The Liar's Diary
Patry Francis
Dutton
375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014
0525949909 $16.47 www.penguin.com www.patryfrancis.com/index2.htm
Aaron Paul Lazar
Reviewer
The Liar's Diary, a psychological suspense novel by debut author Patry Francis, should be tooled in fragrant red leather with gilt edges, and placed on your bookshelf in a place of honor.
Be forewarned. When you buy it, allow for an uninterrupted block of time. Forget sleep. The lure of The Liar's Diary is strong, for it will call your name incessantly, and your dreams will be filled with Ms. Francis's characters long after you've reached the end of this riveting new work.
Full of subtle, twisting truths that bob and weave in a surf of lies, The Liar's Diary is like a fragile raft on a swelling sea of denial. Carefully selected truths are masterfully revealed as we are thrust into the life of high school secretary Jeanne Cross. The raft soars higher – just enough to almost peer over the whitecaps. Jeanne glimpses half-truths so disturbing she retreats into the safety of her compulsively ordered life. Disoriented and in psychological turmoil, we twist and weave in yet another direction beside her, constantly on edge and guessing until the final page.
Jeanne strives to be the dutiful wife, mother, housekeeper, nurturer, and employee. But we quickly learn her perfect life is built on a severely cracked foundation. Gavin Cross, the debonair doctor husband, is a controlling father who bullies his son, feeding an explosive eating disorder that sends Jamie Cross to chocolate for relief. Scenarios of mockery escalate, with full blame for Jamie's lack of academic success laid squarely at Jeanne's feet. In her picture perfect house, we soon discover a supremely unhappy woman who lives in suburban hell, trying to defend her beloved son and keep peace in the dysfunctional family.
Enter Ali Mather, the new music teacher at Jeanne's school who flounces into Jeanne's staid world of responsibility with flowing strawberry blond hair, fragrant perfumes, and tight jeans, enticing the high school boys and male teachers, and providing hours of juicy gossip for the rest of the staff. Ali, flamboyant, passionate, and unabashedly sexy, is the antithesis of sedate, controlled Jeanne. Yet, through a circumstance not fully understood, Jeanne is drawn to Ali like a powerful narcotic.
Ali, married to George Mather, a most perfect husband, has issues of her own. Unresolved childhood traumas send her into the arms of two men in Jeanne's town, shocking the quiet community. George, strangely forgiving and still madly in love with his philandering wife, cuts a figure of loving forgiveness. As Ali embraces her hedonistic experiences, including an affair with the school shop teacher half her age, Jeanne reacts with simultaneous repulsion and fascination.
But someone is stalking Ali, entering her home and leaving subtle reminders of their presence. Is it one of her lovers? A student? A jealous wife? Her music is desecrated, personal items disappear, but the police don't take her seriously. Jeanne struggles to help her friend overcome her fears and abandoned relationships, just when Ali's diary disappears and people start to die.
The story twists into another realm, shocking the reader multiple times, surging higher now with dark half-truths. Jeanne's son is accused of ungodly crimes, and it's up to her to uncover the facts. She must discover who's lying, in order to save her son.
Patry Francis is a gifted deep thinker who knows people and paints them well.
Her writing style is engaging and smooth going down – like a big bowl of lime sherbet. First time novelists often try too hard, peppering their prose with ostentatious adverbs and adjectives. But Ms. Francis's writing focuses on the compelling story as the movie plays in your head with a clever appreciation of the craft.
I highly recommend The Liar's Diary to anyone who enjoys a good suspense, mystery, or psychological thriller.
Forever In Your Eyes
Sylvia Dianne Beverly
Golden Arts Publishing
0971632905 $15.99
Afrika Midnight Asha Abney
Reviewer
Rating: "Forever In Your Eyes" is a potpourri of poems of love, appreciations and tributes, dedicated to Dr. Maya Angelou. It is an excellent collection of poetry written by Sylvia Dianne Beverly "Ladi Di" and consists of 124 pages, published by Golden Arts Publishing. Sylvia Dianne Beverly, "Ladi Di" is a native of Washington, D.C, CEO of Golden Arts Publishing Co, founder/director of "Girls and Boys with Hearts," poet, and author of Forever In Your Eyes (A potpourri of poems of love, appreciations and tributes, dedicated to Dr. Maya Angelou and published by Golden Arts Publishing Co.).
