May 15, 2014: Volume LXXXII, No 10

Featuring 320 Industry-First Reviews of Fiction, Nonfiction and Children's & Teen

KIRKUS VOL. LXXXII, NO.

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REVIEWS

The thing about caring for her aging parents that most surprised Roz Chast was everything. We ask her about her funny, heartrending memoir Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? p. 58

contents fiction Index to Starred Reviews............................................................3 REVIEWS.................................................................................................3 Kaui Hart Hemmings’ Possibilities.........................................14

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

Mystery.............................................................................................. 31 Science Fiction & Fantasy.......................................................... 37 Romance............................................................................................38

nonfiction Index to Starred Reviews..........................................................41 REVIEWS...............................................................................................41 Roz Chast and her aging parents.........................................58

children’s & teen Index to Starred Reviews......................................................... 85 REVIEWS.............................................................................................. 85 Why be likable? We ask E. Lockhart.................................. 104 interactive e-books.................................................................. 120 continuing series.......................................................................123

indie Index to Starred Reviews.........................................................125 REVIEWS..............................................................................................125 Racial justice educator Debby Irving............................... 134 Appreciations: Stephen King’s Carrie................................ 145

A surreal puzzle of a book from the Netherlands challenges both protagonist and readers with layers of mystery. Read the review on p. 100.

fiction THE FEVER

These titles earned the Kirkus Star:

Abbott, Megan Little, Brown (320 pp.) $26.00 | $12.99 e-book | Jun. 17, 2014 978-0-316-23105-3 978-0-316-23102-2 e-book

THE FEVER by Megan Abbott................................................................3 NIGHT HERON by Adam Brookes.........................................................5 O, AFRICA! by Andrew Lewis Conn.................................................... 6 STORMBIRD by Conn Iggulden............................................................16 THE SLEEPWALKER’S GUIDE TO DANCING by Mira Jacob........... 17 AGOSTINO by Alberto Moravia; trans. by Michael F. Moore............22 THE ANTIQUARIAN by Gustavo Faverón Patriau; trans. by Joseph Mulligan.................................................................... 24 LAND OF LOVE AND DROWNING by Tiphanie Yanique................. 29 DEFENDERS by Will McIntosh...........................................................38 SHIELD OF WINTER by Nalini Singh................................................ 40

LAND OF LOVE AND DROWNING

Yanique, Tiphanie Riverhead (368 pp.) $27.95 Jul. 10, 2014 978-1-59448-833-7

The lives of teenage girls are dangerous, beautiful things in Abbott’s (Dare Me, 2012, etc.) stunning seventh novel.

At Dryden High School, 16-year-old Deenie Nash and her best friends Lise Daniels and Gabby Bishop are an inseparable trio. The daughter of Tom, a popular teacher, and younger sister of hockey star Eli, Deenie radiates the typical teenage mixture of confidence and vulnerability. When Lise suffers an unexplained and violent seizure in the middle of class, no one is quite sure how to react.

Until another girl and then another exhibit the same symptoms.

The rumors seem to spread as fast as the mysterious affliction, which is blamed on everything from a rotten batch of vaccine to female hysteria. Abbott expertly withholds just enough information to slowly ratchet up the suspense until the reader is as breathless as Deenie at the arrival of each new text message or cryptic phone call and the school vibrates with half-formed theories and speculations. Finding herself becoming slowly more isolated with each incident, Deenie must not only sort through the infinitely complex social and emotional issues ignited by the events—she’s also dealing with her first clumsy sexual experience—but also the very real fear that something in the town is causing the fits, and it’s only a matter of time before she’s next.

Nothing should be taken at face value in this jealousyand hormone-soaked world except that Abbott is certainly our very best guide.

THE GARDEN OF BURNING SAND

Addison, Corban Quercus (400 pp.) $26.99 | May 6, 2014 978-1-62365-129-9

In Zambia, Kuyeya—a teenage girl with Down syndrome—is raped, and American human rights lawyer Zoe Fleming dedicates herself to finding the attacker and bringing him to justice.

Zoe was sexually assaulted as a teenager herself, by the son of a crony of her father, Jack Fleming, now a senator seeking |

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the nomination for president. She inherited a love of Africa from her late mother. Because Kuyeya’s attacker is the son of a former cabinet minister, Zoe and her fellow attorneys must get past all manner of obstacles orchestrated by the corrupt system in order to pursue their case. The closer Zoe gets to the girl, whose trauma she eases by playing Johnny Cash songs, the more driven and fearless she becomes. Her investigation reveals complicated ties between the attacker’s family and that of Kuyeya, whose mother was a prostitute who died of AIDS. Zoe also becomes close to the local police investigator—who has his own secret to conceal. The novel is part mystery, part courtroom drama, part family saga and part political polemic—in boldly opposing her father’s plan to cut AIDS funding for Africa, Zoe stands to hurt his campaign—while managing to form a cohesive whole. Addison is out of his element with the thug who threatens Zoe—a hulking stock character the author ultimately doesn’t know what to do with—but that’s the only false note.

Addison’s second novel (A Walk Across the Sun, 2013) is both an affecting tale of a tragically abused girl and a convincing plea for humanitarian support in Africa. (Author tour to Boston, New York, Washington, D.C., Minneapolis/St. Paul, New Orleans, Denver, Los Angeles, Portland and Seattle)

THE TEMPORARY GENTLEMAN

Barry, Sebastian Viking (320 pp.) $26.95 | May 1, 2014 978-0-670-02587-9

Pensive, quietly lyrical novel by Irish writer Barry (On Canaan’s Side, 2011, etc.), the sixth in a series of books whose stories are separate yet connected.

Jack McNulty, the “temporary gentleman” of the title—that is, an Irishman made into an Englishman in order to serve the crown as an officer—hasn’t had it easy. He’s been torpedoed off the coast of West Africa during World War II, been made wiser and infinitely sadder in love, and now, tucked away in a relatively quiet corner of riotous Ghana in the time when colonial is verging on post-colonial, is steadily inebriating himself (“Into the small hours we drank the palm wine”) into obliviousness. As with the consul in Under the Volcano, drunk gringos do not usually fare well in the tropics. This much we know, and we can foresee the consequences, but the strongest part of Barry’s tale is in its visitation of the past, when McNulty falls deeply in love with Mai Kirwan, the rose of Sligo. There, Barry falls into Joycean reveries: “And what I see is an essence which is in itself solo and isolated, but still a woman replete, laden with gifts, musical, athletic, clever as a general, and seems to sit before me, even now, when she is gone, gone for ever, as real as though I could reach forward and touch her, so powerful, so completely present, and so lovely.” Indeed. But why is Mai gone, and why is Jack in near exile at an outpost on the River Volta? Therein hangs Barry’s tale, and though one romantically inclined might accuse him of a cynical attitude toward love, Jack’s actions certainly remind 4

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us that a relationship that begins with good intentions so often deteriorates into the idly contemptuous—especially when copious amounts of alcohol are involved.

Grim, even cautionary, from first to last. But, for all that, a beautifully written story of a love lost, and inevitably so.

THE VISITORS

Beauman, Sally Harper/HarperCollins (544 pp.) $27.99 | Jul. 1, 2014 978-0-06-230268-7 This historical novel approaches, slantwise and at considerable length, the 20th century’s most sensational archaeological event.

The most obvious way to fictionalize the 1922 discovery of King Tutankhamen’s tomb would be to have the major players tell the tale—Howard Carter, principal archaeologist, and his financier and mentor, Lord Carnarvon (resident earl of Highclere Castle, of Downton Abbey fame). Beauman’s (The Sisters Mortland, 2006, etc.) more original approach—have a character at the margins carry the narrative weight—is riskier. The narrator, Lucy, is 11 when she first arrives in Egypt after the untimely death of her mother. Her trip is financed by her wealthy American maternal grandparents, since her widowed father, a Cambridge classics don, cannot cope with a child. Through a new friend, Frances, whose parents are archaeologists, Lucy hovers on the fringes of the dig, which includes the irascible, hard-drinking Carter; the affable, high-minded Lord Carnarvon; and their entourage of scientists, curators, wives and lovers. Abetted by Lucy’s snoopy spinster guardian, Miss Mack, the girls hone their eavesdropping skills on the scandals surrounding glamorous divorcée Poppy, one of the hangers-on. Forced to return to the gloomy home of her father, Lucy is schooled in the art of manipulation by her conniving governess, Nicola, soon to be her stepmother.

Then Lucy escapes back to Egypt just as Lord Carnarvon and Carter reveal their find, exceptional not merely for the magnitude of its treasure, but for the fact that the tomb has remained, through three millennia, virtually unmolested by looters. The ensuing “Tutmania” has unintended consequences for both men. Lucy’s juvenile point of view is interspersed with the retrospective musings of nonagenarian Lucy, as a documentary filmmaker pesters her to divulge the untold story of the Tut dig.

Since the main event is recounted mostly through hearsay, Lucy and her fellow supernumeraries have to be interesting in their own rights for this novel to succeed, and perhaps by dint of the sheer number of pages they occupy, they almost are.

There are riches here, but it takes patience to unearth them.

“One of the best and most compulsively readable spy-fiction debuts in years.” from night heron

THE SYMMETRY TEACHER

Bitov, Andrei Translated by Gannon, Polly Farrar, Straus and Giroux (320 pp.) $26.00 | Jul. 8, 2014 978-0-374-27351-4 A postmodern novel of dizzying intricacy.

Bitov plays mind games of all sorts with his readers—he includes puns, excerpts from made-up novels, false footnotes and comments on nonexistent manuscripts. The book’s subtitle is “A Novel-Echo,” and from the title page, Bitov moves immediately into a second title page for The Teacher of Symmetry, a novel supposedly published in 1937 and written by A. Tired-Boffin. But wait…in an introductory note, Bitov talks about how this obscure novel had played an important role in his life and how he’d labored to translate it into Russian, so The Symmetry Teacher becomes an elaboration of Tired-Boffin’s novel…which is about an author named Urbino Vanoski, who’s written several books, excerpts of which appear in Bitov’s novel—with commentary by Tired-Boffin. Among the most amusing “excerpts” is “The End of the Sentence,” supposedly from Vanoski’s A Fly on a Ship. Here, we meet his narrator, Anton (are we not now at three or four removes from reality?), Tishkin (a “bombist” or terrorist), and Tishkin’s lover, Manya—and yes, the pun on “mania” is intended.

Throughout the novel (Bitov’s? Tired-Boffin’s? Vanoski’s?), we find literary jokes such as the following epigraph: “The end of the sentence must be marked by a period.—A rule of punctuation.”

In addition, one entire chapter is an excerpt from a poem by Ris Vokonabi, yet another fictional creation, and another chapter, “Posthumous Notes of the Tristram Club,” echoes both Dickens and Tristram Shandy.

While Bitov’s intelligence and gift for intellectual play are never in doubt, the novel hits the head rather than the heart.

FURTHER JOY

Brandon, John McSweeney’s (208 pp.) $24.00 | Jun. 10, 2014 978-1-938073-94-6 Following three novels (A Million Heavens, 2012, etc.), Brandon offers his first story collection: 11 offbeat, openended tales in which unmoored people make impulsive decisions.

“Palatka” is representative. Pauline and Mal are neighbors in a ratty rental building. The 17-year-old Mal dates recklessly, and the somewhat older Pauline feels a motherly concern, especially when Mal goes missing. But here’s the twist: Envying Mal’s free spirit, Pauline suddenly emulates it with a questionable bar pickup, leaving us in enjoyable suspense. Even more captivating is “The Picnickers.” Kim is visiting Rita in Chicago for a week. They’re old

friends, mid-30s, but when Rita organizes a group of women to visit an outlet mall, Kim, who’s single, prefers a field trip with Franklin, Rita’s teenage son. Franklin is a supersmart loner, and the two hit it off; he drives them to an actual field, Kim faint with desire, which is inappropriate perhaps but feels wonderful. Stories that don’t quite work are “The Midnight Gales” and “The Differing Views,” both of which dabble in the surreal. In the former, members of a community are randomly abducted; in the latter, a guy in a condo, devastated after a breakup, sees seven human brains on the floor, presumably projections of his angst. What to do? Brandon seems at a loss about how to make use of those brains. He’s at the top of his game with “The Inland News,” taking a familiar storyline (police chief uses psychic to solve murder) and beautifully rearranging it. Sofia, done with college, lives with her adoptive uncle Tunsil, a kindly cop. Sofia has psychic powers, and to help her handle them, Tunsil arranges supervised interviews with suspects in a murder case. Sofia “sees” the murder, but that’s far from the end, as Brandon embeds the extraordinary in an otherwise ordinary life.

An impressive collection, cleareyed and penetrating.

NIGHT HERON

Brookes, Adam Redhook/Orbit (352 pp.) $26.00 | May 27, 2014 978-0-316-39983-8 Against all odds, Prisoner 5995—a former professor wrongly convicted of murder—escapes a high security Chinese facility after 20 torturous years. Having concocted a plan to flee China and establish a new identity, he finds an unlikely ally in Mangan, a veteran British journalist based in Beijing.

In his former life, the escapee was employed by British intelligence under the code name Peanut. After he finds a place to lay low and recover from the physical abuse he suffered at the prison camp, he tracks down a one-time fellow academic and spy who is now a well-off military researcher; he forces his old colleague to make copies of secret documents by threatening to expose his past—and by beating him to a pulp. When he hears about Mangan, a famous British reporter who lives in the area, Peanut passes the documents to him and asks that Mangan give them to his contacts in the British Embassy. Though he thrives on danger, the last thing Mangan wants is hot papers in his possession; he’s already under close scrutiny by state security for a story he wrote on a cult after sneaking into the blockaded town it was occupying. After Mangan is talked into working for British intelligence, all manner of reversals, betrayals, arrests and killings have him and Peanut running for their lives. Brookes, a one-time China correspondent for the BBC, knows this turf exceedingly well and translates that knowledge into a novel that is as strikingly different as it is thrilling. In hinting at China’s capabilities as a cyberenemy, the author may be giving us a clue about the subject of his next novel. One can’t wait to read it.

One of the best and most compulsively readable spyfiction debuts in years. |

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“A wildly ambitious and entertaining novel that manages to be both slapstick and deeply tragic.” from o, africa!

THE MIGHTY JESTER

Chamberlain, Mary Dr. Cicero Books (318 pp.) $15.00 paper | Jun. 7, 2014 978-0-615-94020-5

Here’s a Caribbean murder melodrama, written by a British historian who specializes in that area.

It’s the 1980s on an invented island, 20 years after it gained independence from the British; unfortunately, the island is so generic we might be on the moon. Chamberlain uses broad strokes to paint a majority black population and a white minority of former plantation owners and indentured laborers. Two women are her alternating narrators. Vanessa Francklyn’s family has lived on the island for generations, and she has inherited a sugar plantation. Susie Howard is a British expatriate, an anthropology lecturer at the university (though we never see her on campus). In her mid-30s, Vanessa marries Cammy Turner, a white man who grew up poor but is now the richest man on the island thanks to his construction business. Susie has an affair with the Afro-Caribbean David Springer, poet, novelist and calypso singer, the eponymous Mighty Jester; his anti-establishment calypsos have won him a large following. David is married to Lucinda, an artist and rising star, whose patron and lover is Cammy Turner.

This is way too schematic. It’s also troubling that the narrators’ voices sound the same, though the women are polar opposites.

Cammy turns into an abusive husband; Vanessa, a doormat wife.

David is an attentive lover but low-key and passive, not protagonist material. Cammy is shot to death as a crime wave engulfs the island. There’s a big fat clue as to the killer’s identity, squelching the suspense. Still, we climb the “ladder of escalation.” David is scapegoated, arrested, tried in secret and sentenced to death.

A frantic Susie flies to England and enlists legal help. Both narrators are now close to hysteria: Vanessa’s the victim of panic attacks, Susie’s the almost-victim of a strangler.

“What an awful, ghastly, wicked world,” says Susie. A hyperbolic one, too.

O, AFRICA!

Conn, Andrew Lewis Hogarth/Crown (384 pp.) $25.00 | Jun. 10, 2014 978-0-8041-3828-4 A wildly ambitious and entertaining novel that manages to be both slapstick and deeply tragic.

A lot is about to change in the summer of 1928 for moviemaking brothers Micah and Izzy Grand. The silent comedy in which they specialize is giving way to talkies, which the brothers and their financially beleaguered producer believe is a passing fad. The Roaring ’20s have loosened a lot of moral strictures, including race mixing, though racism remains as 6

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rampant in America as apple pie and baseball (Babe Ruth makes an early cameo in the novel and in the movie the Grand brothers are making). And the spirit of Manifest Destiny is soaring through both the fledgling movie industry and the country at large, where the cultural axis has begun to shift from East to West. Though Micah and Izzy are twin sons of Jewish immigrants, in some ways they could hardly be less alike. Micah is impulsive and insatiable; Izzy is repressed.

Micah is the director who works on the fly; Izzy is the technician and cameraman who brings his brother’s vision to life on the screen. Through an unlikely combination of circumstances (plausibility isn’t a major concern here)—including Micah’s gambling debt, his love affair with the beautiful (and black) Rose and his producer’s financial woes—the film company heads to Africa to work on multiple projects, including one on the rise of slavery (co-written by black gangsters, as payback for Micah’s debt), that will provide counterpoint to Birth of a Nation. “Here they were, a gallery of misfits—a black kid, a Jew fairy, and a circus freak—halfway around the world, pulling levers on the American culture machine,” writes Conn (P., 2003). The trip profoundly affects both brothers—Izzy in particular—and the Africans they encounter, for if you “[p] oint a camera at something, you change it.” As a tale of two continents during a period of significant upheaval, this audacious novel encompasses not merely the essence of America and the art of moviemaking, but the nature of time.

To bring this full circle, maybe the Coen brothers could adapt the vision of the Grand brothers for the big screen.

GHOST SHIP

Cussler, Clive; Brown, Graham Putnam (416 pp.) $28.95 | May 27, 2014 978-0-399-16731-7 Kurt Austin and his National Underwater Marine Agency team save the world yet again, this time from a criminal family that’s been hijacking the innocent and taking hostages for four generations.

Commandeered off the coast of South Africa by Gavin Brèvard and a gang of criminals who’d booked passage with counterfeit currency, the SS Waratah vanished without a trace in 1909. A century later, the Brèvard family is still at it. Brothers Sebastian, Egan and Laurent, along with their kid sister, Calista, have kidnapped Sienna Westgate and her two children and intend to sell her services to the highest bidder—assuming they can recover her from Rene Acosta, their double-crossing former client. The Brèvards’ racket is much more high-end than sexual slavery, for Sienna, architect of the legendary Phalanx security software, is one of the most sought-after computer experts in the world. Nothing could stop their nefarious scheme save for the fact that Sienna is the onetime fiancee of Kurt Austin, who lost her to Internet billionaire Brian Westgate. Sienna and her kids were supposedly lost at sea when Westgate’s yacht, Ethernet, sank, but mounting evidence

shows that she’s no more dead than the SS Waratah, which never sank at all. Kurt’s initial encounter with fire-breathing Calista Brèvard as they battle over Sienna, who’s being held on Acosta’s yacht, ends inconclusively. So Acosta packs Sienna off to Korean street criminal–turned-industrialist Than Rang, head of the DaeShan Group, and the action—there’s plenty of action— shifts from the African coast to the Korean peninsula, where Kurt, his buddy Joe Zavala and their NUMA stalwarts dodge everything the Brèvards can throw at them as they struggle to free Sienna before the world’s computer systems all go kablooey.

Once more, Cussler and Brown (Zero Hour, 2013, etc.) paint with such broad strokes that Kurt’s adventures aren’t so much written as whitewashed.

OCTOPUS SUMMER

Dorson, Malcolm Soft Skull Press (256 pp.) $15.95 paper | Jul. 15, 2014 978-1-61902-298-0 An immature and spoiled prep school student vacillates between the Manhattan club scene and the cocktail soirees of the Long Island elite during one long, bad summer.

This odd duck of a teenage dramedy by banking analyst/debut novelist Dorson draws on his own experience at a similarly preppy academy. The novel’s protagonist is Callum Littlefield, a preening little snot who believes he’s a big fish in the small pond of his boarding school in the Berkshires. We meet him in the midst of his fall from grace, as he’s first reprimanded for underage drinking and then expelled for dealing ditch weed to his smarmy classmates. Virtually abandoned by his emotionally distant father and Xanax-addled mother, Callum is sentenced

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to spend the summer working at the estate of his equally bizarre grandmother, whom everyone calls “Octopus” for her various leisure activities. There are strange interludes about a mentally ill servant who believes Callum has brought a curse down upon his family, and they don’t really interface well with the drug- and alcohol-fueled adventures that form the core narrative. To create an excuse to get back to the city, Callum joins a creative writing group to which he actually starts applying himself. However, the majority of the book concerns his roving internal monologue in the timeless teenage pursuit of getting high and/or laid. The story tries to give Callum an arc of reversal—there is of course a girl, Layla Semmering, who inspires him to try to be a better guy. Unfortunately, Layla doesn’t have much personality, and a startling denouement is manipulative—a naïve and simultaneously callous trick to pull the rug out from under readers in a novel that doesn’t have that much to recommend it in the first place.

An unnecessary contribution to the growing genre of douche-bag lit.

SO MUCH A PART OF YOU

Dugan, Polly Little, Brown (240 pp.) $25.00 | $12.99 e-book | Jun. 10, 2014 978-0-316-32032-0 978-0-316-32030-6 e-book A debut collection that could practically pass for a novel; almost all the stories feature members of a single family through three generations, focusing on Anna Riley as she grows from childhood equestrienne to wife and mother.

In the opening story, “The Third Rail,” John Riley is the 12-year-old son of an abusive, alcoholic father in the midst of the Depression. By the second tale, “A Matter of Time,” it’s the mid1970s, and John has become the alcoholic father of 10-year-old Anna; the stories continue chronologically, focusing on Anna (and occasionally her troubled relationship with her father) as she navigates adolescence, love, marriage, motherhood and life “as a middle-aged orphan.” But Anna is not the main character in every story; some feature the college days of Peter, who will become her husband, and his doomed romance with Anne, who will eventually form a close friendship with the initially wary Anna. There are complications involving abortions and all sorts of deaths—pets, babies, parents—causing Anna to muse, somewhat heavy-handedly, that “life is too hard sometimes, but life is all there is.” Yet subtlety of characterization is often the writer’s strength, as her stories move through the conventional details of domesticity to panic attacks and “uncharted insanity,” showing the fragility beneath even the most stable lives. Though some of these stories work fine on their own, most benefit from the context provided by the others, the development of character and the complexities of relationships from one to the next.

Not surprisingly, Dugan is at work on a novel, which readers will eagerly anticipate after reading this promising collection.

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THE ART OF ADAPTING

Dunn, Cassandra Touchstone/Simon & Schuster (368 pp.) $25.00 | Jul. 29, 2014 978-1-4767-6160-2 Dunn’s debut novel treats readers to a family in transition—in other words, a taste of real life, plain and simple.

Lana, recently separated from her husband, struggles to adapt to life after being under his controlling thumb for nearly two decades. Being in charge of herself, her two teens—Byron and Abby—and her younger brother, Matt, who has Asperger’s syndrome, forces Lana to reassess her approach to life by forgiving the past and trusting again to find new happiness. The characterdriven story knits together the varied ways each family member suffers and shows their attempts, often dysfunctional, to alleviate the pain. Dunn gives each of the four main characters a voice in alternating chapters, an approach that allows a touch of insight into all but deprives readers of the full force of any one personality and also gives a “young adult” feel to the story—three of the four characters are young. Adult readers may wish for more of Lana and a deeper exploration of her problems. Nevertheless, each character is appealing and will hold readers’ interest. Dunn explores dating after divorce, Asperger’s syndrome, anorexia, teen bullying and more, but again, by crowding so many issues into one novel, she dissipates the effect of each, somewhat simplifying the sufferers’ struggles. Problems resolve quickly and loose ends are neatly tied— perhaps a nod to Dunn’s short story background—but readers will gain a greater awareness of the complexity of such problems and the many struggles a broken marriage creates for families.

A neatly wrapped, happily-ever-after tale of a broken family that survives and thrives.

YOUR FATHERS, WHERE ARE THEY? AND THE PROPHETS, DO THEY LIVE FOREVER? Eggers, Dave Knopf (208 pp.) $25.95 | Jun. 17, 2014 978-0-101-87419-6

A man takes a bunch of hostages for the sake of some robust, moderately unhinged conversation about ethics in Eggers’ latest big-issue novel.

With A Hologram for the King (2012), Eggers began diligently feeling his way toward a form for a moral novel that would address 21stcentury economics and politics. The results have been hit or miss: Hologram was an impressive Hemingway-esque study of the alienation that rapid high-tech expansion sows, while The Circle (2013) was a sodden and didactic jeremiad about social media’s capacity to chisel away at our privacy. His new novel is similarly message-laden but, since it’s brief and told exclusively in dialogue, doesn’t wear out its welcome. Thomas, the novel’s antihero, has kidnapped a number

of people and shackled them in separate buildings on a decommissioned California Army base; among them are an astronaut he knew in college, a Vietnam-vet congressman, a grade school teacher, his mother and a police officer. Thomas is clearly unstable, but the discussions that spill out address legitimate real-world concerns.

Why are governments more adept at financing war than education?

Where is the line between inappropriate and criminal behavior, and who decides? How much of our capacity to navigate the world is predetermined, and how much of it is a function of experience?

The deliberately unrealistic structure carries the faint echo of Plato’s dialogues, though Eggers is careful to keep the tone relatively casual.

(Like many fictional madmen, Thomas is frightening, but he holds your attention.) Over the course of the handful of days the novel covers, Thomas becomes more delusional, but also more revealing of a critical incident in this life, which gives the closing pages some needed drama while raising questions about the appropriate relationship between authority and compassion.

Eggers turns this novel’s contrivances into an asset, though overall it feels more like a series of philosophy-symposium prompts than a full-fledged story.

A REPLACEMENT LIFE

Fishman, Boris Harper/HarperCollins (336 pp.) $25.99 | Jun. 3, 2014 978-0-06-228787-8 An ambitious young writer compromises his integrity for the sake of his Russian forebears in Fishman’s darkly comic, world-wise debut.

Slava, the hero of this tale, toils as a relatively anonymous researcher at Century, an esteemed New Yorker-style magazine. Though he’s a gifted storyteller, he’s relegated to writing snarky retorts to flyover-country news briefs. His hubristic ambition to write bigger things is seized upon by his grandfather, who wants him to write a narrative for an application to receive reparations from Germany for death-camp survivors. The grandfather wasn’t actually in the camps, but no matter: Slava is masterful at giving (and withholding) just enough detail to be persuasive, and soon,

WALKING ON WATER

Evans, Richard Paul Simon & Schuster (320 pp.) $19.99 | May 6, 2014 978-1-4516-2831-9

The fifth volume in the Walk series brings it to a pedestrian close.

Followers of the series know that Alan Christoffersen is walking across America to mend his broken heart after his wife’s death. Starting in Seattle, his goal is Key West. When he reaches Jacksonville, Florida, news arrives of a dire family emergency, so he flies home to deal with it. Afterward, he returns to his walk, during which he mulls over the meaning of life and occasionally trades wisdom with strangers.

One of them says Christoffersen is “like most of humanity, looking for something that’s ultimately not worth finding.” But Christoffersen disagrees. He’s looking for hope. This last leg of his journey is about 500 miles of straight line, which pretty much describes the plot. Every day he walks 20 miles, give or take a few, and every day he says what he eats and whom he meets. Fine. This is a journal, after all. But there are no surprises, mysteries, twists, setbacks or disasters except for the one beginning the tale. He deeply misses his wife, of course, and is now in love with a woman he’s never kissed and who’s engaged to marry another man. Meanwhile, he claims to be “not wired for celibacy,” yet he calmly rebuffs the advances of two lusty sirens in a bar without even reporting a tingle below the belt. From his journal entries, Christoffersen appears to be a man without fault.

No, he doesn’t compare himself to Jesus, but the metaphor is clear.

After a rain, he realizes he’s “walking on water,” but it’s no Sea of Galilee. Anyone can walk on water this shallow.

Readers of the first four volumes will enjoy this conclusion. Others who are interested should read these feel-good books in sequence, starting with The Walk. (Agent: Laurie Liss) |

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“As usual, Furst manages to hold the reader’s rapt attention without blood-and-guts action.” from midnight in europe

much of the post-Soviet Jewish diaspora in Brooklyn is asking for similar assistance. Instead of making a dour morality tale, Fishman mines this setup for comedy, satirizing the magazine’s preaching about accuracy (which proves to be conditional) and portraying Slava as an easily led intellectual schlemiel. Bolstering his indecisive character, Fishman has Slava juggling two romantic interests, one a Century fact checker, the other a fellow Russian. How to make such an uncertain man worth spending time with? The novel is largely carried on Fishman’s sharp wit, ear for dialect and close character studies, which capture the sociological nuances of everyone from preening magazine editors to doting relatives. (He writes of Brooklyn’s Soviet expat community: “These unlike people had been tossed together like salad by the cupidity of the Soviet government, and now, in America, they were forced to keep speaking Russian…and they did, because a Ukrainian’s hate of Russian was still warmer than his love of an American.” Slava’s romantic and professional reckonings in the closing pages are inevitable, but Fishman thoughtfully raises questions of what Holocaust-era suffering is deserving of recompense.

A smart first novel that’s unafraid to find humor in atrocity.

If Not For

IF NOT FOR THIS

Fromm, Pete Red Hen Press (240 pp.) $15.95 paper | Aug. 5, 2014 978-1-59709-538-9

This

Battling multiple sclerosis? Make a baby.

That’s not an American Medical Association advisory but the strategy of a young couple coping as best they can in Fromm’s Pete Fromm third novel. Maddy has a rule: Boyfriends must be 10 years older than her 22-year-old self. Troy fits, and she’s comfortable with him, but then the rule goes out the window, along with the unfortunate Troy. Maddy’s job is rowing tourists on rafts down Wyoming rivers. At a party, she meets another boater her age, Dalton, and is overwhelmed. They’re married at dawn on a riverbank, the perfect setting for outdoorsy people with a dash of hippie, and from the start, their goal is to make babies. Life doesn’t cooperate: They lose their cheap housing in their beloved valley and eventually give up rafting. They move to a town in Oregon, where Dalt becomes a carpenter. It’s five years before Maddy conceives, and her pregnancy coincides with the diagnosis of MS. The birth of their son, Atty, goes off without a hitch, though it happens between chapters and is not described. In a novel that’s centered on the body, it’s perverse of Fromm to omit childbirth. Still crazy in love, Dalt and Maddy must decide whether to have another child. Maddy has reasonable objections, which the strong-willed Dalt discounts: They will beat the odds. Their daughter, Izzy, is born (again, offstage), but Maddy’s breast-feeding is interrupted by a violent tremor. Her condition deteriorates. She must use a wheelchair. Dalt throws himself into his work; at home, he hovers anxiously. At some point, he crosses the line from loving to uxorious. As Maddy says, “He 10

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cares about me. Too much. He always has.” She fluctuates between stoicism and self-pity; bottom line, a character who was dull and healthy becomes one who’s dull and disabled. The kids stay mostly at the margins.

It’s not easy to convey the reality of suffering while somehow transmuting it, and it’s no disgrace that Fromm should have fallen short.

MIDNIGHT IN EUROPE

Furst, Alan Random House (272 pp.) $27.00 | $13.99 e-book | Jun. 10, 2014 978-1-4000-6949-1 978-0-679-60423-5 e-book Another tense drama of pre–World War II Europe from a master of the period.

December 1937. Attorney Cristián Ferrar is a Spaniard working in Paris and New York. Civil war rages in his native country, and he fears deeply that Francisco Franco’s fascists— the Nationalists—will win. On the other side are the Republicans, who are communists and other loyalists supported by Stalin’s Soviet Union. It is in many ways a proxy war between Hitler and Stalin and a precursor to world war. Spies are everywhere, perhaps even in the hero’s bed. “For the secret services of Germany, Italy and the USSR, the civil war was a spymaster’s dream,” Furst writes. He portrays Europe with masterful foreboding, a mood that paints the continent in shades of gray. On both sides, people disappear at the slightest suspicion of treason. Ferrar wants to help the Republicans before all is lost, but how? Messerschmidts supplied by Hitler continually divebomb and slaughter the Republican troops. Almost no country wants to help them—not the United States, not Britain, not France.

Italy, of course, is under fascist control. What about the Soviet Union? Can Ferrar and his friend de Lyon buy anti-aircraft munitions from the Soviets? No, not officially. Stalin knows he will eventually need them. But perhaps with the right connections, Ferrar can relieve an Odessa warehouse of the needed materiel and sail it successfully to Valencia. It is an act of bravery and desperation that even with the best outcome won’t tip the balance, but Ferrar doesn’t know that. As usual, Furst manages to hold the reader’s rapt attention without blood-and-guts action.

Furst owns the dark blanket that covers Europe between the two world wars. His latest is a satisfying, thought-provoking read.

TELL ME ONE THING Stories

Goldstone, Deena Talese/Doubleday (272 pp.) $24.95 | Apr. 22, 2014 978-0-385-53875-6

In screenwriter Goldstone’s fiction debut, eight stories—some connected— portray characters struggling with loss, forgiveness and the complexity of human relationships.

In the title story, 5-year-old Maggie stops speaking after her mother, Lucia, spirits her away from her beloved father, Richard, one summer morning. In “Get Your Dead Man’s Clothes,” Jamie O’Connor attends his abusive father’s funeral and examines how a lifetime of violence shaped the O’Connor children.

In “Irish Twins” and “Aftermath,” the arrival of Jamie’s sister with her own tales of woe prompts him to grudgingly reflect on the solitary life he’s built for himself, as far from home as

possible. The drama among the O’Connors is loud but wraps up quickly and a little too neatly. “Sweet Peas,” “What We Give” and “The Neighbor” focus on Trudy, whose husband of 32 years, Brian, dies suddenly, leaving her bereft and uncertain about how to deal with the world. There are moments when Trudy’s loss is poignant, such as when she finds her husband’s jacket with his gardening gloves in the pocket, but her stories follow the same pattern that many in this collection do: Things go from bad to worse, but then they inevitably get better. Goldstone tends to zoom in on each character—perhaps a result of her screenwriting experience—and explain his or her background and motivation, so not much mystery remains. The last story, “Wishing,” is told in the first person, so it avoids this to some degree, but on the whole, it lacks the more emotional moments of the others.

These stories tend to drag on and then wrap up quickly with a sentimental moment you wish had come sooner.

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EMPIRE GIRLS

Hayes, Suzanne; Nyhan, Loretta Harlequin MIRA (304 pp.) $14.95 paper | May 27, 2014 978-0-7783-1629-9 When their father dies unexpectedly and leaves their home to a half brother they never knew they had, Ivy and Rose Adams head to Jazz-Age New York City to find their missing sibling, each full of expectations and unprepared for the changes the city will wreak.

Neither plain, practical Rose nor beautiful, dreamy Ivy are prepared for the sudden death of their father. Devastated by grief, they are further rocked when they learn he was on the brink of financial disaster and that he left the management of his home and estate—such as it is—to Asher, a son from a previous marriage. More mysterious, Asher seems to have disappeared since he returned from the Great War. Ivy and Rose take it upon themselves to find him: Rose, because she wants to convince him to sign their home over to them, and Ivy, because she feels her brother will somehow take the place of the father she was so close to. But following the few clues their father left takes the girls down paths they never expected; it makes them question their roles in the family and their own personalities as they’ve always understood them, causing enormous friction between them before allowing them to move beyond their preconceived notions of who they are and who they might become.

Hayes and Nyhan have written an imaginative and elegant tribute to the timeless complications of young women coming of age, set against the glitter and jumble of New York in the 1920s.

Family tensions are ratcheted up through death, misunderstanding, jealousy and the shadow of war, and the sisters find that once they leave the comfort of their father’s love and their childhood home, they are both challenged and liberated.

Lovely and lyrical.

I AM PILGRIM

Hayes, Terry Emily Bestler/Atria (624 pp.) $26.99 | $11.99 e-book | May 27, 2014 978-1-4391-7772-3 978-1-4391-7774-7 e-book Tom Clancy meets Robin Cook in a thriller that should find a place in many beach bags this summer.

Debut novelist Hayes brings wellrefined storytelling chops to the enterprise: He’s written numerous screenplays, including Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. Indeed, while reading this novel, one gets the sense it was written to turn into a screenplay or perhaps began life that way, what with its shifting points of view and a narrator who may or may not be reliable. Whatever the case, Hayes gets us into the thick of things right away: Pilgrim, a federal agent, is a brilliant 12

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student of the human psyche who just happens to have awesome killing skills that he’s practiced on several continents; in Moscow, for instance, he recounts, “even though I was young and inexperienced I killed my boss like a professional.” Don’t give him a bad performance review, then. He finds plenty of scope for his talents when put up against a former mujahedeen ominously code-named The Saracen, who’s resolved to wreak all kinds of havoc on the West for its offenses against Islam. He’s a bad, bad man—the fact that he wasn’t killed in the war along with a million other Afghans, Hayes writes, “would make most people question if not God’s existence at least His common sense.” Hayes is a master of the extremely gruesome scene—the opening involves an acid bath, and later we get popped eyeballs, beheadings and all kinds of grisliness. The story does go on a hundred pages too long and gets sidelined here and there, but it has considerable strengths, and the author gets points for avoiding at least some clichés and putting a few Arabs into key good-guy (or good-girl) positions.

Two psychos enter, and one psycho leaves. Good entertainment for readers with a penchant for mayhem, piles of bodies and a lethal biochemical agent or two.

THE CONFESSIONS OF FRANCES GODWIN

Hellenga, Robert Bloomsbury (320 pp.) $26.00 | Jul. 8, 2014 978-1-62040-549-9

Catullus, the confession box, a loaded gun and a muscle car punctuate a former teacher’s memories in a novel rich with life and strangely awkward.

Entering retirement after teaching Latin for 41 years in Illinois, Frances Godwin begins to write of her past in what becomes a “spiritual autobiography” as she ponders love, regrets, losses and wrongs unredressed. Her 33-year marriage ends painfully as her husband slowly succumbs to lung cancer. She can’t forgive herself for not granting some of his wishes. She’s also troubled by her violence in dealing with her daughter’s abusive husband, then struggles with the Roman Catholic imperative to formally confess her sin. As happens to many of the main characters in the six previous novels by Hellenga (Snakewoman of Little Egypt, 2010, etc.), this Midwesterner goes to Italy, where she unburdens her soul to a priest whose reaction is laissez faire. Odder still are a meeting with her dead husband and her conversations with the voice of God. They’re presented as literal chats—comic, ironic, combative (the Almighty on Bill Clinton: “I told him to keep it in his pants”). There’s another sort of deity in the deus ex machina supplied by the valuable vintage car she left covered for years in her garage. With a woman as intelligent and well-grounded as Frances—a published translator of Catullus, an accomplished pianist, a lover of beauty, a seeker of life’s pith—these implausible elements raise unfortunate doubts about whether she should be taken seriously.

A resourceful storyteller, Hellenga presents a likable heroine confronting guilt, self-doubt and wavering faith, a woman strong enough to do just fine without divine intervention.

THE NEVER NEVER SISTERS

Heller, L. Alison New American Library (352 pp.) $15.00 paper | Jun. 3, 2014 978-0-451-41624-7

The prodigal daughter returns after 20 years, but the happy Reinhardts aren’t sure what to do with her gloomy presence in this sly fiction about families.

Paige is a bit ambivalent about the big news—Sloane is coming to Manhattan for a visit. She hasn’t had contact with her older sister in two decades, since Sloane ran away from a ritzy rehab at 16. Mother Vanessa is guardedly optimistic that they may be a family again, while father Frank is treating the event as he does most: in a state of genial oblivion. Paige’s husband, Dave, has weightier concerns—his law firm has suspended him for a few weeks, and they (or he) won’t say why. For a striving workaholic, this is a death sentence, but Paige’s response is heavy on suspicion

and light on sympathy. (How embarrassing for her, considering that she’s a therapist.) When sullen Sloane arrives, she has little interest in reconnecting with her parents, but Paige she likes.

And Paige is shocked to meet Sloane’s traveling companion, fiance Giovanni, who is charming and bright, and their little dog, Bandito, who accompanies them as they visit chic eateries for Sloane’s travel blog. The myth of Sloane encompassed so much catastrophe that Paige is a bit surprised to befriend a fairly normal, if occasionally moody, real person. Begging out of their summer outings, Dave becomes increasingly distant, and Paige is convinced he’s involved with some illegal shenanigans. Paige hires Giovanni’s best friend, Percy (she calls him the Adonis), to use his skills as private investigator to ferret out the truth—though she won’t be happy when she gets it. Thankfully, she now has her big sister’s shoulder to cry on.

New York attorney Heller’s second novel (The Love Wars, 2013) is a triumph of witty dialogue and characters as true to life as your best friends.

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INTERVIEWS & PROFILES

Kaui Hart Hemmings

The author of The Descendants unearths more trouble in paradise

By Megan Labrise

Photo courtesy Christina Simpkins

No one does trouble in paradise quite like Kaui Hart Hemmings. The Descendants (2007), her daring novel, is a pitch-perfect mix of dark matter and deep laughs—the story of a prominent family grappling with death, infidelity and one another on the verdant island of Kauai.

For the setting of her sophomore novel, The Possibilities, Hemmings chose ski mecca Breckinridge, Colorado. (She lived there after college; it’s where she and her husband met.) Though trading surf for snow, both settings are the type more likely to be found on postcards than the page. “That’s where it all began: as a desire to capture this unique town, this place that people come to spend their vacations and have fun, to show what it’s like to live there and not just pass through— same with Hawaii. The stories of the people who 14

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actually make a living, have children and, in this case, go through some hard times,” says Hemmings.

Don’t talk to Sarah St. John about hard times— the tourism TV host is mourning her 22-year-old son, Cully, who died in an avalanche three months ago.

Sarah, who never married Cully’s dad, lives with her own father, Lionel, a recent retiree whose interests are QVC and curmudgeonry (like taking potshots at her best friend, Suzanne, a zaftig divorcée). All, by turns, are dealing and not dealing with life, from the petty annoyance of an ice-coated deck on up.

A protean form of the story actually predated The Descendants, says Hemmings, but finding the right narrator took time. Once located, Sarah proved more difficult to channel than Descendants narrator Matt King. “It was a bigger challenge to write from a woman’s point of view who had had a full life with her son and who had tons of regrets and yet hope. It was just a harder voice to capture, and I think I needed time to be able to manage that,” she says.

Hemmings acknowledges that her subjects tend to skew toward devastating. “I always think, ‘God, why do I have to write about that?’ Part of it’s just for the sake of drama, but also, I just think that brings out a way to showcase people at their very best and very worst. I also am drawn to the way they have to deal with everything on the outside. You know grief—you don’t just cry in your room; you have to go out, and you have to buy groceries.”

In the grocery story parking lot, Sarah encounters the mother of another avalanche victim, the insufferable Lorraine, a charter member of Parents Against Avalanche Disaster who wants to win Sarah for the cause. Sarah can’t help it: “I thought to myself while looking at Lorraine, You grieve horribly. I am a classier griever than you....” Nevertheless, it’s a constant strug-

gle not to turn on, tune in and drop out. “Everyone has a tragedy, and you don’t see the whole world sitting it out, excusing themselves from the table because they’re full,” Hemmings writes.

Discoveries complicate recovery: for example, a cache of money and marijuana discovered while she and Suzanne are cleaning out Cully’s closet. She’s horrified, though Suzanne seems to take it in stride: “ ‘After my mom died I found four bags of cremated pets in the back of her closet,’ [Suzanne] says. ‘You never know what you’ll find. I’d rather score weed than dead Pomeranians,’ ” Hemmings writes.

That we’d sometimes prefer a different version of reality is thrown into high relief by the arrival of Kit, who has something of Cully’s she wants his family to have. Awkward and obviously grieving, too, Kit forms an unlikely bond with Lionel, and the four of them—plus Cully’s father—pile into Suzanne’s monstrous SUV to attend an unforgettable memorial service planned by Suzanne’s daughter. It is a masterful ensemble scene.

“I’m fascinated with the way life can turn and take such different pathways based on one choice or just by chance—that you happen to be in one place and there’s just so many ways your life can go. Grief sort of carves out this space for another tunnel that goes somewhere else, so I guess with The Possibilities, it’s just pathways and opportunities and new directions.

It was a hopeful title,” Hemmings says.

The entry of Kit and re-entry of Cully’s father portend a brighter day, and yet the low-hanging cloud over Sarah will never go away. “I close my eyes and imagine his possibilities, the different hues of his self, what his face would look like in ten years, the kind of man he would be. He never had the chance to become himself. He never had the chance to be anyone else,” she writes. The ups and downs of life are as assured as the ebbs and flows of tides, the ascents and descents of skiers on Tenmile Range.

First, Publish a Debut Novel; Second, Meet George Clooney Hemmings’ first novel, The Descendants, was adapted and directed by Alexander Payne into a George Clooney film nominated for five Academy Awards (one of which it received, for Payne’s adaptation). Payne’s production company optioned the novel before it was published; four years later, he renewed the option and asked Hemmings if he could fly to Hawaii the following week to meet with her. “From that first meeting, his questions were just relentless in trying to get stuff right,” Hemmings says. Payne “wanted to make the film for people in Hawaii” and asked Hemmings for her opinion of his drafts. “I would say ‘No, they wouldn’t speak this way’ or ‘Can you add this?’ It was very open, and I don’t think that will ever be repeated” with another screenwriter, she acknowledges. Hemmings played the role of Clooney’s secretary, Noe, in the film. “Sitting and watching George Clooney say my words in front of the camera and then him coming down and sitting next to me and us chatting was just surreal,” she says. “It was crazy and yet not crazy because you’re not on a constant note of ‘this is exciting’ but a note of ‘this is life right now, and I’m enjoying it.’ ” —M.L.

the possibilities Hemmings, Kaui Hart Simon & Schuster (288 pp.) $25.00 | May 13, 2014 978-1-4767-2579-6

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

The Possibilities received a starred review in the Apr. 1, 2014, issue of Kirkus Reviews.

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“Hilderbrand has a way of transcending the formulaic and tapping directly into the emotional jugular.” from the matchmaker

THE MATCHMAKER

Hilderbrand, Elin Little, Brown (416 pp.) $28.00 | $14.99 e-book | $30.00 Lg. Prt. Jun. 24, 2014 978-0-316-09975-2 978-0-316-32902-6 e-book 978-1-607-88524-5 Lg. Prt. Hilderbrand’s latest Nantucket heroine has a very particular kind of clairvoyance: She can always tell whether a couple is compatible or not.

Dabney Kimball Beech, 49, who heads up Nantucket’s Chamber of Commerce, is known for her headband, pearls, penny loafers and other preppy accoutrements, as well as her fabulous menus for tailgates and picnics. Then there’s her track record of spotting perfect matches: If a couple is suited, she sees pink around them; if not, green. So far, her unerring intuition, augmented by artful introductions, has resulted in more than 40 long-term Nantucket marriages. As the wife of John Boxmiller Beech, aka Box, a Harvard economics professor who’s frequently summoned to the Oval Office and whose benchmark textbook nets about $3 million a year, Dabney’s domestic life is serene— except that she’s never gotten over her high school sweetheart, Clendenin “Clen” Hughes, a Pulitzer-winning journalist whose beat has been, until recently, Southeast Asia. Due to a childhood trauma involving a runaway mother, Dabney has been too phobic to leave Nantucket (except for four years at Harvard). Nearly three decades before, unable to follow in Clen’s globe-trotting footsteps, Dabney banished him from her life and from the life of their daughter, Agnes, who’s never met her father, though she knows who he is. Now Clen is back on Nantucket—minus an arm. Agnes is engaged to the uber-rich, controlling and decidedly unclassy sports agent CJ. (This couple is definitely swathed in a green cloud.) Since Box is teaching in Cambridge during the week, the opportunity to resume an affair with Clen proves irresistible to Dabney. The complications mount until, suddenly, Hilderbrand’s essentially sunny setup, bolstered by many summer parties and picnics (and lavishly described meals, particularly seafood), takes a sudden, somber turn. Hilderbrand has a way of transcending the formulaic and tapping directly into the emotional jugular. Class is often an undercurrent in her work, but in this comedy of manners–turned–cautionary tale, luck establishes its own dubious meritocracy.

Beach reading with an unsettling edge. (Author tour to Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Houston, San Francisco, San Diego and Chicago)

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PAINTING JULIANA

Hunter, Martha Louise Goldminds (356 pp.) $29.99 | May 20, 2014 978-1-930584-62-4

A woman is hit with a hurricane of bad news: Her husband wants a divorce; her father’s Alzheimer’s is getting worse; her children aren’t talking to her. Then she gets a mysterious package of paintings that may shed light on her mother’s untimely death in a car accident.

Juliana is dissatisfied. Though she leads a pampered existence as the wife of a prominent Austin attorney, after 14 years their marriage has lost its spark. It might seem that Oliver’s verbal abuse and sociopathic behavior (groping her in public, humiliating her among friends) would make Juliana happy to get out, but they decide on counseling. Then, at the first session, he serves her with divorce papers and insists she vacate the family home that evening. He’s already told their 14-year-old twins that she’s an adulterer, among other lies, so they’re glad to see her go. Without money of her own, Juliana retreats first to her brother’s house and then to her father’s when he’s taken to the hospital with a possible stroke. While Juliana is fixing up her childhood home—and trying to get back in Oliver’s good graces—a mysterious package arrives: a crate of paintings, made by her father, sent from a New York gallery. Juliana is stunned; her father was a fusty old CPA who gave no indication that he was an artist. Meanwhile, Oliver tells her he wants to reconcile (it’s a trick), her friends have turned their backs (just as well—a couple of them are sleeping with Oliver), and she’s drinking one too many glasses of chardonnay. The novel’s implausible climax, in which a recurring dream from childhood comes true, enables Juliana to recover her identity, but nothing she does seems to flow from her character—it only serves to further the plot.

Convoluted and overwritten (no detail is left undescribed), Hunter’s first effort is a disappointment. (Author tour to Dallas, Austin, Houston and San Francisco)

STORMBIRD

Iggulden, Conn Putnam (496 pp.) $27.95 | Jul. 8, 2014 978-0-399-16536-8 Series: Wars of the Roses, 1 Iggulden (The Blood of Gods, 2013, etc.) rallies dukes and barons, archers and peasants, schemers and warriors in this first in a trilogy chronicling the 15thcentury War of the Roses.

Henry VI, only 22, assumes England’s crown; he’s “a dear white lamb to lead us in prayer”—the opposite of his warrior father—and he mystically believes hours of prayer keep France at bay. “Bring me a truce, Derry,” he commands Master Derihew

“Amina’s romance, as well as mouthwatering descriptions of Kamala’s cooking, leavens but does not diminish the Eapens’ family tragedy.” from the sleepwalker’s guide to dancing

Brewer, once an archer and now the king’s spymaster. Brewer brokers a treaty with France’s King Charles and Duke René of Anjou for the marriage of the duke’s daughter, 14-year-old Margaret, to Henry in return for the English-held lands of Anjou and Maine.

Powerful warrior royals like Richard, Duke of York, are opposed.

Others, like William, Lord Suffolk, are ambivalent but loyal to the crown. The marriage is made, English protection is withdrawn, and the farms and settlements in Maine and Anjou become prey to the French. Worse, the collapse of those betrayed English bastions causes violent unrest in England. Giving color to various scenes and schemes, Iggulden skillfully depicts bloody clashes as English settlers fight, then retreat from Maine, Anjou and Normandy into Calais, followed by action-packed and nerve-racking street fighting when rebellious Kentish Freemen march into London. With Suffolk dead, the precociously intelligent and courageous Queen Margaret, along with other loyal lords, relies on Brewer’s scheming to secure the physically weak and emotionally damaged Henry. An heir is needed. Other lords conspire to name York Protector and Defender of the Realm. Iggulden superbly dissects the dogfight among Edward Longshanks’ descendants, but he also creates memorable fictional characters—in addition to Brewer, there’s Thomas Woodchurch, an English archer– turned–Anjou wool merchant drawn back to the bow.

Capturing the stink and gore, violence and romance of medieval life, Iggulden makes real those grand characters who live in the collective memory. A page-turner sure to have readers eager for the next in the series.

her father; not only is he talking to dead relatives on the front porch, but he’s exhibiting odd behavior at work. By the time Thomas is diagnosed with a physical disease, Amina is feeling a bit haunted by the past herself—she can’t escape from memories of growing up with the gifted but troubled Akhil, whose death as a high school senior was a blow from which no one in the family has recovered. Amina also finds a lover she avoids introducing to her parents for good reason: He’s the brother of Akhil’s high school sweetheart, and he isn’t Indian.

Amina’s romance, as well as mouthwatering descriptions of Kamala’s cooking, leavens but does not diminish the Eapens’ family tragedy.

Comparisons of Jacob to Jhumpa Lahiri are inevitable; Lahiri may be more overtly profound, Jacob more willing to go for comedy, but both write with naked honesty about the uneasy generational divide among Indians in America and about family in all its permutations.

THE SLEEPWALKER’S GUIDE TO DANCING

Jacob, Mira Random House (512 pp.) $26.00 | $12.99 e-book | Jul. 1, 2014 978-0-8129-9478-0 978-0-8129-9479-7 e-book Jacob’s darkly comic debut—about a photographer’s visit to her parents’ New Mexico home during a family crisis—is grounded in the specifics of the middleclass Indian immigrant experience while uncovering the universality of family dysfunction and endurance.

Amina Eapen was born in New Mexico, but her older brother, Akhil, was born in India before the family moved to America. Amina and Akhil chafed against their parents’ evident unhappiness—their mother, Kamala, clung to impossible dreams of returning to India; their father, Thomas, disappeared into his medical practice—while also enjoying the extended Christian Indian community to which the Eapens have always belonged. Now in her mid-30s and unmarried, Amina is working as a wedding photographer in Seattle, having dropped her career in photojournalism after a picture she took of a suicide went viral. Then Kamala, who has become a Baptist, manipulates Amina into a visit by claiming Thomas is acting strangely. Amina arrives in New Mexico reluctant but soon realizes that something may actually be wrong with |

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“The storyline is vintage King, too: In the battle of good and evil, good may prevail—but never before evil has caused a whole lot of mayhem.” from mr. mercedes

UNRAVISHED

Kaplan, Hester Ig Publishing (224 pp.) $16.95 paper | Jun. 10, 2014 978-1-935439-90-5 Relationships—flawed, ruptured, secret, evolving—are sifted and scrutinized in this latest collection from Kaplan (The Tell, 2013, etc.).

Several of the eight stories collected here are set in the author’s hometown of Providence, Rhode Island. The first story (and title tale) sets the tone with an economical portrait of the crises in Alice’s 10-year marriage to a man who is “proud, boastful, know-it-all, sometimes a bully” and who is enraging their community with plans to build a waterfront home that will destroy the classic vista from a revered artist’s historic homestead. Alice’s compromised response is echoed in “The School of Politics,” where museum director Francine reconnects with the “criminal, thug, intimidator” she once dated and who is now the mayor of her city and on trial for corruption. Kaplan’s insights into the waxing and waning of marital arrangements have their quirky side. Hollis, who breaks a tooth at the start of “The Aerialist,” returns to his old, none-too-gentle dentist, whose daughter, a trapeze artist, helps unlock the tension in Hollis’ latest relationship. In “Companion Animal,” a husband whose single instance of infidelity has exposed his hollow marriage moves into shabby new digs and begins to understand some of the relationship deals we make.

Children often play a role as game-changer, like the pregnant stepdaughter in “Lovesick” who reveals the truth behind an infertile marriage. The final, longest story is a departure, following two unattuned colleagues at a deserted private school who reluctantly link up in the face of the apocalypse. This narrative also hinges on a child and secrets declared, but its departure into horror and mortality sits oddly with the more familiar domestic upheavals that have gone before.

Although the insights are sometimes too explicit, Kaplan’s stories confidently, capably explore the switchbacks of human interaction.

MR. MERCEDES

King, Stephen Scribner (448 pp.) $30.00 | Jun. 3, 2014 978-1-4767-5445-1 In his latest suspenser, the prolific King (Joyland, 2013, etc.) returns to the theme of the scary car—except this one has a scary driver who’s as loony but logical unto himself as old Jack Torrance from The Shining.

It’s an utterly American setup: Over here is a line of dispirited people waiting to get into a job fair, and over there is a psycho licking his chops at the easy target they present; he aims a car into the 18

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crowd and mows down a bunch of innocents, killing eight and hurting many more. The car isn’t his. The malice most certainly is, and it’s up to world-weary ex-cop Bill Hodges to pull himself up from depression and figure out the identity of the author of that heinous act. That author offers help: He sends sometimes-taunting, sometimes-sympathy-courting notes explaining his actions. (“I must say I exceeded my own wildest expectations,” he crows in one, while in another he mourns, “I grew up in a physically and sexually abusive household.”) With a cadre of investigators in tow, Hodges sets out to avert what is certain to be an even greater trauma, for the object of his cat-and-mouse quest has much larger ambitions, this time involving a fireworks show worthy of Fight Club. And that’s not his only crime: He’s illegally downloaded “the whole Anarchist Cookbook from BitTorrent,” and copyright theft just may be the ultimate evil in the King moral universe.

King’s familiar themes are all here: There’s craziness in spades and plenty of alcohol and even a carnival, King being perhaps the most accomplished coulrophobe at work today. The storyline is vintage King, too: In the battle of good and evil, good may prevail—but never before evil has caused a whole lot of mayhem.

The scariest thing of all is to imagine King writing a happy children’s book. This isn’t it: It’s nicely dark, never predictable and altogether entertaining.

REPLAY

Levy, Marc Translated by Bignold, Kate; Iyer, Lakshmi Ramakrishnan Europa Editions (256 pp.) $23.95 | Jun. 3, 2014 978-1-60945-202-5 An existential thriller, translated from the French, about a New York Times reporter with one hell of a deadline.

This is the 13th novel by the wildly popular Levy (If Only It Were True, 2000, etc.). While it’s less syrupy than his previous books, discerning readers will find plot holes you could drive a tank through. Thirty-something Andrew Stilman is working as the obituaries editor for the Times when one night he drunkenly stumbles into Valerie Ramsay, an attractive classmate from days gone by. Their affair blossoms quickly into love and a marriage proposal. But days before the wedding, Andrew meets a mysterious woman who obsesses him to the point that he confesses the emotional betrayal to his new wife, ruining his marriage in less than a day. This is when things get weird. A few days later, Andrew is running along the Hudson when he’s viciously stabbed in the back.

When he wakes up, it’s 60 days earlier. Over the course of the next two months, Andrew pounds the pavement, trying to figure out who wants to kill him. Somehow, instead of obits, he’s now doing investigative reporting that has attracted the ire of many. Could the would-be killer be connected to the parents who lost their adopted children, who turned out to have been stolen from China? Or Maj. Ortiz, the Argentinean warlord whose atrocities Andrew uncovered? Or could it be someone closer to home, like Valerie? It could even be Andrew’s philosophical tailor. “There’s no going back,” he

warns the young reporter. “And some actions can have irreparable consequences—like falling for some total stranger, however mesmerizing she may be, right before your wedding.” It’s worth making the leap of metaphysical faith to enjoy Andrew’s dilemma if you can buy into the setup. Unfortunately, Levy can’t seem to decide whether he’s writing a ghost story, a geopolitical thriller or a spy novel, and the story never really coalesces enough to satisfy.

An eerie premise, indeed, but this murky thriller can’t quite stick the landing.

LET ME SEE IT Stories

Magruder, James Triquarterly/Northwestern Univ.

(208 pp.) $18.95 paper | Jun. 3, 2014 978-0-8101-5244-1 Ten linked stories about growing up gay, introduced by a prologue that elliptically takes us to the cores of the two major characters.

In the prologue, Tom Amelio—48 years old in 2008—is reminiscing about his first cousin Elliott Biddler, who died years earlier. The last (and title) story is set in 1992 and finds Elliott and Tom in Paris to witness the marriage of one of Elliott’s former lovers and confirms our fears that Elliott has died of AIDS. In between, we get glimpses into the lives of the two cousins, who didn’t even meet until they were 19. Some of the stories focus on Tom, some on Elliott and some on both; Magruder

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shifts both chronology and point of view to allow his characters to be narrators in some stories and third-person participants in others. Tom and Elliott grow up, explore their sexuality, take on various boyfriends and lovers, and try to accommodate themselves to a culture that is less than understanding about a fundamental component of who they are. Elliott is the more outgoing of the two. A graduate of Cornell, he takes risks and likes to live on the edge. While in college, he participates in a program that lets him study in Paris, where he takes a lover and winds up getting la chtouille—which he announces is French for “the clap.”

Tom is more subdued and less impulsive than his cousin, though he, too, takes numerous lovers as he feels his way through the sexual shoals of adolescence and early adulthood.

By turns comic and melancholy in tone but always razor-sharp in its insights.

WE ARE CALLED TO RISE

McBride, Laura Simon & Schuster (320 pp.) $25.00 | Jun. 3, 2014 978-1-4767-3896-3

This first novel has a stronger focus on falling than rising but casts struggle in a noble light.

Four voices narrate the story, set in residential Las Vegas. Avis, 50-something, is witnessing the unexpected end of her marriage and the volatile changes in her son, Nate, who has recently returned from his third tour in Iraq and is about to become a police officer. Next we meet Roberta, a seasoned court-appointed advocate for children who ruminates on past cases, the city of Las Vegas and its rarely seen underprivileged side. Bashkim, 8 years old, lives with his baba and nene, Albanian refugees who run an ice cream truck. He loves school, his nene and his little sister, but his baba is a paranoid former political prisoner who beats his wife and makes Bashkim anxious.

Finally, Spc. Luis Rodriguez-Reyes wakes up in Walter Reed hospital, injured and traumatized after losing his best friend in Afghanistan. The pertinent details in all these lives are brutal ones, and the events that eventually bind them together, even more so. McBride has a talent for voice; her characters are easy to distinguish from each other and equally realistic, despite their dissimilarity. She’s also a stickler for procedure, which can be dry but adds depth to some aspects of the tale, particularly Bashkim’s schooling and Luis’ recovery process. The theme of tragedy, specifically why bad things happen to good people and why good people can do bad things, is heavy-handed, though the novel is stocked with kind, professional, intuitive secondary characters who go a small way toward balancing out the horror.

Arguably, the book’s fifth protagonist is Las Vegas; many passages are bittersweet love letters to what it’s like to make a regular life and raise a family there.

Though ardently told, this novel takes on more issues than it can reasonably handle. (Agent: Stephanie Cabot)

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WHY I KILLED MY BEST FRIEND

Michalopoulou, Amanda Translated by Emmerich, Karen Open Letter (257 pp.) $13.95 paper | May 20, 2014 978-1-934824-74-0

Two girls, entranced with each other and hopelessly intertwined, grow up in the political chaos of Greece.

Another fine entry in the University of Rochester’s Open Letter series of literary translations, this cerebral novel by prizewinning novelist Michalopoulou (I’d Like, 2008, etc.) recounts a friendship of the kind that marks us for life. Maria is just a child in the late 1970s when she’s uprooted from the home she treasures in Nigeria and returns with her parents to crowded, unstable Athens. Her life is changed forever when she meets Anna, an angelic-looking classmate who is also a refugee, albeit from vogue Paris and not the wilds of Africa.

Anna is a strange creature whose outer beauty disguises a passionate, ruthless and politically volatile mind. The novel tracks their unpredictable relationship through their adolescence in the 1980s to one character’s untimely end (though it should be fairly obvious that the provocative title—Maria’s chosen title for the novel she imagines writing about Anna—is metaphorical rather than literal). It does take decades for Maria to see past Anna’s many betrayals, childish tests and impulsive leaps into their country’s radical politics and take her for what she really is. Here’s a notable moment in Maria’s blooming self-awareness: “I’m beginning to understand the mechanism behind her charm: she does something insane, something out of keeping with her beauty, her image, the way she dresses. Then she uses that conspicuous act like a blanket: she wraps herself up in it, becomes that act. In the eyes of others, Anna is an allegory for generosity, courage, resourcefulness. She does things that occur to other people only fleetingly, enacts scenarios from the realm of instinct. She charms, she torments, she curses, she kills.” A deft translation from the Greek by Emmerich helps Michalopoulou bring this emotional love-hate relationship to life.

A spare but affecting novel about love and war during the restless decades.

ONE NIGHT IN WINTER

Montefiore, Simon Sebag Harper/HarperCollins (480 pp.) $26.99 | May 6, 2014 978-0-06-229188-2 British historian Montefiore turns in his second novel, a foreboding tale of Soviet Russia based on actual events.

Given that Montefiore is a biographer of The Boss (Young Stalin, 2007, etc.), it’s fitting that, as in Anatoly Rybakov’s Children of the Arbat—whose spirit looms over this book—Josef Stalin should appear as a central character in this odd drama. Less usual, perhaps, is that Stalin has sympathetic moments: Late in the story, we find him reclining on a sofa, smoking a cigarette and thinking of lost love: “If only there had been more love in my life, he thought despondently, but we Bolsheviks are a military-religious order like the Knights Templar.” The romantic and slightly gloopy image suits the larger story, which concerns a class of well-heeled, privileged children who attend a school that’s out of

Dead Poets Society, if with pictures of Lenin instead of Lord Byron.

Young Andrei Kurbsky, from out in the sticks of the Soviet Empire, doesn’t share their high status, but, a devotee of Pushkin, he nonetheless is swallowed up in a floppy-haired beatnik-manqué clique that adores the Romantic poets. That’s not such a smart move in an age when socialist realism is the only acceptable aesthetic, and Stalin—the sire of less-than-accomplished offspring, as we see—is as ruthless with the children of his own confidants as he is with his political enemies. Though the narrative lags at times, and though Montefiore sometimes inclines to the didactic (“The title ‘Comrade’ means Rimm was a member of the Communist Party”), the storyline is unusual enough to keep things moving. The characters, too, are strong and believable, all careening toward a fateful day. Though his novel is based on history and told with a historian’s concern for detail, Montefiore notes in an afterword that his is “not a novel about power but about private life—above all, love.” Yet, of course, it’s power that moves things to their grim conclusion.

A kind of Virgin Suicides for the Soviet set, speaking to much that’s dark in the human soul—but to what can redeem it, too.

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AGOSTINO

Moravia, Alberto Translated by Moore, Michael F. New York Review Books (128 pp.) $14.95 paper | $10.99 e-book Jul. 8, 2014 978-1-59017-723-5 978-1-59017-737-2 e-book Originally published in 1945, this novel about the loss of innocence shines in a new translation.

Thirteen-year-old Agostino finds himself in a precarious position, poised between childhood and adolescence. He’s a loving son to his gorgeous, widowed mother and at first is content to spend time with her on a Mediterranean beach. Eventually, however, the mother begins a flirtatious relationship with Renzo, a young man who works on the local boats. Agostino feels his mother’s attraction to Renzo and is powerless to do anything about it. Inhabiting the same space are some local neighborhood boys, used to a more rough-andtumble—and frankly vulgar—existence. Their ribald repartee at first embarrasses and later intrigues the highly innocent Agostino, who never quite fits in with this subculture. Moravia is psychologically astute in portraying the agony of Agostino, who for the first time begins to notice his mother as a woman and, at times, a very seductive one. To escape from the tormented ambivalence he feels, he starts to hang out with the local boys, who tease and mock him. Out of Agostino’s struggle comes the realization that “he had bartered away his former innocence, not for the virile, serene condition he had aspired to but rather for a confused hybrid state in which, without any form of recompense, the old repulsions were compounded by the new.” At the end of the novella, nothing is resolved for the moment since Agostino, after all, remains a 13-year-old—and would anyone seriously want to return to that age?

Perceptive and razor-sharp insights into the agony of adolescence.

FUNNY ONCE Stories

Nelson, Antonya Bloomsbury (304 pp.) $26.00 | May 20, 2014 978-1-62040-861-2 In her immersive new collection of nine stories and a novella, Nelson (Bound, 2010, etc.), a much lauded novelist and short story writer, introduces not-alwayshappy or well-behaved protagonists who make questionable choices.

Ex-boyfriends and -girlfriends, stepchildren from dead marriages and former in-laws crop up in the present, affecting the status quo. In “Soldier’s Joy,” a woman who married her college professor goes home years later to help her injured father and 22

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rediscovers the attraction of an old boyfriend, whose rejection of her in the past is about to haunt her anew. A rich example of Nelson’s ability to conjure a fully peopled scenario in only 20 pages, “iff ” reveals the poignantly interdependent relationship between a divorced woman and her ex–mother-in-law. Lovey in “First Husband” comes to the aid of her needy former stepdaughter—tending her children, accepting her manipulation— while considering different kinds of married love. These stories are set in scattered cities—Albuquerque, Houston, Telluride, Chicago—and focus on everyday families dealing with long-resonant emotions. While irony pervades many of them, a streak of despair runs through several, and suicide is touched on softly but repeatedly: in “iff ”; in “The Village,” whose central character, Darcy, finds herself paying tribute to her father’s mistress, who rescued her once; and in “Winter in Yalta,” where a 30-year friendship unravels during a reunion weekend in New York.

Nelson’s central characters can sometimes seem interchangeable: Mostly they are not-so-young women bruised by love, by leaving or being left, whether through death, divorce or dementia. But others—like Phoebe, the badly behaved woman of the title story, whose hair catches fire—are uniquely memorable.

Distinctive, quirky stories that deftly capture some of life’s messiness.

THE CITY UNDER THE SKIN

Nicholson, Geoff Farrar, Straus and Giroux (256 pp.) $25.00 | Jun. 3, 2014 978-0-374-16904-6

Young women with maps crudely tattooed on their backs hold answers to the mysteries posed in Nicholson’s arch urban thriller.

