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t h e w o r l d’s t o u g h e s t b o o k c r i t i c s f o r mo r e t h a n 7 5 y e a rs fiction
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chi ldr en’s & te e n
Rajesh Parameswaran marvels with an inventive and witty debut story collection p. 905
Inside Job director Charles Ferguson provides a concise, cogent assessment of the 2008 banking disaster and how the fallout has affected the country p. 931
Jim Murphy and Alison Blank pen an engrossing biography of tuberculosis, illustrating it with a wealth of eye-opening archival images p. 977
kirkus q&a
featured indie
Graham Swift discusses his new novel, Wish You Were Here, which ranks among his best p. 904
Poet Michelle Bitting discusses the author’s parallel tasks of seeking inspiration and selfpromotion p. 1000
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Anniversaries: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest B Y G RE G O RY MC NA M EE
Fi f t y- f o u r y e a r s a g o, a n e w c o m e r to San Francisco, a couple of unpublished novels in his suitcase, found a job working the night shift in what back then was technically called a loony bin—a psychiatric hospital, in other words. He got to know several of the patients there, including veterans suffering from PTSD, young men jailed by their families for coming out, and an Indian struggling with fierce schizophrenia. Ken Kesey also came to be intimately acquainted with a new therapeutic regime dominated by pharmaceuticals, along with the lobotomies and electroshocks of old, with one drug in particular, LSD, taking a place in his life and legend ever after. Fifty years ago, Kesey’s distillation of that experience, absent the LSD—that would come up for literary handling in Tom Wolfe’s 1968 “new journalism” masterpiece The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test—would take the publishing world by surprising storm. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, whose title derives from an old British nursery rhyme about migrating geese, those freest of birds, centered on an unlikely hero, Randle McMurphy, that freest of men. But McMurphy is not free, and he has made a very bad strategic error—in order to get out of an Oregon prison he feigns madness, only to find himself in an Oregon mental hospital that is a gateway into a thousand private hells. Observing and chronicling all this is a strikingly tall though easily bullied Indian called “Chief Broom,” since sweeping and mopping are his favorite ways of passing the time. Chief ’s other close object of study is the head nurse, Mildred Ratched, “a veritable angel of mercy,” who is tiny and doll-like, “everything working together except the color on her lips and fingernails, and the size of her bosom,” which is improbably large. (Noted Kirkus at the time, “Big Nurse is custom tailored for a busty Eileen Heckert.”) It is not long before McMurphy and Ratched are set on a course of mutual destruction and not long before the orderly, closely regimented world she has worked so hard to create is smashed to bits. There was no better fictional clarion call for the dawning 1960s than that, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest became de rigueur reading on campuses across the land, back when college students read books voluntarily. The copy I have, bought in 1972, when I was 15, is the 19th paperback printing. Three years later, Miloš Forman’s film adaptation, with Jack Nicholson as a letter-perfect McMurphy and Louise Fletcher as a slightly less than doll-like but still ideal Nurse Ratched, propelled sales of Kesey’s book to new heights. By then Kesey had come and gone on countless adventures and misadventures on his legendary school bus, Furthur. He had also published a book that, if anything, was even better than Cuckoo’s Nest, namely Sometimes a Great Notion, one of the truly great American novels. (On that score, not for nothing does McMurphy wear boxers sporting white whales.) Kesey’s writing would grow spotty after that, with Sailor Song, published 20 years ago, being his final, much lesser solo novel. But two masterpieces are more than most writers pull off, and 50 years later, his debut novel more than endures.
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This Issue’s Contributors
Maude Adjarian • Mark Athitakis • Joseph Barbato • LD Beghtol • Sarah Bellezza • Amy Boaz • Julie BuffaloeYoder • Lee E. Cart • Jessica Chapman • Marnie Colton • Lisa Costantino • Dave DeChristopher • David Delman • Kathleen Devereaux • Steve Donoghue • Nora Dunne • Daniel Dyer • Lisa Elliott • Gro Flatebo • Julie Foster • Peter Franck • Eric F. Frazier • Michael Griffith • Peter Heck • Jeff Hoffman • Andrew D. King • Robert M. Knight • Christina M. Kratzner • Janet Krenn • Paul Lamey • Katelyn Leenhouts • Louise Leetch • Judith Leitch • Elsbeth Lindner • Nilda Lopez • Joe Maniscalco • Don McLeese • Gregory McNamee • Ruth Mills • Carole Moore • Clayton Moore • Aparna Narayanan • Liza Nelson • Mike Newirth • John Noffsinger • Brandon Nolta • Sarah Norris • Donna Marie Nowak • Mike Oppenheim • Jim Piechota • Christofer D. Pierson • Gary Presley • David Rapp • Kristen Bonardi Rapp • Erika Rohrbach • Lloyd Sachs • Mark A. Salfi • Bob Sanchez • Arthur Smith • Wendy Smith • Margot E. Spangenberg • Andria Spencer • Gabe • Matthew Tiffany • Claire Trazenfeld • Steve Weinberg • Norman Weinstein • Rodney Welch • Carol White • Chris White • Joan Wilentz • Homa Zaryouni • Alex Zimmerman
contents fiction Index to Starred Reviews....................................................p. 895 REVIEWS.........................................................................................p. 895 Mystery........................................................................................ p. 913
The Kirkus Star is awarded to books of remarkable merit, as determined by the impartial editors of Kirkus.
Science Fiction & Fantasy....................................................p. 921 Q&A WITH graham Swift....................................................... p. 904
nonfiction Index to Starred Reviews.................................................... p. 925 REVIEWS......................................................................................... p. 925 Q&A WITH Marilu Henner..................................................... p. 940
children’s & teen Index to Starred Reviews................................................... p. 959 REVIEWS........................................................................................ p. 959 Q&A WITH Kate Coombs...........................................................p. 976 interactive e-books.............................................................. p. 989
indie Index to Starred Reviews.................................................... p. 993 REVIEWS......................................................................................... p. 993 Q&A with Michelle Bitting................................................. p. 1000
In Mark Haddon’s latest novel, a familiar premise inspires surprising and deeply moving results. See the starred review on p. 901. |
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nonfiction
Jonathan Franzen returns, this time with a collection of essays on books, life and one of his favorite activities—birdwatching. In a starred review, we called Farther Away an “unfailingly elegant and thoughtful collection of essays from the formidable mind of Franzen, written with passion and haunted by loss.” Make sure to head online as our veteran contributor Don McLeese further dissects this book of essays from one of fiction’s finest writers, out the first week of May.
book expo america May is always a huge month for big books out in time for Memorial Day and the kickoff of beach season, but especially for the book industry’s premier event of the year—the BookExpo America in New York City, June 4-7. Make sure that you hit kirkusreviews. com and check in on what our bloggers—SF Signal, the Rap Sheet, Bookslut and more—are recommending to get your summer reading lists kicked off right.
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fiction Toni Morrison has long been treasured as one of the greatest living writers working today. This month, the revered author returns with Home, which we called, in a starred review, a “deceptively rich and cumulatively powerful novel.” Online, we’ll take a closer look at the book that should put her atop many a reading list for May.
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.
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Joel Stein has long made millions of readers laugh with his column for Time. Now, the comedic writer takes on life with his son—and trying to become more of a “manly man” in the process, engaging in more red-blooded American male activities. Check out our website to read our interview with Stein for his new book Man Made: A Stupid Quest for Masculinity.
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fiction These titles earned the Kirkus Star: HHhH by Laurent Binet................................................................ p. 896 GONE GIRL by Gillian Flynn....................................................... p. 899 THE RED HOUSE by Mark Haddon............................................. p. 901 EDGE OF DARK WATER by Joe R. Lansdale............................... p. 902 I COULDN’T LOVE YOU MORE by Jillian Medoff...................... p. 903 I AM AN EXECUTIONER by Rajesh Parameswaran.................... p. 905 HAPPINESS IS A CHEMICAL IN THE BRAIN by Lucia Perillo......................................................... p. 906 MY FIRST SUICIDE by Jerzy Pilch................................................ p. 907 THE AGE OF MIRACLES by Karen Thompson Walker................ p. 911
HHhH
Binet, Laurent Translated by Taylor, Sam Farrar, Straus and Giroux (336 pp.) $26.00 May 1, 2012 978-0-374-16991-6
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THE CALYPSO DIRECTIVE
Andrews, Brian Arcade (336 pp.) $24.95 | Apr. 1, 2012 978-1-61145-494-9
A biological thriller that mixes a series of “what-if ” scenarios as it moves from New York to Europe in the blink of an eye. Will Foster, also known as Patient-65, escapes from the prison-like medical facility where he’s held captive. Will mounts his escape after weeks of watching the staff and after a few stealthy midnight reconnaissance missions. However, his escape doesn’t go as smoothly as he hoped, and soon the young American finds himself in Europe with no idea of exactly where he is or how he got there. After Will was laid off from his job with a New York City-based advertising company, he maxed out his credit cards and job hunted with no success. Based on a friend’s advice, Will volunteered as a test subject for some pharmaceutical trials. Soon, he found himself strapped to a hospital bed in Prague and injected with substances he couldn’t identify. When Will bolts, his first thought is to look up Julie Ponte, an old love living in Vienna. Although not quite convinced that Will’s situation is as desperate as he claims, Julie comes to rescue Will, and then takes him back to her apartment, but they soon discover they’re being tracked. Meredith Morley, an executive with Vyrogen, the company conducting experiments on Will, launches a team of vicious German brothers who specialize in brutality to hunt for the escaped test subject. But Morley doesn’t stop there; she also goes to an old boyfriend for help. He’s the genius behind an ultra-high tech, under-the-radar think tank that specializes in doing the impossible. With both sets of trackers on their heels, Will and Julie reestablish their relationship while trying to stay alive and one step ahead of their pursuers. This is an intelligent but technical novel, one that occasionally includes too much scientific detail. The story works until the last third of the novel, when supposedly brilliant and capable people make some pretty basic mistakes that propel the cast of characters into an ending that does little but set up an obvious sequel.
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“The evergreen allure of Nazis as the embodiment of evil is what drives this French author’s soul-stirring work.” from hhhh
ZOMBIE
Angelella, J.R. Soho (352 pp.) $15.00 paperback | Jun. 5, 2012 978-1-61695-088-0 Angelella creates a weird brew here, featuring an eight-fingered priest, pill and sex addicts, cultish rituals and the Byron Hall Catholic High School for Boys. Narrator Jeremy Barker is beginning his freshman year at Byron Hall, and it’s fair to say he’s obsessed with Zombie films. He can rattle off his Ten Best like nobody’s business, and he’s even created a personal code of conduct derived from his obsession (e.g., Avoid Eye Contact, Keep Quiet, Fight to Survive). In fact, the novel is so zombie-drenched that the titles of his favorite movies serve as chapter titles as well (the one exception being The Greatest Story Ever Told, which a priest has hooked Jeremy into by suggesting that Lazarus and Jesus might be the first zombies ever—think about it). Jeremy’s home life is, to put it charitably, disordered, for his mother is addicted to pills (though she offers up a prayer before partaking), his older brother is addicted to sex, and his father turns most of their conversations into uncomfortable sexual innuendo. Jeremy’s only love comes from his dog, whom Angelella, with irritating cuteness, names “Dog.” Although Jeremy voyeuristically checks out his neighbor, a college student, and falls for Aimee, a student director at the local girls’ Catholic school, his main preoccupation is figuring out what his father is up to, for Jeremy gets evidence that he’s colluding with Mr. Rembrandt, an eight-fingered priest who just happens to be Jeremy’s English teacher. All of the weirdness adds up to not very much, and Angelella has an irksome habit of nudging the reader in the ribs with his wit and cleverness.
THE PROPOSAL
Balogh, Mary Delacorte (320 pp.) $26.00 | May 1, 2012 978-0-385-34332-9 A widowed noblewoman and a lord with middle-class antecedents engage in a decidedly unconventional courtship. Lady Gwendoline, somewhat lame from a long-ago riding accident, sprains her ankle while taking an ill-advised shortcut up a seaside cliff, which just happens to be on the grounds of Penderris Hall, where the Survivors’ Club, six Napoleonic war veterans and a widow, meets annually. One of these, Hugo, Lord Trentham, who earned his title as a reward for valor in a “Forlorn Hope” assault on the enemy, comes upon Gwen, and in his gruff, no-nonsense way carries her to Penderris. His companions had just been joking that Hugo, who has decided to take a wife, would propose to the first woman he met at the 896
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shore, and now their jibes prove prescient, for Gwen and Hugo are instantly drawn to each other, and in contravention of every rule of decency, consummate their love days later, in a way that Jane Austen may well have imagined but would never have put in writing. Both acknowledge the considerable impediments to a marriage between them. Hugo is solidly middle-class although he’s the inheritor of a substantial import/export fortune. Gwen bears tremendous guilt from her first marriage: Her husband, who suffered from manic depression, killed himself in front of her, not long after her miscarriage, a result of the aforementioned riding accident. Hugo also is tormented by conscience: The hopeless attack he led succeeded only at the cost of massive casualties. Moreover, only a middle-class wife could help Hugo find a suitably bourgeois match for his half-sister Constance. But Constance, with Gwen’s collaboration, aims to make her debut at balls and parties among London’s high society. Reluctantly assenting, Hugo also agrees to court Gwen in a genteel manner Austen would definitely endorse, even if it kills him. Balogh contravenes the conventions of historical romance by introducing an ingredient the genre is not always known for: intelligence.
HHhH
Binet, Laurent Translated by Taylor, Sam Farrar, Straus and Giroux (336 pp.) $26.00 | May 1, 2012 978-0-374-16991-6 The evergreen allure of Nazis as the embodiment of evil is what drives this French author’s soul-stirring work: a hybrid of fact and meta-fiction that won the Prix Goncourt in 2010. Picture a man being driven to work in an open-top car, taking the same route every day. He is feared and loathed by passersby, yet he has no bodyguard. This is Heydrich in Prague in 1942: the Nazi Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, supremely powerful, supremely vulnerable. He is Binet’s anti-hero. His projected assassination is Binet’s story, and Heydrich’s would-be assassins (Gabcík the Slovak and Kubiš the Czech) are Binet’s heroes. “Two men have to kill a third man.” Simple, no? But the narration is not. Binet’s alter ego narrator is a zealous amateur historian. Like all amateurs, he makes mistakes; disarmingly, he admits them. “I’ve been talking rubbish,” he exclaims. He retracts some of his assertions; he regrets his inadequacy as a historian. Yet in fact he does a good job of putting the assassination in a geopolitical context. He excoriates the spinelessness of the British and French governments in acceding to Hitler’s takeover of Czechoslovakia. He convincingly profiles Heydrich, aka the Blond Beast and the Hangman of Prague. This monster was Himmler’s deputy in the SS (the goofy title refers to the belief that he was also Himmler’s brain) and the principal architect of the Final Solution. The assassination, dubbed Operation Anthropoid, was the brainchild of Beneš, head of the Czech government-in-exile in London. He needed a coup to restore |
the morale of the Czech anti-Nazis. Gabcík and Kubiš parachute in. The arrival of these modest yet extraordinary patriots is like the first hint of dawn after a pitch-black night. They are embedded with the Czech resistance while they plan tactics. The account of the assassination attempt and its nail-biting aftermath is brilliantly suspenseful. Binet deserves great kudos for retrieving this fateful, half-forgotten episode, spotlighting Nazi infamy, celebrating its resisters, and delivering the whole with panache.
NINE MONTHS
Bomer, Paula Soho (272 pp.) $15.00 paperback | Aug. 21, 2012 978-1-61695-146-7 A Brooklyn woman flips out when she discovers she’s pregnant with her third child in this first novel by Bomer, whose previous short story collection (Baby and Other Stories, 2010) took a steely-eyed, unromantic view of motherhood. As the novel opens, Sonia is about to give birth to her third baby, alone in a hospital in Philadelphia. Flash back eight months. Sonia is a bourgeois yet hip (if that’s not an oxymoron?) wife and mother who has put aside her ambitions as a painter for the time being in order to care for 4-year-old Tom and 2-year-old Michael. She doesn’t have to work because husband Dick, a hazily drawn nice guy, earns a good living doing some kind of worthwhile research. Now that the boys are old enough for pre-school, Sonia is thinking about starting to paint again. And, no longer overwhelmed by the exhaustion of caring for small babies, she and Dick have rekindled their sexual relationship. The ironic result is Sonia’s unexpected, unwanted pregnancy. Sonia has never been exactly in love with being a mommy, but she doesn’t want the responsibility of choosing to terminate. Pregnancy only exaggerates a propensity toward self-absorption as she and Dick dither away the first trimester arguing but not deciding whether to abort. Meanwhile, Sonia ‘s ambivalence toward Brooklyn itself increases. She has diminishing patience with parenting peer pressure—the emphasis on nutrition, on finding the perfect school, on making sure one’s child is properly diagnosed for trendy learning and social disorders. But, a Brooklyn cultural snob, she suffers a panic attack while house hunting in the suburbs. Finally, toward the end of her second trimester, Sonia snaps. Leaving the boys with longsuffering Dick, she heads off in her car. For the talky last trimester of the novel she revisits not only the people and places of her past, but also her pre-marriage persona to ready herself for permanent adulthood. Sonia is hard to care about, so her arguments pro and con baby–raising carry less weight than they should.
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CODE OF THE FOREST
Buchan, Jon Joggling Board Press (374 pp.) $24.99 | May 4, 2012 978-0-9841073-5-3 Corruption, Southern style: Goodold-boy power brokers are challenged by an idealistic newspaper publisher in this lumbering debut. Buck Ravenel learned how the world works at his exclusive prep school. As a squeaky-clean prefect he had reported his roomie to the headmaster for an infraction. The headmaster finessed matters, pressuring the roomie’s father for a donation. Everybody won; favors trumped rules; the titular Code had been observed. Now, in 1995, Buck is a powerful state senator in South Carolina, and his son Tripp is director of the state’s environmental agency. When a phosphate company applies for a permit to strip mine near Georgetown, on the coast, and his agency’s in-house report is negative, Tripp has it deep-sixed. Like father, like son. There will be a sweet business deal if the permit is approved; Buck and his partners will profit. Just one problem: A young black paralegal has obtained the original report and passed it to the local paper, on condition his identity is protected. The paper runs the story. Buck sues, seeking millions in damages. It’s time for Wade McNabb, the crusading publisher, to enlist the help of Kate Stewart, an equally idealistic lawyer. Let battle commence! Unfortunately, it doesn’t. First we must plow through Wade and Kate’s back stories. Wade’s father had been a hero, standing up for black folks, losing the paper after an advertisers’ boycott, and eventually killing himself. Kate’s dad had been a successful tobacco buyer who became consumed with guilt once the lung cancer connection became clear. So the high-minded dead loom large over a couple destined for each other, though not quite yet. They spend a day on a remote beach, but he’s the perfect gentleman and she’s the perfect lady, making for a perfect snooze. The judge in the long-delayed courtroom scenes is a good old hunting buddy of Buck, so the fix is in. Will right over might prevail? High moral tone, low narrative appeal. (Southeastern tour)
THE CHEMISTRY OF TEARS
Carey, Peter Knopf (288 pp.) $26.00 | May 12, 2012 978-0-307-59271-2
A puzzling novel that doesn’t reveal its secrets easily. The latest from the renowned and prolific Carey (Parrot and Olivier in America, 2010, etc.) is too fanciful to pass as realism yet too inscrutable for parable or fable. Though all of it (or at least half of it) concerns a grieving woman’s attempt to re-engage with life after the death of her married lover, the prevailing spirit is comedic, even kirkusreviews.com
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whimsical, rather than tragic. And the prevailing metaphor is that of clockwork, the mechanical precision of the museum where she serves as a curator, with “a considerable horological department, a world-famous collection of clocks and watches, automata and other wind-up engines,” a place where “for years I thought clockmaking must still any turmoil in one’s breast. I was so confident of my opinion, so completely wrong.” To keep protagonist and occasional narrator Catherine from going haywire, her supervisor assigns her an archival task: to study the diaries of a man who had commissioned a mechanical duck for his ailing son more than a century earlier. Some chapters are all Catherine, some are from the diaries of Henry and his adventures with the mechanical duck, and some mix the two, though the reader must make leaps of conjecture to connect the writing of Henry and the response from Catherine. Then the plot thickens, as it appears that the circumstances surrounding her affair were more complicated than Catherine had realized, and she comes to suspect that the pages she reads were written specifically for her: “He anticipated someone would watch him through the wormhole, that was clear. He wrote for that person.” While reading about the attempts to construct a mechanical duck that would appear animated, practically alive, Catherine feels herself turning into a machine: “Ingest, I thought, digest, excrete, repeat.” For what it’s worth, the thematic key would seem to be a Latin epigram, which translates, “You cannot see what you can see.” It’s a novel that will amuse or challenge some and frustrate others.
THE THIRD GATE
Child, Lincoln Doubleday (368 pp.) $25.95 | Jun. 12, 2012 978-0-385-53138-2
When setting out to investigate Near-Death Experiences, it’s best to employ an “enigmalogist.” In Child’s (Terminal Freeze, 2009, etc.) latest adventure, Dr. Jeremy Logan, Yale professor of Medieval History, has the right resumé, and his new client, H. Porter Stone, provides the enigma. Stone is the James Cameron of treasure hunters, and his current dig seeks the “holy grail of Egyptology,” the secrets of the tomb (cursed, no doubt) of Narmer, the Pharaoh who united Egypt and became its first God-King. Logan is the man for the job, having exorcised ghosts and discovered links to legendary treasures around the globe, and thus he has Stone’s respect and support. That means Logan is soon ensconced atop the Sudd, a vast primeval swamp beyond the far southern reaches of the Nile. There, Stone has constructed a fabulous floating exploratory complex, attempting to burrow 45 feet through a nearimpenetrable mishmash of muddy water, “mire, and silt, and particulate matter, and foul decay as old as the oldest tomb,” to find the three chambers of Narmer’s legendary tomb. There are assorted characters in play, none beyond stock, including Jennifer 898
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Rush, wife of the head of the Center for Transmortality Studies. Ethan Rush is Logan’s former classmate and his contact on this escapade. Jennifer was returned from post-car crash dead after 14 minutes, apparently equipped to indulge a representation of the soul of Queen Niethotep, Narmer’s devious and ambitious consort. Niethotep speaks through Jennifer to apply the requisite curse. Stone and company defiantly access the funeral chambers, the quest for knowledge and fame outweighing superstition. There are drownings, deaths, methane explosions, and repercussions between Stone, the techno-types and the obligatory attractive young female Egyptologist. Ample gadgetry, New Age soul-shifting, and pyrotechnics sufficient to employ a stable of stuntmen when brought to film: Child’s newest is the sort of thing to delight all those who got wrapped up in The Mummy. Think, a Dan Brown-ian adventure amongst Pharaohs ready with a pocket full of curses.
XO
Deaver, Jeffery Simon & Schuster (400 pp.) $26.99 | Jun. 12, 2012 978-1-4391-5637-7 A country singer/songwriter who’s getting unwelcome attention from a devoted fan provides kinesic specialist Kathryn Dance, of the California Bureau of Investigation, with her third extratwisty case. Edwin Sharp really likes Kayleigh Towne. Since receiving the computer-generated email thanking him for his interest in her, he’s written back 50 times, effortlessly dodging the attempts of her protective staff to throw him off her scent. He knows everything about her and her entourage—her father and mentor, Bishop Towne; her assistant, Alicia Sessions; her producer, Barry Zeigler; and her chief roadie Bobby Prescott—so of course he’s on hand, all courtesy and insinuating smiles, when she returns to her hometown of Fresno for a concert. Kayleigh’s old friend Kathryn Dance (Roadside Crosses, 2009, etc.), who also happens to be on hand, can’t read Edwin’s body language: He’s either completely honest or completely delusional. But she can’t resist elbowing her way into the investigation bullheaded sheriff ’s deputy P.K. Madigan launches when a heavy lighting fixture just happens to brain Bobby late one night. Kathryn soon sets Madigan straight about what happened to that errant light and how to conduct a proper interrogation. In the absence of any hard evidence against Edwin, however, the sheriff ’s office has to let him go, and the violence escalates. Fans of Deaver’s celebrated sleuthing marathons will wait with bated breath as this onion is peeled to disclose multiple layers of deception, betrayal and triple crosses. This time, though, the surprises, driven by Deaver’s constant determination to outdo himself, seem both over-galvanized and uninspired. Deaver has to call in his main man, quadriplegic criminalist Lincoln Rhyme (The Burning Wire, 2010, etc.), to run the forensics that yield a crucial clue. The bevy of criminals working independently and |
“A fast and pleasurable read with plenty of local color.” from the road to grace
at serious cross-purposes is not to be believed. And the ending is his most conventional in years. A serious page-turner that would have been even better if it had ended a hundred pages earlier. (Agent: Deborah Schneider)
CLIFF WALK
DeSilva, Bruce Forge (352 pp.) $24.99 | May 22, 2012 978-0-7653-3237-0 Fresh from the Most Corrupt State competition comes a second persuasive entry that links pretty much every citizen of Providence to a child-snuff-porn ring. Cosmo Scalici, convinced that he deserves more respect as a waste recycler who mainly feeds trash to pigs, is less than happy when one of his hogs beats him out for the child’s hand that he’s just glimpsed. Soon after a post-slaughter autopsy confirms Scalici’s find, along with his dim prospects for respect, someone—State Police Capt. Steve Parisi won’t confirm whether it’s Salvatore Maniella, Rhode Island’s premier pornographer—gets shot to death and takes a thoroughly disfiguring header off Newport’s scenic Cliff Walk. The two incidents are obviously linked, but in order to connect the dots, reporter Liam Mulligan, of the dying Providence Dispatch, will have to wade through a pit of waist-high filth: an online ring of child pornographers, a vigilante who’s riding around town executing same, an interchangeable series of pole dancers coming on to him (who knew prostitution was legal in Rhode Island until 2010?) and bodyguards warning him to quit hassling Sal Maniella’s daughter Vanessa, queen of the city’s strip clubs, and of course Mulligan’s estranged wife, Dorcas, who phones him every time she goes off her meds. The high-casualty plot is a mess. But the epic, warts-and-all portrait of the city is scathing; ulcer-ridden wiseacre Mulligan (Rogue Island, 2010) is never less than compelling company; and the analogies between the newspaper business and the porn business are spot-on. As in Mulligan’s hard-nosed debut, the real star here is Providence, which the author knows intimately.
THE ROAD TO GRACE
Evans, Richard Paul Simon & Schuster (272 pp.) $19.99 | May 8, 2012 978-1-4516-2818-0
Evans’ third novel in a series (Miles to Go, 2011, etc.) about a troubled man who must learn to forgive. Alan Christoffersen is well into his walk from Seattle to Key West. He’s a widower who still grieves. Friends had cheated him out of home and business, so he up and walked away from it all. Maybe at the farthest |
point on the map he will find grace in his heart. Along the way, a series of interesting people test his character and help illuminate his soul. His mother-in-law, Pamela, is the first of them as she tracks him down along the road and begs to talk. Alan refuses, but she will not be denied. Although well told and moving, this part of the plot tests credulity. Pamela had abandoned her young daughter McKale, who years later married Alan. Now Alan is so bitter at her treatment of McKale, he won’t give Pamela five minutes to talk. Really? Maybe earlier books make this premise easier to buy. Anyway, this is at the core of the story. Who needs forgiveness more: the offender or the offended? If Alan can forgive, perhaps he can shuck his burden and find grace along his path. In one small town, a lonely woman comes to him in the night and begs for his love. Perhaps no other scene in the book better shows his character. Although the book is not specifically religious, Alan clearly shows his spirituality and cares deeply about who he is. A fast and pleasurable read with plenty of local color and enough sentiment to evoke a tear or two. Although this installment can stand on its own, a reader’s best bet is to begin with the earlier books. (Agent: Laurie Liss)
GONE GIRL
Flynn, Gillian Crown (432 pp.) $25.00 | Jun. 5, 2012 978-0-307-58836-4 A perfect wife’s disappearance plunges her husband into a nightmare as it rips open ugly secrets about his marriage and, just maybe, his culpability in her death. Even after they lost their jobs as magazine writers and he uprooted her from New York and spirited her off to his childhood home in North Carthage, Mo., where his ailing parents suddenly needed him at their side, Nick Dunne still acted as if everything were fine between him and his wife, Amy. His sister Margo, who’d gone partners with him on a local bar, never suspected that the marriage was fraying, and certainly never knew that Nick, who’d buried his mother and largely ducked his responsibilities to his father, stricken with Alzheimer’s, had taken one of his graduate students as a mistress. That’s because Nick and Amy were both so good at playing Mr. and Ms. Right for their audience. But that all changes the morning of their fifth anniversary, when Amy vanishes with every indication of foul play. Partly because the evidence against him looks so bleak, partly because he’s so bad at communicating grief, partly because he doesn’t feel all that grief-stricken to begin with, the tide begins to turn against Nick. Neighbors who’d been eager to join the police in the search for Amy begin to gossip about him. Female talk-show hosts inveigh against him. The questions from Detective Rhonda Boney and Detective Jim Gilpin get sharper and sharper. Even Nick has to acknowledge that he hasn’t come close to being the husband he liked to think he was. But does that mean he deserves to get tagged as his wife’s killer? Interspersing the mystery of Amy’s kirkusreviews.com
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disappearance with flashbacks from her diary, Flynn (Dark Places, 2009, etc.) shows the marriage lumbering toward collapse—and prepares the first of several foreseeable but highly effective twists. One of those rare thrillers whose revelations actually intensify its suspense instead of dissipating it. The final pages are chilling. (Author tour to New York, Kansas City and Chicago)
BENEATH THE SHADOWS
Foster, Sara Dunne/Minotaur (320 pp.) $24.99 | Jun. 5, 2012 978-0-312-64336-2
A young woman returns to the Yorkshire moors in hopes of discovering what happened to her missing husband. Grace and Adam gave up their busy London lifestyle to move with their baby daughter, Millie, to Hawthorn Cottage, Adam’s deceased grandparents’ home in a remote moorlands village. They hardly had time to unpack before Adam went missing. Millie, in her pram, was left on the doorstep, but despite a massive search, Adam was never found, and the police suspected he might have done a runner. A year later ,Grace returns, determined to find out the truth. Village doyen Meredith, a recent widow who supported Grace until her parents arrived, helps her to ease back into village life. Meredith has a large family, and her girls all spent time with Adam back when he was a young man living with his grandparents. When an estate agent suggests that Grace could rent out the cottage for good money if it were renovated, she finds Ben, a housesitting architect looking for a project. And Grace’s sister Annabel, a journalist who wants Grace to leave as soon as possible, arrives to help go through stacks of boxes in the attic and cellar. Grace’s search of the boxes reveals several things she didn’t know about Adam’s past life, and her interactions with Meredith’s family reveal even more. Picking through the detritus of the past leads to a shocking discovery that will help solve the mystery of Adam’s disappearance. Foster’s second (Come Back to Me, 2010) page-turning tale of suspense set on the snow-covered moors has something for everyone: mystery, romance, paranormal activity and mortal danger.
WIFE 22
Gideon, Melanie Ballantine (400 pp.) $26.00 | May 29, 2012 978-0-345-52795-0 A domestic romantic fantasy for maturing but computer-savvy Bridget Jones fans, Gideon’s first adult novel (The Slippery Year, 2009) concerns a wife torn between her uncommunicative, grumpy 900
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husband and the charming stranger she flirts with online. Alice Buckle is about to turn 45, her mother’s age when she died, and feels so at sea that she’s been avoiding her motherless women support group. It doesn’t help that her marriage to ad exec William has hit a rocky stretch. He’s always been a still waters running deep kind of guy, but since his demotion at work—for erratic behavior during a presentation for an erectile dysfunction product—he has become less communicative than ever. Alice also worries about her children: Is 12-year-old Peter gay? Has 15-year-old Zoe developed an eating disorder after being dumped by her first boyfriend, who happens to be the son of Alice’s best friend Nedra, a gay divorce lawyer? So when Alice receives an online invitation to participate in an online survey of long-married women, she signs on. Answering the survey questions posed by an anonymous but empathetic researcher gives Alice an opportunity to re-examine the evolution of her marriage from its steamy beginnings. The set-up also allows the plot to unfold through questionnaire answers, emails and texts, as well as scenes of theatrical dialogue—although her only produced play bombed, Alice remains a playwright at heart. Supposedly following its rules of anonymity, Alice keeps the survey a secret from William although she has no compunction about telling Nedra. Irked by William’s apparent cluelessness, Alice carries on an increasingly intense flirtation with her researcher. Glued to her smart phone, she practically ignores her family and her myopic self-centeredness begins to grate. By the end, Alice becomes downright unattractive, undeserving of the happiness that the genre typically grants. Nevertheless, women of a certain age will find her escapades breezy fun, especially since the William character is blatantly intended to bring Colin Firth to mind. (Agent: Elizabeth Sheinkman)
HAVANA REQUIEM
Goldstein, Paul Farrar, Straus and Giroux (320 pp.) $26.00 | May 1, 2012 978-0-8090-5393-3 Intrigue snares an American lawyer visiting Cuba in this sluggish third novel from Goldstein (A Patent Lie, 2008, etc.). Michael Seeley, featured in both of Goldstein’s earlier novels, is known for two things: his expertise in copyright law and his pro bono work for struggling artists. He’s also attempting a comeback at a major Manhattan law firm after being fired for failing to appear in court for his client. That was an alcoholic’s lapse, but Seeley has been on the wagon for a year now. An elderly black Cuban musician, Héctor Reynoso, comes to him with a simple request: He and his fellow musicians want their music back. They signed away their rights years ago, but their tunes, dating back to the 1940s, are being played all the time. Seeley overcomes his reluctance to get involved when Reynoso mysteriously disappears. A more action-oriented author would have sent Seeley to Havana lickety-split, but first the lawyer |
must joust at a partners’ meeting with his rival Hobie, who’s ex-State Department and has important contacts there, and then (for plot reasons only apparent later) meet with a banker who’s offering him a new entertainment client. Seeley’s mission in Havana is to track down Reynoso and the other musicians and have them sign the termination notices. He is helped by Amaryll, a Reynoso contact, a volatile black Latina beauty and the novel’s love interest. The signature gathering is slow, tedious work, further alienating the reader. Deep into the story, Seeley finds Reynoso dead in his apartment, murdered. There are many players here (the security police, State’s representative, a 90-year-old American lawyer working for that bank’s new client) but no answers, and the befuddled Seeley goes on a bender. State’s guy puts him on a plane back to New York, where a wordy denouement reveals that the musicians were victims of an unsavory deal between Castro and an American mobster. Dull protagonist, cliché-ridden situations; a so-called legal thriller that’s long on law and short on thrills. (Agent: Wendy Strotham)
THE RED HOUSE
Haddon, Mark Doubleday (272 pp.) $25.95 | Jun. 19, 2012 978-0-385-53577-9
A familiar premise inspires surprising and deeply moving results, fulfilling the British novelist’s considerable promise. Haddon became a literary sensation with his debut (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, 2003), a critical and commercial success which relied for effect on a tricky narrative perspective—a protagonist who was not only unreliable, but autistic. He then succumbed to a severe case of sophomore jinx with A Spot of Bother (2006), a novel that suggested that the debut was the only gimmick that Haddon had in him. What surprises about his third novel is that it’s not only his best, it’s his most conventional, at least in terms of the plot. Following the death of their mother, a brother and sister, who hadn’t maintained much contact and had felt some estrangement, bring their families together for a weeks’ vacation. With a spirit that evokes A Midsummer Night’s Dream (to which one of the characters compares this idyll), the set-up ensures that there will be revelations, twists and shifts in the family dynamic. Angela has three children whom she loves (all detailed richly and empathically), a husband she tolerates, and the memory of a stillborn daughter whom she still mourns (18 years later). Richard, a wealthier doctor who has arranged this family reunion with his sister, has a younger second wife, a career crisis, and a stepdaughter who is as mean-spirited as she is attractive. Where similar novels often devote whole chapters to the perspective of a character, this one shifts perspective with every paragraph, sustaining suspense (sometimes as to whose mind the paragraph reflects) while enriching the developing relationships among people who barely know each other, in a place where |
“the normal rules had been temporarily suspended.” There will be flirting across generations and gender, sexual orientations discovered and revealed, and deep secrets unearthed. “What strangers we are to ourselves,” muses one character, “changed in the twinkling of an eye.” Yet the plot feels organic rather than contrived, the characters convincing throughout, the tone compassionate and the writing wise. A novel to savor.
INTO THE DARKEST CORNER
Haynes, Elizabeth Harper/HarperCollins (416 pp.) $25.99 | Jul. 1, 2012 978-0-06-219725-2
In Haynes’ debut, a woman is stalked by the former lover who nearly killed her. Because of a dual time frame that introduces us to twitching, OCD- and PTSD-plagued Catherine Bailey in the fall of 2007 and then pulls back to 2003, we know that the gorgeous, too-good-to-be-true guy she meets in a bar on Halloween is….too good to be true. So the suspense, such as it is, comes from 1) waiting to find out exactly what horrible injuries Lee Brightman inflicted that got him jailed, and 2) how long it will take him to find Cathy, relocated from Lancaster to London, once he is released on December 28. The author plausibly traces Cathy’s evolution from feisty party girl to paralyzed victim too terrified to do anything but wait for the next blow or knife slash—and it’s a nasty twist that smoothtalking Lee has persuaded all her girlfriends that she’s a neurotic self-cutter inexplicably trying to reject the man who truly loves her. The arrival in Cathy’s present-day life of gentle psychologist Stuart Richardson, who refers her to doctors to treat her disorders and builds up her self-esteem, is plausible enough, though Stuart is the kind of totally understanding character who exists only in novels to heal the heroine and be bonked on the head by the villain. Readers are basically turning the pages until they get to the big denouements: the gory final scene of abuse, which in real life would likely have ended with Cathy’s death; and the climactic confrontation in which we hope she will inflict equally gory retribution. (Don’t worry.) Haynes clearly intends this to be a tale of female empowerment, but it’s really just another revenge fantasy. And the ending, which dangles the possibility of a sequel, is a cheap shot. Effective, in an ugly sort of way.
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“A highly entertaining tour de force.” from edge of dark water
DRUGS
Helton, J.R. Seven Stories (256 pp.) $15.95 paperback | May 1, 2012 978-1-60980-401-5 This is your book. This is your book on drugs. Our daily lives, as Aldous Huxley— duly quoted in the epigraph to short story writer and memoirist Helton’s newest (Man and Beast, 2001, etc.)—once observed, range from the tortured to the tedious. Either extreme begs to be escaped from, and lo, whence drugs. We take Helton’s “Jake” to be an alter ego for the author; if he is not, then this book, categorized as fiction but with matter-of-factness that suggests extensive, em, field research, as well as narrative flatness, is a masterwork of close observation, a new rejoinder to S. E. Hinton’s work half a century ago. Helton has been likened to Bukowski, but there was an exuberance to Bukowski; so far as we know, he has not been likened to the Denis Johnson of Jesus’ Son, whose characters had some small measure of self-awareness and enough oomph for us to be interested in them. Alas, Helton’s tone is as affectless as the Texas plains, where Jake does a little poking about, earning a few bucks in construction here and bumming there, just enough to land a score. He starts off a cipher toking a little boo—“I was extremely curious about drugs as they were so verboten in my own home”—and progresses, via methadone and crystal meth, to the mad-pimp lifestyle and thence collapse without much emotional freight, as if it were all happening to someone else. Perhaps this is intentional; perhaps not. In defense of the narrative, however, the author does serve up a good recipe for how not to live one’s life: “two twenty-four canister boxes [of nitrous oxide] at Planet K or restaurant supply stores every day,” followed by a little weed and “only three Vicodin and two Flexeril.” Kids, don’t try it at home. The takeaway: Drugs are boring. Find something interesting to do—and something interesting to read. (Author tour to Texas, Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York)
LONESOME ANIMALS
Holbert, Bruce Counterpoint (272 pp.) $24.00 | May 15, 2012 978-1-58243-806-1
A bloody Western set during the 1930s, Holbert’s debut novel follows an amoral lawman hunting an amoral killer in the rugged, rapidly changing rural counties of Washington State. Holbert’s unsettling book demands a strong stomach: The violence is graphic, and sublime prose is cheek by jowl with ridiculous conceits. Whether the violence is gratuitous is a question the book begs but avoids answering, but one’s pleasure may turn with one’s stomach. At the end the 902
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reader will feel relief or satisfaction or some combination, and tip a sweat-stained hat to Holbert for raising the stakes of the Western genre. The protagonist Russell Strawl’s name says it all, rhyming with drawl and squall, but the participle of another rhyme is the best word to describe him: appalling. Pure antagonism, Strawl travels light as a contagious disease and falls like a curse. He has superhuman hearing, which seems a prerequisite for his in- or sub-human behavior. We are expected to believe in types: in Keystonish cops, fops, sots and a young man who answers only to the name of a prophet. The plot is as tortured as the killer’s victims. Holbert’s sympathies seem to align with the quality of his prose: The land is rendered in loving, even exquisite detail, so too the crimes. The characters’ minds are infernal, and at its best the prose makes the darkness visible. Holbert has gone all-in: This book is audacious. It reaches the heights and then keeps rising so far over the top one doesn’t know how to take it.
EDGE OF DARK WATER
Lansdale, Joe R. Mulholland Books/Little, Brown (288 pp.) $25.99 | Mar. 25, 2012 978-0-316-18843-2 The author of the prize-winning Hap and Leonard series (Devil Red, 2011, etc.) charts a course that may remind you of a distaff Huck and Jim. Paddling a makeshift raft down the Sabine River, they flee East Texas, a New York minute ahead of their pursuers. There are four of them: tough-minded Sue Ellen Wilson, at 16, the stuff of natural leaders; Jinx, Sue Ellen’s lifelong black friend who, if she knows anything at all, knows she’s better than the bigotry she’s endured all her life; angry, resentful Terry, not wholly reconciled to the fact that he’s gay; and Sue Ellen’s alcoholic mom Helen, who’s quite forgotten how pretty she still is. Flagrantly ill-treated, consistently undervalued, they’ve been brought together by a murder. May Lynn Baxter, “the kind of girl that made men turn their heads and take a deep breath,” is pulled from the river, her bizarre death clearly no accident. It’s an event that provides the restless four with both a mission and a pretext. May Lynn always wanted to go to Hollywood. They will usher her ashes there, a task that provides them with a more or less credible reason for doing what they’ve been longing to do: run. The river, the raft, a stash of money coveted by bad guys, nonstop adventures that edify, terrify and deepen the bond between Sue Ellen and Jinx. A highly entertaining tour de force.
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A CONSPIRACY OF FRIENDS
McCall Smith, Alexander Pantheon (272 pp.) $272.00 | Jun. 1, 2012 978-0-307-90723-3
The third installment in a series concerning the denizens of London’s Corduroy Mansions. Member of Parliament Oedipus Snark has been appointed Undersecretary of This and That, but his psychotherapist mother Berthea still doesn’t like him. Nor does his ex-lover Barbara Ragg, whose knowledge of his unsavory past gives her an unexpected opportunity for revenge. It’s likely to provide cold comfort from a rift that looms with her fiancé Hugh after the confessions they feel impelled to make to each other, or the revenge of his own that Rupert Porter, Barbara’s partner in the literary agency their fathers founded, plots after Barbara decides not to sell him the flat her father left her after all. Wine merchant William French’s son Eddie, financed by his heiress girlfriend, Merle, hires Cosmo Bartonette, the sharpest design eye in London, to decorate a space he wants to turn into a Hemingway-themed restaurant, and in the process he learns a bit about both Cosmo and himself. William’s own quiet life is complicated by an avowal of love as unexpected as it is unwelcome and by the disappearance of his beloved Pimlico Terrier Freddie de la Hay, late of MI6 (The Dog Who Came in from the Cold, 2011, etc.). Caroline Jarvis, William’s downstairs neighbor, wonders whether life will offer her any deeper relationships than the one she enjoys with her best, best friend James. And Berthea’s brother, Terence Moongrove, moves up from his new Porsche to become part owner of a racecar he intends to drive himself. This third volume of Chekhovian soap opera is every bit as addictive as the first two. Fans will be sad to see any of the plots tied up, even by happy endings, and hope for more complications next season.
I COULDN’T LOVE YOU MORE
Medoff, Jillian 5 Spot/Grand Central Publishing (432 pp.) $13.99 paperback | May 15, 2012 978-0-446-58462-3 Medoff ’s talent for characterization is evident in her latest novel, a richly layered tale about that complicated thing called family. Eliot Gordon is Everywoman—a working mother of three, she has complicated relationships and just a few minutes to spare at the end of the day. She dotes on her girls, 4-year-old Hailey, and her stepdaughters, 7-year-old Gail and teenager Charlotte. She adores Grant (though they’re not married and no one’s sure why). And she is an active member of the Gordon Girls, consisting of youngest sister, Maggie, the |
comically imperious middle sister, Sylvia, and their mother, a novelist who spent their childhood hunched over a typewriter. It’s a good life except for the occasional intrusion of the Sculptress, Eliot’s code name for Grant’s first wife, Beth, a self-absorbed painter (she specializes in vagina self-portraits) who barely has time for Gail and Charlotte and expects Grant to support her art. And then Finn Montgomery appears. One of those impossibly beautiful men, Finn was Eliot’s great love in college until he took a job in New York and never looked back. Now back in Atlanta (with a polished wife and daughter), Finn bumps into Eliot and all of her memories of heartbreak and devotion come rushing back. They begin a flirtation, secret calls and meetings (we see Eliot helplessly tumbling into almost adultery) and then Finn takes it further, confessing that Eliot is his true love. To Medoff ’s credit, the plot takes a sharp turn away from what could have been a conventional storyline; instead, at the beach and on the phone with Finn, Eliot turns for a moment, and when she turns back, both Hailey and Gail are drowning in the stormy Atlantic. Whom she chooses to save and the consequences of her flirtation devastate everything she has. Heavy with guilt, Eliot tries to rebuild love. Medoff’s fully realized novel beautifully explores the most important relationships we create: as parent, as sibling, as spouse.
SO FAR AWAY
Moore, Meg Mitchell Little, Brown (272 pp.) $25.99 | May 29, 2012 978-0-316-09769-7 After a mild-mannered family-dramedy debut (The Arrivals, 2011), Moore gets way more intense in a novel that mingles the stories of a cyberbullied high school student, a guilt-ridden archivist and an Irish maid in the 1920s. It’s unusual for a 13-year-old to be poking around the Massachusetts Archives, especially since she’s come to Boston on the bus all the way from Newburyport. But what really attracts Kathleen Lynch’s attention to Natalie Gallagher is that the girl reminds Kathleen of her own daughter Susannah, who got involved in drugs and vanished just before graduating from high school some 10 years ago. Natalie’s under pressure too; Kathleen sees a vaguely threatening text on the girl’s dropped cell phone, and we quickly learn that Natalie is being bullied by her former BFF Hannah Morgan and Hannah’s new pal, the extremely nasty Taylor Grant. Natalie’s mother, who’s gone practically catatonic since her husband moved out, is in no shape to protect her daughter, and Kathleen’s well-meaning attempts to help backfire. A second plot unfolds in the notebook Natalie found in the basement of her family’s house and brought to the Archives; it details Bridget O’Connell’s experiences in 1925-1926 as a maid to Newburyport’s Turner family. Moore’s storytelling skills are evident as the tension builds on both fronts. Bridget suffers demeaning treatment from Mrs. Turner and winds up in bed with Dr. Turner, kirkusreviews.com
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k i r ku s q & a w i t h g r a h a m sw i f t The richness of everyday life provides seemingly inexhaustible possibility within the novels of Graham Swift, whose Wish You Were Here ranks with his best. It’s a novel of rural England, where destinies appear to be preordained, yet every life, and every decision within it, so profoundly affects so many others. A man mourns the death of his brother, a soldier in Iraq with whom he’d lost contact, and the delicate balance of his existence begins to topple, threatening everything from his marriage to his memories. Few novelists show more subtle mastery than Swift, whose characters invite the reader’s empathy rather than judgment.
Wish You Were Here
Graham Swift Knopf (336 pp.) $25.00 Apr. 17, 2012 978-0-307-70012-4
Q: What was the seed of inspiration for this novel? A: I never have a grand plan. Novels for me arise obscurely and with a strong sense of the provisional. There eventually comes a point when I know I’m “in” one, but not how I’ve crossed the threshold. I may well have begun with the shotgun—the shotgun that features in the opening pages and has several appearances in the book, in the hands of different characters. Q: How did the topical element of Iraq and the “war on terror” in this novel change the writing experience? A: It all came from my groping for the story behind that first scene. I felt that as well as telling the story of a man and wife, the novel would involve the relationship of two brothers, that there’d be a missing brother—Tom—who’d be much younger than the main character, Jack. I can’t explain why. At some point I made the leap to the missing brother having joined the army many years ago, thus to Iraq and thus to what became the spine of the narrative—the almost literal “coming home” of that war, the story of the return of a dead soldier. But I can’t stress too much how all this, with its political, even global implications, arose out of a local, intimate context. This is a novel about farming as much as anything, about all the meanings the word “land” can have, including that of close, heartbreaking physical view. I seem to write novels that are simultaneously domestic and undomestic, rooted and uprooted.
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Q: Were you conscious of wanting to write something with more of an element of suspense? Are the pacing and chronological structure organic to this novel? A: I hope all my novels involve a degree of suspense, if only because storytelling, the process of gradual revelation, is inherently suspenseful. But it’s true that the final chapters of Wish You Were Here have a strong “cliffhanger” element. Many readers have commented on the roller coaster experience, on how they absolutely couldn’t guess the outcome. I can only say I shared all this myself. I really didn’t know at the beginning how it would end. Q: Do you think English readers and American ones might identify differently with your novels in general and this one in particular? A: Because I try to write about core human stuff and because I believe in empathy, I’d hope the differences are minor. Novels have to be set somewhere, and I’ve said elsewhere, though it’s hardly my original thought, that the local is the route to the universal. –By Don McLeese
ph oto © Ek ko vo n S ch wi ch ow
Q: Why did Jack and his wife come together, and why have they stayed together?
and their seldom-articulated, stubborn love for each other. All this said, it’s clear from the beginning that their relationship has never been so severely tested as now.
“Indian filmmaker and novelist Murari offers a romantic feel-good about Afghanistan.” from the taliban cricket club
with disastrous consequences. Taylor’s persecution escalates, and Natalie feels increasingly isolated as her mother buries herself in work, her father takes a vacation with his new girlfriend, and Kathleen is distracted by a friend whose lover is caught in the Haitian earthquake. Moore is equally skillful in capturing the class tensions of the early 20th century and the scary cruelty of teenage girls amplified by 21st-century technology. The final pages dangle a plethora of loose ends, but they’re unlikely to bother readers gripped by the novel’s strong emotional content. (Agents: Elisabeth Weed and Stephanie Sun )
THE TALIBAN CRICKET CLUB
Murari, Timeri N. Ecco/HarperCollins (336 pp.) $24.99 | $11.99 e-book | May 15, 2012 978-0-06-209125-3 978-0-06-209127-7 e-book Indian filmmaker and novelist Murari (Taj, 2005, etc.) offers a romantic feel-good about Afghanistan circa 2000, not without its share of grim fundamentalism but heavy on the optimism. Educated Afghanis who chafe under the harsh restrictions of the fundamentalist government, plucky 24-year-old Rukhsana and her 16-year-old brother, Jahan, live with their cancer-ridden widowed mother in Kabul. No longer allowed to work as a journalist, Rukhsana still manages to send out anonymous stories of life under Taliban rule to the Hindustan Times in Delhi where she lived with her family in happier times—she attended college and fell in love with Hindu Veer although she gave him up when she returned to Afghanistan, knowing her parents would not approve. One day she and other journalists are called to the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice by Zorak Wahidi, the same man who slapped and physically threatened Rukhsana at a newspaper office four years earlier. Wahidi announces that the Taliban is forming a cricket team as a propaganda tool to show the government’s capacity for civility and sportsmanship. The newspapers are to announce that a competition will be held among Afghani teams to decide who gets to compete internationally in Pakistan. Rukhsana, who played cricket on her college team in Delhi, realizes that cricket may be the way to get Jahan out of Afghanistan. She puts together a team of cousins, all of whom want to escape Afghanistan, and disguises herself as a man in order to coach the ragtag band into a competitive force within three short weeks. Fortunately she is wearing her fake beard and goes unrecognized when Wahidi’s even more malevolent brother shows up to announce that Wahidi wants to marry Rukhsana. The stakes for winning the cricket match have increased dramatically. Not to worry, Rukhsana is not only smart, beautiful, loyal and beloved, she and her ever-growing band of conspirators are also darn lucky. Readers will be of two minds, whether Murari’s Bend It Like Beckham approach to Taliban repression is trivializing or uplifting.
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INSTINCT
Oldham, Nick Severn House (224 pp.) $28.95 | May 1, 2012 978-0-7278-8132-8 A terrorist hunt collides with a homicidal rapist’s spree. Blackpool Detective Superintendent Henry Christie is surveying the crime scene of a raped and murdered teenager when he witnesses the duly warranted shooting of a suspected terrorist sought by MI5, MI6, SIS, Special Branch, Counter Terrorism and his old pal Karl Donaldson, a supersleuth doing undercover work as a legate at the American embassy. While the agencies bicker over which has jurisdiction, another suspected terrorist is collared with bombs strapped to his chest and a detonator in his hand. Does that account for everyone? Donaldson thinks he winged another perp, slowing but not stopping his getaway. Blood droplets and airport security identify him as Jamil Akram, who runs terrorist camps in Yemen, instructs aspiring suicide bombers, and plans events for maximum public outrage and fear. Jamil hustles himself to Gambia, where Boone, a semi-retired smuggler, eventually realizes that the man he’s agreed to pick up is worth a lot more than the sum he agreed on. His blackmail buys him a gruesome, watery grave, the brutalization of his girlfriend Michelle and a spot of vengeance engineered by his drinking buddy Steve Flynn, an ex-cop in Christie’s squad who now takes on fishing charters. Meanwhile, Christie learns that one of the four different sperm deposits in his teenage victim matches Jamil’s DNA. As Christie, Donaldson and Flynn (Facing Justice, 2011, etc.) share information, skullduggery most British comes into play, with more deaths and a cover-up in the offing. Nobody makes coincidences seem as likely or as deadly as Oldham, who tempers all this mayhem with a new romantic entanglement for recent widower Christie, but also staves off his retirement with the adrenaline rush of the chase.
I AM AN EXECUTIONER Love Stories
Parameswaran, Rajesh Knopf (272 pp.) $24.95 | Apr. 10, 2012 978-0-307-59592-8
A debut story collection from Parameswaran. The book opens with “The Infamous Bengal Ming,” narrated by a tiger who expresses affection for his keeper in the only language available to him, a fatal combination of mauling and love-biting; he then escapes the zoo to commit other acts of mayhem, under which lies a misunderstood tenderness. This tour de force sets the tone and the stage for these dark, rollickingly imaginative stories in which the powers of love and savagery are kirkusreviews.com
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loosed upon each other again and again. In the title story, a semiliterate (and also fancily semi-literary) hangman tries to seduce his new wife despite her disgust at discovering the way he makes his living. Meanwhile, he tries to negotiate between the equal and opposite forces in him of compassion and brutishness. In “The Strange Career of Dr. Raju Gopalarajan,” a fired computer salesman, an Indian-born American who believes deeply—too deeply—in the immigrant dream of self-reinvention, checks out anatomy texts from the public library and sets up shop in an exurban strip mall, claiming to be a doctor. Other stories feature a panopticonic security state in which everyone seems to be a government agent spying on everyone else; an elephant composing a memoir (in “Englaphant, that strange tongue native to all places of elephant-human contact,” we’re told); an Indian woman soldiering on with Thanksgiving plans despite the fact that her husband lies dead on the floor. The stories—some published in journals like McSweeney’s, Granta and Zoetrope—can sometimes be arch and tricksome, and they’re not for everyone. But Parameswaran is a dazzlingly versatile stylist, and the conceits and voices here are varied and evocative. An inventive, impressive and witty book. (Author tour to Boston, New York, Portland, San Francisco and Seattle)
AN UNCOMMON EDUCATION
Percer, Elizabeth Harper/HarperCollins (352 pp.) $24.99 | May 1, 2012 978-0-06-211096-1
Bonds of love, family and friendship, sometimes damaged or beyond repair, are nevertheless celebrated in an intense debut by a noted poet. Naomi Feinstein, the misfit child of misfit parents—an orphaned immigrant Jewish father and a depressed Catholic mother—grows up clever but lonely in Brookline, Mass., convinced by her father’s heart attack that her destiny lies in cardiac medicine. Friendship with Teddy, the boy next door, turns into an early but enduring love. However Teddy moves away, leaving Naomi alone once more while still questing for a closer relationship with her troubled mother. Accepted at Wellesley College, Naomi leaves home only to find that college life is just as solitary until a sudden act of heroism on her part leads to acceptance by the Shakespeare Society and friendships, notably with a privileged Japanese girl, Jun Oko. Although Naomi’s insularity becomes somewhat diminished, darker events will swallow three of the people she cares most about, and the largest lesson she must learn is that she cannot save any of them. Her efforts to do so and eventual emergence from sadness are charted with restraint and empathy in Percer’s lyrical, slightly dreamy narrative. A subdued, thoughtful coming-of-age tale that hovers observantly on the edge of melancholia. (Author events in San Francisco Bay area. Agent: Lisa Grubka)
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HAPPINESS IS A CHEMICAL IN THE BRAIN Stories
Perillo, Lucia Norton (224 pp.) $23.95 | May 7, 2012 978-0-393-08353-8
A prize-winning poet (and MacArthur Fellow grant recipient) extends her literary mastery with a debut story collection. While these stories reflect the poet’s plainspoken virtuosity and elliptical compression, they are very much rooted in her experience in the Pacific Northwest. Perillo (Inseminating the Elephant, 2009, etc.) majored in wildlife management and worked summers at Mount Rainier National Park. Not that she idealizes or sentimentalizes the natural world, but it puts her very human characters in perspective: “There was beauty…and also decay, and the years were just a factory for changing one into the other.” The opening and closing stories (“Bad Boy Number Seventeen,” “Late in the Realm”), as well as one in the middle (“Saint Jude in Persia”), have the same first-person narrator, a young (initially), spirited woman whose love life is undermined by her limited possibilities, as she deals with a sister with Down syndrome and a mother embittered by the husband who deserted them. Funny and sad in equal measure, the stories find the narrator admitting, “I haven’t always proved to be the shrewdest judge of human nature. My romances have left me with a recurring dream in which I’m slashing tires and the tires’ blood is spilling out.” Throughout the fiction, blood ties are tenuous, commitment is provisional, and fate is arbitrary: “She packed her things and headed west, and when she hit the ocean and could go no further she tossed a coin and made a right-hand turn.” Thus do so many of the characters in these stories find themselves in the area around the Puget Sound, which more often seems a last ditch than a last chance. These are characters with grit and survival instincts, but ones who ask, “What was sadness, after all, but the fibrous stuff out of which a life was woven? And what was happiness but a chemical in the brain?” Emotionally unflinching stories of considerable power, wonder and humor.
