August 15, 2011: Volume LXXIX, No 16

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REVIEWS

t h e nat i o n ’s p r e m i e r b o o k r e v i e w j o u r na l f o r mo r e t h a n 7 5 y e a rs

fiction

nonfiction

children & teens

★ Diana Abu-Jaber crafts a moving portrait of imperfect humans struggling to do right p. 1401

★ Roya Hakakian pens a riveting true-life thriller concerning Europe’s relations with Iran p. 1432

★ Canadian R.J. Anderson pens a refreshing, traditional science-fiction adventure for teens p. 1454

★ John Connolly weaves together suspense, mystery and the supernatural in a fine thriller p. 1404

★ One of America’s greatest naval victories is splendidly recalled by Craig L. Symonds p. 1450

★ An inquisitive chicken wreaks artistic havoc in Deborah Freedman’s meta–picture book p. 1465

★ Patti Callahan Henry delivers an affecting Southern tale about second chances p. 1406

★ Paul Hendrickson pays tribute to Hemingway with a book about the writer and his boat p. 1433

★ Three around-the-world explorers are revived in Matt Phelan’s brilliant graphic panels p. 1488

Sue Ann Jaffarian has blood on her mind; Patti Henry Callahan comes up for air; Angela Gerst points out the cracks; Aravind Adiga climbs a tower; Ben Loory spins wild tales perfect for day and night; Louise Penny is cast in a new light; and much, much more v i s i t k i rku sre vi e ws. com f or f ull versions of f eatures, q & as and thou sa n ds of archived reviews

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interactive e-books p. 1397 fiction p. 1401 mystery p. 1415

science fiction & fantasy p. 1419

children & teens p. 1453

nonfiction p. 1421

kirkus indie p. 1502

Chairman H E R B E RT S I M O N # President & Publisher M A RC W I N K E L M A N Editor E L A I N E S Z E WC Z Y K eszewczyk@kirkusreviews.com Managing/Nonfiction Editor E R I C L I E B E T R AU eliebetrau@kirkusreviews.com Features Editor M O L LY B RO W N molly.brown@kirkusreviews.com

From Beyond the Grave

BY T H O M AS

LEI T C H

Children’s & YA Books VICKY SMITH vicky.smith@kirkusreviews.com Kirkus Indie Editor P E R RY C RO W E perry.crowe@kirkusreviews.com Mysteries Editor THOMAS LEITCH Editorial Coordinator REBECCA CRAMER rebecca.cramer@kirkusreviews.com

Not even death can slow down some authors. Oedipus at Colonus was first produced after Sophocles had died, and by the time The Bacchae won the Dionysia Festival Competition, it was too late to congratulate Euripides. Virgil hung onto The Aeneid until he was beyond any criticisms Caesar Augustus might have. Most of Christopher Marlowe’s plays and all of Franz Kafka’s novels were published posthumously, along with The Silmarillion, The Mysterious Stranger, The Prince and Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy.

Now two of the best-loved contemporary thriller writers have joined the ranks of the undead. Barely three months after the release of what seemed like his final Spenser novel, Robert B. Parker is headed for the bestseller lists again with a Jesse Stone novel, Robert B. Parker’s Killing the Blues, written by Michael Brandman. Dick Francis is set to enjoy another canter around the track with Dick Francis’s Gamble, written by Francis’s son Felix.

Don’t worry how these new entries in long-running franchises compare to their predecessors. Parker and Francis, both more notable for reliability than novelty, are surprisingly easy to copy. Even if Parker’s voice were harder to imitate, Brandman, who collaborated with him on several TV movies, would probably have it down by now. As for Francis, it was long rumored that his wife Mary took an active, maybe even a predominant, role in writing his novels. Felix Francis, who’d worked as a researcher for his father, had been listed as co-author on the title page of his last four novels already. So you’re in practiced hands.

What does it matter whose name is on the title page? Jane Austen’s novels originally carried the byline “By a Lady.” George Eliot and the Brontë sisters all published their books under pseudonyms. Alleged authors from Nick Carter to Carolyn Keene were fig leaves for fiction factories in which numberless anonymous ghostwriters might toil. In fact, the cult of authorship—the idea that books are written by a single author whose name carries a guarantee of consistency and a certain, well, authority—is a distinctly modern development.

These latest installments, however, want to have things both ways. On the one hand, Parker and Francis are so readily imitated that it really doesn’t matter whether they’ve written the new entries themselves. On the other, those titles, Robert B. Parker’s Killing the Blues and Dick Francis’s Gamble, explicitly promote them from the dead to the undead. In identifying them with the brand-name authors who didn’t write them, their marketers are keeping the modern cult of the author alive even as they might seem to return to the more innocent days of authorless stories. The author is dead; long live the author.

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Maude Adjarian • Paul Allen • Mark Athitakis • Joseph Barbato • Gerald Bartell • Antonia Lynn Blair • Amy Boaz • Julie BuffaloeYoder • Elizabeth Call • Michelle Daugherty • Dave DeChristopher • David Delman • Kathleen Devereaux • Ryan Donovan • Daniel Dyer • Lisa Elliott • Peter Franck • Bob Garber • Faith Giordano • Amy Goldschlager • Christine Goodman • Charles Green • Michael Griffith • BJ Hollars • Erica Lamar • Rebecca Schumejda • Elsbeth Lindner • Carey London • Swapna Lovin • Joe Maniscalco • Don McLeese • Gregory McNamee • Chris Messick • Carole Moore • Chris Morris • Liza Nelson • Mike Newirth • John Noffsinger • Courtney E. Nolen • Mike Oppenheim • Jim Piechota • Christofer D. Pierson • John T. Rather • Karah Rempe • Karen Rigby • Erika Rohrbach • Cedric Rose • Lloyd Sachs • Bob Sanchez • Michael Sandlin • Rebecca Shapiro • William P. Shumaker • Wendy Smith • Margot E. Spangenberg • Andria Spencer • Justin Stark • Tom Swift • Claire Trazenfeld • Steve Weinberg • Carol White • Chris White • Wendy Witherspoon

interactive e-books THE TRULY GREAT NOODLE

interactive e-books for children THE BODY LANGUAGE OF VERONICA SUE

Applebee, Kristen Illustrator: Applebee, Kristen Developer: My Black Dog Books $2.99 | May 19, 2011

A plump and (generally) cheery frog models sneezes and sighs, giggles, slumps, growls and other common bodily signals.

In bright, heavily brushed painted illustrations, brightgreen Veronica Sue poses in comfy dress along with other family members in a variety of simply rendered indoor and outdoor settings. These paintings deftly incorporate select but wellplaced small animations, sound effects and touch-activated balls, flies or other items. Two to four lines of rhymed comment on each manually advanced screen provide explanatory glosses for her sounds, expressions or gestures—“Her tummy says ‘GRRRRR’ when it’s ready to eat. / Her tastebuds say ‘YUM’ when they find something sweet.” Uncertain new readers can get a chirpy audio reading of that page alone by tapping a speaker icon in the corner. A house icon in another corner opens a strip of relatively large thumbnail images for quick backing and forthing. The app isn’t immune to crashes, and the text could use copy editing—Veronica Sue “let’s [sic] out a GASP” at one point, and “tastebuds” is usually two words.

Moreover, children with a cognitive disability may have trouble picking up Veronica Sue’s relatively understated cues. Nevertheless, this introduction to nonverbal language is likely to spark both better self-awareness and further discussion.

Not yet an app to greet with open arms, but certainly worth more than a shrug. (iPad storybook app. 5-7)

Berman, Sam Illustrator: Bright, Bonnie Developer: Grids Interactive $3.99 | June 20, 2011 A heaping plateful of interactive, often gross-out effects nearly bury this rhymed gustatory episode. Not that that’s a bad thing.

The spaghetti that young Nate sits down to slurp turns out to be just one long noodle that extends out the door, across the street, past the cat scratching in the playground sandbox, through the pig sty and like unsavory places. “Finally, it stopped at Gower’s Junk Store, / and ended up next to a boot on the floor.”

Each of the 17 broadly comical cartoon scenes is festooned with touch-activated animations or sound effects large and small.

These range from a dog-walker’s “Go pee-pee for Mama!” and a snoring pig’s chartreuse fart to a recurring mouse popping up in various garbs and, toward the end, Nate’s escalating series of belches. The screens load quickly, and multiple taps on some of the special features trigger multiple responses. Children can’t turn off the short, brassy soundtrack loop but do have the option of hearing the tale read by a jovial canned narrator, reading it silently or recording it for themselves. The “self-record” also comes into play in an Extras area, which, along with samples from an album of food-related songs (sold separately), contains a “Burp-O-Meter” for competitive eructation.

The main plot won’t be funny past the first reading (if that), but finding all the extras will take multiple visits. (iPad storybook app. 6-8)

ANGELINA BALLERINA’S NEW BALLET TEACHER

Developer: Callaway Digital Arts $0.99 | June 9, 2011 Series: Angelina Ballerina

Angelina Ballerina gets a new dance instructor and learns to accept that there’s more than one “right” way to do things.

Angelina was comfortable with her former ballet teacher, but when she meets her new instructor she’s urged to jazz up pirouettes and float through the air like a butterfly. She tries to |

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“Multiple taps transform a giggling block of wood in Geppetto’s workshop into a skinny, loose jointed puppet that suddenly delivers a Bronx cheer and then whirls away on a long series of misadventures.” from pinocchio

comply, but deep down she’s feeling insecure and yearns for the comfort of proper ballet moves. Each page offers interactive elements (hinted at by glistening stars), and there’s a glossary embedded in the text that offers definitions and demonstrations of numerous ballet terms. Various bells and whistles are available by visiting the main menu, including puzzles, coloring-book pages and video snippets. However, there are a few hiccups. If a character is touched out of sequential order, the dialogue and/or animated movement might cause some confusion. And when the app is in narration mode, the story is immediately interrupted if one of the characters is tapped (potentially making it hard to get through the story with over-eager toddlers.)

Over the course of several readings, there were a couple of screen freezes and one outright crash; still, the app’s overall functionality and the popularity of perhaps the most graceful and polite rodent on the planet make this app a good bet.

A sweet story that will likely put a twinkle in diminutive toes. (iPad storybook app. 3-7)

PINOCCHIO

Collodi, Carlo Adaptor: Elastico srl Illustrator: Conversi, Lucia Translator: Caution, Lemmy Developer: Elastico srl $3.99 | March 17, 2011 Unusually brisk special effects animate this relatively less satiric but equally amusing adaptation of the classic tale.

Multiple taps transform a giggling block of wood in Geppetto’s workshop into a skinny, loose jointed puppet that suddenly delivers a Bronx cheer and then whirls away on a long series of misadventures. These culminate in a final change into a flesh-and-blood boy with help from a fingertip “paintbrush.”

Quick and responsive touch- or tilt-activated features range from controllable marionettes, Pinocchio’s tattletale nose and Fire-Eater’s explosive sneeze to a movable candle that illuminates both Geppetto in the fish’s dark belly and the accompanying block of text. Even the thumbnail page images of the index (which opens any time with a shake of the tablet) tumble about, somehow without falling out of order. Though transitions are almost nonexistent in the episodic plot, the text is both substantial enough to have a definite presence and artfully placed in and around Conversi’s brightly colored settings and toylike figures. Text is available in English or Italian with a clear, understated optional audio narration backed by unobtrusive music. A link on the credits page leads to downloadable coloring sheets on the producer’s website.

A fine introductory version, condensed to a highlights reel but lively enough to keep even younger audiences entertained. (iPad storybook app. 6-9)

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A BOAT MESSAGE

Developer: Glitchy Pixel $2.99 | June 25, 2011

A letter to a friend, composed after a dreamy boat journey.

Backed by meditative solo piano music and “assisted” at each step by readers, a young narrator folds a paper boat. He then sets sail to gather up stars and other ingredients (mermaid’s tears, a seed, a flying fish’s feather) needed to plant and nurture a magical tree. The final missive, a tender “thinking of you” note that recaps the journey, appears on a leaf from the tree. The interactive features are sparse but well-integrated and sometimes even clever. After the easy-to-follow paper-folding animation, each screen of the multi-layered cartoon illustrations features either one to three draggable items or a tilt-sensitive movement. The pacing is kept stately by hiding the “next” arrow until the picture is touched, and the app “remembers” a crayon selected at the beginning that not only colors a flag partway through, but governs the color of the tree’s leaves at the end. Icons on every screen allow readers to start over or to switch the short text between English (with several typos) and Spanish. The lovely music can be turned off at any time, too, though it’s hard to see why anyone would want to. Despite an abrupt ending and the locked landscape orientation, readers can’t help but fall under this atmospheric outing’s spell.

More an extended e-card than a full-fledged story, but beguiling nonetheless. (iPad storybook app. 6-8)

EDSEL MACFARLAN’S NEW CAR

Holechek, Max Illustrator: Toland, Darrell Developer: Auryn Inc. $0.99 | June 8, 2011

Automotively named Edsel McFarlan loves model cars and has a thrilling highoctane adventure when the toy of his dreams arrives in this visually zippy app that ultimately fails to kick into high gear on the interactive lane.

Edsel, a red-headed, blue-eyed boy, orders a life-sized model car in the mail. His room is filled with toy cars, auto posters, hubcaps and license plates. In the slickly illustrated pages of the app, based on a 2010 book, Edsel’s delighted grins and body language lovingly capture the laser-focused obsession of a young boy in love with a hobby. When Edsel finishes his new model and takes it for a spin through town, the story amusingly follows Edsel through (seemingly harmless) trips through back yards, across an intersection and into a construction site. The intentionally simple and direct text (“The steering wheel turned the front tires”) are a counterweight to the packed illustrations, which feature many background details, characters and life-like clutter. If only the app was as attention-oriented. The kirkusreviews.com

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too-straightforward adaptation features narration and displays the names of objects on screen aloud, but that’s about the extent of its interactivity. Such a motion-filled story could have benefited from a little animation or at least the inclusion of sound effects. (Pages that feature sound effects like “SNAP” or “KAREEK” spelled out in text cry out for aural accompaniment.)

Edsel’s story is entertaining, but as an app it doesn’t quite rev the engine to the limit. (iPad storybook app. 4-8)

are chasing it. There’s been an earthquake—but rescuers are on the way. Each presumption is fueled by everyday sounds, including a passing motorcycle, a whistling teakettle and footsteps on stairs. Each disruption is introduced by an image of what is really making the noise, followed by the protagonist’s ever-more-bloodshot eyes staring out of the dark; his thoughts appear as sentences that curl around his eyes, so he is literally surrounded by his fears. The story clearly demonstrates that many fears are silly conjectures that have no basis in fact. It’s likely to spawn conversations about being afraid of the dark— or anything, for that matter. Native English speakers may find the narrator’s heavy accent distracting (she refers to a “wild and hang-ry animal,” talks rapidly and even sounds downright sultry at times). The story can be narrated or read in English, Spanish or Italian, and the read- and record-it-myself options include original sound effects. Marionette-like characters, well-crafted animation and angled, floating text add significant graphic appeal. There’s even a painting feature that allows creations to be emailed directly from the iPad. Great story idea, beautiful and well-functioning graphics—but mildly lacking in delivery. (iPad storybook app. 4-9)

JOURNEY INTO THE DEEP

Johnson, Rebecca L. Developer: Lerner Digital $2.99 | May 31, 2011

Well-designed digital bells and whistles boost Johnson’s already first-rate print dive past marine biology’s frontiers (2010) to the next level.

Paired to quick glimpses of scientists engaged in the worldwide, decade-long Census of Marine Life, the select array of newly-identified copepods, jellyfish, sea cucumbers, “squidworms” and other exotic denizens of both shallows and deeps look even more eldritch and alien on the screen. The author’s second-person address places readers directly into the adventure: “Scrunched inside a submersible that has just passed 1,476 feet (450 meters), you’re descending through a dark world few people have seen.” Two videos (one a lively intro by the author, the other more than six minutes long, which accounts for the app’s unusual size) and slide shows join a great array of large, sharply detailed photos—many of which are eye widening close-ups. Photo captions have been moved behind tappable icons to give the pages a spacious look, and the chapters are “stacked” to make both horizontal and vertical navigation positively pleasurable. Live links to web sites and online articles punctuate the closing resource lists.

A fascinating step-by-step descent into the still largely unexplored “living minestrone” in which our planet is enfolded, with special features that enhance rather than distract. (iPad informational app. 10-13)

BANANA SKIN CHAOS!

L’Arronge, Lilli Illustrator: L’Arronge, Lilli Developer: zuuka! GmbH $2.99 | June 7, 2011 The audio balance may not be quite right, but this brief and busy e-version of a nearly wordless German tree-book brings the noise.

Berated by, maybe, an older sister for heedlessly dropping a banana peel on the sidewalk, young Hubert gleefully envisions an escalating cascade of mishaps that begins with one passerby slipping. It ends—just nine screens later—in a broad cartoon streetscape jammed with crashed vehicles, escaped pigs and zoo animals, innocent bystanders splattered with food and all manner of slapstick byplay. There is no animation, but successive manually advanced scenes fade in or out cinematically and can be spread for scrolling close-up views of the action. Each scene features several touch-activated oinks, beeps, squeals and electronic sounds that are hard to hear over the overloud, percussive musical track. This is turned off in the final scene, where the sounds continue running once tapped so that viewers can create a mighty satisfying cacophony of their own.

An entertaining ruckus, still in need of a tweak or two to reach its full, parental-insanity–inducing apotheosis. (iPad storybook app. 4-6)

WHEN THE LIGHTS GO OUT

Kevorkian, Analía Illustrator: Gatto, Horacio Developer: Zentric $2.99 | June 17, 2011 A child lies in bed contemplating what various nighttime sounds might be.

Lights are switched off, no one else is around and strange noises fuel an already-jumpy imagination. In this story, the protagonist hears assorted sounds and imagines numerous dangers and crises. Perhaps there’s a wild animal loose, and the police |

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SNUGGLE MOUNTAIN HD

bookmarks or page choices are provided, which proves to be an inconvenience, since the story is not divided into chapters.

Despite aunt Dete’s infernal meddling (she drags poor Hieidi to Frankfurt in the second installment; the third is not yet available), this oh-so-slightly saccharine tale delivers a reliably upbeat outcome for readers who enjoy a nice old-fashioned story. (iPad storybook app. 4-10)

Lane, Lindsey Illustrator: Iwai, Melissa Developer: PicPocket Books $2.99 | April 23, 2011 Despite multiple updates, this lightly enhanced version of an epic domestic Quest (print

edition: 2005) still needs work.

With heroic effort and unflagging determination, little Emma struggles up a coverlet “mountain,” braving successive hazards to wake a “two-headed giant” from a Sleeping Spell… aaaand get pancakes for breakfast. As a child narrator reads slowly and expressively, short lines of text appear and then vanish on each screen of the flowing, richly colored art—unless the audio and (likewise optional) word highlighting are switched off, in which case the later lines never show. Blinks and other inconspicuous animations add subtle movement, and touch-activated sounds include quiet noises from the resident dog and cat and loud comments from Emma—but not the parental snores nor “grumbles” and “roars” of Emma’s tummy mentioned in the narrative. The mouthwatering pancake recipe appended would make a fine close, were it not followed by two pages of discussion questions and three more of ads.

Still just a few adjustments away from realizing its full cozy potential. (iPad storybook app. 4-6)

HEIDI PART I

Spyri, Johanna Adaptor: Barothy, Katrin Draemann Illustrator: Kizlauskas, Diana Developer: JustKidsApps $1.99 | March 30, 2011 Category: Fiction A pedestrian adaptation of the classic delivers little transcendence, but it does make for a comfortable introduction for younger readers.

This dual-language elementary adaptation of Heidi can be read in English or German (readers can choose between Swiss dialect or standard German). Sentence structure and vocabulary are too complicated for very early readers, so it is better suited for more confident readers and young foreign language students. A heavily abridged version of the original novel, the story is broken up into three individual apps, which must be purchased separately. With a background in advertising, religious art and children’s illustrations, artist Kizlauskas captures the Swiss geography in bright colors. The developers make little use of available technology, providing just enough interactivity to enhance the story for younger kids who are being read to but not too much to distract older kids from their reading. As Heidi’s aunt Dete takes her to live with her grumpy grandfather high in the Swiss Alps, readers can touch animals or objects to hear them make sounds and people to hear them speak. No 1400

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TWINKLE TWINKLE LITLE STAR The Experience

Taylor, Jane Illustrator: Hague, Michael Developer: Flying Word, Inc. $0.99 | June 17, 2011

First a poem, then a lullaby, often a book and now an app—how we wonder what you... will be next.

Taylor’s classic English nursery poem is narrated in a British accent and set to gentle background music befitting its bedtime-book status, but the real stars of this app are Hague’s richly detailed illustrations, which show beautifully on the tablet screen. Set on a blue fabric backdrop, the “book” opens up to reveal his characteristically detailed compositions, here consciously echoing picture-book masters of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Full of multiple touch-activated images that evoke childhood’s dreams and fairy tales, the pictures lead readers through the evening’s journey. Two children sail their little wooden boat across the night sky, where interactive features are plentiful—children swing from the moon, seahorses neigh and babies giggle, just for starters. A 3-D effect enabling the reader to tilt and turn the “book” adds to the dreamy feel. For those who prefer a lullaby, the interactive features also include versions of the song sung by native speakers in Arabic, Chinese, Indonesian, Italian, Nigerian, Russian, Spanish and Welsh but alas, despite the melody’s Gallic origins, no French.

That readers will be introduced to several more verses than the usual first four is just icing on this particularly luscious cake. (iPad storybook app. 3-7)

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fiction BIRDS OF PARADISE

LAST MAN IN TOWER

Abu-Jaber, Diana Norton (368 pp.) $25.95 | September 6, 2011 978-0-393-06461-2

Adiga, Aravind Knopf (400 pp.) $26.95 | September 1, 2011 978-0-307-59409-9

Abu-Jaber (Origin, 2007, etc.) uses a plot staple of standard-issue domestic melodrama—a family dealing with a runaway daughter—to develop a meticulous, deeply moving portrayal of imperfect human beings struggling to do right.

Miami, churning with money, steamy energy and clashing cultures shortly before the recent real-estate crash, is the evocative setting. Elite pastry chef Avis Muir and her husband Brian, a corporate lawyer for a big developer, remain in crisis five years after their stunningly beautiful daughter Felice ran away. Still in Miami, Felice has met briefly with her mother a handful of times, but neither her father nor older brother Stanley, whom Avis always neglected in her obsession with Felice, has seen her since she was 13. As a hurricane approaches, the characters are buffeted by their own internal storms. Increasingly brittle and withdrawn, Avis finds herself drawn to a mysterious Haitian neighbor with her own terrible family secrets. Passive Brian, overwhelmed with his sense of failure as husband and father, is tempted both to have an affair and to invest in a cockamamie real estate deal. Stanley, always underrated by his parents, is now the charismatic proprietor of a wildly popular organic market he fears he may lose to encroaching development. About to turn 18, Felice is outgrowing her life as a street kid but believes she must stay away from home to punish herself for past acts.

Glorious descriptions, both of nature and Avis’s mouthwatering pastry, offset yet intensify the jagged emotions of the Muirs.

In this provocative exploration of the fault lines of loyalty and guilt, Abu-Jaber’s searing perceptions, particularly about parents and children, more than make up for a less than convincing ending or an occasional lapse into overlabored prose. (Author tour to Miami, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, New York)

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Two strong-willed men, a developer and a holdout, propel this gripping second novel about real estate, greed and community in Mumbai (Bombay), India; Adiga won the Man Booker prize for his debut (The White Tiger, 2008).

There’s a building in Mumbai we get to know as well as the two protagonists. Vishram Society Tower A is an unremarkable six-story structure a stone’s throw from the Vakola slums. Water supply is poor. Pests necessitate visits from the “seven-kindsof-vermin” man. Still, the building has class. The residents of this co-op are middle-class professionals, respectable people typified by Yogesh Murthy, known as Masterji, the 61-year-old retired physics teacher and recent widower. Mr. Shah is the far from respectable but hugely successful is the builder. His is a rags-to-riches story; starting with smuggling and slum clearance, he’s now at the top of the heap. Vishram’s two towers’ proximity to the financial center attract his attention. They must be demolished to make way for his magnificent new project. Shah’s buyout offer is generous, but it comes with a strict deadline; acceptance must be unanimous. There are four no votes. Masterji votes no as an act of solidarity with his dear friends the Pintos, an old married couple. Then they’re threatened, and suddenly Masterji is the lone holdout. Stubborn and irascible, he is that rare individual who has no price; he wants nothing.

Shah could have his enforcer cripple or kill him, but he wants the building’s gossipy denizens, by now frantic for the money, to do the dirty work. With great skill, Adiga spotlights the slippery slope, as the unthinkable becomes the thinkable and finally the doable. Really, what choice do his neighbors have? The author sets us up for the kill while placing it in context: the riotous sights, sounds and smells of Mumbai.

Adiga nails the culture of corruption. How exciting to watch a writer come into his own, surpassing the achievement of his first novel. (First printing of 100,000)

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“A beautiful and affecting novel, Tolstoyan in its compassion for humanity.” from until the dawn’s light

UNTIL THE DAWN’S LIGHT

Appelfeld, Aharon Schocken (240 pp.) $26.00 | October 1, 2011 978-0-8052-4179-2

Distinguished fiction by one of Israel’s most prominent novelists.

Appelfeld sets his novel in the early 20th century in the far reaches of the Austrian Empire. Blanca is a promising high-school student, particularly gifted in Latin and mathematics, and she plans to do university study as well, perhaps in Vienna. But when she starts tutoring Adolf, an imposing physical specimen though woefully deficient as a human being, she falls in love, and they decide to marry. Blanca rejects her Jewish heritage and converts to Christianity but quickly finds that Adolf is scarcely the man of her dreams. He’s bad-tempered and churlish and has a particular animus against Jews. Blanca finds herself trying to balance competing family claims when her mother has a lengthy stay at a tuberculosis hospital and her father is confined to an “old people’s home,” largely at Adolf ’s insistence, at the young age of 53. Adolf, a drunk, becomes progressively more impossible to live with.

The stakes are even higher when Blanca gets pregnant and has a son, Otto, whom Adolf also alternately neglects and mistreats.

When Blanca can stand it no more, she takes it on the lam with Otto after committing a brutal crime. Their life becomes a journey both of calm and of fear, especially when she begins to see “wanted” posters cautioning people to be on the lookout for her.

Blanca’s journey is not solely geographical, for she also explores the forced rejection of her Jewish roots as she deals with a culture that is virulently anti-Semitic.

A beautiful and affecting novel, Tolstoyan in its compassion for humanity.

ONLY TIME WILL TELL

Archer, Jeffrey St. Martin’s (400 pp.) $27.99 | September 1, 2011 978-0-312-53955-9

The first book in a new series, a family saga called The Clifton Chronicles, slated to cover 100 years.

It’s 1919, and a young woman named Maisie, on a day’s holiday in Westonsuper-Mare, England, determines to lose her virginity while her future husband spends the afternoon at a pub. And so the subsequent birth of her son Harry raises the first of many questions readers will have little difficulty guessing in advance: Who is Harry’s actual father? Harry is told his father died in the Great War, but he’s skeptical. His subsequent story spins out in a series of overlapping narratives that lead to a great deal of overlapping details, otherwise known as padding.

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a rare quality. His mother, of little means but great determination, thus resolves to enroll him in public school where he will receive a strong education. At school, Harry befriends the loyal Giles Barrington, the son of wealthy Hugo Barrington, who, for reasons apparent to everyone but Harry, remains aloof, uneasy and guarded around Harry, especially when, a few years later, Harry takes an interest in Hugo’s attractive daughter Emma.

Eager to see Harry on to Oxford, Maisie opens a tearoom with great success. In a melodramatic turn—like many here, laid on with a trowel, but with little evocation of time and place— someone burns Maisie’s tearoom to the ground. Maisie suspects Hugo as the culprit and proceeds to blackmail him with information about the fate of her husband. The dastardly Hugo responds to her with a double cross laced with abject physical cruelty. Meanwhile, the Second World War looming, Harry and Emma decide to marry. As they stand before the rector, a guest stands and halts the proceedings. The revelation that follows will elicit few gasps from those who weren’t there that day.

For all its considerable girth, remarkably thin.

THE GIRL IN THE POLKA DOT DRESS

Bainbridge, Beryl Europa Editions (176 pp.) $15.00 | September 1, 2011 978-1-60945-056-4 The last novel from English author Bainbridge, who died in July 2010.

Against the chaotic backdrop of 1968 America, a young British woman, Rose, and an angry widower pursue an elusive figure, admired and mythologized by her and murderously despised by him, from East Coast to West, a pursuit that culminates (though it doesn’t quite end) at the Ambassador Hotel in L.A. on the June night when Robert Kennedy was assassinated.

Rose has come to the U.S. in search of Dr. Wheeler, who seems (all exposition in this book comes through a glass, darkly) to have been her protector during an awful adolescence. She is met in Baltimore and accompanied on her search—it’s a kind of accompaniment that resembles hostage-holding—by someone she knows only as Washington Harold, an ill-tempered, secretive man whose wife had an affair with Wheeler and then committed suicide. Harold is, as the sometimes savvy and sometimes childishly self-absorbed Rose seems to intuit, using her; he intends to take revenge. Everywhere they go along the way they encounter mayhem and threat—a botched bank robbery in which a gun is held to Rose’s head, killings, near-riots, racial animus. Bainbridge died before she could finish her 17th novel, and toward the end, especially, this odd, angular picaresque feels chaotic and choppy.

Still, it shows off the author’s gifts for compression and dark, deadpan wit. Behind it all rest the sinister and violent undertones that discomfit the reader from first page to last.

Unfinished, but a fitting and worthy coda to a storied career.

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BOXER, BEETLE

Beauman, Ned Bloomsbury (256 pp.) $16.00 | September 1, 2011 978-1-60819-680-7 Many adjectives come to mind when describing Beauman’s debut novel, but “strange” surely applies. Readers may feel compelled to shower after taking in this satiric tale (both funny and repellent) of fascism, eugenics, boxing, entomology, sex and murder.

Kevin Broom suffers from trimethylaminuria, a rare genetic condition that makes him smell like rotten fish, so he mostly spends his days in his London flat collecting Nazi memorabilia online. But he stumbles on a crime scene that takes the story back to the 1930s with Hitler in ascendance and some British holding him in awe. Broom learns about a five-foot-tall, ninetoed, hard-drinking Jewish homosexual boxer, appropriately named “Sinner” Roach, whose death in the 1930s is even uglier than his life. A eugenicist who wants to study him has previously focused on insects to learn whether he can breed undesirable traits out of them. (Think Aryan beetles.) The story wonderfully mocks eugenics and fascism, while the writing bursts with imaginative metaphors. For example: “Silkstone was a cheerful burly man whose laughter could have torn the stitches out of a straitjacket.” Or: “Twelve-year-old Millicent had so many freckles that Erskine wondered if she had stolen some from other children.”

Unfortunately, the novel has no oases of sanity or likability, no character to care about or wish well. Millicent likes to burst into a room and breathlessly accuse people of perverse sex acts, but no one pays attention to her since she doesn’t even understand her own words. Meanwhile, who cares whether Broom solves the mystery or whether Erskine unearths the secrets of racial purity or whether Sinner will become the flyweight boxing champion.

Who cares who is buggering whom, and in what graphic detail?

The only truly interesting question is how Sinner dies.

If Franz Kafka had a sense of humor, perhaps he would have written a book like this one: quirky, comical, brilliant and, somehow, ultimately disagreeable.

CRIMES IN SOUTHERN INDIANA

Bill, Frank Farrar, Straus and Giroux (288 pp.) $15.00 | September 7, 2011 978-0-374-53288-8 A dark, hard-boiled debut consisting of interconnected short stories.

No doubt about it, Bill can write. His sentences are terse and clipped: You’ll feel as though some backwoods cracker has taken a break from cookin’ meth or beatin’ his wife to tell you these stories. It’s a book without heroes, just a few reasonably |

decent people surrounded by others you’d want to scrape off the sole of your shoe. Redeeming qualities are rare in the characters, who have colorful names like Knee High, Pine Box and Pitchfork.

Oh, and Dodo. Women are raped, brains are splattered and faces are sliced. A man gets his grandson whacked, bullet to the head, to teach that boy a lesson. Cross your kin, you wind up in Hill Clan Cross Cemetery, “where bad deals were made good and lessons were buried deep.” A woman goads her husband to kill her father, who’s always called her a whore. A guy skims cash from MS-13, Mara Salvatrucha, the most dangerous gang anywhere. A dicey idea at best. A woman leaves her husband, gets gang-raped, maybe gets even, maybe doesn’t. Readers will be rapt or repelled by the fast pace and near-constant violence that makes James Lee Burke’s books look like kiddy lit. The stories are well told, though, and will get the readers’ adrenaline flowing, maybe the bile rising, too. Some characters appear in several of the stories, but the one constant thread is the setting. Ordinarily this might work well, but this collection would have benefited from having a central character the reader could root for. Most of the characters are simply bone-marrow bad, and their stories leave an acrid taste about the human condition.

Aficionados of crime writing likely will love the stories and their crackling excitement. Others, if they even finish the book, will at least appreciate the well-crafted prose.

(Agent: Stacia J.N. Decker)

THE SURROGATE

Carver, Tania Pegasus (448 pp.) $25.95 | September 24, 2011 978-1-60598-256-4 Carver’s debut novel, a thriller with a decidedly British flair, isn’t for the squeamish or easily frightened.

Something’s decidedly not right in Colchester: Four women, three of them pregnant, have been brutally murdered.

In the cases of the pregnant victims, the murderer cut the babies from their mothers’ wombs and police believe the last child is still alive. The case falls to Detective Inspector Phil Brennan, chief investigating officer of the Major Incident Squad (the British equivalent of chief of detectives). Brennan and his officers, Anni Hepburn and Clayton Thompson, are trying to make sense of killings so brutal that even veteran officers find themselves sickened by the gory crime scenes. Colchester is unprepared for the homicides; it’s a peaceful, family-oriented place where homicides like these simply don’t happen. Officials, scrambling to solve the killings and find the missing baby, call in psychologist Marina Esposito. Marina is Phil’s former lover; they met over a case that turned sour and dangerous. Marina moved on and is, in fact, pregnant herself, although she’s not yet showing and doesn’t share her news. Soon, the investigation takes them to the last victim’s strapping former boyfriend and a woman with secret and deadly ties to police. While Phil, Marina and other investigators race against time to save the life of the infant, the killer is out again, looking for

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another victim. Graphic violence may turn off readers who prefer their thrillers less bloody, but the action is both convincing and necessary to the narrative arc. What’s less convincing is the plodding pace at which the police move in this case, with Marina providing dubious expert input, but plenty of emotional conflict. The book, a success in Europe, may also prove too heavily laden with English colloquialisms for American audiences. No attempt has been made to explain much of the slang, leaving those unfamiliar with the King’s English scratching their heads.

A good premise that’s long on promise, but the choppy writing, dominated by melodramatic one-liners, and stilted repetition of phrases (no one simply drinks anything, instead they take mouthfuls of their drinks) prove more distracting than thrilling.

THE BURNING SOUL

Connolly, John Atria Books (416 pp.) $26.00 | September 6, 2011 978-1-4391-6527-0

Connolly’s latest Charlie Parker thriller offers a powerful story line that weaves together suspense, mystery and a small touch of the supernatural.

Parker, antihero private investigator, returns for another lap around backwoods Maine, with criminals and the occasional ghostly visitor as uneasy companions. This time Parker gets involved with the case of a missing child, 14-year-old Anna Kore, who disappears from the tiny, isolated town of Pastor’s Bay, leaving behind not a single workable clue. But Charlie hasn’t been called in to help find Anna, although his case dovetails with that of her disappearance. Instead, he’s been hired by an attorney representing a strange and conflicted client who may or may not be involved in the Kore case. Parker, whose own wife and child died and whose latest lover, Rachel, has left and taken their daughter, Sam, along with her, labors under no illusions. He knows the chances of getting Anna back alive are slim to none. But the deeper he gets into the case, the more layers he finds: Everyone from Boston-based mobsters to the FBI want a little piece of this action. Parker is a typical world-weary detective, but he’s made more interesting by the company he keeps: Angel and Louis, strangely mismatched souls who are there when Charlie needs them, cops who neither trust nor respect him and sometimes the odd visitor from a world beyond the living.

An intelligent, plausible thriller, both harrowing and memorable.

HOW TO STOP LOVING SOMEONE Stories

Connor, Joan Leapfrog (208 pp.) $15.95 | October 1, 2011 9781-935248-20-0

Connor’s latest collection of short stories explores both the highs and lows of letting go of love.

In a well-crafted collection that ranges from funny to poignant to the absurd, Connor takes on everything from an infatuation with the UPS man (“Men In Brown”) to an alcoholic’s obsession with Janis Joplin (“The Landmark Hotel”). “Men in Brown,” the lead story, chronicles a self-imposed recluse’s growing obsession with her UPS delivery guy, with whom she strikes up a conversation about books. The UPS guy reads and is impressed by a woman who also reads. In order to keep him coming back, she obsessively orders things she neither needs nor wants, but can’t seem to interact with him face-to-face. Connor resolves that impasse in a memorable, laugh-out-loud Lucy Ricardo moment. In “What It Is,” the author follows an older woman whose hopes of turning a longdistance romance into something real fade faster than a bouquet of cut flowers as she and the man she longs for close the geographical distance between them, then find that expectations often fall short of reality. “Halfbaby” spirits readers inside the mind of an unusual woman leading an unusual life in a remote island community. The sea and shoreline are frequent settings in this collection, and Connor proves herself adept at making both the settings and the emotions of her characters palpable.

Sometimes she excels (“The Writing on the Wall”), and at other times she does not (“Palimpsest”). She is an excellent wordsmith who understands the power of language, the same qualities that make the stories so compelling also serve on occasion to irritate and frustrate the reader: Arcane language, nouns implausibly pressed into service as verbs, never-ending descriptions and an overabundance of clever wordplay turn the book into the written equivalent of a buffet overloaded with rich foods.

Reading the stories in this volume in rapid succession is akin to consuming an entire chocolate cake in one sitting; it proves much tastier when cut into smaller slices.

AN ACCIDENT IN AUGUST

Cossé, Laurence Translator: Anderson, Alison Europa Editions (208 pp.) $15.00 | August 30, 2011 978-1-60945-049-6

The “accident” in the title refers to the Paris crash that killed Princess Diana, but Cossé takes the unusual step of imagining the life of a woman who was putatively involved.

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“A young family man escapes the Great Recession by driving marijuana cross-country.” from mule

Louise Origan is living a life, if not of quiet desperation, then at least of self-questioning, but her life is changed dramatically when, on a night in late August 1997, a Mercedes traveling at a high rate of speed grazes her Fiat Uno and leaves her shaken. The next morning she’s even more unnerved when she discovers that the Mercedes had crashed in the Pont de l’Alma and created a media frenzy. It’s reported that a “slow-moving white Fiat Uno” had been in the vicinity of the crash, and authorities (as well as sharklike journalists) are eager to find the owner. Louise knows she doesn’t want to be involved, so she takes her car across Paris to be fixed and leaves a false name at the garage. Even after she picks the car up, she considers ditching it (literally) and leaving her flat for a while, but then the sleazy mechanic shows up with a proposal—telling her story to Paris Match for one million francs and splitting the proceeds. To ensure this happening, he kidnaps her, but she escapes, committing a serious crime in the process.

Then her life becomes peripatetic, as she roams from hotel to hotel and changes her look (ironically morphing into a Diana look-alike), still haunted by the possibility that her secret will be found out. The ultimate irony plays out when she discovers that she’s one of a long line of Fiat “owners” who have wished to insinuate themselves into the pop-culture drama.

Cossé’s 2003 novel has been admirably translated, and the psychological issues she raises are telling and true.

MULE A Novel of Moving Weight D’Souza, Tony Mariner/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (304 pp.) $14.95 | September 28, 2011 978-0-547-57671-8

A young family man escapes the Great Recession by driving marijuana cross-country, raking in good money and bad vibes.

“Drive fast and swerve a lot” is the joking advice drug dealers give mules like James, an unemployed freelance journalist who begins driving pounds of weed from California to Florida to make ends meet when he and his pregnant wife fall out of work. Of course, the job involves a stressful amount of careful attention to detail, not just to the speed limit but to the type of car, its plates and the safest routes. Some early pages shoehorn in an overabundance of detail about the legal complexities of the gig, but the book is largely a propulsive and intense journey into the degradations of living in the black market. James’ story begins in the middle of 2006, the start of the U.S. economy’s latest stumble, and as the markets collapse he takes some comfort in the large wads of cash he accumulates. But happiness is fleeting and, as D’Souza reveals, ultimately inaccessible. Subdealers break promises, which leads to violence; the business demands keeping secrets, which slowly drives a wedge between James and his wife. The book is a departure from D’Souza’s previous two novels, 2006’s Whiteman and 2008’s The Konkans, which focused on themes of race and assimilation, but he eases |

comfortably into this milieu: He’s clearly studied the mechanics of the marijuana trade, and he addresses it in ways that reject the simple moral boundaries of most cinematic portrayals of drug dealers. D’Souza captures the push and pull of James’ emotions, his paranoia and his frazzled rationalizations. James has a nerviness that makes him perfect for the gig, but it’s agonizingly clear how much he sacrificed to get it.

A smart and bracing ground-level exploration of the drug trade. (Author tour to New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco)

SORRY

Drvenkar, Zoran Translator: Whiteside, Shaun Knopf (352 pp.) $25.95 | (e-book ): $25.95 September 22, 2011 978-0-307-27355-0 (e-book ): 978-0-307-70137-4 An intricately plotted but thematically belabored German thriller.

The narrative momentum accelerates into a page-turning climax, one that makes it tough to distinguish the good from the bad guys and to keep the shifting identities straight, but the elaborate setup requires a suspension of credibility. The novel introduces four characters who were friends in high school, where they all had ambitious hopes for the future, but each is somewhat adrift a decade later. Kris has just lost his journalist’s job, Tamara has relinquished custody of her daughter, Wolf has seen a whirlwind romance turn tragic with his lover’s overdose death and Frauke has become estranged from her mother, who is committed to a mental institution. Kris and Wolf are brothers; Tamara and Frauke are best friends. There is also some romantic complication between the men and the women. Fortune strikes after they team to form an agency called Sorry, which—and here’s the part that strains credulity—becomes an instant success by offering to make apologies for people who don’t want to do it themselves. Some sort of amends—financial or otherwise—occasionally accompany the apologies, and the central conceit allows the author to meditate on the implications of guilt, atonement, redemption and responsibility. There are other characters, including one introduced on the first page as “You,” who commits a brutal crime in which the agency becomes involved and just may be responsible. “You” are morally ambiguous, perhaps the devil incarnate, perhaps an avenging angel, and though you are given a name as the narrative proceeds, it may not be your real name. Whoever you are depends significantly on the identity of a character generally referenced as “The Man Who Wasn’t There,” who complicates the proceedings in a manner unknown to the agency but increasingly evident to the reader. “You have an agency that apologizes, but there’s lots that you can’t forgive yourselves,” explains the character more often known as “You” to the most reluctant member of the agency’s quartet.

Ignore the literary and philosophical pretensions and hang on for the ride.

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WUNDERKIND

Grozni, Nikolai Free Press (288 pp.) $24.00 | September 6, 2011 978-1-4516-1691-0 In his autobiographical first novel, this Bulgarian-American writer describes the travails of an alienated musical prodigy in Cold War Bulgaria.

“Youth is feeling seventy years old, misanthropic, and ready to die at fifteen.”

So says the narrator, Konstantin. He is indeed 15, an award-winning classical pianist at Sofia Music School for the Gifted. He’s been there (Italy and Germany, for competitions) and done that (up in the school’s attic, with willing female fellow-students).

His world-weariness is not just adolescent posturing. It reflects life in 1987 Bulgaria, one of the most repressive of Europe’s communist states. Its leaders, declaims Konstantin, are midgets and puppets, as are most of his teachers. His parents, both academics, are monsters, though there’s no evidence for that; they’re kept offstage. Hanging out with like-minded rebels provides some relief, but the great escape for him is music, especially his beloved Chopin. Grozni’s static novel moves between rhapsodic descriptions of his practice pieces and his sneering denigration of the regime and its obedient servants, his teachers.

This is the petulance of the privileged; it becomes wearisome.

Real suffering is embodied in his old uncle, who several times faced death in a Bulgarian concentration camp after offending the government. Konstantin knows that his talent is his ticket out, as his sympathetic piano teacher tells him, yet he has a selfdestructive streak. He feels closest to Irina, a fine violinist and the school’s most disturbed student. He participates in pranks that are not so funny, scaring the daylights out of some teachers with some Kalashnikovs. In a familiar first novel pattern, the action is crammed into the closing chapters.

Grozni’s writing about music is resonant and nuanced; his writing about life under communism, much less so.

THE ART OF FIELDING

Harbach, Chad Little, Brown (528 pp.) $25.99 | September 7, 2011 978-0-316-12669-4

An amiable, Middle American, baseball-centric coming-of-age tale.

Henry Skrimshander seems bound for nowhere special, and fast. He’s good enough out on the field, but not quite good enough for the Majors or the Ivy League; as he knows, “College coaches were like girls: their eyes went straight to the biggest, bulkiest guys, regardless of what those guys were really worth.” Through good dumb luck, though, catcher Mike Schwartz discovers Henry and gets him a scholarship at Westish College, a middling but OK school up 1406

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by Lake Michigan, which, though not of Ivy standing, doesn’t lack for cliques and cabals. Henry feels somewhat adrift there, though he’s steadied by the odd wisdom of the book that gives Harbach’s its title. “Death is the sanction of all that the athlete does,” runs one of its apothegms, even though death seems less a part of baseball than of, say, bullfighting. Henry’s parents are somewhat more than adrift when they learn that he’s bunking with a gay roommate who helpfully buys their son clothes so that he can fit in; their small-town heads are in full swoon, but no more than the school’s eccentric president, who decides that he might be in love with one of his students at the time that his divorcee adult daughter returns home to whip up storms of the heart all her own. The tale takes turns reminiscent of The World According to Garp, though the influence is incidental; Harbach would seem to owe as much to Twain and Vonnegut as to anyone else. In the end, nothing ever quite turns out like anyone expects, which, as grown-ups know, is the nature of life. The recognition of that truth can lead novelists and their characters into cynicism or lazy contempt, but Harbach’s keep both stiff upper lips and smiles on their faces.

A promising debut—and one guaranteed to draw attention, for it commanded an unusually big advance and will likely be pushed accordingly. Stay tuned.

COMING UP FOR AIR

Henry, Patti Callahan St. Martin’s (272 pp.) $24.99 | September 1, 2011 978-0-312-61039-5

An affecting Southern tale about second chances and banishing the ghosts of regret.

Ellie is devastated when her mother Lillian suddenly dies. Theirs was not a perfect relationship—Lillian was one of those moneyed Southern Belles devoted to perfection and protocol—but Ellie was a faithful daughter nonetheless. Cleaning out her mother’s closets, Ellie comes across Lillian’s secret journal, begun when she was a girl, with one single entry added every New Year’s Eve for the remainder of her life. Ellie is shocked to discover this paper stranger: the carefree girl, the dramatic teenager, the passionate young woman, in love with “Him.” The mystery man in question crushed Lillian, turning her into the exacting figure Ellie knew. Ellie fears this fate for herself. Nearly 50, trapped in a marriage to the right sort of man, living the right sort of social life in Atlanta, Ellie feels as if she’s dying. And then Hutch O’Brien reenters her life. A curator at the Historical Society, Hutch is finishing an exhibition on Atlanta’s Woman of the Year winners from the 1960s. Lillian was a winner and Hutch suspects it was because she was involved with the civilrights movement. But Hutch is not some crumpled historian— he is Ellie’s college lover, her very own wrong-kind-of-man. She tells Hutch about the journal, and the two head to Lillian’s closest friend Birdie’s house on the Alabama coast for some answers. As Lillian’s secret life is uncovered, Ellie’s marriage to

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“A zesty South Asian accent gives this lightweight romp some heft.” from duty free

Rusty is revealed for what it is: a loveless endeavor begun for her mother’s approval and Ellie’s own sense of safety. Spending time with Hutch shows her there could have been another life—one of passion—just as her mother could have had a different life with “Him.” By novel’s end, long-held secrets are revealed, the Alabama coast enchants Ellie into a new life, and Hutch, well…

Romantic storytelling at its simple best. (First printing of 100,000. Agent: Kimberly Whalen)

RED FLAGS

Jurjevics, Juris Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (320 pp.) $26.00 | September 20, 2011 978-0-547-56451-7 In this stellar second outing from Jurjevics (The Trudeau Vector, 2005) Erik Rider, Army CID special agent, flies to Vietnam’s Phu Bon on orders to investigate and disrupt a narcotics ring operating amid the legal and moral turpitude of

the Vietnam conflict.

The Vietnamese army is understandably reluctant to engage their Viet Cong adversaries, let alone whoever is producing and smuggling out opium and marijuana with the help of indigenous tribes from the forbidding highlands and funneling profits to the communists, corrupt Vietnamese officials and possibly even an American civilian. Corruption and graft are rife, even in the ranks of the anti-corruption task force, so Rider and CIA cohort John Ruchevsky run missions sub rosa, uncovering a tangled net of influence, secret deals and kickback. Jurjevic’s ’Nam seethes with conflicted loyalties and the desperation of a nation and indigenous peoples still reeling from French imperialism suddenly forced to play host to a de facto war. To the enlisted men, Vietnam is paradise and hell; to the indigenous tribes like the Montagnards and to the Vietnamese, it’s a caldera of conflict that Jurjevics depicts with an anthropologist’s eye for customs and interrelationships. The drama is vast and intricate: missionaries, mercenaries, soldiers and aid workers with differing aims but united in their need to survive in the face of a highly organized enemy who, Rider discovers, knows the foe’s radio frequencies and has an uncanny precognition of airstrikes.

Only when Ruchevsky and Rider have some success destroying an opium field do they realize the depths of their enemy’s infiltration into their ranks and ruthlessness when it comes to reprisals. And, because the war is not officially a war, their hands are further tied by diplomatic immunity and the U.S. government’s reluctance to compromise classified information or favorable relations with their allies. This tight-wound thriller drips with historical detail in all its cruelty, portraying with hard-boiled realism a conflict where neither side balked at intimidation and torture, and where human life was often just collateral.

It’s a thin line between murder and war in this splendid contribution to the body of fiction written about Vietnam.

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STORIES FOR NIGHTTIME AND SOME FOR THE DAY

Loory, Ben Penguin (208 pp.) $15.00 | August 1, 2011 978-0-14-311950-0

These minimal, surreal confabulations are tiny dramas whittled down to their unadorned emotional core, carrying readers through transformations of mood to striking, often startling and always unexpected epiphanies.

A man is haunted by his awareness of a secret monster sleeping at the bottom of the local pool; when his disguise fails a moose must flee for his life from a sportsmens’ party; the sea and a house fall in love with one another and are initially frustrated in their attempts to unite; an octopus finds his solitude and spoon-polishing habit interrupted when his nephews come to visit from the sea; boys crawl into dark places where they face their fears and find light; a father, attempting to save his son from a well, learns to fly. If one story could encapsulate the irrationality that drives this irreducible collection, it would be “On the Way Down: A Story for Ray Bradbury,” about a falling man, a play on Bradbury’s admonition against pure intellect: “you’ve got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.” Loory gives wings to many of these flights of fancy, but their flights are unpredictable and his machinery, deceptively simple, is mysterious. Many flirt with mythology and metaphor, drawing characters into an underworld of phobias, of sex and death and loneliness, allowing them to return enlightened, but the playfulness that permeates Loory’s work prevents them from coming off as preachy. Always they entertain with a delightful elasticity of mind, a deep pathos and an infectious sense of the comic aspects of the human condition. These very short stories are all the more impressive in the depth and openness to interpretation they achieve with simple elements and a lack of real characters. Yet despite the fact that the stories are undeveloped, like stick figures in a flip book, Loory uses some sort of magic to elicit strong pathos.

One of a kind: a thoroughly entertaining antidote to rigid thinking and excessive seriousness.

DUTY FREE

Mohsin, Moni Broadway (272 pp.) $13.00 | (e-book ): $9.99 September 6, 2011 978-0-307-88924-9 (e-book ): 978-0-307-88925-6 In Pakistan-born, London-resident Mohsin’s U.S. debut, an affluent Lahore housewife reluctantly seeks a suitable bride for her nerdy cousin Jonkers.

Really, it was mean of her Aunty Pussy to pressure our unnamed narrator into helping with this daunting task. Sure, the family has plenty of money, thanks to

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Uncle Kaukab’s stint as “chief of central board of revenew” in the ’80s, but Aunt Pussy wants Jonkers “to make a big marriage, na, to a nice rich, fair, beautiful type from an old family.” He wants to marry for love and actually asks his cousin if she is happily wed. Well of course! Husband Janoo may spend a lot of time in “his bore village” and seem disappointed that his emptyheaded spouse displays no shred of social conscience or glimmer of intellect as Pakistan goes to pieces in late 2009. What does she care? She has “a big house, servants, social life, status, cars, cupboards full of designer joras and jewellery, and so on and so fourth.” If only the “beardo-weirdos” would quit setting off bombs and threatening girls’ schools, she could seriously enjoy shopping and hanging out with her equally status-conscious girlfriends. Our heroine’s solipsistic diary entries aren’t quite as hilarious as the author imagines, though her mix of Urdu and English filled with misspellings and malapropisms gives a tangy sense of her semi-educated, privileged mindset. Readers may not feel terrible when the narrator and a friend are robbed at gunpoint as they’re having “a good old goss” in her car while a servant buys them fruit. But just as we’re about to write her off, she proves to have a heart and decides to defend the hardworking travel agent Jonkers has fallen for against snobbish Aunty Pussy. Her discovery of an ethical core is a trifle sudden, but Mohsin’s tale is good-natured enough so that we’re happy it ends with a wedding and reconciliations all around.

A zesty South Asian accent gives this lightweight romp some heft.

THE BOOK OF LIFE

Nadler, Stuart Reagan Arthur/Little, Brown (256 pp.) $13.99 | September 1, 2011 978-0-316-12647-2 Reflective stories about family relationships—parent-child, grandparent-child, brother-brother, husband-wife—with a focus on generally nonobservant Jews.

Nadler seems to know his characters inside-out and spins out their foibles and frailties in a leisurely fashion. In the first story, “In the Book of Life,” Abe Rivkin has a brief fling with the seductive but manipulative daughter of his longtime friend and business partner, Larry Reinstein—and then discovers that Larry has been having an affair with Abe’s wife. In “Winter on the Sawtooth,” Josh returns home after four months at Stanford to find out his mother is having an affair with the teacher of her memoir-writing course. While Josh’s father knows but doesn’t approve of his wife’s dalliance, Josh, who during his first semester has started to take religion seriously, is angered by his father’s passivity as well as by his mother’s infidelity. In “The Moon Landing,” two brothers, Charlie and Dave, try to come to terms with the death of their parents, who passed away only days apart. Charlie has been trying to make it as a writer in Hollywood and has had modest success with a B-movie script, while Dave is the “successful” son, 1408

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an affluent attorney who stayed near his parents in Boston but who harbors resentment against Charlie’s abandonment.

“Beyond Any Blessing,” the final story in the collection, and one of the best, introduces us to Daniel, whose parents died when he was seven and who was raised by his elderly grandfather, a rabbi. Now, at the age of 90, his grandfather has been let go due to infidelity, and Daniel tries both to help him and to come to terms with his own restless and unintelligible life.

Nadler is a writer’s writer, a fine observer of the nuances and idiosyncrasies of character.

DREAMS OF THE DEAD

O’Shaughnessy, Perri Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster (352 pp.) $25.00 | (e-book ): $11.99 July 12, 2011 978-1-4165-4973-4 (e-book ): 978-1-4391-6064-0

This time out, attorney Nina Reilly’s nemesis is a defunct ex-client who might be more alive than dead.

Jim Strong frightened the daylights out of Nina, who, as followers of this series know, does not terrify easily (Show No Fear, 2008, etc.). Accused of murdering his brother, he hired Nina to represent him, and she ended up convinced not only of his guilt but that his capacity for evil was close to limitless.

And then he vanished. It was a disappearance so convincing, a silence so complete, that after several years, all connected to him—father, remaining sibling, Nina, too—felt safe in presuming him dead. Now, suddenly, here’s Philip Strong, Jim’s father, pacing the floor of Nina’s South Lake Tahoe law office.

It’s a matter of some urgency, he insists, having to do with the Paradise Ski Resort, which he’s attempting to sell. Much more significantly, it has to do with his presumed dead son, who it seems may have been prematurely presumed dead. From Brazil, Philip informs Nina, a certain legal-looking document has arrived making it clear that Jim wants a piece of the ski resort pie. “He’s dead,” says Nina. “This is fraud.” But if the document is indeed fraudulent, then as far as Philip’s concerned it’s up to Nina to prove it. Nina being Nina, she agrees and sets about the task. But as tough and smart as Nina is, is it possible that this time she’s outmatched?

Feisty, funny Nina engages as always, but this is as much a romance novel as it is a thriller, which means, of course, occasional stretches of no-man’s land. (Agent: Nancy Yost)

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YANKEE DOODLE DIXIE Patton, Lisa Dunne/St. Martin’s (320 pp.) $24.99 | September 1, 2011 978-0-312-55693-8

Second in a series begun with the well-received Whistlin Dixie in a Nor’easter (2009), in which Patton’s heroine Leelee returns to her native Memphis.

As she flees the endless winter of Vermont, Leelee Satterfield reflects that it was her ex’s dream to run a B&B in Yankee territory, not hers. It’s not an easy decision: Fiery (her nickname) redhead Leelee had turned the once mildewed inn into a thriving Southern-themed country hostel and starred restaurant, with the help of handsome chef Peter. Just before her departure, Peter, who has not hitherto acknowledged the frisson between them, kisses Leelee. Back in Memphis with two young daughters, Leelee depends on her late parents’ former housekeeper, Kissie, to handle the domestic front. Kissie, who talks like Mammy in Gone with the Wind, babysits, cooks and “Lawds” up a storm, while Leelee finds employment at Classic Hits FM 99. Her three BFFs welcome Leelee back with peach daiquiris and dubious advice. On the job, she contends with the pranks of lovable DJ Johnny and the smarmy advances of the hygiene-challenged midday jock Stan, not to mention her cold-fish boss who warns her against fraternizing with the luminaries who visit the station. However, when rock star Liam White stops by on his tour, he’s so taken with Leelee that he offers her an all-expenses-paid trip to his gig in NYC. Leelee has misgivings (she’s still hung up on Peter but her letters to him go unsent), but after assurances that her groupie status will be purely platonic, she goes. Naturally her decision results in some complications. Patton, a broadcast veteran, knows her radio, but much of the book feels padded, and the foregone conclusion is telegraphed from the beginning by the title.

Absent the fish-out-of-water-in-Vermont aspect, this sequel flounders. (Author tour to Nashville, Memphis, Atlanta, Raleigh)

ZOMBIES! ZOMBIES! ZOMBIES!

