December 01, 2013: Volume LXXXI, No 23

Featuring 267 Industry-First Reviews of Fiction, Nonfiction and Children's & Teen

KIRKUS VOL. LXXXI, NO.

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REVIEWS

CHILDREN'S & TEEN

Grasshopper Jungle

by Andrew Smith A seriously weird, seriously brilliant chronicle of the end of the world p. 94

NONFICTION

Little Failure

by Gary Shteyngart An immigrant’s memoir like few others, with as sharp an edge and as much stylistic audacity as the author’s well-received novels p. 67

on the cover

Wally Lamb once again probes the heart of a monster to craft his latest best-seller, We Are Water. p. 14

FICTION

Lydia's Party

By Margaret Hawkins A beautiful evocation of a death at midlife p. 11

INDIE Indie expert David Vinjamuri assesses his own place in self-publishing. p. 116 Inside: Pop-Up Book Roundup p. 97

Anniversaries: The Holy War Against Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses B Y G RE G O RY MC NA M EE

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

I n t h e f a l l o f 1 9 8 8 , 2 5 y e a r s a g o , Salman Rushdie published a sprawling allegory of the lives of immigrant Muslims in England, that alien land of forbidden foods, gray skies and ceaseless rain. The Satanic Verses was issued to a handful of critical notices, and it enjoyed quiet sales at first.

Under normal circumstances, Rushdie’s novel almost surely would have continued to do so. But then a Muslim parliamentarian, enraged by what he took to be sustained blasphemies in a book he admitted he had not read, petitioned the government to ban The Satanic Verses in India, and Rushdie and his novel became international news.

Sensitive to religious conflict, the Indian government bowed to the parliamentarian’s demands on Oct. 5, 1988, invoking India’s customs laws to prohibit the manufacture and sale of Rushdie’s book.

In announcing its decision, it declared that the ban “did not detract from the literary and artistic merit of Rushdie’s work,” to which the author retorted, “thanks for the good review.”

The Satanic Verses was banned as well in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Egypt and South Africa. Back in India, where one in every 10 citizens is a Muslim, pirated editions sold briskly, and life went on as before. But the Rushdie affair would not end. Conservative Pakistanis, testing the new government of Benazir Bhutto, demanded that Pakistan force the United States to halt publication of Rushdie’s novel. Anti-American riots exploded in the streets of Karachi and Islamabad, and Pakistani mullahs turned to the Iranian Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini for leadership. Khomeini denounced Rushdie, saying that the author deserved to die for “insulting Islam.” Other Iranian religious leaders offered a bounty to anyone who killed Rusdhie, and Khomeini announced that hundreds of Muslim assassins from around the world had gone to London to exact vengeance.

Taken on its own terms, the Ayatollah’s argument had a recognizable and consistent logic. A subversive reading of the life of Muhammad underlies The Satanic Verses, whose very title recalls a set of suras, or scriptural verses, that Muhammad deleted from the Quran after deciding that he had composed them under Satan’s influence. Rushdie’s main characters, Gibreel Farishta and Saladin Chamcha, are themselves unwilling prophets of a sort, adrift and dishonored, persecuted by natives.

One, a policeman, stops beating Chamcha only long enough to yell, “I’m from Weybridge…where the fucking Beatles used to live,” as if that gave his violence its moral authority. Like Muhammad’s, Chamcha’s and Farishta’s days are full of apocalyptic visions, of battles in the hostile land of Margaret Thatcher. Gibreel and Saladin are mythical beings in a foreign land, as all immigrants, Rushdie seems to argue, are monsters, belonging to no country.

It took years of life in hiding, which Rushdie has recounted in his memoir, Joseph Anton, before the fatwa was lifted. The book sold and sold, and it remains in print today, even as Rushdie remains alive. Yet, at the time, Western governments bowed and quaked, Western intellectuals joined in the call to punish the author, and America’s major bookseller chains willingly pulled the book from their shelves. They fulfilled not a publicist’s fantasy but the dreams of tyrants.

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

Editor in Chief C laiborne S mith csmith@kirkus.com Fiction Editor E L A I N E S Z E WC Z Y K eszewczyk@kirkus.com Managing/Nonfiction Editor E R I C L I E B E T R AU eliebetrau@kirkus.com Children’s & Teen Editor VICKY SMITH vsmith@kirkus.com Mysteries Editor THOMAS LEITCH Contributing Editor G R E G O RY M c N A M E E Senior Indie Editor KAREN SCHECHNER kschechner@kirkus.com Indie Editor RYA N L E A H E Y rleahey@kirkus.com Indie Editor D avid R a p p drapp@kirkus.com Assistant Indie Editor M AT T D O M I N O mdomino@kirkus.com Editorial Assistant CHELSEA LANGFORD clangford@kirkus.com Copy Editor BETSY JUDKINS Director of Kirkus Editorial P E R RY C RO W E pcrowe@kirkus.com Director of Technology E R I K S M A RT T esmartt@kirkus.com Marketing Communications Director SARAH KALINA skalina@kirkus.com Marketing Associate A rden Piacenza apiacenza@kirkus.com Advertising/Client Promotions A nna C oo p er acooper@kirkus.com

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This Issue’s Contributors

Maude Adjarian • Mark Athitakis • Joseph Barbato • Amy Boaz • Lee E. Cart • Perry Crowe • Kathleen Devereaux • Bobbi Dumas • Daniel Dyer • Lisa Elliott • Peter Franck • Bob Garber • Michael Griffith Jeff Hoffman • Robert M. Knight • Paul Lamey • Louise Leetch • Judith Leitch Angela Leroux-Lindsey • Peter Lewis Elsbeth Lindner • Don McLeese • Gregory McNamee • Chris Messick • Carole Moore • Clayton Moore • Liza Nelson Mike Newirth • John Noffsinger • Sarah Norris • Mike Oppenheim • Jim Piechota Christofer D. Pierson • William E. Pike Gary Presley • Erika Rohrbach • Lloyd Sachs • Leslie Safford • Bob Sanchez • William P. Shumaker • Linda Simon • Elaine Sioufi • Margot E. Spangenberg • Andria Spencer • Bill Thompson • Matthew Tiffany • Claire Trazenfeld • Steve Weinberg • Carol White • Chris White Joan Wilentz

Cover photo by Chris Hetzer

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contents fiction

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

Index to Starred Reviews............................................................5 REVIEWS.................................................................................................5 The secrets & tragedy behind Wally Lamb’s new novel.........................................................................................14 Mystery..............................................................................................25 Science Fiction & Fantasy..........................................................32 Romance............................................................................................34

nonfiction Index to Starred Reviews.......................................................... 35 REVIEWS............................................................................................... 35 Richard Holmes falls upwards..............................................50

children’s & teen Index to Starred Reviews..........................................................71 REVIEWS...............................................................................................71 Sex and the middle-aged librarian..................................... 88 Pop-Up Roundup............................................................................. 97 interactive e-books.................................................................. 104

indie

Robert Sabuda applies his astonishing paper-engineering skills to the classic Andersen tale to spectacular effect. Read the review on p. 103.

Index to Starred Reviews........................................................ 109 REVIEWS............................................................................................. 109 Interview with an indie Operator....................................... 116

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

As the year comes to a close, Kirkus always revisits the best titles of the year. Some writers whose books were selected for our Best Books of 2013 lists will be featured on Kirkus’ website this month. Among the teenbook authors, look for our interview with Alaya Dawn Johnson as she tells us about creating her luminous, nuanced and original cyberpunk adventure, The Summer Prince. Bennett Madison, author of September Girls, will elaborate on his not-mermaid story for boys. Madison’s novel is a meditation on manhood that takes a turn into magical realism. Kirkus will also speak to Sara Zarr about her standout coming-of-age story, The Lucy Variations. In Zarr’s book, 16-year-old Lucy struggles to figure out the place of music in her life apart from her family’s expectations.

Johnny Temple, general editor of Akashic’s series of noir collections (Brooklyn Noir, 2004, etc.), skims the cream from the first 59 volumes to create USA Noir: Best of the Akashic Noir Series. Like a series of postcards, the stories leave you with good memories of past encounters rather than creating bold new experiences.

Perhaps the single most impressive feature of the collection is its range of voices, from Joyce Carol Oates’ faux innocent young family to Megan Abbott’s impressionable high school kids to the chorus of peremptory voices S.J. Rozan plants in a haunted thief’s head. Eat your heart out, Walt Whitman: These are the folks who hear America singing and moaning and screaming.

Kirkus writer Clayton Moore will talk to Johnny Temple this December.

Revisiting the Best Nonfiction Books of 2013 this month on the website, Kirkus writer Joshunda Sanders will interview Stanley Crouch about the rich musical history in his new biography Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker.

Crouch is a veteran cultural critic and jazz historian who wrote the simultaneous stories of the rise of jazz and the emergence of one of its brightest comets, Charlie Parker. Be on the lookout for Kirkus’ interview with Gretel Ehrlich about her eloquent and lyrical accounts from the devastation of the 2011 tsunami in Japan within Facing the Wave: A Journey in the Wake of the Tsunami. Also, we will talk with Boris Kachka about his smart, savvy portrait of what is arguably the country’s most important publisher in Hothouse: The Art of Survival and the Survival of Art at America’s Most Celebrated Publishing House, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. Kachka presents a thorough study of the gold standard in American literary publishing, complete with sex, sour editors and the occasional stumble into financial success.

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

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fiction RIPPER

These titles earned the Kirkus Star:

Allende, Isabel Harper/HarperCollins (464 pp.) $28.99 | Jan. 28, 2014 978-0-06-229140-0

LYDIA’S PARTY by Margaret Hawkins............................................... 11 THE SECRET OF MAGIC by Deborah Johnson.................................... 13

A seasoned hand at the intimate Latin American literary novel and young-adult fantasy takes an ungainly stab at a pageturner about a serial killer.

This loose, overstuffed crime story from Allende (Maya’s Notebook, 2013, etc.) is set in San Francisco, where teenage heroine Amanda is navigating two problems. First is the split between her mom, Indiana, a gorgeous New-Age healer, and her dad, the SFPD’s deputy homicide chief. The second problem is the spate of grotesque murders in the city, over which Amanda obsesses online with a group of fellow geeks with a mordant streak. (Allende refers to such Internet activity as a game called Ripper, but the “game” seems hardly distinct from a chat room.) While Amanda attempts to connect the murders to one killer, Indiana ponders whether to give her affections to a wealthy but shiftless socialite or a former Navy SEAL with PTSD. There are repeated references in the book to Scandinavian crime fiction, and Allende has clearly taken inspiration from the general outlines of the genre: the gory, imaginatively murdered corpses, the whip-smart young female hero, the cynicism about law enforcement institutions. But Allende struggles with pacing and tone. The novel is overlong and thick with clichés both in the prose and the characters; the most carefully drawn character, Indiana, is prone to a flightiness that seems largely designed to serve plot points. Allende crafts some thoughtful brief sketches of San Francisco subcultures, from high-end mansions to rough-and-tumble drag queens, and she cleverly unifies the murders in the closing chapters. But by then, the characters and plot turns feel so familiar that a late-breaking tragedy has little emotional effect.

Credit Allende for attempting to expand her range, but crime fiction is plainly not her forte. (Author tour to Boston, Columbus, Denver, Miami, New York, Portland, Ore., and San Francisco)

IN THE NIGHT OF TIME by Antonio Muñoz Molina ; trans. by Edith Grossman.....................................................................18 THE HANGING JUDGE by Michael Ponsor........................................21 ANNIHILATION by Jeff VanderMeer...................................................23 NO GOOD DUKE GOES UNPUNISHED by Sarah MacLean.............34

THE SECRET OF MAGIC

Johnson, Deborah Amy Einhorn/Putnam (400 pp.) $26.95 | Jan. 21, 2014 978-0-399-15772-1 |

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“Well-chosen and broadly representative: an ideal introduction to Busch for those new to him and a welcome anthology for those who already know his work.” from the selected stories of frederick busch

THE UNAMERICANS

quotidian workaday world, it is not with the dourness of Raymond Carver or the bibulousness of Charles Bukowski. Busch announces his stories with attention-getting first lines that demand explanation: “I woke up at 5:25 because the dog was vomiting.” “What we know about pain is how little we do to deserve it, how simple it is to give, how hard to lose.” “The morning after I drove to his newest town, I met my father for breakfast.” His characters are plumbers (“I dig for what’s wrong”), ward nurses (“[t]he worst became the orderly who brought in a plate of mashed potatoes and open hot roast-beef sandwich in glutinous gravy”), outdoorsmen (“[i]t’s an old Boy Scout trick”), often living in forgotten small towns that have yet to get Internet service. A typical Busch story finds the central character not quite sure of his (rarely, her) place in the world and with some change in the works, sometimes wanted and sometimes not: “I was nine years old and starting to age.” It’s not a cheery world that Busch inhabits (“the people downstairs were getting along as best they could in their sad, short lives”), but it’s full of meaning, and no living writer quite gets at that meaning with the same literate determination.

Well-chosen and broadly representative: an ideal introduction to Busch for those new to him and a welcome anthology for those who already know his work.

Antopol, Molly Norton (256 pp.) $24.95 | Feb. 3, 2014 978-0-393-24113-6

The impressive debut collection by Antopol (National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Awardee; Wallace Stegner Fellow) features a variety of settings—Israel, Belarus, California, Poland, Maine—and characters, but it also has an unusual cohesiveness for a first collection.

Most of the characters here are Jews of Eastern European extraction; most are grappling, in one way or another, with issues of estrangement: from home, from family members, from the big ideological/idealistic causes they once espoused, from themselves. In “The Unknown Soldier,” set in California at the time of Joe McCarthy’s anti-communist witch hunts, a young Russian-American actor emerges from a year in prison for contempt of Congress—a rap he takes despite being a communist of convenience, so as to aid his movie career, rather than of conviction—and tries to reconnect with his 10-year-old son. “The Quietest Man” centers on a Czech dissenter and émigré-turned– American professor who, a quarter-century after his departure from Prague and nearly as long after a divorce brought on by his selfishness, is terrified that his semi-estranged daughter, a playwright, has written a scarcely veiled indictment of his failures and inattentions. The harrowing and poignant “My Grandmother Tells Me This Story” depicts a ragtag band of World War II teen guerrillas who call themselves the Yiddish Underground.

Antopol offers complex, psychologically subtle portraits of her often regretful characters, and the details—child revolutionaries carrying sharpened branches through Eastern European forests during WWII since, at a distance, they can pass for rifles or Czech dissidents who must compose their plaints against the government longhand since “the government had a record of everyone who owned typewriters”—are chilling and persuasive.

A smart, empathetic, well-crafted first collection—Antopol is a writer to watch.

THIS DARK ROAD TO MERCY

Cash, Wiley Morrow/HarperCollins (240 pp.) $25.99 | Jan. 28, 2014 978-0-06-208825-3

Cash (A Land More Kind Than Home, 2012) follows his evocative debut with another striking take on Southern literature.

Wade Chesterfield’s a failed baseball player. He claims to have been Sammy Sosa’s teammate on the Gastonia Rangers, a North Carolina minor league team. Now, Wade hangs drywall. Brady Weller used to be a Gastonia police detective, until he killed a teenage boy in a traffic accident. Now, Brady sells home security systems, offering silent penance by serving as a court guardian ad litem. That’s how Brady meets Easter and Ruby Quillby, wards of the state. They’re Wade’s children, their mother dead of an overdose. Wade, parental rights signed long ago, now wants to be a true father. Wade’s enabled by found money: a backpack of cash linked to an armored car robbery. In the rhythms and cadence of the South, Cash offers a tale about family and about the tenuous link among the right choices, living with consequences or seeking redemption. The story unfolds in three voices: 12-year-old Easter, echoing from naïve to wise, hopeful to fearful, believing and doubting; Brady, weary, bitter, intent on finding justice where he can; and finally, Robert Pruitt, former baseball player, now an ex-con driven by ’roid-rage and mindless hatred for Wade, who long ago hit him with a beanball and maimed him. Wade persuades his daughters to flee their foster home. In dread of being sent to Alaska to grandparents she’s never met, Easter agrees, since “leaving

THE SELECTED STORIES OF FREDERICK BUSCH

Busch, Frederick Norton (480 pp.) $35.00 | Dec. 2, 2013 978-0-393-23954-6

Sterling collection of short fiction by a late master (1941-2006) of the short story form.

Busch (Rescue Missions, 2006, etc.) has been gone for several years, but he continues to exercise an outsize influence on writers-in-training, enshrined as he is in the creative-writing syllabus. That is for good reason, for if Busch’s short fiction concentrates on the 6

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I AM ABRAHAM

with him seemed like the best answer.” Despite admonitions from his former partner and threats from the FBI, Brady’s intent on finding the girls. Then he learns Pruitt’s being paid

by Tommy Broughton, a small-time hood who engineered the armored car heist, to find Wade and the stolen money, and Brady’s pursuit grows more urgent, realizing Pruitt will kill the girls to get to Wade.

A story of family, blood loyalty and making choices that can seem right but end up wrong.

Charyn, Jerome Liveright/Norton (464 pp.) $26.95 | Feb. 3, 2014 978-0-87140-427-5 Charyn (Johnny One-Eye, 2008, etc.) has Abraham Lincoln narrating his own story, beginning a few moments before the assassination and then telling the highlights of his life through a series of flashbacks.

Lincoln is presented here literally warts and all, from his rough-and-tumble upbringing to his early career as a lawyer and Illinois state legislator to the burden of being president. His first serious relationship is with Ann Rutledge, with whom Lincoln is very much in love (though Charyn endows him with a 21st-century sexual consciousness that at times seems rather jarring). After Ann’s death, Lincoln develops a case of the “blue unholies,” a melancholy that haunts him for much of the rest of his life. He next takes up with the vivacious

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PRAYERS FOR THE STOLEN

and demanding Mary Todd, who comes across as more of a burden than a helpmeet, especially when they get to the White House, where she is unadmiringly styled the “Lady President.”

Mary is preoccupied with redecorating, flirting and, later, with deeply grieving the loss of her son, Willie. The portrait of Lincoln readers get is characterized by emotional and psychological complexity, for he’s a reluctant candidate, a caustic commander in chief and, at times (understandably), a diffident husband. He, too, is deeply saddened by the death of his son as well as by the deep social divisions he seems unable to bridge.

Charyn skillfully weaves bits of speeches and a large cast of characters, most of them drawn from Lincoln’s life, into his intricate portrait of the 16th president. (Author tour to New York, Boston, Washington, D.C., Springfield, Ill., and Richmond. 10 illustrations)

Clement, Jennifer Hogarth/Crown (224 pp.) $23.00 | Feb. 11, 2014 978-0-8041-3878-9

A young girl struggles to survive under the desolate but terrifying umbrella of the Mexican drug wars.

It wouldn’t be incorrect to call this a novel of collateral damage. We hear all the time about the executions and decapitations of the bloody wars in Mexico, not to mention the endless contest over immigration reform as desperate men cross the United States border daily, running either to or from something. But what happens to those poor souls left behind?

That’s the premise behind this spare, almost noir novel by Mexico-based American poet Clement (The Poison That Fascinates, 2008, etc.) that tells the story of 13-year-old Ladydi Garcia Martinez, who lives in a small village in southwestern Mexico. Her home is very much a woman’s world, made so because all the men have either fled to the United States to start new families, been kidnapped to work for the cartels or been murdered. It’s a world where mothers bruise, maim or disguise their daughters to prevent them from being kidnapped and sold as human chattel. Ladydi’s drunken mother contemplates knocking out her teeth, while Ladydi and her friends scramble to conceal themselves in holes in the ground as convoys rumble in. Ladydi’s friend Paula, kidnapped, returns with tales of girls burning themselves with cigarettes to mark their corpses. “If we’re found dead someplace everyone will know we were stolen. It is our mark. My cigarette burns are a message,” says Paula. “You do want people to know it’s you. Otherwise how will our mothers find us?” Eventually, Ladydi escapes to become a nanny for a rich couple in Acapulco, but a baseless misunderstanding lands her in a women’s prison, where Ladydi must rely on her fellow inmates to retain her last vestiges of hope. Some thematic elements recall Clement’s 2002 novel A True Story Based on Lies, but overall, this is a much richer and more durable tale.

A stark portrait of women abused or abandoned by every side in an awful conflict.

NORTH OF BOSTON

Elo, Elisabeth Pamela Dorman/Viking (432 pp.) $27.95 | Jan. 27, 2014 978-0-670-01565-8 Perfume heiress turns unwilling sleuth in Elo’s suspense series launch.

Pirio Kasparov is learning scent sense from her irascible father, who still runs the Boston-based perfume empire founded

by Pirio’s late mother after the family emigrated from Russia. Although she expects to inherit the business one day, a hefty allowance and flexible work schedule allow her 8

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“Feldman is clever in his use of the Jonah story, and his novel is of the same strange and enigmatic quality as the original.” from the book of jonah

plenty of time for extracurricular activities, including going on a lobstering trip with her friend Ned Rizzo aboard his new boat, the Molly Jones. Their outing proves disastrous when, although they are nowhere near a shipping lane, the giant hull of a freighter cleaves the smaller craft in two, killing Ned and leaving Pirio drifting on a board in the freezing Atlantic. She is rescued, and the fact that she survived in cold water much longer than average, without succumbing to hypothermia, has elicited the interest of the U.S. Navy, which wants to study her. But she has little time to be a guinea pig for her country: She has her hands full with Ned’s son, Noah, and Noah’s unreliable, alcoholic mother, Thomasina, Ned’s ex-girlfriend. Clues unearthed during one of Thomasina’s drunken escapades fan Pirio’s vague suspicion into a full-blown conviction that Ned’s death was no accident. Apparently, Ned purchased the Molly Jones for $1 from his former employer, a mega-fishing concern called Ocean Catch. A chance encounter with an Ocean Catch insider leads to another startling revelation: Before suddenly leaving (or being fired?), Ned had crewed on the giant fishing trawler Sea Wolf. That boat’s crew was receiving periodic, off-the-books cash bonuses despite hauling in a minimal amount of legal catch. Was the Sea Wolf hauling contraband? Had Ocean Catch, or someone else, tried to buy Ned’s silence with the gift of a lobster boat? Who stood to gain by his death? Elo’s lively style and the vivid characters lend credence and heft to an original, if ungainly, conspiracy-thriller plot.

The groundwork is well-laid for future Pirio Kasparov adventures.

where he lives a calm but somewhat drug-addled life, and eventually his path crosses with that of Judith’s (now Judy), who’s also adrift.

Feldman is clever in his use of the Jonah story, and his novel is of the same strange and enigmatic quality as the original.

THE LAST ENCHANTMENTS

Finch, Charles St. Martin’s (336 pp.) $24.99 | $11.99 e-book | Jan. 28, 2014 978-1-250-01871-7 978-1-250-01870-0 e-book Finch (An Old Betrayal, 2013, etc.) creates a lyrical ode to youth, idealism and love in a contemporary novel about a young man’s year of graduate studies at Oxford University.

Preston Nesbitt, a - y r- o l d savant, confined to a mental ward, e x p o s e s s o c i e t y ’s foibles in his journal - a humorous satire on st-century America.

THE BOOK OF JONAH

Feldman, Joshua Max Henry Holt (352 pp.) $28.00 | Feb. 4, 2014 978-0-8050-9776-4

A modern retelling of the story from the Hebrew Bible, with a corporate lawyer standing in for Jonah and Amsterdam for the belly of the whale.

In the beginning, Jonah Daniel Jacobstein seems to be on top of the world.

He’s got two girlfriends, is making lots of money and is about to be made a partner at his law firm. But coming in on the subway one day, he has an encounter with a Hasidic Jew who questions him about the biblical Jonah, and this conversation profoundly unsettles Jacobstein, a nonobservant Jew. Still, life is good—or seems to be—but then things quickly begin to unravel. He decides to break off one romance (with Zoey) and commit to another (with Sylvia), but then both of these relationships end up falling apart.

His law firm assigns him a prestigious and lucrative client, but he sends a compromising email and gets fired. His life, in other words, is scarcely what it seems and in fact is subject to almost Job-ian reversals. Parallel to Jonah’s story is that of Judith, a precocious child and then a promising academic art historian who’s lost both her parents in the 9/11 attacks. After his life falls apart, Jonah drifts to Amsterdam,

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There are moments and people that significantly impact a person’s life and spur major transitions, and Yale graduate William Baker experiences both when he arrives on the Fleet campus of Oxford. As he describes his year, he reflects upon the emotional, physical and intellectual journey that ushers him into the world of adulthood. While countless college students around the world routinely engage in activities similar to Will’s, what makes this fairly routine coming-of-age story so appealing is twofold: Finch’s accomplished narrative skills and his ability to connect each character with the reader. Will, a former campaign worker for John Kerry’s unsuccessful 2004 presidential bid, leaves his girlfriend, Alison, stateside and settles into student life in England, which he and Alison remind themselves is only for a year. But it’s a year that challenges their relationship, as Will contemplates social barriers, financial comfort and his feelings for Sophie, a fellow Oxford student who’s involved with another man. Will also develops friendships with a diverse group: snobbish Tom, who looks down on Will for being American but becomes his closest friend; Anil, a student from Mumbai who comically embraces hip-hop but can’t mask his concise BBC accent; Timmo, whose one aspiration is to be a participant in a television reality series; chronically broke, good friend Ella, who falls for Tom; and Anneliese, a German student and talented photographer. Will’s experiences aren’t all that unique: The friends drink and party together, fall in and out of love, and support each other during difficult times and devastating losses.

But Finch brings each character to life with striking effectiveness as they struggle with issues of class, the political climate, academics and their futures.

A portrait of university life that’s contemplative and nostalgic.

it surfaces later in a poem she writes; it will win a nationwide competition. In the novel’s middle, and strongest, section, Jess has a sleepover with a posh family in their huge house. In class-conscious England, the Vyes inhabit a gray area between posh and common. Jess, not previously interested in the opposite sex, swoons over a marvelously mature boy (Christian is 14, looks much older) who talks of revolution and insists on meeting her father, who, it turns out, is a famous lefty. Then, another narrow escape for Jess: Christian takes her to visit some slums, and a stray German bomb kills two kids down the street. The delayed shock causes Jess to write her poem, a move that shows Gardam’s insight into both child and budding writer. A final section is less successful as Gardam searches for a truthful ending.

The qualities for which Gardam is cherished (the quirkiness, the bright-eyed wonder at reality) are already apparent in this early work.

KEEP CALM AND CARRY A BIG DRINK

Gruenenfelder, Kim St. Martin’s Griffin (320 pp.) $14.99 paper | Dec. 24, 2013 978-1-250-00504-5 Series: There’s Cake in My Future, 2 Gruenenfelder (There’s Cake in My Future, 2010, etc.) brings back wisecracking college friends Nic, Mel and Seema as the three prepare for another wedding and one friend follows her dreams.

Mother-to-be Nic and single teacher Mel are on hand when it’s their friend Seema’s turn to get married, and they’re determined everything will go according to plan. That’s a pretty tall order, especially since Nic’s bridal shower game, the cake pull, resulted in a major mix-up, and she’s planned the same game for Seema’s shower. This time, Nic assures Mel and Seema, the cake’s set up perfectly, and the three friends will pull out the charm that’s meant for each of them. It’s foolproof, at least in theory. Each girl ends up with a different charm, and rather than the passport (signifying travel) she’s been promised, Mel ends up with a money tree (signifying reward). That’s not the only problematic aspect of the wedding week, however. As members of both families flock into town to attend two very different ceremonies—an Indian-style extravaganza involving the groom riding astride a white stallion and a conservative Western-style walk down the aisle—Nic’s jolted with pains, and Seema and Scott find themselves with pre-wedding jitters and facing a possible catastrophe before the nuptials. Mel can handle the snags in her friends’ lives, but she’s not as adept at handling her own problems. She needs to find a new place to live, faces the possibility of losing her job, and is in a relationship drought. One of the problems is solved when Seema’s suave, hunky older brother flies in from France for the wedding, and his visit awakens Mel to other possibilities that take her from the streets of Paris to the canals of Venice and the beaches of Hawaii. Although her

A LONG WAY FROM VERONA

Gardam, Jane Europa Editions (208 pp.) $16.00 paper | Nov. 5, 2013 978-1-60945-141-7

This venerable British author is best known in the U.S. for her Old Filth trilogy, completed this year. Now, here’s an opportunity to read her first novel, from 1971, about a girl on the cusp of puberty in wartime England.

Jessica Vye has a secret. When she was 9, a famous writer spoke at her school about becoming a writer. He was such an inspiration, she pursued him to the train station and thrust all her writings at him; months later, she heard back: She was a bona fide writer. Jess tells us this breathlessly. By now, she is all of 12, still impetuous. Her father has changed careers, from schoolmaster to clergyman; the family has moved to the blustery North East, and England is at war with Germany. Gas masks are mandatory; so is food rationing. Idiotic school rules get her in trouble, but Jess goes on her merry way until she encounters a madman (and potential molester) in the municipal gardens. She suppresses the memory until 10

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journey doesn’t always go smoothly or as planned, the charm proves prophetic as Mel seizes control of her own destiny and finds fulfillment.

Although the humor can be forced and crude, Gruenenfelder’s characters are charismatic, entertaining and distinctive.

same group of women has been coming for years (except Norris, who makes barely plausible excuses), and Lydia worries over the usual: the food, the wine, the weather. But this will be her last party; she’s just been diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer and has but a few weeks to live. She struggles over a letter she plans to give each friend after dinner; a letter she writes and edits and is dissatisfied with because how can you explain all the disappointments of a lifetime in an uplifting farewell?

She teaches art at a community college in the suburbs of Chicago, but really she wanted Norris’ life. Years ago, Lydia and Norris were colleagues, but thanks to Lydia’s mentorship (and, admittedly, Norris’ own icy determination), Norris has become a world-renowned painter while Lydia gave up long ago. And Lydia had men, too many of the wrong kind. And she had fears of making the wrong choices and so made too few important ones. And now she knows it is too late for anything; there is no more time to be the person she imagined. As she prepares for the party, her guests get ready as well: Elaine is bitter and alone and spreads acrimony like ruined pixie dust; still beautiful, Maura loses herself in reveries of Roy, the married man she

LYDIA’S PARTY

Hawkins, Margaret Viking (304 pp.) $26.95 | Jan. 27, 2014 978-0-670-01576-4 Hawkins’ third novel is a beautiful evocation of a death at midlife—at once elegant, melancholy and wise.

With shades of Mrs. Dalloway, much of the novel takes place in a day, as Lydia prepares for her annual winter party. The

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STILLWATER

devoted her life to for a once-a-week “date”; Celia is married with a teenage son but is perpetually surprised that family life is so tedious. And then there is Norris, whom everybody hates but Lydia, and even Lydia hates her a little bit, too. Hawkins smartly continues the novel after the party, after Lydia’s death, after Norris begins a grand portrait series of the women, and the plot takes a number of unexpected, hugely enjoyable turns.

It is this kind of book: the kind one buys extra copies of to pass out to friends.

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Helget, Nicole Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (336 pp.) $24.00 | Feb. 4, 2014 978-0-547-89820-9 Helget’s tale of frontier life in the territory of Minnesota gives stark meaning to the term “woebegone.”

The novel interweaves the stories of several denizens of Stillwater, Minn., as the town is transformed from wilderness outpost to lumber empire. We know from the beginning how wily Beaver Jean, a fur trapper and trader, meets his end—from an ax wielded by his own daughter. The events leading up to this date with destiny are recounted in an extended flashback which comprises the novel. Lydian, Beaver Jean’s runaway wife, arrives at the orphanage run by Mother St. John, a Catholic nun, and the peripatetic priest Father Paul. There, Lydian gives birth to twins, a boy, Clement, and girl, Angel. After their mother escapes to

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“Fresh, confident, yet understated, Hope’s first work movingly revisits immense tragedy while also confirming her own highly promising ability.” from wake

THE SECRET OF MAGIC

Mexico, Angel is adopted by a wealthy couple, the Hatterbys, who live nearby, while Clement becomes the surrogate son of Mother St. John’s assistant, Big Waters, a Native American exiled by her tribe. Soon after the twins are born, a fugitive slave, Eliza, arrives at the orphanage with her young son, Davis. Ailing from consumption, Eliza has run away from her masters while they were traveling in the North, and Beaver Jean, who’s seeking other sidelines now that beaver hats are no longer fashionable menswear, is on her trail, hoping to collect a bounty. However, he’s slowed considerably by a decrepit nag and his remaining two wives. Father Paul spirits Eliza and Davis to a house of ill repute (also a stop on the Underground Railroad), where Eliza dies. Davis is adopted by a prostitute, Daisy, who was ruined after being jilted by her Southern beau. Her most frequent client is Mr. Hatterby, whose wife is slowly poisoning Angel to keep her—and her husband—close to home. But when Clement and Angel reconnect, their fierce bond will explode everyone’s best laid schemes.

Although the dialects occasionally distract, and too many colorful characters clamor for attention, this novel effectively dramatizes the seismic sociological shifts that shaped the American Midwest.

Johnson, Deborah Amy Einhorn/Putnam (400 pp.) $26.95 | Jan. 21, 2014 978-0-399-15772-1 Mississippi-based author Johnson’s second novel (The Air Between Us, 2008).

The book is about a young black lawyer facing the complexities of race relations in the 1946 South. It offers a somewhat romantic but emotionally affecting take on the period after World War II, when returning AfricanAmerican soldiers were no longer willing to be treated as inferior citizens and the NAACP was laying groundwork for the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Regina Robichard is a Columbia Law School grad working for the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund in New York City when her mentor, Thurgood Marshall—whose saintly portrayal would be wearying if he were more actively involved in the story—receives a request to

WAKE

Hope, Anna Random House (304 pp.) $26.00 | Feb. 11, 2014 978-0-8129-9513-8 The echoes of warfare reverberate through an evocative debut which considers the lasting impact of military carnage on those left to carry on.

Grief and anger, shame, silence and the inextinguishable life force are some of the elements captured in Hope’s delicate portrait of three women’s lives in London in 1920, as the shock waves of World War I subside. While the French countryside starts to reclaim the battlefields, so the wives and mothers, sisters and daughters of the maimed and fallen must continue with their lives.

One young woman, Hettie Burns, makes a living as a dance instructor, earning enough to support her unhappy mother and shellshocked brother. Ada Hart is still haunted by the death of her son, Michael, in 1917, whom she glimpses everywhere.

And upper-class Evelyn Montfort, bitter after the death of her fiance, tries to find purpose in the drudgery of work. The book’s time frame is the five-day period spanning the disinterment, the journey back to England and ceremonial procession to the Westminster Cathedral grave of the Unknown Warrior, during which period the women’s lives begin to shift. Using telling detail, Hope creates a vibrant physical and emotional landscape in which her leading characters, and a sea of others, move irresistibly into the future, some having found resolution, others still in search.

Fresh, confident, yet understated, Hope’s first work movingly revisits immense tragedy while also confirming her own highly promising ability. |

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INTERVIEWS & PROFILES

Wally Lamb

The best-seller chose, once again, to “become” a monster to craft his latest novel, We Are Water

By Suzy Spencer jects, “You know, in an earlier book, I wrote about the Columbine tragedy. And you know, in that one, it’s about a terrible misuse of power.”

That’s The Hour I First Believed—a novel he struggled with and through for nine years, and it’s a book that received mixed reviews, which may be why it seemingly haunts him. Or maybe it’s because—since he always writes in first person—it forced him to “become” Columbine shooters Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris.

“I didn’t particularly want to write from the point of view of the Columbine perpetrators, but I had to,” Lamb says. “I could not figure out those two—what their motivation was, why they would presume to play God with other people’s lives…and where that sociopsychopathy came from. So I was both afraid of Klebold and Harris and also went looking for them to see if I could figure them out. I didn’t want to do it, but I also felt driven to do it.”

While reviews for The Hour I First Believed may have been mixed, reviewers are gushing over We Are Water, a book that came to him quickly and without drama and that he practically zipped through in four years. Still, it’s a book that required him to “become” pedophile Kent Kelly.

“You think I want to be this way? That it’s a choice?” he writes as Kent.

“I didn’t used to work crap jobs. I made decent money selling life insurance.”

“Those sales skills? They were transferable. Single moms with little girls….”

“I think that when something scares me,” Lamb says, “it’s a red flag for me to investigate it whether I want to or not, to both explore my fear and also sort of get inside the character’s head.

“See, I’m a fairly hopeful person,” he adds, “but I think I write because my sense of hope and my sense

Photo Courtesy Elena Seibert

New York Times best-selling author Wally Lamb can’t seem to talk about his new novel, We Are Water, without talking about his third novel, The Hour I First Believed.

We Are Water is the richly detailed story of the Oh family of Three Rivers, Conn., a family of five coping with tragedy and secrets, including murder and molestation. The Hour I First Believed is an even more detailed narrative about Caelum and Maureen Quirk, also of Three Rivers, as they grapple with tragedy and secrets, including mass murder and molestation.

At first, Lamb simply says that We Are Water is about power versus powerlessness. Then he inter14

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of fear are sort of balanced. And these characters sometimes scare me, and sometimes my protagonists’ actions kind of scare me, too, but it’s like taking a dare. It’s kind of like—I don’t mean to get too literary with you….”

And Lamb delves into an explanation that he’s been telling interviewers for years—the Greek myth of the Minotaur inside the maze. “The maze being the story that you are trying to tell, and you go this way and that way, and there’s the monster in the middle, and it’s you versus the monster. And you know Kent is a kind of monster to me. I had to wrestle him down by figuring him out.”

But Kent’s a monster that Lamb wrote with great sympathy, a sympathy that the two-time Oprah’s Book Club author attributes to his 14 years of working with incarcerated women, teaching them how to write. “Once they get to trust me and their own voices and also the other people in the group, they begin to unleash some of their secrets,” he says. “And lots of times in incarcerated women, there is incest in their childhoods. And so I’ve been on the receiving end of a lot of writing about that but from the point of view of the victim.”

That still doesn’t explain how he got into the mind of a pedophile, a task that so disturbed him that every day after writing as Kent Kelly, Lamb had to take a shower in an attempt to wash off the predator.

“Well, I just used my imagination. I didn’t do a whole lot of research into pedophilia, but I tried to figure out what his past had been,” Lamb explains.

“And, um, what I came to believe about Kent is that in his own perverted way, he was looking for some kind of closeness—that he might have suffered from something like attachment disorder, based on the rejection by parents and so forth.”

Lamb describes a pivotal scene in We Are Water, as a killer flood roars through Three Rivers and a teenage Kent rescues his young cousin Annie. “They’re cold and they’re wet, and they’re up in the tree, and he wraps Annie inside of his jacket and feels the closeness in that way, and it’s completely protective at that point. And in some ways, I think he keeps trying to sort of, you know, get that back, but in ways that go terribly wrong and are terribly traumatizing for Annie.

“I don’t pretend to be a psychologist or anything,” Lamb adds, “but I am fascinated with the way the mind works and quite often the diseased mind.” He

notes that his hometown of Norwich, Conn., “housed the largest hospital for the mentally ill in the state of Connecticut, so ever since I was a kid, I was always fascinated with emotional disorders. And I remain fascinated and sometimes puzzled by them.”

Lamb’s readers will be fascinated too. But thanks to his writing, they will be less puzzled. In fact, if there’s only one message readers take from We Are Water, Lamb wants it to be, “In body and mind, keeping painful secrets can become toxic for you, and you run the danger of either exploding or imploding.”

That, he says, he learned from his incarcerated women. Secrets and tragedy. Those with power versus the powerless. Themes that he can’t stop writing about.

Suzy Spencer is the author of the New York Times bestselling true-crime book Wasted and the memoir Secret Sex Lives: A Year on the Fringes of American Sexuality.

We Are Water Lamb, Wally Harper/HarperCollins (576 pp.) $29.99 | Oct. 22, 2013 978-0-06-194102-3 |

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Passionate but never didactic, Johnson wisely allows the novel’s politics to play second fiddle to the intimate, nuanced drama of the young black Yankee and middleaged white Southerner in this provocative story about race in America that becomes a deeply felt metaphor for all human relationships.

investigate the death of decorated serviceman Joe Howard Wilson, killed on his way home to Revere, Miss. The request has come from Mary P. Calhoun, a white woman in Revere who employs Wilson’s father, Willie Willie. Regina, whose own father was lynched in Omaha, Neb., before she was born, gets Marshall to send her to Revere. The case interests her in part because she recognizes that M.P. Calhoun authored her favorite childhood novel, about three children, two white and one black, sharing adventures in a magical forest under the tutelage of a wise black man. The novel, which includes an unsolved murder, was banned in Mississippi, but Mary, who may remind readers of Harper Lee, lives on in Revere as a member of the landed old-money gentry. Staying in a cottage Mary built for Willie Willie in her backyard, Regina soon realizes that the white citizens, including Mary herself, seem to be protecting the obvious murderer. But motives and black-white interdependency prove more complex than Regina expected. Most confusing for Regina is her own reaction to Mary Calhoun, her idol and nemesis—and possibly her friend.

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REDDEVIL 4

Leuthardt, Eric C. Forge (368 pp.) $25.99 | Feb. 4, 2014 978-0-7653-3256-1 Neurosurgeon and biomedical engineer Leuthardt leans on his medical background in this futuristic debut thriller.

Dr. Hagan Maerici has problems, not the least of which is that his wife can’t seem to understand that, unless he

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works harder and more efficiently, he’ll soon be cut out of the research he loves: marrying human consciousness and artificial intelligence in a revolutionary way. It’s 2053, and most individuals (except for the very old, technophobes and some religious extremists) are connected by virtue of implants in the brain that make the transmission of information instantaneous and personalized. People can make phone calls, access information and even track one another using these neurological implants.

And researchers like Maerici have high hopes that when the breakthrough he’s working on comes through, it will yield huge results and profits, since AI will be able to actually think for itself. Then, things start happening that change the playing field: People die, and the deaths are neither explicable nor ordinary. Instead, the over-the-top violent murders are perpetrated by well-known citizens who seemingly have no motive to kill the decedents. When two St. Louis police detectives, old-timer Edwin Krantz and former Navy SEAL Tara Dezner, take on the homicides, they soon find themselves hip-deep in an inexplicable phenomena. It’s apparent from the book’s beginning that Leuthardt knows his subject matter. However, this novel isn’t written on a level that the average science-fiction or medicalthriller reader will appreciate. His language choices often lean toward the esoteric, which makes the tale’s already odd construction even more difficult to follow. Weaving in and out of the various lives of his characters, Leuthardt seems to assume his readers already understand the world he’s created, making his universe overly complicated and technical.

Most of the author’s characters spend a disproportionate hunk of the story in states of confusion, a state that will be shared by many of the novel’s readership. (Agent: Adam Chromy)

in Nairobi, where she falls in with a group of expats and white Kenyans who read like Ernest Hemingway retreads: sexual free spirit Lana, her stuffy rich American lover, Don, sexy worldweary photographer Pierre. In her late 30s, Jane finds herself falling in love with Kenyan paraglider Harry, who is maybe 23.

The group accompanies Jane to Uganda as a kind of a lark, but the mood sours as the privileged whites face the enormity of the atrocities committed against the kidnapped children, who were turned into murderers and sex slaves and are now struggling to readjust. Eventually, Jane interviews Esther, who tells her story, but even while Jane claims to be deeply moved by Esther’s tragedy, she is obsessing about Harry’s waning interest in their affair.

Ultimately, Jane’s drama reaches its own tragic conclusion, proving perhaps that bad stuff can happen anywhere.

Despite hauntingly beautiful prose, there is a secondhand feel to Esther’s story, which plays fiddle to Jane’s navel-gazing.

THIRTY GIRLS

Minot, Susan Knopf (336 pp.) $26.95 | Feb. 11, 2014 978-0-307-26638-5 Minot (Rapture, 2002, etc.) tries to combine a fictionalized but mostly journalistic account of the abduction of Ugandan children by Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army with a sexual drama about the doomed romance of an American writer and a much younger white Kenyan.

The title refers to the actual girls taken from St. Mary’s Catholic boarding school in northern Uganda in 1996 by Kony’s rebels. The early scenes following the seizure of the young girls are riveting, the attempt of the school’s Italian nun to retrieve them—she wins the release of more than 100 girls while Kony’s men keep the strongest and most attractive for themselves— heartbreaking. The child-army experience is narrated through the eyes of Esther, who, like many of the St. Mary’s girls, eventually manages to escape to a rehab center. Esther’s narrative of her captivity and attempt to recover is intercut with the story of an American writer named Jane who has come to Africa to write about the St. Mary girls. Before traveling to Uganda, Jane stays |

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“...a masterwork...” from in the night of time

IN THE NIGHT OF TIME

wrestles with the question of whether he should stay in Spain and fight or move on to some place such as New York, where he has both a reputation and a lover. Problem is, even as he’s wrestling with rationalizations (which “sounded like the lie of someone who’s going to desert”), his lover is bent on going to Spain to join the loyalist cause herself. Ignacio is something of a cipher, even as others in his circle do their best to remain safe and anonymous— and for good reason, since Molina delivers a scathing, Goya-esque view of war: “Now the long whistles of mortars, and a few seconds later the earth rose in the fields along the highway like streams of lava in an erupting volcano.” Molina writes with the epic sweep of Boris Pasternak, claiming the space hitherto occupied by the nonSpanish novelist Ernest Hemingway; his story is long but without a slack moment, as it carefully builds a portrait of a world that has disappeared and a moment that is about to: “Think of how big the world is,” as Ignacio says, “how complicated it is for two people to meet. We’ve been lucky twice—there won’t be another time.”

A simple love story at one level, a broad portrait of a nation in flames at another, and a masterwork through and through.

Molina, Antonio Muñoz Translated by Grossman, Edith Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (656 pp.) $30.00 | Dec. 3, 2013 978-0-547-54784-8 Superb novel of the Spanish Civil War, ranking among the best of the many books written about that conflict.

The war of 1936–39 remains an unhealed wound, and Molina (Sepharad, 2003, etc.) runs a certain risk—as, recently, did Javier Cercas with Soldiers of Salamis—in revisiting it. He does so from the point of view of an architect, Ignacio Abel, who has risen from the ranks of the working poor, his bricklayer father scorning and pitying him for his lack of macho strength, living a life in which “feeling the blow of the slap that hadn’t yet struck his pale face” constitutes business as usual. Ignacio is a socialist but no firebrand; even so, he feels himself in danger, and throughout the narrative, even in flight, he

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THE SUN AND OTHER STARS

in the hospital with Claudine at her side, the charges against the missing Tregarron are upgraded to murder, even though Claudine, in whose stable he had taken refuge after fleeing the scene, suspects that the testimony against him is a tissue of selfserving lies. Taking time out for her volunteer work at the clinic Hester Monk runs for sick and wounded prostitutes, she makes the rounds of the other guests, probing ever more deeply into their relations with the dead woman.

Though there’s precious little mystery here, there’s considerable pleasure to be had in watching Perry, on her annual sabbatical from her cumbersomely virtuous anatomies of Victorian social mores (Acceptable Loss, 2012, etc.), manage Claudine’s nimble cut-and-thrust conversations with young people, society hostesses and her own husband.

Pasulka, Brigid Simon & Schuster (336 pp.) $26.00 | Feb. 4, 2014 978-1-4516-6711-0

On the Italian Riviera, a wounded young man rediscovers his appetite for life through the intervention of a fugitive soccer celebrity, in the heartwarming second novel from award-winning writer Pasulka.

Unusually, Pasulka (A Long, Long Time Ago and Essentially True, 2009) not only introduces a lot of soccer into her love story, but also narrates it from a male perspective, that of 22-year-old Etto, son of the village butcher in San Benedetto, a seaside tourist resort in Liguria. Still mourning the loss of his brother, Luca, and his heartbroken mother’s subsequent suicide, Etto (who often swears, usually in Italian) is a walking storm of unresolved emotions: loss, anger, guilt, restlessness and uncertainty. But a catalyst for change appears—Yuri Fil, a Ukrainian soccer celebrity, in hiding after a match-fixing scandal. Etto cares little for soccer but does find himself attracted to Yuri’s tough sister, Zhuki, and becomes a secret nighttime pupil of Yuri’s. When the celebrity’s presence eventually becomes known, the whole community is swept up in the excitement and organizes a soccer tournament. Events reach a head at the Ferragosto Festival, and although, by now, Pasulka has lost some of her plot's sure-footedness, she does succeed in bringing all her players safely home.

Pasulka scores a refreshing success with her affectionate portrait of a small-town community and her fresh angle on an aching heart. (Agent: Wendy Sherman)

A CHRISTMAS HOPE

Perry, Anne Ballantine (208 pp.) $18.00 | Nov. 12, 2013 978-0-345-53075-2

Veteran Perry (A Christmas Garland, 2012, etc.) draws back the curtain on an 11th round of decorous Yuletide skullduggery among the oh-so-proper Victorians.

Claudine Burroughs doesn’t expect much from the Christmas party her distant husband, Wallace, has dragged her to. Forbes Gifford, his second wife, Oona, and their guests are as colorless as they are correct. The only bright spot Claudine finds is a chance meeting with rough-edged Welsh poet Dai Tregarron when she ventures onto the terrace for a breath of fresh air. But the stimulation his company offers pales before the news shortly afterward that the party gets from Creighton Foxley, Cecil Crostwick and Ernest Halversgate, the sons whose parents are among the guests.

According to them, Tregarron has set upon Winnie Briggs, another guest, and seriously wounded her. When Winnie dies |

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KIDS THESE DAYS

a remote vacation condo south of Jacksonville owned by Alice’s sister, Carolyn. Walter is soon drawn into working for Carolyn’s husband, Mid, whose considerable wealth comes from owning things: real estate, sea kayak rentals, umbrella shops, a pizza place—all the strange accoutrements that adorn the beach to leech money away from tourists. Walter is talked into running the ice machine empire while he and Alice fumble their way through a difficult pregnancy. This is an interesting book with a slightly offbeat tone. Walter, who tells the story, makes for an amusing worrywart whose fish-out-of-water state becomes more and more obvious as Mid gets arrested and Walter begins to realize that he’s become attached to a serious criminal. Even Mid feels bad: “I had something else pictured. Something calmer. Fewer police, fewer wayward children, you know?” There are some madcap elements here that recall the novels of Tim Dorsey or Laurence Shames, but the core story of Walter’s family makes the enterprise feel closer to an Alexander Payne jaunt than anything else.

A funny, frenzied tale of a terrified man plummeting helplessly into his own adulthood.

Perry, Drew Algonquin (320 pp.) $14.95 paper | Jan. 14, 2014 978-1-61620-171-5 Meet Walter and Alice. They’re screwed.

Perry (This Is Just Exactly Like You, 2010) follows up his poignant debut novel about a father and his autistic son with a lighter novel about impending fatherhood, Hiaasen-ian Floridians and the way life carries us forward whether we want it to or not. Walter and Alice used to have a fine life in North Carolina, stable enough that they began to tiptoe toward the idea of having children. “Yes, I told her, yes, which was not quite a lie: I could easily enough see us having a child, or children. I imagined we’d keep them fed and watered, that we’d find ways not to kill them, or ourselves,” Walter muses. And then life carries them forward: Walter loses his job and Alice quits hers, and they move 500 miles south to

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“...would make a great movie.” from the hanging judge

THE HANGING JUDGE

genderwise) was there at the crucifixion and has a sidelong relationship with Judas, a figure who comes off as curiously sympathetic, playing a part in a very big passion play. Judas, natch, has been doing his bit ever since to bring Christ back to Earth: “He had spent centuries in service of this holy mission.” But so have many others, each in his or her own way, from witches and vampires (with scrapbooks of human hearts, no less) to priests and earthly warriors and even Lucifer, the baddest of the bad guys, his bad self. The whole yarn is improbable in the extreme, and therein lies at least some of its draw; Rollins and Cantrell seem always on the verge of breaking out into laughter even in the most fraught of situations, of which there are many—among them an absurd scenario featuring a cougar, a sedan and one of those weird sort-of-Jesuits known as the Sanguinists. By the time the tale gets around to hieroglyphic depictions of Jesus, things have become more Indiana Jones than Robert Langdon.

It’s junk food, but it’s pretty tasty. (Author tour to Denver, Houston, Phoenix, San Diego and Sacramento)

Ponsor, Michael OpenRoad Integrated Media (376 pp.) $16.99 paper | Dec. 3, 2013 978-1-4804-4194-1

A legal thriller written by, and from the viewpoint of, a federal judge.

A drive-by shooting in the central Massachusetts city of Holyoke kills two people, including a Puerto Rican man and a middle-class white woman. The state has no death penalty, but the case is moved to federal court, where a death sentence is possible. A black man, Moon Hudson, stands accused of capital murder and drug dealing. Innocent or guilty, Hudson is no angel, and some in his neighborhood want him to get the lethal injection that the prosecutor is looking for. The Honorable David Norcross must preside over the trial in which a pair of smart, determined attorneys face off against each other. Can Norcross ensure a fair trial and prevent a circus? Woven into the tale is the true story of two Massachusetts men hanged in 1806 on the basis of spurious testimony. As Irish Catholics, the accused didn’t stand a chance—they truly faced a hanging judge. But Judge Norcross is nothing like that, being portrayed as a thoroughly professional judge and a likable widower whose idea of profanity is saying “Criminey!” He falls in love with a woman, providing a subplot that threatens to ruin the trial but otherwise highlights the judge’s humanity. Meanwhile, there are plenty of surprises to keep readers turning pages. Ponsor gives readers a unique look into the workings of a courtroom.

But more than that, he demonstrates a feel for how ordinary families are affected by the legal system.

Ponsor’s debut would make a great movie.

INNOCENT BLOOD

Rollins, James; Cantrell, Rebecca Morrow/HarperCollins (448 pp.) $27.99 | Dec. 10, 2013 978-0-06-199106-6 The religious-themed mayhem of the authors’ jointly penned Blood Gospel (2013) continues in the second of a projected four volumes.

There’s a touch of genius, witting or no, in pairing a Dan Brown–ian hiddencodex mystery with a vampire tale. Let that suffice lest spoilers ruin the fun, except to say that the blood of the title is no accident. Intrepid scholar Erin Granger, fresh from the Holy Land, reunites with friend-with-benefits Jordan Stone, the tough soldier who’s seen some weird times in Masada and elsewhere in the Holy Land, along with Father Rhun Korza, who always knows more than he lets on. Joining the fun this time is a childlike angel who’s been around for a very, very long time—so long, in fact, that he (and/or she, angels being hard to pin down, |

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GULLIVER’S TRAVELS

on Trepanation and Kinship Autotomy”), he soon regrets not paying more attention to the “fantastickal stories” told to him by his aging father when he wakes in the custody of an exceptionally tiny people who mistake him for his forebear. Eventually retracing his ancestor’s path, from Lilliput to the country of the Houyhnhnms and all stops in between, this Gulliver learns that the original Gulliver’s influence on those he encountered has not always proved to be positive.

The new Lilliput presents itself as a nigh-utopian consumer society, though the source of its prosperity is puzzling and its citizenry hide behind ubiquitous smiley-face masks. During a rousing speech about Lilliput’s boundless progress, Rowson undercuts the propaganda with an image of riot police violently suppressing the grinning populace while everyone else goes shopping. Gulliver himself faces extraordinary rendition and deportation during his increasingly desperate and scatological journey. (Excreta is essentially a character in the story.) Rowson gleefully plays with language, particularly in the impenetrable pomposity of Gulliver’s guides and the blatherskites of Brobdignag, which hilariously reveals itself when read aloud. The fastidiously crosshatched ink illustrations—part Ralph Steadman, part Heironymous Bosch—match the soiled material wonderfully,

Rowson, Martin—Adapt.

Atlantic (128 pp.) $19.95 paper | Nov. 1, 2013 978-1-78239-008-4

Cartoonist and novelist Rowson revisits Jonathan Swift’s classic caustic exploration of human nature in this visceral, contemporary graphic-novel sequel.

Some 300 years after his ancestor first encountered a series of bizarre cultures strewn across the seas, a new Gulliver begins his own travels. Rowson (The Wasteland, 2012, etc.) situates his adaptation squarely in the present, tracking in from a celestial event, through a sky littered with satellites and contrails, to the silhouette of our hero—who holds a degree in “Socio-Anthropological Epidemiology” and a senior post at the “Secretariat of the World Institute of Forensic Therapy”—wading through surprisingly shallow waters. While this Gulliver is only vaguely aware of his ancestor (our hero was tellingly shanghaied during “a Global Forum

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buzzing with decrepitude and madness. One suspects that Swift would approve.