THE OTHER WOMAN
Phillippi Ryan, Hank Forge (416 pp.) $24.99 | Sep. 4, 2012 978-0-7653-3257-8
Fired by the TV station that got sued for libel when she refused to reveal a source, a Boston reporter gets thrown into the even more dangerous shark tank of a U.S. Senate campaign. Jane Ryland knew perfectly well that grocery magnate Arthur Vick was the client who’d reneged on all the high-flown promises he’d made call-girl Sellica Darden. |
But when Vick won a $1 million judgment from Channel 11 and Sellica vanished, her boss threw her under the train. Now that Jane’s old rival, Boston Register city editor Alex Wyatt, has snapped her up, the first thing he wants her to do is identify the source she wouldn’t identify in court. No deal. So Alex sends her into the jaws of ex-governor Owen Lassiter’s Senatorial campaign to get an interview with Lassiter’s reclusive wife Moira. At first Moira hides behind the likes of campaign mogul Trevor Kiernan and consultant Rory Maitland; then she puts Jane off. When she finally talks, though, what she says is explosive: She thinks the candidate is carrying on an affair. In fact, he’s in much deeper trouble than his wife realizes. Two different beauties, volunteer Kenna Wilkes and groupie Holly Neff, are plotting at cross-purposes to get close to him for their own nefarious ends. Someone sabotages one of his campaign rallies in far-off Springfield. Skeletons from the candidate’s past prepare to leap from their closets. Back in the present, Detective Jake Brogan, Jane’s friend and not-quite-lover, tangles with reporters convinced that the second young woman’s corpse found near a bridge means the city is harboring a serial killer.
More of everything you read thrillers for—two unrelated stalkers, four unrelated killers (along with diverse non-homicidal malefactors) and enough plot twists for a pretzel factory. Readers who love too much of a good thing will look forward to the promised series from Ryan (Drive Time, 2010, etc.).
MY FIRST SUICIDE
Pilch, Jerzy Translated by Frick, David Open Letter (276 pp.) $15.95 paperback | May 15, 2012 978-1-934824-40-5 A set of loosely concatenated stories that don’t quite add up to a novel but are nonetheless rich in character and in the exploration of contemporary urban life in Poland. In the title story a man reminisces about a time 40 years before, when at the age of 12 he first had
How much would you spend for dinner with Thomas Jefferson? Jack Arrowsmith spent p $1,400 at Fleurie in Charlottesville. Praise from Kirkus Reviews: P “Boody’s writing is so good ... (he) gives Jefferson a wholly authentic voice ... This Jefferson is delightfully quirky, flawed yet sympathetic and fascinating ... An engrossing, haunting story about making up for lost time.” — Kirkus Reviews, April 15, 2012
For information about film or publication rights, contact the author at thomasjeffersonrachelandme.com |
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“A book that offers lots of action and gloomy shadows but not much dramatic traction.” from the 500
the impulse to take his life. He’s heard from Pastor Kalinowski (one of the recurring characters) about the “other world” and has some curiosity about the passage from This World to That. The possibility of his own self-destruction curiously liberates the narrator, so he gives himself permission to violate some taboos—like watch an adult film and read a forbidden book he’s found at the bottom of a cupboard. Pilch manages to inject a great deal of humor into the story—as well as tragedy, for it’s also about the narrator’s relationship to his drunken and dissolute father. “The Most Beautiful Woman in the World” announces its subject grandly, though the narrator is forced to admit she might only be in the top ten—or the top 100. He’s nevertheless pleased to have found her, though his sexual fantasies about her turn out to be at one and the same time both indulged in and quashed. In “The Double of Tolstoy’s Son-in-Law,” the narrator develops an obsession about an old photograph of Tolstoy playing chess, while in “A Chapter about a Figure Sitting Motionless” the obsession is with Anka Chow Chow, a virginal soccer fan who has a weakness, or perhaps a fetish, for girls with backpacks. It’s hard to do justice to the outré and eccentric, but gorgeous quality of Pilch’s prose. Here he manages to pull off some neat literary tricks, frequently and self-consciously undermining the seriousness of his subjects with pricks of irony.
THE BORGIA MISTRESS
Poole, Sara St. Martin’s Griffin (416 pp.) $14.99 paperback | May 22, 2012 978-0-312-60985-6 A poisoner in the court of the Borgia pope strives to protect His Holiness by rooting out an assassin, in the third of a series. Francesca Giordano, daughter of a Jewish courtier to the Borgia pope Alexander VI, inherits her position when her father is murdered by assailants still unknown. This is only one of the mysteries tormenting Francesca; increasingly she has begun to suspect that her mother, Adriana, did not die while giving birth to her, as she was told. A professional poisoner, Francesca serves Alexander as a contract killer and also as a taster, examining and sampling every dish he is served. With cold calculation, or with the blood-thirsty frenzy that sometimes overtakes her, she has killed several men. She’s the confidante and intermittent mistress of Cesare, the Pope’s son, who has lately been impressed into the priesthood at the rank of Cardinal. Fearing plague in Rome and those who would thwart the Borgias’ plans for world domination, the Pope’s court, including his 13-year old daughter Lucrezia, decamp to the fortified town of Viterbo. Their entourage includes an unruly delegation of Spaniards from the court of Isabella and Ferdinand, tolerated because an alliance with Spain is crucial to Borgia ambitions. A series of sudden deaths among the household staff, which Francesca, who also serves the Borgias as a coroner, is at a loss to explain, leads her to suspect that an assassin may well have infiltrated the court. 908
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But who is the killer’s target? The Pope, Cesare, Lucrezia, Francesca herself, or Herrera, the dissolute Spanish envoy who hates Francesca, not least because she’s his rival for Cesare’s affection? Needing someone to trust, Francesca befriends an abbess who knows the truth about Adriana’s death. The persecution of the Cathar heretics two centuries before also has repercussions for Francesca and her charges. That Poole manages to hew a path through this thicket of complications is a testament to her considerable expository skill. A welcome antidote to the usual melodramatic Borgia fare.
THE 500
Quirk, Matthew Reagan Arthur/Little, Brown (304 pp.) $25.99 | Jun. 5, 2012 978-0-316-19862-2 Washington, D.C., is the setting for this John Grisham-style thriller about a recent Harvard Law graduate who gets in way over his head at a sinister consulting and PR firm that will stop at nothing to control all 500 of the capital’s top movers and shakers. Mike Ford thinks he’s got it made working for Henry Davies, who shuttles between jobs as a distinguished Harvard professor and a seasoned “fixer” in Washington who worked for Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. Ford’s $200,000 salary will chase away his massive college debt, Davies’ influence promises to get his con man father out of prison, and a beautiful senior consultant named Annie is his for the asking. Not bad for a scuffling blue-collar kid whose life seemed headed in another direction when he joined the Navy at 19. But it isn’t long before Ford detects hidden agendas behind his assignment of cozying up to and collecting secrets about a congressman. He starts spying on his bosses, attaching GPS devices to cars, and getting himself threatened and hurt. The players include a Serbian war criminal called Rado; a Supreme Court justice with a Beretta and a human rights case before him; and Rado’s seductive 23-year-old daughter, whom the justice is accused of abusing. Quirk’s first novel is a breezy but not always sure-footed tale. As first-person narrators go, Ford doesn’t make much of an impression, offering the usual mix of self-consciousness, regret and callow determination. If this book is filmed (20th Century Fox acquired the screen rights), it likely will lose its cheaper plot devices and rely less on a letter containing the only piece of dirt that can bring its villain down. A book that offers lots of action and gloomy shadows but not much dramatic traction. (Author tour to New York, Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Houston, Chicago, Kansas City and Washington, D.C. Agent: Shawn Coyne)
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ADA’S RULES A Sexy Skinny Novel Randall, Alice Bloomsbury (352 pp.) $24.00 | May 1, 2012 978-1-60819-827-6
A feisty middle-age black woman sheds 70 pounds and rekindles the flame with her preacher husband. Approaching her 25th college reunion, 220-pound Ada Howard decides to get out of her 3X sweats and work towards that stretchy size-10 black dress at Target. It’s not just that she wants to look good at the reunion for foxy old flame Matt Manson, who appends a handwritten message (“Honey Babe. It’s been too long.”) to the invitation. And it’s not just that her preacher husband, Lucius, might very well be cheating on her. (He’s lost weight, bought a new car and is never home.) Getting slim and healthy is a political issue for Ada. Her three older sisters died of diabetes before they turned 60, and every day at KidPlay, the day care center she runs in Nashville, she sees a parade of oversized African-American women feeding their children the same fattening junk food they eat themselves. So Ada embarks on a program of exercise and diet based on the list of 53 rules that opens this self-help manual delivered in a fictional format. For the most part, the rules are nothing you couldn’t find in an actual diet book— though probably not “Get better hair down there,” which forecasts the earthy humor with which Randall (Rebel Yell, 2009, etc.) in subsequent pages chronicles Ada’s journey toward size 10 and a revitalized marriage. When Ada visits the four congregants she suspects of being her husband’s bit on the side, instead of confessions, she hears a litany of the sexual tributes to his wife that Preach recited when invited to adultery. His highly improbable confidences are typical of the novel’s relentlessly positive tone; Randall’s emphasis on black pride and self-respect, while understandable, makes for predictable fiction. A quick aside about a betrayal by Ada’s best friend Delila strikes the only note of adult complexity in a book dedicated to simple cheerleading. Well-intentioned and readable, but very broadly drawn and often gratingly rah-rah. (Author tour and regional events. Author video. Agent: Amy Williams)
on-ramp to the freeway. This dilemma is given figurative form in the debate they begin about an owl perched on a jungle gym, a traditional symbol of wisdom that appears on the first page of a book filled with unwise characters. The Rain Dragon of the title is an organic cooperative of hardy souls, occupying the grounds of a former poor house and producing yogurt, honey, soap, flowers—the produce as diverse as the people. Amy and Damon are drawn north from L.A. to this place, hoping to cure their malaise. The book focuses on Damon, who discovers that things are not all that different in the land of yogurt and honey than they were amongst the palms, exhaust and plastic surgery. Damon’s evolution parallels his relationship with Peter, the coop’s charismatic founder. As Damon is drawn into Peter’s orbit, voluntarily doing the dirty work for a company with an improbably changing mission, he begins to realize why he undertook this journey north in the first place. What happens to Damon, a capable man, as he discovers his talents are wholly unsuited to the stable and sustainable life he desires? The book’s most compelling question remains open, inconclusive and as unsettled as the characters’ lives.
RAIN DRAGON
Raymond, Jon Bloomsbury (272 pp.) $15.00 paperback | May 1, 2012 978-1-60819-679-1 The plaid vibe and rainy weather of contemporary Portland, Ore., is the backdrop for Raymond’s second novel, about the quest for love, authenticity and organic produce. When the book begins, Amy and Damon are lost, and at a loss. They find themselves in a cul-desac in the outer suburbs of Portland when they should be on an |
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THE REVEREND’S WIFE
THE TESTAMENT OF JESSIE LAMB
Roby, Kimberla Lawson Grand Central Publishing (336 pp.) $24.99 | May 1, 2012 978-0-446-57247-7 Another episode in the soap opera otherwise known as the life of Reverend Curtis Black. Chicago mega-church pastor and celebrity author Reverend Black has another self-engineered debacle on his hands. Although in the last installment he and wife Charlotte had cheated on each other, Curtis is unable to forgive her. Charlotte, who has atoned in myriad ways, including transforming her resentment of Curtis’ love child Curtina into profound motherly love, goes into a tailspin when Curtis moves into a guest bedroom and coldly informs her that he will file for divorce the minute their son Matthew has graduated from high school and is safely Harvard-bound. At her favorite suburban sports bar, she has a few too many and returns home schnockered. She pours out her frustrations to Curtis, who only grows more indifferent the more she drinks. Increasingly, he’s been finding solace in daily telephone conversations with Sharon, a new church member who moved (she says) to Chicago to be near him and offers him (he thinks) platonic friendship. When Charlotte’s behavior grows more erratic (she embarrasses the straight-laced Matthew by impugning his girlfriend’s virtue as the youngsters are posing for prom photos, and then stays out late at the sports bar where she’s seen chatting up another man), Curtis visits Sharon and almost sleeps with her before his religious scruples kick in. Charlotte confronts Curtis with cell phone evidence of his flirtation, and the tide turns. Curtis actually warms to her, and reconciliation is in the air. He’s happy Charlotte decided to surprise him at an event he’s keynoting in Detroit, but when the couple discovers Sharon, scantily clad and lolling on Curtis’ hotel bed, it’s back to square one. As a pastor, Curtis is a woeful role model—he behaves ethically only when it suits him and is quicker to blame others than to accept the consequences of his own misdeeds. Despite his sanctimonious protestations, Curtis hasn’t learned his lesson, and future fracases, necessitating future books, are inevitable. (Author tour to Atlanta, Jackson (Miss.), Birmingham, Nashville and Louisville)
Rogers, Jane Perennial/HarperCollins (256 pp.) $14.99 paperback | May 15, 2012 978-0-06-213080-8 An idealistic young heroine makes a decision that will alter her life, and possibly the world, in Rogers’ (The Voyage Home, 2004, etc.) eighth novel. It’s not easy being a teenager in Lamb’s futuristic world. Like many young people, 16-year-old Jessie is struggling to find her own identity. She’s dealing with all of the conflicts inherent in a teen’s life—love, friendship, relationships, parental control—but she’s also surrounded by an ominous force that threatens the very future of humankind: a genetically engineered virus known as Maternal Death Syndrome, which destroys pregnant women and their unborn children. Jessie’s father, a scientist, is part of a team that is working to stop it. Jessie, who narrates the story, begins to question all the attitudes and values she and her friends have learned as children. In an effort to find herself, Jessie joins an activist group and becomes marginally involved in several causes. As she ponders her role in life, the world around Jessie is disintegrating into chaotic demonstrations over women’s equality, genetic engineering, moral injustice and just about every other important social issue known to man. Each is treated superficially by both Jessie and the author, and ultimately these threads detract from what could have been a provocative story. As if Jessie doesn’t have enough on her plate already, she also must deal with her beloved aunt’s illness, a rocky event in her parents’ marriage, a friend’s assault, the betrayal of an older adult and a sexual encounter. Amid the turmoil, Jessie resolves to do something to make her life meaningful, a move that her father and those around her try to prevent. With an emotional disconnect that is inconsistent with true teen behavior, Jessie tries to convince her parents, her friends and herself that her chosen mission is the right path for her—and that one person can, indeed, make a difference. A disturbing story that, in the end, somehow seems a bit shallow.
THE INNOCENTS
Segal, Francesca Voice/Hyperion (288 pp.) $25.99 | Jun. 5, 2012 978-1-4013-4181-7 Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence gets a reboot in this novel set in a present-day London Jewish enclave. The plot structures of Wharton’s 1920 classic and this novel are extremely similar: Adam, an ambitious young man, is set to marry Rachel, a stunning woman from a well-to-do family (Adam works in Rachel’s father’s law firm). Adam and
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“Riveting, heartbreaking, profoundly moving.” from the age of miracles
Rachel have been a couple since they were teens, but their just-so existence is upended with the arrival of Rachel’s cousin Ellie from New York. Ellie has scandalized many in her family with her acting and modeling career, which included nude scenes in an art film, while rumors of her consorting with married men abound. But Adam is drawn to her in spite of all this, and in part because of it—her free-spirited, straight-talking attitude hits him like a thunderbolt, making him aware of just how sheltered his life has been. Segal isn’t the ornate stylist Wharton is, but she writes elegantly and thoughtfully about Adam’s growing sense of entrapment, and she excels at showing how a family’s admirable supportiveness can suddenly feel like smothering. (She can write with humor, too; in one scene Adam’s family reads names from the Jewish newspaper’s birthsdeaths-weddings announcements and guesses if they were “hatched,” “dispatched” or “matched.”) Segal’s effort to work a Madoff-ian financial scandal into the closing chapters feels like an ungainly attempt to add some drama, and Ellie and Adam’s flirtatious bantering isn’t always convincing. But overall this is a well-tuned portrait of a couple whose connection proves to be much more tenuous than expected, and of religious rituals that prove more meaningful than they seem. Segal thoughtfully ties in family Holocaust lore and high-holiday gatherings to show that those long-standing bonds are tough to break. Even if the plot and themes are second-hand, this is an emotionally and intellectually astute debut.
PRIVATE GAMES
Sullivan, Mark & Patterson, James Little, Brown (448 pp.) $27.99 | Feb. 13, 2012 978-0-316-20682-2 Zingy formula—emphasis on formula—fiction from the literary maquiladora that is James Patterson. All right, it’s not literature. But Patterson, he of six dozen novels and counting, has an uncanny knack for the timely thriller, and this one is no exception. The Private of the title is a security firm (think Blackwater, though better at hiding its secrets) charged with providing said security during the London Olympic Games. As the book opens in July 2012, a Very Bad Man is about to disrupt the games in ways that the Palestinians at Munich could never imagine, with the secondary aim, it would seem, of watching the cream of British pop music run for the exits: “To keep the infernal singing from getting to me, I focus on the fact that just a few minutes from now, I will reveal myself. And when I do I’ll be able to rejoice in their shared horror—McCartney, John, and Faithfull, too.” Now, Sir Paul and Sir Elton, sure, but what’s Marianne Faithfull ever done, apart from smoke too many cigarettes, to offend this puritan? It’s tipoff enough that he goes by the name of Cronus, the Greek Ur-god that killed and ate his own children. So, Hannibal Lecter, no? Not quite—and nowhere near Thomas Harris’ league, insofar as the writing is concerned. Private eye Peter Knight, whose name |
is as suggestive as Philip Marlowe’s, goes into action, working with the ever-irritating reporter Karen Pope to take down the voracious Mr. Bad, who shares narrator duties with the authors, and who seems to take a rather wide view of which children he’s entitled to eat. Will the world ever be safe from our literal spoilsport? Read this and see. Be offended if you’re a fan of Renée Zellweger or dislike offhand sexism. Be more offended if you’re a fan of English writ well. A pleasant romp all the same; as lightweight as a whiffleball—but fun.
THE AGE OF MIRACLES
Thompson Walker, Karen Random House (288 pp.) $26.00 | Jun. 26, 2012 978-0-8129-9297-7
In Walker’s stunning debut, a young California girl coming of age in a dystopian near future confronts the inevitability of change on the most personal level as life on earth withers. Sixth-grader Julia, whose mother is a slightly neurotic former actress and whose father is an obstetrician, is living an unremarkable American middle-class childhood. She rides the school bus and takes piano lessons; she has a mild crush on a boy named Seth whose mother has cancer; she enjoys sleepovers with her best friend Hanna, who happens to be a Mormon. Then one October morning there’s a news report that scientists have discovered a slowing of the earth’s rotation, adding minutes to each day and night. After initial panic, the human tendency to adapt sets in even as the extra minutes increase into hours. Most citizens go along when the government stays on a 24-hour clock, although an underground movement of those living by “real time” sprouts up. Gravity is affected; birds begin to die, and astronauts are stranded on their space station. By November, the “real time” of days has grown to 40 hours, and the actual periods of light and dark only get longer from that point. The world faces crises in communication, health, transportation and food supply. The changes in the planet are profound, but the daily changes in Julia’s life, which she might be facing even in a normal day, are equally profound. Hanna’s family moves to Utah, leaving Julia without a best friend to help defend against the bullies at the bus stop. She goes through the trials and joys of first love. She begins to see cracks in her parents’ marriage and must navigate the currents of loyalty and moral uncertainty. She faces sickness and death of loved ones. But she also witnesses constancy and perseverance. Julia’s life is shaped by what happens in the larger world, but it is the only life she knows, and Walker captures each moment, intimate and universal, with magical precision. Riveting, heartbreaking, profoundly moving. (BEA)
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THE RIGHT-HAND SHORE
Tilghman, Christopher Farrar, Straus and Giroux (368 pp.) $27.00 | May 1, 2012 978-0-374-20348-1 A return to the Mason estate in Maryland, where an ill-fated family’s hopes are pulled apart by inexorable forces. Tilghman (Roads of the Heart, 2004, etc.) published the novel Mason’s Retreat, about that property at Chesapeake Bay, in 1996. This new novel returns to the same place and family but is set earlier in time. An act of cruelty—selling the estate’s slaves south just before Emancipation—sets the mood, irretrievably ruining the Retreat for scion Ophelia Mason. Her marriage to scientific farmer Wyatt Bayly sees the acreage turned into a vast peach orchard where Wyatt, “a friend of the Negro,” employs Abel Terrell as his assistant. Abel’s clever son Randall is the inseparable friend of Wyatt’s child Thomas, and the boys are educated together and equally, while Wyatt’s daughter Mary is taken to France by Ophelia, who is increasingly living separately from her husband. These tensions between mother and father, black and white, brother and sister, come to a head in 1890 when the peach trees succumb to disease, and Randall turns against Thomas because of Thomas’ love for Randall’s sister. Breakdown, murder and a family split ensue, leaving Mary to her own difficult destiny. Tilghman’s trademark nuanced observation and insight are abundantly apparent, but there’s no real center to this insistently portentous parable of multiple blight.
THE CARE AND FEEDING OF EXOTIC PETS
Wagman, Diana Ig Publishing (240 pp.) $15.95 paperback | Nov. 13, 2012 978-1-93543-964-6
A sometimes slow-moving but evocative study in the oddball psychology—or better, psychologies—that is as much a Southern California hallmark as sun and surf. Winnie Parker, her first name suggestive of victory, is a classic casualty: her husband, a TV celebrity, has dumped her for a young woman with perfect breasts (“Lacy said Jessica’s boobs were fake, but Winnie thought they were just fresh and unused”), and now she’s left to cope with the harrowing hells of raising a teenage daughter single-handedly. Lacy, the rebellious daughter, is experimenting with things Winnie would prefer her to stay away from. From nearby, someone is watching all this, biding his time like a coiled rattlesnake until striking— in this instance, by kidnapping Winnie for reasons that become darker as the story unfolds. Wagman (Spontaneous, 2000, etc.), a screenwriter and novelist, is perfectly at home along the tortuous freeways and hidden arroyos of L.A.; a bonus of her insightful 912
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character study is a tour of the strange world of reptile trading, with the villain of the piece keeping his house jungly hot for the benefit of an iguana and another very bad person who “masqueraded as a photographer” stripping the wild of skinks and chameleons, snakes and salamanders. The bad guys are as redneck as the protagonist of Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief but with nowhere near the manners, and it’s Winnie’s challenge to keep up with and stay ahead of them while remaining unraped and unkilled. In the end, what unfolds is a perfect plan gone awry—though, dreamed up by stupid people, the plan is of course nowhere near perfect, and therefore it goes just as sideways as it was foreordained to do. The atmosphere is as dense as the steamy, iguana-rich jungle of Oren’s dreams, with Wagman’s pacing sometimes slowing to a crawl, whereupon the impatient reader will have to resist the urge to jump ahead and get on with it. The opportunities for cliché are endless, but Wagman avoids most of them. Matters of timing aside, a satisfying glimpse into a herpetological demimonde—and the weird households of sunny SoCal.
STRINDBERG’S STAR
Wallentin, Jan Translated by Willson-Broyles, Rachel Viking (464 pp.) $28.95 | May 28, 2012 978-0-670-02357-8 Evil Nazi schemes, Norse mythology, Pompeian legend and a balloon expedition to the North Pole are narrative bedfellows in this sprawling, fanciful tale driven by the desperate pursuit of a metal ankh, or amulet, discovered on a corpse in an abandoned copper mine. A bestseller in Sweden, Germany and France, Swedish journalist Wallentin’s first novel is an Energizer bunny effort that keeps going and going across continents and time periods, piling on plot details as it does. After the bizarre murder of the diver who discovered the ankh, a history professor known for his research in symbols and myths, Don Titelman, is held for the crime. The son of a Holocaust survivor whose horrific accounts of torture have made him a pill-popping wreck, Titelman is mysteriously abducted by Germans from the Swedish Embassy and locked with his lawyer in a wine cellar. They escape and hook up with Titelman’s strange, reclusive sister, Hex, who literally lives underground. The action leads to the Arctic, where Titelman uncovers the truth behind an ill-fated 1897 balloon expedition, during which three men perished, including Swedish photographer Nils Strindberg. For fans of overstuffed adventures who are adept at keeping up with slippery plot developments, this book has much to offer. In the early going, it scores as a larkishly offbeat alternative to the dour mysteries Swedes are known for, and its evocations of the Holocaust can be oddly affecting. But the deeper Wallentin gets into his grandiose concepts, which include the discovery of an ancient buried city in China’s Taklimakan desert, the more he loses his narrative thread. Better suited to the role of odd-duck |
supporting character than protagonist, Titelman fails to elicit the rooting interest he should. Any one of the plot strains in this ambitious debut might have made for a satisfying novel, but woven together, they create more confusion than excitement.
OVERSEAS
Williams, Beatriz Putnam (464 pp.) $25.95 | May 10, 2012 978-0-339-15764-6 An engaging romantic debut cheerfully bends the rules to unite soul mates Kate and Julian, separated merely by an ocean, a world war and a century. Pivoting on a time-slip even more unlikely than most, Williams’ full-throated love story demands absolute suspension of disbelief for maximum enjoyment. Operating in both 1916 and 2007, it introduces a couple who cross the time/space continuum to find—and protect— their other halves. Kate Wilson, an investment analyst in modern Manhattan, can’t believe her luck when blond, rich, honorable, single, athletic, British hedge-fund wizard Julian Laurence falls for her. But Kate doesn’t yet understand her destiny. She is also seen in alternate chapters visiting Amiens in France during the Great War, searching for iconic war poet Capt. Julian Ashford in an effort to change the course of history. Mysteries abound, and Williams dodges explanations for too long, opting instead for an excess of conversations about trust and commitment which drain suspense and create a sagging, stalled middle section. When answers finally come, they arrive in a rush of derring-do and credulity-stretching chicken-and-egg explanation. Williams’ terrific premise proves impossible to sustain, but with her gift for humor, snappy dialogue and swooning romance, there’s plenty to enjoy and the promise of more enjoyable escapism to come in future work.
SOUND
Wolf, T.M. Faber & Faber/Farrar, Straus and Giroux (384 pp.) $17.00 paperback | May 1, 2012 978-0-86547-850-3 Clever debut novel of the Jersey Shore and more urbane environs by hiphop journo and Yale Law grad Wolf. This isn’t the Jersey Shore of those twerpy MTV reality-TV types, but it is modestly Situationist in the ‘60s sense—surreal, political, a little unhinged, as if Kafka had learned to surf. The narrator has been sloughing off in grad school, but not for any want of intelligence or any Less Than Zero–like need to Hoover up the neighborhood; this guy is smart, smart, smart, “studying metaphysics and teleologies, string theory and eschatology,” but |
just a little misdirected. What to do? Well, once the university yanks his funding, he heads back home, soon to be haunted by visions of a lovely young thing named Vera. (Connect her name to “truth,” philosophical reader, for the symbolism runs thick in this book.) Vera is also smart, and unworldly, too—perhaps too much so for New Jersey. What to do? Well, have a beer, maybe hit the waves, maybe talk crap with buds who stayed back home and didn’t head into the Big City to get their Baudrillard on. In the end, not much happens, though Wolf can write a nice sentence. The smart and entertaining conceit about his book, the thing that makes it memorable, is the typographic treatment that distinguishes levels of noise—whether from a city street or a crowded party—by its bursts of sans serif and slab serif and demibold obliques, all set in various directions and in various point sizes, making this a feast for the eyes that is oddly reminiscent at turns of the late-’60s Tom Wolfe but assuredly of the here and now—in fact, a literary analog of a kind to the sonic effects Wilco pulls off in Jeff Tweedy’s anthem to clanging urban chaos, “Via Chicago.” It’s something David Foster Wallace might have tried, and in the experiment, Wolf acquits himself well. Smart, entertaining post-postmodernism, and with surfboards, too.
m ys t e r y OSCAR WILDE AND THE VATICAN MURDERS
Brandreth, Gyles Touchstone/Simon & Schuster (368 pp.) $14.00 paperback | May 8, 2012 978-1-4391-5373-4 When someone sends the creator of a legendary sleuth a severed hand, the game is afoot! After a rhapsodic 1877 letter from Oscar Wilde to his devoted mother concerning the wonders of Rome, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle sets out to narrate the tale in chief, beginning 15 years later at a Homburg spa. Doyle is flush with success, Wilde decidedly less so, though critically celebrated, and the duo enjoys a friendly, albeit barbed rivalry. Oscar relishes the region’s sensuous delights, but for Doyle this will be a working vacation. He brings an Everest of fan mail to answer, clearly triggering Wilde’s envy. Inside one package, postmarked Rome, they find a severed hand. Another, smaller package from Rome contains a finger, which they at first mistake for a cigar. Doyle advises proceeding carefully, but Wilde, with brio, convinces him to “act recklessly.” Indeed, a delightfully dangerous adventure may be just what the doctor ordered for the weary Doyle. So it’s off to Rome. On the lengthy train ride, the pair share confidences from their past and meet nervous kirkusreviews.com
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“A misfit crew band together in an antic misadventure.” from hide and snake murder
Martin Sadler and his effervescent sister Irene (a name that should be familiar to fans of Sherlock Holmes). Tea at the Vatican with the influential circolo inglese proves a turning point in the mystery, which involves precious jewels and deceased Pontiffs. Brandreth’s fifth Oscar Wilde caper (Oscar Wilde and the Vampire Murders, 2011, etc.) floats on a cushion of bubbly banter and droll period references. The whole series is literary escapism of a high order, though with each episode the mystery seems to recede further in importance.
HIDE AND SNAKE MURDER
Chandler, Jessie Midnight Ink/Llewellyn (288 pp.) $14.95 paperback | Jun. 8, 2012 978-0-7387-2597-0
A misfit crew band together in an antic misadventure. Shay O’Hanlon, trying to get into a routine while her finally-girlfriend Lt. JT Bordeaux is training at Quantico, is just getting comfortable when something goes wrong. Not for Shay this time; it’s her up-to-no-good friend Basil who comes to Shay for help because someone’s after him for stealing a large stuffed snake from an office where he was doing ductwork. At first Shay’s certain the whole thing must be a mistake, but when Baz adds that Shay’s older friends Agnes, Eddy and Rocky now have custody of the snake and are holding it in New Orleans—though he never exactly explains why—Shay knows she’s got to do something. When she tries to get in touch with the trio, they’re MIA, so Shay grabs her old friend Coop and with Baz, heads for the Big Easy. Although she knows Agnes and Eddy are feisty enough to take care of themselves, gentle Rocky isn’t street-smart, and Shay wants to be there to offer everyone extra protection while explaining the situation in person. When they arrive, Agnes and Eddy report that Rocky hasn’t been seen since the night before. It shouldn’t be hard to find Rocky with his distinctive aviator cap in the southern heat, but somehow, along the way, the group ends up mixed up with a crooked cop, a group of circus performers and a powerful drug lord. Fans of Chandler (Bingo Barge Murder, 2011) will appreciate the character development and sense of humor, though newbies may wonder why anyone would help hapless Baz.
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A FATAL FLEECE
Goldenbaum, Sally Obsidian (336 pp.) $24.95 | May 1, 2012 978-0-451-23675-3
Yet another homicide disturbs the peace of lovely Sea Harbor, Mass. Semi-retired Nell Endicott; her niece Izzy Perry, newly married owner of a knitting shop; lobster fisherwoman Cass Halloran; and wealthy, generous older lady Birdie Favazza are the Seaside Knitters. Despite their age differences and disparate lifestyles, these ladies are close friends with an impressive track record for solving murders (The Wedding Shawl, 2011, etc.). This time they get involved in the death of Finnegan, an old friend who owns a great piece of seaside property he’s let go to seed since the death of his beloved wife, Moira. Many are fed up with the waist-high weeds and decrepit buildings, but Finnegan refuses to sell. Lately he’s taken Gabby Marietti, Birdie’s newly discovered granddaughter, under his wing while ignoring his own daughter Beverly, an artist who’s recently returned to town. So many people are after Finnegan’s property that when he’s found murdered, there’s a long list of suspects: Beverly, who expected to inherit; Gabby’s uncle, who’s seen sneaking onto the property; a builder who’s been outspoken in his efforts to get the land; and even Cass, the surprise beneficiary of Finnegan’s will. The knitters must use all their skills and local knowledge to solve a case that cuts too close to home. Another enjoyable visit with the ladies. The mystery may not be very challenging, but there’s lazy seaside charm, food tips and the obligatory knitting project for those so inclined.
FUN HOUSE
Grabenstein, Chris Pegasus Crime (336 pp.) $25.00 | May 15, 2012 978-1-60598-336-3 How low can reality TV go? Think murder. After beat cops are unable to keep a lid on a perpetually volatile situation, macho New Jersey police detective John Ceepak and his partner, cheeky narrator Danny Boyle, draw the short straw and are assigned to monitor the personnel involved in the hit reality television show Fun House (think Big Brother crossed with Jersey Shore, with a dash of American Chopper), currently filming at the resort town of Sea Haven. The carnival of dysfunction is overseen by slick, sleazy producer Marty Mandrake. Unfortunately, both clueless Mayor Sinclair and Chief Baines think the detectives’ involvement is a great way to minimize danger while bringing helpful publicity to Sea Haven. Set at the “Coin Castle,” Fun House features a predictably twisted collection of hard-partying troublemakers |
like Paulie “The Thing,” Soozy K and Paulie’s nemesis, steroid-addicted Vinnie, known as Skeletor because of his muscle-and-bone physique. As it happens, Skeletor is a wanted fugitive, part of a biker gang sought by New Jersey police for two years. Ceepak’s plan to arrest him cause all kinds of trouble with higher-ups. The issue gets a new dimension when Paulie turns up brutally murdered and Skeletor is tagged as the prime suspect. Predictably, Mandrake wants the production to keep rolling. He has the mayor’s ear, which means a tumultuous investigation and more killings before the case is solved. Ceepak and Boyle’s seventh caper (Rolling Thunder, 2010, etc.) moves like lightning as it puts its cartoonish cast through their paces.
WICKED EDDIES
Groundwater, Beth Midnight Ink/Llewellyn (312 pp.) $14.95 paperback | May 8, 2012 978-0-7387-2163-7 A fishing tournament brings murder to the Arkansas River and distress to a novice river ranger. Finding dead bodies is definitely not part of a ranger’s job description. In her initial year at the Arkansas Headwaters Recreation Area, however, Mandy Tanner (Deadly Currents, 2011) already seems to have developed a knack for it. First, she discovers that someone buried a hatchet in Howie Abbott’s neck while the fly fisherman slept illegally at the Vallie Bridge campground. Later, while looking for missing angler Arnold Crawford, she dredges up the body of Howie’s niece Faith from the Canyon Doors rapids. Few will miss Howie, least of all his rivals, who accuse him of cheating by fishing in off-limits tournament waters the day before the start of competition. But Faith is mourned by all, especially her cousin Cynthia, who just happens to be Mandy’s best friend. Now Mandy watches the Abbotts unravel. Faith’s parents have an alibi for the time of Howie’s murder; so does her brother Craig. But Cynthia has none, and to Mandy’s horror, Det. Victor Quintana arrests her. Her boyfriend, Rob Juarez, wants Mandy to concentrate on selling her late uncle’s house so the pair can plow the profit into RM Outdoor Adventures, their fledgling company. But how can Mandy pay attention to real estate with her best friend in jail and no other culprit in sight? Once again, Groundwater, mixing mystery with outdoor adventure, comes up with an excursion that will please most comers. (Regional author appearances)
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TOTE BAGS AND TOE TAGS
Howell, Dorothy Kensington (304 pp.) $23.00 | Jun. 1, 2012 978-0-7582-5332-3
A SoCal hottie can’t stay out of trouble between trips to Starbucks. Armed with her new degree from the University of Mixology, Haley Randolph is ready to face her latest quest for the über-exclusive Temptress handbag when she makes the mistake of telling her official boyfriend, Ty Cameron, about her achievement. Actually, it’s Haley’s BFF Marcie who brags about the UM degree, and it’s not Haley’s fault that he thinks UM is University of Michigan and that the degree is in business and not in the beverage trade, and it’s not really her fault that she sort of ends up using her “Michigan” degree to get a job with contract agency Dempsey Rowland. What does a contract agency do, anyway? No matter what, Haley’s sure that she’s up to the task until she finds out there are background checks that are likely to uncover her less-than-stellar credentials. In a turn of events both lucky and tragic, chief of security, Violet Hamilton, is killed, which should give Haley time to stay employed just long enough to earn a paycheck…well, and maybe solve her murder, too. Meanwhile, Haley’s high-maintenance mother insists that Haley help find her housekeeper Juanita, who had the gall to disappear instead of planning the menu for the latest dinner party. The Valley Girl voice Howell affects for the series (Slay Bells and Satchels, 2011, etc.) is, as she might say, mad old school. A reboot of the basic formula seems urgently needed to increase the lolz. (Agent: Evan Marshall)
DEATH OF A SECOND WIFE
Hudgins, Maria Five Star (270 pp.) $25.95 | Jun. 15, 2012 978-1-4328-2592-8
A wedding party gathers on a remote Swiss mountaintop, where the uninvited guest is murder. Leaving her friend Carabinieri Capt. Marco Quattrocchi behind in Italy, Virginia-based history professor Dotsy Lamb travels to LaMotte, Switzerland, to attend her youngest son Patrick’s wedding to Erin Toomey. Since Dotsy’s husband, Chet, has dumped her for Stephanie Merz, staying at the Chateau Merz is a necessary evil. The chateau’s remote highmountain location is accessible only by a snow cart or an elevator hidden in the mountain. No sooner is Dotsy settled in than Stephanie is found shot dead in the bunker where extra food is stored along with weapons left over from the war. Outside the bunker is the body of Gisele Schlump, the attractive cook who appeared to have had a cozy relationship with Stephanie’s kirkusreviews.com
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brother Juergen, an intrepid adventurer who had to give up his exciting life to run the family business. The police make Chet their #1 suspect, but all is not well in the beautiful chateau. A scribbled note left by Stephanie leads to the discovery that Erin was briefly married but not divorced and the consequent cancellation of the nuptials. Dotsy’s son Patrick, who runs Chet’s John Deere dealership, has discovered several million missing and is sure Stephanie took it. Dotsy and her friend Lettie, Patrick’s godmother, who’ve had prior experience solving murders (Death of a Lovable Geek, 2008, etc.), get help from Marco, who arrives just in time to help solve the crime. To the series’ usual attractive locations seasoned with a dash of history, Hudgins adds a mystery with an intriguing group of suspects.
LONG ISLAND NOIR
Jones, Kaylie--Ed. Akashic (288 pp.) $15.95 paperback | May 15, 2012 978-1-61775-062-5 Longtime Long Islander Jones has collected a volume of 17 new stories as diverse as the massive island itself. Characters traveling to Long Island abound here. In Charles Salzberg’s “A Starr Burns Bright,” a man named Swann takes the LIRR out to Long Beach for a day to drop off a package for his old friend Goldblatt. Meanwhile, the local cops stop Nick, who’s bound for Westhampton Beach in Matthew McGevna’s “Gateway to the Stars,” before he can get to the Dune Road mansion where his underage brother Jeffrey is headed for a weekend of “true Dionysian worship.” Other characters come to Long Island to spend their so-called golden years. Sheila Kohler’s “Terror” settles its heroine in Amagansett, where she and her husband bought a second home when land was cheap. Kaylie Jones (the book’s editor) sends a writer and his second wife from Manhattan to Wainscott in “Home Invasion,” only to reveal a questionable environment for his teenage daughter. And in “Past President,” Sarah Weinman shows a retired cop that there’s always room for crime in privileged Great Neck. A few characters come from very far away. In Amani Scipio’s “Jabo’s,” May and Shangy hop a watermelon truck in Georgia and discover that even the Hamptons have a wrong side of town. And Qanta Ahmed turns the American dream into a nightmare for a bride from Pakistan in “Anjali’s America.” The best of these tales are perceptive glimpses into how people live out the choices they make. The worst are pointless recitations of one disaster after the other. No one escapes unscathed, but some wounds are redemptive; others just bleed.
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WHAT COMES NEXT
Katzenbach, John Mysterious Press (464 pp.) $26.00 | Jun. 5, 2012 978-0-8021-2611-5
Katzenbach (The Madman’s Tale, 2004, etc.) sets an amateur sleuth living on borrowed time to hunt a kidnapped teenager whose time is even shorter in this pulp-ish re-imagining of “The Pit and the Pendulum” for the digital age. Jennifer Riggins is the fourth victim her abductors have taken, and by now they’ve gotten most of the bugs out of their routine. Deftly snatching her as she’s running away from home yet again, the criminal lovers hood her and chain her in a basement in a Massachusetts farmhouse they’ve rented and put a video feed online for thousands of voyeuristic subscribers around the world who can’t stop watching the ultimate reality show. There’s only one fly in the ointment: The kidnapping was witnessed by Adrian Thomas, a retired psychology professor on his way home to kill himself after getting a diagnosis of Lewy body dementia, a rare illness that acts like Alzheimer’s speeded up. Adrian is already prone to hallucinations and short-term memory lapses, and Det. Terri Collins doesn’t find him the ideal witness. On the other hand, now that he’s summoned them from the grave, his late wife, his late brother and his late son all provide him with genuinely helpful suggestions, and it doesn’t hurt to have Jennifer, now known to her global audience as Number 4, sought by someone with absolutely nothing to lose. Leaning on Mark Wolfe, a registered sex offender, for help doing the unspeakable online research, Adrian slowly zeroes in on the basement where she’s being held. But can he rescue her from the fiendish torments her inventive captors have lined up for her? So sadistically measured in its pace that readers will have plenty of time to ask themselves how different they really are from the perverts tuned in to Number 4’s sufferings. (Agent: Moses Cardona)
ICE CAP
Knopf, Chris Minotaur (304 pp.) $24.99 | Jun. 5, 2012 978-1-250-00517-5 Called out in the middle of an epic snowstorm by a client who did three years for killing his paramour’s husband, Hamptons attorney Jackie Swaitkowski (Bad Bird, 2010, etc.) finds every indication that he’s done it again. Of course, Franklin Delano Raffini hasn’t punctured Donald Pritz’s heart once more with a skewer. Don’s been dead and buried, and his widow Eliz has been enjoying a $7.5 million insurance windfall, for even longer than Franco was in prison for killing him. No, the new corpse is Tad Buczek, the eccentric heir (is there any other kind in the Hamptons?) who infuriated his staid neighbors |
when he bulldozed his homestead to create Metal Madness, an attraction featuring misshapen hunks of metal. Franco’s already ticked off police detective Joe Sullivan by inexplicably dragging Tad’s corpse away from the place where he was killed, further degrading the world’s snowiest crime scene. The news that he was keeping company with Katarzina Buczek, the metal maven’s much younger mail-order bride, seems to be his one-way ticket back to stir. But Jackie, undaunted, takes her client’s arrest as no more than a challenge to poke around among Tad’s nearest and dearest, who just happen to be her late husband Pete’s relatives: Paulina Swaitkowski, Pete’s mother and Tad’s sister; Salina Lumsden, Pete’s aunt, the housekeeper of Tad’s crazy home; and Salina’s husband, Freddy, his handyman. With such nutty suspects to choose from, it’s a cinch that Jackie will crack the case as soon as she dodges the goons scrap-metal magnate Ivor Fleming has sent to dog her steps and Roger Angstrom, the New York Times crime reporter determined to write a story about her. More disciplined than Jackie’s wild first two cases, though that’s not saying much. A treat for readers who enjoy the journey more than the destination.
THE BOY WHO STOLE THE LEOPARD’S SPOTS
Myers, Tamar Morrow/HarperCollins (304 pp.) $14.99 paperback | $9.99 e-book May 8, 2012 978-0-06-199773-0 978-0-06-210145-7 e-book The Belgian Congo of 1958, facing enormous social changes as colonial rule is nearing an end, is challenged by more
intimate disruption. The denizens of the lovely town of Belle Vue are separated by a chasm even deeper than the river crossed by a bridge that connects the whites on one side to the natives on the other. But there are other crossings, some peaceful, some not. Protestant missionary Amanda Brown’s servant Cripple is a heathen, a wise, self-educated woman married to a failed witch doctor. The stunning town sexpot, Congo-born Madame Cabochon, whose spouse is a sot, looks with
A SIMPLE MURDER
Kuhns, Eleanor Minotaur (336 pp.) $24.99 | May 8, 2012 978-1-250-00553-3
The winner of the 2011 MWA/Minotaur First Crime Novel Competition takes an itinerant weaver searching for his son to an unexpectedly tangled mystery inside a Shaker community in 1796 Maine. Returning to his home, Dugard Pond Farm, after a long absence, William Rees is dismayed to learn that 14-year-old David, the son Will’s sister Caroline and her husband Samuel Prentiss agreed to take in when Will left the farm in their care to ply his weaving trade on the road, has run away with nary a peep from them. Will swiftly tracks the boy to Zion, a Shaker enclave outside Durham, and even more quickly establishes that David considers himself abandoned by his father and has no desire to leave with him. But his brief visit with Zion leader Elder White means that he’s available to get detained on suspicion of murder by Sheriff Coulton when Sister Chastity, formerly Catherine Parker, is bashed to death, then invited at David’s suggestion to investigate her death after farm couple Henry and Jane Doucette vouch for his alibi. Everyone at Zion assumes that none of their Family could have broken the peace so wantonly, but Will’s not so sure. Chaperoned by Lydia Jane Farrell, who’s continued to live in Zion even after being expelled from the Family, he questions the Sisters and Brothers. He and his delightfully independent-minded Watson discover that Sister Chastity’s death is anything but simple; instead, it’s the latest instance of a pattern of violence that reaches back two years—a pattern that’s still not complete. Kuhns’ focus on a closed community allows her to keep her story from drowning in period detail while emphasizing both the limitations and the charms of the Shakers’ vanished world. |
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dismay on the mutual attraction between Amanda and police chief Capt. Pierre Jardin. Into this mix of competing religions and wide class differences comes Monsignor Clemente, a Rome-based priest and childhood friend of Madame Cabochon. Clemente harbors a secret rooted in his time in the Congo as a young priest in the 1930s. The narrative switches back and forth between the present and the past, when twins are born to a powerful chief. Ordinarily twins would be killed, but the chief manages to save them, only to have one molested by a white man. The cure for that outrage is to have all the tribe, and the priest’s companion, share in eating the offender. Then the twins are torn apart by a kidnapping, and when they secretly reunite in Belle Vue, one is found dead, and the sins of the past afflict a town already poised for disaster. This third in the series (The Headhunter’s Daughter, 2011, etc.), based on Myers’ life as the child of missionaries in the Belgian Congo, is not a mystery in the traditional sense. But it provides a fascinating look at life in a colonial Africa on the brink of catastrophic change as the wily Cripple manipulates her self-anointed betters.
THE CONSTANT LOVERS
Nickson, Chris Creme de la Crime (224 pp.) $28.95 | May 1, 2012 978-1-78029-518-3
His investigation into the death of a young woman stretches to the limit the meager resources of Richard Nottingham, Constable of Leeds. A girl lies stabbed to death near ruined Kirkstall Abbey. Although she is apparently from a well-to-do background, no one seems in a hurry to claim the body. Finally, a wealthy farmer, Samuel Godlove, appears looking for his missing wife, who, with her maid, had gone to visit her parents and not returned. Sarah Godlove, the daughter of Lord and Lady Gibton, was much younger than her husband. Nottingham is certain that the mayor will push for a quick solution to the murder of a wealthy, aristocratic woman. Fortunately, he has help. Along with his longtime assistant John Sedgwick, Nottingham has recently taken on trial Rob Lister, the educated son of a local newspaper publisher. Rob has not been able to find a job he likes, but he quickly shows an aptitude for investigative work, and his connections among the town’s upper classes prove to be helpful in the case of the dead girl. Using all their connections, the pair discover that Sarah was forced into the marriage with Godlove by her parents, who had little money to support their title and the lifestyle they wanted. Although Godlove genuinely cared for Sarah, she had been forced to give up the man she loved. After secretly meeting her every week, he killed himself when Sarah was found dead. It won’t be easy for Nottingham to discover her killer while also dealing with gang rivalries about to erupt in violence. Nottingham’s third (Cold, Cruel Winter, 2011, etc.) does not provide a very challenging mystery but is worth reading for the details of life in 18th-century Leeds. 918
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BLESSED ARE THE DEAD
Nunn, Malla Emily Bestler/Atria (384 pp.) $14.00 paperback | $9.99 e-book Jun. 19, 2012 978-1-4516-1692-7 978-1-4516-1695-8 e-book The murder of a beautiful Zulu housemaid threatens to inflame racial tensions in 1953 South Africa. Even before preacher Baba Kaleni found her body, garlanded with flowers and pillowed by a tartan blanket, someone had telephoned Col. van Niekirk, of the Durban CID, to alert him to a murder. So the colonel promptly passes on the news to D.S. Emmanuel Cooper, even though it’s 3:45 a.m. and he couldn’t possibly know (or could he?) that Emmanuel is frisking with Lana Rose, the mistress the colonel is about to sacrifice to his impending marriage. This prologue offers a foretaste of the secrets that await Emmanuel and D.C. Samuel Shabalala when they arrive the next day in tiny Roselet. The late Amahle Matebula’s family, headed by a chieftain with five wives, demands the release of her body from the police surgeon’s custody; the Reed family, the Afrikaner owners of Little Flint Farm, where Amahle toiled as a maid, barely seems to notice her absence. So it’s no wonder Constable Desmond Bagley, station commander of the Roselet Police, did nothing when Amahle’s mother reported her missing. Like James McClure, Nunn (Let the Dead Lie, 2010, etc.) sets the warm, intimate professional relationship between his two police officers against the contrasting, and apparently unbridgeable, gaps between Afrikaners and Zulus everywhere they turn in Roselet. It’s especially gratifying to see what Emmanuel does when, on orders from above, he’s pulled off the case and Shabalala isn’t. Historical hindsight may make readers a bit more selfcongratulatory about recognizing the evils of apartheid, but it won’t help them see around the curves Nunn has plotted or rise above her insight into the enduring dilemmas of her separate-and-unequal world.
THE BODY IN THE BOUDOIR
Page, Katherine Hall Morrow/HarperCollins (272 pp.) $23.99 | $18.99 e-book Lg. Prt. $23.99 | May 1, 2012 978-0-06-206548-3 978-0-06-206549-0 e-book 978-0-06-212829-4 Lg. Prt.
Which matters more, the ingredients in the wedding cake or the clauses in the pre-nup? On the flight to Italy to celebrate their anniversary, caterer Faith Fairchild (The Body in the Gazebo, 2011, etc.) reminiscences about the prelude to her marriage to Tom, which included such semi-disasters as her sister’s betrayal by her beau, her future |
sister-in-law’s pesky attempts to reunite Tom with their nextdoor neighbor, one assistant’s leaving to open her own restaurant, another’s search for a missing World War II veteran who done her granny wrong, and, oh yes, four attempts on Faith’s own life, one by food poisoning, another by a shove on a subway platform, a third by a bit of falling brickwork at her Uncle Sky’s estate, and one more when the brakes on a car she’d borrowed gave out. Unlike Faith, Sky’s housekeeper couldn’t escape someone’s murderous urges. While she lolled about in Sky’s wife’s boudoir dolled up in her marabou-trimmed peignoir, someone crept in, whacked her dead, then slithered out, resurfacing days later to incinerate the poor woman’s sister and brother-in-law in a propane fire. Would Faith’s wedding have to be cancelled, or at least postponed? Of course not. After all, the champagne had already been ordered, and all the relatives were certainly willing to cover up the scandal caused by one of their own. Includes recipes, menus, drink concoctions and much charm, but a denouement so silly that it leaves a bad taste in your mouth. (New England regional author appearances)
THE LAST KIND WORDS
Piccirilli, Tom Bantam (336 pp.) $26.00 | Jun. 5, 2012 978-0-553-59248-1
Summoned home by an urgent plea from his kid sister, a runaway brother finds his family of thieves just as dysfunctional and even more criminal. Collie Rand has run out of time. Condemned to death after a murder spree that claimed eight innocent lives, he has a date with the needle in two weeks. And although there’s precious little love between him and his brother Terrier (yes, all the Rands are named after dog breeds), he has one thing he wants to impress on Terry: He didn’t strangle teenager Rebecca Clarke. Collie doesn’t claim his innocence; he can’t explain what made him kill all those people after a short life devoted entirely to stealing from his Long Island neighbors; he just wants Terry to know that he only went seven for eight. Since Detective Gilmore’s not likely to be any more help than Terry’s father Pinscher or his uncles Malamute and Greyhound, Terry has to go it alone in his inquiries. Wondering all the while why he’s laboring to exonerate a brother who freely admits his guilt in seven homicides, Terry scrutinizes the records collected by Collie’s jailhouse bride Lin, purloins the case files from Gilmore’s office, and watches his teenage sister Dale’s highly unsuitable involvement with pennyante hood Joe Cassidy, who, styling himself Butch, plots a robbery that’s clearly out of his league. The results are more murder, some harsh truths about the Rand family, and a searing examination of the ties that bind brother to brother. Consigning most of the violence to the past allows Piccirilli (The Fever Kill, 2007, etc.) to dial down the gore while imparting a soulful, shivery edge to this tale of an unhappy family that’s assuredly unhappy in its own special way. (Agent: David Hale Smith ) |
SIDNEY CHAMBERS AND THE SHADOW OF DEATH
Runcie, James Bloomsbury (448 pp.) $16.00 paperback | May 1, 2012 978-1-60819-856-6
A cleric celebrates Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation year by assisting a detective inspector in solving a series of genteel crimes. Canon Sidney Chambers, the bachelor vicar of Grantchester, has two best friends: Inspector Geordie Keating, who regularly loses to him at backgammon, and posh Amanda Kendall, junior curator at London’s National Gallery, who shares a flat with his sister Jennifer. The six longish stories contained herein are threaded together by a seemly cast of villagers, parishioners, sharptongued Mrs. Maguire, the vicar’s housekeeper and Leonard Graham, the effete assistant curate. In “The Shadow of Death,” a congregant’s request that Sidney investigate the suicide of her lover introduces him to Hildegard, the deceased man’s wife, for a possible romantic entanglement. “A Question of Trust” introduces Sidney to a fancy engagement dinner in London and a missing ruby ring. “First, Do No Harm” returns him to Grantchester, where a pregnancy and a mercy killing precede a marriage. In “A Matter of Time,” Sidney’s love for jazz leads him to a Soho cafe that offers scat, drugs and strangulation. A portrait of Anne Boleyn disappears in “The Lost Holbein,” and Amanda is kidnapped as she pursues it. And Lord Teversham, of Locket Hall, is murdered during a performance of Julius Caesar by one of the Roman assassins on stage in “Honourable Men.” Only a churl could resist Sidney, whose musings on love, evil and morality, penchant for quoting snippets of poetry, preference for whiskey over the endless cups of tea he is offered, and ratiocinative success at unraveling crimes make him endearing.
KINGS OF MIDNIGHT
Stroby, Wallace Minotaur (304 pp.) $24.99 | Apr. 10, 2012 978-1-250-00037-8
Chasing her retirement number, superthief Crissa Stone (Cold Shot to the Heart, 2011, etc.) fills bunches of money bags. And body bags. Crissa Stone is a onewoman larceny machine—smart, resourceful and, above all, careful, which explains an enviable success rate. But she’s reached the point where it makes sense for her to leave the life behind. Her exit will require a really big final score. Fortunately, opportunity knocks in the guise of ex-mobster Benny Roth. Hidden deep in a witness protection program for longer than anyone can remember, Benny’s been doing an exemplary job of going straight. He has a job he kirkusreviews.com
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likes, he has friends and he has Marta. Benny’s 62, she’s in her 20s, yet the feeling between them is clearly genuine. Love and tranquility, however, come to an abrupt end with the intrusion of three wise guys from the East. Not only do they remember Benny, but they recall his connection to a certain vanished haul pegged at $8 to $10 million. They want Benny to help recover what’s been lost. Marta in tow, he wriggles free of them and, through a mutual friend, makes his way to Crissa. The aging racketeer and the slick young highway person form an unlikely partnership. Will it be strong enough to withstand their predators while they hunt for lost treasure? Or will thieves fall out? Once again Stroby demonstrates how adept he is at making readers empathize with the essentially unworthy. (Author events in New Jersey)
MURDER ON FIFTH AVENUE
Thompson, Victoria Berkley Prime Crime (304 pp.) $24.95 | May 1, 2012 978-0-425-24741-9
An upper-class midwife and an Irish Catholic police detective continue their unlikely alliance in a seventh murder investigation. Sarah Brandt defied her wealthy family to marry a doctor and become a midwife. Now a self-supporting widow, she has good relations with her parents but is still very surprised when her father, Felix Decker, calls upon her friend Detective Sgt. Frank Malloy to solve the murder of a fellow Knickerbocker Club member. When Chilton Devries was found dead at the club, his death first seemed to be by natural causes. But a small stab wound in his back proves that he was murdered. Malloy is not welcomed at the Devries mansion, but between his talks with the servants and the calls Sarah and her mother pay on the not overly sad widow, they manage to dig up some promising leads. Devries had a mistress; he spent the night before his death with her; his son and daughter-in-law hated him; and he had a number of business enemies. As if all of that weren’t enough, he tried to get a Mafia Don to murder his daughter-in-law’s mother. Behind the facade of wealth and high society lurk some very nasty secrets. In turn-of-the-century New York, where police have little interest in arresting the wealthy and well-connected, it will be up to Malloy, Sarah and her father to find the killer and decide how to discreetly punish the perpetrator. Thompson (Murder on Sisters’ Row, 2011, etc.) once more weaves the class differences and casual bigotry of the period into a mystery with some neat twists.
