The Best Indie Books and Book Apps of 2013

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Mysteries Editor THOMAS LEITCH

REVIEWS................................................................ 3

Contributing Editor G R E G O RY M c N A M E E Senior Indie Editor KAREN SCHECHNER kschechner@kirkus.com

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Indie Editor RYA N L E A H E Y rleahey@kirkus.com

adult REVIEWS.................................................59

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Children’s REVIEWS......................................62

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What could make Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland even more surreal and sublime than Carroll’s original tale? Walrus & Carpenter Productions’ seamless blending of the illustrations of some 12 classic artists’ interpretations into one gorgeous e-book. Read our starred review on p. 63.

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Lockwood deftly combines elements of investigative journalism and crime fiction. Read our starred review on p. 38.

A pair of ex-Marines applies a Zen approach to their combat-ignited love of caffeine, describing their quest for the perfect cup of coffee with charm and vigor. Read our starred review on p. 60.

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In 2013, self-publishing continued to show warp-speed growth and wide-ranging diversity. Kirkus Indie kept pace. We reviewed more than 3,000 books, including a literary tale of one down-and-out bungler’s life in Depression-era Minnesota, a YA “satisfying scientific confection,” a memoir about surviving the Soviet Gulag and a beer drinker’s guide to wine.

This past year, Indie titles contained multitudes; they were instructive, diverting, sublime, eco-conscious and otherworldly. Liz Castro’s timely collection of articles investigates and advocates for Catalan independence. In the ornately produced The Well of Being, Jean-Pierre Weill borrows from 18th-century Italian Jewish mystic Ramchal and illustrates the oneness of all via watercolors that double as “spiritual Rorschach blots.” Novelist and TV writer Melissa Jo Peltier hilariously skewers the scripted, exploitive world of reality TV in Reality Boulevard. A collection of LGBT short stories examines multiple generations of queer experience in primarily urban settings. Creative killers abounded, particularly in Carol Golembiewski’s “arty, high-concept supernatural thriller” set in a museum.

Philip R. Belzunce and Lalei E. Gutierrez offer eight ways to save a relationship through connection and communication, and Brad Lancaster suggests methods to help save the planet through “water stewardship” for gardens, landscaping and everyday use. And in the sci-fi world of Cleland Smith’s Sequela, sexually transmitted designer diseases are a fashion statement. Indie editors Ryan Leahey, David Rapp and I were transported, edified and entertained by the Best Indie Books of 2013, and we hope you will be too. Bon voyage! ­—Karen Schechner 11 Stories

Cander, Chris Rubber Tree Press (234 pp.) $14.00 paper $9.99 e-book Apr. 10, 2013 978-0-9889465-0-7

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A WILDER ROSE

Albert, Susan Wittig Persevero Press (307 pp.) $24.99 | $14.99 paper | Oct. 1, 2013 978-0-9892035-0-0 This pitch-perfect novel reimagines the life of Rose Wilder Lane, co-author of Little House on the Prairie.

Albert (Widow’s Tears, 2013, etc.) has discovered an endlessly fascinating protagonist. Lane, the libertarian and rumored lesbian, was an established, award-winning writer in her own right, but she may be best remembered today as the uncredited co-author of the Little House books written by her mother, Laura Ingalls Wilder. Albert’s well-researched novel draws from the letters and journal entries of both women to offer a fictionalized account of the years spanning 1928-1939. The Great Depression threatens not only Rose’s livelihood as a writer, but also the free-wheeling, itinerant lifestyle she so values. When she and her companion, Helen Boylston, leave their home in Albania and return to the Wilder farmstead in Missouri, the move is meant to be temporary—Mansfield, Mo., has little to offer in the way of culture, after all, and Rose frequently clashes with her headstrong and old-fashioned mother. In the aftershock of the stock market crash, however, both women lose their savings, and Rose loses the financial stability she had enjoyed as a freelance writer before the crash. When a publisher shows interest in printing the stories of Laura’s difficult frontier childhood (but Laura’s untrained writing fails to impress), the mother and daughter enter into an unlikely, often contentious collaboration to produce the now-beloved Little House books. From this strange, very specific historical relationship, Albert has written a nuanced, moving and resonant novel about fraught mother-daughter relationships, family obligation, and the ways we both inherit and reject the values of our parents.

The book also offers insightful, timely commentary on what it means to be a career writer.

With all of the charm of the Little House series—and the benefit of a sophisticated, adult worldview—Albert’s novel is an absolute pleasure.

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A PRAYER FOR THE DEVIL

Allan, Dale Emerald Book Company (320 pp.) $23.95 | $8.99 e-book | Oct. 1, 2012 978-1-937110-34-5 In Allan’s debut thriller, a priest aims to find the people responsible for his brother’s murder, whatever the cost.

An explosion at a political rally kills a popular presidential candidate, a Muslim reformist and a lawyer who had Senate aspirations. However, authorities are baffled as to which person was the intended target of the terror attack. The lawyer’s twin brother, Luke Miller, a Catholic priest raised in a Jewish household, becomes a media celebrity in the aftermath of the tragedy, and he spends much of his day dodging paparazzi. The press’s fascination is understandable; after all, Luke wears his brother’s clothes, drives his brother’s car and goes out in public with his brother’s widow.

He decides to look into the bombing on his own, even though his investigation may ultimately put other people’s lives in jeopardy. Allan’s novel is a blistering tale with all the right ingredients for a mystery—for example, Luke’s prodding reveals more questions, such as why Luke’s brother had been carrying a gun.

But the author’s multifaceted characters are what give the book distinction. Luke is a bracingly ambiguous character, prone to violent retorts and wracked with guilt over the fact that he and his brother had not been on the best of terms. The novel also addresses Luke’s ties to the cloth, as his need for retribution makes him question his faith. The story is full of complex relationships; for example, Luke is indisputably attracted to both his sister-in-law Deborah, and the Muslim reformist’s sister Jami. Luke encounters many dead ends and red herrings, but they always feel like steps closer to a solution rather than throwaway pieces of a puzzle. The book’s stellar ending addresses a lingering uncertainty and leaves much for readers to ponder.

An engaging mystery, and a sizzling debut.

ONE DAY TELLS ITS TALE TO ANOTHER

Augustine, Nonnie CreateSpace (104 pp.) $20.33 paper | Mar. 11, 2013 978-1-4827-3099-9

Like a well-wrought memoir, this medley of free- and fixed-verse poems combines vivid personal narrative with probing self-reflection.

“So, I did the thing / I would never do,” confesses a young dancer upon landing an art-smothering, body-pulverizing contract job in “Paid to Dance,” one of many seemingly autobiographical poems in Augustine’s debut collection. One can easily imagine the same confession from the older narrator sleeping with her friend’s husband in “Wine and 4

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Cheese Villanelle” or the jaded lover of “Sestina,” who “learned to play double, just like him.” Compromise and disillusionment are frequent themes here but so are resilience and learning, although the narrators are often too busy navigating their lives to recognize their growing wisdom. Augustine often layers the perspectives of the narrator, author and reader to bolster the poems’ realism and emotional sincerity, and it’s a technique she hones to near perfection. On rare occasions, the poet usurps the narrator and lapses into bathos: “As we sit at this café table / in Montmartre, sheltered / from the downpour, I see our future. / I will write it down on torn paper, / using a sapphire pen,” seemingly taking seriously Billy Collins’ satirical advice in his poem “The Student” that poets should, “[w]hen at a loss for an ending, / have some brown hens standing in the rain.” On the whole, however, Augustine demonstrates much greater control and precision as she works through multiple iterations of love and loss, employing to great effect forms as varied as the prose poem, the concrete poem, the villanelle, the sestina, the sonnet and the ballad. She reimagines fairy tales, evokes foreign lands through bodily sensation, valorizes women’s perseverance, and revels in the rollicking pleasures of sex, even when they come with risk. As her narrators age, she tightens the circle, mourning and celebrating with equal intensity. One narrator contemplates the “Three Things That Did Not Happen”: “I almost saw Nessie,” “I almost won the jackpot,” and “I almost had a child. / She was there in my womb / until chromosomes killed her. / My God, that would have been something.” Among the losses, though, it “appears gone for good are dramas and bothers, / threats and therapists, drunk, needy lovers. / And…lovely, lovely, lovely is my cat’s furry belly.”

Poetry that often transcends its own bounds, spilling over into readers’ lives and forcing them to confront their own narratives.

ROLL THE DICE

Avrashow, Wayne Manuscript (430 pp.)

In this hilarious, politically savvy potboiler, an aging rock star stages his biggest gig yet—a high-profile election campaign.

Pushing 50, singer and perennial Rolling Stone cover boy Tyler Sloan decides that an independent run for the open Senate seat in his home state of Nevada is just the thing to cement his legacy. With sky-high name recognition, crowd-pleasing charisma and a personal fortune to spend, his chances don’t look bad. But he struggles with plenty of negatives, including a well-publicized history of drug abuse, the united hostility of the Republican and Democratic party machines, and an unequalled risk of bimbo eruptions. (Floating around somewhere is an old video of him engaging in group sex—with his GOP opponent.) Sloan plunges into the whirl of exaltation and degradation that is the modern election campaign: boning up on his cow-milking technique for a county fair, deflecting idiotic press gotchas (the direst is an accusation of |

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“The plot twists like ginkgoes in the wind.” from riding the tiger

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vegetarianism flung at him before an audience of cattle ranchers), enduring the Girl Scouts’ heckling, patiently rebuffing every demand to sing and ducking when a Second Amendment stalwart opens fire. Almost as riotous are the backstage wranglings: Sloan’s campaign manager is wearing a wire for the Feds, his lawyer is up to his monogrammed cuff links in influence peddling, and the sexual tension with his edgy media guru is primed to explode. For all the fun it pokes, Avrashow’s novel is keenly observant in its depiction of both the public histrionics of elections and the hard-boiled dealmaking and arm twisting that go on behind closed doors. The author’s subtle, knowing prose brings out layers of complexity in characters and their motives, never reducing them or their quest to caricatures. Sloan is an intelligent, politically savvy hero, ready to compromise—although he also realizes the value of a vicious attack ad. He runs a feel-good populist campaign that promises vague “solutions” while skirting specifics, yet he retains a core of conviction that gives his politics some substance. As mired as Sloan is in the sleaze of vote-getting, readers will be eager to see him win.

An entertaining, spot-on portrait of politics at its corrupt, dysfunctional, inspiring best.

television and gadgets, can shit in a flush pot, and see the world— still a savage, though.” In the end, Banks delivers an engaging tale of forgiveness and the strength of familial ties, even when those ties have been frayed almost to extinction.

A spectacular novel of colonial China that should put this first-time author on the map.

A FLOWERSHOP IN BAGHDAD

Banzet, Michael CreateSpace (348 pp.) $17.95 paper | $8.99 e-book | Oct. 3, 2012 978-1-4782-7129-1 U.S. Air Force veteran Banzet reports with a proud airman’s-eye view (and some humor) on his enlistment and posting to Iraq and America’s effort to rebuild the Iraqi military in the wake of Saddam Hussein’s shattered dictatorship.

RIDING THE TIGER

Banks, Milena iUniverse (532 pp.) $37.95 | $27.95 paper | Feb. 19, 2013 978-1-4759-5637-5 Debut novelist Banks crafts a sweeping tale of seduction, betrayal and war.

This novel draws on the shared, complicated colonial history between the British and Chinese peoples and spans six decades, starting in 1937 when fighting between Japanese and Chinese troops led to the Second SinoJapanese War. It focuses on Jardine, a young Chinese orphan who knows little of her past. In 1997, Jack Morgan, an elderly, dying Kentuckian who has lived in China for decades, summons Jardine to his apartment and tells her, “The woman who kept you from knowing who you are has recently died.” That woman, Violet Summerhays Morgan, was Jack’s long-suffering, infertile wife and the daughter of Percival Summerhays, Jack’s benefactor and boss.

Jealous of Jack’s imagined and real affairs, Violet cheated, lied and even murdered in her attempt to win Jack’s love and destroy her competition. But in 1937, Jack met and fell in love with Ana, a Russian émigré, and had a daughter with her named Bella. That girl’s fate, and Jardine’s, is inextricably bound to that of her parents’ and those of their many friends and enemies in business and romance. Banks’ evocative prose is impressive throughout: “Algy knew he’d always remember this moment, the sound of the clock on the wall ticking, the man’s hand as it clutched the bottle, and the look of the wife, slow and hateful, as they drank her liquor and her happiness.” The plot twists like ginkgoes in the wind as the characters cruelly betray one another. As Jack tells Jardine, “Modern man is no better off; he only thinks he is because he has |

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Occasional salvos of fierce political op-ed—pro-Bush, anti“liberal”—pepper this robust, often humorous and thoughtful military-insider account of Air Force life and the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Banzet grew up in Montana and, after marriage he enlisted in the Air Force. However, his entry was delayed and, before actually attending basic training, Banzet looked at a future of hopeless, entry-level civilian jobs. (However, as part of Banzet’s mission statement, he aims to overturn the stereotype of U.S. forces being demoralized youth who serve merely because no other employment opportunities beckon.) Once in the military, Banzet declares that America’s armed forces—even the grunts; especially the grunts—feature some of the best souls the country has to offer. He shores up that assertion with vivid descriptions of the work done by American (and British) troops repairing Iraq. Even as insurgents and Sunni–Shiite enmities took a toll on coalition endeavors (the bad news exaggerated by the media, the author asserts), Banzet helped lead the effort to retrain former Iraqi military members, many of whom, not long ago, were the enemy. A country’s armed forces reflect its essence, Banzet states, and while he encounters his share of martinets during his tour (including an “intel guy” worthy of Get Smart), the Saddam dictatorship had sired an especially dysfunctional military culture of sycophancy, incompetence and corruption. Banzet writes of instilling in his new Iraqi cadets an Air Force–style discipline, honor (performing duties for a greater Iraq, not out of fear) and leadership. He doesn’t excuse the POW abuse at Abu Ghraib but does emphasize that it was an exception to the rule; most Iraqis felt safer under occupying American troops. For skeptics seeking a rationale for what made Iraq such a priority target after 9/11, the book only offers a warmed-over take on Bush Doctrine, with the qualifier that Saddam’s forces were in such shambles it’s no wonder the CIA got bad info about weapons of mass destruction.

Banzet’s wit is a WMD itself, and readers might guess he detests democrats even more than Saddam; fortunately, instead of talkradio bloviating, most of the time he uses solid storytelling and eyewitness examples to maintain that the U.S. presence in Iraq was beneficial to and appreciated by the Baghdad locals he came to know. The book would nonetheless benefit from a glossary of terminology, acronyms and jargon peculiar to the Gulf Wars.

Action takes a rear guard to the human element in this compelling account of a soldier’s mission being accomplished.

GRAFFITI GRANDMA

Barney, Jo Encore Press (338 pp.) $13.95 paper | $2.99 e-book Mar. 11, 2013 978-0-615-72645-8

Ostensibly about a serial killer, Barney’s (The Solarium, 2011, etc.) novel is about much more than that. It’s also the story of people who are down but not out and a rumination on family, courage and responsibility—a book that reverberates long after the last page.

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Grouchy old Ellie Miller, the “graffiti grandma,” is on a quixotic mission to scrub the graffiti off the mailboxes in her neighborhood. With solvent and rags, she does it at least once a week.

One day, she encounters Sarah, a homeless teenage goth girl who offers to help. But they’re wary of each other. In the first chapter, they discover, under a pile of leaves, the body of Peter, a homeless boy who was Sarah’s friend and protector. From there, the plot is off and running, even as it skips around. But that’s OK, since Barney is an agile writer with an uncanny ability to tie the plot strings together. For example, the narrative doesn’t get back to the action of the first chapter until Chapter 11, after all the characters are introduced, each with his or her own back story. There’s Jeffery, another forsaken kid whose grandfather comes to rescue him from a traumatic childhood, though he may not be a real rescuer after all. There’s divorced policeman Matt Trommald and his autistic son, Collin. And there’s Ellie, who’s no saint, though she’s finally sober. She thinks her troubled son, Danny, is long gone—and good riddance—but he might be closer than she thinks. Each chapter has its own appropriate point of view, with Ellie and Sarah in first person and Matt and Jeffrey in third. As such, it’s easy to get to know Ellie and Sarah and their wary dance around each other; Matt and Jeffrey, less so. Key to the plot is the camp in the nearby dense woods, where young runaways make up a ragtag family.

But runaways are turning up dead. Who’s the killer? Fortunately, Barney’s narrative nimbleness helps wrangle the storylines as they race to a satisfying conclusion.

A gripping book with compelling characters who don’t want your pity.

GOOD VS. GOOD Why the 8 Great Goods Are Behind Every Good (and Bad) Decision Beck, John C. North Star Books (240 pp.) $19.99 paper | $9.99 e-book Jan. 28, 2013 978-0-9847491-4-0

A business management expert explains that disagreements and conflicts are not the products of good versus evil but of differences in how individuals prioritize what he calls the Eight Great Goods.

After conducting thousands of interviews and surveys with people from more than 20 cultures, Beck (co-author: Japan’s Business Renaissance, 2005, etc.) determined that making decisions is, for most people, an attempt to do the right thing or to do good. The decisions people make, Beck says, can be sorted into one of the Eight Great Goods, each illustrated here with interview snippets: Life, Growth, Relationships, Joy, Individuality, Stability, Equality and Belief. Individuals prioritize these goods differently, with great variation; Beck notes that, according to his research, less than 10 percent of a representative sample of Americans shares a pattern of priority with another person. Regardless of this individual variation, Beck cogently |

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and effectively proposes that by using these eight goods to categorize even the most contentious debates, opponents will discover commonalities. Perhaps more importantly, opponents will stop viewing debated issues in terms of good versus evil and instead understand conflicts as a matter of good versus good.

Once an individual organizes the eight goods according to his or her own priorities, Beck says decision-making can be accomplished by applying a simple algorithm to the problem at hand.

At the organizational and national levels, where individual lists would, he presumes, vary significantly, problems are analyzed based on which goods are most applicable. Using the debate over Arizona’s immigration law as an example, Beck illustrates this process by bringing a contentious group of debaters closer to agreement by identifying the goods of Relationships, Equality, Stability and Individuality—the goods most affected by the law’s passage, he says. Further evidence of how these eight goods factor into decision-making is described in Section III, which examines various nations and the policies that reflect how different countries have prioritized these goods. The book concludes with a section on how leaders can put the Eight Great Goods into practice and develop better, more focused

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and successful organizations. Due to Beck’s conversational writing style, the concepts are made easy to understand without becoming too simplistic. Rather than offering a tired analysis of the current trend toward deep polarization, he offers plausible, practicable steps toward a solution that require little more than a fresh perspective and a willingness to try something new.

An eye-opening, even-keeled theory offering hope to those who disagree.

Eight Pathways of Healing Love

Belzunce, Philip R.; Gutierrez, Lalei E. Bella-Tierra International (276 pp.) $29.87 paper | Jan. 7, 2013 978-0-9857666-0-3 A deceptively simple guide to relationships.

The self-help market abounds with breezy advice about love connections. It’s a rare guide that has the power to flip perspectives and trigger epiphanies, not to mention provide simple techniques that might alter habitual reactions and behaviors. From the first pages, this treatise diverges from the surface-skating norm. Drawing on decades of client counseling, as well as their own experience as a couple, Belzunce and Gutierrez have created a road map for exploring eight areas of human existence and interaction, which they call pathways. While some are self-explanatory (Connection and Communication, for example), most compartmentalize life in more novel ways (such as Being and Balance, the challenge of harmonizing discordant aspects of the self and the other). They make utter sense, though, within the authors’ framework. Such idiosyncratic terminology—and the unapologetically heart-centered language, which belies an inherent, worldly wisdom—is easy to resist at first brush. Familiarity, however, breeds understanding and acceptance. Each discussion of pathways includes explanations, illustrative case histories, questionnaires and worksheets, some extensive enough to require flip charts. Pointers abound for defusing heated communication, with examples of navigating difficult conversations and a recurring emphasis on being present—slowing breathing and hearing or expressing only what is happening in that instant. The material skillfully helps develop new approaches and viewpoints. Exposure alone has value, even to the reader who foregoes completing the exercises (or who would balk at couples’ therapy). Any relationship, post-divorce included, stands to benefit from exploring all of the pathways, as do the individuals involved.

A valuable addition to the self-help genre, for skimmers and divers alike.

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“[E]ven the most indiscernible movements of body, mind and heart are painstakingly recognized and charted.” from between bodies lie

The latest edition of the yearly anthology series offers a vivid cross section of contemporary gay life.

Though its title is something of a misnomer—The Best Gay Small Press Stories might be more fitting—this collection, edited by Berman, doesn’t suffer for its conspicuous absence of today’s most famous gay writers. Its 20 stories (most of them fiction, with a few autobiographical pieces included) examine multiple generations of gay experience. Ameen’s “Irrespective of the Storm,” for instance, chronicles his arrival in New York City in 1978, nodding to a subterranean sexual culture almost unrecognizable today, while several of the stories grapple with the meaning of commitment in the modern age of Internet sex. Though the complexity of desire might not be the most surprising thematic throughline for an anthology of gay writing, the collection succeeds precisely due to the fact that the stories are complicated, populated with believable, imperfect characters and plenty of ethical gray areas. If desire is one of the collection’s primary concerns, another dominating interest is capturing varied moments in gay men’s lives. Jones’ searing “Boy, A History” follows a character known only as Boy throughout his sexual awakening in a hostile environment. Other contributors tell stories of young love and long-term relationships turned tepid, middle-aged anxiety and elderly isolation. Though the book’s no less enjoyable for it, the anthology’s scope can feel narrow at times, with the majority of its stories taking place in familiar urban gay settings and most of its characters of an educated, well-cultured set.

But the book does succeed in representing a wide range of voices— though there’s nothing approaching experimental here—and the result is a compellingly diverse reading experience: strong writing throughout, with each story distinct from the next. While this collection’s nuanced depictions of gay men today will surely attract gay readers, the quality of its stories transcends niche interest.

A fine showcase of emerging and small-press authors.

THE LIGHT CHANGES

Billone, Amy Hope Street Press (78 pp.) $6.12 paper | $0.99 e-book | Jun. 5, 2013 978-0-9890740-0-1 Moving, psychologically nuanced free verse on death, rebirth and the powerfully generative potential of loss.

Billone’s debut poetry collection opens with the distinctly violent thud of metal on flesh: “I was raped by a speeding train. I asked it to. / I threw myself before it….Oh what enormous / metal thighs. Oh what fast thudding hips. Again / again against my blackening eyes, skull, chest, waist.” The rattle |

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Best Gay Stories 2013

Berman, Steve—Ed. Lethe Press (267 pp.) $16.07 paper | Jun. 1, 2013 978-1-59021-152-6

of crushing bones reverberates through this volume as Billone revisits again and again this vivid moment of loss, of clarity and of new beginnings. For all the isolation this act of surrender implies, Billone’s narrator seems as concerned about the repercussions for her father as for herself. Recently emerged from a coma, she peers from the buzzing confines of her damaged skull and notices his small discomforts: “Now almost dead I wake to feel him stroke / my hand with his weary feet in buckets / full of ice.” Though headed by epigraphs drawn from Virginia Woolf and Elizabeth Barrett Browning—their influences here are undeniable—this volume’s insistent attention to self-violence, suffused with a complex longing for, and yet wariness of, paternal blessing begs for comparison to Sylvia Plath, a comparison in which Billone more than holds her own. Poems such as “Invitation from a Carnival after a Storm,” “Paris to London” and “If Nothing Else” demonstrate her ability to convey a rich, fraught sensuality with sharply lucid verse. Like Plath, she evokes a father both omnipotent—one who can tear down her “tiny words” with “bare / gigantic / father arms / overwhelming”—and omnipresent, a hovering, suffocating presence whose “terrified eyes” and “gasping face” may have been prescient or may have pushed the narrator to attempt suicide. Unlike Plath, however, she learns—from her father’s fears, from that thudding train and from her late mentor, the poet Jack Gilbert—to savor the profound intensity of approaching loss. As her attention moves from her own recovery to the birth of her son, she cherishes each exquisite moment preceding the loss of their shared bodies: “My God, I have never loved / anything as much as these / ripples inside me.” Indeed, in this tightly woven exploration of how to hold onto something important amid constant change and loss, the “gray light changes / will change // is changing now / as it always does.”

Thrilling in its courageousness, breathtaking in its vividness.

BETWEEN BODIES LIE

Blanc, H.M. AuthorHouse (346 pp.) $23.95 paper | $3.99 e-book Oct. 10, 2012 978-1-4772-6911-4

A disillusioned writer travels to the tropics in search of inspiration in Blanc’s emotionally astute debut novel.

Cristobal Porter is a British writer whose work is in decline. With each novel garnering less critical acclaim than the last, the author spends more time looking out of windows than he does writing. Badgered by his publisher and tormented by a difficult first relationship following the death of his wife, he retreats to an unnamed island in the tropics, where civil unrest lurks beneath the surface of everyday life. On his arrival, Porter uneasily slips into society following his introduction to the slick yet lascivious American diplomat, Jack Kaplan. Kaplan’s wife, the enigmatic Ana, is a patron of the arts, and Porter finds indie

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himself lingering at the edge of her cocktail party, staring at the backs of artists and well-heeled expats. While Kaplan dismisses the art scene, Ana finds a kindred spirit in Porter, and a bond tentatively forms between them. Porter goes about his book research but is almost immediately encumbered by the unannounced arrival of Nadia, his dangerously seductive young mistress. As his yearning for Ana grows stronger, Porter recognizes a growing intimacy between Nadia and Kaplan. When Ana finally learns of her husband’s affair, she draws Porter closer, but a tragic secret from her past rocks their budding relationship. As the plot unfolds, the whispers of uprising grow louder.

Blanc is supremely sensitive to the trials and tribulations of the creative process; he writes with the wisdom of an established author grown weary of the literary scene. Some readers may consider the depiction of an emotionally disheveled yet unconventionally dashing novelist to be somewhat clichéd, but that thought is far outweighed by Blanc’s brilliantly detailed study of human connections and disconnections, in which even the most indiscernible movements of body, mind and heart are painstakingly recognized and charted.

A masterfully written exploration of the beauty and cruelty of love, as sharp as it is sensual.

SIDING STAR

Bryan, Christopher The Diamond Press (406 pp.) $14.99 paper | $9.99 e-book Sep. 10, 2012 978-0-9853911-0-2 A detective inspector joins forces with an Anglican priest and an astronomer to thwart a shadowy organization’s sinister plans in this debut suspense thriller.

In England’s Exeter Cathedral, a man with a strange black book is found dead in front of the altar, with occult signs spray-painted on the floor and a crucifix overturned. In Australia’s Siding Springs Observatory, a young astronomer named Charlie Brown discovers a supernova that’s sending “a hail of high-energy particles and electromagnetic radiation” straight toward Earth. Linking these events are the machinations of a secret society bent on power and destruction. As DI Cecilia Cavaliere investigates the secrets of the black book, she turns to scholar and Anglican priest Michael Aarons for help. Cecilia, Michael and Charlie must confront a world-threatening challenge with cleverness, courage, science and faith—as well as love and friendship. In this entertaining, thought-provoking novel, Bryan (The Resurrection of the Messiah, 2011, etc.)—himself an Anglican priest—highlights the imaginative sweep and power of Christianity. As Charlie says, “I can say, the universe has to be the way it is, otherwise I wouldn’t be here.

And that’s certainly true. But still, to be in awe or not to be in awe, that’s a choice—an emotional choice—and I don’t see opting for one as being any more or less ‘scientific’ than opting for the other.” Bryan’s heroes aren’t just likable but lovable: intelligent, amusing, hardworking, even kind to animals. In contrast, 10

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the novel’s villains are truly spooky and disturbing; readers are always aware of the urgency of stopping their evil plans.

An enjoyable novel of spiritual mystery and adventure— well-plotted, intelligent and deeply moving.

Sets, Lights, & Lunacy A Stage Designer’s Adventures on Broadway and in Opera

Burlingame, Lloyd CreateSpace (210 pp.) $25.99 paper | $7.99 e-book | Sep. 9, 2013 978-1-4895-8752-7

Former stage designer Burlingame (Two Seeing Eye Dogs Take Manhattan, 2012) recalls the highs and lows of his time on Broadway.

“Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly and I had to design,” the author confides in the opening chapter of this elegant, amusing memoir. In 1940, when he was 5 years old, his father took him to see a performance of the Gilbert and Sullivan opera The Mikado, after which the author returned home to build his own version of a Japanese garden in a shoe box. His destiny was set, and in his teens, he studied at the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now part of Carnegie Mellon University), drawn there by its prestigious drama department. By 19, he’d taken over set design at the acclaimed Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. The author recounts many humorous calamities during this period of developing his skills; for example, during a production of W. Somerset Maugham’s Rain, a beaded curtain made of macaroni fell gradually in pieces to the floor, leaving the actors crunching hard pasta underfoot. In 1956, Burlingame was drafted into the U.S. Army and assigned to the Signal Corps’ Army Pictorial Center in Queens, N.Y., but he received a reprieve from duty in Korea, which allowed him to begin a dazzling career on Broadway. He details his Manhattan beginnings, during which he set up a makeshift scene shop in a Greenwich Village warehouse using tools from the Army. Much of the book reads like a Who’s Who of 1960s and ’70s theater, with appearances by such luminaries as Italian film director Franco Zeffirelli and English theater director Peter Brook. One pull-no-punches chapter is devoted to the author’s work with the “devil of Broadway,” producer David Merrick. These accounts of grand collaborations are skillfully nuanced with moments of devotion and humility; at one point, for example, the author was forced to search the Bowery at night for plans he had lost, and when he kneeled in a snow-filled gutter, he was hit by a car. Overall, Burlingame is a skillful raconteur who transposes his experiences to the page with an understated wit, poise and grace.

A consistently intriguing backstage glimpse of Broadway’s brighter past and a must for theater buffs.

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Cander, Chris Rubber Tree Press (234 pp.) $14.00 paper | $9.99 e-book Apr. 10, 2013 978-0-9889465-0-7 The superintendent of an 11-story apartment building in Chicago falls from the roof, remembering stories of the tenants on his way down.

As a teenage trumpet prodigy, Roscoe lost a finger in the gate of his apartment building’s elevator. His trumpet dream shattered, he became superintendent of that same building, where he’s lived all his life. Now living in a Spartan basement apartment, he sees to the needs of the building’s tenants. But Roscoe never gave up on the trumpet, and on a fateful autumn evening, he ascends to the roof of the building to play his trumpet for all the world to hear. The people down on the sidewalk are entranced. Roscoe finishes and modestly bows—but loses his balance and begins his fatal plunge. Then the frame story launches: Time slows as Roscoe descends 11 floors, remembering a story about someone who lived on each floor he passes. Sylvia Freeman, a hoarder, lived on 10. On seven lived exiled Joaquin Rojas, whose Cuban friend sent him books stolen from Castro’s library. David and Bill, the gay couple who lived on the sixth floor, split up over a stupid misunderstanding. Mrs. Delpy lived on five, where her psychotic son Martin crawled out on the ledge, followed by Roscoe. Finally, on the second floor lived Roscoe’s only lifelong love, Iris Montgomery, with their illicit love consummated just once. Cander’s book isn’t quite Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio (1919), though.