A filthy, fantastic and fitting continuation of a misanthropic classic.

volume of the Southern Reach trilogy from VanderMeer (Finch, 2009, etc.); subsequent volumes are scheduled for publication in June and September 2014.

The Southern Reach is the secret government agency that dispatches expeditions across the border to monitor Area X, an ominous coastal no man’s land since an unspecified event 30 years before. This latest expedition, the 12th, is all-female, consisting of a psychologist, an anthropologist, a surveyor and a biologist (the narrator). Names are taboo. Their leader, the psychologist, has hypnotic powers. They have no communication devices, but they do have firearms, which they will use; some earlier expeditions also ended bloodily. Close to base camp is "the tower," a mostly underground structure that acts as tunnel, which they descend. On its walls are grim biblical admonitions, raised letters made of fungi. The biologist incautiously inhales tiny spores which, she will discover later, fill her with brightness, a form of ESP. Tension between the women increases when the anthropologist goes missing; they will discover her dead in the tower, discharging green ash. Next, the psychologist disappears. Leaving the hostile, ex-military surveyor behind, the biologist makes her way to the other interesting structure, the lighthouse, which she climbs in dread. VanderMeer is an expert fearmonger, but his strongest suit, what makes his novel a standout, is his depiction of the biologist. Like any scientist, she has an overriding need to classify, to know. This has been her lifelong passion. Her solitary explorations created problems in her marriage; her husband, a medic, returned from the previous expedition a zombie. What killed the anthropologist? The biologist’s samples reveal human brain tissue. Some organism is trying to colonize and absorb the humans with whom it comes in contact. Experiencing “the severe temptation of the unknown,” she must re-enter the tower to confront the Crawler, her name for the graffiti writer.

Speculative fiction at its most transfixing.

COLD STORAGE, ALASKA

Straley, John Soho Crime (304 pp.) $26.95 | Feb. 4, 2014 978-1-61695-306-5

After serving time, a reformed drug dealer seeks peace in the small Alaskan village in which he grew up, but trouble hounds his every step.

The rumor spread like wildfire up and down the boardwalk in Cold Storage, Alaska: After serving seven years for dealing cocaine, Clive “The Milkman” McCahon—brother to town medic Miles, son of town fixture Annabelle, grandson of Ellie, who opened the first bar in town with her husband—was coming back to town. He’d left 20 years ago, at the age of 15, so not a lot of people knew him. Still, the fact that someone was coming to live in the tiny village, rather than leaving to live somewhere else, was gossip-worthy enough, especially in a gossip-hungry town like Cold Storage. But Clive wasn’t coming alone. For one thing, a nosy cop had been coming around, seemingly anxious to catch Clive doing something illegal. And somehow, while picking up a large quantity of cash he was pretty sure his former business partner owed him, Clive had acquired an extremely large, extremely ugly dog. And Clive’s former business partner, who was less than convinced that he owed Clive any money, was bound to come looking for him—and the money—sooner or later. But the oddball residents of Cold Storage take care of their own, and Clive is as oddball as they come, especially since he’s started communicating with animals. In the author’s note at the end of the book, the second in Straley’s (The Big Both Ways, 2008, etc.) Cold Storage series, Straley mentions his desire to write a tribute to screwball comedy, and he has certainly done so. The cast of eccentric characters, the sharp, witty dialogue, and the chaotic, frenzied pace of the narrative would do Preston Sturges proud. Readers looking for edge-of-your-seat suspense should look elsewhere, but those who like their crime with a healthy side of humor could hardly do better.

Quirky, funny and compulsively readable.

QUESADILLAS

Villalobos, Juan Pablo Translated by Harvey, Rosalind Farrar, Straus and Giroux (192 pp.) $13.00 paper | Feb. 11, 2014 978-0-374-53395-3 A political allegory aims for pointed satire but settles for slapstick farce.

The author (Down the Rabbit Hole, 2012) writes of a poor family that thinks of itself as middle class, living in a region where “there are more cows than people, more charro horsemen than horses, more priests than cows, and the people like to believe in the existence of ghosts, miracles, spaceships, saints and so forth.” All of this figures into the narration of a man remembering his boyhood of 25 years earlier, when he was 13 and the second oldest in a family subsisting totally on quesadillas. The cheap meal provides the titular metaphor for the family’s condition and has a wide range of quality and implications: “The normal quesadillas were the ones we would have eaten every day if we lived in a normal country—but if we were living

ANNIHILATION

VanderMeer, Jeff Farrar, Straus and Giroux (208 pp.) $13.00 paper | Feb. 4, 2014 978-0-374-10409-2 After their high-risk expedition disintegrates, it’s every scientist for herself in this wonderfully creepy blend of horror and science fiction. This is the first |

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“...poignant...” from the last train to paris

SHLEPPING THE EXILE

in a normal country we wouldn’t have been eating quesadillas and so we also called them impossible quesadillas....Finally you had the poor man’s quesadillas, in which the presence of cheese was literary: you opened one up and instead of adding melted cheese my mother had written the word ‘cheese.’ ” Gentrification arrives, initially with a neighboring family of three from Poland, whose large estate presages the development that will threaten the protagonist’s family’s ramshackle home with demolition. Most of the names in the family are classic Greek, starting with oldest son Aristotle, of whom the narrator complains, “You can’t fight for the truth when your rival’s name is Aristotle.” An exception is a “stoner uncle” known as Pink Floyd, who causes the narrator to lament, “Pink Floyd, how I wish you were here.”

For all that it has to say about the relationship between the few rich and the many poor in Mexico, the writing is neither as clever nor as funny as it seems to think it is.

(Agent: Andrea Montejo)

Wex, Michael St. Martin’s (192 pp.) $23.99 | Feb. 18, 2014 978-0-312-36463-2

A fish-out-of-water tale of an outcast adolescent growing up in exile out in the Canadian wilderness.

Diaspora doesn’t generally lend itself to comedy, but it works pretty well in this distinctly Jewish coming-of-age novel by Wex (The Frumkiss Family Business, 2011, etc.). It concerns Yoine Levkes, a teen growing up in the desolation of Coalbanks, Alberta, post–World War II. Like many young people, he finds himself caught between the religious solemnity of his parents and the natural impulses of growing up. And like smart young people in his situation, he’s painfully aware of the limitations of his situation. “If only Tradition had barfed me forth onto the dry sands of Western civilization, I could have grown into a big shot, a contender; a stammering, nattering, chest-pulling Jewish intellectual with nothing on my mind but social justice and yellow-pubed shiksas, the hero of a thousand novels,” he muses. Acting as our narrator, Yoine is smart—smarter, really, than a character of his age and demeanor has any right to be, but it’s his quick-witted running commentary that carries the novel more than its minimal plot. However, Wex does excel at building incongruous characters who demonstrate the counterintuitive complexities of Jewish life—the radical poet who publishes pornography for gentiles to fuel his agenda is just one highlight. “I get fathers coming to see me with pictures of their daughters shtupping horses, and this is at least eighty percent of the population—and I use their money to exalt, to try to keep alive the only culture in the world that knows from good and evil, from life and death, and from life that’s worse than death.” But even a death in the family brings no gravity to this feathery story, as Yoine’s goals consist mostly of getting into the pants of girlfriend Sabina Mandelbroit.

Wex’s humorous writing is crisp. Note: There’s a lot of Yiddish threaded through the story, so the glossary at the back of the book may prove helpful.

THE LAST TRAIN TO PARIS

Zackheim, Michele Europa Editions (320 pp.) $17.00 paper | Jan. 7, 2014 978-1-60945-179-0

More than 50 years after the events recounted, a reporter reminisces about her life in Europe prior to the outbreak of World War II. Although, or perhaps because, she was born and raised in Nevada, Rosie Manon craved another kind of life—more adventurous and meaningful than the one she’d known as a child. Her father was Catholic and her mother Jewish, although the latter lived in denial of her religious background and tried to keep Rosie from this part of her identity. In 24

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Although shifts in chronology and point of view further complicate an already dense plot, Axelrod has a gift for characterization and a strong lead in Kennis. Nantucketers might bristle at the cynical portrait of their home, but his mystery debut gives the island as much personality as its varied inhabitants.

1933, after a stint as a reporter with the New York Courier, Rosie seeks a transfer to its Paris office and finds herself the only woman on the staff and particularly ill-treated by her editor, Ramsey, an intolerant bigot who nevertheless recognizes Rosie’s talent. She styles herself R. B. Manon and becomes a tough-skinned reporter, eventually moving to Berlin, obviously a perilous place for her. There, she falls in love with Leon Wolff, a gifted engraver (and forger of documents) who, against his will, uses his talents on behalf of the Reich. Rosie and Leon carry on a surreptitious affair, but life eventually gets too dangerous, and Rosie reluctantly moves back to Paris. One sidelight of her life involves the murder of her cousin, Stella, the daughter of Rosie’s beloved Aunt Clara, and Rosie’s reporting on the outcome of the trial. Rosie lives through the horrors of Kristallnacht and, two years later, through the fall of Paris, losing track of Leon and only toward the end of the novel, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, finding out about his time in Sachsenhausen concentration camp and his postwar life with another woman.

Despite some occasionally wooden dialogue, Zackheim gives us a poignant glimpse into the tensions and anxieties of prewar Europe.

MURDER ON THE ORIENT ESPRESSO

Balzo, Sandra Severn House (208 pp.) $27.95 | Dec. 1, 2013 978-0-7278-8311-7

An audience participation stunt at a mystery writers’ convention leads unsurprisingly to murder.

Although she didn’t know it at the time, it turns out that coffeehouse owner Maggy Thorsen had excellent reason to badger her boyfriend, Brookhills County Sheriff Jake Pavlik, into bringing her along to Fort Lauderdale for Mystery 101. Conference organizer Zoe Scarlett, obviously an old friend of Jake’s, looks about ready to eat her keynote speaker alive—which is more dinner than Maggy gets. Playing her own version of “I Shagged the Sheriff” leaves her with no time to dine before boarding the train for the convention’s signature “Murder on the Orient Espresso” event: a three-hour slog through the Everglades during which conference attendees re-enact the Christie classic.

Since funds are limited, the organizers offer no meal but copious booze, along with the obligatory corpse-shaped cake. When the cake knife goes missing, Maggy worries. When Larry Potter, author of scathing reviews on his website PotShots, also goes missing, even Pavlik and Zoe start to worry. It isn’t until eccentric engineer Theodore B. Hertel Jr. points out that a torrential downpour has washed out the tracks beneath the train that the rest of the guests, happily sozzled on the excursion’s only culinary offering, begin to worry. But Potter’s estranged wife, Audra Edmonds, his reputed lover, Rosemary Darlington, his germaphobic agent, Carson, and even assistant conference organizer Missy Hudson can do little to help, leaving Maggy and her sweetie to solve the crime.

Maggy’s eighth (Triple Shot, 2011, etc.) moves slower than Hertel’s locomotive, proving that not even a South Florida setting guarantees sunny days.

m ys t e r y NANTUCKET SAWBUCK

Axelrod, Steven Poisoned Pen (312 pp.) $24.95 | $14.95 paper | $22.95 Lg. Prt. Jan. 7, 2014 978-1-4642-0087-8 978-1-4642-0089-2 paper 978-1-4642-0088-5 Lg. Prt. A ruthless entrepreneur cheats everyone but death.

Preston Lomax is proud of the number of people who’d like him dead. He’s been unfaithful to his wife with all three of her sisters and many of her friends, bugged his sons’ apartments, forced his daughter Kathleen to play “Guess My Mood” all her life, used his money to barge into Nantucket society, and conspired with a local developer to break ground for a shopping mall on former conservation land. His plan to pre-empt the investigation into his shady business practices by skipping town without paying his creditors fails when he’s found dead with a four-way screwdriver in his chest just before Christmas, leaving Nantucket’s police chief, Henry Kennis, with a long list of suspects. A series of flashbacks spotlights the editor of a local paper that Lomax bankrupted, a painting contractor embroiled in blackmail with his vengeful mistress and Kathleen’s boyfriend (who’s sleeping with her mother), and Kennis’ own girlfriend. The police chief, a shrewd California native, carefully navigates the roiling currents of Nantucket society and persists, despite the danger to himself and his family, in this smart procedural.

THE MURDER HOUSE

Beaufort, Simon Severn House (256 pp.) $28.95 | Jan. 1, 2014 978-0-7278-8327-8

A police constable looks at murder from more angles than she’s ever wanted to.

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life. Her first assignment in a pleasant rural area is easy and enjoyable, but things change when she’s moved to Bristol West, where she must deal with both persistent violent offenders and bigoted, sexist Sgt. Barry Wright. Helen’s social life seems to improve when she meets a few old school friends after ticketing one of them. Lawyer James Paxton was a highflier at school who charmed her into a dismal one-night stand and then disappeared from her circle. Paxton has made enemies of the police by defending violent criminals and getting them off by all means necessary. When Helen wrongly takes a case file with her on a weekend away, Paxton steals it, copies it and blackmails her into meeting him in a deserted house to force her to help get his client off. Helen kills him in a moment of rage. Appalled at first, she soon rationalizes her actions and uses her police skills to hide her guilt. Once the body is finally found, it is not where she left it. DI Neel Oakley and his team at first think it is the body of an Albanian professor who was renting the house short-term.

Feeling sorry for Helen, Oakley tries to keep her from the wrath of Sgt. Wright by using her on his team when he can. Even when the police identify the corpse as Paxton, Helen does all she can

to spread red herrings. The pressure causes her to do things she never imagined she was capable of.

Taking a break from his historical mysteries (A Dead Man’s Secret, 2011, etc.), Beaufort produces a keen psychological thriller along the lines of Ruth Rendell. Although readers know the killer from the start, Beaufort deftly explores just how far someone will go to protect herself.

SOUTHERN HEAT

Burnsworth, David Five Star (304 pp.) $25.95 | Feb. 19, 2014 978-1-4328-2800-4

An emotionally wounded war veteran finds new purpose in a search for his uncle’s killer.

After former dirt-track racer Brack Pelton lost his wife to cancer, he nearly followed her, first by drinking too much and then by volunteering for suicide missions as a Marine in Afghanistan. Now that he’s home in South Carolina again, with only a dog for company, he’s about to meet his uncle Reggie when he hears shots and finds Reggie bleeding in an alley. As his uncle is dying in his arms, Brack hears him whisper, “Ray...Ray shot me.” This sends Brack on a quest that takes him from Charleston’s most fashionable houses to its seediest shacks. He discovers that, as Reggie’s heir, not only does he own a waterfront dive, a sizable piece of highly desirable property and stashes of money hidden in crab pots, but he also has more friends than he thought. Reggie’s ex-wife Patricia Voyels, who is also the owner of the local news station, and her star reporter, Darcy Wells, as well as the Rev. Thomas Brown and a lawyer who served in Vietnam with Reggie all help Brack pursue a convoluted case of corporate greed and misused federal funds.

Although one suspect is far from surprising, Brack isn’t alone when he’s nearly blindsided by the ending of this solid debut.

Burnsworth’s choppy storytelling is even less polished than his hero. But the people and the puzzle keep you reading and wanting more.

THE AVALON CHANTER

Carl, Lillian Stewart Five Star (332 pp.) $25.95 | Jan. 22, 2014 978-1-4328-2804-2

Could Farnaby Island be the Avalon of Arthurian legend?

Farnaby lies off the coast of Northumberland, near the better-known holy isle of Lindisfarne. First Elaine Lauder and now her daughter Maggie, inhabitants of Farnaby, have tried to prove that it is Avalon. Maggie has announced the opening of a tomb she’s convinced will cause a sensation. It does but not the one she had imagined. The tomb contains the 26

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THE BREAKFAST CLUB MURDER

body of a man who, although long dead, is certainly not a contemporary of Arthur’s. Maggie thinks that it may be her father, since she’s never been convinced that Elaine’s husband, Wat, is her real father. George Grinsell, the rude and obnoxious inspector sent to investigate, already thinks Maggie is a murderer even though she was cleared of killing a lover years ago. Grinsell quickly alienates just about everyone on the small island, and there’s a long list of suspects when he’s attacked and later dies. Elaine, who suffers from dementia and often wanders the island, may hold the key to the mystery, but it’s not clear that she knows she does or can share her knowledge. Fortunately, American historian Jean Fairbairn and her husband, Alasdair Cameron, a retired Scottish police detective who is now head of Edinburgh’s Protect and Survive, are on hand, she to write a story for Great Scot, both of them to enjoy the music at the Gallowglass music school. Alasdair is asked to supervise the local constable and Grinsell’s assistant until the fog abates enough to send in a new officer. Jean and Alasdair (The Charm Stone, 2009, etc.) approach the problem from different viewpoints but arrive at the same conclusion.

The historical detail slows the progress of the story, but it’s still full of enjoyable twists.

Crespi, Camilla T. Five Star (326 pp.) $25.95 | Feb. 19, 2014 978-1-4328-2805-9

Romance and cuisine add piquancy to suburban murder.

On the day of her ex-husband Rob Staunton’s wedding in New York, Lori Corvino’s enjoying a plate of gnocchi in Rome when fellow tourist Alec Winters spills sauce all over her dress. Once she’s back home in a suburb of New York, a bouquet of flowers arrives from Alec, along with a secret recipe to help Lori revive her catering career. But Lori’s more concerned about her daughter Jessica’s relationship with Rob’s new wife, Valerie, with whom Lori has a fight before witnesses. She’s automatically the first suspect when Valerie’s body turns up in the trunk of Rob’s car. It’s not much consolation when the focus of the police investigation shifts from Lori to Rob to members of Lori’s breakfast club—longtime friends who meet regularly in a Greek diner—and their husbands to a tangle of changed wills, foundering real estate deals and secret lovers. When Alec Winter resurfaces, Lori’s glad to find a friend to confide in as she learns how little she actually knows about the people around her.

Crespi (The Trouble with a Hot Summer, 1997, etc.) describes the cooking prep so lovingly that you may start eating the pages. She’s equally affectionate in her depiction of this amiable cozy’s heroine, who’ll be irresistible to women who’ve lost a husband to a skinnier upgrade or had to make a new start in midlife.

DUST

Cornwell, Patricia Putnam (480 pp.) $28.95 | Nov. 12, 2013 978-0-399-15757-8 Kay Scarpetta is back, as world-weary and sharp-eyed as ever, in this latest Cornwell (The Bone Bed, 2012, etc.) outing, the 21st in the series.

Scarpetta has reason to be jaded: She’s just returned from Connecticut, where she conducted 27 autopsies, “most of them children, and when I pulled off my bloody scrubs and stepped into the shower I refused to think about what I’d just done.” Teamed with a much more excitable Cambridge cop, she’s scarcely back home in Boston when she’s called to examine a corpse that’s turned up “out in the mud at one end of the athletic fields, what’s called Briggs Field,” as Cornwell curiously puts it. And not just any corpse, of course: The victim was a computer whiz who just happened to be involved in a complex lawsuit involving heaps of money and, as it develops, some shadowy connections to the federal government. Scarpetta’s husband, an FBI profiler, plays a more significant role in the tale than in other Cornwell whodunits precisely due to that Washington connection, but it takes a good while for Scarpetta to piece the puzzle together, with a parade of potential bad guys to choose from, including a rich dude who you know, just know, has to be bad because he owns “a shaving set made of mammoth ivory.” The red herrings and MacGuffins are standard mystery fare, complicated

by Cornwell’s deep appreciation for the work of medical examiners in even the relatively simple matter of distinguishing a murder from a suicide, to say nothing of deciding who did the foul deed.

The takeaway? “People still suck.” Yes, they do, and they do very bad things to each other. Stay tuned.

GOING DARK

Hall, James W. Minotaur (304 pp.) $25.99 | Dec. 3, 2013 978-1-250-00500-7 In Hall’s 13th Thorn novel, the goit-alone Key Largo PI undergoes a crash course in parenthood when he discovers the grown son he barely knows belongs to an environmental activist group with terrorism on its agenda.

In targeting the Turkey Point nuclear power plant near the Florida Keys, the Earth Liberation Front originally had planned on a nonviolent action. But extremists in the group now have a spectacular demolition in mind, having acquired a superpowerful explosive.

Taken prisoner by ELF on the remote island where they’re preparing the attack, Thorn is unable to talk his son, Flynn, into escaping with him. But to be around the boy in order to protect him, he convinces ELF that he supports their efforts. It helps that one of the group’s leaders is a woman for whom Thorn was a surrogate father when she was a troubled teen. Meanwhile, having been alerted to ELF’s presence by the logo they left inside the plant’s supposedly impenetrable |

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“...a tense psychological mystery...” from lake of tears

NOOSE

security system, authorities, including FBI man Frank Sheffield, plan a “force-by-force” exercise in which agents take on the plant’s security forces with simulated weaponry. In the end, real shots are fired, Thorn’s sidekick, Sugarman, gets more of the action than he bargained for, and betrayals are revealed—the great sex Frank has with a psychologically scarred Homeland Security agent from his past proves to be skin-deep. As ever, Hall is in colorful command of his South Florida setting, occasionally editorializing on the harm developers are doing to it. Compared to other mystery writers, he plays things refreshingly low key, but he’s always in control, thriving on the setup as much as the payoff.

The plot of Going Dark doesn’t have the zip of some of Hall’s other Thorn books, but with its nicely observed characters and lively dialogue—and terrific sex scenes—it keeps readers turning the pages.

James, Bill Severn House (240 pp.) $28.95 | Dec. 1, 2013 978-0-7278-8318-6 The creator of Harpur and Iles (Play Dead, 2013, etc.) uses the attempted 1956 suicide of a British starlet to unleash a flood of baleful memories for the journalist tasked with writing an article about her.

The official story is that her teakettle snuffed out the gas flame while Daphne West slept, nearly asphyxiating her accidentally. But no one believes that story or is meant to.

Pressed by Mirror editor Percy Lyall to interview the survivor at her hospital bedside, reporter Ian Charteris swiftly makes himself so unpleasant that he’s thrown out of her room. Daphne isn’t to know that Ian’s being even more unpleasant to himself than to her. As if in a dream, he drifts from one traumatic memory to the next. There’s the day when Ian, 5, saw his father, an officer on a paddle ship crossing the Bristol Channel, rescue passenger Emily Bass from drowning while the ship’s captain lost his life trying to save her—an episode that ruined Laurence Charteris forever. There’s the wartime interlude when Ian, 11, saw one man stab another to death in an air-raid shelter, ran for the police and ended up as the star witness in a murder trial that sent the killer to the gallows. There’s the suddenly serious rivalry between Ian and another cadet that brings Ian back to the attention of Emily Bass, now married to Ian’s group captain and doing some hushhush government work. Finally, there’s the recent rumor of a coup to oust Prime Minister Anthony Eden over the Suez affair.

The unusual plot thickens and darkens but never comes to a full head of steam.

THE ARNIFOUR AFFAIR

Harris, Gregory Kensington (304 pp.) $15.00 paper | Jan. 28, 2014 978-0-7582-9267-4

A pair of Victorian sleuths step into a hornet’s nest of family secrets.

When Lady Arnifour hires private detectives Colin Pendragon and Ethan Pruitt to investigate the death of her husband, the Earl of Arnifour, and an attack on her niece, Elsbeth, Colin senses at once that his client’s motive has little to do with love for her husband. She seems more interested in protecting the primary suspects, groundskeeper Victor Heffernan and his son Nathaniel. When the case turns into a double murder, Colin and Ethan broaden their investigation to include Arnifour’s mistress, his drunken heir, his suffragist daughter and his business partner. Along the way, a young street urchin hoping to find his missing sister plays on Ethan’s sympathies. His pleas have a special resonance for Ethan, for although his own family was as genteel as Colin’s, Ethan spent years on the street and in a nightmare of opium addiction until Colin rescued him. The more they investigate the two convoluted cases, the more Ethan risks backsliding, even with the support of Colin, who is more than his partner in this slanted homage to Sherlock Holmes. Colin has Holmes’ arrogance but is dimpled and charming, while Ethan is a darker Watson. The author, however, is no Conan Doyle.

Harris’ debut is written with a blithe disregard for historical authenticity and a tin ear for period dialogue.

Although the relationship between the leads is discreetly intriguing, most of the rest of the characters don’t raise either a chuckle or a tear.

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LAKE OF TEARS

Logue, Mary Tyrus Books (208 pp.) $24.99 | $16.99 paper | Jan. 18, 2014 978-1-4405-7150-3 978-1-4405-7151-1 paper The answer to a rural murder may lie in Afghanistan.

Deputy Sheriff Claire Watkins becomes acting sheriff when her boss has a heart attack. Things have been peaceful in Fort St. Antoine, Wis., but that all changes when the remains of a body are found in the replica of a Norwegian longboat burned on the shore in an autumn ritual. Claire’s daughter Meg, who is soon leaving for college, feels an instant attraction to a man she meets at the boat burning, little knowing that he will soon be a murder suspect. Claire calls in a forensic expert who uses dental records to identify the remains as those of Tammy Lee Johnson, whose fiance, Terry Whitman, has just reported her missing. Although Tammy Lee and Terry are scheduled to wed soon, Tammy Lee has been flirting with Andrew Stickler, her high school boyfriend and the new man Meg is dating. Andrew’s not only eight years older than |

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WHISPERS OF VIVALDI

Meg, he’s also a deputy working for her mother and a man who has issues to deal with from an incident in Afghanistan that almost got him killed. Both Andrew and Meg have some reservations about dating, but their strong sexual attraction overcomes their doubts.

Although Claire likes her deputy, he still joins that jealous fiance on her suspect list, and she asks Meg to stop seeing him until the murder is solved. As Claire and her staff work to find the killer, Meg and Andrew find it impossible to keep apart, until another murder opens the investigation to new possibilities.

The latest from Logue (Maiden Rock, 2007, etc.) is a tense psychological mystery, compulsively readable, that may seem obvious but offers up some surprising twists.

Myers, Beverle Graves Poisoned Pen (300 pp.) $24.95 | $14.95 paper | $22.95 Lg. Prt. Jan. 7, 2014 978-1-4642-0208-7 978-1-4642-0210-0 paper 978-1-4642-0209-4 Lg. Prt. Operatic rivalry leads to death in Venice.

Venetians take their opera very seriously in 1745. Once, the castrato Tito Amato was their darling. Retired now, he is trying to help Maestro Torani, director of Teatro San Marco, win back audiences from a competing company. Tito hopes that an innovative opera, The False Duke, by Niccolo Rocatti, a former student of the late, great Vivaldi, will do the trick. Tito gets permission from patrician cultural adviser Signor Arcangelo Passoni to mount the opera on one condition: Young castrato Angeletto must sing the female lead.

When Torani is murdered at a reception honoring Angeletto, Tito is devastated. Torani was closer to him than his own father.

But the more he uncovers about the murder, the more puzzles arise: the defection of Torani’s mistress, a murky connection between Rocatti and the Signora Passoni, tarot cards that appear in unexpected places, and the riddle of whether Angeletto is a man or a woman. Although Tito is an unlikely hero—castrated as a child, forced to give up the stage when an accident cost him his voice, resigned to living in an unsanctioned marriage with his beloved pagan wife—he pursues his investigation to a satisfying conclusion.

Myers (Her Deadly Mischief, 2009, etc.) has perhaps too painstakingly recreated 18th-century Venice; the plot is very slow to start rolling, even with the help of a gondola chase. The fully realized hero, however, makes up for flaws in pace and plausibility.

TRUSTING VIKTOR

Mims, Lee Midnight Ink/Llewellyn (312 pp.) $14.99 paper | Feb. 8, 2014 978-0-7387-3426-2 Underwater intrigue, offshore drilling and onshore romance enliven a scientist’s days and nights.

When Russian student Viktor Kozlov rescues geologist Cleo Cooper from a scuba dive gone wrong, she lets him spend the night with her. Although he’s 12 years younger than her, he’s also attractive, eager and knowledgeable about her subject of expertise. Dismissing him as a one-night stand, Cleo escapes with relief to her consulting job aboard the Magellan, an exploration drill ship searching for natural gas for a company in which Cleo and her ex-husband, Bud, are both investors. She’s just retrieved a strange circular object from a remotely operated vehicle when a man attacks her. She awakens with no knowledge of how she got away from him or what happened to her attacker, whose body soon washes up on shore. The longer Cleo remains aboard the Magellan, the more questions she has about Bud’s role in her attacker’s death and about Viktor, who’s helping her find an undersea clue to missing treasure. Cleo ultimately learns where her trust should lie in a mystery long on technical detail and short on realism.

Although geologist Mims (Hiding Gladys, 2013) writes with professional authority, she could have established her heroine as a specialist in a man’s world without burdening readers with so many scientific details—or undercutting Cleo’s selfsufficiency by obliging her to be rescued again and again.

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DYING TO KNOW

O’Connor, TJ Midnight Ink/Llewellyn (408 pp.) $14.99 paper | Jan. 8, 2014 978-0-7387-3950-2 A detective comes back from the dead to solve his own murder.

Off early from work for a change, Detective Oliver “Tuck” Tucker investigates a noise in his house and is shot dead. He immediately returns in ghostly form to view the crime scene. His wife, Angel, a history professor involved in a nearby Northern Virginia dig, calls his partner, Bear Braddock, whom Tuck watches search the house and hide away one of Tuck’s files. His captain, who thinks Bear is too personally involved to investigate the murder, assigns two other cops, one of them very suspicious of Bear, whom he suspects of having more than a friendly interest in Angel. Several Civil War– era bodies have been dug up at Kelly Orchard Farms, where a |

THE LAST DEATH OF JACK HARBIN

local builder who’s been excavating for a bypass fumes about the fortune he’ll have to spend while waiting for historians to try to determine just how important the find is. Could he be behind Tuck’s death? Or, since the hit looks very professional, could the killer be a local mobster with ties to Kelly’s whom Tuck and Bear had been investigating? Tuck is slow to adjust to his new status, but he slowly gains knowledge and strength. His dog, Hercule, senses his presence from the first, and eventually Angel understands that she can talk to him and becomes his partner in trying to uncover a murderer intent on making her the next victim.

O’Connor’s debut in the increasingly crowded ghostdetective genre provides plenty of suspects and an eclectic mix of motives among the living.

Shames, Terry Seventh Street/Prometheus (250 pp.) $15.95 paper | $11.99 e-book | Jan. 7, 2014 978-1-61614-871-3 978-1-61614-872-0 e-book A retired sheriff takes on a tricky case of murder.

Jarrett Creek is one of those East Texas towns where most people know your business and football is king. The locals are in a bad mood when their team loses the first game of the season after the popular coach inexplicably benches the star quarterback. Former star quarterback Jack Harbin is a regular at the games even though he’s blind and lost a leg in the Gulf War. He and his best buddy, Woody Patterson, had enlisted together, but when Woody was turned down, he married the lovely and popular Taylor, who’d never been able to make up her mind between them. Although Taylor’s now remarried to a lawyer, Jack still isn’t talking to Woody.

Abandoned by a mother who left town when she couldn’t take the strain, Jack’s been cared for by his father, Bob. When Bob suddenly dies of an apparent heart attack, various townspeople join Jack’s veteran buddies to help out until Jack is viciously stabbed to death. Since the sheriff is a drunk who’s currently drying out, the town council asks former sheriff Samuel Craddock to find the killer. Atop his list of suspects is Jack’s brother Curtis, who lives with his wife, Taylor’s sister, and their children in a compound near Waco peopled by paranoid crazies. Curtis, who never liked his brother, stands to inherit a large sum. But Sam, whose skills are sharp as ever, starts to uncover some strange things in Jack’s past and finds $10,000 missing from Jack’s bank account.

Shames’ second (A Killing at Cotton Hill, 2013) is a nifty whodunit whose broad range of characters successfully captures the flavor of small-town Texas.

ROSEMARY AND CRIME

Oust, Gail Minotaur (320 pp.) $25.99 | $12.99 e-book | Dec. 17, 2013 978-1-250-01104-6 978-1-4668-3428-6 e-book A divorcée starting over gets tagged as the primary suspect in the murder of a local chef.

Piper Prescott is finally getting her due. She spent her younger years as a devoted wife and mother, but now that the ink is dry on her divorce, she’s fulfilling her lifelong dream of opening a specialty spice store in her adopted Georgia hometown. Piper is so determined to popularize her new baby, Spice It Up!, that she’s hired local chef Mario Barrone to cook up a special demonstration for her grand opening. Unfortunately, when Piper goes to Mario’s restaurant with the spice delivery he’s most recently demanded, she finds the cantankerous cook stabbed, leaving her holding the knife. Clearly, Piper’s in need of a defense lawyer to prove she had nothing to do with the murder. But the closest she can hope to get is informal advice from her ex-husband, CJ, a glorified ambulance chaser. As the citizens of Brandywine Creek pressure new police chief Wyatt McBride to make an arrest, the otherwise friendly faces Piper usually finds around town turn against Piper and her store. Her wild-child BFF Reba Mae Johnson convinces Piper that the two must take the investigation into their own hands, even though it may provoke the ire of Chief McBride.

Though the investigation is eminently predictable, Piper’s real-life problems as she negotiates her peril, along with some sassy small talk from Reba, will have fans of Oust (Shake, Murder, and Roll, 2011, etc.) looking for the sequel.

THE HOUSE ON THE CLIFF

Williams, Charlotte Bourbon Street/HarperCollins (352 pp.) $14.99 paper | Jan. 7, 2014 978-0-06-228457-0 A client suffering from nightmares leads a psychotherapist down a treacherous path in coastal Wales.

A photograph of a handsome man with his eyes scribbled out baffles Dr. Jessica Mayhew when it arrives anonymously in her office mail. But Gwydion Morgan, a handsome actor with an irrational fear and a recurring dream about being trapped in a small, dark place, takes Jessica’s mind off the photo—and her shaky marriage. Then she realizes that the photo shows Gwydion’s father, Evan, a well-known director, womanizer and, Jessica suspects, child abuser. On a visit to Creigfa House, the Morgans’ imposing cliffside home, Jessica encounters Gwydion’s mother, Arionrhod, |

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“...fabulously geeky...” from ex-purgatory

EX-PURGATORY

and a lingering mystery about what happened to Elsa Lindberg, a Swedish tourist who drowned near the house several years back. As Gwydion’s dreams become more detailed, the middle-aged Jessica becomes increasingly attracted to her 25-year-old client, more suspicious about Elsa’s relationship to the family and more convinced that the answer lies somewhere at Creigfa House.

Jessica’s entanglement with the Morgans has predictable consequences in this low-key psychological mystery, which may stand alone as the only Welsh novel that uses button phobia as a plot device.

Clines, Peter Broadway (336 pp.) $14.00 paper | $9.99 e-book Jan. 14, 2014 978-0-8041-3661-7 978-0-8041-3662-4 e-book The superheroes of the future have been restored to their dull, pedestrian lives, and they have no idea who or where they are.

Clines (Ex-Communication, 2013, etc.) set a lot of geek hearts aflutter with this imaginative series that finds his version of the Justice League caught between a zombie apocalypse and a host of supervillains set loose with a lot of dangerous toys in a world fallen to chaos.

In his fourth outing, the author pulls off a very comic-book–inspired trick, lifting a concept from an old episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation but also liberally borrowing the kinds of high-concept, worldshifting events that run rampant in Marvel Comics “events” as well as bits and pieces from noodle-benders like The Matrix and Inception.

Interestingly, it not only drops a host of Easter eggs for longtime fans, but it also makes for a satisfying entry point for new readers.

We open on George Bailey, a handyman at a local college who finds himself plagued by dark, apocalyptic dreams. One ordinary day, he is approached by a pale girl in a wheelchair who introduces herself as Madelyn Sorensen. “The Corpse Girl,” she says. “And you’re George Bailey. St. George? Formerly the Mighty Dragon?” Eventually, George accepts the fact that he is future zombie world’s analog of Superman and needs to find his mind-wiped comrades. The problem is that our heroes can’t figure out whether they’re being manipulated via telepathy, are trapped in some kind of comprehensive illusion, interacting in a virtual simulation like the matrix, or are simply comatose in a hospital somewhere, dreaming the whole thing up. It can all sound a little juvenile on paper—Clines freely admits that he invented these characters in grade school—but he brings such a youthful enthusiasm to the whole deranged enterprise that it’s easy to overlook a few flaws in the name of good, clean fun.

A fabulously geeky adventure about getting the superpowered band back together.

Williams’ rationalizations for the unprofessional behavior of her heroine, a smart shrink who makes a lot of dumb decisions, don’t add up. But Jessica is a strong, sympathetic protagonist whose own complexities, more than the intricate family puzzle she tries to solve, make her debut worth reading.

science fiction and fantasy HE DRANK, AND SAW THE SPIDER

Bledsoe, Alex Tor (320 pp.) $24.99 | Jan. 14, 2014 978-0-7653-3414-5

Another independently intelligible outing for freelance sword jockey Eddie LaCrosse (Wake of the Bloody Angel, 2012, etc.).

As a beardless mercenary, Eddie fails to save a stranger from being mauled to death by a bear—although he does rescue the baby girl (named, oddly, Isidore) the man dies protecting. He leaves the baby and the stranger’s bag of gold with a good-hearted shepherd’s daughter and goes about his swashbuckling business. Now, 16 years later, sword jockey Eddie is between jobs (“on vacation”) and traveling with his girlfriend, the dauntless and resourceful freelance wagon-driver Liz Dumont. Finding himself in the same village, Eddie’s memories gradually surface, and he wonders what became of Isidore. Well, she’s developed into an intelligent and beautiful teenager, Isadora, who’s captured the heart of Jack, the incognito prince of the realm. But the least of the obstacles to their romance is Jack’s father, King Ellis; the pair will also have to contend with neighboring monarch Mad King Gerald and his ghastly legacy, Gerald’s overbearing sorceress, Opulora, and a huge, powerful, smelly and evidently simple-minded creature named Tatterhead. The plot’s so mysterious, even to the characters, that, halfway through, Bledsoe introduces a wandering scribe to explain what’s going on. Despite the sanitized medieval setting, speech and sensibilities are modern, with hints that the magic is actually immeasurably advanced science. And Eddie’s professed cynicism is mostly a front—he’s actually quite a humanitarian. The biggest failing is his narrative voice: He sounds exactly the same as a youngster and, 16 years later, as an accomplished veteran.

Existing fans will enjoy this book, but it won’t win many converts. (Agent: Marlene Stringer) 32

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STAR ROAD

Costello, Matthew; Hautala, Rick Dunne/St. Martin’s (336 pp.) $25.99 | $12.99 e-book | Jan. 14, 2014 978-1-250-01322-4 978-1-250-01336-1 e-book Pulp science fiction from Costello (Vacation, 2012, etc.) and recently deceased (1949-2013) Hautala (The Demon’s Wife, 2013, etc.), their only collaboration.

The idea readers are asked to swallow— and it’s a large ask—is that space is threaded by a Star Road, a sort of blacktop in hyperspace, constructed by vanished alien Builders, patrolled by voracious Road Bugs that will eat you if you pull over, |

that humanity has learned to navigate in vehicles resembling rocketpropelled, airtight Humvees. Even more absurd, the ramps that lead to the Road’s gateways begin and end on planetary surfaces. Anyhow, the repressive World Council has decreed that it’s in sole charge of the Star Road. The rebellious Runners oppose the Council and insist the Roads should be open to all. Runner head-honcho Ivan Delgato has been captured; unfortunately, his brother, Kyros, has taken over, and he’s a lunatic intent on causing mayhem. So the Council releases Ivan from jail with the agreement that he head for planet Omega IX, confront Kyros and offer the Runners a deal. The action never falters as what starts out as a routine drive for Star Road Vehicle-66’s lively crew and passengers rapidly turns into a video game–inspired nightmare, with hairsbreadth escapes, dastardly plots, heroic rescues, gnomic utterances, monsters, love interests, guns and violence, aliens, and Raiders of the Lost Ark–style tests of nerve and analysis.

Younger readers—the gamer crowd—might well find this amusing and thrilling. The more mature audience will likely be annoyed at the daft concepts but also bemusedly charmed by the authors’ ability to pull rabbit after rabbit out of the hat.

All in all, something for everyone.

MALICE

Gwynne, John Orbit/Little, Brown (640 pp.) $16.00 paper | Dec. 3, 2013 978-0-316-39973-9 Series: The Faithful and the Fallen, 1 A middling Middle Earth–ish extravaganza with all the usual thrills, chills, spills and frills.

All modern fantasy begins with J.R.R. Tolkien, and Tolkien begins with the Icelandic sagas and the Mabinogion. Debut author Gwynne’s overstuffed but slow-moving contribution to the genre—the first in a series, of course—wears the latter source on its sleeve: “Fionn ap Toin, Marrock ben Rhagor, why do you come here on this first day of the Birth Moon?” Why, indeed? Well, therein hangs the tale. The protagonist is a 14-year-old commoner named Corban, son of a swineherd, who, as happens in such things, turns out to be more resourceful than his porcine-production background might suggest. There are bad doings afoot in Tintagel—beg pardon, the Banished Lands—where nobles plot against nobles even as there are stirrings of renewed titanomachia, that war between giants and humans having given the place some of its gloominess. There’s treachery aplenty, peppered with odd episodes inspired by other sources, such as an Androclesand-lion moment in which Corban rescues a fierce wolven (“rarely seen here, preferring the south of Ardan, regions of deep forest and sweeping moors, where the auroch herds roamed”). It’s a good move: You never can tell when a wolven ally will come in handy, especially when there are wyrms around.

Gwynne’s effort pales in comparison to George R.R. Martin’s gold-standard work, but it’s nothing bad; the story grinds to a halt at points, but at others, there’s plenty of action.

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REX REGIS

Modesitt Jr., L.E. Tor (448 pp.) $27.99 | $14.99 e-book | Jan. 7, 2014 978-0-7653-3634-7 978-1-4668-3208-4 e-book Series: Imager Portfolio, 8 Another, perhaps the final, installment of the prequel fantasy series (Antiagon Fire, 2013, etc.) involving the unification of Lydar under a single ruler.

Imager Quaeryt’s crushing of Antiago and its vicious rulers came at great personal cost. His wife, Vaelora, lost the baby she was carrying, while Quaeryt himself was badly injured and his hair and fingernails turned white. Now, Quaeryt, Vaelora, the imagers (wizards) and armies head back to Variana, mending or building new bridges, quelling resentful Bovarian High Holders and greedy Factors as they go. Quaeryt is troubled by dreams or visions of the godlike imager Erion, who repeatedly warns him not to seek personal gain. Once they reach Variana, they face a difficult interview with Lord Bhayar, who is thrilled by Quaeryt’s successes but less than pleased that he has so far overstepped his orders. Still, of all Lydar, only Khel remains uncommitted to Bhayar, and the Khellans have agreed to consider terms. Quaeryt and Vaelora set to work as joint minister for administration and supply of Bovaria.

Yet, Quaeryt is troubled that no dispatches have arrived from Submarshal Myskyl in the north, and he begins to suspect that Myskyl and Marshal Deucalon are conspiring with the Bovarian imagers who vanished after the battle in which Quaeryt vanquished Rex Kharst. Bhayar refuses to believe that old soldiers who served his father loyally could be conspiring against him, so Quaeryt must find solid evidence while persuading Bhayar to let him establish a Collegium where imagers can safely be educated and trained in the service of the state. Overall, workmanlike rather than spectacular, as Modesitt illustrates honor, dedication and estimable personal values through the words and deeds of his leading characters.

Fans won’t be disappointed.

LIKE A MIGHTY ARMY

Weber, David Tor (672 pp.) $27.99 | $14.99 e-book | Feb. 4, 2014 978-0-7653-2156-5 978-1-4299-4508-0 e-book Series: Safehold, 7 Another doorstopper in a doorstopper series, the seventh of Weber’s popular slow-burn Safehold yarns (Midst Toil and Tribulation, 2012, etc.).

The premise is that a powerful and xenophobic alien race, the Gbaba, attacked and destroyed Earth. The survivors fled to planet Safehold, where a faction of religious fanatics, the Church of God Awaiting, seized power and, in the name of keeping humanity hidden, buried all evidence of advanced science fiction & fantasy

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technology and introduced a repressive medieval regime, complete with inquisition to deal with dissenters. Nearly 900 years later—and from this entry, you won’t learn how—a cybernetic avatar, Merlin Athrawes, appeared and stealthily began to introduce advanced technology in recognition that only a global war would suffice to overthrow the absolute grip of the church. Assisted by Merlin and other avatars, virtual personalities and an artificial intelligence, the island empire of Charis has declared its independence from the church and is forging ahead with steam-powered ships and equipment, modern-style field guns and efficient assault rifles, though as yet only a handful of the rebellion’s top leaders know Merlin’s secret. Other lands around the globe have allied with Charis, and the fighting has been bloody, debilitating and vengeful. Yet the church’s vast armies and resources are far from defeated and, in their own limited way, are capable of changing and adapting to meet the threat. Fans know the formula: plenty of rousing battle scenes— Weber’s specialty—and characters that gradually, over many pages, come into focus, along with a seemingly endless torrent of detail, some rich and illuminating but more commonly scarcely relevant to the plot or to those readers who’d rather just get to the combat.

If you’re not already addicted to this series, don’t start here.

make sense for the direction of the whole, and the end result is delightful and heartwarming enough to help readers forget the occasional weaknesses.

Touching and infused with the joy of family and the light of the Christmas season.

NO GOOD DUKE GOES UNPUNISHED

MacLean, Sarah Avon/HarperCollins (400 pp.) $7.99 paper | Nov. 26, 2013 978-0-06-206854-5 A duke who has lived under the shadow of suspicion for a murder he’s not sure he didn’t commit holds the possibility of redemption in his hands when the lady reappears, alive and well, though she brings other threats—to his equilibrium and to his heart.

Twelve years ago, William Harrow, Marquess of Chapin and heir to the dukedom of Lamont, woke up on the morning of his father’s wedding to find that he was in the would-be bride’s bed, along with an astonishing amount of blood, and that the lady herself was nowhere to be found. Under a cloud of suspicion of murder, the marquess was banished from his family and from polite society, resurrecting himself as Temple, first a street fighter, then a partner in the Fallen Angel, the exclusive London casino. Members of the club may petition for the opportunity to challenge the undefeated Temple in the boxing ring; if the challenge is accepted and the patron wins, all of his debts will be forgiven. One dark night, Temple is approached by none other than long-lost Mara Lowe, assumed dead at Temple’s hands.

Mara’s brother has lost everything to the Fallen Angel, and she promises to re-enter London society and prove Temple is innocent in exchange for debt forgiveness. Understandably angry, Temple decides on another path, one that will ruin Mara once and for all. Mara has more at stake than her brother’s fortune, but given Temple’s angry reception of her, she’s can’t trust him with her secrets, even as she finds herself inexplicably drawn to the enigmatic outcast. As for Temple, the closer he gets to his retribution, the more he wonders if he hasn’t well and truly met his match in every possible way, questioning his thirst for vengeance. In the third installment of the Rules of Scoundrels series, MacLean once again creates compelling and complex characters and sets them on a path toward love and reconciliation that begins with seemingly impossible odds and ends with exquisite fulfillment.

Beguiling and emotionally lush.

r om a n c e THE CHRISTMAS ANGEL

Maas, Jane Dunne/St. Martin's (192 pp.) $16.99 | Nov. 19, 2013 978-1-250-03757-2

The journey of an heirloom Christmas angel reflects the loves and losses of a family through five generations.

When Owen, a Welsh miner, wins a trip to London in 1875 and meets Jessica, an up-and-coming actress, he is bound and determined to marry her. Exchanging letters helps the couple fall in love, and Owen builds Jessica a house in Wales. He also carves a beautiful angel to sit at the top of an outdoor Christmas tree. But, in the end, Jessica chooses her career over Owen, giving him back the angel. The miner sets off for America, winding up in Pennsylvania. Settling in, Owen meets Maggie, and together, they raise four children and usher in the 20th century, which will see the family face two world wars, more romance and a surprisingly winding road, all the while maintaining the tradition of placing the lovely angel on top of an outdoor tree. This story is short and sweet, with a charming intergenerational set of love stories and a hint of Christmas magic. Though the storytelling is sometimes odd and simplistic, and the narrative style is often more like a series of vignettes rather than a seamless story, the choices 34

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nonfiction SMALL MOVE, BIG CHANGE Using Microresolutions to Transform Your Life Permanently

These titles earned the Kirkus Star: OUR ONE COMMON COUNTRY by James B.Conroy....................... 42

Arnold, Caroline L. Viking (272 pp.) $27.95 | Jan. 20, 2014 978-0-670-01534-4

NOT I by Joachim Fest......................................................................... 44 THE EMPIRE OF NECESSITY by Greg Grandin.................................47 THE POPE AND MUSSOLINI by David I. Kertzer............................54 HOW TO BE DANISH by Patrick Kingsley..........................................55 THE MAP OF ENOUGH by Molly Caro May...................................... 57 MY LIFE IN MIDDLEMARCH by Rebecca Mead.................................58 SEYMOUR HERSH by Robert Miraldi............................................... 60 READING DANTE by Prue Shaw....................................................... 66 LITTLE FAILURE by Gary Shteyngart.................................................67 THE WINE SAVANT by Michael Steinberger..................................... 68 PAT AND DICK by Will Swift............................................................. 69

THE EMPIRE OF NECESSITY Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World

Grandin, Greg Metropolitan/Henry Holt (384 pp.) $30.00 Jan. 14, 2014 978-0-8050-9453-4

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Goldman Sachs managing director and technology leader Arnold tenders some advice you may have heard from your kindergarten teacher: Focus, and take smaller bites.

The author does not claim to be offering revolutionary insights—indeed, at times, it feels as though she is reinventing the wheel—but she does have a calming and anecdotally rich way of presenting the idea that small changes lead to big change. Why do we fail to attain our well-intentioned resolutions? Why do, according to one study, 88 percent of resolutions falter and fizzle, raining guilt and demoralization down on our heads? Very simply, writes Arnold, we fail to be strategic and targeted. The author is low-key in an encouraging way, and she lays out a method of conduct that is small but meaningful, a compact commitment designed to overpower a precise target and deliver the immediate benefits of achievement—in other words, a sustainable act of willpower, working from the edge of the issue to the heart of any matter. “Microresolutions,” writes the author, “are designed to help you repeat a behavior until it becomes habit.” Arnold presents a number of guiding lights: Micro moves must be easy and explicit (you up the ante when you are ready—don’t let “scope creep” make you take on too much too early); an immediate payoff is important, and it resonates with satisfaction; and it must be personally achieved without relying on others. Then comes anecdotal material about how Arnold and others went about various projects: getting more sleep, getting fit, controlling eating and honest communication (though not necessarily the art of honest conversation— that’s a whole book in itself).

Wisdom from time immemorial—take it a day at a time and moderation in all things—reworked by Arnold to morph broad goals into manageable, measurable microresolutions.

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“Astute and bursting with information—an entertaining treat for sitcom fans and a valuable contribution to TV history.” from sitcom

SITCOM A History in 24 Episodes from I Love Lucy to Community

AMERICAN SAINT The Life of Elizabeth Seton Barthel, Joan Dunne/St. Martin’s (304 pp.) $26.99 | Mar. 4, 2014 978-0-312-57162-7 978-1-250-03715-2 e-book

Austerlitz, Saul Chicago Review (416 pp.) $19.95 paper | Mar. 1, 2014 978-1613743843

Sitcoms reveal America’s changing reality, writes the author in this enthusiastic overview of an enduring genre.

Movie and TV critic Austerlitz (Another Fine Mess: A History of American Film Comedy, 2010, etc.) brings his keen analysis of American culture to sitcoms, long the staple of prime time. Each chapter focuses on a single episode of a popular show, which launches the author’s investigation into the evolution of comedy; the talents of stars, producers and writers; and the changing expectations of viewers. As the author sees it, sitcoms emerged in the 1950s as “field guides to the new postwar consensus, an effort to simultaneously reflect the lives of their audiences and subtly steer their behavior.”

The shows celebrated family life and domesticity, even when their subjects were sparring, childless couples, such as Ralph and Alice Kramden in The Honeymooners. Most early sitcoms featured middle-class white families with stay-at-home mothers, children who invariably got into and out of mischief in half an hour, and fathers who did not always know best. Those sitcoms, writes the author, “promised comfort and familiarity, the certainty of an eternal present free of all but the most fleeting concerns.” In evaluating the genre, Austerlitz sets the bar high: I Love Lucy was brilliant, while Leave it to Beaver was repetitive and only occasionally funny. Some of his discoveries may surprise readers: The long-running, award-winning The Dick Van Dyke Show and Cheers were almost cancelled after their first seasons; Carl Reiner envisioned Johnny Carson for Van Dyke’s role; the creator of the racist Archie Bunker was “a card-carrying liberal humanist.” Roseanne, writes the author, disrupted the idea of sitcom as middle-class comfort zone; Friends offered viewers “a replacement family” in the form of a group of confidants; Seinfeld began a trend in which sitcoms spoofed television itself, “undercutting its medium, ridiculing its traditions and its unspoken assumptions.”

Astute and bursting with information—an entertaining treat for sitcom fans and a valuable contribution to TV history. (24 b/w photos)

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A biography of the first American saint, who described herself as “the Mad Enthusiast.”

Elizabeth Seton (1774–1821) was elevated to sainthood in 1975 on the basis of her religious fervor and several posthumous miracles. Barthel (A Death in California, 1981, etc.) vividly brings to life a strong-willed, contradictory, passionate woman. Born into a notable New York family (her father was a famous physician), Seton, like many other wealthy Americans, was raised as an Episcopalian. Catholicism was illegal in New York; even after it became legal in 1790, it was associated with “dirty, filthy, red-faced” immigrants. However, at the age of 30, after her husband died of tuberculosis in Italy, Seton stepped foot into a Catholic church. Overwhelmed by the spectacle of Sunday Mass, she collapsed, sobbing. For the next few months, she lived with devout Italian friends and fell in love with the “handsome, dashing” 39-year-old brother of her host.

By the time Seton returned to America, she was determined to convert. Her friends and family were scandalized, but Seton felt that “Jesus came to her in a profoundly intimate way” through the Eucharist, and she felt close to Mary as well. The Catholic Church, she was certain, was “the one, true church of Christ.”

Seton was not content merely to worship. Through arduous efforts and political astuteness, she founded and directed the first order of American nuns, countering church authorities who wanted to limit women’s participation. Whether lured by Seton’s own charisma, Catholic doctrine or several attractive young priests, other women joined her. The Sisters of Charity survived and shaped the future of American Catholicism.

Barthel sets Seton’s life against the roiling political context of the American Revolution and its aftermath, offering a rounded portrait of an ambitious woman who struggled mightily to fulfill the tenets of her faith: to be obedient, merciful and good. (Two 8-page b/w photo inserts)

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WITHOUT MERCY The Stunning True Story of Race, Crime, and Corruption in the Deep South Beasley, David St. Martin’s (304 pp.) $26.99 | Jan. 28, 2014 978-1-250-01466-5 978-1-250-01467-2 e-book

A story of racism, injustice, corruption and greed run rampant in 1930s Georgia.

Former Atlanta Journal Constitution editor Beasley (co-author: Inside Coca-Cola: A CEO’s Life Story of Building the World’s Most Popular Brand, 2011) digs into some shameful events in Georgia’s history, focusing mostly on a judicial system that swiftly arrested, tried, convicted and sent six black men to the electric chair while two white “thrill killers” escaped that fate. The author provides details of the known facts behind their crimes and of the mass execution on the night of Dec. 9, 1938. To add insult to injury, five of the six bodies were not even given burial but were turned over to medical schools as cadavers. The racist bent of all-white Southern juries is a familiar story, but the close ties between the Ku Klux Klan and the state government will perhaps be news. According to Beasley, the Klan infiltrated the state government. E.D. Rivers, governor from 1937 to 1941, had been named a Grand Titan for the state of Georgia by Hiram Wesley Evans, the Klan’s Imperial Wizard. After his inauguration, Rivers gave Evans a monopoly on the state’s asphalt business, a venture that later expanded into other lucrative businesses. Beasley writes that besides handing Evans a “license to print money” at the government’s expense, the corrupt Rivers had his own racket of selling pardons to convicted gangsters, murderers and other criminals. Unfortunately, the author’s account is diffuse and repetitive, losing focus by overly detailing minor characters and wandering off into side issues such as the eugenics movement.

