March 01, 2013: Volume LXXXI, No 5

Featuring 321 Industry-First Reviews of Fiction, Nonfiction and Children's & Teen

KIRKUS VOL. LXXXI, NO.

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REVIEWS CHILDREN'S & TEEN

GAME ON!

by Jennifer L. and Matthew Holm Everyamoeba Squish returns with a tale of video-game addiction that will have readers dissolving in laughter. p. 91

NONFICTION

The Guns at Last Light

by Rick Atkinson The author brings his Liberation Trilogy to a resounding close. p. 45

FICTION

The Woman Upstairs

by Claire Messud A brilliant, terrifying novel. p. 26

Photo by Gene Page

Rebecca Miller Director, Painter, and Actress but Writer Above All Else p. 14

Also In This Issue Baseball Picture Books, p. 111

Humor Writer Jason Mulgrew, p. 58 Gail Carriger: The Queen of Quirk, p. 92 How Best-seller Hugh Howey Made His Own Luck, p. 124

Anniversaries: Foucault’s Pendulum B Y G RE G O RY MC NA M EE

Chairman H E R B E RT S I M O N # President & Publisher M A RC W I N K E L M A N Chief Operating Officer M E G L A B O R D E KU E H N mkuehn@kirkus.com

A b i t o f c o n s p i r a c y t h e o r y t o o p e n t h i s m o n t h of ides and signs and portents: For decades, a giant pendulum slowly swung inside the Smithsonian’s Museum of History and Technology. When the museum was renovated to become the Museum of American History, the pendulum disappeared. Where did it go? And why, in those closing days of the Bush administration, did it go?

It was not just any pendulum. It was a Foucault pendulum, designed by a 19th-century French

Editor E L A I N E S Z E WC Z Y K eszewczyk@kirkus.com Managing/Nonfiction Editor E R I C L I E B E T R AU eliebetrau@kirkus.com Children’s & Teen Editor VICKY SMITH vsmith@kirkus.com Features Editor C laiborne S mith csmith@kirkus.com

scientist to show the rotation of the Earth. Now, the physical world, ancient philosophers and

Mysteries Editor THOMAS LEITCH

modern scientists agree, is governed by chaos; just so, the human world is swept along by mysteri-

Contributing Editor G R E G O RY M c N A M E E

ous forces, dark eruptions of the spirit, cruel fixations and mad superstitions. So Umberto Eco sug-

Senior Indie Editor KAREN SCHECHNER kschechner@kirkus.com

gests in Foucault’s Pendulum, a sprawling philosophical novel that appeared a quarter-century ago in its original Italian and went on, like his earlier Name of the Rose, to find readers around the world.

The novel centers on three editors at a Milanese vanity publisher. They pass their quiet days by inventing oxymoronic courses, such as “Urban Planning for Gypsies,” for their projected School of Comparative Irrelevance and by flattering and bilking wishful authors—always a subject with possibilities. Hardened cynics, the narrator Casaubon and his colleagues Belbo and Diotallevi regard their work with arrogant zeal: “Transforming books with a word here, a word there….If you fill the world with children who do not bear your name, no one will know they are yours. Like being God in plain clothes.”

Their playful life is soon interrupted by one Col. Ardenti, whose great dream is to publish a history of the Knights Templars, a military order of monks enriched by the Crusades and crushed by papal order in the early 1300s. Certain that the Knights Templars still exist and secretly rule the world—a story that has been taken and run with by lesser authors since—Ardenti urges his manuscript on the doubtful editors. Soon thereafter, the three are drawn into a weird whirlwind that is at least partly of their own making, and it is up to Casaubon to save them all.

Guided by hints Belbo has hidden in his computer, called Abulafia after the medieval Jewish mystic, Casaubon sounds the depths of one occult organization after another; numerologists, Illuminati, astral projecters, synarchists, Rosicrucians, New Agers, channelers, Freemasons and other devotees of the “tellurian currents” all come under Casaubon’s scrutiny. Like the hero of Borges’s story “Death and the Compass,” he wanders from one strange corner to the next, on to a nicely twisted ending that bares the totalitarian fascination with secrecy, an obsession that defines the will to power. At the close of the novel, the innermost mystery still unresolved but lots of mayhem accomplished, we’re still not quite sure which conspiracy will prevail—or which reality actually governs the world.

What we do know is that it’s a dangerous business toying with authors. Fans of intellectual mysteries will find no more pleasing guide to the tellurian currents than Foucault’s Pendulum, 25 years on.

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 • Gerald Bartell • Amy Boaz • Lee E. Cart • Derek Charles Catsam • Marnie Colton • Dave DeChristopher • Gregory F. DeLaurier • Kathleen Devereaux • Bobbi Dumas • Daniel Dyer • Lisa Elliott • Julie Foster • Peter Franck • Bob Garber • Sean Gibson • Alan Goldsher • 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 • Chris Morris • Liza Nelson • Mike Newirth • John Noffsinger • Sarah Norris • Mike Oppenheim • Jim Piechota • Christofer D. Pierson • William E. Pike • Gary Presley • Karen Rigby • Lloyd Sachs • Bob Sanchez • Sandra Sanchez • Michael Sandlin • Rosanne Simeone • Elaine Sioufi • Wendy Smith • Margot E. Spangenberg • Emily Thompson • Claire Trazenfeld • Steve Weinberg • Rodney Welch • Carol White • Chris White • Homa Zaryouni

you can now purchase books online at kirkus.com

contents fiction Index to Starred Reviews............................................................5 REVIEWS.................................................................................................5 The many lives of rebecca miller..........................................14

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

Mystery..............................................................................................34 Science Fiction & Fantasy..........................................................41

nonfiction Index to Starred Reviews..........................................................43 REVIEWS...............................................................................................43 An interview with humor writer Jason Mulgrew........58

children’s & teen Index to Starred Reviews..........................................................75 REVIEWS...............................................................................................75 Gail carriger: The queen of quirk.......................................92 baseball picture books............................................................111 interactive e-books.................................................................. 114

indie REVIEWS..............................................................................................117 back story: Hugh Howey..........................................................124

Rick Atkinson brings his Liberation Trilogy to a resounding close. See the starred review on p. 45.

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on the web novelist living on a remote island who discovers a collection of artifacts washed ashore in a Hello Kitty lunchbox—possibly debris from the devastating 2011 tsunami. As the mystery of its contents unfolds, Ruth is pulled into the past, into Nao’s drama and her unknown fate, and forward into her own future.

w w w. k i r k u s . c o m Check out these highlights from Kirkus’ online coverage at www.kirkus.com 9

In Rob Zombie’s new novel, The Lords of Salem, Heidi Hawthorne is a 37-year-old FM radio DJ and a recovering drug addict. Struggling with her newfound sobriety and creeping depression, Heidi suddenly receives an anonymous gift at the station—a mysteriously shaped wooden box branded with a strange symbol. Inside the box is a promotional record for a band that identifies themselves only as The Lords. She decides to play it on the radio show as a joke, and the moment she does, horrible things begin to happen. The strange music awakens something evil in the town. Soon enough, terrifying murders begin to happen all around Heidi. Who are The Lords? What do they want? As old bloodlines are awakened and the bodies start to pile up, only one thing seems certain: All hell is about to break loose. Tyler Stoddard Smith asks Zombie about his new novel.

You are passionate about books and so are we. Visit the Kirkus Book Bloggers Network to find current commentary on your favorite genres.

From celebrity to sci-fi, we cover it all.

Perhaps you’ve seen Westboro Baptist Church protests on the news, picketing at events such as the funerals of soldiers, the 9-year-old victim of a shooting and Elizabeth Edwards, all in front of their grieving families. The WBC is fervently anti-gay, anti-Semitic, and anti- practically everything and everyone. And they aren’t going anywhere: The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in favor of the WBC’s right to picket funerals. Kirkus writer Joshunda Sanders asks Lauren Drain about her former membership in the WBC and her new book, Banished: Surviving My Years in the Westboro Baptist Church; Drain was thrust into that cult at the age of 15 and then spat back out again seven years later. Banished is the first look inside the organization, as well as a fascinating story of adaptation and perseverance. When Drain’s formerly liberal and secular father set out to produce a documentary about the WBC, his detached interest gradually evolved into fascination, and he moved the entire family to Kansas to join the church and live on their compound. As Drain matured and began to challenge some of the church’s tenets, she was unceremoniously cast out from the church and permanently cut off from her family and from everyone else she knew and loved.

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 best-seller Andrew Kaufman. 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.

Jessica Gross asks Ruth Ozeki about her new, long-awaited novel, A Tale for the Time Being, which Kirkus has called “a masterpiece, pure and simple” in a starred review. In Tokyo, 16-year-old Nao has decided there’s only one escape from her aching loneliness and her classmates’ bullying. But before she ends it all, Nao first plans to document the life of her greatgrandmother, a Buddhist nun who’s lived more than a century. A diary is Nao’s only solace—and will touch lives in ways she can scarcely imagine. Across the Pacific, we meet Ruth, a

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fiction THE CARETAKER

These titles earned the Kirkus Star:

Ahmad, A.X. Minotaur (304 pp.) $24.99 | May 21, 2013 978-1-250-01684-3

LOVE IS POWER, OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT

by A. Igoni Barrett..................................................................................8 FATHERHOOD by Thomas H. Cook.................................................... 11 THE ROOTS OF BETRAYAL by James Forrester.................................. 15 BETWEEN MY FATHER AND THE KING by Janet Frame.................16 ANGEL BABY by Richard Lange.........................................................22 THE WOMAN UPSTAIRS by Claire Messud...................................... 26 GODFORSAKEN IDAHO by Shawn Vestal.........................................32

BETWEEN MY FATHER AND THE KING

Frame, Janet Counterpoint (256 pp.) $26.00 May 14, 2013 978-1-6190-2169-3

Ahmad debuts with a fast-paced literary thriller, shifting action from the desolate ice-clad Siachen glacier separating India and Pakistan to the posh environs of Martha’s Vineyard.

Ranjit Singh is a Sikh, once an Indian army captain, a frontier war veteran. Ranjit was involved in a friendly fire incident and imprisoned. Upon release, he knew his life was in danger from a corrupt general. With his wife and daughter, Ranjit sought refuge in America. His wife’s uncle, a Boston grocery store owner, financed their flight, but Ranjit chafed under the uncle’s patronizing attitude and demands for cheap labor. Ranjit moves his family to Martha’s Vineyard and struggles with a landscaping business. As winter arrives and work disappears, Anna Neals, young second wife of a Massachusetts’ senator, the nation’s longest serving African-American legislator, asks Ranjit to work as a caretaker for the Neals’ vacation home. Her request seems innocuous, but Anna is an emotionally damaged woman. The story unfolds in the present, with flashbacks to the mission that cost Ranjit his military career, often in the form of hallucinations in which Ranjit’s loyal sergeant appears. Trapped between lack of money and his wife’s depression and loneliness, Ranjit temporarily shelters his family in the senator’s island house, the first step in an inexorable spiral into personal chaos. Their trespass is discovered when two men break in searching for computer records that could wreck the senator’s political career. The action shifts to Boston and then back to Martha’s Vineyard, with hairbreadth chases and violent confrontations. The operatives arrest Ranjit’s wife and daughter as illegal immigrants and then threaten deportation, attempting to extort the computer records from Ranjit. Ahmad writes with intimate familiarity of Boston, Martha’s Vineyard, and the Sikhs and their culture, but his best work comes in his characterizations of the ambitious senator, caught up in Indian and Pakistani duplicity and North Korean chicanery; Anna, the grieving and lonely wife; and the Singh family’s stumbling through the swamp of cultural discordance.

Top-notch effort in the first of a promising trilogy.

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“Allende is a master at plucking heartstrings....” from maya’s notebook

MAYA’S NOTEBOOK

BEST KEPT SECRET

Allende, Isabel Harper/HarperCollins (400 pp.) $28.99 | Apr. 23, 2013 978-0-06-210562-2 A 19-year-old Californian escapes her troubled past when her grandmother sends her to an isolated Chilean community in the latest confection of spiritual uplift, political instruction and lyrical melodrama from Allende (Island Beneath

the Sea, 2010, etc.).

In 2009, Berkley-born and -bred Maya arrives in Chiloé, an isolated island community in southern Chile, to escape the drug dealers and law enforcement officials on her trail. Her eponymous notebook combines a record of Maya’s not-so-gradual immersion into the Chiloé community with her memories of an idyllic childhood and horrifically wayward adolescence.

Because her Scandinavian mother deserted her in infancy and her father traveled constantly as a pilot, Maya was largely raised by her paternal grandparents, Nini and Popo. Popo, a gentle African-American astronomer, is actually Chilean-born Nini’s second husband; she left Chile with her son after her first husband’s arrest/torture/murder by Pinochet forces. While Maya has always loved fiery Nini, Popo was the steadying center of her girlhood. After his death, Maya dove headlong into a life of addiction and criminality, ending up on the streets of LA, where she became a drug runner and worse. But all that ugliness seems far away as she settles into Chiloé, living with and assisting Nini’s old friend Manuel, an anthropologist researching the mythology of the Chilotes. Maya, who is visited at times by visions of her Popo, builds a special relationship with Manuel— her curiosity about Manuel’s relationship to Nini gives Allende an excuse to explore the dark history of 1970s Chile. Maya also coaches the local kids at soccer and falls in love with a backpacking psychiatrist from Seattle, a gentle romance that contrasts starkly with her memories of rape and violation. Despite her enthusiasm for her new life, Maya remains in danger: She knows secrets criminals might kill for if they can just find her.

Allende is a master at plucking heartstrings, and Maya’s family drama is hard to resist, but the sentimentality and a lack of subtlety concerning politics, Chilean and American, can grate. (Author tour to: Boston, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Nashville, New York, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C.)

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Archer, Jeffrey St. Martin’s (384 pp.) $27.99 | May 14, 2013 978-1-250-00098-9 Series: The Clifton Chronicles, 3 In this third of this much-like Downton Abbey series, Archer (Sins of the Father, 2012, etc.) takes the Clifton Chronicles into the post–World War II era.

Employing a prologue, Archer slaps a final coat of paint on Volume 2, with the Lord Chancellor awarding the Barrington title to Harry’s brother-in-arms, Giles, a Labor MP. Harry and Emma, Giles’ sister, are finally free to marry. The two already have an out-of-wedlock son, Sebastian.

In this installment, Emma and Harry discover Emma’s cad of a father sired a young girl now living at a local orphanage. The Cliftons do the paperwork and the interviews and adopt Jessica, a budding artist, without revealing to her or Sebastian that she’s blood kin. Meantime, Harry’s become an acclaimed author of detective novels, and Emma meets a Pulitzer Prize–winning author who is impressed with her intellect and decides to help her obtain a degree. When family matriarch Lady Elizabeth dies, she disinherits Giles because he intends to marry Lady Virginia, a greedy, rhymes-with-witchy aristocrat. There’s a divorce when Giles regains his senses and then a family reconciliation.

And much more. Archer spins sufficient narrative threads for six novels, complete with ample money, Old-Boy connections, intrigue and a deus ex machina.

What-will-happen-next reading best approached after picking up the series’ first two entries.

THE ROVING TREE

Augustave, Elsie Akashic (224 pp.) $15.95 paper | May 7, 2013 978-1-61775-165-3 Augustave, a first-time novelist, pens a well-balanced story about a young woman, caught between two worlds, who struggles to connect with her heritage.

Iris Odys grew up in a world vastly different from the one in which she was born.

When she dies shortly after giving birth, her final wish is that the story of her life be related to her daughter so that she will understand who she is. When Hagathe, a maid who works for a wealthy family, returns to her Haitian village and gives birth to Iris, she ekes out a living for herself and her daughter, but life is not easy under the rule of “Papa Doc” Duvalier and his ever-present militia, the Tonton Macoute. After Hagathe is brutally assaulted, she makes a difficult decision: Concerned for her daughter’s safety and future, she asks a visiting anthropologist and her husband to adopt 5-year-old Iris and take her to America. The Winstons, a wealthy Caucasian couple, already have one adopted daughter

and readily agree to Hagathe’s request. Raised in privilege by her loving and supportive parents, Iris assimilates into her new culture, but her need to understand her origins, to delve into the very essence of her existence, and to embrace not only herself, but her ancestors, is overpowering. Her godfather enrolls Iris in Haitian dance classes, and it’s when she dances to the beating drums that she finally begins to connect to her roots. Entering college, Iris joins the Black Students Union and meets fellow Haitian Pépé, with whom she feels an immediate bond. A disturbing message from Haiti and information about her biological family compel Iris to return to Haiti, where she learns about her ancestors’ mystical rituals and practices. Her decision to accept a job in Africa finally reconciles past, present and future when Iris falls in love with an older, politically powerful man who wishes to marry her. Augustave has created a polished narrative that addresses racism and cultural and class differences and provides a wealth of information about vaudou beliefs.

A praiseworthy effort.

A GUIDE TO BEING BORN Stories

Ausubel, Ramona Riverhead (208 pp.) $26.95 | May 2, 2013 978-1-59448-795-8

Lyrical stories arranged around themes of birth, gestation, conception and love—yes, in that order.

“Poppyseed,” from the section entitled Birth, presents a dual narrative in which a father gives us a relatively objective perspective and a mother a far more subjective one on their severely incapacitated daughter, Poppy. A doctor has proposed using Poppy as a surgical experiment, and his puffed-up view of himself reduces her status to that of a laboratory animal, in contrast to the heartbreaking surge of love the parents experience. “Chest of Drawers” takes us into the realm of the surreal, for here, the husband of a pregnant woman does indeed find little drawers

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growing in his chest, and in them, he begins to carry small items (such as his wife’s lipstick) as well as small dolls that distortedly mirror his wife’s condition. In “Atria,” Hazel Whiting loses her virginity to Johnny, a clerk at the 7-Eleven, and shortly thereafter is raped by another man. When she becomes pregnant, her status increases when people believe she’s carrying the child of a rapist even though Johnny is the father. Buck, a girl in “Catch and Release,” is a talented athlete who wants to grow up to be a baseball player. Actually named after first lady Mamie Eisenhower, Buck loves her nickname but never discovers its sordid origin—when her wayward father, Pops, found out Buck’s mother was pregnant with her, he contemptuously threw a dollar bill on the bed, calling out “This is my contribution! Call that baby Buck, ’cause that’s all he’s worth!’ ” Ausubel has a gift of language so rich that even the most mundane events are invested with poetry, and many of her characters are in need of all the poetry they can muster.

COLD DECK

Barnes, H. Lee Univ. of Nevada (216 pp.) $26.95 | Mar. 15, 2013 978-0-87417-884-5 A Vegas novel, so naturally, it concerns scamming the casinos.

Jude Helms is out of his element in Las Vegas, for he’s that seeming rarity: an honest dealer. But he’s run into a string of bad luck, having been fired without cause from several casinos. (Well, perhaps not totally without cause. Once, he complimented a customer for her largesse, which was misconstrued as “large ass.”) Now, it’s 20 years later, and although his marriage has fallen apart, he’s close to his children, 14-year-old Beth and recent college graduate Lucas. All Jude really wants is enough money to start his own masonry company, but until that time, he’s committed—or condemned—to work the tables. Finally he seems to get a break when Audie, the mother of one of Beth’s friends, introduces him to Ben, who’s impressed by Jude’s skill in dealing cards. Ben works with him and with Angel, a slick con, to perfect Jude’s technique in checking and changing cards without being seen. In a hierarchy of corruption, Ben seems to be working for the mysterious Wade, an ex-con definitely not to be messed with. When Jude feels he’s had enough, Ben informs him that he’s now “in” and can’t escape the $2 million scam that’s planned involving a “cold deck,” in which a deck of cards with predictable patterns is substituted for one of the casino decks in the shoe. Jude does everything he can to extricate himself from his morally compromising situation and to protect his children, something made far more difficult when he discovers that Audie, with whom he’s developed a sexual relationship, is perhaps the mastermind behind the whole scheme—and is also married to the ever-menacing Wade.

Barnes’ novel will be of particular interest to those familiar with slots, blackjack and the seamy side of casinos.

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LOVE IS POWER, OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT Stories

Barrett, A. Igoni Graywolf (176 pp.) $15.00 paper | May 7, 2013 978-1-55597-640-8

Love, life, revenge, survival and compassion all figure in this bighearted, daring collection of stories from a gifted Nigerian writer.

Barrett—a prize-winning contributor to several anthologies and journals—shares as much with Raymond Carver or Amy Hempel as Chinua Achebe, from whom he draws inspiration.

The author has that innate sense of what it is below the surface that sends people simmering, not to mention the impeccable sense of timing that the form demands. Many of the stories, loosely based on Barrett’s family, are mundane tragedies. In the opener, “The Worst Thing That Happened,” an old-age pensioner with numerous children struggles to find someone to pick her up from cataract surgery. “Godspeed and Perpetua” chronicles the long, slow demise of an arranged marriage and the incredible lengths a noble man must go to in order to protect his family. Others are simply stories of survival. In “The Shape of a Full Circle,” when 14-year-old Dimié loses the money for dinner, not to mention his alcoholic mother’s nightly blessing, he must draw on his grandmother’s good graces for help. It’s one of those stories that Barrett lands with a shattering blow: “When Daoju Anabraba, a smile playing on her chapped lips, uttered the words, ‘I hate your eyes, my son,’ he slapped her.”

Another, “Dream Chaser,” plays off the post-modern trope of skilled young hackers cruising the Web for suckers, pretending to be girls they are not. The final story, “A Nairobi Story of Comings and Goings,” is another unromantic heartbreaker about the volatile relationship between a Nigerian man and a white NGO worker. “Love means you make me happy until you don’t,” Barrett writes, with startling finality.

Electrifying tales of vibrant urban nights and acrid, desperate days.

THE SHINING GIRLS

Beukes, Lauren Mulholland Books/Little, Brown (368 pp.) $25.99 | Jun. 4, 2013 978-0-316-21685-2 Beukes carries her experimentation in science fiction (Moxyland, 2010) and fantasy (Zoo City, 2010) to very dark corners as she follows a time-traveling serial killer who preys on young Chicago women from the 1930s until the 1990s.

In 1974, a little girl named Kirby takes a toy pony from a strange man in his 30s named Harper. In 1931, Harper, a tramp

“...both sizzling and swashbuckling.” from cinnamon and gunpowder

no older or younger than in 1974, hears and follows mysterious music to a boarded-up tenement and opens the front door with a key he has found in the pocket of a coat he stole earlier that night. Inside the house, which is elegantly furnished, is a man’s dead body. On the bedroom wall are the names of girls possessing a special glow that he must extinguish (and his first victim is a young showgirl with a literal glow about her from the radium she uses in her act). Each time Harper leaves his house, he can travel in time. He marks his victims first by giving them small gifts, then returns years later to kill them. And he returns again and again to 1931. Because of his ability to travel in and out of the 60-year time frame, he avoids suspicion. But there are glitches. In 1951, the transgendered showgirl he met in 1940 kills herself before he can kill her. In 1993, an artist turned crack addict has already lost her shine by the time he strikes.

And Kirby, whom Harper assumes he has killed in 1989, has managed to survive. By 1993, when Harper’s pace has sped up, Kirby is a student intern for attractive, middle-aged newspaper reporter Dan, who covered the story of her attack. Tracking her assailant, Kirby begins to suspect the bizarre nature of Harper’s vicious killing spree.

Despite thrillingly beautiful sentences, Beukes’ considerable imaginative powers seem wasted in this shallow, often ugly game of cat and mouse tarted up with supernatural elements that do not bear too much scrutiny. (Author appearances in New York, Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix, Houston and Chicago)

solely in fine cuisine: She’s on a quest to track down the Brass Fox, another villainous pirate who turns out to be her son—and whose father is none other than Lord Ramsey. It seems that Ramsey’s business concern, the Pendleton Trading Company, is deeply involved in the opium trade, hauling the illicit drug from India to China, and Captain Mabbot wants to put a stop to it.

Brown is able to make his narrative both sizzling and swashbuckling.

CINNAMON AND GUNPOWDER

Brown, Eli Farrar, Straus and Giroux (336 pp.) $26.00 | Jun. 4, 2013 978-0-374-12366-6 A novel of pirates in 1819.

Owen Wedgwood has a good job as a chef for Lord Ramsey when the latter’s house is broken into by Hannah Mabbot, captain of the Flying Rose. For obscure reasons—obscure at least to Wedgewood, who narrates the story— she murders Ramsey in cold blood and has her pirate minion Mr. Apples kidnap Wedgewood, for she’s thrilled to discover he’s a cook; it’s been difficult to have fine dining aboard a pirate ship.

While distressed to have been captured, Wedgwood is even more upset to discover he’s expected every Sunday to create culinary masterpieces from the thin gruel (as it were) of the ship’s store, but somehow he manages. For example, he’s able to create yeast bread by holding the rising dough against the warmth of his belly. At first, he ekes out acceptable meals, but as he’s able to raid the ship’s larder and occasionally get provisions in untoward ways, his Sunday meals become ever more creative and spectacular. Eventually, he turns out delicacies such as “Herring pâté with rosemary on walnut bread. Tea-smoked eel ravioli seared with caramelized garlic and bay leaf...and rum-poached figs stuffed with Pilfered Blue cheese and drizzled with honey.” But Captain Mabbot is not interested |

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IF YOU WERE HERE

Burke, Alafair Harper/HarperCollins (368 pp.) $25.99 | Jun. 4, 2013 978-0-06-220835-4 Burke opts for a different spin on the thrillers she usually produces, featuring a new heroine, former assistant district attorney turned journalist McKenna Jordan.

McKenna is in a pretty nice place these days: She has a handsome former West Pointer for a husband, a great job as a feature writer for a New York–based magazine and hints of a book deal based on a story she wrote. All she has to do is decide what story to write for the magazine’s next issue, which she soon accomplishes by tapping out a complicated 4,000-word investigative piece in a mere two hours. But McKenna has baggage, and every once in a while, it comes back to haunt her. A few years ago, as a former assistant district attorney, she prosecuted a case in which a police officer killed a kid who was armed. After researching the weapon, she uncovered evidence that it should have been destroyed years prior; her revelations set off a controversy that torpedoed her legal career and led to her new one as a journalist. Now, it looks like she’s embarking on another story that could also have life-changing effects. That story involves a woman that both McKenna and her husband, Patrick, have known for years. Susan Hauptmann, a West Pointer herself, mysteriously disappeared a decade ago, but when McKenna spots a woman who closely resembles Susan in a shaky video taken in a subway, she jumps on the trail. Soon she is up to her neck in subterfuge and lies, and she starts wondering if even the people to whom she’s closest are telling her the truth.

While the first half of the book builds reader anticipation, the second half bogs down in a hopelessly complicated plot that harbors false ending after false ending.

A frustrating read with too many West Point facts and an ending that just won’t end.

WHEN SHE CAME HOME

Campbell, Drusilla Grand Central Publishing (336 pp.) $14.99 paper | Apr. 9, 2013 978-1-4555-1035-1 A novel that deals with a number of important social issues, including the actions of private contractors in war, the treatment of women in the armed services, domestic violence and school bullying.

The author transports the reader into the heart, soul and mind of Francine Byrne Tennyson to feel her pain, recall her vivid childhood memories and experience her crises of conscience. It is clear that Frankie’s father, a highly decorated Marine general, expects his son to follow in his footsteps.

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Francine is determined that she will be the one to make her father proud. She excels in academics as well as athletics and after 9/11 decides to enlist in the Marines herself despite having a baby daughter. Both her husband and her father are unhappy about her decision. For years she performs office work near home but eventually is deployed to Iraq and returns with sufficient fear, anxiety and anger to warrant treatment for PTSD. She avoids treatment for a while as she struggles with the memory of witnessing a private contractor murder a child, a boy about the same age as her own daughter. She blames herself for not somehow preventing it and then struggles with the question of whether or not to testify at a Senate hearing regarding the conduct of the private contractors in Iraq. In the midst of all this, she watches her daughter act out her own anger and frustration at school, where other kids make fun of her, and she attempts to assist another female veteran with a daughter who is homeless and hiding from an abusive ex-husband.

Ultimately, in this heart-wrenching tale, Frankie figures out what she must do to help herself and her family.

THE SMART ONE

Close, Jennifer Knopf (352 pp.) $24.95 | Apr. 5, 2013 978-0-307-59686-4

Close, whose first novel (Girls in White Dresses, 2011) romped with recent college grads newly on their own, focuses here on two sisters on the cusp of 30, both torn between independent womanhood and lingering dependence on parents.

Claire Coffey has no investment in her nondescript (as in never described) job at an unnamed nonprofit, no social life now that her engagement has been broken by mutual consent, and a negative cash flow now that her ex-fiance has moved out of their shared Manhattan apartment. The only way she sees out of her debt is to move back in with her parents in Philadelphia: supermaternal Weezy and slightly removed Will (Close’s men never rise above sketches). Claire’s sister Martha, older by less than a year, is already there. She has lived at home and seen an increasingly frustrated therapist ever since having a breakdown during her first job as a certified nurse years ago. Soon, Claire has a dull temp job and a guy to hook up with: her hottie crush in high school, who conveniently just got dumped by his fiancee and is living with his parents too. An insecure underachiever, Claire is the typical cute, witty heroine readers know will land on her feet. But less attractive, i.e. slightly overweight, Martha, who has always been needy and socially off-kilter, steals the novel. After years managing a J.Crew, she has taken a first step back toward nursing with a job as an elderly man’s caregiver, but whether she’ll take a second step remains questionable. The friction between the sisters is palpable and real. Less believable is the subplot concerning younger brother Max, who moves home with his gorgeous, sensitive but very pregnant college girlfriend, Cleo; Close evades explaining why they decide to have the baby. Nothing unexpected happens, but the novel

sings in the small moments when its women express uncomfortable truths, undercurrents of sibling resentment and parental disappointment, which usually remain unspoken.

An unassuming but far from vacuous domestic comedy, perfect for the beach or a long plane trip. (Author tour to Chicago, New York and Washington, D.C.)

FATHERHOOD And Other Stories

Cook, Thomas H. Pegasus Crime (224 pp.) $24.95 | May 15, 2013 978-1-60598-467-4 A collection of 11 short stories, each one dark, crisp and satisfying.

The stories begin with “The Conviction,” where a good-old-boy Atlanta cop “knows” a killer’s identity without having to leave the

police station—he’s dead sure it’s a colored man who’s never up to any good. The collection ends with “What She Offered,” in which a one-night stand with a woman dressed in black results in a noir twist.

Throughout, the stories are engaging despite their generally bleak outlook. In “The Odds,” a dying man has been plagued for most of his life by his obsession with odds. What are the odds that he’ll be hit by a bus if he leaves his apartment? Or burn down his apartment building if he lights a match for the gas stove? A boxer throws a fight in “The Fix” and earns the sobriquet “Shameful Shamrock,” but was it truly a fix?

In the title story, a man falls in love with a beautiful girl and marries her.

But he detests the son she bears because the boy isn’t his. The child seems to mock the man right up to the startling end. (Anyone hoping to read about the ideal father might well look elsewhere.) “Rain” offers the staccato patter of cop dialogue and a sense of futility in the big and heartless city. “What Eddie Saw” imagines a boy whose father was a murderer. All of the stories are filled with misunderstandings, misdirections and misplaced resentments. Cook is a master yarn spinner brimming with imagination.

Probably won’t make you smile, but it will certainly grab and hold your attention.

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THE MAGIC CIRCLE

Davidson, Jenny Amazon/New Harvest (208 pp.) $15.95 paper | Mar. 26, 2013 978-0-544-02809-8 Role-playing games take over New York City’s Morningside Park with calamitous consequences in Davidson’s (Invisible Things, 2010, etc.) latest novel.

Lucy, a poet and MFA graduate student, shares an apartment with Ruth, a postdoc in game theory and design. Their Swedish neighbor, Anna, has garnered a Fulbright scholarship to study the urban culture of outdoor gaming. Yet each woman harbors a secret weakness. Lucy’s tenuous, almost ghostly connection to life and Ruth’s eating disorder, however, pale in comparison to Anna’s past as a neglected child consigned to a psychiatric hospital. Both Lucy and Anna assist Ruth in constructing her latest game, Trapped in the Asylum, which uses contemporary technologies (GPS, smartphones) to recreate an 1890s community for the insane. Anna is soon inspired to develop her own, darker game that imagines evil forces impinging on the city itself. Players must—weirdly and erotically—reinforce the magical protective wards first set into the gardens and buildings designed by Olmstead and architectural giants McKim, Mead and White. The arrival of Anna’s charismatic brother, Anders, catalyzes a dangerous game, indeed. Based upon The Bacchae—Euripides’ unsettling dramatization of the tensions between the rational and the irrational, between reason and passion—this game employs live-action role playing. Casting Ruth as the logical Pentheus, Anna as the irrational Dionysus, the game is replete with maenads and enforcers recruited and mobilized via Gchats, text messages and blog posts. As the players take their roles more and more seriously, the game becomes disturbingly unpredictable. Despite some stilted dialogue, Davidson deftly orchestrates a startling collision between the classical and the contemporary, reality and play.

A suspenseful cautionary tale: Don’t play games with strangers.

THE CONDUCT OF SAINTS

Davis, Christopher Permanent Press (232 pp.) $28.00 | May 15, 2013 978-1-57962-3159

Historical fiction, set in Rome in 1945 during the fraught post-war period.

With many characters based on real figures, including Pope Pius XII, this book has elements of a thriller.

At the center of Davis’ (A Peep Into the 20th Century, 1971, etc.) novel is Brendan Doherty, hard-drinking Irish prelate and canon lawyer from Philadelphia. Long a resident of Rome, long in the employ of the Vatican, he has two tasks. Implacably opposed to capital punishment, he attempts to save the confessed killer Pietro Koch from the death penalty.

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Suspicious and skeptical, he interrogates the saintly murderer Alessandro Serenelli, saved by a vision of his victim Maria “Marietta” Goretti. The investigation is a formality, as Goretti is to be canonized (she was, in 1950). Doherty is knotted with contradiction; alcohol and lies are the lubricants necessary to loosen his grasp of the facts and their hold on him. We meet Tommy Costa, trusty assistant to a U.S. Army general. Tommy and his general are good-hearted looters, injecting needed cash and other forms of currency into the strapped economy and strapless black market. Doherty meets Tommy in the company of impoverished royals. Rich in art and prestige but cash poor, they are not flattered; as the book proceeds, the title looks ironic. Deeply committed to conventions of novelistic verisimilitude, the book reads as a study of sin, the blackest guilt of Koch, the conflicted Doherty, the spotless soul of the saint Maria.

A strong example of an uncommon type of historical fiction, appealing to readers who like to see guilt punished or forgiven.

DECADENCE

Dickey, Eric Jerome Dutton (400 pp.) $26.95 | Apr. 23, 2013 978-0-525-95383-8 Seeking liberation and a fuller awareness of self, Nia Simone Bijou enters a glittering fantasy world of erotic temptations. But some unfinished business shows up at her erotic playground.

A successful screenwriter from Trinidad, Nia has no shortage of willing lovers. Most recently, she has indulged in a spontaneous ménage à trois with a lovely woman from Vancouver and Bret—Bret, who (like an erotic magician) can work carnal trickery with a basic towel. Recalling a torrid sexual marathon with the exotic, powerful businessman named Prada, Nia cannot deny that she longs for him but finds herself reluctant to pursue a relationship with him, since no one man could ever satisfy her for long.

Even worse, he says he’s in love with her. Further in her past lurks Chris, her first love and the man who broke her heart. Restless and in search of sexual adventures, Nia joins the exclusive club Decadence, which offers adult pleasures—awarding membership only to the most physically beautiful applicants (after screening them for all known sexually transmitted infections). Initially a voyeur, Nia is quickly drawn into active participation, engaging in anonymous sex with men and women who signal their wealth with Mont Blanc watches and Louboutin shoes. Dickey (An Accidental Affair, 2012, etc.) focuses on aroused body parts (often with pretentious, quasimystical euphemisms). Combined with such clinical observation, Nia’s minute description of every throb and moan cheapens the hedonistic exploits into crude thrills. Her ostensible quest for a man who can indulge her every fantasy devolves into a three-ring circus of sexual acrobatics. By the time Chris, Prada and Bret return to her life, and Nia must make some real-life decisions with real-life consequences, the reader is numb and ready to go home.

More debauched soft pornography than tantric sexual quest.

THE BARBED CROWN

Dietrich, William Harper/HarperCollins (368 pp.) $26.99 | May 7, 2013 978-0-06-219407-7 Dietrich’s creation Ethan Gage (The Emerald Storm, 2012, etc.) is no typical action hero.

Gage is an American who finds himself in the middle of key moments in 19thcentury European history, and one whose loyalties shift. Gage is strictly in it for the adventure, never really doing anything heroic. The sixth adventure in the Gage series finds him recovering from the death of his wife, Astiza, which he blames on the rise of Napoleon. Seeking revenge, he enlists as a spy for the British, and his spirits are boosted considerably by his partner Catherine Marceau, a seductive French renegade whose past is a well-guarded secret. Eventually, Astiza is revealed to have survived, and Gage works as a double agent.

Everyone knows how Napoleon’s career will wind up; less clear is whether Gage will survive his spy career and whether his marriage will survive the intrusions of Catherine.

Dietrich has the Gage series down to a formula, blending history with entertaining tall tales and a good deal of irreverence.

THE LULLABY OF POLISH GIRLS

Dominczyk, Dagmara Spiegel & Grau (240 pp.) $25.00 | Jun. 4, 2013 978-0-8129-9355-4

Three girls across two continents face issues of growing up, most particularly sexual relationships and the volatile nature of friendship.

In 2002, Anna Baran is living in Brooklyn when she learns of the sudden and violent death of the husband of Justyna, a friend who still lives in Poland. The third friend in the triumvirate is Kamila, living in a Polish neighborhood in Wyandotte, Mich., and grateful to be separated from Emil, her Polish husband. (Kamila had always been a bit put off

by Emil’s reticence, but she’s recently discovered his libido is directed toward other males rather than toward her.) Dominczyk then moves readers back to 1989, when Anna was almost 13 and visiting Poland for the second time. (Her father, Radoslaw, is a political émigré who’s not allowed to return to the mother country.) That summer remains memorable for Anna since she establishes contact with the girls who were the daughters of her mother’s best friends, since she immediately falls in love with handsome Sebastian Tefilski, and since she’s labeled a spoiled American. The narrative chronology continues to shift between Polish and American venues, as Anna eventually becomes a Hollywood film star, still visiting Poland in her time off. She also

becomes romantically involved with Ben Taft and is seeking a way, either gracefully or not, to bring the relationship to a close.

Anna, Justyna and Kamila grow from adolescence to womanhood with a shared intimacy, facing predictable problems (boys, distance) that intervene to sometimes weaken and sometimes strengthen their bonds.

Dominczyk writes knowingly of the issues faced by first-generation Americans and their problematic ties to the home country.

CLAUDIA SILVER TO THE RESCUE

Ebel, Kathy Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (256 pp.) $25.00 | Jun. 18, 2013 978-0-547-98557-2 Some families tangle and unravel, while others knit together, hiding every flaw. Claudia Silver, unfortunately, has grown up in the unraveling kind.

Sometimes you really can’t go home again. At least Claudia can’t. With graduation days away, her mother, Edith, blithely announces that there is simply no room for her, now that Edith’s skanky boyfriend, Robbie, has moved in, of course. Being cast adrift is nothing new for Claudia. Once again, Claudia lands on her feet, as her best friend, Bronwyn, enlists the help of her father, Paul. Soon the two are roommates in Brooklyn. Subsidized with a monthly allowance from her parents, Bronwyn lives a fairly comfortable, slightly bohemian life working as an assistant talent booker. Claudia is scraping by.

Her job as a production assistant and lunch-order architect for a small production company has two perks: free lunches and the beyond sexy (tattooed, pierced, leather-clad) doorman, Ruben Hyacinth. Entangling with Ruben leads to Claudia being unceremoniously fired—the same day that half sister Phoebe shows up, running from Robbie’s menacing advances. Determined to help Phoebe, Claudia turns to Paul for advice, but this time, Claudia doesn’t land on her feet. She lands in an affair with Paul, which could cost her everything. Ebel exploits her experience as a screenwriter and poet in this lively debut novel. Claudia’s dry wit and discerning eye turn what could be a rather mopey coming-of-age tale into a hilarious roller coaster of a ride. Quirks and vexations for each supporting character enrich every scene.

Claudia sees quite clearly the price of her own actions, and her goal is survival. Well, with a little fun along the way.

Family may be unstable and downright unbalanced, but in this witty, assured, surprising novel, family still has to accept you—mistakes and all.

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The Many Lives of Rebecca Miller b y

Miller, Rebecca Farrar, Straus & Giroux (352 pp.) $26.00 Mar 5, 2013 978-0374178543

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most challenging aspect of the novel. “It’s almost like breathing: You breathe in, and you breathe out. It’s about finding those moments when the reader is ready to move on.”

“Leslie came to me first,” continues Miller. “The image of a man standing on the front lawn taking a pee.” During the making of her last film, Miller had worked with an editor with the last name Senzatimore. “I thought it was such a great name. It means without fear—and it made me think that there was something titanic about the character. When I saw Leslie in that moment, I had this intuition that there was another dimension. I didn’t think of it as a fly at the time. I saw it as another creature, maybe a sprite. Like a soul stuck between two lives. Like some kind of cosmic accident.”

A reader might immediately assume that Miller drew inspiration from the most famous insect-perspective classic, Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, but the imaginative origins of her novel largely came from other sources, such as the supernatural short stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer. When Miller began work on Jacob’s Folly, she also read an article written by a Hasidic Jewish woman who lives in Canada. “It was a homespun article that included little, funny things about her life,” explains Miller. “One of the things she wrote about was her daughter being followed around by a fly. She joked that maybe the fly was a soul that was in between lives. That was when the whole idea of the book clicked for me, and I understood that Jacob would be reincarnated as a fly.”

Miller spent five years researching and writing Jacob’s Folly. With the help of Max McGuinness, a graduate student at Columbia University, Miller scoured literature and interviewed experts, learning as much as she could about the small population (about 600) of Jews who were living in Paris.

“My interests had run deeply into 18th-century France,” Miller says. “Honestly, I was interested in the origins of anti-Semitism in France. Where did it come from? The medieval period was impacting, informing these attitudes and really cast a shadow on the 18th century. It was a very interesting period—and I was interested in following the line of the Jewish question.”

It seems like the natural next project, for Miller might be translating Jacob’s Folly to the screen. “I’m not planning to at the moment,” she says. “I’m so tired from writing the book that I don’t see how it would work. Right now, I just want to enjoy it.”

9 S. Kirk Walsh has written for Guernica, the San Francisco Chronicle, the New York Times, and the Boston Globe, among other publications.

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Near the beginning of her third book, Jacob’s Folly, Rebecca Miller writes: “Reliable, true Leslie Senzatimore stood on his square of newmown grass at the cusp of dawn, planted his feet far apart, leaned back, and aimed a glistening arc of piss straight over the fading moon. The heavenly body glowed, lassoed by his streaming ribbon, and maybe even claimed by a man who, at forty-four, had every reason to be content.”

This striking scene hurtles into motion Miller’s ambitious, absorbing novel, which moves between contemporary Long Island and 18th-century Paris and examines identity and its myriad facets—religious, spiritual, sexual—through the perspective of a telepathic fly. (Yes, a fly!) Narratively speaking, it’s a remarkable feat how the author/filmmaker agilely threads together three distinct narratives— the aforementioned Leslie Senzatimore, who runs a marine repair shop in Patchogue, Long Island; Masha Edelman, a 21-year-old Orthodox Jew who struggles with a vague illness and the rules and rituals of her religion; and Jacob Cerf, an 18th-century valet living in Paris who is reincarnated as a fly and hovers and, ultimately, impacts the lives of Masha and Leslie.

Jacob’s Folly is a rare book from a rare breed of artist. Prior to becoming a filmmaker and writer, Miller—the daughter of playwright Arthur Miller and wife of actor Daniel Day-Lewis—trained as a painter and sculptor at Yale. Despite this experience, Miller has always considered herself a writer first. “I started writing as a teenager, but I never published anything,” she says. “Later, when I was painting, I always wrote. In a way, it’s something that I’ve always done.”

In the late ’80s and early ’90s, Miller pursued acting and took on several television and film roles (Regarding Henry, Consenting Adults) but then started to direct her own movie projects. “It’s been a long time since I’ve acted, but the experience really informed me as a director and also as a writer,” she says. “It taught me what’s it like to work from the inside. Because of my own acting and my husband being an actor, I have developed a tremendous appreciation for what real acting is.” Her films—Angela, The Ballad of Jack and Rose, and cinematic adaptations of her last two books, Personal Velocity and The Private Lives of Pippa Lee— have garnered numerous awards, including the Independent Spirit John Cassavetes Award and the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance.

Given her background as a painter and director, it’s not surprising that Miller has a tendency to see things visually. This holds true for the complex structure of Jacob’s Folly. “I saw the strands of narratives like a Challah bread,” she says. “The interlocking narratives were braided like the bread.”

Miller admits that the structure was perhaps the

Jacob’s Folly

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“...brainy, often riotous....” from everyone says that at the end of the world

EVERYONE SAYS THAT AT THE END OF THE WORLD

Egerton, Owen Soft Skull Press (336 pp.) $15.95 paper | Apr. 9, 2013 978-1-59376-518-7

The world ends in Austin, Texas, and a multitude of less cool venues, in Egerton’s seriocomic, eschatological whimsy.

The thing is, nobody has time for the apocalypse. Milton Post and his lover, Rica, nervously expecting an unplanned child, just want to spend some quiet time together. Hayden Brock, a TV actor Rica fell in love with when she was 13, is on the run from video footage that shows his post-Emmy party ending with a tender moment between him and a goat. Roy Clamp, a member of Pearl-Swine, the band that kicked Milton out, is up for anything but isn’t exactly a paragon of initiative. Click, a hermit crab, reacts even more passively to outside forces. So as the signs and tokens begin to multiply—Dr. Kip Warner hawks the Lifepods that are supposed to keep the elect safe through the holocaust, sewer inspector Kiefer Bran finds an underground river of blood, heretofore inoffensive nutria overrun Austin and attack its retail establishments—you’d think the cast would be caught flat-footed. But they aren’t: They keep moving in response to forces they can’t understand. As Egerton (The Book of Harold, 2010, etc.) piles on the analogies among the bemused Milton, the suddenly adrift Hayden and Click the crab, a surprisingly coherent spirituality emerges from the picaresque farce. If the end of the world doesn’t quite live up to its advance publicity, well, that’s happened often enough before.

A brainy, often riotous, ultimately moving Cat’s Cradle for our time peopled with reluctant seekers of spiritual nourishment who might have stepped from the pages of Flannery O’Connor. (Author events in Austin, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle and New York)

REDEMPTION MOUNTAIN

Fitzgerald, Gerry Henry Holt (448 pp.) $27.00 | Jun. 25, 2013 978-0-8050-9489-3

Charlie Burden is literally burdened.

His career has devolved into meaningless administration; his marriage is lifeless, his children grown. Could he redeem himself and perhaps find love amid the coal fields and mountains of West Virginia?

Originally self-published under the title The Pie Man (2009), Fitzgerald’s debut novel pits corporate greed against Appalachian vulnerability as a mining company threatens a rural community.

Ready to drop the country-club lifestyle and return to purposeful work, Charlie agrees to salvage the construction management of a coal-burning plant in Red Bone. He hopes to straighten out

the problems quickly and then be reassigned to China. With its jaded hero caught up in a morally conflicted universe, agreeing to do one last job for the robber barons (in alliance with corrupt politicians, manipulating permits and ruining the land) before he can do meaningful work again, Fitzgerald’s tale has elements of a corporate thriller. Although he wants to help the people of Red Bone, Charlie soon realizes that his bosses are implicated in the environmental crime of mountaintop removal. But his efforts to stop the project are complicated by the community’s desperate need for jobs. Soon he has enemies on both sides of the security fence. The thriller, however, lies uneasily with the romance concocted between Charlie and Natty. An abused wife with a drunkard for a husband and a son with Down syndrome, Natty is the perfect damsel in distress. She has a delicate beauty, is impossibly good to everyone and instantly attracts the rugged Charlie. Their relationship is, of course, fraught with perils, which struggle to crescendo into violence through long expositions of the looming environmental catastrophe.

Romantically tepid.

THE ROOTS OF BETRAYAL

Forrester, James Sourcebooks Landmark (448 pp.) $14.99 paper | May 1, 2013 978-1-4022-7269-1 Forrester delves deeply into 16th-century intrigue to deliver a whale of a yarn.

William Harley, the Catholic herald known as Clarenceaux, is entrusted with a document called the Catholic Treasure. He must guard it with his life since both the legitimacy of Queen Elizabeth and peace in the realm are at stake. As with any good tale of adventure, Clarenceaux faces staggering obstacles and betrayal. Sharing the stage with him is the swashbuckling pirate Raw Carew, the bastard nephew of Sir Peter Carew. One gets the impression that Clarenceaux would like nothing better than to sit by a hearth and peacefully study coats of arms, but he must fight to survive instead. Forrester delivers a solid story on several levels: The plot is strong, the hero brave and honorable, and the details—ah, the details. Be glad, reader, that you didn’t live in Elizabethan times, where filth permeated society. At one point, Clarenceaux is held prisoner and must escape through a hole in the floor, a hole over which many people have sat. The torture and the fights leave little to the imagination but seem mild compared to the scenes on the Davy, the vessel commandeered by the atheist brigand Raw Carew. When the ship is surrounded and the cannons begin to fire, Clarenceaux must show his mettle or die. The blood and gore are horrific, and the reader may blanch. Yet real fighting must have been much as Forrester describes it—violent and cringe-worthy, not romantic.

A winner for any reader who loves historical, actionpacked novels.

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BETWEEN MY FATHER AND THE KING

Frame, Janet Counterpoint (256 pp.) $26.00 | May 14, 2013 978-1-6190-2169-3

A treasure-trove of stories, from the very earliest she ever published, to work published posthumously, from the late, great Frame.

Frame (1924-2004)—author of more than 20 books in multiple genres, winner of every literary prize she was eligible for in her native New Zealand, honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Literature—is a master. Thirteen of the 28 stories in this collection were unpublished in her lifetime, though one of the best, “The Gravy Boat,” was read aloud by the author on radio in 1953. The gravy boat, part of a set of china given to a retiring “Locomotive engineer,” leaves the recipient at sea. “I Got a Shoes,” “A Night at the Opera” and “Gorse is Not People” concern themselves with the insane and the institutions where they waste away, patronized and abused.

All harrowing, the latter two are masterpieces. “The Wind Brother” is a fairy tale, “The Silkworms” a savage parody of the big fish in the small pond, “Gavin Highly” a piercing parable about the difference between meaning and value. According to the notes, many of the stories may be autobiographical; many cover material that Frame treated elsewhere. A mere 30 pages, “The Big Money” is the longest story. Told from the perspective of a youngest son, it follows the descent of a family, from gentle semirural poverty to urban squalor and tragedy, and hinges on a single hilarious misunderstanding. All overflow with dazzling observation and unforgettable metaphor: “a blue vein, like the thin giggle from inside a fish, lying, throbbing, under his skin.”

A powerful collection.

THE DEAD CALLER FROM CHICAGO

Fredrickson, Jack Minotaur (320 pp.) $25.99 | Apr. 23, 2013 978-0-312-60527-8

A mysterious phone call from a longdead thief spells trouble for everyone in PI Dek Elstrom’s neighborhood of Rivertown.

The call, which comes to Dek’s friend Leo Brumsky, must be potent indeed. It makes Leo turn white and go quiet. And when Dek, flush with the kind of optimism you can only get from listening to a first-class motivational speaker like infomercial personality Lester Lance Leamington, returns from an insurance-fraud case in Iowa two days later, Leo has vanished. So have his mother, his girlfriend and her mother too. Harnessing the skills that can barely keep him in Cheerios, 16

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Dek traces Endora Wilson and her mother to Eustace Island, miles from anywhere, but it’s a bad mistake; his success has the downside of leading one of the men Leo was fleeing to their hiding place. And when Dek finally does catch up with Leo, he finds him standing over a dead man, a revolver in his hand.

From that point on, the story, which entangles everyone who’s ever worked for the Rivertown zoning and inspection office with a Brueghel painting that’s been AWOL since World War II, devolves into a series of episodes in which guys follow other guys who are often themselves following still other guys, with everyone involved armed and dangerous.

If the mystery is less than compelling, Dek (Hunting Sweetie Rose, 2012, etc.) continues to be good company, whether he’s rescuing his ex-wife from kidnappers or playing a divorcing Hollywood couple against each other.

YOU

Grossman, Austin Mulholland Books/Little, Brown (400 pp.) $25.99 | Apr. 16, 2013 978-0-316-19853-0

Calling all video gamers...here’s a novel about designing, playing and ultimately becoming obsessed with fantasy and science-fiction games.

The book involves two time periods: the halcyon early days of gaming, from 16-bit to 64-bit Commodore computing, and the contemporary world of realistic effects and virtual reality. One of the more significant questions the early pioneers wrestled with was, which is more important, the narrative arc of a story or graphics technology? While most opted for the former, one of the problems is that unpredictable and sometimes untoward things can and do happen in the world of games. Russell, the narrator of the story, had originally been one of the self-professed nerds who started writing code and creating games at a young age. He even graduated from college and had a year of law school before “dropping out” and joining some of his old friends at Black Arts games. The two leaders of this company were Simon, now deceased, and Darren, both held in awe by the gaming community. Simon was a true genius, with perfect scores on his SATs. Disdaining college, Simon developed a series of games that Russell discovers in a desk drawer. Meanwhile, Darren breaks away from Black Arts and takes most of the talent with him, leaving the inexperienced Russell in charge of designing a game that needs to be a blockbuster. Fantasy and reality get confused when Russell falls in love with a character on the screen.

But, as he points out, why not? After all, she’s “smart and confident and had amazing hair, and she was a princess.” Reality is ever so much duller. While Russell becomes more and more obsessed with tracing Simon’s legacy through the games he discovers, he begins to get equally involved in the game he’s designing—and only negative things can come from this.

While Grossman’s imagination is fertile, the narrative is overly discursive and rambling.

FLY AWAY

Hannah, Kristin St. Martin’s (416 pp.) $27.99 | Apr. 23, 2013 978-0-312-57721-6 Hannah’s sequel to Firefly Lane (2008) demonstrates that those who ignore family history are often condemned to repeat it.

When we last left Kate and Tully, the best friends portrayed in Firefly Lane, the friendship was on rocky ground. Now Kate has died of cancer, and Tully, whose once-stellar TV talk show career is in free fall, is wracked with guilt over her failure to be there for Kate until her very last days. Kate’s death has cemented the distrust between her husband, Johnny, and daughter Marah, who expresses her grief by cutting herself and dropping out of college to hang out with goth poet Paxton. Told mostly in flashbacks by Tully, Johnny, Marah and Tully’s long-estranged mother, Dorothy, aka Cloud, the story piles up disasters like the derailment of a highspeed train. Increasingly addicted to prescription sedatives and alcohol, Tully crashes her car and now hovers near death, attended by Kate’s spirit, as the other characters gather to see what their shortsightedness has wrought. We learn that Tully had tried to parent Marah after her father no longer could. Her hard-drinking decline was triggered by Johnny’s anger at her for keeping Marah and Paxton’s liaison secret. Johnny realizes that he only exacerbated Marah’s depression by uprooting the family from their Seattle home. Unexpectedly, Cloud, who rebuffed Tully’s every attempt to reconcile, also appears at her daughter’s bedside. Sixty-nine years old and finally sober, Cloud details for the first time the abusive childhood, complete with commitments to mental hospitals and electroshock treatments, that led to her life as a junkie lowlife and punching bag for trailertrash men. Although powerful, Cloud’s largely peripheral story deflects focus away from the main conflict, as if Hannah was loath to tackle the intractable thicket in which she mired her main characters.

Unrelenting gloom relieved only occasionally by wrenching trauma; somehow, though, Hannah’s storytelling chops keep the pages turning even as readers begin to resent being drawn into this masochistic morass.

While it’s not exactly clear why the Victorian period is so amenable to such sinister and disturbing phenomena, Harwood certainly makes the atmosphere work here. In 1882, a young woman wakes up at Tregannon House, a former mansion in Cornwall, now turned into an insane asylum run by Dr. Straker and his gruesomely unwholesome assistant, Frederic Mordaunt. Although the day before she had introduced herself as Lucy Ashton, later that night she is found unconscious, and when she emerges from a nightmare the following morning, she’s convinced her name is Georgina Ferrars and that she lives with her uncle in London. When Dr. Straker goes to London to sort out the confusion with Ferrars’ (or is it Ashton’s?) identity, he comes back to Tregannon House with the disturbing report that she must be an imposter, for he met the “real” Georgina Ferrars at her uncle’s. Disturbingly, the more the Georgina in the asylum tries to assert her identity, the more the authority figures are persuaded she’s delusional, so she’s committed to the involuntary wing of the asylum, where she’s convinced the only way for her to reclaim her identity is to escape. Also upsetting is that she begins to

THE ASYLUM

Harwood, John Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (224 pp.) $25.00 | May 21, 2013 978-0-544-00347-7 Creepy doings—certificates of insanity, switched identities, morbid personalities—in and around an asylum in 19th-century England.

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“...a tantalizing read.” from the last camellia

have flashbacks to childhood memories in which she had an imaginary friend/alter ego named Rosina. We’re then taken back to a series of letters from Rosina Wentworth to Emily Ferrars about 20 years previously—and eventually to a journal written by Georgina Ferrars. Rosina breathlessly reports to her cousin all the latest gossip, dwelling especially on her own romantic entanglements with Felix Mordaunt, owner of a mansion in Cornwall. Once again, identities shift.

While the Gothicism works well, at times Harwood’s convolutions become as mystifying to the reader as to the characters he depicts.

THE LAST CAMELLIA

Jio, Sarah Plume (320 pp.) $15.00 paper | May 28, 2013 978-0-452-29839-2 A historical mystery that spans over 60 years, told from the alternating perspectives of two young women: Flora in 1940 and Addison in 2000.

The setting is an old English manor with a very special garden and orchard.

The camellia of the title is a rare and valuable botanic specimen which flower thieves desire to steal and sell, but there are far more sinister stories hidden in the closed-off rooms of the historic manor house. Jio opens the story with a prologue written at the English cottage in 1803 to establish the significance of the special flower, then moves to New York in 2000, where Addison, formerly Amanda, is being spied on and stalked by a sinister villain named Sean who threatens to expose some past transgressions to her new husband. Her husband, Rex, is a sweet young man from England whose family has recently purchased the estate and asked him to come out and help plan renovations. She decides that trip to England might be the best way to escape the spooky attentions of Sean. Then the narrative flashes back to Flora’s story in 1940. Flora also travels from New York to the manor, where she will work as a nanny to the children of the strange, strict and touchy widower who lives there while she conducts an undercover search for that valuable plant for another sinister stalker who recruited her with the promise to pay off her parents’ debt (the “or else” being what usually happens to poor folks who find themselves in debt to bad guys). Questions are continually raised, and most are ultimately answered, in this collection of intersecting stories.

The images of the flowers, the landscape and the manor house are vivid and make for a tantalizing read.

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VIRGIN SOUL

Juanita, Judy Viking (320 pp.) $26.95 | Apr. 18, 2013 978-0-670-02658-6 A debut novel about a young woman’s coming-of-age with the Black Panther Party has more emotional power than depth.

There’s no indication that the novel’s protagonist, a naïve collegiate who wants to be a writer, is a stand-in for the female author, but the fiction nonetheless often reads like memoir or like a young-adult rendering of a riotous, tumultuous era. As a freshman, the virginal Geniece has her locker next to Huey Newton’s girlfriend, and as the account proceeds through her sophomore, junior and senior years, she encounters plenty of other prominent members of the Black Power movement— Stokely Carmichael, Eldridge Cleaver, Bobby Seale—acquires a boyfriend who gives her a reading list, becomes radicalized, loses her virginity. She also must come to terms with the challenge posed by her aunt: “Be who you is cuz you ain’t who you isn’t.” But during a period of life when everyone experiences so much change, in the midst of such a tumultuous era, Geniece has trouble deciding exactly who she is. “I knew I was becoming militant,” she says. “I just didn’t know if I wanted to become a militant.” And, later: “Sure, I had fancied myself militant. That fit my naturally rebellious nature. But to be a militant was frightful. Yet intriguing.” Is such militancy more than a fashion statement? Instructed to dress in the fatigues of the movement, she responds to a man with whom she’s having a politically charged affair: “I know you don’t think that’s for me. They’re not even feminine....Chanting ‘off the pig’ is as masculine as I’m getting.”

With any attempt to balance romance and political commitment, she runs into one of the movement’s contradictions: that women are seen as less equal than men in the fight for equality, reduced to “sexual cannon fodder in the midst of war.”

The novel skates along the surface of ’60s political upheaval and the Black Power movement, making those times seem like a phase that the protagonist (and its author?) were passing through.

THE DERVISH

Kazan, Frances OPUS (256 pp.) $24.95 | Apr. 12, 2013 978-1-6231-6004-3 Kazan explores the exciting and dangerous time in Turkey—or Anatolia—shortly after World War I, when Turkish nationalists under Mustafa Kemal are fighting to establish a post-Ottoman regime.

The narrator is Mary Di Benedetti, an American whose husband died at the Battle of the Somme— though Mary narrates these events from a perspective some 40

years after her husband’s death. After visiting his grave in France, she goes to Turkey to spend some time with her sister Connie and her brother-in-law John, a diplomat. Mary is an artist who likes to roam about unhampered to do her sketching, but one night, she witnesses an event that will change her life forever—a British soldier kills Halil, a Turk, in cold blood, though not before Halil gives some mysterious documents to Mary, who secretes them among her sketches. Halil also says something that sounds to Mary like “Holiday hanoom.” After this almost Hitchcock-ian scene, Mary finds out that a woman named Halide Hanim (the latter word an honorific, not a name) is working with the nationalists and is happy to receive the unexpected documents. Mary and Halide become good friends, as Mary starts to become more and more enamored with Turkish culture. She also meets Mustafa, Halil’s grieving father, and they begin a romantic relationship that must be carried on sub rosa. Although both the Allied (i.e., British) troops and the American consulate warn Mary of the dangers involved in her growing entanglement with Turkish politics and personalities, she increasingly devotes herself to the nationalist cause, even to the point of being threatened with arrest.

Despite some wooden dialogue, Kazan opens a window into a time period and a culture largely ignored or forgotten in the 21st century.

World War II as well as their rivalry over Greer, who still seems oddly intimate with the man who left her at the altar. A series of revelations about Michael Devlin’s eldest son Harry’s true nature and Greer’s wounding breach of faith with her husband are doled out piecemeal, so the reader’s growing comprehension mirrors Riddle’s reluctant maturing. Kelly skillfully builds almost unbearable tension, slipping in plenty of dark laughs en route to a wrenching climax that leaves in its wake some painfully unresolved questions—just like life.

More fine work from a writer with a rare gift for blending wit and rue.

THE LAST SUMMER OF THE CAMPERDOWNS

Kelly, Elizabeth Liveright/Norton (400 pp.) $25.95 | Jun. 3, 2013 978-0-87140-340-7

A 13-year-old girl finds that keeping secrets can have mortal consequences in this scarifying follow-up to Apologize!

Apologize! (2009).

Kelly’s new novel is just as scathingly witty as her best-selling debut but better plotted and even more emotionally harrowing, as narrator Riddle Camperdown looks back two decades to the disastrous summer of 1972. Her affluent family lives in Wellfleet on Cape Cod. Her father, Camp, a left-wing Democrat, is running for Congress. Her glamorous mother, retired film star Greer Foley, is far too self-absorbed to care much about the campaign and spends most of her time indulging in lethal witticisms indicating how tiresome she finds her husband and daughter—indeed, pretty much everything except her fascinating self. It’s in the barn of Greer’s chattering, equally narcissistic stooge, Gin, that Riddle overhears a mysterious scuffle and emerges from a stall to be menaced by sinister stable manager Gula, though he lets her flee to turn his attention to someone moaning in the tack room. The terrified girl doesn’t tell her parents, and when they hear about the disappearance of Charlie Devlin, younger son of Greer’s old flame Michael, it becomes even more impossible for Riddle to speak up, especially since Gula turns up periodically to hint at unspeakable consequences if she does. There’s bad blood between Camp and Michael, dating back to their service in |

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MO SAID SHE WAS QUIRKY

Kelman, James Other Press (320 pp.) $15.95 paper | Apr. 23, 2013 978-1-59051-600-3

A bracing stream-of-consciousness tale of life on London’s lower rungs from the veteran Scottish novelist and Booker Prize winner.

