April 01, 2013: Volume LXXXI, No 7

Featuring 362 Industry-First Reviews of Fiction, Nonfiction and Children's & Teen

KIRKUS VOL. LXXXI, NO.

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REVIEWS Also In This Issue

Rounded up: Books for Mother’s Day & Father's Day p. 123 Writers Know You Better Than You Know Yourself p. 14 Lemony Snicket & Jon Klassen Reveal the Rules of The Dark p. 96

Nia Vardalos

Instant Mom, Long Struggle p. 56

CHILDREN'S & TEEN

Pancho Rabbit and the Coyote

by Duncan Tonatiuh A rabbit family enacts the all-too-familiar experiences of many who seek a better life in El Norte in this incandescent picture book. p. 118

NONFICTION

Mortal Sins

by Michael D'Antonio A riveting and fascinating document of a watershed era in the life of the Roman Catholic Church p. 54

FICTION

The Silver Star

by Jeannette Walls The best-selling writer talks sisterly bonds. p. 31 Photo by Óttar Guðnason

Artist of the Floating World B Y G RE G O RY MC NA M EE

At a c e r t a i n t i m e i n h i s l i f e , the French impressionist painter Toulouse-Lautrec, for reasons known only to him, took to dressing in the clothes of a Japanese samurai warlord, bought at auction. Paul Gauguin thought enough of his colleague’s strange apparel to mention it several times in his correspondence, noting that he had no idea of what Toulouse was up to. But ToulouseLautrec’s garb signaled one of the impressionists’ few acts of open homage to another school of rebels, worshipped by Whistler, Van Gogh, Monet and Seurat, as well as by Gauguin and ToulouseLautrec themselves: the ukiyo-e artists of 19th-century Japan.

The ukiyo-e school, born in the Buddhist tradition, offered “pictures of the floating world,” the world of sensory impression and experience that we take to be real, as unadorned as an Ansel Adams photograph. Its practitioners worked almost exclusively on publishers’ commissions, and most of them, naturally, were dirt-poor. One of the greatest of the ukiyo-e painters was Hokusai, a magnificent artist who toward the end of his life was reduced to begging for his daily meals.

Another, equally poor, was Hiroshige, who died 155 years ago, just before the period of Japanese history that Mark Ravina depicts in his fine biography The Last Samurai (Wiley, $16.95).

Born Ando Tokutaro in 1797, Hiroshige (the pseudonym, one of many he used, is thought to mean “made mad by water”) was the son of the fire warden of Edo (now Tokyo) Castle. He inherited the position and worked at it for two decades, secretly studying woodblock printing with the Zen artist Toyohiro, who taught him Western techniques of landscape and perspective that were new to and even forbidden in Japan. Hiroshige soon surpassed his teacher, and his collection of woodblock prints, Fifty-Three Stations on the Tokaido (the road from Tokyo to Kyoto), and later his Eight Views from Omi, established him as a master of depicting everyday life.

Hiroshige’s work became known in Europe almost immediately after his death, deeply influencing those who would later become the impressionists. In the United States, Hiroshige’s work received less attention, so that when Crosby Stuart Noyes, publisher of the Washington Star, donated a hundred Hiroshige prints to the Library of Congress in 1906, they were buried and forgotten in the vaults. Rediscovered, those prints were first published nearly 30 years ago as The Sketchbooks of Hiroshige (George Braziller, $35), a book that, reissued in 2001, is now out of print but fairly easy to find in the secondhand market.

Hiroshige’s favorite subjects—the banks of the Sumida River, Mount Fuji, samurais and geishas, travelers, common people at their daily work, actors in the Kabuki theater, characters from Japanese folklore, animals and fishes—are abundant in the collection. Through those images, Hiroshige continues to exercise the attention and admiration of our best artists; Barry Moser’s roiling wave, the woodblock print that graces the opening chapter of the Arion Press/University of California Press edition of Moby-Dick ($34.95), is a descendant of the tidal bore in Hiroshige’s “Waves, Sail, and Flying Crane.” It’s time for a revival of the artist of the floating world—and for a new edition of the Sketchbooks to work its ways with the next generation of Western artists.

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

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This Issue’s Contributors

Elfrieda Abbe • Maude Adjarian • Mark Athitakis • Michael Autrey • Adam benShea • Amy Boaz • Lee E. Cart • Marnie Colton • Gregory F. DeLaurier • Kathleen Devereaux • Bobbi Dumas • Daniel Dyer • Lisa Elliott • Peter Franck • Faith Giordano • Jeff Hoffman • Robert M. Knight • Christina M. Kratzner • Paul Lamey • Louise Leetch • Judith Leitch • Peter Lewis • Elsbeth Lindner • Raina Lipsitz • Don McLeese • Gregory McNamee • Brett Milano • Carole Moore • Clayton Moore • Liza Nelson • Mike Newirth • John Noffsinger • Mike Oppenheim • Jim Piechota • Christofer D. Pierson • William E. Pike • Gary Presley • Karen Rigby • Erika Rohrbach • Lloyd Sachs • Bob Sanchez • Sandra Sanchez • Michael Sandlin • William P. Shumaker • Rosanne Simeone • Elaine Sioufi • Wendy Smith • Margot E. Spangenberg • Andria Spencer • Bill Thompson • Claire Trazenfeld • Steve Weinberg • Rodney Welch • Carol White • Chris White • Joan Wilentz • Alex Zimmerman

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contents fiction Index to Starred Reviews............................................................5 REVIEWS.................................................................................................5 Vendela Vida on the Believer’s Always Apprentices....14

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

Mystery..............................................................................................32 Science Fiction & Fantasy.......................................................... 37 Romance............................................................................................38

nonfiction Index to Starred Reviews..........................................................41 REVIEWS...............................................................................................41 Nia Vardalos’ Instant Mom, After a Long Struggle.....56

children’s & teen Index to Starred Reviews......................................................... 79 REVIEWS.............................................................................................. 79 Lemony Snicket & Jon Klassen Reveal the Rules of The Dark............................................................................................ 96 books for mother’s day & father’s day............................. 123 interactive e-books.................................................................. 128

indie Index to Starred Reviews.........................................................135 REVIEWS..............................................................................................135 Nisa Burns’ Kitchenability Success....................................142

Neil Gaiman delivers a poignant and heartbreaking, eloquent and frightening, impeccably rendered fable. See the starred review on p. 12. |

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on the web w w w. k i r k u s . c o m

and before long, he begins to neglect his studies and live a double life: one in the rarified world of Harvard, the other as an exile with Kalaj on the streets of Cambridge.

Check out these highlights from Kirkus’ online coverage at www.kirkus.com 9

Gordon West interviews Aaron Hartzler about his new, starred young-adult memoir, Rapture Practice: My One-Way Ticket to Salvation.

Hartzler grew up in a home where he was taught that at any moment the rapture could happen, that Jesus might come down in the twinkling of an eye and scoop Aaron and his family up to heaven. As a kid, Aaron was thrilled by the idea that every moment of every day might be his last one on planet Earth. But as Aaron turns 16, he finds himself more attached to his earthly life and curious about all the things his family forsakes for the Lord. He begins to realize he doesn’t want the rapture to happen just yet—not before he sees his first movie, stars in the school play or has his first kiss.

Eventually, Aaron makes the plunge from conflicted do-gooder to full-fledged teen rebel.

We interview noted historian David Cannadine about his new book The Undivided Past: Humanity Beyond Our Differences, which Kirkus gave a rare starred review. Investigating the six most salient categories of human identity, difference and confrontation—religion, nation, class, gender, race and civilization—Cannadine questions just how determinative each of them has really been. For while each has motivated people dramatically at particular moments, they have rarely been as pervasive, as divisive, or as important as is suggested by such simplified polarities as “us versus them,” “black versus white,” or “the clash of civilizations.” For most of recorded time, these identities have been more fluid and these differences less unbridgeable than political leaders and media commentators—and some historians—would have us believe. Yet our public discourse is polarized more than ever around the same simplistic divisions, and Manichaean narrative has become the default mode to explain everything that is happening in the world today. “They take it for granted and do not write about it,” Cannadine, the Dodge Professor of History at Princeton University, tells Kirkus writer Bill Thompson. “But historically, there is quite a lot of good news.”

For the latest new releases every day, go online to Kirkus.com. It’s where our editors and contributing blog partners bring you the best in science fiction, mysteries and thrillers, literary fiction and nonfiction, teen books and children’s books, Indie publishing and more.

And be sure to check out our Indie publishing series, featuring some of today’s most intriguing self-published authors, including television producers Colin and Ryan Pyle. Each week, we feature authors’ exclusive personal essays on how they achieved their success in publishing. It’s a must-read resource for any aspiring author interested in getting readers to notice their new books.

From the history of unity to assimilation—David Garza asks best-selling novelist André Aciman about his April novel Harvard Square. It’s the fall of 1977, and amid the lovely, leafy streets of Cambridge, a young Harvard graduate student, a Jew from Egypt, longs more than anything to become an assimilated American and a professor of literature. He spends his days in a pleasant blur of 17thcentury fiction, but when he meets a brash, charismatic Arab cab driver in a Harvard Square cafe, everything changes. Nicknamed Kalashnikov—Kalaj for short—for his machine-gun vitriol, the cab driver roars into the student’s life with his denunciations of the American obsession with “all things jumbo and ersatz”—Twinkies, monster television sets, all-you-can-eat buffets—and his outrageous declarations on love and the art of seduction. The student finds it hard to resist his new friend’s magnetism,

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fiction THE BOLEYN KING

These titles earned the Kirkus Star:

Andersen, Laura Ballantine (368 pp.) $15.00 paper | Jun. 4, 2013 978-0-345-53409-5

LEXICON by Max Barry........................................................................7 THE OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE by Neil Gaiman..............12 NOS4A2 by Joe Hill............................................................................. 17 FLAT WATER TUESDAY by Ron Irwin...............................................19 THE THIEF OF WORDS by Starling Lawrence...................................22 RED SPECTRES by Muireann Maguire..............................................23 VISITATION STREET by Ivy Pochoda..................................................27 BIG BROTHER by Lionel Shriver....................................................... 29 THE SILVER STAR by Jeannette Walls................................................. 31 BLUNT IMPACT by Lisa Black.............................................................32 LUCKY BASTARD by Deborah Coonts................................................. 33 THE APPLE ORCHARD by Susan Wiggs............................................ 40 LEXICON

Barry, Max Penguin Press (384 pp.) $26.95 Jun. 18, 2013 978-1-59420-538-5

A debut novel that considers what might have happened if Anne Boleyn had been able to give Henry VIII the male heir he required.

In real life, Anne Boleyn miscarried.

In this re-imagined history, she gives birth to a son, William. William is 10 when his father, Henry, dies and he becomes king. Among the extended family are youngsters who are raised with William, including Dominic and the girl they call Minuette, who keeps a diary. The three become good friends, and later, the two young men both fall in love with Minuette. William’s half sister Mary (of Bloody Mary fame) maintains a staunch Catholicism while the rest of the family supports the Protestant faith. Mary is seen as a threat who could possibly lead a Catholic rebellion, tearing England apart. Peace comes, and war is waged against foreign nations based on whether those nations are predominantly Catholic or Protestant. There is fighting and spying and a conspiracy around a rumored written affidavit that states William is not Henry’s son after all.

An entertaining book for Tudor history buffs that’s grounded in acute psychological and political insight.

FIVE STAR BILLIONAIRE

Aw, Tash Spiegel & Grau (400 pp.) $26.00 | Jul. 2, 2013 978-0-8129-9434-6

Making it in Shanghai: Five immigrants find life challenging in Malaysian Aw’s third outing.

All five are ethnic Chinese from Malaysia. Phoebe and Gary are from the poor, rural North; Justin and Yinghui are from powerful, wealthy families. There’s also Walter Chao (more about him later). Phoebe has little going for her, but she knows from self-help books to re-invent herself. Gary, still in his teens, is a pop star; after wowing them in Taiwan, he’s preparing for his first Shanghai concert. Yinghui was forced to leave Malaysia when the family business collapsed; now 37, she owns two successful lingerie stores. Justin is here on family business |

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“A gorgeously spun and deftly told tale.” from the house of impossible loves

to acquire real estate. When he and Yinghui, who knew each other in Malaysia, have a chance meeting, it counts as a hallelujah moment, simply since any character interaction is a relief from the long slabs of exposition. The only break has been the voice of Walter Chao, who addresses the reader directly. He has overcome poverty in Malaysia to become a successful businessman and author of self-help books (yes, Phoebe’s read them).

Walter’s a philanthropist, he tells us, but is he reliable or a con man? The question gathers urgency after he persuades Yinghui to invest in a cultural center. The answer comes only at the very end, in one throwaway sentence, Aw having seemingly lost interest in his own handiwork. Shanghai, painted in broad strokes, is a city that never sleeps, an eerie replica of New York. There are numerous flashbacks to Malaysia, where Yinghui had a long relationship with Justin’s brother; the only interesting writing is the barbed treatment of these two Westernized poseurs.

A clunky novel.

THE HOUSE OF IMPOSSIBLE LOVES

Barrio, Cristina López Translated by Carter, Lisa Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (336 pp.) $25.00 | Jun. 4, 2013 978-0-547-66119-3 The Laguna family is cursed. Generation after generation of women fall hopelessly in love and bear only daughters, who, in time, suffer their own hopeless loves.

Young-adult author Barrio offers her first novel for adults.

Imbued with magical realism, Barrio’s tale of lost loves sparkles.

In the fall of 1897, a handsome Andalusian landowner arrives in the small Castilian town to hunt, but before he can chase the first stag, he is caught himself by the golden eyes of Clara Laguna. Her mother is the town witch, renowned for making protective amulets, repairing hymens and predicting the future by throwing cat bones. Undaunted by the townspeople who urge him to stay away from the cursed family, the Andalusian instead embarks on an impassioned love affair. Clara’s mother encourages the affair but discourages Clara’s hopes of marriage, even when he returns the following year. She’s right, of course.

The Andalusian abandons Clara, leaving her pregnant with yet another Laguna girl. He also leaves her with the means to exact a strange revenge: Clara turns the house he gave her into a brothel. Behind the house grows a magical garden, lush with roses and tomatoes that defy the cycle of seasons. Named the Scarlet Manor, the house itself attracts not only clients eager to have the golden-eyed Clara, but also a bearded woman, who escapes the circus to become Clara’s enamored cook, and a wild-eyed priest, who bewitches his congregation with sermons born of war. The Laguna women’s saga continues through Clara’s daughter and granddaughter, until at last a boy is born into the family. Yet the curse may still have a few tricks to play.

A gorgeously spun and deftly told tale.

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DARK LIES THE ISLAND Stories

Barry, Kevin Graywolf (192 pp.) $24.00 | Sep. 24, 2013 978-1-55597-651-4

In his latest, Irish author Barry (City of Bohane, 2011, etc.) offers 10 pieces of literary fiction.

A postmodern lens reflects youthful ineptness in “Across the Rooftops.”

In “Wifey Redux,” perhaps the collection’s best story, Saoirse, “blonde and wispily slight with a delicate, bone-china complexion,” marries, births Ellie and turns to Pinot Grigio, while her dutiful husband becomes consumed by their daughter’s beauty and her sex-obsessed suitors. A blocked poet turned innkeeper herds horny Belarus staff and droning, alcoholic locals in “Fjord of Killary” until, epiphany-flooded, “I felt a new, quiet ecstasy take hold. The gloom of youth had at last lifted.” In “A Cruelty,” a boy/man/child, autistic perhaps, time-obsessed, fixated on lunch-pack Chocolate Goldgrains, is accosted by a bully, perhaps a rapist, certainly “hyena,” his safely circumscribed world forever fractured. Later, a sad group of ale fanciers makes a humorous and melancholy “Beer Trip to Llandudno.” Irish lyricism shines throughout the collection. “Ernestine and Kit” opens so—“the world was fat on the blood of summer”—but relates a tale as black as a witch’s heart. A kitchen steward, “black mass of backcombed hair and a graveyard pallor,” fumbles into a double-dealing bombing plot in “The Mainland Campaign.” A broken lover laments in “Wistful England,” and Jameson whiskey–loving “Doctor Sot” finds drunken perceptions reflected by psychotic Mag, a traveler. An on-the-run drug dealer confronts the devil, twisted overseer of two sisters, eight wild children and chained feral dogs in “The Girls and the Dogs.” A rattletrap “White Hitachi” van is home to Patrick, incompetent thief, intent upon saving his brother from “Castlerea prison, or the secure ward at the madhouse (many a Mullaney had bothered the same walls).” The title story is penultimate, a young artist, a cutter, from a fractured family seeks west Ireland solace. “Berlin Arkonaplatz—My Lesbian Summer” concludes the collection, Irish writer Patrick entrapped and enlightened by bohemian Silvija, “beautiful, foul-mouthed and inviolate.”

Winner of the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, Barry writes stories that are character-driven, archetypical yet magnetic, pushing toward realism’s edge where genre becomes irrelevant.

LEXICON

Barry, Max Penguin Press (384 pp.) $26.95 | Jun. 18, 2013 978-1-59420-538-5 Modern-day sorcerers fight a war of words in this intensely analytical yet bombastic thriller.

Barry (Machine Man, 2011, etc.) is usually trying to be the funny guy in the world of postmodern satire, with arrows keenly aimed at corporate greed and how to make it in advertising. Apparently, our Australian comrade has changed his mind, racing up alongside the likes of Neal Stephenson with this smart, compelling, action-packed thriller about the power of words. In a deft narrative move, Barry parallels two distinct storylines before bringing them together with jaw-dropping surprises. In the first, a carpenter named Wil is jumped in an airport bathroom by a pair of brutal agents who kill his girlfriend

and kidnap him for reasons unknown. In a storyline a few years back, we meet a smart, homeless grifter named Emily Ruff on the streets of San Francisco. After a run-in with a mark, Emily is invited to train under the auspices of a mysterious international syndicate known as “The Poets.” The shady peddlers of influence and power force Emily to study words as if they were a source of incredible power—and in the hands of gifted prodigies like Emily, they are. What could have been a sly attempt to satirize postmodern marketing and social media becomes something of a dark fantasy as couplets intended merely to influence become spell-like incantations with the power to kill.

Back in America with Wil and his new captor, Elliot, we learn that Wil is the sole survivor of a terminal event in rural Australia and is being relentlessly pursued by Woolf, the perpetrator of the attack in Oz. In the background, the cult’s mysterious leader, Yeats, pulls strings that put everyone at risk, and no one turns out to be who we imagined.

An up-all-night thriller for freaks and geeks who want to see their wizards all grown up in the real world and armed to the teeth in a bloody story.

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DAMN LOVE

Beach-Ferrara, Jasmine Ig Publishing (200 pp.) $15.95 paper | Jun. 11, 2013 978-1-9354397-8-3 Whether she’s writing about gay or straight relationships, the dynamics of family ties or friendships, Beach-Ferrara’s exploration of the numerous types of love are spot-on in her debut short story collection.

Set primarily in San Francisco and North Carolina, she links the characters as many of them move in and out of each other’s lives, dealing with common emotions and often complicated situations. In “Stayin’ Alive,” physician Alex struggles with the death of a relationship as thoughts of her deceased uncle, a drug addict who taught Alex to cuss and was instrumental in her success, play out in her mind. In “Different Paths, Same Woods” and “American Martyr,” readers meet Ruth, a stoic, cancerstricken mother caught between her husband’s rejection of their gay son, Peter, and her need to reconcile. “Custody Bus” transports a divorced woman who has trysts with her ex-husband in various hotel rooms (where she works) back to her earlier days when children of divorced parents were forced every Friday to board a bus to comply with court-ordered visitations with noncustodial parents. On the eve of deploying to Fallujah with her National Guard unit, Keisha, a Durham police officer in “Love the Soldier,” conducts one final stakeout and reflects upon her older brother’s death, her failed marriage and the secret that she keeps from her pastor father and devout mother. Expressive and sincere, Beach-Ferrara’s stories give voice to common, yet often uncomfortable, themes in society: same-sex love and issues of marriage, identity, religious beliefs, military service and intolerance.

The author’s success—she’s a minister and LGBT rights advocate—lies in the simplicity of her style and the honesty of her words as she builds each story, one as fine as the next.

THE WONDER BREAD SUMMER

Blau, Jessica Anya Perennial/HarperCollins (272 pp.) $14.99 paper | May 28, 2013 978-0-06-219955-3 1983 is like, a bummer, man, in this hazy quasi-comedy about sex, blow and what’s next.

No stranger to the unique strain of adolescent nostalgia for California after her similarly themed debut, The Summer of Naked Swim Parties, Blau (Drinking Closer to Home, 2011, etc.) goes over the top, sometimes very uncomfortably, with this druggie blast from the past.

Set in the Los Angeles glory days of hair, metal and valley porn, the author designs quite the odd duck to center her gray comedy.

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When we open on shiftless Berkeley college student/remindus-yet-one-more-time-she’s-Jewish-biracial-Asian—wait, she has a name, it’s Allie Dodgson. Anyway, the girl is not doing so hot. She loaned a bunch of money to her dreamy boyfriend, who promptly broke up with her. To make ends meet, Allie is working in a crappy dress shop in Oakland with her BFF Beth, snorting coke and trying to avoid the antagonistic penis of her masturbatory employer Jonas. Unfortunately for her, tuition and the rent are both due, and Jonas isn’t giving up her paycheck without a fight. In a fit of pique, Allie swoops up a Wonder Bread bag full of high-octane cocaine, and she’s off on her After Hours-esque misadventure. There are a lot of bad decisions, a lot of poorly made decisions and a lot of kooky characters to keep Allie rolling and tumbling. “I want to go back to school next summer,” Allie says. “I want to stay in Berkeley and graduate with honors. I want to return this car to my friend Beth. I don’t want to be a cokesnorting thief.” There’s a bit of lost-girl syndrome as Allie tries to reconnect with her rock-star mother and her absentee father.

But tastes will vary—between the paraplegic porn producer and Allie shagging Billy Idol (seriously), most readers will have made up their minds one way or another.

Meant to be Alice in Wonderland by way of Boogie Nights, the book comes off more like vintage Tarantino performed

by HBO’s Girls.

TUMBLEDOWN

Boswell, Robert Graywolf (448 pp.) $26.00 | Aug. 6, 2013 978-1-55597-649-1 A book that reminds readers that the wages of sin are myriad and include the opportunity to find oneself.

James Candler knows better. A counselor at the Onyx Springs Rehabilitation and Therapeutic Center, he seems poised to become the center’s youngest director. He has a colorful cast of clients, a fiancee about to arrive from London—he proposed via text message—an expensive car he doesn’t respect himself for buying, a drafty stucco McMansion in a bedroom— read bedlam—community, and a roommate, his oldest and best friend Billy Atlas, who can barely get himself out of bed much less hold up the world. The engaged Candler hooks up with a woman he does not realize is his stalker. She, like everyone in the book, is the benevolent avatar of an evil type. Though bad things happen, and Boswell conjures menace with ease, the conclusion of the story will frustrate or please, depending upon your feelings about literary conceits; conceits Boswell handles masterfully. Boswell displays immense talent for characterization and observation, the narrator moving seamlessly among more than a dozen named characters, all with some connection to the haunted and impulsive Candler. Time is elastic, the fate of one character suspended while Boswell moves his attention back to follow a different character through the same few days, hours or minutes. Boswell makes only one misstep in a novel

“...a moving and open-eyed coming-of-age story.” from we need new names

that seems guaranteed to deliver pleasure: Karly Hopper, a client at the rehab center, is drop-dead gorgeous and developmentally disabled, but only enough to make her laugh at everything and flirt with everyone. She’s less a character than a waking wet dream, and her redemption—and whom she redeems—is too pat. Boswell (The Heyday of Insensitive Bastards, 2009, etc.), recipient of two NEA Fellowships, a Guggenheim Fellowship and a PEN West Award for Fiction, shares the Cullen Chair in Creative Writing at the University of Houston with his wife, writer Antonya Nelson.

An impressive work.

WE NEED NEW NAMES

Bulawayo, NoViolet Reagan Arthur/Little, Brown (304 pp.) $25.00 | May 21, 2013 978-0-316-23081-0 A loosely concatenated novel in which Darling, the main character and narrator of the story, moves from her traditional life in Zimbabwe to a much less traditional one in the States.

For Darling, life in Zimbabwe is both difficult and distressing. Her wonderfully named friends include Chipo, Bastard, Godknows and Sbho, and she also has a maternal figured called Mother of Bones. The most pathetic of Darling’s friends is Chipo, who’s been impregnated by her own grandfather and who undergoes a brutal abortion. The friends have little to do but go on adventures that involve stealing guavas in more affluent neighborhoods than the one they come from (disjunctively named “Paradise”), an act that carries its own punishment since the constipation they experience afterward is almost unbearable. Violence and tragedy become a casual and expected part of their lives. In one harrowing scene, their “gang” attacks a white-owned farm and both humiliates and brutalizes the owners. Also, after a long period of absence and neglect, Darling’s father returns, suffering from AIDS. Spiritual sustenance is rare and comes in the form of an evangelist with the unlikely but ripe name of Prophet Revelations Bitchington Mborro. Eventually, and rather abruptly, Darling moves from the heat and dirt of Zimbabwe to live with her Aunt Fostalina and Uncle Kojo in the American Midwest, a place that seems so unlike her vision of America that it feels unreal. In America, Darling must put up with teasing that verges on abuse and is eager to return to Zimbabwe, for her aunt is working two jobs to pay for a house in one of the very suburbs that Darling and her friends used to invade.

Bulawayo crafts a moving and open-eyed coming-ofage story.

ON THE FLOOR

Campbell, Aifric Picador (256 pp.) $26.00 | Jun. 25, 2013 978-1-250-02839-6 Former investment banker Campbell peppers her debut novel with dense financial industry jargon in this study of a woman at a crossroads in life.

Geri holds the key to one of the world’s most enigmatic men, Felix Mann, an economic hedge fund manager with very deep pockets and an odd attachment to the London-based woman. In addition to her capability to grasp and solve mathematical equations in the blink of an eye and an intuitive talent for handling a tricky character like Felix, Geri’s also ensconced in a male-dominated universe. Geri is currently suffering the recent loss of the man she loves. When Stephen walked out on her, Geri fell apart, but she still maintains an outward cool. Only her close friend,

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Zanna, can pierce the armor she wears to ward off both the pity and curiosity of her fellow players in the financial world. Then comes the offer, more of a demand really, from Felix, who wants her to relocate from London to Hong Kong, where he lives and operates. When Geri met him for the first time, Felix amused himself by having her solve complex mathematical problems and then seeing how far she would go when presented with unappealing and distinctly non-British table delicacies, such as turtle blood. Now she must decide whether or not she will relocate. Those unfamiliar with and/or uninterested in the stock market will find the first part of the book tough slogging, but readers who manage to stick around may find the unexpected ending worth the effort.

Campbell’s story, interwoven with the outbreak of the Gulf War, excels when she concentrates on the little details that make her characters interesting.

DADDY’S GONE A HUNTING

Clark, Mary Higgins Simon & Schuster (352 pp.) $26.99 | Apr. 9, 2013 978-1-4516-6894-0

Clark follows a complicated family mystery in this familiar story of individuals caught up in past misdeeds and present tragedies.

As sisters, Kate and Hannah Connelly couldn’t be more unalike: One is tall, blonde and good with numbers, the other, short with charcoal brown hair, is a budding fashion designer. But the two sisters share more than simply the bond that comes with being siblings—they have a father who is distant, self-absorbed and disinterested in their concerns. The three are tied together by virtue of the family business, which produces high-quality antique reproductions. When the quality of the products and orders fall off, the girls pressure their father, who wants to be called by his first name, Doug, to sell out. He refuses, despite their best efforts. Then, one night, the complex explodes, killing a former employee and landing Kate in the hospital, unconscious and fighting for her life. Clark then trots out the current plant manager; the widow and daughter of the dead man; two fire marshals, along with the wife of one of them; a woman whose daughter disappeared after moving to New York City in order to become an actress and her son, who is a lawyer; the family of a college student who was murdered two years earlier; a retired police detective; Hannah’s best friend; and a plethora of other characters, all of whom are described down to their dental work. Also figuring heavily in the plot is a long-ago accident in which a boat driven by Doug Connelly sank and killed his wife, Susan, and his brother and the aftereffects of the Vietnam War. While the two fire marshals inexplicably continue to follow a case that spreads to include not simply arson, but other, more serious crimes that are not related to the explosion, the other characters find their lives and fates converging.

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Too many characters and too much extraneous information pad this lackluster tale that will resonate with Clark die-hards but won’t bring new converts to the fold.

SUSPECT

Crais, Robert Putnam (320 pp.) $27.95 | Jan. 22, 2013 978-0-399-16148-3 Veteran thriller-maven Crais (Taken, 2012, etc.) returns with a pleasingly perplexing storyline fresh from the headlines.

The heroine of the piece is Maggie, a 3-year-old German shepherd on her second deployment as a patrol and bomb-sniffing dog in Afghanistan. She is fiercely loyal to her handler—so when the inevitable happens, as it does in the evocative, grisly set piece that opens Crais’ latest, she’s thrown for a loop. Crais has to get a little didactic to provide the basis for innocent civilians: “Dogs suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder shared similar stress reactions with humans, and could sometimes be retrained, but it was slow work that required great patience on the part of the trainer, and enormous trust on the part of the dog.” True dat. For her sacrifice, Maggie is not sent to live out her life on the farm, but instead teamed up with trauma-stricken, guilt-ridden LAPD officer Scott James, who, like Maggie, has lost his partner in action. The difference is that Maggie’s handlers know who the bad guys were, whereas James has to go Rambo and find out who shot up him and his friend. The answer, revealed after a sequence of carefully plotted, well-described episodes, won’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s read James Ellroy’s L.A. Confidential, though the resolution is more up-to-date. The story takes in vast swaths of Los Angeles in all its multicultural glory, with baddies in the drug and diamond and policing businesses alike. And it’s oddly affecting, with Crais ably capturing the bond between humans and canines without veering into sentimentality.

A solid, muscular thriller, well-spun.

PASTORS’ WIVES

Cullen, Lisa Takeuchi Plume (368 pp.) $16.00 paper | Apr. 30, 2013 978-0-452-29882-8 Marriage to the man at the pulpit is an ordeal of biblical proportions for a trio of wives in this uneven debut from former Time reporter Cullen.

Ruthie and Jerry fulfill our expectations of New Yorkers—he works in finance, she in PR, and they live busy lives filled with takeout and friends. Then Jerry is called to God. Ruthie, a lapsed

Catholic, is stunned but supportive when Jerry announces he is quitting Wall Street to work for an evangelical megachurch in Georgia. She always knew Jerry was spiritual (after all, they met while he was a theology student), but their religious differences seemed irrelevant to their urban life. Soon enough, the two are on the campus of the Greenleaf Church, where staff and parishioners are encouraged to drive green hybrids, use the church’s store and cafe, enjoy the Christian-themed yoga studio and enroll the kids in their day care. Ruthie and Jerry are housed in the same gated community where the church’s charismatic leader, Aaron Green, and his wife, Candace, live.

Ruthie is strangely nonplused by their move to a Southern-style Stepford and is in fact impressed by first lady Candace. While Jerry is turning into Pastor Green’s right-hand man, Ruthie makes friends with Ginger, Candace and Aaron’s daughter-inlaw. Ginger is often alone with her two small children (while her husband happily jets around the world on disaster relief missions), at the mercy of Candace’s haughty commands. When Ginger’s past (an Internet porn career before she was saved and married) comes to light, Candace shows everyone how to play

hardball. Meanwhile, Ruthie fears that she and Jerry are drifting apart and that he is seeing the choir’s lead singer, a true believer, which is something Ruthie will never be. Though Cullen’s story occasionally feels like a juicy secret revealed, the novel lacks a consistent authorial point of view. Filled with Bible verses and an insider’s unquestioning acceptance of evangelicalism (the novel could do well in the Christian fiction market), it fails to fully examine Ruthie’s role as outsider until the end.

A case of a reporter’s objectivity failing the needs of fiction.

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“A good beach read....” from all the summer girls

ALL THE SUMMER GIRLS

Donohue, Meg Morrow/HarperCollins (288 pp.) $14.99 paper | May 21, 2013 978-0-06-220381-6 A fast-paced novel about the enduring friendship of three young women who spent their summers in Avalon on the Jersey shore before dispersing across the country.

The book opens with Kate, now a lawyer in the girls’ original hometown of Philadelphia. Kate’s fiance, a man she met in law school, breaks up with her the same day she learns she is pregnant with their baby. Then we meet Vanessa, now living in New York City. Vanessa has given up her career as an art dealer in the city to raise her daughter Lucy and is struggling with her husband’s confession that he recently came close to cheating on her. Then we meet Dani, an aspiring novelist who has just lost her job in a bookstore in San Francisco. Dani is still dealing with drug and alcohol addictions and is still looking for Mr. Right. When the three decide to get together and spend the 4th of July holiday back in Avalon, they are each haunted by memories of Kate’s twin brother, Colin, who tragically drowned there eight years earlier when they were all on the cusp of adulthood. Woven into the mystery of Colin’s demise are other issues of childhood that influenced each of the young women. As they look back on the painful past and flirt with future opportunities, the women finally share the secrets they had kept all those years, forgive one another and prepare themselves to move on in positive ways.

A good beach read, set in a beach town.

OH DEAR SILVIA

French, Dawn Harper/HarperCollins (320 pp.) $24.99 | May 28, 2013 978-0-06-227181-5 Will Silvia, who’s in a coma in the hospital, ever speak again? If not, then her visitors, friends and family will help piece together her story, while also revealing their own.

Popular British television comedian French, who has already published two best-sellers in the U.K., makes her American debut with a downbeat story of family fracture narrated from multiple perspectives, using voices sometimes profane, sometimes strongly colored by dialect for comic effect, although the result is more clumsy than funny. If there’s a plot, it’s the mystery of why Silvia Shute became a different woman five years ago, suddenly divorcing her husband and estranging herself from her two children. The explanation emerges through the drip-drip repetitive pattern of chapters devoted to the individual visitors to her bedside after her mysterious three-story fall, each of these characters heavily 12

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delineated on each visit. Wacky sister Jo tries many offbeat remedies to wake Silvia up, even bringing a male stripper to the hospital bedside. Friend Cat and Indonesian housekeeper Tia reveal agendas, while busy Nurse Winnie tells her own tale while tending to Sylvia’s physical needs. It’s a labored form, and the conclusion is thin.

French has a big, buoyant TV personality; how different from this dull, incomplete little story.

THE OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE

Gaiman, Neil Morrow/HarperCollins (192 pp.) $25.99 | Jun. 18, 2013 978-0-06-225565-5 From one of the great masters of modern speculative fiction: Gaiman’s first novel for adults since Anansi Boys (2005).

An unnamed protagonist and narrator returns to his Sussex roots to attend a funeral. Although his boyhood dwelling no longer stands, at the end of the road lies the Hempstock farm, to which he’s drawn without knowing why. Memories begin to flow. The Hempstocks were an odd family, with 11-year-old Lettie’s claim that their duck pond was an ocean, her mother’s miraculous cooking and her grandmother’s reminiscences of the Big Bang; all three seemed much older than their apparent ages. Forty years ago, the family lodger, a South African opal miner, gambled his fortune away, then committed suicide in the Hempstock farmyard. Something dark, deadly and far distant heard his dying lament and swooped closer. As the past becomes the present, Lettie takes the boy’s hand and confidently sets off through unearthly landscapes to deal with the menace; but he’s only 7 years old, and he makes a mistake. Instead of banishing the predator, he brings it back into the familiar world, where it reappears as his family’s new housekeeper, the demonic Ursula Monkton. Terrified, he tries to flee back to the Hempstocks, but Ursula easily keeps him confined as she cruelly manipulates and torments his parents and sister.

Despite his determination and well-developed sense of right and wrong, he’s also a scared little boy drawn into adventures beyond his understanding, forced into terrible mistakes through innocence. Yet, guided by a female wisdom beyond his ability to comprehend, he may one day find redemption.

Poignant and heartbreaking, eloquent and frightening, impeccably rendered, it’s a fable that reminds us how our lives are shaped by childhood experiences, what we gain from them and the price we pay.

KING OF CUBA

García, Cristina Scribner (256 pp.) $26.00 | May 21, 2013 978-1-4767-1024-2 Fidel Castro contemplates his legacy at the end of his life while a disgruntled Cuban expat plots to hurry that end along.

The latest from National Book Award– nominated novelist García (Dreaming in Cuban, 1992, etc.) attempts to get inside the head of Castro, who, deep in his 80s, stubbornly clings to the ideals of the revolution while musing on lost loves and past glories.

(One well-turned set piece turns on a chintzy musical performed in his honor about the thwarted Bay of Pigs invasion.) Scenes starring Castro alternate with those featuring Goyo, a contemporary of the leader (they attended university at the same time) who’s plotting el presidente’s assassination for a universe of reasons, including the deaths of his father and brother. Goyo’s scheme seems at first like an idle Internet obsession, but when Castro announces plans to speak at the United Nations in New York, Goyo turns serious and plans a road trip. Coming along for the ride is Goyo’s drugaddict son, prompting a host of memories of what used to be and what could have been. Castro has similar fixations, which is García’s point: Though Castro and Goyo live two different lives, their memories and heartbreaks each have a similar resonance. To that end, the style of the book resembles less a thriller than a meditative, lightly comic tale of two lust-fueled men on quixotic journeys. Footnoted asides from Cubans and Cuban expats add some broader perspective to the two men’s deeply interior lives, but the book thrives on the intimacy of its leads; in García’s hands, the insomniac, long-winded, mulishly committed dictator becomes, if not exactly sympathetic, at least entertainingly comprehensible.

A clever, well-conceived dual portrait that shows what connects and divides Cubans inside and outside of the island.

Nauplios’ narration, we learn of the difficulties faced by the heroes who accompany Jason in his quest for the Golden Fleece, his ticket to reclaim his rightful inheritance. After harrowing adventures, the Argonauts arrive in Colchis, where Medea’s father, Aetes, sets Jason impossible tasks to acquire the fleece.

Medea instantly falls in love with the charismatic Jason and secretly helps him when he promises to marry her and be forever faithful. When Aetes reneges on his promise, Medea flees with the Argonauts, aiding them on the dangerous trip home.

Even though Jason proves to be a weak and faithless husband, Medea continues to help him in his fight to become king. Using her skills as a sorceress earns her the enmity of the Corinthians and brings about the death of her children in a manner far different from legend. Nauplios, who has loved her from afar, remains faithful in her time of despair.

Greenwood, best known for her Phryne Fisher mysteries, has written historical novels as well (Out of the Black Land, 2013, etc.). The first of her three Delphic Women series to be available in the United States is an enthralling, sensual, tragic tale packed with historical detail.

MEDEA

Greenwood, Kerry Poisoned Pen (250 pp.) $24.95 | $14.95 paper | $22.95 Lg. Prt. Jun. 4, 2013 978-1-4642-0143-1 978-1-4642-0145-5 paper 978-1-4642-0144-8 Lg. Prt. A feminist take on Greek legend.

The well-known stories of Medea, Jason and the Argonauts are based on widely differing legends. Now it’s Medea’s turn to speak. Greenwood’s Medea is a priestess of Hecate and a princess of Colchis, in what will become the modern-day Republic of Georgia. She has learned well the teachings of her tutor, the sour Trioda, and is used to a good deal of freedom as she roams the area, always accompanied by her two black hounds. From Argonaut |

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INTERVIEWS & PROFILES

The Believer’s Always Apprentices Windows into the Writerly Life

By Tobin Levy

Vendela Vida Photo Courtesy Chloe Aftel

“Writers see you in a way you don’t always see yourself,” Joan Didion told Vendela Vida in a 2011 interview that’s reprinted in Always Apprentices: The Believer Magazine Presents Twenty-Two Conversations Between Writers. Didion’s proposition highlights the complex nature of a writer interviewing another writer, since both are presumably hyperaware of the other’s proclivity for studying the person before them.

Always Apprentices is the third volume of writer interviews from the Believer. The collection features intimate exchanges between fiction writers that took place in the past six years, some through letters or email, others in person. “Sometimes the writers would arrange something between themselves, and shake up the format or the location,” says Vida, one of the book’s three

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editors (along with Sheila Heti and Ross Simonini). “Mark Leyner and Brian Joseph Davis’ conversation took place at a bar, and Aleksandar Hemon and Colum McCann’s conversation led them to one.”

Most of the dialogues read as though they genuinely occurred without a larger audience in mind. (Namedropping entails literary references rather than acquaintances.) All of them reveal one established author’s fixation with another’s creative process. The questions that reappear are surprisingly collegiate. Tom Barbash wants to know where Michael Ondaatje likes to write (in other people’s houses) and whether he revises as he goes (yes and no). Sheila Heti wants to know more about Mary Gaitskill’s affinity for longhand. (It allows you to get “heavily immersed in your own being,” Gaitskill says.)

Aleksander Hemon waxes dramatic about how and why he writes. It’s “my main means of engagement with the world and I want the scars of that engagement to be left in the language. I write and read with the assumption that literature contains knowledge of human experience that is not available otherwise.”

The various windows into writers’ lives—their processes, their creative maxims, their maxims about creativity—have a slight Annie Dillard quality. Vida doesn’t take umbrage at the comparison. “I think it’s natural to want to know about a writer’s process, both because they’re sometimes so strange, and sometimes so mundane….I want to know that [other writers] struggle, too. I want to know what they do when a book is giving them trouble, how they know they’re finished with a book, how they know they’ve arrived at the ending. Writing is such a private art in so many ways—I just want the curtain pulled back a little. I want to know I’m not alone.”

Always Apprentices succeeds not since it provides an array of colorful, writerly insights—which it does—but since it doesn’t alienate the general reader while trying to make the readers who are writers feel less alienated.

The collection in and of itself is highly entertaining.

The conversations read like scenes in a play that, at one point or another, will appeal either stylistically, thematically or both, to almost everyone. One side of each conversation introduces the scene and the interview subject. The tone and content of these overtures are notably, at times comically, distinct.

Some are lyrical and personal, while others are pithy and biographical. There are interviewers who exhibit measured adulation for their subjects, and there is Wells Tower, whose introduction begins: “Barry Hannah is America’s greatest living writer.” (The interview took place prior to Barry’s death in July 2008.) The introduction ends with, “Hannah wasn’t satisfied with just the right word, it had to be the fiery, ecstatic word, too, a Molotov cocktail against syntactic dreariness.”

Literary flattery doesn’t get much better than that.

Fiction writers become factually animated characters in these not-exactly-linear narratives that are often broken up into numbered parts that function like dialogue intertitles. Part III in the conversation between Geoff Nicholson and Will Self is entitled “Sex-Walking.”

In the dialogue between Brian Joseph Davis and Mark Leyner, Part I is titled “Papa Was an Infinitely Hot and Intense Dot.” At the outset of Paula Fox’s talks with Nick Poppy, we’re given a taste of what’s ahead: “Appropriate elements for children’s fiction: sentiment, racial things, sexual things, death.”

There is humor throughout each discourse. Some of it comes from the inherently nervous spectacle that is proudly erudite wordsmiths conversing. It’s too easy to interpret words as peacock feathers and verbose interviewers as star-struck. The personalities and repartee are worth the read even if some of the talking points are occupation-specific. The writers certainly don’t limit their discussions to all things craft. Don DeLillo talks to Bret Easton Elis about the movie Psycho. Mary Gaitskill tells Sheila Heti why all writers need wives. Sedentary drinking, drinking while walking, vampires, deer hunting and armchair travel (in order to write) are all covered.

But so are semantics, the (bleak) futures of the novel and publishing, the perks of having an “airport book” and the perils of success.

If anything is noticeably absent in the collection, it’s much intradisciplinary bite. Sarah Schulman provides acerbity in her discussion of sexual politics in publishing.

Joy Williams voices her disdain of one of George Saunders’ stories. And Hemon says, “I am itching to criticize some well-regarded writers’ works, but I am not doing it because I am perfectly aware that my critique could easily be reduced to envy or just plain meanness.”

Hemon also declares that, when it comes to writers, “There is no ‘we.’ There is no inherent solidarity—of purpose, of ethics or aesthetics—among writers. There may be some shared experience of irrelevance, but that just makes people pissy and lonely.”

The general theme of the collection, however, is cohesion and mutual admiration. The initial conversation between Ellis and DeLillo features a moderator who begins by encouraging the writers to avoid “excessive back patting,” and, soon after, Ellis has to remind himself not to go “into the whole lovefest aspect” of DeLillo’s Americana.

The interviews in the book occurred since the editors either paired writers who they thought would have a good conversation or a writer told them whom they’d like to interview. The likelihood that the Believer would consider a collection pairing writers who seem allergic to one another is slim to none, though they’re not opposed to pairing authors for whom the disparity in stylistic inclinations is more pronounced.

“Well, that could be interesting if they’re very different, but mutually respectful,” Vida says. “I would imagine Hemingway and Nabokov would have been interesting to pair, the butterfly collector with the elephant hunter. But ideally they would have found common ground, at least in their pursuit of mastery.”

Tobin Levy is a writer living in Austin, Texas.

Always Apprentices: The Believer Magazine Presents Twenty-Two Conversations Between Writers Edited by Heti, Sheila; Simonini, Ross; Vida, Vendela Believer Books/ McSweeney’s (352 pp.) $16.00 March 12, 2013 978-1-938073-25-0

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CARNIVAL

Hage, Rawi Norton (304 pp.) $25.95 | Jun. 17, 2013 978-0-393-07242-6 But then, life’s a carnival right?

The carnival metaphor/cliché suits the novel well, for the people who populate Hage’s world tend to be on the periphery—outsiders, loners, questioners and especially readers. Fly, the main character and narrator, was born to a mother who was a trapeze artist and a father who (literally? figuratively? symbolically?) flew a flying carpet; not exactly mainstream professions. (Fly further complicates his genealogical history by claiming to a friend that his mother was also “a weaver of ropes, who loved for dwarves to nibble on the backs of her knees.”) Fly becomes a taxi driver and gets his name because he embodies one of two styles of drivers: the spiders, who stay in one place waiting for their fares, and the flies, who incessantly roam the streets on the prowl for passengers. As one might imagine, this puts Fly in contact with some of the less prepossessing elements in modern urban culture. Another professional problem Fly runs into is the taxi inspector, a woman who “molests” the drivers, and if they resist her advances, they find themselves hit with big fines.

Two other outsiders, Otto and Aisha, befriend Fly and take him into their home, but after Aisha dies, Otto is in such deep grief that he enters a mental hospital, unwillingly, for treatment. He gets his revenge on his psychiatrist by having Fly “kidnap” him and forcing him to read a poem by Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones).

Fly’s most important relationship is with Mary, a woman who, unlike her abusive husband, loves books.

Hage’s characters, while not necessarily larger than life, are certainly weirder than life, and Hage writes about them with humor and affection.

THE SILENT WIFE

Harrison, A.S.A. Penguin (336 pp.) $16.00 paper | Jun. 25, 2013 978-0-14-312323-1 Harrison’s first novel tells the story of a couple splitting apart, with alternating chapters featuring the viewpoints of the main characters.

Jodi Brett and her longtime companion, Todd Gilbert, have been in a satisfying 20-year relationship. Jodi, a psychotherapist, works out of their expensive Chicago condominium, seeing two clients a day during the week and spending the remainder of her time taking classes in flower arranging, walking their golden retriever, Freud, and preparing gourmet meals. Todd, who worked his way up in independent development by flipping properties, had an unhappy childhood.

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seems to suit them both, at least until he catches sight of Natasha.

The daughter of an old friend, Natasha is no longer a pimply teenager with black nail polish and garishly dyed hair. Instead, she has turned into a curvaceous coed who becomes involved in a tempestuous relationship with Todd, the man Jodi thought would always be there for her. Now, Natasha is demanding that Todd leave Jodi and seems determined to make that happen, even if she has to resort to a few nasty tricks of her own. But Jodi isn’t through with Todd, nor is she ready to roll over and play dead: In fact, if anything, she’s prepared to make sure someone else meets that fate if that’s what it takes to stop the events that threaten to disrupt her carefully ordered existence. Harrison, who in real life is also a psychotherapist, writes a neat atmospheric tale that examines life from both characters’ points of view but sometimes works a bit too hard to cram extraneous detail into the story, particularly when it comes to psychotherapy and Jodi’s present clients. While readers can probably get over a few mentions of Jodi’s work, the Q-and-A style rendition of her own therapy and references to different schools of psychological thought may make readers’ eyes glaze.

Harrison pens a good, basic story stretched thin by unnecessary and distracting detail.

THE MEASURES BETWEEN US

Hauser, Ethan Bloomsbury (400 pp.) $26.00 | Jul. 9, 2013 978-1-62040-115-6

Journalist and short story author Hauser’s debut novel.

The book begins with a fateful meeting: Vincent Pareto, a wood-shop teacher in a Boston-area public school, is concerned about his daughter Cynthia’s apparent depression and considering putting her in a mental hospital. For advice, he turns to Henry Wheeling, a former student who is now a psychologist. Henry advises, perhaps too casually, in favor of hospitalization. Thus begins the crumbling of two marriages and an ultimately tragic series of events. Vincent and his wife, Mary, are crippled by their love for Cynthia, which distances them as a couple and leads to some questionable decisions as parents. Vincent’s self-doubt is compounded by the threat of a layoff from his school. Meanwhile, Henry has drifted into an affair with a student while his pregnant wife, Lucy, who is the book’s most vividly drawn character, takes off to Texas in an attempt to sort out the distance she feels from her husband and unborn child. Like many first novels, this one tries to fit a little too much in. Some of its scenes, including an early one at a traveling circus, are beautifully written but shed no real light on the plot or characters. Worse, the sudden death of a major character happens offstage and is never fully explained.

The obvious point is that the closest of intimates can never really know each other, but an unexplained death seems a mistake in a book that otherwise succeeds by examining the inner lives of its characters. (Author events in Boston and New York)

“...both funny and sad...” from love me anyway

LOVE ME ANYWAY

Hawk, Tiffany Dunne/St. Martin’s (320 pp.) $24.99 | May 7, 2013 978-1-250-02147-2 A debut novel, both funny and sad, from a former flight attendant, about two flight attendants.

The chapters that describe the work conditions and requirements of the service end of flying will have readers laughing out loud. The chapters that delve into the painful past experiences of the two young women who took to the skies to find happier futures will draw tears. Emily’s mother left her and her father when Emily was young. Emily got lucky insofar as her father met and married a woman who was a loving stepmother, but her own marriage at a young age to her high school sweetheart did not turn out so well. The postnuptial Carl, overly controlling and increasingly abusive, is not the prenuptial sweetheart she thought she knew. She feels safer leaving Bakersfield behind altogether, and even safer in the sky, when he receives the divorce papers. KC, never married, a free-spirited and somewhat promiscuous young woman, was not lucky growing up. When her father left her and her mother, her mother never remarried but worked hard as a single mom to raise KC, not realizing how much KC wanted to find and confront her father. KC finally finds him with help from the Internet and plans to fly to Hawaii to meet him. When Emily and KC meet as fellow flight attendants and become roommates, KC encourages Emily to loosen up and let her hair down, seek romance and love. But with love come consequences.

Readers will find the book’s two heroines well worth knowing.

Talent Manx, who likes nothing better than to take the local youth for a one-way spin in a Rolls-Royce Wraith bearing the easily deciphered license plate that is the novel’s title. Can anyone stop his infernal joy riding? Maybe, just maybe, and it makes perfect sense that it’s a steampunk-ish young woman who patrols the Massachusetts landscape on a Raleigh bike. Though there are King-ian shades—the underworld setup, the possessed car, the cool chick—Hill’s story is quite original, and, for horror fans of a certain ironic bent, it’s an unqualified delight, well-written and, within limits, believable. It’s also quite gruesome in spots (“The Gasmask Man was in two pieces, connected by a single fatty string of gut”) and altogether quite scary, all of which adds up to a successful exercise in spookiness.

Bonus points for being smart and having a young woman as a heroine who doesn’t need saving herself. Fun for all ages, though maybe with a PG warning. (Author tour to Austin, Boston, Boulder, Denver, Kansas City, New York, Portland, San Francisco and Seattle)

NOS4A2

Hill, Joe Morrow/HarperCollins (704 pp.) $28.99 | Apr. 30, 2013 978-0-06-220057-0 A good-natured romp in the garden of good and evil—or, as rising horror/fantasy maven Hill (Heart-Shaped Box, 2007, etc.) has it, Christmasland.

If you remember Stephen King’s It or, heck, “The Pied Piper of Hamelin,” you’ll remember that there are few setups creepier than a dude with shiny toys luring children to their doom. It gets creepier still when Santa Claus has “gaping jaws,” and a supernatural harpy comes equipped with ornaments that “dangled from her pierced breasts”—why, it’s enough to put a person off Christmas forever. The author of all this mayhem (and Hill is so skillful that we don’t know till the very end whether he’ll get away with it) is a mysterious but charming hellion named Charles |

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LOOKING FOR ME

Hoffman, Beth Pamela Dorman/Viking (368 pp.) $27.95 | May 28, 2013 978-0-670-02583-1 Self-taught furniture restorer and successful business owner Teddi Overman has built a good life. Yet a mystery from her past lingers.

Raised in Kentucky, Teddi had an idyllic, if offbeat childhood. Her controlling mother, Franny, discounted her ability to transform junk into art, even after Teddi’s faux-finished bedside table earned her $100 and an invitation to visit an antiques dealer in Charleston. Franny instead bought Teddi a typewriter as a graduation gift and pushed her to go to secretarial school.

Teddi’s father, silent and supportive, gave her a car and a map: her tickets to freedom. Josh—Teddi’s younger brother, a gifted naturalist and possible vigilante—gave her a horned owl’s feather and wished her luck. But then Teddi broke her mother’s heart, her father died, and Josh disappeared. Burying herself in her work, Teddi relies on her quirky collection of friends and foes. Mr. Palmer, the owner of the Charleston antiques store, gives Teddi her first chance and introduces her to Albert, a brilliant furniture repairer. Olivia, a rare books conservationist and Teddi’s best friend, meets her in the cemetery for emergency confidences over lunch. Tedra and Preston Calhoun help her negotiate the world of bank loans with distinct Southern charm. And then there’s Miz Tula Jane Poteet: a nice but forgetful little old lady or a kleptomaniac? Of course, her lawyer son eagerly pays for all of Tula Jane’s “purchases,” but he just as eagerly cuts short every conversation with Teddi.

Just as love begins to nudge at the edges of Teddi’s life, she is forced to reckon with Josh’s disappearance and her mother’s dashed expectations. Hoffman’s (Saving CeeCee Honeycutt, 2010) sophomore novel confusingly mingles a charming Southern-girl romance with a weighty mystery.

The romance resolves predictably, yet the mystery leaves far too many loose threads.

YOU ARE ONE OF THEM Holt, Elliott Penguin Press (304 pp.) $25.95 | Jun. 3, 2013 978-1-59420-528-6

A novel that tells the story of best friends who grow up in D.C. during the Cold War, told from the perspective of the one who is less talented, less desirable and more real.

Holt’s short fiction has received a Pushcart Prize, and she was runner-up for the 2011 PEN Emerging Writers Award. Our narrator and protagonist is Sarah Zuckerman. After Sarah’s older sister’s death from meningitis, 18

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her parents’ marriage never recovers. Sarah needs a friend, and when the Joneses move in next door, she gets her wish. Jenny Jones’ family is an advertisement for a particular form of American domestic happiness, and the outgoing Jenny is an advertisement for herself. It is the early ’80s, the deepest chill of the Cold War, when Sarah begins a letter to Yuri Andropov, then leader of the Evil Empire. Jenny writes too, and Andropov replies to her. Jenny becomes a media darling, joins the popular clique at school, and leaves Sarah and her morose mother alone with their sorrows. A few years later, Jenny and her parents die in a plane crash. This fact of Jenny’s disappearance, and the conspiracies surrounding it, define Sarah’s life (Sarah’s mother establishes a Jenny Jones foundation). After college, Sarah travels to Russia in response to a note from Svetlana. Svetlana, apparently, is the girl standing next to Jenny in all the photos from Jenny’s visit as a child ambassador to the USSR. We never stray far from Sarah’s cramped perspective, and this tries the reader’s patience, as Sarah offers platitudes in place of insight.

This debut novel only looks deeply at one character, Sarah, and she is not enough to sustain interest.

THE OFFERING

Hunt, Angela Howard Books/Simon & Schuster (320 pp.) $14.99 paper | May 14, 2013 978-1-4391-8205-5 A novel that concerns the moral issues surrounding gestational surrogacy.

The narrator, Amanda, survived an explosive car crash that killed her father when she was 5. She maintains a somewhat distant relationship with her mother but is happily married to her husband, Gideon, who’s from a warm and loving Cuban family. Gideon is a soldier who is frequently sent around the world to defuse dangerous situations. Amanda and Gideon are blessed with a gifted daughter. In order to cover the expense of a special school for their offspring, Amanda decides to become a gestational surrogate for an agency that matches her with a wealthy French couple. She decides to do this since it pays well and would allow her and Gideon to start a business and have more children of their own once he is finished with his military service. A cousin-in-law, who is herself unable to have a child and plans to adopt, questions this choice. There are conversations about the morality of harvesting eggs for surrogate gestation when there are so many orphaned children in the world. There are conversations about the fact that many harvested and fertilized eggs do not survive, which leads to questions of when life begins. Things take a turn in the plot when Gideon is killed in the line of duty shortly before Amanda gives birth to what is supposed to be the French couple’s child.

Difficult issues are addressed and emotional gaps are bridged in a story about a controversial subject.

FLAT WATER TUESDAY

Irwin, Ron Dunne/St. Martin’s (320 pp.) $24.99 | Jun. 4, 2013 978-1-250-03003-0

Irwin debuts with movingly rendered literary fiction about love and loss, youth and maturity, ambition and its cost.

Rob Carrey is a champion. He’s won prizes propelling a single-seat racing scull with two oars. Carrey’s been recruited for a “post-graduate” high school year by the Fenton School, a posh private Connecticut academy. Carrey, a working-class boy, is alien among legacy children and intends to continue his quest for solitary medals. Instead, he’s drafted to fill a slot in the four-man racing crew. His father’s ambition is that the Fenton sojourn will earn his son entrance to an elite university. There is a second narrative thread with Carrey, in his 30s, no college degree, turned documentary filmmaker. He’s in love with Carolyn, a film editor. Carolyn was once pregnant with Carrey’s child, a baby miscarried while he filmed in Africa. Left shattered by Carrey’s response, Carolyn wants to end their relationship just as Carrey confronts the suicide of one of his former racing crew. The narrative segment following young Carrey’s Fenton year is a powerful study of the muddled, stumbling steps from youth into adulthood, a time when Carrey learns “You will lose things....When you do, there will be no river to run to.” Other characters shine: Connor, best of the Fenton rowers, scion of wealth, never able to fulfill his family’s ambitions, beautiful and damned in the fashion of a Hemingway hero; Ruth, coxswain, first female to drive the boat, petite, ambitious, focused, yet another boarding-school–rich-family throwaway. Irwin’s descriptions are observant and intimate—“as if the boat had found some kind of grace, like a giant bird expanding its wings.”

Readers become immersed in the Darwinian cruelty of the young reflected against the loneliness of a lost, jaded teacher, then confront a man finding purpose, and close the book after bathing in a deeply evocative, hope-filled conclusion.

An elegy to love and loss and reconciliation.

Bea, that gets Honey out of her Oregon art studio. Bea’s bequest of an apartment and store in the quaint town of Sugarberry Island, Ga., encourages Honey to make the cross-country trek in the hope of starting a new life, but no sooner does she arrive in town than her ancient car goes kaput. That’s not the only thing that seems to be going wrong for Honey. Apparently, the store and apartment she’s been planning on have been leased to Leilani Dunne and her cupcake empire. Though Leilani’s sweet as frosting about the misunderstanding, Honey’s at a loss for what to do next. Meanwhile, the usually aloof mechanic Dylan Ross finds himself thinking about Honey so much that he hopes the special parts he ordered for her car never come in. Dylan hopes he can talk Honey into letting her guard down and embracing her gift, and him, as much as she feels that she’s starting to embrace Sugarberry.

Expanding her Sugarberry series to include a new character, Kauffman (Babycakes, 2012, etc.) dishes sweet desserts.

Though she breaks no new ground, audiences will find the cast of regulars and newcomers easy to like.

HONEY PIE

Kauffman, Donna Brava/Kensington (336 pp.) $14.00 paper | Apr. 30, 2013 978-0-7582-8053-4 An artist moving to a new town meets a man who encourages her to give love a chance.

Although her name makes her sound like a real sweetie, reclusive Honey D’Amourvell has never been a people person. She’s been blessed with the familial gift of being able to see into others’ pasts and futures, though she views this gift as a curse. In fact, it’s only the death of her favorite relative, Aunt |

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“...a fine tale of lives re-examined.” from five days

ALL DECENT ANIMALS

FIVE DAYS

Kempadoo, Oonya Farrar, Straus and Giroux (272 pp.) $26.00 | May 1, 2013 978-0-374-29971-2

Kennedy, Douglas Atria (320 pp.) $26.99 | Apr. 30, 2013 978-1-4516-6633-5

Guyanese-British Kempadoo’s third novel (Tide Running, 2003, etc.) again takes on the socioeconomic complexity of the Caribbean, this time in Trinidad as a multiracial group cares for a friend dying of AIDS. A fluid sense of time and Kempadoo’s mix of native patois and feverishly descriptive prose creates an almost hallucinogenic atmosphere to fill out the skeletal story of Trinidadian architect Fraser’s last days. Before his diagnosis, Fraser was already the center of a multicultural, multiracial circle of educated, artistic types. The son of middle-class Trinidadians, educated at Cambridge and gay, Frazier is a confusion of mixed allegiances, and during the lively parties he throws at the beautiful home he designed, his own conversation shifts in a heartbeat from local slang to proper British. But after he collapses from renal failure and discovers he has full-blown AIDS, his friends surround him: his tough but devoted houseboy, his lovers, his elegant and sexy women friends, the Catholic priest with whom he sparred over a building project, his furiously proper mother and browbeaten father, the working-class cab driver who suffered his own catastrophic loss when his Indian girlfriend was murdered.

In particular, there is the Caribbean artist Ata, whose conflicted consciousness lightly weaves together the fragmented plot. Ata lives with Fraser’s friend Pierre, a French U.N. bureaucrat, and Fraser’s illness exposes cracks in the couple’s relationship. Like Fraser, Ata finds herself torn between her identity as a Caribbean and her embrace of Pierre’s European sophistication.

Despite its intense sensuality, this is a novel more of ideas than emotions. How to balance the corruption and the creativity that define Trinidad and its vibrant but disturbingly violent boomtown capital, Port of Spain? How to balance European logic against the less rational, even magical power of the island?

How to move past the history of political domination? How to live fully in the moment yet think clearly? How to communicate to anyone outside oneself? “How to live with the ugliness of the beauty we love?”

Kempadoo’s sensuous language and tangled storytelling veer between hypnotic and incomprehensible.

Two middle-aged, ordinary Mainers have an opportunity to alter their lives through love.

Laura, a radiology technician in a small town, is a seasoned diagnostician of the benign or deadly menaces lurking within her patients, even if delivery of the good or bad news must be left to her supervising physician. The fact that she has sold herself short all her life has led to disappointments on every level, from her failure to qualify for med school to a marriage, now two decades in duration, that she essentially transacted on the rebound from her first serious love affair. When, at a conference in a Boston hotel, she meets, by chance, insurance salesman Richard, she soon sees the parallels in their lives. He too allowed strictures in his life to curtail his dreams. A domineering father prevented him from having the writing career he wanted, just when he was on the verge of entering an MFA program, accompanied by the woman he loved. He too married someone on the rebound, a woman who has proven to be just as cold and insensitive as Laura’s husband, Dan. Laura’s marriage was tolerable until Dan was downsized by Maine’s most iconic mail-order company, then forced to accept a humiliating demotion to the stockroom. As Richard and Laura share meals and drinks, their feeling of kindred spirithood grows as they recognize each other’s unique qualities, mostly having to do with the love of books, culture and English vocabulary. Turns out, Richard has been planning his escape for a while and has even spotted a Boston apartment where his future will unfurl. As passionate embraces cinch the deal, it seems that these two lost souls have lucked into a second chance—but will they dare to take it? Despite pages of self-revelatory dialogue, Richard and Laura remain ciphers who may not command enough reader identification to make us care whether their future promises new love or merely a fresh hell.

Despite some character underdevelopment, a fine tale of lives re-examined.

SIEGE

Kernick, Simon Atria (384 pp.) $15.00 paper | Jun. 4, 2013 978-1-4767-0623-8 The latest from the best-selling British author (The Business of Dying, 2003, etc.); this thriller was partially inspired by a 2008 terror attack in Mumbai.

What would you do if the only way to save your two children was to betray your colleagues and send them into an ambush? A group of gunmen

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takes over the fictional Stanhope Hotel in London, killing anyone who shows the remotest hint of resistance. They rig the hotel with explosives to prevent either rescue or escape. Apparently, an unnamed Arab government is behind the attack, but the terrorists are hard-core mercenaries instead of Arabs. Some of them are ex-soldiers who fought in Iraq, serving the interests of the rich and powerful, and they feel they’ve gotten nothing in return for their sacrifices. They feel wronged by the system, so their goal is to humiliate British authorities and bring down the government. The AK 47–toting Fox wants to “cause chaos and terror, to smash the old, established order,” not to liberate Palestine or high-tail it with a bundle of cash. Meanwhile, the British authorities do their best to negotiate from their vantage point of weakness. Of course, the bad guys will have a hard time leaving the hotel alive, but do they even want to escape?

So the siege—but not the story—is at a standstill. A couple of subplots keep things moving, for example, witness Martin Dalston, whose intended suicide is interrupted by the chaos.

Meticulous plotting makes this a fast-moving yarn with short chapters, tight writing, plenty of violence, and characters both flawed and believable.

Kernick is a first-rate storyteller. Readers will have no trouble hating this book’s bad guys, who lack even a glimmer of humanity.

discovers her own special strengths and develops stronger bonds with the others. Georgia, determined to investigate Ben’s actions and uncover what happened to their holdings, works to hold together the family and support her daughters’ decisions, Luey’s in particular. And when the money trail finally unravels—no surprise to readers since the plot is pretty transparent—Georgia resolves issues about her own future.

Koslow knows how to please her target audience; although there are a few missteps, particularly toward the end when the resolution seems hard to swallow, the perfectly frothy, romantic story will appeal to readers who want a few hours to engage in a different world.

THE WIDOW WALTZ

Koslow, Sally Viking (352 pp.) $27.95 | Jun. 17, 2013 978-0-670-02564-0

Former McCall’s editor-in-chief Koslow (Slouching toward Adulthood, 2012, etc.) choreographs an entertaining but lightweight story about a mother and two daughters who are suddenly forced to redefine their lives and relationships step by step.

Georgia Silver-Waltz becomes a 50-year-old widow when husband Ben suffers a fatal heart attack while preparing for the New York marathon. Thanks to Ben’s lucrative law practice, Georgia’s lived a pampered life, and the couple has always indulged their two daughters. Nicola, aka Cola, Korean-born, was adopted as a baby. She’s drifted from one interest to another without much to show for it, but she can slice and dice with the best of them thanks to a stint learning a few culinary skills in Paris. Louisa, or Luey, was born to Ben and Georgia a year after Cola was adopted.

She’s rebellious, brilliant and often resents her older sister. But when mother and daughters find themselves virtually penniless—at least as far as upper-class New Yorkers are concerned— they come together, not always harmoniously, and do what they have to do to survive: sell their apartment, put the family’s East Hampton beach house on the market, auction off valuables on eBay and—gasp!—get real jobs. Georgia edits essays for students applying to college; Cola accepts a position working at her uncle’s exclusive jewelry store; and enterprising Luey starts a business as a dog walker/sitter. As the family’s dynamics change, each woman |

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THE THIEF OF WORDS

Lawrence, Starling The Quantuck Lane Press (224 pp.) $24.95 | Mar. 28, 2013 978-1-59372-050-6

Elegant, elegiac novel from publisher/writer Lawrence (Montenegro, 1997, etc.), set in a dangerous time and place.

The Peace Corps does it all the time, but it’s an enterprise fraught with peril for an innocent youngster to enter places torn by violence, greed and cynicism. Take Sierra Leone, for example, where the blood-diamond trade has its epicenter—and where child soldiers and rapist militiamen and particularly unpleasant warlords run amok in the countryside. Nora Fenton could not be more innocent when she arrives there, intending to do good. A born liberal arts major (“She would start Ulysses some other time, but not today”), she falls in love at every turn, usually with young women, as if to forestall experiencing the illness and loss that are descending on loved ones far away. Less innocent is the young man who loves Nora in turn, a would-be writer and stamp collector (with some echoes of John Fowles perhaps intended in his makeup), and who is a born—well, embellisher of the truth, certainly an unreliable witness and chronicler of events and perhaps, we sense at the beginning of Lawrence’s story, with not a little darkness in his own heart. Lawrence wisely begins his tale at the end, after a fashion: A tragedy has occurred, but how deeply it cuts remains to be explored. And explore it he does, with subtle language that suggests the complexity of the scene in which Nora and company find themselves (“The second item was the matter of the boy, Morlai, who had been introduced as her rapist and had morphed, in a subsequent letter, into her trusted companion”). Ranks with the best of Norman Rush in its sensitive but still controversial portrait of African turmoil as experienced by those unequipped to escape it.

Emotionally honest, beautifully written.

LONG DIVISION

Laymon, Kiese Bolden/Agate (250 pp.) $15.00 paper | Jun. 15, 2013 978-1-932841-72-5 A novel within a novel—hilarious, moving and occasionally dizzying.

Citoyen “City” Coldson is a 14-year-old wunderkind when it comes to crafting sentences. In fact, his only rival is his classmate LaVander Peeler. Although the two don’t get along, they’ve qualified to appear on the national finals of the contest “Can You Use That Word in a Sentence,” and each is determined to win. Unfortunately, on the nationally televised show, City is given the word “niggardly” and, to say the least, does not provide a “correct, appropriate or dynamic usage” of the word as the rules 22

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require. LaVander similarly blows his chance with the word “chitterlings,” so both are humiliated, City the more so since his appearance is available to all on YouTube. This leads to a confrontation with his grandmother, alas for City, “the greatest whupper in the history of Mississippi whuppings.” Meanwhile, the principal at City’s school has given him a book entitled Long Division. When City begins to read this, he discovers that the main character is named City Coldson, and he’s in love with a Shalaya Crump...but this is in 1985, and the contest finals occurred in 2013. (Laymon is nothing if not contemporary.) A girl named Baize Shephard also appears in the novel City is reading, though in 2013, she has mysteriously disappeared a few weeks before City’s humiliation. Laymon cleverly interweaves his narrative threads and connects characters in surprising and seemingly impossible ways.

Laymon moves us dazzlingly (and sometimes bewilderingly) from 1964 to 1985 to 2013 and incorporates themes of prejudice, confusion and love rooted in an emphatically post-Katrina world.

WHAT A MOTHER KNOWS

Lehr, Leslie Sourcebooks Landmark (384 pp.) $14.99 paper | May 1, 2013 978-1-4022-7956-0

A woman awakes from an extended coma to find her world utterly changed.

Coming home from the hospital, LA producer Michelle gradually learns some awful truths about the car accident which impaired her memory and crippled her right arm. Most alarmingly, 19-year-old Noah (her son Tyler’s pitching coach) died in the crash after Michelle’s SUV slid off the road into Topanga Canyon—and Michelle has no idea what he was doing in her car. Her husband, sound engineer Drew, has relocated to New York, where he’s enrolled Tyler in prep school. And daughter Nikki is missing. Michelle is being sued by Noah’s parents for wrongful death, and her own lawsuit against the SUV manufacturer is undermined by the fact she may have ignored a seat belt recall notice. Her family has been virtually bankrupted by her medical expenses and cannot afford to pay her attorney. Since she has zero recollection of either the accident or the events surrounding it, Michelle launches her own investigation, which she hopes will also lead her to Nikki’s whereabouts. She pieces together a progressively more complex scenario: Noah was well on the way to rock stardom when he died; Michelle herself had, pro bono, produced a video for his band, Roadhouse. In fact, her former Hollywood colleagues have seemingly turned on her and are making a biopic about Noah that may prejudice the outcome of the lawsuits. A Roadhouse groupie produces a photo card containing shots showing Nikki and Noah kissing.

This takes some of the onus off Michelle (whose cougardom some gossips were blaming for Noah’s presence in her car).

Now that Nikki could be a material witness, it is even more imperative that Michelle track her down. A postcard sent to

“An excellent anthology...” from red spectres

Noah’s mother from Hawaii provides the first tangible clue, which lures Michelle to Maui. Despite the intriguing premise, the disjointed and meandering narrative and phoned-in prose tamp down both suspense and forward momentum.

A would-be thriller in dire need of a script doctor.

RED SPECTRES Russian Gothic Tales from the Twentieth Century

Maguire, Muireann Overlook (224 pp.) $25.95 | Apr. 18, 2013 978-1-4683-0348-3

An excellent anthology of psych-andspook mischief from behind the Iron Curtain, where a literature rich in such things held sway during the Soviet era.