Missing here is the firm hand of an editor that might have shaped a verbose and rather shapeless narrative into a compelling story, for the facts of the matter deserve a better telling. (8-page b/w photo insert)

Berkin (History/Baruch Coll.; Civil War Wives, 2009, etc.) tells the story of a strong woman who succeeded in spite of herself. The young Baltimore beauty was not only intelligent, but also blessed with a quick wit. She was a good friend of Dolley Madison, who introduced her to the best of Washington society. Brash and dressed in the newest shockingly bare styles out of France without a thought to opinion, she found that Jérome Bonaparte was just what she was looking for. The youngest brother of Napoleon, he did not enjoy the navy and left his post in the Caribbean to see America. Jérome and Elizabeth fell madly in love; after a lengthy fight with her father, the couple married in late 1803. Napoleon was livid and ordered his brother home to France—without that American girl. Elizabeth was banned from entering any port in Europe. Jérome finally succumbed to his brother’s demand, and his return to France in 1805 was the end of the marriage. After Napoleon annulled the marriage, she strove for her son’s legitimacy, first with the emperor himself and eventually with Napoleon III and finally in the courts of France, all to no avail. This story would be that of just another headstrong girl who married badly if it weren’t

WONDROUS BEAUTY The Life and Adventures of Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte Berkin, Carol Knopf (256 pp.) $27.95 | Feb. 17, 2014 978-0-307-59278-1

Biography of Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte (1875–1879), who fought against the conventions of her time in “a country that lauded self-interest and self-fulfillment for its men but confinement and sacrifice for their wives.” |

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“Talking points for liberals to refute talking points by conservatives over a controversy that just won’t quit.” from the benghazi hoax

THE BITE IN THE APPLE A Memoir of My Life with Steve Jobs

for her fierce independence. She went to Europe seeking intellectual freedom and an identity, carefully budgeted her scant funds, invested wisely and became one of America’s first selfmade women.

A wonderful story of a woman who managed to achieve independence and leave her mark in a world not quite ready for her. (8 pages of color illustrations)

BIRTH SCHOOL METALLICA DEATH The Biography, Volume 1 Brannigan, Paul; Winwood, Ian Da Capo/Perseus (416 pp.) $27.99 | Nov. 15, 2013 978-0-306-82186-8 978-0-306-82187-5 e-book

First half of a projected two-part biography of the metal masters of the universe.

Former Kerrang! editor Brannigan (This Is a Call: The Life and Times of Dave Grohl, 2010) and U.K. rock journalist Winwood dreamed up this ambitious undertaking over pints in a London pub. Both Brits had covered Metallica for years, and clearly, both held the megaband in the highest regard. This volume covers the hardworking, hard-drinking, hard-driving band’s first decade, from its founding in Los Angeles by drummer Lars Ulrich and rhythm guitarist/vocalist James Hetfield in 1981 to the preview of its game-changing fifth album at Madison Square Garden in 1991. (Among the 10,000 fans lined up to hear the album were “members of that summer’s other most celebrated band: Nirvana.”) True to its title, this biography also follows each significant member—including founding lead guitarist Dave Mustaine and the man who replaced him, Kirk Hammett—from birth through school, life in Metallica and, in the case of bassist Cliff Burton, shockingly premature death in a tour bus accident in 1986. Though a devastating personal and professional loss for his colleagues, Burton’s death caused scarcely a skipped beat in Metallica’s unstoppable momentum toward world domination: Three weeks later, the bassist was replaced by speed-metal hero Jason Newsted. In one of their most interesting revelations, Brannigan and Winwood entertain (without fully dispelling) rumors that Burton and Hetfield had actually been conspiring to replace Ulrich, whose talents as drummer were as controversial as his talents at self-promotion were not. Though the writing is uneven, sometimes bogging the narrative’s momentum down in unnecessary verbosity, the authors’ enthusiasm for their subject is infectious.

They’re well-placed to show how Metallica learned from their British New Wave of heavy-metal forebears and, in true Oedipal fashion, killed the fathers to create something new.

For metal heads and most fans of hard rock.

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Brennan, Chrisann St. Martin’s (320 pp.) $25.99 | Oct. 29, 2013 978-1-250-03876-0

Free-wheeling memoir of the author’s relationship with the young Steve Jobs, which led to the birth of their daughter, Lisa.

When artist Brennan writes that “[t]he histories of women involved with so-called great men occupy a shabby territory in the public’s mind,” it is a poor strategy to deflect potential criticism of motives and conduct, for it dodges personal responsibility, something she imparts to Jobs, who swarmed with “misanthropic confusion.” Their on-again, off-again relationship was never smooth, and the author could relate to Jobs’ adoptive mother’s comment: “Steve was so difficult a child that by the time he was two I felt we had made a mistake. I wanted to return him.” Regardless, the author “knew he was a genius when I first saw him because his eyes shone with brilliant, complicated cartwheels of light,” that he “had a big conversation going on inside,” and when he spoke, “[h]e would often say things that seemed to come from the high winds of a vast plain.” In Jobs, she found a seeker who came with a price— “Highs and lows are what it takes to break the mold of previous consciousness and allow world-shattering ideas to be birthed”— but Jobs was psychologically damaged goods, needy of all the attention, and “[h]e’d wipe people out in the process” of getting it. Brennan writes of their taking LSD, Jobs’ Zen teacher and his friendships, and a sweet vignette of days on a communal farm, yet she provides nothing groundbreaking. Jobs was cheap and caustic and tried to drive a stake between mother and daughter—though seemingly worthy criticism bleeds into odd psychological speculation: “I will be clear. Steve was not a sexual predator of children. There was something else going on…my sense is that part of Steve’s fractured emotional development resulted in his ludicrously fetishizing sexuality and romance.”

For those who require the full Jobs collection. (8-page photo insert)

THE BENGHAZI HOAX

Brock, David; Rabin-Havt, Ari Media Matters for America (104 pp.) $0.99 e-book | Oct. 16, 2013

Talking points for liberals to refute talking points by conservatives over a controversy that just won’t quit.

On Sept. 11, 2012, the U.S. embassy compound in Benghazi, Libya, suffered a terrorist attack that left four Americans dead, including U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, and 10 injured. Initial speculation that this was a protest against an anti-Muslim YouTube video was soon corrected to confirm |

that it was a well-plotted action by terrorists who have yet to be caught. Beyond these facts, so much remains up for grabs, with conservatives claiming that the compound should have been better protected and should have received reinforcements, that President Barack Obama is soft on terrorism and tried to shift blame, and that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has lied about her role and responsibility in the tragedy. To the contrary, asserts Media Matters for America founder Brock (The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy, 2004, etc.) in this strong defense of the Democratic response, a conspiracy of conservative lies has kept this controversy alive, primarily through the Fox News talking heads and other “hoaxsters,” including Mitt Romney and senators John McCain, Lindsay Graham and Kelly Ayotte. They have progressed from the scapegoating of Obama to an attempt to derail Clinton’s campaign as the front-runner to be nominated as his successor. “The reality is that there are two Benghazis,” writes the author, one in which “the most basic facts would get twisted, contorted, even invented out of thin air to create bogus narratives” by “a Republican noise machine.”

If Hillary Clinton does indeed run for president, questions concerning Benghazi will continue to be raised, and this book attempts to answer every one of them in her defense.

people and ideas can flourish”—and some less-than-helpful tidbits, but the majority of the tips are useful. Some of the more notable contributors include the CEOs of Zappos, eBay, Stetson, Atlantic Records Group, Accenture, Tesco, ING Direct, United Entertainment Group, Saks, Hilton Worldwide and The Container Store.

Reams of practical advice for and from business leaders, most—thankfully—with a human, caring touch.

QUICK AND NIMBLE Lessons from Leading CEOs on How to Create a Culture of Innovation

Bryant, Adam Times/Henry Holt (288 pp.) $26.00 | Jan. 7, 2014 978-0-8050-9701-6

New York Times business reporter Bryant (The Corner Office: Indispensable and Unexpected Lessons from CEOs on How to Lead and Succeed, 2011) collects advice from CEOs on how to build a business culture that attracts and encourages the best employees.

How do you keep that old magic of successful startup businesses? Maintaining the initial soul, passion and nimbleness of those first days is the author’s aim in this chatty, anecdotally rich series of interviews with more than 200 CEOs, a stew of experience from which Bryant tries to spear the nuggets of wisdom. Culture is the key, writes the author: “[I]nnovation is the byproduct of an effective culture.” Of course, that’s not as easy as it sounds, for it requires much of the CEO: a free flow of ideas, a tempering of the ego and the encouragement of the development of new skills to keep things fresh. CEOs must live by and be responsible to the values of the business, be dependable and caring, keep meetings to the point and small in size so people can participate, develop a culture of respect, solicit input by talking directly with the person involved. With so many business professionals weighing in, there is bound to be some static: One CEO extols giving employees “space and rope,” then emphasizes teamwork. There are also plenty of bromides—“A successful culture is like a greenhouse where |

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KNOWING MANDELA A Personal Portrait

Carlin, John Perennial/HarperCollins (160 pp.) $14.99 paper | Dec. 10, 2013 978-0-06-232393-4

Anecdotal, intimate remembrance of the South African leader by a journalist who grew to love him.

As the South African correspondent for the London Independent during the key years between the release of Nelson Mandela from prison in 1990 and his election as president of South Africa in 1994, Carlin (Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game that Made a Nation, 2008) offers a thoughtful tribute to this unparalleled leader within the frame of his leadership legacy. The author looks at the various tactics Mandela used to bring about a nearly miraculous transition from apartheid to all-inclusive democracy in South Africa. His 27-year imprisonment had softened the edges of the African National Congress leader, who had served as head of the group’s armed wing. He was condemned in his 1964 trial for taking up arms against the state; in prison at Robben Island and elsewhere, Mandela had turned his unimaginable suffering into a sense of duty, gravitas and forgiveness, even of his enemies. In prison, his natural graciousness won over even his white guards, and he began to study Afrikaans in an attempt to understand the Afrikaner and his history. Mandela’s ability to take the long view, as Carlin delineates, allowed him to see beyond calls for vengeance after violence broke out within black townships, instigated by the rival Inkatha group or after the assassination of ANC leader Chris Hani by a white man in 1993. Mandela’s magnanimity disarmed both blacks and whites, and his incredible stature as a much-needed peacemaker largely kept his estranged wife from being prosecuted for the violence and murderous actions she had encouraged in her bodyguards. Carlin zeroes in on Mandela’s dignified capacity to allow all people, despite their backgrounds, to change and evolve for the good.

A brief but moving look at the rare qualities of an effective, good-hearted leader.

SEX WORKERS UNITE A History of the Movement from Stonewall to Slutwalk Chateauvert, Melinda Beacon (272 pp.) $25.95 | $25.95 e-book | Jan. 7, 2014 978-0-8070-6139-8 978-0-8070-6140-4 e-book

A verbose chronology of the perpetual demonization of prostitution.

“Human rights for sex workers reframes decriminalization,” writes grass-roots sexuality and gender activist Chateauvert (Center for Africana Studies/Univ. of Pennsylvania) 40

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in her historical account of sex workers, who, in her opinion, are long overdue to receive universal respect and justice. Combining decades of documentation and personal experience teaching university-level social justice course work, Chateauvert presents her treatise via a rapid-fire avalanche of focal events, key players and historically relevant advocates for social change. Though the direction of the dense chapters is somewhat rudderless, the breadth of the material impressively commemorates the movement’s decadeslong struggle. The author spotlights many historic activist groups, such as ACT UP and anti-entrapment organization COYOTE, then moves on to address the patriarchal resistance and identity politics of the 1970s, AIDS awareness and prevention efforts, and the galvanization of the pornography and sex-for-hire industry toward being recognized as a hyperprofitable, bona fide business.

Yet the struggle for legitimate recognition continues, as does the ridicule associated with those who make sex work their livelihood, Chateauvert soberly notes. Negative repercussions of the trade proliferate and manifest in pernicious prejudices like “slutshaming,” which implies the victim of a sex crime deserved it, and “whorephobia,” a denigrating form of sex panic. While consistently inclusive of all manner of sex-trade workers, the author primarily focuses on the plights of lesbians, the transgendered population and feminists, though she shows a particular disdain for “straight” pro-monogamists and those who believe a prostitute’s self-image is the key to their victimization. Chateauvert examines more contemporary visibility activities, including SlutWalk, a multi-city empowerment event meant to peacefully demand that sex workers be destigmatized and respected as a humane community.

Overly professorial in tone, yet it sufficiently delivers the importance and impact of sexual equality for all.

THE GOLDEN THREAD A History of Writing Clayton, Ewan Counterpoint (400 pp.) $30.00 | Feb. 11, 2014 978-1-61902-242-3

British calligrapher Clayton (Arts, Design and Media/Univ. of Sunderland) embarks on an enormous undertaking: the history of the written word.

From Egypt circa 1850 B.C. to Xerox PARC in California, where the author lent his typographical expertise in the early days of the computer, Clayton’s narrative is necessarily both mind-numbingly specific and vastly general. Moreover, he mostly ignores all but the Greco-Roman tradition from which our own writing descends, devoting very little space to early printing in China and Korea. As a calligrapher, Clayton waxes rapturously on the craft of writing and how cultural shifts have informed the “concept of an alphabet as an interrelated system of proportional forms.” This proceeded from the era of the Greeks’ trading with Phoenician cities, when they adapted their writing from syllabic to the latter’s simpler alphabet. Eventually, Greek “monoline” (all letters having the same thickness) dovetailed into Roman inscription, which used fuller, more sophisticated forms. Everyday |

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“A brilliant account of the doomed effort to end the Civil War through diplomacy.” from our one common country

writing emerged from official documents, giving way to quicker, cursive scripts and rounder uncials, the precursor to lowercasing.

Clayton emphasizes the importance of literacy to the rich periods of writing development—e.g., in the A.D. fourth century, citizens of Rome enjoyed a wide variety of libraries; the early Christian monks and scholars like Eusebius created a new method of book production; Charlemagne instituted a new era of administrative discipline in which the influential “Carolingian minuscule” was adopted; and Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press helped spur the Protestant Reformation. Hand in hand with the evolution of writing went paper and quill pens, and Clayton spills plenty of ink over these devices. He dwells fondly on the craftsmen who created the gorgeous fonts that bear their names and how periods of rich letter writing gave way to the ascendancy of newspapers, advertising and the “mechanical interventions” of the Industrial Revolution.

However, even as the digital age took off, the computer continued to require elegant topography.

A four-millennia trajectory that nearly overwhelms with its incremental magnitude.

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OUR ONE COMMON COUNTRY Abraham Lincoln and the Hampton Roads Peace Conference of 1865 Conroy, James B. Lyons Press (416 pp.) $27.95 | Jan. 7, 2014 978-0-7627-7807-2

A brilliant account of the doomed effort to end the Civil War through diplomacy.

In February 1865 three “commissioners,” all prominent members of the Confederate government, met with Abraham Lincoln and Secretary of State William Seward on a riverboat near Hampton Roads, Va., to explore the possibility of a negotiated end to the Civil War, an event briefly portrayed in the recent film Lincoln. The project appeared hopeless from the start; schemes were launched to derail the conference before it could begin, deftly defeated by further chicanery on the parts of the

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commissioners and Ulysses Grant. Legal and political difficulties beset the conference as well, given the commissioners’ lack of authority to conclude an agreement, Jefferson Davis’ claim that he had no authority to dissolve the Confederacy, and Lincoln’s refusal to recognize the existence of a separate government in Richmond. In this excellent debut, Bostonbased attorney Conroy vividly captures the hope, weariness, despair and anger of the moment and the complexity of feelings on both sides. Everyone yearned for peace, but in the end, Southern hard-liners clung to an increasingly incredible denial of their impending defeat, and Northern radicals bent on vengeance made agreement impossible even at this late stage of the war. The author lays out this tragic and fascinating story in a style that is witty, acerbic and ironic. His characters stand out as strikingly distinctive individuals, including the bitter, delusional dead-ender Davis, a man “with a politeness so studied as to be almost sarcastic”; Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, with his “nerve-chilling stare and his perfumed beard”; and Stanton’s agent, the officious Maj. Thomas Eckert, who “descended from Washington City like the coming of the Lord.” Towering over all is Lincoln, desperate to end the killing but, despite the fears of the radical Republicans, adamant about reunion and the end of slavery as the price of peace.

A splendid addition to any Civil War library.

CHURCHILL’S FIRST WAR Young Winston at War with the Afghans Coughlin, Con Dunne/St. Martin’s (320 pp.) $26.99 | Jan. 28, 2014 978-1-250-04304-7 978-1-4668-4104-8 e-book

Daily Telegraph executive foreign editor Coughlin (Khomeini’s Ghost: The Iranian Revolution and the Rise of Militant Islam, 2009, etc.) infuses many of the celebrated traits of Winston Churchill (1874–1965) with a charming naïveté as he set out as a young man to reclaim his family’s good name.

Churchill’s determination to become a soldier played out against the illustrious legend of his distinguished grandfather, the first Duke of Marlborough, and the disgrace of his own father’s tarnished reputation as a hotheaded Tory statesman. As a boy, Churchill was obsessed with his collection of toy soldiers lined up in correct formation; he gleaned that “proving personal courage on the field of battle was a prerequisite for the pursuit of a career in politics.” Getting into the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, on the third try did not win his father’s approval, yet joining the cavalry proved his greatest joy. In choosing the elite 4th Queen’s Own Hussars, he got a smart uniform and a commanding officer, Col. John Brabazon, who agreed to take on young Winston as a favor to his well-connected mother. Coughlin’s bifurcated work moves between a winning biography of Churchill and a tortured catalog of Afghan history led by the precursors to the Taliban. Allied with his spendthrift mother to advance his career, |

Churchill tried to figure out how to achieve personal glory as quickly as possible, first in Cuba, then India. While his service with the Malakand Field Force quelling tribal resentment that erupted over the arbitrary Durand Line only lasted six weeks, his dispatches about the campaign published in the Daily Telegraph were remarkable and made his name as “knight of pen and sword.”

Current soldiers in Afghanistan still read Churchill’s thoughtful account of civilization and tribal intractability.

An absorbing youthful biography and a messy history lesson that holds eerie pertinence today.

YOU HERD ME! I’ll Say It If Nobody Else Will Cowherd, Colin Crown Archetype (320 pp.) $26.00 | Nov. 19, 2013 978-0-8041-3789-8

ESPN Radio host Cowherd sounds off on a variety of sports topics.

Although his business obliges him “to summon a strong opinion,” the author insists his views are honestly held, not adopted merely for the sake of controversy. It’s his job, he claims, to look beyond the press releases and the consumer’s to figure out who among the talking heads offers a reliable source of information. In his debut, Cowherd shotguns the sports world in a series of short chapters, each a blast on a hot topic—e.g., why Nike is the only company that can mount a marketing campaign sufficiently powerful to drive public opinion; why college basketball coaches are so insufferable; why quarterbacks from second-tier colleges have greater success in the NFL than those from big schools; why home-field advantage is so pronounced in the NFL; why the X Games ought to get out of the Olympics; why the Southeastern Conference is the biggest dynasty in sports; and why the NFL should ban in-stadium beer sales. The phone lines light up when Cowherd compares Bill Belichick to Steve Jobs, Major League Baseball to the Republican Party, Boston fans to 5-year-olds, John Daly to Allen Iverson, Peyton Manning to Robin Williams. Occasionally, he discourses on a nonsports topic—how “menstrual synchrony” has its male equivalent in the group stupidity of young men, why all comedians eventually lose their edges and why a so-called balanced life is overrated—but he sticks mostly to the games and personalities that obsess our sports-crazed nation. Cowherd’s socially liberal views often place him at odds with the sports world, and his brashness can be off-putting, but his departures from conventional wisdom, his humor and—notwithstanding his confessions of predictions gone horribly wrong—his frequently incisive trendspotting and analysis set him apart from the pack of radio hosts who do no more than fill time.

Provocative and amusing takes on the passing sports parade.

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“A stunning portrait of a strenuously anti-Nazi family in Berlin who managed to hang on to their moral convictions during the brutalizing Hitler years.” from not i

IN BED WITH WALL STREET The Conspiracy Crippling Our Global Economy Doyle, Larry Palgrave Macmillan (240 pp.) $26.00 | Jan. 7, 2014 978-1-137-27872-2

A former Wall Street insider excoriates the current nonsystem of alleged self-regulation and weak government regulation in the finance industry.

After being employed as a mortgage-backed securities trader at Bank of America, Bear Stearns and other large financial firms, Doyle became disillusioned and departed. He now runs his own investment practice and serves as something of a whistle-blower. The problems he discusses are mostly familiar to readers conversant in current American politics: the coziness of legislators and lobbyists; campaign contributions meant to sway thinking and, sometimes, votes; government regulatory agencies, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, that seem more watchful than they are, as well as so-called selfregulatory groups within the Wall Street community that rarely protect investors from inexcusable financial losses. With great intensity, Doyle focuses on a little-known self-regulator called the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. His deep digging into the operations of that group qualifies as investigative journalism, and the scandalous details he recounts are impressive.

Unfortunately, Doyle does not engage lay readers, relying far too heavily on unfamiliar acronyms and institutional prose; further, he does not draw memorable characters, either the heroes or the villains. As a result, the book is mostly exhausting to understand, although the effort may be worthwhile for patient readers with some economics background. The final chapter, a lengthy list of proposed reforms, is far easier to digest. Doyle proposes a new agency to be created by Congress (until now part of the scandal rather than part of the solution)—called the Financial Regulatory Review Board—and run by highly qualified individuals currently in the private sector who have demonstrated a passion for public service. The author has clearly done his homework while thinking about a reform effort.

An important book that could have been much better with improved writing and greater insider sharing by Doyle.

THE FAT LADY SANG

Evans, Robert It Books/HarperCollins (240 pp.) $17.99 paper | Nov. 12, 2013 978-0-06-228604-8 978-0-06-222834-5 e-book The notorious kid is still in the picture.

Former Paramount Studios head Evans (The Kid Stays in the Picture: A Notorious Life, 1994) suffered three strokes in quick succession in 1998, at the age of 68. This sequel to his raunchy autobiography begins with that crisis and moves back and forth in time as Evans recalls his eventful life as actor, head of Paramount, independent producer, and, lately, comedian and voice-over talent. Producing such iconic movies as The Godfather, Chinatown, Rosemary’s Baby, Love Story and the 1974 version of The Great Gatsby—to name just a few—it’s no wonder that Evans knows everyone who is anyone in the place he affectionately calls Tinseltown. Names drop like snowflakes in a blizzard: Frank Sinatra, (“Whatever Frank wanted, Frank got,” Evans notes), Mia Farrow, Gene Kelly, Aristotle Onassis, Dustin Hoffman, Ali McGraw (one of seven former wives), Evans’ good buddies Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty, Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter, Barry Diller: a cast of thousands. Evans is not a man to cross, and he makes clear that he was determined to claw his way back after his strokes, with help from the often invoked “Guy Upstairs.” In the first weeks, he allowed no visitors: “Call it ego, narcissism, selfpity, horrendous pain, shame at my distorted face”—he could not bear to see their reactions. He deeply resented his doctor, who cautioned him against resuming his former lifestyle, and the ministrations of his three therapists—physical, speech and occupational—but finally gave himself up to months of grueling rehabilitation. During that period, barely able to walk, he managed to persuade Catherine Oxenberg, a much younger actress, to marry him. That escapade—the marriage was annulled within a week—Evans blames partly on the drug cocktails he was taking for his ailments, which turned him “into one dangerously delusional junkie.”

Self-aggrandizing, self-promotional, self-satisfied: Evans has produced a quintessential Hollywood memoir.

NOT I Memoirs of a German Childhood

Fest, Joachim Translated by Chalmers, Martin Other Press (464 pp.) $16.95 paper | Feb. 11, 2014 978-1-59051-610-2

A stunning portrait of a strenuously anti-Nazi family in Berlin who managed to hang on to their moral convictions during the brutalizing Hitler years.

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A conservative historian and journalist who wrote a biography of Hitler, among other works (Inside Hitler’s Bunker: The Last Days of the Third Reich, 2004, etc.), Fest first published this moving memoir of his coming-of-age during the Third Reich to enormous acclaim in Germany in 2006, also the year of his death at age 79. One of five children born to a politically committed teacher, Johannes Fest, who was alarmed by the ascent of the Nazi Party at the expense of the Weimar Republic, the author and his siblings grew up in a middle-class Berlin suburb and were duly inculcated with their father’s staunch prophetic teachings about the perils of surrendering to Nazi lawlessness.

Johannes took his children to see the burned-out Reichstag, lost his civil service job in 1933 due to his perceived inability to support the “national state,” and was frequently shunned by neighbors, prompting his fearful wife to plea for compromise with the Nazi state so that their life would be easier. But Johannes maintained his moral convictions, and the author and his older brother were invited to a “second supper” with his parents after the smaller ones had gone to bed in order to discuss the events of the day in secrecy. Fest’s portrait of his father is strikingly sympathetic, especially against the backdrop of an increasingly acquiescent German populace for whom “upholding the law was more important…than justice.” After boarding school and recruitment into the compulsory Hitler Youth, then the Luftwaffe, Fest experienced a horrifying end to the war, yet his memoir focuses more on his literary and musical development.

A beautifully written and translated work that creates rare, subtle portraits of Germans.

A NATION IN PAIN Healing Our Biggest Health Problem

Foreman, Judy Oxford Univ. (464 pp.) $29.95 | Feb. 1, 2014 978-0-19-983720-5

Encyclopedic in scope, this book on chronic pain also tells the personal story of the author, a Boston-based, nationally syndicated health columnist.

When she developed chronic neck pain, Foreman’s savvy medical background and reporter’s skills were little help. She suffered the same stigmatizing it’s-all-in-your-head reaction that many chronic pain patients (especially women) experience. Finally, an MRI scan showed the arthritis, bone spurs and sliding vertebrae of her cervical spine that caused her agony.

Foreman spent five years interviewing experts, reviewing the literature and talking to patients to summarize what America is doing about pain. The answer? Not much—despite a 2011 report by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies of Science revealing that 100 million Americans live in chronic pain. Foreman cites the report, noting also that medical schools barely touch the subject of pain. She then lays out the anatomy and physiology of pain perception. She debunks myths about women’s greater tolerance of pain and infants’ lack of feelings |

of pain. She provides an especially solid chapter on mindbody interactions, discussing the placebo effect, the relationship between pain and depression, and alleviation techniques like meditation and cognitive behavioral therapy. Then it’s on to treatments. Government, health provider and cultural dictates that inhibit the use of opioids or, in the case of government, even allow research on marijuana, get the drubbings they deserve. (It’s important to note, however, that opioids provide limited relief for chronic pain.) As for other approaches (drug and nondrug), Foreman discusses benefits and risks and cites multiple clinical trials, some pro, some con, for each treatment.

She also extols the benefits of exercise: There’s good evidence that it helps for low back pain, arthritis and fibromyalgia.

Foreman’s text underscores the fact that pain really is an extraordinarily complex phenomenon that requires more research. If we continue head-in-the-sand policies, we will remain a nation in pain.

THE STORY OF MUSIC From Babylon to the Beatles: How Music Shaped Civilization

Goodall, Howard Pegasus (368 pp.) $27.95 | Jan. 15, 2014 978-1-60598-538-1

A celebrated British composer and broadcaster surveys the evolution and cultural significance of music, from prehistoric caves to Coldplay.

There’s been nothing too new under the sun about the fundamentals of music since about 1450, begins Goodall (Big Bangs: The Story of Five Discoveries That Changed Musical History, 2001).

Then he whisks us back to caves and prehistoric instruments (flutes, whistles) and begins his swift journey through the centuries. He recognizes that the subject requires much inference until the ages of notation, print and recording, but he plunges bravely into the lake of darkness and manages some illumination.

We pause to look at “the magic of musical pitch,” the concepts of octaves and harmony, the invention of the musical staff (A.D. 1000), and the evolution of rhythm, chords, chord progressions, musical keys and tempo. Goodall also explores the invention and modification of significant instruments—the violin, organ, piano—and the creation of various musical forms—songs, operas, oratorios, sonatas (a subject that bores him, he writes). The big names retain their size in his account. Bach, Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin and myriads of others will surprise none by their presence and prominence. The author is also alert to the significance of popular music and has some passages about Broadway and the movies, blues, rock ’n’ roll (whose origin he traces to Benny Goodman!), jazz and hip-hop. Goodall also discusses the effects of political systems on music and musicians— from pre-revolutionary France to Nazi Germany to the Soviet Union and others. The author continually reminds us of technological advances—print, recordings, radio, films—that enabled kirkus.com

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music to spread as never before. He does not like conventional terms for musical periods (e.g., Classical, Neo-Classical) but finds himself forced to use them occasionally.

Cultural history with some attitude and considerable rhythm and melody.

DOWN TO THE CROSSROADS Civil Rights, Black Power, and the Meredith March Against Fear Goudsouzian, Aram Farrar, Straus and Giroux (368 pp.) $28.00 | Feb. 4, 2014 978-0-374-19220-4

Evenhanded look at the many complicated tenets of the civil rights movement that converged with James Meredith’s march from Memphis to Jackson, Miss., in June 1966.

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The early successful cohesion of nonviolent demonstration in the movement was fraying from emerging militancy, outcry over the Vietnam War and government inattention. Goudsouzian (History/Univ. of Memphis; King of the Court: Bill Russell and the Basketball Revolution, 2010, etc.) brings these uneasy strands together in the Meredith March, as it was called. In 1962, Meredith was the first black man to challenge segregation at the University of Mississippi; a celebrated and somewhat misunderstood activist loner, Meredith had resolved to march through the Mississippi delta alone or with a few black men in order to “challenge that all-pervasive fear that dominates the day to day life of the Negro,� as well as galvanize black voter registration.

The intended march was more or less ignored by the civil rights establishment, who dismissed Meredith as opportunistic or a little kooky, until a white man shot him on the first leg of the march. First reports stated that Meredith was dead, another casualty who had dared to challenge Jim Crow. Though he was only wounded, other leaders were shocked into action and resumed his crusade: first, Floyd McKissick of the Congress of Racial Equality; then, Martin Luther King Jr. and his Southern

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“Deeply researched and well-written, this book will appeal to general readers and specialists alike.” from the empire of necessity

Christian Leadership Conference; followed by the increasingly militant Stokely Carmichael of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Each of the leaders, in the process of profound change to his respective group, found it opportune to continue on Highway 51, astounding passersby with their singing, descending on courthouses to register black voters and refusing to be intimidated by angry whites.

A textured exploration of the significant players and events at this key juncture in American history. (8 pages of b/w illustrations)

THE EMPIRE OF NECESSITY Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World

Grandin, Greg Metropolitan/Henry Holt (384 pp.) $30.00 | Jan. 14, 2014 978-0-8050-9453-4

Pulitzer Prize finalist Grandin (History/New York Univ.; Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City, 2009, etc.) offers a splendid account of the 1804 slave rebellion made famous in Herman Melville’s novel Benito Cereno.

On a sealing expedition in the South Pacific, veteran captain Amasa Delano (1763–1823) encountered a ship in seeming distress, boarded it to provide food and water, and discovered a great deception: The black-skinned people on board—West African slaves—were in command of the vessel and holding its Spanish captain hostage. The clever role-playing by mutinous slaves sharply contradicted the prevailing belief that slaves lacked cunning and reason, and Grandin uses the episode as a revealing window on the Atlantic slave trade and life in Spanish America in the early 1800s. Delano, a veteran seaman from New England, where slavery supported the economy, is seen as “a new man of the American Revolution” who, like many, championed freedom and found slavery morally reprehensible, yet nonetheless played his own role in the system. He eventually led an attack on the rebel-held ship and tortured many captives. Grandin’s research in the archives, libraries and museums of nine countries shines forth on each page of this excellent book. He writes with authority on every aspect of the “slavers’ fever” that gripped the New World and details vividly the horrors of disease-ridden slave ships (“floating tombs”), the treks of slave caravans overland through the pampas to Lima from Buenos Aires, and the harsh, brutal life of sealers, who clubbed and skinned their victims, annihilating many seal rookeries of the Argentine and Chilean islands. The author also examines the parallels between Melville’s novel and the historic incident, and he reflects on evidence of the omnipresence of slavery as an institution that he discovered on his research travels.

Deeply researched and well-written, this book will appeal to general readers and specialists alike. (38 illustrations; 2 maps)

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THE UNDERCOVER ECONOMIST STRIKES BACK How to Run—or Ruin—an Economy

Harford, Tim Riverhead (240 pp.) $27.95 | Jan. 16, 2014 978-1-59463-140-5

It’s hard enough to manage, or even understand, our own finances. The “Undercover Economist” seeks to teach us how to manage the economic affairs of nations.

Before we can fix the world’s dysfunctional economies, Financial Times columnist Harford (Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure, 2011, etc.) would have us understand the forces that make national and global fortunes thrive or fail— i.e., macroeconomics. Harford is a Socratic sort of tutor; here, he presents the questions from the point of view of a wonkish student. Money, we learn, encompasses three things: a store of value, a medium of exchange and a means of accounting.

Harford neatly defines such terms as “nominal GDP targeting,” “recession,” “liquidity trap,” “price rigidity,” “consumption smoothing” and “spending multiplier.” Remarkably, it is all quite accessible and occasionally waggish. Readers will easily follow a discussion of stimulus versus austerity and determining the right amount of inflation (3 or 4 percent). The author also notes that printing money is sometimes a good practice.

John Maynard Keynes, the patriarch of modern macroeconomics, is the right fellow for the short term, and the classic economists are fine for the long haul. As the recent crisis teaches, understanding and managing a global economy is difficult and complex, requiring many thinkers. Harford examines Keynes, Paul Samuelson, Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz and other wise practitioners. There is much to learn from the Underground Economist’s primer, though against whom he is striking back, as the title has it, isn’t clear. Readers may not be called upon to manipulate the world’s economies, but the next time a conversation turns to the “Phillips Curve,” Harford’s students need not be excluded.

Uncovering cant and weak practice with some common sense and plenty of experience, Harford puts the art of macroeconomics within reach, making the unruly study considerably less dismal.

GOLD The Race for the World’s Most Seductive Metal Hart, Matthew Simon & Schuster (304 pp.) $26.00 | Dec. 3, 2013 978-1-4516-5002-0

Overview of gold’s perpetual dominance over modern and past societies, focused on historical and economic issues. kirkus.com

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“Miami Herald columnist and best-selling novelist Hiaasen wages a relentless war of words against those who would despoil his home state and cheapen a nation: the greedy, the corrupt and the stupid.” from dance of the reptiles

Characterizing the preceding millennium’s obsession with gold as “a murderous, cruel, intoxicating, brutal adventure,” Hart (The Irish Game: A True Story of Crime and Art, 2004, etc.) moves swiftly from discussing current armed conflicts in South African mines to Francisco Pizarro’s 16th-century assault on the Incan people, which filled Spain’s imperial coffers and accelerated Europe’s gold-based economy. The author’s general approach is to flit between multiple elements pertaining to the topic. Several chapters examine the controversial concept of economies based on the “gold standard” of direct exchange: “The strict operation of the gold standard sent regular waves of misery through the world, as the vagaries of trade would drain a gold supply and lacerate an economy.” This resulted in regular convulsions within the United States, providing grist for conspiracy theorists. Hart focuses on watersheds like the 1892 run on gold, Franklin Roosevelt’s executive order barring gold hoarding, and the lesser-known account of Richard Nixon’s suspension of gold convertability in a startling prime-time speech.

Today, the author argues that shadowy gold trading groups like the British “Spider” (from SPDR Gold Shares) establish the market value of gold using complex methodologies not unlike those that precipitated the Great Recession. He also looks at how gold fever has seized post-reform China, the eccentric geologists whose innovations led to enormous strikes beginning in the 1950s, and pulpy tales of stolen gold. Hart is a fine close-in journalist, gathering many engaging facts and anecdotes about gold’s production and endless manipulation within the world economy and human psychology, but the lack of a compelling central narrative makes the work feel less cohesive.

Recommended for those determined to speculate in gold as an alleged hedge against economic tremors.

NEVER HAVE I EVER My Life (So Far) Without a Date

Heaney, Katie Grand Central Publishing (272 pp.) $14.00 paper | Jan. 14, 2014 978-1-4555-4467-7

One woman’s confessions about not having a love life.

Beginning with her first boy infatuation at age 7 and advancing to the ripe age of 25, Heaney takes readers on an exhaustive, descriptive jaunt through her multiple boy crushes and attempts to obtain a boyfriend. Readers who get through the first 20 pages without thinking “who cares” may enjoy the author’s self-deprecating humor, which borders on unfunny as she laments and bemoans her fate. She claims, however, that “[m]ost of the time it does not upset me to think about my sad, old, decrepit spinster body…not having a boyfriend at any given moment bothers me very little. Not having ever had one bothers me only slightly more.” Tongue in cheek, Heaney reminisces about boys from kindergarten and beyond—their hair, the way they talked, how she felt around them, what she wrote in her diary back then; 48

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she quotes to emphasize her points. This sets the tone as she proceeds to delve deeply into her affections, near loves and possible first dates in high school, college and graduate school. She tried drinking, being flirty, being distant and aloof, and even succumbed to the oftentimes humiliating moments of setting up an online dating profile only to discover that some men send the exact same message to every single woman. Throughout multiple near hits, an occasional kiss or two, and numerous boy friends but no boyfriends, the author has maintained her circle of girlfriends to gossip with, run to for advice and downright hate when any of them lands the guy they both secretly desired.

Heaney’s misadventures are more a testament to the power of friendship among women than anything comical regarding her struggle to find real love.

A drawn-out, sometimes-amusing examination of the author’s search for a loving relationship with a man, any man.

DANCE OF THE REPTILES Rampaging Tourists, Marauding Pythons, Larcenous Legislators, Crazed Celebrities, and TarBalled Beaches: Selected Columns

Hiaasen, Carl Vintage (416 pp.) $15.95 paper | Jan. 21, 2014 978-0-345-80702-1

Miami Herald columnist and best-selling novelist Hiaasen (Bad Monkey, 2013, etc.) wages a relentless war of words against those who would despoil his home state and cheapen a nation: the greedy, the corrupt and the stupid.

The author knows better than most Edward Abbey’s dictum: Growth for its own sake, unrestrained, is the philosophy of the cancer cell. As Florida’s population grows, taxpayers usually foot the bill not only for sprawl and environmental degradation, but also for every crackpot scheme heralding an economic boon. In this collection of his muckraking columns, Hiaasen employs a seasoned bullshit detector that is among the most acute in American journalism. He pillories everything from coastal development run amok to the folly of offshore oil drilling, from efforts at gutting the Environmental Protection Agency and Endangered Species Act to bungling by the Army Corps of Engineers. While dissections of decay dominate, also in his cross hairs are capital punishment, corporate welfare, “intelligent design,” Medicare fraud, corporate lobbyists, manipulated elections, mortgage scams, legislative complicity in the exploitation of migrant workers, Vatican stonewalling on child sexual abuse, the National Rifle Association’s disproportionate influence, feckless televangelists, a hyperventilating news media and, of course, the Iraq/Afghanistan debacle. Though he occasionally goes to the well once too often, Hiaasen, also a writer of satirical fiction, wields the facts, finely tuned outrage and an eviscerating sarcasm to potent effect. Were his |

broadsides not armed with solid reportage, these columns might begin to sound overheated—a scathingly anti-business, anti-Republican rant—save that he invariably dispenses scorn (or credit) where it’s due, to whomever deserves it. Hiaasen is not so much unabashedly liberal as steadfastly sensible, his humor fueled by righteous dismay.

If Florida is the poster child for a nation’s fiscal and political disintegration, Hiaasen is the state’s galloping knight (in)errant, slaying the dragons of ineptitude, arrogance and idiocy.

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SEXPLOSION From Andy Warhol to A Clockwork Orange—How a Generation of Pop Rebels Broke All the Taboos

Hofler, Robert It Books/HarperCollins (368 pp.) $27.99 | Feb. 4, 2014 978-0-06-208834-5

Fun, fascinating examination of the moment when American and British culture seemed to lose all inhibitions.

In the middle of the 20th century, the walls of censorship were battered by courtroom decisions favoring what officials had called “indecent” literature—e.g., James Joyce’s Ulysses, Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer and Allen Ginsberg’s Howl. Variety senior editor Hofler (Party Animals: A Hollywood Tale of Sex, Drugs, and Rock ’n’ Roll Starring the Fabulous Allan Carr, 2010, etc.) focuses on the period from 1966 to 1973, when those walls

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INTERVIEWS & PROFILES

Richard Holmes

The possibility of death makes success all the sweeter for the adventurers in Falling Upwards

By Megan Labrise

Photo Courtesy Holmes Author Photo

Aeronauts have lofty goals. For science, for art, for pleasure and pragmatism, they hitch their baskets to balloons and head for the stars. In Falling Upwards: How We Took to the Air, Richard Holmes offers up a remarkable history of aerostation, defined as the science or art of operating lighter-than-air aircraft.

If this high-spirited, intelligent and humorous book does not encourage readers to take to the skies (caveat lector), they may at least be swept off their feet.

Holmes is a keen detective and a buoyant narrator.

The British biographer, whose subjects include Shelley and Coleridge, won the 2009 National Book Critics Circle Award for The Age of Wonder: The Romantic Generation and the Discovery of the Beauty and Terror of Science. In the habit of tracing the lives of great minds, 50

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he has become a cleareyed identifier of narrative arcs.

“When you have a group of people in a balloon basket, it’s a natural shape for a story,” says Holmes, citing the launch, journey and landing triptych. “Very often, coming back to earth was tough or even brutal—that kind of curve is a metaphor for our lives.”

Balloons entered Holmes’ life at age 4, at a Norfolk village fete, when a pilot uncle tied a red helium balloon to his nephew’s Aertex shirt. “ ‘Maybe you will fly,’ my uncle remarked....[The balloon] tugged me impatiently towards the sky, and I began to feel unsteady on my feet. I felt that I was falling—upwards,” writes Holmes. He gently guides the story further back, to the Montogolfier brothers’ invention of the passenger balloon (hot air) in 1783, followed that year by the December flight of Dr. Alexander Charles, in the first true hydrogen balloon.

Whether hot air or gas, ballooning began to pick up steam as a spectacle and soon had higher hopes thrust upon it: “It seems to me in the beginning, the 1780s and ’90s, the very early period, people really hoped that the balloon was going to produce an absolute revolution in transportation. You were going to get from A to B across seas and mountains with a kind of speed and safety,” says Holmes—in other words, the potential to become the next steam engine. Flights inspired earthbound audiences as well, including Edgar Allan Poe, Mary Shelley, Jules Verne, Victor Hugo and H.G. Wells, who have all featured the vessels in their writing.

While an all-balloon mail or passenger system proved impracticable, the explorative potential of the medium was bound only by its enthusiasts’ imaginations. Balloons were employed by the Union Army Balloon Corps to spy on enemy soldiers; and in a grand-gesture response, the Confederate Army creat|

ed a dress balloon built from the multicolored scraps of Southern belles’ ball gowns. (A scrap the size of a playing card survives in the “special reserve” archives of the Library of Congress, says Holmes.)

By 1859, a team of aeronauts, Wise and LaMountain, traveled 809 miles from St. Louis to Henderson, N.Y., a sky voyage that came close to an inglorious ending; and in 1897, three Scandinavians embarked on the first voyage to and from the North Pole. Arguably of greater value to science were flights that plumbed heights heretofore undiscovered. At great personal peril, James Glaisher and Henry Tracey Coxwell discovered the limit of the respirable atmosphere at 22,000 feet—just 10,000 feet below the stratosphere. One lost consciousness, but they knew they were safe when their hands would cooperate in holding the brandy bottle once more.

What scientists, explorers, rebels and showmen chose as essential to the larder for balloon trips is an education unto itself, far beyond sacks of mail and scientific instruments. Grand tourers packed as if for a picnic in the sky. “The bottle of champagne always seems to be in the basket. Quite interesting. Useless, because the air pressure is so low it just flies out of the bottle; you can’t do anything with it,” says Holmes.

They brought suits of fine clothes, heavy blankets and rugs, Belgian chocolates—even gifts from kings for blessing various expeditions—coffee and newspapers, drawing pencils, camera equipment and musical instruments. Holmes worked out that one party of three led by Charles Green, who was perhaps the most ambitious 19th-century balloonist, packed enough meat, foodstuffs and alcohol to feed seven for an entire month. “It’s creature comforts, the idea of the balloon taking up the whole parlor, as it were. I think that’s the paradox, that and the comedy of it,” he says.

The need for these comforts high above the clouds is about more than mere celebration. For all that aeronauts learn of air currents and sound construction, the rudderless balloon’s exact course remains unknowable; so does the landing spot. Holmes acknowledges many tragedies among the triumphs, a knowledge the pilots shared. “The book is a study in that kind of courage, which is produced by the presence of death or risking death,” says Holmes. Perhaps the possibility of death makes success all the sweeter.

“Even in modern hot air balloons, in the back of your mind is what will happen at the landing,” he says. |

By now, Holmes has experienced his fair share of flights—citing a lift from Barbara Fricke, America’s Challenge Gas Balloon Race winner, at the world’s premier annual balloon fiesta in Albuquerque, N.M., home to the Anderson-Abruzzo International Balloon Museum.

From the Library of Congress to the Brussels airport that holds the original basket of Félix Nadar’s 190-foot-high red gas balloon, Le Géant, to Australia, Holmes traveled in pursuit of the story—in the name of exploration—to discover the unknowable, or at least to get high trying. In aerostation, as in writing, inspiration and wonderment are a two-man crew. “It is about what balloons gave rise to. It is about the spirit of discovery itself, the extraordinary human drama it produces; and to this, there is no end,” he writes.

Megan Labrise is a freelance writer and columnist based in New York.

Falling Upwards: How We Took to the Air Holmes, Richard Pantheon (416 pp.) $35.00 | Oct 29, 2013 978-0-307-37966-5 kirkus.com

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“An essential contribution to understanding the roots of our most recent financial crisis, enriched by a deeper review of the history of American home financing.” from the mortgage wars

seemed to come tumbling down, not only in books, but also in film, theater and TV. Suddenly, authors, directors and producers set their sights quite frankly (albeit often satirically) on formerly taboo subjects like transsexualism (Gore Vidal’s Myra Breckinridge), masturbation (Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint), male prostitution (Midnight Cowboy) and rape (Straw Dogs). Language and subject matter became more explicit in works like the 1966 film of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and the smash-hit TV series All in the Family. Actors of both sexes began appearing fully nude on the popular stage in Hair and Oh! Calcutta! and in films like Andy Warhol’s Trash and Ken Russell’s Women in Love. Hofler’s deep research reveals the personal (and personnel) connections among many of these projects. Most astonishing, however, are the author’s chronicles of the reactionary attitudes these revolutionary works provoked in mainstream media. Readers will marvel over the ideological distance traveled since those years, particularly by the New York Times, which in 1964 fretted about “overt homosexuality” in Greenwich Village and in whose Sunday magazine in 1973 feminist Anne Roiphe clucked her tongue over “evil flower” Lance Loud, the oldest and openly gay scion of the pioneering reality show An American Family.

Sparkling history of an artistically spirited age.

ONE SIMPLE IDEA How Positive Thinking Reshaped Modern Life

Horowitz, Mitch Crown (352 pp.) $24.00 | Jan. 7, 2014 978-0-307-98649-8

The evolution of the positive-thinking movement.

In present-day society, the philosophy of positive thinking is ubiquitous. But where did this belief system come from? In extensive detail, Tarcher/Penguin vice president and editor in chief Horowitz (Occult America: White House Séances, Ouija Circles, Masons and the Secret, Mystic History of Our Nation, 2010) examines the developmental process of positive thinking from the late 1700s to today. When New England clockmaker Phineas Quimby took a “frenetic carriage ride” in 1833 across the Maine countryside, he suddenly realized that the ensuing exhilaration relieved his tuberculosis symptoms. Blending this new, positive thought process with the practice of mesmerism or hypnosis, Quimby began treating the sick through mental methods. Based on his work, a student founded the practice of Christian Science and was followed by others who delved into metaphysical studies. During the ensuing decades, other movements began to develop, and influential people, including Ronald Reagan, promoted the philosophy of mindful thinking and believed in “America’s divine purpose and of a mysterious plan behind the nation’s founding.”

Horowitz also examines the modern tactics outlined in The Secret and the mind-body connection found in the discipline of quantum mechanics. Though more a historical analysis than a 52

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definitive text on whether the practice actually works, the author does claim, “[t]he wish to authentically search for the self and its true aims is, perhaps, the greatest form of mental affirmation to which a person can aspire, and the one that brings the most help.” Based on the all-encompassing information Horowitz provides, as well as his extensive notes that add further depth to the conversation, any scholar interested in this field should have no trouble making his or her own decision on the subject.

A historically rich analysis of an idea that is older than many may think.

THE MORTGAGE WARS Inside Fannie Mae, BigMoney Politics, and the Collapse of the American Dream

Howard, Timothy McGraw-Hill (304 pp.) $30.00 | Dec. 2, 2013 978-0-07-182109-4

Gagged until a civil suit was finally dismissed in 2012, former Fannie Mae CFO Howard lays bare for the first time how the agency was undermined, and its executive leadership framed, by a confederation of political opponents.

The author was initially charged with deliberately falsifying financial reports. His explosive account traces behind-thescenes activity beginning around 1998. He describes a bipartisan league of free market ideologues, political hatchet men operating as financial regulators, and major business and corporate interests eager to privatize Fannie Mae’s mortgage business for their own benefits. The agency had always been a target of free market critics, but now, Howard writes, the objectives were different. Their aim was to change the terms on which the agency conducted its business, undermine its contribution to financial stability through recycling the trade deficit, and ultimately put the agency into receivership. This was finally achieved under Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson in 2007. In Howard’s view, ideological and political obsessions with Fannie Mae’s charter and financial importance significantly blindsided public officials, contributing to the outbreak of the 2008 financial crisis. Howard contends that the fact that Fannie Mae came back after the crisis, reassuming its role as one of the major issuers of mortgage debt, shows that the agency’s private-sector opponents were wrong throughout. The author presents a different view of the origins of the mortgage crisis, showing its roots in an earlier subprime crisis that had erupted in the 1990s. He contends that private mortgage lenders were the ones who lifted the most basic credit-qualification standards from borrowers and that they compounded their blunders with offerings of financial derivatives, which miraculously transformed the lowest quality of mortgage debt into AAA-rated securities.

An essential contribution to understanding the roots of our most recent financial crisis, enriched by a deeper review of the history of American home financing. |

MORE THAN CONQUERORS A Memoir of Lost Arguments Hustad, Megan Farrar, Straus and Giroux (240 pp.) $25.00 | Feb. 11, 2014 978-0-374-29883-8

A daughter of evangelical missionaries reflects on the complexities of faith.

Hustad (How to be Useful: A Beginner’s Guide to Not Hating Work, 2008) was born in Minneapolis, where her family had relatives and roots. But her parents felt a religious calling, and soon, young Megan and her sister, Amy, were transported to the Caribbean island of Bonaire, where her father took a post with Trans World Radio, broadcasting God’s word over shortwave.

Bonaire, flat and salt-rich, “offered excellent conductivity for radio signals,” heard as far north as Canada and south to the Amazon. After a few years on the buggy, soggy island, the family returned to Minnesota, awaiting a new assignment: this time, to Holland. When Megan protested that she didn’t want to live in a foreign country, her mother replied, “That’s too bad….

Because you live in one now.” Alienated from 1980s American culture, Hustad’s parents felt out of place in Holland, as well, where the supervisor of TWR was intent on making Christian views relevant in “the marketplace of ideas.” Maybe phone-in programs would help; maybe market research: “[B]ad programming,” he insisted, “placed a strain upon the sovereignty of God.” When her father’s conflict with the supervisor proved unresolvable, the family was offered another post in Sri Lanka.

Instead, they returned to Minnesota. Amy, 18, had long before rejected her family’s life of near poverty and cultural isolation.

Megan, 12, still went weekly to the church youth group “because I was not prepared not to. I was initially expected to be better at God but everyone quickly realized that I was not.” Escaping to New York City as soon as she could, Megan met people “who associated religious belief with rank stupidity” and even pathology, leading her to reconsider her own complicated connections to faith.

Some tediously detailed sections and an impressionistic structure weaken the overall impact of Hustad’s memoir.

BURQAS, BASEBALL, AND APPLE PIE Being Muslim in America

Idliby, Ranya Tabari Palgrave Macmillan (256 pp.) $27.00 | Jan. 7, 2014 978-0-230-34184-5

One woman’s personal examination of Muslim and American values.

In this follow-up to her comparative study of Muslim, Christian and Jewish identity (The Faith Club, co-authored with Suzanne Oliver and Priscilla Warner, 2006), Idliby hones in on her family’s |

experiences as American Muslims immediately following 9/11.

The author and her husband, then longtime Manhattanites and self-described “secular Muslims,” suddenly found themselves and their children challenged by “Muslims who speak for us and Americans who reject us.” Thus confronted with repeated calls to account for the whole of Islam, and skewed views of a violent Islam at that, Idliby was forced to look within at what Muslim and American values she held dear. The author charts that reflection, as this daughter of a Palestinian father and Kuwaiti mother who had spent her youth shuttling between Virginia and Dubai painfully relates to her own children’s post-9/11 sense of being the “other.” Hoping for better for her American-born children, Idliby tailors her remarks for a largely Islam-illiterate American audience, debunking a number of widespread misconceptions about Islam. Refusing to have her children’s worldviews constricted by “clerics who peddle seventh century absolute orthodoxy as the only true Islam,” Idliby strongly advocates for reading the Quran in the cultural context of its time and not as literal doctrine for 21st-century society.

For example, the author explains that female head-covering is a social convention and admonishes those donning the niqab (full face covering) for opting to be “buried alive under a black tent” and, thereby, “erased of their identities.” In Mecca, Islam’s holiest city, Idliby also points out, “face coverings are banned,” underscoring one of the memoir’s central points—that “Islam is not a nationality, but a faith, as diverse and varied as its many billion adherents.” Such diversity of belief, Idliby compellingly argues, aligns well with American individualism and cherished beliefs in equality, diversity and justice.

A bold, intimate, welcome examination of reconciling one’s faith in America.

BECOMING MR. OCTOBER

Jackson, Reggie with Baker, Kevin Doubleday (304 pp.) $26.95 | Oct. 8, 2013 978-0-385-53311-9

With the assistance of Baker (The Big Crowd, 2013, etc.), legendary slugger Jackson (Reggie: The Autobiography, 1984, etc.) attempts to set the record straight about the tumultuous World Series–winning New York Yankees of 1977 and 1978.

When he signed with the Yankees in 1976, Jackson was already a star, having won two championships with the Oakland A’s and a league MVP award in 1973. He also had a reputation for speaking his mind in a way that did not always endear him to teammates and fans. None of this, however, prepared him for the cauldron that was the Yankees, run by manager Billy Martin and owner George Steinbrenner. Much has been written about this team, and Jackson announces early on that this book was born out of his outrage at how he was portrayed in the 2007 miniseries The Bronx Is Burning; indeed, the tone is often aggrieved as the author recounts the many injustices he faced along the way. There’s no denying he has a point: He kirkus.com

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“Kertzer is unflinching and relentless in his exposure of the Vatican’s shocking actions.” from the pope and mussolini

was often treated unfairly by the press and his teammates and certainly by Martin, a volatile personality at the best of times, who never got over his resentment that Jackson was brought onto the team against his wishes. But whatever was behind the struggles—racism, resentment over his comments to the press, his superstar salary or other factors—Jackson does himself no favors by repetitively rehashing these old wounds, though he does at least acknowledge partial responsibility for some of them. Resentment aside, the author remains a fascinating character who offers plenty of insight into the game as it was played then and now. No baseball fan can deny the greatness of Jackson’s magical three consecutive first-pitch home runs in Game 6 of the 1977 World Series, and many will enjoy reliving the moment through his eyes.

Readers not put off by the taste of sour grapes will find much of interest here, from the unique mind of one of baseball’s most enigmatic stars and greatest clutch performers.

GENESIS Truman, American Jews, and the Origins of the Arab/Israeli Conflict

Judis, John B. Farrar, Straus and Giroux (448 pp.) $30.00 | Feb. 4, 2014 978-0-374-16109-5

Dogged, exhaustive survey of the rocky road from late-19th-century Zionism through President Harry Truman’s recognition of the state of Israel.