Editor: Penzler, Otto Vintage (827 pp.) $25.00 | September 20, 2011 978-0-307-74089-2 “They sat like people asleep with their eyes open, staring, but seeing nothing.” A Tea Party rally? No, no: A clutch of zombies, the stars of Penzler’s (The Vampire Archives, 2009, etc.) latest mega-anthology.

Zombies are the latest big thing, of course, at least in filmdom. But whereas the zombies of the movies now move quickly, eat all body parts indiscriminately and explode very nicely, the zombies of literature (pulp, mostly) are a slower and ever so slightly more stately bunch of ghouls. Consider Penzler’s starting |

point, a story from 1929 called “Dead Men Working in the Cane Fields,” in which you’d have to look very hard to see that those unseeing, eyes-wide-open folks were truly the walking undead and not, in fact, merely suffering from a bad hangover after one too many mojitos. Many of Penzler’s selections are variations on a very limited theme: A traveler to some torrid country down Caribbean way finds, to his or her horror, that the locals are creepy-crawly types, “grayed to the hue of putrescent bone,” as writes one Arthur Leo Zagat—whether a forerunner of the restaurant guides, alas, we do not know, though the author of that starting-point tale did, Penzler delights in telling us, indulge in cannibalism. Some of Penzler’s choices are arguable: Sure, Guy De Maupassant’s story “Was It a Dream?” sports a mention of a poor schmo walking “with extended arms, knocking against the tombs,” but it’s a stretch, probably, to include it in the canon of zombie lit. Inarguably zombielicious, though, are Karen Haber’s latter-day tale “Red Angels,” with its sly good humor (“The best artist in Haiti is some sort of undead thing that just drools and paints”), Harlan Ellison and Robert Silverberg’s very strange short story “The Song the Zombie Sang,” and H.P. Lovecraft’s spooky (natch) confection “Herbert West—Reanimator.” On the down side, Penzler does not satisfactorily explain his criteria for inclusion, and there are a couple of iffy picks, including the endless “Z is for Zombie”; his introduction is glancing, and some fine recent tales (notably Max Brooks’ World War Z) go unnoticed.

One wishes for a slightly—ahem—tastier and less flabby gathering. But if zombies are your cup of meat, this is just the thing.

THE TOWERS

Poyer, David St. Martin’s (320 pp.) $25.99 | September 1, 2011 978-0-312-61301-3 After barely surviving the 9/11 terrorist attack on the Pentagon, and having his wife maimed while escaping the attack on the World Trade Center, U.S. Navy officer Dan Lenson reconsiders retiring and becomes embroiled in the search for Osama bin Laden.

Poyer, who has drawn on his considerable experience as a naval officer in crafting the popular Lenson series (The Weapon, 2009, etc.), likely had no reason when he was writing this book to believe it would be upstaged by the actual discovery and disposal of bin Laden. That Obama administration triumph unavoidably takes some of the edge off this story. But plot isn’t what drives the book as much as procedure. It still succeeds as a detailed examination of how the government and the military work together, or don’t, in such pressure-backed situations—and in such hostile territory as the frigid expanse of Afghanistan, urban Bagram and pre-revolt Yemen. Poyer couldn’t be more authoritative in imparting chains of command, strategy, weaponry and terrain. On September 10, 2011, Lenson is in the Washington suburbs licking his wounds, having been passed over for captain despite his Navy Cross and Silver

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k i r ku s q & a w i t h n i c h o l s on b a k er

House of Holes

Nicholson Baker Simon & Schuster (272 pp.) $25.00 Aug. 9, 2011 9781439189511

Q: You’ve written about some unsexy topics—Wikipedia, John Updike—so why do you find yourself returning to literary erotica?

Nicholson Baker writes about sex the way most people wish it existed—uninhibited, thorough and immensely pleasurable. Throughout his wildly varied literary career, Baker has maintained the wry humor and detailed wit that won him acclaim for his fiction (Vox; The Fermata) and nonfiction (Double Fold; Human Smoke) alike.

In House of Holes, Baker explores sex in the funhouse as sexually frustrated citizens are magically transported to the hypersexual House of Holes compound for as much sex as they can handle—or afford. Once there, they can spend time in the Porndecahedron or visit the Pornmonster. It’d all be perverse if it weren’t so entertaining. Here, we talk to Baker about his return to literary erotica, nonsexual interests and the file he’s dubbed “Sex Words.”

Q: The men and women at House of Holes can have whatever they want sexually for a price, but how significant is the underlying tenet of “be careful what you wish for?” Can they have too much of a good thing?

A: I think that’s a very useful question to ask. Maybe it’s only in fiction that you can explore certain hypothetical possibilities and figure out what the limits would be. If you could be sucked through a straw, or sucked down a hole at a golf course into a world where the rules didn’t apply, what would you want to do? It’s fun for anybody to ask himself or herself that.

What would you end up doing? One guy gives up his left arm for a bigger penis, but it doesn’t turn out to be as important to him as he thought it might be.

Q: You’ve got an impressive array of euphemisms for sex acts, organs and orifices—a “jizm prism,” a “lovely Lincoln Stiffens,” “my Malcolm Gladwell”—but they never repeat. Do you have running list of sex slang that you’ve been collecting since your last book?

A: Yeah, I have a file called “Sex Words.” At one point when I was doing this I wanted to refresh the vocabulary a little and have fun with it. If the word was going to be an unexpected, odd word, maybe a made-up word—something surprising and, with any luck, a little bit funny—then I would have to think of it right then. On-the-fly was the way I did it a lot of the time.

The other thing with using creative words— it’s fun—but then there’s a point if you’re writing a sexy book that you want it to be sexually arousing.

There’s a moment when the tried-and-true words are better, I find. There’s this kind of curve where you’re allowed to use these strange words, and then you have to veer back into words that aren’t strange in order to make the whole thing work. Part of the fun was in balancing those two curves of energy.

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–By Ryan Leahey

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p h oto by e l ia s b a k er

A: Life is a big, messy, wonderful experience. It has all kinds of layers to it. Sometimes you’re in the mood to think about Wikipedia, sometimes you’re in the mood to think about World War II, sometimes you’re in the mood to think about the odd little moments of life—like going on errands but not buying shoelaces.

Sometimes you think about sex. I think about sex a lot, so I devoted those two books in the early ’90s, Vox and The Fermata, to sex as a mutual seduction with digressions, and my own adolescent fantasy of stopping time. Then a whole bunch of years went by, and you reach a point where it seems like there’s more to say. I thought I was done with sex as the subject of novels—not necessarily as something for me to think about, but more of “do I have anything new to say?” I thought I had finished with it when I reached the last word of The Fermata.

But I guess it was about five years ago that I started writing these vignettes and pieces of things. I came up with this place, the House of Holes, and I thought, what if a women stuck her legs through these two holes and there were some crazy composers [Alexander Borodin and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, masturbating] on the other side? It just started to feel fun again. Also, it was sort of a challenge. Can you do something that, let’s say, a dirty movie can’t do? What is it that words can do still that movies can’t do?

This is what a book can do—you can suddenly be in this crazy world where people are switching body parts and doing things that are impossible. I got a kick out of warping the rules so that could happen.

That’s really what you get to do as a novelist—just make it up and see if it makes sense in its own way.

Most of the time when people are being transported to the House of Holes, they’re in the middle of something mundane—they’re pulled through a golf hole, or a pen tip, or a period in a sentence. There’s a boundary between the two realms, like when one character actually crosses over the property line separating House of Holes from a normal working farm.

The idea that the real world becomes the forbidden fruit or the exciting world that you’re prohibited from entering, that’s kind of interesting. I was playing with that back in Vox, too, when one of my characters would start to tell a story that wasn’t seductive or sexual, but was just about staring at the dial of an FM stereo receiver or something. The reality becomes sexualized because you’re swimming in so much sexual stuff.

“An intriguing variety of stories about growing up Mexican American.” from heart-shaped cookies

Star. His superiors don’t like his independent streak. Former SEAL sniper Teddy Oberg is in Los Angeles, having left the Navy to produce war movies. The 9/11 attacks draw both men back to the Middle East. Meanwhile, federal special agent Aisha Ar-Rahim, an Arab-American working counterterrorism in Yemen, discovers the racial stereotyping she had to deal with a day earlier are nothing compared to the nastiness after 9/11. The book is short on suspense, and the opening descriptions of the World Trade Center disaster add nothing to our understanding. But with its sure characterizations and blow-by-blow descriptions, it does a great job putting you in the middle of the action and conveying the vast odds against military success in Afghanistan.

An involving, skillfully told tale of the after-emotions of 9/11 and the internal conflicts experienced by U.S. personnel in the hunt for bin Laden.

HEART-SHAPED COOKIES

Rice, David Bilingual Press (160 pp.) $15.00 | August 1, 2011 978-1-931010-79-5 Rice (Crazy Loco, 2003, etc.) pulls stories from his native ground, that fertile bicultural soil along the Rio Grande where the great border river makes its way to the sea.

The book includes nine pieces of original “sudden fiction,” often no longer than two pages, all of which are told in the first person. As with some of the previously published pieces, many seem autobiographical, and all explore the life of a child in the vibrant Mexican American culture of south Texas. Rice has a fondness for a sharp turn at a story’s end, not an O. Henry ending, but delightful all the same. The sudden fiction includes “Man vs. Beast,” wherein two little brothers are stung while maliciously killing a jellyfish, and “Dad Shoots to Kill,” about a boy who worries about his National Guard father, sent to watch for looters prowling the hurricane-ravaged streets of Brownsville. The longer works come from Rice’s collection Give the Pig a Chance and his contributions to anthologies. The author makes death a character in more than one of the pieces, and there are BB guns, mythical beasts, curses and even teenage experiences in hospitals that inspire medical careers. The most emotionally affecting may be “Tina La Tinaca,” in which a lonely, unattractive single woman becomes guardian to Hector, the son of her drunken brother. A day at Astroworld and a Major League baseball game— “The best time I ever had in my whole life”—ends in tragedy.

Throughout, Rice displays a gift for descriptive turns of phrase— e.g.,“[Mother] shook her now-angry dishrag.” The book concludes with the script of a play authored by Mike Garcia based on a Rice short story, “She Flies.” That play, with its theme of opportunities lost and taken by young Hispanic women, has been performed in front of audiences across the nation.

An intriguing variety of stories about growing up Mexican American.

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RIP TIDE

Rimington, Stella Bloomsbury (384 pp.) $25.00 | September 1, 2011 978-1-60819-489-6 A foiled Somali hijacking sets MI5’s Liz Carlyle (Dead Line, 2010, etc.) on the winding trail of international terrorists.

It’s nice that the pirates who attempted to seize the Aristides, a little ship carrying relief supplies on behalf of the United Charities’ Shipping Organization, were seized themselves instead.

But the abortive attempt raises several puzzling questions. What was British grocery scion Amir Khan doing in such flagrantly illegal company? Why have hijackers been targeting UCSO ships lately, especially those with unusually high-value cargos? Is there a leak inside UCSO that’s tipping off its enemies? When Liz Carlyle interviews Amir in a French prison, his characterization of himself as an innocent bystander is so laughably glib that Liz is certain he’s linked to some nefarious plot. But her own colleagues are anything but helpful in connecting the dots. Mitchell Berger, who heads UCSO’s Athens office, never gets around to mentioning that he’s ex-CIA. Geoffrey Fane, Liz’s opposite number at MI6, who’d rather share his bed than his plans with her, secretly plants a junior op inside UCSO’s Athens office, then acts blandly surprised when she gets herself killed. Liz’s most readily forthcoming colleague is Salim Alavi, aka Boatman, an agent inside the Birmingham mosque at which he studied with Amir, who supplies useful intel right up until the moment his cover is blown. And when Fane urges that an agent be placed undercover on the next voyage of the Aristides, Liz insists that it be one of her own, intelligence officer Dave Armstrong, only to see him removed from the ship by pirates who clearly know what a prize they’ve captured. Luckily, Liz, equally undistracted by her conflicts with her alleged mates and her romance with her French counterpart Martin Seurat, remains all business and foils plot after plot.

Though the incessantly buzzing threat board may give you more headaches than thrills, the densely imagined counterterrorist culture Rimington creates beneath the tradecraft is as compelling as ever.

MAKEDA

Robinson, Randall Akashic (350 pp.) $15.95 | September 1, 2011 978-1-61775-022-9 Through his grandmother Makeda, narrator Gray March finds much to love about his African—and his African-American—heritage.

For a time Gray has only known his blind and loving grandmother in her persona as Mattie March, a laundress for white families in Richmond, Va., but it turns out she has great depth to her soul. For

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one thing, her real name turns out to be Makeda, reflecting an African heritage that goes back generations. For another, she has dream-visions of past life experiences, one of the most notable being her memory as the daughter of Ongnonlou, a 14th-century Dogon priest from Mali. Mattie/Makeda accepts these dreams as a matter of course, and as she spins out her past history to 15-yearold Gray, he becomes fascinated and writes down the details of her life as a Dogon girl. Most startlingly, the Dogon people are skilled astronomers who worship Sirius as well as some smaller, satellite stars…whose existence wasn’t confirmed by astronomers until the late 20th century. (According to Robinson’s postscript, this detailed astronomical knowledge of the Dogon is a mystery that has yet to be resolved.) Gray’s fascination with his grandmother’s story eventually leads him to Mali, and his research confirms the existence of Ongnonlou as well as geographical details of the landscape of which Makeda could obviously have no firsthand knowledge. Makeda also channels other past lives, in one of which she was a Jew and in another a Muslim, but her experience of having been raised Dogon over 500 years before dominates both her life and her grandson’s.

Robinson writes with erudition about strange and wonderful matters.

IN CADDIS WOOD

Rockcastle, Mary François Graywolf (272 pp.) $15.00 | September 1, 2011 978-1-55597-592-0 A mournful tale of illness, accident and betrayal across generations from the author of Rainy Lake (1994).

When Minneapolis architect Carl Fens collapses at the opening of a museum retrospective devoted to his work, it’s an early sign of Shy-Drager syndrome, whose grim progress provides the novel’s only forward movement.

Otherwise, Carl’s and his wife Hallie’s memories alternate with the narrative of his nervous system’s inexorable decline to depict a tension-riddled family nursing wounds both physical and psychological. Carl’s cheating father died in a car crash with his mistress when Carl was in high school; Hallie’s mother walked out when she was a child; and neither has really gotten over those old wounds. Carl’s obsession with his work has severely strained their marriage more than once, most notably in 1996, when Hallie left him and had a brief affair. The Fens’ daughter Beatrice still has neurological damage from being hit by a car as a child. Twin sister Cordelia lost her young husband three years ago in a fire that decimated Caddis Wood, the rural Wisconsin retreat where the family spends summers and holidays. It’s there that Carl discovers letters from Hallie’s former lover, shortly before he learns of his terminal diagnosis. He reacts with precisely the solipsistic anger and hurt you’d expect, and the unfolding details of Beatrice’s accident and Cordelia’s loss don’t exactly lighten the somber mood. There are 1412

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some moving moments, such as Hallie’s tentative reconciliation with her mother, and it’s a nice touch that the rupture caused by Carl’s discovery of her affair is not resolved by a grand scene of forgiveness, merely subsumed in a painfully new level of intimacy as Hallie tenderly cares for her dying husband. Still, there’s an awful lot of woe here, more perhaps than one story can comfortably bear.

Rockcastle writes compassionately about her characters’ grievances and hesitant attempts to grow, but lovely prose doesn’t entirely compensate for an excess of plot points and shortage of actual development.

CALL ME WHEN YOU LAND

Schiavone, Michael Permanent Press (240 pp.) $28.00 | October 1, 2011 978-1-57962-221-3

Schiavone’s debut literary novel delves into the sad relationships between a single mother and her son and between her and the bottle.

Craig is dead. He was Katie’s husband and father of the surly C.J., but no one seems terribly grieved, since he’d left them for California years ago, taking a dark secret with him. Meanwhile, Katie struggles to raise a teenage son and cobble together a living by tending bar and painting. Unfortunately, Katie has trouble selling her art, perhaps in part because her portraits show people without faces. But she is never far from a stiff drink. One day, Craig’s motorcycle shows up as his parting gift, and C.J. finally sees something to distract him from his anger—if only he were old enough to drive. Katie reeks with self-pity, especially in contrast to her successful sister Caroline, who never fails to point out Katie’s many failings. Their arguments often end with Caroline telling Katie to “call me when you land.” Great-Uncle Walter, terminally ill, abbreviates his suffering by driving the motorcycle into a wall. Too bad, because he was the sane one in the household. Then amid familial chaos, C.J. and the repaired motorcycle disappear. Rather than reporting the incident to the police, Katie simply waits, hoping he’ll write and eventually return. The novel is told in the present tense except for the numerous flashbacks that bring Craig back to life in Katie’s memory. All the characters are deeply flawed and human, but the people readers will likely care about are those who act on their problems. That includes Walter and C.J. Whether it also includes Katie, only patient readers will learn.

Well written and thoughtful, even though it’s hard to root for a character who is her own worst enemy.

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CHILDREN OF PARANOIA

Shane, Trevor Dutton (384 pp.) $25.95 | September 8, 2011 978-0-525-95237-4 Joseph, a young assassin drafted into a longstanding shadow war in which loved ones are routinely killed for no apparent reason but revenge, falls in love with a Canadian girl and attempts to escape to a new life with her.

Joseph, the would-be hero and narrator of Shane’s first novel, doesn’t know what he’s fighting for, only that if he doesn’t do his job, the “evil” deeds committed by the other side won’t be answered. Knives are preferred over guns. The best weapons are his bare hands, which he uses to choke a targeted woman to death outside her Brooklyn brownstone in the book’s opening scene. Though the war has been going on for some time, most people seem to be unaware of it, even though high-school kids are instructed on their future roles. (You have to be 18 to become a soldier; no one under the age of 18 can be killed.) After he falls for Maria during a botched job in Montreal—they meet cute in front of a porno theater—he tells her what he does and breaks all kinds of other rules to be with her, especially after learning she’s carrying his baby son. He also violates code to spend time with his two best friends and fellow killers, Michael and Jared. There are other assignments in the war, we learn. You can also work intelligence or be a “breeder” leading a domestic life to keep the ranks replenished. Credibility is not Shane’s strong suit. There are too many question marks and unlikelihoods hanging over the plot, and over 17-year-old Maria. Give the author credit for sustaining the story as well as he does, and for devising a compelling finish. But he hasn’t satisfactorily worked out his premise, one reason why the paranoia played up in the title is never felt on the page. Having introduced the rule that if you have a child before you turn 18, you have to turn it over to the other side, Shane does nothing with it. Maybe he’s saving that for the sequel he sets up.

Senseless individuals carry out a senseless sort-ofsecret war, with not a true hero or even a protester in sight.

(Agent: Alexandra Machinist)

BEFORE EVER AFTER

Sotto, Samantha Crown (304 pp.) $23.00 | (e-book ): $23.00 August 2, 2011 978-0-307-71987-4 (e-book ): 978-0-307-71989-8

fizzles in the telling.

Though this debut has all the components of a summer treat—romantic European locales, tragedy across the centuries, a supernatural leading man—it

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After two years of marriage, young Shelley is widowed when a subway bombing kills Max. Three years later, a young man comes to her London door with unbelievable news: He is Max’s grandson Paolo. He has convincing evidence in a series of photos of himself as a child with Max, but as she, Max and Paolo are all about the same age, the truth that Max is very old, in fact, immortal, is inconceivable. Nevertheless, Paolo has found Max running a restaurant on a remote Pacific island, so Shelly and Paolo take the next plane to the Philippines to confront him. On the long ride, Shelly narrates her romance with Max and unravels the truth about his long, long past. On a whim five years ago, Shelly took a quirky tour with Max’s company, which offered an unusual perspective on Europe’s great capitals. At each out-of-the-way site, Max spun an incredible yarn for his merry little group of travelers: the tale of poor Isabelle during the 19th-century Communard Revolt, the fate of two adventurers at the French Revolution, a ghost story involving a mad mercenary in 16th-century Switzerland, a quiet conversation on aging between an old abbot and a young monk in a 13th-century Austrian monastery and so on, until Max’s tour reaches its conclusion at Herculaneum, one of the ancient cities destroyed by Vesuvius in 79 CE, an event that made Max immortal. On the tour Shelly and Max fell in love—it is only in the retelling to Paolo that Shelly realizes these stories were about Max. Surprisingly, following Max through history is rather dull. He is often not the lead player; so much of the novel is composed of vignettes of characters who simply come and go, without the weight of Max (himself a rather shadowy figure) to ground the story.

Sotto’s characters are flattened by the crush of history—a flaw that overshadows the cleverness of her conceit.

(Agent: Stephanie Kip Rostan)

THE BOAT TO REDEMPTION

Su Tong Translator: Goldblatt, Howard Overlook (368 pp.) $25.95 | September 1, 2011 978-1-59020-672-0 In a loosely paced, prize-winning political satire, possible descendants of a Chinese revolutionary martyr are linked to an orphan girl with a bourgeois attitude.

Su Tong (My Life as Emperor, 2005, etc.) won the Asian Man Literary Prize for this salty tragicomedy tracing an absurdly burdened life in the era of the Cultural Revolution. Its central character is Dongliang, whose father believes himself the son of revolutionary heroine Deng Shaoxiang, a fact proved by the fish-shaped birthmark on his backside. But when an investigative team declares the claim invalid, 15-year-old Dongliang’s world falls apart. His father’s “lifestyle problems” (multiple sexual liaisons) also come to light, and divorce follows. Forced to choose between his parents, Dongliang accompanies his father into a life of shame on a fishing barge where Ku tries to

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“Despite an engaging narrator, this rambling novel is nearly centerless.” from noon

castrate himself. The curious tone of the story lends a farcical, occasionally even dreamy edge to a tale layered with subtle references to China’s recent past as well as burdensome sexuality and sorrow. Dongliang is often adrift, a misfit who only discovers some purpose when an orphan child, Huixian, is found on the barge. But Dongliang’s feelings are not reciprocated, and Huixian grows up first to a life of success and then experiences her own fall from grace.

This meandering, oddly shaped novel is likely to be of greater impact to readers familiar with its context.

NOON

Taseer, Aatish Faber & Faber/Farrar, Straus and Giroux (304 pp.) $25.00 | September 20, 2011 978-0-86547-858-9 Despite an engaging narrator, this rambling novel is nearly centerless.

Taseer is interested in family relationships, especially estranged ones.

(The opening sentence of Anna Karenina is appropriate here.) At the beginning of the story, Rehan Tabassum is on the way to see his long-lost father.

Up till this point his life has for the most part been enviable—he’s grown up in Delhi with his mother, a lawyer, and his superrich industrialist stepfather, Amit Sethia. But the mystery at the center of his life is Sahil Tabassum, yet another (but real) superrich father (he’s made a fortune in the cell-phone business), a Pakistani Muslim. The journey to this core of identity begins with Rehan’s decision to visit his father in Pakistan, a year after the Kashmir earthquake. Along the way, we get familiar with Rehan’s story, a life of servants, wealth and entitlement. We learn of his past through flashbacks to significant life events with symbolic resonances. Taseer devotes a long chapter to a dinner party in which we see how Rehan’s stepfather is preoccupied, perhaps even obsessed, with notions of class and privilege. His values emerge most strongly when, during this dinner party, pretty much everything goes wrong. Another extended episode involves the theft of two laptops, a cover for a larger theft of a family safe. Here, when various servants are accused, we see how difficult it is to penetrate to the core of this relatively simple act of larceny—and how inept and corrupt are the investigators themselves. Rehan finally settles in with a “lost” brother, Isffy, who’s being blackmailed for making a pornographic video.

Throughout the novel, Taseer shifts easily from Rehan’s point of view to a more neutral narrative stance, but the overall impression is one of fragmentation rather than fullness of understanding.

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A DUBLIN STUDENT DOCTOR

Taylor, Patricia Forge (496 pp.) $24.99 | October 11, 2011 978-0-7653-2673-7 The latest of Taylor’s Irish Country Doctor series, this time a prequel depicting protagonist Fingal O’Reilly’s medstudent days.

The extended flashback which takes up most of the book begins when Fingal, on his way home to Ballybucklebo, the Ulster village where he is a family doctor, stops at the scene of an accident: Donal Donnelly, Ballybucklebo’s lovable ne’er-do-well, has crashed his motor bike and suffered head trauma. While monitoring Donal’s condition at a nearby hospital, Fingal recalls his clinical training at Trinity College, serving indigent patients from Dublin’s slums. Fingal’s literature professor father was so opposed to Fingal’s chosen career that he refused to bankroll his son’s education, forcing Fingal to spend four years in the merchant marine to earn the tuition. His long-suffering mother, who’d dreamed of being a physician herself, encourages Fingal and eventually his father comes around. At school, Fingal weathers a series of scrapes in between pints of Guinness at the local pub with his three best friends. He ponders getting engaged to Kitty, a student nurse, but failing an exam is enough to convince him that he needs to forego romance for studying. Fingal raises some hackles because he sees his patients as people, not cases: he mourns when his first cardiac patient cannot be saved, and finds a job for an impoverished veteran whom he treated for pneumonia.

When his father is diagnosed with leukemia, Fingal wonders if he will live long enough to see his son graduate. Although it will appeal to faithful followers of the series, this book suffers from a plodding pace and a lack of suspense. (There’s never any real question about whether Fingal will earn his degree, or whether he and Kitty will wind up together.) As with other volumes, the principal appeal is in the dialects, local color and, for fans of medical fiction, the detailed descriptions of diagnoses and treatment regimens, both present-day and pre–World War II. Adheres scrupulously to the motto “first, do no harm.”

(Agent: Natalia Aponte)

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I MARRIED YOU FOR HAPPINESS

Tuck, Lily Atlantic Monthly (208 pp.) $24.00 | September 1, 2011 978-0-8021-1991-9 Using shards of memory, Tuck creates the portrait of a marriage in her latest, following the NBA winner The News from Paraguay (2004, etc.).

Nina and Philip have been married for 42 years. He’s a university mathematician, |

“An unshakable hunch and a sense of duty keep a dogged detective on the case in a nearly perfect murder.” from the dead genius

she’s an artist. His death is as quiet as the fall of a leaf. He returns to their Massachusetts home to rest before dinner. Nina finds him dead. Cardiac arrest, says her neighbor, an endocrinologist.

Here Tuck suspends time, allowing Nina, during the night ahead, to sift through the memories and images from their life together.

Tuck uses a loose variation of a binary, Hegelian model. On the one hand are the mathematical formulations spelled out by Philip in the lecture hall and over the dinner table; he’s a popular, witty teacher. Numbers represent logic and order; they are beyond time. In opposition are Nina’s memories, their wild disorder at the mercy of time. These are “the manifestations of the inner self,” Nina’s reference to a Nathalie Sarraute novel she’s reading when Philip hits on her at a café in Paris, their first meeting. It is daring of Tuck to set their courtship in Paris, such well-trodden ground for young lovers. The result is a somewhat synthetic charm.

What’s real, shockingly so, is Nina’s rape by Philip’s French cousin in a forest outside the city. Nina never told Philip about the rape or its consequence, a risky back-alley abortion; another secret was her one infidelity, a summer fling with a yachtsman in Brittany.

Was Philip faithful to her? Nina doesn’t know, but she has a jealous temperament, an irritant among her many happy memories of lovemaking, meals and shared laughter. Another possible irritant, the contrast between Philip’s successful career and Nina’s failure to make it commercially, goes unaddressed, a disconcerting omission masked by exotic vacation travel writing.

Does the couple’s mutual happiness provide a Hegelian synthesis? Not quite, though Tuck’s crisp writing is a joy.

m ys t e r y THE DEAD GENIUS

Brand, Axel Five Star (300 pp.) $25.95 | July 20, 2011 978-1-4328-2514-0

An unshakable hunch and a sense of duty keep a dogged detective on the case in a nearly perfect murder.

When Lt. Joe Sonntag reads of Armand de Trouville’s death, he decides to pay his respects on behalf of the Milwaukee Police Department. It’s the 1950s, and the mercurial Trouville had developed the science of document examination to help in civil and criminal cases. Few people are at the funeral home.

Indeed, Trouville, who died of heart failure, seems to have left no will. Expecting to return to the station house, Sonntag is enlisted instead to find Trouville’s heirs, if there are any. Visits to both Trouville’s office and home reveal a compulsively neat personality, but not a scintilla of personal information about him. Sonntag is ready to call it a job for somebody else, but his boss Captain Ackerman, who thinks it’s really murder, instructs Sonntag to keep |

digging. Trouville’s young assistant Harley Potter seems slightly resentful, but not resentful enough to murder, and tweedy receptionist Agnes Winsocket is above reproach. At length, however, Sonntag’s systematic probe begins to yield results. He finds a discrepancy in the time of death and, after some pressure, Potter produces the names of several unhappy clients. But is Trouville’s tabula rasa life one of single-minded dedication or a clever invention to hide a shady past? As leads become more complex, ladylove Lizbeth plays Nora to Sonntag’s droll Nick.

Pseudonymous Brand’s third Sonntag caper (Night Medicine, 2011, etc.) rolls slowly, buoyed by Brand’s crisp prose and Sonntag’s reflexive wisecracks.

THE AFFAIR

Child, Lee Delacorte (416 pp.) $28.00 | September 27, 2011 978-0-385-34432-6 Ever wonder why Jack Reacher left the Military Police and became a oneman freelance vigilante squad? Child goes back 14 years to show how it all happened.

His commanding officer, Col. Leon Garber, clearly doesn’t want to send Maj. Reacher to Carter Crossing, Miss., any more than Reacher wants to go. But Fort Kelham is a particularly bad place for a murder because Capt. Reed Riley, who commands Bravo Company there, is the son of Sen. Carlton Riley, the chair of the Armed Services Committee. And the rape and murder of Janice May Chapman in a nearby bar’s parking lot rings so many alarms that Garber needs someone to work undercover, basically spying on the local cops, as Maj. Duncan Munro heads the official investigation. No sooner has Reacher hitched into Carter Crossing than he makes several surprising discoveries.

Janice May Chapman wasn’t killed in that parking lot. She was only the latest in a series of Carter Crossing murders. The first two victims, equally beautiful but African-American, poorer and less headline-worthy, have been forgotten by everyone but their families. Sheriff Elizabeth Deveraux orders Reacher out of town but then relents far enough to take him into her confidence and her bed. Reacher, who excels as both a lover and a fighter, has his early moments as a hard-nosed sleuth and a junkyard dog (after he taunts an aggrieved local family who’ve sent only three hulking guys to beat him up, he’s faced with six next time around). But the meteor shower of potential enemies coming at Reacher from every side—Sheriff Deveraux, Maj. Munro, Senate Liaison Col. John James Frazer, Sen. Riley and his son, a militia calling itself the Tennessee Free Citizens and that family of hulking yahoos—work against the action-driven inevitability of Child at his best (Worth Dying For, 2010, etc.). And he’s not as good as his competitors at devising the riddle-wrapped-in-amystery-inside-an-enigma structure he uses instead.

The best thing we discover here is the explanation for why Reacher left the Army. By the end of this adventure, he certainly has his reasons.

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BRUTE STRENGTH

Conant, Susan Severn House (224 pp.) $28.95 | September 1, 2011 978-0-7278-8067-3 Malamutes rule—at least in the life of one amateur sleuth.

When she’s not solving murders, Holly Winter is a Dog’s Life columnist, a dog trainer and an investigator for Malamute adoption. Finding the right home for a Malamute is not easy, and Holly must tactfully tell many applicants that a Malamute is not for them. Some of them don’t take rejection well, as she learns when she and others start getting nasty phone calls. One solace is her new friend Vanessa Jones, who’s just moved in nearby with her Malamute, her internist son Hatch, her depressed daughter Avery and her hypochondriac father Tom. Holly invites all of them, including Hatch’s fiancée Fiona, to dinner, where they meet her father Buck and her stepmother Gabrielle and enjoy a fine meal before a car crash kills Fiona on the way home. Although Holly (All Shots, 2007, etc.) wonders if her death was really accidental, she and her veterinarian husband Steve are distracted from following up her suspicions by many other concerns, from hiding her stepmother’s cosmetic treatments from her dog-obsessed father to tracking down the source of a threatening series of phone calls. Even as the surprises escalate, Holly remains too involved in the world of dogs to realize her life is in danger.

The thin mystery takes second place to loads of information about dogs certain to appeal to those who love them.

A CRACK IN EVERYTHING

Gerst, Angela Poisoned Pen (270 pp.) $24.95 | (Large Print ): $22.95 (Paperback ): $14.95 | September 1, 2011 978-1-59058-944-1 (Large Print ): 978-1-59058-945-8 (Paperback ): 978-1-59058-946-5 A Boston lawyer and political consultant finds her latest client more than a handful in attorney-turned-reporter

Gerst’s debut novel.

Chaz Renfrow wants Susan Callisto to help him run for mayor of Telford, Mass., because she has an unblemished, though short, record of political wins. Why the CEO of a biotech company wants to be mayor of Telford is another story. Smooth-talking Chaz insists it’s because that’s the only way to get the zoning he needs to expand NovoGen Tech. Her trusted friend Beauford Smith warns Susan that Chaz is poison. But skeptical Susan lets Chaz charm her into accepting a $20,000 retainer anyway, squandering some of the time she should be working on Roddie Baird’s congressional campaign visiting Renfrow’s Telford site. She keeps 1416

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better tabs on elderly restaurant owner Nino Biondi, a client from her old real estate days, in his battle with landlord Peter Lombard.

When Nino is beaten unconscious, presumably by Lombard’s thugs, Susan uses the power of attorney Nino assigned her to cut a deal with Lombard that gives Nino a new site in Cambridge plus an apartment. Meanwhile, trouble erupts at NovoGen Tech: Chaz’s assistant Torie Moran is found dead in the trunk of her car.

Telford police call in the Staties, forcing Lt. Michael Benedict back into Susan’s life. Between her old boyfriend and her new client, the lawyer doesn’t know where to turn—until a spate of new attacks threatens both her livelihood and her life.

Gerst gets good mileage out of her political roots, but it’s her finely honed plot that seals the deal. Here’s hoping she runs for another term.

THE CRADLE IN THE GRAVE

Hannah, Sophie Penguin (480 pp.) $15.00 | September 1, 2011 978-0-14-311994-4 What happens after the jury gets it wrong. Or does it?

For reasons he declines to illuminate, Laurie Nattrass suddenly leaves Binary Star Productions and hands over the documentary he’s been working on for several years to Fliss Benson, who would rather not be saddled with it. The feature focuses on the misguided testimony of pathologist Judith Duffy, which sent two woman to prison for murdering their children, and Laurie’s investigation, which got the doctor stricken from the medical rolls, set the mothers free, and led to the acquittal of another mother up on the same charges. Not only does the documentary bring up a tragedy within Fliss’ family, but two of the mothers are now having doubts about participating. Then one of them is attacked, another is murdered, and someone leaves cards with 16 identical numbers arranged in four rows of four at the crime scenes and sends one to Fliss. DI Gil Proust, DC Simon Waterhouse and his partner Charlie Zailer (The Truth-Teller’s Lie, 2010, etc.) step in to determine whether a vigilante has decided that the juries were right the first time around in determining that these were not unassisted crib deaths, a conclusion shared by the husband of one of the mothers. A tellall memoir holds clues, but before they can be deciphered, more complications arise.

Hannah, who understands every neurotic twitch, blemish and lie a person is capable of, is just the thing for those who followed the Casey Anthony murder trial.

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“Johnson’s period noir is violent and chaotic, but his clever weaving of history with intriguing characters makes for an exciting read.” from motor city shakedown

BAITED BLOOD

Jaffarian, Sue Ann Midnight Ink/ Llewellyn (336 pp.) $14.95 | September 1, 2011 978-0-7387-2312-9 A spate of grisly stakings sends shock waves though L.A.’s vampire community.

Madison Rose (Murder in Vein, 2010, etc.) is slowly adjusting to her new life working for Samuel La Croix and the California Vampire Council. Living Box-and-Cox–style with Doug and Dodie Deadham, Madison is free to attend classes at the local community college, go jogging or laze around the pool while her vampire hosts spend the daylight hours sacked out. But one morning her solitude is shattered by the sight of a body in the pool, pierced by a sharp stake. The young vampire, who turns out to be merely wounded, tells a tale when he recovers of a nearby castle filled with vampires and their human consorts leading libertine lives under the eye of a mysterious vampire known only as “Lady.” As more staked vampires turn up, the Council mo ves quickly to find their source, since any notice by the police or press would reveal their secret lives to the public. Madison has her own ideas. Through a Southern California realtor, she locates a secluded property that just might be Lady’s castle. She also turns to fellow “beater” Mike Notchey, an L.A. cop who’s helped Samuel and the Council before. But Notchey’s attitude to the vamp world has become complicated since his friendship with Madison. As she struggles to walk the fine line between the living and the undead, Madison learns to balance her human feelings for those who nurture and protect her with caution around those whose nature places them beyond the reach of human law.

Although killing the undead is no joke, this second entry in Jaffarian’s latest series offers both humor and heart.

MOTOR CITY SHAKEDOWN

Johnson, D.E. Minotaur Books (288 pp.) $24.99 | September 13, 2011 978-0-312-64457-4 The Latin proverb “Revenge is a confession of pain” perfectly describes Will Anderson’s situation.

In 1911 Detroit, Will Anderson lives for revenge. His involvement in the death of his friend Wesley McRae (The Detroit Electric Scheme, 2010) and his own disfigurement at the hands of mobsters has led him to follow the driver of crime boss Vito Adamo. When he finds the man with his throat cut, he knows he will be a suspect and realizes he must find the killer. It’s no easy job in a dangerous world populated by rival gangs willing to do anything |

to come out on top. Arrested for murder, Will spends months in jail before a confession from another man sets him free. But all is not well; he’s become addicted to morphine, and his family is imperiled. His father must either produce a large sum of money or let a union into his electric car company. His back against the wall, Will puts his hope in his ex-fiancée, Elizabeth Hume, recently returned from Europe; Detective Riordan, one of the few honest cops in Detroit; and the Purple Gang, a bunch of young boys he’s enlisted to help him survive the mob war raging around him. Under these circumstances, he finds that Vito Adamo may be more friend than enemy.

Johnson’s period noir is violent and chaotic, but his clever weaving of history with intriguing characters makes for an exciting read.

SWITCHBACK

Klein, Matthew Severn House (304 pp.) $28.95 | September 1, 2011 978-0-7278-8051-2 A successful currency speculator under pressure leaps out of the frying pan and into sci-fi territory in this torrid, over-plotted tale.

Palo Alto hedge fund manager Timothy Van Bender has it all: the understanding wife, the Yale connections, the gorgeous secretary, the BMW. The first sign that he’s losing it is emphatic enough to have ended most novels. A sudden surge in the price of the yen, against which the Osiris Fund II has bet heavily, leaves the fund short a cool $24 million. Since Timothy didn’t get where he is by hesitating, he instructs his numbers guy, Jay (the Kid) Strauss, to double down on his original bet, in effect betting the firm that the yen will drop. At first things go pretty much as you’d expect. The yen doesn’t drop enough. Leading Osiris investor Pinky Dewer demands to pull his money out. Timothy sweats bullets. But then his problems take a bizarre turn. His wife Katherine telephones him from Big Sur a few days after she’s celebrated their anniversary by asking him for $150,000 to say that she’s terminally ill and plans to take her life. When Det. Ned Neiderhoffer, of the Palo Alto PD, investigates, he finds every indication that Katherine went through with her plan—except for a body. Sunk in grief but still dimly aware that the moment of his complete financial ruin is rapidly approaching, Timothy is ill-equipped for the news that comes when he traces the missing $150,000 to a mysterious Dr. Clarence Ho: Days before she died, Katherine made arrangements to have Dr. Ho copy her brain. Timothy can communicate with her via keyboard, but what she really wants is for her consciousness to be implanted in a new body like that of Tricia Fountain, his impossibly beautiful secretary. From that point on, complications snowball in ways guaranteed to keep you up all night.

Klein (Con Ed, 2007) lards this preposterous tale with so many telling details about Timothy’s lifestyle and psychology that you’ll be swept up right along with him.

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MURDER IN THE 11TH HOUSE

Lewis, Mitchell Scott Poisoned Pen (250 pp.) $24.95 | (Paperback ): $14.95 (Large Print ): $22.95 | September 1, 2011 978-1-59058-950-2 (Paperback ): 978-1-59058-952-6 (Large Print ): 978-1-59058-951-9 Catching a perp by starlight.

Stock market buys and sells, each dictated by scrutinizing astrological data, have made private eye David Lowell very rich. His knowledge of trines, ascendants and other astral configurations has afforded him a New York City townhouse, a housekeeper, a driver/bodyguard, a computer geek/psychic, an office receptionist who’s also available to tail suspects and two pet turtles, Buster and Keaton. When Lowell’s daughter Melinda, a low-ranking attorney in the D.A.’s office, is assigned to prosecute Johnny Colbert, a foulmouthed, heavily tattooed female bartender jailed for blowing up Judge Farrah Winston, she thinks the accused has been set up and asks him for help. After studying everyone’s natal chart, Lowell bails out Johnny, who’s been attacked while in custody at Rikers, and the hunt is on for who really dunnit. Since the judge’s astrological makeup includes heavy traffic in the sign representing politics, Lowell focuses on her connections to shenanigans in Pilgrim’s Cavern, Utah (don’t ask). Despite stringent security measures, someone gets inside Lowell’s townhouse and plants another bomb.

Johnny, a demolition expert in the Army Reserves, saves the day, enabling Lowell and his cohorts at the Starlight Detective Agency to save her.

How many gimmicks can one mystery hold? In this case, far too many, with more on the horizon in a proposed astrological sequel.

A TRICK OF THE LIGHT

Penny, Louise Minotaur Books (352 pp.) $25.99 | (e-book ): $12.99 August 30, 2011 978-0-312-65545-7 (e-book ): 978-1-4299-7289-5 Schadenfreude descends on the Quebecois village of Three Pines.

Clara Morrow’s solo exhibition at the Musee d’Art Contemporain in Montreal has been a long time coming. And although some seem pleased for her success in middle age, others, including a school friend turned vitriolic art critic, a gallery owner and even her husband Peter, an artist himself, wrestle with their envy. The day after the showing, back in Clara’s garden in Three Pines, Lillian Dyson, former critic, current A.A. participant and Clara’s vituperative 1418

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ex-friend, lies dead of a broken neck. Armand Gamache, heading up the Sureté’s homicide division, and his second-incommand Jean Guy Beauvoir (Bury Your Dead, 2010, etc.), are called on to investigate. They soon realize the case pits sobriety against drunkenness, appearance against reality and good changes against bad. Moreover, Gamache and Beauvoir have their own demons to exorcize, stemming from a catastrophic police raid, physical and emotional rehab and a marriage that never should have happened. With suspects and old slights vying to be uncovered, it becomes difficult indeed to find “some measure of peace in the small village.”

Penny, elevating herself to the pantheon that houses P.D. James, Ruth Rendell and Minette Walters, demonstrates an exquisite touch with characterization, plotting and artistic sensitivity. And there could be no better explanation of A.A. than you will find here. (First printing of 100,000. Agent: Teresa Chris)

LOUISE’S WAR

Shaber, Sarah R. Severn House (208 pp.) $27.95 | September 1, 2011 978-0-7278-8040-6 An OSS file draws the attention of a young widow. And a murderer.

Louise Pearlie, whose husband died five years ago after his measles led to pneumonia, moves from North Carolina to Washington, D.C., where she begins work as a clerk in the Research and Analysis branch of the Office of Strategic Services.

When she comes upon a document from Gerald Bloch, a hydrography expert on the coastline of French North Africa, requesting asylum for his Jewish wife and child while he joins the Resistance to fight the Nazis, she takes it to her supervisor. Next thing you know, the supervisor is found dead in his ransacked office and the document has gone missing. Louise, who was best friends with Rachel Bloch at college, is desperate to save her from the Reich’s clutches. She resolves to find the file, get it to Gen. Donovan, and have him initiate plans to bring Rachel to the States. But it’s difficult knowing whom to trust. Louise fends off several would-be suitors who may be Vichy supporters. She chats up Clark Gable at a posh mansion. She frets over FBI agents staking out her boarding house. She even breaks into the French embassy for more information on Gerald Bloch. She’s also confused about her fellow boarder Joe Prager. He may or may not actually be a professor of Slavic languages, but he sets off delicious little tingles whenever he’s near.

Less cozy than Shaber’s Simon Shaw series (Shell Game, 2008, etc.), and a virtual primer on how narrow minded 1940s society was, with women expected to get coffee for their bosses, homosexuals to hide their preference and people of color to accept job discrimination.

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A BITTER TRUTH

Todd, Charles Morrow/HarperCollins (352 pp.) $24.99 | (e-book ): $19.99 September 1, 2011 978-0-06-201570-9 (e-book ): 978-0-06-209259-5 Sister Crawford spends an eventful Christmas 1917 on leave from the battlefield.

Just back from France and planning to stay overnight in a London boarding house before traveling to her family in Somerset, Bess Crawford finds a young woman huddled on her doorstep, wet, shivering and bruised. She brings her inside, and the next day Lydia Ellis admits that she’s leaving her husband Roger, who struck her.

If Bess will accompany her, she’ll return to Vixen Hill in Sussex and face him again. Off they go, their arrival heralded by a thunderclap announcement by family friend George Hughes: While in France he saw a young child identical to Roger’s sister Juliana, who died as a tot. Surely Roger fathered her while serving in France. Roger’s sister, mother and gran are distraught. The next day, George is dead, his murder followed by the disappearance, then death, of blind Davis Merrit, who may have killed him. But why? While family tension mounts, Bess, summoned back to France, promises Lydia to look for that child. With the assistance of an Aussie soldier, she finds young Sophie but leaves her in the care of nuns in Rouen. Bess returns to England, followed by the Aussie with Sophie in tow. There’s another murder and much investigating by the constabulary before a plethora of confessions are presented, some admitting to current missteps, others to past mercy killings in the Ellis family, and a deserter is unmasked.

The least believable tale from the Todd partnership (An Impartial Witness, 2010, etc.) finds Bess, Roger and the Aussie traipsing all over France and England and bumping into each other. Still, few writers surpass Todd in depicting the insanity of war. (First printing of 75,000)

BLACK DIAMOND

Walker, Martin Knopf (320 pp.) $24.95 | (e-book ): $24.95 August 30, 2011 978-0-307-70014-8 (e-book ): 978-0-307-70145-9 A paean to the truffle.

When Hercule Vendrot is murdered while hunting truffles in the Dordogne, his death comes under the purview of his friend and fellow enthusiast of the melanosporum (black diamond truffle) Bruno Courreges. Vendrot had warned Bruno, Chief of Police of the village of St. Denis, that there |

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were shenanigans going on in the Ste. Alvere truffle market.

The troubles had escalated from price-fixing to the ransacking of a Vietnamese stall, the firebombing of a Chinese restaurant and full-scale Asian warfare, with Chinese and Vietnamese gangs battling each other for control of the valuable truffle market. Furthermore, both Guillaume Pons and his father, truffle dealers, are vying to become mayor, and the Communists, the Socialists and the Greens are taking sides to determine the outcome. More complications arise when it appears that Vendrot’s past includes a stint supervising governmental torture, assassinations and upheaval during the Vietnam era. His will lists his Vietnamese daughter as one of his heirs, if only she can be found. Bruno’s love life takes a turn for the worse when an English ex-pat becomes enamored of Guillaume, but he finds solace in preparing a venison casserole and creme brulee with truffles for Vendrot’s wake, providing a soothing respite before he’s tossed back into a mess that includes more arson, a double murder, illegals scurrying hither and yon and Vendrot’s memoirs revealing Algerian treachery.

The meat-and-potatoes political thriller is supplemented and upstaged by a glorious foodie’s delight, from an author who knows his way around the French passions (The Dark Vineyard, 2010, etc.).

science fiction and fantasy THE HIGHEST FRONTIER

Slonczewski, Joan Tor (416 pp.) $25.99 | September 1, 2011 978-0-7653-2956-1 An accomplished science-fiction writer and biology professor at a small liberal arts college draws on all her professional experience to portray a young woman’s freshman year in space.

Some years into the future, global warming and a cyanideemitting, apparently mindless alien creature called an Ultraphyte have made the Earth nearly uninhabitable. Jennifer Ramos Kennedy, descendant of three presidents (in fact, a clone of one of them) has been groomed to lead the fight to conserve the planet’s remaining resources. Unfortunately, a genetic flaw makes public speaking incredibly difficult, and she’s devastated by the recent death of her more charismatic twin brother, Jordi. She literally distances herself from her problems by matriculating at Frontera College, located in a

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lushly terraformed space habitat. However, Earth politics still demand her attention, as she’s linked to several key figures in the upcoming U.S. presidential election, a hotly contested race between the liberal, science-embracing Unity party (read: Democrats) and the Centrists (a conservative, Tea Party–like faction which insists that outer space ends at the moon’s orbit). Meanwhile, the Ultraphyte problem also follows Jennifer to Frontera, forcing her from the quiet life she desires to take a public stand. Slonczewski’s worldbuilding has always gone deep; she gives the profoundest thought to how biology, culture, social structure, language, politics and economics combine to shape the future. Although the author is solidly on the side of science, she’s not blindly so: although the elite genetically engineer their children to be disease-free and brilliant, there’s a high incidence of psychological and social disorders amongst them. She’s also clear-eyed about the type of personal compromises politicians (including academic

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politicians) must make in order to win votes and money.

Jennifer’s story feels unfinished; readers will certainly hope to follow her through to graduation.

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nonfiction THE PUPPY DIARIES Raising a Dog Named Scout

Abramson, Jill Times/Henry Holt (256 pp.) $22.00 | October 11, 2011 978-0-8050-9342-1

New York Times managing editor Abramson (co-author: Obama: The Historic Journey, 2009, etc.) chronicles her experience raising a boisterous new puppy.

Culled from the author’s Times blog series, the book charts her journey from apprehension about a new pup to delight in her newest family member. In the wake of losing a much-beloved pet and on the heels of a difficult injury that left her unsteady on her feet, Abramson and her husband finally decided to welcome a new puppy, Scout, and her nearly boundless energy into their lives. Scout’s gradual and difficult transition from country life to the bustling streets of Tribeca brought new challenges for all concerned: puppy day care, advanced leash instruction and making friends (both human and canine) at the neighborhood dog park. Yet despite the Abramson’s delight in Scout, the narrative suffers from an identity crisis. If the book is a memoir, it lacks depth of insight and analysis about the dog-human relationship. If it is a training manual, the author provides woefully few details about specific skills that can strengthen both a dog’s mind and the relationship between animal and human. It may be best categorized as a lifestyle book, as it provides a glimpse into a small window of modern dog ownership: wealthy, American baby boomers. Indeed, writes, “there is no Official Puppy Handbook for fifty-somethings,” but this flourishing community of new owners have unique concerns about raising and caring for their dogs.

Scout appears to be a lovable dog, but much of the fun of new dog ownership is overshadowed by the author’s persistent cadence of anxieties about puppyhood. (40-45 black-and-white photos)

Ackroyd (Venice: Pure City, 2010, etc.) has worn many literary hats over the years—historiographer, biographer and novelist, to name a few. After recent years of reliable and prolific just-the-facts history on everything above ground in London (including the River Thames), the author lowers himself into the muck of London’s mysterious underworld in this compact but surprisingly diverse study. “Like the nerves within the human body, the underworld controls the life of the surface,” writes the author. Alongside the usual straight-laced factual history, Ackroyd enhances his research with airy philosophizing, grandiose pronouncements and fashionable filth-mongering, all while teasing out the hidden meanings and subterranean lore of life under the capital. He contemplates underground rivers and streams, the London Underground transit system and the “tube,” the elaborate network of sewers, tunnels, buried wells and springs, former bomb shelters, and, of course, the city’s cemeteries and catacombs. He provides the back story on how London’s geographical nomenclature is tied to its rich underground history, not to mention how this netherworld has become a source of terror and wonderment in the minds of surface-dwellers. Throughout, Ackroyd is at his most wildly associative and experimental. A good example of his approach throughout comes in the chapter “Far Under Ground,” where he personifies individual tube lines: “The Circle Line is adventurous and breezy, while the Bakerloo Line is disconsolate and brooding.” Readers who have experienced the same underside of London will find it difficult not to concede the accuracy of characterizations like these, however whimsical.

Eloquent and visceral.

IS THAT A FISH IN YOUR EAR? Translation and the Meaning of Everything Bellos, David Faber & Faber/Farrar, Straus and Giroux (336 pp.) $26.00 | October 18, 2011 978-0-86547-857-2

LONDON UNDER The Secret History Beneath the Streets

Ackroyd, Peter Talese/Doubleday (240 pp.) $25.00 | November 1, 2011 978-0-385-53150-4 The indefatigable expert on the Big Smoke considers the history below London’s streets from a historical, mythical and psycho-geographical perspective. |

An award-winning translator describes and defends his profession.

Bellos (French and Comparative Literature/Princeton Univ.; Romain Gary: A Tall Story, 2010, etc.) has a broad definition of translation: in general, the ability of the human mind to convert stimuli into meaning. He begins by imagining a world without translation—recognizing the unpleasant possibility of such a situation—and then identifies and analyzes key issues of his

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discipline. He dispenses with some common misconceptions about translation (“Translations are substitutes for original texts. You use them in the place of a work written in a language you cannot read with ease”) and examines some of the difficulties and oddities of the enterprise. For example, how to translate into French those portions of War and Peace that are already in French? Bellos also discusses dictionaries (observing that, in one sense, a language becomes a language when it has a dictionary) and dismisses what he calls the myth of literal translation (word-for-word substitution). He reminds us of the canard about Eskimos having scores of words for “snow” and deals with issues like the translation of sacred texts, the difficulty of simultaneous oral translation and translation problems in the fields of law and journalism. There are some stunning moments along the way, as when he offers a dozen variations of a translation of a Chinese shunkouliu (“oral grapevines”). There are moments of humor, too (oh, the problems translating naughty jokes!). Bellos realizes that in literary translation, the only way to experience the author’s original effect is to read the text in the original language. His passion sometimes propels him into hyperbole, but never for long.

Erudite and occasionally dense, but ultimately illuminating, even transformative.

COLUMBUS The Four Voyages

Bergreen, Laurence Viking (544 pp.) $35.00 | September 20, 2011 978-0-670-02301-1 Christopher Columbus—heroic explorer or genocidal plunderer? Bergreen (Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu, 2008, etc.) says he was both, and more.

While best known for his breakthrough voyage to the Caribbean in 1492, Columbus returned to the New World three times, discovering hundreds of islands, establishing settlements in Hispaniola and exploring the coasts of modern Venezuela and Central America. Like Patrick O’Brian’s Jack Aubrey, he was a master at sea, a disaster on land.

Ill-qualified for colonial administration, his attempts to turn a profit by accumulating gold and slaves, assisted by an unruly band of Spanish mariners and criminals, resulted in political back-biting that sent him back to Spain in chains at the end of his third voyage. The story of Columbus’ exploits includes storms and shipwrecks, military clashes, political skullduggery, mutiny, cannibalism and promiscuous sex, but Bergreen fails to assemble the dramatic facts at his disposal into a compelling narrative. Nor does he deliver the measured evaluation of the man and his career that a controversial figure of his importance merits. Bergreen clearly doesn’t like his subject much, and he interjects his own criticisms of the explorer throughout the text without specifying the standards by which he is judging his subject or the facts supporting his judgments. He even frequently reminds readers that, as every schoolchild knows, poor deluded 1422

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Columbus was never anywhere near China or India. The author thereby becomes an intrusive figure in the narrative, while Columbus never emerges as the powerful, complex and charismatic personality he must have been. Furthermore, the text exhibits a confusing lack of discipline and order. For example, more than once Bergreen relates the same incidents or circumstances twice with varying details and no recognition that this ground has already been covered. As a result, readers will have difficulty trusting the sequence of events as presented.

A well-researched but disappointingly delivered biography of a monumental figure. (Agent: Suzanne Gluck)

SPIRIT JUNKIE A Radical Road to Discovering Self-Love and Miracles Bernstein, Gabrielle Harmony (256 pp.) $23.00 | September 1, 2011 978-0-307-88740-5

Journey the road to self-fulfillment through the eyes of a true believer.

Opening the doors to our deepest, darkest and most frightening obsessions, anxieties and nightmares can result in an unbalancing in our lives, writes Bernstein (Add More-ing to Your Life: A Hip Guide to Happiness, 2011, etc.).

That’s when fear steps in and overwhelms love. This perceptive yet atypical outlook is just a glimpse into the world of the author, whom the New York Times had christened “the next generation guru,” a girl unafraid to embrace love and pass off most every “problem” as illusion. In this mixture of humor, grief and how-to instructions on achieving enlightenment, Bernstein offers more than just autobiography or a user’s guide to meditation. Fluidly and openly sharing her own struggles and successes is a maneuver guaranteed to warm hearts and chill spirits, and it ultimately leads readers down the path to their own spiritual connection. The author writes in easily understandable prose, describing her evolution from a fearful, attention-seeking young girl into a courageous and loving teacher and mentor always hungry for a new learning experience. Bernstein’s guide will help readers welcome meditation and prayer into their lives and dismiss their egos as illusions.

A groovy blend of meditative and instructive writing.

(Author tour, including New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston)

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BUCKLEY William F. Buckley Jr. and the Rise of American Conservatism Bogus, Carl T. Bloomsbury (416 pp.) $30.00 | November 1, 2011 978-1-59691-580-0

A professed liberal’s assessment of the rise, reign and enduring legacy of William F. Buckley (1925–2008), the godfather of the modern conservative movement.

Bogus (Law/Roger Williams Univ.; Why Lawsuits are Good for America: Disciplined Democracy, Big Business, and the Common Law, 2001, etc.) offers not a traditional cradle-to-grave biography but an ongoing conversation about and argument with Buckley—with long (often overlong) asides explaining the historical contexts of events involving his subject. The author admires Buckley as profoundly as he disagrees with him. He praises him throughout for his humor, prolificacy, energy, writing, debating and managerial skills and devotion to his family and causes. But for Buckley’s principal ideas, which, Bogus writes repeatedly, came directly from his father, he has much disagreement and even disdain. Nonetheless, he recognizes that Buckley changed American history, “a feat so great that it is almost impossible to overstate.” Bogus writes about Buckley’s influence on Ronald Reagan, Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh and numerous others, and he shows how Buckley assembled a team that propelled National Review into a position of influence. The author revisits Buckley’s father’s involvement in the Mexican Revolution (he met Pancho Villa), swiftly summarizes Buckley’s education, his early writings and his efforts to avoid combat in World War II and Korea. He establishes the primacy of religion in Buckley’s weltanschauung and chronicles his awkward, tone-deaf writing about civil rights, his symbolic run for mayor of New York, his advocacy of wars in Vietnam and elsewhere and his moves to distance NR from the Birchers and other extremists.

A disagreeing but rarely disagreeable argument with a figure far easier to debate on the page than in person. (16page black-and-white insert. Appearances in Washington, D.C., New York, Boston, New Haven, Conn. Agent: John W. Wright)

TANGO My Childhood, Backwards and in High Heels

Bond, Justin Vivian Feminist (136 pp.) $15.95 | September 13, 2011 978-1-55861-747-6

gender advocate.