Some stories, like the perennially clogged toilet on eight, are playful anecdotes. Yet many of the tenants show heartbreaking spiritual damage; some of them are admirable, some not so much. Quiet, diffident Roscoe, who’s spent half a century supporting them all in one way or another, just as admirably supports these stories.

A wonderfully clever compilation.

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his marriage has imploded, he has developed substance abuse problems, and he has run from the Normandy town where he and his family lived. Adler is a broken, lonely man trying to show strength to others through his clinical practice, but he’s unable to reconcile the events of the past. Although Édouard Morin, a mentally ill local youth, confessed to the crime and has been institutionalized and everyone involved, including Adler’s ex-wife and her new family, wants very much to forget the episode, the body of teenage Sophie Adler has never been found.

When the death of Adler’s mother-in-law impels him to finally return to Yvetot, France, he realizes that he must reach closure before he can try to build a new life. Of the many ways a novelist could approach the search for a missing body, Carpenter opts for a most complex and ingenious one—through a detailed analysis of the language used by the brilliant, psychotic Morin during his brief, ill-advised interviews with Adler. This taut, high-stakes plotline is very effective, but the novel contains much more than this. Although Adler is a former resident and fluent in French, he is an interloper in the close-knit community.

He is an American; he lacks understanding of the intricacies

Theory of Remainders

Carpenter, Scott Dominic Winter Goose Publishing (284 pp.) $27.99 | May 22, 2013 978-0-9889049-0-3 Carpenter’s (This Jealous Earth, 2012) suspenseful debut novel weaves together the consequences of a horrific trauma and the thirst for both vengeance and acceptance with explorations of the human mind, family dynamics and the complexities of language.

A psychiatrist seems well-positioned to process the psychic damage of past events, but Dr. Philip Adler, 52, remains devastated 15 years after the violent death of his only child. As a result, |

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of French culture; and he is a constant reminder of the town’s inability to keep one of their own safe. As he stirs up unpleasant memories, the town mobilizes against him. The author’s ability to satirize the French people’s distaste for outsiders and their inflexibility brings mordant humor to the grim proceedings.

Fully realized characters, a remarkable fluency of language, wit, and an extensive comprehension of French culture and history make this literary novel a stellar achievement.

nation of “domination” and “treachery.” Still, this collection is packed with a college course’s worth of interesting information.

For either those well-versed in the case of Catalonian independence or for the uninitiated, an estimable addition to an increasingly tempestuous debate.

The Hangman’s Replacement Sprout of Disruption

What’s up with Catalonia?

The Causes Which Impel Them To The Separation

Chiveneko, Taona Dumisani CreateSpace (490 pp.) $14.99 paper | $5.99 e-book Feb. 22, 2013 978-1-4812-1193-2

Castro, Liz—Ed. Catalonia Press (224 pp.) $12.00 paper | $3.99 e-book Feb. 19, 2013 978-1-61150-032-5

A substantial collection of scholarly articles exploring, and defending, the prospects for Catalonia’s independence

from Spain.

Castro’s debut effort, as editor of an anthology of 35 articles both investigating and advocating for Catalonian independence, is politically timely. This last September 11, Catalonia’s National Day, a colossal gathering of 1.5 million protesters filled the streets of Barcelona demanding independence from Spain.

That’s a historically impressive turnout but even more astounding when one considers that it’s one-fifth of Catalonia’s population. The essays are largely written by professional academics, though a few are written by European diplomats. Most are very brief, some only a few pages long, and none exceeds 10 pages.

Thematically, this is a broad and diverse assemblage of treatments evaluating the possible economic, political, cultural and educational ramifications of Catalonia’s secession from Spain.

Acknowledging that Catalan cultural identity is closely tied to its unique language, the book has five articles devoted to Catalonian linguistic heritage. A sense of cultural defense enlivens the collection, as Catalonian president Artur Mas avers in his introduction to the volume: “We find that we contribute a huge amount, too much even, and though we help as much as we can, we are neither understood nor respected for who we are.” Along these lines, many of the articles take up the cause of Catalonian sovereignty as a matter of national self-determination. Other contributors interpret independence as a political issue or as Josep M. Muñoz puts it, they are animated by “motives” that are “more democratic than nationalist.” The essays amassed are lively, lucid and provocatively puckish, as well as edifying.

While some intellectual diversity is gained by including contributions from outside Catalonia (there are articles cataloging the view from Scotland, Brussels and the U.S.), the book would have benefited from at least one or two pieces making the case against independence. This omission makes the work as a whole more activist than strictly philosophical. Also, the rhetoric hurled against the purportedly despotic Spain sometimes verges on hyperventilated; Elisenda Paluzie accuses the 12

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A desperate villager’s quest to become Zimbabwe’s newest executioner kicks off this intriguing debut horror novel involving man-eating plants, organ harvesting and other uncanny oddities.

Abel Muranda is a devoted family man determined to do whatever it takes to feed his starving rural family, even if it means journeying far into the big city on foot in the hope of landing a job as the government’s hangman. Meanwhile, Zimbabwe’s ruling elite is in an uproar because someone has created a batch of carnivorous flame lilies capable of digging up the dead—and the government’s ghastly secrets, as the plants have been unearthing unmarked graves. Nothing is as it seems in Chiveneko’s science-fiction–tinged tale, which introduces readers to a lethal cast of bad guys and bad girls with tangled motivations. One intriguing subplot follows a man charged with creating a special gallows to be used for executions; he uses discarded weapons of war as his raw materials and would rather spend time cuddling up to his cold, metallic creation than to his warm, loving wife.

At nearly 500 pages, this intricately woven novel is a disconcerting parable exploded to epic proportions. The author renders its many characters, from the mad genius responsible for the impending botanical apocalypse, to the prostitute/undercover operative who falls in love with Abel, to the seemingly simple Abel himself, with frightening subtlety and detail. One member of the elite, called Doll Eyes, is described as follows: “Planted into the lower part of his skull was a jaw of menacing proportions. If someone ever tried to mug him at gunpoint, all he had to do was clench it. This alone would demoralize the robber.”

The boughs of this arboreal shocker threaten to creak under the weight of its ever-mounting plot, but they never quite crack.

Instead, readers are left wondering just how deep the roots go.

A thought-provoking, singularly strange and absorbing novel.

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THE HIGH HUNT The Orion Guild: Book One Connell, Adam Self (326 pp.) $3.99 e-book | Jul. 24, 2013

Energetic, edgy sci-fi with a Game of Thrones bent.

Connell (Total Secession, 2012, etc.) returns to the stars after two earthbound sci-fi thrillers, but like his debut novel, Counterfeit Kings (2004), this one mines a rich vein of darker, grittier genre fiction. This novel moves at a breakneck pace with short chapters primed for quick reading. The central conflict is between Lansing—the current (and only) Grand Marksman of a union of professional big-game hunters known as the Orion Guild—and a disgraced former Grand Marksman named Bledsoe, who has been expelled from the same group for hunting human beings.

When Lansing returns to Wildernesse, his home planet, to carry out an important mission, he’s teamed with volatile up-andcoming hunters who possess hazardous ambitions. His situation becomes even more dangerous when an unscrupulous rival organization arises, recruiting the fallen Bledsoe as a weapon against Lansing. The Orion Guild—which, due to its mission to control dangerous wildlife, is important to the expansion of human colonization of planets—holds to a strict code of behavior, but Bledsoe and his sponsors will stop at nothing to beat Lansing and the guild at their own game. Sex, violence and swearing are graphic and intrinsic to the story but not gratuitous. Nonetheless, squeamish readers may be turned off; others will enjoy the charged narrative. There are occasional bits of awkward dialogue—a character named Frog says, “Didn’t know your eyes were cockazoot, you cur. You only see in shades of gray, like your furry friends?”—but not enough to kill the engines on this fast-moving sci-fi adventure.

Explosive action in the far future.

Fitzwilliam Darcy Such I Was

Cromlin, Carol Worth Saying (342 pp.) $13.91 paper 978-0-9890811-0-8

In this enjoyable work of historical fiction set in the Jane Austen universe, Cromlin imagines what makes the mysterious Fitzwilliam Darcy tick.

In her book Pride and Prejudice, Austen famously suggests, “a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” With these words, the scene is set for Fitzwilliam Darcy, one of the most beloved, well-known characters in Austen’s oeuvre. Cromlin, in her book set prior to Darcy’s debut in Pride and Prejudice, envisions Darcy’s formative 14

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years, beginning with Darcy’s birth and continuing through his childhood and young-adult years. She breathes life into his parents, illuminates the bond between Darcy and his sister, and delves with great detail into the history of the contentious relationship between Darcy and George Wickham. Readers are invited to celebrate holidays at Pemberley and travel the world with Darcy during his adventurous grand tour abroad. Perhaps of most interest, Cromlin seeks to explain how Austen’s Darcy, a gentleman of great wealth, good character and impeccable manners, becomes a man perceived as distant and unpleasant.

The journey toward understanding this complex character is immensely enjoyable, and the supporting cast of familiar characters, such as Col. Fitzwilliam and Georgiana Darcy, helps round out the satisfying story. Cromlin’s poetic descriptions paint a clear portrait of Darcy’s life of privilege in 18th-century England, tackling the many facets of Darcy’s personality with aplomb, often using his own thoughts to better explain his actions and defining characteristics. Ultimately, Cromlin’s tale arrives at the fateful moment when Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet first set eyes on each other, providing a seamless transition into Austen’s literature and Darcy’s future.

Austen devotees may enjoy this glimpse into Darcy’s background, and Austen newcomers might find themselves searching the shelves for her classic novels.

THE TURQUOISE TATTOO

Dauphin, Vaya BookPal (286 pp.) $14.35 paper | $10.99 e-book Feb. 1, 2012 978-1-74284-190-8 A young woman comes of age while simultaneously realizing her Maori-related powers in Dauphin’s debut YA fantasy.

Scarlet Flint is a little different from most girls. For starters, she can read the minds and feelings of others, causing her no shortage of trouble.

Her unstable life gets more chaotic once she moves from her Australian home to New Zealand. She ends up in the middle of the feud between the mysterious Sterling and his menacing brother, Manu. Her involvement turns out to be greater than she ever imagined just as her telepathic abilities increase. Scarlet is an Elemental, a half-human with supernatural abilities, a gift described in Maori legend. Sterling, another Elemental, quickly becomes her greatest ally—and possibly something more—as she struggles through the dangers she faces because of her powers. While fantasy books based on myth aren’t uncommon, stories based specifically on Maori myth are, making this novel unusual. Detailed explanations of Maori myth provide solid context—Dauphin even includes a glossary—but do not slow the narrative. The characters also help set the book apart. Scarlet is a remarkably strong young woman who faces each new challenge bravely. She is loyal to her love interest but also allows herself to be frustrated with him when he deserves

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“[Joel] and Wade fit into the pantheon of great losers, the author having a Charles Portis–like gift for writing about dim bulbs without condescending to them.” from all the talk is dead

WE’RE DOING WHAT FOR SUMMER VACATION?

Davis, Cindy; Rollason, Ali AuthorHouse (112 pp.) $23.99 | $14.95 paper | $3.99 e-book May 3, 2013 978-1-4817-4673-1 The matchless true-life travelogue of a 9-year-old’s trip to Borneo, co-authored by a mother-daughter writing team.

Nine-year-old Ali is less than thrilled when her parents announce that the whole family will be going to Borneo for their summer vacation.

She doesn’t even know where Borneo is, and neither does her school librarian. Ali wonders why they can’t spend their summer on the beach in Florida, preferably staying at a hotel with decent toiletries and nightly chocolates on the pillow. However, Ali and her older brother, Zak, know all too well their formerhippie parents’ penchant for traveling to exotic locations to experience the way other people live. The trip to Borneo forces Ali to confront one of her biggest fears—flying—and unfortunately introduces her to new fears: bedbugs, leeches, kidnapping and being stuck in a stairwell. Despite her continued hope for a nice, luxurious hotel, Ali concedes that their experiences— whitewater rafting with natives, diving, hiking in the rain forest and staying in a treehouse—make the family’s atypical holiday worthwhile. Rollason’s naturally engaging writing style (perhaps assisted by her multipublished, academic mother) makes this a quick, enjoyable read, equally appealing to adults and slightly advanced younger readers. Similarly, the unattributed illustrations and black-and-white photographs add visual interest for younger readers and adults alike. Rollason, age 10 when the book was written, manages to be indulgently exasperated with her parents without the attitude an older child might express.

She shares her perceptions of cultural differences and environmental descriptions in an unaffected manner, without being bogged down by research or too many facts. Leeches and bedbugs notwithstanding, the unique experiences shared in Borneo bring the family closer together. Allusions to headhunting in Borneo’s history, as well as that disturbing leech incident and an island of lost children, may make this memoir inappropriate as a read-aloud for younger children, but tweens of both genders will happily join the adventure.

Eat, Pray, Love for tweens.

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it, and she aims to walk beside him, rather than chase after him.

Sterling, too, intrigues. At times, he’s a charmer, evoking in Scarlet “the same feeling [she has] for stray puppy dogs,” but he also has a clouded past that he struggles with, making him a good boy with bad-boy appeal. Skillful foreshadowing appears throughout, and most chapters end with a teaser that keeps the pages turning.

Intriguing good guys struggle against ominous supernatural threats amid the lush backdrop of Maori legend.

All The Talk Is Dead

Ebner, Michael CreateSpace (234 pp.) $12.99 paper | Oct. 14, 2009 978-1-4486-2384-6

Two aspiring rock musicians think that the way to success is for one of them to fake his own death, then capitalize on the phony tragedy.

In his mid-20s, Joel Wilson works as a bellhop at a Sydney hotel, where he hooks up with slightly older Wade Farley, a lobby pianist, to form a rock band. But to Joel, this is only a means to an end, as he really sees himself as a filmmaker. Unable to get a recording contract, Joel and Wade hatch a scheme: They’ll go to New York, where they’ll fake Joel’s death and turn that tragedy into a launch pad for their music. Once the deed is done, Joel travels to Montreal, where he takes on an assumed name. Time passes, and Joel hears nothing from Wade. Then, one day, he turns on

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Twenty-Seven Dollars and a Dream How Muhammad Yunus Changed the World and What It Cost Him

Esty, Katharine Katharine Esty Company (312 pp.) $21.22 paper | Mar. 1, 2013 978-0-615-79993-3

An admiring portrait of a charismatic economist and entrepreneur who found his calling as Bangladesh’s “banker to the poor.”

Bankers aren’t often thought of as heroes, but Muhammad Yunus comes across as one in this flattering biography. Esty (Workplace Diversity, 1997, etc.) traces the unlikely career of Yunus, who jointly won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize with the Grameen Bank for battling poverty in his native Bangladesh.

The “Twenty-Seven Dollars” in the book’s title refers to how Yunus stumbled onto his life mission in 1976 while a young college professor. He loaned $27 to a group of 42 villagers, allowing them to break free from the bonded labor that trapped many rural Bangladeshis. Yunus went on to found the Grameen Bank, specializing in microfinance—small, uncollateralized, easy-to-repay loans to poor residents, especially women. Esty chronicles the growth of the Grameen Bank, as well as Yunus’ later focus on “social businesses,” designed to address a social problem while making a profit. Microfinance as a policy tool has its critics, but Esty makes a compelling case that Yunus and his colleagues aided countless impoverished Bangladeshis while empowering women in a Muslim nation where they traditionally enjoyed few freedoms. Inspired by the author’s own interactions with Yunus, the fast-paced book holds lessons not only for social activists, but entrepreneurs as well. Yunus has founded more than 25 companies in industries ranging from telecommunications to renewable energy. Esty isn’t a detached biographer.

She admits Yunus is her “hero” and that she aims to spread his story to a wider audience. As she sees it, Yunus is an iconoclastic visionary able to spur others to action yet ambitious enough to |

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the radio and hears one of his songs being played as part of a tribute album put together in his memory. It looks like the scheme worked, and Wade has been living it up in New York while Joel has been on the down low in Montreal. The ensuing complications, however, humorously expose the dark underbelly of fame in the music business. The premise isn’t entirely original, and the machinations of how Joel and Wade pull off their scam are a little on the sketchy side, but Joel’s misadventures in three different cities are hilariously rendered. He and Wade fit into the pantheon of great losers, the author having a Charles Portis– like gift for writing about dim bulbs without condescending to them. The book’s filled with laugh-out-loud lines and dialogue, more than compensating for any flaws in terms of story logic or narrative cohesion, making for a memorable trip through the demimonde of wannabe rock stars.

Unrefined but infectious, like a barely legal high.

make powerful enemies. In 2011, he was ousted from the Grameen Bank in what the author believes was a politically motivated vendetta. Esty draws on her own background as a social psychologist and consultant to extract seven “patterns of action” she says underlie Yunus’ success. The result is a powerful template for any organization seeking to make a difference.

Relentless and inspiring, the life of Muhammad Yunus shows how capitalism and conscience need not be at odds.

The Friday Edition A Samantha Church Mystery

Ferrendelli, Betta Amazon Digital Services (322 pp.) $2.99 e-book | Jul. 6, 2012

In Ferrendelli’s debut mystery, a reporter desperate to solve her sister’s murder must face demons of her own.

Samantha Church didn’t quit her nearly decadelong career reporting for the Denver Post; she was fired due to the basic, yet persistent, mistakes in her articles. She knows she’s a damn good reporter, so her firing came as a shock, but an even bigger surprise was the accusation that she’s an alcoholic. Sure, she likes to have a drink now and then, but does that really matter? Sam won’t admit that her problem has caused her to lose custody of her daughter and also to miss her sister’s important phone call—her last communication before falling to her death from an apartment balcony. Convinced her sister would never commit suicide, Sam searches for her killer, following a trail of corruption involving drug cartels and some of the highest ranking members of a police department outside Denver. But as Sam tries to find justice for others, she realizes she needs rescuing as well. Struggling with personal demons, weight problems and alcoholism, Sam is a carefully crafted, realistically flawed character. Her mistakes and missteps have a humanizing effect, and though she may be exasperating at times, most readers will find themselves steadfastly in her corner. Secondary characters are similarly complex, with no lack of personal weaknesses, complementing the already tangible sense of humanity. The plot slows, understandably, during Sam’s alcoholic blackouts and moments of depression and accelerates accordingly in her times of clarity. Ferrendelli deftly avoids formulaic resolutions with outcomes that are nuanced and often unexpected. Some readers may feel that Sam’s occasionally lengthy moments of introspection lag compared to the rest of the story, and peculiar imagery—as when Sam remembers holding her daughter and feeling “her young tender bones as soft and as fragile and limber as cooked spaghetti noodles”—detracts from otherwise authentic, thoughtful prose. Minor issues aside, Ferrendelli’s debut will leave many readers hoping for more from this vulnerable, highly sympathetic heroine.

A smart, nimble treat of a mystery that provides ample foundation for growth.

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JEZEBEL IN BLUE SATIN “The Hollywood Murder Mysteries” Book One

ME AND MURDER, SHE WROTE

Fischer, Peter S. The Grove Point Press (252 pp.) $12.95 paper | $5.99 e-book | Nov. 1, 2011 978-0-9846819-9-0

In this stylish homage to the detective novels of Hollywood’s Golden Age, a press agent stumbles across a starlet’s dead body and into the seamy world of scheming players and morally bankrupt movie moguls.

An aging actress whose star has fallen, a thuggish bodyguard, a Holy Rolling studio head, an actor whose sexuality is in flux—these people inhabit the world of beleaguered publicist Joe Bernardi. Like Chandler’s Philip Marlowe, Joe operates in a 1940s Los Angeles full of femmes fatales, hucksters, and shady movers and shakers. But he’s no hard-drinking tough guy, just a man desperate to clear his name—the cops think he killed a dead actress—while trying to find satisfaction in his job at second-rate Continental Studios. He also wouldn’t mind reuniting with his ex-wife, Lydia, whose house he watches in the wee hours. Joe’s struggling to regain his life after the war, and his soft heart and fledgling courage stand out against the old-fashioned whodunit plot in which there’s no shortage of suspects, including Mafia men, all with convincing motives for murder. Adding depth and color are descriptions of LA that are at once nostalgic and believable. Observations from Joe’s viewpoint slyly echo the era and the genre: “the job suits her like a size 2 silk slip,” and “he can squeeze a penny hard enough to make Lincoln cry.” That’s what makes the story snap: the familiar yet original characters and their sparkling dialogue. Author Fischer spent many years as a Hollywood scriptwriter, and his talent for authentic voice and tight repartee shines in this first installment of the Hollywood Murder Mysteries series. The background is steeped in movie lore, with names and events of the time—Farley Granger, Gail Russell and the Black Dahlia murder case—cropping up to set the tale against real Hollywood history. Layered with complex relationships that are rarely what they seem, the tightly drawn plot carefully unveils its mysteries; even as one murder is solved, more twists pop up to ensure revelations right up to the satisfying ending.

An enjoyable, fast-paced whodunit from opening act to final curtain.

Fischer, Peter S. The Grove Point Press (248 pp.) $18.95 paper | $8.99 e-book Sep. 15, 2013 978-0-9886571-3-7

An award-winning television writer and producer reflects on his prolific career.

Throughout the 1970s and ’80s, many of the biggest hits on network television were mystery programs. Longrunning shows such as Columbo and Murder, She Wrote commanded large audiences week after week, and even short-lived shows such as the 1975 series Ellery Queen had devoted cult followings. In this autobiography, mystery novelist Fischer (Pray For Us Sinners, 2013, etc.) recounts his time as a writer and producer for these and other programs and discusses the many people he met along the way. The author focuses primarily on his career in Hollywood, starting with his early success as the writer of a 1971 TV movie of the week called The Last Child and ending with his retirement shortly after a long tenure as a TV writer and producer. The narrative flows briskly as Fischer tells of writing episodes of famous programs such as Marcus Welby, M.D. and winning an Edgar Award and two Golden Globes for Murder, She Wrote. The author also discusses his work on other promising but less-successful shows; the chapters dealing with The Eddie Capra Mysteries from 1978 and the 1987 series The Law and Harry McGraw (starring Jerry Orbach) offer insights into how programs’ fates can be guided by both ratings and network politics. Overall, Fischer provides an engaging glimpse into the interpersonal relationships that enriched his life and career; for example, the camaraderie Fischer shared with TV stars Angela Lansbury and Peter Falk developed into long-standing friendships. Fischer further pays homage to his love of film and television by including a trivia question at the end of each chapter.

A warm, affectionate autobiography that will likely appeal to TV history buffs.

Promo Cowboy

Fitzsimmons, Barry CreateSpace (372 pp.) $14.95 paper | $2.99 e-book May 13, 2013 978-1-4792-7166-5 A genre-bending mystery set in the high-stakes world of TV production.

The titular narrator of Fitzsimmons’ (Life Askew, 2002) second novel is straight out of the Wild West, right down to his dialect, values and beloved collection of hats. But Promo Cowboy, who’s long renounced his “Christian name,” isn’t lassoing cattle out on the range—he’s working long days and late nights at a post-production studio in Midtown Manhattan, creating promos for whatever TV network calls on his freelancing talents.

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Though he’s suspicious when he gets a new gig through the referral of a longtime rival, Promo Cowboy is in no position to turn down work. As he gets further involved in the inner workings of a new up-and-coming network, some troubling coincidences come to light—namely, many of his new colleagues (and old friends) seem to be connected by their past tenure at Lifestyle TV (LTV), a music TV network that “[c]hanged television forever.” Sound familiar? Promo Cowboy’s new boss, Belinda got her start in the business as one of the “A-Girls,” LTV’s in-house pretty young things. Work becomes more complicated when a murderer dubbed the Video Killer begins strangling industry veterans with video tape, and Promo Cowboy, who’s recently had a one-night tryst with one of the victims, finds himself at the center of the media circus and the police investigation. Fitzsimmons, a more than competent writer, constructs a smart, well-plotted whodunit, and mystery fans will likely find his unusual setting and hero refreshing. More cosmopolitan readers, however, may find themselves exasperated by Promo Cowboy. Though his dialect is consistent, it’s also a bit heavy-handed; the longer passages that he narrates can quickly become grating. And while his occasional sexist and generally offensive remarks don’t go unremarked upon by other characters, neither do they render Promo Cowboy a particularly sympathetic figure.

This original, well-written crime story will win plenty of fans, but it’d be better off with a more likable protagonist.

I, PARIS

Garnett, Rick BookBaby (106 pp.) $4.99 e-book | Jul. 1, 2013 A retelling of Homer’s Iliad from the point of view of Paris, seducer of Helen.

Homer’s millennia-old story about the abduction of Helen from Sparta and the resulting 10-year Greek siege of Troy is given a fresh retelling in Garnett’s fiction debut, this time centering on the character of handsome, exiled Trojan prince Paris, a simple woodsman who one day encounters a miraculous vision: three goddesses, each of whom offers him a prize. He can choose to have wisdom, power or the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen of Sparta, wife of King Menelaus. Paris picks Helen, re-introduces himself to his royal family at Troy, sets out for Menelaus’ palace, and there finds Helen every bit as bewitching as her reputation foretold (“Words to describe her make no sense unless you see her, in which case no words are needed”). She’s also unhappy and willingly goes with Paris back to Troy. The Greeks soon follow. Readers familiar with Homer’s Iliad will know what happens next: coastal raids, battles and 10 years of conflict, during which, as Helen bitterly points out, the Trojans turn from welcoming to blaming her. They also blame Paris, who’s constantly upbraided for his blithe, carefree nature in the midst of war (as Hector puts it, “Who can blame them if they cannot endure the sight of you, so calm and cheerful in the presence of their pain?”). Garnett treats all this familiar subject matter with vivid, 20

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gripping freshness. He largely demythologizes the story (apart from Paris’ initial fever-dream of goddesses, Homer’s host of interfering immortals is absent from the book) and, instead, fills it with acute, dramatically convincing psychology. He narrates events from Paris’ point of view, and although the young prince is always feckless and self-absorbed, the reader somehow never hates him—and the book’s other characters are equally and refreshingly complex. Fans of Sarah Franklin’s Daughter of Troy and Marian Zimmer Bradley’s The Firebrand will find this an outstanding addition to the ranks of Trojan War novels.

A lyrical, outstanding modern reshaping of the ancient Homeric epic.

The Projection Room

Golembiewski, Carol AbbottPress (248 pp.) $35.99 | $17.99 paper | $3.99 e-book Jan. 29, 2013 978-1-4582-0742-5 Cubist art runs amok and slaughters museum staff in this arty, high-concept supernatural thriller debut.

Georges Bosque, a master of the cubist style of painting, wanted his last works to be destroyed after his death—including a painting depicting two angels of death roaming a World War I battlefield.

But Noelle Walker, the acquisitions curator at the Milwaukee Museum of Art, is happy to buy them from his widow, despite their spooky aura. Trouble starts when museum employee Bruce Mallory scans one of the paintings with a new computergraphics gizmo that projects paintings in three dimensions. It works great with naturalist artworks, but cubist paintings are, well, different, and their projections cause bystanders to mimic their off-kilter geometry—eventually turning them into mangled heaps of flesh. Before you can say “non-Euclidean universe,” the gadgetry has liberated a ghoulish Bosque figure from its canvas to wander the galleries, looking for fresh victims. Noelle, Bruce and Noelle’s elegant boss, Geoffrey, must cope with art that’s gone off the deep end; at the same time, Noelle deals with her romantic feelings for Bruce and for Geoffrey, the father of her child. As the “malicious Cubist thing” passes paintings, they come to life, and threatened humans dive into pictures to escape the lurking danger—causing consternation among the paintings’ inhabitants, whose flatland world has suddenly been invaded. Art teacher Golembiewski creates an intriguing new menace which works its mayhem as artists do, by creatively reimagining space and structure—but with grisly real-world effects. Although the overall conceit is a bit cartoonish, she grounds it in subtle, psychologically realistic prose and a gallery full of sharply etched characters. (The sullen, liberally pierced goth art student who sets off the carnage is a particular hoot.)

Although the subject matter may be lurid at times, the author’s fine brushwork keeps the picture sharp.

An original, entertaining horror fantasy.

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“In this intricately plotted novel, Hartman...spins the familiar trappings of gothic mystery together with a fresh postmodern sensibility.” from the rules of dreaming

BROTHERS AND BONES

Hankins, James Amazon Digital Services (399 pp.) $0.99 e-book | Oct. 25, 2012 A prosecutor and a homeless man team up against a murderous conspiracy in this rollicking thriller.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Charlie Beckham is thrown for a loop when a deranged man on a subway platform addresses him by a nickname known only to his long-lost brother Jake. The problem is that Jake’s been presumed dead for 13 years. Charlie scours Boston’s back alleys for the elusive vagrant and finds a grizzled amnesiac named Bonz with the grooming of a sasquatch, the fighting chops of a Navy SEAL and serious mental instability. Soon, Charlie’s life collapses: He blows the biggest case of his career, a colleague, Angel, is found dead in his apartment, and Charlie finds himself on the run from the law with Bonz as his only ally. To get clear of the wreckage, the pair must solve a labyrinthine mystery—one that knits together Jake’s fate, Bonz’s foggy past and a missing audiotape. The two also contend with some formidable bad guys, one of whom specializes in hammering nails into his victims’ heads. Hankins’ sly buddy adventure contrasts two unlikely comrades. Charlie’s well-ordered world crumbles into paranoia and theft, while Bonz works toward forming coherent sentences and practicing better hygiene. The two settle into an entertaining dynamic as their statuses equalize, with Charlie’s squeamish legalism playing off Bonz’s unselfconscious violence and practicality. Hankins surrounds them with a crackerjack cast of bristling thugs, weaselly lowlifes and beady-eyed feds, and he ties the story together with pitch-perfect dialogue, mordant humor and action scenes poised exquisitely between menace and chaos. At times the plot’s scheming and counterscheming gets a bit over-the-top, but readers will likely be having too much fun to notice.

A complex, entertaining thriller.

Unexposed Film A Year on Location

Harris, Rob CreateSpace (364 pp.) $14.95 paper | $9.99 e-book Dec. 13, 2012 978-1-4750-3243-7

A breezy memoir of a publicist’s year on Hollywood movie locations.

Harris enjoyed privileged access to the insular world of Hollywood movie productions, and he puts that experience to effective use in this memoir of his work on movies such as Gladiator (2000) and The Perfect Storm (2000). He also effectively depicts the tensions— and temptations—that came with spending months at a time away from his wife and two children. “This is partly my story, 22

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partly the story of all of us—gaffers, grips and go-fers alike— who spend our lives traveling with the circus, cleaning up after the elephants, making movies,” he writes. Harris sees his job as a thankless task requiring the patience of Job as he deals with temperamental actors and scoop-hungry reporters. “[P]ublicity is the department that adds the least apparent contribution to making the movie and is therefore an annoyance to everybody,” he admits. In a breezy, engaging style, he captures both the tedium and glamor of the 1999 shoots he worked on, sharing a steady stream of tidbits about actors and others he encountered in the Moroccan desert, Malta, Toronto, Los Angeles and other locations. There’s a terrified Joaquin Phoenix saying of his role in Gladiator, “I can’t do it. I’m just a kid from Florida”; a crew member warning Harris that Russell Crowe always does “some actory thing where he behaves like [his] character”; and Mark Wahlberg’s manager telling the author to make sure that reporters on the set of The Perfect Storm don’t see the actor’s entourage.