No one knows who kidnapped the women, blindfolded them and etched the maps into their skin—they’re otherwise unharmed and promptly returned home. But several people are interested in the maps, which seem to point to a shadowy underground where an unidentified reward awaits. Wrobleski, a murderous criminal, will do anything to lay his hands on it. He bullies Billy, an aimless parking-lot owner with a jaded 12-year-old daughter, into collecting the tattooed women and acting as his henchman. Among those Billy roughs up is Zak, a cartography-store clerk who becomes involved with the hard-edged Marilyn; while privately dealing with the trauma of being defiled by a tattoo attacker years ago, she’s combing the city for clues on the disappearance of her grandfather. She lives in the longshuttered Telestar Hotel, a ’60s relic he designed. At times, the novel comes off like a sardonic answer to the film comedy It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, with its odd assortment of characters, rapid pacing and offbeat touches. But the author, who has also written a nonfiction book called The Lost Art of Walking (2008), is seriously devoted to the physical history of places, as reflected in the wealth of maps in the book—including the unsavory Rape Map, which charts where various assaults have

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A workaholic father rediscovers a purpose far greater than the job he left behind in Salt Lake City when he and his 13-year-old son set off on a hilarious and hairraising road trip to Panama’s Darien Gap.

Aria’s life is full of dark secrets—and only Thomas can give her the courage to confront them. But when tragedy strikes, Aria is left alone to transform her broken heart into something beautiful.

When mask-maker Evie is stripped of her identity and home by a cryptic bandit, she must hide at the palace to seek revenge. Get swept away by this story of mystery and romance.

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“A masterful debut in which a Peruvian literary critic and scholar crafts a metamystery that explores identity, deceit, guilt and narrative.” from the antiquarian

taken place. “Maps are always nostalgic one way or another,” says Zak. The novel also speaks to how cities are reshaped and, more importantly, reimagined.

This “cartographic thriller” by the British-born, Los Angeles–based Nicholson doesn’t always rise to its subject, but it does a good job of making us think about our surroundings and the people in them.

THE WITCH OF BELLADONNA BAY

Palmieri, Suzanne St. Martin’s Griffin (336 pp.) $14.99 paper | $9.99 e-book May 13, 2014 978-1-250-01553-2 978-1-250-01552-5 e-book Fourteen years ago, the night her mother died, Bronwyn Whalen ran away from Magnolia Creek, Alabama, and never looked back; now her family is in crisis, and Bronwyn knows it’s time to mend the rifts in her heart and her home.

Bronwyn has made a life for herself in upstate New York, worlds away geographically and emotionally from her Alabama hometown. She’s a famous photographer and has embraced a nomadic professional life and a quiet personal life, alone on a farm with her partner, Ben. But a single phone call changes everything when she learns that her brother Patrick is in jail for killing her childhood best friend, Charlotte. Bronwyn knows her brother couldn’t kill anyone, but since he confessed, she’ll have to untangle a whole mess of mysteries to get to the truth— which means she’ll have to go home and get started. Of course untangling current mysteries often means looking to the past and occasionally to the future, particularly when a family has magical tendencies. Palmieri’s second magical family mystery is steeped in a vibrant mix of Southern charm and gothicism.

Sometimes the sleuthing seems a little red herring-ish as Bronwyn ambles from clue to clue and suspect to suspect, and the mystery often serves the family drama more than the other way around. But Palmieri is a delightful writer, and we are drawn in by her characters, descriptions and worldbuilding. Weaknesses in plot construction are offset by the author’s lively prose and her ultimately affirming exploration of dark and light.

A fascinating look at magic, mystery, family and love with a Southern gothic flair.

THE ANTIQUARIAN

Patriau, Gustavo Faverón Translated by Mulligan, Joseph Black Cat/Grove (224 pp.) $16.00 paper | Jun. 3, 2014 978-0-8021-2160-8 A masterful debut in which a Peruvian literary critic and scholar crafts a metamystery that explores identity, deceit, guilt and narrative.

The plot seems simple enough, until it doesn’t. Narrator Gustavo (who has the same first name as the author) is a psycholinguist who receives an out-of-the-blue call from his closest friend, Daniel, with whom he’s had no contact for three years. Daniel apparently wants to talk about what happened back then, when he was accused of killing his fiancee in a jealous rage and subsequently attempted suicide, and what has happened since, during his confinement in a mental hospital.

From that setup, strands of narrative intertwine: stories of Gustavo and Daniel in the formative days of their friendship; stories of Daniel and his disturbed sister, who disappeared; stories about Daniel’s obsession with older books, which somehow involves him in a “mafia that traffics in human body parts.” Interspersed with these stories are fables and parables from the novel’s title character, who merges with one of its main characters. Against a backdrop of clashing armies and acts of terrorism, Gustavo and Daniel resume their relationship, with the former starting to feel like a “fictional detective” who “felt more like I was being played with by an army of hooded puppeteers.” Is Daniel the one pulling those strings? Did he commit the murder to which he confessed?

Has he committed others? Daniel has plainly enlisted Gustavo to find out something, but what if Gustavo’s discovery incriminates Daniel? As one character suggests, “[t]he moments from the past or from the future, the unreal scenes from tales, dreams, the projects we push aside each day that exist in the doubt we stop having in order to live—they’re all worlds as true as this one.” Within these worlds, the novel finds a provisional truth.

Rarely does a literary mystery work on as many levels as this.

THE DIRECTIVE

Quirk, Matthew Little, Brown (368 pp.) $26.00 | $12.99 e-book | May 27, 2014 978-0-316-19864-6 978-0-316-19865-3 e-book A young Washington, D.C., attorney who inherited his con man father’s skills and love of risk is forced under pain of death to steal trading secrets worth billions from the Federal Reserve Bank.

Mike Ford may be a Harvard Law graduate, but he never learns. In Quirk’s previous novel, The 500 (2012), he got in murderously over his head spying on influential congressmen for a

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life-altering payday. In this new book, a brutal schemer threatens to kill Mike and his brother, Jack, a chronic screw-up on the verge of landing in prison like their old man, unless Mike breaks into the D.C. office that issues billion-dollar trading directives to the Fed. When, on the eve of his engagement party, Mike starts offering phony excuses for his sudden disappearances, he angers his fiancee, Annie, one of the spoils of The 500. Her snooty British father, who runs a shadowy hedge fund, has never liked him. Pulling stunts like bursting into a social gathering and threatening a man with a knife doesn’t smooth tensions with her. After enduring grueling torture, Mike applies his considerable skills to the heist, including picking supposedly impenetrable locks, cracking security systems and setting up his own surveillance. He also sets traps for the bad guys—for whom, he increasingly suspects, Jack is working. There’s enough action for three thrillers and plenty of twists and turns. But the shaky plot, which revolves around Mike’s trust-him, don’t-trust-him feelings toward his brother, quickly becomes tiresome. Mike’s cardboard personality ensures that the book will fail to involve the reader more than superficially.

A fast-paced but emotionally empty follow-up to The 500.

Reid’s tome on married life is as uplifting as it is brutally honest—a must-read for anyone who is in (or hopes to be in) a committed relationship.

LANDLINE

Rowell, Rainbow St. Martin’s (320 pp.) $24.99 | $12.99 e-book | Jul. 8, 2014 978-1-250-04937-7 978-1-4668-5037-8 e-book A marriage in crisis, a magical intervention and a bittersweet choice.

TV writer Georgie McCool is trying to have it all, but it becomes clear that she’s failing when her husband, Neal, heads to Nebraska for a family Christmas with their kids—without her. The career opportunity of a lifetime has appeared, but now her marriage may be ending as a result. What seems to be the setup for

AFTER I DO

Reid, Taylor Jenkins Washington Square/Pocket (352 pp.) $16.00 paper | Jul. 1, 2014 978-1-4767-1284-0 An unhappily married couple spends a year apart in Reid’s (Forever, Interrupted, 2013) novel about second chances.

When we meet Lauren, she and her husband, Ryan, are having a meltdown trying to find their car in the parking lot at Dodger Stadium after a game. Through a series of flashbacks, Lauren reveals how the two of them went from being inseparable to being insufferable in each other’s eyes—and in desperate need of a break. Both their courtship and their fights seem so ordinary—they met in college; he doesn’t like Greek food— that the most heartbreaking part of their pending separation is deciding who will get custody of their good-natured dog. It’s not until Ryan moves out that the juicy details emerge. Lauren surreptitiously logs into his email one day, in a fit of missing him, and discovers a bunch of emails to her that he had saved but not sent. Liberated by Ryan’s candor, Lauren saves her replies for him to find, and the two of them read each other’s unfiltered thoughts as they go about their separate lives. Neither character holds anything back, which makes the healing process more complex, and more compelling, than simply getting revenge or getting one’s groove back. Meanwhile, as Lauren spends more time with her family and friends, she explores the example set for her by her parents and learns that there are many ways to be happy. It’s never clear until the final pages whether living alone will bring Lauren and Ryan back together or force them apart forever. But when the year is up, the resolution is neither sappy nor cynical; it’s arrived at after an honest assessment of what each partner can’t live with and can’t live without. |

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just another contemporary novel about midlife struggles takes a near-paranormal turn when Georgie finds a way to talk to Neal, but he’s not the Neal who’s just left her. Instead, she’s talking to him in the past, right before they got engaged. As the days leading up to Christmas tick by, and Georgie goes back and forth between talking to the Neal she fell in love with and avoiding her rapidly crumbling current life, she starts to realize that she might be able to undo the complications of the present and has to decide whether she wants to.

Though Rowell started her career writing adult fiction (Attachments, 2011), she leaped up the best-seller lists with teen novels that adults love too (Fangirl, 2013; Eleanor & Park, 2013); in this book, she’s taken the romantic excitement of great contemporary teen literature and applied it to a more mature story, examining whether the blush of first love explored so memorably in Eleanor & Park is enough to keep a couple together forever. Her characters are instantly lovable, and the story moves quickly and only a little predictably—the ending manages to surprise and satisfy all at once. Though some teens might not be interested in the story, adult fans will love Rowell’s return to a story close to their hearts.

The realities of a grown-up relationship are leavened by the buoyancy and wonder of falling in love all over again.

FOUR CORNERS

Rudolph, Wally Soft Skull Press (304 pp.) $15.95 paper | Jun. 10, 2014 978-1-61902-297-3 A meth addict itching to go straight gets sidetracked in the Southwest in this tough-talking debut.

When we first meet Frank, the narrator of Rudolph’s first novel, he’s carrying a steamer trunk’s worth of baggage. He’s a middle-aged man making a good faith effort to quit speed, but his young girlfriend, Maddie, is still using. Frank is trying to help Maddie as well as his junkie friend Ben, who wants to run from Colorado to Mexico with his son, Sean. But when Ben is separated from the group, Frank is left with even more baggage, as well as the wrath of Ben’s father, a casino mogul with underworld connections. In other words, Rudolph means to stress that hard-luck people can be as hard to quit as hard drugs, and the tone the author gives Frank is appealingly flinty and worn. (“Something scratched at my heart like fishhooks on a tin can.”)

As the title suggests, Frank drives through four Southwest desert states over the course of the novel, but the strongest scenes are the ones in which he’s forced to stay put in a Phoenix jail, where he suffers a stroke; his flashbacks to his past as a dealer and user, along with his interactions with nurses and guards, put some fresh air into the story, allowing Rudolph to write about consequences and addiction without greeting-card sanctimony.

The novel is structured like a thriller, but Rudolph makes a few rookie errors: Frank is carefully rendered, but the side characters are thinner, the web of interactions becomes overly convoluted, and the gunplay in the closing chapters feels stock. The strength of Frank’s voice compensates for the flaws, though, 26

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recalling down-and-out tales like Don Carpenter’s Hard Rain Falling or Daniel Woodrell’s Give Us a Kiss.

A familiar noirish plot enlivened by its no-nonsense, rough-living narrator.

THE SCENIC ROUTE

Sipher, Devan New American Library (272 pp.) $15.00 paper | Jun. 3, 2014 978-0-451-23966-2 Chick lit written by a guy—a guy who writes the “Vows” column for the New York Times.

This meringue of a novel features star-crossed if slightly annoying lovers Naomi Bloom and Austin Gittleman.

They met in elementary school, haven’t seen each other in ages, then reconnect at the California wedding of childhood friends. Will they seize their chance at happiness? This is a question Sipher (The Wedding Beat, 2012) leaves open until the final chapter. The metaphoric implications of the title are broadcast early, when Naomi and Austin spend part of the wedding in a philosophical argument about whether wrong turns are possible. Their creator’s real talents lie not in philosophy (nor primatology, ophthalmology, Internet capitalism or haute cuisine, the professions he doles out among his characters) but in pop culture and witty chatter. Naomi is contacted on OkCupid by a guy who appeals to “the Team Edward girl inside her, not that she’d ever admit to having seen a Twilight movie.” Later, she realizes her values are more conventional than she had thought: “[S]he could take the girl out of the OC, but she couldn’t take the OC out of the girl.” Another character clarifies his opposition to marriage: “My idea of a fun night isn’t cuddling up with someone and watching Project Runway. I’d prefer to be sitting in my boxers watching Family Guy.” Despite the Twitteriness of it all, Sipher attempts to give the narrative emotional weight— a tragedy in Austin’s past casts a shadow over the story, and another one awaits him in these pages. Yet these dark strokes seem almost inappropriate. Fortunately, the plot includes three weddings—two straight, one gay—and with these, Sipher’s touch is sure.

This fizzy, au courant rom-com is more farce than love story.

“An honest and genuine DIY punk-rock lesbian love story from back in the day.” from pissing in a river

THE FARM

Smith, Tom Rob Grand Central Publishing (368 pp.) $26.00 | Jun. 3, 2014 978-0-446-55073-4 Mama’s gone crazy, daddy’s gone crazy, and Smith (Child 44, 2008) has skipped over from Stalin’s Russia to the idyllic Swedish countryside for his latest thriller.

The change of scene puts Smith squarely atop territory claimed by Stieg Larsson, Henning Mankell and other masters of Scandinavian mayhem. Smith, who has family ties to Sweden, works a customarily Nordic twist, too, by setting family members at one another’s throats—and quite unnicely, too. A frantic email (“Nothing else, just my name, an exclamation mark”) alerts Daniel to the fact that something is rotten across the North Sea, where Mum has been parked in a hospital while Dad mutters worriedly about her declining mental faculties. Ah, but Mum, who turns up in London, having fled, may not be loony at all. Indeed, she has a bag full of notes about Dad’s late-blooming nefariousness: “In this satchel,” she intones, “is some of the evidence I’ve collected over the summer.” Evidence of what? Well, out among the cornflowers and hollyhocks, a corpse, maybe more than one, might just lie, for Dad has a kinky, hidden side. Meanwhile, Mum is old-school enough to believe that the fairy-tale world of trolls and goblins lies on the edge of the forest, though her hypotheses about the teenage girl who’s gone missing from their bucolic farm town have an eminently practical side. Smith does creepy very well, setting scenes that slowly build in intensity, and he keeps readers guessing about who can and cannot be trusted. He also has a knack for finding the ominous in the picturesque, so a candlelight procession of “women dressed in bridal white” turns into a backdrop for a discovery that Daniel isn’t quite prepared to make. And, it being Sweden, even bad guys and red herrings are neat, orderly and eminently polite: “It wasn’t enough for Håkan to attack me,” notes Daniel. “He wanted my permission to do so.”

They’re resourcefully lethal as well. A satisfying mystery on ground that, though familiar, manages to yield surprises in Smith’s skillful telling.

THE ACTRESS

Sohn, Amy Simon & Schuster (320 pp.) $26.00 | Jul. 1, 2014 978-1-4516-9861-9 The turbulent career of a Hollywood star, from the indie film festival to the red carpet to the lonely bedroom in the mansion.

Known for biting satires of Brooklyn yuppies, Sohn (Motherland, 2012, etc.) has laid down her lance and joined the paparazzi with this slow-moving, predictable novel of the Hollywood A-list. You’ve heard of

TomKat and Brangelina—meet SteMad, a nickname which would be terrific if this were a comic novel but is presented here with the phoned-in, almost medicated dullness that is the dominant tone of this book. Its heroine, Maddy Freed, leaves her indie director boyfriend for Hollywood icon Steven Weller, a leading man whose career has been plagued by rumors that he is…wait for it…gay. Naïve Maddy is tormented by this vicious lie, which she thinks can’t be true because if it were, how could he have sex with a woman? “His breath was hot as he leaned in and kissed her. She had never been kissed like this. His lips were soft but deft....The kiss went on through entire decades of cinema... and the kiss was nothing like the ho-hum kisses Dan had given her lately; it had personality and confidence, and she offered her whole mouth, her self, to him.” Poor Maddy; she’s got a lot to learn. As her market value and critical esteem rocket past those of her aging-hottie husband, she is ever more isolated and mistreated. On the plus side, Sohn knows her Hollywood; even the names of minor characters—directors Walter Juhasz and Elkan Hocky, screenwriter Oded Zalinsky—have a savvy energy that hints at how good this book could have been if played for laughs.

Behind the scenes of the tabloids, this novel finds a dated plot, dopey dialogue and cardboard characters.

PISSING IN A RIVER

Sprecher, Lorrie Feminist (256 pp.) $16.95 paper | Jun. 10, 2014 978-1-55861-852-7 An American expat haunts the streets of London, dancing to the beat of a head full of bad wiring.

Please, please, please let her get what she wants: After mining the D.C. punk scene in her debut novel 20 years ago, this follow-up by Sprecher (Sister Safety Pin, 1994, etc.) revisits the post-punk/Britpop era of 1990s London with such detail and accuracy that readers may be able to hear chords hanging in the air. When we first meet our heroine, American teenager Amanda, she’s in a sorry state. Humming with post-suicidal anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder and deadened by a cocktail of psychotropic drugs, she hallucinates two British women: a stunning brunette named Melissa and a younger, punky girl.

Determined to seek out the source of her visions, she books an adventurous study-abroad trip in London, where she starts to come out of her shell. After steadfastly earning a Ph.D. in English literature in America, the now 30-something out-and-proud lesbian throws her guitar on her back and returns to London as a busker. One awful night, she interrupts a rape in progress and saves Nick, a cocky Cockney woman with damage similar to Amanda’s. They seek shelter with Nick’s doctor friend, Melissa, with whom Amanda falls instantly, rapturously in love. As the potential couple tiptoes toward each other, Amanda continues to rock the Tube, engage with London’s dangerous activist movements, rail against injustice and struggle with mental health issues. “My brain spat out intrusive thoughts faster |

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than I could neutralize them,” she says at one particularly bad moment. “I would have given just about anything if I could have unscrewed my head and taken if off for a few minutes.” It’s a wild ride buoyed by the voice of its screwed-up, kick-ass narrator and scored by the likes of Nirvana, The Clash, Patti Smith and even Heart. Dig the E.P. on the author’s website to hear Amanda’s tunes.

An honest and genuine DIY punk-rock lesbian love story from back in the day.

MONSTER’S CHEF

Tervalon, Jervey Amistad/HarperCollins (224 pp.) $24.99 | Jun. 10, 2014 978-0-06-231620-2 A thriller with some characters that are memorably quirky, perhaps since we’ve seen them before.

Each chapter of Tervalon’s (Lita, 2003, etc.) new novel begins with a recipe because William Gibson, the narrator, is a chef—albeit one who’s lost his chic Greenwich Village restaurant (and his wife) to his cocaine addiction. After serving time in prison, he lands a job as a personal chef for Lamont Stiles, a rock ’n’ roll god better known as Monster. Getting to know the people maintaining Monster’s lifestyle is the only treat here. The aptly named Thug is a giant of a bodyguard, a whacko tough guy who’s strictly in it for the money. Rita is Monster’s wife, playing mute because her man can’t stand to hear her talk. Bridget is the stereotypical hip assistant who hates her job, fears her boss and caters to his quirks. They live in secret and spend lavishly. But then a young boy is found murdered on the grounds of Monster’s Lair, and the novel begins to unravel.

The plot doesn’t hold together, and characters drop in and out on a whim. There’s potential in the evil weirdness of Monster, the rock star who rules his own universe, but as we learn more about him—a singer who has a penchant for young boys, bleaches his black skin, pays his wife for their child and has a fantastical playground at the Lair—we realize we’ve been down this road before.

Tervalon’s novel is ill-fated from the beginning as he really can’t improve on his real-life source material.

A LONG TIME GONE

White, Karen New American Library (432 pp.) $25.95 | Jun. 3, 2014 978-0-451-24046-0 Vivien Walker comes to terms with her troubled past in this sweet Southern tale of the bond between mothers and daughters.

Vivien returns to her family’s home in the Mississippi Delta to find that much has changed since she ran away to Los Angeles years before. Her beloved grandmother Bootsie is dead, and her estranged mother, Carol Lynne, has Alzheimer’s disease and barely recognizes her. Vivien has also fallen on hard times: After a miscarriage and a painful divorce, she’s popping pills to mask her pain as well as calm her nerves. But she comes from a long line of prodigal daughters, and as Vivien reconnects with Carol Lynne, she learns about the heartbreak that drove each Walker woman away from home—and the strength that ultimately brought her back—as she rummages through her mother’s diary and old newspaper articles and coaxes stories from her tight-lipped neighbor, Mathilda. Meanwhile, Vivien’s stepdaughter, Chloe—the light of her life—has tagged along with Vivien against her father’s wishes. Chloe’s presence brings many touching moments, notably a scene in which she lets Carol Lynne French braid her hair even after the ailing woman calls her by the wrong name. Though Vivien’s homecoming begins with an unidentified body found in a shallow grave near her house, she seems to put the mystery on the back burner as she dwells on her unhappy childhood. But an ominous nursery rhyme about the crows that perch in the gnarled tree above the grave keeps the suspense simmering each time Vivien repeats it, and the poetry takes on a different and more poignant meaning at the end.

A slow-moving mystery culminates in an emotionally satisfying moment of redemption for a stubborn heroine and the family she grows to love.

THAT SUMMER

Willig, Lauren St. Martin’s (352 pp.) $25.99 | $12.99 e-book | Jun. 3, 2014 978-1-250-01450-4 978-1-4668-5147-4 e-book A New Yorker inherits a house in England where she discovers the tragic romance of a 19th-century ancestor caught up with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

Though born in London, Julia has little memory of her childhood there. After her mother’s death in a car accident, she and her father moved to New York, where he came to prominence as a surgeon and she grew into a driven stock analyst. She’s been adrift since she was laid off, though, so the notification about inheriting a house from her great-aunt offers the break she needs. The house in Herne Hill jogs long-buried

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childhood memories: Her mother was raised there, and they visited her great-aunt often. On her first day back she’s surprised by a cousin, Natalie, who suspiciously offers to help. Nat then invites Nick, an antiques dealer, to get the house sorted out.

Amid the bric-a-brac there are some notable paintings—a portrait of a stunning young woman hangs in the conservatory and a scene of Tristan and Isolde has been wrapped in linen and hidden in a closet. The chapters alternate between the story of Julia and Nick researching the paintings (and the windfall they may bring) and the life of the young woman in the portrait, Imogen Grantham, who finds herself unhappily married in 1849. She had thought she and her husband, Arthur, would share their love of antiquities, but after their marriage, Arthur treats her like a doll. It’s only when the Pre-Raphaelites come to study Arthur’s collection that Imogen realizes what she’s been missing. Arthur asks one of the painters, Gavin Thorne, for a portrait of Imogen, and soon artist and model have begun an affair that will have deadly consequences. Meanwhile, Julia and Nick begin a summer romance that may cure their historic skittishness.

Willig’s novel has superior predecessors—Byatt’s Possession, Ackroyd’s Chatterton — but she brings an easy, contemporary charm to her characters, ensuring the perfect beach read.

ROBOGENESIS

Wilson, Daniel H. Doubleday (352 pp.) $26.95 | $13.99 e-book | Jun. 10, 2014 978-0-385-53709-4 978-0-385-53710-0 e-book Man meets machine in the second act of the war to end all wars: Robopocalypse 2.0.

The first book in this series, Robopocalypse (2011)—a recounting of a war between humans and a powerful new artificial intelligence— seemed like a stand-alone in the manner of Max Brooks’ World War Z, despite its cinematic appeal. Apparently Wilson has decided a follow-up is in order. While this entry maintains the tension of the original’s run-and-gun warfare against a multiplicity of post-Terminator killing machines, the Matrix-like intrigue of the artificial intelligence’s murky origins is lacking here. To catch up, in the first book, the good guys killed the AI called Archos by destroying its mainframe. But early in this book, a copy of Archos reveals to Russian janitor Vasily Zaytsev that many copies exist and are at odds with an earlier version calling itself Arayt Shah. “In response, I triggered the New War,” the AI explains. “I decimated the human race, regrettably. But I did so with one purpose: to forge a hybrid fighting force capable of surviving the True War—a war that has been initiated and is being fought by superintelligent machines. Instead of simply discarding your species, as the others would, I have transformed your kind into a powerful ally.” From there, Wilson straightforwardly revisits his main characters, including the young warrior Lark Iron Cloud of Gray Horse Army; biomechanically

enhanced big sister Mathilda Perez; and our third hero, Cormac Wallace of Brightboy squad. Zombie fans will find much to love in the grotesque fusions between men and bots that are essential to the plot. More emotional sequences visit Japanese engineer Takeo Nomura and his robot queen from Robopocalypse and our bold janitor, who advises his robot opponents, “I may be a simple man, but I am very good with an ax.”

A satisfying but perfunctory installment that suffers from a bit of second-act similarity.

LAND OF LOVE AND DROWNING

Yanique, Tiphanie Riverhead (368 pp.) $27.95 | Jul. 10, 2014 978-1-59448-833-7

A debut novel traces the history of the U.S. Virgin Islands through the fate of a family marked by lust, magic and social change.

Of the atoll where her parents met, Anette Bradshaw says: “You seen even a postcard of Anegada?

It too pretty. Like heaven and hell marry up and birth all the beauty goodness and badness could possibly make.” Anette’s is one of four narrative voices in this novel by St. Thomas–born Yanique (How to Escape from a Leper Colony, 2010), which follows the story of the children and grandchildren of Capt. Owen Arthur Bradshaw, a man whose unchecked appetites cause trouble for a good half-century after his ship goes down. In alternating short chapters, we hear from a wise, playful third-person narrator and, in first person, from each of Bradshaws’ three outlandishly beautiful children: Eeona, both his daughter and his lover; Anette, who never knew either of her parents before their untimely deaths; and Jacob, Bradshaw’s unacknowledged son by a back-street mistress. Eeona becomes an imperious queen of a woman who never gets over her love for her father, refusing even the suit of a fellow who proposes 70-odd times; she moves to St. John and becomes entangled with a lost character from the family romantic tree. Half siblings Anette and Jacob are also ruled by incestuous passion, though they are unaware of their relationship, which is only partially derailed by Jacob’s sojourns on the mainland for military service and medical school. Their story is interwoven with both the folklore and history of the island: backward-facing feet, silver pubic hair and a race of demigods called the Duene are sprinkled among scenes of development, hurricanes, tourism and the social movements of the 1960s and ’70s.

Bubbling with talent and ambition, this novel is a headspinning Caribbean cocktail.

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CITY OF DEVILS

Bretherick, Diana Pegasus Crime (464 pp.) $25.95 | Aug. 1, 2014 978-1-60598-577-0 A series of fictional murders in 19thcentury Italy tests the theories of a reallife criminologist.

James Murray, a student of the renowned Dr. Joseph Bell in Edinburgh, has come to Turin to learn everything professor Cesare Lombroso can teach him about the new science of criminal anthropology. When the murdered and mutilated body of one of Lombroso’s experimental subjects is found propped up against the monument to the dead in Piazza Statuto, with a note in blood reading “A Tribute to Lombroso,” James wonders why his new mentor is content to leave the matter to two investigating branches of the police instead of using his expertise to find the killer. Instead, Lombroso seems focused on a symposium that brings together some of the greatest scientific minds in the world—some of whom appear to be intent on deflating the supremely self-confident Lombroso. A second murder with another mutilated body makes James wonder whether the murderer is using the corpses’ body parts to symbolize elements of Lombroso’s best-known textbook.

But that theory doesn’t explain why the killer carved upside-down crosses on the victims’ shoulders or why there are two different styles of handwriting in the taunting notes to Lombroso or why James keeps feeling that someone is following him. As murder follows murder, not only Lombroso, but the woman James has come to love are threatened, and James is forced to ask uncomfortable questions about his own dark past and possibly darker future in a tale that tries but fails to maintain suspense.

Bretherick, a lecturer in criminology, brings earnest zeal, if not graceful prose or skillful pacing, to her debut novel. Although her erudition can make for heavy going, the personal issues of her fictional hero offer some relief from the pedantry of the historical Lombroso and his colleagues.

NEVER ALONE

Carpenter, C.J. Midnight Ink/Llewellyn (360 pp.) $14.99 paper | Jun. 8, 2014 978-0-7387-4023-2 In the first book of a new series, a New York City detective investigates a psychotic killer.

Megan McGinn has recently solved a difficult case whose perpetrator is now in a mental institution. Her beloved father, an NYPD veteran, has just passed away, and her mother, who has Alzheimer’s, has to be placed in a home. The day after the funeral, Megan and her sexy partner, Sam Nappa, catch a new case guaranteed to raise her stress level. Shannon McAllister, a nice, college-educated, middle-class young woman, is found 30

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dead in horrific circumstances. She’s been strangled but posed peacefully on her side, her nails neatly cut and cleaned. Her killer took no valuables and left no fingerprints but did leave a loaf of Irish soda bread baking in the oven and a plain gold ring sewn into her crotch. Because Shannon’s father has pull, the pressure to solve the case comes right from the top. Shannon had just ended an affair with one of her professors. This arrogant jerk looks like a good candidate to Megan, but he has an alibi. Taunting text messages sent to Megan from Shannon’s phone have her looking over her shoulder and eventually second-guessing herself. She even interviews the psychopath she just put away, hoping to learn something from the way his mind works. After Megan pushes the professor too hard and he assaults her, she’s placed on leave, but she keeps working the case on the sly.

A promising debut for fans of the procedural thriller. The complex heroine and startling denouement lift this one above the average and bode well for future installments.

NEVER LOOK BACK

Donoghue, Clare Minotaur (304 pp.) $24.99 | $11.99 e-book | Jun. 10, 2014 978-1-250-04607-9 978-1-4668-4625-8 e-book Detectives scramble to find the connections in a series of killings.

DI Mike Lockyer runs a homicide unit in gritty South London with the help of capable DS Jane Bennett. What looks like the third in a string of remarkably similar homicides leaves Lockyer severely shaken because the latest victim resembles his daughter, Megan, who lives with his ex-wife. All three young women were raped; all had their wrists cut and their throats slashed; and all were killed in public places. At the same time, photographer Sarah Grainger is so terrified by a string of phone calls and the sensation of being constantly watched that she’s afraid to leave her house. She gets no help from the police until Lockyer and Bennett get a look at her meticulous diary of every phone call and possible sighting of her stalker. From things he has said, they think he may know the identity of the murderer. Lockyer’s stress mounts further when the next victim also turns out to resemble his daughter, who’s moved in with him while her mother settles into a new relationship. Lockyer finally crosses the line when his protective feelings for Grainger jeopardize the investigation.

An excellent procedural debut with depth of characterization and plenty of suspense.

m ys t e r y THIRD RAIL

Flynn, Rory Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (224 pp.) $23.00 | Jun. 10, 2014 978-0-544-22627-2 A second-generation cop banished from Boston to his little hometown seeks a comeback by tangling with a world-class designer drug.

Meet Third Rail, aka Thrilla, Mindfuck and ADA. It lifts you up, irons out your problems and revises your past mistakes so they’re actually empowering. You can see why everyone in Nagog, Massachusetts, would want it and why Mr. Mach, lord of the Zero Room, and his street-level associate Declan Nevis would be happy to supply it. There is a downside, though. Third Rail makes you feel so invincible that one apparent user, financier Robert Hammond, fatally crashes his car while he’s under the influence, and another, high school student Kelly Pierce, caps her doomed masquerade as a track star by running into a tree. Luckily for Nagog, but not so luckily for himself, Officer Edward Harkness is on hand, emptying parking meters ever since an accidental death in Boston stopped his career there dead in its tracks. Harkness thinks he’s hit bottom, but in fact, his slide has hardly begun. It continues when he takes up with artist/bartender Thalia Havoc, loses the Glock that’s been issued to him, duels repeatedly with his nemesis, Sgt. Dabilis, and attends the funeral of Capt. William Munro, the Nagog cop who’s always been another father to him. How can Harkness retrieve his weapon without tipping off his superiors that it’s gone, and what will he do with it once he’s got it again?

If you think this story sounds familiar, you’re right.

Flynn’s glum debut is so intent on sketching in his depressive hero that it never gives him much of a mystery to solve or explains why two different women—hard-living Thalia and baker Candace Hammond—would be so interested in him.

THE BAKLAVA CLUB

Goodwin, Jason Sarah Crichton/Farrar, Straus and Giroux (288 pp.) $26.00 | Jun. 10, 2014 978-0-374-29437-3 When a part-time sleuth—and fulltime eunuch—happens upon a dastardly, if somewhat inept, nest of killers, what else can he do but save the day?

Aboard a ship sailing from Bari to Istanbul, a man called La Piuma, “The Feather,” leans over the

rail, oblivious to the person standing behind him, a would-be assassin working for “The Committee,” who decides to let him live another day. In Istanbul, the courtly eunuch/detective Yashim (An Evil Eye, 2011, etc.) enjoys an evening of culture at the Polish embassy with Ambassador Palewski and guests. They discuss the local political situation, the papacy and matters of artistic note in mid-19th-century Europe. Yashim is on hand when Palewski receives and pooh-poohs a warning about The Committee. Days later, he hears Natasha, a beautiful young Russian, spin tales of brutal killings and ominous plots. She and Yashim engage in what feels oddly like a romantic romp. Meanwhile, Giancarlo, Rafael and Fabrizio, a trio of energetic Italians, plot urgently but with questionable efficacy to complete the assignment postponed in the shipboard prologue. Their collaboration with the sketchy Father Doherty raises still more questions. With the help of the mysterious Marta, Yashim is eventually able to convince Ambassador Palewski that the expected Polish prince Czartoryski is in grave danger. Can the prince be intercepted in time and saved?

Yashim’s fifth, and reportedly final, case unfolds more like a picaresque caper than a whodunit, elegantly written and immersing the reader in exotic 19th-century Turkey.

Still, it’s a long and leisurely road to actions of consequence.

LAND OF SHADOWS

Hall, Rachel Howzell Forge (320 pp.) $24.99 | Jun. 10, 2014 978-0-7653-3635-4

An African-American LAPD detective’s approach to a murder case is filtered through the experiences of her own early life.

Elouise “Lou” Norton grew up in a tough section of Los Angeles. How tough? Her sister Tori was most likely a murder victim 30 years ago, though her body was never found. Now Lou is married to a wealthy man who cheated on her in the past and who’s at it again during a business trip to Japan. When Monique Dowler, a young African-American girl, is found hanging in a closet in an unfinished condo complex, Lou’s new partner, Colin Taggert—a white cop who recently moved from Colorado to escape a bad relationship—thinks she killed herself, but Lou has an excellent reason to disagree. The man who’s building the complex over community objections is Napoleon Crase, whom she suspects of having murdered Tori. Monique was no innocent. Her many boyfriends included a minister’s son and a gangbanger.

Once the coroner confirms that her death was murder, Lou and Colin have plenty of suspects to consider. They’re disturbed that Monique was found wearing her cheerleading outfit even though she’d recently graduated from high school and had been accepted at a local college. They discover that Monique and her older sister both drove expensive cars and wore designer clothes their family could hardly have afforded. When Lou goes back to her childhood streets to investigate, she must walk a |

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“Hawken spins an uncompromising Mexican-American version of the British miniseries Traffik that finds room for a dry-eyed look at everyone involved in the drug trade....” from tequila sunset

fine line between past and present.

This first procedural from Hall (A Quiet Storm, 2002, etc.) combines a conflicted, gutsy heroine and a complex, many-layered mystery. (Agent: Jill Marsal)

TEQUILA SUNSET

Hawken, Sam Serpent’s Tail (352 pp.) $14.95 paper | $9.99 e-book Jun. 10, 2014 978-1-84668-854-6 978-1-84765-826-5 e-book An ex-con informant caught in the middle of the drugs-and-guns trade across the U.S.-Mexico border becomes a contested frontier himself, as cops and criminals battle for his loyalty and offer precious little in return.

Felipe “Flip” Morales has done his four years in the Coffield Unit without saying a word. That makes him a stand-up guy in José Martinez’s book, and Martinez wants Flip in his criminal organization. He doesn’t mind that Flip already has a job unloading containers in a warehouse owned by his mother’s boyfriend, Alfredo Rodriguez. When the time comes, in fact, Martinez plans to lean on Alfredo to take his money and do his bidding as well. But Flip has other plans. As soon as Martinez gets in touch with him, he gets in touch with Detective Cristina Salas, of the El Paso Police Department, who’s been spending her days working cases like that of the grocery owner threatened by kids who demand free sodas—while her counterparts across the border in Ciudad Juárez, including Matías Segura, work multiple homicides. That imbalance is ended by Flip’s information about Martinez’s plans to trade American guns for Mexican drugs, which entangles Cristina, Matías and Flip with Jamie McPeek, an FBI agent who will do whatever’s necessary to roll up Martinez’s operation, even if it means keeping her local colleagues in the dark and hanging Cristina’s confidential informant out to dry.

Hawken (The Dead Women of Juárez, 2012) spins an uncompromising Mexican-American version of the British miniseries Traffik that finds room for a dry-eyed look at everyone involved in the drug trade, with special attention reserved for the hapless Flip.

THE DEVIL MAY CARE

Housewright, David Minotaur (464 pp.) $25.99 | Jun. 3, 2014 978-1-250-00961-6

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not much more.

Entrepreneur Juan Carlos Navarre is too obviously a nouveau-riche immigrant for Riley Brodin’s family to take him seriously, except of course as a threat to their darling daughter and granddaughter. But Riley takes her boyfriend seriously enough to be distraught that he’s been missing for three days, and she wants McKenzie to look for him. McKenzie isn’t enthusiastic until Riley indicates that his search would be a serious poke in the eye to her grandfather Walter Muehlenhaus, the Croesus with whom McKenzie has already crossed swords. Roused to action, he makes the rounds of the people most likely to know what’s happened to Navarre—his ancient landlady, Irene Rogers, who owns the palace he’s rented; her realtor, Anne Rehmann, whose services to Navarre have gone beyond the usual; and Mary Pat Mullaly, the real owner of the restaurant Navarre told Riley was his. Long before one of these helpful informants is raped and murdered, McKenzie has concluded, “I don’t think Navarre is missing. I think he’s hiding”—presumably from the tough guys who’ve staked out his favorite places, dressed in the colors of the notorious Nine Thirty-Seven gang, which passed into oblivion years ago after its chief financial officer ratted out his colleagues and vanished with their treasury. Who’s in the greatest danger from the new gang: Navarre, Riles or McKenzie himself?

McKenzie, who seems to be channeling the Lew Archer of The Barbarous Coast and Black Money, continues to be more interesting than his cases (Highway 61, 2011, etc.). Maybe he should leave the mystery field and write a memoir or a selfhelp book.

ALL THE THINGS YOU ARE

Hughes, Declan Severn House (288 pp.) $28.95 | Jun. 1, 2014 978-0-7278-8371-1

The creator of private eye Ed Loy (City of Lost Girls, 2010, etc.) spins a standalone in which the fallout from a Halloween prank 35 years ago turns a perfect Wisconsin family’s life into a nightmare.

How do you tell your bride that you set the fire that killed her family? Danny Brogan has no idea, so he doesn’t even try. Instead, he enters into holy matrimony with Claire Taylor, nee Bradberry, without saying anything about the Halloween night when he was 11 and he and the rest of his posse—Dave Ricks, Gene Peterson and Ralph Cowley— sneaked off to the home of Jackie Bradberry, the dull-witted schoolmate whose brothers bullied them unmercifully, bent on excitement, and one of the Four Horsemen—presumably Danny, who knocked himself cold and doesn’t remember what happened—accidentally or deliberately tossed a Molotov cocktail through the window, burning the house to the ground. Now the past catches up with Danny and Claire in the form of a masked guest at a barbecue. The immediate upshot of Danny’s encounter with the angel of death is that Claire, returning home

from a trip to Chicago to see an old beau, finds her husband and two daughters vanished, their house stripped bare of furniture and their dog hacked to death. And that’s only the beginning of the couple’s tribulations as Claire searches for Danny and they separately search for the truth about what’s happened and what’s about to happen.

Cutting back and forth from Claire to Danny to a Madison police officer to an assassin who’s been hired by a shadowy Mr. Big, Hughes sticks so close to each one that he manages to create a threatening, baffling world that feels both kaleidoscopic and claustrophobic.

CARNIVAL

Janes, J. Robert MysteriousPress.com (373 pp.) $14.99 paper | May 13, 2014 978-1-4804-6815-3 One suicide is a tragedy, but two suicides definitely require an investigation.

Jean-Louis St-Cyr and Hermann Kohler first met on the battlefields of France during World War I, when they served on opposite sides. Nearly a quarter-century later, during yet another international war, they meet again with some regularity to investigate unusual crimes (Tapestry, 2013, etc.).

They’re summoned to Alsace in 1943 to probe a pair of suicides at a German-run POW camp. One victim is Renée Ekkehard, the secretary of Col. Hans Rasche, the camp’s commander; the other, whose corpse was found a week later, is a prisoner named Eugène Thomas. The detective duo receives a handful of lame excuses about official laxness in discovering and reporting the deaths of both victims, whose bodies have been placed in cheap coffins. Renée was believed to be visiting her family in Strasbourg; an anonymous letter pegs Eugène as an adulterer. Mindful of the nearby Karneval, abandoned since the Blitzkrieg but often rumored to be a spot for trysts and worse, locals speculate about an affair between the two suicides, but the detectives are skeptical. They’re just as interested in the nearby Schrijen Works, a textile factory where Eugène labored and Renée was good friends with the owner’s daughter. Within all these crosscurrents lies the truth that must be revealed.

The arch chemistry between the two competitive sleuths, the smattering of German and French, and the measured unfolding of the well-appointed plot all give StCyr and Kohler’s 15th case a faint flavor of Poirot.

BLACKLIST

Ludwig, Jerry Forge (416 pp.) $25.99 | $12.99 e-book | Jun. 10, 2014 978-0-7653-3539-5 978-1-4668-2218-4 e-book Five years after what seemed the definitive humiliation of Sen. Joseph McCarthy, the Hollywood blacklist claims new victims.

Everybody calls David Weaver “Teddy’s boy,” even now that he’s about to bury his father, a blacklisted screenwriter who fled the country to avoid testifying to the House Un-American Affairs Committee. Returning to Hollywood in 1959 with his father’s body, David needs a job, and the only one Teddy’s one-time lawyer Harry Rains, now head of production at Panorama Studios, can get him is running errands for Leo Vardian, Teddy’s former writing partner and old friend, as he directs the bigbudget feature Against the Wind. The professional experience is priceless, and it’s a great way to renew his friendship with Leo’s daughter Jana, who was David’s girlfriend before Teddy spirited his family off to Mexico. But David still feels allergic to Leo, who testified as a friendly witness and named names to HUAC. The wounds opened by the rift between the two fathers persist in David’s uncomfortable run-ins with two nemeses from the past, FBI agent Brian McKenna and redbaiting columnist Joe Shannon, and you just know the course of true love between David and Jana isn’t about to run smooth.

Alternating chapters narrated by David, Jana and the surprisingly sympathetic McKenna, TV writer Ludwig (Getting Garbo, 2004, etc.) begins killing off the supporting characters, throwing suspicion on Teddy’s boy, who can’t even remember what he was doing during the crucial intervals.

An insider’s heartfelt fictionalized account of the toxic legacy of the blacklist, decked out with an untidy mystery, an excruciatingly familiar cast, and dozens of references to real-life Hollywood and D.C. figures. The ideal audience would be readers who’ve never heard of the blacklist and readers who can’t forget it.

A SONG FOR THE DYING

MacBride, Stuart HarperCollins (496 pp.) $24.99 | Jun. 10, 2014 978-0-00-734430-7

A tough Scottish cop emerges from prison with a boulder-sized chip on his shoulder and a single focus: justice.

Framed for murder, former DI Ash Henderson served eight years and has been released to society with exactly two items on his agenda. The first is to catch the serial killer he was pursuing at the time, the twisted and brutal “Inside Man,” so named because he left dolls inside the stomachs |

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of his victims. The second is to take revenge on Mrs. Kerrigan, the crazy Irish criminal who framed him. Strangely, the Inside Man abruptly stopped his crime spree when Ash went to prison. But now he’s started again, leaving a nurse murdered in a remote dumping ground, trademark doll embedded in the corpse. Is he sending Ash a message? Ash feels a strange elation, helping him muscle through his knee-jerk resistance to authority (he’s forced to wear an ankle bracelet), the needling of resentful colleagues and the renewed understanding that he can never regain the life he had before. His former sidekick, optimistic psychologist Dr. Alice McDonald, helps engineer his release and does her best to run interference for him as they try to pick up where they left off on the case. As the pair savor their deliciously discordant chemistry, Laura Strachan, a survivor of the Inside Man, delivers a baby, an event elaborately covered by the press. She seems to be a sitting duck, unless Ash can save her. MacBride does a spotty job of explaining carryover characters from Ash’s first thriller (Birthdays for the Dead, 2012).

But his gritty, immediate prose and righteous hero grab the reader from the get-go.

THE PRIME MINISTER’S SECRET AGENT

MacNeal, Susan Elia Bantam (320 pp.) $15.00 paper | Jul. 1, 2014 978-0-345-53674-7

A spy must cast off the black dog of depression in order to return to active duty.

A Brit by birth, Maggie Hope was raised in the U.S. by her aunt; when she returned to Britain, she learned that the parents she thought were killed in a car accident are alive; her father’s a codebreaker for Great Britain, her mother’s a Nazi spy. This information changes her life and commits her to the war effort. A perilous trip to Berlin to deliver a set of radio crystals has left her physically wounded and mentally exhausted. Her mother is in the Tower of London waiting to be shot, and both Maggie and her father refuse to visit her.

Two wartime romances have gone sour, so now Maggie is training recruits for MI5 at a remote Scottish house, too depressed to do anything else, when another instructor convinces her to go to Edinburgh to see her old friend Sarah dance in a ballet. The ballet ends in disaster when the leading lady collapses and dies. Sarah and another cast member are detained by the police until both become dangerously ill with the same symptoms as the dead ballerina. Maggie, who has seen similar symptoms in a sheep, is released from her depression by her quest to save her friend. While she’s sleuthing in Scotland, the U.S. intelligence services, who have cracked the Japanese code, are blithely ignoring the danger signals of an imminent attack, and Churchill, certain that the U.S. will respond to any attack with a declaration of war, is pondering the moral implications of ignoring the coming crisis.

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Although this current installment is not up to the level of His Majesty’s Hope (2013), it generates excitement as it explores the moral issues involved in winning the just war.

(Agent: Victoria Skurnick)

RESURRECTION BAY

McDaniel, Wayne; Womack, Steven Midnight Ink/Llewellyn (360 pp.) $14.99 paper | Jun. 8, 2014 978-0-7387-4065-2 First-timer McDaniel and veteran Womack (The Software Bomb, 1993, etc.) attempt to breathe new life into Richard Connell’s classic story “The Most Dangerous Game” by making the man hunted for sport into a series of hunted women.

Decatur Kaiser is compulsively tidy, likes sophomoric puns and runs the best bakery in Anchorage. He has a devoted wife and two wonderful children. Small wonder no one suspects that every time he goes on one of his annual hunting trips, he takes with him a different young woman he’s kidnapped to rape, release and hunt through the deep Alaskan wilderness after giving her half an hour’s head start. One year his choice falls on Susie, an exotic dancer he picks up at Bushwhackers, the local strip joint. He doesn’t know it’s her first night on the job or that she’s Sue Turnbull, the daughter of his friend Anchorage cop Sgt. Dick Turnbull. At first, Sue literally can’t believe what’s happened to her—just to give her the message that it’s all terribly real and raise the stakes a tad, Decatur chops off her finger when he turns her loose, and her early survival strategies are ineffectual. But then she catches a lucky break and resolves that she’ll fight back and win. Since you can rely on cat-and-mouse tales like this one to end with appropriate revenge against the killer, there’s a limited opportunity for unexpected developments; McDaniel and Womack provide exactly one big surprise in Chapter 35, just two-thirds of the way through the story. From that point on, it’s downhill all the way.

Pulp-ish, fast-moving and predictable to a fault. For readers who haven’t had enough, the final chapter hints at a series.

PRESENT DARKNESS

Nunn, Malla Emily Bestler/Atria (384 pp.) $16.00 paper | Jun. 3, 2014 978-1-4516-1696-5 It’s 1953. Although DS Emmanuel Cooper has been reassigned from Durban CID to Marshall Square in Johannesburg, his fourth case returns him uncomfortably to his roots in neighboring Sophiatown.

Teenager Cassie Brewer was at home when two thieves broke in, beat her parents badly and drove off in the family Mercedes. And she’s certain who the miscreants were: a pair of St. Bartholomew’s College students named Kibelo Nkhato and Aaron Shabalala, whom Cassie’s parents—Ian, the school principal, and Martha, a secretary at the office of land management—had entertained at dinner shortly before the assault.

The first suspect provides an alibi, but the second can’t, and as the evidence against him mounts, it looks like an open-and-shut case. Emmanuel (Blessed Are the Dead, 2012, etc.) would make the arrest and turn without a second thought to his Christmas vacation if Aaron Shabalala weren’t the son of his longtime friend Zulu/Shangaan DC Samuel Shabalala. If Aaron is innocent, as he claims, why is he so determined not to cooperate with the authorities, and why is Cassie so insistent that he’s guilty?

Emmanuel’s temporary boss, Lt. Walter Mason, congratulates him on his great work finding the stolen car and removes him from the case; but Emmanuel keeps going, joining up with his friend Samuel and Dr. Daniel Zweigman—a Holocaust survivor he’s asked to treat another victim of the thieves even though that would mean crossing the color line—to find the truth.

Never mind if his defiance exposes Emmanuel’s secret liaison with a mixed-race lover, Davida Ellis, and the child he’s fathered.

There’s never much doubt who’s really behind the attacks on Ian and Martha Brewer, but Nunn, who provides enough action and suspicion to keep the pot boiling, doesn’t need much of a mystery to bring the sad racial divisions of apartheid once more into sharp relief.

WINDSWEPT

Ryan, Patricia Severn House (192 pp.) $27.95 | Jun. 1, 2014 978-0-7278-8357-5 Murder mars a young New Yorker’s Caribbean getaway.

Emily Harrington has so looked forward to a prenuptial vacation with her fiance, Michael. But when a tricky business deal lures him to London, Emily decides that even on her own, sunny Aruba beats snowy Manhattan hands down. So she starts off for Island Bluffs by herself, hoping Michael will catch up in a day or two. Her first day is a knockout. Island Bluffs owners Martin and Anne Maitland take her under their wing, and soon, she finds herself seated at dinner with the Maitlands; socialite Marietta St. John; her companion, Nora; powerful restaurant critic Roger Stirhew; and his lovely young wife, Jessica. The next day, the Maitlands’ daughter Sarah takes Emily to see her craft co-op in Oranjestad and then to lunch at her fiance’s upscale bistro.

In the afternoon, handsome, unattached Nick Marino takes her windsurfing. Aruba is perfect—if only Michael would shake loose of his business obligations so she could show it to him! As the week wears on, however, Emily begins to fret, not only about Michael’s continuing absence, but about Roger the self-centered food critic’s increasing boorishness. He picks fights with his wife, badgers his

hosts and threatens other guests, until at long last, someone shoots him in the head. Since Emily’s the one who finds his body, she has to endure endless interviews with the ultrapersistent Inspector Thomas Moller, who’s determined to find Roger’s killer before he or she can strike again.

You know there’s trouble in paradise when the heroine’s fiance doesn’t even have a last name. Romance lovers will be intrigued; mystery buffs may want to steer clear.

DON’T TALK TO STRANGERS

Williams, Amanda Kyle Bantam (336 pp.) $26.00 | Jul. 1, 2014 978-0-553-80809-4

An erudite investigator is an outsider in the small town where she’s been hired to catch a child predator.

Talented and ambitious, Dr. Keye Street was in the process of working her way up the food chain at the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime when her drinking put the brakes on her career. Now that Keye has a few years of recovery behind her, she’s settled into a more sedate life as the head of her own firm, Corporate Intelligence & Investigations. Although much of the business relies on bail jumpers and background checks, the phone still rings sometimes with a special case that needs Keye’s expertise. When Sheriff Meltzer calls to ask Keye to investigate a child predator in the rural town of Whisper, Georgia, she gets a familiar feeling of excitement. Admittedly, this feeling is only partially about figuring out what kind of person would abduct two teenage girls 10 years apart; Keye’s hit a bit of a rut with her boyfriend, Rauser, and is aching for a chance to head out of town. Once Keye arrives in Whisper, she’s shunned by the local cops, who are insulted that Meltzer has contracted out their job to an outsider. But Keye’s fresh perspective might just be what’s needed, since the more seasoned cops’ personal knowledge of the families involved has led them to overlook key pieces of evidence. The abduction of another girl forces Keye to come up with fast answers before another body is added to the count.

All the twists and turns readers of Williams (Stranger in the Room, 2012, etc.) have come to expect, though the sketchy development of the minor characters makes the big reveal less effective. (Agent: Victoria Sanders)

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“Her cover blown, an undercover cop reinvents herself as a whole company of private investigators.” from the red chameleon

THE BOY IN THE WOODS

Wilson, Carter Severn House (224 pp.) $28.95 | Jun. 1, 2014 978-0-7278-8385-8

A best-selling author, long haunted by the formative experience that launched his career, is threatened anew by the monstrous figure behind it all.

At 44, Tommy Devereaux has led what most people would call a successful life as a devoted husband and father—except for that one time two years ago when he betrayed his wife, Becky, for a fling with his personal assistant—and a well-known writer of thrillers. As he’s signing books one day, he gets a note from a woman he was just chatting with: “You didn’t even change my name.” In a flash he realizes that the woman, suitably disguised, was Elizabeth, whom he last saw one day 30 years ago when he and his high school buddies Mark Singletary and Jason Covington, hanging out in the Oregon woods, were approached by a red-haired girl a few years older with a 10-year-old boy in tow. Elizabeth brazenly flirted with them, and then, as Tommy and his friends watched in horror, she brought herself to orgasm by pleasuring herself with the 10-year-old—and then murdered him. To make things even worse, a masked man accompanying her forced the witnesses at gunpoint to bury the corpse after mingling their blood on a knife that would provide damning DNA evidence against them. Now that she’s read Tommy’s fictional version of the crime in the teaser chapter of his forthcoming novel The Blood of the Young, Elizabeth is determined that he tell her real story as a serial killer of 38 victims (the toll will shortly rise)— and woe betide him whether or not he obeys her.

Wilson (Final Crossing, 2013) provides serious shivers for readers who can overlook the gaping logic holes in setup and execution.

THE RED CHAMELEON

Wright, Erica Pegasus Crime (320 pp.) $24.95 | Jun. 15, 2014 978-1-60598-568-8

Her cover blown, an undercover cop reinvents herself as a whole company of private investigators.

Kathleen Stone’s days on the NYPD left her with two things: an unscratchable itch for fellow cop Ellis Dekker and the skill to fade into the background in a way the 6-foot-2, ice-blond Dekker never could. Once the Costa gang makes her, though, Kathleen’s net worth as a cop plummets to near zero.

So she swaps her badge for a dozen wigs. Now, in two seconds, she can become Katy, Kat, Kitty, Katya—whomever her client du jour needs to get the goods on a cheating spouse or light-fingered partner. In her favorite black dress and spiffy red bob, she 36

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becomes Kathy Seasons, charming hedge fund hawks at Hamilton’s while tailing Stephen Kramer, suspected of infidelity by his wife, Gloria. When Kramer gets popped in the men’s room, Kathy runs from the bar, ditches the wig and resourcefully turns into 15-year-old Keith to give the police the slip. As ash-blonde Kate, Kathleen stakes out the Kramers’ apartment in time to see young stud Leif Nichols pay the widow Kramer a two-hour condolence call. The next day, she’s back as flame-haired Kathy, alleged real estate broker drafted to find a condo for James Clifton, a Wall Street wolf who happened to be in Hamilton’s the day Kramer got offed. Between Clifton and Gloria Kramer, Kathleen has her hands full. But she still has time for a quick tryst with Marco, her alternative to the cagey Dekker; a trip out to Suffolk County with her doe-eyed secretary, Meeza; and a couple more corpses.

All those rapid-fire costume changes give a jumpy feel to Wright’s fast-paced, quirky debut.

NO STONE UNTURNED

Ziskin, James W. Seventh Street/Prometheus (275 pp.) $15.95 paper | $11.99 e-book Jun. 10, 2014 978-1-61614-883-6 978-1-61614-884-3 e-book The year is 1960. Reporter Ellie Stone (Styx & Stone, 2013) looks for her big break covering the grisly murder of a beautiful college student in upstate New York.

Everyone in New Holland agreed that Judge Harrison Shaw’s daughter Jordan was the best. She was homecoming queen in high school and is now a sophomore at Tufts, where she’s the star of the French Department. Straight-arrow Tom Quint adored her, bad-boy Pukey Boyle lusted after her, and ungainly Glenda Whalen idolized her. So how did Jordan’s naked body end up in the woods the weekend after Thanksgiving? Sent by the New Holland Republic to take pictures for a story written by George Walsh, a rival reporter, Ellie hopes to get a scoop of her own by finding Jordan’s car, which turns up parked at the Mohawk Motel. She also finds out from the medical examiner that Jordan had been fitted with an intrauterine device. Suspecting that a lover may have been involved in Jordan’s death, Ellie looks first at the local boys who flirted their ways into Jordan’s heart and then to the men of Tufts, who may have offered her more mature enticements. At every step, Ellie finds frustration: from her rival at the Republic; from locals who don’t want to believe their golden girl may have strayed from the righteous path; and most of all, from a murderer who would kill again to avoid being unmasked.

You can’t help rooting for tenacious Ellie, who has the grit to know when she’s right and the grace to admit when she’s wrong.

MEMORY OF WATER

science fiction and fantasy

Itäranta, Emmi Harper Voyager (272 pp.) $14.99 paper | $10.99 e-book Jun. 10, 2014 978-0-06-232615-7 978-0-06-232616-4 e-book

PROPERTY OF A LADY FAIRE

Delicate medium-future fable that first appeared in Finland in 2012.

Global warming has destroyed the old world and its order. Wars were fought over energy resources and water, rendering Norway and Sweden uninhabitable. Now the empire of New Qian rules Asia and much of Europe. In the far north of occupied Finland, where even in winter the temperature rarely drops below 50 degrees and water shortages are endemic, 17-year-old Noria Kaitio studies under her father to become a tea master. Not only must Noria learn the ceremony, with its underlying philosophy and ethics, but she must be introduced to her father’s greatest secret: the location of the hidden spring from which the water for the teahouse derives. The region’s military chief, Maj. Bolin—a family friend and frequent guest—has been protecting the teahouse, but as water shortages become ever more acute, Bolin’s successor, Cmdr. Taro, proves less accommodating.

After soldiers dig up the grounds and trash the teahouse, finding nothing, Noria’s mother leaves to take up a position at a university in China, hoping Noria will join her. Meanwhile, Noria’s friend Sanja, a young woman with an extraordinary talent for fixing broken junk recovered from ancient landfills, recovers what she fails to recognize as a CD player. In the same landfill, Noria finds a disk, which they are able to play and whose contents hint at an extraordinary and dangerous secret. After her father dies, Noria makes plans to learn the truth.

Itäranta’s fine debut is lyrically rendered, vivid and engaging despite a bit too much philosophy and a less-thansatisfying ending. (Agent: Elina Ahlback)

Green, Simon R. ROC/Penguin (352 pp.) $26.95 | Jun. 3, 2014 978-0-451-41431-1

A likable addition to a supernatural series (Casino Infernale, 2013, etc.; each volume is understandable even if you haven’t read the others) about Eddie Drood and his family, whose self-appointed vocation is to protect ordinary humans from otherworldly nasties.

This time out, Eddie, in his private-eye persona of Shaman Bond (modeled on James Bond, of course), must go to London’s Wulfshead Club, where a series of unfortunate information leakages has taken place. He soon solves that one, but there are plenty of other items on the agenda. His recently deceased grandmother, the Drood Matriarch, bequeaths him a mysterious box that she promises will make him Patriarch of the family. Such a prospect holds no appeal, so Eddie takes the box but doesn’t open it. The Merlin Glass, the magical doorway that allows Eddie to hop between dimensions, appears to have developed a will of its own. Worse still, Eddie and sidekick/girlfriend/witch Molly Metcalf are summoned to the government’s Department of Uncanny, where Eddie’s grandfather is Regent of Shadows—or, rather, was, since the supposedly unkillable Regent is now dead, slaughtered horribly along with his entire staff. And everybody who’s anybody is blaming Eddie and Molly.

Next, a disembodied Voice announces that it’s kidnapped Eddie’s parents, and if he wants to see them again, he’d better locate and hand over the Lazarus Stone, an object that has the power to bring people back from the past. To learn more, our heroes must interrogate the dreaded Drood in Cell 13. Via some patient—well, OK, violent—sleuthing, Eddie and Molly learn that the irresistibly alluring and unfortunately elusive Lady Faire has the item in question—and she’s not about to let it go.

Tons of plot, nonstop semicomic action, and further revelations about the entire Drood brood and their mysterious mission— what’s not to enjoy?

Close to the best of a fun series.

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ROGUES

Martin, George R.R.; Dozois, Gardner–Eds. Bantam (784 pp.) $30.00 | Jun. 17, 2014 978-0-345-53726-3 Avast, ye varlets, intergalactic and otherwise: There are new bad boys and girls afoot on Mars and in Middle Earth, and you’ll like them, even if you’ll count your silverware after they leave.

There are lovable rogues, like Johnny Depp of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, and unlovable ones, like Sarah Palin. They have in common an irresistible penchant for gaming the system, no matter what mess they leave for others to pick up. They also nurse a narcissistic dose of self-worth relative to other people, as well as a conviction that whatever they’re doing is right; thus, as Joe Abercrombie writes |

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of one femme criminale, “To be caught by these idiots would be among the most embarrassing moments of her career.” Exactly: for a rogue, the worst crime is to be busted. Martin, of Game of Thrones franchise fame, and Hugo Award–winning editor Dozois assemble a lively collection of original stories across several fictional genres that have in common Conan-like qualities— in the sense that, as they write in their introduction, Conan is “a hero, but…also a thief, a reaver, a pirate, a mercenary, and ultimately a usurper who installed himself on a stolen throne.”

(There’s another thing about rogues, too, and that’s that their victories tend to be fleeting, if not pyrrhic.) The biggest draw in this sprawling collection is a new Song of Ice and Fire yarn

by Martin, giving back story to a mid–Targaryen dynasty scamp whose “bold deeds, black crimes and heroic death in the carnage that followed are well known to all.” But then, arguably, all the men of Westeros are rogues. Of particular interest, too, are a grandly whimsical piece by Neil Gaiman that begs to be turned into a Wes Anderson film; a shaggy dog tale by Paul Cornell of a Flashman-ish character gone to seed; and, especially, an utterly arresting, utterly surprising tale by Gillian Flynn that begins, “I didn’t stop giving hand jobs because I wasn’t good at it.”

Rambunctious, rowdy and occasionally R-rated: a worthy entertainment, without a dud in the bunch, that easily moves from swords and sorcery to hard-boiled Chandleresque. (Agent: Kay McCauley)

DEFENDERS

McIntosh, Will Orbit/Little, Brown (512 pp.) $16.00 paper | May 13, 2014 978-0-316-21776-7 Abandoning the domestic sphere he explored so aptly in Love Minus Eighty (2013), McIntosh tells a more global yet still deeply personal tale about life during wartime and its aftermath.

In 2029, the telepathic, starfishshaped Luyten have just about conquered Earth—it’s tough to fight an enemy who knows everything you’re about to do.

Pushed to the brink, humanity develops the defenders: brilliant, 16-foot tall, three-legged soldiers impervious to telepathy.

But once the Luyten are defeated, there are millions of defenders who are ill-suited to anything other than war and who are in a position to demand whatever they want from the weaker humans. The larger picture is primarily filtered through the perspectives of Kai, an orphan who inadvertently befriends Five, a wounded Luyten later captured by the U.S. government; Oliver, Kai’s eventual adoptive father, a socially awkward CIA operative who interrogates and becomes unduly influenced by Five; and Lila, Kai’s future wife, a clever, scientifically inclined young woman. As in his other work, McIntosh builds a believable universe with well-thought-out social dynamics—although the beginning of the novel does jump about in time somewhat confusingly. The genetically engineered soldier who can’t adapt to peacetime is a frequent figure in sci-fi, but most previous 38

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examples of the trope haven’t considered the implications quite so carefully. And, of course, the novel’s sharp commentary on the difficulties soldiers have fitting into civilian society after their service—and the struggles of civilians both during and after war—has a sadly contemporary relevance. There’s also a fascinating take on how political alliances shift over time: One’s bosom friend today can be one’s deadly enemy tomorrow, and vice versa.

McIntosh has his finger on the pulse, again. (Agent: Seth Fishman)

r om a n c e HOW TO SCHOOL YOUR SCOUNDREL

Gray, Juliana Berkley Sensation (320 pp.) $7.99 paper | Jun. 3, 2014 978-0-425-26568-0

A betrayed princess hides in plain sight, disguised as the male secretary to the most ruthless earl in England, biding her time until it’s safe to return to her country while falling under the spell of her complex, compelling employer.

Crown Princess Luisa has spent her life doing her duty to her father, her country and her people. But when a group of anarchists kills her father and her husband and overruns her tiny alpine principality, she and her sisters are sent into hiding in England. Luisa winds up as the acting secretary to the Earl of Somerton, whom she dubs “an overbearing, demanding, bleak-faced despot,” though she soon becomes nearly indispensable to his business and remains practically the only person in his orbit who will stand up to him.

Feeling oddly satisfied and liberated by the work she is doing, and increasingly drawn to the mercurial earl, she is still in a constant state of low-level worry for her sisters and her vanquished country. When she realizes that Somerton seeks vengeance against his unfaithful wife and her lover, Luisa attempts to turn him against a path that will harm him as much as it does them, though he considers her motives questionable when he discovers that she’s connected to the lover. And she is a princess. And her uncle, the enigmatic Duke of Olympia, wants her back on the throne, with Somerton by her side. As they navigate forgiveness, redemption and their fledgling love, they must also dodge death threats and enemies far closer to home than anyone thinks. Prolific author Gray wraps up her second trilogy with the same lyrical writing, lush romance, complex plotting and emotional depth she’s become known for, and we are charmed by and invested in the determined princess, her tiny monarchy and the ruthless man she tames.

Another delightful, enchanting romantic adventure from the talented Gray.

A SHIVER OF LIGHT

Hamilton, Laurell K. Berkley (368 pp.) $27.95 | Jun. 3, 2014 978-0-425-25566-7

Fae princess Merry Gentry is about to give birth to triplets at the ad hoc Court she’s established in Los Angeles, giving rise to political and personal complications across the faerie world and threatening those closest to her.

Merry, born Princess Meredith NicEssus, is the first faerie princess born on American soil, with bloodline ties to both the Seelie and Unseelie Royal Courts. Having survived countless assassination attempts, she fled to California and lived a mortal life as a private investigator for years, but recently, her magic has awakened, and she has established her own household with powerful lovers while creating alliances with other supernatural beings. Both Fae Courts are likely ruled by infertile leaders, causing infertility in the population, so many faeries are following Merry to LA and pledging their allegiance to her, hoping she will help them bear children of their own. Meanwhile, her enemy, King Taranis, is using both magical and legal means to get Merry under his influence, all while Merry and her stable of lovers are settling in to life with three babies, from two different fathers. Paranormal superstar Hamilton returns to her Merry Gentry series with the same storytelling imbalance that affects most of her books these days: There’s too much boring sex, talking about sex, and Merry waxing rhapsodic about her many, many lovers. We catch occasional glimpses of Hamilton’s brilliant storytelling and compelling imagination, and the worldbuilding remains spectacular, with its many amazing physical and spiritual details—when we get to see it. Hamilton grew her reputation on her action-packed, supernatural storytelling and eroticism, and while we get slivers of it, we have to wade through too much banality to get there.

A shadow of Hamilton’s greatness, but avid fans waiting for the continuation of Merry’s story will still buy it.

BETTER HOMES AND HAUNTINGS

Harper, Molly Pocket (384 pp.) $7.99 paper | Jun. 24, 2014 978-1-4767-0600-9

Billionaire social media magnate Deacon Whitney contracts a group of renovation specialists, including landscape designer Nina Linden, to live and work on his remote island estate.

After generations of neglect, the Crane’s Nest is getting some attention. The once-beautiful estate—which sits in Narragansett Bay—has been left mostly to disintegrate since it was built by Gerald Whitney for his wife,

Catherine. Just after the mansion was completed, Catherine was murdered, and the shadow of her mysterious death hung over Gerald for the rest of his life; the family has never been able to restore its fortunes or its reputation. Until Deacon. The island has long been rumored to be haunted, but Deacon—a man of science—refuses to believe it. Nina is so desperate to rebuild her life and career after her former partner (in business and romance) betrayed her that she’s grateful for the opportunity, no matter what misgivings she may have about the place or its oddly attractive owner. As the collection of people—Deacon’s cousin Dotty; his best friend and architect, Jake; and professional organizer Cindy—become colleagues, then friends, none of them can deny that there is some malevolent force on the island, and they have to solve the mystery of Catherine’s murder before history repeats itself. After writing successful Southern contemporary and vampire-themed paranormal romances, Harper turns her humor and charm to a Gothichaunted-house-on-a-remote-island story. The characters are authentic and appealing, the sexual and romantic tension are perfectly balanced, and the snippets of the past as experienced by modern-day characters in dreams and trances should seem trite but work quite well. With more than one enemy, it’s sometimes hard to know who’s responsible for what, and the ending almost makes it seem like the heroes were at times too easily misled. But Harper is a witty, engaging writer, and any weaknesses are completely overcome by the strength of the writing and storytelling.