If you create a Frankenstein monster—a blend of Marxist idealism and Asian despotism, say—then you are going to have problems. The same is true if you allow generations of inbred mediocrities to occupy your throne. Gathering nine hitherto untranslated tales, Maguire (Russian Literature and Culture/Oxford Univ.) observes that the early practitioners of Soviet gothic, among them Ivan Bunin, Yevgeny Zamyatin and Mikhail Bulgakov, “used supernatural imagery and settings to convey the internal decay of imperial Russia and the chaotic Communist society that replaced it.” Their followers—Perov, Chayanov, Peskov, etc.—elaborated on themes such as mortality, the nature of the soul and, creepily but effectively, the pesky habit of mannequins of coming to life and giving people frights: “In spite of the somewhat crude craftsmanship, the mannequin radiated the impression of a portrait drawn from life. It was quite clear that this wax sculpture had had a living original, an astonishing, miraculous original.” The ghostliness of most of the stories isn’t quite up to the standards of an M.R. James— or, for that matter, a Henry James—but the Russians aren’t far behind the Brits on that front, and there are plenty of fine,

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spooky moments (“I’ve figured it out rationally: if he’s wearing the crown, he’s been killed, and if a dead man comes and speaks to me, I must be mad”). About the only flaw in this brilliant and, within the bounds of the gothic genre, wide-ranging collection is that it simply isn’t big enough.

Students of Soviet-era Russian culture will enjoy reading between the lines. Readers who love a good ghost story will enjoy it, period.

THINKING OF YOU

Mansell, Jill Sourcebooks Landmark (432 pp.) $14.00 paper | May 1, 2013 978-1-4022-8129-7 In British Mansell’s 11th novel a lovable ditz approaches an empty nest, a new job and a pathological roommate with comic charm and a dash of courage.

Ginny didn’t think Jem beginning university would be so difficult. And when she drives three hours to Bristol on a lonely whim, she finds Jem happily absorbed in her new life at school with flatmates Lucy and Rupert and a job at the local pub. In response, Ginny decides to revamp her social life. In quick order, she finds a job waitressing at a posh restaurant and antiques center (owner Finn is moody and gorgeous) and puts an ad out for a roommate (she’s imagining chick flicks and nights together at the wine bar). Everyone who applies for the spare room is awful, but then Perry Kennedy shows up, handsome and flirtatious.

When move-in day comes, he pulls a bait and switch, claiming the room was meant all along for his sister Laurel, who’s been a bit down since her breakup with Kevin, and would Ginny mind watching that Laurel takes all her meds. Before she can say no, Perry asks her out. So begins Ginny’s not-so-fabulous new life, caretaking sad-sack Laurel, dating Perry when she can pin him down and fretting over Jem, who she rightly suspects is sleeping with the obnoxious Rupert. When Perry and Ginny’s best friend, Carla, begin an affair, Ginny is heartbroken—not over slick Perry, but losing Carla is almost unbearable. Thankfully she has Jem and Gavin (her ex-husband, who was terrible at marriage but is quite nice as a friend) and Finn to cheer her up.

In fact, Finn may be just the person to appreciate Ginny’s quirkiness, if only his ex didn’t show up expecting a reunion, perhaps ruining Ginny’s happy ending. But never fear, for the large cast of characters, bright days are ahead, even for mopey Laurel.

Mansell is like a Michelin-rated chef: She may use the same common ingredients, but under her sure hand the results are deliciously superior.

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ALTAI

Ming, Wu Translated by Whiteside, Shaun Verso (320 pp.) $26.95 | Apr. 9, 2013 978-1-78168-076-6 More historical fiction alla Bolognese by the Italian committee.

Q, the eponymous hero of the collective’s first offering (under the moniker Luther Blissett), is a man of parts. So is Emmanuele De Zante, who may or may not be a Jew, may or may not be a Venetian, may or may not be on the side of the Turks in the looming war pitting East against West in the mid-16th century. As the tale opens, an explosion has racked Venice—always a topical tale—and the question immediately looms whether the Turks are involved. Those wily Ottomans are an elusive prey, though, and De Zante, who narrates, is a spy to catch out spies, even if innocents are caught in the crossfire and even if De Zante immediately postulates “an enemy other than the Turks.”

Ah, but who might that be? There’s always Joseph Nasi, Venetian public enemy No. 1, into whose orbit De Zante is swiftly drawn. Who is De Zante, who is Nasi, and where is the Anabaptist? The action travels smack into the middle of the Battle of Lepanto and smack into the harems of Constantinople, but there are some doldrums in midcourse, as if the young Italian writers couldn’t quite figure out which among them was responsible for tightening the dramatic arc. That said, there’s plenty of intrigue, a bit of metacommentary (and metasituations, as with the presence of a shadowy English spy to foreshadow the later relations of Brits and Turks), and oodles of verisimilitude to carry the tale to its clear-as-mud conclusion.

If you like your historical fiction with plenty of explosions and Turkish-inflected interjections (“I do not doubt that our Muezzinzade Ali Pahsa...will be able to stand up to the infidels”), this is right up your alley.

A CASE OF REDEMPTION

Mitzner, Adam Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster (336 pp.) $26.00 | May 14, 2013 978-1-4516-7479-8 “[W]hen you help a rapist get acquitted and your wife and daughter are killed the next day, it’s awfully hard to convince yourself that karma doesn’t exist,” muses Dan Sorenson in Mitzner’s (A Conflict of Interest, 2011) second legal thriller.

After resigning from a prestigious NYC law firm following the death of his wife and daughter at the hands of a drunken driver, Sorenson spent 18 months drowning his guilt and grief in whiskey.

That accident happened after Sorenson’s successful defense of Darrius Macy, NFL Super Bowl hero. Now he’s been confronted by

Nina Harrington, a young attorney. Harrington is resigning from another prestigious firm to defend Legally Dead, a rapper incarcerated for the murder of Roxanne, a rising pop star. She’s certain of his innocence. Harrington inveigles Sorenson into interviewing the rapper at Rikers Island. Legally Dead has fired Marcus Jackson, prominent African-American attorney, because Jackson suggested plea negotiation. Mitzner, a Big Apple attorney himself, isn’t afraid to employ the headliners as tropes—Jackson could be Cochran, Roxanne is Taylor Swift-ian, and Legally Dead and Darrius Macy could be edgy celebrities like Chris Brown and Ben Roethlisberger.

Given he neglected his family pursuing the brass ring of celebrity, Sorenson’s emotional collapse is nicely realized, especially considering his moral quandary upon learning Macy lied about his innocence; so also is Sorenson’s perception of the new case as possible redemption. Despite Harrington’s tangled love life and ultimate motivation, she and other characters—Brooks, monomaniacal record mogul; Nuts, Legally Dead’s friend; grandstanding Judge Pielmeier—are more one-dimensional. Nevertheless, Mitzner’s courtroom drama is Grisham-like in suspenseful before-thebench action. The book is plot-driven, and it’s a wicked ride, with more loops and flips than Coney Island’s Cyclone, right up to the surprise-and-bigger-surprise denouement—one leaving open the possibility Sorenson might reprise his role as the go-to guy when a celebrity needs a mouthpiece.

Law and Order-like twist-and-turn, moral-quandary suspense needing only the echoing cell door sound effect.

and Democrats alike to make sure its misdeeds go unpunished, and odious VP Tim denies workers raises while enjoying his sailboat and house in Florida. Since the author herself works with disabled teens, these all-black villains may well be based on fact, but they make for slightly schematic fiction. Nonetheless, Nussbaum’s vivid portraits of a wide variety of ILLC residents, some of whom are mentally ill as well as physically challenged, reveal the three-dimensional humanity of people the rest of society is all too willing to neglect and ignore.

Well-meaning, well-written and well-plotted, with qualified justice for some of the bad guys and hope for a few of the oppressed: A most appropriate winner of the 2012 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction.

GOOD KINGS BAD KINGS

Nussbaum, Susan Algonquin (336 pp.) $23.95 | May 28, 2013 978-1-61620-263-7

Playwright/activist Nussbaum makes her fiction debut with a scathing look at life inside an institution for disabled juveniles.

Located next to the old Chicago stockyards, the Illinois Learning and Life Skills Center is hardly as nurturing as its name suggests. Formerly state-run, ILLC is now operated by a private company whose main interest is in maximizing profits; while Whitney-Palm cuts costs and corners, ILLC’s doctors get kickbacks for ordering millions of dollars in unnecessary tests for their patients. One of the “houseparents” is sexually abusing a terrified incest survivor; one of the guards is a brutal bully who eventually breaks a boy’s jaw. Even the well-meaning employees are so exhausted and overstretched due to staff cuts that one wheelchair-bound kid dies of third-degree burns from a scalding shower when left unsupervised. Nussbaum unfolds her story in a polyphonic narrative whose colorful individual voices somewhat mitigate the parade of grim particulars. Tough yet vulnerable Yessenia is a particularly engaging narrator among the residents, and gentle, caring guard Ricky has a touching romance with Joanne, a disabled activist who does clerical work at ILLC and serves as the novel’s political conscience. Nussbaum doesn’t deal in shades of gray: Whitney-Palm donates big bucks to Republicans |

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TAMPA

Nutting, Alissa Ecco/HarperCollins (256 pp.) $25.99 | Jul. 2, 2013 978-0-06-228054-1 A middle school teacher in Tampa, Fla., goes to outrageous lengths to hide her voracious sexual appetite for adolescent boys.

Nutting certainly brought dark overtones to her story collection Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls (2010), but even that auspicious debut pales next to the unclean psyche at the heart of her first novel. In a story that makes Nicholson Baker’s work look hygienic by comparison, Nutting unleashes a devious temptress whose acts of deception are as all-consuming as her incessant masturbatory frenzy. Our narrator, Celeste Price, looks absolutely harmless on the surface. She’s married to a rich suburban police officer, drives a hot car, and her looks could cause car wrecks. Unfortunately for her, Celeste is also deeply, unfixably broken. She says that the loss of her virginity at age 14 imprinted on her, and she has been working unceasingly as a student teacher to get to the mother lode: a gig as a full-time teacher of eighth-grade boys.

In her first year, she obsesses over her chosen target, young Jack Patrick, on whom she ruminates in the most illustrative fashion. “Something in his chin-length blond hair, in the diminutive leanness of his chest, refined for me just what it was about the particular subset of this age group that I found entrancing,” Celeste confesses. “He was at the very last link of androgyny that puberty would permit him: undeniably male but not man.”

Once she convinces Jack to give in, Celeste performs every salacious, graphic sexual act under the sun—almost as if she is committing these brazen acts on him and not with him. She even starts sleeping with her lover’s father just to cover her tracks.

For decades, transgressive fiction has traditionally been grim, male and graphic. For those few voices asking why there aren’t more women working in this swamp, this one’s for you.

A taxing attempt to penetrate the mind of female child molesters with grimy, mundane results.

PRIVATE BERLIN

Patterson, James; Sullivan, Mark Little, Brown (448 pp.) $27.99 | Jan. 21, 2013 978-0-316-21117-8 Another industrial thriller from the Patterson (Private Games, 2012, etc.) factory.

The Wall has fallen, and in Berlin, a security firm named Private flourishes.

Among its many other activities, Private is recently back from the London Olympics—the subject of Patterson et al.’s Private Games—only to find that things are emphatically not cool in the Heimat. When top agent and 26

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earner Chris Schneider goes missing, everyone fears the worst.

Rightly, too, for the worst comes to pass in gruesome ways that are best described by a first-person narrator, who interrupts the omniscient third-person narrator at the most inconvenient of moments. There’s a gimmick to that, showy enough to let us know that the bad guy is most definitely a very bad guy, implicated and in league with all sorts of lesser villains in a Blofeldian sort of way. (Sneers he of a new toy of torture, “I click on the starter. There’s a snapping noise and then a thin, intense flame bursts from a tube. ‘Twenty-four hundred degrees,’ I say, enjoying the terror flaring in Mattie’s face.”) Said Mattie is the heroine of the piece, a tough cookie with a talent for mayhem and a sharp, analytical mind, like Private’s other operatives, whether good or evil. In the end, we get a revisitation of the Cold War, complete with Stasi files and the requisite intrigues; it’s nothing fans of the Bond and Ludlum franchises haven’t seen before, and though it’s second-tier, it’s competent enough.

Call it cut-rate Bourne, then, with enough action to keep the story moving and enough verisimilitude to belay having to suspend disbelief too often.

THE ONE-WAY BRIDGE

Pelletier, Cathie Sourcebooks Landmark (304 pp.) $24.99 | May 1, 2013 978-1-4022-8073-3 Pelletier’s long-awaited addition to the tragicomic annals of fictional Mattagash, Maine.

Mattagash is a town divided by a oneway bridge, a crossing that can only be made by one car at a time. The bridge will figure heavily in the at-times-farcical story, but in the meantime, Pelletier is bent on making us love the “cantankerous” men and the staunch yet wistful women who people this ultrarustic pocket of the Northeast. Many voices, most of whom share distant or close kinship, alternate points of view. Orville, 65, the town mailman, is staring down retirement as he delivers mail for the last time. He can’t ignore the insults that his archrival Harry has heaped on him, most recently a regulation-flouting, mooseshaped mailbox. Since the kids have left, Orville’s wife, Meg, is more absorbed by computer games involving penguins than her paunchy husband. Billy, a downstater, has decided peddling pot and pills is safer in Mattagash than in Portland, where he’s left a trail of drug debts and broken hearts. It’s been awhile since he’s gotten a shipment from his connections, cartel wannabes the Delgato cousins: Instead, their parcels contain fake fingers. Trying to rectify his poverty by doing odd jobs with his own fifth (or sixth?) cousin Buck, Billy is in increasing danger of freezing to death in an unheated camper and a classic Mustang convertible with the top permanently down as a Maine winter looms. Harry, recipient of a Purple Heart, is still tormented by flashbacks and dreams of combat in Vietnam and guilt over the deaths of his buddies and the carnage inflicted by both sides. Since his wife, Emily, died of cancer years before, Harry, though respected in

“...appealingly warmhearted...” from archipelago

town, has been something of a recluse. With so many characters, a coherent plot takes awhile to emerge, and when it does, it neatly melds the fallout from Billy’s traffic in bootleg Viagra with the more profound ramifications of wounds, both physical and psychic.

A welcome return for the author.

VISITATION STREET

Pochoda, Ivy Dennis Lehane/Ecco (320 pp.) $25.99 | Jul. 9, 2013 978-0-06-224989-0 A mystery about a missing girl and the ghosts she leaves behind.

One summer evening, teenagers Val and June float on a rubber raft out into the bay off Brooklyn’s Red Hook section.

Only Val returns, her near-dead body washed upon the shore. But Val can’t seem to tell anyone what happened to them or why June disappeared without a trace. For weeks afterward, the Lebanese shopkeeper Fadi tries to keep his customers informed about developments and neighborhood rumors in the case. Meanwhile, Jonathan, an ex-Julliard student turned jingle writer and music teacher, may be getting too emotionally close to Val. The novel’s focus isn’t on the police investigation, but on the missing girl’s effect on her neighbors and friends. Who saw Val and June take the boat out? Can June possibly be alive? Can young Cree tell what he knows without being automatically accused of a crime since he’s a black man?

The book is rich with characters and mood and will make readers feel like they’ve walked the streets of Red Hook. Everyone in the story deserves a measure of sympathy, from the girls on the raft to the shoplifting teenager to the pathetic uncle who won’t tell anyone anything for free. Red Hook itself feels like a character—hard-worn, isolated from the rest of New York, left behind and forgotten.

A terrific story in the vein of Dennis Lehane’s fiction.

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

ARCHIPELAGO

Roffey, Monique Penguin (384 pp.) $16.00 paper | May 28, 2013 978-0-14-312256-2 Unmoored by catastrophe, a father takes his daughter and dog to sea in this gentle novel from Orange Prize finalist Roffey (The White Woman on the Green Bicycle, 2011, etc.).

It’s been almost a year since a disastrous flood in Port of Spain, Trinidad, drowned Gavin’s infant son. His wife, Claire, retreated into speechlessness and nearly

constant sleep; she is staying with her mother while Gavin and their 6-year-old daughter, Océan, have returned to their rebuilt home. But Gavin keeps falling asleep at work, and Océan sobs for whole nights. They can’t get over their losses in a house filled with memories, Gavin decides; he boards his boat Romany with Océan and their dog Suzy, determined to fulfill his youthful dream of visiting the Galapagos Islands. As they sail west toward the Panama Canal, stops along the way at various islands give Roffey the opportunity to make some pointed observations about wealthy tourists, and she draws a quiet parallel between the legacy of colonialism and her characters’ emotional state: “Recovery takes time; it is the story of the still emerging Caribbean.” Gavin worries at first, as both Océan and Suzy retch with seasickness while he struggles to guide Romany through a squall, that he’s made a terrible mistake; ongoing references to MobyDick underscore the sea’s capacity to inflict harm, as does a shipboard fall that leaves Océan with a nasty wound. Island doctors stitch up her leg, and we see father and daughter slowly reawakening to happiness as they experience tranquil days amid the natural beauty of the Caribbean. But the departure of Phoebe, a young woman hired to help with the three-day sail over open seas to Cartegena, reanimates Océan’s anguish over her mother’s abandonment, and father and daughter must endure one more bereavement before their journey ends.

A bit short on narrative energy, but appealingly warmhearted; readers will empathize with the endearing characters and want them to have a happy ending.

SEDUCTION

Rose, M.J. Atria (384 pp.) $24.00 | May 7, 2013 978-1-4516-2150-1 Rose (The Book of Lost Fragrances, 2012, etc.) fails to breathe new life into her latest offering, which includes themes and characters introduced in previous stories and rehashes discussions about reincarnation, Jungian psychology and olfactory sensations.

Mythologist Jac L’Etoile, a woman with a troubled past, is contacted by former fellow mental patient Theo Gaspard, who also has a troubled past. Theo’s family home is on the Isle of Jersey, and Theo invites Jac to the island to view some mysterious discoveries he’s made. Against her therapist’s wishes, Jac journeys to the island, where she meets Theo’s elderly aunts, both with—what else?—troubled pasts, and Ash, Theo’s estranged and, yes, troubled brother. In the 1850s, the Isle of Jersey becomes Victor Hugo’s residence-in-exile and Hugo, troubled by his daughter Didine’s death, becomes obsessed with trying to communicate with her through séances. He also smokes hashish, which could explain his claim that he communicates with many of history’s greatest souls, including Jesus and Shakespeare. One evening, Hugo meets Fantine, a mysterious, troubled young woman from a family of perfumers who recently lost a child, and he becomes obsessed with her. |

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Switch to 56 B.C., when a tribe of Druids also occupies the Isles—right on the property belonging to Theo. Owain, the high priest, his wife and child live a pretty normal Druid life until he and the other priests have troubling visions that they believe Owain must fulfill in order to save the tribe. Meanwhile, in 1855, Hugo’s having his own problems: He’s wrangling with the Shadow of the Sepulcher, aka Lucifer, who’s made him a pretty sweet offer. And then there’s Jac in present-day life: She’s suffering dizzy spells, being bombarded by different smells, experiencing overwhelming feelings of dread and calling out weird names. One of the aunts ties a ribbon around her wrist to keep Jac from slipping away to heaven-knows-where, and it seems to do the trick. As the author switches back and forth between the very distant past, the sort-of-distant past and the present, she finally connects all the troubled characters (long after the reader’s managed to do so) and brings the book to a close—but not before Jac, her hosts and therapists have protracted discussions about reincarnation and the collective unconscious.

Much déjà vu about nothing.

TAKE, BURN OR DESTROY

Russell, S. Thomas Putnam (448 pp.) $27.95 | May 16, 2013 978-0-399-15896-4

Captains courageous, ambitious and resolute do furious battle on the high seas in the midst of the French Revolution.

This U.K. export reaches American shores to continue the adventures of Capt.

Charles Hayden and his unlucky frigate, the HMS Themis. Russell (A Battle Won, 2010, etc.) has the advantage this time, having already established Hayden’s background and his dual nature as a British officer with a French mother. This allows him to throw the reader right into the action, as Hayden and his motley crew intercept intelligence about a plot to invade England. But before the Captain can return to Portsmouth with the news, they’re outmaneuvered by a wily French captain named Lacrosse—as fascinating a character as Russell has conceived and an absorbing counterpoint to the nobly flawed Hayden. But a sudden shipwreck shifts the ground between the warring crews, leading to a remarkable rescue for Hayden and his men. Meanwhile, back in England, a misunderstanding has left Hayden estranged from his lady love, Henrietta Carthew, who is being courted by another man. Her absence is a particularly cruel blow for Hayden, as tentative in romance as he is bold in battle. Nevertheless, the newly promoted Post Captain soldiers on in his new charge, the 64-gun ship Raisonnable. The crew is tasked with delivering dispatches to Adm. Lord Howe, who is cruising the English Channel in pursuit of a French convoy. Russell is no slouch at writing adventure, having crafted a host of sci-fi/fantasy novels under pen names, but he is becoming incredibly skilled at crafting these seafaring adventures. Hayden makes for a rich character whose internal turmoil 28

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lends credence to his role as master and commander, while his crew is as varied and interesting as any of Patrick O’Brien’s lot.

Another vivid adventure with a tumultuous historical backdrop—not to be missed by fans of pirates and naval strategy or by history buffs.

PARIS

Rutherfurd, Edward Doubleday (832 pp.) $32.50 | Apr. 23, 2013 978-0-385-53530-4 Overstuffed yarn of the ville lumière from city-hopping epic-smith Rutherfurd (New York, 2009, etc.).

Rutherfurd’s latest is billed as Paris: The Novel, a designation with which the shades of Émile Zola and Victor Hugo might take issue. A novel, maybe—or maybe five novels rolled up into one big saucisson—but not the novel, DeMille-an or Zanuck-ian as it may sound. For Rutherfurd, the novel form seems to be an opportunity to erect a kind of scaffolding around a sequence of flash cards devoted to, in this case, the history of Paris, and there’s scarcely a paragraph of exposition that is not didactic at heart. Henry Ford, he takes pains to tell us, is “the motor manufacturer” (not “a motor manufacturer”), just so we’re sure we’re not talking about Henry Ford the doughnut baron of Chillicothe. The Knights Templar, for anyone who hasn’t read kindred spirit Dan Brown (though Rutherfurd is far and away the better writer), “were the guardians of huge deposits in many lands. From there, it was only a step to being bankers.” He even explains French to the French: “Dieudonné....

It means ‘the gift of God.’ ” Merci pour les explications, dude. Rutherfurd layers on the symbolism with a trowel: Not for nothing does the garçon at the book’s beginning share a name with a certain musketeer. And much of the writing telegraphs, passively telling rather than showing: “the thought of base blood entering the noble family of de Cygne was repugnant to him.” All that said, Rutherfurd’s sense of epic sweep is admirable, and any book that stretches from Caesar to May 1968 is bound to need a lot of room.

For all its merits, Rutherfurd’s latest is too big and too professorial for comfort—Edmund White could have written his own À la recherche du temps perdu in the same space.

THE TRANSLATOR

Schuyler, Nina Pegasus (352 pp.) $24.95 | Jul. 16, 2013 978-1-60598-470-4

A multilingual woman learns life lessons while recovering from a freak accident.

Hanne Schubert, the translator of the title, is a widow and mother of two grown children: a successful son, Tomas, and

Brigitte, a prodigal daughter who has yet to return. An accomplished translator, fluent in several languages, Hanne is the product of a peripatetic upbringing and of tough love. As the book opens, Hanne is engaged in an affair with Jiro, the main character of a novel she is translating from Japanese. Her fantasies and dreams focus on Jiro, the complicated creation of the contemporary Japanese novelist Kobayashi, and not on her sometime-lover, David, professor at the fictional Colbert University. (If there was any humor in the book, it might be found in this name, but sadly, it is generic.) Her translation submitted, her expectations high, she falls down a flight of stairs. In the hospital, she becomes a medical curiosity, losing all her languages but Japanese. This prompts her to accept an invitation she initially declined to speak at a conference in Japan. At the conference, Kobayashi confronts her, precipitating a crisis. Hanne decides to seek out Moto, a famous Noh actor and Kobayashi’s inspiration for Jiro. While living with Moto and his brother Renzo, Hanne observes Moto’s prolonged mourning for his ex-wife and takes heart from his example—or so we are expected to believe.

Long on plot but short on story, this is chick lit for sophisticates.

THE BONE SEASON

Shannon, Samantha Bloomsbury (480 pp.) $24.00 | Aug. 20, 2013 978-1-62040-139-2

A futuristic novel that presents an alternative universe of seers, soothsayers and even such esoterica as rhabdomancers—and their enemies.

The year is 2059—using the Scion calendar, that is—and the future is not a happy one. Paige Mahoney is 19, narrator of the story and a “dreamcatcher” at the top of the seven orders of clairvoyance.

Her status means she has greater sensitivity to and control of the “aether,” a higher plane of existence and something that gets her in big trouble when her spirit winds up flying out of her body and killing an Underguard. (Not only is the universe Shannon creates an alternative one, but so is the vocabulary.

One gets used to deciphering such sentences as, “The idea that the Rephaim fed on aura just didn’t compute. It was a link to the aether, unique to each voyant.” An extensive glossary at the end of the novel helps with this decoding.) Paige is caught, given a strong dose of “flux” and taken to the “Lost City” of Oxford, where she’s confined to the Residence of Magdalen. There she meets Nashira Sargas, the “blood-sovereign of the Race of Rephaim,” who are all clairvoyants (in contrast to the Amaurotics, or nonclairvoyants). Paige’s name is changed to XX-59-40, and she comes under the control of Arcturus, Warden of the Mesarthim, who becomes her “keeper.” Nashira explains to Paige the existence of the Emim, “mindless, bestial creatures with a taste for human flesh.” Every 10 years, the Rephaim “harvest” the clairvoyants to help them control the Emim, and these harvests are called Bone Seasons.

The first of a projected set of seven novels, this book is for those who like their dystopian science fiction multilayered, philosophical and complex to the point of impenetrability.

BIG BROTHER

Shriver, Lionel Harper/HarperCollins (384 pp.) $26.99 | Jun. 4, 2013 978-0-06-145857-6 A woman is at a loss to control her morbidly obese brother in the latest feat of unflinching social observation from Shriver (The New Republic, 2012, etc.).

Pandora, the narrator of this smartly turned novel, is a happily settled 40-something living in a just-so Iowa home with her husband and two stepchildren and running a successful business manufacturing custom dolls that parrot the recipient’s pet phrases.

Her brother, Edison, is a New York jazz pianist who’s hit the skids, and when he calls hoping to visit for a while, she’s happy to assist. But she’s aghast to discover he’s ballooned from a trim 163 to nearly 400 pounds. Edison can be a pretentious blowhard to start with, and his weight makes him an even more exasperating houseguest, clearing out the pantry, breaking furniture and driving a wedge in Pandora’s marriage. So Pandora concocts a scheme: She’ll move out to live with Edison while monitoring his crash diet of protein-powder drinks. The book is largely about weight and America’s obesity epidemic; Shriver writes thoughtfully about our diets and how our struggle to find an identity tends to lead us toward the fridge, and she describes our fleshy flaws with a candor that marks much of her fiction.

But the book truly shines as a study of family relationships. As Pandora spends a year as Edison’s cheerleader, drill sergeant and caregiver, Shriver reveals the complex push and pull between siblings and has some wise and troubling things to say about guilt, responsibility and how what can seem like tough love is actually overindulgence. The story’s arc flirts with a cheeriness that’s unusual for her, but a twist ending reassures us this is indeed a Shriver novel and that our certitude is just another human foible.

A masterful, page-turning study of complex relationships among our bodies, our minds and our families.

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THE CHILD THIEF

Smith, Dan Pegasus Crime (352 pp.) $25.00 | Jun. 15, 2013 978-1-60598-440-7 Set in 1930, a former soldier must leave his quiet farm life in the outskirts of Soviet-controlled Ukraine to find his kidnapped niece.

British author Smith’s (Dark Horizons, 2011, etc.) latest thriller begins with Luka, a veteran of World War I and the Russian Civil War, discovering a mysterious stranger who is barely conscious and pulling a sled loaded with two dead children. When his neighbors in the small Ukrainian farming village learn of the children, Luka is unable to prevent the hastily formed mob from lynching the stranger.

Luka’s inner turmoil increases when his brother-in-law (and the leader of the hanging party) realizes that his daughter is missing and it becomes clear that Luka is the one person who has the skill set to recover the missing girl. With the potential threat of an encroaching Soviet police force sweeping the countryside, Luka leaves his wife and daughter behind and sets out with his twin sons into the harsh Ukrainian wilderness. The stakes are raised when Luka realizes that the kidnapper is using the young girl as bait to lure Luka and his sons into a dangerous labyrinth where their own lives are continually threatened. The tension steadily increases as Luka uses his military training in a battle of wits with the unknown kidnapper, and the division between the hunter and the hunted becomes more and more blurry.

In a style that methodically builds suspense, Smith delivers the story of a hero able to rise to the challenge in the face of escalating troubles.

THE MANGO BRIDE

Soliven, Marivi NAL Accent/Berkley (368 pp.) $15.00 paper | May 7, 2013 978-0-451-23984-6 Characters excavate the past in order to illuminate the present.

The author hits the ground running with a scene in which a woman we will soon come to know as a loving, nurturing nanny lashes out with a kitchen knife at her employer, a woman we will soon come to know as a nasty narcissist. Moving from decade to decade and back and forth across the ocean from Manila to Berkeley, Calif., this is a compelling tale of tragic family secrets. Amparo, the daughter of upperclass parents, has an abortion. Worried about what gossip will do to the family honor, the mother, Señora Concha, banishes her daughter to America, where Amparo gets work as an interpreter in Berkeley. There, she meets and falls in love with her yoga teacher and connects with her mother’s brother, also banished from the family home, years before she was born. Beverly 30

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(named for Beverly Hills), from a poor, servant-class family, gets herself to California by putting her photo up on a website where American men look for Filipina mail-order brides. Beverly ends up with a man acting out a cycle of domestic violence that began in his own childhood, and she plans to leave him as soon as she can secretly save enough money to buy tickets for herself and their young daughter to go back to Manila. Beverly and Amparo meet by chance in Berkeley, but Beverly suffers a tragic death before she and Amparo can discover their blood connection. When Amparo learns that Beverly was the result of her uncle’s long-ago affair with her own nanny’s sister, she steps up with her boyfriend to adopt the child Beverly left behind.

After tracing the family’s dark history, the tragic story ends on a more hopeful note for the next generation.

OUT OF RANGE

Steinberg, Hank Morrow/HarperCollins (352 pp.) $25.99 | $12.99 e-book | Jun. 4, 2013 978-0-06-208053-0 978-0-06-208054-7 e-book Six years after ace newspaper reporter Charlie Davis and his British wife, Julie, barely escaped a Tiananmen-like massacre in Uzbekistan, she is abducted near their Los Angeles home. His efforts to find her lead him back to the roiling former Soviet state, where he must also thwart a terrorist plot.

Charlie’s marriage hasn’t been the same since he gave up the international beat—understandably, since he got shot in Uzbekistan and his wife nearly lost her baby during an uprising there—to do menial work for the Los Angeles Times. After her disappearance, he discovers emails of Julie’s that indicate she has been having an affair—possibly with her old Cambridge classmate Alisher Byko, once a potential force for good in Central Asia with his inherited wealth and charisma, and now a force for oppression. She may also be involved in some kind of secret operation, possibly with MI6. In due course, Charlie is abducted by the same Black Ops agents who carried off Julie, makes a daring escape and, with the help of an old, trusted friend, goes all-out to undermine Byko.

This debut is fast-paced, well-plotted and scenic. But we’re on familiar turf, storywise, even with the torture scenes. The characters are rather thinly drawn, and Steinberg could have done more to make the events of the past resonate unsettlingly through the present. Charlie and Julie survive their harrowing first visit to Uzbekistan too neatly, and the book never overcomes that.

An above-average, if familiar international thriller, the first from the creator of TV’s Without a Trace.

“...grand in scope, rich in musicality...” from the keeper of secrets

THE KEEPER OF SECRETS

Thomas, Julie Morrow/HarperCollins (384 pp.) $14.99 paper | May 28, 2013 978-0-06-224030-9

A priceless 1742 Guarneri del Gesu violin becomes a focal point from which radiates the story of a German family devastated by the Holocaust, a Russian family hiding secrets and a community of musicians.

Thomas’ (In Vino Veritas, 2012, etc.) novel sweepingly embraces generations of the Horowitz family. In 1939, Simon Horowitz follows in the footsteps of his father, grandfather and great-grandfather—all virtuoso violinists. Hoping to hide at least the most precious of the family heirlooms from the Nazis, Simon’s father has the instrument—which has been in the family for over 150 years—subtly altered. Leaping ahead in time, the story picks up with Daniel Horowitz, whose talent at the age of 14 has already earned him the prestigious Hillier Foundation International Prize, as well as the kind attention of maestro conductor Rafael Gomez. Although the family did not lose its talent, it did lose the del Gesu during the war, which also sent Simon, his brother and his father to Dachau. Despite his gift— and to his parents’ horror—Daniel would rather play baseball with his friends. While Rafael plots to keep Daniel playing the violin, another musician, Tatiana, captures the musical world’s attention, not for her skill (which is certainly remarkable), but for her instrument. Rescued from prostitution, Tatiana is under the protection of Sergei Valentino, who allows her to play his family’s 1729 del Gesu. Hearing her play in public, however, restorer Roberto di Longi becomes convinced that in her hands lies something far more valuable. Soon, Daniel’s fortunes and the mystery of the del Gesu violins begin to converge, forcing Rafael to weigh friendship against justice.

From unexpected mercies to unbridled greed, Thomas’ tale is grand in scope, rich with musicality, yet the pressures of the musical coterie deflate when set against the horrors of the concentration camps.

THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF NATHANIEL P.

Waldman, Adelle Henry Holt (256 pp.) $25.00 | Jul. 16, 2013 978-0-8050-9745-0

Nate Piven’s affairs are convoluted, to say the least, and some of his relationships seem to come right out of Seinfeld episodes.

Where to begin...well, there’s Juliet, who meets Nate after a hiatus and castigates him for his insensitivity, for he’d gotten her pregnant, paid for an abortion and then effectively dumped her. We also meet Elisa, a former girlfriend who renews her interest in Nate now that

he’s about to have a book published. At a dinner party, Nate briefly meets Hannah, whom he finds attractive and who later becomes his “serious” girlfriend. They get along great, and Hannah even goes toe-to-toe with Jason, Nate’s overly intellectual best friend.

Nate and Hannah settle into a comfortable relationship, both sexual and social, but then (inevitably?) become moody and begin to drift apart. Nate knows the relationship’s over when Hannah sends him a long email detailing the depth and complexity of her feelings, and he fails to respond with a similar email, so he then receives a much shorter and angrier one dismissing him as a jerk. On the rebound, Nate hooks up with Greer, another friend of Hannah’s, and the novel ends with Nate and Greer moving in together. While on the surface things are fine, the relationship is fraught with the usual vulnerabilities and anxieties that characterize all of Nate’s relationships. Throughout the narrative, Waldman also flashes us back to Nate’s earlier girlfriends, pals and hookups.

The characters that populate Waldman’s world are artistic, creative, funny and intelligent—except when it comes to matters of the heart, for they are constitutionally incapable of making long-term commitments. It would be refreshing to find one mature adult.

THE SILVER STAR

Walls, Jeannette Scribner (288 pp.) $26.00 | Jun. 11, 2013 978-1-4516-6150-7

Memoirist Walls, who has written about her own nomadic upbringing (The Glass Castle, 2006) and her remarkable grandmother (the novelized biography Half Broke Horses, 2009), turns to outand-out fiction in this story about two young sisters who leave behind their life on the road for the small Virginia town their mother escaped years before.

By 1970, 12-year-old Bean and 15-year-old Liz are used to moving from town to town with their would-be actress/singer mother, Charlotte. When Charlotte takes off to find herself in San Diego, the Holladay sisters know how to fend for themselves, living on potpies and getting themselves to school for several weeks. But then the authorities start sniffing around. Scared they’ll be carted off to foster care, Liz decides they should head cross-country to Byler, Va., the hometown Charlotte left for good when Bean was still a baby. Clearly, Walls borrows from her own experience in describing the girls’ peripatetic life, but she doesn’t waste undue time on the road trip before getting the girls to Byler, where the real drama begins. The Holladays used to own the town’s cotton mill, but all that’s left is the decaying mansion where Charlotte’s widowed brother still lives. Less cutesy eccentric than he first seems, Tinsley gives the girls the security they have missed. Tinsley also reflects Byler itself, a conservative Southern town struggling to adjust to shifting realities of racial integration and the Vietnam War. Bean joins the newly integrated school’s pep squad and thrives by assimilating; creative, sensitive Liz chafes under pressure to conform. Then, Charlotte shows up wanting to take the girls to New York City. Walls throws in an unnecessary melodrama concerning an evil bully of a man who threatens Liz with violence |

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and worse, but the novel’s strength lies in capturing the complexity of Bean’s and Liz’s shifting loyalties.

Walls turns what could have been another sentimental girl-on-the-run-finds-home cliché into a fresh consideration of both adolescence and the South on the cusp of major social change. (Author tour to Atlanta, Austin, Houston, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, New York, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C.)

THE HANGING GARDEN

White, Patrick Picador (240 pp.) $15.00 paper | May 28, 2013 978-1-250-02852-5

The posthumous publication of an unfinished coming-of-age novel by the Nobel Prize-winning Australian author (1912-1990).

According to his biographer, what we have is about the first third of a novel which White began late in his career and was forced to set aside. Two kids arrive in Australia after the outbreak of World War II. They are “reffoes” (refugees). Gilbert Horsfall has been sent from London to escape the Blitz; his mother’s dead, his father’s an invisible colonel in India.

Eirene Sklavos is accompanied by her mother, Gerry, fleeing Germanoccupied Greece; Gerry, an Aussie, married a Greek communist who died in prison. She’ll be going back to do nursing in Egypt and connect with her new man. Gil and Eirene are parked with Mrs. Bulpit, a widow in suburban Sydney. White alternates their viewpoints; the writing is impressionist, elliptical. The children mark out their territory. Eirene, acutely conscious of her olive complexion, sees herself as a “black reffo Greek” and has the greater psychological burden. On the cusp of puberty, they share a bed one night but don’t cuddle. The grown-ups, Ma Bulpit and Eirene’s aunt Ally, are slovenly and repellent. The kids create a refuge in the wild, untended garden, building a treehouse together, though curiously, White pays their time in it little mind, leaving a hole at the center. The drama, when it comes, does not develop from their brittle friendship.

Even in context, a fragmented work, primarily of interest to White completists.

LOVE ALL

Wright, Callie Henry Holt (240 pp.) $25.00 | Jun. 25, 2013 978-0-8050-9697-2 A sympathetic debut charts the days following a matriarch’s death during which three generations of the same family see their settled lives begin to splinter.

Sex, marriage vows and teenage angst seam Wright’s first novel, set in the small community 32

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of Cooperstown, made famous in the 1960s when a notorious novel, The Sex Cure, exposed the thinly veiled affairs of its citizens. Bob Cole feared his own infidelities would come to light in its pages, although his wife, Joanie—the grandmother who dies in the prologue—never let on that she knew about them. But she did, and so did their clever daughter Anne, whose character was shaped by the undeclared marital tensions. Anne escaped to Harvard Law School, but later, married to Hugh, she returned. Joanie’s death means Bob must move in with Anne and Hugh, a fact which upsets established family patterns, leading to the exposure of Hugh’s own recent infidelity. And then there are Hugh and Anne’s two teenage children, each caught up in their own dilemmas of hormonal awakening, sport and the fearsome possibilities of the future. Narrated from multiple perspectives, some more compelling than others, and larded with themes, Wright’s novel is overfreighted yet capable and humane.

Inhabiting an appealing if familiar scenario, this is a novel long on empathy but missing the spark of animation.

m ys t e r y BLUNT IMPACT

Black, Lisa Severn House (224 pp.) $28.95 | May 1, 2013 978-0-7278-8252-3 Forensic detective Theresa MacLean (Trail of Blood, 2010, etc.) takes the risk of getting too close to a murder victim’s daughter.

A construction site is a dangerous place for anyone, much less a woman who’s had a little much to drink. So at first blush, it looks as if Samantha Zebrowski just fell from the 23rd floor of what’s slated to become Cuyahoga County’s new jail. But Samantha has been finishing concrete since she was 14. How could such an experienced worker ignore OSHA regulations and stray past the 10-foot safety zone? Theresa’s leading theory is suicide, not an unlikely scenario for a single mom living with a wheelchairbound mother and an 11-year-old. But Samantha’s daughter Anna, known as Ghost, claims to have followed her mother on her barhopping tour that night and saw someone push her over the edge. True to her name, Ghost slips out of her Nana’s house the next day and shows up at the medical examiner’s office wanting to help Theresa find the “Shadow Man” who was with Samantha the night of her death. Theresa dries Ghost’s tears and promises her that she and her cousin, homicide detective Frank Patrick, will find Samantha’s killer. The next day, while lunching with prosecutor Ian Bauer, she sees the little girl showing her mother’s picture to the bartender at Tavern on the Green. Fearful that the Shadow Man will try to eliminate Ghost

TIME TO KILL

before she can identify him, Theresa redoubles her efforts to bring Samantha’s killer to swift justice.

Black handles multiple plots like a pro, building a story with almost as many layers as the new Cleveland jail.

LUCKY BASTARD

Coonts, Deborah Forge (352 pp.) $25.99 | May 14, 2013 978-0-7653-3546-3

Like everything else in Vegas, the corpse is displayed extravagantly, draped over the hood of a candy apple red Ferrari, the heel of a Jimmy Choo stiletto embedded in her neck.

Lucky O’Toole, that lusty, wryly selfdeprecating troubleshooter for the glitzy Babylon Casino, is patching up the ding the departing cabaret singer Teddie left in her heart by drooling over French chef Jean Charles. She’s just fired the much-loathed poker room manager and secured a seat at the high-stakes table for a deaf young man when she’s called on to deal with the dead woman perched on the pricey Ferrari spotlighted in the casino’s dealership. Babylon security tapes show the soon-to-be-dead gal cheating but losing big anyway, then getting followed from the card table by Dane, her soon-to-be ex. As Lucky and Detective Romeo try to round him up, other problems surface. The poker room manager is poisoned. Shady Slim Grady, who always shows up for the big-stakes poker tournament, turns up dead in his plane, and his wife, bimbo Betty Sue, insists on sending him off with a gaudy Celebration of Life party. The deaf kid disappears.

Offshore betting sites come into play. A storm makes Lucky traipse through Vegas sewer pipes after a mystery woman. Jean Charles’ 5-year-old son is due to arrive from France, and Lucky is scared to meet him. The Department of Justice is running a sting operation that has as much a chance of succeeding as the mayoral campaign of Lucky’s mom, a former madam now hitched to the Babylon’s Big Boss. Then, just as matters are simmering down, Teddie returns.

If you’re entertained by sex, innuendo and a few fantasies you’d like to see played out—and who isn’t?—you ought to have Lucky and her extended Vegas family (So Damn Lucky, 2012, etc.) on speed dial.

Coughlin, Jack with Davis, Donald A. St. Martin’s (304 pp.) $25.99 | May 7, 2013 978-1-250-01287-6 This time out, it’s the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution against Gunnery Sgt. Kyle Swanson.

Guess who wins?

Accountant Norman Haynes would have had plenty to tell Task Force Trident, the president’s personal team of intelligence troubleshooters, about the shadowy Palm Group, which he’d been auditing, if he hadn’t been assassinated. His death, and the attempted kidnapping of Swanson’s adopted mother, retired actress Lady Patricia Cornwell, make Trident’s antenna bristle so furiously that triggerman Swanson (Running the Maze, 2012, etc.) is soon on his way to Sharm el-Sheikh, partnered with Egyptian-born MI6 operative and Egyptologist Dr. Tianha Bialy, who doesn’t trust him any more than he trusts her. Their mission is to make contact with the Pharaoh, an agent who’s been passing on information about the Army of the Guardians. Bialy has her own agenda, but her clashes with Swanson are soon mooted by a series of terrorist attacks on Egypt’s national soccer team and an Iranian ship plying the Red Sea. The attacks, which look like the work of Egyptian terrorists determined to stabilize their emerging government, have actually been masterminded by Pharaoh, otherwise known as Col. Yahya Ali Naqdi. This high-ranking officer in the Army of the Guardians has hatched a plot to create a pretext for an Iranian invasion of Egypt. He plans to insert a slender military force into Sharm el-Sheikh, ostensibly at Egypt’s invitation, so that he can commandeer the city’s airport, cow the locals into submission and ultimately establish control over all shipping that passes through the Suez Canal. The Egyptian forces are so credulous, disorganized and ill-equipped that nothing can stop the Pharaoh’s plan except for Swanson, armed with his sniper’s eye, his talent for creating new alliances and whatever weaponry he can lay his hands on.

Swanson, who clearly thinks he’s an American James Bond, dishes out plenty of “plain old ass-kicking payback” for red-meat fans.

CUTS THROUGH BONE

Hunt, Alaric Minotaur (320 pp.) $24.99 | May 14, 2013 978-1-250-01330-9

The murder of a wealthy Columbia University student provides a steep learning curve for the pair investigating her death.

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be tested by the case. So will his recent hire, Rachel Vasquez, a bright young woman whose parents think she should be in college instead. Rachel is bored by the job until the pair are engaged by the cousin of Columbia student Camille Bowman to look more closely into her death than the police have done. Greg Olsen, Camille’s boyfriend, has been arrested. Greg’s service in the Afghanistan War doesn’t bear too close an examination, and his gun was the murder weapon, but Guthrie and the cousin think that he’s innocent. One witness the police missed is a homeless man who has no plans to testify. His reluctance leads the pair on a hunt through little-known alleys and dangerous stretches of old subway tunnels. Back above ground, Guthrie and Rachel learn that Camille was quite the party girl before she met Greg, and some of her former playmates are not pleased with their investigation. Nor is the Russian Mafia. When they’re nearly killed, they realize that their investigation has hit a nerve with someone powerful. The big question they come up against, however, is whether Camille or Greg was the intended victim.

Despite its modern touches, Hunt’s down-and-dirty debut harkens back to Sam Spade and other classic private eyes. It may be a little rough around the edges, but it drags you in and keeps you reading.

THE STRANGER

Läckberg, Camilla Pegasus Crime (384 pp.) $25.95 | May 7, 2013 978-1-60598-425-4 Fjällbacka, which must already be the most crime-ridden little town in Sweden (The Stonecutter, 2012, etc.), gets both a serial killer and a reality program.

Everyone knows that Marit Kaspersen hated liquor. So why did she have a toxic level of alcohol in her bloodstream when her car crashed into a tree? Before Detective Patrik Hedström and his colleagues on the Tanumshede police force can do more than establish that the accident that took Marit’s life was no accident, a second murder claims their attention. With the full cooperation of wealthy Erling Larson and his compliant town council, TV producer Fredrik Rehn and the crew of misfit partiers he’s assembled—bosomy Barbie, spoiled rich kid Calle, untalented singer Tina, bully-boy Uffe and neurotic Mehmet—have descended on the town to shoot Sodding Tanum. Larson, who’s convinced that the show will put the place on the map, gets his wish in spades when one of the dim stars turns up strangled at the end of an especially enthusiastic round of partying, and the surviving cast members are the obvious suspects.

Since Patrik is busy welcoming bright new colleague Hanna Kruse into his squad and preparing for his wedding to crime novelist Erica Falck, he scarcely has a moment to spare for the Kaspersen case. When he does look more closely into it, though, he soon realizes that it’s linked to at least three far-flung earlier murders over a period of 10 years and perhaps even to the much higher-profile killing that’s outraged locals without ever slowing down the production of Sodding Tanum.

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Patrik’s still no great shakes as a detective—people keep bringing him crucial evidence other cops would have to hunt for—but the surprising punch the big reveal packs makes this the best of Läckberg’s four appearances in English to date.

SISTERS

MacDonald, Patricia Severn House (224 pp.) $28.95 | May 1, 2013 978-0-7278-8247-9 A letter from her late mother turns a would-be curator’s world upside down.

Returning to the Boston suburbs after graduate school seemed a natural step for Alex Woods—or would have seemed natural had both her parents not died in a car crash shortly before her graduation. Now Alex is back, cleaning out her childhood home and looking for work in one of Boston’s many galleries. Her parents’ attorney has quite a surprise for her.

Her mother left a letter for Alex, an only child, telling her that she had a baby when she was a teenager. Mr. Killebrew agrees to have a private detective search for the child, given up for adoption shortly after her birth. But the results of the search shock Alex: Her half sister Dory is in prison for the murder of Lauren, the natural child of her adoptive parents, Garth and Elaine Colson. Stunned, Alex visits Dory and finds her half sister bitter and guarded. Marisol Torres, a law student working with the Justice Initiative at New England Law School, believes that Dory may have grounds for an appeal; her public defender advised Dory to plead guilty without attempting to gather any evidence that might have exonerated her. Alex helps Marisol find evidence that Dory was misrepresented. Getting her conviction overturned, however, is not the same as proving Dory innocent. As the sisters come to know each other, Alex wonders whether she made the right decision to find Dory and help her. Is she putting herself, her new career and her blossoming friendship with college professor Seth Paige at risk for a sister she lived 26 years without knowing she had?

The latest from MacDonald, a longtime specialist in family potboilers (Missing Child, 2012, etc.), won’t disappoint her fans.

GARDEN OF EVIL

Masterton, Graham Severn House (240 pp.) $28.95 | Apr. 1, 2013 978-0-7278-8249-3 A supernatural tale pits an English teacher against an adversary who may just be the devil.

The students who enroll in Jim Rook’s remedial English class at West Grove Community College have no

idea what’s in store for them from Day 1. It’s not so much that these kids are particularly ignorant or ill-prepared for the real world, though they are both, as that bad luck seems to follow Jim wherever he goes. As the world’s only true medium, Jim frequently finds himself embroiled in supernatural situations.

The apparent ritual murder of a college student whose body is whitewashed and suspended from the ceiling of his classroom suggests this semester is dishing up more of the same.

Whoever perpetrated this crime evidently wants to make it personal for Jim, who has an unexpected tie to the victim.

Though Jim feels certain that the death is related to the mysterious Simon Silence, the son of a cult reverend and one of Jim’s latest crop of students, principal Ehrlichman refuses to remove Simon from the class. Without warning, Jim finds himself drawn into a world in which he is expected to question good and evil and must make a choice between the two.

As he’s forced to decide, more people close to Jim are drawn into the drama, and it’s not clear who will make it out alive, including Jim’s usually well-loved cat, Tibbles.

Though Masterton’s (Festival of Fear, 2012, etc.) plot moves well and is action-oriented, the condoning of generally abnormal human interactions by all hands may make readers wonder what, in this world, normal is.

TINE TO LIVE, A TINE TO DIE

Maxwell, Edith Kensington (304 pp.) $24.00 | May 28, 2013 978-0-7582-8461-7

An organic farmer has a lot more than crop failure to worry about.

Cam Flaherty took over her uncle’s farm after losing her job. Now that she’s switched to organic produce, she’s off to a good start, with quite a few people signed up for weekly produce shares, a stand at a local farmer’s market and a chef eager to buy her food.

Even though she’s overwhelmed with work, Cam is forced to fire Mike Montgomery, the sullen son of a local farmer, when she finds him bringing pesticides onto her property. Her shareholders and members of the locavore group that buy her products pitch in to help, but things go from bad to worse when Mike is found dead with Cam’s pitchfork through his neck. The police arrest Lucinda DaSilva, one of her helpers, but Cam, unable to believe that she’s guilty, decides to do some sleuthing on her own. Her former childhood friend is a police officer whose husband is involved in a local group of bigots who are trying to discover undocumented foreigners living in the area. Besides Lucinda, whose status is in doubt, several other people, some of them longtime residents, may be undocumented, including Cam’s new love interest, Jake Ericsson, a Swedish chef, and a Polish businessman whose daughter helps Cam at the farm while earning a Girl Scout badge. Will Cam find the killer before her business vanishes?

The first in a planned series offers plenty of organic gardening lore, characters too nice to kill anyone and a mystery guaranteed not to keep you up at night.

I HEAR THE SIRENS IN THE STREET

McKinty, Adrian Seventh Street/Prometheus (256 pp.) $15.95 paper | May 14, 2013 978-1-61614-787-7 The second in the author’s Troubles Trilogy, focusing on the 1982 Northern Ireland war zone.

Belfast DI Sean Duffy never gets in his car without checking first to see if the Irish Republican Army has rigged a bomb to its undercarriage or the Ulster Defence Regiment is standing nearby ready to lob Molotov cocktails through the windshield. Nobody is really safe in Belfast these days, and he and DC McCrabban have had their share of run-ins with both sides. When a bloody trail leads to a locked suitcase tossed in a trash bin, they open it to find a decapitated torso with a partially obliterated tattoo. The autopsy indicates that the victim was poisoned, frozen and chopped up, and the toxin was Albrin, a rare tropical concoction never before seen in the U.K. but recorded as being used three times in the U.S. by husbands eliminating their womenfolk. Was this a tourist? The tattoo identifies him as a veteran of the U.S. military, and cagey consulate and FBI sources identify him as William O’Rourke, a one-time Internal Revenue Service member who’s been visiting Ireland looking for his roots. The suitcase he was found in leads Duffy to the isolated home of Martin McAlpine, supposedly an IRA victim months back, although the investigation into his death was slipshod. The duffer who handled it turns up dead, while McAlpine’s well-connected older brother Sir Harry tries to stop Duffy’s inquiries. He’s not the only one. The Secret Service, the Brits and the FBI all seem to have a stake in a coverup, and Duffy also manages to antagonize John DeLorean, who’s battling local economic doldrums by employing 3,000 Ulstermen in his Northern Ireland car factory. Ordered to stand down, Duffy ignores his higher-ups, flies to Boston, where he’s almost killed, then returns to confront a firebombing and a demotion.

Like The Cold Cold Ground (2012), a gruesomely accurate portrayal of ’80s life in Ireland and a searing indictment of political trade-offs, religious intemperance and morally corrupt businessmen.

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“...dark, soulful and violent...” from shotgun lullaby

THE BODY IN THE PIAZZA

Page, Katherine Hall Morrow/HarperCollins (256 pp.) $24.99 | Apr. 30, 2013 978-0-06-206550-6

The Fairchilds celebrate their 25th anniversary in a Tuscany cooking school complete with wine, olives, secretive companions and homicide.

Caterer Faith Fairchild and her pastor husband, Tom, have a few days in Rome before heading for the outskirts of Florence for the inaugural week of her former assistant Francesca’s Cucina Rossi cooking program. They’re befriended by Freddy Ives, who reveals few personal details but knows the best restaurants, cafes and tourist vistas in town. To the Fairchilds’ horror, he’s stabbed to death in a Roman piazza, grasping for his pen and saying, “They’re going to ki....” The police seem uninterested, and the Fairchilds, who barely caught a glimpse of the attacker, head for the Tuscany hills, where Francesca’s cooking students are gathered. There are a bickering couple, possibly contemplating divorce; a goth girl with facial piercings; a British couple who find fault with everything; a pair of lovebirds; some Southern ladies; and Francesca’s neighbor Luke, who owns a grand palazzo and the surrounding vineyards. The group has barely warmed up the oven when Francesca’s assistant quits, decapitated snakes are left in all the bathtubs, Faith is locked in an Etruscan tomb, Tom is kidnapped, Freddy’s notebook is discovered in the palazzo, and his pen turns up too, startling one and all. It will take a call to Faith’s sister back in the States to get the British Embassy involved and separate an assassination plot from the shenanigans of a jealous local, but not to worry: The cooking school is a major success, and the participants leave with a nice set of recipes.

Tuscany food markets, extra virgin olive oil and historic sites are all rendered with Page’s typical gusto and charm (The Body in the Boudoir, 2012, etc.), but, again typically, the plot collapses since logic and reason remain missing ingredients

MURDER IN CHELSEA

Thompson, Victoria Berkley Prime Crime (304 pp.) $25.95 | May 7, 2013 978-0-425-26041-8 A child’s mysterious background puts her life in danger.

Widowed midwife Sarah Brandt, the maverick daughter of a wealthy society family, is fostering and wishing she could adopt Catherine, a young girl abandoned at a downtown Manhattan mission. When a woman claiming to be Catherine’s nursemaid arrives and says that Catherine’s mother wants her back, Sarah, horrified, asks for help from her old friend Detective Malloy, who’d like to be more than a friend 36

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but feels he has nothing to offer Sarah. The nursemaid is murdered before Malloy can talk to her, but with help from Sarah’s parents, the sleuthing duo manage to learn quite a bit about Catherine’s parentage. Her mother, chorus girl Emma Hardy, was the mistress of David Wilbanks, a wealthy man who offered to marry her for the child’s sake after his wife died. After refusing his offer for obscure reasons, Emma went on the road with her lover, an alcoholic actor. Now, the dying Wilbanks wants to put Catherine in his will. But his act of kindness may be the death of her, since his family recoils from the idea. Sarah and Malloy must answer some key questions to keep Catherine safe.

Why is Emma trying to sell her daughter to Wilbanks when she could have married him? And are any members of the Wilbanks family desperate enough to kill Catherine?

Thompson’s latest tour of early-19th-century New York (Murder on Fifth Avenue, 2012, etc.) combines the requisite historical details with a surprise ending that bodes well for future entries in this enjoyable series.

SHOTGUN LULLABY

Ulfelder, Steve Minotaur (336 pp.) $25.99 | May 14, 2013 978-1-250-02808-2

Auto mechanic Conway Sax’s inconsistent attempts to help a hard-used, hard-using kid, who reminds him of his estranged son, leads to disaster for both him and the kid and for a lot of other citizens of Framingham, Mass., as well.

There’s nothing especially likable about Gus Biletnikov, a small-time campus dealer who’s landed with a self-advertising whoop among the Barnburners, Sax’s AA chapter—certainly nothing that would justify pulping the elbow of a guy named Andrade just for selling the kid a crappy car. But Gus looks a bit like Roy, and Sax (The Whole Lie, 2012, etc.) can’t help feeling that befriending him might be a way of making amends for their spectacular falling out, especially after somebody shoots up Almost Home, the halfway house where Gus is staying, and leaves three guys dead, one of whom he probably mistook for Gus. While Sax is getting acquainted with Gus’ circle—his father, Peter, a coldhearted investment banker; his stepmother, Rinn, who’s about the same age as Gus but a lot better looking; his supplier, Teddy Pundo, whose gangster father, Charlie, would rather be tending to the jazz club he owns; and Donald Crump, a small-time entrepreneur who’s come back East from Houston to settle a score with Peter—Gus is getting high in his room at Almost Home with his college buddy Bradford Bloomquist, aka the Dude. When Sax finds out about Gus’ backsliding, he tosses the kid out, literally, and things rapidly go from bad to worse. By the time Sax is finally able to call it a day, five more cast members will be dead, with the survivors in no mood to brag about their good luck. Sax does come off parole, though.

As dark, soulful and violent as the title would suggest.

There’s a real lullaby and some real shotguns.

ANTIDOTE TO MURDER

mining family destroyed by those same invaders, in a futile and desperate effort to warn Earth of the approaching menace. Instead, Victor’s treated like an unimportant minor criminal, while his evidence is ignored. Lem Jukes, meanwhile, heir to a powerful space mining corporation, with whom Victor tangled in space, reaches Earth just days ahead of the alien vessel. He knows precisely the danger the aliens represent and intends to use the situation to wrest control of the business away from his coldly indifferent father, Ukko. Despite everything, the authorities decide the Formics probably aren’t hostile and send an official delegation into space. The Formics contemptuously blow the delegation to atoms and launch massive projectiles toward the planet. Mazer Rackham of New Zealand’s Special Air Services happens to be in China on a training mission when the projectiles arrive and transform themselves into vast invulnerable fortresses, against which the Chinese defenders are helpless. Capt. Wit O’Toole’s Mobile Operations Police desperately seek a way to enter China and join the battle against the Formics. The sections that feature highly intelligent, self-reliant children—Card’s trademark—are as excellent as ever; elsewhere there’s plenty of solid action, well-developed characters and prose that’s often disappointingly clumsy.

Another solidly engrossing installment, where the aliens are really just a sideshow: What we’re witnessing is how and why Ender’s child armies came to be.

Young, Felicity Berkley (368 pp.) $16.00 paper | May 7, 2013 978-0-425-25354-0

A woman doctor in 1911 is a rara avis who must fight for respect.

Dody McCleland considers herself lucky to hold a position as England’s only autopsy surgeon. It’s her other work at a free clinic for women that may get her jailed for murder. When a young woman comes to her for an abortion, already suffering from lead poisoning from the pills she took hoping to bring on a miscarriage, Dody prescribes an antidote and asks her to return. When the woman is found dead from a botched abortion, Dody is accused. Her suffragette sister suggests that she ask her friend Chief Inspector Pike (The Anatomy of Death, 2012) for help, but a proud Dody, recalling that Pike fled at the last minute from the surgery she had arranged on his bad knee, refuses. Pike, still suffering the mental and physical problems from his service in the Boer War, is in love with Dody.

Although she returns his love, she is loath to marry and give up her career. Pike, now with Special Branch, is working undercover to winkle out German spies. When his mission goes south, however, he manages to get assigned to Dody’s case. The only evidence against her is some accusatory anonymous letters she suspects may have been sent by a jealous colleague at the morgue.

When another woman is found dead, Pike, Dody and even her sister go all-out to discover who is manufacturing the lead pills in the hope that this discovery will lead to the abortionist.

The second in Young’s promising series features a strong heroine, a twisty mystery and the obligatory historical detail.

THE HUMAN DIVISION

Scalzi, John Tor (432 pp.) $25.99 | May 14, 2013 978-0-7653-3351-3

Scalzi (Redshirts, 2012, etc.) offers his fifth in the Old Man’s War series.

The Colonial Union keeps peace among the universe’s humans, albeit one fractured after Earth’s withdrawal.

Blame John Perry and Jane Sagan, Roanoke Colony leaders. Earth’s billions had provided Colonial Defense Forces troopers and outpost settlers, which allowed the Colonial Union to cope with the machinations of the Conclave, an alliance of alien (nonhuman) species. Scalzi rockets characters through assorted space adventures, with repeated appearances by Lt. Harry Wilson, CDF technician and Earth native, who finds himself wherever the action is, whether that’s in space disarming a missile trap set for the Utche, an alien species with whom the Colonial Union is negotiating, or caring for an ambassador’s dog whose survival figures into an alien civil war.

Other players pop up repeatedly, including two CDF colonels, a hard-line ambassador and a female starship captain. Starships use “skip drive” to outwit Einsteinian physics and “skip drones” to communicate across light years. Human characters communicate in dialogue laced with 21st-century humor and irony, even among the CDF troopers (repurposed 75-year-old earthlings) equipped with “BrainPals,” neural-computer implants. The aliens too function with socioethical and political mores replicating Machiavelli, authoritarians or third-rate dictators. Laced

science fiction and fantasy EARTH AFIRE

Card, Orson Scott and Johnston, Aaron Tor (400 pp.) $25.99 | Jun. 4, 2013 978-0-7653-2905-9 Series: Formic Wars, 2 Second entry in the prequel series (Earth Unaware, 2012), set many years before the deeds of the Ender’s Game novels.

In China, young genius Bingwen ponders an Internet file seeming to show hostile insectlike aliens. The file was distributed by Victor Delgado, last survivor of a space |

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with oddball humor, the plot is not so esoteric that a newbie to sci-fi’s outlier world cannot follow, and the science buy in isn’t so great as to cause those who mastered introductory physics to stumble. The story simply launches human quandaries and foibles into the universe—greed, aggression, duplicity, arrogance, chauvinism and other distinctly human negatives— where they are imposed on alien circumstances, creatures and environments. Females share power and failure equally, but sex and romance take a back seat to wildcat settlements, derring-do heroes, missiles fired and messages misunderstood, all of which are offset by stunning technology, imagined landscapes and the covert destruction of Earth Station by spaceships piloted by brains-in-boxes. That makes for a gateway to the next episode.

A Heinlein-like adventure for a serious sci-fi fan.

r om a n c e HIGHLANDER MOST WANTED

Banks, Maya Ballantine (368 pp.) $7.99 paper | Mar. 19, 2013 978-0-345-53324-1

When Scottish warrior Bowen Montgomery enters an enemy keep, he is surprised to find that the bravest person there is a mistreated captive of the clan, and the more he learns about the compelling, wounded Genevieve McInnis, the more sure he is that he’s met his

match—and his mate.

After vanquishing the McHughs as an act of reprisal for abducting Laird Graeme Montgomery’s wife, the Montgomery clan takes over the McHugh keep, which most of the McHugh warriors have abandoned, including the laird, Patrick McHugh.

Ian, Patrick’s spoiled, malevolent son, was responsible for the abduction and was killed in the rescue campaign. Bowen Montgomery, Graeme’s brother, has been left in charge of the keep and its survivors. He is intrigued by a young woman who often takes charge in the midst of chaos but is obviously disdained by the McHugh clan members. As Bowen takes measure of the situation, he realizes that Genevieve was also abducted by Ian and has been held captive for a year, despite being the only child of the laird of another clan. Sexually and physically abused

by Ian and despised by his clan, Genevieve still speaks in their defense, begging for their safety and well-being, and asks only for the chance to be delivered to a convent where she may live in peace. As events play out, Genevieve proves herself to be smart, brave, skilled and true-hearted, despite everything that’s happened to her. Bowen falls in love with her but worries that she’ll never be happy until she reconciles with her family, who believes she’s dead—and whom she is too ashamed to contact.

Banks has written an emotionally taut Highlands romance with 38

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a remarkably alpha-yet-perceptive-and-sweet hero and a heroine who has issues but overcomes them with the help of her perfect champion. A slight quibble with the credibility of the first love scene, given Genevieve’s recent traumatizing experiences, and a slightly rushed feeling to the ending, does not ultimately impact the success of the book.

Lush emotionalism, compelling characters and a moving storyline will win romance fans.

SECRETS OF A RUNAWAY BRIDE

Bowman, Valerie St. Martin’s (384 pp.) $7.99 paper | Mar. 26, 2013 978-1-250-00896-1 Annie Andrews is young, headstrong and determined to marry Mr. Arthur Eggleston; Jordan Holloway, Earl of Ashbourne, is a confirmed bachelor, best friend to Annie’s new brother-in-law and determined to stop her.

With her sister Lily happily married and off on her honeymoon, Annie sees the perfect opportunity to convince Mr. Arthur Eggleston to ask for her hand in marriage. When she realizes that Lily has tasked Jordan with keeping an eye on her, she sets out to elude him but is foiled time and again. The catand-mouse game which starts out somewhat in fun becomes more high-stakes as Annie begins to make choices that threaten her reputation, and Jordan finds himself increasingly annoyed at, yet also protective of and attracted to, his young charge.

Whisking her away to his country estate, he sees a new side to the young woman he’d considered a flighty nuisance and takes steps to find her a groom, stunned when his attempts backfire, hurting her feelings and offending him on her behalf—and stirring emotions he didn’t believe he was capable of. Could it be he’s met his match in the vexing chit? This book is the followup novel to Bowman’s debut, Secrets of a Wedding Night (2012), and it shines with the same charm and wit. The dialogue sparkles, and the characters—especially Annie—have unexpected depth and subtle layers that make them relatable and authentic, even when they’re doing things that, on surface level, we know they shouldn’t. Watching cynical Jordan succumb to Annie’s naively seductive personality is sweet and touching, and we are thoroughly invested in the relationship long before the main characters understand that they are falling in love, which makes their romantic enlightenment more potentially devastating and ultimately satisfying.

A fun, delightful yet emotionally poignant late-Regency romance which succeeds on every level.

WHAT TEARS US APART

Cloyed, Deborah Harlequin (336 pp.) $14.95 paper | Mar. 26, 2013 978-0-7783-1379-3

An American heiress volunteers for a month at an orphanage in the slums of Nairobi and falls in love while having to navigate political, racial and ethnic tensions.

Looking for relevance and a true human connection she’s never been able to find, Leda volunteers at a boys’ orphanage in Kibera, in the sprawling slums of Nairobi. She is immediately and powerfully drawn to the director, Ita, who’s traded in his dreams for the responsibility of childrearing in tumultuous Kibera, as well as to the seven boys he is effectively raising. As attraction flares between them, Ita’s complicated childhood friend Chege—now a violent gangster—is confused and threatened by their romance. Meanwhile, tensions are rising amid a volatile political atmosphere (the book is set during the protests after the December 2007 presidential election) which will come to a head just as Leda is preparing to leave, with intentions of coming back. But as violence erupts in the slums, actions, reactions and misunderstandings will find Leda, Ita and Chege making difficult choices. They will see themselves and each other at their best and at their worst and must decide how to move through fear and betrayal into forgiveness and redemption. This is at heart a romance between two people who find acceptance and love in each other, after lifetimes of never quite feeling at home wherever they were. The book is marred by a jarring starting point, given its overall tenor and message, and an ending that works but may be too easy for some readers. (It certainly is easier to find a happy-ever-after when there is money enough to bring about life-changing opportunities.) The narrative style jumps back and forth among various voices and timelines, which can be disorienting, though it lends a suspenseful edge to the events.

Despite some flaws, a courageous romance that reminds us that many of our problems are of the firstworld variety, and how lucky we are for it.

ANY DUCHESS WILL DO

Dare, Tessa Avon/HarperCollins (384 pp.) $5.99 paper | May 28, 2013 978-0-06-224012-5

When his mother tries to force his hand in selecting a bride, Griffin York, the Duke of Halford, decides to teach her a lesson by choosing the nearest serving girl, then astounds them all by falling in love with her.

Pauline Simms’ desires are simple. She wants to work hard enough to get her and her developmentally

challenged sister out of her abusive father’s house and open a bookshop. For the working class, however, simple is not easy, and earning enough to follow her dreams is nigh impossible for a barmaid. So when a duke’s mother issues her son an ultimatum in the tavern where Pauline works, demanding he pick a bride from the women present, and Griffin York, Duke of Halford, chooses Pauline, she makes a deal with the arrogant aristocrat.

His mother will give Pauline “duchess lessons,” at which she’ll fail miserably, and he’ll give her the astounding sum of £1,000. Seeing the gift for the miracle it is, Pauline agrees, leaving her tearful sister behind for a week, journeying to London to mingle with high society, while spending far too much time alone with Griffin, who clearly hides secrets that haunt him. Pauline chinks away at his emotional armor and grows dangerously attracted to him, while Griffin begins to wonder how he ever survived without her. Historical romance favorite Dare has penned a Cinderellathemed late-Regency romance with a working-class heroine who dares to dream beyond her station and a libertine determined to change his life. It’s a fairly outlandish plot in historical terms, but readers will be willing to suspend disbelief for this couple who are so perfect for one another, despite being scandalously mismatched socially. Great writing and characterization will keep readers engaged and invested. Sly nods to classic and modern Cinderella favorites enhance an already fun, textured plot.

Moments of laugh-out-loud humor, emotional intensity and sensual passion woven through an engaging plot and endearing characters make this a great read for romance fans.

THE BLOSSOM SISTERS

Michaels, Fern Kensington (352 pp.) $25.00 | Apr. 30, 2013 978-0-7582-8671-0

When Gus Hollister’s gold-digger wife throws him out, he works to re-establish ties with his grandmother and great-aunts, whom he’s ignored since his marriage and who have a few secrets of their own.

CPA Gus Hollister is blindsided on the last day of tax season when wife, Elaine, demands a divorce, forcing him out of his own house, which his grandmother paid for. Since their marriage, Elaine has convinced him to ignore his grandmother and her two sisters, the women who raised him and whom he loves more than anyone in the world. Now he must work to get back in their good graces, and in the process, he’ll find out that those ladies and a posse of local seniors have started local and online businesses selling a spectrum of interesting, varied products. Elaine, the gold digger, expects to take him for everything he’s worth, including his house, his car, half his business and even his inheritance. Lucky for Gus, he’s an all-round-good guy no one can stay mad at—oh, and that he has a world-famous, billionaire hedge fund manager as a best friend, who is willing to fund his divorce attorney—the best ever, of course—and a full firm of private investigators. And how fortunate that Elaine is |

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“A sweet, sexy romance...” from whiskey beach

not only a bona fide gold digger (a term used repeatedly throughout the text), but also a practicing high priestess of witchcraft with a long background of deception, shrewish behavior and all-round-villainess tendencies. (And how unfortunate that Gus wouldn’t listen to all of his relatives and friends when they told him not to marry her.) Not to worry, though, Elaine has her next mark in sight, and Gus is just lucky enough that she’ll move on to the next guy and uncharacteristically decide to cut her losses and legal property rights and leave Gus alone. Meanwhile, Gus will help his grandmother and friends streamline their operation, and maybe he’ll even fall in love.

A cute concept undercut by awkward writing, inconsistent, simplistic characterization and too many implausibilities to allow us to take the book or the ending seriously.

WHISKEY BEACH

Roberts, Nora Putnam (496 pp.) $27.95 | Apr. 16, 2013 978-0-399-15989-3

A year after his wife was murdered, Eli Landon is leaving Boston for a fresh start in his family’s coastal ancestral home, possibly with Abra, the beautiful housekeeper he meets there who is determined to help him clear his name

and reclaim his life.