"Forever In Your Eyes" is an inspirational, uplifting, motivational and delightful book. Each of the poems are insightful, healing and touching such as "Deep In My Heart,"
"My Heart Speaks," and "Bring Back The Holy Spirit." "A Phenomenal Blessing", "Blessings of Existence", and "Love of Wisdom" are motivational, spiritual and glorifying. After reading, "Forever In Your Eyes," you will find yourself completely energized and refreshed. My favorite poem written by Sylvia Dianne Beverly and is published in ""Forever In Your Eyes" is entitled: "It's Up To Me."
"Its Up To Me"
Be a leader
Even if it means standing alone
Be unique
Have a style and mind of your own.
Be steadfast, solid on your convictions
Stand up for your predictions
Initiate brand new traditions
Be truthful, especially to self
Know honesty and love wins above all else.
Be on time
Be the first in line
You just might get a quarter instead of a dime.
Be thankful and prayerful morning noon and night
God our Father will lead you
Guide you towards what's right.
Be pleasant, be optimistic, smile say hello first
Yes, thank you, please, make them daily verse.
Be wise and witty – success will be for thee
All the while saying if it is to be
It's up to me.
(Dedicated to Korin – 11/23/02)
From a Crooked Rib
Nuruddin Farah
The Penguin Press
375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014
0143037269 $14.00 www.us.penguingroup.com 1-800-847-5515
Ashley Theisen
Reviewer
Writer Nuruddin Farah originally wrote From a Crooked Rib in 1968, but it fell out of print shortly thereafter until 2003 when Farah received worldwide attention for his "Blood in the Sun" trilogy in the late 1990s. The story is written from the perspective of an 18-year old woman named Ebla who flees her rural town in Somalia when she learns about her soon-to-be arranged marriage with an old man in the early 1960s. The foremost theme is the role of women in society during pre-Somalia independence and Ebla's struggles with the traditional Somalian society. Making it geared more towards women, perhaps. I found the recently reprinted, slim novel about Ebla's struggles to be an amazing, very real-sounding account of a woman who is perhaps too progressive for her own good. Farah's story about the pain, suffering, confusion, and strife this woman goes through is not written in the best way since it sounds more choppy than flowing at parts, but it nonetheless makes the readers feel as if they are right next to Ebla, going through what she is going through as well in a simple, sincere manner.
Written when Farah was in his early 20s, From a Crooked Rib is born during a time of turmoil and societal change since Somalia's independence occurred just a short time before. The story is written right before the country's independence of 1960, so writing from a woman's perspective about the changes to modernity and independence for a woman as progressive as Ebla who was dealing with restraints of traditional Somalian society was probably something not far from the truth in real life. Being Farah is born and raised in Somalia, Africa his stories are loosely based on events that had occurred around him and to the people around him as well. He was quoted in saying he wrote "to keep my country alive by writing about it."
When Ebla finds out she is to marry an old man, she sneaks out of her home, leaving her brother and beloved behind, without any plan for the future. While contemplating her decision to escape or not, Ebla "had no answers to the questions how to escape, where should she escape to, whom should she go to, and when she should escape." After she flees her village, she stays with one of her distant cousins in a rather large, confusing city where she helps take care of her cousin's demanding pregnant wife. While caring for her, she meets an old woman next door who lets her in on her cousin's plan to sell her off as a wife. After finding this out, she decides to make another huge decision by fleeing to another city, Mogadishu. In this city, she becomes the wife of her confidant's nephew, but finds she is lonely most of the time since he is away for training in Italy, more than he is home. While she thought the move to the new city would make her life better, she finds out she remains powerless and dependent on men, once again. As said by her husband, "We are not equal. You are a woman and you are inferior to me." During this abandonment, she falls into the arms of another man, who hates she has been involved with another man and still remains largely clueless to the new customs and practically new culture of her new city. Ebla learns many new things and goes through hard times. Through all her pain, strife, and troubles, remains strong and tells herself, "I love life. I love it...I love to live for something."