Fun, sweet, spooky and sexy.

THERE’S WILD, THEN THERE’S YOU

Leighton, M. Berkley (304 pp.) $14.00 paper | Jun. 3, 2014 978-0-425-26782-0

Social worker and perennial helpmate Violet does her best friend a favor and winds up in the laser-sharp sights of local rocker Jet, just where she wants to be but fighting it all the way.

When Violet shows up at an addiction meeting just to give her BFF Tia moral support, she meets Jet, who maneuvers her into acting as his sponsor and keeps her at his side as he works through his addictions, previous bad behavior and a fledgling music career—all the while keeping a horrible secret to himself, one that would surely drive Violet away if she knew. Violet, good girl extraordinaire and first-class square, falls into an uneasy friendship with the rich, sexy, rock-star playboy, keeping the fact that she’s not an addict to herself. They inch closer to a sexual relationship, which it’s clear he wants, but she is morally conflicted, until all the truths come out and everyone is devastated. Best-selling author Leighton knows how to write sexual tension and conflict, and it’s clear why she has such a following.

However, without exactly being clichéd, the book is unrealistic in annoying ways. Jet is a sexy rock star. Violet’s mom was a |

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rock groupie. Violet won’t tell Jet the truth, which, for a social worker, seems both unethical and ludicrous. Jet won’t tell Violet the truth, and the truth is really pretty despicable, so despite how much he complains to himself and calls himself names, it doesn’t do much to engender our sympathy and makes us furious at him in the end. Violet is a really sweet person, but she comes across as a doormat. Tia is a narcissistic witch through most of the book, and Violet’s dad is a pathetic drunk. But suddenly, in the end, due to all the trials and tribulations of Jet and Violet, everyone changes his or her ways. Still, there’s enough edgy sexiness and seductive storytelling to find an audience.

Often overdone and irritating but also engaging and charismatic, so it will find its crowd of admirers.

HERE’S LOOKING AT YOU

McFarlane, Mhairi Avon/HarperCollins (448 pp.) $14.99 paper | Jun. 3, 2014 978-0-00-755947-3

History professor Anna Alessi is shocked when she has to work with James Fraser, her high school tormentor; stymied when he doesn’t recognize her; and stunned when she finds herself falling for him.

Formerly fat and friendless, Anna is meeting her 30s with the same planning and determination that helped her earn her advanced degree, land her dream teaching position and slim down, though she has never quite come to think of herself as any kind of beauty or social contender. Still, it’s time to meet a man, and as she signs up for a variety of online dating sites, she has the opportunity to work on a fabulous history exhibit at a local museum, where she meets James, the tech expert who will be creating computer-interactive features for the project and who was also the merciless instigator of the cruelest prank of her school days. Anna trusts him about as far as she could throw her high school self, but as they work together and get to know each other, she begins to lower her defenses. As their friendship grows against the backdrop of Anna’s disastrous dates, her sister’s problematic upcoming wedding, James’ disintegrating marriage and his womanizing friend Laurence, Anna finds herself considering something more, until the disturbing moment James discovers who Anna used to be, forcing him to face who he was—and is.

From the beginning, we are drawn to Anna’s pain as a bullied student, and we can see James, the idol of their school and her painful crush, turning on her with the stinging malevolence of teen cruelty. Smoothly written and nicely constructed, with an interesting and powerful look at the past and the hold it can have on us, yet with a keen eye toward how empowering struggle can be.

Fun and engaging but with thought-provoking twists that deepen the emotional impact beyond light romantic comedy.

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SHIELD OF WINTER

Singh, Nalini Berkley (432 pp.) $25.95 | Jun. 3, 2014 978-0-425-26401-0

As an Arrow, Vasic has been conditioned to remain even more detached than most Psy, so when he’s asked to guard Ivy, an empath who may hold the key to their society’s survival, he’s unnerved by her emotionalism and his long-buried desire to belong.

The corrupt Psy-Council has fallen, and the remorseless regime of Silence—the enforced practice of remaining emotionally distant—has been lifted. The members of the elite Psy paramilitary group known as Arrows are independent now, loyal to no one but themselves. Forging a wary alliance with Kaleb Krychek, the de facto leader who caused the council to fall and has since stepped into its void, the Arrows must help staunch the spread of a deadly psychic contagion that threatens the lives and sanity of the Psy race. Krychek suspects that empaths may be the answer, though their emotional nature was brutally stifled under the Silence. Vasic, second-in-command of the Arrows, is assigned to find and protect empath Ivy Jane, who has been living beyond the grid after undergoing a devastating state-mandated “emotional reconditioning.” Vasic is a cold creature of the shadows, and he knows he can never be forgiven for the damage he’s done under the command of the Psy-Council.

However, the more time he spends with Ivy, the more her honest emotions affect him, reawakening feelings he barely remembers. Somehow, under Ivy’s accepting and fascinated gaze, Vasic just might learn to feel again—emotions like hope, passion and love. But first, Ivy and Vasic must vanquish the contagion and a life-threatening legacy from Vasic’s violent past. Paranormal author Singh continues her popular Psy-Changeling series with an emotionally intense and gratifying romance while advancing a new reality for her complex psychic society set on Earth a few generations hence. Shadowy Arrows make great redeemed alpha heroes, and pairing profoundly damaged Vasic with the blatantly empathic Ivy works brilliantly.

Singh shines with elaborate, compelling worldbuilding and scorching sexual and emotional tension.

nonfiction OUR DECLARATION A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality

These titles earned the Kirkus Star: THE TRIGGER by Tim Butcher............................................................47

Allen, Danielle Liveright/Norton (208 pp.) $27.95 | Jun. 23, 2014 978-0-87140-690-3

THE EMPATHY EXAMS by Leslie Jamison..........................................62 CAPITAL IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

by Thomas Piketty................................................................................. 73

A slow and careful reading of America’s founding document.

The Declaration of Independence, itself the product of many hands, addressed everybody: “a candid world” the signers presumed capable of judging the facts and approving the reasons that impelled the colonies to take the fateful step of separating from Britain. Allen (Social Science/Institute for Advanced Study; Why Plato Wrote, 2010, etc.) insists we take the signatories at their word and that we need not be steeped in history to comprehend a text that works simultaneously as an eloquent statement of philosophical principle and as a utilitarian memorandum. For more than a decade, the author has taught the Declaration to elite students and to adults in night school, and she maintains that “a willing mind and life experience” are sufficient for understanding the document. As if conducting a friendly conversation, sentence by sentence, she takes readers through all the text’s words, and she proves a patient, informed and friendly guide. By subordinating history—although she admits some history is required for a fuller understanding of the colonists’ list of grievances against King George III—and focusing on the philosophical, she easily demonstrates her thesis: that liberty and equality, “the twinned foundations of democracy,” are not necessarily in tension.

Rather, she argues, they are inextricably linked, and if anything, “equality has precedence over freedom.” Readers prepared to quarrel with Allen’s judgment will need first to acknowledge her careful definition of the ideal of equality (scrupulously extracted from the Declaration’s own words) and to commit to a similarly rigorous textual analysis. Her dedication to slow reading forces us to pause and reconsider words we thought we knew—“self-evident,” “created equal”—words that eerily resonate—“swarms of officers”—and words whose full definitions continue to unfold more than 200 years after the nation’s birth.

At once simple, sharp and deftly executed. (35 illustrations)

YOU ANIMAL MACHINE (THE GOLDEN GREEK)

by Eleni Sikelianos................................................................................ 77 ON DEMOCRACY’S DOORSTEP by J. Douglas Smith......................78 NATURE’S GOD by Matthew Stewart................................................78 PERFECTLY MISERABLE by Sarah Payne Stuart...............................79 MICHELANGELO by Miles J. Unger................................................... 82

PERFECTLY MISERABLE Guilt, God and Real Estate in a Small Town

Stuart, Sarah Payne Riverhead (320 pp.) $27.95 Jun. 12, 2014 978-1-59463-181-8

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THE ARSENAL OF DEMOCRACY FDR, Ford Motor Company, and Their Epic Quest to Arm an America at War

If alarmism proves polarizing where global warming is concerned, maybe humor can bridge the divide and build a consensus. Such would seem to be the strategy of Bauman, who bills himself as “the world’s first and only standup economist,” and cartoonist Klein; both collaborated on The Cartoon Introduction to Economics (two volumes, 2010 and 2011). The authors admit that there have long been wild fluctuations in climate before there was any ecological concern, that human activity is only part of the issue and that the doomsday scenario that some find inevitable is in fact uncertain. Having established a tone of moderation, invoking scientific method rather than ideology, Bauman and Klein nonetheless reinforce the realities of global warming, fossil fuels and greenhouse gases as potentially catastrophic. “The key fact about business as usual is that it would make [carbon dioxide] emissions explode,” they write, while softening the punch with an analogy involving China and cakes (a guitarist and feedback feature prominently elsewhere).

Projecting through the century, “[u]nder business as usual emissions could rise 250%...pushing atmospheric [carbon dioxide] concentrations up near 1000 ppm.” The perspective of “environmental economics” distinguishes this analysis from that of a natural scientist or an environmental ideologue, for the authors insist from the start that economic growth, particularly in Asia and Africa, will be a dominant theme throughout the century (and a positive force) but that the profound environmental impact of all that growth is likely to accelerate climate change, unless the world at large faces the problem and its implication and arrives at consensus that might slow the process.

Though the book’s approach is entertaining, its message is nonetheless urgent.

Baime, A.J. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (368 pp.) $27.00 | Jun. 3, 2014 978-0-547-71928-3

The Ford Motor Company goes to war.

In this latest examination of the transition of American industry to wartime production, journalist Baime (Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans, 2009, etc.) focuses on Ford’s conversion from the production of automobiles to aircraft engines and the B-24 Liberator bomber. The author surveys the history of the company from its founding in the Model T era to the outbreak of war, portraying Henry Ford as an antiSemitic curmudgeon who instituted a reign of terror on the factory floor under the fearsome Harry Bennett. His long-suffering son Edsel, installed as a figurehead president, struggled against him to get the company involved in war production and drove the creation of the massive Willow Run plant, with its goal of a bomber per hour, until his early death from cancer. A pasteboard FDR puts in an occasional appearance as the ebullient father of the nation urging everyone on to victory.

Baime structures the story as a lurid family contest among three generations of Fords, but he never develops the personalities of Edsel and his son Henry II (as he calls him) with sufficient depth or nuance to make the conflict genuinely engaging in either business or personal terms. He brushes briskly past the details of the truly epic challenges of retooling the auto plants and fine-tuning Willow Run; potential embarrassments, like labor strife and the relationship of the company with Ford affiliates in occupied Europe building trucks for the Nazis, surface dramatically, then fade rapidly out of the narrative. Written in a hyperbolic tabloid style—e.g., 40 torpedo bombers constitute “a vast storm cloud of airplanes,” Edsel Ford “had been all but crucified”—the book falls well short of the standards set by similar recent works. See Arthur Herman’s Freedom’s Forge instead.

A complex and worthy story reduced to a beach read.

(8-page b/w insert)

J.D. SALINGER The Escape Artist

Beller, Thomas Amazon/New Harvest (192 pp.) $20.00 | Jun. 3, 2014 978-0-544-26199-0

An attempt to come to terms with J.D. Salinger’s life (1919-2010) and legacy.

Whether or not Open City founder Beller (How to Be a Man: Scenes from a Protracted Boyhood, 2005) ever intended to write a full-fledged biography of the late author, what he has produced is more like literary criticism of other Salinger bios and memoirs, along with impressions of early Salinger stories and visits with some who knew or worked with him (some of who still prefer anonymity). It is also about the writing of such a book, the affinities the author feels for his subject and the ambivalence of his pursuit: “There are two ways to respond to a secret when one comes into your possession: You share it with everyone, or you keep it, and delight in being part of the conspiracy of virtue. In this book I want to do both.” If there were secrets he unearthed, he must have kept them, since what he has written is filled with conjecture. Consider Salinger’s relationship with celebrity debutante Oona O’Neill, his first public

THE CARTOON INTRODUCTION TO CLIMATE CHANGE

Bauman, Yoram; Klein, Grady Island Press (224 pp.) $19.95 paper | Jun. 5, 2014 978-1-61091-438-3 An often amusing graphic primer about an issue the authors recognize as apocalyptically serious.

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ONLY IN SPAIN A Foot-Stomping, Firecracker of a Memoir About Food, Flamenco, and Falling in Love

obsession with a much younger woman (before she dumped him to marry the much older Charlie Chaplin): “Was Oona the love of his life? Or an epic crush and the object of his most intense ardor and lust? Or an occasion for social climbing? Or a trophy? I vote for all of the above.” Beller relies heavily on the unpublished manuscript for Ian Hamilton’s biography, which Salinger successfully sued to have all quotes from his letters removed and which resulted in a published version that was still more revelatory than this latter-day gloss on it. He offers a secondhand quote from Salinger that “a writer’s worst enemy is another writer,” but one senses that Salinger would consider this author more a nuisance than a formidable foe.

A light and halfhearted treatment. Turn to David Shields and Shane Salerno’s Salinger (2013) instead.

Bennett, Nellie Sourcebooks (304 pp.) $14.99 paper | Jul. 8, 2014 978-1-4022-9385-6

A peripatetic Australian’s account of how a flamenco dancing hobby led to high adventures in music, food and love in Spain.

Bennett was a bored shop girl who worked at a high-end department store in Sydney. Tired of two years of mind-numbing, dead-end routine, she shook up her world with flamenco dance lessons, and she immediately fell in love with the glamour, fire and romance of the dance. Soon, she realized she wanted more than to simply take lessons; she wanted to “dream [her] life and live life like it was a dream” by making flamenco the center of her world.

She decided to continue her dance studies in the ancient city of Seville in southern Spain. For six weeks, Bennett danced by day and immersed herself in flamenco bar culture by night. She learned to relish the pleasures of flirting on the dance floor with handsome, dark-eyed Spanish men, who made her feel as though she was “the star of her very own Broadway musical.” The vegan Bennett even learned to enjoy savory tapas dishes made from meat. By the end of her stay, she knew she would return. Brimming with intentions to live in Spain indefinitely and aspirations to become a professional flamenco dancer, she flew to Madrid several months later.

She attended the famous Amor de Dios flamenco academy and then danced with dangerously seductive neighborhood residents when she could no longer afford to go to the academy. After being kidnapped by a gypsy boyfriend who wanted to “marry” her by taking Bennett home with him, she fell in love with a Basque man with whom she lived for three years. Only after her lover asked her what she wanted did the author recognize her one truest passion: to travel forever into the beautiful unknown.

Lightweight, footloose good fun.

THE HISTORY OF THE HUDSON RIVER VALLEY From Wilderness to the Civil War

Benjamin, Vernon Overlook (512 pp.) $45.00 | Jun. 12, 2014 978-1-59020-079-7

A lecturer in local history (Marist and Bard colleges) and former journalist debuts with a thick, detailed story of a region as rich in legend and legendary characters as it is in history.

Benjamin’s text reads at times more like a reference book than a narrative history, but it collects some priceless information, useful context and overview, as well as confident though not always agreeable opinion. He declares, for instance, that only Poe surpassed Washington Irving as a writer of short stories in the 19th century (somewhere, Hawthorne and Melville are weeping). Cavils aside, Benjamin’s truly is a sturdy volume in size and importance. He gives us a few pages of paleogeography, describes the current dimensions of the river and its valley, launches into some detail about the critters that used to roam there (mammoths and mastodons among them), and tells about the arrival of the first American Indians and, of course, Henry Hudson (1609). Then, Benjamin marches through the development of the valley: the Indian wars, the struggle between the Dutch and the English for the region, the arrival of slaves. Soon enough, it’s the American Revolution, and the author writes at length about specific battles and leaders, including Benedict Arnold. George Washington is, of course, a mighty presence, and Benjamin dutifully records his visits to the region. Then it’s onward to the Federalists and anti-Federalists and sections on religion, agriculture, transportation and entrepreneurial ventures. The author devotes a chapter to Irving, another to James Fenimore Cooper and another to Poe. We learn about the artists who loved the valley’s natural wonders, and Benjamin describes the rise of tourism, the effect of Manifest Destiny and the moves toward the Civil War. Lincoln’s death ends the book.

An essential reference—though not always a gripping narrative.

ZOOM How Everything Moves: From Atoms and Galaxies to Blizzards and Bees

Berman, Bob Little, Brown (336 pp.) $27.00 | $12.99 e-book $25.98 Audiobook | Jun. 24, 2014 978-0-316-21740-8 978-0-316-21742-2 e-book 978-1-47895-352-4 Audiobook

“We are embedded in a magical matrix of continuous motion,” writes Astronomy columnist and Old Farmer’s Almanac science editor Berman (The Sun’s Heartbeat: And Other Stories from the Life of the Star that Powers Our Planet, 2011, etc.). |

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“The strange, mysterious world of rare maps—and the even stranger mystery of the man who stole them for years without getting caught.” from the map thief

The author explains how, following two days of heavy rain that wreaked havoc on his rural community, he decided “to probe the most amazing motions of nature.” This led him to visit a mountain observatory in the Andes, where massive telescopes probe the far reaches of the universe in search of new galaxies.

There, the author interviewed Dan Kelson, who has pioneered a new technology for “gathering the light from galaxies eight billion light-years away.” Kelson’s methods allow the detection of “objects rushing away from us at the astounding speed of 112,000 miles per second…more than half the speed of light.” Berman then discusses the explosive rate at which the universe is inflating as new galaxies are created and older ones fly apart. He introduces some deeper issues of cosmology—e.g., whether the universe had a beginning and whether or not it is infinite—placing them in a historical perspective, from Aristotle’s speculations to Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. Switching gears, Berman looks at events in nature that are so slow that we fail to observe their motion. An example of this is the shift of the Earth’s magnetic poles—not to be confused with their fixed geographic counterparts. The author also considers our subjective perception of motion, which is relative to the size of a moving object—e.g., an airplane slowing for a landing appears to be virtually motionless while birds in flight seem to move quickly—and the rapidity with which we and other living creatures process information.

An engagingly quirky popular treatment of the ongoing debate about the nature of space and time in the universe and our place as both observers and participants. (19 b/w illustrations)

a map valuable. Some are simply meticulous works of art; others helped forge the destinies of countries or document lands that no longer exist (such as the short-lived Roanoke Colony). There are also uniquely primitive maps that are wildly off the mark about undiscovered lands, harkening back to an age when North America was still known as “Terra Incognita.” As an attorney involved in Smiley’s case put it, these maps “drew the lines between where knowledge ended and imagination began. They represented man’s timeless drive to explore the unknown and bring definition to the void.” In the modern world, they have also become an affordable means of conspicuous consumption for people who can’t quite swing a Picasso or Monet.

A fascinating story of ambitions high and low, the ancient yearning to chart a new world and the eternal lure of a quick buck.

THE NORM CHRONICLES Stories and Numbers About Danger and Death

Blastland, Michael; Spiegelhalter, David Basic (384 pp.) $17.50 paper | Jun. 3, 2014 978-0-465-08570-5

The authors examine risk both mathematically and emotionally, with sympathy for a public confounded by probability and rarely logical in judging odds.

Blastland (co-author: The Tiger that Isn’t: Seeing Through a World of Numbers, 2007) and Spiegelhalter (Mathematical Sciences/Univ. of Cambridge) emphasize that the notion of risk focuses thinking on a dreaded event at the expense of all the nonevents that happen, and this framing can induce fear, helplessness and recklessness. By way of illustration, they create three prototypes—the risk-averse Prudence, your average, reasonable guy Norm, and the daredevil brothers Kelvin, Kevlin and Kieren—starting chapters with scenarios on how the characters behave in fraught situations. With broad British humor and slang, the authors cover risks from childbirth, violence, accidents, sex, drugs, transportation, crime, surgery and more, including excellent chapters on cancer screenings and how to read unemployment figures. To make the data user friendly, the authors introduce microunits. A “MicroMort” (MM) is the onein-a-million risk of dying on a single day of a specific cause. In the case of accidents or acts of violence, for example, the daily risk in the U.K. is 1 MM, while in the U.S., it is 1.6 MM. Another unit, a “MicroLife,” looks at chronic risk factors by dividing a lifetime into 1 million equal parts. The authors also spend some time on the history of risk analyses, on the notion of chance and on the inadequacy on information: In the end, no matter what probabilities can be derived from population data, no one can predict what will happen to you as an individual.

Commendable for its wide compilation of facts and figures—but perhaps even more so for the authors’ “deep sense of uncertainties around data, statistics, and evidence.” (36 b/w illustrations)

THE MAP THIEF The Gripping Story of an Esteemed Rare-Map Dealer Who Made Millions Stealing Priceless Maps Blanding, Michael Gotham Books (320 pp.) $27.50 | Jun. 2, 2014 978-1-59240-817-7

The strange, mysterious world of rare maps—and the even stranger mystery of the man who stole them for years without getting caught.

Journalist Blanding (The Coke Machine: The Dirty Truth Behind the World’s Favorite Soft Drink, 2010) presents a detailed account of the case of E. Forbes Smiley III, the high-living Gatsby-esque map dealer who scored millions fencing rare maps. Although deeply knowledgeable and well-respected in his field, Smiley also wanted the good life, and he racked up a mountain of debt trying to bankroll fancy homes and ill-advised property schemes. A charmer who won the trust of librarians and was deeply aware of their haphazard filing systems, Smiley easily developed a second career in thievery. He got away with it for at least four years, until the fateful day in 2005 when a Yale security guard noticed he dropped a razor blade on the floor of the rare book and manuscript library. Blanding delves deep into both Smiley’s world and the history of mapmaking, focusing in particular on what makes 44

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“Braitman’s gradual accretion of reasons to believe in animal emotional states that we can relate to, including the loopy ones, gives pause and sparks curiosity.” from animal madness

REDEEMING THE DREAM The Case for Marriage Equality

“Every animal with a mind has the capacity to lose hold of it from time to time,” writes the author in this investigation into the literature of abnormal animal behavior, both the scientific and the observational. There is much here that will remind readers of Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson—a gift for storytelling, strong observational talents, an easy familiarity with the background material and a warm level of empathy—and Braitman emphasizes that it doesn’t require an enormous leap of faith to feel our kinship with these beasts, particularly the suffering ones. Her recital of the historical tales of animal mental disorders is engaging, and into it she threads the experiments of cognitive ethologists, neurologists and behavioral biologists, as well as the troubling story of Oliver, her Bernese mountain dog who exhibited considerable signs of madness. What was at play in her dog’s behavior—a constricted gene pool, the neurological misfirings of breeding? Braitman infuses her narrative with humorous ruminations—“we felt like perverts at the dog park— dogless people who came to look at dogs, luring other people’s pets over to be petted with clandestine pockets of treats”—and she takes anthropomorphism just so far while casting a wary

Boies, David; Olson, Theodore B. Viking (320 pp.) $28.95 | Jun. 17, 2014 978-0-670-01596-2

The two principal attorneys who faced off over Bush v. Gore in 2000 joined forces in 2009 to fight California’s Proposition 8, which outlawed gay marriage, and, now, to write this light account of their adventures in court.

Coming on the heels of Jo Becker’s polychromatic Forcing the Spring: Inside the Fight for Marriage Equality (2014), this account by two A-team lawyers seems a bit wan by comparison. Although much of the text is in the third person, on two occasions, the authors pause to let an individual have a chapter.

Both men have “Why I Took the Case” chapters, and later, each writes a paean to the other. Olson praises Boies’ artistry as a cross-examiner; Boies praises Olson’s strengths in closing arguments. The two talk about their ideological differences, too, but realize they both love fine wine, sailing and numerous other pleasures. They offer platitudes about how political differences should not separate us so severely. Two of the stars of Becker’s book appear early—Chad Griffin and Rob Reiner—but they fall off the narrative train quickly as the authors roar through their federal lawsuit, the appeal and the Supreme Court appearance that resulted in a partial victory for the authors’ side (Prop 8 died). The authors help us see what a massive (i.e., expensive) undertaking this suit was (millions of dollars) and give us some details about how many lawyers were involved and what they were doing. But the whole thing seems a bit airbrushed. Were there really no arguments? No egos? No mistakes of any consequence? They are fairly gentle, too, with their opponents, praising their diligence at times and their strategies. However, Boies and Olson do disdain the “expert” witnesses the pro–Prop 8 team assembled. (Some were so unqualified that their roles ended after their depositions.)

More bromance than a rigorous account of what actually occurred. Turn to Becker’s book instead.

ANIMAL MADNESS How Anxious Dogs, Compulsive Parrots, and Elephants in Recovery Help Us Understand Ourselves

Braitman, Laurel Simon & Schuster (320 pp.) $28.00 | Jun. 10, 2014 978-1-4516-2700-8

Through experiential and anecdotal evidence, science historian and senior TED fellow Braitman takes measure of the emotional thunderstorms that cramp or even curtail the normal lives of animals. |

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OUR NECESSARY SHADOW The Nature and Meaning of Psychiatry

eye on “Pet Pharm” and the long, ignoble past of doping our pets. The author may gesture toward what “animals might tell us about ourselves,” but she is thankfully willing to allow them their mystery, “that other animals have many special abilities that we don’t have and this may extend to emotional states.”

Braitman’s gradual accretion of reasons to believe in animal emotional states that we can relate to, including the loopy ones, gives pause and sparks curiosity.

Burns, Tom Pegasus (384 pp.) $27.95 | Jun. 15, 2014 978-1-60598-570-1

A comprehensive history and analysis of the practice of psychiatry.

Burns (Social Psychiatry/Oxford Univ.) admits to developing a predilection for the craft of psychoanalysis after his mother suffered a nervous breakdown when he was a teenager and he observed the “enormous difference” her treatments made. Now a practicing psychiatrist, the author attempts a qualitative and personally reflective examination of his livelihood, a medical specialty that, he asserts, has long confused and confounded our culture. In the introduction, Burns pinpoints the main psychiatric illnesses affecting the adult population, and the first chapter, however oddly placed, forms a helpful preparatory primer for those seeking care. The author discusses the field’s origins, from asylum care (the “essential precursors” to modern psychiatry) to the exploration of mental unconsciousness and theories of automatism, psychoanalysis and the fight-or-flight internal battle of soldiers with shell shock.

Burns notes how early barbaric psychiatric treatments like insulin-induced comas, surgical leucotomies and aggressive electroconvulsive therapy have all contributed to a perpetually negative slant on the practice, but he remains optimistic about its future and displays and emphasizes the importance of psychiatry as a legitimate, trustworthy medical practice. “Deinstitutionalization” and the blooming popularity of antidepressants, along with advancements in neuroscience, collectively counteract these aspersions. Additionally, Burns shares his own frustrations regarding the “philosophical and ethical contradictions” of delivering professional psychiatric care and argues against the misconstrued belief that the practice is an outmoded hustle. He dexterously synthesizes all of this material into a broad-minded volume which may prove “more descriptive than explanatory” for some but that articulately grasps the past and present modalities of psychiatry. Writes Burns, “[psychiatry] is ‘our necessary shadow’ in that it deals with illnesses that are a part of what we are, not things that just happen to us such as flu or a broken leg.”

A responsible, evenhanded exploration of a highly provocative medical industry.

UNBREAK MY HEART A Memoir

Braxton, Toni It Books/HarperCollins (272 pp.) $27.99 | May 20, 2014 978-0-06-229328-2 978-0-06-229330-5 e-book

Six-time Grammy Award winner Braxton speaks out regarding her turbulent personal and professional lives.

From the time Braxton was a little girl growing up in rural Maryland, she wanted to be a star. By the mid-1990s, she had achieved that goal, and her 1996 single, “Unbreak My Heart,” from her second album, “Secrets,” became a chart-topping, certified-platinum success. Yet guilt, financial and personal troubles, and ongoing family health issues have pockmarked the author’s projected glamorous life. In 1988, 21-year-old Braxton and her four sisters landed their first recording contract.

“No one could’ve predicated the painful episode that would follow: Five bright-eyed Braxton sisters would soon be narrowed down to one.” For many years, Braxton suffered severe guilt about accepting a record deal that excluded her sisters, and the decision infuriated her mother, which added to Braxton’s sense of dismay. The author’s success was also marred by two bankruptcies, a divorce and her son’s autism diagnosis. The author faced her own health crisis during her Las Vegas show when she received a diagnosis of lupus. “My diagnosis that day marked the beginning of my road to recovery,” she writes, “but it was also the end of my Vegas run.” The author eventually disclosed her condition on the family reality TV show Braxton Family Values, which began in 2011 and features her mother and sisters. Braxton seems intent on establishing a secure pathway through life’s inherent messiness.

“I’m starting to realize that we’re not supposed to keep everything lined up and in perfect order—even with our best efforts, we can’t accomplish that anyway,” she writes. “Instead, we’re meant to find lessons in both the chaos and the cleanup.”

Overly sentimental, but Braxton fans will applaud the star’s candor and perseverance.

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“The engrossing story of Gavrilo Princip, the 19-year-old Bosnian Serb nationalist whose assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand...sparked World War I.” from the trigger

THE TRIGGER Taking the Journey that Led the World to War

life from his home in the remote hamlet of Obljaj (where Princip left his initials on a rock and declared, “One day people will know my name,”) to Sarajevo, where he became a student and “slow-burn revolutionary” determined to overthrow the Austro-Hungarian occupiers of his homeland. Butcher details the assassination (Princip’s first shot cut the Archduke’s jugular vein; the second killed his wife, Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg), the ensuing trial and the assassin’s death in prison from tuberculosis. The author’s intelligent, near-obsessive, textured account of the assassin’s life and times is a fascinating history of a complex region rife with ethnic rivalries and a vivid travelogue of a dangerous journey across a landscape marked by the minefields and devastation of the fighting of the 1990s. More broadly, Butcher makes clear the importance of Princip’s act as the spark that detonated an “explosive mix of old-world superiority, diplomatic miscalculation, strategic paranoia and hubristic military overconfidence.” Deliberately misrepresenting the assassin’s motives (which were to liberate not only Serbia, but all south Slavs), Austria-Hungary invaded Serbia, which led to World War I. Butcher notes that under different regimes, Princip has

Butcher, Tim Grove (336 pp.) $26.00 | Jun. 3, 2014 978-0-8021-2325-1

The engrossing story of Gavrilo Princip (1894-1918), the 19-year-old Bosnian Serb nationalist whose assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, on June 28, 1914, sparked World War I. While covering the Bosnian War of the 1990s, former Daily Telegraph correspondent Butcher (Chasing the Devil: A Journey Through Sub-Saharan Africa in the Footsteps of Graham Greene, 2011, etc.) became intrigued by Princip after visiting a littered Sarajevo chapel that commemorated the assassin’s name. In 2012, he returned to the Balkans to follow the path of the young peasant’s

ROBIN KORTH

When I take myself too seriously, life automatically stops being fun.

But I do provide untold free amusement for others.

“An original work that will amuse, inspire and motivate readers.”

—Kirkus Reviews

SOULONTHERUN.COM For film or publication rights, contact ContactUs@SoulOnTheRun.com ISBN: 978-1-4525-9098-1 (sc) • ISBN: 978-1-4525-9100-1 (e)

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“Well-written and thoughtful, Clyburn’s memoir offers valuable fly-on-the-wall notes on how politics can be conducted in a healthy way and at an effective level.” from blessed experiences

LET THE TORNADO COME A Memoir

been remembered variously as a hero and a terrorist. The author views him as “an everyman for the anger felt by millions who were downtrodden far beyond the Balkans.”

A haunting and illuminating book marking the centennial of the assassination.

Chin, Rita Zoey Simon & Schuster (336 pp.) $25.00 | Jun. 24, 2014 978-1-4767-3486-6

GOLAZO! The Beautiful Game from the Aztecs to the World Cup: The Complete History of How Soccer Shaped Latin America

This lyrical debut memoir reveals the indelible consequences of childhood abuse.

Poet and essayist Chin was raised in an atmosphere of violence. Her depressed, angry mother rejected her, and her father savagely beat her. “For as long as I can remember,” writes the author, “I knew that my parents were out of control. I knew they were capable of anything.” At the age of 11, she started running away from home; by the time she was 14, she was in jail. She spent the next years living in state-run institutions or on the streets, sleeping in stairwells “or, more often, the questionable beds of men and women.” Chin became a stripper, abused drugs and sold herself for sex. Addicted to cocaine, she realized that she had hit bottom. Drawing on a spark of inner strength, she managed to wrest control of her life, earning a GED, taking college courses and eventually completing an MFA degree. Then, in her mid-30s, married to a neurosurgeon, just having moved into their first home, she became overwhelmed with panic attacks. She was afraid to climb stairs, leave her house and drive on highways. Desperate, she sought help from an array of medical professionals, with varying success. Finally, she found a measure of peace from riding horses, particularly one skittish horse whose reaction to the world mirrored her own. Cantering, she discovered, felt “like the opposite of panic…it was only by holding on so tightly that I could begin learning how to get go.” She discovered, too, that panic “wasn’t a virus or an erratic black bird…in the end, panic was me.” Although she could not escape her past, it need not dominate the present: “No matter how many stories you put on top of the first story, the first one is always there, visible.”

Chin deftly creates the palimpsest of those stories, past and present, in this candid, graceful testimony to remarkable resilience.

Campomar, Andreas Riverhead (448 pp.) $16.00 paper | May 6, 2014 978-1-59448-586-2

The most comprehensive history of soccer in the part of the world in which it may well mean the most.

Campomar, publishing director of Constable & Robinson in the U.K., provides a thorough, engaging history of the development of fútbol and its place in Latin American society. The author focuses mostly on the 20th century, when the game went from being an English import geared primarily toward British expatriates and elites to being the domain of the masses, who worshipped their heroes, condemned their goats, and filled the terraces for their club and national teams. Campomar also illustrates the way soccer reflected and sometimes fueled political developments across the region. He covers a large geographic swath including Mexico and Central America but gives the bulk of his attention to the countries of South America, where he interweaves the story of the local club game into that of the national teams, which have allowed the region to take its place, even if only for 90 or so minutes at a time, with the Europeans. Clearly timed for the summer’s World Cup in Brazil, the book illustrates how the Río de la Plata nations of Uruguay and Argentina represented the continent’s pre-eminent powers through the first half of the 20th century, with the Brazilians rising to dominance only in the 1950s. Campomar effectively brings out the color and passion for the game, its evocative language, its artistic power and its sometimes-martial ugliness. While the author occasionally tries to do too much, he accomplishes his task with verve.

Brazil will be under enormous pressure to win this summer, and Uruguay and Argentina will be in the running. That will provide opportunities for the updated paperback edition of this fine, scintillating history.

BLESSED EXPERIENCES Genuinely Southern, Proudly Black

Clyburn, James E. Univ. of South Carolina (320 pp.) $34.95 | May 1, 2014 978-1-61117-337-6 South Carolina congressman Clyburn recounts a long and productive, if occasionally frustrating, life in politics, providing a fine primer for anyone thinking of entering the arena.

That fight over the Confederate flag flying over the capitol in Columbia? Clyburn, who has represented his district in Washington since 1992, was there for it, and he took heat from both sides

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for attempting a rational compromise. (Remember the days of rational compromise?) He notes, quietly but firmly, that the neoConfederates were disingenuous in their claims for the banner, a modification of the “navy jack” that the Ku Klux Klan found appealing a couple of decades after the war, and he suggests that it’s a bovine attachment to heritage—“a heritage of slavery,” that is—that kept them wedded to it. Recalling his long path from would-be college athlete (he didn’t have the speed for baseball) to actor and debater to political aide, Clyburn shows again and again how politics is done: It’s all about the art of the deal and reminding those for whom you’ve done favors that they owe you; of one such negotiation with fellow representative Corrine Brown, the author writes, “I only half jokingly told her that I would let her know at some undetermined point in the future what my price would be.” Clyburn almost always has a kind or at least gentle word to say about even his staunchest opponents, provided he finds them to hold principles. If they do not, then he’s not shy of speaking his mind, as when he writes of former governor Mark Sanford, “regardless of the effort, he always seemed to be several days late and millions of dollars short.”

Well-written and thoughtful, Clyburn’s memoir offers valuable fly-on-the-wall notes on how politics can be conducted in a healthy way and at an effective level. (46 b/w illustrations)

to protect their families against white supremacist violence since the time of Reconstruction. The author also characterizes slave insurrections as “the taproot of the modern freedom struggle” and explores the contradiction of African-Americans serving in the U.S. military while being deprived of basic civil rights. Yet while retaliatory violence might have been the norm in some communities, it could not bring the vast, radical change that nonviolence did.

Thought-provoking and studded with piercing ironies.

THE NEW ARABS How the Wired and Global Youth of the Middle East Is Transforming It Cole, Juan Simon & Schuster (384 pp.) $26.00 | Jul. 1, 2014 978-1-4516-9039-2

A nuanced analysis of the factors leading to revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.

Cole (History/Univ. of Michigan; Engaging the Muslim World, 2009, etc.) finds that the uprisings by the people of these three nations against their oppressive rulers share important similarities that contributed to their success—unlike in the doomed scenario in Syria. All had a majority of disaffected, mostly unemployed young people, left-leaning youth living in towns or cities who had absorbed important lessons from the previous generation’s anti-American, Leninist, hierarchical ways. Most of the members of “Arab Gen Y” were unmarried, literate and nonreligious; some had worked outside of their countries, and all were intimately savvy about the Internet (chat room and forums) and the ways around their countries’ censorship. These young people were able to use the Internet to consolidate lateral alliances of “political breadth and flexibility”—e.g., creating new spaces and blogs to air incidences of police brutality.

The Gaza War of 2008-2009 radicalized many youth, while the economic downturn of 2008 forced the “idling” of young workers. Moreover, the prospect of the ruling dynasties’ establishing “republican monarchies” (grooming sons or sons-in-law for succession) with no true sovereign legitimacy betrayed the 1950s revolutions that had won their countries’ independence from imperial powers. With the Internet to open their eyes, writes Cole, “the gap between rhetoric and reality was all the easier for the millennials to see.” The youth declared “Kefaya!” (enough), which became the Egyptian rallying cry. In Egypt and Tunisia, the military sided with the popular uprising, while in Libya, the international community stepped in. Cole argues that in these three instances, revolutions met with success due to the fact that they fundamentally altered who controlled the wealth in those countries.

An elegant, carefully delineated synthesis of the complicated, intertwined facets of the Arab uprisings.

THIS NONVIOLENT STUFF’LL GET YOU KILLED How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible

Cobb Jr., Charles E. Basic (304 pp.) $27.99 | Jun. 3, 2014 978-0-465-03310-2

A frank look at the complexities and contradictions of the civil rights movement, particularly with regard to the intertwined issues of nonviolence and self-defense.

A former field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, veteran journalist Cobb (On the Road to Freedom: A Guided Tour of the Civil Rights Trail, 2007, etc.) studies the civil rights revolution at the grass-roots level rather than through the leadership.

Martin Luther King Jr. and others in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference officially adopted nonviolent resistance in the form of sit-ins, boycotts and demonstrations, yet these tactics were viewed skeptically by some activists. Violence against black resisters was so prevalent and pernicious, Cobb writes, that retaliatory violence was neither unheard of nor indeed unexpected. The peaceable sit-in at a Woolworth’s in Greensboro, North Carolina, on Feb. 1, 1960, for example, contrasted markedly with a subsequent violent clash between black demonstrators and the white mob that set upon them during a sit-in in Jacksonville, Florida. Self-defense with firearms often went hand in hand with nonviolent resistance—indeed, it “ensured the survival…of the freedom struggle itself.” Cobb backs up this rather perplexing statement with a variety of historical material, pointing out that blacks in the rural South had relied on guns |

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WALLACE, DARWIN, AND THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES

“insights and accomplishments.” Costa provides an account of Wallace’s scientific career leading up to his discovery and thereafter. Wallace first established himself as a naturalist, collecting specimens in Brazil and Southeast Asia and authoring books on his travels. Younger than Darwin by more than a decade, Wallace was familiar with Darwin’s earlier writings. In 1858, unaware that Darwin was writing his magnum opus, Wallace sent him a review copy of a paper he hoped to see published. Entitled On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type, it revealed the mechanism of natural selection in evolution. Darwin had been slow to reveal his own discovery of the theory, fearing the opprobrium he knew would follow publication. Now, to his distress, he was in danger of being scooped. At the suggestion of friends, a hitherto unpublished preliminary paper by Darwin was presented to a meeting of the Linnean Society together with Wallace’s paper, establishing their joint priority and launching a fruitful future scientific collaboration.

An illuminating, nuanced account of the parallel discovery of a theory still deemed controversial by some. (35 line illustrations; 7 halftones; 1 map; 7 tables)

Costa, James T. Harvard Univ. (292 pp.) $39.95 | Jun. 2, 2014 978-0-674-72969-8

An in-depth look at the seminal contributions of Alfred Russel Wallace (18231913)—often solely attributed to Charles Darwin (1809-1882)—that led “to revolutionary new understandings of earth history and of the life upon earth in the mid- to late nineteenth century.”

This book is a follow-up by Costa (Biology/Western Carolina Univ.; The Other Insect Societies, 2006 etc.) to On the Organic Law of Change: A Fascimile Edition and Annotated Transcription of Alfred Russel Wallace’s Species Notebook of 1855-1859 (2013), which he edited and annotated. The author convincingly navigates potentially treacherous terrain, setting the record straight on Wallace’s great achievement, which independently foreshadowed Darwin’s On the Origin of the Species without in any way diminishing Darwin’s

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GOOD HUNTING An American Spymaster’s Story

SYLVIA, QUEEN OF THE HEADHUNTERS An Eccentric Englishwoman and Her Lost Kingdom

Devine, Jack; Loeb, Vernon Sarah Crichton/Farrar, Straus and Giroux (336 pp.) $28.00 | Jun. 3, 2014 978-0-374-13032-9

Eade, Philip Picador (384 pp.) $30.00 | Jun. 3, 2014 978-1-250-04589-8

British journalist Eade debuts with a well-written biography of Sylvia Brett Brooke (1885-1971), a tale that doubles as a history of the last days of the Raj. The story takes place in Sarawak, a kingdom on the island of Borneo ruled from 1842 on by the autocratic Brooke family. The eponymous headhunters were the Dyaks, a ferocious and warlike people whose traditional practices the Brookes tried to eliminate, with mixed results. Sylvia’s husband, Vyner Brooke, became the third White Rajah of Sarawak in 1917, and she dubbed herself “queen of the headhunters” in her fanciful memoirs. Although an ineffective, irresponsible, disordered, hedonistic and largely absentee ruler, Vyner was vaguely devoted to providing for the welfare of his people, who loved him and celebrated whenever he and Sylvia returned to Sarawak. They rarely spent more than a few months per year in Sarawak, mostly to avoid the English winters. At home and abroad, Sylvia wrote novels, painted and night-clubbed; the author refers throughout to her unrestrained behavior and stories that “can’t be put on paper” but offers few specific examples. The ones he does provide—painting portraits of prostitutes, too much drinking and dancing—seem hardly excessive by the admittedly extravagant standards of colonial rulers. The Brookes were exceptional in their spending habits, however, leading a very high life (though rarely together) when back in England. The appearance of Machiavellian Gerard MacBryan as Vyner’s private secretary in the late 1920s launched years of plots about the succession; Sylvia was determined that her daughters not be excluded by primogeniture, but the Japanese settled the question by invading in 1941.

Vyner and Sylvia were, of course, elsewhere at the time.

Vivid portraits of some fairly crazy Brits and a way of life that deserved to be doomed. (Three 8-page photo sections; family tree)

Veteran CIA covert operative Devine highlights his career foiling trouble from Chile to Afghanistan. The book was coauthored by Houston Chronicle managing editor Loeb (King’s Counsel: A Memoir of War, Espionage, and Diplomacy in the Middle East, 2011, etc.).

Devine, now founding partner of the Arkin Group, which specializes in international crisis management, retired from the CIA as acting director of operations in 1998. He is intensely proud of his 32-year career at the agency and of its original noble intent, inherited from Bill Donovan’s Office of Strategic Services, to protect the nation’s national security. Refreshingly, Devine, a blue-collar native of suburban Philadelphia who began to ascend the CIA ranks in the late 1960s, does not sugarcoat the various failed schemes directed by U.S. presidents from Nixon to Bush or the enormously damaging, long-running infiltration by moles like Aldrich Ames. Although Devine’s tenure began after the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion and ended before 9/11, absolving him from much of the criticism that the CIA attracted then, his first tour was in Chile just when the unrest against democratically elected president Salvador Allende got underway in 1973. Although Devine claims the CIA was not involved in the military coup, he admits to a series of destabilizing measures introduced to bring down the socialistminded regime, at Nixon’s insistence. The author spends a great deal of space discussing his erstwhile colleague Ames, once a friend, who was well into his downward spiral selling secrets to the Soviets in Rome, where Devine was also stationed—as his superior, in fact. Yet when Ames’ perfidy was discovered in 1994, Devine escaped censure and was instead promoted. Working thematically rather than chronologically, Devine explores his stints of glory, namely funneling guns with Charlie Wilson to Afghanistan’s mujahedeen in order to defeat the Soviets and sustaining important relationships with changing directors.

Devine’s attention to detail translates into a finely delineated memoir of his selective undercover tradecraft.

YOURS FOR ETERNITY A Love Story on Death Row Echols, Damien; Davis, Lorri Blue Rider Press (320 pp.) $27.95 | Jun. 17, 2014 978-0-399-16619-8

A former prison inmate and his wife share the personal letters they exchanged during his incarceration, offering insight into their remarkable, if slightly obsessive relationship. |

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“Poetry reveals the devastating trajectory of war.” from some desperate glory

Landscape architect Davis began writing to Echols (Life After Death, 2012) in 1996 after seeing a documentary about the murder case that landed him on death row. She soon found herself drawn to not only Echols’ story, but also the man himself. The pair wrote to each other several times per week. They talked about everything from “chastity belts [and] whirling dervishes” to “17-year locusts and Paganini.”

Within just a few short months, Davis and Echols had fallen in love despite the fact neither one of them knew what the other looked like. After a brief summer visit, the profound spiritual and emotional connection deepened to include a physical component that surprised both with its intensity.

Speaking of her desire for Echols, Davis writes, “[m]y body is alive with it…it is agony. Echols in turn reveals his wish to have Davis with him, “flesh against flesh [with] nothing to separate us.” Execution and the ups and downs of the appeals process hung over the pair like a shadow, yet Davis and Echols still managed to create an elaborate world of “magickal” possibility from which they drew strength. Believing that they were going to “build a history that stretch[ed] to infinity,” they married in 1999. The fight to keep their love, hopes and dreams alive continued until Echols was finally released in 2011. Then the couple began a new struggle to lead a normal life free from the barriers and surveillance that had formerly defined their relationship.

Reconstructed from thousands of letters the pair exchanged over 16 years, this tender and unusual narrative offers a rare, courageously intimate view of a love that should never have survived and yet did.

Charles Sorley wrote in 1914. “Think what you are marching to.”

By January 1915, his letter to a friend revealed a deepening sense of dismay: “We don’t seem to be winning, do we? It looks like an affair of years.” A few months later, he began a poem with lines that could have served as his epitaph: “Such, such is Death: no triumph: no defeat: / Only an empty pail….” In October, aged 20, he was killed by a sniper. Owen, held in high regard by Sassoon, was killed, age 25, in 1918; Brooke, Thomas and Grenfell were already dead. Those who survived—e.g., Sassoon and Graves—“couldn’t leave the war, even if…they wanted to move on.”

“What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?” Owen asked in his “Anthem for Doomed Youth.” For Egremont, the poems serve as “holy glimmers” of lives lost and as powerful protests against the hell of war.

WITHIN ARM’S LENGTH A Secret Service Agent’s Definitive Inside Account of Protecting the President Emmett, Dan St. Martin’s (320 pp.) $26.99 | Jun. 10, 2014 978-1-250-04471-6 978-1-4668-4317-2 e-book

The story of the men and women who swear to lay down their lives for the president.

Emmett presents himself as the epitome of the Secret Service: patriotic, motivated and self-serious; his intention here is to “[capture] the unique culture of the organization.” Following an officer’s commission in the Marines, he secured entry into the Secret Service through sheer persistence, fulfilling a childhood dream rooted in the traumatic memory of the Kennedy assassination. He even married a fellow agent, with whom he has a combined 42 years of service. Although all agents customarily spend several years investigating crimes like check fraud, Emmett pushed for a transfer to the Counter Assault Team, the counterterrorism unit that follows the presidential motorcade: “Of all the agents in the Secret Service,” he writes, “these men’s motives for being there were perhaps the purest of all.” With CAT, Emmett was on unusual high-risk protective missions, such as going to Haiti with Vice President Dan Quayle. Yet the author claims the unit’s unique capabilities went unappreciated by the agency’s meddlesome upper management, a consistent theme throughout the book. Following CAT, Emmett moved to the Presidential Protective Division. Emmett clearly presents the logistics, training and equipment that comprise the PPD agent’s working life, testifying to the long hours and physical privations beneath the glamour. However, he’s clearly unwilling to tell tales out of school about presidents George Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, all of whom he personally protected (although he discusses the security nightmare created by Clinton’s love of jogging), and too often the narrative is generalized and anecdotal rather than specific. Emmett’s personalized perspective is that of a martinet, generally scornful

SOME DESPERATE GLORY The First World War the Poets Knew

Egremont, Max Farrar, Straus and Giroux (352 pp.) $28.00 | Jun. 10, 2014 978-0-374-28032-1

Poetry reveals the devastating trajectory of war.

On the centennial anniversary of the start of World War I, historian Egremont (Forgotten Land: Journeys Among the Ghosts of East Prussia, 2011, etc.) considers the intersecting lives and work of 11 British poets who were soldiers and esteemed contributors to the burgeoning genre of war poetry. Many of the author’s subjects are likely to be familiar to readers, including Rupert Brooke, Charles Sorley, Siegfried Sassoon, Isaac Rosenberg, Edward Thomas, Wilfred Owen and Robert Graves; others, such as Edmund Blunden and Julian Grenfell, are lesser known today. During the war, Egremont writes, “the poets began to be lionized,” invited to give readings in elite salons and sought by publishers. Six chapters focus on each year of war and its aftermath, offering an adroit biographical and historical overview, followed by a selection of poems that chronicle the writers’ spirits, as they changed “from enthusiasm to pitiful weariness,” from hope to disillusion. “Cast away regret and rue,” 52

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toward those he encounters (excepting presidents, Marines and fellow agents) and frequently complaining about “political correctness” and media scrutiny compromising the Secret Service.

A sternly narrated account that captures the grim, insular nature of the American security state at its most elite levels. (8-page color photo insert)

Feldman (Counseling Psychology/Santa Clara Univ.; coauthor: The End-of-Life Handbook: A Compassionate Guide to Connecting with and Caring for a Dying Loved One, 2008, etc.) and Kravetz use artfully described case studies to demonstrate their point, while also avoiding excessive psychological terminology.

The authors base each chapter on a particular aspect of change in the trauma victim—e.g., individuals such as anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan, who was forced to reassess her understanding of the world around her after tragedy: in her case, the loss of her son in the Iraq war. For others, there is an awakening to faith, as in the case of social activist James Cameron, who testifies that he was saved from lynching by God. There are also intensely powerful stories of forgiveness, such as that of Clemantine Wamariya, who survived the slaughter in Rwanda, followed by life as a refugee. However, the very aspect that makes the book approachable also limits its effectiveness. The authors’ work is largely anecdotal in nature and does not delve into true analysis of the supersurvivor phenomenon. Though they provide some discussion of the psychological, physical and social aspects of these survivors’ stories, readers are left wondering just how often a trauma

SUPERSURVIVORS The Surprising Link Between Suffering and Success Feldman, David B.; Kravetz, Lee Daniel Harper Wave/HarperCollins (256 pp.) $25.99 | Jul. 1, 2014 978-0-06-226785-6

Two psychologists provide a nontechnical exploration of how certain people not only survive trauma, but actually thrive after a traumatic experience.

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THE ISLAND OF KNOWLEDGE The Limits of Science and the Search for Meaning

survivor thrives in such ways, and why. Nevertheless, the book is uplifting and provides hope for the human condition. Feldman and Kravetz’s closing story—about Nobel Peace Prize recipient Betty Williams—is particularly riveting. Her life was drastically changed one day when she witnessed a senseless sectarian killing in Northern Ireland. Instead of recoiling, she acted and began a peace movement that changed the history of that country.

Hope for the endurance of the human spirit in the face of tragedy.

Gleiser, Marcelo Basic (352 pp.) $28.99 | Jun. 3, 2014 978-0-465-03171-9

Gleiser (Natural Philosophy, Physics and Astronomy/Dartmouth Coll.; A Tear at the Edge of Creation: A Radical New Vision for Life in an Imperfect Universe, 2010, etc.) seeks an answer to the question, “Can we make sense of the world without belief?”

The author suggests that even scientific giants like Newton and Einstein depended on “intuition and personal prejudice” to extend their knowledge, knowing full well the limitations of their theories. Scientific knowledge has advanced since their groundbreaking discoveries, but so, too, has our understanding of its inherent limitations. Gleiser contends that although we can extend our understanding of how the universe works, our efforts to penetrate reality will always include an element of unsubstantiated belief. The author traces the history of science, including Aristotle’s Earth-centered model of the heavens, which was upended by Copernicus and his successors. This led to the achievements of classical physicists such as Newton and James Maxwell in understanding gravity and electromagnetism and culminated with Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. Then, Gleiser tackles current cosmological theories—e.g., the Big Bang, the expanding universe and the possibilities that it is only one of infinitely many other universes. For readers unfamiliar with the material, this will be a lot to comprehend, even though the author uses descriptive metaphors to make it more accessible. Gleiser also examines the anomalies of quantum physics, such as the odd behaviors of electrons or photons that appear to be particles in some experiments and waves in others, and he gives examples of electrons that appear to communicate instantaneously, a step back to Newton that Einstein criticized “as spooky action at-a-distance.” Gleiser ends with an examination of information theory.

Readers may find this to be an overly ambitious attempt to provide a historical perspective to the scientific enterprise that is more confusing than illuminating.

GOOD TALK, DAD The Birds and the Bees...and Other Conversations We Forgot to Have Geist, Bill; Geist, Willie Grand Central Publishing (320 pp.) $27.00 | $14.99 e-book | May 20, 2014 978-1-4555-4722-7 978-1-4555-4720-3 e-book

Two veteran raconteurs face off to cover over four decades of family myths and legends.

Co-host of NBC’s Today 9 a.m. hour and MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Willie Geist (American Freak Show: The Completely Fabricated Stories of Our New National Treasures, 2010, etc.) joins his father, columnist and TV journalist Bill Geist (Way Off the Road: Discovering the Peculiar Charms of Small Town America, 2007, etc.) in canonizing both great and not-so-great moments in parenting and coming-of-age. The authors banter back and forth in their discussions of everything from a nonexistent father-son sex talk to Willie’s summer camp to coaching Little League. Then there are the tales of underage drinking, how to cook up a fake ID, the family’s Elvis cult and an uncle’s/brother’s pharmacopeia perfectly timed for special events. As in most families, there is one car handed down through the generations, in this case, a Jeep CJ-7.

The authors interleave the chapters with sidebars entitled “Geist Date in History” that highlight small events that bear marking— e.g., the day Willie met Donald Trump. Willie also includes a previously published story about taking his daughter to a Columbia University football game. The Geist family, the authors note, often perform rites of passage late, so this book is a chance “to cover our father-son bases retroactively.” It’s clear most of these stories have been told countless times; they’re practiced and wellpaced. However, new material about Bill’s Vietnam tour and his battle with Parkinson’s disease contain further revelations and have not been polished over the family dinner table. A strong father-son relationship shines through.

Heavy on bad-boy behavior and sports, the book should come with a six-pack of cheap beer. A quick read that is not for everyone.

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WHEN I FIRST HELD YOU 22 Critically Acclaimed Writers Talk About the Triumphs, Challenges, and Transformative Experience of Fatherhood

or not, is a big “fun-suck.” The writers here are a diverse bunch, and they’ve taken widely different paths exploring the human condition in novels, essays and journalism. In the ring with the young progeny, however, they are the pictures of confusion, punch-drunk and on the ropes. Dennis Lehane outlines how all of his delusions about adulthood and fatherhood were stripped away in not-gentle but also not-abnormal ways. Lev Grossman laments the loss of his life as a writer. However, when he returned to the desk, he found the writer not dead but transformed: better, stronger and faster. Ben Greenman, a little further along with a 12-year-old, writes about our memories of those foggy early parenting years, the sleepless nights and how we invent memories from that time that encapsulate events. Other contributors include Justin Cronin, David Bezmogis, Karl Taro Greenfield, Benjamin Percy, Rick Moody, Garth Stein and Andre Dubus III (“So much joy, as if my deepest, truest life could only begin once I became a father”).

This collection could be subtitled “Profiles in Perseverance”: These fathers have fought the battles, and we lucky readers receive this collection of wry, moving stories.

Gresko, Brian–Ed. Berkley (304 pp.) $15.00 paper | May 6, 2014 978-0-425-26924-4

Nearly two dozen male writers contribute essays on the trials, tribulations and pleasures of being a father.

Social commentators decry the rise of the “man-child” of the 21st century, who spends as much time now playing video games as he did when he was 15, couldn’t fix the plumbing if his marriage depended on it, and so on. They’re the men who can’t find a single thing about their own character to question. It’s an outlook on life that becomes difficult to maintain once one becomes a father, as more than one writer notes in this collection; parenting, like it

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THE SKELETON CREW How Amateur Sleuths Are Solving America’s Coldest Cases

MONA LISA A Life Discovered

Hales, Dianne Simon & Schuster (336 pp.) $28.00 | Aug. 5, 2014 978-1-4516-5896-5

Halber, Deborah Simon & Schuster (304 pp.) $25.00 | Jul. 1, 2014 978-1-4516-5758-6

Like many visitors to the Louvre, journalist Hales (La Bella Lingua: A Passionate Journey through the World’s Most Beautiful Language, 2009, etc.) was fascinated by Leonardo da Vinci’s famous portrait and set out to investigate the real Lisa Gherardini del Giocondo: “Why did the most renowned painter of her time choose her as his model?...And why does her smile enchant us still?”

The author already established her affection for anything Italian in her previous book. Here, she romps through Italy’s roiling political past, eager to make 15th-century figures seem contemporary. Reading letters between one husband and wife, she felt that she was viewing “a medieval version of a television reality show” in which the husband was a “workaholic merchant….I can imagine the stressed-out businessman as a character in a Woody Allen film—perhaps a neurotic, death-obsessed Wall Street trader, with a therapist on speed dial, antacids in his pocket, and Xanax in his medicine cabinet….” Artists in Florence, she insists, “reigned like rock stars.” Inserting herself into the narrative, Hales recounts brief, often banal conversations and discloses her own wide-eyed responses to people, places and things. Upon finding Lisa’s birth certificate: “Leaping out of my chair, I dance in excitement.” Her jaw dropped when she visited a Baroque palace to interview a princess. As for Lisa—wife of a wealthy merchant and mother of seven (one a stepson)—little evidence exists about her life. Hales, then, extrapolates what her life “would have been” from books about Renaissance women. The repetition of “would have,” “might have” and “perhaps” throughout the book gives the narrative—as lively and detailed as it is—a speculative quality. The author also includes a “Mona Lisa Timeline” and a list of key characters.

The breezy tone is a jarring contrast to the considerable scholarship that informs the author’s history.

Account of the eccentric online communities that have transformed the forensic identification of deceased missing persons.

“Chances are good that you or someone you know has at one point stumbled over a dead body,” writes Boston-based science writer Halber in this passionately rendered debut. “America is home to tens of thousands of unidentified human remains.”

Using a number of infamous unsolved crimes as a framework— including such regional legends as Kentucky’s “Tent Girl” and Provincetown’s “Lady of the Dunes”—the author argues that, despite our cultural fondness for crime stories and pursuit of perpetrators, it remains shockingly easy for a dead body to remain unidentified and thus disappeared, whether through natural or malicious intervention. Until recently, law enforcement was often ineffective in managing UIDs, given that such cases often crossed state lines as well as the technical complexities of handling decomposed remains. This began to change in 2004, when Justice Department studies found alarming numbers of unidentified remains in many jurisdictions; at the same time, many amateurs had begun to connect, share information and provide tips on cold cases via the Internet. Halber recounts her interviews with several of these cold-case enthusiasts, a diverse group ranging from a Massachusetts police dispatcher to a selfdescribed “Southern version of Kojak” whose identification of Tent Girl after 40 years led to a full-time career. Since then, amateur interest in such unsolved cases has expanded: Halber notes that crowd-sourced discussion boards like Cold Cases and the Doe Network evolved spontaneously, taking advantage of information secreted in the Web’s dark corners, yet often wound up becoming competitive and catty. Although law enforcement used to resist such outsider involvement, many officials now recognize the benefits of the homegrown sleuths’ efforts.

Both charming and disturbing, Halber’s accessible, personalized style is engaging despite being somewhat at odds with the grisly aspects of her topic.

DISOBEYING HITLER German Resistance After Valkyrie

Hansen, Randall Oxford Univ. (464 pp.) $29.95 | Jul. 1, 2014 978-0-19-992792-0

Hansen (Politics/Univ. of Toronto; Fire and Fury: The Allied Bombing of Germany, 1942-1945, 2009, etc.) examines how the German people—even the military—had had enough of Hitler’s mad schemes.

Col. Claus von Stauffenberg’s assassination attempt on July 20, 1944, did not manage to kill Hitler, but there were plenty of higher-up military officers who had hoped it would, and they 56

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“It’s hard to say whether the book is better than the movie(s), but whether readers are gamers or just enjoyed The Social Network, they’ll be spoiled for choice here.” from console wars

waited anxiously for the outcome to see which way the political wind was blowing. Scholar Hansen employs his considerable knowledge of Allied movement into Germany at the close of the war to reveal where the pockets of resistance were located, especially in light of Hitler’s furious, scorched-earth endgame.

Many military resisters like Stauffenberg came from the middle ranks, and the author describes them as “Bismarckian,” honorbound and goal-oriented rather than sharing Hitler’s “nihilistic,” genocidal vision. They were fed up with Hitler’s centralization of military power, his amateur meddling and even, for those deeply Christian, appalled by the war of extermination of local populations in occupied territory. Others, like Erwin Rommel, knew the war was lost, and armaments minister Albert Speer, for reasons of power, actively circumvented many of Hitler’s decrees. As the Allied forces began to infiltrate Germany, the factors in building resistance were complex, but mainly, the Nazi command structure was breaking down. In Paris, Gen. Dietrich von Choltitz dithered, sparing the city from destruction. Southern ports of Toulon and Marseilles, although rendered German “fortresses” and ordered to be defended to the last man, were handed over to the Allies without total demolition, while the liberation of German cities, one by one, was frequently aided by civilian resistance of military command.

An authoritative, compelling study sure to raise hackles.

which had just 50 employees. Kalinske fought a competitive campaign starting with the “Sixteen Weeks of Summer” in 1991, during which Sega carried out an inspired insurgency to diminish the launch of the SNES. The edginess of the company’s advertising and products—think of the speed and scale of Sonic the Hedgehog versus the trusty familiarity of Mario and Link—shook the market like no upstart had before. Meanwhile, Harris also tracks a quirky Icelandic physics student named Olaf Olafsson, who was quietly helping Sony build a giant-killer of their own.

It’s hard to say whether the book is better than the movie(s), but whether readers are gamers or just enjoyed The Social Network, they’ll be spoiled for choice here.

WATCHING THEM BE Star Presence on the Screen from Garbo to Balthazar

Harvey, James Faber & Faber/Farrar, Straus and Giroux (432 pp.) $27.00 | Jul. 8, 2014 978-0-571-21197-5 A movie critic considers the mystery of star power.

Playwright and essayist Harvey (Emeritus, Film and Literature/SUNY, Stony Brook; Movie Love in the Fifties, 2001, etc.) takes his title from James Baldwin’s observation about movie stars: “One does not go to see them act; one goes to watch them be.” A star’s personality, the author contends, transcends particular performances to generate “enforced intimacy” with the viewer. “A screen star,” he writes, “generally appropriates her role rather than disappearing into it (as an ordinary actor might do).” Greta Garbo, for example, “offered something that approached sublimity,” which emerged even in the “dead weight” of a movie like Anna Karenina (1935). Ingrid Bergman shone like “a goddess” even when miscast, “because it’s her more than the character…that you respond to.” Beginning with stars of the 1930s and ’40s, Harvey analyzes performances by Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Bette Davis, John Wayne, Bergman and Charles Laughton. In a section on “realists,” he turns to Robert De Niro, notably his role as Noodles in Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America (1984); performances by Lily Tomlin and Ronee Blakley in Robert Altman’s Nashville (1975); and Pam Grier, the raunchy heroine of Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown (1997). Harvey also looks at directors such as Jean-Luc Godard, whose masterful close-ups celebrated star quality, and Carl Theodor Dreyer, “arguably the preeminent ‘religious’ filmmaker of our modern cinema time.” He cites Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), in which Maria Falconetti had an “overwhelming star turn” as Joan. “There is something religious about the movie experience,” the author writes, and he ends his film journey with a worshipful exegesis of Robert Bresson’s Balthazar (1966), in which the star is a donkey.

Harvey’s meticulously close reading of movies illuminatingly analyzes both the “controlling sensibility” of stars and the viewer’s process of “intense watching.” (127 b/w illustrations)

CONSOLE WARS Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle that Defined a Generation

Harris, Blake J. It Books/HarperCollins (576 pp.) $28.99 | May 13, 2014 978-0-06-227669-8 978-0-06-227671-1 e-book

Long before Xbox One and PlayStation 4 were scrapping it out on retail shelves, a small but nimble competitor very nearly unseated Nintendo. Welcome to the Console Wars.

This history of the battle for video game market supremacy between Sega’s Genesis gaming system and Nintendo’s SNES console is the source material for not only an upcoming documentary co-directed by the author, but also a Scott Rudin–produced Hollywood film being written and produced by geek icons Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen (This Is the End), who contribute a funny introduction here. The good news is that despite being a bit lopsided in its portrayal of the players involved, the book is a highly entertaining behind-the-scenes thriller in which price fixing, psychotically aggressive marketing schemes and, occasionally, genuine innovation all come into play. Harris posits the fight between the two companies as a David-vs.-Goliath battle between Nintendo, which dominated the video game industry in the post-Atari era, and Sega, which valued audacious ideas, aggressive branding and more mature games. The nominal hero of the book is Tom Kalinske, a former Matchbox marketing executive sought out by Hayao Nakayama to run Sega’s American division, |

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INTERVIEWS & PROFILES

Roz Chast

She loved her parents, but they also drove her bananas

By Megan Labrise Chast was born in 1954 to George, a foreign language teacher, and Elizabeth, an assistant principal, in Brooklyn, New York. “They were a tight little unit,” writes Chast, whose drawing depicts her aged parents on the couch: “ ‘Codependent’? Of course we’re codependent!” says Elizabeth. “Thank GOD!!!” says George. They were born 10 days apart in the spring of 1912, grew up two blocks from each other and attended the same fifth-grade class. Finding three to be a crowd, their daughter fled for art school as soon as possible.

“They were special. I cared about them, and I know they cared about me,” says Chast. “I loved them, but they drove me bananas. They really did drive me bananas.”

Her parents continued to live devotedly in the same Brooklyn apartment for the next three decades.

It wasn’t until a 2001 visit that Chast discovered the encroachment of grime. Subsequent trips confirmed her suspicions of decline. “By 2002, they were 90, and it was hard not to notice that every time I came to see them, the grime had grown thicker....The piles of newspapers, magazine, and junk mail had grown larger...and they themselves had grown frailer,” Chast writes. “I could see that they were slowly leaving the sphere of TV commercial old age—Spry! Totally Independent!!

Just Like a Normal Adult, but with Silver Hair!!!—and moving into the part of old age that was scarier, harder to talk about, and not a part of this culture.”

Were her parents no longer able to care for themselves? Who even knew what that meant? To strongwilled Elizabeth, especially, accepting help was a nonstarter. Leaving the apartment wasn’t up for debate.

As Chast writes, “My mother did not ‘pick her battles,’ as parents nowadays are advised to do. And the few fights I dared to have with her, she won. She always won.”

Photo courtesy Bill Franzen

The thing about caring for her aging parents that most surprised Roz Chast was everything.

“I didn’t know anything about elder lawyers, I didn’t know about hospice. I didn’t know whether they had a will. I didn’t know how to start these conversations. I felt like I was just making it up in a sort of incompetent way as I went along,” says Chast, the New Yorker cartoonist. “As I said to somebody recently, it’s not like they have What to Expect When Your Parents Are Over 90 and Don’t Want to Move Out of Their Apartment.”

While that specific title has yet to grace self-help shelves, customers who searched for that item may enjoy Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? Chast’s first memoir is exceptional: a funny, heart-rending take on an increasingly common experience, told primarily through four-color panel cartoons.

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What follows is the inevitable series of unfortunate events: George, suffering from dementia, gets lost in their own building; Elizabeth takes a nasty tumble off a step stool. In a poem written after the fall, entitled “Too Soon We Grow Old: Too Late We Get Smart,” she reflects on what went wrong: “Twas my knees that betrayed me, / As they buckled under me. / This wasn’t the first time, / So just how dumb could I be?”

Chast’s humor is a delight, though she identifies more with her father, the inveterate worrier: She worries about her parents’ continuing to live alone. She worries about finding an assisted living facility closer to her Connecticut home—depicting “Sunset Gardens,” “End-of-the-Trail Acres,” “Final Bridge Rest Home” and “Last Stop: A Luxury Residence for People in Their Golden Years” as samples of the available accommodations. She worries about medical procedures, caregivers, dwindling finances and whether she’s doing enough.