Former defense attorney Eli Landon has lived under a cloud of suspicion since he found his murdered wife in their shared home on the same day they’d publicly argued over their impending divorce and her ongoing affair. While no charges have been brought against him, a dogged police detective has hounded him to the point of harassment, and he’s lost his job, most of his friends and his sense of place in the world. Moving into his family’s historical estate on Whiskey Beach to take care of the house while his grandmother heals from an accident in Boston, Eli devotes his energies to expanding a modestly successful writing career, attempting to write a novel. Meeting Abra, a local parttime housekeeper/massage therapist/yoga instructor/jewelry designer/waitress is an unexpected bonus, especially when she brings her healing energy to Eli’s wounded spirit. But something is not right at the homestead, and a string of accidents and crimes follows Eli to the coast. The longer he stays, and the closer he grows to Abra, the more convinced he is that in order to find peace and have a chance for happiness, he’ll need to fight back, solve an ancient family mystery and figure out who murdered his wife. Roberts brings her inimitably smooth writing skill, excellent characterization and textured plotting to her newest romantic suspense, which plays out as much a character drama with suspense elements as a crime procedural, since the buildup to and motive for the crimes is fairly languidly paced, though compelling.

A sweet, sexy romance with an intriguing historical family mystery that bleeds into a modern-day crime spree, casting suspicion on an innocent man.

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THE APPLE ORCHARD

Wiggs, Susan Harlequin MIRA (432 pp.) $24.95 | Apr. 30, 2013 978-0-7783-1493-6

Antiques treasure hunter Tess Delaney lives a high-octane existence and is on the cusp of the success she’s fought for, so now may not be the best time to question everything; but as events pile up and secrets are uncovered, forcing her to re-evaluate, she may find that a perfect life she never dreamed of is within her reach.

On the very day Tess expects a huge promotion in her highly prestigious antiques brokerage firm, banker Dominic Rossi turns up in her San Francisco office to inform her that she has a grandfather and a half sister she never knew about; that her grandfather is in a coma; and that she’s named in his will as half owner of an orchard that’s about to go under. Raised by a single mother who traveled extensively and an unmarried grandmother who owned an antiques shop, Tess has always been attracted to the idea of family but has had limited exposure to the reality. She is drawn to the honorable Dominic, her welcoming sister Isabel and life in Archangel, Calif., and she quickly becomes entwined in discovering the truth about the family she never knew, bringing her talent and experience as a researcher, historian and treasure hunter to the many secrets buried in the sands of time. Underneath it all, a mysterious, missing heirloom may bring them all financial and emotional salvation, and in the process of discovery, Tess will begin to understand the true power of love, community, family and honor. Wiggs’ latest is a lovely, poignant story of a woman who thinks she has it all until she discovers she truly does, and none of it is what she expected.

With vignettes from Nazi-occupied Denmark and a spotlight on the noble actions of an engaged Danish citizenry that reportedly managed to save 99 percent of its Jewish population, Wiggs tells a layered, powerful story of love, loss, hope and redemption.

nonfiction THE SUMMER OF BEER AND WHISKEY How Brewers, Barkeeps, Rowdies, Immigrants, and a Wild Pennant Fight Made Baseball America’s Game

These titles earned the Kirkus Star: THE ASTOR ORPHAN by Alexandra Aldrich.....................................43 MARY AND LOU AND RHODA AND TED

by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong.............................................................45

Achorn, Edward PublicAffairs (384 pp.) $26.99 | Apr. 30, 2013 978-1-61039-260-0

MORTAL SINS by Michael D’Antonio.................................................54 AMERICA 1933 by Michael Golay......................................................59

An accomplished baseball historian reminds us when a go-ahead Western city and an upstart league turned the country “base ball mad!”

Only 20 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, professional baseball had already been around long enough for corruption scandals to have almost killed it. To compete with the staid and stained National League, the newly formed American Association slashed ticket prices and offered beer sales and Sunday baseball to appeal to immigrants and the working class. These innovations, plus a rough-and-ready brand of ball, spiffy uniforms, and remodeled and well-regulated ballparks, all helped to set new attendance records and smooth baseball’s entry into the 20th century as America’s national pastime. Providence Journal deputy editorial pages editor Achorn (Fifty-Nine in ’84: Old Hoss Radbourn, Barehanded Baseball, and the Greatest Season a Pitcher Ever Had, 2010, etc.) tracks the hard-fought 1883 pennant race, focusing particularly on the St. Louis Browns—the first iteration of today’s Cardinals—and their mercurial, Steinbrenner-esque owner, Chris Von der Ahe. Among many colorful characters, the Browns featured the young Charlie Comiskey (who’d have his own brush with scandal as owner of the 1919 Black Sox), manager “Ted” Sullivan, who first used “fanatics” to describe the game’s passionate supporters, and Arlie Latham, whose swift base running led his language-challenged owner to exclaim that he could run “like a cantelope.” Achorn mixes in stories about other league standouts: the doughty pitcher for the eventual champion Philadelphia Athletics, Bobby Matthews; their minstrel performer turned owner, Lew Simmons; their Yale man, Jumping Jack Jones, whose unorthodox delivery baffled hitters; and Louisville’s Pete “the Prince of Bourbon” Browning, whose bespoke bat made apprentice woodworker Bud Hillerich wealthy. Scheming owners, rampant racism, hard-drinking players, beleaguered umpires, crazed spectators and lurking gamblers—all these were also part of the league and of Achorn’s unblinking but still admiring presentation.

A thoroughly enjoyable re-creation of the gusto, guts, glory and grime of the game’s early days.

IMPROBABLE SCHOLARS by David L. Kirp....................................62 CLASS A by Lucas Mann.................................................................... 64 EDMUND BURKE by Jesse Norman.....................................................67 THE UNWINDING by George Packer.................................................. 69 THE LAST OF THE DOUGHBOYS by Richard Rubin.........................72 THE LAST TRAIN TO ZONA VERDE by Paul Theroux......................76 THE UNWINDING

An Inner History of the New America Packer, George Farrar, Straus and Giroux (464 pp.) $27.00 May 21, 2013 978-0-374-10241-8

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THE AUDACITY OF HOPS The History of America’s Craft Beer Revolution

tomb, Theodore Davis (1837–1915) was the driving force in the exploration of the Valley of the Kings. Adams vividly portrays the unlikely robber baron who set the standards for archaeology.

The author intersperses a simple biography of the man in this chronicle of Davis’ 18 major tomb finds. His account of the drive for wealth illustrates the connivance and brutality that were the M.O. of 19th-century American tycoons. While Davis never approached the wealth level of his fellow industrialists, he certainly matched them for ruthlessness, lack of scruples and downright dishonesty. He was a man who saw opportunity and grabbed it, and he watched and learned as lawyers cheated his stepfather of his copper leases, vowing to become as rich and merciless as they. He eventually controlled mineral rights to 400,000 acres in Upper Michigan, and he then set out to “collect” great riches; Egypt became his “project.” Archaeological digs in that era were unscientific and often more destructive than productive, but Davis put his money to work clearing the valley from end to end. His finds included the complete tomb of Tut’s great-grandparents and a gold tomb that was the richest collection to date. More importantly, he published numerous books about his findings, sharing his methodology with the scientific world. Alas, King Tut’s tomb was so magnificent that it relegated Davis’ finds, and the man himself, to the back of the history books.

Adams presents Davis warts and all, as a callous, scheming tycoon who amassed a fortune and then did an about-face and behaved with honesty, responsibility and generosity as he transformed archaeology from glorified grave robbing to a science. (12 b/w photos; 1 map)

Acitelli, Tom Chicago Review (416 pp.) $19.95 paper | May 1, 2013 978-1-61374-388-1

A new history on the resurgence of craft beers and home-brewing in America from 1965 to 2012, tracing the pioneering efforts of individuals coast to coast, as well as their influence worldwide.

Former New York Observer senior editor and current All About Beer contributor Acitelli offers a surprisingly engrossing, lively narrative on the tenacity of smaller outfits amid the dominant corporate brands, “a story populated by quintessential American characters: heroes and villains, hippies and yuppies, oenophiles and teetotalers, gangsters and G-men, men in kilts and men in suits, advances and retreats, long nights of the soul and giddy moments of triumph.” He covers lagers, pilsners, ales and other beers produced after Prohibition and examines the stories behind their creation. He carefully explores the personages who offered distinctive alternatives to products by Coors, AnheuserBusch and other mass-produced labels, revealing the challenges they faced, from turning out consistent, signature tastes inspired by historic recipes to reaching wider markets with an independent spirit that often eschewed advertising. In the first section, the author alternates among profiles of some of the early figures in American craft beers—including the owner of San Francisco’s Anchor Steam company, Fritz Maytag, and Jack McAuliffe of The New Albion Brewing Company—and their fellow enthusiasts overseas, such as Michael Jackson, author of The World Guide to Beer. In the second section, Acitelli traces shifts in craft beers and home-brewing after Congress legalized the practice (which had been illegal since the 1930s but largely overlooked); the rise and demise of other microbreweries during the 1980s; continuing parallels with the locavore movement; increasing interest from venture capitalists; and related topics. In the third and fourth sections, the author further chronicles hurdles and successes, culminating in a tribute to McAuliffe.

An invaluable resource for connoisseurs. General readers will find the topic exhaustive yet accessible. (b/w photos)

THE ALLEY OF LOVE AND YELLOW JASMINES

Aghdashloo, Shohreh Harper/HarperCollins (288 pp.) $26.99 | Jun. 4, 2013 978-0-06-200980-7

From the Iranian Revolution to Hollywood, with courage and style.

The first Iranian and Middle Eastern actor to be nominated for an Academy Award (House of Sand and Fog), Aghdashloo tells a plucky tale of fortune and tenacity, beginning in Tehran in the late 1960s as the firstborn of a well-off civil servant. Although the shah had modernized the country considerably, traditional values were still strictly adhered to—e.g., the interdiction on becoming an actress, as the author desperately desired from early on. While her father had decided she was going to become a doctor, the then-19-year-old author was waylaid by a dashing older suitor, Aydin Aghdashloo, a well-connected artist who truly swept her off her feet. He also assured her that, as his wife, she could pursue her dream. She did, instantly procuring a spot at the theater workshop that would provide her with some teeth-cutting roles over the next few years. Yet the political situation grew dodgy by the late 1970s, and the author writes that she had to choose between staying

THE MILLIONAIRE AND THE MUMMIES Theodore Davis’s Gilded Age in the Valley of the Kings

Adams, John M. St. Martin’s (384 pp.) $26.99 | Jun. 25, 2013 978-1-250-02669-9 978-1-250-02670-5 e-book

Long before Lord Carnarvon and Howard Carter discovered King Tut’s 42

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“Vividly gothic family romance.” from the astor orphan

MACARTHUR’S WAR The Flawed Genius Who Challenged the American Political System

in a repressive atmosphere that censored the arts and leaving her husband, who had decided to stay in Iran. It was a heartrending decision, but the author does not adequately explain it, perhaps due to the confusion of the time. Aghdashloo installed herself in London, returned to school and completed her college degree by her early 30s, working largely at Browns boutique in Knightsbridge and selling her jewelry and car. She eventually found acting work that conveyed her to Hollywood. Though somewhat high-handedly edited, her work conveys a tremendous energy and love for her craft and adopted country.

A work as charming and elegant as the actress herself, conveying her remarkable career as a survivor of the Iranian debacle.

Alexander, Bevin Berkley Caliber (256 pp.) $25.95 | May 7, 2013 978-0-425-26120-0

Versatile military historian Alexander (Sun Tzu at Gettysburg: Ancient Military Wisdom in the Modern World, 2011, etc.), a Korean War veteran, takes on the perilous confrontation between the U.S. military and the civilian command during that war.

The author sets the stage for the buildup to the Korean conflict with an engaging clarity, drawing many good lessons from the time—e.g., the tragic loss of China as an ally, the stunningly cavalier regard for the use of nuclear weapons and the fallibility of military “professionals.” First, Alexander backtracks to tell the story of the Far East pickle and how the U.S. was so fixated

THE ASTOR ORPHAN A Memoir

Aldrich, Alexandra Ecco/HarperCollins (272 pp.) $24.99 | $24.99 Lg. Prt. | Apr. 16, 2013 978-0-06-220793-7 978-0-06-220796-8 e-book 978-0-06-222339-5 Lg. Prt. In this novelistic debut, a poor girl with a rich pedigree remembers comingof-age in the decaying shell of her family’s once-grand Hudson Valley home.

By the time Aldrich’s grandparents inherited the Rokeby estate, their branch of a dynasty that included the 19th-century trader John Jacob Astor had lost almost all its wealth except for the 450-acre lot on the Hudson that had been in the family since the 1680s. Three hundred years later, when this memoir opens, the 10-year-old Aldrich and her destitute parents shared the elegantly crumbling mansion with her better-off aunt and uncle and two younger cousins. Her alcoholic grandmother and a pampered Labrador retriever shared a less-opulent guesthouse of more recent vintage, and a motley assortment of transients and bohemians lived rent-free, courtesy of her father Teddy’s generosity (or inability to say no), in various outbuildings scattered around the property. A bright and sensitive girl on the doorstep of puberty, Aldrich was just beginning to feel the sting of shame associated with being the child of the charming but feckless Teddy, who, though educated at the best schools, had no skills or desires to be anything but the lord of Rokeby, and his beautiful, sharp-tongued wife.

Her shame only increased when Teddy welcomed a mysterious French woman named Giselle into the fold. Rokeby had once been a paradise for Aldrich. With its scandalous secrets, it was becoming more like a prison she longed to escape through the auspices of a hypothetical unknown wealthy aunt or through her own skill at the violin. It’s a trick to tell a story this rich and complicated through the eyes of a child without losing the subtleties of character and nuances of history, but Aldrich pulls it off with aplomb.

Vividly gothic family romance.

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on its anti-communist paranoia that it failed to grasp that Mao Zedong had broken with the Kremlin and was making sincere attempts at rapprochement with Washington by 1949, rebuffed

by President Harry Truman and Secretary of State Dean Acheson. Containment of communism was the official policy, as well as driving the North Koreans back to the agreed-upon 38th parallel after Kim Il-sung led an invasion of the south in June 1950.

However, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the U.S. commander in the Far East, World War II hero and now “proconsul” of occupied Japan, had other ideas—namely, that the U.S. should not stop at the 38th parallel but should unite the whole country, China be damned; moreover, he made alarming, erroneous statements about China’s imminent invasion of Formosa (Taiwan). MacArthur could not be ignored, especially after engineering his brilliant invasion at Inchon, which only increased his national stature. Alexander tracks MacArthur’s persistent rogue statements, his visit to Chiang Kai-shek and his frank insubordination for a terrific depiction of a clash of titan egos.

A well-focused cautionary tale about the checks and balances of power.

Bernofsky describes how she revises—usually four drafts—as she prepares her own translations from German, and Clare Cavanagh closes the collection by showing how the villanelle, a poetic form unknown in Poland, arrived there via translation.

Perhaps too textually dense for general readers, but the book raises and clarifies a variety of significant issues about the many decisions translators must contend with.

THE AGE OF THE IMAGE Redefining Literacy in a World of Screens

Apkon, Stephen Farrar, Straus and Giroux (272 pp.) $26.00 | Apr. 16, 2013 978-0-374-10243-2 Debut author Apkon, executive director of the Jacob Burns Film Center, makes a strong case for the moving image as today’s primary form of communication. Yet, like many true believers, he pays short shrift to the cultural downside.

With the new technologies has come the democratization of media, writes the author. Inexpensive access to the tools and techniques of video and filmmaking enables us to circumvent the “elitist” gatekeepers of production companies and TV networks. Now it is possible for anyone who is visually literate to conceive, shoot and disseminate his or her own videos, influencing the world overnight. Visual media may be redefining the sorts of literacy we need to comprehend the digital age. Visual literacy also might better engage and prepare students in our flailing school system. However, Apkon spends too much time considering how students will enter the global economy and not enough examining what they might do of value within it. What does it matter if 20 million viewers see a YouTube video if that video is vacuous? While the author cautions that we must be sophisticated consumers of visual media, he ignores a worrisome byproduct: When anyone can make “art,” everyone will. What about talent and professional standards? Apkon’s scholarly rigor and generally cogent analysis are offset by his preoccupation with trivial achievements, the occasional slippage into pop psychology and a dismissive tone.

He drips scorn on anyone who resists this inexorable visual tide, but one need not be a Luddite to recognize that not every innovation is an advance. Though a devotee of independent cinema, the author’s cultural touchstones appear to be famous Hollywood storytellers whose work is dominated by technically impressive yet empty entertainments.

Apkon goes to great lengths to assay the obvious. Only in passing does he grant that the image does not exist in isolation, that word and image are inextricable. After all, he required this ancient technology—a book—to communicate his ideas.

IN TRANSLATION Translators on Their Work and What It Means

Allen, Esther; Bernofsky, Susan­—Eds. Columbia Univ. (288 pp.) $29.50 paper | $28.99 e-book May 28, 2013 978-0-231-15969-2 978-0-231-53502-1 e-book

Translators reflect on their work: its mechanics, frustrations, rewards and meanings.

Editors Allen (Modern Languages and Comparative Literature/Baruch Coll.) and Bernofsky (MFA Program/Columbia Univ.) have assembled a knowledgeable and articulate collection of translators who describe in considerable detail a process that most readers think little about. Eliot Weinberger notes that “translators are the geeks of literature.” David Bellos talks about the problem of maintaining a sense of “foreignness” in a translation. Several writers also talk about the issue of whether to maintain some of the words of the original in a translation—a way to retain a sense of the original. Catherine Porter raises an issue that a number of the writers mention: their lack of status in the academic world and their virtual invisibility with readers.

Several essays deal with the problems translators face in specific languages. Maureen Freely writes about translating Orhan Pamuk from Turkish into English; Jason Grunebaum discusses the problems of translating from Hindi to English. If the audience is South Asian, perhaps one method is appropriate, but if the audience is American, then what? There is some translation playfulness in the volume, too: Haruki Murakami describes his translation of The Great Gatsby, an essay that, in turn, Ted Goossen translates from Japanese into English—and then follows with some reflections of his own. Lawrence Venuti discusses the difficulty of translating from archaic literary forms. Co-editor 44

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“For any fan of the show or TV history in general, this book is pure pleasure.” from mary and lou and rhoda and ted

MARY AND LOU AND RHODA AND TED And All the Brilliant Minds Who Made The Mary Tyler Moore Show a Classic

miles from the city of Mazar-e-Sharif, is enormously detailed and moving—though mired, however, in frequently purple prose that clots her narrative rather than clarifies. The people of this ancient land hailed from nomadic ancestors, becoming mostly scavengers of calligonum (a plant) rather than farmers: from patriarch Baba Nazar to his son Amanullah, who yearned to travel and was not allowed to keep the family money due to his profligate ways, to his hardworking wife, Thawra, who squatted over the loom for months to create the gorgeous carpet that would fetch the family’s sole livelihood of a couple hundred dollars (later sold by dealers for thousands to the Westerners), to the famished children who were often afflicted with the “black cough” and addicted to opium from infancy. Rains were rare, trees nonexistent, and there was no longer even a mullah in the village mosque. Yet these timeless clans who had endured the traversing armies of Alexander the Great and Tamerlane, the British and the Soviets, the Taliban and the Americans, continued to adhere to ancient rituals such as buying skeins of yarn in the bazaar, celebrating the weddings of their daughters and observing the fast of Ramadan.

A dense, intimate portrayal of an ancient people, peppered with the author’s own charming sketches.

Armstrong, Jennifer Keishin Simon & Schuster (320 pp.) $26.00 | May 7, 2013 978-1-4516-5920-7

The juicy, entertaining and informative behind-the-scenes story of a great American sitcom that left a lasting influence on popular TV. In this delicious history of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, former Entertainment Weekly writer Armstrong (Why? Because We Still Like You: An Oral History of the Mickey Mouse Club, 2010) seems to have had the cooperation of just about everyone involved in the show’s making, and the results are riveting. Starting at the very beginning, she shows how this particular phenomenon was the result of a lot of elements coming together at the same time: a popular star, a creative team with a then-daring idea of a show about an independent woman, and, contrary to the fears of network bosses, a receptive viewership. Armstrong traces the evolution of the show, properly focusing on the creative team of James L. Brooks and Allan Burns, who knew exactly the character they wanted, what kind of comic tone they wanted to set, and were smart enough to hire great women writers who used their own lives and experiences to shape the world of Mary Richards and Rhoda Morganstern. Armstrong reveals how much of the show’s success had to do with unpredictable factors—e.g., a casting agent who happened to see Valerie Harper on stage and suddenly thought, “That’s our Rhoda.” The author also gives great inside detail on all the major players in front of the camera, from the insecurities of actor Ted Knight, to the friction between Gavin MacLeod and Cloris Leachman, to a married and somewhat conservative star who wasn’t all that inclined to consider herself liberated.

For any fan of the show or TV history in general, this book is pure pleasure. (16-page 4-color insert)

THE WORLD IS A CARPET Four Seasons in an Afghan Village

Badkhen, Anna Riverhead (288 pp.) $26.95 | Jun. 1, 2013 978-1-59448-832-0

A fearless author regards the Afghanis on their own terms.

In a Balkh village in northern Afghanistan that could not be found on the map, where the illiterate Turkoman women fashioned the most exquisite rugs in the world, Philadelphia-based journalist Badkhen (Peace Meals: Candy-Wrapped Kalashnikovs and Other War Stories, 2010, etc.) spent a year chronicling the hard lives of the inhabitant survivors. Her account of one family in Oqa, a dusty village |

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HUNGRY What Eighty Ravenous Guys Taught Me About Life, Love and the Power of Good Food

At age 25, the author discovered a love for cross-country biking and began her first lesbian love affair. Twenty-two years later, when her latest relationship ended on the issue of whether or not to become parents, the author decided to go it alone as a single mother. She began exploring whether two close gay male friends might consider being sperm donors.

Becker describes her state of mind at the time: “I wished I was a Southern gastric brooding frog. No gastric brooding frog husband to find. No career to worry my shiny gray head. Life could be as simple as swallowing a batch of fertilized eggs and burping up some babies.” Her laugh-out-loud humor permeates this account of her experiences, from finding a sperm donor to dealing with medial professionals, insurance companies and the side effects of fertility treatments. Much of the tale involves the man who ultimately became her daughter’s biological father and their relationship, which would go beyond physical fatherhood to include his active if infrequent involvement with his daughter. The process was halted when she suffered epileptic seizures and needed brain surgery, an experience Becker explored in her memoir, I Had Brain Surgery, What’s Your Excuse? (2003). A longtime female friend who had raised her own son as a single mother offered encouragement and practical help. During this time, their relationship deepened, leading to a same-sex marriage with two mothers, in what was to become a three-parent family.

Tender and funny, this appealing modern love story is greatly enhanced by the author’s drawings. (b/w illustrations throughout)

Barnes, Darlene Hyperion (272 pp.) $24.99 | Aug. 6, 2013 978-1-4013-2477-3

A memoir of an untrained chef with an English degree who set out to temper bad behavior by serving good food and to change junk-food diehards into foodies.

When Barnes took a job as a cook for the Alpha Sigma Phi house on the University of Washington campus, she knew “that ‘frat boy’ was shorthand for ‘arrogant, drunk, and disorderly,’ ” but she didn’t know that house chefs were generally glorified warmers of precooked meals. Her new job came with major challenges. The kitchen—with its “archaic gas range,” freezer held together with duct tape and a rat in the pantry—was a nightmare, requiring critter control and rigorous scrubbing and disinfecting. Though frat-house jobs were on the bottom rung of the chef hierarchy, for Barnes, a job in which customers respected her was a dream compared with her stint as a chef for a demanding family or at a cafe, where the health violations were frequently flagrant. At least in the Alpha Sig kitchen, she called the shots—often laced with expletives. When the rowdy, grungy frat-house atmosphere, the guys ignoring her kitchen rules and the uncooperative vendors got to her, she vented. Thankfully, her humor, honesty and a steadfast vision save the book from becoming one long rant. Resistant at first, the guys grew to love her food.

Eventually, she gained the respect and friendship of the vendors, and the reputation of her table grew. Sorority girls often raided her pantry for leftovers and left fan notes. The book is as much about nourishment as it is food. Barnes’ affection for the fraternity brothers carries the narrative. It wasn’t all about consuming, it was about connecting,” she writes.

A heartening memoir of good food and tough love with a few down-home recipes thrown in. (4 b/w photos. First printing of 50,000)

PROFESSOR BORGES A Course on English Literature

Borges, Jorge Luis Translated by Silver, Katherine New Directions (280 pp.) $26.50 | May 23, 2013 978-0-8112-1875-7

Edited and translated transcripts of recordings of a university class in English literature taught in the fall of 1966 by the celebrated Argentinian author.

In 1966, Borges (1899–1986) had been teaching for 10 years at the University of Buenos Aires, and his lectures communicate a comfortable familiarity with the material; they also offer some piercing insights into specific works in the English canon.

His 25 class sessions began with the Anglo-Saxons and ended with Robert Louis Stevenson and the notion of schizophrenia evident in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and other works. (Shakespeare is present only in allusions.) His approach is highly traditional—mostly lecture and explication—though in some later classes, he invited students to read aloud from the texts; he periodically interrupted to illuminate. Also astonishing were his expectations for his students. He routinely alluded to other texts outside the syllabus (The Picture of Dorian Gray, In Cold Blood) and stated and/or implied that his students surely knew

ONE GOOD EGG An Illustrated Memoir Becker, Suzy Bloomsbury (256 pp.) $25.00 | May 7, 2013 978-1-60819-276-2

Following in the tradition of James Thurber and Jules Feiffer, best-selling author/illustrator Becker (Kids Make It Better: A Write-in, Draw-in Journal, 2010, etc.) combines droll illustrations with a lively narrative style in this chronicle of the high expectations and shattering disappointments on her journey to motherhood.

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“The story of Brockes’ quest to understand her mother’s past is powerful on its own, but the backdrop against which most of the narrative unfolds—a country with its own history of rapacious violence—makes the book evenmore poignant and unforgettable.” from she left me the gun

SHE LEFT ME THE GUN My Mother’s Life Before Me

these works. Among the texts and authors he dealt with directly were Beowulf, Johnson and Boswell, James MacPherson, Wordsworth and Coleridge (he calls the latter “lazy”), Blake, Carlyle, Dickens (who “suffers from an excess of sentimentalism”), Robert Browning and William Morris. Borges—who had lost his eyesight by 1966—occasionally confesses some personal frailties—e.g., “I have a poor memory for dates.” He also clearly believed in the importance of an author’s biography: He continually introduced works with some details about the writer’s personal life. Evident, too, is a trait that many contemporary students would probably find off-putting: a lack of humor. The classes were unrelievedly earnest and academic and included very few references to popular culture or contemporary history.

A sobering, even startling, view of an academic world that has fundamentally altered and softened in the last half-century.

Brockes, Emma Penguin Press (320 pp.) $26.95 | May 20, 2013 978-1-59420-459-3

The riveting memoir about how a prizewinning British journalist reclaimed her mother’s traumatic past.

Brockes’ mother, Paula, was notoriously reticent about the years she had spent growing up in Durban, South Africa. Her family and friends knew that Paula had expatriated to England in 1960 for political reasons but not much else. Among the few things she brought with her from South Africa was a handgun that Brockes discovered “wrapped in a pair of knickers.” Paula considered the gun among her prized possessions and bequeathed it to Brockes without any explanation of why it meant so much to her. After Paula died of cancer, her daughter decided to learn about the South African side of her family and the life story her mother had suppressed. A database search in England unearthed evidence that her mother’s father, Jimmy, had been on trial for murder six years before Paula had been born. Despite misgivings that continued research into her mother’s past was “unfair, unethical [and] possibly unforgivable,” Brockes traveled to Johannesburg to talk to the maternal relatives she had never met and search through government archives for more details about her grandfather. Her aunts and uncles remembered the family patriarch as a drunken “psychopath” who brutalized his children. Paula, on the other hand, was the heroic elder sibling who called her younger brothers and sisters her babies and tried to protect them against her father’s savagery by shooting him. Court records revealed still more: that Jimmy had also been tried and later acquitted for molesting his daughters.

The story of Brockes’ quest to understand her mother’s past is powerful on its own, but the backdrop against which most of the narrative unfolds—a country with its own history of rapacious violence—makes the book even more poignant and unforgettable.

LEARNING TO LISTEN A Life Caring for Children Brazelton, T. Berry Da Capo/Perseus (256 pp.) $24.99 | May 1, 2013 978-0-7382-1667-6

Memoir of the much-admired pediatrician and prolific author.

Brazelton (Emeritus, Pediatrics/Harvard Medical School) opens with frank comments about his own unhappy childhood, his distant relationship with his parents and his early talent for taking care of small children. He skims through his medical education and naval service and hits his stride when he turns to the years when he began to combine the practice of pediatrics and psychiatry.

A more accurate title for this book would be Learning to Observe, for Brazelton became a keen observer of newborns and from these observations developed with his colleagues the Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale, a comprehensive scale for understanding the temperament of newborns that is still taught and used today. He also explains Touchpoints, a theory of the forces that drive child development that is taught to professionals at the Brazelton Touchpoints Center at Boston Children’s Hospital and to parents in a series of popular books. For general readers—i.e., those who are not new parents—the most fascinating parts of the memoir are most likely to be his accounts of his experiences studying newborns in other cultures: Mayans in southern Mexico, Guatemalans, Kenyans, urban and rural Japanese, Chinese, Navajos in Arizona and Greeks on the island of Thera. The author is not shy about his accomplishments, and he appears to take special delight in telling of encounters with vocal admirers, of his put-downs of those less respectful, and of his brushes with the famous.

Readers familiar with Brazelton’s books and articles on babies and children may relish this close-up look at the man who guided them through the vicissitudes of parenthood; others, not so much.

THE BOYS IN THE BOAT Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics

Brown, Daniel James Viking (432 pp.) $27.95 | Jun. 4, 2013 978-0-670-02581-7

The long, passionate journey of the University of Washington rowing team to the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

The nine young Americans (including coxswain Bob Moch) who made up the team in the Husky Clipper that would eventually edge to victory by six-tenths of a second ahead of the Italians in the Olympics emerged from the harsh realities of the Depression, as Brown (The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of a |

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Intermittently engaging, but there are more questions than answers here.

Donner Party Bride, 2009, etc.) delineates in this thorough study of the early rowing scene. The journey of one young rower, Joe Rantz, forms the emotional center of the narrative. A tall, strapping country boy who had largely been fending for himself in Sequim, Wash., in 1933, he got a shot as a freshman at making the prestigious crew team at UW, which was led by freshman coach Tom Bolles and head coach Al Ulbrickson. Many strands converge in the narrative, culminating in a rich work of research, from the back story involving the creation of UW’s rowing program to the massive planning and implementation of the Berlin Olympics by Hitler’s engineer Werner March, specifically the crew venue at the Langer See. The UW team honed its power and finesse in the lead-up seasons by racing against its nemesis, the University of California at Berkeley, as well as in East Coast regattas. Despite the threat of an American boycott, the Berlin Olympics were carefully orchestrated by propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels and filmed by Leni Riefenstahl to show the world the terrifying images of Aryan “purity” and Nazi supremacy. Yet for these American boys, it was an amazing dream.

A touching, fairly uncomplicated portrayal of rowing legends.

THE LAST MAN IN RUSSIA The Struggle to Save a Dying Nation Bullough, Oliver Basic (384 pp.) $27.99 | May 1, 2013 978-0-465-07498-3

An exploration of Russia’s demographic decline through the life of a dissident priest.

“The Russian nation is shriveling away from within,” writes Bullough (Let Our Fame Be Great: Journeys Among the Defiant People of the Caucasus, 2010), the Caucasus editor for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting. More Russians are dying than are being born, and they are dying young, often from the results of chronic alcohol abuse. Bullough set out to understand why, examining the life of the nation through the life of a single man, Dmitry Dudko (1922–2004), a Russian Orthodox priest. Sent to the gulag for writing anti-Stalin poems, Dudko was rehabilitated under Khrushchev but became a notorious dissident by preaching hope and trust to people denied both by the Soviet state. Arrested again under Brezhnev, he was broken by the KGB, recanted his opposition to the state and ended up churning out anti-Semitic propaganda. “His fate parallels the fate of his whole nation,” writes Bullough. “Through the twentieth century, the government in Moscow taught the Russians that hope and trust are dangerous, inimical and treacherous. That is the root of the social breakdown that has caused the epidemic of alcoholism, the collapsing birth rate, the crime and the misery.” The author attempts to enrich his conception of the connection between Dudko’s history and Russia’s lamentable condition by undertaking a pilgrimage to sites significant in his subject’s life: his seminary, the camp where he was imprisoned, the churches where he preached, his homes and his grave. In a vivid, colorful account of his journeys, Bullough starkly chronicles the visible evidence of Russia’s despair in abandoned villages, ruined farms, shuttered factories and ubiquitous drunkenness. Though the author sees some hope in the new generation’s resistance to Putin’s electoral frauds, his optimism sounds like whistling past the graveyard of a dying society.

Part biography, part travelogue, a perceptive, sad and very personal analysis of the decline of a once-great nation.

(30 b/w illustrations)

A MATTER OF LIFE

Brown, Jeffrey Top Shelf Productions (96 pp.) $14.95 paper | Jun. 1, 2013 978-1-60309-266-1 In this graphic memoir, a Midwestern preacher’s son loses his faith and discovers art.

Both the style and tone of this coming-of-age narrative sustain an engaging naïveté, even as the young son who is the author becomes a father himself, and the deceptively simple story encompasses three generations of male Browns, who may or may not discover the answers to life’s biggest questions in church. The creatively prolific Brown (Funny Misshapen Body, 2009, etc.) has extended his talents into film, animation and broadcasting (on NPR’s This American Life), and he also teaches comics at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Yet there is nothing artistically flashy or academic in this understated, matter-of-fact memoir, which begins, in darkness leading to a glimmer of light (over six large panels): “When I was little, I believed in God. At least I think I did. At some point I realized that I didn’t believe. And I hadn’t in a long time. If ever. It doesn’t mean I don’t believe in something bigger than myself.” Such an introduction leaves a lot of open space for interpretation, and the rest of the narrative, in panels not considerably larger than postage stamps, proceeds to fill in some of it, though by no means all. It’s a story of church, camps and missions, then college, art, museums, sexual awakening and fatherhood, where a son might receive different answers than the father, who is the author, received from his own father.

Brown dedicates the memoir to his father and son, and love for both permeates the pages, where epiphanies are small, revelations conventional, and neither the artist nor the challenges he faces ever seem larger than life.

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IMMIGRATION WARS Forging an American Solution

extremism. The anti-independence French accused the Algerian Muslims of savagery. Those who were pro-revolution believed that there was no room for the colonial occupiers in an independent Algeria. As a French liberal who considered himself a moderate between those extremes, Camus had boundless sympathy for the plight of impoverished Algerians, yet he felt that independent rule by a Muslim majority would be a catastrophe for those (like himself) who were French but had deep roots in Algeria. Ultimately, his writing represents a moral plea for an idealism beyond politics. He maintains: “We are condemned to live together.” “It is as if madmen inflamed by rage found themselves locked in a forced marriage from which no exit was possible and therefore decided on mutual suicide.” He also insists that regardless of how “old and deep the roots of the Algerian tragedy are, one fact remains: no cause justifies the deaths of innocent people.” However his words were received at the time and the crisis he addressed resolved itself, his thoughts on ends justifying means and on civilian casualties for some political purpose seem prophetic.

A political footnote to a literary legacy.

Bush, Jeb; Bolick, Clint Threshold Editions/Simon & Schuster (304 pp.) $27.00 | Mar. 5, 2013 978-1-4767-1345-8 The 2012 election is still fresh in memory, but with this effort to make a multicultural, immigrant-flush America safe for Republicans, it’s clear that another Bush is declaring for the presidency.

Bush’s book—slender and double-spaced but padded for all that—is a victim of timing. As he’s been protesting on the talk shows, he wrote it last year, when Republicans weren’t budging on the issue of immigration reform. Now, they’ve budged to the left of where Bush has landed, a natural positioning given that his co-author is a principal in the free-market-trumps-everything-else Goldwater Institute, which thrusts the book onto the extreme right of the bookshelf. So what do Bush and Bolick say? Controversially, perhaps, that illegal immigrants—the undocumented, in more diplomatic terms—should have a path to residency but not citizenship. Somewhat less controversially, that the borders need to be secured. Not at all controversially, that immigration reform is needed, but that it should be driven more by economic need—the ability and desirability of the would-be immigrant to produce dollars—and less by the humanitarian considerations of yore. Some parts of Bush’s program are eminently reasonable—and already in place, never mind Bush/Bolick’s canard that the Democrats are filling the nation with foreigners who merely want a handout. But the larger part of the program is a plank-building plea to Republicans that they should be reaching out to Hispanics, “who exemplify traditional Republican values of hard work, entrepreneurship, education, family, and belief in God”—and without whom the GOP is doomed to fringe status.

Cynical, tardy and unnecessary.

ALGERIAN CHRONICLES

Camus, Albert Translated by Goldhammer, Arthur Belknap/Harvard Univ. (154 pp.) $21.95 | May 6, 2013 978-0-674-07258-9

In a manner less literary than journalistic but more personal than political, the Nobel Prize–winning existentialist argues for a liberal middle ground between French imperialism and the independence of his native Algeria.

More than a half-century after the Algerian War and the independence that Camus ambivalently resisted, the first English translation of his volume of writings on the period (a book largely ignored or disdained upon its initial French publication) is less interesting today for the specifics of the polarized tension there than for its timeless musings on torture, terror, assimilation and |

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“A charmingly conversational tale of devotion—to each other and to the science and art of medicine.” from brotherhood

BROTHERHOOD Dharma, Destiny, and the American Dream

May 1963, providing a companion to his stunning 1997 pictorial, Everest: Mountain Without Mercy. In the early 1960s, there was great pressure on these brave “hybrid scientist-adventurers” to boost American morale with a daring feat of collective strength after such a dark decade shrouded in war, a failed Cuban territorial invasion and Soviet space rivalries. A chance meeting between Willi Unsoeld, a grizzly mountain guide, and young Pacific Northwest climbers Barry Corbet and Jake Breitenbach while scaling Wyoming’s Grand Teton range in the early ’60s forged the beginnings of an American Everest team of climbing parties led by Norman Dyhrenfurth, a veteran Swiss-American mountaineer. Eventually, 21 hand-selected members of the expedition (glaciologists, radio operators, historians, cinematographers, etc., along with numerous ancillaries) ascended the mountain’s treacherous terrain, battling bone-crushing injuries, oxygen deprivation, weather extremes and “house-sized” blocks of ice collapsing in their paths. Though Corbet’s faith in the team’s success floundered, the steely determination of the other members kept hope alive. Culled from “Expedition Newsletters” and interviews with the seven surviving expedition members, Coburn’s unhurried, character-driven narrative pays scrupulous attention to the climb’s every detail and to Everest’s majestic natural history. The author’s contemporary coda features a visit with the nonagenarian Dyhrenfurth, who wryly comments that mountaineering on Everest has gone terribly modern and that simply “coughing up $50,000” can afford a reasonably fit person a secure, guided trek to the summit.

An exhilarating slice of American adventure-sporting history.

Chopra, Deepak; Chopra, Sanjiv Amazon/New Harvest (384 pp.) $28.00 | May 21, 2013 978-0-544-03210-1

Two brothers, both doctors, reflect on a remarkable journey from their childhood in newly independent India to their success and renown in Obama’s America.

Throughout this dual memoir, the Chopra brothers insist they are two very different people, and they offer some evidence to support this contention. Readers, however, will more likely be struck by their similarities, by the common chords sounded as each takes over in alternating chapters to tell what amounts to a love story: their love of family, of medicine, of their native India and their adopted America. They shared schooling, games and friends as the privileged children of a prominent physician in a land where Western medicine was still new. Both came to America to complete their medical education, and, though they encountered some casual prejudice, both were happily surprised by the egalitarian nature of their training. They tell some interesting, frequently amusing stories about their personal and professional assimilation, and they explain their decisions to stay in the U.S., even as they maintain deep ties to their Indian heritage.

Deepak (co-author: Super Brain: Unleashing the Explosive Power of Your Mind to Maximize Health, Happiness, and Spiritual Well-Being, 2012, etc.) revisits his controversial embrace of alternative medicine and his decision to strike out on his own as a “professional outsider.” He describes this as “the fork in the road” separating the siblings, but no great differences emerge from his younger brother’s telling. Indeed, fearful only that his brother will be misunderstood, Sanjiv appears to accept most of Deepak’s insights about the mind–body connection. Certainly, as a dean at Harvard Medical School, Sanjiv (co-author: Leadership by Example: The Ten Key Principles of All Great Leaders, 2012, etc.) is more closely tied to the medical establishment, but he remains intrigued and fully supportive of his brother’s path-breaking career.

A charmingly conversational tale of devotion—to each other and to the science and art of medicine.

FLIP The Inside Story of TV’s First Black Superstar

Cook, Kevin Viking (256 pp.) $26.95 | Apr. 22, 2013 978-0-670-02570-1

Journalist Cook (The Last Headbangers: NFL Football in the Rowdy, Reckless ’70s, 2012, etc.) gives a largely forgotten TV pioneer his due.

Raised in a brutal environment of poverty and abuse, New Jersey native Flip Wilson (1933–1988) became an overnight success in the 1970s as the first African-American host of a TV variety show but not before more than a decade of honing his comedy act in dives and nightclubs across the United States, creating routines and characters such as the legendary “Geraldine.” Cook promises readers the “inside story,” and he does not shy away from presenting the less-than-savory aspects of a life on the road and the stage. Wilson was driven to succeed from the start, and he did not hesitate to clean up his nightclub act for a wider, and whiter, TV audience. He was able, however, to walk a line between comedians like the edgeless Bill Cosby, whose early crossover success both enraged and motivated Wilson, and the unpredictable Richard Pryor, who clearly learned valuable lessons on how to make it big from his time on Wilson’s

THE VAST UNKNOWN America’s First Ascent of Everest Coburn, Broughton Crown (288 pp.) $26.00 | Apr. 30, 2013 978-0-307-88714-6

A sweeping account of the first American visitors to Mount Everest’s peak.

Coburn (Nepali Aama: Life Lessons of a Himalayan Woman, 2000, etc.) delivers an atmospheric retelling of that monumental inaugural climb in 50

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“Revealing, entertaining account of the fortunes— almost always waxing—of the music mogul.” from the soundtrack of my life

ATLANTIS AND THE SILVER CITY

writing staff, alongside fellow future comedy legend George Carlin. Unlike those and others of the time, Wilson’s work is mostly absent from the airwaves today, and Cook’s readable narrative will hopefully go some way toward rectifying that situation. However, despite the book’s level of detail, including some you-are-there creative license on the author’s part, readers do not come away with a real appreciation for what made Wilson tick, beyond a desire to entertain and get rich.

An entertaining and well-intentioned biography that lacks a deeper understanding of its subject.

Daughtrey, Peter Pegasus (352 pp.) $26.95 | Mar. 13, 2013 978-1-60598-415-5

In his debut, a British eccentric makes a dubious case for the location of the lost city of Atlantis: just off the coast of Portugal, as revealed by a series of clues in Plato’s dialogues.

Daughtrey, who has collected relics and legends of Atlantis for more than two decades, seems to be frequently overwhelmed by the folly of his quest, but he plaintively avers that he is not insane (“You can see and feel the evidence; it is not a figment of my imagination”). Apparently unsure of whether to write a stream-of-consciousness memoir or a bulleted PowerPoint presentation, he combines the two, remaining blissfully unaware that his grandiose conclusions bear little evident relationship to the motley collection of arguments he musters. A typical passage begins with an exegetical reading of Plato’s account of a fabulous lost continent. Itself written nearly 10,000 years after Atlantis is supposed to have sunk beneath the waves, the question of why it should be taken as the gospel truth is never entirely addressed.

Under the evocative heading “Animals,” Daughtrey explains “[i] n clues 44 to 47, Plato indicates Atlantis had many tame and wild animals, particularly elephants.” He proceeds to wax reminiscent about an elephant tusk he once saw in a private collection in Portugal, imagining that it was left by a member of Hannibal’s famous herd (it is unclear what connection this is supposed to have to Atlantis), before admitting, “[w]e will never know unless the tusk is carbon-dated.” Daughtrey blends mythology with amateur archaeology, breathlessly asserting that “[t]he exact location of the capital of the legendary King Arganthonius has never been established”—inferring that it must have been Atlantis.

Appropriate for readers who seek explanations of the origins of human civilization but find Scientology too dry and logical for their tastes.

HILLBILLY HEART

Cyrus, Billy Ray Amazon/New Harvest (288 pp.) $25.00 | Apr. 16, 2013 978-0-547-99265-5 A controversial country-music sensation imparts tales of struggle and success.

Equally lauded and maligned for his 1992 breakthrough single, “Achy Breaky Heart,” Billy Ray Cyrus had to fight for respect from Nashville’s recording elite.

He was uniquely poised for such a battle; far from being the Johnny-come-lately that the media portrayed, Cyrus had paid his dues performing in country-rock bar bands throughout Kentucky, Ohio and West Virginia since the early 1980s. His youth in Appalachia had also given him a strong connection with nature, a sturdy Christian faith, and a devotion to family and music that sustained him through tough times. Cyrus was no choirboy, though; he admits to rabble-rousing, drinking and womanizing in the classic “outlaw country” style, and these portions of the narrative re-create that period of his life with a reckless flair. Nor has his trajectory been a straightforward ascent to fame. After the immense popularity of his debut, Cyrus failed to achieve a similar level of success with his subsequent albums, none of which have sold nearly as well. In the 2000s, he pursued roles in TV and movies and watched his daughter Miley rocket to stardom (and scandal) as Disney’s “Hannah Montana.”

He also became an advocate for military veterans—many of whom have given him their medals as tokens of appreciation— and natural-disaster victims, raising money on their behalf via concerts and a philanthropic foundation. Told in a natural and candid tone, the book will please country-music fans and may even win over some skeptics.

Although the narrative occasionally veers into awshucks-I’m-just-a-country-boy territory, this is a warm account of a star who has managed to remain humble.

THE SOUNDTRACK OF MY LIFE

Davis, Clive with DeCurtis, Anthony Simon & Schuster (608 pp.) $30.00 | $14.99 e-book | $34.95 CD Feb. 19, 2013 978-1-4767-1478-3 978-1-4767-1480-6 e-book 978-1-4423-6178-2 CD

Revealing, entertaining account of the fortunes—almost always waxing—of the music mogul.

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A funny, irresistibly offbeat tale about the risks and rewards of living, and loving, with an open heart.

he qualified for the Review but, ever entrepreneurial, joined the activities board because the post offered a small stipend. As counsel to Columbia, he found that he had an ear for music and an eye for talent, and from there, he rocketed upward. In his tenure at Columbia and Arista, Davis discovered many artists and elevated many others, and he is gracious toward almost all, if carefully so: Paul Simon, we gather, is prickly, and Whitney Houston was a constant handful (about The Bodyguard: “She held her own, but you couldn’t say her performance was inspiring”). Davis is also remarkably catholic in his tastes, having worked with everyone from Miles Davis to Laura Nyro to Johnny Cash to the Grateful Dead to Sean Combs and his coterie of rappers (“When I went to artist showcases or parties Puffy threw for his label’s stars in clubs around the city late at night, I never once brought a bodyguard”).

The anecdotes are fun to read, if seldom newsworthy; what is of greater value is Davis’ detailing of how hits are made. As he writes, “I think there’s a bit of confusion between pop music and pop success,” adding that although the Dead and Patti Smith, and even Aretha Franklin, weren’t pop artists, he was able to work his magic on them to produce hits—and lots of money.

A touch overlong, but a pleasure to read, elevated and mensch-y at the same time.

THE ART OF THINKING CLEARLY

Dobelli, Rolf Translated by Griffin, Nicky Harper/HarperCollins (304 pp.) $25.99 | May 14, 2013 978-0-06-221968-8 A waggish, cautionary compilation of pitfalls associated with systematic cognitive errors, from novelist Dobelli.

To be human is to err, routinely and with bias. We exercise deviation from logic, writes the author, as much as, and possibly more than, we display optimal reasoning. In an effort to bring awareness to this sorry state of affairs, he has gathered here—in three-page, anecdotally saturated squibs—nearly 100 examples of muddied thinking.

Many will ring familiar to readers (Dobelli’s illustrations are not startlingly original, but observant)—e.g., herd instinct and groupthink, hindsight, overconfidence, the lack of an intuitive grasp of probability or statistical reality. Others, if not new, are smartly encapsulated: social loafing, the hourly rate trap, decision fatigue, carrying on with a lost cause (the sunk-cost fallacy).

Most of his points stick home: the deformation of professional thinking, of which Mark Twain said, “If your only tool is a hammer, all your problems will be nails”; multitasking is the illusion of attention with potentially dire results if you are eating a sloppy sandwich while driving on a busy street. In his quest for clarity, Dobelli mostly brings shrewdness, skepticism and wariness to bear, but he can also be opaque—e.g., shaping the details of history “into a consistent story...we speak about ‘understanding,’ but these things cannot be understood in the traditional sense. We simply build the meaning into them afterward.” Well, yes. And if we are to be wary of stories, what are we to make of his many telling anecdotes when he counsels, “Anecdotes are a particularly tricky sort of cherry picking....To rebuff an anecdote is difficult because it is a mini-story, and we know how vulnerable our brains are to those”?

Hiccups aside, a mostly valuable compendium of irrational thinking, with a handful of blanket corrective maneuvers.

LOVE WITH A CHANCE OF DROWNING

DeRoche, Torre Hyperion (352 pp.) $14.99 paper | May 1, 2013 978-1-4013-4195-4

A charming memoir of how an Australian woman with a neurotic fear of the ocean set sail across the Pacific with her Argentinian lover.

Graphic artist DeRoche came to San Francisco from Melbourne to accomplish three things within a period of one year: “leave [her] comfort zone, work in a foreign city [and] enjoy some uninhibited fun.” A few months after she arrived, she found herself head over heels in love with Ivan, an Argentinian man she met in a bar. Tall and handsome and, as she found out later, hopelessly clumsy, Ivan had plans to sail his small boat, Amazing Grace, around the world the following year. DeRoche loved that Ivan could dream big, but she hated the ocean and all the “creepy crawly wet things.” For almost half a year, Ivan tried to persuade her to come with him, while the author looked for every possible way that the trip could go wrong. Afraid of dying at sea, but even more afraid of losing the man she realized was the love of her life, she took the plunge and traveled with Ivan “into oblivion.” They sailed to the Marquesas, Society and Cook islands, where they encountered bewitching tropical landscapes, generous natives and other “ocean gypsies” like themselves. But bad storms, equipment failure and leaks that almost sank the Amazing Grace caused DeRoche to finally abandon the voyage in Tonga and leave Ivan to finish the journey alone. The ending to this love story is still a happy one, though, since, once apart, both realized that a life spent testing limits together was the best adventure of all.

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QUEEN BEE OF TUSCANY The Redoubtable Janet Ross

a great sense of self-worth and an inquiring mind and whom she described in Three Generations of English Women. In 1865, the Rosses moved to Florence in post-Risorgimento Italy and found her family’s contacts and her quick ability to learn languages opened all doors for them. They rented a country villa, and Ross soon became the Padrona, working side by side with the peasant farmers and learning to dare una spintarella, or give a nudge, a crucial art in Italy. Her wide network of friends and relations ensured a steady flow of interesting visitors to their last home, Poggio Gherardo. She was not necessarily a personable woman; in fact, she was often rude, ornery and surly, but most put up with her. But her love for Italy and the Tuscan countryside was unquestionably pure. “If our current collective obsession with Tuscany is another version of the ‘sickly love’ of the Anglo-Florentine’s,” writes the author, “Jane’s was a healthy love—measured, skeptical, informed, slow-building, and ultimately deep and more rewarding for all that realism.”

While exploring the life of his human subject, Downing also effectively draws us to visit Tuscany, to stay and absorb its magic.

Downing, Ben Farrar, Straus and Giroux (352 pp.) $28.00 | Jun. 18, 2013 978-0-374-23971-8

Downing (The Calligraphy Shop, 2003) delivers an illuminating biography of Janet Ross (1842–1927), who led the Anglo-Florentine community through the belle epoque and into the 1920s.

The early-19th-century seekers of wisdom and beauty landed in Florence and rarely ventured into the countryside, preferring to wallow in the culture of the cities and enjoy the affordable cost of living. Ross and her banker husband, Henry, first lived in Egypt for years, where she immediately showed her inherited talent for mixing with the locals and becoming one with her environment. She descended from a matriarchy of independent, self-sufficient women who imbued her with

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“Riveting and fascinating—sure to serve future generations well as they look back on this era.” from mortal sins

COLOR BLIND The Forgotten Team That Broke Baseball’s Color Line

mid-1980s. Former Newsday reporter D’Antonio (Forever Blue: The True Story of Walter O’Malley, Baseball’s Most Controversial Owner, and the Dodgers of Brooklyn and Los Angeles, 2009, etc.) traces the history of these scandals from those first few cases in Louisiana and Minnesota to the national and international news sensations they would one day become. The author weaves a captivating tale of legal drama set against the backdrop of an intransigent ecclesiastical hierarchy. The real-life characters of the story range from colorful to tragic; flamboyant lawyers, alcoholic clerics and activist abuse survivors all help make the story a true page-turner. Yet, while entertaining as a work of legal drama, readers are struck on every page by the horror behind the history. D’Antonio presents the terrible facts of underage sexual abuse, though without making his work prurient. He conveys, however, a double tragedy. Molestation and rape are bad enough, but when coupled with an institutional and almost universal disregard for the victim by church officials, the book becomes an ethical commentary on a grand scale.

Though D’Antonio sometimes concentrates on the personal lives of his characters in ways that appear like he is filling out a novel (“While driving alone or wheeling a cart through the aisles of the local Cub Supermarket in the middle of the night, Julie found herself overwhelmed by fears and doubts”), these overdramatized word pictures do little to detract from the service D’Antonio has done in compiling this history of scandal. In a readable manner, he has helped document a watershed era in the life of the Roman Catholic Church.

Riveting and fascinating—sure to serve future generations well as they look back on this era.

Dunkel, Tom Grove (368 pp.) $25.00 | Apr. 18, 2013 978-0-8021-2012-0

Freelance journalist Dunkel spins the colorful yarn of an improbably integrated team’s wild days of independent baseball during the Great Depression.

As the new sport of baseball took hold of the American imagination after the turn of the century, teams of all forms sprang up across the country. For players unable to make the big leagues for lack of talent, personal issues or skin color, one of the legions of semiprofessional teams often offered a way to earn a living playing the game. In Bismarck, N.D., one of the areas hit hardest by drought and depression, successful car dealer and inveterate gambler Neil Churchill’s desire to put together a winning team led him to seek out the finest players available, regardless of race. The resulting mix of has-beens, wannabes and assorted others went on to dominate opponents across the Midwest, culminating in the 1935 National Semipro Tournament. Their success was due in no small part to the onagain, off-again presence of the legendary Satchel Paige, arguably the greatest pitcher of all time and a character worthy of many books for his accomplishments and antics on and off the diamond. Though the team’s inclusion of both black and white players is obviously noteworthy, Dunkel does not focus on racial politics or the issue of whether the Bismarck team was a precursor of things to come or merely a historical anomaly.

The author does address the racism faced by the black players, many of whom would likely have been major league All-Stars had they been allowed to play, and he provides sufficient historical background to flesh out the story. But at its heart, the book is a tale of a time when baseball was more than just a sport, a multibillion-dollar industry or another form of entertainment competing for Americans’ attention.

A well-told account of a fascinating, and forgotten, chapter in the history of America’s national pastime.

IN THE BODY OF THE WORLD

Ensler, Eve Metropolitan/Henry Holt (240 pp.) $25.00 | Apr. 30, 2013 978-0-8050-9518-0

A feminist playwright and activist’s riveting account of how uterine cancer helped her “find [her] way back to [her] body, and to the Earth.”

Incest survivor Ensler had dedicated her life to understanding the experience of living in a female body since she had become so disconnected from her own. In 2007, her professional obsessions eventually led her to the Congo, where “the systematic rape, torture, and destruction of women and girls” in the name of securing mineral wealth was a horrifyingly banal reality. Ensler began working with Congolese women to create a female-centered safe space called City of Joy, only to discover in 2010 that she had uterine cancer. The diagnosis awakened her to the body that until then had only been “an abstraction.” Suddenly, doctors were cutting into her flesh to fill it with cancer-fighting drugs and then drain it with bags and catheters. Her body, like the body of the Congolese women she was trying to help, had become a host not just to a literal disease, but also to the metaphoric cancers of cruelty, greed, stress and trauma. Loving friendships with women

MORTAL SINS Sex, Crime, and the Era of Catholic Scandal

D’Antonio, Michael Dunne/St. Martin’s (432 pp.) $26.99 | Apr. 9, 2013 978-0-312-59489-3 978-1-250-03439-7 e-book

Nearly three decades of scandal, expertly exposed.

The explosive child-molestation scandals that have rocked the Roman Catholic Church in recent years began as a handful of tenuous legal cases in the 54

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PERILOUS QUESTION Reform or Revolution?

Britain on the Brink, 1832

saved her spirit, while chemotherapy, in tandem with surgery that left her temporarily incontinent, saved her life. In the meantime, the physical transformation brought about by the disease caused Ensler to experience a heightened sense of living and being in a world she had once tried to flee through alcohol, drugs, sex and overwork. Reborn through suffering, she issues a clarion call to women to turn “victimhood to fire…self-hatred to action [and]…self-obsession to service.”

Fierce, frank, raw and profoundly moving.

Fraser, Antonia PublicAffairs (400 pp.) $29.99 | May 7, 2013 978-1-61039-331-7

The dame of British historical biography picks her way gingerly through the cluttered details of Parliamentary reform.

Biographer and novelist Fraser (Must You Go?: My Life with Harold Pinter, 2011, etc.) has so thoroughly enmeshed herself in the machinations and personalities of the leaders surrounding the debate for the first great Reform Act of 1832 that she often neglects to see the forest for the trees.

She does convey the sense of national urgency compelling leaders like the Whig Lord Grey to pursue the bill, which was a long-running attempt to reform Parliament by addressing the medieval, unequal distribution of seats, eliminating “rotten boroughs,” or defunct areas with decreased population, and expanding enfranchisement—at least somewhat. Fraser views England at a crucial “crossroads” during this period, beset by the convergence of historical forces that would play out in the heated two-year debate over the bill. The nation was in the throes of the Industrial Revolution, creating newly populous towns like Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds and a prosperous new middle class. As the horrors of the French Revolution were receding from memory, another revolution in France carried off the latest Bourbon king, Charles X, and installed the populist Louis-Philippe, thus demonstrating yet again the power of the masses, delighting the Whigs while alarming the Tories. In England, the bloated, ailing George IV died in June 1830, ushering in his more people-friendly younger brother William IV. Moreover, the recently passed Act for Catholic Emancipation, which gave Catholics the right to vote in elections and stand for Parliament, had riven the Tory government. Consequently, reform was in the air, and the author masterfully evokes the arguments propounded over the several sessions of Parliament by the patricians of the day.

Fraser’s study of the “reasonable” confrontation between Commons, Lords and Crown is engaging, elaborate and elegantly wrought.

UNCOMMON YOUTH The Gilded Life and Tragic Times of J. Paul Getty III Fox, Charles St. Martin’s (304 pp.) $25.99 | May 7, 2013 978-1-250-01821-2 978-1-250-01822-9 e-book

Magazine writer Fox, who died last year, looks back at the sensational kidnapping saga that he started exploring

four decades ago.

John Paul Getty III, 16 in 1973, vanished without warning while residing in Rome. The grandson of oil billionaire J. Paul Getty, the teenager was not attending school regularly but was following a dissolute path paved with alcohol, narcotics, women, sycophants and underworld types interested in the wealth he would inherit. From the moment of his disappearance, reports of a serious crime involving ransom demands alternated with rumors of a hoax, a setup plan by the alleged victim, perhaps with the complicity of his mother, Gail Harris Jeffries, the divorced wife of Getty II. Somehow, Fox won the trust of various players in the investigation. When Italian authorities received a severed ear that matched the ear of Getty III, the investigation heated up. The author lets the saga unfold slowly, with the disappearance not occurring until 130 pages in and the release of the young man back into society after five months of apparent captivity 100 pages later. The narrative is a mixture of Fox’s voice and extended oral-history passages from Gail, a private sleuth hired by the senior Getty, and Getty III’s former wife, among other characters who appear, disappear from the pages, then reappear. Fox writes that he gathered much of the material from conversations with Getty III, who wanted a collaborator for an autobiography. With the main subject and the author now dead, trying to sort among sheer fiction, unalloyed fact and the gray areas in between will be tough for many readers.

A difficult book to read, partly due to its shifting perspectives, partly as a result of its strong odor of wasted lives. (8-page b/w photo insert)

THE FRIEDKIN CONNECTION A Memoir Friedkin, William Harper/HarperCollins (512 pp.) $28.99 | Apr. 9, 2013 978-0-06-177512-3

The Oscar-winning director of The French Connection and The Exorcist looks back at his life and work.

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INTERVIEWS & PROFILES

Nia Vardalos

Instant Mom, Instant Confidante

By Claiborne Smith knocking sound that the audience would assume was coming from inside the casket. Once, during her 10th visit to a fertility doctor, tired of the fake sound of rushing water meant to soothe patients (which she calls “purgatory’s bogus waterfall”), Vardalos takes a stick of incense burning at the office and flings it onto the tape deck emitting the sound in the hope that the incense would burn the tape deck. Instead, the incense falls and burns a hole in her shirt.

Anyone who’s seen My Big Fat Greek Wedding, which Vardalos wrote and starred in, knows that she’s funny. But if comedy is what she naturally does well, what she really wanted to do was something that seemed entirely out of her reach: become a mom. After 12 attempts at in vitro fertilization, Vardalos hangs it up and looks for other options after her best friend wisely tells her that “giving birth is not what makes you a mom.”

What Vardalos calls her “poke in the eyeball” from Mother Nature eventually becomes for her and her husband, Ian, an opportunity, since their infertility leads them to become parents to an almost 3-year-old girl, a product of the foster-care system whose birthparents’ relationship didn’t last beyond the birth of their child. “Mischevious and forceful,” “tough,” “determined,” the girl that Vardalos and her husband name Ilaria is the gift they had been searching for. Instant Mom is the story of Vardalos’ struggle to find Ilaria amid the confusing bureaucracy of the adoption process.

Funny, revealing, heartfelt and written with a telling eye for detail, Instant Mom is a joy to read, even though it begins with a funny passage by a neurotic Vardalos explaining her anxiety about writing a book. I asked her why she wanted to disclose such personal aspects of her life by writing the book.

Photo courtesy Jackie Tucker

It’s clear, not long into Nia Vardalos’ book Instant Mom, that the actress and screenwriter was born to do at least one thing very well: be funny. In an incident she describes in the book, during college, she worked at a florist shop and suggested to her coworker that they attach a tape recorder underneath the floral arrangement that would be placed atop some poor soul’s casket. About 10 minutes into the funeral service, the tape recorder would produce a 56

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Q: One of the ideas that comes up in this book is that writing a book isn’t actually the most natural thing for you to do, which I think even seasoned writers feel sometimes.

How did the idea to write a book about your experiences come about?

do you think the process is like for people who don’t have that kind of access?

A: That’s exactly why I wrote the book. When you’re trying to find this information, you don’t know the difference between social worker and foster agency.

It’s so confusing. Yes, I had access to Rosie O’Donnell, but what actually worked for me was finding a foster social agency. It’s free in every state. The ordinary path is the one that worked for me. That’s where my tenacity paid off.

A: As the National Adoption Day spokesperson, I would find myself in a social situation, a backyard spring party at an industry event, for example, and someone would invariably ask me about how to adopt. You know those people who are first diagnosed with lupus and they can’t stop talking about it? I was constantly talking about adoption, and I realized it had overtaken my writing time and my mothering time because I’m so passionate about it. I felt that I had this incredible responsibility…like a shoe sale—you’ve got to tell your girlfriends about it. I text them within eight minutes about that stuff! So that’s how I felt about adoption. When Katie Couric was at CBS News, she interviewed me, and I told her that I was trying to find a way to get information out about adopting, and she said, ‘Why don’t you write a book?’ and I said, ‘Because I don’t know how.’ When you’re on a talk show, it’s very strange to answer a question, because I was worried I’d be in the middle of something and then a Lean Cuisines commercial would be on, and I’d have laid myself bare.

So this book is me controlling the control-freak part of myself.

Q: You got Ilaria hours after the match was made, and you write that you felt helpless, but any new adopting parent would probably feel a little helpless, right?

A: Yeah, I was going to try to sugarcoat it and encourage people to adopt kids by telling the sweet stories, but I decided, ‘Nope, I have to do it warts and all.’ It was so hard, and this kid was so angry, and I think it’s OK to tell those stories. Since then, I’ve met so many moms and dads who’ve told me about what they went through. What I went through is what any new mother would go through. When we went to Ilaria’s school, they had this cocktail party for new parents. It’s a club: it’s not an adoptive moms’ club, it’s not a biological moms’ club, it’s just a club you’re in where your heart walks around outside your body now, as they say.

Q: You refer to your “personality glitch” in the book, but that glitch is what eventually got you Ilaria, since your glitch is really your determination. Do you still think of it as a glitch or a positive personality trait?

Claiborne Smith is the features editor at Kirkus Reviews.

Instant Mom Vardalos, Nia HarperOne (256 pp.) $26.99 | Apr 2, 2013 978-0-06-223183-3

A: I still think that sometimes I’m a little too tenacious for my own good. The balance is what I’m always searching for. Right after I finished Instant Mom, I went into writing a script for Paramount, and I should have taken a break, regrown some brain cells.

I work really hard. It’s not coal mining; that’s working hard. I’m really diligent. I keep getting rehired. I like to get things done. Ian and Ilaria are so laid-back, and they can spend a whole day watching cartoons. I lay in bed and my legs start twitching.

Q: You write about the adoption process as being a “seemingly endless path of sadness without good news.” But you had access to people like Rosie O’Donnell to help—what |

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job but landing a spot in the mail room at WGN in Chicago (“By the way, kid, are you stupid?” his interviewer asked), and from there working his way from one job to the other, learning the crafts necessary to make a show—and then a film—through trial and error: “Will the floor manager please keep away from the camera?” he was once asked. Lessons learned, he moved west to Los Angeles, where he fell into friendly competition with his contemporaries, foremost among them Francis Ford Coppola, and steadily built a résumé as a reliable filmmaker able to coax the best performances out of actors. There’s plenty of inside baseball here, but Friedkin is more interested in discussing the technical details of his films; we learn, for instance, that “there was not a lot of dialogue looping” in The French Connection, for all the noise on the New York streets, and that Max von Sydow was so tall that he “had to develop a slouch and arthritic movement” for the character he played in The Exorcist. A surprise, given Hollywood’s secular nature, may be the revelation of the depth of Friedkin’s religious faith—even though William Peter Blatty, who wrote the story of that spooky flick, accused him of “having undercut the film’s moral center.”

For aspiring directors, a glimpse into the school of hard knocks, but there’s plenty of good stuff, lean and well-written, for civilian film fans, too.

author sets his tale against the historical backdrop of the region, which was home to the Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa and provided sanctuary to Apache Indians fleeing American troops.

Finally having relinquished his quest, he compares himself to the prospectors and treasure hunters who once scoured the area, and he concludes that he would have had “a far better chance of getting killed in the Sierra Madre” than succeeding.

An exciting adventure story set against a sobering picture of the Mexican political scene.

HIDDEN CITIES Travels to the Secret Corners of the World’s Great Metropolises: A Memoir of Urban Exploration Gates, Moses Tarcher/Penguin (352 pp.) $15.95 paper | Apr. 1, 2013 978-1-58542-934-9

A handbook of spelunking’s edgier, smellier cousin—navigating the secret passageways of urban areas, particularly sewers and subway tunnels—with a liberal dose of ego and occasional misogyny.

Gates, a tour guide and urban archaeologist, began venturing into the vast substratum below Manhattan ostensibly since he “wanted to see everything in New York City,” but it quickly becomes clear that the places that catch his interest are only those where the normal life of the city is absent—the drains and shafts and catwalks that form the hidden infrastructure of the metropolis but that, to the untrained eye, seem primarily distinguished by their rivers of raw sewage and colonies of rats. Occasionally interesting and often befuddling, the narrative chronicles the author’s travels on five continents, hosted by an itinerant but close-knit community of urban explorers who break into cathedrals in the dead of night, climb suspension bridges while intoxicated and practice seduction techniques gleaned from pickup artists. The historical interludes, minilectures on the catacombs of Paris, the aqueducts of Naples, or the Nazi-era bunkers of Odessa, are the book’s redeeming feature, but the occasional lazy sociocultural commentary—e.g., a bizarre paragraph explaining Italy’s “lack of macho territorial energy that is so prevalent in countries with a more AngloSaxon heritage”—will make readers question the author’s judgment. Neither living human society nor the natural world elicit much more than a passing glance here. An epic road trip from Brazil through Bolivia to Peru merits barely three pages, much of which is devoted to a qualitative analysis of the smell of the polluted Choqueyapu River.

Lonely Planet for the realm beyond the “No Trespassing” signs.

IMPERIAL DREAMS Tracking the Imperial Woodpecker Through the Wild Sierra Madre

Gallagher, Tim Atria (304 pp.) $26.00 | Apr. 16, 2013 978-1-4391-9152-1

A quest to find the legendary imperial woodpecker takes ornithologist Gallagher (Falcon Fever: A Falconer in the Twenty-first Century, 2008 etc.) on a trek through the dangerous byways of Mexico’s Sierra Madre.

Since his earlier discovery of the related ivory-billed woodpecker, also thought to be extinct, the author was hopeful of tracking its cousin. Their impressive plumage and loud “trumpetlike toot” made them easily identifiable, and part of their vulnerability came from their social nature, as the animals clustered in groups to protect wounded birds. Considered a pest by farmers (including opium producers) and loggers who cleared the land, it was ruthlessly hunted while its habitat was destroyed. Reportedly, some also considered it a delicacy. By 2008, Gallagher was convinced that it was imperative to make the attempt to locate and protect any of these great birds that remained alive. His problem was not only the dangers inherent in trekking through steep mountain trails, but the fact that the region was controlled by ruthless drug lords and lower-level kidnappers who took advantage of the lawless environment to extort money from local inhabitants and luckless visitors. Gallagher chronicles his own trips to the area, where he was befriended by Mormon ranchers and guided by a member of the drug cartel, as well as the hair-raising adventures of others. The 58

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AMERICA 1933 The Great Depression, Lorena Hickok, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Shaping of the New Deal

prominent Wharton professor, hopes to convince readers otherwise with a book chock full of testimonial stories from businessmen and social scientists on the pros and cons of both giver and taker mentalities. Attitudes in the workplace, he writes, tend to be predominantly of the “matcher” variety (“governed by even exchanges of favors”), whereby a reciprocal balance is strived for and looks good on paper but isn’t always achieved. He notes that givers are looked upon as too soft and trusting, while takers are perceived as callous and hyperdominant. The author provides lively, supplemental case histories from industry givers and takers, like Enron scandal kingpin Kenneth Lay, benevolent online entrepreneur Adam Rifkin and Craigslist’s Craig Newmark, as well as lawyers, hip-hop magnates, teachers and historical greats like Abraham Lincoln and Frank Lloyd Wright. Grant seeks to persuade readers that altruistic givers are too-often underestimated in the business arena, and while some play doormats, many become uniformly successful. He explores the productive nuances of business networking, customer-relationship–building, and practiced, effective communication. In cross matching their characteristics, Grant intimates that there are attributes to be gained in business and career management by being a giver or taker, but he recognizes that a smart combination of both will prove the most effective. He offers “Actions for Impact” to best apply his principles, and his approach is consistently prosocial for readers in every aspect of the business world.

Slick strategies and a fresh approach for business professionals wishing to tip the scales of reciprocity.

Golay, Michael Free Press (320 pp.) $26.99 | May 14, 2013 978-1-4391-9601-4

Historian Golay (The Tide of Empire: America’s March to the Pacific, 2003, etc.) has mined the thousands of letters between Associated Press reporter Lorena Hickock (1893–1968) and Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962), as well as Hickok’s reports, to present an unexpectedly horrific picture of America during a terrible time.

Hired by the incoming Franklin Roosevelt administration in 1933, Hickok traveled the nation to report on conditions, leaving behind “an incomparable narrative record…of America in the depths of the Great Depression.” Although a sophisticated reporter, she was appalled. Cities seemed devastated; storefronts were empty; factories were abandoned or barely operating; farmers continued to be hopelessly in debt, destroying crops they could only sell at a loss. Roosevelt’s National Recovery Administration encouraged unions, but even their victories could not create jobs. Usually, but not always, charities performed magnificently, until they ran out of money. Most victims were apathetic, but there was plenty of violence, especially in mines and rural areas. Conservatives saw communists behind the protests, and there was no shortage of conviction that American capitalism had failed and that revolution was imminent. The voluminous Hickock-Roosevelt correspondence also reveals a passionate friendship whose romantic possibilities have not escaped historians. Golay does not shy away from that material but keeps his focus on the awfulness of the Depression. Those who yearn for an America of low taxes, unfettered free enterprise, no entitlements, and where charities look after the unfortunate will discover that those were the conditions in 1933.