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FINAL SAIL
Viets, Elaine Obsidian (272 pp.) $23.95 | May 1, 2012 978-0-451-23674-6 A husband and wife detective duo teams up to split the work. Finally out from under the radar, Helen Hawthorne (Pumped for Murder, 2011, etc.) is eager to help her new husband, Phil, build Coronado Investigations’ client base. Soon enough, they have a promising client. Rich, angry Violet Zerling hires the pair to prove that her father’s sexy young wife, Blossom, poisoned him. But the ink is barely dry on the mail-order ordination Helen uses to perform Arthur Zerling’s funeral when Phil packs her off to pose as a stewardess on the Belted Earl, whose captain suspects one of his crew is smuggling emeralds. Helen is reduced once more to cleaning rich people’s bathrooms and doing their copious loads of laundry—the same kind of menial tasks she lived on while hiding from ex-husband Rob. She can’t decide whether she’s more appalled by the mounds of cigar ash loudmouthed Scotty Crowne leaves for her to clean, the red wine his perky wife, Pepper, deliberately spills on the thousand-dollar sheets, or Earl Briggs’ bejeweled wife, Beth, who lets her poodle piddle wherever. Just as Helen begins to bond with the two other stewardesses, Louise, the younger, jumps ship. Mira, the senior stewardess, insists that stormweary Louise hitched a ride home on a fishing charter, but Helen suspects foul play rather than foul weather. While Helen hunts hidden gems aboard the Earl, Phil’s busy tracking Blossom, ready to wrap the case the minute his wife makes port. Doubling the mysteries doesn’t really double the fun in Viets’ convoluted eleventh. (Agent: David Hendin)
CARING IS CREEPY
Zimmerman, David Soho (336 pp.) $15.00 paperback | Apr. 3, 2012 978-1-56947-977-3 Following his much-praised debut (The Sandbox, 2010), Zimmerman turns from war-torn Iraq to rural Georgia, where a 15-year-old girl battles for survival. Lynn Sugrue is the stuff of steel magnolias. Young as she is, you can already see the toughness, tenderness and, yes, the ruthlessness that will one day make her formidable. That, however, is the future. Now it’s summer in sweltering Metter, Ga., and Lynn and her BFF, Dani, are caught between boredom and a hard place. In self-defense they invent the Game, which predictably involves computers, chat rooms, and some flagrant lying about who they are, how old they are, and how available they are for sexual adventures. Surprisingly enough, the Game nets an honest, harmless, sweet-natured young soldier named Logan Loy, more naïve than is good for him. As perhaps only an adolescent can, |
Lynn falls helplessly in love, a plunge that results in desperate behavior that will eventually make her a stranger to herself. Meanwhile, Lynn’s mom is coming to the end of a love affair with a good-looking, irresponsible, no-account who’s been feckless enough to steal from a gang of vicious drug dealers willing to maim or kill anyone who gets in the way of their revenge. During the course of an excruciating night at the Sugrue house, Lynn, her mother and poor Logan all qualify. Compelling stuff from a writer who can handle difficult, sometimes grisly, material extremely well. But this coming-of-age story is not for everyone.
(Hamish, Lacey) persist inordinately, while the most intriguing (Bin, Hacker) simply cease in mid-story. Most disappointing of all, Brin generates few truly innovative ideas, instead borrowing heavily from his own previous works and from such writers as Gregory Benford and Greg Egan. A verbose, unwieldy, frustrating, nugget-strewn mess.
EARTH UNAWARE
Card, Orson Scott & Johnston, Aaron Tor (352 pp.) $24.99 | Jul. 17, 2012 978-0-7653-2904-2 Series: The First Formic War,
science fiction and fantasy
The beginning of a prequel series to Card’s iconic Ender’s Game yarns (Shadows in Flight, 2012, etc.), this greatly expands on material from existing backstory and a suite of Marvel comics.
EXISTENCE
Brin, David Tor (560 pp.) $27.99 | Jun. 1, 2012 978-0-7653-0361-5 ISBN-978-1463569327
Huge, ambitious concoction from the author of Kiln People (2002) that tackles the question of why we haven’t yet been contacted by aliens. In a future where everybody is connected via a worldwide virtual reality network, astronaut Gerald Livingstone collects and disposes of the vast amount of orbiting junk that has accumulated in a century of space flight. One object he scoops up is a shaped crystal, clearly manufactured. Gerald finds that, as the first to touch the crystal, it communicates preferentially with him. It turns out to be a repository containing dozens of different aliens, all of whom seem to be competing for his attention. But how did the crystal get here, and what do the aliens want? The answers they give are peculiarly evasive. Other plot threads include Hamish Brookeman, a wealthy author of doomsday yarns tied to the anti-technology Renunciation Movement, whose views—explored at tedious length—gradually change. Peng Xiang Bin, a scavenger along China’s drowned coast, discovers a second crystal whose denizens insist that Gerald’s aliens are liars. Investigative journalist Tor Povlov, her body destroyed in a terrorist incident, survives as a cyborg. Lacey Donaldson-Sander, one of the planet’s super-rich de facto rulers, would have been better eliminated altogether. Lacey’s thrill-seeking son, Hacker, crashes into the ocean after a sub-orbital joyride and falls in with a company of intelligent dolphins. Various prodigiously talented autistics and Neanderthals weave in and out. The problem with all this, other than the lack of a coherent narrative, is that the dullest threads |
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“A dull, overly complicated entry in the swampy gothic romance that feeds fans and starves newcomers.” from deadlocked
Far out in the Kuiper Belt floats the independent mining ship El Cavador, which is occupied by a single, loosely related family. Fresh from a personal disappointment, young mechanical genius Victor Delgado learns that a younger colleague has discovered an incoming object moving at half the speed of light—and decelerating. The solar system is about to receive an interstellar visitor, and though the vessel is far from El Cavador, Captain Concepción wonders who they should inform: Distances are vast and ships are few. Unknown to El Cavador, however, Lem Jukes, scion of a powerful space mining corporation, lurks nearby testing a machine capable of disassembling entire asteroids into their component molecules. Jukes needs a test site, and the nearest suitable one is the asteroid currently occupied by El Cavador. In a callous stealth attack, Jukes cripples El Cavador and sets it drifting away. Days pass before Victor and his father can bring their ship’s main systems back on line, but they still lack laser communications, and the radio’s being drowned out by clouds of radiation emitted by the alien vessel. So they can’t warn a neighboring family that the aliens have dispatched a probe toward them. Meanwhile on Earth, in a second narrative that doesn’t, here, link up with the main story, Capt. Wit O’Toole seeks recruits from the world’s most elite military units for his U.N.-backed Mobile Operations Police. The story progresses nimbly, with plenty of tension and excitement and Card’s usual well-developed characters, although regulars may note a tendency to belabor certain matters in a manner uncharacteristic of Card solo (he co-writes here with screenwriter Johnston). Like the similarly endless Dune saga, it’s impossible to pass up a new entry no matter how unpromising it may seem at first glance.
CALIBAN’S WAR
Corey, James S.A. Orbit/Little, Brown (624 pp.) $15.99 paperback | Jun. 1, 2012 978-0-316-12906-0 Series: The Expanse, 2 Part two of the topnotch space opera begun with Leviathan Wakes (2011), from Corey (aka Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck). Previously, a dangerous alien protomolecule was weaponized by an amoral corporation and field-tested against a habitat in the asteroid belt, bringing Earth, Mars and the Belt to the brink of war. Thanks to whistle-blowing Belter spaceship captain Jim Holden, all-out war was averted and the habitat diverted to Venus. Now, the protomolecule has taken over that planet and appears to be building a gigantic, incomprehensible device, a development viewed with alarm by the great powers. Then, on Ganymede, a creature able to survive unprotected in a vacuum, immune to most weapons and hideously strong, wipes out several platoons of marines. Fighting breaks out and the great powers teeter on the brink of war. Mysteriously, just before the monster’s appearance, somebody kidnapped a number of children who all 922
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suffered from the same disease of the immune system. Botanist Prax Meng, the father of one of the children, asks for Holden’s help in finding his daughter. As Ganymede’s fragile ecosystem collapses, Holden flees with Prax. Meanwhile, on Earth, fiery old U.N. bigwig Chrisjen Avasarala realizes she’s been outmaneuvered by forces in league with the corporation that thinks to control the protomolecule. The characters, many familiar from before, grow as the story expands; tension mounts, action explodes and pages turn relentlessly. Independently intelligible but best appreciated after volume one—and with a huge surprise twist in the very last sentence.
DEADLOCKED
Harris, Charlaine Ace/Berkley (336 pp.) $27.95 | May 1, 2012 978-1-937007-44-7 Series: Sookie Stackhouse, 12 Vampires and werewolves and fairies, oh my: just another day in the life of Harris’ navel-gazing southern belle. This one makes it an even dozen in the lingering chronicles of Sookie Stackhouse, but don’t expect the old girl to call it a day anytime soon. Not when there are hangovers to conjure, love triangles to traverse, and enough extraneous characters in this convoluted fantasy serial to make Game of Thrones look under-populated. For the uninitiated, don’t even attempt to gain entry here, even if you’ve seen an episode or two of HBO’s more sexually blatant adaptation, True Blood. Suffice to say that part-fairy, vampireloving barmaid Sookie remains much the same, if a bit more tedious than usual. The book opens with Sookie out on a girls’ night at paranormal strip club Hooligans, uncomfortably watching her relative, Claude Crane, strip for a rowdy crowd. The night tosses a sour note to Sookie, whose relationship with vampire Eric Northman is never easy. “Just because I wasn’t pregnant and wasn’t married to someone who could make me that way, that was no reason to feel like an island in the stream,” she says. Sookie is also justifiably anxious about the motivations of those around her, as she continues to hide her possession of the powerful magical artifact called a cluviel dor, an ancient fairy love gift. But protecting her hidden treasure becomes a secondary concern when Sookie discovers her lover at one of Bon Temp’s infamous parties, drinking from Kym Rowe, a younger woman. Unfortunately Eric’s bedtime snack bites it within a matter of hours, winding up on the sheriff ’s front lawn with a broken neck. Naturally it’s up to Sookie, with some significant help from her other vampire lover, Bill Compton, to navigate the dizzying conflicts between the vampire, were and fae hierarchies to root out the cause of the girl’s untimely death. A dull, overly complicated entry in the swampy gothic romance that feeds fans and starves newcomers.
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devastated by a volcanic eruption, so Bhayar orders his troops to readiness while dispatching Quaeryt as governor of the province. So Quaeryt has the all-but-impossible job of restoring the city’s essential functions even though the people are starving, the former governor has absconded with ill-gotten gains, the police are all in hiding, and the High Holders are only concerned with taking advantage of the situation. And Quaeryt must also deal with the aristocratic inclinations of his intelligent and beautiful but difficult wife Vaelora, Bhayar’s sister, while nursing his own covert ambitions to restore the colleges of scholars and imagers, which have withered from neglect and local hostilities. After working the requisite miracles while mightily displeasing the entrenched power structure, Quaeryt receives orders from Bhayar to take his three regiments to Ferravyl, where the Bovarian invasion is imminent. Once again Modesitt shows us how one man of integrity, talent and determination achieves his aims—and the price that inevitably must be paid. Not a standout entry, but solidly engrossing nonetheless.
Jemisin, N.K. Orbit/Little, Brown (528 pp.) $14.99 paperback | Jun. 12, 2012 978-0-31-618729-9 Series: Dreamblood, 2 Sequel to The Killing Moon (2011), this New York resident author’s ancient Egypt–flavored fantasy. In the city-state of Gujaareh, the priests of the Hetawa temple use dreammagic to heal wounds, cure ailments, ease the passage of the dying and kill those judged corrupt. Previously, the insane supreme ruler, Prince Eninket, created a diabolical Reaper to gather vast amounts of dream-magic in a quest to become immortal. Gatherer Ehiru and his apprentice Nijiri slew the Reaper and defeated Eninket, but as a result Gujaareh was conquered and occupied by neighboring Kisua. Now, ten years later, Gujaareh has had enough of its overlords. As ordinary Gujaarans passively resist, Wanahomen, the last surviving son of Eninket, rallies the fierce desert tribes to the rebels’ cause; he’s supported by powerful but untrustworthy merchant Sanfi and by the Hetawa. Nijiri, now chief Gatherer, sends Hanani, the first and so far only female Sharer, or healer, and her wise mentor, Mni-inh, to Wanahomen, and the main thrust of the story follows Hanani’s evolution from subservient, insecure, asexual apprentice to the full awakening of her magical and sexual abilities. As the revolution gathers momentum, the one serious complication involves a Wild Dreamer, a tortured, insane, incestuous girl-child whose uncontrolled and agonized Dreaming is killing both citizens and Gatherers. Again, it’s easy to become absorbed in Jemisin’s patient if sometimes pedantic attention to detail and emotionally complex characters. Otherwise, the plot lacks the tension of the first book, with much of it more embroidery than substance. Overstuffed and underpowered, but not to the extent that fans of the first book will be deterred.
THE APOCALYPSE CODEX
Stross, Charles Ace/Berkley (336 pp.) $25.95 | July 3, 2012 978-1-937007-46-1
Fourth in the series (The Fuller Memorandum, 2010, etc.) about the Laundry: a weirdly alluring blend of super-spy thriller, deadpan comic fantasy and Lovecraftian horror. In the universe Stross has conjured up, supernatural nasties are real, so naturally the British government has a department to deal with them. (The U.S. equivalent is known as the Nazgûl.) The Laundry, a department so secret that anybody that stumbles upon its existence is either compulsorily inducted or quietly eliminated, seems quintessentially British: the executive offices, known as Mahogany Row, remain eerily empty; forms must be signed in blood; and there are grandiloquent code names for everything. Applied computational demonologist Bob Howard has been fast-tracked into management, having survived a series of dangerous and unpleasant encounters. His boss, James Angleton, an Eater of Souls (Don’t ask. Really.), worries about CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN, but there’s a more immediate problem: Raymond Schiller, a supernaturally charismatic American televangelist, has grown uncomfortably chummy with the Prime Minister, but by convention and statute the Laundry may not investigate the office they answer to. So Bob finds himself working with “Externalities” in the shape of Persephone Hazard, an extremely powerful witch, and her sidekick Johnny McTavish, who has particular experience with creepy religious cults. Equipped with an unlimited credit card and a camera that doubles as a basilisk gun, Bob jets off to Denver to investigate and runs into an organization run by parasitic brain-sucking isopods—which turns out to be the least of his worries. Stross’ irreverent, provocative, often
PRINCEPS
Modesitt Jr., L.E. Tor (496 pp.) $27.99 | May 22, 2012 978-0-7653-3095-6 Second part of a prequel fantasy trilogy (Scholar, 2011, etc.). In this world, wizards are called “Imagers” because the process involves the intense, precise and accurate visualization of the magic’s objective. Previously, scholar (and secret imager) Quaeryt, ordered by Lord Bhayar of Telaryn to subdue the unruly High Holders of recently-conquered Tilbor, led troops in battle and was promoted to Princeps. Now Telaryn is threatened by Rex Kharst of belligerent Bovaria; unfortunately the city Extela has been |
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unsettling and undeniably effective brew seethes with allusions to other works of literature, film, music and what-all—it’s integral to the fun. Readers familiar with Stross’ dazzling science fiction should relish this change of pace and direction. (Agent: Caitlin Blasdell)
THE COLDEST WAR
Tregillis, Ian Tor (352 pp.) $25.99 | Jul. 17, 2012 978-0-7653-2151-0
Independently intelligible sequel to the dark fantasy Bitter Seeds (2010), something like a cross between the devious, characterdriven spy fiction of early John le Carré and the mad science fantasy of the X-Men. Previously, during World War II, the Nazis developed warriors with devastating psychic powers. To combat them, British warlocks used their inherited lore to summon the Eidolons, irresistible demons beyond time and space, whose price for cooperation is extracted in the blood of innocents. Now, in 1963, after the Soviet Union defeated the Nazis and took over their horrid experiments, their empire stretches from the Pacific to the Atlantic save only for a narrow coastal strip west from Paris—America never entered the war and is still mired in a four-decades-long depression. Gretel and her younger brother Klaus, Nazi products captured by the Soviets and forced to cooperate with their experiments, escape from a prison camp and make their way to England where they insist on contacting former spy chief Raybould Marsh who, beset by personal tragedy, has turned into a belligerent drunk barely holding on to his job as a gardener. Marsh’s erstwhile colleague, the aristocratic Will Beauclerk, wracked with guilt over his part in summoning the Eidolons and subsequent slaughter of innocents, has betrayed the whereabouts of England’s warlocks to the Soviets, who are quietly assassinating them. It will be Marsh’s task to unmask Will’s treachery, learn what greater designs the Soviets have and counteract them, and deal with the seemingly untouchable Gretel, a psychic so formidable that she has foreseen all possible futures and is manipulating everybody toward an end only she knows. Despite the jaw-dropping backdrop and oblique plotting, the narrative is driven by character and personal circumstance, the only possible drawback, certain important developments that annoyingly take place offstage. Grim indeed, yet eloquent and utterly compelling. (Contact: Aisha Cloud)
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nonfiction TINDERBOX The Past and Future of Pakistan
These titles earned the Kirkus Star: WINTER JOURNAL by Paul Auster...............................................p. 926
Akbar, M.J. Perennial/HarperCollins (400 pp.) $15.99 paperback | Jul. 1, 2012 978-0-06-213179-9
THE COST OF HOPE by Amanda Bennett....................................p. 927 TUBES by Andrew Blum................................................................p. 928 PREDATOR NATION by Charles Ferguson.................................... p. 931 SURVIVING SURVIVAL by Laurence Gonzales............................ p. 932 TWILIGHT OF THE ELITES by Christopher L. Hayes..................p. 934 THE MANSION OF HAPPINESS by Jill Lepore...........................p. 941 WAIT by Frank Partnoy................................................................. p. 946 SPILLOVER by David Quammen.................................................. p. 948 DNA USA by Bryan Sykes..............................................................p. 954
TWILIGHT OF THE ELITES America After Meritocracy
Hayes, Christopher L. Crown (320 pp.) $26.00 Jun. 12, 2012 978-0-307-72045-0
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Among the spate of recent books about Pakistan, India Today editorial director Akbar’s (Have Pen, Will Travel: Observations of a Globetrotter, 2011, etc.) elegant, probing work exhibits a sympathetic insider’s understanding of the complex, evolving relationship between Muslims and Hindus in the area. The author traces the early isolation and vulnerability of the Muslim community in India with the collapse of the Mughal Empire in the mid-18th century, squeezed from both sides by the increasingly numerous Hindus and increasingly powerful British. “A strange alchemy of past superiority and future insecurity shaped the dream of a separate Muslim state in India,” he writes. The Muslim clergy thrived as an educated, military class, led by the moral instruction of Shah Waliullah, who propounded a “theory of distance” regarding the Hindu infidels. His idea of a separate Islamic state without dynasty was taken up by the first Muslim political party, the Muslim League, in 1906. The community’s sense of inferiority rendered it ripe for the embrace of a great galvanizing leader, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, an English-educated lawyer who was embarrassingly unfamiliar with Islamic teachings. Yet it was Gandhi who won the hearts of the Muslims by insisting on carrying out his “non-violent jihad.” Akbar masterly reconstructs the final tensions among the Indian Congress and Muslim League, Gandhi, the British and Jinnah, as unity broke down and partition was declared in August 1947. The struggle between a religious and secular state was just beginning, however, undertaken next by Sayyid Maududi, “godfather” of Islamic fundamentalism in South Asia, charismatic leader Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and strongman General Zia. The author concludes darkly with a contemporary portrait of Pakistan still beset by secessionist worries and religious extremism and Balkanized by Western influence. Though the chapter on current affairs yields little new insight, Akbar presents a thoughtful historical perspective, rich in detail, research and gloom.
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“The acclaimed novelist...writes affectingly about his body, family, lovers, travels and residences as he enters what he calls the winter of his life.” from winter journal
THE GOOD FOOD REVOLUTION Growing Healthy Food, People, and Communities
Allen, Will with Wilson, Charles Gotham Books (288 pp.) $26.00 | May 10, 2012 978-1-592-40710-1
Urban farming with a passion. In this food manifesto/inspirational memoir, co-authored by Wilson (coauthor: Chew On This: Everything You Don’t Want to Know About Fast Food, 2006), MacArthur fellow Allen chronicles his struggle to transform abandoned greenhouses in one of Milwaukee’s poorest neighborhoods into a thriving, innovative urban farm that provides fresh food for thousands of people. The author meanders from his childhood in suburban Maryland, where his once-sharecropper parents taught him to cherish the land, to his life as a star basketball player and corporate executive, to his current role as CEO of Growing Power, a not-for-profit dedicated to providing sustainable food to communities that need it. The healthy-food movement, writes the author, has remained primarily an upper-class experience, while the only option for many city dwellers is fast food or convenience stores. Already a passionate farmer, Allen decided to risk it all in 1993 to grow affordable, locally grown food for and with inner-city residents using creative techniques with greenhouses, fish tanks and lots of worms. At times the writing is uneven, and several chapters are filled with unexpected digressions into history lessons or other people’s life stories. Yet these asides, including the heart-wrenching struggles of one of Allen’s employees, bring a refreshing energy to the narrative. Many chapters end with a summary of key points or helpful gardening tips, making it a good read for young adults as well. What Allen does with a small plot of land and a lot of determination is nothing short of inspiring. A moving story of one man’s success in producing healthy food for those who need it the most.
THE (HONEST) TRUTH ABOUT DISHONESTY How We Lie to Everyone— Especially Ourselves
Ariely, Dan Harper/HarperCollins (272 pp.) $26.99 | Jun. 5, 2012 978-0-06-218359-0
Ariely (Psychology/Psychology and Behavioral Economics/Duke Univ.; The Upside of Irrationality, 2010, etc.) explores how honest we are, how honest we think we are and every white lie in the middle. Conventional wisdom suggests that the greatest concentration of dishonest Americans can be found in the Washington, D.C., area. While it’s true that our leaders provide us with 926
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egregious examples of dishonesty, a more nuanced look at how we define the concept reveals that our moral compasses may be less dependable than we would like to believe. Ariely’s prior books regarding irrationality flow into his research around what motivates people’s dishonesty. He argues against the idea that deciding whether or not to cheat is fueled by a cost/benefit analysis. He also finds that the notion of the decision-making process being largely internal is also inaccurate and shares examples of corporate culture’s enabling of dishonesty. It’s far simpler for the media to identify the Kenneth Lay in the story than to explain how hundreds of employees—unlikely to all be maliciously and intentionally undermining the financial security of thousands of people—could participate in an organizational structure that rewards the bending of the rules. Lawyers round up on billable hours, and those who stick to an honest assessment of how much they work are culled from the firm come evaluation time. Ariely also argues convincingly that society’s move toward a cashless society is lessening the moral impact when a few people fudge the numbers slightly—it eventually adds up to billions of dollars in losses. The author dissects dishonesty in schools, relationships and workplaces and examines institutional and cultural safeguards and their levels of effectiveness. Ariely writes in a conversational tone one might associate with a popular teacher, providing readers with a working knowledge of what shapes our ethics—or lack thereof.
WINTER JOURNAL
Auster, Paul Henry Holt (240 pp.) $26.00 | Aug. 21, 2012 978-0-8050-9553-1
The acclaimed novelist (Sunset Park, 2010, etc.), now 65, writes affectingly about his body, family, lovers, travels and residences as he enters what he calls the winter of his life. Written entirely in the second person and, loosely, using the format of a journal (undated entries), Auster’s memoir courses gracefully over ground that is frequently rough, jarring and painful: the deaths of his parents, conflicts with his relatives (he settles some scores), poor decisions (his first marriage), accidents (a car crash that could have killed him) and struggles in his early career. But there are summery memories, as well: his love of baseball (begun in boyhood), his fondness for Campbell’s chicken noodle soup, his relationship with his mother, world travels (not all cheery; he recalls a near fistfight with a French taxi driver), books and friends. Most significant: his 30-year relationship with his wife, writer Siri Hustvedt (unnamed here), whom he continually celebrates. Some of the loveliest sentences in the text—and there are many—are illuminated by love. Near the end, Auster recalls visits with her family in Minnesota, a terrain so unlike what he knew (he lives in Brooklyn). Here, too, are moments of failure (not speaking up when he should have), of illness and injury, of sly humor. The author follows a grim description of a bout with the crabs with
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a paean to nature that begins, “Ladybugs were considered good luck.” Auster indulges in the occasional rant—he goes off on the crudities of contemporary culture—and delivers numerous moments of artful craft. A consummate professional explores the attic of his life, converting rumination to art.
MARILYN The Passion and Paradox of Marilyn Monroe Banner, Lois Bloomsbury (512 pp.) $30.00 | Jul. 17, 2012 978-1-60819-531-2
Fifty years after her death and hundreds of books later, are we any closer to understanding Marilyn Monroe (1926– 1962)? Probably not, but this new biography brings the known facts up to date and offers a fresh, modern take on the tragic star’s life and choices. For Banner (History and Gender Studies/Univ. of Southern California; MM-Personal: From the Private Archive of Marilyn Monroe, 2011, etc.), the tangled roots of Monroe’s contradictions—shy but lurid, innocent and calculating, user and used— originated in her childhood. The product of a family with a history of mental illness, she was passed around between foster homes (both good and bad) as well as an orphanage. She experienced sexual abuse, absorbed a variety of religious influences, and discovered that her lost-lamb look attracted every man she met. Although Banner occasionally plays psychoanalyst, it’s only in an effort to see her subject from every conceivable angle. The author’s film criticism is insightful, particularly in showing how Monroe helped build (and would deliberately mock) her own public image. She examines how Monroe’s unique allure drew on popular tradition and looked forward to the Pop Art future. As for the big question—did Monroe commit suicide or was she murdered by Bobby Kennedy, or her psychoanalyst, or mobster Sam Giancana, or the FBI?—Banner offers no smoking guns. Instead, she gives reasons why all the scenarios, both official and otherwise, are as problematic as they are plausible. Though the author sometimes over explains the obvious, this flaw does not detract from the book’s forward drive or Banner’s sympathetic intelligence. Surely not the last word, but a complete and honest effort and a good starting place. (16-page color insert; 16-page b/w insert)
THE SECOND WORLD WAR
Beevor, Antony Little, Brown (880 pp.) $35.00 | Jun. 5, 2012 978-0-316-02374-0
Beevor (D-Day, 2009, etc.) joins the ranks of other contemporary British historians to tackle the entire war in one volume—e.g., Andrew Roberts (The Storm of War) and Gordon Corrigan (The Second World War). All three books move chronologically, with Roberts grouping by driving themes (“Onslaught, Climacteric, Retribution”), Corrigan by military theaters (the Russian, the Asian and so on) and Beevor by more numerous, geographically detailed conflicts. The result here can be stultifying in its richness of detail, but Beevor makes blazingly vivid the sense of mass upheaval and grief prevalent in all parts of the world. The author’s coverage of the East Asian conflicts is masterful, and he emphasizes early on the key skirmish in August 1939 between Soviet commander Georgi Zhukov’s forces and the Japanese at Nomonhan in Outer Mongolia, in which the Soviets repulsed the Japanese in an appalling massacre. Stalin received Zhukov as a hero, while the Japanese made the portentous non-aggression pact with Stalin just before Operation Barbarossa and moved instead against France, the Netherlands, Britain and the U.S. Navy. Beevor’s knowledge of Crete, occupied Paris, Stalingrad and Berlin infuses these segments with particular nuance, though some readers may wish he had devoted more space to each. Throughout, the author remains cognizant of the brutalization of civilians, including the systematic rape of women. In his chapter on the Nazi extermination camps, he focuses on the account of Rudolf Höss, commandant of Auschwitz, to demonstrate how ordinary the day-to-day horror had become. Eisenhower’s decision not to take Berlin—too many casualties—was “the correct decision even if for the wrong reason,” Beevor writes, because Stalin would never have allowed it. While the author hurriedly wraps up the endgame, the majority of the narrative is a deeply enlightening experience. A work of vast research, depth and insight—perhaps too vast for some readers. (32 b/w photo inserts; 23 maps. Author tour to New York, Washington, D.C., Boston, Chicago, Toronto)
THE COST OF HOPE A Memoir
Bennett, Amanda Random House (240 pp.) $26.00 | Jun. 5, 2012 978-1-4000-6984-2 978-0-679-60484-6 e-book
The hot-button issue of unregulated health-care costs underscores this engaging memoir of marriage and terminal illness. Bennett (In Memoriam, 1997, etc.), a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and executive editor at |
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“Captivating behind-the-scenes tour of how (and where) the Internet works.” from tubes
Bloomberg News, met Terence Foley at a party while on assignment in China in 1983. Lounging on a sofa in a bow tie and horn-rimmed glasses, he plied the lonesome, deadline-driven reporter with tall tales of being a Fulbright Scholar—in reality, however, he was the wacky director of the American Soybean Association. Nevertheless, this became their “signature story,” and a lifetime love was born for Bennett and her visceral, fastidiously dressed beau, 12 years her senior. Their eccentric, restless 20-year marriage produced two children (one biological, one adopted) and plenty of highs and lows, all recounted through the author’s droll, conversational anecdotes. Foley’s colon cancer was diagnosed in late 2000, followed by the discovery of a rare, aggressive kidney carcinoma, which may (or may not have) contributed to his death. Bennett discovered the ambiguity of his diagnosis while poring over her husband’s medical records. While retracing the path of his terminal prognosis, she uncovered a flawed system of mismanaged lab information, astronomical insurance charges and conditional physician reimbursements. The author leaves readers with more questions than answers after dealing with an industry that sets prices “like a giant Chinese bazaar” yet facilitated her husband’s participation in experimental clinical trials. A moving, beautifully written chronicle of true love and a clarion call for health-care reform.
TUBES A Journey to the Center of the Internet Blum, Andrew Ecco/HarperCollins (304 pp.) $26.99 | Jun. 1, 2012 978-0-06-199493-7 978-0-06-209675-3 e-book
Captivating behind-the-scenes tour of how (and where) the Internet works. When an errant squirrel disrupted his Internet connection, Wired correspondent Blum embarked on a journey to discover the roots and structure of the Internet. Taking its title from former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens’ muchridiculed 2006 description of the Internet as “a series of tubes,” this debut deftly combines history, travelogue and jargon-free technical explanations. Blum begins by chronicling the birth of the Internet in the late 1960s. He traveled to UCLA to see one of the first networked computers and meet 75-year-old professor Leonard Kleinrock, one of the fathers of the Internet. From there, Blum visited the companies that form the Internet’s “backbone”: hubs of networked servers where billions of bits of data zip through every second. Travelling around the world, the author was surprised to discover that “the Internet wasn’t a shadowy realm but a surprisingly open one.” Nearly everywhere he went, he was offered a tour by people happy to share their work and expertise (Google’s data center was the lone exception). While Blum occasionally gets bogged down by the technical ins and outs of servers and cable routing, which may not interest some readers, he has a gift for breathing life into his 928
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subjects, including Eddie Diaz, an electrical worker the author followed as he installed thousands of feet of new cable under the streets of Manhattan. A fascinating and unique portrait of the Internet not as “a physical world or a virtual world, but a human world.”
FULL SERVICE My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars
Bowers, Scotty with Friedberg, Lionel Grove (288 pp.) $25.00 | Feb. 14, 2012 978-0-8021-2007-6
A memoir about the author’s role in the secret sex lives of Hollywood’s Golden Age stars. Bowers, a long-time Hollywood hanger-on, delivers a bizarrely upbeat, frequently stomach-churning chronicle of profligacy and perversion that frankly beggars belief. Presenting himself as some unholy amalgam of a pimp, prostitute and Jiminy Cricket, Bowers maintains an unfailingly aw-shucks tone as he details the erotic peccadilloes of dozens of iconic actors, including a coprophagous escapade with Charles Laughton that will haunt the nightmares of most readers. In Bowers’ telling, the author, a good-natured Midwesterner freshly discharged from the Marines, became the center of a prostitution underground almost immediately upon his arrival in Tinseltown, cheerfully arranging trysts by the thousands to suit any and all tastes, however outré, while being relentlessly seduced by every homosexual connected to the film industry. Bowers protests continuously that he sees nothing wrong with facilitating adultery and all manner of deviance on an epic scale, as sex is a natural drive that shouldn’t be beholden to social mores. This point becomes harder to defend as he glowingly describes his childhood sexual abuse involving a friend’s father, customers along his paper route, and various Catholic priests. Bowers’ largesse extends to these predators, who are unfailingly described as sweet, kind, gentle, lonely souls looking for a little harmless comfort. This attitude suggests an insane level of denial or merely denotes the fevered musings of a fantasist with no regard for the reputations of dozens of prominent figures in American popular culture. A singularly off-putting and seamy reading experience. (Two 8-page b/w inserts)
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WE CAN ALL DO BETTER
Bradley, Bill Vanguard/Perseus (208 pp.) $24.99 | May 8, 2012 978-1-59315-729-6
The three-term Democratic senator shares his political perspective and primary concerns for the United States. Bradley (The New American Story, 2007, etc.) is worried about the spreading contempt for Congress and the increasing tendency for the concept of public service to be replaced by a sense of entitlement and the self-perpetuation of elites. The author also focuses on the economy, discussing what has gone wrong and offering his own views on possible solutions—not only through public investment in infrastructure, but also through imaginative reforms of the tax code. He takes matters further in a broad-ranging discussion of how recent transformations in domestic and foreign policy have begun to undermine the American way of life based on upward mobility. He is particularly contemptuous of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which “sits at the center of selling America to the highest bidder.” However, Bradley is clear that government is not the problem and that there can be no prosperity without government. He affirms the bipartisan political tradition of promotion of the general welfare and highlights what he calls “horse-trading for a noble purpose,” which has made possible some of the greatest achievements in American history. The author does not support the automatic recourse to military force to solve international problems, and he believes the challenge from China will depend more on economic competition than military conflict. He does not believe the two parties should have a monopoly on the political process, and he supports increasing openness as in other countries—epitomized in this electoral cycle by the efforts of Americans Elect, a group intent on challenging the country’s nominating process. An important contribution to the national discussion with appeal to independents as well as the more traditionally party-minded.
FREE MARKET REVOLUTION How Ayn Rand’s Ideas Can End Big Government
Brook, Yaron & Watkins, Don Palgrave Macmillan (320 pp.) $27.00 | Sep. 18, 2012 978-0-230-34169-2
“Capitalism is the system of selfishness— of rational selfishness.” Ayn Rand acolytes Brook (Neoconservatism: An Obituary for an Idea, 2010) and Watkins sing the same old hymn, with a slightly different chorus, to the same old choir. In case you’ve forgotten the Randian message, bundled up here in utterly predictable form, it’s that we all owe each other |
nothing. Our sole duty is to ourselves, and thus it behooves us to claw and scratch our way through this Darwinian world and amass as much wealth as possible. In the radical right-wing version that’s infecting the dreaded big government in Washington and that pervades this primer, a truly free-market approach would lead to “the ultimate abolition of all entitlement programs including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and public education; abolition of all government controls on business; the privatization of all property, including public lands, utilities, and roads.” Brook and Watkins, executives at the Ayn Rand Institute, play the usual rhetorical games: Barack Obama is Hitler, or maybe Goebbels, but we really didn’t mean to suggest that he was; Mussolini and Hitler were socialists, and so is Obama, but we don’t really mean to cast aspersions; government regulation is evil because it keeps solid citizens from opening restaurants with bathrooms tiled to their individual tastes. Of course, Hitler and Mussolini weren’t socialists, and neither is Obama, and there are reasons good and true to require restaurants to use tiles that plainly reveal when they’re filthy, just as there are reasons to have regulations on food and pharmaceutical safety, seat-belt regulations, speed limits, and all the other things of government that Randians don’t like. What would Howard Roark do? Maybe find a more persuasive apology for Randian money-grubbism.
THE UNFAIR TRADE How Our Broken Global Financial System Destroys the Middle Class
Casey, Michael Crown Business (416 pp.) $28.00 | May 29, 2012 978-0-307-88530-2 978-0-307-88532-6 e-book
A Wall Street Journal managing editor and columnist explains how the distorted policies underlying the global financial system undermine the Average Joes of all nations. Simultaneously outraged, bitter, fearful and despondent, the middle class surveys the economic wreckage of the past few years with little but contempt for CEOs and other corporate elites. From a cab driver in Andalusia, a seamstress in Indonesia, an assembly worker in Shanghai, an ambulance driver in Mexico, and many others, the widely traveled Casey (Che’s Afterlife: The Legacy of an Image, 2009) collects similar stories of middle-class disenchantment. The author attributes the world’s middle-class misfortunes to the uneven playing field created by a mismatch of fossilized national policies with the fast-moving exigencies of globalization. The “perverse economic incentives” of this perilous new world account for the dangerous codependency of China and America. China’s historic rise and outsized footprint has transformed beef-loving Argentines into soybean producers, helped turn Western Australia into one large mineral deposit, and sown chaos in Mexican manufacturing towns unable to meet “the China price.” Meanwhile, the staid nation
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of Iceland recovers from an episode of banking madness that brought the country to its knees, and the survival of the European monetary union remains in serious question. In a world of banks too big to fail and politicians beholden to big-money contributors, ordinary citizens have borne the brunt of the economic pain. Rather than forcing them to pay any more of the costs of a broken system, Casey calls for a series of systemic national and international reforms, almost all of which require an unprecedented degree of cooperation, to help restore a trust and confidence dangerously shaken. A well-reported, deeply serious appraisal of the exceptional damage a dysfunctional system inflicts on unexceptional people.
DON’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT THE AMERICAN PRESIDENTS
Davis, Kenneth C. Hyperion (720 pp.) $27.99 | Sep. 11, 2012 978-1-4013-2408-7
The author of Don’t Know Much About History and similar titles returns with a sometimes-saucy handbook on the American presidency. As is the case with other formulaic volumes, this one can weary readers determined to journey through its many pages. After his introductory material on the Founding Fathers’ debates about the nature of the presidency, Davis focuses on each of the presidents, in order, offering subsections like “Fast Facts,” “Administration Milestones” and “Must Reads” (including online sources). He also awards an old-fashioned letter grade to each man. Scoring well are Lincoln, both Roosevelts and Reagan; scoring poorly, an assortment of pre– and post– Civil War executives (Pierce, Buchanan, Andrew Johnson—all get failing grades). Davis gives Incompletes to those who served briefly for various reasons (William Henry Harrison, Garfield). In recent times: Clinton gets a B; Bush II, F. The author has found interesting nuggets to scatter along the trail—Buchanan was the first to publish a memoir; Hayes established the White House Easter Egg Roll; McKinley was the last president to have served in the Civil War—and he takes time to explain key historical issues, from Teapot Dome to Watergate to Whitewater to Obamacare. Davis occasionally flashes an attitude, taking a shot at one of Michelle Bachmann’s campaign claims about the Founding Fathers and slavery, noting several historical antecedents for our recent financial meltdown, blasting Bush II for Iraq and other messes, and reminding us that President Obama came into office facing problems equaled only by those greeting Lincoln and FDR. These are not positions that will prompt waves of Republicans to purchase the book, but substantive appendixes add both heft and interest. The tedious format only occasionally dulls the author’s sharp descriptive and analytical skills.
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THE LOCAVORE’S DILEMMA In Praise of the 10,000-Mile Diet
Desrochers, Pierre & Shimizu, Hiroko PublicAffairs (256 pp.) $26.99 | Jun. 5, 2012 978-1-58648-940-3
Desrochers (Geography/Univ. of Toronto) and Shimizu formulate counterarguments to claims made by proponents of locavorism. The authors state that the movement does not nurture social capital because economic wellbeing is correlated to more trade and specialized jobs. It also does not offer a free economic lunch because the more people spend on one local good, the less money they have to spend on another local product. In response to claims about the environmental benefits of locavorism, they claim that food transportation has negligible environmental damage. They also believe that larger food corporations are better equipped to handle food safety than smaller, local operations. Moreover, the issue of food shortage has only been effectively addressed by food imported from other countries. While some of the authors’ points have merit, they ignore some widely known facts about food. For example, Desrochers and Shimizu note that we are bigger and live longer compared to our ancestors due to advancements in food. While that is true, the authors ignore the fact that the average American’s health has declined in the past decade, partly due to increases in food-related diseases such as diabetes. The authors also praise the variety of food available in U.S. supermarkets, assuming that variety exists everywhere, not just in middle- and upper-class neighborhoods. (For a solid discussion of the lack of variety in lower-class areas, see Maggie Anderson and Ted Gregory’s Our Black Year.) In the chapter about food safety, Desrochers and Shimizu list bacterial outbreaks that occurred in local fruit and vegetable farms but do not mention the recent problems in large meat and poultry companies. In 2011, there were three outbreaks and recalls that originated from Dole, Tyson Farms and Jennie-O factories. The authors’ willingness to ignore certain facts and events that do not align with their argument casts doubt on the book’s validity as a source of information. Not recommended for readers looking to become more informed about this issue; suitable for those who already align with the authors’ viewpoint.
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“A deeply argued call to action from a lucid, impassioned polemicist.” from predator nation
A CALM BRAIN Unlocking Your Natural Relaxation System
Devi, Gayatri Dutton (304 pp.) $25.95 | Jun. 14, 2012 978-0-525-95269-5
A neurologist who specializes in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia explores how we can tap into “the neurology and physiology of our body’s innate ‘calm’ mechanisms” to achieve greater health, happiness and success. The director of the New York Memory and Healthy Aging services, Devi (What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Alzheimer’s Disease, 2004, etc.) unravels the functioning of the core brain, where gut reactions are processed, and explains how we can train ourselves to relax and recharge in order to face the 24/7 pressures of the fast-paced modern world. The author describes the way in which the core brain works by controlling emotions and impulses as we navigate the outside world “and the vast environmental sensor and receptacle that is our body.” Fightor-flight reactions, as well as our relative sense of well-being or malaise, are mediated there by the vagus nerve, a frequently overlooked neural conduit that bypasses the spinal cord to connect with the body’s organs. It provides a constant stream of information that tells the brain when to stress out and when to relax and monitors processes such as blood pressure. The core brain is the seat of the sympathetic nervous system, which releases an adrenaline surge when we perceive danger, and the parasympathetic system, which provides the all-clear signal when it is safe to calm down. Devi provides anecdotal evidence suggesting that meditation and yoga, by releasing bodily tension, cue the brain to relax, and she examines how affectionate gestures and shared laughter provide a similar release. A welcome alternative approach to overtaxing our brains and then reaching for the pill bottle—should warrant serious attention.
PREDATOR NATION Corporate Criminals, Political Corruption, and the Hijacking of America
Ferguson, Charles Crown Business (288 pp.) $27.00 | May 22, 2012 978-0-307-95255-4 978-0-307-95257-8 e-book
A concise, cogent assessment of the 2008 banking disaster and how the fallout has affected the country. In his Oscar-winning 2010 documentary, Inside Job, Ferguson did a first-class job of explaining the mess on Wall Street. This book is a longer, more detailed version that underscores |
the film’s points, offering a broader picture of how Wall Street has poisoned the country. The author returns to the scene of the crime, where the slow rise of deregulation under President Reagan had turned into a lawless frontier by the time Clinton left office. Scrapping the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act—which kept investment and commercial banks separate—allowed investment firms to indulge their greediest desires, such as credit default swaps. Their partners in crime were Ivy League economists, who were paid handsomely for either testifying before Congress or writing papers that told banks what they wanted to hear, and ratings agencies like Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s, who recklessly doled out AAA ratings to the well-heeled major firms. So why didn’t anyone go to jail? Well, you can’t break laws that don’t exist. Still, Ferguson argues that real crimes were committed, from lying to federal authorities to filing fictitious financial statements. The author makes sure we get the big picture, too: that the money-driven Wall Street culture of corruption doesn’t advance American progress; it weakens it. Ferguson points to key areas—broadband technology, innovation and education—where greed has kept America lagging behind the rest of the civilized world. A deeply argued call to action from a lucid, impassioned polemicist.
SOWING SEEDS IN THE DESERT Natural Farming, Global Restoration, and Ultimate Food Security
Fukuoka, Masanobu Chelsea Green (208 pp.) $22.50 | Jun. 1, 2012 978-1-60358-418-0
From the late author of the bestseller The One Straw Revolution (1978) comes a similar book about a philosophical approach to natural farming. “The fundamental concept of a natural farm,” writes Fukuoka (The Natural Way of Farming, 1985, etc.), “begins with intuitively grasping nature’s original form, where many varieties of plants and animals live together as a harmonious whole, joyfully and in mutual benefit.” In this English translation of the author’s last work (first published in Japan in 1996), he decries the “indiscriminate deforestation and large-scale agriculture carried out in order to support the materialistic cultures of the developed countries.” This process has created a condition called “desertification,” the inability of the soil to grow anything. Because humans have lost their connection with nature, Fukuoka advocates foregoing harmful modern methods of farming in favor of a simpler approach. Based primarily on the success of his farm in Japan, the author believes the solution lies in aerial distribution of a large variety of plants via clay seed pellets, the use of cover crops, and a no-tilling approach to the soil. By seeding a wide variety of species in the desert, nature will select those plants best suited for a particular location. These
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plants will flourish, drawing water from deep within the earth and thereby allowing other plants and trees to prosper. Taking his philosophy to Africa, India and the United States, among other places, Fukuoka demonstrated that, given sufficient time, seeding fallow earth with vegetables, plants and trees created a lush setting. More a spiritual analysis of farming methods than a hands-on approach, the book still provides viable and simple solutions to the world’s increased need for productive land. An enlightened method for reclaiming the barren soils of the world.
THE LONGEST FIGHT In the Ring with Joe Gans, Boxing’s First African American Champion Gildea, William Farrar, Straus and Giroux (224 pp.) $25.00 | Jun. 26, 2012 978-0-374-28097-0
A veteran sports journalist rehearses the story of Joe Gans (1874–1910), who in 1906 won a titanic 42-round boxing match, lasting nearly three hours, against a bruising white boxer. Gildea (Where the Game Matters Most: A Last Championship Season in Indiana High School Basketball, 1997, etc.), who wrote for the Washington Post for 40 years, begins and ends with the flickering footage of the fight now residing in the Library of Congress. The author devotes more than half of the text to an account of the fight with Oscar “Battling” Nelson in Goldfield, Nev., though he continually cuts away to tell about Gans’ background, his several wives, the era’s virulent racism, other fights and fighters, the history of Goldfield and numerous other asides intended both to provide context and increase suspense. Nelson emerges as a particularly crude specimen, so much so that the huge crowd—virtually all white—rooted enthusiastically for Gans and offered no protests when the referee awarded the victory to Gans because of a low blow; Nelson had been head-butting and committing other fouls throughout. (His gutter racism outside the ring was no improvement.) Whites in the East and South promptly terrorized blacks. The final section deals with Gans’ post-fight celebrity and wealth and with his intransigent refusal to retire, even while tuberculosis was ravaging his body. The final scenes—the fading Gans trying to get home from Arizona to die—are moving. Writers Rex Beach and Jack London have cameos, as do other notables, and the author wonders if George Bellows might have used Gans as the model for the black fighter in Both Members of This Club. With fascinating period detail and skillful writing, the author highlights his subject’s considerable appeal and symbolic significance but speaks a bit too gently about his flaws. (8 pages b/w illustrations)
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OCCUPY NATION The Roots, the Spirit, and the Promise of Occupy Wall Street
Gitlin, Todd It Books/HarperCollins (288 pp.) $12.99 e-book | May 1, 2012 ISBN: 978-0-06-230093-8
Longtime politics and culture writer Gitlin (Journalism and Sociology/Columbia Univ.; Undying, 2011, etc.) looks at the insurgent Occupy protest movement in the United States. The ongoing Occupy movement effectively began on Sept. 17, 2011, when a small group of protesters, calling themselves Occupy Wall Street, set up camp at Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan. The protesters supported a wide array of left-leaning political causes, mostly addressing economic inequality. They soon received media attention, and their numbers grew quickly, as Occupy protests proliferated in cities around the country and world. As Gitlin points out in this relatively brief “initial report on something very much in progress,” the movement has been a huge media success, spreading discussion on economic issues and injecting the term “occupy” and the phrase “the 99 percent” into the national conversation. A veteran of New Left protests in the 1960s and a former president of Students for a Democratic Society, Gitlin effectively places Occupy in context in the history of American progressivism. At times, he seems ambivalent about how the movement is run. Though he approvingly writes about how its lack of leaders and vague goals have helped to make it more appealing and inclusive, he also laments the interminable meetings of fractious and dogmatic Occupiers accomplishing little or nothing concrete. While Gitlin champions Occupy’s “incandescent compound of indignation, joy, outrage, hope, ingenuity, and resolve,” as well as its nonviolence, he has little insight as to what exactly the movement will accomplish going forward (“Prediction is for fools and the jaded”), an uncertainty apparently shared by many inside the movement. A fine introduction to a nascent movement in progress, characterized as one with great potential but an undetermined future.
SURVIVING SURVIVAL The Art and Science of Resilience Gonzales, Laurence Norton (304 pp.) $26.95 | Sep. 10, 2012 978-0-393-08318-7
How can the world smite thee? Let us count the ways... Having limned the odds and wherefores of surviving various challenges in Deep Survival (2003) and Everyday Survival (2008), Gonzales (Lucy, 2010, etc.) looks deeply into the mental processes that
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“Guy exposes Becket’s history so well that readers may question how much of a saint he really was.” from thomas becket
enable us to cope with the trauma that often sets in during and after a challenge to our survival. Take, for instance, the prospect of falling overboard and floating in the deep ocean for five days before rescue, as happened to one woman Gonzales profiled in the first book. Though she was rescued, that was not the end of the story in real life; instead, for years, she has had to relive “the pain of thirst, the terror, the physical brutality of the sea,” while her brain has followed its well-known assumption that what happened in the past will happen in the future, no matter how rare the chances of being shipwrecked. Here Gonzales narrates plenty of grim and gruesome tales, not all of them elective; his survivors are those who have suffered war and terrorism as well as falls off mountains and into choppy surf. The best parts are not those harrowing stories, though, but instead the author’s contemplative explanations of the science behind, for instance, how the amygdala works, a blend of inheritance and hard-won education. Pity us poor primates and our amygdalae, for, as he writes, “[w]hen bad things happen, this system can be the source of much sorrow.” One manifestation is the “rage circuit,” which so often afflicts soldiers returning from combat. Those who adapt well to the post-traumatic stress share points in common. One characteristic of success, writes Gonzales, is the ability to step outside oneself to help others, which is “one of the most therapeutic steps you can take.” Survivors of traumatic events often do not recover without help from others, and Gonzales’ excellent book is an education for those wishing to be of use in a stressful, often frightening world.
DAM NATION How Water Shaped the West and Will Determine Its Future
Grace, Stephen Globe Pequot (304 pp.) $24.95 | Jun. 5, 2012 978-0-7627-7065-6
A concerned, observant “citizen of the West” spins tales of our chronic mismanagement of the only natural resource for which there’s no alternative: water. The American West’s relentless aridity doomed civilizations for centuries. Nevertheless, thanks to gold fever, Manifest Destiny and the railroads, the Great American Desert began filling up with people, entirely, it seems, without regard for limits to expansion imposed by the lack of precipitation. Today, we know better than to think “rain follows the plow,” but we don’t appear even close to developing a water sustainability program to keep cities like Las Vegas, Denver and Phoenix from drying up. Claiming no special expertise—indeed, the West’s water story cuts across too many disciplines for even specialists to wholly absorb—Grace (Shanghai: Life, Love and Infrastructure in China’s City of the Future, 2010, etc.) has nevertheless traveled widely and read broadly. He effectively, even humorously at times, captures the highlights of the West’s liquid history: the |
engineering wonders (and unintentional consequences) of New Deal–era dam projects; the tortuous web of law, regulations, treaties and compacts that govern Western water rights; and the political, bureaucratic and industrial power grabs that have accompanied all reclamation projects. The author covers a lot of territory: geologist John Wesley Powell’s prescient observations and recommendations for watershed communities; the hydro-skullduggery that accounts for the city of Los Angeles; the winding tale of the Colorado, “the world’s most heavily litigated river”; the ongoing depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer; the rise and demise of the Bureau of Reclamation; the industrial and agricultural tainting of our water; and our meager efforts to conserve or create more by desalination and cloud seeding. Westerners long accustomed to the region’s water scarcity will discover nothing new here, but Grace’s dispatches will likely strike those east of the 100th meridian as from another country. Though squarely on the side of environmental prudence, Grace is neither preachy nor accusatory in his descriptions of an impending tragedy and the need for action.
THOMAS BECKET Warrior, Priest, Rebel
Guy, John Random House (416 pp.) $35.00 | Jul. 3, 2012 978-1-4000-6907-1 978-0-679-60341-2 e-book
In this lively new biography of Thomas Becket, Guy (A Daughter’s Love: Thomas More and His Dearest Meg, 2009, etc.) illustrates his vast knowledge of medieval England. The author explains Becket’s non-royal, but hardly peasant, heritage and describes a stammering youth in which he had little interest in study. His Norman parents saw to it that he was well educated, however, including sending him to France for his studies. There he met his lifelong friend John of Salisbury, who would provide a firsthand account of Becket’s murder in Canterbury Cathedral. France was also a flight to safety from tensions at home. Becket was well-known as rakish, lazy and vain, and he never really applied himself to his studies. When Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury, took him into his household, he realized his failings and set to ameliorate his poor education with an autodidactic fervor. Becket watched and learned as Theobald politicized the relationship between the king and archbishop, not realizing that he, too, would one day face exile as he refused to be “bullied by a tyrant.” In his nine years of service to the archbishop, Becket gained considerable power and riches, but many still regarded him as a newcomer aspiring to be an insider. However, he felt he was an equal, especially after he was appointed as the king’s chancellor. The author’s exhaustive research shows that Becket clung to the trappings of wealth he had accumulated well after being appointed as archbishop. Guy exposes Becket’s history so well that readers may question how much of a saint he really was. (2 photo inserts; 2 maps)
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FREE WILL
Harris, Sam Free Press (86 pp.) $9.99 paperback | Mar. 6, 2012 978-1-4516-8340-0 In a brilliant and concise book, the co-founder of Project Reason argues that free will is an illusion. Harris (The Moral Landscape, 2010, etc.) contends that while most of us feel like we have free will, everything that we seem to choose to do is the result of a chain of causes over which we have no ultimate control— synapses, neural chemistry and genetic predispositions, as well as past events and our environment. Harris, who has a background in neuroscience, relies on that discipline and personal introspection. The neuroscience is impressive. In lab experiments in which subjects were asked to make decisions as regions of their brains were monitored, scientists could see that a decision had been made 7 to 10 seconds before the subject was consciously aware of it. The introspection argument is equally powerful, and Harris points out that much of our life is based on luck and that any of us could have been dealt a very different hand. He argues that accepting that free will is an illusion will help us to create a more ethical society. Currently, our justice system presumes free will, punishing under the assumption that given the same circumstances, an individual could have chosen differently. Exceptions are made for insanity, brain tumors, etc., all of which presume that the individual’s free will has been compromised. However, if we assume that free will is illusory—i.e., that criminals are acting outside of their own volition—the question becomes how to deal with offenders and how to protect society. Harris also asks what this conception means for an individual’s sense of self. Short enough to be read in a single sitting and provocative enough to arouse outrage and rebuttals.
UNBELIEVABLE HAPPINESS AND FINAL SORROW The Hemingway-Pfeiffer Marriage Hawkins, Ruth A. Univ. of Arkansas (350 pp.) $34.95 | Jun. 1, 2012 978-1-55728-974-2
A mostly engaging examination of a marriage and its effect on American literature. In addition to the detailed story of Ernest Hemingway’s second marriage, to Pauline Pfeiffer, Arkansas State University administrator Hawkins covers the novelist’s other marriages, the tense relationship Pfeiffer and Hemingway navigated after their divorce, their deaths and more. Pfeiffer met Hemingway in Paris. Though the relationship had a rocky start, the two fell in love, resulting in the end of Hemingway’s first marriage. The next 13 years were filled with travel, children and Hemingway’s 934
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rising career, all considerably bolstered by Pfeiffer family money. Hawkins pays special attention to this financial aspect of the story, arguing that money was at the very least an important factor, and probably the main one, in Hemingway’s decision to marry Pfeiffer. Regardless, the book shows Pfeiffer as a woman in love and content with her marriage and life until her husband moved on to be with someone else. Most of the narrative is absorbing, but Hawkins occasionally becomes bogged down in the details. Genealogies of both the Pfeiffer and Hemingway clans slow the pace, as do occasional off-topic anecdotes that may intrigue Hemingway enthusiasts but distract from the subject at hand. Though she paints Hemingway in a somewhat unflattering light, Hawkins doesn’t ignore his better qualities and includes episodes showing his soft, generous side when dealing with family and those close friends with whom he maintained lasting relationships. Will appeal to Hemingway enthusiasts and readers of literary biography.
