Recently in Books: In The Mail Category
(Not that You Asked): Rants, Exploits, and Obsessions by Steve Almond
Publishers Weekly
This collection of essays on everything from Oprah's Book Club to the joy of being a new father displays all the qualities that have made Almond's short stories (The Evil B.B. Chow) and nonfiction (Candyfreak) entertaining. The wicked humor of Dear Oprah features an in-your-face attack on the Savior of Publishing and her book club, followed by equally obsequious apologies, including a gift of trust to her of his baby daughter. A section titled About My Sexual Failure (Not That You Asked) offers brutally honest dissections of his sexual obsessions as well as those of past girlfriends, including chest waxing, fake breasts and masturbating in the family pool. Demagogue Days is a hilarious look at Almond's experience with Fox News that displays an abiding disgust at current arbiters of cultural and political life in America as well as an enduring empathy for the underdog. But best of all is a beautiful and angry essay on The Failed Prophecy of Kurt Vonnegut (and How It Saved My Life), a look at Vonnegut's career-long concern over whether mankind would survive its own despicable conduct that serves as a summation of Almond's personal and literary ethos.
Stop Dressing your Six-Year Old Like Skank by Celia Rivenbark
Publishers Weekly
In some 32 short essays on the ridiculousness of modern life, Rivenbark (Bless Your Heart, Tramp; We're Just Like You, Only Prettier) wanders through Tweenland at the mall, thinking a better name would be "Lil Skanks." She thinks that the Cruise/Holmes pregnancy has an "indescribably delicious" Rosemary's Baby feel to it and recalls that Monica Lewinsky hosted a TV dating show--in which she "didn't get the guy." Rivenbark riffs on America's crazier obsessions--the painful but obligatory pilgrimage to Disney World, the new attention to "buttocks cleavage," coffee makers calling themselves baristas, or those celebrity moms who have "bumps" instead of babies. Rivenbark describes herself as a "slacker mom" and reminds readers to learn something from men--"because no matter how slack a dad is, if he does the least little thing, people gush over him." This is a hilarious read, perhaps best enjoyed while eating Krispy Kremes with a few girlfriends.
The Flawless Skin of Ugly People by Doug Crandell
Publishers Weekly
Hobbie, the narrator of this endearing debut novel, prefers the company of his beloved mutt, Terry, to the companionship of most humans. Hobbie, who has a blistering case of chronic acne, and Kari, his obese girlfriend of 20 years, continually aggravate their situations: Hobbie picks at and further inflames his bad skin while Kari eats in response to a shared tragedy from their youth. When the novel opens, Kari's ensconced at a weight-loss clinic hundreds of miles from their temporary north Georgia home, and Hobbie lives like a hermit until he's attacked by a bear. While recovering, he's sucked into the messy world of Kari's father, Roth, and slowly, clumsily becomes part of Roth's family once Kari goes missing from the clinic. Crandell has an exquisite eye for small details--Kari's letters home are written on lined paper, the same kind we wrote love notes on--that lend a tender feel to what could easily be overwrought. Though the novel turns on some unconvincing plot twists (particularly in the concluding section), the characters and situations are so simultaneously moving and unique that a bit of contrivance doesn't sink this tale of misfit love
Noogie's Time to Shine by Jim Knipfel
Publishers Weekly
Memoirist Knipfel (Slackjaw and Ruining It for Everyone) here presents Ned Noogie Krapczak, a friendless, 35-year-old schlub who works as an ATM re-stocker and repairman, lives with his mother and is obsessed with old movies. It's clear from the beginning that Knipfel is knowingly drawing on affable loser stereotypes, particularly when he has Noogie steal his first $20 from one of the cash machines entirely by accident. The magnitude of Noogie's theft, however, soon sets him apart: working piecemeal, Noogie steals close to $5 million in $20 bills before being forced on an elaborate road trip with his cat, Dillinger. The book's first half traces Noogie's haphazard flight through unremarkable American towns and has an oddball charm: the possibility that Knipfel's sad creature might have gotten away with such a simple, substantial crime provides real renegade pleasure. In the second half, however, Knipfel shifts focus to the cops and FBI agents trying to track Noogie down: their crews feel thin and underrealized in comparison. Nevertheless, Knipfel's talent for empathizing with the underdog, evident is his earlier work, makes Noogie's adventures poignant and funny.