A brief yet remarkably candid memoir of growing up different, by a worldrenowned cabaret performer and trans-

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Prompted to recall his childhood after learning of his neighbor and longtime tormentor’s arrest for impersonating a police officer, Bond remembers in vivid detail his unusual adolescence, including the peculiar relationship he formed with the nowjailed local bully. Living in suburban Maryland in the ’70s, the author obsessed over Rita Hayworth and other stars of her time, danced like Ginger Rogers and enjoyed wearing lipstick out in public, all of which continued despite his parents’ best attempts to “straighten” him out, including wallpapering his bedroom with a cowboys and Indians theme, to Bond’s despair. Throughout this time, he hid a deep secret: a years-long, often abusive sexual relationship with Hunter, a popular, older boy who tantalized, humiliated and even threatened him. Beginning at age 11 on a boy scouts camping trip, Bond and Hunter had sex in pools, snow forts and tree houses. Accused by Hunter’s mother of “using” her son for his pool, Bond remembered the sexual favors he would perform with Hunter for the opportunity to enjoy the pool. Outside of their physical encounters, Hunter either ignored Bond or harassed him, calling him a “fag” and spreading ugly rumors at school. Generally friendless except for a girl, who later took an overdose of pills, Bond’s situation gradually improved in high school—he got his first car, decorated his room according to his tastes and even dated a girl. He finally broke it off with Hunter, threatening to out the older boy if he continued to demand sex.

Poignant and funny, Bond offers insight into the childhood and mindset of gay and transgender individuals, but the graphic depictions of sex between young boys may frighten some readers.

THE DICTATOR’S HANDBOOK Why Bad Behavior Is Almost Always Good Politics

Bueno de Mesquita, Bruce Smith, Alastair PublicAffairs (336 pp.) $27.99 | September 27, 2011 978-1-61039-044-6 Why politics is a matter of gamesmanship, and why the winners are those who understand the rules of the game.

Bueno de Mesquita (The Predictioneer’s Game: Using the Logic of Brazen Self-Interest to See and Shape the Future, 2009, etc.) and Smith (Election Timing: Political Institutions and Decisions, 2009, etc.) are both on the faculty at NYU and have collaborated in the past (The Logic of Political Survival, 2003).

Their argument rests on the conviction that there is little place for altruism in effective leadership. The rules are simple.

One: “politics is about getting and keeping political power. It is not about general welfare.” Two: Dictators who depend on only a few cronies are in the best position as long as they are generous in sharing the spoils. Three: Make sure the cronies know that there is a large pool of potential replacements if

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“A celebration of the senses, the arts and life itself.” from [sic]

they get out of line. Four: Greed is good within limits, but there is always the danger of popular uprising if the economy becomes dysfunctional. Bueno de Mesquita and Smith put it bluntly: “Paying supporters, not good governance or representing the general will, is the essence of ruling,” Although the authors point out that even in democracies bloc voting and redistricting serve the interest of incumbents, and they suggest that the same lessons apply to leaders in the financial world, the book is intended as a guide to how best to conduct foreign policy when dealing with countries that are not democratic. Tyrants become more vulnerable as they get older.

However, write the authors, because dictators are cheap to buy, the U.S. government should be wary of regime change in the name of democracy.

An unabashed study of the uses and abuses of realpolitik. (Agent: Eric Lupfer)

[SIC]

Cody, Joshua Norton (256 pp.) $24.95 | October 17, 2011 978-0-393-08106-0 Occasionally overwritten but powerfully provocative memoir about death and drugs that is likely to attract a lot of attention.

A gifted young composer who insists that he’s “not really a writer” Cody was diagnosed with a malignant cancer that required a bone marrow transplant following six months of chemotherapy (“you’ll go through it too, almost certainly,” he writes of the chemo. “It’s part of life in the twenty-first century”). With medical expectation suggesting that he would not survive, he became involved with a series of women—romantically or sexually, often drug-fueled—in a narrative that would be deemed implausible were this fiction. The strangest woman who has the strongest hold on him also happened to be the doctor through his bone marrow transplant, an “emotionally unstable” partner who ended their relationship rather than face his death. Yet, as the author admits, “the morphine acted as the classic unreliable narrator,” as dreams and the drugs that induced them pervade the narrative, occasionally leaving readers to ponder the distinction between real life and the reality of what the author experienced in his mind. There are also extended analyses of the relationship between art and life—he’s as absorbed with Paul Klee and Ezra Pound as he is with the Rolling Stones and David Foster Wallace—and attempts to render aesthetics as algebraic equations. Some of the writing is maddeningly glib: “Times change, as Cole Porter and Eliot and the Byrds and those guys who wrote the Bible knew so well.” Some shows flashes of deep insight: “What else, after all, is creativity, if not self-permission to get something wrong, in order to subsequently reorder that something to get it right.” Ultimately, reader frustration will resolve amid the wild swings of mind and mood that the narrative captures, as 1424

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the diversions of the Manhattan club circuit provide small distraction from the hard truths of mortality.

A celebration of the senses, the arts and life itself, within what the author terms “a story about God and vomiting.” (30 illustrations)

THE LIFE OF HON. WILLIAM F. CODY, KNOWN AS BUFFALO BILL

Cody, William F. Editor: Christianson, Frank Bison/Univ. of Nebraska (456 pp.) $27.95 | October 1, 2011 978-0-8032-3291-4 A scholarly edition of the original 1879 autobiography by William Frederick Cody (1846–1917), who in his lifetime became perhaps the most famous American in the world.

Editor Christianson (English/BYU; Philanthropy in British and American Fiction: Dickens, Hawthorne, Eliot and Howells, 2008) offers a useful introduction and a number of appendixes and illustrations to illuminate Cody’s celebrated text: photographs, chronology, letters and even an excerpt from one of Ned Buntline’s risible dime novels about Cody. But the centerpiece is the autobiography itself, a document at once self-effacing, unpretentious and profoundly disturbing to contemporary eyes. Cody wrote the book—Christianson argues he had little, if any, help, though no manuscript survives— when he was on the cusp of the worldwide fame that would enrich him. He was touring theaters around the country but was also still actively scouting for the military in the summer of 1876 when his friend Gen. George Custer last stood at the Little Big Horn. Cody was also friends with Wild Bill Hickok and met Kit Carson and any number of other frontier notables. Cody begins with his birth in Iowa and then narrates the experiences that led to his movements west (his father’s early death put him to work early on wagon trains), his adventures with the Pony Express, horse racing, scouting and hunting buffalo. Cody writes proudly about killing some 4,200 bison.

Much of the second half involves chasing and killing Indians, running away from Indians, scalping Indians, getting married, making babies, disparaging Indians—and African-Americans, about whom Cody writes in a way that would make Huck Finn blush. Cody never for a moment questions his right to slaughter herds or to kill and scalp human beings.

A reminder of the deep belief we once held in white supremacy and manifest destiny. (114 illustrations)

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ONE DAY IT’LL ALL MAKE SENSE A Memoir

THE MAGIC MAKER

Cooper, Susan Candlewick (208 pp.) $22.99 | October 11, 2011 978-0-7636-5040-7

Common Bradley, Adam Atria Books $25.00 | September 13, 2011 978-1-4516-2587-5 Beloved, controversial performer discusses fame and the deeper meanings of his life.

Common, subject of Fox News’ ire following his White House poetry recitation, has long been acclaimed as a thoughtful and deft hip-hop artist. In his memoir—coauthored by Bradley (Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip Hop, 2009, etc.)—he suggests great consciousness of the cultural legacy he carries: “Chicago blackness gave me understanding, awareness, street sense, and a rhythm. I learned the way that soulful people move, act, and talk.” He portrays himself as an openhearted, curious kid, trying to understand the tumult of Chicago’s African-American South Side. Obsessed with girls from an early age, he would go to the city’s museums to meet them. At the same time, he was rhyming in private, and he gave up basketball in high school to concentrate on rap, which he saw as similarly competitive. Common writes frankly about his youthful involvement with gang culture, portrayed as an inevitable rite of passage that became increasingly violent: “Crack hit the South Side of Chicago like a balled up fist.” Varied influences—his mother, friends, artistic ambitions—steered him away from it and toward a more “conscious” existence. By 1989, his early demos as Common Sense were drawing industry attention, and he dropped out of college to pursue this calling, over his mother’s objections. Much of what follows is a funny, honest showbiz narrative, moving from hip-hop to film acting. Interestingly, each chapter begins with a “letter” to someone significant in his life: e.g., his mother and father (early chapters discuss their tumultuous relationship), Emmett Till, former girlfriend Erykah Badu and collaborator Kanye West. Additionally, his mother offers occasional italicized counterpoint. As a memoir, the book succeeds based on Common’s candor, intelligence and charm, despite occasional artificial passages and broad platitudes, and he writes powerfully about his connection with President Obama.

An intriguing look at an iconoclast’s cultural accomplishments.

A longtime collaborator provides an appealing portrayal of John Meredith Langstaff (1920–2005), the talented and passionate musician, charismatic performer and tireless researcher who created the combination of song, dance and drama known as The Revels.

The first Christmas Revels in Cambridge, Mass., in 1971, was an entertainment with medieval roots and a winter solstice theme grown from Langstaff ’s interests in folk music and traditional dance. With his daughter Carol and other associates, he went on to develop community and seasonal celebrations of many different traditions and subjects. In nine more cities, from New England to the Puget Sound, professional and amateur musicians, children and adults, joined to offer annual performances combining mythic elements, ritual and enthusiastic audience participation. Cooper (Victory, 2006, etc.), the Newbery-winning author of The Dark Is Rising series, was a partner in many of Langstaff ’s projects. Describing herself as “John’s tame writer for fifteen years,” she explains that, late in life, he asked her to help him write a personal history going back to his choirboy childhood.

Unfortunately, Langstaff died before they could complete their joint effort. For this “posthumous present to a friend,” she has interviewed colleagues and scoured her subject’s papers to produce a short, gracious and highly readable story of a man and an institution. Beginning with his early years in a family whose annual Christmas carol parties began before he was born, she covers his musical education, service and combat wound in World War II, teaching, performing and process of turning folksongs into children’s books. The second half of her narrative is a history of the Revels. This is a selective rather than exhaustive account, with well-chosen examples and quotations that convey the breadth and appeal of an extraordinary man.

A loving remembrance and a special gift for all who have encountered Langstaff and his performances.

I DIDN’T ASK TO BE BORN (BUT I’M GLAD I WAS)

Cosby, Bill Illustrator: Booth, George Center Street/Hachette (208 pp.) $21.99 | November 1, 2011 978-0-89296-920-3

The Cos again waxes funny on the commonplace happenings of life as we may know it.

With his patented good humor, Cosby (I Am What I Ate… and I’m Frightened!!!: And Other Digressions from the Doctor of Comedy, 2003, etc.) grouses, like many of |

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his contemporaries, about kids today. As in previous collections, the memoir covers his own Golden Age, that long-gone middle of the 20th century in the projects of the City of Brotherly Love. He remembers the daring exploration peculiar to childhood, recalling the monkey bars in the outfield of his sandlot softball games, riding the trolley, the movie house and other local haunts—and of course, the girls. It’s part memoir, part shtick and mostly sly. Bible scholar Cosby offers his exegesis on Genesis, and he reworks his exasperation about the supremely ugly Cabbage Patch Dolls. His standup timing, still one of the best in the business, works in the single-pagers, but is more measured in the short stories as they search for vagrant punch lines. If there are fewer rim shots than in the past, Cosby is still quite entertaining, and the great George Booth provides apt illustrations.

For fans, a small Philly cheesesteak, nonchalant as youth itself, by a comic master.

TOXIC FREE How to Protect Your Health and Home from the Chemicals that Are Making You Sick

Dadd, Debra Lynn Tarcher/Penguin (272 pp.) $15.95 | September 1, 2011 978-1-58542-870-0

A consumer advocate on a 30-year mission to get toxins out of homes and other places explains how to do it—and save money on medical expenses later.

In a single day in 1982, Dadd (Home Safe Home, 1997, etc.) threw out everything in her house she deemed toxic and soon felt much healthier. In this updated version of her original toxins-shedding book, published in 1984, the author goes room-byroom with advice on what to toss, what products or concoctions work perfectly well as nontoxic alternatives and where to find them. The information is well organized and enlightening, and some of the alternatives can be easily made at home. In stores, she writes, nontoxics are more readily available and clearly labeled than ever before—provided the buyer knows what to look for. A wrinkly plain cotton sheet, for instance, is not treated with formaldehyde like the stay-pressed kind. Just be sure to use a nontoxic ironing pad. Dadd is careful to disclose that she is not a doctor, toxicologist or scientist; she is an educated consumer who, like a friendly neighbor, provides readers the benefit of all that she has learned. Her strongest counsel is that these predominantly synthetic toxins, most of them petrochemicals, are making people sick as they waft into indoor air and seep through the pores.

A competent reference tool for those concerned about the explosion of toxics in our daily lives.

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LOVE TIMES THREE Our True Story of a Polygamous Marriage

Darger, Joe, Darger, Alina ,Darger, Vicki, Darger, Valerie, Adams, Brooke HarperOne (304 pp.) $26.99 | September 20, 2011 978-0-06-207404-1 Independent Fundamentalist Mormon husband Darger and his three “sister wives” offer a candid, often engaging account of how and why they chose to enter into an outlawed form of marriage.

Best known as the inspiration for the controversial HBO series Big Love, all four Dargers were products of successful polygamist marriages. “[O]ur childhoods were great,” they write, “and were a big factor in our decision to pursue the same family structure in our own lives.” Darger met his first two wives, Vicki and her cousin Alina, when the three of them were preteens, but serious dating did not begin until high school. At that point, Darger was at the center of what he admits was “an unusual love story, even within the Fundamentalist Mormon culture.” With the blessing of all but one father, he began courting both Vicki and Alina, who in turn worked on solidifying the personal relationship they had with each other. After 18 months, the three married and began their lives together. Ten years later, in 2000, the trio welcomed a third wife, Vicki’s sister Valerie (who had left another, unsuccessful polygamist marriage), into their family. The tragic death of Alina’s newly born child in 2001 brought unwanted legal and media scrutiny into their lives, but rather than destroy the family, it “started [them] on the road to activism to fight anti-polygamy biases.” The Dargers do not evangelize for what they admit is a challenging lifestyle. Rather, with admirable honesty and dignity, they ask readers to respect their choice to live by the tenets of their faith.

Eye-opening and courageous.

FICTION RUINED MY FAMILY A Memoir

Darst, Jeanne Riverhead (336 pp.) $25.95 | October 3, 2011 978-1-59448-814-6

A woman’s post-adolescent comingof-age amid her less-than-conventional family.

In her debut memoir, Darst chronicles the subject she knows best—playing the part of the youngest daughter to her failed writer father and alcoholic mother. Add to the mix a group of three equally peculiar sisters—”a book-hater, a compulsive reader, a paperwork fanatic”—and the readers are left with a startlingly frank account of a family seemingly on leave from the loony bin. As a child, Darst naively placed her faith in

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“Watch for this to be mooted and bruited in school board meetings to come. And score points for Dawkins, who does a fine job of explaining earthquakes and rainbows in the midst of baiting the pious.” from the magic of reality

her father’s writing, assuring herself that “things aren’t going that great now, but it’s all about to change, drastically, because Dad’s gonna sell this novel…” He never did, and as the family’s financial hardships worsened, so did her mother’s alcoholic tendencies, both of which provided an unstable home life that eventually crumbled down around them. While Darst’s humorous tone guards readers from the memoir’s darker moments, occasionally readers may yearn for a slightly more serious take. The author’s troubles with crabs (of the STD variety), a failed lesbian interaction and an incident involving a bowel movement and a plastic bag all serve as further proof of intimate encounters exploited for humor rather than examined on any deeper level (though admittedly, there is little insight to be gleaned from the plastic-bag incident). Despite its surface-level story, Darst’s work offers readers plenty of laughs, though it could benefit from a few more tears.

A comic tale of a drifting writer’s stumblings beyond her family’s eccentricities onto her own path toward happiness.

THE MAGIC OF REALITY How We Know What’s Really True

Dawkins, Richard Illustrator: McKean, Dave Free Press (272 pp.) $29.99 | October 4, 2011 978-1-4391-9281-8 Classification: Science

A resounding denunciation of the enemies of science—namely, magical and supernatural thinking.

Dawkins has long been a noted evolutionary biologist—and atheist—who has made his cases in a succession of influential books: The Selfish Gene, Climbing Mount Improbable,Unweaving the Rainbow, The God Delusion, etc. His argument here takes unaccustomed form: namely, a book seemingly addressed to readers of middle- and high-school age, and illustrated with skillfully rendered cartoons by noted comic artist McKean (Coraline, Wizard and Glass, etc.). Dawkins can sound a little forced when removing his Oxbridge gown to speak to these novices, as when he writes of the supercontinent of 150 million years ago, “They were all one big land mass called Gondwana (well, it wasn’t called Gondwana then—the dinosaurs who lived there didn’t call anything anything, but we call it Gondwana today).” Tetchy or not, Dawkins gamely jumps into his main subject, which is to consider the universe in all its glory, magical without creator or deity in the sky. He approaches this directly and indirectly: Here he considers why bad things happen to good people (call it randomness—and, Dawkins stresses, the real question is, “Why does anything happen?”), there the belief of some people in past lives, alien abductions and original sin. Dawkins will certainly win no friends among the set of folks inclined to get their science from the Creation Museum, for whom he would seem to have little patience in turn.

Watch for this to be mooted and bruited in school board meetings to come. And score points for Dawkins, who does a fine job of explaining earthquakes and rainbows in the midst of baiting the pious. |

TWITTER FOR GOOD Change the World One Tweet at a Time

Díaz-Ortiz, Claire Jossey-Bass/Wiley (224 pp.) $24.95 | September 1, 2011 978-1-118-06193-0

How to get the most out of your Twitter account.

Díaz-Ortiz, head of corporate social innovation and philanthropy at Twitter, provides an easy-to-use guide for organizations trying to harness the power of social media, specifically Twitter. She advises groups to identify the target or goal of their Twitter use, be it informational, personal or fundraising. Díaz-Ortiz then breaks down the specific framework she’s devised, T.W.E.E.T. (Target, Write, Engage, Explore and Track), which will help make any account a success. The author’s “Write” section urges readers to explore the online “everything goes” tactic that hip-hop impresario Kanye West has used with much success, inspiring imitation in others, notably actor turned train wreck Charlie Sheen.

The real strength of the author’s approach is her use of varied anecdotes and examples that candidly discuss the pros and cons of using Twitter for an organization or brand, informing readers of what works and what doesn’t. The author also helpfully provides two fictional case studies that apply her framework to mostly successful results. Readers should proceed with caution, though, as Díaz-Ortiz works for Twitter and does not address many of the criticisms and limitations that have been levied against the application.

Not for novices, but a useful guide for organizations who want to increase their online presence through Twitter.

ON CONAN DOYLE Or, The Whole Art of Storytelling

Dirda, Michael Princeton Univ. (232 pp.) $19.95 | November 1, 2011 978-0-691-15135-9 Pulitzer Prize–winning Washington Post book critic Dirda (Classics for Pleasure, 2007, etc.) provides a personal voyage around the creator of Sherlock Holmes and a prodigious variety of lesser-known heroes, worlds

and volumes.

Most readers know that Arthur Conan Doyle, who never signed his books “Sir Arthur,” thought so little of his most celebrated hero that he tried to kill him off. But most studies of Doyle place Holmes at the center of Doyle’s universe. It’s fair to say that Dirda’s does as well, but the author tries hard to supplement his emphasis on Holmes with due attention to the adventures of Doyle’s own favorite character, Professor Challenger, his horror and fantasy tales, his broadsides and

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his letters. Rooting his discussion in his memories of his own introduction to Doyle’s writings, Dirda recalls his investiture in the Baker Street Irregulars and reprints an abridged version of his essay “A Case for Langdale Pike,” his own addition to the delightful faux scholarship of Sherlockiana. Dirda is at his best in his sensitive appreciation of Doyle’s style, direct, fluent, and surprisingly flexible as he moves from genre to genre, and in his account of manly civic inspiration as the value Doyle aimed above all to inculcate in his writing (a value in which he found the Holmes stories lamentably deficient). But many of Dirda’s own adventures among Doyle’s works, beguiling as they are, could well have been condensed to make room for a more detailed review of the three kinds of writing Doyle considered his most significant: his historical romances, his multivolume history of the Boer War and especially his writings on spiritualism, which Dirda short-changes because he feels so uncomfortable with them.

Despite a few shortcomings, an endearing, well-balanced introduction to a writer the Strand Magazine called “the greatest natural storyteller of his age.”

FORGOTTEN LAND Journeys Among the Ghosts of East Prussia

Egremont, Max Farrar, Straus and Giroux (352 pp.) $27.00 | November 8, 2011 978-0-374-15808-8

A recondite study, so subtly wrought as to be somewhat murky, traces the deeply divided allegiances and tortuous history of a once proud East Prussia.

A northern Baltic stronghold nestled presently between Gdansk, Poland, and Lithuania’s western border, East Prussia had been home to five centuries of highly evolved German civilization, from the crusading Teutonic Knights who wrested the land from the pagans, to the militarized aristocracy of Junkers from which the German army drew its officers. Bombed by the British in 1944 and overrun by the Red Army, its inhabitants fled westward, and the province was effectively depopulated of Germans and dismantled, becoming today’s haunted, uneasy blend of Russians, Poles and Lithuanians. Novelist and biographer Egremont (Siegfried Sassoon, 2005, etc.) tiptoes through this “whispering past” by seeking out some of the members of the old landowning families to get a sense of a previous vanished world: the Dönhoffs of Friedrichstein, the Lehndorffs of Steinort and the Dohnas of Schlobitten. For example, in 1992, the author interviewed politician and writer Marion Dönhoff, one of the founders of Die Zeit, whose memoirs serve as a key historical source. With a keen eye to uncovering history, Egremont studies a 1911 report made of the region by an English colonel, Alfred Knox, at the height of East Prussia’s efficient, militarized glory, when the port of Königsberg was thriving, the railroads criss-crossed the region and a sense of powerful new German nationalism prevailed, albeit tinged with an anxiousness about 1428

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the threat of Russia. The German euphoria after the victory of Tannenberg in 1914 soon gave way to a shattering defeat and a collapse of many great houses. Treks by poet Agnes Miegel and novelist Thomas Mann also provided navigation through this place full of “old yearning.” The once stately Königsberg, home to Immanuel Kant, has become today’s scarred and “doomed” modern Russian metropolis of Kaliningrad, “a place of victims.”

Ponderous, thickly detailed, somberly composed work joining travelogue and reflective history lesson. (20 blackand-white illustrations; maps)

THE GORILLA MAN AND THE EMPRESS OF STEAK A New Orleans Family Memoir

Fertel, Randy Univ. Press of Mississippi (288 pp.) $28.00 | October 14, 2011 978-1-61703-082-6 (e-book ): 978-1-61703-083-3

New Orleans forms the richly atmospheric backdrop for a determined, eccentric family who found success in the steakhouse business.

University English teacher and president of two foundations named in his mother’s honor, Fertel eloquently traces his family history back to his childhood as one of two sons born to food lover Ruth and gambling aficionado Rodney, heir to a shady pawnshop business renowned for being “the biggest fences in the South.” Fertel’s parents married young in 1948 and enjoyed 11 years together before separating, Ruth leaning toward business and Rodney, after taking his son on lavish vacations to Europe, launching two outlandish New Orleans mayoral bids with separate campaign promises: one to acquire a gorilla for the zoo, the other to relocate the Blarney Stone to the Superdome. Though the narrative is a bit disjointed and lacks a cohesive ebb and flow (the generous photographs help, however), Fertel’s memoir gains momentum when he details his mother’s fascinating and resilient ascent to eventual nationwide notoriety with the 1965 purchase of the Chris Steak House brand. Her ownership of the restaurant did not get off to good start, as the flagship restaurant was located in a sketchy part of town, some bad blood with the former owner erupted and a fire forced her to relocate and rename it the “hard to forget” Ruth’s Chris Steak House. Christened “the First Lady of American restaurants,” Fertel expands further on his mother’s notoriously delectable taste in quality meats, her distinctive flare for atmosphere and her love and respect for her staff.

Ruth succumbed to cancer in 2002, having sold the business three years prior—though, her son lovingly notes, she remains “one of the great restaurateurs in a city of great restaurants.”

Fertel ends his memoir with a somber chapter on Hurricane Katrina’s massive devastation, which swept five feet of water into the Ruth’s Chris flagship store.

An uneven but zesty chronicle—worth a look for food historians. (70 black-and-white photographs; 2 maps)

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“A deft exploration that urges us to think before speaking.” from the thinking life

THE THINKING LIFE How to Thrive in the Age of Distraction Forni, P.M. St. Martin’s (192 pp.) $21.99 | September 1, 2011 978-0-312-62571-9 Classification: Philosophy

Insightful meditation on how changing the way we think can improve our daily lives.

Forni (The Civility Solution: What to Do When People Are Rude, 2009, etc.) encourages the pursuit of thinking in an age when “serious thinking is often the illustrious casualty in the digital revolution.” The author explores dependency on modern technology and its associated problems but primarily focuses on the greater value of thinking. He argues against those who write off the lost art of pondering, revealing the reality of wasted time and providing practical suggestions on how to create space in busy lives. He addresses multitasking as “our attempt to do the maximum amount of things in the shortest amount of time with the minimum amount of thinking.” To illustrate his ideas, Forni effectively blends a combination of ideas from classical and modern philosophers, myth, current events and personal anecdotes.

He chides parents and schools for not properly instructing the next generation in how to make good decisions, and how this is detrimental to society at large: “I wish I could tell you that I had the good fortune of undergoing a solid home training in decision making, but I did not. I wish that just one of my teachers had managed to impress upon me and my schoolmates that being happy depends upon making sound decisions.”

A deft exploration that urges us to think before speaking.

IT’S HARD NOT TO HATE YOU A Memoir

Frankel, Valerie St. Martin’s (256 pp.) $24.99 | September 13, 2011 978-0-312-60978-8

Prolific chick-lit novelist and funny girl Frankel (Thin Is the New Happy: A Memoir, 2008, etc.) dishes about what there is to love about hatred.

In her latest, the author explores the more unseemly side of her nature. The resulting string of essays on negativity and its pursuits includes a number of hilarious moments alongside helpful, hardwon insights into parenting and the nature of complaining. When presented with the grim news that she and most of her family are genetically predisposed to a variety of abdominal cancers, Frankel opted to look within to see whether a change of attitude might improve her state: “My doctor told me the hate in me just had to come out. I followed his orders, fessing up to jealousy, phoniness, coldness, bitterness, insecurity, envy, distrust, impatience, revulsion, pettiness, bitchiness. Name the hate, I let it out. The big question: |

Was I happier for it?” Answer: not entirely. “I’d say that I was generally more ‘er’ about all of my emotions,” writes Frankel, “which (bonus) made me deeper.” Though longing for the critical acclaim afforded select other members of the chick literati, the author confesses an unwillingness to dispense with her self-professed shallowness: “If misery were required for depth, I’d rather be a lesser artist.

In fact, I was a lesser artist.” Frankel admits having been born into a family of “kvetchperts,” and she looks to her youth, when she was rejected by the “in” crowd and criticized by her mother because of her weight. Though this loosely chronological account exhibits the vague arc of plot development and emotional growth, the memoir lacks the narrative cohesion and relevance needed to give it the je ne sais quoi of a bestseller.

With humor, Frankel shrewdly probes her darkly shallow places. (Agent: Nancy Yost)

GEORGE F. KENNAN An American Life

Gaddis, John Lewis Penguin Press (800 pp.) $39.95 | November 14, 2011 978-1-59420-312-1

The long-awaited authorized biography of George F. Kennan (1904–2005), the creator of America’s Cold War containment strategy.

Kennan commissioned Gaddis (History/Yale Univ.; The Cold War: A New History, 2006, etc.) to write his life story back in 1981, on condition that the work not be published until after his death. Then 75, Kennan lived to be 101.

Now the story can be told, and it is well worth the wait. At the beginning of his diplomatic career in the late 1920s, Kennan, along with a handful of others, was recruited into the Russian Studies section of the State Department’s Eastern European division by Robert Kelley, and he helped FDR’s Ambassador William Bullitt open diplomatic relations. Gaddis has had unique access to official papers, Kennan’s own publications and documents, the diary that he kept throughout his life and his correspondence, especially to his sister. This access will be especially revealing for those interested in discovering more about the period from 1944 to 1952, which saw victory in World War II, the development of the atomic bomb, the adoption of containment, the beginning of the Cold War and the adoption of the Truman Doctrine. Throughout the book, Kennan’s papers make clear what he was responsible for, and what he wasn’t.

Gaddis also provides intriguing accounts of Kennan’s work with the Marshall Plan, his establishment of a training program for upcoming officers in the military and diplomatic service and his work with Frank Wisner and the Office of Policy Coordination.

But of equal interest are his later life at Princeton’s School of Advanced Studies and his relations with subsequent Presidents, including Bill Clinton, whose expansion of NATO after the collapse of the Soviet Union Kennan forcefully objected to.

A well-rounded treatment of the life of a man who made significant contributions to his country and the world at large.

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LORENA GARCIA’S NEW LATIN CLASSICS Fresh Ideas for Favorite Dishes

Garcia, Lorena Ballantine (272 pp.) $32.50 | June 30, 2011 978-0-345-52543-7

Following the opening of two successful Latin-Asian fusion restaurants, lawyer turned chef Garcia takes her rich international culinary background and channels it into her latest venture: a debut cookbook.

For the author, a home-cooked meal is an expression of love.

With this as her compass, Garcia offers a collection of her favorite Latin dishes spiced with a modern twist. Her experience working as an apprentice chef around the world is evident in her selections. She begins with “The Indispensable Despensa,” a guideline of ingredients readers are advised to have in their pantry, and her philosophy is practical and refreshing: “One major goal of mine was to not give people a huge grocery list and pantry full of ingredients that wouldn’t be used again.” Thoughtfully organized, the cookbook features more than 100 recipes broken into categories: recipes to prepare in 30 minutes; homestyle favorites; restaurant-style meals at home; cooking outside; and “dishes to celebrate.” No true cookbook would be complete, of course, without desserts, and Garcia’s pack a punch, playing with contrasting flavors and temperatures. Her final chapter concentrates on basic Latin dishes everyone should know how to prepare, such as salsitas, herb tortillas and black beans.

Modern Latin recipes ranging from stylish dishes to classic comfort foods in an easy-to-follow format. (National 8-city author tour.)

EMMA GOLDMAN Revolution as a Way of Life

Gornick, Vivian Yale Univ. (160 pp.) $25.00 | October 4, 2011 978-0-300-13726-2 A brief biography of the turn-of-thecentury anarchist once considered the “most dangerous woman in the world.”

Gornick (The Men in My Life, 2008, etc.) aptly condenses the life story of the fiery radical and presents a vivid snapshot of Gilded Age liberal activism. Born in 1869 in the Russian city of Kovno, Goldman immigrated to America with her sister in 1885 and landed in the wretched sweatshops of Rochester, N.Y. Goldman soon became enamored of the local hordes of social agitators, and she was captivated by the 1886 Haymarket affair in Chicago. Moving to Manhattan’s Lower East Side, Goldman fell in with a group of liberals, including the anarchist Alexander Berkman and newspaper editor Johann Most, who launched her speaking 1430

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career. These were heady times for radicals both domestically and abroad. The American Socialist Party numbered more than 100,000 members in the first decade of the 20th century, and “Red Emma’s” fervid lectures were regularly attended by thousands. When Goldman was deported in 1919, she landed right in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution (and quickly became an early critic of the Bolsheviks). The idiosyncratic Goldman often ended up on the wrong side of history—e.g., she was a proponent of birth control but no friend to suffragists, and she remained obsessed with Spanish Civil War refugees when the rest of the world was turning its attention to Hitler and the Jews. But her undying belief that the personal is political would make her an important figure in radical politics more than a century after her birth.

Such a slim volume necessarily glosses over details that would dramatize Goldman’s larger-than-life persona, but Gornick lucidly presents her subject’s significance within a fascinating historical moment.

THE MYTH OF CHOICE Personal Responsibility in a World of Limits

Greenfield, Kent Yale Univ. (256 pp.) $27.00 | October 11, 2011 978-0-300-16950-8

Face it: Your decision about whether to read this book rests on factors too numerous to catalog and too unconscious to understand.

Or so might argue Boston Law School professor Greenfield (The Failure of Corporate Law, 2007), who wants us to recalibrate our notions of personal choice. Though we live in hyper-partisan times, one would be hard-pressed to find a politician who doesn’t avow the importance of “personal responsibility.” But, writes the author, what if personal choice is a misconception? What if our decisions aren’t made as freely as we think? He says culture, biology, economics and authority limit our choices far more than we acknowledge.

Greenfield’s occupation shapes his authorial choices, as he often looks through a legal prism. However, he tries to reach general readers by employing an accessible style and by drawing on personal experience. These forays into the first person serve to disarm the notion of an all-knowing academic. At times, though—such as when describing his mother’s career choices—the personal obscures the universal. More importantly, though Greenfield acknowledges that brain function affects choice, he focuses more on the seen (such as societal factors that convince us to eat fast food) than the unseen (such as how fast food alters brain chemistry and therefore influences all decisions—not just whether we eat another bag of fries). The author deftly debunks prevailing dogma about the infallibility of free markets, especially important during a time when, as he reports, one in seven Americans are poor.

“Too often,” he writes, “the rhetoric of personal responsibility

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“A flavorful, balanced piece of music-biz history.” from the last sultan

is a way for those who ought to admit to shared responsibility to point the finger at someone else.”

How we decide is no small matter, as our choices, public and private, nearly always affect lives beyond our own.

Greenfield aims to make us more mindful of this fact—a worthwhile goal, if unevenly executed. (Author tour to Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego. Agent: Susan Schulman)

THE LAST SULTAN The Life and Times of Ahmet Ertegun

Greenfield, Robert Simon & Schuster (496 pp.) $30.00 | November 8, 2011 978-1-4165-5838-5

Greenfield (A Day in the Life: One Family, the Beautiful People, and the End of the Sixties, 2009, etc.) delivers a compulsively readable, evenhanded biography of Atlantic Records’ founder.

The pampered son of the Turkish ambassador to the United States, Ahmet Ertegun (1923–2006) began promoting jazz concerts as a teen in Washington, D.C., with his older brother.

Financed by a loan from his family dentist, he launched Atlantic in late 1947. With original partner Herb Abramson and ex-journalist Jerry Wexler, who joined the firm in 1953, Ertegun led one of the top independent labels of the wide-open ’50s, releasing major R&B hits by Big Joe Turner, Ruth Brown and Ray Charles.

Presciently diversifying during the ’60s and early ’70s, Ertegun profitably tapped the rock zeitgeist by signing Buffalo Springfield, Crosby, Stills & Nash and, in his biggest coup, the Rolling Stones (the subject of two previous books by Greenfield). Though Atlantic was sold to Warner-Seven Arts for $17.5 million in 1967, Ertegun stayed on with the company for nearly four more decades, serving as chairman through a period of unprecedented upheaval in the record industry until his death at 83. Though many of Greenfield’s tales have been spun before—notably in George W.S. Trow’s celebrated 1978 New Yorker profile and a 1991 biography by Dorothy Wade and Justine Picardie—his book is rich in detail and benefits from new interviews with several principal players. The author entertainingly delineates Ertegun’s on-themoney musical taste, flamboyant personal style, antic prank-playing and ability to mingle with personalities ranging from Henry Kissinger to Kid Rock. Though the author obviously admires his subject, he pulls no punches. Ertegun’s bare-knuckled dealings with Abramson and the volatile Wexler, both of whom were pushed out of the company they built, are unflinchingly recorded.

His complex, often adversarial relationships with such industry peers as David Geffen and Doug Morris reveal a crafty gamesman who was never willing to surrender the upper hand in business. Ertegun emerges as a man of gargantuan gifts and equally heroic appetites who was ruthlessly adept at looking out for No. 1.

A flavorful, balanced piece of music-biz history. (25 black-and-white photos. Agent: Paul Bresnick) |

EL NARCO Inside Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency

Grillo, Ioan Bloomsbury (336 pp.) $26.00 | November 1, 2011 978-1-60819-211-3

Accomplished, chilling account of the murderous growth of Mexican drug cartels.

Mexico City–based journalist Grillo has reported from the region since 2001; his experience is evident in his easy, wry familiarity with the political and social currents of Latin America. He argues that “the Mexican Drug War is inextricably linked to the democratic transition” of 2000, in that the country’s recently elected governments were unprepared to contend with ruthless criminal gangs that had complex regional feuds and allegiances. Grillo examines how the violence of the last several years has exploded in a comprehensible and even predictable way: “Residents of northern Mexico have not turned into psychotic killers overnight after drinking bad water. This violence exploded and escalated over a clear time frame.” Beginning with the Zetas’ recruitment of soldiers in the late 1990s, the author argues that gangsters concluded they could outgun the forces of order. The war that followed, over territory and smuggling routes, pitted Sinaloan gangsters, who’d traditionally managed cannabis and opiate production, against the upstart northeast gangs, and cycles of horrifying bloodshed have followed ever since, with an estimated 35,000 dead. Unfortunately for everyone, the nascent democratic government was persuaded to adopt the American “drug war” model, resulting in a startling deterioration of the social fabric—retaliatory actions by gangsters have resulted in numerous massacres, including attacks on civilians and police officers. Yet seizure rates prove that the cartels “can still operate at full capacity while they fight bloody battles,” suggesting a shocking futility at the heart of the violence. Grillo even documents how Mexican culture has been transformed, discussing dark “narco religions” and the violent yet jaunty narcocorrido music.

A valuable contribution to the literature of the Drug War. (16-page color insert. Appearances in New York, Washington, D.C., Texas, California, Arizona, New Mexico. Agent: Katherine Fausset)

THE NEW SONOMA COOKBOOK Simple Recipes for a Healthy, More Delicious Way to Live

Guttersen, Connie Sterling (416 pp.) $22.95 | September 6, 2011 978-1-4027-8119-3

An update to Guttersen’s classic cookbook features more than 200 new recipes capturing the flavors and body-smart cuisine of the Golden State.

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“A nonfiction political thriller of a very high order.” from assassins of the turquoise palace

Following the success of her Sonoma Diet program, Guttersen (The New Sonoma Diet: Trimmer Waist, More Energy in Just 10 Days, 2011, etc.) offers a new collection of simple recipes that bring new meaning to the concept of healthy living. Emphasizing vegetables and whole grains alongside a small portion of lean meat, home chefs are encouraged to cook with wine and to use “power foods” that give more nutritional boost to meals. The fresh and preferably local ingredients will not leave the dieter hungry; they’ll enjoy a shrimp and artichoke frittata for breakfast, a tomato-based Manhattan-Style Chowder for lunch and spicy chicken with garlic-chile sauce for dinner. Each recipe features not only its nutritional facts but also helpful hints, such as how to plump up chicken or properly cook the moisture out of mushrooms. There are helpful labels that let the chef know if a recipe is fast, will yield leftovers or is gluten free. Wine parings and desserts also have their place in Guttersen’s kitchen; readers can enjoy a piece of her Bittersweet Chocolate Grand Marnier Souffle Cake at 175 calories, while a serving of the Peach, Raspberry and Almond Galette weighs in with 150 calories. There are hundreds of options for those adhering to the author’s daily three-meal plan and easy-to-prepare recipes for readers simply looking for nutritious yet tasty food.

“Wholesome meals, enjoyed as a special celebration or as part of our daily routine, are an important aspect of the art of living,” Guttersen writes. Don’t take her word for it; try it out yourself.

ASSASSINS OF THE TURQUOISE PALACE

Hakakian, Roya Grove (320 pp.) $25.00 | October 4, 2011 978-0-8021-1911-7

Riveting account of a multiple murder and trial that led to a paradigm shift in Europe’s relations with post-revolutionary Iran.

On September 17, 1992, heavily armed assassins burst into a restaurant in a quiet immigrant enclave in Berlin, rudely interrupting a dinner honoring Sadegh Sharafkandi, a leader of a dissident Iranian-Kurdish political organization. Opening fire with automatic weapons and following with a series of single shots, they murdered Sharafkandi and three other Iranian and Kurdish activists. Although the chief assassin was never caught, three of his accomplices, one Iranian and two Lebanese men with connections to Hezbollah, were quickly taken into custody. The ensuing five-year trial, where the crimes of the Stasi were tried after Germany’s reunification, were presided over by the same meticulously fair Judge Frithjof Kubsch who had overseen the sensitive Stasi trials. Hakakian (Journey from the Land of No: A Girlhood Caught in Revolutionary Iran, 2004) deploys all of her talents as a former producer at 60 Minutes and a poet in her native Farsi to tell the human and political story behind the news. She closely follows the surviving family and friends of 1432

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victim Noori Dekhordi, who immediately suspected that the orders for the assassinations came directly from the Iranian regime’s top officials. Hakakian’s novelistic narrative details the intrigues in the Iranian diaspora as the prosecution unearthed threads leading from Tehran to hundreds of murders and a plot to kill hundreds more around Europe in the 1980s and ’90s.

These findings caught the German government between Tehran’s vengeful mullahs, whose interests it had represented in Europe in exchange for contracts with German businesses like Siemens, and the hundreds of thousands of Iranian dissidents who had settled in Germany since the revolution. Even knowing that relations between Iran and Europe would never be the same won’t prepare the reader for the surprising—even shocking—twists the trial took.

A nonfiction political thriller of a very high order.

(Author tour to Boston, New York, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco. Agent: Steve Wasserman)

THE WEALTH CURE Putting Money in Its Place

Harper, Hill Gotham Books (304 pp.) $26.00 | September 1, 2011 978-1-592-40650-0 Simple, inspirational pointers on how to manage money and discover the true meaning of wealth.

After being diagnosed with thyroid cancer, Harper (Letters to a Young Brother, 2007, etc.) boarded a train for a meditative, cross-country journey. Along the way, he encountered a number of fellow passengers who inspired him.

Here he recounts their stories, alongside his own journey and a few resonant history lessons. All this combines to provide readers insight into what it means to be wealthy in contemporary America. Despite adding his own practical tips on how to manage finances, from prioritizing spending to the pitfalls of credit cards, the author encourages others to seek out wealth beyond money—in relationships, in health and in pursuing one’s passions. He defers to his uncle on this point: “If you are making any decision solely based on money, then it’s the wrong decision.” It’s a motto Harper has applied to his own life; the author, who earned a law degree from Harvard and stars in the TV series CSI:NY, writes extensively about his decision to act instead of practice law. Although much of the advice is useful and has practical applications, his writing abounds with clichés and often feels stilted—but it’s not without its merits. The strongest parts are the historical biographies, including those of Pullman Porters and the “Real McCoy.” In the end, the author underwent a successful surgery and remains cancer-free.

Money helps, but it’s not a panacea. Harper demonstrates how redefining wealth can make readers all the richer.

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“Excellent general WWII accounts abound—including those by historical superstars such as Stephen Ambrose and John Keegan—but Hastings is matchless.” from inferno

INFERNO The World at War, 1939-1945

Hastings, Max Knopf (752 pp.) $35.00 | November 2, 2011 978-0-307-27359-8

A World War II history by Hastings (Winston’s War: Churchill, 1940–1945, 2010, etc.) may seem like a tautology, but readers familiar with his previous books will expect an enthralling account of his favorite subject. They will not be disappointed.

This time, the author emphasizes personal experiences as well as his often squirm-inducing opinions. Most startling—but not really controversial—he maintains that the Wehrmacht outclassed all other armies. The Allies, including the Soviets, never won a battle without vast superiority in men and material.

However, he writes, the democracies were smarter. American industry operated more efficiently, took better advantage of science and paid more attention to logistics. German and Japanese troops regularly starved and rationed ammunition. In addition, U.S. intelligence services performed superbly, the enemies’ dreadfully. Readers will perk up at Hastings’ claim that Hitler’s second greatest mistake, after invading Russia, was launching the Battle of Britain. If he had allowed Britain to stew for months after its humiliating defeat, Churchill would have had great difficulty sustaining national morale or fending off pressure to make a peace, which would have eliminated not only Britain but America as a threat. Most general histories sprinkle their pages with anecdotes, but Hastings has this down to a science. He employs numerous specialists, delving into Russian and Italian archives and personally tracking down obscure, vivid, often painful stories from the usual combatants as well as Poles, Bengalese, Chinese and Japanese.

Excellent general WWII accounts abound—including those by historical superstars such as Stephen Ambrose and John Keegan—but Hastings is matchless. (Author tour to Boston, Chicago, New York, Washington, D.C. Agent: Peter Matson)

HEMINGWAY’S BOAT Everything He Love in Life, and Lost, 1934-1961

Hendrickson, Paul Knopf (560 pp.) $30.00 | September 23, 2011 978-1-4000-4162-6 (e-book ): 978-0-307-70053-7 A splendid view of Papa and his beloved boat Pilar.

“You know you love the sea and would not be anywhere else,” wrote Ernest Hemingway in Islands in the Stream. In 1934, already the “reigning monarch of American literature” for The |

Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms, he bought a 38-foot motorized fishing vessel at a Brooklyn boatyard and set out for the Caribbean. “Mr. H. is like a wild thing with his boat,” wrote Pauline, his second wife. An integral part of his final 27 years, Pilar offered afternoons of solace on waters between Key West and Cuba, during which Hemingway fished, drank, wrote, bickered with wives and sons and entertained visitors. A former Washington Post feature writer and winner of a National Book Critics Circle award, Hendrickson (Nonfiction Writing/Univ. of Pennsylvania; Sons of Mississippi: A Story of Race and Its Legacy, 2003, etc.) offers a moving, highly evocative account of Hemingway’s turbulent later years, when he lost the favor of critics, the love of wives and friends and, ultimately, his ability to write. Drawing on interviews, documents (including 34 Pilar logs) and secondary sources, the author succeeds in restoring a sense of Hemingway the man, seen as a flawed, self-sabotaging individual whose kindness and gentleness have been overlooked in accounts of his cruel and boorish side. Even as he attacked critics and fired his shotgun angrily at sea birds, the tortured author proved remarkably sweet and friendly to many, including Arnold Samuelson, an admiring young writer who became Hemingway’s assistant on Pilar; and Walter Houk, now in his 80s, who remembers the author fondly as “a great man with great faults.” Seven years in the making, this vivid portrait allows us to see Hemingway on the Pilar once again, standing on the flying bridge and guiding her out of the harbor at sunrise.

Appearing on the 50th anniversary of Hemingway’s death, this beautifully written, nuanced meditation deserves a wide audience. (23 illustrations. First printing of 40,000. Author tour to Chicago, Key West, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C. Agents: Kathy Robbins and David Halpern)

THIRTEEN LOOPS Race, Violence, and the Last Lynching in America

Hollars, B.J. Univ. of Alabama (248 pp.) $24.95 | September 6, 2011 978-0-8173-1753-9

An intensive examination of lynching in Alabama and its ties to the evolution of Southern racial violence.

Hollars (Creative Writing/Univ. of Wisconsin-Eau Claire; editor: You Must Be This Tall To Ride: Contemporary Writers Take You Inside the Story, 2009) puts a creative spin on his analysis of three lynching cases in the American South: innocent victims Vaudine Maddox (1933), Gene Ballard (1979), and Michael Donald (1981), all violent Alabama murders that became serpentine investigations riddled with false accusations, coverups and the emergence of the Ku Klux Klan. With meticulous detailing, the author describes the three cases, individually and, in concluding updates, how they coalesce. In Tuscaloosa, Maddox’s lifeless body was found pummeled by stones; her murder, in turn, spurred the lynching of three young black

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God, No!: Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales

Penn Jillette Simon & Schuster (256 pp.) $24.00 Aug. 16, 2011 9781451610369

The Devil probably isn’t making him do it, but professional illusionist and troublemaker Penn Jillette is still bent on turning as many souls away from The Almighty as he possibly can. His latest release, God, No! Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales, is a humorous re-envisioning of the Ten Commandments for our modern— and more profane—age.

After a day of drowning Teller in a tank full of hungry piranha and torching a bunch of trees with a jet engine for an upcoming Discovery Channel special, the vocal half of Penn & Teller was finally ready for a wide-ranging conversation.

Read on for his thoughts on the solace of atheism, the Lady Gagas of the late 19th century and the usefulness of obscenity.

Q: Ultimately, do you want to be proven wrong about God? A: My desires don’t really matter. I think honest discussion is really important and whatever the truth ends up being, that’s what matters. More important than that is being able to share reality with other people.

One of my major problems with faith is that it says, “Believe this regardless of the world around you.” And I think that the most important part of being human is to decide to share the world around you. That’s what I want to do, and wherever that leads I’m fine. I’ve changed my mind on so many things over the years. And that’s always a wonderful feeling—it’s a fresh breath.

Q: Is facing your own mortality an easier proposition as an atheist?

Q: What’s the religious pulse of the nation right now?

Q: This new book displays your rare talent for obscenity.

Can you talk about how you’ve used it in the past?

A: My friend [Screw magazine founder] Al Goldstein told me if you don’t want to get sued don’t ever call someone a liar, call them a motherfucker. Don’t ever say they were cheating, call them an asshole.

So, when we first started [our cable TV show] Bullshit!, we went to the lawyers and told them what we were going to do. I said, “We are going to be showing people who have not told the truth, and I’m going to have to say something about them. If I say liar, we will get sued, and we will lose. My friend Al Goldstein says we can use obscenity and that’ll make it much harder [for someone to sue].”

The lawyers thought about it and said, “Yes, if the show is called Bullshit! anyway, let’s go with heavy, heavy obscenity. That will cut down on lawsuits.” We were the only show that would get official marginal comments back on our scripts by lawyers.

The obscenity, in a sense, was a kind of legal dodge.

Q: One story in your new book describes an unfortunate incident with hot blow dryer and your genitals. Any remorse about potentially scarring an untold numbers of male readers?

A: Every male reader that I know that has read the book or heard the story has enjoyed it tremendously. This is a story happening to somebody else so that makes a big difference. You know, if it happens to you, it’s tragic. If it happens to me, it’s funny.

–By Joe Maniscalco

A: I think that we’re seeing the biggest rise in nonreligion that’s ever been seen in the history of the United States. It’s close to how it was it the 1870s, ’80s and ’90s when your top superstars were all atheists.

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A: I think it’s much, much easier as an atheist. I have lost my father, my mother and my sister.

When my mom died, I found that the only comfort I got was from atheism. We loved each other so much, and I still love her. It’s a terrible pain to lose the person closest to you.

But if I had to believe that there was a spook show on top of that and there was a power that could have stopped this but chose not to, I don’t know how I would have taken it. Of course, religious people will tell you they don’t know how they would have gotten through without their faith, but I just don’t understand it.

Huxley. They were the highest-paid speakers. That was Lady Gaga. They did very, very well.

I don’t think people have gotten more atheist, but they’re coming out of the closet more. It’s almost certain that the number of atheists in this country is nearly 10 times the number of Mormons. All atheists have to do is say that’s what they are, and they’re automatically a majority. No single sect comes close to that.

Twenty years ago, the religious people of this country were very comfortable and very smug.

Now they seem desperate. They seem to be clutching onto things. Reality is pretty wonderful. And love is pretty wonderful. And people are pretty wonderful. And that’s very scary for the religious.

male suspects. White police sergeant and family man Gene Ballard was shot in cold blood while investigating a botched bank robbery in Birmingham; two years later, his murderer, Josephus Anderson, a local black troublemaker, was freed on a mistrial. This event sparked an act of violent retribution, resulting in the 13-looped noose, revenge lynching of innocent, 19-year-old Michael Donald in Mobile by two admitted Klansmen, an event that, after a guilty court ruling, ended up bankrupting the United Klans of America faction. Hollars’ text is scholarly and comprehensive but delivered in a fresh, far-from-dry journalistic style. Along with a wide range of source materials like media articles, official statements and interviews with police and local Alabamans, a section of archival photographs (some grisly) provides a humane nuance. The author is also quite astute at drawing meaningful comparisons.

He discusses Donald’s lynching in 1981 alongside the murder of gay man Matthew Shepard in 1998, each established as a “hate crime” and further solidifying the terminology in police work and legislation alike.

A creatively written, edifying work of historical significance and a boon for those interested in Southern race relations. (16 illustrations)

THE LONGEST WINTER Scott’s Other Heroes

Hooper, Meredith Counterpoint (384 pp.) $26.00 | October 1, 2011 978-1-58243-762-0

The tale of how Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen triumphed in the race to the South Pole, beating British contender Robert Scott by only two weeks, still grips our imagination 100 years later.

It is a heroic saga of human endurance stretched to the limit in a continent so harsh that no indigenous inhabitants lived there, made tragic by Scott’s death on the ice. Hooper (The Ferocious Summer: Palmer’s Penguin’s and the Warming of Antarctica, 2007, etc.) focuses on six members of Scott’s team who were given the task of exploring the glacial area to the east while Scott’s team made a direct approach to the Pole. Their adventures and the hardships they endured is, writes the author, “one of the great tales of survival.” Although they landed with adequate supplies near a pre-existing hut, which served as their home base, the expectation was that they would be picked up by the expedition’s ship the following summer. When the ship failed to return for them as planned, their supplies ran out and their situation begin to deteriorate. To survive, they had to find a way, on foot, through the ice, and reconnect with Scott’s backup team. While writing the book, Hooper had access to the scientific notebooks, diaries and letters of members of the expedition, archived at Cambridge University, and she is familiar with her subject, having spent three summers living in Antarctica as a writer chosen to record the work of the Australian National Antarctic Research |

Expeditions and the U.S. National Science Polar Program. She vividly describes the glacial terrain they traveled, the ravages of the weather and the flora and fauna of the region.

A grand story of six brave men who literally and figuratively pulled together in their race for survival. (Agent: Caroline Walsh)

THE TRUST EDGE How Top Leaders Gain Faster Results, Deeper Relationships, and a Stronger Bottom Line

Horsager, David Summerside Press (350 pp.) $24.99 | September 1, 2011 9781609361334

An uninspired debut insists on the importance of trust for business success.

Intended primarily as a motivational instruction book for entrepreneurs, CEOs and corporate administrators, Horsager’s initial offering commits virtually all the sins of the most banal self-help guides. Founded exclusively on anecdotal evidence, schmaltzy metaphors and pseudo-technical jargon (“Trustonomics”?), the author does away with any serious investigation into the philosophical, social or psychological nature of trust. In the current economic climate, most people would look askance at anyone who accepted at face value the offers and promises of businesses and corporations. But the legitimacy of this mistrust is something Horsager never acknowledges—mistrust is simply an obstacle to financial well-being that the business world must overcome. Instead, the author points to story after story of thriving businesses that have successfully won the trust of their patrons. However, because the fundamental objective of business remains the generation of revenue, efforts to win our trust—especially in this post-Madoff world—must be met with healthy skepticism.

Dangerously uncritical in its approach to the current economic crisis.

ROME A Cultural, Visual, and Personal History Hughes, Robert Knopf (512 pp.) $35.00 | November 2, 2011 978-0-307-26844-0

In the spirit of his Barcelona (1992), the art critic and cultural historian zooms through Roman history, from Romulus and Remus to today.

Hughes’ (Things I Didn’t Know, 2006, etc.) subtitle is a bit misleading—“personal history” composes but a nail or two in the impressive edifice he has erected—but few readers will

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complain about anything else. Though his focus is principally on architecture, painting and sculpture, he pauses occasionally to provide historical context, offer portraits of key personalities and grouse about popular culture. Hughes eviscerates The Da Vinci Code (“wretchedly ill-written”), religious fundamentalists (who, he says, have created no art above the level of “drive-in megachurches”), the belief in the virginity of Mary and the noisy crowds in the Sistine Chapel (“just shut the fuck up, please, pretty please, if you can, if you don’t mind, if you won’t burst”). He also raves about artists and artistic works he loves, injecting his text with heavy doses of superlatives: The Pantheon is “certainly the greatest of all surviving structures of ancient Rome”; the Sistine ceiling is “one of the world’s supreme sights.” (Hughes also gives a grand account of the debate about the recent cleaning of Michelangelo’s masterwork.) The author’s knowledge about individual artists and works—and about Roman history—is prodigious, but he is never is pedantic or dull. There are a couple of strange moments—do readers need to be told what Schadenfreude means? Isn’t it a stretch to say that Keats and Shelley were friends?—but mostly there are moments of delight and surprise. We learn that on the Grand Tour, Horace Walpole saw his dog eaten by a wolf in the Alps; we smell the streets of ancient Rome; we discover that hippos were among the animals that fought in the Colosseum.

An appealing mixture of erudition about high culture and curmudgeonly complaints about low. (32 pages of color photographs. First printing of 50,000. Author tour to Boston, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, Vermont, Washington, D.C.)

DESSERTS FROM THE FAMOUS LOVELESS CAFE Simple Southern Pies, Puddings, Cakes, & Cobblers From Nashville’s Landmark Restaurant

Huntsman, Alisa Artisan (232 pp.) $24.95 | September 1, 2011 978-1-57965-434-4

Delve into the sinfully delicious world of sweets and treats from Nashville’s signature dining spot.

“Southern hospitality begins and ends with dessert” in Huntsman’s (Sky High: Irresistible Triple-Layer Cakes, 2007) sophomore foray into the world of cookbook writing. From her Arkansas Sweetly Spiced Apple Crumb Pie straight to the Brownie Bread Pudding, the author’s table of contents alone is pure sweetness for sugar aficionados—and the book does not disappoint in its execution. Readers are carried back to a simpler time of back-porch community picnics and “throngs of family and friends for untold summer socials” where the “queens of cobblers” reigned. Like learning to bake with your great grandmother, Huntsman guides readers step-by-step through some of the most treasured dessert recipes of the South. The book is clean and unfussy, and the author’s recipes 1436

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can provide absolutely lip-smacking results for those brave enough to tackle such intimidating feats as latticed pie crusts and melting chocolate. Alternately, those looking to dispose of last night’s leftovers should hold off until they’ve got their hands on the recipe for Huntsman’s Chocolate Mashed Potato Cake. The author also includes helpful baking tips, such as what to do when you’ve run out of self-rising flour, “a Southern staple,” and how to get “truly professional results” when cutting bars and brownies.

Not only are the recipes mouthwatering, they usher in the warm sentimental goodness that can only result from home-baked joy.

GOING HOME Finding Peace When Pets Die

Katz, Jon Villard (192 pp.) $22.00 | September 27, 2011 978-0-345-50269-8 The latest by Katz (Soul of a Dog: Reflections on the Spirits of the Animals of Bedlam Farm, 2009, etc.) continues his popular line of books regarding man’s best friend, this time focusing on how readers should cope with the loss of a pet.

Immediately after the death of his beloved golden retriever the author accidentally drove his car into a telephone pole.

“This was one of my first lessons in grieving for animal: be prepared,” he writes. While bereaved owners often assume their grief is over the top for “just a dog” or cat, Katz points out that companion animals often play a larger role in one’s daily life than friends or even children, and their deaths can be shockingly powerful. With simple prose, the author aims to assist pet owners through the grieving process by providing advice, anecdotal reflections on the lives of animals and personal stories regarding Katz and other owners’ loss of dogs, cats and even a steer. Readers with ailing pets will find this book particularly useful, as it outlines many ways to prepare for an animal’s encroaching death, such as discussing when and how an owner should make the difficult choice to euthanize, and providing ideas like having a “perfect day” that involves doing everything the pet enjoys.