While some would think the story told from the barely educated woman's point of view is thought to be "awkward" and "choppy" it is written with complete and simple conviction, uniqueness, and truth. As the reader travels while Ebla travels, meets those Ebla meets, and goes through what Ebla goes through, it starts to make them think they are in Somali too. In his novel, Farah shockingly suggests that although the traditional values of his people may be looked down upon from those on the outside looking in and that the rights of woman are virtually nonexistent and outrageous, but there is still an underlying message of commemoration for the woman who never gives up and has a courageous sense of inner self. Although the glossary of terms should include several more words and a much-needed background on Somalia's culture for context purposes would be nice, overall, the novel is one that flows quite nicely. It is short enough to get the point across and to not allow for a hint of boredom and is long enough to allow the reader to dive into another culture quite different from our own. All in all, From a Crooked Rib is a great, shocking, and simple read for those who want a unique and truthful look into the lives of those living in Somalia, especially the women who still have not gotten complete freedom and independence.
Ransomed Dreams
Amy Wallace
Multnomah Books
12265 Oracle Boulevard, Suite 200, Colorado Springs, CO 80921
9781590527474 $12.99 www.mpbooks.com
CeeCee McNeil
Reviewer
Two years ago, private school teacher Gracie Lang endured the unthinkable: her children and husband were killed in a car accident right before her eyes. Unable to find closure, she searches for clues to find the driver involved in the hit-and-run. What she doesn't know is the killer has been watching her every move.
FBI agent Steven Kessler is assigned to Gracie's school to investigate the kidnaping of an ambassador's daughter. Still trying to get over the wounds from his failed marriage and his former wife's abandonment of their young son, Steven tries to deny his growing attraction to Gracie. Is the price too big to pay for justice?
If you are in the mood for a multilayered plot that grips your attention from page one until the final page, read the first installment in the Defender of Hope series, Ransomed Dreams.
The author's descriptive use of language and her knowledge of police procedure as a Gwinnett County Citizens Police Academy and liaison for the police department's training division made the story come to life. Chill bumps formed on my arms as I read this book! I look forward to spring 2008 when the next installment in this exciting series hits bookstores.
The Fifth Stage
Margaret A. Helms
Blue Feather Books, LTD
P.O. Box 5867, Atlanta, GA 31107-5967
9780977031870 $15.99
Cheri Rosenberg
Reviewer
Claire Blevins, a mid-Southern gal from a sleepy town, is turning forty and her friends think it's time she moved on. Even though Claire was technically born in the sixties, she claims that her real birthday was two months shy of turning eighteen, when she befriended Lora Tyler. With Lora, she discovered a connection stronger than raging hormones and deeper than friendship. After high school graduation, Claire and Lora managed to move out on their own while they attended college. Claire became financially secure, determined to give her girlfriend as much as anyone could, but at what price?
Claire lives in a self-induced trance, much the same as the town where she grew up. She gives the illusion of someone living the American dream—self-sufficient and independent, with a good job and a nice house. She can afford the finest restaurants, but she frequents a mediocre eatery instead. It's not the menu that draws Claire, but rather Rebecca Greenway, a woman she's sure she can't have, meaning that she can admire her from afar. After three years of living alone, Claire questions if wealth is an acceptable substitute for the companionship of a lover.
The Fifth Stage is a romance with a clear message that the reader discovers the way Claire does—one stage at a time. One can't help but hope that Claire finds her way to forgiveness so that she can find fulfillment in a second chance at love. Claire is likeable despite her stubborn nature; she's smart but makes mistakes like all mortals; and she's successful but filled with regrets. Written in almost a memoir format, The Fifth Stage is a story about a woman who realizes that she's different from other girls, and comes to terms with the revelation. She's also haunted by the memories of her youth and must learn to accept the things she cannot change before she can have any chance of happiness.
Claire's story, told intimately, honestly, and with humor, reveals her desires and vulnerabilities. Margaret A. Helms slowly builds the tension and then hits the reader with a memorable impact to drive home her message.
Margaret A. Helms deftly leaves a lasting impression from the first word to the last. Through alternating points of view, Claire in the present and in the past, Helms succeeds in telling two stories for the price of one and maintains a flawless flow between both. The Fifth Stage is one of the most profound and emotional journeys this reviewer has read so far this year. It's a five star plus read and hopefully the beginning of a slew of this brilliant author's novels.