TWILIGHT OF THE ELITES America After Meritocracy
Hayes, Christopher L. Crown (320 pp.) $26.00 | Jun. 12, 2012 978-0-307-72045-0
In this forcefully written debut, Nation editor-at-large and MSNBC host Hayes examines some of the consequences of accumulating institutional failures. Whether discussing the dysfunctions of government, Fortune 500 companies, Catholic Bishops or Major League Baseball, the author traces common features to a “broad and devastating crisis of authority” resulting from a breakdown in trust. Hayes examines the relationship between trust and authority and shows that what we actually know usually depends on others, ultimately on a source of institutional authority such as a political party. “We don’t acknowledge that our most fundamental, shared beliefs about how society should operate are deeply elitist,” writes the author. “We have accepted that there will be some class of people that will make the decisions for us, and if we just manage to find the right ones, then all will go smoothly.” Hayes uses the term elite differently than the manner employed by Fox News or Sarah Palin. He defines it as a “small, powerful and connected” group with “three main sources of power: money, platform, and networks.” Of course, money can confer power and buy the other forms of influence, so what was once trusted may no longer be considered either competent or as acting in good faith. Many policymakers put forth education as the answer. Hayes insists that it is no longer enough, arguing that equality of opportunity must be complemented with equality of outcomes, through tax reforms and other measures. A provocative discussion of the deeper causes of our current discontent, written with verve and meriting wide interest.
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“An effective memory manual with an unusual approach.” from total memory makeover
THE FAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH Aretha Franklin, the Rise of the Soap Opera, Children of the Gospel Church, and Other Meditations Heilbut, Anthony Knopf (368 pp.) $30.00 | Jun. 20, 2012 978-0-375-40080-3
Detailed, freewheeling and very personal cultural essays from an admitted obsessive and an amiable and intelligent rambler. For Heilbut (Thomas Mann: Eros and Literature, 1996, etc.), knowing too much can be a “supreme experience.” Indeed, “[f]or a great many of us, the outer reaches of fandom have become our most essential selves.” His own sources of obsession are gospel music (he’s a Grammy-winning producer on his own label), Thomas Mann and German exiles from Nazi Germany in America. Heilbut has written books on all three, and he returns to each in this collection. In the first and longest section, the author explores the gay subculture in gospel music, where “sissies” who were not welcome in society found a home in the church closet. He also traces the gospel roots of Aretha Franklin’s soul music. Switching gears, Heilbut writes about the impact of émigré Germans on American culture. He focuses on Hannah Arendt, Albert Einstein and Thomas Mann, with a beautiful tribute to Austrian novelist Joseph Roth, before digging into the history of the soap opera and neglected blues master Josh White. Like a true fan, Heilbut sees examples of his obsession in everything; an essay on male sopranos draws in Stephen Colbert, the intern from 30 Rock and the former lead singer of Faith No More. Heilbut is a discursive writer, often trailing numerous rabbits before circling back to the subject at hand, and his conversational style occasionally seems absent-minded. A cook’s tour through the passions of an expert whose style is as eclectic as his subject matter.
TOTAL MEMORY MAKEOVER Uncover Your Past, Take Charge of Your Future
Henner, Marilu Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster (256 pp.) $26.00 | Apr. 24, 2012 978-1-4516-5121-8 Actress and memory whiz Henner (Wear Your Life Well: Use What You Have to Get What You Want, 2009, etc.) unveils the secrets to unlocking the hidden
recesses of the mind. The author’s awe-inspiring memory skills, profiled in an episode of 60 Minutes, have eclipsed the fame she won for her portrayal of Elaine Nardo on the beloved TV sitcom Taxi. Despite |
realizing from an early age that she processed memory differently than other people, Henner didn’t know there was a name for her superlative powers of recollection until she began working with researchers at the University of California, Irvine. There, she learned that she is one of a very small number of people classified with Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory. The average person can recall up to 11 events from each year of their life; Henner remembers—in precise detail—every day of her life since the age of 12. By sharing her ability, Henner writes, readers will be able to “use these lessons to transform your memory, your past, and ultimately, your future.” Blending anecdotes from her personal life and career with scientific data and exercises designed to trigger specific types of memories, the author guides readers on a tour through their past. Henner forgoes typical approaches like mnemonics, place pegs and memory palaces. One test stimulates the olfactory nerves to turn up sense memories; another asks readers to revisit their 21st birthdays to uncover the different ways they archive memories. As the text progresses, Henner skillfully demonstrates how memories can help readers process their past, direct their present and shape their future. Other useful chapters address how to effectively record events in a journal and the ways parents can help their children preserve memories. Henner’s enthusiasm is infectious, though the number of exclamation points may distract some readers. An effective memory manual with an unusual approach.
SANDSTORM Libya in the Time of Revolution Hilsum, Lindsey Penguin Press (352 pp.) $27.95 | Jun. 4, 2012 978-1-59420-506-4
A nearly incredible, fantastical tale of the rise and fall of the “mad dog” of Libya. By turns friend and foe of the West, champion and tormentor of his own people, over four decades, Muammar Gaddafi had plenty of help inside and out propagating one of the most arbitrarily brutal, oppressive regimes in the world. British journalist Hilsum followed the events of the Arab Spring closely for Britain’s Channel 4 News and others, and her work combines an on-theground eyewitness account and a nuanced history of how he managed to stay in power for so long. The locus of incendiary resentment that sparked the Libyan uprising centered on the notorious prison Abu Salim, where, on June 28, 1996, 1,270 prisoners were gunned down. Their bodies were never delivered to relatives, and their deaths were only acknowledged a decade later. With the spread of Arab discontent in February 2011, the Abu Salim families had had enough and took to the streets. Having seized power in a coup in 1969, Gaddafi gleaned the finer points of authoritarianism from his hero Gamal Nasser, the East German Stasi and the Chinese. Gaddafi embarked on a cultural revolution and so-called Green Terror to purge rivals, banned the Muslim Brotherhood as a threat to his authority,
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ROTTING IN THE BANGKOK HILTON The Gruesome True Story of a Man Who Survived Thailand’s Deadliest Prisons
organized public hangings and essentially abolished the private sector. Hilsum diligently works through Gaddafi’s grandiose schemes and jumbled reign, during which he was the target of numerous assassination attempts. With great clarity, the author demonstrates not only the criminal megalomania of Gaddafi and his pernicious network of nepotism, but also the venality and hypocrisy of the West that kept him in power until the bitter end. A fitting, clear-eyed send-off to an infamous dictator.
VICTORY The Triumphant Gay Revolution
Hirshman, Linda Harper/HarperCollins (464 pp.) $27.99 | Jun. 5, 2012 978-0-06-196550-0
Retired labor lawyer and professor Hirshman (Get to Work: A Manifesto for Women of the World, 2006, etc.) celebrates the triumph of the gay-rights movement. Drawing on previous histories and more than 100 interviews, the author shows how the movement has been successful over the years in countering bigoted notions of the “four horsemen of the gay apocalypse—Crazy, Sinful, Criminal, [and] Disloyal.” Hirshman is most engaged in her discussions of court cases and their attendant legal issues, and on occasion she offers perceptive comparisons between the gay-rights movement and other, concurrent movements for equality. Often, however, the author draws on previous texts while adding few new insights, giving the book a warmed-over feeling. She relies too heavily on George Chauncey’s exhaustive Gay New York (1994) as a source for her chapter on the early urban gay experience, and her relatively brief take on the 1969 Stonewall riots makes excessive use of David Carter’s Stonewall (2004). As Hirshman makes clear, there have been great strides for the gay-rights movement, particularly in the last few decades, with major U.S. Supreme Court victories and the legalization of same-sex marriage in several states. But it seems strangely naive, even myopic, for the author to claim the movement “triumphant” when so many antigay laws at the state and federal level remain, and so much open homophobia persists in much of the country. (Even one of Hirshman’s interview subjects asked her, “Do you really think you ought to call it Victory?”) While many readers will admire her enthusiasm, a pronouncement of ultimate victory seems premature at best. An ambitious but overly optimistic history. (7 b/w photos)
Hoy, T.M. Skyhorse Publishing (224 pp.) $24.95 | May 1, 2012 978-1-61608-688-6
Collection of short essays about an American’s hard time in two of Thailand’s most notorious prisons. First-time author Hoy, Californian by birth, spent an apparently dissolute youth wandering Asia. He finally settled in Thailand, first in Bangkok and then in the northern city of Chiang Mai, where he committed the crime that is never explicitly named in the short narratives that make up this prison memoir (the cover copy suggests it was related to his failure to report a friend for murder, and documents reproduced inside suggest he was charged officially as an accessory). Whatever the actual crime, he was sent to Chiang Mai Remand Prison, then given a life sentence and transferred to Bang Kwang, the country’s most notorious prison. Bang Kwang officials, writes the author, barely recognized the humanity of their wards. Prisoners were kept in crowded cells where they slept on the floor in spaces too small for their bodies. The drinking water came from the filthy river running nearby, and the food most often consisted of thin chicken broth and white rice. Hoy contracted tuberculosis and nearly died before the American embassy intervened. He was finally released to the Americans on a treaty transfer to spend the rest of his sentence in the United States. The short essays range in quality, but they all display Hoy’s keen eye for the cruel detail—e.g., the senseless torture by prison guards of a captured owl or the murder in broad daylight of a likable coffeeshop owner by an apprentice member of a gang. The author also ably captures the humanity of his fellow inmates. The overall picture is not the unrelentingly gruesome story promised but rather a thoughtful series of meditations on living as well as possible under the worst possible conditions.
BASIC Surviving Boot Camp and Basic Training
Jacobs, Jack & Fisher, David Dunne/St. Martin’s (320 pp.) $25.99 | May 8, 2012 978-0-312-62277-0 978-1-4688-0244-5 e-book
Anecdotal overview of basic training, the great social leveler of military service. Medal of Honor winner Jacobs (If Not Now, When?: Duty and Sacrifice in America’s Time of Need, 2008) argues that “[b]asic military training and boot camp are American institutions that have continued to evolve…but the 936
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experiences of trainees through the decades seem remarkably similar.” This assertion forms the book’s structural core, as the author ranges widely, interviewing living veterans and researching the recollections of others, tracing the universalities of this harsh and surreal yet essential experience. Of his own training ritual, he writes, “we figured we were unique, and we would invent ways of beating that system…until we realized that we had become part of that system.” Jacobs establishes the systemic, unchanging nature of training by breaking it down into various categories of discussion, including the creative brutalities of drill instructors, dreaded tasks such as guard duty, and longstanding dubious legends such as the use of saltpeter in military rations to reduce sexual desires. While some of the included veterans are well-known figures, like Tom Seaver or Brian Dennehy, most are ordinary soldiers who provide wry assessments of their experiences—e.g., “when I first got to my unit they pretty much told me to forget everything that I’d learned in basic.” Overall, the author provides a clear and sometimes mordantly amusing overview of the training experience, punctuating it with personal accounts from soldiers. However, Jacobs does not provide an interpretation of the changing role of the military in American life, as represented by this enduring yet prosaic ritual. Will appeal mostly to readers considering a career in the military or veterans wondering if their memories exaggerate the intense eccentricity of the experience. (12 b/w illustrations)
DOES THIS CHURCH MAKE ME LOOK FAT? A Mennonite Finds Faith, Meets Mr. Right, and Solves Her Lady Problems Janzen, Rhoda Grand Central Publishing (256 pp.) $24.99 | CD $28.98 | Oct. 2, 2012 978-1-4555-0288-2 978-1-61113-869-6 CD
Continuing her search for spiritual relevance in everyday life, Janzen (Mennonite in a Little Black Dress, 2009) recounts the travails and joys encountered while finding love, embracing her new beau’s religion, and surviving breast cancer. Newly single, the author stepped into the dating world and ended up with an unlikely Mr. Wonderful. A huge, goateed rocker with a permit to carry a concealed weapon, he was a reformed alcoholic with a light Southern accent who uttered pronouncements like, “Well, I’ll be double-dipped!” Janzen was mesmerized, she repeatedly informs the reader, by his giant pectorals and his Pentecostal church. “He loved the pastor, the people, the worship,” she writes. “He loved the teaching, the service programs, the bake sales. It was clear to me that this church was an expression of his core values. If I was to keep dating him, I would need to see what it was all about.” The author also covers a lot of other territory in her memoir—life as an English teacher; her breast cancer; the vast differences between Pentecostals and Mennonites, the religion she grew up with; her family relationships; her hot new romance; and her |
new relationship with God—and her peppy enthusiasm almost bounds off the page. Some readers, however, may grow tired of the author’s continuously emphatic tone or her constant attempts to appear slightly naughty by divulging topics good girls would not discuss. Also, she makes entirely too much use of the exclamation point—e.g., “If Lazarus was peacefully rotting there in the tomb and if at the sound of Jesus’s voice, he up and trotted out—well, miraculous! He left death and disease behind, yay! Stank hath no hold on him!” A welcome second installment for readers who enjoyed Janzen’s first memoir. Others may want to turn elsewhere.
DEAR ZARI The Secret Lives of the Women of Afghanistan Kargar, Zarghuna Sourcebooks (288 pp.) $15.99 paperback | Jun. 6, 2012 978-1-4022-6837-3
Heartrending collection of women’s life stories culled from the BBC radio show “Afghan Woman’s Hour.” Kargar presented and produced the show with the goal of providing women in Afghanistan a weekly program that would cut across tribal, social and economic boundaries. The author was chosen in part because she understands and speaks the country’s two primary languages, Dari and Pashtu. Born in Kabul, Kargar and her family fled to Pakistan in 1994, fearing for their safety in the heat of Afghanistan’s civil war. In 2001, the family claimed asylum in the U.K. In line with their homeland’s traditional values, her parents arranged her marriage, at 21, to a distant relative whom Kargar did not love. As the opening chapter, this theme of an Afghan woman accepting an unwanted marriage runs throughout the book, which is rife with the tales of abuse the author heard while producing the radio show. “Regardless of illegality,” she writes, “most women simply obey their family and consider that whatever happens in their lives is God’s will.” Each of the following chapters tells a different woman’s story: a girl given away as a slave to settle a family dispute; a young woman traded to another family in exchange for a second wife for her father; a wife whose gay husband moved his male lover into their home; and women being blamed, even shunned, for failing to produce a son. These terribly sad stories served as a catalyst for change in Kargar’s life, inspiring her to get divorced and make more of her own decisions. An emotional and enlightening reading experience.
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“A provocative and unsettling look at something most take for granted—but shouldn’t.” from privacy
LITTLE BOY BLUE A Puppy’s Rescue from Death Row and His Owner’s Journey for Truth Kavin, Kim Barron’s (256 pp.) $24.99 | Oct. 1, 2012 978-0-7641-6526-9
Freelance journalist Kavin (The Everything Travel Guide to Italy, 2010, etc.) hunts down the story of what happened to her rescue dog Boy Blue. In 2010, the author helped rescue Blue from certain death in an animal shelter in North Carolina. She found him online and was able to quickly provide the lucky survivor with a loving home, where he has flourished. Learning that her new companion might have been infected with ringworm and fearing “that something about his situation had been horribly, horribly wrong,” she applied her investigating skills to uncovering the trail. Her first step was contacting Lulu’s Rescue co-founder Michele Armstrong, who told her that Blue had been “headed for the gas chamber.” The trail then led her to Person County Animal Rescue volunteers in North Carolina, who introduced her to the brutal conditions that Blue faced when he got dumped into the animal shelter. There are 13,000 rescue groups listed online at Petfinder.com, all struggling to find homes for unwanted puppies. The author describes them as functioning “like a modern day version of the underground railroad,” and that’s only the tip of the iceberg. Many unaffiliated volunteers are also involved in rescue efforts. The rescue groups often set standards for shelters and promote the spaying and neutering of animals put up for adoption, as well as finding loving homes, but money and volunteers are in short supply. This book chronicles one of the success stories. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to the Petfinder.com Foundation. A moving call to action.
PRIVACY
Keizer, Garret Picador (208 pp.) $15.00 paperback | Aug. 7, 2012 978-0-312-55484-2 Acclaimed essayist and Harper’s contributor Keizer (The Unwanted Sound of Everything We Want: A Book About Noise, 2010, etc.) conducts a philosophical meditation on the nature of privacy and finds that the “right to be let alone” is a lot more complex than many may think. In an era of phone-hacking scandals, invasive body scans and warrantless electronic snooping, it’s easy to conclude that traditional notions of privacy are under serious assault. But Keizer isn’t interested in restating the obvious. In an intellectually robust discussion of privacy, the author finds that what can 938
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properly be thought of as a true American virtue is actually a lot more precarious than normally presupposed. A man’s home may be his castle, but what about the lady of the house? How much “privacy,” historically speaking, has she been afforded? Does the cleaning woman who visits once per week fare even worse? When does “private” slip into something “secret”—and what’s the difference? With unyielding analytical scrutiny, Keizer raises plenty of doubt about the primacy of so-called private lives. Omnipresent social networks and electronic conveniences aside, the author argues that personal privacy—whether artfully usurped or forcefully restricted—must still be maintained in order for democratically representative governments to exist. Unfortunately, class, gender and race each play a big role in undermining privacy when the needs of “The Market” bump up against individual rights. Keizer provides a profound discourse sure to challenge comfortably held notions about privacy. The consequences of such revelations are vast, and readers will be left considering the implications long after the last page is turned. A provocative and unsettling look at something most take for granted—but shouldn’t.
A LABYRINTH OF KINGDOMS 10,000 Miles Through Islamic Africa
Kemper, Steve Norton (432 pp.) $27.95 | Jun. 25, 2012 978-0-393-07966-1
A spirited reconstruction of the arduous five-year trek into Central Africa by Heinrich Barth (1821–1865), a German scientist exploring for England. Kemper (Reinventing the Wheel: A Story of Genius, Innovation, and Grand Ambition, 2005, etc.) ably renders the intensive research involved in delineating Barth’s life and travels into an engaging narrative. The arrogant, introspective Barth had recently completed his dissertation, learned Arabic and written his travelogue, Wanderings Along the Shores of the Mediterranean, when he was referred to James Richardson, avid English abolitionist and missionary, for his expedition into Central Africa in 1850. Sponsored by Lord Palmerston, then head of the British Foreign Office, the trip was ostensibly commercial, to “make treaties with African potentates,” as well as to spread English civilization and Christianity—the explorers before them had perished by disease and violence. Enduring appalling conditions, such as fever, the deaths of Richardson and other comrades, theft by his Arab guides and especially the lack of funds from England (due to the great lapse in travel time), Barth and his cumbersome camel-laden entourage trekked from Tripoli south through the Sahara. He had to placate the suspicious, murderous Arab chiefs along the way, bribing them with whatever he had, and often being held captive for months. He took assiduous notes about the tribes, mingling with the natives and always asking questions. He discovered a tributary of the Niger, was stranded in Timbuktu
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THAT BOOK ABOUT HARVARD Surviving the World’s Most (In)famous University, One Embarrassment at a Time
and finally rode back to Tripoli in 1855. Back in England, his academic account, when finally published in 1857, was criticized for its tolerant account of the Arabs. With Europe “on the cusp of the imperial age,” his news from Africa was unwelcome. A nicely rounded literary study of an intrepid explorer undone by the cultural biases of the time. (8 pages of illustrations)
BORN TO RISE A Story of Children and Teachers Reaching Their Highest Potential Kenny, Deborah Harper/HarperCollins (256 pp.) $25.99 | Jun. 5, 2012 978-0-06-210620-9
Inspirational account of a woman beating the odds to open quality schools for low-income families in Harlem. In 2001, Kenny, who has a doctorate in comparative international education, created what would become Harlem Village Academies—even though the venture made no sense to her family and friends. A young widow with three children at home, the author had no charter school experience, no building to use for classrooms, no specific plan and little money. She did know enough to realize that without fundraising success, she would never obtain charters from education regulators. However, raising money was extremely difficult without a state charter in hand. Nonetheless, Kenny felt compelled to proceed for reasons she didn’t fully understood. The book is partly memoir; the story of the charter school doesn’t appear until approximately 50 pages in. The author begins with a chronicle of her husband’s death from cancer, followed by the story of her innovative thinking as a business executive, including her stint as group president of Sesame Street Publishing. Kenny shares the development of her thinking about her hoped-for charter school, with its emphasis on building a faculty of the best teachers available in the K-12 range. The parents of the children completed applications, and the spots were filled by an independently run lottery. Although many of the students are lagging below the norm in reading and other subjects, a high percentage of them have shown marked improvement as Kenny’s charter schools have refined teaching and learning techniques. A mostly upbeat book that explains many of the obstacles to success while often glossing over those obstacles and the negative outcomes accompanying the admirable successes.
Kester, Eric Sourcebooks (320 pp.) $14.99 paperback | Jul. 1, 2012 978-1-4022-6750-5
In which the author copes with attending the world’s most demanding institution of higher learning by reducing it to middle-school jokes. Like many freshmen at Harvard, Kester suffered a rude awakening during his first weeks on campus: The smartest kid in his hometown had quickly morphed into, at best, a mediocrity. Academically he couldn’t crack calculus, and he was performing poorly everywhere else too: He locked himself out of his dorm room on move-in day, wearing only his boxers; he rode the bench on the football team; he felt alienated from the sons of old-money Brahmins at the campus’ final clubs. Such modest suffering shouldn’t merit a full-length memoir, a shortcoming Kester attempts to resolve by couching every modest indignity in lowbrow humor. If the book’s cast of characters aren’t actually invented, they certainly adhere to college-comedy stereotypes: the hotheaded football coach, the nerdy math whiz who uses hip-hop slang to boast about his nonexistent sexual prowess, the wacky roommate and the outof-touch college president. The book’s driving force is the most clichéd stereotype of all: the gorgeous, unattainable co-ed. Much of the first half of the book follows Kester’s mooning over this “smokeshow” from a distance, his attempts to catch her attention derailed by some embarrassment or other. The author alternates anecdotes about the downsides of Harvard life (Adderall popping, cheating, constant insecurity) with tales of hijinks. But his comfort zone is cheeseball shtick, from mocking foreign accents to bathroom humor—which makes the final pages’ platitudes about growing maturity and respect for diversity ring all the more hollow. College humor is supposed to be a little lowbrow, but Kester is stuck in a mode of repetitive and ultimately tiring gags.
THE GOOD SON The Life of Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini Kriegel, Mark Free Press (320 pp.) $27.00 | Sep. 18, 2012 978-0-7432-8635-0
FOXSports.com columnist Kriegel (Pistol: The Life of Pete Maravich, 2007, etc.) tells the story of a Youngstown, Ohio, lightweight boxer whose brief championship reign included a notorious 1982 bout that ended with the death of opponent Duk Koo Kim. The author begins with that deadly fight and then shows us a Santa Monica restaurant where Mancini regularly hangs |
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k i r ku s q & a w i t h m a r i lu h e n n e r Th e s e days , m o r e p e o p l e recognize Marilu Henner for her awe-inspiring memory than for her role as Elaine Nardo on the cult TV classic Taxi. Her 60 Minutes appearance several years ago, in which she demonstrated her Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory, has attracted the attention of scientists and casual observers alike. When she’s not undergoing testing with researchers at UC-Irvine or filming on the set of a new movie, Henner’s at work on her Total Health Makeover lifestyle program. The latest addition to the stable, her ninth book Total Memory Makeover, is a fun and invaluable guide which proves that those who can’t remember the past are doomed to repeat it. A blend of anecdote, practical exercises and advice, Henner offers readers a unique glimpse into her singular brain and shares what’s helped her organize and flex that exceptional memory of hers. She’s sure to unlock at least one long-forgotten memory from the cobwebbed recesses of readers’ minds.
Total Memory Makeover:
Uncover Your Past, Take Charge of Your Future Marilu Henner Gallery/Simon & Schuster (256 pp.) $26.00 Apr. 24, 2012 978-1-4516-5121-8
over again. They can never see how they’re ignoring the red flags at the beginning, or how they’re bringing a certain personality or characteristic to the table. If you’re able to bring your past forward into your new experiences, you’re not making those types of mistakes…If you’re able to look back 10 years ago and recognize that you had a similar incident, you won’t behave like that anymore. If you’re able to look at your past, at your failures and successes, you’ll be able to avoid this. This is conscious living. We all walk around so unconsciously all the time, without filling ourselves with the good things in our lives. Memory enables us to move forward in a more conscientious, informed and enlightened mindset. Q: You’ve been working with researchers at UC-Irvine for years now. Have they discovered what makes a memory like yours tick? A: Yes, they’ve been taking skin samples, hair samples, blood samples, saliva. They’ve scanned my brain. They’re always testing me. They’re publishing a paper, which is due out soon, so I can’t give too much away. There’s a lot of information they still don’t know. They do know there are sizable differences in certain areas of my brain and that of someone with a normal memory. I’ve seen the scans, and they made me gasp.
Q: You’re one of about a dozen people who’ve been classified with Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory (HSAM). When did you first notice that your memory was different? A: I’ve known since I was six years old that I had the best memory of anyone around me. I was the family historian, always coming up with the answers. I used to put myself to sleep meditating: What did I do a week ago, a month ago, a year ago? It was like reading a little snippet of a past experience. When I was 18 years old, on May 24, 1970, I was talking with my good friend Irene. She said, “When are you going to realize no one else has this crazy memory of yours?” I knew my family didn’t, even though everyone in my family has a great memory. But nobody else around me could do what I could do. [When I met the others with HSAM], I definitely felt a great kinship. Having this kind of memory is almost like speaking another language. We were able to sit and say, “You’ve had this kind of experience” or “People have done this with you.”
Q: Why? A: Because I couldn’t believe the difference in size in certain sections of my brain—literally, there was a section of my brain that was 10 times larger than a normal person’s. There’s some debate about whether this is nature or nurture, but…for me, it’s been a combination of nature and nurture. That’s what I wanted to share with people in this book. There are ways of sparking, firing off different sections of people’s brains that haven’t been fired off before. It’s self-reflection, but it’s also a blast. It’s fun to look back on your life like a movie you’ve seen or a book that you’ve read and loved.
Q: You suggest developing your memory can lead to improved physical and mental health. In what ways?
–By Karen Calabria
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A: First of all, people tend to make the same mistakes over and over again. It becomes their norm over time. If people are happy, that’s great. But a lot of the time, people find themselves in a rut. They cannot get a grip on what it is in their own behavior that might be re-creating the same scenarios over and over again. People that I work with on memory work, they’re often picking the same guy over and |
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“A sharp, illuminating history of ideas showing how America has wrestled with birth, childhood, work, marriage, old age and death.” from the mansion of happiness
out today with David Mamet, actor Ed O’Neill and others. Kriegel’s cinematic style—quick cuts, lots of dialogue, crisp characterization—works well in a story that in its early stages will remind readers of the Rocky films—and why not? Stallone became a friend and produced a TV movie about Mancini’s life. The author sketches some quick scenes of family history (the first arrived at Ellis Island in 1913), the early family struggles, his father’s promising boxing career (terminated by injuries in World War II) and Mancini’s rise in the amateur ranks. Spliced throughout are sad economic portraits of Youngstown, depressing accounts of the prominence of the Mob in the area and some scattered history of televised boxing. Kriegel shows us that Mancini was not a flashy Sugar Ray Leonard but a straightahead slug-and-be-slugged fighter who wore his opponents down with ferocity and heavy punches. The cameras and celebrities loved him (Bill Cosby shocked Mancini’s handlers when he gave Mancini advice in his corner during the Kim fight). Kriegel deals in some detail with the death fight, devoting a chapter to Kim’s family (he returns to them at the end). Mancini soon lost his title, tried a couple of comebacks, tried Hollywood, married, had children and divorced. Mostly entertaining but not a standout. Coulda been a contender, but the author touches too lightly on the hard questions about celebrity, violence and money in America. (Author tour to Buffalo, Chicago, Cleveland, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New York, Pittsburgh, Washington, D.C., Youngstown, Ohio)
EXIT The Endings that Set Us Free
Lawrence-Lightfoot, Sara Sarah Crichton/Farrar, Straus and Giroux (272 pp.) $26.00 | Jun. 1, 2012 978-0-374-15119-5
The methodology and science behind exits becomes fascinating material in the hands of sociologist LawrenceLightfoot (Education/Harvard Univ.; The Third Chapter: Passion, Risk, and Adventure in the 25 Years After 50, 2009, etc.). Because they have become “signposts of courage and treachery in my life,” the author sensitively plumbs the intricacies of departures with personal resolve. Whether exits portend hope or an entrepreneurial new beginning or reiterate failure and shortcomings, she writes, they are ubiquitous. Most often, smaller exits foreshadow (and groom us for) larger ones to come. Lawrence-Lightfoot draws insights from published source material but most effectively from dozens of interviews with subjects about their exit narratives. Examples: an Iranian CEO who departed his home country for New York City, conflicted by loyalties to his Middle Eastern blood family; a man who abandoned the Catholic priesthood for true love; a gay man whose young exit from the closet introduced a plethora of new concerns and anxieties, but who emerged at 58 remarking how it remains “a gift to be part of a counterculture.” Elsewhere, |
the dignified retirement from a beloved job and the relentless bullying of an ethnic child prove alternatingly heartbreaking, transformative and elucidating, as do chats with a pragmatic psychotherapist and a physician, who cites medical exits as a “letting go” of the physical body. The resonant testimonials Lawrence-Lightfoot spotlights nicely dovetail into a conclusion befitting her research into the inevitability of departures and our individual choice to accept or bemoan them. A finely researched examination that sheds a new light on the catharsis of goodbye.
THE MANSION OF HAPPINESS A History of Life and Death Lepore, Jill Knopf (304 pp.) $27.95 | Jun. 7, 2012 978-0-307-59299-6
A sharp, illuminating history of ideas showing how America has wrestled with birth, childhood, work, marriage, old age
and death. Brilliantly written and engaging throughout, the latest from New Yorker staff writer Lepore (American History/Harvard Univ.; The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party’s Revolution and the Battle Over American History, 2011, etc.) is about how American society reacts to change. The author starts with the perfect metaphor: In 1860, a young entrepreneur named Milton Bradley created a popular board game called Life. The game had long existed in earlier versions, but Bradley gave it a capitalist spin, changing it from a game of good versus evil to one that “rewards only those virtues that lead to Wealth and Success, like Industry and Perseverance.” From there, Lepore tackles conception and how the famous pictures of a fetus in Life in the mid ’60s fostered the relatively modern idea of “being unborn as a stage of human life, a stage that was never on any board game.” The author shows how E.B. White’s surprisingly controversial novel Stuart Little created a small revolution in a country that has always worshipped childhood; she sees it as “an indictment of both the childishness of children’s literature and the juvenilization of American culture.” Lepore’s topics are broad, and they lead her into many interesting byways—e.g., how eugenics was once considered a perfectly progressive idea and how contraception once seemed to threaten society in ways even Rick Santorum has not imagined. She also considers the legacy of Karen Ann Quinlan, the brain-dead young woman whose case helped foment arguments for both the right to die and the right to life, and discusses her visit to the creepy laboratory of cryogenics founder Robert C.W. Ettinger. A superb examination of the never-ending effort to enhance life, as well as the commensurate refusal to ever let it go. (Author tour to New York and Boston)
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A SENSE OF DIRECTION Pilgrimage for the Restless and the Hopeful
Lewis-Kraus, Gideon Riverhead (352 pp.) $25.95 | May 10, 2012 978-1-59448-725-5
Peripatetic ruminations on the meaning of life and finding a sense of direction accompany Lewis-Kraus across three very different countries. Whatever one’s reasons for undertaking the Camino de Santiago—spiritual, touristic, to lose weight, or just for the opportunity to complain about the blisters—the experience is memorable. For the author, a freelance essayist, the trip began as a spontaneous diversion, a chance to temporarily leave behind the tediousness of everyday life and reconnect with a friend who similarly had too much free time. Sardonic discussions about the meaninglessness of blindly following an ancient footpath seamlessly give way to nuggets of personal insight both sacred and secular, and Lewis-Kraus was moved to follow the trek with a Hasidic pilgrimage to Ukraine and a circuit of 88 Buddhist temples in Japan. Pilgrims, beyond “look[ing] at each bus going by with the affection Robert Frost had for woodpiles,” spend much time deep in conversation about subjects as diverse as giraffes, the apostles and the “lazy geographical determinism of Northern Europeans.” However, the humor and the physical torment mask an inner journey through the realm of relationships, aspirations and the soul. Using the not-entirely-dissimilar legends and disciplines of Catholicism, Judaism and Buddhism as a spatial framework and scenic background, Lewis-Kraus explores the subtle impulses that drive people to follow certain paths. High-minded flights of intellectual fancy, however, are only so much use when the physical world, in the form of “a flatulent mixture of schwitz and acrid stewed kasha” intrudes. Thought provoking and engaging in the style of Bruce Chatwin or Paul Theroux, with ample sides of Thomas Merton and Augusten Burroughs.
DECEPTION The Untold Story of EastWest Espionage Today
Lucas, Edward & Swain, James Walker (304 pp.) $26.00 | Jun. 19, 2012 978-0-8027-1157-1
A senior editor at the Economist demonstrates that the Russian secret police state is alive and well and watching the West. In a deeply researched though occasionally murky work, Lucas (The New Cold War: Putin’s Russia and the Threat to the West, 2008) tracks the historical tentacles of East Bloc spying as well as its most recent infiltrations in the West. In the damning series of early chapters, the author slams 942
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Vladimir Putin’s “pirate state,” a regime mired in corruption, for flagrant disregard of the law—one example: the 2009 death in custody of Hermitage Capital Management tax lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. Lucas then concentrates on the espionage history of the Baltic states, “an ideal base for anti-communist activities.” He writes that he was fascinated as a youth by spy literature and a crumbling Eastern Europe and “studied unfashionable languages such as Polish, and practiced them by befriending bitter old émigrés in the dusty clubs and offices of west London.” In order to gain knowledge, influence and power from the West, the Soviets have to steal secrets; they do so by employing innumerable “new illegals” who have moved to the West from Sovietbloc countries after the close of the Cold War. The author focuses mainly on Anna Chapman and her colleagues. Many of the most effective “spooks” succeed by their very blandness and ability to blend into a diverse society like the United States, writes Lucas. He looks at the uneven success of Western spying in the East and closes with a fascinating behind-bars interview with an Estonian official who was informing for the KGB. An urgent call for the West to shake off complacency and protect itself from being duped. (8-page b/w insert)
GIFTS OF THE CROW How Perception, Emotion, and Thought Allow Smart Birds to Behave Like Humans
Marzluff, John M. & Angell, Tony Illus. by Angell, Tony Free Press (288 pp.) $25.00 | Jun. 5, 2012 978-1-4391-9873-5
Bird researcher Marzluff (Wildlife Sciences/Univ. of Washington; The Pinyon Jay, 2010, etc.) and artist and nature writer Angell (Puget Sound Through an Artist’s Eye, 2009, etc.) look at how crows and other similar birds think, learn and remember. Various birds in the Corvidae family—crows, ravens, magpies and others—have been observed fashioning tools out of pieces of wire, implementing multistep plans to obtain food, and even “surfing” on air currents using pieces of tree bark. All are unusually intelligent-seeming bird behaviors, and Marzluff and other researchers have devoted themselves to analyzing these “clever, opportunistic, social, and associative learner[s].” Here the authors use a mix of research results, anecdotal observations and basic neurobiology to illuminate these mysterious behaviors. The most effective section deals with Marzluff ’s project in which researchers wore caveman masks when handling crows in order to gauge whether the birds recognized and remembered specific faces; they appeared to do so with uncanny accuracy. Elsewhere, the authors show how some crows, ravens and magpies are able to convincingly imitate human speech and explain how the birds’ specialized respiratory systems and relatively large brains make it possible. Marzluff and Angell also examine some wild crows’ tendency to leave small “gifts,” such as shiny objects or flowers, for humans that feed them
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“Entertaining and likely to teach most readers something new—an especially good read in an election year.” from where they stand
regularly—an action that may be deliberate or simply accidental. The book isn’t without flaws: A chapter on how and why birds play gets bit bogged down by scientific jargon, and while Angell’s illustrations of birds are exquisitely detailed, his renderings of human beings are oddly amateurish. Overall, however, the book will instill in many readers a sense of wonder and curiosity at what these birds can do. An insightful look at some of our surprisingly capable feathered friends.
A SONG IN THE NIGHT A Memoir of Resilience Massie, Bob Talese/Doubleday (192 pp.) $24.00 | May 15, 2012 978-0-385-53575-5
Born with hemophilia, Massie’s childhood combined bouts of intense pain and disappointment with unabashed joy and lavish family affection. In this moving memoir, the author (Loosing the Bonds, 1997) recounts how this doubled-edged environment laid the foundation for a life filled with compassion and activism. Frequently bedridden and shut out of normal adolescent activities, the author became a reader and thinker. “As I observed others, I also inched away from my self-centered view,” he writes. “I realized that many, if not most, other people faced their own struggles.” Massie continually questioned perceived injustices or institutional unfairness. Whether these unjust conditions existed in the form of racism, cultural and class divides in college, a haphazard and unjust system of free-market health insurance or belligerent corporate attitudes, Massie sought change for those affected. His educational and professional credentials are impressive. He attended Yale Divinity School, Harvard Business School, completed “a valuable stint at the Kennedy School of Government,” taught at Harvard Divinity School and ran for political office in Massachusetts. No matter which issue Massie faced, his goal remained the same: “I want everyone to thrive.” Massie faced a severe health challenge in the form of Hepatitis C, which debilitated him for years until he received a liver transplant, and years earlier, he had contracted HIV during a blood transfusion, though the disease never developed into AIDS. Massie offered himself to Massachusetts General Hospital as a research subject, resulting in a seismic shift in how the medical field looked at HIV. Without sentimentality or a partisan point of view, Massie offers a refreshing alternative from the divisive discourse rampant within much of today’s culture. “Let us choose a new way of talking to each other that honors each other’s dignity even as we disagree, perhaps profoundly, with each other’s views,” he writes in the epilogue. A testament to the strength and goodness within the human spirit.
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WHERE THEY STAND The American Presidents in the Eyes of Voters and Historians Merry, Robert W. Simon & Schuster (320 pp.) $28.00 | Jun. 26, 2012 978-1-4516-2540-0
Rating the presidents is a fascinating game. Merry (A Country of Vast Designs: James K. Polk, the Mexican War and the Conquest of the American Continent, 2009) looks at the criteria and invites readers to make their own assessments. The author—editor of the National Interest and former Washington correspondent for the Wall Street Journal—offers two specific criteria for evaluating presidential success: electoral success and the verdict of historians, as recorded by several polls since 1948, when Arthur Schlesinger Sr. published his pioneering presidential ratings. Merry gives the judgment of the electorate equal if not greater weight than the historians’ opinions. In particular, he argues that serving two terms and being succeeded by a president of the same party is a clear sign of the voters’ approbation. A dozen presidents meet that criterion of success, not all of whom (McKinley and Coolidge, for example) get high marks from historians. Presidential reputations shift with time, as well—e.g., Grant, formerly relegated to the bottom rank because of corruption during his administration, has risen in historians’ estimation after a reevaluation of how he handled Reconstruction. Merry also looks at such factors as presidents’ handling of wars, noting that voters want wars to come to a clean conclusion and to advance the national interest in some definable way; by this standard, Truman (Korea) and LBJ (Vietnam) failed their duty as commanders in chief. Most interesting are the “split decision” presidents, whose second term fell short after a promising beginning—see Eisenhower and Nixon. Not surprisingly, Merry has a fond spot for Polk, who accomplished much in a single term and did not seek a second. On the other hand, his high evaluation of Reagan will not sit well with everyone. Entertaining and likely to teach most readers something new—an especially good read in an election year. (20 b/w photos)
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THE BLISS EXPERIMENT 28 Days to Personal Transformation
Meshorer, Sean Atria (288 pp.) $24.00 | May 8, 2012 978-1-4516-4211-7
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truth converge. Based on a “distillation of the highest and most effective practices found in each of the world’s religions,” the author developed the book through a series of seminars. Here he sets out lessons organized into 28 chapters, each representing a step along the journey to bliss. The chapters begin with a story about a person struggling with the issue at hand (striving for wealth, cynicism, anger, etc.), and then Meshorer discusses the science behind this particular practice to ground the recommendation in practical benefits—e.g., the value of stress reduction through meditation. The author also includes a spiritual section in each chapter, which provides a deeper understanding and perspective for each of the practices. The chapters end with an exercise to move readers forward toward bliss, and QR codes throughout the book offer access to online videos that further illustrate the concepts. Meshorer conceived of this pathway to bliss while battling chronic back pain, and he aims to combine “the ancient and contemporary, Eastern and Western, scientific and spiritual, and practical and mystical into one unified whole.” In clear, concise chapters, the author brings together concepts like forgiveness, gratitude, living in the present, meditation and the power of service above self. The book will have broad appeal, even though Meshorer admits that 28 days to attain bliss may be optimistic.
PRIZE FIGHT The Race and the Rivalry to Be the First in Science
Meyers, Morton A. Palgrave Macmillan (256 pp.) $27.00 | Jun. 5, 2012 978-0-230-33890-6
Meyers (Radiology and Medicine/ School of Medicine, SUNY Stony Brook; Happy Accidents: Serendipity in Modern Medical Breakthroughs, 2007, etc.) examines distortions in the process of assigning credit for major scientific discoveries. The author thinks reform is necessary to encourage creativity despite the financial pressures of competitive team science. He debunks the “dogma that science is self-correcting,” giving evidence of failures in the process of peer review, and he cites instances of university department heads taking sole credit for discoveries made by student researchers and instances of outright fraud (e.g., the notorious 1986 Baltimore Affair). Priority disputes, writes Meyers, are not new to science (see the LeibnizNewton calculus controversy), and Dmitri Mendeleev’s groundbreaking discovery of the periodic table was denied a Nobel Prize. Robert Gallo and Luc A. Montagnier argued over who should receive credit for the discovery of the AIDS virus. It took a meeting and signed agreement between President Ronald Reagan and Prime Minister Jacques Chirac to ensure the right of both the American and the French scientist to claim credit. They finally reached a settlement in 1991, with Gallo conceding priority, and Montagnier was awarded the Nobel in 2010. Another example of a scientific dispute arose in 2005, 944
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when the first of a series of full-page advertisements appeared in the New York Times with the headline “This Shameful Wrong Must Be Righted!” The ads—which attacked the Nobel Prize committee for awarding to Paul Lauterbur and Sir Peter Mansfield the prize for work that “led to the applications of magnetic resonance in medical imaging”—were purchased by another claimant who had been passed over, Raymond Damadian. Meyers, an expert in the field, knew both Lauterbur and Damadian, and he gives a fascinating account of the scientific issues involved as well as the political aspects of the dispute. A thought-provoking examination of the political side of high-stakes science.
OZZIE’S SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT Lessons from the Dugout, the Clubhouse, and the Doghouse
Morrissey, Rick Times/Henry Holt (288 pp.) $26.00 | May 22, 2012 978-0-8050-9500-5
A Chicago Sun-Times sports columnist examines the highly idiosyncratic ways of Ozzie Guillen, baseball’s most controversial manager. Well, that didn’t take long. Only days into the 2012 season and the Miami Marlins suspended their new manager for five games for praising Fidel Castro, remarks that enraged the city’s Cuban community. Whether this or some future furor results in his firing, the episode appears to confirm Morrissey’s prediction that things will “end messy” for Guillen in Miami, just as they did in Chicago with the White Sox. In this debut, Morrissey employs “a Ten Commandments format” common to business management guides, almost as if to demonstrate how resistant Guillen’s messy style is to any traditional template. Too maddeningly contradictory to ever be pinned down, Guillen lives for the spotlight, disregarding “rules” that normally apply to sound management. Thus, he likes “to be in the hot seat,” but he’s unusually sensitive to criticism; he refuses to throw players under the bus, except when he does; he forthrightly confesses to working only for “fucking money,” but his “biggest satisfaction” is winning championship rings; he’s the first Latin manager to win the World Series, but a coach for the Dodgers, a Dominican native, thinks Guillen has “embarrassed every Latino player, coach and front office person.” Morrissey credits Guillen for his baseball acumen, energy and drive, traits that allowed him to embrace a foreign culture from the age of 17 and succeed as a player and manager. But he wonders whether the drama he creates, almost all of it attributable to his fabulously profane, unguarded tongue, will undo him. In today’s buttoned-down, stat-driven era, Guillen is a throwback, a reminder of when baseball burst with colorful characters and when a skipper could be every bit as brash, fiery and impulsive as Guillen and still keep his job. A remarkably timely dispatch from the turbulent Land of Oz. (8 pages of b/w photos)
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“Engaging, useful account of the similarities between humans and other animals.” from zoobiquity
LIFE AFTER MURDER Five Men in Search of Redemption
Mullane, Nancy PublicAffairs (384 pp.) $26.99 | Jun. 26, 2012 978-1-61039-029-3
A radio journalist immerses herself in the lives of five murderers incarcerated in San Quentin State Prison in California. NPR reporter and producer Mullane received remarkable cooperation from the prison staff as well as her subjects as they sought parole for good behavior and changed character. Though the parole process is long and complex, the decisions can be overturned by the governor without detailed explanation. However, for obvious reasons, most governors tend to reject parole requests from murderers even when prison officials and parole board members favor release. Mullane was surprised to learn that of the approximately 1,000 convicted murderers paroled in California in the last 21 years, not one has murdered again. The accounts of the five prisoners—Don Cronk, Ed Ramirez, Rich Rael, Phillip Seiler and Jesse Reed—interweave throughout the book, making the narrative difficult to track at times. The author examines their young lives before the murders, the circumstances of their crimes, their prison terms and their attempts to readjust to the world outside prison. She recounts interviews with family members, lovers and friends, but does not approach those close to the murder victims, a conscious editorial decision that certainly spared suffering for those loved ones but detracts from the book’s emotional impact. Nonetheless, Mullane demonstrates clearly that each of the five men was to some extent a caring person who made a terrible decision on an especially bad day and has spent years trying to sincerely atone for the murder. The author believes in rehabilitation and second chances, and her accounts are unusual in their optimism about inmates living productively behind bars and after their release. Occasionally uneven, but overall an impressive investigative work with interesting findings that tend to contradict conventional wisdom.
ZOOBIQUITY What Animals Can Teach Us About Health and the Science of Healing
Natterson-Horowitz, Barbara & Bowers, Kathryn Knopf (384 pp.) $27.95 | Jun. 12, 2012 978-0-307-59348-1
Natterson-Horowitz (Cardiology/UCLA School of Medicine) and former Atlantic Monthly editor Bowers investigate the correlation between human and animal health issues. |
Cancer, heart attacks, obesity and STDs are afflictions most people associate with humans. However, the authors demonstrate that these are also common ailments in the animal world. Fascinated with the health connection between animals and humans, the authors coin the term “zoobiquity,” which means the “connecting, species-spanning approach to the diagnostic and therapeutic puzzles of clinical medicine.” By accepting our common genetic backgrounds, the authors propose an increase in the exchange of medical information between doctors and veterinarians, as human behavior parallels that of animals in many different arenas. Masturbation, homosexuality and rape are common in the animal world. The “feather-picking disorder” of birds plucking feathers until they bleed is similar to the “cutting” teenage girls administer to themselves. Anorexia can be linked to the nervous behaviors of our “animal forebears,” who lived with the constant fear of not having enough to eat, or of being eaten. The wild behavior of some adolescent males mimics the impulsive antics of still-maturing rats and primates. Sudden noises or traumatic accidents and natural disasters cause an uptick in cardiomyopathy in humans and animals, even if there is no evidence of heart disease in either species. Whether discussing koala bears with chlamydia, stallions with performance dysfunction, or Tasmanian wallabies intoxicated on poppy sap, the authors provide solid evidence that humans are not as far removed from the rest of the natural world as we might have thought. Engaging, useful account of the similarities between humans and other animals. (First printing of 100,000. Author tour to Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Washington, D.C.)
ALL TOLD My Art and Life Among Athletes, Playboys, Bunnies, and Provocateurs Neiman, LeRoy Lyons Press (320 pp.) $29.95 | Jun. 5, 2012 978-0-7627-7837-9
The nonagenarian artist reviews his long career as one of the country’s most popular and public painters. Neiman’s most interesting pages deal with the earliest days of his life: family history, discovery of his ability, early fondness for boxers and poolrooms, days in the military. He landed at Normandy only days after D-Day. Following some formal study after the war, he headed for Chicago and a future that would one day glow as brightly as one of his signature paintings. Early on, he fell under the influence (and payroll) of Playboy’s Hugh Hefner, and he writes with an odd cagey frankness about the parties in Hefner’s mansion. He tells of his marriage to a woman whose capacity for tolerance seems mythical then proceeds into the less interesting final two-thirds of the volume, which often seem more like a chronicle of his adventures with celebrities from the worlds of sport, Hollywood, Vegas, politics and even the Mob. He declares repeatedly that he doesn’t really care that the professional art world shunned him at times—especially when he
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became a fixture on The Wide World of Sports and other shows. But he mentions this so many times that his claim rings hollow. Occasionally he offers something like cultural criticism (“We’re a country that craves stars”), and he reproduces a generous, colorful assortment of his work throughout the decades—so once again we see those familiar, iconic images of Muhammad Ali, Bobby Fischer, Mickey Mantle and so many others. Although Neiman’s words are not often extraordinary, his images caught and characterized an era.
PEOPLE WHO EAT DARKNESS The True Story of a Young Woman Who Vanished from the Streets of Tokyo—and the Evil that Swallowed Her Up Parry, Richard Lloyd Farrar, Straus and Giroux (464 pp.) $16.00 paperback | Jun. 5, 2012 978-0-374-23059-3
Haunting story of a murder in Tokyo in 2000. In the summer of that year, a 21-year-old British woman, Lucie Blackman, disappeared while on a date. Seven months later her remains were found in a seaside cave. Times (London) Tokyo bureau chief Parry (In the Time of Madness: Indonesia on the Edge of Chaos, 2005) paints portraits of both the victim and perpetrator, exploring how Blackman’s past led her to Japan to find work as a “hostess,” a little-understood profession with murky boundaries that defies easy explanation. In describing the months spent hunting for signs of the missing woman, Parry gives readers an inside view of the Tokyo police force. The Blackman family was a constant presence in Tokyo during the search. By explaining their unhappy dealings with the police, use of media appearances to keep attention on the case, and increasingly desperate attempts to find answers, Parry gives the story an extra sense of depth and urgency. The account of the trial of Joji Obara, Blackman’s mystery date, serves as a window not just into Obara’s mind, but also into Japan’s legal system. While much of his life remains a mystery, the author sheds some light on Obara’s character through family history and Obara’s participation in his defense. Though Parry is a journalist, this book often has the feel of a memoir. In the beginning, this disturbs the flow of the narrative, but eventually the author becomes one of the characters and the asides become an enjoyable part of the story. A fresh, compelling read for fans of true crime and slowly unfolding mysteries. (10 b/w illustrations)
WAIT The Art and Science of Delay Partnoy, Frank PublicAffairs (288 pp.) $26.99 | Jun. 26, 2012 978-1-61039-004-0
A leading expert on financial market regulation studies the virtues of delay and even inaction. In the aftermath of the 2008 economic crisis, Partnoy (Law and Finance/Univ. of San Diego; The Match King: Ivar Kreuger, the Financial Genius Behind a Century of Wall Street Scandals, 2009, etc.) asked “why our leading bankers, regulators and others were so short-sighted and wreaked such havoc on our economy.” While there is a high premium today for speed, the author suggests that there are serious downsides to rapid decision-making, unless it is accompanied by long-term strategic thinking and planning. Partnoy’s interdisciplinary approach uses elements of behavioral economics, neuroscience and even sports, as he shows how professional tennis and baseball players give themselves the extra milliseconds needed to process the trajectory of a ball before responding. Good judgment depends on allowing enough time for necessary mental processing to occur. The decision may appear to be spontaneous, but prior experience is almost always a factor—whether it occurs preconsciously, in milliseconds, or consciously, in seconds or longer time frames. Partnoy’s results are groundbreaking and a potential corrective to modern pressures for rapid response, whether on the playing field, in high-speed computer trading and corporate boardrooms, or on the battlefield. The author argues that although circumstances vary—each having its own requirements—and one size does not fit all, society must foster long-term decision-making in addition to making time for better shorter-term efforts. A fascinating addition to the study of decision-making. File alongside Malcolm Gladwell, Dan Ariely, Jonah Lehrer and other similar writers.
PLANES, TRAINS, AND AUTO-RICKSHAWS A Journey Through Modern India Pedersen, Laura Fulcrum (224 pp.) $16.00 paperback | Jul. 17, 2012 978-1-55591-618-3
A fun and quirky but sometimes chaotic travelogue that reveals the many conflicts and contradictions underlying
life in modern India. Journalist and humorist Pedersen (Buffalo Gal, 2008, etc.) wanted to travel to India for many years but was afraid of what she would find there. In 2010, she finally did, “[throwing] 946
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“A genuinely important book that casts the problem of sex trafficking in America into stunning, heartbreaking relief.” from runaway girl
caution to the wind the way one does when climbing aboard Coney Island’s rackety Cyclone roller coaster.” As she made her way from New Delhi in the north to Goa in the south, what she discovered fascinated her as much as it often proved frustrating to comprehend. The world’s largest “democrazy” was a place where people always seemed to be celebrating some festival or another and where “bribes, kickbacks, reams of red tape, and [bureaucratic] incompetence on a massive scale are part of daily life.” It was also a place of bewildering contrasts. Sadhus, longhaired holy men who wandered festivals covered in body paint and little else, carried cell phones. In the major cities, Hindu temples and architectural remnants of the British raj flanked ultra-modern skyscrapers. Bollywood, the multibillion-dollar Indian moviemaking industry, made and exported films that scrupulously avoided “tonsil hockey kissing, nudity or heavy drug use” but that had no difficulty depicting rape scenes and bloody violence. Pedersen follows the well-worn trope of the Western traveler trying to make sense of a profoundly complex and alien culture, and she includes sections that describe major cultural elements and figures. Her main achievement is her avoidance of the clichés that come from this approach; she infuses idiosyncratic observations with mostly genuine insight. Meandering entertainment.
TRANSITIONS OF THE HEART Stories of Love, Struggle and Acceptance by Mothers of Transgender and Gender Variant Children
Pepper, Rachel--Ed. Cleis (240 pp.) $16.95 paperback | May 13, 2012 978-1-57344-788-1
A stark, important anthology of essays by mothers of transgender and gender vari-
ant children. Pepper (co-author: The Transgender Child: A Handbook for Families and Professionals, 2008, etc.) collects more than 30 accounts written by a wide variety of mothers of a wide variety of children. These short vignettes outline the oftentimes heartwrenching social, psychological and physical trials faced by variant gender individuals and their families. For those who assume transgender issues manifest sometime around puberty or only when sexual desire arises, these stories demonstrate quite powerfully that the sex one is attracted to and the gender one feels oneself to be are vastly different subjects. Whether born female and identifying as male, the reverse, or somewhere in between, a remarkable commonality among these mothers’ observations is how young their children were when they began identifying with the other sex—many as early as 2 or 3. One mother describes her preschool-age male-identified daughter asking, “Mom, when is my penis going to grow in?” Many of the mothers show the often-conflicting impulse to protect their children from bullying and ostracism while simultaneously wishing to encourage them to self-express and grow. A number of mothers |
depict their own transitioning of sorts from denial or guilt and initially “protecting” their “family, friends, and acquaintances from” their “kid’s gender identity” to later “ ‘coming out’ as the parent of a transgender child.” Each of these intimate tales of self-discovery are so brief as to be nearly indistinguishable, but the collection’s overall effect gives voice to the desperate need for language to cope with one of the most socially challenging states of being. (First printing of 25,000)
RUNAWAY GIRL Escaping Life on the Streets, One Helping Hand at a Time
Phelps, Carissa with Warren, Larkin Viking (320 pp.) $26.95 | Jul. 9, 2012 978-0-670-02372-1 A California attorney and youth advocate’s rivetingly raw account of the years she spent as a runaway, juvenile delinquent and prostitute. Phelps grew up with 11 brothers and sisters in “a noisy, crowded house where the competition for space, food, and attention never stopped” and where money and parental affection were in short supply. To escape, the author began frequenting the homes of neighborhood friends. By the time she was 12, she had become adept at “strategizing about where to sleep and how (not even what) I was going to eat.” Her habits led her exasperated mother to abandon her at the Fresno County juvenile hall. From there, she took to the streets and became entangled with a series of pimps and drug addicts, who brutalized her both physically and emotionally. Two dispiriting years later, Phelps landed at Wakefield, a last-chance reform institution for girls, where she met two people who changed her life: a counselor who helped her regain her self-esteem and a teacher who reignited her love of mathematics. After leaving Wakefield, Phelps returned to school, graduated, went to college at Fresno State and completed a joint J.D./business degree program at UCLA. But the fight was not over. In her personal life, she “burned through friendships, drank [herself] silly, and dated recklessly.” Only after she made the commitment to help troubled, sexually exploited girls did Phelps begin to find an end to the restlessness that had kept her on the run. A genuinely important book that casts the problem of sex trafficking in America into stunning, heartbreaking relief.
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“A wonderful, eye-opening account of humans versus disease that deserves to share the shelf with such classics as Microbe Hunters and Rats, Lice and History.” from spillover
NO TIME TO LOSE A Life in Pursuit of Deadly Viruses Piot, Peter Norton (380 pp.) $28.95 | May 28, 2012 978-0-393-06316-5
London School of Tropical Medicine director Piot gives a boots-on-theground account of the global struggle to contain two potentially devastating pandemics: Ebola hemorrhagic fever and AIDS. The former U.N. undersecretary general and director of UNAIDS describes himself as a “privileged witness and actor in the history of two of the most extraordinary adventures of our time.” Growing up in a small Flemish farming village, his concern to “work for greater social justice and to travel” led him to choose infectious diseases as a medical specialty, despite advice from a professor who claimed that contagious diseases were mostly under control. In 1976, as a newly minted doctor and microbiologist, he was working in an Antwerp laboratory when they received samples of the then-unknown Ebola virus. There was a deadly outbreak in Zaire, and he was sent there to work with an international medical team to discover its mode of transmission and learn more about its characteristics. The major cause of the contagion was faulty sanitation in hospitals and in preparations for funerals; thankfully, public-health measures ultimately contained the virus. In addition to chronicling his work with the disease, Piot graphically describes the government’s corruption and the impoverishment of the population. Six years later, AIDS surfaced as a disease apparently restricted to gay men, but cases began emerging of men and women in Africa and elsewhere who were not gay but exhibited symptoms of the disease. Blood donors and drug users were also being infected. At an international conference, Piot connected with U.S. infectious disease specialists from the National Institutes of Health. Through these contacts, he was able to procure American and European funding for “a second trip to Zaire that changed [his] life.” An absorbing memoir in which the author learns to combat deadly diseases and maneuver in the international political scene.