Even at the time, many counseled patience and denounced government aid as socialistic, but few readers of this gripping, painful account of third-world–level poverty and despair will agree that it is the natural order. (16page b/w insert)

A DOG WALKS INTO A NURSING HOME Lessons in the Good Life from an Unlikely Teacher

Halpern, Sue Riverhead (320 pp.) $26.95 | May 16, 2013 978-1-59448-720-0

Reflections on a rest home for the elderly.

When faced with the beginnings of empty-nest syndrome, Halpern (I Can’t Remember What I Forgot, 2008, etc.) decided to invest time in others as a way to fill her day. She and her dog, Pransky, became a certified human–dog therapy team, working at the local nursing home. She expected to meet and “learn something about old people, and about the therapeutic value of animals in a medical setting, and about myself in that setting, which was alien and not a little scary.” With Pransky at her side acting as an icebreaker, Halpern experienced the seven virtues of life: “love, hope, faith, prudence, justice, fortitude [and] restraint.” Witty and compassionate, the author introduces readers to the lives of many of the residents, providing insight into the last stages of a person’s life. These people were farmers, counselors, teachers, museum curators, and they “had lives—rich, rewarding, interesting, challenging, complicated lives.” The residents showed Halpern that death is not something to be feared but accepted with dignity despite failing mental and physical health. Over

GIVE AND TAKE A Revolutionary Approach to Success

Grant, Adam Viking (320 pp.) $27.95 | Apr. 9, 2013 978-0-670-02655-5

A scholarly discussion on the push and pull of business ethics.

Do good guys really finish last? Grant, an organizational psychologist and |

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“A deeply compassionate book that poses urgent questions about the end product of imprisonment and the social thirst for vengeance.” from among murderers

AMONG MURDERERS Life after Prison

time, the author realized that “hanging out…[was] as satisfying as anything else we could have been doing between ten and noon on Tuesdays, and, most of the time, more so.” Through her enlightening observations of this particular nursing home, readers will take away the knowledge that we are each given one life and we had best not squander how we live it.

Endearing thoughts on aging and companionship.

Heinlein, Sabine Univ. of California (257 pp.) $29.95 | Mar. 12, 2013 978-0-520-27285-9

A thoughtful consideration of the massive challenges and moral burdens faced by individuals paroled after long sentences for the most severe of infractions.

German-born Heinlein possessed understandable trepidation regarding the pursuit of this project through the labyrinth of “re-entry” from the American prison system: “It is hard to look a murderer in the face….Yet considering the rising number of murderers being released from prison, it becomes harder and harder to turn away.” In 2007, while receiving a master’s degree in journalism from NYU, she began attending events at the Fortune Society (“the crème de la crème of American halfway houses”) in upper Manhattan, following three men as they acclimated themselves to urban society after a quarter-century or longer behind bars. Heinlein develops authentic, nuanced portrayals of her central characters, noting that while all showed remorse and dealt admirably with the challenges of re-entry, questions regarding their redemption remain tricky. Arguing that, since murder sentences represent the extremes of incarceration, their re-entry process would be the most difficult, she observed the three as they dealt with everything from relationships with women to dining in neighborhood restaurants, as well as more profound issues such as their own determination to rebuild their lives and make up for lost years. As she got to know them and weighed their own responses to the moral quandaries of their crimes and punishments, the author makes sharp observations about the tattered world inhabited by released convicts. Heinlein notes that almost “no one employs ex-cons except the agencies that promise to help them,” particularly in hard economic times.

A deeply compassionate book that poses urgent questions about the end product of imprisonment and the social thirst for vengeance.

TIME WARPED Unlocking the Mysteries of Time Perception Hammond, Claudia Perennial/HarperCollins (352 pp.) $14.99 paper | Jun. 1, 2013 978-0-06-222520-7

Science broadcaster Hammond (Emotional Rollercoaster: A Journey Through the Science of Feelings, 2007) reports from the front lines of research into the subjectivity of the experience of time and its weird elasticity.

As the author demonstrates, our experience of time is particularly mind-bending: a complex mixture of memory, attention and emotion, which, when in synchronicity, give time its familiar flow. However, when one or more are out of kilter, our perception of time can warp dramatically. Hammond has an aptly liquid writing style, one that encourages engagement and makes the narrative memorable. Memory appears to play a significant role in our time experience, for studies indicate that the gathering of memories slows time and that forsaking new memories speeds time up. Focusing intensely, as in a scary episode, in which you block out other reference points that convey time’s passage, slows time, but paying acute attention can also make time fly. Hammond tours the latest advances in neuroscience, but some of the material feels radically preliminary and is not always entertaining or groundbreaking. The author, however, ably captures both the details of research—“recent experiments suggest that a moment lasts between two and three seconds, which aligns not only with what we see in poetry, but also in music, speech, and movement. We seem to segment activities into a space of two or three seconds”—and broad visualizations of time. Her survey of investigations into how we perceive the future, from picturing the grade we will receive on an exam to suicide plans, feels almost too fragile to behold. Hammond also shows how readers can change their relationships with time, examining this challenge through a variety of problems with time perception, including “Time Is Speeding Up,” “Too Much to Do, Too Little Time” and “A Poor Memory for the Past.”

Occasionally uneven but mostly enjoyable, thoughtprovoking reading.

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HUMAN TRAFFICKING AROUND THE WORLD Hidden in Plain Sight

Hepburn, Stephanie; Simon, Rita J. Columbia Univ. (448 pp.) $27.95 paper | $26.95 e-book Jun. 4, 2013 978-0-231-16145-9 978-0-231-53331-7 e-book A meticulous academic study grasping the vast scope of an evolving global problem.

Journalist Hepburn (co-author: Women’s Roles and Statuses the World Over, 2006, etc.) and Simon (Public Affairs and Law/ American Univ.; co-author: Immigration the World Over, 2003, etc.) carefully define the many forms of human exploitation, |

which are shockingly prevalent from the poorest to the richest countries. The authors have sifted through documentation increasingly available—such as the Trafficking in Persons Report compiled annually by the U.S. State Department, studies by the United Nations, NGOs, newspapers and court cases—and have chosen 24 countries that offer a representative sampling of the worldwide “trafficking scenario” in terms of economics, geopolitics and culture. Many countries are only now being compelled to address the problem, and the issues of definition plague official statistics and efforts at enforcement. For example, labor trafficking (such as debt bondage) is as much a part of human exploitation as sex trafficking, though not often included in the same statistics. The authors group the countries not geographically but by a thematic commonality. For example, the United States, Japan and the United Arab Emirates are all hugely wealthy countries attractive to traffickers because of their need for inexpensive labor and the allowing of visa loopholes that encourage the enslavement of foreign migrants. The influx of victims trafficked to the Gulf Region after hurricanes Katrina and Rita provide cases in point, as does the reluctance by Japan to address its “hyperthriving” sex industry and yakuza (organized crime) network. Other themes around which countries are grouped include stateless persons, such as the hill tribe people of Thailand and the Palestinians; unrest and displacement (Iraq, Syria); gender apartheid (Iran); social hierarchy (China); and muti murder, or the abduction and murder of people for the purpose of harvesting body parts (South Africa). The authors also consider what happens to traffickers and victims after apprehension.

Difficult reading at times, but immensely well-documented and useful.

enough, at the time of the diagnosis, the author was five months pregnant and presented with the prospect that their unborn child had a 25 percent chance of having MLD as well. Six days after Azylis was born, while Thaïs was becoming bedridden and about to go mute, the Julliands learned that Azylis, too, had MLD. While lamenting that “genetics don’t let the laws of mathematics get in the way” but “take their toll as they see fit,” the Julliands drew even more deeply from their reserves of courage and agreed to a stem cell transplant, the one chance Azylis had to avoid the full brunt of Thaïs’ harsh fate. Though the author’s account charts suffering of mythic proportions, the lessons gleaned from her daughters prove incredibly wise.

Unflinching and inspirational, a parent’s powerful tale of finding love and understanding beyond the senses.

ACT OF CONGRESS How America’s Essential Institution Works, and How It Doesn’t

Kaiser, Robert G. Knopf (448 pp.) $27.95 | May 7, 2013 978-0-307-70016-2

A painstaking, richly detailed look at how the suite of financial reforms that followed the bank near-collapse of 2008 came to be—and nearly didn’t come to be, even as they were defanged.

We get the Congress we deserve, suggests longtime Washington Post reporter Kaiser (So Much Damn Money: The Triumph of Lobbying and the Corrosion of American Government, 2009, etc.), who observes that, beginning in about 1981 with the arrival of Reagan, politics began to trump policy even as “[e]xchanges of favor and petty corruption became congressional reflexes.”

When the American financial system threatened to melt down following the collapse of the junk mortgage market and other dubious means of speculation, Congress found itself with few “legislative statesmen and women” smart enough to understand the events that were unfolding and politically astute enough to know what to do about them. Enter Barney Frank, a scrapper and one of the first openly gay U.S. representatives. The hero of Kaiser’s piece, Frank takes the lead in a scenario so threatening that even Mitch McConnell cooperated across the aisle. Though fraught with political peril, Frank saw in the financial crisis “the opportunity to rewrite the rulebook.” Over the course of Kaiser’s complex, fact-studded account, Frank is shown making a game effort at it despite hindrance, mostly from the Republican side of the House. You don’t have to be a policy wonk or economist to understand that saga, but it surely helps when encountering passages such as this: “This law divided responsibility for the firms handling derivatives contracts between the SEC and CFTC, based on the underlying securities or indices.”

Remember that old saw about making sausages and making laws—that you don’t want to know too much about either one? Kaiser disproves it with this lucid if sometimes numbing book.

TWO SMALL FOOTPRINTS IN THE WET SAND A Mother’s Memoir

Julliand, Anne-Dauphine Translated by Hunter, Adriana Arcade (208 pp.) $23.95 | May 1, 2013 978-1-61145-824-4

A mother depicts her family’s epic battle against nearly insurmountable genetic odds.

First published to wide acclaim in France, Hunter translates the intrepid tale of Julliand, a Parisian journalist and mother, whose own DNA cruelly forced upon her this memoir’s gripping subject. Already parents to a healthy 4-year-old son, Gaspard, in 2006, Julliand and her husband, Loïc, wondered why the big toes of their toddler, Thaïs, were turning outward, giving her a slightly awkward gait. Suspecting an orthopedic cause, nothing could have prepared the couple for the devastating diagnosis: metachromatic leukodystrophy, an incurable degenerative neural disorder that would, in short order, rob Thaïs of every faculty before truncating her young life. The Julliands learned the diagnosis on Thaïs’ second birthday and faced the grim prospect that she was not expected to reach the age of 3. As if this weren’t terrifying |

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“Teachers, concerned parents, political leaders— Kirp’s book has something for everyone, and it deserves the widest possible audience discussion.” from improbable scholars

BACK IN THE FIGHT The Explosive Memoir of a Special Operator Who Never Gave Up

wholesale defunding of public school systems in favor of private schools that are mostly reserved for the wealthy. Kirp (Public Policy/Univ. of California; Kids First, 2011, etc.) observes that in recent years, “fewer white students and more poor and nonwhite students have enrolled in public school,” with the predictable result that public schools have in the main become uncompetitive since they are underserved. He examines the case of Union City, N.J., to show that this is not a requisite destiny: There, in an area of deep poverty (“below such famously troubled cities as Mobile, Milwaukee, and Oakland”), a committed group of administrators, teachers and parents have formed an educational community to defy the odds.

“Community” is an operative word, and the secrets for forging it and bringing new life to the classroom are, by Kirp’s account, fairly few. He identifies some of the keys ones: high-quality, all-day preschool for all children beginning at the age of 3, then “word-soaked classrooms” that emphasize language skills (and therefore thinking skills). Against the prevailing English-only ethos, Union City teaches immigrant children fluency in their language, then fluency in English. The school system actively reaches out to parents to form educational partnerships, and there are plenty of abrazos— hugs, that is, to create a culture of caring. What Kirp considers an exemplary public school system that is a demonstrable improvement over what generally prevails now is replicable everywhere, requiring only fiercely hard work.

Teachers, concerned parents, political leaders—Kirp’s book has something for everyone, and it deserves the widest possible audience discussion.

Kapacziewski, Joseph and Sasser, Charles W. St. Martin’s (320 pp.) $25.99 | May 7, 2013 978-1-250-01061-2

Amped-up memoir of an elite warrior determined to fight on for his country, even after giving up a limb.

The Army Rangers are renowned as the original Special Operators, whose roots, according to Kapacziewski and co-author Sasser (Sanctuary, 2013, etc.), go back to pre–Revolutionary War frontiersmen. The author joined the military in order to become a Ranger; he describes handling the Ranger Indoctrination Program, similar to the Navy SEALs’ notorious “Hell Week,” with aplomb. “Rangers would be deployed to combat zones almost constantly” in the years after 9/11, he writes. “This was the best time in all history to be a Ranger.” Yet he bemusedly notes that “[n]othing went wrong” on his first tour of Afghanistan in 2002. Kapacziewski saw combat in repeated tours of Iraq, but he clearly enjoyed both the experience of war and the opportunity to marry an all-American girl at home, Kimberly (who provides narrative counterpoint). At first, under Special Ops’ protective canopy, the author felt charmed: “No one ever seemed to get hurt on our side.” He notes that modern accouterments like satellite phones, the Internet and Skype “made the war seem less dangerous.” But his luck ran out in Mosul in 2005, when a grenade came through a hatch of a Stryker vehicle, resulting in severe injuries to his arm and leg. His difficult rehabilitation makes up the narrative’s final third, with the twist that Kapacziewski’s mulish determination led to a unique triumph: “Almost a year and a half after amputation, I was back on the line as a squad leader…the first amputee to return to full combat duty.”

Yet despite all his experiences, the author seems to have issues with the topics of masculinity and service: He makes clear to readers that any modern man who’s not an Army Ranger is probably a “sensitive, touchy-feely” effeminate pseudo-male.

A tale of impressive endurance, not enhanced by the surfeit of machismo.

THE GREAT AMERICAN JET PACK The Quest for the Ultimate Individual Lift Device Lehto, Steve Chicago Review (240 pp.) $24.95 | May 1, 2013 978-1-61374-430-7

A sapid look into the historically futile attempts to develop a gravity-defying, single-person flying machine.

Personal air flight, independent from conventional planes and unwieldy hot air balloons, has been pondered by hopeful inventors for centuries, writes Lehto (Chrysler’s Turbine Car: The Rise and Fall of Detroit’s Coolest Creation, 2010, etc.).

Challenged by the heretofore impossibility of achieving lasting stability while airborne, a great many scientists, inventors and hopeful aeronautical specialists have tried and been mostly unsuccessful. The author applauds many of these creative efforts while charting the jet pack’s fascinating evolution. The experimental designs and concepts are legion and include 1940s military engineer Charles Zimmerman’s propellered “flying shoes,” a device that opened the floodgates for more progressive ideas like Stanley Hiller Jr.’s kinesthetic twin-engine–powered platform and aircraft engineer Wendell Moore’s innovative, hydrogen peroxide–fueled rocket belt backpack. All saw their dreams rise and eventually plummet,

IMPROBABLE SCHOLARS The Rebirth of a Great American School System and a Strategy for America’s Schools Kirp, David L. Oxford Univ. (272 pp.) $24.95 | Apr. 16, 2013 978-0-19-998749-8

Hopeful news from the education front.

George W. Bush’s teach-to-the-test No Child Left Behind Act has done untold damage to American education, as has the 62

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Thanks to radio, radar and GPS, the “golden era” of lighthouses is over, but Levitt’s century-and-a-half saga of an innovator whose ideas were at times fostered, at times thwarted, by politicians or leading scientists, is most welcome. (60 illustrations; 6 maps)

some with tragic outcomes. Tweaked innovations on Moore’s concept continued for decades, with each milestone, from pump hoses to overhead airscrews, improving on the prototype before it, yet issues with safety and flight duration stifled progress. Grounded with an academic tone, Lehto’s chapters are rife with technical processes and jargoned commentary wisely tempered with graphic illustrations and photographs, which comprehensively chronicle the unique and choppy legacy of jet-propulsion devices. Though drier than Mac Montandon’s Jetpack Dreams (2008), Lehto’s approach should appeal to armchair inventors and basement tinkerers.

While personal-flight prototypes edge from pipe dream to purchase order, this well-documented history provides a satisfying substitution. (18 b/w photos; 20 color photos; 13 diagrams)

FOR A SONG AND A HUNDRED SONGS A Poet’s Journey Through a Chinese Prison

Liao Yiwu Translated by Wenguang Huang Amazon/New Harvest (432 pp.) $26.00 | Jun. 4, 2013 978-0-547-89263-4

A SHORT BRIGHT FLASH Augustin Fresnel and the Birth of the Modern Lighthouse

In this third translation of Liao’s work (The Corpse Walker, God Is Red), Wenguang Huang renders a lively, vernacular, fluent sense of the poet’s angry depiction of being abruptly apprended by police in 1990 while making a protest film after the Tiananmen Square crackdown.

A somewhat listless poet, at the time living in Fuling, whose family had been uprooted during the Cultural Revolution (involving the horribly traumatic death of the author’s older sister in a bus accident), Liao was radicalized by the government’s barbarous treatment of the student demonstrators in 1989, when he penned the incendiary poem “Massacre.” A harsh and arbitrary detention ensued over two months at the Song Mountain center, where he was brutally initiated into the hierarchical system of the inmates, such as the “menu” of “dishes” meted out as sadistic punishment among the prisoners—e.g., “Stewed Pig’s Nose,” in which “the enforcer squeezes the inmate’s lips between chopsticks until they swell up”; or “Barbequed Pig’s Chin,” when “the enforcer delivers a blow to the unsuspecting inmate’s chin from below, crushing his teeth together.” Educated and considered “intellectual,” however, the author seems to have skirted the worst of the treatment, likely due to the fact that he was literate and able to help others write letters and read. Yet he was also recalcitrant and refused to sign a confession, prolonging his incarceration. Fighting lice, the brutality of the “enforcers,” horrific deprivation of privacy and basic human needs, suicidal urges and the deep contemplation of death, the author survived by the sheer goodwill and kindness of others, such as the aged Buddhist monk who taught him to play the flute. Liao’s work is an amazing testament to the people who are battling the Chinese police state.

A rare eyewitness account by a Chinese dissident who managed to flee to the West to gain his freedom and tell his story.

Levitt, Theresa Norton (192 pp.) $25.95 | Jun. 3, 2013 978-0-393-06879-5

Homage to the man who turned feeble-and-far-between harbor lights into a global multitude of brilliant beacons.

Levitt (History/Univ. of Mississippi) trains the spotlight on Augustin Fresnel (1788–1827), a French civil engineer whose early-19th-century optics experiments demonstrated that light traveled in waves, challenging leading scientists who defended particle theory. He went on to develop the Fresnel lens system, a series of triangular-shaped glass prisms in circular arrays, each prism angled to refract light into a single strong beam that projected to the horizon and beyond. Fresnel died of tuberculosis at age 39, but his legacy survived. Fresnel lenses would eventually replace the far-less-efficient lighthouses that shined light reflected from silvermirrored parabola-shaped enclosures. However, Fresnel lenses were costly and required quality glass and precision grinding at a time in Paris when a horse powered the glassmaker’s machines.

Levitt’s scrupulous scholarship and contextual setting serve readers well. She reminds us of how dangerous the sailor’s life was and how low-intensity reflectors fell far short of the brightness and depth that ships required to prevent their foundering. The author also neatly contrasts Britain with France and America. Britain was ahead of France in Fresnel’s time, already replacing horses with steam power and soon competing with the French in manufacturing Fresnel lenses. Meanwhile, America remained decades behind, thanks to a bureaucracy in which lighthouse management was in the hands of a treasury department auditor who would not use the Fresnel lenses. That changed in the 1840s with a new generation of progressives and the presidency of James Polk, ushering in massive lighthouse building with Fresnel installations—until the Civil War, when the Confederacy hid or destroyed many of them.

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I CAN’T COMPLAIN (All Too) Personal Essays

which, lacking technology, relied more on the “jungle telegraph” to communicate important news than it did on the three telephones. Since the population of Papavray was so small, her neighbors quickly become recurring and familiar characters in her stories. Some of the tales are lighthearted and funny—e.g., a dog’s appearance in the middle of a wedding ceremony or her husband’s first attempt at shearing sheep. Others, like the story of a long-neglected woman on a nearby island, are tragic and horrifying. Though she clearly loves the island and its people dearly, MacLeod does not romanticize life on Papavray, and she explains the violent history of the 18th- and 19th-century Highland Clearances and the grim economic reality of declining populations. At the end of the book, however, the author does not provide an explanation of how her family eventually came to leave Papavray; having grown to know and love the nurse and her neighbors, it would be nice to know the reasons for their parting. Nevertheless, the book is a lovely account of ordinary people thriving in an extraordinary landscape.

Cozy and chatty, these stories offer an intriguing glimpse into life as a nurse on a remote Scottish island.

Lipman, Elinor Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (176 pp.) $20.00 | Apr. 16, 2013 978-0-547-57620-6 Accomplished novelist Lipman (Tweet Land of Liberty: Irreverent Rhymes from the Political Circus, 2012, etc.) exposes her journalistic roots by collecting over 30 “(all too) personal” essays and columns that have appeared in a number of periodicals.

Dating back about 20 years, these mostly light pieces examine her family’s foibles, the craft and business of writing, romance, and, somewhat surprisingly, given the rest of the volume’s rather acerbic tone, moving reflections on her husband’s tragic illness and the author’s life after his death. In each piece, no matter how brief, Lipman tackles the subject at hand with Dorothy Parker–esque wit and verve. The author’s good-spirited openness and self-awareness shine through in pieces on her childhood (she happily dishes about her mother’s condiment-phobia), her willingness to hold grudges and the stages of her son’s development. She also describes the peaks and valleys of decades living with a kind man whose tastes and “midlife fastidiousness,” especially when it came to dress and household clutter, sometimes got the better of her. Particularly keen are Lipman’s observations on writing, covering topics ranging from the naming of characters—“Nomenclature done right contributes to characterization”—to the authorial use of food as a “narrative helpmate” and a frank rumination on the politics of blurbing. Confessing her proclivity to promote the work of others, Lipman explains, “I am giving back. Critics have been described as people who go into the street after battle and shoot the wounded.

No blurb can be a bulletproof vest, but in my own experience it can put a square inch of Kevlar over a worried writer’s heart.”

A feast of bite-sized morsels of humor and wisdom.

CLASS A Baseball in the Middle of Everywhere

Mann, Lucas Pantheon (336 pp.) $26.95 | May 7, 2013 978-0-307-90754-7 978-0-307-90755-4 e-book

In the tradition of football’s Friday Night Lights, a young writer spends a year (and more) following the fortunes of a baseball team: the Class A Clinton, Iowa, LumberKings.

In this impressive debut, University of Iowa writer-in-residence Mann has a busy agenda. He writes frequently about his own doubts, insecurities (he was not much older than his subjects) and failures (in sports, in barrooms). Swimming just below the surface is the dark story of the death of his brother, whose presence emerges periodically to whisper messages of mortality and disappointment. Mann discovered and immersed himself in a group of loyal fans—most notably, an obsessive collector named Joyce, who has nearly 1,000 signed baseballs on display in her home. (She also deals at the local casino.) The author had an uneasy relationship with the players, who came and went (and in one case, came back) during the season. He was among them but not often with them. Mann drank with them and observed the young women flirting with them but not with him. A couple of players, however, did open up a bit—though always on their terms. One night, he dressed up in the LumberKing mascot’s costume and sweat through an odd evening. He drove around the area, looking at the virtually deserted old downtown—the collapse of Middle America and the middle class clearly in his sights. Mann writes about the corn economy, the odorous presence of food-processing giant Archer Daniels Midland, the dilapidated houses and the

CALL THE NURSE True Stories of a Country Nurse in Scotland’s Western Isles

MacLeod, Mary J. Arcade (320 pp.) $24.95 | Apr. 1, 2013 978-1-61145-831-2

Folksy anecdotes about community life on the Hebridean island of Papavray.

In 1970, MacLeod visited the remote Scottish island with her husband and two youngest sons and decided to stay, having grown tired of their congested and cramped life in London. The author threads comparisons between country and city living throughout the book, and she describes the natural beauty of the “wild, exposed” island in luscious detail, making readers feel present in the narrative.

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“Though McClelland offers few solutions for industrialized urban centers, his book is admirably long on explanation and empathy.” from nothin’ but blue skies

NOTHIN’ BUT BLUE SKIES The Heyday, Hard Times, and Hopes of America’s Industrial Heartland

Mississippi River, which flows nearby. The author provides few pitch-by-pitch accounts but plenty of piquant moments of success, failure, consequence and inconsequence. He tells about other trips (Venezuela, for one) to check out the back stories of some players. Mann’s style is easy, fluid, self-deprecating and always engaging.

A grand slam.

McClelland, Edward Bloomsbury (352 pp.) $26.00 | May 21, 2013 978-1-60819-529-9

CLASH! 8 Cultural Conflicts that Make Us Who We Are

Chicago journalist McClelland (Young Mr. Obama: Chicago and the Making of a Black President, 2010, etc.) examines the decline of urban industrial centers in the Midwestern United States and portions of the Great Lakes region.

A native of Lansing, Mich., one of those declining centers, the author presents impressively reported case studies and anecdotes from such cities as Detroit, Flint, Buffalo, Cleveland and Chicago, among others. The closing of factories—those that manufacture automobiles have been the most common— is no secret. Nor is the decline of labor unions, the desperation of the unemployed, the accompanying crime, racial tensions, environmental degradation and the moving of jobs to Mexico and overseas. But McClelland helps to make the old feel new by drawing on a combination of personal contacts, extensive interviewing and acute observation based on showing up and hanging out. Little-known details emerge throughout. How many readers already knew, for example, that Buffalo is the locale of perhaps the first Muslim settlement in the United States? Those Muslims, mostly from the nation of Yemen at first, arrived to take advantage of the attractive jobs in the since-shuttered steel mills. Everywhere throughout the industrialized cities, immigrant tribes gathered to forge steel in the mills and accept other demanding positions in factories, positions numerous American citizens were unwilling to take. But the Rust Belt grew rustier and rustier, as an appellation that formerly denoted pride came to signify poverty and unemployment. Rebirth in some sections of a few of the down-and-out cities seems possible, but mostly, hopelessness is ascendant and elected politicians and their financial supporters show little initiative in assisting the unemployed or underemployed.

Though McClelland offers few solutions for industrialized urban centers, his book is admirably long on explanation and empathy.

Markus, Hazel Rose; Conner, Alana Hudson Street/Penguin (320 pp.) $25.95 | May 2, 2013 978-1-59463-098-9

A grab-bag, pop-psych look at cultural determinism and its discontents.

People are different. Cultures are different. But within those truisms lies a potentially discomfiting question that Markus (Behavioral Sciences/Stanford Univ.) and science writer and cultural psychologist Conner ask at the beginning: “What kind of person will not just survive but thrive in the twenty-first century?” That depends, of course, on place, custom, economy, education and a host of other factors, not least among them culture. Culture— and anthropologists have counted at least 200 extended definitions of that elusive term—is the shell surrounding us human eggs, and, as the authors note, it is what allows so many whites to wear blinders that assure them that we live in a post-racial society while people of color know the truth to be very different. Culture, they assert rightly, has as much to do with who people are “as do the genes, neurons, and brain regions within their bodies.” And as to the clash of the title? The authors do not always have their eyes on this prize, but they address that large question, observing—and it’s always dangerous to generalize—that people raised under the banner of Socrates prize individualism, whereas people raised under that of Confucius tend to value the polity more than the individual members of it.

The authors chew on some slippery but intriguing tidbits: Why are Californians thin and athletic, Midwesterners not so much?

(Hint: It has to do with the stability of relationships.) The authors steer into murkier territory when art pretends to be science, as when they write up a score card for Barack Obama (“gets one point in the ‘Independent’ column for ‘Gender’ ”).

A tighter and better-organized argument would have helped, but the authors provide plenty of smart if debatable observations about who we are.

SEVEN MEN And the Secret of Their Greatness Metaxas, Eric Thomas Nelson (256 pp.) $24.99 | Apr. 30, 2013 978-1-59555-469-7

Metaxas presents profiles of seven men he considers manly exemplars.

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began with the Vietnam War and the presidency of Richard Nixon, a time of ignorance, venality and shame, when many called nearly all authority into question. When the young turned to role models, they were more likely Cheech and Chong than Westmoreland and McNamara. But do we really have to settle for the macho meatheads or the “emasculated...pretend[ing] that there is no real difference between men and women,” asks the author? Certainly not, he writes, for “God’s idea of manhood is something else entirely”—no “loudmouthed bullies or soft, emasculated pseudo-men,” but strong, loving, chivalrous, service-oriented men who use authority for leadership, not personal advancement. Jesus lords over this book—“My own personal greatest role model is Jesus”—but Metaxas has chosen another seven men who surrendered themselves to a high purpose and sacrificed to do the right thing. There is a goodly measure of zeal in Metaxas’ style, and Jesus shares the credit with the acts of the seven men: George Washington, who could have been king but declined, and William Wilberforce, for his abolitionist stance and fights against child labor, alcoholism and animal cruelty in the 19th century. The author also includes Eric Liddell, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Jackie Robinson, Pope John Paul II and, less convincingly, Charles Colson, perhaps only due to the fact that he was such an unsavory character before he found his calling in prison.

Metaxas gives the men their rightful due without lapsing into hagiography.

each farm visit, she sums up the lessons learned. For example, the winery’s pest-management approach suggests to her that cancer should be viewed more as a chronic challenge to be contained rather than as an invader demanding total eradication by the use of harsh treatments. The egg producer’s handling of his flocks of chickens suggests a variety of techniques for reducing human stress. Miller also includes her whimsical hand-drawn maps of each of the locations where she spent time.

While aimed at general readers, the author’s message is also appropriate for physicians and is made palatable by Miller’s persona and the avoidance of preachy smugness.

HOWEVER LONG THE NIGHT Molly Melching’s Journey to Help Millions of African Women and Girls Triumph

Molloy, Aimee HarperOne (208 pp.) $25.99 | Apr. 30, 2013 978-0-06-213276-5

The story of American development worker Molly Melching’s founding and expansion of Tostan, an NGO focused on bringing awareness of human rights and a sense of empowerment to people living in remote African villages.

Melching’s transformation from Midwestern college graduate to thrill-seeking international crusader makes for compelling reading. After arriving in Senegal in 1974 for what was supposed to be a six-month student-exchange program at the University of Dakar, Melching decided to live and work there permanently. She spent years working as a Peace Corps volunteer, translator and children’s book author. In 1991, she founded Tostan, which has become a highly respected organization with an astonishing record of success. Most famous among Tostan’s myriad accomplishments is the work that has led nearly 5,000 Senegalese village councils to declare that they are abandoning the centuries-old practice of female genital mutilation, a painful ritual that can lead to severe health problems and even death. Molloy (co-author: Jantsen’s Gift: A True Story of Grief, Rescue, and Grace, 2009, etc.) has a reporter’s knack for selecting and arranging the most salient details of Melching’s experiences, and the resulting story is moving and memorable. In keeping with Tostan’s focus on empowering Africans to drive change within their own communities, Molloy writes almost as much about Melching’s courageous African mentors and colleagues as she does about Melching. The book’s only serious flaw is Molloy’s zeal for her subject. Although it’s obvious that Melching is brilliant, hardworking, compassionate, humble and brave, some readers may long for at least a glimpse of a flaw. Molloy mentions that Melching has erred in both her professional and personal lives, but her mistakes are never as vividly drawn as her triumphs, and readers are left with the impression that she is more saint than human.

Uplifting and inspirational, particularly for those interested in international development.

FARMACOLOGY What Innovative Family Farming Can Teach Us About Health and Healing

Miller, Daphne Morrow/HarperCollins (304 pp.) $27.99 | Apr. 16, 2013 978-0-06-210314-7

Miller (Family Medicine/Univ. of California, San Francisco) steps outside medicine’s orthodoxy to explore the connection between sustainable farming and healthy living.

The author, who examined diets in traditional communities in The Jungle Effect (2008), has now traveled to family farms around the United States to learn how the principles of sustainable farming apply to integrative medicine and healthy living.

Impelled on her journey by Grace Gershuny and Joe Smillie’s The Soul of Soil (1996), the author spent time on a biodynamic farm and an aromatic herb farm in Washington, on a bison ranch in Missouri, with an egg producer in Arkansas, at a winery in California’s Sonoma Valley and in community gardens in the Bronx.

Working hands-on and also picking the brains of the farms’ operators, Miller observed farmers taking a holistic, or “whole system,” approach to their work that she has found to be too often missing in the modern practice of medicine. To illustrate how her broader, more integrated approach to treating patients differs from the common reductionist approach, the author includes revealing stories of her experiences with specific patients. At the end of 66

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“Humans may be experts at destroying the planet, but we are no slouches at preserving it, either, and Newitz’s shrewd speculations are heartening.” from scatter, adapt, and remember

THE STORY OF SPANISH

and Other Nerdy Stuff, 2006), who suggests we must distill all the strategies humans have used in the past and fashion a projection of them into the future—plus a whole new bag of tricks to devise from scratch so as to get by. Humans are the lucky ones, writes the author; we can live almost anywhere and eat nearly anything, and we tell stories, which contain experiences that will help save us. We are also able to wander, like our besieged ancestors fanning out of Africa 70,000 years ago, to fit in elsewhere. Newitz begins with an exceptional tour through the latest thinking on the great extinctions of the past, giving a wide-ranging view of exactly what extinction means. It doesn’t necessarily require a decline in numbers but can mean a “depression of speciation,” as when an invasive species wipes out all the other species. To the claim that we are headed for the most cataclysmic extinction of all, the author counters that that distinction likely belongs to the Permian period’s “Great Dying,” 250 million years ago, when more than 95 percent of the species on the planet died. She closes with hope, if not exactly completely convincing optimism: “Things are going to get weird. There may be horrific disasters, and many lives will be lost. But don’t worry.

As long as we keep exploring, humanity is going to survive.”

Humans may be experts at destroying the planet, but we are no slouches at preserving it, either, and Newitz’s shrewd speculations are heartening.

Nadeau, Jean-Benoît; Barlow, Julie St. Martin’s (496 pp.) $27.99 | May 7, 2013 978-0-312-65602-7 978-1-250-02316-2 e-book Pop history of the evolution of the Spanish language and its spread through conquest, commerce and culture.

The Phoenicians applied the name Hispania, write Canadian travelers Nadeau and Barlow (co-authors: The Story of French, 2006, etc.), to a strip of Mediterranean shore on which rabbitlike creatures abounded: thus “land of the hyraxes.” There, the language of native Celtic and pre-Celtic peoples met that of the conquering Romans, yielding a blend that would eventually spread across much of the Iberian Peninsula. From there, as the authors chart, it would travel around the world, absorbing streams of words from the languages it encountered—the Visigothic of oncedespised masters, the Arabic of Spain’s former rulers, whole vocabularies from the New World. As the authors rightly note, Spanish is not static. A major world language (by their debatable reckoning, the world’s second in terms of number of speakers), it has spun off in many directions, with some 10 varieties spoken in Mexico alone and a highly influential, somewhat simplified version spreading outward from Spanish speakers in the United States. Nadeau and Barlow write engagingly of the “Latin American boom” in literature, which brought Spanish-language writers onto the world stage, and of the stultifying effects of the Franco regime on the language in its homeland. They are less successful in writing of the deep history of Spanish, suggesting that toro is from some pre-Roman language of Spain (it is not), confusing the causes of the split of Spanish and Portuguese, and missing a couple of entertaining if perhaps fugitive theories on why people in Madrid lisp while those in Maracaibo do not.

A useful overview, strong on sociolinguistics, though historical linguists and philologists will find plenty to gainsay. (6 b/w maps; charts and tables)

EDMUND BURKE The First Conservative Norman, Jesse Basic (304 pp.) $27.99 | May 7, 2013 978-0-465-05897-6

Member of Parliament Norman (Compassionate Economics, 2008, etc.) comprehensively explains the history and the writings of the man whose thoughts have been quarried by politicians for hundreds of years.

The author smartly divides his biography into sections on Edmund Burke’s (1729–1797) life and his thought. The Dubliner arrived in London at age 20, and while he rarely returned, he strove throughout his 30-year parliamentary career for his countrymen and especially the Catholics in that land. Norman eases us into Burke’s thinking, which was not a strict system of philosophy, but rather a flexible inconsistency dealing with the preservation of the social order and the essentials of political leadership. Where a philosopher searches for the proper ends of government, a politician searches for the means to that goal.

Burke supported the cause of the American Revolution and vainly tried to prevent it, and he opposed the French Revolution because it focused on individuals and not so much liberty as license for the individual and his ethics of vanity—i.e., “what’s in it for me?” Burke’s writings were soundly rejected by Thomas Paine but extensively used in James Madison’s institution of checks and balances. The author carefully clarifies the establishments of political parties (as opposed to factions), the

SCATTER, ADAPT, AND REMEMBER How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction

Newitz, Annalee Doubleday (320 pp.) $26.95 | May 14, 2013 978-0-385-53591-5

An animated and absorbing account into “how life has survived mass extinctions so far…and what we need to do to make sure humans don’t perish in the next one.”

Massive catastrophes leading to extinctions have already visited Earth at least five times, writes science writer Newitz (co-editor: She’s Such a Geek: Women Write About Science, Technology, |

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JACK BE NIMBLE The Accidental Education of an Unintentional Director

relationship of representatives to voters, and the “Burkean imaginative engagement: a balance between ego and circumstance, between ambition and constraint, between individual and society.” He also provides a fascinating picture of the political scene in England in the 18th century, where votes were bought with liquor or directed by landlords.

A top-notch introduction to Burke and his paternity of political systems throughout the Western Hemisphere.

Even better, the author points out where ignoring Burke’s thoughts have caused unnecessary difficulties.

O’Brien, Jack Farrar, Straus and Giroux (368 pp.) $30.00 | Jun. 18, 2013 978-0-86547-898-5

The Tony Award–winning director looks back on his apprenticeship years.

Born in 1939, O’Brien wrote two successful musicals at the University of Michigan and planned to become a successful Broadway lyricist/playwright. Then the APA Repertory Company arrived to inaugurate the university’s Professional Theatre Program, and he was swept into the glamorous orbit of leading lady Rosemary Harris and actor/director Ellis Rabb, who hired him after he graduated. O’Brien served as the volatile Rabb’s devoted amanuensis—dealing with practical matters, playing small parts, standing in for him onstage when he needed to direct rehearsals—while APA built a reputation in regional theater and stormed Broadway with a dazzling revival of You Can’t Take It With You. Himself unabashedly gay, O’Brien empathetically portrays the complicated marriage of Harris and the bisexual Rabb, which survived his homosexual affairs but foundered on his jealousy of her greater star power. Theater-history buffs will relish O’Brien’s vivid descriptions and cogent assessments of such famed APA productions as the Erwin Piscator– adapted War and Peace, Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, directed

by Eva Le Gallienne, and the black farce Pantagleize, a personal triumph for Rabb in the title role. O’Brien finally emerged from his mentor’s shadow when producer John Houseman, who joined APA in 1965, pushed him to direct Sean O’Casey’s Cock-a-Doodle Dandy, a less-than-auspicious debut, with the company heading toward dissolution as Rabb’s drinking and mental instability both increased. O’Brien closes the main narrative with his triumphant direction of the Houston Grand Opera’s 1976 Porgy and Bess; a sad afterword chronicles his final break with Rabb. A quarter-century as artistic director of San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre and such Broadway hits as Hairspray were yet to come, but O’Brien’s evocative, loving reminiscences make clear how indelibly his artistic vision was forged in the crucible of regional and repertory theater, among some of the giants of the American stage.

Smart, gossipy and oh-so-dramatic—squarely in the grand tradition of theater memoirs.

STOLEN GLIMPSES, CAPTIVE SHADOWS Writing on Film, 2002-2012

O’Brien, Geoffrey Counterpoint (288 pp.) $25.00 | Jun. 11, 2013 978-1-61902-170-9

Multitasking writer/editor O’Brien (The Fall of the House of Walworth, 2010, etc.) showcases his work over the past decade as a film critic and historian.

The historian gets more of an outing in this new collection; substantially more than half the pieces, many of which were written to accompany DVD re-releases, cover such staples of college classes and museum retrospectives as directors Fritz Lang and Jacques Tourneur and vintage film ranging from Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes to Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless.

The author’s insights into these familiar icons are unfailingly intelligent and delivered in polished prose, though there’s little here that any reasonably literate movie buff hasn’t read before.

His take on contemporary blockbusters (including a single TV series, The Sopranos) is often more idiosyncratic and interesting.

“Spider-Man, the movie…has a ponderousness its model altogether lacked,” he writes, contrasting the scrappy Marvel comics that inspired it with the Hollywood franchise that “descends from above, trailing clouds of magazine covers and licensed toys.” His take on Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report is similarly well-informed about its pop-culture source (a Philip K. Dick story) and appreciative of Spielberg’s abundant moviemaking gifts, while holding the film to a higher intellectual standard than its director seems interested in meeting. O’Brien, editorin-chief of the Library of America, tends to take a serious, quasiacademic approach to movies; obituaries for his predecessors Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris are appreciative and shrewd about both critics’ essential qualities, but he’s clearly more in sympathy with the “reverence for film history” he praises in Sarris’ work than with Kael’s fierce advocacy for “the sovereignty of her own taste.” In general, the author is less an innovative thinker than a tasteful summarizer of received cultural wisdom, right down to the concern expressed in his preface that movies are part of the semisinister digital revolution.

Smart, careful reviews covering a reasonably representative swathe of movies past and present.

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“New Yorker writer Packer ranges across the country to chronicle the time when ‘the coil that held Americans together in its secure and sometimes stifling grip first gave way.’ ” from the unwinding

THE ANCESTRAL CONTINUUM Unlock the Secrets of Who You Really Are

mortifying stories about wetting herself in a gas station and puking in her friend’s father’s car before a party. She also comes across as somewhat bratty and entitled. Her young adulthood was appropriately wacky. She flew from Canada to Los Angeles on a whim in a desperate attempt to meet Leonardo DiCaprio and bought, then sold, a dilapidated camper van. When describing her adulthood and parenthood, she grows into her precociousness. “An Open Letter to the Nurse Who Gave Me an Enema Bottle” is entertaining, and the last sentence is genuinely funny and unexpected. “How I Met Your Father” is sweetly raunchy, the kind of story that will horrify her children but delight her grandchildren. As amusing as some of these stories are, Oxford is a mostly unremarkable writer with a remarkable claim to fame: her successful use of Twitter to gain an audience for her humor and writing. Yet this, the most interesting fact about her, receives very little attention in the book. She does share her experience meeting David Copperfield as a result of a Twitter exchange, but the story readers will most likely want to hear—how she got started with Twitter and how her tweets got the attention of significant public figures like Copperfield and Roger Ebert—is absent from the narrative.

Alternately grating and amusing, Oxford skips the most interesting part of her life: her canny use of Twitter.

O’Sullivan, Natalia; Graydon, Nicola Atria (304 pp.) $26.00 | $12.99 e-book | May 21, 2013 978-1-4516-7454-5 978-1-4516-7475-6 e-book

Spiritual counselor and psychic O’Sullivan and journalist Graydon provide guidance toward connecting with the gallery of heroes, villains and everyday folks who comprise our physical, psychological and emotional heritage (and baggage).

As the authors endeavor to help readers find their place in and path through their particular family tree, they give advice on how to tap into the flow of the past to the present, primarily through meditation and prayer and perhaps in association with a healer or other member of the spiritual community.

Although O’Sullivan and Graydon suggest readers remain open to intuition and incorporeal voices, to “allow ourselves to cross the bridge between our day-to-day awareness and higher consciousness,” they also have much to say to the spiritually clueless among us. Curiosity about your forebears is certainly a near-universal condition. There are many quotidian avenues to explore genealogy, and neither O’Sullivan nor Graydon disavow them. Still, feeling the potency of a familial landscape, for instance, isn’t a great surprise, and it affords us an opportunity to keep an open mind and pay attention to premonitions, dreams and sudden epiphanies. The authors present dozens of stories about people visiting in one form or another with deceased family members, which will appeal to a limited audience of readers. Although a certain passivity occasionally interrupts the proceedings—“The secrets of our inheritance...lie in our genes. They contain the memory of all that we are and all who have gone before us”—it is more likely that O’Sullivan and Graydon espouse active engagement, to seek and interpret your past to both fill yourself out and to disentangle yourself from any ruinous family script.

A mystical foray into our ancestral shadows—not for nonspiritually inclined readers.

THE UNWINDING An Inner History of the New America

Packer, George Farrar, Straus and Giroux (464 pp.) $27.00 | May 21, 2013 978-0-374-10241-8

New Yorker writer Packer (Interesting Times: Writing from a Turbulent Decade, 2009, etc.) ranges across the country to chronicle the time when “the coil that held Americans together in its secure and sometimes stifling grip first gave way.”

“I am the empire at the end of the decadence.” Thus said the French poet Mallarmé. Packer describes the decline of America from a very specific time: If you were born half a century ago, around 1960, then, he writes, “you watched structures that had been in place before your birth collapse like pillars of salt across the vast visible landscape.” While forces are picking away at the pillars that still stand (Social Security, public education, privacy, etc.), and while only money seems to matter, the author offers the tiniest comfort in the thought that America has declined and fallen before. Still, this decline seems steeper than those others, save for the Civil War. Among his subjects are the city of Tampa, Fla., which once “was going to be America’s Next Great City” but is mired in stagnation and desperation, and a struggling, no-longer-aspirational factory worker named Tammy, one of whose co-workers sagely observes, “Most people wouldn’t survive in a factory. Mitt Romney would die in a week.” Against these depressed landscapes and people, Packer juxtaposes a few who are doing a bit better: Raymond Chandler, “a drinker”

EVERYTHING IS PERFECT WHEN YOU’RE A LIAR

Oxford, Kelly It Books/HarperCollins (336 pp.) $25.99 | Apr. 2, 2013 978-0-06-210222-5

Autobiographical vignettes from Twitter comedian Oxford.

These stories fall into roughly three stages of the author’s life: obnoxiously precocious childhood, confused young adulthood and parenthood. When Oxford tells us about her childhood and teen years, she doesn’t hold back, giving us |

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DISTANT INTIMACY A Friendship in the Age of the Internet

whose lapidary stories of blue-collar America have become classics; Oprah Winfrey, empire builder; and Colin Powell, empire builder of another kind. Packer’s repetitive structure—a chapter on Tammy followed by one on Tampa followed by other pieces—hammers home the point that all is not well in America and not likely to get better soon, the promise of “acres of diamonds in Greenville [N.C.]” notwithstanding.

Exemplary journalism that defines a sobering, even depressing matter. A foundational document in the literature of the end of America—the end, that is, for the moment.

Raphael, Frederic; Epstein, Joseph Yale Univ. (352 pp.) $30.00 | May 7, 2013 978-0-300-18694-9

Personal strangers and intellectual compadres discover they have a lot to complain about.

This yearlong collection of correspondence between writers who have never met—novelist and essayist Epstein (Essays in Biography, 2012, etc.) and screenwriter/novelist/biographer Raphael (A Jew Among Romans: The Life and Legacy of Flavius Josephus, 2013, etc.)—reveals a blossoming intellectual romance between provocateurs who hold nearly everything but each other in contempt. They loathe Susan Sontag, Hannah Arendt, Philip Roth, Saul Bellow and anyone associated with the New York Review of Books; they like Henry James, Proust, ballet, the Greeks, Maugham and Balzac. They weigh grievances on editorial politics and prices, nurse old wounds, and match each other point for point on English and American culture and which of the two is more Jewish. The bonds tighten on more personal matters: Epstein mentions an upcoming birthday, which happens to be on the day before the anniversary of Raphael’s daughter’s death; Epstein knows the feeling of dread, having lost a son of his own. Raphael is the verbal highflier, studding every sentence with arcane references and French phrases, against which Epstein’s casual erudition usually comes as a relief. Both score good lines. Raphael, on Edmund Wilson’s fight with Vladimir Nabokov over the latter’s translation of Eugene Onegin: “E.W. had only himself to blame when Pushkin came to Shovekin.”

Epstein, suspecting a writer named Eric Korn is actually a Korngold: “No one of the Hebrew persuasion is named Korn; he must have had the nomenclatural version of rhinoplasty done on his name.” They see through the sham of modern culture but not each other; they are mutual enablers, never noticing that their puns get lamer, spite more stale and grapes more sour.

High-octane lit-chat served cold, heavy on the bitters.

LONG SHOT

Piazza, Mike with Wheeler, Lonnie Simon & Schuster (384 pp.) $27.00 | Feb. 12, 2013 978-1-4391-5022-1 Arguably the game’s greatest offensive catcher recounts his controversial career.

Of all the Hall of Fame–worthy catchers of the past 40 years, few names start an argument more quickly than Mike Piazza. Chosen 1,390th by the Dodgers in the 1988 draft, a courtesy pick engineered by family friend Tommy Lasorda, Piazza went on to set the all-time home-run record for his demanding position, playing, as one observer remarked, “as if he is tearing somebody’s head off.”

With the assistance of Wheeler (co-author: Sixty Feet, Six Inches: A Hall of Fame Pitcher and a Hall of Fame Hitter Talk About How the Game is Played, 2009, etc.), Piazza explains the reasons for this intense single-mindedness, an anger ballplayers describe as “a chronic case of the red-ass. “ The stink of his low draft position never really dissipated, he insists, retarding his progress in the minors, opening him up to charges of nepotism and leaving him at the mercy of the game’s politics. Jealousy over his family’s vast wealth, resentment of his interfering father’s widespread baseball connections and enduring skepticism over his defensive skills (a bum rap, he says) all conspired to deprive him of honors due—at least a couple of MVP awards—or even simple credit for the hard work he put in to excel. That unrelenting dedication is well-documented here, along with the season-by-season highlights of his sterling career, principally with the Dodgers and Mets. He addresses his famous confrontations with Roger Clemens, writes movingly about playing in New York when the twin towers fell and adamantly denies performance-enhancing drug rumors that threaten his Hall of Fame candidacy. A curious mix of fervent metal head and devout Catholic, Piazza appears to understand how his self-centeredness needlessly alienated many, but his apologies can barely be heard over the loud and constant rehashing of grievances.

A superior ballplayer, still a work-in-progress as a human being.

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RAPE IS RAPE How Denial, Distortion, and Victim Blaming Are Fueling a Hidden Acquaintance Rape Crisis

Raphael, Jody Chicago Review (256 pp.) $18.95 paper | Apr. 1, 2013 978-1-61374-479-6

Meticulously researched and passionately argued rebuttal of those who would deny the reality and alarming prevalence of acquaintance rape.

An 11-year-old girl was gang-raped by 18 men and criticized for wearing provocative clothing. Another girl, 15, was gang-raped by men who got her drunk, and she received a ticket for underage |

drinking. Raphael (Freeing Tammy: Women, Drugs, and Incarceration, 2007, etc.) makes the strong case that these are the all-too-frequent outcomes for women victimized by acquaintance rape. Unlike victims of other crimes, such women often face “indifference, disbelief, or outright punishment.” Social conservatives tend to blame rape on the sexual promiscuity of the victims. On the other end of the spectrum, some feminists view acquaintance rape as “an acceptable risk of sexual freedom.” In addition, such deniers claim both that data on the frequency of rape are overinflated and that as many as 50 percent of rape accusations are false. Both claims, as Raphael shows, are entirely false. Countless reputable studies have shown that 11 to 16 percent of all American women have been raped sometime in their life, and numerous studies indicate the false report of rape to be in the 2 to 8 percent range. Further, most rapists are in fact known by their victim. But the deniers’ damage is done, and too many in authority—universities, police, prosecutors and others—too easily dismiss acquaintance rape as “bad sex” at worst. Raphael hopes to change such attitudes, not only through the heavy dose of accurate data she presents, but also through the stories of several young women who were raped by someone they knew.

These horrific accounts provide ample evidence of the need for change in attitudes and actions toward rape victims—a disturbing challenge to anyone who would dismiss the ravages of rape.

an Iron Cross by his Jewish commander), if given to “haranguing those around him about any subject that took his fancy.” He was able to gather followers among religious Germans by professing Christianity, much as he despised it. He rose to power at a time when Germans were begging for an authoritarian figure to solve their economic woes, and though he had a propaganda chief, he himself was one of the best propagandists in history.

So how did Hitler convince his generals to invade Russia and his subjects to ignore the genocide around them?

This readable, fascinating book, a worthy addition to the vast literature surrounding Hitler, has plausible answers.

(16 pages of b/w illustrations)

BUG MUSIC How Insects Gave Us Rhythm and Noise

Rothenberg, David St. Martin’s (288 pp.) $26.99 | Apr. 16, 2013 978-1-250-00521-2 978-1-250-01826-7 e-book

A free-wheeling discourse on the nature of insect noise and its interaction with human ideas of music.

Rothenberg (Music and Philosophy/New Jersey Institute of Technology; Survival of the Beautiful: Art, Science and Evolution, 2011, etc.) has written previously about the songs of birds and whales, both of which he admits are more accessible subjects than insects. Nevertheless, he cites hundreds of years of poetry and music to show that he is far from alone in his fascination for bug music. Basho, the great Japanese haiku composer, wrote in the late-17th century: “Cicadas sing— / know not how soon / They all will die.” Rothenberg writes that the germ of this book, which will be released in time for the re-emergence of one brood of 17-year cicadas in the mid-Atlantic states this summer, first stirred in 1996 when a friend invited him to witness their last appearance above the Hudson Valley in New York. Rothenberg ruminates on this odd prime-numbered rhythm, beating steadily for millennia apparently, which keeps the cicada larvae underground only to enjoy one brief season of maturity in the air every 17 (or, in some lucky species, 13) years, a season they celebrate with loud song and desperate sex. He suggests it is the longest beat in music of any kind. But cicadas aren’t the only creatures that capture Rothenberg’s playful ear and imagination. He also rhapsodizes on the music of crickets, katydids, bark beetles (plausibly suggesting their devastation of Western pine forests might be stopped with the aid of noise), and the water boatman (which makes the loudest sound for a creature of its size by beating its penis against its abdomen). He also riffs on human music, from Josquin des Prez’s medieval chant “El Grillo” (the cricket) and the honey-gathering songs of Ituri forest pygmies to far-out bug-inspired tunes by electronic composers and techno DJs, ending with his own jams with a brood of cicadas in 2011.

Not for everyone, but adventurous audiophiles will catch Rothenberg’s bug for insect-music appreciation.

HITLER’S CHARISMA Leading Millions into the Abyss Rees, Laurence Pantheon (368 pp.) $30.00 | Apr. 16, 2013 978-0-307-37729-6 978-0-307-90813-1 e-book

A searching study that addresses the question, not why so many Germans and Austrians accommodated Adolf Hitler, but why they so ardently embraced him.

Fresh from the news that the Nazi labor- and death-camp system was much more widespread and widely known than hitherto thought, British historian Rees (World War II Behind Closed Doors: Stalin, the Nazis and the West, 2009, etc.) examines Hitler’s career through a Max Weber–ian perspective of charisma, noting that Hitler promised not just decent wages and orderly streets, but “broader, almost spiritual, goals of redemption and salvation.” In the end—and Rees is rightly emphatic about this— Hitler was, like any politician, willing to compromise on almost any front except his central program: the extermination of the Jews. Apologists explain away German and Austrian acquiescence to this program, but Hitler made no effort to disguise his intentions; it was his ability to sell it with impassioned speeches and to cow his opponents with popularly supported terror that won the day for him, at least for a while. Rees looks into several questions and punctures a few myths along the way: Hitler was no slouch in battle, no mere “paper-hanger,” but was a brave and selfless soldier on the World War I front (and commended with |

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“A wonderfully engaging study executed with a lot of heart.” from the last of the doughboys

THE LAST OF THE DOUGHBOYS The Forgotten Generation and Their Forgotten World War

and reported al-Qaida leader killed by a drone in Yemen, and the evolution of special forces–led global strikes, the author seeks to establish his case that Barack Obama’s military policies are best seen as a continuation of the policies of George W. Bush. He characterizes the death of Awlaki as an “assassination by his own government” and insists that Obama’s policies “keep intact many of the most aggressive counterterrorism policies of the Bush era.” Scahill traces the arc of Awlaki’s career, from the aftermath of 9/11, when he appeared to be a spokesman for moderate American Muslims, to the government’s later determination that he was a terrorist leader operating from Yemen. For the author, the surveillance and other methods employed to track and kill Awlaki exemplify the continuation of Bush’s policies in the war on terror. He shows how, after 9/11, laws governing covert and clandestine operations were subverted to shut out oversight from Congress and competition from the intelligence community and the military chain of command. Scahill demonstrates how al-Qaida members found refuge in Yemen from November 2001 onward, while Bush’s administration concluded agreements with the country’s government. However, the author does not consider the possibility that the end of the Iraq war, the death of Osama bin Laden and the overthrow of governments that assisted the Bush administration’s secret prisons and torture constitute a change in policy. Scahill’s case against the Bush administration’s practices is firmer than his assertion that Obama is following the same policy, and he fails to consider the difficulties of unwinding Bush’s legacy.

Not always convincing, but a surefire hit for fans of Blackwater and studded with intriguing, occasionally damning material.

Rubin, Richard Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (528 pp.) $28.00 | May 28, 2013 978-0-547-55443-3

Before the Greatest Generation, there was the Forgotten Generation of World War I, the remaining members of which are depicted in this gloriously colorful swan song.

It’s stunning to think that the last veteran of the American Expeditionary Forces of World War I, Frank Buckles, died in 2011 at the age of 110, but more amazing perhaps is the fact that there were “dozens” of aged veterans still around by 2003, when New York journalist Rubin (Confederacy of Silence: A True Tale of the New Old South, 2002, etc.) took on the task of tracking them down and interviewing them. The French did a better job of recording and honoring them, mainly since they were truly grateful for the Americans’ stepping in and driving back the Germans after four years of mostly brutal stalemate, while back in the U.S., the veterans didn’t have a GI Bill or much recourse.

From the numerous interviews Rubin conducted with these extraordinary people during the last 10 years, he conveys a vivid glimpse of an entire society gradually brought into the conflict, from the 1917 book, Arthur Guy Empey’s Over the Top, which first brought the experience of fighting in the trenches home to Americans, to the Tin Pan Alley hits that sold the war to the people, to the lost regionalisms spoken by the centenarians who shared their stories in a lucid, forthright manner. Most were farm boys and laborers who signed up in the initial excitement of spring 1917 (“I was just looking for—for a life,” one mused), admitting they had nothing against the Germans, especially considering most were sons of immigrants or immigrants themselves. Rubin’s subjects tell of meeting Gen. John Pershing, getting gassed, manning the machine guns, and being continually horrified and, above all, lucky to get out alive.

A wonderfully engaging study executed with a lot of heart.

THE WAR BELOW The Story of Three Submarines that Battled Japan Scott, James Simon & Schuster (464 pp.) $28.00 | May 14, 2013 978-1-4391-7683-2

Using voluminous official records plus interviews and an amazing number of unpublished diaries and letters, former Charleston Post and Courier investigative reporter Scott (The Attack on the Liberty: The Untold Story of Israel’s Deadly 1967 Assault on a U.S. Spy Ship, 2009) delivers a gripping, almost dayby-day account of the actions of three submarines, Silversides, Tang and Drum, from Pearl Harbor to VE Day. Nazi U-boats get the publicity, but America’s submarines were more effective, sinking so many Japanese vessels that by the end of World War II, civilians were starving and factories barely functioning. The author mixes biographies of the men who fought in the subs, technical details of sub warfare and the patrols themselves.

Moving back and forth among the three boats, he describes weeks of boredom and searching, days of maneuvering for attacks, the devastation when they were successful, the frustration when they weren’t and the anxiety of enduring depth-charge attacks while

DIRTY WARS The World is a Battlefield Scahill, Jeremy Nation Books/Perseus (612 pp.) $29.99 | Apr. 23, 2013 978-1-56858-671-7

Scahill (Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, 2007), the Nation magazine’s national security correspondent, questions the legality and command methods of the ongoing war against al-Qaida.

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COLLEGE (UN)BOUND The Future of Higher Education and What It Means for Students

trapped deep beneath the sea. All this havoc on Japanese shipping came at a price; American submarines suffered 20 percent losses, the highest of any Navy service. That included the Tang, sunk, ironically, by its own malfunctioning torpedo, killing most of its crew. The nine survivors emerged as malnourished skeletons after a year of unspeakable conditions in Japanese prisons. Scott pauses regularly to explain the progress of the Pacific war but makes no attempt to write a general history of the submarine campaign; for that, read Clay Blair’s Silent Victory (1975). Inevitably, details of several dozen submarine patrols become increasingly familiar.

Military buffs will lap it up, but general readers may find it difficult to resist the tension, drama and fireworks of this underappreciated but dazzlingly destructive American weapon of WWII. (8-page b/w insert)

Selingo, Jeffrey J. Amazon/New Harvest (256 pp.) $26.00 | May 7, 2013 978-0-544-02707-7 An editor-at-large for the Chronicle of Higher Education surveys the sorry status of higher education.

Part analytical, part self-help, Selingo’s debut will please some and annoy others. The author begins with the case of a young woman with high hopes who dropped out (he uses numerous other such examples throughout), then commences his examination of all that’s gone wrong. Soaring costs, students who no longer learn the way traditional colleges teach, the resistance of many in academe to online learning, prospective families and students who don’t know what they really want from college, the course-credit tradition, grade inflation, the fashion now among many institutions to convert themselves into what he calls a “resort campus,” with amenities and frills that befuddle the older generations—all are contributing to the cracks in the foundations of the old four-year, residential model. Selingo cites numerous alarming statistics—only 20 percent of students, for example, attend a four-year college full time—and he discusses at length the question of the value of a college degree and the conflict between purely vocational aims/economic gains and pursuing a major and career that bring personal satisfaction. Throughout, he points to promising ideas some schools are trying: blending online with face-to-face courses (“hybrid” courses, he calls them), which permit students to finish at their own speed. Near the end, Selingo forecasts five changes— among them: more personalized education and fluid timelines.

He ends both with a sample list of 18 schools with innovative ideas and a list of questions students and families should ask the schools they’re considering—e.g., “What is the job-placement rate of the college’s graduates? How is it calculated?”

A mixture of alarm and hope, wisdom and portending.

LET’S EXPLORE DIABETES WITH OWLS

Sedaris, David Little, Brown (288 pp.) $27.00 | $12.99 e-book | $29.00 Lg. Prt. $29.98 CD | Apr. 23, 2013 978-0-316-15469-7 978-0-316-12568-0 e-book 978-0-316-23391-0 Lg. Prt. 978-1-619-69699-0 CD A more varied and less consistent essay collection from the noted humorist.

In middle age, Sedaris (When You Are Engulfed in Flames, 2008) no longer aims as often for laugh-out-loud funny as he did when he attracted a popular following almost two decades ago. Most of these essays revisit many of the areas he’s previously mined for hilarity—the dysfunctional family stuff, the gay stuff, the American-living-abroad stuff—but much of what he returns to in memory seems less antic and more melancholy than before. In the funniest piece, the penultimate “The Happy Place,” he discovers his Eden by embracing what others of his generation resist: the colonoscopy. “Never had I experienced such an all-encompassing sense of well-being,” he writes. “Everything was soft-edged and lovely. Everyone was magnificent….I’m not sure how long I lay there, blissed-out and farting.” Amid characteristic riffs on book tours, foreigners who eat funny (and Britons who talk funny), his underwear-clad, alcohol-swilling father, and his adventures in a variety of countries with his partner, Sedaris engages readers with a number of pieces in which he writes from a perspective that is obviously not the author’s, raging about the decline of liberty, morality and Western civilization in general in the wake of Barack Obama. With Jesus riding shotgun, the narrator of “If I Ruled the World” froths, “I’ll crucify the Democrats, the Communists, and a good 97% of the college students.” Funnier and sharper is “Just a Quick E-mail,” in which what appears to be a justifiable complaint about a chintzy wedding gift becomes ever more revelatory about the monstrosity of the sender.

Those who have followed Sedaris through the years will find plenty to enjoy, though not much in the way of surprise or revelation.

WAITING FOR JOSÉ The Minutemen’s Pursuit of America Shapira, Harel Princeton Univ. (240 pp.) $27.95 | May 1, 2013 978-0-691-15215-8

A blend of sociology and journalism informs this account of time spent among the self-professed guardians of the U.S.-Mexico border.

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unsecured and swarming with enemies of America. Into this stepped the central character of Shapira’s piece, Chris Simcox, who retreated into the Arizona desert following 9/11 and, by his chronicle, was accosted by swarms of narcotraficantes and coyotes who left him with the conviction that he needed to found “a citizen’s group whose aim would be to protect the borders of the United States from illegal invasion.” Thus born of crisis, the Minuteman movement grew, though its numbers were always much smaller than the noise it made. Shapira argues that it is a mistake to view the movement as an ideological outgrowth of the right wing, even though most of its members would probably self-identify with the tea party or other rightist outliers; instead, he suggests, it is an expression of populism, if a vigilantist one. If its members have a commonality, it is that most of them are old: “It is not their ideology that leads them to establish their camp,” he writes, “it is their age.” Shapira, who spent considerable time in those desert camps along the Arizona border, where Minutemen sat in lawn chairs with rifles to hold back the tide, notes that the movement has disintegrated as Simcox moved to the tony town of Scottsdale, married well and ran for political office, tacking to the right of John McCain on the immigration issue—and bewildering his followers by the bald fact that “he is no longer a Minuteman.”

A valuable look at the birth of a populist paramilitary formation, one whose opponents may not dismiss so easily after reading this evenhanded book. (10 line illustrations)

mind Carl Schmitt, who “enshrined Hitler’s tyranny in law.”

Some of the philosophers acquiesced for the advancement of their careers—e.g., Martin Heidegger, whose affair with his student Hannah Arendt, a Jew, rendered his collaboration all the more baffling or suspect. Jewish philosophers stripped of their university positions either fled or were destroyed. Sherratt devotes one chapter to the singular resistance of one Munich academic, Kurt Huber, and another to the reckoning meted out to the collaborating philosophers at the Nuremberg Trials.

A straightforward work that only hints at the underlying questions of moral failing supported by many of these philosophical works.

DON’T LICK THE MINIVAN And Other Things I Never Thought I’d Say to My Kids Shirtliffe, Leanne Skyhorse Publishing (304 pp.) $24.95 | May 1, 2013 978-1-62087-526-1

An entertaining look at raising twins.

Humor blogger Shirtliffe, who writes for the Huffington Post, the Calgary Herald and other publications, opens the door to her family life with a droll take on parenting twins from pregnancy through kindergarten. Pregnant in Thailand, during her fifth month, she felt like “a walking Astrodome”; by week 37, she writes, “I’d been weighed by two Thai nurses whose combined mass equaled one of my thighs.” After a year in Bangkok, Shirtliffe and her family traveled from Thailand to Alberta, Canada, where life with their children took on the inevitable roller-coaster ride of new parents and toddlers. Anecdotal reflections on breast-feeding, car trips, airplane flights, fingernail cuttings, and “poo and puke” are just some of the many moments Shirtliffe recalls in detail. Numerous parenting tips include “on long trips, let your children eat whatever processed crap you can get your hands on,” pretend you’re on Survivor since “to help you survive raising children, you need to ‘outwit, outplay, outlast’ them each day,” and “as long as your child isn’t the worst in his class, he will succeed. If he is the worst, drink more wine.” Amid the humor are frank confessions of Shirtliffe’s dips into postpartum depression and her frequent assessment of her ability to be a good mom to two normal kids.

But with the help of her husband, family members and friends, the author remembers that “it is all a stage: the small stuff (like sleeplessness and toxic diapers) and the big stuff (your child’s dependence and even your life), and the most important thing to do is laugh.”

Mostly witty commentary on the common ups and downs of being a new parent, times two.

HITLER’S PHILOSOPHERS

Sherratt, Yvonne Yale Univ. (328 pp.) $35.00 | May 21, 2013 978-0-300-15193-0

A systematic breakdown of the core players and ideas usurped in Nazi ideology.

British academic Sherratt (Continental Philosophy of Social Science, 2005, etc.) deconstructs the making of Hitler’s thinking, from the writing of his autobiography as a political vehicle to his “savage bowdlerization” of Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and many other philosophers. Whether Hitler actually read the works he appropriated did not matter, writes the author. He plucked what he needed from this or that philosopher: From Kant, he claimed the supremacy of reason over the dogma of the church and the degradation of Judaism; from Schiller, the beloved motto: “The strong man is mightiest alone”; from Hegel, the formation of the state from ancient origins; from Nietzsche, his fantasies of an ancient Greek ideal; and so on. As a “bartender of genius,” Hitler concocted his lethal ideas about racial supremacy, the lone Romantic hero within the Bavarian natural landscape, the Jewish “enemy” and the obsession with “public health.” He needed a coterie of deputies to carry out his political fantasies, namely Alfred Rosenberg, whose job was to “destroy democracy and construct a new Nazi ideal” by infiltrating the schools and universities; and legal 74

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A HISTORY OF FOOD IN 100 RECIPES

Stauffer (English and American Literature; African-American Studies/Harvard Univ.; Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln, 2008, etc.) and Soskis (Nonprofit Management, Philanthropy and Policy/George Mason Univ.) trace the song’s beginnings as “Say Brothers, Will You Meet us” to “John Brown’s Body” and Julia Ward Howe’s version written in 1861. The song has been used to reflect national ideals, borrowing images from the Bible as a call to action whenever war reared its ugly head. The Howe version became a symbol of the reunification of the North and South, at least in the North. The hymn highly offended Confederates, as it reminded them of the words of the “John Brown’s Body” version sung by Union soldiers, which swore to hang “Jeff Davis from a sour apple tree.” Various versions with new or adjusted lyrics have appeared, modifying the song’s imperialistic bent and millennial aspersions. It has been used to express fears, feuds, righteousness and a providentially blessed nation in times of crisis, and it invariably rouses the masses. This powerful song has been called into action by such diverse causes as labor movements, Spanish-American War anti-imperialists, Teddy Roosevelt’s Progressive Party, Billy Sunday, Billy Graham and leaders of the civil rights movement.

Unfortunately, the lengthy biographies of the various adapters of the lyrics are superfluous and, quite frankly, boring.

The hymn’s growth and adaptation provides a decent story, but not a 300-page one; 100 would have been more than sufficient. (22 b/w halftones)

Sitwell, William Little, Brown (360 pp.) $35.00 | $16.99 e-book | Jun. 18, 2013 978-0-316-22997-5 978-0-316-25570-7 e-book British food writer/editor Sitwell explores shifting tastes and styles in cooking through individual dishes.

The author begins in the second millennia B.C. with a bread recipe, including an ancient Egyptian wall painting to illustrate the methods involved. The early recipes are quite vague; Sitwell notes that well into the 19th century, with fine cuisine limited to aristocratic mansions, published cookbooks were generally expositions of food philosophy by male chefs who “wouldn’t want [their] rivals to get hold of [their] kitchen secrets.”

Cooking times began to appear during the Renaissance, and it was the influential Victorian manual for anxious wives Beeton’s Book of Household Management that popularized the practice of listing the ingredients separately from instructions. Mrs. Beeton’s roly-poly jam pudding (1861) joins a cavalcade of quintessentially British items, including “peas soope” (1669), but Sitwell gives ample space to such revered Frenchmen as Brillat-Savarin (stuffed roast pheasant, 1825) and Escoffier (peach Melba, 1903). No-nonsense Americans like Fannie Farmer (strawberry shortcake, 1896) and The Joy of Cooking’s Irma Rombauer (quick oatmeal cookies, 1931) also get their due, though Sitwell is dubious about modern shortcuts like microwaves and bagged salads. Virtually all the big names of the late-20th-century food revolution are here, from Alice Waters (plum tart, 1971) to Ferran Adrià (an extremely elaborate brioche with rose-scented mozzarella, 2008), as well as such mass-market stalwarts of the Food Network as Emeril Lagasse (pecan waffles, 1998) and Nigella Lawson (fairy cakes, 2000). Sitwell deftly inserts interesting tidbits ranging from the changes wrought by such appliances as refrigerators and gas stoves to the impact of online technology. Indeed, the recipes are basically an excuse for the history, which is fine when the history is this engaging.

Good fun, though best taken in small bites; the chatty tone can be cloying in large amounts. (100 four-color and b/w photos and illustrations)

MAYBE WE’LL HAVE YOU BACK The Life Of A Perennial TV Guest Star Stoller, Fred Skyhorse Publishing (224 pp.) $24.95 | May 1, 2013 978-1-62087-706-7

A view from the trenches of show business by a comic actor straddling the line between success and obscurity.