“I still very frequently ask myself, did I cause, you know, everything bad? Should I have let them continue to live in their apartment? I was thinking maybe my father’s hip broke because he wasn’t used to walking around so much, and he was walking more at the place,” she says. “They’d have to walk from their room to the elevator. You just ask yourself all these questions. I guess I felt like I was doing the best that I could, but I can’t look back and say I’m sure.”

George died in 2007. “After my father died, I noticed that all the things that had driven me bats about him—his chronic worrying, his incessant chitchat, his almost suspect inability to deal with anything mechanical—now seemed trivial,” Chast writes. “The only emotion that remained was one of deep affection and gratitude that he was my dad.”

Elizabeth, suffering from diverticulitis and multiple falls, seemed to be in steady decline. Hospice was engaged. Then the next time Chast visited, Elizabeth was on the couch with her caregiver, eating a tuna sandwich. “Where, in the five Stages of Death, is Eat Tuna Sandwich?!?!?” Chast writes. “When she turned like ninety-six I asked her what she wanted for her birthday and she said ‘a car.’ She was mad because, ‘When you took my car away, you clipped my wings.’

The idea of driving in Connecticut! I don’t even like to drive on Route 7,” she says.

It was a temporary stay. Elizabeth died in 2009, and Chast includes a series of portraits depicting her

mother in bed that depart from her signature style.

The last bears the legend “My mother died tonight at 8:28.” She’s still wearing an oxygen tube.

“I told my daughter, who’s an artist and writer, ‘It’s all material. If I’m ever relegated to that, should you feel so inclined, feel free to take notes,’ ” says Chast.

Funny, a little grim, frustrating, mournful: Can’t We Talk about Something More Pleasant? presents a mix that seems true to the experience—a clue-in for those who have yet to understand firsthand and a comfort to those who do. “You’re not alone if you feel like you’re going to lose it or you’re at the end of your rope, that you’re not going to be able to stand it—because you will, you’ll stand it. It’s just a hard thing,” she says.

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

Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? received a starred review in the Feb. 1, 2014, issue of Kirkus Reviews.

Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?

Chast, Roz Bloomsbury (240 pp.) $28.00 | May 6, 2014 978-1-60819-806-1 |

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FADING HEARTS ON THE RIVER A Life in High-Stakes Poker

permanently changed her life. She did not win, but the experience threw open doors to possibilities that eventually landed her a spot at Julliard. There, she worked with mezzo-soprano Jennie Tourel, who became her mentor and role model, and received instruction from the legendary Maria Callas. Hendricks began her extraordinary career as a performer and recording artist soon after leaving Julliard in 1974. Within three years of graduation, she had sung with every major orchestra and conductor in the United States and at major festivals and opera houses all over Europe, which became her permanent home in 1977. Twenty years into a career that included work on film versions of operas like Puccini’s La bohème, Hendricks added to her vocal repertoire by learning how to sing jazz songs, which she debuted at Montreux Jazz Festival in 1994. Sensitive to human rights issues from an early age, Hendricks became involved with the United Nations and used her musical talents to call attention to social and political conflicts around the world, including the Bosnian war. By the late 1990s, she also created her own award-winning humanitarian organization dedicated to fostering peace and reconciliation. Hendricks’ accomplishments and sincerity are genuinely laudable. However, her painstaking efforts to record every small detail of her career and life and point out the relationship those details have to a greater historical process are too excessive to make the narrative genuinely enjoyable.

Operatically overdone. (49 color photos; 32 b/w photos)

Haxton, Brooks Counterpoint (288 pp.) $24.00 | May 20, 2014 978-1-61902-325-3

A man ponders his son’s pokercentric life.

While studying for a college degree, Isaac Haxton decided to leave school for a year to play professional poker. With all the excitement that implies, Isaac’s father, poet Brooks Haxton (English/Syracuse Univ.; They Lift Their Wings to Cry, 2008, etc.), doesn’t focus simply on the poker angle. Instead, the narrative moves through a series of twists covering every aspect of the author’s son’s life.

While many of Haxton’s flights of fancy fit the subject matter— e.g., his son’s early interest in math problems, lifelong love of games in general and childhood ability at chess—some simply do not, as when his daughter had to give up gymnastics. Other tangential tales are related to each other but still seem out of place in the larger context. For instance, both the author and his son were hospitalized around the same time, and Haxton relates both accounts. While both medical tales begin with serious intrigue, they also fizzle out in similar manners. In an instant, Haxton has moved on, and readers are left to assume that all ended well and to wonder what made the stories worth telling. The author also introduces other elements of the overall gambling story but doesn’t fully flesh them out—e.g., a government seizure of Isaac’s winnings. One compelling factor to which Haxton frequently returns is the idea of chance. He puts his poetry skills to excellent use, spinning out language that is often beautiful and evocative.

The book is not just about his son’s competitive gambling career; it’s also a poetic memorial to the poignant moments in his life, his son’s life and their shared life. Haxton also includes a helpful glossary of card-playing terms.

Not without flaws but an appealing, intriguing read for those fascinated by poker, chance and unique father-son relationships.

LEARNING TO BREATHE FIRE The Rise of CrossFit and the Primal Future of Fitness Herz, J.C. Crown Archetype (432 pp.) $25.00 | Jun. 3, 2014 978-0-385-34887-4

Former New York Times columnist and Rolling Stone rock critic Herz (Joystick Nation: How Videogames Ate Our Quarters, Won Our Hearts, and Rewired Our Minds, 1997, etc.) shares her enthusiasm for the CrossFit strength and conditioning movement.

The CrossFit fitness craze is based on the model of a maximum-output physical regimen of “diabolically intense” timed movements. Herz explores this exhilarating, addictive activity with equal potency, focusing on the health phenomenon’s diverse aspects, including its genesis in a Santa Cruz, California, gym and the ideals adopted by exercise guru and founder Greg Glassman. After delving into the hormonal, anaerobic and metabolic effects CrossFit can have on the human body, the author energetically presents a vast array of profiles and interviews with exercise, sports, law enforcement and military specialists— all enamored by CrossFit’s exhaustive, unisex physical demands and rational core methodology. Herz adds a dramatic flair to her prose, igniting excitement and an uptick in interest even when discussing the female names for CrossFit’s ritualistic workouts of the day or its buzzword-trendy, disciplined philosophy (“half chivalric code and half Bushido”). The author champions the

LIFTING MY VOICE A Memoir

Hendricks, Barbara Chicago Review (496 pp.) $32.95 | Jun. 1, 2014 978-1-61374-852-7

An African-American opera star recalls her distinguished career.

Hendricks grew up in the segregated South of the 1950s and ’60s singing in church and school choirs with no particular desire to make a career in music, which she deemed “extracurricular.” Instead, she studied math and science until a chance invitation to compete in auditions for the Metropolitan Opera 60

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AFRICA, MY PASSION

yearly installations of the global, hypercompetitive CrossFit Games with brio, spotlighting the highs and lows of the competitions’ most elite challengers. Oddly, however, Herz embeds critical information on the inherent risks associated with such high-intensity physical training deep into a chapter devoted to a firefighter who successfully adopted the CrossFit approach.

At times, the author’s exuberance for this trendsetting industry reads like boilerplate infomercial copy (“CrossFit HQ protects a culture that embraces competitive fitness. It’s a cult of excellence….It’s a strategy for resilience”), but as the underdog of the exercise world, CrossFit training (at least to the author) remains a “triumph of the generalist.”

A vigorously written must-read for exercise enthusiasts primed for the ultimate fitness challenge. (8-page b/w photo insert)

Hofmann, Corinne Translated by Millar, Peter Dufour (216 pp.) $29.95 | Jul. 19, 2014 978-1-908129-45-1

The best-selling German author of The White Masai recounts her unexpected return to Africa.

In 2008, Hofmann decided it was time to put her African past behind her. Eager for a new adventure, she set out from her home in Switzerland for New Delhi. But no matter where she went in India, all she could see was her beloved Kenya. At home in Europe, Hofmann answered an ad in a magazine for a travel companion willing to travel “where the world was still wild” and discovered that trip would take her to Namibia—right back to the continent that would not leave her soul. Her expedition started in the ferociously hot savannah wilderness just outside Etosha National Park. She witnessed spectacular scenery and traveled through villages populated by the hardy Himba people, whose joyful appreciation for the little they had made her aware of the “comfortable existence” she lived in Europe.

Several months after her return to Switzerland, Hofmann decided to travel back to Nairobi, where she observed the work of French charity Solidarités International and talked at length with slum dwellers who had managed to survive—and even more remarkably, to dare to dream of a better future—in the face of extreme poverty, crime and AIDS. Hofmann later returned to Kenya again with her daughter to visit the family of the Masai warrior ex-husband she had deeply loved as a young woman but from whose jealous rages she eventually fled. Narrated with genuine affection for all things African, Hofmann’s book is only somewhat interesting as a travelogue and even less so as a memoir of homecoming. The superficial treatment it offers of her own conflicted feelings toward the complex figure of her husband is disappointing and unsatisfying.

Of interest to followers of Hofmann’s other books about Africa but not especially compelling otherwise. (16page color insert)

THE LOYAL LIEUTENANT Leading Out Lance and Pushing Through the Pain on the Rocky Road to Paris

Hincapie, George; Hummer, Craig Morrow/HarperCollins (320 pp.) $26.99 | May 27, 2014 978-0-06-233091-8

With action/lifestyle sports broadcaster Hummer, world-class cyclist Hincapie recounts his career spent in the shadow of disgraced champion Lance Armstrong.

It’s tough to determine whether the fairly recent resurgence of popular interest in competitive cycling is due to the racing itself or to the doping controversy that has surrounded it for the past decade. Whatever the case, the now-retired former cycling phenom Hincapie feels compelled to share his story with the world. Unlike prima donnas like Armstrong and Tyler Hamilton, the author’s role in many Tour de France (and other) international cycling victories was mainly one of team-oriented strategy in making sure his team’s star member shined as brightly as possible in every race. Of course, this more secondary role still won Hincapie plenty of accolades, but it also did not prevent him from eventually indulging in the same sort of illegal performance-enhancing drugs that Armstrong and most of the other stars of the sport were using. It’s interesting to note that Hincapie’s depiction of Armstrong rarely acknowledges Armstrong’s nasty competitive side, owing most likely to the fact that Hincapie never seriously challenged Armstrong and so never caught the full wrath of the world’s foremost cycling celebrity. The author is not exactly contrite when it comes to his role in the doping scandals, either: Like Armstrong and other PED users, Hincapie saw doping as an unfortunate but necessary evil. Much like Hamilton’s The Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France (2012), this book ultimately serves to tear away the gentlemanly facade of competitive cycling to reveal the sport’s profoundly unromantic underbelly.

A straight-edged, readable memoir that will do little to polish cycling’s tarnished reputation.

THE WRONGS OF THE RIGHT Language, Race, and the Republican Party in the Age of Obama

Hughey, Matthew W.; Parks, Gregory S. New York Univ. (240 pp.) $30.00 | May 30, 2014 978-0-8147-6054-3

A dissection of the language of the far right, showing the continued, although masked, biases inherent in their message.

After a quick history of civil rights and racist attitudes, Hughey (Sociology/Univ. of Conn.; The White Savior Film: Content, Critics, and Consumption, 2014, etc.) and Parks (Law/Wake Forest Univ.; co-editor: Alpha Phi Alpha: A Legacy of Greatness, |

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“A fierce, razor-sharp, heartwarming nonfiction debut.” from the empathy exams

the Demands of Transcendence, 2011, etc.) show the process that continues the message while avoiding political incorrectness.

There are four dimensions at play: black dysfunction, white patriotism, white paternalism and white victimhood. The authors show how these dimensions have grown sociologically and legally over the years, especially since the election of the first black president, Barack Obama. The “Southern strategy” was a child of the ultraconservative Dixiecrats in response to Harry Truman’s civil rights program. They laid the groundwork for the advent of the tea party, birthers and the radical right. All of these groups exhibit elements of racism and are anti-immigrant, pro-gun, anti-deficit, anti-Semitic and pro-religion in government. Hughey and Parks demonstrate the different ways in which outright hostility can be masked by implicit racial biases and coded words and phrases—e.g., welfare queen, inner city, states’ rights, entitlement society, welfare state and liberal bias. Decrying Obama as the affirmative action president, the disrespect of journalists and talking heads like Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh, as well as the use of dehumanizing symbols are all methods of this so-called principled conservatism, a term the authors reject outright—“the banner of ‘post-racialism’ is devoid of ethical currency.”

Many of the groups the authors investigate will find further fodder for their tirades, and liberals will doubtless get angry, but all should learn that there’s a limit to the insults American intelligence will tolerate.

way of query: What grows where you are? What are the laws? What animals graze there?” Jamison’s uncanny ease in crossing boundaries between the philosophical and the personal enables her both to isolate an interiority of feeling and capture it in accessible metaphorical turns of phrase: “Melodrama is something to binge on: cupcakes in the closet.” Throughout, Jamison exhibits at once a journalist’s courage to bear witness to acts and conditions that test human limits—incarceration, laboring in a silver mine, ultramarathoning, the loss of a child, devastating heartbreak, suffering from an unacknowledged illness—and a poet’s skepticism at her own motives for doing so. It is this level of scrutiny that lends these provocative explorations both earthy authenticity and moving urgency.

A fierce, razor-sharp, heartwarming nonfiction debut.

NOW I SEE YOU

Kear, Nicole C. St. Martin’s (304 pp.) $25.99 | Jun. 24, 2014 978-1-250-02656-9 The story of a woman navigating the life-changing effects of a degenerative disease.

Learning she had a disease that would eventually destroy her eyesight, leaving her permanently blind, was the last thing Kear expected to hear at the age of 19 when she went in for an eye exam. When the doctor told her she had maybe 10 years of sight left, the author pushed the thought of being blind to the back of her mind and decided to live life to the fullest. A stint in a circus school, several bit parts in plays and numerous one-night stands helped Kear avoid her reality: that her peripheral vision was gone, her line of sight restricted to a narrow tunnel, and her ability to see at night finished. Bouncing from New York City to California and back, Kear surged forward, hiding her increasing disability from her family and friends. This resulted in some hilarious and almost disastrous incidents, which she covered with a sassy sense of humor and long-sleeved shirts, pants and scarves to hide any bruises from having run into objects. Despite the difficulties of losing her eyesight, Kear fell in love, married and embarked on the oftentimes-difficult task, even for sighted people, of having children.

The author narrates her story with frankness and humor as she relays humiliating moments such as crashing into the glass door at Starbucks, spilling coffee all over herself, or losing her daughter on the playground, only to discover she was right next to her the whole time. After a dozen years of fighting this losing battle, Kear finally acquiesced, accepted the inevitable and reached out for help. Her story is spunky and full of a zest for life that will open the eyes of readers to the little joys of the world.

A tender memoir about love, life and going blind.

THE EMPATHY EXAMS Essays

Jamison, Leslie Graywolf (256 pp.) $15.00 paper | Apr. 1, 2014 978-1-55597-671-2

A dazzling collection of essays on the human condition.

In her nonfiction debut, the winner of the 2011 Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize, Jamison (The Gin Closet, 2010) presents 11 essays that probe pain alongside analyses of its literal and literary trappings. Whether tackling societal woes such as strip mining, drug wars, disease and wrongful imprisonment, or slippery abstract constructs including metaphor, sentimentality, confession and “gendered woundedness,” Jamison masterfully explores her incisive understanding of the modern condition.

The author’s self-conscious obsession with subjectivity and openness to the jarringly unfamiliar become significant themes.

In the title essay, for example, the author uses her job as a medical actor—tasked with pretending to be a patient afflicted with a predetermined illness in the service of measuring medical students’ diagnostic skills and bedside manners—as a springboard for examining the meaning of empathy and her relation to it. “Empathy comes from the Greek empatheia—em (into) and pathos (feeling)—a penetration, a kind of travel,” she writes. “It suggests you enter another person’s pain as you’d enter another country, through immigration and customs, border crossing by 62

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THE SECRET CLUB THAT RUNS THE WORLD Inside the Fraternity of Commodity Traders

The sport of baseball, “America’s Pastime” though it may be, is often knocked as a boring, slow-moving game, even by some of its fans. Kendall, who spent 15 years behind the plate in the big leagues, attempts to dispel that notion by pointing out how many different things are really happening, even when the untrained eye sees 10 players standing still. Ever wonder what’s really being talked about when players and coaches meet on the pitcher’s mound? Or between the batter, catcher and umpire?

What about all those mysterious hand signals? Kendall explains all of this and more, with sections devoted to each position on the field and detailed explanations of the many calculations a player must make in any of the thousands of situations in which he may find himself during the course of nine innings. The signals get their own appendix, and the author also includes a glossary of terms. As the title implies, the author considers himself an adherent to “old-school” baseball, praising those players who work to be the best and disdainfully pointing out when something is done just to look cool—e.g., a catcher removing his mask not to help him see the ball but to give the TV cameras a clear shot of his face. Despite his seriousness about the game, Kendall is not without a sense of humor, illuminating his examples with anecdotes from his long career, told in a straightforward, no-nonsense voice that feels authentic.

A valuable education for baseball fans looking to increase their knowledge of and appreciation for the sport.

Kelly, Kate Portfolio (288 pp.) $29.95 | Jun. 3, 2014 978-1-59184-546-1

CNBC business reporter Kelly (Street Fighters: The Last 72 Hours of Bear Sterns, the Toughest Firm on Wall Street, 2009) takes on the world of commodity traders and the controversies swirling around it.

The author profiles a world in which large-scale bets on market volatility and careful calculation of hedged positions are often upset by unexpected developments: geopolitical or other kinds of crisis, human overconfidence, bad luck, etc. Kelly introduces many world-class market movers, including Marc Rich, the longtime fugitive and former owner of trading company Glencore, and Gary Cohn, the president and COO of Goldman Sachs, which was investigated for manipulating supplies of aluminum. The dizzying rise of oil prices in the late 2000s and their equally precipitous slide provides a frame in which Kelly takes up the question of whether commodity trading is speculative and/or beneficial. Traders like London hedge fund operator Pierre Andurand move billions of dollars with their intuitive bets and lead excessively lavish lifestyles.

The author provides insight into the various levels of the world of commodities, from raw materials production to futures contracts and the derivatives based on them. Kelly chronicles efforts to regulate these markets—especially during Gary Gensler’s tenure at the Commodity Futures Trade Commission—and she also details the depths of continuing opposition. Especially intriguing is the underlying narrative regarding the persistence of the chaotic feedback from the combined effects of disparate individuals, markets and events. “A true knack for wagering on the price vicissitudes of crude, copper, or cotton remain[s] a profitable skill in almost any environment—especially when only a handful of individuals in the world [can] really do it well and on a large scale.”

A lively contribution to an ongoing debate that features the unforeseen as much as the deliberate.

THE FOOTLOOSE AMERICAN Following the Hunter S. Thompson Trail Across South America Kevin, Brian Broadway (352 pp.) $14.99 paper | May 20, 2014 978-0-7704-3637-7

A footnote to renowned journalist Hunter S. Thompson’s yearlong adventure in South America, which Thompson recounted with zest in The Proud Highway and elsewhere.

With zest, yes, but with some padding and stretching of the facts here and there. Travel writer Kevin does good work in following Thompson’s path across the continent, occasionally correcting the details, to revisit the places where the gonzo master lived and worked—some of them places that, readers of The Great Shark Hunt will remember, were thick with gringos who thought nothing of driving golf balls off penthouse decks into the teeming streets below. (“Golf,” one local rightly remarked to Kevin, “that’s only for the elite.”) Kevin spends much of his time, as did Thompson, in Colombia, where, half a century ago, Thompson marveled with thinly disguised fear at an epidemic of rural violence that left unfortunates beheaded and otherwise lifeless. Kevin updates the portrait by noting that among the last of the guerrillas in the Colombian outback, “there isn’t much ideology left, just a fanatical devotion to drug profits.”

(Never mind that Thompson might have funded a squad or two with his consumption habits.) Kevin’s forays to places such as

THROWBACK A Big-League Catcher Tells How the Game Is Really Played

Kendall, Jason; Judge, Lee St. Martin’s (304 pp.) $25.99 | $12.99 e-book | May 13, 2014 978-1-250-03183-9 978-1-250-03182-2 e-book

With the help of veteran sports journalist Judge, former major league baseball All-Star catcher Kendall presents an in-depth guide to what really goes on during a professional baseball game. |

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“Can even more be said about an avowed cypher by looking at the rather uncanny relationship with his fans? In this enjoyable book, longtime followers may be surprised to find out the answer is yes.” from the dylanologists

ORGANIC A Journalist’s Quest to Discover the Truth Behind Food Labeling

Machu Picchu have a by-the-numbers travel journalism feel, but when he’s onto meatier matters, he turns in memorable work— as when, for instance, he digs up some long-forgotten pieces that Thompson wrote in 1962 for the Brazil Herald, an expat publication with a readership in and around Rio de Janeiro and São Paolo of about 7,000. Writes Kevin, nicely wrapping up his perambulations, the paper’s society column “had a slightly glib, above-it-all tone, and I imagined it appealing to people like the British rooftop golfer and his well-connected chums.”

A minor but well-intentioned and entertaining entry in the ever-growing library of Thompsoniana.

Laufer, Peter Lyons Press (288 pp.) $25.95 | Jul. 1, 2014 978-0-7627-9071-5

Former NBC News correspondent Laufer (Journalism/Oregon Univ.; The Elusive State of Jefferson: A Journey through the 51st State, 2013, etc.) investigates the “need to know what we’re eating and how it came to our dinner plates.”

The author became suspicious when a package of ostensibly organic walnuts from Trader Joe’s tasted rancid. Checking the label, he found that they were grown in Kazakhstan. When Trader Joe’s refused to reveal their provenance, his “journalist’s radar kicked in.”

As someone who had reported on “the culture of bribery and corruption that lingers in most former Soviet republics,” Laufer found it unlikely that Kazakhstan was supporting a well-regulated organic food industry. Some months later, a check on the label of a can of “organic” black beans revealed that they came from Bolivia. As someone who had covered the drug trade in that region, Laufer was skeptical again. His suspicions were reinforced when an American case of fraudulent labeling made headlines: Businessman Harold Chase was convicted of passing off 4 million pounds of conventional corn as organic. In the United States, the organic sector has become a big business “worth over two dozen billion dollars a year.” At that size, it is “ripe with opportunities for hustlers,” and the certification process is flawed. Laufer interviewed the U.S. Department of Agriculture official in charge of the National Organic Program, who informed him that, due to understaffing, prosecutions are rare. For comparison purposes, the author traveled to Europe to speak with officials there and found a more regulated food industry, but loopholes and opportunities for fraud still abounded.

A lively, highly informative exposé capped by trips to Kazakhstan and Bolivia, where Laufer settles his questions about the walnuts and black beans he purchased.

Now, how to fix the situation so that not all foods labeled organic are “suspect”?

THE DYLANOLOGISTS Adventures in the Land of Bob Kinney, David Simon & Schuster (256 pp.) $25.00 | May 13, 2014 978-1-4516-2692-6

Perhaps the only thing more inscrutable than Bob Dylan is the cavalcade of misfits and muckrakers that parade through this earnest exploration of the artist’s even more curious brand of devotees.

Bob Zimmerman (b. 1941) started out his career as a rabid fan.

So enamored was he of his boyhood idol Woody Guthrie that he tracked down the collapsing star all the way to his hospital bed, plying him for answers that the sick man could not possibly provide. Strange then, that so much of Dylan’s remarkable career has been saddled with the same kind of futilely obsessive adulation.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Kinney (The Big One: An Island, an Obsession, and the Furious Pursuit of a Great Fish, 2009) mixes a lighthearted approach with the serious business of trying to figure out just what makes Dylan’s legions of followers tick. All of the most outrageous characters are here: the searchers, the collectors, the tapers, the pilgrims and the many who are pissed off at the artist. Of the whole bunch, however, those who came to believe that Dylan had somehow double-crossed them over the years are the most confounding. Either owing to his evolution as an artist or as a person, the depth of betrayal that he has inadvertently incited in these people—sometimes by going electric, at other times going to church—is truly fascinating. Of course, the expert analysis of some of Dylan’s most manic disciples can actually be yet another way of further scrutinizing one of the most already scrutinized figures in American music. Can even more be said about an avowed cypher by looking at the rather uncanny relationship with his fans? In this enjoyable book, longtime followers may be surprised to find out the answer is yes.

Alternately funny, intriguing and shocking.

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A DAUGHTER’S MEMOIR OF BURMA

Law-Yone, Wendy Columbia Univ. (336 pp.) $30.00 | $29.99 e-book | Jul. 22, 2014 978-0-231-16936-3 978-0-231-53780-3 e-book The life of a noted Burmese newspaper editor and activist, recounted by his daughter.

Ed Law-Yone, outspoken owner, editor and publisher of Rangoon Nation, the city’s most influential newspaper, left his writings, diaries, notes and letters to his daughter, Wendy (The |

Road to Wanting, 2011, etc.), hoping that she would use them to tell her family’s story. She felt daunted: “The intricacies of Burmese politics! The byzantine characters and their biblical genealogies! It would take more than a labor of love to disentangle the skeins of Dad’s narrative.” In the 20-plus years since his death in 1980, she published several novels, before the author finally felt ready to investigate her “burdensome legacy.” The result is both an intimate personal memoir and a vivid history of Myanmar, formerly Burma, during decades of roiling upheaval.

Ed Law-Yone took over the Nation in 1948, just as Burma won its independence from Great Britain. Sheltered by “the cocoon” of her family, the young Wendy did not see the political chaos around her as a fragile central government was attacked on all sides by groups of insurgents. Political volatility made newsgathering exciting but dangerous; her father, she discovered, kept a loaded gun in his desk. Nevertheless, he enthusiastically embraced his position as a public figure, attending international conferences, embarking on goodwill missions around the world and forging close relationships with men in power. In 1962, however, a military coup overthrew the elected government. Although at first Ed Law-Yone felt protected by his good relationship with the new leader, Gen. Ne Win, soon his role as gadfly and muckraker was quashed—he was arrested and incarcerated for 5 years. After his release, he left the country with his family and joined other Burmese exiles abroad to mount an opposition campaign to the oppressive military government— efforts that ultimately failed.

Weaving together events she witnessed and those gleaned from her father’s papers, Law-Yone gracefully conveys the dramatic story of her youth, her family, and a remarkable man’s life and work.

English song well known in America. Key was also involved directly in the crucial issue of his time: slavery. A slaveholder himself, he defended in court both slaves seeking their freedom and owners refusing to release their human property. He was a founder and proselytizing member of the American Colonization Society, whose mission was to encourage emancipated slaves to settle in Africa. Key resented the abolitionist movement, believing that freed slaves posed a threat of unrest, and would foment rebellion against slaveholders. Besides his tireless work for the ACS, Key founded the American Bible Society and served as its vice president, and he was a supporter of the American Tract Society, which published and distributed Christian literature aimed to convert nonbelievers. Although Key was a “tepid Federalist who loathed partisan politics,” he became an avid proponent of Andrew Jackson, sympathetic to his campaign against government corruption and his desire to limit federal intrusion into states’ affairs.

A concise, well-researched biography of a self-righteous, opinionated man who embodied the convictions and contradictions of his tumultuous times.

THINK LIKE A FREAK The Authors of Freakonomics Offer to Retrain Your Brain Levitt, Steven D.; Dubner, Stephen J. Morrow/HarperCollins (288 pp.) $28.99 | May 13, 2014 978-0-06-221833-9 978-0-06-221836-0 e-book

Co-authors Levitt (Economics/Univ. of Chicago) and journalist Dubner (Super Freakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance, 2009, etc.) continue on their mission to get people to think in new ways in this lively book about decision and persuasion.

Building on their first two books, the authors offer advice for dealing with “minor lifehacks or major global reforms.”

Most people, they argue, “seek out evidence that confirms what they already think, rather than new information that would give them a more robust view of reality.” They urge openness to evidence that may seem obvious, counterintuitive or even childish. Children, they conclude, are much more likely than adults to focus on small, solvable problems rather than “intractable, hopelessly complex” issues. “Small questions are by their nature less often asked and investigated….They are virgin territory for true learning,” they assert, and much more likely to inspire change. Nine fast-paced, story-filled chapters offer nuggets of useful advice: Don’t be afraid to say, “I don’t know.” It’s essential for learning. Reframe questions: “If you ask the wrong question, you are almost guaranteed to get the wrong answer.” Stay alert to the real root cause of a problem; it may be far different from what people generally assume. Levitt and Dubner analyze the upsides and downsides of incentives and consider the insidious power of “herd thinking.” Genial storytellers, the authors admit that much of their advice may seem like common sense (and, of

WHAT SO PROUDLY WE HAILED Francis Scott Key, a Life

Leepson, Marc Palgrave Macmillan (256 pp.) $26.00 | Jun. 24, 2014 978-1-137-27828-9

The political and moral views of the man who wrote “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

Francis Scott Key (1779-1843) was an influential lawyer, serving for eight years as a district attorney. As historian Leepson (Lafayette: Lessons in Leadership from the Idealist General, 2011, etc.) portrays him, Key was devoutly religious, politically conservative and ardently patriotic. He opposed the American invasion of Canada that began the War of 1812, calling the war “a lump of wickedness,” but by September 1814, after witnessing bombs bursting, rockets hissing and cannonballs rumbling when the British attacked Baltimore, his patriotism overwhelmed him. Seeing the American flag flying after the British retreated, he penned the verses that became the nation’s anthem. Days later, the poem was published in a Baltimore newspaper, indicating that it was to be sung “to the tune of ‘To Anacreon in Heaven,’ ” a popular |

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THE DOG WHO COULD FLY The Incredible True Story of a WWII Airman and the FourLegged Hero Who Flew at His Side

course, they covered much of this territory already in their previous books), but they cite study after study—by psychologists, sociologists, educators and scientists—to show that sometimes common sense is severely underutilized.

Upbeat and optimistic, Levitt and Dubner hope that by thinking “a bit differently, a bid harder, a bit more freely,” readers will be able “to go out and right some wrong, to ease some burden.”

Lewis, Damien Atria (304 pp.) $26.00 | Jun. 10, 2014 978-1-4767-3914-4

THINGS I DON’T WANT TO KNOW On Writing

An enthusiastic dual biography of a man and his wartime animal companion.

A Czech volunteer in the French Air Force, Robert Bozdech crashed in no man’s land at the beginning of WWII. Returning to friendly lines, he discovered a puppy in an abandoned house and kept it throughout his service, including four years of missions for the Royal Air Force. With access to Bozdech’s papers and unpublished memoirs, journalist Lewis (co-author: Sergeant Rex: The Unbreakable Bond Between a Marine and His Military Working Dog, 2011, etc.), who has reported from war and conflict zones for a variety of news outlets, delivers a detailed narrative. Named Antis, the dog was impressively loyal, intelligent and stoic. It accompanied Bozdech in the headlong retreat across France after the Nazi invasion and cooperated as his master smuggled him aboard a ship to Gibraltar and then another to Britain (pets were forbidden). Antis smuggled himself aboard his master’s bomber and flew several missions over Europe before being severely injured by flak. He was also buried in rubble for several days after a bombing attack, shot by an angry farmer for chasing sheep, and suffered nearly fatal cold injury due to the fact that he waited beside the runway for Bozdech’s return, often for days, refusing food and ignoring rain and snow. His presence was no secret to the British media, who made him a national celebrity, and he later received the Dickin Medal, the animal equivalent of the Victoria Cross. Bozdech himself was equally impressive, completing his missions in Bomber Command (only half survived) and then completing another turn in the Coastal Command.

Books on dogs who served in war make up a minor genre. This account will appeal to dog lovers and history buffs who can tolerate the florid novelization and fictionalized dialogue. (18 b/w photos)

Levy, Deborah Bloomsbury (128 pp.) $20.00 | Jun. 10, 2014 978-1-62040-565-9

A slim, elliptical memoir from novelist, poet and playwright Levy.

Only in the most expansive terms can this be considered a book “on writing,” as it is subtitled, though it could be considered a portrait of the writer as a young girl. Most of it at least, for the framing is plainly the author’s adulthood, before the publication of her well-received novel Swimming Home (2011). It begins: “That spring when life was very hard and I was at war with my lot and simply couldn’t see where there was to get to, I seemed to cry most on escalators at train stations.” Levy provides no context for her existential crisis, but she recounts her geographical cure to Majorca, where she shared a restaurant table with a Chinese man, who asked her where she was born. She writes, “I’m not sure I went on to say everything you’re going to read now.” Levy was born in apartheid South Africa, living in Johannesburg, when her father was imprisoned for being a member of the African National Congress. The author then lived with her godmother, where she didn’t quite fit with the family and, perhaps symbolically, freed a bird from its cage (as she’d desired to do for her caged father). Eventually, her father was freed, and the family exiled itself to England, where Levy wondered, “How was I ever going to escape from living in exile? I wanted to be in exile from exile.” Her full-circle return to the Majorca of the book’s beginning brings a perspective informed by politics, feminism, and the challenge and redemption of writing: “What do we do with knowledge that we cannot bear to live with? What do we do with the things we do not want to know?”

Readers get only a vague sense of what these things we don’t want to know might be in a book that seems like a catharsis for the writer but might prove enigmatic for most readers.

BRAZIL The Fortunes of War Lochery, Neill Basic (352 pp.) $29.99 | Jun. 3, 2014 978-0-465-03998-2

Well-focused look at the authoritarian rule of charismatic Brazilian president Getúlio Vargas (1882-1954).

Unlike fellow British scholar Michael Reid in his recent broad overview (Brazil: The Troubled Rise of a Global Power, 2014), Lochery (Middle Eastern and Mediterranean Studies/Univ. Coll. London; Lisbon: War 66

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“A passionate call for ‘responsible meat-eating’ and what that means, as well as an explanation of the small steps required for accomplishing it.” from the carnivore’s manifesto

in the Shadows of the City of Light, 1939-45, 2011, etc.) keeps the spotlight on the buildup to World War II, when Brazil, then a resources-rich provincial backwater, was eyed as a valuable asset by both the Axis and the Allies. Assuming power in 1930 and then ruling as a dictator from 1937 to 1945, Vargas was determined to make Brazil a stronger, more modern power politically, economically and militarily. Argentina was already pro-Nazi, and Brazil’s trade with Germany was vigorous. The United States grew increasingly alarmed by the aggressive moves of Germany and Italy (Brazil also had a large Italian immigrant population), and President Franklin Roosevelt asserted in his inaugural speech of March 1933 what would become known as the Good Neighbor Policy: “I would dedicate this nation to the policy of the good neighbor—the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others.” Wooing neutral Brazil would prove a difficult task for Secretary of State Cordell Hull, Undersecretary Sumner Welles and philanthropist Nelson Rockefeller, charged with coordinating inter-American affairs.

Vargas liked to give alarming speeches reminding the U.S. not to take Brazil for granted. Flanked by his “right eye” (daughter Alzira) and “left eye” (Foreign Minister Osvaldo Aranha), Vargas played the Americans skillfully to get what he needed, eventually even sending troops to fight with the Allies in Italy in 1944. “Brazil may still have been waiting for its future to arrive,” writes the author, “but by the time Vargas was entombed, his capital was at least living in the present.”

Colorful personalities and tricky maneuvers make for a lively drama. (16 b/w images)

they need. The authors cite eight schools that have met the goals of Deeper Learning, including the Avalon Charter School in St. Paul, Minnesota; Impact Academy of Arts & Technology, a charter high school in Hayward, California; Science Leadership Academy, a magnet high school in Philadelphia; and High Tech High, a charter school in San Diego. These schools represent diverse ethnic and economic populations but are “slightly smaller than the norm” for American high schools. Indeed, with all having fewer than 600 students, the schools selected are far smaller than high schools in many U.S. cities, which serve thousands. Six chapters show how each school meets Deeper Learning goals: establishing collaborative learning communities; fostering students’ self-direction; contextualizing and integrating subjects; taking education outside of the school and into the community; motivating students to discover their own interests; and incorporating technology to enhance learning.

The anecdotes are uplifting, but the authors are not persuasive about the ease of adapting these schools’ strategies to larger, financially strapped settings.

THE CARNIVORE’S MANIFESTO Eating Well, Eating Responsibly, and Eating Meat

Martins, Patrick with Edison, Mike Little, Brown (272 pp.) $26.00 | $12.99 e-book | Jun. 10, 2014 978-0-316-25624-7 978-0-316-25622-3 e-book

DEEPER LEARNING How Eight Innovative Public Schools Are Transforming Education in the TwentyFirst Century

A loosely organized, lively and challenging collection of observations, ideas, philosophical meanderings and ethical concerns related to the meat we put on our plates.

Along with former High Times editor Edison (Dirty! Dirty!

Dirty!: Of Playboys, Pigs, and Penthouse Paupers—An American Tale of Sex and Wonder, 2011, etc.), Martins takes a scattershot approach to the discussion, dividing the book into 50 short chapters that cut a wide swath, covering everything from slow food principles to the inhumane treatment of animals on factory farms to how to build a slaughterhouse and the importance of biodiversity and rare heritage breeds. Martins uses the word têtoir for cultures and communities that hand down food traditions, creating distinctive flavors much in the way terroir gives wine its distinct characteristics. Martins, who founded Slow Food USA, now runs Heritage Foods USA, a purveyor of meats from farmers who humanely raise rare or heritage breeds without antibiotics or hormones. His free-ranging thought process, at times distracting, always comes back to slow food basics: “…sourcing responsibly, recognizing the farmer’s work and understanding exactly what we are eating and where it comes from.”

For example, a dirt-scratching Narragansett turkey that freely roamed the barnyard will have a different taste than one raised in a windowless barn under bright lights, its beak and toenails removed, unable to stand due to its inordinately large breasts.

Consumers may abhor such treatment, but are they ready to pay

Martinez, Monica; McGrath, Dennis New Press (256 pp.) $26.95 | Jun. 17, 2014 978-1-59558-959-0

The authors contend that learning how to learn is the most essential skill for 21st-century students.

“Deeper Learning” is the term education advisers Martinez and McGrath (The Collaborative Advantage: Lessons from K-16 Educational Reform, 2005, etc.) use to describe the educational goals they advocate. “Deeper Learning,” they write, “is the process of preparing and empowering students to master essential academic content, think critically and solve complex problems, work collaboratively, communicate effectively, have an academic mindset, and be self-directed.” It’s hard to imagine any school system arguing against these laudable aims, but the authors assert that most American schools fall short of achieving them. Setting Common Core State Standards, they believe, is a step in the right direction, but implementing those standards has been challenging, and they serve as only “one element” in getting students to acquire the knowledge and skills |

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THE MOCKINGBIRD NEXT DOOR Life with Harper Lee

$140 for “a robust, healthy animal that lived a great life?” Martins recognizes that the economic realities of big agriculture vs. independent farmers, distributors and purveyors are the biggest obstacles to his manifesto, but he remains optimistic that consumer demand may eventually bring changes to the supply chain.

It begins with getting to know the farmers, butchers and green grocers who bring food to our tables; it’s about “provenance.”

A passionate call for “responsible meat-eating” and what that means, as well as an explanation of the small steps required for accomplishing it. (10 b/w line drawings)

Mills, Marja Penguin Press (288 pp.) $27.95 | Jul. 15, 2014 978-1-59420-519-4

In her first book, a journalist offers a gentle, loving portrait of a reclusive writer.

After To Kill a Mockingbird was published in 1960, Harper Lee (b. 1926) was overwhelmed with attention. She sat for interviews, signed so many copies of the novel that she developed tendonitis, and watched with alarm as Monroeville, Alabama, the small town in which she lived, was turned into a tourist attraction. Then she retreated, refusing to talk to reporters or cooperate with biographers, determined to live her life quietly and privately. In 2001, when Mills came to Monroeville on assignment from the Chicago Tribune, she expected to take notes on the town’s ambience and, at most, to interview a few people who knew Lee. But Lee—known by her first name, Nelle—and her 89-year-old sister, Alice, a lawyer, were interested in Chicago’s One Book, One Chicago program, which had chosen Mockingbird for that year’s citywide reading. When Mills rang the doorbell at the Lees’ home, Alice invited her in for a long conversation. This led to repeated visits and resulted in a friendship that continues, even with both sisters now in assisted living facilities. Mills portrays Nelle as a grown-up Scout, the feisty and defiant heroine of Mockingbird. “Even at their ages,” writes the author, “it was clear Alice was the steady, responsible older sister, and Nelle Harper the spirited, spontaneous younger one.” The sisters lived modestly, with an eclectic circle of friends that included “a retired hairdresser, a pharmacy clerk, a one-time librarian, and a former bookkeeper who also was the wife of a retired bank president.”

Often, friends joined in the outings, breakfasts and dinners that Mills and Lee shared. Together, they watched two movies about Truman Capote, with whom Lee had worked as researcher for In Cold Blood; their relationship soured later. “Truman was a world-class gossip,” Lee told Mills.

The sisters’ trust that Mills was not a gossip is borne out in this charming portrait of a small Southern town and its most famous resident.

COLLIDING WORLDS How Cutting-Edge Science Is Redefining Contemporary Art

Miller, Arthur I. Norton (352 pp.) $35.00 | Jun. 16, 2014 978-0-393-08336-1

Miller (Emeritus, History and Philosophy of Science/Univ. Coll. London; Deciphering the Cosmic Number: The Strange Friendship of Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Jung, 2009, etc.) suggests that we are “witnessing the birth…[of] a third culture in which art, science, and technology will fuse.”

As the author explains in this review of current trends in avant-garde art, he does not mean this to be taken metaphorically. He believes there to be an actual convergence that extends beyond the use of animation and holography in film. In the future, he writes, “art, science, and technology as we know them today will disappear, fused into a third culture—leaving the door open for the next, as yet unimaginable, avant-garde.” The possibilities inherent in digital technology are one part of the story of how advances in technology can be transformative, but the author focuses on the fusion of cutting-edge science and art to form a new discipline, “artsci.” A good example is the collaboration of artists and scientists at CERN, a collaboration organized in 1997 by Ken McMullen, a professor at the London Institute (an umbrella organization of area art schools.) This led to a London exhibition called “Signatures of the Invisible,” which included a depiction of a particle accelerator using plaster and plastic bags from a supermarket, and another “creat[ing] three-dimensional illusions which seem to move as you walk in front of them” to illustrate paradoxes rooted in perceptions. Miller introduces readers to artistic works that translate sound into light displays and a proposal for bioengineered bones for use in displays and biojewelry. The author suggests that shocking as some of these examples may seem, so too were the cubist paintings of Picasso and the atonal music of John Cage before becoming mainstream.

Intriguing, especially for aficionados of the avantgarde. (70 illustrations, 8 pages of color)

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BRANDO’S SMILE His Life, Thought, and Work

LIFE BY THE CUP Ingredients for a PurposeFilled Life of Bottomless Happiness and Limitless Success

Mizruchi, Susan L. Norton (432 pp.) $27.95 | Jun. 23, 2014 978-0-393-08286-9

Muzyka, Zhena Atria (288 pp.) $25.00 | Jun. 17, 2014 978-1-4767-5960-9

According to his latest biographer, Marlon Brando (1924-2004) was a voracious reader, social activist and insightful actor.

Mizruchi (English/Boston Univ.; The Rise of Multicultural America, 2008, etc.) bases her study on considerable new sources: Brando’s huge library of annotated books, film scripts and research notes, as well as interviews with friends and family members. “I can report,” she writes, “that Brando’s hunger for knowledge was as insatiable as his more legendary appetites for women and food.”

She believes that Brando was a victim of sexism; his good looks and gossip about “the endless women and romantic affairs” led to his being stereotyped as an intellectual lightweight. Mizruchi argues that he was a serious student of philosophy, literature, history, and Western and Eastern religions. In the 1950s, as his reputation was established by performances in A Streetcar Named Desire and On The Waterfront, his reading became “focused on three main areas: comparative philosophy and religion; Asian cultures, including their histories, languages, and arts; and social scientific theory (politics and psychology in particular).” His readings, Mizruchi asserts, influenced his choice of roles, in which he hoped to convey some social or political message. Although he was chided for outspoken political views that some deemed naïve, the author claims that Brando consciously “treated his celebrity as a means to public ends.” His causes included Native American rights, civil rights for African-Americans, UNICEF and the environment. Mizruchi chronicles Brando’s career, highlighting his deliberations over roles, his profuse annotations of scripts and his efforts to deeply understand his characters. Even when he took parts just for the money, “Brando sought to balance lucrative projects against those he did for idealistic purposes.”

Admitting that she has been obsessed with Brando since she was a teenager, Mizruchi paints a sympathetic and respectful portrait of a man far different from the selfabsorbed, self-indulgent one who emerges in other biographies. (78 illustrations)

Muzyka’s journey from tea cart operator to owner of a multimillion-dollar tea business.

As carefully crafted as the handpicked teas she describes, the author’s aptly named book offers wisdom with each cup, a “touchstone of tranquility, of warmth and nourishment.” Each chapter begins with a discussion of a tea blend related to her story, which begins when Muzyka’s son was born with a lifethreatening kidney defect that required surgery. The single mother needed a way to earn money for the hospital bills. A lover of tea and student of aromatherapy and herbs, she looked to her Roma ancestors, medicine women who were healers and herbalists, for guidance. In an upscale consignment shop, she offered her concoctions—Gypsy Love rose tea, Vanilla Rose tea latte, Hazelnut Cinnamon black tea latte­­—on a cart she called the Gypsy Tearoom. Next came Zhena’s Gypsy Tea company, featuring her line of teas created with all the senses in mind: colorful and attractive to the eye, a perfect balance of fragrances, loose leaves to touch, flavors to “dance on the tongue” and a story to tell. Business, she learned, had its own complex layers to understand. She forged ahead with plans to use organic, fairtrade teas even with the inherent economic challenges, and she built a strong relationship with a tea plantation in Haputale, Sri Lanka, that shared her philosophy. Muzyka provides life lessons at the end of each chapter gleaned from what she learned along the way. Ultimately, this sensuous read captures the romance and pleasure of tea. Consider, for example, Coconut Chai, “a blend of sumptuously ripened coconut, thick and balmy Galle Valley black tea, sweet cinnamon, the bold heat of Burmese ginger, mellow nutmeg, prized imperial cardamom, piquant red peppercorns, and tongue tingling clove.” Who could resist?

A story steeped in passion for tea lovers, dreamers and seekers of a meaningful life.

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“An adventurous and frequently dazzling look at our planet’s most massive habitat.” from deep

DEEP Freediving, Renegade Science, and What the Ocean Tells Us About Ourselves

sobering statistics, Netto counts his own eight-day imprisonment as trifling. Still, the pages devoted to his isolation in one of Gaddafi’s jail cells powerfully convey the desperate uncertainties engendered by a lawless regime under which the whim of the dictator controlled the country for more than 40 years. Trying to follow up conflicting reports coming out of Libya about a possible rebellion and after numerous frustrated attempts to cross the Tunisian border, Netto entered the country illegally.

Betrayed by one of his rebel escorts, he ended up in the hands of loyalists torn between their contempt for journalists and their need to appear unflustered by the revolt. Once released and deported, Netto made it back to Libya months later, in time to report on the fall of Tripoli and the capture and killing of Gaddafi, “the Osama bin Laden of the 1980s.” Given the sudden and frightening interruption of his mission, it’s not surprising that those portions of his narrative recounting the various international responses to the Libyan crisis, crucial as they proved for the insurgency’s eventual success, lack the punch of his on-the-scene reporting. Nevertheless, whenever and wherever he’s on the ground in Libya, Netto delivers some first-rate reporting, including interviews of various rebel fighters and eyewitness accounts of horrific scenes no doubt the result of rebelcommitted war crimes. He also manages to expose another of the Gaddafi regime’s many lies: He confirms that Hana, the tyrant’s daughter, long thought killed by a 1986 Reagan-ordered air strike, has been alive and working as a doctor and hospital administrator all this time. Notwithstanding the current political chaos in Libya, Netto concludes with some hopeful words about the country’s future.

A courageous and well-informed piece of journalism.

Nestor, James Eamon Dolan/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (304 pp.) $27.00 | Jun. 24, 2014 978-0-547-98552-7

Nestor (Get High Now (without drugs), 2009, etc.) takes readers around the world as he explores the ocean’s mysterious and revealing depths—and what the deep might reveal about mankind’s origin and future.

We’ve all seen documentary footage of strange deep-sea creatures, trundling along a hazy ocean floor, maybe even glowing in the dark. But how much do we really know about these ecosystems, and how much have we forgotten about our own profound connection to the ocean? With verve and humor, the author describes his own risk-taking attempts to understand the ocean’s ancient secrets and future potential and the daring and brilliant people who have dedicated their lives to probing deeper. Take free diving, for example: Historical accounts suggest that humans have been diving hundreds of feet deep for centuries, with no equipment and holding just one breath of air. Our bodies are capable of withstanding the crushing pressure in deep water, and we have a built-in instinct called the “master switch of life” that activates to give human bodies amphibious skills. Nestor goes into great detail about his own free-dive training, and his writing is sharp, colorful and thrilling. Equally magnetic is the account of his adventure in a deep-sea submarine, a cramped contraption that dove to 2,600 feet below the surface, where light can’t penetrate the water but a variety of organisms thrive. Perhaps the most memorable chapter covers the author’s experience diving with sperm whales, whose enigmatic vocalizations may be the most complex language we can imagine. Throughout, scientific mini-lessons and lively character profiles give context to the author’s anecdotes, bringing the ocean to life from a research perspective as well as a human one.

An adventurous and frequently dazzling look at our planet’s most massive habitat.

NOT FOR EVERYDAY USE A Memoir

Nunez, Elizabeth Akashic (256 pp.) $24.95 | $15.95 paper | Apr. 1, 2014 978-1-61775-234-6 978-1-61775-233-9 paper Her mother’s death prompts a writer to examine her relationship with her family.

Though having previously relied on her prodigious imagination to create stories to help “make sense of the world,” award-winning novelist Nunez (Fiction Writing/Hunter Coll.; Boundaries, 2011, etc.) here opts to forego fiction’s veil to explore “the real truth, the essential truth” in her first full-length memoir. Called back to her native Trinidad on the occasion of her mother’s death, Nunez loosely frames this probing look at the varying dimensions of her family’s relational dynamics across the four days between returning from New York on hearing of her mother’s passing and her burial. The fog of grief following sudden loss, coupled with heady interactions with her ailing father and gathering siblings, provides a ready backdrop for the author to expound on topics as disparate as Trinidadian history, pedagogy, colonialism, Catholicism and her love for British literature. She also assesses

BRINGING DOWN GADDAFI On the Ground with the Libyan Rebels

Netto, Andrei Translated by Marsden, Michael Palgrave Macmillan (320 pp.) $28.00 | Jun. 3, 2014 978-1-137-27912-5

The Paris correspondent for a leading Brazilian newspaper recounts his experience covering the Libyan revolution.

During the eight-month conflict that deposed Muammar Gaddafi (1942-2011), 32 journalists were imprisoned, 15 kidnapped, 30 expelled and 11 killed. Measured against these 70

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was the man we wanted, after all—he does show us his humanity with impressive clarity.

the lasting impact of her parents’ values and relationship with each other on the lives of their 11 children. Nunez analyses the conventions that she feels rooted her “rigidly orthodox” Catholic mother in a 65-year marriage to a loving and accomplished but at times unfaithful husband and her fierce adherence to religious doctrine that resulted in 14 pregnancies and may also have contributed both to her difficulties in openly expressing affection for her children and her encouraging them to travel abroad to seek their fortunes. Taught early on by both parents that “emotions can be dangerous; they can derail you,” Nunez contemplates how this emphasis on emotional reserve may have spawned her and her siblings’ great professional successes alongside a raft of failed marriages, especially when faced with a once-domineering father now diminished by age, widowed and in the early stages of dementia.

An intriguing, sometimes-rambling yet courageous memoir.

THE LIFE OF THE AUTOMOBILE The Complete History of the Motor Car Parissien, Steven Dunne/St. Martin’s (432 pp.) $27.99 | May 13, 2014 978-1-250-04063-3

A prominent British historian maps out the tricky, messy, world-changing history of the gas-powered automobile.

In this straightforward history of cars, Parissien (Interiors: The Home Since 1700, 2008, etc.) begins by offering a concise origin story of the birth of the modern car and then launches into the oft-told tales of the slick behemoths who brought the product to the mainstream. “The men who were responsible for the creation and development of the global car industry were, for the most part, enthusiastic experts or fast-talking salesmen—or, like Henry Ford, a bit of both,” writes the author. “Many of the first auto pioneers were largerthan-life characters.” In addition to Ford, Parissien looks at the men who are mostly known as brand names today, including the rakish Louis Chevrolet, the brilliant engineers Karl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler, and the French pioneer Armand Peugeot.

Focusing on the characters involved in this great drama would have led to more inspired storytelling, but the historian in the author is far too ingrained. He pulls the focus way back to give an undemanding accounting of the industry’s peaks and valleys and the resulting effects on the social structures of America, Europe and Asia. There are a few entertaining moments—Parissien clearly understands the symbolism of the car as sex symbol—and there are nods to the cults of Volkswagen’s Beetle and the Mini Cooper, as well as well-known iconography like Steve McQueen’s Shelby Mustang in Bullitt, James Bond’s Aston Martin, and the DeLorean DMC-12 and its prominence in the Back to the Future movies. However, the step-by-step narrative, pulled almost entirely from secondary sources, is a grind.

An authoritative but dull chronicle of a colorful industry that leaches out most of the interesting parts of one of the world’s great pastimes. (Two 8-page color photo inserts)

FIERCE PATRIOT The Tangled Lives of William Tecumseh Sherman O’Connell, Robert L. Random House (416 pp.) $28.00 | Jul. 1, 2014 978-1-4000-6972-9

An admiring triptych of the Civil War hero—or villain, depending on your loyalties—popular cultural figure and family man.

Military history scholar O’Connell (The Ghosts of Cannae: Hannibal and the Darkest Hour of the Roman Republic, 2010) does not discover a lot about William Tecumseh Sherman (1820-1891) that he doesn’t like. He divides his text into three major sections. The first, and by far the longest, begins with the arrival of the 16-year-old Sherman at West Point in 1836 (“he was beginning a process that would induct him into a warrior elite, forging bonds that would last a lifetime”) and follows him to the end of the Civil War. In the second section, O’Connell focuses on Sherman’s relationships with his men and on his soldiering.

We hear (as we do in the first section) about his men’s restraint during the March to the Sea through Georgia and the Carolinas. Sure, they burned houses and scavenged food and supplies, but they didn’t rape or murder anyone. The final section of the triptych chronicles Sherman’s family life: the early death of his father; his foster family (the politically powerful Ewings); his marriage to his foster sister, Ellen; his children (one son became a priest, a decision that angered Sherman); and his lovers (among them, sculptor Vinnie Ream). The author shows us a garrulous Sherman, a man who had difficulties in his banking career, a highly skilled administrator, a fearless leader, a man who bonded with Ulysses Grant (their relationship cooled when Grant pursued the presidency), and a leader who loved the adulation he enjoyed throughout his post–Civil War days— from his former soldiers and the general public.

Although O’Connell excuses Sherman’s excesses—he |

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“Patterson covers all the bases—an essential book for studious fans of Heinlein, with valuable lessons for anyone hoping to make a living with the pen.” from robert a. heinlein

ROBERT A. HEINLEIN In Dialogue with His Century Volume 2: The Man Who Learned Better

NORTH OF NORMAL A Memoir of My Wilderness Childhood, My Unusual Family, and How I Survived Both

Patterson Jr., William H. Tor (624 pp.) $34.99 | Jun. 3, 2014 978-0-7653-1961-6 978-1-4299-8796-7 e-book

Person, Cea Sunrise Harper/HarperCollins (352 pp.) $25.99 | Jul. 1, 2014 978-0-06-228986-5

A former international model charts her unconventional childhood in the 1960s with a hippie-ish family.

Person begins with the lives of her progressively thinking maternal grandparents, a Korean War veteran and a baker’s daughter who used marijuana to soothe debilitating bouts of depression. That remedy found its way to the author’s mother once the family moved to California. Then, after a failed marriage, the family relocated to a “tumbledown house in a town just over the Canadian border,” where the author was born.

Another move to the northern Alberta wilderness in the early 1970s further estranged the group from contemporary civilization; Person and her family gathered berries, laundered clothing in a river and slept in a ramshackle tepee. The author grew up with an appreciation for nature and for her grandfather “Papa Dick,” who expanded their camps to include visiting “freelove-and marijuana-saturated” transients interested in living the same unfettered lifestyle. Further moves to southern British Columbia and beyond with her mother’s new beau, Karl, eventually became stifling for Person as she came of age and preferred reuniting with her birth father to living with her pothead grandparents. While the author predominantly chronicles her eccentric childhood, in the final chapters, she details her independent ascent into the modeling world, where she bravely traversed the competitive fashion markets in Manhattan and Europe at age 15, alone, with barely an acknowledgment from her oblivious mother. Person also soberingly examines the myriad mistakes and struggles in her own adult life (“I cheated on my first husband with seven different men….I had done so much coke and drank so much booze that I had beat the crap out of my boyfriend”), mirroring her dysfunctional upbringing.

Personal closure occurred with forgiveness and a rebonding with her mother years before her death.

Written with stylistic clarity and studded with family photos, Person’s lucid memories present a stirring scrapbook.

Second and concluding volume of Patterson’s wide-ranging biography of the renowned science-fiction author.

As Patterson (Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue with His Century: Volume 1 (1907-1948): Learning Curve, 2010) notes, Robert Heinlein (1907-1988) did not limit himself to what was then a small, if growing, genre of popular fiction. By the early 1950s, “he was in boys’ and girls’ markets, books, pulp, and film, all at the same time”—part of a concerted, thoroughly thoughtthrough effort to free himself from the pulps while making a living as a writer. Patterson is well-versed in the Heinlein oeuvre, and a significant contribution of his biography is to place Heinlein’s works in the context of his life and the evolution of his politics. As Heinlein was writing his best-known books, among them Stranger in a Strange Land (1961) and Starship Troopers (1959), he was making a political arc from beyond– New Deal Democrat to right-of-Goldwater Republican, a transformation helped by a second marriage to an activist conservative. Though he was friendly with L. Ron Hubbard, he resisted taking the path into invented religion and instead used his fiction to explore philosophical questions of meaning (one reason that Stranger became such a hit in the ’60s counterculture). The ’50s, Patterson reveals, were lucrative and satisfying for Heinlein in some respects, though the ground was always shifting; his Hollywood period closed with a thud when the production company he worked with closed its doors. He was on firmer footing in the ’60s, and though reviewers were often antagonistic (Patterson quotes a few, including some from this publication, that were friendly but more that were not), his books did well—encouraging fan mail that, as Patterson recounts, was full of detailed questions “about everything from economics to where Robert parted his hair.”

Patterson covers all the bases—an essential book for studious fans of Heinlein, with valuable lessons for anyone hoping to make a living with the pen. (8-page b/w photo insert)

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“Essential reading for citizens of the here and now.” from capital in the twenty-first century

DO NOT SELL AT ANY PRICE The Wild, Obsessive Hunt for the World’s Rarest 78rpm Records

Economist Piketty considers capital, in the monetary sense, from the vantage of what he considers the capital of the world, namely Paris; at times, his discussions of how capital works, and especially public capital, befit Locke-ian France and not Hobbesian America, a source of some controversy in the wide discussion surrounding his book. At heart, though, his argument turns on well-founded economic principles, notably r > g, meaning that the “rate of return on capital significantly exceeds the growth rate of the economy,” in Piketty’s gloss. It logically follows that when such conditions prevail, then wealth will accumulate in a few hands faster than it can be broadly distributed. By the author’s reckoning, the United States is one of the leading nations in the “high inequality” camp, though it was not always so. In the colonial era, Piketty likens the inequality quotient in New England to be about that of Scandinavia today, with few abject poor and few mega-rich. The difference is that the rich now—who are mostly the “supermanagers” of business rather than the “superstars” of sports and entertainment—have surrounded themselves with political shields that keep them safe from the specter of paying more in taxes and adding to the fund of public wealth. The author’s data is unassailable. His policy recommendations are considerably more controversial, including his call for a global tax on wealth. From start to finish, the discussion is written in plainspoken prose that, though punctuated by formulas, also draws on a wide range of cultural references.

Essential reading for citizens of the here and now. Other economists should marvel at how that plain language can be put to work explaining the most complex of ideas, foremost among them the fact that economic inequality is at an all-time high—and is only bound to grow worse.

Petrusich, Amanda Scribner (272 pp.) $25.00 | Jul. 8, 2014 978-1-4516-6705-9

Life among the Indiana Joneses of record collectors, who will let nothing come between them and a rare Charley Patton.

This new book by Pitchfork contributing writer Petrusich (It Still Moves: Lost Songs, Lost Highways, and the Search for the Next American Music, 2010) proves once again that it takes a rare person to hunt for rarities, especially when the obscure object of desire is a classic 78rpm blues record. The author investigates both the history of blues and its literally fragile legacy. She joined professional blues travelers as they scoured the Earth for vinyl Stradivariuses, whether it was one of the two known copies of Tommy Johnson’s “Alcohol and Jake Blues” or the only copy anywhere of Solomon Hill’s “My Buddy Blind Lemon.” These people don’t just haunt record stores, yard sales, festivals and eBay; they go where no one else thinks to look, pursuing rare leads, taking out ads, spending sacks of money and weeks of time. Sometimes they strike gold— there are great stories of treasures hauled out of Dumpsters or from under beds—but mostly they just lose sleep over the one that got away. Petrusich caught the virus herself, and she examines the bigger picture. Is it all about the love of music, the thrill of the chase or something more disturbing? Are collectors like Freudian dissidents, seeking the kind of solace that can only be found in the original pressing of “Devil Got My Woman” by Skip James? Or is this all about personality disorder? Collecting old 78s “demands an almost inhuman level of concentration,” writes the author, and there is “a violence to the search, a dysfunctional aggression that vacillates between repellant and endearingly quirky. It’s intimidating to outsiders, and it feeds on sacrifice.”

An engaging and deeply personal journey, for both the writer and her subjects, and an adroit disquisition on the nature of this distinctly American form of insatiable lust.

(8-page b/w insert)

DO FATHERS MATTER? What Science Is Telling Us About the Parent We’ve Overlooked

Raeburn, Paul Scientific American/Farrar, Straus and Giroux (288 pp.) $26.00 | Jun. 3, 2014 978-0-374-14104-2

How science is providing new insights into the importance of the father figure.

In the United States, the cultural model for being a “good father” has become diffuse and conflicted. It’s interesting that Raeburn (Acquainted with the Night: A Parent’s Quest to Understand Depression and Bipolar Disorder in His Children, 2004, etc.) titled the book “Do Fathers Matter?”—that’s one of the few questions about fathering that continues to have a clear answer. Yes, they matter, but how, and in what way? The author, chief media critic for the Knight Science Journalism Tracker site at MIT, traces the historical roots of gender-based division of labor, noting the origins of food gathering, protection and cooking and how those duties remained entrenched through tens of thousands of years. He argues that the combination of this long precedent coupled with increased pressure to be an equal partner at home has led to the creation of a

CAPITAL IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

Piketty, Thomas Translated by Goldhammer, Arthur Belknap/Harvard Univ. (640 pp.) $39.95 | Mar. 10, 2014 978-0-674-43000-6 A French academic serves up a long, rigorous critique, dense with historical data, of American-style predatory capitalism—and offers remedies that Karl Marx might applaud. |

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“A sharply observed coming-of-age memoir about an aspiring writer’s entry-level job at a fading literary agency.” from my salinger year

Many of the mysteries of the literary world remain mysteries to the author, but she provides good company as she explores them.

“male mystique” that leaves many men pressured to be all things to all people—a paradigm as damaging as the “feminine mystique.”

Raeburn considers how the male presence can sculpt a newborn and how the father is, in turn, also sculpted by the infant. Some of the author’s observations are anecdotal—how many of the magazines in your pediatrician’s office are parenting magazines aimed at women?—but they frequently serve as backdrops for other data regarding how men interact with their children and the children’s mothers. The book spans conception to the teenage years, environmental biology and zoology to commercials for bleach and diapers. At times, the narrative reads like an overstuffed binder of research and ideas, with no clear direction to help structure the facts and theories into a set of complete arguments.

As food for thought, the book provides an ample helping for anyone willing to look at the ways fathers are portrayed, the realities of male parenting and all the gray areas in between.

BRAZIL The Troubled Rise of a Global Power

Reid, Michael Yale Univ. (352 pp.) $32.50 | Jun. 10, 2014 978-0-300-16560-9

Economist Latin American columnist Reid (Forgotten Continent: The Battle for Latin America’s Soul, 2008) provides a knowledgeable overview of the vast, vibrant country that will host the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics.

The seventh largest economy, the third largest food exporter, the world’s fourth most populous democracy, a country of enormous natural resources, including self-sufficiency in oil, Brazil has had a peaceable, productive recent rise in fortune. However, that emerges from a history of colonialism, slavery and poverty, writes the author. He touches on such recurrent Brazilian problems as the lack of political organization, which was noticeable as early as the Tupi-speaking Indians’ first encounter with Portuguese seafarer Pedro Álvares Cabral on the Brazilian coast in 1500. (They had neither the metals nor the domesticated animals prevalent in the nearby, highly developed Incan, Aztec or Mayan civilizations.) Reid also sifts carefully through the reasons for and long-term ramifications of Brazil’s huge demand for African slaves between 1500 and 1866. The shorter route to Africa, the exchange of export goods for slaves, the inability to attract free labor and the high mortality in its tropical climate are among the factors he explores. Food shortages and poor diet would plague the Brazilian people (and their economy) up until the modern era. The expulsion of the Jesuits in the 18th century left an “education vacuum,” and the Portuguese crown did not encourage the building of universities; the vacuum remains problematic today. Although the Europeans turned Brazil into a highly stratified and patriarchal society, Reid notes that they also fostered the rich blending of African, Indian and Portuguese people and cultures that formed “the main achievement of the colonial period.” In the 20th century, Brazil built a strong nation-state, beginning with dictator-turned–elected president Getúlio Vargas, through the rule of the generals to the forging of a democracy after the 2002 electoral triumph of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

A thorough study deeply informed by on-the-ground reporting.

MY SALINGER YEAR

Rakoff, Joanna Knopf (272 pp.) $25.95 | Jun. 5, 2014 978-0-307-95800-6

A sharply observed coming-of-age memoir about an aspiring writer’s entrylevel job at a fading literary agency.

Though Rakoff earned acclaim for her debut novel (A Fortunate Age, 2009), her memoir is more engaging, particularly for its mastery of tone.

The author establishes herself as something of an innocent, a master’s grad who wanted to write poetry but required a job to tide her over. She found one at an unnamed literary agency that continued to operate with typewriters and fax machines and where her boss’s main responsibility was the nonbusiness of J.D. Salinger. It would be easy for a satiric hipster to have satirical fun with the material—particularly with the onslaught of letters from generations of Salinger fans who actually expected (or even demanded) a response—but Rakoff isn’t that sort of author. She reserves just the slightest bit of judgmental irony for herself and for her boyfriend, a socialist, boxer and aspiring novelist. Her family recognized that she was a glorified secretary at a menial job that would bring her no closer to fulfilling her literary ambitions and didn’t provide her with sufficient salary to pay her bills.

Against her boss’s admonitions, she developed something of a telephone relationship with Salinger (whom she’d never read before taking the job), finding him “never anything but kind and patient. More so than plenty of people who called the Agency. More so than plenty of his fans.” Eventually, Rakoff fell in love with his books, established correspondence with some who wrote him (and learned why a form letter was previously the standard response), assumed more responsibility as a manuscript reader and something of an agent herself, and left the agency as a published poet.

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TIGER, MEET MY SISTER… And Other Things I Probably Shouldn’t Have Said

Rhee, who is also a professor of surgery at the University of Arizona, is aided by veteran journalist Dillow in recounting a life rich in dramatic moments. Born in South Korea and raised partly in Uganda and then in the United States, Rhee, who received his medical education at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences and consequently served in the U.S. Navy, discovered his bent for surgery as a resident. He loved it, and he had “good hands.” What his memoir shows is that he also had stamina, drive, ingenuity, and the ability to focus and to lead. Having been a trauma surgeon in the “urban battlefields” of Seattle, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles and in the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan, Rhee has seen sights most people never will—or would ever want to. But this is not just a series of horror stories. The author wants readers to understand the importance of trauma centers—trauma is the major cause of death of all Americans under the age of 45—the training of trauma surgeons, and what they do and do not do.

Rhee opens and closes the book with the story of Giffords, but what he makes clear is that what happened in Tucson was not unusual or remarkable. Every year, some 180,000 Americans die of traumatic injuries, and the ones who end up under the care of a skilled trauma team stand the best chances of surviving.

Not for the squeamish, the book provides a fascinating glimpse into a world of rapid life-or-death decisions and actions. (8-page insert)

Reilly, Rick Blue Rider Press (368 pp.) $27.95 | May 13, 2014 978-0-399-17125-3

An acclaimed sportswriter presents a litany of gripes.

The subtitle of this collection of previously published essays by veteran sportswriter Reilly (Sports from Hell: My Search for the World’s Dumbest Competition, 2010, etc.) tells readers what to expect: brash, rude opinions for which the writer does not apologize. The author, an ESPN.com columnist and 11-time national sportswriter of the year, occasionally writes uplifting stories about “People With Big Hearts” or “Tales of Strength” (two chapters in this book), but his stock in trade is quick-paced, topical humor columns for ESPN The Magazine, where his essays are a brief stop en route to something more substantial or entertaining. In large doses, his irreverent humor becomes mean-spirited and derisive. (Reilly’s take on Caltech’s men’s basketball team’s breaking its 310-game losing streak is not a feel-good story.) The author’s complaint about the ponderous pace of major league baseball games showcases his typical hack work: He calls a three-hour-and-fourteen-minute Reds-Giants game in 2012 “can-somebody-please-stick-two-forks-in-my-eyes snore-a-palooza” and grouses, “I’d rather have watched eyebrows grow.” In his column about Jason Collins coming out as a gay NBA player, Reilly describes players’ fears of having a gay teammate as “paranoia in high tops.” However, the author’s irritation is valid when he rebuts the tributes dozens of writers and news outlets heaped upon Al Davis, the controversial owner of the Oakland Raiders, following his death in 2011. Reilly’s listing of the man’s misdeeds and many examples of his disagreeable nature (“Yes, Al Davis believed in A ‘ Commitment to Excellence.’ Yet he didn’t demand it in himself”) are honest and a relief from the hagiography about Davis in the press—not to mention from the author’s endless punning and tepid wordplay.