SPILLOVER Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic Quammen, David Norton (480 pp.) $28.95 | Oct. 1, 2012 978-0-393-06680-7
Nature writer and intrepid traveler Quammen (The Reluctant Mr. Darwin, 2006, etc.) sums up in one absorbing volume what we know about some of the world’s scariest scourges: Ebola, AIDS, 948
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pandemic influenza—and what we can do to thwart the “NBO,” the Next Big One. The author discusses zoonoses, infectious diseases that originate in animals and spread to humans. The technical term is “spillover.” It’s likely that all infections began as spillovers. Some, like Ebola and lesser-known viral diseases (Nipah, Hendra, Marburg), are highly transmissible and virulent, but so far have been limited to sporadic outbreaks. They persist because they are endemic in a reservoir population through a process of mutual adaptation. Finding that reservoir holds the key to control and prevention and gives Quammen’s accounts the thrill of the chase and the derring-do of field research in rain forests and jungles and even teeming Asian cities where monkeys run wild. The author chronicles his travels around the world, including a stop in a bat cave in Uganda with scientists who found evidence that bats were the source of Marburg and other zoonoses, but not AIDS. Quammen’s AIDS narrative traces the origin of HIV to chimpanzee-human transmission around 1908, probably through blood-borne transmission involved in the killing of the animal for food. Over the decades, with changing sexual mores, an everincreasing world population and global travel, the stage was set for a takeoff. Quammen concludes with a timely discussion of bird flu, which has yet to achieve human-to-human transmission but, thanks to the rapid mutation rate and gene exchanges typical of RNA viruses, could be the NBO. You can’t predict, say the experts; what you can do is be alert, establish worldwide field stations to monitor and test and take precautions. A wonderful, eye-opening account of humans versus disease that deserves to share the shelf with such classics as Microbe Hunters and Rats, Lice and History.
FROM HERE TO INFINITY A Vision for the Future of Science Rees, Martin Norton (160 pp.) $23.95 | Jun. 18, 2012 978-0-393-06307-3
The fate of the world demands that scientists and the public communicate better, writes British astronomer and former president of the Royal Society Rees (Our Final Hour: A Scientist’s Warning, 2003, etc.). Expanded and directed at an American audience, these are four of the distinguished Reith lectures, delivered annually over BBC radio by renowned thinkers beginning in 1948 with Bertrand Russell. Readers will learn that 21st-century science impinges on us more than ever and in ways that transform our lives, usually, but not always, for the better. It is the one “truly global culture, transcending all boundaries of nationality and faith.” America is definitely the leader, and Rees uses American institutions as examples of how to do it right (our universities are the best; our entrepreneurs the most entrepreneurial), with exceptions (our politicians who proudly reject science). No Cassandra, he reviews our planet’s looming problems, from climate
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change to overpopulation to nuclear war, emphasizing that there are no solutions outside of science. Since the future depends on our youth, he stresses that scientists are cool, pointing out that Einstein was a hip young guy when he made his dazzling discoveries, not the disheveled, elderly man portrayed by the media of the time. He also warns about the “tendency for long-term strategies, however important, to be trumped by more immediate issues that can be resolved within an electoral cycle.” David Deutsch’s The Beginning of Infinity (2011) provides a more powerful exploration of this theme, but Rees delivers shrewd insights into how science can lead us to a better future.
IN PURSUIT OF GIANTS One Man’s Global Search for the Last of the Great Fish
Rigney, Matt Viking (320 pp.) $26.95 | Jun. 18, 2012 978-0-670-02335-6
A sport fisherman’s search for his game provides the backdrop to this exploration of the damage to the ocean’s fish and animal stocks caused by large-scale commercial fishing operations. Rigney, a member of the International Game Fish Association, debuts with this personal investigation into the decline of big-game fish like marlin, swordfish and bluefin tuna. His travels took him to the Mediterranean, Japan, Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, Georges Bank off Nova Scotia, the Great Barrier Reef and New Zealand. Occasionally fishing along the way, the author sought those whose love for the ocean and its creatures mirrored his own. Everywhere he traveled he discovered a similar story: Corporations entered an area, manipulated or ignored government regulations, and, using long lines and huge nets, laid waste to massive populations of sea creatures. Rigney documents the hideous collateral damage to what is called “bycatch”—in some parts of the world, five pounds of turtle, sea lion, porpoise and whale are killed and thrown back for every pound of shrimp caught. Mexico’s Sea of Cortes, long a preserve for sport fishermen, has opened up to destructive longline fishing. Rigney fished for swordfish in the fished-out waters of the northern Atlantic and visited Tokyo’s fish market, which handles up to 10 percent of the world’s catch each day. There he learned about the Atlantic bluefin tuna, whose Mediterranean breeding grounds have been pillaged for two decades. The author is afraid that the bluefin has gone the same way as the cod and the Atlantic salmon. In Australia, he met with people working on breeding bluefin tuna in captivity; a final swordfish hunt in New Zealand encapsulates his passion for the freedom and wildness of the ocean. A dramatic account that will appeal to the sportsman and conservationist alike.
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Roberts, Geoffrey Random House (448 pp.) $30.00 | Jun. 5, 2012 978-1-4000-6692-6 978-0-679-64517-7 e-book
A welcome new biography of the ruthless Red Army general who defeated the Nazis and then spent decades alternately disgraced and rehabilitated in
Soviet Russia. Roberts (History/University College Cork; Stalin’s Wars, 2007, etc.) relies less on his subject’s self-glorifying memoirs and more on newly available archival material in Russia. Zhukov’s relationship with Stalin emerges as a key, fascinating aspect to the story, as Zhukov, a rising cavalry commander in the rapidly modernizing Red Army, managed to escape being a victim of the army purges of 1937-38 and was then appointed on his first important mission for Stalin: to “conduct a purge” of the Japanese from the Mongolian-Manchurian border in 1939. The victory at Khalkhin-Gol was the Red Army’s first real triumph, deflecting the Japanese from Russia and establishing Zhukov as a brilliant offensive field commander who kept his cool under fire and was not averse to administering draconian discipline to his own men. Stalin had neglected defensive preparation of the Motherland in favor of the counterattack, and he summoned Zhukov after the disastrous response to Hitler’s Operation Barbarossa. From victory at Yel’nya to saving Leningrad and Moscow (“no surrender and no retreat; counterattack wherever and whenever possible”) to Operation Bagration in Belorussia, Zhukov spared no number of Russia soldiers in his path to victory. Roberts spends a good deal of space on Zhukov’s mysterious postwar dismissal to the provinces, due no doubt to his overweening confidence and “Bonapartist” self-aggrandizement, which grated on Stalin. He resurfaced supremely under Khrushchev and died a fitting hero in 1974. A solid, engaging life.
MAN OF WAR My Adventures in the World of Historical Reenactment
Schroeder, Charlie Hudson Street/Penguin (288 pp.) $25.95 | May 24, 2012 978-1-59463-091-0 An amusing and insightful memoir about the wacky world of historical reenactments. Living in Los Angeles, the past was never a subject that writer, radio producer and actor Schroeder spent much time thinking about, preferring to immerse himself in the neverending stream of current events and activities of modern life.
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However, his perspective changed after attending the “largest multicultural living history event west of the Mississippi,” which featured 75 groups including Romans, Vikings and Civil War and Revolutionary War soldiers. “I found it fascinating to learn about history in a three-dimensional, interactive way,” writes Schroeder. “To ask questions of people who loved a time period so much they felt compelled to dress like one of its inhabitants.” The author’s curiosity extended to the “vibrant, eccentric subculture” of the reenactment world and feeling what participants describe as the “period rush”—the “sensation that you’ve traveled back in time.” During his travels, Schroeder lit a canon at an old fort during a reenactment of a French and Indian War battle; helped row a large wooden boat down the St. Lawrence River in an attempt to experience life in the 1700s; dressed up like a Nazi; volunteered to be a radio operator in a Vietnam war game; and reenacted the Civil War in Florida. After traveling thousands of miles, reenacting more than 10 time periods and reading dozens of books on the subject—he even staged his own historical reenactment in Los Angeles— Schroeder realized he knew less about war but more about history and contemporary America. An entertaining read. The companionable author’s gimlet eye rarely misses the absurd or touching incidents he encountered during his explorations.
MEANDER East to West, Indirectly, Along a Turkish River Seal, Jeremy Bloomsbury (320 pp.) $28.00 | Jun. 5, 2012 978-1-59691-652-4
A whimsical, winding journey by canoe and foot through the layers of Anatolia’s history. A British travel writer who focuses on Turkey, Seal (Nicholas: The Epic Journey from Saint to Santa Claus, 2005, etc.) casts himself as a wandering scholar in the tradition of his earlier European compatriots William Leake, Richard Pococke and Francis Arundell. However, Seal attempted what they did not: a solo waterway trip down the 500-kilometer Menderes River (aka Meander), running from the fertile plateau of Anatolia’s interior to the tourist meccas of the Aegean. The river’s name, thanks to the earliest allusions by historian Herodotus, geographer Strabo and others, propelled it on a fanciful etymological odyssey that endures to this day. On his journey, Seal was harshly confronted by the befouled and eroded effects of industrialization, as many parts of the winding river have been used extensively for hydroelectricity and irrigation. Beginning at the river’s source at Dinar and ending near the great classical port city of Miletus, Seal traces age-old migrations of peoples through Asia Minor—including the Hittite, Phrygian, Persian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine and Turk—all who transformed the land in their fashion. While delving into the murky historical depths and recent tensions between the country’s secular and Islamist 950
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elements, Seal was keen to befriend the locals on whom he largely relied for food and shelter as he made his way by a collapsible canoe or, when there was not sufficient water for navigation, by foot. The portraits of these simple farming people are fond and charming, but the lack of maps renders this more of a literary exercise than usable travelogue. Enlightening tour through Anatolia, rich in history and visceral detail.
ALONG THE WAY The Journey of a Father and Son
Sheen, Martin & Estevez, Emilio & Edelman, Hope Free Press (352 pp.) $27.00 | May 8, 2012 978-1-4516-4368-8
The patriarch and scion of one of America’s best-known acting families take turns sharing the stories of their lives, careers and relationship. The 2010 film The Way, written and directed by Estevez and starring Sheen, tells the story of a man who completes the journey along the Camino de Santiago pilgrim’s path begun by his son, who died en route. The movie provides the entry point for the authors—assisted by Edelman (The Possibility of Everything, 2009, etc.)—to relate their life stories, focusing on acting, faith, family and the filming of The Way. Sheen, born Ramon Estevez, the son of a Spanish immigrant father and Irish immigrant mother, grew up in a large Catholic family in Dayton, Ohio. Emilio Estevez was raised in Malibu, Calif., and on film and TV sets around the world as his father struggled to make a career as an actor and keep his family together. On the whole, the alternating voices work well, highlighting the similarities and differences in the father and son’s paths to professional and personal success and noting the failures and obstacles on the way. Estevez’s description of his experiences as a 14-year-old on the Philippines set of Apocalypse Now is particularly noteworthy, adding an extra dimension to the well-documented insanity of that film’s creation. The drawback to a double memoir becomes evident after a while, however, as the stories of auditions and film sets, fascinating though they may be, lessen the impact of what is intended to be the main focus: the life lessons each man draws from their father-son relationship. Shedding light on the creation of a unique family and an American acting dynasty, this book is certain to become a Father’s Day gift staple for West Wing and Repo Man fans alike.
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“If this seems much more a book about General McClellan, there’s good reason. The author deftly exposes his egocentric, messianic tendencies as he purposely prolonged the beginning of the conflict.” from the long road to antietam
THE WAY OF THE STARS Journeys on the Camino de Santiago Sibley, Robert C. Univ. of Virginia (160 pp.) $23.95 | Sep. 1, 2012 978-0-8139-3315-3 978-0-8139-3316-0 e-book
A journalist chronicles his monthlong, 500-mile trek with his grown son along one of the world’s most famous pilgrim routes. Sibley’s (Northern Spirits: John Watson, George Grant, and Charles Taylor—Appropriations of Hegelian Political Thought, 2008, etc.) accounts of his trip were originally published as a series of articles in 2000 in the Ottawa Citizen, where the author is an award-winning senior writer. At 57, “an age when memories claimed more and more of [his] waking thoughts,” Sibley followed through on a promise that he would take his son Daniel on the Camino de Santiago de Compostela, or the Way of St. James, a journey beginning in France and ending in Spain, after Daniel’s college graduation. He makes clear this isn’t a guidebook, instead referring to his story as a “phenomenology of pilgrimage.” Sibley occasionally converses with people along the way and during evening stays at hostels, but the bulk of the narrative tracks his internal monologue. He toils with a series of existential issues, ruminating on life’s necessities, his desire to conquer the mountains, the trail’s rich history and his own longforgotten memories. He quotes a wide variety of writers, including T.S. Eliot, St. Thomas Aquinas and Pico Iyer, to name just a few. During the journey, his physical discomfort dissipated and his mind quieted, although his secret hopes that the divine would be revealed remained unfulfilled. Sibley has a finely tuned appreciation for close-to-the-ground details, and his descriptions are deep and sincere without being overly earnest. Appealing reading for those interested in memoirs about the Camino de Santiago and other epic modern-day treks.
THE LONG ROAD TO ANTIETAM How the Civil War Became a Revolution
Slotkin, Richard Liveright/Norton (496 pp.) $32.95 | Jul. 16, 2012 978-0-871-40411-4
Slotkin (No Quarter: The Battle of the Crater, 1864, 2009, etc.) painstakingly enumerates the instances of Gen. George McClellan’s wavering, delaying and outright disobedience of orders. Throughout the book, the author exhibits his vast knowledge of the numerous generals involved in both sides of the conflict. McClellan was strongly in the camp of those who felt maintaining slavery in the South would end the war and, more importantly, leave him as the true savior and leader of the nation. |
Lincoln knew that compromise would only leave the country to fight another day. The general’s letters to his wife clearly outlined his megalomania, his delusional rages and his insistence that he was the only possible savior of the country. He even insulted the cabinet and the president by refusing to divulge his military plans. Known as the “Virginia Creeper,” McClellan knew that an early victory would allow the “radicals” to take over the war and insist on subduing the South. His outright blackmail in refusing to move his army until he received full command will make readers question why Lincoln put up with the man. Lincoln claimed he was the only capable general available. While the devotion of McClellan’s troops encouraged him as they parroted his opinions and grievances against Lincoln and others, that intense loyalty effectively barred any attempt to remove him. Slotkin’s comprehensive descriptions of the battles of 1862 show his deep understanding of the terrain, the difficulties of communication, the impossible logistics and the characters that influenced the outcome. The author includes a detailed, helpful chronology of the events of that fateful year. If this seems much more a book about General McClellan, there’s good reason. The author deftly exposes his egocentric, messianic tendencies as he purposely prolonged the beginning of the conflict. (10 illustrations; 8 maps)
ALL ROADS LEAD TO AUSTEN A Year-Long Journey with Jane
Smith, Amy Elizabeth Sourcebooks (352 pp.) $14.99 paperback | Jun. 1, 2012 978-1-4022-6585-3
How successfully does the world of Jane Austen translate into Spanish? One intrepid author finds out in this travel memoir/literary exploration. On sabbatical, Austen devotee Smith (Writing and Literature/Univ. of the Pacific) embarked on a project to discuss Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility and Emma with reading groups in Latin America. Displaying the good cheer and wry humor befitting an Austenite (as opposed to, say, an Emily Brontë or George Eliot enthusiast), she plunged into Spanish immersion classes in Guatemala, then set off for a romantic fling and the first of several reading adventures in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Smith was happy to discover that Austen’s genteel 19th-century English setting and formal narrative style proved to be relatable to her eager readers: Nearly all of them recognized their own lives in the plots and affirmed that issues of gender, class and familial obligation transcend era and locale. Smith ably captures the lively, often heated, tone of these literary gatherings and delves into the unique characteristics of each country, showcasing an Ecuadorean park teeming with iguanas, a multi-block stretch of Argentinean bookshops, and a tranquil Chilean monastery complete with its own on-site rooster. While the reading-group discussions tend to blur together by the end, Smith remains an engaging narrator
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OF AFRICA
throughout. A reader would need to possess either a truly cold heart or a pathological aversion to Austen to begrudge her the swoon-worthy happy ending to her tale. A delightful romp that should appeal to those who appreciate the savvier realms of chick lit.
HOW EXCELLENT COMPANIES AVOID DUMB THINGS Breaking the 8 Hidden Barriers that Plague Even the Best Businesses
Smith, Neil & O’Connell, Patricia Palgrave Macmillan (224 pp.) $26.00 | Jun. 5, 2012 978-1-137-00306-5
Assisted by veteran business and leadership writer O’Connell, Smith (CEO of Promontory Growth and Innovation) offers his recipe for business success. The author’s “secret sauce” is consensus building. This idea, along with many of the other ingredients in his concoction, is well known by now. The names might change, but the staples remain the same—reductions in the cost of running a business through layoffs and what used to be called speed-up. The author claims that his process is designed to encourage the emergence of ideas from all layers and participants. He uses the word “ideas” in a specific technical way that is quite different than its usual meaning. “Every idea will have a value—that is, the costs it saves or the revenues it generates,” writes Smith. In this conception, ideas have a concrete financial value that can be quantified based on the risk level assumed in achieving payback of the costs of their implementation over time. Smith bases his system on the importance of undermining inertia and resistance to change; he claims to do this by identifying behavioral and structural “barriers” that have their roots in human nature. Preplanning and staffing is critical. Exposing the identified barriers and changing the burden of proof in internal discussions are among the ingredients that go into the preparation of the “secret sauce.” Smith illustrates his ideas with a variety of interesting examples—e.g., a candy company saved money by reducing the types of chocolate it used; a shipping company eliminated left turns on truck routes and reduced accidents. Sometimes his methods can be painful but beneficial to a company—for example, he contends that the bottom five percent of programmers in tech companies can be considered a cost and usually let go. The author claims that his method will increase profits—and they likely will—but changes in corporate culture will be required to realize them.
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Soyinka, Wole Yale Univ. (224 pp.) $24.00 | Nov. 1, 2012 978-0-300-14046-0 978-0-300-18902-5 e-book The Nigerian 1986 Nobel Laureate (Literature) offers a slender, hopeful volume about his native continent’s potential for healing the world’s spiritual ills. Now nearing 80, Soyinka—playwright, novelist, poet, memoirist (You Must Set Forth at Dawn, 2006)—writes that a “truly illuminating exploration of Africa has yet to take place.” And so he commences one, though he does not gloss over the continent’s sanguinary history—or present. Currently, he sees boundary disputes and “the honey-pot of power,” as well as the enduring issues of race and fundamentalist religions imposed from the outside, as damaging to Africa’s potential. He conducts a quick journey through history, showing readers the Africa envisioned by the actual (Herodotus) and the fictional (Othello) and the Africa whom outsiders insisted on viewing as populated by inferiors. Soyinka argues that the abuse of Africa and Africans (i.e., the slave trade) belongs in company with the Holocaust and Hiroshima in the museum of human inhumanity. He also wonders why, in 2006, the global media obsessed over some Danish cartoons insulting to Islam while virtually ignoring the vast slaughter in Darfur. He argues most strenuously against fundamentalist religions (especially Christianity and Islam), which, he says, subjugate both body and spirit. He identifies them, dispassionately, as “destabilising factors,” more harshly as “resolved to set the continent on fire.” Soyinka offers a hopeful solution: the more gentle, encompassing, tolerant beliefs of the Yoruba. He offers anecdotal accounts of nonWestern medical achievements and paeans to a more accepting, less intrusive, nonviolent set of spiritual beliefs encompassed by the Yoruba deity Orisa. A brief but eloquent plea for peace. Perhaps it takes a Nobel Laureate to see hope as the beating heart in the body of despair.
MAN MADE A Stupid Quest for Masculinity
Stein, Joel Grand Central Publishing (320 pp.) $26.99 | May 15, 2012 978-0-446-57312-2
Impending fatherhood convinces a former devotee of Easy-Bake Ovens that it’s time to start learning the ways of rough-and-tumble guys. Time columnist Stein knew that he had to “man up” at least a little bit after learning that his wife Cassandra was pregnant with their first son. The author wanted to be the type of dad who plays catch with his boy, teaches him how
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“A realistic and poignant compilation of the intricacies of relationships.” from tiny beautiful things
to build campfires and tie square knots. Unfortunately for him, Stein didn’t actually know how to do any of these things; hair product and home-baked goods were more in his wheelhouse. Unabashedly urbane, the author forged ahead with what proves to be a consistently hilarious and surprisingly profound crash course in manliness. Among other adventures, he raced to fires, camped in the wilderness, tracked wild turkeys and shot a powerful Army cannon. In every circumstance he was the ultimate fish-out-of-water propelled ever forward by a deep devotion to his newborn son—a reality that infuses every wild escapade with as much warmth as humor. Almost every delightfully descriptive paragraph seems to be punctuated with a wry turnaround or self-deprecating knock aimed squarely at the author’s supposedly unmanly nature. Venturing so far out of his comfort zone definitely demonstrates a father’s love for his son, but it also does much to reconfirm the value of masculine identity. Although Stein acknowledges the absurdity of subjecting himself to choke holds designed to render opponents unconscious, he can’t help but embrace undeniable manly virtues like physical strength, camaraderie and courage—and seek to pass them on to his son. Charming, funny and life affirming.
TINY BEAUTIFUL THINGS Advice on Love and Life from “Dear Sugar”
Strayed, Cheryl Vintage (304 pp.) $14.95 paperback | Jul. 10, 2012 978-0-307-94933-2
Strayed (Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, 2012, etc.) offers insight into the world of online advice through her collection of letters sent to “Dear Sugar,” her once-anonymous column for the online magazine The Rumpus. Sugar’s Golden Rule—“Trust Yourself ”—pushes the author and her readers to embrace themselves and not be afraid of asking life’s complex questions. Strayed writes that she will “answer anything, so long as it interests or challenges or touches me.” Men and women of all ages contact her hoping she can solve their problems, which include affairs, the loss of a loved one, self-acceptance and understanding the point of existence. In thematic sections, the author presents verbatim letters and their detailed published replies. Strayed’s practical advice mixes with abundant personal anecdotes in which she illustrates to the addressee the reasoning behind her counsel. Admittedly not versed in psychology, her responses are sensitive and comprehensive, and her verbose self-reflection projects understanding and sympathy. Though she avoids medical jargon, Strayed suggests medical counseling when it is necessary. The author demonstrates her forthright personality in a comforting yet stern writing style that connects readers to each contributor’s plight and the subsequent response to their cry for help. Appealing to Dear Sugar fans and self-help seekers alike, this “collection of |
intimate exchanges between strangers” demonstrates that wisdom doesn’t come only from age, but also from learning from the experiences of others. A realistic and poignant compilation of the intricacies of relationships.
MRS. ROBINSON’S DISGRACE The Private Diary of a Victorian Lady Summerscale, Kate Bloomsbury (384 pp.) $26.00 | Jun. 19, 2012 978-1-60819-913-6
Not just a scandalous diary, but a portrait of the plight of women in the early Victorian era. The excerpts from Isabella Robinson’s diary show a woman in a loveless, miserable marriage. Her desperate longings for love, or at least someone to talk to, fed her imagination and fired her writings with delusional tales of amour. Women living in the mid 19th century had no legal existence, so she couldn’t file a lawsuit, control her own money or even claim her own clothes and jewelry. Summerscale (The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective, 2008, etc.) may have set out to write about one woman’s fall from grace, but she also exposes the horrendous misery of even gently born women during the reign of Queen Victoria. It was during that period that the government at last allowed both men and women to sue for divorce without parliamentary approval. A man seeking to put away his wife could do so by implication only, but women needed to prove at least two incidents of adultery. Apparently, in Mrs. Robinson’s case, the fact that her husband had a mistress who bore him two children was not sufficient. At this time the use of insanity as a plea came into more common use, and Mrs. Robinson’s friends strongly suggested that she claim she was insane at the time she wrote things like “the happiness of loving” and “long, passionate, clinging embrace.” A revealing portrait of the straight-laced Victorians who produced innumerable sex scandals, delved into new and sometimes bizarre health fads and generally dismissed anyone considered beneath them, like colonials and women. (8-page b/w insert)
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AMERICAN TAPESTRY The Story of the Black, White, and Multiracial Ancestors of Michelle Obama
Swarns, Rachel L. Amistad/HarperCollins (400 pp.) $27.99 | $14.99 e-book | CD $24.99 Jun. 19, 2012 978-0-06-199986-4 978-0-06-220465-3 e-book 978-0-06-218957-8 CD
A New York Times reporter carefully tracks the complex genealogy of Michelle Obama. Originally emerging from Swarns’ reporting for the Times, this intensive research work pursues numerous Southern ancestors on both maternal and paternal sides who eventually ended up in Chicago by the 1930s looking for new opportunity. The key forebear here, the “mystery of Michelle Obama’s roots,” is a slave woman named Melvinia, who worked on a farm in the mid 1800s in Jonesboro, Ga., where she eventually bore several children whose father was white. After the Civil War, Melvinia stayed on in Jonesboro and had several more biracial children, until she moved away in the mid 1870s. Her older son, Dolphus, became a Baptist deacon and a successful citizen, while his grandson Purnell, having relocated with his mother to Chicago in the 1920s, plunged into the integrated South Side’s scene of swinging jazz. On the other side, Swarns follows the intriguing life’s wanderings of Mrs. Obama’s great-grandmother, Phoebe Moten, born in 1879 in Villa Ridge, Ill., the daughter of sharecroppers and freedmen who had joined the general exodus north during or after the Civil War to flee the blighted opportunity and increasing racial violence that characterized the South. Yet the hope of finding a measure of freedom and prosperity in cities like Chicago didn’t always occur, as in Phoebe’s case: She and her husband, James, an itinerant minister, and their numerous children struggled to reach the middle class only to be dragged down again by racial antagonism and the Depression. Swarns provides numerous tales of heartbreak and achievement, many of which essentially make up the American story. Elegantly woven strands in a not-so-easy-to-follow whole, but tremendously moving. (8-page color photo insert; family tree. Appearances in Boston, Chicago, New York, Washington, D.C.)
DNA USA A Genetic Portrait of America
Sykes, Bryan Liveright/Norton (356 pp.) $27.95 | May 14, 2012 978-0-871-40412-1
Sykes (Human Genetics/Oxford Univ.; Saxons, Vikings, and Celts: The Genetic Roots of Britain and Ireland, 2006, etc.) combines history, science, travel and memoir in one grand exposition of what it means to be an “American.” 954
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America, writes the author, is “where the genes of three great continents converge.” Initially, it was Asian forebears that peopled the new world. Through analysis of mitochondrial DNA, the origins of Native Americans can be traced to three mother clusters arriving from Siberia and a fourth from Polynesia. The arrival dates, based on mitochondrial DNA mutation rates, establish a range of about 16,000 to 20,000 years ago. Unfortunately, high-handed methods toward Native tribes have created a rift that persists today, for what the scientists were doing was destroying beliefs that these natives have existed here forever. Not so for Americans of European or African descent. They know they came from elsewhere and are eager for all the details, as witness the thriving genealogy industry. Geneticists can use mitochondrial DNA as well as y-chromosome analysis, along with the latest DNA chip technologies, including “chromosomal painting.” The latter allows experts to pinpoint selected blocks of genes on individual chromosomes that reflect a European, Asian or African ancestor. Traveling cross-country by train and car with his son and back again with a female assistant, Sykes gathered saliva samples for painting analysis. In a graceful text, the author delivers rich images of the American landscape, conversations with strangers, and historic asides on the waves of immigration, the Indian diasporas and the various federal laws that shaped the movements of people across the continent. In the end, Sykes provides the revelations of those salivary analyses: For the most part we are a motley crew, so much so as to give the lie to any idea that there are pure races or ethnicities. For that reason alone, the book should be celebrated. But Sykes should also be applauded for his skills as a storyteller, science expositor, travel companion and compassionate human being. (8 pages of color illustrations; 8 pages of b/w illustrations. Author tour to Boston, New York, Washington, D.C., Salt Lake City, San Francisco, Seattle)
NEW WAYS TO KILL YOUR MOTHER Writers and Their Families Tóibín, Colm Scribner (288 pp.) $26.00 | Jun. 12, 2012 978-1-4516-6855-1 978-1-4516-6857-5 e-book
Irish novelist and essayist Tóibín (Brooklyn, 2009, etc.) investigates how writers’ classic works were inspired by their families—and sometimes in spite of them. One line of critical thinking holds that a writer’s personal history is out of bounds when judging a poem, play or novel. Tóibín, who mined the life of Henry James for his 2004 novel, The Master, doesn’t adhere to that notion, and these essays are largely concerned with how writers’ personal lives influenced their work. In the opening essay, the author explores why James and Jane Austen tended to avoid writing about mothers, who “get in the way in fiction,” and how that instinct was partly a
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“Turning the conventional wisdom about child development on its head, New York Times Magazine editor Tough argues that non-cognitive skills are the most critical to success in school and life.” from how children succeed
product of their occasionally tense family relationships. Half the pieces that follow focus on Irish writers, including William Butler Yeats, Samuel Beckett and Roddy Doyle; the other half consider the non-Irish likes of Thomas Mann, Tennessee Williams, James Baldwin and others. Most of these pieces, written for the London Review of Books or the New York Review of Books, are piecework prompted by a new biography or collection of letters, but common themes emerge. Dominating mothers provoked Irish playwright J.M. Synge and Beckett (who declared in a letter, “I am what her savage loving has made me”), and closeted homosexuality frustrated Williams and Cheever’s lives and writing alike. Tragedies abound: Yeats brutally dismissed his father’s literary ambitions, Thomas Mann’s children were a riot of addiction and dysfunction, and Hart Crane’s pioneering career as a poet ended in suicide. But like all fine critics, Tóibín inspires readers to go back to the work, and he brings a human aspect to the works of seemingly deracinated authors like Beckett and Jorge Luis Borges. Though there’s no truly coherent thesis here, it’s a pleasure to watch Tóibín rove through 19th- and 20th-century literary history.
HOW CHILDREN SUCCEED Rethinking Character and Intelligence
Tough, Paul Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (272 pp.) $27.00 | Sep. 4, 2012 978-0-547-56465-4 978-0-547-56466-1 e-book Turning the conventional wisdom about child development on its head, New York Times Magazine editor Tough (Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada’s Quest to Change Harlem and America, 2008) argues that non-cognitive skills (persistence, self-control, curiosity, conscientiousness, grit and self-confidence) are the most critical to success in school and life. Building on reporting for his magazine, the author interviewed economists, psychologists and neuroscientists, examined their recent research and talked to students, teachers and principals to produce this fascinating overview of a new approach with “the potential to change how we raise our children, how we run our schools, and how we construct our social safety net.” At a time when policymakers favor the belief that disadvantaged kids have insufficient cognitive training, Tough finds that a new generation of researchers are questioning the cognitive hypothesis. Foremost among them is Nobel laureate and University of Chicago economist James Heckman, who since 2008 has been convening economists and psychologists to discuss significant questions: Which skills and traits lead to success? How do they develop in childhood? What interventions might help children do better? Tough summarizes key research, such as the Adverse Childhood Experience Study, a project of the Centers for Disease Control and Kaiser Permanente, which revealed a stunning |
correlation between traumatic childhood events and negative adult outcomes. Others have shown that the effects of childhood stress can be buffered by close, nurturing relationships. Assessing such evidence, Heckman says policymakers intent on closing the achievement gap between affluent and poor children must go beyond classroom interventions and supplement the parenting resources of disadvantaged Americans. Families, he says, “are the main drivers of children’s success in school.” Heckman’s thinking informs the book, which includes many examples of failing disadvantaged students who turned things around by acquiring character skills that substituted for the social safety net enjoyed by affluent students. Well-written and bursting with ideas, this will be essential reading for anyone who cares about childhood in America.
MEXICO Democracy Interrupted
Tuckman, Jo Yale Univ. (320 pp.) $35.00 | Jun. 26, 2012 978-0-300-16031-4
An insightful firsthand examination of Mexico from 2000 to the present. Based in Mexico City, foreign correspondent Tuckman looks at the political and economic arenas of Mexico since the overturn in 2000 of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), its long-term ruling party. When the National Action Party (PAN), led by Vicente Fox, took power, many Mexicans viewed this as a breath of fresh air, bringing change and hope to the country. However, Tuckman reveals that the ensuing 12 years have not lived up to that optimism, with the wheels of democracy slow to move in a country riddled with corporate greed, political corruption and escalating drug wars. The author’s concentrated inspection gives readers a close look at the lawlessness of the numerous powerful drug cartels instilling fear in locals, migrating workers and even mainstream media with daily kidnappings and murders of those who stand in their way. Tuckman delves into racial discrimination, global warming and environmental concerns regarding Mexico’s large oil fields, as well as the rise in floods and clean-water issues in Mexico City. She also examines the revolutionary actions of the Zapatistas in Chiapas and a flareup in Oaxaca in 2006 that bears comparison to the uprisings seen recently in the Middle East. Not all is lost, however, as recent presidents have attempted to “regreen” deforested areas, tourism continues to rise, and Mexican food products are found around the world thanks to trade agreements. With the upcoming presidential election, Mexicans are once again hoping for a political leader who can “kick-start the levels of growth required to transform the country from a bastion of poverty and inequality into a burgeoning middle-class nation.” An important investigation of Mexico’s recent political, economic and social past—and its possibilities for the future.
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BRIGHAM YOUNG Pioneer Prophet
Turner, John G. Belknap/Harvard Univ. (550 pp.) $35.00 | Sep. 1, 2012 978-0-674-04967-3 Sprawling life of a larger-than-life character in the history of the American West. Brigham Young was Joseph Smith’s lieutenant in spreading the newly coined doctrine of Mormonism and his successor on Smith’s murder. Young carved a homeland out of the Utah wilderness, which was heavily settled by inconvenient Lamanites, as the Mormons called Native peoples. As Turner (History/Univ. of South Alabama; Bill Bright and Campus Crusade for Christ: The Renewal of Evangelicalism in Postwar America, 2008) capably demonstrates, Young’s successes were the fruit of a driving ambition that sometimes manifested itself in ruthlessness. Turner writes carefully—a good tactic, for Mormon history is an always-fraught topic—of Young’s rise in the early hierarchy, including an episode in which he “confronted Smith and his two counselors in the church’s presidency…about their lingering grievances,” divisions that might have yielded a schism had not Young also been a skilled strategist. Dissent was a constant companion in Young’s life, and Turner, to his credit, does not shy from noting that fact. Moreover, the author looks at the various strains of Protestantism, “ecstatic” and otherwise, that fed into early Mormonism, drawing particularly on Methodism in the British Isles, where Young worked as one of the church’s first missionaries. Some of the resulting ideas, blended with Smith’s own, were unusual in the religious landscape of the time. Of interest—and potential controversy—is Turner’s attention to Young’s many wives, who were not always happy with the arrangement and some of whom cut their ties with him; it’s not exactly Big Love, but there’s some high drama in the text. Drama also prevails in the passages related to the infamous Mountain Meadows Massacre and the subsequent execution of Young lieutenant John D. Lee, who insisted that “Young and other church leaders had selected him as their ‘scapegoat.’ ” A scholarly yet thoroughly readable historical/biographical study, of considerable interest to students of 19th-century American history and religious revivalism.
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS A Life Unger, Harlow Giles Da Capo/Perseus (400 pp.) $27.50 | Sep. 4, 2012 978-0-306-82129-5 978-0-306-82130-1 e-book
A neglected president receives his due as a statesman and practical politician. John Quincy Adams (1767–1848), writes Unger (American Tempest: How the Boston Tea Party Sparked a Revolution, 2011, etc.), bridged the 956
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years between George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. He ate with Charles Dickens, ended the War of 1812, shaped the ever-so-slightly misnamed Monroe Doctrine, taught at Harvard, and was one of the most prominent abolitionist leaders in the years preceding the Civil War. On top of that, his father was the nation’s second president. So why is he not better known? The short answer is that he didn’t trumpet his own accomplishments. The longer answer is that American history is so badly taught these days that it seems surprising that anyone remembers Washington, much less Millard Fillmore. Unger’s bracing, readable text is a remedy. In the early chapters, the author explores the difficult job of being first son to the Massachusetts first family. In one telling anecdote, John Adams demanded that the boy be admitted to Harvard as a junior or senior, given “his mastery of two classical and three modern languages, and his command of an enormous body of classical and modern literature, philosophy, and science.” The doting aside, Adams fils soon cut a political figure all his own, deftly serving as a diplomat and analyst of what today we would call geopolitics. His fruitful term as ambassador to the court of the tsar even led his compatriots in Washington to call him an alien, “especially after John Quincy began walking in the winter weather wearing his exotic Russian fur hat and great coat.” Unger writes appreciatively of Adams’ considerable accomplishments, even if the voters of the president’s own time were less generous, turning him out of office in favor of the restive war hero Andrew Jackson. A fine examination of a life, well deserving a place alongside David McCullough’s study of Adams père. (40 b/w photographs)
DYN-O-MITE! Good Times, Bad Times, Our Times—A Memoir
Walker, Jimmie with Manna, Sal Da Capo/Perseus (288 pp.) $25.00 | Jun. 26, 2012 978-0-306-82083-0
A fast, funny and informative standup routine/memoir from one of the major comic stars of the 1970s. Walker—who made his name as J.J. Evans on the sitcom Good Times—recounts his life in the ghetto, on TV and on the road. He gives a good inside look at the TV show, where he was cast as the teenage J.J., surprising producers and angering the cast by becoming the breakout star. At the peak of his fame, he would also play a supporting role in the careers of both David Letterman and Jay Leno, two of the many struggling unknown comics who wrote jokes for him. He also had a front-row seat to the decades-long friendship-turnedbitter rivalry that would lead to the late-show wars of the early 1990s; long after the dust has settled, he remains strongly Team Letterman, holding Leno in contempt. As for the rest of the competition, he admired Richard Pryor, had limited patience for Andy Kaufman and thinks Cosby is king. (He also admits he isn’t always the best judge, having once advised Steve Martin
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“Entertaining, informative, satisfying and fun—everything books should be.” from read this!
to find another career.) Walker also acknowledges certain limits that come with his choice of career: “The problem is that white comics don’t have to be white, but black comics have to be black.” Other limits are self-imposed; although uninhibited in his lifestyle, this self-proclaimed “Johnny Mathis of Black Comedians” has long adhered to his friend David Brenner’s advice that you can’t be successful if you can’t work clean. He is similarly conservative in his politics. Walker, once the comic relief for Black Panther rallies, takes a little too much delight in being a “black sheep among black people.” Rants aside, a unique perspective on the perils of modern comedy from a survivor with a long memory. (16 pages of b/w photographs)
READ THIS! Handpicked Favorites from America’s Indie Bookstores
Weyandt, Hans--Ed. Coffee House (200 pp.) $12.00 paperback | Sep. 4, 2012 978-1-56689-313-8 Selected independent booksellers offer their Top 50 lists. “The desire to share books is the natural outcome of loving them,” writes award-winning novelist Ann Patchett in her lively preface to this lovingly rendered “catalogue of matchmakers.” Editor Weyandt, co-owner of Micawber’s Books in St. Paul, Minn., developed the idea after a customer asked him to share a list of personal favorites. He continued the tradition, asking booksellers from across the country to contribute their lists and offer insight into whom they trust to recommend books, the reading material on their own nightstands, and the keys to operating a successful independent bookstore in today’s challenging marketplace. These professionals demonstrate exceptional curatorial care and a discernible passion for the art of bookselling, a craft Weyandt calls a “combo platter of bartender/barista and priest.” They include many family-run establishments like BookCourt in Brooklyn, N.Y., with two floors and three help desks, and Fireside Books in Palmer, Alaska, home to the “world’s first bookish, blogging bear.” Some offer specialty products, like Chicago’s Unabridged Bookstore and eclectic Skylight Books in Los Angeles, which stock extensive collections of gay and lesbian material. The diverse best-of lists ably represent Weyandt’s varied cross-section of literary connoisseurs. Classics appear alongside older and newer perennial favorites by authors like Donna Tartt, Toni Morrison, Lorrie Moore, Jonathan Franzen, Jeffrey Eugenides and Zadie Smith. Proceeds go to the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, a group that fights literary censorship and supports struggling bookstores. In sharing titles and ideas, handselling becomes, as bookseller and author Eowyn Ivey of Fireside Books remarks, “a small but heartfelt gift, one reader to another.” Entertaining, informative, satisfying and fun—everything books should be. |
A WOMAN IN THE CROSSFIRE Diaries of the Syrian Revolution
Yazbek, Samar Translated by Weiss, Max Haus Publishing (250 pp.) $18.95 paperback | Sep. 1, 2012 978-1-908323-12-5 Haunting memoir of an unwanted season in the hellish combat of civil war. Syrian writer and filmmaker Yazbek, a member of the literary movement called the Beirut39, will be new to most readers outside the Middle East. Both beautifully written—sometimes incongruously so, given the subject matter—and relentless, her narrative opens with the heady days of the Arab Spring, when the rulers of Tunisia and Egypt were giving way to popular uprisings and the edifice of Syria’s security state was being shaken by an awakened people. “They could not and would not believe that this army of slaves, whom they called ‘insects’ or ‘rats,’ could ever rise up against them,” writes the Syrian-German novelist Rafik Schami in his foreword of the stunningly corrupt Assad regime. But on March 15 of last year, the “slaves” did revolt. The regime hit back hard, spraying crowds of unarmed, peaceful demonstrators with bullets. As Yazbek writes, almost by way of prelude to this terrible chronicle of events experienced firsthand, “Death is no longer a question. Death is a window we open up to our questions.” Death is also a constant, grim companion in these pages; it drew close as undercover agents interrogated and harassed Yazbek, receding as, eventually, she fled the country. The images she paints are indelible, pictures of “men on their stomachs in handcuffs, humiliated and insulted,” and of youngsters defiantly baring their chests to the security police before being gunned down. “Sure, I was panicked,” she writes, “but through that panic I learned how to cultivate a dark patch in my heart, a zone that no one can reach, one that remains fixed, where not even death can penetrate.” An essential eyewitness account, and with luck an inaugural document in a Syrian literature that is uncensored and unchained.
THE CHOKE ARTIST Confessions of a Chronic Underachiever
Yoo, David Grand Central Publishing (272 pp.) $13.99 paperback | Jun. 19, 2012 978-0-446-57345-0 A portrait of the artist as a glum man. Yoo, the author of two YA novels (Stop Me if You’ve Heard This One Before, 2008, etc.), presents a painfully honest and strangely unlikable memoir recounting his conflicted feelings about being Asian American—though “conflicted” may be
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the wrong word, as the emotional tenor here leans precipitously toward flat-out self-hatred. The title refers to the author’s strategy of deliberate failure calculated to counter assumptions based on his membership in a “model minority” and the attendant expectations of academic and professional success. This approach led to disastrous consequences in all aspects of his life, including a chronic impotence problem, which is described in copious detail. Yoo paints himself as a dedicated dilettante, haplessly affecting hip-hop cultural signifiers as a teenager, getting through school without distinguishing himself in any way and embracing his status as an anonymous office drone in a successful bid to matter to no one and contribute nothing of significance to the world. There is plenty of rich material here, but Yoo is not a particularly flavorful prose stylist, and his reflexive self-deprecating humor is generically unamusing and further paints him as an unpleasant vortex of insecurity and muffled rage. The author experiences an ironic epiphany late in the narrative when he recognizes that his fiction is hamstrung by unsympathetic characters that exude these traits…the irony being that they also dominate this exploration of his rather pathetic personal history and are not redeemed by any special insight or transformative literary magic. A brave exercise in self-revelation but a decidedly sour, depressing reading experience.
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children’s & teen
THE PRINCESS AND THE PEA
These titles earned the Kirkus Star:
Andersen, Hans Christian Illus. by Dusíková, Maja Floris (28 pp.) $17.95 | Jun. 1, 2012 978-0-86315-857-5
HOMER by Elisha Cooper ..............................................................p. 965 THE BRIXEN WITCH by Stacy DeKeyser; illus. by John Nickle........................................................................p. 966 ON THE DAY I DIED by Candace Fleming ...................................p. 966 THE UNFORTUNATE SON by Constance Leeds ..........................p. 972 INVINCIBLE MICROBE by Jim Murphy & Alison Blank ........... p. 977 BURN MARK by Laura Powell......................................................p. 979 zoe letting go by Nora Price...................................................p. 979 I HAVE THE RIGHT TO BE A CHILD by Alain Serres ; illus. by Aurélia Fronty; trans. by Helen Mixter............................ p. 983 MY SNAKE BLAKE by Randy Siegel; illus. by Serge Bloch.......... p. 984 A HOME FOR BIRD by Philip C. Stead ........................................p. 985 LEONARD by Robin Ink ; illus. by Timothy Penner; dev. by endloop ................................................................................p. 989
I HAVE THE RIGHT TO BE A CHILD
Serres, Alain Translated by Mixter, Helen Illus. by Fronty, Aurélia Groundwood (48 pp.) $18.95 Jun. 12, 2012 978-1-55498-149-6
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This unadorned translation of Andersen’s whimsical tale comes from a German edition of 2007. The pictures are pellucid: Readers see the prince coming home laden with paintings of various princesses who do not fit the bill. They see why on the next page: One princess is sticking out her tongue, and another is picking her nose, and so on. The king and queen are playing chess on that dark and stormy night when there is a knock at the door, and it is the king himself who trundles down the castle stairs, candle and key in hand, to let in a very damp and bedraggled princess. It is the queen who places a single pea on the bedframe and orders the 20 mattresses and 20 quilts to be laid atop it. Our heroine wakes to complain that she barely slept and is “black and blue all over!” The prince knows then he has found a real princess, and a wedding ensues. It ends with the puckish (and traditional) lines: “The pea was put in a museum, where it may still be seen. And that is a true story.” Dusíková’s pictures are full of soft edges and soft colors, with pretty architectural details and an assortment of castle denizens, including a pair of cats and a toddler in jester’s motley. A rendering to bring a smile or possibly a giggle. (Picture book/fairy tale. 5-8)
WHERE IS MILO’S BALL?
Austin, Mike Illus. by Austin, Mike Blue Apple (16 pp.) $9.99 | Jun. 25, 2012 978-1-60905-209-6
The blue cat that starred in the excellent app A Present for Milo (2010) makes an awful crossover from the digital domain. Printed on extra-sturdy boards with folded (rather than glued) flaps, the episode sends Milo in search of his missing ball of string. Led by a helpful mouse, he discovers piles of yarn in various geometric shapes that, once each flap is lifted, reveal common items of the same shape. These range from a square slice of cheese to a triangular piece of pizza to a rectangular granola bar. Meanwhile, behind Milo, two other mice roll up
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“Reminiscent of Jeanne Birdsall’s The Penderwicks (2005), the charming narration has a timeless quality…” from summer at forsaken lake
the continual line of multicolored yarn that loops through each cartoon scene so that by the end the ball is restored. Not only is the prose numbingly wooden (“Little mouse,” says Milo, “will you help me find my ball of string?”), it is confusingly phrased. Milo rejects the square because it has “four sides,” which doesn’t distinguish it from the rectangle, and the oval egg isn’t like a ball because it’s “sort of round-ish but also longish.” Moreover, the concluding general romp comes off less as a resolution to the plotline than filler for the final spread. In marked contrast to his app incarnation, Milo is no more than a static presence in the art, his body shape even duplicated in some scenes rather than redrawn. Just as visually appealing as the app at first glance, and possibly even more durable—but showing considerable fall-off in narrative quality and awareness of audience. (Board book. 2-3)
TOO MUCH TROUBLE
Avery, Tom Frances Lincoln (176 pp.) $8.99 paperback | Jun. 1, 2012 978-1-84780-234-7 Plotted (though not written) in Dickensian style, this debut thrusts two illegal immigrants out into the streets and conveys them to London where they fall in with a gang of child shoplifters. Four years after being sent for safety to England from violence-torn central Africa, 12-year-old Emmanuel and his little brother, Prince, live hand to mouth in the basement of their absentee uncle’s indoor marijuana farm in an unnamed town. When Prince gets into a fight in school and their furious uncle boots them out, the brothers flee to London, where they are rescued and recruited by “Mr. Green,” a glib, genial Fagin who shelters a dozen runaways in exchange for the wallets, cellphones and like loot they lift from crowded train stations and other locales. While Prince turns out to be a natural, Emmanuel guiltily hangs back and dreams of having a “proper home” one day. Ultimately that dream comes true for him and for Prince too, after a tragic gun accident. Though neither the urban setting nor the hardships and violence of street life are conveyed with particular sharpness in Emmanuel’s simply phrased narrative, his distress comes through clearly, as does the joy of settling in with a foster parent and being reunited with his brother. More thought provoking than melodramatic or disturbing, this low-key outing should engage readers despite the pat happy ending. (Fiction. 10-12)
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SUMMER AT FORSAKEN LAKE
Beil, Michael D. Illus. by Kneen, Maggie Knopf (330 pp.) $16.99 | $10.99 e-book | PLB $19.99 Jun. 12, 2012 978-0-375-86742-2 978-0-375-89791-7 e-book 978-0-375-96742-9 PLB
Summer is indeed a time for mystery and adventure. Instead of spending the summer with their divorced father, 12-year-old Nicholas Mettleson and his younger, identical twin sisters leave New York City and head to rural Ohio to live along Forsaken Lake with their great-uncle Nick, an arm amputee who never misses a beat. It’s not long before Nicholas teams up with local star baseball player Charlotte “Charlie” Brennan, and the pair discovers numerous mysteries. These involve an unfinished Super 8 film entitled The Seaweed Strangler, a sailboat that eerily appears each morning at 2:53, a boat accident that caused Nicholas’ then–14-year-old dad never to return to Forsaken Lake and a letter that hints at a long, unrequited love between Nicholas’ dad and Charlie’s mom. Reminiscent of Jeanne Birdsall’s The Penderwicks (2005), the charming narration has a timeless quality as Nicholas and Charlie involve the small-town community in completing The Seaweed Strangler and investigating the nowinfamous boat accident. Also drawing from Arthur Ransome’s 1937 children’s nautical adventure, We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea, the novel features its own sailing hazards and thrills. Ultimately focusing on what’s right rather than the truth, the appealing story leaves one big mystery unsolved, promising a sequel and more summer magic. (Artwork not seen.) (glossary of sailing terms) (Mystery. 9-12)
SIRENZ BACK IN FASHION
Bennardo, Charlotte & Zaman, Natalie Flux (288 pp.) $9.95 paperback | Jun. 8, 2012 978-0-7387-3187-2 Hades’ two favorite Sirens have gone Greek again, whether they like it or not. And they don’t. At least not the banishedto-the-Underworld and slowly-growingscales parts. After a careless error renews their contract as Sirens for Hades, Shar (the tall blond with an affinity for accessories) and Meg (the short brunette more likely to clutch a book than a Birkin) are once again forced to deliver an unfortunate soul to the Underworld. There’s a hitch, though: Shar, in heels and a bikini, is transported to Tartarus, while Meg must work alone on the mortal plane to toss said soul (her bizarre but likable new roommate) down under. Many a mythic figure is introduced along the way—Charon, Cerberus, Hermes, Eurydice—and grave problems are solved with comedic,
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contemporary flare. Though the two young women rely upon above-average intelligence to escape their predicament, their focus often shifts from saving their own skins to flirting with a hunky demigod or finding a date for the Spring Fling. As with the first book (Sirenz, 2011), the double narrative device reveals the perspective of each Siren as she tries to fulfill contractual obligations. But a saturation of highbrow vocabulary detracts from the authenticity of their voices (“Oh, little purloining Paulina was sooooo lucky I wasn’t there”). This frothy romp through mythology sways between tawdry teen romance and glossy chick-lit. (Fantasy. 12 & up)
EASY-PEASY RECIPES Snacks & Treats to Make & Eat
Berman, Karen Illus. by Marts, Doreen M. Running Press Kids (40 pp.) $14.95 | Jun. 1, 2012 978-0-7624-4443-4
Unlike Berman’s Friday Night Bites: Kick off the Weekend with Recipes and Crafts for the Whole Family (2009; not reviewed), this effort is geared toward independent child chefs. The 13 snack and treat recipes get most of their appeal from presentation—among others, a taco-salad pirate face, a breakfast buffet shaped like a train with individual cars and a berry-and-yogurt–snowcapped mountain. To assemble these creations, young chefs are directed to use a pair of (washed) safety scissors instead of knives. But inexperienced cooks may end up with way too much food, as the servings vary widely, are easy to overlook and, in many cases, are too large for one child making a solo snack. For example, the “Cold Creepy Crawly Noodles” serves four to six, while the “Tic-Tac-Toe Open-Faced Sandwich” makes only one (but takes two to play?). “Do It Another Way” sections accompanying each recipe give readers ideas for substituting ingredients or trying new ones. For the most part, the directions are easy to follow, although one recipe may well cause problems, as readers are directed to measure out six cups of popcorn from what appears to be a bag of popped corn, but a later step pictures a measuring cup filled with kernels. Other than this glaring exception, Marts’ digital artwork both supports the text and adds elements of humor, playing up the different themes of the recipes. Young cooks will likely be more successful serving as sous-chefs under their parents’ tutelage than using this to strike out on their own. (Cookbook. 5-10)
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SOFIA AND THE PURPLE DRESS / SOFÍA Y EL VESTIDO MORADO
Bertrand, Diane Gonzales Illus. by Fields, Lisa Trans. by Ventura, Gabriela Baeza Piñata Books/Arté Público (32 pp.) $17.95 | May 31, 2012 978-1-55885-701-8 A quinceañera and a special purple dress serve as inspiration for a little girl to change her lifestyle with exercise and healthier foods. Third-grader Sofía is used to wearing her older cousin Rosario’s hand-me-down sweaters and shirts, but when a beautifully fitted dress especially given to her for Rosario’s upcoming event is much too tight, her mother gently notes that Sofía has “a little extra here and there.” Losing weight is not easy, but Mom suggests that she and sister Mari can do it together by exercising and eliminating sodas and junk food. Despite some initial grumbling, for the next two months, Sofía, Mari and Mom begin to walk to and from school, eat fruits and veggies for snacks, enjoy dancing to music at home, and have fun ice skating. The happy result is a leaner and more energetic Sofía wearing her fitted dress proudly at Rosario’s party. A combination of collage, acrylic and crayon delineate a richly bronze-toned and dark-haired Latino family in daily life, all shopping, playing and working together to reach a goal. Plump round faces and bellies gradually slim down, with happy smiles all around. The dialogue-driven bilingual English/Spanish text emphasizes that hard work, moral support and determination can successfully meet a challenge. Sofía’s best realization is that her new lifestyle can lead to other positive accomplishments, which helps to cut the didacticism of this good-hearted book. (activity sheet) (Picture book. 5-8)
MY EXTRA BEST FRIEND
Bowe, Julie Dial (224 pp.) $16.99 | Jun. 1, 2012 978-0-8037-3692-4 Series: Friends for Keeps, 5
Best friends and summer camp! What could be better? As Friends for Keeps protagonist Ida May prepares to leave for sleep-away camp for the first time, she remembers Elizabeth Evans, her first best friend, who moved away a year ago and failed to keep in touch. Getting over this loss was no picnic, but now Ida May has new friends—two best friends, in fact— and she is looking forward to a week of excitement and fun that they’ll all experience together. Punchy sentences sprinkled liberally with kid-friendly language nicely capture Ida May’s sense of anticipation, but it all comes to a screeching halt at camp when she encounters Elizabeth in the flesh. How can this be? Peer
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pressure, hurt feelings, mild ethical quandaries and middleschool group dynamics blend with arts-and-crafts, swimming and bonfires, as Ida May deals with Elizabeth’s betrayal and decides if they can ever be friends again. Secondary plots dealing with bullying and crushes provide the finishing touches to this believable and accessible tale of friendship-on-the-rocks, and well-rounded characters raise it a notch above the usual series fare. Preteens will gobble up this girl-friendly depiction of the world of early middle school and its ensuing changes. A good choice for girls not quite ready to leave behind the innocence of childhood for the spills and thrills of adolescence. (Fiction. 8-12)
ALEK
Bredsdorff, Bodil Translated by Dyssegaard, Elizabeth Kallick Farrar, Straus and Giroux (144 pp.) $16.99 | Jun. 19, 2012 978-0-374-31269-5 Series: Children of Crow Cove, 4 The Children of Crow Cove quartet comes to a natural conclusion in this stately, careful finale. Tiny Crow Cove has grown strong since its founding so many years ago (Crow-Girl, 2004). Now Alek, formerly known as Doup, wishes to see how his beloved, jilted older brother Ravnar is faring in a place called Last Harbor. After traveling there, Alek stays on with Ravnar, finding work in the local inn. A chance sighting of a murder on the beach near his new home brings him into contact with a shipwrecked girl and a crew of murderous thieves. By helping to catch the villains and bring them to justice, Alek is able to find the means to persuade Ravnar to return to Crow Cove at long last. As with previous novels in the series, most recently Tink (2011), a knowledge of the full history of the cove is a must for readers to derive any pleasure from this conclusion. This Danish import is steeped in quiet dignity, never going any faster than the story demands. Some children will find this pace inexorably slow, but for those invested in the characters, Bredsdorff knows how to fulfill the previous novels’ promise, turning her wayward individuals into a vigorous, vibrant community. A strong conclusion best suited for those willing to read it as part of a whole. (Fiction. 9-12)
GNARBUNGA
Bromley, Matthew Illus. by Bromley, Matthew Boxer/Sterling (32 pp.) $16.95Jun. 1, 2012 978-1-907967-14-6
looks a little like the Michelin tire man but all black, with pingpong-ball eyes and jaws like razor blades. The kids think he’s really cool—they love getting sludgy—but most of the adults, not so much. (Construction workers, who are a little icky already, are the one exception.) Gnarbunga needs something to do. Various children suggest music, art, books; the suggestion that really ignites Gnarbunga’s interest is skateboarding. In short order, he’s decked out in helmet, pads and special shoes, then picks a deck, wheels and trucks. Soon he’s playing at the skate park with his new friends. He apologizes to the people who don’t like getting icky and spends hours at the park learning the best tricks. He can kick-flip over a cat, do a boneless over an ice-cream cone, and even do inverts. Soon everyone is shouting his name. Bromley tucks a nice amount of skateboard slang into his story. His eye-catching digital illustrations are appealing, with only three colors: black, pale purple and flat yellow. Their stiffness and simplicity have a satiric charge, which may elude the very young. Less exposition and more skateboarding activity (and maybe a glossary) would have been welcome, but Gnarbunga’s quirky and lovable nonetheless. (Picture book. 3-6)
PIRATERIA The Wonderful Plunderful Pirate Emporium
Brown, Calef Illus. by Brown, Calef Atheneum (40 pp.) $16.99 | Jul. 10, 2012 978-1-4169-7878-7
One-stop shopping for all “swashbucklers and swashbucklerettes.” Offering “[s]pinnakers, jibs, and rope in hanks; / solid maple walking planks” and arrays of specialty goods from eye patches to aRRgyle socks, this “wonderful, plunderful pirate emporium” merits a stop on every budding buccaneer’s itinerary. Accompanying a hearty commentary that breaks into and out of rhyme but keeps to a rolling rhythm, Brown dishes up illustrations featuring an array of scurvy (if somewhat yuppified) shoppers of both sexes in nautical wear. They are browsing the Yo Ho Hosiery and Footwear department, sitting down in the food court with flagons and nasty-looking viands or accosting the glowering sales staff (“Where be the yardarm cozies?”). From pirate togs to treasure maps to night classes in map reading, here’s the place to pick up anything piratical. Prices? “[W]e put the ‘arg’ in ‘bargain’!” is the proud claim of this K-Mart for corsairs. Avast! This combination of nonsense verse and everything pirate is a guaranteed winner. (Picture book. 6-8)
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“A seafaring adventure with all the elements of a great puzzle but the solution.” from seize the storm
BLACKWATCH
Burtenshaw, Jenna Greenwillow/HarperCollins (320 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 26, 2012 978-0-06-202644-6 Series: The Secrets of Wintercraft, 2 Amid the backlash from the events of Shadowcry (2011), Kate Winters’ and Silas Dane’s destinies again become intertwined. As a traitor on the run, Silas finds a new goal and purpose in rumors of activity from another of Albion’s old enemies—fellow immortal Dalliah Grey, who caused the council a great deal of trouble hundreds of years ago. But heading across the sea to the Continent to join up with her proves difficult when Silas runs into an old enemy from his soldier days. In a parallel story line, Kate’s allies find refuge among the Skilled, but she finds imprisonment. In learning why they are so resistant to her, she learns more about Wintercraft and how dangerous her bloodline is. Late in the novel, both story lines finally come together when powerful magic jeopardizes the veil between the living and the dead. Kate’s story explores more of the history of Albion, the Skilled and the bonemen. By contrast, the Continental setting is underutilized and under-explored, lacking sufficient differentiation from Albion. The characters that inhabit it—such as Silas’ rival and foil Bandermain, the elite Blackwatch he commands and the enigmatic Dalliah—make up for the Continent’s lack of personality by providing the ambiguity that made Silas so interesting in the first installment. Fans of Shadowcry (2011) will find the plot improvements satisfying. (Fantasy. 10-15)
SEIZE THE STORM
Cadnum, Michael Farrar, Straus and Giroux (240 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 5, 2012 978-0-374-36705-3 An ocean thriller brings a family clinging to lost affluence into the path of a drug warlord. From the first page, readers know that a merciless drug warlord is involved, but the family party, on a last yachting jaunt from San Francisco to Honolulu, is caught up in in its own worries. Leonard and Claudette have been living the high life, but their daughter, Susannah, and her cousin, Martin, know that the money is gone. Deck hand Axel is eye candy but also an opportunist looking for a break. When their luxury boat, Athena’s Secret, crosses paths with the speedier Witch Grass, they find a fortune in cash, plus two dead guys: in other words, trouble. They commence a lackadaisical hunt for salvage that turns the voyage into more than a goodbye to a way of life—it could be a goodbye to life itself. Cadnum takes threatening weather, a shark, a lost dog and guns galore and turns them into a nightmare |
scenario. Then, unfortunately, he simply abandons the thriller formula as bad guys and demoralized family come face to face in an ending more whimper than bang. Psychological elements stemming from the relationships between those on the wrong and (supposedly) the right side of the law are introduced early on, but the author lets much of that simply fade. A seafaring adventure with all the elements of a great puzzle but the solution. (Thriller. 12-16)
SOME CAT!