In the foreword, Ray Romano praises Stoller, who had an occasional guest role on Everybody Loves Raymond, as someone who “without fail…always ‘brought’ the funny” and proceeds to describe this memoir as a “hilarious, honest look at the world of the working actor.” The hilarity may be more of an inside joke; the author seems more concerned with illuminating the struggles of actors, and with settling a few grudges along the way (bad dates, unappreciative colleagues), than with delivering laughs. As he explains early on, “In the Screen Actors Guild, 90 percent of the active members are out of work at any given time and 10 percent work for less than eight weeks a year…I’m thrilled to be working in a union where only 2 percent of the members work.” So even though he has “done more than sixty sitcom guest appearances,” on hits such as Seinfeld (where he was also a writer for a season, an experience he chronicled in My Seinfeld Year, 2012) and Friends, he describes a life of uncertainty and insecurity, working with agents and coaches that he isn’t

THE BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC A Biography of the Song that Marches On Stauffer, John; Soskis, Benjamin Oxford Univ. (416 pp.) $29.95 | Jun. 3, 2013 978-0-19-983743-4

The history of the hymn that began as a revival hymn in 1807, morphed into a soldiers’ marching song and served to replace sorrow with resolve as it did after 9/11. |

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“Reading this enlightening book won’t only open a window into Theroux’s mind, it will also impart a deeper understanding of Africa and travel in general.” from the last train to zona verde

ALL THE GREAT PRIZES The Life of John Hay, From Lincoln to Roosevelt

sure are doing him any good and waiting for offers that might take months, even years to materialize. He reveals which casts were friendly and which paid little attention to a week’s guest, he shares the joy of being well-fed on some (and not so well on others), and he frets over sharing a bathroom. Said one casting director after a typical audition, “That’s an interesting way to go.

It’s supposed to be a typical, annoying comedian, but you read it as if you were a special-ed kid, who’s pathetic and takes night courses on how to be a comedian.” He explains to readers, “I was basically just being me.”

A lightweight, sometimes-funny showbiz memoir from a successful background player.

Taliaferro, John Simon & Schuster (672 pp.) $35.00 | May 14, 2013 978-1-4165-9730-8

An overstuffed biography of an overlooked American statesman and reluctant politician.

If you’re a political scientist, American historian or fan of 19th-century Republicanism, you have likely heard of John Hay (1838–1905). If you’re a tourist in Washington, you likely have passed by the Hay-Adams Hotel, across the street from St. John’s Church, where presidents go to pray. Former Newsweek editor Taliaferro (In a Far Country: The True Story of a Mission, a Marriage, and the Remarkable Reindeer Rescue of 1898, 2006, etc.) finds in Hay a subject worthy of wider circulation. Hay, from the minor aristocracy of small-town Illinois, began his professional career as a secretary to Abraham Lincoln, close enough to the action that he traveled with the president to Gettysburg and there recorded that Lincoln “said his half dozen lines of consecration and the music wailed and we went home.” By association with his friend Robert Lincoln, the president’s son, Hay came to be one of the fallen leader’s first biographers—but also a servant of Republican presidents thereafter, one who long “had sworn that he never would run for office, but even in his adamance, he gave hints that he was wavering.” Hay’s apogee came with service as secretary of state to Theodore Roosevelt, who signed up Hay for a second term without even consulting him—but he served till the end of his life, saying, “it would be a scandal to contradict him.” Taliaferro inclines toward too much completeness. The story of how the Panama Canal came to be is an intriguing one and worthy of a book itself, though here, its political complexities tend to burden an otherwise quickly flowing narrative, which moves even faster when friends of Hay, such as Mark Twain and Henry Adams, are part of it.

Overlong, but still the best life of Hay that we have and a persuasive argument for taking another look at the life of a career public servant.

KINGS OF THE ROAD How Frank Shorter, Bill Rodgers, and Alberto Salazar Made Running Go Boom

Stracher, Cameron Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (240 pp.) $25.00 | Apr. 9, 2013 978-0-547-77396-4

A focused survey of three unmatched American long-distance runners.

Frank Shorter, Bill Rodgers and Alberto Salazar were trailblazers in popularizing the sport of distance racing in the late 1970s, and journalist and former competitive mile–runner Stracher (Dinner with Dad: How I Found My Way Back to the Family Table, 2007, etc.) expressively reveals the personal lives and professional development of the New England triplet from that pivotal decade. He describes Shorter as a Yale-educated medical-school dropout and self-taught racer who had to outrun thugs in his youth; the former chain-smoking Rodgers and determined Cuban prodigy Salazar, who trained together, also ran to escape their demons. Though the Munich massacre and memories of an abusive childhood marred Shorter’s confidence in running the Summer Olympics marathon in 1972, he still won a gold medal, solidifying his status as the top racer in the world and successfully launching the American running craze. Rodgers overcame the “hyperfocus” of ADHD to claim his fame, while Salazar, the youngest of the three, battled and defeated chronic illnesses to emerge victorious. In addition to historical factoids on the sport of running, anecdotes about the interpersonal rivalries shared by all three and the then-strict rules governing a runner’s compensation, Stracher weaves into the narrative Tommy Leonard and Fred Lebow, two Boston-area athletes instrumental in the formation of the Falmouth Road Race and the New York City Marathon, respectively. With the same passion used to describe its ascent, the author mourns the evaporating allure of the sport and notes the fates of his famed trio, who must now attend to the physical “damage done by racing,” including hip, knee and heart problems.

Essential reading for runners both competitive and casual. (8-page b/w insert)

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THE LAST TRAIN TO ZONA VERDE My Ultimate African Safari

Theroux, Paul Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (368 pp.) $27.00 | May 7, 2013 978-0-618-83933-9 The acclaimed travel writer and novelist chronicles his journey through Africa as tourist, adventure-seeker, thinker and

hopeful critic.

Theroux (The Lower River, 2012, etc.) is the purest kind of travel writer; he offers no tips, no hotels gems or restaurant |

recommendations, and very few grand, clichéd this-is-what-my-journey-taught-me-about-myself moments. Instead, the author dissects a place and its inhabitants, luxuriating in its history and confronting its present reality. In what he terms his “ultimate African safari,” Theroux manages to incorporate—rather than avoid—the general viewpoints of literature about the continent. He revels in the simple, historical life of the bush but acknowledges its basis in fantasy. He decries the chronic ailments of governments and citizens and still appreciates the vast expanses of beauty, but without the wide-eyed wonder of so many travelers. In this intensely personal book, Theroux honestly confronts racism, stigma, privilege and expectations.

He describes both the privilege and the perversity of slum tours and points out Western complicity in what he calls the voyeurism of poverty, which turns poverty itself into a profitable endeavor. After years of travel writing Theroux willingly questions the very relevance of the endeavor. If the narrative occasionally feels repetitive, it is due to the fact that the author is stressing an important point—though his constant ranting about rap music does start to sound like an old man griping. Still, even his age is significant, and Theroux continually demonstrates the wonder and enthusiasm that has led him on so many adventures during his long career. “Show me something new, something different, something changed, something wonderful, something weird!” he writes. “There has to be revelation in spending long periods of time in travel, otherwise it is more waste.”

Reading this enlightening book won’t only open a window into Theroux’s mind, it will also impart a deeper understanding of Africa and travel in general.

makes shrewd cultural cross-connections: “Digital porn is the equivalent of cheap gin in Georgian England: it provides a reliable, dirty hit that relieves misery and boredom.” When he examines such disparate phenomena as the migration patterns of new synthetic drugs, the abuse of attention deficit drugs by students, the revenue-generating tricks present in electronic pastimes like “Farmville” or “World of Warcraft,” and the popularity of hard-core porn on the iPads of adolescents, he sees technology as a common culprit, creating “the quickening of desire....Most of us [now] face an intensity of temptation that we can only intermittently resist.” The author blends science, personal experience,and witty and bemused commentary into a convincing take on compulsive behaviors that many readers will recognize: “it’s as if someone or something has sneakily moved the boundaries of your self-control.”

A clever look at an insidious consumer landscape, long on sharp observations and worried predictions but short on proposed solutions.

A CURIOUS MAN The Strange and Brilliant Life of Robert “Believe It Or Not!” Ripley Thompson, Neal Crown Archetype (432 pp.) $26.00 | May 7, 2013 978-0-7704-3620-9 978-0-7704-3621-6 e-book

THE FIX How Addiction Is Taking Over Your World

Biography of legendary “Believe It Or Not” cartoonist, world traveler and eccentric millionaire Robert Ripley (1890–1949).

Although capturing every dimension of an oddly complex character like Ripley is no easy task, biographer Thompson (Hurricane Season, 2007, etc.) turns in an obsessively researched but somewhat workmanlike study of the Believe It Or Not founder, whose amazing American life itself plays out like an impossible fairy tale without the need for any particular showy literary finesse. Ripley was born in the 1890s into a lower-middle-class family in California and grew into both a formidable athlete and cartoonist, two interests he would later combine and pursue as a sports cartoonist. But after a few failed stints as a cartoonist for small-time San Francisco newspapers, he moved to New York to try his luck. But it wasn’t until he took his first overseas journey to Egypt and across Europe that he began to cultivate an interest in human oddities and exotic cultures that would eventually make his fortune. He jumped from cartoons to radio and then took the Believe It or Not franchise to books and TV. By the 1930s, while most of America was reeling from the Depression, Ripley was one of the highest-paid and most well-traveled men in the world (he visited around 150 countries in all). Unfortunately, once World War II commenced, he found the world was no longer his playground, with hostilities breaking out in all his favorite countries: China’s submission to communism in the late 1940s was particularly heartbreaking for Ripley. Overall, Thompson’s book only skims the surface

Thompson, Damian Collins (288 pp.) $15.99 paper | Apr. 23, 2013 978-0-00-743610-1

Smartly written consideration of how “cupcakes, iPhones, and Vicodin,” among other marvels of our time, are stealthily, intentionally creating a world

of addictive behavior.

Saturday Telegraph lead columnist Thompson (Counterknowledge, 2008) hammers home a twofold thesis: that the “twelve step” model of addiction as disease, endorsed by therapists and others, is inaccurate in addressing the wide spectrum of compulsive desire as seen by brain science and, more disturbingly, that numerous forces are harnessing this misconception for profit by using innovation and marketing to make elements of modern life more subject to dependency, from pornography to smartphone apps. Although he acknowledges his own youthful struggle with alcohol abuse, he wisely balances the memoir aspects with a wider look at research and the views of others; this, and his generally wry voice, gives his discussion of troubling issues a deft rather than a lugubrious tone. Thompson excels at teasing out the addictive patterns forced upon us in ordinary life, beginning with casinos and strip clubs, and he

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THE END IS NEAR AND IT’S GOING TO BE AWESOME How Going Broke Will Leave America Richer, Happier, and More Secure

of Ripley’s psyche without delving too deeply into what drove his odd wanderlust and exotic tastes. The author’s competent bricks-and-mortar prose is nothing special, but it does adequately convey a detailed fly-on-the-wall–style narrative from the (often unbelievable) facts of Ripley’s own life.

A nuts-and-bolts, mostly nonextraordinary rendering of an extraordinary American life.

Williamson, Kevin D. Broadside Books/HarperCollins (240 pp.) $27.99 | May 7, 2013 978-0-06-222068-4

THROUGH THE PERILOUS FIGHT Six Weeks that Saved the Nation

At last, a conservative treatise that isn’t too bilious to taste—and that is often entertaining even as it is provocative.

National Review columnist Williamson, like so many on the political hard right, wants to shrink government to a size, as Grover Norquist infamously said, that it can be drowned in the bathtub. This is not because government has no purpose, but since it has become an essentially criminal enterprise: “It is a monopoly on violence,” he writes at one point about the propensity of “men with guns” to arrive on the scene once an official has decided that an enterprise—a protest against corruption, say, or girls selling lemonade to raise money for cancer research—is against its interests. Government, the author writes, is self-perpetuating and self-serving, and its minions, in whom we have entrusted power, “are plainly incompetent… and…cannot be trusted.” He adds, using the old libertarian argument, that the mechanism by which power is enshrined in a supposedly democratic society is suspect, even oxymoronic, inasmuch as the social contract is the only one that does not require or even request endorsement from members of society.

Williamson is eminently reasonable throughout, even when he’s burning down city hall. His calls for privatization of some aspects of the law and of the entitlement system sound much less shrill than those of Rush Limbaugh and his ilk, and he even allows that the rich should properly pay more tax than the poor—though perhaps to the poor directly, in the form of an invested trust, rather than to the state, since “money given to politics gets used for politics, for all of Washington’s hollow talk about ‘investment.’ ” It’s a pleasure to find so even and logical a voice in these pages, which deserve broad airing.

Vogel, Steve Random House (560 pp.) $30.00 | May 7, 2013 978-1-4000-6913-2

Veteran Washington Post military reporter Vogel (The Pentagon, 2007), returns with a brisk chronicle of the critical closing months of the War of 1812—specifically, the British attacks on Washington and Baltimore.

The experienced author knows how to write about the military and its human and martial conflicts, so the battle and strategy scenes have a clarity that surpasses what even the several maps provide. He begins in the summer of 1814 with the British planning their attack. They were eager for payback after the American invasion of Canada two years earlier. Vogel focuses on Rear Adm. George Cockburn—a figure he revisits throughout—who was especially intent on capturing and torching Washington. Vogel follows a number of other principals, too, among them Francis Scott Key, James Madison and James Monroe, Dolley Madison, Mary Pickersgill (who made the Star Spangled Banner flag) and numerous others. Vogel hopscotches around the terrain, showing us snapshots of the Royal Navy, the American defenses, British commanders, civilians, politicians and so on, creating in the process a colorful (and rarely sanguinary) mosaic of the events. He shows us the burning of the capital, but we also see the ambivalence some of the British expressed as they destroyed what they recognized as beautiful works of public architecture. Vogel examines the scramble to ready Baltimore for the next assault; we go inside Fort William McHenry (over which the Star Spangled Banner would fly the morning following the fierce British assault). Periodically, the author takes us to Ghent, where negotiators (among them, John Quincy Adams) were working to end the war.

A swift, vibrant account of the accidents, intricacies and insanities of war. (illustrations throughout; 6 maps)

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children’s & teen GIVING TO THE POOR

These titles earned the Kirkus Star:

Abrahams, Peter Philomel (304 pp.) $16.99 | May 16, 2013 978-0-399-25503-8 Series: Outlaws of Sherwood Street, 2

CRANKEE DOODLE by Tom Angleberger; illus. by Cece Bell.............79 ON A BEAM OF LIGHT by Jennifer Berne; illus. by Vladimir Radunsky................................................................ 80 ODD DUCK by Cecil Castellucci.......................................................... 82 FIFTEENTH SUMMER by Michelle Dalton.........................................83 IF YOU WANT TO SEE A WHALE by Julie Fogliano; illus. by Erin E. Stead...........................................................................87 BECOMING BEN FRANKLIN by Russell Freedman...........................87 THE CYDONIAN PYRAMID by Pete Hautman.................................. 92 A HIDDEN ENEMY by Erin Hunter................................................... 94 WATER IN THE PARK by Emily Jenkins; illus. by Stephanie Graegin.................................................................. 94 BORIS ON THE MOVE by Andrew Joyner..........................................95 BOWLING ALLEY BANDIT by Laurie Keller.................................... 98 YELLOWCAKE by Margo Lanagan...................................................100 CATCH RIDER by Jennifer H. Lyne...................................................101 WHAT A PARTY! by Ana Maria Machado; illus. by Hélène Moreau; 101trans. by Elisa Amado....................................................................101 SEPTEMBER GIRLS by Bennett Madison..........................................102

Robbie Forester, aided by her magic charm and multicultural band of dogooders, Tut-Tut, Ashanti and Silas, again battles evil developer Sheldon Gunn and his nefarious underlings (Robbie Forester and the Outlaws of Sherwood Street, 2012).

Silas, a home-schooled genius who is a master of arcane subjects but scores low on emotional intelligence and physical ability, discovers that his estranged father, Jim Wilders, an expert in Native American culture, is protesting Gunn’s proposed new building, a huge tower. Not only will it block out acres of sun, the site could also have been ancestral grounds for an Indian tribe. After Robbie and company find Indian bones on the site, Wilders is murdered. The thriller then moves into warp speed, maintaining its high-adrenaline tension until the happy resolution. Haitian immigrant Tut-Tut, the most soulful character in the first book, plays almost no role in this story, as he’s sidelined early after being picked up by the INS. This gives author Abrahams room to develop Ashanti and Silas, who are more fully formed in this go-round. When an important element of a story is a magic charm that responds to injustice, credibility shouldn’t be an issue, but coincidence abounds, and readers may find the bad guys too demonic to be real.

Still, a fast-paced ride that should appeal to both boys and girls. (Thriller. 10-14)

COWPOKE CLYDE AND DIRTY DAWG by Lori Mortensen; illus. by Michael Allen Austin............................................................105

CRANKEE DOODLE

Angleberger, Tom Illus. by Bell, Cece Clarion (32 pp.) $16.99 | Jun. 4, 2013 978-0-547-81854-2

A BOX OF GARGOYLES by Anne Nesbet..........................................105 WINGER by Andrew Smith............................................................... 115 PANCHO RABBIT AND THE COYOTE by Duncan Tonatiuh........... 118 THE ENDURING ARK by Gita Wolf; illus. by Joydeb Chitrakar..... 121 THE 5TH WAVE by Rick Yancey........................................................ 121 A FUNNY LITTLE BIRD by Jennifer Yerkes....................................... 121 THE LUCY VARIATIONS by Sara Zarr.............................................122 MY GRANDPA by Marta Altés.......................................................... 123 |

Sure he went to town...but did he want to go to town?

Crankee Doodle is bored. His pony suggests going to town, but Crankee says he hates going to town. “There are too many people in town. They all run around in a hurry and ring bells and eat pies, and then they yell at each other to stop running around, ringing bells, and eating pies.” Pony suggests shopping. Crankee hates shopping; he has

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enough stuff. Pony suggests a feather for Crankee’s hat. That doesn’t go over well either. Pony says Crankee could call it macaroni (that means fancy). Crankee thinks lasagna is much more fancy, but he doesn’t want to call his hat macaroni or lasagna or go to town or shop. Pony offers Crankee a ride, but Crankee thinks Pony smells. Poor Pony! Will Crankee apologize? Will they get to town? Will readers ever view “Yankee Doodle” the same way again? Best-seller Angleberger of Origami Yoda fame takes on picture books, treating a younger audience to his dry and zany wit. Readers and storytime audiences will guffaw at his twist on the traditional song. Bell’s gauche, heavy-outlined illustrations are comic-book panels, some spreading over two pages as Crankee Doodle and Pony converse in speech bubbles (and Crankee’s jeremiads fill the page).

A historical hoot full of goofy, eye-rolling goodness.

(Picture book. 4-9)

THE LAST ACADEMY

Applegate, Anne Point/Scholastic (320 pp.) $17.99 | $17.99 e-book | May 1, 2013 978-0-545-50204-7 978-0-545-50377-8 e-book Creating a sense of doom is infinitely more difficult in a novel than in a movie; debut author Applegate makes a worthy attempt.

Camden arrives as a freshman at Lethe Academy, a boarding school in California. On the plane, she meets a creepy man who coincidentally is a trustee at her new school. Named Barnaby Charon, he creates a lot of misgivings within Camden. At least she makes new friends quickly, like Jessie and Nora, plus the glamorous Brynn. Best of all, there’s the charming and completely hot Mark Elliott. Camden might have seemingly random hallucinations, and she doesn’t get along with her roommate, but otherwise things are good at Lethe. When Jessie disappears and no one seems to care—and Barnaby Charon is involved—Camden knows she has to take action. But Camden’s visions are becoming more disturbing, especially what she sees when she visits Mark’s family. For all the questions Camden has, only one person has the answers: Barnaby Charon. At first, unexplained plot events, such as Camden’s going to boarding school in the first place and unusual images, may confuse readers. Yet as the tension mounts, the unanswered questions spur them on.

Anyone who knows Greek mythology will probably figure out the twist quickly, but this novel is still an enjoyable read. (Suspense. 14 & up)

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DEFRIENDED

Baron, Ruth Point Horror (256 pp.) $9.99 paper | May 1, 2013 978-0-545-42357-1 A ghost-story wannabe for the digital age.

Jason Moreland likes alternative bands and ’80s movies, so perhaps it’s not surprising that the girls at his high school just aren’t into him. But when he gets a message back from Lacey Gray, a random Facebook friend, he discovers the girl of his dreams online. When a casual Internet search turns up memorial pages and obituaries, Jason worries Lacey might be too cool for him—literally. Jason decides to investigate Lacey’s life and death, using the messages Lacey is apparently sending from beyond the grave. Baron’s near-manic mentions of social media and technology quickly become tiresome and only serve to jar the narrative flow away from the breakneck action pace. Jason has very little personality—a bland protagonist indistinguishable from the generic Everyteen semihero. Given the numerous incidents of social media hacking in the real world, it stretches credulity that Jason accepts a paranormal explanation instead of suspecting a hijack attempt.

The pages are populated by unsympathetic characters who feel as shallow as the promoted posts on a newsfeed.

Baron produces a novel that feels based on adult assumptions regarding teens’ use of Facebook; it will likely appeal only to the disconnected adult gift-giver with no sense of teen reading taste. (Horror. 12-16)

ON A BEAM OF LIGHT

Berne, Jennifer Illus. by Radunsky, Vladimir Chronicle (56 pp.) $17.99 | May 1, 2013 978-0-8118-7235-5

A boy who asked too many questions becomes iconic physicist Albert Einstein, whose questions changed the world.

The author of Manfish (illustrated by Eric Puybaret, 2008) presents another dreamer, a man who “asked questions never asked before. / Found answers never found before. / And dreamed up ideas never dreamt before.” Story and perfectly matched illustrations begin with the small boy who talked late, watched and thought, and imagined traveling through space on a light beam. Readers see the curious child growing into the man who constantly read and learned and wondered. With gouache, pen and ink, Radunsky’s humorous, childlike drawings convey Einstein’s personality as well as the important ideas in the text (which are set out in red letters). The narrative text includes several of Einstein’s big ideas about time and space; one illustration and the back endpapers include the famous formula. The mottled, textured paper of each page reinforces the concept

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“Lush, jewel-tone illustrations feature rich patterns and are as luminous as if they too are touched by moonlight.” from when mermaids sleep

that everything is made of atoms. A nice touch at the end shows children who might also wonder, think and imagine dressed in the professor’s plaid suit. An author’s note adds a little more about the person and the scientist.

For today’s curious children, this intriguing and accessible blend of words and pictures will provide a splendid introduction to a man who never stopped questioning. (Picture book/biography. 6-9)

NIGHT LIGHT

Blechman, Nicholas Illus. by Blechman, Nicholas Orchard (48 pp.) $16.99 | May 1, 2013 978-0-545-46263-1 This urban-themed picture book makes ingenious use of simple die-cut circles of different sizes on each page to reveal the lights of various vehicles on the following page.

A train, helicopter, taxicab, tugboat, street sweeper, fire truck and other vehicles guaranteed to pique the interest of every little boy (and some girls) are rendered in a bold, stylized design using flat, vibrant colors. The book’s design has a fun, retro feel, although beginning readers may find the dot-matrix type challenging. The format encourages creative guesswork— which vehicle has two white, one red and one green light? Turn the page and see…a tugboat, of course! The title makes a clever connection between the various lights of the city at night, which are illustrated on every page, and the reassuring night light in the little boy’s bedroom on the last page, where he sits in his truck-shaped bed, surrounded by toy versions of the vehicles in the book, reading…this book. This is a first foray into children’s-book design by renowned New York Times designer and illustrator Blechman, sweetly dedicated to his young son.

A stylish and original take on the time-honored die-cut counting book. (Picture book. 2-5)

WHEN MERMAIDS SLEEP

Bonwill, Ann Illus. by Johnson, Steve; Fancher, Lou Random House (32 pp.) $16.99 | $19.99 PLB | May 28, 2013 978-0-375-87061-3 978-0-375-97061-0 PLB Rhythmic lines will lull youngsters who are fully immersed in fairy-tale lore into a dreamy state.

The verse provides the progression, occasionally a stretch, from spread to spread. The waves that rock the mermaids also carry ships on which pirates sleep on trunks. These trunks contain treasures dug from sand. The castle is made of sand, and this is where wizards watch the night sky, and so on until readers encounter the sleeping child, whose ordinary room is seemingly |

touched by magic as a curl of stardust drifts in through the open window. Images of typically frightening creatures such as giants and goblins slumbering may remind children to put their problems to bed, that nothing can harm them, although younger, less sophisticated tots may find them a tad disturbing. These spreads are interspersed with scenes of the more expected and enchanting denizens of fairyland: The mermaids gently rock on seaweed beds, unicorns rest on pillows of leaves, and fairies are comfortably cupped in flowers underneath the moon—the same moon that shines into the child’s room. Lush, jewel-tone illustrations feature rich patterns and are as luminous as if they too are touched by moonlight.

Youngsters are sure to carry these images into their dreams. (Picture book. 3-6)

VIOLET MACKEREL’S NATURAL HABITAT

Branford, Anna Illus. by Allen, Elanna Atheneum (112 pp.) $15.99 | $5.99 paper | May 1, 2013 978-1-4424-3594-0 978-1-4424-3595-7 paper Series: Violet Mackerel, 3

Seven-year-old Violet’s Theory of Helping Small Things doesn’t work out well for a ladybug, but it does inspire her big sister Nicola’s successful natural science project.

In this third in a series of Australian imports starring this appealing, inventive child, Violet turns her attention to small creatures: a sparrow in the shopping center and an undersized ladybug from the colony living under the fennel in the garden. Though Small Gloria doesn’t survive in the habitat Violet builds, the beetle is appropriately honored in her sister’s model of ladybug habitats, as well as being buried and remembered in a simple ceremony. A new verse for “These are a Few of My Favorite Things” helps to provide closure. The death of animals, whether through accidents or of natural causes, often weighs heavily on children, and this deceptively simple early chapter book takes such concerns seriously without getting stuck there.

Each short chapter is a complete event, but readers will be led on by their need to know what happens next. The finished book will include black-and-white illustrations (not seen) and the distinctively designed chapter numbers (they look like they’ve been knit out of yarn) of previous titles. Readers who met Violet earlier will feel right at home.

Still, this sweet family story stands alone and should attract new fans. (Fiction. 5-9)

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“A moral that could have been nauseatingly saccharine in the hands of a lesser author is handled deftly here.

Castellucci and Varon shine together…” from odd duck

BAD ASTRID

Brennan, Eileen Illus. by Dunnick, Regan Random House (40 pp.) $15.99 | May 28, 2013 978-0-375-85580-1 This book defines wishful thinking.

First off, it has a happy ending: The narrator gets tired of being bullied and demands, “Why?...Why are you mean to me?” Astrid begins to stutter. After weeks of tipping over lemonade stands and washing away chalk drawings, she has a sudden change of heart.

“I...I’m sorry...” she says. “I just wanted attention, I guess.” Then she cleans up the Popsicle-stick tower she’s just knocked over.

The world really ought to work like that. The narrator just needs to perform a small act of kindness—picking Astrid up off the ground after a bike crash—and she becomes quite nice.

There are hugs and thank-you’s. Say what? There may be bullies in the world who just need hugs and attention, but it’s rare for them to admit it so quickly. Even younger readers may be puzzled by the abrupt change in behavior. The rhymes are also disappointing. The low point may be: “But still her bike rolled, / and my heart sank a trifle / as there came crashing down / my Popsicle stick Eiffel!” The simple, childlike illustrations, however, are charming.

Readers may appreciate the book’s humor and psychological insight, but they shouldn’t mistake it for an instruction manual. (Picture book. 3-6)

THE LIGHTNING CATCHER

Cameron, Anne Greenwillow/HarperCollins (416 pp.) $16.99 | $10.99 e-book | May 7, 2013 978-0-06-211276-7 978-0-06-211278-1 e-book A trainee at the Perilous Exploratorium for Violent Weather and Vicious Storms on the Isle of Imbur tries to find his missing parents and prevent the unleashing of an eternal storm.

Eleven-year-old Angus McFangus is unexpectedly wrenched from the Devon home he shares with his inventor uncle Max to Perilous, where lightning catchers train to protect the world from extreme weather. Angus learns his own parents are respected lightning catchers who have mysteriously disappeared on an assignment involving the villainous Scabious Dankhart. He also discovers he’s a storm prophet—he has the rare ability to predict the weather. Adjusting to the perils of Perilous, Angus barely survives the weather tunnel and fog field trips while bonding with fellow trainees Dougal Dewsnap and Indigo Midnight. Worried about his parents, Angus concludes Dankhart has them and is using bizarre meteorological disasters to distract Perilous from his dastardly plot to “wreak havoc and cause delicious mayhem.” Despite the dangers, Angus, 82

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Dougal and Indigo bravely set out to thwart him. With its trio of likable school-chum heroes, its eccentric characters and their ingenious names, its imaginative boarding school setting and its supernatural adventure, this first of a projected four-book series has inevitable Harry Potter echoes.

Inventive weather-themed fantasy makes for decent, if derivative, fun. (maps) (Fantasy. 8-12)

ODD DUCK

Castellucci, Cecil Illus. by Varon, Sara First Second/Roaring Brook (96 pp.) $15.99 | May 14, 2013 978-1-59643-557-5 A sublime tale of two strange ducks who overcome the odds—pun completely intended—and become friends.

Theodora is an odd duck indeed: She spends her days swimming with a teacup balanced on her head, flavoring her duck pellets with mango salsa and watching the stars. She is content, her days are full—but they’re not quite fulfilling. One fateful day, a new duck named Chad moves next door. He’s strange, unstructured, disorderly and loud—the opposite of quietly meticulous Theodora. Despite his eccentricities—and her initial judgment of him—the pair bond over a shared love of the stars. During an outing, another duck loudly points out that “odd duck” as the pair waddle past. Each thinks that the other must be the odd one, resulting in an argument. As Theodora ponders their fight, she realizes that though she’s happy with her life, it doesn’t mean much without someone to share it with.

A moral that could have been nauseatingly saccharine in the hands of a lesser author is handled deftly here. Castellucci and Varon shine together, with Varon’s trademark animal characters and Castellucci’s careful prose. Readers expecting a typical graphic novel may be a bit put off; reading like a long picture book, this is reliant on illustrations that stretch across an entire page as opposed to many boxy, structured panels, resulting in a wonderfully odd and endearing little offering.

This clever celebration of individuality delights.

(Graphic fiction. 6-10)

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SPIRIT AND DUST

Clement-Moore, Rosemary Delacorte (400 pp.) $17.99 | $10.99 e-book | $20.99 PLB May 14, 2013 978-0-385-74080-7 978-0-375-98271-2 e-book 978-0-375-98970-4 PLB A ghost-whispering 17-year-old is roped into a cinematic showdown between the FBI and the mob.

Clement-Moore introduces another magical teen detective |

from the Goodnight family, following on Amy’s adventures from Texas Gothic (2011). College freshman Daisy is accustomed to helping out the FBI on cases. Adorable Agent Taylor doesn’t consult with the teen psychic because she’s cute—much as Daisy might wish otherwise—but because her ability to read spirit remnants has helped them catch murderers before.

While Daisy interrogates the dead bodyguard of a kidnapped girl, she’s snatched herself, spirited away by the girl’s crime-boss father. Soon, Daisy is on a madcap road trip across the Great Lakes states in the company of a disturbingly attractive young mobster, learning about Egyptology while avoiding erstwhile apocalyptic cultists. A CGI-ready climax pulls together all the metaphysical building blocks laid down in this mystery’s tight worldbuilding (not to mention mummies, ghosts, animated tattoos and a bonus dinosaur). This likable, uber-competent heroine’s adventure combines elements of paranormal romance and fast-paced thriller, while Daisy herself resembles a Southern teen version of supernatural PI Harry Dresden from Jim Butcher’s best-selling adult series.

Another smart Goodnight caper. (Paranormal mystery. 13 & up)

THE RELUCTANT ASSASSIN

Colfer, Eoin Hyperion (352 pp.) $17.99 | May 7, 2013 978-1-4231-6162-2 Series: W.A.R.P., 1

Colfer opens a new series that promises to be every bit as brisk and violent as Artemis Fowl—this one featuring travelers using steampunk-style time machines for (usually) evil purposes.

Chevron Savano is a teenager of Shawnee descent trained as an FBI agent in an ill-fated anti-terrorist program (and named, as it turns out, for a gas station). He hooks up with Riley, a 19th— century lad trained in the killing arts by Victorian-era master assassin/stage magician Albert Garrick. Their purpose? Simply to stay alive, as a secret device that opens wormholes between past and present but sometimes causes weird mutations in those who use it has turned Garrick into a shape-changing supergenius. He now has modern memories and a new, horrifying agenda that requires the Timekey Chevie carries around her neck. The plot moves back and forth between modern times and 1898 London (or an alternate, as in his lurid descriptions of the city’s festering stews the author makes several seemingly offhand references to “slum cannibals”). The chase hurtles along through washes of gore and less wholesome substances to a massively explosive resolution. Riley and the “Injun princess,” as she is repeatedly dubbed, make reasonably resourceful protagonists, but the scary, casually murderous Garrick really steals the show.

A ghoulish thriller: melodramatic and tongue-in-cheek, sometimes both at once. (Science fiction. 11-14)

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15 DAYS WITHOUT A HEAD

Cousins, Dave Flux (312 pp.) $9.99 paper | May 8, 2013 978-0-7387-3642-6

A teenager holds his crumbling family life together in this finely crafted debut that strikes a delicate balance between humor and pathos.

Most evenings, 15-year-old Laurence and his brother Jay tread lightly around the “force-field of cigarette smoke and booze, with our mum inside” that dominates their roach-infested flat. When his depressed, overworked mother disappears, Laurence protects 6-year-old Jay from his suspicion that she’s not coming back. He knows better than to seek adult help, and for two weeks, living on toast, they manage to avoid their nosy next-door neighbor, Nelly. Laurence hopes that winning a radio trivia contest will solve their problems. With Jay at his side pretending to be Scooby-Doo, he pieces together clues to their mother’s whereabouts. A growing sense of urgency permeates the book, effectively shown in a chapter-heading countdown from “Whensday” and “Blursday” to “Tattersday” and “Doomsday.” This is countered by Laurence’s delightful new friend, Mina, who sees through Laurence’s often-hilarious actions. She gently cajoles him to tell her what’s happening when he’s ready, and with her steady presence, she helps him to see reasons not to give up on his mother. There are no quick fixes or easy answers in a novel in which it’s a given that life together is better than life apart, no matter how dysfunctional that life is.

Expect good things from this new voice in teen fiction.

(Fiction. 12 & up)

FIFTEENTH SUMMER

Dalton, Michelle Simon Pulse/Simon & Schuster (272 pp.) $17.99 | $9.99 paper | May 7, 2013 978-1-4424-7267-9 978-1-4424-7266-2 paper This sweet, realistic tale of a girl’s first love proves that young romance fans don’t need vampires, werewolves or other assorted immortals to enjoy a book about love in their age group.

Chelsea has mixed feelings about spending the family vacation in her family’s pretty little cottage near the shore of Lake Michigan. Granly—her grandmother—passed away the previous winter, and Chelsea misses her. She sets off to find a book in the nearby little town and meets Josh, who works at the bookstore. Dalton’s sensitive writing makes it clear that both teens experience immediate attraction to one another, but their natural insecurity in their first romance makes each doubt that the other feels the same. Chelsea looks to her older, more

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experienced sisters for advice, while Josh simply yields to temptation and plants a sudden kiss on Chelsea. With their intentions declared, Chelsea takes a job as a waitress next door to Josh’s bookstore, where the drama continues. The completely believable and likable characters, the small town and its oftenquirky inhabitants, the waitressing job and, especially, the upand-down relationship between Chelsea and Josh come across with such realism that readers will recognize these characters as actual people like themselves. Drawn with keen emotional insight, this lovely little novel comes as a warm breeze in the current storm of paranormal romantic fiction.

It’s just good writing, and good writing always works.

(Romance. 12 & up)

THE LOVE PLAN

Darling, Angela Simon Spotlight (176 pp.) $15.99 | $5.99 paper | May 7, 2013 978-1-4424-8038-4 978-1-4424-8036-0 paper Series: Crush, 1 Things don’t work out as intended when an overorganized, fiercely determined girl tries to get a handsome boy to like her by following a rigidly detailed

“Love Plan.”

“Just act like yourself,” Chrissy tells her friend Lauren. But Lauren, who is nothing if not prepared, has been observing Charlie for some time and is absolutely determined to be the kind of girl who will knock his socks off. That’s if she can ever get his attention, though naturally she has a plot for that as well.

Even before Lauren pulls out the flow chart, savvy readers will know that her scheme is doomed to failure. Many cringe-worthy moments follow as this initially rather emotionally tonedeaf rising seventh-grader learns to trust her instincts, be a more genuine person and also how to be a friend. This G-rated, nascent, not-quite-romance novel, which takes place during a three-week beach vacation, is squarely aimed at preteen girls and ends on a feel-good note that should please and satisfy them. Although the material never transcends its genre and the characters are somewhat generic, Lauren’s personal evolution is welcome and feels earned.

The story has a lesson worth learning: If a girl has to change “the way she looks and acts” to interest a guy, then maybe that guy isn’t worth interesting. (Fiction. 8-12)

THE GREAT DOG DISASTER

Davies, Katie Illus. by Shaw, Hannah Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster (208 pp.) $12.99 | May 7, 2013 978-1-4424-4517-8 Series: Great Critter Capers, 4

Intrepid 9-year-olds Anna and Suzanne tackle their latest pet challenge with customary ingenuity, elaborate plans and lists, and allies old (Mr. Tucker and Mrs. Rotherham) and young (Anna’s cookie-loving brother, Tom).

Having lobbied her parents for a new dog ever since they sent Barney to a farm where “he’s much better off,” Suzanne’s thrilled to inherit Aunt Deidra’s Beatrice, an ancient, smelly, incontinent Newfoundland who remains stubbornly inert until Anna crawls under Beatrice and heaves upward while Suzanne tugs her leash to get her moving. Anna’s reluctance to lie under Beatrice each day, inhaling her rich aroma, is forgiven when she makes a discovery: Beatrice is depressed! To boost her spirits, the girls bathe her in Suzanne’s baby brother’s bath (his diapers come in handy). Anna contributes her dad’s electric toothbrush and her mom’s perfume. Elderly neighbors pitch in (Mrs. Rotherham’s underpants play a role). Then a huge vet bill with the promise of more to come has Suzanne’s parents murmuring that Beatrice would be better off elsewhere. Not if the ever-resourceful duo can help it! Davies doesn’t sugarcoat harsh realities; family financial constraints, mendacious parents and intimations of mortality—animal and human—lurk amid the hilarity, lending understated pathos to the proceedings. Shaw’s quirky art continues to charm (Miss Matheson’s snappy dog is a treat).

Characteristically funny, this concludes a British series that has been a breath of fresh middle-grade air. (Fiction.

8-12)

THE PATCHWORK GARDEN / PEDACITOS DE HUERTO

de Anda, Diane Translated by Ventura, Gabriela Baeza Illus. by Kemarskaya, Oksana Piñata Books/Arté Público (32 pp.) $16.95 | May 31, 2013 978-1-55885-763-6

A grandmother’s vision and instruction inspires a little girl to change the desolate look of her inner-city neighborhood by encouraging the community to plant a series of vegetable gardens.

Toña’s abuela explains how the garden she cultivated as a small girl on her own little square patch of land yielded the sweet tomatoes she loved. Together, grandmother and granddaughter walk through the neighborhood, finding lots of small, weedfilled patches next to apartment buildings or behind churches 84

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“It’s billed as a trilogy finale for no evident reason except, perhaps, premise exhaustion, but that’s a pretty good one.” from the northern frights

and adjacent to businesses. Father Anselmo allows them to plant a small garden in place of “the dry ugly weeds” behind the church, imagining the delicious salads and steamed vegetables it will produce. This positive example is replicated throughout the barrio, developing into “The Patchwork Garden Club.” The community’s efforts pay off when, in a few weeks, the streets are decorated with greenery and flowering plants that will soon be harvested for delicious, nutritious eating. The English-overSpanish narrative is lengthy but accessible and pleasing. Its positive message of collaboration and cooperation is enhanced by gouache paintings that cheerily depict a recognizably Latino neighborhood.

A worthwhile, eco-friendly bilingual edition. (Picture book. 5-10)

THE NORTHERN FRIGHTS

Derek the Ghost Illus. by Fischer, Scott M. Harper/HarperCollins (272 pp.) $16.99 | $9.99 e-book | Jun. 25, 2013 978-0-06-196098-7 978-0-06-220851-4 e-book Series: Scary School, 3 Six more-or-less-human Scary School students try their luck at frozen, all-monster Scream Academy (“Be judicious or be delicious”) as part of an exchange program.

The experiment goes well enough at first—at least there aren’t any immediate casualties—as the six are conveyed north of the Arctic Circle by giant polter-bears and thrust into classrooms filled with malign trolls, ogres, witches and worse. In chapters with titles like “The Deadly Loogie” and “Severed Head of the Class,” nerdy Charles Nukid and his quailing classmates soldier on. They squeak past a continual barrage of deadly threats to a culminating one in the form of Mortazella, a huge Ice Dragon out to destroy all the monster schools. With help from a fiery sword, some much-more-fiery hot peppers and friends like Penny Possum, whose silence literally speaks volumes, Charles prevails and returns to Scary School in triumph.

As in previous episodes, the monster count is high, but the body count and the level of actual violence are low. Also as before, the author/narrator (“Derek the Ghost”) tucks an extra chapter of thrills into the series’ website. It’s billed as a trilogy finale for no evident reason except, perhaps, premise exhaustion, but that’s a pretty good one. Finished art not seen.

Another lightweight creature feature, with a teeming supporting cast of ookie-spookies. (Comic horror. 8-11)

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ZACK’S STORY

Dokey, Cameron Illus. by Orback, Craig Sky Pony Press (128 pp.) $12.95 | May 1, 2013 978-1-62087-528-5 Series: Boys Camp, 1 Eleven-year-old Zack Wilson has dreamed of summer camp his whole life, and here he is at Camp Wolf Trail having the time of his life in this debut volume in the Boys Camp series.

There’s a map challenge, swim tests, breakfast cleanup duty, an expedition looking for animal tracks and a mistake that could cost Zack the trust and friendship of his new Birch Cabin buddies—and that’s just the first day at summer camp.

The Outdoor Adventure Guide has always been Zack’s favorite book, in which a city boy like him could learn everything about the great outdoors—navigating by the stars, using a compass or starting fires. But it lets him down when he most needs it, and Zack must learn a lesson about taking a stand and owning his mistakes. Later, on a mountain hike, the lesson learned comes into play once again, and in a short time, Zack goes from chump to hero, and camp now feels like where he belongs, among his new friends. Combining simple, fast-paced prose, a third-person voice and italics to indicate Zack’s thoughts, Dokey crafts a high-spirited, good-natured story of a young boy finding his place in the camp world.

A lighthearted camp romp with just enough danger and misadventure to keep the pages turning. (Fiction. 7-10)

HOW MY SUMMER WENT UP IN FLAMES

Doktorski, Jennifer Salvato Simon Pulse/Simon & Schuster (320 pp.) $17.99 | $9.99 paper | May 7, 2013 978-1-4424-5940-3 978-1-4424-5939-7 paper When she can’t seem to stop trying to contact ex-boyfriend Joey even after a temporary restraining order, Rosie’s parents decide to send her on a road trip from New Jersey to Arizona with three guys.

Matty, the neighbor kid who is a year younger than Rosie and practically a member of the family, has been planning the trip with buddy Spencer, whose brother Logan wants to take his car to college. The hope is that Rosie will learn to control her impulsive nature along the way and show some maturity and thoughtfulness. The result is not particularly suspenseful or surprising. The country tunes that make up the book’s soundtrack also indicate the stops along the way: Luray Caverns, Dollywood, the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Grand Ole Opry and Graceland. The story revs up a bit at an all-ages nightclub near Dallas, and then they move on to the Grand Canyon. A love triangle among Rosie, Logan, the hot older brother, and

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“The fresh first-person narration serves the story well, providing grounding in reality as events spin out of control.” from the rules for disappearing

Matty, the boy next door, adds a level of trite, as does Avery, the incredibly rich, dedicated-to-humanity girl whom Logan wants to stop and see. Is that two love triangles? At any rate, Rosie gradually learns to think of someone besides herself and to see her ex more realistically.

Country hokum with a playlist to match. (Romance. 12-16)

THE CIRCLE

Elfgren, Sara B.; Strandberg, Mats Translated by Carlsson, Per Overlook (608 pp.) $18.99 | May 2, 2013 978-1-4683-0658-3 Series: Engelsfors Trilogy, 1 Coming into witchy powers and learning to use them responsibly is complicated by intense teen Sturm und Drang in this doorstopper import.

Heralded by bodiless demons, major evil is poised to break through to this world in the small Swedish town of Engelsfors. Seven high schoolers have been Chosen to fight this evil—which they discover after most are compelled by a never-explained force to meet in an abandoned amusement park—and later develop powers such as the ability to become invisible or to control minds. Their various paths to final, uneasy alliance are embedded in a thoroughly developed, exceptionally complex web of family issues, emotional and sexual entanglements, rivalries, hatreds, inner battles, risky personal choices and conflicting impulses that enrich the story but also make the suspenseful climactic battle with a dangerous adversary seem long in coming. Furthermore, along with killing off some of the Chosen (after they become point-of-view characters too, a knavish trick to pull on readers), the authors lazily trot in a succession of adult witches to explain matters to the survivors.

They also dispel rather than intensify the atmosphere of creeping horror by turning much of the potion- and magic-making into clumsy attempts at comic relief.

Muddled but ambitious, with much to please fans of character-driven fantasy; here’s hoping the next two volumes proceed more smoothly. (Fantasy/horror. 13-18)

THE RULES FOR DISAPPEARING

Elston, Ashley Disney Hyperion (320 pp.) $16.99 | May 14, 2013 978-1-4231-6897-3 Who’s never wondered what it would be like to enter witness protection and assume a new identity?

Meg Jones, her younger sister Mary and their parents have run through six witness protection placements. Each time, something goes 86

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awry, and they are swept right out of their old lives and right into new ones, with new names, new looks, new challenges— and the same old feeling that something just isn’t quite right.

The latest stop is Natchitoches, La., a warm, colorful place with quite a few perks, including a job at a local pizza joint and a handsome boy named Ethan. Smitten, Meg decides to do whatever it takes to stay put, and that means finding out what her father witnessed, or perhaps what crime he committed, to warrant the family’s entry into the strange world of witness protection. Once she’s on the trail of the truth, Meg feels compelled to make things right for her beleaguered family, even if it means placing herself and her devoted new beau in grave danger. The fresh first-person narration serves the story well, providing grounding in reality as events spin out of control.

Though the plot may seem a bit far-fetched at times, the realistic setting, believable romance and spunky protagonist will make this one worth the trip for mystery and romance fans. (Suspense. 12 & up)

TOWERING

Flinn, Alex HarperTeen (304 pp.) $17.99 | $10.99 e-book | May 14, 2013 978-0-06-202417-6 978-0-06-220921-4 e-book A contemporary retelling of “Rapunzel” overcomes a somewhat connect-thedots feel with its gentle, spirited heroine.

The tale is told in two voices: Rachel’s, the blonde girl in the tower, and Wyatt’s, a boy with a secret sorrow. Wyatt has been sent to upstate New York to stay with the mother of an old friend of his mom’s, Mrs. Greenwood, to heal from something readers don’t learn about until halfway through the story. Meanwhile Rachel, who loves the woman she calls “Mama” although she knows her real mother is dead, begins to chafe against her confinement and her loneliness, although Mama visits her each day with food, books and art supplies. Wyatt finds the diary of Mrs. Greenwood’s daughter Danielle, presumed long-dead, and begins to tie together strands that include missing teens, drug addiction, demon lovers and tears that heal. Flinn’s “towering” achievement here is Rachel. She makes readers believe in a character educated only on books brought to her and who has not been outside in years. Readers will understand how she reacts as she does to a cellphone, to walking in snow and to hair that grows so fast she can see it, and they will find her both intelligent and resourceful. Rachel and Wyatt’s romantic encounters are tender and utterly implicit.

Readers may pick it up for the reimagined fairy tale, but they’ll remember it for Rachel. (Fantasy. 12-18)

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CANTA, RANA, CANTA / SING, FROGGIE, SING

Flores, Carolyn Dee—Illus.

Translated by Rosales-Yeomans, Natalia Piñata Books/Arté Público (32 pp.) $16.95 | May 31, 2013 978-1-55885-764-3

Debut illustrator Flores offers a contemporary take on a traditional folk song in both Spanish and English.

The song opens with a frog who begins to croak but is silenced by a fly, which is in turn hushed by a spider, which is in turn hushed by a mouse….Each verse builds on the last, much like the classic rhyme “There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly.” Each double-page spread’s text repeats the previous stanzas and adds new lines, with progressively larger animals shushing smaller ones. Flores cleverly takes a line that could be read as misogynist (“When Mommy decided to sing out loud, / along came Daddy and hushed her mouth”) and turns it into a believable and understandable scenario (Daddy is requesting Mommy to “Shh” because he is talking on the phone). Narrative skill aside, the artist shows inexperience with repetitive background colors (blue water, blue sky, blue wall) and unevenness of execution: Some characters are rendered in photorealistic detail (all of the human characters), while others are not (the insects). Backmatter includes the full song in both Spanish and English, as well as the musical notation and a note on the song.

Lacking humor and absurdity, this story doesn’t hold a candle to classics in the same vein, like The Napping House, but could be a useful addition to a bilingual library. (musical score) (Picture book. 2-5)

IF YOU WANT TO SEE A WHALE

Fogliano, Julie Illus. by Stead, Erin E. Neal Porter/Roaring Brook (32 pp.) $16.99 | May 14, 2013 978-1-59643-731-9 Fogliano and Stead (And Then It’s Spring, 2012) produce another tender, timid story about a boy, his animal friends (a basset hound and a bird) and practicing patience.

Whale watching requires lots of resolve to avoid distractions like birds, roses, pirate ships, clouds, pelicans and so on. Fogliano’s exhaustive accounting of what not to notice artfully communicates the impossibility of unflagging focus. Her skeined advice unreels in a vivid, looping poem, while Stead’s soft, accompanying artwork settles into subdued, simple compositions.

Linoleum printing offers oceanic, undulating blues and greens, while pencil drawings bring the redheaded boy’s freckles and his hound’s drooping skin into focus. Stunning specificity surfaces in the poem’s off-kilter phrasing (an inchworm’s “just nibble scoot” across a leaf). The drifting verse floats and coalesces like the clouds that threaten to divert the boy from whale watching. |

When read aloud, it charms like an incantation. The poem’s unresolved ellipses at the conclusion suggest an unending whale hunt, but Stead’s final two images silently deliver what we’ve been waiting for. The whale, huge and hidden, floats beneath the unknowing child’s tiny vessel and then twists its mass, pulling its head completely out of the water.

The boy, his dog and bird rear back in wonder; readers will gape at the two enormous, whale-sized talents at work in this transfixing picture book. (Picture book. 2-6)

YOO-HOO, LADYBUG!

Fox, Mem Illus. by Ljungkvist, Laura Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster (32 pp.) $16.99 | $10.97 e-book | May 7, 2013 978-1-4424-3400-4 978-1-4424-3401-1 e-book

A ladybug that likes to hide drives the action in this cheery, rhyming romp.

“Yoo-hoo, Ladybug! Where are you?” This lilting refrain beckons children to hunt for the little beetle amid teeming, digitally rendered household toyscapes. With each page turn, the answering “There you are…” appears opposite a scene strewn with brightly colored objects. Turn again, and the page reveals both a verse answer (“tucked in a box with Rabbit and Fox!”) and a visual one, with the grinning ladybug now peeking out from within an enlarged, circular detail from the previous illustration.

Ljungkvist includes enough animals, toys and recurring details— blocks that spell out the word “ladybug,” a Russian matryoshka doll, a red Swedish Dala horse and many more—to invite plenty of scrutiny. The alternating triple pattern of text on color field, the “clue” picture and the neatly rhymed “answer” page combine for a well-ordered experience that will both entertain and instruct young children. Ljungkvist’s pictures pay homage to Barbara Cooney’s Chanticleer and the Fox, Leo Lionni’s windup mouse and Pat Hutchins’ Rosie.

Fox’s playful rhymes steer young preschoolers along on this very satisfying excursion. (Picture book. 2-5)

BECOMING BEN FRANKLIN How a Candle-Maker’s Son Helped Light the Flame of Liberty

Freedman, Russell Holiday House (96 pp.) $24.95 | May 1, 2013 978-0-8234-2374-3

An engaging biography of the man who “snatched lightning from the sky and the scepter from tyrants.”

Benjamin Franklin ran away from his apprenticeship in Boston and arrived in Philadelphia a tired, dirty and hungry 17-year-old who impressed 15-year-old Deborah Read, his

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future wife, as a young man with a “most awkward ridiculous appearance.” With characteristic grace, Freedman sketches his subject’s career: Franklin settled into life in Philadelphia and became a printer, first publishing Poor Richard’s Almanack in 1733. Franklin led the Junto, which fostered such civic improvements as America’s first lending library, lighting Philadelphia’s streets, and founding the firefighting company, the first hospital and Philadelphia’s first college. By age 44, Franklin was prosperous enough to retire from business, but he continued to be busy, inventing bifocals, the lightning rod and the Franklin stove. He was active in the creation of a new nation, signing all of the major documents that created the United States. Freedman is a master at shaping stories that bring history to life, with clear and lively prose rooted in solid research. The stylish volume includes many reproductions of portraits, engravings, and newspaper and almanac pages to enliven the fascinating portrait of Franklin and his times.

A superb addition to Freedman’s previous volumes on the Revolutionary period. (timeline, source notes, picture credits, bibliography, index) (Biography. 10 & up)

WEDNESDAYS IN THE TOWER

George, Jessica Day Bloomsbury (240 pp.) $16.99 | May 7, 2013 978-1-59990-645-4

What happens when your playfully sentient stone palace goes off kilter and leaves you a bright orange egg to care for—secretly?

Princess Celie and her family love Castle Glower and its habit of adding and removing rooms on Tuesdays (Tuesdays at the Castle, 2011).

But now the Castle changes on Wednesdays too, and the modifications have a frantic air. In a tower that only she can see, Celie discovers a huge egg and nurtures it. Startlingly, what hatches is a griffin. Celie keeps fast-growing Rufus hidden; she tries to tell the king and queen, “[b]ut as soon as I opened my mouth to do it, that pack of cloaks fell down the chimney.” The Castle allows only Celie, one older brother (Bran, the Royal Wizard) and amiable Pogue (the village blacksmith) to know about Rufus. George’s core mysteries—if griffins are mythical, why do hallway tapestries imply that the Castle once had “ordinary, every day griffins?” Is the Castle frightened or, possibly, angry?—intrigue. Historical exposition is somewhat dry, but Celie’s flights on Rufus’ back are exhilarating. Danger lurks, somehow related to a visiting wizard and an unknown foreign land, but its precise nature waits for next time, as this installment ends on a cliffhanger (almost literally—several characters are high in the air).

A sweet, funny, sincere story in which siblings work together. (Fantasy. 8-11)

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ONE BRIGHT RING

Géser, Gretchen Illus. by Géser, Gretchen Henry Holt (32 pp.) $16.99 | May 14, 2013 978-0-8050-9279-0

When a girl sees a diamond ring fall through a hole in a man’s jacket pocket, she catches it on a bounce and pulls her mom along city streets in an attempt to return it.

There’s a charming counting theme afoot. Four babies and five frisky dogs present obstacles to “one brave girl” in her pursuit of that bouquet-bearing young man. She loses sight of him but makes a deduction and enters a park’s rose garden. She “tiptoes eight soundless steps… // …while the man checks his pockets / nine frantic times.” As the desperate gent “sheds ten small tears,” the girl, hidden behind a hedge, cannily drops the lost ring “right under his nose.” Géser’s digitally augmented, naïve watercolors depict pale, generic vehicles and simple, cartoonish faces. City grays and browns contrast with bursts of red: the girl’s coat, a stop sign, roses and even the young man’s hair. Mission accomplished, the girl leads her mom on once more. In the final double-page spread, she stands in a bakery, holding a cupcake and gazing upward. A fancy three-tiered wedding cake is decorated with roses—and topped with a bride and groom who look an awful lot like the newly engaged couple smiling through the window.

Children will enjoy the spirit of the chase (and an easily spotted black cat on each spread) in this pleasant introduction to courtship conventions. (Picture book. 3-6)

THE PATH OF NAMES

Goelman, Ari Levine/Scholastic (352 pp.) $16.99 | $16.99 e-book | May 1, 2013 978-0-545-47430-6 978-0-545-54014-8 e-book Goelman’s debut novel, part summer-camp tale, part ghost story and part murder mystery, is served with a sprinkling of math and a heavy dose of oftenconfusing Jewish orthodoxy.

Thirteen-year-old math and magic geek Dahlia reluctantly agrees to three weeks at a Jewish summer camp. There, the ghosts of two little girls visit her, and she begins to dream of David Schank, a young yeshiva student in New York in the 1930s. Soon, she realizes his spirit has possessed her; he is an ibur who needs her help to complete a task he began when alive.

The novel alternates between David’s story, in which he first discovers and then fails to hide from the Illuminated Ones the 72nd name of God, and Dahlia’s, as she attempts to figure out what the ghosts and the spirit want and why the creepy caretaker won’t let any children into the camp’s overgrown hedge maze. A substantial cast of characters, multiple plot twists in both narrative storylines, some subplots that go nowhere, a

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“Goldblatt neatly captures that transitional stage between childhood and adolescence, deftly examining the complex dynamics of friendships and skillfully portraying Julian’s evolution toward self-understanding.” from twerp

KINDNESS FOR WEAKNESS

golem, gematria or Jewish numerology, the cabala and more make this novel a challenging read. It’s certainly a refreshing change from the usual focus in middle-grade Jewish fiction on the Holocaust, immigrants and bar/bat mitzvahs, and the inclusion of a girl protagonist who loves math is also welcome.

Despite its potential, though, it’s likely that the book will have limited appeal. (Paranormal mystery. 12-15)

TWERP

Goldblatt, Mark Random House (288 pp.) $16.99 | $10.99 e-book | $19.99 PLB May 28, 2013 978-0-375-97142-6 978-0-375-97144-0 e-book 978-0-375-97143-3 PLB Twelve-year-old Julian is assigned the task of keeping a journal that details the events that led up to his suspension for bullying.

In an open journal to his English teacher, Julian describes life as a sixth-grader in 1969, roaming his Queens neighborhood with a close-knit group of friends. While the descriptions and dialogue evoke a previous era, the issues Julian faces are timeless topics familiar to adolescents. Initially, Julian minimizes his responsibility for what happened to “Danley Dimmel,” whose real name is Stanley Stimmel. Rather than addressing what occurred, Julian recounts his various mishaps and adventures with his friends. Alternately poignant and comical, Julian’s stories encompass everything from first crushes and first dates to the purpose of his existence. He struggles with the conflicting need to be part of a group, which means coasting in his best friend Lonnie’s wake, and to define himself and understand his unique place in the world. Goldblatt neatly captures that transitional stage between childhood and adolescence, deftly examining the complex dynamics of friendships and skillfully portraying Julian’s evolution toward self-understanding. When Julian ultimately reveals what occurred, he describes it with devastating honesty. Julian’s acknowledgement of his part in the event and his decisive actions at the story’s conclusion illuminate his growing maturity.

Goldblatt’s tale provides a thought-provoking exploration of bullying, personal integrity and self-acceptance.

(Historical fiction. 10-14)

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Goodman, Shawn Delacorte (272 pp.) $16.99 | $10.99 e-book | $19.99 PLB May 14, 2013 978-0-385-74324-2 978-0-307-98207-0 e-book 978-0-375-99102-8 PLB A naïve young man does his best to survive a brutal stay in juvie in this story that is reminiscent of the work of E.R. Frank and Walter Dean Myers.

Fifteen-year-old James is sent to the Thomas C. Morton Jr. Residential Center in upstate New York after he is caught dealing drugs for his older brother, Louis. There, he tries to escape the notice of the ruthless guards and the street-gang recruiters by working out and keeping to himself. Despite his abusive upbringing, James is a sensitive teen who devours the books recommended by his English teacher, Mr. Pfeffer, and dreams of earning his neglectful mother’s love. Encouraged by a few kind staff members and Mr. Pfeffer’s letters, James tries to stay positive but is slowly drawn into the Center’s cycle of violence when he is targeted for being friends with an openly gay inmate named Freddie. When a sadistic guard attacks Freddie, James is forced to prove that his kindness is not weakness, with tragic results. Goodman’s background as a school psychologist is evident in his deeply felt characters and well-realized setting.

Readers who are not familiar with the often-harsh conditions of the juvenile justice system will receive a realistic and compelling examination of adolescent life behind bars in this second novel from the author of Something Like Hope (2011). (Fiction. 14 & up)

TRUTH OR DARE

Green, Jacqueline Poppy/Little, Brown (400 pp.) $17.99 | May 14, 2013 978-0-316-22036-1 Series: Truth or Dare, 1 A well-plotted suspense tale aims itself at the Pretty Little Liars fan base.

Two wealthy BFFs, Caitlin and Tenley, suspect that Sydney, a scholarship girl they’ve always disliked, lurks behind a nasty truth-or-dare game targeted at them. They don’t know that Sydney also receives menacing notes threatening to expose the three girls’ hidden pasts. The girls strive to overachieve: Caitlin’s mother pressures her to get into Harvard, so she takes on far too many extracurricular activities; Tenley’s mother insists that she continue winning teen beauty contests; Sydney uses her passion for photography to escape from the pressures of high school society. Serious tensions abound in all three of the girls’ families, and all try to hide confidential problems: Caitlin hasn’t truly recovered from being kidnapped as a child;

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“Fans of Joey Pigza and Big Nate will find a lot to love here. Charlie is no longer a caricature but a fully fleshed-out, likable young man.” from charlie joe jackson’s guide to summer vacation

Tenley has had breast augmentation; Sydney has a craving to set fires. Numerous possible suspects surface, although Green doesn’t drop any noticeable hints that would tip readers off to the solution. This, when revealed, leads to suspense and a major surprise and propels readers into the next installment in the series. Befitting its genre, the story focuses on popular, beautiful girls, turmoil over boys (all of them devastatingly handsome) and girl-girl rivalries. As it switches the point of view among the three girls, the story moves ahead nicely and should hold readers’ interest quite well.

Good intrigue designed for the chick-lit crowd. (Suspense. 12 & up)

“NO PIRATES ALLOWED!” SAID LIBRARY LOU Greene, Rhonda Gowler Illus. by Ajhar, Brian Sleeping Bear Press (40 pp.) $15.95 | May 1, 2013 978-1-58536-796-2

A librarian endows a treasure-hunting pirate with reading skills as well as training him to hush up in this bland valentine to literacy.

Sending other users fleeing from their computer screens and cozy reading nooks to cower in the stacks, Big Pirate Pete bursts into the Seabreezy Library bellowing demands for treasure. Flashing the fierce, quelling glare that good public and school librarians everywhere wield, diminutive Library Lou shuts him up and sends him away with a promise to help after he bathes and changes his undershorts. When he meekly returns, she shows him that there’s more to the alphabet than “X marks the spot,” and in time, he becomes an avid reader—as Greene puts it in a typically lumbering couplet: “Those factual books, Big Pete came to love. / He read about things that he’d never heard of….” Ajhar tracks the development of this Common Core–friendly reading preference in comical scenes in which schoolmarmish Lou dances balletically among piles of books as the exaggeratedly humongous pirate grows more and more absorbed in his reading. At last he figures out that reading is fun and tenders his thanks: “ ‘ ’Cause of ye, now we know—books be the treasure!’ / ‘Shucks,’ whispered Lou. ‘It’s been my pleasure.’ ” Worthy, even trendy, but unlikely to make nonreaders (of any age) follow the animals in Judy Sierra and Marc Brown’s classic to become Wild About Books (2004). (Picture book. 6-8)

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CHARLIE JOE JACKSON’S GUIDE TO SUMMER VACATION

Greenwald, Tommy Illus. by Coovert, J.P. Roaring Brook (224 pp.) $14.99 | May 14, 2013 978-1-59643-757-9 Series: Charlie Joe Jackson, 3

Attending camp, especially an academic enrichment camp, turns out to be more than notorious slacker Charlie Joe

Jackson bargained for.

Picking up where he left off in Charlie Joe Jackson’s Guide to Extra Credit (2012), Charlie knows he is in for a miserable time at camp. The water sports and basketball courts are not enough to take the sting out of singing the camp song, “Learning to Love, and Loving to Learn,” or the horror of spending whole days with book geeks, reading and writing. Told in Charlie Joe’s sarcastic voice, interspersed with letters home to maybe-girlfriend Zoe and others, the tale moves along at breakneck speed. In the first week, the visiting jocks from a neighboring camp come for their yearly romp to find that Charlie Joe has some tricks up his sleeve. When Charlie Joe joins the newspaper staff in the second week, his interpretation of a Lech Walesa biography leads the campers to strike. In the last week, he helps a fellow camper handle a cheating dilemma. Underlying all the action are the inevitable but sweet changes that happen to middle school nerds when they discover the opposite sex.

Fans of Joey Pigza and Big Nate will find a lot to love here. Charlie is no longer a caricature but a fully fleshed-out, likable young man.

A series that improves with each offering. (Fiction. 9-14)

TOYS IN SPACE

Grey, Mini Illus. by Grey, Mini Knopf (32 pp.) $16.99 | May 14, 2013 978-0-307-97812-7 Keenly intelligent artwork teeters on the delicious borderline of scariness in a nighttime toy adventure.

A boy runs off the page. “That summer night, for the first time, the toys were left outside.” In the green grass lie seven small playthings. The sky darkens; stars emerge. The toys are quiet, then fretful and panicky—so WonderDoll tells a story. In it, a spaceship beams them all upward. How disconcerting! The alien “probably likes to eat pink felt!” speculates Pink Horse. “It might drool at the toys!” quivers Dinosaur. “Someone might get their stuffing probed!” worries Small Sheep. But the alien looks like a glove wearing pajamas—and it’s sobbing. Hoctopize the alien grieves its own lost snuggle object. The spaceship holds thousands of toys that Hoctopize has collected from gardens all over Earth, seeking its missing Cuddles. Tiny labels catalogue the stolen creatures’ origins (“Picnic Table, Front Lawn, 37 Spoon Drift, West Cutlery”). This tale has a heart of gold, while

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the art uses comic-book sensibility (horizontal and vertical panels; speech bubbles; ever-changing angles) and a savvy aesthetic to prevent any hint of saccharine. Does it matter whether the journey was WonderDoll’s invention? Blending edginess and childhood reality (the uniqueness of one’s own stuffed toy), this will satisfy many tastes.

A preschool sibling to Adam Rex’s The True Meaning of Smekday (2007). (Picture book. 4-7)

BELLA’S RULES

Guest, Elissa Haden Illus. by Halpin, Abigail Dial (32 pp.) $16.99 | May 16, 2013 978-0-8037-3393-0 As one might guess from the title, boisterous Bella’s rules are in serious conflict with the family rules.

Bella’s rules: candy for breakfast, no washing your hair, ever, except with mud shampoo, and…there is no such thing as bedtime! Family rules include boring things such as no yelling indoors, no painting on paintings and no scaling the bookcase.

Bella’s rules seem irrefutable, particularly to her kind but wimpy baby sitter Sammy, whom she terrifies with her wild behavior and who resorts to begging her to behave and go to bed. The indefatigable Bella gets her own way with everything, and her long-suffering parents are at their wits’ end. Until Granny pays a visit and brings with her a game-changer—an adorable puppy that breaks as many rules as his young charge and puts Bella in the unaccustomed role of having to introduce order into the chaos. Puppy’s behavior is even more wild, rude and risky than Bella’s. Ruining Bella’s favorite teddy is the last straw, and Bella sulks for a bit, until she starts to understand that by patiently teaching the puppy good behavior, obedience can actually be more rewarding than rebellion. The harmonious pairing of Guest’s simple but lively text with Halpin’s whimsical illustrations charms. Dialogue is represented in free-floating type that dances with nicely paced vignettes and page turns.

A winner. (Picture book. 4-8)

MY WEIRD WRITING TIPS

Gutman, Dan Illus. by Paillot, Jim Harper/HarperCollins (160 pp.) $16.99 | $5.99 paper | $5.99 e-book Jun. 25, 2013 978-0-06-209107-9 978-0-06-209106-2 paper 978-0-06-209108-6 e-book Practical advice on writing from a best-selling author.

Hoping to counter the texting culture with an upbeat volume on how to write well and why to care about good grammar and clear writing, Gutman draws on his own career in writing, |

especially his My Weird School series. Though disingenuous at times and too self-consciously fun, the little guide does impart important advice in a straightforward manner. Short chapters and cartoonish illustrations keep the lessons light, covering such essentials as the importance of paragraphing, cutting unnecessary adjectives, using a dictionary, proofreading and structuring longer pieces. To students who think being illiterate is cool and that spelling, grammar and punctuation are boring—that sentences like “The girls’s lined up in sise order” are just fine—Gutman says, “Sounding like a dumbhead isn’t cool.” This junior version of Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style may just help young writers “trim the fat” and learn to care about even small issues such as “Who or Whom?” and “Me or I?” The handy guide concludes with the one tip that will improve students’ writing more than any other: “If you want to be a better writer, read everything you can get your hands on. Read like crazy!”

A user-friendly guide to writing that just might make a difference. (Nonfiction. 8-12)

PLAYING WITH FIRE

Hale, Bruce Illus. by Dorman, Brandon Disney Hyperion (320 pp.) $15.99 | Jun. 25, 2013 978-1-4231-6850-8 Series: School for S.P.I.E.S., 1 Thirteen-year-old fosterling Max Segredo knows he’s just one stop away from juvie. Luckily, that stop turns out to be the Merry Sunshine Orphanage, where the third floor is off-limits due to a secret science project, and the house rules include “No unsupervised gunplay.”

Staffed with tough instructors with names like “Styx” and “Stones,” the unusually secure “orphanage” turns out to be a vocational school to train students in “Systematic Protection, Intelligence, and Espionage Services.” Max fits in nicely, until coded messages suggesting that his father, a spy himself, is still alive spark an urgent need to escape. Hale threads the narrative with colorful metaphors and throwaway lines (“But his search was as fruitless as an all-beef buffet”) and festoons it with highand low-tech tools of spycraft. He ultimately sends his diverse cast of student spies on a field trip/mission that climaxes in a face-off with shadowy LOTUS—a rival organization with the requisite black limos, palatial hidden headquarters, agents who dress like “catalog models for Victoria’s Evil Secret” and even a shark tank. Dorman adds a handful of dramatic full-page scenes, and Hale closes with a note on ciphers. One character’s sudden murder aside, the tone is mostly light, with family issues and conflicting loyalties (driven by troubling revelations about Max’s dad) for added texture.

This lightweight kid-spy romp should find some eager readers. (Adventure. 11-13)

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THIS LITTLE PIGGY

Harrington, Tim Illus. by Harrington, Tim Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins (32 pp.) $15.99 | May 14, 2013 978-0-06-221808-7 The lead singer of the indie rock band Les Savy Fav takes some time to consider the secret lives of toes.

Everyone knows the standard “This Little Piggy” rhyme.

What we might not have realized is that long after the final “Wee! Wee! Wee!” the toes on the second foot want to have a little fun of their own. Not content to merely dine and take trips to the market, however, these piggies go in for disco dancing, painting and even selling hot dogs. Not to be outdone, the toes on the first foot attempt even wilder antics, like go-kart racing and a secret superhero career. Finally, at the end of the day, all the toes are exhausted, so they all get ready for bed.

The sheer exuberance of these digits buoys much of the read.

Harrington’s simple, colorful digital artwork complements the action remarkably well. Many of the rhymes in the book are near misses, but that’s true for the original nursery rhyme, too.

Once the text gets to the little toes, an amusing overabundance of page-dominating text comes off as funny (though it is inexplicably split into multiple sentences, where a single run-on text may have been a more effective choice).

The shoe is on the other foot when these talented piggies get their due, so consider this for storytimes or households that need an extra kick. (Picture book. 4-8)

THE CYDONIAN PYRAMID

Hautman, Pete Candlewick (368 pp.) $16.99 | May 14, 2013 978-0-7636-5404-7 Series: Klaatu Diskos, 2 Middle books in trilogies are tricky, but this taut science-fiction thriller pulls it off with panache.

The mysterious teenage girl Lah Lia keeps reappearing at pivotal moments of Tucker Feye’s chaotic adventures across time; now, following her own journey through the “disko” portals sheds clarity upon the various rival factions contending through the forthcoming epochs. From her pampered childhood, raised as a sacrifice, to the end of human history, Lia witnesses the early days of the Boggsian technological cult and their transcendence into the spectral tourist Klaatu; the heyday of digitocratic Medicant healers and their persecution at the hands of the fanatically anti-numerate Lah Sept; and the rebellion of the ruthless Yar women against the corrupt priests of her own time. Lia matures from a clever but passive observer to a tough-minded, compassionate and principled actor, determined to take charge of her own life—even if that means rewriting the past. While by no means a stand-alone, the narrative intersperses 92

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chapters recounting Tucker’s interrogation by Cold War–era Arctic explorers to recap important details and ground the more exotic future scenarios. This device also drives the plot, as the two protagonists strive independently to reconnect. When they meet again in the final pages, it is clear that the past is beginning to unravel, and all history is about to break loose.