Not without its sappy moments, but readers will find this book refreshing in its honest depiction of grief over pet loss.

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“A valuable text—not just for the solution, but also for the refreshing philosophy behind it.” from don’t shoot

DRUNKEN ANGEL

DON’T SHOOT One Man, a Street Fellowship, and the End of Violence in Inner-City America

Kaufman, Alan Viva Editions (464 pp.) $25.00 | November 1, 2011 978-1-936740-02-4 An avant-garde writer recalls his journey from gutter drunk to PEN American member.

Kaufman (Matches, 2005, etc.) throws in his lot with the boozer bards in this second memoir about his near-lethal alcohol addiction, recovery and long struggle to become a writer. After touching briefly on his horrific childhood in the Bronx as the son of a French Jewish Holocaust survivor who beat him mercilessly (the territory of his first memoir, Jew Boy, 2000), Kaufman details his traumatizing years with the Israel Defense Forces and his torrid, adulterous affair (which inspired his novel Matches). Kaufman’s blackout drinking is epic throughout and reaches a crescendo when he returns to New York suffering psychotic delusions from PTSD sustained in the Israeli Army. The author’s narrative whips schizophrenically between manic moments of literary self-aggrandizing and deeply depressive moments of shocking wreckage (“Awoke in gutters or curled up to keep warm on manhole covers and grates in cul-de-sacs, filthy, nauseous, hungover, astonished at my gargantuan appetite for the abyss”). Acceptance into Columbia’s Master of Fine Arts program, his involvement with the emerging Spoken Word poetry scene and the birth of his daughter briefly buoyed him, but not enough to keep him from the bottle.

Eventually he hit rock bottom and was kicked out of a crash pad by his acid-dealer roommates, becoming homeless. Kaufman’s sexual perversions sometimes serve his theme of bondage, but occasionally veer into misogyny. Literature literally saved the author, on a bench in New York’s Tompkins Square Park when a fellow poet talked him into trying recovery, and the second half of the book follows Kaufman’s journey to sobriety in San Francisco. The author’s intention to stake his territory among the literary elite is clear, but such efforts can feel name-droppy at times (an anecdote about desperately seeking Isaac Bashevis Singer at his Upper West Side apartment is interesting, but a listing of Kaufman’s Columbia classmates is not). Although the author’s tendency to drop the “I” from his sentence often feels affected, it also occasionally hit its mark, lending a hard edge to Kaufman’s largely intoxicating prose.

A slightly bloated but addictive memoir of self-destruction, recuperation and a literary coming-of-age. (First printing of 25,000)

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Kennedy, David M. Bloomsbury (320 pp.) $26.00 | October 1, 2011 978-1-60819-264-9

An unlikely criminal-justice pioneer revisits his innovative, immensely successful crusade against youth homicide in America’s worst neighborhoods.

Kennedy (Criminal Justice/John Jay Coll.) didn’t set out to dedicate his career to crime, much less the seemingly insurmountable problem of gang-and-drug related violence plaguing America’s cities and stumping even the most seasoned law-enforcement units. Rather, as an aspiring writer straight out of college, he took a job constructing teaching cases for Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. An early assignment on problem-oriented policing sent him to Los Angeles’ beleaguered Watts neighborhood, one of many hit hard by the 1980s crack epidemic. Kennedy was struck by the devastating violence he witnessed and, as he plunged further into researching the problem, the horrifying trends it represented. Quickly, a few things became clear. First, guns, drugs and gangs held the keys to the downward spiral. Second, in a shockingly optimistic and humane perspective, that the real problem was, in essence, a massive misunderstanding; that is, that cops and communities wanted, at the base level, the same things, and could be brought together to work toward them. Kennedy and a few key colleagues launched what became known as the Boston Miracle (a name not sanctioned by Kennedy, who emphasized that hard work, rather than divine intervention, created the results).

With a massive communication effort, including an astonishing set of forum meetings which actually brought gang members and police officers together, Kennedy’s team made clear to the community their goal of stopping violence and valuing the young lives that had previously gone unnoticed. Results were swift and unprecedented—youth homicide rates halved, then quartered, and broad changes were made to communities. More importantly, the solution was not specific to Boston. Over the years, Kennedy has cloned his experiment in cities across the country, from smaller communities like Stockton, Calif., to, with significantly more effort and issues, meccas of urban blight like Baltimore. The problem has in no way been eliminated— and Kennedy emphasizes the drastic consequences when the programs falter—but progress is undeniable.

A valuable text—not just for the solution, but also for the refreshing philosophy behind it. (Author tour to New York, Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Milwaukee, Providence, Washington, D.C. Agent: Gail Ross)

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THE IMMIGRANT ADVANTAGE Why Newcomers to America Are Happier and Healthier and What We Can Learn from Them Kolker, Claudia Free Press (256 pp.) $26.00 | October 18, 2011 978-1-4165-8682-1

Moving to Houston and a job at the Chronicle in the mid1990s, Kolker, a former globe-trotting journalist, found living in the city to be like “taking a round-the-world balloon tour of the countries that were now reshaping the United States.”

The grandchild of Ukrainian Jews on her father’s side and daughter of a Mexican-born mother, the author admits to a longtime fascination with the lives of immigrants, and this led her to start a new beat at the paper, reporting on the lives of immigrants living in her community. She was struck by a 1986 study that showed greater longevity among Latino immigrants than Native Americans despite greater obesity, less education and lower income. This was confirmed in 2010 by the Centers for Disease Control, which established similar results with West Indians, Asians and recently arrived Africans. What was their secret? Many of the people the author interviewed were friends, and she questioned them about those customs from the old country that they valued most highly.

Their answers not only led to her writing this sparkling debut, but they significantly transformed her life. She includes explanations of not only how immigrants adjust to their new lives, but what they can teach us. Kolker focuses on six customs, many of which that she adopted: a money club to which members contribute on a monthly basis without expecting interest; a six-week period when family and friends pitch in to allow a mother to rest after birth; assisted marriages involving family members who help find and vet a potential spouse; parent-supported tutorial programs; multigenerational families who live together, including adult children as well as the elderly; and family dinners amid a supportive community.

A welcome reminder that America was built by immigrants in search of a better future for their children.

THE BIG HANDOUT How Government Subsidies and Corporate Welfare Corrupt the World We Live In and Wreak Havoc on Our Food Bills

Kostigen, Thomas M. Rodale (288 pp.) $24.99 | October 25, 2011 978-1-60961-113-2 (e-book ): 978-1-60961-114-9

A lively polemic in favor of the elimination of government subsidies, especially on food and energy products.

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Whether success would be the panacea that MarketWatch environmental ethics columnist Kostigen (The Green Blue Book: The Simple Water-Savings Guide to Everything in Your Life, 2010, etc.) envisions for us is another matter, but while we await the answer, he provides much high-density fare concerning how our food is produced and what it is doing to us, and how the subsidy system is uniting food and energy production. The author calculates that we all spend about $10,000 per year for subsidies out of an average tax bill of $17,000, and that everything would be cheaper without them. His main concerns are the “Big Five” staple crops—corn, wheat, soy, rice and cotton—and oil production. Kostigen discusses how production methods have changed since the 1970s with the corporate takeover of familybased farm enterprise, and how the financial system has been perverted to support vertically integrated factory farming and food distribution. The subsidy system in the United States has made local production of food staples difficult elsewhere—e.g., it has destroyed Haiti’s rice production and severely damaged Mexico’s corn production. Kostigen does not take into account that in countries where subsidies were abolished or reduced (e.g., “shock therapy” in the former Soviet Eastern Bloc), rapidly rising prices combined with shortages for disastrous results.

Also, the increasing concentration of wealth in the U.S. reduces the usefulness of measures like the “average tax bill” in estimating actual benefits of policies.

While such matters continue to be discussed, Kostigen provides a forceful statement of the need to reorganize food and other primary goods production in the U.S., for reasons of both economy and health.

THE INTERVENTION BOOK Stories and Solutions from Addicts, Professionals, and Families

L., Kathy Conari Press (256 pp.) $16.95 | September 1, 2011 978-1-57324-495-4

A self-described former addict and the 12-Step Recovery Editor for BellaOnline.com, Kathy L. chaperones readers through the intimidating world of addiction intervention, complete with professional advice and tales from those who kicked the habit.

While reality television has popularized the concept of dramatic, group-style interventions, the book advises making an informed decision first, stressing that there are many types of intervention and rash actions may undermine attempts to help. The author targets those who already know their loved one faces a serious addiction, so readers on the fence should seek another source of information. In conversational language, Kathy outlines the differences between formal inventions led by professionals, and the more common informal interventions, in which loved ones decide to simply stop enabling the addiction. She also discusses how to choose a detox program

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and describes the importance of finding a 12-step program for long-term sobriety. The majority of the book consists of personal stories from addicts and their families, including tales of alcoholism, narcotics addiction, pathological gambling, sex addiction and eating disorders. The author follows each train wreck through to eventual recovery, and offers advice for others. As in most 12-step programs, emphasis is placed on finding a “higher power” to pull strength from, and some readers may dislike the book’s religious undertones and War-On-Drugs approach to marijuana, which is depicted as a “a gateway drug” that easily escalates into heroin.

More of a motivational source than a true how-to manual, but offers a frank portrayal of addiction and recovery.

MY PADDLE TO THE SEA Eleven Days on the River of the Carolinas

Lane, John Univ. of Georgia (224 pp.) $24.95 | November 1, 2011 978-0-8203-3977-1

A meditative account of a 300-mile float trip to the sea, from South Carolina’s Broad River to the Intercoastal Waterway north of Charleston.

Just three months before, Lane (English and Environmental Studies / Wofford Coll.; Chattooga: Descending into the Myth of Deliverance River, 2004, etc.) had taken his family on an adventure trip to Costa Rica. Unfortunately, the trip ended under conditions of exceptionally high water, several canoes capsized and the guide and one other kayaker drowned.

The author explains that starting out on another boating trip was a way for him to come to accept the painful truth that “mistakes and surprises are often what form a memorable journey, but they’re also what make for tragedies.” Lane was joined on the different legs of the journey by friends. For much of the time, the weather was unseasonably wet, but this did not diminish the adventurers’ enthusiasm. Throughout the trip, the author muses about the historical ruins they encounter, such as an old grist mill and the old canal that was closed to barge traffic 150 years ago; he compares them to the six power dams that they pass. Exploring the past as he travels peacefully down the river, Lane has an important realization: “A river trip that I was imagining as a journey, an adventure, had been, only two hundred years earlier, as common as a road trip on a present-day interstate highway.”

A final arduous paddle against the tide takes the author to a successful conclusion of this low-key spiritual adventure.

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WHISKEY BREAKFAST My Swedish Family, My American Life Lindberg, Richard C. Univ. of Minnesota (328 pp.) $22.95 | October 1, 2011 978-0-8166-4684-5

A prolific Chicagoan journalist climbs his family tree.

Having previously written about the Windy City’s two most notorious serial killers and its 19th-century police-corruption scandal, Lindberg (The Gambler King of Clark Street, 2009, etc.) turns inward with a bittersweet labor of love he asserts was many years in the making.

The Swedish American author was born in Chicago in the 1960s, “at the height of the McCarthy-era hysteria,” and was raised by his stern, “paradoxical” father Oscar, who followed (and instilled in his son) extremist socialist principles. Lindberg draws readers into his family lineage with an engaging combination of historical specifics and anecdotal memories springing from the mass exodus of Swedes from their native land. Many, including his own parents and grandparents, fled an impoverished life in rural Sweden for the shores of America in search of peace and prosperity. But this is very much Oscar’s story. As Lindberg methodically traces the genesis of his Swedish family, the memoir’s focus remains on his father, who “slipped past” Canadian customs officials in 1924 to settle in Chicago’s North Side “Swedetown,” a favored immigrant destination. Through letters and the author’s remarkably sturdy memory, he illustrates the despair of his father’s life: the crushing death of his mother, the turmoil of four rocky marriages and the halfhearted attempts to be a good father to his children while battling alcoholism. Yet the cultivation of Oscar’s hardworking livelihood as a postwar master homebuilder reveals a redeeming inner strength and nobility. Woven throughout Lindberg’s exhaustive narration are palpable threads of sadness and anger aimed at a father who lacked compassion and affection, stunting the development of a son whose childhood needs went unmet.

Only in the final pages, when the author writes of attending an emotionally healing class reunion, is a moving moment of catharsis achieved.

Deep, introspective and somber, this is by far Lindberg’s most personal book to date.

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“Achingly sad and sweetly comic at the same time.” from happy accidents

HAPPY ACCIDENTS A Memoir

Lynch, Jane Voice/Hyperion (320 pp.) $25.99 | September 13, 2011 978-1-4013-4176-3 A triumphant memoir recounting the inner struggles of one of the most versatile actresses working today.

The breakout star of TV’s Glee on and the hit movies Best in Show and Role Models recounts her past as an archetypical tragic clown— laughing on the outside but highly anxious on the inside.

Growing up in suburban Illinois, Lynch always dreamed of becoming an actress. But at the outset of her career, the author was so wracked with fear, anxiety and self-doubt, she almost derailed her own ambitions. Crushing on the gals at school instead of the guys—and trying to hide her sexuality—didn’t help. Desperately wanting to belong, Lynch only alienated herself from the people with whom she sought connection and camaraderie. The author delves into these topics, and many more, with a well-earned sense of self-awareness.

When she finally attains not only love, but a whole new family, and achieves fulfillment in her career, readers cannot help but share in her obvious joy. The screwy sense of the preposterous imbued in so many of Lynch’s on-screen characters is in full effect here, even when the author recalls some of her darkest moments—like those times when she sought to kill the long, solitary hours between live performances with over-the-counter tranquilizers.

Achingly sad and sweetly comic at the same time.

DISORDERED WORLD Setting a New Course for the Twenty-first Century Maalouf, Amin Translator: Miller, George Bloomsbury (288 pp.) $24.00 | October 1, 2011 978-1-60819-584-8

From a distinguished journalist and award-winning novelist, an extended essay with an urgent warning: The world is on the brink of disaster, and humanity must act now to avert it.

Maalouf (Origins: A Memoir, 2008, etc.), a Lebanese Christian living in Paris, looks at the tensions between the Western world and the Arab world from a unique perspective, and what he sees is more than a clash of civilizations. Both, he writes, have reached their limits and are morally bankrupt. Now is the time for human beings to build a common civilization that respects and benefits from cultural diversity; not to do so, he warns, means that we will “descend together into a common barbarity.” In chapters aptly titled “Hollow Victories” and “Lost 1440

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Legitimacy,” he writes knowledgeably of the history of relations between the Arab world and the West. In his third chapter, “Imaginary Certainties,” Maalouf explores the relationship between politics and religion and between countries and their immigrant populations, and he gives his arguments for taking collective action now to deal with the grave threat of global warming. He presents two visions of the world’s future: one in which humanity is divided into tribes that detest one another but share a bland global culture, and another in which humanity is united around common values but continues to develop rich, diverse expressions of culture. Doing nothing leads to the first; to achieve the second requires making what he calls a step-change. Maalouf describes himself as in a state of worried anticipation, but with a measure of hope. He gives four reasons for his hopefulness about humanity’s ability to ward off the decline: the increasing pace of scientific progress, the continuing emergence of populous nations from poverty, the example of cooperation shown by the European Union, and the election of Barack Obama, which he sees as an indication of the reawakening of a great nation.

Eloquent and full of passion.

FIGHTING FOR AFGHANISTAN A Rogue Historian at War

Maloney, Sean M. Naval Institute Press (352 pp.) $42.95 | October 15, 2011 978-1-59114-509-7

A personal but technical account of Canada’s Task Force AEGIS and TF Orion during the battles in Afghanistan’s Helmand province in 2005–06.

Maloney (History/Royal Military College of Canada; Confronting the Chaos: A Rogue Military Historian Returns to Afghanistan, 2009, etc.), who has extensive field experience from the Balkan wars of the 1990s and from repeated visits to Afghanistan, examines the difficulties in coordinating all the different pieces that go into making the deployment of brigade and battalion forces successful. As part of the NATO deployment, his Canadian elements were involved in assisting the Dutch, rescuing the poorly equipped British, working with Americans, who had their own deployment methods and procedures, and liaising with Afghan military, police and civil authorities. In combat, these many moving parts are required to maintain electronic surveillance, reserve artillery capability, coordinate airborne assistance and provide support in the gathering of intelligence. Each function involves matters of life and death, as well as conflict within the lines of command over priorities, resource allocation and cultural comprehension of the mission—e.g., how to work with the local population on development and funding for medical and education services, how to deal with opium production without compromising the war effort.

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A book by a specialist that will be best appreciated by other specialists, but Maloney also provides general readers with a bird’s-eye view of how the war in Afghanistan has been fought. (15 black-and-white photos; 12 maps)

COLLEGE ADMISSION From Application to Acceptance, Step by Step

Mamlet, Robin VanDeVelde, Christine Three Rivers/Crown (416 pp.) $19.99 | August 16, 2011 978-0-307-59032-9

Mamlet, a former dean of admissions at a number of well-known universities, teams up with journalist and parent VanDeVelde to create a practical and easy-tounderstand primer on college admissions.

“We’ll have the best advice, strategies, and recommendations for you, whether you want to attend your state university, a midsized college, or a small liberal arts school,” the authors write in the first chapter. Those looking to stake their claim to an Ivy League spot will find instruction here as well, but the authors warn that the path will be steeper. Starting off with an overview of the application process, replete with statistics, the authors draw upon their combined 23 years experience in college admissions to demystify an often overwhelming procedure.

Their broad yet intricately detailed guide is intended for both parents and students alike and touches on everything from testing to interviews to financial aid. The most anxiety-inducing part of the process, penning a college essay, is dissected down to the cellular level, including a helpful schematic on how to organize essay drafts and include relevant personal information.

Appendices include a four-year timeline of the process and recommended courses of study. Resources for a variety of students, including those who are undocumented and those considering a gap year, are also provided.

Jittery high-school seniors would be wise to take a deep breath and repeat after Mamlet and VanDeVelde: “Getting into college is not rocket science. It’s a lot of work, but it can be done.” They’re here to show readers how.

UNMEASURED STRENGTH My Story of Survival and Transformation

Manning, Lauren Henry Holt (256 pp.) $25.00 | September 1, 2011 978-0-8050-9463-3

A survivor of 9/11 recounts the ultra– harrowing tale of how she returned from the brink of death after suffering secondand third-degree burns over more than 80 percent of her body. |

The first quarter of the book is a banal recitation of the privileged though unremarkable life that Manning led prior to the day in 2001 that changed her and her country. But when the author begins to describe the horrific moments following her encounter with the fire in the lobby of One World Trade Center that “embraced my body tighter that any suitor,” her memoir takes flight. With honesty and simplicity, Manning details her miraculous escapes first from the crippled North Tower; then from limb amputation; and then from death, which stalked her relentlessly for three months. “I had about 18% chance of surviving, assuming I suffered no dire infections or other complications,” she writes. Her once-comfortable life had suddenly become a living hell. After dozens of surgeries, skin grafts and excruciatingly painful therapies, Manning began the difficult process of relearning “the simplest of activities, basic functions I had always taken for granted such as speaking, holding a fork to feed myself, sitting up, getting in and out of bed and walking.”

Ten years later, her life has returned to “normality” thanks to the unstinting love shown her by family, friends and strangers.

And the hand she thought she would lose has since become a personal “talisman, not of suffering, but of something divine: the power to survive and to heal.”

A flawed but uplifting story of courage, love and compassion.

WHAT IT IS LIKE TO GO TO WAR

Marlantes, Karl Atlantic Monthly (224 pp.) $25.95 | September 6, 2011 978-0-8021-1992-6 A manual for soldiers or anyone interested in what can happen to mind, body and spirit in the extreme circumstances of war.

Decorated Vietnam veteran Marlantes is also the author of a bestselling novel (Matterhorn, 2010), a Yale graduate and Rhodes scholar.

His latest book reflects both his erudition and his battlehardness, taking readers from the Temple of Mars and Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey into the hell of combat and its grisly aftermath. That Marlantes has undertaken such a project implies his acceptance of war as a permanent fact of human life.

We go to war, he says, “reluctantly and sadly” to eliminate an evil, just as one must kill a mad dog, “because it is a loathsome task that a conscious person sometimes has to do.” He believes volunteers rather than conscripts make the best soldiers, and he accepts that the young, who thrill at adventure and thrive on adrenaline, should be war’s heavy lifters. But apologizing for war is certainly not one of the strengths, or even aims, of the book. Rather, Marlantes seeks to prepare warriors for the psychic wounds they may endure in the name of causes they may not fully comprehend. In doing that, he also seeks to explain to nonsoldiers (particularly policymakers who would send soldiers to war) the violence that war enacts on the whole being. Marlantes believes our modern states fail where “primitive” societies

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succeeded in preparing warriors for battle and healing their psychic wounds when they return. He proposes the development of rituals to practice during wartime, to solemnly pay tribute to the terrible costs of war as they are exacted, rather than expecting our soldiers to deal with them privately when they leave the service. He believes these rituals, in absolving warriors of the guilt they will and probably should feel for being expected to violate all of the sacred rules of civilization, could help slow the epidemic of post-traumatic stress disorder among veterans.

A valiant effort to explain and make peace with war’s awesome consequences for human beings. (Agent: Sloan Harris)

THE SECRETS OF SUCCESSFUL COMMUNICATION A Simple Guide to Effective Encounters in Business

McCarney, Kevin T. O’Connell House (200 pp.) $15.95 | September 1, 2011 978-0-9831244-3-6

A somewhat surprising source offers an illuminating guide to better communication.

McCarney began the Poquito Más restaurant chain in Southern California almost 30 years ago. Somewhere along the line, he learned quite a bit about human interaction. Here the author offers a cogent, easily accessible method for improving social interactions, both public and private. It’s based on a simple premise: that in each of us there is The Big Brain and The Little Brain. The Big Brain is home to all of our higher cerebral functions, while The Little Brain, closer to the speech center, is the source of foot-in-mouth disease. The trick to always saying the right thing, writes the author, is learning how to bypass The Little Brain as often as possible. In this way, readers are able to avoid uncomfortable scenarios and start leading happier lives.

Effective communication is largely achieved through awareness and taking a moment to become cognizant of the outside influences constantly affecting our day-to-day psyche. In different hands, this psychology could have easily veered into the dry and technical, but McCarney is entirely straightforward, friendly and effective in his delivery. The chapters are short and concise, yet penetrating, and the accompanying cartoons are whimsical but illustrate important points.

A book that will make readers want to immediately put what they’ve learned into practice.

MILE MARKER ZERO The Moveable Feast of Key West

McKeen, William Crown (320 pp.) $25.00 | October 4, 2011 978-0-307-59200-2 (e-book ): 978-0-307-59204-0 A cultural history of Key West as experienced by some of its most famous

residents.

McKeen (Journalism/Boston Univ.; Outlaw Journalist: The Life and Times of Hunter S. Thompson, 2008, etc.) transports readers to Key West, a wonderland of cigar rollers and beautiful women that for generations has maintained a reputation for lawlessness as well.

It is also described as “the end of the road, the last outpost for an American original.” Among these Americans originals are a wide array of writers: Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, Jim Harrison, Thomas McGuane and Hunter S. Thompson, as well as musician Jimmy Buffett, whose music set the tone for the town. What begins as a biography of a place soon branches off into mini-biographies of its residents. McKeen holds his gaze longest on McGuane, described as “the most revered writer of his generation.” Yet soon after his arrival, even McGuane became afflicted with the vices of the island, engaging in the excesses of boozing and womanizing that became a trademark for many of the island’s better-known inhabitants. “Lust was a legacy of island life,” writes McKeen, a statement McGuane seemed to set out to prove. Equally engaging is the story of Buffett’s miraculous rise from “scruffy street singer” to beloved entertainer. Much of his stardom was attributed to his hit single, “Margaritaville,” which “bottled up the essence of Key West in an effervescent, maddeningly memorable pop song.” By the end of the book, McKeen also offers his own take on capturing the essence of the place: “Key West is still Key West”—a statement that, while cryptic, seems to somehow say it all.

An engrossing tell-all in which Key West’s most notable residents struggle to find sanity, sobriety and a place to call home. (8-page black-and-white insert. Author events in Florida.

Agent: Jane Dystel)

THE BOY WHO WENT TO WAR The Story of a Reluctant German Soldier in WWII Milton, Giles Dunne/St. Martin’s (320 pp.) $25.99 | October 11, 2011 978-0-312-59079-6

Discovering that his father-in-law, a celebrated artist named Wolfram, endured a long, miserable experience in the Wehrmacht, popular historian Giles (Paradise Lost: Smyrna, 1922, 2008, etc.) suspected correctly that he had material for a fresh look at a familiar genre.

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“Indeed, Moore considers himself a patriot; as he writes, if you see his movies, ‘you will instantly know that I deeply love this country.’ This spirited, most welcome book is more evidence of that affection.” from here comes trouble

Combining interviews with family letters and diaries, the author provides an entertaining account of an artistic German family who did not conceal their dislike of Hitler but survived the war. It helped that they lived in a rural artist’s colony in the Black Forest and that the local Nazi leader was a family friend.

Nine-year-old Wolfram paid little attention when Hitler took power in 1933. Already fascinated by medieval art, carvings and icons and excused from the obligatory Hitler Youth by a note from a friendly doctor, he spent his leisure wandering the countryside, inspecting old churches and farms, returning home to draw them. At 17, he began a four-year course at the elite Bavarian State Woodcarving School. However, in 1942, the 18-yearold was drafted and sent to the Russian front. By odd good fortune, he caught diphtheria and nearly died, but evacuation to Germany meant that he, unlike most in his unit, did not perish at Stalingrad. After a long recuperation, he served in France where his unit was devastated after the Normandy invasion. He surrendered to American forces in 1944, spending two years as a prisoner in England and the U.S. before returning to resume his woodcarving studies, marry and begin a successful career.

A fine addition to the dwindling number of firsthand World War II personal stories. (8-page black-and-white photo insert)

ESCAPE VELOCITY Free Your Company’s Future From the Pull of the Past

Moore, Geoffrey A. Harper Business (240 pp.) $27.99 | September 1, 2011 978-0-06-204089-3

A Silicon Valley–based technology consultant and venture capitalist helps companies propel into the future—but only if they’re fluent in BusinessSpeak.

Globalization has changed the way we do business, and Moore (Dealing With Darwin, 2008, etc.) knows that last year’s plan, while standard-operating procedure, can often cause companies to miss out on future growth. The author presents a clearly defined five-point model, or “Hierarchy of Powers,” to free businesses from stagnation: category, company, market, offer and execution. “Category power” gauges demand for products or services and changes with trends, while “Company power” utilizes bargaining and knowledge of genuine competition. Capitalizing on transitory markets is the key to “market power,” where regional market niches reign. For example, Google might be top dog in search engines, but in China, the market leader is Baidu. Competition can be dealt with accordingly through Moore’s nine-point strategy framework for creating market power in transitional markets. Return on innovation is the goal of “offer power,” and the author succinctly describes the snare in which many businesses fall prey: wasting time on insignificant transactions. Moore cites Wikipedia as one successful model of offer power, as it created tenfold improvement in encyclopedia access and currency in less than a decade. He |

ends by charting “execution power” and ways to achieve continued efficiency and growth. Integrating all five powers, argues Moore, can launch both new and existing companies into the changing landscape of the 21st century.

If readers can get past the author’s excessive use of jargon, this is a title worth reading for its smart corporate strategies.

HERE COMES TROUBLE Stories from My Life

Moore, Michael Grand Central Publishing (272 pp.) $26.99 | (Compact Disc ): $29.98 (Large Print ): $28.99 September 13, 2011 978-0-446-53224-2 (Compact Disc ): 978-1-60024-469-8 (Large Print ): 978-0-446-54121-3 Filmmaker and progressive activist Moore comes roaring back with his first new book since Dude, Where’s My Country? (2003).

The author’s theme this time, at least organizationally, is himself—he calls this “a book of short stories based on events that took place in the early years of my life,” even though many of the stories are set in his fifth and sixth decades and, so far as we know, they’re factual rather than fictitious. Think of it as a memoir turned slightly on its side. Whatever the case, it’s vintage Moore, beginning with a highly satisfying tale of redemption (and gloat-free revenge) in the wake of his condemnation of George W. Bush at the Academy Awards ceremony. Moore was no stranger to death threats, but after that episode, they came fast and furious, and he had to hire bodyguards—and not just to satisfy unfounded paranoia. Homeland Security, he alleges, even keyed his gold Oscar statue, “scratching long lines into its gold plate.” Fast-forward a few years, and Moore is, if not a hero, at least no longer persona non grata, now that the rest of country has caught up with the dissimulations and deceptions of the Bush administration. Elsewhere, the author writes of footloose ancestors who brought his bloodline to blue-collar Michigan and their peculiar big-headed evolutionary marker: “The craniums in our part of the country were designed to leave a little extra room for the brain to grow should be ever have a chance to learn anything outside of our rigid and insular lives.” From the pleasures of night baseball to family arguments over long hair and Vietnam to early forays into politics, Moore turns in a readable, and often quite funny, American story.

Indeed, Moore considers himself a patriot; as he writes, if you see his movies, “you will instantly know that I deeply love this country.” This spirited, most welcome book is more evidence of that affection.

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A TRAIN IN WINTER An Extraordinary Story of Women, Friendship, and Resistance in Occupied France Moorehead, Caroline Harper/HarperCollins (384 pp.) $27.99 | November 8, 2011 978-0-06-165070-3

Compelling stories of a group of brave French women in Nazi-occupied France.

Of the so-called Convoi des 31,000, including 230 women political prisoners sent to Auschwitz in January 1943, only a handful survived to tell the horrendous tale of their plight. Biographer Moorehead (Dancing to the Precipice: The Life of Lucie de la Tour du Pin, Eyewitness to an Era, 2009, etc.) interviewed survivors of the convoy and tracked down family and stories of numerous others to reconstruct a fraught period in French history when collaboration was assumed the norm, while underneath seethed a current of active subversion. After the shock of the arrival of the Nazis in Paris in June 1940, the Vichy government advised the French citizens to cooperate with the Germans. While most French didn’t protest the treatment of exiles and Jews, some did, especially idealistic youth who had been radicalized in the ’30s by the Spanish Civil War. One of the women, a dentist named Danielle Casanova, was the leader of a youth wing of the French Communist Party who recruited other young women secretaries and office workers as couriers of underground literature. With the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, resistance against the Nazis was ratcheted up and acts of sabotage were endorsed by the various factions of the Resistance. Unfortunately, the German spy network, aided by French police, grew more alert, and after attacks at the metro and in Rouen, Nantes and Bordeaux, traps were set and a sweep of “terrorists” netted by March 1942. The prisoners, both women and men, were first sent to La Santé, in Paris, where they were interrogated and tortured, then to the military fort of Romainville, before deportation to Auschwitz. Moorehead weaves into her suspenseful, detailed narrative myriad personal stories of friendship, courage and heartbreak.

A sound study of research and extensive interviewing.

(16-page black-and-white photo insert; 1 map)

TAKE THE LEAD Motivate, Inspire, and Bring Out the Best in Yourself and Everyone Around You

Myers, Betsy Mann, John David Atria Books (256 pp.) $25.00 | September 13, 2011 978-1-4391-6067-1

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authenticity, the ability to listen and an awareness of the feelings of employees and constituencies.

Myers, the executive director of Harvard’s Center for Public Leadership and COO of the Obama presidential campaign, offers a cogent, articulate addition to modern leadership theory, citing her experiences with both President Clinton and Obama.

Her easy-to-digest volume is filled with anecdotes that illustrate the importance of a feelings-based approach to achieving major policy goals. In today’s world, dominated by the Internet and the drive for individual fulfillment, Myers argues that “the emerging need is not simply for better leadership but for a new kind of leadership, one based on listening, transparency, and a fundamental honoring of relationships.” But the author’s stories are not limited to those in the Oval Office; sprinkled throughout the book are vignettes of ordinary people who lead by example and through compassion. Myers’ message is that leadership qualities apply to all areas of life: business, politics, school and family. She suggests that paying attention to seven core ideas—authenticity, connection, respect, clarity, a willingness to collaborate, an openness to continuous learning and the courage to do the right thing—is not merely a formula for kinder, gentler leadership, but also a conduit to greater success in achieving financial and policy-oriented goals.

An enjoyable and insightful read for anyone interested in increasing their personal and professional effectiveness.

(Author appearances in Boston and Washington, D.C.)

WHERE CHINA MEETS INDIA Burma and the Closing of the Great Asian Frontier

Myint-U, Thant Farrar, Straus and Giroux (320 pp.) $27.00 | September 20, 2011 978-0-374-29907-1 An illumining look at a country torn between two emerging superpowers.

Former UN diplomat Myint-U (The River of Lost Footsteps: A Personal History of Burma, 2006, etc.) takes readers through his home country in this mixture of travelogue and history. The author begins by discussing the rising powers of China and India, and then turns to the small country caught in the middle, which has served as a buffer between these two countries for centuries.

With crisp, clear, authoritative prose, Myint-U chronicles his journeys from Rangoon to Mandalay, explaining the complex culture and history of the Burmese. Aware that most Western readers will not be overly familiar with the history of his country, the author takes great pains to explain the most basic details of Burmese history and geography without being patronizing.

From the unfinished Burmese civil war to their wars against the British, Myint-U successfully conveys how Burma’s past has affected what it has become. The author then turns to China and India, journeying to the areas closest to Burma. He provides comprehensive insight into Burma’s precarious situation,

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STEALTH OF NATIONS The Global Rise of the Informal Economy

as well as an understanding of its possibilities for the future.

He leaves readers pondering the implications of a democratic Burma and how that might affect the Sino-Indian rise to power in the region.

In a whirlwind tour through Burma’s history, politics, culture and geography, Myint-U makes a successful case for its importance in South Asia’s future. (8 pages of blackand-white illustrations; maps)

SYBIL EXPOSED The Extraordinary Story Behind the Famous Multiple Personality Case Nathan, Debbie Free Press (288 pp.) $26.00 | October 25, 2011 978-1-4391-6827-1

Nathan (Pornography, 2007, etc.) claims that the subject of the 1973 international bestseller, Sybil by Flora Schreiber, and the blockbuster film that followed, was a deliberate fabrication that not only fooled a mass popular audience but shaped the practice of psychiatry, opening the door to mass hysteria and misdiagnosis.

The author first made her mark in 1995 with Satan’s Silence, an exposé of hysterical complaints that young children were being abused by Satanists and false charges of ritual child abuse— allegations that were apparently substantiated but proved to be false. Her latest book illuminates how the American cultural climate that made the claims seem credible had been shaped by the earlier mythological account of a young woman with 16 alternate personalities, who suffered from a multiple personality disorder brought on by her mother’s brutally abusive treatment. Before the publication of Sybil, the number of diagnosed cases was in the hundreds, while afterward the number jumped to around 40,000. While the Sybil story began to come under attack in the ’90s despite attempts to hide the subject’s real name (Shirley Mason) and disguise her hometown, the strength of this book is the way in which Nathan re-creates the context in which this blatant literary fraud succeeded—the frustrations faced by ambitious young women post–World War II and the drugs then used to treat mental patients in the ’50s, many of whom were women. The author explores the co-dependent relationship between Mason and her exploitative psychiatrist Cornelia Wilbur, which began in 1947 and continued intermittently until their death. While Mason became increasing disoriented by drugs administered by Wilbur, the psychiatrist claimed that she was revealing multiple personalities. Her collaboration with Schreiber, to whom she gave falsified clinical records, brought her celebrity while continuing the victimization of Mason.

A nuanced, not-entirely-unsympathetic account of the women who perpetrated a sensational literary fraud.

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Neuwirth, Robert Pantheon (304 pp.) $25.95 | October 18, 2011 978-0-375-42489-2 (e-book ): 978-0-307-90680-9

A close-up look at the world of unlicensed and unregulated trade, which, in many developing countries, is the fastest growing part of the economy.

Neuwirth (Shadow Cities: A Billion Squatters, a New Urban World, 2004), who prefaces every chapter with a relevant quote from Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, takes readers inside what he calls System D, from the French word débrouillardise, meaning resourceful and inventive. His first stopping place is Sao Paulo, Brazil, where a vibrant street market draws more than 400,000 people on an average weekday. Then comes Lagos, Nigeria, a fast-growing DIY city of more than nine million people, many living in shantytowns, where scavengers glean recyclable goods from the dump and where System D provides not just goods but water, electricity and public transportation. Using his personal contacts with merchants, Neuwirth describes the underground trade links between Nigeria and China, including an enormous business in the piracy of electronic goods, and the smuggling industry that brings goods across the border from Brazil to Paraguay. He also details the links between major U.S. corporations and System D; how the system operates today in Brooklyn, San Francisco and other American cities; and what measures governments have taken to regulate it. Throughout, Neuwirth cites other sources to demonstrate that aspects of System D have an ancient history. He is clearly an admirer of System D, seeing in it not chaos and confusion, but communities marked by cooperation and their own codes of conduct.

He argues that governments need System D markets because they are creative and provide jobs, and that System D needs governments because governments can provide infrastructure, organized ports and currency with a stable rate of exchange.

Developing a space where System D can thrive offers “a vision of empowerment, employment, and global equity based, not on the abstraction of the free market, but on the concrete principles of the flea market.”

A vibrant picture of a growing sphere of trade that already employs half the workers of the world.

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“A fun, photo-filled day-in-the-life chronicle of one of America’s hardest-working rock bands.” from pearl jam twenty

PEARL JAM TWENTY

Pearl Jam Simon & Schuster (336 pp.) $40.00 | September 13, 2011 978-1-4391-6921-6 Grunge monsters Pearl Jam compile 20 years’ worth of firsthand remembrances, photos and tour-related ephemera in this oversized career-encapsulating scrapbook.

With a gushy foreword by Pearl Jam acolyte Cameron Crowe, this coffee-table book provides a comprehensive dayby-day compendium of touring and recording highlights. It also sheds light on the band’s pre–Pearl Jam history: namely, almostfamous Seattle groups like Green River and Mother Love Bone, who were hampered by bad luck and bad drugs. Add San Diego surfer/beach bum Eddie Vedder to the mix, and from the ashes of the aforementioned bands rose Pearl Jam, whose official popular history begins around 1991. The narration is minimal, and there’s a lot of oral history from band members and commentary from old-guard rockers who became peers, pals and occasional collaborators—Bruce Springsteen, Pete Townshend and Mike Watt, just to name a few. Whether or not readers are fans of the band, the book’s coverage of the Seattle grunge explosion during the early ’90s is impressive. Of course, not all the details of the band’s early years were glorious. For a time, Vedder and his mates had to deal with being the second-most-popular band from Seattle, as Kurt Cobain and Nirvana rocketed past Pearl Jam in record sales and recognition; to make matters worse, Cobain snubbed the band every chance he got. However, it wasn’t until the post-Cobain, post-grunge years that Pearl Jam really came into their own, musically and philosophically. The band became known as much for their chart-topping albums as for their principled stances, first against the hegemonic evil of Ticketmaster and then against George W. Bush’s illegitimate presidency.

A fun, photo-filled day-in-the-life chronicle of one of America’s hardest-working rock bands.

THE ART PROPHETS The Artists, Dealers, and Tastemakers Who Shook the Art World Polsky, Richard Other Press (272 pp.) $24.95 | October 11, 2011 978-1-59051-406-1

The author of I Sold Andy Warhol (Too Soon) (2009) returns with a paean to the prophets who saw profits in genres of art that were then outside the mainstream.

After defining his concept of “art prophet,” Polsky (Boneheads: My Search for T. Rex, 2011, etc.)—once a gallery owner, now a private dealer—begins his genre journey with Ivan Karp, who discovered Warhol and in some sense propelled public interest in pop art. Then the author moves on to the career of comic-book 1446

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pioneer Stan Lee and traces the history of that genre from its origins to R. Crumb and graphic novels. Next, he looks at those out in San Francisco who helped create the art of the poster in the 1960s, explores the story of Peter Max and talks about Shepard Fairey’s poster of candidate Barack Obama that proved so popular—and litigious. In a sense, all of the artists Polsky discusses are/were outsiders, but he devotes a chapter to the real outsiders—people with no formal training whose works eventually commanded impressive sums at sales. The author continues with a look at Native American art, earthworks (Polsky got to see Robert Samuelson’s Spiral Jetty when that massive work emerged once again from the Great Salt Lake that had covered it over in high-water days), ceramics (which had to overcome its “craft” label), photography (featuring Diane Arbus and Richard Avedon), photorealistic painting and street art. In each chapter, Polsky celebrates the individual(s)—dealers, collectors, gallery owners— who first took a chance on that genre, tells us a bit about the early and most significant artists and considers the current status and challenges facing the genre. Unfortunately, the text includes no images of the works he references.

Clear, concise and energized by the author’s fiery passion for his subject. (Agent: Bonnie Nadell)

THE MAN WHO COULDN’T EAT A Memoir

Reiner, Jon Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster (320 pp.) $25.00 | September 6, 2011 978-1-4391-9246-7

A gifted food writer details his battle with Crohn’s disease.

Winner of the 2010 James Beard Foundation Award for Feature Essay, Reiner expands his gripping article that first appeared in Esquire in 2009. With the spirit and edge of a seasoned sports announcer calling a fight, the author graphically depicts both the cumulative effects of two decades of living at the mercy of chronic illness and the staggering playby-play of a recent life-threatening episode when his guts literally exploded. This self-described “glutton in a greyhound’s body” first experienced Crohn’s disease—a crippling autoimmune disorder typically causing severe intestinal inflammation—at a young age, when gorging on a bag of dried apricots brought on an attack of diarrhea that proved the harbinger of later flare-ups as an adult, culminating in the memoir’s springboard, a small bowel obstruction that ruptured his ileum and spilled bacteria into his gut, causing mind-numbing pain and peritonitis. The resulting surgery left Reiner with an internal wound that wouldn’t heal, forcing physicians to recommend he be NPO (nil per os, or absolutely “nothing by mouth”) for three months. In an age when you-are-what’s-eating-you memoirs line the shelves, Reiner’s self-pitiless account stands out for the irony of a foodie being unable to eat, the sheer magnitude of the torment endured, the courage to stare down unrelenting pain, the honest introspection

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into how suffering made the author insufferable and rocked his family and, above all, his refreshingly snide attitude toward his disease. Reiner’s heart-wrenching description of coveting even the smallest bit of food when he could not eat is as memorable as his behavioral observations when sick and in recovery: “After the patient’s recovery, sympathy is as welcome as genital warts. It sounds like pity, and pity is the last thing you want to hear. Pity is a reminder that you were sick, and a sorry confirmation that people still think of you as sick.”

An inspiring, incredible tale.

ALL INDIANS DO NOT LIVE IN TEEPEES (OR CASINOS)

Robbins, Catherine C. Bison/Univ. of Nebraska (408 pp.) $26.95 | October 1, 2011 978-0-8032-3973-9 A journalist’s report “about contemporary American Indians and how modernity and a restorative vision of the past have generated a new energy among them.”

In her debut, freelance writer Robbins draws on reporting for the New York Times and other publications to trace the forces affecting the lives of the nation’s four million Native Americans.

The main force has been the repatriation of remains and cultural artifacts taken from Indian communities during centuries of European American occupation. Under a process established in 1990 by federal law, many Indian tribes are retrieving artifacts from museums and other agencies, and essentially “gaining sovereignty over their stories and their lives.” In 1999, for example, Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology returned 2,000 skeletal remains that archaeologists had removed decades ago from a Pecos Pueblo burial mound in New Mexico. In recounting emotional ceremonies held to celebrate such returns, Robbins explains that repatriations are helping tribes regain identity and cultures lost long ago. With income from gaming and other sources, many tribes are able to pursue claims regarding sacred sites and other matters. There are now about 125 American Indian cultural institutions, many of them museums. The Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian, established in 2004, further exemplifies the drive for Native cultural expression. At the same time, an ongoing migration to cities, especially by young Native Americans, has become an important (and somewhat countervailing) trend. Most Indians now live in cities and suburbs, writes Robbins, not on reservations, and the author discusses the difficult problems facing them. With their emphasis on human connection, repatriation efforts are becoming a way to help these urban migrants reconnect with the past and preserve their cultural identities. Robbins suggests the same quest for connection can be a useful model for non-Indian Americans, many of whose family members are scattered across the country.

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THE PRICE OF CIVILIZATION Reawakening American Virtue and Prosperity

Sachs, Jeffrey D. Random (336 pp.) $27.00 | October 4, 2011 978-1-4000-6841-8 (e-book ): 978-0-679-60502-7

A noted economist argues that deep reforms are needed to bring renewed prosperity to the United States—a nation “dangerously out of balance,” where a tiny elite holds wealth and power without regard for their fellow citizens.

Known for his studies of economies in Latin America, Asia, and elsewhere, Sachs (Healthy Policy and Management/ Columbia Univ.; Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet, 2008, etc.) weighs in for the first time on America’s economic ills. Drawing on diverse studies and surveys, he characterizes the U.S. as a competitive market society in which “the rich and powerful fail to behave with respect, honesty, and compassion toward the rest of society and toward the world.” From the New Deal through the 1960s, the federal government steered the national economy for the public good. But in the ’80s, power shifted to special interests, whose concern was private advantage, leaving the U.S. economy vulnerable to the 2008 collapse. To restore prosperity, writes Sachs, America must once again have an activist government that works within the market system to create a more balanced economy and a society based on social trust, honesty and compassion. The author writes that most Americans support such reforms, but are misrepresented in Congress, where both parties enact policies “to the right of the public’s true values” to please wealthy contributors. Sachs considers the effects of such forces as globalization, social change and media saturation, and shows how national consensus dissipated as a result of the civil-rights movement, the upsurge in Hispanic immigration the rise of the Sun Belt and suburbanization. Like social scientist Raj Patel (The Value of Nothing, 2010), Sachs writes that we must abandon the craving for wealth and create a more mindful society. A lucid writer, the author is refreshingly direct—tax cuts for the wealthy are “immoral and counterproductive”; stimulus funding and budget cutting are “gimmicks”—and he offers recommendations for serious reform.

An important assessment of what ails America, and a must-read for policymakers. (Author tour to New York, Boston, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Dallas, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Seattle. Agent: Scott Moyers)

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BEST FRIENDS, OCCASIONAL ENEMIES The Lighter Side of Life as a Mother and Daughter Scottoline, Lisa Serritella, Francesca St. Martin’s (256 pp.) $24.99 | November 22, 2011 978-0-312-65163-3

Slice-of-life vignettes from a motherdaughter duo.

Bestselling novelist Scottoline (Save Me, 2011, etc.) and daughter Serritella—who write the Chick Wit column at the Philadelphia Inquirer and have co-authored two previous books of nonfiction (Why My Third Husband Will Be a Dog, 2009, etc.)—share a similar anecdotal style, bemusement and brevity. Writing in the tradition of American humorists such as Erma Bombeck, they consider events with aplomb, from “Twitterific flirting” to the hazards of dog walking, from the pain of trading in a favorite car to the complexities of aging. Recurrent subjects include Mother Mary (Scottoline’s opinionated, Italian mother), pets, travel through airport terminals, fashion and the universality of mother-daughter relationships. On the latter, Scottoline writes, “I have a scientific theory that the bonds that tie mothers and daughters are love and worry, like the two strands in the double helix of some very twisty DNA.” Such broad strokes can be attributed to the escapist nature of the work; these writings are not intended as more than amusing morsels, and most problems portrayed are minor. The authors allow readers to recognize themselves in familiar circumstances and to smile at their self-deprecating approach. Though the majority of entries are written by Scottoline, the handful by Serritella are noteworthy for the counterpoint they provides—she offers a younger generation’s perspective on the everyday. Black-and-white family photographs lend a homey feel to the experience, which culminates in a reminder to mothers and daughters that friendship between them can last a lifetime.

A treat for fans of observational humor.

RECORD COLLECTING FOR GIRLS Unleashing Your Inner Music Nerd, One Album at a Time

Smith, Courtney E. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (224 pp.) $13.95 | September 7, 2011 978-0-547-50223-6

Music writer Smith narrates a melodious road map with much autobiographical detail interwoven.

Despite its title, the self-taught “music obsessive” author’s debut is not a guide book; nor is it aimed specifically at female readers. Instead, it’s a hybrid: part collection of loosely related essays on the music industry, female rock stars and pop music in general; and part memoir, focusing on Smith’s particular tastes in 1448

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music and how that music affects every aspect of her life, most specifically her dating life. The author’s experience in the industry, however overblown and self-aggrandizing (“I’ve been shaping the music you’ve listened to for a decade,” she declares), makes her extremely confident and knowledgeable about popular music, and there is much here that is both interesting and informative.

But some of Smith’s material is disconcerting, such as defining people and events solely through the lens of pop music. Those who share similar tastes will enjoy the book; readers who don’t will find the author aggravating (particularly while making sweeping generalizations about music she doesn’t like) and boring.

Too many intricate details of Smith’s past relationships and boilerplate clichés (e.g., why she won’t date a man who listens too often to The Smiths) make for an uneven collection of essays, ostensibly about music. (Author tour, including New York, Los Angeles, Austin and San Francisco)

A DECADE OF HOPE Stories of Grief and Endurance from 9/11 Families and Friends

Smith, Dennis Viking (256 pp.) $26.95 | September 1, 2011 978-0-670-02293-9

The 10th anniversary of 9/11 is memorialized through 25 heartrending accounts of loss and resilience.

As with his Report from Ground Zero (2002), retired firefighter and prolific author Smith (San Francisco Is Burning: The Untold Story of the 1906 Earthquake and Fires, 2005, etc.) assembles another compilation of courageous stories, many from interviews conducted with dedicated civil servants like the tireless NYFD firefighters, policemen and other Ground Zero attendants who directly responded to the disaster in 2001. Brooklyn fire operations chief Dan Nigro recalls running for his life when the South Tower collapsed around him; he goes on to spiritedly reflect on his 33 years on the force and shares his outspoken opinion on America’s MiddleEastern political involvement (“I think it’s crap”). While FDNY lung specialist David Prezant dug himself out from falling debris to manage a triage area for the seriously wounded, Ladder 6 Captain Jay Jonas and his men raced against time to rescue resilient civilian Josephine Harris. Police commissioner Ray Kelly and chairman of Homeland Security Peter King authoritatively describe counterterrorism measures and strategies currently in place to thwart further terrorist activity, though King emerges as less optimistic about the country’s short-term anti-terrorist goals. While the focus is clearly on recollections from the brotherhood of Ground Zero rescue firefighters, Smith presents a well-rounded selection of interviews, prefaced with descriptive information. From a Manhattan highschool principal whose unshakable faith kept her strong, to griefstricken widows, brothers, sisters and countless families fractured by devastating losses, Smith consistently wrings moving humanity from each contributor’s story.

A stirring tapestry of real-life heroes. (Agent: Al Zuckerman)

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REMEDY AND REACTION The Peculiar American Struggle Over Health Care Reform

Starr, Paul Yale Univ. (336 pp.) $28.50 | October 25, 2011 978-0-300-17109-9

Starr provides a roadmap to the evolution of the health-care debate, a profile of participants and an explanation and interpretation of ideological jargon in a readable way.

Pulitzer winner and American Prospect co-founder Starr (Sociology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.; Freedom’s Power: The True Force of Liberalism, 2007, etc.) is a leading expert on health care and a former advisor to the Clinton White House.

Here he provides an overview of the “peculiar” efforts to legislate on health care in the United States. He uses “peculiar” to distinguish American practice in the area from that of other countries, to discuss the specific ways in which health-care legislative efforts evolved and to examine how one generation’s compromises—employment-based insurance in the 1940s— became successive generations’ untouchable special interest.

Starr’s standpoint is defined by his service during the Clinton administration. His account builds up to those years, by way of Nixon’s efforts for family health insurance, as well as earlier actions, when health-care coverage and costs in the U.S., Britain and Canada were comparable—and therefore quite different from today. The author demonstrates how political bipartisanship in search of practicable solutions, which had been customary prior to Clinton’s term, has been undermined, and how redefining health care away from a universal rights–based approach has impacted the policies adopted in both positive and negative ways.

A useful contribution as the country moves forward with the implementation of health-care reform. (Agent: Scott Moyers)

WEST OF 98 Living and Writing the New American West

Editor: Stegner, Lynn Editor: Rowland, Russell Univ. of Texas (380 pp.) $45.00 | (Paperback) $21.95 September 1, 2011 978-0-292-72343-6 (Paperback) 978-0-292-72686-4 Middling anthology of writing about the American West, focusing on regional identity.

Where is the West? By geographic convention, it begins at the 98th Meridian, where the rainfall shades off into scarcity and the grass gets dry. By literary convention, it’s a state of mind, a place where freedom awaits and the sky and land are big enough to engulf a puny human. Many of the contributors to |

this collection wrestle with one or another of these categories, though an ever-sardonic Charles Bowden puts an end to the incertitude: “So based on the evidence, the case could be made that I live in the West and therefore I am a Westerner. But this claim is bullshit.” Bowden is in good company with the likes of Charles Daniel, Denise Chávez and Jim Harrison, all of whom serve up hymns of not-uncritical praise to the region. Yet the anthology is not wholly satisfactory. One problem is that the contributors are, in the main, the usual suspects—Rick Bass, Barry Lopez, Terry Tempest Williams and the like—who have already said elsewhere what they say here. Another, related to the first, is that these voices are overwhelmingly white (and, less overwhelmingly, academic); an anthology of this sort should be the first to assert by example and not sentiment alone that the West is a place where Anglo, Native and Hispanic cultures meet. That said, there are some excellent pieces here, including a standout essay by Jim Hepworth on growing up in a broken home among Blackfoot Indian basketball whizzes in a place where “the moonless sky above us stretched from horizon to horizon as black as the Lone Ranger’s mask, but it was also a sky filled with a billion planets and stars.” Bowden is customarily grim, but customarily right about things, while Harrison growls, nicely, “If the mountains were actually ennobling I would have noticed it by now.” Other contributors include Louise Erdrich, Antonya Nelson, C.J. Box, William Kittredge and Gary Snyder.

A collection that doesn’t quite live up to its promise.

PULPHEAD Essays

Sullivan, John Jeremiah Farrar, Straus and Giroux (384 pp.) $16.00 | November 1, 2011 978-0-374-53290-1 Though many of the articles collected here illuminate the surfaces of popular culture, the best of them go deeper into the heart of America.

Most of these essays are reported pieces, some of them profiles (of musical artists Bunny Wailer and Axl Rose), others long-form feature stories (on a Christian rock festival, reality TV, the Tea Party revolt). Yet New York Times Magazine contributing writer Sullivan (Blood Horses: Notes of a Sportswriter’s Son, 2004) is always inherently a part of these stories, conscious of himself as an observer and of his perspective as an interpreter, though never gratuitously or self-indulgently intrusive. As a writer for publications ranging from GQ to the Paris Review (where he is the southern editor), the native Kentuckian now living in North Carolina shows his familiarity with what one piece terms “the tragic spell of the South,” whether he’s writing about his complicated relationship with a literary mentor or rekindling memories of an evangelical past while bonding with believers at a music festival. Throughout, he recognizes the danger of “a too-easy eloquence,” and his appreciation of the “unknowable” Michael Jackson in particular challenges a facile understanding. As is

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“A wholly satisfying history of America’s most satisfying naval victory, won in June 1942 with vastly inferior forces.” from the battle of midway

usually the case in such collections, some of the pieces are slighter than others, though none seem journalistically dated.

Even “At a Shelter (After Katrina)” comes alive on the page through the vividness of its sensory detail. Sullivan’s ambition is evident and suggests that he has a much bigger book in him, whether he’s examining “a historical portal [where] you could slip into it and get behind the eyes of the American mind for a minute” or contemplating “the future of the human race” (hint: It involves a war against the animal world, which may have some scientific basis or may be a flight of fantasy).

Mostly impressive work from a writer who frequently causes readers to challenge their own perspectives.

STIRRING IT UP WITH MOLLY IVINS A Memoir with Recipes Sweets, Ellen Univ. of Texas (266 pp.) $29.95 | October 1, 2011 978-0-292-72265-1

An account of the friendship between Austin reporter Sweets and noted columnist Molly Ivins, complete with recipes they cooked together.

The narrative calls to mind a hot evening sitting on a front porch, shooting the breeze and drinking beer with friends. Stories are swapped, not in any particular order, but rather as the spirit moves the assembled party. And Sweets has assembled quite a party: Friends, colleagues, family members and admirers of the late Ivins share tales of her famously sharp political wit, her dedication to her beliefs and her culinary mishaps and triumphs. The author reminds us frequently that though Ivins was a private woman, she connected to others through food.

Readers who loved her prose can now also love her Four Seasons Fancy Chocolate Cake and her Ouefs Brouille. Though several of the recipes are extremely time-consuming, there are also less-complicated versions of famously complicated dishes (see “Cassoulet, Sorta”). To replicate the front-porch feeling, it might be best to scan the recipes and then read the accompanying anecdotes while your African Chicken is simmering. There is no real narrative arc and little discernible organization; the book could be either amiably rambling or lackadaisically unglued, depending on the reader’s fondness for long, interminable postdinner conversations rendered in prose. The author overuses the technique of using paragraph breaks and short sentences to create drama, but otherwise the stories are funny, touching and revealing—and augmented with plenty of photos.

Not quite a memoir or a cookbook, this affectionate biography of a friendship vividly illustrates the importance of cooking to one of the 20th century’s most beloved progressive writers and activists.

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THE BATTLE OF MIDWAY

Symonds, Craig L. Oxford Univ. (464 pp.) $27.95 | October 1, 2011 978-0-19-539793-2 A wholly satisfying history of America’s most satisfying naval victory, won in June 1942 with vastly inferior forces.

Symonds (History Emeritus/U.S. Naval Academy; The Civil War at Sea, 2009, etc.) writes that America’s overwhelming industrial superiority doomed Japan, but adds that this was nowhere in evidence following Pearl Harbor, when its immense fleet with 10 aircraft carriers dwarfed the United States’ four. By April, Japan had performed so well that leaders debated what to do next. The winner was charismatic Admiral Yamamoto, whose victory at Pearl Harbor gave him unprecedented authority. He proposed attacking tiny Midway Island, 1,200 miles west of Hawaii, claiming that this would draw American carriers to its defense, and their destruction would force a negotiated peace.

Yamamoto’s superiors opposed the plan but caved in. Thanks to American code breakers, U.S. forces knew Japanese intentions— useful information although not as vital as some historians claim.

Approaching Midway, each fleet searched for and located the other almost simultaneously. In the subsequent action, both sides experienced the confusion, blunders and blind chance that invariably accompanies battles. Better luck and fewer blunders favored the U.S., which sank four Japanese carriers.

Essentially a history of the Pacific war from January to June 1942 (Midway does not enter the picture until 100 pages in), this is a lucid, intensely researched, mildly revisionist account of a significant moment in American military history. (40 halftones, 10 line)

DO I GET MY ALLOWANCE BEFORE OR AFTER I’M GROUNDED? Stop Fighting, Start Talking, and Get to Know Your Teen

Van Petten, Vanessa Plume (288 pp.) $15.00 | August 30, 2011 978-0-452-29741-8

A 25-year-old “youthologist” offers firsthand insight to assist parents and children in building better relationships.