Perhaps most poignantly, actress Karen Allen confides to Harris, “I didn’t really master my craft until I was nearly 40. And by then I was too old for any of the good roles.” The author is less compelling when chronicling the vicissitudes of his marriage; he admits to infidelity and then, after repeatedly affirming his love for his wife, discloses in the epilogue that they divorced in 2005. Men and women “on the bounding boat of location life... all want someone to come home to and we all secretly fear that the life we leave behind might leave us,” he laments.

A light, engaging behind-the-scenes Hollywood tale.

THE RULES OF DREAMING

Hartman, Bruce Swallow Tail Press (287 pp.) $2.99 e-book | May 19, 2013

A mind-bending marriage of ambitious literary theory and classic murder mystery.

In this intricately plotted novel, Hartman (winner of the Salvo Press Mystery Novel Award for Perfectly Healthy Man Drops Dead, 2008) spins the familiar trappings of gothic mystery together with a fresh postmodern sensibility, producing a story that’s as rich and satisfying as it is difficult to categorize. The narrative begins with Dr. Ned Hoffmann, a new psychiatrist at a mental institution in a small town. Barely in control of his own instabilities, Dr. Hoffmann struggles with demanding bosses and baffling patients, including the schizophrenic grown children of an opera singer who died under suspicious circumstances. When one of Dr. Hoffmann’s recent patients, Nicole, an anxious literature grad student, finally finds a topic for her dissertation, she discovers that life in her town is beginning to mirror art—in some disconcerting ways. Alongside a professional blackmailer, a scrappy librarian and other assorted meddlers and madmen, Dr. Hoffmann and Nicole slowly unspool a mystery that extends all the way back to artists of the romantic era. Hartman impressively turns literary theory into something sexy and menacing, weaving the

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real-life works of writer E.T.A. Hoffmann and composers Robert Schumann and Jacques Offenbach, among others, into his characters’ increasingly muddled lives. Sometimes the writing is self-conscious, as when Nicole says, “If you asked me about what’s been going on around here lately, I’d have to classify it as Post-Modern Neo-Gothic Horror.” For the most part, Hartman brings a light touch to potentially weighty material. Though the novel’s philosophical twists and turns are fascinating, the story also succeeds as an old-fashioned whodunit, and the writing is full of descriptive gems. At one point, the librarian looks at someone “over the tops of her trifocals, as if in the suspicion that none of their refractions would reveal the truth about him.”

As Hartman skillfully blurs the lines between fiction and reality, the book becomes a profound meditation on art, identity and their messy spheres of influence.

An exciting, original take on the literary mystery genre.

DYSTOPIA NOW

Hiestand, Harvey Air Raid Press (482 pp.)

Nov. 6, 2013 978-0-9893149-8-5 Hiestand’s debut sci-fi novel is a disturbingly plausible vision of a future America in economic and political upheaval—and a satirical gem reminiscent of the work of Philip K. Dick.

In a near-future Los Angeles plagued by a worsening recession, Everyman Zeno Jacobs is the newly appointed personnel director at HRW International, a bizarrely bureaucratic corporation that, due to a tax-credit loophole, essentially hires and fires employees for profit. The skyrocketing cost of living makes it increasingly difficult for many people to live, so it comes as no surprise when the Hundred Days Riots begin. Unruly mobs loot grocery stores, burn down banks and raze entire neighborhoods. Jacobs and his love interest, Shasta MacCalistaire, watch the proceedings from the relative safety of the HRW building as Los Angeles plunges into bloody chaos.

Even after the Army establishes martial law, no one in the city is safe. Adept readers will find thematic depths in the novel’s more striking imagery; for example, the HRW building’s deadly labyrinth, where a deliveryman got lost and died, effectively symbolizes the unfathomable complexity of corporatocracy, as well as the difficulties that normal people have navigating a normal workday. (The paintings on the labyrinth’s walls offer up additional profundities.) At the same time, the cleverly constructed narrative is briskly paced and utterly readable. Like the best Philip K. Dick tales, the story works on multiple levels simultaneously—as a breathtakingly bleak vision of the future, a cautionary tale replete with social commentary, and, above all, an unlikely and unforgettable love story.

A timely, and timeless, satirical novel.

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4 to 16 Characters Hourihan, Kelly Lemon Sherbet Press Nov. 7, 2013

The Internet acts as a teen’s saving grace in this angst-y but sweet YA novel.

Jane Shilling is a sullen teenage girl with an alcoholic father and no friends; but on the Internet, nobody knows that.

Told exclusively through online sources— from digital journals to inboxes and instant messages—this is the story of Jane’s living more than one life. She’s created multiple personalities for herself, including the popular Rachel, a 20-something woman with a perfect family and happy life. While Jane would be content to spend her days as Rachel, writing fan fiction for a beloved sci-fi show and interacting with other sci-fi fans online, the adults in her life would like to pull her back to reality. Ever since Jane’s mother died, her therapist has been hounding her to open up, and a new math teacher harasses her for missed assignments. A school bully targets her online quirks, but Gary, a skee-ball champion and student at Jane’s school, befriends Jane both on and off the screen. He may be one of the only people Jane can open up to, along with Nora Acton, a new therapist who’s resourceful enough to chat with Jane online during their sessions. When Jane’s online personas begin to fall apart, she’ll need the help of Gary and Nora to speak her truth. This Internet narrative is surprisingly compelling and effective. Readers gain a portrait of Jane’s deceased mother in a short series of emails sent before her death; it’s a simple reply chain among Jane, her mother and her then-sober father about what to make for dinner than night, but it speaks volumes about why Jane’s life is so wrecked in the wake of her mother’s death. The sci-fi fan fiction is a bit hard to contend with, but it also works as a means to show Jane’s dissociation from the pain in her life. Readers should be prepared for total chat-speak immersion, from actions expressed between double colons to Gary’s abbreviation-happy communiqués.

Throughout it all, though, Jane is a dynamic heroine, smart, angry and heartwarming in all the right ways.

An IM straight to the heart of teenagers who love texting more than talking.

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Howell Jr., R.A. CreateSpace (332 pp.) $12.50 paper | $2.99 e-book Mar. 30, 2013 978-1-4681-8682-6 In this debut thriller, two singles vacationing in paradise find love and sunken treasure, but the treasure belongs to a drug cartel that wants it back.

Luck seems to be on the side of Bill and Vicky. After meeting on Isla La Madre, the blossoming of their romance is followed by the discovery, while snorkeling, of a cigarette boat and close to $60 million—not to mention bullet holes and skeletal remains. The two take the money and try their best to hide evidence of the shipwreck, but that doesn’t stop the Miami Mafia from realizing that a rather sizable payment is now missing. They send their man to recover

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The Man With Blue Green Eyes

the funds and take care of any related problems. Howell sets up his story remarkably well, wasting no time in getting Bill and Vicky together and proficiently establishing their new relationship without dawdling. They snorkel, make love and even have an awkward moment when Vicky breaks the ice by implying that Bill’s an alcoholic—all within the first 50 pages. But it’s their shrewd response to finding bundles of cash at the bottom of the sea that makes them appealing. They consider every option—destroying the money or turning it in to the police, for instance—and they’re cautious even without knowing if they’re in danger. It’s clear to readers, however, that a menace is lurking: Mob man Rizzo enlists Eddy, who’s not above murdering someone to cover his own tracks. The baddies get close enough to the lovers to ramp up suspense, which leads to a rousing car chase and the introduction of a police presence, mostly in the form of Officer Tony Sanchez. His scenes are less engaging, since readers are a few steps ahead of his investigation, but his refusal to let a murder case go cold is laudable. Numerous ships and scenes at sea lead to amusing nautical metaphors—Vicky notes that she and Bill, both with the money, are “on the same

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“Josefowitz’s poems, in all their raw tenderness, are sometimes excruciating to read, but they’re ultimately testaments to a great love.” from living without the one you cannot live without

TOCO Tales Told Through the Eyes of a Small Boy Growing Up in the Countryside of Trinidad WI in the 30’s & 40’s

Jack, Vivian Xlibris (156 pp.) $29.99 | $19.99 paper | $3.99 e-book Oct. 30, 2012 978-1-4797-3164-0

Jack’s debut collection weaves together spirited vignettes recalling his boyhood in Trinidad.

For Gabriel, Jack’s fictional stand-in, there’s no such thing as small beginnings. His recollections come from the years he lives in Toco, a small village on Trinidad, during the second world war. Toco’s remoteness prevents Gabriel from focusing too much on European scuffles, though. While raucous soldiers add an exciting new element to village life, they’re largely seen as a curiosity; there are plenty of more interesting occurrences in these far-from-bucolic island days. A mix of superstition, Caribbean Christianity and island traditions shapes Gabriel’s understanding of the world, turning seemingly normal life events into exhilarating, sometimes harrowing affairs. Zombies, ghosts, ancient village charms, the Obeah man’s visits—he’s a kind of witch doctor—and charismatic priests imbue these stories with an entrancing flavor, while hardscrabble daily requirements, from fetching river water to curing meat for dinner, aren’t described as burdensome tasks but spirit endeavors. Undaunted by daily challenges, he maintains innocence and hopefulness, both of which enable him to make declarations and list dreams bound to awaken nostalgia.

There are other mountains to climb, hummingbirds to snatch out of midair, lighthouses to ascend and girls to charm. Readers will enjoy watching Gabriel grow into a young man, and when a rupture in family life forces him to leave Toco behind, readers may find themselves sharing in his dismay. Jack, a skillful writer, capably relates island parlance while injecting his tales with affecting color and passion, not to mention a few black-and-white illustrations. Most of the stories successfully fit together, and Jack’s proclaimed goal to relate what life was like in rural Trinidad in the ’30s and ’40s has been achieved.

Readers will be happily lost in this lively, engrossing book about home and family.

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Living Without the One You Cannot Live Without Hope and Healing after Loss

boat”—and even water-laden threats, like Rizzo suggesting that Eddy “plug some dike” with an unlucky man.

Pithy writing, an unswerving plot and witty characters give this thriller a notable gleam.

Josefowitz, Natasha Prestwik Poetry Publishing Co. (108 pp.) $9.95 paper | Sep. 23, 2013 978-1-4841-4132-8

A hard-won, heart-wrenching collection of poems.

In her latest book, poet Josefowitz (Been There, Done That, Doing It Better, 2009) touchingly chronicles the painful first year after the death of her longtime husband. Beginning with a description of his final days in hospice, her plainspoken, free verse documents the slow burn of her grief from day to day—whether she’s at her husband’s funeral struggling to “find the man I loved / in all these words” or sitting alone in the evenings, trying to conjure the presence of her lost love (“make a sound in the wind / touch my cheek / with a breath of air”). Although the poems sometimes rely on clichéd abstractions and can err toward the sentimental, Josefowitz’s sense of detail makes them sing. The poems are at their best when most specific: “I miss him / rustling the newspapers / in the room next door / his voice on the phone— / I always knew which of the children / he was talking to.” The author never shies away from difficulties she faces—a fractured sense of self, months of inconsolability and profound survivor’s guilt when she eventually finds herself able to enjoy things again.

In the sad but charming “Firsts,” she finds she must learn how to do the many mundane tasks her husband used to do: taking out the garbage, resetting the clocks for daylight saving time, opening a bottle of wine. Josefowitz’s poems, in all their raw tenderness, are sometimes excruciating to read, but they’re ultimately testaments to a great love and affirmations of the author’s new identity as a single, self-sustaining woman in her elder years.

A beautiful book of sad, funny and relatable verse and a comforting companion for anyone grieving the loss of a loved one.

The Akeing Heart: Passionate Attachments and Their Aftermath: Sylvia Townsend Warner, Valentine Ackland, Elizabeth Wade White

Judd, Peter Haring CreateSpace (414 pp.) $19.95 paper | $9.99 e-book Apr. 30, 2013 978-1-4848-6718-1

Judd (More Lasting Than Brass, 2004) offers a real-life epistolary tale of a bizarre literary love triangle.

In the 1930s, three well-educated women—English novelist Sylvia Townsend Warner, English poet Valentine Ackland and American heiress-turned–activist/writer Elizabeth Wade |

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White—became tangled up in one another’s lives. When White met Warner in New York City in 1929, White was 12 years Warner’s junior and struggling to free herself from the expectations of her wealthy conservative family. Warner fostered an intimate, impassioned and largely epistolary friendship with White; Warner’s lifelong lover, the boldly androgynous Ackland, corresponded with White as well. However, when the philandering Ackland took the inexperienced White as her lover, the three women found themselves caught in a web of conflicting desires. Until 1950, White would periodically return to England (leaving another companion behind) and take up with the two women—relegating Warner to the spare bedroom. Judd’s book is a straightforward biographical account set against the backdrop of mid-20th-century political unrest; all three women campaigned for the Loyalist cause during the Spanish Civil War. Much of the text consists of the women’s correspondence and, less frequently, their journals; these are true treasures, as Warner, Ackland and White were all superb writers. The book might have focused a bit more on their riveting interpersonal dramas, but Judd commits to telling their full stories faithfully, even to the most quotidian detail. Their missives about politics, their literary and artistic friends, and even the behaviors of their beloved pet cats are as finely wrought as their heartfelt notes on their romantic complications.

A detailed biography that offers valuable insight into the lives of three accomplished women.

THE LUNARIUM

K., Kathleen CreateSpace (196 pp.) $7.77 paper | Nov. 2, 2011 978-1-4662-3301-0 Provocative, orgiastic snippets from a sexual voyeur’s social life.

Known for an oeuvre of titillating material, anonymous author K (Honey B., The Suite Life, 2012) explores the fascinating, visually active life of bearded, middleaged “watcher” James Boyle O’Donahue. Irish, single and unlucky in love, O’Donahue fully embraces his penchant for voyeuristic, erotic, group events. Unapologetic to a fault, he allows himself to revel in this clandestine fetish, defensively remarking that the ones being watched are indeed willing participants—their “secret passions are not spoiled by a witness participating in the redefinition of privacy.” Armed with boundless energy, dynamic tour guide O’Donahue directs readers through a wide array of creatively themed sex clubs: Revelry, a “small luxurious pit surrounded by theater seats”; the Lunarium, a fantasy event where he accompanies an unnamed companion; and the Beach, with its taboo “Beyond the Rocks” private area that’s a “sexual potluck” starring 12 randy, experimental couples and a roomful of writhing performers at a lactating “tit talent show.” Written with verve and a contagious sense of exhibitionism, K’s first-person narrative is divided into 70 “things”: brief chapters that descriptively chart O’Donahue’s carnivalesque adventures at risqué live theater performances.

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Amid this plethora of vicariously thrilling and erotic “sexual fiestas,” O’Donahue takes time to philosophically ponder the nature of strippers, compares gawkers to voyeurs, gets schooled by a sex professor and breathlessly observes amazing (and not so amazing) feats of carnality. K doesn’t aim for subtlety, but as a whole, the sexual observances form an enlightening examination of voyeurism.

A wild, steamy story with erudite sex-as-art undertones.

Rally Caps, Rain Delays and Racing Sausages A Baseball Fan’s Quest to See the Game from a Seat in Every Ballpark Kabakoff, Eric Self (266 pp.) $17.99 paper | $11.99 e-book Oct. 2, 2013 978-0-9895472-0-8

Debut author Kabakoff chronicles his quest to visit every major league ballpark in this cheerful travelogue.

The author grew up attending games at Yankee Stadium with his father, but in 2001, at Baltimore’s Camden Yards, he met a man intent on visiting every baseball park with a major league team. The idea nested in the back of Kabakoff ’s mind, and over the next several years, he took in games at New York’s Shea Stadium, Los Angeles’ Dodger Stadium, Philadelphia’s Citizens Bank Park and Chicago’s Wrigley Field. On a 2005 vacation in Southern California, he watched the Anaheim Angels battle the Boston Red Sox, and Kabakoff ’s game was on—he vowed to visit every major league ballpark himself. From August 2005 to September 2011, Kabakoff traveled to every major league city in the U.S. and Canada, not only to watch the hometown teams, but also to explore the ballparks, sample the concessions, visit the halls of fame and meet local fans. Throughout this chatty book, he recaps memorable games, spars with mascots, collects oddball souvenirs and receives frequent sunburns. He also expertly summarizes several team and ballpark histories along the way. There’s nothing scientific about the way he compares stadiums’ retractable roofs or evaluates fans’ enthusiasm, but his casual metrics will likely make indelible impressions on readers nonetheless. His writing style is boyish and agreeable, informal and full of occasionally silly wit. Serious fans won’t find many historical tidbits that they don’t already know, but there are a few odd gems, such as the reason why Honus Wagner’s baseball card is so valuable and what was unearthed during the construction of Denver’s Coors Field. Kabakoff brings his baseball narrative full circle as he describes how his childhood delight in discovering baseball reappeared in his young cousin Rachel, and he expands upon this legacy of shared experiences in the book’s final pages.

An engaging trip around Major League Baseball’s bases that may inspire readers to go on their own ballpark odysseys.

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Radium Baby

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Love Poems for Cannibals

Karp, St. John Remora House (246 pp.) $9.99 paper | $3.99 e-book | Apr. 25, 2013 978-0-9892630-0-9

Keen, Raymond CreateSpace (166 pp.) $9.95 paper | $2.99 e-book | Feb. 5, 2013 978-1-4701-8268-7

In Karp’s debut young-adult novel, three preteens compete to prove their connection to famous scientists who died more than a decade ago.

In 1927, 13-year-old Sam Ticky lives in Claremore, Okla., also known as “Radium Town,” because the chemical element bubbles freely from the ground, like oil. He works at the radium baths, where people soak in an effort to cure themselves of ailments such as barnacles and gout—despite the fact it might possibly be dangerous. According to Sam’s adoptive father, Sam is the biological son of the well-known scientists Alexander and Valerie Pepperpot, who gave him up after they died; as a result, science is his heritage. Meanwhile, in New York, Clive Chapman ponders the fate of his Sun Studios Radio Corporation. Ratings are falling, even on his most popular shows, and he needs something brilliant to turn his business around. When the U.S. government asks for his help in finding the Pepperpots’ missing child, he dreams up a contest. Soon, Sam is competing against two other finalists who share his birthday, Gloria Noakes and Hadrian Sands. The prize: the Pepperpots’ estate. The contestants must solve a series of puzzles staged in China, Egypt and Boston as they try to provide proof of the identity of the real “Radium Baby.” Throughout this adventure novel, Karp’s madcap imagination keeps readers hungering for the final outcome, and his prose sparkles with his flair for the absurd: For example, the Pepperpots “invented the hamster wheel, the hamster cage and the hamster feeder, then rounded off their list of achievements by inventing the hamster.”

The contest’s puzzles, which involve such diverse elements as hornets’ honey and the Eye of Tutankhamen, have surprise twists, but Karp isn’t merely a showman. He’s also capable of dreamily evocative scene-setting (“Everything hit [Sam] at once...the temples with roofs like dog-eared paper, [and the] fine statues and filigree metalwork tracing spider webs across the walls and ceilings”) and manages to end his tale on a truly profound note.

A devilishly rich, satisfying scientific confection.

Startling, cynical, satirical free verse about life among the postmodern ruins.

Keen’s debut poetry collection arrives at the party already a little drunk, a bit raucous and talking a mile a minute, but the longer the night goes on, the more sense it seems to make. After all, he’s not out to hurt anyone; he’s just trying to figure out where it all went wrong for all of us. With considerable energy and tightly coiled wit, Keen ranges across the political, spiritual and pop-culture landscapes only to find them all a little disorienting and largely bereft. “There is no sadness,” he writes, “But the fear of sadness. / There is no despair, / But the distraction from despair. / There is no suffering, / But the avoidance of suffering. / We’re living in bad times, / Biochemically speaking.” Regardless of where he looks, nothing essential remains. Love is sold “in bottles now, / and smells like aftershave,” Christ is “lost in all the traffic” and “so far away from now.” Even your sense of self is suspect: “In this cellular moment, / This eternity / Among strangers, / You see / Yourself / In bits / And / Pieces, / Impossible to describe.” Trapped by the postmodern condition and yearning for the teleologically secure time “before the world was shattered,” Keen’s narrators respond in seemingly the only way available—playing their own language games, answering absurdity with absurdity and papering over fragmentation with pastiche. Meditations on death are peppered with popular advertising slogans, and the apotheosis of Western civilization is reduced to Michelangelo’s David infested with maggots. With no certainty, even of the self, the poems join in the cannibalizing of culture, seeking irony in unexpectedly ironic situations. Amid the brutality arises humor, and Keen ably joins a long tradition in American avant-garde poetry of lampooning demagoguery with poems like “The Demystification of Henry Kissinger” and “Even at Night All Snakes Swallow Their Prey Whole: Looking Back at Arafat & Some of His Peers.” Supporting the politics, satire and social commentary is a more than capable, sometimes beautiful verse that relies heavily on repetition—from anaphora to choral refrains—and startlingly precise imagery (“sway-backed surgeons, / Peeling human skulls like eggs”) for great effect.

Thought-provoking, incisive and entertaining; a remarkably well-rounded debut.

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Democracy’s Missing Arsenal

King, Michael B.; Bredehoft, John M. CreateSpace (588 pp.) $24.95 paper | $19.95 e-book Sep. 10, 2013 978-1-4841-0094-3

Kennedy, Alan W.; Kennedy, Thomas E. Xlibris (194 pp.) $29.99 | $19.99 paper | May 2, 2013 978-1-4771-5286-7

In their debut, consultants Kennedy and Kennedy attempt to demystify the business strategy process.

Too many organizations try to engage in strategic planning without understanding what their current strategy is, according to the authors, a father-son duo with Toronto-based consultancy Gibson Kennedy & Company. Conventional approaches dictate that a company should begin by asking, “Where do we want to be?” The authors contend that a more logical question is, “Where are we?” After all, you can’t change something if you can’t agree on where things stand now. Strategy discussions are also often muddled by intimidating terms like “mission,” “goals” and “objectives”—which are really just synonyms; in this work, the authors avoid such corporate buzzwords, instead offering a streamlined method. Their titular Alpha Strategies are eight “courses of action,” found in all organizations, which encompass every facet of business: production, marketing, growth, research and development, risk, financial management, business definition and organizational management. While the components themselves aren’t new, the authors assert that it’s the relationship among them that ultimately matters: One dominant Alpha Strategy sets the overall culture, they write, while the other seven take secondary roles as “influencers” or “enablers.” Leaders need to agree on how the eight strategies are configured, and then ensure that all are executed properly. To make their case, the authors examine the strategies of such prominent corporations as Ford, Stantec and IBM. The book’s easy-to-follow approach is surprisingly versatile, given its simple design. The authors convincingly demonstrate how the Alpha Strategies function in a range of industries, including nonprofit and public service organizations, and by the final chapter, readers will likely find the difficult task of strategizing less daunting. Although proponents of metric-based strategic models may disagree with the process-orientated Alpha Strategies model, the authors believe such popular methods are shortsighted. Their succinct, elegant approach focuses on the hows and whys of strategy—not just the numbers.

A no-guesswork guide to business strategy and a persuasive thesis on why some organizations are more successful than others.

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The Alpha Strategies Understanding Strategy, Risk, and Values in Any Organization

In the first of their planned threevolume alternative American history, King and Bredehoft expertly plot the effects of the South’s victory in the Civil War. This history starts with Lee’s triumph at Gettysburg, a “point of divergence” clinching the nation’s division into the USA and the CSA—Confederate States of America. The countries form competing international alliances: While the CSA partners with Germany and Britain, the USA forms tightknit friendships with France and Russia. Border conflicts erupt near Mexico and Canada, which the Yukon Gold Rush renders appealing to would-be U.S. colonizers. With Britain entangled in the “Irish Question,” Russia advancing into India and Afghanistan, and the CSA and Japan planning to attack the Philippines, the stage is set for an altered World War I in 1898. Global warfare catches most great powers unprepared, both technologically and ideologically. The CSA, however, is an able aggressor: Hoping to annex Maryland and Delaware, it leads devastating attacks on New York and Washington, leaving the capital in ruins. Indeed, this bleak picture coincides with the narrator’s present-day setting: Writing in 1963, an unnamed, former U.S. president surveys a post-apocalyptic scene while cowered in a primitive New England outpost, with New York City having been destroyed by Germany’s atomic missiles. He attempts to pinpoint where everything went wrong, inspired by “duty to make an honest accounting at history’s bar.” At first, Confederate victory may have augured a better world, but as the slave trade and the accelerated cycle of war continued, things grew worse, especially as the USA restricted freedom of speech to prevent dissent. King and Bredehoft seamlessly weave genuine and conceivable historical happenings: The Dreyfus Affair and Boxer Rebellion are juxtaposed with imagined but entirely plausible assassinations or invasions. Omissions, such as the Boer War and Lincoln assassination—he decided against seeking re-election, leaving the job to William H. Seward—come with faultless justification. Throughout, there is an impressive level of detail as the authors follow minute chronological swerves to their logical conclusions, illustrating “the highly contingent nature of history.”

A flawless blending of actual and potential events, aided by an engaging narrator.

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THE PROXY ASSASSIN Book Three of the American Spy Trilogy Knoerle, John Blue Steel Press (280 pp.) $15.00 paper | $0.99 e-book Sep. 1, 2012 978-0-9820903-9-8

Knoerle’s ace thriller, the third in the American Spy series, chronicles a noirish tough guy’s efforts to protect the world from the Red Menace, circa 1944.

Knoerle hits precisely the right note of humility and bravado when his protagonist, American Office of Strategic Services agent Hal Schroeder, declares in the novel’s prologue: “You wouldn’t believe how much crap you get credit for when you’re a hero.” What follows is a spare, stylish thriller peopled with wisecracking characters straight out of a Billy Wilder flick. Schroeder, a World War II vet marking time as a librarian in his native Cleveland, is tapped by real-life intelligence heavyweight Frank Wisner

for another covert ops “suicide mission” in Eastern Europe. He accepts, of course—after which everything spirals blissfully out of control. Robert Altman–esque cameos of historical baddies, including FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and suave Cambridge Five double agents Guy Burgess and Kim Philby (who made careers of providing British secrets to their Soviet masters) add historical depth to the international political hijinks. However, Schroeder is the star here. The slightly goofy patriot is bright but not extravagantly so—much like author Laura Lippman’s nerdy Baltimore PI, Tess Monaghan, or Peter Robinson’s Inspector Banks, whose dogged legwork and occasional epiphanies eventually solve the problems at hand. Agent Schroeder is no Sherlock, and that makes him all the more appealing and the novel more accessible. Beguiled readers will want to seek out Schroeder’s two prior adventures (A Pure Double Cross, 2008 and A Despicable Profession, 2010) as a stopgap until Knoerle hopefully blesses fans with a fourth book (à la numerically expansive author Robert Rankin) in this delightful trilogy.

A terrific Cold War thriller.

OUT-OF-STYLE A Modern Perspective of How, Why and When Vintage Fashions Evolved Kreisel Shubert, Betty Flashback Publishing (372 pp.) $50.00 | $34.00 paper | Dec. 1, 2013 978-0-9835761-6-7

A guide to the evolution of fashion trends of the past two centuries, useful to costume designers as well as amateur and professional genealogists.

Drawing on her decades of experience as a Hollywood costume designer, as well as two years as a columnist for Ancestry Magazine, the author presents a broad overview of 19th- and 20th-century dress. Her book, which targets genealogists, would be especially helpful for nonexperts who may want to learn more about their historic family photographs. Descriptions of each era’s dominant silhouettes, hats, sleeves and fabric details are illustrated by the author’s line drawings, hundreds of which appear throughout the book. These sketches are essential to understanding the difference between a toque and a cloche or the posture produced by the evolving corset in the early 20th century. The author’s deep knowledge of fashion, the book’s greatest strength, is evident in her cataloging of a broad range of men’s, women’s and children’s styles. Tidbits from the history of fashion, such as a re-evaluation of corset measurements that unzips the idea of the 16-inch waist, will also provide the amateur genealogist or costume designer with a window into the past. The book’s forays into social history and analysis, however, are less compelling. Zoot suits are dismissed as a mere outlying trend, and anti-fur activists are criticized for embarrassing fur-wearing women with their attacks. Queen Victoria gets a bit too much credit for changing courtship practices— “Since, as Queen, she had proposed to him, from that time on women in civilized societies decided to choose their own 34

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“The author tells Musto’s tale in limpid, engaging free verse, which suits the narrative’s offbeat content and poetic mood.” from the life and times of richard musto

LAWS OF DEPRAVITY

La Salle, Eriq CreateSpace (236 pp.) $15.00 paper | $3.99 e-book Jun. 1, 2012 978-1-4775-8211-4

The surprises keep coming in La Salle’s twisting debut thriller, in which good and evil aren’t always black and white.

Quincy Cavanaugh and Tavares “Phee” Freeman team up with FBI agent Janet Maclin in the pursuit of a serial killer who’s murdered 12 clergymen every 10 years for the past three decades. With the killings set to occur over a limited number of days, the investigators have to move quickly to catch the Martyr Maker before he takes more lives and goes back into hiding. In the process, they discover that he isn’t randomly pursuing men of the cloth—he’s targeting the ones who use their positions to keep lurid secrets safe, and he believes he’s on a mission from God. In addition to the absorbing, fast-paced plot that will keep readers guessing until the end, each wonderfully sculpted character has a distinct, lifelike personality. Some characters aren’t who they appear to be, and few escape the story unchanged. Crucial subplots revolving around the main characters’ family members and significant others, who struggle with their own demons—like Quincy’s brother, who’s a priest, and a mother whose son committed suicide on her father’s watch—add nuance, making the characters real, vulnerable and flawed. Without skimping on character development in exchange for action, the plot offers catalysts for change while raising spiritual questions and blurring the line between good and evil, which propels the story upward from being merely a solid, entertaining thriller to being a gripping must-read that could have readers pondering right and wrong long after they’ve finished.

A delightfully twisting roller-coaster ride through light, dark and the shades between.

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husbands”—and the oft-repeated myth of a “closet tax” driving people to store their clothes in cabinets gets a mention. There’s also, at times, a note of disdain for women who don’t conform to the author’s sense of taste, including derision for sausage curls on older women and frequent references to “fashion diehards” who embrace trends beyond their prescribed end dates.

The descriptions of historic styles and their accompanying illustrations, however, constitute a useful resource that outweighs the book’s shortcomings.

This broad compilation of evolving fashion trends makes for a valuable addition to any reference collection.

Elysian Fields

LaFlaur, Mark Mid-City Books (412 pp.) $14.95 paper | $7.50 e-book Mar. 6, 2013 978-0-615-72986-2 A dysfunctional family reflects the decay of New Orleans in debut author LaFlaur’s tale of brotherly love and menace.

