hail,” then to a cloud dropping the more literal icy phenomenon. These careful cuts draw readers through the work from cover to cover, brilliantly underscoring both the poem’s dizzying, dreamlike essence and its thematic obsession with the subjective nature of seeing.

Indian folk art triumphantly meets 17th-century English trick verse in this sophisticated graphic venture fit for middle graders on up. (Picture book/poetry. 10 & up)

APPLESAUCE

Verplancke, Klaas Translated by Mixter, Helen Illus. by Verplancke, Klaas Groundwood (40 pp.) $18.95 | Aug. 1, 2012 978-1-55498-186-1 “My daddy has warm hands. His fingers taste like applesauce. I wish he had a thousand hands.”

Spare of words but rich in feeling, this love note tracks some ups and downs but circles back to an attachment so warm and close that only the stoniest of hearts will remain unaffected. Tagging along as his father washes up in the morning, sacks out in front of the television after some vigorous outdoor play and then goes on into the kitchen to peel apples, the young narrator makes contented comments about dad’s hands, muscles and stomach (“soft as a pillow”). When an unspecified offense brings on “thunder daddy,” though, the miffed lad heads for “the forest of Other-and-Better”—a staircase, in the pictures, that transforms into a dense, dark forest of trees with shouting mouths—in search of a nicer parent.

The scary experience drives him back into the kitchen where dad, who had himself transformed into a hairy, scowling gorilla, offers a bowl of applesauce and reverts bit by bit over a wordless spread as amity is restored. Aside from an early remark that papa “sounds like a mom when he sings in the bath,” there’s no sign of a second adult.

Reminiscent of Where the Wild Things Are in its visual transformations and emotional intensity, but with a more present and openly loving parent. (Picture book. 4-6)

MOM, IT’S MY FIRST DAY OF KINDERGARTEN!

Yum, Hyewon Illus. by Yum, Hyewon Frances Foster/Farrar, Straus & Giroux (40 pp.) $16.99 | Jul. 3, 2012 978-0-374-35004-8 |

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Yum, known for using text and artwork to explore emotions (There Are No Scary Wolves, 2010, etc.), looks at the first day of school from two points of view—that of a little boy who is more than ready and a nervous mother not quite prepared to let him go.

The author’s watercolors are the true standout here, the colors and relative sizes of the characters masterfully conveying their emotions—many spreads could stand on their own without the text at all. Readers first see the pair when the 5-year-old shakes his mother awake on the first day of school; he is huge and pink-faced, towering over his tiny mother, who is bluefaced and cowering in the bed. As the text enumerates her worries (that he won’t have time to eat, she forgot some vital supply, he’ll be late, he’ll get lost, he won’t have any friends), the exuberant boy’s facial expressions, body language and oral responses counter her fears…until they reach his classroom door, and their sizes and colors flip. He quickly gets over it and has a great day at school, greeting his blue-toned mother exuberantly at dismissal, and the two, regular sizes and colors again now that they have survived the day, reunite and share the day’s events.

Yum has perfectly captured the emotional ups and downs of both parent and child in a visually expressive work that will shore up adults as they send their children off on that momentous day. (Picture book. 4-7, adult)

MOUSTERPIECE

Zalben, Jane Breskin Illus. by Zalben, Jane Breskin Neal Porter/Roaring Brook (40 pp.) $16.99 | Aug. 21, 2012 978-1-59643-549-0 Who needs a cookie? Give a mouse a paintbrush!

Janson lives in a museum, in a cozy corner with a pillow and a rose-speckled blanket. One day, she stumbles upon something new, “and her little world opened.” Striding across a gray page, with a soft white glow around her figure to show energy, Janson emerges into a white background and finds—art! Immediately entranced, this self-possessed, humble rodent sets to work copying the masters. A grid of pop-art self-portraits (Janson’s face, with her tenderly expressive eyebrow angle) pays homage to Andy Warhol’s Marilyn series; Janson reclining in a jungle recalls Rousseau; Janson’s snout, elongated and triangulated into cubism, echoes Picasso. Each clean, white page centers Janson at work; an occasional wall angle, easel or dropcloth nimbly enhances the minimal composition. Janson’s gray body and striped skirt are warm hues of low saturation, sending focus to the colors within her artwork: Campbell’s red soup can with mouse face, à la Warhol; blues and yellows for van Gogh’s Starry Night; primaries for a geometric Mondrian mouse and a Munch mouse Scream. When museum renovation bars Janson from the art wing, she weeps, truly bereft, then forges ahead, painting from memory and defining her own style. Discovery and an exhibit follow. Janson’s climactic mousterpiece features canvas texture showing through the paint, honoring her beloved medium.

The joyful clarity of both vision and execution thrills. (notes on 22 artists referenced) (Picture book. 3-7)

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top 25 children’s books

JIMMY THE GREATEST! THE ONE AND ONLY IVAN Katherine Applegate Harper/HarperCollins

FIFTY CENTS AND A DREAM

Jabari Asim Illus. by Bryan Collier Little, Brown

OCEAN SUNLIGHT

Molly Bang; Penny Chisholm Illus. by Molly Bang Scholastic

Jairo Buitrago Illus. by Rafael Yockteng Trans. by Elisa Amado Groundwood

OH, NO!

Candace Fleming Illus. by Eric Rohmann Schwartz & Wade/Random

THE MIGHTY MISS MALONE

Christopher Paul Curtis Wendy Lamb/Random

BOOT & SHOE

Marla Frazee Illus. by Marla Frazee Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster

ELECTRIC BEN

Robert Byrd Illus. by Robert Byrd Dial

NEVER TRUST A TIGER

Lari Don Illus. by Melanie Williamson Barefoot

ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND FREDERICK DOUGLASS

WATER SINGS BLUE

Kate Coombs Illus. by Meilo So Chronicle

Russell Freedman Clarion

A GREYHOUND OF A GIRL

Roddy Doyle Amulet/Abrams

FISH HAD A WISH

Michael Garland Illus. by Michael Garland Holiday House

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top 25 c h i l d r e n ’s b o o k s ( c o n t. )

CHARLEY’S FIRST NIGHT

Amy Hest Illus. by Helen Oxenbury Candlewick

THE REVOLUTION OF EVELYN SERRANO Sonia Manzano Scholastic

TWELVE KINDS OF ICE

Ellen Bryan Obed Illus. by Barbara McClintock Houghton Mifflin

LIAR & SPY

Rebecca Stead Wendy Lamb/Random

IT JES’ HAPPENED

YOU ARE STARDUST Elin Kelsey Illus. by Soyeon Kim Owlkids Books

SQUEAK, RUMBLE, WHOMP! WHOMP! WHOMP!

WONDER

Wynton Marsalis Illus. by Paul Rogers Candlewick

THE MAN FROM THE LAND OF FANDANGO

Margaret Mahy Illus. by Polly Dunbar Clarion

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Don Tate Illus. by R. Gregory Christie Lee & Low R.J. Palacio Knopf

THREE TIMES LUCKY LITTLE WHITE DUCK

Andrés Vera Martínez; Na Liu Illus. by Andrés Vera Martínez Graphic Universe

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MONSIEUR MARCEAU

Sheila Turnage Dial

Leda Schubert Illus. by Gerard Dubois Neal Porter/Flash Point/ Roaring Brook

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