Hautman continues to write mind-expanding adventures and nail-biting suspense to probe big questions of faith, destiny and personal responsibility. The next book can’t come soon enough. (Science fiction. 12 & up)

I’M WITH STUPID

Herbach, Geoff Sourcebooks Fire (320 pp.) $9.99 paper | May 1, 2013 978-1-4022-7791-7 A football star copes with his father’s suicide.

On the outside, high school senior Felton Reinstein has it all: He’s good looking and has a great girlfriend and the respect of his peers. Colleges and universities call him every day to entice him into accepting their scholarships. However, when the trauma he experienced as a child—discovering his father’s body hanging in the garage— begins to eat at him, Felton’s hold on his psyche begins to spiral out of control. Soon, he’s unable to control his actions, the words that come out of his mouth or his anger. Herbach’s narrative starts off shaky, with some uneven depictions of high school culture seeing football-star and possible homecoming king Felton being picked on. He soon hits his stride, however, and the plot takes off as Felton’s anxieties begin to overtake him. Bad decisions, booze and bullying become the name of his game. Herbach soon after throws in a heavy-handed reference to Shakespeare, which unfortunately overshadows much of the story he’s already successfully been building. Still, invested readers will want to push through the Hamlet gridlock to see how Felton and his friends make out in the end.

A memorable character from an author worth watching.

(Fiction. 14 & up)

CRESCENT

Hickam, Homer Thomas Nelson (320 pp.) $9.99 paper | Jun. 4, 2013 978-1-59554-663-0 Series: Helium-3, 2 Hickam advances the plot of his waron-the-moon Western Crater (2012), but not very far in this patchy sequel.

Weary of the war with the Unified Countries of the World that has been dragging on now for three years, Crater Trueblood captures

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“A slightly magical, wholly satisfying fable, visually rich and verbally open-ended, originally published in Australia.” from the coat

Crescent—a short, mouthy and thoroughly deadly genetically altered superwarrior from Earth. He is then faced with the tall task of keeping her from killing, or being killed by, the vengeful citizens of Moontown. Meanwhile, his estranged sweetheart, Maria, granddaughter of Moontown’s kingpin Col. John High Eagle Medaris, barely blasts her way out of a UCW kidnap attempt. Switching among multiple points of view and genres, the author plunges Crater into a murder investigation after Crescent is framed and then abandons that for a flight through the “big suck” to a new life in Armstrong City. Following that, he reunites his protagonist with Maria in time to help her escape another explosive attack and finally has him guide a wagon train (complete with motorized “chuckwagon”) of Mennonite-like settlers on a trek to Endless Dust, an abandoned lunar outpost rumored (accurately) to be haunted.

A middle volume of entertaining but, at best, loosely knit set pieces; only for confirmed fans of the first. (Science fiction/fantasy. 11-14)

BELONGING

Hopkins, Karen Ann Harlequin Teen (416 pp.) $9.99 paper | May 1, 2013 978-0-373-21081-7 Series: Temptations, 2 This second installment in the Temptations trilogy deals with a girl who joins the Amish to be with the boy she loves.

In the first book, 16-year-old Rose left home to live with an Amish family, determined to formally join the community so she could marry Noah. She copes well with the work demands put upon her, but she struggles with the ultraconservative rules that keep her from Noah, and she doesn’t learn the German dialect spoken in the community. Worse, she and Noah have made serious enemies in the Amish community, especially “creepy” Levi. When she joins the church without her father’s permission, he arranges to take her home with police intervention. Will Rose and Noah be able to keep their romance going even after they have been separated, or can they both find others to love instead? Hopkins divides the chapters among spunky Rose, solid Noah and Sam, Rose’s overconfident brother, spending most of the time with Rose. Hopkins presents a mostly sympathetic view of the Amish, despite Rose’s difficulty with their harsh rules. She never caricatures them, depicting them with as many virtues and flaws as her non-Amish characters. A vivid childbirth scene and depiction of an Amish wedding add impact. Nevertheless, the book’s main focus remains on the romance plot rather than on the interesting portrait of the Amish culture.

Routine stuff but for the intriguing setting. (Romance. 12 & up)

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NANTUCKET BLUE

Howland, Leila Disney Hyperion (304 pp.) $16.99 | May 7, 2013 978-1-4231-6051-9 A summer-at-the-beach story takes readers to Nantucket.

When 17-year-old Cricket is promised the chance to spend her summer on Nantucket at her best friend Jules Clayton’s vacation home, she’s psyched.

In addition to lazy days at the beach, summer on Nantucket means the opportunity to connect with her longtime crush, Jay Logan. But when tragedy strikes the Clayton family, Cricket’s summer invite is rescinded. Undeterred, Cricket hatches her own secret plans to stay on the island to support Jules, but upon arrival, her plans fall through, leaving her without a place to stay, no summer job and on the outs with Jules. In a stroke of good luck, Cricket lands on her feet, finding a less-than-glamorous job at an inn that serves as her base for a summer of unexpected adventures and new friendships. Though the book has an overall lighthearted summer vibe, Cricket’s bumpy relationship with her divorced parents, especially her mother, and her fractured friendship with Jules ground the text, providing a welcome sense of reality in a tony island paradise. Cricket’s narration vacillates between hyperbole and thoughtful introspection, making the text feel uneven in places; this reflects Cricket’s development, as the narration matures along with Cricket.

A solid beach read. (Fiction. 15-18)

THE COAT

Hunt, Julie Illus. by Brooks, Ron Allen & Unwin (32 pp.) $16.99 | May 1, 2013 978-1-74114-605-9 A slightly magical, wholly satisfying fable, visually rich and verbally open-ended, originally published in Australia.

A coat, stuffed with straw and inhabited by the small creatures of the field, inveighs against its useless fate as a scarecrow.

But a man comes along, a disappointed man. He sees the coat and figures it has a lot of wear yet in it, so he shakes out the straw and the mice and puts it on, though it is far too large.

The coat speaks to him and carries itself and the man to the Cafe Delitzia. There, he is welcomed, fed and asked to perform, although he thinks he cannot. But the coat knows, and it plays the accordion with such expertise that the crowd is enchanted.

At the end of the night, the coat fits him perfectly, and off the man and the coat go. Brooks’ fine illustrations fit the pattern of the words perfectly. The images in the field start in dull sepia tones, and the coat actually looks pretty bedraggled, but by the time the man reaches the Cafe Delitzia, it begins to glow; as it plays and he sings, the pictures become more colorful. The

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“Well-rounded characters, deep folklore and difficult problems without obvious answers drive the story. These dogs are not just loyal human companions, but warriors, leaders and friends.” from a hidden enemy

typeface emulates handwritten script, complementing the illustrations’ line but occasionally becoming hard to read.

Meditative, musical, magical, mysterious. (Picture book. 5-9)

A HIDDEN ENEMY

Hunter, Erin Harper/HarperCollins (288 pp.) $16.99 | May 7, 2013 978-0-06-210260-7 Series: Survivors, 2 Following a massive earthquake, leashed dogs and strays alike try to find a way to weather a world turned on end by the catastrophe.

Without the longpaws, or humans, the dogs must use both their instincts and their deep tradition of storytelling to make sense of their new lives. This sequel to The Empty City (2012) begins just as Lucky has finally extricated himself from his unwanted pack. Unfortunately, an attack by wild dogs and another quake force him to return to help his frightened friends. Lucky finds himself caught between his responsibility toward his old pack and his admiration for the wild pack led by Alpha, their part-wolf leader. Even though his skills are those of a city dog, Lucky is able to quickly become invaluable to the new pack. However, if Alpha discovers his split loyalty, Lucky will suffer swift canine justice, which often ends in death. Disease, famine and other wild animals make survival even more tenuous as the fast-paced story progresses.

Well-rounded characters, deep folklore and difficult problems without obvious answers drive the story. These dogs are not just loyal human companions, but warriors, leaders and friends. A cliffhanger ending ensures another volume is on the way.

Perfectly crafted. (Adventure. 8-12)

NOTHING BUT BLUE

Jahn-Clough, Lisa Houghton Mifflin (224 pp.) $16.99 | May 7, 2013 978-0-618-95961-7 An insightful, if not entirely successful, exploration of the effects of trauma on memory and identity.

In the powerful opening pages, readers meet a teenage girl who has obviously been through some kind of trauma involving an explosion. Unsure what has happened or even who she is, the girl (eventually going by Blue) feels compelled to just keep moving in the direction she thinks is home, and so she does, eating whatever scraps she can scrounge and sleeping wherever she can find a safe enough bit of space. The chapters that describe her journey are labeled “Now,” and they are interspersed with chapters labeled “Before,” in which readers gradually learn about Blue’s story up until the moment of 94

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the explosion, including her foray into the world of dating and sex with the handsome, popular boy down the street and her parents’ decision to move across the country. In a strange addition to an offering that seems to be striving for emotional and psychological rawness, Blue meets an apparently magical dog named Shadow who impels people to do Blue favors by mesmerizing them with his eyes. The before-and-after structure ultimately undercuts suspense, as the narrative loses momentum, and readers become weary of waiting for Blue to arrive at answers they’ve long known.

Starts out strong, but ultimately fizzles out. (Fiction. 14 & up)

PEST IN SHOW

Jamieson, Victoria Illus. by Jamieson, Victoria Dial (32 pp.) $16.99 | May 16, 2013 978-0-8037-3701-3 Backyard insect thespians Ladybug and her pesky younger brother Fly compete to star in this hilarious pun-filled performance, sure to tickle the fancy of fun- and pun-loving youngsters and would-be young stars.

Although some of the allusions (Bugspray, Pestside Story and Thoroughly Modern Millipede) may be over their heads, children will surely identify with the competition between siblings and recognize the parodies of “classic” songs. “Spiders,” composed

by Wolfspider Amadeus Mozart, is sung to the tune of “The Itsy Bitsy Spider,” for instance, and “Ladybug,” by Earwig van Beethoven, to the tune of “The Wheels on the Bus.” Theatrically lit acts include a supporting cast of costumed ladybugs, butterflies, spiders, assorted bugs and even worms. A playbill complete with appropriately themed advertisements adds to the fun. Jamieson’s collage-and-acrylic illustrations revel in the goofiness, clothing Ladybug in a frilly red dress with black polka dots and a feathery pink boa and plastering an irritating littlebrother grin all over Fly’s face. The Busby Berkeley– inspired “Ladybug” number is hysterical. As Roger Fleabert’s blurb on the book’s cover says, “Six thumbs up!”

This silly read-, dance- and sing-aloud could be a smash hit. (Picture book. 3-7)

WATER IN THE PARK

Jenkins, Emily Illus. by Graegin, Stephanie Schwartz & Wade/Random (40 pp.) $18.99 | May 14, 2013 978-0-375-87002-6 From sunrise to sunset on a scorching summer day, people (and animals) use the water found in a park in many different ways.

“Tup tup. Tup tup.” A cat drinks from a puddle. Dogs splash in the pond to stay cool. Children clean their sticky fingers or build a sand castle complete with moat. Jenkins begins this close

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inspection of a city’s greenery at 6 a.m., when the turtles are just sliding off the rocks and the park is waking up. Every hour is told in small moments, some simple (“Around four o’clock, Benjamin F. skins his knee. / His sitter washes it clean with water from the fountain”) and some amusingly poetic (“Ribbons of water seep out of the rose beds and under benches.... / Pigeons strut at the edges of the new puddles, / cooling their pigeon ankles”). But perhaps the most fun is searching Graegin’s incredibly detailed illustrations. By 10 a.m., the playground is filled to the brim with kids and adults, some of whom will be introduced later in the story and others for whom readers can create their own narrative. It is a seek and find, with curiosity as a guide.

Water may flow in abundance through these pages, but this title is an outpouring of observation that repays careful readers richly. (Picture book. 3-6)

HOORAY PARADE

Joosse, Barbara Illus. by Yum, Hyewon Viking (40 pp.) $16.99 | Jun. 13, 2013 978-0-670-01334-0

Awkward verse rains on this homemade parade.

Gramma arrives on her pink bicycle (seen through the window) with homemade banana bread and a basket full of surprises (although the basket could never hold all that comes out). From that basket, Gramma creates the titular “hooray parade” with puppets behind a curtain rigged across the window. Readers join the granddaughter and her stuffed toys in guessing which animal is coming next, with shadows providing hints. Jaunty, repetitive rhymes are often awkward: “Rhinoceri are bobbing by / orange balloons on their fingers / orange balloons on their toeses / orange balloons on the horns on top of their noses / balloony here, balloony there / balloony rhinos everywhere.” Bold pastel illustrations and colorful captions stand out against a white background, good for sharing with a group. But, there is nothing new or interesting here, and there’s no real story. An accompanying song by Joosse, “Hip Hooray Parade,” may be found on her website.

Recommended only for those in desperate need of more interactive books for preschool children or for avid fans of the author. (Picture book. 2-5)

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BORIS ON THE MOVE

Joyner, Andrew Illus. by Joyner, Andrew Scholastic (80 pp.) $4.99 paper | $4.99 e-book $15.99 PLB | May 1, 2013 978-0-545-48443-5 978-0-545-48782-5 e-book 978-0-545-48442-8 PLB Series: Boris, 1

An early reader shaped just like a chapter book: What’s not to love?

For emergent readers who view themselves as accomplished (or wish to be seen that way), this, one of the publisher’s Branches line, might just be the perfect choice. Boris, a not-particularly-attractive hog, is frustrated. Although he and his parents live in a bus that once took them on fabulous vacations, now the old vehicle is permanently parked, and he longs for adventure. Finally, his empathetic parents fire up the engine to bring him on a journey that, it disappointingly turns out, is only across town to a nature preserve. However, Boris, his anger vividly portrayed in his frazzled body language, contrives to get himself satisfyingly lost. Happily, he’s found, first by a cat in need of a home and then by his parents. Full-color illustrations of his humorously anthropomorphized hog family and just one or two sentences of easy, large-print text per page make this an inviting read for transitioning readers, although they may initially be a bit daunted by the misleading appearance of a full 74 pages of narrative—including a simple science experiment.

The brief text and a chapter format both make this a manageable and entertaining accomplishment for most young readers as well as an amusing listening experience for those not quite able to tackle it alone. (Early reader. 4-7)

MY LUCKY BIRTHDAY

Kasza, Keiko Illus. by Kasza, Keiko Putnam (32 pp.) $16.99 | May 2, 2013 978-0-399-25763-6

Birthdays should be great fun. How awesome will Alligator Al’s be?

Alligator Al’s ready to find himself a big treat for his birthday when there’s a knock at his door.

It’s a piglet! What luck! Al snatches the piglet and ties him in a potato sack despite the piggy’s protests that it’s his birthday, too. Al begins preparing to cook up his birthday visitor, but the piglet points out that no birthday’s complete without a birthday cake. Al agrees and follows the piglet’s instructions for making a yummy cake. Then the piglet reminds him awesome guys deserve fancy decorations on their birthdays. Al decorates, and he’s ready to start on his feast when the piglet says there ought to be guests; he offers to call his friends. With visions of a month’s—or a year’s!—worth of piglets, Al eagerly agrees...but

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INTERVIEWS & PROFILES

Lemony Snicket and Jon Klassen

The Rules of The Dark

By Jennifer M. Brown Lemony Snicket—aka Daniel Handler—saw a drawing by Jon Klassen that showed the dark talking.

“As soon as I saw that, the entire book came to me,” Handler said. In The Dark by Lemony Snicket, illustrated by Jon Klassen, the dark talks to a boy named Laszlo. No wonder the boy is afraid of the dark. But their relationship evolves over the course of the book. “For a moment, it looked like The Dark was going to be Jon Klassen’s first book,” recalls Handler, “and then it looked like it was going to be his lifetime achievement award.”

Q: Daniel, your Series of Unfortunate Events plays on the fears of the Baudelaire orphans, while this book is about Laszlo overcoming his fear. Would you say that, over time, you have become more compassionate?

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A: Daniel Handler: Over time, have I become more compassionate? I’m totally fascinated by that question.

I haven’t had my compassion level checked for a while.

I know with diet and exercise you can maintain it. I guess I’m interested in picture books as a form and the different ways of storytelling that they inhabit. I don’t know if the tone of what happens to the Baudelaires would work in a picture book.

One thing that’s really scary is the unknown, and the dark starting to talk to you is unnerving. If there were something terrible down in the basement, where the dark wanted you to go, it would immediately shatter the fear in a nasty way.

Q: Jon, the palette for The Dark echoes your palette for This Is Not My Hat. Were you working on them both at the same time?

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A: Jon Klassen: My taste in color has to be encouraged.

I don’t know what color is for a lot of the time. I probably could have been happy with any number of palettes. It was more about the value than anything else. Against black, I didn’t want to pop it too much.

You have the license to keep the colors down. Those two books were many years apart.

Q: But you do know what color is for: When you submitted a drawing of the bear [from I Want My Hat Back] for the Society of Children’s Illustrators exhibition, your only use of red was in the matte for the frame. That was brilliant!

A: JK: I like color when it’s an idea. The idea in The Dark was the black, so the color didn’t have to do anything specific. I can go saturated with a color when there’s a specific job for it to do. With the bear, his hat had to be red and you had to notice it; so, for sure, let’s go all the way with red. But when it doesn’t have a specific job, I go the other way and let it be a wash of stuff.

If all of a sudden we had a drop shadow underneath something, it would change the rules of what light is supposed to do. Even if kids can’t point it out, they’d feel it if you drifted too far from what you’d set up.

DH: I agree, it’s an invisible logic, and storytelling is like this, too. If you’re not interested in what makes a story tick, you still can read a book and be satisfied or unsatisfied and have a sense when a story is wellmade. Mr. Klassen taught me that, which surprises me, because he has a general aura of incompetence, so to learn he’d been very thoughtful about things was... moving, actually.

Jennifer M. Brown is the children’s editor of Shelf Awareness, an e-newsletter for the publishing trade and consumers. She also serves as the interim director of the Center for Children’s Literature at the Bank Street College of Education in New York City.

DH: I think the short answer is that Mr. Klassen’s genius is entirely accidental. He has no idea what he’s doing. Often he does something good, but it’s purely by chance.

Q: Jon: Laszlo begins the book on the landing; by the end of the book, he’s partway down the basement stairs. Can you tell us about this progression?

A: JK: One of my favorite parts of the book is the fact that the last line Laszlo says is white text on black.

Until then, the rules have been that only the dark talks with white text on black. Laszlo’s text has been dark on light. He’s talking in the Dark’s language now.

He knows what’s down there. It’s probably not his favorite place in the house still, but he can go down the stairs partway.

DH: That’s an example of things I learned from working with Jon. Jon would say, “The rule is this, and that’s what I’ve been doing.”

JK: Light is complicated, especially for me. I don’t deal with shadows or light sources, because it’s a big design problem. But in this particular book, the light is a clear graphic idea. We need to establish the rules. |

The Dark Snicket, Lemony Illus. by Klassen, Jon Little, Brown (40 pp.) $16.99 | Apr. 2, 2013 978-0-316-18748-0

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piglet’s friends turn out to be a fearsome rhino, hippo, boar and gorilla! Al flees in fright, leaving Piglet and friends to celebrate in style. With this tale of turnabouts, storytime favorite Kasza delivers a sly companion to My Lucky Day (2003), adding a postscript that gives extra insight into the disingenuous porker’s M.O. Audiences of one or many will chortle at the trickery.

Kasza’s lively signature watercolor illustrations are the icing on this brightly colored cake. (Picture book. 2-7)

BOWLING ALLEY BANDIT

Keller, Laurie Illus. by Keller, Laurie Christy Ottaviano/Henry Holt (128 pp.) $12.99 | Jun. 11, 2013 978-0-8050-9076-5 Series: Adventures of Arnie the Doughnut, 1 A bowling tournament gives the rolling raconteur introduced in the 2003 picture book Arnie the Doughnut fresh scope for wisecracks and wild misadventures.

Arnie goes to the bowling alley weekly to meet his cheesy triangular friend Peezo and belt out hits (from “Livin’ la viDOUGH loca!” to “DOUGHNUT make my brown eyes blue”) at the karaoke machine for admiring crowds while his (human) buddy Mr. Bing hits the lanes. Their visits slide into a scurry of sleuthing when Mr. Bing’s new ball, Betsy, inexplicably starts heading for the gutter rather than the pins on every roll. Presented in a frenetic mix of narrative, cartoon collages, dialogue balloons and melodramatic exclamations, the investigation leads the chocolate-frosted shamus to an identity thief at the end of a trail of dropped sprinkles and other clues. Unsurprisingly, it also provides opportunities aplenty to drop punch lines as well as to lay out bowling techniques and rules with help from a confused baseball umpire (“Ya see, Ump, in baseball strikes are BAD, but in bowling they’re GOOD!”), Albert Einstein and other walk-ons.

Like triumphant Mr. Bing, Keller walks off with a “Stiffy Stu McShiny” award for this yummy chapter-book series opener. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 7-10)

GLASSWINGS A Butterfly’s Story Kleven, Elisa Illus. by Kleven, Elisa Dial (32 pp.) $16.99 | Apr. 18, 2013 978-0-8037-3742-6

Seasoned illustrator Kleven presents a rich, colorful picture book with a strong ecological message.

Readers follow Claire, a transparent glasswing butterfly, as she soars and swoops and sips nectar, always taking on the hue of 98

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her surroundings. Disaster strikes, however, when a gust sweeps her away from her family and her “bright, blooming home” and whisks her off to the city, with its forbidding concrete walls and dearth of life-sustaining flowers. The denizens of this Central American city, a pigeon and a ladybug, are friendly, and they lead the hapless butterfly to an empty lot, where she is able to revive her spirits with nectar from a few scraggly urban flowers. The butterfly’s presence works its magic on the desolate urban setting, and before long, her activities help to pollinate the flowers.

The pigeon and the ladybug also help with the gardening, and soon, the garden is a riot of color. And so is Claire! Miraculously, her transparent wings have taken on the flowers’ colors, and they attract a family of glasswings from the country, who turn out to be none other than her beloved relatives. Young children will enjoy spotting the myriad details in the sumptuous collages that fill the pages, modulating the palette expertly as Claire transforms the gray city into a garden.

A joyously optimistic book. (author’s note) (Picture book.

2-5)

A GATHERING OF WINGS

Klimo, Kate Random House (384 pp.) $18.99 | $10.99 e-book | $21.99 PLB May 28, 2013 978-0-375-86976-1 978-0-375-98543-0 e-book 978-0-375-96976-8 PLB Series: Centauriad, 2 The last human must re-enter the wild in order to save her best friends in this meandering sequel in an unremarkable series (Daughter of the Centaurs, 2012).

Malora Thora-Jayke (aka Ironbound, Victorious and Resurrected) has traded the bush for a comfortable life in Mount Kheiron, home of the centaurs. Despite her apprenticeship as a blacksmith, her own paddock and the Apex’s favor, Malora yearns to find her black stallion, Sky, and the mysterious man of her dreams, Lume. Following a trail of rumors, Malora visits the dangerous city of Kahiro, with her centaur friends—shallow Zephele, stern Neal and curious Orion—and the scholarly faun, Honus, providing both hindrance and help. Going solo, she encounters death, Lume and a band of wild centaurs, but she emerges triumphant, with Sky and a new herd in tow. When Malora’s actions bring unexpected consequences, she finds that she must defend her friends from foes, family and mythical monsters. Though Malora boasts impressive survival skills, her contrasting social inexperience allows readers to learn about the world of the hibes (or hybrids), the legacy of the revered Scienticians and the near-extinction of the human race alongside Malora. Klimo tends toward heavy-handed exposition, slow pacing and flat secondary characters; that she excels at describing the physical world and chronicling Malora’s emotional growth does not sufficiently compensate for the weaknesses in the story.

Another horse book, with a trite dystopian twist. (cast of characters, glossary; unseen) (Dystopian fantasy. 12 & up)

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“Clichés aside, it’s an enjoyable, if totally undemanding read for sci-fi–starved audiences.” froms the planet thieves

ALOHA!

Kredensor, Diane Illus. by Kredensor, Diane Random House (48 pp.) $3.99 paper | $12.99 PLB | Jun. 25, 2013 978-0-307-97950-6 978-0-375-97131-0 PLB Series: Ollie & Moon This engaging beginning reader uses comic-book conventions and a Hawaiian setting to invite emergent readers into the story of odd-couple friends Ollie and Moon.

Cartoonish cats Ollie and Moon look like they’ve stepped from an animated television series of their own, but they are original creations for this series. Accompanied by their silent, snail sidekick, Stanley, they play the sunny days away. Ollie likes to try new games, while Moon prefers to consult her many lists to come up with familiar activities. Humor abounds in all scenarios, achieved through narrative text, speech-balloon dialogue and downright goofy pictorial antics. The one major drawback in the book is its lack of artistic cohesion: Backgrounds sometimes employ photographs of lush, Hawaiian beachscapes, which, though consistent with series format, may prove distracting rather than enriching.

Mo Willems’ work in the Knuffle Bunny picture books avoids such missteps with sepia-toned photographic backdrops that allow the characters to pop out, but in Kredensor’s work, the effect of fullcolor backgrounds is overwhelming. Far more successful are those pictures that have clean, white backgrounds—especially given the need to provide ample resting space for eyes new to decoding text and navigating the dynamic between words and pictures.

Nevertheless, the merits of this title will have new readers saying mahalo for a joyful, exuberant friendship story.

(Early reader. 6-9)

THE PLANET THIEVES

Krokos, Dan Tor (256 pp.) $15.99 | May 21, 2013 978-0-7653-3428-2

Eighteen cadets stand between the terrifying Tremist fleet and the annihilation of Earth!

In the year 2800, 13-year-old orphan Mason Stark and the other cadets are logging time in space during summer break on a routine mission when the ship, the SS Egypt, is attacked

by Tremists, aliens that have been waging war with humankind for decades over the habitable planet Nori-Blue. Naturally, the cadets escape capture and try to save their acting captain, Susan Stark, Mason’s older sister. What they find is that the Egypt was carrying a gate, a device capable of making a wormhole big enough to move a planet to a new part of space, and that Earth Space Command was planning to use it to move Nori-Blue into our sun’s orbit to keep it out of the clutches of the Tremists. |

The Tremists steal the gate…and then use it to steal the Earth!

Can Mason and his friends rescue Susan and the whole of the Earth? And what secrets does Nori-Blue harbor that can change the trajectory of the human–Tremist relationship? With a total disregard for the laws of physics and nearly every other science, Krokos kicks off a series of sci-fi adventures with this overstuffed, nonstop adventure that harkens back to pulpy space operas. Far too many plot points tangle a narrative chock-full of one-dimensional characters who excel far too easily at the heroics they must perform.

Clichés aside, it’s an enjoyable, if totally undemanding read for sci-fi–starved audiences. (Science fiction. 9-12)

THE FROG WHO CROAKED

Krosoczka, Jarrett J. Illus. by Krosoczka, Jarrett J. Walden Pond Press/HarperCollins (240 pp.) $12.99 | $8.99 e-book | May 7, 2013 978-0-06-207164-4 978-0-06-207165-1 e-book Series: Platypus Police Squad, 1 Who’s flooding Kalamazoo City with synthetic fish? The Platypus Police

Squad is on the case!

Platypus Rick Zengo is ready for his first day as a detective on the Platypus Police Squad. He dreams of living up to the reputation of his grandfather, who helped rid the city of crime boss Frank Pandini Sr. Partnered with stodgy, slow Detective O’Malley, Zengo doesn’t think he has a chance until their first case, the disappearance of teacher William Hopkins, looks to involve dangerous synthetic fish and possibly Kalamazoo City’s new savior, businessman Frank Pandini Jr. Son of the former crime kingpin, he says he’s working to undo the damage his father did. Zengo’s impulsive actions land the duo on safetypatrol duty, but a break in the case might be the key to success!

Making his chapter-book debut with this series kick-off, Krosoczka, known for his foolish and fun picture books and the goofy Lunch Lady graphic novels, turns out a surprisingly dull two-joke mystery. Cop platypuses: hysterical! Synthetic fish: funnier than fart jokes! It’s a cop-show-rerun plot full of clichéd characters wearing fur and tails. Occasional black-and-white illustrations (final art not seen) might do a bit to liven things up, but the tale’s got the zip of a broken boomerang.

Juvenile fans of Dragnet or Law & Order: SVU might look forward to Book 2; few others will. (Mystery. 8-12)

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“Reading Lanagan, like learning a language by total immersion, involves a leap of faith.…Rather than being coddled by comforting dollops of exposition, readers dive into the murky unknown.” from yellowcake

YELLOWCAKE

Lanagan, Margo Knopf (240 pp.) $16.99 | $10.99 e-book | $19.99 PLB May 14, 2013 978-0-375-86920-4 978-0-375-98931-5 e-book 978-0-375-96920-1 PLB

Lanagan unravels familiar myths and fairy tales, weaving them into unique, sharply resonant forms in this characteristically stunning collection.

Reading Lanagan, like learning a language by total immersion, involves a leap of faith. Each tale conjures a world with unique laws and lawbreakers. Rather than being coddled by comforting dollops of exposition, readers dive into the murky unknown. Spellbound, they reach the end, astonished at how far from shore they’ve traveled. The most powerful of these tales reworks Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Tinderbox,” drawing on its creepy, amoral ambiance to explore the spoils and costs of war. “Rapunzel” morphs into a sunnier tale but with an eldritch feel. Supported by his loving wife and apprenticedaughter, Charon ferries dead souls across the Styx. However strange the details (a sentient building lumbers into the sea; a fascinator plies his trade), the stories rest on bedrock human emotions. Characters act out of fear, anger, love—to stop the pain, to make sense of the senseless, to protect family. The shipbreaking underclass who take apart horrifying vessels are decent folk at heart. In a tale exploring the paradoxical complexities of loss, a mother floats away from the family desperate to keep her.

Traveling such elusive terrain requires an oblique approach, and Lanagan, like Emily Dickinson, tells it “slant.”

Familiar roots and accessible themes make this strong collection a good introduction to Lanagan’s mind-bending work. (author’s note) (Fantasy/short stories. 14 & up)

THE WING WING BROTHERS CARNIVAL DE MATH

Long, Ethan Illus. by Long, Ethan Holiday House (32 pp.) $15.95 | May 1, 2013 978-0-8234-2604-1

The first, fabulous vaudevillian math escapades of the Wing Wing Brothers (The Wing Wing Brothers Math Spectacular, 2012) give way to this lackluster second adventure at a carnival, with the action divided into three amusements.

Focusing on counting to 100 by 10s, the first amusement finds the five brothers competing to ring the bell at the top of a strength tower. While each brother does better than the last, the fifth one providing the slapstick they are known for, and each scores a multiple of 10, there is no counting here. The second amusement at least involves math: Each brother has a tray of 10, 20 or 30 wieners, which readers count as they come to the 100

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table, then subtract as the brothers gorge themselves sick. The last episode puts the brothers on the Wedgie Wheel. Readers add and subtract by 10s and 20s as the ride stops at each car, loading and unloading passengers. Prominent mathematical equations in a large red typeface help readers with the math in the last two amusements, though since the answers are included, they don’t really have to think at all. Long’s pencil-and-digital illustrations are still comical, but the slapstick just isn’t as funny this time around.

Ultimately, this lacks the solid and seamless math practice of the first; it’s just some math annoyingly mixed with a few kinda-funny jokes. (Math picture book. 4-8)

ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE

Lupton, Hugh; Morden, Daniel Illus. by Hénaff, Carole Barefoot (40 pp.) $7.99 paper | May 1, 2013 978-1-84686-784-2 Series: Classics

The myth of the power of music and love is retold for middle-graders with nuanced beauty but marred by a happy epilogue.

The veteran storytellers who reworked this story have made a creditable and even beautiful version, using language that is clear and stately. Orpheus is a musician who can make even the trees dance. A bad omen at his wedding is fulfilled when, the next day, his bride, Eurydice, goes for a walk at dawn and is felled by a snake bite. Orpheus follows her down into the underworld, and his music so moves Persephone and her husband, Hades, that the god of the underworld allows Eurydice to return to life. Orpheus must not look back until they reach the world of the living. Alas, she trips, he turns to help her, and she is gone. Orpheus pours out his grief in music until the jealous god Dionysius inflames a group of women to hack Orpheus to pieces, although his head and his lyre continue to play and sing. In this version, Persephone restores memory to both Orpheus and Eurydice so they can spend the afterlife together—an interpolation that provides emotional relief but guts the story of its power. The rich, matte illustrations are done in a pleasing, patterned style that complements the vivid, never sensational telling.

For readers who need their endings safe. (pronunciation guide, bibliography, family tree of the Greek gods, Olympians) (Mythology. 8-12)

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CATCH RIDER

Lyne, Jennifer H. Clarion (288 pp.) $16.99 | Jun. 4, 2013 978-0-547-86871-4 Powerful writing propels a wellplotted horse story in Lyne’s impressive debut.

Sidney Criser might still be 14, but that doesn’t stop her from driving the junk car her uncle gave her an hour over mountains to clean stalls at a rich woman’s barn. Sid grew up tough, and she can ride anything, but times are desperate: Since her father’s death, her mother has taken up with a no-good abuser who threatens to move them to California. Her mother’s lost her job, and her mother’s brother, her uncle Wayne, who’s long been Sidney’s mainstay, is just about to drink himself to death. Nothing’s easy in their hardscrabble mill town. The other half of Virginia, where pedigreed horses sleep in “nest[s] of pine shavings,” has the horses Sidney longs for, but she’s cleareyed enough to see that rich people have problems, too, just like her classmates destined to work in the mill. “I know that sounds mean and angry, but I’m not either one. We have a life to live that could stop any minute, and I guess I can’t believe this is how some people want to spend it. It makes me sad as hell.” Everything comes together here— setting, dialogue, horse details and, most impressively, voice—so that the near–fairy-tale ending works; like the rest of the book, it feels absolutely true.

A standout. (Fiction. 14 & up)

WHAT A PARTY!

Machado, Ana Maria Translated by Amado, Elisa Illus. by Moreau, Hélène Groundwood (32 pp.) $18.95 | Apr. 1, 2013 978-1-55498-168-7 A birthday party demands some pretty careful planning.

If you’re not careful, when your mother suggests that you invite a friend over for it, you might ask if your friend can bring someone (thinking of his “really cool brother”), plus some food. Your mom, distracted, will probably say, “Why not? Of course. Invite anyone you’d like.” So unless you’re careful, Jack will bring his cool brother, Larry, and they will bring two different kinds of coconut cookies. Beto and Antonieta will bring both their parrot and some tropical fruit.

Fatima will bring her brother Djamel and their dog, along with tahini and pickled lemons. And so on. If you really lose control, the entire community will arrive, complete with salsa dancers and reggae band, and “your birthday party could turn out to be the craziest, wildest, funnest party ever.” Rio de Janeiro native Machado conjures a beguiling, joyful twist on the if-you-givea-mouse-a-cookie scenario, constructing, guest by “carelessly” |

invited guest, a vibrant fiesta. Moreau’s acrylic-and–oil-pastel paintings complement the buoyant prose, populating the book with a cast of characters sporting a great variety of skin tones and hair colors, meticulously including their cod cakes, olives, sushi and more. Readers may well be inclined to emulate the drooling cat and dog under the jam-packed picnic table.

An effervescent celebration of the best possibilities of urban multiculturalism. Readers will want to move right in. (Picture book. 4-7)

CLUELESS MCGEE AND THE INFLATABLE PANTS

Mack, Jeff Illus. by Mack, Jeff Philomel (256 pp.) $12.99 | Jun. 13, 2013 978-0-399-25750-6 Series: Clueless McGee, 2

PJ McGee, PI and secret ninja, gets everything wrong (again) in solving his second case.

Mr. Prince the principal thinks fifth-grader PJ McGee spends too much time thinking about ninjas, so he suggests PJ attend “Rocket Science,” a science club run by Mr. Bellum.

PJ’s none too keen until he learns the club will have a science fair and there will be a prize, a real metal trophy shaped like a rocket ship. PJ successfully knocks out his stiffest competition, Mr. Bellum’s daughter Sara, and devises a sure-win project: a magnetic pickle. But when the trophy goes missing, and the key to its display case is found in PJ’s stinky backpack (the pickle is getting riper by the day), PJ is disqualified. He’s certain Sara is trying to frame him for a crime she committed, and he’s committed to proving it despite the evidence. His sidekick, third-grader Dante, tries to help, but PJ’s more ready to accept bumbling fourth-grader Benny’s help. Can PJ crack the case, avoid boogers and impress his absent father? Maybe not, but he’ll inspire giggles as he tries. Mack’s frenetically whack-adoodle second Clueless McGee title manages to meld mystery and humor in a tale told as much in cartoons as text. Rube Goldberg–ian calamities and grossness are neatly balanced by good intentions and a little friendship lesson.

Even a frog-smacker can see this series has legs. (Graphic/ fiction hybrid. 7-12)

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SEPTEMBER GIRLS

Madison, Bennett HarperTeen (352 pp.) $17.99 | $10.99 e-book | May 21, 2013 978-0-06-125563-2 978-0-06-220129-4 e-book A meditation on manhood takes a turn into magical realism in this mesmerizing novel.

Sam, his father and his older brother are all coping—with varying degrees of success; Sam’s coping includes whiskey and frozen pizza—with Sam’s mother’s departure for Women’s Land. In an attempt to pull things together, his dad decides they will spend the summer on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Prickly yet lethargic, 17-year-old Sam gradually becomes intrigued by the mysterious, beautiful blonde girls who work at the hotels and restaurants there. Interspersed throughout Sam’s slightly sarcastic firstperson narration are short, haunting prose poems from these sisters, who can’t swim though they come from the ocean and whose mother is the Deepness and whose father is the Endlessness. The girls seem to reinvent themselves as needed, much as they reinvent the island where they live, adding to the air of mystery. The brothers’ parents are vividly portrayed, particularly the once-frumpy mother who left their father in a “swamp of discontent”—which turns into a complete abandonment of his job and their usual life. The heart of the story centers on Sam’s gradual unfurling into a less brittle, kinder and more thoughtful youth. The writing, though realistically laced with the F-word and references to smoking and drinking, has a curiously appealing distance from the ordinary but doesn’t abandon it altogether.

A not-mermaid story for boys. (Magical realism. 14 & up)

THE PIRATE’S COIN

Malone, Marianne Illus. by Call, Greg Random House (224 pp.) $16.99 | $10.99 e-book | $19.99 PLB May 28, 2013 978-0-307-97717-5 978-0-307-97719-9 e-book 978-0-307-97718-2 PLB Series: Sixty-Eight Rooms, 3 Sixth-grade sleuths Jack and Ruthie are no strangers to the magic of the miniature Thorne Rooms, but this time, changing the past may do more harm than good.

Through a school genealogy project, Jack and Ruthie learn that a fellow student is distantly related to Phoebe Monroe, the young slave girl whom they met in the previous adventure (Stealing Magic, 2012). As a result of a scandal, later generations of Phoebe’s family lost their fortune and their good standing in the community. Jack and Ruthie can clear the family name, but it means shrinking down and locating hidden documents 102

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inside the Chicago Art Institute’s miniature rooms. Meanwhile, Jack’s family history is also intertwined in the Thorne Rooms.

An old coin—a piece of eight—leads him to travel back in time to 1753 and meet his ancestor, pirate Jack Norfleet. But suddenly, Jack begins to disappear! Changing history can bring disastrous results. Keeping track of all the magical restrictions, along with the spatial logic required to follow air ducts and specifically placed ladders, can be enough to make readers’ heads spin. Add in all of the great-great-great-great-great-great ancestors, plus two parallel yet unconnected storylines, and this magical adventure slows to a crawl.

Dedicated Sixty-Eight Rooms readers will have the patience to sift through, but if newcomers to the series start here, they just might abandon ship. (Fantasy. 8-12)

THE END GAMES

Martin, T. Michael Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins (384 pp.) $17.99 | $10.99 e-book | May 7, 2013 978-0-06-220180-5 978-0-06-220182-9 e-book Seventeen-year-old Michael tries to shepherd his autistic 5-year-old half brother Patrick through a very real zombie apocalypse by pretending it’s just a video game.

Twenty-one days ago, Michael decided he’d had enough of his abusive stepfather, Ron. The final straw: Ron was planning to send Patrick to a mental hospital, so Michael packed Patrick a backpack, told him they were about to play a great adventure game controlled by the “Game Master” and ran for the car in the middle of the night. Unfortunately for them and the rest of the world, brain-seeking zombies attacked that very night. Using the “rules” of the game delivered by the Game Master, videogame–loving Michael keeps the two of them safe as they avoid the Bellows (zombies who echo parts of words they hear in bellowing voices) until they encounter the Rapture, a religious cult at zombie-plagued ground zero that worships the living dead.

Escaping their insane clutches, the boys find the Charleston, W.V., Safe Zone…but few survivors remain. Can they trust Capt.

Jopek, the lone military man? Is there any real safety in the new, awful world? Martin’s debut is a lethargic zombie thriller that buries a few interesting ideas in tortured syntax and repetitious narration. It regularly abandons the logic it painstakingly sets up as well as basic reality in service of advancing the plot.

Even die-hard zombie fans will be hoping for an end to this game far sooner than it comes. (Horror. 14 & up)

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“A quietly intriguing meditation on history and truth.” from below

KIKI: MY STYLISH LIFE

history of his own. Together, the two kids swim on the side of the lake that is closed to the public, where dropping water levels reveal hazy but tantalizing impressions of Old Lower Grange.

Although the author does a masterful job of making sure all the pieces fit at the end, the central mystery is hard to buy. This is mitigated by a reasonably suspenseful climax, an earned family solidarity message and the lesson: that to find the truth, one must delve below the surface.

A quietly intriguing meditation on history and truth.

(Fiction. 9-12)

May, Kyla Illus. by May, Kyla Scholastic (96 pp.) $4.99 paper | $4.99 e-book $15.99 PLB | May 1, 2013 978-0-545-44512-2 978-0-545-49680-3 e-book 978-0-545-49613-1 PLB Series: Lotus Lane, 1

“I am Kiki, World-Famous Style Star!”

Meet Kiki, budding fashionista, expert shopper, enthusiastic dog lover, devoted chicken caregiver and excellent friend.

Since her mom is going away for a week for her work as a fashion stylist, Kiki is keeping a journal to apprise her of everything that goes on, particularly the adventures of the Lotus Lane Girls Club (Kiki and her friends Lulu and Coco). In an accessible diary format that includes texts, drawings of Kiki’s various outfits and side commentary, Kiki relates—in preteenspeak —some of the highs (pajama parties, cupcake baking, outfit planning) and lows (stressing over a school project, failing to befriend new classmate Mika) of being an elementary school girl. When it turns out that both Kiki and Mika have chosen to create fashions for the school art fair, the competition gets a little fierce; add to it various misunderstandings and a missing dog, and a huge mess ensues. What’s a girl to do? While admittedly very light fare with a thin plot, minimal character development and an excess of exclamation points, girly girls and fans of May’s earlier books will eat this up. Though part of the publisher’s new Branches series of chapter books, the busy format may initially stump children just graduating from early readers.

A good choice for girls who love sparkles. (Fiction. 6-8)

BELOW

McKinlay, Meg Candlewick (224 pp.) $15.99 | May 1, 2013 978-0-7636-6126-7 A 12-year-old girl discovers a town secret hidden under thousands of gallons of water in this earnest, thematically rich exploration of the relationship between history and truth.

Cassie Romano was the first baby to be born in the town of New Lower Grange, which replaced Old Lower Grange when Mayor Finkle “flipped the lever” turning the old town into an artificial lake and dam site. Since she was little, Cassie has been fascinated by the drowned town, which, together with New Lower Grange, is about to celebrate its centennial. Cassie’s much older sister is making the celebration’s centenary book, which Cassie feels whitewashes history, as it only shows the positive side of the changeover. Narrated in the first person by its likable protagonist, this quirky but thoughtful not-quite-mystery teams Cassie with Liam, a boy with an unfortunate personal |

CRIMINAL

McVoy, Terra Elan Simon Pulse/Simon & Schuster (288 pp.) $16.99 | May 7, 2013 978-1-4424-2162-2 Nikki would do anything for her boyfriend, Dee. But, when he talks her into committing a crime with him then leaves her to take the fall, Nikki begins to think that even true love has its limits.

Even though all of her friends tell her that Dee is trouble, Nikki cannot seem to pull away from her moody and sometimes violent boyfriend. Nikki’s stepfather is in jail, her mother is strung out on drugs, and her grandmother is dead. Only her friend Bird, with whom she lives, offers any real stability. Unfortunately, Bird hates Dee, forcing Nikki to choose. Even after the police reveal that Dee’s “N” tattoo might actually be for another girl and Nikki is imprisoned, she defends her troubled boyfriend. Graphic sex, violence and foul language, while appropriate to the circumstances, overwhelm the tale. Even though it is clear that Nikki is lost in her own addiction—to Dee, not drugs—her continued reluctance to see Dee for what he is becomes wearisome. McVoy’s story of abuse and addiction lacks the subtlety and depth that this difficult topic demands.

Readers who make it all the way through the story will be grateful their incarceration is finally ended. (Fiction. 14 & up)

ON MY STREET

Meinderts, Koos Illus. by Fienieg, Annette Lemniscaat USA (32 pp.) $14.95 | May 1, 2013 978-1-9359-5424-8 This hit-or-miss rhyming catalog of the neighbors who live on the narrators’ (ostensibly the author and illustrator’s) street may leave readers wishing for more detail.

The unusual neighborhood features some true characters, each with a home that matches their occupation or personality.

“Lightfingers” Louie lives at Number 2, and his concrete home

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“A gusher of half-digested elements and overchewed laffs,… reminiscent of the late, unlamented Barf-O-Rama series….” from the barftastic life of louie burger

includes bars on the windows, floodlights all around and a second-story balcony edged with barbed wire. The dancer lives in a Romani wagon–type house, while sailor Charlie Noble lives in a boat-shaped dwelling. Other residents include a cowboy, a queen, a cook and a man who has filled his house with empty bottles. The rhymes and rhythms mostly work, though the verses are too short to really introduce the eccentric neighbors: “Our Auntie, named Fritzi MacFluff, / Lives with her kitties, Sniffy and Snuff. / Her house is all knitted from yarn, / But you’ll find she gives not a darn!” Fienieg paints vivid portraits of the eclectic homes on the left-hand pages, their occupants opposite them. But a few may have readers (and parents) scratching their heads: Mr. Cree drinks tea and his house has distinct rounded towers—Middle Eastern? Russian? Or are they tea cozies? And in her fishbowl home, the Merry Maide’s voluptuous bosoms are not entirely contained within her seashells.

The inhabitants of Number 11 have crafted an enticing world, but there isn’t enough here to invite readers back for a second visit. (Picture book. 4-6)

THE BARFTASTIC LIFE OF LOUIE BURGER

Meyerhoff, Jenny Illus. by Week, Jason Farrar, Straus and Giroux (176 pp.) $13.99 | Jun. 11, 2013 978-0-374-30518-5 In a debut that would be more appropriately titled Stand-Up Chuck, Meyerhoff saddles a fifth-grade would-be comedian with both severe stage fright and a new classmate who comes between him and his best friend.

Having introduced a full-page glossary of vomit vocabulary, from “barfcredible” to “barftrocious,” Louie then relentlessly draws on it to describe his life. He focuses on the stand-up routine, which he’s been practicing for two years (“you can’t rush comedy”) but can’t face performing before a live audience, and his longtime friendship (as the self-billed “Barf Brothers”) with Nick Yamashita. This is suddenly complicated by Theodora, a jock who refuses to wear girl clothes unless forced to and insists on being called “Thermos.” Tucking in family stresses and the currently requisite bully issues, the author guides her protagonist past Nick’s actual gastric gusher in class to a climactic talent-show triumph that is cut short by one of his own. His wild delight at discovering that his little sister had filmed the latter spew and sent it to a TV show ends the tale on an up-tempo, if counterintuitive, strain. Week’s fluid ink-and-wash illustrations reflect the light tone without depicting any of the gross bits.

A gusher of half-digested elements and overchewed laffs, more reminiscent of the late, unlamented Barf-ORama series than similarly premised novels like Gordon Korman’s Maxx Comedy (2003) or James Patterson’s I Funny (2012). (Fiction. 9-11)

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PARALLEL

Miller, Lauren HarperTeen (432 pp.) $17.99 | May 14, 2013 978-0-06-219977-5 Parallel worlds collide to life-altering effect in this soft–sci-fi novel.

One minute Abigail Barnes is shooting a movie in Los Angeles opposite “Cosmo’s Sexiest Guy Alive,” and the next, she’s waking up in a Yale dorm room with a roommate and life she doesn’t recognize. Thankfully, Caitlin, Abby’s science-genius best friend, is also a Yalie. Together they conclude that Abby’s strange, new reality is the result of an “interdimensional collision” of two parallel worlds. Sound confusing? That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Further complicating the situation, Abby (and readers) must come to terms with the fact that she is now permanently linked to another Abby who exists in a separate physical world. The choices that this parallel Abby makes directly affect the world in which this Abby exists.

This gets especially tricky when it comes to matters of the heart. Desperate not to lose her newfound love, Abby must race against time and her parallel self in order to regain control of her destiny. While the premise of Miller’s debut novel for teens offers an interesting take on universal themes of love and fate, and the characters are likable enough, the science at the heart of the story is mind-numbing. Furthermore, the constant back and forth between parallel worlds will likely make it difficult for readers to ever truly feel invested in the novel’s romantic core.

A miss. (Science fiction. 14 & up)

KELSEY GREEN, READING QUEEN

Mills, Claudia Illus. by Shepperson, Rob Margaret Ferguson/Farrar, Straus & Giroux (128 pp.) $15.99 | May 1, 2013 978-0-374-37485-3 Series: Franklin School Friends, 1

Can a third-grader like to read too much?

Principal Boone throws down the gauntlet: He will shave his beard if the students at Franklin School read 2,000 books in a month. Kelsey Green is excited. After all, she is the best reader in her class. Kelsey doesn’t care if the winning class wins a pizza party or if the principal shaves his beard or kisses a pig, but she does care if she beats classmate Simon Ellis, therefore securing her name on a plaque. Kelsey’s competitive nature exposes the dark side to such contests: She figures out that short books (poetry, Junie B. Jones, etc.) will move her closer to her goal, even though they are not the books she usually reads. She assumes that Simon is cheating and sets off to prove it. She begins to dread family events since they take time away

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from reading for the contest. But Cody, a boy in her class, is not reading. Kelsey finally discovers what is really important when she helps him learn to read. Though Kelsey is borderline unlikable for most of the contest, Mills allows for redemption when Kelsey realizes that Simon is not cheating and that Cody has a lot to offer the class. Sprinkled with titles even new readers will likely recognize, this new series shows a lot of promise.

Lesson learned: Read for fun, not for competition. (Fiction. 6-9)

THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE CURSED

Morgan, Page Delacorte (352 pp.) $18.00 | $10.99 e-book | $21.99 PLB May 14, 2013 978-0-385-74311-2 978-0-307-98081-6 e-book 978-0-375-99095-3 PLB A newish supernatural being arrives in this straight-out gothic saga.

Gargoyles, forced to protect humans from demons, lurk overhead on the old Gothic church in Paris bought by a titled English family in 1899. Gargoyle Luc tries to protect the family’s two daughters as they roam Paris looking for their missing brother, Grayson. Proper in name only, Ingrid, 17 and the story’s main heroine, doesn’t bother with chaperones, while Gabby, at 15, dresses in a sexy red dress and goes out to visit men alone. Meanwhile, hellhounds are slaughtering Paris’ population of young ladies. Readers learn early that Grayson is a prisoner in the Underneath, where gargoyles and humans cannot go. Luc can’t seem to do his protecting job properly even with the help of the Alliance, a group of humans who also fight demons. Forbidden romance and hot kissing scenes abound. Gargoyles are not yet overexposed in books for teens, and Morgan’s description of the Underneath also stands out as inventive. However, the gothic genre leads her into the usual conventions of sentence fragments and hyperbole (“Hesitation meant death”). Her execution of the story comes across as awkward and inexpert, with much repetition. The concept may be somewhat new, but the plotline could have been lifted from any 1930s monster movie, including the villain who obligingly explains all before attacking.

A nifty idea clumsily executed. (Paranormal suspense. 12 & up)

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COWPOKE CLYDE AND DIRTY DAWG

Mortensen, Lori Illus. by Austin, Michael Allen Clarion (32 pp.) $16.99 | May 14, 2013 978-0-547-23993-4

Gadzooks! Cowpoke Clyde has talents galore, but he just can’t corral that big ol’ dirty Dawg into the washin’ tub, and all Clyde’s efforts lead to some mighty hilarious mischief in this cumulative tale set in the old West.

Pitch-perfect rhyming text bounces along with peppy phrases telling the tale of a cowboy who likes to keep things clean and tidy. Clyde tries tactic after tactic to catch his dog for a scrub down, each new method adding another layer of mayhem to the scene, with a lassoed hog, wet chickens and a kicking mule adding to the hilarious hijinks. Finally Clyde takes a bath in the moonlight by himself while singing a “cowpoke tune” beneath a full moon, and that is the winning lure that gets the dirty Dawg into the washtub. Illustrations in acrylics and colored pencils use deep, saturated colors and exaggerated proportions to dramatic effect, with uproarious scenes of screaming cats, a flailing mule and a hog ready to leap right off the page.

The frenetic activity is offset by the moonlit scenes of Clyde and Dawg in the tub, with a satisfying conclusion in which all the characters join them for a bath. This is a story that begs to be read aloud with a twangy drawl, perhaps as part of a Western or farm-themed storytime.

Plumb funny, fer sure. (Picture book. 3-8)

A BOX OF GARGOYLES

Nesbet, Anne Harper/HarperCollins (368 pp.) $16.99 | $10.99 e-book | May 14, 2013 978-0-06-210425-0 978-0-06-210428-1 e-book Receiving birthday well-wishes is a delight, unless one of those greetings is on creepy green stationery that obligates you to reanimate a supposed-to-be-dead wicked relative.

Demonstrating that Paris isn’t always baguettes and bicycles, Maya’s 13th-birthday happiness is challenged from every angle.

Her mother falls ill, her best (and only) friend, Valko, is being sent to Bulgaria, and an off-putting ripple of something peculiar is gradually transforming Paris for the worse. Maya soon realizes that Henri de Fourcroy, the cousin she banished but didn’t exactly kill, is behind the dark wave of strangeness changing the city. With the use of some sinister stationery, Henri binds Maya to helping him rematerialize at the eventual cost of her own life. Thus the struggle to save herself and the world from the growing circle of mischievous magic commences as gargoyles, a madwoman and a purple-eyed shadow stalk her. A twist of the

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magic makes its transformative effects visible only to Maya and Valko, cementing this as a battle they must strategically fight without adult help. Stone monsters and spells aside, this is at its core a tale of summoning intellect, guts and logic to save the day.

This sequel to The Cabinet of Earths (2012) has, like Maya, only become more refined, its vividly sensory third-person narration artful and immediate. And though reading the previous book is helpful, it can substantially stand on its own.

A flavorful mille-feuille with equally tasty layers of dark magic, light comedy and salty determination. (Suspense.

12-15)

OLYMPUS AT WAR

O’Hearn, Kate Aladdin (400 pp.) $16.99 | May 7, 2013 978-1-4424-4412-6 Series: Pegasus, 2

After a mostly triumphant adventure, Emily, Pegasus and company are back for more Olympian goings-on.

It’s almost happily-ever-after: Emily can walk again thanks to a golden brace, and she and Joel, along with Pegasus and Olympian thief Paelen, are safely ensconced in Nirad-free Olympus. But Emily’s father is still a prisoner of the Central Research Unit, the evil government agency that tortured Joel and Paelen. When the teens leave Olympus on a rescue mission, they find the Nirads are back—but the Nirads are actually the prisoners of the Gorgons, who are seriously bad news. This second volume has the same action-and-violence–packed, Greek mythology–flavored adventure. There’s a hint of romance and a bit too much weeping from Emily. The young-feeling writing style (simple sentence structures, lots of telling) sometimes sits awkwardly alongside the more mature content—violence, loss, self-awareness and adolescence. Still, the underlying messages (friendship and self-reliance win the day; the bad guys always lose) are appropriate for all ages (if a tad on the simplistic side). The next volume promises a love triangle and potentially more CRU, as the wicked G-men remain at large at the end.

Weaker than the first volume, but still a good diversion for Rick Riordan fans in need of something to tide them over between books. (Fantasy. 10-14)

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THORN ABBEY

Ohlin, Nancy Simon Pulse/Simon & Schuster (304 pp.) $16.99 | May 7, 2013 978-1-4424-6486-5 Tess knows that her transition to the elite preparatory school Thorn Abbey will be challenging, but when she falls for the mysterious and tortured Max, everything becomes hauntingly more difficult.

Tess, while shy and bookish, seems determined to find her way in her new school. However, her indomitable spirit is quickly shanghaied by an overwhelming obsession with the handsome and moody Max. Very little digging is required to unearth the terrible tragedy that haunts Max: the death of his girlfriend, Becca. Tess’ roommate, Devon, reveals that Becca was also her old roommate. Rather than seeing this as a bad omen, Tess seems to find the coincidence fortuitous. Devon’s repeated warnings, Max’s own rejections and even ghostly attacks cannot dissuade Tess from her objective: to claim Max as her own. The acknowledgments claim Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca as the book’s inspiration. However, other than a few minor plot points, Ohlin’s story bears little resemblance to the classic work, both in its content and its execution. Tess is more oblivious than tragic, and Max reads as shady rather than mysterious. Add in the stock secondary characters, and the resultant tale is little more than a watered-down ghost of the Hitchcock-worthy mystery.

Not classic. (Suspense. 14 & up)

I DREAMT...A BOOK ABOUT HOPE

Olmos, Gabriela Translated by Amato, Elisa Groundwood (40 pp.) $18.95 | May 14, 2013 978-1-55498-330-8

Created to benefit the International Board on Books for Young People’s Fund for Children in Crisis program, this picture book presents provocative images and ideas regarding the violence many young people encounter.

Twelve Mexican artists each depict a different scene from a single child’s dream about how life could be: A life-sized pistol emits a butterfly; scarred and weapon-toting drug lords sell and blow soap bubbles; a cloud of laughing mouths outwits a kidnapper. Each spread varies stylistically, from cheery pop art to dark caricatures, but this works in the dream context. The narrator wakes to a reality of skeletal arms rising from the earth, attended by crows—a composition symbolic of the nightmare lived by many. The concluding message of inspiration uses the metaphor of city trees that “fight back” (an unfortunate word choice, given the book’s mission) “and break open the sidewalks… / and grow despite everything,” unlike those that are “crushed by the pavement.” The challenge will be matching this

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“Narrated in the first person by Cooper, Osterweil’s novel reveals the inner workings of a sensitive boy trying to figure out how to help his family survive.” from cooper and the enchanted metal detector

to the right audience—more mature children or those who have lived through the worlds evoked. The cover illustration of lacey, white dandelion fluff does not hint at the dangers within, and this purposeful book is not an all-purpose read.

Bibliotherapy is a tricky business, as is the desire to shield young children from images that may cause nightmares. This is sure to arouse passion in both camps. (editor’s note) (Picture book. 7-12)

THE MIGHTY LALOUCHE

Olshan, Matthew Illus. by Blackall, Sophie Schwartz & Wade/Random (40 pp.) $17.99 | May 14, 2013 978-0-375-86225-0 While he has no difficulty overcoming much larger and fiercer opponents in the boxing ring, the eponymous hero of this quirky collaboration may nonetheless struggle to find an appreciative audience.

Lalouche is a postman in late-19th-century Paris. Slight but strong, he enjoys his work, adores his pet finch, Geneviève, and appreciates his small apartment, even if it doesn’t have a view.

Naturally, he is devastated when his superior informs him that he’s being replaced. Determined to find work, he responds to an advertisement for sparring partners, and the rest is history (though there’s a bit of mockery to endure before he triumphs).

Luckily enough, the postal service’s new “fleet of electric autocars” don’t work out as expected, so by the happy ending, Lalouche is back to pounding the pavement and chatting with old friends on his regular route. Olshan’s understated text flows smoothly, with occasional French phrases that emphasize the continental charm of his offbeat narrative. Blackall’s ink-andwatercolor illustrations, meanwhile, combine exaggerated size differences and unusual angles with a collagelike style to create a gently humorous, old-fashioned, scrapbook feel. Illustrations of Lalouche’s opponents are particularly amusing, including those that decorate the endpapers. Blackall’s personal collection of pictures of old-time boxers apparently inspired Olshan’s narrative; though thoroughly accomplished, it nonetheless has a very adult feel.

It remains to be seen whether young listeners will consider Lalouche a real contender. (author’s note) (Picture book. 6-8)

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INTUITION

Omololu, C.J. Walker (336 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 11, 2013 978-0-8027-2371-0 This first sequel to the reincarnation story Transcendence (2012) starts slowly but builds up.

At first, Cole and her heartthrob Griffon act as though they’re characters in a standard romance novel. As the plot progresses however, events from Cole’s past life in 16th-century England begin to intrude on her blossoming romance. Drew, a 20-year-old Australian who already has built an enormous fortune, claims to be Cole’s husband from that previous life, the one in which the two pledged eternal love. When he learns of Drew’s identity, Griffon instantly cuts off his relationship with Cole. Here the story speeds up. Drew introduces Cole into a new society of reincarnated beings, all wealthy but with few scruples. He offers her an easy life that she finds difficult to resist. Meanwhile, she continues trying to recover from the injury to her arm that has cut short her cello career and giving cello lessons. Readers may need a chart to keep track of all the new terms introduced to describe the reincarnated characters.

In addition to Akhet and Sekhem, there are now Iawi, Khered and a few other Egyptian-derived terms. While expanding Cole’s romance possibilities, Omololu introduces another mystery: What does Veronique, Cole’s nemesis from the first installment, intend to do with a secret formula she’s developed?

Thus is the next sequel set up nicely even as Cole’s romantic choices resolve.

Cole’s tale is still an interesting one, but the series can’t take too much more romantic push and pull. (Paranormal suspense. 12 & up)

COOPER AND THE ENCHANTED METAL DETECTOR

Osterweil, Adam Namelos (243 pp.) $18.95 | May 1, 2013 978-1-60898-149-6

A young boy’s life takes an unexpected turn when he receives an old metal detector.

Cooper lives with his mom in upstate New York, where they run an antiques store in an old barn.

Although he’s only 11 years old, Cooper manages the household and store. His mom, who used to bring Cooper to garage sales, changed after Cooper’s little brother died and his dad left. Now Cooper pays the utility bills with money he keeps in an old coffee tin and ventures to garage sales alone to find items for the store. Much to the dismay of Mr. Shepherd, the director of the town’s historical museum, Cooper has a knack for getting into

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“A dandy trickster tale on many levels, it offers monsters scary enough to chill the youngest readers without causing nightmares.” from grim, grunt and grizzle -tail

sales early to snag the best items. When Cooper unexpectedly leaves a yard sale with a metal detector and finds 12 musket balls from the Revolutionary War in his backyard, it sets in motion a chain of events that will change his life forever, revealing not only history buried deep in his backyard, but family secrets as well. Narrated in the first person by Cooper, Osterweil’s novel reveals the inner workings of a sensitive boy trying to figure out how to help his family survive. Cooper’s active imagination is a stark contrast to the responsibility he assumes at home: He finds friendship in Decto, the french-fry–eating metal detector, and Squeaky, his rickety bicycle, among other objects. Cooper’s exchanges with these imaginary friends add enough silliness to keep young readers engaged. However, lengthy passages about battles, as told by Mr. Shepherd, slow the narrative’s flow and often feel dry, especially when compared to Cooper’s vibrant voice. Still, budding historians will have the opportunity to learn about an important moment in U.S. history—and may even be inspired to pick up a metal detector of their own.

A poignant coming-of-age story and history lesson rolled into one. (Fiction. 10-13)

PRIMATES The Fearless Science of Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Biruté Galdikas Ottaviani, Jim Illus. by Wicks, Maris First Second/Roaring Brook (144 pp.) $19.99 | Jun. 11, 2013 978-1-59643-865-1

Veteran science writer Ottaviani (Feynman, 2011, etc.) teams up with illustration newcomer Wicks in this semifictionalized overview of the “Trimates,” three women primatologists championed by Louis Leakey.

The book opens with Goodall’s cozy first-person account of her childhood dreams of studying animals in Africa, her recruitment by Leakey, the establishment of her long-term chimpanzee study in Nigeria and her key discoveries regarding chimpanzee behavior. The narrative then shifts from Goodall to Leakey’s other protégées, Fossey and Galdikas, and their influential research on, respectively, gorillas and orangutans. Fossey and Galdikas also tell their own tales in distinct, often funny, voices. Wicks’ cheerful drawings complement the women’s stories by highlighting their humorous moments. However, the simplicity of Wicks’ rounded figures and flat backgrounds make the panels documenting primate behavior less effective than they could be. Another weakness is the text’s tendency to summarize when more scientific and biographical detail would be welcome. For example, the final chapter covers the later stages of the Trimates’ careers but only briefly addresses the circumstances surrounding Fossey’s death. Readers looking for more substantial biographies or science should seek out other sources after whetting their appetites here.

More story than study, the book provides an accessible introduction to Goodall’s, Fossey’s and Galdikas’ lives and work. (afterword, bibliography) (Graphic novel. 10-14) 108

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GRIM, GRUNT AND GRIZZLETAIL

Parnell, Fran Illus. by Fatus, Sophie Barefoot (48 pp.) $7.99 paper | May 1, 2013 978-1-84686-910-5 Series: Monster Stories, 6

A monster story from Chile, tailormade for new readers.

When the king tires of his three naughty daughters’ tricks, he turns them into oranges and stations a guard under the tree they hang from to keep them safe. When monsters Grim and Grunt hear about the orange princesses, they inveigle their youngest brother, Grizzle-Tail, into terrifying the guard and making off with the fruit one at a time. The king is left in despair after two of the oranges are thus captured. Servant Pedro steps up and offers to guard the final orange. When Grizzle-Tail comes back, Pedro pierces his skin as he grabs the orange and flies away, leaving a trail of blood.

Pedro follows the trail, Hansel-and-Gretel style, until he finds not only the first two (cowardly) guards, but the monsters’ land and the princesses, too. A dandy trickster tale on many levels, it offers monsters scary enough to chill the youngest readers without causing nightmares. With saturated acrylics and droll dialogue in speech bubbles, the illustrations both extend the text and keep the action zipping along.

Familiar fairy-tale motifs and folkloric repetition make this a solid choice for newly independent readers. (sources) (Folktale/early reader. 6-10)

RONA LONG-TEETH

Parnell, Fran Illus. by Fatus, Sophie Barefoot (48 pp.) $7.99 paper | May 1, 2013 978-1-84686-908-2 Series: Monster Stories, 5

A Tahitian tale of a monstrous mother.

Rona Long-Teeth loves her daughter, Hina, dearly. She keeps her skin moisturized, combs her hair until it shines like water and feeds her the best food so she will grow up strong and healthy. Though Rona cares for her daughter, she “[feels] nothing for the people on the island.” In the evenings, while Hina sleeps, Rona makes late-night visits to the huts in her village to eat the juiciest young humans.

Hina is completely unaware of her mother’s monstrous tendencies until she befriends a young man named Monoi, who falls in love with her and tells her the truth. Undertones of the Rapunzel story run deep here, but understatement is the order of the day.

“Hina had no idea that Rona Long-Teeth ate human beings. She was very upset.” This story, told in five chapters, gallops on to its stunning conclusion: Tricking the murdering mother, the village

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chief kills her before she can kill her own daughter. Vivid acrylic paintings and amusing speech bubbles unsuccessfully attempt to make light of the violence. The recurring theme of cannibalism and the image of the mother, with her huge, toothy mouth and fanglike beads on her shirt, about to eat her own daughter are a bit rough in a book for emerging readers.

Misses the mark for the intended audience. (sources) (Folktale/early reader. 6-10)

THE MIGHTY QUINN

Parnell, Robyn Illus. by DeYoe, Katie ; DeYoe, Aaron Scarletta Press (264 pp.) $10.95 paper | May 14, 2013 978-1-938063-10-7 A new classmate helps fifth-grader Quinn Andrews-Lee re-evaluate longtime friendships and stand up to a bully.

Neally Ray Standwell’s “cosmos green” eyes can see inside people, Quinn thinks. She recognizes that Matt Barker is a bully and a bigot and understands his schoolmates’ fears. When Matt trips her, she stays silent, but later in the term, when Matt claims that Quinn gave him a black eye, she figures out how to prove the truth.

For her first middle-grade novel, set in Hillsboro, Ore., where she lives, Parnell creates interesting child and adult characters and confronts them with serious issues, including child abuse, care for the environment, ethics and even skin color. Matt’s and Neally’s families demonstrate the contrast between values taken from religious beliefs and those coming from a sense of social justice. Quinn’s own parents don’t go to church. They willingly explain their reasoning to their son in one of a series of serious conversations adults have with children here, often humorously interrupted by the realities of family and school life. Some of what’s going on in this lengthy story may glide over child readers’ heads, in spite of discussion questions included at the end, but it will certainly provide food for thought.

It’s something of a soapbox, but it’s one of the few books for the audience that discusses the possibility of not practicing a religion. (Fiction. 9-12)

THE ORIGINALS

Patrick, Cat Little, Brown (304 pp.) $17.99 | May 7, 2013 978-0-316-21943-3 Can you really own your life if you have to share it with two other people?

Born together from the same birth mother, 17-year-olds Lizzie, Ella and Betsey should be triplets. They are not: They are clones of a baby simply known as the Original. When their geneticist birth mother’s lab came under |

scrutiny seven years ago, she whisked them away to start a new life in hiding. The cloned teens collectively become known as Elizabeth Best, with each girl allowed out of the house for a third of the day to spend time at school or evening classes.

Set in the present day, this science-fiction thriller is narrated in the present tense by Lizzie, who begins questioning her lack of freedom, especially when it comes to dating, and happens upon an uncanny look-alike on the Internet. As she risks more trips out of the house and a clandestine relationship with Sean, Lizzie discovers that her mother has some secrets of her own.

With Lizzie as ringleader, the sisters, each with distinct personalities, set out to uncover the truth about their past and pave new futures of their own. Although contrived elements of suspense keep the story from being as taut as the author’s previous novel, Forgotten (2011), readers will enjoy the quick pacing and speculating on science’s ethical dilemmas.

Provocative. (Science fiction. 13 & up)

ACES WILD

Perl, Erica S. Knopf (224 pp.) $15.99 | $10.99 e-book | $18.99 PLB Jun. 11, 2013 978-0-307-93172-6 978-0-307-97547-8 e-book 978-0-375-97104-4 PLB This companion to When Life Gives You O.J. (2011) returns to the tribulations of 11-year-old Zelda “Zelly” Fried, now spending her first winter living in Vermont.

In the first book, Zelly yearned for a dog. Well-meaning buttinsky Grandpa Ace, whose pronouncements, laced with Yiddish words and phrases, are rendered in large capitals, advised practicing with a plastic orange-juice jug. Now Zelly’s finally got her pet, also named Ace. Like Grandpa, the pooch is completely irrepressible. Zelly’s parents tell her the dog must pass his training course if she wants to throw a slumber party. This ordeal, along with having to deal with newly widowed Grandpa’s sudden enjoyment of female companionship, seems more than Zelly can handle. This novel is as mildly amusing as the first, and Zelly remains a likable girl with a realistic voice, though the parents (and other characters) are superficially drawn. Some may wonder why the onus of the dog’s perfect obedience is placed solely on Zelly’s shoulders, not to mention why a party must depend on it. More problematic: Even secular readers won’t buy that a Jewish family who observes every Hanukkah tradition doesn’t know exactly when the holiday begins. In addition, in “Zelly’s glossary” of Yiddish words, there’s no mention that a yarmulke (or kipa) is worn by males only.

For dog-loving readers who appreciate light entertainment and lots of capital letters. (dog-training tips, Yiddish glossary) (Fiction. 9-12)

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MAYA WAS GRUMPY

SCREWED

Pippin-Mathur, Courtney Illus. by Pippin-Mathur, Courtney Flashlight Press (32 pp.) $16.95 | May 1, 2013 978-1-9362611-3-0

Plissner, Laurie Merit Press (304 pp.) $17.95 | May 18, 2013 978-1-4405-5710-1

Although the title character is Maya, this story is actually about her clever grandmother, who tames both the grumpy child and her chaotic hair.

When Maya wakes up on the wrong side of the bed, she does not know why she is grumpy. “She was just in a crispy, cranky, grumpy, grouchy mood.” Not only that, her hair grows ever more unruly and invasive as Maya spreads her gloom throughout the house. With a smirk and a knowing eye, Gramma begins to untangle the moody mess. “Well then,” says Gramma, “I guess that means no hunting for hippos after breakfast.” Pippin-Mathur’s watercolor-and-ink illustrations capture all of the whimsical and wacky things grumpy people would never do, like bathing baby elephants and tickling tarantulas. With patience and imagination, Gramma’s humorous ideas slowly push away the blues, and Maya’s sweet disposition returns. Delightfully, Gramma keeps her promise, and readers find Maya and her twin brothers playing with hippos, crocodiles, elephants and even tarantulas.