Virginia Woolf ’s and James Joyce’s studies of characters’ inner ramblings are a Modernist artifact for plenty of writers and readers today. But for Kelman, they remain a useful way to explore the depths of people often considered outsiders. His Booker-winning 1994 novel, How Late it Was, How Late, tunneled deep into the mind of a Scottish ex-convict, and his most recent novel, the 2008 Kieron Smith, Boy, did much the same for a pre-adolescent child. The hero of this novel is Helen, a working-class Scottish woman struggling to keep her family (and herself) together in London. On her way home from work at a casino, she sees a homeless man who resembles her estranged brother, and from there, a universe of concerns emerge: Her broken relationship with her brother and parents, her difficult 6-year-old daughter, the racism that her Muslim partner (the Mo of the title) faces and how that racism affects her. Plotwise, little happens in this day-in-the-life story: She comes home from work, spends time with Mo and her daughter, tries to sleep, then heads to work again. That simplicity, combined with the generally glancing observations Helen makes about her life, makes this novel a less substantial portrait than it could have been; Kelman eschews false drama, but in favor of a dry cinéma vérité. Still, Helen’s voice is casual, funny, earnest and a pleasure to spend time with, and in time, Kelman carefully builds her wealth of concerns into an intense can’t-take-it-anymore fury.

Her fear of slipping off that last rung is real.

Though it lacks much of an arc, the novel’s brevity and lack of affect are to its credit: a gritty and wise snapshot of urban life.

THE SECOND CHANCE CAFÉ

Kent, Alison Montlake Romance (358 pp.) $12.95 paper | $9.99 e-book | Mar. 5, 2013 978-1-611097894 978-1-611092707 e-book Kaylie Flynn returns to the only home she’s ever known, intending to open a cafe; along the way, she’ll find friends, family and perhaps the love she never knew she was looking for.

When Kaylie’s father joined the military and she was abandoned by her mother to the foster-care system, she was lucky to land in Hope Springs with the Wise family. They’re gone now, but she’s back in town to buy the lovely Victorian house the 20

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Wises owned and convert it into a restaurant. She’s spent her adult life keeping her eye on that prize, and now that she’s fulfilled the dream, for the first time ever, she finds herself drawn to the people around her: the sexy contractor she hires to do the renovations to make the home a business; the artistic weaver who’s found amazing success with the Hollywood crowd; and a variety of other workers and members of the community who are making a stamp on her heart. Kaylie distrusts her own emotions, and depending on other people has never been easy.

Adjusting to Hope Springs and the many people who want to help her—and maybe even love her—is a difficult leap of faith, and one she’s unprepared for, but maybe the time has come for a change. Maybe she’ll even trust them enough with her hidden secrets or enlist their aid in helping her find her father, who disappeared into the sands of time. While the premise is wonderful, and the character-building is well-done, the storytelling simply moves too slowly to be engaging, and for the most part, the conflict is too weak to carry any true emotional intensity for the duration of the book. Some awkward phrasing, poor pacing and a plot that misses the mark in building tension from the start make for a decent but unspectacular read.

Great concept, lackluster execution.

A MAN WITHOUT BREATH

Kerr, Philip Marian Wood/Putnam (448 pp.) $26.95 | Apr. 16, 2013 978-0-399-16079-0

Kerr (Field Gray, 2011, etc.) offers his eighth Bernie Gunther mystery.

It is 1943. Stalingrad has gutted Hitler’s Wehrmacht, but the Nazi plague infecting the East rages on. Gunther, formerly commissar at Berlin Police Praesidium, has been drafted into the German war effort as an investigator in the army’s War Crimes Bureau. Jaded and cynical, sardonic and impudent, Gunther is no Nazi sympathizer. He understands he’s to uncover only war crimes that might be used as German propaganda. There come reports of possible mass graves at Smolensk, and Gunther is sent to investigate. Propaganda minister Goebbels wants confirmation that mass graves are in Smolensk’s Katyn Wood, and he wants responsibility laid on the Russian NKVD. Kerr’s sketch of Goebbels dazzles. The author pulls the reader down into the dark underground of Der Führer’s rabbit hole of totalitarian horror. While supervising the exhumations, Gunther stumbles upon a plan by the Wehrmacht’s aristocratic Prussian Junker leadership to assassinate Hitler. Kerr examines the brutality of the Eastern Front war, the German attempt to wipe out the Jewish population, the Russian partisans’ terror tactics focused on the occupiers, the Gestapo’s retribution against innocents, and the racial and ethnic conflicts resolved by barbarity.

Kerr masterfully explores morality’s shadowy gray edge.

THE MYSTERY OF MERCY CLOSE

Keyes, Marian Viking (352 pp.) $26.95 | Apr. 9, 2013 978-0-670-02524-4

At the age of 33, Helen, the youngest and latest-blooming of the five Walsh girls, has suffered yet another setback.

She’s been forced to give up her beloved, eccentrically decorated flat and move back in with Mum and Dad. Since her detective work has all but dried up, thanks to the economic taming of the Celtic tiger, she grudgingly accepts a missing person case from an old flame, Jay, who is managing the reunion tour of a former Irish boy band, the Laddz. Only four Laddz are on board—the fifth, front man Docker, has gone on to mega-stardom in movies and is now a full time globe-trotting philanthropist. Wayne, the wackiest of the Laddz, goes abruptly AWOL four days before

opening night. The other Laddz, including John Joseph and his new wife, Middle Eastern singing sensation Zeezah, not to mention Jay and a gangster named Harry, all stand to lose bigtime if Wayne isn’t found. Helen’s investigation turns up no clues except a phone message from a woman named Gloria on the eve of Wayne’s disappearance from his home on a Dublin cul-de-sac called Mercy Close. Highly illegal checks of his cellphone and financial records turn up nothing. Neither Wayne’s closest associates nor jealous ex-girlfriends have any idea who Gloria could be, and a bludgeon-wielding assailant warns Helen to give up her quest. On the personal front, Helen’s new boyfriend, Artie, a cop, seems to be too amicably divorced, and his three children have mixed feelings—ranging from adoration to hatred—toward their mother’s potential replacement.

Throughout, flashbacks detail Helen’s bouts of despair, related in her quirky voice, with mordant asides about psychotropic drugs and the logistics of a good suicide plan. (Hint: Avoid dog walkers while attempting to drown self.)

Readers who find some topics too serious for irony be warned—nothing is sacred in Helen’s world.

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“A film waiting to happen....” from angel baby

THE WOMAN HE LOVED BEFORE

ANGEL BABY

Lange, Richard Mulholland Books/Little, Brown (304 pp.) $25.99 | May 14, 2013 978-0-316-21982-2

Koomson, Dorothy Grand Central Publishing (464 pp.) $15.99 paper | May 14, 2013 978-1-4555-0714-6 A mystery and a love story told from the alternating perspectives of Libby, her husband, Jack, and Jack’s first, nowdeceased wife, Eve, after Libby discovers Eve’s hidden diaries.

The romance between Libby and Jack is nice enough, until they are involved in a car accident and Jack cries out Eve’s name.

Then the police question both Jack and Libby, making Libby wonder why one female police officer seems to think Jack might have caused the accident on purpose to kill his second wife.

Apparently, the circumstances of the first wife’s death were suspicious. Libby doesn’t believe Jack is a killer, but she is curious to learn what happened. Soon after, Libby finds Eve’s diaries.

The diary entries tell the story of a young woman who leaves home to escape rape by her mother’s boyfriend only to fall on hard times and into a life of prostitution. Life goes from bad to worse until she meets Jack, who loves her deeply. Happily ever after, however, is interrupted when Eve encounters an unwelcome figure from her past.

A tear-jerker.

LET THE DARK FLOWER BLOSSOM

Labiner, Norah Coffee House (364 pp.) $16.95 paper | May 14, 2013 978-156689-320-6

A story about storytelling from Minnesota-based author Labiner.

Labiner’s style combines elements of poetry and theater and features fast, clipped prose. Several stories here circle around each other. The central story concerns orphaned twins Sheldon and Eloise. Eloise is married to a lawyer who specializes in undermining the testimony of witnesses to murders by questioning their memories. Before their marriage, Eloise was involved with her brother Sheldon’s friend, Roman Stone, an acclaimed author who stole the story Sheldon couldn’t bring himself to start. The book begins with Roman’s death (a murder of course) and flashes back to reveal multiple, alternating points of view. Concurrent with questions raised about what actually happened are questions about the accuracy of memory, especially when combined with guilt and self-doubt.

Dark and intriguing.

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A rising star in neonoir, Lange follows up his 2009 novel, This Wicked World, with a sharply calibrated and affecting tale about a young Mexican beauty who will do anything to reclaim the baby daughter she left in Los Angeles.

The woman, Luz, survived a hard upbringing in Tijuana only to fall under the control of an abusive Mexican drug lord, Rolando, aka “El Principe.” After going to great lengths to convince him she is devoted to him, she sneaks off with a pile of his money, killing two of his household staff with his gun. She hires Malone, an American who makes a living smuggling Mexicans across the border, to drive her to California.

They are quickly pursued by Jerónimo, a one-time LA gang member whom Rolando springs from a Tijuana prison to bring back Luz, and Thacker, a corrupt U.S. Border Patrol agent.

Jerónimo, a reformed soul whose wife and daughter are being held by Rolando until he returns with Luz, strikes an uneasy alliance with the slovenly, unreformed Thacker: He’ll get Luz, and the border cop will get the money. Malone, who is haunted by memories of seeing his own little girl run over by a car, becomes committed to Luz. The twisting plot thickens when Rolando orders Jerónimo to bring back Luz’s child as well. Unlike most such stories, this book is driven not by greed or revenge but by parenthood, and Lange doesn’t subscribe to the usual moral checks and balances. In all other ways, however, he embraces classic noir in all its violence, bleakness and dark humor. He makes readers care about his flawed characters and appreciate the odds that were stacked against them by the circumstances of their upbringing.

A film waiting to happen, this book boasts memorable characters, evocative settings and a suspenseful plot.

MAMA’S CHILD

Lester, Joan Steinau Atria (320 pp.) $15.00 paper | May 28, 2013 978-1-4516-9318-8 Lester’s (Black, White, Other, 2011, etc.) poignant narrative probes the relationship between a mother and her biracial daughter.

Young Lizzie O’Leary is a starry-eyed idealist who drops out of college in 1963 and heads to Greenwood, Miss., to become a civil rights volunteer. When she meets and falls in love with Solomon Jordan, an African-American musician and recent college graduate, they move to San Francisco. Fifteen years later, their biracial

marriage has produced two children, Ruby and Che, who’ve been raised to identify with their black heritage. Lizzie spouts the doctrine and attends the rallies—whenever Solomon doesn’t try to keep her hidden away from his Black Panther colleagues— but her white skin and flaming red hair brand her as an outsider.

However, Lizzie’s an activist who’s adopted feminist beliefs as well, and she’s angry that Solomon spends so much time outside the home while she’s expected to raise the children and care for the house. Their constant arguments lead to divorce, and when Lizzie and Solomon split up, Che goes to live with his father, and Ruby’s forced to stay with her mother. An angry young teenager, Ruby resents Lizzie both for what she perceives her to be (self-absorbed and racist) and what she knows she cannot be (someone who can empathize with her feelings as a person with a culturally diverse background). Contributing to the frayed relationship is the fact that Lizzie attacks her mothering role with vigor while also going to the opposite extreme.

She recruits a biracial woman to mentor Ruby and then has an affair with her. Lizzie tries to engage Ruby in mother–daughter time by cultivating a garden, but she forgets to pick her up after hockey practice. She encourages her daughter to become selfsufficient by refusing to cook but insists on hiring a baby sitter for Ruby on the evenings she works late. The struggle to heal the rift between the two is both complex and emotional. Lester writes well about a subject familiar to her: She’s a member of a biracial family, and her previous book, geared toward young adults, addresses the same issue.

No matter a person’s ethnic or cultural background, this book is relatable.

for commas. “When Gabby finally looked at him, seeming more confused than agitated, Paul sarcastically sustained a huge grin, which Gabby stared at blankly while appearing to be thinking, very slowly, due to alcohol, about what, if anything, she should do about what was happening.” There begins a book tour (mind-altering drugs fueling readings), perhaps best characterized as a geographical relocation of the same hipster existentialist remove from all but what happens between Paul’s ears, the exception being his companion, Erin, a young Baltimore woman he meets via the Internet, whom he marries in a nothing-better-to-do Las Vegas decision. Post-Taipei honeymoon, with Erin bouncing between Baltimore and Brooklyn, the marriage seems off-again, on-again, spiced by avant-garde MacBook-filmed self-documentaries and drug-addled conversations and text messaging both childish and surreal.

Very much au courant, a meditation on “the nonexistent somethingness that was currently life.”

TAIPEI

Lin, Tao Vintage (272 pp.) $14.95 paper | Jun. 4, 2013 978-0-307-95017-8 Lin (Richard Yates, 2010, etc.) focuses on the lives of post-post-modern Gen Y artists in his third novel.

No action-adventure herein. Think internal dialogue. Think angst-filled, uber-jaundiced existentialism. A hundred pages in, protagonist Paul is still prowling Brooklyn parties and bars. He’s made a quick trip home to Taiwan, but little happened there either. Back in the borough, Paul has moved from one maybe-a-girlfriend to another, met dealer friends who trade in recreational pharmaceuticals—Xanax, Adderall, cocaine, ’shrooms and MDMA—and ruminated a bit about his novel, soon to be released. The narrative drones along with flat affect, thoroughly reportorial in style, right down to the quirky introductions of characters with a newspaper-style name/age format: “When Paul woke, the next afternoon, Laura, 28, had already friended and messaged him on Facebook.” And so it goes, artistic Weltschmerz profundity. Paul is intelligent; his IQ is “either 139 or 154.” He invites friends to watch Trash Humpers, uses a MacBook and iPhone, and his life is rendered with a fondness |

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CHANGING LANES

Long, Kathleen Amazon Publishing (266 pp.) $14.95 paper | $9.99 e-book May 14, 2013 978-1-611099454 978-1-611091762 e-book Long (Christmas Confessions, 2008, etc.) adds another feel-good romance/ self-revelation novel to her resume.

Talk about having a bad day. Syndicated columnist Abby Halladay and her fiance, Fred, are only months from the Big Day when the ax falls. First, Abby loses her job, then she learns the house they’ve bought in her hometown of Paris, N.J., needs costly repairs before anyone can move in—and she’s already moved out of her old place. Thank goodness for solid, predictable Fred. He’s meeting her for dinner and will make everything right. But then again, maybe not. It turns out that Fred’s flown the coop for Paris—Paris, France—since he’s bored, and now he refuses to return Abby’s calls or texts. Forced to move in with her parents, younger siblings and grandmother, Abby spends the following month driving around town in her dad’s cab while frantically trying to reach Fred, enduring her mother’s attempts at matchmaking and trying to get her life back on track. Along the way, she reconnects with her old neighbor and friend Mick O’Malley, who’s in town to care for his sick mother. Abby and Mick once shared everything, including a kiss, before he slipped out of town 13 years ago after both landed in jail following a stupid mistake. Abby relies on her best friends, Destiny and Jessica, to advise and console her, but she also begins to realize that she’s not the only one with problems. She discovers heartwarming, heart-rending, heartfelt and heartbreaking truths about family, friends, townspeople, couponers, dog therapists and just about everyone else she encounters, as she learns to let go of the past and finally gathers the courage to stand in front of the crowd at the local pub and sing karaoke. But this touching event doesn’t happen until she captures moments in all the aforementioned lives with an old Minolta and reflects on the importance of moving on with life, accepting others, learning to live one’s dreams and so on.

Long’s narrative is full of trite observations, but her appealing story and quirky characters provide a pleasant few hours’ worth of diversion.

A CONSTELLATION OF VITAL PHENOMENA

Marra, Anthony Hogarth/Crown (400 pp.) $26.00 | May 7, 2013 978-0-770-43640-7

A decade of war in Chechnya informs this multivalent, heartfelt debut, filled with broken families, lost limbs and valiant efforts to find scraps of hope and dignity.

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Marra’s vision of Chechnya in the years following the fall of the Soviet Union is inevitably mordant: religious and separatist battles have left the roadways studded with land mines, the buildings pockmarked with bullets and many residents disappeared and tortured. The characters Marra brings to this landscape, though, are thankfully lacking in pieties about the indomitability of the human spirit. At the core of the story is Sonja, a longtime doctor with a flinty, seen-it-all demeanor who, as the story starts in 2004, has taken in an unlikely pair: Akhmed, a barely competent but well-intentioned doctor who is protecting Havaa, whose father has been abducted. Akhmed is quickly put to work learning to saw off shrapnel-flayed legs, and as the novel shifts back and forth in time, each of their stories deepens.

The most affecting and harrowing subplot involves Sonja’s sister Natasha, who is missing as the story begins; we quickly learn the various indignities she suffered in the years before, forced into prostitution and addicted to heroin but later recovered enough to help deliver babies alongside her sister. Marra has carefully threaded his characters to work an everybody-is-connected theme, and some of those connections ultimately feel contrived. But he’s a careful, intelligent stylist who makes the most of his omniscient perspective; one of his favorite tricks is to project minor characters’ fates into the future; by revealing their deaths, he exposes how shabbily war treats everybody and gives the living an additional dose of pathos. The grimness is persistent, but Marra relays it with unusual care and empathy for a first-timer.

A somber, sensitive portrait of how lives fray and bind again in chaotic circumstances.

PARANOIA

Martinovich, Victor Translated by Ignashev, Diane Nemec Northwestern Univ. (296 pp.) $21.95 paper | Mar. 31, 2013 978-0-810128767 Living in a dystopian society makes falling in love difficult. But when the head of state security turns out to be a third party to the affair, love becomes dangerous—perhaps suicidal.

Pulled from shelves in Belarus just two days after its publication, Martinovich’s debut novel conjures up 1984’s Big Brother as it tells the story of Anatoly and Elisaveta’s star-crossed affair.

Driven by spotty electricity and a touch of writer’s block, Anatoly takes a restless walk through town, hoping to connect with someone, to find someone who truly sees him, who truly can love him. At last, through the window of a cafe, his eyes lock with Elisaveta’s. Just as he realizes their bond, however, she races off in a car with plates belonging to the Ministry of State Security. The next night, haunted by her memory and the political gambits of his own novel’s plot, Anatoly finds himself back at the cafe, sliding into a seat across from her, beginning a torrid affair. Although the lovers try to be discreet, they are, in fact, under constant surveillance. The watchful eyes, open ears and

“...an entertaining tale for spy-novel enthusiasts.” from red sparrow

nimble fingers of the State document every item in Anatoly’s home, every word between the lovers, every breath exhaled during their trysts. Ratcheting up the tension, Martinovich tempers the richly descriptive and allusive thoughts of Anatoly with the dry, clinical assessments of the surveillance reports. Placing the details of the trysts in those reports—and leaving Anatoly to simply remember his moments with Elisaveta—both isolates the lovers and ominously disconnects them from their own affair. So when Elisaveta disappears shortly after revealing her pregnancy, neither Anatoly nor the reader knows whom he can turn to for help.

A thrillingly twisted tale of a love triangle set in an alltoo-plausible political nightmare.

RED SPARROW

Matthews, Jason Scribner (448 pp.) $26.99 | May 14, 2013 978-1-4767-0612-2

SEEING IS BELIEVING

McCarthy, Erin Berkley Sensation (304 pp.) $7.99 paper | Mar. 5, 2013 978-0-425-26173-6

Seeing ghosts is a so-called gift Piper Tucker could well do without and has caused her trouble for as long as she can remember; but when Brady, her childhood crush, comes back to town, sexual sparks fly between them, causing realtime tension and long-dead restless spirits to demand some modern-day satisfaction.

Piper was 8 when her stepfather abandoned her on the doorstep of the father she never knew she had, and she’s spent the last 15 years trying to fit in to the small town of Cuttersville, Ohio. The fact that she can see ghosts has always been Prime Secret No. 1 for Piper. She loves the town, her family and her job as a teacher in the local school, so she doesn’t plan on ever

Matthews’ first novel, a globe-trotting spy thriller, features enough action to satisfy even the most demanding of adrenaline junkies.

CIA field operative Nate Nash acts as the control officer for an invaluable Russian asset placed high up in Putin’s administration. Nate chose to become a career spy despite pressure from his wellconnected attorney father and two brothers to knuckle down and join the family business. Now, instead of filing briefs and golfing on weekends, he’s playing tag with top-notch Russian intelligence teams out to expose Nate’s source, known by the code name MARBLE. Meanwhile, another Russian, a beautiful ballerina named Dominika, raised by parents disenchanted with Russian politics but smart enough to realize that such an attitude could prove deadly to their only child, has been forced out of ballet school following an incident of sabotage. While contemplating her grim future, Dominika is approached by her loathsome uncle and top Soviet intelligence official, Vanya Egorov, to seduce an oligarch bothersome to the current administration. When a soulless killer becomes involved in the assignment, Dominika realizes she must quickly adhere to the party line in order to survive and asks her uncle to help her join the intelligence service, which he does. Soon, Dominika and Nate are set on a collision course, and the stage is set for a cat-andmouse game that bounces from Moscow to Helsinki to Rome to Athens, a deadly assassin at their heels. The inclusion of a recipe at each chapter’s end (for foods including chicken Kiev and kebabs), along with the not-so-subtle mentions of food wedged into the storyline, is unnecessary. This book is good and doesn’t need the gimmicks.

The author’s CIA background and the smart dialogue make this an entertaining tale for spy-novel enthusiasts.

(Author tour to Dallas, Los Angeles, New York, Phoenix, San Diego, Traverse City, Mich., and Washington, D.C.)

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letting anyone know. Enter Brady, the boy she had a major crush on as a child and the only one she shared her secret with. He’s back, surprised to see her all grown up, and she’s happy to take advantage of the sexual energy that crackles between them. But that same energy seems to waken a frightening urgency in some wandering spirits who’ve been in Piper’s life for years. The rising attraction and growing attachment between Piper and Brady somehow open the door to a long-forgotten murder mystery that they’ll investigate in hopes of granting peace to two doomed souls whose love ended badly. As for romance, Piper and Brady have some issues of their own, since he’s temporarily unemployed and homeless, older than she by years, and has a community reputation as a notorious flirt. Everyone knows he’s bad news for her, except, for some inexplicable reason, Piper herself. As the two search for clues in a bygone mystery and explore their newfound love, they face obstacles and resistance from every direction and must confront them all with heart and courage to claim a life together. Sweet, sensual and well-written.

A sexy, romantic love story with a light mystery that revolves around ghosts; both fun and tender.

THE WOMAN UPSTAIRS

Messud, Claire Knopf (272 pp.) $25.95 | Apr. 30, 2013 978-0-307-59690-1

A self-described “good girl” lifts her mask in Messud’s scarifying new novel (The Emperor’s Children, 2006, etc.).

“How angry am I?” Nora Eldridge rhetorically asks in her opening sentence. “You don’t want to know.” But she tells us anyway. Nora is furious with her dead mother, her elderly father and her estranged brother, none of whom seem to have done anything very terrible. Basically, Nora is furious with herself: for failing to commit to being an artist, for settling for life as a third-grade teacher in Cambridge, Mass., for lacking the guts even to be openly enraged. Instead, she is the woman upstairs, “whose trash is always tidy, who smiles brightly in the stairwell.” So when the exotic Shahid family enters her life in the fall of 2004, Nora sees them as saviors. Reza is in her class; after another student attacks and calls the half-Lebanese boy “a terrorist,” she meets his Italian mother, Sirena, the kind of bold, assertive artist Nora longs to be. They wind up sharing a studio, and Nora eventually neglects her own work to help Sirena with a vast installation called Wonderland. She’s also drawn to Skandar, an academic whose one-year fellowship has brought his family to Cambridge from Paris. “So you’re in love with Sirena, and you want to fuck her husband and steal her child,” comments Nora’s friend Didi after she confesses her intense feelings. It’s nowhere near that simple, as the story unfolds to reveal Sirena as something of a user—and perhaps Skandar too, though it’s unwise to credit Nora’s jaundiced perceptions. Her untrustworthy, embittered narration, deliberately set up as a feminine counterpoint to the rantings of Dostoevsky’s Underground Man, is an 26

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astonishing feat of creative imagination: at once self-lacerating and self-pitying, containing enough truth to induce squirms.

Messud persuasively plunges us into the tortured psyche of a conflicted soul whose defiant closing assertion inspires little confidence that Nora can actually change her ways.

Brilliant and terrifying. (Author tour to Boston, New York, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C.)

THE GIRL WHO MARRIED AN EAGLE

Myers, Tamar Avon/HarperCollins (272 pp.) $13.99 paper | Apr. 30, 2013 978-0-06-220385-4

An artful combination of cultural anthropology and fiction.

The eagle of the title refers to a chief of the Bashilele tribe who reside in the Kasai district of the Belgian Congo. The novel interweaves the stories of two young women: Julia, a white girl from the Bible Belt of the United States who wishes to do missionary work in Africa, and Buakane, who longs to escape her fate.

Buakane is traded for goats and chickens by her parents to the chief, who is looking for his 23rd wife, a position that ensures she will have food and shelter until her powerful and abusive husband dies, at which time she will be buried alive alongside him. The women’s paths cross when Buakane runs away from her wedding and is rescued from a hyena attack by missionaries driving Julia to her new post. As the story progresses, readers are invited to contemplate religious philosophy and consider the exploitation of women.

Engrossing and educational.

THE MORE YOU IGNORE ME

Nichols, Travis Coffee House (220 pp.) $15.95 paper | $9.99 e-book Jun. 11, 2013 978-1-56689-321-3 978-1-56689-332-9 e-book

A deeply unreliable narrator takes the form to the next level when he foists himself on the owners of a schlocky wedding blog.

Stalker novels are nothing new in the world of thrillers, but posing one as a shrill, fey experiment in comedy may well be a tough sell for sophomore novelist Nichols (Off We Go Into the Wild Blue Yonder, 2010). The poet-turned-novelist deeply indulges his love of the clipped, erratic style of poetry as well as a penchant for the epistolary device, last seen in the letters that make up his debut.

Moving into the Internet age has opened up a new vein of satire for Nichols, who makes not-so-subtle jabs at the twin demons of self-promotion and personal privacy. For starters, his unnamed narrator is batshit crazy—not necessarily a bad thing in characters

ranging from Patrick Bateman to Tyler Durden—but his lead’s protracted screeds about conspiracy theories and personal slights quickly become wearying. Our guy, trying to track down a beloved ex, MFL (“My First Love”), spends his days trolling the Web looking for pictures of her. That’s when he unfortunately runs across a picture of Charli Vistons, bride-to-be. He quickly breaks into her public blog at Charlico.com and learns of her impending nuptials to Nico Novtalis, brother to the blog moderator, Chris. Naturally, our stalker’s logic isn’t always easy to follow. “The personal is absolutely political, after all,” he practically seethes. “Of course blog comments in general, dear readers, are revolutionary because they allow for point X, which dilates our triangular perception from simple A, B, and C into the pyramidal realms.” And so on, and on, and on as our lunatic host opines that Chris is trying to pluck his brother’s prize. We also get some background in memories of related adolescent hijinks, but whether readers have the stamina to finish the ride is a fair question.

An experimental novel of obsession and violation that makes Nicholson Baker and Mark Leyner look positively banal.

Nuanced characters, evocative settings, tricky plot connections and a spin on genre conventions mark what appears to be the start of a distinctive series.

APOLOGY

Pineda, Jon Milkweed (208 pp.) $16.00 paper | Jun. 4, 2013 978-1-57131-104-7 A tragic childhood accident haunts two families for years to come. This first novel, simple in essence, is fumbling and convoluted in the telling.

Picture a deserted construction site.

In it is a deep hole with a discarded shovel.

As a 10-year-old girl jumps across, a football whizzes past her; she lands badly, falling in, as Mario, the dumb kid who threw the ball, takes off. First to arrive at the site next morning is Mario’s

A MATTER OF BLOOD

Pinborough, Sarah Ace/Berkley (352 pp.) $16.00 paper | Apr. 2, 2013 978-0-425-25846-0

A serial killer, marital strife and a family tragedy dog a London cop in a police procedural that hits all the marks—and then some.

Pinborough opens by setting out the classic elements of a police procedural.

London DI Cass Jones arrives at Moneypenny’s, a sleek pub, to pick up his monthly payoff that lets owner Artie Mullins operate as he pleases. Jones has no compunction about the arrangement—that’s how cops survive in this miasmic London of the near future, afflicted by recession, terrorism and a new strain of AIDS that defies treatment. Jones has his own problems with cocaine and a dark moment in his past. But like all the characters here, he’s nuanced: He’s not entirely cynical and believes he can navigate the shoals of his unhappy department to solve cases, two of which he faces at the moment. The first involves the gruesome serial killings of four women over two months. Across the women’s nude bodies are scrawled in blood the words, “NOTHING IS SACRED.” And around the edges of their eyes, tiny eggs hatch maggots. The second case involves the murders of two young boys whose misfortune it was to be at the site of a drive-by gangland murder. Jones is barely on the case, which he works with a colleague with whom he had an extramarital affair and a bullying boss, before his brother, his brother’s son and wife (with whom Jones also had an affair) are found brutally slain. Worse, compelling evidence, including samples of Jones’ semen on the murdered wife, point to the DI as the culprit. His supervisor takes him off the case, his wife spurns him, and he’s left mostly alone to clear himself and solve the other cases. Then Pinborough smoothly blends another element: The case may have supernatural underpinnings. |

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“An exotic journey of redemption.” from a spear of summer grass

uncle, who lives with the family. They are from an unidentified Latin American country, settled now in Norfolk, Va. The uncle’s name is Exequiel, nicknamed Shoe. He’s well-meaning but not the sharpest knife in the drawer. The girl, Teagan, is hurt but alive. Shoe scrambles away, taking his nephew’s football, and calls the company, anonymously, reporting the girl’s whereabouts; back home, a remorseful Mario confesses to his uncle.

It had been a prank gone wrong. Shoe’s actions look suspicious, though; there will be a trial and jail time for the innocent construction worker. Pineda serves up his story in bite-size pieces, focusing on moments he deems special. A poet, his intention is that these moments will crystallize into a luminous whole. It doesn’t work out that way. Key events, like the trial and incarceration, get barely a page between them. Teagan’s condition is left blurry; she survives, brain-damaged, and that’s about it.

Attention devoted to Teagan’s family should have been spent on Shoe and Mario; theirs, clearly, is the central relationship.

Flashbacks overemphasize the point that Shoe has been a loser since age 9, when bandits kidnapped him, demanding he bring them guns. A nonsensical demand culminated in an absurd torture, scarring Shoe for life. Back in the present, Mario makes important life changes.

A sloppy melodrama. (Author tour to New York, Nashville, Charlottesville, Norfolk and San Francisco)

MY FATHERS’ GHOST IS CLIMBING IN THE RAIN

Pron, Patricio Translated by Lethem, Mara Faye Knopf (224 pp.) $24.00 | May 21, 2013 978-0-307-70068-1

A son returns from self-exile and comes to terms with his father’s past, and his own, during the military dictatorship in Argentina; the fifth, largely autobiographical novel and American debut from this Argentine writer.

It’s 2008. The author’s alter ego, whom we’ll call P., has spent the last eight years in Germany at a university, obliterating his past with huge quantities of pills. Now, at age 33, he returns to Argentina on word that his father, known as Chacho, is in the hospital, dying. P. reunites with his mother and siblings, but his mental fog only lifts as he reads through folders on his father’s desk. They contain journalistic reports of a man’s 2008 disappearance in Chacho’s hometown. The man, Alberto Burdisso, was a 60-year-old maintenance worker at the athletic club and a former schoolmate of Chacho’s, whose interest in the case becomes clear with the mention of Burdisso’s sister, Alicia. Chacho had been a journalist and a teacher of journalism; also a Peronist and leftist. He had taught Alicia and gotten her involved in politics. When she was “disappeared” by the junta in 1977, Chacho felt responsible for her fate. Alberto’s own fate was sealed when the state gave him a sizable sum: reparations for his sister’s murder. The money attracted the attention 28

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of lowlifes, who threw Alberto down a well, where he died. P. recognizes there’s a symmetry between his father’s search for justice for Alberto and his own search for Chacho’s political identity. His father had been a target of the junta. When his sister reminds P. that their father self-sacrificingly searched their car for bombs before driving them to school, that opens the floodgates of memory. No more pills. P. now has a moral imperative to see that his parents’ struggle against the dictatorship must not be forgotten.

The concrete details of Alberto’s case resonate more than P.’s abstract spiritual odyssey.

A SPEAR OF SUMMER GRASS

Raybourn, Deanna Mira (384 pp.) $15.95 paper | Apr. 30, 2013 978-0-7783-1439-4

Part romance, part travelogue, part murder mystery, featuring characters whose paths cross in the wilds of Africa.

The story revolves around Delilah Drummond, a vain and promiscuous young woman whose behavior has caught the attention of the media and embarrassed her grandfather, a wealthy landowner in Louisiana who extends a generous allowance to Delilah and her mother, Mossy, the woman Delilah has emulated. Mother and daughter meet in Paris after Delilah’s latest husband commits suicide before their divorce is finalized. One of his cousins has filed suit against Delilah for the family jewels. It is Delilah’s greedy and callous response that has inspired the media attention. Delilah’s mother and one of Delilah’s ex-stepfathers, Nigel, as well as one of her own ex-husbands (now her friend and attorney), advise her to maintain a lower profile and suggest she spend some time in Africa on Nigel’s estate. Once in Africa, Delilah meets an old friend, an artist with whom she will have an affair, and the fascinating Ryder White, with whom she will fall in love.

Delilah also meets the neighboring wealthy white landowners, as well as many poor natives. Africa transforms Delilah in ways she could never imagine.

An exotic journey of redemption.

THE UNKNOWNS

Roth, Gabriel Reagan Arthur/Little, Brown (224 pp.) $24.99 | Jul. 2, 2013 978-0-316-22328-7 A dot-com millionaire with an analytical mind and crippled maturity clumsily negotiates the minefields of adult relationships.

Whether you blame Nick Hornby, Junot Díaz or Tom Perrotta, they’ve collectively inspired a rash of novels whose main characters are dyed-in-the-wool SOBs. Such is the case with

this earnestly written portrait of a cad by debut novelist Roth. It may also say something that the novel starts with a badly timed, Ecstasy-inspired romp and ends in a strip club. Our nominal hero is Eric Muller, a tense, gifted programmer who hit it big with a bit of popular software. He has the serious hots for Maya Marcom, a journalist who’s just old enough not to buy into Eric’s bullshit moves. Threaded through the story are flashbacks to Eric’s childhood, complete with an embarrassing adolescent incident in which his journal, marking observations about his female classmates, fell into enemy hands. Less embarrassing and more painful is Maya’s stern confession that her father, Donald, molested her regularly as a child. But something strikes Eric as odd about her story, and he tracks down her father in California to hear both sides of the forlorn tale. His obsession with her clearly painful past leads to a showdown over the veracity of memory and the fragility of loyalty. Roth tries to mitigate some of Maya’s angst with a weak subplot about Eric’s entrepreneurial father and his get-rich-quick schemes, but it never quite gels. Eric is also something of a philosopher without a philosophy, which leads to lines like this one: “We hang here long enough to etch the moment onto the surfaces of our brains, so that in every one of the infinite possible futures we will each be able to remember exactly what the other looked like in the moment right before we started kissing, when we had no inkling of the world of trouble to come.” No pressure or anything.

The messy story of a guy neither bad enough to be evil, nor good enough for redemption.

IN TIMES OF FADING LIGHT

Ruge, Eugen Translated by Bell, Anthea Graywolf (304 pp.) $26.00 | Jun. 11, 2013 978-1-55597-643-9

A multifaceted look at four generations of an East German family with roots in the Communist Party; this debut was a commercial and literary success in the German author’s homeland.

The action moves back and forth over 50 years, beginning in 1952, but the central event, witnessed by six different viewpoint characters, occurs in 1989, shortly before the Berlin Wall comes down. The occasion is the 90th birthday party of Wilhelm, the patriarch, an unrepentant Stalinist and Party bigwig. Family members present include Charlotte, his imperious, mean-spirited wife, and his stepson Kurt, a respected Party historian and timid reformer. Conspicuously absent are Kurt’s Russian wife and his rebellious son Alexander, who that day has fled to the West. Though ideology is a crucial element of the novel, first and foremost come the domestic concerns that affect any family. Thus, the climax of Wilhelm’s party will not be his receiving one more Party honor, nor the news of Alexander’s defection, carefully concealed by Kurt, but the collapse of the old folks’ dining table, inexpertly assembled

by Wilhelm, whose powers are failing. And it is typical of the

oblique narration that you might even miss the act that ends his life that same day. Mysteries abound. We first meet Wilhelm and Charlotte in Mexico, refugees from Nazism, ending their 12-yearslong exile. Has Wilhelm been a secret agent for the Soviets? The possibility dangles. Why is there just one tiny reference to Charlotte’s first husband, the father of her sons? Those sons were sent to the gulag after Kurt’s veiled criticism of Stalin in a private letter to his brother. Kurt did 10 years; his brother was murdered, circumstances undisclosed.

Most important, how did Kurt keep his faith in communism after his ordeal? A case of self-deception? His son Alexander believes “everything is deception.” It’s a grand theme, but it’s left undeveloped.

Ruge takes full advantage of the varying viewpoints to display, impressively, the density of family life, but a thematic cohesion is lacking. (Author tour to New York, Boston, Minneapolis, Chicago and Atlanta)

THE WHISPERING MUSE

Sjón Translated by Cribb, Victoria Farrar, Straus and Giroux (160 pp.) $22.00 | May 1, 2013 978-0-374-28907-2 A slim, suggestive, seafaring fable introduces the Icelandic author to America.

Something of an Icelandic Renaissance man (From the Mouth of the Whale, 2011, etc.), the novelist, poet and playwright has also collaborated with multimedia musical artist Björk (and earned an Oscar nomination in the process). The first American publication of this 2005 novel (which was honored as that year’s Best Icelandic Novel in his homeland) will likely attract a broader readership to an author revered by peers including David Mitchell and Junot Díaz. It leaps across centuries, blurs the line between myth and reality, and features a shape-shifting storyteller who was once a girl and then a gull before becoming a seaman. Yet, he isn’t the narrator, but the teller of one of the stories within the story, which is related by the fictional author of Memoirs of a Herring Inspector, an aged gentleman devoted to his “chief preoccupation, the link between fish consumption and the superiority of the Nordic race.” In 1949, his theories somehow lead to an invitation to voyage on a merchant ship, where he discovers to his consternation that the meals are rarely fish, but more often something like “horse sausage with mashed potatoes and white sauce,” and where each evening features stories from the aforementioned seaman, who finds inspiration in a sliver of wood (which later stirs the loins of the novel’s narrator and serves to link the storytelling impulse with the sexual urge). His tales concern Jason and the Argonauts, a mythical adventure that the storyteller apparently experienced firsthand. Amid theories about how man evolved from fish, dreams that make implausible stories seem even more far-fetched and the narrator’s realization of “the crew members’ tendency to behave as if everything I said was |

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incomprehensible,” the narrative proceeds to a climax in which reality (fictional or otherwise) collapses in upon itself.

Metafictive, multilayered storytelling. But the book may leave many readers wondering what the point is.

THE DOLL

Stevens, Taylor Crown (320 pp.) $24.00 | Jun. 4, 2013 978-0-307-88878-5 In Stevens’ third lean and mean thriller featuring Vanessa Michael Munroe, an “informationist” with a scary dark streak who specializes in recovering kidnapping victims, she is forced by an Eastern European sex trafficker to deliver an American teen to a European buyer.

If Michael doesn’t comply with the demands of the Doll Maker, so called because he has the kidnapped girls made up to look like dolls, he will kill her closest friend and partner in special ops, Logan, whom he also has abducted. As her boss and lover, Dallas security consultant Miles Bradford, orchestrates efforts to save her, Michael improvises a scheme to escape the Doll Maker’s control and free the girl. That involves escaping the trafficker’s surveillance of her every move as she drives from Croatia to Italy and thwarting his adopted son, who is following her and can kill her sniper-style at any time. She also must prevent the tiny but cocky girl, Neeva, an actress who has fallen under her influence, from putting herself in harm’s way.

This book is strongly influenced by the existential bare-bones approach of Lee Child’s Reacher books, and its brilliant but damaged heroine, the estranged daughter of missionaries, owes much to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. But Stevens stamps the novel with her own bleak, punishing, bullet-flying outlook.

With the exception of a scene or two between Michael and Neeva, the tone is grim—no lighthearted relief here, especially from the stony Bradford. Out of that gloomy intensity comes edgy suspense.

In Stevens’ powerfully contained follow-up to The Innocent (2011), there is no release for the tormented heroine, only license to live another day.

THE PINK HOTEL

Stothard, Anna Picador (288 pp.) $15.00 paper | Apr. 23, 2013 978-1-250-02680-4 Arriving in LA too late for the funeral of the mother she never knew, the toughcookie teenage heroine of this moody, Orange Prize longlisted debut starts her own coming-of-age journey.

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Determinedly, self-consciously noirish in tone, British novelist Stothard’s first fiction follows an unnamed, English, 17-year-old girl piecing together the story of Lily, the parent who abandoned her at age 3. Brought up in London by her father, the girl is summoned to the U.S. by a hospital’s phone call, but she only arrives in Venice Beach in time for Lily’s wake, held at the Pink Hotel which she owned. On impulse, the girl helps herself to some of Lily’s belongings, including a suitcase conveniently filled with photos and documents which will aid in the reconstruction of Lily’s life. Danger follows in the form of Lily’s ex, who wants the suitcase back; and romance in the form of David, an alcoholic paparazzo with whom the girl falls in love. Two characters dominate the story—the impenetrable narrator with a taste for pain and a take-no-prisoners attitude, implausibly confident for her years; and Tinseltown, seen in an unglamorous light during a heat-wave summer. Stothard’s focus on these two helps disguise the scantiness of the story.

Ignore the chick-lit-ish title. This story works hard to be worldly-wise and cool, and it sometimes succeeds.

GOLDEN BOY

Tarttelin, Abigail Atria (352 pp.) $24.99 | May 21, 2013 978-1-4767-0580-4 Adolescent angst reaches a whole new level after a sexual assault forces intersex Max (who has equal numbers of female and male chromosomes) to rethink his identity.

British writer Tartellin’s U.S. debut takes a mainstream approach to the sensitive issue of intersex individuals, previously called hermaphrodites, whose physical makeup straddles the gender divide. Golden boy Max Walker, the older child of a high-profile English family, and a popular, attractive, successful, all-around likable 15-year-old, is one. But Max, who appears to be male but has female as well as male genitalia, is raped by a family friend in the book’s opening pages, and the rest of the novel traces the impact of this event on him, his family and others. The narrative is shared amongst several voices, including Max’s younger brother, his mother, who has always felt guilty about Max, his well-meaning but busy father, his girlfriend and his sympathetic doctor. While Max struggles miserably to understand himself and his future better, the reader learns a lot about the treatment and options for intersex people.

Tartellin’s writing is heavy on emotions and introspection but not especially incisive, relying instead on movement among the one-dimensional characters to sustain the simple plot.

This lengthy coming-of-age story spliced with “issues” trades on empathy rather than strong storytelling and seems pitched at a younger readership.

THE PERFUME COLLECTOR

Tessaro, Kathleen Harper/HarperCollins (352 pp.) $24.99 | May 14, 2013 978-0-06-225783-3

The story of a woman who receives an unexpected inheritance, from Pennsylvania-based author Tessaro (Innocence, 2005, etc.).

Grace Munroe, a young woman in London in 1955, receives a letter from Paris informing her that a woman she has never heard of has just died and left her an apartment and an investment portfolio.

Believing it must be a mistake, she flies to Paris to investigate this strange inheritance. The story then moves back in time and across the ocean to New York in the 1920s, and they are definitely roaring. Moving from continent to continent and decade to decade, the author reveals the sometimes-tragic, sometimesexhilarating life journey of Eva D’Orsey. A brilliantly gifted orphan, Eva is catapulted by circumstances into womanhood at a young age. Her journey involves following two men she met while working with the housekeeping staff of a high-end New York hotel. One of these men is himself an orphan and the protégé of an older Russian woman, Madame Zed, who teaches him the art and science of creating perfumes. Andre opens a perfume store in Paris while Eva is in Monte Carlo, counting cards for the rebellious son of an aristocratic English family. Before long, Eva joins Andre at the perfumery in Paris, but then the Nazis take over, and Andre, a Jew, is carted off to a concentration camp despite Eva’s attempt to save him. Eva’s story, told from her perspective, is interspersed with her story as told by Madame Zed to Grace Munroe, who has followed a clue to the old perfume shop.

A colorful, stimulating journey through time.

A TIME OF CHANGE

Thurlo, Aimée; Thurlo, David Forge (352 pp.) $24.99 | Apr. 9, 2013 978-0-7653-2452-8 A Navajo and an Anglo join forces to solve a murder.

Even though he’s an Anglo, Tom Stuart, who owns The Outpost, has always been like a father to his Navajo employee Josephine Buck. When Tom is found shot to death, Jo must put aside the lessons that will train her to become a healer. Tom’s son Ben, returning home on compassionate leave from the Army, is shocked to learn that Tom has left the trading post to Jo, although Tom inherits everything else. Ben and his father had long butted heads, and Jo, who was Ben’s high school girlfriend, had dumped him over his bad behavior. Trying to rise above Ben’s skepticism over how she influenced his father, Jo vows to keep The Outpost in business

and care for the staff, who all badly need their jobs. Despite Tom’s doubts, sexual sparks still fly when the pair get together.

Once the sheriff ’s department gets stuck, Ben and Jo set out to find the killer. Jo receives phone threats for her troubles, and the trading post and house are broken into and searched, clearly by someone desperate to recover something Tom hid. Ben, who served as both a sniper and a medic, is still dealing with issues from his overseas service. But when someone starts shooting at him and Jo and hijacks their van on the way home from a Mexican buying trip, he only becomes more determined to find his father’s killer.

The latest from the Thurlos, who’ve spent a great deal of time on the rez (Black Thunder, 2011, etc.), offers the usual insights into Navajo life but is much more romance than mystery.

THE HEALER A Novel

Tuomainen, Antti Henry Holt (224 pp.) $25.00 | May 14, 2013 978-0-8050-9554-8

In Tuomainen’s first appearance in English translation, a long-unpublished poet takes to the streets of a grimly dystopian Helsinki in search of his vanished wife.

It’s not as if Tapani Lehtinen doesn’t already have enough sorrow to weigh him down. A series of weather-related disasters from Bangladesh to the Amazon have created 800 million climate refugees. In relatively sedate Finland, months of rain have interrupted power, ruined homes and canceled any promise of normal social life, as everyone who can move even further north rushes to do so. In the depths of this man-made hell, Johanna Lehtinen goes missing. It’s not unusual for newspaper reporters to take off in search of a story without calling in, says Lassi Uutela, her editor, though he can’t remember Johanna’s ever doing it before. The story Johanna has been working on is chilling: a series of slaughters of prominent business leaders and their families. The person who’s claimed responsibility in a series of emails to Johanna, calling himself the Healer, insists that he’s only trying to punish the kinds of people who recklessly accelerated climate change. Chief Inspector Harri Jaatinen, of Helsinki’s violent crimes unit, has no idea what’s happened to Johanna. Neither does her old friend Elina Kallio or her husband, Ahti, a lawyer who’s about to leave town with her since they can no longer find work. And the one lead the police have—the discovery of former medical student Pasi Tarkiainen’s DNA at several of the crime scenes—is seriously compromised by the news that Tarkiainen died five years ago.

Tapani’s search, which will lead him through an appalling series of cityscapes to some shattering discoveries about the wife he thought he knew so well, is the stuff of authentic nightmares.

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“...a convincing portrait of misbehavior...” from crime of privilege

GODFORSAKEN IDAHO

Vestal, Shawn Amazon/New Harvest (224 pp.) $15.95 paper | Apr. 2, 2013 978-0-544-02776-3 A provocative and revelatory debut, filled with stories about losing faith and trying (often in vain) to find purpose, mainly set amid the sparsely populated Mormon country of the rugged Northwest.

Raised a Mormon and now a columnist in Spokane, Vestal combines formal invention and spiritual depth— even when those depths are dry with spiritual estrangement—in nine stories that establish a unique vision. All but one of these stories has a first-person male narrator, generally one who is struggling with faith or has fallen from it, often one who is drifting without direction. When the all-but-destitute loner narrating the title story says that “[t]he vistas were wide, wide open, like the view from the middle of the ocean,” what he sees as promise strikes the reader as more like emptiness. Broken families, abandoned by the father, fill these stories as well. Two of the narrators are dead; one is in the afterlife (where “the food is excellent....You eat from your own life only. You order from memory, as best you can”), another’s spirit somehow coexists within the consciousness of a young Mormon veteran, returned from World War I, driven mad by his sinful memories. God is mostly invoked in these stories through his absence.

“I have tried again to pray,” writes a man, fallen from faith in the early 1800s, following the death of his wife. “Five months since Elizabeth has gone, and I remain unable to find the language....I fear for my soul, for I am angry at Him, and He is silent.” Yet hell is very real, often a hell of the narrator’s own making, with sin central to the human condition. In “Families Are Forever!” (a title that is more threat than promise), a compulsive liar and his girlfriend visit her Mormon parents (with whom she feels tension complicated by faith). “[S]omething about it made me want to change myself entirely,” he says, but he sees through the eyes of her father that “he knew all he needed to know about me—that I was false in my bones.” And he asks, like others in these stories might, “Couldn’t I be someone else, for once?”

Plainspoken stories filled with profound ambivalence and occasional flickers of redemption.

CRIME OF PRIVILEGE

Walker, Walter Ballantine (416 pp.) $26.00 | Jun. 11, 2013 978-0-345-54153-6

Years after watching his preppy friends sexually violate a young woman at a Palm Beach party, lowly assistant DA George Becket puts himself at risk by investigating their involvement in the unsolved murder of a girl in Cape Cod. The old friends, including several cousins, are related to a 32

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powerful Massachusetts senator—the “incredibly nice guy” who got Becket his job. The murder victim’s grieving father, written off as a nut case for pestering authorities with theories about the cold case, convinces Becket the person who clubbed his daughter to death with a golf club wasn’t found for political reasons. Becket quickly discovers links between that crime and the one in Palm Beach. Haunted by his failure to do anything to prevent the rape, he becomes obsessed with solving the murder. He flies around the country, and to Costa Rica and France, questioning people. He is so dogged in his pursuit of the truth, he earns the respect of the guy hired to beat him up.

This book sometimes bogs down in whodunit-style exposition. The suspects include a one-time best buddy of George’s who escaped to Idaho to run a rafting company, the bratty cousin who is now a shifty foreclosure banker with a movie-star girlfriend, and a family friend now living in Europe under an assumed name. Everyone has secrets, including Becket’s elusive ex-wife, who cheated on him with a colleague of his, and his attractive co-worker, a society type who may or may not be on his side. Even when the action slows, Walker maintains his dry, sometimes biting humor and moral edge.

In his first novel since The Appearance of Impropriety (1993), San Francisco trial lawyer Walker delivers a convincing portrait of misbehavior among the rich and powerful.

THE KINGS AND QUEENS OF ROAM

Wallace, Daniel Touchstone/Simon & Schuster (288 pp.) $24.00 | May 7, 2013 978-1-4767-0397-8 Wallace (Big Fish, 2001, etc.) spins another mythical tale about love and family.

Helen and Rachel are great-grandchildren of Elijah McCallister, who carved the town of Roam out of the wilderness, a town built around the manufacture of silk, a fabric he discovered for himself after landing in China as a sailor. Elijah succeeded through theft and monomania. He kidnapped Ming Kai, a peddler who knew the secrets of silkworms and mulberry trees, and brought him to America. “We’ll be rich,” he tells him and promises to bring Ming’s family from China. Instead, Elijah provided Ming with a “replacement family.” Roam prospered and then faded, leaving Helen and Rachel the last McCallisters. Rachel is beautiful and blind. Helen is older, “ugly from the day she was born.” The girls’ parents are killed. Helen becomes Rachel’s caretaker, sharing Elijah’s mansion, “recklessly beautiful, the largely uninhabitable manifestation of the mind of a madman.” There, Helen has “covered every mirror in the house with old grocery sacks,” persuaded Rachel that she is the ugly one and imprisoned her with fantasies of flesh-eating birds and bottomless ravines.

What transpires thereafter is a tale of love, magic and reconciliation, a tale populated by scarred and distorted characters: whites, Chinese and “combos.” The narrative’s catalyst comes when Rachel runs away, intent on proving her independence.

A fanciful story layered in symbolism and ripe with lyrical language.

THE BLOOD OF HEAVEN

Wascom, Kent Grove (432 pp.) $25.00 | Jun. 4, 2013 978-0-8021-2118-9

Violence is the one constant in this bombastic first novel about frontier adventurers in the American South at the start of the 19th century.

That violence came early for Angel Woolsack. His father, an itinerant preacher, punished the boy by having him suck live coals. The narrator/protagonist will find a friend, though, in another preacher’s son, Samuel Kemper, a big lug 10 years his senior. Only 14, Angel impregnates a convert’s daughter, who is drowned by her scandalized mother. Angel then strikes his father dead with the shovel used to dig the girl’s grave and is saved from a lynching by Samuel, who whisks him away on horseback. Angel sees him as his brother, taking the Kemper name. From Missouri, the “brothers” drift south, and Angel turns criminal, with Samuel his accomplice. He mugs drunken merchants while praying for their souls; a gun-toting, Bible-brandishing daredevil. In Natchez, Miss., he’s ready to mate with an equally violent young whore. Red Kate, 14, axed to death the Creek Indians who had kidnapped her; she now works for a fearsome madam. “We’re children of desolation,” Angel declares to Kate. This rhetorical flourish substitutes for character analysis; the biblical resonance of Wascom’s prose helps mask the implausible action.

Angel buys Kate from her madam, and the two move to West Florida, still administered by the Spanish. In this lawless country of slavers and hucksters, there will be firefights, ambushes and reprisal killings; Angel, failing to understand that revenge is a dead end and God owes him nothing, discards his Bible. Enter Aaron Burr, the disgraced vice president. Wascom miscalculates by trying to fit his freelance backwoodsman into a historically grounded power play. The star-struck Angel loses his autonomy to become a tiny, uncomprehending cog in Burr’s machine, and the novel sinks into a quagmire of shifting historical alliances.

A debut that has a certain mad zest but is seriously hurt by its lack of a trajectory.

unstoppable. How, seven years on, can Nick be married to Lily’s BFF Budgie Byrne while Lily herself is single and accompanied by her 6-year-old sister, Kiki? The answer is teased out at length via parallel narratives set in 1931 and 1938, both voiced by Lily. In 1931, she meets dashing Nick at a football game when they are both college students. Their passion is mutual, but Lily’s father disapproves. Undeterred, the couple elopes. But, in 1938, they are not together. Instead, Lily is confronted by Budgie’s apparently idyllic marriage to an oddly distracted Nick. Another old college pal, Graham Pendleton, previously Budgie’s lover, tries to woo Lily, but their engagement falls apart. Just when the reader’s exasperation with Nick, Lily and the missing link reaches its limit, explanations for their non-togetherness are delivered.

And then the weather at Seaview turns distinctly stormy.

An elegant if somewhat old-fashioned delayed-gratification seaside romance with a flavor of Daphne du Maurier.

A HUNDRED SUMMERS

Williams, Beatriz Putnam (368 pp.) $26.95 | May 30, 2013 978-0-399-16216-9

A candidate for this year’s big beach read—the period story of a derailed love affair seen through a sequence of summers spent at Seaview, R.I. It’s not “Whodunit?” that drives Williams’ (Overseas, 2012) latest but “What went wrong?” between Lily Dane and good-lookingbut-Jewish Nick Greenwald, whose love for each other seemed |

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m ys t e r y

CROSS ROADS

Young, Wm. Paul FaithWords (304 pp.) $24.99 | Nov. 13, 2012 978-1-4555-1604-9 In which a Gordon Gekko-ish sinner is hauled from the slough of despondency by a very helpful Buddy Christ.

Tony Spencer isn’t a bad, bad, bad man, but he’s not a good one, either. He loves women, whiskey and money, not necessarily in that order, and though once in reasonably good standing with the man upstairs, he has drifted into the limbo of not particularly caring one way or the other; in his view, “[l]ife was a violent evolutionary gasp of meaninglessness, the temporary survival of the smartest or most cunning.” Big mistake, for when Tony finds himself in the back of a big screaming ambulance, fate pitches him out on the other side of the universe to face down—well, Dad, or Papa God, as evangelist Young cloyingly calls him. Grandmother is more sympathetic, if a touch elliptical and, well, a bit hippie-ish (“Breathe in, breathe out, be still.”), but Sonny—that is, Christ—is a born explainer, patient and in the main, sympathetic. “Listen carefully, Tony,” He says.

“There is only...hear me carefully: there is only one God.” Ah, yes: Straight is the gate and narrow the path—anyone who paid attention in Sunday school knows the drift, but Young’s J.C. rolls right up to the edges of the New Age, without much evident fondness for smiting and such. Young has a very odd sensibility when it comes to spinning descriptions, serving up disturbing metaphors, such as “Winter simply bowed out like a beaten woman” (Why not a beaten man? Because a beaten woman, presumably, is more Pauline.), and odd ethnic observations (“Obviously Anglo-Saxon, a hint of something darker and finer softened his features…”). Even so, this yarn is competently (but no more than competently) spun, if ever so obvious.

If Robert James Waller were to don homespun and ride the circuit, this might be the result. The faithful and literarily forgiving might approve.

A MURDER AT ROSAMUND’S GATE

Calkins, Susanna Minotaur (352 pp.) $24.99 | Apr. 23, 2013 978-1-250-00790-2

A Restoration-era chambermaid has ideas far above her station.

1665. Lucy Campion is fortunate to have a place in the home of Master Hargrave, a magistrate who pays well and treats his servants with exceptional consideration. The household also includes Hargrave’s flighty wife and their lawyer son Adam, their daughter Sarah, and their foster son Lucas, who is destined for the church. Lucy’s mundane routine is changed forever when her best friend below stairs, the lovely, flirtatious lady’s maid, Bessie, is murdered. At first Adam is suspected, but then Lucy’s brother is arrested for the crime. Since several other young women have also been murdered, Lucy tries to discover a connection among them that will exonerate him. Lucy can read and write, and her lively curiosity confounds Adam, who finds himself attracted to her while still considering her beneath him.

Although Lucy gets herself into some dicey situations trying to find who really killed Bessie, the real danger comes from the family’s battle with the plague that is killing thousands in London. Mistress Hargrave succumbs, but the rest of the family survive and retire to their country estate. When they return to the city, however, there is still a murderer to find.

Calkin’s debut mystery places her unusual detective in a world rich in carefully researched historical detail. Even mystery mavens who winkle out the killer may well enjoy the story anyway.

THE LAST GIRL

Casey, Jane Minotaur (368 pp.) $24.99 | May 21, 2013 978-0-312-62201-5 How far would a daughter go to get her father’s attention?

It’s hard to believe that a young teen would slash the throat of her twin sister, stab her mother over 30 times, then knock her father unconscious, no matter how much she’d been ignored. Yet Lydia is the only one left standing when London coppers Josh Derwent and Maeve Kerrigan (The Reckoning, 2012, etc.) arrive at the Wimbledon home of defense attorney QC Philip Kennford. She’s hysterical, but once he recovers from his bashing, her father hardly seems to care; he simply 34

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packs her off to his dead wife’s sister to recover, leaving Derwent and Kerrigan to ponder whether Daddy, Mummy or one of the twins—sexually adventurous, now-dead Laura, or introverted Lydia, with her eating and self-cutting disorders—motivated the murderer. Superintendent Godley, who has his hands full trying to deal with the Skinner-Goldsworthy drug wars, urges diplomacy in dealing with the high-powered QC, but Derwent is incapable of discretion, and Kerrigan is distracted by whether to leave her livein boyfriend, Rob, and deal with a stalker on her own. Savannah, Philip’s beautiful daughter from his first marriage, has earned his enmity by falling in love with Zoe, and the homophobic barrister is most displeased when Lydia decides to move in with them. An overdue admission brings Kerrigan and Derwent to Savannah and Zoe’s Sussex farm, where one daughter lies dead, another is ready to immolate herself, and an unacknowledged half sibling finally breaks down and identifies the object of all this carnage.

So many plots, so few pages to contain them. And Derwent is so irritating that readers may well wish the killer’s list had included him.

FOLLOW HER HOME

Cha, Steph Minotaur (288 pp.) $24.99 | Apr. 16, 2013 978-1-250-00962-3

A young woman’s obsession with a fictional detective involves her in a reallife murder.

Los Angeles–based Korean-American Juniper Song has been friends since high school with Luke Cook, the son of a wealthy lawyer who supports his ambitions as a filmmaker. Luke and Song went to Yale, where they met Diego, who became the third member of their group and, for a while, Song’s boyfriend.

After graduating from law school, Diego married and went to work for Cook Senior’s law firm. Song’s ambitious career path changed when, after she left for college, her younger sister was seduced by a teacher and eventually committed suicide. Now she drifts, working as a tutor and hanging out with Luke while constantly rereading the novels of Raymond Chandler. When Luke asks her to find out if Lori Lim, a very young Korean girl who works for the law firm, is sleeping with his father, Song agrees, thinking that all the years she’s spent with Philip Marlowe will give her a leg up on sleuthing. Song takes the drunken Lori home but is sapped in her driveway and awakens in another part of town.

After she gets Luke to take her back to her car, she discovers the body of another employee of the firm in her trunk. Threatened by a smooth-talking stranger who knows a lot about her family, Song calls on Luke and Diego for help, only to get Diego murdered for his trouble. Song, who can’t help seeing something of the sister she thinks she failed in Lori, is determined to untangle the mystery that’s already claimed one of her dearest friends.

Cha’s debut updates Marlowe’s dark and dangerous LA to modern times while keeping the quirky characters and a twisty mystery that will hold readers to the bitter end.

HOUR OF THE RED GOD

Crompton, Richard Sarah Crichton/Farrar, Straus and Giroux (304 pp.) $26.00 | Apr. 2, 2013 978-0-374-17199-5 Female circumcision, baby selling, tribal conflicts and ballot-box stuffing unsettle life in Nairobi.

When a Maasai prostitute is found butchered in Nairobi’s Uhuru Park, Sgt. Mollel, a Maasai temporarily stationed at Nairobi Central CID, hops on his bike to survey the damage. Assisted by Kiunga, a Kikuyu, he traces the descent of the poor girl’s body through storage drains that seem to begin on the grounds of Orpheus House, a shelter for the wayward where Wanjiku Nalo, the wife of charismatic preacher George Nalo, founder of his own mightily successful ministries, provides solace, late-term abortions and is possibly involved in a baby-stealing ring. She admits that Lucy, the dead girl, stayed at Orpheus House but denies knowing how she wound up dead. Lucy’s pal Honey, whose stillborn baby was delivered by Wanjiku, insists that Lucy had a baby, the genital butchery was meant to cover up the birth, and her newborn was stolen from her at the behest of a politically influential client. Tracking the client leads Mollel and Kiunga to David Kingori, whose Equator Investments has ties to Nalo’s ministry and a strong rooting interest in the Kenyan presidential race, which has become a battle royal between racist tribal leaders, governmental storm troopers and the mungiki, marauding gangs. In the process of uncovering who killed Lucy, Mollel also learns how election votes are switched, while desperately trying to outrun the street riots turning Nairobi into a war zone.

Former BBC journalist Crompton’s debut features a unique voice, an in-depth look at diverse Kenyan rites and political chicanery, and a hero who, one hopes, is just at the beginning of his fictional career.

ALIVE!

Estleman, Loren D. Forge (288 pp.) $24.99 | Apr. 2, 2013 978-0-7653-3331-5 Another priceless bit of Hollywood lore surfaces, fascinating archivist Valentino and killing one of his best friends.

Can’t imagine anyone but Boris Karloff playing the Monster in the 1931 film Frankenstein? Well, Carl Laemmle Jr., head of production at Universal, could. He made a screen test of Bela Lugosi, fresh from his triumph in Dracula, but then went with Karloff instead. The test must have been wretched indeed, but the quality of Lugosi’s performance wouldn’t make Valentino salivate any less over a filmed record. So it’s no wonder that washed-up action star Craig Hunter phones his old |

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“...has both depth and an intricate whodunit...” from strawberry yellow

buddy, an archival consultant at UCLA, to try to share his news about this amazing find. Unfortunately, Hunter’s been lost to drink and drugs for so long that Valentino dodges his calls all day long and then hangs up on him. When the cops show up the next day at Valentino’s office to tell him that Hunter was beaten to death in the restroom of the Grotto, a tavern in San Diego, he feels so guilty that he not only takes a call from Hunter’s ex, Lorna, a retired actress who’s poised to dive into the bottle herself, but promises her he’ll find the killer. It doesn’t seem that hard, either, since strong-arm gangster Mike Grundage, who owns the Grotto, is reputed to have beaten lots of other people the very same way Hunter was beaten. Will Valentino look past the obvious? Sadly, he won’t have to look very far.