Much like the lush, crumbling city in which it lives, the Weems family exists on the edge of decrepitude. Gasper, the deceased father whose odd demise haunts the ramshackle family home, was a cheerful but ineffectual man, and his ailing wife, Melba, and his elder son, Simpson, share his weak nature. If Gasper had any strength, it funneled into the younger son, Bartholomew, who holds his family hostage with his gargantuan body, constant consumption and zealous antics. He is the elephant in the room, and although his mother believes that he needs psychiatric help—and a job to augment her pitiful pension—she holds no sway over him. Neither does Simpson, his 36-year-old brother; he works a dead-end job in a copy shop by day and frequents a brothel by night—until his favorite nymphet, the only person he let through his emotional barriers, vanishes. Now all Simpson has left is his persistent dream of moving to San Francisco and becoming a poet, but his family ties bind him to his mother’s frailties and his brother’s psychotic tantrums. As Simpson wanders the “shadows of the city’s infrastructure” in the Gentilly section of town, he dreams of something else: fratricide. On those walks, LaFlaur’s descriptive talent shines. Fertile imagery drips like Spanish moss: the old buildings collapsing, “as though the humidity-sodden bricks were returning to mud,” while “cloud stacks glowed like the battlements of heaven.” Simpson’s mental landscape is equally vivid, drawn with such empathy and depth that readers will forgive his perpetual indecision and may even root for him to carry out the removal of his near-deranged brother.

A wholly involving story with Faulkner-ian characters in a fully realized setting.

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF RICHARD MUSTO Lamport, Joe Roll Your Own Press (186 pp.)

Nov. 15, 2013

A winsome character sketch that celebrates a homeless man’s quirky personality and picaresque life story.

Richard Musto, an 87-year-old homeless man living on Sixth Avenue in midtown Manhattan, is a Runyonesque figure who has a jumble of colorful memories and habits. He’s a fastidious housekeeper, carefully keeping his milk-crate–and-cardboard campsite shipshape and his patch of sidewalk clean and mopped; a dapper dresser in black beret and American-flag cravat; an amateur

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expert on military history and cinema, always happy to act out a scene; a cigar-smoking bon vivant and incorrigible ladies’ man, always ready with witticisms for the Hooters gals; and a clear thinker with an acerbic take on the world (sample pensée: “A lot of guys / stop to ask me / what’s the secret of life / and I’ll say to them / how the hell should I know”). Lamport, bemused by Musto, spent many an evening hanging out and recording the man’s back story, which included combat in World War II, many knockabout jobs, an enduring passion for the ponies, a sexless marriage and countless adventures in cross-dressing and BDSM, which, he claims, began with the nuns at his grammar school.

(One of Musto’s more improbable sideline career jags was as a ladies’ maid and lingerie model.) The author tells Musto’s tale in limpid, engaging free verse, which suits the narrative’s offbeat content and poetic mood; along the way, he sprinkles in atmospheric odes to the bustling New York streetscape, along with somewhat overdone stanzas invoking the muse. The portrait also has some dark edges, including an ugly family feud that makes Musto “all the more human in his monstrosity.” Musto appears in Michel Delsol’s arresting black-and-white photographs, looking like an elfin version of an Easter Island statue. Overall, Musto

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emerges as a resilient survivor, weathering the obliteration of his camp by city workers with a soft curse and plucky aplomb. The result is a heartening lesson on “How to live life in extremis / Yet to the fullest.”

A romanticized but beguiling saga of one man’s life on the streets.

Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Volume 1, 2nd Edition Guiding Principles to Welcome Rain into Your Life and Landscape

Lancaster, Brad Rainsource Press (304 pp.) $29.95 paper | Jul. 1, 2013 978-0-9772464-3-4

Lancaster’s (Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, 2007, etc.) combination reference manual, how-to guide and environmental manifesto offers a wealth of information about “water stewardship” for gardens, landscaping and everyday household use.

Novices need not be intimidated by this revised edition’s abundance of charts and diagrams or its lengthy appendices: The material is simple to understand, and Lancaster’s friendly, conversational tone is accessible for all readers. Using eight common-sense principles as a guide—e.g., “Always plan for an overflow route, and manage that overflow water as a resource”— the author makes a cogent case for water conservation; namely, it’s ethical, and it saves money. He also details integrated permaculture practices, including the importance of understanding the sun’s angles for passive cooling and heating. According to Lancaster, it’s always best to plan drainage at the highest point of a watershed and then work down, allowing the water to spread to optimal locations—a method that can be achieved through thoughtful observation of the land. Careful planting of native vegetation also plays a crucial role, and the author suggests that “water-needy” fruit trees be placed close to the house, as they can easily be nourished by roof runoff or graywater from sinks, showers and washing machines. Readers who live in wet climates may feel underrepresented in this book—Lancaster lives on an eighth of an acre in Tucson, Ariz., and uses an average of less than 12 inches of rainfall annually—but his principles can be adapted to fit any terrain or climate. Though there are many practical ideas contained within these pages, readers shouldn’t expect A to Z gardening instructions laid out in an easy-to-flip format; instead, Lancaster presents design ideas and plenty of engaging food for thought, including some personal worksheets in Appendix 5, as well as photos and reallife examples of people who have successfully harvested water for sustainable use. For example, Zephaniah Phiri Maseko, an African farmer, feeds his family in a drought-prone area thanks to his handmade reservoirs and “fruition pits.” Likewise, the Howells of New Mexico have lived on rainwater alone for over 20 years. While not everyone will want to live completely off

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A Beer Drinker’s Guide To Knowing And Enjoying Fine Wine

Laughren, Jim Crosstown Publishing Inc. (206 pp.) $16.95 paper | Dec. 10, 2012 978-0-9855336-1-8 For all the beer-drinking die-hards, Laughren serves an enticing, thorough, though not suffocating introduction to hops’ fermented friend, the grape.

Though the shelves creak under the weight of wine books for dummies and gun-shy tipplers terrified by wine-speak, here’s a welcome addition that’s relaxed, inviting and intelligent. Laughren is a bon vivant without being a boob, a sensualist even if he wouldn’t put it that way. He likes his beer—the book is liberally sprinkled with beer wisdom, as if to soothe the wary brewer—but he’s also a big fan of wine, and he wants readers in on the action. He aims to provide an unintimidating yet rich tour through the world of wine, highlighting its conviviality but undergirding it with a candid sense of what’s in the glass. With a healthy dose of detail, Laughren touches on the history of wine, factors in its production and an appreciation of terroir. He sketches various social scenarios and the wines he might choose to complement them: a zinfandel with a basketball game on TV; a big, young Brunello di Montalcino when the brothers of your new squeeze stop by to check you out; a cabernet sauvignon for dinner with the boss; a dry sherry when the squeeze comes over to break up with you. A sweet, bright humor pervades the book, as Laughren makes wine tasting sound like fun rather than an opportunity to embarrass yourself. His descriptions—“like sucking stones and chips of slate dipped in lime and lychee juice”—require attention. He’s chummy, like a knowledgeable friend who doesn’t need to wear it on his sleeve, though the insight seeps through. Most importantly, he’s on your side: “there’s no need to excuse your preferences,” he says, but be open to new experiences. Also included are excellent maps of wine-producing regions and a brief survey of various oenological tools.

Cheers to this spirited, perceptive guide.

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the grid, readers interested in preserving natural resources can apply Lancaster’s time-tested ideas to any lifestyle.

Valuable environmental insight—a conservationist’s delight.

THE ALEXANDRITE Lenz, Rick Self (243 pp.)

Lenz’s mesmerizing, multifaceted debut novel is both an intriguing timetravel/past-life adventure and a subtle homage to Marilyn Monroe.

Initially set in Southern California in 1996, the storyline follows Jack Cade, a 40-year-old struggling actor who’s inexplicably given a valuable alexandrite ring by an unknown benefactor. But the strange gift doesn’t change Cade’s run of bad luck: He loses a job he desperately needed, and his wife finally leaves him. When a woman named Maggie Partridge, who claims to be a psychophysicist, contacts the down-and-out actor with “extremely important” information, he decides to meet with her and hear her out. Her story is incredible: She believes that Cade used to be a man named Richard Blake, a gemologist who lived in the San Fernando Valley in the 1950s—and she has a way to send him back in time to prove it. Cade agrees and indeed finds himself back in 1956 as the gemologist. Blake’s existence is as bleak as Cade’s. He lives with his wife and her mentally challenged sister, with whom he’s having an affair. Blake, an aspiring actor, has the opportunity to meet Marilyn Monroe, who has just started filming Bus Stop. Meeting Monroe helps Cade/Blake begin to unravel the mystery surrounding the alexandrite ring, and the pieces to an incredibly intricate puzzle start falling into place—until Blake’s wife takes umbrage with his infidelity. Along the way, this fascinating look at the underbelly of Hollywood offers an intriguing glimpse into Monroe’s tragic life and death. “We turned her into an icon,” says Cade, in Richard’s body, “then a vessel of our hopes and dreams, and finally a human sacrifice.” Like Monroe, the novel is impressively complex. Lenz—himself a veteran actor—cunningly blends time travel, LA noir, Hollywood glitz and self-discovery, making for a uniquely appealing read.

A stellar story illuminated by a star’s light and a man’s search for himself.

LOVE, IN THEORY Ten Stories

Levy, E.J. Univ. of Georgia (224 pp.) $24.95 paper | $24.95 e-book Sep. 15, 2012 978-0-8203-4349-5

Levy’s award-winning short story collection masterfully explores the vagaries of romantic love.

In Levy’s (Amazons: A Love Story, 2012) 10 lyrical gems, disparate characters struggle without someone to love, and some are paralyzed and shocked by the loss of affection. In “Theory of Transportation,” Thomas sleepwalks to a movie theater on the night of his lover’s death. In “The Best |

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Way Not to Freeze,” a reclusive English professor, Katie, falls for Ben, a man of the world who teaches her how to portage a canoe in the wilderness, but after invigorating her life, he returns to his ex. Most of Levy’s stories are peopled with highly educated characters interested in highbrow subjects—Nietzsche, French Impressionism, Persian rugs. They can’t help intellectualizing the confusing whys and hows of love. For example, in “Theory of Enlightenment,” Gil leaves Renee, trading their discussions of botany and Mahler for yogic asanas and incense at a Buddhist retreat. “Sometimes one plus one can equal less than two,” Gil tells her. Levy’s prose is deeply philosophical and sometimes heady but never pompous. It depicts infidelity and loss yet avoids melancholy and sentimentality, as the characters often don’t have the expected reactions to difficulties—they are too cerebral for that. Levy beautifully explores the pitfalls of domestic life in “Gravity,” in which Richard attends his sister’s second wedding, as do his mother, father and father’s mistress. The bride is nearly inconsequential in this poignant vignette; instead, the story focuses on Richard, who evaluates his own relationship in light of his familial peculiarities. The final story, “Theory of Dramatic Action,” employs a second-person narrator, as if to finally address the reader directly; it’s also the only one bordering on edgy, as a dominatrix tempts the heroine. Levy’s taut prose, intelligence and emotional acuity penetrate nearly every sentence. Fans of Amy Bloom’s short stories are likely to enjoy Levy’s work. Readers will likely savor this collection, a 2011 winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, for its intoxicating language and introspection.

A smart, insightful collection of stories about life and love.

Note: Levy is a freelance contributor to Kirkus.

The Arsonist’s Last Words

Lockwood, Alison R. Mansfield House Books (308 pp.) $13.95 paper | $3.99 e-book | Sep. 7, 2012 978-0-9855358-0-3 An elegiac novel that deftly combines elements of investigative journalism and crime fiction.

This debut effort follows the morally wrenching aftermath of a major urban catastrophe in a way that’s eerily evocative of the 9/11 attacks. A massive fire consumes the Parramore Plaza in Orlando, Fla., killing 115 people and emotionally scarring untold more. Marko Abissi, a recently fired janitor, immediately falls under suspicion, as he all too perfectly fits the profile of an arsonist: He has a history of violence and a personal life crumbling into disarray. There are also rumors that he has ties to the Middle East. Juni Bruner, a grizzled veteran reporter, tirelessly investigates every lead, desperately trying to make sense of the despairingly senseless. The book’s startlingly innovative structure powerfully captures the city’s madness in response to the disaster. Instead of a traditional novel told from a 38

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single perspective, the book is more like a heap of archival documents—including newspaper articles, personal correspondence, transcripts of telephone conversations and even a worker’s compensation report. The reader becomes a proactive participant in the investigation, poring over the dark mystery’s disjointed evidence. From the outset, the novel reveals that Bruner won a Pulitzer Prize for her ace reportage and that she ultimately took her own life, leaving only a 200-page manuscript as a clue to her inconsolable sadness.

Her spiraling descent mirrors the city’s frenzied chaos, its people numbed by depression and enlivened by the urgency to assign blame. Although the climax is fairly predictable early on, it’s still a poignant conclusion to a stirring tale. It’s a testament to the author’s skill that the narrative remains a seamless whole, even as it unfolds in fractured parts.

A moving parable about the wounding effects of human tragedy and the collateral damage of the search for moral truth.

IN SEARCH OF AND OTHERS

Ludwigsen, Will Lethe Press (196 pp.) $15.00 paper | Mar. 1, 2013 978-1-59021-270-7 Mundane reality mixes with the magical and the macabre in this scintillating collection of speculative fiction.

Inspired by the pop-enigma TV anthology hosted by Leonard Nimoy, Ludwigsen’s droll yet haunting title piece sets the tone, answering the puzzling questions with a blend of mythology and cynical common sense—“[t]he creature in Loch Ness was a plesiosaur, but it died in 1976 and locals concealed the carcass”—that eventually homes in on a homicide detective’s buried secrets. In other stories, characters confront the supernatural—or actively recruit it: A realtor specializing in haunted houses and murder scenes seeks out those special buyers who might like “stigmatized properties”; a 13-year-old girl tries to quantify her dog’s dream world for a science-fair project; a cantankerous hillbilly family resists government agents who want to upload their consciousnesses into a paradise simulation; a sentient house tears lose from its foundations and embarks on an epic journey to salve its guilty conscience; and the imaginary kingdom of Thuria intrudes into several narratives, cropping up in an off-kilter scouting expedition, a mother’s psychotic break and a postmodern literary scholar’s research on an ancient coded text.

Ludwigsen’s well-wrought, entertaining tales feel like a mashup of Ray Bradbury and Stephen King, and his evocative, whipsmart prose steeps readers in a realism that’s mordantly funny and matter-of-fact but glimmering with whimsy and horror that leaks around the edges. The stories also work as subtle explorations of character and psychology, especially in the superb story “The Ghost Factory,” in which the spectral inhabitants of a defunct mental hospital enact the spiritual dysfunctions

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“The characters are rich in their speech, experiences and motivations, which the measured, purposeful writing only enhances.” from dialogues of a crime

DIALOGUES OF A CRIME

McCluskey, Frank Bryce; Winter, Melanie Lynn Policy Studies Organization (274 pp.) $14.95 paper | $8.50 e-book Dec. 11, 2012 978-1-935907-98-5

Manos, John K. Amika Press (300 pp.) $15.95 paper | $4.95 e-book | Jul. 26, 2013 978-1-937484-13-2 In Manos’ crime drama, Michael Pollitz must decide whether to protect the mobster who has protected him.

When Mike, a college student in 1972 Illinois, is arrested on drug charges, his father insists he use a public defender. His childhood friend’s father, Dom Calabria, head of the Outfit in Chicago, wants to help Mike by providing a first-rate lawyer, but Mike goes with his father’s wishes. The outcome is a plea bargain for a short stay in Astoria Adult Correctional Facility—but after he’s brutally beaten and raped by three inmates, Mike spends most of his sentence in the infirmary. He doesn’t give up his assailants’ names but threatens their lives right before he’s set to be released. When Mike is picked up by the head of the mob, people notice. Flash forward to 1994, when Detective Larry Klinger begins investigating the murders of two former Astoria inmates who were violently killed shortly after being released. An informant—the third man who beat Mike—tells Klinger that the murders were committed by Calabria, the kingpin whom Klinger would like to see taken down. Klinger investigates, coming in contact with Mike, and the two form a friendship.

When Klinger realizes that Mike will never give up Calabria, he begins to wonder whether it’s even worth investigating the murders of such evil men. Manos is extremely deft at allowing the characters to reveal the story and what motivates them. Klinger captures this particularly well; he ponders his role in the reality of crime and punishment, and Manos allows him to grow in the process: “Interviewing scumbags has to be the most tedious damn thing in the world, Klinger thought, as Bobby Andrews jumped back and forth over the same explanations, tripping over one lie after another.” The characters are rich in their speech, experiences and motivations, which the measured, purposeful writing only enhances.

A character-driven crime novel ruled by complex men facing the past.

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The Idea of the Digital University Ancient Traditions, Disruptive Technologies and the Battle for the Soul of Higher Education

of modern life by fading from the world. Ludwigsen’s creepy, comic world reveals plenty about our own.

Crackerjack genre yarns with real literary depth and polish.

A sweeping study of the university structure, emphasizing how higher education must evolve in a digital era.

The mass adoption of online technology has pervaded every manner of business; universities are no different. In fact, as McCluskey and Winter suggest in this probing work, “the digital revolution is changing the very DNA of higher education.”

Still, “the university has come late to the digital revolution,” and the authors explore the reasons why. In text that’s both interesting to read and carefully researched, McCluskey and Winter discuss the role and structure of the university in general, lending a historical perspective while continuously drawing comparisons and contrasts between the traditional and digital university. The authors address in detail the most obvious evidence of online influence—the growth of online courses—but they pay equal attention to broader implications: the opening up of new avenues for library research, the shift away from paper-based student records and the fundamental change in the way professors teach students. The authors often return to the notion that “Big Data will impact how the university sees its students and their learning.” McCluskey and Winter cite Target, the retail chain, as being exemplary in its use of customer data, and they directly relate those efforts to the ways in which universities will have to use “Big Data” in the future “to see where education is succeeding and where we have work to do.” The authors also raise the issue of nonprofit versus for-profit universities, the latter having expanded largely because of online course offerings. Rather than take a position in favor or against for-profits, however, the authors diplomatically discuss some of the ways the nonprofit and for-profit institutions could learn from each other. Finally, the authors offer their own perceptive assessment on what the digital university might someday look like, postulating about dashboards, data warehouses and digital report cards.

Comprehensive, insightful and visionary.

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THE FALL OF VENTARIS Book Two of the Grey City

Powderhorn

McInerny, Joseph Tanglefinger Books (344 pp.) $12.50 paper | $2.99 e-book | Feb. 8, 2013 978-0-615-65083-8

McGarry, Neil; Ravipinto, Daniel Peccable Productions (442 pp.) $13.99 paper | $5.99 e-book Sep. 21, 2013 978-0-9850149-1-9

In the second installment of McGarry and Ravipinto’s (Duchess of the Shallows, 2012) fantasy series, a young woman seeks to find balance between her past life as a scholar’s daughter and her new life as a rising star among criminals.

Newly accepted into the Grey, a secret society of thieves, Duchess strikes up a business partnership with Jana, a singularly gifted weaver. Jana has been forced to work on the outskirts of town after being denied entry into the weavers’ guild due to her race, class and outsider status. Duchess is certain that with Jana’s skills and her own connections and unorthodox business savvy, they can build a profitable partnership—but only if Duchess’ calculated scheme to secure Jana’s admittance into the guild is successful. Meanwhile, she also wants to employ the bodyguard services of Pollux, the empress’s former servant and lover, who’s incarcerated for acknowledging his parentage of the empress’ son. As part of an elaborate and hazardous scheme, Duchess plans to break Pollux out of jail by faking his death. As she pursues her plans, Duchess makes a few new enemies along the way. She’s also confronted with the past she left behind as the daughter of the late hero and scholar Marcus Kell, as she forms a reluctant acquaintance with Darley, a longforgotten childhood rival and the daughter of her father’s best friend. As she uncovers secrets of days gone by, she feels torn between her well-established life as a cunning thief and clever businesswoman and the very different life she might have had.

Readers unfamiliar with the series’ first book may find some details of the world’s social structure to be unclear, but the intricately plotted schemes stand alone in most other respects, and newcomers will likely find them easy to follow. The authors, through their powerful portrayals of strong-willed characters, skillfully examine and confront issues of race, class, gender and sexual orientation in a way that’s rarely, if ever, done in medieval fantasy. In a manner that’s both modern and timeless, they examine the ways that strong women forego niceties to fight for the respect so easily granted to men. Overall, the novel is an engaging account of a young woman’s quest to succeed because of her outsider status, rather than in spite of it.

A thrilling story of thievery and self-discovery.

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Set in Minneapolis during the Great Depression, McInerny’s novel tells the story of Horton Moon, whose love of drink and women leads to his downfall.

Moon’s life is something short of perfect. He has a job, but it doesn’t pay nearly enough; with four kids and a fifth on the way, he’s struggling. He loves his wife, Annie, and most of the time they get along, but she doesn’t like how much time he spends drinking at the neighborhood bar. Then Moon meets and falls in love with Caroline, a young woman freshly arrived from the prairie. Though he never stops loving Annie, he takes up with Caroline; it isn’t long before Annie learns of the affair. Things are bleak, and when Moon loses his job, they grow bleaker. That’s when he decides to take his friend Peterson up on his offer to partner together for a robbery. It seems to go well, and Moon is relieved to be suddenly flush with money—until he learns that the guys they stole from want him dead. For a while, Moon goes underground, living among the hard-luck guys at the poor end of town before leaving the city, but for him, Minneapolis is home. So, he comes home to face his fate. With the exception of a short prologue and epilogue, Moon draws readers in while narrating in the present tense, and McInerny’s simple, spare style captures the feel of 1930s Minnesota. In describing a key character, Moon says, “There’s a history between Uncle Jack Morrison and myself that I maybe need to spell out right here. I don’t like Jack. And he doesn’t like me.” The short prologue introduces an element of mystery that will keep readers guessing until almost the very end of the novel.

As the prologue states, the real story is that of Moon and how he changed; though the novel is essentially a character study, it avoids the dull, self-indulgent style that can sometimes weigh down similar novels. McInerny balances Moon’s moments of introspection with bursts of action that keep the pace quick and the pages turning.

This tale of a flawed man in a gritty setting manages to be both intense and beautiful.

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LUNCH WITH BUDDHA

Merullo, Roland AJAR Contemporaries (392 pp.) $34.85 | $16.85 paper | $9.85 e-book Nov. 13, 2012 978-0-9848345-5-6

McKay Jr., Doc LOCEM Books (331 pp.)

Dec. 10, 2012

McKay’s adventure tale set in two timelines—present day and the 16th century—explores the complex fears and hopes that arise when very different cultures confront each other.

In present-day Honduras, an assorted group (church members, others) sets out to make contact with a remote jungle tribe. Before long, their expedition runs into trouble. Lost in the jungle without any way to signal for help and battered by floods, they find their supplies being stolen by mysterious jaguar-spotted forest people, who also abandon a young boy to their care. When the group spots a different band carrying off a body, their fears about cannibalistic jungle tribes multiply. Or, as Zoe puts it, “I’m like…hu-u-uh? What do we do about them? Do we give them gifts? Oh, my god, it’s scary! It’s like…majorly crucial that we work all this out!” Architect Howard’s closed heart opens to Rachel, a young team member, but he’s thrown into guilt and despair when he accidentally injures her. Meanwhile, in the Aztec year One-Reed (1519 to readers), young villager Atl, just coming into manhood, travels with a few others from his small village to trade in a larger town, where they get their first glimpse of Europeans: a man with pink skin and orange hair, “other men in costumes like clowns,” and one (Cortés, in fact) “badly dressed for the wet heat in a stiff animal skin….He seemed to be a leader, except he wore no feathers.”

Atl returns home safely, but after disaster strikes the village, a revenge mission brings him and his friend Deer of Stone into Cortés’ army as porters. Aztec tribute-takers have made many locals willing, naïve allies of the Spanish. In both timelines, getting past barriers of language, custom and culture is extremely difficult and, as Zoe would put it, majorly crucial. Issues of faith, despair (echoed in the name of the cynical Dr. DeSparr), sacrifice, repentance and love challenge several characters in important ways but never abstractly. In McKay’s novel, trust, love and sacrifice are things you do, not just feel, as when looking after the sick, crossing a shaky bridge, offering food. Both timelines use well-researched, authentic, vivid details. The author has a gift for dialogue; each character sounds unique, often amusingly so. His writing is rich, complex and beautiful, whether describing a complicated battle scene or a heartfelt conversation, and his characters are equally rich, revealing layers of complexity and closely held secrets as the book develops.

Deeply felt, humane, with every emotion and insight well-earned, this is a thick, rich, satisfying novel that deserves a wide audience.

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NEW WORLD TRIBE Faces of Sacrifice

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In this engaging follow-up novel (Breakfast with Buddha, 2008), Merullo takes readers on a spiritual road trip through the American West.

Otto Ringling is a successful New York City editor who has built a happy, comfortable life with his family in the suburbs. But when his wife, Jeannie, dies, Otto’s entire orbit is suddenly thrown off course. Along with his two college-aged children, his New-Age sister Cecelia, her eccentric, sort-of Buddhist husband and guru, Volya Rinpoche, and their enlightened 6-year-old daughter, Otto finds himself in the forests of Washington to spread his wife’s ashes. On the way back to the family farm in North Dakota, Otto rides alone

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“This provocative, intensely powerful novel is a must-read for sci-fi fans and Civil War aficionados, though mainstream fiction readers will find it heart-rending and inspiring as well.” from the gray ship

with Volya—a reprise of the trip the two took in Breakfast With Buddha—in a beat-up pickup truck. Together, they traverse the mountainous West, Otto teaches Volya about American culture— including food, water parks, marijuana and transvestites—and Volya teaches Otto how to let go. Otto is frustrated and often angry. While he has embraced some of Volya’s teachings—and has even tried his hand at meditation and yoga—his wife’s death has left him bitter, skeptical and confused. But he does his best to keep an open mind: He listens to Volya, even when his sweet, wise and goofy companion says little; he asks questions, even when he knows that the answers will most likely elude him. In Otto Ringling, Merullo offers readers a hero that’s a bit jaded but loving; a little lost but searching. One can’t help but root for Otto, despite—or perhaps because of—his curmudgeonly tendencies, and hope that he finds the inner peace that, even if he doesn’t quite know it, he desperately seeks. While there are a few flat notes—a handful of too-convenient circumstances to help Otto along his path to clearer consciousness and some distracting references to too-current events (the Obama/Biden campaign, tumult in Syria) that pluck the narrative from its otherwise timeless path—Merullo’s is a beautifully written and compelling story about a man’s search for meaning that earnestly and accessibly tackles some well-trodden but universal questions.

A quiet meditation on life, death, darkness and spirituality, sprinkled with humor, tenderness and stunning landscapes.

THE GRAY SHIP

Moran, Russell F. Coddington Press (382 pp.) $14.95 paper | $2.99 e-book Aug. 29, 2013 978-0-9895546-0-2 In this stellar time-travel novel, a modern-American nuclear-powered cruiser sails through a time portal and goes back 152 years to the days just before the beginning of the Civil War. The USS California, under the command of Capt. Ashley Patterson, an African-American woman, is headed toward Charleston, S.C., to participate in a ceremony commemorating the first battle of the Civil War: the bombardment of Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861. But before her ship reaches its destination, the massive cruiser—and its 630 crew members—travels through some sort of temporal wormhole and ends up near the Charleston Harbor in 1861, just hours before the Confederate assault is about to begin. After eventually wrapping her head around the fact that her entire crew has traveled back in time, Patterson realizes that she has some difficult decisions to make: Does she let history repeat itself and focus on trying to find a way back home, or does she use the military superiority of the California—“outfitted with enough fire power to unleash Biblical hell on an enemy”—to help end the war quickly and thus save the approximately 620,000 soldiers who would otherwise die in the next four years? Powered by a cast of well-developed characters—Lincoln and Lee are among the prominently 42

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featured historical figures—consistently brisk pacing and a pulse-pounding (albeit slightly predictable) conclusion, the humanist themes of this novel are momentous and just as timely today as they were back in the 1860s. This provocative, intensely powerful novel is a must-read for sci-fi fans and Civil War aficionados, though mainstream fiction readers will find it heart-rending and inspiring as well.

A rare read that’s not only wildly entertaining, but also profoundly moving.

Japan 365 A Drawing-A-Day Project Muzacz, J. Self (432 pp.) $30.00 paper | May 24, 2012 978-0-9853127-0-1

A debut collection of pen-and-ink drawings of Japan that blend reality and the artist’s imagination.

Muzacz, an American artist and a resident of Japan, compiles the results of his effort to complete one ballpoint-pen drawing each day for an entire year, starting in January 2011. The devastating earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan in March 2011 are the focus of many images, as is the Occupy movement that developed later in the year. The author arranges his drawings by theme—people, architecture, fashion, animals and so on—and provides captions or longer descriptions in both English and Japanese. Drawings of the natural world dominate the book’s early pages, and later illustrations mostly depict people and man-made environments. A section on graffiti reflects the author’s early days as a street artist, but the collection embraces a wide variety of styles, including explicit emulations of noted artists throughout Japanese history. The captions suggest that some drawings are based on photographs, while others are apparently drawn from life. Some images, particularly those depicting mythological creatures or surfing fish, are evidently drawn from the author’s imagination. Many of these pleasing drawings feel timeless; readers will be left wondering if a bucolic temple image was taken from a 19th-century photograph or if there are tourists just outside the frame taking pictures on their iPhones. The book’s final section collects thumbnail versions of all 365 images, presented in the order in which they were originally drawn. Overall, this is a comprehensive view of Japan, past and present, as seen through the eyes of a young artist with an eye for beauty in all its forms.

An attractive visual introduction to Japan.

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THE QURAN With or Against the Bible

Naqvi, Ejaz iUniverse (394 pp.) $35.95 | $25.95 paper | $3.99 e-book Jun. 7, 2012 978-1-4759-0775-9

Myrick, Leland Adept Books (192 pp.) $2.99 e-book | Dec. 12, 2012 In the second installment of his Kingdom of Graves fantasy trilogy, Myrick (The Ten, 2012, etc.) delivers high adventure, back-alley espionage and a little bit of romance.

Jorophe Horne and his companions have two purposes in life: Serve the king and preserve the peace he established. As a member of the elite fighting squad called the Ten, Jorophe previously killed demons and defeated the Dar Kharji people in epic battles of good and evil. But his work is far from over when the kingdom’s true enemy, the Blooded, arises in the north, led by the mysterious, power-hungry Prince Leoben. The warlord dispatches his army into the kingdom and meets little resistance.

Few know how to defeat his legions of woelfin beasts and shidh slave warriors, and few realize Leoben’s true goals. The Blooded are aided by superhuman assassins called the Mortuus, who infiltrate the capital and deliver a crippling blow to the kingdom. Jorophe and company set out in search of a secret weapon that might bring down the invading forces, while the kingdom’s Lord Prosper commands his army of “shadows” to seek a new alliance with an ancient people. Meanwhile, Leoben’s minions terrorize the countryside, slaughtering children and enslaving women as the Kingdom of Graves teeters on the brink of defeat and complete annihilation. The novel continues where the first book left off and maintains its predecessor’s high-quality storytelling. Chapters are well-planned and -executed, providing glimpses of back story that creatively move the action forward and heighten the tension—not an easy task in an adventure tale. Myrick expands the landscape of the first book, adding an underground city ruled by a mournful monarch, a lone cottage guarded by a blind old man and snow-covered plains that frame the novel’s climactically bloody conclusion. Overall, the novel successfully presents a complex world through artfully visual scenes and multiple perspectives, with enough twists and turns to dazzle fantasy fanatics.