Manifest Infamy
Steve Golighty
Publish America
111 E Church St Frederick, MD 21701
1424159709 $24.95 publishamerica.com
Cheri Clay
Reviewer
George Young lands what he believes is his dream job. A chance to start over and get on the right path, totally by accident unbeknownst to George, he lands the assistant news reporter job at WIZZ 1200 AM in Leesburg, Virginia. Sharing a home on the top of the mountain with an awesome view with Ralph an old friend who's kind of quirky and likes to walk around in the nude. Suddenly Ralph disappears and leaves George on his own. The boring meetings and never ending days with very little pay and outdated equipment sometimes makes the job hard to bear but it's a new beginning and a chance to grow up.
He meets many of the locals whom all have secrets of their own. The station personalities from his boss work driven, diet coke drinking Colleen to fat Ted with his obnoxious eating habits. The area's other newspaper and radio reporters strange Howard Percy who George wonders if he's gay and the beautiful Rose Adams whom George can't take his eyes off of. The town council with personality clashes who struggle to agree on anything and just why is Mayor Dawson always fifteen minutes late for the council meetings? The Board of Supervisors who all seem to have their own political agendas with Town Manager Steve Jones ex-CIA assassin believes George is out to kill him so he must kill him first, delusional Councilman Roger Digby who can't understand why Council chairman Bill Burton doesn't like him and want to be his friend and a whole host of other characters. And what about the mysterious letters George receives with the slanderous statements against some of the local residents, who sent them and why do they want read on the air and why did they chose George to air them?
Actually Manifest Infamy reads like four novels in one, which is a great thing as author Steve Golighty does an awesome job with the character descriptions that you come away with a clear picture of each one and a feeling that you know them personally. Read George's life, the station's employees and other reporters lives, the town council and the board of supervisors' lives then how they all intermingle with each other. No one is sure of anyone and no one is sure they can trust anyone.
This modern day tale could be set anywhere in small town America. You'll smile, you'll giggle, you'll laugh out loud at some of the conversations and antics and know that it could all really happen. And poor George as him and Rose struggle at romance but with meetings and deadlines with conflicting schedules you'll wonder if they ever will get together.
Actually you'll wonder if you're reading a true story instead of a work of fiction. Since author Steve Golightly has a bachelor's degree from the University of Maryland in English literature, in the Navy he did broadcast journalism and he worked at WAGE Radio in Leesburg, Virginia as a reporter and newscaster you wonder if this is a story out of Steve's own life as he seems to be an expert. Author Steve Golightly has done an excellent job in this his first novel and as this reviewer believes one of the up and coming newcomers of the year. A great read for men and women alike as the author himself puts it "anyone who enjoys Garrison Keillor, Tom Wolfe, John Mortimer or Mark Twain will enjoy this book" and you'll clearly see that "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" is the author's favorite book as this story unfolds. So it is definitely an excellent read. Actually the way it ends will make you wonder could we by chance see a sequel in the making?
The book is a print-on-demand but is available through Barnes and Noble, Amazon, Books-A-Million and through the publisher Publish America but is well worth the read wherever you find it.
Cinco de Mayo: What is Everybody Celebrating?
Donald W. Miles
iUniverse
2021 Pine Lake Road, Suite 100, Lincoln, NE 68512
0595392415 $ 20.95
Dawn M. Papuga
Reviewer
Responsible parenting or teaching would send an inquisitive child to "look it up," whatever "it" may be—a word, a fact, or an historical event. But what happens when there are no credible, adult focused resources to research from? Donald W. Miles found this to be the case when he went searching for a book to recount the historical events of the popular holiday, Cinco de Mayo. Children's books about the holiday were plentiful, but none were available for adults with accurate, historical, in depth information. In this world of constant documentation, it is hard to believe that some topics have gone un-discussed, and that false information continues to be taught regarding a largely celebrated holiday. With this in mind, Miles made it his mission to compile the disparate resources his research uncovered into one document—Cinco de Mayo: What is Everyone Celebrating?
Miles' book is a step by step historical progression through the seven-year struggle for Mexicans to reclaim their country from the grip of Napoleon III that began with the battle of Puebla in 19th century Mexico. He painstakingly sets the scene for every move the European armies made on their progress to take Mexico City and install Archduke Maximilian as Emperor of Mexico. Not only does Miles give readers an intimate view of the military rationale for every advancement from Veracruz to Puebla to Mexico City and the eventual execution of Archduke Maximilian, he incorporates the perspectives of the Mexican people and how the American Civil War effected the movement of both French and Mexican armies. Miles provides a panoramic perspective on events that have been glossed over in the past, and drives home the impact of the battle of Puebla for any individual seeking an understanding of celebration of Cinco de Mayo. Though at times Cinco de Mayo can appear to be flirting with historical fiction, Miles demonstrates his thorough research in every segment of the book, and offers a complete bibliography to support his presentation of a segment of time in Mexican history.