Veteran Estleman (Alone, 2009, etc.), clearly more interested in past Hollywood lore than present-day mysterymongering, is better as a tour guide (his apercus are right on the money) than as a plotter, and the only thing the killer does to make himself memorable is slink off into the fog way too early.

THE BONE MAN

Haas, Wolf Translated by Janusch, Annie Melville House (176 pp.) $14.95 paper | Apr. 2, 2013 978-1-61219-169-0 Too many bones in the grinder make for a weird, wild second case for Austrian cop-turned–private eye Simon Brenner (Brenner and God, 2009).

Friedrich Löschenkohl’s family restaurant in Klöch is famous throughout Styria for its crispy, oversized servings of fried chicken. So, of course, it generates thousands of pounds of bones a week.

But now, someone’s been adding human bones to the mix, and Löschenkohl’s daughter-in-law Angelika wants Brenner to find out who. The only trouble is that Angelika’s gone missing by the time Brenner arrives. Nor is she the only one. East Styrian sculptor Gottfried Horvath has already vanished. They’ll be followed by Goran Milovanovic, the Yugoslavian goalie of the Klöch soccer club, whose day job includes feeding the bone grinder at Löschenkohl’s; Jacky Trummer, the chatty son of Löschenkohl’s bathroom attendant; and a rival soccer player named Ortovic whose decapitated head turns up in a bag of soccer balls. So Brenner really might wonder whose bones those are in the grinder. Instead, however, he wonders about the weather, his ex-girlfriend, the time years ago when he cuckolded the head of the Vienna Vice Squad, and whether it’s all right to eat fried chicken with his fingers. Revelations of dark doings eventually arrive but so quickly after so much studied inaction that they have a surrealistic air, and you can see why Brenner claims he was able to tie up the loose ends only due to “shock-power” after a villain with a meat cleaver severs his pinkie.

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Appealing as Brenner is, the most original figure here is the narrator, who hovers above the action with matterof-fact detachment, ever alert for moments when he can swoop down and set you straight about what’s going on or change the subject entirely.

FALSE ALARM

Heley, Veronica Severn House (224 pp.) $28.95 | Apr. 1, 2013 978-0-7278-8237-0 Domestic matters both personal and professional loom large for the owner of the Abbot Agency (False Report, 2012, etc.).

Solving a murder is not at the head of Bea Abbot’s to-do list, especially given the merger of her domestic agency with the larger Holland and Butcher. But Maggie, Bea’s former assistant and now project manager in her own right, is threatening to move out from under Bea’s roof and into a penthouse owned

by Maggie’s mother. Sir Lucas Ossett, the fourth husband of Maggie’s mom, moved out of their marital home after taking a tumble down the stairs, and Bea offers to discover who planted the tripwire that caused the tycoon’s nasty fall. Spry seniors Carrie Kempton and Lucy Emerson are only too glad to give Bea their take on the minor mysteries in the Ossetts’ building.

What kind of therapist is Carmela Lessbury, who sees only male clients and only in the afternoon? What happened to Tariq, a young, gay South Asian, who seems to have disappeared after Sir Lucas fired him from a tech job at Vicori Corporation? And who poisoned Momi, professor Jacobsen’s cat? The mysteries progress from minor to major when someone pushes the building’s irritable caretaker off Tariq’s balcony. Even Bea’s MI5 friend CJ Cambridge warns her that things are murky at Vicori. Can she unmask a killer and keep Maggie home where she belongs?

The Abbot Agency’s seventh outing will be just the thing for readers who like their cozies with a bit of bite.

STRAWBERRY YELLOW

Hirahara, Naomi Prospect Park Books (256 pp.) $15.00 paper | Mar. 5, 2013 978-1-938849-02-2

Family turmoil draws an elderly parttime California sleuth back into action and triggers a sometimes-uncomfortable trip down Memory Lane.

The Watsonville funeral of his second cousin Shug becomes a bittersweet reunion for elderly Mas Arai and a handful of others who worked the strawberry fields together decades ago. The retired gardener and occasional detective feels affection for his 1940s youth in Watsonville but also remembers the discrimination

he faced after emigrating to the United States in the wake of Hiroshima. Shug’s erratic son Billy has carried on the family strawberry business and even found a remedy for the pernicious plant disease strawberry yellow. His grief is palpable and hard for Mas to witness. In the middle of the night, Mas is jolted by police sirens. The body of a young woman has been found in the nearby greenhouse, her head bashed in. She’s identified as Laila Smith, Billy’s girlfriend. That’s awkward because Billy is married, though estranged from his wife. One of the investigating detectives is Shug’s niece Robin Arai, who’s not shy about sharing information with Mas. Overwhelmed, he decides to leave, but Shug’s widow, Minnie, buttonholes him and voices her opinion that Shug was murdered, not the victim of the reported heart attack. What can Mas do but probe?

Mas’ fifth case (Blood Hina, 2010, etc.) has both depth and an intricate whodunit, weaving flashbacks of the sleuth’s complicated youth with the starker contemporary reality of buried resentments and revenge.

MAKE THEM PAY

Ison, Graham Severn House (192 pp.) $27.95 | Apr. 1, 2013 978-0-7278-8238-7 DCI Harry Brock (Gunrunner, 2011, etc.) eats, drinks and makes merry while investigating the murder of three con artists.

Since the van set alight in Richmond has German plates, Brock calls Kriminalhauptkommissar Horst Fischer of the Essen police to help identify the two charred bodies inside.

Hans Eberhardt and Trudi Schmidt turn out to be grifters who specialized in selling shares in phony companies to pensioners.

Their co-conspirator, Nigerian Samson Adekunle, also turns up dead with a letter of reference from a New York real estate agent in his Clancy Street apartment. So Brock and his sergeant, Dave Poole, seize the opportunity to visit Joe Daly at the U.S. Embassy. Unfortunately, instead of the T-bone steak rumored to be on offer, all they get is some Scotch and the opportunity to watch the diplomat verbally abuse his secretary (“Darlene, just hightail your sweet little butt in here one second.”) Daly doesn’t know squat about Adekunle or his scam. When the investigation stalls, Brock and Poole travel to Essen, where they drink beer, watch Fischer smack barmaids playfully on the rump and view pornographic movies starring Trudi Schmidt. More stalling. Brock contemplates a trip to the Bahamas to trace the loot Adekunle stashed there but settles for watching his girlfriend, Gail Sutton, and her pal Charlotte Hunter romp topless in the pool. Eventually, a witness offers a random bit of information that helps Brock crack the case and settle down with “a welldeserved glass of ale.”

Brock and Poole’s latest outing makes you want to phone Inland Revenue and complain.

BRAKING POINTS

Kaehler, Tammy Poisoned Pen (302 pp.) $24.95 | $14.95 paper | $22.95 Lg. Prt. Apr. 2, 2013 978-1-4642-0099-1 978-1-4642-0101-1 paper 978-1-4642-0100-4 Lg. Prt. American Le Mans driver Kate Reilly (Dead Man’s Switch, 2011) unleashes a firestorm when she bumps a popular NASCAR driver at Road America.

The road at Elkhart Lake is slick with rain. Still, Kate could pass Miles Hanson’s blue Corvette easily if he’d only make way for her. He doesn’t, and the ensuing crash sends Miles to the hospital.

Even though the collision is ruled a “racing incident,” equally the fault of both drivers, Hanson’s fans go ballistic. Nash Rawlings, president of the Miles Hanson fan club, confronts her publicly.

So does broadcaster Felix Simon, a popular figure on the ALMS circuit. Worst of all is Racing’s Ringer, a blogger who dubs Reilly “Kate Violent.” The Ringer cybertrashes Kate, sending unflattering pictures as well as stories of past misdeeds—mostly from her preteen racing years—to readers across the country. Even being named one of six female athletes to represent Beauté Cosmetics’ new Glorieux line brings derision from the Ringer and others who continue to insist that girls can’t drive. But when her good friend Ellie Prescott dies after downing Kate’s orange juice, her boyfriend, Stuart Telarday, is convinced that the campaign of Kate-hate has gone too far. Even if Jack Sandham continues Kate’s contract with Sandham Swift Racing, she may not live to drive another Petit Le Mans.

Kate’s second outing is just as fast-paced as her first, balancing mystery and racing adventure all the way to the checkered flag.

BLOOD ORANGE

Keskinen, Karen Minotaur (320 pp.) $24.99 | Jun. 4, 2013 978-1-250-01233-3

A fledgling California PI, more accustomed to finding runaways than murderers, attempts to upend a frame-up.

Jaymie Zarlin is an easy mark. When her former beau, Sheriff Deputy Mike Dawson, sends housecleaner Gabi Gutierrez to her, she agrees to look into the plight of Gabi’s nephew.

Danny, mentally slow like Jaymie’s dead brother, has been found cradling the body of Lili Molina, the pretty young girl starring as Daphne in the Santa Barbara solstice pageant, and the cops figure he killed her. Jaymie finds many clues the SBPD overlooked and is soon sleeping with her pal, a high-powered nabob, for insights, ignoring the deputy’s pleas that she be careful, and stepping on the toes of the rich, the haughty and the secretive. |

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Her dog is brutalized, but her office gets better organized as Gabi takes over as her assistant, bringing the files up-to-date, making decent coffee and offering chocolate-filled pastries every morning. Acting on Jaymie’s behalf, she also accepts a dognapping case Jaymie handles altogether more smoothly than Lili’s murder, which will implicate a bratty son, a rebellious daughter, a closeted dad, a mother in denial, a wealthy aunt and her gun-toting assistants, and various men whose families have been privy to arcane, felonious solstice rites for generations. Danny will die, Jaymie will require rescue, and the Santa Barbara Fire Department will have to deal with a major alarm.

But not to worry: Jaymie will figure out whodunit. More importantly, those chocolate-filled pastries will keep right on coming.

Mark first-timer Jaymie as one more private eye California could do very nicely without.

UNTOLD DAMAGE

Lewis, Robert K. Midnight Ink/Llewellyn (312 pp.) $14.99 paper | Apr. 8, 2013 978-0-7387-3576-4 A cop turned junkie has to turn back in order to uncover a friend and colleague’s descent down the same dark path.

Mark Mallen has bottomed out. The former undercover cop got a little too embedded in a gig researching a drug ring in the San Francisco underbelly and ended up an addict.

After being unceremoniously dismissed for good, Mark is on his own—permanently, it seems, since his family can’t accept what he’s become either. His days are spent on the streets and at his second home, the Cornerstone bar, until Officer Oberon Kane seeks him out with some additional bad news. Eric Russ, Mark’s friend from the academy, has met a similar fate, turning to the world of drugs and losing what he had in the world.

The difference between Mark and Eric, Oberon tells him, is that Eric has been found dead. The only leads in Eric’s case are Mark’s contact information and the heroin, both found in Eric’s pocket. Though the police would never formally accept his help, Mark is determined to find out more about the crime, even if he has to get clean to do it. The terrible pull of his addiction isn’t his only trouble; local drug lords Jas and Griffin have evidently blown his former cover and are out for revenge.

Equally rooted in the struggle for justice and the struggle for sobriety, Lewis’ debut makes it clear that there may be no clear right or wrong.

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BOARD STIFF

Lynn, Kendel Henery Press (282 pp.) $14.95 paper | Apr. 30, 2013 978-1-938383-32-8 Investigating the murder of a wealthy board member might be a cinch if it weren’t for the competing interests of the heroine’s college heartthrob.

Though her typical domain is planning luncheons and board meetings as the director of South Carolina’s Ballantyne Foundation, Elliott Lisbon is suddenly put in the role of private investigator when board member Leo Hirschorn is found dead in his home. Though Elli is no stranger to investigating—she’s been working on her PI license off and on for awhile now—her area is usually inquiries for upper-crust Ballantyne board members, not murder. Now Elli feels responsible for clearing the name of board chair Jane Hatting, the sort of person everyone believes could murder someone. But Elli is certain that Jane is innocent of this particular homicide. Elli thinks the investigation would be a piece of cake were it not for the meddling of her college ex, Nick Ransom. For some reason, he thinks the murder falls into his domain. Maybe it’s something about his being the new police lieutenant. As Elli and Nick conduct parallel investigations, it becomes clear that, no matter what comes to light, Sea Pine Island may not be big enough for the two of them.

Though Lynn’s debut is geared toward fans of fun, feminine heroines, Elli is a little too bland to make a splash.

Would a partner in crime save the day?

BRUSH WITH DEATH

MacInerney, Karen Midnight Ink/Llewellyn (336 pp.) $14.99 paper | May 8, 2013 978-0-7387-3459-0 An innkeeper’s efforts to help her artistic niece prove almost the death of her.

The worst problems Natalie Barnes thinks she’s facing are the way her engagement ring is irritating her finger and the impending visit of her motherin-law-to-be. But then disaster strikes Maine’s Cranberry Island.

Natalie gets notice that the mortgage on her Gray Whale Inn is in arrears, even though she’d provided a local lawyer with the payments. Worse, she finds her niece Gwen’s gay mentor, Fernand, with his wrist slashed after a big party at his house. The party had been notable for its undercurrents, especially those triggered by the arrival of a hot new artist and an overbearing agent who barely allows her to speak a word. Both Fernand’s partner and his sister turn up at the inn soon after his death.

Although the police write it off as a suicide, both Gwen and Natalie suspect murder. After Natalie talks to her police officer fiance, John, who was off-island at the time of the death,

he persuades his colleagues to take another look. Meantime, John’s mother, Catherine, arrives for her expected visit, making life even more stressful for Natalie as she struggles to support Gwen, who’s put aside her beautiful watercolors in favor of large oils that the sponsor of her show insists will sell better. Despite these distractions, Natalie, who’s had her share of experience tracking down killers (Berried to the Hilt, 2010, etc.), continues to hunt for the very clues that will put her in the greatest danger.

The fifth Gray Whale adventure provides complex characters, stunning scenery and many recipes. There’s also an easily solved mystery.

FOAL PLAY

O’Sullivan, Kathryn Minotaur (272 pp.) $24.99 | May 7, 2013 978-1-250-02659-0 A fire chief, a sheriff and a border collie solve a murder.

Colleen McCabe is the fire chief on Corolla Island, part of the lovely Outer Banks of North Carolina, where tourists come to see the wild horses who roam free. A dead body that washes up on the beach marks the start of big trouble for Colleen and her friend Sheriff Bill Dorman, who wants her to stick to fires and butt out of his police work.

Then an explosion rips through the home of Colleen’s former schoolteacher Myrtle Crepe. The body found inside is presumed to be that of Myrtle, whose tart tongue has earned her many enemies. But Myrtle, who may have seen something dangerous, turns up quite alive. She begs her old pupil to hide her, and Colleen reluctantly agrees, though she questions her decision when Myrtle uses her thespian skills to disguise herself as Colleen’s uncle and starts sleuthing on her own. In the meantime, Colleen’s border collie, Sparky, helps a little girl dig up a heroin cache on the beach. The girl works with her art teacher to sketch the man she saw nearby, but the teacher is murdered and the sketch destroyed before anyone can see it. The DEA, arriving to work the case, arrests a harmless mentally challenged man who Colleen and Bill know is innocent. They vow to use their local knowledge to track down the real killer.

O’Sullivan’s debut features pleasantly amusing characters but not a very challenging mystery.

THE FAMOUS AND THE DEAD

Parker, T. Jefferson Dutton (368 pp.) $26.95 | Apr. 18, 2013 978-0-525-95317-3

Parker reaches once more into the real-life story of Operation Fast & Furious to conclude his sprawling, multivolume saga of Charlie Hood, the seen-it-all deputy of the Los Angeles Sheriff ’s Department.

Operation Blowdown, which already went south, is now coming back north. Three years after a thousand Love 32s were smuggled into Mexico under the noses of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the weapons have begun to make their way back into the U.S. It’s only a matter of time before liberal California congressman Scott Freeman is assassinated by Lonnie Rovanna, a schizophrenic former bodyguard who’s been told to kill Freeman by the voices he hears on the radio, helpfully supplied with a Love 32 by Dr. Todd Stren, a psychologist who consults with the San Diego Superior Court. Charlie quickly realizes that Dr. Stren is actually Mike Finnegan, the bathroom-products wholesaler who’s also a modern devil (The Border Lords, 2011, etc.). Even before Freeman hits the floor, Charlie’s already under fire from his rabid congressional colleague Darren Grossly; once Freeman has been pronounced dead and somebody’s got to take the blame, it’s clear that Charlie’s days with the LASD are numbered. Getting forced into two paid leaves, however, merely sharpens Charlie’s appetite and frees his hands to go after his prey: Finnegan, North Baja Cartel head Carlos Herredia, falling LASD star Bradley Jones and a ring of insider thieves, including the extremely well-armed Clint Wampler, who’s already cherishing a bitter personal grudge against Charlie for hurting his finger. The ensuing ritualistic showdowns, which seem to owe as much to The Lord of the Rings as to other cop novels, show Parker burrowing deep into his characters, so that both heroes and villains spring to unnervingly complicated life.

Part cops-versus–drugs-and-guns procedural, part elemental morality play, part fire-and-brimstone mythmaking, all of it inimitably Parker.

MARBECK AND THE DOUBLEDEALER

Pilkington, John Severn House (192 pp.) $27.95 | Apr. 1, 2013 978-0-7278-8239-4

An Elizabethan spy travels far and wide in the service of his queen.

Marbeck, an often rash younger son, makes a precarious living as an intelligencer for Queen Elizabeth I, whose coldhearted secretary of state, Sir Robert Cecil, is England’s spymaster.

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“...showcases sturdy police work on a complicated case.” from one through the heart

must assume several new identities to accomplish the task Cecil has set him: find Morera, the double agent who is revealing England’s secrets to the Spanish. Marbeck journeys to France, where a dying agent sends him to one of Morera’s informants, the Comtesse de Paiva. Posing as an arms dealer looking to trade with the Spanish, Marbeck is welcomed by the Comtesse, but that night, he is attacked and captured by the Spanish, who take him to a ship for questioning. Marbeck slips away and returns to the Comtesse, who admits having taken Spanish spy Juan Roble as her lover. Barely escaping from the Comtesse’s angry husband, Marbeck makes his way to Paris, where he questions another English spy before returning home. Even in London he is dogged by the Spanish, who seek to hide the identities of their agents. Marbeck must use every skill at his command to win the dangerous game.

In a departure from his series featuring Thomas the Falconer (The Muscovy Chain, 2007, etc.), Pilkington introduces an intriguing new hero in the dashing Marbeck in an eventful tale packed with the usual Elizabethan minutiae.

ONE THROUGH THE HEART

Russell, Kirk Severn House (252 pp.) $28.95 | Apr. 1, 2013 978-0-7278-8240-0

Nothing turns a cold case hotter than two partial skeletons and 14 skulls.

When pop historian and author Albert Lash, suffering from ALS, sells his San Francisco house and moves to an assisted living facility, the new tenants are disconcerted to find a gruesomely decorated bomb shelter under the floorboards of the garden shed, which is scheduled for demolition. Over a dozen skulls are neatly stacked against a wall, two partial skeletons lie beside them, and there is a filthy mattress with attached restraints and copious blood splatters. Could this be where Ann Coryell, a graduate student working on her thesis about the effect of unreconciled genocide on the collective unconscious, died 10 years ago? Lash, her mentor and lover, had been considered a suspect. But the original detectives on the case, one a drunk and the other now retired, made no headway. Homicide cop Ben Raveneau, now assigned to cold cases (Counterfeit Road, 2012, etc.), still has nightmares about missing a call from Ann that might have saved her. Ann’s mother still suffers guilt over refusing her pleas for help. Brandon Lindsley, who harbors a grudge against Lash for reneging on an agreement to collaborate with him on three books, leads Raveneau to members of a minicult devoted to Ann’s theories. In short order, the FBI gets involved, along with a Missouri sheriff. Incendiary bombs set much of the California forest ablaze, and Lash nearly succumbs to radiation poisoning. Worse, nobody— not the FBI, the veteran cops or the cultists—confides everything Raveneau needs to know. More must die, pseudonyms reveal their secrets and all those bones finally get identified before Raveneau can settle down for wine and pizza with his girlfriend.

Seasoned pro Russell showcases sturdy police work on a complicated case.

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ONE FOR OUR BABY

Sandrolini, John MysteriousPress.com (360 pp.) $14.99 paper | $14.99 e-book Apr. 9, 2013 978-1-4532-9933-3 978-1-4532-9795-7 e-book Frank Sinatra’s latest bimbo is kidnapped.

When gorgeous Lilah DeHart, prettier than Ava Gardner and better in bed, misses a screen test arranged for her by Frank Sinatra, her boyfriend of four weeks, Old Blue Eyes smokes up a storm, belts back a few and asks Joe Buonomo, a pilot and private eye who’s saved his skin more than once, to find out what happened to her.

Joe, known to Sinatra’s mobster connections as Joe Bones, feels sucker punched when Lilah turns out to be his ex-fiancee, Helen.

Now he’s just as desperate as Sinatra to find her. His resolve pits him against the Ching Hwas, who may be responsible for the murder of Helen’s pal Betty. While trying to avoid the lethal Asians, Joe runs up against Carmine the Rat and his sidekick, who send a message to Sinatra that to get Helen and the film back, he must pay $100,000. What film? The one with Helen and another babe frolicking naked with a gent or two. Tracking the blue movie takes Joe from Sinatra’s plush compound in Palm Springs to Vegas to Ensenada, where he and Helen briefly connect before she’s whisked away by more gun-toting thugs to a porn kingpin’s well-protected lair across the border. The feds swoop in. The Chinese reappear. Mobsters get blown to smithereens. Not even Joe’s piloting skills can keep him from crashing a plane into a mountain. Still, he rouses himself, tries once more to rescue Helen, manages to lose the ransom money and Helen, and gets a glimpse of another blue movie starring presidential candidate Jack Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe, which started the whole brouhaha off in the first place.

Heat up the popcorn. This retro debut thriller has all the makings of a Bruce Willis movie: sex, violence, flashy scenery, cardboard characters. What’s not to like?

A WALK WITH THE DEAD

Spencer, Sally Severn House (208 pp.) $27.95 | Apr. 1, 2013 978-0-7278-8242-4

The disappearance of a young girl launches an investigation that poses a host of challenges for DCI Monika Paniatowski (Lambs to the Slaughter, 2012, etc.).

In her flounced pink dress, Jill Harris couldn’t make plainer how unhappy she is at her Aunt Vanessa’s wedding. But Monika is distracted by Liz Duffy, the new police surgeon, before she can talk to the pouting teenager, who reminds her a bit of her own Louisa.

The next day, when Jill’s mother reports her daughter missing,

she bitterly regrets the missed chance. Now the comparison between Jill and Louisa can’t be missed, since Louisa was kidnapped briefly only months before. With Chief Constable George Baxter off in Yorkshire investigating the prison suicide of a sex offender, Monika gets assigned the difficult case despite its personal resonance. Knowing that Baxter is likely to pull her off as soon as he returns, she wants to close it fast. Once Jill’s body is found, she presses her team—DI Colin Beresford, DS Kate Meadows and DC Jack Crane—to make an arrest. They nick Bill Horrocks, whose hatred of lesbians is a motive for killing the same-sex–oriented teen. But the discovery of Margaret Hudson, a teenager killed in nearly the same spot as Jill, frees Horrocks from the nick. While Baxter interviews the recalcitrant staff of HM Dunston Prison about the string of violent attacks that preceded Jeremy Templar’s death, Monika grows increasingly worried that her failure to resolve this sensitive case may pose a threat to her career.

Another solid outing for Charlie Woodend’s worthy successor, whose baggage, like her striking European nose, makes her all the more appealing.

malevolent entity, nurtures schemes of conquest. Among all this are characters with confusingly similar names, or the same character with different names. The dialogue tends towards starchystiff. And Moon thoughtfully provides a map that, less helpfully, omits many of the places mentioned in the text. Still, it’s easy to become fully immersed in, and absorbed by, the narrative: Her great strength lies in the patient accumulation of telling detail, yielding an extraordinarily rich picture of the world’s politics, philosophy, military structure, history, magic and alien cultures, where men and women stand as equals even in force of arms.

A concluding volume is promised—and it’ll have to be some finale to knit up all the strands. Moon proves here, as in the past, that she’s more than equal to the task. (Agent: Joshua Bilmes)

GHOST SPIN

Moriarty, Chris Spectra/Bantam (576 pp.) $16.00 paper | Apr. 30, 2013 978-0-553-38494-9 Third installment of Moriarty’s independently intelligible far-future series (Spin Control, 2006, etc.) featuring a power struggle between the UNSec military-industrial empire and its cold-war adversaries, the AI-enhanced clones of the Syndicate.

UNSec’s command of its interstellar colonies is crumbling as its quantum teleportation network collapses. Key to the survival of both UNSec and Syndicate, and perhaps the human species itself, is the Drift: a strange region of space where quantum reality seems to operate on a macro level. When the almost unimaginably complex Emergent AI called Cohen reportedly suicides on planet New Allegheny, various pieces of him— ghosts—survive in scattered networks, some insane, some conscious. Cohen’s wife, ex-UNSec major Catherine Li, doesn’t believe the story. Li faces several problems: She’s wanted on certain planets as a war criminal, but thanks to UNSec boss Helen Nguyen’s restructuring of her psyche, she has no recollection of what she’s accused of doing. And the only way she can reach New Allegheny is by “scattercast,” having herself beamed toward her destination as an electronic download. Unfortunately, with this method, anybody with the right equipment can grab a copy of her. Consequently, another version of Li works for UNSec Navy captain Astrid Avery, whose mission is to hunt down ex-Navy pirate William Llewellyn. Llewellyn, tortured by a guilty secret, must operate in the Drift but needs a far more powerful navigational AI than the one already in his head. The one he gets is one of Cohen’s self-aware ghosts, and the ghost promptly begins to absorb him body and soul. Complexity is the watchword here, of thought, idea, narrative, character and plot; the resulting dense, chewy narrative avoids the obvious pitfalls, though it’s certainly not an easy read.

Highly rewarding, but you’ll need to bring along plenty of active brain cells. (Agent: Scott Hoffman)

science fiction and fantasy LIMITS OF POWER

Moon, Elizabeth Del Rey/Ballantine (512 pp.) $26.00 | Jun. 11, 2013 978-0-345-53306-7 The fourth entry in Moon’s solidgoing-on-stolid Paladin’s Legacy fantasy series (Echoes of Betrayal, 2012, etc.) is far from easily intelligible for unacquainted readers.

Once again the plot, or rather the multitudinous intrigues and designs, creeps forward. Kieri Phelan, the half-elf king of Lyonya married to Arian, another half-elf, must beget an heir, since he faces external threats and, at home, disaffected elves, attacks from evil elflike iynisin and an as-yet unmasked traitor. Powerful and mysterious dragons, or perhaps the same dragon, make their presence known.

Mikeli, the young king of neighboring Tsaia, discovers, to his dismay, that his brother Camwyn has developed forbidden magic powers, as have an astonishing number of others, nobles and commoners alike. A tribe of gnomes nominate Jandelir Arcolin, Count of the North Marches, as their prince. In a box that cannot be opened lurks a mysterious sentient regalia. Former thief-enforcer Arvid Semminson starts hearing the voice of the god Gird. And the Duke of Immer, willingly possessed by a |

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STEPPING STONE / THE LOVE MACHINE

Mosley, Walter Tor (288 pp.) $24.99 | Apr. 2, 2013 978-0-7653-3010-9 Series: Crosstown to Oblivion

The creator of Easy Rawlins, whose ambition keeps sending him back to apocalyptic sci-fi scenarios with decidedly mixed results (The Wave, 2006, etc.), presents a pair of visionary novellas mainly designed to provide their characters with occasions to hector each other and the gentle reader with speechifying.

Stepping Stone, the more interesting of these two tales, begins in quotidian reality before taking leave of it. Truman Pope, long ago identified as suffering from a learning disability, finds his uneventful tenure as mailroom manager at the firm of Higgenbothem, Brightend and Hoad disrupted by the apparition of a young woman in an ecru pantsuit whom nobody else can see.

Minerva, as she calls herself, opens Truman’s eyes to soaring new vistas, including the good news (Truman is God) and the bad (the coming of “the worst plague in the history of the human race”), before the millennial conclusion. Love Machine begins more forthrightly with technobureaucrat Lois Kim testing the Datascriber, which top neurophysicist Dr. Marchant Lewis has produced for her bosses at InterCybernetics International, and then realizing that she’s given Lewis access to her memories and desires and opened herself in turn to the Co-Mind Lewis shares with Marie, a former employee he once threw across the workspace and lamed, and three other associates, one of whom, doubling as a coyote, chides her: “[Y]ou are still thinking as one person who is alone in the cold embrace of uncaring, inert matter.” After some initial resistance, Lois quickly adjusts to her new status and prepares to forge her comrades into the new vanguard of humanity.

Mosley, whose mystery novels (All I Did Was Shoot My Man, 2012, etc.) have won deserved acclaim, is here at his most declamatory, essayistic and oracular.

GRAIL OF THE SUMMER STARS

Warrington, Freda Tor (384 pp.) $27.99 | Apr. 23, 2013 978-0-7653-1871-8

Third of Warrington’s related but independently intelligible aliens-amongus Aetherial Tales fantasies (Midsummer Night, 2010, etc.).

Thirty thousand years ago, the Aetherials, serially immortal, pureenergy beings, fled their home and took up residence, some in human form, on Earth. Previously, Mist, a human-formed Aetherial, was murdered by his duplicitous brother, Rufus, who, 42

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thousands of years ago, destroyed the Aetherial city of Azantios.

Reborn Mist has few of his memories, human or Aetherial, but knows that he must find Rufus—and kill him. Meanwhile, Birmingham art gallery curator and talented designer Stevie Silverwood receives an unsolicited visionary triptych from old college flame Daniel Manifold. The triptych, called “Aurata’s Promise,” vividly and vigorously depicts a ruined palace, a scarlet-haired goddess and a city in flames. It bears a message to Stevie: “The world needs to see this.” But, arresting though the artwork is, why? Daniel, she discovers, has vanished from his London studio. Mist, recalling something of who and what he is, follows the clues to Birmingham. He recognizes not only the scenes in the triptych, but the people too; only the title remains baffling. But with his rusty human attributes, when he tries to talk to Stevie, she recoils. Then, one night in the gallery, an eerie presence manifests itself, cracks Stevie over the head and vanishes with the artwork. With no other choice, Mist must make another attempt to reassure Stevie, since he will need her help in tracking down Daniel, the triptych and Rufus—whatever the latter is planning, it definitely won’t be good. A classy, beautifully rendered tale that persuasively builds from low-key beginnings into a complex enterprise with real heft, a rich back story and characters that grow with the narrative.

A must for existing fans, while being easily accessible to newcomers.

nonfiction THE FIGHT TO SAVE JUÁREZ Life in the Heart of Mexico’s Drug War

These titles earned the Kirkus Star: THE GUNS AT LAST LIGHT by Rick Atkinson...................................45

Ainslie, Ricardo C. Univ. of Texas (332 pp.) $25.00 | Apr. 1, 2013 978-0-292-73890-4

INTUITION PUMPS AND OTHER TOOLS FOR THINKING

by Daniel C. Dennett........................................................................... 48 THE MARTIN DUBERMAN READER by Martin Duberman.............50

One of the clearest accounts yet of the causes for the violence in Ciudad Juárez and the convoluted politics behind Mexico’s attempts to keep it from dragging the whole nation down.

Ainslie (Education/Univ. of Texas; Long Dark Road: Bill King and Murder in Jasper, Texas, 2004, etc.), a psychologist and filmmaker with dual Mexican and American citizenship, interviewed scores of Juárenses over some of the worst years for violence (2007-2010). By chance, they coincided with the mayoral term of José Reyes Ferriz, who is effectively the central figure of the narrative. A member of Mexico’s deeply entrenched Institutional Revolutionary Party (known by its Spanish initials PRI), Reyes Ferriz was at odds with the party’s old regime leadership as represented by the governor of Juárez’s state of Chihuahua, José Reyes Baeza. This political rift stemmed as much from Mexico’s decade-old experiment in democracy, which allowed parties other than PRI to win elections, as it did from the increasingly violent wars for control of the drug traffic to the United States by rival cartels based in Juárez and Sinaloa, which Mexican President Felipe Calderón has tried to fight with the national military. It’s a complicated story with tangles of threads leading all over the place—from PRI’s repression of student and leftist dissent in the 1960s and ’70s to the expiration of the U.S. assault weapons ban in 2004 that led to a radical spike in the appearance of deadly AR-15 automatic rifles in the hands of cartel operatives. Though occasionally miring the story in repetitious regurgitation of news clips, Ainslie does best when focusing on the often heartbreaking stories of the long-suffering people of Juárez.

A hard-nosed, cleareyed analysis of a legacy of institutionalized corruption and its dire consequences for human lives.

SURFACES AND ESSENCES by Douglas R. Hofstadter; Emmanuel Sander.................................................................................56 THE CHILD CATCHERS by Kathryn Joyce......................................... 57 BIG DATA by Viktor Mayer-Schönberger; Kenneth Cukier................61 AND MAN CREATED GOD by Selina O’Grady................................. 64 A FORT OF NINE TOWERS by Qais Akbar Omar............................ .64

INTUITION PUMPS AND OTHER TOOL S FOR THINKING

Dennett, Daniel C..

Norton (384 pp.) $27.95 May 6, 2013 978-0-393-08206-7

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ANCIENT ISRAEL The Former Prophets: Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings: A Translation with Commentary

ground, detailing his rise to teen-idol fame with the self-penned 1957 hit “Diana” and the ensuing package tours that found him rubbing elbows with Buddy Holly, Fats Domino and Chuck Berry. Into the early ’60s, Anka continued to score big hits, wisely intuiting that his career would last longer if he went the cabaret/casino route.

When Beatlemania and psychedelia flooded the charts, he fully embraced the Rat Pack lifestyle and spent the ensuing decade gambling and drinking with Frank Sinatra (sweet when he wasn’t drinking, vicious when he was) and Sammy Davis Jr. (sweet whether he was drinking or not), as well as various mobsters, Saudi arms dealers and casino entrepreneurs. Now that Anka has outlived Sinatra, Davis and most of the mobsters, he understandably wants to crow about it—and crow he does, citing a veggies-and-exercise regimen for his longevity. Despite dishing out a few tidbits about high rollers like Donald Trump and Steve Wynn, Anka remains disappointingly mum about his fellow musicians and presents his tales in a remarkably slack, disorganized fashion.

Strictly for those who fetishize gaudy hotels, Mafia chic and sappy ballads. (Two 16-page color photo inserts)

Alter, Robert Norton (928 pp.) $35.00 | Apr. 1, 2013 978-0-393-08269-2

A fresh translation of six historical books of the Hebrew Bible.

Venerable scholar Alter (Hebrew and Comparative Literature/Univ. of California; The Wisdom Books: Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes: A Translation with Commentary, 2010, etc.) continues a decade of biblical-translation work with this new look at Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, and 1 and 2 Kings. These core historical texts explain the history of ancient Israel, including such famous figures as Samson, Elijah, David and Solomon.

Each translation is accompanied by an introductory essay and extensive commentary in footnotes. Though Alter does not address the obvious question—why another translation?—his translation is unique enough and his commentary extensive and erudite enough to render the question rather moot. The author has a definitive respect for the ancient writers who first wrote these texts; he sees them not as “schools” or abstract conveyors of legend but as real people who knew they were doing an important service by recording this history, as best they knew it. Alter also reads the texts with a sharp eye for moral lessons and ethical dilemmas. Rather than ignoring ethical issues or chalking them up to cultural differences, he grapples with them, understanding the text to be an ethical and religious work. Yet he does so without snobbishness. Alter’s translation has an earthy quality, sticking closely to the text without bending it to fit modern preferences for grammar and language flow.

A fine, useful resource for lay scholars, clergy and serious Bible readers.

A SPOONFUL OF SUGAR A Nanny’s Story

Ashford, Brenda Doubleday (320 pp.) $25.95 | Apr. 2, 2013 978-0-385-53641-7

Reflecting on her 62 years as a nanny, Ashford presents a delightful compilation of memories, child care tips and insights from a radically different time and place.

Contemporary mothers will discover the trove of practical advice just as useful today as it was in 20th-century England. At the age of 92, she has been heralded as Britain’s longest-serving nanny.

Ashford began her “nanny boot camp” training at the prestigious Norland Institute in 1939. “I never dreamed when I graduated from the Norland Institute at eighteen that I’d still be looking after babies when I was eighty!” writes the author. Ashford’s career included caring for children of aristocrats, working in a war nursery, caring for a rather shifty family with dubious associates and working at a “sprawling family farmhouse…set in acres of beautiful grounds.” Ashford ably weaves together her personal observations on social and cultural changes and her child care stories. “As we entered the 1950s a nanny in a uniform seemed strangely outdated,” she writes. “Society was changing, and I had to be seen to be changing with it.” The author never married, but rather devoted her life to creating the happiest homes she could for her families. For a decade, Ashford was what she called a “troubleshooting nanny,” moving from house to house, helping new mothers get back on their feet and establishing a stable routine for the household. At 80, she came out of retirement, helping a young mother who had once been one of her charges with her two children.

Ashford recounts a life filled with love, devotion and hard work—a snapping good story by a true British treasure.

MY WAY

Anka, Paul with Dalton, David St. Martin’s (320 pp.) $29.99 | Apr. 9, 2013 978-0-312-38104-2 978-1-250-03520-2 e-book The crooner who penned Frank Sinatra’s signature tune reminisces about the Rat Pack, the shifting landscape of popular music and the truth behind the phrase, “What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas.”

Reading Anka’s autobiography—written with Rolling Stone founding contributor Dalton (Who Is That Man?: In Search of the Real Bob Dylan, 2012, etc.)—is a bit like hanging out poolside with a charismatic yet self-congratulatory uncle: fun for a few minutes, but ultimately you find yourself edging away as the man just keeps rambling about the good old days. Anka begins on solid enough 44

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“An outstanding work of popular history, in the spirit of William Manchester and Bruce Catton.” from the guns at last light

THE GUNS AT LAST LIGHT The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945

War II birth to its spectacularly expensive sale to a new owner in 2006 to its descent into bankruptcy four years later. The complex, meant to provide affordable rental apartments to thousands of residents, had been built and managed primarily by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. Although the MetLife reign had been filled with controversy, a large percentage of tenants continued to remain fiercely loyal to the owner.

When MetLife decided to sell, the deal became the priciest real estate transaction in New York City history. The effective cost to the winning bidder, Tishman Speyer Properties, topped $6 billion. The institutional investors roped in to contribute to the purchase price meant Tishman Speyer made the purchase using other people’s money. The author focuses on Rob Speyer, the second-generation scion of the real estate firm. The account of the failure is bracing from a variety of perspectives, including those of the tenants, the politicians, the investors and various levels of government. Bagli is less successful when he tries to place the disastrous investment within the context of the worldwide financial crisis. His attempt to describe the crisis in a relatively small number of pages fails to resonate in the same way that full-length books about the financial mess have resonated.

Despite some flaws, Bagli’s sourcing is impressive, and readers will welcome his ability to make arcane investment dealings comprehensible.

Atkinson, Rick Henry Holt (896 pp.) $38.00 | May 14, 2013 978-0-8050-6290-8

Atkinson (The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944, 2007, etc.) brings his Liberation Trilogy to a

resounding close.

The war, of course, ended in Allied victory—though, it often seems even in these closing pages, just barely. Among the challenges were not just a ferocious German war machine that refused to stop grinding, but an Allied effort often hampered by internal disagreements and the inevitable jockeying for power.

One skillful player was British general Bernard Montgomery, whom Atkinson captures with a gesture in an opening set piece: “With a curt swish of his pointer, Montgomery stepped to the great floor map.” That map provided a visual survey of Overlord, the great 1944 multipronged invasion of Normandy, of which the author’s long account is masterful and studded with facts and figures. Many of the key actors—Eisenhower, Patton—will be well-known to American readers, but others will not, not least of them Theodore Roosevelt Jr., the oldest general at D-Day and perhaps the bravest as well. American readers may also not know that British and Canadian troops landed elsewhere in Normandy on that day and paid a fearful price; Atkinson is to be commended for giving equal billing to those Allies. Toward the end, those Western Allies finally worked out some of their big differences, just in time for the final savage campaign of winter 1944–1945, which included the Battle of the Bulge. Atkinson assumes little outside knowledge of his readers, so his story is largely self-contained; as such, with the other volumes in the trilogy, it makes a superb introduction to a complex episode in world history.

An outstanding work of popular history, in the spirit of William Manchester and Bruce Catton.

MY ANIMALS AND OTHER FAMILY

Balding, Clare Penguin Press (336 pp.) $26.95 | Apr. 22, 2013 978-1-59420-562-0

A BBC broadcaster’s captivating chronicle of her childhood dogs and horses.

The daughter of the queen’s racehorse trainer Ian Balding, the author knew the friendship and protection of animals before she felt the same in humans. Indeed, her well-connected parents were too busy running the stables, involving the daily exercise and care of some 80 thoroughbred horses, racers and jumpers, an equine obsession that soon rubbed off on her and her brother, Andrew. In discrete chapters named for the particular animal in question, Balding depicts the notables, such as her first friend and protector Candy, her mother’s cherished boxer, and the starter horse the children were given by the queen herself. There was her father’s fearsome “lurcher” dog, a scruffy combination of a sight hound and terrier, favorite of the Romany Gypsy for its intelligence and way with horses; the first horse she showed, a pure-white Welsh Mountain pony called Volcano; and the “Heinz 57” horse she adored and first helped her prove her riding mettle. Balding became an intrepid racer and champion jumper, even winning an Austin Rover Mini and besting the royal princess at one point. Yet the fairy-tale setting and English banter also convey some deep insecurity about Balding’s parental indifference, verging on negligence, as the children suffered

OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY Inside the Housing Crisis and the Demise of the Greatest Real Estate Deal Ever Made

Bagli, Charles Dutton (416 pp.) $28.95 | Apr. 4, 2013 978-0-525-95265-7

A detailed recounting of a gigantic affordable-housing failure in New York City amid the international economic collapse beginning in 2008.

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LOST IN SUBURBIA A Momoir of How I Got Pregnant, Lost Myself, and Got My Cool Back in the New Jersey Suburbs

numerous falls and broken bones, and resentment simmered as her brother was given free rein and encouragement while she, the girl and tomboy no less, was not.

An irresistible look at the horsey mores of the landed English.

Beckerman, Tracy Perigee/Penguin (272 pp.) $15.00 paper | Apr. 2, 2013 978-0-399-15993-0

MY BACKYARD JUNGLE The Adventures of an Urban Wildlife Lover Who Turned His Yard into Habitat and Learned to Live With It

Lighthearted, mostly humorous memoir of suburban motherhood based on the author’s nationally syndicated column.

Published by more than 400 newspapers in 25 states, Beckerman’s column inspired an eponymous blog (lostinsuburbia.net), and her funny accounts of situations running the gamut from mundane to outrageous have resonated with readers, particularly mothers of young children. This book opens with a scene in which the always self-deprecating Beckerman, on an afternoon school run to pick up her daughter, was pulled over by a police officer who dryly observed that she was wearing her bathrobe.

Chapter titles, including “I’m Not Fat, I’m Just Pregnant. Okay, I’m Fat, Too” and “ ‘P’ Is for Parenting and Prozac,” in addition to Beckerman’s tone, are consistently zippy and dramatic. She includes plenty of confrontations, like the scene in which her husband discovered she got a tattoo at age 35, as well as internal monologues riffing on the less-appealing aspects of motherhood, such as the lack of time to take a shower. The tattoo and subsequent chopping off of her hair are ascribed to Beckerman’s desire to be “cool” again, the way she was pre-motherhood when she worked in TV and lived in Manhattan. These efforts string the chapters together with the theme of the reignition of her individuality. Feeling that people look down on mothers, she acknowledges that “the second we become moms we start to let ourselves go.” Beckerman doesn’t want to lose herself in motherhood, and her “momoir” offers entertaining vignettes about balancing her responsibilities at home with her quest to tap into her true self.

Breezy fun.

Barilla, James Yale Univ. (384 pp.) $28.00 | Apr. 22, 2013 978-0-300-18401-3

A naturalist’s account of how turning his backyard into a certified wildlife habitat inspired him to explore “the limits of coexistence” more globally.

After he and his family bought their first house, Barilla (Creative Nonfiction and Environmental Writing/Univ. of South Carolina) wanted a way to proclaim that he “had become a stakeholder” in ongoing efforts to maintain animal habitat integrity. So he certified his yard as “wildlife-friendly” with the National Wildlife Federation. In a gesture that declared his new rootedness to place, Barilla planted apple, pear and peach trees in his yard; soon, bees and fruit-raiding birds and squirrels began to converge. He learned that being part of an ecosystem—rather than its overseer—meant finding oneself “jostled and threatened” and one’s “belongings usurped.” At the same time, Barilla also began wondering about urban environments elsewhere in the world and how people could maximize the potential of these environments in a future where “over 70% of the human population [would] live in cities.” To answer this question, he visited urban areas in Florida, Massachusetts, New York, as well as in Brazil and India, where he observed the relationships between humans and other species. Whether as objects of scorn or intense devotion, animals were universally as fascinating to humans as they could be uncomfortable (or even dangerous) to live with. The challenge was to not only learn to respect them and their right to exist alongside humans, but also to help preserve their integrity as “wild animals [and] not household pets.” Barilla’s ultimate message is both simple and powerful: To work toward coexistence means setting aside all notions of speciesism and cultivating an open, ecologically aware mind.

Intelligent and quietly provocative.

SHAKESPEARE’S PUB A Barstool History of London As Seen Through the Windows of Its Oldest Pub— The George Inn Brown, Pete St. Martin’s (384 pp.) $26.99 | May 21, 2013 978-1-250-03388-8 978-1-250-03387-1 e-book

The centuries-long story of the George Inn, which may not have been Shakespeare’s local, but proves fascinating nonetheless.

Brown (Man Walks into a Pub, 2004) admits that there’s no proof the Bard of Avon ever set foot in the George Inn, but it’s the logical place on which to center this book, as it’s the 46

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Brown’s wit and extensive research make this a solid book of history, sociology and literature, as well as a great travel guide. (b/w photos throughout)

only inn that survived fires, the railroads, the Blitz and modernization. The surviving section of the 16th-century pub is a perfectly preserved example of the coaching inns of the past.

The author’s vast research shows the centrality of these inns to everyday life and commerce. This is actually a history of Southwark, for so many years—nay centuries—the dumping ground for people, businesses and severed heads that the city across the Thames didn’t want to deal with. Just as often referred to as “the borough,” Southwark sits at the bottom of London Bridge, which until the middle of the 18th century was the only bridge across the Thames. With goods, and especially hops, arriving from the southeast, Southwark became the logistical distribution center of London. As such, inns required large yards for the wagons, coaches and their propulsion units: horses. The inn yards then evolved into the theaters of the area: supporting the plays of Shakespeare, enjoyed from the galleries for those who could afford a penny. The Canterbury Tales, as well as Piers Ploughman, showed the beginnings of the inn as a community gathering place, but Dickens’ Mr. Pickwick made the George’s name as tourists trolled for links to that most popular author.

HERE IS WHERE Discovering America’s Great Forgotten History

Carroll, Andrew Crown Archetype (480 pp.) $25.00 | May 14, 2013 978-0-307-46397-5

From the editor of several popular collections of letters (Behind the Lines, 2005, etc.), a down-home account of his travels in search of neglected historical sites.

There’s no particular rhyme or reason to the places Carroll chose to visit, which range from the tiny Hawaiian island where a Japanese pilot crash-landed after bombing Pearl Harbor to Daniel Boone’s

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“A famous thinker demonstrates how he does his job.” from intuition pumps and other tools for thinking

grave, which may not actually hold his remains and which gives rise to a long discourse on other famous people who were buried, dug up and buried again elsewhere. This grab-bag approach suits Carroll, whose appreciation of history is sincere but shallow. At one point, in a Cleveland bar that stands on the site of a movie theater whose showing of a risqué French film led to the Supreme Court’s landmark 1964 ruling on obscenity, the author got into a conversation with a patron “about how boring we thought [history] was growing up.” Now that he loves history, the author’s strategy for converting others is to make it as unintimidating as possible: He offers chatty descriptions of his journeys and of his guides to the various sites, who were often just amateur historians like Carroll, and he makes eloquent pleas for the importance of such forgotten episodes as the Wyoming race riot that killed dozens of Chinese coal miners in 1885.

Still, it’s odd that he spends so much time at places where no physical traces remain of the incidents he wishes to commemorate. “The stories, not the physical sites, are what’s paramount,” he avers, a claim that would be more convincing if it weren’t immediately followed by, “and they become more indelibly impressed in our minds when we travel to where they occurred.” Since Carroll is a good storyteller and has done an impressive amount of research, his lack of rigor and aw-shucks manner will grate only on readers who prefer a more systematic approach to history.

Amiable pop history.

with a sharp-elbowed, spikes-high intensity that earned him many admirers and few friends. Particularly for those whose image of the Georgia Peach derives solely from the infamous Al Stump biography and the ensuing Tommy Lee Jones movie, this portrait of the lion in winter will come as a surprise.

A gentle, affecting memoir.

BABY MEETS WORLD Suck, Smile, Touch, Toddle

Day, Nicholas St. Martin’s (368 pp.) $25.99 | Apr. 2, 2013 978-0-312-59134-2

A thorough look at “an inscrutable creature,” a “glorious, unfathomable mystery”: the infant.

Like any new parent, Day was intrigued with the behavior of his son. How did he know breasts and thumbs brought food and comfort? Why did he like to be touched so much?

Why did he smile, and was he really expressing an emotion when he did so? After failing to find adequate answers, Day delves into the historical, social and personal world of infants to find out why babies do what they do. The author blends scientific data with historical and cultural norms and aberrations, covering the pros and cons of breast-feeding, the ins and outs of wet nursing, and the benefits of thumbs and/or pacifiers. He cites some interesting statistics—e.g., “according to a recent experiment, it is 16 percent more of a burden to carry a baby in your arms than in a sling”—and emphasizes the importance of touch, which is “life itself…all the crucial messages sent by a parent—love, security, commitment—are communicated through touch. It’s our lifeline.” Day sheds light on the way societal attitudes have fluctuated over time as to the proper methods to raise a child, especially regarding feeding, sleeping and holding the infant.

But “even if we are up to our ears in infancy stories—it will never be enough.” Fortunately, the author provides plenty of encouragement and anecdotes about successful parenting and the requirements for ensuring a healthy, productive life for a child. The story of an infant is as much about the parent as the child, Day notes, and no individual child or adult has the exact same experience as any other.

An entertaining study of newborn behavior.

HEART OF A TIGER Growing up with My Grandfather, Ty Cobb

Cobb, Herschel ECW Press (220 pp.) $24.95 | Apr. 1, 2013 978-1-77041-130-2

The greatest baseball player of the dead ball era, and the most widely despised, tenderly remembered by his grandson.

Herschel Cobb grew up the middle child of alcoholic parents, his father a near-300-pound bruiser who physically and mentally tortured him until a heart attack put an end to the madness when the boy was 8; his mother, cruelly indifferent to the abuse, disastrously remarried and continued to administer her own brand of emotional pain. The only solace came from his Granddaddy’s occasional visits, phone calls, letters and, most of all, from summers spent with the old man at Lake Tahoe. There, Herschel learned lessons in humility, persistence, charity, self-reliance and responsibility. By then, Ty Cobb was well past his baseball heyday, at arm’s length from his surviving children, alone with his fabulous wealth from prescient investments in Coca-Cola and General Motors. He appeared to acknowledge the hash he’d made of his personal life—“Hersch, it was my fault. It was my fault”—and he reached out to his grandchildren in a way quite at odds with his ferocious reputation. A large part of this narrative’s charm lies in the little boy’s gradual awakening to his grandfather’s towering achievements in baseball and to his controversial legacy: “Granddaddy, what did you do? Who are you really?” The question turns out to be not so easily answered. Ty, almost pathologically competitive, famously played 48

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INTUITION PUMPS AND OTHER TOOLS FOR THINKING

Dennett, Daniel C. Norton (384 pp.) $27.95 | May 6, 2013 978-0-393-08206-7

A famous thinker demonstrates how he does his job.

Thinking is hard, writes Dennett (Philosophy/Tufts Univ.; Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, 2006, etc.), who then proceeds |

to explain how to do it right. He stresses that history’s philosophical giants have relied on vivid, although not necessarily accurate, thought experiments, which he dubs “intuition pumps” (Plato’s Cave, Descartes’ evil demon, Kant’s categorical imperative). Dennett begins with a dozen general-purpose tools, from the popular reductio ad absurdum (examine a statement for preposterous implications) to a warning to watch out for the deepity, a proposition that seems profound only because it’s ambiguous (“Love is just a word”). Having delivered these devices, he goes on to show how they illuminate or, equally often, shoot down arguments on great philosophical subjects such as consciousness, evolution and free will, as well as revealing the thought processes of philosophers themselves, with emphasis on those with whom Dennett disagrees. A well-known materialist, he has no patience with explanations that involve “magic,” whether it is a god who creates everything, an evolutionary structure too complex to result from a natural process or a human mind with secrets beyond the reach of science. Those who deny that one can compare the brain to a gigantic computer don’t understand how computers work. Much of their operation appears genuinely magical but isn’t.

Despite a generous helping of wit and amusing anecdotes, this is not Philosophy for Dummies. Many of the short chapters require close attention and rereading, but those willing to work will come away with a satisfying understanding of how deep thinkers think. (31 illustrations)

told account of an extended battle with Afghan insurgents, for which he received the Navy Cross, a distinction about which he feels deep misgivings, having lost two comrades there. In the concluding chapters, Donald describes his decision to retire, coming to terms with the grueling experience of combat and his wish to keep working with SF veterans through advocacy groups. The narrative is rambling at points, and some of the noncombat interactions feel stagey, but this memoir raises hard questions about the toll American policy takes on its professional warrior class.

Straightforward reflections on what it takes to be the most elite sort of soldier and the hidden costs of that life.

BATTLE READY Memoir of a Seal Warrior Medic

Donald, Mark L. with Mactavish, Scott St. Martin’s (352 pp.) $26.99 | Mar. 12, 2013 978-0-312-60075-4 978-1-250-00976-0 e-book Life story of a warrior with an unusual dual specialty—Navy SEAL and combat medic—told with plainspoken stoicism.

In this book co-authored by Mactavish, Donald examines his rarefied position in the pantheon of Special Forces veterans: “the highest decorated Medical Service Corps officer in the history of the Navy and the first medical officer of any corps… to receive a Navy Cross since Vietnam.” Yet, by the end of this sprawling memoir, his feelings about his expansive battlefield experience are decidedly ambivalent: “War is not an esoteric chess game...I no longer believed the answer required an army on foreign soil.” Unlike other recent SEAL memoirs, Donald does not go into detail about his upbringing, early service as an elite Reconnaissance Marine, or the crucible of SEAL training and its notorious “Hell Week.” Instead, after his first combat experience on a SEAL team in the 1991 Iraq War, he explains his gradual transition into practicing as a medic. He attended the Navy’s elite physician assistant program—even as his first marriage dissolved and he dealt with the emotional aftershocks from combat, both of which he terms common among Special Forces operators. The book’s centerpiece is a harrowingly |

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“A provocative collection that is thoughtful in both scope and attention to detail.” from the martin duberman reader

PARIS TO THE PYRENEES A Skeptic Pilgrim Walks the Way of Saint James

a participant in, and witness to, many of the significant historical events of the last 50 years. As the founder of the Center for Gay and Lesbian Studies at CUNY and a participant in the development of the movement for gay rights, Duberman’s account of the Stonewall riots of 1969 is exemplary of his overall approach, a mix of the historical and the personal. Under the rubric of social and economic justice, he writes about the relationship between individuals and society, along with the struggle for political and personal/sexual freedoms. He discusses the antebellum abolitionist movement and provides thumbnail biographies that frame the question of “normal” vs. “neurotic.” Duberman works these themes into his treatment of the civil rights, black nationalist and gay rights movements.

The author does not offer broad generalizations, but particular exemplification: the career of Paul Robeson and his struggle against racism, Howard Zinn’s involvement with the 1950s civil rights movement in Atlanta, and the actions of the Student National Coordinating Committee, the Gay Academic Union and the National Gay Task Force. He also examines the tragedy of AIDS and the issue of racism in the gay male community, and he offers incendiary thoughts on the death of Ronald Reagan, lionized by most but disdained by the author for his refusal to assist in AIDS research (“Reagan wouldn’t lift a finger to foster research or to combat the mounting epidemic in any way. Mr. Compassion couldn’t even say the AIDS word”) or provide any protection of the civil liberties of minorities.

A provocative collection that is thoughtful in both scope and attention to detail.

Downie, David Pegasus (352 pp.) $27.95 | Apr. 1, 2013 978-1-60598-432-2

Beset by the crises of middle age, an author and his photographer wife walk from Paris to the Pyrenees along the Way of Saint James.

Just before he turned 50, food and travel writer Downie (Paris, Paris: Journey into the City of Light, 2011, etc.) discovered that his gluttonous ways had finally caught up to him. Doctors told him that he had become “in essence, a walking foie gras” and was in imminent danger of liver failure. Disillusioned as well by “the forced cleverness of corporate magazine writing,” Downie decided to take time off to recover his health and rejuvenate his world-wearied spirit. A few days before Easter, he and his wife set off down the Rue Saint-Jacques, which marked the start of the route medieval pilgrims took from Paris to the shrine of St. James in Spain. Downie’s desire to trek across France had little to do with any need to find God. “I hadn’t escaped the gurus and drug culture of California to wind up Catholic in France,” he writes.

His journey—most of which would take him along old Roman roads and pilgrim routes that wound through the Burgundy countryside—was one he hoped would re-inspire him to ask the “big questions” that had once fired his imagination. Along the “maverick way” the couple followed (and which he documents with photographs), Downie was drawn to the way Celtic and Roman history intermingled in the landscape, architecture and people.

He came to understand that however modern France appeared to be, it lived “simultaneously in the past and present.” More profoundly, he realized that he was ultimately no different from the pilgrims who had walked “The Way” before him. His pilgrimage, like theirs, was “both the question and the answer” and a means to heightened awareness.

A witty and intelligent spin on the spiritual-journey motif. (32 pages of photographs)

HAPPY MONEY The Science of Smarter Spending Dunn, Elizabeth; Norton, Michael Simon & Schuster (288 pp.) $25.00 | May 14, 2013 978-1-4516-6506-2

How to “wring the most happiness out of every $5”—by structuring experiences to create the largest impact on happiness and satisfaction.

Dunn (Psychology/Univ. of British Columbia) and Norton (Marketing/Harvard Business School) write that bringing in more money doesn’t necessarily increase happiness. This is certainly not a new assertion, but their infectious enthusiasm for their subject is admirable. They organize their thinking around five principles for money—1) Buy Experiences; 2) Make It a Treat; 3) Buy Time; 4) Pay Now, Consume Later; 5) Invest in Others—and they offer a way to break out of the consumer cycle of ever-bigger, expensive purchases of goods like cars and houses. They argue that the happiness associated with such a pathway is evanescent at best. A bigger bang for the buck can be achieved by organizing small purchases using their principles.

The more of them that can be combined into one purchase, the greater the happiness. Buying coupons for friends to enjoy coffee at Starbucks sometime later in the week is better than doing

THE MARTIN DUBERMAN READER The Essential Historical, Biographical, and Autobiographical Writings Duberman, Martin New Press (336 pp.) $21.95 paper | May 7, 2013 978-1-59558-679-7 978-1-59558-890-6 e-book

Selections from the prolific writings of the prize-winning author and dramatist.

Born in 1930, Duberman (History Emeritus/CUNY Graduate School; Howard Zinn: A Life on the Left, 2012, etc.) has been 50

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BROTHERS EMANUEL A Memoir of an American Family

the same for oneself, or buying the coffee today. They organize the evidence to back this up, discussing how “what we call the ‘drool factor’ ”—anticipation—works on us at a physiological level, and how “delay can enhance the pleasure of consumption.” Dunn and Norton argue against going into debt to pay for either experiences or things, insisting that debt is detrimental to marriages and other relationships, nor do they favor buying now and paying later. They provide an interesting exploration of increasing happiness by buying time, as well as ways to address budgeting.

Helpful ways to think about improving quality of life as it relates to finances.

Emanuel, Ezekiel J. Random House (288 pp.) $27.00 | Mar. 26, 2013 978-1-4000-6903-3

The brother of Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel relates the history of his family’s classic immigrants-make-good American story.

Ezekiel Emanuel’s memoir is ostensibly the story of how he and his brothers, Rahm and Ari, developed their unique personalities and talents over the years. The author became a respected research scientist specializing in bioethics, his brother Ari, a successful talent agent, and his brother Rahm worked for the Clinton campaign in 1992 and eventually became Barack Obama’s chief of staff. Yet despite the brothers’ ambitions in their respective fields, they aren’t the ones whose lives

ABOVE THE DIN OF WAR Afghans Speak About Their Lives, Their Country, and Their Future—and Why America Should Listen Eichstaedt, Peter Chicago Review (304 pp.) $26.95 | Apr. 1, 2013 978-1-61374-515-1

Veteran journalist Eichstaedt (Consuming the Congo: War and Conflict Minerals in the World’s Deadliest Place, 2011, etc.) delivers from Afghanistan a dismal report on that country’s continued disintegration and decline and the failure of U.S. efforts to prevent it.

When U.S. and coalition forces entered Afghanistan in 2001 and defeated the brutal Taliban regime, hopes ran high for peace and prosperity. Neither, reports the author, has occurred.

Rather, Afghanistan remains a country “crumbling at the edges and collapsing at its core.” Eichstaedt interviewed Afghans from all walks of life: government officials, Taliban leaders, shopkeepers, mullahs, would-be suicide bombers, victims of self-immolation and others. Afghanistan remains among the poorest nations of the world, and the Taliban grows stronger as a corrupt government dominated by regional and ethnic warlords does little to aid the Afghan people. Women remain brutally oppressed, and chaos reigns: “The fighting, the death, the destruction was random and it was everywhere.” Eichstaedt places much of the blame for this mess on the U.S. and its strategy of placing military objectives above development. Among the Afghans Eichstaedt interviewed, an ambiguous view of the U.S. emerged. Some feared the planned withdrawal of U.S. forces in 2014 would surely lead to the return of Taliban control and civil war. Yet many others fiercely hated the Americans and other foreign forces, seeing them as occupiers and conquerors under whom Afghan life had only grown worse. While he does discuss possible strategies for improving the situation—a real and sustained development plan coupled with a continued U.S. military presence, for instance—Eichstaedt sees no easy fixes— nor do most of the Afghans he gives voice to in this work of skilled and brutally honest journalism.

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make for the most interesting focal point in the book: It’s the parents who actually lived the memoir-worthy lives. The father, Ben, was a direct participant in the Israeli War of Independence in 1948, interrupting his medical studies to act as an amateur secret agent and then joining the Israeli artillery in the fight against the Egyptians. After the war, he finished medical school in Switzerland before coming to America to set up his practice.

Their mother was a staunch left-wing activist in the 1960s; she brought her sons to some of the most heated political protests in Chicago. Comparatively, the early life that Ezekiel and his brothers led in the Chicago suburbs was fairly comfortable and middle-class, with all three brothers going to expensive, exclusive colleges on their father’s dime and studiously sticking to the straight-and-narrow path to professional success. In fact, the most exciting thing that happened to the author came while studying in England: He was jailed in Oxford for supposedly resisting arrest while breaking bike safety laws.

Well-written and heartfelt but short on dramatic moments and memorable anecdotes.

substantially to the regional polarization that eventually led to war. If only people had been more willing to talk, negotiate and compromise, writes the author. All fine, of course, unless you and yours have been enslaved for more than two centuries.

At times, this thesis-driven tour employs a curious moral compass.

HALF MAN, HALF BIKE The Life of Eddy Merckx, Cycling’s Greatest Champion Fotheringham, William Chicago Review (320 pp.) $18.95 paper | Apr. 1, 2013 978-1-61374-726-1

The life and times of the greatest cyclist ever.