By the time New Republic senior editor Judis (The Folly of Empire: What George W. Bush Could Learn from Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, 2004, etc.) arrives at Truman’s travails over how to handle Jewish-Arab Palestine at the end of World War II, the author has already slogged through the complicated history of Zionism in late-19th-century Europe. He depicts Palestine both as a refuge from anti-Semitism, as envisioned by Theodor Herzl, and as a “spiritual center” coexistent with nonJewish inhabitants as envisioned by Ahad Ha’am and the Lovers of Zion. Yet the “holy land” was not a place of “desolation” as per the mythmaking of the Western imagination. Rather, it was inhabited by hundreds of thousands of constantly feuding Muslims and Christians who lacked the political organization or money of the evolving Jewish Agency for Israel. The intransigence of both sides, Jew and Arab, is astounding, especially in the course of the early history, when there were actually moments when a binational solution might have been possible. The Balfour Declaration’s support for a “national home for the Jewish people” without affording the “non-Jewish communities in Palestine” any political rights furnished the validation that the Zionists needed for boosting Jewish immigration, purchasing choice agricultural land from the Arabs and rejecting Arab labor, all of which tipped the balance of power in the region. Moralist Truman’s hesitations about a Jewish state at the expense of the Arabs were overridden by the American Zionist 54

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lobby, led by the combative Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver of the American Zionist Emergency Council. As Judis painstakingly delineates, Truman’s continually “passing the buck” allowed the Arab-Israeli War to inevitably unfurl.

A valiant, detailed effort to establish some clarity around the murky historical underpinnings of the Arab/ Israeli conflict. (8 pages of b/w illustrations; 3 maps)

THE POPE AND MUSSOLINI The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe Kertzer, David I. Random House (576 pp.) $32.00 | Feb. 1, 2014 978-0-8129-9346-2 978-0-679-64553-5 e-book

More deeply troubling revelations around Vatican collaboration with evil.

With the unsealing of archives in 2006 concerning the papacy of Pius XI, Kertzer (Social Science, Anthropology and Italian Studies/Brown Univ.; Amalia’s Tale: A Poor Peasant, an Ambitious Attorney, and a Fight for Justice, 2008, etc.) found the call to scrutinize them “irresistible.” The author spares no toes in his crushing of the church’s “comforting narrative” around its relationship with Mussolini’s fascist regime. The signing of the Lateran Accord in 1929 between the Holy See and the dictator established the Vatican as sovereign territory and bound the Catholic Church and the regime to a new period of codependence. Having been elected to the papacy just as Italy was rocked by cataclysmic violence between fascists thugs and socialists, Pius XI and his advisers “began to question the wisdom of opposing Mussolini’s crusade.” While Mussolini had previously spoken out against the power and holdings of the church, and the fascists unleashed a campaign of beatings of priests and Catholic activists, Mussolini’s sudden and opportunistic embrace of the church by 1922—for example, asking for “God’s help” in his first address to parliament—charmed Pius into thinking he had an ally to bring the church more firmly back into Italian life, which had been challenged by modernism. Although Mussolini’s increasing cultivation of cult status alarmed Pius, his minions and, indeed, the church organ extolled fascism for seeking to “place spiritual values once again in the place of honor they once occupied, especially as required by the battle against liberalism.” Even Mussolini’s suppression of the pope’s darling Catholic Action youth groups did not fray collaboration between them to marginalize Italian Protestants and Jews, until Pius grew ill and it was too late to change course.

Kertzer is unflinching and relentless in his exposure of the Vatican’s shocking actions. (40 photos; 2 maps)

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HOW TO BE DANISH A Journey to the Cultural Heart of Denmark

Kingsley, Patrick Marble Arch/Simon & Schuster (208 pp.) $16.00 paper | Feb. 4, 2014 978-1-4767-5548-9

A book so engagingly written and incisively reported that it will make readers who have never given a second thought to Denmark give at least passing thought to moving there.

It would be a mistake to think that there’s nothing rotten in Denmark, but this interconnected series of cultural essays by Guardian Egypt correspondent Kingsley makes a convincing case for how much the country has going for it as well as an indication of the challenges that lie ahead. The author examines the international success of The Killing, a TV series which “wasn’t so much a cult hit as a state religion” in its homeland and subsequently became the rage of the author’s native England (and didn’t fare as well but earned a cult following in its American adaptation). He extends his appreciation through the country’s “extraordinary culinary revival”—Noma is widely considered the world’s finest restaurant—and social services that encompass “childcare, healthcare and education,” including “university education and most of its living costs.” “Students aren’t seen as a burden on the state, but as people whose skills will one day support it,” writes the author. “They’re future participants in Danish life, and they’re treated as such.” Demographic challenges include the increase in retirees who benefit from that welfare state and the difficulties faced by anyone who doesn’t fit the Danish norm—not only immigrants, but also Muslims and others who were born there.

Kingsley makes a strong case that Muslim protest over the cartoons of Muhammad, cast as a free speech issue throughout most of the democratic West, was a response to caricature “intended to provoke and humiliate an already marginalized section of society.”

Though the scope of the book is small and the style conversational, Kingsley renders the quality and complexity of life in Denmark with an outsider’s fresh perspective and a journalist’s sharp instincts.

HOW SHOULD WE LIVE? Great Ideas from the Past for Everyday Life

Krznaric, Roman BlueBridge (336 pp.) $22.95 | Jan. 1, 2014 978-1-93334684-7

The title of this potent lifestyle guide poses a valid question—and, after more than three millennia, still a good one.

In a dozen cogent discourses, writer, social scientist, “cultural thinker” and London’s The School of Life founder |

Krznaric (How to Find Fulfilling Work, 2012, etc.) delivers the back story to the art of living. Drawing on history to demonstrate how we once lived and selecting some of the accumulated wisdom of the ages, the author presents a sophisticated pep talk for the achievement of truly better living. The school of Socrates and the story of the founding of French department store Le Bon Marché are marshaled to the cause, as are the works of totemic teachers like the ancient Romans, John Stuart Mill, Henry David Thoreau, Leo Tolstoy, Albert Schweitzer, Adam Smith, Helen Keller and Kaspar Hauser, as well as lesserknown instructors. Krznaric considers human concerns like the varieties of love (currently a “cultural calamity”) and the importance of eccentricity and slowing down (time is not actually money). We have more than five senses, and not everything meets the eye. Krznaric also offers travel as a pilgrim, tourist, nomad or explorer as a path to a more rewarding life, or maybe a higher regard for nature could be the way. In addition, widely held beliefs should be reconsidered. (The author, for example, is dubious about the antiquity of the House of Windsor’s royal traditions.) Finally, the author calls upon readers to consider appropriate methods of dealing with death.

Founded on thoughtful, accessible history, Krznaric’s message on approaches to a well-lived life is several notches above commonplace self-helpers. He offers a compendium of interesting miscellany; if it fails to improve the way we live, we will, at least, have learned a good bit.

Based on human experience, helpful hints on transforming the way we live.

PROMISE LAND A Journey Through America’s Euphoric, SoulSucking, Emancipating, Hornswoggling, and Irrepressible Self-Help Culture Lamb-Shapiro, Jessica Simon & Schuster (256 pp.) $25.00 | Jan. 7, 2014 978-1-4391-0019-6

The author’s exploration of the world of self-help books and of her own childhood trauma.

Early on in the book, Lamb-Shapiro recounts the time she and her father—a child psychologist and the author of multiple self-help books—attended a seminar for authors of self-help books led by Mark Victor Hansen, one of the authors of the best-selling Chicken Soup for the Soul series. In one sense, this chapter represents the book in a nutshell: an exploration of the culture of self-help, what it means to readers and how (and if) it helps, sorting out the wheat from the chaff. “As Americans,” she writes, “self-help reflects our core beliefs: self-reliance, social mobility, an endless ability to overcome obstacles, a fair and equal pursuit of success, and the inimitable proposition that every single human being wants and deserves a sack of cash.” Though not necessarily jaded, the author examines her kirkus.com

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subject with at least a wearied, cautious uncertainty. Through her father’s work, she’s been on the author/writer side of the equation long enough to be comfortable with pointing her finger at the snake-oil salesmen of the industry, and she takes a look at the seemingly limitless number of products and follow-up seminars one can choose to spend money on. Similarly, Lamb-Shapiro explores the world of The Rules, the late-1990s book/system for “Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right.” She finds that, more than anything else, self-help has become an elaborate business with the aim of continuing to expand and make money from countless spinoffs and new products. The other narrative thread concerns the author’s childhood trauma: Lamb-Shapiro’s mother committed suicide when she was very young. As the author dissects these and other self-help systems, finding fault fairly, she also finds it seeping into her approach to grieving that loss and learning more about how her mother died.

A brave, personal book in which the author discovers the best of the self-help industry, despite its many flaws. (6 b/w images)

A CHILD OF CHRISTIAN BLOOD Murder and Conspiracy in Tsarist Russia: The Beilis Blood Libel Levin, Edmund Schocken (400 pp.) $29.95 | Feb. 25, 2014 978-0-8052-4299-7 978-0-8052-4324-6 e-book

A page-turning history/true-crime story surrounding the myth of blood libel, the idea that “Jews commit ritual murder to obtain Christian blood” to use in Passover rites.

The fiction of blood libel can be traced precisely to Thomas of Monmouth, who first published the accusation in 1150. No matter how many bishops, popes and monarchs unreservedly rejected the accusation, it has managed to pop up with alarming regularity. The late 19th century was particularly virulent, with 79 cases alleging ritual murder in Eastern Europe. At that time, Russia maintained nearly 1,500 anti-Semitic statutes on their books. The 1911 case of Mendel Beilis, who was accused of the murder (and supposed blood libel) of teenager Andrei Yushchinsky, is a perfect fit for the talents of Emmy Award–winning Good Morning America writer and producer Levin. His easy narrative style makes the book read like a novel as he points out the absolute absurdity of the baseless accusation. His comprehensive research uncovered proof that just about every security official involved found no reason to charge the young factory worker. The obsessive anti-Semite Vladimir Golubev was the first to accuse Beilis, and his fellow right-wing groups took up his cry for blood and threats of pogroms. Those who felt most strongly that it was a Jewish plot were, unfortunately, those who had the most influence: Czar Nicholas II and the chief prosecutor for the Kiev Judicial Chamber, Grigory Chaplinsky.

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derelicts who were primed with vodka before their statements were taken. “The ordeal of Mendel Beilis stands as a cautionary reminder of the power and persistence of a murderous lie,” writes the author. “In the twenty-first century, the Blood Libel is still with us.”

Levin manages to tell the story clearly without provocative bias while pointing out how the entire world demonstrated their incredulity at the absurdity of the entire episode. (24 pages of b/w illustrations)

NEWTOWN An American Tragedy

Lysiak, Matthew Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster (288 pp.) $25.99 | Dec. 10, 2013 978-1-4767-5374-4

Meticulous account of the Newtown massacre and its aftermath.

On Dec. 14, 2012, Adam Lanza murdered 20 first graders and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. He had already killed his mother, and he ended by killing himself. New York Daily News journalist Lysiak covered the event, later moving to Newtown to gather more material, particularly about Lanza’s troubled life. Suffering from Asperger’s, Lanza was a difficult, angry, withdrawn child. His mother dealt ineffectually with his behavior, repeatedly pulling him out of schools that she believed were not serving his needs, which exacerbated his isolation. Their common bond was guns: When Adam was 4, she taught him to shoot at a firing range; when he was older, she gave him guns of his own. Their house was filled with firearms and ammunition, and Adam became an expert on weaponry, sharing information and advice on gun enthusiasts’ websites. He was obsessed with mass murderers, correcting Wikipedia entries for them, and creating a 7-foot-long spreadsheet ranking killers “in order from most kills to least, along with the precise make and model of the weapons used….” Anders Behring Breivik, who shot 69 students at a summer camp in Norway in 2011, was Lanza’s hero. The subtitle of the book is “An American Tragedy,” but Norway was obviously not immune. Why did Lanza kill? Could he have been stopped? What can prevent future horrors? The author quotes experts, but questions remain unanswered: about the connection between autism and violence; about whether violent video games (Lanza was obsessed with them) lead to violent acts; about the efficacy of gun control laws (Lanza broke all of Connecticut’s existing laws); about whether better mental health access could have stopped his descent into rage and paranoia; and about America’s identity.

Lysiak hopes to “inform the debate” generated by the tragedy; it’s been a year, and this harrowing book might be a reminder that the debate needs reviving.

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“May’s poetic, gleaming prose makes palpable the wildness and wind, freezing and thawing earth, delicate fragrances of grass and budding trees—and her own profound transformation.” from the map of enough

IT’S EVEN WORSE THAN IT LOOKS How the American Constitutional System Collided with the New Politics of Extremism

A NEW LEAF The End of Cannabis Prohibition

Martin, Alyson; Rashidian, Nushin New Press (256 pp.) $17.95 paper | Feb. 4, 2014 978-1-59558-920-0 978-1-59558-929-3 e-book

Mann, Thomas E.; Ornstein, Norman J. Basic (272 pp.) $16.99 paper | Sep. 3, 2013 978-0-465-07473-0 978-0-465-03136-8 e-book Two scholars examine how today’s hyperpartisanship has crippled our government.

In a country famous for its rough-and-tumble politics, are things really worse than they’ve ever been? Yes, wrote Brookings Institution senior fellow Mann and American Enterprise Institute resident scholar Ornstein in last year’s best-seller, and the answer is still yes in this paperback edition with an updated preface and new afterword allowing the authors to factor in the 2012 election results. To explain the dynamics of the institutional dysfunction plaguing Congress, they begin with a chronicle of the 2011 fight over the debt limit. They trace the governmental breakdown to two sources: 1) the mismatch between our separation-of-powers government and an increasingly parliamentary-style of party politics that features rigid ideologies, a prioritizing of political strategies over national welfare, and an unwillingness to compromise; and 2) the asymmetric nature of the polarization—i.e., a wildly out-of-the-mainstream Republican Party. After dismissing a number of hoary “solutions” to the problem (a vigorous third-party movement, a balanced-budget amendment, term limits), the authors offer their own proposals for fixing the parties and reforming our governmental institutions, most very lofty—e.g., mandatory voting, shifting authority between and within the branches of government—few likely to be adopted. They reject the notion that we’re merely passing through an unfortunate phase and insist that we’re at an unprecedented impasse. They go on to criticize the mainstream media for its false sense of equivalence, its unwillingness to hold Republicans more properly accountable for the current dysfunction. The authors, who’ve collaborated before (The Broken Branch: How Congress is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track, 2006), style themselves as straight shooters, nonpartisan analysts who’ve worked for decades in Washington with members of both parties. They say they are calling out the Republican Party only because the evidence obliges. Likely, at least half the country will disagree.

Precisely the sort of argument that causes a stir in establishment D.C. but only small waves elsewhere.

How, where and why the United States lost the “War on Drugs.”

Bill Hicks once cracked, “I loved when Bush came out and said, ‘We are losing the war against drugs.’ You know what that implies? There’s a war being fought, and the people on drugs are winning it!” Hicks would have loved Martin and Rashidian’s cogent, well-sourced and ambitious analysis of the slow decline of cannabis prohibition in the United States. The authors frame the book squarely in the recent passage of Colorado’s Amendment 66 and Washington state’s Initiative 502, both of which legalized the drug for recreational use during the 2012 elections, and the narrative opens on those victory ceremonies. But then the authors dig deeper with interviews with figures like Valerie Corral, the “Mother Teresa of Pot,” who first formed her medical marijuana collective in California two decades ago. There’s also Colorado’s Mason Tvert, a subversive activist who used the media to deliver his message in a way that made sense to the state’s middle class.

The authors talked to the activists at Montana Cannabis, where, two years ago, federal agents raided the sedate grow house by coming in with guns blazing. Martin and Rashidian ably ferret out counterintuitive trends, like the fact that much of the opposition to Colorado’s law came not from law enforcement but from those involved in the drug trade. They also examine the fallout and blowback of the drug wars, ranging from the brutal violence that continues to plague the Mexican border to the terrifying buildup of the federal prison population to nearly 7 million inmates, a majority felled by drug convictions and many by the illogical “three-strike rule.”

Not as much fun as Cheech and Chong, but a piercing work of sociological reportage.

THE MAP OF ENOUGH One Woman’s Search for Place

May, Molly Caro Counterpoint (320 pp.) $25.00 | Mar. 1, 2014 978-1-61902-236-2

In an impressive debut memoir, a self-proclaimed “Woman of the World” chronicles her journey to find a home.

May, who has worked as barista, conservationist, teacher and vegetable farmer, joins the ranks of Gretel Ehrlich and Annie Proulx, celebrants of sagebrush, big skies and journeys of self-discovery. The author grew up a |

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traveler: Her parents moved frequently, and when asked where she came from, May would respond, proudly and defiantly, “I am from nowhere.” A move to the Gallatin River Valley of Montana with her fiance fed a new restlessness to discover a place she could call home and, even more importantly, to discover if rootlessness defined her. On 107 acres of land owned by her parents, the couple decided to build a yurt, a traditional Mongolian structure of bent wood covered with canvas, providing “a thin membrane” of shelter from owls, coyotes and a slinking mountain lion. They finished the painstaking project just before the snows began. Shrouded by the hushed winter landscape, May felt herself quieted, and she honed a new skill: “Learning silence in order to hear your own truth.” Instead of having no roots, she decided she, too, had been shaped by the places where she had lived —“a lineage of worldliness”—places essential to her identity that she did not need to travel constantly. While her friends wondered when she would take to the road with a new map, she settled into the tasks of day-to-day survival: planting, reaping, sweeping, cooking: “Some whole days,” she writes, “could be spent taking simple care.”

May’s poetic, gleaming prose makes palpable the wildness and wind, freezing and thawing earth, delicate fragrances of grass and budding trees—and her own profound transformation.

MY LIFE IN MIDDLEMARCH

Mead, Rebecca Crown (256 pp.) $25.00 | Jan. 28, 2014 978-0-307-98476-0 A New Yorker writer examines the arc of her life in the reflection of George Eliot’s Middlemarch.

This subgenre—examining personal history through the echoes of a singular work of art—can be riddled with land mines. When it works well—e.g., Alan Light’s The Holy and the Broken (2012)—the results can be marvelous. Obviously fleshed out from her New Yorker article “Middlemarch and Me,” Mead (One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding, 2007) could have simply written a dense biography of Mary Ann Evans, who would go on to write some of the most enduring novels of the Victorian era under her pen name. In fact, Mead was wise not to omit herself from this story, as her feelings about the great work and its themes of women’s roles, relationships and self-delusion are far more insightful than a barrage of facts would have been. Mead discovered the book at 17, a critical time when the character of Dorothea Brooke, the aspirational protagonist forced to subjugate her dreams, truly spoke to her. In some ways, it’s easy to see how Mead’s life has paralleled these fictional characters she so admires, even as she repeats some of the same mistakes.

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erring humans—and recognize that we, too, will sometimes be struggling, and may sometimes be erring, even when we are at our most arrogant and confident,” Mead writes. “And this is why every time I go back to the novel I feel that—while I might live a century without knowing as much as just a handful of its pages suggest—I may hope to be enlarged by each revisiting.”

A rare and remarkable fusion of techniques that draws two women together across time and space.

THE PRIORITY LIST A Teacher’s Final Quest to Discover Life’s Greatest Lessons

Menasche, David Touchstone/Simon & Schuster (224 pp.) $24.00 | Jan. 14, 2014 978-1-4767-4344-8 Inspiring memoir from a young teacher who refused to give up after a

brain cancer diagnosis.

The idea of the priority list came to Menasche in his early days teaching honors and AP English at a Miami magnet school, when his students were having trouble relating to Shakespeare’s Othello. In an effort to help them, he presented a list of words that applied to everyone’s life—“honor, love, wealth, power, career, respect”—and asked them to order the words according to the importance they might have had for Othello. The list, which he modified over the years to include more abstract ideas, became one of his standard teaching tools, and it helped students connect with the literary characters and reflect on their own priorities. “Their lists revealed more about their lives and what mattered to them than anything they ever said aloud,” he writes.

Only in 2006, after he was diagnosed with brain cancer at 34, did Menasche write his own list. He was dismayed to find that the top items on the list were friendship and education rather than love or his marriage. After two emergency operations and continuous chemotherapy, he managed to lead a relatively normal life and continue teaching for six more years. He describes his return to the classroom after the first operation as one of the happiest days of his life, and he explains that since he was childless, his students were like family to him. When his health deteriorated and he was finally forced to give up teaching in 2012, he was deeply depressed. Then he made the audacious decision to travel the country and see how his former students were doing, and he discovered that the bonds he had formed with them remained strong. Student comments at the conclusion of each chapter celebrate the author’s continuing influence on their lives.

A beautiful meditation.

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CALL ME BURROUGHS A Life

Miles, Barry Twelve (736 pp.) $32.00 | Jan. 28, 2014 978-1-4555-1195-2

A ponderous revisiting of the strange and terrible life of the godfather of America’s Beat movement.

In this strange season for literary biographies, we’ve already worked through J. Michael Lennon’s warm but thorough portrait of a combative Norman Mailer and the controversial and revelatory Salinger, by David Shields and filmmaker Shane Salerno. William Burroughs (1914– 1997) is an equally bizarre figure whose hallucinatory and experimental works of art and unpredictable journey rained influence down the generations from Jack Kerouac to Kurt Cobain. This wedge of biographical examination is no less doorstop-worthy but hardly the definitive biography of the mad genius of Lawrence, Kan. First of all, Miles (In the Seventies: Adventures in the Counterculture, 2011, etc.) carries some fairly weighty credibility, having known Burroughs and his contemporaries from 1965 on. However, the author has already exhaustively covered the Beat movement in numerous biographies, not least in William Burroughs: El Hombre Invisible (1993). Here, it’s seldom that we hear that laconic drawl and snarling wit that Burroughs carried into old age, which is clearly missed. Instead, Miles goes down the well-worn path of meticulously tracking his subject through time and place instead of through attitude and output.

Even the pivot point of the novelist’s life—the 1951 misadventure in Mexico during which Burroughs shot and killed his wife—elicits little in the way of emotional insight into that furious whirlwind.

Answers from a man the author knew and interviewed many times could have changed the way Burroughs is painted; pointing instead to a confessional sliver of text from the Tom Waits collaboration The Black Rider is avoidance.

While segments about the writing of groundbreaking works like Naked Lunch and heroin-fueled binges in Tangiers and Paris are satisfyingly voyeuristic, the biography is ultimately neither sensational enough to court controversy nor keen enough to be useful to future scholars.

CITY OF GOD Faith in the Streets

Miles, Sara Jericho Books/Hachette (224 pp.) $20.00 | $9.99 e-book | Feb. 4, 2014 978-1-4555-4731-9 978-1-4555-4732-6 e-book Account of an unusual urban Ash Wednesday.

San Francisco Food Pantry founder and director Miles (Jesus Freak: Feeding Healing Raising the Dead, 2010, etc.) shares her experiences and musings from Ash Wednesday in 2012. A resident of San |

Francisco’s Mission District, the author encounters a level of diversity within a few blocks of her home and church that rivals almost any other urban neighborhood in America. It is within such a setting that she goes about the job of ministering, under the auspices of an Episcopal church, to the larger community.

Much of her story is a lead-up to her journey outside the confines of church walls, when she took the ashes of Ash Wednesday out into the neighborhood, offering ashes on the street corners throughout her neighborhood. Despite her anxieties about this very public celebration of liturgy, the event turned out to be a joyous and touching experience. Miles is deeply committed to her urban neighborhood and toward radical involvement in the life of the city. In fact, everywhere she looks, she is reminded of “the movement,” a waning countercultural thrust spawning everything from socialist bookstores to gay street patrols.

Given the nontraditional backdrop of the Mission, Miles’ Episcopal chants and rituals seem out of place and even jarring, yet everywhere she went on this Ash Wednesday, she was met by people eager to partake in the ceremony. Along the way, she introduces colorful characters, both from the fringes of society and from the depths of San Francisco activism. An intriguing read, Miles’ account will resonate most with those who live in and love the inner city. Though the author recognizes that religious experiences are global and varied, she is unapologetic in proclaiming, “for me, it’s cities that make the presence of God most real.”

Poignant and passionate look at the city church, inside the walls and out.

SEVEN SECONDS Memories of the JFK Assassination, the Tragedy that Changed America Millea, Holly Byliner (40 pp.) $1.99 e-book | Oct. 25, 2013

A short collection of memories of the Kennedy assassination by a random assortment of media and entertainment figures.

The 50th anniversary of the assassination has sparked plenty of published commemoration but perhaps none as strange or slight as this. If you want to know how that tragedy affected the Four Seasons’ Frankie Valli, Hustler publisher Larry Flynt or comedian David Steinberg, here’s your source. Journalist Millea saves one last question for everyone she profiles: “Do you remember where you were when you heard the news that JFK had been shot?” Maybe she had the idea for this collection of extended quotes all along, or maybe she was just curious (she explains that since she was 2 at the time, she had no personal recollection of that tragic day). Since her interviews likely hadn’t come anywhere near that subject until then, one assumes that Barbra Streisand, Dick Cavett and game-show host Alex Trebek were surprised by the question, but none of them seem ambushed by the out-of-theblue query. Journalist Gay Talese swims against the tide of convention, claiming that when he was sent to gather man-on-the-street kirkus.com

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“A deep biographical treatment of the Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who is the scourge of those in power.” from seymour hersh

reactions from New Yorkers, they really weren’t feeling a whole lot in the immediate aftermath (until the media showed everyone what we were supposed to feel). Artist Chuck Close remembers conservative law students at Yale “drinking a toast to the death of JFK.” Flynt reflects with a rare tinge of remorse, “Isn’t it strange that, twelve years later, I would publish nude photos of his wife, Jacqueline? It seems not a very nice thing to do when you think about it, but it just all seemed like business to me.”

There seems to be no reason for the order in which these interview snippets are presented and no rationale for who is included, other than the fact that each was interviewed by the author.

SEYMOUR HERSH Scoop Artist

Miraldi, Robert Potomac Books (416 pp.) $34.95 | Oct. 1, 2013 978-1-61234-475-1 A deep biographical treatment of the Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who is the scourge of those in power.

Seymour Hersh, now in his late 70s, began his unlikely journalism career in 1959 after earning a history degree from the University of Chicago and dropping out of law school. With limited cooperation from his subject, journalist and former journalism professor Miraldi (The Pen Is Mightier: The Muckraking Life of Charles Edward Russell, 2003, etc.) documents his remarkable, controversial decades as an investigative reporter. Hersh comes across as a good guy of limited patience when approached by fellow journalists and as a bulldog with sharp teeth when in his reporter mode. Miraldi clearly demonstrates how the journalistically capable but mostly unknown Hersh rocketed to fame in 1969 with his exploration of the My Lai massacre. Despite the enormity of that atrocity and countless similar atrocities by American troops, no other journalist was digging into the topic, and Hersh had difficulty finding a news outlet to publish his findings. Eventually, his output of books, investigations for the New York Times, projects for the New Yorker and speeches to a wide variety of audiences made Hersh famous, albeit alternately loved or hated. Miraldi explains why there is rarely a middle ground of opinion regarding Hersh the person and Hersh the muckraker. Although Hersh is extremely closed about his family life, Miraldi manages to reveal pertinent information, allowing his subject to emerge from the pages as fully human rather than a one-dimensional scandal hound. In the competition between Hersh and Bob Woodward—a competition that includes strong feelings from the supporters and detractors of each—Hersh can be considered to be superior based on Miraldi’s portrait, despite the warts the biographer delineates. Miraldi closes the Hersh saga in 2004, after Hersh’s exposé of Abu Ghraib, yet another blot on America’s reputation in the world.

An important, long-overdue biography.

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REDEFINING REALNESS My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More

Mock, Janet Atria (288 pp.) $24.99 | Feb. 4, 2014 978-1-4767-0912-3

One woman’s authentic memoir about becoming her true self.

Being poor and black can be difficult enough, but being poor, black and transgender can appear nearly insurmountable in today’s world. Nonetheless, with grit and determination, Mock accepted her position in life and moved ever forward toward her goal of becoming the woman she knew she was meant to be. With simple honesty, the author brings readers into the world of transgender identity, of what it meant and felt like to be born and thought of as a boy, only to know deep inside that she was not that boy. From learning her father was addicted to crack to the childhood sexual abuse she sustained to the street sex she performed to gain enough money for her sex-change operation, Mock allows readers into the deepest and darkest moments of her life. As she writes, “[w]hy tell your story if you’re not going to tell it in its entirety?”

The author also provides endearing stories of her moments of delight as she transitioned, the girlfriends who accepted her and aided her with makeup and clothes, the women who helped her out on the streets and the family members who embraced her regardless of her gender identity. Undercurrents of strong emotion swirl throughout this well-written book, as Mock constantly moves forward toward complete womanhood, and she freely discusses her thoughts on the world’s view of transgender and “other” people. It is an eye-opening and unapologetic story that is much greater than mere disclosure; it is a necessary assessment that a transgender person is as normal as any other person who claims the title of normalcy and that gender and body shape do not form a person’s identity.

An enlightening, much-needed perspective on transgender identity. (Author appearances in Los Angeles, New York, New Jersey, Kansas City, Madison)

A RELIGION OF ONE’S OWN A Guide to Creating a Personal Spirituality in a Secular World Moore, Thomas Gotham Books (288 pp.) $27.50 | Jan. 13, 2014 978-1-592-40829-0

looking to pick a fight). |

A vade mecum in support of selfcrafted faith, so broadly accepting that it’s definitely not the holiday gift for your fundamentalist brother-in-law (unless you’re

“To create a religious life of your own,” writes former monk and psychotherapist Moore (The Guru of Golf, 2010, etc.), “you have to think things through and be critical of the information you find.” Christopher Hitchens would add that you have to suspend disbelief and reason, as well, but the author is ready for such objections. Indeed, he holds that the one in five people who are self-identified atheists or agnostics can live religiously meaningful lives, even if they “probably don’t want to use the word ‘religion,’ ” observing ancient traditions without necessarily believing in their divine authorship. Moore professes to being guided by Taoism, Christianity, Greek mythology, Buddhism, Sufism, Transcendentalism, and Native American belief, a smorgasbord that would cause conniptions in religious purists of every conceivable stripe. Yet, quoting from the works of the earthly saint Simone Weil, the author isn’t prescribing a cafeteria-style, selective faith so much as taking each faith seriously and working hard at it—as Weil said, “Each time you consider a spiritual tradition, think of it as if there were none other.” Some of Moore’s recommendations are rather painfully obvious: Pay attention to your dreams and keep a notepad by the bed to record them; bring spirituality into the bedroom in other contexts; honor the muse; play nice. Some are even a little hippie-ish: “Get a beautiful edition of the Tarot Cards. They are full of traditional images that relate to your life. Read them as you read a dream.”

A well-meaning book that wears its spirit of tolerance on its sleeve, and tolerance isn’t a bad thing—no matter what Stephen Dawkins or Billy Graham might have to say about it.

THE ROMANTIC ECONOMIST A Story of Love and Market Forces

Nicolson, William Marble Arch/Simon & Schuster (208 pp.) $16.00 paper | Jan. 7, 2014 978-1-4767-3041-7

A romantically challenged Londoner offers new strategies on playing the dating game, attempting to “make sense of something he doesn’t understand, using something that he does.”

With only a six-week duration as his relationship “personal best time,” Nicolson, a 20-something trainee solicitor for a British law firm, parlays his studies in economics and politics at Edinburgh University into unorthodox ways to view love, improve his chances at romance and demonstrate a correlation between love and the “clear-cut rational world of economics.” Applying the dismal science to the love game, the author explores online dating, where one’s “goods” are presented, displayed, brokered, ordered and possibly exchanged. “Playing hard to get” increases your demand by not overstocking and oversimplifying intentions. Nicolson shares personal dating anecdotes that range from the humorous to the cringe-worthy and astutely equates a fizzling love life with didactic market |

principles, complemented with graphs and charts. His sage best friend and patient sounding board Flora offers counsel, but her stern advice does little to dissuade his course of action, which can be outwardly sexist and overstated, as in a long-winded chapter involving the long wine lists at higher-end restaurants.

Some correlations are cleverer than others, as when Nicolson establishes an economic correlation with the nice-guys-versusbad-boys equation or how the eternal tug of war between the (married) sexes can be measured using market force predictors.

After a long dry stretch, Nicolson admits to successfully dating a girl for a year, yet he eventually forgoes the strong, safe, bankable investment of a long-term relationship for the free-form “liquidity” of the single life. A chapter on Keynesian economics restores his confidence in himself and in love.

A not always convincing, mostly amusing glimpse at the grinding gears of the young male in pursuit of love and economic stability.

A FORK IN THE ROAD Tales of Food, Pleasure, and Discovery on the Road Oseland, James—Ed. Lonely Planet (304 pp.) $15.99 paper | Dec. 1, 2013 978-1-74321-844-0

A savory collection of personal narratives about the “fabulous and even miraculous” ways that food revives “the great, exciting promise of life.”

Saveur editor in chief Oseland (Cradle of Flavor: Home Cooking from the Spice Islands of Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia, 2006, etc.) invites readers to feast on writing by distinguished restaurant critics, writers, cookbook authors and chefs that celebrate the “tastes and sensations…[that] alter our view of the world.”

The book’s opening essay recounts British restaurant critic Giles Coren’s first, and last, encounter with Hostess Twinkies.

To Coren’s boyhood self, these sugary confections symbolized both the golden promise of America and, by extension, the “endlessly thrilling” meals Americans always ate. Food, however, does not evoke place alone. As novelist Francine Prose shows in her essay about a Christmas holiday spent in France, it can also be tied to memories of finding gustatory, if slightly guilty, pleasures in unexpected situations. For others—like poet and memoirist Frances Mayes, who talks about her life-changing decision to study cooking in Provence, and chef Marcus Samuelsson, who describes his risky but scrumptious encounter with fugu—food has been salvation. Exciting and exotic as it can be, the best food is sometimes the simplest. Food critic Alan Richman discovered this truth on a trip to post–Arab Spring Egypt, where his happiest culinary experience was with the “unsophisticated [and] unruly” dishes eaten by ordinary people. But for chef Martin Yan, who affectionately recalls his impoverished mother’s modest yet magical kitchen in rural China, the most mouthwatering dishes are often born at home. Funny, insightful and revealing, Oseland’s anthology is not just a delightful kirkus.com

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“Solid science well infused with readable history, pop culture and personal stories.” from me, myself, and why

THE WARRIOR STATE Pakistan in the Contemporary World

adventure in world cuisine, but also a thoughtful exploration of the emotions that so often accompany cooking, dining and eating. Other contributors include David Mas Masumoto, Sigrid Nunez, Michael Pollan and Rita Mae Brown.

Delicious reading for the discerning foodie.

ME, MYSELF, AND WHY Searching for the Science of Self

Ouellette, Jennifer Penguin (368 pp.) $16.00 paper | Feb. 1, 2014 978-0-14-312165-7

Who are we, and why are we the way we are? These are the questions examined by an intrepid science journalist.

Ouellette (The Calculus Diaries: How Math Can Help You Lose Weight, Win in Vegas, and Survive a Zombie Apocalypse, 2010, etc.) launches into her subject by looking inward. An adoptee, she had a sample of her DNA analyzed, looking for information about her genetic heritage. Her next venture was to undergo an fMRI of her brain. Limited as these tests turned out to be, they provided her with the opportunity to talk about current trends in the fields of genotyping and neuroscience. Next, Ouellette opted for personality testing, which leads to a critical look at that field of psychology and the author’s conclusion that our genes influence our personalities by regulating brain chemistry. Having come full circle in her examination of “me,” Ouellette moves on to “myself,” looking at behaviors and identity. She reports that studies with drunken fruit flies and mice provide clues about the link between genes and alcoholism and that research on virtual reality worlds indicates that the avatars one creates or that one bonds with can reveal much about self-perception. Gender identity comes under her scrutiny, too, as the author reports on the continuing debate about whether sexual orientation is a choice or a destiny created by our genes. She concludes that the essence of the self is not revealed by the information garnered through scientific investigations but that our personal narratives, the stories we tell about ourselves, are essential to getting the whole picture.

The author’s personal anecdotes reveal a writer with keen intelligence, curiosity, a spirit of adventure and a sense of humor.

Solid science well infused with readable history, pop culture and personal stories.

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Paul, T.V. Oxford Univ. (272 pp.) $27.95 | Feb. 3, 2014 978-0-19-932223-7

Pakistan is a mess, writes Paul (International Relations/McGill Univ.; Asymmetric Conflicts: War Initiation by Weaker Powers, 2011, etc.) in this grim yet thoughtful analysis of how it got that way and how, however unlikely, it might straighten out.

Everyone’s list of failing states contains many in Africa but also includes Pakistan, which is equally poor and ruled by a military that pursues a pugnacious, hyper-realpolitik foreign policy and ignores the necessity of economic development. In the chaos following the 1947 partition of British India, Pakistan received little of the bureaucracy, infrastructure and treasury and lost the first of four wars with India. Yet India, despite its own turmoil, corruption and ethnic quarrels, has prospered during recent decades and maintained democratic institutions.

Pakistan, on the other hand, remains an impoverished autocracy. “Neither the national security state approach nor the use of religion has pacified the class and ethnic division of Pakistani society,” writes the author. “It is indeed one of the least globalized countries in terms of the core economic categories of trade and investment.” When generals do not govern directly, weak civilian leaders defer to a military that absorbs most of the budget and remains fixated with the next war with India. Other great powers feed this obsession. China considers Pakistan an ally in its border disputes with India. Happy to learn that the generals opposed communism, the United States sent aid, which vastly increased after the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and continues. American leaders are aware that Pakistan spends most on her forces facing India, but they continue to yearn (in vain) for more cooperation in the war on terrorism.

This aid has proved a “geostrategic curse,” perpetuating a perilously unstable warrior state and rescuing it from bankruptcy more than once.

Painting a broader picture but covering much the same ground as former Pakistani ambassador Husain Haqqani’s Magnificent Delusions (2013), Paul delivers an equally insightful and harsh portrait of a dysfunctional nation.

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“Interesting topic, impressive execution and stunning visual accompaniments.” from the power of glamour

ROTH UNBOUND A Writer and His Books

THE POWER OF GLAMOUR Longing and the Art of Visual Persuasion

Pierpont, Claudia Roth Farrar, Straus and Giroux (368 pp.) $27.00 | Oct. 22, 2013 978-0-374-28051-2

An insightful portrait of a creative life.

New Yorker writer Pierpont (Passionate Minds: Women Rewriting the World, 2000) admired Philip Roth long before she met him at a party in 2002. That meeting generated nearly a decade of conversations that inform this book: part biography—“used primarily as illumination”—part literary and cultural history, part Roth’s own memories, all in the service of examining Roth’s long, prolific career. Goodbye, Columbus (1959) catapulted the young author to fame, earning a National Book Award and acclaim from such prominent literary figures as Saul Bellow, Alfred Kazin, Irving Howe and Leslie Fiedler. It also incited accusations of anti-Semitism among readers who objected to Roth’s portrayal of his characters. “I’ll never write about Jews again,” he announced after a particularly grueling attack. But 10 years later—after two critical and commercial failures—Portnoy’s Complaint appeared. This novel, about “a wretchedly good Jewish boy’s attempts to squirm out of the ethical straitjacket of his childhood...,” was, writes Pierpont, “one of the signal subversive acts of a subversive age” and established Roth’s literary identity.

Pierpont traces Roth’s life through two marriages, many affairs, a few awkward dates with Jacqueline Kennedy, assorted medical maladies and near-suicidal depression. She offers judicious overviews of his works and critics’ responses, including feminists’ accusations of misogyny. Although she draws somewhat on Roth’s two partial autobiographies, she calls her subject a master of self-disguise, most overtly revealed in Zuckerman, the protagonist of four novels, including Zuckerman Unbound. “Without Zuckerman—or some other mask,” writes Pierpont, “Roth is kind, discreet, and far from exciting. Also, far from truthful.”

Although the opinionated Roth never avoided a fight, the man Pierpont came to know was reserved, gentle and cautious. “This is a discrepancy that all of Roth’s friends observe,” she notes: “the literary pirate who carries a bottle of Purell.”

Although not a substitute for a full biography, Pierpont’s book offers a candid and sympathetic portrait of an audacious writer.

Postrel, Virginia Simon & Schuster (256 pp.) $28.00 | Nov. 5, 2013 978-1-4165-6111-8

Postrel (The Substance of Style: How the Rise of Aesthetic Value Is Remaking Commerce, Culture, and Consciousness, 2003, etc.) offers a thoroughly researched, analytical, illustrated view on the characteristics, both keen and subtle, that qualify an object, person, event or location as glamorous.

Following publication of The Substance of Style, her detailed account of the increased value of aesthetics in popular culture, the journalist and editor turned her attention to the study of glamour. She leaves no stone unturned in her examination, touching on topics ranging from the intrigue of Michael Jordan to political failures, and she writes in equal measure about what glamour is and is not. Glamour, she argues, is not equivalent to luxury and cannot be bought; instead, it depends on the object in question and its audience’s imagination and desire. “It is not a product or style but a form of communication and persuasion,” she writes. “It depends on maintaining exactly the right relationship between object and audience, imagination and desire. Glamour is fragile because perceptions change.” In two- to three-page sections, Postrel unpacks so-called icons and archetypes, including princesses, superheroes, makeovers and cities like Shanghai, and judges each on its illusory powers and pitfalls. The design and production of the text are appealing, due largely to the 100-plus accompanying images: photographs and paintings that evoke glamour throughout history and, in some way, spark readers’ fantasies while increasing the scope of understanding on the subject and its various contexts. Postrel cites innumerable sources, weaving quotations and vignettes into each of her chapters, and the result is exhaustive and wholly entertaining. For those interested in the evolution of glamour over the ages, as well as readers with a stake in marketing, this is a must-read.

Interesting topic, impressive execution and stunning visual accompaniments.

ROBERT PLANT A Life

Rees, Paul It Books/HarperCollins (368 pp.) $28.99 | Oct. 22, 2013 978-0-06-228138-8

By-the-numbers biography of the shaggy rocker.

Unfortunately, former Q and Kerrang! editor Rees hits nearly every rock-bio cliché. As his yarn opens, we find an aging Plant, frontman of Led Zeppelin, world-weary, “the weight of history pressing down upon him; the burden of all the demons |

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he had come here to put to rest at last.” Then the perfunctory career review begins: Midlands boy grows up in a bombed-out, gritty industrial landscape, the child of music-loving (but classical music, mind you) parents, hears Elvis—and, more to the point, Bill Haley and His Comets—and is turned into a faux American. As Rees rightly notes, Plant, initially known in Britain as the hippie’s hippie, is a shrewd and bookish fellow who refuses to be pinned down. He made his fortune as a singer of heavy rock, but, as folk-rock idol Roy Harper says, “Robust Planet” was smart not to do the same old rock thing in the 30-odd years post-Zep, instead searching endlessly on the musical horizon for the next thing to do. (The current next thing is a blend of Middle Eastern and Americana, a pleasingly contradictory sound.) Plant, who at 65 “is now eligible for a bus pass and a state pension” in Britain, is a serious enough musician to warrant a serious biography, though perhaps it’s payback for thudding anthems like “Kashmir” and “Immigrant Song” to have a life story clotted with thudding prose along the lines of “His path was set,” “In many respects 1965 was to be a pivotal year,” and “He heard the screams, smelt the sex and sensed the power that could be bestowed upon the man with the microphone.”

For die-hard fans only. Zeppelin fanatics will want to turn to Stephen Davis’ hoary Hammer of the Gods (1985), which, though covering only the band and not Plant’s solo decades, isn’t as painful to read.

FALLING INTO PLACE An Intimate Geography of Home Reid, Catherine Beacon (176 pp.) $24.95 | Feb. 4, 2014 978-0-8070-0992-5 978-0-8070-0993-2 e-book

An uneven collection of sharply observed and deeply pondered essays, mainly on the environment but informed by the author’s perspective as a Quaker and a lesbian.

“In their shapes and meanders, the personal essay and the long walk have much in common, most notably in their valuing of the journey over the destination,” writes Reid (Creative Writing/Warren Wilson Coll.; Coyote: Seeking the Hunter in Our Midst, 2004), who invites readers to share some walks, most of them in nature generally and many of them involving birds specifically. She continues to observe that these two linked pursuits involve “a heightened attention,” and most of these essays pay very close attention to detail, as the author finds significance in distinctions to which many observers might remain oblivious.

She also makes connections between her solitary contemplation of nature and her relationships with those close to her, as when she writes after the death of her grandmother, “She and I may not have said much about the matters of our hearts but in the language of birds we shared plenty.” Two essays rise above the rest. “Hitched, Massachusetts, 2004” seems deeply felt as well as pondered, as the author works her way through the 64

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ambivalence of becoming legally wed to her partner, “because there are lots of reasons besides fidelity and commitment why queers might want to marry and why doing so might cause palms to sweat.” In “Wild Geese and Other Nostalgias,” the author illuminates how love for birds might be bad for them, making it too easy for them to stay in one place and multiply, interrupting their natural migratory cycles.

As a self-conscious writer and ardent environmentalist, Reid makes fine company for those who share her passions, yet there’s little trace of humor, self-deprecating or otherwise, that might broaden her circle of readers.

WARSAW 1944 Hitler, Himmler, and the Warsaw Uprising

Richie, Alexandra Farrar, Straus and Giroux (752 pp.) $40.00 | Dec. 9, 2013 978-0-374-28655-2 A sympathetic delineation of one of the grimmest chapters in a savage war.

Though neither a World War II scholar nor military expert, Richie (Faust’s Metropolis: A History of Berlin, 1998) has the advantages of living in Warsaw and familiarity with the location and resources—e.g., a collection of underground newspapers from the war years. As a result, her work exploring what she considers a largely unexposed episode at war’s end—not to be confused with the suicidal Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943—remains engrossing despite the nearly unreadable catalog of horrors inflicted on the victims. The Polish people had been resisting German occupation since the first bombing and invasion in September 1939. Early on, Soviet collusion with Germany in carving up the country left Poles wary of any collaboration, which would have crucial consequences in the summer of 1944, when communication between the Polish and the approaching Soviets might have helped bolster a defense of the city. By June 1944, the Soviets had launched Operation Bagration, creating havoc for the German Army Group Centre and causing nearly half a million casualties. To everyone’s amazement, the Germans began to withdraw from Warsaw until the assassination attempt on Hitler in July, which shook his trust in his generals and elevated Heinrich Himmler and his minions. Warsaw was declared a “fortress city,” to be held at all costs, and a stunning German counteroffensive, engineered by Field Marshal Walter Model, pushed the Soviets out just as the Polish underground army gave the fateful signal to start the uprising. The consequences for Poles and their city were devastating and complete, what the author calls “a Polish Götterdämmerung which would play out before an indifferent world.”

A massively researched, profoundly unsettling work revealing how the battle for Warsaw exposed the perfidy of East and West alike. (24 pages of b/w illustrations; 7 maps)

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DANCING THROUGH IT My Journey in the Ballet

Ringer, Jenifer Viking (288 pp.) $27.95 | Feb. 24, 2014 978-0-670-02649-4

Faith buoys one dancer’s life.

At the age of 14, studying dance in Washington, D.C., Ringer was chosen to fill in at the Washington Ballet. The piece was George Balanchine’s lyrical, elegant Serenade, and performing, Ringer recalls, felt “like a light taking up residence in my chest.” She decided then that she must become a professional ballerina. When her family moved to New York, she was accepted into the prestigious School of American Ballet, the feeder for the New York City Ballet. There, she undertook a grueling schedule of classes, as well as finishing high school.

She was also faced with Balanchine’s ideal of the perfect ballerina: “small head, long neck and limbs, slim hips, arched feet, tall and very thin.” When Ringer reached puberty, however, her new curves generated anxiety that her body was out of her control. At the same time, she was accepted into the New York City Ballet as an apprentice, which intensified her training and also her feelings of vulnerability about her body and her talent. Dancers, she realized, never admit pain, exhaustion or weakness but instead sacrifice their bodies “for the approval of whoever happened to be watching, whether it be a ballet master or the audience.” Desperate to exert control over her life, Ringer became obsessed with her body image and spent the next few years alternating between anorexia and bingeing. Finally, she gained so much weight that ballet master Peter Martins fired her. The author reclaimed her life and her career through a renewal of her religious faith: prayer and a belief in God’s watchful care. Married now, with two children, she is a principal ballerina with the NYCB. Told with modesty and humility, Ringer’s memoir exposes the unrelenting rigor of a dancer’s life and the passion and exhilaration of dance itself.

THE MAD SCULPTOR The Maniac, the Model, and the Murder that Shook the Nation

Schechter, Harold Amazon/New Harvest (368 pp.) $24.00 | Feb. 18, 2014 978-0-544-11431-9

The fiendish story of “mad sculptor” Robert Irwin (1908–1975), featuring “the kind of lurid goings-on that speak to the secret dreams and dangerous desires of the public.”

Examining the life and surroundings of Irwin, who perpetrated a triple homicide on Easter Sunday 1937, veteran truecrime writer Schechter (American Literature and Culture/ Queens Coll.; Psycho USA: Famous American Killers You Never |

Heard Of, 2012) also offers tales of other grisly murders, particularly the two murders that took place over an 18-month period in exclusive Manhattan’s Beekman Place. They are connected only by geography and the fact that the tabloids embellished the stories with any salacious material they could dig up or create. Schechter delivers a solid indictment of the journalism practices of the 1920s and ’30s. It was a time of trial by newspaper, with everyone, including Walter Winchell, having a go at the latest suspect. The police were not much help since they fed the beast in their announcements of every lead and suspect.

The murders by the mad sculptor were not even his intended victims; they just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Obsessing about a girl who spurned his proposal, Irwin intended to kill her, and his earlier attempt at self-emasculation to enable him to focus on his powers of visualization brought him to the only psychiatrist who understood his problem, the famed German-born Fredric Wertham. Irwin committed himself to mental institutions on a number of occasions, and his long history of mental illness, possibly due to congenital syphilis, his explosive temper and self-delusion marked him as a man who never should have been released.

For readers who enjoy the stories of the sensationalistic press of the 1930s and its crass exploitation of the details of horrific murders; not for fans of clever police work or investigative reporting.

PRISCILLA The Hidden Life of an Englishwoman in Wartime France Shakespeare, Nicholas Harper/HarperCollins (448 pp.) $27.99 | Jan. 7, 2014 978-0-06-229703-7

Novelist Shakespeare (In Tasmania, 2004, etc.) searches for the realities of his aunt’s life before, during and after World War II. The first portion of the book explains Priscilla’s childhood: Her mother ran off with one of a series of lovers; her father’s lover demanded Priscilla be sent off to Paris to live with her mother in 1926; her mother abused her. It was at school in St.-Germain-en-Laye that she met promiscuous Gillian, who became her lifelong friend and confidante. After a case of venereal disease and a badly performed abortion in Paris (her mother gave her the abortionist’s name), she met and married Robert, nearly 20 years her senior. In spite of her husband’s impotence, Priscilla enjoyed the luxuries of being a vicomtesse. When Robert was taken prisoner in the German invasion, her in-laws, fearful of losing their estates, turned her out. She was interned a short time as a British national but was released when she claimed pregnancy. This is when her history gets cloudy. When Priscilla returned to England after the war, she was a healthy woman with a suitcase full of designer clothes and little evidence of the ravages of wartime Paris. Was she a collaborator? Who were her protectors? A trove of papers, letters and photographs kirkus.com

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“Read this book to discover Dante the man, the pilgrim and the poet. Then go read his greatest poem. He’s well worth the exploration, and Shaw is a Virgil-like guide.” from reading dante

discovered by Shakespeare after Priscilla’s death paint the portrait of a woman who lived well. In occupied Paris, ordinary women were cast into extraordinary circumstances—their main goals were to procure enough clothing and food and not get shot. Priscilla’s letters and Gillian’s notebooks finally put names to Priscilla’s important Paris wartime lovers, and the author moves back and forth in time to narrate her life.

A somewhat disjointed story that nonetheless successfully recounts how one woman dealt with her dysfunctional life. (b/w photos throughout)

READING DANTE From Here to Eternity

Shaw, Prue Liveright/Norton (398 pp.) $28.95 | Feb. 10, 2014 978-0-87140-742-9

Dante expert Shaw (Emeritus, Italian Studies/Univ. Coll. London; editor: Dante: Monarchy, 1996) explains The Divine Comedy so easily and simply, she eliminates all trepidation in anyone daunted by his masterpiece, “the greatest poem of the Middle Ages and perhaps the greatest single work of Western literature.”

To understand Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) the pilgrim, you must first understand Dante the poet. Originally a politician, Dante was exiled from his native Florence in 1302, an event that brought his poetry to maturity. The Divine Comedy was not a theological work but rather a poem by a man exploring his personal and cultural memories on a journey of life. As the author sings the praises of Dante, readers will come to understand the genius of his work. The first vernacular work in the Florentine dialect, Dante’s 100 cantos, more than 14,000 lines of poetry, are in a rhyme scheme of his own invention called terza rima— a series of three line tercets, with the end word of the second line in one tercet supplying the rhyme for the first and third line of the next. It not only generates the next tercet; it makes the poem absolutely tamper-proof. Shaw exposes the profound depth and art of poetry that encompasses so much more than language and rhythm. Dante avoided writing in Latin, as was the custom, in order to appeal to the masses. He did use a little Latin, however, and also invented words in the new and entirely flexible Italian to fit into his rhyme scheme. Shaw also includes a helpful glossary, timeline and an “excursus on metre.”

Read this book to discover Dante the man, the pilgrim and the poet. Then go read his greatest poem. He’s wellworth the exploration, and Shaw is a Virgil-like guide. (34 illustrations)

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A CRUEL AND SHOCKING ACT The Secret History of the Kennedy Assassination Shenon, Philip Henry Holt (640 pp.) $32.00 | Oct. 29, 2013 978-0-8050-9420-6

Just in time for the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination comes this startling book, which deepens the case for conspiracy while turning some existing conspiracy theories on their heads.

In 1964, the Warren Commission promulgated the lonegunman theory of the assassination, which held that Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone in killing the president. Former New York Times reporter Shenon, who had previously investigated the investigators in The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation (2008), writes that he was approached by a lawyer who had worked, as a young man, for the Warren Commission and who said that other once-young men had stories to tell before they passed on. Their stories are several; blended with the author’s own five-year campaign of reporting and research, they do not speak well for the nation’s intelligence services. (Whether things have gotten better or worse since then will be a matter of debate.) The aristocratic CIA competed with the blue-collar FBI for control of evidence and narrative; each agency had eyes on Oswald, but neither acted properly to contain him, even as Oswald, unlike other American soldiers who defected to the Soviet Union, was placed under special surveillance. Had either acted on available intelligence and arrested Oswald while he was in Mexico City in September 1963, the assassination might have been averted.

As it was, writes Shenon, in Mexico, Oswald came under the sway of a woman who may have put him to work as an agent of Fidel Castro’s government: “There is no absolute proof…that Silvia Duran was anyone’s spy,” he writes, “although there was clearly plenty of suspicion about it in 1963 and 1964.” There seems to be plenty of evidence to suggest, though, that the intelligence agencies destroyed valuable documentation after the killing in a rush to cover up incompetence.

The reader emerges from this complex narrative feeling that the case is not quite settled, but Shenon has helped us get further than we’ve been before.

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“Though fans of the author’s fiction will find illumination, a memoir this compelling and entertaining...should expand his readership beyond those who have loved his novels.” from little failure

LITTLE FAILURE A Memoir

Shteyngart, Gary Random House (400 pp.) $27.00 | Jan. 7, 2014 978-0-679-64375-3

An immigrant’s memoir like few others, with as sharp an edge and as much stylistic audacity as the author’s well-received novels.

The Russian-American novelist writes that after completing this memoir, he reread his three novels (Super Sad True Love Story, 2010, etc.) and was “shocked by the overlaps between fiction and reality...On many occasions in my novels I have approached a certain truth only to turn away from it, only to point my finger and laugh at it and then scurry back to safety. In this book I promised myself I would not point the finger. My laughter would be intermittent. There would be no safety.” That observation minimizes just how funny this memoir frequently is, but it suggests that the richest, most complex character the author has ever rendered on the page is the one once known to his family as “Little Igor” and later tagged with “Scary Gary” by his Oberlin College classmates, with whom he recalls an incident, likely among many, in which he was “the drunkest, the stonedest, and, naturally, the scariest.” Fueled by “the rage and humor that are our chief inheritance,” Shteyngart traces his family history from the atrocities suffered in Stalinist Russia, through his difficulties assimilating as the “Red Nerd” of schoolboy America, through the asthma and panic attacks, alcoholism and psychoanalysis that preceded his literary breakthrough. He writes of the patronage of Korean-American novelist Chang-Rae Lee, who recruited him for a new creative writing program at Hunter College, helped him get a book deal for a novel he’d despaired over ever publishing and had “severely shaken my perception of what fiction about immigrants can get away with.”

Ever since, he’s been getting away with as much as he dares.

Though fans of the author’s fiction will find illumination, a memoir this compelling and entertaining—one that frequently collapses the distinction between comedy and tragedy—should expand his readership beyond those who have loved his novels.