Cinco de Mayo is a comfortable journey through the past, and does not bludgeon readers with footnotes or with dry accounts of military staging. Instead the snapshot structure of the book allows readers to easily follow the progression of events leading to the battle, and the motivations of all parties involved. Cinco de Mayo is as much about the creation of Mexican culture as it is an historical account of a battle against occupation and imperialization led by Napoleon III. Rather than recounting the events with the stereotyped sterility of history books, Miles brings to life the major actors in the theatre of war in a highly readable, accessible rendering of events and personalities.
Cooking Lessons by Nina Romano
Tracey Broussard, editor
Rock Press, Inc.
4611 South University Drive #450, Davie, FL 33328
9780967674872 $12.95 www.Rock-Press.com
Elaine Winer
Reviewer
You're sitting on a boat in Sardinia. You've eaten raw sea urchins sprinkled with Vermentino di Gallura and are watching the moon over Porto Cervo Marina, Sardegna. "Magic," poet Nina Romano says in her debut collection of poems, Cooking Lessons, "Magia. I swear it. I pity everyone who is anywhere else but in this windless, cloudless Sardinian port tonight."
Romano grew up in Brooklyn with Italian speaking parents. When she moved to Rome, she saw its beauty with fresh eyes. At the same time, her roots were in its culture, and the bilingual poet uses words from both English and Italian like a stone mason fitting stones. There is the sense of an ancient structure to the book, its lushness supported by sure classical knowledge. In "Meeting," the persona of the poem walks Roman roads laid down by Julius Caesar in 46 BC and goes to Piazza Mattei to meet her lover at the fountain of turtles. Gazing at the lithe bodies sculpted by Bernini, knowing that her lover will not come, will never come again, she says : "but if truth be told,/ the turtles were added later to Bernini's youths,/ … How joy springs from those lithe bodies."
Cooking Lessons is not a cook book, it's not about assembling and cooking food in the kitchen. Instead, Romano tells us about the preparation of the food before it is packaged neatly and sent to the grocery store (there are no neatly packaged, sterile products anywhere in this book.) It is an attitude, an expertise, of older and more direct societies.
Here are her directions for preparing caviar, in "Recipe for Buttariga,:"
From an exemplary female muggine better known as cefalo,
that has reached a certain dimension,
denoting its ovarian maturity,
remove, with a great deal of courtesy, the double ovary pack,
evading cuts in delicate membranes
leaving attached to the eggs
the harder part encasing the summit.
Later in the poem, she directs:
The delicacy must dry in an ambient dwelling—
a room free of ocean salinity and night humidity.
The eggs are ready, achieving amber's transparency, colored rosa cupo.
Herein lies the difficulty—conserving buttariga.
Cloak entirely with wax hotter than a melting candle.
Even gathering fruits and vegetables can have a brutal aspect. Romano tells us, with dazzling, hands-on knowledge, what must happen before figs and mushrooms are ready to be eaten. In "Lover of Baskets":
... Funghi were dusted of bosk coats,
and skinned in spots. When she'd picked a chilo, minus basket weight,
she quit the thicket, headed home to slice, dice, and dissect every floppy fat
cap and chunky stem till every white-villain-white worm, cajoled by scorching
sun, inched their tiny bodies out in an undisciplined array of crawls,
slithers and creeps, squirming suicidally, to a concrete resting place below ...
Figs are split, quartered and dried above slow smoke fires, almonds from Palermo tucked inside their bellies, then they're "skewered/ and shafted onto overgrown opaque wooden picks, impaled upon mini-stakes." In this book, nothing concerning the harvesting of the living things we eat is hidden to make the process look "nice." Nina Romano's words are not "nice," they are better than that; they are "real." And she reports with a lyric eye, seeing the beauty in these first, necessary and ancient rituals.
In food, she finds her hope for immortality. In "Roasted Peppers" she says "And now I know for sure we never die till the last person we know dies,/ for just as I am remembering her, so someone else I teach will remember me when I'm gone—/even if it's just on a 3 X 5 recipe card."