Bicycle racing has fallen on hard times. The recent revelations about Lance Armstrong’s long-standing use of performance-enhancing drugs simply provides the seeming coup de grâce for a sport tainted from top to bottom with juicing athletes. Here, veteran cycling journalist Fotheringham (Put Me Back On My Bike: In Search of Tom Simpson, 2007, etc.) provides a welcome reminder that at its best, cycling creates phenomenal athletes with otherworldly endurance, discipline and will. Born in 1945, Eddy Merckx was raised in the suburbs of Brussels. He embraced bicycle racing at a relatively young age. By the time he was in his teens, he revealed clear promise for future stardom; with his parents’ reluctant blessing, he turned professional. Within just a few years, he had climbed to the pinnacle of the sport and had earned the nickname “The Cannibal.” Merckx dominated the sport for a decade, making victory so routine that some fans and journalists came to resent and even hate him, as they believed his overwhelming rate of victory was ruining the sport. Fotheringham is passionate and knowledgeable about his subject, and for fans of the sport, this book will likely stand as the definitive Merckx biography. Newcomers to cycling’s history will learn a great deal but may at times be overwhelmed by the detail and presumed knowledge that the author brings to the narrative.

Eddy Merckx was the greatest of all time in his sport.

Fotheringham has placed him in his proper context and reminds us all that world-class athletes are driven by forces that most people can only imagine.

A DISEASE IN THE PUBLIC MIND A New Understanding of Why We Fought the Civil War Fleming, Thomas Da Capo/Perseus (384 pp.) $26.99 | May 15, 2013 978-0-306-82126-4

A prolific popular historian casts a harsh light on the abolitionists, insisting that their vitriolic rhetoric deserves more blame for the Civil War. In a preface, Fleming (The Intimate Lives of the Founding Fathers, 2009, etc.) establishes his thesis and defines his terms— diseased public minds have made possible everything from the Salem witch trials to 9/11—then writes that he would like to have been an observer at John Brown’s 1859 Harpers Ferry raid. Not many sentences unspool before readers realize that Fleming is no fan of Brown. In the author’s view (expanded in later chapters), Brown was a lying, murdering madman, a failure at most everything he attempted. After the Harpers Ferry moments, Fleming returns to the arrival of the first slaves to America in the 17th century, then guides us slowly forward to the outbreak of the Civil War, then to Appomattox and its aftermath. Along the way, he says things that won’t endear him to more liberal readers. He defends the slave-owning founders, emphasizing their ambivalence (without any commentary about, say, Sally Hemings), and alludes to research that shows there wasn’t as much rape of slave women as the abolitionists averred—and that most slave owners weren’t really into whipping and other fierce punishments. (He does condemn slavery, calling it “deplorable.”) But John Quincy Adams, William Lloyd Garrison, Harriet Beecher Stowe, John Brown and others—they were so intent on demonizing the South (where many did not own slaves, Fleming reminds us) that they contributed 52

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SAVING NORMAL Reclaiming the Natural Power, Resilience, and Selfhealing Properties of the Brain

When assigned to cover the Oprah Winfrey Show, Kansas City Star feature writer Fussell used his affliction as a calling card for an interview, telling her how, some years before, her interview with a fellow sufferer had inspired him. Winfrey gave him a tape of a recent show she had done with Matovic, who had been disabled by the syndrome until recent, successful brain surgery.

The doctors implanted an electrode deeply in his thalamus (the area which controls motor impulses) and connected it to a battery-controlled minicomputer placed in his chest. While the potentially fatal surgery had worked for people with Parkinson’s disease, Matovic’s operation was the first success story for a Tourette’s patient. After watching the tape, Fussell got in touch with Matovic to share experiences, and the idea for a joint book project emerged. Now happily married with children and a successful career, Fussell’s life nonetheless was becoming unendurable. He suffered severe pain from the violent, uncontrollable jerking motions of his head, which had injured vertebrae in his neck and also disrupted his sleep. He writes about both of their battles with the disease, which worsens over time. As a boy and young man, Fussell was able to divert attention from his

Frances, Allen Morrow/HarperCollins (304 pp.) $27.99 | $21.99 e-book | May 14, 2013 978-0-06-222925-0 978-0-06-222927-4 e-book

Frances weighs in with a no-holdsbarred critique of the newly revised Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

As the DSM IV Task Force leader, the author does not duck responsibility for the problematic nature of the manual, which he describes as a “cultural icon” and “perennial best seller.” Not anticipating the diagnostic creep, “we failed to predict or prevent three new false epidemics of mental disorder in children—Autism, Attention Deficit Disorder, and Childhood Bipolar Disorder.” In the author’s view, too often clinicians adopt labels from the manual to cover up their own sloppy and even faddish diagnoses. He predicts that the situation will worsen with the new edition. Once considered a rare disease, “CBD [childhood bipolar disorder] has become the most inflated bubble in all psychiatric diagnosis.” Frances anticipates that the DSM V’s inclusion of Asperger’s in the autism spectrum will cause problems, possibly leading to a reduction of special school programs that help students with Asperger’s at one end of the spectrum, and disability benefits for the extremely disabled at the other. While accepting his own and fellow psychiatrists’ failure to predict the problem of label creep, the author ascribes most responsibility to pharmaceutical companies, which have “hijacked the medical profession” and created “a feeding frenzy of over-diagnosis, over-testing, and over-treatment.”

He attributes the current obesity epidemic to side effects of modern antipsychotics, and he charges drug companies with complicity in promiscuously pushing antipsychotics on patients with “garden-variety” anxiety or shyness and broadening the definition of childhood bipolar disease to encompass temper tantrums and moodiness. In a partial effort of exculpation and mea culpa, Frances explains that his team began work in the “pre-Prozac days of 1987.”

A valuable assessment for clinicians and potential patients.

TICKED A Medical Miracle, a Friendship, and the Weird World of Tourette Syndrome Fussell, James A.; Matovic, Jeffrey P. Chicago Review (272 pp.) $26.95 | May 1, 2013 978-1-61374-380-5

A moving but also hair-raising story of Tourette’s syndrome and a risky surgical procedure.

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“A loose-limbed, skeptically informed critique of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, with particular interest in its forthcoming, fifth incarnation.” from the book of woe

ANNE PERRY AND THE MURDER OF THE CENTURY

embarrassing tics. Matovic, 33 at the time of his operation, had a more disabling disease, which had also come on slowly but had progressively incapacitated him. Unable to work, he devoted his time to finding a team of neurosurgeons who would perform the difficult operation.

A graphic but inspiring depiction of the ravages of the disease, their bravery and the sustaining love of their families. (16 b/w photos)

Graham, Peter Skyhorse Publishing (384 pp.) $24.95 | May 1, 2013 978-1-62087-630-5

A New Zealand lawyer revisits the highly publicized, mysterious case of matricide in his country in 1954.

Graham (Vile Crimes: The Timaru Poisonings, 2007) makes the old seem fresh as he tries to explain why teenagers Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme murdered Parker’s mother during a walk in a nature area.

The murder, sensational on its own, gained extra resonance later—once because of the Peter Jackson film about the case, Heavenly Creatures, and once after Hulme, released from prison, reinvented herself as best-selling novelist Anne Perry. Graham explores conundrums, such as the mental states of the teenagers at the time of the murder and afterward; whether the teenagers were starry-eyed lesbian lovers; and why each defendant served so little time given that they never expressed contrition.

Turning his re-examination into a contemporary detective story, the author builds up drama about whether he will be able to locate Parker (who assumed a new identity) and Hulme. And if he can locate them, will they talk to him and reveal undisclosed details about the crime? Though Graham does not learn anything new from the perpetrators, he does gain insights from numerous other individuals who became enmeshed in the case.

An epilogue informs readers about the fates of the major and minor players. Graham psychoanalyzes Parker and Hulme from afar but does so tastefully and insightfully. Matricide is a rare crime. As a result, it has not been written about much in the popular literature, a gap Graham fills admirably.

A worthy retrospective that feels chilling in the manner of novelist Perry. (52 b/w photos)

THE GOOD NURSE A True Story of Medicine, Madness, and Murder Graeber, Charles Twelve (320 pp.) $26.99 | Apr. 9, 2013 978-0-446-50529-1

The terrifying, true tale of nurse Charles Cullen, a man who worked with the most vulnerable of patients for 16 years, delivering life or death on a whim.

A whodunit where the culprit is identified on page one is as strange as a thriller with no surprise ending, but journalist Graeber presents these facts right from the beginning, never doubting the strength of the story. It works. Even without an uncertain finale, this true-crime tale delivers mystery and intrigue. The author begins with the satisfaction Cullen felt in his work, the good money he made and the doors open to him despite the litany of problems littering his professional and personal record. The author describes how Cullen came to nursing, how he felt a sense of belonging and distinction in his role, and the dysfunction of his personal life. Soon, Cullen was exerting control over his world by taking the lives of patients. Graeber does a particularly good job of showing the mounting evidence against Cullen as his misdeeds were originally discovered, following the nurse from accusation to accusation. The author imbues the story with an intense level of anticipation, with one question constantly in the background: Who will stop this man and when? Graeber describes the administrators who refused to report Cullen in the same way as the whistle-blowers who insisted on involving the police. The author’s cut-and-dried delivery serves to make the many paradoxes more poignant and lend some humor to a dark subject.

A thrilling and suspenseful page-turner that is sure to be loved by the majority of readers, who will be both horrified and fascinated.

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THE BOOK OF WOE The Making of the DSM and the Unmaking of Psychiatry Greenberg, Gary Blue Rider Press (416 pp.) $27.95 | May 2, 2013 978-0-399-15853-7

A loose-limbed, skeptically informed critique of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, with particular interest in its forthcoming, fifth incarnation.

Like it or not, the DSM is a controversial book from almost any approach, and Mother Jones contributor Greenberg (Manufacturing Depression, 2010, etc.) explores them all in this rangy commentary. The DSM has been accused of corruption, infected by Big Pharma looking for new targets and doctors looking for new patients, and its editors have been accused of deception, evasion and secrecy as they garner millions in profit |

for the American Psychiatric Association. But the authority it has gathered is perhaps most damning: descriptive agreement between practitioners masquerading as medical science, its diagnoses putting critical educational and insurance benefits on the block, a realized potential for overmedicating what may well be normal behavioral responses. A practicing psychotherapist, Greenberg is not about to throw the baby out with the bath water, to deride the urge to recognize and classify our psychological travails, but he does take exception when those categories claim more than they can deliver and our prejudices lead to wild surmises mostly out of touch with the landscape of suffering’s natural boundaries. Greenberg is an entertaining guide through the treacheries and valuable instances of the DSM, interviewing members on both sides of the divide and keeping the proceedings conversational even when discussing the manual’s pretensions toward epistemic iteration. He also brings his own practice into the picture, with examples of the DSM falling woefully short in capturing the complexity of personality.

Bright, humorous and seriously thoroughgoing, Greenberg takes all the DSMs for a spin as revealing as the emperor’s new clothes.

the author clearly cares deeply about the future of his beloved profession, and he reminds us of a time when a legal career was more about service, collegiality, community and shared purpose.

He offers numerous suggestions that might allow the profession to cushion the consequences of the bubble about to burst, but given the pathologies he describes, their adoption appears unlikely anytime soon.

Essential reading for anyone contemplating a legal career.

DECISIVE How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work

Heath, Chip; Heath, Dan Crown Business (320 pp.) $26.00 | Mar. 26, 2013 978-0-307-95639-2

A manual on how to become more rational when facing difficult decisions at work and in your personal life.

The brothers Heath (Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard, 2010, etc.) are a writing team with a couple of best-selling business titles under their belt. Chip, a professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business, and Dan, a senior fellow at Duke’s Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship, specialize in writing about how human behavior affects organizations. Their present collaboration examines a variety of decision-making processes in business and personal life—whom to hire, which job to take, which schools to apply to, whom to pursue a romantic relationship with—and argues that those processes matter more to the outcome than the decisions themselves. The Heaths argue that humans are hampered by four “enemies” of decision-making rooted in our unconscious behavior: narrow focus, confirmation bias, short-term emotion and overconfidence in the outcome. They propose a four-step model called WRAP (“Widen your options, Reality-test your assumptions, Attain distance before deciding, and Prepare to be wrong”) that they believe provides a template for good decision-making. All this is presented in the introductory chapter. The rest of the book fleshes out the Heaths’ thesis with dozens of examples of best practices—e.g., Sam Walton’s bus tour of competitors to decide how to speed customers through checkout lines; an Intel executive’s insight that enabled him to drop a safe product line and focus on a riskier one; a San Diego nonprofit’s struggle to decide to stick with their increasingly successful local mission or attempt a national one.

Readers approaching this book because they have a pressing decision may be annoyed by the Heaths’ lumbering pace, but for those who want to improve decisionmaking overall, the workshop style of the narrative should prove helpful.

THE LAWYER BUBBLE A Profession in Crisis Harper, Steven J. Basic (272 pp.) $25.99 | Apr. 2, 2013 978-0-465-05877-8

An insider reports on the legal profession’s impending implosion.

Focusing on two vital institutions, the law schools who act as gatekeepers and “big law,” the prestigious firms that set the tone, Harper (Law/Northwestern Univ.; The Partnership: A Novel, 2010, etc.), for 25 years a partner at the distinguished firm of Kirkland and Ellis, now an adjunct professor, is perfectly positioned to reflect on alarming developments that have brought the legal profession to a most unfortunate place. The lawyer bubble, he argues, as with the dot-com, real estate and financial bubbles that preceded it, cannot be blamed on the Great Recession. Rather, it’s a creation of those charged with safeguarding the profession, who’ve abandoned any long-term vision out of greed for money, power and status. In thrall to the U.S. News and World Report’s annual rankings, law schools regularly manipulate the methodology that determines the listings; deans focus on the short-term financial performance of their own institutions, encouraging an oversupply of applicants and graduating students into a job market already glutted.

Similarly, big law takes its cues from the American Lawyer’s list of the nation’s top 100 firms, looking to maneuver for position, sacrificing long-established firm cultures in favor of immediate profit and maximum partner reward, and causing widespread dissatisfaction within the ranks. Harper describes associate labor in these firms as depressing, unfulfilling and unrelenting. Most readers will shed no tears at this sorry spectacle, but |

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“Certainly not for all readers, but first-rate popular science: difficult but rewarding.” from surfaces and essences

BEYOND BELIEF My Secret Life Inside Scientology and My Harrowing Escape

The authors write that “each concept in our mind owes its existence to a long succession of analogies made unconsciously over many years, initially giving birth to the concept and continuing to enrich it over the course of our lifetime.”

The word “band,” for instance, can mean many things, from an invisible set of wavelengths to a wedding ring to the Beatles; each of those designations forms by analogy to the others, a process made more complex by virtue of the fact that words, even the most ordinary of them, “don’t have just two or three but an unlimited number of meanings.” Given all that, it is hardly surprising that one man’s meat is another’s poison— and therein lies the complement to analogy formation, “the very lifeblood of cognition,” namely classification or categorization, with the ancillary process of abstraction (whence, for instance, the category “non-square rectangle,” containing eight subcategories of rhombuses, parallelograms and so forth). Hofstadter’s works are never easy reading, and this one is no different, chockablock full of words such as “zeugmaticity” and “factorization” and with plenty of math to daunt the less than numerate. Yet it’s worth sticking with his long argument, full of up-to-date cognitive science and, at the end, a beguiling look at what the theory of relativity owes to analogy.

Certainly not for all readers, but first-rate popular science: difficult but rewarding. (10 b/w illustrations)

Hill, Jenna Miscavige with Pulitzer, Lisa Morrow/HarperCollins (416 pp.) $27.99 | Feb. 5, 2013 978-0-06-224847-3 An ex-member of Scientology’s inner elite bolts—understandably, to trust this undistinguished but still valuable memoir.

If Charles Dickens had been a sci-fi author, he might have dreamed up something like Scientology and its weird workhouses. Hill, born to parents who had been longtime members of sci-fi author L. Ron Hubbard’s organization, and whose uncle is now its de facto leader, recounts a life resolutely within the realm of the thetans. “Everyone I knew was in the Church, and as a third-generation Scientologist, my life was Scientology,” she writes. That life included absolute obedience to dictates that seem crafted to strip away any autonomy from the individual, if any individuality at all. At the age of 4, Hill was already an adept, while her parents were members of “Sea Org,” the inner sanctum; one requirement was that families be separated and that “children over the age of six would be raised communally at locations close to Sea Org bases.” Family visits dwindled, and Hill scarcely saw her mother unless on “special Scientology/ Sea Org occasions…[when] I would get to see her for a whole day.” Hill’s break from the sect in 2005, after years of control, coincided with the publication of an unauthorized bio of Tom Cruise, perhaps its best-known member, which she found to be accurate. Hill’s emotional turmoil is wrenchingly authentic, but even the help of well-credentialed writer Pulitzer (co-author: Banished: Surviving My Years in the Westboro Baptist Church, 2013, etc.) does not save the book from a limping prose style full of expressions such as “incredibly special” and “I got pretty emotional that Dallas’s family was there to make it special.”

Despite the uneven prose, readers with an interest in the psychology of religion, among other subjects, will find this rare insider’s account to be of value—less so than Lawrence Wright’s Going Clear (2013), but of value all the same.

REMEMBERING WHITNEY My Story of Love, Loss, and the Night the Music Stopped

Houston, Cissy with Dickey, Lisa Harper/HarperCollins (320 pp.) $27.99 | Jan. 29, 2013 978-0-06-223839-9

A talented, flawed artist, seen through the eyes of a loving, forgiving mother.

Considering what her daughter put her through, most readers will be impressed by Cissy’s patience and unconditional loyalty. Cissy, a well-respected yet underappreciated vocalist herself, relates Whitney’s highest highs and lowest lows with honesty, but not much in the way of introspection or insight. The narrative proceeds in a this-happenedthen-this-happened-then-this-happened fashion, readable and breezy but lacking depth. Cissy all but glosses over her own impressive career, which is unfortunate, since she recorded as a background vocalist for Wilson Pickett, Van Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Aretha Franklin, Paul Simon, Gregg Allman, David Bowie, Diana Ross and many others. Still, there is plenty of material that Houston devotee’s will find fascinating: Young Whitney’s (aka Nippy) childhood thrall with music and her speedy ascension up the music-industry ladder; the insider view of the behind-the-scenes machinations that helped Whitney get to and remain at the top of the charts; and Whitney’s true feelings about fame. Many readers will pick up the book hoping to learn the real deal about her tumultuous, toxic relationship with fellow singer Bobby Brown and her descent into

SURFACES AND ESSENCES Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking

Hofstadter, Douglas R.; Sander, Emmanuel Basic (464 pp.) $35.00 | May 1, 2013 978-0-465-01847-5

How do we know what we know?

How do we know at all? With an enjoyable blend of hard science and good storytelling, Hofstadter (I Am a Strange Loop, 2007, etc.) and French psychologist Sander tackle these most elusive of philosophical matters.

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CALMER, EASIER, HAPPIER PARENTING Five Strategies that End the Daily Battles and Get Kids to Listen the First Time

substance-abuse–based madness. While Cissy details how she bent over backward to save her daughter, she offers precious little information about what happened in the Houston/Brown household. However, that sort of salacious material would be out of place in this mostly affectionate remembrance of an iconic singer whose whole story will likely never be told.

Fans of the Houston ladies will laugh, cry and beg for more. The rest of us will shrug and move on.

Janis-Norton, Noël Plume (448 pp.) $16.00 paper | Apr. 30, 2013 978-0-14-219692-2

UNFLINCHING COURAGE Pioneering Women Who Shaped Texas

An insightful, optimistic guide for parents of children aged 3 to 13 from learning and behavior specialist Janis-Norton, founder of London’s Calmer, Easier, Happier Parenting Centre.

Through choice anecdotes from participants in her programs as well as hypothetical examples, the author highlights five characteristics parents generally desire from their children—cooperation, confidence, motivation, self-reliance and consideration—positing that daily routines will be less frustrating once these characteristics are modeled and instilled. She details key concepts to help parents teach their children better habits, including positive verbal reinforcement to gently redirect actions; allowing children to “think-through” problems and solutions for themselves; preparing an organized home that enables children to complete their own responsibilities with greater ease; daily one-on-one time between each parent and child; empathetic listening; and more. In repetitive, meticulous fashion, each chapter builds on skills previously discussed to equip parents in setting clear, firm, consistent expectations that allow children to thrive. Janis-Norton emphasizes that the aim is not perfection, but a realistic reduction in the dawdling, arguing and other behaviors that challenge the average modern household, especially during the course of common events, from meal- and bedtimes to struggles over homework and media consumption. Janis-Norton offers solid, sensible advice that favors preventative over reactive measures; while learning and practicing these communication skills requires a significant investment of time, her approach remains free of gimmickry— no extra purchases or special aids, no quick steps to success.

Centers on respectful communication and trust, with a broadly appealing, authoritative style accessible to anyone willing to “be dedicated to trying new ways of doing things.”

Hutchison, Kay Bailey Harper/HarperCollins (320 pp.) $27.99 | Apr. 9, 2013 978-0-06-213069-3

Senator Hutchison (Leading Ladies: American Trailblazers, 2008, etc.) brings stories of her state’s unsung heroines to light.

The author writes of women who, in the early 19th century, followed their husbands to settle in Texas with its promise of cheap land and prosperity. Generally well educated and from genteel backgrounds, these pioneers had the courage and resilience to endure wars, primitive living conditions, diseases and grueling labor. It was all too common for women, such as Emily Austin Bryan Perry, sister of Stephen F. Austin (“the Father of Texas”), to survive the deaths of more than one husband and several children. Hutchison’s roots go back to her great-great grandfather Charles S. Taylor, a key figure in the state’s fight for independence from Mexico in 1836. During ensuing conflicts, her great-great grandmother was among the women who packed their families in wagons and headed east, fleeing the Mexican army in what was called the “Runaway Scrape.” Like many others, her three daughters died along the way. Readers will also learn about Margaret Houston, who suffered from melancholy, disliked politics and tended her eight children, mostly alone, while Sam Houston was away managing affairs of the state; Rachel Parker Plummer, who was kidnapped by a Comanche tribe and rescued, forever scarred by the ordeal; and Sarah Cockrell, the “mother of Dallas.” The book is laden with historical facts, and some readers may wish for more fluid storytelling, but Hutchison ably sets down a record of these remarkable women’s lives. For readers who want to learn more, she provides a comprehensive bibliography.

Though regional in nature, the hardships and contributions of these pioneers reflect those of women across the country. A valuable resource for the archives of Texas and women’s history.

THE CHILD CATCHERS Rescue, Trafficking, and the New Gospel of Adoption Joyce, Kathryn PublicAffairs (352 pp.) $26.99 | Apr. 23, 2013 978-1-58648-942-7

Journalist and Religion Dispatches associate editor Joyce (Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement, 2009) broadens the understanding of adoption’s conundrums, not |

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Family Matters b y t y l e r

Mulgrew, Jason HarperCollins (240 pp.) $14.99 Feb 12, 2013 978-0-06-208083-7

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Mulgrew offers a caveat: “Sorry, but [236 Pounds of Class Vice-President] is not that kind of memoir.”

Mulgrew explains that while his best-selling Everything Is Wrong with Me, which is more focused on his childhood and family lore, seemed like the right book to work on after the success of the blog he started in 2004 (also called Everything Is Wrong With Me), his latest offering, 236 Pounds of Class Vice-President, was “the book I really wanted to write all along. It’s much closer to me, emotionally and chronologically,” says Mulgrew.

“People responded to the photos I posted of myself and my family on the blog,” Mulgrew explains. “I took the pictures and arranged them in a kind of chronological order. From there, my agent and I were able to select the best stories, find a good direction and pull the book together.”

Even if it weren’t for the photos, Mulgrew laughs, “I couldn’t get away from these stories if I wanted to. In Philly, in my family, we’re just a ballbusting culture. Me, my friends and my family, we’re all so accustomed to the stories. I just write them down.”

When asked if, like James Joyce, Mulgrew found that “imagination is memory,” the 33-yearold Mulgrew pauses. It is the pause one encounters when bringing up the subject of James Joyce around Irish Catholics. Then, I hear that sustained gurgle, followed by a sigh. “I think that’s probably something Joyce said to pick up women,” he says, “but I can understand the sentiment. In my case, memory would have to serve as imagination. I’m just lucky that I’ve had such an interesting upbringing, because I have no imagination, whatsoever.”

9 Tyler Stoddard Smith’s writing has been featured in UTNE Reader, McSweeney’s, Esquire, The Best American Fantasy, The Beautiful Anthology and The Morning News, among others. He is also an associate editor of the online humor site, The Big Jewel. His first book, Whore Stories: A Revealing History of the World’s Oldest Profession, was published in 2012.

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“When a writer is born into a family, the family is finished,” goes the maxim by Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz. Okay, but what happens when a family is born finished? Like the Octomom or the Kardashians?

On the other hand, there are certain families who, when a writer appears in their midst, couldn’t give a damn–they’re all too busy finishing themselves.

That’s often the case with the Mulgrews, a blue-collar family from South Philly, whose exploits, indignities and implosions are chronicled by the eldest son, Jason Mulgrew, author of the memoirs, Everything Is Wrong with Me: A Memoir of an American Childhood Gone, Well, Wrong, and most recently, 236 Pounds of Class Vice-President: A Memoir of Teenage Insecurity, Obesity, and Virginity. As indicated by his titles, Mulgrew is the first to admit his own foibles, and of all his family members, Mulgrew is the one who bears the heaviest brunt of his own criticism.

Whether he’s being bribed (with a dog) by his mother to make it to the Pennsylvania State Spelling Bee, eschewing potential high school football stardom for a bowel movement, failing a driver’s test (twice) or engaging in some of the most awkward father-son time since Luke and Darth went in for family bonding under the chassis of a TIE fighter, 236 Pounds of Class Vice-President brings into focus a more evolved Mulgrew. Or at least, an older one.

And, when I spoke on the phone with Mulgrew, he was in the midst of another family crisis, this one only half his fault.

“My wife is expecting our first child in three days,” he says, his voice reminiscent of all almostparents: Traumatized, tired and scared out of their gourds. “And we’re both sick, so I’ve been trying to generate ideas for a third book, but right now, my plate is full. It’s overwhelming. I don’t know what to do.”

Reading 236 Pounds of Class Vice-President, one fears that Mulgrew, a man who wore a fur cape through high school and whose life’s motto is: “If at first you don’t succeed, immediately give up and focus on stuff you already know you’re good at,” is going to crack.

Mulgrew, at one point in 236 Pounds of Class VicePresident, attributes a trip to the bathroom during a school assembly as “one of the defining moments of my life,” and as our conversation progresses, it becomes clear that he may have had an existential reprise in this particular department: “At 1:30 in the morning yesterday, I just sat down on the toilet and enjoyed the experience. I felt a profound sense of peace—it was almost Zen.” He may still crack, but with Mulgrew, there is always a hint of sentimentality to accompany the schadenfreude.

For readers looking for Greek, italicized pathos,

236 Pounds of Class Vice-President: A Memoir of Teenage Insecurity, Obesity, and Virginity

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only within the United States, but also internationally, with deep investigations of children from Liberia, Ethiopia, Korea, Rwanda, Haiti and China.

Perhaps the least publicized development within the adoption realm during the past few decades is the aggressive involvement of evangelical churches. Parishioners, even those with multiple biological children, are adopting orphans from overseas, as well as many children who have been wrenched from biological mothers (and sometimes fathers) as part of for-profit schemes. Some of the church members see adoption as a faith-based mission—as an alternative to abortion but also part of a biblical mandate to care for the oppressed and impoverished while simultaneously saving souls. Joyce explains that although such adoptions might seem like a win-win solution, in fact, birth mothers and families, especially in third-world countries, are torn apart by the international transactions. Joyce studied academic treatises and traveled widely across the U.S. and to locales in other nations rarely visited by tourists.

The number of compelling anecdotes and case studies is impressive. Whenever ethically defensible, Joyce uses real names and normally indicates fictitious names when she saw no moral alternative. Although the overall picture is grim despite tsunamis of good intentions, the grimness is occasionally relieved by righteous individuals and institutions trying to do better. One of the relatively upbeat case studies focuses on the megachurch of celebrity pastor Rick Warren. He admits his evangelical members involved in international adoptions have not always proceeded perfectly, but Joyce suggests that he is sincere about learning from mistakes in a drastically shifting landscape.

Groundbreaking investigative and explanatory reporting.

shows that there were multiple causes of the conflict and describes the spreading ripples of the interstate bloodshed. Lawmen, lawmakers and bounty hunters on both sides of the border kept busy.

King highlights two of the most celebrated/reviled (depending) of the private and public lawmen—Dan Cunningham and Bad Frank Phillips. The author describes in detail the ambushes, night attacks and horrors that these families visited upon one another.

He quotes contemporary newspaper accounts, takes us inside jails, up into the hollows, and into the minds and hearts of the participants, bystanders and victims. Near the end, King tells us that the families—both huge—unite for an annual reunion.

An informed account—both reasoned and reasonable— of the irrational. (20 b/w photos; 1 map)

THE SHORT, STRANGE LIFE OF HERSCHEL GRYNSZPAN A Boy Avenger, a Nazi Diplomat, and a Murder in Paris Kirsch, Jonathan Liveright/Norton (352 pp.) $27.95 | May 6, 2013 978-0-87140-452-7

Biblical scholar and Los Angeles Times columnist Kirsch (The Grand Inquisitor’s Manual: A History of Terror in the Name of God, 2008, etc.) examines a forgotten young Jewish assassin, eliciting new queries about Jewish armed resistance during World War II. The name of Herschel Grynszpan may have “ended up in the dustbin of history,” but his deed—the shooting of German official Ernst vom Rath, which so enraged the Nazis that they unleashed Kristallnacht on November 9, 1938—did not. Kirsch believes it is time to take another look at the life of this troubled Hanover-born Jewish teenager, who was sent to Paris in 1936 in a last-ditch attempt by his desperate family to find some opportunity for advancement or even survival. By 1933, the Grynszpan parents had already survived pogroms in Poland and three decades of poverty in Hanover; once the Nazi vise tightened, the youngest son was sent to Paris to stay with uncles and aunts.

Herschel was at his wit’s end when money ran out and employment was closed to him, and the French and Germans both rejected his request for visas. Trapped in Paris, he subsequently learned that his parents and sister had been rounded up and dumped on the Polish border. Under financial and familial pressure, in hiding and subject to anti-Jewish reprisals, Grynszpan bought a gun, proceeded to the German embassy and shot vom Rath in a desperate act of vengeance not unlike what moved the young medical student David Frankfurter to shoot Swiss Nazi functionary Wilhelm Gustloff in 1936. Grynszpan’s deed gave the Nazis a “convenient pretext” for the unleashed barbarity against Jews, while Jewish reaction was divided. Journalist Dorothy Thompson offered an impassioned radio address in his defense. Suspicions of conspiracy and homosexuality abounded, and Kirsch expertly picks through the murky details to shed new light on the historical significance.

THE FEUD The Hatfields and McCoys

King, Dean Little, Brown (352 pp.) $27.99 | $14.99 e-book | May 21, 2013 978-0-316-16706-2 978-0-316-22478-9 e-book

A featured voice on the recent History Channel series Hatfields & McCoys offers a detailed and generally dispassionate account of America’s most notorious feud.

Popular historian King (Unbound: A True Story of War, Love, and Survival, 2010, etc.) obtained the cooperation of both extended families and maintains a disinterested stance throughout his account of the feud that raged from 1865 to 1890. The author begins with a snapshot of the 1890 hanging of Cotton Top Mounts, a Hatfield, then traces the conflict back to the 1850s and slowly guides us through the ensuing decades. Useful family trees show the intermarriages between the two Appalachian families, and King periodically reproduces the trees with names of the victims crossed out. Dominating the Hatfields throughout was “Devil” Anse Hatfield, who somehow managed to avoid death and prosecution throughout the decades and died an old man. The McCoys suffered more grievous losses and never really managed to exact on the Hatfields the pervasive revenge they sought. King |

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A compelling study of “a spectral figure whose real nature remains a mystery and whose historical significance is profoundly enigmatic.” (8 pages of photographs)

In 1943, a severely damaged B-17, returning from a mission over Germany, was intercepted by a Messerschmitt fighter.

Instead of finishing off the crippled bomber, the German pilot guided it toward the Channel and sent it on its way to England.

Both pilots were still living 60 years later when Makos, editor of the military journal Valor, discovered the story. That single encounter was too short for a book, but Makos and military writer Alexander (Biggest Brother: The Life of Major Dick Winters, the Man Who Led the Band of Brothers, 2005) bring together the stories of the pilots. Franz Stigler was a deeply religious Catholic who loved flying. Already a commercial pilot, he was drafted into the Luftwaffe at the beginning of the war. He served grueling tours in Africa, Italy and Germany, becoming a fighter ace and flying the first jet while watching most of his comrades die as massive bomber formations devastated his nation. Charlie Brown was a West Virginia farm boy who moved from the peacetime National Guard to the Army to the controls of a B-17.

Many of his friends died, as well. Serious military buffs may wrinkle their noses at the energetically nonpartisan tone—all the Luftwaffe pilots hated the Nazis; the American airmen were quirky but brave—and there is too much invented dialogue.

Despite excesses of enthusiasm, massive research and extensive interviews combine in a vividly detailed account of German fighter operations in Western Europe and the training and blooding of an American bomber crew.

HOW TO FIND FULFILLING WORK

Krznaric, Roman Picador (160 pp.) $16.00 paper | May 1, 2013 978-1-250-03069-6

An inspirational self-help book with an intellectual pedigree.

For those interested in making a career switch (or just brooding on alternatives to their unfulfilling jobs), this pocket guide by a former British academic turned lifestyle consultant organizes itself along familiar lines: the three this, the four that, the emphasis of italics, the easily digestible verities and slogans so common among the genre. Yet the advice from Krznaric (The Wonderbox, 2011, etc.) has literary, philosophical underpinnings that give it uncommon depth, blurring the distinctions between where to work and how to live. Thus, the book not only distills fulfilling work to “three essential ingredients: meaning, flow and freedom”; it raises the issue of “what meaning really means, and how to find it.” Ultimately, much of the advice is common sense (bolstered by words and examples from Bertrand Russell, da Vinci, Rousseau and others), and much of the urging is to take that chance rather than settling for numbing security. Meaning (once we figure out what it means) and freedom are fairly easy to grasp in comparison with the trickier “flow,” which suggests work that you can lose yourself in, so that work hardly seems like work at all: “It most commonly occurs when we are using our skills to do a task that is challenging, but not so hard that we fear failing.” Perhaps the most counterintuitive piece of advice comes in the “Act First, Reflect Later” chapter, which doesn’t necessarily advocate recklessness but does suggest that planning can be procrastination and that the only way to see what the experience is like is to experience it.

Those who would seek out a book like this are already most primed to follow its suggestions.

REPLACEMENT CHILD

Mandel, Judy Seal Press (224 pp.) $16.00 paper | Mar. 5, 2013 978-1-58005-476-8

Mandel’s account of being her parents’ “replacement child” following the death of an older sister she never knew.

On the morning of January 22, 1952, American Airlines flight 6780 crashed into the home in Elizabeth, N.J., where Mandel’s parents resided with their two daughters. In addition to killing all 22 passengers and the captain, the accident left the family’s youngest child, 2-year-old Linda, terribly burned, while her 7-year-old sister, Donna, perished in the fire. Former corporate marketing director Mandel reflects on her parents’ ensuing grief, guilt and their pervasive sense of loss that, years later, prompted them to have another child: the author. She grew up with constant reminders of the devastating crash, not the least of which were her sister’s disfiguring injuries that required innumerable reconstructive surgeries. The narrative moves between time periods as Mandel conjures events on the day of the accident and in the years between the crash and her birth, vignettes from Mandel’s childhood and her adult life (including three failed marriages), and imagined scenes between her parents. Describing her mother and father’s decision to have another baby, she writes, “the prescription, then, for their own survival was a child conceived to heal the family.” Mandel details her perception of her parents’ motivation and her conflicted

A HIGHER CALL An Incredible True Story of Combat and Chivalry in the War-Torn Skies of World War II Makos, Adam with Alexander, Larry Berkley Caliber (400 pp.) $26.95 | Dec. 19, 2012 978-0-425-25286-4

An inspiring dual biography of two World War II airmen against the background of the European air war.

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“A fascinating, enthusiastic view of the possibilities of vast computer correlations and the entrepreneurs who are taking advantage of them.” from big data

BIG DATA A Revolution that Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think

feelings, including resentment and gratitude, about the results of their choice. Most chapters are one to four pages, and the constant cutting between years feels choppy and distracting, but Mandel’s story is compelling, and the emotional wreckage in her own life is crystal clear.

Disjointed but dramatic and resonant.

Mayer-Schönberger, Viktor; Cukier, Kenneth Eamon Dolan/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (256 pp.) $27.00 | Mar. 5, 2013 978-0-544-00269-2

RACE TO INCARCERATE A Graphic Retelling

Plenty of books extol the technical marvels of our information society, but this is an original analysis of the information itself—trillions of searches, calls, clicks, queries and purchases.

Mayer-Schönberger (Internet Governance and Regulation/Oxford Univ.; Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age, 2009) and Economist data editor Cukier begin with a jolt by pointing out that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spends weeks evaluating reports from doctors and clinics before announcing a flu epidemic. In a 2009 study reported in the scientific journal Nature, Google engineers tracked certain Internet searches (“medicine for cough,” “fever”) and detected a rise in flu cases immediately. Formerly, faced with huge numbers, researchers could only examine a select sample: a slow, expensive process that led to errors if the sample wasn’t properly chosen.

The Google researchers examined everything—or close to everything: hundreds of millions of searches. This was a breakthrough.

“Big data,” the authors’ term for our new ability to manipulate immense amounts of information, reveals not only more, but entirely new knowledge. Who knew that by evaluating her credit card purchases, retailers can calculate the odds that a woman is pregnant? The authors provide an exciting ride without neglecting the risks. Thirty-two surveillance cameras operate within 200 yards of the apartment where George Orwell wrote 1984. Data mining is so efficient that today’s privacy protections are irrelevant. Once enough of your activities, however anonymous, are “datafied,” a computer can identify you.

A fascinating, enthusiastic view of the possibilities of vast computer correlations and the entrepreneurs who are taking advantage of them.

Mauer, Marc Illus. by Jones, Sabrina New Press (128 pp.) $19.95 paper | Apr. 2, 2013 978-1-59558-541-7 978-1-59558-893 e-book

A graphic primer on the inequities of the American penal system, presumably aimed at students who have yet to form an opinion on the subject.

The third iteration of this title is one that even author Mauer (Invisible Punishment, 2002) writes is “certainly not a version that I would ever have anticipated.” It distills the influential 1999 text and subsequent update into a version that would have more emotional resonance, or, as the foreword by Michelle Alexander puts it, “would be engaging and accessible to young readers and people in all walks of life, not just policy wonks.” As illustrated by Jones (Isadora Duncan: A Graphic Biography, 2008), the simplified condensation hits all the high points: the racial disparities faced by those in the judicial system (particularly in regard to drug cases), the growth of the prison industry, the price paid for the “War on Drugs,” “Law and Order” and “Three Strikes and You’re Out” campaigns, and the tension and conflict between deterrence (and punishment) and rehabilitation. Even comparatively liberal President Bill Clinton failed to reverse a trend in which more than two decades of spending “had bloated the prison system, while cuts to social programs had starved the inner cities.” Where middle-class whites are often allowed to seek treatment for drug abuse, black users more often face prison, with mandated sentences. “Looking back on two centuries of prison in America, how little has changed,” the text maintains. “The basic concept is caging humans.” Though conservatives claim that the increase in incarceration has reduced crime, this manifesto argues that other factors have contributed to this decline. The graphic narrative builds the basic case for human values rather than draconian punishment, for investment in social services rather than the prison industry.

A worthy tool for liberal educators, but it is not likely to change the minds of conservatives who feel that prisoners are getting what they deserve.

THE MYTHICAL BILL A Neurological Memoir McAuliffe, Jody Univ. of Iowa (164 pp.) $18.00 paper | Mar. 15, 2013 978-1-60938-154-7

A beautifully written memoir of a woman coming to terms with her father’s illness.

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diseases. How he reached this point, and why, as well as how the McAuliffe family coped, is the author’s subject. While serving in World War II, Bill McAuliffe was diagnosed with torticollis, an involuntary contraction of the neck muscles causing his head to twist toward his ear. After an ill-fated surgery to correct it, he began to experience signs of mental illness, which grew into long, hallucinatory and even violent weekends that overshadowed the author’s childhood. McAuliffe pulls from her father’s diary entries, letters, interviews and extensive research to bring order to her memories and to decipher what actually happened to her father. While it seems there were many culprits for her father’s lingering illness and early death—the VA hospitals, the Navy, misinformed doctors, even other family members— McAuliffe does not lapse into accusatory language; she is more interested in exploring the limitations each faced. Told in a circuitous and, at times, almost dreamlike style, her goal is to investigate her father’s past and to understand her own relationship with him and how it has shaped her life. This is not a memoir written with an audience in mind, filled with lurid details of a family in crisis; rather, it’s a thoughtful meditation that reads as though it were written for the author herself. Readers will feel privileged to share in her journey.

A loving, lyrical, complicated portrait of a mentally ill father and the family he left behind.

authors examine wind turbines as a “pleasant visual” in one instance and a potential “blight” in another, and some readers may wonder who decides “those things we like, that are useful, pleasurable, and healthy.” The authors end with a “What’s Next?” section, a list of 10 points to remember, including “We Don’t Have an Energy Problem. We Have a Materials-in-theWrong-Place Problem,” “Always Be Asking What’s Next” and “Add Good on Top of Subtracting Bad.” Mostly stimulating and inventive.

WHAT WOULD GRACE DO? How to Live Life in Style Like the Princess of Hollywood

McKinnon, Gina Gotham Books (240 pp.) $26.00 | Apr. 11, 2013 978-1-59240-828-3

A heavy-handed, tedious “self-help” book offering precious little in the way of advice—unless listing New York restaurants once patronized by Grace Kelly

counts as advice.

Purportedly written as a “modern-day guide to the classic beauty and timeless style of the Hollywood starlet and reallife princess, Grace Kelly,” the narrative is just an amalgamation of the juicy bits of the books McKinnon (1001 Ridiculous Sexual Misadventures, 2009, etc.) has read about Kelly in the last year. Did you know Grace had a difficult relationship with her father? Have you heard she had affairs with her co-stars?

Or that her marriage to Prince Rainier of Monaco was “no fairytale”? Do you know the difference between being fashionable and possessing “true style”? If not, you will learn all that and more from this mediocre book. The advice about how to “channel Grace” in one’s everyday life ranges from the obvious and unspecific (“Exude confidence,” “Make friends from all walks of life,” “Remember birthdays,” “Keep in touch”) to the insultingly out of reach (“Stay at the Savoy when in London”). The author’s attempts at humor are often strained: “now it’s time to put your life in the dock and subpoena your inner Grace. As a witness in the vagaries of life, we can’t think of anyone more expert than she”; “Keep with tradition and don’t show your husband your dress…or what’s underneath it until your wedding day.”

Readers eager to learn more about Grace Kelly would be better served by reading Donald Spoto’s High Society (2009) or Wendy Leigh’s True Grace (2007), both of which are quoted at length here. Readers who wish to be more like Kelly would be better off watching her films.

THE UPCYCLE Beyond Sustainability— Designing for Abundance

McDonough, William; Braungart, Michael North Point/Farrar, Straus and Giroux (240 pp.) $27.50 paper | Apr. 16, 2013 978-0-86547-748-3 Architect McDonough and chemist Braungart (co-authors: Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, 2002) tender both an attitude and a strategy for a better-designed world.

The authors caused a splash a decade ago with their notion of cradle to cradle: that our goods and services can be designed with the intentionality of reuse. Here, they expand on that notion, firing off examples of achieving the upcycle—“a delightfully diverse, safe, healthy, and just world with clean air, water, soil, and power, economically, equitably, ecologically, and elegantly enjoyed”—through the proper use of design. The book is a heady engagement, a powerful to-and-fro between the authors and readers. Who would quibble that design ought to take reuse into account, that regulations are a red flag indicating the need for redesign, or that using positive ingredients to begin with is better than having to eliminate dangerous byproducts? Most interesting are the hands-on, root-to-rebirth projects they, or others, have accomplished: Their design of an experimental, high-sustaining building for NASA is a vision brought to life; infusing objects with color via reflected-light polymers rather than poisonous dyestuffs; providing plants with the specific light energy they need with solar-powered LEDs. But the 62

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“An uplifting work of incredible grit and fortitude.” from the cooked seed

THE COOKED SEED A Memoir

an indispensable reference. Campbell offers access to some of Moore’s infamously detailed scripts, providing an entree into the inner workings of his twisted, genius mind—and the daunting task his artist partners face in having to translate those scripts into pictures. The interplay between Moore and the dryly humorous Campbell leads to a series of amusing exchanges that provide insight into their working relationship.

For example, when the script calls for two of the main characters to traverse, in a carriage, a bridge that the enterprising Campbell discovered, through photo references, was not yet finished at the time of the story, he sent Moore a photocopy of the partial bridge with a drawing of the carriage plummeting off it, suggesting that perhaps they send the characters “round the long way.” Campbell also includes his daughter’s somewhat disturbing but highly entertaining “Ripper File,” complete with a drawing of a “rotton kidney.” Beyond the story notes, Campbell’s commentary provides insight into the artistic process, including his research methodology and his working relationship with assistants who helped with backgrounds, building layouts and other details.

Aimed at a very narrow audience, but a treasure trove for would-be comic scribes and artists and independent comic aficionados. (32-page full-color insert)

Min, Anchee Bloomsbury (320 pp.) $26.00 | May 7, 2013 978-1-59691-698-2

A truly rags-to-riches story from Shanghai to Chicago.

Novelist Min (Pearl of China, 2010, etc.) came through the Cultural Revolution scarred, sickened and with a resolve to survive. While her first book and memoir, Red Azalea (1994), delineated her early, fervent embrace of Mao’s communism, her ordeal working in a labor camp and being “handpicked” (though there was no choice in the matter) by Madame Mao’s film scouts in 1974 to represent the coarsened proletarian worker in her propaganda films, this work reveals the enormous physical and emotional toll those early struggles took on Min, propelling her to reinvent herself in America. Eventually disgraced as “a cooked seed” (no chance to sprout), Min was considered “guilty” along with her entire family; she was left with a “stained dossier” and a pervasive personal sense of humiliation and worthlessness.

Thanks to tips from the actress Joan Chen, whom the author had befriended during their time at the Shanghai Film Studio, Min was able to convince the Art Institute of Chicago that she was an artist and fluent speaker of English; her “crazy determination” to get past U.S. immigration officials landed her in Chicago as a student in 1984. Min’s rather dry, grim descriptions of living on visa tenterhooks for years, enduring cruel loneliness, flagrant exploitation at job after job, and appalling living situations, even involving rape, prove moving reading. Always gnawed by her duty to repay her family and send money home to give her mother the toilet of her own she never had, Min felt nonetheless tenderized by being treated as a human being in America rather than a “bug.”

An uplifting work of incredible grit and fortitude.

HITLER AND THE NAZI CULT OF FILM AND FAME

Munn, Michael Skyhorse Publishing (224 pp.) $24.95 | May 1, 2013 978-1-62087-727-2

English film historian Munn (Conspiracy of Angels, 2012, etc.) offers a hard-driving study of Hitler’s music and film obsessions and the sacrifice of untold talent and youth to the murderous Nazi ideology.

The author attempts to get at what made Hitler tick and drove him like a deranged person, starting from his questionable genetic makeup, as the product of the incestuous union of two cousins whose other children were variously “stupid” or “imbecile[s],” to his self-styled impersonation of the white knight, misunderstood outsider and prophet gleaned from Wagner’s Rienzi and other characters. From Hitler’s idolization of Wagner’s operas, he forged his fantasies about racial purity and the ideal German state risen gloriously from the ashes of the Versailles Treaty, and Munn depicts how Hitler liberally employed the spectacle of parades, banners, fires and communal singing adopted from Wagner’s stages. As he rose to power, he found his true talent in oratory. He tasked his trusty deputy and publicist, Joseph Goebbels, with forging his cult of personality, taking over the German film industry to root out the “Jewish spirit of decay” from German culture and ensuring that films showed a “wholesome” representation of Nazi ideology, as depicted in riveting, ritualistic documentaries by Leni Riefenstahl, anti-Semitic vehicles or films to rouse the fighting spirit, like Kolberg. Along the tragic way, there were the making and

THE FROM HELL COMPANION

Moore, Alan; Campbell, Eddie Top Shelf Productions (288 pp.) $29.95 | May 1, 2013 978-1-60309-303-3

A man-behind-the-curtain look at a seminal graphic novel.

When Moore and Campbell teamed up on the grim, nuanced From Hell in the 1990s, they created an epochal work that remains a highlight even within the legendary Moore’s unparalleled oeuvre. Far from the playground of Technicolor superheroes, the book’s unflinching black-and-white portrayal of Jack the Ripper’s London set the standard for “mature” graphic novels. From Moore’s exhaustive research to Campbell’s incredible attention to detail, the book remains worthy of close reading, making Campbell’s behind-the-scenes commentary |

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“A carpet designer and businessman’s profoundly moving account of a childhood and adolescence lived amid the Afghan civil war.” from a fort of nine towers

AND MAN CREATED GOD A History of the World at the Time of Jesus

destruction of innumerable careers, and Munn unrolls the credits like detritus on the battlefield: Jewish artists who were able to flee Germany and those who perished in the gas chambers, others who collaborated for the sake of their careers and paid dearly after the war.

A creepy yet compelling who’s-who of collaboration in the big-screen industry during the Nazi era.

O’Grady, Selina St. Martin’s (416 pp.) $26.99 | Apr. 26, 2013 978-1-250-01681-2 978-1-250-01682-9 e-book

THE PHILOSOPHER, THE PRIEST, AND THE PAINTER A Portrait of Descartes

A seminal epoch explored in terms of statecraft and religion, sociology and belief.

The first century B.C. was largely dominated by imperial Rome and its regional client kings. Octavian defeated Marc Antony and Cleopatra and became Augustus, master and overlord of the Roman world. In its German campaign, Rome suffered disastrous defeat. It was a time when conquest by trade was preferable to war, when mystery cults held sway, and pagan gods could be human enough to do business with mortal men.

Charity was an unknown notion to the Romans, but clearly, religion held empires together. In Alexandria, still under Hellenic influence, compassionate Isis was the divinity of choice.

The Arabian exporters of frankincense and unguents had their own gods, as did Palmyra. China, under Confucianism, was the world’s oldest empire. There, the crafty usurper Wang Mang displaced the Han Dynasty for a few unhappy years. Despite Roman hegemony in Jerusalem and most of the known world, though, the Jews would not or could not be assimilated. In her fine synthesis, journalist O’Grady (co-editor: A Deep but Dazzling Darkness: An Anthology of Personal Experiences of God, 2003, etc.) brings antiquity to vivid life, relying on myriad sources, including Horace, Josephus and Saul of Tarsus, Suetonius, Cicero, Plutarch, Schama and Gibbon. There are tunics, togas, coins, carvings, slaves and struggles, all vibrantly presented in an admirably accessible text. O’Grady demonstrates the universal symbiosis of state and faith before and during the formative years of Christianity, and she offers a secular gloss of the remarkable success of Pauline Christianity in a tumultuous world.

A wonderfully illuminating, prodigious tour de force of ecclesiastical anthropology. (Two 8-page b/w photo inserts)

Nadler, Steven Princeton Univ. (280 pp.) $27.95 | Apr. 21, 2013 978-0-691-15730-6

“A small, intimate portrait” illustrating the biography of René Descartes and his ideas.

Nadler (Philosophy/Univ. of Wisconsin; A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza’s Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age, 2011, etc.) believes that Descartes “belongs as much to the intellectual culture of the Dutch Golden Age as he does to the grand history of Western philosophy whose development he so strongly influenced.” Feeling politically constrained in France, Descartes moved to Holland to work, but his philosophy aroused controversy and opposition in Dutch universities as well. Nadler situates the French philosopher’s life in its Dutch context and frames the narrative with an investigation into a few portraits of Descartes. One was supposedly painted by Frans Hals and is in Copenhagen. The author demonstrates that there may be a possibility that one of Descartes’ friends commissioned the portrait from Hals as a memento prior to the philosopher’s 1649 departure on a visit to the queen of Sweden. This would have been from the period he lived in the village where he wrote the Discourse on Method and Principles of Philosophy. The friend was the Catholic priest Augustijn Alsten Blomart, who lived in the city of Haarlem, just south of Descartes’ country-village home. Blomart, as Nadler shows, was well-integrated into contemporary Dutch literary, artistic, scientific and political circles. Hals also lived and worked in Haarlem. Nadler discusses the extant portraits of the philosopher, as well as their provenance and what is known of the context in which they were produced. He also provides a chronological summary of Descartes’ philosophical works in relation to their Dutch context.

A generalist brings together three fields—philosophy, religion and art—often kept separate. (10 color illustrations; 21 halftones; 1 map)

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A FORT OF NINE TOWERS An Afghan Childhood

Omar, Qais Akbar Farrar, Straus and Giroux (416 pp.) $27.00 | Apr. 16, 2013 978-0-374-15764-7

A carpet designer and businessman’s profoundly moving account of a childhood and adolescence lived amid the Afghan civil war.

When Omar was growing up in the early 1990s, his native city of Kabul was “like a huge garden.” Life was full and happy, and his only concern was besting his cousin Wakeel at kite |

flying. But then rival Mujahedeen factions began fighting each other, transforming the once-Edenic city into a bloody wasteland that reminded Omar of “an American horror movie.” The family sought refuge in Qala-e-Noborja, a fort on the outskirts of Kabul that a friend of Omar’s father had transformed into a lush, green compound. As rockets and gunfire exploded around them, the family planned for their return home. Omar and his father attempted to go back to the family house, only to find it occupied by sadistic soldiers who imprisoned and tortured the pair before freeing them. As the ring of terror tightened around the fort, the family fled Kabul. Their dangerous journey took them through central and northern Afghanistan, where they camped in caves located inside a giant statue of the Buddha and joined nomad relatives on their overland treks. Along the way, Omar met, and fell in love with, an older deaf-mute Turkmen girl who taught him how to weave carpets. These skills would eventually help him support his starving, demoralized family and secretly provide work to young Kabuli women who suffered under the misogynist regime of the Taliban. As lyrical as it is haunting, this mesmerizing, not-to-be-missed debut memoir is also a loving evocation of a misunderstood land and people.

A gorgeously rich tapestry of an amazing life and culture.

issues that she neglects. In the final quarter, O’Brien returns to some effective ruminations about finding a place that’s “home” and about feeling mortal—even old (an encounter with Jude Law is poignant). Near the end, she revisits her abandoned girlhood home, drifting through it and remembering.

Emotion and reflection contend for prominence with superficiality; the former win, but barely.

OUT OF ORDER Stories from the History of the Supreme Court

O’Connor, Sandra Day Random House (256 pp.) $26.00 | $40.00 CD | Mar. 5, 2013 978-0-8129-9392-9 978-0-8129-9393-6 e-book 978-0-385-536079-1 CD

Here comes the judge—and she has stories to tell.

O’Connor (The Majesty of the Law, 2003, etc.), the first woman to serve as a justice on the Supreme Court—though, she hastens to add, not the first woman to hold a post of importance in that highest judiciary in the land—has been retired for half a decade, but still she is asked what being a justice is like.

And, of course, she’s heavily involved in civic education, educating Americans about what being American is about. The result is this lightly told but deeply thought-through history of the court, part of “a government that develops and evolves, that grows and changes, over time.” Her case studies are many, including Marbury v. Madison, which articulated some of that evolution and established the court’s authority as the final arbiter of the constitutionality of legislation, and some of Daniel Webster’s greatest hits—for, she reminds us, Webster argued some 200 cases before the court, “known for his ability to marshal precedents and historical evidence with skill.” Apart from the most significant cases, such as Brown v. Board of Education, O’Connor examines just a few minor cases and then mostly to illustrate points about the humanity of the court—Scalia is a funny guy, Rehnquist was a card, etc. She is candid, opinionated and even entertaining throughout, though we wait breathlessly for the fly-on-the-wall story of how the Supreme Court decided to give George W. Bush the presidency.

For the time being, a well-considered, lively survey of what the Supreme Court does, how it’s constituted and, bonus round, how to argue before it. (illustrations throughout)

COUNTRY GIRL A Memoir

O’Brien, Edna Little, Brown (384 pp.) $27.99 | $14.99 e-book | Apr. 30, 2013 978-0-316-12270-2 978-0-316-23036-0 e-book

The octogenarian Irish novelist, playwright, poet, biographer (and more) revisits her rich and sometimes rowdy life.

The best sections of this episodic memoir are the first and final quarters of the text. In the first, O’Brien (Saints and Sinners, 2011, etc.) writes affectingly of her girlhood—her memories of being attacked by an ill-tempered dog, of playing with dolls in her dining room, and of discovering and nurturing her interest in literature and writing. “The words ran away with me,” she writes. She worked in a pharmacy in Dublin but soon fled when the seductions of sex and literature and celebrity whispered that she could have a very different life than the one she was experiencing. Her account of her marriage to writer Ernest Gébler is grim and often depressing (understatement: he was not happy about her literary success), but she eventually left him, battled for custody of her children (she eventually won) and soared off into celebrity, a state that consumes the middle—and weakest— sections of the book. She seems determined to list every famous person she encountered, and the roster seems endless—John Osborne, Robert Mitchum, Paul McCartney, R.D. Laing (who became her therapist), Harold Pinter, Gore Vidal (she stayed at his Italian villa), Arthur Schlesinger and Norman Mailer. On and on go the names, a virtual phone book of the famous. These sections are mere molecules on the surface of some much deeper |

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A DEATH IN THE LUCKY HOLIDAY HOTEL Murder, Money, and an Epic Power Struggle in China

Pogrebin’s text serves her well as both an informative guide and an autobiographical chronicle. Evenly distributed throughout are personal interludes from her battle with breast cancer combined with helpful sections guiding those who are conflicted “when your role in the relationship is no longer easy or obvious.”

For many, she writes, worry for a friend’s sudden or prolonged illness can be an intimidating, touchy subject, and communicating genuine concern could understandably be met with either graciousness or an irritable “Thank you for caring. Now leave me alone.” The author’s sharp advice illuminates many of the more common gray areas governing what to say to an ailing friend, appropriate visitation frequencies and durations, and proper gifting. She also provides tips for good behavior when a friend’s parent or child is gravely ill. Much of this valuable “illness etiquette” comes from personal experience (Pogrebin’s mother died of cancer) and from survival stories told to her by fellow patients. Illness, she writes, will often prove a friendship’s mettle, and those who get it right will temper the unavoidable shame and embarrassment that often accompany serious health issues.

A useful refresher course on navigating the complicated territory of compassionate companionship.

Pin Ho; Wenguang Huang PublicAffairs (320 pp.) $27.99 | Apr. 2, 2013 978-1-61039-273-0

A true-crime murder mystery from 2011 set in a remote Chinese city, with an outsized impact on governance of the vast nation.

Pin Ho and Wenguang Huang (The Little Red Guard, 2012) use the case study method, shifting from the specific to the general throughout the book. The murder victim was Neil Heywood, a British businessman with ties to Chinese officials who held the power to approve business deals with foreign investors.

While on a business trip, Heywood turned up dead in his hotel room in Chongqing. The authors reveal a list of likely suspects about halfway through the text. First, they introduce Wang Lijun, a powerful regional Communist Party official who served as the police chief of Chongqing. As a law enforcement chieftain, Wang Lijun carried a reputation for employing brutality with suspected criminals. Next, the authors introduce Bo Xilai, the most powerful regional official and ostensibly Wang Lijun’s superior. Like many powerful party members who had risen to authority, Bo Xilai was a “princeling,” which meant he was the spawn of previous generations of government officials considered stalwarts. The book’s third section focuses on Bo Xilai’s powerful wife, Gu Kailai, considered huo shui, loosely translated as “poisonous water.” The authors explain how Gu Kailai continues a tradition of beautiful women who destroy the careers of powerful men. In the final section of the narrative, they link the murder case to the rise last year of Xi Jinping as the dominant Communist leader in the country.

Because the names, titles and governmental forms will be unfamiliar to most Western readers, the narrative can feel like tough going at times, but the authors weave a fascinating, dark narrative web.

SNOB ZONES Fear, Prejudice, and Real Estate

Prevost, Lisa Beacon (208 pp.) $26.95 | $26.95 e-book | May 7, 2013 978-0-8070-0157-8 978-0-8070-0158-5 e-book Real estate journalist Prevost makes a strong argument against restrictive zoning in elitist Northeastern communities.

Though ordinances might seem a dry topic for a compelling book, a journalist who has written for the New York Times and the Boston Globe Magazine (where her reporting led to earlier versions of some of these chapters) makes the issue interesting on a number of levels, taking the argument beyond property values into the essential notion of what a community is and what might benefit it. Through reporting on elitist enclaves such as Roxbury and Darien in her home state of Connecticut, as well as other New England towns, Prevost shows that preservation is often a mask for prejudice and that communities are strangling themselves through legal and economic restrictions that prevent young families from moving to town and older retirees from staying there.

They also serve as a buffer against racial and ethnic minorities, as well as economic classes, that the wealthy moved there to escape.

“Today’s advocates of large-lot zoning do not often go around talking about their desire to drive up prices and keep out the riffraff,” she writes, though that is the effect of what they’re doing.

“Roxbury was lacking in a vital resource: the people who keep rural towns running,” she writes. In a region where well-to-do communities oppose condos where “affordable housing” might run $250,000 or much more, the book does an effective job

HOW TO BE A FRIEND TO A FRIEND WHO’S SICK

Pogrebin, Letty Cottin PublicAffairs (304 pp.) $24.99 | Apr. 9, 2013 978-1-61039-283-9

A cancer survivor channels her ordeal into reflections on the nature of empathy and friendships.

Ms. magazine founding editor Pogrebin (Three Daughters, 2002, etc.) offers sound counsel to those comforting ailing friends. In 2009, a routine mammogram revealed a suspicious mass that not only changed the author’s relationship to her body, but also the interactions with her friends, some of whom were hesitant to visit.

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“Intelligent and thought-provoking views into the complexities of addiction and recovery.” from clean

CLEAN Overcoming Addiction and Ending America’s Greatest Tragedy

demonstrating how restrictiveness hurts the communities themselves. Fleshing out the argument and making it more nuanced would mean treating the developers more as profit-seekers than social crusaders and presenting more of the perspective of those who live there (including prominent members of the supposedly liberal media elite).

Moves the argument well past simple “not in my backyard” sentiments—though more perspectives and stronger storytelling might have made a good book even better.

Sheff, David Eamon Dolan/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (384 pp.) $25.00 | Apr. 2, 2013 978-0-547-84865-5

An enterprising treatise on drug abuse and addiction intervention.

During the time when Sheff chronicled his son’s “hellish” heroin and methamphetamine addiction (Beautiful Boy: A Father’s Journey Through His Son’s Addiction, 2008), his desperate attempts to gain a compassionate understanding of the nature of drug dependency educated him thoroughly. This follow-up to that research defines the roots of addiction with clean, accessible language, examining the classic patterns of abuse from the first hit to full-blown dependence and from denial (“anosognosia”) to treatment and recovery. Sheff offers new, sustainable solutions to a problem that has reached epidemic levels in this country (nearly 1 in 10 Americans has a drug problem).

Among the many precepts the author lists is a belief that the drugs themselves are a “symptom” and not the sole cause of an addiction. He addresses the sciences of drug dependency, risk factors, the broken addiction-treatment system in place today and a family’s crucial role in prevention. In terms of recovery, Sheff compares drug (methadone) versus drug-free (AA) routes toward achieving sobriety and eliminating relapses. Particularly fascinating is the author’s profile of a Chilean doctor’s observational research on the relentless behavioral patterns of fruit flies and mice exposed to alcohol mist, which demonstrates the seductive and ultimately irresistible nature of drugs like alcohol and cocaine. Sheff veers away from labeling addiction as a lost cause and rather offers new models, strategies and alternative therapies for abuse intervention and promising reform.

Intelligent and thought-provoking views into the complexities of addiction and recovery.

LIFE AT THE MARMONT The Inside Story of Hollywood’s Legendary Hotel of the Stars—Chateau Marmont Sarlot, Raymond; Basten, Fred E. Penguin (368 pp.) $16.00 paper | May 1, 2013 978-0-14-312311-8

A loving but lighter-than-air biography of the hotel that has loomed over Hollywood since the 1920s.