In book form, Reilly’s columns are an avalanche of small stones, hitting readers with trite observations and stale one-liners.

NO MAN’S WAR Irreverent Confessions of an Infantry Wife

Ricketts, Angela Counterpoint (320 pp.) $26.00 | Jul. 15, 2014 978-1-61902-326-0

An Army wife reflects on marriage, war and guilt.

On leave as commander during an 18-month deployment in Iraq, Ricketts’ husband made a startling confession: He was responsible for the torching of a building that resulted in the deaths of women and young children. Although cleared of wrongdoing, he was beset by anguish. As the commander’s wife, charged with keeping up morale among soldiers’ families, Ricketts felt complicit. “Writing this book,” she writes, “is my version of repentance, my version of forcing myself to look at a pile of corpses I helped create….I am both a perpetrator and victim of war, in my own tiny way.”

Besides facing her complicity, she shares her sadness at the effect of Army life on her marriage, which deteriorated as her husband, an ambitious career officer, went on repeated deployments, ever longer and more dangerous. Each time he returned, he seemed to be a stranger to her and their children, each time more addicted “to being ‘in the fight’ and the adrenaline rush of battle.” Ricketts vents anger, as well, about much of Army life: its rigid protocol and hierarchy; the “fundraisers and luncheons and newsletters and team-building workshops” that she comes to find meaningless; the “KoolAid”—as she calls euphemisms and propaganda—that

TRAUMA RED The Making of a Surgeon in War and in America’s Cities Rhee, Peter with Dillow, Gordon Scribner (288 pp.) $28.00 | Jun. 3, 2014 978-1-4767-2729-5

From the chief of trauma at Tucson’s University Medical Center, where Congresswoman Gabby Giffords was taken after the mass shooting in 2011, comes a memoir filled with explicit details about repairing horrific damage to human bodies. |

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“Rogers gives booze a thorough going over, complete with good cheer, highbrow humor and smarts.” from proof

WEST OF THE REVOLUTION An Uncommon History of 1776

the Army perpetuates in its endless PowerPoint “snooze-fests.”

Describing herself as “judgmental as hell,” “mischievous” and “borderline devious,” the author zealously scorns the “Perfumed Turd posturing” of pretentious, self-important wives of senior officers. War, she came to realize, is not waged by combat soldiers alone but by women whose marriages and families are disrupted, who raise children as virtual single parents, and who hide overwhelming fears and anxiety as they live with “another new normal” that comes with every new mission.

Outspoken in her critique of the “Army machine,” Ricketts celebrates the “secret sisterhood” of soldiers’ wives, defiantly and desperately battling for survival. A blunt, bold debut memoir.

Saunt, Claudio Norton (304 pp.) $27.95 | Jun. 16, 2014 978-0-393-24020-7

A multilayered American history of “formative events…occurring not just along the Eastern Seaboard but across all of North America.”

The year 1776 had enormous repercussions in the West, opening up the land to the exploring Spaniards and rapacious Russians and decimating the Native Americans as well as significant native fauna like otters and beavers. Saunt (American History/Univ. of Georgia; Black, White, and Indian: Race and the Unmaking of an American Family, 2005, etc.) explores what the rest of the continent was up to at the same time that George Washington was forming his Continental Army and Patrick Henry was disclaiming on liberty or death— namely, a rush for land and furs and the pushing out of the Indians in the way. Some of the alarming events included the purchase by speculator Richard Henderson of a whopping 22 million acres of land in what is now Kentucky and Tennessee from the Cherokee leaders for a pittance in a naked grab after British collapse; Capt.

Ivan Solovyev and his band of Siberian trappers wreaking havoc on the native Aleuts; and the Spaniards, fearing Russian incursions in California, inciting the displeasure of the native Kumeyaays in the process, while conquistador Juan Bautista de Anza and his exploring party were making first contact with the Costanoan-speaking Indians in the San Francisco Bay. The division of the continent in two along the Mississippi River at the conclusion of the Seven Years’ War (1763) allowed some tribes to take advantage of increased trade, while most others straddling the divide were crushed. Saunt ably juggles myriad events—the Hudson Bay Company causing the near extinction of many species of animal, the Lakotas’ discovery of the fertile Black Hills—throughout his compelling narrative.

A welcome amplification of the American story. (22 illustrations; 15 maps)

PROOF The Science of Booze

Rogers, Adam Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (272 pp.) $26.00 | Jun. 3, 2014 978-0-547-89796-7

From the action of the yeast to the blear of the hangover, via the witchery of fermentation, distillation and aging, Wired articles editor Rogers takes readers on a splendid tour of the booze-making process.

Though he is the kind of person who likes to understand how to get from point A to point B—e.g., grain to single malt, rice to sake—the author appreciates that nothing would have been achieved if experimenters worried about figuring out the properties of fungal hunger for sugar or why esters delight us.

Rogers dips into history to track alcohol’s progress from the Alexandrian alchemist Maria to all the proto-chemists making improbable hay from fermentation and distillation to America’s annual consumption of “465 million gallons of distilled spirits, 836 million gallons of wine and 6.3 billion gallons of beer.” Rogers conveys it all with lucidity, brisk enthusiasm and humor, which helps lighten the science. In an illuminating chapter on taste and smell, the author shows how microeconomist Richard Quandt set the “professional reviewers” Jancis Robinson and Robert Parker straight with his article “On Wine Bullshit.”

The author also recounts discussions with sensory scientist Hildegarde Heymann, the chief merit of whose “approach is that it cuts through Quandtish bullshit.” Not that Rogers’ humor can’t dive low—inevitably the morning comes after a night of ethanol-induced debauchery: “You are so screwed….Your guts are in full rebellion; whatever happens next is going to happen in the bathroom”—but he is a rationalist and a serious investigator. And, he notes, difficult mornings are often worth the pain—e.g., deeply experiencing Lance Winters’ apricot eau de vie, “the philosophical qualia of apricot. It is like drinking the design spec.”

Rogers gives booze a thorough going over, complete with good cheer, highbrow humor and smarts.

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TEACH A WOMAN TO FISH Overcoming Poverty Around the Globe

Sharma, Ritu Palgrave Macmillan (288 pp.) $26.00 | Jun. 10, 2014 978-1-137-27858-6

An international women’s issues advocate tells the story of how females all over the developing world are seeking to improve their economic prospects and create better futures for themselves and their families.

Women Thrive Worldwide founder Sharma traveled to three regions in the developing world—Southeast Asia, Central America and West Africa—to see how everyday women dealt with poverty. |

“This is writing and reading as adventure, where every page can bring a different sort of revelation.” from you animal machine

Her goal was to not just understand what it meant to live on $1 or less per day like the estimated 1.3 billion people in the world who do so. It was also to see the specific social, political and economic forces that kept women, who are primary caregivers and important breadwinners for their families throughout the developing world, down. In Sri Lanka, Sharma witnessed the informal economic system that allowed women to work from home while also ruthlessly exploiting them. At the same time, she also saw individual companies that treated women workers fairly and created hope for thousands of people. In Honduras, she observed how a farm association that pledged to support peasant women had taken advantage of them. With Sharma’s help, these females fought back and won. In Burkina Faso, she watched as women struggled against institutionalized sexism to create some of the most progressive national gender policies anywhere in the developing world. Sharma also listened to stories from courageous women who faced violence, humiliation and domestic abuse but had nevertheless managed to survive and even thrive. No matter where in the world poor women lived, they all shared one desire: that their children receive the education they did not have “to live well…and be free from the illiteracy, deprivation and suffering they have endured.”

Sharma’s experiences not only support the idea that “when you teach a woman to fish, everyone eats,” but also serve as an aggressive call to action for anyone who cares about ending global poverty.

a single mother’s rent.”) It’s a quest book of sorts, a pilgrimage into the desert where the author sought her grandmother more than 25 years after the latter’s death. “Thus begins the tale before human time but in human terms, and stretches far beyond us into a future we cannot imagine, except, perhaps, that it will contain us as walking libraries,” writes the author. “It matters that there are holes in a family history that can never be filled, that there are secrets and mysteries, migrations and invasions and murky bloodlines. In this way we speak of human history.”

This is writing and reading as adventure, where every page can bring a different sort of revelation.

INDEPENDENCE The Tangled Roots of the American Revolution

Slaughter, Thomas P. Hill and Wang/Farrar, Straus and Giroux (512 pp.) $30.00 | Jun. 10, 2014 978-0-8090-5834-1

There was a lot more to gaining independence from Britain than the Boston Tea Party.

Tangled is the operative word in Slaughter’s (History/Univ. of Rochester; The Beautiful Soul of John Woolman, Apostle of Abolition, 2008 etc.) finely researched, arduously plotted study, a tortuous progression of arrogant strictures by an out-of-touch motherland that only led to increasing colonial disgruntlement.

The first immigrants to Cape Cod were an oppositional, authoritarian lot: middlebrow, family-oriented, forming “closed, corporate communities of believers, who accepted the covenant that bound them to each other and collectively to God.” As long as they were allowed to worship freely and practice their “acetic work ethic” and trade, they prospered, yet tensions grew into the early 18th century. These included a fear of Native Americans and outside influences, an opening up of a trans-Atlantic market economy, the French expansion to the north, sectarian fissures within New England forms of worship and even “a democratization of information” in the form of the proliferation of newspapers. Slaughter looks carefully at the influence on the colonies of Britain’s empire-making across the globe, from India to the Ohio Valley, Nova Scotia to the Caribbean. The defeat of the French at Plassey (Bengal) in 1757 and Quebec in 1759 allowed the British crown to turn its administrative attention to the colonies, especially in terms of much-needed revenue, yet checks in legal and economic policy (the nuances of which Slaughter draws in stultifying detail) only heightened the colonists’ paranoia and sensitivity. The author underscores the vastly different views about “independence” versus “separation” held by the British and the colonists. The British were bewildered by the colonists’ pursuit of “anarchy and confusion,” while the colonists were first and foremost deeply rooted in a sense of personal liberty of conscience above any act of government.

Erudite and fascinating but occasionally too dense and difficult to follow.

YOU ANIMAL MACHINE (THE GOLDEN GREEK) Sikelianos, Eleni Coffee House (126 pp.) $16.95 paper | Jun. 3, 2014 978-1-56689-360-2 978-1-56689-364-0 e-book

A wonderfully strange and inventive book by a professor and poet who combines various forms into an unclassifiable whole.

Sikelianos (Creative Writing/Univ. of Denver; Body Clock, 2008, etc.) and the publisher classify this work as “an essay,” but it often reads like poetry, memoir, graphic narrative and pastiche, mixing typography (even handwriting) and visuals with various literary approaches. Its subject and focus is the author’s late grandmother Melena, who danced burlesque as the “Leopard Girl,” married five times and at least once attempted to provide instruction to her young granddaughter: “My grandmother teaching me to dance around a coffee table. You move your hips to the drums, she is telling me, your feet to the rest. She’s drunk.

We’re having fun in that way you do with someone who might punch you in the teeth at any moment. Like standing at the edge of a dark cliff, below you, the nighttime waters aglow with dense possibility.” The writing pulsates with such life force, reckless and a little giddy, as the author surveys her family’s female history, the immigration of Greeks to America (and the diners they opened) and the translation of lust into money (“Who said hoochie-coochie means a drunk women’s genitals? It means |

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“Stewart delivers a penetrating history of an American Revolution not yet finished and a stirring reassertion of the power of ideas unbound by the shackles of superstition.” from nature’s god

ON DEMOCRACY’S DOORSTEP The Inside Story of How the Supreme Court Brought “One Person, One Vote” to the United States

A MOST IMPERFECT UNION A Contrarian History of the United States Stavans, Ilan Illus. by Alcaraz, Lalo Basic (272 pp.) $26.99 | Jun. 6, 2014 978-0-465-03669-1

Smith, J. Douglas Hill and Wang/Farrar, Straus and Giroux (384 pp.) $30.00 | Jun. 10, 2014 978-0-8090-7423-5

Prolific intellectual Stavans and collaborative artist Alcaraz follow up and expand their first exploration of American culture (Latino USA: A Cartoon History, 2000, etc.) to examine the secret history of the United States of America.

Stavans and Alcaraz offer an opposing view to the sanitized history most of us were taught in elementary school classrooms. As a Mexican-born Jewish immigrant who moved to the United States in the 1980s, Stavans has a passionate response to the erroneousness of American history. “The past is elastic,” he writes. “Its parts shrink and expand depending on who is looking at them and when.

Because of this, it’s important to take a contrarian’s viewpoint, to be wary of what the French call idées fixes—lazy unquestioned truths.” From this ambitious beginning, Stavans and Alcaraz track the arc of history, from Christopher Columbus’ unlikely enterprise to find the new world (he didn’t) to the acrimonious relationship between the pilgrims and Native peoples all the way through to our messy, dangerous post-9/11 world. Stavans and Alcaraz examine social movements, pop culture, politics, crime, war and economics, with pithy side comments from the aforementioned peanut gallery. Since it casts its net so wide, it can feel very out of tune from time to time, although Alcaraz’s amusing pen-and-ink style ably captures most of the book’s famous subjects. Stavans and Alcaraz also aren’t afraid to poke a little fun at themselves: “You interject too much out-of-place information! The readers are all confused now,” cracks Alcaraz. Nonetheless, well-read students are unlikely to find too many surprises here. While it makes for an entertaining afternoon, it’s still mostly a surface-level history lesson with a few iconoclastic opinions added in for spice.

A history book that wants to be Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of American Empire but comes off more like Larry Gonick’s The Cartoon History of the United States with more savvy jokes.

Smith (Managing White Supremacy: Race, Politics, and Citizenship in Jim Crow Virginia, 2002, etc.) uses the fight for “one person, one vote” to explain the workings of the Supreme Court.

The book is invaluable for anyone who wishes to understand the court, especially those who aren’t familiar with legal jargon. The author clearly explains the procedures that led up to and followed each case. It’s not just three hours of presentation, a vote and opinions delivered; the nine justices and their clerks devote countless hours to each and every case. The cases brought to the Warren Court against state legislatures all concern disproportionate representation of place over population, with rural areas exerting more control than highly populated cities. Decennial reapportionment requirements were ignored, and the few controlled the many. The first and most cited decision was Colgrove v. Green (1946), in which the court denied its jurisdiction over state legislatures. It wasn’t until 1959 in Baker v. Carr that the court accepted its role. In case after case, the court faced the decision of whether it could apply the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause or hide behind the 15th’s right to vote despite race and other factors. The author takes us through five important cases of 1963 without legal droning or prolix explanations. Even after the court decision requiring “one person, one vote” for both houses of state legislatures, Sen. Everett Dirksen of Illinois attempted to pass resolutions against the ruling and even proposed a constitutional convention. Still, malapportionment’s evil twin, gerrymandering, along with the current trend of “one dollar, one vote,” often succeeds in tilting the balance of power.

Smith gives us the knowledge that imparts the power to change and, more importantly, the hope that it can succeed. (16 pages of b/w illustrations)

NATURE’S GOD The Heretical Origins of the American Republic Stewart, Matthew Norton (540 pp.) $28.95 | Jul. 1, 2014 978-0-393-06454-4

Stewart (The Management Myth: Why the Experts Keep Getting it Wrong, 2009, etc.) delivers a penetrating history of an American Revolution not yet finished and a stirring reassertion of the power of ideas unbound by the shackles of superstition.

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Meticulously annotated and informed by imposing erudition, the book is a lively chronicle of the years leading up to the signing of the Declaration of Independence, especially noteworthy for detailing the unsung contributions (in word and deed) of such revolutionary figures as Ethan Allen and Thomas Young. It is also an admirably lucid survey of radical philosophical thought on the nature of man and the cosmos, a guiding principle grounded in reason and transmitted from Epicurus via the poet Lucretius, further developed by the great philosophical minds of the 17th century and embraced by the Founding Fathers. Stewart’s capacity to render undiluted the complex deliberations of these thinkers glows on the page, notwithstanding the occasional Mobius strip of esoterica. The author locates these ideas in the heterodox, deist origins of the Republic, with a focus on corporeal reality, not spiritual mysteries. In doing so, he reveals the true and enduring significance of the American experiment: not merely as a revolt against an imperial monarch, but against the global reach and oppressive artifice of supernatural religion. Stewart gives the simplistic “common religious consciousness” and much presumed wisdom a fair hearing, then demolishes them utterly, though not dismissing what is useful in faith. By closely analyzing the writings of Jefferson, Young, Franklin, Paine et al., he quashes the delusion that America was established as a “Christian” nation.

In affording a fresh perspective on the difficult but exhilarating birth of this country, Stewart shows that the often superficially misunderstood words of the Declaration of Independence are even more profound than they appear.

complaining. Stolz writes that she has amassed 1,462 Facebook friends, including 478 people she doesn’t know at all, who are privy to her photos, status updates and whereabouts. In contrast, the author’s mother’s standards for whom she considers friends online and in real life are the same: people she actually speaks to and genuinely likes. Stolz offers analyses and observations from sociologists, psychologists and clinicians who support her beliefs about social media addiction, and she glosses such topical jargon as “e-cheating,” “iBrains” and “digitally-acquired ADD.” Though the author admits that her obsession is absurd and harmful, she amply demonstrates that she isn’t seriously inclined to stop.

A mostly obnoxious magazine column stretched to book length.

PERFECTLY MISERABLE Guilt, God and Real Estate in a Small Town

Stuart, Sarah Payne Riverhead (320 pp.) $27.95 | Jun. 12, 2014 978-1-59463-181-8

A writer’s wickedly droll account of how she came to terms with her WASP heritage and the impossible expectations of “mother” New England.

With its “pristine town center, gleaming with historically correct colors,” Stuart’s (My First Cousin Once Removed: Money, Madness, and the Family of Robert Lowell, 1998, etc.) hometown of Concord, Massachusetts, seemed the embodiment of perfection. But as Stuart well knew, high-flying moral pretensions, hypocrisy, and an insatiable hunger for social prestige and high-priced real estate bubbled just beneath the deceptively charming surface. In this wry memoir, the author explores her relationship with her hometown and with a whole host of Concord notables, from Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathanial Hawthorne to Louisa May Alcott, whose fictional mother Marmee—and the perpetually miserable Alcott matriarch on whom she was based—represents everything good and bad about New England culture. A rebel who defied the WASP values of thrift, practicality and quiet snobbery, Payne fled Concord for New York after an early marriage. Yet within 10 years of leaving, her longing to return home became “obsessive.”

Concord had “become a kind of utopia, where [she] would give her children the perfect childhood.” It also became a personal testing ground where she fantasized she could engage in errorfree parenting while earning the approval of her own mother and father. Instead, Stuart found herself moving into larger and larger homes she and her husband could not afford and joining exclusive social clubs, all in the name of maintaining the facade of WASP success. Seeking enlightenment about her dilemmas and compulsions, the author examines her family’s personal history as well as Concord literary history. She learned that her pattern of feeling guilt and smugness on the one hand and seeing nonexistent coziness on the other were part of a heritage best survived through self-deprecating humor.

Satire at its finest.

UNFRIENDING MY EX And Other Things I’ll Never Do Stolz, Kim Scribner (224 pp.) $24.00 | Jun. 24, 2014 978-1-4767-6178-7

A former MTV news anchor and America’s Next Top Model contestant draws on her personal experience to generalize about the impact of the obsession with social media among those between the ages of 25 and 35.

Stolz presents dozens of exhibits of her rude behavior and anecdotes from friends who also exhaustively check Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tinder and Gchat. The author estimates that she spends 4.5 hours per day on her smartphone and admits she doesn’t hold up her end of face-to-face or phone conversations due to the fact that she constantly checks other friends’ tweets and status updates. “We hate ourselves for using these things so much,” she writes, “but we learn to live with the guilt….We can remember when we were focused and attentive, and it bothers us, but that doesn’t mean we will stop.” She also writes that “I concluded that my smartphone had been filling a void, but then I realized that was the whole problem: these devices never filled a void because there had never been a void. They just came in and pushed other, real stuff out.” However, readers should note that she’s not |

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GOTTLAND Mostly True Stories from Half of Czechoslovakia

OTHER PEOPLE’S HOUSES How Decades of Bailouts, Captive Regulators, and Toxic Bankers Made Home Mortgages a Thrilling Business

Szczygiel, Mariusz Translated by Lloyd-Jones, Antonia Melville House (304 pp.) $25.95 | May 27, 2014 978-1-61219-313-7

Taub, Jennifer Yale Univ. (416 pp.) $30.00 | May 27, 2014 978-0-300-16898-3 978-0-300-20694-4 e-book

Impassioned, insightful snapshots of life in pre-Velvet Revolution Czechoslovakia.

Winner of the 2009 European Book Prize, acclaimed Polish journalist Szczygiel’s well-researched, unsunny volume of “mostly true stories” forms an indelible impression of the Czech population. His glimpses encapsulate the struggles of these hardscrabble citizens prior to the nation’s liberation in 1993, with strength and resilience as the operative themes threaded throughout. The sweeping opening biography focuses on the rise of innovative Czech entrepreneur Tomas Bata, who revolutionized the shoe manufacturing business using the Henry Ford assembly-line production model.

The author also profiles the tangled life of actress Lida Baarova, who, for two years during her early 20s, became the mistress of Joseph Goebbels, the “Minister of Propaganda” for Hitler’s National Socialist government. Also of note are creatively drawn portrayals of struggling pop singer Marta Kubisova, whose songs were censored and removed from public consumption, and a poignant report on the life of teenage Prague student Zdenek Adamec, who became increasingly appalled by the conditions in the Czech Republic and committed public suicide by self-immolation. Szczygiel explores the communist takeover of Czechoslovakia in searing pieces revealing the true extent of the mass liquidation of “anything that brings simple pleasure” to the public. The author also offers an inventive take on the metamorphosis of the “Cubist personality” of provocative writer Eduard Kirchberger into pseudonym “Karel Fabian.” All of these congruous pieces create a patchwork tapestry of Central European history. Whether chronicling the sculpting of Prague’s monument to Joseph Stalin or the dubious allegiances of writer Jan Prochazka, the atmosphere Szczygiel evokes is glumly foreboding yet intensely interesting.

A controversial, insightful work from Poland’s 2013 journalist of the year.

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A business law expert shines a pitiless light on the subprime mortgage meltdown that kicked off the Great Recession.

Remember the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s? Taub (Business Law/Vermont Law School) certainly does, and she spends the first part of her narrative exposing the roots of the 2008 mortgage crisis, revisiting the tale of Harriet and Leonard Nobelman, whose innocent purchase of a Dallas-area condo culminated in a 1993 Supreme Court decision that prevented them from modifying their home mortgage through bankruptcy. Victims of a land-flip– based investment scam, the Nobelmans were, finally, “too small to save.” Meanwhile, all the decision-makers who, in a dizzying series of transactions, fueled the Nobelman mortgage received government support, and very few suffered negative consequences. In the second part of the book, Taub traces the housing bubble and mortgage crisis of the new century, which by 2013 saw 5 million homes lost to foreclosure and another 10 million still left underwater.

Despite the drag of this negative equity on the fortunes of Main Street, Wall Street appears to be doing just fine. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, Taub finds the same players and practices that brought us the S&L debacle again responsible. She blisters the “legal enablers” who, by their acts or omissions, failed to corral predatory practices and wild speculation. She tells of regulators asleep at the switch and rating agencies beholden to their subjects, of acts by Congress and state legislatures, federal courts and various rule-making agencies, all of which favored the big and powerful financial players.

She concludes by dispelling some of the absurd myths surrounding the entire debacle, among them that “nobody saw it coming,” that “there was not widespread fraud and abuse,” and that the real fault lies “with greedy homeowners who borrowed money and did not pay it back.”

Meticulously argued and guaranteed to raise the blood pressure of the average American taxpayer.

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REBBE The Life and Teachings of Menachem M. Schneerson, the Most Influential Rabbi in Modern History

UNCERTAIN JUSTICE The Roberts Court and the Constitution Tribe, Laurence; Matz, Joshua Henry Holt (416 pp.) $30.00 | Jun. 3, 2014 978-0-8050-9909-6

Telushkin, Joseph Harper Wave/HarperCollins (624 pp.) $29.99 | Jun. 10, 2014 978-0-06-231898-5

With Chief Justice John Roberts’ leadership of the Supreme Court approaching its 10th anniversary, Tribe (Constitutional Law/Harvard Univ., 2008, etc.) and Matz, who clerks for a federal judge, provide a perspective on the changes reflected in the court’s decision-making patterns.

The co-authors cooperate in a near-forensic dissection of the court’s work under Roberts, comparing the arguments of each justice on a case-by-case basis. Many of their conclusions will be eye-openers for general readers. Contrary perhaps to expectation, this is not merely an account of a consistent five-member conservative majority against a liberal minority. Conservatives—e.g.,

A biography of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson (1902-1994), whose influence on Judaism and the Jewish people is still coming into focus.

One of America’s leading rabbis, Telushkin (Hillel: If Not Now, When?, 2010, etc.) is well-qualified to write about his subject: While he is not a Lubavitcher, he has been an affectionate observer of the movement for his entire life, and his father served as Schneerson’s personal accountant. Less a traditional biography and more a compendium of mostly lighthearted anecdotes, the book progresses thematically, highlighting Schneerson’s thoughts and quips on a wide variety of subjects. Telushkin draws on Schneerson’s public statements as well as his voluminous correspondence and his thousands of private audiences, with his followers and others, both Jewish and non-Jewish, memorably held in the middle of the night.

Broadly educated, Schneerson spent eight years studying engineering at prestigious universities before seeking rabbinic ordination, and each morning he read the newspapers in four languages. His far-reaching secular interests were evident in his humanistic mindset and lateral thought processes; he praised the astronauts after the moon landing, saying that he “discerned in [their] disciplined lifestyle…lessons with which Jews—particularly the sort who would not instinctively accept the demands of the Torah—could inspire themselves to be more observant.” Schneerson had no heirs (“Never spoken of in public, we can only imagine what a great tragedy and disappointment this was”), and his death was so keenly felt that his followers found the idea of appointing a successor unthinkable. Many clung to the hope that he was the Messiah, creating a deep rift in the Orthodox world. Telushkin concludes that those who believe this “do not mean what people think they mean…the Messiah issue is, in the final analysis, a non-issue.”

An approachable and admiring introduction appropriate for readers interested in modern Jewish thought. (16page b/w photo insert)

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“Unger’s edged prose shows us a clear Michelangelo emerging from the stone of history.” from michelangelo

Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito—can differ from each other as much as they do from liberals like Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor. Tribe and Matz fully address legal, philosophical and political motivations, and they document the general direction taking shape as one that tends to reverse law in many areas established since the New Deal. The authors systematically examine how the conflicting opinions on the court are coming together to reformulate the law’s understanding of the Constitution in practice. The justices have focused much attention on cases that involve technical rules of procedure. In these cases, the court has favored big business and limited the rights of individuals to seek remedies through the courts for perceived wrongs. They have also used procedural cases to confer “near-total immunity on prosecutors and police,” even undercutting aspects of Miranda rights. Certain decisions on integration, voter rights and affirmative action have raised questions about plaintiffs’ future abilities to pursue any rights case in the courts. The court’s decisions have also been geared toward establishing a new balance between federal and state governments and redefining congressional responsibility regarding the economy.

A well-researched, unsettling investigation of recent trends in the nation’s highest court.

died in 1564, the year of the birth of Shakespeare, who left no letters (or other manuscript material). We also see Michelangelo’s ferocious work habits and perfectionism and his ascetic lifestyle, which didn’t really change until later in his life when his financial situation became more comfortable. Michelangelo outlived numerous popes (his relationships with them were significant), local rulers and families, and other notable artists.

Unger’s edged prose shows us a clear Michelangelo emerging from the stone of history. (8-page 4-color insert; b/w photos throughout; 2 maps)

REDEMPTION SONGS Suing for Freedom before Dred Scott

VanderVelde, Lee Oxford Univ. (336 pp.) $29.95 | Jun. 2, 2014 978-0-19-992729-6

The history of how slaves successfully sued for freedom.

The infamous 1857 Supreme Court ruling in the case of Dred Scott v. Sandford reversed lower courts’ decisions and denied long-sought freedom to Scott, a slave. Vehement protest over the ruling contributed to the beginnings of the Civil War. In researching that case for her biography of Scott’s wife, VanderVelde (Law/Univ. of Iowa; Mrs. Dred Scott, 2009) discovered a trove of 300 court files in St. Louis, in which 239 litigants petitioned for emancipation. Defended by court-appointed lawyers, more than 100 of the plaintiffs won. How, wondered the author, did slaves learn that they could sue? What factors determined the outcome?

Her meticulous research informs this illuminating history of a dozen of those cases. Claims for freedom, she found, could be supported on several grounds. Some petitioners claimed that they were free but were mistakenly taken as slaves. Surprising to VanderVelde, only three cases involved sexual exploitation, suggesting that such claims may have been suppressed. The largest claims, however, were based on residence in a free territory. According to the law at the time, any slave living on—or born in—free soil automatically was legally free. With national expansion in full force, some slave owners brought their slaves through free states north of the Ohio River on their way west; if they stayed in those states long enough, slaves were emancipated, even after they were taken elsewhere. VanderVelde makes palpable the bravery and fortitude of the men and women who sought freedom for themselves and their families. Sometimes, the suit was quick and uncomplicated, but many cases dragged on, and some owners defied the courts by kidnapping their former slaves. Slaves that had been handed down to new owners found themselves confronted by the complication over whom to sue.

The voices of petitioners, rescued from court annals, testify to a defiant struggle for freedom, empowerment and dignity.

MICHELANGELO A Life in Six Masterpieces

Unger, Miles J. Simon & Schuster (416 pp.) $29.95 | Jul. 22, 2014 978-1-4516-7874-1

Art historian and journalist Unger (Machiavelli, 2011, etc.) organizes his life of Michelangelo by focusing on six masterpieces of varying media that compose the pillars of his creative life.

Michelangelo di Lodovico di Buonarroti Simone (1475-1564) was a cantankerous genius whose works emerged not just from Italian marble, but from the even more adamantine stone of the political realities of his time. The six works that Unger focuses on include Pietà, David, the Sistine ceiling, Medici Tombs, Last Judgment and St. Peter’s Basilica. The author tells us about the idea, the creation (Michelangelo was notoriously secretive about his work and did not like others, especially his patrons, looking in and making suggestions), the political and interpersonal difficulties he faced, and the public receptions. This last varied widely: The Sistine ceiling brought cries of admiration; Last Judgment elicited cries of another sort—another painter disguised some nudity. Unger excels at showing us the artist at work: his reluctance, his caginess, his temperament (easily hurt and angered, he sometimes tried to run away) and his jealousies (da Vinci and Raphael among them). We marvel, too, at his mastery of so many different types of media. Unger describes his contentious relationships with members of his own family, especially his hectoring letters to his siblings. Readers will find it astonishing how many of Michelangelo’s letters remain; he 82

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ROMANY AND TOM A Memoir

The author explains that after years of working on environmentalist issues as a Sierra Club activist, he became dispirited by the “constant brawling between environmental activists and loggers, ranchers and other rural residents.” In 1997, he and a partner decided to put their ideas into practice and started a nonprofit ranch based on the migratory behavior of bison feeding in a natural habitat. The venture failed after the 2008 financial collapse, but the author was convinced that they were on the right track. He believed that with proper soil management, ambient carbon dioxide could be significantly reduced, which would also increase the quality of the food we eat. “Around 30 to 40 percent of the carbon created by photosynthesis can be exuded directly into soil via plant roots to nurture the microbes that help plants grow and build healthy soil,” writes the author.

White traveled to speak with soil scientists and visited ranches in the American Southwest and Australia to witness how modern, high-tech ranches were using satellite monitoring and onthe-ground scrutiny to check the condition of the land. He discovered massive ranches that were divided into continually monitored small plots, where farmers tested the soil and ground cover conditions and moisture in order to determine where and when to rotate cattle, which were contained by solar-powered, mobile fencing. White also spoke with scientists at the University of California whose experimental data buttressed his hypotheses about carbon soil capture. The author reports efforts to restore wetlands that “can sequester carbon at rates up to fifty times those of tropical forests.” White concludes that some sort of incentive-based carbon offset market is required to encourage high-tech investment in soil management.

An inspiring can-do approach to the threat of global warming.

Watt, Ben Bloomsbury (368 pp.) $27.00 | Jul. 1, 2014 978-1-62040-372-3

A British singer-songwriter’s keenly observed memoir about growing up with his talented but mismatched parents and looking after them in their old age.

Before he became their caretaker, Everything But the Girl co-founder Watt (Patient: The True Story of a Rare Illness, 1997) thought he knew his parents.

The daughter of a Methodist parson, his colorful, part-gypsy mother, Romany, had been an up-and-coming Shakespearian actress before pregnancy and early marriage stopped her career “[dead] in its tracks.” Romany’s second husband, Watt’s working-class father Tom, had been a gifted and sought-after jazz artist. With the advent of rock ’n’ roll in the 1950s, however, the big bands that had been Tom’s passion disappeared.

Unwilling to embrace the pop-music sound, the elder Watt’s career fell off. He finally gave up music altogether in the 1970s to become a house painter. Romany, in the meantime, stumbled into a second career as a showbiz feature writer for newspapers and magazines. While Tom languished in his own despair, she assumed the role of family breadwinner. The attimes violent clashes that erupted between these two strong personalities became the painful background to Watt’s adolescence. Ironically, the pop music that the elder Watt rejected became the bedrock of his son’s own internationally successful career as a musician. The beginning of Tom and Romany’s physical and mental decline in the early 2000s brought with it burdens that took a heavy toll on Watt and eventually caused him to have a breakdown. He found partial healing by immersing himself in family artifacts, including private documents that recounted the destructively passionate affair that had set Tom and Romany on a collision course. The author’s new perspective finally allowed him to see his parents for what they were: “ordinary people” shaped by experiences that he would neither fully know nor understand.

A thoughtful, sensitively wrought memoir.

REMEMBER THE TIME Protecting Michael Jackson in His Final Days

Whitfield, Bill; Beard, Javon with Colby, Tanner Weinstein Books (320 pp.) $26.00 | Jun. 3, 2014 978-1-60286-250-0

The calamitous last stage of the singer’s life as told by his trusted security team, with the assistance of Colby (Some of My Best Friends Are Black: The Strange Story of Integration in America, 2012, etc.).

Whitfield and Beard witnessed firsthand how Michael Jackson (1958-2009) squandered his enormous wealth by trusting the wrong people, whose questionable business deals yielded more legal entanglements than profits. They steered clear of the infighting and conflicting agendas among those who oversaw Jackson’s crumbling empire and observed how Jackson, deliberately disengaged from his own affairs, was “a billion-dollar enterprise, running 24/7, and there was nobody in charge.” The authors provide solid insight into Jackson’s immature behavior—e.g., his ruinous habit of turning to wealthy,

GRASS, SOIL, HOPE A Journey Through Carbon Country

White, Courtney Chelsea Green (288 pp.) $19.95 paper | Jun. 10, 2014 978-1-60358-545-3

White (Revolution on the Range: The Rise of a New Ranch in the American West, 2008 etc.) shows how taking measures to increase the carbon content of the soil can help mitigate global warming. |

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“From Aswan to Cairo, encompassing deserts and oases, Wilkinson proves to be a pleasant, nondidactic and always-informative travel companion.” from the nile

powerful figures to rescue him in times of crisis and his blithe dismissal of the harm his staff endured due to his refusal to manage his corrupt advisors. In one incredible story, Jackson asked Whitfield during one of the pop star’s famed spending sprees at FAO Schwarz why Whitfield wasn’t buying Christmas presents for his own daughter; when he informed Jackson he had not been paid in weeks, he replied “Oh” and did nothing to repair the situation. Jackson was renowned for his enormous compassion and generosity to people in need around the world, but he couldn’t see the pain his actions caused the people closest to him. “[B]eing isolated from such a very young age,” write the authors, “he [never] developed the skills you need to cope with personal relationships.” The authors also reflect on how Jackson missed out on more than just playtime and friendships: “Childhood isn’t just about being a child; it’s about becoming an adult,” says Whitfield. “Because eventually you will be an adult, whether you want to or not.”

Illuminating and thoughtful, especially for those who can’t help but hear Jackson’s hit song when they read the book’s title.

the country. Wilkinson’s erudition is marvelously nuanced— e.g., when he points out how the tomb workers in the village of Deir el-Medina near Thebes went on strike, during the reign of Ramesses III, thus holding the government accountable in what was certainly one of the first instances of civil awareness.

From Aswan to Cairo, encompassing deserts and oases, Wilkinson proves to be a pleasant, nondidactic and alwaysinformative travel companion.

THE NILE A Journey Downriver Through Egypt’s Past and Present

Wilkinson, Toby Knopf (320 pp.) $27.95 | Jun. 12, 2014 978-0-385-35155-3

Gently meandering tour of the Nile River in the company of a deeply knowledgeable guide.

To understand the cataclysmic changes gripping Egypt at the moment, eminent British Egyptologist Wilkinson (The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt, 2011, etc.) urges a return to the heart of the country, the Nile, the source of the country’s economy, spiritual beliefs and political structure. He moves from Upper Egypt to Lower, starting at the First Cataract, which, until the completion of the High Dam at Aswan in 1964, would send torrents of water from the rains flooding the plains in midsummer, inundating the fields not just with water, but fertile silt, renewing its annual fecundity and connecting all the settlements along the way. Measured by a rock-cut Nilometer, which allowed the earliest governments literally to plan the year’s budget and wealth, the floods gave rise to the agricultural richness of the region from prehistoric times. The Nubian trading centers near Aswan, the Jewish community that once thrived on Elephantine Island, the great Pharaonic civilizations, and Ptolemaic and Roman periods—all of these civilizations required the ferrying of people and transport of goods and building stones from the quarries. Thanks to later visitors like Napoleon, Scottish painter David Roberts, tour operator Thomas Cook, Victorian tourist Amelia Edwards and amateur archaeologist Lord Carnarvon and others, Egyptian treasures have been revealed and preserved, though also sadly removed from 84

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THE VANISHING SEASON

These titles earned the Kirkus Star:

Anderson, Jodi Lynn Harper/HarperCollins (272 pp.) $17.99 | $9.99 e-book | Jul. 1, 2014 978-0-06-200327-0 978-0-06-223917-4 e-book

THE STEPSISTER’S TALE by Tracy Barrett....................................... 86 ASHLEY BRYAN’S PUPPETS by Ashley Bryan; photos by Ken Hannon..........................................................................87 NINJA! by Arree Chung...................................................................... 88 THANK YOU, OCTOPUS by Darren Farrell....................................... 92 DON’T LET GO by Michelle Gagnon.................................................. 94 HOW TO OUTRUN A CROCODILE WHEN YOUR SHOES ARE UNTIED by Jess Keating.............................................................. 99 NINE OPEN ARMS by Benny Lindelauf; illus. by Dasha Tolstikova; trans. by John Nieuwenhuizen............................................................100 DIRTY WINGS by Sarah McCarry.................................................... 103 THE FOUR SEASONS OF LUCY MCKENZIE by Kirsty Murray..... 107 CHUKFI RABBIT’S BIG, BAD BELLYACHE by Greg Rodgers; illus. by Leslie Stall Widener..............................................................109 CARTWHEELING IN THUNDERSTORMS by Katherine Rundell...110 INCREDIBLE NUMBERS by Ian Stewart; dev. by TouchPress.........122 CHUKFI RABBIT’S BIG, BAD BELLYACHE A Trickster Tale

Rodgers, Greg Illus. by Widener, Leslie Stall Cinco Puntos (40 pp.) $17.95 | $8.95 paper $8.95 e-book Jun. 24, 2014 978-1-935955-26-9 978-1-935955-27-6 paper 978-1-935955-60-3 e-book

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In this moody thriller set on an isolated Wisconsin peninsula, the tourists are gone, a serial killer’s at large, and incendiary passions ignite in winter’s deepening bitter cold.

Smart, responsible Maggie is every parent’s dream. She hasn’t complained about leaving her Chicago life and friends behind for the shabby house in Door County, where she knows no one; aware that her parents are doing their best in difficult times, she wants to spare them knowledge of her unhappiness. Her new friend—beautiful, impulsive Pauline from the mansion next door, who takes abundance for granted—draws Maggie into her world, which includes Liam, who’s been in love with Pauline for years. Though Pauline insists she doesn’t reciprocate, Maggie notices their interdependence. She observes Pauline’s beauty, wealth and freedom with wry detachment, but she needs all her self-control to tamp down her growing attraction to Liam. A series of unsolved murders whose victims are local young women provides narrative counterpoint. Community benefits are held for the survivors, but parents guard their daughters fearfully. Trust’s in short supply. After Pauline’s sent to Milwaukee for her protection, Liam and Maggie draw closer, and Maggie’s swept away. As she did in Tiger Lily (2012), Anderson provides an observer’s voice, a sort of pared-down Greek chorus, that foreshadows and warns of what is coming while remaining helpless to prevent it.

An intensely gripping tale with a surprise ending that’s fully earned. (Fiction. 12 & up)

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A HORSE CALLED HERO

Angus, Sam Feiwel & Friends (320 pp.) $16.99 | Jul. 1, 2014 978-1-250-04508-9

A horse named Hero inspires his young owner to heroics in this suspenseful coming-of-age novel.

When British troops escape from Dunkirk, instead of coming home, the widowed father of Dodo and her |

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“Barrett tells her story straight, painting a picture of the sisters’ poverty that rings true.” from the stepsister’s tale

8-year-old brother, Wolfie, is listed as missing, and the children are evacuated to the countryside. When their father is found but court-martialed for desertion, the children console themselves by remembering his World War I cavalry heroics; the locals aren’t as forgiving, and the children take refuge with an eccentric clergyman and his adult daughter, who raises ponies. Wolfie’s discovery of an orphaned foal becomes a lifeline to his maligned father; he names it Hero, and the letters his father writes him about earning a horse’s trust become their primary relationship. The war years pass. Hero grows and is trained under saddle; he proves his worth in a desperate slog through bog lands that claims the life of Dodo’s horse. Then Hero disappears. Angus’ compelling writing and forceful plot mesh well to create a story that’s more thriller than historical fiction. The focus of the third-person narration shifts between Dodo and Wolfie, which causes some confusion, and Dodo’s character is not as well-drawn as Wolfie’s. Some of the wartime details aren’t quite right, but they don’t hinder the story and will likely pass unnoticed.

Adventure, a horse, faithfulness and truth—an arresting combination. (Historical fiction. 10-14)

THE STEPSISTER’S TALE

Barrett, Tracy Harlequin Teen (272 pp.) $16.99 | Jun. 24, 2014 978-0-373-21121-0

Despite the singular title, this clever and sensitive retelling of “Cinderella” takes the viewpoint of the supposedly evil stepsisters and turns the story inside out.

Jane and her sister, Maude, live in serious poverty after the death of their handsome but alcoholic father, who wasted the family fortune. They live in their decaying mansion with their mother, who still insists that ladies do not work, although Jane and Maude toil all day, chopping wood, cooking and gathering food from the woods.

When their mother returns from town with a new, supposedly rich husband and stepsister, Isabella, conditions worsen, as Ella refuses to lift a finger. When her father also dies bankrupt, the girl sulks by the cold fireplace, playing with the cinders, leading to a new nickname: Cinder-Ella. A royal hunting party brings the prince; beautiful Ella tells the aristocrats of her evil stepmother and sisters. Smitten, the prince holds a ball—but Ella may not find the fairy-tale ending she hopes for….Barrett tells her story straight, painting a picture of the sisters’ poverty that rings true.

She includes the major elements of the fairy tale but gives them realistic rather than magical origins, naming Ella’s pony Mouse, for instance.

Highly imaginative as well as insightful, this outstanding revision has the power to entrance and provoke thought.

(Romance. 12-18)

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LINE OF FIRE Diary of an Unknown Soldier

Barroux Illus. by Barroux Translated by Ardizzone, Sarah Phoenix/Trafalgar (96 pp.) $16.99 paper | Jul. 1, 2014 978-1-907912-39-9

An unusually personal view of World War I’s early days, conveyed by new illustrations grafted to a French soldier’s chance-found diary.

Dated Aug. 3 to Sept. 5, 1914, the anonymous diary tersely records mustering, train rides, weary marches, efforts to scrounge up provisions and billeting, much digging of trenches, and advances and retreats under enemy artillery fire. Aside from occasional thoughts of family left behind, the writer’s observations are detached in tone—even gruesome sights of a human leg caught in a tree and heavily wounded patients in a hospital ward are only noted in passing. Along with portraying how he rescued the account from a pile of curbside rubbish, Barroux illustrates the diary with large panels of heavy-lined drawings made with butcher’s pencil and a pale yellow varnish wash. Most depict somber figures in uniform, drawn with geometrical noses that give them the look of puppets or mannequins, trudging through sheets of rain or sketched rural settings. The diary’s abrupt end leaves the writer wounded but complaining of boredom as he recuperates; the artist closes with sample pages from a handwritten album of songs found with the document. In a passionate introductory note, Michael Morpurgo invites readers to “weep” over these glimpses of war.

American children, at least, may not shed many tears, but they should come away feeling closer to understanding what that century-old conflict must have been like to those who fought in it. (Graphic memoir. 11-14)

LITTLELAND AROUND THE WORLD

Billet, Marion Illus. by Billet, Marion Nosy Crow/Candlewick (32 pp.) $14.99 | Aug. 26, 2014 978-0-7636-7579-0 The 10 animal tykes introduced in Littleland (2013) dance and play their way

around the globe.

The itinerary begins in London, ends in New York’s Central Park and in between stops in a more or less geographically logical mix of cities and generalized locales. These range from Venice to the pyramids, Tokyo to the Australian Outback. Happily, Africa is represented by both Egypt and Kenya, which is specified as “a country in Eastern Africa,” although the tour is heavily Eurocentric. Endpaper maps track the journey, each stop is identified in the accompanying comment, and the Richard Scarry–style cartoon scenes include recognizable landmarks or other location

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“…shells, sea glass and driftwood find new life in Bryan’s African folklore–inspired creations….” from ashley bryan’s puppets

markers. Running beneath every spread are nine labeled items for viewers to spot—combining generic bicycles or sunglasses with site-specific national flags, animals, foods, musical instruments and the like. Ethnic stereotyping is, at worst, mild; in China, for instance, only one figure is not dressed in a festival robe, and in Italy, “people often eat pizza for lunch.” As the characters are all animals, ethnic markers tend to be sartorial.

A good way for tourists who are still toddlers to glimpse the wide world without leaving a parental lap. (Picture book. 2-4)

MIDNIGHT THIEF

Blackburne, Livia Hyperion (384 pp.) $16.99 | $9.99 e-book | Jul. 8, 2014 978-1-4231-7638-1 978-1-4847-0628-5 e-book A debut fantasy spins standard tropes into a dark, morally complex adventure.

Fearless former “gutter rat” Kyra gleefully steals from the wealthy, while the upright knight Tristam pledges to defend the city of Forge against the marauding Demon Riders.

When the charismatic James persuades Kyra to aid the Assassins Guild in their effort to undermine the corrupt aristocracy, the ensuing plots and counterplots strain loyalties and threaten the entire city. Hoary genre clichés are refreshed by nuanced portrayal: Forge appears a typical medieval-ish fantasy city, but it’s rife with oppression and festering resentments; the Demon Riders’ wildcats, the only magical element, feel convincingly alien. Kyra, at first seeming a tiresome rehash of the “thief with a heart of gold” type, has her naïveté ripped away with a shockingly brutal choice that sends repercussions reverberating throughout the story. James, introduced as a charmingly seductive bad boy, loses his romantic appeal with his cynical manipulations. Even Tristam, the most conventionally virtuous protagonist, finds that base methods in pursuit of laudable ends have tragic consequences. Each character must choose between bad and worse options, and not all make the “right” decision.

While both Kyra and Tristam achieve redemption (of a sort) by the end, they pay a cruel price—and neither is altogether certain it was worth the cost.

While this volume comes to a satisfying conclusion, thoughtful readers will keep pondering the future of Forge and its people. (Fantasy. 12-18)

WANTED: DEAD OR IN LOVE

Brunner, Kym Merit Press (288 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 30, 2014 978-1-4405-7057-5

Bonnie and Clyde have languished in Limbo for decades, but thanks to a teenage girl on probation who touches the bullets that mowed them down, they have a chance to rekindle their romance.

Monroe’s father has added to his collection of gangster memorabilia five slugs from the outlaws’ final shootout. After pocketing two of the slugs, Monroe hears a voice in her head with a Southern accent and becomes convinced that she’s possessed by Bonnie. Monroe meets Jack at a party and lets him hold the slugs; soon, he’s possessed by Clyde.

Chapters alternate between Monroe, who’s trying to keep Bonnie from taking over, and Clyde, who’s more successful at controlling Jack and restarting his crime spree—a technique that meets with only mixed success. Monroe’s foulmouthed, bad-girl persona and snarky attitude are unconvincing, as are the shallow characterizations of high school life. Clyde’s more compelling narrative, written in dialect, is rich in humor and colloquialisms from the 1930s as he confronts life in 21st-century Chicago. Plot points arise and are dropped without ceremony, like a skateboarder with an otherworldly message for Monroe and a stereotypical deer-hunting redneck who nearly sidetracks Monroe’s efforts to get to Bonnie and Clyde’s memorial in Louisiana.

Four personalities in two bodies (and plenty of sexual tension) make for a wild ride in one stolen vehicle after another, but uneven quality in the writing weakens the overall effect. (Fantasy. 13-17)

ASHLEY BRYAN’S PUPPETS Making Something from Everything

Bryan, Ashley Illus. by Bryan, Ashley Photos by Hannon, Ken Atheneum (80 pp.) $19.99 | $10.99 e-book | Jul. 8, 2014 978-1-4424-8728-4 978-1-4424-8729-1 e-book A riveting collection of puppets made from found objects at the seashore.

Coretta Scott King–Virginia Hamilton Lifetime Achievement winner Bryan here presents the uncanny fruit of over 50 years of artistry and beachcombing. A child of the Depression, Bryan early on developed a penchant for collecting cast-off items from New York City sidewalks. As an adult, when walking the shores of Maine’s Little Cranberry Island, he does the same, now turning much of his seaside bounty into the more than 30 hand puppets captured here in exquisite detail by photographer

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Hannon. Not only do shells, sea glass and driftwood find new life in Bryan’s African folklore–inspired creations, but bits of net, marbles, thumbtacks, gloves, twine, all kinds of bones, watchbands, forks, fur and a bedpost—not to mention the occasional button—and more amazingly transform into appendages and accessories. As if his wildly fashioned creatures don’t have enough character, Bryan gives each of his puppets a name and poem describing both what it’s made from and its vision. Says the shamanlike Spirit Guardian: “We are born of cast-off pieces / And, like magic, brought alive / By your own imagination. / That’s the gift / By which we thrive.”

A stunning work of creative genius sure to captivate the young and lend pure delight to beachcombers of any age.

(Picture book/poetry. 4 & up)

MY BIBI ALWAYS REMEMBERS

Buzzeo, Toni Illus. by Wohnoutka, Mike Disney-Hyperion (32 pp.) $16.99 | Aug. 19, 2014 978-1-4231-8385-3

The vast savanna is parched and dry, and grandmother Bibi is the only elephant who remembers the way to desperately needed water.

Mischievous little Tembo follows Bibi and her mama, aunties and sisters as they go “[s]earching for wet.” Along the way, she is often distracted, stopping to chew the leaves of a jackalberry tree, chasing some storks or taking a nap in a lovely cool spot. Each time, she finds herself alone, separated from the herd. She squeals and then listens until a family member locates her and escorts her back to the herd. Finally Bibi locates the remembered spot, where they all dig down through the dry riverbed until they reach the precious water. Tembo is childlike and appealing, but all her actions are also consistent with elephant behavior as explained in an author’s note describing the dynamics of elephant family groups. The elephants’ thoughts are shown in italics, indicating that they are not voiced, while Bibi’s call is expressed as a “rummmmble.” Several phrases are repeated multiple times, creating a sense of continuity and rhythm along with reassurance that all will be well. Wohnoutka’s lovely illustrations, in tans, purples and grays, convey the vastness of the setting, along with accurate depictions of the elephants and the other watchful animals.

A gentle, loving picture of interaction among generations. (Picture book. 3-7)

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THE TROUBLEMAKER

Castillo, Lauren Illus. by Castillo, Lauren Clarion (48 pp.) $16.99 | Jun. 3, 2014 978-0-547-72991-6

This late-summer vignette features two kinds of troublemakers: a bored brother and a bold, thieving raccoon.

The nominal narrator (with his stuffed raccoon accomplice) decides to play pirates. He filches “some rope” (his sister’s sneaker shoelace), a “blindfold” (her scarf) and her stuffed bunny, sending all downstream in his toy boat. Mom intervenes, engendering the bunny’s sopping retrieval and an apology to Sister. Enter a stealthier culprit—seen by readers, not the family—who pilfers both stuffed toys, Brother’s boat and dinosaurs—even, through his bedroom window, his blanket! A funny punch-line spread shows Raccoon snoozing in the tree just outside, a stuffed animal tucked under each paw, the little boat now a bed. Though the kids and toys reunite, it’s clear from the last picture that Raccoon has no intention of reforming. Castillo’s digitally finished ink-and-acetone-transfer illustrations showcase her signature thick, grainy outlines and varied textures, which at turns evoke soft pastel, thin watercolor washes and rendered crayon. A palette of muted greens, red-orange and blue is heavily accented by umber-black (for hair, inky nighttime scenes and some interspersed pictures in silhouette). Children will relate to the everyday sibling tussles and the key roles played by best-loved toys. They’ll also get a peek at the interplay between rural human households and the wild creatures adapting to their presence.

Engaging and worthwhile. (Picture book. 3-7)

NINJA!

Chung, Arree Illus. by Chung, Arree Henry Holt (40 pp.) $16.99 | Jun. 3, 2014 978-0-8050-9911-9 Silently the young ninja stalks through the house to reach his objective: baby sister’s prized milk and cookies.

Throughout the quiet house, Ninja Maxwell moves on fleet feet. He has two objectives: surprising his sleeping father and pulling off the ultimate heist of his baby sister’s snack (along with his awesome red ninja cup). The young ninja however, is not without feeling. When his ninja skills leave his little sister saddened and him both caught red-handed and “dishonored,” Maxwell seizes the opportunity to impart to the next generation (aka selfsame baby sister) the “way of the ninja.” Young readers should certainly relate to Maxwell’s familiar assemblage of household ninja props: a stick (a pool cue), ninja rope (a jump rope) and, of course, a ninja paddle (a paddleball game). A gentle rhythm propels this lively and charming text: “A ninja sneaks /

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creeps, / tumbles, / hides, / and is fast on his feet.” Told through a blend of traditional picture-book illustrations and comicbook–style panels, this seamlessly hybridizes the two forms, creating the perfect jumping-in point for readers interested in ninjas and comics.

High-flying fun to be read aloud or independently. (Picture book. 3-6)

EVA AND SADIE AND THE WORST HAIRCUT EVER!

Cohen, Jeff Illus. by Allen, Elanna Harper/HarperCollins (32 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 3, 2014 978-0-06-224906-7

Inspired by a real-life, viral recording of WNPR reporter Cohen interviewing his daughters about a certain unfortunate hair-cutting incident.

Eva has a mop of wild, crazy curls on top of her head that is out of control. It reaches almost down to her tush. Sadie, Eva’s older sister, tries to force Eva’s hair into a more manageable style, when suddenly she has a brilliant idea—what Eva needs is a haircut! Unfortunately, cutting hair is not as easy as it looks.

Each snip brings another and then another. With Eva’s shorn locks in a pile around her feet, Sadie knows the situation is “bad, bad, bad!” Chronicling a behavior that almost every child has indulged in (some to a greater extent than others), Cohen taps into youngsters’ natural curiosity and disastrous inability to predict consequences. Told in the first person from Sadie’s point of view, Sadie’s initial sincere motivation and ultimate horror are both neatly captured. But the overall tone falls flat, even though there are exclamation points galore and emphasized italics to show spunk. Allen’s cartoonish illustrations give the girls bright, expressive movement, almost as big as Eva’s untamed tresses.

One hopes readers see it as a cautionary tale, not a road map. (Picture book. 4-7)

this in the bud, Chevie plunges once again through a wormhole into the great, filthy city’s thick miasmas and cobbled mean streets. Along with describing with indecent relish the fetid slums and sewers in which most of the action takes place, Colfer outfits Chevie with a Dickensian supporting cast. It’s led by Riley, a street child trained up as an assassin, and larger-than-life crime lord Otto Malarkey, among others. The plot consists of a quick and, usually, violent series of escapades that culminates in an assault on Box’s underground fortress. The bad guys are both clever and heavily armed, and there’s much casual murder and wading through hip-deep rivers of raw sewage, along with gunfire, massive explosions and unlikely romance. Time travel makes the future a fluid reality, but it looks like it may be saved at the end, though some strings remain to be tied up—or further tangled—in upcoming sequels. Chevie is of Shawnee lineage, leading her confederates to make the occasional, unfortunate “Injun” reference, alas.

A grand yarn told with a wink and kitted out with high stakes and broadly drawn characters for maximum fun.

(Science fiction. 11-14)

THE HANGMAN’S REVOLUTION

Colfer, Eoin Hyperion (384 pp.) $17.99 | $9.99 e-book | Jun. 24, 2014 978-1-4231-6163-9 978-1-4231-8796-7 e-book Series: W.A.R.P., 2 Undoing the catastrophically altered present wrought in The Reluctant Assassin (2013) requires further immersion (not just figuratively) in Victorian London’s noxious stews for teenage, time-traveling special agent Chevron Savano.

Mad Col. Clayton Box has founded a nearly worldwide ecclesiastical police state in the 19th century with 20th-century troops and weaponry transported back in time. In order to nip |

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“Apparently even adults can misbehave, as a family portrait turns into equal-opportunity mischief-making.” from children are naughty

DISCONNECTED

Cronkhite, Lisa M. Poisoned Pen (200 pp.) $10.95 paper | $5.99 e-book | Jun. 3, 2014 978-1-9293-4502-1 978-1-9293-4503-8 e-book Milly, 17, is tormented by Amelia Norris, but Amelia isn’t another girl— she’s part of Milly herself.

Whether Milly is schizophrenic and hearing voices, has blackouts due to a personality disorder or suffers from some more fantastical difficulty is unclear. That confusion passes for mystery as Milly attempts to understand the fire that burned down the house she shared with her grandfather and sends them to live with an aunt with secrets of her own. While Milly finds something good with Blake, the gardener who works for her aunt, her mental instabilities lead the teen to the hospital and some clarity, only to have an out-of-nowhere plot twist threaten her fragile progress. There are a few nice turns of phrase and description in this novel, but they can’t overcome all the other problems with Cronkhite’s work (which is inspired by her own mental health struggles, according to her author’s note). Milly’s voice comes off as completely inauthentic, and the dialogue is trite and stilted, full of sentences that sound straight from a school nurse’s pamphlets. The plot is full of unnecessary details and appears to be laboring to be edgy.

Teens hoping for an Ellen Hopkins read-alike will be disappointed by this. (Mystery. 14-18)

CHILDREN ARE NAUGHTY

Cuvellier, Vincent Illus. by Guillerey, Aurélie Flying Eye Books (32 pp.) $17.95 | May 13, 2014 978-1-909263-26-0

A vitriolic screed against rude, selfish, nasty children—sufficiently overdone to indicate that it’s at least partly in fun.

Retro, James Flora–style illustrations depict scenes of small children misbehaving and adults (or, in one scene, zoo animals) sobbing histrionically. Cuvellier’s accompanying narrative, translated from French, inveighs against children who throw tantrums, won’t share toys, bite and otherwise harass others or even just play hard to get when a parental cuddle is offered. The offenses tallied proceed to turn from mean to liberating. A child throws creamed spinach on the floor; another paints everything in sight rather than staying inside the line; a third—a young musician—plays piano not with “ten tiny fingers” but “with her feet, her elbows, her teddy and her bottom.”

Mozart would (does, in the picture) weep, but then, he’s only 5.

Apparently even adults can misbehave, as a family portrait turns into equal-opportunity mischief-making. Children supposedly turn “lovely” at bedtime though, and in the final scene, a young 90

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sleeper lies, smiling angelically—dreaming of bloody death and violence. “Children are naughty. Parents are nice. And that is that!” Right.

Young readers and listeners will grow dizzy from shaking their heads in mock dismay. (Picture book. 6-8)

EXTRACTION

Diaz, Stephanie St. Martin’s Griffin (416 pp.) $18.99 | $9.99 e-book | Jul. 22, 2014 978-1-250-04117-3 978-1-4668-3732-4 e-book Another Hunger Games-wannabe latecomer.

In this toxic Surface settlement, everyone is an under-20 manual laborer (and yet also half of the population receives intensive formal educations that cover chemical formulas and Yates’ correction). The only way to avoid being worked to death or executed (“replaced”) at age 20 is to be picked for Extraction to the planet’s rich, underground Core sector. Every year, the 16-year-olds undergo a mysterious test that measures their Promise. The top scorers in each of the outer sectors (which are work camps established after the Core put down unsuccessful rebellions) are Extracted to the Core.

Heroine Clementine is, of course, Extracted, even though this means leaving behind her boyfriend; she vows to find a way to convince those in power that Logan is worthy of a late Extraction. Once in the core, the Extractions undergo training and more testing in order to be assimilated. Clementine so excels that she draws the ire of the Commander’s favorite, a violent bully with a penchant for sexual assault. Unsurprisingly, Clementine discovers that the government running this system has dark secrets. The setting is undeveloped not just logistically and culturally, but also in physical description. Some of the training sequences are cool, though, and the ending sets up a more promising plot for the obligatory second novel.

Half-baked, confusing and highly derivative. (Science fiction. 12-17)

OLLIE AND THE SCIENCE OF TREASURE HUNTING

Dionne, Erin Dial (288 pp.) $16.99 | Jul. 10, 2014 978-0-8037-38720 Series: 14-Day Mystery, 2

Former sidekick Ollie, whose legendary geocaching skills helped Moxie locate some stolen paintings in Moxie and the Art of Rule Breaking (2013), takes center stage in this (literally) breathless thriller set in a Wilderness Scout camp on the Boston Harbor islands.

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“Except for the invented Gigantosaurus, the dinos in Duddle’s luxuriantly detailed prehistoric scenes are all named and recognizable, if somewhat anthropomorphized, versions of real ones….” from gigantosaurus

Asthmatic Ollie is ordered by the FBI agent investigating the art theft from the previous book to join the scout group for two weeks and “[s]tay out of trouble.” Despite the best will in the world, Ollie finds it impossible to subdue his detective instincts. In between hilarious scout pranks, rivalries and games of capture the flag, he is soon caught up in a more desperate hunt for pirate treasure, in which at least one adult member of the group has a serious vested interest. In spite of his lessthan-athletic physique—he describes himself as “short, a mix of Caucasian/Vietnamese, asthmatic, overweight and [looking]… like the kid in [the movie Up]”—Ollie keeps up with the best of them, running all over the islands on foot and by boat. Ollie uses his detective skills and determination to outwit the sinister Ranger Johnson and his unpleasant daughter, to find a cache of missing diamonds and to make sure that justice is duly served.

A well-choreographed romp starring an engaging protagonist who richly deserves his turn in the spotlight.

(Thriller. 10-15)

NELSON MANDELA World Leader for Human Rights

GIGANTOSAURUS

Duddle, Jonny Illus. by Duddle, Jonny Templar/Candlewick (32 pp.) $16.99 | Aug. 5, 2014 978-0-7636-7131-0 A variation on “The boy who cried wolf,” set well before Aesop existed—or, for that matter, boys and wolves.

Following parental warnings—“His feet go STOMP! / His jaws go CRUNCH! / In the blink of an eye, / you’d be his LUNCH!”— little Bonehead volunteers to be a lookout for his three timorous hatchling buddies. Several bogus alarms and one nearly fatal encounter with the titular monster ensue. Except for the invented Gigantosaurus, the dinos in Duddle’s luxuriantly detailed prehistoric scenes are all named and recognizable, if somewhat anthropomorphized, versions of real ones—Bonehead is an Ankylosaurus, and his pals are a Triceratops, a Parasaurolophus and a Brachiosaurus.

For comedic effect, though, he exaggerates the size differential between the popeyed youngsters and the grown-ups, who are all

Doeden, Matt Lerner (48 pp.) $26.60 PLB | Aug. 1, 2014 978-1-4677-5197-1 PLB Series: Gateway Biographies

A standard-issue profile of the renowned activist—one of a spate launched by his death in December 2013.

Doeden opens with Mandela on trial for treason in 1964, closes with a quote from Barack Obama’s eulogy and in between covers the civil rights leader’s long career from childhood to final illness. Small news photos and boxed discussions of apartheid and Steve Biko’s brief life accompany a narrative that reads like a term paper—though, looking at the paltry lists of notes and sources at the end, an inadequately documented one. Along with plenty of similar bio-trivia, readers will find out that Mandela moved from village schools in Qunu and Mqhekezweni to Clarkebury Boarding Institute, Healdtown and the University of Fort Hare before getting a correspondence-course law degree from the University of South Africa… but not why any of that is worth knowing or what light it sheds on his character, achievements and historical significance. Yona Zeldis McDonough’s Peaceful Protest (illustrated by Malcah Zeldis, 2002) or Kadir Nelson’s terse but masterful Nelson Mandela (2013) supply clearer, more cogent tributes.

Routine assignment fodder. (further reading, websites, index) (Biography. 8-11)

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so humongous that often only portions of their heads or feet fit into the frame. Rearing up on a foldout page, toothy Gigantosaurus makes a particularly rousing climactic entrance.

A delight for dinosaur devotees, with a rhyming text and repetitive structure that will make it a storytime winner as well. (Picture book. 5-9)

THANK YOU, OCTOPUS

Farrell, Darren Illus. by Farrell, Darren Dial (40 pp.) $16.99 | Jun. 12, 2014 978-0-8037-3438-8

wallabies hop, hedgehogs “[stop] by a forest food court,” ostriches run, and octopuses swim; the animals are of both sexes. The only variation in the pattern is in the pacing. Some questions and answers occupy a spread; others include the page turn. Beginning with the spaghetti-twirling armadillo on the cover, Wood’s quirky creatures add to the humor, which might well spur listeners to make up some menus of their own. The author and illustrator have their giraffe eating from wild apricot trees rather than the acacias that are so prevalent in the giraffes’ savanna habitat. While their diet includes wild apricots and mimosa, acacias are at its core.

A good joke that lost its way a bit. (Picture book. 4-7)

THE SHADOW LANTERN

When a well-meaning octopus helps his buddy to bed, silliness ensues.

It’s “Bedtime ahoy” on this plump, little tugboat with Yellow Submarine–like appeal. Accordingly, the mates aboard—a good-natured boy and his cephalopod steward—begin their bedtime ritual. Octopus makes a warm bath. “Thank you, Octopus,” the boy says happily, until he realizes it’s a tub full of egg salad! “Gross! No thank you, Octopus,” the child firmly states.

Wanting to make amends, Octopus offers more help and hilarity as he reinterprets the bedtime routine: Undies land on the Statue of Liberty, teeth receive a (paint) brushing, and the monsters under the bed? They’re now in the closet. Farrell’s playful illustrations, done in pencil and colored in a warm pastel palette, are appealing and hip. There is a meditative energy to his lines that perfectly captures the allure of the sea, and his use of word bubbles, patterning and quirky humor are reminiscent of an indie comic. In the end, the tables are turned, as the courteous kid extends a bear hug (given by an actual bear!) to Octopus.

The best buddies say good night to each other—and to the bear, their dirty socks and the monsters in the closet.

A terrific read-aloud; each repeat visit will ensure gleeful participation, as readers practice both tone and volume.

A maritime—and bedtime—delight. (Picture book. 3-6)

IF AN ARMADILLO WENT TO A RESTAURANT

Fischer, Ellen Illus. by Wood, Laura Scarletta Press (32 pp.) $14.95 | Jul. 2, 2014 978-1-938063-39-8

Flavin, Teresa Templar/Candlewick (272 pp.) $15.99 | Jul. 22, 2014 978-0-7636-6436-7 Series: Blackhope Enigma, 3

In this, their third art adventure, Sunni and Blaise are inexorably pulled back to the painting The Mariner’s Return to Arcadia in Blackhope Tower, the setting of their first encounter with the artist/sorcerer Fausto Corvo and villain Soranzo (The Blackhope Enigma, 2011).

Sunni and Blaise are sure that Corvo’s three magical paintings are safely hidden within Arcadia. They steadfastly kept this secret even when they were kidnapped and held in 18th-century London (The Crimson Shard, 2012). But when a “spirit photographer” shows up at Blackhope Tower with an Oculus—a shadow lantern—along with painted slides created by Corvo, both mystery and chase are reopened. With events unfolding on Halloween, and with the addition of a ghost who has her own agenda, Sunni and Blaise are almost stretched to their limits. As before, descriptions are rich, but readers who have not followed the duo’s adventures through the first two books may be hopelessly lost, despite constant references to past adventures. In fact, the fill-ins slow the pace considerably, leaving only die-hard fans curious about the surprising fate of the three paintings or the burgeoning romance between Sunni and Blaise.