PEE-SHY

Spinelli, Frank Kensington (352 pp.) $15.00 paper | Jan. 1, 2014 978-0-7582-9132-5 978-0-7582-9133-2 e-book The frank chronicle of a physician recovering from a traumatic childhood stunted by shame.

Internist, wellness radio host and public speaker Spinelli (The Advocate Guide to Gay Men’s Health and Wellness, 2008) openly shares the harrowing episodes of sexual abuse he endured as a youth and the ripple effect that lasted well into his adult life, until he decided to find |

closure in his 40s. After fulfilling many of his adult life goals, such as a lucrative private practice, home ownership and a publishing deal, it was a loving gay relationship that proved most elusive for the lonesome author. A particularly nerve-racking blind date with handsome Chad reconfirmed a barrage of neurotic insecurities, including a bizarre bathroom ritual caused by Spinelli’s paruresis, a social-anxiety phobia rendering one unable to urinate in the (real or perceived) presence of others. The narrative backtracks to the late 1970s, tracing Spinelli’s youth as a chubby Italian boy from Staten Island who, at 11, first met Scoutmaster “Bill,” a ruthlessly seductive man who lured several youth into his bedroom for “boy bonding.” But his dating life soon takes a back seat to the author’s aggressive investigational probe into his molester’s history: a pedophilic sociopathic police officer who the author discovered had not only penned a memoir decades earlier, but adopted 15 wayward boys into his home. Their anguished phone confrontations and Bill’s resultant trial, conviction and imprisonment make for intensely bracing reading. Spinelli’s cleansing confessional becomes the graceful release he’d waited decades to experience. “Closing the door…I caught a glimpse of myself in the beveled glass,” writes the author. “There I was. Not some fractured, mirrored reflection of my former self, but me: short, pee-shy, a man able to make the future better than the past.”

An engrossing memoir about overcoming childhood sexual trauma.

THE AGENT My 40-Year Career Making Deals and Changing the Game

Steinberg, Leigh with Arkush, Michael Dunne/St. Martin’s (304 pp.) $25.99 | Jan. 21, 2014 978-1-250-03042-9 978-1-250-03043-6 e-book

A one-time superagent—whose exploits informed the film Jerry Maguire— rehearses his rise, fall and struggles to recover.

Once upon a time, Steinberg (Winning with Integrity: Getting What You’re Worth Without Selling Your Soul, 1998) and his agency represented some of the most stellar names in the NFL sky— quarterbacks Warren Moon, Steve Young and Troy Aikman among them. The narrative commences at the 2006 NFL Hall of Fame inductions, when Moon and Aikman were inducted. We then swoop back to 1949 and his birth, boyhood in Los Angeles and the news that his IQ ranks with Einstein’s. (Humility is not a hallmark of Steinberg’s prose—though it does appear near the end.) We follow him to Berkeley (where he continued through law school) and his decision to become a sports agent due to his friendship with quarterback Steve Bartkowski. He negotiated a good deal for his friend, and off he went on his rocket ride to celebrity. It wasn’t long before he was wheeling and dealing and negotiating multimillion-dollar deals for his clients, living high in the hills above the Bay, schmoozing with celebrities of all sorts. Steinberg says he sought character in his clients—and, kirkus.com

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notably, admirably, urged them to contribute in various ways to charities. He alludes several times to some nastiness in his profession—jealousy, racism (especially the NFL’s dilatory ways vis-à-vis black quarterbacks) and self-absorbed athletes (not entirely their faults). The narrative suffers from some cheesy “guess-what’s-gonna-happen-next?” sentences at the ends of many chapters and from the author’s failure to explore more thoroughly and reflectively his personal weaknesses—alcohol being the principal one. Yes, we read a little about his depressions and his rehab experiences but all in a breezy, “that’s-all-behind-menow” fashion.

NFL crazies will eat this like snack food; more serious readers will shun the empty calories. (8-page b/w photo insert)

THE WINE SAVANT A Guide to the New Wine Culture Steinberger, Michael Norton (224 pp.) $24.95 | Dec. 3, 2013 978-0-393-08271-5

Informative, easily digested how-to guide to enjoying modern wines.

Men’s Journal wine columnist Steinberger (Au Revoir to All That: Food, Wine and the End of France, 2009) offers historical, practical and enjoyable advice on the current wine landscape. From the five elements that create a fine wine to the five must-have books on wine (other than this one) to lists of the best brands of reds and whites, the author’s assistance flows readily from the page to readers. He examines the Parker method of critiquing wine and offers his own methodology so readers can learn how to judge for themselves what constitutes a good bottle. Do you need guidance on how to store wine, what wines pair well with what food, or the definitions of “corked” or “spoofulated”? Steinberger delivers the answers. Unafraid to state his opinions on sauvignon blanc or California chardonnay, the author backs his dislike with solid reasons and then proceeds to offer readers better alternatives to his hated wines. His knowledge is not limited to northern European or California wines, as he examines the differences among 10 rising stars in the wine world. Aware that money might play a factor in one’s ability to purchase a good Burgundy, riesling or Vouvray, Steinberger provides a list of “Fifty of the World’s Great $25 and Under Wines,” which itself makes the book worthy of shelf space. The author’s enthusiasm for wine is infectious, and his desire to lead readers to the best of the best is irresistible. With his lists in hand, those new to the world of viticulture and vintners, as well as practiced oenophiles, will gain invaluable assistance as they peruse the multitude of available possibilities.

Educational, entertaining information on navigating the world of wines.

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WE ARE OUR BRAINS A Neurobiography of the Brain, from the Womb to Alzheimer’s Swaab, D.F. Translated by Hedley-Prôle, Jane Spiegel & Grau (448 pp.) $28.00 | Jan. 7, 2014 978-0-8129-9296-0

Modern scientific research has provided new insight into how the brain works at every stage of life and how chemical processes in the brain affect who we are and how we interact with each other.

Prominent neuroscientist Swaab (Neurobiology/Amsterdam Univ.) is an ideal tour guide to these developments, taking readers chapter by chapter through a human life span of the brain.

A complex and often mysterious organ, the brain has been subject to study for centuries, and yet new discoveries are announced all the time due to increasingly sophisticated experimental methods. Using case studies, historical texts and experience gained from a career in brain research, the author treads some controversial ground in his conclusions. Importantly, he argues that free will may not be absolute and that the brain may be wired to predetermine key aspects of human behavior. For example: When we fall in love, is it a demonstration of free will or a chemical imperative beyond our conscious control? Swaab also suggests that factors like homosexuality and addiction— which have often been cited as individual choices—are instead hard-wired into our brains and therefore beyond our control.

The physical changes in the brain’s circuitry during adolescence or parenthood also suggest predetermination. Accompanying these revelations are technological advances that may be able to treat devastating brain disorders like schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia. Deep-brain stimulation, neuroprostheses, gene therapy and stem cell transplants are some of the cutting-edge treatment options that could represent the future of brain health. The author advocates for an increased awareness of the social significance of brain research and writes passionately about its huge potential for a greater understanding of ourselves as human beings.

A cogent, provocative account of how 21st-century “neuroculture” has the potential to effect profound medical and social change.

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“A model of well-documented revisionist history.” from pat and dick

PAT AND DICK The Nixons, an Intimate Portrait of a Marriage

THE QUEEN’S BED An Intimate History of Elizabeth’s Court

Swift, Will Threshold Editions/Simon & Schuster (450 pp.) $26.99 | Jan. 7, 2014 978-1-4516-7694-5

Whitelock, Anna Sarah Crichton/Farrar, Straus and Giroux (480 pp.) $28.00 | Feb. 11, 2014 978-0-374-23978-7

The marriage of Richard and Pat Nixon undergoes sharp analysis by Swift, a formally trained psychologist and firstfamily historian (The Kennedys Amidst the Gathering Storm: A Thousand Days in London, 1938-1940, 2008, etc.).

The author had access to letters and other of the first lady’s materials unavailable to previous biographers and historians.

He uses them wisely, smashing stereotypes of Richard Nixon as a cold personality who had no clue how to treat his wife and of Pat Nixon as a plastic female too old-fashioned in her idea of marriage to make an impact as a political wife. The book is certainly no valentine to the Pat and Dick of the title, however.

It is a nuanced portrait of each as an individual and of them as a married couple, working through good and bad times while being scrutinized intensively by political foes, ideologues, academics and journalist gossipmongers. Perhaps the most surprising conclusion by Swift is that Pat demonstrated sympathy for women’s rights not only in the United States, but around the globe. The author’s evidence is plentiful, and he writes with grace throughout the mostly chronological narrative. From the opening chapters, it is obvious that Swift understands the skillful use of details and anecdotes that have escaped a large number of Nixon biographers. Even his telling of the couple’s lengthy courtship feels fresh, as the ambitious but socially awkward young Quaker lawyer trapped in the small California town of his upbringing pursues the self-possessed, physically gorgeous, much-sought-after young teacher who grew up with almost no advantages. Swift delves into their compatibility ups and downs, their parenting skills and other private matters, but he focuses mostly on the difficult decisions Pat and Dick had to make together before undertaking seemingly long-shot attempts to serve in the House of Representatives, Senate and the White House.

A model of well-documented revisionist history. (16page color insert)

Densely erudite, intriguing take on Queen Elizabeth I’s very public private life.

Although biographies of Elizabeth and her court are legion, this intimate portrait by Tudor scholar Whitelock (Mary Tudor: Princess, Bastard, Queen, 2011) delves into the nitty-gritty of the archives, diaries and records of people around the queen who physically knew her person. Indeed, the queen herself acknowledged upon accession to the throne in 1558 at age 25 that she had “two bodies”: the natural body of a woman, flawed and corruptible, as well as the “body politic to govern,” inviolable and enduring. Moreover, she was regarded as both feminine and masculine, as she famously alluded to in her Tilbury speech of 1588: “Although I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, I have the heart and stomach of a King, and a King of England too.” Remaining unmarried plunged the queen’s body “at the centre of a drama that encompassed the entirety of Europe.” The metaphors in poetry or satire of the time, referring to the queen in chaste or erotic terms, reveal the charged, sexual anxiety around her accession and succession.

Especially striking is the author’s chronicle of Elizabeth’s relationships over the course of her long reign; she was never alone, and she had several (probably consummated) love affairs or infatuations, most notably with her beloved Lord Robert Dudley. Her ladies-in-waiting certainly knew the skinny on Elizabeth, but they were fiercely loyal even after her death, when they refused to allow her body to be examined or disemboweled, thereby allowing her to remain regina intacta. Whitelock’s deep reading into the primary sources of this period proves wonderfully satisfying.

This chockablock, scholarly portrait invites further interest in this endlessly alluring queen. (8 pages of color illustrations)

DANUBIA A Personal History of Habsburg Europe

Winder, Simon Farrar, Straus and Giroux (560 pp.) $30.00 | Jan. 21, 2014 978-0-374-17529-0 Offbeat portrait of the lost past of Central Europe, ruled by the dull but dependable Habsburg dynasty.

That history stretches out for nearly half a millennium, and Penguin Press U.K. editor Winder (Germania, 2010, etc.) pokes into nearly every corner to examine both the stability of what would become the Austro-Hungarian |

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“A rich, scholarly, instructive reminder that there’s always more to learn about Honest Abe.” from we called him rabbi abraham

Empire and its inevitable decline in the aftermath of World War I. With characteristic lightheartedness, the author ascribes the dynasty’s longevity to “the ability of the senior male to produce heirs and avoid going mad,” but it did not hurt that the Habsburgs introduced a perfectly functioning if soulless bureaucratic machine of the sort that Habsburg subject Franz Kafka would lend his name to. Winder ranges broadly in space as well as time. As he notes, half of the time it took to research and write his book was spent simply wandering the streets of provincial and national capitals as well as small villages, turning up treasures such as the great imperial cathedral at Speyer, where Rudolf of Habsburg lies buried: “For anyone growing up in England or France and used to Gothic it is very alarming to be surrounded by Romanesque gigantism, particularly when made expressionist by malevolent pools of darkness and weird echoes from shuffling feet.” Winder’s offhand, jokey mannerisms could be precious in lesser hands, but he pulls it off, and his book has plenty of serious turns, as when he ponders the curious rise of nationalism in a country that embraced several quite different nations, from Transylvania to Slovakia to a large stretch of the German-speaking world.

That nationalism, of course, eventually produced Adolf Hitler, who may have been inevitable.

“Was it inherent in the destruction of the Habsburg Empire,” Winder wonders in closing, “that Nazism would result?” It’s a meaningful question, one of many that Winder raises in this lucid, often entertaining historical travelogue. (17 b/w illustrations; 5 maps)

Lincoln from 1865 onward—e.g., “Thou has wound thyself lovingly around the hearts of millions with gentle ties, which even the destructive tooth of time can never loosen.” Following the assassination and its aftermath (including an account of the funeral train), Zola follows a more thematic pattern. He looks at ways of memorializing the president, at works of art and music that the president inspired (Irving Berlin and Aaron Copland are here), the views of Lincoln as a moral exemplar, and at the contributions of scholars and collectors. He shows us examples of a children’s book, some Yiddish poems honoring the president, and comments about the strong Jewish presence in the making of the recent film Lincoln. He ends with a persistent story—circulated on the Internet—that Lincoln had actually been a Jew. This Zola swiftly dismisses, noting that “all evidence [is] to the contrary.”

A rich, scholarly, instructive reminder that there’s always more to learn about Honest Abe. (59 illustrations)

WE CALLED HIM RABBI ABRAHAM Lincoln and American Jewry, a Documentary History

Zola, Gary Phillip Southern Illinois Univ. (528 pp.) $49.50 | Feb. 6, 2014 978-0-8093-3292-2

A comprehensive collection of documents describing and characterizing the special bond between the 16th president and many American Jews before and after his death.

Zola (American Jewish Experience/Hebrew Union Coll.; The Americanization of the Jewish Prayer Book, 2008, etc.) includes introductions and contextual explanations for each of the documents he provides—a great boon for readers. The first major section is chronological, and we see Lincoln’s early relationships with Jewish store owners, a photographer (Samuel G. Alschuler), a chiropodist and some notable supporters. Zola explores the issue of having Jewish Army chaplains (Lincoln permitted this) and gives us a detailed look at the bizarre case of Gen. Grant’s 1862 expulsion of Jews from regions of the South under his jurisdiction. (He was upset about some trade problems.) Lincoln quickly changed the order. The author also examines Lincoln’s resistance to efforts to “Christianize” the Constitution.

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children’s & teen EVERTRUE

These titles earned the Kirkus Star:

Ashton, Brodi Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins (368 pp.) $17.99 | $11.99 e-book | Jan. 21, 2014 978-0-06-207119-4 978-0-06-207121-7 e-book Series: Everneath, 3

THE DUMBEST IDEA EVER! by Jimmy Gownley.............................. 80 PIECES OF ME by Amber Kizer.......................................................... 82 EMPRESS OF THE SUN by Ian McDonald.........................................85 BRIMSBY'S HATS by Andrew Prahin................................................ 90 FOUNDING MOTHERS by Cokie Roberts; illus. by Diane Goode......91 THE NOISY PAINT BOX by Barb Rosenstock; illus. by Mary Grandpré.......................................................................93 GRASSHOPPER JUNGLE by Andrew Smith.................................... 94 THE GLASS CASKET by McCormick Templeman............................. 96 THE GHOSTS OF TUPELO LANDING by Sheila Turnage................. 96 THE NIGHT PIRATES by Peter Harris ; illus. by Deborah Allwright; Corina Fletcher...................................................................................101 ANIMAL OPPOSITES by Petr Horácek.............................................101 ANIMALS UPSIDE DOWN by Steve Jenkins; Robin Page; illus. by Steve Jenkins..........................................................................101 THE LITTLE MERMAID by Robert Sabuda........................................ 103 NOTT WON'T SLEEP by Renate Dorrestein; illus. by Liselore Goedhart; dev. by Developlay................................ 104

Nikki and Jack’s relief at escaping the Everneath at the end of Everbound (2013) is short-lived, as they face the highest stakes yet.

Nikki’s health starts to fail immediately as she transitions into an Everliving. She will die if she doesn’t feed. A transitioning Everliving can only feed on the Everliving who holds her Surface heart—in Nikki’s case, and to boyfriend Jack’s ire, Cole.

Worse, Nikki has limited time before she will need to feed on a Forfeit. She doesn’t want to damn an innocent to the Tunnels— the fate she narrowly avoided in Everneath (2012)—but Jack and Cole will do anything to keep her alive. After Cole and his band are attacked by followers of the Everneath’s queen (hoping to thwart their plot to depose her and put Nikki in her place), only Cole escapes, but he does so with amnesia. Nikki and Jack capitalize on his memory loss to convince him that he was working with them to destroy the Everneath for good (which would prevent Nikki from dying or having to feed), but they can’t be sure how much to trust him, as his memories may return. As in previous installments, the prose is sprinkled with references to Greek mythology. The beautifully orchestrated obstacles and rising tension position the characters so that they must succeed or die.

Although the denouement passes very quickly, the ending satisfies and will break some hearts. (Paranormal romance.

13 & up)

BEAN'S NIGHT by Sarah Hines Stephens; illus. by Anna Grossnickle Hines; dev. by appropo........................................................................ 107

JUNKYARD

Austin, Mike Illus. by Austin, Mike Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster (40 pp.) $16.99 | Jan. 14, 2014 978-1-4424-5961-8

THE NOISY PAINT BOX The Colors and Sounds of Kandinsky’s Abstract Art

Rosenstock, Barb Illus. by Grandpré, Mary Knopf (40 pp.) $17.99 | $20.99 | Feb. 11, 2014 978-0-307-97848-6 978-0-307-97849-3 PLB

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The title on the cover is a clue to the tale—“JUNK” is rendered in a rusty-colored scribbly style, while “YARD” is a light green with a grassy pattern—but the ultimate message is murky.

A frowning sun looks down on a yard full of junk where there’s not even enough room for a tree to take root. Austin’s scribbly digital illustrations are visually busy, full of discarded |

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“Benji looks exactly the way a cartoon character should, in any time period: one part Richie Rich, one part Scott Pilgrim.” from benji franklin: kid zillionaire

junky objects that are half recognizable, the rest of the pile taken up with patterned shapes. Mice scramble through the junkyard while two giant Munching Machines take on the job of eating everything. “They crunch boxcars, jelly jars, / crooked airplane wings. / And five dirty dump trucks / filled with curly metal springs.” Troublingly, though, they also slurp up tankers of oil and “tubs of toxic waste,” magically getting rid of it. The clean white background slowly begins to dominate, the two robots sweeping the yard clean for something new: trees and flowers, a garden, a playground, a mountain, a lake. But the final illustration seems to incorporate some of the junk in the new play space. Did the robots reuse those items? Is this recycling at work? The message is that garbage is bad and needs to be cleaned up, but it also seems to suggest that this is simple and never mentions anything about reducing what one uses and throws away.

While some kids will be fascinated with the robotic Munching Machines, the takeaway is unclear, and the represented ease of getting rid of garbage is certainly wrong.

(Picture book. 4-8)

BENJI FRANKLIN: KID ZILLIONAIRE

Bean, Raymond Illus. by Vimislik, Matthew Capstone Young Readers (160 pp.) $9.95 | Feb. 1, 2014 978-1-4342-6419-0 Series: Benji Franklin: Kid Zillionaire, 1 This book is the best cartoon that Hanna-Barbera never made.

Benji has more money than he can count. He may be even wealthier than Richie Rich or Scrooge McDuck, so he can spend all his time searching for lost dinosaurs and flying into space with an eccentric scientist. He earned his fortune by designing an app that generates excuses. (“I’m a kid” works in almost any situation.) As soon as Benji becomes a zillionaire, he buys himself a space station. “[I]t’s a great place to keep my zoo,” he tells an interviewer. If Benji had had a TV show back in the 1970s, fans would be fighting over his toys right now on eBay. Not a single moment of the story is plausible.

Benji’s adventures are funnier than anything that happened to Jonny Quest or Josie and the Pussycats. The book wasn’t written in the 1970s, so the pace is much faster than Jonny Quest. On one page, the characters are building a chicken coop near an airplane hangar. On another, they’re saving the world from an asteroid. Benji looks exactly the way a cartoon character should, in any time period: one part Richie Rich, one part Scott Pilgrim.

Vimislik’s illustrations are like everything in the book: not at all realistic but very, very funny.

It doesn’t make a lick of sense, but it’s great value per page. (Humorous adventure. 7-10)

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A BUNNY IN THE BALLET

Beck, Robert Illus. by Beck, Robert Orchard/Scholastic (40 pp.) $17.99 | Feb. 28, 2014 978-0-545-42930-6

Toe shoes and tutus are the stuff of dreams for a rabbit.

Parisian Désirée Rabbit tells her story in the first person. She has been dancing from childhood and knows that she is destined to be a ballerina.

Unfortunately, the receptionist at the ballet school is adamant in her opposition. Madame Molotov (more correctly “Madame Molotova,” and even then, what an odd choice of names) states that “there are NO BUNNIES in the ballet.” Not one to give up, Désirée shows off her many moves, and the ballet master sees talent and drive. She practices, she rehearses, and she gets a role as a pet rabbit in The Nutcracker, dropping all her carrots with excitement at the honor. In an all-too-familiar moment, a featured dancer is injured, and Désirée hops in to applause and acclaim.

Beck, a former dancer, borrows from such classics as 42nd Street for his oft-told tale of the chorine/corps member achieving stardom. His ink-and-watercolor artwork depicts dancers and Parisian scenes with swift, loose strokes against a white background.

These lines look more preliminary than finished, and they suggest rather than demonstrate ballet steps. Though they evoke movement, such a treatment is not acceptable for a dance form that is so precise with its arm and leg placements. And the bunny in her tutu has lost all her plump appeal.

Alas, not the stuff of dreams for balletomane readers.

(Picture book. 4-7)

WHITE SPACE

Bick, Ilsa J. Egmont USA (560 pp.) $17.99 | $17.99 e-book | Feb. 11, 2014 978-1-60684-419-9 978-1-60684-420-5 e-book Series: Dark Passages, 1 When what’s real keeps shifting in monstrous ways, can Emma find her way home? Can she even hold on to sanity and self?

With a head full of metal that causes migraines and occasional blackouts, 17-year-old Emma makes the best of her life at Holten Prep until one of her teachers accuses her of plagiarizing a dead writer’s unfinished and inaccessible manuscript. Taking off on a trip with her friend Lily, Emma gets caught in a freak snowstorm, and she finds her survival, her fate and even her past entwined with those of seven strangers. Reality keeps shifting, and motifs keep repeating, and everything is tied to dead horror author Frank McDermott and the bizarre and bloody way he wrote his stories. Can Emma and her companions escape the monster he released? Bick’s doorstopper mixes provocative

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ideas from Inkheart and the movies The Matrix and Inception with a little Charles Dickens, but it doesn’t give readers much in the way of character or plot to hang onto through huge swaths of the tale. Quick cuts between short chapters with cliffhanger endings attempt to keep pages turning; instead, they offer ample opportunity to put this overlong and often confusing first of another gargantuan trilogy down and move on to something more immediately engaging and sustained.

Fans who can forgive the downer ending can look forward to a historical-thriller sequel shortly (or longly, as the case will surely be). (Horror. 14 & up)

SORRY YOU’RE LOST

Blackstone, Matt Farrar, Straus and Giroux (320 pp.) $15.99 | Jan. 21, 2014 978-0-374-38065-6 After his mother’s death from cancer, New Jersey seventh-grader Denny “Donuts” Murphy’s carefully crafted clown persona gets him in trouble at school without easing his grief.

As a distraction, his best (and only) friend, Manny, enlists him in a candy-sales scheme to make enough money to hire helicopters or whatever it might take to entice eighth-grade “hotties” to accompany them to the spring dance. But Denny would prefer classmate Sabrina, who seems to like him. Further complicating this story of healing-in-progress is the boy’s 300-pound father’s withdrawal. Both father and son are lost in their personal miseries—a point underscored with references to Les Misérables. The first-person narration chronicles six months of madcap behavior, flights of fancy and flashbacks revealing the reasons behind Denny’s downward spiral and predictable meltdown. The boys’ freedom to roam the halls of Blueberry Hills Middle School (limited only by encounters with a villainous eighth-grader) is surprising, but otherwise the school setting will be familiar, populated by some sympathetic adult characters as well as some less attractive ones. While some readers may tire of Denny’s frenetic goings-on, others, like Sabrina, will watch and wait patiently. They will be pleased by the improbable outcome.

For middle school readers, a painful, funny and realistic picture of a family coming to terms with loss. (Fiction.

11-15)

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FATES

Bross, Lanie Delacorte (336 pp.) $18.99 | $21.99 PLB | Feb. 11, 2014 978-0-385-74282-5 978-0-375-99079-3 PLB This debut fantasy series opener flies over half the universe, but it delivers some depth amid all the chaos.

Corinthe longs to return to her home planet of Pyralis. She’s the first Fallen Fate in history, banished to Humana (Earth) for losing one of the marbles of fate. There, she follows orders to engineer the fates of humans. Meanwhile, Luc, a star soccer player hoping to escape his impoverished, fractured family, strives to keep his little sister, Jasmine, out of trouble. When the two meet, they are immediately attracted to each other, but Corinthe has little idea what that means. She has been ordered to fulfill one last assignment: to kill Luc. At this point, the story takes off into serious fantasy,

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as Luc and Corinthe fall into a Crossroad between planets and begin a journey to rescue Jasmine, who has been abducted and imprisoned in a flower, there to be turned into a vicious Blood Nymph. Bross takes readers to several different and imaginative worlds and introduces a solid cast of secondary characters. The sudden twists and turns into new worlds become dizzying as the story progresses. Readers who persevere will see Corinthe progressing toward an understanding of love as she slowly becomes more human and realizes that order and obedience might not be the paramount ideals of the universe.

An interesting read for patient romantic-fantasy fans.

(Fantasy. 12 & up)

ZOOM! ZOOM! Sounds of Things That Go in the City

Burleigh, Robert Illus. by Carpenter, Tad Paula Wiseman/Simon & Schuster (32 pp.) $16.99 | $12.99 e-book | Feb. 4, 2014 978-1-4424-8315-6 978-1-4424-8316-3 e-book

WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE ANIMAL?

An energetic, multivehicle ride through a bustling city day.

A cheerful sun awakens a sleeping metropolis, and garbage trucks and joggers take to the streets. With each spread, the day progresses. Rhyming text, jam-packed with action, propels the day forward, as each refrain announces the inhabitants’ intentions: “Work time,” “Lunch time,” “Play time,” “Party time.”

Exuberant onomatopoeia incorporated into the artwork follows the refrains, as trucks vroom, vans dash, and firetrucks flash. The frenetic pace finally slows at day’s end, as stores close, parties come to an end, and revelers walk home. Hushed tones denote the need for sleep. Carpenter’s retro-styled computer illustrations have a simple charm. Each spread offers something of interest, whether in pattern, composition or character.

Done in a simple palette primarily of yellow, blue and red, with a base tone reminiscent of newsprint, the cheery artwork also captures the activity and grit of the city.

Young vehicle-lovers will rev their engines for more.

(Picture book. 2-6)

BECAUSE I STUBBED MY TOE

Byous, Shawn Illus. by Byous, Shawn Capstone Young Readers (32 pp.) $14.95 | Feb. 1, 2014 978-1-62370-088-1

Byous explores the domino theory—and they all fall down— to comic effect.

According to chaos theory, somewhere in the Amazon, a butterfly flaps its wings, which down the road apiece causes a tsunami to wash over Jakarta. Here, a boy gets out of bed and 74

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stubs his toe against the leg of a chair, which causes a girl to drop her ice cream cone, a bicyclist to drill his head into a wasps’ nest, an old man to jump in a lake, a seesaw rider to be launched into space and a herd of elephants to stampede—which eventually resolves the ice cream tragedy. The action is continuous, the energy level is in the red zone, and the colors are strong (more pleasing than garish). The book works well as an early reader in that it has a humorous and linear storyline and few words, which are for the most part manageable, although Byous also throws in a few curveballs, such as teeter-totter, bouncy and knocked.

Byous is also a master of the motion line—almost everything here is jittery or zipping or crashing—and all the little symbols that help readers feel part of the action, like the lightning bolts and stars that attend the mashing of a toe into a chair leg early in the morning.

An eye-tickling, cacophonous vocabulary builder. (Picture book. 4-8)

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Carle, Eric Illus. by Carle, Eric Henry Holt (40 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 21, 2014 978-0-8050-9641-5

Cause-related anthologies are challenging to do well, but this one (benefiting the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art) succeeds admirably—on multiple levels.

The investment of 13 popular illustrators allows Carle to present a portable gallery of animals and a marvelous array of approaches, media and layouts that even the youngest viewers can access. The only thing missing is ethnic diversity among the artists. Accompanying the assemblage are brief poems, captions or anecdotes conveying why these are favored choices.

Peter Sís relays the Czech ritual of watching the Christmas Eve carp swimming in the bathtub and the tearful parade of neighborhood children releasing their dinners into the river; his flying fish transports three feline kings bearing gifts. Chris Raschka’s hand-lettered, existential musings are paired with his portrait of a lowly snail building a dazzling shell. Older children with a book background will have fun recognizing the work of familiar illustrators: Lane Smith’s textured, green pachyderm; Lucy Cousins’ heavily spotted leopard rendered in searing yellow; Erin Stead’s understated penguins. They will also enjoy Bad Kitty’s antics as he jealously breaks into Nick Bruel’s octopus story and the duo’s “shameless flattery” of the volume’s compiler. The book opens with Carle’s collaged string-bean–loving cat and concludes with photographs of his museum.

This menagerie offers picture-book lovers of all ages a glimpse into each creator’s style, personality and brand of humor. (biographies, photographs, websites) (Picture book.

4-8)

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“The second installment in this trilogy keeps the pace moving and provides additional background to flesh out the characters’ back stories.” from tremor

TREMOR

and revelations are complex but predictable (as are Brother Blue’s deceptions and murders). The arrival of three human teens adds romance, friendship and cold manipulation. Castellucci’s prose is sometimes awkward, and details are more sketched than explicit, but the last bit is surprisingly rich, as Tula suddenly expands her personal revenge fantasy.

The intriguing plot remains emotionally narrow until the ending, which promises a broader scope and interplanetary activism in the next installment. (Science fiction. 13 & up)

Carman, Patrick Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins (368 pp.) $17.99 | $10.99 e-book | Feb. 25, 2014 978-0-06-208580-1 978-0-06-208582-5 e-book Series: Pulse, 2 Faith Daniels and Dylan Gilmore are two of only five people with an extra pulse, giving them strange and amazing abilities well beyond those of normal teenagers. But life in 2051 is anything but normal.

They’ve already faced off against the Quinn twins, teens who have extra pulses along with really bad attitudes. Clara was responsible for murdering Faith’s best friend, and Faith has vowed vengeance. The fifth extra pulse is Gretchen, the twins’ mother, who has a military mind and the desire to change the world to something beyond twisted. Faith, Dylan and their computer-geek friend, Hawk, set out to discover where the Quinns are hiding. Surveillance leads them to an abandoned prison in the Colorado mountains, which they decide to infiltrate by having Dylan establish contact with Andre, the twins’ father, who just happens to be his father as well. But this won’t be a happy family reunion; it’s just the best chance they have to discover what the Quinns have been planning…and to stop it if they can. The second installment in this trilogy keeps the pace moving and provides additional background to flesh out the characters’ back stories.

It all leads up to a tantalizing glimpse of what’s yet to come in the final volume. (Dystopian romance. 13 & up)

TIN STAR

Castellucci, Cecil Roaring Brook (240 pp.) $16.99 | Feb. 25, 2014 978-1-59643-775-3 Trapped for years on a remote space station, a girl brews revenge.

Tula’s only 14 when her family’s spaceship, headed to a distant planet to set up a human colony, inexplicably docks at a space station called the Yertina Feray. Tula notices that the ship’s grain cargo has been unloaded and points this out to the ship’s leader, Brother Blue—who, in response, beats Tula brutally and leaves her for dead. He launches the colony ship without her and then departs in another ship. Stunned at learning that her charismatic leader is a sociopathic megalomaniac, and unable to contact any human colonies, Tula represses emotions to focus on survival—even when her family’s ship explodes. Constructing an identity as a trader, she barters favors and objects with the Yertina Feray’s all-nonhuman population.

The desolate station residents yearn for real lives elsewhere, but bitter Tula wants only to kill Brother Blue. Interplanetary politics |

SECRET LIES

Dunne, Amy Bold Strokes Books (370 pp.) $11.95 paper | Dec. 17, 2013 978-1-60282-970-1 Defying parents, religion, friends and tragic circumstances, two teenage girls manage to nurture their growing relationship and find safety in each other’s arms.

To all outward appearances, Jenny O’Connor has it all: popularity, a loving home and plenty of confidence. Nicola Jackson seems to be her polar opposite: socially awkward and forced to hide painful secrets about her home life. When the two of them collide in the street, it seems unlikely that their friendship will last beyond the day, but they discover they are stronger and happier as a couple.

Even as their friends and families strive to break their alliance, they fall deeper and deeper into love. Debut novelist Dunne offers a quick-moving but predictable plot populated by characters who seem blatantly determined to school readers on the evils of prejudice. The heavy-handedness of the lesson overshadows nearly every interaction, and the histrionics assigned to certain scenes make them better suited to an earlier setting. One 16-yearold attacks with “People like you and her should be locked up to protect the rest of us.” This protest feels out of place in a contemporary teenager’s world of instant access to the latest celebrity same-sex couples.

A soap-operatic treatment of an issue that would unfold better with a more nuanced approach. (Fiction. 15 & up)

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ARTHUR QUINN AND HELL’S KEEPER

Early, Alan Dufour (384 pp.) $14.95 paper | Jan. 14, 2014 978-1-78117-158-5 Series: Father of Lies, 3

Evil Loki reigns triumphant—for a while—over Dublin and the world beyond in this lumbering trilogy closer. “[W]e’re all going to have such fun together!” leers the thoroughly villainous trickster as he finds at last his long-hidden offspring Hel, to whom he has given all |

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“Drawn from both video gaming culture and the rich tapestry of Jamaican myth and folklore, blending pointed social satire and mystical philosophy, this exuberant, original hero’s journey is a real trip.” from game world

his powers of noncreation. First order of business: summarily blasting Arthur, his 12-year-old nemesis from previous episodes, into nonexistence. But because Arthur wears the indestructible ribbon Gleipnir, instead of dying, he wakes in Asgard, where the Norns tell him that Loki’s meddling has made Ragnarok imminent. Arthur returns to a Dublin flooded by supernatural rains, where he reforges old alliances while engaging Loki’s jet ski– riding werewolf thugs in a not-very-suspenseful series of captures, escapes and chases. Ultimately, boy and god meet to slug it out, the trickster is himself tricked into captivity, Arthur’s friends throw him a “Thanks for Saving the World from Certain Destruction, Arthur!” party, and the author takes pains to explain how everyone involved (even, in a way, Loki) is going away happy.

A little too heavy-handed to sit among the literary hipsters at the front of the Percy Jackson bandwagon, but worthy at least of a ticket to ride. (Fantasy. 11-13)

BETTER OFF FRIENDS

Eulberg, Elizabeth Point/Scholastic (288 pp.) $17.99 | $17.99 e-book | Feb. 25, 2014 978-0-545-55145-8 978-0-545-55146-5 e-book Best friends Levi and Macallan struggle with their close relationship in this lighthearted and at times too sweet romantic comedy.

When they meet as new seventh graders, Macallan is grieving her mother’s recent death and finds support in Levi and his loving mother, who’ve just moved to Wisconsin from California due to his father’s job. In dialogue-driven vignettes, the two swap turns as first-person protagonist over the next five years as they date various others, declare themselves just friends and discover they have romantic feelings for one another—but seemingly never at the same time.

Punctuating the narrative are short, present-day conversations in which they playfully rib each other about their past missteps.

While it’s not revealed until the end whether or not they do so as a couple or just as friends, it’s clear that whatever the outcome, they are still a pair in some form, which somewhat lessens the dramatic tension. Some readers will appreciate the lack of swearing throughout, though others may find it unrealistic for a teen among friends to use a phrase like “[a] pain in the rear.”

Secondary characters in Macallan’s family, including grandparents who live in Ireland and an uncle who is developmentally disabled, add dimension but are not especially developed.

A fun if lightweight read that will appeal widely to romance fans. (Fiction. 12-18)

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GAME WORLD

Farley, C.J. Illus. by Im, Yongjin Black Sheep/Akashic (285 pp.) $18.95 | $11.95 paper | Feb. 4, 2014 978-1-61775-210-0 978-1-62775-197-4 paper Drawn from both video gaming culture and the rich tapestry of Jamaican myth and folklore, blending pointed social satire and mystical philosophy, this exuberant, original hero’s journey is a real trip.

Dylan’s one stressed-out sixth grader. His health’s iffy, he’s a target for bullies, and his eccentric sister, Emma—three years younger, but taller and in the same accelerated class—is a huge embarrassment. Now the Professor, their ornithologist guardian, has lost her job. No wonder he often feels “like he had sixteen browser windows open in his head all at once.” Dylan escapes into the world of “Xamaica,” an exciting video game at which he excels. With his friend Eli, and Emma tagging along, Dylan enters a tournament sponsored by the game’s manufacturer that promises a big payoff. “Xamaica” proves to be more than a video game. Guided by Ines, the CEO’s daughter, they probe its mysteries and, after Emma’s pulled into the game, search for her there, meeting Nestuh, a Rastafarian spider, a squadron of hummingbirds with a Wall Street mindset, the mysterious Nanni (good witch or villain?) and a host of other equally colorful beings. The debut’s wild plot wobbles at times but, supported by its sturdy premise, always regains its footing.

The illustrations, capturing the mystery and menace of Xamaica’s denizens, along with their whimsical charm and pathos, are a treat.

Exhilarating, thought-provoking and one of a kind. (glossary, bibliography) (Fantasy. 10-14)

THE WELL’S END

Fishman, Seth Putnam (352 pp.) $17.99 | Feb. 25, 2014 978-0-399-15990-9

This debut science-fiction series opener relies on the standard mad-scientist scenario, which provides plenty of action.

Mia, who’s about to turn 17, feels isolated from her fellow students at the superelite Westbrook Academy, a boarding school for the uber-wealthy. She mostly stays with her fellow townies. Brayden, a new student, has just entered on the scene when a strange virus invades the school that appears to make people die of old age within hours. Also invading the school is Blake, first posing as a journalist but returning with a private army that forcibly quarantines the school. Mia and her pals manage to escape in a lengthy and nicely suspenseful sequence, the best in the book. At last, they arrive at the enormous cave

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where Mia’s father does secret work. There, they learn the truth behind the virus and Blake. All the while, of course, a romance between Mia and the mysterious Brayden hangs fire. Just who is Brayden, and what is he doing there? Fishman concocts a marvelous enigma to underlie Mia’s father’s work, tying in an incident in Mia’s childhood that gives rise to the title. While the posh school and the mad-scientist plots don’t plow any new ground, the story will keep readers flipping pages.

Good entertainment. (Science fiction. 12 & up)

GOLD MEDAL WINTER

Freitas, Donna Levine/Scholastic (320 pp.) $16.99 | $16.99 e-book | Jan. 7, 2014 978-0-545-64377-1 978-0-545-64473-0 e-book Dominican-American Esperanza Flores is not a typical world-class U.S. figure skater, but she’s going to provide Olympics-eager girls the perfect opportunity to channel their ambitions.

After unexpectedly winning a silver medal at Nationals, Espi is selected for the Olympic team, along with spiteful Stacie and Meredith, Stacie’s reluctant sidekick and sometime victim. Espi encounters handsome (but conniving) male champion Hunter, who tries to begin a relationship with her, a tempting opportunity even though hockey phenom Danny presents as a better choice. Although Espi’s route to top-level skating seems improbable—self-taught until she was 10, then coached gratis by champion Lucy Chen at her private rink—other parts of her ice odyssey, including her quest to land a quad, pack in enough realistic detail to satisfy dedicated skating aficionados. Drama among skaters continues to increase, creating ample tension both on and off the ice after they arrive at the games. Unfortunately, Freitas lets the relationships edge out the skating, and Espi’s critical final appearance on the ice gets short shrift. In the face of multiple challenges, Espi remains sensibly and believably grounded, although many other skaters are portrayed far less kindly.

An admirable heroine navigates a difficult path to fame and fortune in a tale that will appeal to those looking for a lavish serving of romance along with an interesting backstage glimpse of the international skating world. (Fiction. 10-14)

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EMMA IN PARIS

Frossard, Claire Illus. by Frossard, Claire Photos by Urbain, Christophe Enchanted Lion Books (56 pp.) $17.95 | Dec. 4, 2013 978-1-59270-139-1 In this second book about a travelloving bird named Emma (Emma’s Journey, 2010), the little sparrow sets sail across the Atlantic to meet her Parisian cousin.

Emma, who was “born and raised in New York City,” decides to visit her cousin Amélie, who lives in Montmartre. With limited language skills and Amélie’s address clutched under her tiny wing, Emma sets out looking for her home. Undeterred by a pair of rude avian pedestrians who ignore her and an old mouse who can’t hear her, the resourceful bird uses her last few cents to purchase a French-English dictionary, which she enthusiastically studies. She befriends a cat, Edouard, and he guides Emma to her cousin. Amélie regales Emma with her stories about her life as a performer in a street circus—and then, to Emma’s delight, Amélie recruits her to join the act. Frossard’s charming illustrations are creatively integrated into Urbain’s colorful, slice-ofParisian-life photographs—from its famed monuments to its scenic, hidden alleyways. In this Paris, the small-sized animal world of mice, cats, dogs and birds goes about its everyday life: underfoot, in trees, at the market, unnoticed by the humans.

Funny images are everywhere; a pair of crows jog by in running shoes and headbands, and a cat works as a DJ, outfitted with headphones and record player.

Au revoir, Emma, until (we hope) Book 3. (Picture book. 5-8)

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BY THE GRACE OF TODD

Galveston, Louise Razorbill/Penguin (240 pp.) $16.99 | Feb. 27, 2014 978-1-59514-677-9

Can a kid who killed his hermit crab through neglect save a brand new civilization?

Sixth-grader Todd Galveston Butroche just wants to survive the new year at Wakefield Middle School. He and his best friend, Duddy, have always been bullied; this year’s got to be different. Todd and his home-schooled neighbor, Lucy, discover an entire civilization of tiny humanoids living on a sweaty gym sock under Todd’s bed in his disgustingly unclean room. The Toddlians see Todd as a god; Todd sees them as his ticket to coolness after he’s paired with uber-bully Max for the science fair. Max wants to train the Toddlians to do dangerous tricks. Will Todd give up his friends and destroy a civilization just to be cool? No need to guess why Galveston decided to use a pseudonym for this unfortunate waste of an entertainingly gross premise. The frame story, related by Toddlian Lewis, |

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doesn’t work particularly well with Todd’s first-person narration.

The tiny Toddlians are microscopic when Todd first discovers them, but fairly quickly he’s able to see them with his naked eye, and they can juggle marbles and ride chameleons. Dated and unfunny jokes about such figures as Nixon and John Wayne will be totally lost on the target audience, and there’s a serious problem with relative time in the narrative. This entry in the little-people subgenre should be avoided like a moldy tube sock.

The “to be continued” on the final page reads like a threat. (Fantasy. 8-11)

THE DARK LADY

Gatti, Alessandro Illus. by Bruno, Iacopo Translated by Turner, Chris Capstone Young Readers (240 pp.) $12.95 | Feb. 1, 2014 978-1-62370-040-9 Series: Sherlock, Lupin & Me, 1 In this charming mystery/adventure mashup set in 1870, the boy Sherlock Holmes and two equally fictional friends, Irene Adler and Arsène Lupin, solve a puzzle involving a dead burglar and a stolen necklace.

Twelve-year-old Irene, far too adventurous and wild for a young lady of her station, is vacationing in the seaside resort of Saint-Malo with her stiff, disapproving mother and the family butler, Mr. Horatio Nelson. Despite his proper demeanor, Mr. Nelson is perceptive, unpredictable and surprisingly fond of his young charge. Irene, who narrates the story, immediately takes to Sherlock and Arsène—the three, although neatly differentiated, are well-matched in terms of determination, imagination and intelligence—and the story kicks into gear when they find a dead body washed up on the beach. The rest of this fast-paced, old-fashioned puzzler concerns their investigation: Who is this person, was his death murder or suicide, and is his demise connected in any way with the burglary of Lady Martigny’s diamond necklace and the so-called Rooftop Thief? Although there’s suspense, jeopardy and fisticuffs, the tone of this ingenious tale is coolly stimulating—it does a particularly deft job of explaining to young readers the importance of each revelation and how it fits into the larger picture—and will engage on an intellectual rather than an emotional level.

Enjoyable brainteaser with a period flavor. (Fiction. 8-13)

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LADY THIEF

Gaughen, A.C. Walker (320 pp.) $17.99 | Feb. 11, 2014 978-0-8027-3614-7 Series: Scarlet, 2 In medias res, the second volume of the Scarlet series (Scarlet, 2013) plunges readers happily into the world of Sherwood Forest and does not end with any resolution, but its spirited action and rich voices hold.

The main voice is that of Scarlet, thief and lady indeed.

As Lady Marian, she has married Gisbourne to protect Robin Hood. Gisbourne has injured Scarlet and tortured Robin Hood, but he promises her an annulment (and no consummation) if she will just play a part while Gisbourne fawns upon Prince John. Scarlet sees all these wheels within wheels clearly as she tries to protect the people of Nottingham. She also needs to protect herself from Robin, whom she loves but who suffers from a kind of PTSD. There is a full measure of kisses and caresses (but no more than that) and some very lovely and slightly antique language—“She were as pretty as milk and sun”—as well as splendidly choreographed jousts and archery contests. There are also some brief but vivid scenes of physical cruelty. All this holds together as Scarlet discovers her true heritage and finds a supporter and protector in the ancient Eleanor of Aquitaine (mother of Prince John and Richard Lionheart). There are secrets and lies, and back story comes to the forefront enough so readers who might have missed the first volume won’t be lost.

The tale comes to a bitter stopping point that will leave readers very much in need of the next volume. (Historical fiction. 13-18)

NETTA AND HER PLANT

Gellman, Ellie B. Illus. by Ugliano, Natascia Kar-Ben (32 pp.) $17.95 | $7.95 paper | $6.95 e-book Jan. 1, 2014 978-1-4677-0422-9 978-1-4677-0423-6 paper 978-1-4677-2435-7 e-book A little girl’s understanding of the annual Jewish New Year for trees, known as the holiday of Tu B’Shevat, begins with a seedling she continues to care for through her primary years, watching it grow into a fine small tree.

This gentle narrative incorporates the natural progression of both plant and family life as its protagonist, Netta (“plant” in Hebrew), grows under her family’s nurturing even as she cultivates the new seedling. When Netta grows too big for her toddler-size bed and moves into a larger one, she also replants her little growing tree in a roomier pot, giving it water, sunlight and even music. As the whole family expands with a new baby

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“Siria narrates her own story as it is unfolding; there is no omniscient adult voice to guide her, only her own sensitivity and insights as she pieces the puzzle together.” from winter sky

sister and an imminent move to a larger home, Netta’s tree moves with them to an outdoor setting, first on the new house’s porch and then in the ground in a nearby park. Beginning with new kindergarten friends, Netta will celebrate the growth of the tree each year on this special day with a traditional outdoor party filled with fruits and nuts typically harvested in Israel. A pale springlike palette of greens, yellows and blues in the softedged drawings reinforces the symbolism of new growth.

A welcome addition to the Judaica and ecology shelves. (glossary, author’s note) (Picture book. 3-5)

PATTI CAKE AND HER NEW DOLL

Giff, Patricia Reilly Illus. by Bryant, Laura J. Orchard/Scholastic (32 pp.) $16.99 | Jan. 1, 2014 978-0-545-24465-7

Giff ’s rather wordy text about a little girl moving to a new room and a big bed may fail to keep young readers engaged, but Bryant’s watercolor-and–colored-pencil illustrations add a touch of sweet humor.

Patti Cake, dressed in a mix of pink and purple, is excited to get her very “own new room,” but when she goes to bed, the “greatly dark” space feels lonely. Unflappable babysitter Bella responds to this news with a trip to Mr. Herman’s Everything Store, where Patti Cake finds a doll with “frizzly hair and blush on one cheek.” When they get home, she discovers that the doll does not even have a belly button. A quick flick of a nail-polish brush seems to do the trick. Readers can foresee what happens next. The nail-polish spills; Patti Cake arouses Tootsie the dog from her nap in the bathtub; Tootsie tracks nail-polish paw prints all over. The spread with a close-up of the alarmed pup charms. After yet more mishaps, it is finally bedtime, and Patti Cake, the doll and Tootsie curl up in the no-longer-lonely room. Giff ’s text both runs long and strains too hard to achieve a toddler voice; Patti Cake’s too-cute, declarative narration grows wearisome.

Books on moving to a bigger bed abound; this title does little to set itself apart. (Picture book. 3-5)

WINTER SKY

Giff, Patricia Reilly Wendy Lamb/Random (160 pp.) $15.99 | $10.99 e-book | $18.99 PLB Jan. 7, 2014 978-0-375-83892-7 978-0-385-37193-3 e-book 978-0-385-37192-6 PLB Siria was born on New Year’s Day and named for the star Sirius, which shines brightest in the winter.

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died when she was little, but she cherishes the astronomy book that belonged to her. She believes that her mother entrusted her with her father’s well-being. Pop is a firefighter and the only family she has, and she is determined to keep him safe. She is frightened and feisty, headstrong and calculating. She sneaks out at night to follow the sirens and keep vigil with him and his team. A series of suspicious fires in her city neighborhood during the Christmas holiday season involves Siria in ever more dangerous escapades and seriously disrupts her friendships when she mistakenly believes her best friend might be an arsonist. Siria narrates her own story as it is unfolding; there is no omniscient adult voice to guide her, only her own sensitivity and insights as she pieces the puzzle together. Giff deftly builds upon Siria’s relationships with Pop, his colleagues at the firehouse, her friends Laila and Douglas, and a stray dog, greatly broadening the usual definition of family. There is some gritty reality, but the overall tone is one of goodness, kindness and community.

Tender and satisfying. (author’s note) (Fiction. 8-12)

EXPRESSING THE INNER WILD Tattoos, Piercings, Jewelry, and Other Body Art

Gordon, Stephen G. Twenty-First Century/Lerner (56 pp.) $24.95 e-book | $33.26 PLB | Jan. 1, 2014 978-1-4677-2548-4 e-book 978-1-4677-1467-9 PLB

Cool tats, blinged-out nails, dragqueen makeup and more.

Do teens know that the oldest tattooed mummy was a European who lived more than 5,000 years ago before being frozen into a glacier? Or that women and girls of the Miao Long Horn group in China wear their hair 2 feet wide and 8 inches high, while the Masai women of Eastern Africa shave their hair off? Gordon’s all-too-brief yet informative account of the ways humans have decorated themselves throughout history tells it all—or as much as can be told in under 60 pages. Each section begins with a highly accessible connection to a current celebrity mainstay, such as Beyoncé, Katy Perry and Rihanna, then dives headfirst into the fascinating, multicultural history of each beauty trend. The narrative style is so succinct that readers will find they’ve already devoured a whole section of the book without even noticing, and full-color and black-and-white photos make the read all the more enticing. Readership will be wide—from preteen girls and boys on up through teens. Readers should know that Gordon explicitly points out that men throughout history have worn makeup and jewelry and have paid close attention to their hair.

Great for research but better as a jumping-off block for youth who are interested in the cultural history of adornment. (source notes, bibliography, further information, index) (Nonfiction. 10-16)

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“From the very first panel, Gownley's graphic memoir is refreshingly different.” from the dumbest idea ever!

THE DUMBEST IDEA EVER!

Gownley, Jimmy Illus. by Gownley, Jimmy Graphix/Scholastic (240 pp.) $24.99 | $11.99 paper | $11.99 e-book Feb. 25, 2014 978-0-545-45346-2 978-0-545-45347-9 paper 978-0-545-63375-8 e-book The charismatic creator of the Eisner-nominated Amelia Rules! series recounts his beginnings as a cartoonist.

From the very first panel, Gownley’s graphic memoir is refreshingly different. He’s not the archetypal nerd, and he doesn’t retreat to draw due to feelings of loneliness or isolation.

Gownley seems to be a smart kid and a talented athlete, and he has a loyal group of friends and a girlfriend. After he falls ill, first with chicken pox and then pneumonia, he falls behind in school and loses his head-of-the-class standing—a condition he is determined to reverse. A long-standing love of comics leads him to write his own, though his first attempt is shot down by his best friend, who suggests he should instead write a comic about their group. He does, and it’s an instant sensation. Gownley’s story is wonderful; his small-town life is so vividly evinced, it’s difficult to not get lost in it. While readers will certainly pick up on the nostalgia, it should be refreshing—if not completely alien—for younger readers to see teens interacting without texting, instead using phones with cords. Eagle-eyed readers will also be able to see the beginnings of his well-loved books about Amelia. He includes an author’s note that shouldn’t be overlooked—just be sure to keep the tissues handy.

Humble, endearing and utterly easy to relate to; don’t miss this one. (author’s note) (Graphic memoir. 10 & up)

THE ORDER OF THE OWLS

Guerra, Elisa Puricelli Illus. by Bernstein, Gabo León Capstone Young Readers (160 pp.) $9.95 | Feb. 1, 2014 978-1-6237-0038-6 Series: Minerva Mint, 1

A red-haired foundling makes friends and begins a promising set of adventures on the ninth anniversary of her discovery in a travel bag in London’s Victoria Station.

Now living in a run-down manor in Cornwall, Minerva Mint hopes desperately to learn the identities of the parents who abandoned her nine years earlier. This series opener introduces Minerva’s mysterious origins and her two companions. Every year, just before Minerva’s birthday, her guardian, Geraldine Flopps, advertises for her parents; every year, imposters appear to claim her. She runs off this year’s pair with a magic owl-calling flute but only after a series of episodes in which clues are 80

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presented, materials gathered, and the children’s personalities revealed. Minerva is adept with a slingshot and can tell when people are lying. Blonde Thomasina is privileged and prepared for adventure. Immigrant Ravi is afraid of heights but willing to do almost anything for Thomasina. There’s a great deal of climbing, some literal cliff-hanging, a magic potion and a secret compartment. The companions scare off Minerva’s nemesis, evil Gilbert O’Sullivan, but it’s clear he’ll return. Occasionally the translation doesn’t quite hit the mark, but cinematic action carries the story forward. Readers will be eager for more. (Six titles have been published in Italy.)

Predictable but appealing for series fans. (Adventure. 7-10)

WILLOW

Hegamin, Tonya Cherie Candlewick (384 pp.) $16.99 | Feb. 11, 2014 978-0-7636-5769-7 An educated slave girl struggles against the confines of race and gender in this coming-of-age story set in 1848 on the Pennsylvania-Maryland border.

Fifteen-year-old Willow, taught to read by her master, writes letters at her mother’s grave, located within sight of the granite MasonDixon Line marker. Papa, whom Willow adores—until she finds out what really has happened to her mother—is as controlling as any white master and determined to marry Willow off to a brute from the neighboring plantation. Ezra Jack Keats New Writer Award–winning author Hegamin (Most Loved in All the World, 2009, etc.) juxtaposes Willow’s first-person narration with Cato’s story: a free black 17-year-old aspiring to lead slaves to freedom. When the teens’ lives intersect, they fall in love at first sight, precipitating tumultuous results. This arresting story, richly historical, with an engaging narrator and well-drawn secondary characters, is unfortunately marred. The authenticity of Willow’s voice, with its awkward sentence structure and dialect, may make the book difficult to access for many in the intended audience. The lack of distinct chapters adds to confusion, as the narrative shifts between the two main characters’ stories. The author has researched deeply, but historical tidbits adding local color are so numerous as to impede the plot’s progression and even to feel didactic.

A gripping but uneven exploration of the anguishing impact of slavery. (Historical fiction. 14-17)

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DUCK TO THE RESCUE

Himmelman, John Illus. by Himmelman, John Henry Holt (32 pp.) $16.99 | Feb. 18, 2014 978-0-8050-9485-5

Now that the pigs, the chickens and the cows at Greenstalk’s farm have made merry mayhem (Cows to the Rescue, 2011, etc.), it’s the duck’s turn.