Co-authors Sarlot (who owned the Marmont, 1975-91) and Basten (author of numerous books about Hollywood, including Max Factor’s Hollywood: Glamour, Movies, Make-up, 1995) begin with a glimpse of the place in 1975, then whisk us back to 1926 to watch Fred Horowitz finding the spot where he wanted to build his new hotel. Thus commences a dance through the decades.

We learn what was going on in Hollywood in general, who was running the hotel (from management to the garage), and, of course, who was staying there—and what they were doing. It seems that just about everyone notable stopped there (sometimes for years), and the authors often organize subsections of chapters by names (always prefixed with a polite “Mr.,” “Miss,” or “Mrs.” (No “Ms.” at the Marmont!) In the 1920s and ’30s, folks like Jean Harlow and Clark Gable were there. And Billy Wilder, Joan Blondell and other performers. Writers liked to hang there, too—including Thornton Wilder, Ben Hecht and Dorothy Parker. Howard Hughes stayed awhile, as did Grace Kelley (hotly pursued by High Noon co-star Gary Cooper). We learn a bit about the swimming pool, too (installed in 1947), and who liked to splash in scant suits. Some of the most shimmering stars were there at times, Garbo and Monroe among them. And some footage for Myra Breckenridge came from the Marmont. The rock era brought wild times, with some rowdy groups trashing their rooms. And, of course, John Belushi died there in 1982. Most chapters feature paragraphs that are little more than lists of names, and there is precious little analysis or reflection—probably superfluous in such a volume.

Frivolous and superficial—but as entertaining as an old B movie on a dreary Saturday afternoon.

EUROPE The Struggle for Supremacy, from 1453 to the Present Simms, Brendan Basic (688 pp.) $35.00 | May 1, 2013 978-0-465-01333-3

A smartly encapsulated 550 years of European history by a Cambridge historian reveals patterns and perils that continue to play out today.

Divided and competing or cohesive and cooperative? The history of Europe since 1450 reveals states struggling for imperial title, space and security, with Germany as strategic central leading the charge. Simms (Three Victories and a Defeat: The Rise and Fall of |

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the First British Empire, 2008, etc.) takes a conceptual approach to the forging of modern European geopolitics, from the supremacy of the Holy Roman Empire at the heart of the European balance of power to the turbulent revolutions and ideological clashes of Central Europe that gave rise to Nazism and the definitive Cold War struggle between the Soviet Union and the West. Within each of the large-frame chapters, Simms manages to be both specific and big-picture, dense and wonderfully digestible within one hefty volume. He consistently pursues the notion that whoever held the imperial title—Charles V, Louis XIV, Frederick II of Prussia, Maria Theresa of Austria, the Hanoverians of Britain, etc.—held the balance of power in Europe. From the Seven Years’ War, the decay of the ancient regime was hastened by the revolutionary convulsions within the American colonies and France, giving rise to crises across Europe in the state system and debates over which form of government should prevail—autocratic or democratic? From the struggles for emancipation in all forms during the 19th century to the bitter disputes over partitions in the 20th, questions of Europe’s embrace of cohesion or retreat into sectarianism continue to command a sense of urgency.

Simms handles them adeptly.

An astute, comprehensive one-volume history of the “European project.” (20 b/w illustrations and maps)

and ambition. They know their days of usefulness are numbered, and we know it, too.” Funny sidebars emphasize key points in each chapter.

A tongue-in-cheek look at being a mom.

I INVENTED THE MODERN AGE The Rise of Henry Ford Snow, Richard Scribner (384 pp.) $30.00 | May 14, 2013 978-1-4516-4557-6

Evidently fired up by Ford’s success story, former American Heritage editor-inchief Snow (A Measureless Peril: America in the Fight for the Atlantic, the Longest Battle of World War II, 2010, etc.) conveys his interest by delving deeply into the details of Ford’s mechanical genius.

How did he construct the simple, durable, cheap automobiles that were to transform American life for just about everybody in the first decades of the 20th century? Snow reminds readers constantly that Ford was a farmer’s son whose interest in machinery was stoked by his abhorrence for intensive farm labor and by his hope to make it less cumbersome and more efficient. Inculcated with the teachings of the McGuffey readers (stressing “truth, honesty, fair-dealing, initiative, invention, self-reliance”), Ford honed his skills in Detroit by repairing everything from watches to locomotive wheels, apprenticing in steam, electricity and gas engines, studying them all until he constructed his first gas engine in the kitchen of his first home in 1893. The horseless carriage was a burning ambition for many inventors and did exist in many forms around that time, though Ford’s gas engine earned accolades from Thomas Edison, who recognized the limits of electricity and the value of Ford’s selfcontained combustion unit. Where he spun his genius was in keeping the evolving automobile available to the Everyman, rather than just as a toy for the elite. Snow frequently separates the facts from the apocryphal—e.g., that sales of Model As did not go anywhere until after the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 showed the world the tremendous use of automobiles and “the soundness of Henry Ford’s idea,” and that the $5-a-day wage was not Ford’s original notion but his vice president’s.

Stylistically, Snow mimics the marvelously folksy, protean temperament of his subject, dwelling on Ford’s early mechanical inventions rather than his latter problematic prickliness, and everywhere portraying a compelling character.

MOTHERHOOD COMES NATURALLY (AND OTHER VICIOUS LIES)

Smokler, Jill Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster (188 pp.) $15.00 paper | Apr. 9, 2013 978-1-4767-2834-6

A humorous treatment of the joys (and miseries) of motherhood.

Every parent has heard many of the countless axioms of child-rearing: Motherhood comes naturally; pets make children more responsible; it’s just a phase; etc. Smokler (Confessions of a Scary Mommy, 2012) turns these ideas upside down, offering readers a more honest, sarcastic take on what parenting is really all about. Whether covered in vomit, dealing with persistent urination issues, or being kicked and bruised, the author finds the humor in parenting. Her own children, other children and her husband all come under scrutiny as she pokes fun at such things as the phases kids should never outgrow (being easy-to-please, having sweet breath and believing mommy is always right) and the ones they should get rid of as quickly as possible: the knowit-all, the nonstop question of why. Smokler covers a variety of topics, from trips to the mall and vacations to sleeping, peeing in private and being a stay-at-home mom. She will help you decide when to throw away that cute macaroni necklace that “your precious child painstakingly threaded…with his bare hands! Look at that color composition—look at that sense of style! It’s a masterpiece, and you are the luckiest mommy in the world.” She also eulogizes her pre-mom body: “we remember those perky breasts previously so full of life and promise, now sucked dry of all hope 68

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“Perhaps a bit too acidic for some tastes, but most foodies will find the book refreshingly different.” from steal the menu

STEAL THE MENU A Memoir of Forty Years in Food

suffered from leukemia, and his wish was to become a Highway Patrol motorcycle officer. Shankwitz, who was in the Arizona Highway Patrol at the time, was able to grant his wish with the help of other officers. All of the stories are touching, and the children are memorable and, while similar, display plenty of differences. There is Tatum Null, who describes herself as “sassy” and is obsessed with Disney princesses. Katelyn Atwell, another cancer survivor, became an engagement speaker after raising enough money to grant five wishes. While the Make-A-Wish foundation is often thought of as a relief for children in pain, this shows that it is much more. Sparks demonstrates how having a wish granted—whether it was a vacation, swimming with a dolphin or meeting a significant person—helped with the healing process. Many of the children became stronger as a result of having something to look forward to. As Sharon Atwell, Katelyn’s mother, says, St. Jude healed her daughter physically, while Make-A-Wish healed her spiritually. Not all the stories have happy endings, but the patience and gratitude of the parents for every moment they get to spend with their children is inspiring.

The subject matter makes the book occasionally painful to read, but it is informative about the difficult world of children with life-threatening diseases and their families.

Sokolov, Raymond Knopf (256 pp.) $25.95 | May 14, 2013 978-0-307-70094-0

A knowledgeable look at the transformation of fine dining over the past half-century, viewed through the prism of the author’s personal history.

When Sokolov succeeded Craig Claiborne as food editor of the New York Times in 1971, he was unimpressed by the city’s ossified restaurant scene. Bolstered by “the ego of a child prodigy” (he was a National Spelling Bee contestant at age 10), Sokolov dismissed the fare at Manhattan’s established French restaurants as mediocre imitations of the authentic French cuisine he had savored while a Newsweek correspondent in Paris. Management rather liked the stir Sokolov made with his glowing review of a humble Sichuan restaurant attached to a New Jersey gas station; they were less enthusiastic about a survey of dog foods that Sokolov acknowledges sardonically spoofed his regular gig, nor did they appreciate the generally “anti-establishment and rhetorically flamboyant” tone of his work. Sokolov was fired in 1973, less than a year after his prescient Times column embracing the nouvelle cuisine revolution being fomented in France

by Paul Bocuse, Michel Guérard and the other Young Turks. In his fuller assessment here, Sokolov disdains the marketing of nouvelle cuisine as “the cuisine of modern, slim people,” arguing that its true significance was as “a most elaborate system of culinary parody, punning and metaphor.” Readers unconvinced by this provocative claim may nonetheless enjoy the author’s braininess and brashness as he goes on to chronicle a freelance career that included a highly intellectual food column for Natural History magazine before he settled down for 19 years as editor of the daily arts page for the Wall Street Journal. Sokolov is equally stimulating on the “molecular gastronomy” of Ferran Adrià and other modernist chefs.

Perhaps a bit too acidic for some tastes, but most foodies will find the book refreshingly different. (11 illustrations)

KARL MARX A Nineteenth-Century Life Sperber, Jonathan Liveright/Norton (512 pp.) $35.00 | Mar. 11, 2013 978-0-87140-467-1

A thorough but starchy portrait of the father of modern communism.

Sperber (History/Univ. of Missouri; Europe 1850–1914, 2008, etc.) aims to put Karl Marx (1818-1883) squarely within the context of his time, when the French Revolution was long over and the Industrial Revolution was taking hold. He follows Marx through the watershed events of his life, tracing his restless evolution through Hegel’s systematic philosophy and Ludwig Feuerbach’s atheist humanism, ultimately emerging as the fulltilt revolutionary firebrand and economic diagnostician who believed communism was “the solution to the riddle of history.”

He also believed that capitalism was in its death throes, and— unless it sank of its own weight—only violent revolution could put it out of its misery. Sperber credibly reveals Marx’s personal and political passions, ironies and contradictions; he was both Jewish and anti-Semitic, and he was an enemy of the bourgeoisie who lived off the profits of his friend Friedrich Engels’ family cotton mill, which had its own share of exploited workers.

For Sperber, Marx’s theories of class struggle and profit were shaped by his lifetime, became hardened with age and began to seem dated not long after his death. Also, under the careful husbandry of Engels, those ideas flowered into Marxism (or as some have suggested, Engelsism), which arguably had only a tenuous connection with its founder. Sperber delivers an objective portrait, but his insights are wrested at exhaustive length

ONCE UPON A WISH True Inspirational Stories of Make-A-Wish Children Sparks, Rachelle BenBella (352 pp.) $14.95 paper | Mar. 5, 2013 978-1-937856-12-0

An inspirational book about eight children who struggled with life-threatening diseases and had their wishes granted by the Make-A-Wish foundation.

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SIMPLER The Future of Government

and demand enormous patience from readers. His writing is dry and clumsy, and the book is so top-heavy with obtuse theoretical explanations that the life itself often gets lost. After awhile, Marx comes across as a tiresome Teutonic windbag.

Authoritative in its scope, but dense and unnecessarily difficult. (34 illustrations)

Sunstein, Cass R. Simon & Schuster (240 pp.) $26.00 | Apr. 9, 2013 978-1-4767-2659-5

Obama’s former “regulatory czar” examines the reforms that are beginning to transform the government and what they portend for the future.

In 2009, Harvard Law School professor Sunstein (A Constitution of Many Minds: Why the Founding Document Doesn’t Mean What It Meant Before, 2009, etc.) became administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, “the cockpit of the regulatory state,” where he worked for the next three years. Sunstein was present during the first Reagan administration, when the office was established and its purposes defined. He writes about using the office to find ways to save lives and money and attempt to improve the quality of life. Sunstein is a partisan of behavioral economics and uses its methods in what he calls “nudges…approaches that influence decisions while preserving freedom of choice.”

His mission, he writes, has been largely one of simplification: “fewer rules and more common sense.” Disclosure, whether in summary or fuller form, helps the process along, as does involvement of the public. For example, changes to the presentation of automobile fuel economy make the costs clearer over time, and the presentation of daily food requirements through the image of a plate, rather than a pyramid, makes for better understanding. Sunstein is a vigorous defender of the methods of cost-benefit analysis, both to determine what the costs really are and to figure out whether proposed changes or improvements will bring about net benefits. He has interesting insights about features of current partisan conflicts and the contradictory positions protagonists can find themselves in.

Sunstein’s firsthand knowledge and distinct humor give his account a real dynamism.

THE SHARED WISDOM OF MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS The Timelessness of Simple Truths Stoddard, Alexandra Morrow/HarperCollins (224 pp.) $21.99 | Apr. 2, 2013 978-0-06-211637-6

In yet another guide to enjoying the good life, Stoddard (Things Good Mothers Know, 2009, etc.) offers advice on how to grow old gracefully.

Based on her own experiences—she and her husband are blessed with good health, comfortable financial circumstances, and successful daughters and grandchildren—she shares the wisdom she has accumulated over the years. The book is full of a series of platitudes—e.g., “As we make steady progress in understanding life’s purpose, our lives will become deeply meaningful and fulfilling”; “Look for the cause in every effect”; “Nature teaches us that we are not in control”; “Getting organized is a wonderful accomplishment.” She recommends giving back to society through charitable efforts, and she warns against gossiping or dispensing unwanted advice. She also extols the virtues of being debt-free, eating a healthy and environmentally sustainable diet, and savoring the simple pleasures of daily existence.

She argues for the benefits of paying for tasks such as gardening and using a taxi service rather than owning a car. Stoddard explains how she and her daughters share life-enriching insights in dealing with thorny problems—e.g., regarding the intrusiveness of technology, her daughters turn off their cellphones during dinner, and the author schedules her time online. She also shares an experience when she and her husband coped with disappointment: After a planned trip to Paris with her daughter’s family was canceled at the last moment, she and her husband swallowed their distress and popped off to Paris on their own.

An annoying tone of self-congratulation pervades this disappointing collection of commonplace adages.

NATURE’S FORTUNE How Business and Society Thrive by Investing in Nature Tercek, Mark R; Adams, Jonathan S. Basic (256 pp.) $26.99 | Apr. 9, 2013 978-0-465-03181-8

Nature Conservancy president Tercek and science writer Adams explore the possibilities of the environmental movement joining with the business community to tap nature’s capital, to the betterment of both.

Can activities that produce good environmental outcomes also produce good commercial results? Can the businessperson’s fundamental concerns square with the time-honored environmentalist’s belief in the natural world’s inherent value?

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The authors claim that there is plenty of common ground, and they provide a number of examples to make the point: Where would Coca-Cola be without a clean and plentiful supply of fresh water? This constitutes an opportunity to save habitats that “act as giant sponges,” from the high grasslands of Ecuador to the flood plains of the Mississippi River. The fishing industry can avoid the tragedy of the commons through easements, markets for trapped fish, communal fisheries and catch shares.

McDonald’s has changed its purchasing policies to avoid alignment with the plunderers of the rain forest. Protecting coral reefs and planting drought-tolerant trees increases productivity while avoiding environmental degradation. Green urbanism is looking at the city system as a whole, providing green space and creating a framework for ecologically sensitive development. The authors call for long-term vision, particularly when it comes to our youth, who need encouragement and incentives to get outside and burnish their innate biophilia and sense of place.

Occasionally, the authors’ optimism that business will see the long-term light may not convince skeptics appalled by the rush to frack and more deep-sea drilling, but there is no denying the opportunities available in the big picture.

A hopeful message that a sensible marriage of business and environmental interests is in the cards, which until now has mostly been trumped by shortsightedness.

spends lots of pages of this slim volume returning to his meditations on the qualities of Generation X relative to Prince—e.g., “It’s appropriate to critique the media vision of gen X as unfairly whitewashed, but to say that Blacks are not part of gen X is short-sighted”—and this aspect of his approach comes to seem repetitive and dated.

Mostly engaging and will hold greatest appeal to readers who are already fans of Touré, Prince or both.

I TOLD YOU SO Gore Vidal Talks Politics: Interviews with Jon Wiener

Vidal, Gore with Wiener, Jon Counterpoint (128 pp.) $13.95 paper | Apr. 9, 2013 978-1619021747

These transcripts of four interviews with the late man of letters offer some provocative volleys but cover the same ground too often and don’t show Vidal fully amplifying his ideas.

Nation contributor Wiener (History/Univ. of California, Irvine; How We Forgot the Cold War: A Historical Journey Across America, 2012, etc.) promises that the book “offers Vidal in a more sustained mode of conversation: developing arguments, tracing connections between past and present, citing evidence.

Of course he provides plenty of one-liners and zingers along the way.” The zingers have more staying power, whether he’s identifying John F. Kennedy (“a friend of mine,”) as “a flippant figure of no depth” and “a mistake as a president” or dismissing generations of the Bush clan as “the most negligible family in the country.” The two shorter and more recent (2007 and 2006) interviews that begin the book were public performances in Los Angeles, with questions from the audience as well. The earlier and more substantial ones are from a radio interview in 2000 and a 1988 print piece in Radical History Review. Much is made throughout of Vidal’s historical fiction, particularly Empire (1987), his once scandalous Myra Breckinridge (1968) and his bestknown play, The Best Man (1960). His sympathetic interviewer never questions his subject’s assertions, whether he’s claiming that this country has “the worst educational system for the average citizen, for the non-rich, in the world” or charging that the culture in general and the New York Times in particular had it out for him following an early novel about gay life. He also believed that Franklin Roosevelt had advance warning of Pearl Harbor and that Bush knew about the 9/11 attacks and could have stopped them.

Missing the voice and presence of a man who could be an outrageously entertaining speaker, these transcripts fail to match the depth of his writing, as well.

I WOULD DIE 4 U Why Prince Became an Icon

Touré Atria (160 pp.) $19.99 | Mar. 19, 2013 978-1-4767-0549-1

Interpretive exegesis of the songs and style of the artist formerly and currently known as Prince.

Touré (Who’s Afraid of Post-Blackness?: What It Means to Be Black Now, 2011, etc.) argues that though Prince was chronologically a late boomer, he became an icon for Generation X, people born between 1965 and 1982, a time of lower birthrates and social anomie. Prince’s own difficult, lonely childhood gave him the ambition and remove to forge a rock-funk hybrid that was both spiritual and highly sexual, and this gave him an iconic appeal to the disillusioned demographic that came of age in the 1980s, during Prince’s run of hit albums beginning with “1999.” In support of this, Touré discusses the content of many of Prince’s songs, focusing more on the responses to Prince’s work than on what Prince actually did to create it. Touré also discusses Prince’s relationship with his backing musicians, significant to his thesis since Prince was one of the first rock stars to recruit a fully diverse band. Although the author talked to other scholars, Prince’s collaborators and former lovers, he’s not pursuing a concrete look at the nitty-gritty of Prince’s innovations in the studio or a narrative of his career arc’s sharp rise (and moderate decline). Instead, he offers a broad overview of Prince’s life and career, tied to his own ideas about demography and race. Touré |

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“An absorbing, complex medical detective story.” from the philadelphia chromosome

NICCOLÒ MACHIAVELLI An Intellectual Biography

the treatment of cancer. It took longer than the succeeding 10 years for phrases like “genetic mutation” and “chromosomal abnormality” to become part of the scientific vernacular. By 1959, when the available investigative tools were still primitive by today’s standards, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania discovered an abnormality in the relative sizes of two chromosomes. Ultimately, this led to an understanding of the role of oncogenes, but first a marriage had to take place. The prevailing theory, based on the study of chicken tumors, was that since cancers were contagious, they were caused by viral infection. After virologists determined the genetic makeup of viruses, they opened a second trajectory for the research. They made the remarkable discovery that a normal, proto-oncogenetic chicken gene was temporarily assimilated into an “infecting” virus where it mutated. Normally, the proto-oncogenes were also found in healthy humans, as well as chickens and other animals. Now that the gene was identified, a similar process was discovered in the Philadelphia Chromosome. In this case, a mutated oncogene was located at the point where two specific chromosomes split and interchanged positions before their parts were rejoined. The next problem was to establish the gene’s role in normal cell regulation and how to block its functioning after it had mutated. Wapner weaves together the basic and applied science with the stories of the dedicated researchers, the broader supporting superstructure of modern medicine and the process of bringing pharmaceuticals to market.

An absorbing, complex medical detective story. (8-page photo insert)

Vivanti, Corrado Translated by MacMichael, Simon Princeton Univ. (312 pp.) $27.95 | Jun. 1, 2013 978-0-691-15101-4

The late Vivanti was a man who knew the works of Machiavelli inside and out.

This book is not a biography of the man but an exploration of his writings.

Those who have read The Prince, The Art of War and The Discourses will have a leg up on everyone else reading this book, as Vivanti highlights the writings of this Florentine clerk and connects them to the local history. Some knowledge of local events in the 15th- and 16th-century Italian states is a must, especially regarding the Holy Roman Emperor, the king of France, numerous popes and local politicians, all of whom competed for control. There are those who insist that Machiavelli’s most famous work, The Prince, rather than encouraging harsh, dictatorial government, is really a satiric picture intended to lead readers to republicanism. As he compared the politics and population of Rome to those of Florence, the ability to sustain a republic in this Tuscan city seemed highly improbable. His History of Florence, commissioned by Pope Clement VII, is a good example of his attempt to please his patron while trying to include all the history. Even so, his statement that republics, with their diversity, are much more adaptable and likely to last longer than a princedom indicate his true politics. That he was a republican is without doubt, but the volatility of the area shows how difficult the establishment of such a republic would be. This was an era of Savonarola, the Borgias and Medici, strong leaders who tolerated little opposition.

Readers looking for the story of the Florentine historian’s life will be better served by Miles Unger’s 2011 biography. Students well versed in the classics, the historian’s vast writings and medieval history will most enjoy this academic biography.

HELGA’S DIARY A Young Girl’s Account of Life in a Concentration Camp

Weiss, Helga Translated by Bermel, Neil Norton (240 pp.) $24.95 | Apr. 22, 2013 978-0-393-07797-1

A young Prague girl’s diary, amended after the events, chronicles her yearning for a normal life before deportation to Terezin and Auschwitz.

Covering the fraught period between Czechoslovakia’s mobilization for war in late 1938, when the author turned 9, to May 1945, when Weiss and her mother finally returned to Prague after the capitulation of the prison camp Mauthausen, where they were last transported, this diary offers a poignant look at the tense, precarious fate of the Jews under Nazi occupation.

Weiss lived with her mother and father in a middle-class flat in Prague when the Germans invaded her homeland and anti-Jewish laws were put into place, gradually restricting every aspect of their lives. The author’s school was closed down, forcing her to be home-schooled at private apartments, and her unemployed father took over the cooking and cleaning. In December 1941, Weiss and her parents were deported to Terezin, confined to the bleak, disease-ridden barracks, and under constant threat

THE PHILADELPHIA CHROMOSOME A Mutant Gene and the Quest to Cure Cancer at the Genetic Level

Wapner, Jessica The Experiment (288 pp.) $25.95 | May 14, 2013 978-1-61519-067-6

Science writer Wapner uses the development of a successful cure for a once-fatal form of leukemia to illustrate the application of genetic engineering to the frontiers of current medical practice.

The discovery of the structure of DNA unleashed the potential to use genetically engineered pharmaceuticals in 72

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THE OTHER SIDE OF THE TIBER Reflections on Time in Italy

of more transports east. In October 1944, Weiss’ father was sent to a labor camp, never to be seen again, while the author and her mother were sent briefly to Auschwitz, then to work in an airplane factory in Freiberg. Lying about her age, she was able to stay with her mother, and they managed to survive the cold, disease and hunger. Before transport, the diary and drawings were given to her uncle at Terezin, who worked in the records department and bricked the documents in the walls of the barracks.

After the war, she subsequently edited and added the sections on the concentration camps, all carefully documented here.

Weiss’ moving eyewitness portrait adds a deepening to the understanding of the Jews’ plight during this horrific period in history. (16 color paintings; 12 photos)

Wilde-Menozzi, Wallis Farrar, Straus and Giroux (384 pp.) $27.00 | Apr. 23, 2013 978-0-374-28071-0

An American writer’s dreamy incantations on many decades living between Rome and Parma.

Wilde-Menozzi (Mother Tongue: An American Life in Italy, 1997) meanders among youthful reflections and lasting impressions of her long life in Italy to create both a lyrical journal and traveler’s guidebook. With her background in technical teaching at Oxford, which she abandoned along with her soured first marriage in the late 1960s to try her hand at writing in Rome, she made a living as a teacher and translator of English to Italian noblemen. Originally from Wisconsin, the daughter of a U.S. senator, “raised in an atmosphere of painful splits,” she was determined to live her own life at a time when women were not expected to make their own living and in a place where art was understood “as its own higher law.”

Coursing through the various chapters like the living river Tiber are the work of the great artists Michelangelo, Bernini and Caravaggio within some favorite haunts like the Vatican Museum, catacombs and churches. A sense of “inclusion” pervades the eternal city, the author writes, while its enduring squares seem to bear witness to history. She also chronicles her treks to Siena, Etna and the economically challenged south, specifically Puglia, to explore the plight of refugees. Her whimsical observations range from reflections about a 100-year-old man who walked the mountains around Turin, to the Italian way of justice, to the sad destiny of a young woman who was stabbed during an argument with her husband. From her early “hungry and untrained eyes,” Wilde-Menozzi arrives at moments of elegant sagacity and inspired humility.

An up-and-down but useful collection to haul on a trip to Rome.

SOUTHERN SOUL-BLUES

Whiteis, David Univ. of Illinois (344 pp.) $24.95 paper | May 1, 2013 978-0-252-07908-5

A well-reported but not entirely satisfying consideration of a hardy R&B subgenre.

Veteran blues observer Whiteis (Chicago Blues, 2006) examines a style, nestled not always comfortably on the cusp of classic deep soul and funky blues, which has operated mainly below the commercial radar since the late Z.Z. Hill put it on the map with “Down Home Blues” in 1981. The bulk of the book comprises lengthy in-depth profiles of seasoned performers Latimore, Denise LaSalle, J. Blackfoot and Bobby Rush and younger successors Willie Clayton, Sweet Angel, Sir Charles Jones and Ms. Jody; other progenitors and latter-day practitioners receive shorter entries in two late chapters. Whiteis also delves into the realities of writing for the genre, the intrinsic difficulties of marketing the music and vague possibilities for its future. While the author is clearly enthusiastic about his subject, he seems to be in deep denial about the real potential for soul-blues. As he notes repeatedly, the music has always attracted a middle-aged (and older) demographic, and even its youngest stars are in their 40s and 50s. It continues to survive on what’s left of the Southern chitlin’ circuit or on the occasional package tour or a small festival circuit. Major U.S. labels and big-market R&B radio have never given the style a tumble, and its artists must be content with selling their material either through smaller independents or via their own imprints. While Whiteis holds out some hope that soul-blues can sustain itself in the wide-open world of Internet music distribution, he offers no compelling evidence that this is actually a path out of the wilderness. And his maddening reluctance to offer album sales or radio-airplay figures only confirms the reader’s suspicion that this is an increasingly marginal music that is playing to a graying, shrinking and narrowly circumscribed audience.

Soul-blues fans will savor this love letter, but nondevotees will be left in the cold. (35 b/w photos)

GREEN EQUILIBRIUM The Vital Balance of Humans and Nature

Wills, Christopher Oxford Univ. (320 pp.) $34.95 | May 1, 2013 978-0-19-964570-1

A field biologist with camera in hand travels around the planet to discover the factors that lead to the survival of balanced ecosystems.

Wills (Emeritus Biological Sciences/Univ. of California, San Diego; The Darwinian Tourist: Viewing the World Through Evolutionary Eyes, 2010, etc.) chronicles visits to sites in California, Guyana, Brazil, the Pacific and southeast Asia, some relatively |

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“Glows with one man’s love for science.” from letters to a young scientist

pristine, some threatened, some recovering nicely from the effects of human damage. He sees the balancing of pressures on thriving ecosystems as a “green equilibrium.” These pressures are constantly changing, and the greater the genetic and ecological diversity within the ecosystem’s population, the greater the likelihood that some members will adapt to the changes and survive. The author argues that human beings not only shape ecosystems, but are shaped by them. Thus, he writes, while we have pushed the green equilibrium out of balance in many places, making them unsustainable and threatening our own existence, the evolution of our species has given us “pretty good brains,” with the ability to understand the problems we have created and the power to solve them. Wills is both a skilled storyteller and a talented photographer, and he provides an eyeopening account of the long history of human migrations out of Africa and into Europe, Asia, Australia and the Americas. He gives readers the big picture as well as the striking small details that stay in the mind, and he ends on a high note: We can quantify our impact on the environment; what is beyond quantifying is the sheer joy of making it better.

For general readers, an essentially optimistic view of earth’s ecological problems and the role humans have played in creating them and can play in solving them.

are tested and how theories are developed. Finally, he closes with a discussion of proper behavior in working with other scientists, in conducting research and in publishing results. The take-home message is that enthusiasm, creativity, curiosity and persistence are the keys to success.

Glows with one man’s love for science. (21 illustrations)

LETTERS TO A YOUNG SCIENTIST

Wilson, Edward O. Liveright/Norton (192 pp.) $21.95 | Apr. 15, 2013 978-0-87140-377-3

The eminent entomologist, naturalist and sociobiologist draws on the experiences of a long career to offer encouraging advice to those considering a life in science.

Pulitzer Prize winner Wilson (The Social Conquest of Earth, 2012, etc.), whose book’s title is reminiscent of Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet, is not, however, writing to one young man but to a generation of potential scientists.

After a prologue in which the author assures would-be scientists of their importance in our technoscientific world, he groups 20 letters into five sections. In Part I, “The Path to Follow,” he offers a set of guiding principles. Surprisingly, the first is designed to comfort students who fear going into science because they lack confidence in their math skills. Not to worry, he counsels, for one can always find collaborators with the necessary mathematical skills. Most important, he advises, is to find a field that interests you, that stirs your passion, that you can call your own, and then become an expert in it. In Part II, “The Creative Process,” Wilson discusses the nature of science, the scientific method, how scientists think creatively and what it takes to succeed. In “A Life in Science,” he relates events from his career, discoveries he and others made, and how they made them. In “Theory and the Big Picture,” Wilson again uses concrete examples from his own work to show how hypotheses 74

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children’s & teen HOORAY FOR BREAD

These titles earned the Kirkus Star:

Ahlberg, Allan Illus. by Ingman, Bruce Candlewick (32 pp.) $15.99 | Apr. 9, 2013 978-0-7636-6311-7

INSIDE OUTSIDE by Lizi Boyd.......................................................... 80 BYE-BYE BABY BROTHER! by Sheena Dempsey................................83 FEARLESS by Cornelia Funke; trans. by Oliver Latsch.....................87 GAME ON! by Jennifer L. Holm; Matthew Holm..............................91 WHEN I WAS EIGHT by Christy Jordan-Fenton; Margaret Pokiak-Fenton; illus. by Gabrielle Grimard.......................93 LOOK! by Ted Lewin.............................................................................97 MY BEAUTIFUL HIPPIE by Janet Nichols Lynch............................... 98 BONES NEVER LIE by Elizabeth MacLeod....................................... 98 THE WATCHER IN THE SHADOWS by Chris Moriarty; illus. by Mark E. Geyer.......................................................................100 A CORNER OF WHITE by Jaclyn Moriarty......................................101 EAST OF THE SUN, WEST OF THE MOON by Jackie Morris.........101 TIGER IN MY SOUP by Kashmira Sheth; illus. by Jeffrey Ebbeler......................................................................105 A LONG WAY AWAY by Frank Viva.................................................109

A baker delivers a loaf from the oven to his family’s kitchen, where the bread is eaten, slice by slice, through the course of one day.

Cheery acrylic artwork shows a happy clan with perky parenthesis-shaped smiles, apple cheeks and dot eyes both enjoying their mealtime bread and giving extra morsels to dogs, ducks, birds and mice. Charming portraiture, simple linework and sunny yellow backgrounds connote the warm, pure pleasure of a fine, crusty loaf. Even small children will appreciate how this family values their food, how they let none go to waste and how they share with even the smallest creatures. These animal bread lovers give thanks on joyous, full-bleed, doublepage spreads with banner-sized capital letters (“HOORAY— TWEET, TWEET—FOR BREAD!”). Their hoorays offer a nice bounce and a rewarding page turn, buoying occasionally trite rhymes that surface elsewhere. The quirky, conversational language does speak directly to children, however, and the last stanza (about two runaway slices) directs little readers to turn the page for the final food festivity: A gleeful gang of smileyfaced fridge foods (beans, bacon, tomato, cheese, egg, banana, lettuce) run on hind legs to meet up with the missing slices, ready to celebrate and shout HOORAY! Mirthful artwork and friendly rhymes get readers all toasty with warm, good feelings. (Picture book. 2-6)

TAKE ME OUT TO THE YAKYU by Aaron Meshon........................... 112

THE LAURA LINE

SOMETHING TO PROVE by Robert Skead; illus. by Floyd Cooper.......................................................................... 113

Allen, Crystal Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins (336 pp.) $16.99 | $9.99 e-book | Apr. 23, 2013 978-0-06-199274-2 978-0-06-220844-6 e-book Modern sass combines with a historical twist, making an uneven blend of middle school melodrama and the bitter realities of slavery.

As she showed in How Lamar’s Bad Prank Won a Bubba-Sized Trophy (2011), Allen has a flare for blending the austere with the audacious. In her new novel, she introduces readers to Laura Eboni Dyson, the latest in a long line of Lauras dating back to the Amistad. Overweight and

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popularity-challenged, the last thing Laura wants is to draw negative attention to herself. When her seventh-grade history teacher convinces Laura’s grandmother, Mrs. Anderson, to allow her class to visit the crumbling slave shack at the rear of Mrs. Anderson’s property, Laura is determined to derail the class trip. Baseball-loving Laura is deeply ashamed of the shack, which she calls “yesterday’s history,” and she thinks her classmates will scorn her for hanging onto that history. Laura may prove tiresome to readers; she’s tough, strong and self-assured in one scene and downright mealy-mouthed in the next. By the time Laura stops wallowing and realizes her profound connection to a long line of Lauras, readers may meet her epiphany with a quizzical, “Is that it?”

Smartly rigged with history and graced with quick dialogue, the novel sails with Laura’s snappy quips. Unfortunately, the story’s emotional core sinks, leaving readers unsatisfied and adrift. (Fiction. 8-12)

LETTERS FROM HILLSIDE FARM

Apps, Jerry Fulcrum (160 pp.) $12.95 paper | Apr. 16, 2013 978-1-55591-998-6

Faint echoes of the middle volumes of the Little House series are all that animate this bland, Depression-era epistolary tale.

Apps opens with a superfluous introduction to his fictional family and their historical background and closes with two pages of letter-writing exercises. In between, he records five months of life on a Wisconsin farm. Although the family’s removal to the farm is triggered by the loss of the father’s factory job, hardship seems very far-off. During the period covered by the book, the weather is idyllic, money never seems tight (along with horses and heavy equipment, George’s father buys both a puppy, shipped in from a distant locale, and a retired circus pony), and not even the death of a cow or the dumping of a load of seed oats in a ditch results in any sort of setback. All is told via the correspondence between 12- (later 13-) year-old George Struckmeyer and his grandmother back in Cleveland. Grandma responds with eyeglazing platitudes (“What a Fourth of July celebration! Picnics are fun, aren’t they? And having one near a lake makes it even more fun”) to George’s long, polished accounts. He tells of social events, baseball games, getting the hay in, feeding a passing hobo and putting on an amateur circus in the barn, among other small adventures.

Neither George’s experiences nor the author’s pedagogical additions offer much to engage readers’ hearts or minds. (Historical fiction. 10-12)

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TAMALITOS Un poema para cocinar/A Cooking Poem

Argueta, Jorge Illus. by Domi Groundwood (32 pp.) $18.95 | Apr. 9, 2013 978-1-55498-300-1

The latest of Argueta’s free-verse recipes is a savory tribute to corn—as ancient a foodstuff as it is delicious.

Presented in bilingual passages with the Spanish over the English, his directions begin with an invitation to think about “kernels of corn— / white, yellow, blue ones, / purple, red and black ones— / like a rainbow / when it’s drizzling.” Following references to corn’s antiquity, he goes on to describe how to gather the simple ingredients, assemble the tamalitos and cook them, all while dancing “the Maya corn dance / and the Aztec dance / and the powwow dance / and the corn dance / of all the people of corn.” Using a high intensity palette, Domi reflects the author’s infectious energy in watercolor on wet paper, painting scenes of broadly grinning young cooks capering through cornfields and kitchen, demonstrating how to hold and stuff the corn leaves and then, in the end, chowing down: “Ummmm, ¡qué deliciosos tamalitos, / estos tamalitos de maíz hechos con amor!” Rather than list “oil” and “fresh white cheese” as ingredients, the author could have been more specific, but this is a minor quibble. Steps that require adult assistance are signaled throughout the text with asterisks.

Even for novice chefs (and readers) the “Ummmm”s are easily attainable. (Picture book. 4-8)

LOKI’S WOLVES

Armstrong, K.L.; Marr, M.A. Illus. by To, Vivienne Little, Brown (368 pp.) $16.99 | May 7, 2013 978-0-316-20496-5 Series: The Blackwell Pages, 1 The apocalypse is coming, and only the gods can stop it. One problem—the gods are dead.

The gods of Norse myth might be dead, but their descendants live, and in Blackwell, S.D., most residents are descendants of either Thor or the trickster god Loki. When Ragnarök, the apocalypse, arrives, 13-year-old Matt Thorsen will be the champion of the gods. He is charged with finding descendants of other gods, forming an alliance and facing off against the monsters of the apocalypse. Unfortunately, the prophecy says that the champions of the gods and the monsters all must die if the world is to be reborn. The narration alternates among the three third-person voices of Matt, Fen, a descendant of Loki, and Laurie, his cousin. It is so methodically constructed that readers will welcome the action Ragnarök will

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“In the bite-sized blocks of narrative text, challenging vocabulary words like ‘carnivores’ and ‘luminescence’ come with pronunciation guides and lucid in-context definitions.” from fly guy presents: sharks

offer. However, this volume is but the debut of a trilogy, and readers will have to await future volumes to tie the tale together.

Since Norse myths are not as familiar to most kids as Greek and Roman tales, readers will probably want to check out the series’ website, which provides additional information (incomplete at time of review).

Norse mythology brought to life with engaging contemporary characters and future volumes that promise explosive action; ideal for Percy Jackson fans who want to branch out. (Fantasy. 8-12)

FLY GUY PRESENTS: SHARKS

Arnold, Tedd Illus. by Arnold, Tedd Scholastic (32 pp.) $3.99 paper | May 1, 2013 978-0-545-50771-4 Series: Fly Guy

clouds of different shapes.” Since she starts by discussing story and writing, a segue to letters and words makes sense, but this is a limited view of imagination and creativity. She includes one reference to music but none to scientific creativity or the visual arts. Light bulbs and gears appear as clichéd images inside her mind. Illustrations mix watercolor and drawing and sometimes have a diagrammatic look. The limited palette is quite sophisticated, as is some language. As the text ends, the narrator speaks about what happens after her words hold hands: “And they cross the bridge of my imagination that connects my worlds: the internal and the external.”

Originally published in Spain, this amorphous volume could certainly be used as a jumping-off point by a creative adult, but there are far better books on the topic available.

(Picture book. 6-8)

Buzz and his buzzy buddy open a spinoff series of nonfiction early readers with an aquarium visit.

Buzz: “Like other fish, sharks breathe through gills.” Fly Guy: “GILLZZ.” Thus do the two pop-eyed cartoon tour guides squire readers past a plethora of cramped but carefully labeled color photos depicting dozens of kinds of sharks in watery settings, along with close-ups of skin, teeth and other anatomical features. In the bite-sized blocks of narrative text, challenging vocabulary words like “carnivores” and “luminescence” come with pronunciation guides and lucid in-context definitions. Despite all the flashes of dentifrice and references to prey and smelling blood in the water, there is no actual gore or chowing down on display. Sharks are “so cool!” proclaims Buzz at last, striding out of the gift shop. “I can’t wait for our next field trip!” (That will be Fly Guy Presents: Space, scheduled for September 2013.)

A first-rate sharkfest, unusually nutritious for all its brevity. (Informational easy reader. 5-7)

INSIDE MY IMAGINATION

Arteaga, Marta Illus. by Celej, Zuzanna Cuento de Luz (24 pp.) $15.95 | Apr. 1, 2013 978-84-15503-59-0

Imagination is an elusive concept, and this book misses the boat in its attempt to deconstruct one girl’s cre-

ative process.

The nameless child tries to describe how her mind works as she explores the world of her imagination, entering it quite literally through a door and seeing legendary characters: “unicorns, fairies, elves and magicians.” Then she proceeds to use a series of similes: “My imagination is like a sea of thoughts that float and glide over each other.” “My imagination is like a land of |

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“An engaging coming-of-age story marked by the somewhat predictable dysfunctional-parent problems that are so common in the type.” from fly guy presents: sharks

ONE PLUS ONE EQUALS BLUE

Auch, MJ Henry Holt (272 pp.) $16.99 | Apr. 30, 2013 978-0-8050-9405-3

Basil and Tenzie both have synesthesia, either a gift or a curse that can make a person into one of life’s rejects.

For Basil, new to public school from a lifetime of home schooling and previously unaware that not everyone sees numbers as colors, synesthesia just confirms him as a freak. He embraces that status, sitting alone and avoiding his classmates. Tenzie has just moved to town and started at the middle school as well. At first, she seems to have a peculiar and charming resilience that makes her impervious to others’ attitudes. Readers—and firstperson narrator Basil—only gradually discover that she’s much more vulnerable than she first appears. After Carly, Basil’s feckless mother, returns from a five-year absence in Hollywood, Basil is appropriately wary. Tenzie, though, ignored by her parents, falls victim to Carly’s dysfunctional attention when the young woman takes over production of the school play. The two seventh-graders and Basil’s attentive, custodial grandmother are sensitively portrayed, but Basil’s voice leaves other characters, especially Carly, only broadly sketched. Her inner workings remain a mystery—just as they are to her bewildered and rejected son. Synesthesia provides an initial bond between Basil and Tenzie, offering a minor subplot, but is never the focus of the tale.

An engaging coming-of-age story marked by the somewhat predictable dysfunctional-parent problems that are so common in the type. (Fiction. 11-14)

CAMERON AND THE GIRLS

Averett, Edward Clarion (240 pp.) $16.99 | Apr. 16, 2013 978-0-547-61215-7

In an engaging if predictable cautionary tale, 14-year-old Cameron stops taking medications for his schizophreniform disorder and finds that his choice brings unwanted consequences.

Off his medication, Cameron hears voices. He likes having some of the voices in his head, such as the even-keeled, informative Professor and the alluring Girl, a newer arrival. (They are helpfully represented, as are the other voices, by recognizably different typefaces.) His desire to hold onto the voices makes his quitting his meds believable and compelling. The central ambiguity—the way some aspects of Cameron’s unmedicated state feel desirable and important, even while others are confusing or frightening—is maintained almost to the end. A new, intimidating voice Cameron calls the Other Guy urges Cameron to take risks and be cruel, and readers feel the exhilaration Cameron experiences at obeying the Other Guy’s 78

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commands. Cameron’s parents and sister are realistically drawn, with believably flawed reactions to Cameron’s condition, as is his friend Nina, a classmate with depression from the Emotionally Disturbed Program. A pat ending, however, undermines the question of whether Cameron ought to be allowed to go without medication, as does an afterword in which the author, a clinical psychologist, speculates that “one day, Cameron might very well be free of the disease forever, which is his fondest hope.”

Complex questions are carefully presented but answered too simply in this nevertheless intriguing exploration. (Fiction. 12-16)

DEAD RIVER

Balog, Cyn Delacorte (256 pp.) $17.99 | $10.99 e-book | $20.99 PLB Apr. 9, 2013 978-0-385-74158-3 978-0-375-98578-2 e-book 978-0-375-99012-0 PLB While most people who visit the Dead River hear the white noise of rushing water, 17-year-old Kiandra Levesque hears the voices of people the river has claimed.

She’s been kept away from water ever since her mother committed suicide by walking into the Delaware River 10 years earlier.

Angry at this abandonment, she wants to prove to herself that she has left her mother behind, so she sneaks away with her boyfriend for a camping and rafting trip in rural Maine. When she encounters the spirit of a boy killed in the 1930s, Kia learns that she has magical powers and that she might be able to see her mother again—but that she must cross the river from life to death to do so. Balog starts her story in media res, allowing narrator Kiandra to introduce herself slowly, by revealing her past. There’s a trick to keeping the narrator mostly unnamed and identified only by fears for the first several pages, and unfortunately, the author doesn’t quite carry it off. Despite her heavy and often articulated misery, Kiandra comes across as a shallow character: clear, fast-moving and trickling downstream before making an impact. The inevitable love triangle feels forced, and the resolution stretches the bounds of the narrative rules, but at least it assures there’s no loose threads for a sequel. The secondary characters are oxbow lakes, extraneous pieces cut off from the main flow and leading nowhere.

Not the refreshing plunge it would like to be. (Paranormal thriller. 12 & up)

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THE SUPER SECRET MYSTERY

Barden, Stephanie Illus. by Goode, Diane Harper/HarperCollins (144 pp.) $16.99 | $9.99 e-book | Apr. 23, 2013 978-0-06-200443-7 978-0-06-220841-5 e-book Series: Cinderella Smith, 3

Cinderella Smith, shoe-losing thirdgrader, is back, now facing the challenges of a research project.

Third-grade is the year when some kids (the Rosemarys, in this case) appoint themselves too old for childish things, while others (Cinderella and her posse) are still happy to jump and hop and slither when the zoo docent instructs them to. Alas! It’s hard to know what to do if you are Cinderella Smith. When the class is assigned a research project on animals, the children decide they want to shock and amaze their classmates. This turns out to be harder than they thought. Cinderella wants to study ocelots, but the books she needs mysteriously disappear from the library. She and her friends, the self-named Group in Cahoots, come up with a cooperative way to shock and amaze everyone, even the Rosemarys. Fans of this series will appreciate the subtle changes that happen in these sunny stories: The boys and girls are growing up and noticing each other in different ways—they solve problems and forgive each other, even when the Rosemarys conspire to ruin things. Goode’s black-and-white illustrations add humor and emotion to the story and, in the end, even make a lovely visual reference to the real Cinderella story when Charlie puts his basketball shoe on Cinderella’s bare foot.

Charming. (Fiction. 7-10)

I HAVE A GARDEN

Barner, Bob Illus. by Barner, Bob Holiday House (32 pp.) $14.95 | Apr. 1, 2013 978-0-8234-2527-3 Series: I Like to Read

practice. The bright pictures, particularly coupled with the clearly defined value of the garden as a shared environment, make this a nice choice for preschoolers, too.

Sweet and sturdy. (Early reader. 2-7)

DORKO THE MAGNIFICENT

Beaty, Andrea Amulet/Abrams (224 pp.) $16.95 | Apr. 2, 2013 978-1-4197-0638-7

A young would-be magician gets lessons in both stagecraft and life from a crusty elder.

Fifth-grader Robbie Darko is horrified to learn that he’ll be giving up his room to terrifying, old Grandma Melvyn while she waits for a knee operation. Discovering that she had been a renowned magician in her early days, though, he sees opportunity. He

“Belongs on teens’ reading lists alongside classics of its type such as Laurie Halse Anderson’s SPEAK and Cheryl Rainfield’s SCARS.” —Mike Mullen, awardwinning author of ASHFALL and ASHEN WINTER

Barner’s entry in the I Can Read series features an appealing white dog narrating a simple text.

“I have a frog in my garden. / I have a bird in my garden.”

A chipmunk, a bug, a bee, and additional fauna and flora flourish on successive spreads. The dog, which dashes about with a bone or stick, declares, a bit too greedily, “This garden is all for me.” With a turn of the page, all of the previously pictured creatures gather together, visually conveying the text’s corrective sentiment: “No. This garden is for all of us.” Barner’s exuberant gouache-and-pastel cut-paper collages feature stylized sunflowers, poppies, daisies and more. A bluebird’s topknot looks like a heart, echoing the shape of the dog’s shiny nose. Pictures and words (delivered in the educational typeface “Report School”) cohere nicely, offering blossoming readers some fresh, springy |

“A careful treatment of a difficult topic.”

—Kirkus, February 2013

“May be the title that helps a teen open up and tell someone, rather than continue to suffer in silence.”

—Practically Paradise—Diane R. Kelly

www.luminisbooks.com

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earns her respect and enlists her help with his act for the upcoming school talent show by gradually learning how to stand up to her harsh tongue and temper. What she teaches him are not new tricks but deeper principles, from “Your job is to make [audiences] believe impossible things” to the values of relentless preparation and of flexibility when things go wrong. These initially seem disappointingly abstract but stand him in good stead both for the show and for when Grandma Melvyn takes another, final trip to the hospital. The author creates a sympathetic cast, but Robbie’s habit of refusing to describe his tricks while overexplaining everything else in his life may leave readers wanting to know less about him and more about Grandma Melvyn and his best friend Cat, a classmate with a real gift for connecting with people.

Beaty slips in some important stuff here, but the supporting characters steal the show. (Fiction. 10-12)

UNDER PRESSURE

Berne, Emma Carlson Darby Creek (104 pp.) $7.95 paper | $20.95 e-book | $27.93 PLB Apr. 1, 2013 978-1-4677-0718-3 978-1-4677-0958-3 e-book 978-1-4677-0303-1 PLB Series: Counterattack Soccer is everything for high school athlete Elise.

Part of the Counterattack series about various teammates on a high school girls’ soccer team, Berne’s tale features senior Elise. In the spring season of her final year, Elise anticipates earning a place on a college team. She is thrilled to learn a scout from her parents’ alma mater will be observing her team in a month, searching for potential freshman candidates. Desperate to make a stellar impression, Elise scrambles for a quick method to increase her competitive edge, naïvely deciding that the “Winners Athletic Supplements” she discovers are the solution. Berne examines serious issues young athletes encounter, including the tremendous pressure to succeed—whether it is self-imposed or driven by parental influence—and body-image concerns. Elise, lacking confidence in her skills and struggling with self-esteem, quickly makes a series of poor choices in her quest for instant perfection. Her anxieties further manifest in body-image issues, and she embarks on dangerously unhealthy eating patterns. Elise’s deteriorating physical and emotional conditions are effectively sketched in this fast-paced, slim novel. Ultimately, events culminate in near disaster, which leads to dramatic changes in Elise’s sports and life goals.

Berne’s discerning tale combines vivid sports descriptions with a compelling storyline. (Fiction. 12-18)

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INSIDE OUTSIDE

Boyd, Lizi Illus. by Boyd, Lizi Chronicle (40 pp.) $15.99 | Apr. 1, 2013 978-1-4521-0644-1

In this wordless picture book, youngsters follow a boy through the seasons and see how the natural world influences his indoor projects and outdoor activities.

The ease with which he moves between the two spaces— inside to outside and back again with each page turn—and his subsequent productivity are emphasized by intriguing die-cut windows throughout. In the opening spread, mittens, boots and scarf are strewn about, clues that the boy has been outdoors; indeed, snowmen are visible through his windows. Yet he anticipates spring as he sits at the table planting seedlings. He takes a break to make more snowmen and then he’s back indoors, where he hangs his paintings of snowmen, appropriately melting, and birds. The seedlings sprout, and outside his windows, trees are in bud. Children will pore over the increasing number of details as the two worlds merge. Bird mobiles inside complement the birds outside; he keeps houseplants as well as a garden.

At all times, glimpses through the windows show inside and outside in harmony. Beautifully paced, the boy’s endeavors encourage replication. This is a fine example of how nature sparks the imagination of the creator, whether sculptor, painter, gardener or crafter. Even the illustrations, gouache on brown Kraft paper, staples on many children’s art tables, invite tots to get busy.

Inspired and inspiring, this is creative genius at work.

(Picture book. 2-6)

STORY’S END

Burt, Marissa Harper/HarperCollins (368 pp.) $16.99 | $9.99 e-book | Apr. 2, 2013 978-0-06-202054-3 978-0-06-220302-1 e-book There’s no question that “[m]essing around in the Villainous parts of Story is risky stuff,” in this sequel to Burt’s debut novel, Storybound (2012).

Young Una Fairchild is back, desperately trying to unravel the vast entangled problems in the land of Story. The Tale of Beginnings reveals the three legendary Elements of Story’s origins: the Silver Quill dipped in Dragon’s Ink applied to a Scroll of Fire. When these three elements are brought together again, the End will be written, and the old Story will be complete, making way for a new Story to begin. Along with friends Peter, Indy and Snow, Una races to make sure that the Elements do not fall into the wrong hands— in her case, hands that are more related to her than she ever dreamed possible. While Burt has strong concepts and a penchant for plot, the events of the story fail to reveal much about the one-dimensional characters. As in Storybound, without the

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“Cate’s watercolor figures fill but don’t crowd the pages, and they throw themselves into the preparations with infectious smiles and high spirits.” from who has the biggest bottom?

grounding of and association with clear character development, the plot sometimes devolves into a long sequence of breathless and cluttered details.

Despite its flaws, this book has a magical and endearing quality that may be particularly helpful for readers who need to leave an old story behind and begin to write a new one. (Fantasy. 8-12)

THIS MORNING SAM WENT TO MARS A Book About Paying Attention Carlson, Nancy Illus. by Carlson, Nancy Free Spirit (32 pp.) $15.99 | $9.99 paper | Apr. 1, 2013 978-1-57542-433-0 978-1-57542-434-7 paper

A perfunctory story barely masks a corrective agenda for children with major or minor attention issues.

Being given to daydreaming about expeditions to Mars and other locales rather than watching the time or staying on task at school, Sam is continually exhorted to “Focus!”—which makes him feel “frustrated, sad and dumb.” When his (apparently single) father takes him to a doctor, he unhesitatingly unloads on her. In return, he gets a prescription to lay off junk food, organize his possessions, move his school desk away from the window, and ask for help from others but also not to stop exercising his “awesome” imagination. And, shades of Leo the Late Bloomer, “then one day…Sam got to school on time with his homework!”

And soon he’s doing well enough there that he’s no longer hearing “Focus, Sam!” Carlson illustrates this tidy plotline with cartoon scenes of dot-eyed figures in static poses, and she closes by reiterating the same suggestions for improvement in a note addressed to parents and teachers.

Valid the strategies may be, but it would be hard to present them in a less convincing way; it’s 100 percent bibliotherapy. (Picture book. 6-9, adult)

REVOLUTIONARY FRIENDS General George Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette

Castrovilla, Selene Illus. by Kozjan, Drazen Calkins Creek/Boyds Mills (40 pp.) $16.95 | Apr. 1, 2013 978-1-59078-880-6

This effort to illuminate and explicate the affectionate relationship between George Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette, as well as its impact on United States history, is enthusiastic but perhaps ambitious for the format.

The body of the work is presented as an illustrated narrative with interjections expressing Lafayette’s point of view; focusing |

on a short period of time, it is relatively straightforward. Moved by news of the American Revolution, the young Marquis slips out of France at the age of 19 and sails to the New World to offer his services to Washington’s army. Only tolerated at first (because earlier émigrés had not left a positive impression), Lafayette shows his mettle in the battle of Brandywine and forges a lifelong personal bond with the general he so admires.

Castrovilla writes in a heightened, emotive voice punctuated by exclamations in French. Extensive backmatter provides additional details including, among other things, a description of the continuing connection between the two men, chronological outlines of their lives, a list of French phrases found in the text, a bibliography and a list of relevant historical sites. Kozjan’s illustrations, pen and ink with digital color, reflect the action of the text effectively for the most part, though awkwardly drawn figures, both human and animal, and odd expressions distract in some cases.

Of potential interest as curriculum support, this treatment requires advanced reading skills (or a grown-up) and a basic understanding of the historical context. (Informational picture book. 9-12)

WHO HAS THE BIGGEST BOTTOM?

Cate, Marijke ten Illus. by Cate, Marijke ten Lemniscaat USA (32 pp.) $17.95 | Apr. 1, 2013 978-1-93595-425-5

In this jolly import, spotting the largest bottom, the barest belly, the widest mouth and like superlatives in a loose gathering of children, animals and animate toys preparing to put on a circus will draw young viewers into all sorts of visual funny business.

It’s a messy affair. On the first spread alone, one child hauls in miscellaneous lumber and tools, while another creates party hats and noses for himself and several toys. Still another gives a piglet a sudsy bath near a dog diving into a pot of what looks like tomato soup, and yet another samples an array of perfumes next to a toddler proffering a full, stinking potty to a grimacing monkey. The pairings change and the clutter increases in successive scenes, as the stage goes up, costumes go on, signs (and pigs) get painted, and at last, the solutions to the titular and related questions present themselves (though they were easy enough to identify earlier). Suspended in white space with only pale shadows for background, Cate’s watercolor figures fill but don’t crowd the pages, and they throw themselves into the preparations with infectious smiles and high spirits.

A quick bit of fun for fans of Bob Staake’s Look! A Book!

(2011) and like seek-and-find scrambles. (Picture book. 3-6)

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“Caterer’s plot has sturdy bones…but the likable protagonists’ challenges are too easily overcome, and their supposedly huge mistakes oddly inconsequential.” from the key & the flame

THE KEY & THE FLAME

Caterer, Claire M. McElderry (480 pp.) $16.99 | Apr. 2, 2013 978-1-4424-5741-6

Excessive length dilutes this fantasy adventure.

Holly lives “on a block of identical houses,” in an American town where “[e]veryone bought clothes at the same mall.” Woefully bored, she dreams about “lives she d[oes]n’t lead.” Then her parents pack up the family and take Holly and younger brother Ben to the English village of Hawkesbury, where their rental cottage’s mysterious caretaker/ landlord gives Holly an iron key. Using the key to open a door in a tree, Holly, Ben and local boy Everett venture into an alternate realm resembling the Hawkesbury countryside but stocked with (way too many) fantasy creatures and dialects. In Anglielle—which is vaguely medieval in the vein of so many fantasy novels—Ben’s hand-held video game and asthma inhaler still work, but Holly’s key transforms into a magic wand, and there’s a hostile king and prince. Caterer’s plot has sturdy bones (Ben and Everett are imprisoned in a castle; Holly attempts various rescues), but the likable protagonists’ challenges are too easily overcome, and their supposedly huge mistakes oddly inconsequential. These combine with the tale’s meandering length to create a watery result. Efforts are too drawn out, indistinct and laden with destiny (Holly “knew the Old Tongues, somehow”) to seem quite meaningful. A Sauron-like figure lurks as an overlay for later in the series, never coming into play.

Fine enough as fantasy goes—but there are better. (Fantasy. 8-12)

SPEED

Clement, Nathan Illus. by Clement, Nathan Boyds Mills (32 pp.) $16.95 | Apr. 1, 2013 978-1-59078-937-7 With the same attention to detail as his Drive (2008) and Job Site (2011), Clement brings stock-car racing to life for armchair drivers.

Readers see it all—from the order to start engines to the pit stops and the many mishaps that can happen during a race—and flags help signal much of it. But while all the details are there, the whys are missing—why the pace car, why the pit stops? The race cars follow the pace car for several laps before the green flag starts the race. A collision triggers the yellow caution flag, and the pace car again leads the way. “Race cars hit the pits. Refuel. Jack up. Change tires.” When the green flag is again waved, “It’s pedal to the metal.” A crash and a wave of the red flag stops the race while the track is cleared. The white lastlap flag is quickly followed by the famous checkered flag, ending the race. The final page reveals it’s all been child’s play: A child’s hand extends from the edge and holds the winning car. Brightly 82

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colored cars in the digital illustrations contrast nicely with the gray and black of the track. Distance is indicated by blurriness, with objects in the foreground having sharp, crisp lines. A guide to the flags’ meanings appears before the story.

Fans will race to share this with their favorite racersto-be, though they will need to fill listeners in on all the specific whys and hows. (Picture book. 4-7)

HOUSE OF SECRETS

Columbus, Chris; Vizzini, Ned Illus. by Call, Greg Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins (496 pp.) $17.99 | Apr. 23, 2013 978-0-06-219246-2 Columbus and Vizzini craft a fastmoving, cinematic narrative that packs plenty of punch but may still have trouble measuring up to the competition.

The plot is predictable yet peculiar.

Three kids lose their parents suddenly—and horribly—before being thrust into a series of manic adventures. The action pingpongs wildly from a primeval forest peopled by savage warriors to the high seas, festooned with murderous pirates and hungry sharks, to a medieval-style castle ruled by a vicious queen. The children are cardboard characters at best: Cordelia, the brainy, bookish oldest sister; Brendan, the hyperactive, game- and sport-obsessed 14-year-old brother; 8-year-old Eleanor, spunky and sweet with a learning disability thrown in for spice (and plot potential). Secondary characters are even more sketchily drawn, which suits perfectly in some cases but weakens their impact in others. The text often reads like a script, providing direction rather than description. Some details seem gratuitously gross and/or violent, and the dialogue doesn’t always ring true. Worst of all, how the authors get their heroes out of trouble and back to the real world seems anticlimactic and, even within the fantastic framework of the story, not entirely believable.

Ending with the promise (or threat) of further adventures, this is clearly intended to be the next big thing— whether it fulfills that ambition remains to be seen. (Fantasy.

10-14)

THE MYSTERY OF DARWIN’S FROG

Crump, Marty Illus. by Jenkins, Steve; Rodriguez, Edel Boyds Mills (40 pp.) $16.95 | Apr. 1, 2013 978-1-59078-864-6

In an engaging blend of biology and history, frog scientist Crump tells the story of how we have come to know what we do about one of the world’s most unusual frogs.

The frog was first discovered by Charles Darwin in Chile in 1834 and later named for him. In 1848, a French zoologist found

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that one of Darwin’s specimens was packed full of tadpoles.

Scientists were baffled by this surprise. Was the frog a cannibal or a rare species that gave birth to live young instead of laying eggs? Crump explains how scientists eventually discovered that males of the species hold tadpoles safe in their vocal sacs until the polliwogs metamorphose into froglets. The latest mystery scientists are trying to unravel about Darwin’s frog is the cause of a lethal fungus that may drive the species to extinction. The author also shares her firsthand experiences studying Darwin’s frog in their natural habitat. The eye-catching volume is illustrated with color photographs, detailed artistic renderings of the frog by Jenkins, and ink-and-watercolor portraits of the various human personalities involved by Rodriguez, making its creation as collaborative as science itself.

An attractively designed and informative introduction to a fascinating amphibian full of strange surprises. (glossary, bibliography, websites, index) (Nonfiction. 7-11)

PERIOD 8

Crutcher, Chris Greenwillow/HarperCollins (304 pp.) $17.99 | $9.99 e-book | Apr. 1, 2013 978-0-06-191481-2 978-0-06-219024-6 e-book Suspense, heartbreak, a healthy dose of athletics—this novel has everything that Crutcher’s longtime fans have come to expect, and more.

When distance swimmer Paul “Paulie Bomb” Baum confesses to his girlfriend that he’s cheated on her, he turns to his mentor for advice. During lunch period, Mr. Logsdon—Logs—runs an open classroom where students can freely air their feelings and opinions. Paulie and Hannah’s breakup takes a back seat to the disappearance of straight-A student and Period 8 regular Mary Wells, aka the Virgin Mary.

Meanwhile, semi-nemesis Arney seems a lot more manipulative than Paulie would have expected from the student body president, especially when he worms his way into Hannah’s good graces. With his signature straightforward storytelling, economy of language and credible teen voices, the author stretches into new territory here, exploring the emotional toll being coerced into sex against their wills takes on boys as well as girls. While at times plot elements seem disconnected against a backdrop of a wide array of characters and motivations, there’s a lot here that will appeal to teens, including the way that Logs, nearing retirement, plays a little fast and loose with confidential information.

Fast-paced intrigue keeps the reader hanging on as Paulie pieces together clues to the discomfiting truth behind the strange, shadowy behavior of people he trusted.

(Fiction. 14 & up)

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WILLIAM AND THE LOST SPIRIT

de Benneval, Gwen Translated by Smith, Anne; Smith, Owen Illus. by Bonhomme, Matthieu Graphic Universe (160 pp.) $9.95 paper | $22.95 e-book $30.60 PLB | Apr. 1, 2013 978-1-4677-0807-4 978-1-4677-0979-8 e-book 978-0-7613-8567-7 PLB A sprawling, richly imagined medieval adventure follows a young boy’s quest to find his father’s missing spirit.