Casanova, Mary Illus. by Hoyt, Ard Farrar, Straus and Giroux (40 pp.) $16.99 | Jun. 5, 2012 978-0-374-37123-4 Violet the cat finds it hard to make friends with her new owners’ two dogs until they show their loyalty despite her unfriendliness. Casanova’s energetic text begins with a brief mention of Violet’s previous home, where there was “too little food and too much shouting.” Presumably that’s why she hisses and spits at the people who stop by her cage at the shelter. Most walk away, but one couple decides to take her home. Once there she terrorizes George and Zippity, heroes of Some Dog! (2007). Things change after a trio of stray dogs finds her alone in the yard. Once rescued, Violet undergoes a serious attitude adjustment. From the cover that shows a wide-eyed, anxious-looking cat to the implication that Violet’s earlier experiences shaped her personality to the fairly scary attack by the stray dogs, this is not a typically perky pet-adoption tale. Hoyt’s illustrations, which appear to combine watercolor and pencil, set the story in and around a house by a lake and offer a mostly realistic look at the action. The cozy setting and some visual humor lighten the mood, as does Casanova’s use of nonsense words to convey the barking and meowing of the various animals. Just as prickly as its heroine, this book requires an audience ready for its sobering back story. (Picture book. 4-7)
VERY SPECIAL FRIENDS
Chapman, Jane Illus. by Chapman, Jane Good Books (26 pp.) $16.99 | Jun. 1, 2012 978-1-56148-748-6
The grass is always greener when you have companions to share your time. Mouse eagerly awaits the arrival of her “Special Friends” at the river’s edge. Rabbit appears and offers to wait with her, and the two play happily. Other neighbors wander by and invite themselves to the impromptu gathering with pleasantly polite dialogue. “Just the weather for waiting,” smiles Frog. “May I join you?” As the day draws to a close, Mouse informs her patient friends that they, her Special Friends, have been with her all
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“Christensen’s bold lines and bright, warm gouache wash illustration support every part of the account.” from i galileo
along. The appealing outdoor setting is depicted in shades of lush, robust green; the text features a lilting rhythm to illustrate the quiet hustle and bustle of the natural world. “Butterflies fluttered on the breeze. / Bees buzzed in the daisies. / Ants scuttled busily in the grass.” The emphasis is on simple pleasures; Rabbit twirls Mouse with abandon, and the buddies sprawl in the field. Characters’ peaceful smiles and animated gestures capture their gentle interactions. Mouse tiptoes nose-to-nose with Frog, tugs Rabbit’s ear, and whispers to Turtle while balanced precariously on a tree branch. The diminutive rodent’s engaging personality shines, though readers will wonder why Mouse was so darn cagey about the identity of the Special Friends all day long. This soothing ode to the power of friendship reveals that a lazy day is always better spent with the ones you love. (Picture book. 3-5)
I, GALILEO
Christensen, Bonnie Knopf (40 pp.) $17.99 | PLB $20.99 | Jun. 12, 2012 978-0-375-86753-8 978-0-375-96753-5 PLB It was Galileo’s passion that got him into trouble, but his dedication to finding the truth meant that his work endures. This distillation of the famed astronomer’s life focuses on his exceptional talent for scientific inquiry. Christensen uses a first-person narration that brings readers close to Galileo’s development as a scholar and a scientist. The narrative recounts his childhood in Pisa (“center of my parents’ universe”), surrounded by music and mathematics and encouraged to ask questions in search of the truth. He describes his rise in the academic community and his invention of a calculating compass and “the world’s first truly scientific telescope.” Finally, he details the events that led to his humiliation and imprisonment for his scholarship in support of a Copernican view of the solar system. Christensen’s bold lines and bright, warm gouache wash illustration support every part of the account. The handsome cover and title-page opening emphasize Galileo’s particular delight in observing the stars and the movements of heavenly bodies with a telescope of his own design. A small illuminated circle, the room in which Galileo met the Inquisition, is set against a somber blue-black background, a striking contrast with earlier pages showing the warm and heavenly blue of the night sky under Galileo’s observation. Maps and diagrams within the narrative help guide readers. A timeline spanning the years both before and after Galileo’s life, brief lists of his inventions, experiments and discoveries, a glossary and list of sources extend the work. An accessible, inviting and attractive introduction to Galileo. (Picture book/biography. 6-10)
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50 CLIMATE QUESTIONS A Blizzard of Blistering Facts
Christie, Peter Illus. by Kinnaird, Ross Annick Press (120 pp.) $22.95 | paper $14.95 | Jun. 1, 2012 978-1-55451-375-8 978-1-55451-374-1 paperback An airy survey of the effects of climate through history and prehistory, from the initial case of “planetary flatulence” that created Earth’s atmosphere to the effects of whale poop, the computer industry and less-frequent bathing on levels of greenhouse gases. Christie presents a disjointed but roughly chronological series of observations beneath jokey questions like “Who put the lizard in blizzard?” (about dinosaurs in the Antarctic) and “What is it with kids these days?” (about El Niño and La Niña). The book is not without flaw. The author confuses “stalactite” with “stalagmite,” seldom brings in facts to support his claims, and fails to draw credible connections between climate change and events like the Viking discovery of North America, the building of cathedrals in Medieval Europe, or the destruction of the Spanish Armada. Nevertheless, in general, readers will come away with a better picture of climate’s long-term effects and the forces that govern it. Lame jokes, the occasional simple “Clim-ACTivity” and Kinnaird’s cartoon vignettes further lighten the informational load. The author cites sources for his information (though not specific pages) in endnotes. A broadly focused look at the topic, neither systematic nor forceful, but well designed for browsers with casual interest or short attention spans. (bibliography) (Nonfiction. 9-12)
KEEP HOLDING ON
Colasanti, Susane Viking (224 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 14, 2012 978-0-670-01225-1
If Noelle can just hold on until graduation, she might finally escape the school bullies and her neglectful mother. But when the bullying goes too far, she must choose whether to run away or finally stand up for herself. Caught between her miserable existence at school and a home life that is at best impoverished and at worst abusive, Noelle believes if she can just keep her head down, she can escape to the city, where her life will really begin. Unfortunately, the brutal bullying, her mother’s refusal to buy food and a boyfriend who only wants to make out in secret are making it hard for her to stay hopeful. When she is offered a position on the lit mag and her crush, funky Julian Porter, asks her out, Noelle wants to believe that things are finally turning around. Then one of their classmates commits suicide, and Noelle is determined
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to make sure everyone knows the truth. The familiar story of bullying is elevated by Colasanti’s smart dialogue, quirky characters and richly layered plot. Readers will engage intellectually and emotionally with each character, and the countdown toward graduation that marks every chapter heightens Noelle’s desperation to escape. The high level of craft in the writing even makes the cloying and overly earnest ending forgivable. Emotionally satisfying from beginning to end. (Fiction. 12 & up)
HOMER
Cooper, Elisha Illus. by Cooper, Elisha Greenwillow/HarperCollins (32 pp.) $16.99 | Jun. 1, 2012 978-0-06-201248-7 Stories of patiently waiting dogs have been around for just about forever, or at least since Homer wrote about faithful Argos recognizing Odysseus after a 20-year absence. In Cooper’s touching story, the patient pup is an aging yellow Lab named Homer, whose love for his family is as deep and wide as the ocean outside their cottage. At daybreak Homer is already lying on the front porch, looking out over a field and beach, as well as the sea beyond. As the family members (including three more dogs) pass by Homer on their way out, they all invite him to come along to play in the water, dig in the sand or bike to the store. Homer replies to each in turn that he is happy to stay right there on the porch, watching and waiting. His family returns, and the pleasant day winds down, with Homer finally curling up in a cozy armchair for the night, content because “I have everything I want.” Soft-focus watercolor illustrations effectively convey the seaside atmosphere with a combination of formats, including some pages with consecutive panels and wordless double-page spreads showing a wide view of the cottage and beach and the inside of the home with the family getting ready for bed. Soothing and satisfying; perfect for reading on the porch on a summer evening, preferably next to a dog. (Picture book. 3-7)
JUST ONE MORE! Corderoy, Tracey Illus. by Edgson, Alison Good Books (26 pp.) $16.99 | Jun. 1, 2012 978-1-56148-746-2
his book is not nearly long enough. So, he makes the rounds among his friends, hoping to get some story ideas. Little Owl is an outer-space fan, Little Mouse likes anything about cheese and Little Wolf enjoys pig tales. The rewrites take the rest of the day. When Little Brown Bunny finally gathers his family for his first author’s reading, he is so exhausted that he falls fast asleep. Edgson’s artwork combines the bright colors, sweet facial expressions and adorable animal characters that are common fodder in bedtime tales. But Little Brown Bunny’s enthusiasm and persistence come through loud and clear—one can almost imagine that his tongue is sticking out of his unseen mouth as he hunches over his book, pencil in a tight grip. Corderoy may be on to something here—Little Brown Bunny’s transformation from listener to author could prove inspiring. (Picture book. 3-7)
OINK-A-DOODLE-MOO
Czekaj, Jef Illus. by Czekaj, Jef Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins (32 pp.) $16.99 | Jun. 1, 2012 978-0-06-206011-2 Warning: This book will make children want to play the telephone game all day long. “I have a secret,” the pig says. He leans in close, so the chicken can hear him. “Oink,” he whispers. “Pass it on.” Alert readers will already see where this is going. Fifteen pages later, the message is much longer. “Are you sure you’re ready?” the cat asks the dog. The cat, looking just a tiny bit panicked, says, “Hee-haw-oink-baa-quack-caw-ribbit-hiss-neigh-meow-moohoo-squeak. Pass it on.” This is a book to read more than once. That’s not because it’s difficult to follow, but readers might miss details like the tiny sound effects of the animals’ feet the first couple of times through. The chicken goes flit flit. The cow goes galump galump. And on the last few pages of the book, when everything has gone horribly awry, the pig has a wonderful look of delight on his face. Czekaj has drawn him with just a hint of mischief in his eyes. “Don’t worry…” he says…“we’ll just start over.” A biographical note says that the author “is a cartoonist, children’s book author and illustrator, and underground DJ.” It makes him sound a little subversive. His animals have just as much personality. Get ready for many, ever-sillier rereadings. (Picture book. 3-6)
A story-loving tot’s desire for bedtime reading to last longer leads him to try his hand at being an author. Little Brown Bunny’s obliging family takes turns reading “just one more” book to him until the supply of stories runs out. The disappointed tyke comes up with the genius plan to write his own story, a long one: “Then storytime will last all night.” But a trial read-aloud with his stuffed dinosaurs reveals that |
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A DAY WITHOUT SUGAR / UN DÍA SIN AZÚCAR
de Anda, Diane Illus. by Montecalvo, Janet Trans. by Ventura, Gabriela Baeza Piñata Books/Arté Público (32 pp.) $17.95 | May 31, 2012 978-1-55885-702-5 A risk of family diabetes prompts Tía Sofía to teach her nieces and nephews about alternatives to sugar when choosing meals and snacks. Ten-year-old Tito and his cousins enjoy spending weekends at their aunt’s house, playing board games and watching television. On this weekend, Tía Sofía tells the family that everyone must help Tito eat healthier to avoid developing diabetes like his grandfather and uncle. To do this, they must eliminate as much hidden sugar as possible and eat natural sugars such as those in fruits. Under their aunt’s guidance, the children spend the day analyzing all their meals. They learn, for example, that ketchup and relish include sugar, but fresh tomato and homemade salsa on a hamburger can be healthier and just as delicious. At day’s end, they are surprised with an apple turnover, sans sugar but made with cinnamon, that holds its natural delicious sweetness simply from the juice of the apples. Latino family scenes painted in gouache on textured paper are populated by amiable, brown-skinned characters who seem to enjoy the challenge presented to them. The weekend concludes with the only acceptable sugar treat, a sweet kiss from Tía Sofía. Though the focus on sugar is apparent, an underlining theme of balancing nutrition with exercise rounds out the purpose-filled story told with a fluent dual English and Spanish text. (Picture book. 6-8)
THE BRIXEN WITCH
DeKeyser, Stacy Illus. by Nickle, John McElderry (208 pp.) $15.99 | Jun. 26, 2012 978-1-4424-3328-1
An enchanted coin, a plague of rats, an itinerant fiddler and the disappearance of the village children are familiar folklore elements that find their ways into this original adventure. Although 12-year-old Rudi Bauer thinks he’s found a treasure, no good can come from taking something that belongs to the Brixen Witch. His sleep is plagued by nightmares, but when they stop there’s no relief—the village is infested with rats. Setting her third-person narrative in a tiny, Germanic mountain community, DeKeyser makes a traditional fantasy world come to life with homey details and believable dialogue. The witch’s old-fashioned speech reveals her great age. Occasional small silhouettes effectively highlight important symbols in each chapter: grandmother’s rocking chair, a mountain flower and then, 966
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more ominously, rats and more rats. Around the Pied Piper events, the author weaves a substantial story that includes both good and bad magic and the power and purpose of a medieval witch for a village. “Sounds like you’re just a midwife, really. Or a philosopher. Not really a witch,” Rudi blurts out. But the witch really is a witch, even though much of her power has been stolen by her greedy servant; she’s necessary to her mountain and her village. As his Oma points out, young Rudi, the one child left behind after the children disappear and the one who precipitated the crisis, is the one to make things right. Fresh and satisfying for middle-grade readers. (Fantasy. 9-12)
HAUNTED HISTORIES Creepy Castles, Dark Dungeons, and Powerful Palaces
Everett, J.H. & Scott-Waters, Marilyn Christy Ottaviano/Henry Holt (160 pp.) $14.99 | Jul. 17, 2012 978-0-8050-8971-4 History is more haunted than readers may think. Disney might have some believing that castles are clean, pink and full of unicorn tapestries. But Virgil Dante, youngest Master Ghostorian in London, is here to disabuse readers of that notion, ostensibly with the help of his raven, Thor, and a passel of ghosts. They tour history with the assistance of a cursed pocket watch and look in on castles, dungeons, palaces and graveyards. Here and there, they learn a thing or two from a “real” ghost from the locale and time period they are visiting. More often, Virgil just lectures in a colloquial narrative voice or offers maps, lists and diagrams of horrible places and things in world history. The usual suspects get the eye: The Tower of London and the Bastille figure prominently, but there are also lesser-known nests of nastiness like Himeji Castle in Japan and Castle Neuschwanstein in Bavaria. Everett and Scott-Waters have put together an instructive, amusing-enough gross-and-horrible history title. However, it feels a bit scattered, and the ghosts are few and far between. Abundant black-and-white illustrations are grisly and spooky enough to hold interest. Reluctant historians may find Virgil’s “ghostory” appealing. (timeline, maps, resources) (Nonfiction. 8-12)
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ON THE DAY I DIED Stories from the Grave
Fleming, Candace Schwartz & Wade/Random (208 pp.) $16.99 | Jul. 10, 2012 978-0-375-86781-1 Nine creepy tales told by dead teens and positively tailor-made for reading— or reading aloud—by flashlight. Fleming uses a version of “The Vanishing Hitchhiker” as a frame story and |
“A sports story that handsprings away from romance and toward a commendable joy in accomplishment.” from gold medal summer
draws inspiration from several classic horror shorts, monster movies and actual locales and incidents. Within this frame, she sends a teenager into a remote cemetery where ghostly young people regale him with the ghastly circumstances of their demises. These range from being sucked into a magical mirror to being partially eaten by a mutant rubber ducky, from being brained by a falling stone gargoyle at an abandoned asylum to drowning in a car driven by a demonic hood ornament. Tasty elements include a malign monkey’s paw purchased at a flea market, a spider crawling out of a corpse’s mouth and a crazed florist who collects the heads of famous gangsters. Amid these, the author tucks in period details, offers one story written in the style of Edgar Allan Poe (“As I pondered the wallpaper, its patterns seemed to crawl deep inside me, revealing dark secrets… No!”) and caps the collection with perceptive comments on her themes and sources. Light on explicit grue but well endowed with macabre detail and leavening dashes of humor. (Horror/short stories. 10-13)
WHEN NO-ONE’S LOOKING AT THE ZOO
Fraillon, Zana Illus. by Masciullo, Lucia Trafalgar (25 pp.) $16.99 | Jun. 1, 2012 978-1921502460
The animals have their own, surprising ways of having fun. Seven two-page spreads offer a fairly normal picture of zoo activity accompanied by a bright bit of verse. But open the folded-over right-hand page and... the monkeys “swing from vines / with the greatest of ease. / They gobble-gulp bananas / and screech in the trees. / But when no-one’s looking...,” they frolic in a big swimming pool, wearing bathing caps and goggles, with one even reading a book on a raft, a drink (complete with umbrella) clutched in one foot. The giraffes secretly like to water ski, the seals dance in a beautiful ballroom, and the elephants love to go skateboarding. Who knew? The bears sniff and growl when the visitors to the zoo are watching, but secretly they have a snappy combo of piano, bass, flute and tambourine. The final spread has all the animals staring at the reader: “When no-one is looking / what do you do?” All different kinds of play turns out to be the answer. Fraillon’s poems have crisp rhythms and some nice phonic touches; with no verse on the hidden pages, though, they feel rather incomplete. Masciullo’s paintings are bright and beautifully textured, but her figures are disappointingly generic. Nice but unexceptional—once the fun of lifting the gatefolds is past. (Picture book. 4-7)
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GOLD MEDAL SUMMER
Freitas, Donna Levine/Scholastic (240 pp.) $16.99 | Jun. 1, 2012 978-0-545-37288-6
Freitas, who brought readers the delightfully feisty protagonist of The Possibilities of Sainthood (2008), is back with another determined young teen facing challenge. Joey is a first-rate gymnast who has never actually won gold, but not for want of trying. Now she’s faced with training hard through the summer for Regionals. That would be okay, because she adores her sport, but goodlooking Tanner has moved back to town, becoming a major distraction, and her best friend Alex is considering dropping out of training to spend more time with her new boyfriend. Joey’s parents, burned out after years of watching her older sister compete—often in pain from injuries—support her gymnastics training financially but frequently undermine the 13-year-old’s determination to persevere. (This is not completely credible, however, since they are otherwise involved with their children.) Joey’s very serious first-person narration is believable, and her cautious exploration of a budding relationship with Tanner rings true. Gymnastics routines are described using terminology that will only be familiar to gymnasts, adding authenticity to Joey’s voice; a spread of step-by-step illustrations of some of the skills helps clarify Joey’s descriptions of her routines. Talented young athletes will recognize and applaud Joey’s zeal; others might wish she could broaden her focus. A sports story that handsprings away from romance and toward a commendable joy in accomplishment. (Fiction. 10-14)
MY LIFE IN BLACK & WHITE
Friend, Natasha Viking (304 pp.) $17.99 | paper $8.99 | Jun. 28, 2012 978-0-670-01303-6 978-0-670-78494-3 paperback
After a car accident leaves Lexi’s face terribly scarred, she is forced to figure out what is truly important in life. Lexi is the beautiful one. Her best friend, Taylor, is the wild and funny one. Together they are an unstoppable force. Everything seems perfect until one summer night when it all falls apart. After finding her boyfriend, Ryan, and Taylor making out at a party, Lexi wants nothing more than to escape. She begs a ride from Taylor’s brother, Jarrod, who takes the opportunity to hit on her. An argument quickly escalates, leading to an accident that changes Lexi’s life forever. Angry and bitter, Lexi pushes everyone away from her. It isn’t until her sister, Ruthie, and Theo, a guy with no patience for Lexi’s self-pity, are honest with her that Lexi starts peeling away the plastic life she once had and discovers the real
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“A shocking, spine-tingling ending proves that ghost stories never go out of style.” from the unquiet
one underneath. Authentic dialogue, complex characters and an interesting narration lift this story above others with a similar theme. Even when she’s behaving erratically, Lexi’s sarcastic wit and genuine emotion make her a girl readers will root for. These characters drink, are sexually active and swear, making them instantly recognizable to older teens. Artful and satisfying. (Fiction. 14 & up)
GIRL OUT LOUD
Gale, Emily Chicken House/Scholastic (288 pp.) $17.99 | $17.99 e-book | Jun. 1, 2012 978-0-545-30438-2 978-0-545-41517-0 e-book A resolutely average teenager nearly collapses under the weight of her bipolar father’s outrageous expectations. Kassidy’s life in “deepest, darkest, dorkiest suburbia” would be manageable (the drudgery of her all-girls’ high school and the unfairness of her brother Raff ’s ability to get away with petty criminality notwithstanding), were it not for her sense of responsibility to keep her mercurial father on an even keel. Over the years, she’s gone along with his schemes for fame and recognition, submitting to testing to join Mensa and auditioning for a fish-sticks commercial as well as the National Youth Orchestra. But when Dad announces his intention to coach Kassidy to victory on The X Factor, she realizes that indulging him is no longer a viable strategy. Compounding Kass’ anxiety are a kitchen-sink’s worth of other issues: a reciprocated crush on the boy who turns out to be the object of her friend Char’s affection, the possibility that Raff may be drawn into a life of serious crime, and the discovery of her mother’s secret life outside the home. Gale succeeds in building a claustrophobic emotional atmosphere for her heroine to push back against, but the pileup of issues tips her story into unbelievable, soap-operatic territory. Readers will enjoy Kass’ self-deprecatingly funny approach to her many problems, but the credulitystraining plotting renders this a secondary purchase, at best. (author’s note) (Fiction. 12-16)
THE UNQUIET
Garsee, Jeannine Bloomsbury (400 pp.) $16.99 | Jul. 1, 2012 978-1-59990-723-9 Even small towns have urban legends. Since 16-year-old Rinn’s last manic episode resulted in the death of her grandmother, she and her mother have uprooted from California to relocate temporarily in her mother’s rural Ohio hometown. With her bipolar disorder under control for the 968
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moment, Rinn’s new life seems promising—until she discovers that a tunnel built to bypass the gym at her high school is rumored to be haunted by Annaliese, a teen who drowned in the school’s swimming pool 20 years ago. After a séance conducted by fellow classmates unleashes the ghost’s full powers, strange “accidents” begin occurring around the school. The story builds in intensity as both Rinn and Annaliese show their determination to overtake each other’s will. Their power struggles highlight Rinn’s constant battle to overcome her disorder and appear normal again. But how can a bipolar teen, already known for hearing strange voices, seeing hallucinations and experiencing psychotic episodes, convince those around her of the ghost’s homicidal plans? To stop Annaliese, Rinn may just have to find out what started her haunting in the first place. A steamy romance with the best catch at school adds just the right balance to the novel’s chilling effects. A shocking, spine-tingling ending proves that ghost stories never go out of style. (Supernatural thriller. 14 & up)
THE GIRL IS TROUBLE
Haines, Kathryn Miller Roaring Brook (336 pp.) $16.99 | Jul. 3, 2012 978-1-59643-610-7
Teen detective Iris Anderson struggles to solve parallel mysteries while coming to terms with her Jewish identity in World War II–era New York City in this engrossing follow-up to The Girl is Murder (2011). It’s only been a month since Iris helped her gumshoe dad solve the disappearance of one of her classmates. Now her father is reluctantly allowing her to assist him on cases, but when Iris finds some disturbing crime-scene photos of her deceased mother in his office, she almost regrets her decision. Iris had been told her mother committed suicide. The photos indicate foul play, though, and Iris is determined to find out the truth. Meanwhile, she has also been hired by the Jewish Student Federation at school to uncover who is leaving anti-Semitic notes in members’ lockers. The investigation stirs up Iris’s feelings of guilt over her own Jewish heritage, which she has essentially ignored. Emotionally distraught and personally involved in both cases, Iris is a prime target for bad boy Benny’s romantic overtures. But are his intentions as sweet as they seem? Or is Iris flirting with danger? Haines delves deeper into Iris’ intriguing character in this compelling, self-contained sequel while doing a bang-up job of maintaining the ace period setting. A solid addition to what is turning into a swell series. (Historical mystery. 12 & up)
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DOG GONE!
smallest dino-maniacs—even “mother T. Rex and her terrible rexes six” look cuddly. Little hatchlings will likewise stretch, hoot and snuggle down cozily as they listen. (Picture book. 2-5)
Hernandez, Leeza Illus. by Hernandez, Leeza Putnam (32 pp.) $15.99 | Jun. 14, 2012 978-0-399-25447-5 No, dog! A frisky pup bounds through his home, radiating happiness and cheerfully making messes wherever he goes. Crisp, pithy phrases replete with rhyme and repetition will have young readers eagerly joining in as this mischievous mutt gets into lots of trouble. “Happy dog. / Yappy dog. / Settle down, you snappy dog,” his boy warns, but he goes unheeded. When the dog rips up a beloved toy, he finally gets a well-deserved scolding and, wounded to the bone, runs off. As he sadly wanders the streets in search of a place to stay, the digitally enhanced acrylic illustrations show him from different angles as he comes to terms with his new situation. But life on the street is no place for a dog such as he. “Enough, dog. / You’re tough, dog. / But not for living rough, dog,” a wellmeaning new canine friend tells him. At the perfect moment, the dog’s boy appears, searching by flashlight, and the two are joyfully reunited. The jubilant pup gets overexcited again (“No, dog… / Whoa, dog!”), but as the two curl up for sleep with the newly repaired toy, the boy adds, “I’ll never let you go, dog.” Dog lovers and energetic youngsters will find much to love here, and the final note of acceptance provides comfort and warmth. A sweet pooch portrait of unconditional love. (Picture book. 3-6)
CREATURE COUNT A Prehistoric Rhyme
Huante, Brenda Illus. by Nguyen, Vincent Farrar, Straus and Giroux (32 pp.) $16.99 | Jul. 3, 2012 978-0-374-33605-9
A jaunty prehistoric version of “Over in the Meadow” with a cast of particularly happy-looking dinos and extinct mammals. From “a mother woolly mammoth and her little woolly one” to “a mother maiasaur and her little hatchlings ten,” family groups wreathed in smiles and depicted in vivid greens, blues and purples variously trumpet, boom, hoot, snarl, stretch and munch. Without doing violence to the rhythm’s familiar cadences, Huante varies the opening lines (“On a prehistoric mountain where the sky was so blue…” “Near a prehistoric swamp by a long, curling vine…”). Nguyen brings all of the creatures together for a closing snuggle “in the moonlight of a prehistoric night.” Lest younger readers be left with the impression that that could ever actually happen, the author explains on a closing spread that these creatures lived in different eras, and goes on beneath vignette portraits to provide a sentence or two of basic facts about each. While the aesthetic is not a particularly demanding one, there is no doubt of its appeal to the |
ARISE
Hudson, Tara Harper/HarperCollins (416 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 5, 2012 978-0-06-202679-8 This sequel to Hereafter (2011) finds Amelia still dead but not loving it. Touching Joshua Mayhew remains a thrill, but whenever things heat up, Amelia tends to de-materialize, which definitely puts a crimp in their romance. After Eli warns that she and those she loves are attracting interest from demons, Amelia realizes that to keep Joshua safe, she’ll have to leave him. She puts it off, though, hoping she can shake the demons by joining the Mayhew Christmas trip to New Orleans, where the Louisiana Mayhew teens have a surprise for her—they’re seers. All can hear Amelia; a few, like charismatic Alex, can see her. She’s also visible to ghosts caught between life and death and to Gabrielle, a Voodoo priestess who might be able to solidify Amelia. Again, Hudson earns a spot in the paranormal-romance front ranks, compensating for occasionally clunky prose with a fast-unfolding plot and intriguing characters. Leaving small-town Oklahoma for New Orleans might be a bad move for Amelia, but it’s great for readers. Rendered in fiction, this atmospheric city invariably becomes a spooky character in its own right (maybe it’s time to demand royalties). Amelia herself feels more vivid this time around, perhaps because her heightened visibility permits more interaction with other characters. A creditable second act; genre fans won’t be disappointed. (Paranormal romance. 12 & up)
BABY DON’T SMOKE
Jaime, Everett Illus. by Brown, Eliot R. Kalindi Press (40 pp.) $9.95 paperback | Jun. 1, 2012 978-1-935826-20-0 In a graphic novelette that wears its agenda on both sleeves and on every other garment, a young Latina mother moves through clouds of dialogue balloons filled with anti-smoking arguments. Blowing off pleas to stop lighting up by her baby’s father, her widowed mother and the television, Maria falls asleep with a cigarette in her hand. She wakes to a dream world in which she has burned down her house, meets her repentant father in the hospital (“If I’d only realized that the only gift I was leaving
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you was asthma and a dirty habit…”) and is whisked off with a pregnant fellow patient to a confrontation with the witchy, bitchy—and, in Brown’s garishly colored, crudely drawn cartoons, hideously thin—head of the “Tarburro” corporation. She gloats: “Lovely, young parent smokers! Your children are my children!” For readers who aren’t already browbeaten into insensibility by the barrage of information, Jaime caps the episode with seven pages of statistics (mislabeled “Factoids”), websites and quiz questions. Maria wakes at the end in a singed easy chair and resolves to quit cold turkey. The target audience, having certainly been exposed to similar anti-smoking screeds already, is unlikely to follow suit. (Graphic novel. 12-16)
OLYMPIG!
Jamieson, Victoria Illus. by Jamieson, Victoria Dial (32 pp.) $16.99 | Jul. 5, 2012 978-0-8037-3536-1 The story of a pig, perhaps a tad delusional but all guns and going for Olympic gold. Jamieson’s young porker, Boomer, is the first pig to compete in the history of the Animal Olympics. He’s a charger—“Hard work and practice make an Olympic champion”—but still a pig: not as strong as the elephant, as speedy as the cheetah or as brawny as the gorilla. A mean-spirited reporter tries to diminish his hopes, yet Boomer can only see gold dancing before his eyes. And they are wonderful eyes, enormously expressive in his great pig head as he proceeds to get trounced in every event. The reporter needles Boomer after every loss, and Boomer finally snaps when his cannonball fails to impress the diving judges: “Who made you the boss? No fair! Lawsuit, buddy!” He quits. But his mother tells him how proud she is, and he returns for a slam-bang finale. Hope springs eternal; it’s not winning, but how you play the game; you can’t win them all. True, but Boomer makes such a hash of each contest, perhaps it is best just to say that he is a good sport, and good sports make sports good. Though the story doesn’t turn any new ground, Jamieson’s affective artwork, with its brio and dash, endows Boomer with an attractive personality, no matter his flaws. A salubrious object lesson of playing for playing’s sake. (Picture book. 5-8)
FLORENTINE AND PIG
Katzler, Eva Illus. by Mikhail, Jess Bloomsbury (32 pp.) $16.99 | May 1, 2012 978-1-59990-847-2
With help from her silent porcine buddy, a young cook concocts picnic treats—some of which are more yummy than feasible. 970
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The six recipes (plus a craft project) may appear at the end, but they’re really the centerpiece of the tale. The lack of apples for Florentine’s Apple and Carrot Muffins with Sunshine Lemon Icing provides a temporary setback, but Pig overcomes it, charging up a tree on a “crunchy apple mission.” That’s pretty much it as far as the story goes. A subsequent one-spread whirl of kitchen activity produces a bountiful basketful of snacks, from Cheddar Cheese and Pumpkin Seed Bites and Sticky Red Onion Hummus with Cucumber Dunkers to Homemade Lemonade with Fresh Berry Ice Cubes. The plot is strictly perfunctory, and Mikhail’s mixed-media cartoon scenes of a pop-eyed, frizzy-haired lass and her sweater-clad sidekick add more light than motion to the enterprise. Even more problematically, though most of the directions are clear enough for young novices to follow (with adult help suggested for some steps), the cheese-and–pumpkin-seed mixture is supposed to be cooked in “paper cups” for half an hour (cupcake liners are depicted, but young cooks who don’t know better may encounter disaster). Also, the Rainbow Sprinkle Cookie recipe pairs an entire cup of butter to only 11/4 cups of flour, which would yield some very flat, fatty cookies. A mouthwatering menu, but not much else. (foreword to parents) (Picture book. 6-8)
THE CASE OF THE FATAL PHANTOM
Kennedy, Emma Dial (368 pp.) $16.99 | Jun. 28, 2012 9789-0-8037-3542-2 Series: Wilma Tenderfoot, 3
In this episode, apprentice detective Wilma Tenderfoot and her beagle, Pickle, meet a phony phantom and a genuine ghost, and Wilma moves a step further in her quest to solve the mysteries of her own origin. Book three lives up to the promise of earlier series titles (The Case of the Frozen Hearts, 2011, etc.) with an appropriately convoluted plot, exaggerated characterizations, plenty of playful language and a ridiculous romance. The diminutive but dastardly Barbu D’Anvers reappears, bent on collecting a gambling debt, marrying swooning Belinda Blackheart and bumping off her parents so that he can inherit the family’s crumbling estate. Another pair of conspirators constructs an elaborate scheme to find treasure hidden at Blackheart Hoo and scare the owners out of hunting for it themselves. Kennedy reminds readers about the main characters and isolated setting on Cooper’s Island through an elaborate side exploration of the divided community’s curious history and traditions including the annual Brackle Day celebration. Villain D’Anvers never speaks plainly: He hisses, pants, screams and cackles. Wilma’s dog, Pickle, is embarrassingly outfitted in one outlandish getup after another; Inspector Lemone can’t stop thinking about food; and Detective Goodman solemnly smokes his rosemary pipe, before he identifies the perpetrators and reveals all. No real fatalities occur.
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“A post-apocalyptic debut breathes new life into a quickly flagging genre with its setting among the First Nations peoples of the Pacific Northwest.” from shadows cast by stars
Ghost story, detective adventure and good fun—but readers are advised to begin this entertaining series with volume one. (Humorous mystery. 8-12)
THE VINDICO
King, Wesley Putnam (304 pp.) $16.99 | Jun. 14, 2012 978-0-399-25654-7 Four teens and one preteen of disparate backgrounds find themselves forcefully recruited into a league of super-villains in this pallid series opener. They are plucked from lives that range from fairly unsatisfying to downright unpleasant and taken to the secret headquarters of the League of Heroes’ sworn enemies, the Vindico. There, the super-villains use a variety of predictable tactics (humiliation, terror, the promise of power) to mold the unlikely kids into protégés. Though each kid has a separate potential superpower, they bond enough, given the bizarre circumstances, to work together against their mentors when one of them is threatened. What could be an enjoyable comic-book romp is fatally hamstrung by the author’s regrettable tendency to tell, not show. The thirdperson narration shifts perspective from kid to kid and occasionally to the villains, a tactic which should develop distinct characters but here does not. With a couple of notable exceptions (a sarcastic-but-charismatic older boy virtually abandoned by his mother and a computer-genius girl reared in an unloving home), the kids’ back stories are largely uncompelling. Giving readers access to the thoughts and plots of the super-villains serves to leach rather than build tension, and a credibility-straining series of double-crosses causes the climax to drag rather than thrill. Finally, the super-villains’ motive for villainy underwhelms, resulting in huge suspension-of-disbelief problems. For real super-villain fun, skip this and go back to Catherine Jinks’ Evil Genius (2007) and sequels. (Adventure. 10-14)
SHADOWS CAST BY STARS
Knutsson, Catherine Atheneum (464 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 5, 2012 978-1-4424-0191-4
A post-apocalyptic debut breathes new life into a quickly flagging genre with its setting among the First Nations peoples of the Pacific Northwest. Even though they live in the Corridor, Cassandra Mercredi and her family have kept to the Old Way. When a new strain of the Plague that killed their mother emerges, she, her twin brother, Paul, and her father flee to the Island, where the Band clings to treaty lands. Métis, they are apart from the specific culture of the Island, but |
they are nevertheless Other, and their blood contains the only known cure for the Plague. Cass finds herself apprenticed to healer Madda and increasingly drawn to Bran, the son of the Island’s vanished leader. She also experiences a terrifying connection to the Sisiutl, the serpent-spirit that dwells in the lake by her house. Knutsson’s narrative is ambitious, twining together Pacific Northwest mythology, standard post-apocalyptic tropes and a coming-of-age story inflected with romance. Readers of Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a PartTime Indian will recognize the harsh realities portrayed, albeit within the science-fictional framework. Knutsson’s language is often atmospherically beautiful, but the story flounders at times, introducing unfulfilled subplots that may be foreshadowing for events in future volumes or simply red herrings. Nevertheless, it’s an absorbing read populated by characters hardly ever found in teen novels. (Science fiction. 12 & up)
SEEING RED The True Story of Blood
Kyi, Tanya Lloyd Illus. by Rolston, Steve Annick Press (126 pp.) $22.95 | paper $14.95 | Jun. 1, 2012 978-1-55451-385-7 978-1-55451-384-0 paperback An irreverent if anemic survey of the red stuff ’s roles in human culture, from Galen to the Twilight series. The information is presented beneath drippy red borders and splattered with both jokey cartoon illustrations and graphic-novel style episodes featuring a hoodie-clad researcher who hooks up with a hot young vampire. Kyi’s report opens with a slashing overview of early medical theories about the circulatory system and closes with superficial speculations about why The Hunger Games and news stories about violent crimes are so popular. In between, it strings together generalities about blood rites in cultures from Matausa to our own Armed Forces and religions from Roman Catholicism to Santeria. The author also takes stabs at blood-based foods, the use of blood (particularly menstrual blood) in magic and modern forensic science, medical bloodletting, hereditary hemophilia in Europe’s ruling class, vampirism, and other topics in the same vein. But readers seeking at least a basic transfusion of information about blood’s physical functions or component elements will come away empty. Moreover, the trickle of specific facts doesn’t extend to, for instance, naming the site of a prehistoric sacrifice stone on which traces of gore have been found or even, despite repeated reference to blood types, actually identifying—much less discussing—them. A colorful but superficial ooze of anthropology, with a few drops of biology mixed in. (further reading, sources, index) (Nonfiction. 11-13)
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“Set in 15th-century France and Tunisia, the book is… meticulously researched, throwing readers into a past that feels fresh and new.” from the unfortunate son
STAND UP! How to Stay True to Yourself
Laouénan, Christine Illus. by Bertrand, Cécile Amulet/Abrams (80 pp.) $12.95 | Jun. 1, 2012 978-1-4197-0198-6 This slender volume, effectively translated from French, lightly covers the skill of assertiveness, including when to deploy it and when to tone it down. Many young teens encounter situations when they need to find a way to say no to friends, classmates, adults or perhaps even well-meaning parents. Using brief scenarios and extremely quirky and appealing cartoon-strip illustrations, this effort explores in some depth a variety of pertinent dilemmas, but its advice is only superficial. For example, the author envisions a situation in which a girl is heavily pressured by a controlling friend and then describes at length the psychodynamics that cause her to accept uncomplainingly the friend’s unpleasant behavior. Unfortunately, the section concludes without ever offering specifics to resolve the problem. A chapter on bullying also comes up short. After explaining what might motivate bullies, the advice is, “Learn how to defend your rights and calmly stand up for yourself.” Sometimes the illustrations don’t do much to expand on the text; other times, they are placed out of sync with it, which is confusing. Many of the pages’ backgrounds are divided either vertically or horizontally into two contrasting background colors; the vertically divided pages can be visually distracting, particularly when the background color is too dark for effective contrast. While this well-intentioned effort may appeal to some readers and does provide helpful insight into some challenging situations, it alone will not solve many problems. (Nonfiction. 10-15)
THE UNFORTUNATE SON
Leeds, Constance Viking (256 pp.) $16.99 | Jun. 14, 2012 978-0-670-01398-2
The nature of luck, fortune and fate is dissected and reexamined over the course of this outstanding novel. Born with only one ear, Luc considers his lot in life distinctly unlucky. His father hates him, seemingly without reason, so when the chance arises to apprentice with a local fisherman, the boy leaps at it. Living with the fisherman’s family he grows close to their ward, the beautiful Beatrice, and things seem to be looking up… until he’s kidnapped by pirates and sold to a Tunisian in North Africa. While Luc receives an education from his learned master, Beatrice looks into Luc’s past and discovers that he is the discarded son of a particularly vicious count. 972
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Though the plot falls into familiar territory—a hero discovers his true parentage—Leeds sets the book up as more of a historical conspiracy tale. Indeed, Beatrice’s attempts to unravel the truth reveal the dead count’s vast cover-up, unknown to even Luc’s brother. Leeds writes delicately, fleshing out each character as a fully realized human being. Set in 15th-century France and Tunisia, the book is also meticulously researched, throwing readers into a past that feels fresh and new. Engaging from the very first page, this is one work of historical fiction that will have even readers who prefer fantasy clamoring for a sequel. (Historical fiction. 9-12)
ONE WHITE DOLPHIN
Lewis, Gill Illus. by Aparicio, Rachel Atheneum (352 pp.) $15.99 | Jun. 12, 2012 978-1-4424-1447-1
A boy with cerebral palsy and an injured albino dolphin calf help Kara Wood come to terms with her mother’s death and the sale of the family’s boat, Moana. Kara’s mother vanished a year ago on a dolphin-saving trip to the South Pacific. With debts mounting, her father plans to sell the sailboat they built and that he has used to tend their lobster pots. The temporary protection of the reef near their British coastal home is about to expire, and local fishing-fleet owner Dougie Evans is looking forward to dredging for scallops again— destroying an environment that Kara loves. Setting up this situation and bringing dyslexic Kara together with Felix Andersen, a computer-savvy boy who doesn’t let a useless arm and slight limp get in his way, takes nearly half the narrative. Readers who persevere will be rewarded with a satisfying stranded-dolphin rehabilitation and an edge-of-your-seat sailboat rescue. Lewis complicates her plot with distracting details, including the family vendetta that makes Evans’ ultimate change of heart less than convincing. But she evokes the natural world beautifully, with compelling descriptions of the surprising undersea and shoreline wonders that support the strong environmental message. Readers captivated by Wild Wings (2011) may find this less engaging but will certainly be hoping for more books from Lewis in the future. (Fiction. 9-13)
THE WOLF’S WHISTLE
Lie, Bjorn Rune Illus. by Lie, Bjorn Rune Nobrow Ltd. (32 pp.) $18.00 | May 8, 2012 978-1-907704-03-1
In this “origins” tale, a slug of liquid courage prompts nerdy Albert the wolf to seek justice as a costumed superhero against the three porcine Honeyroast brothers and their gangster dad Al Prosciutto.
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Years after being bullied by the Honeyroasts at the Snobtown Academy, Albert has grown up to realize his dream of working for Wonder Comics (albeit as a janitor). Albert no sooner learns that his former nemeses are living high off the hog than a suspicious fire in one of their buildings kills all of his school buddies. Predictably depressed, he is fired up after a hobo offers a drink from a bottle in a brown paper bag (“It’s mighty powerful stuff. It’ll give you all the strength you’ll ever need…”). He dons a mask and cape made in his youth and sets out “to topple the towers of tyranny and to huff and puff and blow all asunder who stood in the way of righteousness.” Lie pairs cramped-looking blocks of small type with full-page or multi-paneled cartoon illustrations infused with murky red tones and printed on rough paper in grainy textures, giving them a dim, pulpy, retro look. “Yes, Albert would become the Lone Wolf,” the author concludes. “Hear his whistle.” Makes The True Story of the Three Little Pigs (1989) look positively wholesome in comparison. (Picture book. 14 & up)
IN THE LAND OF TWILIGHT
Lindgren, Astrid Illus. by Törnqvist, Marit Floris (44 pp.) $22.95 | Jun. 1, 2012 978-0-86315-886-5
The third book from this Swedish team relates a fanciful dream tale that sharply contrasts with their realistic previous two (A Calf for Christmas and Goran’s Great Escape, 2010, 2011). Told in first person by a boy who’s been told he won’t walk again because of a bad leg, the tale recounts his visit to the Land of Twilight with Mr. Lilyvale, who comes through his window. They fly over the sights and scenes of Stockholm, from the spire of St. Clara’s Church to Kronoberg Park, where red and yellow candies grow on trees. The boy drives a tram off a bridge and into a river and then steers a bus to a countryside farm, where he meets a talking moose, dances and eats. Mr. Lilyvale even presents him at court to the King and Queen of the Land of Twilight. Throughout their travels, Mr. Lilyvale repeatedly says, “Nothing really matters in the Land of Twilight,” with the last sentence explicitly affirming the sentiment: “It really doesn’t matter if you have a bad leg, because in the Land of Twilight you can fly.” The message seems questionable here—that your imagination can take you anywhere? At times readers may find themselves wondering if it isn’t an extended metaphor for death. The watercolor illustrations waft across the pages, incorporating twilight colors in a breezy style. Though the format is attractive, its rambling airiness will disappoint Lindgren fans and have a limited audience. (Picture book. 6-10)
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WE GIVE A SQUID A WEDGIE
London, C. Alexander Illus. by Duddle, Jonny Philomel (384 pp.) $12.99 | Jun. 1, 2012 978-0-399-25609-7 Series: An Accidental Adventure, 3
Celia and Oliver are beginning to wonder if destiny will ever stop lobbing accidental adventures their way. On New Year’s Eve, 11 (and 1/2)–yearold twins Celia and Oliver Navel want what they always want: to sit in front of their new cable TV and eat snack cakes… but both their parents are world-renowned explorers. In fact they live on the 4 1/2th floor of the Explorer’s Club, and they have to attend the Club’s New Year’s Gala. When a squid attack (don’t ask) brings an abrupt end to the festivities, they return home to find ichthyologist Chris Stickles waiting with a message from their (intermittently) missing mother: She needs their help to find Plato’s map and maybe Atlantis, and maybe the Lost Library of Alexandria. Thankfully (well, not in the twins’ opinion) teen heartthrob Corey Brandt is there to offer his boat for the expedition. The reluctant adventurers are off again on a wedgie- and Pirate Chicken (err, Rooster)–filled quest. London’s third in the series does not let up on the Saturday-morning-cartoon goofiness, and the sibling rivalry heats up a bit, too. Duddle’s occasional black-and-white illustrations are a plus in this open-ended romp that will definitely satisfy fans. High-seas hijinks with more laughs (and groans and squids) than adventure. (Humor. 9-12)
SCRIBBLES AND INK
Long, Ethan Illus. by Long, Ethan Blue Apple (32 pp.) $12.99 | Jun. 25, 2012 978-1-60905-205-8
Two artistes conflict, critique and ultimately collaborate amid a bracing mess of splashes and scribbles. Deftly drawn in ways that reflect their individual styles, Ink the dapper mouse paints neatly limned still lifes, while disheveled Scribbles the cat sketches loose portraits with colored pencils. Turning up their noses at one another’s efforts (“Amateur!” “Hack!”), the two engage in an escalating squabble that begins with insults but soon takes over entire pages with Harold and the Purple Crayon–like figures and pranks. At last, a full-spread mutual meltdown depicted in wild scrawls and blotches leads to an agreement to work together—on a series of paintings (including one on a big double foldout) that bear strong resemblances to art by Leonardo da Vinci, Keith Haring and other renowned artists. Long’s visual exuberance echoes that achieved in the likes of David Catrow’s I Ain’t Gonna Paint No More (written by Karen Beaumont, 2005) and especially David Wiesner’s Art and
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Max (2010), which has a similar plot to boot. In closing, though, he identifies the artists he’s referenced and adds a distinctive fillip by suggesting that copying great art done by others isn’t a bad way to develop one’s own skills. An action-packed contretemps, though in the end it’s more a bit of technical advice for young artists than a general tribute to the benefits of working together. (downloadable blank sketchbook [not seen]) (Picture book. 7-9)
GAME CHANGERS
Lupica, Mike Scholastic (224 pp.) $16.99 | $16.99 e-book | Jun. 1, 2012 978-0-545-38182-6 978-0-545-44315-9 e-book Series: Game Changers, 1 Ben’s love of football forces him to overcome his disappointment at losing the role of starting quarterback to the coach’s son. Ben McBain may not be the biggest player on his Pop Warner football team, but he has the greatest desire to win. Ben idolizes former NFL quarterback Doug Flutie, who was considered to be too small for the position but who played bigger than his height. He fights bitterness at being overlooked for his dream position, both due to his size and because his coach has determined that his own son, Shawn, will quarterback the team. Coach O’Brien, a former professional player, is set on his son’s duplicating his path, not realizing the pressure Shawn feels. Shawn’s response makes him a terrible teammate and threatens to turn the group of talented players into losers. Ben reaches out to Shawn, trying to save their season, but just when he thinks he is making progress, one of Coach O’Brien’s game decisions causes a rift between the players. This action-packed story not only delivers plenty of good football plays, but also explores the consequences of parents living vicariously through their children. Ben is lucky: His father, while encouraging, is more low-key. Ben is a strong character, surrounded by a great group of sidekicks. Readers who, like Ben, live and breathe football, will enjoy. (Fiction. 7-11)
ZAC AND THE DREAM STEALERS
MacKenzie, Ross Chicken House/Scholastic (304 pp.) $16.99 | Jun. 1, 2012 978-0-545-40106-7 Heavy turmoil in the land of Nod. Zac Wonder lives in the Waking World, which is suddenly plagued by an epidemic of bad dreams. When his beloved, feisty guardian, Granny Wonder, 974
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is summoned to a crisis simultaneously emerging in the land of Nocturne, Zac goes along too. There they find that dark-magic Dream Stealers are afoot, greedily zapping the nightmares of Wakelings to seize more power. In a refreshing twist on customary gender and age roles, Granny turns out to be one of the Knights of Nod, a “good” magician, who wants to save the day. Fast paced and full of cartoonish collisions with werewolves and vampires, the plot takes a while to get into gear. But Zac and Granny are endearing, as is Rumpous Tinn, Grandmaster of the Knights of Nod, who keeps useful devices in his beard. Scottish novelist MacKenzie, in his U.S. debut, dedicates this story “to grandparents everywhere,” filling it with magic, potions and metaphors about dreaming and wakefulness. By story’s end, a mystical Trinity, of which Zac may be a member, seems capable of saving the world, as the main characters meet up in a church, and suddenly it’s Christmas. For middle-grade lovers of fantasy who are missing Harry Potter and are willing to make do with a more superficial plot and minimal character development. Grab your Granny and fasten your seatbelt. (Fantasy. 8-12)
THE HOMEMADE STUFFING CAPER
Madormo, John Philomel (256 pp.) $15.99 | Jun. 1, 2012 978-0-399-25543-4 Series: Charlie Collier, Snoop for Hire, 1 Hard-boiled boy detective Charlie Collier, Snoop for Hire, takes on his first big case. Inspired by fictional hero Sam Solomon, star of 1930s-era-Chicago detective novels, Charlie has a knack for solving brainteasers and run-of-the-mill middleschool crimes and misdemeanors. Lucky for him, his sidekick Henry has an eye for business and makes sure to parlay Charlie’s skills into a few extra dollars. Turns out that Charlie is not the only one obsessed with Sam Solomon. His eccentric grandmother and riddle-loving librarian Eugene also know Sam’s modus operandi. Up until now, Charlie has handled small cases, but he longs for his first big case. His assignment comes from an unlikely place—turns out Eugene is more than a librarian, and he needs help with a local case of missing exotic birds. While the story is overlong for the intended audience, the snappy firstperson noir language keeps the plot moving. The midstream addition of intuitive Scarlett and misunderstood Sherman adds depth to the story and gives hints of capers to come. Each chapter title is borrowed from a Sam Solomon novel, keeping the link between Charlie and his fictional hero alive. What would Sam Solomon and Charlie Collier do after cracking this case? Solve another one, readers hope. (Fiction. 9-13)
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“Realistic characters, palpable fear, budding first love, and a touch of Native American ethos add to this well-crafted debut.” from at yellow lake
ONE MOMENT
McBride, Kristina Egmont USA (272 pp.) $16.99 | Jun. 26, 2012 978-1-60684-086-3 Heading into summer with her closest friends, Maggie feels like she has it all, including a perfect boyfriend. She even plans to step up the level of intimacy with Joey. The day after a wild party, they’re at one of their favorite hangouts—a gorge where everyone but Maggie has leapt off a cliff into a swimming hole. This time Maggie decides she’s ready, if Joey holds her hand. Something about the bracelet on Joey’s wrist tugs at the back of her mind as they climb, and in the moment before they leap, she stops. Joey doesn’t, twisting in midair as he falls to his death. Adam finds Maggie cowering in the bushes on the trail with no memory of what happened. Maggie’s first-person account meanders between comforting flashbacks of Joey and her struggle to confront her fear that she caused his death. Fragments of the incident return, revealing some unwelcome truths about Joey and their friends, some of whom are grieving for very different reasons from those she could have imagined. Like a puzzle, pieces of Joey’s life start to fall into place, making Maggie realize that there might have been a reason not to trust him after all. Good, solid drama about the power of secrets to test the bounds of friendship, with just enough tension to satisfy teen readers. (Fiction. 14-17)
TIMEPIECE
McEntire, Myra Egmont USA (336 pp.) $17.99 | $17.99 e-book | Jun. 12, 2012 978-1-60684-145-7 978-1-60684-332-1 e-book Series: An Hourglass Novel, 2 Bad boy Kaleb Ballard struggles with his empathic powers and complicated relationships in this sequel to Hourglass (2011). Though Emerson Cole brought her boyfriend, Michael, and Kaleb’s dad, Liam, back from the dead, time is still out of joint for the super-powered teens at the Institute. Jack Landers, murderer and saboteur, is still on the loose and wreaking havoc on the time continuum. Each teen has many reasons to find him, but fewer methods as now only Jack possesses enough “exotic matter” to travel through time. Stronger temporal rips and unwanted attention from the Chronos group also complicate their pursuit of Jack. Kaleb replaces Emerson as the narrator, and, accordingly, his motivations are clearest of the characters’: He seeks to revenge Liam’s (temporary) death, to restore his comatose mother’s lost memories and to protect Emerson. Kaleb’s bad-boy persona and habits hinder his quest— he deadens his empathic powers with alcohol, tattoos, piercings |
and casual hook-ups—but he reveals a sensitive side in his evolving interactions with the hot-tempered Lily Garcia, Emerson’s friend and the newest, informal addition to the team. Action scenes sometimes seem intrusive or arbitrarily placed, and the mysterious Infinityglass feels contrived, as relationships rather than plot drive the story. Clearly a sequel but still makes time fly by. (Paranormal thriller. 14 & up)
AT YELLOW LAKE
McLoughlin, Jane Frances Lincoln (366 pp.) $8.99 paperback | Jun. 1, 2012 978-1-84780-287-3 Three contemporary teens accidentally meet at Yellow Lake in rural Wisconsin, where they share three life-changing days after witnessing a crime. To escape her mother’s “latest crappy boyfriend,” 14-year-old Etta and her mom move to a trailer park near Yellow Lake. For Etta, the “good, safe feeling” lasts until her mom’s new boyfriend, Kyle, starts hanging around while her mom’s at work. Fifteen-year-old Peter lives in England. Shattered by his mother’s recent death, Peter surreptitiously borrows his father’s credit card and travels alone to Yellow Lake to bury a lock of her hair on the shore by the family cabin. Finally, leaving his single mother in Minneapolis because she joked about his “Indian phase,” 16-year-old Jonah randomly trespasses on land by Peter’s cabin, where he builds a wigwam and initiates a quest for his Ojibwe heritage. Subsequent events force the three to hide in the cabin, which they discover is the site of Kyle’s illegal methamphetamine operation. Told from their alternating and very diverse perspectives, the plot spins slowly, building into a suspenseful, high-action crescendo as the initially wary teens learn they can count on and even care about one another. Realistic characters, palpable fear, budding first love, and a touch of Native American ethos add to this well-crafted debut. Sensitive coming-of-age thriller. (Thriller. 12-16)
A GIRL NAMED DIGIT
Monaghan, Annabel Houghton Mifflin (192 pp.) $16.99 | Jun. 5, 2012 978-0-547-66852-9
An engaging heroine is at the center of this slim spy thriller from debut novelist Monaghan. Farrah Higgins has a gift for finding patterns, but she couldn’t control it in middle school. Saddled with the nickname Digit, Farrah resolved to fit in once she reached high school by hiding her math skills. Then Farrah stumbles upon
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k i r ku s q & a w i t h kat e c o om b s Kate Coombs may be known for her middlegrade fantasies (The Runaway Princess and The Runaway Dragon) and picture-book fairy tales (Hans My Hedgehog, illustrated by John Nickle, etc.), but as it turns out, poetry is her first love. Water Sings Blue: Ocean Poems, her fifth book and first poetry collection, includes 23 delightful ocean poems—some serious, others brilliantly playful and light—set alongside Meilo So’s suggestive watercolors just teeming with the hues, movement, and wonders of sea and shore. Though she now resides in Utah, Coombs says some of her fondest childhood memories come from time spent at the beach near Los Angeles.