In this fourth episode of barnyard slapstick from Himmelman, Ernie the duck tries to solve various problems that beset the Greenstalk farm and in the process, makes a delightful hash out of things. He crashes a truck full of pumpkins that are late for the market, has to be rescued himself from the rafters by the calf he has climbed up to save, gets tied up like Gulliver when he babysits the chicks and throws a great shadow-monster against the wall when he switches on the flashlight to comfort a frightened Emily. Ernie’s animal friends feel his pain, and a lamb finds a way to restore his confidence. Himmelman’s watercolors are sure, whether depicting the brewing crisis or Ernie’s inevitable mortification. The artwork also has a comedic clarity that lifts the simple text, enlivening its deadpan humor: “I guess we can turn them into pumpkin pie,” says the farmer, pumpkin shell on head and pumpkin guts oozing everywhere. As in the earlier books, there is a hooting refrain—“Duck to the rescue!”—which will make for a raucous read-aloud.

This well-intentioned duck has a heart of gold to go with his lead foot and ham fist—er, wing. (Picture book. 4-8)

In fact, the author is having so much fun, her musings sometimes overwhelm the story, and readers won’t be surprised to find her bookstore cameo as Mrs. Bunny’s translator. The plot is unapologetically preposterous, but the truly witty banter, near-constant conflict and palpable love between Mr. and Mrs. Bunny are both genuinely affecting and uproariously funny. Blackall’s elegant, expressive black-and-white illustrations add whimsy to an already effervescent adventure.

A purely Horvath-ian (meaning hilarious) hop across the pond. (Comedy of manners. 9-14)

LORD AND LADY BUNNY— ALMOST ROYALTY!

By Mr. & Mrs. Bunny

Horvath, Polly Illus. by Blackall, Sophie Schwartz & Wade/Random (304 pp.) $16.99 | $10.99 e-book | $19.99 PLB Feb. 11, 2014 978-0-307-98065-6 978-0-307-98067-0 e-book 978-0-307-98066-3 PLB Mr. and Mrs. Bunny and the sixth-grade human child Madeline collide again in this silly, satirical sequel to Horvath’s Mr. and Mrs. Bunny—Detectives Extraordinaire! (2012).

Mrs. Bunny, always in search of a new job (and a new hat to go with it), has now decided she must become the queen of England, despite the fact that she’s from Canada…and a rabbit. Coincidentally, Madeline’s hippie mother inherits a sweet shoppe in the English village of Bellyflop, and so Madeline stumbles upon her dear bunny friends again—this time on an England-bound cruise ship. The adventure begins! Told in alternating sections—bunny, human, bunny, human—the stories of the dreams and delusions of the two traveling parties unfold, heavily seasoned with Horvath’s wry take on everything from social media to clotted cream to celebrity authors who write about wizards and magical candy. |

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UNHINGED

Howard, A.G. Amulet/Abrams (400 pp.) $17.95 | Jan. 7, 2014 978-1-4197-0971-5 Series: Splintered, 2 Alyssa has returned from Wonderland, but her adventures are far from over in this convoluted sequel to Splintered (2013).

After defeating Queen Red and rescuing her artist boyfriend, Jeb, Alyssa hopes for a semi-normal finish to her high school career. With her mother back from the mental hospital after 11 years, prom and graduation on the horizon, and Jeb’s burgeoning art career ahead, Alyssa works hard to forget about Wonderland and her netherling powers. Though jealous of Jeb’s rich, young female patrons and worried about his memory loss, Alyssa believes they have a future together, even as Morpheus, her childhood tutor and creepy suitor, demands that she love him and fight Queen Red. But when Alyssa won’t come to Wonderland, it comes to her, in a perverted medley of Carroll’s creations. Howard excels in sensory and sensuous descriptions but prizes details over plot.

Readers who appreciate a Gothic love triangle, body modification, eerie art and brooding-artist types will enjoy this colorful but creepy offering and await the next installment. Anyone seeking Alice will have to look elsewhere.

A world of weirdness that, sadly, necessitates a sequel.

(Fantasy. 14 & up)

NEST

Hurley, Jorey Illus. by Hurley, Jorey Paula Wiseman/Simon & Schuster (40 pp.) $16.99 | $12.99 e-book | Feb. 4, 2014 978-1-4424-8971-4 978-1-4424-8972-1 e-book Hurley’s penchant for textile design is clearly apparent in this debut picture book.

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“Kizer keeps her focus on the difficult choices each character faces while effectively penning attractive, three-dimensional portraits of each.” from pieces of me

changing weather and foliage. Even the endpapers are part of the story, showing simple robins’ egg shapes. Unfortunately, this style of illustration is inherently static, and its paucity of detail is unlikely to hook children’s interest, especially where wildlife is concerned. The too-empty spreads lack real interest or substance, presenting the birds and trees as designer shapes rather than living entities. A single word placed on each spread offers a short gloss on each illustration, but beyond the obvious progress through seasons, the relationships among the words are frequently ambiguous. Readers are more or less left to tell the story on their own, belying the book’s apparent simplicity. The author’s note describing the life cycle and behavior patterns of the American robin is necessary, as it gives information mostly lacking in the rest of the book.

This superficial robin’s-eye view of a year does not really get off the ground. (Picture book. 2-5)

PASSIONARIES

Hurley, Tonya Simon & Schuster (368 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 7, 2014 978-1-4424-2954-3 Series: Blessed, 2 Revered by some, hunted by others, Lucy, Cecilia and Agnes may have survived the staggering violence that claimed Sebastian’s life, but their hopes of returning to any semblance of normal after the events at Precious Blood are quickly and quite decisively dashed (Precious Blood, 2012).

Their new and very public status as saints has left them targets for haters, most notably an Opus Dei–like faction of the Catholic Church hellbent on killing the girls before they realize their full power. Once again, Hurley brings a dark and shadowy version of Brooklyn to life. It’s the perfect backdrop for this subversive, gritty novel. And while it lacks some of the spectacular drama that characterized the first novel, perhaps since the deliciously nefarious Dr. Frey remains too far in the wings, readers will find plenty to hold their interest. Though the evil doctor sacrifices far too much screen time by relying too heavily on his minions, the girls pick up the slack. Readers will also relate as Lucy, Cecilia and Agnes struggle to make peace with their destinies and to maintain faith in each other and in themselves despite their extraordinary circumstances. At the end of the day, sanctity aside, they are teenagers trying to make sense of the cards they’ve been dealt. Unfortunately for them, the deck is stacked.

A terrific second volume. (Paranormal thriller. 14 & up)

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NIGHT CREATURES

King, Jeremy Jordan Bold Strokes Books (367 pp.) $11.95 paper | Dec. 17, 2013 978-1-60282-971-8 Series: Immortal Testimonies, 2 New York City in the early 1980s is a dark and dangerous scene, especially for a naïve young man from the Midwest.

Bryant Vess is staying with his cousin Wally and Wally’s boyfriend, Patrick, in New York City. Just as his new gay life is beginning to blossom with a sexy boyfriend, gay men across the city are beginning to fall ill with something that is, at first, called Gay-Related Immune Deficiency. At the same time, a series of grisly murders occur in the bathhouses, spawning newspaper articles about the “Village Vampire.” A bathhouse tryst with a mysterious stranger leaves Bryant sick—but not in the same way as his friends; he can’t stand the light and craves raw meat. When he returns to health, Bryant becomes certain that the dark stranger saved his life through this sex act. He hunts the man down to convince him to save everyone and finds himself drawn into an ancient secret society full of mysteries and dangers. A loosely connected companion to In Stone (2013), King’s sex-filled novel makes the most of its setting; the New York City bathhouse scene makes for a potent backdrop. Readers may well find the story’s internal paranormal logic problematic, as it draws some troubling connections among vampirism, homosexuality and AIDS. While gay teens interested in paranormal romance and AIDS history could definitely do worse, this sometimesbusy and disjointed coming-of-age journal makes for an uncomfortable read. (Paranormal romance. 17 & up)

PIECES OF ME

Kizer, Amber Delacorte (304 pp.) $16.99 | $10.99 e-book | $19.99 PLB Feb. 11, 2014 978-0-385-74116-3 978-0-375-98429-7 e-book 988-0-375-98988-9 PLB This unusual and affecting story ties the lives of five completely different teens together through the transplant dona-

tions of one who dies.

The five teens are Jessica, a shy girl with a wealthy socialite mother; Sam, a boy who believes in miracles and spends his life blogging; Vivian, a talented artist with no social life; Leif, a football star with demanding, famous-athlete parents; and Misty, a girl from a poor, immigrant family. Four of them will receive the organs of one who dies. The ghostly donor, always watching each recipient but unable to communicate with him or her, narrates the story as the four surviving teens move toward one another and, eventually, toward the memory of the donor. At

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TOGO

last, when one recipient appears to be in serious danger, the rest work together in an effort to help. Kizer keeps her focus on the difficult choices each character faces while effectively penning attractive, three-dimensional portraits of each. If the parents remain somewhat flat, each teen comes across as a realistic, unique individual whom readers will care for. Each has a different choice to make as well: Who will stand up to their parents?

Who will reach out to others? And how will the narrator, the dead character, come to peace with death?

Different, sensitive and emotional, as well as an effective argument for organ donation. (Paranormal fiction. 12 & up)

Klimo, Kate Illus. by Jessell, Tim Random House (160 pp.) $6.99 | $12.99 PLB | Jan. 28, 2014 978-0-385-37335-7 978-0-385-37336-4 PLB Series: Dog Diaries, 4 Affable sled dog Togo leads readers through his puppyhood, his racing career and “The Balto Business.”

Balto the sled dog became a household name after the Serum Run of 1925, in which medicine for a diphtheria outbreak in Nome, Alaska, was transported via dog sled. According to musher Leonhard Seppala, however, the true hero was Togo, who led Seppala’s team much farther than Balto had done. Here, Togo narrates his life story in an accessible voice full of warmth and folksy idioms. In addition to Togo’s time as a “furry-faced little brat” of a puppy, readers see him learn to lead a sled-dog team, race along the Sweepstakes Trail, deliver the famous serum and finally reach old age. Togo’s point of view is believably doglike. He is touchingly loyal to Seppala, motivated to work hard and win races by his desire to please his musher. The dogs’ communication with one another and with people is represented by italicized dialogue, but it is made reasonably clear that the “talking” happens in the language of barks and nips and howls. A substantial appendix gives information about Siberian huskies, the Iditarod and the historical facts behind Togo’s tale.

An informative historical narrative with heart. (appendix.) (Historical fiction. 8-12)

GRANDMASTER

Klass, David Frances Foster/Farrar, Straus & Giroux (240 pp.) $16.99 | Feb. 25, 2014 978-0-374-32771-2 A mediocre high school chess player discovers his perfectly ordinary father is a former grandmaster in this standardissue father-son relationship story.

Daniel Pratzer has always been a jack-of-all-trades, master of none when it comes to athletics. “I had worked hard to become a decent baseball player…an acceptable soccer player…but I had never been great at any of them.” When he takes up chess as a way to make friends at his New Jersey private school, he is informed by his teammates that his accountant father, Morris W. Pratzer, used to be an internationally known chess champion. They urge Daniel to convince Morris to take part in a high-stakes New York City tournament along with them and their fathers. Stung by the fact that Morris never revealed his “checkered” past, Daniel angrily confronts him only to learn that his dad quit the game because the competition had released his incendiary temper and nearly cost him his life. But Morris decides to play the tournament anyway, and his famous rage re-emerges when he faces an old rival. In the predictable end, father and son learn valuable lessons about teamwork, honor and acceptance. Check. Checkmate.

The paint-by-numbers plot and unimaginative dialogue are unlikely to encourage anyone but the most diehard chess aficionado to finish this rote problem novel.

(Fiction. 11-15)

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THE QUEEN’S CHOICE

Kluver, Cayla Harlequin Teen (512 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 28, 2014 978-0-373-21092-3 Series: Heirs of Chrior, 1

Royal Fae cousins uncover a human conspiracy against their kind during a crisis of succession.

Anya loves freedom and travel but will lose those pleasures, as her aunt, Queen Ubiqua, is naming her the heir in response to a prophecy of the queen’s death, skipping over Anya’s cousin, Illumina, whose claim is stronger. Illumina’s a troubled human-hater who opposes the truce with humans. To prevent Illumina from becoming queen while also avoiding the crown, Anya goes to the human world to find the runaway true heir, Ubiqua’s halfhuman son, Zabriel. Immediately after crossing the Bloody Road (a magical barrier only Fae can cross) into human lands, Anya’s caught by hunters who cut off her wings—a mutilation that destroys her magical elemental connection and prevents her from returning home. She’s rescued by a family fleeing unjust laws and befriends their eldest daughter, Shea, who joins her quest. The beginning is weighted down by pompous

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verbosity and expository worldbuilding delivered in awkward dialogue between characters who already know the information.

Plot devices like eavesdropping and flashbacks finish the job, though not gracefully. Luckily, once Anya and Shea run afoul of law enforcement and a massive Fae-hunting operation with government ties, the pace picks up. A cliffhanger follows a climax filled with action and intrigue.

Uneven; only for patient, forgiving readers. (discussion questions) (Fantasy. 13 & up)

FROGS IN THE BED My Passover Seder Activity Book

Koffsky, Ann D.; Steinberg, Shirley Cohen Illus. by Koffsky, Ann D. Behrman House Publishing (32 pp.) $7.95 paper | Jan. 1, 2014 978-0-87441-913-9 Traditional Passover Seders are often lengthy and uninteresting for young children; this picture activity workbook offers a variety of art projects, games and even a comic strip to help counteract this effect.

An illustrated version of the classic “Frog Song” introduces the holiday’s theme with a sleepy pharaoh awakening to frogs in his bed, on his head and jumping everywhere in his realm.

Subsequent pages follow with a surprising bounty of activities, given the slimness of the volume. There’s a Seder plate symbolmatching game, followed by the four questions in the original Hebrew, with Romanized spellings and in English translation.

A comic-strip version of the magid attempts to inject a little humor into the Passover story. There’s an activity that encourages children to “munch” their matzo into different shapes and another that places the afikoman at the center of a maze activity. Suggested crafts include making Elijah’s cup and, of course, jumping frogs. Throughout, cartoon illustrations uneasily combine an ancient Exodus atmosphere with detailed instructions for each activity.

While meant to engage children before, during and after the ceremony, this pedestrian and amateurish workbook is unlikely to keep children absorbed for long. (Picture book/religion. 4-7)

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SCARED STIFF 50 Phobias That Freak Us Out

Latta, Sara Illus. by Gallas, G.E. Zest Books (224 pp.) $12.99 paper | Feb. 4, 2014 978-1-936976-49-2

Part browsing item, part therapy for the afflicted, this catalog of irrational terrors offers a little help along with a lot of pop psychology and culture.

The book opens with a clinical psychologist’s foreword and closes with a chapter of personal and professional coping strategies. In between, Latta’s alphabetically arranged encyclopedia introduces a range of panic-inducers from buttons (“koumpounophobia”) and being out of cellphone contact (“nomophobia”) to more widespread fears of heights (“acrophobia”), clowns (“coulroiphobia”) and various animals. There’s also the generalized “social anxiety disorder”—which has no medical name but is “just its own bad self.” As most phobias have obscure origins (generally in childhood), similar physical symptoms and the same approaches to treatment, the descriptive passages tend toward monotony. To counter that, the author chucks in references aplenty to celebrity sufferers, annotated lists of relevant books and (mostly horror) movies, side notes on “joke phobias” and other topics. At each entry’s end, she contributes a box of “Scare Quotes” such as a passage from Coraline for the aforementioned fear of buttons.

Sympathetic in tone, optimistic in outlook, not heavily earnest: nothing to be afraid of. (end notes, resource list) (Nonfiction. 11-14)

POEM-MOBILES Crazy Car Poems

Lewis, J. Patrick; Florian, Douglas Illus. by Holmes, Jeremy Schwartz & Wade/Random (40 pp.) $17.99 | $20.99 PLB | Jan. 7, 2014 978-0-375-86690-6 978-0-375-96690-3 PLB Limitless possibilities for future car designs are imagined in a collection of free-wheeling verses.

Everything from food items to animals to bathtubs and more are the inspirations for these strange vehicles. A paper car can be shredded if it breaks down, a bathtub car keeps you clean as you go, and a hot-dog car can be eaten at the end of the ride. A few of the verses refer either explicitly or obliquely to alternative fuels. There’s a battery-powered “Eel-ectric Car” and unused fossil-fueled wrecks in “Jurassic Park(ing),” and in “23rd-Century Motors,” oil and gas are totally passé. With a few exceptions the verses flow naturally with easy rhymes. Oddly, the first four lines of the introductory poem are awkward and not indicative of the mood and swing of the following lines and the remainder of the poems. But Lewis and Florian are both

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“McDonald lets his imagination run rampant without abandoning credibility, tackling real scientific concepts such as confirmation bias, a feature lacking in far too much science fiction.” from empress of the sun

masters at creating lighthearted, fun-filled, breezy poems, and they do not disappoint in this joint venture. The text is placed as if on a stained and folded slip of paper, which is surrounded

by Holmes’ highly imaginative, bright and lively illustrations, rendered in pencil and watercolors with digital colors added.

Endpapers are tire-tracked, and the contents page matches line drawings to the titles.

Young readers will almost certainly be inspired to create their own wacky cars. (Picture book/poetry. 6-9)

A GIFT FOR LITTLE TREE

Marquez, Colleen D.C. Illus. by Dunn, Masako Cupola Press (32 pp.) $16.99 | Jan. 14, 2014 978-0-9857932-4-1

A God-centric adoption story using a grafted apple tree as a metaphor.

Four opening spreads set the scene with softly colored watercolor artwork: an apple orchard, an idyllic place where the often anthropomorphized trees bear fruit of all colors and tastes and where all the trees are happy under the loving care of the farmer who planted them. But the fifth introduces Little Tree, who yearns to bear her own fruit but cannot. When she asks the farmer what her purpose could be, he reassures her that, having planted her, he has not forgotten her. One fall, the farmer grafts a limb from Green Pippin, whose branches are too weak, onto Little Tree, who wonders if she could love these apples but trusts the farmer.

Come spring, all her doubts are banished, and she is grafted several more times, eventually sporting apples of many different colors, all of them loved. The final spread is a close-up of Little Tree and her apples, the only text Isaiah 49:16—“Behold, I have carved you on the palms of my hands.” A final author’s note describes Marquez’s inspiration for the story, which also led her to adopt children of her own. Nowhere else, though, does the book break from the apple-tree metaphor to talk about adopting children.

More than most adoption books, this one is love-it or hate-it, as its metaphor is likely to sail over most children’s heads and shows adoption as only a Plan B. (Picture book. 5-8)

EMPRESS OF THE SUN

McDonald, Ian Pyr/Prometheus Books (275 pp.) $17.99 | $11.99 e-book | Feb. 4, 2014 978-1-61614-865-2 978-1-61614-866-9 e-book Series: Everness, 3 The marvelous Everness series takes readers to a world with highly evolved dinosaurs in this third voyage through parallel universes. |

Readers will need to be familiar with the first two books (Planesrunner, 2011; Be My Enemy, 2012) to have a hope of understanding what’s happening this time. The story grows ever-more complex as it follows three plotlines. First comes the main plot with hero Everett Singh, who accidentally guides the Everness to an Alderson Disk, a conglomeration of planets engineered into a vast flat disk, where it crash-lands.

Worse, the “Diskworld” (with a nod to Sir Terry Pratchett), has been devised by dangerous, intelligent dinosaurs called the Jiju, which did not go extinct in this parallel universe and have been evolving for tens of millions of years longer than humans.

Meanwhile, on our Earth, Everett’s “alter,” Everett M, tries to fight off an invasion of the Nahn, intelligent nanobots that absorb every living thing they touch. Villain Charlotte Villiers once again plots to steal the Infundibulum, the map of all the universes, from Everett. McDonald lets his imagination run rampant without abandoning credibility, tackling real scientific concepts such as confirmation bias, a feature lacking in far too much science fiction. Fans might wish for more focus on the original Everett, but eventually, the three storylines weave themselves together nicely, setting up another sequel with hints of forthcoming romance.

Endlessly fascinating and fun. (Science fiction. 12 & up)

TWEEZLE INTO EVERYTHING

McLellan, Stephanie Illus. by Griffiths, Dean Pajama Press (32 pp.) $17.95 | Feb. 1, 2014 978-1-927485-47-7

Tweezle is tired of being the baby monster of the family.

He’s a big boy now—and has some not-so-helpful ways of showing it! McLellan and Griffiths’ previous work, Hoogie in the Middle (2013), had middle monster Hoogie feeling invisible and frustrated. Now Tweezle takes a stand against his birth order.

Everyone calls him “little,” but he wants to do something BIG. He tries to help in the kitchen, but the dishes crash to the floor.

He tries to help outdoors, but he ends up knocking everything over in the shed. His sisters shout at him: “You’re the lint at the bottom of my pocket!” and “The mud on the bottom of my sneakers!” After this, little Tweezle mysteriously goes missing.

His family finds him helping a baby bird that has fallen from the nest. Tweezle has had a big idea after all. Although furry, green and whiskered, Tweezle shares many commonalities with toddlers who are gaining independence. Older siblings in particular will recognize the ways Tweezle’s good intentions sometimes work against him.

Though not startlingly insightful or original, this tale about an endearing monster family spotlights some very real moments of childhood growth. (Picture book. 3-6)

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“What stands out is the sheer delight that Sameer and his Amma (mother), pictured in a pink sari, exude as they appear in glowingly painted scenes that feature unusual perspectives.” from what will i be?

DOGGIE DUTIES

Michalak, Jamie Illus. by WGBH Educational Foundation Candlewick (48 pp.) $14.99 | $4.99 paper | Feb. 11, 2014 978-0-7636-7277-5 978-0-7636-6815-0 paper Series: Fetch! with Ruff Ruffman The popular Fetch! with Ruff Ruffman host now has his own chapter-book series, though his humor doesn’t transition well.

Ruff has gotta go. His new Golden Blobby award broke the toilet in his doghouse (don’t ask), and now he sees water everywhere. NASA really should be working on a solution. His helpful show supervisor, Blossom, points out that NASA is, so Ruff starts astronaut training. More potty humor follows as Ruff and Blossom present a few facts about water and life onboard the International Space Station, where urine is recycled into drinking water. Dog Ruff, cat Blossom and mouse assistant Chet then design a filter of their own to see how water can be cleaned using rocks, sand, uncooked pasta and a coffee filter (directions for this experiment are in the backmatter). But NASA just launched its only space toilet. What’s a dog to do? Well, how about trying to use Chet’s toilet in his mouse hole? Will Ruff ever get unstuck for his next book? Will readers who love his show care? While the bright digital artwork matches that of the TV show, and the illustrator has nailed Blossom’s mute sass, so much of the show’s humor depends on Ruff ’s tone of voice and delivery that this just falls flat. And those who love science may not find enough of it here to satisfy.

Ruff Ruffman’s transition to the page is a rough one, though true fans may stick it out. (Picture book. 7-10)

MISTWALKER

Mitchell, Saundra Harcourt (320 pp.) $16.99 | Feb. 4, 2014 978-0-547-85315-4 High school junior Willa’s coastal Maine world has been rocked by tragedy.

Before the beginning of Mitchell’s latest paranormal outing (The Elementals, 2012, etc.), tenacious lobsterwoman Willa enlisted the aid of her younger brother, Levi, to retaliate after another lobsterman repeatedly interfered with her father’s traps. As Willa tells in flashback, when they got back from their trap-destruction foray, the man was waiting on the dock and murdered the boy. Still wracked by grief and guilt, although supported by her boyfriend and her appealingly depicted lesbian best friend, Willa begins to feel the draw of the Grey Man, a mythic, ghostly figure who haunts an offshore lighthouse. Alternating chapters are related by Willa and the Grey Man, who was lured to the island and entrapped a century earlier; he must remain there until he catches 1,000 86

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souls of those who die in or near the sea—or finds a willing replacement to fill his job. As Willa’s world continues to fall apart, that option sometimes seems attractive to her. Mild creepiness and limited suspense result, sustained by lyrical writing that sometimes fails, particularly in Willa’s case, to feel like an authentic voice.

Although it includes all the necessary components— lots of fog, a ghostly presence and an alienated teenage girl—this effort never quite achieves a compelling level of peril and creepiness. (Paranormal fiction. 11-18)

WHAT WILL I BE?

Nayar, Nandini Illus. by Manetti, Francesco Karadi Tales (28 pp.) $11.95 paper | Jan. 14, 2014 978-81-8190-284-9 Series: Curious Sameer In a narrative reminiscent of The Runaway Bunny, a young boy imagines escaping from his mother.

The would-be runaway considers many careers, from train-engine driver to chef, from magician to zookeeper, from doctor to astronaut, but every time that he tells his mother about his new choice, she tells him how she will seek and find him. The text has a regular, pleasing pattern, with key words highlighted in a special typeface and picked out in different colors. In one typical double-page spread, he declares: “Then I will become an explorer and find new animals. I will stay in the deep jungle and you will never find me!” She rejoins: “But when you discover new animals,…they will be named after you. I will hear the name and know where you are!” Readers may focus on these highlighted words, but they are not linked to a glossary. What stands out is the sheer delight that Sameer and his Amma (mother), pictured in a pink sari, exude as they appear in glowingly painted scenes that feature unusual perspectives. Apart from the sari, the bindi on Amma’s forehead and the warm brown faces (which sometimes look like carved wooden dolls), this duo could be from anywhere.

The bold, textured paintings and obvious love shown between parent and child will attract readers and entice them to return. (Picture book. 3-6)

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WHAT COULD IT BE?

Nayar, Nandini Illus. by Manetti, Francesco Karadi Tales (28 pp.) $11.95 paper | Jan. 14, 2014 978-8-181-90285-6 Series: Curious Sameer

A big blue box is waiting for Sameer when he returns home from school, and he tries to guess what’s inside.

In Sameer’s second outing (What Will I Be?, 2014), the boy and his mother, dressed in a blue shalwar kameez (tunic and pants worn in South Asia), play a guessing game in patterned sentences. The highlighted words appear in the text as in the first work but only in Sameer’s sentences. As the boy uses his senses and wits to figure out the contents of the package, his mother assures him that he can do everything that he wants to do with the objects in the box. She keeps telling him that he hasn’t guessed yet, but occasionally she does give him a clue. When he queries: “Could it be a puzzle?…Is it something I can piece together and form a picture?” Amma responds: “You’ll form pictures, but it isn’t a puzzle.” Other guesses include a book that will let him “enter a whole new world,” a magic set that will help him “make things appear and disappear” and blocks you can use to “make tall buildings and bridges.” When the gift is finally revealed, children will understand Amma’s cryptic answers. The wonderful relationship between mother and son is visualized in intense colors, striking perspectives and imagery straight out of children’s creative moments.

A guessing game that spurs imagination. (Picture book. 3-6)

HOW I DISCOVERED POETRY

Nelson, Marilyn Illus. by Hooper, Hadley Dial (112 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 14, 2014 978-0-8037-3304-6

Multiaward-winning poet Nelson (A Wreath for Emmett Till, illustrated

by Philippe Lardy, 2005, etc.) tells how growing up as a daughter of one of the first African-American career officers in the Air Force influenced her artistic development.

In its 50 unrhymed sonnets, the memoir reflects on Nelson at ages 4 through 14, as she and her family followed her father during the pivotal 1950s. Moving to 11 locations in 10 years, from Ohio to Texas, Maine to California, Nelson, her sister and parents crossed the country, repeatedly giving the speaker in these first-person poems the full-throttle experience of being not only the new kid on the block, but often the lone AfricanAmerican in her class. Nelson grippingly conveys the depth of her resulting isolation, noting the strangeness of how in Kittery Point, Maine, “we’re the First Negroes of everything.” There’s also the bafflement of having meaning attached to simply being |

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herself—for example, while standing in line to get a polio vaccine in 1955 Kansas, “Mrs. Liebel said we were Making History, / but all I did was sqwunch up my eyes and wince. / Making History takes more than standing in line / believing little white lies about pain.”

With sophisticated wordplay and poignantly spare description, this lyric bildungsroman creates as effective a portrait of race relations in 20th-century America as of formative moments in Nelson’s youth. (author’s note) (Memoir/poetry. 10 & up)

ROAD RASH

Parsons, Mark Huntley Knopf (352 pp.) $16.99 | $10.99 e-book | $19.99 PLB Feb. 11, 2014 978-0-385-75342-5 978-0-385-75344-9 e-book 978-0-385-75343-2 PLB Dumped by his band, Zach faces the prospect of the summer before senior year’s being the dullest of his life, forced by his parents to work a “real” job. Things turn around when Bad Habit picks him up as their new drummer right before their first tour.

Zach quickly learns that being in a touring band is itself a job, schooling him in compromise, management and professionalism. However, the moments on stage make up for the drama and boredom between gigs. Driving from town to town, Zach wonders what is going on between him and girl-backhome Kimber, as their emails seem to be taking their friendship into new territory. He also discovers that his band mates have hidden talents that could elevate them to the next level, but he manages to set off one ego-bomb after another as he tries to challenge them creatively. The predictable yet believable mix of personalities—self-absorbed lead singer, goofy bass player, token girl on keyboard and the talented-but-serious guitar player—works well despite some awkward language and clichéd scenes. When the band takes the stage, the music references and technical details are presented with such enthusiasm that readers will find their heads nodding and toes tapping as though they were in the crowd.

A road-trip adventure in romance and friendship that is ultimately all about the music. (Fiction. 14-17)

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Sex and the Middle-Aged Librarian What Happens When an Open-Minded Book Critic and a Protective Mom Are One and the Same Person

By Vicky Smith

Let me begin this by saying that I consider myself a prude. I’m not particularly proud of this, it’s just what I am. Which is why realizing that my colleagues at Kirkus know me for talking about sex came as something of a surprise. An essay I wrote discussing oral sex and specifically a book that broke YA ground by describing cunnilingus (Cadillac Chronicles, by Brett Hartman) has apparently become minor work88

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place legend. My poor mother would be mortified if she knew.

But when you think about it, it’s not that odd.

When you work with books for teens, sex is an everpresent concern. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 50 percent of high school students report having had sexual intercourse, and slightly over 15 percent of them report having had sex with four or more partners. Since teens are having sex, it’s not a huge surprise that sex figures in books for teens and therefore in reviews of books for teens.

It is funny to step back and think about it. What reviewer of adult fiction routinely thinks about parsing sexual content and describing its presence and treatment in a book? When sex started making its way into books for teenagers, reviews appeared featuring lines that were variations of “Sexual content skews this book toward an older audience,” or worse, “Sexual content makes this book inappropriate for the audience.”

It’s the rare adult who wants to think about teenagers—particularly their own—having sex. And it seems we don’t want to think about teenagers reading about it, either. Librarians working with teens are always conscious of both the kids that they are working with directly and those kids’ parents. How will it affect a librarian’s relationship with a teenager and with his or her parents if the kid is found to be reading a book with sexual content his or her parent doesn’t want him or her to encounter yet? Blowback can get pretty scary, both on a personal and on an institutional level.

NOTE: I am firmly of the belief that developmentally typical kids who are not ready to encounter kirkus.com

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sexual content will, when they bump into it, consider it gross and put the book away until they are ready.

Those children who have been inappropriately sexualized early may well stand to gain by seeing models of healthy, co-equal, consensual sexual relationships.

They will also stand to gain, I hope, by seeing characters who are victims learning and growing beyond their victimization.

The comfort level of adults at large notwithstanding, books for teens are getting racier and racier. A genre that first confronted sex in the form of cautionary tales about teen pregnancy and the sex-ed manual that is Judy Blume’s Forever… has become more and more comfortable with the subject. And given those CDC statistics, it’s high time.

But just as there’s been a learning curve for writers, there is a learning curve for reviewers of teen books. I periodically get questions from reviewers about how to handle sexual content. My reviewer of Not Your Mother’s Meatloaf, a collection of comic-book–style short stories about teens and sex, wrote me with this concern: “Even though I consider myself pretty darn liberal when it comes to deciding what’s YA and what isn’t, I’m actually leaning toward recommending that this get reviewed by the adult section.” We had a conversation about it. Did he think that it was actively dangerous for teens to read it? Did he think that adults were the intended audience?

The answer to both questions was no, so we reviewed the book in the children’s & teen section with the following sentence: “There’s no doubt teens of all ages will be scrambling to get their hands on this title; it’s more of a matter of finding adults who are willing to offer it to them.”

I had a similar conversation about Night Creatures,

by Jeremy Jordan King, a paranormal thriller about a gay young man from the Midwest who moves to New York City in the early 1980s, just as AIDS was emerging. My (gay) reviewer was uneasy about the numerous sex scenes that explicitly if not graphically addressed pretty free-wheeling stuff. Should we kick this upstairs to the adult section? I told him what I believe: that “from an equal-opportunity perspective, I think it’s really important for gay teens to have access to the same type of content that straight teens are getting these days.”

It became very personal for me this summer, as I made my way through Lauren Myracle’s The Infinite |

Moment of Us, a first-love and first-sex story that in many ways is an early-21st-century update of Forever.... New high school graduates Wren and Charlie fall in love and initiate sex in the most responsible way possible; Wren both sees to birth control (and uses it properly) and insists that the already sexually active Charlie be tested for AIDS. Their sex scenes are both adorable and graphic, presenting an ideal for teen readers: Sex is awesome, when engaged in thoughtfully, at the right time and with love. And isn’t that what we want to teach our children?

But as I was reading the book and thinking of how far we’ve come since the early days of YA, my 16-yearold daughter casually asked, “Is that a good book?”

And there I was, on the spot, my theoretician self and my mother self looking at each other over what seemed to be a very high wall.

“Um, yes,” I said. Did I then offer to give it to her as soon as I was done? Um, no. Apparently I am a coward as well as a prude. But do I hope she will pick it up on her own and read it? Yes, definitely, no ums about it.

Vicky Smith is the children’s & teen editor at Kirkus Reviews.

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IN THE BEGINNING...

Plumeri, Arnaud Illus. by Bloz Papercutz (56 pp.) $10.99 | Jan. 7, 2014 978-1-59707-490-2 Series: Dinosaurs, 1

Kicking off a new comics series, over a dozen smart-mouthed dinosaurs strut their stuff amid added disquisitions on reptilian relatives, fossil bones, continental drift, coprolites and other topics of dino-interest.

For the most part, each page is an individual miniepisode framed in small, squared-off cartoon panels. Along with occasional appearances by paleontologist “Indino Jones,” the cast includes a range of toothy carnivores, from T. Rex to Velociraptor, and vegetarians, like Diplodocus and Triceratops. The dinos exchange wisecracks (“HEY, TYRANT! YOU’RE SO UGLY YOU LOOK LIKE MY BUTT!”) while demonstrating offensive and defensive features, distinctive crests or other decorations and (usually) messy eating habits. Along with the snarky dialogue, some amusing byplay is provided by a diminutive Compsognathus who recurrently pops up to get stomped or come to some other bad end. Despite the seemingly casual plotlines and comical cartoon art, distinctions between reptiles and dinosaurs, dinos that actually lived in different eras and other fine points of dinosaurology are carefully laid out. Moreover, boxes in the lower corners contain specific summary facts about each creature that are repeated in the closing glossary.

This stimulating mix of hard information and prehistoric hijinks bodes well for subsequent volumes. (Graphic fiction/nonfiction. 6-8)

BRIMSBY’S HATS

Prahin, Andrew Illus. by Prahin, Andrew Simon & Schuster (40 pp.) $15.99 | $12.99 e-book | Feb. 4, 2014 978-1-4424-8147-3 978-1-4424-8148-0 e-book Brimsby, a hat maker, dearly misses his badger friend, who sailed away to become a sea captain.

Brimsby (a proper name for a hatter!) could be any number of animals, really, with his black stubby nose, nubby ears, pea-soup–colored body and bowler hat. A bear? A mole? Inset scenes, arresting compositional choices and conversation bubbles direct eyes across pages of computer-generated artwork.

While flat, these illustrations carry powerful poignancy. The badger relays his seafaring dreams to Brimsby as ships, pirates, telescopes and dragons hover over their heads, encapsulated in a row of neat ovals. Twelve small, sequential studies reveal Brimsby’s mounting loneliness with painful clarity. He sits at his work table, by the window, sewing different hats on different 90

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days in different seasons, in boxy isolation—a lonely portrait that changes little, repeating again and again across a doublepage spread. Readers may sniffle before turning the page to find him trudging across a sweeping snowscape, waist-high in a drift.

He meets some cold birds shoveling snow out of their nests and thinks of the perfect solution: hat bird houses! Brimsby’s industry and empathy find him a flock of thankful friends.

Sophisticated storytelling, both through words and images, beautifully describes the significance of friendship and what it feels like to miss, keep, love and make a friend. (Picture book. 2-6)

DIAMONDS & DECEIT

Rasheed, Leila Disney Hyperion (432 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 7, 2014 978-1-4231-7118-8 Series: At Somerton, 2

More scheming servants and conniving debutantes at Somerton.

On the eve of World War I, technology and shifting social mores are eroding the fabric of London society as the pace of life accelerates. In the second installment of this soapy series, the focus shifts to Lady Ada’s secret half sister, Rose, who was raised as a housemaid at Somerton and elevated to a member of the family at the conclusion of Cinders & Sapphires (2013). As Rose attempts to navigate her first London season as a participant instead of a supporting player, she is confounded at every turn by malicious rivals and conflicting messages about her role in the evolving societal landscape. Gossip (and the fear of it) is the driving force at the heart of the story. Although there is some mustache-twirling villainy—and brutal consequences for aristocratic license—most of Rasheed’s characters are satisfyingly complex and flawed. With a few notable exceptions, no one is all good or all bad, leaving plenty of room for outlandish plot twists and changes of heart. Deft descriptions embroider the subplots that provide the historical context and intrigue— the trains of London’s Underground Railway roar “like an imprisoned dragon”—and the anxiety of the age is leavened somewhat by humorous touches.

Add this to the list of recommended reading for Downton Abbey enthusiasts. (Historical fiction. 12 & up)

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“Goode’s illustrations are often breathtaking....Roberts’ lively text is illuminated with flourishes and curlicues along with winsome or whimsical portraits....” froms founding mothers

DIVIDED WE FALL

mystery carries the three from their New Jersey home to Washington, D.C. Along the way, they elude a villainous couple and search for a rogue great-aunt. As they work together to solve the mystery, the cousins conquer individual fears and forge a bond with one another, learning to respect their differences.

Readers will relish this sparkling adventure, which offers plenty of action, humor, age-appropriate danger and mental calisthenics. (Mystery. 9-12)

Reedy, Trent Levine/Scholastic (384 pp.) $17.99 | $17.99 e-book | Jan. 28, 2014 978-0-545-54367-5 978-0-545-54369-9 e-book Series: Divided We Fall Trilogy, 1 In the first installment of a trilogy set in the near future, 17-year-old Pfc. Daniel Christopher Wright fires the shot that may spell the end of the United States.

When Danny’s Idaho National Guard unit is called to police a protest in Boise, Danny is hit by a rock and accidentally discharges his weapon, causing other Guardsmen to open fire, killing several protestors. When President Rodriguez demands that Gov. Montaine turn over the names of the soldiers involved and begin enforcing the new federal ID-card law, a standoff ensues.

The conservative governor vows to resist a federal government grown too big and will nullify the new law. Since nullification means insurrection according to Article VI, Clause 2 of the Constitution, federal troops are called in, and the crisis escalates. Danny’s story is threaded between frequent and lengthy italicized news reports that keep readers abreast of the political situation. Given the dramatic battle scene depicted on the cover, readers may be disappointed to find that the action in Volume 1 is intermittent, as the political and military pieces are set in place for the sure-to-be-dramatic concluding volumes.

Projecting 19th-century nullification crises into a notso-distant future, Reedy creates a credible military thriller.

(Thriller. 14 & up)

THE SECRET BOX

Ringwald, Whitaker Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins (304 pp.) $16.99 | $9.99 e-book | Feb. 25, 2014 978-0-06-221614-4 978-0-06-221616-8 e-book Fresh voices make this story a winner.

Jax Malone is bored with her 12th birthday. Her presents are unexciting—“…nail polish, a couple of Starbucks cards. Big yawn”—and she is not even interested in a package addressed to her delivered in that day’s mail. That is, until her mother whisks it away, forbidding her to open it. Jax can’t stand secrets, and with the help of her shy cousin, Ethan, she finds and opens the package. It contains a mystery that Jax and Ethan need help solving, so they trick Ethan’s older brother, Tyler, an obnoxious genius computer gamer, into helping. The story is told in first person, in alternating chapters by Jax and Ethan (made easy to follow by a distinct typeface for each). Jax’s wry, confident voice juxtaposed against Ethan’s insecure, retiring one, along with Tyler’s supergeek, out-of-touch arrogance, combine to create many laugh-out-loud moments. Pursuing the |

FOUNDING MOTHERS Remembering the Ladies

Roberts, Cokie Illus. by Goode, Diane Harper/HarperCollins (40 pp.) $17.99 | $18.89 PLB | Jan. 28, 2014 978-0-06-078002-9 978-0-06-078003-6 PLB ABC and NPR correspondent Roberts and Caldecott Honoree Goode forge an attractive and compelling version for young people of Roberts’ adult book of the same title.

Goode’s illustrations are often breathtaking. On the endpapers, she has reproduced in sepia tones with antique pens some of the source documents that allow readers to know these women. Roberts’ lively text is illuminated with flourishes and curlicues along with winsome or whimsical portraits in what looks like ink and watercolor. Some women get two-page illustrated spreads, like Esther DeBerdt Reed, who wrote one of the endpaper pieces and who raised thousands of dollars for Washington’s troops. They bought linen for 2,000 shirts for the soldiers, and into each was sewn the name of the woman who made it. There are briefer vignettes on women writers and women warriors, as well as an illustrated timeline from 1765 to 1815. Abigail Adams, Dolley Madison and Martha Washington are included of course, and there’s also Mercy Otis Warren, who wrote letters and poems championing the cause of freedom, and Eliza Lucas Pinckney, whose “little schemes” included raising silkworms and cultivating indigo as a cash crop. Roberts’ “Letter of Introduction” sets the stage, and the acknowledgments from writer and illustrator tell a compelling story of research and support.

It is a wonderful package, adding the women who made it work to the men we thought we all knew. (websites) (Nonfiction. 8-12)

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“For maximum effect with readers, tell them the premise of the book is: Math can kill you.” from finding gossamyr

HOW TO WASH A WOOLLY MAMMOTH

look that gives both world and characters depth and warmth.

This book won’t make math any less troublesome, but it might keep students interested in the subject matter. (And if it doesn’t, they’ll have something to think about during the lecture on equilateral triangles.) (glossary) (Graphic fantasy. 8-13)

Robinson, Michelle Illus. by Hindley, Kate Henry Holt (32 pp.) $16.99 | Jan. 7, 2014 978-0-8050-9966-9

Step-by-step advice for tackling the task of mammoth hygiene.

Moving to a very different pachyderm from the one in her previous title, What to Do If an Elephant Stands on Your Foot, illustrated by Peter H. Reynolds (2012), Robinson instructs readers in the best ways to give your average everyday mammoth a bath. Taking cues from instructional guides, Hindley depicts diagrams of properly filled baths, figures that show how to get one’s mammoth into the bathtub and even an array of possible soapy hairstyles. A misstep involving soap and large eyes leads to a very dirty mammoth escapee. So dirty, in fact, that the raincoat-clad heroine ends up taking a bath with him, much to the mutual contentment of the two. The art lifts what might otherwise have been an average outing with a delightfully expressive mammoth (he may not speak a word, but his eyebrows alone convey volumes). Lined ledger paper stands in perfectly for bathroom tiles, and even the rubber ducky is an interesting character to follow.

With its combination of understated text and witty art, this book will leave most readers hankering (read: begging, pleading) for a prehistoric pet of their very own. (Picture book. 3-7)

FINDING GOSSAMYR

Rodriguez, David A. Illus. by Ellerton, Sarah Th3rd World Studios (132 pp.) $24.95 | Jan. 7, 2014 978-0-9832161-6-2 Series: Finding Gossamyr, 1 No one ever trusts their math teacher, which is why kids need to read this comic before their teachers can recommend it, because it’s a math book that actually is fun.

For maximum effect with readers, tell them the premise of the book is: Math can kill you. On the world of Gossamyr, math is a form of combat and a vehicle for magic. A little boy named Denny ends up in Gossamyr with his sister when he completes a theorem. He’s suddenly in a parallel world with flying boats and blue oxlions. Younger readers will want oxlions of their own, to keep as pets. Hard-core fantasy readers may be frustrated with all the clichés. There’s an honorable warrior, and there are outsiders trapped in a world that only they can save. But the characters cease to be clichés as soon as they start to speak. Denny can measure pieces of wood by sight, to the millimeter, and when his sister tells him, “It’s okay if they’re not exact,” he says, “No, it’s not.” Ellerton’s glossy, luminous panels have an airbrushed 92

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MONKEY ME AND THE GOLDEN MONKEY

Roland, Tim Illus. by Roland, Tim Branches/Scholastic (96 pp.) $15.99 | $4.99 paper | $4.99 e-book Jan. 28, 2014 978-0-545-55977-5 978-0-545-55976-8 paper 978-0-545-55978-2 e-book Series: Monkey Me, 1 Monkey business allows young children to make a serious transition from early readers to chapter books.

As reading reluctance can build from the first stages of literacy, this debut title in a series of illustrated chapter books aims to hook both struggling and new readers. Clyde—rambunctious, a little mischievous and the epitome of the reluctant reader—often envisions himself as a monkey. On a school field trip to a science and history museum, he encounters two problems that lead to nonstop adventure. After bumping into a thief disguised as a museum guard, his gift-shop version of the Golden Monkey icon is switched with the real artifact. The boy also eats a scientist’s radioactive banana (it was blasted with a gamma ray), which enables his inner monkey to turn him into a real monkey. Traditional illustrated text turns to a graphic-novel format when Clyde accidentally and then on purpose turns into a monkey. Not even his brainy, no-nonsense twin sister, Claudia, can control Clyde’s monkey self as teachers and other school workers chase him through the school hallways. The action peaks when the thief shows up at school, pretending to be a substitute teacher and wanting his stolen Golden Monkey back.

While this series doesn’t have aspirations to high literature, it does fulfill an important developmental reading need with high-interest humor and adventure. (Adventure. 6-8)

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THE NOISY PAINT BOX The Colors and Sounds of Kandinsky’s Abstract Art

Rosenstock, Barb Illus. by Grandpré, Mary Knopf (40 pp.) $17.99 | $20.99 PLB | Feb. 11, 2014 978-0-307-97848-6 978-0-307-97849-3 PLB

This impressive biography of Vasily Kandinsky highlights the unusual connection between his art and the music that inspired it.

As a young boy in Russia, Vasily—nicknamed Vasya—glumly studies “bookfuls of math, science, and history.” His heavy eyelids droop; he sits “stiff and straight” while adults drone on.

Then his aunt gives him a paint box, and everything changes. As Vasya mixes one hue with another, he hears the colors making sounds. “Whisper” is set in a faux handwriting type; “HISS” is also set in a different type from the primary text. Vasya listens as “swirling colors trill…like an orchestra tuning up.” Rosenstock explains the mixing of Vasya’s senses—synesthesia, in contemporary terms—through the shapes he paints: “Crunching crimson squares,” “[w]hispering charcoal lines” and “a powerful navy rectangle that vibrated deeply like the lowest cello strings.” Using acrylic paint and paper collage, Grandpré emphasizes the blending of two arts by showing Vasya’s paintbrush-holding arms aloft as if he were conducting and by letting Vasya’s colors waft upward from his palette, making curlicues in the air, with music staffs and notes interwoven. As Vasya grows up, he faces resistance to his nonrepresentational work, including the repeated interrogation, “What’s it supposed to be?”—but his magnificent, abstract, sound-inspired paintings won’t be repressed.

A rich, accomplished piece about a pioneer in the art world. (author’s note, painting reproductions, sources) (Picture book/biography. 5-10)

HOW THE BEATLES CHANGED THE WORLD

Sandler, Martin W. Walker (176 pp.) $20.99 | Feb. 4, 2014 978-0-8027-3565-2

From their early performances in Liverpool to the present, this lavishly illustrated account examines the enduring influence of the Beatles on music and culture over the past 50 years.

Opening with their February 1964 appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, arguably “one of the most defining and indelible moments in the history of music, television and pop culture,” Sandler traces the progress of Beatlemania. He emphasizes that the Beatles transformed culture with music by performing without a lead singer, changing the nature of record singles, |

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redefining the record album, revolutionizing album covers, finding “inspiration in almost everything around them” and expressing the mood of the times. Sandler moves chronologically through the Beatles’ career, tracking formative years in Liverpool and Hamburg, Germany, their phenomenal popularity in the United States, their rapturous concert tours, their breakup in 1970 and subsequent individual careers. Chapters on their impact on fashion, hairstyles, movies and religion reinforce the overall theme. Richly illustrated with period photos that capture career highlights, this chronicle of the 20th century’s lead music group is boldly printed on glossy paper in colors, typefaces and layout appropriately reminiscent of ‘60s pop art.

A well-researched and attractively presented look in words and pictures at how the ever-popular Beatles did indeed change the world. (discography, sources, bibliography, further reading & surfing; not seen) (Nonfiction. 10-14)

BRIGHT BEFORE SUNRISE

Schmidt, Tiffany Walker (288 pp.) $17.99 | Feb. 18, 2014 978-0-8027-3500-3

Prim Brighton, a high school junior, agrees to accompany sullen Jonah to a party only after the senior reluctantly promises to participate in a communityservice project. Soon, sparks are flying in this opposites-attract romance.

Initially, Jonah and Brighton’s “date” is merely a businesslike agreement. Jonah needs Brighton’s beauty to make an ex-girlfriend jealous, and Brighton needs Jonah’s participation as part of her project to honor her late father. Their early interactions are largely contentious, as Jonah offends Brighton by describing her carefully cultivated “nice” persona as symptomatic of a lack of interests. But revelations and radical changes in perceptions must happen quickly considering the novel’s short time frame, and Schmidt seems to compensate by relying on formulaic situations to move the plot along. Jonah becomes suddenly protective of Brighton when she attracts the unwelcome attentions of a brutish older guy at the party, and Brighton earns respect by gushing about horror movies during a late-night impromptu pizza dinner with Jonah’s friends. Meanwhile, Brighton begins recognizing Jonah’s sensitive side while observing him with his hometown friends and listening to stories of his father’s abandonment. Her growing understanding allows her to see his observations about her personality less as critiques and more as permission to shed the burden of pursuing her father’s legacy at the cost of her own personal interests.

Predictable but with some sweet moments. (Fiction. 12-18)

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SCHOOL OF CHARM

Scott, Lisa Ann Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins (304 pp.) $16.99 | $9.99 e-book | Feb. 18, 2014 978-0-06-220758-6 978-0-06-220760-9 e-book After her father’s death, 11-year-old Brenda “Chip” Anderson feels lonely and alienated when she’s transplanted from New York to Mt. Airy, N.C. A tomboy and “daddy’s girl,” Chip loved hanging out in the woods with her father, but now Mama moves the family to Mt. Airy to live with Grandma, who takes an instant dislike to Chip and focuses on entering Chip’s two sisters in the Miss Dogwood 1977 beauty pageant. As former pageant winners, Grandma and Mama become obsessed with grooming Chip’s sisters for the pageant, leaving her to grieve and adjust on her own. Chip’s father always told her she was “perfect just being” herself, but now she’s confused. When she discovers Miss Vernie’s School of Charm, “free to those who need it,” Chip enrolls, hoping to surprise Mama and Grandma by secretly entering the pageant.

Miss Vernie assures her students they will be most beautiful if they are themselves, but Chip learns the hard way by trying to become a “brand-new Brenda.” The quiet, gentle plot progresses slowly, allowing Chip to heal, form new friendships and assimilate Miss Vernie’s unorthodox charm lessons before becoming a “brand-new Chip.”

Poignant, inspiring debut novel of loss, belonging and being true to yourself. (Historical fiction. 8-12)

GRASSHOPPER JUNGLE

Smith, Andrew Dutton (400 pp.) $18.99 | Feb. 11, 2014 978-0-525-42603-5

A meanderingly funny, weirdly compelling and thoroughly brilliant chronicle of “the end of the world, and shit like that.”

This is not your everyday novel of the apocalypse, though it has the essential elements: a (dead) mad scientist, a fabulous underground bunker, voracious giant praying mantises and gobs of messy violence. As narrated by hapless Polish-Iowan sophomore Austin Szerba, though, the “shit like that” and his love for it all take center stage: his family, including his older brother, whose testicles and one leg are blown off in Iraq; his mute, perpetually defecating golden retriever; the dead-end town of Ealing, Iowa; his girlfriend, Shann Collins, whom he desperately wants to have sex with; and most importantly, his gay best friend, Robby Brees, to whom he finds himself as attracted as he is to Shann. His preoccupation with sex is pervasive; the unlikeliest things make Austin horny, and his 94

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candor in reporting this is endearing. In a cannily disjointed, Vonnegut-esque narrative, the budding historian weaves his account of the giant-insect apocalypse in and around his personal family history and his own odyssey through the hormonal stew that is adolescence. He doesn’t lie, and he is acutely conscious of the paradox that is history: “You could never get everything in a book. / Good books are always about everything.”

By that measure, then, this is a mighty good book. It is about everything that really matters. Plus voracious giant praying mantises. (Science fiction. 14 & up)

MY BLUE BUNNY, BUBBIT

Smith, Maggie Illus. by Smith, Maggie Clarion (40 pp.) $16.99 | Jan. 7, 2014 978-0-547-55861-5

Part special–stuffed-animal tale, part new-baby story, part craft extravaganza, this picture book has a little something for everyone, so long as that “everyone” enjoys sewing narratives.

When she was born, the unnamed heroine of this tale was given a handmade stuffed blue bunny named Bubbit by her much-beloved grandmother. Now a new baby has been born to the family, and the new big sister wants to make sure her brother has something just as special. After consulting with her grandma, the two set about creating a soft yellow elephant from the little girl’s outgrown coat and scraps from well-loved clothing. Will the new baby come to love it? A snapshot of the near future yields the answer. With art consisting of a melding of pencil, fabric, gouache and digital illustration, the textures embedded into the pictures give the book a tactile, homey feel.

The writing itself is strong, though no one would mistake this as a story for all expectant older sibs. After all, the focus on the craft of sewing will appeal mostly as a novelty for those in the intended age group. That said, it would be the rare child that reads this and then doesn’t hanker for a blue “Bubbit” of their very own.

New older siblings won’t be blue for long thanks to this sweet, if special, offering. (Picture book. 4-8)

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“…Staniszewski neatly captures the pain of a shy young girl with newly separated parents.” from the dirt diary

THE DIRT DIARY

Staniszewski, Anna Sourcebooks Jabberwocky (256 pp.) $6.99 paper | Jan. 7, 2014 978-1-4022-8636-0 What could be worse than cleaning other people’s toilets on the weekends?

Cleaning the toilets of the two most popular girls in eighth grade, that’s what.

Rachel Lee needs to raise $300 fast, having stolen it from her college fund to buy a ticket to Florida to convince her father to return to the family. In order to pay her fund back before her mother finds out, she enlists as a helper in her mother’s new cleaning business. As she gains access to the bedrooms of some key people in her middle school, Rachel makes some decisions that come back to haunt her, escalating the very problems she is trying to solve. After causing untrue rumors to start and accepting money to spy on someone, Rachel finally learns that honest conversations with parents and true friends seem to be the best tonic. And yes, the mean girls are really mean—but Rachel discovers reasons for that as well. Although most of the issues that confront Rachel seem two-dimensional, Staniszewski neatly captures the pain of a shy young girl with newly separated parents. Written in Rachel’s voice, the plot is predictable and the language simple.

The quick pace and creative storyline will attract those in the mood for an undemanding, light read. (Fiction. 10-14)

HENNY

Stanton, Elizabeth Rose Illus. by Stanton, Elizabeth Rose Paula Wiseman/Simon & Schuster (40 pp.) $16.99 | $12.99 e-book | Jan. 7, 2014 978-1-4424-8436-8 978-1-4424-8438-2 e-book Henny is a chicken but with human arms. (Best not overthink the hows and whys.)

She likes being different from her fellow chickens when she’s climbing a tree, but she doesn’t like being different when the other farm animals laugh at her. In other words, she is Everychicken. Henny’s disproportionately long, spindly, pinkish human arms are particularly creepy to behold, partly due to the soft, delicate nature of the debut author/illustrator’s penciland-watercolor illustrations. They allow her certain luxuries foreign to her species, such as hugging her mother and helping Mr. Farmer with his chores. And, somewhat unsettlingly, “She liked it when they fluttered behind her like ribbons when she ran.”