Publishers Weekly
One of the two winners of the Gather.com First Chapters contest, Edwards's provocative debut begins in the summer of 1850 as the debate over the expansion of slavery into the Mexican Cession territory prompts threats of secession and war. A slave revolt and rumors that the leader of the uprising is roaming the countryside recruiting an army further frays nerves in Charleston, S.C. When a local farmer is caught harboring a runaway, he is charged with a capital crime. The New York Tribune sends young reporter John Sharp to cover the trial; he quickly befriends planter Tyler Breckenridge, the scion of one of the most powerful families in Charleston. But as Sharp and fellow reporter Owen Conway uncover clues of a covert militia buildup, Sharp begins to suspect that Breckenridge is involved. As the emotionally charged fugitive-slave trial unfolds, Sharp and Conway rush to expose the secessionist conspiracy and head off war. Edwards fills the gaps in the record of the Crisis of 1850 to produce a plausible scenario that eloquently captures the fear and rivalries of the antebellum era, though many passages could use a healthy pruning. For fans of historical fiction--and Civil War fiction particularly.
***Content has been a little sparse lately as I try to get acclimatized to a few things. This combined with some technical difficulties has "put me off my game" as the saying goes. Look for more content after Labor Day, but the pace will still be quality over quantity. In the meantime, here are some books that have found there way to my doorstep that might be of interest.***
- Our American King by David Lozell Martin
Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. At the start of Martin's compelling postapocalyptic novel, which reads like The Road as told by the crusty old woman from Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All, Mary and her husband, John, perch precariously in a tree while a huge, corpse-eating pig waits below. Flashback a few decades: Mary and John are starving in suburban Maryland outside Washington, D.C., after a disaster known as the calamity destroyed much of the country's infrastructure. The top .1% of America's richest citizens have bought up all the commodities and withdrawn to enclaves guarded by hired thugs. After a man known as Tazza emerges as a strong local leader, John declares him king. Martin (The Crying Heart Tattoo) charts Tazza's self-sustaining kingdom from its early bucolic beginnings to its final bloody battles against rapacious Canadians hired by a resurgent American government bent on subduing this upstart leader. Filled with action, romance and terrific characters, this intelligent cautionary tale deserves a wide readership.
- The Echo Maker by Richard Powers
Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. A truck jackknifes off an "arrow straight country road" near Kearney, Nebr., in Powers's ninth novel, becoming the catalyst for a painstakingly rendered minuet of self-reckoning. The accident puts the truck's 27-year-old driver, Mark Schluter, into a 14-day coma. When he emerges, he is stricken with Capgras syndrome: he's unable to match his visual and intellectual identifications with his emotional ones. He thinks his sister, Karin, isn't actually his sister--she's an imposter (the same goes for Mark's house). A shattered and worried Karin turns to Gerald Weber, an Oliver Sacks-like figure who writes bestsellers about neurological cases, but Gerald's inability to help Mark, and bad reviews of his latest book, cause him to wonder if he has become a "neurological opportunist." Then there are the mysteries of Mark's nurse's aide, Barbara Gillespie, who is secretive about her past and seems to be much more intelligent than she's willing to let on, and the meaning of a cryptic note left on Mark's nightstand the night he was hospitalized. MacArthur fellow Powers (Gold Bug Variations, etc.) masterfully charts the shifting dynamics of Karin's and Mark's relationship, and his prose--powerful, but not overbearing--brings a sorrowful energy to every page.
- World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism by Norman Podhoretz
Publishers Weekly
One of the few proud neoconservatives remaining, Podhoretz offers an impassioned defense of President Bush's foreign policy, gleefully attacking those on the left and the right who harbor suspicions that Bush fils is less than infallible. Convinced that we are in the middle of the fourth world war (the Cold War was the third), he attempts to steel us for the years of conflict to come. But Podhoretz's argument falls flat because of his refusal to face difficult realities in Iraq. He insists that the media has resolutely tried to ignore any and all signs of progress and repeatedly asserts that those with whom he disagrees are committed to seeing the U.S. fail in Iraq in order to enhance their professional reputations. Even in describing how the events of September 11 drew America together, Podhoretz cannot resist partisan sniping: [E]ven on the old flag-burning Left, a few prominent personalities were painfully wrenching their unaccustomed arms into something vaguely resembling a salute. Podhoretz's take-no-prisoners writing style will delight his partisans while infuriating his ideological opponents, whom he brands as members of a domestic insurgency against the Bush Doctrine.