For most readers, the first two mysteries will have sufficed. (Fantasy. 9-12)

What do animals eat? In question-and-answer form, the human narrator compares animal restaurant orders with her own.

This lengthy joke follows a repetitive pattern. There’s a question that includes the usual locomotive pattern and habitat of one of nine interesting creatures. A silly answer is followed by a more sensible one. “If a RATTLESNAKE slithered through a desert cafeteria, what would she choose?” Not “[b]eans and rice” but “[s]everal rodents and a lizard.” Sea turtles crawl, butterflies flutter, 92

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JEX MALONE

Gaber, C.L.; Stanley, V.C. Merit Press (304 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 18, 2014 978-1-4405-7051-3

A police detective’s daughter spends a summer solving a crime.

The moment Jex arrives at her estranged father’s house, the plot becomes far too convenient. Three teen girls, fascinated by rumors that Detective Malone has a daughter (the detective’s level of awe-inspiring celebrity never feels particularly believable), invite themselves into Jex’s father’s house. By the end of the afternoon, Jex and the others have declared themselves friends, formed a secret detective agency and reopened the high-profile unsolved case of local teen Patty Matthews’ disappearance 13 years earlier. Almost immediately, the girls discover Patty’s private journal, which, despite

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an extensive police investigation, had not previously been found.

No element of the story works any better than its hard-to-swallow plot. Jex’s narrative wisecracking is occasionally clever (“The girl is a walking punctuation mark”) but just as often clunky and unfunny. The girls have little beyond one defining characteristic each; Jex’s relationship with her dad changes from hostile to heartfelt with very little impetus, and the mystery’s resolution is simplistic. The “famous girl detective quotes” that begin each chapter serve as an upbeat reminder of women sleuth role models, but their content is often quotidian and only tenuously related to the chapter that follows.

A dud. (Mystery. 12-18)

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“Gagnon closes her Don’t Turn Around trilogy with a suspenseful page-turner that will have fans cheering.” from don’t let go

DON’T LET GO

Gagnon, Michelle Harper/HarperCollins (352 pp.) $17.99 | $9.99 e-book | Aug. 26, 2014 978-0-06-210296-6 978-0-06-210298-0 e-book Series: Don’t Turn Around, 3 Can hackers Noa and Peter survive long enough to take down evil pharmaceutical magnate Charles Pike?

Across the country teens are dying slowly of a mysterious disease known as PEMA, and Noa is pretty sure the experiments Pike’s scientists did on her against her will nearly a year ago had something to do with finding a cure. With hard drives full of encrypted, possibly incriminating evidence that they stole from Pike’s company, Pike & Dolan, Noa, Peter, Daisy and Teo have been on the run for over three months. Unlike some of the other activist former subjects, the foursome escaped the attack by Pike’s men in Santa Cruz mostly unscathed (Don’t Look Now, 2013). But Pike’s men always seem to find them no matter where they hide; Peter and Noa just need time to crack the encryption. As Pike’s men draw closer and Noa’s health starts failing, Peter and Noa seek the help of an uber-hacker named Loki in a last-ditch effort to get some leverage to force Pike to release what he knows about a cure. Gagnon closes her Don’t Turn Around trilogy with a suspenseful page-turner that will have fans cheering. The end may be a bit too tidy for reality, but the strong characters, detestable bad guys, action and humor make this a ride no thriller-lover should miss.

Not to be read without its predecessors but not to be missed, either. (Thriller.12-16)

SIMPLY FANTASTIC An Introduction to Classical Music

Gerhard, Ana Illus. by Legnazzi, Claudia Translated by Roulston, Heléne; Lytle, David The Secret Mountain (68 pp.) $16.95 | Jun. 1, 2014 978-2-924217-21-4

Creatures of fantasy, folklore and religious tradition from the Fairy-Queen to the Firebird provide an intriguing introduction to classical music.

Here’s an appealing gallery of 20 fantastic characters depicted in music. There are elves and witches, trolls and skeletal dancers, ghosts and blessed spirits, a sorcerer’s apprentice, a sugarplum fairy, the devil and more. Each is presented in a few short paragraphs headed by the musical piece’s title, genre and composer. The text, smoothly translated from Spanish, often includes something of the background and story of the piece.

These words are set against watercolor images featuring surreal and stylized figures. An accompanying CD presents the 94

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music: short, relatively familiar selections from Purcell in the 17th century to Ligeti in the late 20th. These range from solo songs and choruses to piano and orchestral pieces, recorded by well-known musicians. Some, like Schubert’s “Der Erlkönig” and Wagner’s “Valkyrie” prelude, are complete; others are just a familiar excerpt. (The text of Goethe’s poem “The Elf King” is reproduced without credit.) Most are under 2 minutes. These pieces have been well-chosen to demonstrate the range and variety of classical music and its performers. Extensive, informative backmatter describes each selection and composer and includes a timeline and glossary.

Second in a series by a classically trained Mexican pianist that began with Listen to the Birds (2013), this will be welcomed by teachers, music-loving parents and their children. (Informational picture book/CD. 7-12)

GIANT VEHICLES

Green, Rod Illus. by Biesty, Stephen Templar/Candlewick (16 pp.) $15.99 | Aug. 1, 2014 978-0-7636-7404-5 Eight real-life big “dogs”—some of which make the monsters of myth and movie look like Chihuahuas.

From a three-engine, 135-car coal train and the world’s biggest container ship to the Soviet-built Typhoon submarine and Mil Mi26 “Whopper Chopper,” these puppies are all designed to carry mammoth payloads over land or sea, through the air or into space. As usual, Biesty renders each with accurate proportions and in detail fine enough that individual workers or passengers can be discerned…though sometimes only as antlike dots.

Surrounded by labels and smaller images, each portrait sprawls across a full spread of heavy stock. Revealing cutaways that are either visible or concealed beneath die-cut flaps of diverse shape and size give youngsters a chance to see inside. There is no real sense of relative scale; the Saturn V rocket that requires a 90-degree rotation of the book for readers to fully appreciate it looks downright slender next to the Caterpillar 797F dump truck that dominates the next spread. This quibble aside, there’s plenty to keep kids occupied for quite some time here.

A gallery of gargantuan delights guaranteed to leave young fans of mountainous machinery panting with pleasure. (Informational picture book. 5-8)

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“Short, obsessive chapters from the unidentified killer’s point of view add to the suspense, and enough clues are dropped as to the killer’s identity that astute readers will be able to solve the puzzle….” from the body in the woods

MY PET RATTLESNAKE

THE BODY IN THE WOODS

Hayes, Joe Illus. by Castro L., Antonio Cinco Puntos (32 pp.) $16.95 | $7.95 paper | $11.95 e-book Jun. 24, 2014 978-1-935955-61-0 978-1-935955-62-7 paper 978-1-935955-63-4 e-book

Henry, April Christy Ottaviano/Henry Holt (272 pp.) $16.99 | $9.99 e-book | Jun. 17, 2014 978-0-8050-9852-5 978-0-451-46978-6 e-book Series: Point Last Seen, 1

The creators of The Gum Chewing Rattler (2006) concoct another outlandish episode with a twist in its tale.

A dog in all but body, the snake that follows the young narrator home one day becomes a nearly inseparable companion. He sleeps at the foot of the bed, waits at the gate on school days and once even sounds the alarm when a burglar breaks in (shades of Crictor). Furthermore, all efforts to ditch the reptile at the behest of the lad’s father and nervous neighbors come to naught; like the cat of the familiar folk song, the snake just comes back. Except for giving the rattler a big, doggy grin (or mournful, sad-dog face), the illustrator portrays figures and arid setting with fully appropriate, poker-faced realism. Ultimately the snake’s habit of chasing cars leads to its demise—depicted in a final view of it “lying there in the middle of the street” (in deference to more tender sensibilities, the victim appears to be sleeping rather than flattened) that sets up a groaner of a punch line.

A shaggy snake story certain to elicit hoots and hollers aplenty from young audiences. (Picture book. 6-8)

In a fast-moving and well-constructed mystery, three teen volunteer members of a search-and-rescue team track a serial killer targeting homeless teen girls in Portland, Oregon.

An experienced SAR member is supposed to accompany every search party, but an error lands new volunteers Ruby, Nick and Alexis alone together on their first call. Other team members quickly locate the man who is the target of their search, but the three teens find something else: the body of a recently dead girl. Each teen comes from a unique and compellingly drawn background, expressed with impressive effectiveness given how

BAD APPLE’S PERFECT DAY

Hemingway, Edward Illus. by Hemingway, Edward Putnam (32 pp.) $16.99 | Aug. 14, 2014 978-0-399-16036-3

An outing doesn’t quite go as planned for Mac the apple and his resident worm, Will—first met in Bad Apple (2012) and still best buds.

It’s all about keeping a positive outlook. Arriving at the water hole to find it nearly dry, Mac and Will “[get] creative” and build mud apartment houses. The onlooking sour apples sneer at first but soon join in to make a mud city. Not even a sudden thunderstorm puts a damper on things, for though it drives the playful produce into a hollow tree, Mac’s tale of “pretty swell apples” rocketing to Mars keeps Everyapple enthralled until the rain stops. Outside, the mud city is mostly gone, but the now-brimming water hole offers a fine opportunity for death-defying dives and then an afternoon spent contentedly bobbing with friends.

Mac and his coterie sport smiles (mostly), stick limbs (except for Will) and shiny skins of diverse, bright colors in Hemingway’s sparsely detailed outdoor and interplanetary scenes.

Though Mac’s “bad apple” moniker is strictly marketing, his core belief that it is “never too late to turn things around” is a nutritious notion. (Picture book. 6-8) |

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quickly the plot moves. Nick, whose father died in the Iraq War, has joined SAR in hopes of both living up to his father’s legacy and impressing girls. Timid but capable Alexis pushes others away to stop them from discovering that she spends most of her time and energy managing her mother’s mental illness.

Ruby in particular stands out. Her socially unacceptable but genuinely felt exuberance at participating in a murder investigation is frowned upon by parents and police but lovingly conveyed through enthusiastic dialogue and narrative asides. Short, obsessive chapters from the unidentified killer’s point of view add to the suspense, and enough clues are dropped as to the killer’s identity that astute readers will be able to solve the puzzle before the final, high-stakes climax.

A quick, thrilling read that doesn’t skimp on characterization. (Mystery. 12-18)

PUSH GIRL

Hill, Chelsie; Love, Jessica Dunne/St. Martin’s Griffin (240 pp.) $18.99 | $9.99 e-book | Jun. 3, 2014 978-1-250-04591-1 978-1-4668-4605-0 e-book Co-writer Hill draws on her own experience as a teen coping with paraplegia to tell a hopeful story.

“My parents. Getting a divorce. This was the absolute worst thing that could happen to me,” Kara Moore laments as she prepares to sneak out to a party. She’s wrong: Curt, her popular boyfriend, humiliates Kara in front of everyone, and when she flees the party, a drunk driver hits her car, paralyzing her from the waist down.

A talented dancer, Kara has to adjust to more than a wheelchair. People’s attitudes have changed, too—including hers.

Except for a plucky fellow patient, her friend, Amanda, and her ex-boyfriend, Jack, her peers are distant, and Kara is reeling from being unable to dance. Everyday barriers don’t help; even though Kara’s rehabilitation is glossed over, she makes plain her frustrations with narrow doorways, thick carpets and distant elevators. These details ameliorate occasionally stilted prose.

When Jack persuades Kara to run for homecoming queen, the determined “Kara 2.0” starts a chapter of Hill’s own Walk and Roll Foundation and reaps unexpected rewards. The book’s overall optimism is heartening, but the cursory ending disappoints—considering that Kara loved to dance and driving was “[her] Zen,” her discovery of wheelchair dancing and learning to drive with hand controls deserve more attention than a couple of summary paragraphs.

A light, ultimately upbeat look at life after spinal cord injury. (Fiction. 13-18)

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DROP IT, ROCKET!

Hills, Tad Illus. by Hills, Tad Random House (32 pp.) $12.99 | $3.99 paper | $3.99 e-book $15.99 PLB | Jul. 8, 2014 978-0-385-37247-3 978-0-385-37254-1 paper 978-0-385-37249-7 e-book 978-0-385-37248-0 PLB Series: Rocket The irresistible, black-and-white puppy named Rocket moves into the early-reader market following his wildly successful picture-book learning experiences, How Rocket Learned to Read (2010) and Rocket Writes a Story (2012), and a board book, Rocket’s Mighty Words (2013).

This title, part of the Step into Reading series, sports a circular logo on the front with Rocket and his friend and mentor, a yellow bird, appealing to Rocket’s established fan base. In this simple story for children who are just beginning to read a few words on their own, Rocket finds several items and is told repeatedly by the yellow bird and other friends to “Drop it, Rocket.” The pup obeys until he finds a red boot, which he wants to keep. The stereotypical wise owl brings in a book as bait, solving the minor problem. Basic words are written on cards and added to a “word tree” at the beginning and ending, an obvious reading lesson that is also a perfect complement to Rocket’s earlier picture books. Perhaps due to the severely limited vocabulary imposed by the form, this story is less whimsical than Rocket’s earlier outings, but thanks to that limited vocabulary, it should become a go-to book for adults working with children just venturing into independent reading.

Rocket’s fans should enjoy this book geared directly to children who, like their hero, are tackling the hard work of reading. (Early reader. 5-8)

SKIES LIKE THESE

Hilmo, Tess Margaret Ferguson/Farrar, Straus & Giroux (240 pp.) $16.99 | $9.99 e-book | Jul. 15, 2014 978-0-374-36998-9 978-0-374-36999-6 e-book When Jade arrives in Wyoming for her summer vacation, she is in for a lifechanging experience.

Jade is used to quiet summer vacations in Philadelphia. But this year, her parents pack her off to Wyoming to have an adventure with eccentric Aunt Elise.

That’s where Jade meets Joshua Parker, a boy who thinks he’s descended from Butch Cassidy (whose real name was Roy Parker, so the boy insists on being called Roy). Roy wants to replicate Butch Cassidy’s Robin Hood ways by robbing a bank to help his parents regain their business. Jade is willing to help

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but prefers more law-abiding methods, such as hosting stargazing parties on Aunt Elise’s roof. Drawing on rich Western lore and creating characters as gritty as the earth itself, Hilmo paints a picture of a town where everyone is connected. Folks old and young prove themselves able to weather the storms—both literal thunderheads and the hardships of life—while maintaining hopeful hearts as expansive as the sky. Most refreshing: Parents, caregivers and other adults in the neighborhood only appear to be leaving the children to their own devices. In reality, they keep a loose rein, respectfully giving Jade and Roy some independence in recognition that the real adventure in life is the process of becoming.

A heartening, comforting story with enough tension to keep readers hooked and a subtle message that will sneak up on them. (Fiction. 8-12)

UNRAVEL

Howson, Imogen Simon & Schuster (480 pp.) $17.99 | Jul. 8, 2014 978-1-4424-4658-8 Elissa and Lin return to Sekoia to try to help out in the aftermath of the secrets they exposed in Linked (2013).

Sekoia’s economy has been devastated by the revelations about the Spares—psychic twins enslaved, tortured and brutally used as human spaceship batteries in the planet’s biggest industry, spaceflight—and subsequent legal declarations of their humanity. Now the lack of operable ships leaves the planet defenseless against unsavory space types. As Elissa and Lin have discovered that linked twins can safely run a ship together, they wish to bring this discovery back home to save their planet. But the world they return to is a much more dangerous place than it was—aside from rationing, martial law and violence, Spares and their twins are being targeted for abduction and even murder. The girls befriend other sets of twins before they are swept into poorly paced, confusing action sequences in which they’re pursued by hate groups and terrorists with vaguely defined motivations and agendas. In a late twist that may save the book for some, they learn one last credibility-stretching secret about the Spares that poses a new kind of danger. Elissa and Caden’s romance barely develops further, mostly staying in the realm of convenient miscommunication.

Elissa and Lin’s intense sisterhood is richer, as are the moral questions they wrestle with.

The plot is uneven, but it ends strongly. (Science fiction.

12-17)

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THE AMAZING ERIK

Huber, Mike Illus. by Cowman, Joseph Redleaf Lane (32 pp.) $15.95 | Jun. 10, 2014 978-1-60554-209-6

Lessons in dealing with sadness and offering compassion dominate this picture book.

Erik is playing at the water table, acting like a magician as he mixes blue and yellow water to make green. When his sleeves get wet, he becomes upset, and feeling overwhelmed by his emotions, he starts to think about other things that make him sad—namely, balloons popping and scary dreams. Bereft, he shows his teacher, Regina, his sodden sleeve, and in this image readers first see that he uses a wheelchair.

Regina validates Erik’s sadness and offers to get him a new shirt, but as she walks away, he notices that his shoe is wet, too, and this causes further distress. Then a little girl named Rita comes to help him clean up the water on the floor, in the process helping him feel better. Their play transforms the splashed water into a source of fun, and it also affords Erik the opportunity to slide himself out of his chair to the floor. This everyday grappling with emotions is enriched by the matter-of-fact diversity of the characters, but the story itself doesn’t hold much excitement or appeal. Cartoonish art largely reiterates the text, doing little to enhance its storytelling.

A book more about feelings than story. (Picture book. 3-5)

REBORN

Hunter, C.C. St. Martin’s Griffin (400 pp.) $21.99 | $9.99 paper | $9.99 e-book May 20, 2014 978-1-250-04745-8 978-1-250-05653-5 paper 978-1-250-03592-9 e-book Series: Shadow Falls: After Dark, 1 Hunter (Chosen at Nightfall, 2013, etc.) returns to the supernatural school/camp Shadow Falls, switching protagonist from Kylie to Della— there’s a love triangle, naturally.

Della’s efforts to conceal her vampire status have led her family to suspect her of drug use, alienating her from their esteem and affections. An offhand remark leads Della toward a family mystery and a missing uncle (possibly a fellow vampire).

Back at Shadow Falls, Della has run-ins with a (hot, mysterious) new vampire, Chase, who competes with Steve, the sexy shape-shifter, for her affections. When Della catches the scent of a killer vampire after a double homicide, she begs the Fallen Research Unit (sort of a supernatural FBI) agent who runs the camp to work the case—it is her dream to work for the FRU. Complicating things, Chase is investigating too. Additional mysteries involve a ghost, Della’s cousin and Della’s health problems

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“Readers will find watching Hutchins’ unusual magical rules bring about startling consequences for family and political structure utterly fascinating.” from drift

(a strange cold that causes her vampire senses to wax and wane— usually in ways that help the mystery plots). The many plotlines don’t overwhelm as they’re all predictable, and many eventually consolidate. Although the worldbuilding assumes readers are familiar with Hunter’s earlier novels, snatches of narration sometimes repeat themselves. The strongest elements are the friendship among Della, Kylie and Miranda and their hilarious (and sometimes-naughty) girl-talk sessions.

This is great for readers wanting to return to Shadow Falls, but it won’t attract new audience members. (Paranormal romance. 14 & up)

DRIFT

Hutchins, M.K. Tu Books (400 pp.) $18.95 | Jun. 1, 2014 978-1-62014-145-8 Original worldbuilding and cosmology spice up a save-the-world romantic adventure.

Five years after fleeing their Turtle-back island home in the dead of night for a treason he was too young to understand, Tenjat and his sister Eflet scrape out a living as subsistence farmers on the back of a different massive Turtle, Island Gunaji. While Tenjat is determined to become a warrior Handler in order to care for his sister, Eflet is disgusted with his goal. But since Eflet (inexplicably) won’t tell Tenjat why his clever plan is so flawed, he sees no alternative. A man who doesn’t pass the Handler tests or apprentice to an artisan has no choice but the shameful life of a hub, or husband, disgracefully burdening the Turtle with children. Luckily, Tenjat passes the Handler tests; less luckily, he feels disgustingly hubbish about Avi, the young woman who is his Handler trainer, who must whip Tenjat into shape in order to save Island Gunaji from starvation, rampaging nagas and the enslaving hordes of other Turtles. Though too much of what Tenjat needs to know is revealed through Eflet, her revelations are so intriguing that her nigh-omniscience is less distracting than it could be. Readers will find watching Hutchins’ unusual magical rules bring about startling consequences for family and political structure utterly fascinating.

Totally fresh. (Fantasy. 12-14)

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GRACE AND THE GUILTLESS

Johnson, Erin Switch/Capstone (272 pp.) $16.95 | Aug. 1, 2014 978-1-63079-001-1 Series: Wanted, 1

After the Guiltless Gang murders her family and burns their cabin, Grace is determined to bring the evildoers to justice.

Naïvely, Grace heads to Tombstone, Arizona, to ask the sheriff to go after the men—but of course, he is being paid to look the other way. In town, she is defended from an importunate cowboy by a young man who looks Apache (but isn’t); he rescues her again in the desert. Joe is his name, and his adoptive father is the leader of a community of Chiracahua, as the Apache prefer to call themselves. They will provide her with a new place to belong, if she will allow it. The Native American characters are, with one exception, amazingly gracious and welcoming, despite Grace’s bumbling ignorance—Joe’s infodump explanations of their customs usually come a bit too late to save her. A young girl named Sequoyah (readers familiar with the famous Cherokee linguist will be nonplussed by this) is witness to the growing attraction between Grace and Joe. This romance disguised as a survival tale that’s in turn disguised as historical fiction has a few believable moments, but they are usually disrupted by Grace’s repetitive internal dialogue in which she admonishes herself to put her vengeance first.

Lots of action, blood and death argue eloquently against those telling Grace to forgive and move on. Only the sequel will reveal her choice. (Western. 14-18)

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF BENNY ALVAREZ

Johnson, Peter Harper/HarperCollins (224 pp.) $16.99 | $9.99 e-book | Jun. 24, 2014 978-0-06-221596-3 978-0-06-221598-7 e-book Benny navigates the treacherous waters of seventh grade with wit and sarcasm.

Dubbed “Mr. Negativity” by his little brother, he follows in his dad’s footsteps in always expecting the worst, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have any fun. He and his two best friends test new vocabulary from the thesaurus each day at school, where a girls-vs.-boys divide arises. Benny is chosen as the boys’ champion in a poetry competition against the girls, led by his nemesis: know-it-all Claudine. Meanwhile, Benny’s dad has been out of work and just can’t find a job, his mom is unrelentingly positive, and his grandpa is slowly losing his mind. This second middle-grade novel from the author of The Amazing Adventures of John Smith, Jr., AKA Houdini (2012) offers richly developed side characters and a true-to-life voice in Benny’s smart-mouthed but still-naïve perspective. His

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Irish family’s antics (the “Alvarez” is some long-lost relative) carry the story engagingly for readers with only the lightest of plots.

This friendship story will appeal to word nerds and those that tolerate them, and it may even produce some tears under cover of humor. (Fiction. 11-14)

HOW TO OUTRUN A CROCODILE WHEN YOUR SHOES ARE UNTIED

Keating, Jess Sourcebooks Jabberwocky (240 pp.) $7.99 paper | Jun. 3, 2014 978-1-4022-9755-7 Series: My Life Is a Zoo, 1

Living in a zoo wouldn’t be so bad if the whole school didn’t know about it.

Middle school is tough under the best of circumstances, and 12-year-old Ana certainly isn’t living under those. Her best friend has moved to New Zealand, her parents have moved the whole family to a zoo, and her world-famous grandfather is visiting, which means she’s required to appear on television with him. For a shy person, things can’t get much worse. But they do! The social bullies get word of her pending moment in the spotlight and use the opportunity to score extra material for torment. Luckily, Ana finds new friends who help her discover her true seventh-grade self and who even help with the seemingly impossible: passing her math finals. Following in the tradition of Judy Blume and Paula Danziger, debut author Keating delivers a fun-filled, pitchperfect book about one of the most fraught stages of life. Humor, poignancy and fascinating zoological facts infuse the narrative with a warm conversational tone that welcomes readers into the drama that is middle school. The dollop of romance is refreshingly appropriate for middle school readers, and the angst Ana feels over the idea of performing in front of a crowd will touch plenty of sympathetic introverts.

An amusing, highly readable book about the perils of being 12 in a snake-eat-snake world. (Fiction. 9-13)

I SEE THE SUN IN INDIA

King, Dedie Illus. by Inglese, Judith Satya House (40 pp.) $17.95 | Jun. 20, 2014 978-1-935874-21-8 Series: I See the Sun…, 7

friends in Hindi, but classes are conducted primarily in English.

In the afternoon, she visits her gem-merchant Baba in the bazaar and then meets a friend for a Bollywood movie. After a curry dinner, she does her homework and then heads to bed. As in previous books, Inglese provides mixed-media illustrations in muted palettes, positioning her characters within and against photo-collaged scenes of bustling streets, peaceful courtyards, and such sights as the Raj Mandir movie theater and the massive Hawa Mahal palace (rendered “Hawa Maha” in the text). Though there is no express mention of it in the narration, Mila’s family hints at India’s ethnic tapestry, with skin tones that range from light to dark. A substantial author’s note provides some historical context as well as touching on some of India’s ethnic and economic complexities. Mila’s narration appears in Hindi above English text on every page.

Though it’s necessarily oversimplified, it’s still a sweet introduction to one part of modern India. (Picture book. 5-8)

GALAXY’S MOST WANTED

Kloepfer, John Illus. by Edwards, Nick Harper/HarperCollins (224 pp.) $12.99 | $8.99 e-book | Jul. 22, 2014 978-0-06-223101-7 978-0-06-223103-1 e-book Series: Galaxy’s Most Wanted, 1 STEM camp is nerd heaven—until the aliens descend.

Kevin and his friends Ward, Tara and TJ have to find a way to win the Invention Convention at Northwest Horizons science camp if for no other reason than to beat Kevin’s nemesis, Alexander. Unfortunately, Alexander and his team, the Vainglorious Math Nerds, have built a working hovercraft. Kevin and his pals decide to build a galactascope, an interstellar communications device based on a comic book written by a man supposedly abducted by aliens…and it works!

Responding to their summons, small, purple and furry Mim crashes into the camp lake. Can the friends keep Mim a secret until the Invention Convention? They’re pretty crafty, so probably. But when more aliens descend, can they trust that all their new friend has told them is fact? Kloepfer’s series kickoff is slow to start. It’s only after the aliens arrive that the story shows signs of life and only toward the end that the fun actually lifts this above run-of-the-mill go-to-camp tales. The sequel, set up in the last couple pages, might well be fun from the start, since the preliminaries are now out of the way. Final art not seen.

This offers a few smiles and a laugh or two while readers wait for the sequel. (Science fiction/humor. 8-11)

King and Inglese return for the seventh book in their geographical-literacy series for young children, this time visiting India.

Mila wakes to the cries of the peacocks at dawn and goes downstairs to the kitchen of the family home in Jaipur, which is “so big my parents rented rooms to tourists.” Sari-clad Maa packs lunch (biryani), and then blue-jumpered Mila hops into the tuktuk, in which her uncle drives her to school. There, she greets her |

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“Lindelauf lures readers into the intrigue and mystery of it all and then demands their intense concentration.

Every element of the tale has a purpose….” from nine open arms

HEXED

Krys, Michelle Delacorte (384 pp.) $17.99 | $10.99 e-book | $20.99 PLB Jun. 10, 2014 978-0-385-74337-2 978-0-449-81311-9 e-book 978-0-375-99110-3 PLB A cheerleader discovers she may actually be a witch in this enjoyable but formulaic paranormal romance.

Los Angeles high school student Indigo Blackwood has a hot (if phony) boyfriend and a secure spot in the upper echelons of the popular crowd. Though relations with her jealous, supposed best friend have been somewhat strained, she’s reasonably happy with life, helping out at her mom’s occult store and dodging the friendly overtures of her nerdy but kind neighbor, Paige. However, from the moment she observes a strange accident just outside her mom’s shop, all of this changes, and she is pitched headfirst into a centuries-old war between the Family— made up of witches and warlocks—and their sworn enemies, the Priory, who are sorcerers. Fans of the genre will be unsurprised that Bishop, a gorgeous but gruff 18-year-old warlock, is assigned to help Indigo as she navigates her entrance into this world. Plenty of witty banter between Bishop and Indigo will please readers. Their bonding over shared similar tragedies in their lives is convincing and adds a bit of depth, though it does little to mitigate the predictability of their relationship, initially antagonistic, then inevitably romantic.

For teens that can’t get enough of supernatural love stories, this one will fill the bill just fine, and the cliffhanger ending will leave them eager for more. (Paranormal romance.

14-18)

BATS IN THE BAND

Lies, Brian Illus. by Lies, Brian HMH Books (32 pp.) $17.99 | Aug. 5, 2014 978-0-544-10569-0 Series: Bat Book

Yet more bats tumble from Lies’ belfry, this time to ignite a darkened summer theater with the gift of music.

Lies, who has ushered bats through a night at the library, the beach and the ballpark, invites a colony into a playhouse after lights out. There, he carves out a piece of the small hours for his readers, that strange time of collywobbles and spooky quiet.

The playhouse is anything but, as the bats have decided to light up the dark with “a little night music.” In tuneful couplets laced with fluid if demanding words like “sitar” and “improvise,” the bats get busy with jazz—is that Dizzy, with those cheeks?—and rock—is that Leon Russell, in Uncle Sam’s hat?—and a camelliaadorned bat woman with a broken heart: “Her feelings fill the room with blue,” a room that Lies has draped with indigo. The 100

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paintings are full of mood and spot-lit color, the bats upside down and right-side up, the rhyme both casual and emotive.

There is no doubt that Lies has made an effort to please adult readers with plenty of allusions: In what passes as their dusk, a bat takes his fiddle to the roof. But the bats never fly over young readers’ heads. They are there to entertain, and that they do.

Again with the bats, evoking another call of “encore!”

(Picture book. 4-8)

NINE OPEN ARMS

Lindelauf, Benny Illus. by Tolstikova, Dasha Translated by Nieuwenhuizen, John Enchanted Lion Books (256 pp.) $16.95 | Jun. 24, 2014 978-1-59270-146-9 At the end of an isolated road outside a small village in Holland in 1937, Fing and her eccentric family find themselves in a strange house that gives up its secrets reluctantly and with far-reaching consequences.

Young Fing is stalwart, compassionate and truth-seeking, but she is not an omniscient narrator, for she learns the intricate, tangled stories as they are doled out piecemeal by her grandmother Oma Mei, who is hiding as many secrets as the house. The work’s three-part construction weaves the events surrounding Fing’s family with an earlier cast of characters from the 1860s. Each part has a distinct tone and sensibility. In the first and third parts, Fing and her sisters rise to the challenges of life with their ever optimistic father, their somewhat inept older brothers, and the mad and mysterious Hatsi. All the while, they grow increasingly uncomfortable with the puzzles posed by the house and Oma Mei’s sometimes-contradictory tales.

The middle part, Charley and Nienevee’s story, is narrated by Oma and has a darker and more sinister quality. Lindelauf lures readers into the intrigue and mystery of it all and then demands their intense concentration. Every element of the tale has a purpose, and in the end, the multiple layers of past and present separate and come together in surprising, often discomfiting twists and turns.

A challenging and entirely unique Dutch import. (translator’s note, character list, slang word list, map, contents) (Fiction. 11-14)

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THE TIME OF THE FIREFLIES

Little, Kimberley Griffiths Scholastic (368 pp.) $18.99 | $18.99 e-book | Jul. 29, 2014 978-0-545-16563-1 978-0-545-63406-9 e-book Disconnected vintage telephones occupy an entire section of Bayou Bridge Antiques. When one of them suddenly starts ringing, the eeriness quickly escalates.

The voice on the line orders Larissa to follow the fireflies, and when she obeys, she is transported through time to witness scenes from various moments in her family’s past. As she tries to puzzle out what is happening to her, Larissa realizes that there is a constant in all of the riveting vignettes she witnesses: the presence of a beautiful, perhapsmagical doll that is now one of her mother’s prized possessions.

Larissa must figure out how the doll figures into her family history, which has been plagued by tragedies, including Larissa’s own near-drowning, before her mother and unborn baby sister become the next victims. Suspense builds quickly and doesn’t falter until the mystery is solved and restitution is made for long-ago transgressions. Larissa’s first-person narration is fresh and engaging, and the richly evoked south Louisiana setting serves to ground this ethereal tale in a real time and place while contributing to the mysterious mood it requires.

For those fond of exceedingly creepy but not-too-violent stories of the supernatural. Fans of Mary Downing Hahn will devour this one. (Paranormal thriller. 9-12)

BRAZEN

Longshore, Katherine Viking (528 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 12, 2014 978-0-670-01401-9 In a companion to Gilt (2012) and Tarnish (2013), Longshore chooses as her heroine a member of Henry VIII’s household less well-known than Catherine Howard and Anne Boleyn, the respective subjects of her earlier novels.

Mary Howard FitzRoy’s story provides a fresh perspective for a retelling of the cruel and tragic drama of the Tudor court.

The child bride of Henry VIII’s illegitimate son, Henry FitzRoy, young Mary has the misfortune to fall in love with her 14-yearold husband. Although marriage to the royal heir makes her a duchess and thus higher in rank than her haughty mother, her life as a royal wife is mostly frightening and lonely. The young spouses are forbidden to consummate their marriage for fear of injury to the male heir. Fitz is often away on court business, while Mary is alienated from her female companions and left to wait on the doomed Anne Boleyn. Mary’s unsatisfying romance with her young husband plays out against a backdrop of court intrigue, power struggles, and the sequential rises and demises |

of Henry’s wives. The couple plot to run away together, but they are held by the invisible ties of the powerful men who determine their destiny and those of the people around them.

In this third novel in her trilogy, Longshore skillfully blends history with romance, weaving a compelling, poignant story of love, loss and betrayal. (family tree, author’s note) (Historical fiction. 13-17)

ALVIN HO Allergic to the Great Wall, the Forbidden Planet, and Other Tourist Attractions

Look, Lenore Illus. by Pham, LeUyen Schwartz & Wade/Random (176 pp.) $15.99 | Aug. 5, 2014 978-0-385-36972-5 Series: Alvin Ho, 6

Alvin Ho is at it again. Allergic to everything and all things girly, this 7-1/2-year-old worrywart hops a continent to visit relatives in Beijing. Is China ready for Alvin?

The hilarious family vacation kicks off with an airport-security bang. Only Alvin can manage to set off alarms both on and off the plane, with his family of six in tow, including his baby sister (amusingly referred to in fish terms). Once in Beijing, Alvin meets his aunt Aiyi, uncle Jonathan (who looks “plain,” not “Chinese at all”), and cousins Katie and Bean Sprout. The family zips off to such sights as the Great Wall of China and the Forbidden City, where dragons, “Peeking” duck and an encounter with a pit toilet go hand in hand. Amid his navigation of culture shock, Alvin becomes consumed with guilt over his dad’s lost passport and his rejection of an orphan’s wish for a friend. The way Look channels this adorable fraidy-cat continues to delight in this sixth Alvin book. Her lightning-quick dialogue sets the ideal tone and pace for reluctant travelers. Rendered in ink, Pham’s illustrations convey the family’s emotions, from anxiety to bliss, with simple, lively expressions. And around all the mayhem, there lies a story full of heart as big as China, where friendships (even with a girl) reach far beyond great walls.

Pack your bags and prepare to fly. (glossary) (Fiction.

6-10)

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“The horrific actions undertaken by many of those trapped in the name of survival are disturbing but not gratuitous, and the question of morality at play in many of the characters’ decisions is fascinating.” from no dawn without darkness

NO DAWN WITHOUT DARKNESS

Lorentz, Dayna Kathy Dawson/Penguin (240 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 17, 2014 978-0-8037-3875-1 Series: No Safety in Numbers, 3 This final novel in a trilogy about teens quarantined in a mall after their exposure to a virus is realistic in its portrayal of the lasting effects of the ordeal for the survivors.

Though it shifts the narrative focus slightly from predecessors No Easy Way Out and No Safety in Numbers (2013, 2012), this volume continues to tell the story from various points of view— including bullied Marco (who has now become a bully himself), self-doubting football player Ryan and poetry-loving Shay. However, the fate of Lexi, the daughter of a U.S. senator also locked down in the shopping center, is in question throughout most of this installment. Ginger, a dancer, is introduced as a fourth perspective instead. While the voices of each character are distinct, it can be difficult within such an action-packed plot to keep track of the movements of each. Several chapters featuring the communications of the senator to her government superiors very effectively ratchet up the suspense. The horrific actions undertaken by many of those trapped in the name of survival are disturbing but not gratuitous, and the question of morality at play in many of the characters’ decisions is fascinating.

Though readers will need to have read (and possibly recently reread) the previous two to understand this conclusion, it provides a thoughtful and broad-reaching ending to a tale of surviving dire circumstances. (Thriller. 14-18)

THE FIRE WISH

Lough, Amber Random House (320 pp.) $17.99 | $10.99 e-book | $20.99 PLB Jul. 22, 2014 978-0-385-36976-3 978-0-385-36978-7 e-book 978-0-385-36977-0 PLB Series: Jinni Wars, 1 The Thousand and One Nights meets The Prince and the Pauper.

In what can only be termed quasi–historical fantasy (the geography checks out, the mythology not so much), two girls—one headed to Baghdad to marry the caliph’s son, the other a jinni who spies on humans as part of an interspecies war—switch places. They look exactly alike, and both of them are closer to the secrets behind the war, which began in their infancies, than they know. Alternating chapters in occasionally indistinguishable (but generally wellwritten, albeit with occasional flashes of purple prose) first-person voices detail their worlds (the historical world aboveground and the jinni’s anachronistically modern-feeling underground Cavern); their 102

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parallel romances (the swap was good for kissing, at least); and the escalating war. Someone has been inciting trouble for a long time, and Najwa and Zayele’s accidental switch brings it all to a head. Yes, it’s first in a trilogy, but its arc is satisfying enough on its own.

Fast-paced and reasonably respectful, this Middle Eastern–flavored fantasy will appeal to a growing readership clamoring for exactly this kind of girl-powered intrigue, magic and romance. (Fantasy. 12-16)

JULIA, CHILD

Maclear, Kyo Illus. by Morstad, Julie Tundra (32 pp.) $17.99 | Jul. 8, 2014 978-1-77049-449-7 A mere hint of Julia Child’s collaboration with Simone “Simca” Beck informs this look at how following one’s passion can require the fearless enthusi-

asm of childhood.

Though in reality Julia and Simca met as adults, here Julia is very young when she has a taste of sole meunière and falls in love with French cooking. She and friend Simca are just two young girls who meet on weekends to “shop at the market and gather new ideas and recipes.” They form a sisterly bond and imagine cooking together always. Morstad’s lively art uses Photoshop, ink and gouache, telegraphing a suggestion of the ink-and-watercolor work of mid-20th-century artists like Sasek and Bemelmans.

Maclear manages—just—to avoid being directly didactic when, concerned about the sober and dreary adults around them, Julia and Simca prepare “recipes for growing young.” Still, there’s a rich dollop of sentimentality in the way that the two young cooks bring “all sorts of big, busy people” to a remembrance of childhood pleasures. The result is a lighthearted, if slightly obscure allegory about inspiration and its gifts.

Intriguing for an adult familiar with the real Julia and perhaps for the perceptive child who will understand that it’s not about how old you are, or about what you cook, but about what you bring to the table. (Picture book. 4-8)

THE TRUTH ABOUT ALICE

Mathieu, Jennifer Roaring Brook (208 pp.) $16.99 | Jun. 3, 2014 978-1-59643-909-2

Jealousy, rumors and lies can ruin a teen girl’s life.

In the summer before junior year at Healy High School, Alice Franklin was one of the girls popular enough to be invited to Elaine O’Dea’s party. That night, Alice supposedly slept with both high school quarterback Brandon Fitzsimmons and college guy Tommy Cray. Just after

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homecoming, Brandon dies in a car accident, allegedly while texting with Alice. Debut author Mathieu brings new life to a common mean girls’ narrative through her multiple first-person narrators. Readers first hear Alice’s story from Elaine, the queen bee of the junior class. Then Kelsie Sanders enters as Alice’s best friend, who is willing to cast her aside to maintain her own tenuous place in the social hierarchy. Two boys also get to tell their sides of the story: Josh Waverly, Brandon’s best friend, who has secrets of his own, and Kurt Morelli, nerd extraordinaire, who’s been secretly obsessed with Alice for years. Due to the novel’s short length, the rotating narrators and a few questionable word choices, some characters border on caricatures in places.

When readers finally hear directly from Alice in the book’s last chapter, they may wonder why the author took so long to introduce arguably the most interesting voice in the book.

A quick if unoriginal read saved by a realistic ending.

(Fiction. 13-18)

DIRTY WINGS

McCarry, Sarah St. Martin’s Griffin (288 pp.) $18.99 | $9.99 e-book | Jul. 15, 2014 978-1-250-04938-4 978-1-250-02710-8 e-book Punk street kid Cass runs away with sheltered pianist Maia in the lyrical standalone prequel to All Our Pretty Songs (2013).

The intimate third-person narrative perspective alternates fluidly between the two girls’ voices, as well as between “Now”—as the girls take a breathless, speed-fueled road trip down the West Coast— and “Then”—as they become friends and Maia decides to leave her stifling, sterile home. Readers of All Our Pretty Songs will know that Cass and Maia retain their close bond as adults, that both have daughters and that Maia, after a tragedy, stays lost in a drugged haze. But these fates are only gently alluded to here. Instead, readers see a skeletal red-eyed Hades figure, grimly recognizable even to readers unfamiliar with Cass and Maia’s futures. He haunts Cass’ dreams, demanding a terrible bargain and waiting with an eerie patience until Cass is vulnerable enough to give him what he asks. The prose is exquisitely crafted, moving effortlessly from dizzying to heartbreaking.

Each setting—an exhaustingly filthy punk house, the New York street where Maia’s hermitlike father suddenly comes to life, the Mexican beach town where the girls’ road trip ends— is vibrantly constructed through careful detail and spare but evocative prose.

A breathtaking companion volume, fully readable on its own and devastating in the context of its predecessor.

(Urban fantasy. 14-18)

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AW, NUTS!

McClurkan, Rob Illus. by McClurkan, Rob Harper/HarperCollins (32 pp.) $17.99 | Aug. 26, 2014 978-0-06-231729-2 What self-respecting squirrel wouldn’t take off in hot pursuit of the Platonic acorn?

As squirrels do, this one is squirreling away nuts for the coming winter. He’s already got a nice little hoard, but one escapes the jam-packed larder. It doesn’t escape Squirrel’s notice, though. This is no regular acorn: Perhaps it was the acorn of youth or the acorn of plenty. Anyway, Squirrel chases it across town via taxi, pogo stick, delivery van, dog, boat, horse, even a helium balloon, until the acorn comes to rest in a mountain of acorns. Squirrel plucks the artful, dodging acorn and brings it home—along with all the other acorns—for a special repast.

Just as he is settled in his easy chair, well, another acorn catches his eye as it pops free of the fold….Chasing a dream should not be denied, but it looks like Squirrel is getting awfully hungry.

Plus, it is hard to differentiate the everyday from the sublime here: A joke about a one-note creature is hard to raise above the, well, single note. The artwork feels more like it is on celluloid than canvas or paper, the washed-out colors also lacking depth or texture.

A thin rendering of an uninspired story. (Picture book. 4-8)

MR. PANTS It’s Go Time!

McCormick, Scott Illus. by Lazzell, R.H. Dial (128 pp.) $14.99 | Jul. 10, 2014 978-0-8037-4007-5 Series: Mr. Pants, 1 McCormick and Lazzell try to pass off frenetic bad behavior and annoying sibling rivalry as amusing antics and engaging character development in this graphicstyle chapter book.

The focus is on family interactions and everyday activities, though the family in question is at least a little bit odd. Inexplicably, Mr. Pants, an orange cat with two distinctly differentsized eyes, Foot Foot, a smaller gray cat, and Grommy, a white kitten with a pink bow, have a human mother who sports stylized Laura Petrie hair and gives off a retro vibe. The plot focuses on big brother Mr. Pants, who nags his mom for an end-of-summer outing while whining his way through a trip to the “Fairy Princess Dream Factory” and a back-to-school shopping spree. Uneven attempts at injecting humor vary from adultcentric (Mom’s shoe addiction and Mr. Pants’ nicknames for his sister, which include My Left Foot and Agony of deFeet) to gross-out (Mr. Pants’ grungy room). Despite the graphic-novel format, there’s no sense of flow to the static artwork, which features panels of varying sizes in mostly muted

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INTERVIEWS & PROFILES

E. Lockhart

The Writer for Teens knows that young women shouldn’t have to be likable, in fiction or in real life

By Alex Heimbach

Photo courtesy Heather Weston

Once upon a time, there was a king who had three beautiful daughters.

The United States may not have a monarch, but we certainly have our own royalty. From the Kennedys to the Rockefellers, privilege in America has its own mythology, involving trips to the Hamptons, elegant black-tie benefits, lacrosse games and degrees from the Ivies.

In her new novel, We Were Liars, E. Lockhart explores the dark side of that kind of wealth. The book centers on the Sinclairs, a family of “old-money Democrats” so rich that they have their own private island off the coast of Massachusetts. Every summer, the whole clan congregates on the island, reuniting 104

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the titular Liars: the family’s three eldest grandchildren—Cady, Johnny and Mirren—and outsider Gat (who is the nephew of Johnny’s mother’s boyfriend).

When Cady’s father moves out on the eve of her 15th summer, she’s excited to escape to the idyllic Beechwood Island. But the WASPy reserve of her relatives isn’t enough to hide the trouble brewing: Her aging grandfather’s behavior is increasingly unpredictable, and he seems to enjoy watching his three daughters jockey for the inheritance.

Lockhart grew up in New England, attending prep school and spending summers at her grandparents’ house in Martha’s Vineyard. Although her family didn’t have anywhere near the kind of money the Sinclairs do, she knew plenty of people who did. “I was always kind of one foot in, one foot out of that world,” she says.

Lockhart knew she wanted to write books for children from a young age, but after college, she undertook a doctorate in English literature at Columbia. “Honestly,” she says, “I think I just wanted to be an academic because I wanted people to take me seriously.”

We Were Liars draws on some classic texts, including King Lear and Wuthering Heights, and the novel has touches of both the former’s moral reflectiveness and the latter’s gothic sensibility. Like Emily Brontë, Lockhart employs an unreliable narrator—albeit one as frustrated by her inability to get to the truth as the reader is. At the end of that summer, Cady hits her head under mysterious circumstances and is found half drowned on the beach. She develops chronic, debilitating headaches and can’t remember what happened no matter how many times it’s explained to her. It’s only when she returns to Beechwood, almost two years later, that she begins to recover her memories of the earlier summer.

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Cady’s migraines form the germ of the novel. Lockhart knows a number of people who suffer from such headaches and became interested in writing about how such pain would affect a character’s life: “I thought especially for a teenager this might really affect your sense of yourself, your sense of your own competence,” she says. And when you can’t trust your own experiences, you’re forced to rely on the testimony of others. But what if they aren’t telling you the truth?

This is the novel’s central tension: As Cady herself admits, the Liars probably deserve their nickname.

“The process of reading the novel is the process of uncovering the truth behind the lies they tell the others or that they tell to themselves,” Lockhart says. This made the novel challenging to construct—it involved a lot of reorganizing and rewriting. That attention to detail pays off in the novel’s engrossing and genuinely surprising plot.

Lockhart intersperses her twisting narrative with interludes that reimagine the novel’s events as fairy tales. The basic setup of the story—a rich father with three daughters looking to inherit—comes from a tale often known as “Love Like Salt,” in which a king demands that his daughters tell him how much they love him so he can decide who is most worthy of inheriting his kingdom. The elder two make flowery speeches and outlandish comparisons in order to impress him, while the youngest daughter simply states that she loves her father “as meat loves salt.” For this, she is disinherited and banished (at least until the king realizes the true value of her answer). In the novel, however, all three daughters are equally manipulative as they attempt to secure their portions of the family fortune, and it is Cady, the eldest grandchild, who refuses to play along; as she puts it, “I suffer migraines. I do not suffer fools.”

Other tales, including “Thumbelina,” “Beauty and the Beast,” and “Sleeping Beauty,” are retold in ways that reflect the circumstances of the various Sinclairs.

These interludes never end happily or even peacefully—evidence of the emptiness of the Sinclair family’s self-mythologizing. Lockhart says she saw this device as a way “to say things about the family that I couldn’t say directly or my heroine couldn’t say directly.”

Cady’s version of events is no more reliable, however. She has awkward interactions with her family members, who attempt to tiptoe around the gaps in her memory. The pain of her headaches makes her self-centered and snippy. She complains a lot and is |

constantly taking her privilege for granted. In a quest to prove her moral superiority, she embarks on a project to give away one of her possessions every day. Cady is nonetheless absolutely compelling, which is what Lockhart thinks is the most important quality in a character. “I don’t think young women should be required to be likable,” she says. “In fiction or in real life.”

Lockhart is similarly impatient with many of the conventions of romances. “I don’t believe in soul mates, and I don’t believe in…people who are dangerous being awesomely sexy,” she says. This aversion to typical romantic tropes made fleshing out Cady’s “rawfeeling” relationship with Gat tricky. But Lockhart is pleased with the result and describes We Were Liars as the most romantic book she’s ever written.

Ultimately, though, We Were Liars is the story of Cadence Sinclair Eastman, who knows both the power and the danger of a good story—a quality she shares with her creator.

Alex Heimbach is a freelance writer in New York. You can find her on Twitter @lexeh.

We Were Liars received a starred review in the Apr. 1, 2014, issue of Kirkus Reviews.

We Were Liars Lockhart, E. Delacorte (240 pp.) $17.99 | $20.99 PLB | May 13, 2014 978-0-385-74126-2 978-0-375-98994-0 PLB

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“Preteens will enjoy the easy read, identify with the characters and ask for more.” from the demon notebook

shades of mustard, plum, gray and mauve with flat, spare settings and simply silhouetted characters.

Pedestrian, predictable and totally tedious, this generic effort fails to appeal either visually or literarily. (Graphic novel. 7-9)

IDA M. TARBELL The Woman Who Challenged Big Business—and Won! McCully, Emily Arnold Clarion (288 pp.) $18.99 | $18.99 e-book | Jul. 8, 2014 978-0-547-29092-8 978-0-544-15160-4 e-book

A female journalist takes on the behemoth Standard Oil and its powerful founder, John D. Rockefeller, changing both reporting and business regulation.

In the period just before and after the Civil War, the nascent petroleum industry grew unchecked by regulations or ethical business practices, and women had few options outside of marriage and family. These two factors come together in the life of Ida M. Tarbell. Daughter of an early oil entrepreneur, Ida and her parents decided she should receive a solid education. Rejecting the traditional roles available to women, she embarked on a career as a journalist and writer. Eventually she made her name as a fearless investigative reporter, exposing the corrupt practices of John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil. In a startling departure, Caldecott winner McCully offers a thorough prose exploration of the life of a complex woman who defied the conventions of her time while coping with her own family difficulties, successfully contextualizing her work against its historical backdrop. The shift from picture-book form to long-form nonfiction is not without its bumps; the detailed narrative moves slowly as it describes project after journalistic project, and the archival images McCully includes do not sufficiently break up the text.

Though Tarbell rejected the term, this will appeal primarily to those interested in the history of muckraking journalism. (source notes, bibliography, photo credits, index not seen) (Nonfiction. 12-16)

THE DEMON NOTEBOOK

McGann, Erika Sourcebooks Jabberwocky (288 pp.) $6.99 paper | Jun. 3, 2014 978-1-4022-9538-6 Wouldn’t it be great if magic spells worked? Maybe…not.

Grace, Jenny, Rachel, Adie and Una have been dabbling in magic. They have tried spell after spell from The Great Book of the Occult, but none have worked.

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Andrew didn’t pee his pants in French class. Mr. McQuaid never talked gobbledygook in history class. They’re complete failures as witches…until they try the Ouija board in school on the night of the full moon. The board works, starting a Latin phrase, and the pages of their notebook of failed spells magically flip back and forth. Scary, but no big deal—until their spells start working, from the most recent on back. It turns out that magic is not that much fun when you do get exactly what you ask for, particularly considering the first spell they cast was a wish that the school bully would be hit by a bus. Now it’s a race against time to stop the magic and save Una from the demon that’s possessed her. Thankfully, they have a crazy, old cat lady to help them out. Irish author McGann’s debut is funny, a bit scary and surprisingly realistic, given the premise; she nails the relationships among the kids with ease. Preteens will enjoy the easy read, identify with the characters and ask for more.

Here’s hoping the sequel jumps the pond soon. (Fantasy.

9-14)

I AM ROSA PARKS

Meltzer, Brad Illus. by Eliopoulos, Christopher Dial (40 pp.) $12.99 | Jun. 17, 2014 978-0-8037-40853 Series: Ordinary People Change the World Following introductions to Amelia Earhart and Abraham Lincoln, this third title in the set introduces an iconic figure in the civil rights movement.

In a straightforward fictionalized narration, Parks tells her story. She gives examples of segregation and bullying in her early life, describes the incident that led to her work for the NAACP and the resistance that led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955-56. “The only tired I was, was tired of giving in,” she remarks. The book makes a point of contrasting her small size with her great determination. In the cartoon illustrations, Parks has the round head of Charlie Brown; sometimes she even shares his rueful expression. As with other heroes in the series, she remains child-sized throughout the book, which has the effect of infantilizing her. In one particularly unfortunate illustration, she and an equally child-sized Martin Luther King have an imagined conversation, depicted in speech bubbles, in front of an integrated classroom full of students prayerfully reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. The small, square format seems designed for young hands, and the approach may be most appropriate for preschoolers. The thriller writer–turned–writer for children has provided no documentation, sourcing or suggestions for further exploration of this history, but two pages of photographs (not seen) follow the account.

A barely serviceable introduction with far more child appeal than substance. (Picture book/biography. 3-7)

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THE FOUR SEASONS OF LUCY MCKENZIE

Murray, Kirsty Allen & Unwin (216 pp.) $9.99 paper | Jul. 1, 2014 978-1-74331-702-0

An evocative story of family ties.

When 11-year-old Lucy’s older sister, Claire, has an accident while studying in Paris, the family Christmas is canceled as their mother rushes to her side. Lucy is dropped off to stay at her Aunty Big’s house in an isolated valley in the Australian bush. Lucy barely remembers her prickly aunt, and she resents staying with her. Then she discovers that the murals painted on Big’s dining room walls—each depicting a different season in the valley—are magical. One night, Lucy steps through the mural portraying spring and meets a child named April who seems oddly familiar. As Lucy slips into a different mural each night, she comes to realize that April is actually her Aunty Big when she was 12—and that the family she is getting to know in the magical valley is her own: her ancestors.

Australian author Murray links past and present with sophisticated plotting and a wonderfully descriptive setting; the Australian bush comes alive in all its beauty and harshness, and the river that flows through both the past and present valley is an expressive metaphor for the flow of time. With a less accomplished writer, this kind of story could become simple nostalgia, but here it is triumphant.

A powerful story of life’s continuity; magical realism at its best. (Magical realism. 10-14)

FIND SPOT!

Previn, Stacey Illus. by Previn, Stacey Little, Brown (40 pp.) $15.00 | Jun. 17, 2014 978-0-316-21332-5 In a style reminiscent of Laura Vaccaro Seeger, Previn uses die cuts and simple phrasing to explore many different kinds of spots.

It has all the makings of a grand concept book—squat, square trim, bright colors—but it’s a bit unclear on the actual concept it is trying to teach or, in fact, exactly what the “spot” is.

The cover may lead children to believe that Spot is a Dalmatian puppy, but within, children will find that “spot” is an omnibus term whose exact meaning is flexible. Many of the “spot” pairs are true opposites: “Spot jumps. / Spot crawls. // Spot flies. / Spot falls” (the “spots” are, respectively, a frog’s spot, ant’s segment, firefly’s light and ladybug’s dot). Some “spots,” like the opening spread that depicts a rooster and an alarm clock (“Spot crows. / Spot wakes”), are similar and not opposite at all. Others, such as a bowling ball and the tires of a car (“Spot rolls. / Spot zooms”), are even more of a stretch. Literal-minded children will go nuts trying to figure out exactly what the “spot” is in |

each picture. The name of the rooster or its eye? The hole in a tree (“Spot grows”)? If so, is the hole growing or the tree growing? Regardless, the thick, crackled acrylics and heavy brush strokes give incredible texture to each pair. Extreme close-ups and generous swaths of bold colors heighten the exuberance.

The playful game of searching for spots just may be enough to carry youngsters through.

The concepts have gone slightly askew, but the book can spark discussion, which just might be the only educational bent needed. (Picture book. 2-5)

DROWNED

Reilly, Nichola Harlequin Teen (304 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 24, 2014 978-0-373-21122-7 Series: Drowned, 1 The world ends in water in this tense post-apocalyptic novel.

On the far-future island of Tides, eroding from chronic catastrophic floods, the survival of each of its 496 inhabitants depends on the relative importance of their jobs.

The higher their status, the farther they stand from high tide at “formation”—when each citizen crowds onto a platform and prays not to drown. Coe, who lost her hand to sea monsters under mysterious circumstances, prays hard; her job as Craphouse Keeper will make her especially vulnerable when she turns 16 and loses the protection of childhood. When ineffectual King Wallow falls ill, rebellion rises, and Coe finds herself attendant to spoiled Princess Star. Coe’s friend, Tiam, is chosen as the next king. Love is a liability in cutthroat Tides, but Coe hates imagining him with Star. When anarchy breaks out, Coe must abandon rivalries to save Tiam and find safety in a secret mountain. Suspense rises with the water as characters reveal their flaws and loyalties, and key words—which only Coe can read, kind of—are obsolete riddles that engage readers’ attention until the answer becomes plain. Coe’s voice is tough but eloquent, saturated with the bleakness of Tides and her hopeless romance. Though the story fizzles under an unexplained major plot convenience, the briny yet hopeful ending arouses anticipation for the sequel.

An atmospheric, uneasy tale of survival. (discussion questions) (Post-apocalyptic romance. 12-16)

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“Through a series of ‘amazeog’ and ‘totes’ expressive emails and a few letters that use conversational slang from their respective cultures, the girls explore the possibility....” from finding ruby starling

LATITUDE ZERO

Renn, Diana Viking (448 pp.) $17.99 | Jul. 3, 2014 978-0-670-01558-0

A mystery involving bicycling culture set in greater Boston and Ecuador.

Seventeen-year-old Tessa Taylor has been the perky host of the Boston-based cable TV show KidVision for four years.

But when she gets caught “bandit riding” (riding without raising the necessary money) for a charity event, she loses her job. Worse, she thinks she’s caused the death of star EcuaBar team cyclist Juan Carlos, who went down in the crash Tessa caused when she pulled out of the charity race abruptly. Thus begins a layered plot of murder and racketeering full of twists and turns. Author Renn knows her way around competitive cycling— the nuanced descriptions of the operation of bicycle-racing teams are spot-on. Where the story lurches, however, is in the barely credible decision-making of its narrator, Tessa. Tessa’s rationale for not contacting the police when she is threatened (“[n]ot so simple”) is not convincing, and too many of Tessa’s decisions force readers to wonder whether she’s just used to having her own way and not listening to others or if she is, in fact, clueless. To be sure, Tessa’s bad decisions lead to a great deal of exciting action and tension that keep readers turning the pages, but the excitement doesn’t outweigh the overall believability problems.

Exciting, for readers who can get past the annoyingly persistent credibility issues. (Thriller. 13-17)

WINGS

Richards, Elizabeth Putnam (400 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 12, 2014 978-0-399-15945-9 Series: Black City, 3 Blood Mates Natalie (all human) and Ash (half human, half vampire) continue the drive to unseat the evil dictator Purian Rose and win justice for all races in the United Sentry States.

At the end of Phoenix (2013), Natalie was plucked from danger and restored to her mother and the father she thought dead, both key members of the Sentry rebellion against Rose.

Meanwhile, Ash—aka the Phoenix, symbol of the grass-roots campaign Humans for Unity—heads home to Black City to regroup. They both have their eyes on the Tenth, the concentration camps where Rose has imprisoned the vampire Darklings.

Each with allies both human and in-, they reunite there. Their alternating, present-tense narrations are joined in this book by a third, that of Edmund, whose story occurs 30 years before and provides both some flimsy back story and lots more angst.

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there’s plenty of action, but the blow-by-blow narration holds it in stasis. The characters are like bad actors in a high school play, emoting on cue and then moving to the next mark. The scientific improbabilities that have plagued the series from the beginning mount here, with the (protracted) climactic moment fueled by a laughably impossible medical procedure.

Only for those readers who are dying to read the end of Natalie and Ash’s story. (Paranormal romance. 14-18)

FINDING RUBY STARLING

Rivers, Karen Levine/Scholastic (288 pp.) $16.99 | $16.99 e-book | Aug. 26, 2014 978-0-545-53479-6 978-0-545-53482-6 e-book A separated-at-birth story for the digital age.

After plugging photos of herself into FaceTrace (a fake but plausible Googlelike image search), American Ruth Quayle, age 12 2/3, discovers that she might have an identical—and stylish—twin sister in England named Ruby Starling. Just imagine: “The very same set of cells! But with an accent! And good fashion sense!” Through a series of “amazeog” and “totes” expressive emails and a few letters that use conversational slang from their respective cultures, the girls explore the possibility with each other and close friends before approaching their families. While their communications voice typical preteen concerns, such as finding best friends, whether they’re ready to kiss boys and not wanting their parents to treat them like children anymore, it becomes increasingly emotional as Ruth wonders about the how and why of their situation. Adopted and given a transplant heart soon after birth, Ruth can’t help but feel unbearable anger and sadness toward a biological mother who gave her away. With the help of her “real” parents, her father’s attempts to “Buddhify [her] life,” her poetry tumblr and a newfound sister (and best friend), she finds forgiveness and an expanded circle of love. And maybe boys are kissable after all!

Totes bittersweet. (Fiction. 10-13)

BROKEN WORLDS

Robinson, Anitha Children’s Brains are Yummy Books (224 pp.) $8.95 paper | Jun. 10, 2014 978-1-933767-37-6 A teenage runaway survives a brutal attack with the aid of a beautiful stranger, only to discover her new friend isn’t quite the hero she’s always dreamed of.

At 16, Kalli finds herself trapped under the thumb of her mother’s cousin, Sita. After Kalli’s father leaves, Sita forces men upon Kalli under the guise of finding her a rich Indian husband

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to support the family. Finally, Kalli flees, only to be assaulted and nearly killed. An angelic stranger named Ellis saves her and brings her to a healer. Kalli wakes with only a tiny scar, as if she were never hurt at all, and soon Ellis invites her to stay with him while she heals. Kalli swings rapidly from mistrust to infatuation; she worries her new situation is too good to be true, but the truth is far stranger than she ever imagined. Robinson spins a story that begins as an eerie mystery and takes a sharp turn into B-movie science-fiction territory. Kalli’s character initially reads as authentic but quickly swerves headfirst into the trope of a teen girl in love, stunting opportunities for growth. The second half of the story reads like a different novel from the first, with too little weight given to worldbuilding.

A disjointed science-fiction thriller helmed by yet another heroine prioritizing a problematic romance above all else. (Science fiction. 13-18)

CHUKFI RABBIT’S BIG, BAD BELLYACHE A Trickster Tale

Rodgers, Greg Illus. by Widener, Leslie Stall Cinco Puntos (40 pp.) $17.95 | $8.95 paper | $8.95 e-book Jun. 24, 2014 978-1-935955-26-9 978-1-935955-27-6 paper 978-1-935955-60-3 e-book

Like tricksters in traditions everywhere, “Chukfi Rabbit is lay-zeeee.”

In a time long ago, the narrator tells readers in an assured voice, Ms. Shukata Possum organizes “an everybody-worktogether day to build her” a new house. Chukfi pleads prior commitments—until he hears that “fresh homemade butter” will be served with dinner. Well, that rotten rabbit shows up but disappears as soon as he can, going down to the spring where Ms. Possum is keeping the butter cool and eating it all up while feigning illness. Greedy Chukfi! When the workday is finished, he must pretend a great appetite, “even though his belly [is] great-big stuffed.” A giant, buttery belch betrays him, of course. Choctaw storyteller Rodgers invests the tale, found in the archives of the Oklahoma History Center, with plenty of humor and oral flair.

From the spring, Chukfi hears the “saw-saw-sawing and the hamham-hammering”; as “they didn’t really have hammers back in those days, [the turtle] kindly agree[s]” to substitute. Choctaw illustrator Widener dresses her animal characters in a mélange of traditional and contemporary attire; Chula Fox and Luksi Turtle sport black, brimmed hats and tasseled belts, while Kinta Beaver wears a denim work shirt and a baseball cap. Both text and illustrations positively exude good humor.

Chukfi is a trickster worthy of the name, and this fresh, funny tale makes an excellent addition to the genre. (author’s notes) (Picture book. 5-8)

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HUMAN BODY

Rogers, Simon Illus. by Grundy, Peter Big Picture/Candlewick (80 pp.) $17.99 | Aug. 26, 2014 978-0-7636-7123-5 Series: Information Graphics Stylized graphics rendered in saturated hues set this quick overview of body systems apart from the general run.

Arranged in tabbed and color-coded sections, the tour covers familiar ground but often from an unusual angle. The tally of human senses at the beginning, for instance, includes “proprioception” (physical multitasking), and ensuing chapters on the skeletal, circulatory and other systems are capped with a miscellany of body contents and products—from selected parasites and chemicals to farts and sweat. Likewise, descriptions of a dozen physical components of the “Brain Box” are followed by notes on more slippery mental functions like “Consciousness” and “Imagination.” The facts and observations gathered

by Rogers are presented as labels or captions. They are interspersed on each spread with flat, eye-dazzling images designed

by Grundy not with anatomical correctness in mind but to show processes or relationships at a glance. Thus, to show body parts most sensitive to touch, a silhouette figure sports an oversized hand and foot, plus Homer Simpson lips (though genitals are absent, which seems overcautious as an explicit section on reproduction follows a few pages later), and a stack of bathtubs illustrates the quantity of urine the average adult produces in an average lifetime (385 bathtubs’ worth). There is no backmatter.

Far from comprehensive but visually arresting and, at times, provocative. (Nonfiction. 11-13)

THE NIGHT PARADE

Roscoe, Lily Illus. by Walker, David Orchard/Scholastic (32 pp.) $16.99 | Aug. 26, 2014 978-0-545-39623-3 Nighttime can’t just be for sleeping; what do toddlers really do at night?

“Have you ever wondered what happens at night / while mothers and fathers lie sleeping? // Children wake up. / They climb out of their beds, / some crawling, some / running, some leaping.”

They gather together and skip through town. They sing songs and bake cakes for the moon. “They build castles of sand. / They paint pictures by hand. / They turn somersault / flips through the park.”

They dress up and march and read mountains of books and tell each other magical tales. But with each tale, they get dozier and dozier until they toddle back to bed and say goodbye to friends as the moon goes down. Despite one tiny hiccup in the meter at the close, Roscoe’s rhyme makes a great rhythmic bedtime tale. Little listeners will be eager to lay down their heads with the prospect of a night’s adventure with whales and mermaids. In

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“There is an excellent balance of characters both villainous and helpful as readers follow the fiercely independent Will through hardship and into triumph.” from cartwheeling in thunderstorms

Walker’s watercolors, a multiethnic crew of young, happy revelers marches and plays musical instruments by the light of a smiling moon…a utopia of cakes, costume and play.

A fine addition to the bedtime story shelf—it practically croons itself. (Picture book. 2-5)

CARTWHEELING IN THUNDERSTORMS

Rundell, Katherine Simon & Schuster (256 pp.) $16.99 | $10.99 e-book | Aug. 26, 2014 978-1-4424-9061-1 978-1-4424-9063-5 e-book “It wasn’t until Will’s Wildcat life came under threat that she realized how dearly she loved it.”

Wilhelmina Silver—Will, Madman and Wildcat to those who love her—deeply relishes her life in rural Zimbabwe. Daughter of a mother long lost to malaria and a loving English father who is foreman at Two Tree Hill Farm, Will spends her time racing about the vibrant terrain as an uber-tomboy. Her best friend is a farmhand her own age, known since their earlier childhood: “a tall, fluid black boy to her waiflike, angular white girl.” Will’s carefree, African world shatters when her father succumbs to malaria, after which the plantation owner’s new, manipulative wife sends Will to a boarding school in London.

Apparently set in the present day, the story accelerates its pace as Will uses her wits and her considerable athleticism to combat the hostility of bullying classmates and to cope with her new, cold, urban surroundings. There is an excellent balance of characters both villainous and helpful as readers follow the fiercely independent Will through hardship and into triumph. They cannot help but dearly love Will and her motto of “Truth, ja, and courage.”

With debut novel Rooftoppers (2013), Rundell showed her capacity to write an entertaining story featuring a courageous female protagonist; this second novel surpasses by virtue of its striking, soaring prose. (Fiction. 8-13)

MUDDY MAX The Mystery of Marsh Creek

Rusch, Elizabeth Illus. by Lawrence, Mike Andrews McMeel (224 pp.) $9.99 paper | Aug. 5, 2014 978-1-4494-3561-5

world: The muck there endows him with superstrength farts and other more useful abilities when slathered on and, well, eaten—but it also turns out to be an increasingly clingy goo with a mind of its own. Moreover, Max isn’t the first person to fall into its clutches. The stage is set for a high-pressure double rescue, in which a Ghostbusters-style “demudifier” contrived by Patrick plays a central role. A third schoolmate, Irie, is introduced but, in this episode, not given anything significant to do except spy on the boys, though she does figure on the cover. Lawrence’s clean-lined figures portray character and action in easy-to-read ways, but as his panels don’t vary much in size, the page design has a mechanical look. Also, judging by the sample pages, the colors are muddy (not in a good way) and too pale to give the waves and splotches of creeping goop any real definition.