(Sometimes her arms are shown as boneless, sometimes not.)

In time, the barnyard bird begins to imagine hailing New York taxis, ice-skating, even flying a plane. Unfortunately, there’s no cohesive narrative here, mostly just abundant illustrated examples of what can be accomplished with arms and hands.

As Henny worries about tennis elbow and hangnails, imagines |

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pointing or “mak[ing] a point,” plugs her ears or carries a purse, readers may stop caring what Henny can or can’t do.

Whether or not children find a friend in Henny, this picture book needs a storyline. (Picture book. 4-8)

NO PLACE

Strasser, Todd Simon & Schuster (272 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 28, 2014 978-1-4424-5721-8 Dan is middle-class and college-bound, but that won’t keep the global recession from taking his home.

Dan—with a stockbroker mother and a city-employee father, headed to Rice on a baseball scholarship—was once a solid member of the middle class. But when his parents lose their jobs, the family winds up in Dignityville, a tent city for the town’s homeless. Homelessness, he learns, isn’t merely the absence of a roof and four walls: It’s hunger, insecure storage, shame, exhaustion, physical vulnerability, and disconnection from phone service and Wi-Fi. Even geography becomes Dan’s enemy, as he discovers Dignityville is outside his school district, and his after-school job is too far away to reach. Highly politicized infodumps about America’s growing wealth disparity, while unsubtle, are smoothly integrated through the voices of minor characters with messages to impart. There’s an Occupystyle activist with informative posters, a young black man sneering at the surprise of middle-class white people at being “shoved down to the bottom where they never thought they’d be,” even Dan’s own Web searches for a school research project springing from his experiences.

For similar themes with less of a problem-novel vibe, try Sarah Dooley’s lovely Body of Water (2011); nonetheless, Dan’s experience with middle-class poverty is accessible and timely. (Fiction. 13-15)

PINK CUPCAKE MAGIC

Tegen, Katherine Illus. by Varner, Kristin Henry Holt (32 pp.) $16.99 | Jan. 28, 2014 978-0-8050-9611-8

Princess Zoe gets sweet revenge on her thieving brother with a special batch of magical cupcakes.

Zoe loves to make cupcakes, but whenever she whips up a batch, her pesky brother, Ralph, and his friends eat them all up. Zoe also loves princesses, but pretending to be one just isn’t satisfying enough, so she decides to bake a wish right into her next batch of pink cupcakes. Her wish—to be a princess—is granted, and she spends a lovely day in her magical kingdom, granting, in turn, the wishes of her |

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“A complex, layered plot highlights a split between those who cling to traditional beliefs and young people who look for rational explanations….” from the glass casket

furry subjects for shoes and coats. This meandering and disjointed storyline is only partly rescued by the funny exercise of harmless sibling revenge that draws the tale to a close: When Zoe discovers that Ralph has once again stolen her precious pink cupcakes, she hatches a plan to bake some magical green ones for him and his friends that will turn the lot of them into frogs for a day. The illustrations, in acrylic on watercolor paper, lend a feistiness to redheaded Zoe and a sparkly sheen to her fluffy, pink confections.

The right ingredients—cute cupcakes, a dash of magic, one determined princess and plenty of pink—are all accounted for, but this recipe still falls flat. (cupcake recipe) (Picture book. 3-6)

THE GLASS CASKET

Templeman, McCormick Delacorte (352 pp.) $17.99 | $10.99 e-book | $20.99 PLB Feb. 11, 2014 978-0-385-74345-7 978-0-449-81315-7 e-book 978-0-375-99443-4 PLB In the woods above the quiet mountain village of Nag’s End, five soldiers of the king are mysteriously killed.

Village elders presume it was a wolf attack, but Tom and his brother Jude are convinced that no animal could have inflicted the horror that they saw up on icy Beggar’s Drift. Tom’s best friend, Rowan Rose, is warned by her scholar father not to succumb to the others’ fear of witches, goblins and wood sprites.

But it becomes hard to ignore the strange goings-on, especially after Fiona Eira, a cousin Rowan never knew she had, arrives.

Tom, who’s looking for a “grand love,” thinks he’s found it with the enchanting Fiona. He gives her a coin he found on Beggar’s Drift that may be connected to a greater evil than anyone imagined. A complex, layered plot highlights a split between those who cling to traditional beliefs and young people who look for rational explanations for what turns out to be a string of grisly deaths in the village and surrounding forest. Twists and turns keep readers in suspense as Rowan, Fiona, Tom and Jude navigate a convoluted path through sibling rivalry and friendship en route to adulthood.

With stylish prose, richly developed characters and well-realized worldbuilding, Templeman plumbs archetypes of folklore to create a compelling blend of mythic elements and realistic teen experience. (Fantasy. 12-17)

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THE FINEST HOURS The True Story of a Heroic Sea Rescue

Tougias, Michael J.; Sherman, Casey Christy Ottaviano/Henry Holt (176 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 14, 2014 978-0-8050-9764-1

Readers who appreciate a gripping survival tale will be spellbound by this fast-paced, action-packed account of a real-life disaster involving two tankers wrecked in a ferocious North Atlantic storm and the crews’ hair-raising, valiant rescue by the Coast Guard.

On Feb. 18, 1952, a savage nor’easter slammed 70-foot waves into the oil tankers Pendleton and Fort Mercer off the coast of Cape Cod, and both split in half, leaving their crews to the mercy of the raging storm. Only the Fort Mercer was able to send a distress call. The Coast Guard sent ships to aid the men, including three small crews in lifeboats. During the rescue of the Fort Mercer, the wreck of the Pendleton was discovered. The Coast Guardsmen valiantly rushed to save the men on four floating hulks, the stern and bow sections of each of the tankers. Using the tools of the novelist, the authors provide a vivid, moment-by-moment retelling, jumping from the Pendleton to the Fort Mercer to the Coast Guard in quick succession, drawing on the accounts of survivors and witnesses. Unfortunately, this quick pace sometimes makes it difficult to keep track of the characters as the narrative bounces back and forth between the two rescue efforts.

A thrilling, harrowing account of disaster and heroism. (bibliography) (Nonfiction. 9-14)

THE GHOSTS OF TUPELO LANDING

Turnage, Sheila Kathy Dawson/Penguin (368 pp.) $16.99 | Feb. 11, 2014 978-0-8037-3671-9 With heaps of Southern charm and the homespun humor of a favorite uncle, Turnage presents the spirited followup to her Newbery Honor debut, Three Times Lucky (2012).

Just as its predecessor did, this sequel shines thanks to Turnage’s deft, lyrical language and engaging characters. Mo LoBeau and her Desperado Detective Agency cohort, Dale Earnhardt Johnson III, are sixth graders now. When a purportedly haunted historic inn goes on auction and Mo’s guardian, Miss Lana, wins the bid, Mo is determined to use her detecting skills to find the ghost. Dale isn’t so sure, but Mo is a force of nature when she sets her mind. But Dale fears Mo has gone too far when, in a fit of one-upmanship with her archnemesis Anna “Attila” Celeste Simpson, Mo declares that she and Dale will do a class project on the town’s oldest citizen. Turnage crafts a

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laugh-out-loud scene: “It would mean extra credit,” Miss Retzyl points out. “Extra credit looms large with Dale, who specializes in the Recess Arts.... Attila flashed her braces. ‘There isn’t anyone older [than Mayor Little’s mother], Mo-ron’....My temper popped like bacon on a hot skillet. ‘There is too somebody older....Dale and me are interviewing a ghost.’ ” Naturally, Mo and Dale learn as much about growing up as they do about spirits from the great beyond.

This delightful sequel demonstrates that Tupelo Landing may be even better on a second visit. (Mystery. 10-14)

WAKE UP, RUPERT!

Twohy, Mike Illus. by Twohy, Mike Paula Wiseman/Simon & Schuster (32 pp.) $16.99 | $12.99 e-book | Feb. 18, 2014 978-1-4424-5998-4 978-1-4424-5999-1 e-book

the tale as he lists possible hardships along the trail and asks, “WHAT WILL HAPPEN THIS TIME?” In the next spread, Patience Mills bids a poignant farewell to her baby’s grave as her family joins the wagon train. Now the text makes its fatal mistake: Hereafter, there is a dizzying parade of new names and relationships until the end, when Carl reappears to summarize the journey’s calamities and declare the trip “not bad.”

The single-page monologues are attractively and appropriately set in Caslon Antique against a faded, faux burlap background.

Unfortunately, the generic pen-and-ink-plus-watercolor illustrations are reminiscent of 1960s TV Westerns. The folksy free verse, although more informative than the art, fails in its tooambitious attempt to delineate 16 different characters.

Despite some good adventures, such as the fun of tossing buffalo chips and the thrill of climbing Laurel Hill, the combination of a one-voice-fits-all twang with too many names and characters is numbing rather than inspiring. (maps, historical notes, author’s note, further reading) (Picture book. 7-10)

Rupert the Rooster just wants to sleep in!

Every morning, Rupert sets six alarm clocks and hides them around his room in the barn. That way, by the time he finds all six ringing clocks and turns them off, he will be awake enough to see the sun, crow and wake everyone on Farmer Tim’s farm.

Rupert just hates getting up early. When he complains to his best friend, Sherman the sheep, Sherman volunteers to do the crowing as long as Rupert teaches him how. After a lesson, Rupert goes to sleep with his slippers over his ears. Sherman sets the alarm clocks for himself…but he has a nightmare in which he doesn’t get up in time. Waking in the middle of the night, he crows and then panics when he is not loud enough to rouse the others. He gets his entire family to bleat with him, and the farm wakes up early, with disastrous results. As Rupert watches the chaos, he vows to always do his own important job himself.

Author and New Yorker cartoonist Twohy delivers a fine addition to the confused-farm-critter canon with this tale of lazy Rupert who learns a little rooster-ly responsibility. The cartoon watercolors enhance the silliness of the tale.

Preschoolers will bleat for a repeat. (Picture book. 3-7)

VOICES FROM THE OREGON TRAIL

Winters, Kay Illus. by Day, Larry Dial (48 pp.) $17.99 | Feb. 27, 2014 978-0-8037-3775-4

A series of illustrated fictional monologues introduces the history of the Oregon Trail.

It’s a good idea, and the beginning is great: Readers meet 13-year-old Carl Hawks, who is helping his father lead a wagon train from Independence, Mo., to Oregon City. Carl sets up |

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pop-up roundup POP AND PLAY Things That Go

Abbott, Simon Illus. by Abbott, Simon Kingfisher (10 pp.) $7.99 | Sep. 17, 2013 978-0-7534-7162-3 As the book opens, paper engineering animates a variety of vehicles on the page.

A race car moves ahead of its competitor, a digger’s shovel lifts, a boat crests a wave, a train emerges from a tunnel, and a rocket zooms through space. Abbott’s bold-outlined cartoons in highly saturated colors give the book a playfully busy energy.

The almost unnecessary text captions the action (“The racecar whizzes past”) and includes one question per scene to engage readers (“What shape are the wheels?”). The companion title, Pop and Play: Zoo Animals (978-0-7534-7163-0), features wild critters and includes the same page-animating pop-ups: A monkey swings through a jungle, a tiger peeks out from behind a tree, penguins slide on the ice, and more. As in the first book, the childlike art is more appealing than the workmanlike text.

Each one-sentence description of the action is accompanied by simple questions or invitations to count on every doublepage spread—except, inexplicably, the panda’s. The direction to count the 16 teeth on the crocodile will prove daunting to many toddlers.

Despite these quibbles, both books are likable and affordable starter pop-ups. (Pop-up/board book. 2-4)

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HOW CARS WORK The Interactive Guide to Mechanisms that Make a Car Move

Arnold, Nick Illus. by Sanders, Allan Running Press Kids (24 pp.) $19.95 | Sep. 24, 2013 978-0-7624-4726-8

An ambitious but impractical introduction to 10 mechanical systems common to most automobiles, with build-your-own cardboard components for each.

The book opens with general descriptions and cartoon cutaway illustrations of a four-cycle engine, transmission, differential, brakes, steering and other features. Pictures on each spread invite manually dexterous readers to construct their own flat “working” models. This is done on the supplied detachable pegboard. Models of a cam-driven valve, a piston in a cylinder, versions of the rack-and-pinion mechanisms that control windshield wipers and steering, and various gear pairings use the no fewer than 45 (!) heavy-gauge gears, rocker arms and other pieces (plus a pouch of plastic fasteners) stuffed into an attached box.

(Detailed assembly instructions are in the box as well.) Not only are many of these pieces small—and all easy to lose—but the “spring” for the model shock absorber is a single solid piece that will flex only if broken. Furthermore, as the author and illustrator skimp on some definitions (just what is a “parking pawl”?) and skip mention of four-wheel drive, of modern hybrid electric cars and of electronic components in general, their title promises more than it really delivers.

More a Model T (or better yet an Edsel) than a T-Bird.

(Informational novelty. 6-10)

WALK THIS WORLD

Broom, Jenny Illus. by Nieminen, Lotta Big Picture/Candlewick (24 pp.) $17.99 | Oct. 8, 2013 978-0-7636-6895-2 A one-day world tour strolls through 11 bustling cityscapes— highly stylized but with identifying clues and recognizable landmarks tucked within stacked rows of streets and clusters of buildings.

References in the rhymed commentary to “[t]eeming streets and bhangra beats” or “[c]apoeira dancers whirling” provide location clues, but aside from London, New York, Rio and Paris, most scenes are crowded composites. In one, a gondolier glides between a leaning tower and an erupting volcano; another offers a view of Uluru across a stretch of water near the Sydney Opera House. On each page, three to five small square or rectangular flaps—artfully concealed by landscape or architectural lines— hide glimpses of underground activity, people within structures or other visual surprises. Nieminen’s tiny human figures, all of 98

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which are faceless or have black dots for heads, convey a message contrary to Broom’s conclusion “that though we might look different, / underneath we’re just the same.” Still, everyone here from the walking narrator to shopkeepers, sunbathers, ice skaters and window washers (there are a lot of windows) is doing something, and the flat, graphic art’s vibrant colors kick up the collective energy of all that activity.

Eurocentric despite stops on each (permanently inhabited) continent, but a bright debut for the Finnish artist.

(Informational novelty. 6-8)

PEPPA PIG AND THE PERFECT DAY

Candlewick Press Illus. by Candlewick Press Candlewick (8 pp.) $17.99 | Oct. 8, 2013 978-0-7636-6825-9 Series: Peppa Pig

Two outings and a game of hide-and-seek in between add up to a perfect day for Peppa and friends in this four-spread TVseries spinoff.

First Peppa and her bubble-gum–pink family ride to the park (“Vroom!” says little George) for a healthy picnic packed

by Daddy Pig. Then it’s home for playtime with Danny Dog and Suzy Sheep, until Grandpa Pig arrives with a boat big enough for all (“Ship ahoy!”). Children can embellish this strippeddown plotline on the foldout playscape attached to the back cover. All of the figures in the flat, very simple illustrations also come as punch-outs on a loose sheet, and there are corresponding slots in the detachable pop-up car and boat. Fans of the British series, which runs on Nick Jr. in the United States, may experience several moments of pleasure before the card-stock vehicles are crushed.

More kit than story, with some assembly required. (sticker sheet) (Pop-up/picture book. 3-4)

DAVID CARTER’S 100 Lift the Flaps and Learn to Count!

Carter, David Illus. by Carter, David Sterling (20 pp.) $17.95 | Feb. 5, 2013 978-1-4027-8738-6

Children will echo a certain Sesame Street character’s “I love to count!” after lifting 100 numbered flaps to see as many different cartoon figures.

Changing settings from spread to spread, Carter begins with an undersea scene followed by gatherings of cars and trucks, garden veggies, dinosaurs, desserts and so on. Each page features five shaped, stacked flaps of decreasing size and varying

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“The paper engineering is not only different on each spread, but the patterns of color and shape become ever more complex to make spotting each successive dot trickier….” from spot the dot

orientation, with the largest always on top—and each flap features a simply drawn, brightly colored item or animal with an identifying label and a number. A city bus (labeled number 11) lifts to reveal a fire truck (12), which conceals an ambulance (13), which covers a “doggy rickshaw” (14), under which a “city worker” (15) emerges from a manhole (here, a doghole). Lifting the fifth and smallest flap in every stack reveals a congratulatory message: “Now you’ve counted to [number]!” Rather than concluding with a flourish, the final “Now you’ve counted to 100!” looks like its predecessors and seems anticlimactic. Still, even very young children with rudimentary counting skills will be drawn on by the stream of visual surprises and will feel a proper sense of accomplishment when they reach the end.

A flap lifter’s delight and a sure promoter of early numeracy. Count on repeat visits. (Novelty counting book. 1-2)

SPOT THE DOT

Carter, David A. Illus. by Carter, David A. Ruckus/Scholastic (14 pp.) $12.99 | Sep. 1, 2013 978-0-545-50009-8 This abridged paper version of an outstanding iPad app sticks to the same basic design but offers a different set of visual challenges.

An instruction on the left side of each spread invites children to spot a differently colored dot—either hidden beneath flaps or concealed within groups of dots or other shapes that change with the pull of a tab or turn of a wheel—on the right.

“Spot the blue dot,” the text instructs, opposite an orange page on which dots or fractions of dots are spilled. The blue dot is only three-quarters full; spinning the wheel allows readers to “complete” the dot as well as change the colors of other dots or dot-wedges on the page. The paper engineering is not only different on each spread, but the patterns of color and shape become ever more complex to make spotting each successive dot trickier: The game of hide-and-seek is capped by a final explosion of hundreds of dots for “black” and “white.” Though this lacks the original’s audio narration and fanfares (and also features only eight colors rather than 10), as the movable art is new rather than just reproductions in paper of the digital animations, it has rewards of its own for diapered digerati.

The app is still better (not to mention cheaper), but with Carter, even spinoffs are first-rate. (Pop-up/picture book. 2-4)

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HAUNTED HOUSE A Touch and Feel Spooky Tour Cat’s Pyjamas Illus. by Cat’s Pyjamas Barron’s (22 pp.) $12.99 | Oct. 1, 2013 978-0-7641-6641-9

A perfect storm of bad art, worse design and trite content.

The spooky mansion “looks deserted” (windows aglow with lights in the picture notwithstanding), but a skeleton greets “you” at the door. He leads “you” on a tour past a jar of brains, a vampire’s “long box” (?), a monster’s soup tureen and other hollow items. These are all actually pockets, identically shaped but pasted on in different orientations. Outside each is an invitation to “slide your hand in if you dare… / See what’s lurking but BEWARE!” Inside, readers feel pieces of slick plastic, fur or other textured material meant to suggest an eyeball, fangs, spider legs or other must-avoids. In just recognition that these tactile clues are too poorly chosen and shaped to be even superficially credible, the narrative provides specific prompts. “Be so kind and fish out a fresh eyeball for me,” the monster politely asks “you”; readers will feel just a raised plastic button (though if they peer inside, they will see a plastic toy eye. Moreover, the low-budget illustrations are meant to be atmospheric but are actually only murky, blurred jumbles of cobwebby, candlelit antique bric-a-brac—capped by a notably unstartling glob of card-stock ectoplasm popping up in low relief from the final spread.

A lackadaisical effort to exploit a gimmick used—and probably used up—to (somewhat) better effect in Steve Cox’s Is That You, Wolf? (2012). (Novelty/picture book. 5-7)

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MAISY GROWS A GARDEN

Cousins, Lucy Illus. by Cousins, Lucy Candlewick (16 pp.) $14.99 | Feb. 26, 2013 978-0-7636-6242-4 Series: Maisy First Science Book

Not Maisy’s first garden but perhaps her most bountiful.

With assists from pull tabs, Maisy digs, plants, waters, weeds and finally harvests a vegetable garden (with help from Panda, who also plants sunflower seeds). Like the snail, earthworm and various insects that look on, children will smile as seedlings rise from the rich, chocolate-brown earth—putting down visible roots, too. With proper care, they turn into carrots and lettuce, clusters of green beans and ripe tomatoes hanging beneath lush greenery. A topical glossary to the left of each growing scene introduces words like “watering can” and “dandelion.” Kicking off her muddy boots in the final spread, Maisy leans back to enjoy the fruits of her labor and admire the sunflowers that unfold atop tall stems: “How beautiful the plants are!” |

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ANIMALS EVERYWHERE A Pop-Up Adventure

Helpful groundbreaking for budding gardeners, despite moving parts that are far from toddler-proof. (Pop up/picture book. 3-4)

Deutch, Yvonne Illus. by Woodward, Jonathan Sterling (22 pp.) $14.95 | Sep. 3, 2013 978-1-4549-0812-8

MAISY’S FAIRGROUND

Cousins, Lucy Illus. by Cousins, Lucy Candlewick (16 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 11, 2013 978-0-7636-6491-6

Maisy and friends visit an amusement park, but the experience is about as exciting as watching a dropped Creamsicle melt.

The breathlessly hyperbolic text—“Phew! Wow! Whoopee!

Treats! Surprises! Prizes! Rides! Look here, there, and everywhere!”—is perhaps a clue that this trip needs some help. Neither it nor the incandescent colors and heavy black lines of Cousins’ art serve to rev up the seven underperforming movable rides and other attractions. The visit begins with bumper cars in which a pull tab moves only two of the visible cars (approximately 1 inch each, at that) and ends with an unconvincing pop-up Ferris wheel. This latter has seats that not only have to be loosened by hand, but in motion, often turn to show blank backs. Alas, the outing’s other special effects are likewise as lackadaisically designed as they are physically fragile.

Even confirmed fans are unlikely to give this perfunctory outing more than a quick spin. (Pop-up/picture book. 4-6)

IS THAT YOU, MONSTER? Check Inside the Secret Pockets If You Dare!

Cox, Steve Illus. by Cox, Steve Barron’s (22 pp.) $12.99 | Mar. 1, 2013 978-0-7641-6608-2

BABY AND ME

In a barely disguised remake of Is That You, Wolf? (2012), intrepid readers are invited to stick their hands into a series of pockets…and feel what lies within.

For this iteration, Cox changes the cast in his shadowy nighttime cartoons from farm animals to a group of children gathering for a campout, searching for protagonists from a piggy to young Sam—who likewise searches a yard and outbuildings to make sure no monster is present. On each alternate spread, a tarp, tent flap or other possible concealment is a pouch bearing the legend: “Slide your hand in if you dare… / Monster may be lurking so BEWARE!” What actually lurks out of view is a patch of fur, sticky goo or textured plastic just right for a momentary shock. Each discovery turns out to be bunnies, a toy or something else innocuous, though, which nicely sets up a large pop-up shocker on the final spread.

An interchangeable knockoff but still tailor-made to spark bursts of delighted nighttime screaming. (Novelty/ picture book. 4-7) 100

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A populous but indigestible flurry of paper-collage animal portraits, not exactly enhanced by inept rhymed commentary and pop-ups.

The survey begins with a spread of sharks headlined by a gaping 3-D great white, oddly placed over a round die-cut hole so that it looks hollow and a school of tuna on the next spread is visible down its gullet. The album proceeds to take viewers from ocean deeps to the jungle, a grassland and on to the South Pole in arrays that alternate between groupings of related creatures and representative general menageries. The animals are created with colorfully contrasting pieces of cut paper but look flatter and less realistic than Steve Jenkins’ similarly constructed images. They are identified on each crowded spread but aren’t shown to scale and mingle without reference to home continents. Though the great white does flash an anatomically correct five rows of teeth, the four pop-ups, particularly an emperor penguin with an angular head that looks more like a pterodactyl’s, aren’t realistic. The rhymes range from forced (“tenpins/penguins”) to meaningless (“Eyes peep down like mischievous flunkeys, / a chittering, chattering…troop of monkeys”) and include a reference to a “lounge of lizards.” Deutch offers a closing page of prose facts about selected animals that includes a confusingly punctuated reference to the emperor’s “ ‘brood’ pouch.”

A low-cal alternative to the more nutritious likes of Jinny Johnson’s Atlas of Animals or Jenkins’ magisterial Animal Book (both 2013). (Informational pop-up. 6-8)

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Dodd, Emma Illus. by Dodd, Emma Nosy Crow/Candlewick (16 pp.) $14.99 | Aug. 1, 2014 978-0-7636-6544-9 A child with a doll demonstrates baby care in this sweet, decidedly purposeful outing.

“This is me,” begins the stroller-pushing young narrator.

“And this… / is my baby doll.” On she goes to show bottle feeding, diaper changing (sans any visible sign of need for same), bathing and toweling dry, and then putting down in a rocking cradle.

“Being a mommy is really hard work!” she concludes meaningfully, and so she promises to give her own mommy lots of help— with “our new baby!” Using a palette of, largely, pale pinks and blues, Dodd crafts big, simply drawn illustrations of the cheery tot with her doll (both Caucasian). They are enhanced by gluedin swatches of soft cloth representing towel and diaper, plus pull tabs that lower a stroller’s hood, empty a milk bottle and float kirkus.com

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“Printed in a range of sizes, the narrative’s type looks thrown into each scene at random, but the text is actually both easy to follow and artfully placed to enhance the melodrama of this rousing moonlit expedition.” from the night pirates

a rubber ducky across the tub. A climactic double-flap doorway reveals mommy with both baby and new big sister on her lap.

Pushing actual child care duties off on preschoolers is a nonstarter, but this may help prepare younger prospective sibs for family changes. (Pop-up/picture book. 3-4)

THE NIGHT PIRATES Pop-Up Adventure

Harris, Peter Illus. by Allwright, Deborah; Fletcher, Corina Egmont/Trafalgar (14 pp.) $19.99 | Jun. 1, 2013 978-1-4052-5678-0

which are the only text, vary in size and typography.) Thanks to the large trim size, the “TALL GIRAFFE” positively towers over a “short dog,” and the humongous elephant revealed at the end (opposite a “small ladybug”) is sure to draw delighted “whoa”s from young viewers as its multicreased portrait opens out. This is a less populous but far sturdier alternative to Robert Crowther’s Opposites (2nd edition, 2005).

An elegant exploration of an ever-popular subject.

(Informational pop-up. 3-5)

WHERE IS MAMA? A Pop-Up Story

Large pop-ups and multilayered tableaux gas up an already effervescent tale of pirate adventure from 2006.

Young Tom wakes (maybe) to see shadowy figures stealing the entire front from his house. He finds himself joining a crew of “rough, tough little girl pirates” scheming to disguise their ship and steal treasure from Capt. Patch and his grownup buccaneers. Swinging from hammocks strung from pop-up palm trees, Patch’s scurvy crew turns out to be pushovers when the invaders—brandishing sabers and fiercely buckling swash beneath oversized pirate hats—leap from door and window with a “fearsome roar!” as the climactic spread opens. Tom and the girls then sail off in triumph to hoist both wall and weary boy back into place (more or less, as a final flap reveals). Printed in a range of sizes, the narrative’s type looks thrown into each scene at random, but the text is actually both easy to follow and artfully placed to enhance the melodrama of this rousing moonlit expedition.

Avast! No treasure is safe from these diminutive daredevils of the deep. (Pop-up/picture book. 3-6)

ANIMAL OPPOSITES

Horácek, Petr Illus. by Horácek, Petr Candlewick (20 pp.) $15.99 | Aug. 6, 2013 978-0-7636-6776-4

With the same high spirits and elemental simplicity that lights up his One Spotted Giraffe (2012), Horácek pairs up smiling animals to show contrasts in size, shape or behavior.

Floating on white or variegated monochrome backgrounds, the 20 creatures are all actual cutouts or images of cutouts, depicted with informal pen and brush strokes and a keen eye for natural detail and coloration. The animals alternate between posing on a flat page and hiding behind big gatefold flaps or foldouts. The latter set, like the “LOUD LION” roaring at a “quiet rabbit” and the “bouncy kangaroo” leaping away from a “STILL SLOTH,” shift or rise as the flap is opened. (The labels, |

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Hung, Yating Illus. by Hung, Yating abramsappleseed (24 pp.) $19.95 | Apr. 9, 2013 978-1-4197-0718-6

An aquatic take on the ever-popular “Are you my mother?” plotline, weak in the natural-history department but fully cozy.

After Mama Frog lays her eggs in some “seaweed” she finds in her pond and goes off to find a lily pad for a home, five bigeyed tadpoles hatch and go in search of her. As they don’t know what she looks like, they accost Mama Duck, Mama Fish, Mama Crab and others. All of these mothers, rather than eat the tadpoles as many would do in real life, indulgently send them along with different descriptions of their real mama. Working with a palette of harmonious greens and grays, Hung crafts serenelooking pondscapes that open with tabs and lifted flaps into spacious, layered tableaux. When Mama Frog’s ribbits lead at last to a joyful meeting, her offspring’s first question is not, considering the storyline, the natural one about why they don’t look anything like her. Instead, they ask her to teach them her froggy song. She promises that once they do change to frogs, “we will sing ‘ribbit, ribbit’ together, all day and night!”

A miniodyssey, familiar but elemental, and played out amid plenty of smiles and pop-ups. (Pop-up/picture book. 3-5)

ANIMALS UPSIDE DOWN A Pull, Pop, Lift & Learn Book!

Jenkins, Steve; Page, Robin Illus. by Jenkins, Steve Houghton Mifflin (24 pp.) $24.99 | Aug. 27, 2013 978-0-547-34127-9

More than 26 creatures flip, twist, swivel or simply pose upside down in this neatly laid-out gallery of nature’s acrobats.

A fruit bat and a male bird of paradise pop up to hover gracefully over double-page spreads, but most of Jenkins’ animals |

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“This bug lover’s delight teems with arthropod images and facts.” from bugs

move laterally or switch positions with the pull of a tab or lift of a flap. From a pangolin swinging by its tail to reach a termite’s nest and a sparrow hawk twisting in midair to seize a bird from underneath to a net-casting spider dropping a webby trap over a passing fly, the movements are small but consistently naturallooking. The animals are all rendered with typically amazing accuracy from pieces of cut and torn paper. Captions that themselves sometimes curve or stand on their heads identify each animal and comment on how upending helps it to, usually, capture or to keep from becoming food (more information about each is provided on the closing spread). On a lighter note, to cap the lot, a simple but ingenious sliding panel even flips a human silhouette, as “sometimes going topsy-turvy is just for fun!”

A treat for eye and mind alike, besides being suitable for displays and durable enough to stand up to plenty of handson use. (Informational pop-up. 5-9)

MESMERIZING MATH

Litton, Jonathan Illus. by Flintham, Thomas Candlewick (16 pp.) $18.99 | Aug. 6, 2013 978-0-7636-6881-5

This lightning-quick overview of select mathematical topics doesn’t add up to anything useful.

The jumbles of cartoon images—many with flaps or, less often, a spinner or other add-on—begin on a hard-to-follow contents map. They then continue in successive single spreads to illustrate surveys of numbers, geometry, probability, mathematical transformations, measurement, statistics and numerical sequences. Skipping such basics as addition and subtraction, Litton immediately plunges into squares and square roots, primes and powers, negative numbers, triangular numbers, zero, infinity, fractions, percentages and decimals in a dizzying whirl that will quickly leave math tyros behind. On the other hand, even budding math geeks won’t bring much away from his simplistic claim that “[m]ost numbers can be broken down into smaller numbers called factors” or a description of decimal places without clear examples. The discourse is likewise overcompressed on subsequent pages, ending with an array of sequences ranging from Fibonacci numbers and Pascal’s triangle to how many times a 16-square length of toilet paper can be folded in half.

That isn’t the only case of mission creep, as glances elsewhere at optical illusions and at the hazards of slanted survey questions demonstrate. Furthermore, two punch-out models make this problematic for libraries.

Infectiously enthusiastic but more elementary of look than content, with a hard-to-determine audience. (Informational pop-up. 8-11)

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BUGS A Stunning Pop-Up Look at Insects, Spiders, and Other Creepy-Crawlies McGavin, George Illus. by Kay, Jim Candlewick (12 pp.) $19.99 | Oct. 8, 2013 978-0-7636-6762-7

This bug lover’s delight teems with arthropod images and facts.

The survey is highlighted by a fat-tailed scorpion rearing up dramatically from one opening and a 3-D cockroach the size of an adult hand on another, its inner as well as outer anatomy depicted in exacting detail. These are no exceptions; Kay’s insects, arachnids and other creepy crawlies look lifelike enough to skitter off on their own. McGavin, a veteran entomologist, fills the spaces around them with quick but specific facts about body parts, behaviors, weapons and defenses, life cycles and habitats. A final gallery of his “ultimate bugs” covers record-setting size, speed, venomousness and like need-to-know extremes. The pages are designed to look like crosses between scrapbook leaves and the general clutter in a scientist’s desk drawer. Readers may be as dizzied as they are dazzled by the wide array of scripts and typefaces as well as the evident intent to cram as many flaps, foldouts, accordion-folded minibooks, pull tabs, slide-out panels and pop-up cutouts as possible into the book.

Almost too much—but hatchling naturalists will swarm over this like ants at a picnic. (Pop-up/nonfiction. 10-13)

THE BUCCANEERING BOOK OF PIRATES

Pirotta, Saviour Illus. by Robertson, Mark Sterling (24 pp.) $19.95 | Aug. 6, 2013 978-1-4549-0414-4

Avast! Hidden treasure—of a sort— awaits discovery by budding corsairs and cutthroat knaves who delve into this slender collection of pirate tales.

Fastened to the right, me hearties, be a booklet with six superficial, sanitized retellings of public-domain yarns by the (unattributed) likes of Robert Louis Stevenson (Treasure Island) and Daniel Defoe (The Life, Adventures and Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton, here rendered as “The Captain’s Secret”). All these renditions are much improved by Robertson’s painted images of glaring buccaneers in colorful period dress and settings. On the left lurks a pirate in a box. Aye, unfolding to a height of slightly over 4 feet and printed on heavy card stock with grommets for hanging up is a piratical figure in full pop-out regalia. He brandishes a minisaber and poses with a dagger, a treasure map, a “black spot” (see Stevenson, above) and other items removable or kirkus.com

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otherwise keyed to the tales placed to the side or secreted in various pockets.

A swashbuckling bit of storytime or bedroom décor, though not even Davy Jones would want the perfunctory plot summaries and recast scenes in the accompanying literary afterthought. (Novelty. 5-8)

DINOSAUROLOGY

Rimes, Raleigh Candlewick (30 pp.) $19.99 | Sep. 1, 2013 978-0-7636-6739-9 Series: ’Ology

The weakest entry in the ‘Ology series (so far) is undersupplied with content, invention or even the customary embedded and detachable trinkets.

Supposedly the record of a 1907 expedition that explores a South American island on which primitive humans coexist with dinosaurs, the yellowed “notebook” at first glance looks like others in the series. It features wordy, awed comments in a faux hand-lettered type squeezed into crowded spreads and gatefolds around dashed-off watercolors, small pencil sketches, and inset letters, booklets or info cards that are either pasted in or, more often, printed to look as if they were. Crowded around the edges and sometimes overlapping, the insets provide additional dino portraits, cursory infodumps of standard-issue dino data (as it was in 1907, with editorial updates in small print at the bottom) and brief profiles of prominent early paleontologists. The paltry assortment of “realia” consists of a notably unconvincing pouch of silver-glitter “ground dinosaur horn,” a patch of plastic “Allosaurus skin” and four plastic “jewels.” The overall premise and much of the plot should sound familiar to older readers, and indeed, at the end is a purported letter from Arthur Conan Doyle with an unapologetic admission that he stole them from this “document” for his novel The Lost World.

The theft actually went the other way, and considering the uninspired result, to no worthy purpose. (Novelty. 10-13)

THE LITTLE MERMAID

Sabuda, Robert—Adapt.

Illus. by Sabuda, Robert Little Simon/Simon & Schuster (12 pp.) $29.99 | Oct. 1, 2013 978-1-4169-6080-5

intricately interwoven construct—and end with a high-ceilinged, multilayer wedding stage. Around these, the tale plays out largely on side flaps and inset booklets that themselves feature multiple layers and many small but no less brilliantly designed pop-ups. In scenes both above and below the ocean surface, rich colors blend and flow in tonal sweeps that echo the artist’s linework for elegance as well as the courageous mermaid’s intense inner emotions. Carrying the tale up to her hard-earned transformation to a spirit of the air, Sabuda has preserved the original’s events and much of its imagery in his rendition while dispensing with Andersen’s wordier flights of description and, thankfully, the heavily moralistic concluding passage. As with all of Sabuda’s pop-up creations, the spreads should be teased open rather than pulled to minimize the chance of tearing. The rewards are well worth taking such care.

A magnificent counter to the Disney pap. (Pop-up/fairy tale. 9-12)

A LITTLE BIT OF OOMPH!

Saltzberg, Barney Illus. by Saltzberg, Barney Workman (22 pp.) $13.95 | Sep. 24, 2013 978-0-7611-7744-9

Emphatic colors and overall tone, plus transformations worked in part by inventive paper engineering, punch up a series of inspirational slogans in this follow-up to Beautiful Oops! (2010).

“Make something ordinary” trumpets the first opening in huge letters…but that final word is on a flap that, lifted, reveals a flashy change to “EXTRAordinary.” Likewise, “Help little seeds grow” adds “into beautiful flowers” with a 3-D bouquet.

Spinning a wheel moves the “o” in “curiosity” into the middle of “disc-very,” and pulling a tab after “Put your heart into everything you do!” adds and subtracts letters to give “nothing is impossible” an even more positive inflection: “everything is possible.” A final double-gatefold parade of cartoon animals marching through flowers and stars cranks the exuberance to fever pitch with “YOU CAN MAKE ANYTHING BEAUTIFUL!” While it lacks the thematic integrity and friendly collegiality of Beautiful Oops!, there’s no denying the book’s sincerity and enthusiasm.

A heaping helping of abstract uplift. (Pop- up/picture book. 5-15)

In his latest stunner, Sabuda pairs a version of the tale that is less abridged than most retellings to paper-engineered effects that, as usual, raise the bar of the

physically possible.

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LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD

Seal, Julia Illus. by Seal, Julia; Ita, Sam Barron’s (12 pp.) $12.99 | Apr. 1, 2103 978-07641-6598-6

The very leaves on the forest trees are gingham-patterned in this cloying version of the tale.

There is a slightly fraught moment when Red Riding Hood recalls her mother’s vague warning of danger in the forest and studiously ignores the woodcutter (!) as he strolls past. Aside from this, the story takes its customary course up to “All the better…to eat you with!” Then the aforementioned woodcutter appears at the door, stands aside to let the wolf run past and vanishes. Thereupon, Red’s grandma is discovered in the closet (“Did I sleepwalk?”), and she and her granddaughter sit down for tea and a tower of heavily frosted cupcakes. Ita adds beginner-level pop-up cutouts to Seal’s cartoon scenes of broad-faced, smiling figures in generic country settings. They don’t appear even to try to add a frisson to the overly expository text.

Even the wolf has twinkly eyes in this rendition, which is suitable only for those children who can’t tolerate a more robust one. (Pop-up/folk tale. 4-6)

interactive e-books MONSTERS VS ROBOTS

Amora, Leonardo Leonardo Amora $1.99 | Sep. 27, 2013 1.0; Sep. 27, 2013

Nino has some robot friends to help him combat his bedtime fear of the dark.

“This is Nino and he has a big problem at bedtime… / He is afraid of the dark.”

The app begins predictably but colorfully, offering readers red glowing buttons to push and puzzles by which to discover the names of the creatures alluded to in the title. Readers meet Nino’s Robot Hero and see how his “justice ray” can put any monster on the run. Robot Monkey’s “meteor punch” is just as effective in the monster-clearing department. But Nino’s problem escalates when the Dark Night comes banging on the door.

(Readers are given no back story on who this is, nor why he’s the ultimate scary beast.) The robots will need help. When readers enter the correct code in time, all the robots’ friends show up to help. When they do, a big fight ensues, or so it seems, and just when the Dark Night is about to “explode,” Nino yells, “Don’t do it Dark Night!” This begs the question, “Do what?” Readers are advised to turn the light on to see what really happened.

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whimsical animation and action, along with well-timed sound effects and engaging narration, will pull youngsters who don’t worry much about story logic along. It may be less confusing in Portuguese, which readers can toggle to from the home page.

The universal “afraid of the dark” theme confuses more than it entertains in this backfire of a bedtime story. (iPad storybook app. 4-9)

AXEL’S CHAIN REACTION

Badolato, Laura Allison Pomenta Illus. by Armiño, Mónica Laura Allison Pomenta Badolato $2.99 | Sep. 30, 2013 1.1; Oct. 15, 2013

Repeated failures set up a young artist/tinkerer for success in a tale driven by its agenda but laden with extras.

Restless, inattentive and probably a sufferer of ADHD or of a spectrum disorder, Axel continually annoys his third-grade classmates and teacher. A typical mishap sends him and the other students sprawling over their carefully constructed art projects. Recollection of his lengthy struggles at home to create a kinetic sculpture à la Alexander Calder inspires him to recast the broken materials and paint-spattered room into one big collective artwork that wows everyone. The figures in Armiño’s cartoon scenes move and gesture clumsily, but there’s some compensation in the interactions. The wide range of touch-, tilt- and shake-activated animations is capped by a camera at the end that lets viewers take selfies. Furthermore, the multivoiced audio track can be switched on or off, a thumbnail strip allows easy navigation, and tapping the visible lines magnifies the scrolling lines of text. Moreover, both the story and three appended projects feature video clips showing kinetic art in action, the author profiles Calder and two other artists in a side feature, and an icon promises a game in a future update.

A “hands-on” tale with an appealing protagonist whose road to triumph is a realistically rocky one. (glossary) (iPad storybook app. 6-10)

NOTT WON’T SLEEP

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

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

Nott (“night” in old Norse and Icelandic) is a delightful child dressed in purple pajamas and a cap that sports heartshaped antennae. She’s sleepy but not quite ready to go to sleep (sound familiar?) Dutch author Dorrestein’s tale begins with a kirkus.com

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“…Sock Monster himself is a riot, a little fur ball of anarchy who takes satisfying bites out of every sock situation.” from my sock monster

sweeping view of Nott’s treehouse bedroom, where she’s gleefully jumping on her bed. Once she hops to the floor, three pulsating puzzlelike images appear. Tapping each one causes Nott’s pillow to carry her off to three distinct dreamlike adventures.

Touch the moon and she’ll land in the clouds, where readers can help clear them away and feed stars to the moon. Touching the outline of Nott’s cuddly sidekick, Nox (Latin for “night”), transports her to a pond where she must complete simple yet clever tasks that lead her friend to shore. Finally, the outline of the lantern takes her to a forest, where catching fireflies reveals creatures that, when tapped, move to center stage and settle down to sleep. There’s no text, and Nott doesn’t speak except to say “Yay!” and giggle when touched. But the story carries itself and will, in all likelihood, carry many a little reader off to dreamland.

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

ROCK AND ROLL MOUSE

Falcão, Atma; Falcão, André Editora Biancovilli $3.99 | Oct. 9, 2013 1.0; Oct. 9, 2013

Subpar is too generous a word for this app about a cat chasing a mouse.

The cat leaps out its owner’s window after the titular mouse, leading the little girl on an adventure in which she encounters an armadillo, a frog, a rooster and a duck. There are plenty of apps from abroad that are excellently made and transition to American audiences well; this Brazilian offering isn’t one of them. The rhyming meter is erratic, and syntax is often distorted to meet the form. Pronunciation debacles include words like havoc (hah-VOCK) and feline (feh-LINE or, once, fehLEAN), and one of the worst rhymes couples guitar (gih-TAR) with cheddar (ched-DAR). The narration is heavily accented, compounding the proofreading problems with the written text (“pound” for “pond,” for instance). Every few screens, the text from the previous pages is repeated as a blues/rock song.

Unfortunately, the vocals, music, animation and interaction are all equally uninspiring, on a par with the text. Then of course there’s the storyline, which seems to get stuck over and over again like a scratched LP. More holes than a piece of Swiss cheese. (iPad storybook app. 3-6)

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MY SOCK MONSTER

Freytag, Lorna Illus. by Freytag, Lorna Junoberry $4.99 | Oct. 8, 2013 1.0.1; Oct. 8, 2013

A cuddly antihero charms and devours in a simple story of theft and footwear.

In the home of the young girl narrating the story, the Sock Monster is very real, a little white puff with a pink belly, a cotton-ball tail and a hungry human mouth. Sock Monster chomps socks in drawers, eats them right off the clothesline and gets into the washing machine to enjoy them fresh and wet.

When she runs out, the young girl must resort to grand theft stocking, taking unmatched ones from friends and loved ones. The app exposing the little monster is short at 10 pages and simple in design with few frills. Text is unadorned (“He GOBBLED socks from the washing line”). Illustrations are a mix of photos, computer-generated art and some simple animation that looks great but doesn’t really stand out. Luckily, Sock Monster himself is a riot, a little fur ball of anarchy who takes satisfying bites out of every sock situation. And he’s not without taste. He won’t descend to eating underwear and gets sick if the socks are smelly, leading to a soundeffect–filled page that will tickle young fans of flatulence humor.

It’s a good lesson for other app developers: A winning main character can turn an otherwise unremarkable app into an itty-bitty joy, even a little sock-stealing stinker like the Sock Monster. (iPad storybook app. 3-10)

CUTIE BEAR

Hedman, Garrett Illus. by Hedman, Garrett Garrett Hedman $3.99 | Sep. 12, 2013 1.4; Nov. 10, 2013 A teddy bear’s search for self leads to encounters with three real bears.

The interactive effects are more sophisticated than the writing here. Having been introduced by his young “caretaker,” Layla, to the constellation “Ursus Major,” fierce Cutie Bear sets out in a hot air balloon—“to prove I had braveness like him.” Following several crash landings in different habitats and quick dismissals from a polar bear (Ursus maritimus), a black bear (Ursus americanus) and a brown bear (Ursus arctos horribilis), he floats home in despair: “Hopelessness was inside me.” But after comforting Layla during a scary thunderstorm, he decides that since “[b]raveness was in [his] body,” he can be his own species, Ursus cutimus. The optional narration is in a voice that manages to be both gravelly and squeaky at the same time. Even in silent mode, there are appropriate sound effects—notably Layla’s rapid “heartbeat,” which slows down if readers, as instructed, hug their tablets—and taps, rubs and tilts set off a range of changes in position, color and expression in the cartoon scenes. |

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“…readers are encouraged to pay close attention to each song to prepare for the challenging game at the end, in which readers match the sounds and sound-wave graphs to the corresponding frogs....” from noisy frog sing -along

Not quite ready for prime time, but with major revisions to the text, this could be an Appus cutimus. (iPad storybook app. 5- 7)

NOISY FROG SING-ALONG

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

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

Expanding upon his 2013 book of the same title, Himmelman focuses his app on one species of frog per screen with accurate drawings and actual recordings. The onomatopoeic spellings give children a way to “sing along” as the bullfrog “jug-o-rums” and the peepers “peep, peep, peep.”

Readers can touch the frogs or jiggle the screen to make them fill their pouches and sing, and it culminates in a chorus as all the frogs sing together. (Unfortunately, in “Read to Myself ” mode, the recorded frog sounds cannot be activated for this chorus.)

Following this, the “How They Really Sound” section includes individual descriptions with very cool interactive sound-wave graphs to accompany each frog’s unique voice. Also included are information about habitat and curious facts about each of the 12 species of frogs featured. Some have poison glands behind their eyes that make them distasteful to predators, while others breathe through their skins as they spend the winter under the mud. Here, readers are encouraged to pay close attention to each song to prepare for the challenging game at the end, in which readers match the sounds and sound-wave graphs to the corresponding frogs—although an incorrect match proves just as much fun as a correct one.

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

NIKO

Imaginism Studios Imaginism Studios Inc. $0.00 | Sep. 20, 2013 1.0.0; Sep. 18, 2013

at a time either automatically or with cued taps on each black screen (page turns remain manual even in “autoplay”). Once launched, they generally proceed to display several seconds’ worth of magical transformations, violent explosions or other expertly designed animations. Though there are occasional inexact matches between the audio and visible narratives, and switching to silent mode also shuts off all the sound effects, a cast of voice actors chews the scenery with appropriate gusto.

The writing doesn’t quite measure up to the slick production and design, but it’s a grand adventure for a diminutive hero nonetheless. (iPad storybook app. 9-11)

FIND ME Rhymes for Curious Kids

Natale, Giulia; Hollenstein, Jenna PubCoder Srl $3.99 | Sep. 28, 2013

Young fans of visual puzzles will enjoy this spot-the-difference enhanced e-book.

Attractive digital artwork—originally developed for the wordless app Find Me (Kisbo/Paddybooks, 2011)—features repeating designs of common objects, with an animal hidden on each page. Natale uses rhyming clues and a brief animation on each page to help young readers identify the hidden animals. A crocodile blends in among a collection of scissors; a dinosaur looks suspiciously like a teapot. These bright, colorful scenes are busy, but they are less frenetic than Walter Wick’s classic I Spy photo montages. When readers tap the hidden animal, they are rewarded with an amusing animated scene. Playful clues will entertain young readers, but they do not provide much substantive information about the animals. The woodpecker “might look like a shoe: bright, shiny, and sleek, / But rather than feet, it’s trees that he seeks.” The smooth narration emphasizes the rhythm and rhyme in a playful, natural way. The narrator is soothing but perky, just like a lovely preschool teacher. The app highlights an entire line of text at a time, which aids children who have moved beyond the initial beginning-to-read stages.

This cheery story will entertain young readers with pleasant rhymes, bright digital artwork and simple animated scenes. (Enhanced e-book. 4-7)

A fierce young warrior with a magic sword takes on a volcano-dwelling bad guy in this hybrid film/digital comic book.

Melodrama rules: “I am on a quest to destroy the darkness forever!!! Me and my mighty sword that is!!!” Backed by spookily atmospheric music that inexplicably shifts to a jaunty melody at the climax, the tale pits Niko—a small, dark-skinned figure in the cartoon art with a savage scowl and an aggressive mohawk—against a “monstrosaurus” and various other multieyed, evocatively named monsters on the way to a final face-off against a glowing, tentacled horror. Depending on the setting, panels of diverse size and shape appear one 106

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MACBETH

Shakespeare, William The New Book Press LLC $9.99 | Sep. 9, 2013 1.0; Sep. 9, 2013 Series: Wordplay Shakespeare A pairing of the text of the Scottish Play with a filmed performance, designed with the Shakespeare novice in mind.

The left side of the screen of this enhanced e-book contains a full version of Macbeth, while the right side includes a performance of the dialogue shown (approximately 20 lines’ worth per page). This granular focus allows newcomers to experience the nuances of the play, which is rich in irony, hidden intentions and sudden shifts in emotional temperature. The set and costuming are deliberately simple: The background is white, and Macbeth’s “armor” is a leather jacket. But nobody’s dumbing down their performances. Francesca Faridany is particularly good as a tightly coiled Lady Macbeth; Raphael Nash-Thompson gives his roles as the drunken porter and a witch a garrulousness that carries an entertainingly sinister edge. The presentation is not without its hiccups. Matching the video on the right with the text on the left means routinely cutting off dramatic moments; at one point, users have to swipe to see and read the second half of a scene’s closing couplet—presumably an easy fix. A “tap to translate” button on each page puts the text into plain English, but the pop-up text covers up Shakespeare’s original, denying any attempts at comparison; moreover, the translation mainly redefines more obscure words, suggesting that smaller pop-ups for individual terms might be more meaningful.

Even so, this remains Macbeth, arguably the Bard of Avon’s most durable and multilayered tragedy, and overall, this enhanced e-book makes the play appealing and graspable to students. (Enhanced e-book. 12 & up)

BEAN’S NIGHT

Stephens, Sarah Hines Illus. by Hines, Anna Grossnickle appropo $1.99 | Oct. 20, 2013 1.0; Oct. 20, 2013

manual-advance options, in all three 11-screen episodes, a child reads aloud (optionally) the one or two words or two-word sentences on each screen, then at the end chirps “Again?” Toddlers will certainly take her up on the invitation.

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

PRESTO Magic at Your Fingertips

Tapfuze Tapfuze $2.99 | Sep. 24, 2013 1.0; Sep. 24, 2013

A magic-themed collection is, at its tricky heart, just a collection of four iPad technology demos.

On a welcome screen featuring a cute, big-eyed spider, four cards are presented: a camera, a set of colorful balls, a microphone and a swirling crystal ball. Each leads to its own minigame using iPad technology in the guise of, say, a very old hand-crank camera or a microphone from radio days, presented along with jaunty period music. Readers who choose the camera can take selfies, which are then arbitrarily assigned effects like stretching, swirls or a monocle and mustache. The same goes for the mic, which is just an elaborate way of presenting audio filters for a recorded voice. Instructions for each section are presented as labored, grainy, black-and-white projector slides. It seems like a lot of musty fuss that will be lost on young readers, if that’s the intended audience rather than steampunk aficionados or 90-year-olds purchasing their first iPads. A period narrative that tied all four of the app’s admittedly well-designed toys—call it Boardwalk App-pire—may have made the experience something compelling. But as released, it’s the kind of curiosity that will be played with a few times then quickly forgotten.

Some neat ideas and good execution don’t add up to a magical experience, and the fun—poof!—disappears before you know it. (Requires iOS 6 and above.) (iPad informational app. 5-10 or 80 & up)

Comfy-cozy digital version of a board book (one of a 1998 trio) featuring a black cat and a squeaky toy mouse.

Touch-sensitive elements—a snoring cat, a toy that squeaks when tapped and can be dragged across a floor or tabletop—and animations such as a slowly setting sun or a falling tablecloth add very easy-to-follow motion to Hines’ original, extra-simple domestic scenes. Here, views of Bean snoozing beneath a window sandwich a brief nighttime stalk and chase. Bean’s Baby offers a nose-to-nose encounter with a laughing infant followed by a shared nap. Bean’s Games include quick rounds of “Jumping Bean,” “String Bean” and, at last, (unsurprisingly) boneless slumber on the lap of a “Human-Bean.” Along with auto-play or |

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A TO SEA

Wilson, Josh; Illus. by Wilson, Donna Joshua Wilson $4.99 | Sep. 26, 2013 1.0.1; Oct. 5, 2013 Lovely artwork is marred by awkward text and poor narration.

An ocean-themed abecedary catches attention with striking artwork. Digital illustrations are enhanced with textured paper, blended watercolors and cutpaper–collage effects. The palette ranges from vibrant tropical reefs to subtle, dark kelp forests. Unfortunately, the rhyming text is often awkward and does not always provide appropriate information about these animals. Moreover, rhythms jar with out-of-sync emphases. “A is for Anchovy. / A strange pizza topping, they’re salty and strong. // B is for Blue Whale: / the largest animal ever at 100 feet long.” The narration is clear and wellpaced, but an echo-y affect impairs the quality. Limited animation effects add to the visual interest and work smoothly. Tap the ocean, and a school of anchovies swim onto the page from both directions. Interesting bite-size facts appear when readers tap the bottom of each page. While these facts help develop a clear understanding of the ocean animals, they struggle to counteract a primary text that muddies the water: “K is for Killer Whale. / He’s innocent. Please don’t put him in a cell.”

A picturesque tour of the ocean is sunk by uneven text. (iPad alphabet app. 4-8)

This Issue’s Contributors # Alison Anholt-White • Mark Athitakis • Kim Becnel • Elizabeth Bird • Louise Brueggemann Connie Burns • Timothy Capehart • Ann Childs • GraceAnne A. DeCandido • Andi Diehn Robin L. Elliott • Brooke Faulkner • Laurie Flynn • Omar Gallaga • Laurel Gardner Judith Gire • Melinda Greenblatt • Megan Honig • Julie Hubble • Jennifer Hubert • Shelley Huntington • Kathleen T. Isaacs • Laura Jenkins • Betsy Judkins • Deborah Kaplan • Angela Leeper • Peter Lewis • Lori Low • Wendy Lukehart • Joan Malewitz • Hillias J. Martin Shelly McNerney • Daniel Meyer • R. Moore • Deb Paulson • Rachel G. Payne • John Edward Peters • Susan Pine • Rebecca Rabinowitz • Kristy Raffensberger • Nancy Thalia Reynolds • Melissa Riddle Chalos • Lesli Rodgers • Erika Rohrbach • Leslie L. Rounds Mindy Schanback • Katie Scherrer • Mary Ann Scheuer • Dean Schneider • Hillary Foote Schwartz • Karin Snelson • Rita Soltan • Edward T. Sullivan • Jennifer Sweeney • Jessica Thomas • S.D. Winston • Monica Wyatt • Melissa Yurechko

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indie THE EXECUTIONER'S HEIR A Novel of EighteenthCentury France

These titles earned the Kirkus Star: THE GRAY SHIP by Russell F. Moran................................................ 118

Alleyn, Susanne CreateSpace (348 pp.) $15.99 paper | $0.99 e-book | Sep. 2, 2013 978-1-4923-0679-5 Alleyn (Palace of Justice, 2010, etc.), author of several historical mysteries set in France, fashions a dramatic tale based on an actual family of executioners in

18th-century Paris.