Highly recommended for genre buffs and newbies alike, this adventure carries readers through a land of magic, laughter and tears.

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MARK OF THE BLOODED Book Two of the Kingdom of Graves

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A sober, probing exploration of the relationship among the three Abrahamic faiths—Islam, Judaism and Christianity.

Virginia Woolf once asked, “Ought not education to bring out and fortify the differences rather than the similarities?” Modern discussions of Islam tend to do just that, hastily pegging the youngest of the major monotheisms as different, foreign and far-off. In his accessible new contribution to the field of comparative religion, Naqvi tries to bridge the gaps that have too long separated Islam from Christianity and Judaism, arguing in essence that the three

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faiths are more alike than most people suspect. To do so, he engages in a “topic-by-topic review” that compares Muslim beliefs on a variety of themes—e.g., God, Scripture, science, ethics—to their Judeo-Christian counterparts. His review leads him to a number of basic insights that are nonetheless crucial reminders that what unites believers is often greater than what divides. Jews, Christians and Muslims all revere the patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph. Islam venerates Jesus, a man who is, for Muslims, a prophet and teacher of the highest regard. Naqvi also argues that Muslim ethics—outlined in the Five Pillars of Islam—are quite similar to Judeo-Christian moral teachings. But while the author gravitates toward likeness, he doesn’t ignore differences; he honestly and objectively explains how the three religions sometimes diverge, and he ends each chapter with a set of provocative discussion questions that challenge readers to ponder these weighty topics. Naqvi does it all with an intelligence, grace and evenhandedness that make his project appealing for believers and nonbelievers alike.

A superb comparative look at Islam and its sister faiths, perfect for promoting a spiritual dialogue.

THE PATH TO SPIRITUAL MATURITY

Neale, Felicity CreateSpace (182 pp.) $14.95 paper | $4.99 e-book Jan. 22, 2013 978-1-4791-8699-0

Australian Neale writes her first book, a self-help guide to spiritual development.

Neale, a lifelong spiritual seeker, puts forth a distinct, detailed plan for attaining fulfillment. Borrowing from many wisdom traditions from across the world and her own personal experience, Neale writes a warm, engaging account that gives concrete steps for reaching spiritual maturity. Penned for those who are exploring different directions and who are not concerned with doctrinaire stands, this little book should perhaps have been titled, The Bridge to Spiritual Maturity, as a bridge metaphor continues throughout the book, offering an image that leads the reader through the spiritual growth process. “Each person’s relationship to God is in private and is for no other person to interfere with,” writes Neale, whose carefully considered system of guidelines and principles are meant to foster presence without alienating the reader. Neale provides examples of low-, middle- and high-level development. Understanding the effect of personality on awareness, cultivating mindfulness, and using different types of prayer are some of the specific techniques that Neale offers. “We labor under the illusion that external factors dictate the kind of life we have,” Neale says, but, ever the advocate of personal responsibility, she urges the spiritual seeker to exercise free will and to take responsibility for thoughts, words and actions. Anyone who is open-minded and curious will find in this volume a wealth of 44

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information that can be applied to his or her own growth and to the inevitable pitfalls and challenges.

A detailed, approachable handbook to mindfulness by a knowledgeable, experienced spiritual guide.

Saving Baby How One Woman’s Love for a Racehorse Led to Her Redemption

Normile, Jo Anne; Lindner, Lawrence Powder Point Publishing (272 pp.) $15.00 paper | $7.99 e-book Apr. 16, 2013 978-0-9888780-0-6 In horse lover and activist Normile’s memoir (co-authored with seasoned writer Lindner), she fights for the humane treatment of ex-racehorses.

Compelled by the idea of owning a thoroughbred, Normile acquires “Baby” from an ailing breeder, with the stipulation that she races him. Driven by a competitive spirit rather than financial gain, her main priority is ensuring her new horse’s well-being. Normile becomes indoctrinated in the early 1990s subculture of Detroit horse racing—and the corner-cutting and corruption that lurk in the unregulated sport. Her tender love for Baby compares to a mother’s love for her child who’s all the more vulnerable due to his inability to express himself.

Baby shows promise as a winner, but due to a series of unsavory experiences, he never reaches his potential. He eventually meets a tragic, untimely end resulting from negligence on the track. This heart-wrenching loss launches Normile into a fight to protect other horses from the same fate. She’s motivated further when she learns some dark truths behind the industry, like the legal practice that has retired racehorses being slaughtered and sold for meat. Ultimately, she helms a nonprofit rescue that matches retired thoroughbreds with new owners. Like many tireless and committed activists, she sacrifices her family relationships and personal well-being for her cause. With the help of Lindner’s first class storytelling, action and emotion equally drive this compelling tale that will bring on the waterworks for any animal lover. The horses Normile loves are portrayed as dynamically as human beings, with imagined dialogue Normile gleans from their body language. Early in the book, she describes Baby’s departure from his mother and siblings: “There were cries and whinnies from the other horses as the trailers left. ‘Where are you going? We thought you were home to stay,’ ” the others horses are imagined saying. “Baby himself didn’t appear to be nervous. ‘I’ll be back,’ he whinnied confidently. ‘Just gone for a bit—have to make my mark.’ ” A touching narrative that transcends its subject matter.

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After her father’s murder, a princess fights to save herself and her kingdom in O’Connor’s (The Lost Heir, 2013) engaging fantasy tale.

Princess Irewen Donríel of the human kingdom of Dargon spent the first 20 years of her life within the walls of her castle home, shunned by her extended family due to her late mother’s secret elven descent. After her cousin kills her father and makes an attempt on her life, Irewen is rescued by Prince Laegon of the Wood Elf kingdom of Silverden, who is accompanied by his Guardian, a lion named Brégen, and Dame Silevethiel, the Guardians’ leader. When the princess reveals her secret heritage and begins to discover that she has powers unique to two different elven races, Laegon recalls an ancient elven prophecy that says that a woman will reunite the four feuding elven races—Wood Elves, Light Elves, Sea Elves and Green Elves. Irewen accepts the prophecy and decides to further investigate her heritage, learn to fight and stop being the damsel in distress she was raised to be. Along the way, she and Silevethiel develop an emotional telepathic bond of mutual protection. With her friends and the Wood Elven community on her side, Irewen prepares for the long fight ahead. In this first book of the planned Vaelinel Trilogy, O’Connor creates a complex heroine who not only defies common tropes of female fantasy characters, but willfully overcomes them. The bonds between Guardians and Protectors offer a refreshing break from the romances (and bromances) which typically populate fantasy novels. Overall, this exotic story is sure to entice adult aficionados of such animated series as Avatar: The Last Airbender.

A fresh adventure novel sure to enchant a wide range of fantasy fans.

A MANUAL FOR THE MODERN MYSTIC

Olesky, Rio iUniverse (360 pp.) $33.95 | $23.95 paper | $7.69 e-book Mar. 22, 2011 978-1-4502-9405-8 A guide about how to weave spirituality into real-world experiences by following 12 basic, manageable laws.

The word “mystic” often brings to mind a person who lives outside society in order to maintain his rarified state. However, Olesky (Astrology and Consciousness, 1995, etc.) writes that a mystic way of being can enhance every aspect of normal human existence—from childbirth to creative expression to simple tasks such as tidying a workspace or watering plants in a garden. His manual lays out universal laws he has identified (and followed) as guideposts for spiritually connected |

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Silevethiel

O’Connor, Andi Purple Sun Press Oct. 24, 2013

living. The laws correlate with the 12 zodiac signs, which Olesky has eloquently expanded to embody the full range of flesh-andblood experience. For example, the possession-focused earth sign Taurus embodies the Law of Survival, while the expansive sign of Sagittarius correlates with the Law of Abundance.

(Other laws touch on Creativity, Love, Harmony, Transcendence and other principles.) However, this is no mere astrological guide: Olesky fleshes out the principle behind each law before touching on the astrological correlation and explains the consequences of “not aligning” with each law. The book never becomes dry or preachy; Olesky draws on his own experiences as well as those of his family, clients and teachers to breathe life into each law and highlight the laws’ relevance and achievability.

The result is an eminently readable, heartfelt and soulful manual, graced by Olesky’s wisdom as well as quotations and ideas from spiritual teachers across the centuries.

A passionate testament about interconnectedness that appeals to both heart and mind.

REDEFINING REASON The Story of the Twentieth Century “Primitive” Mentality Debate

Patterson, Bradley William Xlibris (396 pp.) $29.99 | $19.99 paper | $9.99 e-book Jan. 11, 2011 978-1-4535-8939-7

A history of social anthropology and its pursuit of “reason” through the 20th century.

Neuropsychologist Patterson takes on the daunting task of tracing science’s view of reason as it relates to anthropology, from the time of Darwin to the present day. In doing so, he unveils a number of internecine arguments within the scientific community, as well as the hand-wringing in Western culture that has led to a near abandonment of the study of reason altogether. Patterson’s tale begins with Victorian-era anthropologists in the field who studied “savage” or “primitive” peoples in a race against time—before their cultures would be dramatically changed by encroaching Western ways. Critically influenced by Darwin, Patterson explains that, “At heart, early professional anthropology was a scientific search for human origins and evolutionary history.” In studying indigenous peoples, these scientists took for granted that European-based cultures were superior and that Europeans were more mentally advanced than “primitive” peoples. As the 20th century unfolded, however, various influential scholars and the schools of thought they initiated changed these assumptions. By 1950, some scholars were questioning whether social anthropology could even be considered one of the sciences. Sartre questioned the field’s reliance on reason as a measure of people’s abilities, and by the 1960s and 1970s, the Eurocentric character of traditional anthropology was under severe attack, leaving the whole field with a “crisis of representation” it is still battling to this day.

Patterson provides a wealth of information in an approachable

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“[I]n this smart, funny, insightful novel, reality TV becomes all too real.” from reality boulevard

but sometimes melodramatic form (“The maw of eternity had simply opened and claimed him within a few blinks of an eye”).

Though open to the general reader, Patterson’s work will best lend itself to students of anthropology or sociology, and it will be a worthwhile reference for the often intractable arguments affecting such fields and the sometimes larger-than-life personalities who have shaped them.

A sharp, wide-ranging historical study.

Reality Boulevard A Novel

Peltier, Melissa Jo Apostrophe Books (359 pp.) $1.49 e-book | Feb. 10, 2013

When a long-running documentary series is cancelled, the show’s filmmakers must navigate a new reality TV landscape in this satiric novel.

Marty Maltzman’s award-winning prime-time series Lights and Sirens has been following emergency responders such as police, paramedics, hospital ERs and the Coast Guard for 16 years, telling dramatic stories of injury and danger. Now, the show’s been axed, a victim of a shift in reality TV toward the Kardashians, celebrity weight losers and spoiled “housewives.” Hunter Marlow, a producer on the series, would like to revisit her documentary Second Sex (widow-burning in India, clitoridectomies in Sudan), but she needs funding. She has a new and well-paying reality TV–producing offer from Ian Rand, CEO of RandWorld Productions. But he betrayed her in the past; can she trust him? Can Marty trust the gorgeous, much younger actress Crimson Fennel, who’s making a play for him?

Can anyone trust anyone else in Hollywood? Peltier, herself an award-winning producer and writer (Dog Whisperer With Cesar Millan, Secrets of the Pyramids, etc.), uses her insider knowledge of Los Angeles, the TV industry and its players to craft a zinging satire. When Marty pitches a show following smokejumpers, a young exec replies, “[O]ur audiences tend to gravitate more to, say, the crazy pyros who are setting the fires, not the guys who just go around putting them out.” Hunter, starting work on a new series, is shown the secrets of Frankenbites: chopped up, remixed and enhanced editing used to create a more dramatic but false story out of raw “reality” footage. As a colleague explains to an appalled Hunter: “Sometimes I do just want to go home and take a shower. But you know, it’s only television. It’s not like anyone takes it seriously.” But in this smart, funny, insightful novel, reality TV becomes all too real, forcing several characters to confront their decisions. Peltier examines the Hollywood world of writers, producers, rich kids, actors, wannabes and con men with a keen and often compassionate eye.

A dead-on satire—with a heart—of the reality TV scene from a knowledgeable, witty insider.

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Hidden in Plain Sight The Other People in Norman Rockwell’s America

Petrick, Jane Allen Informed Decisions Publishing (143 pp.) $18.95 paper | $3.99 e-book | Oct. 8, 2013 978-0-9892601-1-4

A fresh, well-researched study of artist Norman Rockwell’s treatment of race.

When readers think of Rockwell, they generally don’t picture a radical trailblazer who bucked conservative trends and broke racial stereotypes. Instead, they picture, well, his pictures—works that seem to embrace wholesome ideas: Thanksgiving dinner, grandmothers praying, puppies. Petrick (Beyond Time Management, 1998), in this smart, nuanced book, encourages readers to look again at Rockwell’s varied body of work. She argues that Rockwell was far from a closed-minded portrait artist; he actually went to great lengths to represent African-Americans and other minorities in his works, motivated by an intense desire to represent all of America. She provides many frequently overlooked examples, including “Working on the Statue of Liberty” (1946), which depicts five workers cleaning the famous statue; the model for the figures was white, but Rockwell painted one of the workers as having brown skin. He included minorities in his paintings throughout his career—not something easily done in mid-century America—and made race the topic of several high-profile pieces, including “The Problem We All Live With” (1964), in which a young black girl is shown entering a New Orleans school. Rockwell’s main employer, the Saturday Evening Post, had a policy stating that illustrations could only portray blacks in menial positions—a rule which Rockwell did his best to skirt around. Eventually, however, he tired of this limitation and began working for the more liberal Look, where he pursued projects with a distinct social bent, including “Murder in Mississippi” (1965), inspired by the 1964 killing of three civil rights activists. Petrick relays all this with clarity and insight, drawing on the portraits, Rockwell’s own biography and the ample scholarship that surrounds the artist. She also talks to the African-American models for some of his paintings, and these interviews can feel extraneous at times, as when the author occasionally delves too much into the models’ lives today.

However, they highlight Rockwell’s desire to capture all facets of America and all of its stories. The irony, Petrick wisely points out, is that so few people choose to see this side of Rockwell today, preferring instead the “whitewashed” version. In this book, she manages to say something revealing about the artist—and about us.

A brief but enlightening social history of a great American artist.

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“Rashid deftly mingles personal anecdotes with polemical fire.” from the wrong kind of muslim

Picker, David V. CreateSpace (332 pp.) $16.95 paper | $7.99 e-book Aug. 10, 2013 978-1-4826-4992-5

A major motion-picture executive tells stories of his work on some of the 20th century’s most famous films.

Picker, a former president of United Artists, was born into a family renowned for its substantial contributions to the film industry. His father worked as chief booker and buyer for the Loew’s New York City theater chain, affording young Picker complete and free access to all movies released in its theaters.

After spending his college years studying and working in the film industry, the author joined his uncle, a film executive, at United Artists in 1951. Picker humbly describes his quick ascent from intern to assistant to executive and then describes his experiences on various major films, including stories about industry people, business transactions and production. Throughout, Picker’s passion for movies, and his respect for the artists who create them, is endearingly evident, and he frequently states how thankful he is for his experiences. He even reflects positively, if a little remorsefully, about movies that United Artists didn’t pick up, calling them “the ones that got away,” such as The Graduate (1967) and Planet of the Apes (1968). At times, the abundance of business and financial details may be confusing to readers who aren’t well-versed in film industry jargon. However, most will likely enjoy Picker’s insider stories about the production of such films as Midnight Cowboy (1969), The Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night (1964) and the James Bond franchise. His appropriately cinematic tone carries readers through fast-paced, dramatic stories, and his colorful, opinionated descriptions of those he encounters are highly entertaining. Funny anecdotes about such luminaries as Woody Allen, Steve Martin and Ingmar Bergman, for example, provide readers with rare glimpses of these famous figures’ unique personalities.

A thoroughly entertaining look at how artistic visions, strong personalities and business acumen can create great films.

THE MIDDLE KINGDOM RIDE

Pyle, Colin; Pyle, Ryan CreateSpace (300 pp.) $19.99 paper | $9.99 e-book Dec. 2, 2012 978-1-4681-5981-3 Two brothers drove BMW motorcycles on a 65-day, 18,000-km loop around China, then co-authored this brisk, optimistic memoir about the trip. |

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MUSTS, MAYBES, AND NEVERS A Book About the Movies

Ryan Pyle is a freelance photographer and journalist in China, and Colin Pyle was a currency trader in Toronto. In 2010, when the economic recession slowed Ryan’s assignments and Colin found himself frustrated by work, they put their jobs aside and took a selffinanced road trip through China. It began in Shanghai, Ryan’s new home. They traveled clockwise, to the North Korean border, west to the Mongolian border and across the Xinjiang region, south through Tibet, then east through southern China back to Shanghai. Ryan narrates most of the story, and his writing is professional and ripe with factoids about China. Colin interjects with entertaining journallike entries that address the same narrative with a rarely redundant, saltier voice: “Can you imagine checking in to a hotel room and finding there’s shit in your toilet? And when you tell them, they say ‘Flush it’! Can you even fathom that?” The charismatic, likable brothers gleefully outrun Chinese police, careen through lesser-documented parts of China and show an affinity for non-Han ethnic minorities, especially the Uyghur people. After the clutch on Ryan’s bike malfunctions, requiring maintenance in Lhasa, Tibet, the duo backtracks 500 km to ensure that they aren’t shortchanging their route. When describing sights and events, their descriptions tend to be logistical rather than florid, and, for the most part, they eschew disparaging words about the country (except when it pertains to Chinese bureaucracy). The brothers also discuss their video footage and recording sessions at length, since they plan to release a documentary film about the trip as well.

Enthusiastic, archetypal travelers whose informative story is worth the ride.

The Wrong Kind of Muslim An Untold Story of Persecution & Perseverance Rashid, Qasim Self (254 pp.) $14.95 paper | $9.95 e-book May 28, 2013 978-0-9893977-0-4

A heartfelt memoir of Muslim-onMuslim discrimination and oppression.

On April 26, 1984, the government of Pakistan issued a comprehensive law rendering criminal the expression of the Ahmadi sect of Islam. Ahmadi leaders who continued to address their congregations in their official capacities were arrested; mosques were tightly policed or shut down; Ahmadi Muslims caught “acting Muslim” were subject to summary imprisonment and worse. Widespread discrimination by the nation’s Sunni majority focused not only on Ahmadi Muslims but also on Shia Muslims, Catholics, Protestants, Hindus and atheists. Rashid’s family was caught up in the violence and confusion of these so-called blasphemy laws. Yet when the members moved to the United States in 1987, they faced similar, though not as intense, discrimination and suspicion. The heartbreak of both worlds is movingly captured in Rashid’s memoir, in which he relates not only his own experiences but those of the many victims he interviewed. “I visited blood-splattered mosques, touched scars left by gunfire,

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grenades, and shrapnel, and prayed for the departed at their final resting places,” he says. Embarking on a “Jihad—of the pen,” Rashid effectively dramatizes some of these stories—including that of his cousin Danyal (not his real name), whose imprisonment and torture provide the book’s most memorable passages— to raise readers’ awareness of the plight of religiously persecuted minorities in Pakistan. Rashid deftly mingles personal anecdotes with polemical fire, outlining the history and nature of the Ahmadi sect, detailing the claustrophobic bigotry of Pakistan’s ruling mullahs and authorities, and convincingly broadening his scope to encompass “the millions, or rather, the billions around the world who live under the veil of oppression of conscience.”

Stories of graphic violence—for instance, gunfire erupting during prayer services crowded with children—alternate with the author’s repeated calls for understanding, tolerance and free inquiry. “The antidote, therefore,” he writes, “is education and compassion. Education combats the ignorance, and compassion melts away fear.” Although his memoir offers a penetrating look at the strange specifics of a terrorist mindset, it is equally insightful on the psychology of the religiously oppressed. Along the way, the vivid narrative avoids easy answers, since there are none.

A harrowing yet hopeful story of modern-day religious persecution.

Project GITMO Resurrection

Rich, Daniel J. CreateSpace (344 pp.) $9.95 paper | $3.95 e-book | Feb. 1, 2013 978-1-4820-5116-2 A debut sci-fi technothriller in which U.S. troops find themselves the subjects of a bizarre government experiment.

In 1991, U.S. Air Force Maj. Frank Craymer’s F-16 crash-lands in remote Iraq—just another tragedy in the first Gulf War. When Iraqi forces reach the crash site and find the dead pilot, they also discover an uncovered, underground chamber containing a centuries-old Latin manuscript and a group of eerily preserved human bodies. The manuscript, a diary, tells the story of a group of superstrong men and women living through the centuries, experiencing firsthand the 1066 Battle of Hastings and the coming of the Black Death. This secret race survived by drinking human blood, and the bodies of the last members have been interred in the Iraqi desert for hundreds of years. News of the discovery reaches Saddam Hussein, who wonders if fate has delivered him an unbeatable weapon in his fight against the West. He dreams of creating a supernatural army and sets his scientists to the task of using fluids from the site’s dead bodies to transform humans into unstoppable vampires who don’t fear garlic or sunlight. In Rich’s extremely clever, infectiously readable narrative, readers follow both the progress of Saddam’s program and, as the war on terror continues the U.S. presence in Iraq, the enlistment of Maj. Craymer’s nephew, Aaron. Thanks to a devious CIA operative, Aaron finds himself part of a group of servicemen who have been 48

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transformed into vampires and sent on covert missions. When the U.S. government changes its mind and tries to terminate them all, Aaron and his teammates use their newfound abilities to survive. The author’s big, complex plot sprawls over 10 years and two continents, but he manages it all with a confident hand.

His dialogue is immediately believable, his tensely controlled action scenes build in intensity as the plot advances, and his pitch-perfect blending of sci-fi and military action will appeal equally to fans of Tom Clancy and True Blood.

An ingenious, thoroughly absorbing twist on the military-fiction genre.

Stretchers Not Available The Wartime Story of Dr. Jim Rickett

Rickett, John AuthorHouseUK (284 pp.) $21.29 paper | $9.16 e-book Jan. 20, 2012 978-1-4670-0898-3

Rickett, in his nonfiction debut, astutely backs out of the way, letting his father’s journals of wartime doctoring—and life, as it happened between the emergencies—carry the day.

Like any good physician, Dr. Jim Rickett paid close attention to the mental and emotional well-being of those around him. He often recorded those details in diary entries and letters to his wife, Dorothy. His remembrances dance from observations of human perseverance to the classic British stiff upper lip: “[T]his morning there was some more machine gunning, but I was safely tucked away having a bath.” Such baths were left behind, though, when Rickett was pulled from his community practice to scratch a field hospital out of nothing on the tiny isle of Vis off the coast of Italy and Yugoslavia, piecing commandos back together as they returned from raids on German-controlled islands in the Adriatic Sea. He was soon revealed to be a man in his element, bartering boots for supplies and, when operating, balancing the need for light against the strict requirements of a wartime blackout. His world was a time and place where, out of necessity, blood for transfusions could be stored in old wine bottles. The younger Rickett steps in only occasionally, deftly footnoting medical terms or establishing historical context. World War II neophytes won’t be left to drift, and war buffs will still appreciate this graceful, intelligent account from a man who unexpectedly found himself directly, intimately besieged on the front lines.

Together, Rickett’s commentary and his son’s light touch chronicle the intricacies of man’s wartime condition, at which official records and most battle accounts only hint.

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“Ross writes like a Steinbeck trained as a boxing columnist on the Lower East Side.” from tales from the sidewalks of new york

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CHOOSE YOUR WEAPON Book 1 in the Helen of Hollingsworth Trilogy

Corr Syl The Warrior

Rodriguez Pratt, Sarah Quail School Press (306 pp.) $7.99 paper | $2.99 e-book | Aug. 3, 2013 978-0-9887075-0-4 Smart, sensitive, socially awkward and trapped in the suburbs, Helen Connor finds purpose and excitement by fighting dragons in a mythical land.

Rodriguez Pratt’s debut novel, the first in an anticipated trilogy, tells how Helen’s love for the Glorious Dragonfighter book series leads to her entry into the warrior training program in Erwingdon, an apparently not-so-fictional land where devious, malevolent dragons are attempting to take over and rule. Helen’s advancement through her training is well-paced and entertaining. The primary strength of the book, however, lies in the intersections between Erwingdon and Helen’s “real world” home of Hollingsworth, Texas, a typical American town struggling with the loss of industry, encroachment of sprawl and sharp divisions of wealth. Like Helen, several of her schoolmates also have parallel lives in Erwingdon, a plot device that initially seems like an eye-rolling coincidence. This conceit, however, allows the author to examine the teens’ more familiar concerns—navigating the social atmosphere of high school, grappling with authority, dealing with parental expectations, worrying about the future—through the lens of life, death and saving the world. The novel divides its time evenly between Hollingsworth and Erwingdon, and in both places, the teenagers seem real and three-dimensional. While there’s no drug use or sex, there’s plenty of swearing and fighting and some alcohol, although Helen herself abstains. Rodriguez Pratt’s skilled writing ranges from snappy, believable dialogue to evocative descriptions of an abandoned oil refinery and a terrifying dragon cave.

Several plot arcs end satisfyingly in this first book of the trilogy—Helen finishes her training and wins some battles in both worlds—but a few loose ends remain. What will become of the new sorcerer’s apprentice? How will Helen’s love interests resolve, both in Erwingdon and Hollingsworth? Who is behind the dragons’ evil plot? After getting to know Helen, her friends and her worlds, readers will want to find out.

A well-written, intelligent, exciting choice for readers looking to get hooked on a new fantasy series.

Note: Rodriguez Pratt is a freelance contributor to Kirkus.

Rogers, Garry CreateSpace (262 pp.) $14.95 paper | May 27, 2013 978-1-4849-8989-0 In this debut sci-fi novel, great responsibility is thrust upon a young warrior descended from rabbits who’s fighting to restore peace among humans, animals and the Earth.

The Tsaeb, sapient descendants of animals, have evolved exceptional intelligence well beyond human capacity. They are guided by Immediacy, a “philosophy of consequences” that leads them to strive for peace, balance and environmental sustainability. Though the Tsaeb have evolved, humans—known as the Danog—remain mired in selfish ideals, causing an unsustainable, damaging effect on the environment. Still, for over 100 conflictless years, the Tsaeb and Danog have peacefully coexisted on opposite sides of a border, according to treaties. Corr Syl, a young Tsaeb descended from rabbits, just completed his warrior training and wishes to travel the world. But when the Danog violate the treaty by bringing weapons into Tsaeb territory, Corr is called upon to visit Danog territory to forge some sort of resolution. Reluctantly accepting his assignment, Corr sets off with beautiful Rhya Bright, a fiery young Tsaeb warrior also descended from rabbits. The stark contrast between Tsaeb and Danog cultures illuminates the consequences of human materialism and shortsightedness, highlighting man’s impact on the planet. Although the story gets off to a bit of a slow start, the rich landscape and intricate plot strikingly explore modern understandings of war and the relationships among colonizers, indigenous peoples and the land. It may be difficult to keep track of the numerous places and characters, but the story’s flow remains relatively uncompromised, and an appendix serves as a helpful reference. Rogers (Arizona Wildlife Notebook, 2012) draws from the classic sci-fi wheelhouse, à la Octavia Butler, melding those motifs with fantasy elements in a style sure to please fans of either genre.

A beautifully written YA novel that will captivate environmentalists and sci-fi fans of all ages.

Tales From The Sidewalks Of New York

Ross, Ron CreateSpace (230 pp.) $11.99 paper | $2.99 e-book May 17, 2012 978-1-4700-0219-0

In 13 short stories based on real life, Ross (Nine...Ten...and Out! The Two Worlds of Emile Griffith, 2008, etc.) mines the memories of his life to create memorable characters struggling to survive against unfavorable odds. |

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To Ross, the boxing ring and its “gallant performers” have always seemed “to be a microcosm of life.” In “The Journeyman,” Ross’ opening story, the author portrays the weary existence of a seasoned prizefighter named Billy Dumas, aka “The King of Plain.” A “Model-T in a world of Corvettes and Porsches,” Billy’s been beaten so badly he develops what appears to be dementia— and a tragic belief in his own ability. The succeeding trio of tales revolves around the street-wise, Brooklyn adolescence of future Jewish prizefighter Al “Boomy” Davidoff and a gang of miscreants, such as Brownsville bully Billy Belch and “soda bottle-cap legend” Bitsy Beckerman, who act as if they’re on “the farm team of Murder, Inc.” “The Cashayfelope Man,” about the mystery surrounding a foreign-born ragpicker, takes place around the desperate time of what 6-year-old protagonist Dovie Mendelson calls “the Limberg baby.” Brownsville, the Brooklyn neighborhood of pushcarts and punch-ball games, reappears along with another set of pugilists and promoters in two of the book’s stronger pieces, “An Entrepreneurial Act” and “The Glory Days.” The former is a touching eulogy for Monk, “who throws as many punches with his face as he does with his fists”; the latter is a love letter, alternately heartbreaking and inspiring, to the camaraderie of boxers and trainers. The final three tales are told in rhyming verse, which detracts slightly from the power of the author’s wise-guy vernacular and polished prose.

For the most part, Ross writes like a Steinbeck trained as a boxing columnist on the Lower East Side. Humorous turns of phrase keep sad inevitabilities at bay: “[T]his whole world ain’t made up of ditch-diggers and pugs,” says Monk—a thought that runs contrary to the world Ross handily creates.

A lithe, lyrical collection that packs more than a few punches.

became interested in ecology and continued that interest into his pseudo-retirement. Now nearing 80, he finds it’s time to look back, sometimes fondly, sometimes angrily. Shabecoff is neither a fanatic nor a purist: “I like my wilderness not too wild,” and “I believe in the sanctity of life, but I make exceptions for biting insects.” Over the years, “civilization” encroached on his Berkshire retreat, but he accepts that inevitability with good grace. He is, however, often nostalgic for the environments of his childhood. He now sees the Bronx as a dysfunctional slum, although in his childhood, it had lively ethnic neighborhoods, good schools and clean streets. Set mostly in Washington, D.C., “Every Place” tells the story of the author cutting his teeth as an environmental writer, and he describes the often bitter journalistic wrangling, beginning with the Reagan administration.

There’s no love lost between him and conservative administrations whose goal was to privatize everything and give powerful industries free rein. In fact, Shabecoff—who’s rubbed elbows with numerous movers and shakers over the years—never pulls his punches, calling out those he sees on the side of the angels and those not. Readers will also enjoy 10 pages of black-andwhite family photos, including Philip and Alice at their beloved Berkshire getaway, which gives the book an extra human touch.

As expected from a man who’s dealt with words his whole adult life, the writing is consistently graceful, with rarely a false step.

“The Last Place,” for instance, begins on an elegiac note related to mortality, then slowly builds into as bracing a jeremiad against greed and stupidity as readers are likely to find anywhere.

A must-read for anyone interested in the environment— shouldn’t that mean everyone?

LEFT AT THE MANGO TREE

PLACES Habitats of a Human Lifetime

Siciarz, Stephanie Pink Moon Press Oct. 22, 2013

Shabecoff, Philip PLACES (282 pp.) $12.50 paper | $6.00 e-book Dec. 6, 2012 978-0-615-68618-9 Environmental writer Shabecoff ’s (A Fierce Green Fire, 2003, etc.) memoir is informed by his passionate, decades-old interest in the natural (and sometimes urban) environment— what it means to us and how humans have worked assiduously to destroy it.