Lighter than Alexander’s bad day and less emotional than Sophie’s, this is still a visual delight from a new author with a charismatic cast of characters. (Picture book. 4-8)

THE WATERMELON SEED

Pizzoli, Greg Illus. by Pizzoli, Greg Disney Hyperion (40 pp.) $16.99 | May 14, 2013 978-1-4231-7101-0

WITCH FIRE

A watermelon-loving crocodile worries over a swallowed seed in this balmy tale.

Juicy endpapers of watermelon pink draw readers into this playful tale about a crocodile and his favorite fruit. Oh, how this friendly little croc adores his watermelon. But when he accidentally eats a seed, it’s an emergency!

The silly reptile frantically envisions the consequences of growing a melon inside one’s belly, until his stomach responds. With a large belch, the seed is dislodged, and the croc happily swears off watermelon—until the next delectable slice. The illustrations, done in a graphic, flat-color style with simple linework, recall the cheerful stylings of Ed Emberley and Roger Hargreaves. While Pizzoli uses the computer to arrange his compositions, he takes extra care to hand print the pieces. Done in a three-color printing, the silk screen offers a toothiness to the page, giving fruit, animal and emotions more substance.

However, the ingenuity of Pizzoli’s work is in the making of the images, rather than in the story itself, which is about as substantial as, well, a piece of watermelon.

A humorous vignette with deliciously bright colors that leap from the page. (Picture book. 3-5) 110

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A pregnant teenager struggles with her choices.

Grace is an honor student, daughter of the founder of a group called Save Yourself for Marriage. Nick is a squarejawed jock whom no one expects to “go slumming” with a geek like Grace. A few minutes in the back seat of his car and a failed condom change everything.

Whisked away in the night by her horrified mother, Grace finds herself being examined by a doctor planning to perform an abortion. When she refuses, her hypocritical parents throw her out. Grace is rescued by the neighborhood yenta, a childless Holocaust survivor. Mrs. Teitelbaum offers Grace love, a home, post-baby college funds—and an understanding greatnephew, Charlie. Like a traipse through idealized, 1950s-style teen life, this cautionary tale uses every cliché of white suburban dating rituals and gender roles. It juxtaposes them with gritty dialogue, from “babydaddy” to Grace as “a place to park his junk,” that comes across as an awkward authorial attempt to simultaneously shock and be hip. Shifting points of view and characters rarely in the moment as they indulge in introspection make for a preachy, adult view of teen life that undermines any possible authenticity.

With few real consequences to anyone’s actions, it’s hard to tell who the intended audience is for this formulaic, ultimately unsatisfying novel. (Fiction. 12 & up)

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Powell, Laura Bloomsbury (336 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 4, 2013 978-1-6196-3006-2 In this largely successful sequel to Burn Mark, Lucas and Glory, trained in the use of their considerable fae powers to fight witchcrime, pose as students to investigate Wildings, an elite Swiss boarding school believed to have terrorist ties.

Each is restless, conflicted and awkwardly aware of their growing mutual attraction. Connected to a leading coven/crime family, Glory’s not entirely happy to be working for a government whose centuries-old Inquisition once terrorized witches and continues to marginalize them. Her tough working-class demeanor masks vulnerability and pain from her mother’s abandonment. Unlike Glory, reserved, upper-class Lucas considers his fae, which ended his father’s Inquisitorial career, more liability than gift. Remote and well-guarded, Wildings is where the rich and powerful discreetly park offspring who’ve developed fae powers. (One has ties to Glory’s family.) While Glory’s

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“Boy and birds alike sing with infectious joy in this loving tribute, and the 3-song CD that comes with it is a nifty bonus.” from sing!

risk-taking pushes Lucas out of his comfort zone, it advances their investigation, which leads to a South American country whose brutal government tolerates witchcraft. Immensely likable, Lucas and Glory are major assets, along with vivid settings and Powell’s wry political savvy. But explaining what’s gone before in this complex world slows the opening chapters (making the case for restoring synopses to series fiction). That duty discharged, the pace accelerates and the plot grips.

Smart, suspenseful and delicious. (Urban fantasy. 14 & up)

IT’S RAINING PUPS AND DOGS

Prevost, Jeanne Illus. by Hansen, Amelia Gryphon Press (24 pp.) $16.95 | May 14, 2013 978-0-940719-16-3

An understanding dad shows his daughter why it’s best for their dog not to have puppies in this well-meaning, earnest story about pet overpopulation.

Lauren is an African-American girl about 11 or 12 years old who desperately wants her young female dog to have at least one litter of puppies. Her parents don’t agree, so Lauren is alternately sad and angry when her dog returns from surgery after being spayed. Lauren’s wise father first tells his daughter about the high number of unwanted dogs and then shows her by taking her to a dog shelter. The shelter attendant shows them long rows of appealing dogs waiting for adoption, and Lauren asks to volunteer at the shelter to play with the dogs. The text includes several vague references to dogs that are unadoptable due to their difficult previous circumstances and to dogs staying at the shelter “all their short lives,” but euthanasia is not explained within the story. A concluding note intended for parents and other adults gives information about unwanted dogs, euthanasia and puppy mills as well as additional sources.

It’s a sensitive introduction to a difficult topic, but parents should be ready for difficult questions. (author’s note, additional sources) (Informational picture book. 6-9)

AN ARMY OF FROGS

Pryce, Trevor with Naftali, Joel Illus. by Greene, Sanford Amulet/Abrams (288 pp.) $15.95 | May 7, 2013 978-1-4197-0172-6 Series: Kulipari, 1

healer friend Coorah into imaginary adventures (and parental disapproval). But when the protective Veil around the Amphibilands weakens, spiders and scorpions unite, and Gee is kidnapped, Darel seizes the chance to prove himself, save his people and find the remaining Kulipari. Darel is reckless but easy to root for, particularly when he uses both wits and strength to rescue Gee. His opponents, the spider queen Jarrah and scorpion leaders Pigo and Marmoo are stereotypically villainous, with convenient fatal flaws. While the headstrong hero and action may entice readers, the material was more capably handled by the late Brian Jacques in his Redwall saga.

An illustrated character chart clarifies the abundance of players and rapidly shifting points of view, and plentiful illustrations depict the action sequences.

This little frog should find fans among readers of the Warriors and Redwall sagas. (Fantasy. 10 & up)

SING!

Raposo, Joe Illus. by Lichtenheld, Tom Christy Ottaviano/Henry Holt (40 pp.) $16.99 | May 28, 2013 978-0-8050-9071-0 The simplest and arguably best Sesame Street song serves as text to an almost equally elemental storyline in which music serves as the wind beneath a little bird’s wings.

Lichtenheld opens with a set of wordless spreads. In a nest on a branch suspended in space against a pale wash of blue, a fledgling sees its two sibs sing a note and fly away. Noteless, sad and alone, the bird sits—until a lad with a guitar (and early Bob Dylan hair) saunters into view, takes a seat down below and unself-consciously ripples out notes. These shatter the nest and send the bird soaring to join its sibs in a buoyant chorus.

Along with being strung out in short phrases to accompany the illustrations, the song’s words are recapped at the end—both in English and in a partial Spanish translation—with all the “La-lala-la-la”s added. The book closes with an image of the original manuscript with a note from the composer’s son. (A musical arrangement is absent, but it’s probably superfluous anyway, so well-known is this song.)

Boy and birds alike sing with infectious joy in this loving tribute, and the 3-song CD that comes with it is a nifty bonus. (Picture book. 3-5)

A young frog dreams of battle in this animal-adventure series opener.

Darel wants to be a Kulipari like his father, who died in the Hidingwar protecting the dreamcaster turtle king, Sergu, against the scorpion hordes. He diligently trains to be a warrior despite his wood-frog limitations, drawing his chubby sidekick Gee and |

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“Hits the gross-out sweet spot.” from toilet paper mummy

TOILET PAPER MUMMY

Rex, Michael Illus. by Rex, Michael Random House (128 pp.) $4.99 paper | $4.99 e-book $15.99 PLB | May 28, 2013 978-0-307-93167-2 978-0-307-97538-6 e-book 978-0-375-97010-3 PLB Series: Icky Ricky, 1

Readers with a soft spot for grossout humor will find plenty to keep them gagging in Rex’s latest novel (Fangbone! Third-Grade Barbarian, 2012) for the early-middle-grade set.

Told through a combination of vignettes about Ricky’s icky escapades and such “Time-Saving Tips” as how to turn toothpaste into a tasty sandwich spread, this novel is a fast-paced, enjoyable read—but not for the faint of heart. From earwax to booger bubbles to mango, french-fry and fish-stick soup, the ick-factor bar is set high. It is raised even higher by illustrations that capture Ricky in all his gross glory. And with the exception of one chapter in which Ricky stands up to the town bully, gross is what this book is all about. While there is nothing particularly new or clever about this series opener, Rex fans eager for another dose of his trademark brand of humor will walk away satisfied. Certainly there are young girls who might get a kick out of the image of Ricky turning in homework on a piece of cheese or crafting a bicycle helmet out of a watermelon, but the antics of the predominantly male cast of characters will most likely appeal to young boys. The format of the novel, with its numerous illustrations and short chapters, also makes it a good bet for reluctant readers.

Hits the gross-out sweet spot. (Fiction. 8-12)

THE BARK IN SPACE

Robbins, Trina Illus. by Page, Tyler Graphic Universe (64 pp.) $6.95 paper | $21.95 e-book $29.27 PLB | May 1, 2013 978-1-4677-0725-1 978-1-4677-0972-9 e-book 978-0-7613-8166-2 PLB Series: Chicagoland Detective Agency, 5 There are hundreds of stories about talking dogs, but if this graphic novel is any indication, every book would be better with a dog in it.

The math is simple: A Google search for “dog” brings up 1,430,000,000 results. So Raf ’s newest invention ought to be an instant success. It’s a dog-to-human translator. The only problem is, dogs don’t have much to say. Even Raf ’s (alien) canine friend Bradley, who happens to speak English, says: “…much as I love my Earth doggie buddies, I gotta admit that, unlike me…they’re kinda dim bulbs….” The storyline is busy, even for 112

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a Chicagoland Detective Agency comic. There’s a missing princess, a dog show, a mad scientist and a saucer full of dogs from the planet Fnarf III. The alien dogs get the best lines, by way of Raf ’s iDog2 translator, including: “Human person, can you throw the flying saucer of playing fetch?” The art looks a bit more rushed than in previous volumes, but this is still one of the most inventive stories in a consistently innovative series. And even human beings will sympathize when the Fnarfian Princess Zu-La says, “Earth people are nice enough, but not very smart… none of them understands me.”

“Relax and enjoy,” counsels Bradley. “It’s like a carnival ride.” (Graphic mystery. 8-12)

TRIBAL JOURNEY

Robinson, Gary 7th Generation (120 pp.) $9.95 paper | May 1, 2013 978-1-939053-01-5 Helping to carve and then paddle a traditional canoe brings a disabled Seattle teenager back to his Salish roots.

Paralyzed in one leg after a traffic accident (both he and the other driver were texting), Jason is gradually drawn out of his depression. This is effected first by the healer his Duwamish mother brings in, who tells him, “Your soul has been very far away from your body. I called it to come back to be with you again.” Following this, he is invited to join in the creation of a cedar dugout for the annual gathering of Coast Salish tribes. Ugly early scenes with Jason’s abusive German-American father—“A lot of people think all Indians are alcoholics. Not in my family”—seem shoehorned in, but they are mitigated later on. Jason’s experiences in the canoe’s ceremony-rich carving, naming and challenging 200-mile journey to Cowichan Bay on Vancouver Island take center stage to spark both his acceptance of a place in the Native American community and his resolve to walk again.

An uncomplicated tale of mirrored inner and outer journeys, welcome for its look at Native American characters in a modern context. (Fiction. 10-16)

THUNDER ON THE PLAINS

Robinson, Gary 7th Generation (128 pp.) $9.95 paper | May 1, 2013 978-1-939053-00-8

An unhappy “urban skin” from Los Angeles reclaims his Cheyenne heritage in the course of an adventurous summer with relatives on the reservation.

Saddled at home with a stepfather and at school with both a hostile principal and a bully who calls him “Tonto” and “redskin,” Daniel

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Wind is relieved to be sent off to a summer wilderness-survival camp in Montana run by his uncle. Though he is pleased to discover that the reservation has television and Internet access, he absorbs traditional values and culture from his grandfather as he makes friends, learns to ride and comes to appreciate the Big Sky Country’s beauties. Ultimately, he uses both digital and organizational skills to head up a rescue of buffalo (“Buffalo People,” as his grandfather calls them) slated for culling from the Yellowstone Park herd. That 200-mile bison drive passes in just a few paragraphs, though. Unfortunately, Robinson devotes more attention to spiritual homilies (“Our special gift is knowing that all things on this earth are related”), a simplistic explanation of white prejudice against Native Americans and the formal naming ceremony that Daniel earns with his “rite of passage.”

The agenda riding this unvarnished tale may leave young readers who aren’t Native Americans feeling like they’re on the outside looking in—not necessarily a bad thing, considering the vast quantity of books that do the opposite. (Fiction. 10-16)

SUPER HAIR-O AND THE BARBER OF DOOM

Rocco, John Illus. by Rocco, John Disney Hyperion (32 pp.) $16.99 | May 21, 2013 978-1-4231-2189-3

SOMEONE’S SLEEPY

Rose, Deborah Lee Illus. by Andreasen, Dan Abrams (32 pp.) $16.95 | May 7, 2013 978-1-4197-0539-7

A quiet rhyme follows a little girl through her nighttime routine.

The yawns begin on the very first page and are contagious. A little girl, her puppy, a toy and even the picture on the wall all have their mouths stretched wide open: “Stardust sky and silver moon / Someone’s sleepy / Bedtime soon.” She takes a bath, puts on her pajamas, brushes her teeth and gets tucked in tight. The lulling text highlights different parts of the body, prompting parents to gently touch each part (maybe even with a kiss) during sweet bedtime read-alouds. “Sleepy shoulders / Sleepy knees / Sleepy through-thewindow breeze. // Sleepy teeth and sleepy lips / Sleepy toes and fingertips.” Warm jewel tones and cozy crosshatching, along with heavy lids and those oh-so-realistic yawns, give Andreasen’s illustrations a comfort just right for bedtime.

There will never be a magic book that puts every child to sleep, but this hushed cadence is certain to soothe. (Picture book. 2-5)

I SCREAM ICE SCREAM! A Book of Wordles

A young superhero falls prey to a Samson complex.

Young narrator Rocco, with his frothy mass of curls, is a comic-book fan and, of course, the superhero of his own stories—along with three equally long-haired sidekicks. But when he is hauled off to a scissors-wielding, nearly bald barber, he’s afraid that his superpowers have been compromised. Will a viny plant or maybe a mop head restore them? But his friends all sport new, short haircuts, too, and all the boys feel quite weak until a younger girl needs help: superheroes to the rescue. Artist Rocco’s children are cheerfully compact and kinetic. In a just-right nod to comic-book conventions, the trip to the barber and subsequent illustrations of the boys without superpowers are rendered in grayscale, while the superhero moments take place in colorful, warm hues on a background of comic-book–like Ben-Day dots. Little Rocco’s powers, and those of his friends, don’t exceed reality: jumping homemade ramps on a bike—check; flying by skateboard over (toy) cars and trains—check; leaping from a tall stepladder into a baby pool— uh, no, as the child’s look of dismay indicates. The little girl who creates an occasion for the boys to return to their superhero roles has a wise look of her own—superpowers of observation, perhaps—and may well end up as a sidekick herself.

This won’t answer those many preschool requests for superhero stories, but it does offer a go-with-the-flow bit of imaginative silliness. (Picture book. 3-6)

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Rosenthal, Amy Krouse Illus. by Bloch, Serge Chronicle (40 pp.) $16.99 | May 1, 2013 978-1-4521-0004-3

This playful collection of 14 ingeniously illustrated “wordles” introduces readers to homophones.

Opening with a definition of wordles as “groups of words that sound exactly the same but mean different things,” the text immediately offers examples “I scream/ice cream” and “heroes/he rows.”

Commencing the game, it challenges readers to guess the second wordle of each subsequent pair before turning the page. Guessing “rain, dear” for “reindeer” may be obvious, but other wordles prove more challenging. Guessing “icy” for “I see” is not a stretch, but a second option of “Aye, sea!” may be, without the visual context of a pirate ship. Indeed, the zany, clever multimedia illustrations, with their deceptively childlike figures drawn in stark, black outlines, create a humorous visual context for each wordle, spinning surprising links between verbal juxtapositions. “A family affair” is visually represented by a line of people wearing assorted headgear.

Its wordle, “a family of hair,” is visually cued with the same line of people raising their chapeaux to reveal wild hair. Likewise, the illustration for “princess cape” of a creepy princess in a cape trying to kiss a knight tied up in yarn is followed by the wordle “prince escape,” showing the foiled princess throwing up her arms as the knight’s foot disappears through a door.

Witty wordplay guaranteed to tease and tickle. (Picture book. 5 & up)

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THE CAGED GRAVES

Salerni, Dianne K. Clarion (336 pp.) $16.99 | May 14, 2013 978-0-547-86853-0

When an inquisitive teen returns to her birthplace to meet her fiance, she uncovers a bizarre mystery surrounding her mother’s grave, unleashing disturbing buried secrets.

Since her mother’s death, 17-year-old Verity Boone has lived happily with her aunt in Worcester, Mass.

She returns to Catawissa, Penn., in 1867 to meet Nate McClure, the farmer who successfully wooed her with his letters. Verity’s initially disappointed and wonders if Nate’s really more interested in her father’s farm. Compared to the dashing local doctor who barely hides his attraction to Verity, Nate seems dull, even though locals openly resent her for winning the eligible bachelor. As she sorts through her true feelings for Nate, Verity’s shocked to discover her mother and aunt buried outside the town cemetery in graves enclosed in metal cages. Why were her mother and aunt ostracized in death? Was it to protect them from body snatchers or grave robbers? Were they suspected of witchcraft? Determined to find the truth, Verity investigates, exposing community prejudices and twisted family secrets that lead her to a perilous confrontation and stunning revelations.

Salerni grounds her story in local Revolutionary War lore, creates a spirited heroine with enough self-reflection to feel convincing and crafts a suspenseful plot that skirts sensationalism.

This unusual romantic mystery stands out. (author’s note) (Historical fiction. 12 & up)

MEMOIRS OF A HAMSTER

Scillian, Devin Illus. by Bowers, Tim Sleeping Bear Press (32 pp.) $15.99 | May 1, 2013 978-1-58536-831-0

A scary foray into the wide (indoor) world cures a hamster of any yen for adventure in this variation on the creators’ Memoirs of a Goldfish (2010).

Seymour the hamster is quite comfy in his pen, thank you— until lured into engineering an ingenious escape by Pearl the cat’s teasing promises of a staircase made of sunflower seeds and a sunroom filled with yogurt drops. But Pearl turns out to be a “big, fat liar,” and Seymour’s adventure turns into a frantic flight not only from her, but also from Buck the dog and, most frightening of all, a roaring monster called a “Hoover.” The arrangement of Seymour’s chatty exposition into 14 “Nights” is a clear contrivance—he supposedly spends Nights 11, 12 and part of 13 cowering under the sofa before the watchful Pearl falls asleep and he can make a break—but the pacing is suitably breathless.

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bright-eyed pet who, though once susceptible to temptation, clearly enjoys the familiar comforts of wheel and water bottle— to which he is returned following a last-second rescue by his human yogurt-drop supplier, Little Girl.

“Question: Who’s the luckiest hamster in the world?

Answer: ME!” Readers will probably agree. (Picture book. 6-8)

CHILLAX

Scott, Jerry Illus. by Borgman, Jim HarperTeen (256 pp.) $9.99 paper | Jun. 1, 2013 978-0-06-222851-2 Series: Zits A hybrid graphic-and-prose novel starring Jeremy Duncan from the author and illustrator’s comic strip Zits covers welltrodden ground with charm and humor.

Jeremy and his good friend Hector have scored tickets to see rock gods Gingivitis in concert. Just one problem: Neither one has permission from his parents. And one more problem: Jeremy and Hector’s band mate Tim’s mom (aka T-Mom) has been diagnosed with cancer, and Tim will be spending the night of the concert donating bone marrow. Can Jeremy and Hector make it to the concert and bring back something meaningful for their pal Tim? Black-and-white cartoon-style drawings are interwoven seamlessly with the text. Sometimes the drawings illustrate events described in the prose, and other times action and dialogue unfold within comics panels. There’s nothing groundbreaking in the narrative’s frequent comic observations: Rock stars are eccentric; guys don’t talk about their feelings (though maybe they should). Nevertheless, the laid-back, standup-comedy–esque tone is good for plenty of chuckles (“Here’s a free tip: Hollering ‘Dude!’ at a rock concert is about as specific as hollering ‘Mom!’ at a water aerobics class”), and the resolution is warm while retaining a humorous edge.

Well-executed, clean fun with a heart. (Graphic-and-prose fiction. 12 & up)

LOST SLOTH

Seibold, J. Otto Illus. by Seibold, J. Otto McSweeney’s McMullens (32 pp.) $16.95 | Jun. 18, 2013 978-1-938073-35-9 A free shopping spree turns into a race against time—never a happy idea when you’re a sloth.

Too logy even to get to the phone before the answering machine kicks in, Sloth learns that he has only eight hours to claim his spree at the store. Can he make it? Being narcoleptic as well as slow-moving, his ensuing odyssey quickly turns hilariously suspenseful as Seibold urges readers to form a cheering

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“Smith deftly builds characters...and he laces meaning and poignantly real dialogue into uproariously funny scatological and hormonally charged humor....” from winger

section with lines printed in a different color—“Yay, Sloth! Let’s go, Sloth!” In the characteristically stylized illustrations, Sloth’s frozen, masklike features add a Buster Keaton–ish air to his frantic efforts. Having dragged his way down the street and into the park, where a hoped-for shortcut becomes a long detour/ nap, Sloth arrives in the nick of time on a stolen hang glider.

His spree turns out to be short but sweet, as he immediately rams his cart into a pile of pillows and passes out. The author cranks tongue further into cheek with witty side business, like a glimpse of an Occupy! camp in the park and, at the end, a oneperson pillow fight (“Yay, Sloth! You won!”).

Another clever, quirky outing. (Picture book. 6-8)

GAME ON

Seles, Monica with LaRosa, James Bloomsbury (272 pp.) $17.99 | $9.99 paper | May 7, 2013 978-1-59990-976-9 978-1-59990-901-1 paper Series: Academy, 1 Tennis champion Seles draws on her experience as a teen athlete to launch a series set in an exclusive sports academy.

Maya Hart, a working-class teen from Syracuse, finally gets the prize she has worked tirelessly to achieve: a place at the world’s premier sports-training academy.

Almost as soon as she arrives, though, she finds herself socially in over her head. There is a huge gulf between the scholarship students and the spoiled kids of privilege. All of the pluck Maya used to get to the Academy buckles when she runs afoul of the Academy’s star of tennis and endorsements, Nicole King. With the encouragement of her gutsy, punk-golfer roommate, she holds her ground, but she still needs the help of the owner’s son, Travis (and her biggest crush), to avoid expulsion. Despite her rocky start, it appears she and the upper echelon will bond, and she even moves into their storied “villa.” But Nicole has no plan to share her status. “There can only be one queen bee at the Academy. And it’s not you.” This is a series premise with a lot of potential: The world of high-stakes athletics and its impact on teens hungry to succeed is compelling. Unfortunately, there is not enough sports action to balance the “mean girls” intrigue.

Still, the premise will attract readers, and the cast of characters is varied and interesting enough to hold them.

(Fiction. 12 & up)

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WINGER

Smith, Andrew Simon & Schuster (448 pp.) $16.99 | May 14, 2013 978-1-4424-4492-8 A boarding school is the setting for life-changing experiences in this smart, wickedly funny work of realistic fiction from the author of The Marbury Lens (2010).

Self-proclaimed loser Ryan Dean is a 14-year-old junior at Pine Mountain, where he plays wing for the tightknit rugby team. In a magnificently frenetic first-person narration that includes clever short comics, charts and diagrams, he relates the story of the first few months of the school term as he’s forced to room with an intimidating senior on the restricted, euphemistic Opportunity Hall, due to transgressions from the previous year. He’s completely head over heels for Annie, an older classmate who insists she can’t be in love with him due to his age, and lives in fear of the “glacially unhot” teacher Mrs. Singer, who he’s certain is a witch responsible for cursing him with a “catastrophic injury to [his] penis,” among other ailments. He’s also navigating letting go of some old friends and becoming closer to one of his teammates, Joey, who’s gay. Smith deftly builds characters—readers will suddenly realize they’ve effortlessly fallen in love with them—and he laces meaning and poignantly real dialogue into uproariously funny scatological and hormonally charged humor, somehow creating a balance between the two that seems to intensify both extremes.

Bawdily comic but ultimately devastating, this is unforgettable. (Fiction. 14 & up)

MONSIEUR ALBERT RIDES TO GLORY

Smith, Peter Illus. by Graham, Bob Allen & Unwin (32 pp.) $16.99 | Jun. 1, 2013 978-1-74237-680-6

Framing a distant cousin to “The Tortoise and the Hare” in loosely sketched watercolors and delicious dactyls, Graham and his brother-in-law present an aging but game Parisian who quixotically enters a bicycle race to the Côte d’Azur.

Having impulsively lined up against hotshots like “handsome young François, surrounded by girls, / with a sneer on his lips and a shine on his curls,” 60-year-old Albert sets off on the grueling course and resolutely pedals on as others whiz by.

Having labored through days of rain and snow, he reaches the top of the mountain pass at last—in time to watch as a giant snowball plummets past, snatches up all the other cyclists and plunges into the sea far below. As the erstwhile entrants drag their way to shore, Albert “rides into Nice, / with an escorting bevy of mounted police. / A hug from a film star, a kiss from the mayor, / for Albert Larousse—cyclist extraordinaire!” The

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“Srinivasan follows her debut, Little Owl’s Night (2011), with a similarly striking rendition of the marine world in this no-place-like-home tale.” from octopus alone

verses’ clever rhymes and the handwritten-style typeface both complement Graham’s informal scenes of the balding, whitehaired gent plugging along or sitting at his ease with bread and wine as flocks of helmeted cyclists zoom past—and ultimately holding up a golden trophy in triumph. Bravo!

Slow and steady wins the race—though being tardy enough to miss the avalanche helps. (Picture book. 6-8)

OCTOPUS ALONE

Srinivasan, Divya Illus. by Srinivasan, Divya Viking (40 pp.) $16.99 | May 16, 2013 978-0-670-78515-5 Shy Octopus flees the sea horses who dance into her cozy cave, but the deeper ocean is lonely and a little scary, so she returns to her friends in the lively reef.

Srinivasan follows her debut, Little Owl’s Night (2011), with a similarly striking rendition of the marine world in this no-place-like-home tale. Her story opens with a cast of characters, reef inhabitants, that are identified on the end papers.

Readers will be able to point them out as Octopus makes the traditional picture-book journey on pages whose backgrounds range from varying shades of blue and green to the near-black of the ocean depths. With frames, full-page and double-page spreads and even a fold-out starring a whale, the artist varies her images to add interest and show the passage of time. In spite of eyelashes that defy the usual understanding of the differences between mammals and cephalopods and the anthropomorphic plot, this sweet story is relatively accurate in its depiction of octopus behavior and reef ecology. The octopus changes color to blend into her environment several times, squirts ink to hide and escape, and lurks in caves. There are predators and prey, but, appropriately for the intended audience, no one gets eaten.

A gentle, positive story set in a world far less scary than that of Pixar’s Nemo. (Picture book. 3-7)

THE SECRET OF WHALE ISLAND

Stilton, Thea Illus. by Stilton, Thea Papercutz (56 pp.) $9.99 | Apr. 30, 2013 978-1-59707-403-2 Series: Thea Stilton, 1 The first book in the graphic-novel spinoff of the Thea Stilton chapter books, themselves spinoffs of the Geronimo Stilton franchise.

It’s a new school year at Whale Island’s Mouseford Academy for the Thea Sisters (not actual siblings but a group of friends centered around Thea Stilton). Written for fans of the Thea Stilton series, the book assumes familiarity with the characters and skips introductions. Two traditions mark the start of 116

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a new year—the school dance, which yields a subplot about the girls trying to find dates, and the arrival of whales at the island.

But this year, a whale has broken the pattern by arriving early, swimming without the other whales and even attacking fishing boats. It’s up to the Thea Sisters to figure out why the whale is acting strangely and to solve the orca’s problem. The problem is connected to a celebrity cosmetics entrepreneur, a special guest to the school on account of her generous donation and her children’s enrollment as new students. The celebrity has an illegal, secret hobby—collecting sea life. Her hobby leads to a couple of footnotes with ocean-animal facts, though the story is more concerned with entertainment than education. The resolution comes far too easily in a short plot that is lacking in obstacles. Plot limitations notwithstanding, the colorful characters’ revealing body language and expressive faces keep even simple conversation scenes’ illustrations dynamic.

For Stilton readers who prioritize interpersonal relationships and friendship over mysteries and action. (Graphic fantasy. 7-10)

ICONS

Stohl, Margaret Little, Brown (448 pp.) $17.99 | May 7, 2013 978-0-316-20518-4 Humanity’s only hope against an alien occupation is a quartet of teens with emotion-based superpowers.

When the aliens landed on Earth, they cowed humanity into submission with the mass murder of several cities via an electromagnetic field generated by the alien Icons. Dol somehow survived and, under the care of the compassionate Padre, has developed a deep friendship with fellow vaguely superpowered teenager Ro. They hide from the Embassy that “oversees” Earth–alien relations by shipping humans off to work as slaves on mysterious, never-defined projects. On Dol’s 17th birthday, the Padre gives her a mysterious book explaining who and what the Icon Children are. Inexplicably, she decides not to read it; this is part of a pattern of clunky information-withholding that sits awkwardly and frustratingly alongside exposition. Embassy soldiers capture Dol, and after an encounter with a more-than-he-seems mercenary, they bring Dol and Ro to the Embassy where they endlessly bicker with fellow Icon Children Lucas (the Ambassador’s son) and silver-haired Tima. With all that squabbling, readers will feel like they are reading the same scene over and over again without the payoff of plot progression. Dol’s torn between best friend Ro and mysterious new Lucas, yielding a clichéd romantic storyline. Top-secret documents filed between chapters make the invasion and mystery of the Icon Children more interesting than Dol’s narration does.

Those without superhuman patience should pass. (Science fiction. 12 & up)

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CALL ME AMY

Strykowski, Marcia Luminis (180 pp.) $24.95 | $14.95 paper | $9.95 e-book May 15, 2013 978-1-935462-76-7 978-1-935462-75-0 paper 978-1-935462-77-4 e-book In a first-person voice that doesn’t always quite ring true, Amy describes the events of the spring in which she begins a transformation into young adulthood.

Eighth-grader Amy is growing up in a coastal Maine village in 1973; she is shy, unpopular and self-focused. In two gradually developing relationships, she is befriended by a spunky elderly woman, Miss Cogshell, known to many as “Old Coot,” and by Craig, the tough-guy son of an abusive, alcoholic single mother.

Craig is struggling in school and at home, so when he takes on care of an injured seal pup, he’s pushed to the brink and turns to Amy for help. Since it’s illegal to take in wildlife, the pair must keep “Pup” hidden while they raise him; Miss Cogshell becomes a willing participant, keeping the seal in her home while also gently reaching out to both unhappy teens. But Miss Cogshell is not well, and eventually the young pair must get their emotional support from each other, something they are at first unable to do. At times, Amy’s voice feels more authorial than authentic (“A rush of freedom outweighed the feel of coarse ground against my palms”), but debut author Strykowski gains competence as she progresses and lets Amy speak more clearly.

Well-drawn, sympathetic characters and the developing spark between Amy and Craig combine to create a pleasant, satisfying read. (Historical fiction. 10-14)

MY LIFE AS A CARTOONIST

Tashjian, Janet Illus. by Tashjian, Jake Christy Ottaviano/Henry Holt (272 pp.) $13.99 | May 28, 2013 978-0-8050-9609-5 Series: My Life as a…, 3 Cartoonist Derek grapples with a perplexing association between disability and bullying in this stand-alone sequel to My Life as a Book (2010) and My Life as a Stuntboy (2011).

Derek has two best friends at school and two beloved critters at home, including Frank, a capuchin monkey who’s practicing family life before training as a service animal. Frank’s the model for Derek’s comic, Super Frank. Drawing’s a fun challenge; reading’s a difficult chore, though the stick-figure cartoons with which Derek illustrates his vocabulary words enliven the margins. Each playful sketch portrays a word from the adjacent paragraph but in an amusingly different context— “ingenious” shows up as a cupcake machine. Derek’s life takes a |

turn for the worse when transfer-student Umberto targets him.

Umberto steals Derek’s cartoon ideas and makes him a “verbal punching bag.” The bullying arc is fairly standard, but the bully isn’t, at least physically: Umberto uses a wheelchair. On one hand, Tashjian creates a real anti-stereotype in this speedy wheeling boy who could (and would) easily crush Derek with a lacrosse stick if teachers weren’t around. However, after the boys bond, Derek’s funny narrative voice (“Frank’s fur is now covered in a helmet of peanut butter”) indulges in a few adultsounding, rose-colored disability clichés, saying that Umberto possesses “honesty and grace” and “inspires me.”

This entertaining read leaves some provoking questions unanswered—usefully. (Fiction. 9-12)

MERMAID IN CHELSEA CREEK

Tea, Michelle Illus. by Polan, Jason McSweeney’s (333 pp.) $20.00 | May 21, 2013 978-1-938073-36-6

An avant-garde author’s fantasy debut is exquisitely written but draining in its unrelenting ugliness.

Thirteen-year-old Sophie Swankowski dreams of leaving behind working-class poverty in dreary Chelsea, Mass., but for now seeks relief by deliberately inducing fainting spells. When her overstressed single mother finds out, Sophie is exiled for the summer to her grandmother’s business, the town dump. That’s when things start to get strange: A foulmouthed, hard-nosed mermaid appears in her dreams. A flock of pigeons falls in love with her. And a mysterious glass artist reveals that Sophie is destined to become an empathetic messiah, purifying humanity of hatred and despair. Tea’s prose is lush and hallucinatory, occasionally producing scenes of gorgeous wonder and tenderness, but mostly it serves to depict the rotten, filthy, toxic nastiness of Chelsea and its denizens. All the major characters—saintly, villainous or trapped in between—are female; the few men are both repulsive and ineffectual. Nearly half the narrative is a string of episodes in which the third-person perspective switches from character to character rapidly, evoking disgust and contempt rather than horror or pity. (The lumpy pen-and-ink illustrations don’t help.) The story only takes flight as Sophie finally learns more about her heritage (with fascinating allusions to Eastern European legends), while growing in compassion and magical strength—but the putrid corruption around her offers no possibilities for cathartic triumph or healing, just the ambiguous hope of escape.

The ornate literary style and grim themes make this read more like a story about adolescence for adults than one aimed at actual teens. (Magical realism. 12 & up)

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“Accessible for young readers, who may be drawn to it as they would a classic fable; perfect for mature readers and the classroom, where its layers of truth and meaning can be peeled back to be examined and discussed.” from pancho rabbit and the coyote

THE THREE LITTLE PIGS AND THE SOMEWHAT BAD WOLF

Teague, Mark Illus. by Teague, Mark Orchard (48 pp.) $16.99 | May 1, 2013 978-0-439-91501-4

The classic fairy tale gets an update with a subtle message about healthy eating and a happy ending for a hungry wolf.

When the owner of the farm decides to sell and move to Florida, he gives his three (anthropomorphized) pigs their pay and sends them on their way. The junk-food–loving brothers listen to their sister and reluctantly agree to buy building materials with their money…but straw and sticks are so cheap they have enough left for potato chips and “sody-pop.” Meanwhile, the sister works on her brick house and healthy garden. When a hungry wolf comes to town and is rebuffed at all its eating establishments, he takes his anger out on the brothers, who smell deliciously like pig and whose houses don’t stand a chance. But all his huffing and puffing at the sister’s house, combined with his hunger, makes him pass out. In an ending that may remind readers of Gail Carson Levine’s Betsy Who Cried Wolf, illustrated

by Scott Nash (2002), the pigs revive, feed and befriend him.

Teague’s oil paintings are marvelously detailed and brightly colored. His pigs are full of personality, and their human traits and accessories are sure to delight.

A fine addition to the fractured-fairy-tale shelf, though it does lack that certain something that made Eugene Trivizas’ The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig, illustrated

by Helen Oxenbury (1993), such a standout. (Picture book. 3-7)

THE LANGUAGE INSIDE

Thompson, Holly Delacorte (528 pp.) $17.99 | $10.99 e-book | $20.99 PLB May 14, 2013 978-0-385-73979-5 978-0-375-89835-8 e-book 978-0-385-90807-8 PLB In flowing free-verse poems, a 15-year-old white American girl who grew up in Japan recounts a kaleidoscope of devastations, recoveries and irreparable damage—ranging from the geopolitical to the personal.

Emma’s lived in Japan since infancy. When her family moves to Massachusetts for her mother’s breast-cancer treatment, Emma starts getting migraines. She hates “abandoning Japan” just months after the 2011 Tohoku earthquake/tsunami; she wants to continue helping her friend Madoka’s relatives shovel sludge from their drowned houses and wait for word of a missing aunt. Japan’s “endless stretches of mangled homes / the tangled mountains of debris / and all the broken towns and families” feel like Emma’s own. In Massachusetts, “I don’t know when to say 118

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what / I don’t know if something’s funny or not.” She writes a poem: “Lonely is / when the language outside / isn’t the language inside.” As Emma volunteers, helping a physically disabled adult write poetry, and meets a multigenerational Cambodian community with Khmer Rouge history, Thompson nimbly braids political tragedy, natural disaster, PTSD, connections among families, and a cautious, quiet romance into an elegant whole.

This is an artistic picture of devastation, fragility, bonds and choices; here’s hoping some Tohoku tsunami books from a Japanese perspective will join it. (poetry list, recommended resources) (Fiction. 14 & up)

PANCHO RABBIT AND THE COYOTE A Migrant’s Tale

Tonatiuh, Duncan Illus. by Tonatiuh, Duncan Abrams (32 pp.) $16.95 | May 7, 2013 978-1-4197-0583-0

A brilliant modern fable—eloquent, hopeful and heartrending—about a rabbit family whose members cross the border in search of a better life, and each other.

Drought forces Papá Rabbit to leave for the great carrot and lettuce fields of the north, hoping to make money for his family. Years pass, but when he doesn’t arrive home on the appointed day, his eldest son, Pancho Rabbit, sets out to find him. Heading north, he meets a coyote who promises a shortcut in return for food. At each step of their treacherous journey, the coyote demands more food in exchange for Pancho’s safe passage. The food finally all gone, Pancho is about to be consumed when Papá Rabbit rescues him. Reunited, Pancho learns all the money Papá saved for the family was stolen by a crow gang. Pancho guides them home, but happiness is short-lived, as the family must decide who will—and how to—return north if the rains still refuse to come. Textured earth tones are digitally collaged to create Pancho’s world, where the river’s darkness and desert’s sweltering heat are inescapable. Geometric shapes define the characters’ faces, making them reminiscent of Aztec stone carvings. But Tonatiuh’s great strength is in the text. No word is wasted, as each emotion is clearly and poignantly expressed.

The rabbits’ future is unknown, but their love and faith in each other sustains them through it all. Accessible for young readers, who may be drawn to it as they would a classic fable; perfect for mature readers and the classroom, where its layers of truth and meaning can be peeled back to be examined and discussed.

An incandescent, humane and terribly necessary addition to the immigrant-story shelf. (Picture book. 5-9)

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KAMIK An Inuit Puppy Story

illustrations enchant, the couplets do not. (Irritatingly, many are improperly punctuated as well as forced.)

Poor text makes skipping this zoo trip advisable. (Picture book. 3-6)

Uluadluak, Donald Illus. by Leng, Qin Inhabit Media (32 pp.) $10.95 paper | May 31, 2013 978-1-927095-11

PAPERBOY

An Inuit boy begins to understand his puppy with the help of his grandfather, an experienced sled-dog owner.

Jake is a boisterous, impatient little boy who is unsuccessfully trying to train his first puppy, who is just as ebullient and unruly as his owner. Jake brings his dog, Kamik, to his grandfather’s house, where the older man’s gentle, introspective stories about his own years of dog training help Jake to see his puppy in a new way. Jake’s grandfather shows his grandson that quiet bonding with the dog will help more than yelling or pulling at the dog. The grandfather speaks in a gentle, understated tone that is echoed in the softly shaded pen-and-ink illustrations and gray text in a type that evokes hand-printing. The sensitively told story is adapted from the recollections of an Inuit elder from the Canadian province of Nunavut, where the book was first published. For the U.S. market, readers would have appreciated an author’s note, a map showing the location and a pronunciation guide for the Inuit names and terms included in the text.

(For example, Grandfather’s name is Ataatasiaq.)

An intriguing, positive glimpse into Inuit traditional culture. (Picture book. 4-9)

HOW MUCH DOES THE GRAY IN THE ELEPHANT WEIGH?

van Lieshout, Elle; van Os, Erik Illus. by Hoogstad, Alice Lemniscaat USA (32 pp.) $17.95 | May 1, 2013 978-1-9359-5427-9

A visit to an unusual zoo sparks the imagination of an inquisitive little brown-skinned boy out with his white grandfather.

Boldly colored animals (and people) stand out in Hoogstad’s layered illustrations, which carry much of the book’s meaning.

Each two-page spread (there are 12 in all) is quite busy, with fine, colored lines delineating environments on a predominantly white background. The boy and his grandfather walk through the gates of the zoo, and an array of colorful animals is there to greet them.

The little boy wonders about animal spots and stripes; the background changes to place him and grandpa in an artist’s studio, where painters put spots on the giraffes and stripes on the zebras.

An eye doctor’s office is the setting for two bright peacocks that are having the eyes in their tails examined. The ice blue polar bear stands among many tables of outdoor diners: “And when they’re faced with summer’s heat, / do polar bears eat summer treats?” Additional small pictures that suit the theme run around the perimeters of some pages, and the humans pictured are of many genders and ethnicities. But where the book’s design and |

Vawter, Vince Delacorte (256 pp.) $16.99 | $10.99 e-book | $19.99 PLB May 14, 2013 978-0-385-74244-3 978-0-307-97505-8 e-book 978-0-375-99058-8 PLB Little Man, whose real name isn’t revealed until the conclusion, stutters badly, a situation that presents new difficulties now that he’s taken over his friend’s paper route for a month.

Debut author Vawter depicts a harshly segregated 1959 Memphis, and since the tale is highly autobiographical, he captures a full and realistic flavor of the time. Little Man, as he’s called by his brave, black live-in housekeeper, Mam, has a few less-than-effective strategies that he employs to control his stutter, but it dominates his life nonetheless. Along the paper route, he encounters three fully rounded characters who make their mark on the story: Mrs. Worthington, a young, attractive and abused wife who drinks too much and awakens in Little Man a new, albeit very safe, interest in the opposite sex; Mr. Spiro, a widely read retired seaman who offers Little Man heartfelt advice and insightful support; and scary junkman Ara T, who steals Little Man’s knife and evolves into a looming threat both to the boy and Mam. Carefully crafted language, authenticity of setting and quirky characters that ring fully true all combine to make this a worthwhile read. Although Little Man’s stutter holds up dialogue, that annoyance also powerfully reflects its stultifying impact on his life.

An engaging and heartfelt presentation that never whitewashes the difficult time and situation as Little Man comes of age. (Historical fiction. 10-14)

THE SPIES OF GERANDER

Watts, Frances Illus. by Francis, David Running Press Kids (336 pp.) $12.95 | May 1, 2013 978-0-7624-4658-2 Series: Song of the Winns, 2

Four stalwart mice return in this second book of The Song of the Winns, risking their lives as spies to help liberate Gerander from oppressive neighboring Souris.

In The Secret of the Ginger Mice (2012), triplets Alex, Alice and Alistair and their friend, Tibby Rose, discovered their Gerandan roots and Free and Independent Gerander, a resistance

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organization dedicated to restoring Gerander’s independence.

The triplets also learned their missing parents were FIG operatives, imprisoned on Atticus Island. Arriving at FIG headquarters, the four mice receive dangerous undercover assignments.

Alistair and Tibby Rose must find a network of ancient tunnels in northern Gerander near the source of the Winns River and, they hope, rescue Alistair’s parents. Meanwhile, Alex and Alice will pose as Sourian servants to infiltrate the palace in Gerander’s capital city and gather information useful to FIG. Both pairs use their wits and bravado to survive serial perils, only to find that someone in FIG has betrayed them. A breathless plot alternates between Alistair and Tibby Rose’s quest and Alex and Alice’s spy activities, carrying the resilient, endearing mice to a surprise ending and ensuring their key role in the future fight to save Gerander. Delicate pen-and-ink spot art memorializes chapter details.

An animated sequel that does not disappoint. (map) (Animal fantasy. 8-12)

THE SHORT SELLER

Weissman, Elissa Brent Atheneum (256 pp.) $15.99 | May 7, 2013 978-1-4424-5255-8

A seventh-grader plays the stock market.

Lindy isn’t ready for her math test, and coming down with mononucleosis is one way to get out of going to school.

In the month that Lindy’s home sick, her father gives her $100 to play with on his stock-trading site.

Though Lindy thinks of herself as “dense at math,” she is more than able to pick up the concepts when they have a practical use.

Aided by the book Buying Stock for Dummies, Lindy immerses herself in the stock market. Her rate of return on her $100 is excellent, so it’s completely safe to dip into her parents’ capital, right? But the stock market is more volatile than Lindy realizes—and so are junior high friendships. While she’s been home focusing on the NASDAQ, her friends have formed new relationships without her. Lindy’s enthusiasm is infectious but sometimes impenetrable. The mathematical and functional aspects of selling stock are explained fairly clearly, but the social aspects of finance, from CNBC to the Wall Street Journal, from television analysts to certified financial advisors, lack explication.

While the slow start and trappings of finance culture will deter some readers, those who are drawn in by Lindy’s passion and the fun math puzzles will be rewarded by a startlingly suspenseful conclusion, with far more at stake than mere classroom drama. (Fiction. 11-12)

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YOKO FINDS HER WAY

Wells, Rosemary Illus. by Wells, Rosemary Disney Hyperion (32 pp.) $16.99 | May 7, 2013 978-1-4231-6512-5

Yoko and her kimono-clad mother have an adventure at the airport at the beginning of their trip to Japan.

The security process exhausts Mama, who falls asleep at the gate, so Yoko goes by herself to the restroom. But when she exits by a different door, she and her mother have some difficulty in finding each other again. Though each runs afoul of the basic principle of search and rescue—stay put—the glitch offers Yoko, and by extension young readers, an opportunity to be independent and resourceful. Yoko finds her way to the airport police, while her mother enlists the reassurance of several helpful workers, and they are comfortably reunited. For some reason, everyone in this airport, unlike at Yoko’s school, is a cat—maybe to minimize the scariness of crowds of strangers?

Icons for everything (food, stairs, elevators, terminals, airport police) give readers a chance to note details and to be observant along with Yoko as she figures out what to do. A successful conclusion for the trip and perhaps a recounting to grandmother of the adventure must wait for another book. The rich presentation, from endearing illustration to paper and design to color and touches of gold and silver, celebrates the experience of reading a book; that the story is told in both words and symbols allows young listeners to follow along in complex ways.

A terrific book to share with children preparing for their first flights as well as Yoko’s fans. (Picture book. 3-7)

THAT IS NOT A GOOD IDEA!

Willems, Mo Illus. by Willems, Mo Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins (48 pp.) $17.99 | May 1, 2013 978-0-06-220309-0 A new offering of guaranteed laughs from three-time Caldecott-honoree Willems.

From the cover to the cast credits to the title page, the story presents itself as a movie in book form, observed not only by readers, but by a gaggle of excitable goslings. The action begins when a dapper fox and a plump goose meet—successfully establishing the field of a traditional tale. Dialogue between the characters, showcased as ornately framed white text against a page-filling black background, harkens back to the design of silent films. Double-page spreads picture an increasing number of goslings gazing out at readers and admonishing, “That is NOT a good idea!” as the wide-eyed goose follows the fox from the city to his home in the woods. The goslings’ antics grow progressively frantic—and hilarious—as their warnings increase in intensity. The climax proves that appearances can be deceiving, as the anticipated conclusion is turned on its head. Using

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“The suspension-of-disbelief Kool-Aid [Yancey] serves goes down so easy that every piece of the story—no matter how outlandish—makes perfect sense.” from the 5th wave

signature bold lines, Willems’ illustrations are as satisfyingly expressive and comic as his previous work featuring fowl (his pigeon makes a cameo appearance here, though not an obvious one). Exceptionally observant readers may anticipate the twist, but that won’t spoil the enjoyment of this fun-loving fractured fable. Minimal text makes this book ideal for read-alouds and discussions of fable and fairy-tale motifs.

Pure glee. (Picture book. 3-8)

THE ENDURING ARK

Wolf, Gita Illus. by Chitrakar, Joydeb Tara Publishing (34 pp.) $21.95 | May 14, 2013 978-93-80340-18-0

A fresh take on an enduring tale retells the story of Noah and Na’mah and the great flood.

The book’s innovative accordion design illustrated in the Bengal Patua style of scroll painting is just one of the sumptuous design elements that distinguish it as a remarkable offering. A slipcase decorated with the eponymous ark adrift on swirling blue ocean waters covers the hardcover; when it is revealed, it shows pairs of animals, two by two aboard the vessel. The first pages invite readers to open up the spreads side by side so they unfurl into a continuous piece of art, first showing a great eye looking down upon verdant landscape. Omniscient opening narration acknowledges the story’s ancient origins and says, “great tales deserve to be repeated—and so let me tell it here again, in my way.” The familiar tale progresses and refreshingly gives an equal role to Na’mah as she and Noah hear God’s warning, build the ark and gather animal pairs to board it. Once the world floods, the art unfolds in the opposite direction, neatly bisecting the story into ante- and postdiluvian parts. A curious artistic decision shows the people not saved by the ark smiling as they succumb to the flood waters, but all other illustrations, including the culminating vision of the rainbow, are sublime.

A gorgeous re-envisioning of an old, old story. (Picture book/art book. 3 & up)

THE 5TH WAVE

Yancey, Rick Putnam (480 pp.) $18.99 | May 7, 2013 978-0-399-16241-1

The challenge? Surviving the genocide of the human race when aliens attack Earth in the not-too-distant future.

Sixteen-year-old Cassie, her brother Sam and her dad survived the first four gruesome waves of the attack. Together, the three wait out the titular fifth in a military base for survivors |

until school buses arrive to take all children to safety, including her brother Sam. Cassie, her dad and the rest of the adults are then divested of their weapons and marched into a bunker by their protectors. Cassie escapes, only to see her dad (and everyone else) brutally executed by their so-called protectors. She then embarks on a mission to rescue her brother. As in his previous efforts (The Monstrumologist, 2009, etc.), Yancey excels in creating an alternative world informed by just enough logic and sociology to make it feel close enough to our own. The suspension-of-disbelief Kool-Aid he serves goes down so easy that every piece of the story—no matter how outlandish—makes perfect sense. The 500-plus-page novel surges forward full throttle with an intense, alarming tone full of danger, deceit and a touch of romance. The plot flips back and forth with so much action and so many expert twists that readers will constantly question whom they can trust and whom they can’t. Best of all, everything feels totally real, and that makes it all the more riveting.

Nothing short of amazing. (Science fiction. 14 & up)

A FUNNY LITTLE BIRD

Yerkes, Jennifer Illus. by Yerkes, Jennifer Sourcebooks Jabberwocky (48 pp.) $15.99 | May 1, 2013 978-1-40228-013-9 The funny little white bird is almost invisible against his white background, unnoticed and, consequently, sad.

He discovers that by gathering materials from his surroundings—feathers, leaves, stalks, flowers—he can make himself look more like an ordinary bird and also become visible. Unfortunately, this can also draw unwanted attention from predators.

Strutting along proudly with his newfound accoutrements, he is immediately noticed by a fox, and he only escapes by hastily abandoning his treasures and becoming invisible again. After this experience, he discovers a virtue in his invisibility. He can hide himself and also protect other creatures from harm. The moral of this Aesopian tale, simply told, is that it is more rewarding to be a good friend than to show off. In a constant play with positive/negative space, the artist explores with gentle humor the meaning of identity, both visual and metaphorical. Until he learns to use his surroundings appropriately, the bird is defined only by his environment. Once he understands the ways of the world, he can create his own identity. A flat, decorative style, delicate brushwork and a light, controlled palette in refreshing, springlike colors characterize Yerkes’ illustrations.

This highly original and thought-provoking picture book will appeal to the peek-a-boo sensibilities of the youngest readers and also have aesthetic appeal for parents.

(Picture book. 2-5)

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“What makes Lucy’s story especially appealing is the very realistic way this ‘entitled brat’ (as grandfather called her) acts out as she experiments with new identities.” from the lucy variations

MATILDA AND HANS

Yokococo Illus. by Yokococo Templar/Candlewick (32 pp.) $16.99 | May 14, 2013 978-0-7636-6434-3 First published in the U.K. in 2012 as Hans and Matilda, this quirky import combines minimal text, an odd twist and charmingly childlike pictures to create a brief (a)morality tale.

Matilda, an anthropomorphic cream-colored cat dressed in a red-and-white polka-dot dress leads a blameless, if somewhat boring, life. Hans, meanwhile, is also cream-colored, though he sports black whiskers. Unlike Matilda, Hans lives to misbehave.

While Matilda spends her days reading, gardening and tidying, Hans plays tricks and commits vandalism. When Matilda sees a wanted poster promising a big reward, she decides to turn Hans in. Whether she earns the reward is not revealed, but her behavior and Hans’ certainly change as a result of her decision.

Yokococo uses short, simple sentences to convey the action.

Her mixed-media–and-watercolor illustrations have clean lines and appear to mirror the simplicity of the text. Closer examination, however, reveals that not only have a limited palette and matte paper been used for Hans’ adventures, but Matilda’s more colorful scenes appear to have been created on textured paper. This difference effectively prevents readers from predicting the plot twist while also emphasizing the cozy feel of Matilda’s environment.

Sophistication of illustrations aside, it is essentially a one-joke tale that will leave readers and listeners wondering what the point is—if any—yet still isn’t likely to stir up much real interest. (Picture book. 3-6)

PENGUIN ON VACATION

Yoon, Salina Illus. by Yoon, Salina Walker (40 pp.) $12.99 | May 1, 2013 978-0-8027-3397-9

This delightful companion to Penguin and Pinecone (2012) presents another parable of friendship, this time with an exotic tropical crab.

Penguin is tired of snow. Yearning for something exciting, he decides to head for a sandy beach. He packs his bag and floats north on an iceberg. But this new adventure isn’t quite what he expected. He can’t ski or sled or even skate on sand.

When a curious red crab sees Penguin’s distress, he asks, “Are you lost?” “No, I’m on vacation,” says the frustrated and bewildered bird. Crab takes Penguin under his claw and shows him the ropes. The joys of the beach become clear to Penguin with Crab’s friendship, as they play the sunny days away together.

All vacations come to an end, though, and it is soon time for Penguin to return home. But now Crab needs a vacation! The new friends switch roles, allowing Penguin to teach Crab all the 122

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wintry wonders of his previously boring home. With her signature thick lines, pure colors and scratchy textures, Yoon creates a beach backdrop to showcase Penguin’s tender personality.

When the book begins, perceptive readers might recognize a tinge of loneliness in Penguin, and they will see how having a friend makes even the familiar seem more exciting.

Lesson learned: The magic of friendship does not depend on where you are or what you are doing—it is about being together and learning from each other. (Picture book. 3-7)

THE LUCY VARIATIONS

Zarr, Sara Little, Brown (320 pp.) $17.99 | May 7, 2013 978-0-316-20501-6

Having publicly abandoned a promising piano career after her grandmother died while Lucy Beck-Moreau was a continent away preparing to perform, the 16-year-old struggles to figure out the place of music in her life apart from her

family’s expectations.

What makes Lucy’s story especially appealing is the very realistic way this “entitled brat” (as grandfather called her) acts out as she experiments with new identities. Prone to adolescent crushes, she obsesses about an English teacher, impulsively kisses a serviceman met in a candy shop and falls hard for her brother’s new piano teacher, Will Devi. Lucy is impressively privileged: Old family money makes it possible for her to wear expensive clothes and attend an exclusive school; the family housekeeper provides important support. She also hurts. As the book opens, eight months after the death of the grandmother she still misses, she’s futilely performing CPR on her brother’s former teacher, dead of a stroke in the middle of a piano lesson. The third-person narration focuses entirely on Lucy but allows readers enough distance to help them understand her behavior in ways Lucy cannot.

Occasional flashbacks fill out the back story.

The combination of sympathetic main character and unusual social and cultural world makes this satisfying coming-of-age story stand out. (Fiction. 12-18)

THE GARDEN OF MY IMAAN

Zia, Farhana Peachtree (236 pp.) $15.95 | May 1, 2013 978-1-56145-698-7

While inviting comparison to Judy Blume’s seminal Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, this likable tale of an Indian-American girl who fears drawing attention from those hostile toward Muslims focuses on the social consequences of religious identity, rather than faith itself.

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With Ramadan fast approaching, Sister Khan asks Aliya’s religion class to set Ramadan goals and write about what they learn. She expects Aliya to fast not just weekends but weekdays.

(Aliya’s loving, supportive family leaves the decision to her.) Like Margaret before her, Aliya pours out her worries and frets over her late puberty in letters to Allah. Her friend Amal has gotten her period and started covering her head. Asked to befriend a Moroccan girl at her public school who wears hijab and fasts during Ramadan, Aliya’s first annoyed, then intrigued at how Marwa finds a place for herself without sacrificing her religious principles. If the downside of open observance is clear to readers, the beliefs and intentions underlying these religious observances, especially hijab, are not. Hijab’s part of her, Marwa says vaguely. “I feel natural in it.” For Aliya’s mother, who doesn’t wear it, “hijab is a symbol of modesty—a good symbol but a figurative one.”

Omissions aside, Zia’s gentle message—that Muslims come from many cultures whose observances differ, while the long shadow of 9/11 hovers over all—is timely and beautifully conveyed. (Fiction. 8-12)

b o o k s f o r m o t h e r’s day & fat h e r’s day MY GRANDPA

Altés, Marta Illus. by Altés, Marta Abrams (32 pp.) $15.95 | Apr. 9, 2013 978-1-4197-0588-5 The relationship between grandfather and grandson is evocatively portrayed in this spare but powerful look at the warm interdependency of age and youth.

A bespectacled, light brown, mature bear walks with a cane against a stark white background. A bright red leaf—perhaps signaling the beginning of the autumn season or his time in life—swirls to the ground and briefly captures the bear’s attention before he focuses on a flock of small birds, some red and others brown. “My grandpa is getting old… // Sometimes he feels alone.” A page turn reveals a spunky candy red young bear bursting onto the scene to greet his relative: “But then I come along!” The birds take to the sky, and the duo begins their time together. The language has a gentle and comforting, back-andforth rhythm. “When he is with me, he smiles. / When I am with him, I can fly!” An especially humorous spread first shows Grandpa’s head buried in a newspaper and then turning up his nose at an offered spoonful from his grandson. “At times he behaves like an old man. / At times he’s like a child.” Although the elder has moments of struggle with his memory or getting lost, the young one comes to the rescue with a hug or a guiding hand. Altés employs an elegant restraint with the book’s design. |

The limited palette and broad expanse of white space allow the story to truly shine.

Even though titles about aging grandparents are many, this tale stands out for its stunning simplicity and avoidance of heavy-handed messages. (Picture book. 3-6)

SATURDAY WITH DADDY

Andreasen, Dan Illus. by Andreasen, Dan Henry Holt (24 pp.) $12.99 | May 14, 2013 978-0-8050-8687-4

This slice-of-life tale about a bright blue anthropomorphized elephant family is pleasant but fails to excite.

Saturday is the day that a perky young pachyderm spends with his dad. Clear but pedestrian language recounts each activity the two engage in throughout the day: “After breakfast we get dressed. Then Daddy and I hop in the car and head to Mr. Patel’s market. / We sing along to our favorite songs on the radio.” They get the supplies for a cookout, work together to build a grill, enjoy a meal in the backyard—even after spilling some lemonade—toss a Frisbee and finally “pile into the big hammock” for a nap. While Andreasen’s illustrations are cheery and vibrant, the text rarely succeeds in conveying the quiet joys father and child have as they go about their suburban activities.

Preschoolers will enjoy seeing the young elephant helping out and participating in some fun on every page—the pair is adorable in their matching orange aprons—but although well-intentioned, this title remains flat and forgettable. (Picture book. 3-6)

PLEASE, PAPA

Banks, Kate Illus. by Swiatkowska, Gabi Frances Foster/Farrar, Straus & Giroux (32 pp.) $16.99 | May 14, 2013 978-0-374-36002-3 Practicing politeness gets Alice almost everything she wants for her imaginary barnyard. Too bad the horse makes a request of his own.

Alice needs a lot of animals for the farm she’s building in her bedroom. “Mama, give me the pig,” she demands. Mama reminds her to say “please.” Each time Alice requests another animal, Mama teaches her to use her manners before handing her a toy animal that, the illustrations reveal, when placed in her daughter’s hands, becomes the real thing. When Alice needs a horse, though, Mama has none. But smart Alice is ready when her papa comes home. With the requisite “please,” Alice asks her dad to be the horse. They trot, neigh, gallop and race around the room. When she asks for the horse to jump, she does not like the answer: “No…this horse is tired.” Here, the spread’s background

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turns from a cheery blue-gray to a stormier hue as Alice sulks.

The dad, painted as a chalky white horse, asks to be given a rest.

Then he says, “Please, Alice….Please.” The page turn shows Alice relenting, giving Papa, no longer a horse but himself on all fours, a pat on his head. While the message delivered is a good one, the lush Victorian feel of the art may not appeal to the readers most likely to benefit most from this lesson. A companion title, Thank You, Mama (2013), was not available for review.

A lesson in manners for children with sophisticated visual palates. (Picture book. 4-6)

JUST LIKE MY PAPA Buzzeo, Toni Illus. by Wohnoutka, Mike Disney Hyperion (32 pp.) $16.99 | Apr. 2, 2013 978-1-4231-4263-8

Buzzeo and Wohnoutka (Stay Close to Mama, 2012) pair up again, this time taking a closer look at the loving dynamic between a lion and his mischievous cub on the African savanna.

Papa is “the protector and King” as he roars “a warning… across the plain.” Young Kito (Swahili for “precious gem”) wants to be just like his father; after all, someday he will also be king. Throughout the day he growls, dodges a laughing hyena, attempts to swat flies with “his little golden tail” and waits with instinctual anticipation as the lionesses target a wildebeest on an evening hunt. Always he is at his dad’s side. A playful spread set against all white shows Papa “with a swipe of his huge paw… send[ing] Kito flying through the air, like a stork gliding on the breeze.” A tender nighttime spread of Kito on his father’s back tells of him raking “his paw gently through his papa’s mane.”

Children and their parents will appreciate this intimate look at this wild feline pair. Although presented as a charming story about a specific lion cub, the descriptive facts provided about lion prides are accurate and later expanded upon in a note at the book’s end.

The warm and reassuring flow of the text and the dramatic painterly scenes of the African landscape come together for a likable tale just in time for Father’s Day. (Picture book. 3-6)

MAX AND THE TAG-ALONG MOON

Cooper, Floyd Illus. by Cooper, Floyd Philomel (32 pp.) $16.99 | Jun. 13, 2013 978-0-399-23342-5

After a visit, an African-American grandfather and grandson say farewell under a big yellow moon. Granpa tells Max it is the same moon he will see when he gets home.

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This gently told story uses Max’s fascination with the moon’s ability to “tag along” where his family’s car goes as a metaphor for his grandfather’s constant love. Separating the two relatives is “a swervy-curvy road” that travels up and down hills, over a bridge, “past a field of sleeping cows,” around a small town and through a tunnel. No matter where Max travels, the moon is always there, waiting around a curve or peeking through the trees. But then “[d]ark clouds tumbled across the night sky.” No stars, no nightingales and no moon are to be found. Max frets: “Granpa said it would always shine for me.” Disappointed, Max climbs into bed, missing both the moon and his granpa. In a dramatic double-page spread, readers see Max’s excitement as “[s]lowly, very slowly, Max’s bedroom began to fill with a soft yellow glow.” Cooper uses his signature style to illustrate both the landscape—sometimes viewed from the car windows or reflected in the vehicle’s mirror—and the expressive faces of his characters.

Coupled with the story’s lyrical text, this is a lovely mood piece.

A quiet, warm look at the bond between grandfather and grandson. (Picture book. 4-6)

I WANT MY MOMMY!

Corderoy, Tracey Illus. by Edgson, Alison Tiger Tales (32 pp.) $12.95 | Mar. 1, 2013 978-1-58925-130-4

Though he is distressed that his mother is going out for the whole day without him for the first time, Arthur and Grandma do their best to play through his bouts of moodiness and engage in some adventurous fun.

Small Arthur the mouse, dressed in a cozy, bright green dragon costume, is an adorable little fellow sure to instantly charm readers. Mommy takes him to Grandma’s house, where he is greeted with a big hug, “[b]ut soon it was time for Mommy to go.” Arthur “waved and waved until Mommy was gone.” Sympathetic Grandma suggests some activities. Paint a picture?

“Rargghh!” Make some dragon music? “OK!” Each time Arthur and Grandma get carried away with their imaginary games, the doorbell rings. And each time Arthur is disappointed when it is the letter carrier or a neighbor instead of his mother. Dedicated Grandma matches each moment of despair with an even better idea. From hiding treasure to protecting its hiding place from the tickling Grandma-Knight, Arthur is kept happily occupied. When the doorbell rings one more time, brave Arthur the dragon is ready to battle whoever dares to enter. What a surprise when it is Mommy! Corderoy and Edgson combine an engaging text with a variety of full-page and spot illustrations that capture exciting episodes of dramatic play—Grandma brandishing her feather duster as a sword is particularly impressive—and glimpses of fleeting emotion.

This winning tale with considerable child appeal will entertain young readers whether they suffer from a bit of separation anxiety or not. (Picture book. 3-6)

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“An urban setting with a calming palette complements the soothing, loving tone of Hughes’ poem celebrating an African-American mother and her baby.” from lullaby (for a black mother)

GIDDY-UP, DADDY!

of leaving some stones can end up having a significant impact.

When Hunter returns, only six stones are left. How these last several are used will engage readers curious and creative alike.

Unexpected gifts for both Grammy and Hunter are the results from George’s satisfying ending; the book is ideal for prompting discussions about ripple effects and the power of imagination. (Picture book. 5-8)

Cummings, Troy Illus. by Cummings, Troy Random House (40 pp.) $16.99 | $19.99 PLB | Apr. 23, 2013 978-0-307-97856-1 978-0-375-97129-7 PLB In this hilarious romp, a daddy must call upon his stellar horsing-around abilities to guarantee a good time be had by all.

“Once there was a dad who was really good at playing horsey.

Seriously, he was the best.” This first page of the book shows little brother and older sister perched on his back ready for adventure. One day, dad is outside practicing his jumps when a couple of sinister horse rustlers capture him. So begins the quest to find dad, rescue him and escape up north. Their journey takes them at a rapid pace to a rodeo, onto the tight rope in a circus tent, into the middle of a polo match, onto the racetrack during the Kentucky Derby and up the side of a Canadian mountain. During each part of their travels, Daddy makes sure to keep them safe since they are constantly just one step ahead of rustlers. With danger always lurking, the text has a lot of “but then”s spurring readers to quickly turn each page. Cummings dresses the thrilling tale with cartoony illustrations chock-full of zany details that kids will find appealing (but perhaps at times a bit frenetic). As one can guess, the kids save the day and their horsey daddy all in time for dinnertime at sunset.

For an unabashedly unsentimental laugh-out-loud tale that celebrates fathers’ loving, playful side—as well as their stamina—look no further. (Picture book. 3-7)

A SPECIAL GIFT FOR GRAMMY

George, Jean Craighead Illus. by Johnson, Steve; Fancher, Lou Harper/HarperCollins (32 pp.) $17.99 | May 1, 2013 978-0-06-053176-8

A bond built on love, understanding and trust between a grandmother and her grandson proves pleasantly surprising for all involved.

As the time approaches to say goodbye after a visit to Grammy, Hunter leaves a small stone pile on his grandmother’s front porch. When she asks him what she’s to do with it, he answers, “What everyone does with a pile of stones.” She responds wisely, “Of course.” A few days pass, and then various people in the community utilize a stone or two for a wide range of purposes. The mail carrier puts one on a pile of letters so they do not blow away, a neighbor marks her pets’ graves with a couple, a girl stacks them as a directional signal, the carpenter fashions a plumb line with one, a gardener improvises and uses one as a hammer, while a boy puts a few near the tires of his wagon “to keep it from rolling downhill.” Johnson and Fancher combine acrylic, pencil and collage to create finely textured spreads that zoom out to show the bigger picture of how one small act |

MY DAD THINKS HE’S FUNNY

Germein, Katrina Illus. by Jellett, Tom Candlewick (32 pp.) $14.99 | Apr. 9, 2013 978-0-7636-6522-7

Everyone knows that dad who constantly cracks jokes. Some are funny and some not so much.

Australian author Germein fashions this title out of a string of jokes, one-liners and wordplay. As with any audience of such antics, the narrator’s responses vary from a chuckle, laughing out loud or an eye-roll to utter confusion. Mixed-media illustrations by Jellett appear to utilize collage, adding texture and a do-it-yourself feel. The text has a loose structure. On just about every spread, the book’s title serves as a preamble to the series of jests. “My dad thinks he’s funny. When people say, ‘How are you feeling?’ Dad says, ‘With my hands.’ When people say, ‘Would you like sugar?’ Dad says, ‘I’m sweet enough.’ ” One of the more successful quips, sure to cause some giggles, is “when Dad says, ‘Time for a special announcement,’ we leave the room fast, before it really starts to smell.” Here, the picture’s perspective is from below, making the dad look ominous; on the lower right, his son attempts to flee. Overall, this is an amusing tribute to dads who like to yuck it up.

Share with readers with enough knowledge and sophistication to get the humor so the results are either guffaws or groans instead of blank stares. (Picture book. 5-8)

LULLABY (FOR A BLACK MOTHER)

Hughes, Langston Illus. by Qualls, Sean Harcourt (32 pp.) $16.99 | Mar. 19, 2013 978-0-547-36265-6

An urban setting with a calming palette complements the soothing, loving tone of Hughes’ poem celebrating an African-American mother and her baby.

The rhythmic language slowly unfolds with only a line or two per spread. Qualls’ illustrations in acrylic, pencil and collage extend the rich imagery of the text with fantastical qualities that young ones can appreciate. “A necklace of stars” shows mother swinging her baby through a sparkling, celestial, deep purple sky softened with rounded clouds in blues, pinks and grays. The white “[g]reat diamond moon” leads to the next

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“Wise preschoolers will relate to the young monster’s passionate reactions while eagerly poring over the gross yet silly details in the watercolor, gouache, pen and pencil illustrations.” from mommy ’s little monster

spread, in which mama and child, in a close-up silhouette, “[kiss] the night” amid a burst of stars and with a wavy line of musical notes. This “sleep-song lullaby” is ephemeral, as any sweet song is, but the just-the-right-length note at the end satisfyingly delivers biographical information about the famous poet, while a photo of Hughes as a baby with his mother and the poem’s full text provide further context. This appealing, quiet offering would serve as an appropriate introduction to poetry for new readers since the font is big and much of the vocabulary repeats.

Share with little ones needing a gentle lullaby. (note, further reading) (Picture book/poetry. 2-6)

MOMMY’S LITTLE MONSTER

McNiff, Dawn Illus. by Willis-Crowley, Kate Chicken House/Scholastic (32 pp.) $16.99 | Mar. 1, 2013 978-0-545-48057-4

Tiny Troll does all he can to keep his beloved mommy from going out and leaving him with a sitter.

McNiff ’s entertaining text convincingly conveys the mercurial wave of emotions a toddler troll experiences when his mother’s time and attention are about to be taken away. Whining at the announcement that she is attending a party “only for grown-ups” leads to his clinging to her as she paints her claws, waxes her tail and rubs “slime into her scales.” Once she is ready, “Tiny Troll took one look at his mommy and loved her so much he nearly popped!” But off she must go, and his adoration quickly turns to rejection and then a full-out temper tantrum that subsides into tears. Kindly Mrs. Hag coaxes him out of his despair with mugs of mudmilk and a good story. Soon, the redand-white-striped-pajama–clad monster succumbs to bedtime.

Wise preschoolers will relate to the young monster’s passionate reactions while eagerly poring over the gross yet silly details in the watercolor, gouache, pen and pencil illustrations. All ends well as Mommy wakes Tiny Troll with a kiss good night and a gift of his favorite treat—“a bag of rotten worms.”