By the time Van Petten was ready to celebrate her Sweet Sixteen, she had already achieved success as the founder of RadicalParenting.com, a website that curates parenting tips from teenagers. Building on the same formula that won her numerous accolades and skyrocketed sales of her two previously self-published titles, the author culls advice from teenagers and translates it directly into language parents can understand. “Some of the advice in this book you may not like,” Van Petten cautions

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parents in the introduction. This might be particularly true of the chapter entitled, “Risky Business: Smoking, Drinking, Sex and More,” in which the author adamantly states from the getgo, “Every teen will engage in ‘risky’ behavior.” Practical solutions on how to address issues ranging from chores to curfews, and even cyber bullying, can be found here, in addition to exercises for parents and their teens to improve family unity. Most effective is the author’s discussion of the distractions and difficulties presented by society’s increasing reliance on technology; she suggests enforcing electronic-free times and areas and engaging in family-wide discussions about what it means to be a good cybercitizen. Van Petten’s overarching message is that all teenagers are different, and regardless of their issues, most teenagers wish their parents would talk and listen to them more, not less.

A rational approach to defuse hand-to-hand combat parenting.

LAST DAY ON EARTH A Portrait of the NIU School Shooter

Vann, David Univ. of Georgia (184 pp.) $24.95 | October 20, 2011 978-0-8203-3839-2

Acclaimed novelist Vann (Caribou Island, 2011, etc.) alternates his own adolescent fantasies about guns and school shootings with those of Steve Kazmierczak, who on Valentine’s Day 2008 killed five and wounded 18 on the Northern Illinois University campus before ending his own life.

The author’s notes that his back story and that of Kazmierczak are similar. Though an outwardly well-behaved, exceptional student, Vann began an obsession with guns at age 13 after his father’s suicide; the author had easy access to the weaponry his father left behind. When he read about Kazmierczak’s rampage, the author felt compelled to investigate and obtained an assignment from Esquire. Gaining access to Kazmierczak’s 1,500-page police file, Vann delved into the reasons for the mass murder. Those who had known Kazmierczak only during his years as a NIU student might have seen a dedicated scholar in the making, a potential professor of criminology who earned high grades and participated in campus activities. By relying on the law-enforcement files, however, Vann began to understand the demons of a manic depressive individual who had used powerful medications heavily, demonstrated suicidal tendencies for years, become alienated from family members and found it difficult to maintain friendships and romantic relationships.

Although he rarely deviates from his own history and the arc of Kazmierczak’s troubled life, Vann occasionally provides background on previous campus mass murderers (including the 2007 tragedy at Virginia Tech) and on the ease of purchasing deadly weapons in the United States.

A carefully crafted account of a descent into fatal madness.

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MAN IN THE MUSIC The Creative Life and Work of Michael Jackson

Vogel, Joseph Sterling (320 pp.) $24.95 | November 1, 2011 978-1-4027-7938-1

An attempt to offer critical perspective on music that the author loves

uncritically.

Vogel’s goal is worthy: to rescue Jackson’s artistic legacy from the distortions of the tabloid press, a celebrity-obsessed culture and the aftershocks of his shocking death. Terming his subject “the archetypical misunderstood artist,” the author provides comprehensive context, detail and analysis of every Jackson solo album and every individual track (sometimes pages worth on a single song), as well as cuts that have remained unreleased. Vogel admits that he “frequently felt out of my depth” and “quickly realized that my role would necessarily be as much editor as author.”

The research is impressive, but the book would have benefited from better editing and more critical nuance. As he quotes a halfdozen or more reviews of an album (or track), he embraces those that are positive and discredits anything negative as an inability to listen “objectively,” whatever that might mean in the field of criticism. His own escalation of superlatives and comparisons approaches delirium: “Off the Wall did for R&B what the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds did for rock”; “ ‘Man in the Mirror’ stands with classics such as John Lennon’s ‘Imagine,’ Marvin Gaye’s ‘What’s Goin’ On,” and the Beatles’ ‘Let It Be’ as one of the great social anthems of the modern age.” By the time readers reach this statement—“HIStory makes a strong case for being Jackson’s magnum opus—and one of the best albums by any artist in the 1990s”—the author’s perspective has become increasingly difficult to trust; it’s as if Vogel feels that overstatement is a necessary corrective to the critical slights the artist has suffered.

Some fans will appreciate the author’s seriousness of purpose (which others will find tedious), but the book has more value as a reference work than a critical study. (Agent: Helen Zimmerman)

PHYSICS ON THE FRINGE Smoke Rings, Circlons, and the Alternative Theories of Everything

Wertheim, Margaret Walker (336 pp.) $26.00 | October 25, 2011 978-0-8027-1513-5

Maverick science writer Wertheim (A Field Guide to Hyperbolic Space, 2005, etc.) challenges the right of the scientific establishment to lay claim to the position of gatekeepers of truth.

After receiving an undergraduate degree in physics, the author pursued a career as a journalist, writing a column on science for three fashion magazines including Vogue Australia. At that

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time, she began following the work of outliers in the field, and in 1994 she discovered Jim Carter, a central figure in this book.

She admires his commitment to describe physics in terms a layman can comprehend without knowledge of higher mathematics.

Carter rejects the theories of Newton, Faraday, Maxwell and Einstein, as well as quantum theory, in favor of his own view of the universe. Wertheim describes his theory that in this universe, “all matter and energy are explained by the mechanics of subatomic particles each one shaped like a circle of coiled spring.” She compares his down-to-earth approach to physics with that of Richard Feynman when he demonstrated the brittleness of O-rings under freezing conditions. The author explains that she decided to write this book about “outsider physicists,” whose work is off the beaten track, after attending a 2003 conference of mainstream physicists sponsored by the Institute of Theoretical Physics on the “bizarre, magical worlds” proposed by various String Theories.

She contrasts this with a 2010 meeting sponsored by the Natural Philosophy Alliance—a group that offers fringe scientists an online platform where they can publish—attended by “dissident researchers” from around the world who presented more than 120 hotly debated papers—their own version of peer review.

Although her enthusiasm for alternate science is controversial, Wertheim raises an important question with broader ramifications: Since “anyone can publish a theory of physics online, what can be, or will be, or should be, our criteria for credibility in this field?” (16-page color insert and black-and-white throughout. Agent: Michelle Tessler)

HOW TO SURVIVE THE TITANIC or, The Sinking of J. Bruce Ismay

Wilson, Frances Harper/HarperCollins (352 pp.) $26.99 | October 11, 2011 978-0-06-209454-4

Wilson (The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth, 2009) tells the story of the Titanic’s polarizing owner, who was aboard the vessel and survived its fatal 1912 collision with an iceberg.

The author demonstrates an impressive knowledge of that night to remember. She reminds us of the ship’s enormous size, its “unsinkable” reputation, its insufficiencies (not nearly enough lifeboats) and its principal function: to transport emigrants, who composed the large majority of the passengers. But her focus is the ship’s laconic owner, J. Bruce Ismay, who found a spot on one of the last lifeboats to leave the stricken vessel. (He later claimed, with some eyewitnesses’ substantiation, that no one else was around; a seat was open so he took it.) Many later reviled him, believing he should have chosen to perish with those left behind. Throughout, Wilson relies heavily not just on the documentary evidence—there were official hearings on both sides of the Atlantic; she summarizes both in detail—but on her literary training and interest. Allusions to literature abound—Moby-Dick, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” Frankenstein, Charles Dickens, Alice in Wonderland, Virginia Woolf 1452

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(who attended some of the hearings in England), E.M. Forester and, most significantly, Joseph Conrad and his Lord Jim, a novel whose plot parallels in striking fashion the story of Ismay. At times, Wilson loses herself in Conrad, and one chunky section of her text resembles nothing so much as an essay by an earnest grad student of Modern British Literature. Literary analogies can be arresting, but the author’s tour of Conrad is excessive and distracting. Far better are the sections where she mines Ismay’s pathetic letters, the numerous newspaper accounts and the survivors’ testimony.

An up-and-down history of an intriguing figure. (Two 16-page black-and-white inserts; 15 photos. Author appearances in New York and Washington, D.C.)

THE QUEST Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World

Yergin, Daniel Penguin Press (816 pp.) $37.95 | September 20, 2011 978-1-59420-283-4

CNBC global energy expert and Pulitzer winner Yergin (The Commanding Heights: The Battle Between Government and the Marketplace That Is Remaking the Modern World, 1998, etc.) returns with an appropriately massive tome on an endlessly important subject: the world’s energy future.

“The world’s appetite for energy in the years ahead will grow enormously,” writes the author in the opening pages. Just how enormously remains to be seen; as he writes, energy consumption grew by nearly half across the world in the last 20 years, a result of increasing economic development, and it is likely to increase by nearly as much. But how to feed that increasing demand? In a timely discussion, Yergin examines the aftermath of the recent earthquake and tsunami in northeastern Japan, where damage to nuclear power plants caused Germany and other European powers to declare a moratorium on new plants within their borders.

Even France, the world’s largest exporter of electricity, much generated by nuclear power, has voiced misgivings about the energy source. In a fluent narrative, Yergin looks closely at three big issues: whether the energy will in fact be there to meet the demand, what sorts of conflicts will be generated with the generation of power and whether energy needs and environmental concerns can ever be balanced. Importantly, he argues for diversity in energy, particularly because of the well-known law of long lead times in making changes to the energy mix—in other words, it takes much time and much planning to convert from one source to another, and the world will need to employ every source it can get. For that reason, the author projects continued reliance on fossil fuels over renewables. At the same time, he emphasizes an indirect source of energy, namely the more efficient use of the energy we already have, for which there must be greater economic incentives.

Capably ranging from science to history to politics, Yergin serves up a highly readable, sometimes sobering view of what the near future will look like—and it may not be pretty.

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children & teens THE CENTAUR’S DAUGHTER

Abbott, Ellen Jensen Marshall Cavendish (336 pp.) $17.99 | (e-book ): $17.99 September 1, 2011 978-0-7614-5978-1 (e-book ): 978-0-7614-6087-9 Series: Watersmeet Volume: 2 Heavy-handed moralizing weighs down a generic but competent coming-of-age fantasy.

Abisina had thought that the death of the Charach would lead her mother’s people, the xenophobic, misogynistic Vranians, to embrace the egalitarian philosophy of Watersmeet, led by her heroic centaur father. But things didn’t work out that way: Watersmeet, overwhelmed by refugees, chooses isolation and casts out Abisina and her friends when they protest. Exiled to the south, they find the Vranians suffering from the devastation the war left behind but still no more accepting of dwarves, centaurs and fauns than before. Even worse, Abisina discovers that she has inherited more from her father than his ideals: a legacy that may destroy her sense of self. This title is very much a “middle book,” as several subplots are set in motion, but none are really resolved. Convenient revelations provide a hint of back story to the world, but there’s not much coherent explanation, nor any nuance to individuals or communities. There is nothing original in the narrative treatment of the magical creatures, who are distinguished mostly by their attitudes towards Abisina: They either adore her uncritically or are bigots and bullies. The overt message of equality wars with the subtext that talent, authority and morality derive from genetic descent rather than actions and beliefs.

Nonetheless, readers who don’t mind being bludgeoned with “Tolerance GOOD! Prejudice BAD!” should find this a diverting-enough adventure. (Fantasy. 12-16)

THE GHOSTS OF GRIBBLESEA PIER

Abela, Deborah Farrar, Straus and Giroux (240 pp.) $15.99 | October 11, 2011 978-0-374-36239-3 Can 12-year-old Aurelie possibly save her family’s deteriorating amusement-parkon-a-pier from evil Lucien B. Crook, even with help from some ghostly relatives?

Aurelie, refreshingly capable of embracing her unusual way of life and surrounded by a cast of quirky kin, faces incessant bullying at school, mostly from a pair of smarmy classmates, abetted by Rufus, the misguided (bullied as well as bullying) son of the obsequious mayor, Finnigus Bog. Blackmailed by ruthless real-estate mogul Crook, the mayor is conspiring to engineer the downfall of Gribblesea Pier. Aurelie’s relatives, many of them exceedingly lively ghosts, have a few tricks up their sleeves, but it will take more than their capable efforts to defeat Crook’s team. Characters abound, many of them defined mostly by their humorous names rather than by any significant descriptive development. The plot races along at a breakneck pace, leaving little room for nuance, yet never quite hitting a stride of madcap silliness either. Subplots—Uncle Rolo’s long-abandoned love affair, the bullying Aurelie faces at school, Rufus’ problems with his father—add a little depth but mostly remain unresolved. Even the paranormal aspects of the tale are never fully plumbed; the ghosts are neither sufficiently ghostly to be interesting nor wacky enough to be funny, although humor seems to be the goal.

A fast-paced, mildly funny, never-quite-suspenseful tale that lacks a magical spark. (Paranormal adventure. 10-14)

MY RHINOCEROS

Agee, Jon Illustrator: Agee, Jon Michael di Capua/Scholastic (32 pp.) $16.95 | September 1, 2011 978-0-545-29441-6 What can a pet rhinoceros do? Not a lot, unless it has hidden talents.

A boy looks in the window of an exotic pet store, enters the shop and chooses a rhinoceros.

He’s a nice quiet pet and doesn’t cause any problems, but he doesn’t do any regular pet things, either. No rolling over or fetching. According to an expert, he should be able to pop

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“Once upon a time ‘science fiction’ was not invariably preceded by ‘dystopian,’ nor was it just a handy synonym for ‘paranormal.’” from ultraviolet

balloons and poke holes in kites, but a test run in the park is a dud. Did the boy get a lemon? Should he trade him in for a hippo? A series of mad events follows, in which robbers flee the scene of the crime in, you guessed it, balloons and kites, and our hero rhino saves the day. This special pet can fly, too!

An improbable tale for sure, but Agee strikes just the right note. He tells it with an absolutely straight face in simple unadorned language that will have readers laughing out loud at the antics. The clever format begins the action before the title page, in a silent prelude to the narration. The heavily outlined cartoons are sharp and brightly colored and sprawl across the pages in perfect harmony with the text. Young readers might very well ask for a pet rhino of their own.

Lighthearted fun as a read-aloud or read-alone. (Picture book. 3-7)

ULTRAVIOLET

Anderson, R.J. Carolrhoda Lab (312 pp.) $17.95 | (e-book ) $12.95 September 1, 2011 978-0-7613-7408-4 (e-book ): 978-0-7613-7947-8 Once upon a time “science fiction” was not invariably preceded by “dystopian,” nor was it just a handy synonym for “paranormal.” This breath of fresh air reintroduces readers to traditional science fiction, with the bonus of a strong heroine.

Alison, 16, has been hospitalized ever since her beautiful, popular classmate, Tori, disappeared. Her claim that she disintegrated Tori landed her in the psychiatric ward and soon gets her transferred to a residential treatment facility for seriously disturbed teen patients. Confused, conflicted, fighting the deadening effects of medication, Alison is desperate to leave the hospital yet fearful of what she might do if freed. These worries are complicated by her long-held secret: She has synesthesia.

This sensory cross-wiring causes Alison to experience numbers as colors; she hears stars and tastes lies. She’s long obeyed her mother’s warning to tell no one. Now a mysterious, attractive young doctor has nosed out her secret. Anderson, a Canadian author of fantasy, is an assured storyteller with a knack for creating memorable characters. The barren, northern Ontario setting—where NASA astronauts once trained for moon landings—slyly accents a twisty plot refreshingly free of YA cliché.

In bracing contrast to her passive, vampire-fodder counterparts, Alison steers her own course throughout her multi-layered journey—a thoroughly enjoyable ride. (author’s note) (Science fiction. 12 & up)

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CALLI

Anderson, Jessica Lee Milkweed (198 pp.) $16.95 | (Paperback ): $8.00 September 1, 2011 978-1-57131-702-5 (Paperback ): 978-1-57131-699-8 When one of her two moms is diagnosed with lupus and a new foster sister her own age moves in, things become complicated for Calli.

Life in her Louisiana suburb has been pretty straightforward, with boyfriend Dub lighting up the romance and friend Delia a solid support. All of that goes haywire when new foster sibling Cherish makes a play for Dub, Delia finds a new buddy and Calli finds she is unable to turn to either mom for help. Another foster child is anticipated, and the circumstance, while not overwhelming, begins to really eat at her. Attempts to teach Cherish what it feels like to have her stuff co-opted backfire, and Calli learns the hard way that retribution isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

On the typical teen-angst scale, this is fairly tepid, though it’s serious enough to Calli, whose first-person, present-tense narration wrings emotion at every opportunity. Resolution comes fairly easily, as French homework, weekly family outings at a local buffet and “intervention” shopping trips with Delia and her new pal combine with Calli’s admitting her wrong and making an effort to make things right.

This story about an average girl who rises to some unusual challenges in steady fashion makes for comfortable middle-of-the-road fare. (Fiction. 12-16)

JANE & MIZMOW

Armstrong, Matthew S. Illustrator: Armstrong, Matthew S. Harper/HarperCollins (32 pp.) $15.99 | (Library Ed ): $16.89 October 1, 2011 978-0-06-117719-4 (Library Ed ): 978-0-06-117720-0 A little girl and her rather unusual pal quarrel, but they know just how to make up, too, in this charming paean to friendship.

Jane’s best friend’s a cuddly “monster” named Mizmow, and having a monster as a best friend can be challenging. Mizmow loves climbing trees, while Jane likes keeping her feet securely on the ground. Jane and Mizmow both love the seesaw, though loving it together can be problematic. Jane likes jumping into piles of raked red leaves, and Mizmow loves snacking on them. Jane helps Mizmow shower, and he keeps her feet warm at night. One chilly day, they fight over their favorite knit hat, leaving Mizmow “mad” and Jane “more mad.” Suddenly, they’re not best friends anymore, and doing things alone isn’t much fun. “How can you get your best friend back?” Jane and Mizmow find the perfect solution. Humorous, softly hued illustrations cast Mizmow as a big, brown, fluffy critter sporting rabbitlike ears, chickenlike feet and

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a crooked, impish grin. Reminiscent of cartoon animation, the visual action progresses in two or four frames per page, with and without text, focusing on Jane and Mizmow cheerfully together, glumly apart and enthusiastically reunited.

A whimsical, gentle reminder that even the best friendships occasionally wobble, especially if a quirky, but endearing monster’s involved. (Picture book. 3-5)

SAMANTHA ON A ROLL

Ashman, Linda Illustrator: Davenier, Christine Farrar, Straus and Giroux (40 pp.) $16.99 | October 11, 2011 978-0-374-36399-4 Things get a bit dicey when plucky Samantha experiments with her new roller skates in one frightening, hilarious inaugural “roll” through town.

Eager to try out her new roller skates, Samantha’s undaunted when her mother’s too busy to help her learn. Instead of putting the skates away as her mother instructs, Samantha puts them on and carefully cruises “through the kitchen, through the den, / Down the hall and back again.” Positive her mother won’t mind, Samantha slides out the door and skates down the sidewalk and up Hawthorn Hill, where “she doesn’t note the long, STEEP slope” until it’s too late and she’s speeding downhill, very much out of control. Clueless how to brake, Samantha creates havoc as she flies by Will chasing butterflies, bumps into Matt playing ball, snags Katie’s kite string, collides with an outdoor bridal party, “Slaloms through the marching band, / Overturns the ice cream stand” and soars up a skateboard ramp.

The jaunty text in easy-to-remember couplets starts slowly as Samantha inches along on her new skates and accelerates into a sweeping crescendo memorializing her downward descent.

Colored-pencil–and-watercolor illustrations rely on energized, quick lines to maximize Samantha’s exaggerated facial expressions and frantic body language as she careens across the page.

A memorable first skate by an irresistible imp. (Picture book. 4-7)

FROST

Baer, Marianna Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins (400 pp.) $17.99 | September 13, 2011 978-0-06-179949-5

England prep school) with an unexpected roommate, eccentric Celeste. When not photographing dead beetles, Celeste tries to cover up unexplained events at Frost, from a closet that smells like death to bruises all over her body. Instead of the idyllic year Leena planned, she begins hiding out in her own closet when she sinks into anxiety and experiences her own strange occurrences.

After Leena dates Celeste’s older brother, David, who took a year off to care for their father, who suffers from schizoaffective disorder, the roommates, both vying for David’s attention, initiate cat-and-mouse games. It’s up to readers to figure out who—or what—is causing all the mental instability in Frost House among the plot twists and turns. Baer has a knack for dialogue and creating creepy situations that will intrigue teens. But because the story line is rather repetitive and drawn out, the surprise ending makes more of a whimper than a bang.

For those fans of Gail Giles and Nancy Werlin who don’t mind thrillers with a slower pace. (Thriller. 13 & up)

MAX’S CASTLE

Banks, Kate Illustrator: Kulikov, Boris Farrar, Straus and Giroux (48 pp.) $16.99 | October 25, 2011 978-0-374-39919-1 Banks and Kulikov’s Max is back in his third escapade of wordplay.

Billing it as a sequel to Max’s Words (2006) and Max’s Dragon (2008), this author/illustrator team again presents a clever tale that embodies the possibilities of a child’s imagination. When Max finds something amazing in a box under his bed—wooden alphabet blocks—he uses them to start building a castle. His two older brothers get into the act, and, lo and behold, WALLS become HALLS, a MOAT becomes a BOAT, PIRATES become RAT PIES, and BATTLE becomes BABBLE as the boys move the blocks, rearrange letters and transform words into a full-blown castle scenario. That is, until the castle comes under siege by a BLACK CAT turned BLOCK CAT (“It must smell the rat pies,” says Karl). Playful perspectives, vivid colors and animated action are brilliantly executed with details that require a second look, then a third. Kulikov takes readers back and forth from reality to fantasy using the alphabet blocks as a bridge in inspiring fashion. The “king called his knights to the round table. And for their loyal FEATS he organized a FEAST. From the castle TAPESTRY he made PASTRY. And from the PARAPETS he made TEA.” This homage to the power of imagination one ingenious and entertaining game of wordplay. (Picture book. 5-8)

Boarding school turns from magical to deadly in this debut.

After discovering Frost House, the shabby-chic Victorian hidden on the edge of campus, and convincing the dean to let her and her best friends room in it, Leena returns to start senior year of Barcroft (a quintessential New |

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COLORS OF ME

Barnes, Brynne Illustrator: Nelson, Annika M. Sleeping Bear Press (28 pp.)

(Library Ed ): $15.95 | September 1, 2011 (Library Ed ): 978-1-58536-541-8 Barnes’ earnest, rather oblique text interrogating the use of colors as labels for people is at odds with its playful, naive collage art.

The clunky opening line reads, “I’m just a kid coloring the world in the pictures I drew. I look in my crayon box to see which one I’d be…I wonder if kids are colors too,” propelling readers into a lengthy rumination on whether elements of the natural world “see” a child as a color. “Am I a color to the sky?

Am I a color in my dreams? Am I a color to the moon? Am I a color to the sea?” The ideological slant declares color an inadequate and limiting description or category for a human being.

While a laudable message, it seems a rather abstract one for the intended child audience, though Nelson’s accompanying, playful and, yes, colorful, collage illustrations seem much more in tune with young children’s sensibilities. This title doesn’t measure up to other more developmentally appropriate titles prompting discussion about race, ethnicity and diversity. Let’s Talk about Race, by Julius Lester and illustrated by Karen Barbour (2005), and The Skin You Live in, by Michael Tyler and illustrated by David Lee Csicsko (2005), are just two of these.

The book has its heart in the right place, but its mind is too clearly focused on adult agendas and preoccupations.

(Picture book. 5-8)

IT HAPPENED ON A TRAIN

Barnett, Mac Illustrator: Rex, Adam Simon & Schuster (288 pp.) $15.99 | October 4, 2011 978-1-4169-7819-0 Series: Brixton Brothers Volume: 3 The Brixton Brothers Detective Agency is no more.

Kid gumshoe Steve Brixton (who actually doesn’t have a brother, he just picked the name because it mirrors his beloved Bailey Brothers detective stories) has, at the ripe old age of 12, retired from the detecting game. He became disenchanted upon discovering, during his last adventure (Ghostwriter Secret, 2010), that the author of those inspiring books was actually a criminal mastermind. So Steve’s given up his agency, and now his best chum Dana is spending entirely too much time with Other Dana, his girlfriend. Little does Steve know that signing up for the Model U.N. with Dana and Other Dana will place him on a train rocketing toward detecting destiny! When meeting a mysterious young lady onboard gets Steve invited into the mysterious last car on the Sunset Coastliner, Steve and Dana (but not Other Dana) 1456

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find themselves invited to protect Mr. Vanderdraak’s new, vintage motor car from serial car thieves! Can Steve solve the case? More importantly, can he go more than five minutes without getting trapped somewhere? Barnett’s sly and often silly Hardy Boy parody chugs along with plenty of laughs and enough honest-to-gosh mystery to please any lover of boy detective fiction. Rex’s blackand-white pencils (which also parody the Hardy tales) are still a fine match for the goofiness.

Mention of the next adventure at mystery’s close will make Brixton fans smile. (Humorous mystery. 10-14)

THE JEWEL FISH OF KARNAK

Base, Graeme Illustrator: Base, Graeme Abrams (40 pp.) $19.95 | September 1, 2011 978-1-4197-0086-6 Detailed paintings accompanied by panels of hieroglyphics grace a slim plot and a perplexing puzzle.

Jackal and Ibis are two (amusingly) low-life characters in ancient Egypt. Caught stealing, they are offered the chance to avoid punishment by retrieving a jeweled fish for the Cat Pharaoh.

Not surprisingly, given that they have described themselves as “poor and stupid thieves,” they manage to muff this opportunity when they accidentally allow the golden fish to make contact with water—the very thing they had been warned against. Magically coming to life, the fish swims away, condemning them to spend the rest of their lives searching for it. Readers are invited to help by identifying the lost fish using a series of movable pages embedded in the back cover. Sliding each of the three circles creates fish of varying patterns. Discovering the correct pattern and reporting it to the author’s website will bring an unspecified reward. As always, Base’s illustrations are appealing and elaborate. An alphabetical key that accompanies the hieroglyphics provides access to additional content. Endpapers appear to be textured stone.

Jackal and Ibis have expressive eyes that enhance the humor and effectively convey their emotions, while the snappish Crocodile Prince’s fierce fangs seem sharp enough to pierce the page.

Base’s fans will be thrilled to have another challenge to pore over. (Picture book. 7-10)

ALICIA ALONSO

Prima Ballerina Bernier-Grand, Carmen T. Illustrator: Colón, Raúl Marshall Cavendish (64 pp.) $19.99 | (e-book ): $19.99 September 1, 2011 978-0-7614-5562-2 (e-book ): 978-0-7614-5994-1 A biography in poems and pictures of the prima ballerina assoluta of Cuba, who thrilled audiences for decades with

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“In a visual feast for fans of wheeled vehicles large and small, Biggs presents a series of high-density street scenes done in an amiably rumpled cartoon style.” from everything goes: on land

her extraordinary technique and beautiful interpretations of Giselle and other classics.

Alonso danced flamenco as a child, but because “ballet dancing / tastes better / than chocolate ice cream,” she chose it as her lifelong passion. Loss of peripheral vision early in her career and, years later, near total blindness never deterred her.

After wooing audiences in New York City and across America, she returned to Cuba in 1959 when Fidel Castro funded her Ballet National de Cuba and remained steadfastly and controversially loyal to him and his government. America closed its doors to her until a triumphant return to New York in 1975 in Swan Lake. Bernier-Grand writes in short, free-verse vignettes that beautifully capture each step in Alonso’s personal life and career. Particularly touching is the poem “Dancing Fingers,” which describes Alonso dancing Giselle with her fingers as she lies in bed with bandaged eyes after surgery. Colón’s signature scratchboard illustrations in warm tones of blue, green and gold capture the colors of Cuba, the ethereal stage settings of Alonso’s greatest triumphs and her elegance and grandeur.

She has been a ballerina, a teacher, a Cuban and a role model for those with handicaps. Truly a noteworthy life, poignantly rendered here. (notes, bibliography) (Picture books/biography. 8-14)

EVERYTHING GOES: ON LAND

Biggs, Brian Illustrator: Biggs, Brian Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins (56 pp.) $14.99 | September 1, 2011 978-0-06-195809-0 In a visual feast for fans of wheeled vehicles large and small, Biggs presents a series of high-density street scenes done in an amiably rumpled cartoon style.

Driving in from the ’burbs to a generic metropolis, a lad and his dad gloss each big, double-page spread—“ ‘Do trucks work the same way as cars?’ / ‘Many of them do. Trucks also have jobs, like cars’ ”—as they glide through heavy traffic, past a construction site and under an elevated highway. They wait for fleets of bikes and motorcycles to pass and park at last near a train station to pick up Mom. Along with sparely labeled close-up or cutaway views of a car, a bicycle, a big truck, a subway station, an RV and other specimens, the author sets up the family reunion at the end with a giant double-gatefold aerial view of an entire neighborhood packed with traffic, pedestrians, local businesses and signs, each one individually distinct. Jokey side conversations (one firefighter tells another, “There’s no fire. It’s just a cat”; his companion asks, “Should we get some milk?”) play off more serious and informative dialogue. A diagram of a car is accompanied by a disquisition on the relationship between a car battery and the motor, as well as the fact that “[a]n electric car uses batteries and electric motor. No gas!”

A glory ride for young car, truck, train, bus and trolley devotees. (Informational picture book. 4-6) |

PEOPLE

Blexbolex Illustrator: Blexbolex Enchanted Lion Books (208 pp.) $19.95 | September 13, 2011 978-1-59270-110-0 In the wake of Seasons (2010), an equally beguiling barrage of simple images demonstrating this French illustrator’s unusual technical command and sharp powers of observation.

Screen printed on pleasantly rough paper in a limited range of colors, each of the over 200 figures (one per page, with rare exceptions) is composed of a few sharply distinct, realistically formed elements. They float beneath a large word or phrase that identifies a familiar activity (“Sleeping”), occupation (“Rabbi,” “Balloon Pilot”) or personal feature (“Amputee”). Many are paired with the facing image, often to witty effect: “Spy” follows “Eavesdropper”; a “Contortionist” and a “Plumber” adopt similar poses; the wintry breath of a man “Shivering” echoes that of one “Smoking.” Though most sport pink skin and contemporary western clothing, Blexbolex extends his purview with, for instance, two Maasai “Warriors” leaping, an Asian “Heroine” brandishing sais, a “Cowboy” and a “Pirate” in traditional garb—not to mention a “Corpse,” a green-skinned “Alien,” a “Mermaid” and a variety of humanoids from myth and legend such as “Cyclops” and “Demon.” The artist could have made more of an effort to be nonsexist in his language (“Fireman”) and exemplars (“Secretary,” “Waitress”), but the overall diversity and visual harmony complement the sheer tactile pleasure of turning the pages to create, cumulatively, an unusually rich browsing experience.

A memorable gallery of humanity (and its outliers). (Picture book. 6-9)

AN ANNOYING ABC

Bottner, Barbara Illustrator: Emberley, Michael Knopf (32 pp.) $17.99 | September 13, 2011 978-0-375-86708-8 What’s annoying? Adelaide annoys Bailey when she runs at him wearing her tiger costume, scaring him and causing him to let the gerbil out of its cage.

So begins a rollicking preschool/early-elementary romp featuring kids who appear in alphabetical order with a corresponding action as Adelaide sets off a domino effect. “Bailey blamed Clyde. / Clyde cried. / Dexter drooled on Eloise. / Eloise elbowed Flora. / Flora fumed.” The pandemonium that ensues is a clever visual narrative loaded with details, such as the gerbil-escape subplot. The hilarity lies in the illustrations, typical Emberley style, done in mechanical pencil and watercolors. Children (and Miss Mabel, the teacher) in the

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“A lyrical, understated punk-kid love song to Brooklyn and to chosen family.” from brooklyn burning

alphabetical spotlight are rendered in full color, while the other characters are in black and white against colored backgrounds. The kids sport a variety of skin colors, hairdos and clothing, with one girl (Ida) in a wheelchair. How does the mayhem resolve? When Zelda zaps Adelaide with the water hose, Adelaide, as instigator, apologizes, and so does everyone else. For the trickier letters, Q is Quentin; X is Xavier; Y is Yves. One read-through will simply not be enough to enjoy all the fun. This would make a splendid project for a classroom to make up their own alphabetical list of names.

A is for one awesome, amusing, antic alphabet book.

(Alphabet picture book. 4-8)

BROOKLYN BURNING

Brezenoff, Steve Carolrhoda Lab (208 pp.) $17.95 | (e-book ): $12.95 September 1, 2011 978-0-7613-7526-5 (e-book ): 978-0-7613-7945-4 A lyrical, understated punk-kid love song to Brooklyn and to chosen family.

Early in the summer of 2006, Scout comes to Greenpoint, Brooklyn, looking for someone to make music with. Kid, who plays drums and was kicked out by an angry father a year earlier, ostensibly for drinking, greets the newcomer with both suspicion and reluctant interest. Meanwhile, police are investigating the Greenpoint Terminal Warehouse fire—based on a true event—and Kid is a suspect. As Kid moves through the streets and shops of Brooklyn, the narration names each place, creating both specificity and familiarity. Flashbacks to the previous summer, the fire and Kid’s relationship with another troubled street kid slowly and deftly provide insight into Kid’s circumstances. Homelessness, queerness and the rougher sides of living on the street are handled without a whiff of sensationalism, and the moments between Kid, the first-person narrator, and Scout, addressed as “you,” are described in language so natural and vibrant that readers may not even notice that neither character’s gender is ever specified. While a couple of scenes with Kid’s mother feel overly redemptive, readers will probably be happy for them anyway.

Overall, the tone is as raw, down-to-earth and transcendent as the music Scout and Kid ultimately make together.

(Fiction. 14 & up)

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NINJA COWBOY BEAR PRESENTS THE CALL OF THE COWBOY

Bruins, David Illustrator: Leung, Hilary Kids Can (32 pp.) $16.95 | September 1, 2011 978-1-55453-748-8 Series: Ninja Cowboy Bear Volume: 3

Three good friends (who have been optioned for an animated series) experience friction but work it all out.

“The cowboy was a good friend to the ninja and the bear. / He was kind. / He was caring. / He was fun. / He was funny. / But sometimes he could cause a ruckus.” When he goes bird-watching with the bear, the pop of his gum and his boingy pogo stick scare away the birds. The cowboy doesn’t understand why the bear gives up and leaves. Later, when he pairs up with the ninja to read, the cowboy drums on a rock, plays hacky-sack and chats on his cell. The cowboy doesn’t understand why the ninja gives up on reading. As the cowboy walks through the noisy countryside trying to puzzle things out, he finally gets it. When the three reunite, they each share their hobbies and have a loud old time. Canadians Bruins and Leung return with their exuberant trio of three individuals who sometimes have to put in some effort to make their friendship work. The mix of full-bleed, spot and panel computer-generated illustrations again gives the simple tale visual pizzazz, and the cartoon characters virtually leap off the page.

So far, the ninja and the cowboy have received time in the spotlight; fans will be anticipating the bear’s entry, which is sure to follow. (Picture book. 2-6)

SALLY’S BONES

Cadenhead, MacKenzie Illustrator: Spookytooth, T. S. Sourcebooks Jabberwocky (176 pp.)

(Paperback ): $6.99 | September 20, 2011 (Paperback ): 978-1-4022-5943-2 Poised to give up the ghost, a lonely little girl finds a reason to live when she discovers a canine crony with a graveyard past.

With her “blunt-bobbed hair,” “chalky white skin” and Tone Death concert T-shirts, Sally Simplesmith doesn’t fit in with her pretty-in-pink sixth-grade Merryland Middle School classmates. After ultrapopular Viola Vanderperfect deliberately excludes her from everything, outcast Sally feels, well, “cast out.” Lying on her mother’s grave, Sally desperately longs for death. Instead, she gets Bones, a “bright-smiling, tail-wagging skeleton dog,” sent by her departed mother’s spirit. Bones becomes Sally’s best friend and savior. Her kind, but detached, father warns Sally to keep the “petrified pooch” a secret, but soon the “cadaverous canine” is exposed, and the “former social leper and her imperishable pet” become “overnight sensations.” When all neighborhood dog

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bones vanish, the D.C. (Dog Catcher) suspects Bones, forcing Sally to take drastic measures to exonerate him and uncover the real culprit. Could it be villainous Viola? Heavily tongue-in-cheek tombstone talk, snappy text, over-the-top melodrama plus a sympathetic heroine equal one hilarious read. Black-and-white spot art highlights skeletal Bones’ corporeal personality.

A silly, deliberately histrionic but surprisingly suspenseful preteen tale of despair, deception and redemption with a canine character straight out of a Tim Burton flick.

(Melodrama. 9-12)

LADDERTOP

Card, Orson Scott Card, Emily Card, Zina Margaret Illustrator: Ibardolaza, Honoel A. Tor (192 pp.) $9.99 | September 27, 2011 978-0-7653-2460-3 Series: Laddertop Volume: 1 A high-octane outer-space adventure slated to be the first in a twosome.

Preteens Robbi and Azure are best friends, though the girls couldn’t be more opposite: Robbi is a sensitive dreamer, while Azure is a driven go-getter with a short temper. Azure’s biggest dream is to be picked for Laddertop. This is a program of the Givers, aliens who claim to help conserve Earth’s resources by building power-providing space stations 36,000 feet above the Earth; these are reached by giant ladders. Children are chosen to attend Laddertop since their small stature makes it possible for them to perform maintenance in the cramped spaces. Azure is delighted to learn she’s picked for the mission, but Robbi is more reluctant. She reveals that her stepfather is abusive, and she worries about the safety of her younger siblings in her absence. Once in the Laddertop training program, strange things begin to happen to Robbi: She’s bitten by a strange creature that imprints her with a tattoo that periodically bleeds, and she is plagued by strange dreams. The main characters in this volume are largely female, strong and intelligent, a wonderful departure from male-dominated extraterrestrial offerings.

Ibardolaza’s muscular art blends manga and Western aesthetics.

An intriguing beginning; readers will clamor for the follow-up. (Graphic science fiction. 12 & up)

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FLOORS

Carman, Patrick Scholastic (272 pp.) $16.99 | September 1, 2011 978-0-545-25519-6 Here is the Whippet Hotel, a very strange place: Each of its floors has its own eccentric personality, especially the hidden ones.

Carman has not only created a beguiling building but populated it with a sympathetic company of oddfellows, plus a few nefarious creatures (except the ducks, because, as readers are told, “ ‘Always bring a duck.’ Words to live by.” Readers will come to feel totally invested in the hotel, just as they will come to love Leo, the maintenance man’s 10-year-old son, in whose hands the fate of the rickety old joint rests when four strange boxes arrive. Cryptic utterances—“A flying goat will be of use”—are fun because there’s always at least a sideways understanding of what it might mean, and there are clues that the reader can follow like breadcrumbs to the last, cheering pages. But it is the atmosphere that takes over, whether it is as heart-gladdening as when “the coffeepot filled the basement with the rich smell of morning,” or as curious as one of those ducks, whose “breath smelled like daffodils.” (“You’ve been eating the flowers on the grounds again, haven’t you?” Leo asked.)

The author is a fine storyteller; he rides the mystery right up to the edge invests his characters with quirks that aren’t merely cute but essential to the person’s identity.

(Magical adventure. 9-12)

WILD ROSE’S WEAVING

Churchill, Ginger Illustrator: Wong, Nicole Tanglewood Press (32 pp.) $15.95 | October 11, 2011 978-1-933718-56-9

Preachy and predictable, this well-intentioned effort tries too hard to convey the joy and value of creativity.

Wild Rose (her name, not a descriptor plus her name) would rather frolic in the fields with the woolly white sheep than watch her grandmother weave. She revels in the oncoming storm, dances in the rain and wades in the water, rejecting each of her grandmother’s calls to come learn how to make a rug.

Grandma starts (and, improbably enough, finishes) her rug in the time Wild Rose spends outdoors. Its beauty achieves what her entreaties have not—now Wild Rose wants to learn. Stilted and abstract, the text fails to enliven the slight plot. When Wild Rose is won over, it’s because she looked at the rug and “saw life in its colors [and] felt peace in its pattern.” Wong’s illustrations, which appear to be a mix of pen and ink and watercolor, feature simply drawn figures and spare settings. They are attractive but fail to bring the characters to life. Some details suggest that perhaps Wild Rose and her grandmother are Native American,

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which could add interest and authenticity, but unfortunately this remains unclear.

Ultimately, neither the subject matter nor the presentation is likely to engage young listeners’ interest; they’d be better off following Wild Rose’s example and playing outside. (Picture book. 4-7)

DYING TO TELL ME

Clark, Sherryl Kane/Miller (272 pp.) $15.99 | September 1, 2011 978-1-61067-063-0 After moving to a rural Australian town, Sasha’s unwelcome premonitions lead her to solve a string of art thefts while tackling her own issues.

Ever since her mum left, Sasha’s “life has turned into a huge, weird disaster area.” The sad, anxious Sasha knows her dad’s trying hard to hold the family together. When he accepts a police job in Manna Creek to “make a new life,” Sasha decides she’ll give “moving to the back of nowhere” a chance, just to make him happy. Unimpressed with the drab town, the bedraggled house behind the police station and the hostile locals who resent the new cop’s kids, Sasha and younger brother Nicky explore with their new pet police dog, King. Sasha’s freaked out when she finds that she and King can communicate telepathically and even more upset when she starts dreaming about local people, past and present, who are about to die. Is there something wrong with her? Should she tell her father or repress everything? In an authentic first-person voice, Sasha fumes at her missing mum, reacts negatively to Manna Creek, supports her father and brother and conveys her fears about her telepathic powers as she leads the tense, fast-moving plot to resolution.

A stronger-than-she-realizes heroine uses her disconcerting telepathic gifts to help others and heal herself in this satisfying adventure. (Paranormal adventure. 11-14)

SHELTER

Coben, Harlan Putnam (288 pp.) $18.99 | September 6, 2011 978-0399256509 Series: Mickey Bolitar Volume: 1 Being the new kid at his high school is the least of Mickey Bolitar’s worries; how about a missing girlfriend and dad’s possible rising from the dead?

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of Mickey’s lively mind; in the forefront is finding out what happened to new girlfriend Ashley Kent, who stopped coming to school one day. Attempts to learn more have been stonewalled by teachers and the administration. Mickey teams up with two unlikely sidekicks: Ema, a sarcastic overweight goth girl whom Mickey rescued from humiliation in gym class, and Spoon, a hacker nerd who knows all about Mickey’s mad basketball skilz (which he’s keeping under wraps). Many daredevil acts ensue.

This teen spinoff of the prolific Coben’s adult Myron Bolitar (Mickey’s uncle) series (Long Lost, 2009, etc.) benefits greatly from his trademark crackerjack pace and multi-layered plotting.

Most of the time, Mickey’s short-attention-span snark seems both age appropriate and believable. His mother’s struggle with drug addiction adds poignancy.

A not-bad-at-all entry into the teen market for this adult author. (Mystery. 12 & up)

THE BASKET BALL

Codell, Esmé Raji Illustrator: Plecas, Jennifer Abrams (32 pp.) $16.95 | September 1, 2011 978-1-4197-0007-1 Girl power on the b-ball court.

Lulu is what you might call a girlygirl. You know—complete with tea sets, stuffed animals, makeup and unicorn pictures on her bedroom wall. But there’s something else about Lulu: Her absolute most favorite thing to do is shoot hoops.

Unfortunately, in Lulu’s world, basketball is for boys, and they will not allow Lulu to play on their team. Whenever she asked, “ ‘Girls cannot play, the guard would say, / Asserting his offensive. / ‘We’d knock you down, and doctor’s bills / Are dreadfully expensive.’ ” Undaunted, Lulu decides to create her own team, sending out invitations to girls far and wide for an event she terms the “Basket Ball.” Girls bound in from around the globe and astound Lulu with their basketball skills. The girls decide to form a league and appoint Lulu captain of one of the teams.

The lively illustrations, done in ink, watercolor and gouache on watercolor paper, showcase an ethnically diverse group of strong, active girls who, sporting purses, dresses and jewelry, are clearly still girly-girls too.

Any girl who has ever been rejected from a boys’ game will identify with this story, but with the growing popularity and availability of girls’ sports, one hopes she won’t have to go to the lengths Lulu did to find a league of her own. (glossary) (Picture book. 4-8)

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“The philosophical Pigeon narrates his story in painterly prose…. Fluid, linear spot art captures the essence and whimsy of this unusual tale.” from the masterwork of a painting elephant

THE MASTERWORK OF A PAINTING ELEPHANT

Cuevas, Michelle Illustrator: Young, Ed Frances Foster/Farrar, Straus & Giroux (144 pp.) $15.99 | October 11, 2011 978-0-374-34854-0

A little boy and a nurturing elephant embark on a memorable search and find adventure, fame and the meaning of home.

Abandoned by his parents as a baby, Pigeon Jones is “a restless sort,” who crawls into a pile of leaves next to a car wash, where Birch, a kind-hearted, white elephant with a talent for painting, finds him. Birch adopts Pigeon and raises him on his back, where Pigeon sleeps, eats, plays and showers. Fiercely protective, Birch homeschools Pigeon until fifth grade, when Pigeon attends the local school from his perch atop Birch. On his 10th birthday, Pigeon announces his wish to go to Paris so Birch can find his lost love and hang out with famous artists.

They hop a freight train to New York, where they meet singing hobos, become trapped in the Bronx Zoo and devise a plan to free the animals. They live in Hollywood, discover the art world of Paris and briefly join a circus. But eventually Pigeon realizes that it’s time to leave the security of Birch’s back and feel the ground under his own two feet. The philosophical Pigeon narrates his story in painterly prose, evoking the beauty and wonder of the world he and Birch experience. Fluid, linear spot art captures the essence and whimsy of this unusual tale.

A touching, singular story of a painting elephant and the boy he lovingly fosters. (Fiction. 6-12)

A BEAUTIFUL DARK

Davies, Jocelyn HarperTeen (400 pp.) $17.99 | September 27, 2011 978-0-06-199065-6 Here’s a paranormal romance that doesn’t follow all the conventions of the genre but relies at least in part on imagination to feed the needs of readers seeking supernatural fun.

In this novel, the heroine has no difficulty with vampires, werewolves, mermen or ghosts. Instead, Skye appears to live within reality in the normal world, until strange things start happening to her on her 17th birthday. Of course, two handsome new boys have coincidentally appeared, both with the ability to make girls weak in the knees at a glance, but it’s Skye herself who seems to have some kind of supernatural ability. Her eyes turn from gray to shiny silver, and machinery explodes around her. Eventually readers learn that the boys— golden Devin and dark Asher—are angels, one a “guardian” and the other a rebel. Skye can’t avoid her strong attraction to Asher, but Devin pulls at her heart as well. Little does she know that |

she’s a very special girl, in great danger, with a life-changing choice to make. Davies layers on the suspense, delving ever further into the supernatural but keeping some realism in the story until the final confrontation (which may or may not set up a sequel). While angels are almost as thick on the ground these days as vampires, Devin and Asher achieve a modicum of originality, and Skye has enough spunk to please her audience.

A cut above the genre average. (Paranormal romance. 12 & up)

FROST

Delsol, Wendy Candlewick (378 pp.) $15.99 | October 1, 2011 978-0-7636-5386-6 Series: Stork Volume: 2 This second installment in the planned Stork trilogy sends Kat and Jack into the hidden realms of Norse mythology and novel that also retells Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen.”

Kat has finally begun to fit in well in her new town in Minnesota, where she learned that she has paranormal powers as a “stork” and can, as a member of a group of elderly “storks,” control pregnancies (Stork, 2010). Her boyfriend Jack, who has paranormal powers to control the weather (he’s really Jack Frost), suddenly cools toward her when a beautiful climate researcher comes to town. The age-neutral Brigid charms everyone but Kat and takes enraptured Jack to Greenland for climate research— where they disappear. Meanwhile, Kat travels to Iceland with her grandpa and meets the equivalent of Andersen’s “robber maiden,” who helps her journey into the spirit world to rescue Jack. Delsol keeps this sequel nicely self-contained, while she follows the framework of the fairy tale. She paints Kat as a fashion-conscious modern California girl with enough spunk to challenge a powerful Norse goddess. Readers get a taste of a travelogue to Iceland, complete with a festival, local food and a hint of supernatural creatures. Once Kat’s spirit journey starts, the narrative takes off into a suspenseful adventure and sets up the next sequel.

Well-paced narration will keep readers interested—a superior paranormal adventure. (Paranormal adventure. 12 & up)

CHOCOLATE ME!

Diggs, Taye Illustrator: Evans, Shane W. Feiwel & Friends (40 pp.) $16.99 | September 27, 2011 978-0-312-60326-7 Dark-skinned children are more likely to be confused than comforted by this unvarnished esteem-builder.

Looking sheepish and unhappy in the pictures but sounding angry, a young boy cites teasing comments

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“No fewer than 50 cartoonists and comic-book artists provide distinctive visual riffs on as many nursery rhymes in this memorable showcase.” from nursery rhyme comics

from lighter-skinned peers about his skin color, hair and other features. “I squirmed and wiggled / as they giggled at my teeth so white. / ‘You can be our flashlight at night. / Just smile and we’ll be alright.’ ” The emotional skies clear, though, after his mother supplies both a pep talk (“Look in the mirror and / love what you see!”) and a plate of chocolate cupcakes to share with his erstwhile tormentors. Evans, too, sends a mixed message in the ways he portrays the figures he poses against sketchy urban backdrops. Opposite the line about the narrator’s “flashlight,” the boy’s teeth are both hardly visible (in contrast to the whites of his big, bright eyes) and colored a lower-contrast ivory to boot, and in several scenes his mouth is so inconspicuous and oddly placed that his nose might be mistaken for smiling lips.

More troubling, to judge from their postures and expressions, the other children’s mockery may come across to readers as just friendly banter—particularly in light of a final scene that is all frosting-smeared happy faces and mutual amity—instead of the hurtful words the narrator perceives.

Self-worth is always worth bolstering, but the positive message here is clouded by muddled subtexts and visual cues. (Picture book. 6-8)

I AM SMALL

Dodd, Emma Illustrator: Dodd, Emma Cartwheel/Scholastic (24 pp.) $8.99 | September 1, 2011 978-0-545-35370-0 It’s a big, scary world out there, but love can keep you safe.

A tiny penguin is overwhelmed by the vastness of the universe. The ocean is deep, the sky is high and the stars are endless. Steep mountains and strong winds in an endless winter also contribute to the feeling of being small and insignificant. But her parents are much bigger and warm and loving and make her feel like the biggest part of their lives. Dodd chooses a carefully designed spatial arrangement of the text and simple, visual language, repeating the refrain “and I am small” as the little one encounters all that largeness, creating empathy and understanding for the timid little penguin without being overly sweet or cloying. The full- and double-page illustrations set this work above similar tales of enduring parental love, perfectly matching the text as they depict the tiny and somewhat awkward baby penguin. Appropriately polar, winter hues of grays, whites, blacks, icy blues and shining textured silver are startlingly interrupted by the high, bright Antarctic sun. The adult penguins provide the only other bits of color, as their necks and beaks light the way to their nurturing warmth.

A lovely, reassuring bedtime story with a simple message of parental affection that littlest listeners and readers will take to heart. (Picture book. 1-5)

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BETWEEN THE SEA AND THE SKY

Dolamore, Jaclyn Bloomsbury (240 pp.) $16.99 | October 1, 2011 978-1-59990-434-4 A mermaid braves the human world to find her lost sister and to seek her only love in this new fantasy.

Esmerine has only just become a siren when her older sister Dosia, also a siren, disappears into the human world. Mermaids can grow legs temporarily and live on land although, as in Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale, walking is terribly painful for them. But Esmerine not only longs for her sister, she’d like to locate her childhood friend Alander, a winged man-creature, for whom she secretly longs. Esmerine quickly finds him in the bookstore he runs, and although she’s sure no romance is possible, she can’t seem to tear herself away from him. He agrees to carry her on his back in a flight to the mountains to find Dosia, and adventures ensue. Dolamore writes in a simple style that feels more middle-grade than teen, but her story should also appeal to middle- and younger high-school readers, making this a good hi-lo choice. She displays plenty of imagination, especially in her setting, with its 19th-century-style clothing and quaint towns. The portraits of her two leads will convince readers, and several of her minor characters, such as ex-mermaid Belawyn and Alander’s father, stand out as quirky and individual.

A simple but effective fantasy. (Fantasy. 10-14)

NURSERY RHYME COMICS 50 Timeless Rhymes by 50 Celebrated Cartoonists

Editor: Duffy, Chris First Second/Roaring Brook (128 pp.) $18.99 | October 11, 2011 978-1-59643-600-8 No fewer than 50 cartoonists and comic-book artists provide distinctive visual riffs on as many nursery rhymes in this memorable showcase.

Featuring plenty of the usual chestnuts (“Mary Had A Little Lamb,” “Hey, Diddle Diddle,” etc.) interspersed with an array of such less-well-known entries as “The Lion and the Unicorn,” “Yon Yonson,” “Cindereller” and “There Was an Old Woman Tossed Up in a Basket,” the choice of verses alone makes this a refreshing change of pace for children and parents. The “rich, loam-like mix” of artists, as scholar Leonard Marcus puts it in his well-caffeinated introduction, gives these “nutshell narratives” a “back-story elaboration” that ranges from “endearing slapstick” to “noir-ishly operatic high drama.” Lucy Knisley’s “Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe” is a tattooed rocker who runs a daycare center. David Macaulay repeatedly builds up London Bridge in typically complete and precisely drawn detail.

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Each of Cyril Pedrosa’s five little piggies has a (sometimes fatal) encounter with a wolf. Most of the illustrations are framed in sequential panels, though Jules Feiffer, Craig Thompson, Gahan Wilson and some others take more freestyle narrative approaches. Visually far more complicated than the usual toddler-friendly nursery fare, this is best saved for older children— and for parents who crave a little graphic stimulation after putting baby to bed.

As much as the visual styles may vary, the high levels of wit and invention never falter. (Graphic nursery rhymes. 5 & up)

SOLDIER BEAR

Dumon Tak, Bibi Illustrator: Hopman, Philip Translator: Watkinson, Laura Eerdmans (144 pp.) $13.00 | September 1, 2011 978-0-8028-5375-2

protagonist declares, “My name is Elizabeth!” She then lauds the virtues of her “nine letters long” moniker, concluding, “I also like that there is a queen named after me!” Alas, Elizabeth must fend off “Lizzy,” “Liz,” “Beth” and “Betsy’s” aplenty as her granddad, a neighborhood boy, a merchant and a crossing guard greet her with these nicknames. Never bratty, this girl simply knows who she is and what she wants to be called. Forsythe’s restrained color palette and expressive line contribute to his brilliant rendering of Elizabeth’s character, and his whimsical inclusion of a pet duck (unmentioned in the text) adds another layer of idiosyncratic delight. A double whammy of a punch line first shows readers that “Elizabeth” isn’t quite the mouthful her full name is and then underscores her true sweetness when she acquiesces to having her heretofore-silent baby brother call her “Wizabef?” “Close enough,” she thinks.

This debut picture-book offering from Dunklee and Forsythe is close enough to perfect in its tone, pacing and interplay between words and pictures: Wonderful. (Picture book. 3-7)

MY NAME IS NOT EASY

A bear cub purchased by a pair of Polish free soldiers in the Iranian desert in 1942 becomes a private in the Polish army, a member of the 22nd Transport Company and an active participant in

the war in Italy.

Tak bases her novel on actual facts: Wojtek (spelled phonetically as Voytek in Watkinson’s translation) was a real Syrian brown bear, really in the Polish Army and really the artillerycarrying subject of his company’s emblem. But her humans are fictional characters, a group of five soldiers including Peter, the bear cub’s new “mother,” Stanislav, who purchases him and figures out how to feed him, and Lolek, who adopts the monkey who eventually becomes his friend. The narrative focuses on the bear’s antics, which both enliven the soldiers’ lives and cause them difficulty. Originally published in Holland in 2009 as Soldaat Wojtek, this is smoothly translated and engagingly illustrated with sketches and helpful maps. Funny, fresh and heartwarming, it doesn’t ignore the horrors of war but concentrates on the joy of having an animal friend, albeit a difficult one.

Readers of any age do not need to know anything about the complicated history of the Polish free forces or even World War II to enjoy this tale of “a friend and a mascot who made the war easier to bear.” (Historical fiction. 9 & up)

MY NAME IS ELIZABETH!

Dunklee, Annika Illustrator: Forsythe, Matthew Kids Can (24 pp.) $14.95 | September 1, 2011 978-1-55453-560-6 Don’t call her Betsy.

After all, though she may seem part Olivia and part Lilly (with just a smidgen of Chrysanthemum), right on the cover the |

Edwardson, Debby Dahl Marshall Cavendish (256 pp.) $17.99 | (e-book ): $17.99 October 1, 2011 978-0-7614-5980-4 (e-book ): 978-0-7614-6091-6

The story of three Iñupiaq children (then known as Eskimos) living above the Arctic Circle who are sent to a Catholic boarding school with other children,

white and Indian.

Told by five different narrators covering the time period 1960-65, this is essentially Luke’s story, whose native—and, as the title indicates, difficult-to-pronounce—name is not revealed until toward the end. Forbidden to use their language, fed unfamiliar food and under the thumb of priests and nuns, some strict and some kind but whose religion is unfamiliar, Luke’s homesickness is visceral. The good wishes and intentions of other children, their teachers and their parents all fail to offer comfort or to soften the hardships endured. Details of the outside world and the concerns of the day are woven in to the narrative, often highlighting how astonishingly oblivious the world is to the reality of life in Alaska. The rivalry between Indian and Eskimo is made equally vivid, along with the stereotypes and bias that both sides believe about the other. Readers will see these children become adolescents, imbibing of the rebellion that the decade is known for in the lower 48 and allowing proximity to build bridges of understanding and hope, even in the midst of death and loss. Edwardson (Blessing’s Bead, 2009) makes clear in a note that this is a reflection of her own childhood experiences and that of her contemporaries.

Painful, inspiring and affectionate. (Historical fiction. 10-14)

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NO ORDINARY DAY

Ellis, Deborah Groundwood (160 pp.) $16.95 | September 13, 2011 978-1-55498-134-2 Homeless orphan Valli is always friendly, if amoral.

When Valli can, she sneaks glimpses at Bollywood dances, learns a little reading or throws rocks at the monsters— people without faces or fingers—who live on the other side of the tracks. Most of the time, however, she picks up coal. Sick of beatings, hunger and coal, Valli hides on a passing truck, fleeing her life of poverty for a life of… well, more poverty, but also more excitement. On the Kolkata streets she lives day-to-day. Constantly starving, she contentedly begs and steals; when she has something she doesn’t need (a bit of extra soap, a blanket), she passes it on to somebody else. When Valli tries her luck begging from kind Dr. Indra, she learns she has leprosy, just like the faceless monsters back home. It takes some time, but Valli learns to accept help from the women who offer it to her: Dr. Indra, who works at the leprosy hospital; Neeta, a sales manager with leprosy who teaches Valli how to make pie charts; Laxmi, a teenager who’s been burned. An emphasis on Christmas falls discordant, but Valli’s journey from stubborn solitude to member of a community is richly fulfilling.