Each essay describes and comments upon one of the many places where Shabecoff has resided or at least visited in a long career as a writer for the New York Times. These chapters include the summer place he and his wife built in the Berkshires (“The Best Place”), the Bronx neighborhoods where he grew up, the Catskills where, every summer, young Shabecoff and his family escaped the sweltering city, and his sojourns as a journalist in Germany, Japan, Washington, D.C., and many other locales. Toward the end of his career at the Times, he 50

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In this remarkable debut novel, a young girl named Almondine narrates the mystery of her own birth on the whimsical island of Oh. In the tropical island country of Oh, Raoul Orlean wants to know two things: Who is his granddaughter’s true father, and where did the missing pineapples go? The decline of the pineapple trade has left an abundance of the prickly fruit; Raoul, the sole man at Oh’s international customs counter, can present one to every tourist who deplanes, and outside the airport, his friend Bang sells penknives for cutting the pineapples. Nat, owner of a fleet of mismatched vehicles, drives the tourists to and fro, most likely depositing them at Oh’s popular bar, the Buddha’s Belly, overseen by the jolly and generous Cougar. Raoul, Almondine’s grandfather, is troubled by her arrival in the world. She looks nothing like her faithful mother or father but everything like Gustave, the manager of a pineapple plantation. Raoul could dislike Gustave enough based on this suspicion, but then he awakens to a new surprise: Two acres of Gustave’s pineapple

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A Redlight Woman Who Knows How to Sing the Blues My Life in White Institutions

Sisney, Mary CreateSpace (510 pp.) $17.43 paper | $3.00 e-book | May 9, 2013 978-1-4827-0725-0 Retired English professor Sisney’s (Growth Through Fiction: Short Stories for the Basic Reader, 2008) improbably comic memoir about a black woman’s career in white-dominated academia.

Born into a working-class African-American community in Kentucky during the waning Jim Crow years, Sisney traversed a veritable cultural minefield to get her doctorate and a tenured professorship. In five decades at “white institutions,” including 30 years at California Polytechnic State University, Sisney faced formidable sexism and racism. The author blends seriousness and humor when documenting life as a double-minority professor in the 1970s, ’80 and ’90s. She gives fellow professors entertaining pseudonyms such as Superfly, a white male professor who worked overtime to convey his coolness via “some kind of jive talking, black hip language.” She occasionally switched to black vernacular to “fix his old white ass,” a typical example of the author’s wry way of coping with insufferable colleagues. Sisney critiques culture and politics with similar hilarity, describing, for instance, her desire to administer a “No Fool Left Behind” test to former President George W. Bush to assess his literary aptitude. Even plentiful parentheses, a couple of longrunning chapters and overly detailed accounts of academic committee meetings fail to dampen the farcical spirit that animates the book. Beneath all this humor, however, is an unflinching account of the serious discriminatory practices that fester in the supposedly enlightened ivory tower. Although primarily about her career, the narrative also touches on Sisney’s personal life, with particularly poignant reflections on her fraught |

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plantation have “disappeared” overnight. The country of Oh cries black magic. Raoul—and by extension, the Office of Customs and Excise, whose government export tax the disappearance avoids—cries foul. Aided by his favorite nonfiction detective books, he diligently sets out to find his granddaughter’s origin and the missing pineapples. Oh seems to be a place overflowing with gossip and magic, but Raoul’s friends and family might hold the answers. The novel is built upon Almondine’s incredible narration, as she coyly pulls the reader along on these tandem mysteries, weaving in and out of her family’s stories and secrets. Her witty, pun-filled language and swift storytelling imbue the novel with charm, yet for all the back stories and interweaving, Almondine is careful to keep readers by her side as she unravels the detailed story of her grandfather and his friends. Siciarz has a talent as plentiful as Oh’s pineapples, and readers will hunger for more.

A tropical feast of charming, clever characters, smart storytelling and just the right amount of magic.

relationship with her mother. The book brims with pop-culture references and, at times, peculiar and funny meditations on topics ranging from contemporary American sexuality to O.J. Simpson’s murder trial.

With allusions to the black literary canon and chapter titles drawn from African-American music, Sisney’s tragicomic memoir speaks to a diverse audience.

SEQUELA

Smith, Cleland Self (404 pp.) $4.46 e-book | Jun. 10, 2013 Set in near-future London and revolving around a naïve young scientist’s meteoric rise to fame in the lucrative viral-design industry, this pseudonymous debut (the author is Scottish poet Angela Cleland) is a sci-fi masterwork.

Part futuristic corporate thriller, part powerful cautionary tale, this provocative, disturbingly plausible novel provides a glimpse into humankind’s ugly future. When Dr. Kester Lowe, one of the leading minds in viral design, accepts a job at the London-based technomedical giant V, his life irrevocably changes. In a society where sexually transmitted designer diseases are a fashion statement—the streets of London are described as “a midsummer party in the plague ward”—Lowe’s talents, with the help of his seductive and highly manipulative boss, Alexis Farrell, quickly make him a superstar in the fashion world. He’s suddenly rich, famous and— in a business climate where sex is power—coerced into having sex with a bevy of VIPs for the good of the company. But as his viral creations (the desirable symptoms of which include gold-rimmed eyes, luminescent lymph nodes, etc.) are taking the fashion industry by storm, a group of religious fanatics plot to destroy Lowe’s career and reputation and put a stop to the morally unacceptable fashion trend. The worldbuilding here is remarkable; Smith’s London of the late 21st century is meticulously described and vividly imagined. The narrative tone, while understated and stylish, has a decided edginess to it, and the cast of well-developed, three-dimensional characters is remarkably relatable. The pacing is brisk and the storyline complex without being convoluted. The ultimate result is an utterly readable novel, not only impossible to put down, but conceptually mind-blowing.

Extraordinary—a visionary tour de force.

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Big Jack Is Dead

Smith, Harvey CreateSpace (284 pp.) $12.99 paper | $9.99 e-book Apr. 2, 2013 978-1-4825-6365-8 A hellacious father retains his grip on his son’s psyche even after death in this darkly brilliant debut novel.

Jack Hickman Jr. has carved out a niche in affluent, anomic Sunnyvale, Calif., developing team-building software. It’s as close to real human engagement as his free-floating alienation (and violent fantasies) will allow. He’s called back to the wasteland of Lowfield, Texas, where he grew up, after his father, Big Jack, kills himself, and he weathers agonizing encounters with his mother and brother, both zoned-out drug addicts, and his stepmother, an officious woman who upbraids him for his callow misanthropy. The story of his bleak odyssey is interspersed with scenes from his even bleaker boyhood under his father’s thumb. Big Jack was a titan of runty, redneck rage, a welder who compensated for his small stature and smaller prospects with an explosive temper, caustic sarcasm and guns; he also had a knack for cruelly twisting the insecurities of anyone weaker than him, including his children, his wife and his many girlfriends. Smith uses acid-etched scenes of abuse, pervaded with menace and humiliation, to create a disturbing study of domestic terror at its most intimate. Yet Big Jack is punishingly human, a link in the great chain of threat and belittlement that is working-class masculinity; his impulses toward charity and beauty yield only baffling pain and squalor. Smith brings his magnetic characters to life with penetrating psychological insight, pitch-perfect dialogue and subtly evocative imagery, and he sets them in a sharply observed panorama of the industrial Gulf Coast, with its trash-strewn ditches, fire-ant mounds and moldy trailer courts. It’s a “concrete and salt-grass landscape under rust skies made of pipes and catwalks,” harboring a life that amounts to “a great nothingness…a hissing television on a dead station.”

Smith’s tale is a riveting update of Southern gothic themes, told with dead-on realism and raw intensity.

A powerful family saga by a writer with talent to burn.

KEEP FOREVER Gulag Memoirs

Sokolenko, Aleksandr Konstantinovich Translated by Lane, Alex CreateSpace (156 pp.) $10.99 paper | $2.99 e-book Dec. 14, 2012 978-1-4752-4689-6 A former prisoner recounts his years in the Soviet gulag in this memoir.

In this English translation of reminiscences originally recorded in 1970, Sokolenko shares stories from his years of imprisonment for political offenses during the 52

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Stalin regime. (A biographical note explains that Sokolenko was exonerated in 1956, when it was concluded that there was no basis for his original conviction.) The narrative does not follow Sokolenko’s imprisonment chronologically but is made up of a series of vignettes, with Sokolenko blending his own experience into the stories of his fellow prisoners and their guards. These true stories capture both the horrific experience and bitter humor of Russia under Stalin, as committed socialists, blackmarket businessmen and ordinary people struggled with the changing definition of “enemy of the state.” Sokolenko’s narrative clearly demonstrates that the corruption and absurdity of the Soviet system confronted prisoners inside the gulag as well as outside—Sokolenko was often forbidden to use his agricultural experience, even though the camp was expected to grow its own food; medicinal stores of vodka were used for a prison guards’ party; a corrupt and incompetent gulag administrator was finally removed from his position, only to be reinstated because it was a crime for anyone to challenge his commitment to the socialist cause. Throughout the book, the tone is matterof-fact, allowing the events described, rather than any elegant prose, to work on readers’ emotions. This was a wise decision by the author, who does not overwhelm the prisoners’ anecdotes with unnecessary commentary. (In contrast, the book’s footnotes, which decipher for the contemporary reader many of the names and policies Sokolenko mentions, are a useful addition, and the text could easily have accommodated more.) The result is a clear, bracing depiction, but not a maudlin one, of one of the darker chapters of modern history.

Skillfully portrays the bleakness of the prison system with an appreciation of the dark humor that allowed the author to survive it.

Software and Mind The Mechanistic Myth and Its Consequences

Sorin, Andrei Andsor Books (944 pp.) $68.00 | Jan. 1, 2013 978-0-9869389-0-0

In this massive philosophical treatise that crosses disciplines with verve and meticulous logic, politics, cognitive science, software engineering and more become threads in a complex examination of mental modeling.

Sorin argues against what he labels the “mechanistic myth”: the belief that virtually all fields, from psychology to biology, can be addressed by pursuing methodologies and theorizing based on hierarchical modeling—a method of breaking down processes and concepts from high-level ideas into simple, indivisible base units or concepts. Although Sorin’s primary expertise and focus for the book is in programming and computer science, he convincingly argues that the success of hierarchical structures has spread from the hard sciences of physics and engineering—where, in Sorin’s estimation, these models work and should be utilized—to virtually all fields of study, including

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“[Townsend’s] warm empathy still glows in this intimate yet cleareyed engagement with Mormon theology and folkways.” from the mormon victorian society

CODENAME: SOB STORY The Tale of a Picket Line Sailor During WWII Steinmetz, Jena M. CreateSpace (312 pp.) $18.00 paper | $7.99 e-book Jan. 14, 2013 978-1-4800-3107-4

In this notable debut penned by his granddaughter, a World War II veteran recalls action in the Pacific fleet.

Ten months after Pearl Harbor, young but gung-ho Robert J. Steinmetz convinced his parents to sign off on his Navy enlistment. “Steiny,” as Philadelphia working-class buddies called him, plunged from civilian shipbuilder to Shipfitter, Third Class, aboard the USS Gear ARS 34. The Navy issued these sailors only Marine knives for their assignment to plug holes in sinking ships. “Not even worth real weapons,” he concludes— “the lowest of the low.” He survived seven invasions and battles that forever changed him, hiding his anguish from family members for nearly 70 years. Fortunately, Steiny turns out to be a gifted storyteller. Jena Steinmetz, who began this as-told-to |

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sociology and psychology, in which the processes and concepts involved appear to be too complex for the relative simplicity of hierarchical modeling. Since these fields study human interactions, which function on multiple levels and can vary depending on numerous factors, Sorin argues that the important concepts and theories in these so-called “soft” sciences cannot be adequately modeled or understood using hierarchical thinking.

From this basic concept, Sorin broadly examines what he sees as troubling trends in academia, software development, government and many other endeavors. Early on, Sorin betrays the color of his conclusions through frequent use of emotionally charged words (e.g., absurd, charlatans, totalitarianism) and disdain for the majority of those working in the mechanistic mode, focusing especially on academic bureaucrats and those who, in Sorin’s opinion, work with pseudoscientific theories, such as linguist Noam Chomsky’s theories regarding universal grammar. To be fair, Sorin offers a disclaimer in his critique of the “mechanical myth”: “Myths,” he says, “manifest themselves through the acts of persons, so it is impossible to discuss the mechanistic myth without also referring to the persons affected by it.” His clear disapproval of these groups and theories doesn’t detract from the thorough explanations, well-reasoned arguments and crystalline logic he employs at every step. His explanations of mechanistic vs. nonmechanistic models and of the importance of tacit knowledge (meaning knowledge that is gained by experience, which isn’t always expressible in simple ways) are particularly cogent, and his textbook-length elucidations will enrich understanding for university-level students in various fields of study.

Despite moments of personal distaste, Sorin’s concise arguments stand as a model of reason.

memoir as a project for her English degree, deftly captures her grandfather’s language and personality, as if readers are listening across the kitchen table. Despite a number of typos and editorial lapses that seem to have survived the production process, she demonstrates skill and judgment in transforming extemporaneous talk into fluid prose. Sentence fragments fill the book yet enhance conversational tone rather than hinder readability.

Dialect, such as “nuttin’ doin’,” flavors the narrative without overshadowing it, and though some characters swear like sailors, it never feels heavy-handed. Steinmetz also uses novelistic techniques to control the presentation, opening with tense sailors below deck hearing gunfire, then backfilling Steiny’s childhood, enlistment and shipmate bonding. Steiny recalls events with remarkable clarity, and as Steinmetz writes with rich detail, summoning all the senses, the short chapters and poignant scenes propel readers, while time shifts help connect wartime and civilian life. A circle of blood on a white parachute evokes the Japanese flag, food tastes like gasoline, melting metal hisses, and rotting corpses, fresh paint and Iwo Jima’s sulfurous odor assault Steiny’s nose. Most painfully, screams of the fallen and handfuls of clinking dog tags haunt him: “It’s the sounds that still scare the man out of me,” he admits. Readers will quickly care about Steiny, making his postwar life relevant in vignettes that range from harrowing to heartwarming.

A grand tale told well.

The Mormon Victorian Society

Townsend, Johnny Booklocker.com, Inc. (258 pp.) $16.95 paper | $2.99 e-book Mar. 15, 2013 978-1-62646-341-7 Gay Mormons struggle to reconcile their hearts with their faith in these slyly revealing stories.

Townsend’s characters wrestle with the normal neuroses of modern life as distinctively shaped by the Church of Latter-day Saints. In the title story, two young men find that their nostalgia for Victorian culture—sadomasochistic fetishes and a cult of virginity—resonates with their Mormonism. In “Latter-Day Sinners,” a New Orleans man caught in Hurricane Katrina wonders if God’s wrath has been provoked by his homosexual inclinations. The proper Mormon husband of “The Third Part of the Trees” finds his patriarchal authority challenged when his anxiety over global warming prompts him to uproot his family. Elsewhere, the dutiful Mormon angel in “Kolob Abbey” discovers that repressed homosexuality haunts even the most exalted realms of the celestial afterlife. “Julie and Cowboy” follows a closeted student determined to suppress his urges—until his obligatory Mormon fellowship service leads him into temptation in the form of a seductive wastrel. Several stories explore the conflicted impulses of gay Mormons who’ve left the church but find that, after escaping its stifling constraints, they miss the

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close-knit community it nurtured. Whereas Townsend’s previous story collections charted the darker margins of mainstream Mormon life, in his latest, the tone is more muted, the sexual transgressions less lurid, his characters’ discontent quieter and more reflective, yet it’s no less absorbing. Suffused with talk of politics, these stories register the new openness and confidence of gay life in the age of same-sex marriage; many are set in the tolerant milieu of Seattle, where middle-aged characters lead comfortable, dull lives, their ostracism from the church just another muffled ache amid ordinary estrangements and deflations. What hasn’t changed is Townsend’s wry, conversational prose, his subtle evocations of character and social dynamics, and his deadpan humor. His warm empathy still glows in this intimate yet cleareyed engagement with Mormon theology and folkways.

Funny, shrewd and finely wrought dissections of the awkward contradictions—and surprising harmonies— between conscience and desire.

Mind Twisters Memories for the future

Töttösy, Ernest; Szablya, Helen M. CreateSpace (192 pp.) $9.95 paper | $4.95 e-book Aug. 10, 2012 978-1-4781-6817-1

A shocking glimpse into the mind of a victim of psychological and physical torture at the hands of the Hungarian secret police under Stalinism.

Töttösy’s first memoir, translated by Szablya, delves into his psyche under the extreme stress of torture, as well as his mental destabilization as a result of hallucinogenic drugs he ingested under duress in 1952 and ’53. During Stalin’s reign, the Hungarian secret police, the AVH, were utterly ruthless in extracting confessions from their political prisoners. Töttösy was a victim of their so-called truth serums, which, coupled with tactics such as repeatedly beating him with clubs, caused him to manifest symptoms of schizophrenia. A voice began speaking in his head, commanding him to tell the truth. Each time he spoke, he was beaten, often so brutally he welcomed the passage to unconsciousness as a brief respite from torture. Mysteriously, he managed to survive; despite the voice in his head forcing him to confess to a conspiracy, it seemed to repeatedly save his life by warning him against the dangers of his actions. Töttösy’s resilience will stagger even the most stoic reader. As the memoir progresses and his insanity clashes with the absurdity of the punishments enacted by the secret police, his frenzied mind almost becomes a force of good against the evil madness of their actions. The fact that his memory remained so sharp in the grip of mental illness and abuse is miraculous. Szablya’s fluid translation carries the weight of historical importance, providing deep insights into the hidden brutality of the AVH. More information and research about the Hungarian regime may have strengthened the work’s readability to those unfamiliar 54

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with the surrounding history, but this unflinching portrayal of inhumanity will capture anyone’s attention.

A courageous account of torture and insanity that beams with hope of a soul’s survival.

The Powers That Be

Utgard, Gordon Trafford (260 pp.) $21.50 paper | Aug. 9, 2005 978-1-4120-6565-8

A CEO chronicles how Saudi Arabia’s royal family carried out a hostile takeover of the private hospital he led.

Utgard, an American hospital executive with international experience, spent three years in Saudi Arabia, from 1998 to 2001, trying to turn around the struggling Al-Salama Hospital in Jeddah. Its owner, Sheik Khalid Bin Mahfouz, one of the world’s richest men—later rumored to have ties to Osama bin Laden—recruited Utgard through intermediaries. This foreshadowed a consistent pattern: Although holding the title of chief executive, Utgard never dealt directly with the so-called powers that be. In his debut, Utgard tells his story in clear prose and granular detail. From the outset, his assignment appears misbegotten. The board chairman never attends any meetings; a multimillion-dollar remodeling project lacks a written contract and stalls repeatedly over payment disputes; representatives from the royal family’s hospital in Riyadh enthusiastically propose a strategic partnership, then will not return phone calls; deadlines and commitments evaporate like mirages. Subterfuge and misdirection rule the day, symbolized by a euphemism Utgard uses to describe the acquisition: “reverse privatization.” Ample conflict drives the action, and Utgard sketches his characters convincingly, but their dialogue occasionally sounds unnatural since he forces into it explanatory information better left to narration. Meanwhile, the pace bogs down when storytelling yields to documenting the historical record, and detailed accounts of staff meetings and management strategies sometimes read like an academic textbook or legal deposition.

On the other hand, the book is highly personal, with insightful observations about Saudi business practices, culture and geography. Utgard, an outdoor enthusiast, peppers the narrative with tales of family vacations, desert road trip and diving in the Red Sea; an entire chapter is a travelogue of places he visited on days off work. This amalgam may prove too personal for some business readers, while managerial minutiae may overwhelm general readers. However, it’s a valuable case study, particularly for anyone in hospital administration, and a broader cautionary tale about the risks of operating private enterprises where governments wield unchecked power.

A unique memoir that provides a rare window into the Saudi kingdom.

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“Nixon’s voice is captured perfectly: Readers will all but hear his jowly baritone.” from the watergate memoir of gordon walter

Walker, Wickliffe W. CreateSpace (168 pp.) $14.95 paper | $9.95 e-book | Jan. 5, 2013 978-1-4793-2047-9 Walker’s linked short stories describe the people and the chaos in the majestic, frightening region of the AfghanistanPakistan frontier from the time of the Soviet invasion to the more recent U.S.-led war.

Author Walker (Courting the Diamond Sow, 2000, etc.) builds these 13 tales around Special Forces Officer Col. Bailey and his counterpart and friend from Pakistan. Though fictional, the episodes are based on real events and show the beauty and, to Western eyes, the mystery of the region. Danger is always present as Bailey (perhaps a stand-in for Walker himself) tries to befriend the Pashtuns and Afghans while chasing al-Qaida and all manner of nasty terrorists. With his Pakistani colleague, he goes into a remote area to establish the truth of a claim that a tribal sect has captured a Soviet chemical-weapons truck (actually a mobile field hospital). Bailey is never quite sure who’s on whose side, knowing shifting allegiances have forever been the way of life in Afghanistan. Bailey must determine the reason for a suicide bombing and engage in a firefight with al-Qaida–linked terrorists. Interspersed among these incidents are the colonel’s accounts of the home of Special Forces, Fort Bragg; interference from politicians; nonsensical decisions by colonels and generals to abort an operation; and frustration with the news media.

A TV reporter who has ignored advice is badly wounded in an attack and has to be airlifted out, putting everyone in danger. The author is well-aware of the trickery and chicanery in Afghanistan, but he has great respect for the people and the region. Vivid details abound; Walker’s description of a character’s “lean, sunken cheeks, one eye the milky white of advanced cataracts, and a voluminous white turban accented with a tall gold-colored brush” brings him to life. Military tactics play against the background of the thousands of years of history that have produced the Afghanistan of today.

Insightful, striking portrayal of the Afghan culture and people.

YOUR ENLIGHTENED MIND WANTS TO KNOW

Walsh, J.M. CreateSpace (278 pp.) $14.95 paper | Nov. 6, 2012 978-1-4783-2341-9

Walsh investigates the origins of Mahayana Buddhism in his careful, honest search for truth on the spiritual path.

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GOAT GAME Thirteen Tales from the Afghan Frontier

belief and bitter skepticism. Walsh’s debut manages to avoid these pitfalls. His approach falls between scholarship and personal reflection; through investigating the many sources (but few facts) that surround the provenance of Mahayana texts— focusing mostly on the Lotus Sutra but also appealing to his own experience and the writings of his teachers within Nichiren Buddhism, the branch of Mahayana Buddhism he studies personally—Walsh triangulates a “middle way” between skepticism and faith. Where Walsh cannot be sure of a conclusion— for instance, whether Zoroastrianism and Mahayana Buddhism intermingled along the Silk Road in Persia and India—he calmly and rationally states his uncertainties. As such, the numerous fascinating details about the timeline of world religions and the historical figures within the development of various strains of Buddhism are allowed to speak for themselves. Although Walsh eventually concludes that it’s unlikely the Mahayana texts were issued directly from the Shakyamuni Buddha (usually recognized as the historical Buddha), he nonetheless resolves to open-mindedly examine the real-world effects of doctrines in Mahayana Buddhism; ultimately, Walsh decides that these effects fortify the tradition, despite the path’s debatable origin.

Though calm and relaxed, Walsh’s scholarly approach can sometimes seem dense and tangential in comparison to other writers on Buddhism, such as Alan Watts or Thich Nhat Hanh. Walsh doesn’t write Zen koans; he researches and investigates. Therefore, his book will primarily appeal to Mahayana Buddhists who seek to resolve the religion’s apparent inconsistencies while learning more about the history of their tradition. Nonetheless, any student of religious history will benefit from a reading.

A sincere, penetrating history whose conclusions are both scholastically and spiritually sound.

The Watergate Memoirs of Gordon Walter

Walter, Gordon Christopher Matthews Publishing (178 pp.) $16.95 paper | $7.95 e-book Mar. 20, 2013 978-1-938985-09-6

The fictional, humorous life and times of Gordon Walter, Richard Nixon’s top-secret right-hand man.

During World War II, Walter met young Lt. Richard Nixon in the Navy. While stationed in the South Pacific, Walter proved his worth by helping Nixon make off with a few cases of an admiral’s whiskey for a party. From that moment on, whenever he needed a little covert help behind the scenes, Nixon turned to his old friend. As Nixon’s political career took off, he found himself calling on Walter’s services again and again, especially after he became president. Among other things, Walter secretly oversaw the Plumbers—“a group that we can pin the blame on if things go wrong, so people will have someone and won’t go digging for us”—babysat a deliciously inept Spiro Agnew, helped orchestrate the buildup to a manufactured (ultimately unnecessary) war with

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Albania and was there throughout the Watergate scandal, which, as Walter explains, was a huge mix-up from the start. As edited

by Alaric Thistle, this debut fictional memoir is an uproarious take on the Nixon years as seen from the inside. There are ample laughs throughout the book, but some sections stand out, especially Walter and Agnew’s covert trip to England and Germany to bolster the vice president’s foreign policy–making skills and Walter’s experience tailing Nixon’s burglars while they attempt to nab Ellsberg’s psychiatric file from his doctor’s office. Walter and Nixon’s imagined plotting lends a humorous slant to real-life historical events, and Walter himself is a great character—wry, licentious but with a stubborn loyal streak. Similarly, Nixon’s voice is captured perfectly: Readers will all but hear his jowly baritone.

While the tone is satirical, the high level of historical detail adds a layer of richness. Although bound to amuse even casual readers, those more familiar with the politics, personalities and scandals of the Nixon years are likely to especially appreciate this irreverent take on the era.

Sharp, snooping political satire.

THE WELL OF BEING A Children’s Book for Adults

Weill, Jean-Pierre Jean-Pierre Weill Studios (216 pp.)

Oct. 1, 2013 978-0-9858003-0-7

A self-styled “children’s book for adults” about finding contentment in the world.

Weill’s big, ornately produced debut opens with an elementary restatement of the core philosophical outlook of 18thcentury Italian Jewish mystic Ramchal (Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto) about the essential oneness of all creation and how existence is a constant journey to re-attain the oneness of creation’s beginning. In bright, simple watercolors (one image per page, with plenty of white space), Weill follows a central visual character—a man in a suit and hat whose face is a blur—through a series of vignettes, some purely conceptual (walking up a graph of life events partitioned like a piece of modern art), others very concrete (waiting at train stations, sitting at the seaside, etc.), while the narrative—generally one line per illustration—elaborates on Weill’s concept of how individuals find peace through introspection: “Well-being is generated not from the outside but from inside.” Each of the illustrations suggests a separate tale, and this fits neatly with Weill’s idea that each person’s life journey is essentially a collection of such tales. “We organize our circumstances into stories,” he writes, “stories we pick up along the way.” Through darker imagery (including one image of Auschwitz and another of the 9/11 attack), the author references life’s obstacles, and Weill contends that all such obstacles can be overcome with inner resources: “When we lose touch with wellbeing, joy seems to depend on circumstances, on what happens outside of us.” Introspection continues to be the key: “When we become aware of our own thinking,” he writes, “we awaken.”

The book’s simplicity of insight is well-matched by its impressive production quality; the pages are thick and heavy, meant 56

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to convey the impression of timeless wisdom. As with most modern books on such weighty themes, Weill’s narration more often than not resorts to vague generalities to move its lessons forward. Readers may feel encouraged to read their own life experiences into these stark images, using Weill’s paintings like spiritual Rorschach blots. What wisdom or reassurance they draw from such an exercise will depend on what they put into it.

A beautifully crafted, uplifting meditation on the inner, personal dimensions of hope.

The Warrior With Alzheimer’s The Battle for Justice

Woodfin, Stephen Amazon Digital Services (288 pp.) $5.99 e-book | Sep. 1, 2012 A legal thriller that does double duty as a poignant tale of a love challenged by the indignities of Alzheimer’s and the corrupt judicial system that refuses to acknowledge them.

Woodrow “Woody” Wilson has begun to forget things. He’s having not just the typical memory slips that increase as a man enters his 80s, but telling lapses such as not recognizing family members or believing their good intentions. When such moments arise, Woody takes off in his truck, and his loving son, Waylon, and wife, Maggie, tail him as he revisits cherished places from his past. One day, however, Woody ditches his truck and disappears with an unknown man. The family enlists the help of investigator Sherwood “Shot Glass” Reynolds, a recovering alcoholic who witnessed his own father’s battle with dementia. Reynolds soon identifies the stranger as Linus Schmutzer Jr., aka Doc Smooth, a psychiatrist forced to resign for conducting unauthorized experiments on Alzheimer’s patients.

Yet all is not as it seems, as Waylon and Reynolds unravel a wartime connection between the abductor and abductee that stretches back to Auschwitz. A dangerous lapse into dementia leads Woody to hold a deputy at gunpoint, which results in his arrest. His court-appointed lawyer, Pythagoras “Thag” Clemons, lives a woebegone existence that makes Reynolds’ sad life shine by comparison. Thag is also painfully familiar with Alzheimer’s, and he joins the motley crew, which soon includes Woody’s cellmates, in an audacious plan to get justice for the ailing World War II veteran. Woodfin (The Lazarus Deception, 2013, etc.), an attorney with several thrillers to his name, expertly combines the detailed machinations of the legal system with a fast-moving, twisting plot that leads to an unanticipated climax.

His tender portrayal of Woody and Maggie’s deeply felt love is a welcome surprise, as are the many near-poetic depictions of dementia that evoke pathos without a hint of sentimentality.

A fine thriller, with a bittersweet love story that lingers long after the last page.

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“This delicately intricate work provides a full dance card of themes: sex, romance, mystery and a grim peek into a devastated future.” from the woman who sparked the greatest sex scandal of all time

The Woman Who Sparked the Greatest Sex Scandal of All Time

Wyllie, Romy CreateSpace (306 pp.) $18.95 paper | $9.99 e-book Oct. 26, 2012 978-1-4782-9834-2

Wyllie (Bertram Goodhue, 2007, etc.) moves away from architectural histories to document the life of her son, Andrew, who persevered and thrived despite Down syndrome.

When the hospital staff delayed bringing Wyllie her firstborn child after his birth in 1959, she was immediately uneasy, and rightfully so: Andrew was diagnosed as a mongoloid, or what is now known as having Down syndrome. Troubled by the doctor’s explanation that “sometimes the best policy is to inform the mother, before she even sees her baby, that the child has died and then place him immediately in an institution,” she and her husband decide to keep their son at home and raise him as normally as possible. Wyllie details the early struggles with Andrew, from difficulties nursing to apprehension over what their family, friends and neighbors might think.

She recounts their lengthy search for a school program to fit Andrew’s capabilities and their great fortune in finding Lambs Farm, a still-operating facility where Andrew lived happily for most of his adult life. Wyllie’s writing is lucid and remarkably forthright. She doesn’t shy away from the negatives, such as her frustrations and mistakes as the parent of a special needs child, or her concerns that her other, “normal” children were somehow being slighted. She also conveys the grief she faced in the tragic cancer death of her 14-month-old second child.