Water Sings Blue:
Kate Coombs, illustrated by Meilo So Chronicle (32 pp.) $16.99 Apr. 1, 2012 978-0-8118-7284-3
Q: Is this collection at all nostalgic for you? A: Yeah, to me the beach is just sort of beloved. There’s something about sitting on the shore, watching the waves go in and out, that’s hypnotic and concerns something about the universe. I don’t know—it’s a powerful piece of nature. I’ve spent some time at the Long Beach Aquarium, watching the jellyfish, for example. There’s something extremely beautiful and strange about jellyfish and, really, sea life in general. And I have good memories of the shore. We would go boogie boarding and make sand castles, and the inhabitants of these castles were these little weird things called sand crabs. I remember the sensation of being out on my boogie board, past the surf line, and kind of lying on my stomach with my feet dangling down in the cold water while my back was totally burning—it was a strange combination of sensations. I have to say I would try not to imagine the creatures that might be swimming down around my helpless legs. But no shark attacks or anything like that—kelp on occasion, kelp attacks. There are some memories there. Q: What inspired these poems?
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Q: What age did you envision these poems for? A: As a children’s-book writer, I write mostly for myself. I sort of never grew up, but as far as an age group from a teaching standpoint, I would say this is about second through fourth grade. I feel sometimes people say, “But you used a hard word on page 16,” and I’m like, “Yeah, well, tell the kids what it is; they like that sometimes. They’re like, ‘Wow: a big word!’ ” Q: So you weren’t thinking about that when writing the poems? A: Well, I’m a complete bookworm and collector of children’s books, and I have an extensive blog. I’ve read dozens of children’s books and children’s poems over the years, so I’m tuned into that and sort of know if I’m going too high. Some of the animal names are tricky, but much of the language is accessible, and I just sort of think middle grade when I write anything! The other thing is I take kids seriously. To me, a child is a thinking person, and I have a great respect for children, so I make a point of not talking down to them—whether I’m talking to them in person or in a poem or book. I expect a lot from kids because they’re not mentally inferior. They just lack a certain amount of information, sometimes vocabulary—not everybody gets that. I think about that when I write. –By Erika Rohrbach
9 For the full interview, please visit kirkusreviews.com
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p h oto © a b ra m s b o o ks
A: Well, I started with the jellyfish poem, and as a poetry person it was clear to me that with children’s poetry you have to have a theme. They like to have a narrative arc in some cases, so I was shooting for that. I remember when I was writing my middlegrade fairy-tale stuff, talking to an agent who said, “You’ve got to stop writing poetry because it’s just a terrible market.” I was like, I don’t think so—I love this stuff, so I’m going to keep trying. Also, I started collecting seashells as a child. When I was 9 or 10, a neighbor gave us a bread box full of shells that her great aunt had collected living on the beaches in Tahiti—what a way to go, right?! It’s a really marvelous collection. In California these days, you can’t find much. You don’t get big perfect
univalves because first of all, they don’t wash up often, and second, there are so many people there that it’s hard to find anything but fragments. I’ve since collected other shells by buying them and once in a while picking them up, and so I’ve put up a gallery of some of the shells that I own on my website. I found out recently that Pablo Neruda had one of the best private seashell collections.
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an eco-terrorist organization after their suicide bomb attack on JFK Airport, and the terrorists want her dead. If that seems unbelievable, it’s taken even further by Farrah’s FBI protector, the cute, young rookie agent John Bennett, who works with Farrah to uncover a blackmail scheme involving the attack’s bomber. This leads to bad guys chasing them all over New York, thanks to a mole inside the FBI. Meanwhile, Farrah is falling for John—and he feels something for her, too. Even with all these credulity-stretchers, this novel is so much fun to read that readers will buy it all, thanks to Farrah’s smart, witty voice and the gentle romance between John and Farrah. Check your mind at the door and enjoy this novel of two young adults caught up in a world of danger, adventure and, possibly, true love. (Thriller. 14 & up)
SUPER-DUPER DUDLEY!
Mongredien, Sue Illus. by Pedler, Caroline Good Books (26 pp.) $16.99 | Jun. 1, 2012 978-1-56148-743-1
A self-centered canine belongs in the doghouse. Dudley Dog seeks constant praise from his terrier sidekick Bonzo. Always calling for attention, Dudley balances precariously on his bike, dangles upside down from Grandma Goat’s tree, and sends ducks running for cover when he dives headfirst into the wading pool. Bonzo admires these daring feats, but Dudley’s attitude (“There’s only room for one megastar in this village. And that megastar is me!”) forces Bonzo to follow his own path. When jealous Dudley realizes that Bonzo’s piano playing charms everyone in town, the bossy pooch stages his own talent show. Though initially successful, Dudley’s musical inability leaves the audience wincing (one sheep puts a pail over his head to muffle the racket). Unaccountably, Bonzo comes to the rescue, Dudley finally accepts Bonzo’s paw of friendship, and the show continues without a hitch. Dudley never grows into a likable character: Bonzo is the only one working at the friendship, and Dudley only accepts Bonzo’s kindness when it benefits him. Bright colors fit the carnival atmosphere; Dudley’s rhinestone collar and sparkling-star leotard shine. The depiction of his dramatic stunts moves the action forward to its resolution. Campy dialogue (“It’s going to be a quacker!”) and the sappy conclusion sound off-key notes. Dudley’s inflated ego makes him one doggy dud. (Picture book. 3-6)
INVINCIBLE MICROBE Tuberculosis and the Never-Ending Search for a Cure Murphy, Jim & Blank, Alison Clarion (160 pp.) $17.99 | Jul. 10, 2012 978-0-618-53574-3
Murphy and Blank chronicle the story of the tuberculosis microorganism, the greatest serial killer of all time. Tuberculosis has been infecting people for millions of years and has killed over a trillion humans. This fascinating tale unfolds as a biography of a germ, an account of the treatment and search for cures, and a social history of the disease. As Murphy treated yellow fever in An American Plague (2003), this volume offers a lively text complemented by excellent, well-placed reproductions of photographs, drawings, flyers, woodcuts, posters and ads. The images include an Edvard Munch painting depicting the death of his 16-year-old sister of tuberculosis, a flyer for a Paul Laurence Dunbar poetry reading with a discussion of how minorities were denied proper medical care, a drawing showing death coming for Irish-born author Laurence Sterne and a photograph of Anne, Emily and Charlotte Brontë, all of whom died of tuberculosis. The broad focus of the slim volume allows it to be about many things: medical discovery, technology, art and how people from all walks of life have dealt with a deadly disease that pays no attention to social distinctions. The bibliography is thorough, and even the source notes are illuminating. Who knew the biography of a germ could be so fascinating? (acknowledgments, picture credits, index [not seen]) (Nonfiction. 9-14)
THE MONSTER
Nix, Garth & Williams, Sean Scholastic (304 pp.) $16.99 | $16.99 e-book | Jun. 1, 2012 978-0-545-25898-2 978-0-545-46948-7 e-book Series: Troubletwisters, 2 Beginning where Troubletwisters (2011) left off, twins Jaide and Jack Shield struggle to harness their magical powers while tracking a rat-regurgitating monster and
battling dark forces. Staying with Grandma X, the twins have joined the Wardens, a worldwide group of guardians against The Evil, and are studying ways to control and understand their magic. Their powers are unwieldy and continue to flummox Jack and Jaide. The twins forge a new friendship with Tara as the town begins to buzz with rumors of a roaming monster. Grandma X has started acting strangely, and something foul is afoot at the old sawmill. The twins are determined to find this monster, but |
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there are so many intricately tangled secrets that they often become sidetracked. Pace rules, as event piles on event. The intensity and bizarreness ramp up when insects flock to Jack and a clowder of cats becomes possessed. The climax involves an awesome spectacle of powerful forces, as The Evil, preying on the twins’ still-malleable souls, strives to take advantage of their self-doubts and possess their gifts. As good and wicked battle, Jack and Jaide come to understand that knowing themselves is their wellspring of power, wisdom that will no doubt come in handy in the next installment. This gripping fantasy for the middle-grade set delivers magic and delightful dollops of ick. (Urban fantasy. 8-12)
I KNOW A WEE PIGGY
Norman, Kimberly Illus. by Cole, Henry Dial (32 pp.) $16.99 | Jun. 14, 2012 978-0-8037-3735-8
FOR DARKNESS SHOWS THE STARS
How can one small pig get into so much trouble? “I know a wee piggy… / who wallowed in BROWN. / Upside down, he wallowed in brown. ‘But brown is not for me,’ he said. ‘I think I’ll add a rinse of…’ / RED!” And so it begins! This energetic, pitch-perfect riff on “I Know an Old Lady” introduces various colors while following a spirited young piggy on a delicious romp through a county fair. Mayhem ensues as the pig chooses his hues and frolics through a variety of substances (mud, grass, chicken feathers and tomatoes, for example) to achieve his multicolored goals. In a nice touch, the names of the colors are bolded and colored within the otherwise black text, making for easy recognition of the actual words. Youngsters will eagerly join in and sing along with the cumulative verse and laugh out loud with the lovable piggy as he scampers throughout the fair, wreaking havoc everywhere he goes. The acrylicand-ink illustrations are replete with vibrant colors and gentle humor and will draw even the most reluctant readers in. But wait! There’s a color missing—blue. What is blue at a county fair? A ribbon, of course. Does this piggy deserve one? You bet! This gleefully messy pig will prompt endless re-readings. (Picture book. 2-6)
THE SHAPESHIFTER’S SECRET
Ostler, Heather Cedar Fort (328 pp.) $16.99 | Jun. 1, 2012 978-1-4621-1033-9
This new take on shapeshifters, people who can morph into animals, suffocates under an avalanche of unskillful prose in a heartfelt story that screams for better editing. Julia doesn’t know she’s a supernatural being until her dad, Lancer, tells her that she’s royalty in a paranormal land. Worse, rebels led 978
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by Julia’s own mother want to kill her. Whisked to the family castle for safety, Julia enters school there to learn how to turn into a werecat at will. There she makes both friends and enemies and falls in love. Events lead to a final showdown between the factions with Julia caught in the middle of the fight. Clearly, Ostler loves her story, but, sadly, her writing lacks any hint of polish. Declarative sentences dominate the prose and nearly all dialogue, giving every character the same voice. Little description or character development and few transitions leave her writing stilted, with some extremely awkward phrasing (“She… searched for the culprit of the noise”). Grammatical errors abound, many serious, especially involving pronouns, adverbs and prepositions (“Me and you aren’t so different”; “he did terrible”). The firmly amateurish writing seriously interferes with the flow of the story throughout, especially at the climax. Imagination stifled by inexperience. (Fantasy. 12 & up)
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Peterfreund, Diana Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins (416 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 12, 2012 978-0-06-200614-1 A post-apocalyptic retelling of Jane Austen’s Persuasion scores high for ingenuity but loses points with sledgehammer morality. Elliot North is a Luddite, one of the elite destined to care for the mentally Reduced remnant after human genetic engineering went catastrophically wrong. But she has begun to question her duty; her family seems more interested in luxurious leisure than estate management. Her people will starve without recourse to forbidden technology, and more and more Post-Reduced children are being born. None of these “Posts” are more clever than Kai, her best friend until he ran away four years ago. Now he has returned with the fleet of Post explorers who could be the last hope for saving Elliot’s heritage, but his bitterness toward Elliot may be hiding a more dangerous secret. The plot stays surprisingly faithful to Austen; the setting is cleverly updated to a futuristic dystopia, but it fails to explore the more interesting societal and technological ramifications. Instead, the original’s subtle delineation of the nuances of class and social change is replaced with heavy-handed condemnations of slavery, anti-intellectualism and fundamentalist religion. The protagonists are now barely 18, and the compressed timeframe makes their remarkable accomplishments implausible, even with nigh-magical nanotechnology. However, as the emotional drama is similarly ramped to extremes, the target audience may be too swept away by righteous indignation and swoony romance to notice any lapses of logic. A perfectly pleasant read on its own, this could send readers to investigate the source—a happy outcome indeed. (Dystopian romance. 13 & up)
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“Crime noir meets paranormal romance in this addictive thriller about two London teens in whom the fae awakens…” from burn mark
THE MASTER OF MISRULE
Powell, Laura Knopf (384 pp.) $16.99 | $10.99 e-book | PLB $19.99 Jun. 12, 2012 978-0-375-86588-6 978-0-375-89784-9 e-book 978-0-375-96588-3 PLB Creepy, tarot-infused magic and mayhem take center stage in part two of this unusual duology that began with The Game
of Triumphs (2011). Despite holding the Triumphs that promise answers to their various back stories (including the murder of Cat’s parents, Blaine’s abusive stepfather and Flora’s comatose sister, all related to the Game of Triumphs), resolution eludes Cat and her friends. They must fight the Fool, now the Master of Misrule, whom they released in the first volume, not only for their own success, but to save the world. Episodic but engrossing adventures in the Game give way to a showdown in the real world as the lines blur between Game and reality. Powell’s descriptive writing brings the dreamlike, decaying card-world to eerie life; the childish oracle smearing car oil across her mouth in an underground parking lot is only one of a host of haunting images. In the end, there are no easy answers, but the four teen protagonists get the closure they need and grow into themselves as they move out of the Game. Little synopsis of the first volume is provided, making this a poor starting point for readers. Thriller, magic, mystery, love and betrayal: in the cards and in these pages. (listing of tarot cards, author’s note) (Urban fantasy. 13 & up)
BURN MARK
Powell, Laura Bloomsbury (416 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 19, 2012 978-1-59990-843-4 Crime noir meets paranormal romance in this addictive thriller about two London teens in whom the fae awakens, conferring abilities at once exhilarating and harshly stigmatized. Glory exults in her strong powers, although Auntie Angel warns her to hide them from the organized-crime covens ruling their hardscrabble neighborhood; otherwise, she could be forced to marry Wednesday Coven–heir Troy Morgan. (Powerful witches are rare and the gift runs in families.) To Lucas, whose ancestry includes England’s most distinguished inquisitors, his awakening fae feels like a door slamming on his future and his father’s career as Chief Prosecutor of the Inquisitorial Court. Asked to investigate who’s sabotaging an important legal case, Lucas jumps at the chance, working with a skeptical Glory. In this alternative contemporary England, witches have achieved some rights and can even have careers, provided they’re |
“bridled” (fitted with magic-preventing iron). Still, stake burning remains legal, though regulated; growing popular movements advocate witch genocide. Political intrigue and class warfare, inquisitorial office and coven politics are densely detailed without overwhelming the characters or slowing the pace as the narrative builds to a tense climax so cinematic that readers will find themselves mentally casting the film version. This smart, stylish series opener raises the bar for paranormal fiction, leaving readers impatient for the next installment. (author’s note) (Urban fantasy. 12 & up)
ZOE LETTING GO
Price, Nora Razorbill/Penguin (288 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 28, 2012 978-1-596514-466-9 Why is Zoe trapped in what appears to be some kind of mental facility? Told entirely from Zoe’s perspective, this psychological zinger unfolds like a mystery. Zoe’s mother drives her to an isolated mansion that houses six girls whose days are completely regulated by the three women in charge. The girls attend mandatory daily therapy, plus cooking and gardening classes. Administrators force them to eat every bite of each meal, with food served to them in gigantic portions. Zoe writes to her best friend, Elise, describing her memories of times with Elise and her days at the mansion. She remains defiantly certain that she’s completely unlike the other girls there until, finally, she remembers an event that she desperately wants to forget. Price plainly understands the psychological condition she slowly unveils, dropping clues here and there amid Zoe’s letters, observations and thoughts. She writes sophisticated prose and dialogue, perhaps too sophisticated for teenager Zoe, but readers caught up in the sweep of the story will forgive that minor flaw as Zoe’s true condition becomes clear. The novel provides a nifty excursion with an unreliable narrator and keen insight into the uncertainties and terrors of adolescence. It may also provide a warning to girls prone to self-destructive behavior. The slow reveal of Zoe’s problem will keep readers invested to the last page. Well plotted, skillfully written. (Fiction. 12 & up)
LIBBY OF HIGH HOPES
Primavera, Elise Illus. by Primavera, Elise Paula Wiseman/Simon & Schuster (192 pp.) $14.99 | Jun. 12, 2012 978-1-4169-5542-9 It takes a while, but high hopes finally pay off for a horse-loving girl. When 10-year-old Libby accidentally-on-purpose lets her dog run loose, she discovers a run-down stable next door, complete with a
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“Throughout, Wright’s acrylic-and-ink illustrations employ a colorful, naive style to capture the exuberance of Bonnie’s first bike ride…” from the best bike ride ever
beautiful but somewhat neglected mare named Princess. Predictably enchanted, Libby goes home to beg for riding lessons— less predictably, her older sister gets the lessons instead. Libby comes up with a plan to work for lessons—and her sister uses the idea to work off the cost of riding boots. Undaunted, Libby learns to groom horses and spends time making Princess feel better. Meanwhile she’s being forced onto a swim team, her former best friend is throwing an icky “Princess Party,” and her sister discovers boys. There’s a lot going on, and abrupt transitions can sometimes unmoor readers, but Libby’s natural charm and cheerful persistence carry the day—not to a blue-ribbon happy ending, but to a more satisfying conclusion that celebrates the real bond between horses and riders. Primavera’s occasional, gently humorous black-and-white illustrations break up the generously spaced text. A solid choice for horse lovers ready to move past early chapter books. (Fiction. 8-12)
THE BEST BIKE RIDE EVER
Proimos, James Illus. by Wright, Johanna Dial (32 pp.) $16.99 | Jun. 1, 2012 978-0-8037-3850-8
Bonnie O’Boy’s dream comes true when she gets a bike and then must learn an important part of riding it: how to stop. The title of Proimos’ novel for teens, 12 Things to Do Before You Crash and Burn (2011), is only tangentially related to this picture-book offering, in which Bonnie crashes after failing to heed Mother’s warning: “You can’t just go ride all willy-nilly.” Willy-nilly she goes, and ensuing spreads imaginatively depict her riding over bridges, mountains, elephants and more, and she simply cannot stop. Although it may strike some as odd that Bonnie needs no practice (let alone training wheels) to balance, they’ll enjoy connecting the aforementioned fantasy scenes of the bridge, mountains, elephant, etc., with toys and other backyard landmarks. Luckily, she only crashes into her little brother Charley’s building project. Her parents comfort her, her father helpfully saying, “Here are the brakes,” and in a pictorial nod to safety, Bonnie dons a helmet. Meanwhile, Charley rebuilds his play farm, and Bonnie again sets off around the yard. Throughout, Wright’s acrylic-and-ink illustrations employ a colorful, naive style to capture the exuberance of Bonnie’s first bike ride, while promising that although this initial taste of two-wheeled freedom may be the “best,” there are many joyful rides in store— perhaps astride her next secret wish: a pony. A fun-filled take on a familiar childhood milestone. (Picture book. 4-6)
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REBEL MCKENZIE
Ransom, Candice Disney Hyperion (288 pp.) $16.99 | Jun. 26, 2012 978-1-4231-4539-4 Twelve-year-old Rebel McKenzie is aptly named. While the aspiring paleontologist dreams of unearthing ancient fossils, she must instead spend her summer watching her 7-year-old nephew, Rudy—who prefers hot dogs with his spaghetti, misses his absent father, and routinely saves a seat for God during lunch. Rebel longs to escape the mobile-home park where her sister lives and join the “Ice Age Kids’ Dig and Safari” camp, but the family lacks the funds for her to do so. Over the summer, Rebel soon discovers others who are also longing for something: her short-tempered neighbor Lacey Jane, whose mother died the previous winter, and Miss Odenia, a retired hand model who yearns to return to her childhood town. A beauty contest with a cash prize seems to be Rebel’s golden opportunity to achieve her goal of getting out of town and into camp. Ransom comically depicts Rebel’s endeavors to prepare for the contest and dethrone local beauty queen/neighborhood nemesis Bambi. However, Ransom carefully balances the tale’s humor with subtler scenes that convey Lacey Jane’s poignant struggle to adjust to her mother’s death and Rudy’s fragile vulnerability. Spunky and sassy, Rebel redefines beauty pageants in this rollicking tale. (Fiction. 10-13)
CAN I JUST TAKE A NAP?
Rauss, Ron Illus. by Shepperson, Rob Paula Wiseman/Simon & Schuster (32 pp.) $15.99 | Jun. 5, 2012 978-1-4424-3497-4 Rauss, winner of the 2010 Cheerios® New Author Contest, reveals the travails of poor Aiden McDoodle as he searches for a quiet spot to get some sleep. He tries upstairs, downstairs, the backyard and even the town park. But each place is too noisy: “In the library the whispers built up to a riot, / until the librarian stepped in and shouted out, ‘QUIET!’ ” When the noises of the baseball game, ice-cream truck, maintenance worker and the band practicing in the gazebo finally become too much, Aiden snaps. His plea for quiet is heard from sea to sea and into space. The world obligingly pauses long enough for him to run home, jump into bed and begin to snore before the noises resume. The lengthy lines of Rauss’ rhyming verse add to its sometimes-stumbling rhythm, and readers never find out just why Aiden is so tired, a fact that detracts from the humor, especially given his seemingly younger sister’s unflagging energy level. Shepperson’s watercolor-and-ink artwork add to this disconnect, as they
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depict a quite ordinary day—the noise level looks to be nothing extraordinary. But readers will certainly feel for the tired tyke, whose facial expressions say it all as he desperately tries to find some rest amid everyone else’s exuberance. Skip this, and stick with Karen Beaumont and Jackie Urbanovic’s No Sleep for the Sheep (2005) for a story with a catchy rhythm that will really have listeners chiming in. (Picture book. 3-7)
TOKYO HEIST
Renn, Diana Viking (384 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 14, 2012 978-0-670-01332-6 A van Gogh heist, a trip to Japan and a yakuza attack: Could there be a better summer? Violet’s an otaku—a comics-loving Japanophile, derided as a “Manga-loid” by her school’s mean girls—who draws her own manga and makes scarves out of vintage kimonos. Her dreadful summer plans (working at the comic-book store) are delightfully derailed when she has to join her estranged artist father in Tokyo, where he’s been commissioned to paint a mural. But what’s this? Her father’s employers have been relieved of three van Gogh drawings, and Violet knows just the suspicious characters who might be guilty! The plucky detective investigates in both Seattle and Tokyo, following suspects around town in a tangled blonde wig and deciphering codes incorporated in both art and kanji. Soon the mystery begins to resemble an episode of Violet’s own manga, Kimono Girl, complete with dangerous yakuza (Japanese mobsters), blackmail letters and FBI stings. Eagle-eyed Violet’s sleuthing is assisted by her keen love of art, from manga to van Gogh to ukiyo-e, Japanese woodblock prints. A proficient caper spiced up by Violet’s eye for art. (Fiction. 12-14)
AND STILL THEY BLOOM A Family’s Journey of Loss and Healing
Rovere, Amy Illus. by Spector, Joel American Cancer Society (48 pp.) $14.95 | Jun. 1, 2012 978-160443-036-3
them that the memories they have of their mother will never die. He tries to explain the well-meaning comments of friends and neighbors, responds calmly to his children’s many questions, and tries to help both kids understand the complicated emotions their friends might be feeling. “Some kids might be scared and confused. They might worry that what happened to Mom will happen to someone they love.” Children facing the challenging year following the death of a parent will not feel so alone knowing that Ben, Emily and their father get through it. Occasional fullpage portraits show this strong family working together. The strength of this lengthy, overtly didactic story is that it gives teachers and surviving parents a working vocabulary to use with grieving children and will help when they need to be nudged to talk. (Fiction/bibliotherapy. 9 & up)
THE WHOLE GUY THING
Rue, Nancy Zondervan (176 pp.) $9.99 paperback | May 1, 2012 978-0-310-72684-5
Rue, who maintains a Christian teen blog, has gathered questions from female preteens and young teens on a variety of topics related to interactions with boys, and here she expands that into an advice resource. Chapters follow the same general format but focus on slightly different topics. First she quotes from a few young women and then presents a brief quiz so girls can identify where they fall on an emotional spectrum. She follows with a few comments from young men summarizing their group perspective, some related scriptural material and topics for conversations with parents. Finally, she includes a blank section where girls can record their feelings. Most of the topics seem to center around how to comfortably interact with boys or how to accept not being able or willing to do so. The chapter entitled “Do They Really Just Want One Thing?” addresses the issue of sexual activity, with a caveat: “We’re not going to discuss any of the actual details of the act.” For girls that have already engaged in sex, she offers this comfort: “[P]lease don’t feel like you’re damaged goods. You are a human being who has made a mistake, and who among us hasn’t messed up somewhere?” Most of the gently but unapologetically preachy advice steers girls toward parental guidance and soulful conversations with God. A safe, readable book on a challenging topic that offers conservative, prayerful advice for young teens. (Nonfiction. 11-15)
Emily and Ben, with the help of their father, work through their grief after their mother dies from cancer. Emily and Ben struggle with all the emotions that follow a devastating loss. Emily shows signs of depression, even snapping at 7-year-old Ben, who is having his own struggles. It’s Emily’s 10th birthday, and she is angry that her mother is not there to celebrate. Emily’s father calmly responds to the mood swings and emotions that his children are experiencing, gently reminding |
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ALICIA’S FRUITY DRINKS / LAS AGUAS FRESCAS DE ALICIA
Ruiz-Flores, Lupe Illus. by Lacámara, Laura Trans. by Ventura, Gabriela Baeza Piñata Books/Arté Público (32 pp.) $17.95 | May 31, 2012 978-1-55885-705-6
The fruit-blended juice drinks known as aguas frescas offered at a fair inspire a little girl and her mother to serve their own version after soccer practice. Alicia really likes the taste of these fruit drinks and learns from her mother that they can easily be made at home with a blender, fresh fruit, ice cubes and water. Mimicking the aguas frescas stand with all its flavors, they try out strawberries, cantaloupe, watermelon and pineapple. Alicia wonders if sugar should be added to the recipe, but mother says that the fruit itself provides enough sweetness and is much healthier than sodas. When a soccer teammate needs testing for diabetes, Alicia’s invitation to have the team over for her fruity drinks also encourages everyone to avoid drinking the canned soda by trying a delicious substitute. The dual English/Spanish text is augmented by summery scenes in opaque, rich colors. The notso-subtle message that diabetes, sugar and lack of exercise can all be related adds a didactic, cautionary tone to the otherwise pleasant story of sisterhood through soccer. The simplicity of the suggested idea that homemade fruit juice will always be fun to make and delicious to drink is appealing. (Picture book. 6-8)
THINK BIG
Scanlon, Liz Garton Illus. by Newton, Vanessa Brantley Bloomsbury (32 pp.) $16.99 | PLB $17.89 | Jul. 3, 2012 978-1-59990-611-9 978-1-59990-612-6 PLB A bouncy, early-childhood answer to Glee shows a racially diverse classroom of kids eagerly preparing for a multifaceted art performance. Scanlon’s spare rhyming text bursts with gusto. No page has more than four words, but every word’s turbocharged because of flawless scansion and exuberance. The project ultimately takes a theater format—“Brainstorm / Blank page // Scene set / Onstage”—but along the way, no art form goes unturned. There is cooking—“Pinch salt / Dice, chop // Click, flash / Time stop”— and then singing, sewing, ceramics, dance: “Big voice / On pitch // Pin, trim / Thread, stitch // Red clay / Round wheel // Spin, twirl / Toe, heel.” Painting, knitting and music feature too. If readers never learn quite the essence of the final performance, that simply adds a frisson of excitement. Mixing gouache, charcoal and mixed media in digital collage, Newton shows the busy kids in constant motion, not hyperactive but vigorously productive. Adults appear only when it’s time for an audience. The 982
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curtain rises on a scene revealing kids with a bass viol, construction outfit, chef ’s apron and tulle tutu, and the text’s crescendo will send readers scampering off to do its bidding: “Big breath / Brave heart // Ready, set… // Make art!” Short and peppy enough for plenty of encores—until it’s time to go make art. (Picture book. 3-6)
SECRET LETTERS
Scheier, Leah Hyperion (336 pp.) $16.99 | Jun. 26, 2012 978-1-4231-2405-4
Sherlock Holmes’ secret daughter goes on the case in this tepid Victorian whodunit. Twelve-year-old Dora Joyce learned of her illustrious parentage the night before her mother died of the same fever that had just killed the man she thought was her father. Now 16, the girl has been reared by her aunt, who despairs of her niece’s unladylike tendency to “notice things.” When her married cousin finds herself being blackmailed with letters written to a now-dead lover, Dora leaps at the opportunity to meet the famous detective. Alas, she arrives just after he has been killed fighting Moriarty, but Peter, the attractive young man who delivers this news on the doorstep of 221B Baker St., is himself a detective. A bit of eavesdropping in Peter’s office quickly leads to Dora’s involvement in a case that places her cousin’s blackmailer at the heart of another mystery, that of the disappearance of a young gentlewoman. In the guise of a servant, she infiltrates (with credibility-straining ease) the country estate where the suspect works as a valet in the hope of cracking both cases. The danger inherent in any Holmes-derived story is that it will not measure up to its inspiration, and this is the case here. Dora and Peter’s frequent attempts to out-Holmes each other grow tiresome, as do Dora’s embarrassingly swoontastic thoughts about Peter. Moreover, the third-degree burns she suffers impede her only when the narrative remembers them. Pass on this; revisit either the original or Nancy Springer’s engaging tales of Sherlock’s little sister Enola. (Historical mystery. 12 & up)
MARTÍN DE PORRES The Rose in the Desert Schmidt, Gary Illus. by Diaz, David Clarion (32 pp.) $16.99 | Jun. 19, 2012 978-0-547-61218-8
With images of surpassing beauty and power and a text both simple and lyrical, Diaz and Schmidt tell the life of the first black saint of the Americas.
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“This unusual multicultural pairing packs a powerful punch.” from the great race
Martín’s mother was African, his father a Spanish nobleman. His father took his children from Lima, Peru, where they lived in desperate poverty, to Ecuador, where he gave them his name. Back in Lima, Martín was apprenticed to a healer, and at 15 he asked admittance to the monastery. Because of his mixed blood he could not be a priest, but he offered himself as a servant. His gifts as a healer became known throughout the city, and Spanish nobles waited for his healing touch while he first tended the poorest and most desperate, both human and animal. Schmidt recounts the story using repeated motifs: the dark eyes of the boy; the frowns of the Spaniards; the name-calling. Diaz achieves an extraordinary luminosity in his illustrations. The tenderness with which Martín treats his charges, the vivid expressions of those who scorn him and those who rely on him, and the balance of shape and stunning color make each page shine. A note offers further details, but, alas, there is no bibliography. A visual—and, it must be said, spiritual—delight. (Picture book/biography. 5-9)
MIRACLE
Scott, Elizabeth Simon Pulse/Simon & Schuster (224 pp.) $16.99 | Jun. 5, 2012 978-1-4424-1706-9 Megan goes from being an ordinary teenager at soccer camp one day to a living miracle the next—with all the heavy baggage that comes with it. When Megan emerges from the embers of a plane crash with barely a scratch, she is hailed a miracle. However, when Megan returns to her small, rural hometown, she feels overwhelmed by both the onslaught of well-wishers and the slowly returning memories of the crash and its victims. Megan is most challenged by her parents, who are unable to see beyond her miraculous escape and fail to recognize that she is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and seriously needs help. Finding solace in strange places, Megan befriends her attractive playboy neighbor, Joe, who carries his own baggage, and a woman from her local church who is a Vietnam veteran. These two relationships enable Megan to see that she is not the only one carrying a tremendous burden and that she need not carry it alone. In addition to Megan’s PTSD, this text tackles tough topics including homophobia, complicated family dynamics, alcoholism and death without flinching or sugarcoating. Told through the perspective of a well-defined and likable protagonist, this text shines a bright light on the importance of mental health. (Fiction. 15-18)
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THE GREAT RACE
Scott, Nathan Kumar Illus. by Chitara, Jagdish Tara Publishing (32 pp.) $16.95 | Jun. 1, 2012 978-93-80340-15-9 Series: Kanchil Stories In Indonesian and Malaysian folklore, Kanchil the mouse deer (an animal about the same size as a rabbit) is a trickster character who usually outwits his fellow animals. Here he stars in a tale similar to Aesop’s “The Tortoise and the Hare.” In this third tale in Scott’s series about the character (Mangoes and Bananas, 2006, etc.), Kanchil invites the other animals to a race. Surely he can run faster than Gajah the elephant, Babi the boar, Harimau the wicked tiger, Kerbau the water buffalo and Buwaya the crocodile, who has “fast moving jaws.” When Kakatua, the scarlet macaw, announces the race, none of the animals enter, except for Pelan the snail. Pelan outsmarts Kanchil not once, but twice, but only the readers, not the animals, will ever find out how. Tara Publishing champions the talents of Indian folk artists and has paired this very accessible story with dramatic images in a specialized style originally used for Gujarati religious cloth paintings. Though there’s no claim that this art style has any relationship to the original tale, it’s an apt match. The book designer adapted the work to the printed page, keeping the intense blood red and ebony black. Each doublepage spread takes on an exciting life of its own. A note provides background information on the tale, and an afterword tells the story of the illustrations with photographs of the original cloths. This unusual multicultural pairing packs a powerful punch. (Picture book/folklore. 4-8)
I HAVE THE RIGHT TO BE A CHILD
Serres, Alain Translated by Mixter, Helen Illus. by Fronty, Aurélia Groundwood (48 pp.) $18.95 | Jun. 12, 2012 978-1-55498-149-6
From the bold opening assertion, “I am a child with eyes, hands, a voice, a heart, and rights,” to the urgent closing plea, “We need our rights to be respected now—today,” this primer invites young readers to think about their universal rights as children as embodied in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. An engaging child narrator explains that kids have a right to: a name, a family, a country, food and water, shelter, medicines and help if their bodies don’t “work as well as other children’s.” Kids have a right to go to school, to refuse to work, to express themselves, to play and create, to be protected from disasters and wars, to be free from violence, and to breathe air “pure as the blue sky.” These rights apply to all children regardless of
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“Siegel’s unnamed boy narrates the tale joyfully and enthusiastically, making Blake’s oddities completely believable.” from my snake blake
gender, race, size, wealth or country if they live in one of the 193 countries ratifying the Convention. Readers may be surprised, however, to discover the United States is not one of these countries. Engagingly naive acrylic illustrations spanning doublepage spreads evoke Chagall in their use of flat patterns, swirling lines, vibrant hues, and symbolic, powerful dream-like images of the repertoire of children’s rights. Provocative and guaranteed to spark awareness of children’s rights. (note on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child; list of states party to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child) (Picture book. 4-7)
MY SNAKE BLAKE
Siegel, Randy Illus. by Bloch, Serge Neal Porter/Roaring Brook (32 pp.) $16.99 | Jun. 19, 2012 978-1-59643-584-1 Blake the snake just might be the most spectacular pet of all time. Dad brings home a very long, bright-green snake to the delight of his son and the dubious reluctance of Mom. But this snake quickly proves to be highly unusual and extremely talented. He twists his body to form the letters of his name in beautifully realized cursive writing, adding reassuring words to calm Mom’s fears. Blake goes on to become a valued member of the family. Some of his talents are definitely snake-appropriate, like catching flies and licking dishes clean. But he also cooks, finds lost items, helps with homework, walks the dog, and offers protection against bullies. Although there are some situations that are a little dicey, as when his simple presence scares other passengers on an airline, all in all Blake is a “perfectly polite, delightful snake.” Siegel’s unnamed boy narrates the tale joyfully and enthusiastically, making Blake’s oddities completely believable. The language is breezy and quirky with lots of goofy dialogue and some hilarious and very apropos homework questions and answers. Bloch’s deceptively simple black-line cartoons are placed on long, narrow pages with lots of white space with bright greens and pinks bleeding beyond the lines. They evoke a mid-20th-century visual sensibility that honors Crictor, that other famous pet green snake, while perfectly complementing the text. Clever, laugh-out-loud fun. (Picture book. 3-8)
A SONG FOR MY SISTER
Simpson, Lesley Illus. by Mai-Wyss, Tatjana Random House (32 pp.) $16.99 | PLB $19.99 | Jun. 26, 2012 978-1-58246-427-5 978-1-58246-428-2 PLB
Wishes come true here, but not right on time. Mira wishes for a sister, and a baby is born four years later. Sound effects are important in this book. When Mira tosses coins into a wishing well, they go “Swish clink clank.” The baby makes one noise, “Waaaaaaa!”—there are always seven as in a row. She cries when her parents try to feed her and when Mira bounces her or shows off her best cartwheel. The word “Waaaaaaa!” appears in bright red letters, and readers might get tired of seeing it on page after page, but then, that’s the point. By the day of the naming ceremony, even the rabbi looks a little worn out. (Progressive readers will be happy to see that she’s a female rabbi.) Mira, of course, saves the day, if not right on time. The book ends with the sounds of Jewish music, Mira singing “Dim-dim-dee-dee-dim” and her sister singing “Goo-googa-ga-ga.” Even young readers may see the plot twists coming, but the details are funny (Mira wants to name the baby Siren), the ending is genuinely moving, and some families may want to borrow the naming ritual for themselves. A neat melding of religious traditions into the familiar new-sibling story. (Picture book. 3-8)
THE SUPERHEROES EMPLOYMENT AGENCY
Singer, Marilyn Illus. by Jones, Noah Z. Clarion (40 pp.) $16.99 | Jul. 24, 2012 978-0-547-43559-6
From Blunder Woman to Stuporman, this gallery of underemployed B-list superheroes is up for any task. Got rats and mice? Call on the (inch-high) Verminator! Supernatural foes will flee from the garlic foam wielded by Muffy the Vampire Sprayer. Afflicted by gangsters? “When racketeers insist on quiet / and it’s not wise to start a riot, / send the Baby, send the Baby.” Furthermore, “And if those cries don’t make them hyper, / Weapon Two is in the diaper.” Along with having distinct individual powers and abilities, several of these eager job seekers combine to offer enhanced services. Armored Sir Knightly and The Masked Man, both aging veterans, can team up to entertain at children’s parties, for instance, and Kelly (ejected from the Green Lantern Corps for wearing a heterodox shade of green) will join silk-spinner Caterpillar to design stylish new costumes for “Trendy Defenders.” Using a free range of page designs from sequential panels to full-spread scenes, Jones reflects both the changing rhythms and the overall buoyancy of Singer’s rhymes with simply drawn, brightly colored cartoon views of each S.E.A. member in action. When budgets or problems aren’t quite right for the likes of Spider-Man or the Dark Knight, here’s a reasonably priced alternative. (Picture book/poetry. 7-9)
There is no specific Jewish ritual for naming a daughter, so many families invent their own. Simpson has invented an entire book to go with it. 984
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ALIEN ON A RAMPAGE
Smith, Clete Barrett Disney Hyperion (304 pp.) $16.99 | Jun. 5, 2012 978-1-4231-3448-0
In this warm-hearted sequel to Aliens on Vacation (2011), David resumes his summer job at Grandma’s Intergalactic Bed & Breakfast and finds himself on the wrong footing with a creepy alien. David is thrilled to be back at Grandma’s, where he helps with the vacationing outer-space guests. However, he quickly discovers a sinister element in the new employee, Scratchull. Scratchull is a skull-headed, slug-eating alien whose voice drips with condescension. He gives David the creeps but has everyone else fooled. Snarffle, a purple, bouncy alien with six legs, a spinning tail and a boundless appetite, becomes David’s charge and supplies much of the story’s chuckles. Meanwhile, David stumbles upon Scratchull’s diabolical plan to get home and destroy Earth in the process. Replete with good intentions but lacking in finesse, David is unable to convince the others of their danger. Grandma has entered the baking contest at the Pioneer Day Festival in an effort to improve her relations with the human community, but with Scratchull helping out in the kitchen, David cannot shake this feeling of unease. Over the course of this funny sequel, David proves you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to overcome villainy, and Snarffles can be man’s as well as alien’s best friend. With a festival grand finale that’s like a picnic of the living dead, this outing is spot-on for middle graders who like a dash of humor in their science fiction. (Science fiction. 8-12)
DIARY OF A PARENT TRAINER
Smith, Jenny Delacorte (320 pp.) $12.99 | $9.99 e-book | PLB $15.99 Jun. 12, 2012 978-0-385-74198-9 978-0-375-98894-3 e-book 978-0-375-99035-9 PLB Thirteen-year-old Katie is certain she has the grown-ups in her life figured out. Organizing her findings as a guide to understanding grown-ups, self-proclaimed “parent trainer” Katie decodes their behaviors within the pages of her diary. With a keen eye, Katie identifies the various “modes” in which grown-ups operate—ranging from “Embarrassing Mode” to “Annoyed Mode”—including the modes’ potential causes and possible solutions. Interspersed among the observations and advice are Katie’s diary entries. Smith reveals the myriad emotions that Katie experiences as she perches on the edge of young adulthood: feeling bereft as friends Hannah and Loops begin dating boys, while spurning the attention of a boy she truly likes. Other diary entries delve |
into the aftermath of Katie’s beloved father’s death. Katie is appalled that her mother is dating a new, younger man and determines to discourage him. As she reflects on her father’s final days and his words of hope and encouragement, Katie must decide whether she can accept the impending changes in her life. While Katie is often exasperated by her eccentric but loving extended family, Smith conveys a powerful message about family connections. Alternately funny and heartbreakingly poignant—a memorable tale. (Fiction. 10-13)
A HOME FOR BIRD
Stead, Philip C. Illus. by Stead, Philip C. Neal Porter/Roaring Brook (32 pp.) $16.99 | Jun. 5, 2012 978-1-59643-711-1 Vernon is both a toad and a forager for found objects. Ambling along with his latest haul, he chances upon a creature he seeks to know and then to help. Observant children will have noticed (next to the copyright information) the overloaded “Careful Moving Co.” pickup truck barreling down the road, where a bump releases a cuckoo from its clock spring. On re-readings, additional story elements will be discovered in the truck. Vernon observes that “Bird is shy… but also a very good listener,” when he introduces Bird to his friends. He and his pals conclude that Bird is lost and unhappy, so the thoughtful, resourceful amphibian readies a teacup boat for the journey to help this quiet stranger return home. They check out a birdcage, birdhouse, mailbox, nest and telephone wires—to no avail, but “Vernon was a determined friend.” After the weary pair seeks refuge inside a familiar farmhouse clock, Vernon wakes to a cheery “Cuckoo!” and all is well. Stead’s loose gouache strokes and crayon scribbles create a disheveled world just right for suggesting a junk-collector’s paradise. Wide lines mix with thin curves, and wet and dry strokes commingle for a dappled, breezy setting; blue and green canopies often frame the page borders. Stead’s sensitive telling and white background create space for contemplation. A deeply satisfying story that speaks to the universal desires to be nurtured and to find a home. (Picture book. 3-8)
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TODAY ON ELECTION DAY
dissonant, and the author occasionally inserts his own commentary into the novel at various points, advising readers to “take a break and read the Hunger Games again.” Readers might do well to take his advice. (Thriller. 12 & up)
Stier, Catherine Illus. by Leonard, David Whitman (32 pp.) $16.99 | Jul. 1, 2012 978-0-8075-8008-0
A proudly buoyant tour of Election Day in the U.S.A. This spry salute to the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November generates a significant amount of positive energy. Only through active engagement in the process—informing yourself, going to the polling station—will you be tapping into the possibilities of the system. Everything else is just so much hot air. Stier neither belabors nor stints on the text. There is a decent amount of information to be imparted, if only to acquaint readers with political parties, campaigns, Congress, the history of the vote, Constitutional amendments, debates and voting, and it is done in an easy, if modestly didactic voice. It has the genuine ring of smart young students giving the oral presentation of their civics projects, sweet and serious. Stier situates the activity around the children’s school, and Leonard makes the most of the setting, giving it the warm, watercolor cast of a small town, yet modern in its computer voting machines. And all ages are involved, young to old, with the finger squarely placed on the importance of 18-year-olds assuming this mantle of importance. Future voters of the world, unite. The vote, Stier makes clear, is a great gift we have given ourselves. (Informational picture book. 6-9)
A BAD DAY FOR VOODOO
Strand, Jeff Sourcebooks Fire (272 pp.) $8.99 paperback | Jun. 1, 2012 978-1-4022-6680-5
When Tyler’s jerky sophomore-history teacher falsely accuses him of cheating, his somewhat psycho best friend Adam pays to have a voodoo doll made of their teacher. Despite Tyler’s initial disbelief that the doll could be real, the two try it out the following day. Tyler sticks the doll’s leg with a pin, and his teacher’s leg flies off, spurting blood everywhere. The paramedics take him away. The two boys proceed to freak out—Adam much more so than Tyler, because then he has a voodoo doll made in Tyler’s image to blackmail him from spilling their story to the cops. All of this happens in the first 45 pages, and what ensues is a ridiculously stupid chase to rescue the doll from car-stealing thugs, a Rottweiler and a host of other bizarre and mildly humorous characters before Tyler meets an untimely demise. Strand’s best selling point is his ability to create authentic teen voices and craft wacky plot twists that baffle and surprise readers. The novel’s assets stop there, however. The characterizations are shaky. The plotting is haphazard and 986
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SMART GIRLS GET WHAT THEY WANT
Strohmeyer, Sarah Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins (352 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 26, 2012 978-0-06-195340-8 What smart girls like Gigi, Neerja and Bea want is smart boys, although they’re hard to find. After following in Neerja’s sister Parad’s Ivy League–bound footsteps for years, the friends stumble upon Parad’s signature-less yearbook, making them think that maybe studying isn’t everything. Gigi, who rocks Latin and chemistry, narrates this clever, Glee-like romp through sophomore year. The only relationship on her Facebook page is with Petunia, her basset hound. Her social nonexistence is epitomized by the girls she sits between in homeroom, who ignore her while they pass a phone back and forth across her. Her take on their account of a Halloween party prompts the question, “Where is a deus ex machina when you need one?” When Gigi is accused of cheating on the AP Chemistry midterm along with Mike, a Man Clan wannabe who calls her “Einstein,” the girls launch into action. Gigi finds herself running for student rep against Will, the new guy from California she’s fallen for who’s unafraid to use the word “metaphor” in conversation. Neerja tries out for the lead in Romeo and Juliet and Bea convinces Gigi to join the ski team with her, all in the name of establishing their cred. The author of The Cinderella Pact (2006) shows a humorist’s ear for the cadence of teen language in this smart foray into teen literature. (Fiction. 12-17)
CLOVER TWIG AND THE PERILOUS PATH
Umansky, Kaye Illus. by Wright, Johanna Roaring Brook (256 pp.) $16.99 | Jun. 5, 2012 978-1-59643-754-8 Series: Clover Twig, 2
Resourceful Clover, her witchy (but benevolent) employer Mrs. Eckles, Clover’s clumsy friend Wilf and, of course, Mrs. Eckles’ sister, the evil Mesmeranza, are all back for another low-key adventure (Clover Twig and the Magical Cottage, 2009). Set in a somewhat generic fantasyland peopled by witches, villagers and the odd troll, this sequel should appeal to fans of the first book but relies a bit too much on familiarity with that
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“Vande Velde again traps teenagers inside an authentically depicted arcade game—but here she works twists into the premise that are both amusing and crank up the danger.” from deadly pink
volume to be truly accessible to newcomers. On the other hand, it’s an easy and engaging read that will be gobbled up by fans of traditional tales, many of whom may be inspired to check out the first installment. There’s mild danger—or at least the hint of it—magical creatures and some humorous jabs at newfangled technology. Clover and Wilf each find a new friend as they travel the Perilous Path, along which they also encounter scary clowns, stuck-up girls and enticing illusions. What they don’t have much luck finding is Herbie, Clover’s little brother, whose disappearance sets the story in motion. Umansky’s characters are once again charmingly quirky, and she peppers her tale with amusingly outlandish events. Wright’s comical blackand-white illustrations, sprinkled throughout, seem pitched to the younger end of the intended audience but definitely suit the lighthearted tone. Despite dire warnings, this magical journey winds up being mostly pleasant and perky, just like its heroine. (Fantasy. 9-12)
DEADLY PINK
Vande Velde, Vivian Harcourt (304 pp.) $16.99 | Jul. 10, 2012 978-0-547-73850-5
GRAVEYARD SHIFT
Westwood, Chris Scholastic (304 pp.) $17.99 | Jul. 1, 2012 978-0-545-39919-7
Two London teens train to escort souls into the afterlife in this thoroughly muddled fantasy. They have been recruited by Mr. October, a master of disguise given to both cryptic hints and long-winded background explanations. Ben goes out each night either to an office to type the names of the dead onto file cards in the magically disguised “Ministry of Pandemonium” or into the streets with psychic classmate Becky to escort the city’s newly minted ghosts through a shining doorway. This latter task is complicated by the menacing Lords of Sundown—a diverse group of baddies with the vague agenda of bringing “disorder and chaos to the world.” They achieve this by both kidnapping confused spirits and sucking out the souls
Vande Velde again traps teenagers inside an authentically depicted arcade game—but here she works twists into the premise that are both amusing and crank up the danger. As in User Unfriendly (1991) and Heir Apparent (2002), the game, called “The Land of Golden Butterflies,” is manufactured by the shadowy Rasmussem Corp. and is fully immersive, fed directly into the brain through electrodes. Into this game 14-year-old Grace Pizzelli’s big sister Emily has gone; moreover, she has refused to come out and altered the code so she can’t be forcibly ejected. As sessions that run longer than a few hours cause brain damage and death, the corporation desperately turns to Grace to follow Emily in and persuade her to leave. Reluctantly agreeing, Grace discovers to her disgust that, rather than offering the usual heroic-fantasy or science-fiction setting, this digital world has been colored in pinks and lavenders. It is stocked with (supposedly) benign magical creatures and hunky male servitors—in general, it seems designed to cater to 10-yearold would-be princesses. The idyll has gone sour, though, because thanks to Emily’s fiddling, not only have the wish-granting sprites turned nasty, but the game’s governing Artificial Intelligence has changed the Rules—disabling the “Quit” function and forcing both Grace and her already-failing sister to embark on a seemingly hopeless quest with their real lives at stake. Emily’s motives turn out to be little more than a pretext, but the author delivers another clever, suspenseful drama in the digital domain. (Science fiction. 10-12)
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“The cast is thoroughly likable (even the requisite bully will earn reader sympathy, if only for being so gormless).” from mind if i read your mind?
of the living like (as Mr. October puts it) “industrial-strength vacuum cleaners of doom.” When Ben pockets a card with his own mother’s name on it, Mr. October saves his job with a transparent switcheroo, but the lad’s failure to follow proper procedure somehow lets the Lords of Sundown into the Ministry for a climactic battle. Ben’s filing expertise is key to overcoming them. A jumble of contrived events and nonsensical details, this book is neither suspenseful enough to work as drama nor funny enough to be a sendup. (Fantasy. 11-13)
MIND IF I READ YOUR MIND?