-Coincidentally: Unserious Reflections on Trivial Connections by George Rutler
Book Description
From the DaVinci Code and Roswell to E Pluribus Unum and the pyramid on the back of every dollar bill, we all are fascinated by secrets, codes, and coincidences. George Rutler - EWTN speaker, Crisis magazine columnist, and reigning Catholic wit - offers his reflections on the coincidental links that connect the most far-flung parts of our worlds. Topics cover the gamut of human life, from Louis Farrakhan and Edgar Allen Poe to Benjamin Franklin and the propensity of Scottish physicians to dominate the Nobel Prizes for Medicine. Each 4-page reflection is accompanied by line art to give this volume the perfect feel of antiquarian delight - perfect for the language lover and curmudgeon in all of us.
Duck Duck Wally: A Novel by Gabe Rotter
Publishers Weekly
Rotter relies heavily on black street slang for comic effect in his zany debut, starting with chizapter 1. Wally Moscowitz, a self-described frumpy, kinda chubby little boring man living in Los Angeles, writes lyrics for rapper Oral B, the current star of Godz-Illa Records. When not penning lyrics full of four-letter words for Oral, Wally also writes dirty bedtime fables for adults, examples of which are sprinkled throughout the novel. Godz-Illa CEO Abraham Dandy Lyons has assured Wally that if anyone ever discovers that Oral B isn't writing his own lyrics, Wally will end up in a ditch. Soon, Wally's dog gets 'napped, goons are trying to kill Wally and everyone rushes to and fro against a backdrop of glitzy L.A. bizness thuggery. Rotter's a talented writer, though readers who find variations of the same joke funny enough to support the silly plot will be most rewarded.
Publishers Weekly
Sometimes sad, often poignant and always painfully honest, the stories in this fiction anthology do away with the rose-colored glasses that grown-ups often employ to make memories of adolescence bearable, drawing them back into the bewildering fog of youth. Beyond a talented group of writers-including George Saunders, Jennifer Egan, Stacey Richter, A.M. Homes and Nathan Englander-author and editor Poirier has gathered a happily diverse set of sad-sack stories. Julie Orringer produces a "Note to Sixth-Grade Self," in which she advises an awkward 12-year-old how to get through excruciating dance classes ("Do not think about Zachary Booth's hand warts"); Mark Poirier contributes the story of an unhappy boy whose compulsive lies hide an unspeakable secret; and Amber Dermont posits a convincing tale of a teenage girl learning to understand her abhorrent mother. For adult readers, this rich, candid collection is bound to stir memories of their own growing pains, and more than a few words of thanks that they're in the past; for those in the thick of it, these stories will, if nothing else, take a little of the sting out of teenage loneliness and confusion.
The New Kid: A Novel by Eliot Schrefer
Publishers Weekly
Schrefer weds fluid prose to a trashy/sexy plot in his fun second novel, revisiting the corrupting world of the rich (his debut, Glamorous Disasters, featured an SAT tutor caught up in the dirty doings of his wealthy clients). Fifteen-year-old Humphrey Baxter, recently relocated with his down-on-their-luck parents to Florida, has trouble adjusting to his new digs (a motel), and though initially Humphrey's narration strikes a familiar YA tone, Schrefer throws in a welcome wrinkle with two bizarre friendships (with a jock and the jock's hot mom) that lead to Humphrey being savagely beaten. With Humphrey hospitalized, Schrefer cuts to Humphrey's half-sister, Gretchen, who has found love with Rajan Lansing and surrogate parents in Rajan's wealthy folks, Gita and Joel. After Rajan dumps her, Gretchen follows Gita and Joel to Rome to get Rajan back. During the luxurious, curiously intimate summer, Gretchen hears of Humphrey's troubles and the Lansings enthusiastically invite Humphrey to join them. The Lansings handle all expenses, but there is a price to pay as the two Baxters become disturbingly (and not entirely unwillingly) entangled with philandering Joel and increasingly unstable Gita. Aside from the Hollywood thriller ending, the combination of smart writing and a decadent world make for a genuine if guilty pleasure.