The book features Andrew’s writing and drawings, letters from his teachers and co-workers, and interviews with many of the people in his life, which provide an intimate look at his intellectual, emotional and physical development. As a comparison, Wyllie also chronicles the experiences of two younger children, one born in 1980 and one in 1994, who also suffer from Down syndrome. Her account of the history and science behind the disorder is thoroughly researched yet highly readable, and she evenhandedly discusses the possible impacts of modern prenatal genetic testing. Of her ongoing struggle for better resources, Wyllie remembers that “the most difficult task was to capture the interest of the average person who does not have a special needs child.” Transcending this aim, her book is as richly absorbing for casual readers as for caregivers and loved ones of Down syndrome children and adults.

This cleareyed, intelligent memoir is an invaluable resource for anyone whose life is affected by a developmental disability.

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LOVING ANDREW A Fifty-Two-Year Story of Down Syndrome

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Yaakunah, Eli CreateSpace (230 pp.) $9.95 paper | $0.99 e-book Feb. 25, 2013 978-1-4810-3177-6

First-time novelist Yaakunah’s erotic dystopian novel follows a questioning journalist searching for a missing co-worker.

In a future New York, Journalist Ishtar Benten of the News Agency is promoted from the Department of Written Chronicles to the Department of Scriptwriting. Concurrently, a man named Utu, whom she’d met in the break room for “erotic coffee,” disappears. As she looks for him, she seeks help from Arianne, a memory thief, and Harlequin, a sad but sympathetic clown. Her investigation ultimately makes her ask herself hard questions: Is truth fundamental or simply a byproduct of the News Agency? This delicately intricate work provides a full dance card of themes: sex, romance, mystery and a grim peek into a devastated future. It’s mainly an erotic novel, but its eroticism is complicated. For example, Ishtar envisions people she first encounters as being physically transformed during sex—strange, violent thoughts that appear to be routine for someone in her line of work. The book’s text is also laced with sexual metaphors—she drives her “motoregg” into her home’s “womb,” and she and Arianne “penetrate” the agency’s security; later, Ishtar describes herself as “pregnant with betrayal.” The ever-present eroticism makes the sex scenes, real and imaginary, seem less explicit; they’re often lyrical and eccentric, as when Ishtar is intimate with a guide during the virtual tour of a villa.

The author also touches on detective fiction tropes when Ishtar shadows a man, hoping to find answers; nostalgia, when she laughs and cries while watching Charlie Chaplin movies; and moral doubt, when the fear of a high-paying job blinds her to her employers’ totalitarian control of the news. Touches of wry humor reinforce an already sturdy novel; the fictitious story, “Do Aliens Have Claws?” is presented in its entirety.

A virtuosic, erotic sci-fi debut.

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“A smart, laugh-out-loud murder-mystery romp.” from fleeting glance

FLEETING GLANCE

Young, Sherban CreateSpace (292 pp.) $15.95 paper | $5.99 e-book | Nov. 1, 2012 978-1-4801-9914-9 Enigmatic Romanian master detective Enescu Fleet returns for another tangled tale.

Young (Fleeting Memory, 2011) brings back suave sleuth Enescu Fleet in this complex, hypercaffeinated crime caper that opens with the narrator, hapless John Hathaway, who’s “not much of a detective,” on the brink of marrying Lesley Darlington. John’s friend and fellow detective Hutton has set up Lesley and her British parents in a lakeside cabin belonging to John “Johnny Fishcakes” Frederick Herrington, the mob kingpin “most famous for his ongoing blood feud with the Vroom family of Boston.” Lesley worries they may all be caught in the crossfire, although Hathaway is fairly certain she simply likes saying “Vroom.” Trouble instead strikes Hutton, who’s roughed up by goons. Shortly afterward, he’s led into the lakeside cabin by none other than famous retired detective Fleet and his faithful Maltese, Pixie. From there, the book’s manic plot takes off, centering on the Fishcakes/Vroom blood feud as it skillfully and delightfully lampoons conventional murder mysteries by filtering them through the quip-heavy sensibilities of a Wodehouse novel. “It’s amazing how often I end up in seats next to the most priceless asses,” Hathaway laments. When Fleet assembles a room full of such specimens at the book’s climax, one character dryly asks, “Next you’re going to say [the culprits are] in this very room,” to which the unflappable Fleet replies, “I am and they are.” The plot moves from one perfectly deployed absurdity to another, with Everyman Hathaway at the center of things, always with the slightly annoying but nearly infallible Fleet on hand to shed some light and generally be inscrutable.

When Fleet hints that one particular pawn on the plot’s chessboard is “a knight in pawn’s clothing,” a hapless guest asks, “The knight’s the one that makes a move like an L?”—at which point Fleet suggests they “lay off the chess metaphors for now.”

A smart, laugh-out-loud murder-mystery romp.

This Issue’s Contributors # Paul Allen • Kent Armstrong • Richard Becker • LD Beghtol • Kathy Biehl • Allie Bochicchio Valerie Brooks • Julie Buffaloe-Yoder • James Burbank • Darren Carlaw • Charles Cassady Stephanie Cerra • Donna Conaway-Morrissey • Lisa Costantino • Steve Donoghue • Tom Eubanks • Melissa Faliveno • Jameson Fitzpatrick • Rebecca Foster • Eric F. Frazier Shannon Gallagher • Courtney Gillette • Alissa Grosso • Matthew Heller • Justin Hickey Susan J.E. Illis • Ivan Kenneally • Tristan Kraft • Isaac Larson • Jane Leder • Peter Lewis Caitlynn Lowe • Mandy Malone • Lisa Maloney • Joe Maniscalco • Ingrid Mellor • Chris Messick • Gabrielle Mitchell-Marell • Ashley Nelson • Brandon Nolta • Joshua T. Pederson Matt Phillips • Jim Piechota • William E. Pike • Jon C. Pope • Jackson Radish • Sarah Rettger Jessica Skwire Routhier • Martin Rushmere • Melissa Ruttanai • Ken Salikof • Michelle Schingler • Crystal Schwanke • Nomi Schwartz • Jerome Shea • Hannah Sheldon-Dean Barry Silverstein • Emily Thompson • Carrie Allen Tipton

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Whether they are apps—stand-alone software that opens directly from your tablet—or enhanced e-books—interactive texts read through a platform such as iBooks—the very best electronic texts create a reading experience that is altogether new without sacrificing artistic or narrative satisfaction. Many are based on familiar classics (such as Penguin and Inkle Studios’ Poems by Heart or Oceanhouse Media’s spin on four of Byron Barton’s sublimely simple books on transportation) or other oral or printed tales. Many others are entirely new, created expressly for an interactive medium and doing things with the notion of “book” that stretch our conventional understanding to the limits. Still more cross cultural boundaries, bringing stories from places and in forms to North American readers that they would never have encountered in print. Explore this year’s crop of interactive texts and celebrate with us.

—Vicky Smith

AWA, YOU DREAM TOO MUCH

Digout, Michel Illus. by Digout, Simon tapatap $3.99 | Oct. 25, 2013 1.0; Oct. 25, 2013

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Note: With the exception of apps and e-books for adults, the reviews published in this section have already appeared in a previous issue of Kirkus Reviews.

ESSENTIAL ANATOMY 2

3D4Medical.com 3D4Medical $24.99 | Feb. 14, 2013 2.0.1; Aug. 7, 2013

A thoroughly well–thought-through app takes experts and neophytes alike through the tangles—literally—of the human body.

Anatomy is the bane of medical students, art students, dance students—anyone whose work requires knowing the difference between a metatarsal and a mentalis, to say nothing of an acromioclavicular ligament and an annular one. As with real-world lab courses, the app opens with a skeleton in what an art historian might call a relaxed orant pose. Through a process of addition by means of menus on the right-hand side of the screen (which can be moved to the left for those who wish), various layers of muscles, arteries, veins, organs, nerves and other elements can be placed on the skeleton. Each can also be removed, and parts of each can also be taken away to focus on discrete subsections. Each element has an information panel glossing it: For instance, of the gastric arterial branches, users learn, “The left and right gastric arteries and the left and right gastroepiploic arteries supply the lesser and greater curvatures of the stomach respectively. These arteries send branches over the stomach to supply the body, pylorus and fundus of the stomach.” Which is just so, but this can be fed back, so to speak, in numerous ways, including timed or untimed quizzes and rotated views that can be bookmarked for future study.

Views can also be annotated with a stylus or finger (the latter of which might help train future doctors to scribble illegibly).

Impeccably designed and one of the best of a wide field of competitors. An invaluable addition to the iPad toolbox of students of the human body. (Requires iOS 6 & up.)

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THE DOORS

Brandwidth Warner Music Group $4.99 | May 6, 2013 1.1; May 6, 2013 Blast their music at top volume and you will know “what it was like to hear men play rock ’n’ roll music.” So writes Hunter S. Thompson, making a cameo in this thoroughgoing biography of the

iconic rock band.

The recent death of founder Ray Manzarek has brought renewed attention to the extent of The Doors’ influence over the last 45 years.

Spearheaded by veteran producer and former Electra Records head Jac Holzman, this app bowed in just before Manzarek’s passing.

Naturally, it is singer Jim Morrison, a walking train wreck, who commands the most attention, but Holzman and contributors such as David Fricke and Greil Marcus (with smaller pieces by Patti Smith, Barney Hoskyns and the band members themselves) give all due to the brilliant musicianship of Manzarek, guitarist Robby Krieger and drummer John Densmore. Each of the band’s albums is presented in detail, with sound samples that link to full files available from the iTunes store. There are lyrics too (even the blue ones of “The End”), as well as promo videos and technical notes on the details of recording (such as the fact that “Unknown Soldier,” from “Waiting for the Sun,” marks “the first use of 8-track Dolby A ‘ ’ on a pop record.” An additional gallery offers a trove of still photographs, videos, demos, concert posters and other material. All the material is easily navigable and intuitively laid out. Fair warning to fans and rock geeks: This poses every danger of being an enormous time sink, since each piece is part of the puzzle, from a recent gubernatorial pardon granted to Morrison for the infamous charge of lewd and indecent behavior to Francis Ford Coppola explaining how the opening sequence of Apocalypse Now came into being.

A model of multimedia publishing and an essential for fans of the band and students of rock history alike.

THE AFRONAUTS De Middel, Cristina Ubiquo Studio $6.99 | Apr. 15, 2013 1.1; Apr. 25, 2013

An art photographer’s striking reimagining of Zambia’s unusual effort to launch a space program.

The physical book of The Afronauts caused a sensation in the art world when it was published in 2012; copies currently sell for upward of $4,500.

The appeal is obvious: Taking her cue from an article about a schoolteacher’s attempt to enter Africa into the space race in the early ’60s (he was “certain Mars is populated by primitive natives,” he wrote in a newspaper article), De Middel imagines scenes from the training program in ways that address African folklore, Western condescension and romantic notions of space travel. A 60

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man is shown in a flight suit with the stereotypical frilled accessories of a “witch doctor”; a colorful but ramshackle miniature rocket is perched in a field, noble but nonfunctioning; a clichéd space alien rests on an examining table; an elephant nuzzles the oversized, bulbous, opaque space helmet of a trainee. (A diagram shows the afronaut’s space gear, including a “coconut water tank.”)

De Middel’s photographs, drawings and manipulated news images elegantly capture a sense of wonder and a sense of futility simultaneously; the images’ bleached-out, Instagram-ish palette feels appropriately archival, the stuff of neglected history, but the gamefor-anything postures of the would-be astronauts evoke the feeling of Sputnik and Apollo launches. (Aren’t all such photos always a bit propagandistic? Doesn’t spaceflight reflect a primal urge, no matter who’s doing it?) On a technical level, the app asks the user to do a little clumsy hunting around in a large image of stars to find the portal into the images, but the images themselves are welldisplayed and retain their resolution with pinch-to-zoom gestures.

Brief but worth lingering on; though the app is wordless and there are only 40 photos, its beguiling imagery is consistently thought-provoking. (Requires iPad 2 and above.)

PERFECT COFFEE AT HOME

Haft, Michael; Suarez, Harrison Illus. by Blake, Benjamin Haft & Suarez 1.4; Jul. 1, 2013 Think you make a good cup of joe?

This delightful e-book might have you rethinking your answer—or at least dropping some money on some new gear.

Ordinary consumers may have a jones for java, but authors Haft and Suarez take it to extremes. It’s an addiction they came by honestly as Marine infantry officers, “perpetually sleep-deprived from the training, the planning, the preparations for war.” Having graduated from coffee as a “bitter caffeine-delivery system” to a perfect blend of art and science, they here serve up several strategies for making a perfect cup of brew, and in doing so, they prove that what we once knew is all wrong. For instance, they argue, pouring boiling water on ground coffee lends it a metallic taste, whereas in numerous methods of brewing coffee, such as the French press, “you usually want the water somewhere between 196 and 204 degrees”—which, they note, is below the boiling point. If it seems that Haft and Suarez are demanding the devotion to a cup of coffee that Zen monks pay to the perfect cup of tea, then that’s by design; moreover, they bring to the table a mad scientist’s compulsion to experiment, delivering a few grand discoveries along the way. Not least of these is the fact that it’s possible to brew a delicious, complex cup without boiling water at all, so long as you don’t mind waiting 12 hours or so to drink up. The e-book is welldesigned and easy to bookmark, dotted with pleasantly cheerful videos with an appropriately jazzy, jolting soundtrack.

Altogether, an excellent production. The downside: You’ll likely be investing in a burr grinder and industrialstrength Moka pot, as well as relearning the metric system.

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“Snatches of Poe’s first-person narration…must be manipulated, twisted and turned in order to discover the next outburst of literary lunacy.” from the tell tale heart

POEMS BY HEART From Penguin Classics

Penguin Group USA; Inkle Studios Viking $0.00 | Apr. 4, 2013 1.0; Apr. 4, 2013 For whatever blessed reason, committing poems to memory appears to be back in vogue. Here, Penguin USA and Inkle Studios transport that impulse for learning verse “by heart” from the one-dimensional world of the page to the digital realm’s multimedia expanse with a nifty app.

Readers can download the app for free, then purchase small bundles of thematically grouped classics, creating their own “library” of poems to work through at their own pace. Each poem is tagged with a level of difficulty—Blake’s quatrain “Eternity” is deemed “Easy,” Canto I of the Inferno, “Very Hard”—and prefaced with a brief biographical note. One can read the work in its entirety and/or listen as a voice (female or male) recites the poem. The app’s audio recordings are just serviceable, lacking the drama created by verse performed with a sense of audience. Its most engaging feature sits to the right of each poem, where tapping the “Learn This” button requires the timed filling in of missing words from each clause. One’s score in attempting perfect memorization is then tallied, pinball-machine– like, yielding compliments like “Not bad” and “Amazing.” The sweet reward of successful poetic assimilation awaits on completion of the fifth level of difficulty, when readers can record and save their own recitation of the poem. The repetition involved in attempting such word-for-word recall leads painlessly to fuller comprehension. And while Penguin’s current “poetry store” selections hail from 15 poets as Dead White Male as they come (only Emily Dickinson and Elizabeth Barrett Browning represent the fairer sex, and Wallace Stevens alone saw the 20th century), the app provides unique points of entry to famous poems at the lexical level.

A sophisticated, wildly addictive tool for avowed poetry lovers.

THE TELL TALE HEART Poe, Edgar Allan Rocket Chair Media $1.99 | May 6, 2013 1.0; May 6, 2013

Poe’s classic short story of murder and madness is here subtly but effectively repurposed to haunt the dreams of a whole new generation of readers.

It’s been 170 years since Poe’s chilling first-person narrative was first published in an ill-fated Bostonbased magazine called The Pioneer. But this marvelously restrained iPad app might just be the ultimate platform for conveying the |

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The upside: Your coffee henceforth is going to be worthy of a world-class barista.

claustrophobic creepiness inherent in Poe’s gothic tale of a killer betrayed by his own insanity. Snatches of Poe’s first-person narration are found scrawled on a textured background that resembles a pitted wall; they must be manipulated, twisted and turned in order to discover the next outburst of literary lunacy. Slowly and even painstakingly, tracing the story in this most tactile way brilliantly mirrors the disjointed, zigzagging inner workings of the protagonist’s tortured mind while also creating an uncomfortable intimacy with the unnamed antihero. Additionally, following the crooked etchings—which vary in font as well as physical orientation—up, down, over and around conjures an unmistakable feeling of being alone in the dark with an unwelcome someone reading over your shoulder. Poe’s eerily elegiac prose is faithfully rendered. Isolating it bit by bit while maintaining a linear, if wildly undulating flow adroitly capitalizes on the rising tension.

Poe’s psychological masterpiece is perfectly matched with just enough digital interactivity to chill readers anew.

(Requires iOS 6 and above.)

18 CADENCE

Reed, Aaron Aaron Reed $3.99 | Apr. 3, 2013 1.0.1; Apr. 17, 2013 A century in the life of a small American house, told in brief sentences and remixable words.

The top third of the screen of this app has three parts. One is a floor plan of the house at 18 Cadence, with a modest porch, living room, kitchen and two bedrooms. Second is a sentence-long description of a person in one of those rooms. Third is a list of objects in the room. Reed means to show how the American home has changed over time, and despite the concision of its narrative—often just one sentence and a few stray details—the story acquires an emotional resonance. In the early 1920s, the home is occupied by three sisters, one tormented by her homosexuality.

In the ’30s and ’40s, a family moves in with three boys who head off to fight in World War II. By the ’80s and ’90s, the decrepit building has become off-campus housing and ultimately a drug den. The objects in the rooms change, from Sears catalogs to portraits to bongs, but the app allows readers to scrapbook while reading. Every word on the top third of the screen can be moved to a “workbench” and manipulated in various ways— stacked to make found poetry, combined to make longer sentences and cut back up again (a razor-knife tool helps with the cutting). Options are limited: Readers can’t, for instance, combine fragments from different rooms or different years into one sentence. But the effect of seeing words accrue on the workbench separately is surprisingly affecting. The books and utensils acquire a kind of personality unique to the time they were used; the military medals of one resident are as totemic as the Pink Floyd poster of another.

Despite a bare-bones narrative, an intriguing and even absorbing exploration of the power of objects across time. |

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“Enhancements include...active hyperlinks from Web-based resources in the bibliography, allowing galvanized readers instant, direct access to further information.” from the skull in the rock

c h i l d r e n ’s BYRON BARTON COLLECTION #1

Barton, Byron Illus. by Barton, Byron Oceanhouse Media $4.99 | Jun. 18, 2013 2.3; Jun. 18, 2013

Barton’s books about transportation are notable for their spare simplicity and bright pop-art illustrations; here, four gain added value with features that both entertain and encourage reading skills.

Introducing the setting for each mode of transport, the books open simply: “On the road,” “In the sky,” etc. Each subsequent page then highlights a different type of truck, airplane, etc., and with a true minimum of words conveys a good bit of information about their functions. “Planes” and “Boats” focus on the passenger jet and cruise ship as specific types, while “Trains” and “Trucks” concentrate on what they do. To assist early readers, words zoom up and are spoken when objects in the pictures are touched, and all words are highlighted as they are read; Oceanhouse’s signature style is an excellent complement to Barton’s simple compositions and text. Young readers will enjoy moving the vehicles, people and even the clouds while realistic (and optional) sound effects such as honks, murmured speech and engine noise play in the background. Extra movement is provided by subtle animations. A drop-down bar gives easy access to the audio options, page selection and information tabs.

Bright, simple and loaded with big machines—a steam engine, a fire boat and even a crop-duster, among others— this app is sure to appeal to young transportation enthusiasts. (iPad informational app. 2-5)

THE SKULL IN THE ROCK

Berger, Lee R.; Aronson, Marc National Geographic $9.99 | Apr. 23, 2013 1.0; Apr. 23, 2013

Advances in paleoanthropology are given a bracing, clearsighted overview in this enhanced e-book from Berger and Aronson, based on the 2012 print book of the same name.

Many easily recognize the discovery of 3-million-year-old Lucy as a vital moment in the human progress. But except for articles published in rarified journals, the general public hasn’t heard nearly enough from the paleoanthropological front since her discovery, and this work helps to set that record straight. It uses the findings of co-author Berger and his son as a hinge to learning from the fossil record; of “training your eye to see what 62

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you need to see” out in the field. Using the National Geographic Society’s trademark crack photography and layman’s language, the book takes readers from Lucy through a very helpful timeline of famous fossil finds in Africa and the introduction of dating techniques. It constructs a braided evolutionary trail that includes a member Berger named sediba, who had traits quite separate from chimpanzees and may prove to be a link to the deep past. Enhancements include an introductory video that uses Google Earth to zero in on Berger’s dig sites outside of Johannesburg, another, nifty video that gives a “3-D” look at the titular skull, enlargeable photos that often appear in swipeable galleries, and active hyperlinks from Web-based resources in the bibliography, allowing galvanized readers instant, direct access to further information.

A terrific piece of paleoanthropology, with a smart blend of scientific sobriety and narrative verve. (Nonfiction enhanced e-book. 10 & up)

OVER IN THE JUNGLE

Berkes, Marianne Illus. by Canyon, Jeanette Dawn Publications $3.99 | Mar. 6, 2013 1.1; Mar. 13, 2013

Based on Berkes and Canyon’s 2007 book, this new interactive counting and sing-along app is a snazzy introduction to the fauna of the rain forest.

Centering around the lush and colorful illustrations, each page introduces a new species with information on how the animal parents care for their young and often revealing a bit about their environment: The poison dart frogs appear in the bromeliads so important to their survival, for instance. The text is written in rhyme to fit the familiar tune and can be heard sung or read by the author; there is also a “Read to Myself ” mode. Simple animations allow readers to set the animal babies in motion.

Butterflies flutter and marmosets swing, each in their own stratum of the jungle. Emphasizing the many layers of habitat in the rain forest, the appended “Find the Babies” counting game shows where in the jungle each of the species makes its home.

Further information on each animal, plus photos, follows, as do bios of each of the creators. The illustrator’s discussion of her techniques should appeal to young artists. It’s not quite as flawlessly interactive as the developer’s previous app, Over in the Ocean (2012); there are some bugs with page turns, and background music and jungle sounds often don’t play in “Read to Myself ” mode.

Rich with learning experiences, Berkes’ book elegantly combines art, reading, counting and music with the natural sciences. (iPad informational app. 3-8)

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characters (Bluebeard, Baba Yaga and Punch) and revealing satisfyingly puerile jokes with each crash. Its greatest liability is the absence of any kind of source note to contextualize the myth for children not already familiar with it. [Editor’s note: background information added in version 1.1, May 12, 2013] A pleasantly understated alternative to the many frenetic apps on the market. (iPad storybook app. 4-8)

Bourgonje, Chantal Illus. by Bourgonje, Chantal Tizio BV $1.99 | Aug. 20, 2013 1.0; Aug. 20, 2013

A fanciful, almost dreamy little story featuring a turtle, a goose, a rabbit and— who would want it otherwise?—a monster.

This app is a simple piece of work, asking only that readers turn the page when they are ready, after following the bouncing words in the narrative or having digested the lovely artwork.

The story, of which there are two similar versions to choose from, follows the young animals from their bath to a rowboat by the sea, where they catch a giant clam that—surprise!—harbors not a bivalve but the mud monster, a cheery soul who looks to be cut from kelp (very muddy kelp) and enjoys dancing in circles with his new friends. As a wind instrument peeps along in the background, they dance until tired and then tuck the mud monster back into his shell and send him home. The three chums then turn homeward as well, back to their bath. The story is gentle, which accounts for much of its charm, but it is not milquetoast. It has an engaging energy in its call for adventure and the realization that adventure can be sweet as well as daring. The illustrations’ loose lines and kaleidoscopic watercolors endow the characters, even the monster, with a seraphic air.

A story that is as happy as a clam at high tide. (Requires iOS 6 and above.) (iPad storybook app. 3-6)

EACH TO HIS OWN!

Cali, Davide Kite Edizioni Srl $0.99 | Feb. 20, 2013 1.1; Mar. 1, 2013

In this droll, wordless import, a dozen dogs or other animals are connected to as many walkers by, usually, very long leashes.

Walker and animal being generally located at opposite ends of a long horizontal that is only partly viewable at any time, swiping leads to an initial visual surprise. A cowboy’s “dog,” for instance, turns out to be a huge bull, a delivery man walks a giraffe, a woman in upscale dress trails well behind a skunk. Single or multiple taps on the cartoon figures in each pairing activate more foolery in the form of low-volume sounds or visual effects. These range from jumps or color changes to “poots” of colored gas from the skunk, a tilt-responsive cascade of gifts from Santa and (a sure crowd pleaser) a discreet but decidedly risqué flurry of brightly patterned and even pictorial squares continually replacing Tarzan’s loincloth. There is no particular order or plotline, and the single-screen gallery/index opened by a corner icon allows viewers to skip around at will.

No bells but maybe a few whistles and definitely some giggles. (iPad novelty app. 5-9)

HERMES

BumpBump Books BumpBump Books $1.99 | Jan. 4, 2013 1.0; Jan. 4, 2013 As might be expected for a god, Hermes’ beginnings are far from ordinary.

Born at dawn, he eats nonstop and grows prodigiously—as the uncredited text reads, “The day of his birth was exceptionally trying for his poor mother.” Bored by nightfall, he slips out of the cave and straightaway happens upon a herd of “lovely cows,” which he steals before butchering and eating two of them. “Woe unto Hermes,” though, as those lovely cows just happen to be Apollo’s. As apology, Hermes presents Apollo with the first lyre—partly made from the horns of one of Apollo’s dead cows.

Illustrations are largely watercolor with some collaged-in elements, most notably a cherubic Victorian face that cleverly belies Hermes’ naughtiness. The app is minimally interactive, opting for subtle animation and sound effects over finger taps in a way that prioritizes the story. The text is exceptionally wellsynced to both pleasingly accented narration and page turns, but there is no advanced navigation or options. At the end of the story, children are rewarded with the opportunity to drive Hermes around in a bumper car, bashing the developer’s other |

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THE MUD MONSTER

ALICEWINKS Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland 150th Anniversary Animated Edition

Carroll, Lewis Walrus & Carpenter Productions LLC $9.99 | Apr. 18, 2013 1.0; Apr. 18, 2013 This sumptuous iBook presents a straightforward telling of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, accompanied by artwork that will send readers down the rabbit hole of delight.

It has been 150 years since Carroll trooped Alice before readers. In that time, there have been illustrations aplenty to go with the text, though arguably, John Tenniel caught the greatest fancy. There’s no Tenniel here, but a parade of gently animated artwork that delivers one pleasure after another. They appear in the form of short videos that convey the story read aloud, and in so many styles readers may wonder if the book

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“An African village child’s flights of imagination soar even higher thanks to exemplary art, narration and animation.” from awa, you dream too much

couldn’t accommodate something by, say, Warhol, too. It is as though Carroll gave a great, inclusive, Whitman-esque hug to interpretation. Millicent Sowerby gets spooky; Arthur Rackham is all caricature and cream; Margaret Tarrant shimmers on the surface, like sunlight on a lake; Mabel Lucie Attwell is as Deco as a Tiffany lamp; Alice Woodward is mischievous; Gwynedd M. Hudson has the delicacy of a Fabergé egg; George Soper draws dreamscapes. Some of the animations of the old artwork can be a bit creepy—as the White Rabbit appears on the scene, for instance, he hops through four distinct illustrations, changing style with each—but then, so is the story. Chapter by chapter, videos precede sequences of still plates, which themselves precede the printed text. The nice, rich rumble of the narrator is counterpointed with voices of a young girl and strange creatures, all well-characterized.

A stellar—indeed, archival—addition to any library.

(Enhanced e-book/fantasy. 6 & up)

TINO THE TRIANGLE Book & Peekaboo

Cumer, Eleonora Illus. by Cumer, Eleonora LARIXPRESS $0.00 | May 18, 2013 1.0.1; May 18, 2013

Colorful, simple artwork will draw young children to Tino’s story, in which the little triangle meets 10 different animal friends.

Tino, a bright yellow triangle, is in search of new friends as he explores the world. Tap Tino, and he is surrounded by a bright blue background. Quiet sound effects provide clues to guess the next friend Tino meets, revealed with another tap and creating a peekaboo game. Barks and pants signal the appearance of Fido the dog, “a funny fellow./ The fleas just love his fur.”

Tino the triangle is incorporated into each illustration, whether as the dog’s ear or a crocodile’s tooth. Each animal spread contains a few interactive elements—enough to keep up interest but never impeding the pace. The order in which the animals appear changes with each reading, heightening the pleasure of the guessing game. (Unfortunately, not all of the sound clues are obvious: Do hedgehogs really snore?) The story can be read in English, Italian or German. Interestingly, the authors did not directly translate the text, instead creating text suited to young children in each language. For example, Tino meets Fido the dog in English, cane Tobia in Italian and Hund Lumpi in German. In each language, alliteration and internal rhyming combine with smooth, gentle narration suitable for toddlers.

While this app may seem simple at first glance, it is actually just skillfully restrained, providing a reading experience nicely tailored to very young children. (iPad storybook app. 2-6)

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THE BIG WORD FACTORY

de Lestrade, Agnès Illus. by Docampo, Valeria mixtvision Digital $3.99 | Oct. 21, 2013 1.0; Oct. 21, 2013 There’s nary a word wasted in this love letter to the power and beauty of

individual words.

In a “peculiar land” where people must “buy and swallow the words they want to speak,” a poor boy named Paul can’t afford to tell a girl named Marie that he loves her. Paul is up against a boy whose family’s wealth affords him the ability to use as many words as he likes. In the end, Paul’s mere three words—cherry, dust and chair—are enough to make Marie notice. The sweet and simple story, based on the traditional book Phileas’s Fortune (2010), is greatly enhanced by elegant animation and interaction. Deep reds highlight Marie and Paul’s story against the gray gloom of an industrial word factory that towers over their town. Words are cannily deployed as hidden extras. As the story opens, categories of words for sale, including “Obsolete Words” (dungarees, brume) and “Funny Words” (gewgaw, drizzle and of course, gobsmacked), float down as little slips of paper. The app otherwise brims with clever touches, such as a language game for sorting words into three available languages: English, German and French. There’s also a link to a six-minute video version of the story.

Budding language nerds or anyone who’s a sucker for a humble little love story won’t have trouble finding the right word for this app: “delightful.” (Requires iOS 6 and above.) (iPad storybook app. 5-12)

AWA, YOU DREAM TOO MUCH

Digout, Michel Illus. by Digout, Simon tapatap $3.99 | Oct. 25, 2013 1.0; Oct. 25, 2013

An African village child’s flights of imagination soar even higher thanks to exemplary art, narration and animation.

The titular expostulation couldn’t be more wrong. Sitting comfortably in a patch of shade, young Awa observes that the new plaits in her hair look like baobabs—thus sparking a remarkable chain of free associations. Taps on highlighted words in her ruminations bring quick glimpses of hooting monkeys and other animals around a mighty tree, piranhas and a caiman splashing in the Amazon River, and also masklike “genies” bobbing in and out of view with snatches of percussive rattling.

Drawn with quick, scribbly pen strokes and bright digital paints, the rain forest scenes, the creatures within them and the skies overhead glow with colors—nearly always unexpected ones, such as a zebra that, with successive taps of the text, flashes

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NOTT WON’T SLEEP

Dorrestein, Renate Illus. by Goedhart, Liselore Developlay $2.99 | Sep. 17, 2013 1.3; Sep. 17, 2013

A winning combination of cute characters, soothing music and gentle bedtime activities for toddlers and preschoolers.