Winkler, Henry & Oliver, Lin Scholastic (176 pp.) $17.99 | paper $5.99 | $5.99 e-book Jul. 1, 2012 978-0-545-29888-9 978-0-545-29883-4 paperback 978-0-545-46950-0 e-book Series: Ghost Buddy, 2
A sixth-grader and his live-in ghost further cement their friendship while bootstrapping each other toward better social skills in this airy sequel to Zero to Hero (2012). This time the ghost takes center stage. Dead teen and compulsive prankster Hoover “the Hoove” Porterhouse has but one last chance to earn a passing mark from Higher-Ups in Helping Others and Responsibility to be set free to realize his life- (and death-) long dream of visiting every Major League ballpark in the country. When an upcoming school assignment that requires showing some personal skill sends his shy, breathing buddy Billy Broccoli into a terrified tizzy, the Hoove’s “help” with a fake mind-reading act boosts Billy’s public status from outsider to awesome. Carrying its messages lightly, the tale ultimately leaves the Hoove with better impulse control even as it moves Billy to twin realizations that cheating is neither good for building self-respect nor the best way to make friends. Highlights include a pair of misty Field of Dreams–style exchanges with the one-and-only Yogi “You can observe a lot by watching” Berra. The cast is thoroughly likable (even the requisite bully will earn reader sympathy, if only for being so gormless). A go-down-easy book that provides both lightweight character building and several comical turns. (Fantasy. 10-12)
ONE OF A KIND
Winter, Ariel S. Illus. by Hitch, David Aladdin (32 pp.) $15.99 | Jun. 5, 2012 978-1-4424-2016-8
with the built-in pairs of twin classmates at his school but often finds himself friendless and feeling unimportant. The bright, digital artwork, blending a ’60s retro style with an Edwardian fashion aesthetic, highlights Lysander’s ongoing frustration. His situation just may change when the school hosts its annual Twindividuation, a daylong series of events meant to encourage individuality. With twins divided into two separate teams and given mismatched uniforms, Lysander expects to be left out once again. But he aces the solo singing competition, the oneman relay and a wickedly spot-on twin dilemma, the Isolated Ice Cream Inquiry. In this last, he chooses an ice-cream flavor without the benefit of sibling consultation in a record-setting 15 seconds, finally gaining confidence and the recognition he deserves. Winning the Simondon-Stiegler Cup, the individual award for individuality, proves it. While not unique, this lighthearted story helps children appreciate their own special qualities and build the courage to express them. (Picture book. 4-7)
A WANT SO WICKED
Young, Suzanne Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins (288 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 26, 2012 978-0-06-200826-8 High-school student Elise begins experiencing some very odd things that make her feel like some stranger is beginning to occupy her body. That’s not surprising in this sequel (that can’t stand alone) to A Need So Beautiful (2011), which chronicled the poignant situation of angellike being Charlotte, who had the need to intervene in troubled people’s lives but at the ultimate cost of both her own existence and all memory of it. Now readers discover that she’s back, not only greatly diminishing the impact of the first tale, but also limiting the threat of any perilous choices she now faces as she occupies the hapless Elise’s body and gradually rediscovers herself. Hunky romantic interest Harlin also returns, having conveniently been drawn to the love of his life in her new form, but he faces handsome potential rival Abe, who draws Elise into some believable teen situations. Onika, the evil temptress housed in an immortal—but nonetheless badly decayed—body, haunts Elise’s dreams and then turns up in the (decomposed) flesh, as well. Elise’s rebellious older sister Lucy, initially angst-ridden about her own issues, adds to the now-predictable conflicts that Charlotte/Elise must resolve before Charlotte can move on to a potential third book in the series. Knowing that Charlotte doesn’t really face obliteration disappointingly defuses the suspense for all but the most avid fans. (Paranormal romance. 12 & up)
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interactive e-books GIFT
Buchanan, Andrea J. Illus. by Seabrook, Alexis OpenRoad Integrated Media $16.99 | Mar. 27, 2012 An interactive ghost tale weaves together historical fiction and a supernatural love story with satisfying results. Daisy’s mysterious ability to channel electricity has always been more curse than blessing, especially since it means no cellphone or computer use. However, when she and her friends Danielle and Vivi are unexpectedly faced with an evil spirit from Daisy’s distant past, the utility of Daisy’s gift slowly becomes clear. Woven into the mix is Kevin, a brooding love interest with a guitar who keeps Daisy grounded throughout their adventure. Interactive elements ranging from embedded YouTube videos to subtly animated black-and-white illustrations add to the overall experience and spooky atmosphere. The text concludes with a final section—“More Gift”— in which the three supporting characters present their own perspectives on the story. For example, Kevin’s section includes links to audio files of songs and lyrics, which will be familiar to readers as they are featured at the beginning of selected chapters. Vivi’s story is told in a brief graphic-novel format in realistic watercolor illustrations, and Danielle presents her point of view as pages from her diary. While the alternative formatting and use of audio works well, the entire section feels tacked on. Nevertheless, the enhancements are sufficient to make going digital with this text (also published as an ordinary paperback) worthwhile. A fantastical and historical ghost story that benefits from technology and the presence of young love. (Paranormal romance. 15-17)
THE LITTLE GIRL WHO COULD FLY
Capek, Karel Yellow Pixie $4.99 | Mar. 1, 2012 A; Mar. 1, 2012
A softened-up adaptation of Czech writer Capek’s short story, “The Man Who Knew How to Fly,” this cheerily illustrated app still manages to convey a sense of what’s lost when we leave childhood. The ebullient girl in a red beret and polka-dot dress sails above fields and her cottage home, buoyed by starry magic. Drawn in a Golden Age vintage style, the girl’s rosy cheeks and sweet smile follow her even into her sleep, where she dreams of her own airborne adventures. But soon, she’s visited by a quartet of witch-like village teachers who demand to know how she flies |
and to measure her skill. Of course, that saps the magic from the little girl’s talent, and soon she’s not flying at all, left only with memories of what she once had. If that sounds depressing, most parents reading might agree, but the app does a skillful job of avoiding a maudlin conclusion with (one might say overly) upbeat music and a regained smile. The app blends its retro look with solid app design and a few well-integrated extras, like a coloring-book page, a dress-up game and the option of tilting the iPad to guide the little girl’s aerial movements. It’s an adaptation that manages a tricky balance between heartfelt and hokey within an app that has a distinctive look and feel. (iPad storybook app. 3-7)
THE LITTLE BLUE DOGGY
Daunais, Lionel Illus. by Lafrance, Marie The Secret Mountain $3.99 | Feb. 23, 2012 1.1; Mar. 9, 2012
A loosely knit doggy meets his demise when his parents lock him in the bathroom closet for the day. Based on the 2010 traditional book of the same name (which was based on the original song written by Daunais in the 1950s), this story chronicles the plight of Snag, whose parents banish him to a closet while they go to the park to observe humans in cages. The abandoned pup cries and eventually falls asleep, only to be almost completely eaten by a million tiny mites that leave only his tail. When Snag’s parents return and find that he’s been devoured, his mother uses her knitting needles to reconstruct him (begging the question, “Is it really the same dog since it’s a new ball of yarn?”) The song is super peppy, which—when combined with the warped storyline—is reminiscent of an antidepressant commercial that plays cheery music while the narrator reads all of the medication’s ghastly side effects. Illustrations are strikingly colorful and display beautifully on the iPad screen, but none of them are the least bit interactive in nature. “Watch” mode functions like a video (with very minor animation in places); “read” is silent with manual page turns; “sing” is karaoke with pictures. A decent offering in terms of music and illustrations, but the bizarre storyline and the complete lack of interaction sink the ship. (iPad storybook app. 3-6)
LEONARD
Ink Robin Illus. by Penner, Timothy Ink Robin $3.99 | Mar. 15, 2012 1.0; Mar. 15, 2012 Imagination makes all the difference in this story of one boy’s quest for new friends. A move from the city to the country leaves Leonard, an optimist with an enormous imagination, in a
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bit of a quandary: Where are all the new friends? As readers join him in his search, Leonard’s imagination takes off full force, taking him into the jungle and soaring into outer space. He’s even desperate enough to crash his sister’s tea party, which turns out to be an awkward turn of events. Full of adventurous, interactive fun, this appealing app is well worth the price and the upgrade to iOS5. Penner’s ‘60s-retro illustrations pop, and Andy Trithardt’s narration piques interest from the get go. The music and sound effects are brilliant and flawlessly timed. From the harp-andflute combo that takes readers into Leonard’s imagination to the mournful violin solo played by his long-suffering feline sidekick, it’s a sonic delight. It all adds up to a reading experience children will turn to again and again, and not just because they love the games embedded in the story (squishing big bugs in the forest, spotting jungle animals with a spyglass and building a robot). Well told, cleverly illustrated and beautifully supported with interactive surprises that make sense and are great fun, this is a stellar example of iPad storytelling. (iPad storybook app. 4-8)
THE TORTOISE AND THE HARE: REMATCH
Keller, Wallace E. Illus. by Keller, Wallace E. See Here Studios $2.99 | Feb. 28, 2012 1.0; Feb. 28, 2012
Does slow and steady still win the race? In this extended version of the timeless children’s tale, there’s a hare more to the story...and to the answer. The story opens with a recap of the familiar tale. In the wake of his humiliation, the Hare seeks counsel from the wise old Owl (depicted as a psychoanalyst, with the Hare on his couch) and decides to challenge the Tortoise again. The Tortoise, an athlete/celebrity in the wake of his victory, fields calls all day and has a throng of fans. He exercises regularly, riding his stationary bike and practicing yoga. So when the Hare calls, wanting a rematch, the Tortoise is happy to oblige. Will the Hare learn to pace himself, as the Owl wisely suggests, or will he push himself too hard and lose again? Although its pace is at times tortoise slow, the 34-page app features 90 interactive elements that add depth and texture. Kids will love hearing the Hare snore under the tree and seeing his eyes pop when he loses to the Tortoise. Parents will grin at the cover of Good Sport magazine. The race action, well supported by character-appropriate music, is in mini-movie format, with continuous action and shadowing. In fact, music is one of the app’s best features, the tempo framing the action of the story, page by page. Overall, perseverance, patience and good sportsmanship rule the day in this colorful sequel. (iPad storybook app. 4-7)
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OWL AND CAT
Lear, Edward Illus. by Podles, Ewa The Nitro Lab $0.99 | Mar. 9, 2012 1.0; Mar. 9, 2012 Feline and fowl profess their love for one another in this winning adaptation of Lear’s popular 1871 nonsense poem. Owl and pussycat take a moonlight ride in a “beautiful pea green boat.” Owl pulls out his guitar and openly declares his affection for the cat, singing “O lovely Pussy! / O Pussy my love / what a beautiful Pussy you are.” The cat, clearly swept off her feet, suggests that they be married. Since they don’t have a ring they sail away “for a year and a day” until they come across a pig with a ring in his nose. He agrees to sell his ring to the two sweethearts, and a turkey subsequently performs their marriage ceremony. Everything about this app is well done. The graphics are simple, deeply colorful and laser crisp, and the characters are appealingly goofy. Each slightly animated page holds one or more interactive elements that are basic, yet pleasing, particularly in their tactile fluidity. Sound effects are well placed and strikingly clear, perfectly garnishing the overall effect rather than overwhelming it. Though original music accompanies the text throughout the book, developers intentionally excluded voiceovers to encourage parents to read to their children. Although labeled as “free” in the app store, that applies only to the first few pages. Readers who want the whole poem will need to make an in-app purchase. A triumphant blend of classic literature and tablet technology. (iPad storybook app. 2-5)
AMAZONAS In Search of Mother Nature
Malatesta, Leon & Tardivo, Fernando Illus. by Anjos, Ramon Studio Malatesta $4.99 | Mar. 2, 2012 1.0.0; Mar. 2, 2012
A trip down an Amazonian river is sunk by forced and awkward rhyming text. Roberto takes a river trip in the Amazon rainforest hoping to spot Mother Nature. Along the way, he meets up with some fascinating creatures but never quite spots her. In the end, he finally realizes that he did find Mother Nature because “she is in everything, and she is everywhere.” The art is pedestrian, although the animation introduces some interesting perspectives. There are some good interactive effects, such as the ability to move a firefly lantern around a page to light up areas of the screen. The app is narrated in English, Spanish or Portuguese. The addition of a map for self-direction is a nice touch, although it is missing a way to navigate to the beginning of the story. The text includes some interesting tidbits, but the rhyme and rhythm make the story hard to listen to and nearly
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“Clean, simple, seamless—just right for the nursery-school set or children with special needs.” from lost larry
impossible to read aloud: “Look all around, and smile off that frown. / Alligators look mean but you don’t need to scream, / ‘cause the light really makes them calm down.” Moreover, there are no sources or notes to indicate whether any of the assertions in the story are factual or not. Just telling the story in simple prose is the only upgrade that could save this app. (iPad storybook app. 3-8)
LOST LARRY
Nunn, Graham Illus. by Nunn, Graham Wasabi Productions $3.99 | Mar. 7, 2012 Series: Larry Lizard, 1.1; Mar. 16, 2012 A little green lizard will trail a fingertip home in this mini-Odyssey, the third of Larry’s interactive outings. Pointing fingers in the illustrations and overt instructions in the rhymed text (“Trace a path with your finger right on the screen / Larry will follow once the path’s been seen”) provide uncommonly broad hints for this app’s toddler audience. They guide the lost lizard through very simple zigzag mazes, over stepping stones, and past gatherings of anthills and beehives to, at last, a dark little cave just right for a curled-up snooze. The story is read (optionally) in soothing Aussie accents over quiet sighs or chuckles from Larry and other easily identifiable sounds. The low-key narrative accompanies a set of broadly brushed cartoon scenes—in each of which taps will also make numbers appear briefly in sequence, a fish leap, an echidna suck up ants, or buzzing bees fly off as Larry crawls or hops out of view. An unobtrusive icon at the top of each portrait-mode screen opens a menu with a link back to the start, a toggle for the audio narration and other options. Clean, simple, seamless—just right for the nurseryschool set or children with special needs. (iPad storybook/ dexterity app. 1-3)
THE PRISONER OF CARROT CASTLE
Pedersen, Chris Illus. by Jeong, Kate Purple Carrot Books $2.99 | Feb. 10, 2012 1.1; Feb. 27, 2012
A young lad makes his vegetables more palatable by imagining an unlikely adventure. As Aidan stares at vegetables he doesn’t want to eat, he is transported to Carrot Castle, where he lands in a prison tower to await a face-off with the king. Alarmed, he eats his way through the carrot-lined cell wall and slides down a secret passageway, landing in a courtyard (definitely the coolest feature of the app). Aidan scrambles to hide in a tree, which is really |
a tall stalk of broccoli he must gnaw his way through. Eventually he faces the angry king, who chastises him for eating carrots and broccoli (a reverse psychology move that every parent has probably tried at least once). When Aidan snaps out of the fantasy his plate is clean. The storytelling in this app is perfunctory, plain and in several places inconsistent. Children will be dying to know why, for instance, does the king imprison Aidan? In addition, Aidan is sentenced to walk the plank, yet the castle appears to be landlocked. (Aren’t planks on ships anyway?) Indications that the episode in Carrot Castle is imaginary may well slip by young readers. There are a handful of run-of-themill interactions—flying bats, meowing cats and several short tap- or swipe-triggered animations, but after one read-through they’re likely to lose their luster. Predictable and weak, both on a literary and technological level. (iPad storybook app. 4-7)
WHO STOLE THE MOON?
Stratton, Helen Illus. by Gerasimov, Vlad WindyPress $4.99 | Mar. 5, 2012 1.0; Mar. 5, 2012
When the moon fails to appear above his skylight one night, a young boy sets out to find the thief who stole it. Bertie Brown likes to lie in his bed at night and gaze at the moon. One evening it isn’t visible, so he assumes that it must have been stolen. Bertie apologetically asks a host of animals if they have taken it, but they all say no. He finally comes upon a wise owl that explains that the moon hasn’t vanished; the clouds are hiding it from view. There are plenty of interactive and educational opportunities throughout the book’s 23 pages. Unusual animals are introduced; one screen is viewed through a telescope that moves around the page; ladybugs and fireflies change colors when tapped. Kudos to Gerasimov for creating magical illustrations that are sure to feed fertile imaginations. The developer also deserves significant props for bringing the images to life in subtle but powerful ways. Children may wonder, though, how this dedicated watcher of the skies will never have noticed clouds before. Another weak spot is the bonus “vignettes” that feature eight original songs. The tunes are sincere and pleasant enough, but not particularly well crafted, especially the lyrics, which seem to pander primarily to rhyme and meter. Other bonus features include an arcade-type game, several thematic matching challenges and a host of puzzles. A solid effort that will please children and parents alike. (iPad storybook app. 4-8)
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SAM AND BEN
Westphal , Sylvia Pagán Illus. by Gsell, Nicole Pinwheel Books $2.99 | Feb. 21, 2012 1.0; Feb. 21, 2012 A familial story of similarity and difference, as seen through the lens of twin boys. Sam and Ben may have been in their mama’s belly at the same time, but they’re distinct individuals in many ways. Sam is blond, Ben’s hair is brown; Sam loves building things, while Ben prefers playing soccer; they even laugh differently. But they also have a lot in common: Both of them love music, cars, bugs and—interestingly enough—fashion. Most importantly they have the same siblings and parents that encourage their individuality. This story does a lovely job addressing the identity challenges inherent in being a twin, embracing the similarities between the boys while simultaneously celebrating their differences. The watercolor-like illustrations are whimsical and bright, yielding basic movement or sound effects when touched. Narration can be switched off, but turning the volume down entirely is the only way to kill the music (a shame since it also silences the sound effects). The activities screens offer basic, toddler-friendly games like coloring and matching. If readers want to revisit earlier pages or go back to the beginning from somewhere in the story, it must be done manually (and sluggishly), as there’s no “home” button or page-selection option, except on the opening screens. A sweet story that won’t rock the app world, but will still appeal to many readers (especially twins). (iPad storybook app. 2-5)
STRIDING BIRD An Interactive Tale Yap, Stephanie Illus. by Sun, Wenpo Comicorp $1.99 | Feb. 28, 2012 1.01; Mar. 12, 2012
up the unremarkable artwork. Moving a finger from the center of the screen will cause winds to blow, day to turn to night, lightning to strike, etc. A navigation bar and brief tutorial is accessible on each page. Some minor annoyances include having to press a narration button on each page, not being able to turn off the music without muting the iPad, and some intermittent crashes. Standard fare with some satisfying interactive features. (iPad storybook app. 3-8)
THE LEGEND OF THE ZODIAC RACE
Yum, Nicholas Illus. by Wong, Toto BelugaBloo $0.99 | Feb. 21, 2012 1.0; Feb. 21, 2012
A retelling of the legend of the Chinese Zodiac features charming Asian illustrations, animations and music but is marred by instability. Long ago in China, the Jade Emperor held a race to determine the order of the 12 animals of the Chinese Zodiac. The animal that beats the others across the river will have the honor of having the first year named after him. Spoiler alert: The rat wins through trickery and takes the top spot, forever alienating his friend, the cat. Endearing children dressed in animal masks with busily spiraling legs depict the 12 animals. The soft, chalky backgrounds feature a river, mountains and trees. The text is on a scroll that rolls out from the side of the screen, which is an interesting device, but since it covers most of the screen, one can’t see both text and illustrations at the same time. At the end, kids can discover an interesting fact about each animal and the personality traits that supposedly go along with people born in that year. There is no interactivity except for navigation, although there is enough going on in the app to hold interest. A pleasant-enough introduction to a potent Chinese legend. (iPad storybook app. 3-7)
In a twist on a familiar tale, a small bird decides to give up flying and become
a land creature. Striding Bird envies his four-legged friends, who don’t have to worry about strong winds sweeping them or their homes away. So he tucks away his wings, practices walking and makes his home in a hollow log on land. Striding Bird is quite content until a thunderstorm washes him and his home away. While he is bemoaning his fate, he meets a one-legged bird with a broken wing who is whistling as he repairs his nest. After some reflection, Striding Bird realizes that “real happiness comes with appreciating what he had, instead of what he did not.” The story is predictable and uninventive, although Striding Bird is an appealing character. Interesting interactions liven 992
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This Issue’s Contributors # Elizabeth Bird • Marcie Bovetz • Kimberly Brubaker Bradley • Sophie Brookover • Louise Brueggemann • Timothy Capehart • Ann Childs • Julie Cummins • GraceAnne A. DeCandido • Dave DeChristopher • Lisa Dennis • Carol Edwards • Omar Gallaga • Judith Gire • Melinda Greenblatt • Heather L. Hepler • Jennifer Hubert • Kathleen T. Isaacs • Laura Jenkins • Betsy Judkins • Deborah Kaplan • K. Lesley Knieriem • Megan Lambert • Angela Leeper • Peter Lewis • Wendy Lukehart • Lauren Maggio • Joan Malewitz • Hillias J. Martin • Kathie Meizner • Daniel Meyer • Lisa Moore • R. Moore • John Edward Peters • Melissa Rabey • Rebecca Rabinowitz • Nancy Thalia Reynolds • Melissa Riddle Chalos • Ronnie Rom • Leslie L. Rounds • Ann Marie Sammataro • Dean Schneider • Karyn N. Silverman • Meg Smith • Robin Smith • Rita Soltan • Shelley Sutherland • Deborah D. Taylor • Bette Wendell-Branco • Gordon West • Monica Wyatt
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indie Self-publishing has opened an incredible number of doors—not just for authors but for readers, too. With well over 1 million books self-published a year, those doors won’t be closing anytime soon. Of course the sheer quantity of self-published books is astounding—after all, everyone has a story to tell, and sharing that story with thousands, or even millions, of people has never been easier or less expensive—but what may be more surprising is the quality of self-published books ready to be discovered. At Kirkus Indie, we’ve offered professional, unbiased reviews of selfpublished books since 2005, so we’re intimately aware of how great these books can be. Some have even earned Kirkus stars. So read on and visit kirkusreviews. com/indie for an exciting look at books made possible by self-publishing.
THE DEVIL’S IMPERIUM Legacy
Wina K AuthorHouseUK (432 pp.) $23.95 paperback | $3.99 e-book Jan. 26, 2012 978-1467880350 In Wina K’s debut novel, teens get swept up in the prelude to all-out war between good and evil. As a half-demon, Chris has been hunted his entire life by men who consider the destruction of his kind a holy mission. After they kill first his mother and later his adopted father and sister, Chris swears vengeance and is pursuing it when he meets Amy. Although Amy has been hiding her power of healing and living a normal school-age life, she and Chris soon notice their shared superhuman abilities. It’s not until after a group of ruthless “Peace Keepers” move to collect Amy for their own purposes that the two young people realize they’ve fallen in love. All hell (and some heaven) breaks loose, with the demon-hunters fighting the peace keepers to protect Amy. Through a series of bloody battles, Chris struggles to control his demonic side and is ultimately forced to question the value of the revenge he’s sworn to carry out. The cover’s warning—“[w]hen you think the worst is over, it’s only the beginning”—proves apt, as near-death situations pile up faster than readers can count them. Although details sometimes get lost in the frenetic hack-and-slash, Wina K balances out the combat by sowing interpersonal and political intrigue at an equally speedy pace. As behooves a story that includes demons and angels, almost every aspect is larger than life, from the multiple beheadings to the celestial visitations to the twisted family histories. At times, that exuberance lies on the wrong side of over-the-top, but it also gives readers deliciously villainous antagonists and nonstop entertainment. A whirlwind of religious mythology, violence and melodrama.
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THE SOUND OF ONE HORSE DANCING
These titles earned the Kirkus Star:
Baker, Tom iUniverse (212 pp.) $24.95 | paper $14.95 | Oct. 14, 2011 978-1450271271 978-1462050635 paperback
BYE BYE BLACKBIRD by Eileen Berry........................................ p. 994 LIVING THROUGH CHARLIE by Rebecca Woods........................ p. 1001
When a young, wildly successful ad executive is unexpectedly fired from a 1970s Madison Avenue ad agency, he |
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“Few books of recent poetry reveal such a penetrating awareness of how the environments in which we live affect us as much as we affect them.” from bye bye blackbird
must come to terms with his closeted identity as a Stonewall-era gay man and differentiate the truly meaningful from the inconsequential in Baker’s debut. Tim Halladay is nothing less than the golden boy at his high-profile New York ad agency. Recently promoted to vice president at the age of 27, he is the youngest company officer. Immersed in an opulent world of three-martini lunches and exorbitant expense accounts, Tim is living the dream. But when he is unexpectedly fired, his cloud bursts and he comes crashing back down to Earth. He soon realizes that, with a mere $300 in savings, his sizable credit card debt has morphed into a menacing leviathan that threatens to turn his world upside down. With no truly close friends to turn to, Tim is forced to look within himself for solace. At this point in the book the author begins a series of flashbacks; these detailed memories give readers an expansive depth of insight into Tim’s character and how he weathers the soul-searching dilemma in which he now finds himself. Baker nimbly leads readers back and forth through time, interweaving the defining moments of this young man’s life into the events of a long weekend. As Tim’s dysfunctional family and stuffy upbringing come into focus, the reason he’s chosen to keep his sexuality hidden becomes increasingly obvious: His father has long made it clear that Tim’s penchant for theater and his not-so-macho demeanor are utter disappointments. Tim will never fit neatly into his father’s country club mold, and they both know it. Nor is his mother much help, largely powerless in the patriarchal culture of 1950s Connecticut. Tim’s rejection of his father’s ideal has heavily influenced the man he has become. Readers from all backgrounds will find themselves empathizing with Baker’s protagonist as he struggles to reconcile his high-profile life with his true identity. A candid portrait of a man torn between two worlds, whose struggle will reverberate in readers’ souls.
the dangerous knowledge contained in Smith’s hybrid mind: The Russian operative, whose memories Smith inherited, was one of three individuals who knew a code necessary to unlock an extensive nuclear warhead arsenal. What follows is a rollicking traipse through espionage stings, gunfights, and meetings between friends and enemies as two covert units, one American and one Russian, go to great lengths to protect their national—and, as it turns out, personal—interests. Despite the violence and manpower, however, it is the disembodied Smith who plays the biggest role, in a way that makes a strong claim about the potential drawbacks of immortality in a world where “once you are quantifiable, you aren’t human anymore.” Berke’s prose alternates between straightforwardness and meditation; in spite of its clockworklike plot, the novel manages to speak directly to the philosophical, theological and biological paradoxes inherent in the idea of a human living past physical death. By the end of the novel, it’s clear that, at least for Smith, being human is not merely a matter of chemical processes, but a matter of doing the right thing. A rough-and-tumble combination of science fiction, crime and romance that ultimately succeeds in salvaging the best from each genre to comment meaningfully on the perplexing—and often uncertain—nature of human identity.
BYE BYE BLACKBIRD Worlds Past and Worlds Away
Berry, Eileen Plain View (80 pp.) $14.95 paperback | Aug. 1, 2010 978-1935514749 Merging geographic precision with detailed lyricism, Berry’s collection of poetry spans continents and states of the soul. The best poetry focused on a particular locale tends to evoke sensory stimulation as much as meaning, and Berry’s collection of nearly 60 poems is no different. Born in England, the author has travelled widely throughout Africa and the United States. With a doctorate in geography, she casts a discriminating, discerning eye on the landscapes to which her travels have taken her. In unrhymed, compact poems—few more than a page in length—the poet speaks with seriousness about the relationship between the natural world and one’s inner world. In “Music of Place,” she writes: “Carried in the wind is the music of place, blown / like washing on a line, white sheets flapping, sending / large billowing folds of sound back to me,” which typifies her ability to translate a place into a finely detailed, highly specific moment in her past or present. Some poems set in North Africa elevate journal-like jottings into sharply etched experiences. The dominant moods suffusing these poems are calm and meditational, perhaps reflecting the influence of poet Elizabeth Bishop, who was also attuned to inner and outer geographies. The final 20 poems shift focus from geography and place to reconciliations or frictions with family members; many relatives have passed on but are vibrantly
HUMAN A Novel
Berke, Robert G. MultiModoMedia (346 pp.) $9.99 paperback | Dec. 18, 2011 978-0984950706 First-time novelist Berke examines the tenuous relationship between the mental and the corporeal in a tale of political tug-of-war between the secret operatives of two world superpowers. Elijah Smith, the founder of the scientific company SmithCorp, appears to have crested in old age and begun his descent into death. With the help of the precocious but scarred Dr. Bayron and Hermelinda—Smith’s nurse and lover—death isn’t the only option for Smith. Using materials imported from a Russian researcher who attempted to recreate the mind of a deceased government agent, Bayron sets out to reconstruct a digital model of Smith’s brain that effectively preserves his consciousness in a “prosthetic mind.” Though the experiment accomplishes its goal, both Smith and Bayron soon discover 994
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EVERYDAY NOIR
alive in the author’s memory. These family sketches often turn on a particularly poignant phrase spoken to the author by a parent or loved one: “Windows” pivots on Berry’s father’s comment, “I could drive if I wanted to,” as the author notes that her father never owned a car. Few books of recent poetry reveal such a penetrating awareness of how the environments in which we live affect us as much as we affect them. An extraordinary, nuanced collection by a gifted poet.
Chapman, Con CreateSpace (331 pp.) $14.95 paperback | Jan. 27, 2012 978-1468138979 A tongue-in-cheek mapping of the mean streets of suburbia. In Chapman’s (The Supremes’ Greatest Hits, 2010, etc.) latest, 31 short stories mostly set in and around the greater Boston area illustrate the author’s contention that “noir is where you find it.” The conventions of the sub-genre familiar to Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe are mostly omitted—no guns, no drugged cocktails, no torture (except for the kind involving in-laws)—but the noir sensibility and diction are on display on each page of Chapman’s book. Colonial-style suburban homes, security guards, notary publics, bored housewives (including one who’s a bat), special agents tasked with collecting overdue lunch money—all given the noir treatment. The conceit is saved from becoming tiresome by Chapman’s fleet plotting (the stories average about five pages in length) and sure comic touch. In “Art Van Stiffel, Deciduous Tree Lawyer,” a new client is described as being “stacked like a concrete grain silo, without the dust and the pickup trucks parked outside and the risk of fatal explosion.” In “Fallen Women 101,” a collegecampus pimp warns the hapless protagonist, “No rough stuff…I got to protect my investment. Besides, plain vanilla garden variety pedagogy is your best prostitution value.” In the collection’s best story, “Read My Lips, or Simply Refer to the Subtitles,” a man hires a specialist to provide subtitles for his interactions with his family, which doesn’t go over well with his loved ones: “You could cut the tension with one of those dull but fancy cheese knives women buy each other when they run out of gift ideas.” It’s ordinary suburban life that’s being satirized here, not noir, but the satire is light and gentle in any case. There’s a chuckle or a laugh in every one of Chapman’s noir-tinged stories.
FOREST HIGH Short Stories
Boone, Bob Amika Press (100 pp.) $14.95 paperback | $4.95 e-book Aug. 10, 2011 978-0970841667 A collection of short stories examining the inner life of educators at various junctures in their careers. The title refers to the framing device Boone (Inside Job: A Life of Teaching, 2003, etc.) employs, where at least one character in each piece has a connection to Forest High School, either as instructor or pupil. The most moving stories focus on aging instructors and their legacies, after having influenced the lives of coworkers and pupils, for better or worse. “Funny in the Summer” centers on the relationship between Armand, a veteran educator approaching retirement, and Julie, a younger instructor who presses him to share humorous memories from his long career. This daily recounting of anecdotes inspires Armand to write down his recollections, starting with the letter A and continuing through the alphabet: “A could be Antonio, who used to sing in class, or A could be All Quiet on the Western Front, or the apricot someone stuck in his briefcase.” Decades of viewing alphabetized lists of student names have apparently permeated Armand’s mind and determined his methodological approach to most tasks. However, Boone does not glorify all teachers as laudable role models or paragons of organization. “Special Project” presents the power struggle between two characters with equally lackluster records: Jerome, a chronically absent student with few completed assignments, and Arthur, an English teacher with poor judgment who forgets that Jerome is enrolled in his class. When grades are due, Arthur attempts to negotiate a mutually beneficial agreement and alter his grade book by hand. Boone’s economical use of dialogue serves a dual purpose, as characters reveal questionable attitudes in a small amount of space or, more often, withhold uncomfortable truths from themselves and others. These layered, often humorous classroom insights are buoyed by the author’s lean, clear writing style. The author will find an eager audience among readers who work in the profession, but these stories are genuinely accessible for any student who has ever wondered what’s happening on the other side of the desk.
AFTER ONE HUNDRED YEARS Corporate Profits, Wealth and American Society
Dunn, Joseph J. CreateSpace (414 pp.) $20.00 paperback | $9.50 e-book Jan. 26, 2012 978-1466249547 A systematic and timely exploration of how corporate profits, personal fortunes and philanthropy have benefitted American society over the course of a century. As Americans debate income disparity and federal policies aimed at ending the recession, debut author Dunn revisits history to unearth relevant data from public policy spanning the |
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first decade of the 20th century to the present. His quest: to find out where the profits go and who benefits from them. At the outset, Dunn invokes the Watergate-era phrase “follow the money.” He begins with how customer choices control the fate of business, then compares widely varying corporate performance across major industries and assesses the impact of government policies on investors. He also examines philanthropy across decades, tracking charitable giving by the foundations and descendants of the five wealthiest men in 1905. His finding: “Philanthropy returns corporate profits and personal wealth to society over time, often at a value that greatly exceeds their original worth ... often addressing causes that voters neglect with a passion and practicality that government agencies do not possess.” Dunn asks how society can fuel economic growth to replenish philanthropic coffers, concluding: “We promote innovation by letting more of the profit from business activity stay with the investors who risk capital. We suppress it by taking more of the profits in taxes.” Criticizing Keynesian economics or asserting that Roosevelt’s policies prolonged the Great Depression isn’t new, but Dunn’s coinage of “The Dark Age of American Innovation” should attract attention. A compelling graph shows how U.S. patent applications did not recover to 1929 levels until after President Kennedy’s tax cuts and then surged following Reagan’s cuts. Dunn deftly explains balance sheets, income statements, price-earnings ratios and return on equity. More notable is the author’s graceful narrative style, which never bogs down despite the book’s complicated subject matter. In economics there are always opposing viewpoints; whether or not readers share the author’s conclusions, they will find his approach well-reasoned, his presentation crisp and the historical details engaging. This cogent, well-constructed apologia of American capitalism deserves wide readership.
WestSky, Frank scrambles to clear his name while navigating a succession of shadowy stalkers and the resurgence of a war compatriot. As his fate hovers uncertainly before him, Frank’s conscience remains heavy with memories of Vietnam. The author writes with breezy energy and is consistently at his best when describing scenes of suspenseful intrigue. The thrills last right through the book’s final chapters and a particularly climactic, watery denouement. Frank and wife, Nicole, who puts her physician practice on hold as all this unfolds, emerge as a heroic pair despite the implausibility of much of the melodrama. Whether they’re skirting imminent danger at the hands of marauding villains or devising schemes to outsmart the doggedly persistent killers, these two steal the show. A spirited, readable debut with extra points for plot and pacing.
$KIN IN THE GAME The Past, Present, and Future of Real Estate Investments in America Elgonemy, Anwar CreateSpace (534 pp.) $18.15 paperback | $2.99 e-book Mar. 2, 2012 978-1463507657
First-time author Elgonemy offers an in-depth look at the 2007 housing market collapse and suggests changes to mortgage practices to prevent its recurrence. Drawing on 25 years of experience in commercial real estate, the author offers thoughtful ideas on the cause of the real estate bubble, suggests solutions to the current rash of foreclosures, and proposes ways to prevent it from happening again. Elgonemy’s book is thorough and well-researched: Extensive data illustrates boom-and-bust cycles and real estate trends in home price and size, while economic statistics chart decreased personal savings and increased bankruptcy. “The U.S. financial meltdown was caused by an interconnected system of loans improvidently made, inappropriately packaged, imprudently bought, and inadequately capitalized,” the author says. He also says, “We all screwed up. Government. Rating agencies. Wall Street. Commercial banks. Regulators. Investors.” Elgonemy analyzes the role of real estate agents, mortgage brokers, loan officers and appraisers, as well as CEOs who received excessive compensation and other “wicked incentives.” He demonstrates the effect residential real estate problems had on the commercial sector, and how the junk bonds and leveraged buyouts of the 1970s led to the current crisis. He points out that home ownership is not for everyone—and shouldn’t be promoted as such: For many people, renting is a better option, and it should be encouraged rather than disparaged. Exhaustive in scope, the lengthy tome—nearly 400 pages—tacks on an additional 100 pages in appendices and footnotes; “Chapter Two: Mumbo Jumbo” clocks in with 60 pages that define loan securitization, mortgage-backed securities, liquidity risk and collateralized mortgage obligations, among other concepts. Elgonemy says
DANGEROUS PAST
Ebbers, A. F. SilverHawk Books (240 pp.) $24.95 | $0.99 e-book | May 1, 2007 978-0978948238 In Ebbers’ debut thriller, a commercial pilot and his wife are framed by a murderous criminal network. The author, a reporter and former Vietnam pilot, fashions a resilient character in Capt. Frank Braden, who, at 50, is enjoying his career as a commercial pilot for WestSky Airlines. When a sudden explosion rips out part of the hull during a routine flight, Frank, alongside his trusty copilot, is able to save more than 100 passengers from hurtling toward certain death. The resulting FBI probe traces the source of the explosion to a bomb sewn into a dog’s belly in the plane’s cargo hold; worse still, they believe the episode was a premeditated suicide mission on Frank’s part. The deck is stacked against the captain once it’s uncovered that he was a taxidermy fan as a child, he recently filed for bankruptcy, and his pet Labrador is missing. Suspended from 996
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“Despite the intensity of her subject matter, the author fuses exhaustive research on ancient symbols, art and religion to create a gripping page-turner.” from the seven perfumes of sacrifice
THE SEVEN PERFUMES OF SACRIFICE
his book is neither a textbook nor a “post-mortem publication [on] the subprime mortgage crisis”; rather, it’s intended for “intelligent laymen [and] financial professionals.” His ideas and solutions would be most appropriate, however, for government regulators and readers working in the financial industry. Not for novices, but economically adept readers interested in a comprehensive analysis of what went wrong in the residential real estate market will find a wealth of information and ideas.
Logan, Amy Priya Press (268 pp.) $14.95 paperback | $4.99 e-book Mar. 5, 2012 978-0985308018 Logan’s debut thriller follows an investigative journalist as she sets out to avenge the honor killing of a Druze friend. Globe-trotting investigative journalist Fereby McCullough Jones narrowly escapes death in a suicide bombing when her Israeli Druze friend Leila Azzam whisks her off a bus just before it explodes. The Druze, a secretive and restrictive Arab community, adhere to a covert religion loyal to the Israeli state; though Fereby knows Leila as an energetic, bold artist of immense talent, Leila’s strict religious family sees her as a stain on their honor ever since a vicious attack she endured as a child. When Fereby finds Leila’s bruised, bloody body surrounded by jeering crowds in the middle of the street, she immediately suspects her friend has been the victim of an honor killing. But the Druze religious hierarchy, the obstructive Azzam family and the unsupportive Israeli legal system prove to be greater obstacles than anticipated when Fereby attempts to bring Leila’s killers to justice. Logan’s passion to eradicate honor killing is clear in this fast-paced narrative. Despite the intensity of her subject matter, the author fuses exhaustive research on ancient symbols, art and religion to create a gripping page-turner. Well-developed supporting characters add depth and intimacy to Fereby’s noble mission. Logan astutely and sensitively depicts the Druze women as powerful and intelligent characters in spite of their subjugation. Male characters, on the other hand, tend to be slightly one-dimensional, although they remain convincing. A harsh critic of religious doctrines that suppress women, the author highlights some of the sect’s more sublime traditions and beliefs so as to respectfully portray a more complete picture of the Druze. Suspenseful, smart, and laced with unexpected twists and turns, Logan’s exciting novel offers a haunting portrait of women in repressive cultures who are forced to live as second-class citizens. From the first page, Logan’s thrilling debut novel is an intelligent, intricately layered adventure.
THE COLONEL’S SON
Jennings, Ernest iUniverse (312 pp.) $17.95 paperback | $9.99 e-book Mar. 16, 2011 978-1450279482 In his short, gruesome career, Cotter Banks—the eponymous colonel’s son— graduates from patricide to serial murder, with gleeful forays into drugs, kidnapping and sexual torture in Jennings’ debut thriller. Set in Dillon, Texas, “a Town of 9,000 Friendly Folks and a Couple of Old Grouches,” Jennings’ novel almost immediately grabs the reader’s attention with the brutal, premeditated murder of Frank “Buck” Banks, a retired Air Force colonel, by his college-age son. Unlike most killers in suspense stories, Cotter is not rich, brilliant or charismatic; in fact, he’s a goofy, egotistical stoner with loser friends who makes so many mistakes, forensically speaking, in his escalating homicidal rage that there’s no question he’ll be brought to justice. The fun here is in how and by whom. Enter heroic retired U.S. Marshall and acting-sheriff Will Clayton, who deputizes Don Taggert, ex–Dallas Police Department vice-squad superstar, to assist him in his search for the “Right Hand Killer,” so dubbed after Banks’ grisly signature MO. Unpleasant family secrets are discovered along with almost comically gruesome crime scenes— and, for one lucky lawman, romance beckons. Soon the bloody trail leads Clayton and Tag right to Cotter’s ripped-from-theheadlines hidden lair, where an unexpected appearance by a mysterious forensics expert provides the set-up for a possible sequel. All of this may be standard fare, but what the novel lacks in actual mystery, it makes up for with old-fashioned blood, guts and character development. While Jennings’ tidy, folksy prose is a notch above most regional-inflected pageturners, it never strays too far into the elusive realm of Cormac McCarthy–esque “literature,” which makes it all the more appealing. The only serious problem with this book is one of proportion: Its oversized format makes it an uncomfortable fit in drugstore bookracks or commuters’ hands—the natural habitats of such popular thrillers. Jennings’ debut presents a y’all-infused alternative for fans of John Sanford or James Patterson.
BY HIS OWN BLOOD
Montandon, John Rockford Brownstone Publishing (302 pp.) $14.95 paperback | $8.95 e-book Feb. 27, 2012 978-0615604831 Montandon’s first novel is a fictionalized account of his family’s happy life on their rural west Texas farm before his father’s tragic death from AIDS. The author’s father, Eugene “Doc” Montandon, was subjected to unnecessary surgery in the early 1980s; many years later, shortly before his death, the family discovers |
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that Doc was infected with HIV-positive blood as a result of the procedure. The hospital never informed the Montandon family of its error and even refused to treat Doc as a patient. By the time the family found out, Doc was in the advanced stages of the disease. Although quite touching and emotional, the story of Doc’s disease, death, and resulting emotional and spiritual toll on the family comprises only the latter half of Montandon’s volume. The first portion is dedicated to family history. These recollections set the stage and build characterization before the tragedy starts to unfold, but some readers may be anxious for the action to kick off. If this book were restructured—bringing Doc’s story to the forefront while weaving anecdotes throughout the entire text—the poignancy of this title might resonate more with readers. The story of Doc’s treatment, death, and everything that follows is captivating. As it revisits a time when people were shamefully refused treatment for AIDS, the book chronicles the early stages of American society’s understanding of this disease and presents a grim picture of the ignorance and the intolerance to which early patients were subjected. The impact of Doc’s death on the author is clear, and he describes Doc’s final days with an intensity and passion that will affect readers. Starts slow but ends as a beautiful, memorable story of one family’s love and the tragic death of its patriarch.
compulsively readable. Ultimately, readers may ask whether holding onto ideals and integrity is really worth this high a price. An absorbing thriller wrapped in a sharp, biting critique of corruption.
TOPPING THE DOME Art and Politics During the Construction of the Capitol Dome Novak, Richard F. CreateSpace (232 pp.) $14.95 paperback | $4.99 e-book Nov. 8, 2011 978-1466276789
A fictionalized account of how two American sculptors from vastly different backgrounds came to adorn the U.S. Capitol in an era of national strife. Novak, a sculptor with 40 years of experience, brings the magic of marble carving to life in plain but engaging prose in this debut historical novel. When British troops burned the U.S. Capitol in 1814, from the ashes rose an opportunity for American artists. Previously passed over in favor of skilled Italians, Americans were invited to train in Rome and return to rebuild the Capitol building. Foremost among these homegrown sculptors is Thomas Crawford, a 20-yearold who develops into one of Rome’s premier sculptors, attracting the attention of well-placed Americans George Washington Greene and Charles Sumner. Yet years pass without Crawford garnering a single commission from Washington. Ironically, self-taught sculptor Clark Mills is profiting through his political contacts, receiving only the second commission from Congress awarded to an American sculptor. Not until the Capitol’s expansion in 1852 does Crawford’s luck change. In quick succession, he is awarded commissions for panels, doors, and his dome-crowning glory, Freedom. But success is bittersweet: He is diagnosed with an inoperable tumor behind his left eye. As Crawford’s health worsens, Mills is brought in to complete Freedom, thus marrying Crawford’s Old World training with Mills’ New World entrepreneurial savvy. This microcosm of America’s artistic history plays out against the increasingly volatile congressional battle over slavery. One could argue that Crawford’s difficulties in landing commissions may be traced not only to his long residence in Rome, but to his friendship with Charles Sumner, a powerful abolitionist, whose scathing speeches dot the book’s second half. Mills, on the other hand, could not have risen far without the skilled help of his slaves—in particular, a craftsman named Philip Reid. The white mountaintops of Carrara, the seductive textures of artists’ materials, and the majesty of Roman art all shine in spite of a tendency toward expository dialogue and misplaced punctuation. The result here is less novelesque than nonfiction with dialogue, full of technical and historical detail, but also underdeveloped characters and unevenly executed subplots. That said, neither art enthusiasts nor American-history buffs should mind, as the compelling story unfolds amid the world of classical art before shifting to the realm of political machinations. A well-researched narrative of how the U.S. Capitol became a showcase for the nation’s finest neoclassical artwork.
A REASON TO TREMBLE
Mustin, Bob CreateSpace (386 pp.) $14. paperback | $2.99 e-book Feb. 25, 2012 978-1469908977 After the small town of Hope, Ga., is rocked by the hit-and-run death of a 10-year-old girl, two brothers set out to find her murderer in Mustin’s debut thriller. When Emily Shane is killed by a hitand-run driver, her father, Pat, begins to obsess over the idea that known-alcoholic Phil Agee is the culprit. It was Agee’s vehicle that was seen ricocheting away from the crime scene, after all. But Agee’s close involvement with prominent liberal Sen. Alan Baxter leads Pat to suspect that the police and Baxter are withholding evidence and not interested in pursuing justice. Pat’s increasingly violent mood swings and volatile outbursts are driving a wedge between him and his wife, Yvonne; the town; and his brother Jason, a Vietnam War vet who lives with the couple. In order to save his family, Jason agrees to investigate the case with old war buddy and private detective Wilton Byrd—as long as Pat lays low. As the case enfolds, more tragedy ensues and Jason and Wilton uncover secrets and lies that shatter the family and town. Author Mustin has created a rich, layered and believable character study of Hope and its people; these are fundamentally decent people who struggle against a greater machine. Some lose their souls and lives trying to make a difference. The corrupting nature of power (the enormity of which is the title’s “reason to tremble”), the damaging effects of war and personal loss, and issues of trust and betrayal are explored with intelligence and depth as two men risk everything to uncover the truth. Filled with complex characters and relationships, this novel is moving and 998
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interesting and often amusing—as when the author regales his brash yet successful move to partner with Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft and Apple to distribute specialty paper samples. Struhl portrays himself as a “high powered” businessman and his aggressive style will likely pump up readers. However, there are places in the book where the tone verges on elitist, such as the anecdote about a colleague who starts a private jet service with support from Warren Buffett. In other instances, the author’s exceptional networking makes his success seem far out of reach for fledgling business owners; through his colleagues, Struhl meets the visionary behind the candy store in FAO Schwarz and he gets a call as soon as a particular poster company he admired goes up for sale. Halfway through the book, the reader begins to feel as if everything will keep falling into place, but then the author does something admirable: He describes struggles and expensive failures. Prospective investors change terms at the last minute. An initial public offering goes awry. A partner abandons a business deal, resulting in the loss of millions of dollars in legal fees. Despite the flops that would terrify a new entrepreneur, Struhl forges on with enthusiasm, reminding readers that failures happen—but the opportunity for success can be worth the risk. Through more than a dozen illustrative examples looking at challenges overcome by founders of Hotels.com, Spanx and others, Struhl infuses readers with optimism that they too can launch a successful start-up.
Pace, Mike River Point Press (450 pp.) $11.00 paperback | $0.99 e-book Mar. 5, 2012 978-0615518428 Pace’s debut supernatural thriller follows Sheriff Estin Booker as he faces off against the ultimate cosmic force. In Cumberton, Md., trouble begins soon after a construction crew unearths a small wooden box at the site of a new dormitory at the local Christian college. Trapped within the box is Lucifer’s Light, a tool that can bring about a worldwide descent into Hell. Once released, it begins rapidly claiming souls, driving young and old to commit horrific suicides under the amplified guilt of any past transgressions. Assisted by a lovely but hard-bitten Baltimore detective on forced vacation, Booker investigates to the best of his ability. But with the Light on the loose and demonic enforcers on call, even being armed and faithful may not be enough. While satanic thrillers may have gone out of vogue in the ‘70s, Pace makes a good argument for reviving the genre, bringing hard-edged rationality and modern investigative techniques to bear on his supernatural plot. Despite frequent flashbacks that span nearly four centuries, the plot flows with clarity and economy, maintaining a narrative rhythm that provides all the information readers need without rushing the story. Some of the character flourishes aren’t as successful—the enforced using of “shuck” instead of the F-word quickly grates on the reader’s internal ear, defeating its purpose—but overall, the players are more wellrounded than strictly called for by the genre. Characters that might seem to be antagonistic, such as the TV evangelist who founded the college, turn out to have surprising depth and sympathies—making their eventual fates more rewarding or, in some cases, heartbreaking. Pace crafts compelling characters in service to a thrilling plot, with narrative riches in a vein thought by many to be played out.
THE BEAUTIFUL HANGOVER And Everything Else a Canadian Learned from a Colombiana About the Balance Of Mother, Wife and Self Waring, Micheline & Cano, Liana FastPencil (260 pp.) $9.99 e-book | Aug. 1, 2011
STARTING THEM UP Timely, Under-the-Hood Insights for Entrepreneurs by a Serial Starter and a Bunch of his Entrepreneurial Friends
A disheveled Canadian mom befriends a sexy Colombian, and the end result is a lively account of self-discovery and life balance in Waring and Cano’s memoir. Though Waring’s lighthearted voice makes for a fun read, her life wasn’t always so breezy. As an expatriate living in Buenos Aires, she loved the culture and her family. But her husband’s job forced him to travel nearly 150 days a year, and the daily responsibility of caring for two young children rested heavily on her shoulders. As a result, she suffered from migraines, a back injury and exhaustion. Enter Cano, a former swimsuit model and Colombian expatriate mother who “laugh[ed] heartily, dance[ed] with the enthusiasm of a teenager and savour[ed] good food like there [was] no tomorrow.” Waring was dazzled by Cano’s flair and the way she balanced motherhood and her own needs. Per Waring, Colombian women embrace their femininity at all ages, but their beauty goes much deeper than the skin. Cano reveled in the moment and appreciated the small things in life. Even hangovers were wonderful events to Cano because she could lounge in bed with her husband. Eventually, the two women embarked on a
Struhl, Warren CreateSpace (234 pp.) $14.99 paperback | $9.99 e-book Oct. 7, 2010 978-1453780619
A serial entrepreneur reveals the skills and thrills behind building a successful start-up. Struhl’s energetic first book encourages would-be entrepreneurs to seize opportunity and enter into the world of start-ups. Each chapter centers on one theme of advice, such as how to vet a new concept or take on industry giants, with Struhl providing examples from his own companies or those of his friends. Throughout the book, the stories of these businesses are specific, |
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k i r ku s q & a w i t h m i c h e l l e b i t t i ng In poet Michelle Bitting’s most recent collection, Notes to the Beloved, which earned a Kirkus star, she conjures narrators equally cerebral and sensual, tragic and comic. Bitting strives, she says, “to write darkly sensual, frank poems that deal boldly and in a shockingly skillful way with the female body and experience.” Her poetry draws from a wealth of personal experience—she’s been a dancer, chef and teacher—and her ear for the musicality of plain language. We recently spoke to Bitting about inspiration, self-promotion and her measure of success as a poet.
NOTES TO THE BELOVED
Bitting, Michelle Sacramento Poetry Center Press (92 pp.) $15.00 Paperback January 15, 2012 978-0983136231
Q: Notes to the Beloved comprises poems of wildly different natures, from those tied very closely to a particular moment to the visionary and boundless. Where do your poems come from? A: I just got through giving a workshop this morning on this very subject of “scratching” for poems. How it’s so much about the free-floating imagery and ephemera hanging out before—and behind— your very eyes. Mark Doty calls it “the mind playing over the world of matter.” I think that’s really great, because it suggests the immediate, spontaneous, live-streaming act of gathering scraps and shimmering detritus, both audible and visual, in conjunction with, and driven by, whatever emotional engines are revving their cylinders in the unconscious. I work a lot from prompts—lists of random words that fellow writers share and generate new work from. And then I let my own burning narrative needs play against that and assist in navigating the content. So, when it’s going well, it stays surprising for me. As far as specific subject matter, my poems often deal with the body—its beauty, its brokenness.
K i rk us M e di a L L C # K i rk us M e di a L L C President M A RC W I# NKELMA N President SVP, Finance M A RC W I NH Kull ELMA N J ames SVP,Marketing Finance SVP, J ames ull M ike HH ejny SVP, Marketing SVP, Online M ike H ejny Paul H offman
Q: Speaking of the body, when faced with reminders of their own mortality, your narrators often respond in very physical ways: eating, skinny dipping, making love. Why are these adequate responses for them?
SVP,# Online Paul H2012 offman Copyright by Kirkus Media LLC. #KIRKUS REVIEWS (ISSN 0042 Copyright 2011 by Kirkus 6598) is published semiMedia LLC. KIRKUS monthly by Kirkus Media REVIEWS (ISSN 0042 LLC, 6411 Burleson Road, 6598) is published semiAustin, TX 78744. monthly by Kirkus Subscription pricesMedia are: LLC,Digital 6411 Burleson & PrintRoad, Austin, TX 78744. Subscription (U.S.) Subscription prices are - 13 Months ($199.00) $169 for professionals Digital & Print ($199 International) and $129 Subscription (International) ($169 International) for - 13 Months ($229.00) individual consumers (home Digital Only Subscription address required). Single - 13 Months ($169.00) copy:Single $25.00. All$25.00. other rates copy: onrates request. All other on request. POSTMASTER: POSTMASTER: Send Send address address changes changes to to Kirkus Kirkus Reviews, Reviews, PO PO Box Box 3601, 3601, Northbrook, Northbrook, IL IL 60065-3601. 60065-3601. Periodicals Periodicals Postage Postage Paid Paid at at Austin, Austin, TX TX 78710 78710 and and at at additional additional mailing mailing offices. offices.
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A: I think there are only a handful of lucky poets who don’t have to push and promote the hell out of their work. I don’t like having to submit my work—it’s very time-consuming and way less interesting than actual writing. More and more I like doing readings and I love teaching. I’m very turned on by people who inspire others, and I strive to be one of those people myself. And that takes getting out there. I find the more I do for my website and let people know all the projects I’ve got my hands in, the more creative opportunities arise. Then it spills into overload mode and it’s time to get quiet and focus deeply on making the work. I’m getting better at shifting from one mode to the other. It’s an acquired discipline. You have to build up your muscles. Q: Would you consider yourself successful in your promotion efforts? What, in your opinion, constitutes success as a poet? A: That’s a really good question and I’m not sure I can answer it for poets, but I know that for myself, if I’m writing poems on a regular basis that move and amaze me and other people, and make them want to read more, publish me and buy my book, then I guess I’m enjoying some success as a poet. But not everyone is into that game, and still they write good poems and maybe love teaching. I hope they feel successful. I’d like to keep writing some truly stunning and beautiful and challenging poems. I’d like to surprise myself and fascinate others. In doing that, I might be accomplishing a little soul-shifting work and saying something true about the human condition. –By Jon C. Pope
p hoto c o urt esy o f
A: It all comes back to the body, doesn’t it? Despite our “loftier” intentions? I embrace the joyful pleasures of the flesh and all the yearning and struggle that seem to go with it as a human trying to love other creatures walking around on planet Earth. There is some healing and repair that happens when something powerful manages to be stated through poetry, through art. I also admire the saints and martyrs, their extreme devotions to mystical matters and the often spare simplicity of their existence. I think any serious poet who applies herself to the rigors of this calling can dig that on some level. I also think food and sex and burying your head in a warm vat of lilac are worthy endeavors.
Q: You have a robust web presence, a packed schedule of readings and video promos of your books; you clearly have a handle on how to promote poetry. What role do you think promotion and marketing play in poetry these days?
“Readers may not always find themselves at the edge of their seats, but they will certainly feel their stomachs rumbling.” from the check
project to turn Waring into a lovely “Yummy Mummy” like Cano, complete with confidence, playfulness and professionally blowdried hair. Waring’s personal improvement journey bubbles with humor (often self-deprecating, as she describes her frizzy hair and very pale “blue white” legs) and tongue-in-cheek banter. While marveling at the fact that Cano is a Colombian who doesn’t drink coffee, Waring exclaims, “Oh, my beloved coffee! However as the Canadian who doesn’t drink beer, I can’t throw stones. Somehow, we have both failed in our patriotic duties.” Along with a peek into the ethnically diverse Latin American culture, Waring discusses what she learned from Cano, including a potpourri of life philosophy and health and beauty topics that range from “To Wax Or Not To Wax” to “Power Plate” exercising. A glossary of food and cultural terms, as well as websites and articles for further reading, are included. Waring’s transformation and most of the beauty ideas—like moisturizing skin and drinking lots of water— are familiar. However, rollicking anecdotes, such as the time Waring danced onstage with George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic, are memorable reminders for readers to carpe diem. Moms searching for mind and body improvement will enjoy the colorful inspiration.
generated more suspense, but The Check’s brevity is a virtue—by the end, the reader can still vividly remember the tense opening scene in which a gunman threatens Carlo with a silenced weapon. Readers may not always find themselves at the edge of their seats, but they will certainly feel their stomachs rumbling. A fresh atmosphere and taut prose make this novella an enjoyable read.
LIVING THROUGH CHARLIE
Woods, Rebecca CreateSpace (252 pp.) $14.99 paperback | $4.99 e-book Feb. 9, 2012 978-1466357372
The hypercompetitive rituals and other inanities of elite suburban preschools get a merciless but droll dissection in Woods’ debut novel. Meg Norton, stay-at-home mom of two, strives to shoehorn her son Charlie into a prestigious preschool even though she knows he isn’t ready for the transition. The decision to keep him home isn’t hers to make: In her affluent Southern California community, interview tutors for kindergarten admission and waiting lists for preschool are as ordinary as PB&J. Moreover, her husband, Chuck, and wealthy father-in-law attended the Norwich School, which they continue to financially support as alumni. But Charlie’s “interview” isn’t a success—he throws a tantrum over his shoes—and he’s turned down by Norwich administrators. In fact, it takes little for Charlie to have a meltdown; bunchy socks, the wrong drinking cup, even humming can trigger tears and screams. Meg’s endless problems with her son spill into other areas of her life—isolating himself with work, Chuck seems to hold her responsible for Charlie’s oddities; the other moms at play dates and art classes make her feel outcast; even her best friend Dana seems to have transformed into the kind of “A-list mom” they previously mocked. After Charlie gets into Norwich on his third attempt, Meg’s troubles multiply and turn far more serious. She must acknowledge one secret in order to reveal another that will change her son’s life and her own. Woods crafts classroom and backyard scenes into keen, sly takes on the world the Norton family inhabits. Meg makes an ideal medium for this tale. A perpetual outsider, she skewers with delightful off-beat humor all that comes her way—bridal-themed birthday parties, kindergarten graduation ceremonies and school drop-off etiquette. What saves her from sanctimony is that she’s too smart to be unaware of her own complicity and her desperate desire to fit into a world she loathes. She’s astute enough to finally admit, too, that the distance between her problem child and herself may be less than she thinks: “We both have things to learn.” An irreverent but stylish critique of a privileged social milieu.
THE CHECK A Novella
Williams, Steve Illus. by Scaffardi, Mario Amazon Digital Services (70 pp.) $2.99 e-book | Mar. 4, 2012 In this suspense novella, a master chef will stop at nothing to prevent a deadly illness from threatening his family. Carlo Zaratti is head chef and owner of Z, the newest gourmet Italian restaurant in town. Business is growing: What sets Z apart is Carlo’s hands-on approach with his guests, although his impeccable taste in ingredients certainly helps. He runs the restaurant with Mali—his loving wife and the future mother of his child—and Attilio and Enzo, two assistants vying for favor. The enterprise seems poised for success until Mali wakes one night in wracking pain—the onset of a rare and terminal illness known as Kagen’s Disease. The news utterly devastates Carlo; Attilio finds him that morning sprawled out on the restaurant floor, drunk on the cellar’s prize wine. When Carlo later visits Mali in the hospital, a doctor brings encouraging news: The only documented survivor of this rare disease was also pregnant, although her treatment was extremely expensive. Carlo resolves to gather the $5 million necessary for the treatment by any means possible, so he turns to a wealthy patron’s mysterious business associate for assistance. The associate’s plan forces Carlo and his team to create the ideal dining experience for an event so exclusive it will cost thousands of dollars per plate. Unaware of the dark deed this mystery man has in store, Carlo sets to work on his menu. Williams’ (Grass, 2011) prose throughout this tight plot is very economical. Each of Carlo’s dishes reveals Williams’ extensive knowledge of the culinary arts, although the mouth-watering description is unfortunately sparse. More careful control of pacing might have |
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an EPIC NEW ADVENTURE FROM CORNELIA FUNKE!
978-0-316-05614-4 • $16.99
Praise for Ghost Knight “Sword swinging ghosts will haunt readers of this droll, harrowing, and historically grounded ghost story.” —Kirkus A story with “drama, wit, and charm.” —Booklist
“A simultaneously creepy and romantic middle-grade ghost story that will please her legions of younger fans.” —Publishers Weekly