Malvinas Requiem by Rodolfo Fogwill
In the foreground of this fabulous, satirical, subterranean story is the crunching discomfort of fighting a war on the cold, windswept hillsides of the Falklands. Here, however, the campaign is seen from an Argentine perspective, where the Brits are efficient, well-paid, confident supermen eager to wipe out confused, hungry, half-trained peasant conscripts. Amid the carnage, the dillos live by getting food from the Argentines in exchange for kerosene and cigarettes. The kerosene and cigarettes they get from the British in exchange for information about Argentine positions. There is no overt morality except for the unspoken commentary provided by the image of the dillo with a thumb up its backside, an endlessly adaptable symbol for General Galtieri buggering up Argentina, inefficient officers screwing up helpless squaddies, and idiotic life messing up everyone.Had Borges written All Quiet on the Western Front, it might have come out something like this. Amid the snow and slush, death arrives from mines buried in the ground, bullets fired from the hillsides and rockets from the air. But permeating the carnage, black-cowled nuns float into view, sheep explode in slow motion, Harrier jets hang silently in mid-air, and dead pilots swing by beneath orange parachutes, while burrowing deep into the earth the dillos cling desperately to life and pass time away with fantastical stories about the nature of the world above them.
Here are some book that will be hitting bookstores later this summer and fall that have found their way to me:
- Scots on the Rocks: A Bed-and-Breakfast Mystery by Mary Daheim
Publishers Weekly:
Daheim's enjoyable 23rd B&B mystery (after 2006's Saks and Violins) takes Judith McMonigle Flynn, her cousin Serena Renie Jones and their husbands to a remote town in Scotland. The idea is to get away from the stresses of running an inn, and from Judith's pesky habit of stumbling over corpses and solving murders, but when a new Scottish acquaintance mysteriously dies, Judith can't help poking around. Why would anyone kill Harry Gibbs? Perhaps his wife, now twice widowed, had developed a romantic relationship with someone else, or perhaps a complex business deal lies behind Harry's demise. The tight-knit locals aren't always willing to open up to Judith, and soon more people die. The many eccentric Scottish characters aren't especially well developed, but the local color—fine wool, romantic castles, freely flowing whiskey and tea—is charming. This cozy makes a good vacation read, whether or not your destination is Scotland.
Synopsis
An ancient race of lycanthropes survives in modern LA and its numbers are growing as packs convert the city's downtrodden into their fold. Stuck in the middle are a local dogcatcher and the woman he loves, whose secret past haunts her as she fights a bloody one-woman battle to save their relationship. Meanwhile, dog packs fight and scheme all around the them, hiding out in old warehouses, city kennel cages, or the plush comfort of suburban homes. Paying no heed to the moon, these packs change from human to wolf at will, squaring off against one another as they seek dominance at any cost. "Sharp Teeth" is a novel-in-verse that blends epic themes with dark humour, dogs playing cards, crystal meth labs, and acts of heartache and betrayal in Southern California.
- Winged Wonders: A Celebration of Birds in Human History by Peter Watkins and Jonathan Stockland
Book Description
Celebrating the powerful role of birds in human customs and traditions from around the world and throughout history, this sourcebook explores the delightful stories surrounding some of the world’s best-known birds—including the eagle, owl, pelican, falcon, dove, swan, and raven. With topics including folklore, literature, music, dance, and spirituality, this eclectic and enchanting encyclopedia of avian–human relations is an ideal companion for any bird-lover. Brilliantly illustrated and filled with intriguing research, it illuminates many astonishing aspects of bird life, including their dazzling colors, intricate nest-building habits, finely structured feathers, amazing feats of migration, and breathtakingly beautiful song and movement.