Nott (“night” in old Norse and Icelandic) is a delightful child dressed in purple pajamas and a cap that sports heart-shaped antennae. She’s sleepy but not quite ready to go to sleep (sound familiar?) Dutch author Dorrestein’s tale begins with a sweeping view of Nott’s treehouse bedroom, where she’s gleefully jumping on her bed. Once she hops to the floor, three pulsating puzzlelike images appear. Tapping each one causes Nott’s pillow to carry her off to three distinct dreamlike adventures. Touch the moon and she’ll land in the clouds, where readers can help clear them away and feed stars to the moon. Touching the outline of Nott’s cuddly sidekick, Nox (Latin for “night”), transports her to a pond where she must complete simple yet clever tasks that lead her friend to shore. Finally, the outline of the lantern takes her to a forest, where catching fireflies reveals creatures that, when tapped, move to center stage and settle down to sleep. There’s no text, and Nott doesn’t speak except to say “Yay!” and giggle when touched. But the story carries itself and will, in all likelihood, carry many a little reader off to dreamland.

A worthwhile bedtime ritual that children will return to again and again. (iPad storybook app. 1-5)

NOISY FROG SING-ALONG

Himmelman, John Illus. by Himmelman, John Dawn Publications $2.99 | Oct. 1, 2013 1.0; Oct. 1, 2013

A ribbit-ing good follow-up to Noisy Bug Sing-Along (2013).

Expanding upon his 2013 book of the same title, Himmelman focuses his app on one species of frog per screen with accurate drawings and actual recordings. The |

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stripes of intense green, purple and red. Adding cinematic touches, smooth pans and dissolves (almost all tap-activated) follow the twisting path of Awa’s reverie to a final close-up of her sleeping, smiling face. The designers avoid a common flaw by allowing the expressive audio reading, available in English or French, to be switched off without also turning off the animal noises and other background sounds. There is, however, no way to go back or start over without closing the app.

Quibbles aside, a terrific depiction of a young mind slipping off into vivid daydreams. Young readers will be hard put not to follow. (iPad storybook app. 5-9)

onomatopoeic spellings give children a way to “sing along” as the bullfrog “jug-o-rums” and the peepers “peep, peep, peep.” Readers can touch the frogs or jiggle the screen to make them fill their pouches and sing, and it culminates in a chorus as all the frogs sing together. (Unfortunately, in “Read to Myself” mode, the recorded frog sounds cannot be activated for this chorus.) Following this, the “How They Really Sound” section includes individual descriptions with very cool interactive sound-wave graphs to accompany each frog’s unique voice. Also included are information about habitat and curious facts about each of the 12 species of frogs featured. Some have poison glands behind their eyes that make them distasteful to predators, while others breathe through their skins as they spend the winter under the mud. Here, readers are encouraged to pay close attention to each song to prepare for the challenging game at the end, in which readers match the sounds and sound-wave graphs to the corresponding frogs—although an incorrect match proves just as much fun as a correct one.

A nifty aural introduction to various frog species. (iPad informational app. 3-8)

TALKING ABC

Jutiful Ltd. Jutiful Ltd. $2.99 | May 24, 2013 1.2; Jul. 1, 2013

While ABC apps are certainly plentiful, these playful Claymation-style critters will bring giggles and multiple readings.

With its creative animation, this app puts a twist on an otherwise fairly typical ABC book. Each page features a large uppercase letter on a bright background.

When young readers tap it, the clay letter folds up into a ball and then unfolds into an animated creature that corresponds to that letter. Preschoolers will certainly laugh at these goofy animals, with their big, round eyes, oversized mouths and silly expressions. The unicorn, xiphias and yeti all provide amusing variations on the standard fare of ABC animals. Tap the animal, and it will form into a ball before reverting back to the letter.

Unfortunately, the narration does not repeat the letter name at this point, missing an important opportunity for reinforcing names and sounds. The letter names are clearly articulated with cheerful narration; however, the letter sounds are not as clear.

An original song plays continuously if users tap the musicalnote icon, a useful feature for very young children. The settings are easy to use, enabling parents to toggle between letter names and sounds. Four games extend the interactive learning with matching games and puzzles.

These appealing creatures will draw preschoolers back for repeated readings and exposure to letter names and sounds—a winning combination. (iPad alphabet app. 2-6)

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“Particular highlights include a mouth that pronounces the word for “mouth” in nine languages….” from the book of holes

THE BOOK OF HOLES

Lange, Poul Illus. by Lange, Poul Chocolate Factory Publishing $4.99 | Jul. 25, 2013 1.0; Jul. 25, 2013 An airy introduction to holes of, mostly, the anatomical sort with touchactivated effects that run the scale from whimsical to hilariously edgy.

Preserving the format of the original Danish print edition (with a black dot in place of the die-cut hole), this digital version alternates white screens of text printed in curved lines— read expressively in a childlike voice—with thematically related Monty Python–style collages. Practically every element in each collage will drift, drop, spin, chime, blink, mutter or otherwise respond to taps. Along with defining useful new words like “anus” and “nostril” (“The boogers come from your nostrils”), the presentation not only covers bodily orifices, but also black holes and the Big Bang, dental cavities, and holes in nature or around the house. Particular highlights include a mouth that pronounces the word for “mouth” in nine languages and a notexactly-graphic look at reproduction: “It is certain that you entered this world through a hole. But that’s a long story. Ask your dad….” Several of the collages feature items that can be played like musical instruments or, as on a face with scrambled features, require rearranging. An icon on every page leads to a thumbnail index and a key to all the interactive extras.

Educational and entertaining—and tailor-made to spark stimulating interchanges between younger children and unwary grown-ups. (iPad informational app. 2-5)

THE STORY OF KALKALILH

Loud Crow Interactive; Rival Schools Digital Agency Loud Crow Interactive $2.99 | Aug. 1, 2013 Series: Bramble Berry Tales 1.1; Aug. 23, 2013

Two children have trouble staying in bed until their Mooshum, their grandfather, tells them a Coast Salish cautionary tale featuring a “scary old woman who eats the toes of children as if they were grapes!”

Dropped off by their dad at the mountain cabin of Mooshum and Kookum, Thomas and his little sister Lily have trouble settling down that night—until they hear how, long ago, a group of similarly sleepless children followed the delicious scent of candied salmon into the woods and were seized by the terrifying Kalkalilh. Both the children, who look like polished wooden dolls with black, button eyes, and the skulls that float about the hunched-over old woman’s cluttered hut wriggle and giggle when touched in the tilt-sensitive illustrations. The overall flow isn’t as smooth as it might be, as each picture takes a 66

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moment to load and the text only appears a few lines at a time.

Still, options include autoplay or manual advance, a multivoiced audio and a choice of four languages, including Squamish. Furthermore, a main menu with thumbnails is available any time, and tapping the occasional red word in the narrative opens a box with the Squamish equivalent and a culture-specific comment or observation. Ultimately, the children in the core tale push their captor into her own fire, whereupon she turns into a cloud of mosquitoes and pursues them through the woods into the arms of their parents. In the framing story, Thomas and Lily rise in the morning to find real candied salmon and opposite-ofscary Kookum waiting in the cozy kitchen.

Not too spooky for bedtime yet with distinct chillerdiller potential, this folk tale marries tradition and modernity with great style. (iPad folk-tale app. 6-9)

ALPHABET ANIMALS A Slide-and-Peek

MacDonald, Suse Illus. by MacDonald, Suse Auryn $1.99 | Feb. 27, 2013 1.0.0; Feb. 27, 2013

Voicing, small-scale animations and a matching game suit MacDonald’s 2008

abecedary to a T. Realistically reproducing the original’s square pages with their slide-out cards, each screen of this digital version features a simple, brightly colored, graphic-style animal portrait based on a clearly recognizable capital letter. Beneath that is a “tab” that pulls out an image of the letter unadorned and that triggers a simple animation. Young viewers can hear both the animal’s name and the letter pronounced with taps, and they may either swipe to the next letter or choose it from a strip running below. The names do not appear in print, but aside from xenops (a type of South American bird), all of the animals are common (and real, except perhaps for the unicorn). A “Game” icon on the title page opens a screen on which children are invited to spell their names and then drag animal thumbnails to match the letters.

Overall, a well-designed edition with extras that will appeal to diapered digerati. (iPad alphabet app. 1-3)

FANCY HAT

Majcher, Sylvia Illus. by West, Andrew The Sequence Group $3.99 | Aug. 24, 2013 1.2; Aug. 28, 2013 A young girl finds she can be happy without her newfound token of joy in an app that favors striking visuals over sound design or needless frills.

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LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD

Nosy Crow Nosy Crow $4.99 | Apr. 25, 2013 1.0.2; May 2, 2013 A retelling of the familiar fairy tale, Nosy Crow’s newest app has the appearance of a graphic novel and offers a fresh new twist in the storyline.

Portrayed as brave and capable, Red Riding Hood heads through the forest, where readers help her navigate forks and the path. Each path leads to a different game and subsequent variation in the story. Instead of simply being distractions embedded in the app, each game is integral to the story and encourages readers to carry on through to the end, where the various items gathered prove useful in dispatching the wolf. Interactions are smooth and infused with humor. The 3-D effect and zoom capability add depth to the illustrations, and a map is provided as a shortcut to the games. Game features include tilting to pour honey and to move a spider around a maze, blowing seeds from a dandelion, readers’ own reflections in a pool and many touchscreen games. The characters, narrated superbly by child actors, speak to each other when tapped. Unfortunately, conversations get a bit out of whack if not tapped in the correct order, but eventually, all becomes clear. In “Read and Play” mode, words are highlighted as they are read out loud, and blue dots blink to help readers find interactions on each page.

Well-crafted and fun to read, this is an empowered “Red Riding Hood” not to miss. (iPad storybook app. 4-7)

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Forever frowning amid the gloom of cold rain and loneliness, a child identified only as “the grumpy girl” finds a bright yellow hat with a red ribbon. The fancy hat brings sunny days, flying kites and ice cream cones. “With her fancy hat, she laughed harder, smiled brighter, and felt like the happiest girl in the world.” The girl temporarily loses her favorite new item of clothing but discovers quickly that she can be just as happy without the hat. With its well-executed, painterly illustrations, the app is more sophisticated than it first appears. The visuals favor subtle shifts of perspective over full-blown animation.

Movement is activated by tilting the iPad in different directions to make the scenes breathe in unexpected ways. There are no extra features, not even page numbers, and the lack of sound effects, music or narration creates a silence that only seems noticeable when compared to the tweedles and beeps of competing iPad storybooks. A fierce seaside storm and a bus splashing through a puddle seem made for sound cues, but in this case, the decision to embrace silence works fine. The text isn’t revelatory, but its message of building happiness from within comes across clearly.

This gloomy girl’s transformation to happy camper is worth embracing, silent or not. (iPad storybook app. 4-10)

AXEL SCHEFFLER’S FLIP FLAP FARM

Nosy Crow Illus. by Scheffler, Axel Nosy Crow $0.99 | Sep. 18, 2013 1.0.0; Sep. 18, 2013

A silly introduction to sounds and rhyme.

This quadruple-screen “flip book” with 121 possible combinations uses the first letter or phonetic sound of an animal’s top half combined with the name of a different animal’s bottom half to create such creatures as a “purkey” (a pig/turkey—a greedy animal that can’t fly, of course) or a “dicken” (a dog/chicken, which herds the other animals and is great at laying eggs). As readers slide either half from side to side, they create new creatures and also new rhyming descriptions, with one quatrain for each half. In this way, the app explores phonetic sound as well as rhyme, with highlighted words to assist emergent readers. Subtle background music never interferes with the narration, and each poem is engagingly read by child actors with British accents—details users have come to expect with Nosy Crow creations. With the exception of the “For Grown-ups” button, which is purposely difficult to open, all of the interactions are quick and responsive. Page flips are quite easy, but young readers must wait for the poems to finish being read before they are able to tap the animals for sound. At that point, both animal halves can be tapped simultaneously, combining their noises and making for some pretty silly fun that will appeal broadly.

Scheffler’s bright, colorful illustrations combine with wordplay for a winner. (iPad storybook app. 2-5)

RED IN BED

On, Josh daniel logeman $0.99 | Feb. 13, 2013 1.0.2; May 31, 2013 This simple yet substantive story gives toddlers a valuable primer on color and music.

The story begins with seven little characters—they look like peas—snuggled in bed. Each one represents both a color in the rainbow and a note on the heptatonic scale. Tapping each colorful sphere produces a cheery note, with the exception of Red, who honks instead of dinging, as it’s feeling under the weather. “Don’t worry Red / we will color for you,” says Orange, as all of the other colors tumble out the door. Each subsequent screen finds the beadlike characters hard at work to color things that correspond to their particular hues. But each one also picks up the slack for Red, who is home sick. Blue colors the sea and the sky, for example, but it also tints a fire truck—blue. Little fingers help bring the colors to life by tapping on the named elements; each one dings except the incorrectly colored item, which produces a noise that might be what a question mark sounds like.

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the wrong color. Tapping the miscolored items returns them to their proper color, and as night approaches, the dots head back to bed. Available in English (with either American or British spellings), French, Spanish and Hungarian.

A solid and satisfying offering on all fronts. (Requires iPad 2 and above.) (iPad storybook app. 1-5)

THE JÖRGITS AND THE END OF WINTER

Sandell, Anders Illus. by Sandell, Anders; Mahaluf, Constanza Tank and Bear LLC $5.99 | Mar. 20, 2013 1.0.2; Apr. 11, 2013

Following a crash landing in the Baltic, a motley crew of space aliens encounters strange creatures (well, Finns) in this briskly paced, eco-themed import.

The seven furry Jörgits’ hopes of rescuing their icy home using Earth’s “Terra Forming” technology are dashed by the discovery that that “technology” is actually just humans’ irresponsibly messing up their own planet. Nevertheless, they ally with 11-year-old Jenny and her inventor/musician father, Joonas, to escape and then defeat a genially evil tycoon set on raising a “New Atlantis” after our society collapses. Along the way, the Jörgits also discover coffee (“…wonderful! It tasted like a mixture of burnt rubber and dirt”), plus the delights of shopping, sauna and skiing. Left with a sequel-ready open end, the tale is told in 14 chapters (plus a hidden one, unlocked by tapping five well-hidden Easter eggs) of fluent, colloquial prose with humorous side notes on sliding panels and a handy strip index.

The retro-style illustrations are rendered in pastels and blocky shapes, and they range from full-screen static views to melodramatic video clips, tilt-sensitive animations, a spreadable tourist map of Helsinki and, particularly noteworthy, several panning scenes on which atmospheric musical compositions can be tapped out.

A tongue-in-cheek tale with serious underpinnings, enhanced by inventively designed visuals. (iPad science-fiction app. 9-11)

YELLOW, RED, BLUE AND IF I GET ANGRY GREY

Sanna, Alessandro Illus. by Sanna, Alessandro WARE’S ME $0.99 | Mar. 22, 2013 1.0; Mar. 22, 2013

This inventive pairing of colors with musical riffs offers almost unlimited opportunities for visual and aural experimentation—plus jigsaw puzzles for more structured entertainment.

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Each of the four colors are introduced individually with their musical themes, first by blank screens to draw on and then stylized, big-eared animals whose parts can be moved about with a fingertip or left to separate in a tilt-sensitive drift. On following screens, the color fields and the figures appear in combinations that can be reordered or rearranged to create both color changes and musical juxtapositions or even, with rhythmic tapping, multilayered arpeggios. The title screen’s “Play” option leads to three jigsaws and an unusual kaleidoscopic puzzle that all use the same set of shapes and colors in fresh compositions.

Comical grunts, drawing lines that transform into flights of butterflies and other small flourishes enhance the artfully designed interaction. There is no narration or text, but children will find that in addition to drawing and playing with colors, they can create a story that ends with enormously satisfying chortles.

A rewarding alternative for children who find the digital edition of Hervé Tullet’s Press Here (2012) too relentlessly inscrutable. (iPad play app. 4-8)

CHARLIE BROWN’S ALL-STARS!

Schulz, Charles M. Illus. by Schulz, Charles M. Loud Crow Interactive $3.99 | Jun. 19, 2013 1.1; Jun. 24, 2013

An adaptation of a 1966 baseballthemed Peanuts TV special preserves Schulz’s gloomy wisdom in seamlessly designed fashion.

Though it’s less well-known source material than A Charlie Brown Christmas, this tale is similar in tone, with realistically spiky exchanges and loads of anxiety for Charlie Brown, manager of a losing baseball team. This being Schulz, Charlie Brown must suffer unending verbal abuse and dashed hopes before a not-quite-happy ending. In its gorgeous app form, the lines among book, TV show and interactive experience are blurred by a design that gives readers control of the flow of the app without getting in the way of the story. Scenes are self-contained and easy to navigate, featuring voice clips from the original program, narration by original Linus actor Christopher Shea and familiar music by Vince Guaraldi, all edited expertly to sync with the pages. Action features, including interactive pitching, hitting, surfing and skateboarding, are worked unobtrusively into the narrative. A stand-alone scene that introduces the swipe-tonavigate mechanism before the story starts is an impressive fusion of comic-strip panels and subtle motion cues. That the app doesn’t resort to replicating TV animation and instead opts for the paper cut-out style that is a signature of the developer is another smart design choice.

It all comes together perfectly in this top-notch take on Peanuts—an easy home run. (iPad storybook app. 3-10)

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“As with developer Slap Happy Larry’s previous effort, The Artifacts (2011), this app is packed with telling details, ripe artwork and an underlying melancholy.” from midnight feast

so much so that it wouldn’t have been unreasonable if the developers had broken it up into multiple pirate apps.

Lucky for app bargain hunters, this one’s got it all: a plucky heroine, a funny parrot, lots of treasure and more than enough material to stave off boredom at sea. (iPad storybook app. 4-10)

Sedarat, Roger Illus. by Loeffler, Trade Bluemarker.com $1.99 | Jan. 5, 2013 1.1; Dec. 18, 2012 A trip to the grocery store leads to a whimsical tale as a family struggles to find a home for a dozen baby dinosaurs.

At the store, Leo asks his dad to get an enormous box of eggs.

When they get home, Leo and his dad are surprised to discover a dozen baby dinosaurs have hatched and are happily eating their groceries. Just what are Leo and his family to do when the baby dinosaurs take over their apartment? While dinosaurs running amok is nothing new to children’s books, this original story is pretty nifty. Loeffler’s (Zig and Wikki in Something Ate My Homework, 2010) illustrations are clear, expressive and warm. Young readers will giggle as they try to donate the baby dinosaurs to the museum, take them to school and finally return them to the store. The narration is exaggerated just enough to draw out the humor, emphasizing the playful side of this story. The visual layout includes clear, well-designed presentation of the text on the page, varying the print size and location, creating interest in the words for new readers. Interactive features, usually simple animations or silly sound effects, add to the humor and keep children engaged with the story.

Readers will undoubtedly want to find a basket full of these silly, helpful dinosaurs at their own supermarkets. (iPad storybook app. 3-7)

ALIZAY, PIRATE GIRL SlimCricket SlimCricket $1.99 | May 25, 2013 1.0; June 1, 2013

Alizay, the redheaded pirate preteen of the Bonny Clipper, is always up for a hunt for treasure, especially when it’s with her loving dad, Capt. Rubberfoot (his peg leg is a plunger).

When their ship is becalmed near a mysterious isle, she faces a series of challenges that include a “Frogger”-like river crossing, a music game and secrets that are revealed on a treasure map. Throughout, Alizay stays upbeat and brave, collecting four needles that will reveal the secret of the island. In the best way possible, little is left to chance in the app. Illustrations are richly detailed, with cartoonish animation blending seamlessly with scenes that change perspective when readers tilt the iPad. For younger readers who may not be able to solve all the game’s puzzles, there are “Easy,” “Medium” and “Hard” difficulty settings, and most tough spots can be skipped to continue progressing in the story. There’s not much dazzle in the writing, but the app is more like a clever game with a nice back story than a straight storybook narrative. There’s a lot to Alizay’s adventure, |

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MIDNIGHT FEAST

Stace, Lynley Illus. by Stace, Lynley Slap Happy Larry $3.99 | Jul. 30, 2013 1.0; Jul. 30, 2013

An intricate, sophisticated and dreamy story of a teen’s hunger for not only food, but the world she’s built in her imagination.

In a near future where drought and poverty are the norm, teenage Roya longs for a rich midnight feast so she might forget her worn surroundings—but when she finally stays up for it, is not what she hoped. As with developer Slap Happy Larry’s previous effort, The Artifacts (2011), this app is packed with telling details, ripe artwork and an underlying melancholy. Moody, dark-hued painted pages detailing Roya’s daily life alternate with “B-pages” in which Roya’s mind fills with daydreams, nightmares or literal interpretations of things she hears or thinks; when she imagines her parents laughing their heads off, it’s shown. Many of Roya’s mental wanderings are less disturbing and more transcendent: She imagines a dance hall of shadowy partners in the body of her father’s guitar or a movie theater filling with popcorn. The sum of striking visuals, smartly restrained audio cues, subtle voice acting, unobtrusive narration and navigation, and always-relevant iPad interactive elements is more resonant than overwhelming. Younger readers may be confused and spooked by some of the story’s content; there’s an option to eliminate the “scary sauce” in the story (cleverly represented by a ketchup bottle).

Beautiful, haunting and completely original, Roya’s tale is a 12-course meal of intelligent storytelling. (activities, reading notes) (iPad storybook app. 9-16)

BEAN’S NIGHT

Stephens, Sarah Hines Illus. by Hines, Anna Grossnickle appropo $1.99 | Oct. 20, 2013 1.0; Oct. 20, 2013 Comfy-cozy digital version of a board book (one of a 1998 trio) featuring a black cat and a squeaky toy mouse.

Touch-sensitive elements—a snoring cat, a toy that squeaks when tapped and can be dragged across a floor or tabletop—and animations such as a slowly setting sun or a falling tablecloth add very easy-to-follow motion to Hines’ original, extra-simple domestic scenes. Here, views of Bean snoozing beneath a window sandwich a brief nighttime stalk and chase. Bean’s Baby |

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“The children are comfortable in front of the camera, the dialogue never sounds artificial, and both the video and the graphic segments show top-drawer production values.” from neomad interactive comic

offers a nose-to-nose encounter with a laughing infant followed by a shared nap. Bean’s Games include quick rounds of “Jumping Bean,” “String Bean” and, at last, (unsurprisingly) boneless slumber on the lap of a “Human-Bean.” Along with auto-play or manual-advance options, in all three 11-screen episodes, a child reads aloud (optionally) the one or two words or two-word sentences on each screen, then at the end chirps “Again?” Toddlers will certainly take her up on the invitation.

Not as chewable as the originals, but the enhancements are expertly integrated rather than just tacked on and will welcome rather than overwhelm the target audience. (iPad storybook app. 6 mos.-2)

NEOMAD INTERACTIVE COMIC

Sutu Illus. by Sutu Bighart $2.99 | May 24, 2013 3.0; Jun. 17, 2013

In an electric mix of live video clips, CGI effects and neon-hued comics pages, young Aborigines have exciting adventures both in Western Australia’s Pilbara Desert and in outer space.

The stories center around the scruffy Our Gang–style Love Punks, faces painted to resemble the mottled, elaborate hangout they have built from recycled junk. In the first two episodes, they take a flying car for a joy ride, then encounter the echidna god Jiribuga. Meanwhile, the Satellite Sisters play a fast-paced zero-gravity game and watch over Earth from orbit to protect it from falling space junk. In the finale, the two groups combine to rescue a spaceship full of tourists from being swallowed by the sky god Mingkala. The children are comfortable in front of the camera, the dialogue never sounds artificial, and both the video and the graphic segments show top-drawer production values.

The comics pages are particularly noteworthy: They often alter inventively when swiped rather than just turn and feature melodramatic voice-overs activated by tapping dialogue bubbles, and they were created in part by the young cast itself. Furthermore, tapping bilingual lines a second time causes a translation to appear—or, for effect, sometimes not: “An ancient gigantic angry sky god! It’s trying to suck us into its muji!” Pranks and banter fly as the young cast hilariously hams its way through the plot, but there are also earnestly delivered messages about the importance both of environmental conservation and of respecting traditional beliefs.

Dazzling. (includes three “making of” featurettes) (iPad graphic-novel app. 6-10)

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LOCOMOTIVE

Szymanowicz, Maciej Big Rabbit $1.99 | Sep. 13, 2013 1.0.1; Sep. 13, 2013 A completely delightful interactive ride on an old train full of surprises.

From the beginning, the top-drawer artwork, filigreed, naïve and with burnished, antique color that gleams, captivates. The subject: An old steam engine with a good complement of wagons (as the English would say) filled with burly men and salamis; bananas and a resident monkey; grand pianos, piggies complete with butchers’ marks; milch cows (across-the-pond English, again); cannons and like entertainments. This provides readers with an opportunity to do some counting, learn some new words—stoker, bolster—and engage with the material. Readers can slide a window up and down or load the cannon to produce a bang of festive fireworks, place baggage into a jigsaw, pull a whistle chain and release a bunch of balloons (and then pop them). The text is curious and inviting, with an eccentric cadence that keeps it this side of child’s play: “And of these wagons there’s forty all told, / I can’t tell myself what they can all hold.” The background music is just that: in the background; merry, but pleasingly so. There is also a frame where the train slips quietly into being a toy train—a bow to the imagination—and then out, once again under steam, to resume its journey.

Children lucky enough to encounter this app will understand why certain adults mourn the demise of the night mail, the branch line and the narrow gauge. (iPad storybook app. 4-8)

MILLIE’S CRAZY DINOSAUR ADVENTURE

Taylor, Jennifer; Lowenstein, Randy Illus. by Taylor, Jennifer; Lowenstein, Randy MegaPops $1.99 | Sep. 12, 2013 Series: Millie Was Here 1.0.1; Sep. 26, 2013 Canine explorer Millie here builds a time machine to avoid running late with a friend’s birthday gift, but she soon finds herself chased by a baby T-Rex. The first Millie Was Here app (Millie and the Lost Key, 2011) was a giddy mix of plain dog photos, overlaid graphics and hyperbolic storytelling that made the everyday life of a dog-about-town seem epic. That aesthetic continues here, but it’s been refined. There are still levers, dials, ribbons and springs that beg to be played with on well-built pages. But the story elements themselves have evolved nicely, especially a “Story Switch” feature that adds a reader-selected fork in the road leading to games that are part of Millie’s adventure.

The navigation tray that slides up from the bottom of the screen is unobtrusive but genuinely handy. Other extras include a “Bedtime Mode” (which dims the screen and tones down the games) and clear instructions for parents, two app essentials that should be standard

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A DAY IN THE MARKET

Tobias-Papa, May Illus. by Roxas, Isabel Adarna House, Inc. $0.00 | Feb. 15, 2013 1.0.1; Feb. 15, 2013

This bilingual storybook app lovingly depicts a young Filipino child’s first visit to the market with her grandmother.

Waking early, a young girl is excited to spend the day with her Nanay since “Today is market day!” As they get off the bus, the little girl says, “Nanay and I each carry a bayong. Nanay’s bayong is big and colorful. Mine is small and yellow.” While English speakers may not know what a bayong is, they will realize with a little guesswork that they need to drag the little yellow shopping bag to the young girl’s arms before turning the page. The warm illustrations complement the text, adding details from the busy market. Readers must interact with the app to turn each page, directly and playfully engaging children in the narrative. Easy controls at the beginning of the story allow readers to select English or Filipino language options, and the child-voiced narration is both authentic and easy to understand. Navigation is hindered by the lack of a table of contents or page controls. The original picture book of this story, Araw sa Palengke, won the first Filipino National Child’s Book Award in 2010.

Based on an award-winning picture book from the Philippines, this charming app brings the sights, smells and tastes of a traditional Filipino market to a wide audience. It’s easy to see why this little girl is so happy to visit it. (iPad storybook app. 3-6)

MEGAMAMMAL MEG Meg Atherium’s Guide to the Greatest Mammals That Ever Lived!

Vohs, Sandra Illus. by Lynch, Daryl 3r Interactive LLC $2.99 | Mar. 28, 2013 2.0; Jun. 19, 2013

“I’d like your undivided attention because I’ve got some complaining to do,” opens the shaggy ground sloth in Lynch’s minimally detailed cartoons. Sure, dinosaurs ruled the Earth for 120 million years and then disappeared through tantalizingly mysterious causes. So what? Why should they get all the movies, books, posters, breakfast cereals, pajamas and lunch boxes?

Claiming that nonreptiles deserve at least as much respect, Meg introduces herself and a gallery of equally jumbo Cenozoic Era animals. These include Baluchitherium (Meg calls him “Big Baluka”) and the 7-foot-tall bird Diatryma, which also mysteriously died out. The optional voice-over is particularly lively.

Paired to images of extinct creatures that look like plush toys and respond to taps with a diverse array of silly noises or small animations, Meg’s argument may strike many as compelling.

Perhaps it’s time to chime in on her rallying cry: “Boycott dinosaur lunch boxes! No more dinosaur books at story time!” As if—but she makes a strong case. (iPad informational app. 6-8)

I LOVE MY DAD

Walker, Anna Illus. by Walker, Anna SnappyAnt $3.99 | May 30, 2013 1.0; May 30, 2013 Gently rhyming narration follows Ollie the zebra and his father as they spend a day together cooking, going to the park, painting a fence and reading a story at bedtime.

The delicate illustrations in gray and white with highlights of color are simply and effectively animated with no extra clutter to take away from the charm of the original book (2010). Tapping the characters starts them walking, riding bikes, swinging and so on, with the overall effect enhanced by realistic sounds and refreshingly high-quality, original music. Ollie’s ascent of the tree full of singing birds is particularly noteworthy; each bird is gently animated, and Ollie’s father watches with a smile from a lower branch. The littlest ones will love it when Ollie hides under a blanket and then pops out to shout “Boo!” in classic peekaboo fashion. Although easy page turns and an index page option are available, there is unfortunately no option to turn the narrator off and read it aloud. [Editor’s note: “read to myself ” option added in version 1.1, Nov. 22, 2013.]

Simple enough for preschoolers to enjoy independently, but like the subject itself, this app will be enjoyed most when shared together. (iPad storybook app. 2-5)

This Issue’s Contributors

For children (and grown-ups) who are sick of dinos, dinos, dinos 24/7, here’s a plea from “Meg Atherium” to remember the giant prehistoric mammals. |

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across the board. At the end of her first Indiana Jones–inspired adventure, it wasn’t clear whether her appeal would wear thin, but this latest story shows she’s still a great canine companion. Even the short video clips of Millie do not diminish the series’ homespun, handcrafted feel or lessen its playful touch. Millie’s misadventures could continue indefinitely if the exuberant storytelling and attention to detail hold to this level of quality.

She’s a good dog with a great set of apps. (iPad storybook app. 4-8)

# Mark Athitakis • Robin L. Elliott • Omar Gallaga • Laura Jenkins • Peter Lewis Joe Maniscalco • Gregory McNamee • John Edward Peters • Erika Rohrbach Mary Ann Scheuer

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