A true-to-life portrait of a young girl’s cheerful selfishness in this surprisingly optimistic novel of unrelenting poverty. (Fiction. 9-11)

THE LION AND THE MICE

Emberley, Rebecca and Ed Emberley Illustrator: Emberley, Rebecca and Ed Emberley Holiday House (24 pp.) $14.95 | September 15, 2011 978-0-8234-2357-6 Series: I Like to Read

Aesop’s lion and mouse (or mice, as this case has it) have never looked more stylish.

With his massive frame stretched across the page, a wackyhued lion sleeps. But when a tiny mouse, resplendent in olivegreen heels and a tuft of electric-blue fur, finds herself next to the lion, he wakes up. The wry narrator intones (and readers will agree): “Uh-oh.” But true to the fable, the lion lets the mouse go, with the mouse squeaking in reply, “One day I will help you.”

(Sharp-eyed readers will notice that the gray bars, which were previously melded into the background design, are now also found in front of the lion). The mouse returns, with the help of many fashion-forward rodent friends, and fits a key into a never-before-seen padlock. The lion is free—presumably from a zoo—and the mice are happy. As an added bonus after the moral is delivered, the lion says “thank you.” Two lessons in one!

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sentences and direct exposition that serve its intended audience of beginning readers well, if not elegantly. But the illustrations round everything out, giving context clues and a shift in perspective, zooming back to reveal the complete picture.

Likely a bit more turquoise and abstract than Aesop had in mind, but fantastic visual fun. (Early reader/folktale. 2-5)

GALAXY GAMES The Challengers

Fishbone, Gregory R. Illustrator: Beavers, Ethen Tu Books (352 pp.) $15.95 | September 1, 2011 978-1-60060-660-1 Series: Galaxy Games Volume: 1 Japanese-American Tyler Sato’s allclown 11th-birthday party is only the begin-

ning of his trials.

When astronomers decide the star his cousins in Japan have named after him is actually a meteor hurtling toward the Earth, Ty can do without the notoriety—not to mention the worldwide panic. When it turns out to be a spaceship, he thinks his namesake celestial body is cool. When a misunderstanding on the part of the aliens leads them to think Ty is the world’s greatest kid athlete, the kid-leader of the Mrendarian team, M’Frozza, drafts Ty to choose and then lead a team for Earth. Perfidy on the part of adult aliens prompts a challenge from another alien race before the team has a chance to train; can Ty prevail? The actual laughs are few and far between in this at-the-speed-ofmolasses space farce. Fishbone’s first reads like two distinct novels glued end-to-end and wears its multicultural message on its sleeve. Chock full of unnecessary scenes and silly details (will today’s middle-graders really find the conscious evocation of Mork from Ork’s “nanu-nanu” catchphrase funny?), this could have benefited from some heavy editing.

Alas, this space shot never achieves escape velocity. (Science fiction/humor. 8-11)

DEAR BAOBAB

Foggo, Cheryl Illustrator: Leng, Qin Second Story Press (24 pp.) $15.95 | September 1, 2011 978-1-897187-91-3 Maiko experiences an orphan’s loneliness and an immigrant’s unease but eventually finds comfort in his new home.

The titular baobab is an ancient tree in Maiko’s East African village, the site of his fondest memories of playing with friends who didn’t say “that his ears struck straight out from his head.”

After his parents die (no cause is mentioned), he goes to North America to live with his aunt and uncle. His only friend is a small

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“Breathtakingly beautiful meta-illustrations will draw many eyes to this tale of a curious chicken who spills some paint.” from blue chicken

spruce tree, 7 years old like Maiko, growing too close to his suburban house’s foundation. His spiritual communion with this tree is so strong that he tries to save it when his aunt and uncle want to cut it down. Watercolors with pleasantly loose ink lines show generic scenes in Africa and multicultural North America.

Maiko makes friends with Li, but Leonard, another classmate, continually makes fun of his ears (which do not appear unusual in the illustrations). Maiko has experienced his first Halloween and Christmas when, without explanation, Leonard stops making fun of him. Readers might wonder, too, whether Maiko’s ability to hear the spruce’s “song” is too sweetly poetic. On his 8th birthday in spring, in a neat resolution, the family finds a perfect home for the spruce.

Maiko’s own feelings of adjustment are also too quickly resolved in this gentle, purposeful story. (Picture book. 5-8)

BLUE CHICKEN

Freedman, Deborah Illustrator: Freedman, Deborah Viking (40 pp.) $15.99 | September 15, 2011 978-0-670-01293-0 Breathtakingly beautiful meta-illustrations will draw many eyes to this tale of a curious chicken who spills some paint.

“This picture is almost finished,” narrates an unseen artist whose life-size pencil and brush lie across a barnyard drawing with cow, chicken coop and wheelbarrow softly shaded and colored but a barn only outlined. “[T]his day is perfect for painting the barn. / But wait. Does one of the chickens want to help?” A small white chicken patters out from the coop onto the blank white background, climbing up onto the edge of a paint pot— and tipping it over. Blue paint flows down the page, splattering on finished and unfinished bits of the original picture. It floods onto pansies, chicks and the cow, whose “moo wakes the chickens. They’re peevish and blue.” Irritated blue chickens give chase across now all-blue spreads; the original chicken who “just wanted to… / HELP!” is intimidated and “[s]incerely sorry.”

Watercolor washes and splashes, from pale blue to dark, create wonderful, wet patterns; their liquid edges contrast alluringly with fine pencil lines and shadings. Resourcefully, the chicken tips out the artist’s brush-rinsing water jar, drenching and cleansing this world back into neatness. But is that the artist at the end, painting a real barn outdoors while something hilarious happens indoors in her studio?

Delicate and durable, visually sophisticated yet friendly: simply exquisite. (Picture book. 3-7)

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THE CASE OF THE DIAMOND DOG COLLAR

Freeman, Martha Holiday House (144 pp.) $16.95 | October 1, 2011 978-0-8234-2337-8 Series: First Kids Mysteries Volume: 2

The vivacious daughters of the President of the United States, Cammie and her younger sister Tessa, are back at their sleuthing best in this follow up to The Case of the Rock ’n’ Roll Dog (2010).

Life is never dull for these sisters. Their mom is the President, and their dog is the exuberantly acrobatic and aptly named Hooligan. This latest mystery involves a faux-diamond– studded dog collar, a gift to Hooligan from a Pekingese who belongs to the president of a “certain nearby nation.” Just before the collar goes missing, the girls discover that the diamonds are genuine. The house is suddenly filled with suspects.

Could the thief be the visiting dog trainer or one of the staff members? And could this turn out to be a coup attempt on the “certain nearby nation”? In full Agatha Christie mode, the girls deduce motives and gather clues. When the commotion ramps up, it’s keen-eared Hooligan who bounds to the rescue.

Cammie’s cheerful narration gives voice to the action and drops details about the White House, while occasionally mentioning her nostalgia for life before the Oval Office (when she could go to the mall without the Secret Service and she didn’t have to share her mom with the world).

This little gem will be just right for grade-school detectives and budding politicians alike. (Mystery. 7-11)

CHIHUAWOLF A Tail of Mystery and Horror

Ganny, Charlee Illustrator: Slater, Nicola Sourcebooks (144 pp.)

(Paperback ): $6.99 | October 1, 2011 (Paperback ): 978-1-4022-5940-1

A Chihuahua who suffers from smalldog syndrome learns to be happy with himself.

In his attempt to attract the romantic attention of a large, bad-boy–loving Afghan, squeaky-voiced Chihuahua Paco yearns to become a werewolf. A werewolf would make Natasha stand up and take notice of him, instead of mocking him for having the heart of a lion…a dandelion. Hearing that drinking water out of a werewolf footprint will do the trick, Paco drags his oldest friend, Coco the chocolate Lab, out on an adventure that puts all the animals, even the humans, in danger. Not only is the werewolf real, but Paco and Coco have accidentally led him right to—gasp!—Natasha. What ensues is an overlong adventure in which the animals (cats, skunks, dogs, birds…)

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“An exhilarating summer marked by death, gore and fire sparks deep thoughts in a small-town lad not uncoincidentally named ‘Jack Gantos.’ ” from dead end in norvelt

work together to outwit the slow-moving werewolf, protect their humans and learn the value of true friends. The message is crystal clear here—Paco should love himself the way he is and appreciate his true friends—but the story just goes on too long, relying on too many plays on words, occasional Speedy Gonzalez Spanish and jarring changes of narrative voice. Infrequent black-and-white illustrations lack energy and will not help the young independent reader’s comprehension. And no dog lover will believe the scale in the illustrations between the oversized Lab and the miniscule Chihuahua.

Nothing to bark about here. (Fantasy/suspense. 8-12)

DEAD END IN NORVELT

Gantos, Jack Farrar, Straus and Giroux (352 pp.) $15.99 | September 13, 2011 978-0-374-37993-3

An exhilarating summer marked by death, gore and fire sparks deep thoughts in a small-town lad not uncoincidentally named “Jack Gantos.”

The gore is all Jack’s, which to his continuing embarrassment “would spray out of my nose holes like dragon flames” whenever anything exciting or upsetting happens. And that would be on every other page, seemingly, as even though Jack’s feuding parents unite to ground him for the summer after several mishaps, he does get out. He mixes with the undertaker’s daughter, a band of Hell’s Angels out to exact fiery revenge for a member flattened in town by a truck and, especially, with arthritic neighbor Miss Volker, for whom he furnishes the “hired hands” that transcribe what becomes a series of impassioned obituaries for the local paper as elderly town residents suddenly begin passing on in rapid succession.

Eventually the unusual body count draws the—justified, as it turns out—attention of the police. Ultimately, the obits and the many Landmark Books that Jack reads (this is 1962) in his hours of confinement all combine in his head to broaden his perspective about both history in general and the slow decline his own town is experiencing.

Characteristically provocative gothic comedy, with sublime undertones. (Autobiographical fiction. 11-13)

COLD KISS

Garvey, Amy HarperTeen (304 pp.) $17.99 | September 20, 2011 978-0-06-199622-1 To what lengths is it acceptable to go to hold on to someone you love?

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back—although even Wren has to admit that the Danny she has brought back is only a shadow of what he was in life. Desperate to keep what she has done a secret, Wren is forced to live a double life. She must keep one foot firmly planted in teenage reality: attending classes, dealing with friends and ducking her mother’s questions. Her other foot is planted in her secret, as she struggles to keep a boy who is more her puppet than her former boyfriend hidden. Her plans are slowly unraveling when she meets Gabriel, a new boy who can read her thoughts and guesses her dark secret.

As Danny becomes more difficult for Wren to handle, she begins to see that not only is he not the boy she once knew, but he might actually be dangerous. In the end, it is Danny’s own words that help Wren the most. Fast-paced and achingly real, this fresh tale hints at the danger that lurks beneath Wren’s spell without veering into the macabre. Driven by her selfish desires both to keep Danny and then to be rid of him, Wren is not a traditional heroine, but her character is ultimately redeemed by her decision to make things right no matter the cost.

A provocative romance rises above zombie conventions.

(Fiction. 14 & up)

TALES FROM INDIA Stories of Creation and the Cosmos

Gavin, Jamila Illustrator: Hall, Amanda Templar/Candlewick (96 pp.) $19.99 | September 13, 2011 978-0-7636-5564-8 Ten stories retold from Hindu myth, free of any broad cultural context but handsomely packaged and illustrated.

Each tale offers a full slate of gods, heroes, monsters and (often) princesses, as well as plenty of action and, less often, a clever trick or dilemma. They incorporate such memorable images as the sea of milk in which Brahma floats before the Earth’s creation, the decapitated demon head that still chases the sun and moon (“But they would always slip out of Rahu’s neck, and light would return”) and the swayamvaraceremony of Princess Damayanti—in which all her suitors, human and immortal, must line up so that she can choose one. Though 10 tales is hardly enough to brush the surface of one of the world’s oldest religious traditions, Gavin does include a creation story, a flood story and also severely condensed versions of the central events of both the Ramayana and the Mahabarata epics. Pale borders decorating broad page margins harmonize with finely detailed scenes from Hall done in Indian-miniature style to give the volume an elegant look. The lack of source notes or explanations of such significant concepts as “incarnation” and Lord Brahma’s “three in one and one in three” identity make this an inadequate alternative to Madhur Jaffrey’s still unexcelled Seasons of Splendour (1985), though.

Fresh versions of some very old stories, well suited to reading aloud (but practice the names first!). (Mythology. 10-12)

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THE ORPHAN OF AWKWARD FALLS

Graves, Keith Illustrator: Graves, Keith Chronicle (352 pp.) $16.99 | November 1, 2011 978-0-8118-7814-2 The creator of such picture books as Frank Was a Monster Who Wanted to Dance (1999) and Three Nasty Gnarlies (2003) dishes up a first novel seasoned with the same delightfully twisted, ghoulish sensibility.

Immediately upon arriving in Awkward Falls, a small Manitoba town known for its canned sauerkraut and its Asylum for the Dangerously Insane (“both,” notes the narrator, “to be avoided at all costs, as one was likely to cause gas, and the other, death.”), 12-year-old Josephine meets agemate Thaddeus Hibble.

Thaddeus is a scientific genius who has lived alone since infancy on an all–junk-food diet supplied by a robot butler and paid for by re-animating the dead pets of local matrons. Together the two are plunged into personal danger and worse at the clutching hands of hunchbacked lunatic cannibal Fetid Stenchley, former lab assistant and Asylum escapee. With aid from a supporting cast of colorful locals, a half-rotted corpse brought back to partial life and a ravening herd of chimerical monsters created in a secret biotechnology lab, Graves crafts a quick-moving plot composed of macabre twists. These are made all the ickier for being presented in significant part from Stenchley’s point of view. Wordless opening and closing sequences, plus a handful of interior illustrations, both fill in background detail and intensify the overall macabre atmosphere. The central characters receive just, if, under the circumstances, not necessarily final deserts.

Unfortunate Events galore, served with relish. (finished illustrations not seen) (Melodrama. 11-13)

REEL LIFE STARRING US

Greenwald, Lisa Amulet/Abrams (304 pp.) $16.95 | September 1, 2011 978-1-4197-0026-2

For eighth-grader Dina, being the new girl at school is a disaster.

Bewildered by her transition from popular girl to social outcast, Dina retreats behind her video camera. She hopes that the filter of the lens will help her decode life at her trendy new middle school. A school project with reigning “it girl” Chelsea seems to be a perfect chance for Dina to improve her social status. Meanwhile, Chelsea desperately harbors a secret that compels her to maintain the status quo among her exclusive peers even as she begins to question their occasionally cruel behavior. Writing in the alternating voices of Chelsea and Dina, Greenwald explores the perks and pitfalls of popularity, demonstrating how those on both sides |

of the popularity divide can be victims of people’s misperceptions. While Dina’s composure seems precocious at times, her practical perspective combined with her wry humor and Chelsea’s increasingly astute reflections makes this very accessible to pre-and early teen readers. In the process of working together, however reluctantly, Chelsea and Dina gain insight about each other and themselves that readers will benefit from.

This funny, nuanced tale offers keen observations on middle-school life. (Fiction. 10-14)

THE FABULOUS FLYING MACHINES OF ALBERTO SANTOS-DUMONT

Griffith, Victoria Illustrator: Montanari, Eva Abrams $16.95 978-1-4197-0011-8

So the Wright Brothers were the first to fly? Au contraire, asserts Griffith in this rare portrait of a little-known (in this country, at least) early aviator.

An immensely popular figure in his day, the Brazilian-born Alberto Santos-Dumont invented a personal dirigible that he steered around the Eiffel Tower and drove out to run errands.

Griffith’s prose isn’t always polished (“If Blériot succeeded to fly first….”), but her narrative makes her subject’s stature clear as she takes him from a luncheon with jeweler Louis Cartier, who invented the wristwatch to help his friend keep track of his time in the air, to his crowning aeronautical achievement in 1906: He beat out both the secretive Wrights and pushy rival Louis Blériot as the first to fly an aircraft that could take off and land on its own power. The author covers his career in more detail in a closing note (with photos), ascribing his eventual suicide in part to remorse that, instead of ushering in an era of peace as he had predicted, aircraft were being used in warfare. Montanari’s genteel pastel-and-chalk pictures of turn-of-the-20th-century Paris and Parisians don’t capture how much larger than life Santos-Dumont was, but they do succeed in helping Griffith bring him to American audiences.

A generous spirit and penchant for grand gestures make him all the more worth knowing—particularly for American audiences unaware that there is any question about who was the first to fly. (bibliography) (Picture book/ biography. 8-10)

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THE FAERIE RING

Hamilton, Kiki Tor (352 pp.) $17.99 | October 1, 2011 978-0-7653-2722-2 In 1871 London, a ragged girl pickpocket steals a ring that enforces a truce between the British Crown and the Faery world, setting off a struggle between the realms.

Tiki supports her adopted “family” of orphans by using her uncanny ability to steal. When she stumbles into Buckingham Palace, she finds a ring and takes it.

However, she learns that the ring is enchanted, and that dangerous faeries want it. Helping her (or is he?), the handsome Rieker also roams the streets of London as a thief, and he claims to know much about the faeries. Tiki tries to ransom the ring and fend off two menacing faeries, but when one kidnaps her little charge Clara, she faces a life-or-death situation. And, just how close is Tiki herself to the faery world? Hamilton debuts with a fantasy that has a heavy—and interesting—historical focus on the poor street children of Victorian London and contrasts their lives with the splendor of the wealthy. Even the realistic portions of the novel, however, rely heavily on some highly implausible events. Well, it’s a fantasy. Plausibility isn’t required, even if it takes some effort to suspend disbelief. The faeries convince readers of their magic and their danger, the humans of their individuality. The story keeps suspense high with one crisis after another, until it escalates into a final exciting showdown.

An entertaining magical-historical adventure. (Historical fantasy. 12 & up)

DARWEN ARKWRIGHT AND THE PEREGRINE PACT

Hartley, A.J. Illustrator: Osborne, Emily Razorbill/Penguin (432 pp.) $16.99 | October 1, 2011 978-1-59514-409-6

As if new living arrangements, new school and new country weren’t enough to contend with, how about facing whole new worlds?

Eleven-year-old Lancashire lad Darwen Arkwright knows his Aunt Honoria is trying to make living in Atlanta, Ga., bearable. But tea that’s more lukewarm water with a floating tea bag (ugh) that looks like a mouse, a distracted “babysitter,” Honoria’s busy lifestyle and her reliance on upscale takeout are not helping him settle in. Just before the start of school, Darwen follows a strange flying creature through the mall (after watching it messily devour a sparrow) and ends up at Octavius Peregrine’s Reflectory Emporium, which sells mirrors priceless and perilous. The odd proprietor gifts Darwen with a mirror that becomes first a window 1468

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and then a door on the sylvan world of Silbrica. Darwen is a Mirroculist and can see through darkling mirrors into other worlds. Meanwhile, at the overly regimented private school Honoria enrolled him in, Darwen makes a couple friends… and as many enemies. Thefts at school, strange bones in the schoolyard and terrifying troubles in Silbrica all seem connected by more than just Darwen. Can he puzzle things out and survive? Hartley’s first dark fantasy for young audiences is, out of the gate, an imaginative page turner that manages to be by turns spooky, suspenseful and touching.

Likely the start of a series; “Brilliant!” as Darwen would say. (Fantasy. 9-14)

MY HANDS SING THE BLUES

Harvey, Jeanne Illustrator: Zunon, Elizabeth Marshall Cavendish (40 pp.) $17.99 | September 1, 2011 978-0-7614-5810-4 Harvey presents an imagined firstperson narrative in the form of a blues poem by master collage artist Bearden.

Romare muses from his New York studio, conjuring his train journey as a 3-year-old with his parents, from North Carolina to Harlem during the Great Migration from the south to the north. In a note, Harvey comments that Bearden drew analogies between his artistic process and jazz improvisation, which fuels her approach. Drawing inspiration from the artist’s collage Watching the Good Trains Go By (reproduced within), 14 of Harvey’s 21 verses focus on the trip, from tearful goodbyes with great-grandparents to the onomatopoeia of the train’s sounds and the chance sights rolling by. “I spy a woman by a washtub, stirring, staring up at me. / I wonder what she’s thinking, staring up at me. / Maybe that tomorrow so far away I’ll be.”

The talented Zunon’s pictures intriguingly combine realistic faces, stylized landscapes and photo-collage that pays homage to Bearden’s art. Facial images are potentially a bit confusing: The adult Bearden could be mistaken for a teenager, while the preschooler making his first train trip seems more circumspect than a 3-year-old might be.

The interplay of poetic and visual metaphor makes for a striking presentation; adults who can appreciate and chant the bluesy poem as well as sensitively interpret the pictures together with children are the ideal collaborators in savoring this intriguing work. (author’s note, source notes, resources) (Picture book. 5-8)

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“You don’t have to be a geographer (or a toponymist, to get really specific) to take pleasure in odd place names, and there are far too few gazetteers out there for a new one to come amiss.” from from pie town to yum yum

GHOSTS OF ROCKVILLE Search for the Dominion Glass

Heimberg, Justin Seven Footer Press (288 pp.) $16.95 | September 13, 2011 978-1-934734-48-3 Series: Ghosts of Rockville Volume: 1

Young ghost hunters barely start their search for a magical artifact in this fragmentary series opener.

In the wake of a destructive dustup with ghosts in the surprisingly rich rare-book room of their suburban public library, classmates Jay, Pam, Danni and Brian find themselves in a race with shadowy but plainly evil opponents. Their mutual goal is to track down a crystal that can summon and control the spirits of the dead. First, though, they have to secure a certain Key by puzzling out cryptic rhymes that lead in apparently arbitrary fashion to grave markers, nearby crop circles and a local medium. A climactic spectral attack adds a bit of drama, though it leaves the quartet at the end no closer to the Key—much less the sub-titular glass. Along with page images of stodgy background from an “Encyclopedia of the Paranormal” (evidently a fictional one, not to be confused with the two actual reference sources bearing that title), some illustrations look blank until a small, included (and easily lost) square of lenticular plastic is laid over to reveal hidden messages or pictures.

The gimmick doesn’t compensate for an overall lack of internal logic, lazy plotting and “clues” that lead nowhere.

(Fantasy. 10-12)

FROM PIE TOWN TO YUM YUM Weird and Wacky Place Names Across the United States

Herman, Debbie Illustrator: Goldman, Linda Sarah Kane/Miller (120 pp.) $16.99 | September 1, 2011 978-1-935279-79-2 You don’t have to be a geographer (or a toponymist, to get really specific) to take pleasure in odd place names, and there are far too few gazetteers out there for a new one to come amiss.

Herman’s contribution, then, is welcome, despite its weaknesses. First the strengths: Herman proceeds alphabetically by state, focusing on one curious place name and providing an explanation of its origin (or multiple possible explanations). Another dozen or so humorous place names are noted (with a few given very brief expository treatment), and a number of unusual state facts are delivered. Well and good, but this material, which can easily stand on its own, is bedeviled by a near-desperate striving for laughs. Not content |

to let the strange place names pull their comic weight, Herman douses them with corniness and puns and running jokes and enough exclamation marks to curl a Monkey’s Eyebrow (that’s in Kentucky). Another weakness is the artwork. Maps are a hotbed for artistic expression, but—except for the cover, which allows for color—Goldman’s maps feel anemic (the place names under discussion are not located on her state maps), scratchy and overly whimsical, with accompanying line drawings that are arbitrary or in anxiously eccentric pursuit of yet more mirth.

Still, there is a bedrock of toponymic glory here, certainly enough to make some readers fall in love with geography. (Nonfiction. 8-12)

THE BOY WITH PINK HAIR

Hilton, Perez Illustrator: Hill, Jen Celebra/Penguin (32 pp.) $16.99 | September 1, 2011 978-0-451-23420-9

There aren’t any direct references to boys liking boys or girls liking girls in this story about open-mindedness; it simply calls for tolerance for those who may be thought of as “different,” such as this boy, who in addition to his startling looks also likes to cook.

There don’t seem to be many contemporary books that tackle this topic as effectively as the classic Oliver Button Is a Sissy, by Tomie dePaola (1979), or William’s Doll, by Charlotte Zolotow (1972), with the exception of The Sissy Duckling, by Harvey Fierstein (2002). Unfortunately, this one, by another celebrity author, is an almost identical rehash of Duckling’s story, in which he is ostracized because he’s different, until his differences end up saving the day. Here, the Boy with Pink Hair is teased for his looks, although his enlightened parents are always supportive, encouraging his interest in cooking and not “pester[ing] him to play games that he didn’t like.” While the message is undoubtedly worthy, it’s hard to imagine many kids actually enjoying this transparent, didactic, predictable tale. The arch tone, lessons for parents and the fact that the kids are unnamed (“the Boy with Pink Hair,” “the Boy with a Bad Attitude,” etc.) distance this from young readers. The bright, painterly illustrations are appealing, but they’re not enough to rescue this attempt.

Cheery-looking and well-intentioned, but missing a crucial kid sensibility. (Picture book. 5-8)

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“Any day there’s a new Squish (or Babymouse, for that matter) is Pizza Day.” from brave new pond

THE ELEVENTH PLAGUE

Hirsch, Jeff Scholastic (288 pp.) $17.99 | September 1, 2011 978-0-545-29014-2

Hirsch’s debut explores the creation of a new civilization out of post-apocalyptic ruin.

Teenage salvager Stephen Quinn has heard stories about what America was like before collapsing due to a war with China and a virulent influenza. His paranoid grandfather keeps their family alive through harsh rules. After Stephen’s grandfather dies, Stephen’s father abandons their isolationism and is critically injured rescuing captives from slavers. Stephen lets go of his reluctance to trust strangers and accepts help from a scouting party. The scouts’ town, Settler’s Landing, attempts to recapture an idealized American past, complete with cookouts and baseball games. But Settler’s Landing is no utopia, thanks to Caleb Henry, the token rich villain, and his stereotypical bully of a son, Will, who is convinced Stephen’s a spy from nearby Fort Leonard. Will’s usual target, wild Chinese girl Jenny, bonds with Stephen over their shared outcast status, while her adopted brother Jackson pulls him into youth sports, and teacher Mr. Tuttle encourages his intellectual growth. Stephen and Jenny inadvertently set off a chain of impulsive actions that jeopardize more than just Settler’s Landing. Stephen’s underlying internal conflict about the clash between social obligations and personal survival ties the first-person narration together and physically manifests in the climax.

At times heavy-handed, but the author’s enthusiasm shines through. (Dystopia. 12-17)

LIMELIGHT LARRY

Hodgkinson, Leigh Illustrator: Hodgkinson, Leigh Tiger Tales (32 pp.) $15.95 | September 1, 2011 978-1-58925-102-1 Larry the peacock finds adventure in... his very own book.

Quirks and mischief come at readers right away, with a riot of type styles and sizes, small figures in various shapes and colors filling the page, and the author’s dedication to “Lana Banana” (a girl whose smiling photograph is surrounded by messages). Limelight Larry, a bright-blue peacock, announces that this book will be all about him and, because he is FANTASTIC, it will be AMAZING. But before he can explain how, an inquisitive mouse enters, followed by a bird, an elephant, bunnies, a bear with a picnic basket and, strangest of all, a tall wolf in a Red Riding Hood cape dragging a prop forest on a wheeled platform. These visitors set up an impromptu tea party; worse, they fill up the page. Larry can’t 1470

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believe it: They’re cramping his style! He screams at them to leave him alone, then extends his beautiful feathers...a bright (and embossed) two-page spread. But then he realizes it’s not much fun to show off all by yourself. Everybody else is gone and the background darkens to a deep, scary blue. Larry screams again, this time for help. In an instant, everyone is back. Lesson learned: It’s much more fun to share.

Prereaders should be captivated by this cacophony of type and images, and they will certainly identify with the willful peacock. (Picture book. 3-6)

BRAVE NEW POND

Holm, Jennifer L., Holm, Matthew Illustrator: Holm, Jennifer L., Holm, Matthew Random (96 pp.) $6.99 | (Library Ed ): $12.99 September 27, 2011 978-0-375-84390-7 (Library Ed ): 978-0-375-93784-2 Series: Squish Volume: 2 The single-celled everylad who oozed from the Babymouse series to start one of his own in Squish #1: Super Amoeba (2011) tries hanging with the cool crowd.

Squish’s efforts to turn over a new pseudopod on the first day of school look futile—until an invitation to sit at the lunch table with the six hyper-cool Algae brothers offers escape from both his nerdy moocher buddy Pod’s obsession with asteroid disaster and classmate Peggy Paramecium’s relentless optimism.

He discovers the price, though, when one brother relieves him of his prized baseball cap and then orders him to dump nacho cheese all over Pod. Fortunately, Squish has beloved comicbook hero Super Amoeba to provide a moral compass. Mixing framed and unframed panels, the Holms alternate between Squish’s dilemma, illustrated with green highlights, and black and white pages from Squish’s comic, in which Super Amoeba has to make a parallel choice. In the end, both amoebae make the heroic decision. The authors tuck in some morsels of biology, end with instructions for making green slime and provide another sort-of closure for the main plot—as Peggy puts it: “Oh no! The algae just got wiped out by an Asteroid!! That’s sosad!!!

Gee, I wonder if tomorrow is pizza day!”

Any day there’s a new Squish (or Babymouse, for that matter) is Pizza Day. (Graphic novel. 7-9)

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PERFECT

Hopkins, Ellen McElderry (640 pp.) $18.99 | September 13, 2011 978-1-4169-8324-8 While not razor-edged like her previous work, Hopkins’ portrait of four 12th-graders who are expected to be perfect will nonetheless keep teens up all night reading.

In a Reno suburb, expectations take heavy tolls. Trying to excel at baseball and get into Stanford, Sean takes steroids and spirals into rage and rape. Kendra does pageants but wants to model, so she schedules plastic surgery and stops eating. Andre takes dance lessons in secret, funding them with money that his wealthy, status-conscious parents give him for fashionable sweaters. Cara seems faultless at everything from cheerleading to grades, but she’s falling in love with a girl. The four first-person narrations are set in different type and have mildly different styles, but the free verse lacks Hopkins’ trademark sharp, searing brittleness. However, the less-sharp tone works here, because these characters are more depressed than dissociated. The ostensible focus on perfection is a coping mechanism against families that are absent, cold and brutally silent, so the consequences—anorexia, drugs, booze, rape, delusion, deception—all ring true. It also rings true that some characters buckle, worst off at the story’s end, while others find themselves and may make it.

This page-turner pulls no emotional punches; readers should find Impulse (2007) first, because this is a sequel at heart, and knowing the prior work in advance adds crucial layers of meaning. (author’s note) (Fiction. 13-17)

OFF TO CLASS Incredible and Unusual Schools Around the World

Hughes, Susan Owlkids Books (64 pp.) $22.95 | (Paperback ): $12.95 September 15, 2011 978-1-926818-85-6 (Paperback ): 978-1-926818-86-3 Category: Nonfiction

Surprising schools to be found around the world include new schools that work with the environment, schools in places where none existed and schools that meet children more than halfway.

Directly addressed to the reader, lively text in short chunks on double-page spreads introduces 23 schools from 20 countries. Each is located on a map, described briefly and shown in colorful photographs emphasizing the students. Sidebars may spotlight a particular student or offer more details about school life, the building process or events from the school’s history. Each spread also includes a boxed fast fact or two.

Many of these schools are new, in remote, out-of-the-way |

places, places where kids weren’t previously served or places where man-made or natural disasters have disrupted children’s lives. The author makes a point of noting the use of local materials and energy-efficient construction, and she gives credit to the founders. Schools for street kids and refugees, one for girls who would otherwise be married, another for children with sensory impairments, schooling by e-mail and unschooling are some of the more unusual examples. The text concludes with a list of websites of schools and sponsoring organizations and another reminder of the U.N. declaration that every child as the right to an education.

Unusual and useful. (acknowledgements, credits, index, map) (Nonfiction. 9-13)

BE THE CHANGE Your Guide to Freeing Slaves and Changing the World

Hunter, Zach Zondervan (176 pp.)

(Paperback ): $9.99 | September 1, 2011 (Paperback ): 978-0-310-72611-1 Category: Nonfiction

Hunter, the teen spokesperson for a student-led anti-slavery organization, inspires readers to become activists.

Each chapter, named with a key word such as “community,” “leadership” or “compassion,” starts with an inspirational story or about one or more contemporary or historical figures, transitions into the author’s take on the key word in question and ends with a set of discussion questions. Chapters are short, with plenty of white space, and relevant, visually appealing quotations and statistics are scattered throughout.

The author’s activism is rooted in his Christianity, and he uses a number of Bible verses and stories to make his points (as well as a couple of brief but possibly alienating references to abstinence as an example of “solid morals” and a historical figure “ministering to Jews”). The author gives a variety of anecdotes and statistics about what he calls modern-day slavery—a group of boys in Zambia being tricked into an exploitative choir; an elementary school-aged girl sold by her family into forced labor—but readers won’t come away with a big-picture sense of global politics or the forces that make this sort of exploitation possible. Instead, the author asks readers to find issues about which they are passionate and ask God to guide them toward the next step.

Accessible, if slightly insubstantial. (Inspirational nonfiction. 12-18)

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kirkus q & a with alma flor ada and gabriel zubizarreta

Dancing Home

Alma Flor Ada and Gabriel M. Zubizarreta Simon & Schuster (160 pp.) $14.99 July 12, 2011 9781416900887

In their collaboration, Dancing Home, motherand-son writing team Alma Flor Ada and Gabriel Zubizarreta explore what living within the gentle grip of two cultures might mean to young girls.

Despite their teasing, fifth grader Margarita struggles to fit in with her peers. When her cousin Lupe, who doesn’t speak English, comes from Mexico to live with Margarita’s family, fitting in becomes even harder.

Through friendship and self-discovery, both girls learn to celebrate both their heritage and their new identities. Here, Ada and Zubizarreta offer their views on immigration, collaboration and the importance of family everywhere.

Q: Why is it important for young readers to read about subjects like immigration?

AFA: There needed to be a reason why this girl is coming to the U.S. If she’d had a mother and a father, why would she be raised by an aunt? So there was that, but also, the issue of immigrants worries me a great deal. One of the hardships that happens many times is men come by themselves, and it’s very hard for them to live alone. They have no way of bringing their family and have to create a second family. That is not uncommon at all. Everyone is free, but poverty and oppression can bring about situations that otherwise people would not have contemplated. I wanted that message to be there.

Gabriel Zubizarreta: The immigration topic is somewhat controversial, as are most political topics in today’s society. Topics such as these have become divisive and pitted Americans against one another.

Unfortunately there are real people’s lives caught up in the middle of the political power play, and there is real harm occurring to the country. We aim to put a human face to the dilemma and give a voice to those caught in the middle.

AFA: Well, it was really an extraordinary experience.

We did not set out to do this as a collaboration. I had an original version of this book, a much shorter version, and gave Gabriel the manuscript, and he was very gentle in the way he approached me.

The more we got into it, though, we realized we’d entered a true co-authorship. Gabriel is a businessman, but he’s someone who pays a lot of attention to life and to people. What the book did for us on a personal level—it made us talk about many things. Sometimes when things are happening it’s not easy to talk about it, but as time passes we can look back—in this case the book was a wonderful vehicle. Gabriel came out of this project with reallife advice for everyone—write a book with your mother, write a book with your daughters.

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Q: What was your collaboration process like?

GZ: The story involves family relationships, and we have lived many parts of the book in our own lives.

Often our perspectives of the same event are different, and we try to bring that to our book. Our relationship of mother and son has been challenged and ultimately strengthened by the book. It is not easy to co-author, to work with a parent/child team and work across generations. That said, it was a wonderful experience.

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p hoto c o urt e sy of t h e au t ho r

AFA: This is a poem that has been very meaningful in my life. First of all it’s a very famous poem, very popular. Every child in Latin America at one point or another learns to memorize this poem. It actually revolutionized Spanish poetry by bringing in color and sound and smell in very rich way. It’s been part of my life forever. This was crucial to the story—I wanted to show that sometimes children are not aware of the cultural richness that is their heritage.

Here you have a girl called Margarita, and she has no idea that one of the most important poems in the Spanish language has her name in the title. |

Q: You have two main story lines in the book—one about the two cousins who grow to be friends and another about Lupe’s father. Why include the story of Lupe’s father?

Alma Flor Ada: It’s such an important issue in my life and in the lives of the people around me. My grandfather, he was 14 when he stole away on a ship. He was an illegal immigrant. It’s one thing to hear the romantic story of a grandfather who came to Cuba and another thing to put that stamp of “undocumented” on him.

This man became educated, he was successful; so many immigrants have done that. Look at the things we appreciate and admire in the people who, in a way, broke the law. Everyone we think of as heroic are people who did not accept what was legal at the time—Martin Luther King Jr., Mrs. Parks, the fathers of the nation. I want children to think.

Q: Why did you include the poem “To Margarita” in your novel?

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Children continually deny their heritage. Just a few months ago I was working on an after-school project in L.A., getting kids to write their own books. There was a beautiful book written by a boy: It said something like, “My name is José, I like my name very much, this is the name of my father, this is the name of my grandfather. But now I’m just calling myself Joey because when I say José people laugh at me.” It’s wonderful when people change their name as an act of volition, but to give up something that is meaningful to you because you don’t want to be mocked, that is so sad.

“Helicopter moms have not fared well in print—until now.” from george flies south

GEORGE FLIES SOUTH

James, Simon Illustrator: James, Simon Candlewick (40 pp.) $16.99 | September 1, 2011 978-0-7636-5724-6

Helicopter moms have not fared well in print—until now.

The parent starring in this lighthearted saga is nurturing a timid fledgling.

When the autumnal leaves start to fall, young George still has not tested his wings. Cognizant of both the seasonal pull to head south and her son’s fear of flying, the mother bird calmly opts to address his more immediate need—hunger. In the instant that she is off foraging, however, the wind lifts the nest out of the tree, and George appears exhilarated by the seemingly secure flight.

The tension of the separation is short-lived, as mama bird quickly responds, although all she can do is fly nearby, shouting advice as the nest is transported by a car, a barge and a load of lumber. Ultimately, a crisis with a cat leads to the nest’s destruction. James employs sequential panels and single-page compositions until the climax, when a double-spread depicts the triumphant learner.

Fluid lines and breezy watercolor washes complement the lowkey parenting style: This mama hovers patiently, mixing admonishment with encouragement. George, for his part, manages to listen, communicate his feelings and keep trying.

These unflappable characters provide likable, positive role models for readers young and old, who may then enjoy sharing Mordicai Gerstein’s Leaving the Nest (2007), in which several species spread their wings. (Picture book. 3-5)

THE NAME OF THE STAR

Johnson, Maureen Putnam (384 pp.) $16.99 | September 1, 2011 978-0-399-25660-8

A clever, scary, little-bit-sexy beginning to a series that takes Louisiana teen Rory to London.

Rory’s parents are teaching for a year at the University of Bristol, so she gets to spend senior year at Wexford, a London boarding school. She recounts her story, from mining her colorful relatives for stories to wow her English classmates, coming to grips with heavier course loads and making a couple of fairly adorable friends. But London is soon caught up in fear, as a copycat killer has begun recreating Jack the Ripper’s bloody murders in gruesome detail. Johnson fearlessly takes readers from what seems like a cool innocent-abroad-with-iPod story to supernatural thriller, when Rory sees a man no one else does on campus the night of one of those murders. Enter a trio of young folks who are ghost hunters of a very specific sort. The tension ramps up exquisitely among cups of tea, library visits and the London Underground. The explosive ending is genuinely |

terrifying but never loses the wit, verve and humor that Rory carries with her throughout. While this tale does conclude, it does so with a complicated revelation that will have readers madly eager for the next installment.

Nice touches about friendship, kissing, research and the way a boy’s curls might touch his collar fully integrate with a clear-eyed look at a pitiless killer. (Supernatural thriller. 12-18)

MY BOYFRIEND BITES

Jolley, Dan Illustrator: Martinez, Alitha E. Graphic Universe (128 pp.)

(Library Ed ): $29.27 | (Paperback ): $9.95 (e-book ): $21.95 | October 1, 2011 (Library Ed ): 978-0-7613-5599-1 (Paperback ): 978-0-7613-7078-9 (e-book ): 978-0-7613-7187-8 Series: My Boyfriend is a Monster Volume: 3 A small-town teen fond of taking on difficult boyfriends as “projects” acquires a taste for tougher challenges when her newest one turns into a giant bat.

“Vampires are like cockroaches. If you see one, you’ve got a few. If you see a few, you’ve got a lot.” So explains Vanessa’s mysterious but hunky new squeeze Jean-Paul after blowing his cover as a janitor by driving off an attacking band of preppy bloodsuckers—and then revealing that Vanessa herself is descended from a line of monster hunters, and he has been appointed her protector. Rescuing a beloved teacher from exsanguination (armed with industrial quantities of garlic powder and a shopvac) not only proves the truth of Jean-Paul’s observation but firms up Vanessa’s vague career plans, too. Presented in graphic panels done in suitably gothic black and white and featuring both sharply drawn characters and plenty of snarky dialogue, this spirited standalone episode joins both its predecessors (I Love Him to Pieces and Made for Each Other) and the simultaneously publishing Under His Spell, by Marie P. Croall and illustrated by Hyeondo Park, as fine fare for Buffy fans of all...types.

Hip, steamy fun. (Graphic paranormal romance. 12-14)

AFTER OBSESSION

Jones, Carrie Wedel, Steven E. Bloomsbury (320 pp.) $17.99 | September 13, 2011 978-1-59990-681-2 In a tight-knit Maine town, the loss of a fishing boat at sea affects the entire community; for Courtney, a local teen whose father was on board, her hope for his safe return becomes a dangerous obsession that leads her to make a sinister pact with evil consequences.

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Narrated in alternating chapters by Courtney’s best friend, Aimee, and cousin, Alan, the tale relegates Courtney to the backseat in order to explore Alan and Aimee’s fantastical roles and their burgeoning relationship. Since childhood, Aimee has been ashamed of her prophetic dreams and ability to heal, which she links to her mother, who mysteriously died when she was young. Similarly, Alan, who has just moved from Oklahoma to Maine to help Courtney and her mother, also enjoys a mystical heritage that stems from his father’s Native American roots.

Together this powerful pair struggles to release Courtney from her obsession, which clearly arises from more than emotional turmoil. How can they leverage their powers to defeat the River Man and ensure that the friendly and warm pre-obsession Courtney is restored? The River Man is a powerful opponent; the alternating voices effectively ratchet up the tension as the teens explore the mystery and strategize their approach.

This modern-day Faustian tale is well balanced, with teenage romance, racial tension, humor and threads of realistic family dynamics to keep readers engaged. (Suspense. 12 & up)

PURE RED

Joseph, Danielle Flux (240 pp.) $9.95 | September 8, 2011 978-0-7387-2743-1 Despite her ear for authentic teenspeak, Joseph’s (Indigo Blues, 2010) latest effort falls flat.

Cassia’s summer goal is to find her passion before junior year. Her focus shifts between basketball, where she’s thwarted at league play by a more seasoned player, and Graham, a boy whose cute butt she’s had her eye on since spotting him at her father’s art exhibit. She faces obstacles in both arenas— perceived slights on the court from Kate, a.k.a. Thunder, and her inability to draw Graham’s attention away from her father and toward herself. Frustrated, she schemes to get Graham to lust after her with the help of her friend, Liz. The narrative leans heavily on Cassia’s internal monologue at the expense of plot, making Cassia come across as mean-spirited and quick to judge. Fueled by jealousy, with Liz as “back-up bitch,” she counters Thunder’s verbal barbs with hostility out of proportion to actual events. She’s jealous of her father’s new girlfriend; she’s even jealous of people who respond to her sprained ankle with stories of their own, asking herself, “What do you have to do to be special around here? Be in a full-body cast?”

A framework of color imagery lends little to this novel, which is further marred by superficial dialogue, choppy sentences, non sequiturs and poor character development.

(Fiction. 12 & up)

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THE MAN IN THE MOON

Joyce, William Illustrator: Joyce, William Atheneum (56 pp.) $17.99 | September 6, 2011 978-1-4424-3041-9 Series: The Guardians of Childhood Volume: 1 A visual feast cannot compensate for lackluster plotting in this first installment of a new mega-series that involves picture books, chapter books and (of course) a movie.

There are guardians of children everywhere that strive to keep kids safe from harm. Of these, the first was MiM, The Man in the Moon. Born to a loving family with a guardian named Nightlight to keep him safe from bad dreams, MiM’s untainted sleep attracts the unwanted attention of Pitch, the King of Nightmares. When MiM’s family and brave Nightlight perish in an attack, MiM lives out the rest of the days inside his family’s ship (our own moon). Once grown, he determines to protect the children of nearby Earth and calls upon folks like Santa Claus, Mother Goose and the Tooth Fairy to join him in this goal. Joyce’s prowess as an illustrator is undeniable, and this may well be his most ambitious, marvelous-looking title to date. Only a sure and meticulous hand could conjure up such luscious lunar moths and battling constellations. Sadly, the storytelling cannot live up to the visual presentation. Feeling more like an introductory tale than a full-blooded story in its own right, the old-fashioned– feeling narrative fails to find a plot.

Here’s hoping that future installments in this ambitious series will spend less time on back story and more on story line. (Picture book. 5-9)

PET SHOP REVOLUTION

Juan, Ana Illustrator: Juan, Ana Levine/Scholastic (40 pp.) $17.99 | October 1, 2011 978-0-545-12810-0

This tale of a harsh pet-store owner who turns over a new leaf would be uplifting were it not so frightening.

The exotic animals in surly Mr. Walnut’s emporium get a new lease on life after young Mina sneaks in and releases them one night. Because they take his prized wig with them, he becomes a fearful, lonely shut-in, until he is struck by the notion that he could re-create his animals as plush toys. He stops caring that he’s bald and becomes so jolly that Mina and the animals come back to help. Though supposedly transformed, Mr. Walnut remains a visually scary figure from start to finish in Juan’s richly hued, mildly surrealistic scenes. Not only does he sport huge black eyebrows that look like hairy spiders from the outset, but in a misguided sign of his change, a pair of beady, staring eyes suddenly appear in their midst partway along. Worse yet, in the

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JACKSON JONES The Tale of a Boy, a Troll, and a Rather Large Chicken

climactic scene, the smiling animals present him with a Christmas gift that is a near-life-size doll portrait—crudely stitched together and bearing sinister-looking button eyes embedded in thick sprays of black. (In Coraline’s world, it would be the Other Mr. Walnut, a truly horrific notion.) It’s enough to give even fairly sturdy readers a sharp case of megrims.

An unsettling outing, with none of the dreamy lyricism that illuminated the artist’s earlier Night Eater (2004). (Picture book. 6-8)

JOURNAL OF A SCHOOLYARD BULLY Notes on Noogies, Wet Willies, and Wedgies

Katz, Farley Illustrator: Katz, Farley St. Martin’s Griffin (272 pp.) $12.99 | September 13, 2011 978-0-312-68158-6

Combine Roald Dahl’s Twits and other villains, mix with the first-person–journaling trope and the comedic result might look something like this.

In his “Bully’s Log,” seventh-grader Niko Kayler provides an episodic text-and-pictures look at what he regards as the craft of bullying. Anything smelly, humiliating or painful (if not exactly lethal) provides the essence of a good trick to play on his victims, and he doesn’t stint on firing any number of wildly exaggerated blows at the random nerds who annoy him.

Niko’s rogues’ gallery of bullies he most admires includesboth Lucifer and Santa Claus. Katz picks the low-hanging…er, fruit of boogers, poop and farts to fill out his young antihero’s arsenal of tricks and tips for successful bullying. Occasional exclamations of “God!” and the use of adjectives like “motherpuking” send Niko’s malevolence veering off into slightly older teen territory (he says of cyberbullying, “I think it’s cheap and dirty. Like falling in love in Las Vegas”), and how many middle schoolers will recognize a reference to M. Night Shyamalan?

The energy also seems to flag a bit with one relentlessly malicious sort of mayhem following another.

Packaged to recall other diary tales of middle school (faux-spiral binding, scratchy, faux-handprinted type— often hard to read—and roughly drawn illustrations), this take on the rotten inner life of a true bully is a mixed bag.

(Fiction. 10-13)

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Kelly, Jenn Illustrator: Elsammak, Ariane Zonderkidz (256 pp.) $11.99 | September 1, 2011 978-0-310-72293-9 Series: Jackson Jones Volume: 2

It’s hard to believe a book could contain too many chickens, but this novel may test readers’ patience.

For a brief period, Muppet movies used to retell classic stories: Muppet Treasure Island or The Muppet Christmas Carol. This book feels like a Muppet version of the Bible. It’s a religious allegory filled with trolls, squirrels and talking chickens. Jackson Jones is lost inside a giant tree. The tree comes with both an elevator and an elevator operator, who may or may not be God. Some children will find the religious imagery bewildering: If the garden Jackson enters is meant to be Eden, why is there a toilet made of gold at the center? (There’s more bathroom humor here than in most Christian fiction.) The humor is often the book’s strength, with chapter headings like “There Are Absolutely No Eels, Kangaroos, or Rhinoceroses in This Chapter.” But the wacky tone can make the book feel haphazard, with elves and rats popping up at random, never to be seen again. It doesn’t help that there are cliffhangers every few pages.

Readers may tire of chapters that end with a gasp or a scream or a “What was that noise?”

Many of the jokes work, but too often Kelly seems like a desperate comedian, pulling out joy buzzers and chattering teeth and one rubber chicken too many. (Fantasy. 9-12)

SHUT OUT

Keplinger, Kody Poppy/Little, Brown (288 pp.) $17.99 | September 5, 2011 978-0-316-17556-2 A modern-day Lysistrata retelling that reinforces as many stereotypes as it overturns.

College student Keplinger (The DUFF, 2010) sets this version at Hamilton High School, where the football team and the soccer team are engaged in a 10-yearold rivalry. Lissa, obsessed with being in control since her mother’s death in a car accident, is tired of her footballer boyfriend Randy’s participation in pranks, food fights and seemingly endless cycles of revenge. Her decision to combat the problem by organizing a sex strike comes seemingly out of left field, but once the girlfriends of the two teams’ players are united, they begin both supporting each other and comparing their own experiences with sexuality. The

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girls explore their shame about being labeled virgins, sluts or teases, whether any of the girls having sex actually enjoy it (it varies) and whether there’s any such thing as normal when it comes to sex. Plenty of assumptions go uninterrogated, however: Only boys play sports, sex is far more important to boys than to girls and everybody is heterosexual. Cash Sterling, the romantic lead, bosses and wheedles Lissa far less than Randy but still intervenes in her life in ways discerning readers might consider invasive.

Enjoyable as a conversation-starter, but let’s hope reallife conversations take a more critical approach to gender politics. (Fiction. 14 & up)

THE HIJAB BOUTIQUE

Khan, Michelle Kube Publishing (56 pp.)

(Paperback ): $7.95 | September 1, 2011 (Paperback ): 978-0-86037-468-8

Farah, a fifth-grade student of Indian Muslim origins at a fancy girls’ school in Los Angeles, must bring in something representing her mom for International Women’s Day, but the usually creative student can’t imagine what would impress her classmates.

When her mother finds her looking through her closet, Farah feels guilty, but her mother reveals that she herself has a secret. Widowed a few years before, Farah’s mom is opening “The Hijab Boutique,” a store selling Muslim headscarves.

Farah finds a topic for her speech, and her mom makes a new start. Some explanations of Islamic practice are woven into the novella, particularly a discussion of why some women wear the hijab. The contemporary story has subplots concerning friendship and cliques, but the leaden prose will limit readership.

Narrator Farah reflects on her father’s gold convertible: “I find the courage to stare at the symbolic fruit of his hard work.” In the final chapter, “Conclusion,” Farah too quickly tells readers that the “Cool as Ice” girls aren’t so important, and she feels good in a new neighborhood, where she has joined the Muslim Girl Scouts and has a new friend. The realistic black-and-white pencil illustration that accompanies this summation shows her wearing a hijab.

Books about North American Muslim life are badly needed, but this short novel is too pedantic, albeit wellmeaning, to appeal broadly. (Fiction. 9-11)

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JOSEPH AND THE SABBATH FISH

Kimmel, Eric A. Illustrator: Peluso, Martina Kar-Ben (32 pp.) $17.95 | (Paperback ): $7.95 September 1, 2011 978-0-7613-5908-1 (Paperback ): 978-0-7613-5909-8

Award-winner Kimmel retells a Jewish fable of greed and generosity.

At Joseph’s weekly Sabbath table, all are welcomed—rich or poor, young or old. Joseph’s neighbor, Judah, also sets a bountiful table each week, but he prefers to invite only important people to his Sabbath meal; he gives his charity to the beggars in the street. Judah chastises Joseph for his excessive hospitality and correctly predicts that he will soon lose all his wealth. A foreboding dream warns Judah that he, too, might lose his fortune and that Joseph will one day count Judah’s money for himself.

Judah, shaken, sells his property, buys a large ruby and leaves Tiberias by sea—and loses the jewel, the last of his wealth, in a strong storm. Returning to Tiberias, he approaches the always kind and benevolent Joseph for help. Joseph’s luck has once again changed with a fish he received at market: Cutting it open revealed the ruby Judah lost. As in Marilyn Hirsh’s Joseph Who Loved the Sabbath, illustrated by Devis Grebu (1986), Kimmel reconciles the differing attitudes through a conclusion about the importance of celebrating the Sabbath “with an open door and an open heart.” Blended shades of blues, purples and greens done in watercolor, pen and pastel illuminate the old Israeli scenes integral to the narration.

Heartwarming for Jewish collections and religiousschool settings. (Picture book/religion. 5-7)

ELI, NO!

Kirk, Katie Illustrator: Kirk, Katie Abrams (32 pp.) $14.95 | October 1, 2011 978-0-8109-8964-1 Geometric shapes, matte colors and few words tell the story of a beloved but not entirely trained pup.

The right-hand page of nearly each spread holds the title words in bold color: It is what Eli hears when he chases a squirrel, hogs the bed and makes a fuss. There is a big, bold yes at the end, of course, to assure the doggie and readers that he is loved.

Toddlers are not likely to be beguiled by the message of yesyou’re-bad-sometimes-but-we-love-you-anyway—they’re probably quite familiar with David Shannon’s sublime No, David!

(1998)—but they will be taken happily by the pictures. There’s Eli lying on his back surrounded by the great number of food items he has taken one big bite out of, and there he is, going where he shouldn’t, in a clearly delineated if graphically abstract flower bed. And he really does hog the bright-yellow bed in the

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“Larded with earnest purpose but unconvincing and far from likely to be the first call for attention to America’s weight problem that children or parents will encounter.” from eddie shapes up

great blue room. They will no doubt also be delighted by the path of destruction Eli leaves through his house, where furniture and household objects in bright array are scattered behind him. The words “The End” appear just over Eli’s own hindquarters as he moves on to the next adventure.

Adult readers might want to suggest his family be in touch with the BadDog Trainers whose card appears on the opening spread; children will simply enjoy the havoc.

(Picture book. 3-6)

BLOOD ON THE MOON

Knight, Jennifer Running Press Kids (416 pp.) $9.95 | September 28, 2011 978-0-7624-4117-4

Knight rehashes themes of werewolfvampire rivalry and redemptive paranormal romance in a debut that adds little to the genre until the final cliffhanger.

Against the familiar backdrop of remote wilderness and mysterious murders, Colorado State freshman Faith rebuffs the advances of bosom buddy Derek, falling instead for Lucas, an aloof and stunning specimen who morphs into fur, claws and saliva when the urge is strong or the moon is full. When Faith pairs up with Lucas on a school assignment, his one-time best friend and centuriesold vampire nemesis, Vincent, haphazardly targets her as a vehicle to hurt and distract Lucas; Lucas’ affection for Faith develops in earnest only after she becomes Vincent’s mark. Overly stiff and direct dialogue in this first-person narrative often dulls any excitement that might arise from the conflict and power play over Faith’s safety and mortality. Her ability to intuit people’s vibes is underutilized, though her telepathic influence over Lucas when he is in wolf form is crucial to the plot. Mounting ardor between Faith and Lucas heightens the stakes of the climactic battle that draws Lucas’ pack from its enclave and results in highly unusual circumstances for one of its casualties.

Curiosity about the author’s ending promise to tweak paranormal mythology will impel some readers to the sequel, provided they care to learn more about Faith’s travails. (Paranormal romance. 14 & up)

EDDIE SHAPES UP

Koch, Ed Thaler, Pat Koch Illustrator: Hoefer, Jonathan Zagat (48 pp.) $16.95 | September 8, 2011 978-1-60478-378-0 With a message-driven tale of a plump lad who turns over a new leaf, an ex-mayor of New York and his sister clobber readers with the Board of Education. |

To judge from the contemporary dress of the figures in Hoefer’s inexpert illustrations, this isn’t intended to be autobiographical despite the main character’s name—though a breezy admission in the closing lecture that the co-authors were both “chubby” children does creates a certain resonance. Round as the apple he discards from his lunch every day, young Eddie chows down on fatty foods and avoids playground games for fear of embarrassment—until a friend tells him that he’s “a little heavy and out of shape. Maybe it’s because of the way you eat.”

The next day Eddie begins asking his mom for healthier breakfasts than bagels with butter and also heads for the park to jog. A “few weeks” later he’s nimble enough to chase down a runaway baby carriage, hold his own in a playground dodgeball game and even join the school’s soccer team. Despite a seemingly simple program—eat less, cut down on the cookies, exercise regularly—will Eddie’s example prompt similar sudden epiphanies in rotund readers? Fat chance.

Larded with earnest purpose but unconvincing and far from likely to be the first call for attention to America’s weight problem that children or parents will encounter.

(Picture book. 6-8)

WHAT IF YOUR BEST FRIEND WERE BLUE?

Kochan, Vera Illustrator: Garofoli, Viviana Marshall Cavendish (24 pp.) $12.99 | September 1, 2011 978-0-7614-5897-5

This simple picture book is intended to teach both color awareness—of shades such as blue, green and yellow—and color-blindness in terms of skin tones. It doesn’t work.

The book begins by asking, “What if your best friend were blue?” The child narrator answers, “Even if my best friend were blue, he’d still play soccer with me.” The nominal dialogue continues: “What if a policewoman were green?”

“Even if a policewoman were green, she’d still help me find my mom and dad.” The book continues exactly like this, featuring a yellow doctor, a purple fireman, a red teacher and an orange babysitter. The intended message of this title is highjacked by two little words, repeated again and again: “even if.” This phrase, suggesting as it does that a best friend would still play soccer despite his blue-ness and the policewoman still provide a helping hand despite her green-ness, does not undermine homogeneity, but rather confirms whiteness as humankind’s default skin color. Further contributing to this notion is the fact that the main character is white, as are all the other adults and children who are not being used to demonstrate a particular color; skin tones aside from white that actually show up in the real world are absent entirely. Even the lessons in identifying colors fall apart here. The policewoman who is supposed to be green actually first appears as an off-putting shade of yellow.

A big miss. (Picture book. 4-8)

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“When Joel declares himself a Conscientious Objector to the Vietnam War, he feels as though his whole life has been leading to this moment.” from battle fatigue

NINA IN THAT MAKES ME MAD

Kroll, Steven Illustrator: Knight, Hilary TOON/Candlewick (32 pp.) $12.95 | September 27, 2011 978-1-935179-10-8 A young child presents a catalogue of timeless irritations and injustices in a 1976 outing with art and text lightly massaged and reformatted for newly independent readers.