Chasing the Rising Sun: The Journey of an American Song by Ted Anthony
Publishers Weekly
The song "House of the Rising Sun," which became a chart-topping hit in 1964 by the Animals, has a murky history, said to have originated in Appalachia, maybe New Orleans and perhaps even England, as well as having a thriving universal afterlife among cover bands and karaoke singers. Anthony, an editor for the Associated Press, crisscrossed the globe in search of the twisted roots and many spreading branches of this lonesome ballad of unknown origins. The song's ultimate odyssey began in 1937 when folklorist Alan Lomax recorded a version by 16-year-old Georgia Turner Connolly in Middlesboro, Ky. Lomax published the lyrics as "The Rising Sun Blues" and from there it grew in popularity and was performed and recorded by many, including Bob Dylan on his first record in 1962. The story seems promising, but Anthony's narrative is an uneasy mix of memoir, dissertation-like detail (with tedious repetitions of multiple versions of lyrics), journalistic feature writing and esoteric trivia. Anthony at times unconvincingly adopts the authoritative voice of an American studies expert, and he also lacks the musical or poetic knowledge to dissect the song. This exploration will be of most value to those who share Anthony's unbridled obsession with this ubiquitous ballad.
Light in the Dark Ages: The Friendship of Francis and Clare of Assisi by Jon M. Sweeney
Publishers Weekly
She was rudder to his sail and yin to his yang, but the relationship between medieval saints Clare and Francis of Assisi was hardly the love affair depicted in literature and film, as this joint biography makes clear. Sweeney, author of the St. Francis Prayer Book and The Lure of Saints, sketches the true nature of the liaison, which he says was marked by natural affection, but never led to marriage or an affair. There is little reason to believe that Francis and Clare shared any romance other than one that was jointly with God, Sweeney writes of the partners in the spiritual movement that revolutionized Western religion. Relying on early biographies of Francis by Thomas of Celano and Bonaventure as well as more recent scholarship, Sweeney examines Francis's conversion and decision to marry poverty, showing how Clare, 12 years his junior, fled her family to embrace his radical way of life. Sweeney deals, too, with the controversy and dissension that erupted in the movement after just two decades as some followers softened the radical mendicancy espoused by Francis and Clare. Readers interested in an accurate portrayal of these two powerful figures will find this an excellent introduction to a movement that has captured the imaginations of moderns more than 700 years after the deaths of Francis and Clare.
Blue Sky Thoughts: Colour, Consciousness and Reality by Jamie Carnie
Book Description
For centuries philosophers have disputed whether the sky really is blue or whether this "blueness" is only in the eye of the beholder. But perhaps there is a better way to think about perception . . .In this controversial and challenging book, Jamie Carnie introduces a radical new perspective on the way our senses operate, setting out to save our instinctive belief that colors, sounds, flavors, textures, and scents are features of the "real" world and not just mental constructs that disappear the moment we look away. A minimal model of the mind as a virtual machine helps us formulate Carnie's universe.
***Sorry about the radio silence - for those few readers left - I've been very distracted of late. Here is a catch-up In the Mail to fill the space until I can get back in the groove.***
Innocent as Sin by Elizabeth Lowell
Book Description
Kayla Shaw is a private banker in Arizona—smart and capable but underpaid and underappreciated. Rand McCree is a haunted man who paints landscapes in the Pacific Northwest, burning with a need for answers about the terrible event that shattered his world. They are two strangers with nothing in common . . . until their lives entwine—and explode.On what at first appears to be an ordinary day, everything changes for Kayla, as she barely escapes a kidnapping attempt and finds herself accused of a shocking crime: the illegal laundering of hundreds of millions of dollars. Damned by lies and false "evidence," she is trapped with no place to run.
After five agonizing years, Rand has finally been offered what he desires the most: the name of his twin brother's murderer. Hungry for vengeance, he accepts a job with St. Kilda Consulting that will place him in the killer's orbit . . . and tantalizingly close to Kayla Shaw. The cold-blooded international criminal responsible for Rand's brother's death has targeted Kayla as his next victim. Since she can't turn to the police, who believe she's guilty as sin, she must place her life in the hands of the shadowy, secretive man who has come out of nowhere to protect her.
Suspicious of each other, needing each other, they are two against the world—with unknown enemies on all sides and even the government itself suspect—as the violence of the past erupts in the present. And now innocence alone will not be enough to keep Kayla Shaw alive. . . .