The just-right blend of drama and humor—all from a juvenile troll’s point of view—results in a story sure to elicit giggles, delighted screams of “eww” and plenty of happyending “aww”s. (Picture book. 3-6)

MY MOM IS THE BEST CIRCUS

Powell, Luciana Navarro Illus. by Powell, Luciana Navarro Random House (26 pp.) $7.99 | Mar. 26, 2013 978-0-307-93143-6

of indeterminate gender. Mom is a working mother, and readers see her interacting with her little ones with boundless energy in the morning and in the evening when she returns home from work. She’s a juggler as she prepares breakfast, an animal tamer as she wrestles laundry into the washing machine and a “strongwoman” as she carries one kid under each arm. The format parallels the first book, with kinetic, cartoon images in muted colors of a happy, loving and playful family. While the father-as-playground analogy was successful and easy to relate to, the mother-as-circus concept may confuse little ones who are often not so familiar with the goings-on under the big top. The depiction of mom’s shadow flying on the trapeze is too subtle for the audience, and the cover illustration of mom happily juggling a hot cup of coffee is baffling and dangerous. On the final double-page spreads, readers learn that mom’s best act is the “sandman show,” a concept that may also require some explanation.

Fans of the first book may want to see mom in action, but as a solo act, this one just doesn’t fly. (Board book. 1-3)

SATURDAY IS DADURDAY

Pulver, Robin Illus. by Alley, R.W. Walker (40 pp.) $16.99 | May 14, 2013 978-0-8027-8691-3

Irrepressible Mimi and her father have named the day after Friday Dadurday. It is their special day to do everything together. But when Dad’s work schedule changes, their weekend tradition is in jeopardy.

Mop-haired Mimi loves Dadurday. She and her dad make silly-shaped pancakes and read the comics, and each writes a list of activities to do for the rest of the day. Ideas that appear on both lists set the schedule. They have fun going to the library, riding bikes, splashing in puddles and playing checkers. So Mimi is understandably upset with the news that her father will no longer be at home on Saturdays. Suddenly the day has become Madurday or Sadurday. Mother is sympathetic but busy caring for baby twins. When her frustration and bad mood become too much, Mimi explodes in an impressive tantrum that lasts for three pages. But after she calms down, the perfect idea comes to her. Sidewalk chalk, craft supplies and balloons come out.

Pancakes are made; party hats created. Dad is in for a happy surprise when he arrives. Pulver’s well-crafted story touches upon an all-too-common situation—parents’ work encroaching on family time. Alley combines watercolor, watercolor pencil, pen and ink to deftly portray Mimi as she grapples with her feelings about something beyond her control.

Readers will relate to her disappointment and cheer her on as she comes to her own creative solution. (Picture book. 4-7)

Mom gets to be the star in this follow-up to My Dad is the Best Playground (2012).

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OH, THE THINGS MY MOM WILL DO...

Because She Loves Me Through and Through

younger readers. But strangely, the mother comes off as a bit of a layabout and interacts very little with her child. Her activities include a bubble bath, reading in a comfy chair, coffee on the porch and lying in the hammock—in that order, which is also a bit odd—and culminate in a shared dessert with her little boy.

Certainly cute and good animal practice for little ones, but there’s just something off about this one. (Picture book. 3-6)

Richmond, Marianne Illus. by Richmond, Marianne Sourcebooks Jabberwocky (32 pp.) $16.99 | Apr. 1, 2013 978-1-4022-8233-1

It is said that mothers will do anything for their children.

In this humorous slip of a tale, readers see just how far moms often go.

Richmond writes at a rollicking pace with rhyming couplets that describe each silly situation this diverse cast of mothers experiences. First is a barefoot, nightgown-clad mom running after the school bus to deliver a lunchbox. Next comes a move worthy of a star running back as another mother scoops up her green-faced child and carries her off to the bathroom right before she really gets sick. From staying up all night to sewing a frog costume to retracing steps at seven places to find a lost bear, the refrain reminds “Oh, the things my mom will do…because she loves me through and through.” While the text moves smoothly from one hilarious but all-too-believable scenario to the next, it is the illustrations that truly impress. Apparently executed with watercolor and ink, the pictures have a childlike quality that ensures this has appeal for young readers and not just their parents. With pinprick eyes and u-shaped mouths, these mothers make the impossible happen…even if that means risking embarrassment, facing a fear or losing sleep.

Eschewing the usual saccharine odes to motherhood, this title should lead to laughter and some recognition for all the crazy things moms do out of love. (Picture book. 4-6)

WHAT NOT TO GIVE YOUR MOM ON MOTHER’S DAY

Simpson, Martha Illus. by Christy, Jana Amazon Children’s Publishing (24 pp.) $14.99 | Apr. 2, 2013 978-1-4778-1647-9 An adorable, rosy-cheeked blond boy decked out in overalls has some advice for readers about Mother’s Day gifts.

It’s really more nonadvice, as he freely tells readers what she won’t appreciate. “Do NOT give her a bucket of big, fat worms… / unless she is a bird.” Left-hand pages show the boy inappropriately gifting his mother, while right-hand pages show the appropriate animals enjoying the gifts: “Tweet, tweet! Plump, juicy worms!” A beat-up shoe is a poor gift choice…unless your mom is a dog. Save the dead flies for spider moms, the rotting log for a salamander and the block of salt for the deer. Cross sticks, a mound of termites, a mud puddle and mosquitoes off the shopping list. And as for what the pint-sized tyke does recommend?

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WHEN A DAD SAYS “I LOVE YOU”

Wood, Douglas Illus. by Bell, Jennifer A. Simon & Schuster (32 pp.) $16.99 | Apr. 23, 2013 978-0-689-87532-8

Wood produces a cozy, gently humorous title that features a multitude of cuddly father-and-child animal pairs showcasing the innumerable ways a dad can show his love.

Ideal for the younger set at Valentine’s Day, Father’s Day or any day at all, this title states what most kids know: that “[w]hen a dad says ‘I love you,’ he doesn’t always say it in the plain old ordinary way.” The extraordinary demonstrations of paternal love include actions that most children may take for granted. Making pancakes, “even if they’re a little bit…crispy,” racing around the yard, singing a song “for the three hundred and sixty-ninth time,” inventing silly nicknames, giving bikeriding lessons, answering questions “that start with ‘Why,’ ” sharing magic tricks and reading a good story are just some of the many examples. Bell’s digitally finished illustrations have a soft yet sketched quality that captures the warmth and fun as the creatures interact. The cast features bears, alligators, frogs, mice, zebras, foxes, pigs, cats and koalas, among others. In the end, as the youngster is being tucked in, the story circles back to the initial pair of bears. Here, “just to fool you, a dad might say… / ‘I love you.’ In the plain old ordinary way.”

This would be equally successful sharing one on one or with a group and may also be an engaging conversation starter about how actions often speak louder than words.

(Picture book. 3-6)

BECAUSE I’M YOUR DAD

Zappa, Ahmet Illus. by Santat, Dan Disney Hyperion (32 pp.) $15.99 | Apr. 16, 2013 978-1-4231-4774-9

Unabashed sentimentality dominates the text in this loving promise from a father to his child.

What saves this title from being just a syrupy pronouncement are the characters. Santat has good fun creating scenes for two hairy, horned monsters, the dad pickle green and the child a pleasing purple. The somewhat cuddly pair is comically shown

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participating in their less-than-ordinary activities like “having spaghetti for breakfast, French toast for dinner, and rocky road ice cream in the bathtub.” They play with robots, listen to really loud music, burp like champions and miss school to visit New York to share a hot dog. Readers will smile at the low-key humor in the pictures. The page stating, “Because I’m your dad, you can sometimes stay up late with me to watch TV” depicts the father asleep while the child sits on the sofa terrified by what is on the screen. Warm moments abound, as when little monster is rolled up by her father in a blanket like a burrito or when the dad checks the closet and under the bed for monsters. Zappa wrote this story for his daughter, and it overflows with genuine fatherly affection that he would like to pass on, since his father (avant-garde rocker Frank Zappa) did the same for him.

Funny though the illustrations are and loving though the text is, the book falls short due to lack of nuance. (Picture book. 2-5)

I LOVE EWE An Ode to Animal Moms

Zenz, Aaron Illus. by Zenz, Aaron Walker (32 pp.) $12.99 | $13.89 PLB | Mar. 19, 2013 978-0-8027-2826-5 978-0-8027-2827-2 PLB A breezy book aimed at young readers touches upon the unique terms for 27 animal mamas.

A smallish trim size and cutesy, close-up illustrations executed with Prismacolor pencils contribute to a feel that this book is aimed at the toddler and early-preschool set. Clipped, rhyming language poses questions that may surprise with their answers. The spread that queries, “did you know not all COWS moo?” shows seal, elephant, hippopotamus and rhinoceros mother-and-child pairs, since each of these animal mamas is referred to as a “cow.” A traditional-looking chicken and chick introduce the term “hen,” which a page turn reveals also happens to be used for a female octopus, crab and lobster. Some pages may confuse, since not every pair of creatures featured gets a mention in the text—“Mommy is the QUEEN of clean” focuses on a sunny yellow cat and her kitten, but in the near background is a nanny goat and her kid. While potentially useful for introducing new terminology on an ever-popular topic, the pictures have a mass-produced quality that fails to charm, and the final spread of the book is a lackluster stringing of puns: “There’s no other PEN [a female swan] pal like her! DOE…you love me? / Oh, I love EWE.” The best part of this slim title is the final page, which pictures all the animal mothers with their appropriate names. Consider only as an additional purchase. (Picture book. 2-5)

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HUG A BULL An Ode to Animal Dads

Zenz, Aaron Illus. by Zenz, Aaron Walker (32 pp.) $12.99 | $13.89 PLB | Apr. 2, 2013 978-0-8027-2824-1 978-0-8027-2825-8 PLB Zenz utilizes clever wordplay to introduce names for a menagerie of animal dads to the preschool crowd.

Although the text inserts a few silly puns, it mostly reads like an enthusiastically delivered list of terms for the 27 different male creatures that frolic, jump and cuddle with their youngsters. The text playfully cautions, “Brace yourself—my dad might RAM you” as a pair of sheep kick up their heels. Other pages show a bee and ant that “DRONE on” and feature words new to young readers’ ears such as TIERCEL, SILVERBACK and COB. They can even choose which BULL to adore most: a giraffe, walrus, moose or alligator. While the information presented will surprise and spark interest in further animal investigations, the illustrations in colored pencil feel mismatched and rather sweet given the content full of plays on words. As in the companion title, I Love Ewe (2013), the final page features pictures and terms for all of the animal papas found within.

While it’s useful for the wide range of animals covered, the disconnect between the occasionally sophisticated text and the slightly saccharine pictures ultimately compromises its success. (Picture book. 3-6)

interactive e-books SNOW QUEEN

Andersen, Hans Christian Illus. by Yerko, Vladyslav Timecode $3.99 | Dec. 12, 2012 1.00; Dec. 12, 2013 Sumptuously illustrated and enriched with some clever effects, this slightly dark tale should engage lovers of fairy tales as well as those looking for a good story.

This is a rich tale complete with an evil goblin, a beautiful queen and a dark, magic mirror that shatters and falls to earth, distorting the vision of everyone it touches. When young Kai is pierced by slivers of this mirror and subsequently kidnapped by the Snow Queen, his friend Gerda must find a way to save him. Some religious elements of Andersen’s full story are retained in this version but are downplayed from the original.

Backed with professional music and sound effects, the intricate, Bruegel-esque illustrations house many interactions, including minigames, puzzles, hidden objects and a coloring book.

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“This could have been a terrible, tasteless app, but the illustrations are so lovely, the narration and text so poker-faced and the extra features so clever that it works.” from the poppin princess

Readers can blow on the top of the screen to stoke the fire on one page and start a snow flurry on another. The app makes use of the iPad’s camera with a fun-house effect that reflects readers in the evil mirror. Children who look carefully will even find themselves reflected in the Snow Queen’s eyes. An animated mouse icon easily turns the professional narration on and off; the navigation bar at the bottom of each page allows users to adjust the volume, highlights the interactions and provides for page selection.

A solid adaptation, with a girl for a hero. (iPad storybook app. 6-12)

ALL FIXED UP

Bowen, M.C. Illus. by Franklin, Sara Jane Red Piggy Press $3.99 | Jan. 22, 2013 1.0; Jan. 22, 2013 A simple story, available in both English and Spanish, reaffirms a family’s love, even in times of separation.

Many children know how hard it is to wait for a parent to return from a long trip. This story reaffirms these feelings, but it shows how the reunion makes everything just right again. “My dad can fix anything”: a broken bike, a skinned knee, hurt feelings. But it’s a long wait for his return. With personalization and customization options, this picture-book app allows young readers to identify with the main character. The child-voiced narration reinforces this, but families can also record their own narration. Children can write their names on the front page and pronounce the names aloud to become part of the narration. Readers choose whether the main character has short or long hair (presumably a boy or a girl) and whether their father or mother leaves on a trip. Unfortunately, the characters all appear Caucasian despite blue hair. The colorful illustrations have the look of line drawings and watercolor on textured paper, creating the feel of a picture book. The pacing moves the story along well, with just a few lines per spread. The interactive elements have a few surprises, especially with scenes that can be explored beyond the initial view. The app ends with an invitation to children to write or draw their own stories.

This story has heart. (optimized for iPad iOS 6+) (iPad storybook app. 3-6)

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THE POPPIN PRINCESS

Brient, Leïla Illus. by Gaudriot, Claire Audois & Alleuil Editions $4.99 | Jan. 11, 2013 1.0; Jan. 11, 2013

An unusual princess from a faraway land breaks barriers (and wind) in a gorgeously illustrated and humorous fairy tale.

In a tiny, unnamed kingdom, Prince Archibald and his pushy parents seek a bride. The many competing princesses—each with her own quirk—are taken out of contention when the queen puts them through a series of challenges, including one designed to see how they handle cauliflower and broccoli. Here, things take a left turn that will either delight or annoy readers, depending on their tolerance for fart humor. Then Lou, the “Princess of the Wind” arrives. She has terrible table manners, makes silly faces and, most importantly, captures Archibald’s heart. And when she’s tested for flatulence, the silly ending isn’t too difficult to guess: She makes beautiful music with her talented digestive system, securing the throne.

This could have been a terrible, tasteless app, but the illustrations are so lovely, the narration and text so poker-faced and the extra features so clever that it works. Offered in French or English, the story is just the right length, and its visuals, set against a backdrop of creased, taped-up papers, allow the story to get away with a lot.

Perhaps it’s not for everyone, but there’s a lot to admire.

For adults and kids who find it funny, it will be a total gas. (iPad storybook app. 4-8)

THE NUTCRACKER

Cavallo, Francesca--Adapt.

Illus. by Giordano, Philip Timbuktu $1.99 | Jan. 31, 2013 1.1; Feb. 7, 2013 Another adaptation of the popular ballet story.

This is something of a free-form storybook app, in that there are few boundaries in its presentation. While most apps follow the traditional left-to-right reading format, this one doesn’t even have clearly defined pages. Rather, it scrolls downward. Apart from the three “chapters,” there are rarely stopping places that don’t include partial text or graphics from another scene. Font and text color vary, which somehow adds structure. The developer was guided by the Reggio Emilia approach to learning, a model that, among other things, encourages children to develop their own theories and frameworks. Interactions are often unconventional, with text and/or graphics sliding across the screen as though they’re on a pulley that’s triggered by scrolling motion.

Readers can help Clara put the Nutcracker back together, prompt the clock to strike eight (thought it really only strikes

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“The classic lullaby gains some interactive possibilities but loses its magic in the playing.” from i see the moon

once while the clock arms rotate) and complete such languid tasks as rubbing frost from a window or shaking a basket—none of which have much interactive payoff. The writing, supposedly presented at a fourth-grade level, is functional but wobbly in spots (Arabians are referred to as “Arabics,” for example). The music, of course, is from Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite, but it’s presented in ultrashort sound bites that end abruptly.

Unusual, but ultimately unimaginative and uninspiring. (iPad storybook app. 6-10)

THE ADVENTURES OF MR. MOUSE The Fair

Cooper, Edward; Clarke, Mirah Illus. by Clarke, Mirah Edward Cooper $2.99 | Jan. 20, 2013 1.0.1; Feb. 4, 2013 Series: Mr. Mouse, 2

Another badly rhymed, navigationally cluttered “adventure” with Mr. Mouse.

The subpar writing and sloppy interactive elements aren’t the most troublesome things about the Mr. Mouse apps. It’s the unspoken message conveyed in both, namely that a person is worthy of friendship only when he or she can be of use to those they’re trying to befriend. In the first installment (The Adventures of Mr. Mouse, 2012), the titular rodent snubs Mo and Jo until he needs their help. In this follow-up, the three hide from Beanie (a dog) since they don’t want to play with him—that is, until he offers to be their transportation to the fair. Suddenly, they sprout consciences and warmly embrace him. Like the last story, this one is dreadfully rhymed, following neither meter nor any particular form. The backgrounds are a little more intricate than the first offering, many of them photographs upon which floating animations are layered. This time around, there are two versions of the story—for “older” and “younger” readers. The “older” version contains more text, but the age consideration seems haphazard (at least in terms of reading level), as the “younger” one often includes more complex words or phrases. The same clunky controls are strewn across the bottom of every screen, with narration prompts being necessary on every page.

A disappointing attempt at both storytelling and interactive camaraderie. (iPad storybook app. 3-7)

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THE LITTLE RED HEN DreamZ DreamZ $0.99 | Jan. 18, 2013 1.1; Jan. 23, 2013

Poor translation mars an otherwise enjoyable app.

The traditional tale of the hardworking Little Red Hen has seen plenty of retellings in picture-book and app formats. This retelling follows the familiar route, emphasizing the moralistic ending. Readers are given the option of sharing or not sharing with the slackers. If readers choose the path of generosity, the pig, cat and dog “[apologize] to her with shame”; if readers opt not to share, the animals “[bow] their heads in shame.” The app is well-constructed, with pleasing narration, lively background music and smooth animation. The interactive elements are limited, which is appropriate for young children. While the colorful illustrations will charm young readers, the awkward and often incorrect English text presents substantial problems. Beginning on the first page, the translation makes for odd reading: The little hen lives with “her neighbors of kitten, puppy and piggy.” In some cases, the translation is so awkward that it makes little sense: “The seeds germinated soon and grew with spring mint wheat seedlings.” While readers will appreciate that this app is available in 5 languages (Chinese, English, French, Japanese and German), they expect proficient translations.

Readers will be left wishing that the developers put the same effort into writing and translating the story as they did creating all of the technical aspects of this app. (iPad 2 & up) (iPad storybook app. 3-6)

I SEE THE MOON An Interactive Lullaby Leshnick, Dorit dorit leshnick $0.99 | Jan. 9, 2013 1.0; Jan. 9, 2013

The classic lullaby gains some interactive possibilities but loses its magic in the playing.

The titular song is the quintessential nursery classic, a simple, sentimental lyric—some would call it a prayer—that beautifully represents childlike wonder and the mystery of being seen and blessed by God. Many writers have expanded on its simple beauty, which probably explains why it is still alive today. Leshnick’s interactive version attempts to combine real-world things and people (Mommy’s purse, Daddy’s shaving cream, Grandma’s cupcakes and Grandpa’s slippers, among others) with the imaginary world (flying witches and monsters in the mirror) for a whimsical bedtime experience. Each of the five pages contains merry mischief to make, but with lackluster watercolor illustrations and a tinny musical

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backdrop, this dream falls flat. The music can be turned off, but this turns off the narration and blocks display of the text as well.

Of further concern for the value-conscious, the free version of the app contains ads that occupy the bottom of the screen; an in-app purchase removes them.

Just singing the song the old-fashioned way is still the best way to go. (iPad storybook app. 2-5)

STONE SOUP

Meijan, Wang Illus. by Gan, Gan Wawa Mouse $1.99 | Jan. 12, 2013 1.0.1; Jan. 24, 2013 A sweet version of the classic story features a trio of traveling bunnies and much tap-activated bouncing and giggling.

The text is just a bit too long to fit into single views on each screen, and there are a few rough patches, translationwise (“When spring came, three rabbits went on a journey to afar in the bright sunshine of springtime”). Nevertheless, the tale runs along smoothly whether read aloud with careful deliberation by several high-pitched narrators or in “Read Myself ” mode. The wide-eyed, all-animal cartoon cast blinks on its own but wiggles and twitches back and forth with, usually, an electronic boop or other sound effect when touched; on one screen, multiple taps not only turn day into night before the climactic feast, but convey the delicious soup’s aroma with brilliant displays of multicolored stars and fireworks. The page advance is only manual, which allows readers to control the pacing, and an inconspicuous gear icon on every screen allows access to a page index and replay button, as well as sound and (English/Chinese) language switches, plus the now-standard quick access to various social media.

The moral at the end drops more heavily than the rocks into the pot, but that doesn’t spoil the tale’s ever-nutritious theme. (iPad storybook app. 5-9)

MONSTER MORNING

Munoz, Franca; Mevec, Edith Wilcox Illus. by Munoz, Franca Purple Ely $1.99 | Jan. 20, 2013 1.0; Jan. 20, 2013

them along (getting Peril dressed, for instance, or feeding Peter his bug-laden breakfast). The pages are lined with bright borders within which readers will find movable doo-dads like buttons, birds, and the mom and dad monsters. Their nonthreatening world is filled with polka dots, flower patterns and familiar routines, setting a soothing tone for even very young readers who may be ambivalent about spending time with even these harmless-looking monsters. It’s easy to navigate, wellnarrated and offers rhymes that don’t overstay their welcome and only occasionally reach too far (“Peter and Peril are ready to go. / You’ve helped them out from head to toe. / That’s not an easy thing to undergo. / They’re so happy you helped them, you know”).

The little monsters in this family seem happy, loved and well-adjusted. They’re worth a visit. (iPad storybook app. 2-7)

MEET THE INSECTS Village Edition NCsoft NCsoft $6.99 | Jan. 31, 2013 1.0.1; Feb. 20, 2013

Rich in features, if not so much in content, this introduction to insects will give larval entomologists a buzz.

In text sprinkled with the occasional typo, the commentary in the “Insect Story” section offers basic information about diversity, body parts, diets and metamorphosis, illustrating this with simple, sometimes animated cartoon images. “See Insects” presents photos and video clips accompanying closer looks at 30 selected species drawn from five of the class’ major orders. From the title screen, readers can also open a personal journal for collecting their own observations and photos, a quick-access index of the app’s multimedia elements and a set of extremely easy quizzes. However, though a search icon leads to a photo gallery of about 125 insects (sortable, oddly, by color), only the original 30 come with more information than species and common names. Furthermore, aside from a few invaders that have made it to North America, all of those featured entrants are Asian—and subtitle “Village Edition” notwithstanding, there are no ants, cockroaches or mosquitoes.

It’s far from encyclopedic, but budding naturalists will find the journal and overview appealing, and the camera work is often dazzling. (iPad informational app. 5-10)

The morning rituals of little schoolbound monsters are examined in friendly detail in an app structured like a family scrapbook.

Peter and Peril, monster siblings with very different personalities, get up at dawn to start their day, then eat breakfast, get cleaned up, pack their things in backpacks and board a rocket ship. Each step is shown on a page with touch options to help |

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I NEED MY MONSTER

Noll, Amanda Illus. by McWilliam, Howard Pony Tale $3.99 | Dec. 16, 2012 1.0.1; Jan. 30, 2013

This little boy’s not afraid of the monster under his bed. In fact, everything about Gabe is perfect...until he takes the week off, leaving substitutes to fill in.

Every now and then a “things that go bump in the night” book emerges that tilts the subgenre on its pointy little head.

Noll and McWilliam’s traditional book did just that; their app expands on the book, oozing creativity and fun. One by one, the substitute monsters appear under the bed, but none of them are quite menacing enough. Herbert’s claws are woefully inadequate. Ralph’s claws, while superlong, are inappropriately shiny.

Cynthia is a girl monster with lipstick and a bow on her slimy tail, which doesn’t suit the little boy at all. And Mack’s excessively long tongue is more laughable than scary. When Gabe finally returns, his boy snuggles down in his bed for a good night’s sleep. The app leaves no stone unturned, delivering a vividly illustrated story well-supported by engaging narration, imaginative sound effects and an original score. The interactive features and character animation consistently surprise and delight. Best of all, creators give the app a full page of navigational help, text highlighting for beginning readers, easy access to page selection and a memory-challenge matching game at the end.

Whether your young ones have bedtime angst or not, this monster is worth keeping around. (iPad storybook app. 5-8)

WHEN I GROW UP...

Sanoen Sanoen $1.99 | Nov. 28, 2012 1.0; Nov. 28, 2012

A bright and appealing introduction to different professions ultimately falls short of its ambitions.

Colorful illustrations showing 16 different occupations will engage young children as they think about jobs they might do when they grow up. The cartoons have a hip, trendy feel, and there is a refreshing range of nationalities, ethnicities and genders represented.

While this app is designed to promote vocabulary, spelling and reading development, though, it does so with limited success.

The beginning levels introduce the names of the different professions, either on autoplay loop for very young children or with limited interactivity for toddlers. Families wanting to introduce different languages will appreciate the ease of switching among six different languages: English, French, Spanish, German, Chinese and Catalan. However, the subsequent learning-to-read levels (there are five in all) progress too quickly without adequate support. New readers will have great difficulty sounding 132

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out or learning to spell words such as “entrepreneur” or “journalist.” While the “Easy spelling” level provides shadowed letters to guide children in dragging and dropping the scattered letter “tiles” to spell the occupation pictured, the next level provides no scaffolding or support. The full sentences in the final level are complex sentences inappropriate for beginning readers, especially when reading in a new language.

Fun? Yes. But not particularly helpful for developing vocabulary or reading skills beyond the initial level. (iPad informational app. 2-5)

CUTIE MONSTERS Jigsaw Puzzles

Shomali, Evette Illus. by Smith, Paul; M, Yulia Little Phoenix Interactive $2.99 | Dec. 21, 2012 1.0; Dec. 21, 2012

An app that’s high on cuteness and low on actual counting skills.

This app features 10 playful monsters, reminiscent of the popular Ugly Dolls, with text that encourages readers to count items from one to 10. “Blushy has one curly tail. / Toothy has two horrible horns.” Toddlers will laugh at the colorful monsters and their goofy, mostly apropos names. With a touch, the monster wiggles and makes a silly sound, and the relevant numeral appears in a clear, large type.

Unfortunately, it is unlikely that this app will help young children learn to count, as there are no interactive features prompting children to touch and count the item in question. The app has three modes: read it myself, “touch read” words and jigsaw puzzle. With the “touch read” option, readers must tap individual words to hear them spoken aloud. This keeps young readers attentive to the app, but it requires them to tap the words in the correct order for a full sentence. The jigsaw-puzzle activity is well designed for toddlers and preschoolers, with three to six simple pieces each. This app will help children learning to count if they read it with an adult as they would a picture book, but it does not take advantage of the iPad’s interactive features to reinforce counting skills.

The cutie monsters live up to their name, but that’s about it. (iPad storybook app. 2-5)

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THE WAKING PRINCE

The Story Elves The Story Elves $4.99 | Dec. 3, 2012 1.0.1; Dec. 21, 2012

Torrents of words and pictures, plus ingenious software design, propel a more-or-less–linked pair of clever but half-baked tales.

Before dissolving into incoherence, the titular story leads the prince of a country beset by spell-casting witches to the discovery that he can wake an enchanted dog with a kiss, but a sleeping princess requires different magic— that is, a polite introduction. This is related on 35 illustrated sepia page spreads in portrait orientation; when the tablet is turned to landscape view, a new, colored and more detailed picture appears (mystifyingly called a couplet). Another tab on the main screen opens four writer and illustrator “starter” pages that are revealed in succession by turning the tablet through a full circle. A third tab leads to an audio lecture with animated cartoons on reading aloud with expression (“It is the reader who enters the story, and adds the final, essential touches”), delivered by a gushing tarsier. Finally, in a twee multichapter “Making Of ” feature, a writer elf skips the usual publishing approval process but after developing her Waking Prince story idea with an illustrator elf, a designer elf and an editor elf, wins over the frowning Elf Elders. (No doubt it all happened just that way.)

A grab bag of stories and storytelling-workshop elements, with lively, fluent prose and art that really deserves better plotlines. (iPad storybook/instructional app. 7-9, adult)

This Issue’s Contributors # Alison Anholt-White • Kim Becnel • Elizabeth Bird • Marcie Bovetz • Kimberly Brubaker Bradley • Louise Brueggemann • Connie Burns • Timothy Capehart • Ann Childs • Rebecca Cramer • GraceAnne A. DeCandido • Dave DeChristopher • Elise DeGuiseppi • Lisa Dennis • Carol Edwards • Robin L. Elliott • Brooke Faulkner • Laurie Flynn • Omar Gallaga • Judith Gire • Carol Goldman • Linnea Hendrickson • Heather L. Hepler • Megan Honig • Julie Hubble • Jennifer Hubert • Shelley Huntington • Kathleen T. Isaacs • Laura Jenkins • Betsy Judkins • Deborah Kaplan • Joy Kim • K. Lesley Knieriem • Megan Dowd Lambert • Angela Leeper • Lori Low • Wendy Lukehart • Lauren Maggio • Hillias J. Martin • Jeanne McDermott • Kathie Meizner • Daniel Meyer • Lisa Moore • R. Moore • Rachel G. Payne • John Edward Peters • Melissa Rabey • Rebecca Rabinowitz • Kristy Raffensberger • Nancy Thalia Reynolds • Melissa Riddle Chalos • Leslie L. Rounds • Ann Marie Sammataro • Mindy Schanback • Mary Ann Scheuer • Dean Schneider • Stephanie Seales • Chris Shoemaker • Karyn N. Silverman • Robin Smith • Rita Soltan • Jennifer Sweeney • Deborah D. Taylor • Gordon West • Monica Wyatt • Melissa Yurechko

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indie RIDING THE TIGER

These titles earned the Kirkus Star:

Banks, Milena iUniverse (532 pp.) $37.95 | $27.95 paper | Feb. 19, 2013 978-1-4759-5637-5

RIDING THE TIGER by Milena Banks............................................... 135 TOCO by Vivian Jack.......................................................................... 138 FLEETING GLANCE by Sherban Young........................................... 146

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

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 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.

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SWAN LUKA

Berliner, Janet CreateSpace (136 pp.) $7.90 paper | $7.90 e-book Dec. 20, 2012 978-1-4791-2423-7 Berliner’s novel introduces older children to the culture and problems of modern Zimbabwe but leaves them with hope for the future.

Luka, an almost 13-year-old boy from a Zimbabwean village, is looking forward to his manhood ceremony and the next opportunity to visit his cousin, whose village includes both a school and a clinic. But from the book’s early pages, the government’s opposition to such American-funded amenities demonstrates the threat the villagers face from President Robert Mugabe’s soldiers. Almost as soon as the reader has had a chance to absorb the details of life in rural Zimbabwe—Luka’s daily walk to fetch water, the constant threat of drought, terms like “bakkie” and “sadza”—the soldiers arrive, killing Luka’s parents and wounding him in the leg. With the help of a Doctors Without Borders team, the boy is airlifted to a South African hospital, where he spends several weeks healing both physically and emotionally. He recovers with the help of hospital volunteer Sarah, who brings Luka home to live with her and her father. Luka and Sarah share a love of dance, and the book’s title is drawn from their discussion of Swan Lake.

(Sarah is also the most prominent of the book’s several Jewish characters, another opportunity for cultural understanding.) It might be argued that the book presents an idealized view of Zimbabwe’s current crisis, as Luka ends up reunited with his surviving family member and living comfortably in South Africa instead of joining the thousands of refugees. But the book is aimed at young adults, and it does a respectable job of capturing some of the horrors of the Mugabe regime without overwhelming its young audience.

The book has minor spelling and grammar errors, but the overall story is strong.

An effective novel designed to introduce young readers to a new culture.

MR. MOON

Cobb, Daryl K. Illus. by Jaeger, Mishka CreateSpace (36 pp.) $10.95 paper | Sep. 21, 2011 978-1-4636-1919-0 In Cobb’s latest children’s book, the moon, envious of a world he never gets to experience, makes an unusual proposition.

Mr. Moon is tired of missing out on things. While he sleeps, the world comes alive under the shining gaze of Mr. Sun. Children play, flowers blossom, and people happily go about their business. Saddened by this, Mr. Moon decides to stay awake one entire day and join Mr. Sun on his journey across the sky. The jovial Mr. Sun is sympathetic toward the poor moon’s feelings, 136

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but he makes a cogent point: While he, the sun, is asleep, the moon enjoys an entirely different world. Mr. Sun never gets to see a baseball game being played late into the night or enjoy the colorful explosion of fireworks in the night sky. He never sees the nighttime animals like the raccoon or the owl, and he never sees children trick-or-treating on Halloween. He tells Mr. Moon that it’s perfectly all right by him if he stays but that he should think about what he’s told him. Not surprisingly, upon reflection, Mr. Moon agrees that it’s best if he goes to sleep so that he can be ready to greet the world and all its splendor at night. Cobb (Daniel Dinosaur, 2012) will likely delight and instruct children with this charming tale. The message is loud and clear: Although the grass may seem greener on the other side of the fence, it’s far better to love and appreciate the life one already has. Many young children may have mixed feelings about nighttime, a time of unwanted bedtime and imaginary monsters hiding in dark bedroom closets. However, Jaeger’s illustrations give the night a soft, beautiful glow, complementing Cobb’s text and simultaneously convincing both Mr. Moon and the reader that nighttime is a magical time. Her personifications of Mr. Moon and Mr. Sun are utterly delightful; perhaps the most amusing page in the book features a sad-faced Mr. Moon attempting to fruitlessly blow a dangling kite as the children are tucked in their beds. Cobb’s text is less notable but has a simple charm likely to please young readers and should be light and easy enough for children to enjoy in one sitting—perhaps even just before bedtime.

A pleasing children’s narrative with a relevant message.

BRAVING TIME Finding the Way Back

Collins, Bonnie L. BalboaPress (280 pp.) $35.99 | $18.99 paper | $3.99 e-book Aug. 7, 2012 978-1-4525-5639-0 An insightful memoir that traces a teenage girl’s adjustment to her father’s sudden death.

Collins was a teenager growing up in Central Pennsylvania when her “safe and secure” world irrevocably changed. As she recalls in her moving, sharply observed memoir, she had just come home from school when she learned her father had died of a heart attack at the age of 47. “Life without my dad was unimaginable,” she says. Collins recalls how her life evolved after the tragedy, changes made even more difficult by the loss of the family home, a controlling uncle—“suspicion and loathing for him clung to me like moss to tree bark”—and a remote, anguished mother. As a child, Collins obviously wasn’t able to approach her mother’s condition from a clinical perspective; she merely saw a woman with whom she’d desperately like to connect but, in another of the book’s many compelling metaphors, who “resisted speaking of things that bothered her like a clam resisted being opened by a starfish.” In only the first year after her father’s death, she writes, “there had been so many changes….Things I couldn’t foresee; things I couldn’t control.”

Finally, one “dark night of winter,” she found her mother sitting silent and alone in their modest apartment, her “crystal blue eyes” having turned “strangely dark—like two black disks void of focus or feeling.” Her mother had packed a suitcase to go to California.

“Terror mainlined in my veins,” Collins remembers. Her mother had electroshock treatments in a psychiatric ward, where a nurse unraveled the mystery, telling Collins that she was in a deep depression. The later part of the book, in which Collins describes her college years and a relationship with a student who became her first husband, is less gripping. But as a whole, the memoir is an effective exploration of change and how to come to terms with it. Through all the losses, Collins says, she was “beginning to begin a long process of discernment about how I wanted to handle my life, wherever the river of time would carry me.”

The heart-rending effects of change laid bare.

DESTINATION UNKNOWN Adventures of a WWII American Red Cross Girl Cox, Kathleen CreateSpace (210 pp.) $14.95 paper | Oct. 20, 2011 978-1-4664-1248-4

Away from the smoke and the bullets but close enough to the colorful characters, a plucky Red Cross girl tells of her place in World War II’s Mediterranean Theater.

Wars are also fought from behind the front lines. This tale shows one woman and her Red Cross colleagues turning a small wheel in the massive American war machine of 1943. Debut author Kathleen Cox turns wartime letters and snapshots from her mother, LeOna, into a readable, often charming path from rural Minnesota to East Coast training to following in the footsteps of the U.S. Army in North Africa, eventually onward to occupied Italy. Endearingly, the story lacks any pretense to bigness. At each stop, the elder Cox’s job was serving coffee, manufacturing pastimes for GIs, rooting out local embezzlers and, through it all, assuring her Minnesota parents that her adventures carried not even a whiff of danger. She hears of the Normandy landings through news reports, probably no sooner than her stateside friends; even a drive past Cassino, site of some of the heaviest fighting in the Italian campaign, comes a month after the Germans had been driven out. The named and nameless soldiers bask in simple things: talking to an American girl, swimming in a pool and treating the local children to ice cream. LeOna’s Red Cross service and her romance both show the power of the social economy among the troops and their supporters. Knowing the right people or simply charming the right enlisted men could get you a car or even an upgraded room at a seaside palace. The heart of the book, and an understandable focus for the younger Cox, is the story of LeOna’s romance with John Cox—a courtship that included drives through the Atlas Mountains, some innocent stowing away on a B-24 and (as Leona tells it) a small bargain with Pope Pius XII. A fresh, rarely seen perspective on life during wartime.

FUNDaMentals

Griesel, Dian CreateSpace (278 pp.) $79.95 paper | Dec. 7, 2012 978-1-936705-01-6 Sage advice on engaging with investment professionals from a corporate communications pro.

In business, there are certain practicable formulas designed to maximize success in a variety of areas, such as financial analysis, business process management and marketing, to name a few. With the publication of Griesel’s book, add to the list a formula for getting investors interested in a company. Griesel’s well-delivered counsel is universally applicable to CEOs of larger public and private companies and owners of smaller companies. The author discusses certain basics—how to create an elevator pitch, how to make a presentation, how to create a business plan—that the reader could find in numerous other business books. But it’s her concentration on the more advanced fundamentals that make this resource valuable. Griesel’s informative discussion of professional fund investors, for example, is insightful: “PIs do you a favor by listening to your company’s pitch,” writes Griesel. “It’s part of your job to satisfy the needs, wants and expectations of PIs, and whenever possible, to unearth their fears or resolve any complaints or reservations that might prevent them from investing in your company.” This kind of blunt talk is likely to keep in check a business owner who may get too caught up in his or her own ego. Her chapter on “The Importance of a Cohesive Management Team” is equally straightforward. It includes two exercises for executives (one is used with the permission of an investment firm) that demonstrate why senior managers must share common goals and purposes and be able to work together.

Writes Griesel, “Lack of a unified vision in the corporate suite is a surefire way to obliterate investor interest.” Griesel includes the obligatory chapter about social media but does a nice job slanting it to investor relations. Respecting the senior manager’s time, Griesel writes economically and replaces the fluff with specific suggestions.

A well-written, useful guide that should enhance a CEO’s ability to communicate with the investment community and attract new investors.

KP INSIDE 101 Letters to Us at Kaiser Permanente

Halvorson, George C. CreateSpace (446 pp.) $12.99 paper | $2.99 e-book Oct. 26, 2012 978-1-4781-1366-9 A collection of letters by the CEO of the nation’s largest health plan to his 180,000 employees. |

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“Johnson-Weider ably intertwines Cobran’s calculated investigations with his complex fictional world and provides a consistently thrilling, action-packed story.” from black throne conspiracy

Reading other people’s mail can be irresistible—or deadly dull. What will readers find compelling in nearly five years’ worth of weekly emails from someone else’s boss? Plenty, it turns out.

Halvorson (Health Care Will Not Reform Itself, 2009, etc.) offers a unique view of health care from his perch atop Oakland, Calif.– based Kaiser Permanente, a $50 billion–a-year managed care organization that insures and provides care for 9 million people in the United States. Founded in the 1940s by industrialist Henry Kaiser to cover his construction and shipbuilding workers, KP today has 40 percent of California’s health insurance market and 10 percent of the entire nation’s. In recent years, KP pioneered electronic medical records, and many of the successes Halvorson celebrates in this book derive from that $4 billion investment.

Other topics include reducing hospital-acquired infections; lowering mortality rates; cultivating care teams; preventive-health research studies using “big data”; and implementing logistical fixes, such as re-engineering nurses’ shift changes and outfitting mobile clinics for rural patients. These letters, said to be unedited from their original form, contain occasional whiffs of public relations polishing, but background notes often clarify context and jargon, and many include charts and graphs as well. Halvorson maintains a consistent style and distinctive voice and presents complicated health topics in clear and simple language. A few of the author’s verbal quirks become repetitive in book form— for example, he loves the word “lovely” and the phrase “a good thing.” But by writing about his grandson’s premature birth, his dying uncle’s palliative care and his own coronary-bypass surgery, Halvorson humanizes insurance executives and hospital administrators in an era when health care reformers often cast them as boogeymen. Some readers may tire of the relentless cheerleading, but the valuable information Halvorson shares make the pep rallies worthwhile.

A highly readable, surprisingly engaging volume for anyone interested in health care issues.

TOCO Tales Told Through the Eyes of 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 138

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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.

BLACK THRONE CONSPIRACY Johnson-Weider, K.M. Blue Moon Aurora, LLC (434 pp.) $15.95 paper | $4.99 e-book Jan. 20, 2013 978-0-9837984-4-6

A rich sci-fi mystery thriller set in a technologically advanced and politically corrupt galaxy.

In the Ascension Galaxy, people are defined by their status as a noble or commoner, and Sir Cobran Derithal comes from a house of minor nobles. He had a promising military career until an explosion shattered his leg and killed his fiancee. He recovers with his sister and nephew on his home planet of Jarissa, but family problems force him to test his new mechanical leg and travel to the capital, where his sister fears for a young noblewoman’s safety; his powerful and domineering brother is arranging a marriage for him to a mysterious woman; and his wealthy, extravagant cousin Edwin receives an upsetting note and asks for his help. These seemingly unrelated adventures eventually weave together in surprising and delightful ways, as Cobran delves into the intricacies of noble society and finds that he must compromise his morals. Johnson-Weider (West Pacific Supers: Victory at Any Cost, 2012) creates a complex, textured high-fantasy world, complete with political intrigue, societal conflict, romantic histories and, of course, space aliens. Cobran emerges as a compelling, likable frontman—determined, loyal and competent.

Although the myriad characters and worlds can at times be confusing, readers will be rewarded by a persistent, close read,

as each character has unique and evocative quirks that will draw readers into the complexities of the Ascension Galaxy.

Although the prose can be a bit repetitive at times, JohnsonWeider ably intertwines Cobran’s calculated investigations with his complex fictional world and provides a consistently thrilling, action-packed story, leaving readers completely fulfilled—if perhaps a bit shellshocked.

A complex, addictive sci-fi adventure.

A SINGLE MOTHER, A Few Perspectives......

And Anyone Else that Is a Single Parent Jones, Mary Elizabeth CreateSpace (92 pp.) $8.99 paper | $8.99 e-book Dec. 19, 2012 978-1-4793-5207-4

Jones’ debut guidebook on parenting offers an insightful, empowering and resourceful look at what it means to make it as a single parent.

As a single mother herself, Jones doesn’t focus on preconceived negative connotations of single parenthood, but instead provides positive support and guidance. The slim book, just 40 pages long, provides a valuable list of resources available to single parents, including a list of jobs that parents can do from home and that allow for a flexible schedule; instructions on how to apply for education-related funding; health care tips for those not eligible for government-funded health insurance; and housing advice, including how to find homeowning opportunities. She lists specific examples of how parents can increase their incomes using traditional job-hunting skills and suggests relieving stress by using methods ranging from meditation to masturbation.

Throughout, Jones urges single parents to use creativity when confronting personal, professional or domestic challenges, and she encourages them to meditate on a positive future and take the steps necessary to make those dreams reality. The author adopts a tone that’s thoughtful and empathetic but never maudlin. In one chapter, she suggests that the reader visualize a healthier, happier and more productive self: “The goal here is seeking change in each routine or methods of living that you want to shift toward, rather than aspects of life that you want to prevent or give up.”

At times, the advice is a bit idealistic—for example, she promises that, “If you can write an article, type a form or letter, research a topic such as the ‘healthiest foods to eat in America,’ then you can succeed with freelancing.” However, the book’s focus on positive thinking and resourcefulness offers readers a welcome perspective on single parenthood.

An engaging, practical guide for parents.

FREE JAZZ AT THE TSUKIJI FISH MARKET

Nakamura, Naoto Tomoe Planning Office Co. Ltd. (132 pp.) $15.00 paper | Sep. 29, 2012 978-0-615-63018-2 A fun, illuminating introduction to a piece of Japanese life rarely glimpsed by outsiders.

A bustling center of trade for the people of Japan—and the largest seafood center in the world—the storied Tsukiji Fish Market in Tokyo is nonetheless being threatened with relocation to a new site, one that critics charge is unfit and polluted. But the rascally Nakamura has made it his personal mission to stop that from happening. The author loves the Tsukiji Fish Market right where it is, and the adoration he has for this fascinating hub of commerce and culture comes across in an often quirky narrative that reveals as much about him as it does the Japanese fish trade. In addition to preparing freshly caught salmon aboard Russian trawlers and in far-flung factory towns, the former Japanese fish inspector used to lead maverick tours through the vast Tsukiji complex before ultimately turning to writing. Nakamura assumes the role of intrepid tour guide here as well, dipping into the vast intricacies of the Tsukiji Fish Market and the samurai-sword–wielding vendors who make their living there. An odd mix of surprising biography, in-depth history and zealous advocacy evokes the often discordant strains of music referenced in the title. And like jazz itself, Nakamura’s unvarnished writing successfully creates a narrative totality that becomes curiously infectious once the accepted rules of grammar are dismissed. He has as much to say about processing deep-water salmon as he does the human experience, reflecting on Tsukiji’s idiosyncratic hierarchy, as well as his own personal demons. And after his latest tour ends, readers will likely want to know more about both the unconventional author and the ultimate fate of the Tsukiji Fish Market.

A surprising catch from a unique voice.

THE SABBATICAL

Pinto, Frederick CreateSpace (220 pp.) $12.99 paper | $6.99 e-book | Jul. 6, 2012 978-1-4750-0426-7 A key player in the music industry finds himself ousted and forced to reconsider his place in the world.

Forty-something Montreal music executive Charles Barca was the innovator who founded the Internet music company PlayLouder, a platform that “changed the face of the industry forever.” But at the beginning of Pinto’s debut novel, the company’s moneymen and corporate overseers have |

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“This small book of verse will likely yield many delights for readers who want to glimpse the inner heart of Pakistan.” from baraka

exercised a buyout clause in PlayLouder’s bylaws to shut out Barca from the outfit he founded. Virtually overnight, Barca, who was once a “prince” in his industry, becomes, in his own words, “a bought-out, spit-over, disgraced and depressed prince, if that qualifies for royalty in your lexicon.” The action of the novel follows his initial flailing around and then his hardscrabble survivor’s efforts to reinvent himself. Former co-workers and industry players concoct several technologically ambitious schemes designed to create a “perfect storm for musical capitalism,” but Barca, intent on re-evaluating his life and his priorities, isn’t sure he wants a job at all, much less one at the heart of the cutthroat music business he left behind (in some of the book’s best-realized scenes, he takes refuge in a hideaway in Rio de Janeiro). Pinto writes of this life crisis with salty diction but genuine insight; his Charles Barca is caustic, critical and more than a little egotistical, but he nevertheless comes across as the most honorable man in a book thickly populated with schemers, frauds and several mercilessly observed music-industry types. The author’s considerable narrative skills weave together a spot-on portrait of a mercenary business world with a moving account of one man’s internal upheaval, as he finds himself “terminally locked within the patterns of my own ridiculously predictable mind.” In a variety of exotic settings from Ipanema to Copacabana, Barca seeks “a Copernican revolution of the self,” and although the book’s conclusion leaves some crucial questions unresolved, readers will find the journey well worth it.

A surprisingly complex novel about music and self-evaluation.

LOVE-JACKED! Divorce Your Spouse Not Your Dollars Sewell, Bonnie Ashby wedlock-divorce.com (130 pp.) $25.00 paper | $14.99 e-book Nov. 15, 2012 978-0-615-63709-9

In this slim debut, financial planner Sewell puts forth a new way of negotiating divorce.

According to Sewell, divorce is a game, but its players shouldn’t be spouses opposing one another; rather, the author contends, divorcing couples must view themselves as a team taking on the costly and soulless divorce industry. The book begins with an outline of current divorce models, from those negotiated entirely without lawyers to those dragged through the overburdened family law courts. Sewell outlines the basic structures and drawbacks of each, and she’s particularly against taking divorce to court, telling court-bound couples to “open your wallet, hug your kids, and hold on. You’re about to enter one of the worst legal processes we’ve created.” Though the author acknowledges that court or other standard methods of divorce may be the best choices for some couples, her central argument is that, for most people, there’s a better way: fair negotiation through financial planning. Of the financial counseling 140

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business she runs, Sewell writes: “We strongly encourage you to do something radical and get your complete financial analysis and several scenarios before going to see an attorney.” Through a series of examples and anecdotes, she builds a convincing case for making professional financial planning the centerpiece of a successful divorce. However, the book does little beyond persuading readers to hire a financial professional, and much of it feels like an extended advertisement for the author’s profession.

The book includes some outlines of the financial documents and variables that divorcing couples need to consider, but these concrete details are too briefly discussed and too haphazardly organized to be of much use. Additionally, short sections on forming co-parenting plans and healing after divorce feel rushed and out of place, as if only serving as reminders that these issues are important. Though Sewell’s arguments are uniformly rational and persuasive, the book itself doesn’t provide all the tools and information necessary to put her conclusions into practice.

A solid starting point for building a better divorce, but not a comprehensive resource.

BARAKA The Indus Valley Poems Sharpe, Patricia Lee CreateSpace (60 pp.) $9.95 paper | Dec. 12, 2012 978-1-4783-7446-6

An academic and foreign service officer pens her second book of poems about Pakistan and the fate of Pakistani women.

Many readers know about the tribulations of Pakistani women solely through the story of Malala Yousufzai, the 15-year-old girl shot in October 2012 by a Taliban gunman for advocating for education for girls in her country. This collection presents a complex, richly textured exploration of the topic. It’s part a celebration of Pakistan, its layered past and tragic present, and part an agonized revelation and rejection of Pakistani treatment of women.

Sharpe decries the arrogance of males who, through custom and cruel tradition, “suffocate daughters and wives / for the crime of being female / for the sin of having eyes / and lips and minds.”

She does not cloak her poems in feminist rhetoric, however, instead presenting a nuanced and compassionate vision that yearns for a moral center to guide and restore Pakistan to its profound, lost beauty. In the poem “Static,” Sharpe celebrates how “those muezzins of temperate times / poured balm on the wounds of life.” Now, she writes, the call to prayer has been replaced by loudspeakers that carry the crackling, wired-up rants of a debased clergy that show neither love nor empathy.

The author is a careful observer, reveling in the richness of juxtaposition and stark contrast; she writes of a Muslim Sufi shrine bedecked in marigolds and a Hindu temple violated by the “piss of desecrating boys.” But she also has a well-tuned ear for the subtle rhythms that accent the brutal Pakistani streets she conveys. This small book of verse will likely yield many delights for readers who want to glimpse the inner heart of Pakistan. This

THE REAWAKENING The Living Dead Series Volume 1

fiery, compassionate collection is introduced by the author’s friend, fellow poet Fahmida Riaz, winner of a Human Rights Watch/Hammett-Hellman award.

A tough, sensuous collection of poems about Pakistan.

THE CONFLICT THAT WAS A WAR In Vietnam and at Home

Shepherd Sr., William; Corso, Jim; et al.

CreateSpace (218 pp.) $18.99 paper | Oct. 6, 2012 978-1-4774-8942-0 Nineteen Vietnam veterans share their recollections of in-country time in Vietnam and their re-entrance into American society.

The 19 contributors to the collection met as members of a PTSD therapy group in Modesto, Calif.

They open with a preface which neatly and succinctly delineates two of the major themes in the lives of those who fought in Vietnam: guerilla warfare, along with the paranoid mindset it engendered, and the routine hostility veterans encountered upon their return to America, where instead of being greeted as heroes, they were shunned and, in some cases, literally spat on.

The majority of the men were infantrymen, and as such, they had a front-row seat for the horrors of combat. Dead bodies were a common sight, as were dismembered limbs. Many were forced to engage in hand-to-hand combat and to kill enemies in close proximity. Hollywood-worthy jungle terrors were in fact very real—poisonous cobras, spiders as big as a man’s hand, triple-digit temperatures, stifling humidity—and an oppressive stench hung over everything. One man recounts the story of a soldier’s gruesome attack by a tiger. Another tells of a friend who, not wanting to complete another mission, willfully sticks his fingers into a fan in order to receive medical exemption. The sentiments of each veteran bear remarkable similarities. They don’t defend their actions and, while regretful, rarely apologize.

They’re incredulous at the treatment they received at home since they did what their country asked of them (the specter of Agent Orange is the notable and frequent exception to their patriotic feelings). Some still seethe and are openly angry, but most are resigned. What’s left unexplored is how helpful the support-group meetings were for the men struggling with PTSD. It’s only natural, with the peculiar and extreme circumstances of Vietnam, that such a group would offer them solace.

Perhaps that’s what led them to speak their minds here, as well as to state their final, selfless mission: to encourage this generation of Americans to treat the veterans of Iraq, Afghanistan and all future wars with the respect and honor they deserve.

Open, honest, raw and readable.

Souza, Joseph Permuted Press (260 pp.) $14.95 paper | $4.99 e-book Dec. 6, 2012 978-1-61868-081-5

Souza’s debut horror novel, the first of a proposed trilogy, tells the story of a small band of people in Maine holed up in a house and fighting to keep genetically mutated creatures at bay.

Famous novelist Thom Swiftley and his daughter, Dar, drive from Boston to see Thom’s brother, Rick, a noted scientist working on an isolated farm. Sickly livestock is merely the beginning of the carnage, as dead animals come back to life with a bite that results in eventual death—and the deceased return to life as stalking human/animal hybrids. Soon, others take refuge at Rick’s place, which is largely cut off from the world, while Thom just wants to make it back home to his wife and son. The author’s novel has traits of a zombie story—an endless onslaught of the living dead, survivors in a confined space and an implicit apocalypse—but he avoids yielding to formula by employing some creative spins. There are no true zombies, but rather infected beasts or transmogrified crossbreeds, and not all of them stagger around like ghouls; a number of creatures, mutated by birds, can even fly. Sometimes, the novel feels cluttered with ideas—Thom’s faith pitted against Rick’s science-based beliefs; scientific experimentation; global chaos in the wake of an economic collapse; creatures representing a potential next step in evolution, etc.—that could have been more gradually introduced and developed more deeply in subsequent volumes in the series. Thom, often with his family in mind, is mostly sympathetic, but Dar—a teenage girl who had attempted suicide shortly before the animals began attacking—is harder to like, as her strength never quite outweighs her immaturity; she resists authority, insisting that she’s misunderstood, just like any other teenager. The most impressive attribute is Souza’s well-thought-out setting, particularly during the winter months, when piles of snow keep the creatures at a distance and a bitter cold freezes the corpses. Readers may also appreciate the wily foreshadowing and a remark made about a college professor turning students into “liberal zombies.”

Sure to sate readers hungry for an old-fashioned zombie story that takes a few steps beyond standard fare.

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INTERVIEWS & PROFILES

Kitchenability 101

Back Story: Social Media Maven Nisa Burns’ Success Story

By Nisa Burns

Photo Courtesy Lalane Lompero Davenport

Even though I never dreamed in a million years that I would become a professional chef— or a cookbook author—my love of food goes way back, to a very young age.

When I was a little girl, my grammy used to hand my sister and I a bowl and a spoon, saying “Make whatever you want! If it’s good, we’ll eat it; if it’s gross, we’ll throw it down the drain.” This resulted in many failed experiments, of course, but she instilled in me a sense of creativity when it comes to food, and that stuck with me my whole life. Cooking became my outlet, my way of letting loose and having fun, and also my way of dealing with stress. That became pretty important when I struck out on my first career adventure, one that had absolutely nothing to do with food.

After high school, I started taking community college classes in preparation for nursing school.

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My great-grandfather was a doctor, and I planned to follow in his footsteps. So, I began volunteering at a local hospital and wanted to earn my credits for nursing school—but there was just one problem. I was horrible at math. And when it finally came time to visit a potential nursing school in person, I broke down crying. “What am I doing here?” I thought and ran home to cook.

I made everything—and I mean everything— that night. Cupcakes! A huge chicken dinner!

Whatever I had, I threw it on the stove and in the oven. My boyfriend came over to help me eat it all and in his soothing, encouraging way, gently said, “Um, Nisa? Why don’t you do this for a living?”

It was the first time I had ever considered cooking as a career option.

So, I started a little Facebook page called “Nisa’s Cooking” and shared with my friends whatever I was making that day. People started asking me questions, like, “How can I cook that in a dorm room? How can I cook that on a budget?” Basically, it was a lot of kids who had just gone to college and didn’t know how to cook for themselves. I experimented with different recipes and came back to them with answers—and slowly, I began teaching them how to cook.

It gave me the idea to share these ideas with more people than just the ones on my Facebook page, so I Googled “book editor” and found a woman named Helen Chang in San Diego. She told me that creating a book like the one I wanted was expensive and that I also needed a bigger following. So she suggested I at least grow my fan base and to call her back in a year.

In that year, I enrolled in culinary school, I got a job hostessing at a restaurant, and I also saved

enough money to put a down payment on Helen’s services. I got my social media channels up and running, started shooting little videos of my recipes, and a year to the day, I called Helen back.

“You might not remember me, but I called you a year ago about writing a cookbook together?”

Helen later told me that her jaw dropped—she couldn’t believe I had actually called her back. We got right to work, and together, we wrote and photographed the book of my dreams: Kitchenability 101: The College Student’s Guide to Easy, Healthy, and Delicious Food. I decided to self-publish it, and the book went to print on my 21st birthday (just in time for me to legally toast its completion!).

These days, my favorite aspects of being an author are traveling to do events with college students and seeing their faces absolutely light up.

They can’t believe that cooking can be this easy— “I can make an entire meal with a rice cooker?” they’ll gasp—and I love instilling that confidence in them. I’m also a weekly food contributor to Parade.com, doing cooking demos on local morning shows all over the country, and still answering questions on my Facebook and Twitter pages.

None of this would have happened if Helen, my family and my whole Kitchenability team hadn’t given me a chance, and even though I had no idea I would one day cook for a living, run my own business or write a book, it’s been a total dream from start to finish.

Kitchenability 101: The College Student’s Guide to Easy, Healthy, and Delicious Food Burns, Nisa Kitchenability Press (175 pp.) $17.95 Oct 15, 2012 978-0-985643-00-3

Inside Scoop

Burns’ common-sense approach to cooking encourages college students to adopt an infectious love for cooking when young and maintain it lifelong.. Some of the recipes in Kitchenability 101 include: Crunchy, Fruity Yogurt Creamy, Gooey, Drippy Bagel Scrambled Eggs and Turkey Bacon Rosemary Potatoes Banana Cinnamon Waffles Nutella French Toast Thick, Rich Tomato Soup Dorm Room Wrap Avocado Lettuce Wraps Salsa Grilled Cheese Mediterranean Pasta Egg Head Noodles Gnocchi with Pesto Caribbean Dream Fish Tacos Mango Lime Salsa Tropical Pineapple Chicken Chicken Mole Feta-Spiked Turkey Burgers Jalapeño Sliders Caesar Pizza Pasta Carbonara Fancy Mac and Cheese Ants on a Snow Hill Sweet Chili Cranberry Meatballs

An author, speaker and Internet sensation, Nisa Burns made her venture into the culinary world in true Gen Y fashion: virally. Sharing recipes in social media circles, Nisa’s spunky but common-sense approach to food soon earned her many fans on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. She is a culinary graduate of the Art Institute of Virginia Beach and the CEO of Kitchenability, Inc.

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THE BORISOV DILEMMA Strahan, Ted F. Manuscript (326 pp.)

Action and plot twists fuel Strahan’s debut spy thriller.

Damon Courter, a retired CIA operative turned successful author, has his peaceful existence in the Colorado mountains interrupted by the arrival of a figure from his past. In the company of a CIA agent, Courter returns to Washington to positively identify a Russian defector. However, the man who claims to be Borisov isn’t the same man Courter worked with during his CIA days. That would seem to be the end of the matter—but then the Borisov imposter and the CIA agents protecting him are killed, and an attempt is made on Courter’s life, though he’s rescued by his ex-wife, a CIA contractor. Pulled into CIA operations, the pair struggles to sort out what happened, as they meet danger and treachery around every corner, eventually landing themselves in a volatile situation in the Middle East.

From the opening in a Russian prison where the real Borisov is about to meet his end, the high-octane story is filled with tension and action. Strahan has a flair for characterization, creating realistic and believable primary and secondary characters. It’s easy to root for Courter and, though she can be a coldblooded killer when she needs to, his ex-wife, Helen Calparri, who earns sympathy. The dialogue-heavy story rolls forward in a short, punchy style that has a believable feel to it. Descriptions of the action avoid any poetic flourishes and instead rely on taut sentences—“She rushed forward with eyes closed, piling into the man, and tried to jab at his throat and eyes to incapacitate him as quickly as possible and open the elevator door”—to vividly depict the unfolding events. Subplots involving minor characters and the rekindling of Courter and Calparri’s romance ably round out the novel, while the final chapter leaves enough room for a possible sequel.

This abundance of twists, turns and double crosses should satisfy readers eager for some armchair espionage.

WATERSHEDS OF WORLD HISTORY From Monarchies to Democracy and From Myth to Reason Taylor, John L. CreateSpace (192 pp.) $14.98 paper | $7.99 e-book Nov. 14, 2012 978-1-4791-2670-5

Ten thousand years of world history gets crammed into this compact guidebook intended to inspire Internet research.

Some readers may balk at a world history book that covers everything from ancient Sumerian tablets and the agricultural 144

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innovations in the Fertile Crescent circa 8000 B.C. to the present-day Middle East conflict and President Barack Obama’s election in fewer than 200 pages. But armchair historian and former mortgage banker John L. Taylor (Bullheaded Black Remembers Alexander, 2006) hits on every major global event in between these milestones. He summarizes his objective in the book’s prologue: “The text is simply a clear summary of basic information available to everyone….[A]s a reader, you will bring our great human story to life by using Google or other search engines to verify facts, expand details and see the many wonderful images and maps available to you at the touch of your fingertips.” While it’s difficult to criticize a book that admits its dependence on outside sources, especially since none are referenced within, one might wonder why the information wasn’t presented in a Web-based medium in the first place. But as it stands, Taylor’s photoless, nearly dateless book is a thorough, objective introduction to the story of people around the globe, ­naturally beginning with the dawning of the written word.

From there, he introduces the foundations of faith in ancient history, revealing how early religious and mythical beliefs (and those who opposed them) would haunt humanity for centuries to come, leading to history’s most recognizable turning points—the literal and cultural wars through the Dark Ages and the Crusades, through monarchies to scientific revolution, and finally through two world wars to many in the Middle East. As a stand-alone read, Taylor’s breakneck summaries coalesce into a surprisingly complete overview of global triumphs and failures, slowing only to emphasize key dramatic shifts in power and ways of thinking, such as when “the Greeks introduced a rational, rather than a mythological or theological understanding of the natural world.” The dizzying pace sometimes results in a flat, distant tone, but the prose is nothing if not reader friendly.

And while certain moments beg for more historical or physical detail, that is, of course, the reader’s responsibility to resolve.

As much a world history primer for younger or less knowledgeable readers as it is for history buffs who want a concise story of the ties that bind civilizations.

HOW TO GREET STRANGERS A Mystery Thompson, Joyce Lethe Press (246 pp.) $15.00 paper | $6.99 e-book Feb. 15, 2013 978-1-59021-271-4

A sophisticated murder mystery that explores identity issues and Santeria traditions.

Thompson (Sailing My Shoe to Timbuktu, 2003, etc.) gifts readers with a memorable, larger-thanlife character in protagonist Archer Barron. A couple of years after Archer left the Santeria religion, he has yet to find a new spiritual home. He’s completed law school but hasn’t taken the bar, working instead as a night watchman on a college campus.

He’s comfortable with being gay and has come to terms with

“[Thulin’s] message of perseverance can be embraced by anyone, regardless of ability.” from handbook for wheelchair life

his HIV-positive status, although past hurts still linger. His uneasy stability is undermined when his former madrina (or Santeria godmother) is brutally murdered, and he finds himself drawn back to old acquaintances—and confronted with old ambivalences. When a second Santeria practitioner is killed and others, including Archer, are threatened, he allies with a police detective who’s unusually sensitive to Santeria customs.

The novel’s deft pacing is slow enough to allow emotional nuances to develop but fast enough to maintain reader interest. Its subplots generally contribute to the main story, although its shifts in place and time period may not always initially be clear. Thompson expertly sketches characters of different ages, ethnicities, sexual orientations and religious backgrounds, and she imbues even minor characters with individuality and scrupulously avoids caricature. Her dialogue is natural and credible, with Archer showing humor (“Okay, it’s true, I prefer opera to hip-hop, one more way that gay trumps black. Get over it”) and insight (“Guilt was my fellow traveller and always had been, a life sentence and a soulmate all in one, my dark familiar”). The novel offers an intriguing inside look at Santeria rituals and customs, but some readers may get bogged down in the specific terminology. Overall, however, the author delivers a suspenseful, intelligent tale.

Thompson is back with a flourish, entertaining and challenging readers with an engaging mystery.

HANDBOOK FOR WHEELCHAIR LIFE

Thulin, David CreateSpace (160 pp.) $8.99 paper | Dec. 11, 2012 978-1-4793-8850-9 Witty advice from a man who refuses to allow his wheelchair to be a prison.

A broken body doesn’t have to result in a broken person, says Thulin. After awaking from a coma following a stroke, the author had to learn to use a wheelchair. The transition wasn’t easy, but Thulin discovered the “wheelchair life” can be better in many ways than the walking kind. It all starts with a person’s mindset. “More than anything, your attitude will form your future,” he writes. “Form a good one!” To help others facing a similar journey, Thulin offers a lighthearted yet inspiring collection of tips culled from his own experience. There is no central narrative; rather, each page contains one to four instructional nuggets. Some are practical, stressing the importance of wheelchair maintenance, physical fitness and hygiene. Others call for a can-do spirit: “Live the best life possible with the abilities you have today. Don’t wait for tomorrow’s abilities.” Readers are encouraged to be independent and adventurous, to learn how to drive a car and to participate in wheelchair sports when possible. Thulin also touches on relationships. He aptly notes that a wheelchair is not only a new experience for the person using it, but for family and friends as well. Self-pity and poor manners are unacceptable. “Few things are less attractive than a cynic in a wheelchair,” he says. Even the book’s physical characteristics

bear the mark of someone who understands the logistics of using a wheelchair. Compact and flexible, with easy-to-flip pages, the book opens comfortably on a person’s lap. Regrettably, Thulin doesn’t include much biographical info, which would have added a human face to his poignant words. Nevertheless, his message of perseverance can be embraced by anyone, regardless of ability.

Humorous and uplifting, this is a call to lead a vibrant life, whether you walk—or wheel—through it.

...OF PASSING CLOUDS, DISTANT SHORES, AND TALES OF A CUBAN COOK A Collection of Family Recipes Vadell, Marlene CreateSpace (90 pp.) $20.00 paper | Dec. 14, 2012 978-1-4792-1978-0

A nostalgic debut that’s half memoir of a childhood in 1950s Cuba and half cookbook with traditional recipes.

Vadell simply and honestly tells of her early upbringing in Cuba, before her family left and eventually settled in the United States. Born in Havana in 1950, the author tells stories of birthday parties with piñatas, daily swimming at the beach at Santa Maria del Mar and gathering around the table with her extended family for lunch and dinner. “Dinner time was not only a time for nourishment but it was also the arena in which many discussions took place,” she writes. Politics was a common, often heated, topic; Grandmother was “considered a socialist,” while Grandfather and Mother were “more conservative.” Most memorable, though, were the aromas, textures and flavors of the authentic Cuban food. After old Cuba began to unravel in 1960 under the new government of Fidel Castro, the family sought refuge in Spain, Puerto Rico and finally Miami and Los Angeles. Although the memoir’s prose is sometimes repetitive, the author delivers a candid, engaging first-person account of a disrupted life and the making of a new one. The book’s second half details 40 classic Cuban recipes for soups, seafood, beef, poultry, egg dishes and desserts, including sopa de ajo, tortilla de platanos maduros, carne mechada and arroz con pollo, among others. The recipes’ ingredients are basic and readily available, and Vadell’s instructions are clear. She includes family stories with many of the dishes, as well as a few color images, including enticing photos of a flan ring and a bowl of sweetened corn meal.

An author living her life with her “heart in two places” gives readers a taste of the culinary pleasures she remembers.

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SURVIVANOIA

UNBURYING HOPE

Von Smith, Baroness CreateSpace (338 pp.) $15.00 paper | $9.95 e-book Aug. 27, 2012 978-1-4699-0518-1

Wallace, Mary Road Angel Media (340 pp.) $15.99 paper | $9.99 e-book Jan. 16, 2013 978-0-9854207-0-3

First-time novelist Von Smith tells a complex tale centered on Survivanoia, an engineering firm with a potential link to a deadly virus.

As the novel opens, Baroness Dacianna “Daci” Von Worthington has been named the new president of Survivanoia. The company specializes in unconventional products, such as radiation-proof jogging suits, and it also develops vaccines. But has it secretly discovered an effective vaccine for the Flower Flu, a disease which renders people blind, and is there credence to a class action suit claiming that the vaccine is being withheld from the public? The baroness is determined to uncover the truth. This book offers an indisputably novel-length story, but it’s structured as a number of shorter stories, spotlighting different characters’ perspectives. Some initially seem to be digressions, such as one featuring Vonnie, a woman who starts a career in comedy by telling jokes about her estranged, and famous, rapper husband; Vonnie’s friend, Chloe, turns out to be a Survivanoia employee. In the ingenious, intertwining narratives, the author moves back and forth in time, sometimes repeating scenes from other points of view, without ever slowing the momentum of the main baroness/virus plot.

Some events are teased in one story before readers see them fully unfold in another. The stories boast a fetching assortment of characters, including an unemployed genius scientist; the former star of a canceled television series, who takes on his TV character’s persona, uses the show’s catchphrase and hums its theme song; two stepbrothers whose mothers are married; and a noticeably masculine man in a dress. The book’s final act focuses on the baroness and wraps up the loose ends from most of the previous stories, including revealing the aftermath of a car collision. As the story clarifies the baroness’ actions at Survivanoia, and her reasons for being there, it gradually makes her a more sympathetic and engaging character. The story finally comes together in a satisfying conclusion.

A novel with so many painstakingly well-defined layers that readers may want to flip back to page one for a second read—or even a third.

The moving story of a woman holding on to romance while trying to save her troubled lover.

An ambitious work, Wallace’s debut novel tackles difficult subjects, including a soldier’s hidden scars from battle and the devastation of a hometown spiraling into economic disarray. Celeste grew up on tales her mother told her about Detroit being “the doe-eyed, fresh-faced belle of the nation’s ball.” However, as Celeste reached adulthood and the economy collapsed, her city “declined into a gaunt, overlooked old woman whose stringy hair was sown with weeds.” This dark backdrop sets the scene for an even bigger struggle when she meets Eddie, an Iraq War veteran whose overwhelming PTSD makes for a rocky relationship. As Celeste continues to fall for Eddie, hoping to cure him of his dark moods, she begins to suspect that there’s more to him than what she sees. Suspicions of him having an affair as well as dealing drugs begin to grow when she thinks she spots Eddie buying drugs from a nurse. Celeste’s concerns for her failing town and her secretive boyfriend come together when she learns that drug trafficking is at the heart of Detroit’s destruction. Yet she becomes even more determined to carve out a life with her boyfriend, although it means leaving her hometown and friends behind as she and Eddie relocate to Hawaii. Eddie chases his dream of opening a dive shop and reconnects with his young daughter, Rosalinda, while Celeste is forced to choose what will ultimately make her happy. Celeste’s tendency to lose herself in the people around her makes her a sympathetic, likable character, and her story, usually told in a straightforward manner, also features twists that take surprising and touching turns. Her complicated relationship with Eddie makes for an original romantic tale that’s timely and memorable.

A bittersweet tale that highlights the sacrifices people make for love, and at what cost.

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,”

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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.

K i rk us M e di a L L C # President M A RC W I N K E L M A N Chief Operating Officer M E G L A B O R D E KU E H N Chief Financial Officer J ames H ull SVP, Marketing M ike H ejny SVP, Online Paul H offman # Copyright 2013 by Kirkus Media LLC. KIRKUS REVIEWS (ISSN 1948-7428) is published semimonthly by Kirkus Media LLC, 6411 Burleson Road, Austin, TX 78744.

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Written by CARY FAGAN Illustrated by GARY CLEMENT

“Channeling E.M. Forster by way of the Borscht Belt, Fagan and Clement . . . offer a very funny and highly performable plea for the generations to ‘Only connect.’”

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY Ages 4 to 8 | 978-1-55498-148-9 | Hardcover $17.95

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