From “When I do something nice and no one cares…” or “When you get mad at ME and I didn’t do it…” to “When I NEED you and you make me WAIT…” Nina’s complaints range from actual injustice to self-absorbed whining and so have near-universal applicability. Each general grievance is paired to a specific incident detailed in comic-book–style panels on the facing page, such as a painting that distracted parents don’t praise properly, a promise of ice cream that doesn’t pan out, a playmate who abruptly runs off with someone else or clothing that just won’t go on the right way. Fresh and buoyant despite the old-style television or occasional other period detail, Knight’s art places Nina—short haired, dressed in overalls and looking androgynous, in contrast to the girlier figure that Christine Davenier made of her in a 2002 edition (published as That Makes Me Mad)—between siblings in a comfortably domestic setting. He captures her feelings in a broad range of wonderfully expressive body language ranging from hunched-shoulder, irritated frowns to melodramatic sprawls.

A posthumous publication for Kroll; Knight is still going strong and working on an autobiography.

A little parental TLC finally calms the storm, as it usually does. (Graphic early reader. 6-8)

BATTLE FATIGUE

Kurlansky, Mark Walker (256 pp.) $17.99 | October 25, 2011 978-0-8027-2264-5 When Joel declares himself a Conscientious Objector to the Vietnam War, he feels as though his whole life has been leading to this moment.

In this first-person narrative, Joel recounts the events in his childhood that influence his decision. He grows up surrounded by World War II veterans and plays war using their old uniforms. Most of the vets do not talk about their experiences, but it is clear that they are haunted by them—battle fatigue, they call it. This leaves Joel, and readers along with him, struggling to understand the necessity of war, especially when, in the end, we befriend our former enemies, as with the former Axis powers. His father says that the war might not have occurred if more Germans had opposed Hitler’s policies. It is this point that Joel keeps coming 1478

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back to when he realizes that Vietnam will be his battleground: Is he able to stand against policies he abhors, regardless of the consequences? Readers willing to stick with this leisurely recollection will find that the pace picks up when Joel receives his draft notice during one of the most tumultuous periods in the country’s history; even families are divided on the issue, and the personal and societal pressures that Joel faces are tremendous.

Pair this penetrating examination of a teen’s interior process with Walter Dean Myers’ Fallen Angels (1988) for a discussion about teens and the Vietnam War. (Historical fiction. 12 & up)

CAT FOUND

Lee, Ingrid Chicken House/Scholastic (176 pp.) $16.99 | (e-book ): $16.99 October 1, 2011 978-0-545-31770-2 (e-book ): 978-0-545-38799-6 Lee’s Dog Lost (2008) was a fictional account of one community’s fear-fueled drive to euthanize every pit bull in town.

Following the same formula, here she tackles the problem of feral cats.

The town of Clydesdale has a big problem with stray cats, and citizens are demanding a solution. Billy Reddick has a problem, too. His father, Walter, mistreats both him and his mother and takes out his meanness on the town’s homeless cats. When drunk, Walter even uses the cats for target practice.

On Billy’s 11th birthday, Walter gives him an air rifle. “That thing will keep down the vermin.” But Billy has a secret—a stray cat he rescued and is hiding from his parents. When Billy discovers that the cat, Conga, is pregnant, he takes her to an abandoned building that is home to many feral cats but then becomes distraught when she goes missing. Will he find her before his father and other angry townsfolk kill her? The story is abundant with stereotypical characters and situations, right down to the oh-so-convenient climax. Though the ending is happy, at least for Conga, the graphic descriptions of animal cruelty, though honest and not gratuitous, may be upsetting to more sensitive readers.

The depth of Lee’s concern for the animals is palpable, but her desire to deliver her message undercuts the effectiveness of her storytelling; for nuance, stick with Jerry Spinelli’s Wringer (1997). (Fiction. 8-11)

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BLACK, WHITE, OTHER In Search of Nina Armstrong

Lester, Joan Steinau Zondervan (224 pp.) $15.99 | September 1, 2011 978-0-310-72763-7

After her black dad and white mom separate, Nina Armstrong, 15, explores her mixed-race identity.

Nina’s circle of friends is white.

Prompted by another girl, her best friend now turns openly racist. Neither defends Nina when a racist shopkeeper falsely accuses her of theft and searches her. Nina’s father has also started noticing racism. His bitter comment on how white cops treat black victims of a gas explosion causes Nina to wonder, “Who is this Dad?” It may serve the plot, but the family’s past indifference to race and late discovery of virulent racism strains credulity. Interwoven with her story is her father’s history of a courageous, enslaved ancestor who escaped to freedom; reading it helps Nina cope with the racism she encounters. Race and multiracial identity are challenging subjects, messy and evolving; Lester, a white diversity consultant, appears disconcertingly unaware herself of changing terminology; Dad routinely identifies enslaved forbears as “slaves.” For African-Americans, whose mixed ancestry stems from sexual assault by white men on enslaved women and whose racial identity was long defined by the “one drop” rule, claiming white heritage remains fraught and complicated.

Papering over messy but fundamental issues, this wellintentioned, Christian-infused debut—though competently written—achieves its cheerful resolution at the expense of credibility. (glossary, bibliography) (Fiction. 12 & up)

STEAMPUNK!

Editors: Link, Kelly and Grant, Gavin J. Candlewick (432 pp.) $22.99 | October 1, 2011 978-0-7636-4843-5 Classification: Short Stories You can’t have steampunk without steam (and maybe some gears), but in the hands of a stellar cast of authors, everything else is open to interpretation.

Tales range across space and time, from ancient Rome (sort of; M.T. Anderson takes history, adds a few gears and delivers a mind-boggling result) to a Dickensian North America, courtesy of Cory Doctorow, where maimed orphans fight the literal and figurative man; from Wales (Delia Sherman’s comedic “The Ghost of Cwmlech Manor”) to the melancholy present and a heroine who might be an accidental transplant from an altogether more exciting reality (Dylan Horrock’s “Steam Girl”). The collection is carefully organized, |

frontloaded with bound-to-be- popular selections from Libba Bray (girl power in the Old West) and Cassie Clare (unrequited love, talking dolls and second chances) and then moving into less well-known contributors. A couple of graphic tales mix with literary hard hitters like Elizabeth Knox (a dark, dreamy and tragic look at the nuances of relationships) and co-editor Link (whose “Summer People” riffs on old tales of Faeries and humans). Steampunk is hot at the moment in literature, art and fashion: This collection taps into the ethos without ever seeming topical or transient, thanks to contributions rich with much more than just steam and brass fittings.

An excellent collection, full of unexpected delights. (introduction, author biographies) (Anthology. 12 & up)

ALVIN HO Allergic to Dead Bodies, Funerals, and Other Fatal Circumstances

Look, Lenore Illustrator: Pham, LeUyen Schwartz & Wade/Random $15.99 | (Library Ed ): $18.99 (e-book ): $15.99 | September 13, 2011 978-0-375-86831-3 (Library Ed ): 978-0-375-96831-0 (e-book ): 978-0-375-89882-2 Series: Alvin Ho Volume: 4 Nervous second-grader Alvin Ho digs deep to find the bravery to attend a funeral in this playful and poignant fourth offering in the series.

When Charlie, the best friend of his grandfather, dies, Alvin is desperate to console his gung-gung, volunteering to go to accompany him to the last rites without realizing he’ll be in close proximity to a dead body. Once this occurs to him, however, he is terrified—his fear only compounded by his brother’s concern that Charlie’s death is a bad sign for their similarly aged grandfather. The formula that has worked so well in the earlier installments succeeds here again. Alvin’s frenetic firstperson voice as he puzzles it all out is engaging and real, often laugh-out-loud funny, and his family life is touching—sweet and frazzled and filled with endearing details like his father’s use of Shakespearean curses when he’s frustrated. Historical details of the Concord, Mass., setting abound, often comically portrayed due to Alvin’s tendency toward literalism. His eventual ability to contextualize and accept the death of someone he knew evolves naturally, and the madcap scenario that precedes it, exacerbated by Alvin’s anxiety-related inability to talk in school, is at once hilarious and heart-rending.

A fresh entry in what is overall an exceedingly enjoyable series; readers will cheer this latest. (Fiction. 7-10)

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BETTER THAN YOU

off the page. His budding friendship with Hannah rings true and contributes to his growth on and off the field. The relationship between Will and his widowed dad provides an emotional touchstone, while the desperation of a small town trying to hang on permeates the story.

Authenticity and texture combined with well-paced football action make for another solid outing from Lupica.

(Fiction 10-14)

Ludwig, Trudy Illustrator: Gustavson, Adam Knopf (32 pp.) $15.99 | (Library Ed ): $18.99 September 13, 2011 978-1-58246-380-3 (Library Ed ): 978-1-58246-407-7 This is a message book, and it makes no bones about it.

It lifts off with a foreword from a nationally recognized educator railing against the problem of arrogance in today’s youth and concludes with an author’s note about bragging and boasting, supplemented with a list of possible discussion questions.

Nestled between is the rather bald story of Tyler, your everyday grade-school kid, and Jake, who poisons the air with his braggadocio. “My neighbor Jake can be a real jerk—always letting me know that whatever I do, he can do better.” That might be sports or math or having the most cutting-edge stuff, like a Tunage 300 instead of Tyler’s cruddy SoundLaunch. The saving grace of this tale is Uncle Kevin, who joins Tyler in a little guitar pickin’ and counsels him on blowhards: “It’s a way of protecting themselves from potential enemies. But when a kid acts like a pufferfish, he takes up so much space that he can also push away friends.” Uncle Kevin making like a pufferfish is a highlight, as is Gustavson’s artwork in general, with its lush application of paint, summertime languor and emotive breath.

Point made—perhaps over-made—but anyone suffering the oxygen-depleting windbaggery of the neighborhood boaster will find solace here. (Picture book. 4-8)

THE UNDERDOGS

Lupica, Mike Philomel (256 pp.) $17.99 | September 20, 2011 978-0-399-25001-9 A 12-year-old halfback with a huge passion for football fights to keep his team on the field.

Will Tyler keeps reliving the final play of the previous year’s championship, when his team came so close before his fumble caused the loss to their well-heeled rivals across the river.

Unfortunately, budget cuts may keep the town from fielding his team this year. Like other manufacturing towns, Forbes, Pa., has lost jobs and businesses that might sponsor a sports team.

Will takes a chance, writes to a national company and comes up with the funds to keep the team going. That was almost the easy part: The team no longer has a coach, former players are not interested and skepticism abounds. One of the few who want to play is Hannah, a new girl in town with great ability and as much grit as Will. For Will’s dad, who has agreed to coach, and his teammates, this is nearly a deal-breaker. Sports-loving readers will identify with Will, whose heart and determination leap 1480

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MISS LINA’S BALLERINAS AND THE PRINCE

Maccarone, Grace Illustrator: Davenier, Christine Feiwel & Friends (40 pp.) $16.99 | October 11, 2011 978-0-312-64963-0 Series: Miss Lina’s Ballerinas Volume: 2

The nine lovely little girls are back and what a joy—for there’s a new student joining their ranks, and he’s a boy!

It’s in Messina where Miss Lina makes that announcement to Christina, Edwina, Sabrina, Justina, Katrina, Bettina, Marina, Nina and Regina. The girls happily dream of dancing a pas de deux, but the young boy is “feeling quite shy / to see so much pink and be only one guy.” He dances off to the zoo, and at their teacher’s command—”Chassé!”—they pursue! When they find him, he is happily imitating lions and donkeys and dolphins and monkeys. He’s clearly not the danseur noble they envisioned, but the girls are accepting, and all prance back to the studio to practice and perform a very lively season finale. As in Miss Lina’s Ballerinas (2010), Maccarone has fashioned another charming story in rhyme for young readers that integrates ballet terminology into the narrative and provides a very positive reinforcement for boys interested in the arts. The pastel drawings with swirls of crayon lines provide just the right touch of ambiance and energy.

Welcome Tony Farina to Miss Lina’s, and join the applause for a lovely and lively story. (glossary) (Picture book. 3-7)

SWEAR

Malkin, Nina Simon Pulse/Simon & Schuster (480 pp.) $17.99 | October 18, 2011 978-1-4424-2110-3 Not every teen paranormal romance requires a sequel—and this demonstrates why.

In Swoon (2009), readers were mesmerized by the sensually seductive Sinclair Powers, a ghost-turned-golem whose many charms left teenager Dice sighing under his spell. Nowadays, Dice has been living Sin-less, but when her best friend’s boyfriend disappears, she surmises that supernatural forces

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“This light and unencumbered overture holds a substantial message for young Jewish families.” from many days, one shabbat

are again at work. A deranged dead debutante has declared her undying love (literally) for Sin, has taken said boyfriend captive and will not free him until she and Sin are wed. Dice, with her psychic abilities, acts as an intermediary between the two ghosts, trying to figure out how to both get her friend’s boyfriend back safely and how to once again make Sin hers. Readers looking for the same erotic tones found in Swoon will be disappointed; Sin is a stark 180-degree departure from his previous womanizing self, a watered-down shell of his earlier characterization. This plodding affair moves along discontinuously, from a battle of the bands to haunted houses to a sylvan party with the gods. While Swoon was neatly resolved at the end, this sequel feels like an unnecessary offering, more rambling and with a decidedly different tone.

With romances between supernatural creatures and humans dominating the market, this seems like a shameful ploy to draw out something that should have been left where it was—kind of like resurrecting the dead to find a potential boyfriend. (Paranormal romance. 14 & up)

SKETCHY BEHAVIOR

Mangum, Erynn Zondervan (224 pp.)

(Paperback ): $9.99 | September 1, 2011 (Paperback ): 978-0-310-72144-4 Sixteen-year-old Kate Carter’s life goes from normal to anything but when, for a school art assignment, she perfectly captures the face of a serial killer, a situation that both catapults her into fame and threatens her security.

Mangum’s squeaky-clean thriller, aimed squarely at Christian girls, is narrated in the first person by a heroine trying very hard to be snarky, without success— she’s just too nice. It’s an up-and-down affair in both tone and substance, dull voids punctuated with unexpected action, some of which is nearly impossible to buy. After an intriguing set up, during which the savant sketch-artist heroine draws a serial killer so exactly that he’s almost immediately recognized and caught, the story languishes until someone takes a potshot at Kate during a parade. It seems that the serial killer has at least one deadly friend in St. Louis County, a situation that raises the stakes for Kate and the people who surround her. It also causes her to reexamine her feelings about God and faith, a topic the author handles deftly and with a light hand, and sets the stage for a possible romantic friendship with a churchgoing boy.

The action-packed, sealed-with-a-twist ending strains credulity beyond the cracking point, but it finally engages the reader, who will likely close the book smiling. (Thriller. 12 & up)

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MANY DAYS, ONE SHABBAT

Manushkin, Fran Illustrator: Monescillo, Maria Marshall Cavendish (24 pp.) $12.99 | (e-book ): $12.99 October 1, 2011 978-0-7614-5965-1 (e-book ): 978-0-7614-6080-0

The concept of one/many runs throughout this Shabbat story featuring a modern family as it prepares to host a low-key Sabbath dinner.

In the many days of the week, there is only one Shabbat.

A young boy and his parents work together to make their one house with many rooms ready for their evening guests, cleaning, picking flowers in the garden, making challah, creating napkin holders and finally getting dressed. “One person. / Many fingers. // One box. / Many colors. // One shirt. / Many buttons.” Lighting candles with one match and slicing the one challah into many pieces serve as the foci of this Shabbat table around which children and adults gather. While wine glasses are part of the table setting, none of the three basic prayers for the weekly celebration is included. The simplicity of this string of one/many statements, often just four words per page, means the organic, clean, double-page illustrations convey the story through the characters and their action. A more religiously observant crowd may quibble about the lack of yarmulkes, but this easy-going introduction recognizes the importance of observing a weekly ritual that simply ensures one family-oriented evening each week.

This light and unencumbered overture holds a substantial message for young Jewish families. (Picture book. 2-4)

TEN RULES FOR LIVING WITH MY SISTER

Martin, Ann M. Feiwel & Friends (240 pp.) $16.99 | September 27, 2011 978-0-312-36766-4

New York City is the setting of Newbery Honor winner Martin’s (A Corner of the Universe, 2002) latest, which deftly explores the discord between two sisters.

Just barely nine, Pearl Littlefield, at times wise beyond her years, knows all too well that being the younger sister of a 14-year-old has its ups and downs. To keep harmony, Pearl needs to figure out how to live with Lexie without irritating her. This is especially hard now that they are forced to share a tiny bedroom because their grandfather, Daddy Bo, is living with them while he awaits his move to an assisted-living facility. To keep the peace, Pearl makes the titular list. “Rule #3.

Try not to tease Lexie, sometimes this is hard because she says stupid things.” Throughout the school year, Pearl discovers that adhering to her rules does make a difference. Pearl, as narrator, shows herself to be a keen observer of the people around her and mature enough to handle some sticky situations, all with

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“Although it is part of an early-reader series, it doesn’t feel like a textbook primer, nor does it condescend to emergent readers. It reads smoothly with a clear plot, likable characters and an interesting setting.” from boy, bird, and dog

a sense of humor and aplomb. Readers will welcome Pearl’s insights as she grapples with loneliness after her best friend moves across town, Lexie’s frequent outbursts and her concern for Daddy Bo as he grows increasingly forgetful.

Martin has a gift for creating appealing characters in an atmosphere of caring and forgiveness. (Fiction. 9-12)

UNDER THE MESQUITE

McCall, Guadalupe Garcia Lee & Low (224 pp.) $17.95 | September 1, 2011 978-1-60060-429-4 A resilient Mexican-American girl copes with familial obligation and loss in this free-verse novel.

Drawing from her own teen years for inspiration, McCall highlights life in the borderlands: “En los Estados Unidos / I trained my tongue / and twisted syllables / to form words / that sounded hollow, / like the rain at midnight / dripping into tin pails / through the thatched roof / of our abuelita’s house.” Lupita’s first-person tale captures pivotal moments of her high-school years in the border town of Eagle Pass, Texas, with glimpses back at her first six years in Piedras Negras, Coahuila, Mexico. During her freshman year, Lupita discovers that her mother has cancer.

While her mother fights the disease and her father struggles to support the family financially, Lupita sometimes becomes the de facto parental unit for her seven younger siblings. As she worries about food and money, Lupita experiences the typical troubles and triumphs of a teenage girl; her drama teacher, Mr. Cortez, helps her find an outlet for her talent and her pain.

Meanwhile, family members continue to draw strength and support from each other on both sides of the border. With poignant imagery and well-placed Spanish, the author effectively captures the complex lives of teenagers in many Latino and/or immigrant families.

A promising, deeply felt debut. (Spanish glossary) (Verse fiction. 12 & up)

BOY, BIRD, AND DOG

McPhail, David Illustrator: McPhail, David Holiday House (24 pp.) $14.95 | September 15, 2011 978-0-8234-2346-0 Series: I Like to Read

is told in the sparest of language, with a base of 47 different, frequently repeated words, arranged in the simplest of sentences. Although it is part of an early-reader series, it doesn’t feel like a textbook primer, nor does it condescend to emergent readers. It reads smoothly with a clear plot, likable characters and an interesting setting. The text appears in large print at either the top or bottom of each page. McPhail’s signature watercolor-and-ink illustrations are large scale with soft edges. The action and characters are well defined and appealing, and Boy’s facial expressions depict his imaginative thought processes and exertions, as well as the joy of a successful outcome. Even Dog and Bird manage to convey appropriate emotions with just a slight change in the snout, beak or eyes, or angle of their bodies.

This one could work as a read-aloud, child to adult, with lots of pictorial details to notice and talk about. A sweet, gentle charmer. (Early reader. 4-7)

DON’T WORRY, DOUGLAS!

Melling, David Illustrator: Melling, David Tiger Tales (32 pp.) $12.95 | September 1, 2011 978-1-58925-106-9

When bumbling Douglas wrecks a gift, what can he do?

Dad gives Douglas, a big brown bear, a woolly hat. He can’t wait to show his friends. As he’s rushing out the door, Dad calls out, “Take care of it.” There is a flock of sheep incongruously lazing on a tree branch; they think the hat is “snazzy.”

(Melling’s sheep, who resemble little brown dogs wearing tan hooded sweatshirts, appear randomly throughout, as page fillers.) Douglas dances all around and cartwheels with excitement, blithely unaware that his hat has become snagged on a tree.

When he stops, all that remains is a thin band around his head and a long string of spaghetti crisscrossing several branches. It’s ruined! The other animals pitch in to help. The sheep try to reshape the string on Douglas’s head, and the wise cow fashions it into a headband (though a grabby bird snatches it temporarily for her nest). Douglas becomes more and more distraught.

Then it starts to rain. It’s rabbit who takes time to wipe Douglas’s nose and set him straight: “Dad will understand,” he says.

And of course when Douglas tells Dad, he does. He even gives Douglas his own hat to wear. Bonus: a two-page spread of sheep and rabbit goofily modeling a bunch of different hats.

Simple and sweet, with a winning streak of silly. (Picture book. 3-6)

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I WILL NOT READ THIS BOOK

Meng, Cece Illustrator: Ang, Joy Clarion (32 pp.) $16.99 | September 5, 2011 978-0-547-04971-7 In an appeal to reluctant readers, Meng’s cumulative text will provoke laughter as read-aloud fare.

Delay tactics open the story: A boy refuses to read his book, saying, “I have to floss my teeth and wash behind my ears and feed my fish.” His real reason? “Reading is hard and I don’t read fast and sometimes there are words I don’t know.”

Eleven spreads detailing increasingly silly and extreme scenarios demonstrate his resolve through cumulative text displaying an absurdity reminiscent of Michael Ian Black’s Purple Kangaroo (illustrated by Peter Brown, 2010): “I will not read this book even if you hang me upside down / by one toe / over a cliff / while tickling my feet in a rainstorm…” The boy ultimately says he will read the book if he is dropped from his imagined, precarious position hanging from the cliff—“But only if you catch me.” The last page depicts mother, boy and book together, as Ang’s illustration cleverly incorporates elements from the preceding spreads.

Although an engaging picture book with accomplished digital illustrations embodying a style akin to Dan Yaccarino’s art, it’s a shame the text lacks the control that would make it accessible to actual struggling readers.

(Picture book. 3-7)

MONKEY WITH A TOOL BELT AND THE SEASIDE SHENANIGANS

Monroe, Chris Illustrator: Monroe, Chris Carolrhoda (32 pp.) $16.95 | (e-book ): $12.95 October 1, 2011 978-0-7613-5616-5 (e-book ): 978-0-7613-7943-0 Series: Monkey with a Tool Belt

Chico fixes a whole bunch of stuff at the beach and solves a mystery, too.

On a hot summer day, clever monkey Chico Bon Bon, armed with his trusty tool belt, sets about repairing the lawn sprinkler, which has been spraying too much water. Just as he’s finishing up, Kitty pedals up on her mail bicycle with a postcard for Chico. It’s from Clark, his elephant friend, inviting him to his uncle’s beach resort for a vacation. Chico loves surfing, so it’s off to the beach.

The resort looks “amazing,” but, mysteriously, many things have suddenly broken there. In short order, Clark and his uncle Bill (who happens to be an alligator) put Chico to work making repairs. He uses seaweed to fix a hole in a cabana roof, patches a leaky boat and repairs ropes on a whole row of hammock. But |

his biggest challenge by far is the water slide, which is going crazy, spraying water in a whoosh like a giant fire hose. The door to the pump room is locked, but that doesn’t stop Chico. He easily breaks in (in an eight-panel operation that includes eating a banana) and finds the surprising culprit. There’s only one thing left to do: “Let’s go surfing!” Monroe’s breezy, detailed illustrations match the energy and enthusiasm of her tale.

Fact-filled fun for the curious fixer-in-training. (Picture book. 4-8)

AN ELEPHANT IN THE GARDEN

Morpurgo, Michael Feiwel & Friends (208 pp.) $16.99 | October 25, 2011 978-0-312-59369-8 Lizzie, a frail, aged nursing-home resident, relates to her nurse and the nurse’s son her poignant World War II tale set in Dresden, Germany.

Lizzie’s mother is a zookeeper at the Dresden Zoo, where she cares for its very young elephant.

After zoo officials decide that the animals must be shot if Dresden is bombed, she convinces them that the baby elephant could be safely cared for in her back garden. What she doesn’t anticipate is the firestorm that results from extreme Allied bombing in February of 1945. Sixteen-year-old Lizzie, her younger brother Karli, her mother and the elephant begin, on foot, a mid-winter journey toward the safety of a relative’s rural home, where they encounter Peter, a Canadian flyer downed in the bombing. Together, they flee toward American lines. Lizzie’s somewhat stilted voice as she recollects the events from her childhood creates a distance in the narrative that diminishes its punch. Her tale is also periodically—needlessly—interrupted, in a different type, as modern-day events intrude on her storytelling. While the present-day setting gives Morpurgo the opportunity to tie up loose ends, it ultimately distracts from the important, dismal reality of the war story and the plight of the refugees and animals.

A moving but somewhat flawed tale of human—and animal— courage in the face of tragic suffering. (Historical fiction. 10-14)

THE WIZARD MOUSE

Morrissey, Dean Krensky, Stephen Illustrator: Morrissey, Dean Harper/HarperCollins (32 pp.) $16.99 | (Library Ed ): $17.89 October 1, 2011 978-0-06-008066-2 (Library Ed ): 978-0-06-008067-9 Rollie is a curious, young field mouse discontent with his life in the field.

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He has big dreams touched with romance and adventure, which take place in the medieval village he sees from his high meadow. So he strikes camp one day and heads to town, as many a lad and lady are wont to do. On the outskirts of town, he comes upon a wizard’s tower, with two cows floating in the sky nearby.

The cows’ predicament has been caused by the wizard’s diminishing powers and, particularly, by his faltering memory. It is Rollie’s good fortune to be welcomed by the wizard and in turn to become the wizard’s able assistant, ready to supply the correct incantation in the wizard’s ear. Here is another well-told, elegantly paced and visually luxurious tale from Morrissey and co-author Krensky (The Crimson Comet, 2006, etc.), one that again shows their talent for insinuating the wackily supernatural into their adventures—those floating cows; a giant apple tree (that’s literal: one giant apple in a tree); a magic fish—and his artistic mastery: whole-page, and occasional two-page, spreads, with soft daubs of oil paint coalescing into a sharp image that nonetheless has a melting, dreamy quality.

A gentle tale—no serious dark-magic threats here— that grips through its visual lushness. (Picture book. 5-9)

WISDOM’S KISS A Thrilling and Romantic Adventure Incorporating Magic, Villainy, and a Cat Murdock, Catherine Gilbert Houghton Mifflin (304 pp.) $16.99 | September 12, 2011 978-0547566870

From the author of the Dairy Queen series comes this ebullient fairy tale, set in a vaguely Teutonic empire of small baronies, duchies and kingdoms.

Charting the adventures of humble orphans Trudy, a kitchen maid, and Tips, a miller’s son and object of Trudy’s affections, the story’s scope soon broadens to include Princess Wisdom and her grandmother, Benevolence, from the female-led ruling family of Montagne, a small kingdom coveted by larger, wealthier Farina (Princess Ben, 2008). All are nominally subjects of Emperor Rüdiger IV, whose passion is his grand circus. “Told through seven voices” in diaries, letters, encyclopedia entries, self-published family history and a play, the complicated plot unfolds briskly with panache and humor, braiding imperial ambition and marriages of convenience with true love and longing. Trudy yearns for Tips; Tips yearns for Wisdom; Wisdom yearns for the circus; the Duchess of Farina yearns to absorb Montagne. All work out their destinies with gusto and determination (aided or thwarted by witchcraft courtesy of Montagne’s royal family). Only the ending, referencing the story’s fairy-tale provenance, fails to thoroughly satisfy.

If not quite the sumptuous banquet anticipated, the novel still makes a satisfying, tasty treat. (glossary of terms) (Fantasy. 10 & up)

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MARCHING WITH AUNT SUSAN Susan B. Anthony and the Fight for Women’s Suffrage

Murphy, Claire Rudolf Illustrator: Schuett, Stacey Peachtree (36 pp.) $16.95 | October 1, 2011 978-1-56145-593-5

Through the voice of 10-year-old Bessie in 1896 in Berkeley, Calif., readers glimpse a moment in the very long fight for women’s suffrage in the United States.

Bessie is irritated that she cannot go hiking with her brothers and her father, because it is thought too strenuous for girls. Instead, she helps her mother prepare for a tea honoring the great suffragist Susan B. Anthony, whom everyone calls Aunt Susan. Bessie thrills to her speech at the Golden Gate Auditorium and marches for the vote with her mother, although men scream at them and boys pelt them with eggs.

Women lose that California referendum, but Bessie teaches her mother to ride a bicycle, and her father takes her hiking at last. Schuett’s rich gouache paintings have the texture and heft of oils, and she captures the beauty of the suffragists’ white dresses and gold and purple ribbons, as well as the women’s strength and determination. The story is based on that of Bessie Keith Pond, who came from a family of suffragists. A series of short boxed notes about Bessie, California suffrage, Susan B. Anthony and endpapers decorated with excellent newspaper clippings, posters, postcards and photographs round out this work for young readers not ready for Ann Bausum’s stunning With Courage and Cloth (2004).

An inspiring and revelatory tale. (timeline, bibliography) (Picture book. 6-9)

THANK YOU GOD: FROM KIDS AROUND THE WORLD

Nolan, Allia Zobel Illustrator: Sakamoto, Miki Zonderkidz (16 pp.)

(Paperback ): $6.99 | September 1, 2011 (Paperback ): 978-0-310-72264-9 In simplistic rhyme, children in different countries praise God for the good things in their lives, the scenes a mishmash of cultural stereotypes.

Lady Liberty, pyramids, fiestas with piñatas, “sunlight in Red Square,” “castles and shamrocks,” and “wooden clogs that go click-clack” are pointed out by nearly identical, round-faced, smiling children, differing only slightly in skin and hair colors. The first spread shows children pointing to their unnamed countries on a globe. (The Australian girl appears to point to Greenland!) The first lift-the-flap, double-page spread shows Fourth of July fireworks at the Statue of Liberty. The book includes single-page illustrations on the left (Egypt, Russia, an unspecified East African country,

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“What’s cuter than a puppy? Puppies with children, as this book effectively demonstrates.” from what puppies do best

India and Australia) and lift-the-flap pages on the righthand side depicting Mexico, Ireland, an East Asian country (China or Japan?), the Netherlands and a Nordic nation. The illustrations under the flap add little detail; other than the Mexican example, in which the piñata breaks and the candies shower down in the hidden section, this novelty is not used very effectively. The book’s cultural tone-deafness is evident in such gaffes as the Egyptian children’s camel named, of all things, George. Although this book could be used in Sunday schools more interested in feel-good simplicity then accuracy, its small size limits its usefulness with large groups.

Families and teachers who want to make children aware of God’s creativity can find better books than this throwback to ’50s-style international goodwill. (Picture book. 3-5)

WHAT PUPPIES DO BEST

Numeroff, Laura Illustrator: Munsinger, Lynn Chronicle (32 pp.) $14.99 | September 7, 2011 978-0-8118-6601-9

What’s cuter than a puppy? Puppies with children, as this book effectively

demonstrates.

With basic, minimal text and appropriate illustrations, Numeroff and Munsinger lead the reader through pretty much the entire puppy repertoire—with a variety of puppy breeds and owners—from kissing and chasing a ball to digging a hole and tracking mud into the house. “Puppies can play tug-of-war, / take a bath, / and get you all wet.” Also run in circles, roll over for a belly-rub, go on walks, snuggle, etc.

“But best of all...” Numeroff concludes, “puppies can give you lots and lots of love.” This modest and winning canine love letter is perfectly pitched to the very young and will transition well to use with emergent readers. The well-chosen type size and style help in this area, as well. From the first picture of a toddler holding out a red ball for a begging puppy to the final two-page spread of smiling children hugging their pets, Munsinger’s illustrations, in watercolor, pen and ink, and pencil, capture both the cuteness and the antics of puppies. There’s not an extraneous word in the story or figure in the pictures—though readers accustomed to the formula established in such works as What Grandmas Do Best/What Grandpas Do Best (2000) will wonder why there is no dos-à-dos What Kittens Do Best.

Utterly adorable. (Picture book. 3-6)

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THERE IS NO LONG DISTANCE NOW Very Short Stories

Nye, Naomi Shihab Greenwillow/HarperCollins (208 pp.) $17.99 | October 1, 2011 978-0-06-201965-3 Classification: Short Stories Thirty-nine very short stories offer glimpses into the everyday lives of young people.

How much can a writer say in a five-page story? It turns out, everything; if the devil is in the details, so is the world. In “Stay True Hotel,” Jane observes couples walking hand in hand, people with tattoos, old people with canes, parents pushing prams, burgundy peonies in buckets, ginger ale with an orange slice— the “clicking and humming of the planet.” The best of the stories present “fringe observers” happy to be invisible, extracting themselves from the crowd to observe a world full of mysteries.

The spirit of Thoreau suffuses some of the stories, and in “Thoreau Is My Partner,” Andy notices a cardboard coaster in his hotel room that quotes Thoreau: “Live each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each.” As she does in her poetry, Nye achieves a perfect marriage of theme and structure in stories that reflect the moments, glimpses and epiphanies of growing up. Readers can dip in and out with ease, and writing teachers will find it a boon in the classroom.

Though the stories aren’t linked, there is an accumulation of experience and feeling, and by the end of this fine collection readers will sense what life is like—what life means—for these young people. (Short stories. 12 & up)

11 EXPERIMENTS THAT FAILED

Offill, Jenny Illustrator: Carpenter, Nancy Schwartz & Wade/Random (40 pp.) $16.99 | (Library Ed ): $19.99 September 27, 2011 978-0-375-84762-2 (Library Ed ): 978-0-375-95762-8 What would happen if a stand-up comedian—a good standup comedian, like Robin Williams or George Carlin (minus those seven famous words)—were to choose the question for a science experiment? This, in these pages, is what would happen.

Let’s see: Hypothesis—“Ketchup and snow are the only food groups a kid needs.” Result—Not so: Stomachache, brain freeze, “love of ketchup wavering.” Hypothesis—Yodeling during a boring car ride “makes time go faster.” Result—Learns the pleasure of walking. Hypothesis—”A piece of bologna will fly like a Frisbee.” Result—Losing recess. These are marvelously nutty experiments, and by all means, do try them at home. (Maybe not washing the dishes in the clothes washer.)

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“Small-town settings have long been used as laboratories to examine character, and this claustrophobic town is no different.” from envy

Offill and Carpenter send a one-two punch of quality: a poetic compression of words—“Mom cried. Seedlings died”—and multi-media artwork that is not only fetching but wonderfully dear—holding the gerbil’s hand on the Ferris wheel, the dog blinking as glitter is tossed on his head. (“Question—Do dogs like to be covered in glitter? Hypothesis—Dogs like everything.”) Later, the same dog cranks his head and snakes his tongue to snarf a pimento-stuffed olive off the table. This is a most joyful and clever whimsy, the kind that lightens the heart and puts a shine on the day.

Go ahead, break a few dishes in the washing machine, see the humor and enjoy this fine poke at every science fair that ever was. (Picture book. 4-8)

SOUL THIEF

Oliver, Jana St. Martin’s Griffin (320 pp.)

(Paperback ): $9.99 | September 1, 2011 (Paperback ): 978-0-312-61479-9 Series: Demon Trappers Volume: 2 Destruction and demons follow 17-year-old Riley Blackthorne as she trudges across Atlanta seeking her father’s recently re-animated corpse and the Geo-Fiend who killed him.

Picking up moments after the climactic battle of Demon Trapper’s Daughter (2011), this book sees the Guild slowly recovering from a catastrophic demon attack. With many Trappers dead or injured, Riley sees little official action—there’s more detecting than butt-kicking in this slow-paced sequel. Riley ventures into the shadowy world of zombie summoners and witches, unproductively investigates a holy-water counterfeiting ring and takes occasional hot-cocoa breaks. The innovative and amusing demons of the first book take a back seat to stereotypical romantic entanglements, parent drama and politics. Though her boyfriend Simon grows distant, hottie Ori seeks her company—and so much more—as does her father’s former apprentice, Beck. Profligate passions don’t necessarily lead to rampant sex, but the few hookups come off as arbitrary and awkward. Oliver’s occasional exposition dumps fail to establish a coherent reason for the sudden demonic interest in Riley or for Lucifer’s involvement in the mortal world.

Despite the too-frequent switches between narrators Riley, Ori and Beck, the absence of a substantial plot results in a relatively simple read.

A fallen-angel story that never truly takes off. (Paranormal romance. 14 & up)

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ENVY

Olsen, Gregg Splinter/Sterling (304 pp.) $17.95 | (e-book ): $9.99 September 1, 2011 978-1-4027-8957-1 (e-book ): 978-1-4027-9009-6 Series: Empty Coffin Volume: 1 Katelyn’s death is ruled accidental by the coroner, but twins Hayley and Taylor are convinced that a deeper evil has been committed.

In Port Gamble, a lumber-company town in Washington, the connections run both broad and deep, and it’s the exploration of these connections that provides the most satisfying aspect of this mystery. Everyone knows that the twins survived a crash when they were little, and yet no one has realized that they have an eerie connection to the dead and the future.

This sixth sense has Hay-Tay, as best friend Beth Lee calls them, sleuthing for evidence that Katelyn’s death was more than an accident. The opening is suspenseful, and chapterending cliffhangers help to maintain this, but readers will find that the evil and envy at the heart of the story prove to be disappointingly mundane. By the end, the author’s teasing style may be more irritating than suspense-building. Multiple welldeveloped characters add a depth and enigmatic quality that help to compensate for the lackluster plot. Small-town settings have long been used as laboratories to examine character, and this claustrophobic town is no different. Sequel expected; here’s hoping Olsen’s eye for character remains strong while he works on buffing up his plotting.

A relatively gratifying examination of the complexity of connections in a close-knit community. (Suspense. 12 & up)

THE FLINT HEART

Paterson, Katherine Paterson, John Illustrator: Rocco, John Candlewick (304 pp.) $19.99 | September 27, 2011 978-0-7636-4712-4 A heart-shaped talisman created in the Stone Age brings terribly corrupting power to those who possess it, until 12-year-old Charles Jago manages to destroy it permanently.

This magical adventure begins with the fashioning of a piece of flint into a charm for hardening hearts. A hardhearted individual can rule his tribe in the Stone Age and, fast-forwarding to the early 20th century, become the leader in one’s community, but at a cost to his good nature, family and friends. That’s what happens first to Charles’ father, then to an imp called a Jacky Toad and then to a badger. Happily and with help from his little sister, his dog, the king of Fairyland, a talking hot-water bottle and the all-knowing Zagabog,

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Charles wrests the stone away from each one in turn, with no harm done. After all, this is a fairy tale. Written by Eden Phillpotts and first published in 1910, this traditional story has been deftly abridged and brought up to date by the Patersons. They’ve preserved the faintly English narrative voice and humor, idiosyncratic characters, lively action, distinctive Dartmoor setting and even many of the words. The 21st-century version features thoughtful design and Rocco’s digitally colored film-animation–style illustrations, including chapterheads, full-page images and decorations throughout.

A grand tale skillfully updated and tightened up, this should win the hearts of a new generation. (Fantasy. 8-12)

CLEMENTINE AND THE FAMILY MEETING

Pennypacker, Sara Illustrator: Frazee, Marla Disney Hyperion (160 pp.) $14.99 | September 13, 2011 978-1-4231-2356-9 Clementine has had many not-sogood days. But this one just might be the worst.

She loses her favorite hat, her science project is ruined and the “family meeting!” sign is up on the refrigerator—that’s never a good thing. Even though family meetings are supposed to be about family issues,Clementine usually ends up getting in trouble. But this one is different. Clementine’s dad announces that their family is going to grow. Are they are getting a gorilla, like Clementine has always wanted?! No. It’s a new baby. Clementine is N-O-T, not happy. They are a family of four. Four is a perfect number. In infallible Clementine reasoning: “Four can be two and two sometimes, and nobody is lonely. Two kids and two grown-ups. Two boys and two girls.

There are four sides to the kitchen table, so we each get one.”

Five just doesn’t work. Pennypacker tackles the oft-written new-baby theme from a refreshing, older perspective; jealousy is not the foremost emotion, it’s vulnerability. Everything is changing too fast. Clementine and her dad have always had a unique bond, but in this venture, he especially shines. He picks up on unspoken feelings and knows just how to give the right amount of comfort.

Filled with familiar Clementine charm but, more importantly, a whole lot of heart, too. (Fiction. 7-10)

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GUANTANAMO BOY

Perera, Anna Whitman (352 pp.) $17.99 | September 1, 2011 978-0-8075-3077-1 This debut, published in 2009 in the UK, chronicles in devastating detail the kidnapping, incarceration and torture of an ordinary teenager six months after 9/11.

Born in England to immigrant parents, Khalid, 15, is an avid soccer fan and fair-to-middling student. He enjoys online gaming with a Pakistani cousin, but he has no desire to visit Pakistan himself and resents having to join a family trip to Karachi, There, through a convoluted but plausible chain of events, he’s mistaken for a terrorist, abducted and sent to Kandahar, Afghanistan, then to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. During Khalid’s two-year ordeal under U.S. control, he encounters other innocent victims of the War on Terror who’ve been subjected to torture, including waterboarding. Their jailors range from sadistic to indifferent, though a few manifest detached compassion. Khalid’s experience in “enemy combatant” limbo is equally harrowing, demonstrating that helplessness and boredom can be torture, too. However, in showing readers only innocent victims, Perera effectively narrows the argument against torture to its inefficiency and unreliability. The case for a total ban requires showing why torture is wrong even when victims aren’t “pure.”

Nonetheless, this gripping look at a poorly defined war’s unintended consequences uniquely challenges readers to reexamine common beliefs and ask searching questions about means and ends. (author’s note, timeline, discussion guide) (Fiction. 13 & up)

LOLA AND THE BOY NEXT DOOR

Perkins, Stephanie Dutton (384 pp.) $16.99 | September 29, 2011 978-0-525-42328-7 Perkins avoids the second-novel curse with a delectable companion to her debut hit, Anna and the French Kiss (2010).

Seventeen-year-old budding costume designer Lola Nolan (who vows never to wear the same outfit twice) has finally recovered from two years of heartbreak at the hands of amateur inventor Cricket Graham Bell (Yes, “[t]he Bell family is THAT Bell family. As in telephone”), her first love and neighbor who moved away suddenly without a good-bye. Although her two gay dads are always looking for “[e]vidence of debauchery,” she’s found contentment with her 22-year-old sexy musician boyfriend, Max. She’s in for a jolt again, though, when Cricket and his family return to their San Francisco neighborhood so

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his twin sister, an Olympic skating hopeful, can train with a new coach. Fans of the first novel will be happy to know that Anna and her boyfriend have not only remained together but play a role in helping Lola confront her renewed feelings for the boy next door. Along with the possibility of romance, Lola also reconciles her lineage to a homeless, drug-addict mother, while Cricket deals with the revelation that his notorious ancestor stole his famous idea. Just as Perkins did with Paris, she embeds a tour of San Francisco culture throughout the snappy storyline.

And steamy kisses and tingly touches? There are still plenty of those, too. (Chick lit. 14 & up)

AROUND THE WORLD

Phelan, Matt Illustrator: Phelan, Matt Candlewick (240 pp.) $24.99 | October 11, 2011 978-0-7636-3619-7

With uncommon perception and a flair for visual drama, Phelan tracks three intrepid souls’ solo journeys

around the world.

In 1884, Thomas Stevens rode a bicycle from San Francisco to Boston, and then decided to extend the outing—to Yokohama. Journalist Nellie Bly set out in 1889 to beat the 80-day schedule suggested in Jules Verne’s novel (meeting the encouraging author along the way and bettering the novel’s time by two days). Mariner Joshua Slocum took the most circuitous route, sailing over 46,000 miles between 1895 and 1898 accompanied only by poignant memories of his first wife. Adding brief bridging captions or snatches of dialogue to quoted comments from their subsequent memoirs, Phelan highlights the experiences and reflections of each in cinematic sequences of delicately drawn panels. By focusing on the travelers’ faces, he captures their distinct characters (and shared rock-steady determination) with such force and clarity that readers can’t help but be swept along by Stevens’ aggressive mustache, Bly’s steely glare at male doubters and nay-sayers, the aching heart visible behind Slocum’s tough, grizzled countenance. The author rounds off each account with an epilogue, then closes with a thoughtful note and a source list.

Three true tales of adventure as grand and admirable in the telling as they were in the doing. (Graphic nonfiction. 10-13)

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FOLLOWING CHRISTOPHER CREED

Plum-Ucci, Carol Harcourt (416 pp.) $16.99 | September 5, 2011 978-0-15-204759-7

Ghosts, dead bodies, dark secrets and bad energy still lurk in Steepleton, N.J., the boondocks town made famous by the disappearance of high-school loser Christopher Creed.

When the body of Darla Richardson, the sister of Bo Richardson from The Body of Christopher Creed (2000), Plum-Ucci’s Printz Honor–winning debut, is discovered dead and buried in the woods behind the town, dogged, aspiring college reporter Mike Mavic and his girlfriend hit the road to investigate her death and ultimately Chris’ disappearance. Fans of the first book will love the return of the first book’s characters, including Bo, Torey Adams and Justin, Creed’s bombed-out brother, who’s been in and out of rehab since his brother’s disappearance. However, readers won’t like Mike’s narration, whose voice is closer to a sensitive 40+-year-old’s than a college student’s: “I was hoping Justin might find moderation, quit going for the energy-charged manipulation tricks, and maybe give his brother up to the Higher Power.” Much of the first book’s finesse with teenspeak, which made it both a page turner and a sordid pathway into the psyche of an insular New Jersey town, has vanished, leaving far too many platitudes in its place.

Finally, what of Christopher Creed himself? Fans will have to slog through 400+ pages to spot the subtle and notso-subtle clues that lead to the truth in this sort-of thriller.

(Mystery. 12 & up)

DESERT ANGEL

Price, Charlie Farrar, Straus and Giroux (240 pp.) $15.99 | October 25, 2011 978-0-374-31775-1 A taut thriller about Angel, a 14-yearold who is pursued by a man who has a deadly need to silence her.

In a keenly evoked California desert setting, Angel desperately seeks to escape.

Inadvertently, she finds help with a group of caring MexicanAmerican neighbors, who refuse to let her face her nemesis alone. A loner, Angel’s been homeschooled by a meth-addict mother who has hooked up with a “long string of abusive boyfriends picked with the accuracy of a heat-seeking missile.” Her latest, Scotty, is a doozy, and when Angel finds her mom buried in the desert, he realizes she can put him behind bars. A hunter of contraband, he proceeds to use all his wiles to keep her quiet.

Neighbor Abuela makes a plan to help her escape, resulting in the entire family becoming targets. Angel struggles with trust, guilt

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“In this early chapter book with unexpected depth, Miggy experiences an ethical dilemma when she wonders if it is right to keep… power to herself.” from the dragon stone

and maintaining her focus even as she is frightened to death. Suspense never lets up, as the third-person narrator monitors Scotty’s pursuit when Angel doesn’t. Kids and their teacher at a Head Start classroom provide a sense of normalcy and yet are clearly potential victims, upping the ante even more. The small, decaying towns, the Salton Sea and the desert heat provide a vivid backdrop for the unfolding drama. Angel is a tough heroine who needs help but knows if she accepts it, she is risking other lives, too.

Relentless, heart-stopping suspense. (Thriller. 12 & up)

THE DRAGON STONE

Regan, Dian Curtis Illustrator: Curtis, Stacy Marshall Cavendish (80 pp.) $15.99 | (e-book ): $15.99 September 1, 2011 978-0-7614-5974-3 (e-book ): 978-0-7614-6085-5 Series: The Rocky Cave Kids Someday, Miggy wants to tell a story that will make everyone say, “Wow!” Miggy stays behind every summer while her friends migrate with their families to hunt mammoths. When they return, she looks forward to hearing about their adventures. Just once, Miggy wants to have an experience of her own to relate. With this, Regan develops Miggy’s cave-character and her home in the Triassic Forest. Readers share Miggy’s excitement when she finds a dragon stone and learns it is as magical as the Clan’s wise grannies have said it is when she wishes on it to escape Velociraptors and to help her brother. In this early chapter book with unexpected depth, Miggy experiences an ethical dilemma when she wonders if it is right to keep the power to herself. Her question is answered when she and the grannies are trapped by thrashing Spinosauruses, and she must give it up for them all to be saved.

Miggy may no longer hold the stone, but she has been granted her greatest wish: Finally, Miggy has an adventure to tell her friends.

Sticklers for accuracy about the Triassic Period may have trouble with the premise, but most newly independent readers will look forward to more encounters with dinosaurs, humans and the first mammals as the series continues. (illustrated cast of characters, map) (Fantasy. 7-10)

MY OWN WORST FRENEMY

Reid, Kimberly Kensington (256 pp.)

(Paperback ): $9.95 | September 1, 2011 (Paperback ): 978-0-7582-6740-5 Series: Chanti on the Case Volume: 1 This new mystery series with a multicultural cast stars the canny teenage daughter of a vice cop. |

Chanti Evans, a 15-year-old high-school junior, is not exactly looking forward to the start of the new term. While all of her friends will be together at North High, she will be a scholarship student at exclusive Langdon Prep. Her mother, Lana, an undercover vice cop, is increasingly worried about issues in their community and wants Chanti in a better environment. At Langdon, she quickly becomes acquainted with two other new students: Marco Ruiz and Bethanie Larsen. Marco seems nice enough (and very attractive), but it is soon clear that Bethanie has a secret. Chanti can’t dwell on that, because a rash of thefts begins in the school, and the unwelcome new additions are immediate suspects. She is a cop’s daughter, so she applies the sleuthing skills she has learned from her mother.

Just when Chanti thinks the case is solved, though, she becomes embroiled in something more complicated and dangerous than a missing tennis bracelet. Chanti is smart and funny, and this multicultural cast is a welcome addition to the world of teen mysteries. The story is well paced and full of surprises, even if the bad guys don’t have much nuance.

This clever mystery with a biting look at class and privilege is a breath of fresh air. (Mystery. 14 & up)

LIGHT UP THE NIGHT

Reidy, Jean Illustrator: Chodos-Irvine, Margaret Disney Hyperion (40 pp.) $16.99 | October 11, 2011 978-1-4231-2024-7 The coziest of quilts becomes a rocket ship in this gorgeous, mesmerizingly rhythmic read-aloud that explores a boy’s small place in a vast world.

Sporting star-spangled pajamas, the not-too-sleepy astronaut wraps his red-and-white quilt around his shoulders and zooms off into outer space. The slow-building rhyme echoes the cumulative structure of “The House That Jack Built”: “These are the planets that circle the sun, / which hides its face when the day is done, / while stars glow bright / and light up the night, / in my own little piece of the universe.” The soothing rhythms and comforting refrain are just right for very young ears, and the geographical terms will stretch young minds. During the boy’s fanciful flight, his aerial view of Earth includes hemispheres, continents and countries—eventually zeroing in on his own town, house, street and bed. Caldecott Honor–winner Chodos-Irvine’s colorful illustrations are fun and friendly, from the retro linocut spot art of the boy in his bedroom (“This is me”)—to dramatic fullbleed spreads that capture the expansive galaxies, complete with a smiling moon, animal constellations, planets and four-eyed aliens. The richly textured mixed-media artwork—incorporating various printmaking techniques and what looks like cut-paper collage—offers many clever self-referential moments and something new to discover with each reading.

A dreamy-yet-instructive ode to the universe. (Picture book. 2-6)

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“Delicious language and a winsome feline ensure that this new iteration of an oft-told plot will find an appreciative audience.” from scrawny cat

ROOSTER’S REVENGE

Rodriguez, Béatrice Illustrator: Rodriguez, Béatrice Enchanted Lion Books (32 pp.) $14.95 | September 1, 2011 978-1-58270-112-4 Picking up where The Chicken Thief (2010) left off, this companion follows Hen’s erstwhile friends Rabbit, Bear and jilted Rooster as they make their

way back home.

As the trio wordlessly traverses much the same scenery they traveled in the first book, only in reverse, readers will notice Rooster’s overweening disgruntlement. (Kids will need familiarity with the first book to understand his funk.) He brightens up only when he discovers a large egg next to very large skeleton in a cave where the friends take shelter. Through various surreal landscapes they pass, all spread out in the same super-wide format as The Chicken Thief and this book’s parallel story, Fox and Hen Together (2011). Rooster all the while cackles maniacally with pride in his egg even as he juggles it rather injudiciously (Bear adopts a glowing newt in a more understated expression of the parental urge). Readers will not be at all surprised by what hatches, and all (finally) live happily ever after. Taken all together, the three books give children a look at adult feelings and the emotional negotiation that goes with them. Will they understand everything? Probably not. But the snapshot, presented so very whimsically, may help give them some intuitive sense of the emotional currents that swirl around them.

Plenty to look at and much to think about in this complex and funny trilogy conclusion. (Picture book. 5-8)

CALVIN COCONUT: KUNG FOOEY

Rogers, Jacqueline Illustrator: Salisbury, Graham Wendy Lamb/Random (144 pp.) $12.99 | (Library Ed ): $15.99 (e-book ): $12.99 | September 13, 2011 978-0-385-73963-4 (Library Ed ): 978-0-385-907979-2 (e-book ): 978-0-375-89796-2 Series: Calvin Coconut Volume: 6 Sixth in a winning series set in Oahu, Hawaii, this latest about 9-year-old Calvin spins a new twist about his struggle with the island bully that will leave readers satisfied with its auspicious, though imperfect, resolution.

From the moment newcomer Benny Obi enters their classroom, Calvin and his friends recognize that he’s a bit of an oddball. Wearing a skull necklace and mirror shades, he approaches them on the playground and boasts about some accomplishments that seem rather unlikely, including knowing kung fu and having seen a show in Las Vegas performed by 1490

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Calvin’s absentee dad, a singer. They’re dubious about Benny’s claims, but they find him fascinating and are dismayed when bully Tito begins targeting him. Salisbury’s established characters have achieved a comfortable familiarity, both because the author allows details about their personalities to emerge naturally throughout the series and because the dialogue and dynamics at play are so realistic. Calvin’s first-person voice and his internal process as he strives to do the right thing are engaging and believable. Rogers’ black-and-white ink-andwash drawings are full of movement and mood, from broadly smiling insects to the formidable glower of Stella, the teenage friend of the family with whom Calvin has a strained, but caring sort-of-sibling relationship.

This newest continues to spin a fun and thoughtful yarn. (Fiction. 7-10)

SCRAWNY CAT

Root, Phyllis Illustrator: Friend, Alison Candlewick (40 pp.) $16.99 | October 1, 2011 978-0-7636-4164-1 Delicious language and a winsome feline ensure that this new iteration of an oft-told plot will find an appreciative audience.

A terribly thin, wide-eyed orange-and-white cat has clearly fallen on hard times, though he remembers having a home. Root’s evocative description of his condition (“He was lonely. He was little. He was lost”) will tug on listeners’ heart strings. They’ll sympathize when strangers yell at him to “Get out of here!” and worry when a big dog chases him down the street of a seaside town. Luckily, a sudden storm startles the dog and sends him scurrying away. The same storm unexpectedly liberates the dinghy in which the cat has hastily hidden and sets him on the watery path to a new home. Friend’s gouache paintings, including vignettes, single pages and double page spreads, illuminate the straightforward action, starting in an old-fashioned New England port and ending up on a lovely tree-covered island. She captures the fluctuating reactions of the cat perfectly, keeping the focus on the emotional heart of the tale even when the scenery seems likely to swallow him up.

Whether they are landlubbers or seasoned sailors, readers will be pleased to meet this tenacious kitty and even happier to know he’s found cozy comfort in a home with a caring companion. (Picture book. 4-7)

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CHASING THE NIGHTBIRD

Russell, Krista Peachtree (192 pp.) $15.95 | September 1, 2011 978-1-56145-597-3

Abolitionists square off against slave catchers in this well-crafted debut, complicating the schemes of a stranded young sailor.

Kidnapped off the streets of New Bedford by his harsh half-brother, held until his whaler had departed and then forced to work in a local cotton mill, Lucky Valera, a 14-year-old orphan of Cape Verdean descent, finds his efforts to escape stymied at every turn. His attachments to his coworker and new friend Daniel, a fugitive slave, and Emmeline, activist daughter of a Quaker abolitionist, involve him in plans to protect the large number of fugitives in town from approaching slave catchers. Along with a few references to “darkies” and “dark devils” that evoke the era’s negative racial attitudes, Russell folds in enough historical detail to establish a sense of setting. Without burdening the tale with info dumps, she lays out a basic view of the conflict between the recently passed Fugitive Slave Act and the moral stance of those who opposed it. The author also provides ample tests of character for Lucky and Daniel alike as she speeds her tale to a climactic escape and happy resolution after Lucky’s halfsib treacherously tries to collect a reward for both lads and is himself briefly seized.

Solid work, featuring a strong-minded protagonist bent on doing the best he can with what he’s been given. (afterword, bibliography) (Historical fiction. 11-13)

GLOW

Ryan, Amy Kathleen St. Martin’s Griffin (320 pp.) $17.99 | September 27, 2011 978-0-312-59056-7 Series: The Sky Chasers When preserving the human species through deep-space colonization, fertility is both currency and curse.

Everyone expects wedding bells for Waverly and Kieran, the eldest of the first generation conceived in space during the Empyrean’s multi-decade mission to colonize New Earth. Waverly’s hesitations about golden-boy Kieran—and curiosities about Kieran’s broody rival Seth—are tossed to the wayside when an ambush leaves all of them navigating a deadly nebula of lies, schemes and misinformation. While Waverly launches a careful resistance as a captive of Pastor Anne Mather’s childless ship the New Horizon, Kieran and Seth butt heads in an escalating contest for leadership over the distressed Empyrean. Waverly’s initiative and intellect ensure that even as a prisoner she is far from a damsel in distress. Ryan sets Kieran and Seth apart from |

standard love-triangle anchors through emphasis on their wellmatched flaws. The split narrative gives enough breathing room for a balance of introspection and high-stakes action. Along the way, hints of the older generation’s secrets are tossed out but not resolved, leaving the protagonists unsure of whom to trust and readers unsure of whose side to take.

Desire to find out which of the proactive characters’ bold moves end in disaster will leave readers clamoring for the next installment of this space saga. (Science fiction. 14 & up)

THE TANGLEWOOD TERROR

Scaletta, Kurtis Knopf (272 pp.) $16.99 | (Library Ed ): $19.99 (e-book ): $16.99 | September 13, 2011 978-0-375-86758-3 (Library Ed ): 978-0-375-96758-0 (e-book ): 978-0-375-89845-7 Creeping, invasive, blue-glowing mushrooms threaten to destroy a Maine town unless the intrepid hero, eighth-grader Eric, can fend them off.