Booklist
Miami crime reporter Britt Montero, on the mend emotionally after losing her fiance in a shootout (The Ice Maiden, 2002), decides work is the best medicine. Her first case is actually an old one. The body of Nathan York is excavated by construction workers. Years earlier York was the subject of Britt's first big story. He was a militant advocate for men's rights in custody cases and would snatch children from their mothers and deliver them to their estranged fathers. Britt is also trying to track down Marsh Holt, the Honeymoon Killer. A hunky thirtysomething lothario operating with aliases in various states, Holt married a string of women across the country who all suffered fatal "accidents" while on their honeymoons. The ninth Montero mystery reflects Buchanan's steady growth as a novelist. Montero becomes a more textured, deeper character with each entry in the series, and the personal revelations here are as riveting as the crimes being investigated.
My Dreams Out in the Street by Kim Addonizio
Publishers Weekly
Harsh realism mixes with poetic despair as the characters in Addonizio's second novel try to climb out of the hells of their own making. Rita Louise Jackson is homeless at 24, trying to get off heroin and find her husband, Jimmy D'Angelo, who left her after a fight. Rita wanders through contemporary San Francisco, sometimes drunk, sometimes strung out, turning tricks or panhandling when she needs money, all the while haunted by memories of her murdered mother and of her time with Jimmy. As she contemplates ways to turn her life around, an unwelcome opportunity arises when she sees a body being taken out of a seedy hotel. The murderer spots her and promises to come after her. The ensuing fear brings private investigator Gary Shepard into her life. Jimmy, meanwhile, is finding something like success as a waiter at a swanky restaurant. Even during the harshest times, the beauty of Addonizio's language binds the reader to a story that unfolds in the shadows of Denis Johnson's and Charles Bukowski's works. Addonizio (Little Beauties, and several poetry volumes, including What Is This Thing Called Love) might not bring much new to the hobo/vagabond-lit. bonfire, but her characters' desperate lives are rendered with striking delicacy.
- The King of Methlehem by Mark Lindquist
Publishers Weekly
Lindquist (Carnival Desires) puts his experience combating the scourge of methamphetamines as a Washington State narcotics prosecutor to good use in his fourth novel, a gripping thriller. Tacoma detective Wyatt James is dead set on putting an end to the operations of a shadowy figure who uses the alias Howard Schultz (after the Starbucks mogul), who has moved to establish himself as the preeminent meth dealer in the Pacific Northwest. James's efforts to turn smalltime dealers into informants who could lead him to his quarry are aided by Mike Lawson, supervisor of the drug trial unit, and the author's alter ego. When Schultz again beats a rap, James's obsession with his white whale intensifies, leading to a tragic conclusion. The quality writing and flashes of gallows humor raise this above the usual tale of good guys vs. bad guys.
- If Today Be Sweet by Thrity Umrigar
Publishers Weekly:
In Umrigar's tender fourth novel, Tehmina "Tammy" Sethna is torn between two cultures that couldn't be more different: Bombay and Cleveland. The former is her homeland, but after her husband's recent death, she's been staying with her son and his family in America. Tehmina loves being near grandson Cookie, but she often feels like an intruder in her American daughter-in-law's home, and she's disconcerted by the changes in her son, Sorab, who is stressed from the corporate rat race. Though Tehmina's loneliness floods her with memories of her husband, the Parsi community back in India and her traditional ways, she finds no small amount of purpose (and celebrity) in Cleveland after suspecting her neighbor of child abuse and intervening on the children's behalf. Immigration laws, meanwhile, force her to decide whether she'll remain in Cleveland or return to Bombay. Umrigar (The Space Between Us) shows the unseemly side of American excess and prejudice while gently reminding readers of opportunities sometimes taken for granted.