Young William’s life has not been simple: His father is presumed dead, his sister is missing, and his mother has remarried a new man with questionable motives. Filled with a pressing belief that his sister and father need his help, he sets off in search of them.

Along the way, he is aided by a cunning troubadour, a strange knight and a helpful goat who harbors a mysterious secret. Traveling faroff lands, William and his entourage encounter strange monsters and seemingly endless challenges, faithfully pressing on in the face of adversity. This journey, however, has an unseen twist, and William learns that the world he’s known—and the people within it— are not easily categorized. This epic, detailed journey moves swiftly, punctuated by largely wordless and often glaringly bloody action scenes. The attention to detail is meticulous, and helpful notes explain some of the more esoteric terms and references sprinkled throughout the narrative. Like many other adventure tales, this examines questions of good and evil, but in William’s world, lines aren’t so clearly drawn, leaving for an open-ended conclusion.

An interesting, distinctive adventure for readers tolerant of ambiguity. (notes, discussions) (Graphic fantasy/adventure. 13 & up)

BYE-BYE BABY BROTHER!

Dempsey, Sheena Illus. by Dempsey, Sheena Candlewick (32 pp.) $15.99 | Apr. 23, 2013 978-0-7636-6241-7 What older sister hasn’t wanted to make her baby brother disappear?

Every time Ruby asks her mom if it’s time to play, she’s putting a diaper on Oliver, fixing his lunch or feeding him. Ruby tries reading and dressing up her dog, Rory, but it’s not the same without Mom. Ruby, with Rory at her side, waves her magic wand (a stick) to imagine making the baby disappear; she also imagines hiding him in the cabbages at the supermarket, putting him in a yard sale, and—her best idea—building a rocket and sending him to the moon. Best of all is when Mom joins in the space adventure. While many versions of this familiar storyline are available, it’s Dempsey’s charming watercolor-and-pen illustrations that set this apart. The soft, pale hues against white backgrounds create tender scenes

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in a style that blends the wispy touch of Charlotte Voake and the sensibility of Jan Ormerod. Details add dashes of humor, delineate emotions and imbue Rory with personality (his doggie comments are fun). Each fantasy is illustrated with a full-page depiction of the deed in an appropriate style—a sign affixed to a tree for the yard sale and space-age typeface to narrate the trip to the moon.

A sure-fire hit; what Oliver would like to do with his big sister should be next. (Picture book. 4-7)

BINK & GOLLIE Best Friends Forever

DiCamillo, Kate; McGhee, Alison Illus. by Fucile, Tony Candlewick (96 pp.) $15.99 | Apr. 23, 2013 978-0-7636-3497-1 Series: Bink & Gollie, 3 Fans of Bink and Gollie will be pleased to welcome them back in three more humorous linked adventures that, as in their earlier appearances, play off their differences but ultimately affirm their mutual affection.

First, Gollie has dreams of grandeur that don’t impress Bink a bit—and don’t quite work out as she hopes. Next, Bink succumbs to the siren song of an advertisement for an unusual device that promises to make her grow. It succeeds, after a fashion, but doesn’t actually change the status quo. Finally, the two girls seek fame and glory through (relatively) traditional means but wind up deciding to use a different measure of success when their plans don’t pan out.

At the end, of course, they discover what readers already know: Friendship is the best prize of all. Fucile’s digital artwork extends both the humor and the broad appeal. With wide-eyed, smiling characters, crisp black outlines and exaggerated details, they’re reminiscent of (really good) old-fashioned Saturday-morning cartoons. They also offer lots of entertaining elements to linger over, including visual references to earlier exploits, clever use of color to keep the focus clearly on the two main characters and sly jokes to supplement the amusing wordplay.

There may be no new ground broken, but there is still another bumper crop of fun to be had with these two BFFs. (Early reader. 6-8)

A FARMER’S LIFE FOR ME

Dobbins, Jan Illus. by Huliska-Beith, Laura Barefoot (24 pp.) $16.99 | $6.99 paper | Apr. 1, 2013 978-1-84686-790-3 978-1-84686-939-6 paper

horses are thirsty; have they got enough? / Turn on the hosepipe.

Whoosh! Now turn it off. / 1,2,3, it’s a farmer’s life for me.” From milking cows to gathering eggs, cherry picking, and tending to pigs, sheep and horses, parents and children cheerily do the work and embrace it with a “1,2,3, it’s a farmer’s life for me.”

Young and old work side by side to mow and rake the hay or feed the hungry lambs. Inside the farmhouse, baking a cake and cutting it into eight slices makes a pleasant afternoon break.

Cartoonish art in earthy and summery greens are rendered in gouache and acrylic that is then crafted through digital collage.

The art creates an animated atmosphere for this elated group of singing family farmers. Backmatter provides a more informative view on the products resulting from a working farm. An enclosed CD (not heard) presents the text as a song performed by the Flannery Brothers; the written music is also included.

An idealized view of farm life; for a more artistic approach, see Nancy Tafuri’s This Is the Farmer (1994) or Elizabeth Spurr’s Farm Life, illustrated by Steve Björkman (2003). (Picture book. 3-5)

THE HIGHWAY RAT

Donaldson, Julia Illus. by Scheffler, Axel Levine/Scholastic (32 pp.) $16.99 | Apr. 1, 2012 978-0-545-47758-1 With a tale that shares more ground with tales of Robin Hood and the Three Billy Goats Gruff than its inspiration, Alfred Noyes’ “The Highwayman,” Donaldson and Scheffler deliver a lot of laughs.

With a rhyming cadence evoking the hoofbeat pattern of Noyes’ rhythmic verse, Donaldson introduces an anthropomorphic, thieving rat on horseback who steals food from all he encounters. He wants sweets but still takes clover from a passing rabbit, nuts from a squirrel and even a leaf from a line of ants.

He grows fat while they starve, until a duck comes along. The rat threatens to eat her since she carries no food, but taking a cue from the Billy Goats Gruff, she sends him in search of her sister, who supposedly has a hoard of “biscuits and buns aplenty” hidden in a cave. Led there, he calls into the cave, mistaking the echo as the sister’s response with a list of goodies. When he goes to find the treats, the crafty duck channels Robin Hood to steal back his saddlebags of food for the other animals, leaving the rat to wander blindly through the dark cave. Throughout, humorous illustrations obscure any sense of danger in the story, instead provoking pleasure. In an ending that matches the entire book’s comic tone, the rat secures a job cleaning a bakery, leaving the others free of his thieving ways.

A treat. (Picture book. 3-7)

A romantic view of the working life of a busy farm is conveyed in a series of irregularly metered three-line rhyming verses followed by a jaunty refrain.

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“The gorgeous European barnyard is all ocher and sienna, with gray-green shadows, old turrets and tiles highlighting the fiery red wattles of the birds.” from the chickens build a wall

TRUE

Duff, Hilary; Allen, Elise Simon & Schuster (304 pp.) $17.99 | Apr. 16, 2013 978-1-4424-0857-9 Series: Elixir, 3 If someone’s your true love, just stay devoted while he slams you into the wall and crushes your best friend’s hands until she passes out.

Clea and Sage are soul mates forever’n’ever—literally: They reincarnate as lovers lifetime after lifetime. When Sage’s body recently died, his soul leaped into the newly dead body of friend Nico and reanimated it.

However, bodies can reject a new soul just as in organ transplantation (!), and Sage-in-Nico’s-body descends into “[m]adness and violence.” Is part of Nico’s soul still there, restless? Clea, Ben and Rayna travel to a charlatan’s clinic that might nonetheless hold information about “soul rejection.” Sage is portrayed as a tragic hero; Clea and Duff define love as unquestioningly sitting bedside with one’s lover even if he might awaken and kill you. Differing from the series opener (Elixir, 2010), this prose is plainspoken, with contemporary references (“a body that makes Ryan Gosling look like pre-diet Jonah Hill”) and vernacular (“so gross I can’t even deal”), but the very metaphysics are purple. Obviously it’s Sage’s soul operating Nico’s body because “[t]he eyes really are the windows to the soul,” and this live boy has brown eyes (like Sage, unlike Nico). Can a New-Age crystal ceremony permanently break the pattern of Ben’s betrayal and Clea’s bloody murder?

Danger romance at its most digestible, ready to be gobbled and forgotten. (Paranormal romance. 14 & up)

THE CHICKENS BUILD A WALL

Dumont, Jean-François Illus. by Dumont, Jean-François Eerdmans (33 pp.) $16.00 | Apr. 1, 2013 978-0-8028-5422-3

A bunch of deluded clucks build a protective wall that is anything but.

The barnyard is going about its usual business when a hedgehog waddles in. The resident animals are intrigued and edge close, whereupon the hedgehog curls into a defensive ball, causing the rat to refer to it as “this chestnut with paws.”

Though it has disappeared by the next morning, the rooster— a self-appointed pooh-bah, like all roosters—decides “to take control of a barnyard full of hens who hadn’t been paying much attention to him.” He commands that a wall be built against the prickly invaders, a wall so high even birds couldn’t fly over it. So they labor and labor, building a wall of stupendous height, only to find that the hedgehog has been sleeping under the hay, inside the wall, for the winter. In all too fast a wrap-up, the chickens and hedgehog become fast friends. But if the friendship seems |

too precipitous, maybe a bigger lesson is in the offing here: Walls don’t work, from prisoner-of-war camps to national borders. The gorgeous European barnyard is all ocher and sienna, with gray-green shadows, old turrets and tiles highlighting the fiery red wattles of the birds.

A beautiful picture book, with an unexpected, yet profound, something to take away. (Picture book. 4-8)

WHEN YOU WANDER A Search-and-Rescue Dog Story Engle, Margarita Illus. by Morgan, Mary Henry Holt (32 pp.) $16.99 | Apr. 30, 2013 978-0-8050-9312-4

A charismatic golden retriever narrates this earnest story about finding a toddler who wanders away into the woods.

The unnamed dog is newly qualified as a search-and-rescue dog, along with his female handler. As the story opens, the dog is tracking the missing child by sniffing objects and locations where the boy has been. The child is shown in the dog’s thought bubbles engaging in the activities that led to the various scents.

At first, the dog just describes the boy’s activities, but as darkness falls, the dog urges the child to find a tree to hug and stay in one place till the dog can find him. The story’s text flows in poetic fashion, with evocative descriptions such as “squishy snail-slime mud” and “silvery singsong bell” and lyrical, reassuring phrases from the compassionate rescue dog. Despite the potentially scary subject of being lost in the woods at night, the story’s tone projects a sense of brave leadership from the dog, resourcefulness from the child and cozy security when the little boy is returned to his parents. Both dog and boy are endearing in the charming watercolor-and-pencil illustrations.

A sensible safety lesson and a satisfying story. (afterword) (Picture book. 3-8)

RABBIT AND THE NOT-SOBIG-BAD WOLF

Escoffier, Michaël Translated by Maccarone, Grace Illus. by Di Giacomo, Kris Holiday House (32 pp.) $16.95 | Apr. 15, 2013 978-0-8234-2813-7

An unseen narrator slyly frightens a rabbit by describing the not-very-wolflike characteristics of an approaching wolf.

Readers peer across a tabletop at a rabbit cowering behind the other side. “Tell me, Rabbit. Do you know the Not-SoBig-Bad Wolf?” asks the narrator, who seems positioned in the same place as readers. Ever silent, Rabbit draws a Big Bad Wolf

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“A natural for fans of Jon Klassen’s terse creature capers.” from brief thief

on a wall-mounted blackboard while the narrator urges corrections: Not-So-Big-Bad Wolf has smaller ears, smaller nose, smaller teeth and longer hair than a Big Bad. Rabbit draws each change, while the rubbed-out chalk lines remain nicely visible too. Suddenly, “here it comes!” The chalk likeness appears decidedly un-lupine at this point, yet the rabbit flees in terror.

Wolf approaches from the left of the page, showing only claws; Rabbit bounds to the right, diving behind a ball—“Not there.

The wolf can see your ears”—and then a pile of books—“Not there. The wolf can see your tail.” The “wolf,” when it appears, is pretty benign, and the recently screaming-and-running rabbit reverts to expressionlessness. Escoffier’s story demonstrates that things may be less frightening than they seem; however, edginess seeps in through Di Giacomo’s rough scribble-style lines on rustic, pulpy paper, blank backgrounds that spotlight the chase, the wolf-suited (Max-like) child’s grasp on the rabbit’s ears, and some excremental evidence (recurring on the endpapers) of the rabbit’s real fear.

In offering three distinct viewpoints, this curious piece makes a splendid conversation-starter. (Picture book. 3-6)

BRIEF THIEF

Escoffier, Michaël Illus. by Di Giacomo, Kris; Trans. by Di Giacomo, Kris Enchanted Lion Books (32 pp.) $16.95 | Apr. 12, 2013 978-1-59270-131-5 A sparely told French knee-slapper features a chameleon, a rabbit and a pair of repurposed undies.

Twice repurposed, as it turns out. Having enjoyed his customary breakfast fly, green Leon “has to go poo”—and discovers too late that there’s no paper. Happily, he finds a pair of red patterned underwear “full of holes,” hanging from a twig. But hardly has he chucked the soiled briefs into a bush than an insistent little voice drives him to repent of the theft, scrub the rag clean and hang it up again. “Since when are we allowed to touch other people’s things? What do they teach you in school, anyway?” That voice of conscience, as it turns out, actually belongs to an annoyed rabbit in cape and costume. He emerges from hiding to reclaim the garment, tug it over his (wait for it) ears (the “holes” turn out to be eyeholes) and fly off. The text, printed in different colors and typefaces depending on the speaker, is placed over minimally detailed outdoor scenes created with splatters and thin layers of paint, featuring skinnylimbed figures with beady, expressive eyes.

A natural for fans of Jon Klassen’s terse creature capers.

(Picture book. 5-8)

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LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL!

Eulate, Ana Illus. by Uyá, Nívola Cuento de Luz (28 pp.) $16.95 | Apr. 1, 2013 978-84-15619-26-0

Fantasy and social responsibility mix uneasily in this optimistic translation from Spain.

Violet is a Kenyan girl who goes to bed hungry because her region doesn’t have “much food.” A winged giraffe suddenly shows up and flies her all over Africa, but at first, it is an Africa without people—just the animals, plains, forests and mountains of most old-fashioned books about the continent. Then the giraffe introduces a new idea. The fantastical animal tells Violet that “the rainbow sometimes loses its colors when it sees that children are no longer smiling.” They should ask people from other countries to help by “collaborating, by working together, sharing their moments of happiness and seeds of love, and by being generous.” At last humans appear in the pictures, and the giraffe unveils her biggest plan: to tickle everyone in Africa!

Now Violet’s laughter turns into drops of water that become a rainbow that transforms the continent, and “everything turned green, filled with light, and filled with life.” Great swaths of color fill the double-page spreads, and the giraffe, with its heartshaped spots, certainly attracts attention. Violet and the other people are realistically, albeit stereotypically, painted. This sugarcoated attempt to imbue young children with a sense of social consciousness is saccharine in the extreme.

High ideals with a mawkish sensibility. (Picture book. 4-7)

DANNY, WHO FELL IN A HOLE

Fagan, Cary Illus. by Pavlovic, Milan Groundwood (120 pp.) $14.95 | $9.95 paper | $9.95 e-book Apr. 9, 2013 978-1-55498-311-7 978-1-55498-312-4 paper 978-1-55498-313-1 e-book

Faced with sudden life changes, a boy blindly rushes into a deserted construction site and falls into a hole.

Danny comes home from school one day to discover that his parents have boxed up all his possessions, given his dog Thwack away and are separating to pursue their artistic dreams.

Understandably infected with a “terrible energy” that sends him pelting down the street, he is too distracted to watch his step.

As a result, he finds himself at the bottom of a steep-walled pit, with no cellphone service and only the contents of his backpack for supplies. Being generally a levelheaded sort (“His parents always said he was practical, as if it were some kind of defect”), he takes inventory, does his homework, turns a garbage bag into a shelter—and, along with thinking his own thoughts, has some

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therapeutic interchanges with a chatty mole and a treacherous snake. Rescued the next day, he emerges to what seems a bright, new world, and though his repentant parents have put everything back the way it was, he lets them know that it’s OK to move on. Despite the talking animals, it’s more Robinson Crusoe than Alice in Wonderland, with comical dialogue and occasional cartoon illustrations lightening the emotional load.

A quirky existential adventure for thoughtful readers.

(Fantasy. 9-11)

SEAGULLS DON’T EAT PICKLES

Farber, E.S. Illus. by Beene, Jason Chronicle (160 pp.) $15.99 | Apr. 16, 2013 978-1-4521-0820-9 Series: Fish Finelli, 1

fairyland; a thrill-seeker ready to sacrifice anything to undo the death of his wife; and a jaded Victorian whose theft of an occult artifact reverberates through past and present: Five separate storylines collide during a solstice blizzard at a remote Gothic ruin of an estate. Continually unveiling new facets, the tale creates a dizzying sensation, perpetually teetering on the brink of revelation only to fall headlong into deeper mystery. No author is better than Fisher at weaving disparate narratives, characters, even genres into an enthralling tapestry, nor at highlighting exactly the right detail to invest the whole with chilling significance. Unfortunately, so much time is spent crafting the pattern and atmosphere of the intersecting threads that readers are left befuddled as to what, precisely—if anything—actually happens over the course of the plot.

Readers will be dazzled, captivated, frustrated and desperate for the next installment. (Science fiction/fantasy. 12-18)

FEARLESS

Combine the curiosity of three boys, the discovery of a map of an island and the legend of Captain Kidd’s buried treasure and what do you get? A funny gem of a middle-grade mystery, the first of a series.

Fish Finelli (his real name is Norman, but the first word he said was “Fish”) and his pals T.J., who’s constantly eating all kinds of candy, and Roger, who’s always equipped with a pun, set out to find the rumored Captain Kidd’s long-lost loot. Obstacles galore—piles of goose poop, a suspicious librarian and a bet with a bully, among others—guarantee comic scenes. The dialogue is contemporary, and the chapter headings add clever flair: “The Librarian’s Got the Booty?!” Small sidebars scattered throughout provide context and background facts, informing readers just who was Nikola Tesla (the namesake of Fish’s goldfish) and the history of old tech like walkie-talkies and new(ish) tech like microwave ovens. The boys enjoy a remarkable degree of freedom, tempered with prominent but natural references to PFDs and the like, giving readers some jolly, vicarious thrills.

It’s rollicking fun and a welcome new series, a great boys’ counterpart to such stellar girls’ series as Ivy + Bean.

(Mystery. 8-12)

OBSIDIAN MIRROR

Fisher, Catherine Dial (384 pp.) $17.99 | Apr. 23, 2013 978-0-8037-3969-7

Classic fantasy, horror and literary tropes mingle in uneasy tension in this ambitious, maddening, fascinating opener to a projected trilogy.

A schoolboy hellbent on avenging his father’s death; an escaped psychiatric patient (or, perhaps, a time-traveling revolutionary sent back to prevent a dystopian future); a changeling ensorcelled in a frozen |

Funke, Cornelia Translated by Latsch, Oliver Little, Brown (432 pp.) $19.99 | Apr. 2, 2012 978-0-316-05610-6 Series: Mirrorworld, 2 With time running out, aptly named treasure hunter Jacob Reckless returns to Mirrorworld, desperately seeking a way to prevent his own death in this riveting sequel to Reckless (2010).

To save his brother’s life, Jacob cut a deal with the Red Fairy, who cursed him by embedding a deadly moth in his chest, designed to destroy him within the year. Since then, Jacob has exhausted every remedy in Mirrorworld, including the AllHealing Apple, the Well of Eternal Youth and a northern Djinn’s blood. As the reality of his impending death sinks in, Jacob remembers Guismond the Witch Slayer’s crossbow, which, if shot into the heart, can kill many or heal one. With Fox, his devoted, shape-shifting female companion, Jacob embarks on what could be his final hunt through Mirrorworld, with Nerron, a ruthless Goyl treasure hunter in pursuit. As he tries to outmaneuver Nerron and outwit death, introspective Jacob gradually realizes he fears losing Fox more than his life, adding a poignant love note to the overall tone of despair. Adroitly building on layers of European fairy tale, Funke’s original, rapid-fire narrative fearlessly transports Jacob and a bevy of ominous, multifaceted fantastical characters through a dark, decaying landscape in which death waits and honor is rare.

Provocative, harrowing, engrossing. (map) (Fantasy. 12 & up)

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STRANGELETS

the houses. Digital illustrations may make some children think of Pixar’s Cars films, particularly in scenes where Car’s facial expressions are strongest and most humorous—as when the birds make their mess.

An inviting, accessible title for new readers. (Early reader. 5-7)

Gagnon, Michelle Soho Teen (288 pp.) $17.99 | Apr. 9, 2013 978-1-61695-137-5 Three very different teens on the edge of death get firsthand experience of the Many-Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics.

Sophie is dying of lymphoma in a California hospice. Declan is about to be shot as a thief in Galway City. Anat is trapped in a tunnel collapse in the Gaza Strip....The next moment they awaken in a closed ward of what appears to be a hospital. Meeting up with Swiss Nico, Zain from India and Yosh from Japan, none trusts the others, but they have to work together since they’ve no food. When they do manage an escape, the world they find outside is a nightmare. It seems vaguely familiar to Nico, whose father works as a physicist on Long Island, but the buildings are weathered, and mature trees crack the pavements. The place is deserted except for violent, frightening beasts. Finding out what happened takes a back seat to survival. Gagnon’s second for teens (Don’t Turn Around, 2012) riffs on the notion that a supercollider will spawn mini–black holes and plays fast and loose with the laws of physics, but readers won’t mind. Interesting characters, some of whom have dangerous secrets, act and react like real teens. The slow reveal of what’s going on is as tantalizing as the action is pulse-pounding.

Takes some suspension of disbelief (especially for science lovers) but a fun ride. (Science fiction. 14 & up)

CAR GOES FAR

Garland, Michael Illus. by Garland, Michael Holiday House (32 pp.) $14.95 | Apr. 1, 2013 978-0-8234-2598-3 Series: I Like to Read Garland’s little red car invites children along for a ride to reading success.

Opening endpapers show an aerial view of a Levittown-like setting with a single driveway occupied by a car. The title page zooms in on this home, with the car facing the reader, its headlights like eyes and its fender a subtle smile. That expression is amplified in the closer view on the first page of the book proper, with the simple text “Car looks good.” But when the car ventures out to “go far,” it ends up becoming quite a mess after mud, smoke, and birds sully its shiny, red body. “Car does not look good now,” reads the controlled text. “Car is sad.” Happily, Car is also resourceful and heads off to a carwash. Simple lines— “Car gets wet. Splash, splash. / Car gets suds. // Car gets a rub.

Mmmmmmm”—see it getting clean again. Closing endpapers picture the car driving back through the suburban neighborhood again, its bright yellow headlights echoing the lights in 88

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ZEBRA FOREST

Gewirtz, Adina Rishe Candlewick (208 pp.) $15.99 | Apr. 9, 2013 978-0-7636-6041-3 Gewirtz’s emotionally intense debut novel about the complications of families offers a perceptive heroine and poetic, impressive prose.

In the summer of 1980, 11-year-old Annie and her 9-year-old brother Rew live with their grandmother at the edge of the birch and oak forest they’ve nicknamed “the Zebra,” for its dark and light stripes. Annie shops and pays bills as Gran deteriorates bit by bit, retreating into depression and silence.

When the father Annie and Rew believe dead shows up at the door, on the run after a breakout at the nearby state prison, anger, fear and longing envelop the small family. The graceful narrative is articulate and poignant, exploring through Annie’s eyes the complex grief of her family’s story—the mother who abandoned them, the grandfather who died of a broken heart when his son went to prison, the grandmother who takes the children into her own kind of anonymous witness protection program. A few unlikely elements—the nearly complete isolation of the household for weeks, the awkward expository dialogue between a store clerk and a town resident, Annie’s visits to the prison on her own—fade before the strength of the characters and the heartfelt punch of the story.

Odd, imperfect and impressive nevertheless, this will appeal to readers who, like Annie and Rew, are a bit beyond their years. (Historical fiction. 10-13)

TEACHER’S PEST

Gilman, Charles Illus. by Smith, Eugene Quirk Books (176 pp.) $13.99 | $9.99 e-book | May 7, 2013 978-1-59474-614-7 978-1-59474-622-2 e-book Series: Tales From Lovecraft Middle School, 3 Insectile legions led by demons from dimensions beyond threaten poor beleaguered Lovecraft Middle School.

When last readers left seventh-grader Robert Arthur, he had just saved the students of LMS (and by extension, the world) for a second time from the encroachments of Cthulhuian otherness

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“Harper kicks off another graphic-novel series for the early-reader audience with a tale happily devoid of the potty humor and didacticism that mark her Wedgieman titles.” from the ball

and the insanity of crazed physicist Crawford Tillinghast. Unfortunately, Robert had also helped one of Tillinghast’s minions get elected student body president. Now that president, Howard Mergler, seems to have a secret plan to further his master’s scheme to take over first the school and then our whole dimension. Only Robert, his two-headed rat, his erstwhile bully Glenn and ghost girl Karina stand in the way. Glenn’s acting weird (even for him), and Robert fears his mind may not be his own. Is the world doomed? Gilman’s third Lovecraft Middle School title continues the unearthly adventures of Robert and his friends as they defend the school from extradimensional attack. The motion-activated cover of Howard morphing into a giant fly will attract attention, and the often funny (and not-too-scary), easyon-the-brain text will keep readers reading. It is more advisable with this volume than the first sequel, The Slither Sisters (2012), that readers start with the first, but it’s still not vital.

Good, gross and ghoulish. Thankfully Substitute Creature’s only a summer away. (Humorous horror. 9-12)

CALL ME OKLAHOMA!

Glassman, Miriam Holiday House (128 pp.) $16.95 | Apr. 1, 2013 978-0-8234-2742-0

Nine-year-old Paige Turner is tired of being timid—but she needs a new name to go with her new identity.

The beginning of fourth grade seems like the ideal time to change. Paige is determined to be brave this year: do flips on the high bar at recess, stand up to the class bully, Viveca Frye, and maybe, just maybe, even eat cauliflower. The name Oklahoma feels perfect for her new, gutsy personality. After all, at the end of the musical Oklahoma! everyone comes out on stage and yells, “Yee-haw!” A person who yells yee-haw is precisely who Paige wants to be. But changing names is not easy. And neither, as Paige learns, is fourth grade. Questions of popularity and loyalty test her friendships, and the annual talent show has her terrified. But with the help of an inspired teacher and a trusty piano on which to bang and clang out her frustrations, Paige realizes that she doesn’t need to change herself entirely. She can keep a little Oklahoma inside, just in case. Glassman’s spot illustrations have the same energy as her swift prose; Paige’s symbolic lassos are swinging all over the pages.

Though it’s not quite as layered as some other beginning chapter books, young readers who are searching for their own selves will certainly appreciate this new heroine.

(Fiction. 7-10)

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MARY WALKER WEARS THE PANTS

Harness, Cheryl Illus. by Molinari, Carlo Whitman (32 pp.) $16.99 | Apr. 1, 2013 978-0-8075-4990-2

Pants: Women were not supposed to wear them.

Mary Walker not only got her medical degree in 1855, but found it much easier to do her work dressed smartly in men’s trousers and tailored jacket. She was not accepted in the Union Army at first, but as an unpaid hospital volunteer, she tended the Civil War sick and wounded in Washington, D.C., and field hospitals. She was finally commissioned in late 1863, then captured and imprisoned by the Confederates. She was exchanged for a Confederate officer, and in 1866, she was given the Medal of Honor, the first and only woman to receive it. Harness tries valiantly to work this complicated story into one comprehensible for the early grades, but it makes for some difficult phrasing.

Calling her, as some did, a “pesky camp follower” has very negative implications that adults, at least, will get. “Many Americans, especially in the South, firmly believed that enslaving people from Africa was a normal thing to do,” is an awkward encapsulation of the reason for the Civil War. Molinari’s images are richly colored and drawn in an old-fashioned but very compatible style and do a lot toward fleshing out the text.

Despite awkwardness, this is a welcome window into an important American life. (Picture book/biography. 7-9)

THE BALL

Harper, Charise Mericle Illus. by Harper, Charise Mericle Knopf (48 pp.) $4.99 | $4.99 e-book | $12.99 PLB May 14, 2013 978-0-307-97707-6 978-0-307-97709-0 e-book 978-0-307-97708-3 PLB Series: Bean Dog and Nugget, 1 Bean Dog and Nugget are ready for action!

Bean Dog, a pink bean, or perhaps a hot dog, with stick arms and plaid shorts, has a new ball. It’s shiny and perfect and special to him. He’s having the best day playing with his ball when he sees Nugget, a pink circle with stick arms, a bow and a skirt. She thinks his ball is great, but he won’t let her play with it. She sets off whistling, and he thinks better of his selfishness, tossing it and telling her to think fast. The ball bounces off her roundness and vanishes…into the spooky bushes. How can they get Bean Dog’s ball back? Throw snowballs at it? Donuts?

Monkeys? Muffins? No, their shoes! Now their shoes are stuck too. This calls for some deep thinking and a plan: Superdog and Ninja Nugget attack the bushes with garden implements. They get their stuff back: Yeah! After a game and some cake, it really

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“While the wacky comedy and witty wordplay is broken up by emotional growth and romantic story arcs, laughter takes precedence.” from the hero’s guide to storming the castle

THE HERO’S GUIDE TO STORMING THE CASTLE

is the best day! Harper kicks off another graphic-novel series for the early-reader audience with a tale happily devoid of the potty humor and didacticism that mark her Wedgieman titles. The simplicity of the illustrations and the text will draw in young readers, who will identify with the enthusiasm and silliness of these two-color, stick-and-bean characters.

Amiable goofiness to the nth degree—a winner. (Graphic early reader. 5-7)

THE ROSE THRONE

Harrison, Mette Ivie Egmont USA (400 pp.) $16.99 | May 14, 2013 978-1-60684-365-9

A tale of two princesses and a fair amount of magic.

Ailsbet is a princess of Rurik, and Marlissa—Issa—is a princess of Weirland, two island kingdoms not quite at war with each other. Issa is strong in neweyr, women’s magic of the Earth and growing things; Ailsbet, who thought herself unweyr, without magic, turns out to be strong in taweyr, men’s magic of blood, death and war. Taweyr in a woman makes her ekhono—tainted—and thus considered worthy of burning by Ailsbet’s father, King Haikor, who rules capriciously and with the power of his own taweyr. However, he betroths her to Lord Umber of Weirland, and Ailsbet’s younger brother to Issa, as the king hopes to combine both kingdoms under his own iron rule. For most of the book, the two princesses circle around each other; after 400 pages, there is a stopping point but no resolution. There’s a certain amount of murderous violence and a small amount of kissing, both oddly passionless. What passion there is comes in Ailsbet’s love for her flute and the making of music, which is delineated beautifully and boldly, as is the overwhelming response Ailsbet has to her taweyr in a hunt in which she takes down a stag. Talk about duty and honor, about laying aside one’s feelings for the good of the kingdom and about not knowing one’s self or one’s companions dominates, though.

It ends with one princess in exile and the other separated from her true love; whether there’s a sequel to wrap up the dangling plotlines is unclear. Also unclear is whether readers will want it. (Fantasy. 11-15)

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Healy, Christopher Walden Pond Press/HarperCollins (496 pp.) $16.99 | $9.99 e-book | Apr. 30, 2013 978-0-06-211845-5 978-0-06-211847-9 e-book Series: League of Princes, 2 The princes Charming reunite for another slapstick, kingdom-saving quest.

Prince Liam successfully avoided Sleeping Beauty during The Hero’s Guide to Saving Your Kingdom (2012), but now Briar Rose has kidnapped him. Prince Frederic reconvenes the League of Princes (who weren’t doing anything important anyway) to rescue Liam and break up his royal wedding. Before they can rescue him though, Liam discovers the dark truth behind his first heroic act, causing a crisis of faith and shaking his identity. Additionally, Liam finds evidence that Briar has ambitions even more evil than forcing him to marry her. When the League’s rescue attempt goes terribly and hilariously awry, Briar gains the upper hand and manipulates the princes into working for her. She tasks them with recovering a critical artifact from the 11-year-old Bandit King and his new, nigh-impenetrable castle, which also happens to be hosting a brutal warlord as a guest. On top of that, they have to find a way to double-cross Briar and thwart her plots. For their elaborate plan, the princes must recruit old friends and new ones, forming a ragtag band of varying competence levels. While the wacky comedy and witty wordplay is broken up by emotional growth and romantic story arcs, laughter takes precedence. The ending teases readers with hints of the next installment.

Funny and full of heart. (Fantasy. 8 & up)

NINE DAYS

Hiatt, Fred Delacorte (256 pp.) $17.99 | $10.99 e-book | $20.99 PLB Apr. 9, 2013 978-0-385-74273-3 978-0-307-97727-4 e-book 978-0-375-99073-1 PLB Human rights abuses in China get all too personal for a couple of American high school students in this appealing thriller.

Tenth-graders Ethan and Ti-Anna gradually become closer friends and partner investigators when Ti-Anna’s father disappears. Known for his activism on behalf of Chinese dissidents, he loses contact with his family on a trip to Hong Kong. Ethan and Ti-Anna engineer a trip to Asia to investigate, which ultimately puts the initially retiring Ti-Anna into peril. It is a dangerous journey, full of mysterious threats, that requires them each to trust and support the other. It’s not a romance at all, though there are some overtones of that: Front and center is the

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conundrum of how they will track someone who doesn’t want to be tracked, in a strange city and with the government as their opponent. There’s a nice vibe to the friendship between the two, which is supported by the assurance that all is ultimately well; Ethan states at the beginning that the account he narrates is being written for a judge. Hiatt neatly folds in information and background on 20th-century Chinese history and current events. Few mysteries combine cultural diversity, politics and physical danger with a lighthearted friendship.

This engaging mix will have great appeal to middle school readers in search of adventure; the geopolitical education is a nice bonus. (Thriller. 11-16)

OFFSIDE

Higgins, M.G. Darby Creek (112 pp.) $7.95 paper | $20.95 e-book | $27.93 PLB Apr. 1, 2013 978-1-4677-0720-6 978-1-4677-0960-6 e-book 978-1-4677-0305-5 PLB Series: Counterattack As a soccer player, student and frequent baby sitter, Faith feels beset with

responsibilities.

Higgins’ story, a title in the Counterattack series featuring members from the Fraser High Copperheads soccer team, focuses on junior Faith. Her father’s death a few years previously has profoundly affected Faith’s family, both emotionally and economically. Faith often cares for her three younger siblings during the afternoons and evenings when her mother works late-night shifts as a nurse. Until recently, playing on her school’s soccer team has been a refuge for Faith, but lately she has been feeling increasingly disconnected from her teammates.

When her coach suggests switching her position on the team to playing midfield, it invigorates Faith’s game. Faith also appreciates the additional instruction she receives from her coach during this transition, but this also leads to resentment from Caitlyn, an envious teammate. When Faith secretly develops an inappropriate crush on her coach, Caitlyn takes notice, taunting Faith. Higgins adeptly reveals Faith’s solitude: Isolated from her peers, struggling academically and with weighty family obligations, Faith is bereft of confidants. However, the swift resolution to the escalating troubles between Faith and Caitlyn and the tale’s conclusion leave readers hopeful about Faith’s future.

Higgins’ briskly paced tale, skillfully alternating the drama with the sports, will capture readers’ attention. (Fiction. 12-18)

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GAME ON!

Holm, Jennifer L.; Holm, Matthew Illus. by Holm, Jennifer L.; Holm, Matthew Random House (96 pp.) $6.99 | $12.99 PLB | May 28, 2013 978-0-307-98299-5 978-0-307-98300-8 PLB Series: Squish, 5 School assignments, sleep and even Super Amoeba comics go by the wayside when protozoan protagonist Squish is “infected” by a video game.

Seeing best buddies Pod and Peggy mildly addicted to “Mitosis,” Squish spends birthday money for his own copy and maniacally proceeds to work his way past the game’s dozens of levels through sleepless nights and dazed days. Presented as usual in simply drawn, thick-lined panels with green highlights, the episode makes its point by switching from views of the bleary, unwashed victim to screen after screen after screen (“Uh, are you as bored as me?” the occasionally intrusive narrator interjects) of heavily pixelated cells dividing. These culminate at last in an equally pixelated nightmare and a “GAME OVER.” Fixation likewise. Happily, there’s no permanent harm done, as Squish has an English teacher who slips him a makeup assignment to cover a late book report and a dad so cool that he later accompanies his blobby son in costume to a comics convention that just happens to feature the (unnamed but recognizable) “creators of Babymouse.”

Funny and snarky as ever, with a cautionary but reassuring message that this common malady will, like most childhood colds and fevers, run its course naturally without outside intervention. (science project, drawing page) (Graphic novel. 7-9)

THAT TIME I JOINED THE CIRCUS

Howard, J.J. Point/Scholastic (272 pp.) $17.99 | Apr. 1, 2013 978-0-545-43381-5

After high school senior Lexi’s dad dies, she’s forced to head for Florida, where her long-absent mother might be working for a circus.

Another compelling reason for leaving New York City—besides being evicted from her apartment and kicked out of her private school because she now lacks a parent to sign her in—is that the night of her father’s accident, she slept with her best friend Eli, even though he was dating her other best friend, Bailey. Since Eli didn’t come to her desperately needed rescue after her life started to crumble, she’s pretty certain he’s chosen to stay with Bailey. In Florida, she’s quickly hired by the circus and finds devoted friends among the cast and crew. This makes it easier to ignore the mess her life is now in: no school,

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The Queen of Quirk b y

Carriger, Gail Little, Brown Books for Young Readers (307 pp.) $17.99 Feb 5, 2013 978-0-316-19008-4

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thing; I think that’s just how they perceive the world. It’s accessing that teenage voice that for me makes the book a YA book.”

Carriger’s heroines—whether grown women or teenagers—are a rare amalgam of strength and softness. For example, Sophronia, the 14-year-old protagonist in Etiquette & Espionage, has a modest, gentle side. But she also has plenty of strength, wit and determination. Carriger has consistently managed to craft female characters that have plenty of moxie yet maintain and even celebrate their femininity. “I like Tamora Pierce, who says, ‘I write girls who kick ass,’ ” says Carriger. “And I like to write girls who kick ass, but they tend to do it politely.

I’m a nonviolent person by nature, so I like to write characters that can change the world but don’t necessarily have to do it with guns or knives.

I don’t think that reliance upon a weapon is necessarily a strength; you could argue that, in a lot of cases, it’s a weakness.”

“I want my female characters to be strong because of the strength of their intellect,” she continues, “and to make changes because they’re brilliant. I’m also very concerned about making sure that my women are strong in their friendships. I don’t like books where women have backstabby relationships or where a woman can only accomplish something if she’s completely alone. That’s very much a male hero’s journey.”

Carriger herself is a hero to many. As a result of yielding to the excavation process in her own life, she’s created steampunk/sci-fi/paranormal worlds that delight scores of readers around the globe. “I feel so lucky,” says Carriger. “I know some of my success is skill, but a greater portion of it is luck.

I just wrote the right book at the right time that people fell in love with.”

9 Laura Jenkins is a writer and photojournalist based in her hometown of Austin, Texas.

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j e n k i n s

Gail Carriger is the queen of quirk, if by quirky you mean highly imaginative, boldly authentic and deliciously unconventional. She holds master’s degrees in anthropology and archaeology and, until a few years ago, spent months at a time working as an excavator in places like Italy and Peru.

Carriger is also the New York Times best-selling author of the genre-bending Parasol Protectorate series, books that place the words “steampunk,” “paranormal” and “romance” in the same breath.

Though some may consider her mix of genres peculiar, Carriger sees it as a logical progression that reflects where she’s been. “When you read an author, you’re looking at their loves,” she says. “I write steampunk because for me it’s an ode to the origin of my passion, which is science fiction and fantasy. When I was writing the Parasol Protectorate books, I was hearkening back to those very first seeds of genre fiction,” she says. “I basically took the seeds of created monsters and supernatural entities and made them alive for the Victorians, and then poked my Victorians to see how they would react. For me it was this spiraling wheel within a wheel within a wheel of the genres that I love and the origins of my own genre.”

If necessity is the mother of invention, in Carriger’s case, it was also her inspiration. She began to notice that a lot of contemporary literature stayed close to the boundaries of established genres, and she longed to read things that pushed the envelope.

When Carriger wrote her first adult book, Soulless, in 2009, she remembers feeling “genuinely frustrated.” “I kept thinking, ‘I like this urban fantasy thing, but why is it always contemporary?’ And, ‘I like this steampunk thing, but it doesn’t have to be all about the technology.’ And, ‘Why aren’t they funny? There aren’t enough funny books out there.

I want funny! Why is nobody writing this?’ Finally I was like, ‘Fine. I guess I have to write it.’ ” After authoring five Parasol Protectorate books (all of which were aimed at adults and became successful beyond Carriger’s wildest dreams), she’s now publishing Etiquette & Espionage, the Kirkus-starred first installment in her new young-adult Finishing School series. Most of what Carriger wrote before becoming a published author was aimed at teens, so it was a no-brainer when her publisher asked if she’d be interested in writing for a younger audience.

This year, she’s working on books for both adult and young-adult audiences. “It’s about the voice of the main character,” Carriger explains, “and also her perspective on her world. When you’re writing an adult character, she thinks about the repercussions of her actions, whether or not she takes that into consideration. Teenagers are intrinsically more selfish. I don’t think that’s a bad

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“The authors of Fatty Legs (2010) distill that moving memoir of an Inuit child’s residential school experience into an even more powerful picture book.” from when i was eight

her still-missing mother and unresolved issues with Eli. Moving smoothly between chapters set in Florida and flashbacks to the days before her father’s death, debut author Howard effectively depicts an attractive heroine with a notably sarcastic but nonetheless charming attitude. If things fall apart a bit too fast in the beginning and are resolved a little too facilely at the end, Lexi’s narration is entertaining enough to forgive those minor shortcomings. Since Lexi says her “life has a soundtrack,” each chapter begins with pertinent and pithy lyrics with band attributions.

For any reader who ever has felt like running away to join the circus. (Fiction. 12-18)

POSER

Hughes, Alison Orca (168 pp.) $9.95 paper | Apr. 1, 2013 978-1-4598-0147-9 A 12-year-old boy just won’t be able to hold his head up in his middle school if his friends find out he’s a professional model.

Luke can’t stand it when his mom and his aunt call him “Beauty Boy.” He’s been a successful model since he was literally a baby. Now though, Luke just wants to quit modeling and play hockey like any other red-blooded Canadian boy. His secret identity has made him an adept liar, but when his overbearing agent aunt lands him an important contract, he finds justifying the missing school days a challenge. He invents a disease, prompting the sympathetic vice principal to organize a charity drive in the school, including a hockey game between the students and teachers. His lie compounds, and he still has to cope with existing modeling gigs and juggle friends, enemies and family. If Luke quits his lucrative career, how will the family pay its bills? Finally, Luke’s choices lead to a resolution of the situation. Behind the comedy, Hughes presents a convincing picture of a boy just beginning to assert his own individuality, making choices he knows are risky.

Luke’s first-person patter will hook readers, as will details of Luke’s modeling assignments. If the resolution seems a bit easy, the entertainment value stays high.

Plenty of fun, and substance too. (Fiction. 9-12)

WHEN I WAS EIGHT

Jordan-Fenton, Christy; PokiakFenton, Margaret Illus. by Grimard, Gabrielle Annick Press (32 pp.) $9.95 paper | $21.95 PLB | Apr. 1, 2013 978-1-55451-490-8 978-1-55451-491-5 PLB The authors of Fatty Legs (2010) distill that moving memoir of an Inuit child’s residential school experience into an even more powerful picture book. |

“Brave, clever, and as unyielding” as the sharpening stone for which she’s named, Olemaun convinces her father to send her from their far-north village to the “outsiders’ school.” There, the 8-year-old receives particularly vicious treatment from one of the nuns, who cuts her hair, assigns her endless chores, locks her in a dark basement and gives her ugly red socks that make her the object of other children’s taunts. In her first-person narration, she compares the nun to the Queen in Alice in Wonderland, a story she has heard from her sister and longs to read for herself, subtly reminding readers of the power of literature to help face real life. Grimard portrays this black-cloaked nun with a scowl and a hooked nose, the image of a witch. Her paintings stretch across the gutter and sometimes fill the spreads. Varying perspectives and angles, she brings readers into this unfamiliar world. Opening with a spread showing the child’s home in a vast, frozen landscape, she proceeds to hone in on the painful school details. A final spread shows the triumphant child and her book: “[N]ow I could read.”

Utterly compelling. (Picture book/memoir. 5-9)

THE RULES

Kade, Stacey Disney Hyperion (416 pp.) $17.99 | Apr. 23, 2013 978-1-4231-5328-3 Series: Project Paper Doll, 1 A likable science-fiction romance features strong co-protagonists who know where they come from, but not who they are.

Born in a GenTex lab with human and extraterrestrial DNA, Ariane gives new meaning to “test tube baby.” A lab employee, now her adoptive dad, rescued her from a nightmarish, lab-rat existence, thwarting Dr. Jacobs’ plans to mold her into a designer weapon (her abilities include mind reading and telekinesis). Following strict rules and hiding in plain sight, Ariane’s evaded capture for a decade, but GTX is closer than she realizes. Popular, athletic and good-looking Zane coaxes her into revealing herself, while hiding from her the wounds inflicted by his mother’s abandonment and policechief father’s contempt. Reluctantly drafted by Dr. Jacobs’ granddaughter, Rachel, the plot’s evil catalyst, into her scheme to humiliate Ariane, Zane instead is intrigued and attracted.

Ariane’s long-blocked powers come roaring back when Rachel pushes her buttons. Struggling to unite the disparate strands of her identity, Ariane’s an appealing original who (in a welcome departure from YA orthodoxy) does not have beauty-queen looks of which she’s modestly unaware. She and Zane know precisely where she stands in the appearance hierarchy. Cartoonishly evil, Dr. Jacobs and Rachel are less persuasive.

The traditional cliffhanger ending leaves readers hungry for the next course. (Science fiction. 12 & up)

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“[I]ronically, Death is a more fully realized and human character than his fellow Horsemen ever were.” from breath

AND THE WINNER IS...

Amazing Animal Athletes Kaner, Etta Illus. by Anderson, David Kids Can (32 pp.) $16.95 | Apr. 1, 2013 978-1-55453-904-8

How do the different species stack up in the seven events of the World Ani-

mal Games?

Walrus and Cockatoo are the announcers for the Olympicslike WAG competition, and like their human counterparts, they use wordplay, puns and tongue-in-cheek humor to reach their audience. Four animals compete in each contest, each depicted in four pages. Trading cards around the margins introduce their names, classes, homes, habitats and food (an introductory page lists/defines the habitats and features a large world map with continents and oceans labeled). While some winners will be easy to guess without even knowing the competitors (sprinting), others will be sure to surprise readers. The titular phrase is at the bottom of every other two-page spread, urging readers to turn the page and reveal the winner. The facing page is a look at how humans rate against these animal competitors in the same challenges (not very well). Anderson’s watercolor artwork is a mixed bag. The trading cards include a realistic portrait of each animal, but the center illustration frequently anthropomorphizes the animals and makes them look goofy—faces are not one of Anderson’s strong suits. But the weakness of the illustrations ceases to matter as readers get into the rhythm and suspense of the competition.

Children will be fascinated by some of the animals feats cataloged here and may even be curious to see how well they might do in comparison. (Informational picture book. 4-8)

DAVID KARP The Mastermind Behind Tumblr

Kenney, Karen Latchana Lerner (48 pp.) $19.95 e-book | $26.60 PLB | May 1, 2013 Series: Gateway Biographies 978-1-4677-1286-6 e-book 978-1-4677-1285-9 PLB

Bland, standard-issue profile of a (now) 26-year-old Internet entrepreneur.

Citing only previously published sources, the author retraces Karp’s rocketlike rise from disaffected student and teenage computer nerd to chief architect of Tumblr. Since he hasn’t really done much, aside from leaving school early, spending a few months in Japan and then making a zillion dollars since 2007 with his microblogging platform, the narrative is largely an eye-glazing tally of internships, business associates, awards and dizzying statistical milestones. Kenney neglects to analyze Tumblr’s innovations, online community or general context—or 94

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for that matter, even to explain the origins of “tumblelog,” from which the platform’s name is derived. Her insights into Karp’s character are limited to mentions of idols Steve Jobs (extolled for his “keynotes”) and Willy Wonka and his habit of carrying a paper notebook because “[being] on computers all the time makes me feel gross.” Many of the color photos are space-filler views of city skylines or the outsides of buildings.

Just another fabulously wealthy high school dropout role model. (endnotes, bibliography, index) (Biography. 10-13)

BREATH

Kessler, Jackie Morse Graphia (336 pp.) $8.99 paper | Apr. 16, 2013 978-0-547-97043-1 Series: Riders of the Apocalypse, 4 Death speaks, and Xander Atwood listens in this conclusion to a gripping, if uneven series.

Xander has been accepted to colleges, welcomed a baby brother and finally worked up the courage to ask out Riley Jones. Or has he?

The day after an alcohol-fueled party, Xander wakes up to find Death on his balcony. Xander hates heights, but he leans out to coax Death off the ledge to tell his story. Neither Death nor Xander is a reliable narrator, but Death’s cinematic celebration of human evolution and Xander’s booze-induced memory loss make for a riveting read. Unlike the other self-harming teenage horsemen—a cutter War, anorexic Famine and bullied Pestilence—the Pale Horseman is a deity. He recounts the creation and the evolution of mankind and confesses his loneliness and suicidal impulses. If Death dies, this world might too. Suicide, binge drinking, anorexia and other destructive behaviors are still a focus, and the tidy conclusion mimics an after-school special, but ironically, Death is a more fully realized and human character than his fellow Horsemen ever were.

Death and his riders strive to bring balance, and Kessler (Loss, 2012, etc.) begins to achieve it in this series conclusion. (Fantasy. 14 & up)

ALEX KO From Iowa to Broadway, My Billy Elliot Story

Ko, Alex Harper/HarperCollins (320 pp.) $16.99 | $10.89 e-book | May 1, 2013 978-0-06-223601-2 978-0-06-223606-7 e-book

Broadway lights beckoned bright for a boy from Iowa who leapt into the title role of the long-running Billy Elliot.

In his own words, Ko recounts his longtime love of gymnastics and dance. With the support of a loving family, he was able

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to take part in gymnastics competitions and study ballet. The death of his father was a terrible blow, but Ko used prayer to overcome his sorrow and choreographed a solo dance to honor him. Despite financial difficulties, he found his way to Broadway, where, at 13, he became the first replacement within the original trio of Billys a year into the run. He shared the role with two other boys; it was a difficult one, requiring ballet, singing and acting. The journey was grueling, filled with hours of practice and classes and marked by a serious injury. Readers will gain an insider’s knowledge of a Broadway production and share in the great thrill of Ko’s first Broadway performance. His winning personality, drive and strong faith come through on every page. Kudos to his mother for managing the fine line between good mother and stage mother. Alex is currently studying ballet in New York City with an eye on more star turns in the future.

Black-and-white photographs (not seen) illustrate the text.

An enjoyable and fast-paced read for not only stardreamers, but also the star-stuck. (Memoir. 9-14)

THE AFTER GIRLS

Konen, Leah Merit Press (304 pp.) $17.95 | Apr. 18, 2013 978-1-4405-6108-5

After their best friend takes her own life, recently graduated high school seniors Ella and Sydney are left behind to pick up the pieces and cope with the gnawing guilt that there was something they might have done to prevent Astrid from doing the unthinkable.

While Sydney opts to quell the voice inside with booze and music, Ella is plagued by nightmares and visions she can’t escape.

When she confesses that Astrid has been sending her text messages and phone calls from the grave, Ella’s friends begin to question her sanity. The circumstances surrounding Astrid’s death grow even more mysterious when her cousin Jake comes to town, and it becomes clear that Ella and Sydney didn’t know their friend quite as well as they thought. Teen suicide is hardly new subject matter for young-adult fiction, and this debut fails to really distinguish itself from the rest of the pack. Though the layers of mystery surrounding Ella’s visions of Astrid add intrigue, the relationships among the girls are disappointingly underdeveloped. Konen gives lip service to the depth of the threesome’s friendship, but their connection and underlying love for one another never passes the believability test. Astrid remains an enigma throughout the story, while Sydney and Ella feel more like friends of convenience as opposed to high school besties trying to cope with a tragic loss.

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THE BEATLES WERE FAB (and They Were Funny)

Krull, Kathleen; Brewer, Paul Illus. by Innerst, Stacy Harcourt (40 pp.) $16.99 | May 14, 2013 978-0-547-50991-4

Many adult readers will agree wholeheartedly with the title of this heartfelt paean to the Fab Four, but unfortunately, Krull and Brewer don’t quite manage to offer enough evidence to effectively convey to children the Beatles’ unique appeal and immense contributions to pop culture.

The narrative is straightforward. From their early years in Liverpool through their first big hit, the rapturous response they received in the U.S. and their eventual decision to go their separate ways, the trajectory of the Beatles’ incredible success is clearly plotted. Quirky details suggest that serious research informs the text. Unfortunately some sweeping statements may leave young listeners wondering just why the Beatles were considered “so cool, so funny, so fab.” Innerst’s accomplished acrylic-and-ink illustrations also seem more geared toward nostalgic adults. Exaggerated features and odd perspectives abound. Visual jokes and references enrich the paintings and extend the text, as when the band appears on a roller coaster formed by a guitar case plastered with stickers, but will almost certainly go over the heads of the intended audience.

Parents and (more likely) grandparents who want to introduce children to their favorite band would do better to play a song or two on whatever device is handy—though as Brewer and Krull note, the transformative impact of the Beatles was such that kids may not even recognize the originality of their music. (Informational picture book. 7-9)

ANTON AND THE BATTLE

Könnecke, Ole Illus. by Könnecke, Ole Gecko Press (32 pp.) $18.95 | Mar. 1, 2013 978-1-877579-26-4

Little boys and their (imaginary) toys make for a very real story of rivalry and friendship.

Anton wears a swashbuckling hat with a feather; Luke wears a Viking sort of helmet. The two boys meet in the slightest suggestion of outdoors: a bit of squiggly grass drawn on white space.

Anton announces to Luke: “I’m stronger than you,” to which Luke retorts, “Very funny!”—and so it begins. Anton lifts a stone “this big,” while Luke lifts one “THIS big!” Escalation escalates.

Luke carries a whole piano, so he is stronger and much, much louder. But Anton retaliates with drums. By the time they get to bombs and swinging tigers and lions by the tail, alert children with see that the red and blue outlines of their bigger-louderstronger tools are really floating on the white background of their imaginations. But then, a “big dog” chases both up a tree (children will notice it is actually a cute little puppy), and the

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boys begin to compare how hungry they are and how big a cake they will eat if they ever get down. Which they do, arguing about who is faster all the way home.

Five-year-olds the world over (this was first published in Germany) will recognize the conversations and the friendship in this sweet book. (Picture book. 4-8)

VINE BASKET

La Valley, Josanne Clarion (256 pp.) $16.99 | Apr. 2, 2013 978-0-547-84801-3 In a remote corner of China, a Uyghur girl faces government oppression and family troubles.

Mehrigul’s people live on a land they call East Turkestan, located south of Russia, north of Tibet and east of Pakistan. For centuries, their lives had been defined by the Kunlun Mountains and the Taklamakan Desert as they eked out a living strong in cultural traditions. Now under the control of the Chinese government, they are being forced off their mineralrich land, and girls are sent to work in factories far to the south.

Mehrigul has a gift for weaving baskets—as does her beloved grandfather—and when an American woman spots a purely decorative one she has woven to decorate the market cart and offers to buy more, Mehrigul sees a way to preserve her family farm and continue her schooling. In her debut novel, La Valley paints a memorable picture of this faraway people.

Mehrigul’s efforts to weave baskets that are beautiful rather than functional fill the pages with absorbing detail and poignancy. She prays that her hands “might make beautiful work” and that like the bamboo vine she “must learn to bend but not break.” Her mother’s withdrawal and her father’s alcoholism and gambling are countered by her steadfast determination to maintain her self-worth.

A haunting tale of artistic vision triumphing over adversity. (map, note from Mamatjian Juma of Radio Free Asia, afterword) (Fiction. 8-12)

SACRIFICES

Lackey, Mercedes; Edghill, Rosemary Tor (304 pp.) $21.99 | $10.99 paper | $9.99 e-book Apr. 2, 2013 978-0-7653-2825-0 978-0-7653-1763-6 paper 978-1-4299-9719-5 e-book Series: Shadow Grail, 3 Boarding school students prepare for war, but the enemy may already be among them in this tense teen fantasy, third in the Shadow Grail series.

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Spirit White and her four equally artistically named friends are drifting apart after their victorious battle against the Wild Hunt, but Spirit suspects that the war is not yet over. Breakthrough—a game-development corporation and doomsday cabal—has infiltrated the staff and taken over the nearby town of Radial. Spirit cannot rely on her friends, as they succumb to Breakthrough’s temptations and traps, nor on magic, for she is the only student whose power has not yet manifested.

Relegated to the sidelines, only Spirit makes the connections between Breakthrough’s unsubtle villainy and muddled Arthurian mythology, and between a 1970s tragedy and the rebirth of evil. Spirit just wants to cuddle with her boyfriend, Burke, pass her classes and attend a disaster-free dance, but she will have to defeat Mordred and his reincarnated followers first. Lackey and Edghill tackle teen issues and fantasy tropes with equal skill but delay the resolution until the next book, leaving readers to slog through 300 pages of ill-explained oppression.

Combat classes, propagandistic emails and the disappearance of students create a bleak read more reminiscent of The Hunger Games than Hogwarts. (Fantasy. 12-16)

BULLY.COM

Lawlor, Joe Eerdmans (248 pp.) $8.00 paper | Apr. 1, 2013 978-0-8028-5413-1 After being falsely accused of cyberbullying, a seventh-grade computer whiz must find the culprit.

Jun Li is short, smart and socially invisible. He believes in keeping his head down. He has one friend, his neighbor Chris Pine, a basketball player and the tallest girl in the class.

He attracts attention when images of an eighth-grade classmate, a popular, model-pretty but tough and powerful girl named Kimmie Cole, are posted on the school’s website trumpeting the information that she’s bulimic. Since the pictures were sent from a library workstation and PC-savvy Jun was on the computer near the time of posting, he’s now under suspicion. In a setup that’s hard to buy but works anyway, Principal Hastings gives Jun one week to clear his name and find the real wrongdoer—or face expulsion. Aided by Chris, Jun begins to interview students and teachers. Suddenly, Jun is speaking to lots of people, and much to his surprise, he enjoys making social connections. The puzzle’s solution is well-plotted, and author Lawlor concludes it with the classic gathering of suspects for the big reveal. Secondary characters, unfortunately, are mostly mouthpieces with traits rather than flesh-and-blood individuals.

Despite the tepid characterizations and some stiff dialogue, a clever mystery. And the tag, in which Jun and Chris take on another case, signals more fun to come. (Mystery. 10-14)

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“Lewin, [an] accomplished painter of animals in their natural habitats, gives each a double-page spread and uses pencil and watercolors to showcase them in the shimmering sun of the savanna.” from look!

LOOK!

implausible tale in a colloquial first person, present tense that slips occasionally, allowing readers to feel her grief, wonder, fear and surprise.

Inconsistent voice and implausibility aside, middlegrade readers should respond to this perplexing puzzle and its resourceful heroine. (Mystery. 8-12)

Lewin, Ted Illus. by Lewin, Ted Holiday House (32 pp.) $14.95 | Mar. 1, 2013 978-0-8234-2607-2 Series: I Like to Read With wide-eyed amazement, a boy observes animals on the African savanna.

“Look! An elephant eats.” Two giraffes drink at a water hole.

A solitary warthog snuffles in the dirt. A gorilla peers out from behind stalks. Wild dogs alertly listen. Zebras gallop, and monkeys perch high in a tree. Hippos open their mouths in the water, and a rhino sleeps. Now circle back to the boy as he reads a story to his stuffed animals and goes to sleep with his favorite, an elephant, close by. Lewin, the intrepid world traveler and accomplished painter of animals in their natural habitats, gives each a double-page spread and uses pencil and watercolors to showcase them in the shimmering sun of the savanna. Beginning readers will enjoy each repetition of “look,” the short declarative sentences used for each of the animal activities, and the large font. Adults sharing this title will appreciate the connections made between the text and the pictures.

A satisfying challenge and a fun animal adventure made thrilling by Lewin’s characteristically spectacular use of light. (Early reader. 2-6)

WHEN THE BUTTERFLIES CAME

Little, Kimberley Griffiths Scholastic (336 pp.) $17.99 | $17.99 e-book | Apr. 1, 2013 978-0-545-42513-1 978-0-545-52952-5 e-book The day following her grandmother’s funeral, butterflies begin visiting grieving 12-year-old Tara, who’s swept into a bizarre mystery involving her grandmother, butterflies and a small Pacific island.

Raised in a deteriorating Louisiana plantation house, Tara pretends her life is fine, but her impoverished Southern-belle mother hides from reality, her absent father has remarried, and her older sister is self-absorbed. When her beloved Grammy Claire dies unexpectedly, Tara feels like a “hole is shredding up” her heart. Then the first mysterious butterfly appears, followed by a special-delivery letter Grammy Claire wrote before she died. The letter leads Tara to Grammy’s house, where she finds 10 keys and more letters with cryptic clues urging her to protect the butterflies and trust no one. Progressing from clue to clue, Tara learns Grammy had made an amazing scientific discovery about the butterflies on Chuuk island, putting her life and the existence of the butterflies in peril. Suspense builds as Tara relies on her wits and follows her heart to Chuuk, where she risks all to save Grammy’s butterflies. Plucky Tara tells her |

ALVIN HO Allergic to Babies, Burglars, and Other Bumps in the Night

Look, Lenore Illus. by Pham, LeUyen Schwartz & Wade/Random (192 pp.) $15.99 | $6.99 e-book | $18.99 PLB Apr. 9, 2013 978-0-375-87033-0 978-0-375-98889-9 e-book 978-0-375-97033-7 PLB Series: Alvin Ho, 5

Alvin Ho’s lovable, quirky family is due to increase by one in this fifth installment of the warmly funny series, which again features vibrant, playful black-and-white illustrations by Pham.

Though his mom assures a dubious Alvin that she told him months ago about her pregnancy, his new sibling’s imminent arrival introduces a whole new set of worries for nerve-wracked Alvin. Paramount among them is his misunderstanding that the “simply pathetic” (read: sympathetic) pregnancy his mother suggests he’s experiencing will result in him actually giving birth.

Described in short, dialogue-driven chapters and in keeping with the enjoyably over-the-top tone that has come to define the ongoing story, Alvin’s anxiety (which includes an inability to speak at school) creates a host of situational comedies that the adults in his life must help him resolve. Alvin’s father’s absence due to a business trip is notable in this latest, and it results in Alvin’s leaning more heavily on his older brother, Calvin, whose current interest in Rube Goldberg devices makes for some predictably hilarious solutions to problems. The ending glossary, also a fixture of the series, offers creative definitions of terms as diverse as dim sum and nor’easter.

Alvin’s excitable, first-person narration, replete with his realistic attempts to make sense of what he doesn’t understand, will again infect readers with its goofiness.

(Fiction. 7-10)

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“With realism, humor and honesty, Joanne describes a brave new world of miniskirts and bell bottoms, rock music and psychedelic drugs, feminism and the Pill, anti-war demonstrations and profound political upheaval.” from my beautiful hippie!

MY BEAUTIFUL HIPPIE

Lynch, Janet Nichols Holiday House (192 pp.) $16.95 | Apr. 1, 2013 978-0-8234-2603-4

A sheltered 15-year-old growing up in San Francisco becomes part of the 1967 Summer of Love when she falls for a freespirited hippie who changes her life.

An aspiring pianist from a conservative family, Joanne’s attracted to the “hippies, freaks, heads, beautiful people, [and] flower children” who crowd the Haight District. Her mother’s the perfect hostess, her father’s wary of hippies, her older sister’s quitting Berkeley to support her graduate-student husband, and her mindless brother can’t wait to join the Marines and “blast away Commie gooks” in Vietnam. On the fringe of the in crowd, Joanne and her best friend Rena wonder what it’s like to smoke pot and live in New York City. When she meets Martin, a gorgeous hippie whose vagabond life contrasts sharply with her own, Joanne keeps their casual, friendly relationship secret while he gently guides her through the counterculture of drugs, rock and war protests. As society shifts seismically, Joanne must choose between Martin’s fluid lifestyle and holding onto her family and her dreams. With realism, humor and honesty, Joanne describes a brave new world of miniskirts and bell bottoms, rock music and psychedelic drugs, feminism and the Pill, anti-war demonstrations and profound political upheaval.