Not a slick kickoff, but the premise should stick with (if not to) readers well enough to water interest in sequels. (activities) (Graphic fantasy. 10-12)

FRED’S BEDS

Samuels, Barbara Illus. by Samuels, Barbara Farrar, Straus and Giroux (40 pp.) $16.99 | Jun. 10, 2014 978-0-374-31813-0 Fred the beagle loves to nap, and he can sleep anywhere—in a shopping bag or a pile of old newspapers or a slightly soggy bath towel. But even he can’t nap through a noisy birthday party.

Fred’s owner is Zelda, a competent little girl with curly, red hair. She is awhirl with preparations for her party, but the festivities are just too much for Fred. He is banished to the “Flower Bed” in the backyard after tasting the frosting roses on the cake and then trying to climb into a “Noisy-Baby Bed.” When the backyard proves even too exciting, he takes refuge in the “Used-to-Be-Fresh-Laundry Bed” until the increasingly wild party is over. In a satisfying conclusion, Zelda presents one of her presents to Fred, a “Brand-New Bed” made of wicker—but alas, Fred can’t sleep in a designated bed. The final page shows “The Best Bed,” with Fred snuggled up to Zelda in her bed. The story is original and witty, as is Fred’s comical character. Bold, bright illustrations have a fresh appeal, with juicy colors, varied perspectives and fanciful flowers, along with the drolly humorous beagle. The connecting device that names each distinctly unusual bed is one that will appeal to preschoolers, who might be inspired to try napping in curious settings themselves.

Clever and charming. (Picture book. 4-8)

Repeated dunks in contaminated mud confer temporary superpowers on a middle schooler in this spotty series opener.

Curiosity understandably sparked by the discovery that he can disappear entirely into the thinnest mud puddle and also remain invisible until he washes off, Max sneaks away with nerdy inventor buddy Patrick to the local swamp for some experiments. What he discovers rocks his 110

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UNCAGED

Sandford, John; Cook, Michelle Knopf (416 pp.) $18.99 | $10.99 e-book | $21.99 PLB Jul. 22, 2014 978-0-385-75306-7 978-0-385-75308-1 e-book 978-0-385-75307-4 PLB Series: Singular Menace, 1 Can a 16-year-old foster kid save her brother from an evil corporation? Can

she even find him?

When Shay’s nearly-18-year-old brother, Odin, goes missing after the animal rights group he belongs to frees animals and steals data from a Singular research facility, Shay leaves her relatively acceptable foster home to find him. In LA, she’s saved from attack by a former street kid and now trendy, rich artist named Twist. She agrees to help Twist with one of his politically motivated actions, and he lets her stay in his hotel for street kids. Shay finds Odin—but after giving her a mysterious dog named X, Odin’s abducted. Twist and his crew of street kids agree to help Shay find her brother, but Singular’s security division won’t think twice about lying to authorities and killing to protect their illegal operations. Can Shay and her new friends survive their search for Odin even with help on the inside?

Best-selling writer for adults Sandford co-authors this surprisingly languid thriller, which stuffs most of its action into the final 50 pages—presumably saving material for the next book in the series. The interesting-enough story is further hobbled by generic characters and patches of lazy, florid prose.

The author’s name will gain this book attention, but far better books are available for genre fans. (Thriller. 15-18)

REBELLION

Sandler, Karen Tu Books (400 pp.) $18.95 | Jun. 1, 2014 978-1-60060-984-8 Series: Tankborn, 3 Surprising new obstacles crop up in the Tankborn series finale.

As Awakening (2013) ended, an explosion left Kayla’s and Devak’s fates unknown. Devak awakens to learn that medical expenses for his slow-healing injuries have cost him and his great-grandfather their high social status. Far away, Kayla’s a prisoner in an underground compound run by cult leader Ohin.

She and Devak each think the other’s dead. Ohin claims that his movement—Freedom, Humanity, Equality—will bring liberation from slavery for all Genetically Engineered Non-Humans, but Kayla’s a GEN herself and knows that the FHE bombs GEN food warehouses and homes. As Kayla untangles Ohin’s lies and plots her escape (bonding with some giant, organicbut-technologically-controlled spiders), Devak tracks down an |

elusive, FHE-connected boy who has information about Kayla.

His friend Junjie helps, insisting that his crush on this FHE boy isn’t the only reason to trust him. Gone is the fatal illness that dominated Awakening, but now GENs are intentionally damaging their own electronic circuitry—and neurology—to escape the grid that tracks them. Sandler tackles caste systems, slavery and terrorism (including its muddled logic) head-on. Cumbersome prose renders the piece longer than it should be and clumsy on the sentence-to-sentence level, but the plotting’s terrific.

With rebellions, ideological questions and a nonwhite, not-entirely-heterosexual cast, this series is a strong addition to the genre. (glossary) (Science fiction. 13-17)

TAKE BACK THE SKIES

Saxon, Lucy Bloomsbury (400 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 3, 2014 978-1-61963-367-4

A steampunk heroine saves the world in a debut adventure.

Fourteen-year-old Catherine Hunter is a child of one of the most powerful men in the Anglyan government, but that doesn’t mean she’s had a happy childhood. Her cartoonishly evil father presides over a reign of terror in war-torn Anglya, and he has been violently abusive against Catherine all her life. Rather than be forced into a loveless marriage, Catherine disguises herself as a boy and stows away on a skyship. Its jovial, do-gooder crew turns out to be smugglers for justice. They all, from dishy ginger orphan Fox to motherly, stew-ladling cook Alice, happily integrate Catherine—going now by “Cat”—into their ranks. As Catherine learns that everything she’s ever known about her country is a lie, she’s thrust into the usual high-stakes fight to save the world. This struggle is paced just right for her to have lovers’ quarrels while sneaking around the most dangerous building in the country. The pieces are all here for a plucky-girl adventure, but the details—secondary characters right out of central casting, cheesy dialogue, a rushed and badly dissonant conclusion—hang ill-fitting on the age-of-steam framework.

Affectionate “mecha,” gruesome battles, deathbed confessions and stolen children make all the right ingredients for a result not quite baked; send it back to Alice in the galley. (Steampunk. 11-13)

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“There’s not a lot of plot in this lightly amusing slice-of-summer novel...but the book is engrossing, and the likable duo change and grow in believable ways.” from quinny & hopper

QUINNY & HOPPER

and then extract a promise that he will become a vegetarian and take up yoga. An unfortunate mishmash of Eastern religions and traditions emerges from this tale, but the absurdity of the story’s twists and turns helps to mitigate this gaffe.

As silly a trip to grandma’s house as there ever was. (Picture book. 4-7)

Schanen, Adriana Brad Illus. by Swearingen, Greg Disney-Hyperion (240 pp.) $15.99 | Jun. 10, 2014 978-1-4231-7829-3 Two 8-year-olds with opposite temperaments and personalities make friends.

Quinny, who has a big, irrepressible personality, moves from New York City to the small town of Whisper Valley with her family: her working mother, stay-at-home dad (enlighteningly rendered without comment) and two younger sisters. They move in next door to the quiet, scientifically minded, bookish Hopper, who is bullied by his two older, soccer-playing twin brothers. Late in the book, a more-assertive Hopper hits one of his brothers. His mother rebukes him, remonstrating that “we don’t punch people in this family.” Readers will cheer at Hopper’s funny, dead-on response: “Sure we do. Where have you been?” There’s not a lot of plot in this lightly amusing slice-of-summer novel—Quinny and Hopper make friends, catch and return a chicken to its rightful owner, have a fight, start third grade and make up—but the book is engrossing, and the likable duo change and grow in believable ways. Quinny and Hopper, who take turns narrating, have distinct, well-differentiated voices, and Schanen makes good use of her individuated secondary characters as well. Swearingen’s black-and-white drawings both capture the spirit of the characters and enhance the narrative.

This endearing story about true friendship should appeal equally to boys and girls. (Fiction. 7-10)

NINJA RED RIDING HOOD

Schwartz, Corey Rosen Illus. by Santat, Dan Putnam (40 pp.) $16.99 | Jul. 10, 2014 978-0-399-163548

Schwartz and Santat deliver a powerful karate chop of a picture book to fracture the familiar “Little Red Riding Hood” story.

Hot on the heels of their successful Three Ninja Pigs (2012), this tale sees the hungry wolf enrolling in karate class to add some new skills to his predatory ways. Told in verse that adopts the lilting rhythm of a limerick, the humorous text pairs with digital art that bears the mark of Santat’s animation background.

The lupine antihero trains and then goes into the woods, where he encounters Little Red Riding Hood. In a familiar turn, he distracts her on her journey to Grandma’s house with a flowerpicking errand—but when he races off to the cottage ahead of her, he finds that Grandma is gone. Lo and behold, when the girl arrives, she does not need a woodcutter to save her because she has trained at ninja school, too. Grandma shows up fresh from practicing tai chi just in time to see Red subdue the wolf 112

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WALT DISNEY Drawn from Imagination

Scollon, Bill Illus. by Brown, Adrienne Disney Press (144 pp.) $14.99 | Jul. 15, 2014 978-1-4231-9647-1

A squeaky-clean biography of the original Mouseketeer.

Scollon begins with the (to say the least) arguable claim that Disney grew up to “define and shape what would come to be known as the American Century.” Following this, he retraces Disney’s life and career, characterizing him as a visionary whose only real setbacks came from excess ambition or at the hands of unscrupulous film distributors. Disney’s brother Roy appears repeatedly to switch between roles as encourager and lead doubter, but except in chapters covering his childhood, the rest of his family only puts in occasional cameos. Unsurprisingly, there is no mention of Disney’s post–World War II redbaiting, and his most controversial film, Song of the South, gets only a single reference (and that with a positive slant). More puzzling is the absence of Mary Poppins from the tally of Disney triumphs. Still, readers will come away with a good general picture of the filmmaking and animation techniques that Disney pioneered, as well as a highlight history of his studio, television work and amusement parks. Discussion questions are appended: “What do you think were Walt Disney’s greatest accomplishments and why?”

Brown’s illustrations not seen.

An iconic success story that has often been told before but rarely so one-dimensionally or with such firm adherence to the company line. (bibliography) (Biography. 8-10)

PLAY ME BACKWARDS

Selzer, Adam Simon & Schuster (288 pp.) $17.99 | Aug. 26, 2014 978-1-4814-0104-3

In his final year of high school, Leon must choose between maintaining his comfortable existence or blowing it all up to chase something greater.

Leon is on track to do nothing extraordinary with his life. He works at the local ice cream shop alongside his best friend, Stan, and hangs out with the screwballs and weirdos that come in. The gang shuns such bourgeois drudgery as the SATs and college applications in favor

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of typical teenage tomfoolery, but there’s a fine line between a smart, bored kid and a burnout. Leon is the former. When a few moments of chance bring him and popular girl Paige together, Leon begins to shake out of his slacker stupor. This is a particularly smart and sweet teenage love story, refusing to rely on burning passion or overwrought sentiment. There’s an emotional maturity in the way Selzer draws Leon and Paige’s courtship. It is by far the best part of the book. Less engaging are the peripheral characters, particularly Stan, a kid who believes that he’s the devil himself. The character and his influence on the story just don’t work, and time spent with him feels wasted when it could be spent elsewhere. Leon’s journey to personal responsibility is another topic well-tackled, making this an engaging, characterdriven piece with several pros that mightily outweigh the cons.

Surprisingly heartfelt. (Fiction. 14-16)

GRANDMA

Shepherd, Jessica Illus. by Shepherd, Jessica Child’s Play (32 pp.) $16.99 | Jul. 1, 2014 978-1-84643-602-4 A little boy adjusts to changes as his beloved grandmother ages and becomes infirm.

Oscar loves his grandma, and he loves the things they do together, like riding on their scooters and playing on the seesaw. When she “doesn’t feel like playing,” they find other ways to enjoy each other’s company. But now there are many things she can no longer do, and she must move to a place where she will be cared for. Oscar, his dad and his younger sibling visit Grandma, meeting her caregivers and other residents. Sometimes Grandma shouts and gets angry when she cannot remember things, but other times she tells Oscar stories about her life.

The sweet, squiggly pictures show that Grandma visited Paris, went camping and jumped out of an airplane (with a parachute but without a helmet). Oscar is clear about how the changes in Grandma upset him, but he says that friends and family take care of him and make him feel better. Notes at the end give more details about dementia. Oscar’s voice is naïve and prone to inexactitude, and the tale overall is very purposive, clearly created to help other children in Oscar’s situation.

Though it lacks the artistry of Mem Fox and Julie Viva’s Wilfred Gordon McDonald Partridge (1989), it has a useful charm. (Picture book. 5-7)

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I BECOME SHADOW

Shine, Joe Soho Teen (304 pp.) $17.99 | $17.99 e-book | Jun. 10, 2014 978-1-61695-358-4 978-1-61695-359-1 e-book A secret international organization gets more than it bargained for when it kidnaps 14-year-old Rennes “Ren” Sharpe.

Snatched from her bed one night, Ren finds herself at the Future Affairs Training and Education Center. Ren soon learns that she and the other teens at the center are all recruits undergoing training to serve as protectors, or Shadows, to the future leaders. The first-person narrative follows her four-year training program at the F.A.T.E. Center, including torturous nightly injections of the drug “fire” to inure her to pain. On the first day of training, she meets Junie Miller, and the two develop a connection that eventually develops into a romance of sorts. Of course, once training ends, Ren and Junie are separated forever, as both are linked to their assignments, the future leaders they are sworn to protect. Ren’s “link” is the nerdy Gareth Young, incoming freshman engineering major at Texas A&M. After Gareth is targeted in a seemingly random attack, Ren starts breaking the Shadow rules, beginning to wonder whether something more sinister is behind the attack. In his debut, Shine delivers a thrilling plot and a headstrong heroine on par with Katniss Everdeen and Tris Prior. While the novel delivers on Ren’s characterization and action, the romance between Ren and Junie feels unnecessary and is never quite believable.

Read it for the satisfying action, not the love story. (Science fiction/thriller. 14-18)

PLAYING BY THE BOOK

Shirley, S. Chris Magnus Books/Riverdale Avenue Books (302 pp.) $19.99 paper | Jun. 11, 2014 978-1-62601-071-0 For some, coming out is still hard to do.

Despite the current gay-teen-novel canon that depicts worlds where two boys can kiss in public for hour upon hour or dystopias where teen heroes can just happen to be gay, it can be refreshing to find a good, ol’ coming-out novel. Seventeen-year-old Alabama-born, Pentecostal-preacherin-the-making Jake Powell manages to convince his Bible-beating dad that he should go to Columbia over the summer to enroll in an exclusive prejournalism program. His perspective widens considerably: He befriends both a gay student and his Southeast Asian roommate and crushes on a girl...maybe. Jake’s religious upbringing overwhelms the text, as he quotes and remembers page upon page of Scripture. It’s clearly meant to show the influence of his growing up a preacher’s kid, but it does get tedious. The debut takes off, however, when things get hot and heavy between Jake and his new

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“...an excellent choice for readers interested in Game of Thrones but who perhaps aren’t quite ready for some of its more mature subject matter.” from barbarian lord

friend, Julie. The picture-perfect moment when Jake realizes who he is despite all he’s done to pray the gay away is nothing short of priceless. Shirley’s first is solid but pushes no real new boundaries, which may be a good thing. Despite the countless Bible quotes, his plotting moves smoothly, and his characters feel likable and real.

An author worth watching. (Fiction. 12-16)

BARBARIAN LORD

Smith, Matt Illus. by Smith, Matt Clarion (176 pp.) $17.99 | Jul. 1, 2014 978-0-547-85906-4

A mix of Icelandic lore and Norse mythology—and maybe a smattering of the Incredible Hulk— makes up this action-packed adventure of the barrel-chested Barbarian Lord’s struggle to defeat his skull-headed enemy.

With a face devoid of most expression and seemingly locked into a permanent grimace, the Barbarian Lord maintains “the finest farm in Garmrland.” Aided by a ruthless but somewhat hapless witch, nefarious neighbor Skullmaster seeks to destroy him and take over that farm. As the two lock horns in a power play, the Barbarian Lord finds himself battling a variety of foes, from sea monsters to ghosts to trolls. Though the lines between good and evil are distinctly drawn, the Barbarian Lord is a complicated kind of hero who certainly doesn’t shy away from killing (or impaling or slashing…) any opponent who dares cross his path; his personal motto seems to be “[t]here is more honor in battle than in trickery.” This plot is nothing if not action-driven, the multitudinous battle scenes and abundant swordplay (and splendid sound effects) making this an excellent choice for readers interested in Game of Thrones but who perhaps aren’t quite ready for some of its more mature subject matter.

An intriguing and interesting mix of mythology, folklore and fantasy makes for what is in effect a graphic-novel introduction to the sword-and-sorcery genre. (author’s note) (Graphic fantasy. 13-17)

THE FRANKENSTEIN JOURNALS

Sonneborn, Scott Illus. by Banks, Timothy Stone Arch Books (160 pp.) $9.95 | Aug. 1, 2014 978-1-4342-9130-1 Series: The Frankenstein Journals, 1

The discovery of a detailed journal kept by his patchwork dad’s creator prompts a child with mismatched parts of his own to start tracking down his many “cousins.”

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not only clues the boy in to his parentage (or at least his father’s identity), but provides tantalizing leads to the original owners of dad’s components. As J.D. has inherited eyes of different colors and hands and feet of different sizes, he figures that he’s related to said owners—and so sets out to find them or, more likely, their descendants. His search acquires particular urgency thanks to Dr. Frankenstein’s amoral daughter, Frances Kenstein, who is likewise on a quest to recreate her father’s magnum opus using body parts with the same DNA. Repetitively noting how “cute” she is and uttering “Don’t panic,” and “I’ll figure something out” with mantralike frequency, J.D. rescues an explorer in Antarctica and a would-be young police detective in LA from his acquisitive rival in this two-episode opener. Though occasionally given to clumsy turns of phrase, his narrative is stocked with jokes, blotches, gross bits, typeface changes, side notations, sketched vignettes and color illustrations.

Spindly the plotline may be, but it’s greened up with a few yuks and rises from an unusually fertile series premise.

(Light fantasy. 9-11)

MY PET BOOK

Staake, Bob Illus. by Staake, Bob Random House (40 pp.) $17.99 | $10.99 e-book | $20.99 PLB Jul. 22, 2014 978-0-385-37312-8 978-0-375-98186-9 e-book 978-0-375-97195-2 PLB In this cheer for books and reading, a boy wants a pet—but one that’s easy, lacks fleas and won’t run away.

His accommodating parents suggest a book, and together, they trek to the Loyal Neighborhood Bookopolis, where a “frisky red hardcover” captivates. Leash-trained, this unique pet “never needed bathing. / And its ears would never droop. / But best of all that little pet… / It didn’t even poop!” Everything’s swell, until the day the boy returns from school to find that the maid has mistakenly given his pet to charity. The pair race to the thrift store to search for the beloved tome, finding it hiding in a doghouse in the store’s pet section. Staake’s quatrains scan well, though at times they approach—well, doggerel. The wacky premise is elevated to towering heights via the over-the-top digital illustrations, wherein round-headed people, multihued from persimmon to turquoise, cavort with dogs and cats of every description and temperament. Perspective in interior rooms is dizzying, while cityscapes are a gaudy geometry of tightly packed buildings, bridges, parks and populace. Obligingly, Staake finds room to portray this unusual pet’s power to transport its owner through its “tales / Of awesomeness and glory.”

One of Staake’s sillier, more ebullient outings—and that’s saying something. (Picture book. 4-8)

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THE TRUTH AGAINST THE WORLD

Stevenson, Sarah Jamila Flux (360 pp.) $9.99 paper | Jun. 8, 2014 978-0-7387-4058-4

Two teens thousands of miles apart discover they’re haunted by the same desperate ghost.

On a family visit to a Welsh seaside village, Londoner Gareth discovers the lonely, dead child when his cellphone falls into an ancient burial chamber; she returns it to him only after securing his promise to visit her. In California, Olwen’s great-grandmother, Gee Gee, expresses her dying wish to return to that same Welsh village, her hometown. Olwen—known as Wyn—senses that the beloved Gee Gee she thought she knew is a façade hiding a mystery, one tied to her own haunting. After Gareth finds Wyn’s blog, the teens meet online and realize that each has been contacted by a ghostly girl whose name Wyn bears and whose urgent need is draining them. Her voice and image turn up on Gareth’s phone; Wyn’s dreams are more complex, interwoven with Gee Gee, the child and a strange young man. When Wyn’s family brings Gee Gee to her village and Gareth arranges a visit to his great-grandfather there, the teens meet and—exhausted and disoriented by their intensifying visitations—struggle to solve the riddle and free themselves before Gee Gee’s life ends. Though a reluctance to put characters in harm’s way combines with excessive foreshadowing to rob the plot of suspense, there’s an old-fashioned charm to this gently meandering tale that can’t be denied.

A fresh-air alternative to claustrophobic dystopias.

(Ghost story. 11-15)

OH NO! A FOX!

Stoeke, Janet Morgan Illus. by Stoeke, Janet Morgan Dial (32 pp.) $16.99 | Aug. 7, 2014 978-0-8037-39529 Series: Loopy Coop Hens The fox is in the henhouse. Silly fox, what in tarnation was he thinking?

Sounding like a bunch of gals sitting under hair dryers at the salon in Mayberry, U.S.A., Midge, Pip and Dot are three hens always finding themselves in harm’s way, which befits hens living on Loopy Coop Farm. Here, however, they are in mortal danger: A fox, complete with well-cared-for dentures and squinty eyes, has made his way into the henhouse, and it is up to Rooster Sam to make things safe. Though his talents run toward cowardice and sloth, Rooster Sam is repeatedly successful in spite of himself. Farce usually needs a lot of gears and wheels within wheels to find its climax, but Stoeke, with scant text and a reduced line and palette, carries it delightfully |

forward, one unexpected, mildly cringe-inducing incident after another. The hens—well, Midge and Pip—have a gratifyingly hysterical edge, while Dot is the problem-solver (if in a good, goofy way).

Midge, Pip and Dot prove that we can all be heroes, as long as a trio of smart hens has our backs covered. (Picture book. 4-8)

LOVE BY THE MORNING STAR

Sullivan, Laura L. HMH Books (320 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 3, 2014 978-0-547-68951-7

Two young women are mistaken for each other in this romantic farce set in Europe in the run-up to World War II. Hannah Morgernstern and Anna Morgan couldn’t be more different. One is the small, dark-haired half-Jewish daughter of bohemian cabaret owners in Germany; the other is the statuesque, blonde British beauty whose father belongs to the National Fascist Front. As each arrives at the legendary Starkers estate for, respectively, refuge and subterfuge, they are absurdly mischaracterized. Assumed to be the new kitchen maid and cowed by her fellow servants, Hannah never shares the story of her family’s distress and legitimate connections to Lord and Lady Liripip. Anna, originally expected to spy and worse for NAFF as that kitchen maid, takes advantage of the mistake, as both girls fall for Teddy, the only heir to the Liripip fortune. Evoking the spirits of P.G. Wodehouse, Preston Sturges and Shakespeare himself, Sullivan delights in leading readers through a jaunty muddle of romantic misfortunes. Yet the later allusions to Nazis and Hitler strain to be integrated emotionally, and the quirky, entertaining storyline ultimately runs out of steam, failing to match the balance of tone struck by Michelle Cooper in her Montmaray Journals.

This lighthearted comedy set against a backdrop of gathering doom may be gutsy; it’s definitely odd. (Historical fiction. 12-16)

RAIN

Sun, Amanda Harlequin Teen (320 pp.) $9.99 paper | Jun. 24, 2014 978-0-373-21111-1 Series: Paper Gods, 2 Following Ink (2013), Katie and Tomohiro, a Kami (descendant of a Japanese god), cope with the danger he poses to her.

Katie and Tomo’s hopes that they can finally be together are dashed when the ink he holds mastery over dramatically malfunctions. Tomo’s powerful, moving, living sketches are dangerous (especially for

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“Lessons—of the life-skills variety and the SAT-vocabulary variety—are many, but the vibrant characters and lively dialogue make them easy to digest.” from on the road to find out

Katie), so for the sake of their relationship and her safety, they struggle to learn how to control them. Katie researches both Tomo’s struggles and her own connection to the ink by secretly meeting former adversary Jun; Tomo disapproves of their friendship and cannot know. The plot delivers Katie’s answers easily, deploying just a few twists at the end. More interestingly, since Jun and Ishikawa ended up in the hospital at the end of Ink, police suspect the two kendo adepts have fallen afoul of a Yakuza gambling plot and so have their eye on fellow kendouka Tomo; the heroes must keep the true supernatural explanations secret. The least magical plot is perhaps the strongest— Katie’s determined to learn kanji in order to avoid transfer to an English-speaking school, all the while coping with her outsider status. The lovingly drawn depiction of Japan will make readers want to visit. The conclusion, rushed compared to the otherwise leisurely pacing, sets up the sequel.

Weak, formulaic romantic and supernatural plots are offset by rich, setting-driven subplots. ( Japanese glossary, acknowledgments) (Paranormal romance. 12-17)

ON THE ROAD TO FIND OUT

Toor, Rachel Farrar, Straus and Giroux (320 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 10, 2014 978-0-374-30014-2

In a light and gently humorous romance, self-centered Alice learns to run, to cope with disappointment and to consider other people’s feelings.

Alice is heartsick after Yale rejects her Early Action application. However, as a family friend both wise and wisecracking points out in a heavy-handed but nonetheless insightful speech, her crushed feeling is less about Yale itself than about not having gotten her own way. Stubborn, snarky and sometimes glaringly un-selfaware, Alice has a smart retort for everything her mom, dad or family friend Walter tries to tell or offer her. She is kinder to Jenni, the best friend for whom Alice’s parents serve as a sort of surrogate family, but astute readers will notice the imbalances in the pair’s relationship long before Jenni herself points them out. What keeps readers engaged with Alice is her devotion to her beloved pet rat, a comical, curious and deeply lovable creature also named Walter, who inspires enthusiastic and endearing rat-related asides to readers. As Alice follows up on her hastily made New Year’s resolution to start running and meets the kind and driven head of a running shop as well as a down-to-earth and dreamy boy runner, her growth is palpable. Lessons—of the life-skills variety and the SAT-vocabulary variety—are many, but the vibrant characters and lively dialogue make them easy to digest.

Warm, funny and wise. (Fiction. 12-18)

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BETWEEN THE SPARK AND THE BURN

Tucholke, April Genevieve Dial (320 pp.) $17.99 | Aug. 14, 2014 978-0-8037-4047-1

After a heady summer full of romance and danger, Violet’s quiet seaside life seems dull, leaving her wishing for the return of the beautiful and dangerous Redding brothers (Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, 2013).

River, with his mysterious glow, was the first to arrive. Then came Neely, the affable brother and self-appointed caretaker of River. The last was Brodie, a brother with a gift for mayhem and a thirst for blood. In this volume, Neely returns at Christmas, and with him comes the promise of adventure. When a late-night radio show begins reporting strange events, Violet, her twin brother, Luke, and their friend, Sunshine, decide to accompany Neely on his quest to find his dangerous siblings.

Dead ravens, a mysterious sea king and a deadly pied piper all lie in wait for the quartet. Violet is both intuitive and naïve, capable of profound revelation as well as remarkable stupidity.

Her lust for danger as well as her heart divided between good and evil make her a frustrating but compelling heroine. Even when her selfish recklessness threatens the lives of those she loves, she presses forward. The faded opulence of the setting is an ideal backdrop for this lushly atmospheric gothic thriller, which, happily, comes with a satisfying conclusion.

Darkly romantic and evocative. (Paranormal romance. 14 & up)

THE MERCILESS

Vega, Danielle Razorbill/Penguin (336 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 12, 2014 978-1-59514-7226 Mean Girls with an occult twist.

Military kid Sofia Flores is used to moving around and always being on the outside, so she’s happy to be embraced by the queen bees in her new high school in tiny Friend, Mississippi. She is a little sorry that Riley and her posse seem to have it in for friendly Brooklyn, but she goes along with them. Though she’s been raised an unbeliever, her beloved grandmother, who lives with Sofia and her mom, is a devout Catholic; something in her responds when Riley decides to “save” her, baptizing her in the girls’ room. What she sees at a party sets off a horrific series of events that ends with maimed and dead teenagers. The bulk of the book takes place in a secret hideout in an abandoned development, and it is there that the girls viciously, bloodily confront Brooklyn, the proceedings causing Sofia to question all her moral certainties (and her immediate survival). The book

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comes with a “for mature audiences only” label, and refreshingly, this is not a warning about sex but about protracted, unrelenting and graphically described violence. Vega works in the occult element coyly, giving readers and Sofia only glimpses of what may or may not be supernatural evil—but there’s plenty of lovingly described, human-inflicted evil to keep strong-stomached readers occupied.

It’ll take a sturdy reader not to keep flinching—or put this exercise in sensation down altogether. (Horror. 16-18)

EDGAR’S SECOND WORD

Vernick, Audrey Illus. by Burris, Priscilla Clarion (32 pp.) $16.99 | Jun. 3, 2014 978-0-547-68462-8

Baby Edgar’s first word (“NO!”) drives his sister crazy, especially since she waited so long to hear it.

Curly-headed Hazel, eager to share books and playtime with her lump of a brother, shines as a refreshing foil to the snarling older sibling whose resentment simmers in so many picture books these days. Hazel’s failed attempts to play school, store, farm, (or even to squeeze the “squeaky-honky-quacky duck”) with little Edgar evoke empathy from readers and a stream of NO!s from the tiny (but mighty) tot. Hand lettering makes Edgar’s NO!s seem LOUD even to a silent reader. After a whole day of insistent negativity (screeching scenes shown on crisp white pages), she’s about ready to give up on brother bonding.

Mother manages to smile through spilled cereal, botched bathtime and even a loud library run, and fluid ink-and-watercolor illustrations offer lots of optimistic springtime colors (greens, yellows, purples), as well as a serene matte finish. Plucky, pitchperfect kid vernacular keeps the story upbeat too, full of silly run-on descriptors; Hazel hopes that Edgar goes from a “pointing, grunting watermelon” to a “not-no-saying lamb of a ram.”

Exhausted by his own naysaying, Edgar finds himself settled on Hazel’s lap for a bedtime read—and offers a second word that finally brings them together.

Playful narration and amusing artwork will prompt readers to say, just like Edgar, “Again.” (Picture book. 2-6)

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THE SHADOW MOTHER

Virgo, Seán Illus. by Pérez, Javier Serrano Groundwood (64 pp.) $21.95 | Jun. 10, 2014 978-0-88899-971-9

The traditional selkie story plays out in an arc of unrequited love and abandonment in this moody iteration.

Writing in terse prose cast into short lines, Virgo begins the story with the sailor going to sea as a boy but halfway through suddenly shifts point of view to that of the dreamy child born to the silent couple years later. The author shows similar indecision in describing the selkie’s garment. It is a “shadow” when the sailor steals it and a “roll of white skin” when the boy (rather than, as is more common, his mother) at last takes it down to the sea one night and swims “out under the old / moon’s path on the waters, leaving / his memories behind.” As if the sailor’s immoral act and the ensuing picture of failed domestic life in the narrative isn’t sad and remote enough, Pérez adds a full suite of subtly tinted sketches that depict either small, slumped figures in lonely landscapes or claustrophobic assemblages of floating bodies or heads, detached hands and surreal fish with human faces. As the lead victim, the selkie woman is most likely to draw sympathy from readers, but she is the least developed of the three central figures.

Not much here for children, but the portentous atmosphere may prompt readers of the inked and pierced set to overlook the story’s overall lack of clarity or cohesion.

(Folk tale. 14-18)

DRAGON GIRL The Secret Valley

Weigel, Jeff Illus. by Weigel, Jeff Andrews McMeel (192 pp.) $9.99 paper | Jun. 3, 2014 978-1-4494-4183-8 Series: Dragon Girl, 1 In a fantasy land where dragons are hunted and prized as prey, Alanna, a strong and kind young girl, finds and vows to protect a dragon nest at the expense of all else.

Orphans Alanna and Hamel have learned to fend for themselves and survive on the earnings from Hamel’s meager blacksmithing skills and by foraging and hunting for food. One day in the forest, Alanna discovers a cave filled with baby dragons and unhatched dragon eggs. She tries to hide her newfound knowledge from Hamel, who longs to become a knight, but he learns her secret and betrays her. Alanna, who had made herself a dragon costume to act as mother to the new babies, now finds herself living among the dragons in their hidden valley. When Hamel and a disreputable knight named Sir Cedric discover her

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“Genuine dialogue, a quick pace and a plot that strikes the right balance between realistic and fantastic make for an engaging read.” from wildflower

whereabouts, Alanna must decide to save herself and Hamel or the dragons. Weigel has created a compulsively likable heroine who seamlessly blends her strength and compassion, reminiscent of Ben Hatke’s Zita the Spacegirl. With lovable dragons, flying ships and danger around every corner, this delightful fantasy doesn’t disappoint.

Get this charmer into the hands of fans of Jeff Smith’s Bone series and its spinoffs. (Graphic fantasy. 7-11)

WILDFLOWER

Whitaker, Alecia Little, Brown (320 pp.) $18.00 | $9.99 e-book | Jul. 1, 2014 978-0-316-25138-9 978-0-316-25136-5 e-book Series: Wildflower, 1 Bird Barrett’s life isn’t exactly normal: Since she was 9, she has been touring, playing bluegrass music with the Barrett Family Band.

She is used to living in an RV, being in a different city every night and not having any close friends outside of her family. She yearns to be noticed by Adam Dean, another traveling musician who often plays the same venues as her family.

However, she never expected to be noticed by an agent for a major record label at one of their shows. Before long she has a record deal, is in the studio laying down original tracks with seasoned musicians, and has legions of fans. Bird is suddenly a public figure living in the spotlight, which has implications not only for her music, but also for her family and her budding relationship with Adam. What separates this novel from others featuring teenage superstars is how grounded Bird is, even as she struggles to process the dramatic changes taking place in her life. Her family is loving and supportive, though Bird’s choices do provoke natural tension among them at times. Genuine dialogue, a quick pace and a plot that strikes the right balance between realistic and fantastic make for an engaging read. The lyrics and sheet music for one of Bird’s songs are appended.

This tender introduction to a newly minted country superstar sets the stage for a compelling series. (Fiction.

12-16)

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RECKONING

Wilkinson, Kerry St. Martin’s Griffin (368 pp.) $18.99 | $9.99 e-book | Jul. 1, 2014 978-1-250-05353-4 978-1-4668-3854-3 e-book Series: Silver Blackthorn Trilogy, 1 Selected as an Offering to the king, one teenage girl discovers the truth behind her country’s revered leader and attempts to expose him in this nail-biting dystopian adventure.

Every July, as part of the celebration that marks the end of the war, all 16-year-olds must face the Reckoning, a mysterious test that classifies each of them as an Elite, Member, Intermediate or Trog. Beyond assignment to jobs and social statuses, those in the Reckoning also risk inclusion in the pool of thirty Offerings to King Victor. No one knows what being an Offering entails. Silver Blackthorn, a tech-savvy girl from the Northern Realm, learns firsthand the disturbing truth behind the mystery.

Brutality lies in wait at every camera-studded corner in Middle England, and a friend made today may be gone tomorrow. Silver quickly realizes the only way to survive is to escape from Windsor Castle. Though Wilkinson frames this trilogy opener with heavy nods to tropes popularized in Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games trilogy, the plot soon veers into a briskly paced escape mission. Hints at romance fall flat, but there’s true joy in Silver’s evolving friendships and the game-changing spirit of camaraderie they inspire.

Though derivative, this new dystopian novel ultimately engages with its blurring of lines between medieval castles and sci-fi technology. (Science fiction. 14 & up)

MY NEW FRIEND IS SO FUN!

Willems, Mo Illus. by Willems, Mo Hyperion (64 pp.) $8.99 | Jun. 3, 2014 978-1-4231-7958-0 Series: Elephant & Piggie

Can Gerald and Piggie’s friendship withstand the friendly overtures of Brian Bat? When Snake informs Gerald that Piggie is playing with Brian Bat, he is at first complacent. Brian is “nice,” he observes; Snake concurs—after all, he says, “Brian is my Best Friend!” Their mutual reflection that Piggie and Brian “must be having a superduper fun time!” turns, however, to paranoia when they realize that if their best pals “are having that much fun together, then… / …maybe they do not need us” (that last is printed in teeny-tiny, utterly demoralized type). Gerald and Snake dash/slither to put an end to the fun. Their fears are confirmed when the two new buddies tell them they have “been playing BEST FRIEND GAMES!”—which, it turns out, means making drawings of their

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respective best friends, Gerald and Snake. Awww. While the buildup to the friends’ confrontation is characteristically funny, there’s a certain feeling of anticlimax to the story’s resolution.

How many young children, when playing with a new friend, are likely to spend their time thinking of the friends that they are not playing with? This is unfortunate, as the emotions that Gerald and Snake experience are realistic and profound, deserving of more than a platitudinous, unrealistic response.

Everything that readers have come to love about the Elephant & Piggie books is present—masterful pacing, easy-to-follow, color-coded speech bubbles, hilarious body language—except an emotionally satisfying ending. (Early reader. 6-8)

WINGS OF WAR

Wilson, John Doubleday Canada/Random House Canada (256 pp.) $9.99 paper | Jul. 22, 2014 978-0-38567-830-8 Sixteen-year-old Edward Simpson dreams of being a pilot, and World War I affords him the opportunity.

It’s the early days of flying machines, and Edward’s uncle Horst, who builds various kinds of airplanes to fly the Saskatchewan skies in 1914, is in the thick of it, saying, “We will soar like the birds and laugh at the poor people on the ground below.” He arranges for Edward to go to flight school in Montana. From there, Edward goes to the Royal Flying Corps in England and off to war. H.G. Wells had predicted air battles in the clouds and bomb-carrying flying machines capable of destroying whole cities, and soon Edward sees firsthand the killing capabilities of his beloved flying machines. But he literally feels above it all, thinking, “If only I could stay up here forever, free from the insanity below.”

Though he loses friends and acknowledges the death and destruction below, he is able to put the war at a distance and be realistic about his role in it: “It’s what I am, and I cannot deny that.” Wilson writes eloquently about one boy’s love of flight and his dream of flying. Though dialogue is sometimes used didactically to teach readers the history of flight, Edward’s narrative is thoroughly engaging.

A fine, old-fashioned–feeling coming-of-age tale set in the World War I skies. (Historical fiction. 9-14)

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DEFECTOR

Winnacker, Susanne Razorbill/Penguin (288 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 26, 2014 978-1-59514-6564 Series: Variants, 2 Tessa is a Variant, a human who can absorb someone else’s DNA and become that person. This makes her the perfect spy, as readers found out in Imposter (2013).

Tessa has grown since her first mission—she’s more confident about who she is and her special skill. She’s sure she can handle her next mission, but everything goes horribly wrong. Her cover is blown, and Abel’s Army, a band of Variants who are determined to overthrow the government, tries to kidnap her. Worse, her best friend is missing; was Holly kidnapped, or did she just run away? Suddenly, Tessa is not sure of what she knows or whom she can trust. Everyone has lied to her, manipulated her. Everyone is always watching her. By accident, she finds out why: Abel of Abel’s Army and she have a remarkable connection. She can’t stay locked away at headquarters any longer. She needs to find out the truth about her past, rescue Holly and learn exactly who she herself is, with only Devon, her “brother” from her first mission, as companion.

This novel picks up the threads left dangling at the end of its predecessor almost immediately, conspicuously maintaining its shadowy and mysterious tone. Clichéd dialogue and plenty of telling, not showing, characterize the narrative.

Just another on an already crowded shelf. (Paranormal thriller. 12-18)

WHEN A GRANDPA SAYS “I LOVE YOU”

Wood, Douglas Illus. by Bell, Jennifer A. Simon & Schuster (32 pp.) $16.99 | $10.99 e-book | Aug. 5, 2014 978-0-689-81512-6 978-1-4424-9847-1 e-book “When a Grandpa says ‘I love you,’ / he doesn’t always say it / in the regular way. / That would be just a little too…regular.”

Wood and Bell’s follow-up to When a Dad Says “I Love You” (2013) features anthropomorphic grandpa-kid pairs of animals demonstrating all the various unregular ways grandpas can say “I love you.” They might try to teach you to wink, though it usually only results in a blink. They might repeatedly teach you to tie your shoes. He might say it “by buying you / a double-scoop ice-cream cone / on a hot summer day. / And then by helping you eat it / if it melts too fast.” He might teach you to throw a special pitch or pretend to love your tea at a tea party. He might teach you to play old-fashioned games like checkers or try to learn a newfangled game on the computer. “But most of all, a grandpa says / ‘I love you’ just by being… // Your grandpa!” This

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“Yang’s funny and perceptive script offers clever riffs on familiar tropes and explores themes of identity, heroism and belonging.” from the shadow hero

appealing—but free of saccharine—exploration of that special intergenerational relationship would be great for Grandparents Day or just an “I love you” storytime. Bell’s softly smudgy, crosshatched pencil illustrations show animal grandpas and kids in a bounty of recognizable, everyday situations.

It’s hard not to love this one—just like an indulgent grandpa. (Picture book. 3-7)

THE SHADOW HERO

Yang, Gene Luen Illus. by Liew, Sonny First Second (171 pp.) $17.99 | Jul. 15, 2014 978-1-59643-6978 Series: Green Turtle Chronicles, 1 A golden-age comic superhero returns with a brand-new Asian-American origin story.

In 1944, a Chinese-American cartoonist created the Green Turtle, a World War II superhero who may have had a Chinese secret identity. Seventy years later, Yang (Boxers & Saints, 2013) and Liew (Malinky Robot, 2011) have updated the Green Turtle with an openly Asian-American heritage. Growing up in Chinatown, Hank Chu dreams of becoming a grocer like his father. His mother makes other plans for his future, however, after she sees the local, white superhero in action. She sews Hank a costume, tries to help him acquire superpowers and even arranges for him to learn kung fu. Despite her efforts, Hank’s superhero debut is a disappointment—one with tragic consequences for his family after it makes them a target for a local gang. Yang’s funny and perceptive script offers clever riffs on familiar tropes and explores themes of identity, heroism and belonging. For example, Hank’s mother is a hilarious spin on the “tiger mother” stereotype, and in his costume, Hank is often mistaken for “one of those gwailo superheroes.”

Liew’s playful illustrations, especially his characters’ cartoonishly exaggerated expressions, complement the story’s humor.

The first issue of the original 1940s comic book is included in the backmatter.

An entertaining and intelligent response to classic superhero stories. (author’s note, original comic) (Graphic adventure. 12 & up)

I AM THE MISSION

Zadoff, Allen Little, Brown (423 pp.) $18.00 | Jun. 1, 2014 Series: The Lost Assassin, 2 978-0-316-19969-8 An unnamed soldier infiltrates a teen military camp and picks up where his lost colleague left off.

Still recovering from the trauma of his previous mission in New York City (I Am the Weapon, originally published as Boy Nobody, 2013), Boy Nobody, known as Daniel in this sequel, embarks on a new one. He is to assassinate the ringleader of a secret military camp in rural New Hampshire, where he indoctrinates teens to become weapons of fear. Daniel knows he must win their trust and prove his leadership abilities, and that makes up the majority of the pages of this tightly written, exciting second outing. Zadoff packs in plenty of tension-filled moments that will leave readers on the edges of their seats, including some flirty repartee that leads to a bit of steamy action with the daughter of the camp’s owner. This time, however, the blood-and-guts level escalates. It’s no splatterfest, but there’s some bona fide Rambo action in which Daniel digs a knife into his own skin, and that will no doubt turn a few stomachs—but the book’s not really for those readers anyway. The novel’s only fault lies in Zadoff ’s apparent need to keep going.

Just when readers think they’ve made it through one breathless climax, Zadoff adds another twist that tacks on more pages and Hollywood-esque thrills. Readers won’t mind, however. In fact, they’ll be sorry when it finally stops.

A more dangerous Alex Rider for the older set. (Thriller.

13-17)

interactive e-books PTEROSAURS Flight in the Age of Dinosaurs

American Museum of Natural History American Museum of Natural History $0.00 | Apr. 1, 2014 1.0; Apr. 1, 2014 Video clips and computer-graphic animations give this companion to an exhibit at New York’s American Museum of Natural History plenty of lift.

Along with a short video in which the co-curators and another expert highlight the exhibition’s subject and themes, the app offers broad looks at pterosaurs’ physical characteristics—from unique skeletal features to the wide range of

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variations in various species’ teeth, heads and tails. The illustrators start with the fossil record, but in a mix of still and animated images they also flesh out the prehistoric fliers with fuzz or feathers, plus flamboyantly colored heads and crests.

Viewers can compare computer-generated reconstructions of pterosaurs in flight with live action clips of modern birds and insects, see pterosaurs walk and feed, tap locations on a map to visit the sites of major discoveries and use sliders to “assemble” scattered fossil fragments or create a chart of body sizes. The presentation is largely visual, but captions and easily digestible explanatory passages fill in details. Furthermore, mini-essays offer glances at renowned fossil hunters Mary Anning and O.C. Marsh.

Though more a patchwork of discrete sections than a cohesive whole, this up-to-the-moment survey still flies on its own. (Requires iOS 6 and above.) (timeline) (iPad informational app. 7-10)

AVOKIDDO ABC RIDE

Avokiddo Avokiddo $2.99 | Mar. 20, 2014 1.0.1; Mar. 30, 2014

A combination bike ride/ABC lesson becomes a phonetic adventure.

On the opening screen, readers choose a boy or a girl (both Caucasian, alas) to hop on a bike and speed away with a swipe of a finger toward each of 26 alphabet activities. Preschoolers can pop balloons galore until they find the hidden B and then drag each letter of the word to spell it out. They can “extract” the E from one of six eggs, water a quartet of flowerpots until the F emerges, manage a mess of letters by using a magnet to isolate the M and so on. One alliterative activity at a time, they make their way through the entire alphabet, coaxed by an enthusiastic narrator, an encouraging pal (the friend who’s not on the bike assists at each stop) and plenty of digital eye candy. Cycling through the app a second time, the alphabet sequence and words remain the same, but the activities have variables, giving it an even longer shelf life. Readers can also make their ways through the alphabet at random or select particular letters to explore. The app features animation that supports the learning process, spot-on sound effects and a catchy musical backdrop. And among other options, parents can choose a spelling or phonic approach to customize the experience.

Short on repetition and long on educational fun, this app is a preschooler’s delight. (iPad storybook app. 2-5)

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THE FROG AND FISH STORYBOOK

Crawford, Shawn Saacke Illus. by Joepee Valdas Barvainis $2.99 | Mar. 13, 2014 1.0; Mar. 13, 2014

A sweet portrait of an interspecies friendship that survives major physical changes.

Having hatched side by side, tadpole and fish think they’re brothers—until the one develops a pair of legs, and the other acquires scales: “Gee whiz! I get to be a frog? / I’ll hop above and swim below!” / “But I’ll still be a fish. / Then how will we be bros?” It all turns out to be a nonissue, though, because rather than paddling off to meet others of their respective kinds, the two remain best buds. In the illustrations, simple, painted and combed cut-paper pond denizens, cardboard items and (for eggs) buttons have been laid over crumpled or otherwise textured backgrounds. Tapping triggers emphatic sound effects, as well as prompting the figures to twitch energetically, drift, spin or create clouds of paper-dot bubbles. Selecting the optional audio narration also highlights each word of the rhymed verses in succession. A monotonous, dispensable sung rendition of the entire text comes attached.

A low-key alternative to Jeanne Willis and Tony Ross’ Tadpole’s Promise (2005) and other more true-to-nature takes on the theme. (Requires iOS 7 and above.) (iPad storybook app. 5-7)

VINCENT THE ANTEATER’S SPACE VOYAGE

López, Luis Illus. by Zambelli, Isabel El Pudú Studios $1.99 | Mar. 10, 2014 5.0; Apr. 2, 2014

This tale about a space-traveling anteater aspires to educate kids about the environmental dangers of consumerism.

Vincent, an animated felt creature that moves much like the characters in old stop-motion shorts, is a “science-minded” anteater. His favorite food is Green Hairy Ants, and they are in short supply in his tropical forest. His friends suggest dancing under the Great Cosmic Anteater in the sky to get the ants to return, but Vincent isn’t buying anything but a scientific approach. (While the whole creation/evolution debate isn’t explicitly explored, an unmistakable theme of science vs. religion runs throughout the story.) When Vincent builds a rocket and embarks on a quest to find the Cosmic Anteater, a screen with nine planet icons appears, each offering a vignette and subsequent tip that are designed to appeal to kids’ ecological consciences. After making “green” suggestions on each planet, Vincent finally reaches a place of enlightenment. There is no

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“The author swims easily through the sometimes-turbid sea of numbers….” from incredible numbers

Great Cosmic Anteater. The illustrations are stunning and quite distinctive, but the overall interactive design may frustrate. The first page does not advance until all four interactions (signaled with twinkles) are found; both these and those that follow feel arbitrary, but at least subsequent pages advance without forcing readers to find all embedded interactions.

This multilingual app offers appealing visuals and worthy subject matter, but its disjointed, oft-times heavyhanded approach keeps it from soaring. (iPad storybook app.

3-7)

ALPHABET OF INSECTS

Schwaeber, Barbie Heit Oceanhouse Media $2.99 | Apr. 11, 2014 2.6; Apr. 11, 2014

Digital tweaks add interactive features to this edition of an insect ABC (originally packaged in 2007 as a book/ CD set).

The 26 alphabetically arranged entrants include such usual suspects as the Ladybug and Praying mantis, along with the less-familiar likes of the Velvet ant and Olive fruit fly. Each gets a close-up painted portrait done in an arbitrary range of styles from photorealism to crayon sketch, a perfunctory rhymed caption—“The inchworm likes to crawl around / and eat leaves every day…”—and, with a tap on the highlighted name, a boxed snippet of explanation or further detail. A menu can be opened on any screen that allows skipping, starting over and replacing the optional audio reading with a self-recording. Problems abound. The Japanese beetle illustrated is either a rare variety or some other sort of beetle. Along with failing to mention that the Inchworm is a caterpillar or that it and the other three larvae included in the alphabetical roster will look different as adults, the author incorrectly claims that Unicorn caterpillars lay eggs. Her observation that a sawfly (Xyelidae) is “like a wasp but not the same” is both unexplained in the verse and contradicted in the accompanying note. She also characterizes collecting Fireflies in a jar as a “fun activity” but neglects to recommend letting them go afterward.

Budding naturalists, even younger ones, can easily find more dependable and systematic guides to their backyard biota. (iPad informational app. 5-8)

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INCREDIBLE NUMBERS

Stewart, Ian TouchPress $4.99 | Mar. 27, 2014 1.0.0; Mar. 27, 2014

TouchPress and Stewart offer eight challenging dives into mathematical theory and practice for readers not intimidated by complex formulas and brain-bending concepts.

Floating balloons on the opening screen lead to concise explorations of select topics in areas ranging from “Primes” to “Polygons,” “Infinity” to “Music.” In “Nature,” for instance, Stewart focuses on the discovery of the oddly similar but not identical “golden” and Fibonacci numbers and their occurrences in phenomena from sunflowers to spiral galaxies. Likewise, in “Infinity,” he covers set theory and other efforts to make sense of that concept’s bewildering paradoxes. Throughout, readers can tap highlighted names and special terms throughout to see definitions or biographical sketches. They can also search (with near-certain success) for their own birthdays in the first million digits of pi, create a message Enigma Machine–style in “Secret Codes” and experiment with harmonic intervals in “Music,” among other clever interactive demonstrations. The author swims easily through the sometimes-turbid sea of numbers, and the clean graphics, sharp photos and well-designed features that accompany his lucid explanations will help draw readers along in his wake.

This may tempt even children who tremble at the sight of a square root to take the plunge. (Requires iOS 7.1 and above.) (iPad informational app. 14 & up)

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continuing series

TEXAS GRIT

MERMAID REEF

Dahlstrom, S. J. Paul Dry | (141 pp.) $7.95 paper | Jun. 1, 2014 978-1-58988-094-8 paper Adventures of Wilder Good, 2 (Fiction. 8-12)

AWKWARDLY EVER AFTER

Earhart, Kristin Scholastic | (96 pp.) $4.99 paper | May 27, 2014 978-0-545-61760-4 paper Puppy Powers, 2 (Fiction. 7-10)

VIOLET MACKEREL’S POSSIBLE FRIEND

Greene, Stephanie Putnam | (96 pp.) $13.99 | $4.99 paper | Jun. 28, 2014 978-0-399-16364-7 978-0-14-242735-4 paper Princess Posey, First Grader, 8 (Fiction. 5-8)

Banks, Rosie Scholastic | (128 pp.) $4.99 paper | May 27, 2014 978-0-545-53556-4 paper Secret Kingdom, 4 (Fantasy. 7-10)

WAG, YOU’RE IT!

Bates, Marni KTeen | (304 pp.) $9.95 paper | Jun. 24, 2014 978-0-7582-9516-3 paper Smith High, 5 (Fiction. 14-18)

PRINCESS POSEY AND THE FIRST-GRADE BOYS

Branford, Anna Illus. by Allen, Elanna Atheneum | (128 pp.) $15.99 | May 6, 2014 978-1-4424-9455-8 Violet Mackerel, 5 (Fiction. 6-10)

THE RAINBOW OPAL

Harrison, Paula Scholastic | (128 pp.) $4.99 paper | May 27, 2014 978-0-545-66166-9 paper Rescue Princesses, 11 (Fantasy. 7-10)

SHOW-AND-TELL, FLAT STANLEY!

Brown, Jeff Illus. by Pamintuan, Macky Harper/HarperCollins | (32 pp.) $16.99 | $3.99 paper | May 20, 2014 978-0-06-218976-9 978-0-06-218975-2 paper Flat Stanley (Early reader. 4-8)

THEY CHANGED THE WORLD

Bell, Edison and Tesla Helfand, Lewis Illus. by Kumar, Naresh Campfire | (96 pp.) $12.99 paper | Jun. 17, 2014 978-93-80741-87-1 paper Campfire Graphic Novels Heroes (Graphic biography. 10-14)

HEIDI HECKELBECK IS A FLOWER GIRL

Coven, Wanda Illus. by Burris, Priscilla Little Simon | (128 pp.) $15.99 | $4.99 paper | May 13, 2014 978-1-4814-0499-0 978-1-4814-0498-3 paper Heidi Heckelbeck, 11 (Fantasy. 5-7)

FRANKIE VS. THE ROWDY ROMANS

Lampard, Frank Scholastic | (112 pp.) $4.99 paper | May 27, 2014 978-0-545-66614-5 paper Frankie’s Magic Soccer Ball, 2 (Fiction. 7-10)

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TAKE ME ON

NIGHTMARELAND

McGarry, Katie Harlequin Teen | (544 pp.) $17.99 | May 27, 2014 978-0-373-21118-0 Pushing the Limits, 4 (Romance. 14-18)

Preller, James Illus. by Bruno, Iacopo Feiwel & Friends | (112 pp.) $5.99 paper | Jun. 10, 2014 978-1-250-01893-9 paper Scary Tales, 2 (Horror/short stories. 7-10)

SYLVA AND THE LOST TREASURE

EVIL TWINS

McNamara, Margaret Illus. by Collingridge, Catharine Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins | (144 pp.) $15.99 | $4.99 paper | May 6, 2014 978-0-06-226721-4 978-0-06-226720-7 paper Fairy Bell Sisters, 5 (Fantasy. 6-10)

Savage, J. Scott Illus. by Holgate, Doug Harper/HarperCollins | (288 pp.) $14.99 | Jun. 24, 2014 978-0-06-213337-3 Case File 13, 3 (Funny horror. 8-12)

SECRET OF THE SILVER KEY

MIA’S GOLDEN BIRD

O’Connor, Jane Illus. by Glasser, Robin Preiss Harper/HarperCollins | (128 pp.) $9.99 | May 6, 2014 978-0-06-208299-2 Nancy Clancy, 4 (Mystery. 6-10)

Schroeder, Lisa Scholastic | (192 pp.) $5.99 paper | May 27, 2014 978-0-545-60377-5 paper Charmed Life, 2 (Fantasy. 8-12)

THE GREAT MOUSE RACE

THE MYSTERY OF THE STOLEN PAINTING

Stilton, Geronimo Scholastic | (128 pp.) $6.99 paper | May 27, 2014 978-0-545-64654-3 paper Geronimo Stilton: Cavemice, 5 (Adventure. 7-10)

Paris, Harper Illus. by Calo, Marcos Little Simon | (128 pp.) $15.99 | May 6, 2014 978-1-4814-0297-2 Greetings from Somewhere, 3 (Mystery. 5-7)

THE STINKY CHEESE VACATION

Stilton, Geronimo Scholastic | (128 pp.) $6.99 paper | Jun. 24, 2014 978-0-545-55631-6 paper Geronimo Stilton, 57 (Adventure. 7-10)

MR. POPULARITY

Peirce, Lincoln Illus. by Peirce, Lincoln Harper/HarperCollins | (224 pp.) $9.99 paper | May 6, 2014 978-0-06-208700-3 paper Big Nate (comic strips) (Humor. 8-12)

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indie BEATING ARTHRITIS Alternative Cooking

These titles earned the Kirkus Star:

Baker Dan Baker Dan LLC (130 pp.) $25.00 paper | $6.99 e-book Nov. 21, 2013 978-0-9894380-1-8

SCOUTING FOR THE REAPER by Jacob M. Appel..........................126 STARTING UP SILICON VALLEY by Katherine Maxfield............... 132 The Shameless Full Moon, Travels in Africa

by Carol Miller................................................................................... 133 Chronicles: The Library of Illumination

by Carol Pack...................................................................................... 133 ETHICS OF THE UNDEAD by Loren Schechter................................. 137

THE SHAMELESS FULL MOON, Travels In Africa

Miller, Carol CreateSpace (246 pp.) $11.95 paper | Feb. 25, 2014 978-1-4949-3654-9

This alternative cookbook offers a variety of foods that aid in the alleviation of arthritis in the form of creative recipes that veer away from the conventional.

Baker Dan, author and chef, begins this cookbook with a detailed explanation of different nutrients and the ways in which they help control and alleviate pain from arthritis. Diagnosed with Palindromic Rheumatoid Arthritis, the author learned how to engage in alternative cooking, a process in which fewer ingredients are used to prepare meals that reduce inflammation and also satisfy the taste buds. The author posits a central theory: The effects of a food are primary, and gratification from eating is secondary. Eliminating foods that exacerbate inflammation is central to the recipes in this book, and each reader has the freedom to determine which foods to eliminate, whether that’s wheat-based ingredients, meats or certain spices. Organized into categories such as soups, salads, vegetarian dishes, quiches, fish and chicken, the author presents many tasty recipes that depart from traditional fare. For example, the popcorn salad combines popcorn and apples, while the squash soup recipe contains wild sardines. Perhaps the most compelling area of the cookbook is the vegetarian section, which contains exciting combinations, from polenta topped with avocado to seared yams and zucchini and carrots mixed with wild rice. Periodically accompanied by photos, the recipes are colorful and full of healthy nutrients while they’re also mostly light on calories and fats. Baker Dan cites reputable research in the beginning of the cookbook to support the idea that proper nutrition can replace anti-inflammatory medications that can come with a host of side effects such as memory loss, digestive trouble and insomnia. The author also lays out a three-step plan for each individual reader to discover his or her own food intolerances, which includes eliminating foods and then slowly reintroducing them to gauge physiological changes or reactions. Readers who wonder whether they suffer from gluten intolerance or negative reactions to certain foods may enjoy this particularly simple process.

A colorful, thorough cookbook that introduces a variety of recipes for those suffering from arthritis.

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MALALA YOUSAFZAI Warrior with Words

SCOUTING FOR THE REAPER Stories

Abouraya, Karen Leggett Illus. by Wheatley, L. C. StarWalk Kids Media (36 pp.) $11.99 paper | Jan. 29, 2014 978-1-63083-316-9

Appel, Jacob M. Black Lawrence Press (187 pp.) $21.65 paper | Feb. 11, 2014 978-1-937854-95-9

A nonfiction picture book about a young Pakistani activist who believes that education is a basic human right.

Malala Yousafzai grew up in Pakistan’s Swat Valley, where her father ran a school for girls. She loved books, words and language, and in 2007, when the Taliban came to power in the area and tried to ban education for girls, she started writing brave blog posts asserting that education is a fundamental right.

The Taliban infamously responded to the 15-year-old’s courage by shooting her in the head as she sat in her school bus. Malala became an international cause célèbre, shining a light not only on the Taliban’s injustices, but also on the work of activists like her who resisted the regime. After she recovered, she spoke at the United Nations and then took her message—“Every child.

Every country. Free school”—around the world. Malala is a celebrity among politically conscious adults, and her story is exactly the sort that captivates kids: A relatable young teenager who stands up to injustice in a simple, powerful way. Leggett Abouraya (Hands Around the Library, 2012) gets off to a slightly shaky, abstract start on the book’s first page: “Malala Yousafzai did not celebrate her sixteenth birthday with a sleepover, but with a stand-up.” After that, however, her words and her storytelling are clear and moving, revealing a real talent for understanding young audiences. Instead of introducing or explaining the Taliban within the body of the story, for example, she leaves it to a longer endnote so the main narrative can focus on Malala herself. When Malala is shot, the author uses straightforward language that isn’t sensationalistic and doesn’t overpower the gravity of the act. The author also highlights elements of Malala’s bright personality, including her love of the color pink, and quotes often from Malala’s speeches and blog. Wheatley’s illustrations meet the high standards set by the text, using cut paper and occasional photographs to create skillful compositions.

A moving real-life story well-told and beautifully illustrated.

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In this collection of literary fiction, winner of the 2012 Hudson Prize, seven short stories explore secrets, lies and trust.

Appel (Phoning Home: Essays, 2014, etc.) populates his stories with mostly ordinary people. But his characters, whether a truck driver or a professional folklorist, teenage or elderly, male or female, all tend to come up against a longing for trustworthiness. The title story begins with the knockout line: “Nothing sells tombstones like a Girl Scout in uniform”—a mild piece of deception (Natalie, the narrator, is 13 and was never a Girl Scout) that hints at more complicated ones to follow. Over several visits, Natalie’s father flirts with an old love, Delia Braithwaite, who’s dying, while ostensibly selling her a headstone. When she finally says, “I trust you, Gordon,” he trembles, as if suppressing a scream: “My father’s tone shifted slowly from intimate to false intimate—the voice he used to clinch the bargain with his other customers.” In these stories, trust can create distance as well as closeness, as can the truth.

In “Choose Your Own Genetics,” a lesson on blood typing discloses some unsettling news; even more unsettling is how the narrator’s respected father, a geneticist, uses his superior knowledge to bully the teacher. Greta, the lonely, widowed central character in “Ad Valorem,” decides to ignore what she knows to be true since she longs to trust. Part of trusting yourself is knowing your limits, or as the truck-driver narrator of “Hazardous Cargoes” puts it: “You’ve got to know your load. And you’ve got to know how far to carry it.” Appel approaches his characters with compassion and an understanding of human frailty. In “The Extinction of Fairy Tales,” another lonely character realizes when her lawn-care man stops showing up that she doesn’t even know his last name, and she owes him a debt of gratitude: “She wanted to tell people that he was the man who’d buried her dog, but that sounded absolutely nutty out-of-context. There was the problem with human relationships—you could never really explain them.” Luckily for readers, Appel can.

A beautiful, well-balanced collection.

HENCH 2012 EDITION

Beechen, Adam Illus. by Bello, Manny; Beavers, Ethen CreateSpace (134 pp.) $14.99 paper | Jun. 12, 2012 978-1-4776-4957-2 For once, the henchman gets to tell his origin story in this beautifully rendered graphic novel.

In comic books, every costumed villain bent on elaborate schemes, whether a jewelry heist or world domination, needs a few henchmen. It’s these bit players who drive the getaway cars and provide the muscle. Mike Fulton is an ordinary guy whose college football career was shattered along with his knee after a rough game. Trying to buckle down to a normal life, he marries, has a child and works a low-paying job, but he never stops missing the excitement of competition, cheering crowds and team spirit. Football was the only thing he was ever good at. As a linebacker whose mentality is “Just tell me what to do, and turn me loose,” Mike doesn’t know how to make things better. Then he meets Randy, another ex-athlete whose career was ended by injury, who asks him: “Have you ever considered henching?” Former football players are in demand: They have size, speed and can follow orders.

And despite the huge risks, Mike has no better offers. After a successful heist, Mike is nabbed on another job and sent to prison. He promises his wife he’ll go straight, but when their son, Cory, needs expensive medical treatment, he gets back into the life. This choice will have tragic consequences that Mike eventually must face. Beechen (Batman Beyond: Batgirl Beyond, 2014, etc.), Bello (Dugout, 2008) and Beavers (Bad Weather!, 2014, etc.) have created an entertaining, thoughtful spin on the superhero comic, cleverly focusing on the kind of character always left in the background: “This is me,” read several helpful arrows pointing Mike out among a crowd. (This technique is used to excellent, increasingly poignant effect throughout.) Mike’s character is interestingly, realistically developed. Touches of humor and a well-informed understanding of the genre (several panels are hat tips to comic-book greats) help bolster the story. The artwork is strong, bold and dynamic while still providing fine details that help set the scene.

Gets beneath the mask and tights to humanize the henching life.

THE AMERICAN STUDENT

Berkman, Samuel iUniverse (214 pp.) $24.95 | $14.95 paper | May 5, 2006 978-0-595-67332-2 A boy’s coming-of-age story runs through this debut novel filled with Cold War history (including a cameo by Willy Brandt) about a scary struggle with a villainous family.

In 1960s France, Roy Harrison’s lawyer father, Steve, is serving a stint with the Air Force Reserve in Alsace-Lorraine. They’ve had a difficult relationship since Roy’s mother died a few years ago, and Roy didn’t want to go, but his father insisted. A man of discipline and few words, Steve is trying his best to be a good father, though intimacy doesn’t come easily to him. He enrolls Roy in a lycée, pitching him headfirst into French culture—not a welcoming atmosphere for an American kid. Barely speaking French is the least of Roy’s difficulties. One of his classmates, Robert LePerrier, goes out of his way to bully and abuse him for no discernible reason. Readers will be well into the tale before the back story emerges, detailing the LePerrier family’s sordid activities during WWII and their toxic attitudes that have infected their son. Their story (father Jean-Claude’s specifically) brings in two real-life figures from the past: the notorious Klaus Barbie, “Butcher of Lyon,” and Jean Moulin, hero of the Resistance. Steve confronts the LePerrier patriarch, exposing his dark past and bringing him to trial. Meanwhile, Roy has become fluent in French and has—much to his surprise but not the reader’s—come to love his place in France and his French friends. He has grown up; his father is proud of him—and says so. At times, reactions from characters can be a bit over-the-top, not matching the provocations. Nevertheless, the narrative is nicely bookended by passages set in Paris in 1999, when Roy runs into Robert, his old nemesis. They will never be close, but they understand each other. In the epilogue—later that weekend—Dr. Harrison flies home to the States and to his wife and his kids and his good life.

An impressive debut novel; hopefully, there’s more.

STEVE BROWN AND HIS SEVEN SECRETS Bhattacharrya, Abhilassh P CreateSpace (246 pp.) $10.50 paper | $3.99 e-book Jun. 24, 2013 978-1-4905-2116-9

Bhattacharrya’s debut epic fantasy features a boy destined to change the world, talking butterflies, Buddhist monks, ancient secrets, and a strong manga aesthetic in both his prose descriptions and illustrations.

Steve Brown has grown up in an orphanage, slaving away for the abusive Mr. Arnold until a strange series of circumstances sends him across the world to a Buddhist monastery deep in the Himalayas. There, Steve discovers new friends and mentors, like the talking butterfly, Pinkoo; the smiling apprentice monk, Cheeka; and the monastery’s grand master, Shom. He also discovers new enemies, perhaps the most terrifying of whom is Koraka, a scenery-chewing, Satan-worshipping, baby-sacrificing madman.

Koraka seeks seven mystical secrets—six of which, via magical paintings, are guarded by the monastery—that, when combined with Steve’s burgeoning abilities, will give him unlimited access to all the power our sun possesses. It’s up to Steve and his new friends to save these seven secrets and, with them, the world. The plot is an archetypal one, and though details of the villains, the unusual locale and the protagonist’s special powers add some freshness, they’re |

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“Lee Child’s Jack Reacher has got nothing on Soleil; hopefully readers haven’t seen the last of her.” from soleil tangiere

not enough to make this a truly unique story. Most of the characters lack depth, more often than not coming across as simple stock characters rather than real people. The dialogue also ranges from pleasingly cheesy to downright clunky. Steve, for example, is told that these things are happening to him “because only you have the amazing Rainbow power.” The story moves along at a nice pace, however, and the imaginative battle scenes pack a punch. The scattered black-and-white illustrations, also by Bhattacharrya, enhance the story, especially the action sequences.

A fast-paced fantasy epic that will appeal to younger fans of anime and manga.

SOLEIL TANGIERE

Bonner, Larry CreateSpace (322 pp.) $12.99 paper | $4.99 e-book Dec. 30, 2013 978-1-4929-8498-6 A formidable young heroine leads this addictive fusion of noir fiction and suspense thriller.

Amid the political turmoil of the 1980s—Reagan’s in office, the USSR is collapsing—Soleil Tangiere, the 19-year-old daughter of a Quebecois miner, follows her beloved father to Montana when he lands a job working for a mining company specializing in platinum. The owner of the company, however, is hopelessly entangled in the conspiracies of a ruthless businessman/crime boss from England known only as Smythe. When Soleil’s father becomes a target of Smythe’s paranoia and is killed in an “accidental” mining explosion, Soleil—a rugged Canadian beauty who knows how to take care of herself—vows to track down and kill all of those involved in her father’s murder. After catching up with the crooked sheriff and exacting her revenge, she goes on the run and unknowingly begins a brutal yet beautiful journey of self-discovery that takes her to New York City and Europe. Soleil, the powerful fuel that powers this novel, is simultaneously identifiable as a relatively naïve, vulnerable Everywoman and as a larger-than-life heroine.