- The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril by Paul Malmont
Publishers Weekly:
Malmont's debut thriller reads like pages torn from the pulp magazines to which it pays nostalgic homage. It's 1937, and the nation's two top pulp writers—William Gibson, author of novels featuring caped crime fighter "The Shadow," and Lester Dent, the creator of do-gooder hero Doc Savage—are trying to solve real-life mysteries that each hopes will give him bragging rights as the world's best yarn spinner. Gibson follows rumors that pulp colleague H.P. Lovecraft was murdered to the fog-shrouded Providence, R.I., waterfront. Dent tracks clues to an impossible killing through the bowels of New York's Chinatown. As the two adventures dovetail, they spawn sinuous subplots involving tong wars, secret chemical warfare, pirate mercenaries, kidnappings, revolution in China and weird science run amok. Lovecraft, L. Ron Hubbard, Louis L'Amour and Chester Himes all play prominent supporting roles and offer piquant observations on the penny-a-word writing life that conjure a colorful sense of time and place. Like the pulpsters he reveres, Malmont doesn't let the facts get in the way of his storytelling, and the result is a fun, if wildly improbable, pulp joyride.
- Throw Like A Girl: Stories by Jean Thompson
Publishers Weekly:
The women protagonists of Thompson's hard-hitting latest collection of stories (The Gasoline Wars; 1999 NBA finalist Who Do You Love) have, like the young army wife of "It Would Not Make Me Tremble to See Ten Thousand Fall," secret plans to wrest control of their life from husbands, boyfriends and mothers. Kelly Ann Pardee, a high school dropout stuck at home with a child while her army grunt husband is sent to the Middle East, wants to be a warrior, too. The teenage Jessie in "The Five Senses" has run off to Florida with an older man she is beginning to realize is violent and scary, and yet she is disappointed that her new fugitive existence isn't more exciting than her upper-middle-class life. Older women in these stories have been through the mill—of marriage, adultery, child-rearing. Mid-40s Melanie of "A Normal Life" marries Chad after a long affair, only to wonder if this new version of her lover is one she wants. In "Holy Week," seething sales agent Olivia Snow is too worn down by her job and single mom drudgery to upgrade her "subemployed musician" boyfriend or realize how at risk her 17-year-old daughter is. Thompson's talent is on full display.
- Stalin's Ghost by Martin Cruz Smith
Publishers Weekly
Moscow-based Senior Investigator Arkady Renko, in his outstanding sixth outing (after Wolves Eat Dogs), investigates a murder-for-hire scheme that leads him to suspect two fellow police detectives, Nikolai Isakov and Marat Urman, both former members of Russia's elite Black Berets, who served in Chechnya. Isakov, a war hero, is now running for public office. Renko must also look into reports that the ghost of Stalin has begun appearing on subway platforms and why several bodies of Black Berets who served in Chechnya with Isakov have turned up in the morgue. Despite repeated threats to his life, Renko stubbornly perseveres, seeking justice in a land that has no official notion of that concept. Smith eschews vertiginous twists and surprises, concentrating instead on Renko as he slowly and patiently builds his case until the pieces fall together and he has again, if not exactly triumphed, at least survived. This masterful suspense novel casts a searing light on contemporary Russia.
Been a while, time for another edition of In The Mail . . .
Book Description
From the executive director of the ACLU, Anthony D. Romero, and award-winning journalist Dina Temple-Raston, In Defense of Our America takes a critical look at civil liberties in this country at a time when constitutional freedoms are in peril. Using the stories of real Americans on the frontlines of the fight for civil liberties., In Defense of Our America provides a look at the dangerous erosion of the Bill of Rights in the age of terror.[. . .]
With unparalleled access to key players in some of the landmark tests of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, In Defense of Our America weaves together a compelling narrative that provides an unusually full look at the fight for civil liberties as Americans struggle to protect their rights and ensure their security.
- Virtual Worlds: Rewiring Your Emotional Future by Jack Myers
Book Description
A growing number of young people are spending unprecedented amounts of time in a virtual existence. Virtual Worlds are becoming an embedded part of our culture and the implications for every aspect of society are unimaginable. This 116-page easy-to-read book discusses the potential that Virtual Worlds have to dramatically alter the emotional code of the human race, and also reviews the opportunities for individuals, corporations, advertising and media companies to build personal and corporate marketing campaigns in Virtual Worlds. This first reader generated book not only will open the eyes of readers to this completely new world but, in itself, will become an immersive experience for readers that could keep them involved, engaged and emotionally connected to a virtual world community experience for years ahead.
Book Description
For the last thirty years, Douglas E. Schoen has been one of the most innovative people in Democratic politics, working behind the scenes as a political strategist for some of the world's most influential and respected politicians. Now, as the upcoming presidential elections focus attention on the campaign process, this consummate insider draws back the curtain on how modern elections have been transformed in the past quarter-century—and how those changes have changed politics, in America and around the world.