First-rate coming-of-age story with spot-on late-1960s period detail. (Fiction. 15 & up)

BONES NEVER LIE How Forensics Helps Solve History’s Mysteries

MacLeod, Elizabeth Annick Press (160 pp.) $24.95 | $14.95 paper | Apr. 1, 2013 978-1-55451-483-0 978-1-55451-482-3 paper Was Napoleon poisoned? Did King Rama VIII shoot himself? And just whose bones were found in the Temple prison? Only the bones know.

MacLeod provides here a neat introduction to the art and science of forensics, which examines the physical evidence of a death scene through DNA analysis, fingerprinting, bone analysis, autopsies, blood tests, X-rays and a slew of other high-tech methods. She examines seven particular cases in which the verdict had long been in dispute: the deaths of the Mayan royal family, Napoleon, the Man in the Iron Mask, King Rama VIII of Thailand, Grand Duchess Anastasia, King Tut and MarieAntoinette’s son. Each episode is a taut short story, complete with historical context, conjectures, and plenty of background information and colorful minutiae (“Anastasia always had lots of 98

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energy, despite her painful bunions”). The canny unraveling of the evidence reveals the thought process of each forensic team.

It will come as a shock to many that what they thought they knew about the deaths of these characters has been overthrown by recent forensic discoveries. In real life, forensics can be slow and tedious, but MacLeod invests these high-profile deaths with considerable vim and drama. A good selection of staged and archival photographs and artwork accompany the stories.

A fully fleshed and crisply told story of forensics at its romantic best. (glossary, sources, further reading, index) (Nonfiction. 10-12)

THE STONE DEMON

Mahoney, Karen Flux (336 pp.) $9.99 paper | Apr. 8, 2013 978-0-7387-3340-1 Series: Iron Witch, 3

“And then there’s Demian. He may be a demon—the king of the demons—but at least he’s true to his nature.”

Donna Underwood’s final journal entry indicates a sneaking respect for the enemy she faces in the exciting finish of the Iron Witch trilogy. Donna starts out in London. She doesn’t stay there long: The Demon King is on the move to remake the universe, and it’s her job to stop him by questing for the ingredients needed to produce the Philosopher’s Stone. Donna, her wisenheimer friend Navin and the half-fey Xan stand out as three-dimensional characters; others mostly exist to advance the complicated plot. Straighttalking Donna is largely on her own for this adventure, with Xan and comic-relief Navin working more or less together as a support team. In a poignant subplot, would-be boyfriend Xan pursues magic that will restore his partially remembered ability to fly.

Nonstop action, cliffhangers and constantly building tension will keep readers engaged in the story. The climax is rousing, and the resolution, while bittersweet, will satisfy fans of the series. Wellintegrated back story should enable readers new to the series to enjoy the story, but they would be better off beginning with the first book.

This engrossing series conclusion does justice to its kick-ass heroine, her funny sidekick and a vulnerable romantic interest. (Urban fantasy. 13-16)

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HE LOVES ME, HE LOVES ME NOT

Mayhall, Robin Illus. by Cella, Kristen Graphic Universe (128 pp.) $9.95 paper | $21.95 e-book | $29.27 PLB May 1, 2013 978-0-7613-8548-6 978-0-7613-8738-1 e-book 978-0-7613-6005-6 PLB Series: My Boyfriend Is a Monster, 7 This weak entry in a generally well-founded series puts a high schooler between two hunky guys who turn out to be the same hunky guy.

Hardly has Serena started at her new school in a small Texas town than she hooks up with hulking star quarterback Lance.

She also agrees to become a study partner with mostly homeschooled, equally outsized Cameron—on an assignment analyzing (hint, hint) Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Soon, she notices that the two are never seen together and, as time goes on, that Lance shuttles between sweet talk and an ugly temper that turns violent at any mention of Cam’s name. The teens in Cella’s black-andwhite panels are engagingly distinct of look and personality, but Mayhall takes so long to set up the background and introduce the characters that the actual melodrama, revelations, climactic faceoff and tidy resolution are crammed into the last 35 pages.

Some chemistry (of the romantic sort), but the suspense is contrived and perfunctory. (Graphic paranormal romance. 12-14)

SAM AND THE BIG KIDS

McCully, Emily Arnold Illus. by McCully, Emily Arnold Holiday House (32 pp.) $14.95 | Apr. 1, 2013 978-0-8234-2427-6 Series: I Like to Read

Can there be a positive side to a pesky little brother who won’t leave his big sister and her friend to their play?

There is in the latest I Like to Read series entry. Poor Sam is always trying to join in the fun his sister and her friend are having without him. But each time the little bear (so very politely) asks to play, they rather rudely tell him, “You are too small….Go home.” He can’t join in their picnic and is rebuffed from hiding in the cave, and when he wants to join in on making a fort, the friend has him count to 100, cruelly making him believe he is a part of a game. When sister and friend find a boat, they row to an island (wearing life jackets) and finally get the peace and privacy they so wanted…but what will they do when the boat floats away? While Sam becomes their hero, the book ends on this note, never satisfyingly tying up the question of whether Sam will be a welcome playmate in the future. The illustrations, done in pen, ink and watercolor, reflect the green and gray |

countryside nicely, though the facial expressions of the characters can be a mixed bag—the friend especially shows some mean emotions on her face, though the sister does seem to feel some remorse.

While this may open the door for discussion, the lack of a real conclusion may leave readers unsatisfied. (Easy reader. 4-7)

MAID OF SECRETS

McGowan, Jennifer Simon & Schuster (416 pp.) $16.99 | May 7, 2013 978-1-4424-4138-5 Orphan and talented pickpocket Meg Fellowes gets more excitement than she bargained for when she is appointed spy and maid of honor to none other than Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth I in this swashbuckling tale of murder and intrigue in high places.

Meg is violently snatched away from her street life as a member of the Golden Rose acting troupe and taken to Windsor Castle by the sinister Sir William Cecil. There she joins a select cadre of young girls being trained as spies and guardians of the queen’s honor. This is a challenge for Meg as, although she has the power of total recall, she has never learned to read.

The story plays out against a backdrop of rivalry and betrayal among courtiers vying for the queen’s favor, the tricky foreign nobles she has to manage and the maids themselves, who are by turns supportive and ruthless. Meg’s twin talents of total recall of speech and sleight of hand ultimately keep her in good standing with the court’s powers that be, and her quick wits and loyalty to her monarch save her from a nasty fate in a flooded basement prison cell.

Although prey to a few anachronisms (skunks were unknown in Elizabethan England), this lively and fastpaced debut has plenty of action and plot twists to keep readers fully engaged. (Historical fiction. 12-17)

ARCLIGHT

McQuein, Josin L. Greenwillow/HarperCollins (416 pp.) $17.99 | $9.99 e-book | Apr. 23, 2013 978-0-06-213014-3 978-0-06-213016-7 e-book In a dystopian future colony that holds back the monsters that have taken over the world, a girl tries to find her place.

Marina has few friends in the Arclight compound. She was found outside, the only known survivor of the Fade, the light-fearing creatures who inhabit the Dark in swarms and who absorb any human they contact into their own species. Most in the colony fear that Marina could

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be dangerous. Only when Marina and friend Tobin leave the colony do they discover the truth—not only about themselves and their families, but also about the Fade and their own colony.

McQuein’s ruined future world at first seems as out of focus as her difficult-to-see monsters. For at least the first third of the book, readers must infer as much as they can from little information, giving the story the feel of a sequel to another book.

Those who persist in piecing together the bits of plot will be rewarded. Relationships take on more meaning as characters confront a reality they had never suspected, and the suspense thickens. Marina especially stands out as an interesting and spunky character, enough of a rebel to take some major chances.

A tension-filled read for those who wait. (Dystopian adventure. 12 & up)

HIDE AND SEEK

Messner, Kate Scholastic (256 pp.) $16.99 | $16.99 e-book | Apr. 1, 2013 978-0-545-41975-8 978-0-545-53367-6 e-book Series: Silver Jaguar Society, 2 Three young members of the Silver Jaguar Society team up with a Costa Rican 10-year-old to find the stolen Jaguar Cup, a pre-Columbian gold artifact hidden at a rain-forest ecolodge.

Anna, José and Henry, fresh from their rescue of the StarSpangled Banner, described in Capture the Flag (2012), are sent to wait at the lodge Sofia’s father runs not too far from the Costa Rican capital, San José, while the adults responsible for them plan to begin their search for the priceless object. But the thief and his even more dangerous pursuer are staying at this same out-of-the-way sanctuary. This fast-paced mystery makes good use of the rain-forest setting as the young people encounter venomous snakes, biting ants and endangered great green macaws. A hanging, swaying bridge and a long zip line play important parts in suspenseful chase scenes. While the episode resolves satisfactorily, the ringleader of a gang of international art thieves, who now knows and hates them personally, has escaped. There’s plenty of room for a third book in this gripping series. Readers who care to know more about characters may want to start with the first title; this one is all plot and setting, a gratifying page-turner.

Aptly titled, this energetic treasure hunt is sure to find an enthusiastic audience. (Mystery. 8-12)

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A TOUCH OF SCARLET

Mont, Eve Marie Kensington (255 pp.) $9.95 paper | $7.55 e-book | Mar. 26, 2013 978-0-7582-6949-2 978-0-7582-8608-6 e-book Series: Unbound Trilogy, 2 Emma’s adventures in literature continue in this smart, funny follow-up to A Breath of Eyre (2012) that will have readers hauling out their battered school copies of The Scarlet Letter for a second look.

Emma is miserable when Gray breaks up with her not long after leaving for Coast Guard training. It’s unfair to ask her to put her life on hold for a year, he explains. As Emma recovers her balance, she begins to appreciate her unwanted freedom while remaining unsure how to use it—she’s still figuring out who she is. “Take risks. Make mistakes,” her grandmother advises, and Emma does. Her new hairdo is a success, but after she’s caught impulsively kissing roommate Michelle’s boyfriend, she becomes a school pariah. “There is no place more hellish to a teenage girl in poor social standing than a high school cafeteria,” Emma reflects. Repeatedly, via dream or trance state, she’s transported back to Puritan New England, where she encounters someone who knows all about public humiliation: Hester Prynne. Though parallels drawn between Emma’s life and Hawthorne’s novel are nonlinear and intriguing, Mont takes fewer literary risks with primary sources here. Gray’s more conventional, his edginess muted.

It’s Emma’s identity—less crisis than quest—that matters. With help from her fictional role model Hester, it’s an illuminating journey. (Fiction. 13 & up)

THE WATCHER IN THE SHADOWS

Moriarty, Chris Illus. by Geyer, Mark E. Harcourt (336 pp.) $16.99 | May 28, 2013 978-0-547-46632-3

The magic is darker in this intense sequel to The Inquisitor’s Apprentice (2011).

In a richly imagined alternate version of New York City at the turn of the 20th century, Sacha continues his on-the-job training in the police department’s Inquisitor division amid murder, abduction and terrifying encounters with evil beings both real and magical. J.P. Morgaunt mercilessly wields his magical power over newspapers, transportation, manufacturing and just about everything else, including a soul-stealing machine with which he has loosed Sacha’s doppelganger, a dybbuk that is constantly growing stronger. An impending strike at the Pentacle Shirtwaist Factory is the catalyst for Morgaunt’s machinations, which encompass the workers’ union, the crime syndicate Magic, Inc., martial arts

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“Moriarty’s trademark wit and whimsy are on full display, with zingy dialogue that feels right if not entirely realistic and bizarre characters living unexpected lives that manage to be mundane and delightful at the same time.” from a corner of white and Kabbalists. When Sacha’s family is drawn into this morass, he must make impossible choices between guarding their safety and working with Inspector Wolf, Lily and Peyton, all of whom have become dear to him. Moriarity again manages to capture the great distance between rich and poor, the struggle of immigrants to cope with bigotry and poverty, and the rapidly growing and changing world of the real New York City, while staying true to Sacha’s mystical city. Rich language, colorful syntax, vivid description and a brilliant cast of characters beckon readers right into both the adventure and the heartfelt emotional landscape.

Exciting, action-packed and absolutely marvelous.

(Fantasy. 10 & up)

A CORNER OF WHITE

Moriarty, Jaclyn Levine/Scholastic (384 pp.) $17.99 | $17.99 e-book | Apr. 1, 2013 978-0-545-39736-0 978-0-545-51021-9 e-book Series: The Colors of Madeleine, 1 Another one of a kind from the inimitable Moriarty, this time, a barely epistolary fantasy series opener unlike anything else out there.

Fourteen-year-old Madeleine lives in Cambridge, England, with her zany mother in uncertain circumstances, having run away from their fabulously privileged international existence.

Meanwhile, Elliot lives in Bonfire, The Farms, Cello, a parallel reality that might be the real fairyland (although that’s never explicitly stated, and this version seems utterly unlike most versions of fairyland). Through a crack between their worlds, they begin exchanging letters, although more of the novel is about one or the other of these two appealing characters than about their moments of intersection. Elliot wants to find his father, who disappeared mysteriously, while Madeleine wants to be found by hers and is also navigating friendship and her mother’s deteriorating health. Moriarty’s trademark wit and whimsy are on full display, with zingy dialogue that feels right if not entirely realistic and bizarre characters living unexpected lives that manage to be mundane and delightful at the same time. By the end, Madeleine’s story feels somewhat resolved, but Elliot’s has turned an unexpected corner that will bring their worlds much closer and bring readers more mystery and humor in the next volume.

Quirky, charming, funny, sad: another winner from this always-surprising author. (Fantasy. 12 & up)

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EAST OF THE SUN, WEST OF THE MOON

Morris, Jackie Illus. by Morris, Jackie Frances Lincoln (176 pp.) $14.99 | Mar. 12, 2013 978-1-84780-294-1

Reimagined for the 21st century, a familiar folk tale becomes a haunting love story and a reminder that first love may not last a lifetime.

The traditional Scandinavian tale relates the attraction between a great white bear and a young girl, her betrayal, and her subsequent journey to find him and free him from his enchantment. In Morris’ telling, the ending is modern. The story begins in reality. She’s the eldest child of immigrants seeking asylum and struggling in a new country. Even those readers who don’t know the fairy-tale background will know that fantasy is coming from the very beginning, when a polar bear performs a feat of magic on a gritty city street. But while the girl loved the bear, the woman, grown and given a name—Berneen—has more complex emotions. Modern references appear occasionally throughout the text, but this is folklore world, with a splendid variety of landscapes. Watercolor paintings between chapters show fields and forests in several seasons, a southwestern desert and the icy wastes of the frozen north. There are spreads showing the girl, the bear and the castle as well, and tiny vignettes throughout indicate breaks in the action.

This leisurely, lyrical, romantic and realistic version is one to savor and to read aloud, and again, and again. (Fantasy.

11-15)

THE WAITING TREE

Moynihan, Lindsay Amazon Children’s Publishing (224 pp.) $17.99 | May 14, 2013 978-1-4778-1634-9 Being gay in a small Southern town is never easy; it’s harder still when everyone knows and no one approves.

Seventeen-year-old Simon Peters and his boyfriend Stephen Lévesque were discovered having sex by Stephen’s father a month or so after Simon’s parents died in a car accident.

Stephen was sent away to a Christian re-education camp by his evangelical parents, and Simon dropped out of school and got a job at the Stop ’n Save megastore. He spends his free time taking care of his mute, autistic twin brother, Jude, since their older brothers, intolerant Paul and carefree Luke, aren’t much help.

(In this church-centered town, almost everyone has an apostolic moniker.) Everyone urges Simon to find a girlfriend, but he pines for Stephen and knows the two of them are meant to be. Complications abound, and just when things seem to level out, a crisis threatens to derail everything. Moynihan’s debut is a melodrama worthy of a Hallmark Hall of Fame Pride Month

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“Autumn’s coming-of-age is sensitively chronicled, with a wide range of experiences and events shaping her character. Even secondary characters are well-rounded, with their own histories and motivations.” from if he had been with me

production. The narrative’s interesting setup is compromised by ineffectual bullies, an often callous narrator (except where his brother Jude is concerned), and stock characters and events.

Only for readers who have exhausted everything else in the LGBT section; hope for better from Moynihan and fledgling publisher Amazon. (Fiction. 14 & up)

DOWN AT THE DINO WASH DELUXE

Myers, Tim Illus. by Pamintuan, Macky Sterling (40 pp.) $14.95 | Apr. 2, 2013 978-1-4027-7798-1

A fanciful dinosaur wash that’s more than a little reminiscent of DreamWorks’

Shark Tale.

An adorably round-faced little boy in yellow coveralls is readers’ guide to the Dino Wash Deluxe, and the narration is delightfully kidlike: “…this job’s no picnic—you gotta know the customers! No two dinos are alike, and they all need scrub-a-dubbing.” Each knob and spike on Ankylosaurus must be washed, polishing the frill and horns on Styracosaurus takes an hour...and Tyrannosaurus rex is in town! When the “Big Guy” shows up (in a description festooned with simile), the youngster bravely welcomes him, his stutter and pauses broadcasting his fear. Sure enough, T-Rex gets right in his face, the font matching the dinosaur’s size and anger. But the little boy has pegged him correctly—T-Rex doesn’t like soap in his eyes— and he devolves into a whimpering baby. But no worries, the little boy has just the solution. The dinosaur names are printed in a different color within the text, and backmatter provides a short paragraph of information about each one. Pamintuan’s artwork ably matches the text, each brilliantly colored dinosaur a distinct individual. Perspective, size, body language and facial expression all play a role in capturing the story’s moods.

The boy’s co-workers are a nice mix of genders, though they lack racial/cultural diversity.

A romping-stomping choice for dinosaur lovers and those similarly afraid of soap in their eyes. (Picture book. 3-7)

AEROSTAR AND THE 3 1/2-POINT PLAN OF VENGEANCE

Nelson, Peter Illus. by Rohitash, Rao Harper/HarperCollins (352 pp.) $12.99 | $8.99 e-book | May 14, 2013 978-0-06-201220-3 978-0-06-223149-9 e-book Series: Herbert’s Wormhole, 3

Herbert and Sammi—aka the intrepid AlienSlayers—through the wormhole in Alex’s backyard.

It’s all due to an elaborate scheme concocted by AeroStar, Sammi’s embittered 111-year-old future self. On the one hand, a century from now, the friendly aliens of Merwinsville have been stranded on the dark side of the moon while giant wreckers destroy their earthly Utopia. On the other, a time-traveling alien has sown giant, ambulatory, meat-eating plants in the present town’s community garden. Hurtling back and forth through time and space to the rescue puts the trio of sixth-graders in the way of a nonstop barrage of blaster fire from AeroStar’s Utility Tiara, a horde of attacking MinionBots, chases, narrow escapes and reunions with previously met allies. That’s not to mention poop, pizza and Sally Field jokes, practically superfluous Captain Underpants references, and multiple cascades of slime and alien vomit. Though billed as “Yet another novel in cartoons,” the many line drawings more often reflect the action than add to it; most of the tale is told in short cliffhanger chapters that alternate relentlessly between then and now.

The farce is frantic to the point of being labored, but there’s still plenty of room in the Captain’s Underpants for this gang of fellow travelers. (Science fiction. 10-12)

IF HE HAD BEEN WITH ME

Nowlin, Laura Sourcebooks Fire (336 pp.) $9.99 paper | Apr. 1, 2013 978-1-4022-7782-5

The finely drawn characters capture readers’ attention in this debut.

Autumn and Phineas, nicknamed Finny, were born a week apart; their mothers are still best friends. Growing up, Autumn and Finny were like peas in a pod despite their differences: Autumn is “quirky and odd,” while Finny is “sweet and shy and everyone like[s] him.” But in eighth grade, Autumn and Finny stop being friends due to an unexpected kiss. They drift apart and find new friends, but their friendship keeps asserting itself at parties, shared holiday gatherings and random encounters. In the summer after graduation, Autumn and Finny reconnect and are finally ready to be more than friends. But on August 8, everything changes, and Autumn has to rely on all her strength to move on. Autumn’s coming-ofage is sensitively chronicled, with a wide range of experiences and events shaping her character. Even secondary characters are well-rounded, with their own histories and motivations.

There’s not much plot here, but readers will relish the opportunity to climb inside Autumn’s head. (Fiction. 14 & up)

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THE KINDHEARTED CROCODILE

Panzieri, Lucia Illus. by Ferrari, AntonGionata Holiday House (32 pp.) $16.95 | Apr. 1, 2013 978-0-8234-2767-3 A postmodern picture book with decidedly antiquated characterization, this Italian import may upend conventional wisdom about crocodiles, but it reinforces gender stereotypes.

The titular kindhearted crocodile longs to be a pet but knows that families will fear him; they will want puppies, goldfish and the like. In a metafictive effort to overcome this obstacle, he sneaks into a family’s home each night via the pages of a picture book (as it turns out, the very same one readers hold).

While the family sleeps, it putters around the house tidying up, making breakfast and otherwise being kindhearted. The family, in turn, hides out to discover who is helping them each night, and the parents are alarmed to discover the crocodile.

While the children want to keep the croc since they recognize it from their book, the “courageous father” pledges to fight it as the “frantic mother” shrieks and waves her arms about. Later, the couple has “a serious conversation,” and the mother, “who appreciated help with dishes and laundry,” sides with the children, though the father still harbors doubt. In the end, the crocodile convinces them to let him stay, brewing a pot of coffee to seal the deal. Lively illustrations evoking Quentin Blake’s style enliven the story but don’t help it overcome the text’s tired gender construction.

A paradoxically enjoyable and consternating metafictive read. (Picture book. 4-8)

CLUCKY AND THE MAGIC KETTLE

Pavón, Mar Illus. by Carretero, Monica Cuento de Luz (30 pp.) $15.95 | Apr. 1, 2013 978-84-15619-44-4

born upside down, very different from the other birds. Each tale sends the three chicks crying home to their mother for comfort. Her supportive words are just a quick, temporary fix, but she also has a secret weapon: her magic kettle. In the quiet of night, she fills it...with spite, envy, “nasty feelings” and just a shake of stardust. She puts her special stew into jars and slaps on a label: “Yuk!!” And magically, envy turns to admiration. Huh? This tale of self-esteem and the challenges of school has some serious logic problems. (Picture book. 3-5)

A MATCH MADE IN HEAVEN

Robbins, Trina Illus. by Xian Nu Studio Graphic Universe (128 pp.) $9.95 paper | $21.95 e-book | $29.27 PLB May 1, 2013 978-1-4677-0732-9 978-1-4677-0978-1 e-book 978-0-7613-6857-1 PLB Series: My Boyfriend Is a Monster, 8 Proving that the power of teen love trumps even Heavenly directives, a budding graphic artist hooks up with an ethereally handsome new classmate.

Morning Glory’s miserable life at her clique-heavy high school takes a turn for the better with the arrival of hot, strangely naïve Gabriel DiAngelo. A supposedly chance meeting at the local thrift store escalates into movie dates and breathless snogging.

Complications arise with the subsequent appearance of Gabriel’s catty but equally stunning relative Luci DiAngelo, who displays a gift for inciting divisiveness and violence. In the black-and-white art, Morning Glory—dark-skinned and serious-looking in rimless glasses—and Gabriel, with his manga-style features and artfully disheveled blond hair, make a cute couple. In the end, Luci is sent back where she came from. After a climactic revelation (“You had wings!” “Did not.” “Did too! What are you?” “Can’t you guess?”), Gabriel confesses that he’s a Guardian actually sent to help Morning Glory’s friend Julia through some family troubles, freshening up the now-tired guardian-angel-falls-in-love-withhuman-ward trope considerably.

Another fresh and funny outing in a mostly solid satiric series. (Graphic paranormal romance. 12-14)

A doting mother hen’s special stew provides a generous and much-needed serving of community support for her brood.

Clucky the Hen usually takes her three children to Aviary School on her big sturdy tricycle. Hide-and-go-seek is their favorite recess game, and they also work on reading and painting and singing. But some of the other birds at the school have strange ideas, and they plant doubts in the tiny chicks’ tiny heads. Mr. Goose suggests that the featherbrained Clucky might simply forget about them one day and abandon them.

The big blue peacock chick warns them to stay away from the duck, lest their beaks turn twisty like his. The pigeon “and his little bunch” ridicule the chicks because they were supposedly |

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JACKIE ROBINSON American Hero

Robinson, Sharon Scholastic (48 pp.) $4.99 paper | Mar. 1, 2013 978-0-545-54006-3 The author of Promises to Keep: How Jackie Robinson Changed America (2004) tells her father’s tale again, for younger readers.

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third person, Robinson still devotes as much attention to his family life, youth and post-baseball career as she does to his achievements on the field. Writing in short sentences and simple language, she presents a clear picture of the era’s racial attitudes and the pressures he faced both in the military service and in baseball—offering plenty of clear reasons to regard him not just as a champion athlete, but as a hero too. An early remark about how he ran with “a bunch of black, Japanese, and Mexican boys” while growing up in Pasadena is insensitively phrased, and a sweeping claim that by 1949 “[t]he racial tension was broken” in baseball is simplistic. Nevertheless, by and large her account covers the bases adequately. The many photos include an admixture of family snapshots, and a closing Q-and-A allows the author to announce the imminent release of a new feature film about Robinson.

It’s an often-told story, but the author is still in a position to give it a unique perspective. (Biography. 8-10)

THE WATCHER IN THE SHADOWS

Ruiz Zafón, Carlos Little, Brown (272 pp.) $17.99 | May 15, 2013 978-0-316-04476-9

Originally published in Spain, this chilling book follows the mysterious events that take place in a sleepy French coastal village in 1937.

After her father dies and his debts drive the family into a new life of poverty in Paris, 14-year-old Irene Sauvelle moves with her mother Simone and younger brother Dorian to Blue Bay. Simone becomes housekeeper at Cravenmoore, the grand, secluded mansion of retired toymaker Lazarus Jann and his bedridden wife. In exchange for her work, which includes overlooking Jann’s strange proclivities and supervising the single cook/maid, a local teen named Hannah, the Sauvelles get to live in a picturesque cottage called Seaview.

The talkative Hannah introduces Irene to village life and to her orphaned cousin Ismael. Back at Cravenmoore, the enigmatic Jann wows Dorian with his numerous mechanical toys and inventions. As romance ignites between Irene and Ismael, a brutal murder in the forest between Seaview and Cravenmoore quickens the pace and the pulse. Many of the standard tropes of the mystery genre abound (an off-bounds west wing, a sinister forest, a cruel mother, eerie newspaper clippings), yet Zafón has created an original tale that will keep readers turning pages.

The romance and female protagonist may make the novel more appealing for females, but there are enough creepy elements to reach male readers.

A genuine mystery with occasional horror elements.

(Historical mystery/horror. 13-18)

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SPIKE AND IKE TAKE A HIKE

Schindler, S.D. Illus. by Schindler, S.D. Nancy Paulsen Books (32 pp.) $16.99 | Apr. 18, 2013 978-0-399-24495-7

Wacky wordplay accompanies a hedgehog and a coatimundi as they walk to lunch at Cousin Rosa’s.

A cheerful pair of cartoonlike critters, Spike and Ike (named and identified only in the cataloging summary), improbably travel through a flowery meadow, along an island beach, across a buggy bog and into a savannah in their quest for food. On their way, they meet a busy bumblebee, a pair of birds, frogs, a cat and a giraffe with a calf—a fine lunch bunch. As they pass through the generic landscapes, they converse simply in speech bubbles.

Wordplay describing their trip runs on a ribbon along the bottom. In a career that has spanned over 30 years, Schindler has illustrated well over 100 picture and chapter books but almost never written the text himself. Readers will be happy he has taken this path. The tongue-twisting nature of the read-aloud text adds to the humor. Its rhyme and alliteration may help emerging readers, and the animals are shown clearly in the artist’s deft illustrations. Even if readers or listeners have never before encountered a “blue-footed booby baby bird,” they won’t forget this one.

Here’s hoping the happy pair have more adventures to come. (Picture book. 3-6)

YOUR PAJAMAS ARE SHOWING!

Schmitt, Michael-Yves Illus. by Caut, Vincent Graphic Universe (40 pp.) $6.95 paper | $18.95 e-book | $25.26 PLB Apr. 1, 2013 978-1-4677-0871-5 978-1-4677-1119-7 e-book 978-1-4677-0769-5 PLB Series: Where’s Leopold?, 1 Pesky little brothers can be annoying—but what if yours was invisible?

Orange-haired, caramel-chomping Celine is saddled with an exceedingly annoying little brother, Leopold. Unlike most irritating siblings, Leopold has a superpower: He is able to turn invisible. The carrot-topped team do what any kids with access to such a power would do: pull silly pranks on each other and their friends. In one vignette, Leopold uses his talent to blame horribly smelly flatulence on those around him (including Celine and his dad); what kid wouldn’t crack up at the chance to pull off the ultimate “silent but deadly” prank? In another, he employs his invisibility to sneak an entire dessert off the table, leaving his sister to take the blame (though he does pay his own price with an uncomfortably full belly). Oversized panels and

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“Selfors kicks off her Imaginary Veterinary series with a solid, entertaining opener. Ben and Pearl are Everykids that readers will relate to, and the adults of Buttonville are often delightfully weird and clueless.” from the sasquatch escape

exceptionally exaggerated expressions only beef up the already bountiful bons mots. The short, highly episodic exploits are delivered with minimal text and at lightning speed; expect most to devour this in a single short sitting.

Just try to read it and not snicker. (Graphic fiction. 6-11)

THE SASQUATCH ESCAPE

Selfors, Suzanne Illus. by Santat, Dan Little, Brown (224 pp.) $15.99 | Apr. 2, 2013 978-0-316-20934-2 Series: The Imaginary Veterinary, 1 Ben Silverstein’s summer with Grandpa is about to go wild.

When his parents need to “work out some troubles,” 10-year-old Ben gets shipped off to tiny Buttonville, where everything seems to be closed or out of business since the button factory was shuttered years ago. Ben’s used to spending summers in the pool in his Los Angeles backyard with his friends, and Buttonville looks positively coma-inducing. When Grandpa’s mouser Barnaby deposits what has to be a baby dragon on Ben’s bed, Ben and his new friend Pearl (whom the whole town calls “troublemaker” on account of a few innocent incidents) decide to visit the new “worm doctor” who has moved into the abandoned button factory. (Ben had heard her strange assistant Mr. Tabby buying ingredients for “dragon’s milk” at the grocery....) When their visit unleashes a hairy, pudding-loving imaginary beast on the town of Buttonville, Ben and Pearl volunteer to catch him.

Selfors kicks off her Imaginary Veterinary series with a solid, entertaining opener. Ben and Pearl are Everykids that readers will relate to, and the adults of Buttonville are often delightfully weird and clueless. Twenty-five pages of backmatter include information on wyverns and sasquatch as well as the science of reptiles and a pudding recipe.

More hijinks-filled adventure than mystery, this is sure to win an audience. (Adventure. 8-12)

TIGER IN MY SOUP

Sheth, Kashmira Illus. by Ebbeler, Jeffrey Peachtree (32 pp.) $15.95 | Apr. 1, 2013 978-1-56145-696-3

A boy is left in the care of his older sister in an interesting house.

The boy wants her to read to him, but she’s got a book of her own (and earbuds in her ears) and keeps putting him off.

She makes him a can of soup for lunch, and the steam rises and morphs into…“A tiger!” He drops his spoon and tries to defend himself against the ravenous beast with a fabulous contraption made of ladle, corkscrew, whisk and tongs, but his sister only |

wants to know why he let his soup get cold. Microwaving the soup, she acquiesces, reading his book (which is about a tiger) aloud while he eats. The satisfied tiger, meanwhile, wanders about his imagination. The pictures are quite wonderful: The huge, vivid tiger grows out of the soup and goes everywhere, roaring and prowling. The children live in an architectural wonder of a house on a rocky promontory, with great windows and a fine outdoor staircase. The boy in his jeans and sneakers and the girl in her tastefully preteen flower-embroidered hoodie are the color of chai, and his picture book is patterned like a batik or Indian cotton print.

In the current run of titles about older siblings feeding younger ones, this one stands out for its inventive imagery and use of common kitchen implements. (Picture book. 4-8)

THIS IS WHAT HAPPY LOOKS LIKE

Smith, Jennifer E. Poppy/Little, Brown (416 pp.) $17.99 | Apr. 2, 2013 978-0-316-21282-3 A typo misdirects teen film star Graham’s email to Ellie in Henley, Maine, launching an intense epistolary friendship that rapidly becomes an anchor for each.

Keeping his identity secret from Ellie frees Graham to be the pre-celebrity self he’s felt disappearing. Anonymity allows Ellie to safely share private dreams and worries (like how to pay for the prestigious but expensive Harvard poetry workshop that’s accepted her), though not the secrets her family life rests on. Spending his star capital recklessly, Graham insists on Henley as a film location. Their relationship intensifies when they meet in person. Confident yet lonely, Graham pursues more-conflicted Ellie. For Graham—isolated by fame, adrift in a world where image trumps authenticity—Ellie’s a lifeline connecting him to what’s real. But as their attraction grows, so does the threat his fame poses to Ellie, tasked with protecting family secrets. Utterly convincing, Graham and Ellie lend credibility to the otherwise far-fetched setup.

Smith’s work, occupying the zone between literary and commercial fiction, occasionally has an airbrushed feel, avoiding life’s messier realities. (Graham and Ellie’s chaste behavior seems at odds with their passionate longing, for instance.)

It’s a minor quibble, though, next to the author’s strong suit: a cast of vivid, sympathetic characters whose fate matters to readers and keeps them turning the pages. (Fiction. 13 & up)

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“Readers will suck up this quick and gooey adventure like the ‘fly-spit smoothie’ that it is.” from fly frenzy

SPIDER STAMPEDE

Sparkes, Ali Illus. by Collins, Ross Darby Creek (104 pp.) $7.95 paper | $20.95 e-book | $27.93 PLB May 1, 2013 978-1-4677-0710-7 978-1-4677-1121-0 e-book 978-0-7613-9199-9 PLB Series: S.W.I.T.C.H., 1 A spray of strange fluid gives 8-year-old twins Josh and Danny both six extra legs and a quick trip down the bathtub drain in this icky but informative series opener.

Shortly after chasing their dog Piddle into witchy next-door neighbor Petty Potts’ hidden science lab, bug-loving Josh and his violently phobic brother Danny find themselves transformed into spiders. Their stereotypically spider-fearing older sister immediately sends them hurtling through the household plumbing down to the storm drains, where friendly rats Scratch and Sniff are already waiting to ferry them back outside, explaining that the effect is caused by Potts’ S.W.I.T.C.H. (“Serum Which Instigates Total Cellular Hijack”). Happily, there’s an antidote—which Petty Potts herself applies after saving the twins from a hungry toad with a quick stomp of her boot. Sparkes layers her lickety-split tale between a fact file about the twins and a helpful closing list of multimedia nonfiction resources for fans of all things creepy-crawly.

Simultaneously publishing sequels include Fly Frenzy, Grasshopper Glitch, Ant Attack, Crane Fly Crash and Beetle Blast.

A buggy blast; readers will be happy with the clear signs that that the twins’ career as experimental subjects is far from over. (line drawings, glossary) (Fantasy. 7-9)

FLY FRENZY

Sparkes, Ali Illus. by Collins, Ross Darby Creek (104 pp.) $7.95 paper | $20.95 e-book | $27.93 PLB May 1, 2013 978-1-4677-0711-4 978-1-4677-1122-7 e-book 978-0-7613-9200-2 PLB Series: S.W.I.T.C.H., 2

(Spider Stampede, 2013). In the end, just deserts are served out all around, and hints of a larger scheme involving Potts and her chemical cocktails point to sequels. Along with spritzing occasional drops of natural history into the story itself—“To a fly, pee is soup”—Sparkes appends a glossary of insect parts and other vocabulary words. For value added, all series episodes also feature a set list of print and Web resources for larval insectophiles.

Sequels, publishing simultaneously, are Grasshopper Glitch, Ant Attack, Crane Fly Crash and Beetle Blast.

Readers will suck up this quick and gooey adventure like the “fly-spit smoothie” that it is. (line drawings) (Fantasy. 7-9)

HOW TO NEGOTIATE EVERYTHING

Spellman, David with Lutz, Lisa Illus. by Temairik, Jaime Simon & Schuster (32 pp.) $16.99 | $9.70 e-book | May 21, 2013 978-1-4424-5119-3 978-1-4424-5120-9 e-book Temper tantrums no longer working? “There are very few things in life that you can’t get if you ask for them in a rational manner and offer something in return.”

Giving one of her fictional characters both the narrative voice and lead author credit, Lutz extracts canny principles from her adult novel Trail of the Spellmans (2011) that guide a lad named Sammy in dickering for ice cream and then a pet. Illustrated in large, simply drawn cartoons (some of which are drawn from the same source as the text), the negotiations demonstrate the sort of give-and-take required to reach an accommodation.

These are embellished with side notes about managing expectations, sealing the deal (“The phrase ‘We’ll see’ is not binding”), setting realistic goals, the hazards of getting too aggressive and the value of persistence. This last is of particular importance if the chosen pet is, for instance, an elephant. The closing glossary both reinforces previously made guidelines and adds more: “Find out what your mark’s weakness is (quiet, candy, wine, elephants) and you’ve got your negotiation in the bag.”

Firmly tongue in cheek, but even less sophisticated readers (and parents) should find these elemental suggestions helpful in getting to yes. (Picture book. 6-9, adult)

The plot thickens with complications, plus various sorts of goo and slime, in the second episode of this boys-as-bugs series.

When their mother’s prized topiary is vandalized, 8-year-old twins Danny and Josh accept the offer of Petty Potts, the oldbut-not-as-dotty-as-she-seems scientist next door, to transform them temporarily into houseflies in order to track down the perpetrator. Marveling at their suddenly different world (“I can see my own butt!” exclaims Danny. “Without turning my head around!”), the lads buzz off to the house of the suspected classmate culprit. There they have close and gross encounters with both a parental nose and a hungry spider—plus a reunion with friendly rats Scratch and Sniff, introduced in the first episode 106

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NAMELESS A Tale of Beauty and Madness St. Crow, Lili Razorbill/Penguin (304 pp.) $17.99 | Apr. 4, 2013 978-1-59514-357-0

A “Snow White” retelling set in a relatively modern world bursts at the seams with magic and supernatural creatures. |

Cami, the pampered 16-year-old daughter of the Vultusino clan, isn’t true Family, but a human girl adopted at a young age when Papa Vultusino rescued the badly abused child. She lives between worlds, going to school with other humans while socially involved in the world of the Seven, the most powerful and influential Families. Along with having no true place or past, her terrible stutter and passive, introspective nature deprive Cami of a true voice. Just as she comes to realize that her nightmares might be memories, Cami befriends the Vultusinos’ new gardener, Tor, a boy with the same scars she bears. She unravels the dangerous mystery of her past to make peace with who she is. Fairy-tale motifs are not limited to Cami—her best friends Ellie and Ruby reference Cinderella and Little Red Riding Hood. This ambitious work makes a couple missteps: The prose aims for lush but sometimes stumbles into decadent, and the love interest is generically dark and sexy. More than compensating, the ambitious worldbuilding and alternate history are fully thought out and well-realized, sure to enchant readers patient enough to let them coalesce.

A delicious treat for fairy-tale fans. (Urban fantasy. 12 & up)

STRIPES OF ALL TYPES

Stockdale, Susan Illus. by Stockdale, Susan Peachtree (32 pp.) $15.95 | Apr. 1, 2013 978-1-56145-695-6

Stockdale’s feast for the eyes explores the stripes found in the animal world.

In rhyming verse often separated by page turns, the author presents readers with the many places stripes can be found: “Propped on a log, / poised on a leaf. // Scaling a ridge, // and scouting a reef.” On each page is a cleanly rendered portrayal of a striped animal found in that habitat: a frog, a butterfly, a skunk and some tropical fish. Sharp lines and beautiful patterns are what readers will notice about Stockdale’s acrylic artwork.

The animals are not named within the text, allowing this to be a great guessing game, though the youngest ones may not sit still long enough to learn about the animals in the backmatter. And while the creatures are a nifty mix of the common and less wellknown—zebra, skunk, bees, tapir, okapi, bongo—most readers can simply name the type of animal and be satisfied; they need not know the specific names of the tropical fish, though they are provided. The final two spreads present readers with thumbnails of the animals and a few sentences of information about each, as well as a challenge: Match the 19 different stripe patterns to their animals from the text (answers are provided).

A lovely, interactive exploration of stripes and a good introduction to some new animals. (Informational picture book. 2-6)

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THE PETS YOU GET

Taylor, Thomas Illus. by Reynolds, Adrian Andersen Press USA (32 pp.) $16.95 | $12.95 e-book | Apr. 1, 2013 978-1-4677-1143-2 978-1-4677-1145-6 e-book An exuberant (and imaginative) little boy pooh-poohs the idea of having a boring guinea pig for a pet…until he gives it a try.

Not satisfied with his sister’s cute and cuddly guinea pig, the narrator wants a cool pet…like a dog. Watercolor scenes from his imagination fill the next spread, showing readers the fun that he could have with a dog. But a page turn brings him back to reality, his sister explaining that dogs are smelly and messy— the opposite of guinea pigs. This pattern continues as the boy imagines life with a shaggy bear and a smoking dragon. And why stop there? One page is a hodgepodge of (similarly inappropriate) pets, wickedly toothy in Taylor’s artwork. But when the wise sister places her beloved pet on her little brother’s knee, it’s the start of more than just a merry game of hide-and-seek. He agrees he’d like to share her pet, admitting guinea pigs can be fun...“though I’d still like a dragon someday!” Taylor’s children have a sweet sibling relationship (minus the dragon breathing fire at the sister), while page turns nicely build suspense. The parents of young readers who enjoy this may want to read aloud Guinea Dog (2010) by Patrick Jennings next.

No guarantee that children will choose a guinea pig as a pet (especially with all these choices!), but the odds are in parents’ favor. (Picture book. 4-9)

THE GIRL FROM FELONY BAY

Thompson, J.E. Walden Pond Press/HarperCollins (384 pp.) $16.99 | $9.99 e-book | Apr. 30, 2013 978-0-06-210446-5 978-0-06-210448-9 e-book

A tale bursting with intrigue and adventure finds its setting deep in the South Carolina Lowcountry.

Twelve-year-old Abbey Force has had a rough time of things lately. Her beloved father has suffered an accident and now lies in the hospital in a coma. Meanwhile, he has been accused of stealing from a client named Miss Lydia Jenkins, and his law firm, in an attempt to salvage its reputation, has sold the Force family home, Reward Plantation, in order to repay her. Abbey is forced to go and live with her good-for-nothing Uncle Charlie and his wife, Ruth. Her luck begins to change when the new owners, also named Force, well-to-do descendants of the slaves who once lived at Reward, take up residence at the plantation. She and new best friend and neighbor Bee Force stumble upon a mystery—someone is digging holes at Felony Bay, perhaps in search of buried treasure. Soon, they are neck deep in

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a dangerous mess involving Abbey’s father’s so-called crime, her Uncle Charlie, Miss Jenkins’ riches and possibly the town sheriff.

A predictable outcome, lengthy final explanations seeking to tie up loose ends and one too many subplots weigh this one down.

Bee and Abbey are amiable protagonists, though, and their spunk and perseverance, combined with the realistic and richly developed setting, deliver considerable appeal.

A successful turn by a promising new author. (Mystery. 9-12)

ROUND IS A TORTILLA

Thong, Roseanne Greenfield Illus. by Parra, John Chronicle (40 pp.) $16.99 | Apr. 1, 2013 978-1-4521-0616-8

This charming concept book will engage readers and help them recognize shapes in everyday objects.

Beautiful rose-colored endpapers draped with a festive, lacy banner lead readers into a book that is a celebration of both shapes and Hispanic culture. Thong uses simple rhymes (“Rectangles are carts / with bells that chime / and cold paletas / in summertime”) to introduce shapes and Spanish words whose meanings—if not apparent from the illustrations—can be derived from the glossary. Parra’s vibrant colors and geometric, folksy art help readers recognize shapes in both the book and the world around them. Intricate spreads offer an abundance of details observant readers will appreciate. The art and text generally complement each other, though some spreads may require an additional bit of work to understand (tacos are used as examples of a round shape, while being properly depicted as folded tortillas filled with deliciousness; the metates are said to be in the casa but are shown in the backyard). Bird’s-eye views depict a lovely diversity of skin color, but close-up portraiture is less strikingly differentiated.

Nevertheless, this book will teach readers about more than basic shapes thanks to both its use of Spanish words and the inclusion of Hispanic cultural elements. (glossary) (Picture book. 2-5)

MOONSET

Tracey, Scott Flux (408 pp.) $9.99 paper | Apr. 8, 2013 978-0-7387-3529-0 Series: Legacy of Moonset, 1 The orphaned children of a terrorist witch coven are pulled into danger and intrigue by their parents’ legacy.

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all follow. Before their executions for waging a brutal war against the witch Congress and other covens, the Moonset coven— Justin and his siblings’ parents’, whose story is told through chapter epigraphs—cast a powerful curse that prevents their children from being separated. But after an expulsion immediately followed by a wraith attack, possibly linked to the warlock who’s the last remnant of the Moonset rebellion, the Congress changes strategy, beefing up the Moonstone children’s protection and moving them to the town where their parents started the coven. Justin must piece together the Congress’ agenda while under threat from escalating dark magic. Distrusted and feared by other witches, the orphans face suspicion and are kept helpless by protectors who refuse to teach them useful magic despite the attacks. The orphans’ attachment is tempered by realistic sibling squabbling, and the characterization in general is rich. While the story’s climax comes and goes quickly, the political maneuvering in its aftermath is tense and exciting.

Another page-turning magical mystery from Tracey.

(Urban fantasy. 14 & up)

THE ABILITY

Vaughan, M.M. Simon & Schuster (336 pp.) $15.99 | Apr. 23, 2013 978-1-4424-5200-8 Recruited to MI18, a top-secret British agency that employs children to gather intelligence, six preteens use their minds over high-tech gadgets to fight crime in this imported debut.

Thirty years ago, the Myers Holt Academy, an elite and secret boarding school that housed the MI18, closed when one of its students, Anna Willows, was kidnapped and presumed dead. Very much alive, plotting revenge and now known as Dulcia Genever, she, along with her adopted twin sons, has been incapacitating the students and faculty that never came to rescue her. The academy is reopened when one of those former students—the current prime minister—appears to be next on the hit list. Following a confusing transition from prologue to story, the novel centers on 12-year-old Christopher Lane, whose father died seven years ago and whose mother has been a recluse ever since. Chris and his stereotypical mix of cohorts (the overweight bully, the foreigner with broken English, etc.) train to develop their Ability, using their brains to their full capacity, as they practice telekinesis and mind reading and prepare to protect the prime minister at the annual Antarctic Ball for children. This training proves to be more interesting than the concluding fight against villainous Genever and her twins.

Chris’ unresolved home life and an equally open-ended, anticlimactic ending suggest a sequel; readers not yet burned out on paranormal boarding schools may look forward to it. (Fantasy. 8-12)

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“Readers will be taken on a cosmic odyssey, while encouraged to experience a book in multiple ways—to think of a story as an interpretation, not an edict.” from a long way away

A LONG WAY AWAY

microscope may seem anticlimactic after she’s looked at hippos and monkeys, but her choice makes perfect sense. Parents will find it heartwarming, since it encourages an interest in science.

Children might prefer the hippo, but they’ll have fun reading the poop jokes out loud to their parents again and again. (Picture book/poetry. 5-9)

Viva, Frank Illus. by Viva, Frank Little, Brown (40 pp.) $16.99 | Apr. 9, 2013 978-0-316-22196-2

Cleverly designed and perfectly executed, this dynamic two-way story across space, land and sea offers multidimensional adventure and possibilities.

Begin on one side, and it’s a journey down, away from the familiar into the deep. A warm embrace greets readers before a cephalopodlike alien descends, weaving past planets and stars on its topsy-turvy trajectory toward Earth. The appealing creature zooms by planes and towns, sea life and subs, before reaching the deep underwater world to sleep. Begin on the other side, and the alien rises from slumber, its trajectory upward toward heart and home. The illustrations recall Matisse, with their simulation of paper cut-outs, celestial quality and use of a limited four-color palette, which Viva proves can still create infinite possibilities. J. Otto Seibold and Gary Baseman also come to mind, for the work’s graphic nature and loose, organic stylizations. But Viva is his own master, as he uses the constraints of the two-way format to great effect. Readers will be taken on a cosmic odyssey, while encouraged to experience a book in multiple ways—to think of a story as an interpretation, not an edict.

Meticulously designed, from its art direction to the print and finish on the pages, this is a thoughtful and thought-provoking work. (Picture book. 3-6)

THE PET PROJECT Cute and Cuddly Vicious Verses

Wheeler, Lisa Illus. by OHora, Zachariah Atheneum (40 pp.) $16.99 | Apr. 2, 2012 978-1-4169-7595-3

Let parents who find inspiration in this book think twice.

They may think they can use the collection as an example and tell their kids, “If you want a pet, you have to write a report, preferably in verse form, on which animal is the best choice.”

Like the narrator, their children may decide they’d rather have a microscope instead of a real, live pet. So a note to parents: That trick almost never works. Kids will enjoy the poems for a completely different reason: They are funny. The section about farm animals has many, many jokes about poo. The pattern is always the same. The main character thinks she might like a cow or a chicken as a pet. Then it poops on her, or maybe kicks her or pecks at her instead. The later sections of the book are more inventive, and the jokes are concomitantly cleverer. The funniest, and shortest, poem is about a hippopotamus: “Chances of getting a hippo: / zippo.” OHora’s acrylics make sure kids get the jokes, engulfing the girl in smelly, green hippo breath and gleefully depicting both excrement and icky eating habits. The |

ALL MY NOBLE DREAMS AND THEN WHAT HAPPENS

Whelan, Gloria Simon & Schuster (272 pp.) $15.99 | Apr. 2, 2013 978-1-4424-4976-3

In this sequel to Small Acts of Amazing Courage (2011), heroine Rosalind dances with the Prince of Wales during his 1921 visit to India and does her bit for Gandhi’s independence movement.

Growing up in colonial India, Rosalind isn’t “what a wellbred English girl should be,” to the distress of her very British father. Two years before, Rosalind and her friend Max barely avoided arrest for publically supporting Gandhi’s movement to free India. Now they sympathize with his nonviolent strikes disrupting the country. When Rosalind’s father is invited to festivities surrounding the Prince of Wales’ visit to Calcutta, Max coaxes her to deliver an important letter from Gandhi to the prince. Months later, in London, Rosalind’s chance encounter with King George V also affects Gandhi’s cause. Whether saving an Indian girl from an arranged marriage or teaching Indian boys, Rosalind’s loyalties lie with her adopted country. Though at first approaching India’s struggle from a “White Man’s Burden” perspective, Rosalind learns not to apply English values to India and its cultures. Whelan conveys the atmosphere of a critical period in India’s history from the sympathetic, first-person perspective of an egalitarian heroine who acts on her principles.

An entertaining, if fanciful look at colonial India in transition. (author’s note, text of Gandhi’s letter of 1920, glossary) (Historical fiction. 9-12)

OUR RIGHTS How Kids are Changing the World

Wilson, Janet Illus. by Wilson, Janet Second Story Press (32 pp.) $18.95 | Apr. 15, 2013 978-1-926920-95-5

An introduction to the positive action kids are taking globally to improve the lives of children everywhere.

Opening with the text of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, this call to action profiles 10 kids standing up for these rights. In India, Anita’s a UNICEF poster girl for eradicating gender bias. Filipino Emman created a kids’

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“Winters strikes just the right balance between history and ghost story, neatly capturing the tenor of the times, as growing scientific inquiry collided with heightened spiritualist curiosity.” from in the shadow of blackbirds rights coloring book used in schools. In the United States, Dylan mobilized kids over the Internet to reduce global poverty, and Zach walked thousands of miles to raise money for the homeless. In Yemen, Nujood’s book exposed forced early marriages. In Canada, Shannen challenged Parliament to build a new school for indigenous people, while Cheryl founded a nonprofit to halt commercial exploitation of children. Brazilian Mayra organized peace marches to reduce police violence.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ndale works to eliminate child soldiers. South Korean Han-wool makes videos to raise awareness about school bullying. Each profile includes text, quotes, photos and a muddy-looking full-color portrait.

Colorful sidebars feature other kids in action, while “Kids Take Action,” “Kids Create” and “What YOUth Can Do” sections provide more examples of youth empowerment. While lacking textual cohesiveness, this anecdotal collection could inspire kids to make a difference.

A useful, if not artful awareness tool. (Nonfiction. 6-10)

PRANKLOPEDIA

Winterbottom, Julie Illus. by Allen, Robb Workman (224 pp.) $11.95 paper | Mar. 12, 2013 978-0-7611-6756-3 Practical jokers longing for a go-to source of ideas for low-effort pranks need look no further.

Advising readers to choose a victim “who has a sense of humor and can’t flunk you,” and also to “be funny, not mean,” Winterbottom offers over 72 smirk-worthy projects. These range from classics like poking a hole beneath the rim of a can of soda and short-sheeting a bed to slicing a banana without peeling it or creating a fake computer desktop.

The entries are neatly alphabetized and interspersed with anecdotes about notable pranks and pranksters through the ages.

All offer setup instructions and suggestions for enhancing the effects both verbally and, in Allen’s accompanying cartoon panels, visually. Pranks that will make an unusual mess or require adult cooperation are so flagged. Handy recipes include fake bird poop, edible (theoretically) dog poop, vomit, spilled milk, bloody teeth and two kinds of snot. The author also appends an array of faux can labels (“Cream of Sparrow”), fortune-cookie fortunes, signs, letters from school and other ready-to-use “goods” to cut out or reproduce.

Fun for some. (Faux reference. 10-13)

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IN THE SHADOW OF BLACKBIRDS

Winters, Cat Amulet/Abrams (304 pp.) $16.95 | Apr. 2, 2013 978-1-4197-0530-4

A bright young woman is caught between science and spiritualism in her quest to make sense of a world overcome with war and disease in 1918 California.

Mary Shelley Black’s world has been turned upside down by the arrest of her father at their home in Portland, Ore. It is 1918, and the country is at war; those who speak out against it, like her father, find themselves persecuted. Mary Shelley flees to her Aunt Eva in San Diego to avoid possible fallout from the arrest and since it might be a better place to wait out the influenza epidemic that is sweeping the country. Her new home allows her to reconnect with the family of her first love, Stephen, now a soldier fighting in the war. This place is just as full of anxiety and fear as Portland, the toll from war and disease sending her families grasping at anything to alleviate their pain. Stephen’s distasteful half brother, Julius, exploits those fears and the growing interest in the occult by serving as a “spirit photographer”—an occupation Mary Shelley is skeptical of until Stephen is killed and she is visited by his ghost. Winters strikes just the right balance between history and ghost story, neatly capturing the tenor of the times, as growing scientific inquiry collided with heightened spiritualist curiosity.

Vintage photographs contribute to the authenticity of the atmospheric and nicely paced storytelling. (Historical fiction. 12 & up)

FURIOUS

Wolfson, Jill Henry Holt (352 pp.) $17.99 | Apr. 16, 2013 978-0-8050-8283-8 When a charismatic classmate unites three disenfranchised teens, they learn that their anger is an immense and terrifying power in this dark tale that gracefully weaves Greek myth with modern high school culture.

Meg, Stephanie and Alix feel both powerless and incensed by the injustices they see around them. Seeing this, Ambrosia, immortal goddess–cum-classmate, grooms the three girls for her own vengeful purpose. Ambrosia stokes their rage and directs them to their natural calling as the Furies, deities of vengeance. At first, the Furies are gentle and fair with their justice, punishing wrongdoers by burdening them with a sense of shame. But the girls become ever harsher, drunk on the corrosive power, and inflict mental anguish upon their victims before they, too, must face their personal demons.

Meg’s candid narration is occasionally suspended by Ambrosia’s diary entries into The Book of Furious. Here, Ambrosia, in Greek theatrical tradition, expands on her long-standing hatred and the mythology

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from which the current drama has sprung. Fans of Wolfson’s heartfelt realistic novels will relish her fleet prose and these new characters as she examines the theme of justice versus revenge.

For readers moving beyond Percy Jackson into the more complex realm of teen angst, this is an enthralling and chilling tale that uses Greek mythology to create a timely fable. (Fantasy. 12 & up)

FISH FOR JIMMY Inspired by One Family’s Experience in a Japanese American Internment Camp Yamasaki, Katie Illus. by Yamasaki, Katie Holiday House (40 pp.) $16.95 | Apr. 15, 2013 978-0-8234-2375-0

Based on her great-grandfather’s experience in a Japanese “internment camp,” Yamasaki tells how Taro takes care of his younger brother, Jimmy, when he stops eating.

Fish has been a mainstay of their diet, but there is none in the camp. Much to his mother’s shame and distress, Jimmy simply refuses to eat. Yamasaki’s muscular acrylics depict fish swimming through the air all around Jimmy, giving concrete image to his longing. To save his brother’s life, at night Taro cuts through the barbedwire fence, finds a distant stream, catches fish with his hands and returns—thus saving Jimmy’s life. Primarily a muralist, Yamasaki tellingly conveys the dangers Taro undergoes in her art, since the camp is guarded by armed soldiers in watch towers, closed in by fences and illuminated by floodlights. Her illustrations also picture people and places, both at home and in internment. A “Dear Reader” note relates a brief history of the evacuation and her family’s story, accompanied by archival photographs of the author’s family and the Granada Relocation Center in Colorado.

A new and moving look at one of the most disgraceful events in U.S. history, effectively told with childlike surrealism. (Picture book. 6-10)

baseball picture books WHO’S ON FIRST?

Abbott, Bud; Costello, Lou Illus. by Martz, John Quirk Books (40 pp.) $16.95 | Feb. 19, 2013 978-1-59474-590-4

Abbott appears as a red-nosed bear, and Costello is a hapless rabbit, with both creatures dressed in striped shirts and red baseball caps. The dialogue is variously presented in word bubbles, boxes or “shouted” in explosive, full-page format, with all the text in sizes appropriate to the characters’ levels of frustration. Superbright green, yellow, red and blue backgrounds make it all pop. But in book form, the dialogue comes off as merely amusing rather than laugh-out-loud funny, partly since in its original form it was completely auditory. The two men delivered the lines in fast-paced, smartly timed patter with voice inflections indicating annoyance, anger, impatience or resignation. The fun was in the misunderstanding of the wordplay. While Martz’s cartoon animals indicate their emotions in their body language and facial expressions, it’s just a little flat.

In addition, depicting each player as an animal (Who is a snake, What is a dog, etc.) makes it possible for readers to actually visualize a “real” team and diminishes the wordplay. To work at all, it must be read aloud in two distinct, enthusiastic voices so young readers can share the experience.

Not up to the original—leave it on the shelf and find a recording of the real Abbott and Costello. (afterword, biographical notes) (Picture book. 7-10)

PETE THE CAT: PLAY BALL!

Dean, James Illus. by Dean, James Harper/HarperCollins (32 pp.) $16.99 | $3.99 paper | Mar. 1, 2012 978-0-06-211067-1 978-0-06-211066-4 paper Series: I Can Read!

Ultracool Pete the Cat turns his attention to baseball.

Pete’s team, the Rocks, is playing the Rolls. Pete is every measure of a good sport as he encourages his teammates. He isn’t, however, a skilled player. He strikes out and drops a fly ball, and though he reaches first base on a walk and runs as fast as he can, he is thrown out at home plate. “Pete is not sad, He did his best.” After all, his team won, and he had fun. It could be a great antidote to Little League pressure to be number one at all costs. But there is something off-putting about the tone, for there appears to be a lack of any real involvement in Pete’s cool, calm manner, and the repeated insistence that he is unaffected by his performance feels robotic. Does he love the game or intend to improve? Instead, the baseball game seems just another setting for Pete to demonstrate his cool.

Cartoons nicely complement the text, but here too, no change of expression is apparent on Pete’s countenance, nor on any of the players’. The early-reader format is new to this series and hasn’t the lilt of Dean’s earlier works, so this might not be the way to expand the franchise.

No home run here. (Early reader. 3-5)

One of the funniest comedy routines ever to be heard doesn’t successfully translate to print although nearly every word is intact. |

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JACKIE AND ME A Very Special Friendship

teams. Eventually it became—and still is—the only substance allowed on any baseball. Kelly provides information about an unusual aspect of the game in a sprightly, entertaining story with a great “aha” moment.

Dominguez’s bright, expressive double-page spreads follow the events closely and make them live.

For young fans who love the odd, fun details of baseball. (author’s note, statistics) (Informational picture book. 6-11)

Grossinger, Tania Illus. by Esperanza, Charles George Sky Pony Press (32 pp.) $16.95 | Apr. 1, 2013 978-1-62087-683-1

A young girl who feels herself an outsider finds a mentor and friend in Jackie Robinson.

Grossinger tells of growing up at her relatives’ famous Catskills hotel, where she often felt overlooked, awkward, lonely and selfconscious. She was generally uninterested in the celebrities who visited the hotel, but the idea of meeting her hero, Jackie Robinson, was tremendously exciting, even though she was too shy to join in the greetings and photos. A kept promise, a game of pingpong and heart-to-heart talks led to a friendship that lasted for as long as Robinson lived. Through visits and letters, he helped her feel pride in her accomplishments; “Never give up” was his clarion call, and she took it to heart. As she grew older, she came to recognize how deeply he was affected by the difficulties of those early years and how his spirit and kindness inspired her. Grossinger tells her story simply, recalling those long-ago events with fondness and love in text that has the appearance of diary entries. Eye-catching, large-scale close-ups of Robinson and the author as a girl on bright, color-washed backgrounds placed on full- and double-page spreads neatly complement the text. Not always accurate in their depiction of Robinson, they nonetheless capture his personality with warmth.

A lovely evocation of a man who changed baseball and America. (Picture book/memoir. 5-9)

MIRACLE MUD Lena Blackburne and the Secret Mud That Changed Baseball

Kelly, David A. Illus. by Dominguez, Oliver Millbrook/Lerner (32 pp.) $12.95 e-book | $16.95 PLB | Apr. 1, 2013 978-1-4677-1052-7 e-book 978-0-7613-8092-4 PLB A baseball entrepreneur finds a solution to a long-standing technical problem.

Lena Blackburne was at best a journeyman player. He played several positions for several teams, and later, he became a coach just to remain a part of the game he loved. In the first part of the 20th century, new baseballs were hard to handle since they were too shiny and slick, so many different methods were used to dull them. Shoe polish, spit, tobacco juice and dirty water were all tried, but each caused additional problems, as did employing only old, beat-up balls for the entire game.

Blackburne was determined to find a better way. When he serendipitously stepped into some soft, gooey, gritty mud at a fishing hole near his home, he brought some to the ballpark, tried it out on some new baseballs and produced perfect results. At first, he provided them only for his own team, but then he sold tubs of the mud to all professional 112

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TAKE ME OUT TO THE YAKYU

Meshon, Aaron Illus. by Meshon, Aaron Atheneum (40 pp.) $15.99 | Feb. 19, 2013 978-1-4424-4177-4

A young boy enjoys the best of two baseball worlds.

This fortunate youngster can savor the fine points of baseball in America and yakyu in Japan. While in America, Pop-Pop drives him to the stadium in the station wagon and buys him a foam hand and hot dogs. In Japan, Ji Ji takes him to the dome in a bus-train and buys a plastic horn and soba noodles. At the games they variously cheer “get a hit” or “do your best.” Seventh-inning stretch calls for “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” or the team anthem and a release of balloons. In America, his team wins, but in Japan, it ends in a tie, allowable within their rules. Appropriate souvenirs are purchased, and after a wonderful day, Gramma or Ba Ba has a warm bath ready. The comparisons are made mostly on facing pages with matching sentences and illustrations rendered in strong, bright acrylic paint. American scenes have mostly blue backgrounds or highlights, while the Japanese counterparts are red. It’s all a perfectly constructed, vivid picture of the two nations’ particular takes on what has become both of their national pastimes, as well as a multigenerational love of the game. Colorful charts of Japanese and English baseball terms and other words add to the fun.