Tanglewood, a town only vaguely depicted and not particularly evocative of Maine, may have been destroyed by eerie mushrooms once before, in the Colonial period—at least if the writings of a now-dead sci-fi author can be believed. With his parents’ marriage on shaky ground and his clever 9-year-old brother Brian providing lots of challenges, Eric is headed for trouble. It comes first in a teasing incident with his fellow football-team members that gets out of hand, then when he aids a girl, Mandy, who has run away from the private girls’ reform school his mother oversees, making it inevitable that he’ll run afoul of the police. Meanwhile, the mushrooms keep spreading, invading and undermining homes, streets and the local school, a looming threat adults seem oblivious to—perhaps because they caught a glimpse of the book’s disappointing, almost silly cover art. Eric’s banter with friends and his younger brother, his inner dialogue as he analyzes his own behavior and his relationship with his parents all ring nicely true, but with the focus more on his interactions, the potential scariness of the evil mushrooms is never fully realized.

A biological thriller/mystery with a significant level of heart but insufficient horror. (Mystery. 10-14)

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TIMERIDERS: DAY OF THE PREDATOR

Scarrow, Alex Walker (432 pp.) $16.99 | October 11, 2011 978-0-8027-2296-6 Series: TimeRiders Volume: 2

Time travel can be unpredictable.

In this sequel, a TimeRiders team intends to travel back several decades to prevent an event that would throw everyone into the “wrong” future. But things really go awry when Maddy mistakenly opens the wrong window, throwing them (along with everyone around them) back several millennia. It’s up to Liam and his robotic support unit Becks to protect the group from carnivorous and all-too-crafty dinosaurs, while devising a way to send a message back to the future. Meanwhile, locked in New York City in a never-ending loop of September 10-11, 2001, Maddy and Sal work feverishly to conserve enough energy to open another window for a rescue, but they face the challenge of a secret government agency that waits for the day that Liam’s message, discovered in the 1940s, can be delivered. The agency wants the secret of time travel for itself, spelling disaster for the future. But what could be worse than the survival of a previously unknown breed of dinosaur that has actually learned how to adapt, just by watching Liam and Becks in the past? It’s another wild ride through time, with the team always aware that changing one minor event can have devastating consequences to the future. Scarrow blends adventure with history in a way that goes down painlessly.

Readers will be intrigued, puzzled—and ready for the next one. (Science fiction. 12 & up)

TRICKY COYOTE TALES

Schweizer, Chris Illustrator: Thomas, Chad Graphic Universe (64 pp.)

(Library Ed ): $27.93 | (Paperback ): $6.95 (e-book ): $20.95 | October 1, 2011 (Library Ed ): 978-0-7613-6601-0 (Paperback ): 978-0-7613-7859-4 (e-book ): 978-0-7613-7959-1 Series: Tricky Journeys Volume: 1 Not every folktale collection includes the words “BONK BONK BONK,” but they fit perfectly here.

This is the 21st century, and there’s a demographic sampling of readers who’ve grown up watching Warner Brothers cartoons and listening to Native American trickster tales.

This book is for them. Looney Tunes fans will appreciate that Coyote falls off a cliff early in the story. Or, if the readers make a different choice, he’s attacked by wasps or eaten by a giant. The choose-your-own-adventure format allows readers 1492

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to flip a few pages and sample generations’ worth of Coyote tales. (Thomas’ illustrations are somehow both slapstick and archetypal.) The problem, strangely enough, is that there aren’t enough stories here to fill the book. A segment might end with an inspired trick and an escape from Hill Monsters, or it might just peter out. One segment concludes with Coyote joining a pair of beavers for soup. Still, these 64 pages give readers an entertaining and even well-rounded look at Coyote’s personality: the trickster, fool and occasional wise man of tradition. Later books in the series have a more satisfying range of choices: Tricky Rabbit Tales,Tricky Monkey Tales and Tricky Raven Tales.

Folktale purists will be driven looney tunes, but so what if the tone isn’t completely authentic—who doesn’t like to see a coyote fall off a cliff? (Graphic novel. 7-10)

AS I WAKE

Scott, Elizabeth Dutton (288 pp.) $16.99 | September 15, 2011 978-0-525-42209-9 Seventeen-year-old Ava Hanson awakens in a bed, in a room, in a home she can’t remember.

While she recognizes the names and faces of the people in her life, Ava can’t shake the feeling that everyone, including herself, isn’t who they seem. Despite being warned not to pursue them, flashes of another life in another world fuel Ava’s desperation to fill the gaps in her memory. The question is, what and who will it cost her? Her visions reveal a sinister dystopia, where Ava’s only hope to escape the chains of her orphaned past is to be a “listener” for a government that demands conformity and subordination at all costs. The stakes are raised considerably with the appearance of Morgan, a young man who doesn’t belong in Ava’s new world, though her heart recognizes him immediately. Scott (Between Here and Forever, 2011, etc.) lays the groundwork for an interesting twist on the “Who am I?” novel, but Ava’s first-person narration, littered with broken thoughts, is often problematic. Its staccato, stop-and-start rhythm is distracting, pulling readers out of the story. This is a shame, as the worlds the author describes— Ava’s new, normal one, much like ours, and the dystopic one of her memories—make for a fascinating set up.

Despite the book’s flaws, teens will likely find enough to keep them turning the pages, particularly when it comes to Morgan’s desperation to convince Ava that love is the only thing one needs know for certain. (Thriller. 13 & up)

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“Young Tilly is not just a trickster; she is a wayward imp of the just-this-side-of-mean school of mischief making.” from chile the trickster

THE PREDICTEDS

Seifert, Christine Sourcebooks Fire (352 pp.)

(Paperback ): $9.99 | September 1, 2011 (Paperback ): 978-1-4022-6049-0

An experimental computer program’s predictions on students’ future behaviors interfere with one teen’s quest to date her crush.

New girl in town Daphne Wright has the bad luck to start her first day at new school Quiet High by vomiting before witnessing a school shooting. Instantly accepted by the popular girls despite her lack of interest in them, she fits easily into the Bella Swan mold by falling for the mysterious, handsome misfit Jesse. And she falls for him literally—her coordination has an inverse relationship to proximity with him, giving him endless opportunities to play hero.

But aside from a convoluted social scene populated by too many nearly identical background characters, the biggest obstacle to their young love is PROFILE, a software application designed to predict future antisocial behavior. Quiet High, the test location, decides to release the list of Predicteds—teenagers technologically designated for a life of crime and violence—to the general public to prevent more incidents like the school shooting. When the mixed messages Jesse gives off are combined with his results, Daphne is torn as to whether to trust the computer or her heart.

Although weakened considerably by dated pop-culture references, the narrative is at times witty.

While it tries to address the ethical problems of social engineering, the novel’s concluding twist only highlights the lack of logic in both premise and tension. (Science fiction. 13 & up)

TILLY THE TRICKSTER

Shannon, Molly Illustrator: Hoyt, Ard Abrams (32 pp.) $16.95 | September 1, 2011 978-1-4197-0030-9

Young Tilly is not just a trickster; she is a wayward imp of the just-this-side-ofmean school of mischief making.

She pricks a discreet hole in daddy’s paper cup at breakfast.

“Daddy doesn’t look happy,” deadpans Tilly; he sure doesn’t, and Hoyt catches his appalled, rubbery face to a T. She tricks her teacher into eating a hot cinnamon cookie disguised as a strawberry treat (the teacher is not amused, nor is the school principal: “I am not pleased with her petty little pranks,” he says to her hastily summoned parents). But when Tilly fills her brother’s Oreo with toothpaste, making him sick in the process, doubts start to cloud her conscience. And when her family turns the tables and fills her slippers with shaving cream—ay caramba!—enough with the tricks…until tomorrow (which promises to involve a spider). Clearly, Tilly’s pique of conscience is only a glancing episode; she’s really just a naughty girl. Hoyt’s artwork is a delightful |

throwback to the Little Rascals’ world—not guileless; actually rather difficult—and in keeping with that television program, the dog—here, a jowly, spindle-legged bulldog—steals the show.

Not many deep lessons here—just good mean fun. (Picture book. 4-8)

TWISTED

Showalter, Gena Harlequin Teen (576 pp.) $18.99 | September 1, 2011 978-0-373-21038-1 Series: Intertwined Volume: 3 Sluggish pacing and an overwhelming number of characters will once again test fans’ devotion to this paranormal-

romance series.

When readers last saw Aden Stone, he’d been turned into a vampire by his girlfriend, vampire princess Victoria, in a desperate attempt to save him after being stabbed by his best friend Mary Ann’s ex-boyfriend Tucker, who was being controlled by Victoria’s father, Vlad the Impaler. Yes, really. The soap opera continues as Aden and Victoria nearly kill each other by crossfeeding their blood back and forth. As Aden’s vampiric powers increase, Victoria becomes more human, losing her mind-controlling voice, teleportation abilities and diamond-hard skin— but gaining empathy and a truly tender heart. Meanwhile, Mary Ann has fled to Tulsa, Okla., (demonic Tucker and devoted shape-shifter Riley following close behind) to research the three supernaturally powered souls living in Aden’s consciousness, hoping to purge them from his mind. Both Aden and Mary Ann face a variety of brutal vengeance-seekers, including Victoria’s long-lost brother Sorin, witches, fairies and, once again, Vlad the Impaler. Showalter’s strength is in playing with conventions of various paranormal mythologies. Plotting and cast management, not so much: The pace here might charitably be called stately, while her cast of characters threatens to spill out of these overstuffed pages.

A major last-chapter twist will either delight readers or drive them, finally, around the bend. (Paranormal romance.

14 & up)

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STAN AND THE TOILET MONSTER

Shreve, Steve Illustrator: Shreve, Steve Marshall Cavendish (160 pp.) $12.99 | October 1, 2011 978-0-7614-5977-4 A pet iguana flushed down a toilet, a scientist’s unwelcomed potion for giant Brussels sprouts, a sociopathic dog named Mr. Snuggles and a reeking glob |

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“A throwback to old-school comics, this series opener offers a whimsical menagerie of wild animals in search of a beloved friend.” from big city otto

of slime that turns out not to be a baseball are but some of the elements in this Captain Underpants–style yuck-o-rama.

Chasing his last ball down into the town sewer, Stan brings back a noxious, dripping lump that not only disgusts and interests everyone at school but brings his long-lost pet Fluffy—grown to dinosaurian proportions—back to the surface in rampaging pursuit. The author loses few opportunities to drag references to Dumpsters, rotting food, underwear, farts and like subgenre tropes into a plot thick with mishaps, chases and melodramatic cliffhangers. Oddly, despite crafting a tale and cast that are both liberally smeared with muck, he seems to regard any specific mention of what goes into and comes out of sewers as taboo, but you could cut the innuendo with a knife. Tableaux done as large, simple line drawings featuring the annoyed-looking monster and hunched, hapless-looking smaller figures on nearly every page give the tale that fashionable Wimpy Kid look A serviceable placeholder for the Captain’s next outing, with all the stinks and goo but not so much of the wit. (Illustrated fiction. 9-11)

THE DOWNSIDE OF BEING UP

Sitomer, Alan Lawrence Putnam (224 pp.) $16.99 | September 15, 2011 978-0-399-25498-7 The story of a boy and his boners.

“Weinerschnitzel.” “Wang.” “Sky-high pork pipe.” “Baloney pony.” Those are just some of the names 13-year-old Bobby calls his errant penis (within the first three pages), which becomes erect at the most inconvenient times.

After accidently shocking his math teacher into early retirement when she gets a gander at his tent pole, Bobby is sentenced to several hours of school therapy with a counselor who needs couch time herself. In addition, he must deal with his clueless parents, randy grandfather, angry sister and moronic best friend, Finkelstein. His life is further complicated by the fact that he has a crush on the new math teacher’s daughter and doesn’t know how to ask her to the Big Dance. Will Bobby’s wayward pecker continue to obstruct his path to true love? To say this lacks the subtlety and character development of Judy Blume’s classic male-puberty title, Then Again, Maybe I Won’t (1971), is putting it lightly. Stereotypical characterizations combined with a plot that reads like a rejected Family Guy script assure that the novel will find an enthusiastic audience with middle-school boys who share Sitomer’s dubious sense of humor, if with no one else. However, the excessive penis and fart jokes may tire even them.

As a highly specific thesaurus it excels; as a story, not so much. Alan Cumyn covers much the same ground with considerably more nuance, though for slightly older readers, in Tilt (2011). (Fiction. 12-14)

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BIG CITY OTTO

Slavin, Bill Illustrator: Slavin, Bill Kids Can (80 pp.) $16.95 | (Paperback ): $7.95 September 1, 2011 978-1-55453-476-0 (Paperback ): 978-1-55453-477-7 Series: An Elephant Never Forgets Volume: 1 A throwback to old-school comics, this series opener offers a whimsical menagerie of wild animals in search of a beloved friend.

Simpleton pachyderm Otto enlists his friend, a clever green parrot named Crackers, to help him find Otto’s very best friend, Georgie, a chimpanzee who was stolen from their African jungle home by “the man with the wooden nose.” The duo must make their way out of the jungle and soon find themselves across the pond in America, in the big city. When the pair falls in with a gang of crooked gators who take advantage of Otto’s unfortunate peanut allergy (to help them steal gator-ade, of course), Otto and Crackers need to learn who is trustworthy—and who is out to take advantage of their naivete. Slavin’s lush, full-color illustrations have a yesteryear feel with a dash of European influence, invoking the likes of Tintin or Asterix. This makes for a slower, gentler type of graphic novel; while the action chugs along, Otto has a distinctly mellower feel than many of his slick, whizzing contemporaries. While Otto’s sensitive bumbling may appeal in this volume, it has the potential to wear itself thin in subsequent volumes, if more is not done to develop him as a character.

Not for every reader, but fans of comics reminiscent of simpler times will certainly enjoy this. (Graphic fantasy. 9-12)

THE PHANTOM LIMB

Sleator, William Monticone, Ann Amulet/Abrams (224 pp.) $16.95 | October 1, 2011 978-0-8109-8428-8

Not even hammer-and-tongs plotting pounds this jumbled mess of random McGuffins into a coherent whole.

A therapeutic “mirror box” that reflects urgent gestures from ghostly hands sucks Isaac into a series of revealing visions and flashbacks through restroom mirrors. Through these glimpses, Isaac comes to realize that the reason his hospitalized piano-teacher mother has been marked to have her arm amputated is because she’s in the care of a nurse who is a serial killer with a particular thing for pianists. Can he whisk her out of the conveniently unstaffed ICU? Yes, with help from two school bullies who suddenly turn into allies, a grandfather with Alzheimer’s who suddenly regains his mind and a vertigo-inducing optical illusion that distracts the killer when she comes after him with

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a bone saw. Repeated anxious ward visits, multiple red herrings and not one but two scenes in which Isaac is forcibly sedated and then subjected to medical torture (a brutal endoscopy and an MRI) add to the page count but not the weak suspense.

Even Sleator’s confirmed fans will wince at this severely off-key outing. (Suspense. 11-13)

NOTHING LIKE A PUFFIN

Soltis, Sue Illustrator: Kolar, Bob Candlewick (40 pp.) $15.99 | September 1, 2011 978-0-7636-3617-3 Several essential facts about puffins emerge from this engaging, cheerful and astonishingly simple taxonomic exercise, filled with humor and a dynamic conversational style both visual and textual.

Soltis’ relaxed, forthright words and sentences build a momentum of anticipation and discovery—first an initial and then repeated assertion that there is “nothing like a puffin,” followed by a series of comparative observations in which it turns out that a particular animal or item actually is in some way (two legs, hatches from eggs, swims) perhaps a little like a puffin.

Kolar’s eye-catching, full page, digitally created cartoons feature a merry-looking puffin in every opening, interacting with the objects or bright-eyed creatures of comparison: a newspaper, a pair of jeans, a goldfish, a snake, a shovel, a helicopter, a penguin.

The colors on the puffin’s bill are repeated in the figures and vivid backgrounds throughout. Young listeners won’t know everything about puffins after a reading or two of this lively discourse, but they will have an idea about how to relate new information to something already known.

What makes two things alike and what makes them different—what, indeed, confers individuality and the quality of being uniquely amazing—is exuberantly celebrated in a puffin-affectionate package. (Picture book. 2-5)

MARCEL MARCEAU Master of Mime

Spielman, Gloria Illustrator: Gauthier, Manon Kar-Ben (32 pp.) $17.95 | (Paperback ): $7.95 September 1, 2011 978-0-7613-3961-8 (Paperback ): 978-0-7613-3962-5 The legendary mime is introduced to a new generation, though not entirely successfully.

As a child, Marceau loved to silently entertain his friends, like his idol, Charlie Chaplin. During the Nazi occupation of France, Marcel and his brother took on new identities in the French Underground, where they forged documents for Jewish children and helped many |

to escape to Switzerland. Spielman assumes that her young audience will understand references to deportation and concentration camps; unfortunately for those that don’t, her matter-of-fact tone speaks more of adventure than deadly peril. Her tone subtly changes when she lovingly describes Marceau’s training and development as a mime and his stage persona of Bip the clown, admiring his skills in the “art of silence” that won him international renown. But here too, comparisons to the Little Tramp and Pierrot may be outside readers’ frame of reference. Though the illustrations carefully complement the textual content with period details, Gauthier’s cartoon faces are all nearly identical, with only the screen image of Chaplin and Marceau’s Bip having distinctive features. A double-page spread at the conclusion provides photographs of Bip in action and is the only clear indication of Marceau’s stagecraft.

At its best when the emphasis is on the skill and artistry of Mime’s most accomplished practitioner—alas, too much of the book looks elsewhere. (Picture book/biography. 8-10)

BINKY UNDER PRESSURE

Spires, Ashley Illustrator: Spires, Ashley Kids Can (64 pp.) $16.95 | (Paperback ): $8.95 September 1, 2011 978-1-55453-504-0 (Paperback ): 978-1-55453-767-9 Series: Binky Volume: 3 Binky the Space Cat returns for his third not-so-quite-outof-this-world adventure.

The doughty astronaut keeps his humans safe in their space station (suburban house), but his life has become boring…nap, snack, cuddle, nap, catch aliens (bugs), nap. Then his humans bring home foster cat Gracie. And quelle horreur! He must share his food, litter and best friend, Ted! When explaining the situation to Gracie doesn’t work, Binky stalks her, taking notes. She’s too perfect; maybe the aliens created a robot cat in an attempt to infiltrate the space station. But no, when Binky tests Gracie to see if she hates aliens as much as he, she reveals her true identity: Captain Gracie of F.U.R.S.T. (Felines of the Universe Ready for Space Travel), clearance level 6, License to Scratch; she’s Binky’s superior and it’s time for his annual review! Binky must prove himself or lose his commission. He’s made some mistakes in the past, but his humans and his space station need him now! Then aliens actually do invade; will Gracie and Binky be able to beat back the attack?

All the ingredients are present for Spires’ chubby and sweetly delusional kitty’s return: Binky’s wild imaginings, deadpan humor, occasional space gas (poot).

Fans will celebrate; aliens will quiver in fright. (Graphic fiction. 7-14)

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LOVE, MOUSERELLA

Stein, David Ezra Illustrator: Stein, David Ezra Nancy Paulsen Books (32 pp.) $15.99 | September 1, 2011 978-0-399-25410-9 Bestrewing lined sheets with crayon drawings, Polaroids, smudges, a ketchup packet (not a real one) and other signs of affection, a mouseling writes a newsy love note to her Grandmouse.

“I don’t know what to write…” she starts—but that problem disappears in a twinkling, as her attention flits from a crafts project to a pet ladybug (“I taught her to fetch”), from a museum visit (“At the butterfly tent I put honey from the cafeteria on my ears so butterflies would land on me. But none did”) to flashlight shadow puppets during the previous week’s blackout. Showing his customary gift for spot-on evocations of childlike voice and sensibility, Caldecott honoree Stein (Interrupting Chicken, 2010) interweaves Mouserella’s loosely connected comments with decorative crayon sketches, relatively more finished vignettes representing pictures in her imagination or scenes she is describing and painted “photos” of a pet chrysalis, Dadmouse and other subjects. “Write back,” she concludes, after expressing hopes of a future visit. “I mouse you.” Awww.

Sometimes snail mail is just better. Here’s proof. (Picture book. 5-7)

DAUGHTER OF SMOKE AND BONE

Taylor, Laini Little, Brown (432 pp.) $18.99 | September 27, 2011 978-0-316-13402-6 A love thought lost proves anything but when another world’s 1,000-year war spills over into this one.

Seventeen-year-old Karou leads a double life: as an art student in Prague with normal boyfriend troubles—and as a runner of bizarre errands for Brimstone, a scarred and saturnine sorcerer with the head of a ram and the lower body of a dragon. With similarly chimerical associates, he has raised her from infancy and dispatches her through magic portals to destinations all over the world. She knows nothing of her past or purpose—until a sudden, fiery closure of all the portals cuts her off from the only family she’s ever known, and an initially violent but ultimately “sweet and beckoning collision” with winged, inhumanly beautiful Akiva leads to revelations of an ancient conflict between Seraphim and the supposedly bestial Chimaera. Switching points of view and settings, Taylor then fills in a back story that links Akiva and Karou in an older tragedy, while planting seeds that might lead ultimately to peace. The plot hinges on major contrivances, but along with writing in such heightened language that even casual banter often comes off as wildly funny, 1496

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the author crafts a fierce heroine with bright-blue hair, tattoos, martial skills, a growing attachment to a preternaturally hunky but not entirely sane warrior and, in episodes to come, an army of killer angels to confront.

Rarely—perhaps not since the author’s own Faeries of Dreamdark: Blackbringer (2007)—does a series kick off so deliciously. (Fantasy. 13-16)

SIR SETH THISTLETHWAITE AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CAVES

Thake, Richard Illustrator: Chui, Vince Owlkids Books (160 pp.) $14.95 | (Paperback ): $7.95 September 15, 2011 978-1-926818-94-8 (Paperback ): 978-1-926818-95-5 Series: Sir Seth Thistlethwaite Volume: 2

Two imaginative 10-year-old boys embark on a disbeliefsuspending adventure in this second of a series.

Sir Seth, Sir Ollie and Seth’s “steed,” Shasta (his dog in a realer world), discover Puddlewater Pond is draining down into a netherworld, the Queendom of Claire, populated by short Khaboumians, the evil ogre Ooz, his tree-eating dinosaur and some almost-flying umbies. These creatures are coming into conflict, creating confusion, consternation and complete chaos.

Most of the narrative consists of frequent alliteration, puns and embedded rhyming words that don’t scan into poetry. “Sir Ollie stuttered with surprise, his eyes the size of banana cream pies,” for example. A certain amount of this is amusing; after several pages, it simply becomes unbecomingly uneven, creating a nearly noxious narrative. Some of the concepts are strangely Seuss-like: The Umbies travel in pairs, under-umbies under over-umbies that use their apparently otherwise useless wings to provide shade for their under-umbies. Chuggamugga bugs, like mugs with legs, carry water for wayward desert wanderers.

While the pace of the plot careens, its superficiality is strangely startling. Cartoonish black-and-white illustrations add an amusing aura to a plethora of pages.

The potential strength of this presentation would be as a read-aloud to grade-schoolers, who would, no doubt, enjoy the difficulties the adult reader would encounter, wading through all the wacky words. (Fantasy. 8-11)

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“Combining Mattie’s poignant writing and interior monologue, exquisite character development and a slow, deliberate pace, Urban spins a story that rings true.” from hound dog true

PAUL THURLBY’S ALPHABET

Thurlby, Paul Illustrator: Thurlby, Paul Templar/Candlewick (64 pp.) $16.99 | October 1, 2011 978-0-7636-5565-5 Is there any new way left to present the alphabet? The answer is Yes, as this graphic artist demonstrates when he applies his retro style to the ABCs. From a cover that features a boy’s head and arms on a body shaped like the letter A to Z for zipper, the illustrator explains that he “pursues the challenge of fusing the object of the word with the shape of the letter.” His approach succeeds in a fascinating way. The lower- and upper-case letter is centered on the verso pages against textured, vividly colored papers, while the letter designs appear on the recto and have a posterlike quality.

E for embrace is depicted with two E letters fitted together like tongue and groove, for example. The word choices are unusual: G for graffiti; K for karate (a boy’s robed body makes a K shape); P for pretty; Q for quicksand; H for hang (a monkey is hanging from the bars of the letter H in a Hangman game). The digitalmedia artwork has a distinctive look that will be best appreciated by young ones who already know the ABCs. Skillfully constructed and cleverly composed, it’s an awesome alphabet book that adults will also appreciate. (author’s note) (Picture book. 5-7)

HOUND DOG TRUE Urban, Linda Houghton Mifflin (176 pp.) $15.99 | September 19, 2011 978-0547558691 With a little help from a caring adult, a child crippled by shyness begins to bloom.

Soon-to-be fifth grader Mattie is painfully shy, making the frequent moves her mother has initiated especially difficult. In the last days of summer, after she and her mother move in with her Uncle Potluck, the elementary-school custodian, he quickly recognizes both her talent and her difficulties and begins bringing her to work with him, where she records everything he does in her journal (since she’s a writer). She hopes that if she learns enough custodial skills, she can become his junior apprentice during lunch and recess and so avoid the most challenging times of the school day. Meanwhile, she is studiously steering clear of Quincy, a slightly older girl visiting next door; in trying to avoid the social minefield of friendship, she fails to recognize that Quincy is a kindred spirit. As amiable Potluck gently guides her, and her jittery but loving mother comes to better understand her, Mattie believably begins to turn from her inwardly focused timidity to an eye-opening awareness of |

the complexity of others’ emotional landscapes. Combining Mattie’s poignant writing and interior monologue, exquisite character development and a slow, deliberate pace, Urban spins a story that rings true.

This outstanding, emotionally resonant effort will appeal to middle-grade readers. (Fiction. 8-12)

A ZEAL OF ZEBRAS An Alphabet of Collective Nouns

WOOP Studios Illustrator: WOOP Studios Chronicle (64 pp.) $17.99 | September 7, 2011 978-1-4521-0492-8 What do you call a group of camels? A caravan. Of cobras? A quiver!

This unique book of collective nouns is skillfully arranged in alphabetical order by the noun, beginning with A for an Aurora (of polar bears), B for a Bale (of turtles), all the way to Z for a Zeal (of zebras). What unifies the book and makes it zing are the artistic, graphically designed illustrations rendered in Adobe Photoshop, which are beautiful enough to hang individually on walls.

Each letter has a double spread with two bites of information about the creature on the left side and the visual interpretation on the right. “A Venom of spiders. The majority of spiders in the world are solitary, but there are some species, aptly named social spiders, that live together in the thousands. These spiders cooperate to hunt, build large webs, and raise their young.” Opposite, on a turquoise field, said venom (of orb spiders) set about their weaving, the strands of their web white against the background, delicate legs extending in varying shades of brown from their black bodies. Some collective names, like a Hum of bees, may not startle (though they will undoubtedly please), while others are unexpected: a Galaxy of starfish, a Journey of giraffes, a Nest of crocodiles and a Pandemonium of parrots.

From the mesmerizing cover to the dazzling endpapers, this is a fabulously fascinating work of wondrous words.

(Informational picture book. 5-10)

101 WAYS TO BUG YOUR FRIENDS AND ENEMIES

Wardlaw, Lee Dial (288 pp.) $16.99 | (Paperback ): $6.99 September 1, 2011 978-0-8037-3262-9 (Paperback ): 978-0-14-241949-6 Series: 101 Ways to Bug… Volume: 3 In the third in the 101 Ways to Bug series, a group of middle-schoolers encounters a bullying highschool golf-team member and a series of first-love misadventures.

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“The Leviathan trilogy-ender delivers on the promise of the series: thrilling airship battles, world travel, ginormous Tesla coils and a few daring smooches.” from goliath

“Sneeze” Wyatt, who is unbecomingly plagued by serious hay fever, has just returned from a summer-long vacation to discover that: a) while he once merely admired his friend Hayley, now he loves her; b) she has a severe crush on a hunky new Hawaiian member of the high-school golf team, Cullen—who doesn’t know she exists; c) Sneezes’s best friend Hiccup—who is wracked by hiccups when stressed—loves martial-arts star Joonbi; and, d) Joonbi seems to truly adore Sneeze. Sneeze, tapping into a Cyrano de Bergerac concept, begins to write e-mails to Hayley, supposedly from Cullen, a plan sure to eventually fail.

Fortunately, the dialogue that constitutes most of the narrative and drives the plot is largely believable. Less expedient is the lack of significant character development and the numerous references to events that occurred in the two previous volumes in the series. Readers that come upon this work first will find many of the allusions mystifying and might need a score card to keep track of the numerous walk-on characters.

With a mildly humorous presentation and the all-toofamiliar concept of young teens exploring unrequited love, this average effort joins a crowded field. (Fiction. 9-12)

ELLRAY JAKES IS A ROCK STAR!

Warner, Sally Illustrator: Harper, Jamie Viking (128 pp.) $14.99 | September 15, 2011 978-0-670-01158-2 Series: EllRay Jakes Volume: 2 This second series entry (EllRay Jakes Is Not a Chicken, 2011) features an unofficial popularity contest and EllRay’s struggles to extricate himself from the fix he gets into after he tries to take a shortcut to earn the respect of his classmates.

This time, the kids in Ms. Sanchez’s third-grade class are engaging in one-upmanship; Jared’s dad has a new ATV, Cynthia’s dad has a really cool car, Kevin’s dad has a lot of money and so on. EllRay can’t think of anything his geologist dad has that would impress, except crystals, which his father personally collected from all over the world. EllRay brings the valuable rocks to school and somehow finds himself giving them out to his classmates, which is a problem, since he didn’t have permission to borrow them in the first place. EllRay’s attempts to right the situation ring true; he resists adults’ attempts to fix the problem and manages to solve it himself, though not without paying a bit of a price in allowance money and embarrassment. As in the previous book, the dialogue, setting and plot are accessible and realistic.

Young readers can identify with EllRay, who is neither a bad seed nor a goody-two-shoes; he and his sense of humor are just right.

A welcome addition to the tales from Oak Glen Primary School. (Fiction. 7-11)

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GOLIATH

Westerfeld, Scott Illustrator: Thompson, Keith Simon Pulse/Simon & Schuster (432 pp.) $19.99 | September 20, 2011 978-1-4169-7177-1 Series: Legendary Journeys Volume: 3 The Leviathan trilogy-ender delivers on the promise of the series: thrilling airship battles, world travel, ginormous Tesla coils and a few daring smooches.

A revolution in Istanbul behind them, Alek and Deryn travel wherever the living airship Leviathan is ordered by the British Empire. Deryn knows Alek’s secret—that he is heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire—but Alek doesn’t know that Deryn is truly a girl. They don’t have much time to spare for their own personal soap opera as they freewheel around wartorn continents, from Siberia to Japan to the United States to Mexico. Alek and Deryn escape ravenous fighting bears tall as houses, ride atop a gale-tossed airship and star in motion pictures. The whole is peppered with sagacious statements from the tragically underused Perspicacious Lorises, faux-simple creatures always ready to spout off a wise word or three. This entry is relatively light on the steam-powered clankers and genetically engineered beasties that drove the first two volumes of the trilogy, replacing them with repeated airborne drama.

Still, any lost steampunky science is compensated for by nonstop action; it’s hard to mind theatrical revelations when they occur in a made-for-CGI storm. Besides, in the midst of all that action Alek learns the art of navigation and how to measure the weight of water; how cool is that?

Madcap adventure ends much too quickly. (Steampunk. 12-15)

LEARN TO SPEAK DANCE

Williams, Ann-Marie Illustrator: Kulak, Jeff Owlkids Books (96 pp.) $22.95 | (Paperback ): $14.95 September 15, 2011 978-1-926818-88-7 (Paperback ): 978-1-926818-89-4

From ballet to breakdancing and from backyard to Broadway, a guide to all aspects of practice, production and performance.

In this companion title to Learn to Speak Music (2009), the author, a Canadian dance teacher, offers upbeat and wide-ranging advice on why humans dance, how to use different parts of the body to step and spin and jump and how to translate a love of dance into everything from a small amateur performance to a serious career. An inviting format features brief quotations from dancers and captioned paragraphs that provide small nuggets of information. Aspiring choreographers, musicians, stage managers and set designers will find start-up pointers. If you suffer from backstage butterflies or don’t know how to take

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a bow, Williams provides guidance. Want to gather an audience? Read about publicity techniques using posters and online resources. Want to produce a dance video and need funding?

Find out about using camera angles and exploring community resources. A double-page spread takes readers behind and in front of theater curtains in a layout that anyone interested in the arts will find informative. Kulak’s cartoon illustrations are a light-hearted accompaniment.

The enormous popularity of dance and music videos and TV dance competitions should provide a ready and eager audience of children and teens who love to move. (index) (Nonfiction. 10 & up)

DOWN THE MYSTERLY RIVER

Willingham, Bill Starscape/Tom Doherty (333 pp.) $15.99 | September 13, 2011 978-0-7653-2792-5 An intrepid Boy Scout sleuth meets talking animals, creators of worlds and viciously evangelical conformists in a coming-of-age tale first issued in slightly different form in 2001.

Hardly has Max had a chance to wonder how he comes to be walking down a forest road with great gaps in his memory than he meets a similarly afflicted badger who introduces himself as Banderbrock. With a raffish cat named McTavish and Walden, a peaceable bear, joining along the way, that walk soon turns into a flight ahead of a large company of dedicated men and women armed with special swords that can surgically remove troublesome personal characteristics like independence and creativity.

Nonetheless, aside from the occasional narrow squeak, that flight is more like a leisurely amble, punctuated with pauses for extended bickering and reminiscences, plus conversations with a sociable talking tree and a wandering coot who claims to deliver universes. Even before finding safe haven with a “wizard” (here a synonym for “author”) who lays it all out, Max has reached a dismal realization about who he and his friends really are. But going out of print can be a beginning rather than an ending, promises the wizard, pointing out several roads to second careers for fictional characters.

Though it’s been done before and better (see Roderick Townley’s Great Good Thing, 2001), there’s still room in the premise for clever twists. (Metafictional fantasy. 12-15, adult)

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THE WATCH THAT ENDS THE NIGHT

Wolf, Allan Candlewick (472 pp.) $21.99 | October 1, 2011 978-0-7636-3703-3 Twenty-four voices—of passengers, rats and even the iceberg—evoke the human tragedy of the ill-fated voyage.

Titanic was a floating city, “the largest moving thing on the planet ever made by man.” She sank quickly on the night of April 14-15, 1912, and only 712 of the 2,207 passengers survived. Wolf brings the history and, more importantly, the human scale of the event to life by giving voice to the players themselves—the captain, the lookout, the millionaire, the socialite and various workers and passengers representing all classes of society that floated to their doom. The undertaker, out of Halifax, is the first voice, penultimate voice and intermittent commentator, gathering floating clumps of corpses in “a dead man’s sad regatta.”

The iceberg, the voice of the ages, floats with a primordial indifference… but with a plan. Rats have the last word, as they scurry off to “follow the future / follow the food.” As he did in New Found Land: Lewis and Clark’s Voyage of Discovery (2004), Wolf draws on a prodigious amount of research to fully realize each character; they are real people just telling their stories, all the more poignant because readers know their fates and recognize prophetic comments along the way. Extensive backmatter includes character notes, a Titanic miscellany and a large bibliography with books, websites and audio resources for the many readers who will want to know more.

A lyrical, monumental work of fact and imagination that reads like an oral history revved up by the drama of the event. (Historical fiction. 14 & up)

THE FINGERTIPS OF DUNCAN DORFMAN

Wolitzer, Meg Dutton (252 pp.) $16.99 | September 20, 2011 978-0-525-42304-1 Wolitzer turns to writing for young readers with an ever-so-slightly magical tale of friendship and what it takes to be a winner.

Just before starting in a new school, 12-year-old Duncan Dorfman discovers he can read through the fingertips of his left hand. His single mother makes him promise not to tell anyone. When he just can’t take being a nobody any longer, though, he shows his table mate at lunch and draws the attention of Carl Slater, who is determined to win the national Youth Scrabble Tournament by any means necessary. In Portland, Ore., April Blunt and her Scrabble partner practice regularly and search for a boy April met and lost touch with. In New York, Nate Saviano is struggling under the yolk of homeschooling (which is just his father’s way of making him study 24/7 to win the tournament;

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Mr. Saviano lost when he was 12). The teams bond over Scrabble boards, helping each other win in ways that surprise even them.

The novel is shot through with Scrabble words and rules in a way that is reminiscent of Louis Sachar’s The Cardturner (2010). Readers will identify with and root for the characters as their tales intertwine to a satisfying if slightly too cheery close.

Word wizards aren’t the only ones who will enjoy this readable rumination on ethics, competition and identity.

(Fiction. 9-14)

SAINT LOUIS ARMSTRONG BEACH

Woods, Brenda Nancy Paulsen Books (144 pp.) $16.99 | September 1, 2011 978-0-399-25507-6 This gripping addition to the growing body of fiction portraying Katrina’s profound effect on children and families pits an 11-year-old boy, a neighborhood dog and an elderly woman against the hurricane and subsequent devastating flood.

Narrator Saint is a gifted clarinetist with Juilliard dreams and a soft spot for Shadow, a black Lab mix he longs to fully claim.

Families flee Tremé, but Saint’s mom, a dedicated hospital social worker, toils overtime as Katrina homes in. Pops arranges for Saint to evacuate with Uncle Hugo’s family, but Shadow—to Saint’s tearful dismay—runs off. Shadow’s pivotal in the plotting, as Saint slips back into town to find him. Fate tosses boy and dog in with stubborn neighbor Miz Moran, who’s evaded her own relatives in order to remain at home. Their attic confinement is a study in contrasts: The woman’s good planning yields batteryoperated fans and freeze-dried ice cream, but unplanned-for issues include her worsening health and dog poop. Saint bests the flooded house to retrieve Miz Moran’s insulin; the lady’s casual admission that her three heart attacks “was mild ones” ratchets tension. Woods’ marvelous characterizations of Saint and Miz Moran more than stand up to the vivid backdrop of the flooded, chaotic city. Shadow’s credulity-straining heroics will please kids.

A small gem that sparkles with hope, resilience and the Crescent City’s unique, jazz-infused spirit. (Historical fiction. 9-12)

SNEEZE, BIG BEAR, SNEEZE!

Wright, Maureen Illustrator: Hillenbrand, Will Marshall Cavendish (32 pp.) $16.99 | (e-book ): $16.99 September 1, 2011 978-0-7614-5959-0 (e-book ): 978-0-7614-6074-9

Big Bear gets in all kinds of trouble when he takes credit for the work of the wind.

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The leaves are burnished gold and orange, birds fill the sky and Big Bear lets out an enormous sneeze. Coincidentally, this occurs just when the wind whirls the leaves right off the trees. Even though the wind tries to explain, Bear thinks that he’s responsible and tries to nail the leaves back on. Further up the hill is an apple tree, where the same thing happens: “Just as Big Bear let out a sneeze, / branches shook in a very strong breeze.” A flock of geese is resting on the lake, and another gust (simultaneous with a Bear sneeze) sends them flapping away. When Bear claims credit for this as well, the wind loses his temper and pairs his loudest declaration with his strongest gale force: “I do it all! I’m the autumn breeze!” Bear listens and, after scratching his head, says, “You could have told me before,” and retires for the winter. Hillebrand’s mixed-media illustrations use a bright and appealing palette; his evocation of the wind is particularly charming.

Still, though the bounce of Wright’s verse is welcome, the story is all too slender; for truly satisfying ursine braggadocio, try How Chipmunk Got His Stripes, by Joseph and James Bruchac, illustrated by José Aruego and Ariane Dewey (2001). (Picture book. 3-6)

THE ISLE OF BLOOD

Yancey, Rick Simon & Schuster (540 pp.) $18.99 | September 13, 2011 978-1-4169-8452-8 Series: The Monstrumologist Volume: 3 When an obscure, slimy, flesh-colored pouch is delivered to Pellinore Warthrop’s door and renders the deliverer into a bloody, pulpy zombie-like mess, the Monstrumologist has but one course of action open to him.

He leaves his apprentice, the steadfast, loyal, brave Will Henry, in pursuit of the sender, none other than Jack Kearns, who readers will recognize as one of the world’s most famous serial killers. Word on the street reveals that the strange pouch is a nidus, created by the crème de la crème of all monsters, the magnificum that draws human prey up into the sky, shreds it, then drenches the land below with a rain of blood. Through a series of events that involve murder, romance and Arthur Conan Doyle, Will Henry finds his way to London and Pellinore, and the two embark on a journey to an island off the coast of Africa to find the famed monster. Articulately literary, horrifically grotesque and mind-bendingly complex, Yancey’s trilogy conclusion might be the best of the Monstrumologist trilogy. His 19th-century dialogue and descriptions run even smoother than the previous two titles, and his characters have grown deeply complex.

He deftly blurs lines between science and the supernatural, and what results is a long, dark-night-of-the-soul journey for both Will Henry and Pellinore that is certain to turn the hearts and the stomachs of every reader who dares open its pages. (Horror. 14 & up)

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ALL THESE THINGS I’VE DONE

Zevin, Gabrielle Farrar, Straus and Giroux (368 pp.) $16.99 | September 27, 2011 978-0-374-30210-8 Series: Birthright Volume: 1 Some four years after Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac (2007), Zevin returns to teen fiction with a story about the daughter of a Russian-American crime boss making her way in a grimly familiar 2083.

This is no post-apocalyptic nightmare land. The only real clues readers have to a changed America are references to shortages of natural resources and increased regulation of just about everything. Most significantly for Anya Balanchine, chocolate is a controlled substance in this America, and her family is one of the five great chocolate families worldwide. Her parents both dead and her older brother brain-damaged as a result of their shadowy activities, Anya is de facto head of her own family, though not the Family. When she falls for Win Delacroix, the son of the new assistant DA, she knows the match is problematic.

And when her ex-boyfriend is nearly fatally poisoned by a bar of illicit Balanchine Chocolate and she’s briefly taken into custody, things become even more complicated. Zevin excels at inviting readers into Anya’s mafiyaparanoia—so much so that readers will be expecting double crosses that never happen, at least in this series opener. Anya is a likable character, though her retrospective and at times self-conscious account may distance readers.

Still, the love story’s to die for, and the tangled web of relationships will keep readers intrigued to the last page.

(Thriller. 14 & up)

k i r k u s r o u n d-u p continuing series HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LITTLE WITCH! Little Witch, #3

Baeten, Lieve NorthSouth (32 pp.) $16.95 | Sept. 1, 2011 ISBN: 978-0-7358-4043-0 (Picture book. 4-8)

A FRACTION’S GOAL— PARTS OF A WHOLE Math Is CATegorical

Cleary, Brian P. Illus. by Brian Gable Millbrook (32 pp.) $16.95 | Sept. 1, 2011 ISBN: 978-0-8225-7881-9 (Early reader/math. 5-9)

THUMBTACKS, EARWAX, LIPSTICK, DIPSTICK: What Is a Compound Word?

Words Are CATegorical

Cleary, Brian P. Illus. by Brian Gable Millbrook (32 pp.) $16.95 | Sept. 1, 2011 ISBN: 978-0-7613-4917-4 (Early reader/grammar. 5-9)

G IS FOR GOLD MEDAL: An Olympics Alphabet

This Issue’s Contributors # Kim Becnel • Elizabeth Bird • Sophie Brookover • Louise Brueggemann • Timothy Capehart • Louise Capizzo • Ann Childs • Julie Cummins • GraceAnne A. DeCandido • Dave DeChristopher • Elise DeGuiseppi • Lisa Dennis • Steve Donoghue • Carol Edwards • Robin Elliott • Brooke Faulkner • Laurie Flynn • Diane B. Foote • Omar Gallaga • Judith Gire • Melinda Greenblatt • Heather L. Hepler • Megan Honig • Jennifer Hubert • Kathleen T. Isaacs • Laura Jenkins • Deborah Kaplan • K. Lesley Knieriem • Robin Fogle Kurz • Megan Lambert • Angela Leeper • Peter Lewis • Wendy Lukehart • Lauren Maggio • Joan Malewitz • Hillias J. Martin • Jeanne McDermott • Kathie Meizner • Daniel Meyer • Rachel Moore • Kathleen Odean • John Edward Peters • Susan Pine • Rebecca Rabinowitz • Kristy Raffensberger • Shana Raphaeli • Nancy Thalia Reynolds • Melissa Riddle Chalos • Lesli Rodgers • Leslie L. Rounds • Ann Marie Sammataro • Mindy Schanback • Dean Schneider • Karyn N. Silverman • Robin Smith • Karin Snelson • Rita Soltan • Jennifer Sweeney • Deborah D. Taylor • Bette WendellBranco • Bridget Whelan • Monica D. Wyatt

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Khan, Hena, David Borgenicht & Robert Zubrin Illus. by Yancey Labat Chronicle (208 pp.) $12.99 | Sept. 1, 2011 ISBN: 978-0-8118-7124-2 (Action/adventure. 9-12)

I WANT A PARTY! A Little Princess Story

Ross, Tony Illus. by the author Andersen USA (32 pp.) $16.95 | Sept. 1, 2011 ISBN: 978-0-7613-8089-4 (Picture book. 4-9)

BROWNIE & PEARL HIT THE HAY Brownie & Pearl, #6

Rylant, Cynthia Illus. by Brian Biggs Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster (24 pp.) $13.99 | Sept. 27, 2011 ISBN: 978-1-4169-8635-5 (Picture book/early reader. 3-5)

BUTTERFLIES

Herzog, Brad Illus. by Doug Bowles Sleeping Bear (48 pp.) $15.95 | Sept. 1, 2011 ISBN: 978-1-58536-462-6 (Nonfiction. 6-10)

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MARS The WorstCase Scenario Ultimate Adventure

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Simon, Seymour Collins (32 pp.) $17.99 | Sept. 1, 2011 ISBN: 978-0-06-191493-5 (Nonfiction. 5-9)

ROGUE H.I.V.E., #5

Walden, Mark Simon & Shuster (304 pp.) $16.99 | Sept. 27, 2011 ISBN: 978-1-4424-2187-5 (Thriller. 8-12)

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kirkus indie Kirkus has been keeping an eye on selfpublishing for years, and we’ve never seen anything like the current boom. With the number of self-published titles now pushing 1 million per year, and independent authors utilizing new technologies to sell tens of thousands of copies of their work, the age of indie has truly arrived. Kirkus Indie brings readers the best works by independent authors, and we bring independent authors the crucial tools to get the word out about their books like no one else. We’ll give your book an unbiased, professional review, and then we’ll push that review into the world via our social-media properties, newsletters, website and expanding content. To learn more about Kirkus Indie and start promoting your title, please visit us online at kirkusreviews.com/indie/about.

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MOONLIGHT

Ahsanuddin, Arshad CreateSpace (262 pp.) $9.99 | June 11, 2011 978-1460996522 The third installment of Ahsanuddin’s epic Pact Arcanum saga—an utterly readable fusion of apocalyptic science fiction, political thriller and vampiric fiction—is loaded with jaw-dropping plot twists and bombshell revelations that will stun fans of the series.

In 2042, the government of United States—and many of its citizens—struggle with an agreement that recognizes the Armistice and its supernaturally empowered people as a sovereign nation. Some humans would do anything to rid the world of the vampiric Daywalkers and Nightwalkers. The already volatile situation is complicated by the ongoing secret war between Nightwalkers and Sentinels, supernaturally gifted humans with a latent ability to hunt and kill vampires. Central to the storyline is the tumultuous relationship between Sentinel Tobias Jameson, brother of a famous vampire diplomat, and love interest Layla, a fiery Daywalker leader. After a particularly violent fight between the two, Layla finds out that she is pregnant. Vampires aren’t supposed to be able to conceive and the news marks a monumental moment in the saga—the beginning of a glorious new race. But amid a landscape of growing darkness—the disclosure of a potentially omnipotent AI government, the growth of militant human terrorist groups, widespread riots and assassinations—will it even matter? Expanding the boundaries of one of the most popular legends in fiction—the vampire mythos— can be daunting, but Ahsanuddin does it with audacious style.

Moonlight is easily the strongest installment in the Pact Arcanum series to date—powered by a cast of well developed and captivating characters, brisk pacing, a labyrinthine plot and a shocking conclusion. Seat belts are strongly recommended for this supernaturally charged literary roller-coaster ride.

Science-fiction fans and dark-fantasy aficionados will find Ahsanuddin’s meticulously described grand-scale narrative absolutely spellbinding.

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An absolutely wonderful debut with the potential to become a YA classic. from ferret girl

FERRET GIRL

Haskin, Colin (180 pp.) $12.99 | July 26, 2011 978-0986919909 In a modern take on both Kafka and T.H. White, a young girl learns about life as a human by spending time in her pet ferret’s world.

At 14, Fiona Forrest has already had her share of life’s disappointments. Her living situation is comfortable enough; her 3-year-old brother Rickie is largely bearable and her father, though emotionally bottled, is a fairly successful house builder in the Ontario area.

But at the start of Haskin’s confident, hugely engaging young adult novel, Fiona’s mother is “a painful and hurtful non-event,” having left home and stayed incommunicado. Fiona’s father resignedly says Mom is going through a personal crisis and needs time away, but the whole thing is so raw and confusing to Fiona that there are many times when she wishes she could join her alert, intelligent ferret Bandit in the comparative peace and stability of his cage. However, when the story obliges and Fiona suddenly finds herself ferret-sized and able to talk with Bandit, things turn out to be not so idyllic. Bandit—a positively hilarious creation, by turns timorous and pompous with lessons about “the way of the ferret,” a kind of furry Falstaff—is indulgent but unimaginative (although one of his strongest maxims, “Ferrets never surrender,” is something Fiona takes to heart) and the two of them have a whole book’s worth of adventures together, from perilous encounters with a great horned owl and a rat to an enlightening chance meeting with a skunk (“We are sorely misunderstood,” he says). Along the way, Fiona and Bandit become closer friends than either ever expected and Fiona rethinks all of the problems in her much missed human life. Haskin’s book is full of fine writing, fun dialogue (Fiona has a way with deadpan quips) and a multilayered, believable and thoroughly heartwarming ending.

An absolutely wonderful debut with the potential to become a YA classic.

THE WOODCUTTER AND THE MOST BEAUTIFUL TREE Johnston, Robb N. Robert N. Johnston (40 pp.) $16.95 | January 1, 2011 978-1935356158

As the seasons pass, a wise and beautiful tree must persuade a jolly woodcutter not to chop her down.

“Thwickety-THWACK! ThwicketyTHWACK!” sings the woodcutter as he tromps through the forest, swinging his trusty axe and looking for a suitable tree to chop. When he comes upon a beautiful tree, he is at first delighted—until the tree asks him what he intends to do. The |

startled woodcutter declares that he will “CHOP-CHOPCHOP” her “DOWN-DOWN-DOWN!” and the clever tree offers him her flowers instead. He agrees to take these home to his wife in lieu of cutting the tree down. Again and again, the woodcutter encounters the tree, and each time she offers him a gift to dissuade him from chopping her down. Come winter, however, the tree is despondent—her branches are bare and she no longer has anything to offer. To her surprise, the friendly woodcutter offers her a gift. The illustrations by debut author Johnston suit the titular characters well—the loud-mouthed woodcutter’s words burst onto the page alongside his gorgeous and whimsical surroundings. The author’s depiction of the tree is enchanting, with leaves and flowers blossoming onto the page in a colorful display that will captivate the eyes and minds of young readers. Johnston’s illustrations are so beautiful and intricate that they nearly overwhelm the narrative. Still, young readers and listeners are sure to enjoy the repetitive lyrics of the woodcutter’s song. Parents, librarians and schoolteachers may also enjoy belting out the woodcutter’s amusing dialogue. In the end, readers learn a touching lesson of friendship and giving as its own reward.

Gorgeous illustrations, humorous dialogue and a moving narrative make this a stunning debut.

RIDDLES IN PROVENCE Robinson, Jane E.M. Jane E.M.Robinson (205 pp.)

July 5, 2011 978-1460974773

A woman in an unraveling marriage tries to solve her uncle’s murder.

When Michèle Trowel learns that her husband has been cheating, she leaves their home in Boston and returns to the place where she’s always felt most comfortable—her aunt and uncle’s house in her native Provence, France. Unfortunately, she arrives at the house just in time to see Uncle George’s body being wheeled out. At first it appeared as if his weak heart had finally given out, but by sheer chance the hospital discovers that someone had switched his heart medication with something lethal. When Aunt Suzanne reports that someone has stolen a document relating to George’s history as a member of the resistance during World War II, suspicion for the murder falls on an unknown Nazi collaborator who was responsible for the deaths of many members of George’s unit, and who would therefore go to great lengths to conceal his identity. Armed with only the sketchiest information, Michèle sets out to uncover the killer and, in the process, locks horns with the U.P., an ultra right-wing nationalist party currently ascendant in the region. Meanwhile, Michèle must deal with the situation that brought her to Provence in the first place—the dissolution of her marriage. With her wellcrafted prose, Robinson masterfully invokes her setting and fills it with a varied cast of fully fleshed characters. Amid the romance and intrigue lies a compelling political dissertation,

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SPORTS JUNKIES REJOICE: The Birth of ESPN

Bill Rasmussen CreateSpace (262 pp.) $14.95 paperback $9.99 e-book May 12, 2010 978-1451569575

K i r k us M e dia L L C # President M A RC W I N K E L M A N SVP, Finance J ames H ull SVP, Marketing M ike H ejny SVP, Online Paul H o f f man # Copyright 2011 by Kirkus Media LLC. KIRKUS REVIEWS (ISSN 0042 6598) is published semimonthly by Kirkus Media LLC, 6411 Burleson Road, Austin, TX 78744.

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When Bill Rasmussen helped create ESPN in 1979, there was nothing like it on television. Now he’s on the frontier of another media technology, reprinting his memoir, Sports Junkies Rejoice: The Birth of ESPN, through Amazon’s CreateSpace, utilizing print-on-demand features and spreading his work to handheld reading devices. Rasmussen originally published the book with QV Pub, an indie publisher, in 1983, and the rights reverted to him sometime in the early ’90s. The new technology made republishing the book less of an ordeal than his first time around, and now Rasmussen is thinking of writing a couple more books about two of his favorite subjects, history and baseball, using the same format.

Q: What was your experience when you first published Sports Junkies Rejoice with an independent publisher?

A: That was the very, very beginning of the computer age and we were sending discs back and forth, unlike today where everything is so instant. We couldn’t e-mail things; we had to physically mail things. The thing that was most interesting was, how do you decide what you’re going to print, you know? Everything was hardcover, it was in boxes and stacked in warehouses and shipped around the country, unlike today. CreateSpace is on demand and Kindle is online. Whole different world. It’s exactly the opposite of what the first time around was. It was a grueling project the first time around.

Q: Was it easy to transfer?

A: I sent them a copy of the book and they do all of their magic and I sent them all of the updates and the changes and so on and it’s all incorporated, and now people can order it online. It’s amazing. When I go to speak someplace, people say, well, we’ll need 100 books or 75 or 250 or whatever it is. We call them and—we actually don’t even call them. They get ordered online, people get their discount, whatever the agreed upon discount is, and the books are produced and sent right to their doorstep. And then I show up and sign them.

Q: What made you go with CreateSpace?

A: My son…was writing a book. He said go take a look at CreateSpace.com, and when I went there, the instant I got there, it outlined what they do, and I ended up clicking on “create an account” on the spot.

Q: Aside from the ease of production, is it basically similar to when you first released the book on the promotion side of things?

A: Promotion back then was totally different because we didn’t have e-mail and we didn’t have the

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Internet. So it was pretty much a couple of newspapers, a couple of spots in some of the trade papers that we wanted to get to. And that was it.

Q: What made you decide to republish this now?

A: The hardcover dust jacket and all the things were really dated and I thought, gee, if I can get ESPN’s cooperation and get all the updated information, I can add some of that and add some more of the comments and things that happened over the intervening years. So it just seemed like a good time to update it and republish it.

Q: When you created ESPN, there was really nothing to compare it to back then. Do you feel that the publishing industry, with Nooks and Kindles and handheld devices, is in a similar place now to where cable was then?

A: It seems to me almost every month new and different things are happening. I don’t know if it’s a direct comparison to what cable was doing because it was a huge change in how television was perceived back then. There were only about 12 and a half million households with cable. Today, Kindle and Amazon are dealing with the whole nation all at once, and they can do it because of e-mail and so on. I would say there are lots of similarities. A new idea that’s introduced today is adapted much more quickly than anything we did with cable TV was.

Q: Coming from the broadcasting side of things, was writing the book an intimidating process?

A: I was an on-air guy doing sports for 10 years and news for a couple of years. If you took the script of what you did nightly in a television sportscast, if you just wrote it out, everything you said in the three and a half minutes you were allotted, you wouldn’t get very far in a book. When I first started, I was writing it the way I would present it on television.

The book would have been about 31 pages long if I did that. It’s completely different. You still have to get the facts, you still have to get the same information, but it’s presented in a whole different way.

Q: How much do you watch ESPN these days?

A: Not nearly as often as I used to, obviously. This comes as a surprise to everyone—I don’t watch much television. I really enjoy being out, and I enjoy my grandchildren.

–By Nick A. Zaino III

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“Outlandish but exciting entertainment for fans of technology, geopolitics and even romance.” from the elephant cage

describing the current conflicts between the left and the right in France and skillfully connecting it to its roots in the turbulent days of the second World War. Her main character falls squarely on the left, so Robinson does an especially skillful job of skewering the far right (her blowhard fictional nationalist Le Plume sounds an awful lot like the real right-wing politician Jean-Marie Le Pen). But rarely does the book sound preachy, and the wellconceived plot is always in charge of the narrative.

A skillful blend of passion, mystery, politics and history, set in a perfectly rendered Provence.

THE ELEPHANT CAGE Tarrant, Bert Bert Tarrant (274 pp.) $12.00 | March 19, 2011 978-0615430799

A teenager-against-the-world technothriller about a young Alaskan hacker and his battle with Russia after a nuclear strike on the United States.

Eric Palmer, role-playing game addict and prodigy hacker, gets roused one morning by his father, who believes the reports that a Russian terrorist has taken over a missile-launch facility and will fire on Alaska imminently. In true slacker fashion, Eric won’t get up and the police forces his family to leave him and vacate the area. As Eric finally makes his way to a shelter close by, the rumors and speculations crystallize in a terrifying blast of neutrinos—the Russians really have reared their heads and struck, and the terrorist group was only a clever Soviet-style ruse designed to excuse the nation at large. Thus Tarrant throws readers into the scrambling action and dread of life beyond brinksmanship. Stranded initially in a fallout shelter, Eric seems to take things in fair stride with only a copy of The Sound of Music to keep him company. There are a few nagging questions that distract from the early narrative— Did the United States retaliate? Would the United States really accept Russia’s stance that it won’t bargain with terrorists? Why isn’t Eric more terrified? Despite some of these loose threads on the suspension of disbelief, the author works in a crisp, punctuated style that moves in blessed efficiency—especially in a genre which often finds its practitioners gorging themselves on impossibly ornate details and extraneous exercises in melodramatic atmosphere. There’s none of that fat in this taut volume. Eric meets a roughneck resistance leader and a definite love interest, and then breezily hacks into the eponymous Elephant Cage, a secret military facility dedicated to intelligence and command.

From there, Eric must save America from a Napoleonic Russian hell-bent on finally increasing the empire. It’s not believable for a second, but the book reads well and the characters are lots of fun—readers will keep burning through pages to get to the novel’s sly conclusion, where America hits those devious Russians where it really counts.

Outlandish but exciting entertainment for fans of technology, geopolitics and even romance.

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