Publishers Weekly
An unnamed narrator details the post-Yale love triangle of three people much, much wealthier than he in Hobbs's Gatsby-meets-McInerney debut. Unlike Nick Carraway or the persistent "You" of Bright Lights Big City, the speaker at the heart of this novel is more cipher than seer. A shiftless New York freelancer edging into his 30s, the narrator discovers that his Yalie friend—handsome, gay Ethan Hoevel, famous designer of sleek contemporary furniture—has left his boyfriend, Stanton Vaughn, to pursue a doomed relationship with their fellow alum—the married (and female) Samona Taylor (née Ashley). The narrator still carries a torch for Samona, and renews his friendship with Samona's husband, the also-Yalie Merrill Lynch trader David Taylor, mostly out of a morbid curiosity about Samona's philandering. Hobbs spends much of the novel recounting how everyone got where they are in the eight years following college, but the plot picks up in the last third, when Ethan's ne'er-do-well brother precipitates a crisis, and Ethan and Samona's affair has its reckoning. Hobbs convincingly portrays young, Ivied New Yorkers with money, but he leaves the narrator's feelings for Samona (and much else) largely unexplored, making the proceedings feel unresolved.
- Ladykiller by Lawrence Light and Meredith Anthony
Book Description
In the city that never sleeps, evil is wide awake. From the bright lights of Times Square to the dark alleys of New York, the Ladykiller is at work and at prey. Four women savagely murdered on the mean streets of NYC. The Ladykiller leaves no trail, no clues. The pressure is on for NYPD detective Dave Dillon - either he solves the crime or he can kiss his job goodbye.When Dave joins forces with Megan Morrison, a beautiful young social worker, the search for a cold-hearted killer leads to a hot romance. But a host of forces threaten to intrude. Megan's jealous mentor would delight in derailing the romance, as would Jamie, a determined detective with her own not-so-hidden agenda. And Dave's shadowy past is never far behind. The clock is ticking for Dave and Megan. Will they close in on the shocking truth behind the crimes, or will it close in on them? In the world of the Ladykiller, passion can turn deadly in a New York minute.
- Untold Stories by Alan Bennett
Publishers Weekly
Bennett has been known to British audiences of radio, television, stage and screen for decades. In the United States, he's best known as the screenwriter of The Madness of King George and, perhaps, for his experiences with Miss Shepherd, an indigent woman who set up a succession of vans in his front yard for 15 years. Now he returns with a shaggy collection of autobiographical sketches, diary entries, considerations of art, architecture and other authors, as well as an account of his bout with colon cancer. Returning to the precincts of his straitlaced, working-class British background, Bennett reveals a lost world whose influence and mores have trailed him his entire life. He revisits the Leeds that he knew in the 1940s, where he was first exposed to music and theater, and where his parents, both shy and retiring people, set lack of pretension as the highest value. While he plays the old crank who is put upon by the world as it is, Bennett reveals an eye for detail and a feel for the complexity of human interactions. And though he laments at length his own late maturation—physical, sexual and intellectual—and lack of sophistication, he shows himself to have achieved a measure of happiness.
- Captain of the Sleepers by Mayra Montero
Booklist
Montero charts the chilling undercurrents of steamy Caribbean life in novels notable for their lyrical intensity and mystery, eroticism and social acumen. Here, she writes of Puerto Rico as the ill-fated nationalist movement comes undone in 1950 and the U.S. military conducts practice bombing runs in preparation for the Korean War. Montero uses a classic flashback frame as Andres, then the 12-year-old son of a hotel owner, now meets with a man he has been estranged from for 50 years, J. T., a pilot young Andres called the Captain of the Sleepers because he ferried the dead. In his eighties and ill with cancer, J. T. wants to make things right. As J. T. tells his version of past events, Montero illuminates Andres' boy-mind at work as he tries to understand his father's involvement with the revolutionaries, J. T.'s role in their lives, and his mother's early death. The result is a haunting tale of a small place overrun by a superpower and a small family shattered by big dreams of liberation and love, and the mythic alignment of sex and death.
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