In a hereditary position as the son of the executioner, Charles Sanson is required to carry on the distasteful occupation first assigned to his great-grandfather or else be left disgraced and without a source of income. Although a necessary job to maintain discipline for the rulers of the Regime Ancien, the executioner was reviled, called a butcher and torturer by his countrymen. With few friends and a small pool of available women to wed, an executioner could be assured only of financial security and a restricted social life. When, due to his father’s illness, teenage Charles is forced to take over the role of master executioner of Paris, he struggles to find solace with family and then with women who don’t know his secret. When his lover learns of his true profession and abandons him, he rails: “I’ve nothing to be ashamed of! I’m a good Christian, a gentleman, the king’s servant, an officer of the law, and equal of any of them—I only follow orders the judges give me. Why should I be pointed out, hissed at, despised?” When his path intersects with that of François, a bright, high-spirited teenager of petty nobility with no money and little family, Charles realizes that his role as master executioner compels him to carry out horrific punishments on people whose crimes are often more political and vindictive than felonious. Charles realizes that, despite his father’s belief that they serve the law and avenge the innocent, he is “a tool of a regime that’s revealed itself to be corrupt, malicious, and brutal.” Yet Charles continues to carry out the duties of his hereditary post. No detail is spared in describing the heinous punishments demanded by the judiciary and the king. Alleyn’s exhaustive research pays off handsomely in well-drawn characters and colorful historical context. In particular, her female characters are refreshing in their range and willingness to defy stereotypes. A sequel would be welcome to this deftly imagined tale of the years before the French Revolution.

A well-researched, robust tale featuring an endearing executioner.

THE GRAY SHIP

Moran, Russell F. Coddington Press (382 pp.) $14.95 paper $2.99 e-book Aug. 29, 2013 978-0-9895546-0-2

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“Poetry that often transcends its own bounds, spilling over into readers’ lives and forcing them to confront their own narratives.” from one day tells its tale to another

ONE DAY TELLS ITS TALE TO ANOTHER

BEATING THE NBA Tales From a Frugal Fan

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

Bishara, Motez CreateSpace (334 pp.) $15.00 paper | $9.99 e-book Jun. 8, 2013 978-1-4792-6418-6

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

“So, I did the thing / I would never do,” confesses a young dancer upon landing an art-smothering, body-pulverizing contract job in “Paid to Dance,” one of many seemingly autobiographical poems in Augustine’s debut collection. One can easily imagine the same confession from the older narrator sleeping with her friend’s husband in “Wine and Cheese Villanelle” or the jaded lover of “Sestina,” who “learned to play double, just like him.” Compromise and disillusionment are frequent themes here but so are resilience and learning, although the narrators are often too busy navigating their lives to recognize their growing wisdom. Augustine often layers the perspectives of the narrator, author and reader to bolster the poems’ realism and emotional sincerity, and it’s a technique she hones to near perfection. On rare occasions, the poet usurps the narrator and lapses into bathos: “As we sit at this café table / in Montmartre, sheltered / from the downpour, I see our future. / I will write it down on torn paper, / using a sapphire pen,” seemingly taking seriously Billy Collins’ satirical advice in his poem “The Student” that poets should, “[w]hen at a loss for an ending, / have some brown hens standing in the rain.” On the whole, however, Augustine demonstrates much greater control and precision as she works through multiple iterations of love and loss, employing to great effect forms as varied as the prose poem, the concrete poem, the villanelle, the sestina, the sonnet and the ballad. She reimagines fairy tales, evokes foreign lands through bodily sensation, valorizes women’s perseverance, and revels in the rollicking pleasures of sex, even when they come with risk. As her narrators age, she tightens the circle, mourning and celebrating with equal intensity. One narrator contemplates the “Three Things That Did Not Happen”: “I almost saw Nessie,” “I almost won the jackpot,” and “I almost had a child. / She was there in my womb / until chromosomes killed her. / My God, that would have been something.” Among the losses, though, it “appears gone for good are dramas and bothers, / threats and therapists, drunk, needy lovers. / And…lovely, lovely, lovely is my cat’s furry belly.”

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

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Bishara, in a must-read for professional-basketball junkies, chronicles his journey as he sees 25 National Basketball Association games without paying face

value for the tickets.

The author, a die-hard NBA fan, understands the frustration that so many people feel when they see the exorbitant prices that teams charge for tickets. His debut serves as a guide for fans who want to find the best deals on tickets but don’t have experience dealing with scalpers or scouring the Internet. Bishara takes readers game by game as he explains how he acquires his ticket for each of 25 games, lists how much he paid and compares that price to the ticket’s face value. However, these stories not only provide practical advice for getting the best bargains, but also offer plenty of entertainment. Whether he’s scoring free tickets from a local bartender or getting ripped off by a scam artist in Chicago, the author’s love for the game of basketball and for bargain hunting is always apparent. The stories don’t always end with a ticket purchase, either; Bishara scopes out each city’s nightlife and each arena’s beer selection and provides smart commentary on the state of each franchise.

He writes in a conversational style, reporting on every aspect of his experience as a helpful friend might, and breaks up the stories with interviews with a veteran scalper and the head of a dynamic-pricing software company. Both interviews are incredibly interesting, and offer readers insiders’ perspectives on two very different sides of the ticket market. Although Bishara writes from the point of view of an average fan, he also displays a thorough understanding of how ticket pricing works and how that market is evolving. He also provides a valuable “Reflections” chapter in which he hands out awards for the best arena food, the most thriving scalper trade, the most attractive cheerleaders and more.

A thoroughly enjoyable read and a useful tool for any serious NBA fan.

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THE DAWN OF ISLAMIC LITERALISM Rise of the Crescent Moon

for parents looking to help their children succeed in school. The book leads readers through both the mindset necessary to foster a learning environment (Casale encourages parents to develop a family-based mission statement that makes education a priority and to periodically assess their own performance as well as their children’s) and the more practical aspects of forming one, from ensuring that homework is completed to the components of a successful parent-teacher conference. Casale draws on many examples from his own years in the classroom and the principal’s office, which brings a from-the-trenches credibility to his observations and recommendations. Citations from Daniel Goleman, Alfie Kohn and other experts add support, too. One of the book’s key themes is that children cannot be compelled to learn, a point Casale often makes with wry humor: “Aside from torture, coercion, bribes, canceling cable and all electronics, or forcing your child to listen to Yanni, your chances of forcing your child to read a book are slim to none.” His frequent criticism of electronics—“a thief that steals precious time from our children”; “Limit TV, video games, and any other electronics that are mindless and a waste of precious time”; “Cell phones for children under sixteen should be used for emergencies or talking to family members only”—may be a point of contention for readers not so opposed to technology. On the whole, however, Casale gives parents a reassuring, big-picture look at how they, even more than teachers, shape their children’s attitudes to learning. By reminding readers that “even caring and loving parents must learn” how to create a home environment that supports learning, the book establishes itself as a legitimate, useful parenting tool.

An effective manual for parents who want to establish a pro-learning mindset and develop concrete strategies for helping their children succeed in school.

Butta Jr., Joseph A. AuthorHouse (512 pp.) $35.99 | $26.95 paper | Mar. 5, 2013 978-1-4772-9529-8

A meticulous, scholarly introduction to Islamic literalism, specifically designed for a Western readership.

Butta’s (The Jewish People and Jesus, 2010) latest effort attempts to provide a “one-stop introduction for people who want to know more about Islamic literalism.”

Literalists, he writes, fundamentally interpret the Quran as an authoritative guide for all human affairs; some even adhere to a dangerous, politicized version of Islam. The book is intended specifically for curious Westerners who have little knowledge about Islamic studies. To this end, the author strives to present his study in an easy-to-understand style. He examines sections of Quranic text in chronological order, and this innovation alone makes the Quran considerably more accessible. For each section, Butta selects a key text, analyzes it from a theological and historical perspective, and then offers an illuminating “Western analysis,” which considers how each teaching guides Islamic literalists’ interaction with the Western world. For example, one startling account addresses how Islamic antipathy to non-Muslims may be rooted in the belief that “Allah left nonMuslims in error and led them astray so non-Muslims might feel terror and fear.” The prose is always lucid, and the scholarly analysis, though painstaking, is genuinely easy to follow. Butta often makes clear his own misgivings about fundamentalist Islam (“One must wonder if Muslim women would still choose Muhammad over Jesus of the New Testament if they could read the New Testament and make up their mind without fear of being beaten or killed”), and readers might have been interested in hearing more about “strictly cultural Muslims who reject Political Islam.” Nevertheless, the book’s overall presentation is reliably evenhanded and rigorous.

An accessible primer to Islamic ideology for the uninitiated.

THE MEN OF THE USS ARIZONA (BB-39) Revised Edition Cooper, T. J. CreateSpace (586 pp.) $29.95 paper | Aug. 9, 2013 978-1-4909-6411-9

WISE UP: BE THE SOLUTION Establish a “Learning Culture” in Your Home and Help your Child Succeed in School

An exhaustive compendium memorializing every serviceman assigned to the USS Arizona, destroyed by the Japanese

at Pearl Harbor.

To paraphrase a famous quote, one death is a tragedy, but 1,177 are a statistic. Cooper (The Men of the USS Utah, 2009) deconstructs the impersonal casualty count of the USS Arizona by penning an obituary or biographical sketch for each of the 1,514 officers and crewmen who were killed in or survived the attack. Cooper’s 30 years as a genealogical researcher helped her locate and assemble facts and recollections from survivors, family members, military records, newspapers and high school yearbooks. The resulting rosters (casualties, then survivors, alphabetized separately) capture the individual tragedies while amplifying the enormity of loss. Each entry follows a template:

Casale, James L. CreateSpace (140 pp.) $8.50 paper | $4.99 e-book | Aug. 8, 2013 978-1-4820-8638-6 A longtime teacher and principal guides parents through the basics of supporting and enriching childhood education.

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name, rank, serial number, dates of enlistment and assignment to the ship, whereabouts during the attack, subsequent career, awards and honors, final resting place—for many, the wreckage—and survivors. This format offers a well-deserved tribute to each veteran, but the rank-and-file uniformity obscures many colorful details. Nonetheless, patient readers will discover poignant stories. A retired sailor sulked around the house until his wife ordered him to re-enlist: “There is a war coming and you are going to get yourself killed. But I’m not going to have you moping around the house every time a ship enters or leaves the harbor.” A sailor from a different ship got drunk and arrested on shore leave, then died in the USS Arizona’s brig since his ship lacked one. Relatives reported omens beforehand; others claimed hauntings afterward. Servicemen swam to shore and escaped death a second time when bombs failed to explode.

Acts of heroism counterbalanced the searing randomness. Cooper adds historical context with plenty of black-and-white photos, a reprinted history of the USS Arizona, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “day that will live in infamy” speech, humanizing accounts of shipboard leisure, and minutiae about pay grades and dependent allowances. Numerous typos remain in this revised edition of the original 2008 book, though they’re minor flaws in an otherwise well-researched, properly cited and valuable contribution to World War II scholarship.

Perhaps too dense for casual readers, but serious history buffs will be astonished.

trip, and hijinks and adventures ensue. Ultimately, Kirby must confront Bradley and the reasons why the BRI may be permanently at zero. The present-tense, first-person narration works well for recounting these youthful escapades; Kirby is simultaneously reflective and impulsive, making decisions in real time and almost immediately experiencing their consequences. The prose, especially the dialogue, is strong but may be a bit mature for young readers (“You look like a fetus,” is a compelling but perhaps age-specific insult; there are also frequent references to masturbation). Although set in the 1980s, the story and tone have a timeless feel, and Kirby’s struggles with self-exploration are very relatable. Overall, the novel’s strength lies in its evocation of how it feels to live in a sometimes-disappointing world.

A well-structured, enjoyable tale about growing up and letting go.

THE JOY OF FINANCIAL SECURITY The Art and Science of Becoming Happier, Managing Your Money Wisely, and Creating a Secure Financial Future Cygan, Donna Skeels Sage Future Press (394 pp.) $28.95 | Nov. 1, 2013 978-0-9897784-4-2

THE LAST GOOD HALLOWEEN

A thorough guide to keeping your finances—and emotions—in order.

This well-researched book is interested equally in offering emotional and financial advice. In a friendly, accessible tone, Cygan, a certified financial planner, acknowledges that money doesn’t equal happiness but that it surely helps. That said, hers is hardly a get-rich-quick message; rather, the strategies are pragmatic and balanced, since, she says, good financial health promotes good mental health. “If money were only the coins or bills in our wallets, life would be much easier and less stressful.

Money is much more,” she says. “For people who have experienced periods with lots of money and other periods with very little money, it can trigger feelings of insecurity….Money can also incite feelings of fear and anger.” According to her guide, the key is not to make as much money as you possibly can but to find what makes you happy and then find a way to financially support that lifestyle. In most cases, the end goal doesn’t involve having a four-car garage. Cygan is essentially a proponent of the simple life, one that values experiences over things. If working fewer hours brings you sanity, figure out a way to make it happen. Don’t fall prey to jealousy or to keeping up with the Joneses. “Decide you don’t need a super-sized television or a trendy wardrobe. Even better,” she says, “strive to keep your car for 12 years. It’s a good first step.” While this may just sound like wishful thinking, Cygan gives her readers solid financial advice on how to achieve these dreams. Some of her suggestions may seem obvious, such as avoiding credit card debt and saving a little every month, but overall, her ideas are wide-reaching and

Cromley, Giano Tortoise Books (230 pp.) $9.99 paper | $2.99 e-book Oct. 31, 2013 978-0-615-87275-9

Cromley’s debut coming-of-age novel follows a 15-year-old high schooler as he comes to terms with his parents’ split and the confusion of adolescence.

Kirby is your typical teen: mouthy, distrustful of authority and highly aware of his raging libido. But he’s also concerned about the stability of his small family unit. During his short life, he endured a seemingly endless parade of his mother’s suitors, until his stepfather, Bradley, became a more stable presence five years ago. Recently, however, Bradley hasn’t been around the house. He’s disappeared for short periods before— Kirby measures his sabbaticals by an “informal indicator” called “Bradley-Returns Index”—but he’s always come home. When Kirby returns from a torturous stint at computer camp, he finds his mother in a relationship with their neighbor Uncle Harley, or, as Kirby calls him, “the insurgent.” Kirby fears that this development could wipe out the BRI entirely, so he becomes determined to restore order. He enlists the help of his only friends—the meek, sometimes-frustrating Julian, and a troubled girl named Izzy, who’s the object of Kirby’s fantasies—to track down his missing stepfather. The trio “borrows” Julian’s dad’s classic 1969 Plymouth Roadrunner and sets off across Montana on a road 112

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“A story that began as a cyberpunk police thriller has, across three volumes, zoomed out to become a mind blower of Olaf Stapledon–esque dimensions.” from state of being

JOURNEY TO GALUMPHAGOS

sensible. She’s particularly good at helping readers think longterm and navigate tricky terrain like the differences between, say, a traditional IRA and a Roth IRA. With the well-laid-out table of contents, readers can easily use the book as a manual for specific issues they may be having.

A useful, hands-on book to help readers prioritize their happiness through practical financial planning.

Eisner, Seth CreateSpace (84 pp.) $5.48 paper | $2.99 e-book | Aug. 4, 2013 978-1-4910-8232-4 In this entertaining, fantastical adventure for middle-grade readers, three siblings discover that running away from problems might create more of them.

Emily Miller is being bullied. Tired of people, she convinces her sister, Chloe, and brother, Jacob, to run away with her to Galumphagos Island. Chloe, who’s bored of being told to paint only pretty things, is easily convinced. Jacob, a karate student, is more hesitant, but he knows he can’t stand against his sisters when they have something planned. According to travel brochures, the island is a wonderful place where children can play with galumphers, delightful fuzzy creatures that are more fun to cuddle than stuffed animals. Children who run away to the island never return (thus proving that it is a paradise)—yet only galumphers live on the island. Astute readers will realize long before the three children that all is not right with Galumphagos Island, but watching the siblings come to their own conclusions and eventually outsmart the galumphers proves to be an enjoyable read. Maze’s black-and-white, cartoonish illustrations complement the book’s tone, too. In the opening pages, debut author Eisner plants some hints to the galumphers’ weaknesses and strengths, as the older sisters explain to Jacob what a “figure of speech” is; the galumphers always act literally, so they cannot understand those figures of speech—which is dangerous to the children (and, after the galumphers are unleashed on the mainland, to the world) but also a way for them to maneuver around the less intelligent creatures. “Jacob pointed at them and laughed out loud. He acted like he was laughing so hard that he had to double over. ‘I’m in stitches,’ he said as loud as he could.

The galumphers got madder and madder.” Many children’s stories about discovering a magical place that isn’t all it’s cracked up to be might end with a return home, but Eisner cleverly continues the story, allowing the children to show what they’ve learned and prove that they’ve grown from their experience.

A well-paced, delightful children’s book with a moral that’s clear without being heavy-handed.

STATE OF BEING Book Three of The God Head Trilogy

Davison, Sven Michael Bedouin Press (426 pp.) $25.95 | $19.95 paper | $4.99 e-book Apr. 15, 2013 978-0-9855528-6-2 As humanity succumbs to a vast mindcontrol conspiracy, Jake Travissi suspects that reality may no longer be on his side in the finale of Davison’s (State of Union, 2102, etc.) God Head Trilogy.

This third installment doesn’t hold back, opening with nothing less than the nuclear destruction of Mecca, Saudi Arabia.

Islamic fundamentalists are practically the last holdouts against the Consortium, a mid-21st-century conspiracy of techno-elites out to implant civilization with Internet-linked computer chips.

The Chip enhances physiology and perception and instantly connects people with the rest of mankind—but it also means that the Consortium can “hack” them and turn them into mindless slaves, exile them to a sham reality (à la The Matrix) or even order them to die. Jake, a LA lawman with a strong sense of right and wrong, relentlessly battles the Consortium to the point of allying with religious terrorists. The villains find him a source of fascination because he alone managed to resist and override his Chip programming early on. Now, a nanotech-based virus is seeding Chips worldwide into people and animals. Jake, along with a few fellow resistance fighters, flees to the only untainted realm left: the independent colonies on the moon. There, he aims to fully activate his Chip for a last stand against the Consortium’s ultimate cyberweapon—a ruthless, sadistic artificial intelligence named Constantine, who controls billions of human minds simultaneously. As our hero survives one narrow-escape cliffhanger after another, he begins to wonder if can he trust his reality at all—or if his experiences are creations of Consortium puppet masters. A story that began as a cyberpunk police thriller has, across three volumes, zoomed out to become a mind blower of Olaf Stapledon–esque dimensions, ruminating on robot ethics, futurism, and what it means to be human and have free will. (Davison even manages to express the Consortium’s point of view in a disquietingly attractive manner.) Action fans, meanwhile, will find a body count in the billions. As long as readers don’t mind this final installment’s deus-ex-machina conclusion (in a very literal sense), they’ll certainly appreciate its uncommonly forceful grand-canvas sci-fi storytelling.

A high-density wrap-up of a diverting cyber-sci-fi trilogy.

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UNREGULATED CAPITALISM Unregulated Capitalism Is Destroying Democracy and the Economy

ANDY’S STORY Too Much for a Lifetime Jack, Swansea AuthorHouseUK (366 pp.) $24.34 paper | $3.99 e-book Jun. 11, 2013 978-1-4817-9611-8

Gaasvig, George CreateSpace (234 pp.) $14.00 paper | $5.99 e-book Aug. 13, 2013 978-1-4839-8049-2

This debut memoir shares the “all true” challenges, rewards and near-death experiences of a lifelong nomad working in the worldwide petroleum industry.

Swansea Jack is a Welsh-born oil and gas professional. He skipped grammar school and moved back to Wales, from the outskirts of London, at the age of 16 to take on a four-year apprenticeship as a plater in a fabrication shop. In a shocking episode that opens the book, Jack’s “pottering around” in the family garage, in 1981, led to the death of his father and the first of many injuries for the author. In 1984, Jack’s dead “Auntie” left him a Thai Buddha, which he eventually returns to its place of origin. Along the way, he worked and experienced adventures in places such as apartheid-era South Africa and the Islamic Republic of Iran. He traversed Africa from Libya to Nigeria, much of Asia, from Singapore to Pakistan, and more than a few Middle Eastern countries. “Divorce number one,” he writes, began on a job in Saudi Arabia, which he followed with a recuperative fishing tournament in Thailand, before the first of three successively horrible experiences in Venezuela, which included a run-in with voodoo and his second wife, Carolina. On his third and final job assignment in the country, angry mobs forced him to flee South America. After a second divorce and more wanderlust, the author took up with “a crazed Kazhak psychopath” named Antonina, who tried to kill him more than once. Jack’s retelling of this particular story to his friend Andy led to the writing—and odd title—of this book. But not all of Jack’s memories are hair-raising or bizarre.

He delights in the whimsical moments, as when he spent New Year’s Eve at the Millionaire’s Club on the Champs-Élysées. At his best when writing about dreamlike deep-sea–fishing thrills or nightmarish real estate experiences, Jack has produced a series of disjointed anecdotes with no narrative arc. Opening the book feels like sidling up to a man in possession of a Welsh gift for storytelling. As he rambles on about his fascinating life, readers will be happy to indulge him.

The unvarnished tales, travels and travails of a tough, international transient.

A concise, well-researched argument against the dangers of unregulated capitalism.

In this brief but informative book, Gaasvig argues that America is a democracy only in name. “When any nation evolves to the point where the government and a majority of the wealth of the nation are concentrated in the hands of less than 1 percent of the population, no longer is that nation a democracy,” he says. In the age of the Occupy movement, that view isn’t exactly novel; indeed, many of the points made here will be familiar to even apolitical readers, anchored as those arguments are in the author’s standard progressive belief that unfettered capitalism is causing a divide in this country between the haves and the have-nots—a division, the author says, that is both morally and economically suspect. What makes this book unique, however, is its orderly, educational tone. In what amounts to a clear-cut guide to social democracy, Gaasvig makes both economically and politically based suggestions for how to rectify the situation. As for the former, he recommends a range of initiatives, from publically funded child care to nearly guaranteed employment to what he calls a “three-party economic partnership” among capitalists, workers and the government. Politically, he suggests disbanding the Electoral College system and imposing term limits on members of Congress, among many other ideas.

He also writes eloquently about voting and education. Critics may accuse Gaasvig of touting pipe dreams, but he clearly knows his stuff. With even the most idealistic of his ideas—say, the implementation of full employment with livings wages and benefits—he actively addresses opposing views in a controlled, logical way. And he is not unaware of the task ahead, particularly when it comes to inspiring the masses to be involved in the process. However, it’s debatable whether the book will appeal to the American “majority” he references throughout, since this fairly erudite work can at times be a repetitive read. Nevertheless, for students of political and economic theory, it will serve as a factual, well-composed dissection of an extremely important topic.

A handy guide to the uses and abuses of capitalism.

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RETSBOL RISES An Abenaki Lobster Tale

GREAT MOMENTS IN OCD HISTORY A Humorous Look at Life with OCD

Jones, Jayne Rowe Maine Authors Publishing (477 pp.) $23.95 paper | $3.99 e-book Sep. 23, 2013 978-1-938883-65-1

Jordan, Jefferson CreateSpace (90 pp.) $5.99 paper | $1.49 e-book | Jul. 2, 2013 978-1-4825-3022-3

Jones’ debut YA novel sees young adventurers attempt to retrieve a series of Native American amulets and save Maine’s Mount Desert Island.

Abenaki lore states that the tribe once shared Mount Desert Island, Maine, with gigantic lobsters. When the two groups began crowding each other, the lobsters agreed to leave for the ocean. The Abenaki promised to continue properly caring for the land. Both tribes sealed the agreement by creating an orb, which they secured in the base of Cadillac Mountain.

Now, greedy industrialist Barton Baxter has learned about the orb from an ancient Abenaki parchment. By stealing it, he sets disastrous events in motion that threaten everyone on Mount Desert Island. Marine biologist Dr. Banke is summoned from Boston to discover why lobsters are congregating at the island— growing larger and more ferocious in the process. Meanwhile, forces have placed another Abenaki book, once belonging to Baxter’s childhood friend Amelia, in the hands of Ani, Banke’s teenage daughter. Ani and her sister, Eliza, must race to locate amulets that Amelia once wore and restore the covenant between the Abenaki and the lobsters—before the crustaceans retake the island. Jones uses clear, clever prose to narrate Ani and Eliza’s quest: “Unbeknownst to most humans, squirrels run subterfuge on a regular basis [keeping] Homo sapiens from seeing what really happens in the animal kingdom.” There’s also a reverence for nature throughout, emphasized by Ani’s communication with animals. But these plot points only hint at Jones’ always rollicking imagination and penchant for twists, as when Eliza thinks she sees Spider-Man. While primarily for younger readers, the novel also includes adult subtlety: Barton thinks of long-lost Amelia and doesn’t “want his mind to go where it always took him, but lately he had been too tired and too weak to stop both his memory and his what-ifs.”

Irresistible storytelling and a meticulous plot conjure pure New England magic.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder is no laughing matter. Unless laughter is your best defense against it.

In this slim work of nonfiction, debut writer Jordan, a longtime OCD sufferer, is by turns humorous, snarky, angry and thoughtful. This is a personal and anecdotal account of what OCD is and what it’s like to suffer from it 24/7. The book has an interesting and telling provenance. In late 2012, Jordan was at the end of his rope: dead-end job, junker car and few friends.

So his friend Tony—we should all have friends like Tony—challenged him to write a book in 30 days. This is that book. In a work like this, voice is all-important. Who is this guy who has buttonholed us? Well, he’s a chatty and good, accessible writer when he’s on his game. He is likable; the reader will probably root for him. Each chapter is a sort of running commentary on the disease itself, the mental health system, therapies, others’ reactions and so forth. And each chapter ends with a particular anecdote under the heading “Great Moment in OCD History.”

Some of these are horrifying (from the OCD sufferer’s point of view), but most also show the sufferer’s courage and mordant humor. The book is somewhat repetitious. We are all aware of the OCD obsession with germs, real and imagined, and compulsive hand-washing. For Jordan, public restrooms are like Dante’s lowest circle of hell. But after the third or fourth example, the reader more than gets it. Jordan, a committed Christian, has struggled to come to terms with OCD and with God. Is he angry? Well, he has been. But God, he is told, is strong enough to take a lot of abuse. And then he says, “Maybe I needed to be broken....Being broken sucks, there is no getting around it, but once you are broken, you can be rebuilt into something better.”

Tons of tragicomic wisdom packed into a short memoir.

LIVING WITHOUT THE ONE YOU CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT Hope and Healing after Loss

Josefowitz, Natasha Prestwik Poetry Publishing Co. (108 pp.) $9.95 paper | Sep. 23, 2013 978-1-4841-4132-8 A hard-won, heart-wrenching collection of poems.

In her latest book, poet Josefowitz (Been There, Done That, Doing It Better, 2009) touchingly chronicles the painful first year after the death of her longtime husband. Beginning with a description of his final days in hospice, her plainspoken, free verse documents the |

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Interviews & Profiles

David Vinjamuri

An expert on self-publishing assesses the state of the industry and his own place in it

By Sarah Rettger ing habits. “I had been reading self-published books without realizing it,” he says. “I realized that a lot of important things had changed.” He became part of that change, publishing Operator by himself in 2012, with a sequel, Binder, released on December 2.

Vinjamuri hired an editor and a designer to get the book ready for publication in both print and digital formats, but he handled the book’s promotion himself. With his marketing background—in addition to writing, he teaches at NYU and works as a branding consultant—Vinjamuri went into his self-publishing effort with a clear idea of what he needed to do to make Operator succeed. “Word of mouth is the most important thing,” he says. “Make it easy for people to tell your story.”

To do that, Vinjamuri promoted Operator through Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing Select program and submitted the book to Kirkus Reviews and other venues. He also lowered the book’s price to 99 cents for a short time. That had immediate results, sending Operator to the overall Kindle paid best-seller list and earning it the top spot in the thriller subcategory.

“It was selling ahead of Fifty Shades of Grey for a day or two,” he says. It was gratifying to see a marketing campaign pay off quickly, but Vinjamuri is even more pleased with the long-term result: “I’ve already sold more of Operator in the first year than I’ve sold of Accidental Branding in the last five years.”

Operator, which follows ex-soldier Michael Herne as he draws on his military training to investigate a friend’s death and battle the Russian mob, has received plenty of positive reviews, including one from Kirkus. “The novel handles its dark subject matter straightforwardly, and while justice is certainly a theme, the hero also harbors a dark side,” the review says, calling Herne “a new breed of hero.”

It was speed that brought David Vinjamuri to self-publishing his novels—or, rather, the lack of it.

After publishing a business book in 2008 through Wiley, Accidental Branding: How Ordinary People Build Extraordinary Brands, he showed his agent at the time his next project, a military thriller. The manuscript arrived just as the agency went through a major staff turnover. Although the agent did make some attempts at submitting the novel to publishers, it was a halfhearted process, thanks to the agency’s disarray.

“I didn’t really get a lot of ‘no’s on it, but it was two years,” Vinjamuri says.

Those two years were a time of rapid change in the book world, and Vinjamuri, who also writes about selfpublishing for Forbes, saw the change in his own read116

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The novel has its origins in some of Vinjamuri’s own experiences, including a fortuitous connection made while he was on a speaking tour for Accidental Branding. After a talk in Norfolk, Va., an acquaintance suggested he look into a local business, which had been founded by a former Navy SEAL and produced specialized equipment for several elite military units.

As he explored the company, Vinjamuri got to know several veterans of those elite units, and he found them to be far more ordinary than he had expected. “They weren’t at all what I thought they would be,” he says, more like highly focused athletes than Rambo. He spent time training with the men, even taking the opportunity to run the Naval Special Warfare Center’s obstacle course. That experience gave him insight into Michael Herne’s character.

While Vinjamuri is focused on developing his fiction career, he remains part of the broader conversation about self-publishing. He takes a particular interest in how libraries can effectively incorporate self-published books into their collections, and he has spoken at conferences hosted by the American Library Association and several state associations.

“I’ve been going around trying to persuade libraries to discover new authors,” he says.

Plenty of librarians agree with him. In October, Illinois librarians announced the “Soon to Be Famous Illinois Author Project,” a statewide effort to bring attention to high-quality self-published works. The project credits Vinjamuri as an inspiration, and he recently recorded a video for the website.

Vinjamuri sees libraries as a crucial factor in finding and drawing attention to the best self-published books. “You really can’t trust peer online reviews,” he says, noting that it is not uncommon for authors to attempt to manipulate ratings. But “20,000 libraries, working together, can review 300,000 books,” he says, and bring some clarity. “The question is, how do you find the next Confederacy of Dunces when it’s probably sitting out there on Amazon having sold 50 copies with five reviews from relatives?”

Vinjamuri raised some eyebrows in the publishing world with a recent post at Forbes, “Is Publishing Still Broken? The Surprising Year in Books.” It was a response to a post he had written more than a year earlier, “Publishing Is Broken: We’re Drowning in Indie Books—And That’s a Good Thing” (in which

he wrote about the difficulty of finding quality books among the thousands being self-published).

The industry is not broken, he writes now, and that applies to traditional publishing as well. “Output and sales of traditional publishers have not gone down,” he says, while self-publishing is maturing as a platform.

“In the last year, there are more examples of people who’ve written good books that have gotten noticed.”

Some established authors are adding self-publishing to their repertoires, while top-selling indie authors continue to sign deals with traditional publishers.

And as it becomes easier to find the best self-published books, Vinjamuri sees indie publishing as a real career path for himself and other midlist authors: “If they can sell directly, they can make a living at it.”

Sarah Rettger is a writer and bookseller living in Massachusetts.

Binder will be reviewed in a forthcoming issue of Kirkus Reviews.

Binder Vinjamuri, David ThirdWay (226 pp.)

Price varies | Dec. 2, 2013 978-0-9857756-3-6 |

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

slow burn of her grief from day to day—whether she’s at her husband’s funeral struggling to “find the man I loved / in all these words” or sitting alone in the evenings, trying to conjure the presence of her lost love (“make a sound in the wind / touch my cheek / with a breath of air”). Although the poems sometimes rely on clichéd abstractions and can err toward the sentimental, Josefowitz’s sense of detail makes them sing. The poems are at their best when most specific: “I miss him / rustling the newspapers / in the room next door / his voice on the phone— / I always knew which of the children / he was talking to.” The author never shies away from difficulties she faces—a fractured sense of self, months of inconsolability and profound survivor’s guilt when she eventually finds herself able to enjoy things again. In the sad but charming “Firsts,” she finds she must learn how to do the many mundane tasks her husband used to do: taking out the garbage, resetting the clocks for daylight saving time, opening a bottle of wine. Josefowitz’s poems, in all their raw tenderness, are sometimes excruciating to read, but they’re ultimately testaments to a great love and affirmations of the author’s new identity as a single, self-sustaining woman in her elder years.

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

These twists and fights pull readers along despite an unfortunate attempt at dramatic irony that reveals who was behind Tyler’s tragic accident much too early. Faith and God have a large role in the novel, to a degree that much of the dialogue can feel like a sermon, though that may be exactly what Tyler needs to become the hero he was destined to be.

An affecting novel about the collision of love, faith and loss.

THE GRAY SHIP

Moran, Russell F. Coddington Press (382 pp.) $14.95 paper | $2.99 e-book Aug. 29, 2013 978-0-9895546-0-2 In this stellar time-travel novel, a modern-American nuclear-powered cruiser sails through a time portal and goes back 152 years to the days just before the beginning of the Civil War. The USS California, under the command of Capt. Ashley Patterson, an African-American woman, is headed toward Charleston, S.C., to participate in a ceremony commemorating the first battle of the Civil War: the bombardment of Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861. But before her ship reaches its destination, the massive cruiser—and its 630 crew members—travels through some sort of temporal wormhole and ends up near the Charleston Harbor in 1861, just hours before the Confederate assault is about to begin. After eventually wrapping her head around the fact that her entire crew has traveled back in time, Patterson realizes that she has some difficult decisions to make: Does she let history repeat itself and focus on trying to find a way back home, or does she use the military superiority of the California—“outfitted with enough fire power to unleash Biblical hell on an enemy”—to help end the war quickly and thus save the approximately 620,000 soldiers who would otherwise die in the next four years? Powered by a cast of well-developed characters—Lincoln and Lee are among the prominently featured historical figures—consistently brisk pacing and a pulsepounding (albeit slightly predictable) conclusion, the humanist themes of this novel are momentous and just as timely today as they were back in the 1860s. This provocative, intensely powerful novel is a must-read for sci-fi fans and Civil War aficionados, though mainstream fiction readers will find it heart-rending and inspiring as well.

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

AMID THE ASHES AND THE DUST

Mitchell, Clay iUniverse (354 pp.) $30.95 | $20.95 paper | $7.99 e-book May 24, 2013 978-1-4759-8808-6 A devastated Texan must rediscover his faith in order to find himself in Mitchell’s impressive debut religious novel that isn’t afraid to explore the dark side of humanity.

Tyler Morgan’s family, which has been in a small East Texas town for generations, has had its share of troubles. Tyler’s grandfather, and his gambling habit, lost their land to a swindling developer; his father can’t stand up for himself; his mother is battling cancer; and his brother suffered a traumatic brain injury. After coping with problems of his own—he lost his profootball chances and his high school sweetheart (the love of his life) to a covetous teammate—Tyler, a Navy vet, is hoping for a new start by taking his wife and child to the Gulf Coast, where a new life and his own business await. But just as he’s leaving town, tragedy destroys his dream. Five years later and with a hole in his heart the size of Texas, Tyler is living on the Gulf Coast, far from the accusations that it was his drunk driving and refusal to use a car seat that killed his wife and son. Tyler abandons his faith and turns to drinking and brawling, but when he’s suddenly called back to his hometown, he must confront painful questions and the truth about who’s really responsible for the Morgan family’s struggles. Mitchell works with a grand cast of characters against a backdrop of godliness, creating a plot that’s as dark and twisted as the country woods of East Texas.

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UNITED WE FALL

AN UNTITLED LADY

Mourgos, Joseph A. Jammo Publishing (468 pp.) $14.50 paper | $5.25 e-book | Jul. 2, 2013 978-1-4823-2197-5

Penttila, Nicky Manuscript Dec. 20, 2013

In Penttila’s (A Note of Scandal, 2013, etc.)

Regency romance, a young woman struggles to reconcile a tragic past and an uncertain future in a city on the brink of revolt.

Madeline Wetherby is no stranger to hardship. Daughter of an English viscount, she was orphaned as a toddler, rescued from an abusive uncle, and sent away by her godfather, the Earl of Shaftsbury.

She’s educated on all things estate related and is promised to marry his heir, Deacon. Unfortunately, the earl, now deceased, kept his plans a secret, and when Maddie shows up at the castle expecting to marry, she finds that Deacon wants nothing to do with her—especially when it’s revealed she wasn’t born a Wetherby. Madeline’s prospects are bleak. She’s been brought up a lady only to learn that her roots are working class. It’s 1819 in Manchester, and she’s without relations to claim her or a husband to protect her. When Deacon’s brother Nash proposes to marry her, in exchange for some money from his brother, she has little choice but to accept. The novel follows the two as they struggle to find love. Set against the backdrop of a turbulent time in British history, Penttila’s novel shines a light on the plights of both women and the workers of England. Maddie’s struggle to find her identity and some measure of independence parallels the struggles of working-class Mancunians; caught between two worlds, belonging fully to neither, she fights to find her voice as the working class fights for theirs through parliamentary reform. History buffs in particular will enjoy exploring the Peterloo Massacre, one of the defining moments of British history, a conflict in which Maddie plays a central role. Though she suffers great loss, she’s ultimately rewarded for challenging social norms. Without overburdening the story, the many details surrounding the massacre provide rich historical context, but romance is still at the novel’s core. Fortunately, led by genuine and engaging Maddie, the story is refreshingly free of overly sappy scenes and heavy-handed descriptions.

An artful blend of history and romance.

The opening volume of Mourgos’ Galactic Community sci-fi series in which a future Earth is contested by rival alien races.

It’s A.D. 2060, and Marine Capt.

Derrick Folsom has spent the last few years jumping from one of Earth’s political hot spots—Africa, Cuba, Iran, China—to another as the trouble-shooting spearhead of the planet’s drive toward greater unification. The plan is to replace the petty warring of hundreds of nation-states with larger, hopefully more peaceful conglomerates dedicated to progress. Unbeknownst to this much-changed Earth, its fate is being debated by two great galactic forces, the Vorelisian Empire and the Thimmi Empire, sparring civilizations sharing a common border thousands of light years across.

With the consent of the Galactic Council (similar to a United Nations of space), each empire has sent an emissary to Earth to competitively use every method at their disposal to bring about the unifying geopolitics necessary for Earth’s becoming a suitable colony; the Vorelisians and the Thimmi want Earth not necessarily for themselves but rather to break a voting tie in the Council.

The Vorelisian representative, Dr. Charles Lightner, goes about his task by being a technological “gift-giver,” providing mankind with advanced technologies to wipe out famine and disease. The Thimmi candidate, Capt. Arno Pilas, chooses the diplomatic route instead, using his hard-won leverage with Earth’s various leaders to bring about the kind of unifying nation-building enforced by Capt. Folsom. Mourgos sets these various elements in play with a respectable degree of skill and humor, with dramatic momentum—the whole book is told in the present tense— that will keep readers absorbed, especially when all characters, alien and human, face a catastrophe involving Earth’s magnetic field. The characters are well-rounded, and rather than a more predictable good alien/bad alien dichotomy, their many competing agendas are given refreshing complexity. Similarly, the social commentary is intelligently handled; this future Earth is more advanced but less free, and readers will have no trouble spotting the present-day inspiration for those shackles.

An insightful, exciting new sci-fi saga about Earth’s entrance into a galactic society.

HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT The Other People in Norman Rockwell’s America

Petrick, Jane Allen Informed Decisions Publishing (143 pp.) $18.95 paper | $3.99 e-book | Oct. 8, 2013 978-0-9892601-1-4 A fresh, well-researched study of artist Norman Rockwell’s treatment of race.

When readers think of Rockwell, they generally don’t picture a radical trailblazer who bucked conservative trends and broke racial stereotypes. Instead they picture, well, his pictures—works |

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

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

peace treaty, no humiliation of Germany, no German drive for revenge, no Hitler, no World War Two and likely no Cold War.” These are all familiar hypotheticals, but Pines reinvigorates them with new perspectives and energetic prose. For example, he highlights the British propaganda campaign to sway isolationist America; the departure of staunch neutrality advocate William Jennings Bryan from Wilson’s administration and its effect on American foreign policy; and the March 1917 collapse of Russian czarist rule. He draws attention to the fact that huge portions of America’s manufacturing and agricultural economy were invested in the European war. Pines also looks at the mostdiscussed factor in American intervention: the German sinking of the Lusitania in 1915, which killed 128 Americans. For Pines, however, the bulk of the blame falls on Wilson himself, whose 1916 re-election slogan (“He kept us out of war!”) belied his interventionist leanings. The book balances expertly narrated accounts of WWI battles with vigorous extrapolations of what might have happened if those battles hadn’t been fought. American doughboys weren’t needed to save the Allies from defeat, Pines contends—“they were needed only to hand them victory” and at an enormous cost. While some of this book’s theories may seem a bit complacent (German militarism, for instance, was a cultural fact regardless of the Treaty of Versailles), its main arguments are immensely insightful.

A carefully and winningly argued case against military adventurism.

RED HAMMER 1994

Ratcliffe, Robert CreateSpace (470 pp.) $16.99 paper | $4.99 e-book Apr. 26, 2013 978-1-4819-9807-9 In Ratcliffe’s debut thriller, Russia launches a pre-emptive nuclear attack, and the United States must defend itself at sea, on land and in the air.

In 1994, after learning that the U.S. military has a space shuttle–based laser to target intercontinental ballistic missiles, Russia’s leader decides to launch a pre-emptive strike against the United States. The American president quickly retaliates, and in no time, both countries are in the middle of a nuclear war. The novel views the conflict from many points of view, including that of a patrolling U.S. submarine crew, a B-1B bomber pilot flying through hostile skies, and a U.S. Army Special Forces unit on a suicide mission to infiltrate Russia and take out its missile silos. The main character, however, is Gen. Robert Thomas, who, with the U.S. government literally on the run, is given the difficult job of negotiating with surviving Russian leadership to secure a cease-fire. Ultimately, he makes a personal sacrifice reminiscent of the one the bomber pilot makes at the end of Eugene Burdick’s Fail-Safe (1962), the novel that, along with Peter George’s 1958 novel Red Alert (the basis for Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 film Dr. Strangelove), helped kicked off

AMERICA’S GREATEST BLUNDER The Fateful Decision to Enter World War One

Pines, Burton Yale RSD Press (436 pp.) $28.95 | $17.95 paper | Oct. 29, 2013 978-0-9891487-0-2 A detailed look at one of history’s greatest turning points: the American decision to intervene in the first world war.

In this painstakingly detailed, thoroughly researched analysis, Pines (Out of Focus, 1994, etc.) examines the circumstances that led President Woodrow Wilson to take the United States into World War I in April 1917 and that decision’s short- and long-term consequences. Without that intervention, the author writes, there would have been “[n]o punishing Versailles 120

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“The constantly shifting characters become inextricably linked in different ways, until they ultimately separate, finding freedom in loss and letting go.” from airstreaming

AIRSTREAMING

this genre. The author, a former U.S. Navy captain, presents a persuasive depiction of how a nuclear war might actually be fought, including all the strategizing by the president and his argumentative military staff. That said, among the large cast of characters, only one, Gen. Thomas, truly stands out; with his family left behind in the Washington, D.C., blast zone, he carries the emotional brunt of the story. Although it’s intriguing that the author set his story in 1994, before the events of 9/11 drove home new realities, it’s also strange that a book about nuclear war has no discussion about the long-term consequences of atomic radiation, making such a war seem winnable. For red-meat military-thriller fans, however, there’s action aplenty, all excitingly described and cogently dramatized.

An intelligently written techno-thriller that’s reminiscent of the late Tom Clancy’s work.

Schabarum, Tom Cascadia Publishing (340 pp.) $12.00 paper | $3.99 e-book Feb. 10, 2012 978-0-615-60304-9 In Schabarum’s (The Narrows, Miles Deep, 2011, etc.) novel, a mother and daughter are at odds following the loss of their husband and father, and a couple seeks escape after their baby is stillborn.

Outside of Kansas City in the late 1960s, the bonds between 16-year-old Linda and her mother, Clare, are wearing thin in the wake of her father’s death. While Clare worked to support the family, Linda's blind father bestowed upon her his love of jazz.

The loss of her husband creates an even greater financial strain for Clare, and she’s forced to find work for Linda. Linda leaves school to help Martha and Jack, an expectant couple in their late 30s. She’s thrust into their day-to-day routine, helping with chores and housework while Martha is on bed rest. When Jack is away on business, Linda and Clare rush to Martha just in time to help deliver her stillborn baby. Linda’s presence becomes a calming force for Martha and Jack as they rebuild themselves and their relationship after the loss of their child. Jack buys an Airstream trailer and makes plans with Martha to leave their life behind and go “streaming.” Jack loves it: “From a service manager’s point of view [Jack] had an appreciation for how everything was put together: no wasted space, easy to maintain, easy to fix. He marveled at its simplicity.” Meanwhile, Linda and Clare, still ravaged by loss, are both tempted by the freedom of a life apart from one another. With no wasted space yet plenty of emotion, the simplicity of Schabarum’s writing is a marvel.

Compact sentences brim with an appreciation for character and the lonely expanse of suburban life. The constantly shifting characters become inextricably linked in different ways, until they ultimately separate, finding freedom in loss and letting go.

A somber exploration of the confines of suburban life and the secrets that can sustain or suffocate.

TONY PARTLY CLOUDY Rollins, Nick Muscovy House (398 pp.) $0.99 e-book | Nov. 1, 2013

A popular meteorologist with a knack for accurate predictions clashes with gangsters in Rollins’ debut thriller.

As a boy, Tony Bartolicotti had a feeling for sudden shifts in the weather that was more reliable than weathermen’s forecasts. As a result, he headed to school for a meteorology degree, where his hard-to-pronounce surname earned him the nickname “Tony Partly Cloudy.” When Tony eventually finds himself in front of the TV cameras, his casual demeanor and strong Brooklyn accent make him a hit—but it’s his spot-on weather projections that pique bookies’ interest, and it’s not long before Las Vegas thugs come calling. Rollins’ novel at times defies genre expectations; for example, large sections focus solely on Tony’s budding career, including his time with the National Weather Service in Key West, Fla. But it often serves up a smart mix of calm and uneasiness, particularly in scenes involving members of the mob. Even the glad-handing “Uncle Jimmy” Carbone, who treats Tony like kin, is patently dangerous; when he leads a group of gangsters away on business and returns with one less man, it’s abundantly clear what happened. In one notable scene, which gets its own chapter, Jimmy talks to Tony’s boss, who refuses to let Tony audition for an on-air position; Jimmy somehow manages to sound both reasonable and intimidating— without ever making an actual threat. Tony does tend to perpetuate Italian-American stereotypes, particularly in his TV persona, in which he repeatedly says things like “bada bing” and “capisce”; however, this fact is acknowledged in the story and quite tellingly so: As Tony’s forecasts gain viewers, copycats inevitably follow, emphasizing ethnicity as if it were a novelty. Tony’s genuine love of the weather is endearing, although his frequent misunderstandings can be distracting (not to mention puzzling, as he’s a college graduate), such as when he uses the term “carrot catcher” instead of “caricature.”

A consistently engaging dramatic thriller.

NEGOTIATING THE SPEEDBUMPS Living with Traumatic Brain Injury Springer, Holly CreateSpace (128 pp.) $9.99 paper | $6.99 e-book Jan. 18, 2010 978-1-4392-7161-2

Springer (Hello Tomorrow, I’m Still Here!, 2009) presents a firsthand account of her struggles and triumphs after miraculously surviving a traumatic brain injury.

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life—her husband had committed suicide three years earlier— but felt capable of handling a normal routine. Without warning, however, she suffered a terrible aneurysm affecting a part of her brain responsible for many vital tasks, including maintaining balance and walking straight. Most people who suffer similar brain injuries don’t survive, but Springer awoke from a sevenweek coma with considerably less damage than expected. That said, the aneurysm didn’t leave her unscarred, and in this memoir, she discusses the many months of work she spent regaining some of her normal functions. However, her ability to concentrate remained impaired, and her sense of taste also deteriorated over time. Despite her hard struggle, she argues that her life is a gift from God—a belief that seems to allow her to press forward. But although Springer emphasizes the strength she draws from her faith, she doesn’t shy away from her recovery’s rough patches; at one point, for example, she even considered hiring a hit man to kill her. She describes her frustration at losing the ability to do something she loved—cooking—and how her knowledge of her blessings didn’t always provide her comfort.

These feelings of disappointment in the face of grace are universal and may help readers connect to her story on a deep, human level. Although she briefly touches on a few medical issues, particularly when discussing the severity of her injury, her explanations are straightforward enough for medical laymen to follow.

Overall, the book’s tone is personal and introspective, and her inspirational message isn’t clouded by any agenda.

A memoir that simply but effectively reminds readers of the good that can come out of unfortunate circumstances.

the easily flustered Miranda. Despite the novel’s increasingly outré events, Tanner keeps her characters firmly rooted, treating them as real people with real thoughts and motivations. As a result, the central characters emerge as complex, believable entities, no matter how odd things get around them, which makes every bit of both humor and pathos earned. Tonally, Tanner’s debut follows in the footsteps of Terry Pratchett’s warmly sympathetic humanism, and it keeps some darker characters from overwhelming the book’s generally positive worldview.

While some characters aren’t as fully expressed as others— Miranda’s friend Jaya, for example, is basically used as a plot device early on and then never mentioned again—Tanner does an admirable job of juggling characters, events and emotions, fitting them into a satisfyingly screwed-up story with crack timing and solid footing.

Engaging characters, an optimistic but balanced worldview, and confident comedic timing make for a wacky spiritual adventure.

LEO & I AND THE GHOST OF CÉZANNE A Memory of Art and Provence Weyman, William M. CreateSpace (180 pp.) $26.00 paper | Sep. 20, 2013 978-1-4825-5570-7

Weyman’s pleasant debut memoir celebrates the legacy of his artistic mentor, German painter and lithographer Leo Marchutz (1903–1976).

In 1972, Weyman and other acolytes of Marchutz helped open the Marchutz School of art education in Aix-en-Provence, France. In this book, the author offers a tribute to his former teacher. Marchutz received formal education only through age 13; an autodidact thereafter, he took inspiration from nature and museum artworks. Despite the artist’s Jewish background, half of his artistic subjects drew on New Testament imagery, and late in life, he confessed to being “Catholic at heart,” claiming that “without religion there is no art.” The book includes reproductions of Marchutz’s pencil sketches—ephemeral strokes depicting the Annunciation or Aix’s main street—as well as watercolor homages to the French artist Paul Cézanne.

Marchutz, the author writes, prized above all the “integrity of the whole”: balancing nature and art, tradition and modernity, individuality and universalism. In 1930, he settled in France,

THE VIRGIN OF HOPELESS CAUSES Tanner, Amy Manuscript (443 pp.)

Tanner’s charmingly daffy debut calls for a few odd detours in a road novel that’s part spiritual exegesis, part screwball comedy.

What do immortal presences, a hardened war correspondent, a fugitive head of state and a masseuse have to do with one another? Maybe nothing, maybe everything. Miranda Pepper, a lonely masseuse, has just been kicked out of her house by her ex-boyfriend. While driving around to try and clear her head, she gets into a fender bender and meets Clementine Campbell, a troubled but renowned war correspondent. Gripped by a compulsion to find her twin sister, whom she hasn’t seen in nearly 40 years, Clementine invites Miranda to go on a road trip to Tucson, Ariz., where Clementine thinks her sister may still live. What starts as a simple transcontinental excursion soon grows complicated, thanks to Miranda’s newfound and uncontrolled talent for public levitation and a revolving-door cast of strange characters and coincidences. Meanwhile, Kaspar Gorski, voted handsomest man in Warsaw and the president of Poland, leaves his office and makes his way to America, haunted by dreams of his Madonna, 122

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This Issue’s Contributors # Alana Abbott • Paul Allen • Kent Armstrong • Allie Bochicchio • Charles Cassady • Steve Donoghue • Tom Eubanks • Jameson Fitzpatrick • Rebecca Foster • Eric F. Frazier • Justin Hickey • Ivan Kenneally • Caitlynn Lowe • Thomas McGinley • Ashley Nelson • Brandon Nolta • Jon C. Pope • Sarah Rettger • Ken Salikof • Benjamin Samuel • Nomi Schwartz Jerome Shea • Lucy Silberman • Sarah Smith

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in a house that had often been a subject of Cézanne’s paintings; he hid from the Nazis in its henhouse. He later used his expertise to help the police recover some stolen Cézannes.

When Atlanta native Weyman arrived in Aix in 1961 for his junior year of college abroad, Marchutz became his teacher and surrogate father, imparting his love for Cézanne and his doctrines of artistic integrity in weekly feedback sessions. Living in rural France required some adjustment, Weyman writes, but he enjoyed exploring local scenery and engaging in art tourism in Paris and Italy. He eventually became Marchutz’s assistant and one evening saw a “phantasmagoric image” of Cézanne at Marchutz’s house, which he took as confirmation of his artistic vocation. Long after Cézanne’s and Marchutz’s deaths, their spirits remained influential; indeed, Weyman at times describes Marchutz as almost a Jesus-like guru, once referring to a student as a “convert to Leo.” Marchutz, he writes, taught that true originality flowed when the artist, Zen-like, put aside the self while searching for light. This book makes clear that that light and transcendence infused his paintings and his life and could not fail to influence his students. His was an ignoble, unceremonious end (reflected in this book’s abrupt ending), but Weyman offers a belated, engaging eulogy.

A touching, atmospheric painter’s tribute.

she writes: “Off portside, she lay sideways as if riding a jet wind broom; her head oddly crowned by dim moonlight.” Alongside photos and diagrams of the Edmund Fitzgerald, these glimpses of beauty amid chaos characterize the novel’s first half. In the second half, when Caw Caw meets the hockey team, humor lightens the tone: “[S]hopping was their first sport,” and they “were masters of ransacking shop after shop, their scoring-system seemed to rack up points for collecting the best sale items.”

Unfortunately, much of Whitmer’s prose suffers from an overuse of commas—e.g., “The captain leaned, on the top railing, and called down”—often making for stilted reading. But her knack for poetic imagery more than compensates.

A treat for both history and nature lovers.

CHIPPEWA CAW CAW Ojibwe Mazitaagozi Whitmer, Elizabeth iUniverse (198 pp.) $14.95 paper | $3.99 e-book Nov. 13, 2012 978-1-4759-5135-6

A crow escapes the famous sinking of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald, and lyrical adventure follows.

In 1975, the SS Edmund Fitzgerald left port in Wisconsin, carrying pellets of iron ore in its 730-footlong hull. It sailed across Lake Superior, headed for Michigan under the supervision of Capt. Ernest M. McSorley, aka the “Bad Weather Captain.” Fatefully, a storm called the Witch of November rose from the Gulf of Mexico. Tearing across the country, it eventually hit the Great Lakes, slamming the Edmund Fitzgerald with rogue waves that knocked out its radar and breached its hull. While trying to reach the safety of nearby Whitefish Point (with radio help from fellow ship the Anderson), the “Mighty Fitz” sank with no human survivors. In this telling, however, Caw Caw the crow escaped his cage in the cabin and flew to Miner’s Beach, on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. There, having also rescued a small cat from the ship’s deck, his adventures begin. He eventually reaches Traverse Bay, where he meets more interesting animals and even a women’s hockey team.

Sadly, everything reminds Caw Caw of the Native American man who once placed the gifts of an arrowhead and a teddy bear in his cage. Is there any hope of reuniting with this old friend?

Author Whitmer (Aloha Rainbow, 2006) answers the question with engaging lyricism. Describing the Witch of November,

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