Yakyu or baseball, it’s all sheer joy. (Picture book. 3-8)

BARBED WIRE BASEBALL

Moss, Marissa Illus. by Shimizu, Yuko Abrams (48 pp.) $18.95 | Apr. 9, 2013 978-1-4197-0521-2

Kenichi Zenimura built a baseball legacy in the Japanese-American internment camps during World War II. Zeni grew up loving everything about the game of baseball and made a career as a successful player and manager in local leagues around California. Small but mighty, he played in exhibition games in Japan with the likes of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. After Pearl Harbor, he and his family were sent, along with thousands of other Japanese Americans, to heavily guarded internment camps to live in barracks behind barbed wire. He was determined to provide a hint of normalcy and pleasure to his people amid the hardships, and what better way than to build a baseball field and organize teams. With hard physical

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“Cooper’s soft-edged brown, amber and green illustrations lovingly depict the action and emotions called forth in the text.” from something to prove

labor and loads of ingenuity, he and his sons and fellow inmates did it all, creating a sense of community along the way. In language that captures the underlying sadness and loss, Moss emphasizes Zeni’s fierce spirit as he removes every obstacle in order to play his beloved baseball and regain a sense of pride. Shimizu’s Japanese calligraphy brush–andink illustrations colored in Photoshop depict the dreary landscape with the ever-present barbed wire, with that beautiful grassy baseball field the only beacon of hope. Much-needed biographical and historical information is provided in an afterword.

A worthy companion for Ken Mochizuki and Dom Lee’s Baseball Saved Us (1993). (author’s note, artist’s note, bibliography, index) (Picture book/biography. 7-10)

SLUGGER

Pearson, Susan Illus. by Slonim, David Amazon Children’s Publishing (32 pp.) $14.99 | Mar. 19, 2013 978-1-4778-1641-7 A slug with dreams of baseball glory finds success on the diamond thanks to a modified helmet.

Ollie loves everything about baseball, especially his favorite team, the Creepy Crawlers. He longs to join such stars as Grasshopper Bob, Bombardier Bill, Mickey Mantis and Babe Beetle. But how?

With no arms, he can’t very well pitch or catch, and he doesn’t exactly light up the base paths with his speed. His only hope is to become a slugger, but there’s still that no-arms problem. Ollie is nothing if not persistent, though. Equipped with a helmet-mounted bat, he whiffs at pitch after pitch from pal Sammy Stinkbug in private practice till, finally, he clobbers one. Despite not having witnessed this, Coach Roach gives him one try, and on a made-to-slug-order rainy, sloppy day, Ollie drives in Grasshopper Bob for victory and a place in the lineup. There’s not much to make the story stand out; Ollie’s success is a foregone conclusion, and his path to it is so truncated it would be unbelievable even if he did have arms. There’s mild amusement in Slonim’s depictions of Ollie twisting himself into knots, eyestalks crossed crazily as he powers the business end of his bat through a swing. The illustrations don’t follow through on the story’s logic, though, picturing him somehow holding variously a bag of popcorn and a book despite his armlessness.

A blooper. (Picture book. 3-7)

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SOMETHING TO PROVE The Great Satchel Paige vs. Rookie Joe DiMaggio

Skead, Robert Illus. by Cooper, Floyd Carolrhoda (32 pp.) $16.95 | $12.95 e-book | Apr. 1, 2013 978-0-7613-6619-5 978-1-4677-0954-5 e-book

A little-known episode in the careers of two baseball giants highlights the racial divide in the game.

In 1936, pitcher Satchel Paige was already a veteran hero in Negro League baseball, while Joe DiMaggio was a hot, young prospect under consideration by the New York Yankees. Yankee management’s plan was to have DiMaggio bat against Paige in a game between white and black barnstorming teams as a test of his ability to hit the best of the best. DiMaggio managed only an infield hit off Paige, but it was enough to prove himself to the Yankees. Skead details the events of the game with an air of excitement and expectancy, keying in on both men’s strategies and thoughts; Joe tells himself to keep his eye on the ball, and Satchel decides to throw his “wobbly ball” or his “whipsey dipsey do.” Underlying the narrative is sadness that DiMaggio would go on to an enormous career with the Yankees, while Satchel Paige, who had proven himself one of the greatest pitchers of all time, would not play for a major league team until he was over 40 years old. Cooper’s soft-edged brown, amber and green illustrations lovingly depict the action and emotions called forth in the text.

A loving tribute to Satchel Paige, who never looked back in anger. (author’s note, bibliography) (Picture book. 7-12)

BECOMING BABE RUTH

Tavares, Matt Illus. by Tavares, Matt Candlewick (40 pp.) $16.99 | Feb. 12, 2013 978-0-7636-5646-1

An homage to the Bambino introduces a new audience to this great legend of baseball.

Babe Ruth’s baseball skills changed the game forever, and his story reads like a movie script. Seven-year-old George, not quite an orphan, is placed by his father in the St. Mary’s Industrial School because he is unmanageable and incorrigible. The regimented life there is beneficial if not so much to George’s liking, but Brother Matthias teaches him baseball and hones his considerable skills. At 19, he is signed by the minor league Baltimore Orioles, where he is renamed Babe for his wide-eyed, enthusiastic embrace of his new life. From Baltimore to Boston to the New York Yankees, in a time before television and Facebook, he becomes a celebrity of monumental proportions. Tavares is careful to include all the relevant information, focusing on Ruth’s exploits on the field as well as his charitable nature—he helps St. Mary’s rebuild after a devastating

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“The narrative energy and constant happenings keep users thoroughly engaged, while the characters, as drawn for the screen, have strong personalities, and the landscapes have good visual appeal.” from the pilgrim’s progress

fire—while presenting his fast and furious lifestyle as part of his charm and appeal. Watercolor, gouache and pencil illustrations in yellows, greens and shades of amber against bright blue or shining white backgrounds depict a glowing Ruth glorying in his accomplishments. Tavares allows young readers to view Ruth with just the right amount of hero worship and awe.

Flamboyant and amazingly talented, the Sultan of Swat receives due appreciation here. (author’s note, statistics chart, bibliography) (Picture book/biography. 6-10)

A BASEBALL STORY

Torrey, Richard Illus. by Torrey, Richard Kane/Miller (32 pp.) $10.99 | Mar. 1, 2013 978-1-61067-054-8

Coach Mike says that baseball players always need to be ready, and Jordan is all set for the first game of the season.

Jordan tells all the details of opening day, from donning his uniform to pregame practice to his exploits on the field, all the while repeating and carefully adhering to the coach’s mantra. The book’s emphasis is on good sportsmanship and the fun of playing a good game. Narrative sentences are short and matter-of-fact with lots of information about the bare-bones basics of the game. Jordan’s concerns about doing well in the field and at bat, his teammates’ thoughts, and dialogue are all placed in word bubbles that add a bit of humor to the proceedings. Words of encouragement are mixed with comments like “I’m hungry,” “Look I’m an airplane,” and other very childlike asides. But there’s plenty of spirit and camaraderie to go around. In this idealized version of suburban Little League, the coach and the parents are universally supportive and cheerful, and everyone is mostly interested in having fun. Torrey’s brightly hued illustrations on white or grassy green backgrounds are filled with cartoony characters who all have the same facial features, but they are given distinctive coloring, hairstyles and accessories that manage to impart a sense of individuality.

An innocent, sweet and charming introduction to the national pastime. (Picture book. 4-8)

interactive e-books THE PILGRIM’S PROGRESS Bunyan, John Nation9 $4.99 | Dec. 5, 2012 1.0; Dec. 5, 2012

John Bunyan’s Christian allegory gets light-handed but soulful treatment.

This animated app relays Bunyan’s story in a somewhat breathless fashion, 114

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evidently to underscore the import of the proceedings. But it wasn’t necessary, for though this is a considerably pared-down version of the original, it retains its propulsive nature in a colorsaturated, near–3-D format. Here is Christian, carrying his heavy load; no mention of sin is made, so the story can be read as a simple morality play, though the episode with the cross, staying on the narrow path and the quest for the City of Zion belie its Christian roots. Still, the overarching themes are the importance of doing the right thing, behaving with grace and learning how to navigate a world that is a minefield of trouble and temptation. All the singular characters are present: Christian’s traveling companions Faithful and Hopeful; Formalist and Hypocrisy; the Worldly Wiseman and the Evangelist; Discretion, Prudence, Piety and Charity. So too the great places of Vainglory, the Valley of Humiliation and the Valley of the Shadow of Death. The narrative energy and constant happenings keep users thoroughly engaged, while the characters, as drawn for the screen, have strong personalities, and the landscapes have good visual appeal.

A gratifying introduction to one of the most notable pieces of religious literature. (iPad storybook app. 5-10)

FRANKIE The Untold Story of an ItsyBitsy Spider Federspiel, Carey Mills Illus. by Federspiel, Carey Mills Carey Federspiel $3.99 | Jan. 9, 2013 1.0.1; Jan. 9, 2013

A bare-bones, even emaciated retelling of and embellishment on “The Itsy

Bitsy Spider.”

Frankie, a very tiny, brown spider, is small even compared to blades of grass and ladybugs. One day, he encounters a mysterious cave from which emanates a dripping sound. He investigates what turns out to be the spout of a rain gutter. But rather than just being washed out and climbing back again, Frankie gets to do some surfing on a leaf on the way down. No longer afraid, and equipped with beach shorts, he heads back up. The story is simple, with sparse text and pleasant-enough watercolor illustrations. But except for a few sound effects, a blasting surf riff and animations so minimal readers may not even notice they’re happening, this app offers little interaction. There’s no real navigation, just a cumbersome pop-up menu that requires tapping the screen twice to call it up.

(Readers won’t even know it exists unless they happen to tap the screen twice.) All of these issues would be fine if the tale itself were truly transporting or charming, but instead, the lackluster animation, unremarkable writing and jarring music might make readers wish they were reading a better version of the original “Itsy.”

There’s nothing wrong with simplicity, but Frankie’s story and the app built around it are so spare they can’t possibly wash anyone out. (iPad storybook app. 2-6)

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YUMMY TUMMY

up their messes and take a bath, and then it’s off to bed.

An enjoyable, low-stimulation interactive story that should be great for bedtime. (requires iOS 6) (iPad storybook app. 3-6)

Galitskaya, Kate Illus. by Dehtiariova, Olga Glowberry Books $1.99 | Nov. 17, 2012 1.0; Nov. 17, 2012

PWIGGLES ON PLUTO

An app about a child learning to cook has some charming moments, but they’re mixed together to bad effect with unfortunate design and writing choices.

When Lisa is given a set of children’s dishware for her sixth birthday, she begins preparing toy food for her stuffed animals and dolls. Her mother shows Lisa how to make real meals, guiding her in a primer of ingredients, kitchen tools, hygiene and safety. It’s a good, detailed set of lessons. Some pages appear as colorful lists on a background of notebook paper. Other pages show Lisa and her mother interacting in the kitchen with food and appliances while the child’s toys look on. But too many pages are filled with overlong, unbroken blocks of text, and generic, ugly navigation buttons at the bottom of each page work against the entertaining artwork. The juxtaposition of well-designed pages with plenty of animations and wit against more inert pages emphasizes ho-hum writing and derails what could have been a focused, entertaining story. At one point in one of these textheavy pages, Lisa’s mother says, “Well, I see you are pretty bored with all this talking. Let’s do something more exciting!” Oh, the irony.

Overdone and unevenly baked. (iPad storybook app. 5-9)

THE HIPPO, THE RHINO, THE ELEPHANT AND ME

Ink Robin Ink Robin $3.99 | Dec. 20, 2012 1.0; Dec. 20, 2012

A week of whimsical fun with a little girl and her three entertaining friends.

As the title suggests, the protagonist in this story has an odd bunch of pals. However, the unlikely quartet is never at a loss for something fun to do. Sundays are hide-and-seek days; Mondays are musical. Tuesday is art day, while Wednesdays are reserved for make-believe—and so on. This rhyming story is in keeping with Ink Robin’s other offerings (Leonard and Piccadilly’s Circus, both 2012), which is to say that it’s well-written and engaging.

There are plenty of interactive opportunities throughout the story, though they’re pretty conventional and straightforward (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing). On coloring day, swiping the screen produces little sketches and drawings; when the four play dress-up and make-believe, a flip of a switch finds the girl roaring across the screen in a monster costume. Tapping each character on music day produces makeshift instruments that can be strummed and pots that act as a drum kit. Illustrations are both cheerful and fittingly sparse, and the pleasant narration can be turned on or off. Near the end of the story, Mom reminds the foursome that playing can be messy. So they dutifully clean |

Kim, Heji Illus. by Kim, Heji Heji Kim $0.00 | Dec. 8, 2012 valpha 1; Dec. 8, 2012

A nonexistent story and a mostly uninspiring template-built interface ground this app from the get-go.

The pwiggles, hairy creatures that look a little like fingerprints with long horns (or maybe ears?) on their heads, live on Pluto. Readers won’t learn anything of substance about them by reading this story, only that they prefer to do things in groups of two, five and eight. Gluggles, the scoundrels in the story, are Jabba the Hutt–like creatures that growl and grouse and prey on pwiggles. Mild potty humor permeates the story, as there’s some burping, regurgitating and lots of fart sounds. There is one redeeming element here: In a sea of profoundly wearisome apps that have been built using drag-and-drop tools, this one actually offers slight (emphasis on the word “slight”) improvements. For example, on a page where the pwiggles form a dance troupe, swiping one of them triggers a handful of acrobatic flip sequences. And tapping them often causes a lateral, paper-thin rotation. However, the monochromatic, one-dimensional illustrations don’t add even half an ounce of aesthetic value. There’s an index of pages that makes navigation somewhat simple, though the homogenous one-word page descriptions don’t give much of a clue where you’ll land. Unusual sound effects are plenteous, which might help to hold kids’ interest, but there’s no narration.

Pluto deserves better. (iPad storybook app. 2-5)

AMELIA AND TERROR OF THE NIGHT OhNoo Studio OhNoo Studio $1.99 | Dec. 12, 2012 1.0.0.; Dec. 12, 2012

An attractively creepy-cute app gets bogged down in too many distracting extra features to tell a great story.

The world of Amelia—a sunkeneyed girl who hangs around with a kitten, a tortoise and a living, breathing teddy bear—is more than a bit overcrowded. On half the pages of her gorgeously gothic app, taps reveal a variety of critters below the surface. On alternating pages that resemble a traditional storybook, repulsive animals such as giant spiders or slimy caterpillars cross the screen as readers try to pay attention to the story. At first, it’s cool; the beautifully animated sequences are frequently funny. But the frenzied interactivity masks what could have been a perfectly entertaining narrative about friends

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banding together to save the stolen soul of the tortoise, Little Pencil, from a wicked-looking baddie named, deliciously, Whine.

The moody, painterly artwork is stunning, and so is the production work all around. But it ends up an over-spiced stew. The bulk of the animated characters are just marginalia, and a star-collecting game is superfluous. These features sell the story short. The lack of storytelling confidence becomes clear in its pat, disappointing conclusion, which negates much of the experience.

This app gets so much right that it’s a shame it ends up offering too much of a good thing. (iPad storybook app. 4-10)

LULU AND THE BLUE WOLF

Picouly, Daniel Illus. by Pillot, Frédéric Magnard Jeunesse $3.99 | Dec. 5, 2012 1.1.0; Dec. 5, 2012

LITTLE ORIOLE

A popular French picture-book character moves to the app realm with mixed results.

Lulu, a small tortoise with adorable wiggling pigtails in her hair, is surprised to hear laughing from all the forest animals and discovers that they are laughing at a big blue wolf. When she realizes that the animals are laughing at the wolf ’s stuttering howls, Lulu determines to help him discover his frightening side, thus enabling him to pass his “wolf exams.”

While readers will appreciate the resolution of this sweet story, the app adapts the picture book with only partial success. The music and narration, available in French, English and Spanish, engage readers, bringing them into the story, and the design is smooth and attractive. Illustrator Pillot’s vibrant artwork translates beautifully to the iPad, but the picture-book text is too wordy and long for the app format, dominating the screens and slowing the pacing. There are translation issues, too, with some nonsensical syntax (“today school’s nay”) and mystifying idioms (“It’s enough to lose her rag!”). The limited interactive features do not extend the story sufficiently, distracting readers instead of deepening their understanding of the themes or plot.

This app ultimately falls short. (iPad storybook app. 3-6)

MCELLIGOT’S POOL

Dr. Seuss Illus. by Dr. Seuss Oceanhouse Media $4.99 | Jan. 9, 2013 2.1; Jan. 9, 2013

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Zhou, Jianxin Illus. by Zhou, Jianxin Kai-feng Kama Bookstore $3.99 | Dec. 29, 2012 1.1; Jan. 8, 2013 A confusingly organized import with aural and visual appeal aplenty features a small bird on a long journey and an unusual hands-on project.

In harmonious woodcuts reminiscent of Marcia Brown’s grainy block prints, an oriole freed from a cage flies over a bridge, mountains and other features. As he flies, he pauses for philosophical exchanges with a cow (“Well, we should all at least know who we are, shouldn’t we?”) and a stone Buddha. At last, he nestles on a plum branch next to another oriole. The illustrations—some featuring small, restrained animations and others in which the colors appear a layer at a time as a multiblock woodcut would be printed—alternate with blank screens bearing single lines of text. The result is a measured, leisurely pacing reinforced by the deliberate narration (optional, and in English or Chinese), spare musical track and inconspicuous sound effects.

Just getting to the story’s start, though, requires passing a customizable bookplate that turns out to be a beautifully designed tutorial in woodcut printing, followed by a sort of puzzle screen with draggable Chinese characters and analyses of three short poems. Part story, part literary rumination, part introduction to an artistic technique, this is more a compendium than an integrated app.

Still, there are rewards here for reflective readers. (author blurb) (iPad storybook app. 6-9) This Issue’s Contributors #

In this iPad adaptation of the Seuss classic, a young fisherman is undeterred by the warning that there is nothing but trash where he is fishing. A little imagination and a lot of Seuss-ian descriptives make this a productive expedition indeed.

Accompanied by superb background audio, Seuss’ original illustrations appear bright and beautiful on the iPad screen, which 116

shifts focus as the narrative advances. Navigation is smooth and responsive, and the menu button at the bottom makes all options easy to access, including page selection, hints, sound effects and narration options. Whether it is simply a rock or a “fish with a long curly nose,” tap anything in the illustrations, and identifying words zoom up and are voiced. The text itself is highlighted as it is read, and words can be repeated with a touch. Readers can read independently, listen to the professional narration or even let it run like a movie, but perhaps the best option is to record your own voice and share it with others who have the app.

Another solid Seuss adaptation from Oceanhouse, which allows readers to hook plenty of goodies. (iPad storybook app. 3-7)

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Alison Anholt-White • Kim Becnel • Marcie Bovetz • Louise Brueggemann • Timothy Capehart • Ann Childs • Julie Cummins • GraceAnne A. DeCandido • Dave DeChristopher • Elise DeGuiseppi • Lisa Dennis • Carol Edwards • Robin L. Elliott • Brooke Faulkner • Laurie Flynn • Omar Gallaga • Judith Gire • Ruth I. Gordon • Melinda Greenblatt • Megan Honig • Shelley Huntington • Kathleen T. Isaacs • Laura Jenkins • Betsy Judkins • K. Lesley Knieriem • Robin Fogle Kurz • Megan Dowd Lambert • Angela Leeper • Peter Lewis • Ellen Loughran • Lori Low • Joan Malewitz • Jeanne McDermott • Kathie Meizner • Daniel Meyer • R. Moore • John Edward Peters • Susan Pine • Melissa Rabey • Rebecca Rabinowitz • Kristy Raffensberger • Nancy Thalia Reynolds • Ronnie Rom • Leslie L. Rounds • Ann Marie Sammataro • Mindy Schanback • Mary Ann Scheuer • Dean Schneider • Stephanie Seales • Chris Shoemaker • Karyn N. Silverman • Robin Smith • Rita Soltan • Edward T. Sullivan • Jennifer Sweeney • Deborah D. Taylor • Bette Wendell-Branco • S.D. Winston • Monica Wyatt

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indie SUN TZU: THE ART OF MAKING MONEY Strategies for Getting Through a Tough Economy Cheung, Michael M.K. CreateSpace (212 pp.) $12.95 paper | $0.99 e-book Oct. 25, 2012 978-1480089006

Using the principles of Sun Tzu, the ancient general and military tactician, Cheung draws parallels between military and financial strategies.

Selected excerpts and quotes attributed to Sun Tzu provide the basis of Cheung’s suggested strategies for financial success. Just as a military leader must observe the cycles of heaven and Earth, so should the financial planner observe economic cycles and plan accordingly.

The end result is a presentation of conventional wisdoms offered from an unconventional point of view which briefly covers a wide range of some well-known, basic financial skills: Don’t spend more than you earn; don’t accumulate debt; try to do work that you love; invest wisely and plan ahead for retirement. Some strategies relate to personal finances, such as building individual savings, choosing individual investments, and completing a personal analysis of Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT). Other strategies are used to discuss finances at a higher level, such as getting to know the strengths and weaknesses of business competitors and using them to an advantage. Some of the relationships between Sun Tzu’s principles and finance aren’t clearly made; for instance, Sun Tzu advised that “All conflicts are based on deception,” but for Cheung, deception “often involves possessing an asset your competition lacks and using it in surprising ways.” Examples include the protection of intellectual property and proprietary information, which might better be categorized as defense against industrial piracy rather than deceit. Other pieces of advice drawn from war-based parallels may not sit well with everyone, such as the section devoted to the use of spies and the advice to cultivate relationships with a competitor’s administrative assistants in order to gain access to information and the competitor’s leadership. While the generally sound strategies follow tried-and-true methods for achieving success, the challenge is often in the details, which are sometimes left unaddressed. Diversifying skills is always good advice, but the suggestion to “go back to school…or begin a new career” may come across as blithe and superficial to someone who can’t pay for classes.

Perhaps too mercenary for some, but when implemented properly, the mostly sound principles can lead to financial stability and success.

MESSAGES FROM MOTHER....

EARTH MOTHER Cromwell, Mare Pamoon Press (112 pp.) $14.95 paper | $9.99 e-book Oct. 1, 2012 978-0971703230

A walk in the park sets off a mission to awaken humanity and save Earth, as Cromwell’s (If I Gave You God’s Phone Number, 2002) work weaves an argument for living in awareness of all life.

When her boyfriend announces a troubling decision that disrupts her world, Sarah turns to nature for comfort, only to discover that nature wants help in return. The rustically dressed woman who greets Sarah in the forest turns out to be Earth Mother, whose gentle, compassionate embrace melts Sarah’s pain and convinces her of the woman’s identity. Earth Mother has something to say to humanity (13 things, in fact) and invites Sarah to be the conduit. In the weekly conversations that follow, Earth Mother imparts observations, pleas and guidelines for living in greater harmony with her and with other people.

Her messages cover familiar territory (respect the Earth; plant trees) and some terrain that’s not typically associated with her—violence, conflict, competition, gratitude, etc. She’s not crazy about social media or the belittling of women, and she follows guidance for males with a pep talk for females. Earth Mother’s vision of the future is an innovative twist on Utopia, with renewable energy, biodegradable objects, telepathic communication and therapeutic criminal justice. The components might veer toward the simplistic—share food; sing; conserve “things that you’ve broken [Earth Mother’s] soil or skin to get”; leave her offerings of organically grown tobacco—but the cumulative effect isn’t trite. A self-styled “plant intuitive, sacred gardener and worm wrangler,” the author imbues her characters’ conversations with a convincing earnestness and ambition. Despite the instructional nature of the messages, Cromwell cloaks Earth Mother in lightheartedness and gives her an endearing predilection for corny jokes as well as messages of hope and love.

A humorous, good-natured blueprint for saving the planet.

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“The writing...has a knack for capturing the thrill of the whole game, not just the last two minutes.” from the 76ers with iverson

CHILD OF THE SWORD Book 1 of the Gods Within

Doty, J.L. Telemachus Press (422 pp.) $9.99 paper | $3.99 e-book | Nov. 9, 2012 978-1938701887 Doty (When Dead Ain’t Enough, 2012, etc.) conjures a magical world of witches, wizards and war in this high-energy first installment of an epic-fantasy series.

This dark tale charges out of the gate as Rat—a street orphan about 6 or 7 years old—runs through a medieval marketplace with his “one good eye” fixed on an unsuspecting man’s purse of coins. Little Rat, covered with diseased sores and clothed in filthy rags, survives by hiding and stealing whatever he can. When Rat successfully steals the purse, angry market vendors chase him into a oneway alley, where he hides in the shadows. Unbeknownst to Rat, his hiding skill is a form of magic that allows him to wrap shadows around himself. Enter Lord Roland, a respected and feared clan witch, who is impressed by Rat’s magical potential. He stops the mob from hurting the raggedy Rat and takes him to his castle, the House of Elhiyne, where he and his wife, AnnaRail, eventually adopt him as a son. Rat is renamed Morgin, and he often butts heads with his powerful grandmother, the witch Olivia. She and Roland school him in the art of magic and swordsmanship over several years. After an ancient ancestral conflict between clans leads to war, the adult Morgin has an argument with Olivia, and she banishes him from Elhiyne; nonetheless, he vows to fight to save his family. While the book’s minor characters can be a bit clichéd (a beautiful blonde angel helps Morgin), most of the main characters are well-rounded and have human emotions; for example, the fearsome, old Olivia is shown to have a soft spot in her heart for family. Meanwhile, Morgin’s struggles as he deals with his own fears make him a very sympathetic hero. Readers who like action will find gruesome battle scenes reminiscent of The Iliad, with much death and hacking of body parts. A romantic subplot between Morgin and his beautiful wife, Rhianne, while intriguing, doesn’t overwhelm the action. However, the history of the different clans can be confusing, and the ending contains some unresolved issues, which may disappoint some readers. That said, the conclusion carefully props open the door for the author’s next chapter.

A fine fantasy novel that will provide readers with a good weekend escape from reality.

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THE 76ERS WITH IVERSON Reliving the Ride Duquette, Clifton CreateSpace (264 pp.) $13.99 paper | $7.99 e-book Dec. 28, 2012 978-1481167000

Duquette brings every shot, dribble, pass and steal of the Philadelphia 76ers’ glorious 2000-2001 basketball season to life—including the formative years leading up to the championship game—while presenting them through the eyes of a young boy.

Duquette had few hobbies when he graduated sixth-grade in 1998, but he was primarily drawn to basketball by hearing about phenom Michael Jordan. It was deep into Jordan’s career, and many realized that he’d soon be leaving the game.

Duquette tuned in and was immediately smitten. When Jordan retired, Duquette turned his attention to his hometown team. The 76ers were awakening after years of dormancy, which made them ripe for Duquette’s enthusiasm. Duquette writes this book as if he were that boy again, though with considerable polish to the naïveté. He uses plenty of lingo— “rubbed off screens,” “finished in the paint”—but with a fluency that allows the untutored to understand the action as he leads readers through the years leading to the finals. They were exciting years, and Duquette displays that excitement as only a young teenager can experience it: the electricity, the optimism, the lust for statistics and background information and comparisons. Throughout, the spotlight is on Allen Iverson, the awesome 6-foot shooting guard—quick as an asp, dazzlingly acrobatic; however, Duquette is smart to balance him with plenty of time spared for his teammates.

As the 76ers move toward their finals series against the Los Angeles Lakers, Duquette weaves in his own life and family, adding considerable warmth to the book—how his father gradually took to the game; what his mother thought of Iverson (“I guess they finally realized how much of a troublemaker he is”); the school nights when he wasn’t supposed to be watching television and had to sneak from room to room, TV to TV, to steal glimpses of the game. The writing can be wordy, but it can also coax out the poetry of basketball (with its “rainbow jumpers”), and it has a knack for capturing the thrill of the whole game, not just the last two minutes.

Even those with only a smattering of basketball interest will feel Duquette’s boundless joy for the game.

“Her narrators are buffeted by nostalgia but are never fatalistic or cloying; instead, they treasure the past and the present as a single fabric of interwoven threads.” from passages ii

PASSAGES II Brown Doves

Drayton, Helen CreateSpace (120 pp.) $23.13 paper | $5.99 e-book Nov. 20, 2012 978-1478160045 Engaging lyric poetry that manages to be sensual and cerebral, fun and profound.

Readers willing to dig deeper than the work of poets Derek Walcott, Linton Kwesi Johnson and Anthony Joseph will find that exciting new worlds of Caribbean poetry await.

Although some lesser-known Caribbean writers tend to get bogged down in the exotic fecundity of their island landscapes, others write with a grace and steadiness that highlights personal experience within the larger context of culture and environment to reveal something universal. Trinidadian novelist, painter and poet Drayton (The Crystal Bird, 2012, etc.) most decidedly falls into the latter category. Her personal poems often focus on singular moments in her past, yet her evocation of the slippage between past and present, of how we manage to exist in both times simultaneously, speaks directly to readers. The exploration of how “time…magically overlaps generations” pervades this collection. Her narrators are buffeted by nostalgia but are never fatalistic or cloying; instead, they treasure the past and the present as a single fabric of interwoven threads. One narrator, for instance, revisits a memorable beach and finds that the “scenery I knew has all but gone, / except for the sea. / Longing and waiting, I dream of the days / that never can be again. / The sea waits while I dream a dream / where I stand on the balcony of this precious day.” Drayton invests symbols with a similar complexity; the titular brown dove, for instance, is at once a symbol of maternal devotion, sexual allure, rebellion and quiet endurance, and is rife with gender and racial resonances. Occasionally, her more contemplative poems suffer from excess erudition, and she is sometimes prone to distracting alliteration, but she also delivers unmatched similes such as, “The morning stormed my day / like a drunken party crasher / with streams of gold and white ribbons / coming through the window.”

Wise, kind and lively verse that truly “dances to a tune that’s / gloriously redeeming / of anger, hate, and envy. / It’s an awesome authority / with boundless energy.”

SEE MORE AND TALK LESS Teaching and Applying the Mental Aspects of Baseball Figone, Al CreateSpace (156 pp.) $35.00 paper | Nov. 13, 2012 978-1467936941

A useful guide for coaches and advanced players.

Figone, a baseball player and professor of kinesiology (Humboldt State), believes his book can help players perform better and become more confident through daily practice and an awareness of their basic skill levels. The goal, Figone says, “is to design a mental skills program for baseball, specifically for each individual skill executed, learned, practiced, and repeatedly evaluated for improvement from its baseline measure.” When a player can calm his or her nerves and let muscle memory take over, then their performance will improve. First published in 1991, the book’s latest version includes a discussion of how coaches and players can use computer technology to improve performance. Figone examines each aspect of offensive and defensive play, providing detailed breakdowns of proper form and training. Also included is an appendix that provides worksheets to evaluate players at all positions, including in the batter’s box. Figone breaks the game down into fine details, which can be somewhat overwhelming. For example, he provides three pages explaining nine different kinds of steals (ball trajectory steal, jump steal, on-your-own steal, must steal, etc.) and how a player should perform in each situation. Combined with the encyclopedic approach to playing baseball, the dry, often technical language shows that this book isn’t for young or even casual players; it’s aimed squarely at coaches, even professional managers, and novices might find their heads spinning with unfamiliar terms. Readers who don’t know a suicide squeeze from a force out should seek a more rudimentary title, but those looking for a detailed breakdown of our national pastime need look no further.

Valuable, comprehensive instructions for potential big leaguers.

JEZEBEL IN BLUE SATIN

Fischer, Peter S. The Grove Point Press (252 pp.) $12.95 paper | $5.99 e-book | Nov. 1, 2011 978-0984681990 In this stylish homage to the detective novels of Hollywood’s Golden Age, a press agent stumbles across a starlet’s dead body and into the seamy world of scheming players and morally bankrupt movie moguls.

An aging actress whose star has fallen, a thuggish bodyguard, a Holy Rolling studio head, an actor whose sexuality is in flux—these people inhabit the world of beleaguered publicist Joe Bernardi. Like Chandler’s Philip Marlowe, Joe operates in a 1940s Los Angeles full of femmes fatales, hucksters, and shady movers and shakers. But he’s no hard-drinking tough guy, just a man desperate to clear his name—the cops think he killed a dead actress—while trying to find satisfaction in his job at second-rate Continental Studios. He also wouldn’t mind reuniting with his ex-wife, Lydia, whose house he watches in the wee hours. Joe’s struggling to regain his life after the war, and his soft heart and fledgling courage stand out against the old-fashioned whodunit plot in which there’s no shortage of suspects, including Mafia men, all with convincing motives

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for murder. Adding depth and color are descriptions of LA that are at once nostalgic and believable. Observations from Joe’s viewpoint slyly echo the era and the genre: “the job suits her like a size 2 silk slip,” and “he can squeeze a penny hard enough to make Lincoln cry.”

That’s what makes the story snap: the familiar yet original characters and their sparkling dialogue. Author Fischer spent many years as a Hollywood scriptwriter, and his talent for authentic voice and tight repartee shines in this first installment of the Hollywood Murder Mysteries series. The background is steeped in movie lore, with names and events of the time—Farley Granger, Gail Russell and the Black Dahlia murder case—cropping up to set the tale against real Hollywood history. Layered with complex relationships that are rarely what they seem, the tightly drawn plot carefully unveils its mysteries; even as one murder is solved, more twists pop up to ensure revelations right up to the satisfying ending.

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

THE ELECTRIC

Fuller, Rex CreateSpace (226 pp.) $12.99 paper | $4.99 e-book Nov. 6, 2012 978-1478383499 A young boy’s discovery of bones on his family’s Oklahoma farm throws his life into a tailspin in Fuller’s (Decency, 2012) post–World War II novel.

In 1946, 7-year-old Joe works hard on a farm with no electricity. Power companies are looking for land, and Joe’s grandfather hears that organized crime is trying to muscle its way into the electricity business. After Joe discovers what appear to be human remains, James, a man helping at the farm, is arrested for murder. Billy Joe Parmalee, a young attorney, asks Joe if he will help him prove that James is innocent. As the story progresses, the child learns that not everyone is trustworthy. Fuller delivers a novel that’s fully engaged with its time period: Joe is in awe over such things as cameras and telephones and is impressed by a house that has not one, but two toilets conveniently located inside. The author provides the boy with a rich history—his father died during the war, and his mother, during the course of the narrative, moves to Kansas City to make a better life for herself and her son. Joe’s interactions with his family, particularly his grandpa, make for sweet moments, but the standout scenes are those with Joe and the lawyer, as the two work on James’ case. Fuller appropriately and endearingly highlights the farm’s chores; milking the cows is done so often that people use them to measure the time of day, and laundry is an allday event. Joe comes across as a naïve, believable 7-year-old, but he also displays shrewdness and levelheadedness. He has cravings for cream sodas but also describes his anger as “sour acid rivers” that have “raged in [his] veins.” The story is written in Joe’s dialect—the phrase “might could” appears often. But the author’s stylistic bravura really drives the novel home, as he effectively uses fragmented sentences in the more intense scenes, such as Joe’s nightmare that opens the story.

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An engaging novel, which successfully merges a drama and a thriller into a period piece.

BACK TO YOU

Glenn, Priscilla CreateSpace (328 pp.) $12.95 paper | $2.99 e-book Oct. 20, 2012 978-1479103782 First love between two unlikely teenagers comes full circle in this second-chance, friends-to-lovers debut from Glenn.

Good-natured high school freshman Lauren Monroe can’t get bad boy Michael Delaney out of her head. She’s heard all the warnings of her fellow classmates, and she’s even witnessed some of his rage in health class, where he flipped over a desk on the first day of school. But she can’t shake the feeling that there is depth and reason behind his outlandish actions, and an unlikely friendship grows. He likes that she never asks him about which rumors are true, and she likes that she gets to know him in a way that no one else has. So it’s no surprise when she slowly starts to fall in love with him. After sleeping together (her first time), Michael convinces himself that leaving town after graduation and never talking to her again is the best option for the future. Though he loves her, his past has damaged his ability to connect, and he feels he isn’t good enough for her and will only let her down. Flash forward eight years. Lauren lives in a new town, and at her first day teaching day care, Michael shows up out of the blue with his enrolled 4-year-old daughter, Erin. Reluctant to dredge up the past or confront her feelings, they fall into a professional rhythm.

But though Lauren begins dating her chiropractor, she can’t forget her past with Michael. It’s as hard to write a realistic, nonschmaltzy love story as it is to tell any other kind. Glenn not only succeeds here, but flourishes at making her characters both believable and engaging. Just as Nicholas Sparks did with The Notebook, Glenn tells the story of rekindled first love with a deft touch.

Romance fans will devour this standout story.

HEAVEN ON THE HARDWOOD A Coach’s Journey in Faith & Basketball Hammond, Brady Xulon Press (236 pp.) $15.99 paper | $7.99 e-book Sep. 26, 2012 978-1624191916

A young man obsessed with basketball tries to puzzle out God’s game plan in this sprightly Christian motivational memoir.

Hammond, a high school basketball coach in Missouri,

“[A] clean, concise ‘model for the future’ of publishing’s ‘new electronic realities.’ ” from ape: author, publisher, entrepreneur

starts out by recounting his boyhood dream of becoming an NBA star, which he pursued with single-minded intensity through amateur leagues, summer camps and school teams.

It’s a story full of juvenile drama—last-second wins and losses, an agonizing wait to find out if he made the varsity starting squad—that the author tells with panache and a dollop of self-deprecating humor, which obliquely registers the pain of discovering that he’s not quite good enough for the college level. But when the pre-med direction doesn’t pan out—he faints while observing an operation—Hammond feels called to recommit to the game by becoming a coach and teacher, an ambition that’s not quite as lofty as his former dreams of NBA glory, although, in its way, it can be just as absorbing. His career scramble takes him to a small-town school with a flagging team in dire need of a turnaround, then on to a metropolitan Kansas City high school basketball powerhouse, where some of his more important revelations come from supervising a humble detention class. Threaded through this picaresque is his growing Christian faith, which affirms itself through trials great (his mother’s bout with cancer) and small—his struggle to break with a soulless collegiate party culture; a soured romance; and the persistent doubt about whether he’s choosing the right path in life. Hammond’s love of the game animates the narrative, which is full of gripping play-by-play, subtle explications of on-court strategies and leadership insights both gratifying and harsh, especially when a losing season forces him to take a hard look at his unwieldy coaching system. But basketball is also a hook for his probing, complex take on religious priorities. The game serves as a metaphor for his active, fighting faith, not to mention a possible false god that can distract from a life of deeper meaning and purpose. Hammond’s lively prose and down-to-earth perspective make his lessons in devotion unusually resonant.

A rousing saga of sports and spirituality.

APE: AUTHOR, PUBLISHER, ENTREPRENEUR How to Publish a Book

Kawasaki, Guy; Welch, Shawn Nononina Press (386 pp.) $24.99 paper | $9.99 e-book | Jan. 7, 2013 978-0988523104 To succeed in the brave new worlds of self- and e-publishing, according to Kawasaki and Welch’s indispensable guide, one must be an author/publisher with an entrepreneurial bent.

It’s hard to believe in our advanced stage of Kindles and iPads, but in 2011, Kawasaki’s publisher, Penguin, encountered difficulties trying to electronically distribute his New York Times best-seller for a promotional effort. After reading a book called Be the Monkey, which explains the advantages of selfpublishing, Kawasaki and Welch developed “APE,” a concept they unveil as The Chicago Manual of Style for authors interested in controlling their own fates and getting their words

to the reading public. The authors demonstrate how the days of “vanity publishing” are gone; from plotting and pricing to pitching and press releases, determined authors are now doing it for themselves. Before breaking down the self-publishing revolution, or “democratization,” the authors examine traditional publishing, including “fantasy” versus “reality” scenarios. By illustrating the archaic processes of the old model and revealing the precarious hierarchy of redundant players—such as agents, who should be very nervous about this book—the authors herald the paradigm shift that has led to the renaissance of entrepreneurial writers. The result is a clean, concise “model for the future” of publishing’s “new electronic realities.” The authors shatter the myth that e-books currently outsell printed ones, and their book has the foresight to provide information on numerous “tools,” computer programs, online author-service providers and reviewing websites, including a four-page list of “things nobody tells you.” With hundreds of hyperlinks accessible to print readers through the book’s website, the diligent duo covers how to avoid “looking self-published,” how to upload your work without glitches or “gaffes,” and the game-changing nature of print on demand, which will make being out of print “more of an oxymoron.”

Encouraging writers to pitch their self-pubbed work to cloutcarrying ventures, such as Amazon Encore and Kindle Direct, seems to play against the book’s buck-the-system attitude, but it does reflect the text’s inspiring tone.

Essential reading (and reference) for modern authors, regardless of experience.

HERMIE BRAMBLEWEED AND THE ORIGIN OF DREAMER

Lopez Jr., Rene CreateSpace (242 pp.) $9.99 paper | $6.99 e-book | Mar. 3, 2012 978-1466406520 In the first young-adult novel in a projected series, Lopez documents the life and loves of Hermie Brambleweed, a teenager dealing with typical high school drama—and some big secrets.

In this slightly dated coming-of-age story, Lopez introduces the world to Hermie. He’s an amazingly self-sufficient kid who proves to be a classic teenage boy in many respects: He hates his job, spends most of his time hanging out with friends, gets drunk on the sly and sneaks into his girlfriend Jane’s room as often as possible. But Hermie is keeping secrets. His father is dead, his mother is missing, and Hermie lives alone in a big house with a large trust fund administered by his grandparents. He is also guarding a cache of documents hidden in the basement by his meticulous father—files that could land a large chemical company in big trouble. Despite these secrets and the potential pitfalls of autonomy, Hermie flies under the radar by maintaining a job, studying hard, keeping house and living responsibly. As the story moves chronologically through Hermie’s sophomore and junior years, Lopez |

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keeps the focus on Hermie’s passions (bowling and Jane) while entertaining readers with the antics of Hermie and his friends.

There’s potential for great tension in Hermie’s story, but Lopez, alluding to the threat of discovery and danger, misses the opportunity to build suspense by focusing on Hermie’s daily routine rather than his tantalizing secrets. Although the cast of characters is strong, the dialogue feels forced at times, possibly the result of a confused timeline. Lopez doesn’t set the narrative in a specific year, but terms such as “cats” and “chicks” call to mind a bygone era, and he peppers the dialogue with references to cassette tapes and answering machines rather than iPods and cellphones. However, issues relating to sex and drugs remain relevant to modern teenagers, and Lopez addresses them in a tactful, realistic fashion.

A lovable lead character and the hint of mystery make this trip down Memory Lane pleasurable enough to leave readers anticipating the next chapter.

SAYING GOOD-BYE TO YOUR PROSTATE A Decidedly Outside-theBox Journal on How to Beat Prostate Cancer and Laugh While Doing It MacKenzie, Jamie Illus. by Schwartz, Lisa CreateSpace (146 pp.) $12.99 paper | Nov. 24, 2012 978-1478118114

An energetic, irreverent look at prostate cancer and its treatment from a patient’s perspective.

Debut author MacKenzie takes readers from the importance of preventative health care through the unexpected trauma of diagnosis to the nitty-gritty specifics of treatment, making jokes all the way. His open disclosures about potentially embarrassing situations—urinary incontinence, erectile dysfunction, post-surgery masturbatory stimulation, a lack of ejaculate— are both lighthearted and reassuring, sure to bring comfort to anxious readers. MacKenzie makes clear that these readers are expected to be both male and female, patients and loved ones, and he expertly tailors the narrative accordingly. Notably, MacKenzie had a tremendous amount of social support, even from people whom he hadn’t spoken with for decades. For example, he spends the night before a hospital visit with a childhood friend who, despite years without contact, offered an invitation without reservation. Much of MacKenzie’s advice (e.g., always have a second pair of ears since the stress of the situation will impair comprehension) centers on the ready availability of friends and family. He’s open about his gratitude and indirectly acknowledges that other patients may have fewer resources.

Given that reality, a fuller discussion that addressed potential issues related to deficits in social support would have enriched the work by increasing its relevance to a broader patient population. Similarly, the overall content is informative and humorous, but at 100-odd pages of large font, it may leave readers wishing 122

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for a more comprehensive work. Still, it’s nearly impossible not to like MacKenzie’s nimble phrasing (“a manic, frantic panic”) and humbling self-disclosures (“it is completely unfamiliar not to have any ejaculate. It is foreign and made me feel less of who I am or was”). The conclusion is as uplifting and optimistic as the rest of the book, despite a sad reminder of the disease’s potential fatality. Nonetheless, Schwartz’s lighthearted, blackand-white cartoon sketches, which adorn the chapter divisions, further contribute to the book’s calming tone.

An inspiring account of surviving and thriving after a devastating diagnosis.

IN THE LAND OF THE BIRDS Marchitelli, Pietro CreateSpace (72 pp.) $9.95 paper | $2.99 e-book May 10, 2012 978-1470124397

In Marchitelli’s chapter book, a pair of young birds learns that the secret to life rests in finding a partner with whom to ride out the joyful tail winds and difficult head winds of life.

The “Valley of the Birds” is safeguarded by mountains and a coterie of gentle birds who command the sky, “peacefully sharing the joy of life.” When the day comes for young Hebril to jump from the rocky cliff and attempt his first flight, his parents encourage him, fully aware that their purpose in life is to help him become an adult bird. But Hebril backs away, not yet prepared to fail. His parents respect his fear and later debate whether or not to share a family secret with him. “Not at this time,” says the father; Hebril must first “go through the path of becoming a great bird.” The young bird eventually takes flight, which leads him to meet the mysterious Wise Bird, who holds not just the key to the family secret, but to a much larger spiritual enigma—which Hebril encounters when he catches the eye of the beautiful Kerah. As the two fly high and strengthen their wings together, they prove their worthiness. At the urging of their fellow Valley inhabitants, the couple flies off beyond the mountains, where no bird has ever gone. In six easy-to-read chapters, Marchitelli’s birds provide lessons in courage, selfbelief, trust, purpose and love. Deep ideas contained in simple language not only enrich the adventure, they make the book accessible to spiritually inclined families looking for a positive, wholesome way to discuss the somewhat muddy waters of adolescent love with younger readers who, in turn, may feel freer to ask honest questions about sexuality and what life has in store for them. Ellanson’s lovely illustrations add charm and a much-needed dimension to the book. Without them, readers may have trouble forming a mental picture from the narrator’s vague, generic descriptions of his feathered cast.

A tender, thought-provoking journey that teaches that “life is not the origin of love”; it’s the other way around.

THE IDEA OF THE DIGITAL UNIVERSITY Ancient Traditions, Disruptive Technologies and the Battle for the Soul of Higher Education McCluskey, Frank Bryce; Winter, Melanie Lynn Policy Studies Organization (274 pp.) $14.95 paper | $8.50 e-book Dec. 11, 2012 978-1935907985

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

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

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

Comprehensive, insightful and visionary.

WHICH ONE DIES TODAY? Murder in Memphis Paavola, James C. Manuscript (363 pp.)

After a flurry of explosions lights up the streets of Memphis, Lt. Julia Todd and her team of investigators have to play catch-up to stop the bombers before the next strike.

In Paavola’s (They Gotta Sleep Sometime, 2011, etc.) third thriller in the Murder in Memphis series, Lt. Julia Todd and her team are too good at their police work to avoid the heat. As soon as pipe bombs start erupting in Memphis neighborhoods, Todd acts on an instinct that values the lives of others more than her own. Act first, for better or worse, and then deal with the demons that near-death experiences can bring. The bombers’ pattern emerges over the next several weeks, as bomb after bomb targets the decision-makers at Pharaoh Health Management Systems, an insurance company notorious (although by no means unique, as Paavola makes clear) for denying valid claims based on economic expediency, essentially allowing “death panels” to decide who lives and dies. Todd’s team works furiously to predict the bombers’ next move, but they always seem to find themselves a half step behind—too slow to stop the bomb but close enough to feel the flames. Todd, meanwhile, is desperately trying to patch up a relationship that had crumbled while she dealt with the psychological impact from the last time she was seriously threatened in the line of duty. Front and center here is the dysfunction of the health care system, a topic Paavola doesn’t shy away from haranguing. Paavola indicts the system that doles out health care on a bottom-line basis: Money-gorged corporate health care executives indirectly battle the intensely angry individuals who have lost loved ones because of those corporate decisions. Thankfully, the health care debate doesn’t overburden the story, although it tends to weaken some characters on either side of the argument by painting them as caricatures. The action is nonetheless electric: There’s no shortage of bombs and smart, intense sleuthing.

A fun, keep-you-up-at-night thrill ride.

THE ALABAMA REBEL A Novel of Courage Amid Conflict Rose, R. Thomas Signalman Publishing (286 pp.) $15.99 paper | $9.99 e-book Oct. 2, 2012 978-1935991816

A historical novel that portrays the tensions that surrounded the Civil War in the South.

Historian Roe (The Gaelic Letters, 2010, etc) delivers yet another sweeping tale of war-torn lands and coming-of-age.

River Hunter, the son of a Cherokee mother and Scotch-Irish father, is a 16-year-old boy with a fourth-grade education. |

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Back Story: How Best-seller Hugh Howey Made His Own Luck b y

WOOL

Howey, Hugh Simon & Schuster (528 pp.) $26 | $15 paper Mar. 12, 2013 978-1476735115 978-1476733951 paper

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h ow e y

I wonder if lot tery winners get emails asking for advice on how to win the next one. Do people inquire after their recipes of divination?

How many eyes of newt for every swamp bat? What about where they got their numbers? Birth dates or box scores?

Every week, I get a handful of emails from aspiring authors asking for advice. They want to know how I found success with my writing, and I find myself admitting that luck played the biggest part. It feels awkward (if not impossible) to credit my writing ability. Is that because we writers loathe our own work? No? It’s just me? That stinks.

I’m perfectly honest in my response to these emails; I really do believe luck plays a large role.

I worked as a bookseller while trying to make it as a writer. I wrote in my every spare moment.

I did this for years before one of my works took off and I was able to write full time. Watching the best-sellers come and go, I often wondered why some of the great works I enjoyed languished on the shelves while others sprouted wings and took flight. I chalked it up to my poor judgment in literature. Then I found myself on the other side of sudden success, and I searched even harder for answers. All of my head-scratching has been gathered in the following list. It contains less dandruff than you might expect.

I wrote a lot. I know this seems obvious, but it required thousands of sunny days with me inside while others were playing. It required writing even when I didn’t want to. Especially when I didn’t want to.

I didn’t write the same thing. I really wanted to, though. Once I had that first book under my belt, I came down with a bad case of sequel-itis.

I loved my characters and the world I had built, and I just wanted to live with them there. This is a holdover from being a reader, I think. Starting a new series is more painful than continuing on with one we already know we like. I had to learn to stop thinking like a reader as I sat down to write.

I cared about what I wrote. This incorporates three pieces of advice: Write because you love writing. Produce your best work. Make it as errorfree as possible.

I gambled like I was drunk. Not something I recommend in the literal sense, but I made decisions based on my gut that anyone who knows what they’re doing would’ve warned against. I wrote in several genres under the same name. I published short stories and novelettes. I gave my work away.

I charged very little. I spent very little of my time marketing. Instead, I interacted with the readers I already had. Even to this day, I do strange things, like encouraging writers to charge and profit off of fan fiction that takes place in my universe. I |

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encourage artists to charge for prints of their fan art. I don’t take a penny. I do anything that might make my lawyer, agent or editor sick to their stomachs. If I can upset all three at once, that’s when I know I’m doing something right.

I made my work available. This is the second-most important step (directly behind writing a lot). My first novel was published by a small traditional press. My most recent release was with Random House in the U.K. My next book is going to be self-published. In March, Simon & Schuster is releasing my novel Wool here in the States. I just made my first sale to a magazine and another to an anthology. In sum: I’m a fan of every publishing route except for one, and that’s where the book goes unpublished. If you love your work and think others might as well, make it available. Exhaust the querying route first if that’s your ultimate dream, but then look for an alternative. Even if you simply post it to a website or make it free, don’t shove it in a drawer. Drawers are mausoleums for books.

Don’t put your cherished works there.

So, that’s my best advice, my best guess as to why I got lucky. Sure, it’s probably guilty of some post hoc reasoning, but there’s a common theme running through the bolded bits, and it points to increasing your chances of getting lucky. Look over the list again and think of a lottery. Here’s what I did: I punched a lot of tickets. I didn’t choose the same number over and over, which wouldn’t increase my odds. I took care of my tickets. I played in as many lotteries as I could, especially if nobody else was participating. And I didn’t throw them away before the winner was announced.

Did I get lucky? Absolutely. Can it happen to you? I’m proof that it can happen to anyone. Can you improve your odds with some hard work? You better believe it.

Happy writing, everyone. And from the depths of my heart: the best of luck.

9 Hugh Howey is the New York Times best-selling author of Wool, available from Simon & Schuster in March.

“A heartwarming tale of courage and triumph, this well-written, lyrical story ties together the physical war of the time and the wars within ourselves.” from the alabama rebel

He moves with his family to Alabama to escape the ordered removal of Native Americans during the Civil War. River grew up without his father, who disappeared in the Carolina mountains, and he’s stuck with an abusive, alcoholic stepfather.

In order to provide for his family, River turns to nature and hunts only what he needs, determined to pay nature the same respect it shows him. Nature responds in kind—the animals that River needs to feed his family gather around him, making the hunt swift and fruitful. As he pursues higher education, River continues to dress in his traditional Native garb, wearing deer skins despite his joining a society of strangers.

The young man has to confront the reality of the times: Many people are suspicious of his Native American background, and they make no effort to hide it. Soon enough, however, River wins them over with his honesty and strength of character.

Unfortunately, he isn’t successful in charming the family of his first love, Sarah, who, because of her family’s disapproval, marries another. River studies at the university, where he makes friends with the unlikeliest of people and advances farther than anyone predicted. The Civil War soon disrupts his academics. River and his friends join the Confederate Army, where the higher-ups notice River’s bravery and promote him through the ranks until he makes captain. A heartwarming tale of courage and triumph, this well-written, lyrical story ties together the physical war of the time and the wars within ourselves. River’s achievements, brought about through determination and hard work, inspire and captivate. Through his integrity, he appeals to everyone around him, as well as to the reader. This love story stands out for its historic richness and memorable protagonist.

A heroic tale of a man’s journey to success despite the challenges of his time.

41D: MAN OF VALOR The Story of SWAT Officer Randy Simmons

Simmons, Lisa iUniverse (342 pp.) $33.95 | $23.95 paper | $12.99 e-book July 25, 2012 978-1475937060 This earnest memoir recalls a SWAT officer who lived and died for the greater good of his community.

Simmons’ book centers on her late husband, Randy Simmons, the first SWAT officer in Los Angeles Police Department history to be killed in the line of duty. The biography tenderly chronicles Randy’s devoutly Christian childhood in Brooklyn and LA, his years in college trying and failing to make the NFL draft, and finally his callings to become a police officer and marry Lisa, his “soul mate.” Together, they build a family and a rich life of community service, from Glory Kids, the church organization Randy launches (and Lisa assists with whether she wants to or not!) to help inner-city kids and families, to the volunteer SWAT efforts he dutifully signs on for. The hostage

situation that kills him, which involves a mentally unstable man with a gun, is one such mission. The last quarter of the book describes the aftermath of his death, beginning with the planning of an internationally televised 10,000-person funeral. As Lisa explains to her heartbroken children: “People love your father because he was an ordinary man who did extraordinary things.” This moving, well-written biography is as much a love story as it is an homage to Randy’s remarkable goodwill. Simmons describes their relationship with a lot of lightness and humor, adeptly developing the marriage itself as a character that we grow to love and that we miss when Randy’s gone.

(Says Randy: “When was the last time y’all been to church?”

Lisa replies: “Okay, Moses, you gonna lead the way?”) Understandably, Simmons does not criticize Randy or show him as anything but heroic. It’s only when Lisa is excluded from the police investigation surrounding the unsavory circumstances of Randy’s death that we see another, more nuanced dimension to the story; even then, a potentially gripping plotline seems stifled by Lisa’s loyalty to Randy, who would not have wanted the name of the LAPD tarnished. Nonetheless, it’s that same loyalty that lends real charm and depth to this intimate portrait of Randy Simmons, as well as of the LAPD as a whole, here given a warm, nuanced complexity and a representation rarely seen in the news.

An affectionate final word on an inspiring man comes from his devoted wife.

A CAST OF CAREGIVERS Celebrity Stories to Help You Prepare to Care Snelling, Sherri BalboaPress (550 pp.) $33.99 paper | $8.00 e-book Dec. 4, 2012 978-1452559131

Snelling’s authoritative debut offers expert advice and relatable celebrity stories for families and friends struggling to balance caregiving with everyday life.

US Magazine has a regular feature called “Stars Are Just Like Us,” featuring photos of movie and TV stars doing “regular” activities such as grocery shopping, camping or going to the beach. Snelling mines similar territory in this dynamic, well-organized guide. Its first section consists of extensive, original interviews with famous people who have cared for parents, spouses or other loved ones. The stories, from such celebrities as former CSI actress Marg Helgenberger and former Good Morning America co-host Joan Lunden, are personal yet professional, full of useful tips and practical ideas for finding “me time” during hours devoted to caregiving. The second section of the book is a step-by-step handbook on how to be a capable caregiver while still living a full, healthy life. Snelling, CEO of the national Caregiving Club, is also a blogger and TV host who specializes in such issues. Her book covers a wide range of caregiving situations, including traveling with someone who has accessibility problems, weighing |

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the pros and cons of different types of therapy (including those involving music and pets), and dealing with end-of-life issues such as hospice care and funeral planning. She provides advice with care and concern, constantly reminding her readers that that they are not alone. For the more than 65 million Americans providing some form of unpaid care to friends and family members, a sourcebook like this will likely be reassuring and essential.

A smart, informative manual intended to help people take care of their loved ones while also taking care of themselves.

EVERYTHING’S BETTER WITH WINE Swinger, Suzanne Leemur Prints LLC (338 pp.) $12.99 paper | Dec. 11, 2012 978-0985425203

Swinger’s warm, witty debut novel about a woman’s journey from suburban wife and mother to surgeon and countess.

Thirty-six-year-old Samantha Edwards is a mother of two, a cardiac care nurse and a churchgoing Catholic. Her daily life in Santa Monica is frantic from start to finish. She herds her sons to school while she’s hung over (after nights of “drink[ing] wine like soda”), works her shifts at St. Mary’s Hospital managing doctors’ egos, and spends nights with her husband, Stuart, an inadequate lover and “impulsive spender” whose trust fund has run dry. When renowned heart surgeon Matthew McGuire arrives at St. Mary’s, Samantha sets him up with her best friend, attorney Caroline Chamberlain. This matchmaking doesn’t stop Matt and Samantha from falling in love, but Samantha’s marriage, her faith and an unplanned pregnancy prevent them from becoming a couple. After Matt and Caroline marry, Samantha’s life undergoes two drastic changes: Stuart leaves her for a younger woman, and a hospital benefactor provides her tuition for medical school. At med school, Samantha meets Pierrique Vivaldi, a wheelchair-bound French count whom she eventually marries.

Matt and Caroline attend the wedding, where it becomes clearer than ever that Matt and Samantha are still in love. Surprising plot twists at the end keep things interesting. The writing is inviting and honest, the sex scenes frank and comical. Although she describes herself as a woman whose “brain was as sharp as a spoon,” Samantha is intelligent. She’s also lovable in spite of her sins, which range from swearing at her sons to sleeping with a married man. Samantha’s hilarious interior monologues and detailed sexual fantasies are the highlights of her story; less interesting are the deliberations over her drinking, which are dull and scientific, linking her affinity for alcohol to a sugar addiction. The conflict over her drinking is a distraction—the narrative has sufficient momentum without it.

A heartfelt tale of two lovers struggling to find the right time and place.

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ANAPHYLAXIS A Medical Thriller

Wanderer, Alan Anson CreateSpace (342 pp.) $15.50 paper | Dec. 5, 2012 978-1478159438 In this debut medical thriller, the sudden death of a researcher for a biotech company in Colorado leaves everyone wondering: Was it an accident, negligence or murder?

A routine allergy shot for Frank Stevens, Ph.D., has lessthan-routine results—he dies from anaphylaxis, a fatal allergic reaction. His colleague and allergist, Lenny, was unable to save him. Now, Lenny is worried about a potential malpractice suit, even though there appear to be a few people who’d want the man dead. Frank had just had a breakthrough with a vaccine to combat cocaine addiction, he was involved in an extramarital affair, and he may even have ties to an accident from 20 years ago. The convincing scene in which Lenny tries to revive Frank becomes the focal point for most of the story and its characters, as the medical thriller competently becomes a legal and procedural thriller, too. A PI and an agent of the Colorado Bureau of Investigation cover most of the investigatory components, which ultimately bring to light gloriously elaborate connections to the death, including Frank’s senator brother-in-law, a technician at the company and a health care provider. But Lenny steals the show. He faces a lawsuit steered by the widow’s politically ambitious brother as well as questioning from a young, ruthless attorney who meticulously examines every detail of Frank’s death. In a scorching scene that illuminates both sides of the case, the lawyer attempts to find fault in Lenny’s story: Why didn’t Lenny have the proper medical equipment on hand? Could the easily accessible allergy shots have been contaminated by someone else? Other motives might have been at play—mobsters, for instance, would prefer that addicts continue to rely on cocaine. As the case builds and the suspense grows, Wanderer’s thriller commendably incorporates medical terminology without any dense, unwarranted complexity.

A prime read that packs a hefty number of plot twists and characters without getting tangled.

THE PRINCESS AND THE DRAGEENA

Wicks, Michael Illus. by Essa, Mike CreateSpace (56 pp.) $12.99 paper | $2.99 e-book Nov. 12, 2012 978-1468035865 Wicks (Pepe and Seymour’s Adventure, 2009) delivers a charming children’s book paired with delightful illustrations by Essa, structured around the adventures of a princess and her new friend, a rare purple and white “drageena.”

Told in nine small episodes, these quick, often silly adventures showcase Princess Awemina, whose loneliness prompts Prince Mineko to seek out a drageena—a sort of half-dog, half-dragon with tiny wings and a detachable nose—to be her friend and companion while he’s off attending to his princely duties. Though this may seem like a typical fantasy/adventure setup, once the drageena comes into the story, she takes over, and the princess and the drageena’s adventures charmingly become the book’s focus. Drageenas find adventure irresistible, no matter how big or small the escapade may be. The two friends search for cookies, shoes and blockleberries, the grape-looking fruit drageenas prefer. The drageena decides on a name for herself, hunts for another drageena’s lost nose, participates in a blockleberry pie-eating contest and looks for a home. The divergent, fast-paced adventures allow readers to watch Awemina and the drageena’s friendship blossom. The adventures aren’t big, broad or sweeping; they’re similar to the day-to-day activities of ordinary people, such as having a picnic and trying on shoes. It’s somewhat unusual to find a relatable story about royalty and imaginary creatures, so young readers will appreciate the ability to tag along. Essa’s simple, colorful illustrations enjoyably mix a hand-drawn aesthetic with digital backgrounds, and young readers will appreciate the characters’ expressiveness.

Fun, cute illustrations bring this simple story to life.

(or taste) for gore if they’re to enjoy the better part of Young’s book. Still, there’s more than just violence here: humor and a sly camp sensibility run through the story as well. Throughout, Young makes a point to note the songs playing at particular moments, “Bad Luck” and “Killing Me Softly” among them.

While the mythology underlying the killings, featuring an ancient, proto-Aztec community of cannibals, seems more convoluted than the plot requires, Young nonetheless sustains suspense through the very last page, and his simple, straightforward writing makes for an engaging though not overly taxing read.

Hair-raising, funny and surprising; an indulgent pageturner that might keep you off the water.

KILLINOIS!

Young, Frank CreateSpace (280 pp.) $14.95 paper | $2.99 e-book Oct. 6, 2012 978-1477696613 A bloody, cinematic romp through backwoods Illinois.

Reading Young’s debut book is a lot like going to the movies. The setup— teenage friends embark on a wild, illfated weekend aboard a houseboat—is straight out of a horror flick, and Young’s short, single-location chapters have the feel of movie scenes. Needless to say, fans of thrillers and slasher films will have plenty of fun joining lovebirds Peter and Maggie and company on their eventful trip down the Illinois River.

Young’s exposition is particularly well-executed, alternating glimpses of Peter and his two friends’ drunken joyride to the marina with Maggie and a pair of sisters making their own stoned way there. In true horror-movie fashion, each group has some unsettling encounters that fail to make them turn back: The boys cause a ruckus at a wine shop after making moves on some older women, the girls get ogled by some locals at a grocery store, and Maggie’s stop to buy pot reveals she’s been distracting herself with a charming but decidedly creepy dealer while Peter’s been away at college. Once the gang’s out on the water, all hell breaks loose, with characters dying one by one—killed and consumed by mysterious shadowy figures who hunger for human flesh. Readers will require a high tolerance |

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C E L E B R AT I N G O U R

AWARD WINNERS Caldecott Honor Winner

Newbery Honor Winner

Batchelder Award Winner

Geisel Award Winner

Sibert Honor Winner

Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor Winner

PENGUIN YOUNG READERS GROUP penguinclassroom.com

PenguinClassroom

Coretta Scott King Author Honor Winner

@PenguinClass