And while at points the suspension of disbelief is stretched, it doesn’t go too far, leaving readers with a breakneck-paced story filled with political intrigue, nonstop action and even a little romance. With intriguing, well-developed characters, a few bombshell plot twists and a highly satisfying ending, this novel will have fans of mainstream thrillers standing up and applauding. Lee Child’s Jack Reacher has got nothing on Soleil; hopefully readers haven’t seen the last of her.

Brilliant characterizations—particularly the courageous, charming heroine—help make this a finish-in-one-night kind of read.

FIGHT

Coffey, Brent Self (212 pp.) $1.99 e-book | Dec. 22, 2013 Coffey’s debut thriller follows the Boston district attorney, who hopes to adopt a troubled boy and seems to be getting help from a gangster—the same man he’s been trying to put in prison.

After failing to convict notorious mobster Gabriel Adelaide of protection racketeering, Bruce Hudson directs his energy to 5-year-old August, whom Bruce and his wife, Martha, want to adopt. But Bruce’s colitis has disqualified him as a foster parent for the boy. He suspects ulterior motives when Gabe apparently pushes the adoption process along by strong-arming August’s social worker and paying for Bruce’s costly surgery. Gabe, however, has personal reasons for helping—reasons his gangster father, Victor, would rather keep quiet. The well-written novel gradually and skillfully changes protagonists: Gabe begins as Bruce’s antagonist when he initially threatens Sara, the social worker, but Gabe’s tactics improve, and he instead offers Sara money; by the time he takes August away from his uncaring foster parents, Gabe has also taken the novel’s focus. The story’s strongest point is its depiction of fathers: Both Gabe and Bruce may be only surrogate dads, but they clearly care for August—Gabe orders one of his goons to buy whatever toys the boy asks for—and they’re in sharp contrast to August’s biological father, a drunk who raped, beat and strangled the boy’s mother to death and then committed suicide. Coffey amps up the tension by throwing another mob family into the mix: the Filippos, who are trying to elbow their way onto the Adelaides’ turf (mostly drugs and prostitutes). Victor, meanwhile, pulls Bruce even deeper into his family’s troubles when he tries convincing the Filippo boss that he has the DA in his pocket. There are a few plot twists, though most are revealed early in the book, and some well-crafted, subtle touches, as with a caustic portrayal of the press, who adores Gabe and willfully lets him hog their cameras despite the fact that he’s been accused of sanctioning the murders of men who were set to testify in his trial.

Triumphs as a thriller but at its best as a story about what it truly means to be a father.

LIVING A CENTURY OR MORE A Scientifically Fact-Based Journey to Longevity Cortvriendt, William CreateSpace (380 pp.) $24.95 paper | $9.95 e-book Feb. 7, 2014 978-1-4928-7008-1

Clean living improves the odds for a long life, according to this fascinating primer on the medical realities of aging.

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Cortvriendt, a physician, focuses on the nutritional and lifestyle factors that affect our susceptibility to cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and cancer. Front and center is his detailed, wonderfully lucid discussion of food, which takes readers from the basic chemistries of carbohydrates, fats and proteins and their metabolism in the body through the subtle and often strange complexities of dieting. (Excess carbohydrates are bad, but an Atkins-style ban will do much more harm than good, he writes.) He provides a skeptical take on vitamin and antioxidant supplements; vitamins A and E, he writes, have been found to actually increase cancer risks at high doses. He balances this with the seemingly miraculous assertion that eating dark chocolate protects against cancer, diabetes and other ailments; tobacco is anathema, alcohol tolerable and coffee a downright boon, he says. However, Cortvriendt advises that what we do is as important as what we ingest and that there’s no end to the benefits of exercise, which wards off hypertension, dementia and other ills. Basking in sunlight may perk you up, the author says, but it can also give you cancer or make you look old. The book also advises that seething Type A personalities should learn to relax and meditate. There are facts, figures and charts galore, but the author presents the information in simple, straightforward prose that laypeople will understand, while paying due attention to complexities; for example, he explains the pitfalls of deriving reliable conclusions from a muddle of medical statistics and offers shrewd, evenhanded assessments of the conflicting evidence surrounding medical controversies.

The result is an absorbing, highly readable exposition of the science of health that yields a wealth of common-sense advice.

An engaging self-help book that offers a clear road map for extending one’s life span.

CREATING THE GOOD LIFE A Practical Guide to Personal and Financial Happiness Decoster, K. Thomas CreateSpace (174 pp.) $9.95 paper | $0.99 e-book Oct. 18, 2012 978-1-4783-2183-5

A successful financial planner imparts a lifetime of wisdom in a debut self-help manual that’s poetic and practical.

In today’s world, it might seem justifiable to dismiss a book that advocates daily affirmations printed on index cards as little more than a well-meaning Luddite text. But in this case, that would be a mistake. Here, the author assembles a concrete, orderly battle plan carefully designed to fight old habits, negative thoughts and bad attitudes that prevent readers from getting the most out of life. Some app-obsessed readers may scoff, but there’s genuine therapeutic value in Decoster’s oldfashioned self-help approach, which speaks directly to the latest scientific discoveries about the brain’s neuroplasticity and changeability. The author also provides one of the most cogent explanations of the evolution of the brain as most readers are

likely to find. Even the book’s use of well-worn sayings by Mark Twain, Albert Einstein, Will Rogers and others comes across as refreshingly spot-on. Decoster employs an earnest, conversational tone throughout, urging his readers to constantly take action by defining goals, supplanting false beliefs or establishing deadlines. As the author says, “Contrary to popular belief, knowledge is not power. It is only potential power.” Too often, discussions about personal responsibility inevitably devolve into “boot-strap” arguments. But Decoster’s take on responsibility (or, as he defines it, “response-ability”) is both humane and empowering. Understanding that human beings have the innate ability to improve will give readers an essential feeling of control while also giving them something to shoot for. The author acknowledges the craft involved in a life well-lived, and he lays out the nuts and bolts of getting it right.

A surprisingly handy, low-tech how-to guide.

THE VIEW FROM CASA CHEPITOS A Journey Beyond the Border Gille, Judith L. Davis Bay Press (310 pp.) $14.99 paper | $3.99 e-book Sep. 15, 2013 978-0-578-12469-8

Gille grabs a second chance at life by buying a home in San Miguel de Allende.

Gille had always fondly remembered San Miguel de Allende from a visit when she was 20. Fed up with her life in Seattle, where she had lost her retail business, she impulsively bought a second home in the idyllic Mexican hill town 28 years later, renewing a love affair with Mexico that she chronicles here with considerable literary flair. “[A]fter battling endless questions, depression, and guilt, San Miguel seemed like a second chance in life,” she recalls. Casa Chepitos—the name the author’s family gives to their “fairy-tale castle” with “breathtaking views”—sits on an alleyway in one of San Miguel’s less chic neighborhoods. Gille worried initially that she and her husband “might never really fit in. That we’d end up traversing the alley, barely acknowledged by the people we lived among. Like temporary guests on some exotic island.” But during her extended visits to San Miguel, she gradually befriended her neighbors and became part of their lives, hunting for bargains with them at the town’s huge open-air market or celebrating Mexican holidays such as the Day of the Dead and Independence Day. One elderly neighbor reminded her “of Mexico itself—ravaged yet beautiful, riddled with disease, bullied by a man with an oversized ego.” Gille takes a leaf out of such traveler-abroad books as A Year in Provence (1989) and Under the Tuscan Sun (1996), but her contribution to the genre comes alive with her sharply observed re-creations of local events, such as a baseball game in which her teenage son plays, and in her eye for detail: San Miguel’s walls are “drenched in the colors of exotic spices—nutmeg, turmeric, saffron.” To her credit, she also delves beneath the surface of Mexican life, exploring the gentrification of San Miguel and the |

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“[Grayeb] delves deeply into the broader meaning of leadership, intertwining business and personal development in a timely discussion that will resonate with thoughtful leaders.” from leadership and consciousness

flight of young Mexicans to the U.S. in search of an economic future. As a result of this exodus, the author observes, “a new subculture has emerged in Mexico: the hundreds of thousands of wives, mothers, and children who are left behind. They live in a state of limbo.”

A travelogue that comes alive with colorful detail.

LEADERSHIP AND CONSCIOUSNESS The Three-Ring Model for Integrating Personal and Business Growth Grayeb, Federico Renzo CreateSpace (118 pp.) $14.90 paper | $9.90 e-book Feb. 5, 2014 978-1-4936-3312-8

Grayeb, a business leader who has held management positions at major pharmaceutical companies, writes effortlessly and eloquently about the need for today’s leaders to be fully aware and socially conscious.

Consider this a leadership book with a lot of soul. In crisp, instructive text supported by pertinent examples from the workplace, Grayeb describes “an integrated leadership model” consisting of three “Rings of Conscious Leadership”—selfawareness, team-awareness and community-awareness. Grayeb proceeds to skillfully explain each, layering his strong, simple prose with a dose of insight borne of experience and his own introspection. About self-awareness, for example, he writes that leading with consciousness demands purpose, but it also “requires that we focus on what we have (the present) instead of being distracted by an illusion of something we cannot act on anymore (the past) or control (the future).” When it comes to leading a team, Grayeb advocates a “conscious culture” that “instills in [members] the will to lead themselves by finding their own purposes.” As for community, the third ring, Grayeb sees a higher purpose for business than profit alone: “A conscious business is then made of people who are fully aware of the impact their actions have…who manage to consciously balance business with social impact.” In closing, Grayeb suggests that a leader’s change must come from within: “Let’s make our mark, starting with ourselves, then with our work colleagues, then with the companies we work in, and then with the communities we interact with.” This is heady stuff written at a higher level and with a greater good in mind. As such, it is well beyond the typical how-to-lead boundary of most similar books. In about 100 pages, the author delves deeply into the broader meaning of leadership, intertwining business and personal development in a timely discussion that will resonate with thoughtful leaders.

Well-reasoned, articulate and succinct, with a refreshing morality and a true sense of the value of self-worth.

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IN AN EXPATRIATE WORLD Hall, Patrick J. Patrick J. Hall & Associates, LLC (346 pp.) $10.59 paper | $5.99 e-book Oct. 31, 2013 978-0-9912958-0-7

Debut memoirist Hall recounts both the adventures and the quotidian details of his time living and working as an American in Belgium in the 1990s.

Hall and his wife, Cathy, were comfortable as Midwesterners, working for the American division of a multinational health insurance company. Then Cathy was invited to work on a branding project at the company’s Belgian office. Hall overcame his misgivings and agreed to make the move, and the couple packed up their Milwaukee life and set off for Europe. Hall’s portrait of Belgium is neither snarky nor starry-eyed; he acknowledges the challenges the couple faced in learning new languages, navigating unfamiliar roadways and being unable to watch the Packers play in the Super Bowl, but far more attention is given to the ways in which they adapted to their new environment, from finding an open grocery store to becoming regulars at neighborhood restaurants. Nostalgic techies will appreciate many of Hall’s anecdotes from the IT department where he worked: Windows NT is state-of-the-art, 512KB Internet speeds are something to aspire to, and a year passes before Hall convinces the company to let him build an intranet. Though there are some missteps in the writing—Hall’s attempt to render the local accent phonetically (“Yezz, auf cawrz. Many people ride them thayer”) can be grating—there are also plenty of sentences to admire: “I wouldn’t complain if it worked hard to turn our sullied linens pristine, but it acted more like a laborer paid by the hour,” Hall says of a recalcitrant washing machine. As he moves through elements including professional life, the search for housing and settling into an English-language church, Hall convincingly describes the emotional journey of an expatriate.

The book concludes with the couple’s return to Belgium more than a decade later, as they discover that visiting a place is a far cry from making it a home.

An insightful tale of life both in and outside the United States.

MASTER OF THE MISSION INN Frank A. Miller, A Life

ANOTHER MAN’S LIFE A Novel

Hodgen, Maurice Ashburton Publishing (478 pp.) $25.00 paper | Jan. 20, 2014 978-0-9762785-1-1

A focused, meticulously researched biography about Mission Inn hotelier Frank Augustus Miller.

“He is a live wire—a dreamer—a doer—a thinker—a planner—an idealist and a practicalist all combined.” These words about Miller, uttered by a friend, encapsulate the many sides to the Master of the Mission Inn, as he came to be known. From humble beginnings in Tomah, Wisconsin, the industrious Miller turned his family home into the luxurious Mission Inn in Riverside, California, over the course of 50 years. Miller, who arrived with his family in Riverside in 1874 at the age of 17, scrupulously maintained a diary that shed keen insight into his real-time feelings. These personal reflections—the book’s most rewarding section—illuminate his early fears, ambitions, love interests and struggles with temptations. An unwavering moralist, Miller held deeply ingrained religious values, and his desires for Riverside were held to this standard as his influence in town blossomed. Core values of generosity and charity became his lifelong compass and explain much of the ecclesiastical decorations that came to dominate the Mission Inn. Miller’s curiosity and energy never waned; he constantly sought wares far and wide to enhance the Mission Inn’s worldly aura. Stories about how Miller obtained some of the Mission Inn’s most unique pieces—including six Tiffany stained-glass chapel windows and a myriad of Japanese artifacts—are richly described. The Tiffany windows, as with much of the aesthetic at the Mission Inn, were influenced by the women in Miller’s life, and the story rightfully praises their often unheralded contributions. Hailed as the “first citizen” of Riverside, Miller had a journey parallel to the city’s progression; their histories can’t be untwined, and tracing Miller’s life allows for a comprehensive look into Riverside’s evolution from a pioneer town in the West to a modern, budding city. As a direct result of Miller’s dedicated work, the Mission Inn is Riverside’s greatest example of culture, prosperity and longevity.

Reverently remembers Miller’s contributions to the city of Riverside as well as to his life’s work: the Mission Inn.

Horn, Steven W. Granite Peak Press (240 pp.) $19.95 | $14.95 paper | $5.99 e-book Nov. 28, 2011 978-0-9835894-3-3 A memorable debut novel about a life colored by regret and grasping for redemption.

Horn capably tells this poignant story through the memories of Eden Cain, a Vietnam veteran haunted by war atrocities in which he unwillingly participated in secret incursions into Laos under orders from President Richard Nixon. More than 30 years later, Eden lives as an Iowa farmer with Elizabeth, the wife he loves. Theirs is a relationship that focuses on the present and the future, not their pasts: “After twenty nine years of marriage, neither of them truly knew the other….Their pasts were inviolable, a sacredness that each respected.” Life would be perfect if not for the guilt he harbors—a heartbreaking reality not uncommon to sufferers of PTSD. The former helicopter tail gunner tries to forget, but “[w]hat broke him was the awareness that he would never outlive the memory of Vietnam.

No amount of distraction, pleasure or hardship could bury those scattered moments that had changed his life.” His bucolic solitude is shattered, however, when he’s subpoenaed to testify before Congress about the Laos missions amid a political scandal: “How could an insignificant person like himself be needed to rewrite history?” Eden’s was a satisfying if not standout life that, unfortunately, was built on a lie of omission, one about to fall apart thanks to unscrupulous politicians half a country away. Horn, a Vietnam vet, expertly draws readers into the main settings, shifting seamlessly among three time periods—Eden’s years in country, his return to an unwelcoming nation and his courting of Elizabeth, and the present—as he paints the complex picture that has led to Eden’s simple existence and current dilemma.

A moving first effort that starkly examines the scars of war on its unwitting pawns.

TOPEKA, MA ‘SHUGE

Hutson, Raymond Gilliss Books (362 pp.) $14.99 paper | $8.99 e-book Jan. 13, 2014 978-0-615-80963-2 A teenage girl and her Iranian lover, 17 years her senior, embark on a disturbing journey into the American Midwest.

Working as a candy striper in The Dalles Community Hospital in Oregon, 15-year-old Erika Etulain meets Dr. Majij Aziz, a repressed, bullied man from Iran in his early 30s. Compared to the boys in her tiresome junior high school, his maturity enchants her. |

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Rebelling against staunch English parents, Erika rushes into the Iranian doctor’s arms, embarking with him on a road trip to Kansas, entering into sigheh, a temporary Shia marriage, so Majij can have sex with her guiltlessly. The cracks in this taboo coupling are immediate. Majij’s hope to shape Erika into the perfect Muslim wife whom he could take back to Iran is dashed by her rebellious spirit and inquisitive nature, to which he often violently reacts. Waiting for them in Topeka is Majij’s brother Hakim, whose devout fundamentalism demands much of his weak-willed sibling and his new wife. Hutson’s debut will predictably draw comparisons to Lolita, but the novel demonstrates a subtlety of tone and a skillful understanding of interpersonal relationships more reminiscent of Jane Austen than Vladimir Nabokov. The disquieting nature of their coupling is never romanticized, lending the narrative a clever, subdued quality so that otherwise banal happenings—a fart by Majij, an immature, sniping teenage comment from Erika—disturb not only the characters but the reader as well. The drawback to this approach is that the novel’s most important moments and its settings feel overly restrained, even generalized, in their portrayals, blunting emotional or violent outbursts by the characters and ironically making the novel feel its most inert when on the road. Though set before the events of 9/11, and never once uttering the word “terrorism,” the book draws heavily on realworld happenings in 1989, from the influence of the ayatollah to the first World Trade Center bombings, fostering a timely paranoia that addresses, if only superficially, both Islamophobia and fundamentalist Muslims’ fear of Western influences.

An impressive debut that, though it drags a bit in the middle, establishes a constant and ingeniously engrossing sense of discomfort.

ALICE THE HEALER

Ling, John AuthorHouse (60 pp.) $10.49 paper | Oct. 30, 2010 978-1-4520-8132-8 A poetry collection that shows the devastating, exhausting effects of chronic pain and illness.

Ling offers a series of poems about a real-life woman who lived the latter part of her life in extreme physical pain. Alice grew up ballroom dancing and, as an adult, became one of the first female managers in the textile industry. When her body began to decline due to rheumatoid arthritis and Ménière’s syndrome, a disorder of the inner ear, her world became considerably smaller and more difficult to navigate. Ling presents the poems from his own perspective as one of Alice’s friends, caretakers and admirers. The verses provide empathetic accounts of Alice’s suffering and her courageous, admirable attempts to stay connected to the outside world, through church, family and the Internet. The stronger poems contemplate how pain can take over the body, the mind and the spirit. “PAIN!” for example, plays on the idea that even Alice’s hair hurts: “[H]air should 132

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not hurt / you cannot comb pain / brush it away like hair / on the shoulder its there / getting bolder making me / feel older stiff and colder.” “HOSTAGE” describes pain as terrorists who have “hijacked the body. / Sometimes there seem to be / more gunmen than passengers, / she is all pain and no body.” Other poems explore how Alice survives as her own advocate—with doctors, emergency medical technicians and people who can’t fully understand the impact of living with chronic pain. In one of the more poignant verses, the narrator feels guilty for being able to live an “ordinary life” when “any other life to her / would be so rich.” Ling deftly and beautifully expresses one of the most significant challenges of chronic illness when it comes to visitors, including friends and family: “They do not come. / They cannot bear / to live their lives, / to sit and listen, / ask how are you, / and hear the honest answer.” Although the narrator clearly admires and loves his subject and sees her pain, he also recognizes that healing works both ways. In the collection’s title poem, he states, “[S]he would find me out and turn me round, / lift me up and gently put me down, / she in need of healing, healing me.”

An evocative poetry book about the powers of healing and connection.

STARTING UP SILICON VALLEY How ROLM Became a Fortune 500 Company and a Cultural Icon

Maxfield, Katherine Emerald Book Company (368 pp.) $21.95 | Apr. 8, 2014 978-1-937110-62-8 Business history that will satisfy anyone captivated by Silicon Valley.

Maxfield has written an engaging story about ROLM, a Silicon Valley startup that made its mark in the 1970s and ’80s.

According to this insider account based on primary sources and interviews, ROLM was a model of Silicon Valley entrepreneurship that future startups sought to emulate long before consumer technology and social media companies captured the high-tech spotlight. ROLM’s innovative use of emerging digital technologies challenged AT&T’s monopoly position in the telephony business by helping companies save millions of dollars and improving office workers’ productivity. Maxfield fleshes out the story with engineering details, financial data, business strategies and management lessons that will appeal to MBAs eager to create their own successes. ROLM’s founders enjoyed extraordinary success in two distinct businesses—selling digital phone systems to businesses and making military grade computer systems for the Department of Defense. In its heyday, ROLM was a great place to work, with corporate perks such as 12-week sabbaticals for all employees—at full pay—after every sixth year of employment. With tennis courts, a gym, two pools, a gourmet cafeteria and landscaped grounds, its campus headquarters in Santa Clara, California, set a high bar for other

“Carefully researched and written with passion, the narrative buzzes with an energy drawn from the land itself.” from the shameless full moon, travels in africa

companies competing for engineering talent during the late 1970s through mid-1980s. It’s easy to identify with the author’s sadness at how this story ends. ROLM was sold to IBM in 1984, and IBM sold ROLM to Siemens in 1988. The author draws from materials collected by the Silicon Valley Historical Association, newspaper and magazine articles, and interviews with the founders and former employees of ROLM to write a corporate history unusual in its candor. Readers don’t need to know the difference between a PBX and a CBX—although they’ll know after reading this book—to appreciate the intense emotions and exuberant personalities Maxfield portrays. A favorite among employees was ROLM executive Leo Chamberlain, known for “Leo-isms” such as being “ ‘up to our ass in alligators,’ a phrase he used whenever the going got tough.” Few authors have Maxfield’s knack for describing both the forest and the trees, which makes her history of ROLM a worthy model for other histories of Silicon Valley companies.

Corporate history with enough drama for a movie.

THE SHAMELESS FULL MOON, TRAVELS IN AFRICA Miller, Carol CreateSpace (246 pp.) $11.95 paper | Feb. 25, 2014 978-1-4949-3654-9

Miller, a Mexico-based American journalist, celebrates Africa in this compelling travel memoir.

While awaiting her flight to Nairobi, Miller found herself in close proximity to an explosion at Charles de Gaulle Airport. Shaken but remaining levelheaded, she later boarded a plane to begin her African adventure. The tempo of the memoir is thereby set: fast-paced, occasionally bordering on the urgent, yet always coolly informative. Miller writes that during her time spent away from Africa, she missed it as she might “a close friend or beloved relative”—a sentiment palpable throughout the memoir, as the continent and its diverse array of people are described in tender detail. The author’s journey takes her to Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The Nairobi men are “lean and long, with chiseled features,” whereas the Masai men, have “[d]eep-set eyes, [and a] penetrating gaze, yet soft and soulful.” This form of earnest portraiture captures the manner in which, as with the landscape, human physical characteristics change as the miles pass. The political landscape is also carefully considered, with a specific focus on the impact of colonialism and subsequent waves of tourism. The book’s true power lies in its ability to communicate the freedom and wonder of traversing through Africa’s wide-open spaces. Readers share in the amazement of seeing wild animals in their natural habitats and traveling under a “canopy of moon and stars.”

The author describes spiritual aspects of the continent—for example, the legend of Nyami-Nymai, the river god of the Zambezi—yet this travelogue is also an intimate account of a deeply moving inner journey. Although Africa’s dangers are present,

not central, the memoir has its thrills and spills, most notably a shipwreck in Zimbabwe. Focus is placed upon the positive impact the continent can have on the individual, which is helpful in debunking Western perceptions of Africa as merely perilous and politically unstable. Carefully researched and written with passion, the narrative buzzes with an energy drawn from the land itself.

A tender love letter to the plateau continent.

CHRONICLES: THE LIBRARY OF ILLUMINATION Pack, Carol Artiqua Press (298 pp.) $19.95 | Apr. 29, 2014 978-0-9835723-7-4

Pack’s (Evangeline’s Ghost, 2013, etc.) compilation includes the first five stories in a whimsical series about a library where books come to life.

Seventeen-year-old Joanna Charette is addicted to books.

She loves reading them, repairing them—even smelling them.

As an orphan, she lives alone in a ramshackle apartment and works at Book Services as a delivery girl. Her dreams of owning a beautiful library and handling treasured manuscripts seem impossible, until one day she’s summoned to an address she can’t quite find. Believing herself to be at the right spot, Joanna walks toward an old library called the Library of Illumination.

As if destined to do so, she gains entrance and meets the curator, Malcolm Trees. Joanna soon learns that when this library’s enchanted books open, characters suddenly appear. Eventually—after some exploits involving Tarzan and Dr. John Watson—Malcolm is convinced that he’s found his replacement and retires. Joanna moves into the library, hires a teen assistant named Jackson and proceeds to have her own series of increasingly epic adventures. Will she grow into the levelheaded librarian she knows herself to be, or will this fantasy job ruin her real life? Pack cheerfully runs an inventive marathon with this anything-goes premise. The biggest questions readers might ask are addressed in each of the five stories presented here, starting with “Doubloons,” in which Jackson accidentally lets Treasure Island pirates loose. When the book shuts and some gold coins remain behind, the resulting narrative fallout charms and thrills in equal measures. Similarly, stories such as “The Orb” and “Casanova” flaunt Pack’s literary brilliance and her ability to grow the world and characters episodically; watching Jackson woo Joanna will entice audiences just as much as the adventures.

Pack also offers a great reminder: As Jackson knocks fairy tales, Joanna replies that they “have a long tradition of entertaining children while teaching them all things are possible—if they’re resourceful.” That goes for adults, too.

Come for the literary sights and sounds, stay for Pack’s miraculously fine-tuned imagination.

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Interviews & Profiles

Debby Irving

How a racial justice advocate found her voice and published it herself

By Sarah Rettger

Photo courtesy Emily Irving

Debby Irving’s Waking Up White and Finding Myself in the Story of Race is, at least in part, a memoir, so readers may be surprised when she says, “I really don’t want the book to be about me. I want it to be about my message.” The book uses Irving’s experience of being a white woman coming to terms with the complexity of racism in the United States and her own perceptions as a lens to explore the role white allies can play in racial justice work.

As she shifts the focus away from herself, Irving instead uses the book as a tool for community development. When she speaks about the book, she says, “I always try to partner with someone else,” usually 134

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a person of color, working to combat the problems of racism. Irving understands the importance of a strong community since she has relied on her own at every step in her publishing process.

Irving, who lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, tried querying agents in the initial stages of her project but found it difficult to adequately explain her topic in the confines of a book proposal. “I’m trying to shine a light on an already misunderstood topic,” she says. “I realized I would have to write the book before I could pitch it.”

As she began to expand her proposal into a manuscript, Irving found another community at Grub Street, a Boston-based center for creative writing. She took classes and met other writers at Grub Street’s annual Muse and the Marketplace conference and learned about a new side of the book industry. “I had been really anti–self-publishing,” she says, but the conference introduced her to enough happy and successful indie authors to change her opinion.

Irving began to educate herself about the world of self-publishing, compiling detailed spreadsheets that compared the different options available. The numbers showed that print-on-demand was a clear winner. “The idea of being in charge of inventory really wasn’t appealing,” she says.

She was interested in working with CreateSpace after seeing a presentation by Jon Fine, the director of author and publisher relations, at Muse and the Marketplace. But she heard that many bookstores were reluctant to stock books produced by the Amazon subsidiary, and she did not want to be excluded from that retail channel. “I knew that was going to be a huge piece of my reach,” she says. In the end, she chose Ingram’s Lightning Source for production and distribution. “Lightning Source was just

phenomenal,” Irving says. “There’s always someone there to pick up the phone.”

Irving also sought help with the design and marketing of her book, and she found an ideal match in Trio Bookworks, which takes a particular interest in books that explore social issues through personal narratives, just as Waking Up White does. Of her editor at Trio, Irving says, “she understood the subject matter more deeply than I did.” She relied on their guidance and found the support that she needed as a new indie author. “They just held my hand through everything,” she says.

When Irving and Trio began the book’s marketing plan, she was even more pleased with her choice of partners. “I cannot adequately describe what it was like to have the part of the process I was dreading be so fun,” she says. “It was one of the most joyful parts of the process.” She was particularly pleased that the collaboration succeeded despite the lack of face-toface contact: All her interactions with the Minneapolis-based Trio staff took place by phone or online.

Once the first copies were printed, Irving began by sharing Waking Up White with her local community. She held the book launch at her local independent bookstore, Porter Square Books, where a standing-room-only crowd of both friends and strangers showed up to learn about efforts toward racial justice in Cambridge. “It meant so much to me,” she says. During the event, she urged attendees to buy two copies of the book—one to keep and one to pass along to someone else—and they did, placing orders for more books when the store sold out.

Since the book’s release in January, it continues to sell and recently hit the Boston Globe’s best-seller list, which is based on sales at local bookstores. Irving also sells the book at conferences focused on topics related to social justice, and she has found success with large institutional sales—especially since Lightning Source allows her to offer discounts on bulk purchases.

Her most recent event was at Wellesley Books, an independent bookstore in an upscale suburb of Boston. She describes the event’s focus as “how efforts to be diverse play out in the suburbs,” and she was pleased to learn that a group of teachers from the local middle school attended and shared stories from the reading with their colleagues. The teachers embraced the book, and the school placed an

order for books they plan to distribute to the rest of the staff.

There are “zero reasons I would say ‘don’t do this,’ ” Irving says, although she wants to be sure that aspiring indie authors do not expect the process to be simple. “I have a lot of things in place that not everybody would have,” she says, including the ability to invest thousands of dollars in preparing the book for publication. “If I want to write another book, I’m all set up to do it,” she says, but adds, “I’m not sure I have another story to tell.” Instead, she is thinking of using the imprint she established, Elephant Room Press, as a venue for other authors of books on racial justice. Whatever the next step is, Irving knows it will be one more part of her antiracism work, and she knows she can depend on her community to make it happen.

Sarah Rettger is a writer and bookseller in Massachusetts.

Waking Up White and Finding Myself in the Story of Race Irving, Debby Elephant Room Press (288 pp.) $19.99 | Jan. 9, 2014 978-0-99-133130-7 |

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CITY OF WHORES Perry, Mark B. Starboard Home Press (416 pp.) $10.99 paper 978-0-9914193-0-2

In Perry’s novel, a former actor reflects on life with a Hollywood power couple.

During the O.J. Simpson scandal, Daniel Root learns of the death of mogul Milford “Milly” Langen, whose wife, actress Lillian “Lilly” Sinclair, committed suicide in 1982. Although never an A-Lister, Root enjoyed a brief stint in pictures until the film offers “dried up like the chaparral on the Hollywood Hills.” His stage name was Dexter Gaines—“Dex” to Milly and Lilly—and the trio was together for two years, separating in anger the night Dex almost strangled Milly. Four decades prior, Dex had arrived from Texas determined to be a star, blessed with good looks, a birthmark on his lip (“a bit of bittersweet chocolate”) and shaky hands that he calmed by smoking pot. Dex first encountered Milly and Lilly on New Year’s Eve 1952 and later crossed paths with Cary Grant, Tallulah Bankhead, Tony Curtis and Darryl F. Zanuck, to whom Milly was second-in-command. With the advent of TV, studio heads feared audiences would stay home, but the real drama is in the trio’s affairs and the secrets each kept. Deftly mixing fictional characters with well-known personalities of Hollywood’s golden age, this subtly powerful novel is neither slick nor sleazy, and it’s thankfully devoid of caricature. Milly, Lilly and Dex are finely drawn with foibles of the flesh in a Truman Capote–like piece that may leave readers pining for Bogie and Bacall. At heart, it’s a love story, deeply affecting and tinged with pathos. Granted, the scandalous behavior of the 1950s seems, at present, to be relatively tame, and the big reveals are played less for shock than emotional resonance, though at least one may fail to surprise. In such a dramatic setting, some melodrama is to be expected, but here, it’s kept to a minimum.

Overall, the narrative is rich in detail, and everything matters in this fully realized world.

A poignant tale of unrequited love and sexual longing that burns slowly and lingers like cigarette smoke.

SURROUNDED BY MADNESS A Memoir of Mental Illness and Family Secrets Pruchno, Rachel Dog Ear (344 pp.) $18.00 paper | Mar. 24, 2014 978-1-4575-2559-9

The heavy-hearted memoir of a woman who lost her mother and daughter to the bitter grip of mental illness.

Mental illness not only ravages those who suffer from it; it devastates their families as well. A developmental psychologist, Pruchno (Challenges of an Aging Society, 2007, etc.) is in a unique position to write about living with a 136

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person afflicted by a disease of the mind. Her mother committed suicide in 1975 after struggling with manic depression. Then, in a cruel twist of fate, her adopted daughter, Sophie, was eventually diagnosed with three illnesses: ADHD and bipolar and borderline personality disorders. Penned in a vivid, literary style that bleeds anguish, Pruchno’s story is a mother’s worst nightmare—raising a deeply troubled girl whose self-destructive tendencies led to risky sex, drugs and suicidal thoughts, despite efforts to help her. Pruchno recounts in tortuous detail Sophie’s downward spiral and how constant strife and anxiety robbed the family of any sense of normalcy. After Sophie was allegedly raped at age 11 by a camp counselor, her emotional swings carried increasingly dire consequences, including an aborted pregnancy at 16 and hospitalization in a psychiatric unit. The most shocking parts of the book are transcripts of Sophie’s online chats with a man whom she met for sex. While the author’s candor can be suffocating at times, Pruchno believes too many families struggle in secret. She hopes her experiences will spark a national dialogue on the damage mental illness inflicts on families. When Sophie turned 18, the author was forced to let her go to find “rock bottom”—a decision Pruchno intellectually accepted as necessary, though she agonized over the loss of her little girl. Since the book centers on a young person and leaves such a powerful impression, it would make a solid supplementary text for a college psychology course. Pruchno’s feelings of desperation and powerlessness speak more to the reality of mental illness than an academic case study ever could.

An unvarnished look at the destructiveness of mental illness, as told by a person who suffered at the hands of someone else’s demons.

TEACHER ON THE HIGH WIRE Radcliffe, Marjorie CreateSpace (146 pp.) $9.00 paper | Oct. 17, 2013 978-1-4827-0676-5

In this memoir, a woman looks back at five years of traveling and teaching kids in the circus.

Of everyone who’s ever run away to join the circus, Radcliffe—“a very proper fifty-year-old lady from academia” and former country-club member—is one of the unlikeliest. But after divorce and an unsuccessful stint as a Spanish teacher to “large classes of aspiring delinquents,” she started tutoring children in the entertainment industry and was then invited to apply for a teaching job with Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey. Interested in new experiences, Radcliffe went for it. In her debut work, Radcliffe writes evocatively of cramped train compartments, bad smells, being too cold or too hot, and the difficulties of setting up classrooms anew in various towns. She reports on many behind-the-scenes glimpses of “the greatest show on earth”: the often troubled young men who do the heavy lifting; the performers’ routines and hierarchies; the seamy sides of many cities; and circus gossip, stories and scandals. Circus life, Radcliffe writes,

“While fans of teen vampires will be delighted to find something different, teen dystopia and horror fans who turn their noses up at the genre should certainly make an exception for this smart, fun read from an up-and-coming YA author.” from ethics of the undead

is something like a village from centuries ago: Everyone knows “whose bastard the village drab had borne, who was stealing chickens, and whether the lord’s son preferred the shepherd, the shepherdess, or the sheep.” By the same token, “Circus children, on the whole, are warm, loving, and well-adjusted. These kids don’t just have one or two doting parents; they have more than three hundred.” Sometimes Radcliffe’s sympathies seem oddly placed.

Writing of a cook who abandoned his family and joined the circus to avoid paying child support, she comments jauntily, “The circus won!” Hurray? She also breezily dismisses animal rights activists as “do-gooders” despite considerable evidence, including videos, of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey animals being abused with bullhooks, whips and electric prods. Elsewhere, though, Radcliffe is more sensitive to the darker undercurrents beneath the circus’s bright, spangled surface. In response to a jest, one of the guys says, “Hey, I’m not on the ten most-wanted list….I joined because nobody wanted me.” As Radcliffe says, “Sometimes a joke covers up a lot of pain.”

A humorous, gossipy account of an unusual lifestyle.

YOU’VE GOT VERVE, JAMIE IRELAND!

Rose, Lisa Otter CreateSpace (184 pp.) $9.99 paper | Mar. 14, 2014 978-1-4848-0070-6

Rose’s debut children’s novel delivers a valuable narrative about a fifth-grader facing bullying, learning disabilities and a ghostly mystery.

After 10-year-old Jamie Ireland’s best friend moves away, a bully targets her on the bus, and her teacher humiliates her in class over her messy handwriting. Writing makes her hand cramp, and she has trouble spelling because her brain scrambles certain words and letters. Jamie’s loving parents are busy with work, and she’s sure that they expect her to be as perfect as her older sister. One night, Jamie has an odd dream about a woman offering her a book with a heart-shaped grease stain on its cover—“[a]nd that’s when Jamie’s dream hopped like a rabbit from her asleep-brain into her wide-awake-brain.” She rummages in her attic and makes a discovery that connects her with her grandmother, who died before she was born: a cookbook with a heart-shaped grease stain and a special recipe for apple pie. Jamie delves into the science of cooking and adds baking to her other interests, which include running races at recess and reading. But when the bullying continues, Jamie’s learning problems worsen. So does her frustration, culminating in a suspension from school and a counselor’s request that she keep a daily inspiration diary. The pages of this diary also feature well-chosen quotations from wide-ranging sources (such as “Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand,” by philosopher Baruch Spinoza). The line drawings and graphic design elements by illustrator Tito add visual interest as Rose deftly tells the story of Jamie’s emergence from her shell and her diagnosis of dyslexic dysgraphia. The author’s prose is never preachy or

saccharine, and it nicely builds suspense where appropriate. A junior baking contest ends the book on a satisfying note.

A highly readable work of juvenile fiction about a spirited young girl’s ups and downs.

ETHICS OF THE UNDEAD Vampires Pose Questions on Love, Diversity and Religion in the Sawtooth Mountains Schechter, Loren Merrimack Media (446 pp.) $17.95 paper | $6.99 e-book Nov. 20, 2013 978-1-939166-26-5

Four teens must cling to each other for survival when they find that their remote wilderness boarding school is actually a school for vampires who are all too eager to feast on their new classmates.

Jung Soo, Hector Campos, Kathy Campion-Swink and Lionel Worthington each have different reasons for accepting scholarships to the Sawtooth Wilderness Academy: Soo loves the mountains and hopes to improve her English; Hector is offered the school as an alternative to juvie; Kathy has run away from a slew of boarding schools, and her parents were reassured to hear the academy has never had a successful runaway; and Lionel, who dreams of joining the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, has been promised private violin instruction at the academy after cuts to arts funding and rejection from the Chicago High School for the Arts left him without other routes to pursue his dreams. Little do they know that the academy is actually a school for vampires; it has recently become a public charter school in order to accept state funding. To keep its funding, however, the school must pass an inspection by the school board, demonstrating a certain level of diversity, which the student body is severely lacking—that’s where the scholarship students come in. While the faculty has taken measures to protect the new students during the weeks leading up to the inspection, that hardly makes them feel safe: The Satanic Legion’s strong presence in the school is dying to find a way around the rules, and the moody, unpredictable teenage vampires constantly drool over them as a convenient source of nutrition. While they quickly find allies among the students and faculty, the main characters know they must escape. But how? And who will get hurt in the process?

Schechter (Murder in Millbrook, 2012) manages to explore complex questions about ethics, diversity and culture without proselytizing to readers or detracting from an absolutely riveting storyline that few YA authors beyond Neal Shusterman have pulled off. The slow, sophisticated narrative structure reflects Shusterman’s, using multiple points of view and a lot of patience to allow readers to form their own opinions about richly developed characters as the story unfolds. While fans of teen vampires will be delighted to find something different, teen dystopia and horror fans who turn their noses up at the genre should certainly make an exception for this smart, fun read from an up-and-coming YA author.

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FLIGHT OF THE TARANTULA HAWK A Lance Underphal Mystery Scott, Michael Allan Telemachus Press (350 pp.) $11.99 paper | $3.99 e-book Feb. 13, 2014 978-1-940745-01-5

Psychic crime-scene photographer Lance Underphal is back. In Scott’s (Dark Side of Sunset Pointe, 2013) latest thriller, this tortured character tries to use his visions to help police find a murderer who’s injecting victims with Botox.

When Lance is called to photograph the scene of a murder, a real estate agent killed by Botox shot into her neck, he realizes he’s already seen this in a vision—a wasp stinging a tarantula with a paralytic venom. Doing what he can to help his cop pal Detective Frank Salmon, Lance combs through his dreams, vague though they might be—the symbolic wasp and tarantula; a potential victim whom Lance can’t see clearly; a killer appearing as a child. Meanwhile, Lance, a tormented psychic plagued with insomnia and migraines, finds solace in hearing and conversing with the voice of his dead wife, Sonja. PI Jake Jacobs, a former SEAL who served with Frank, enters the investigation when he’s hired by Jenny, whose husband, Paul, disappears and is later found dead, also from Botox. Jake eventually locks on to a suspect, the senior vice president of a bank’s HR department, while the police have their eyes on someone else. Lance, meanwhile, provides details as they come to him, but he’s absolutely sure of one thing: The murderer is female. He just has to convince the cops he’s right. Alluding to his previous novel with mentions of “the Rodriguez case” but avoiding unnecessary elaboration, Scott can churn out visually rich passages with ease, particularly later in the story when the visions gradually reveal the killer and become increasingly disturbing. In particular, manifestations of the little girl eventually merge with the wasp and tarantula in a stunning, cringe-worthy scene. Lance is an intriguing protagonist, suffering from his psychic abilities with visions of a killer inside his head but also tortured by the simple fact that he still misses Sonja. Jake, however, ends up with the sauciest morsels: Already in a sexual relationship with Jenny’s mother, he picks up his female suspect at a bar on ladies’ night and later has to convince Jenny that he’s not holding out on her in the search for Paul’s killer. He has the best scene, too, when he tracks still-missing Paul’s phone to a foreclosed home and slowly approaches the door while on the phone with Jenny.

However, the killer’s identity may not be a shock—readers will likely spot the link between the first two victims and wonder why the cops didn’t see it sooner.

Solid characters and Lance’s alluringly grim dreams help distinguish this murder mystery.

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KNISH In Search of the Jewish Soul Food

Silver, Laura Brandeis University Press (272 pp.) $24.95 | May 6, 2014 978-1-61168-312-7 When is a knish more than just a knish? When it is the repository of more than a century of Jewish immigrant culture.

Silver’s debut nonfiction book is itself like a knish—deceptively simple. A knish is a pastry stuffed with potatoes, kasha, vegetables, cottage cheese, jam or anything really; truth be told, if you can name it, it’s probably been stuffed into a knish. On the surface, it’s heavy peasant food—carbs, often plus more carbs—but the artistry that goes into rolling out the thin dough and flavoring the filling is considerable. Similarly, Silver’s single-subject work of social history has been shaped with skill and nuance and—to continue chewing on the metaphor—seasoned with sharp humor and deep affection, not just for the pastry but for all the people whose lives it has touched. Silver starts with two memories: one of standing in the Polish town of Knyszen, where she had gone in search of the pastry’s roots; the other of the ritual meals of knishes she enjoyed with her Brooklyn-born grandmother. Though the knish arrived in the New World with Jewish immigrants, America is its homeland now, as it is nearly forgotten in Eastern Europe and barely recognized in Israel. Silver then introduces the pantheon of American knish makers, most of them gone today: Mrs. Stahl’s, Gabila’s, Schatzkin’s and others. Her loving, detailed portraits are bolstered by deep historical understanding. After the impressive beginning, the subsequent chapter “In Search of the First Knish” is rather thin and unsatisfying, as it winds haphazardly through Poland and Israel, Internet searches, and an interview or two. But Silver returns to surer ground as she explores pop culture and visits devoted knish makers in St. Paul, Minnesota. Her voice is energetic and deeply personal, and she’s unafraid of puns or a Yiddish turn of phrase; occasionally, that means cleverness trumps clarity and historical details get lost in showy storytelling tropes, but her enthusiasm and knowledge still carry readers along.

An accomplished piece of research shared in a delightfully readable way.

SPELL ON ME

Smith, Serge Amazon Digital Services (150 pp.) $0.99 e-book | Jan. 8, 2014 In this debut novel, a lonely man, dissatisfied with his comfortable but ultimately shallow lifestyle, starts an intensely introspective diary after experiencing a life-altering shock to his consciousness.

It isn’t often that the doors of perception swing open widely enough for the average Joe to saunter through and confront the ultimate nature of reality.

But when the protagonist of this finely crafted meditation on the profound is allowed a glimpse of the other side, he knows that his life will never be the same again. Much of this protracted soliloquy is concerned with how he attempts to bridge the divide between his humdrum existence and the truly extraordinary world he’s spied beyond the veil. He writes, “I have at least two viewpoints now: One is my old life and everything connected with it—a life in which everything was clearly defined, if not preordained—and there is this other life that dawned on me next to the ocean that day.” The solo nature of his exploration remains intact throughout, except for three conversations with his sensitive but practical mother; an antagonistic co-worker; and a sort of gentleman guru. The author uses the novel’s diary construction as a literary device to discuss Eastern/New Age notions about reality. There’s little in the way of a conventional plot, other than that the narrator encounters a mysterious woman early on and anticipates meeting her once again. Some of the most intriguing concepts the author examines are that eternity is real, time is a construction, and that the normal function of the human brain intermittently interrupts the ongoing flow. As the narrator contemplates these truths, he has alternating feelings of horror and happiness.

Smith’s highly descriptive language (“I see people crowding in front of the glittering shop windows….I move from one shop window to the next, and everywhere I see the same moving bodies and their inaudibly murmuring lips”) manages to convey both emotional states with equal alacrity and weight.

A slim novel packed with plenty of wonder and genuine moments of awe.

HUNT FOR A BRIDE

Spalsbury, Jeff R. CreateSpace (306 pp.) $14.95 paper | $5.99 e-book Mar. 5, 2014 978-1-4952-3144-5 Outlaws are defeated and cowboys find true love in this third book in Spalsbury’s (The Hunted Return, 2012, etc.)

Western series.

Spalsbury returns to 19th-century Montana for this story of classic Old West adventure with a dash of romance. Kay Cannon is on her way from New York to Montana as a mail-order bride for a cowboy named Sinful when she realizes two men are after her, looking to steal something they believe she possesses. She makes her way across the country, evading her pursuers, and lands in the company of Sinful’s colleague Doc Whitfield, just back from studying medicine in France. Whitfield saves Kay from the men chasing her—and from a number of other outlaws as well—and delivers her safely to Elk Forks, Montana, where she settles in among the characters who populate the town. When Kay is kidnapped by her pursuers, Doc, Sinful, Red, Big John and the sheriff ride through the mountains to save her. The strong cast of supporting characters, from gambler and revenge-seeker Mary Beth to Mrs. Bale—housekeeper, sharpshooter, and honorary grandmother—keeps the story vibrant, while the many plot

threads eventually come together in a satisfying resolution. The long rides, gun-toting dames, quick draws and scruffy miners are all stock elements of Western fiction, but Spalsbury succeeds in blending them into a more modern portrait of the familiar tropes.

These tough cowboys aren’t afraid to show their tears, for instance, and several members of the Blackfoot tribe also act as supporting characters. Although stereotypes occasionally arise, the author manages a balanced, honest approach to a violent period in American history. Readers unfamiliar with the previous books in the series may find themselves lost at times, but on the whole, Spalsbury is effective at bringing in the necessary back story without overwhelming the reader.

A lighthearted, engaging novel that fits squarely into the tradition of Westerns yet finds its own path to a more modern audience.

HOPE POINTS NORTH

Spetta, Robert Douglas Star Flight Security Press (210 pp.) $14.99 paper | Mar. 13, 2014 978-0-615-94810-2 In his second novel, Spetta (High Tide Low Moon Running, 2002) offers a charming, resonant coming-of-age adventure.

The author smartly builds his tale around the camaraderie of three close friends in 1960s Long Island. At the heart of the archetypal group is Chris, seemingly the most normal of the threesome, which also includes troubled loner Teddy and introverted, intelligent Charlie. As told by Chris in a series of flashbacks from the modern day, these three misfits became friends for two reasons: “The primary bond was our status as outsiders in the caste system of teenagers, but more importantly it was our ability to make each other laugh. We had found each other out of necessity, and this made our fraternity strong.”

Spetta paints a bucolic picture of rural Long Island in simpler times, when children explored and camped out in the woods near their houses, only returning home when parents shouted or rang a bell. It’s a land that’s later wiped away by progress, like a low tide flowing back to the ocean: “We were the last Algonquians to walk under the canopy of leaves that led to the sea.”

This grand adventure starts innocently, with the three children at play, but grows to encompass a found boat, a hidden treasure, a murder mystery, an overland quest and even the American space program. The action takes place over a few fall days in a believable, tranquil setting. Secondary characters, including a crotchety old hermit and a lustful, greedy minister, help elevate the diverting narrative. Occasional spelling and punctuation errors can sometimes be distracting, but overall, the novel provides a colorful journey back to a nearly forgotten time. The author’s portraits of his baby boomer characters are spot-on as they seek to discover their true north.

Spetta takes what could have been merely a quaint look back at the ’60s and makes it into an unforgettable tale of enduring friendship. |

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THE CORRUPTION OF INNOCENCE A Journey for Justice

THE NEWMAN RESIDENT

St. John, Lori Creative Production Services Inc. (495 pp.) $29.99 | $10.99 e-book | Sep. 10, 2013 978-0-9890401-2-9 An account of a woman’s four-year fight to save a convicted murderer from execution.

In 1993, at a crossroads in her life, St. John “needed, wanted desperately, to feel passionate about something.” She found what she was looking for when she volunteered for Centurion Ministries, an organization that works to vindicate wrongfully convicted prisoners. There, she learned of the case of Joseph Roger O’Dell, who had been sentenced to death in 1986 for the rape and murder of a woman in Virginia. She provides a dramatic account of the nearly four years she spent trying to save O’Dell from being executed, an effort that was ultimately unsuccessful despite the intervention of both the Italian and European parliaments. “I would learn that the justice system isn’t really about justice,” she recalls. O’Dell’s conviction was based largely on blood evidence and the testimony of a jailhouse informant, but St. John, using her insider knowledge of the case, makes a convincing argument that it was tainted by witness tampering and the suppression of evidence. “It was a defendant’s worst nightmare,” she writes. “Joe was not only fighting the state. He was also fighting his own lawyer.” While working with O’Dell’s appellate lawyers, the author uncovered evidence that was never presented to the jury, interviewed witnesses—including the informant, whom she and an investigator tracked down in West Virginia—and received threatening letters from one of the prosecutors. “I am fighting against ruthless, powerful figures of authority who are not interested in the truth,” she laments. The book also details her personal relationship with O’Dell, whom she visited regularly on death row and to whom she eventually became so close that they married on the day of his execution in July 1997. It was a “connection caused by the union of two people in an intense battle over a human life,” she explains. The author’s passion keeps the book from becoming bogged down in legal detail, and the countdown to O’Dell’s execution is almost as suspenseful to read as it must have been for her to experience.

Although she was unable to save O’Dell, she believes she was “successful in bringing this injustice to the world’s attention.”

An effective exposé of the criminal justice system that casts convincing doubt on the guilt of a death row inmate.

Swift, Charles Fifth East Publishing (342 pp.) $12.95 paper | $3.99 e-book Jan. 30, 2014 978-0-9899794-0-5

Swift’s bracing debut thriller envisions a New York where career-minded parents allow fascist institutions to raise their children.

It’s the near future, and the president is a smiling subordinate to the corporations that rule America; individuals rely more on technology than each other; and public schools have been abolished. Richard Carson and his wife, Carol, are Manhattan lawyers. While she’s passionate about law, Richard’s dream is to become a novelist. They’ve sent their young son, Christopher, to the Newman Home, a technologically savvy school, where he’s raised and educated full time. One day, to Carol’s chagrin, Richard decides to take the summer off from his firm and write. He also suggests they bring Christopher home on a summer sabbatical from Newman so they can bond with him. Carol strongly disagrees, arguing that the boy will fall behind in his intensive curriculum. Nevertheless, they bring Christopher home. Once there, however, their son is nervous and robotic, showing no personality. Then, while stroking the boy’s head before bed one night, Richard finds an incision scar behind his ear. Is the sinister mark related to Christopher’s malaise and Newman’s reluctance to give him up? This irresistible premise taps into modern paranoia about corporate control and social disengagement. Swift’s propulsive tale arrives in bite-sized chapters. Truly riveting, though, is Swift’s dialogue; when a Newman representative tells Richard his son can’t leave a class, she says, “I’m sorry, but we have the other residents to think of.” He replies, “And I only have one to think of.” Commentary on actual public policies is equally searing: “They were trying to create a new profit center. No child left behind? All the kids were left behind.” Occasionally, Swift projects his sensibilities as a writer through Richard, which can feel intrusive—“Finally, he knew he had a story to tell rather than a message to send”—a minor complaint about an incredibly successful work.

Why can’t all thrillers be this satisfying?

LOVE AND MAYHEM ON THE SUNNY ISLE OF JAMAICA Tate, Hope Hamilton CreateSpace (326 pp.) $12.99 paper | Feb. 22, 2014 978-1-4948-1987-3

In Tate’s debut romantic thriller, the way out for a woman being obsessively pursued by dangerous men may lie in uncovering her mother’s mysterious past.

Now that Drulietta Van Hamilton has inherited her late father’s vast estate, she’s getting noticed by a number of men. That’s not a problem when the attention’s 140

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“[The Tenglins] explore imagined worlds through harebrained humor in stories featuring goofy, original characters, including a vegetarian lion, monster ballerinas and a breakfast-making robot.” from the rock and roll band in my armpit

coming from Chad, a doctor just hired at the nearby hospital who falls for the young woman. But most of the men are either aggressive or outright menaces: Her cousin, Justin, believes he’s entitled to the estate, where he also resides; Chad’s father, Beckley, chases Dru when she refuses his advances; and marijuana traffickers kidnap her for ransom. Dru realizes that they’re enchanted by her since she’s the spitting image of her mother, Caroline, who died after giving birth to Dru and her now-dead twin sister, Drucilla. Dru delves into Caroline’s history to reveal why the infatuated men refer to both mother and daughter by a word she’s unfamiliar with—“Willoweens”—and why Dru’s son, Delamar, is in the same amount of jeopardy as his mom.

Tate spins a wickedly fun web in establishing her plot, with gleefully intricate links among the characters; upon hearing that his mother knew Caroline, an already-smitten Chad hilariously expresses a fear that he and Dru are related. There are indelible and often spooky settings, including Dru’s estate, which is so huge that she’s unaware of men growing marijuana on her property. Instant romance arrives too, when Chad, who has only just declared his love for Dru, asks her uncle Mercurio about “making her pregnant.” The introduction of an enigmatic group called Friends in High Places adds intrigue—both its membership and its reasons for being invested in Dru are hazy—as does an apparent clairvoyance shared by Dru and Delamar; each knows when the other is in peril. The story suffers when it hits a lull in the book’s second act, almost as if it’s hovering over the same plot devices: multiple trips to the hospital due to threats or attacks; more than one kidnapping; and interminable discussions about Chad and Dru’s potential marriage and its inexorable consummation. But the third act puts the story back on track with suspense and plenty of chances for Dru to display her self-defense training, though her signature move seems to be kneeing men in “the delicate anatomy.”

A spirited, diverting thriller that’s marred only by some narrative repetition.

THE ROCK AND ROLL BAND IN MY ARMPIT Tenglin, Robbin; Tenglin, Kevin Illus. by Stalker, Drew Cranial Egg (36 pp.) $14.95 | Dec. 12, 2013 978-0-9848951-1-3

In the Tenglins’ debut book, illustrated by Stalker, offbeat tales of whimsical characters are told through goofy, rhythmic poetry and equally eccentric illustrations.

The authors, a brother and sister, explore imagined worlds through harebrained humor in stories featuring goofy, original characters, including a vegetarian lion, monster ballerinas and a breakfast-making robot. Each loosely rhyming, upbeat poem ends with an offbeat punch line: “I’ve really been way much too lenient / Allowing them to live here rent-free, / But if I kick them out, I haven’t a doubt / They’ll just move to the back of my knee.” Stalker’s brightly colored, detailed illustrations pop

on otherwise clean, white pages. Their slight creepiness giddily calls to mind Ren & Stimpy, as do the at times slightly gross descriptions of “Goat Pizza” with “slimy brown banana peels” and “underpants with a mildew crust.” Sensitive parents of young readers might also beware of slightly morose tales, such as “Pool Party,” the story of a boy who accidentally jumps into a pack of cannibals’ soup. Other tales, though, such as “Band Aid,” about a girl anticipating the pain of an adhesive bandage’s removal who is pleasantly surprised by the painlessness of the actual experience, offer warmhearted lessons for young readers.

Similarly, “Molly McBing, best on the swing” uses humor to tell a cautionary, well-intentioned tale about swing safety. “Elevator to the Moon” and “Watermelon Seed” are simple tales of childhood imagination, while other poems, especially “Nose Race” and “Chimp Removal,” are purely nonsensical and likely to get a laugh. Slight variations in the placement of illustrations on each page match the rhythm of the poems, while the simple, clean presentation and readable typeface allow the neat, meticulous design to balance the absurdity and goofiness of the content.

An artfully executed book with silly, absurdist humor that will electrify the imaginations of young readers.

CIRCLE JERK

thomassey, rollo CreateSpace (148 pp.) $9.95 paper | $6.99 e-book Feb. 24, 2013 978-1-4826-1261-5 An unapologetically raunchy work of crime fiction about an endearing Pittsburgh hood who attempts to avenge the murder of his friend, in the process becoming a kind of local folk hero.

Though powered by a cast of well-developed characters and virtually nonstop action and adventure, this narrative is peppered with grammatical errors. Those errors notwithstanding, the solidly built storyline is replete with impressive plot twists. Jackie Fajt, a well-known face in the North Side region of Pittsburgh, was raised by a cantankerous tavern owner named Maxie and liked by virtually everyone in the neighborhood. Jackie grew up, joined the military and came back a disabled war hero. Now, working for a scumbag gangster named Spider, he’s staring down a dead-end existence.

In hopes of a monetary gain, he even hatches a wild plan to disrupt Pittsburgh’s upcoming G-20 summit with threats of violence.

But while out collecting money from local businesses for Spider, Jackie finds out that his boss has been murdered—and he now has more than $25 million in cash. With his newfound windfall, Jackie amends his plan so that it will also avenge the recent murder of a homeless man he had befriended years earlier. But when an oversexed, foulmouthed FBI agent named Micki Malone is assigned to track down the person making threats regarding the G-20 summit, the plot grows complicated with political infighting, libidinous encounters and more than a few devious attempts at double-crossing. Some of the scenes are downright jaw-dropping—as when Jackie interrupts a Steelers playoff game by flying a model airplane |

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carrying propane tanks into a transformer—but thomassey makes it work in a confident, edgy narrative that will offend some readers and entertain others.

A brutal, Tarantino-esque novel fueled by nonstereotypical characters and visceral scenes.

BAD BLOOD

Tulipan, Noel CreateSpace (222 pp.) $8.99 paper | $4.99 e-book Mar. 6, 2014 978-1-4936-8115-0 The sudden death of an intern at a Nashville hospital in 1996 leads to speculations of murder and vengeance in Tulipan’s debut medical thriller.

Dying in the operating room, Jason “JT” Thomas doesn’t leave behind many mourners. The philandering intern boasted about his frequent escapades with nurses at Arcadia Medical Center, and sex with emergency room nurse Leslie Arnot is the reason he missed multiple pages during a shift, ultimately resulting in the death of a young girl named Jenny. But his death is largely the result of his blood not clotting, caused, Dr. Sam Johnson suspects, by a blood thinner. This merely suggests murder, but it seems like a sound notion when Leslie turns up dead from a possible injection of potassium chloride. Sam helps Detective Henry Baskin with theories—perhaps

SEARCHING FOR THE TRUTH IN THE NEW TESTAMENT

This Issue’s Contributors # Adult Elfrieda Abbe • Maude Adjarian • Stephanie Anderson • Mark Athitakis • Joseph Barbato • Amy Boaz Jeffrey Burke • Lee E. Cart • Derek Charles Catsam • Dave DeChristopher • Kathleen Devereaux Ruth Douillette • Bobbi Dumas • Daniel Dyer • Lisa Elliott • Gro Flatebo • Jordan Foster • Julie Foster Peter Franck • Devon Glenn • Amy Goldschlager • Alex Heimbach • Jeff Hoffman • April Holder Robert M. Knight • Christina M. Kratzner • Megan Labrise • Paul Lamey • Louise Leetch • Judith Leitch • Angela Leroux-Lindsey • Peter Lewis • Elsbeth Lindner • Judith B. Long • Georgia Lowe • Joe Maniscalco • Janet Matthews • Don McLeese • Gregory McNamee • Clayton Moore • Liza Nelson Mike Newirth • John Noffsinger • Mike Oppenheim • Jim Piechota • William E. Pike • Gary Presley Sarah Rettger • Erika Rohrbach • Lloyd Sachs • Leslie Safford • Bob Sanchez • Michael Sandlin William P. Shumaker • Linda Simon • Margot E. Spangenberg • Andria Spencer • Bill Thompson Matthew Tiffany • Claire Trazenfeld • Pete Warzel • Rodney Welch • Carol White • Chris White Joan Wilentz • Marion Winik • Alex Zimmerman Children’s & Teen Alison Anholt-White • Kim Becnel • Marcie Bovetz • Kimberly Brubaker Bradley • Louise Brueggemann • Timothy Capehart • Ann Childs • GraceAnne A. DeCandido • Elise DeGuiseppi Lisa Dennis • Andi Diehn • Carol Edwards • Brooke Faulkner • Laurel Gardner • F. Lee Hall • Heather L. Hepler • Megan Honig • Shelley Huntington • Kathleen T. Isaacs • Laura Jenkins • Deborah Kaplan Joy Kim • K. Lesley Knieriem • Robin Fogle Kurz • Megan Dowd Lambert • Angela Leeper • Peter Lewis • Nina Lindsay • Lori Low • Joan Malewitz • Hillias J. Martin • Jeanne McDermott • Kathie Meizner • Deb Paulson • John Edward Peters • Melissa Rabey • Rebecca Rabinowitz • Kristy Raffensberger • Nancy Thalia Reynolds • Melissa Riddle Chalos • Amy Robinson • Lesli Rodgers Erika Rohrbach • Ronnie Rom • Mindy Schanback • Katie Scherrer • Dean Schneider John W. Shannon • Karyn N. Silverman • Jennifer Sweeney • Deborah D. Taylor Kimberly Whitmer • Monica Wyatt Indie Paul Allen • Kent Armstrong • Darren Carlaw • Stephanie Cerra • Tricia Cornell • Lynne Heffley Matthew Heller • Justin Hickey • Isaac Larson • Alex Layman • Joe Maniscalco • Dale McGarrigle Ingrid Mellor • Randall Nichols • Heather O’Neill • Florence Olsen • William E. Pike • Jackson Radish Sarah Rettger • Megan Roth • Jerome Shea • Barry Silverstein • Powder Thompson

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someone at the hospital contaminated a latex glove—until he realizes that the motive, means and opportunity all point to scrub nurse Jane, the mother of Jenny. Unfortunately, Sam has fallen in love with Jane. The doctor scrambles to turn police attention away from her while hoping to find his way to the truth. Tulipan’s novel is a solid thriller with an unambiguous, concise structure that efficiently builds tension. It opens on the day of JT’s death and is then split into three parts—a flashback showing the events leading to Jenny’s death; the discovery of further evidence against Jane, including her fingerprints found at Leslie’s apartment; and a murder trial. The story is imposing not by piling on the suspects and pieces of evidence but by continually re-examining the same suspect and evidence and viewing them under different lights: The blood thinner, warfarin, is also found in rat poison and, as the defense attorney implies, could have made contact with JT’s skin by accident. Tulipan is generally reliable at explaining medical parlance or equipment in layperson’s terms, similar to how the district attorney asks pathologist Linda Levine to do so in court; however, the scene in which Sam and JT perform a shuntogram on Jenny will have many readers scratching their heads. The author nevertheless excels in developing other pangs of drama, as when Baskin, hoping to get JT’s body exhumed, learns that the body was donated to science; JT’s parents threaten to file a civil suit; and Sam becomes so willing to help Jane that some of his actions may not be legal.

Medical thriller fans will appreciate the tantalizing plot and a markedly absorbing murder trial.

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Valset, Jon iUniverse (704 pp.) $46.95 | $36.95 paper | $9.99 e-book May 16, 2011 978-1-4502-8930-6

An incisive, unorthodox investigation of Scripture.

Valset’s thorough reading of the New Testament is worthy of any academic standard. In his sprawling commentary, he explores a wide variety of scriptural passages with great acuity. The book opens with an abridged world history leading up to the New Testament, including Greek and other historical references. The conclusions Valset reaches, however, are not expected ones. Indeed, he sets out to question, if not disprove, many of Christianity’s most basic assumptions regarding the New Testament. Some of his findings may seem mundane, such as arguing that there is no scriptural substantiation that Jesus’ feet were nailed during the Crucifixion. But he goes on to tackle far heavier subjects. For instance, Valset takes issue with the divine attributes assigned to the Holy Spirit, pointing out that the Spirit was not a favorite topic of the early Gospel authors and that it was Paul who made the Spirit an important point of theology. Again and again, Valset alludes to inconsistencies in accounts by the writers of the New Testament,

at one point shouting in exasperation: “How disheartening it is to encounter clashing versions of the inerrant word of God at every turn! Did any of the authors of the Christian canonical books ever care to write only what he knew was absolutely the truth?”

In the end, Valset concludes that Jesus was merely a man, misled by his religious zeal into tempting fate. “In his last minutes of lucidity,” Valset writes, “Jesus must have been painfully aware that his entire life had been wasted pursuing a hopeless dream.”

The author comes to the same conclusions as many other secular scholars over the past two centuries, though he does so in a manner more focused on literary criticism than most. To a Christian audience, Valset’s pharisaical work may raise eyebrows, while his unwavering attack upon language leaves no room within the text for literary license or even personality.

A confident, sure-footed reading of the New Testament that challenges believers.

K i r k us M edi a L L C # President M A RC W I N K E L M A N Chief Operating Officer M E G L A B O R D E KU E H N Chief Financial Officer J ame s H ull SVP, Marketing M ike H ejn y SVP, Online Paul H o f f man # Copyright 2014 by Kirkus Media LLC. KIRKUS REVIEWS (ISSN 1948- 7428) is published semimonthly by Kirkus Media LLC, 6411 Burleson Road, Austin, TX 78744.

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INDIE

Books of the Month MALALA YOUSAFZAI

A BECKONING WAR

Matthew Murphy

Karen Leggett Abouraya

A moving real-life story well-told and beautifully illustrated.

HENRY’S RE-ENTRY

88x50

Adam Tendler

Welcome Cole Cole maps out a propulsive emotional journey.

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An empathetic yet flawed man drives this wonderful novel, the first from an author ready for a glittering literary career.

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An honest, searching exploration of the artist as a young man.

Appreciations: Carrie Turns 40 B Y G RE G O R Y M C N A M EE

If you are younger than—well, younger than I am, anyway, Stephen King is like the Overlook Hotel: He has always been there.

But, like its eternal caretaker, Jack Torrance, King has a back story. Forty years ago, he wasn’t quite there—that is, he wasn’t yet a giant of popular fiction and an ascended master of the pants-wettingly–frightening yarn. Instead, he had been laboring away for a while on the lower rungs of a high school faculty, teaching English by day and, like said Mr. Torrance, drinking beer by night. And writing, always writing: He had several novels in his desk drawer by the early 1970s, and though he had yet to convince a publisher of it, he was certain that he had the stuff to take his place alongside Poe, Lovecraft and maybe even Tom Tryon.

As the story goes, King’s wife, Tabitha—who surely deserves a place in the panPhoto courtesy Shane Leonard theon of champions of American literature—retrieved a few pages, pounded out on a battered Olivetti (if you are younger than, say, Chloë Grace Moretz, that will be a mysterious reference indeed), that a despairing King had discarded. She encouraged him to keep on with the weird tale that he was struggling to pull out of the ether, and King took her up on it.

What had begun as a short story turned into a novel, if a rather formless one, that reportedly took King a fevered couple of weeks to bang out. That novel made the rounds, earning rejection after rejection to befit its heroine, who was an odd bird, or, in Kingly terms, a low bird, if birds had totem poles—and, as King wrote, “The low bird is not picked tenderly out of the dust by its fellows; rather, it is dispatched quickly and without mercy.”

(Cue slaughter.) Eventually, when hope was fading against hope, it landed a home at Doubleday and a $2,500 advance—a little more than $13,000 in today’s dollars.

Published in April 1974, Carrie took a few months to sell out its run in hardcover. I was working in a heavily trafficked bookstore in suburban Washington, D.C., at the time, and I remember selling a copy or two a day, far fewer than Peter Benchley’s Jaws, which had come out a couple of months earlier. It took a few months, too, before major publications such as the New York Times noticed King’s debut, most in brief and then in passing.

Yet Carrie, that oddly blood-soaked tale of a plain Jane with Latest cover Original cover specific, unusual powers to move an audience, did just fine in the end. After the paperback rights were sold, King was able to leave teaching and write full time, which he did with a vengeance, producing big blockbuster novels such as The Shining, Salem’s Lot, and The Stand within a few years and proving that, though there may have been toothy sharks in the water, Benchley’s vision was a lot less scary than his. And after Brian De Palma released his exceedingly creepy movie version in 1976, propelling John Travolta from sweathog to movie star, King was able to afford just about anything he wanted, though it took a while before he moved on from that beat-up Italian typewriter.

He has always been the caretaker—for the last 40 years, anyway. We wish Stephen King many years of happy horror-making to come.

Gregory McNamee is a contributing editor at Kirkus Reviews. |

kirkus.com

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appreciations

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15 may 2014

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Praise for a modern classic Written by Charles de Lint

• Illustrated by Charles Vess

★“Delicious.”—SLJ ★“Lyrical.”—PW ★“Beautiful bookmaking, lovely storytelling, and wondrous illustrations.”

—Kirkus Kirkus

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