The poet's mother teaches her to cook as a child. In the title poem, "Cooking Lessons," her mother tells her to begin the supper. "Careful with boiling water!" her mother warns her. "You can't mess up because food is love…" When the poet is grown, Romano writes of a persona in "The Beach at Anzio" that the reader guesses might be a bit like the poet herself: "You and I walk the shore,/ scoop by handsful/ leafy lettuce-like seaweed /to make fried squid fritters/ that'll sputter in hot oil, a semblance of us in our bubbling matrimony
In "Bread," Romano writes about a gift of bread given to her hungry son on the island of Ist, which, she says is the island Marco Polo was born on (the poet has an amazing, wide ranging knowledge of exotic facts). The last line of this short poem has a stinging rhythm and names money from three countries, using two languages.
… The sailor's Slavic, almost good as my Sign,
convinced the owner to give me yesterday's
fragrant-wood-burning-stone-oven-baked-bread.
Zero dinars, zip dollars, zap lire. "Regalo. Per favore."
Unsurprisingly, she is an enthusiastic daughter, as well as mother and wife. Remembering her father in the powerful poem, "The Deer Slayer," she writes:
His spirit soars above mountain summits.
But my father's feelings, thoughts, ashes,
and name have I sucked down with the oyster,
clenching a shard of his bone
between my teeth with the meat of the crab.
She credits her mother not only for teaching her how to cook, but also for teaching her how to love... In "Form and Theory" she says,
For years, I stood at her side embezzling
preparations, purloining secret
flips of the wrist to pound cutlets to paper thinness,
filching, for later use, the way she sliced away impertinent
gristle or sassy fat, plagiarizing how her hands dipped
into mixed breadcrumb she'd fling onto the meat,
then top with grated parmesan, forming tiny wells
so quickly I barely catch the precision timing
in her flicking finger, or drizzle of olive oil
…I am my mother's child learning cooking lessons.
….In form & theory I am my mother…
Underneath these passionate celebrations of life, one senses, finally, a deep unease. The times are at odds with her antique soul, as though Ceres had been transplanted to the twenty-first century, and to Florida. In the striking poem "My Feet Outside the Sheets" she writes:
There's a ketch in the stretch of canal at the back of my house.
On summer mornings I wake to find my feet outside the sheet—
Beating rhythms to the wind in fittings for the ketch's sails
And the down-to-the-bone of me wants to run away.
My feet are ready, but a golden anklet anchors me for now
As surely as my son's feathery eyelash kisses my cheek.
It is this sense of deep unease combined with the poet's obvious joy in connection to food and loved ones that creates the heartfelt tensions that make this book so successful. In Cooking Lessons, Romano takes the reader into her rich, passionate, complex world. It is a poetic treat not to be missed.
Psychologically Unemployable
Jeffery Combs
More Heart Than Talent Publishing, Inc.
6507 Pacific Avenue, Suite 329, Stockton, CA 95207
0974092428 $17.95 www.moreheartthantalentpublishing.com
I've never been a big fan of motivational speakers or the books that they've written. To me they all seemed to offer the same nonspecific advice, be positive, get rid of the negative people in your life, yada yada yada. That all changed when I read the very encouraging new book "Psychologically Unemployable" by California-based motivational speaker Jeffery Combs.
"Psychologically Unemployable" was written for those with an entrepreneurial spirit, including the recently laid off, the frustrated salaried worker, and the new business owner. It begins with the describing the profile of an entrepreneur, advising on how to deal with limiting beliefs, and helping readers decide what they want to be when they grow up. And in the spirit of "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People," and "What Should I Do With My Life," Combs gives life-changing advice on becoming your own boss and a better person in life. For example, regarding how to become rich and thriving, Combs says:
Most people think that if they work harder and for a longer period of time, they will eventually have success. To become wealthy and successful, you'll soon discover that hard work isn't the answer. You don't get paid for time when you're self-employed, as I am. You get paid for how valuable you become. Trading time and working hard for dollars usually gets you broke.
There are many more quotable passages in "Psychologically Employable" that prove how valuable Combs' book can be for those looking to make a positive effect on their lives outside of the traditional nine-to-five gig. While the book could use the touch of an editor and a better graphic designer, the message is not lost, and the author is one to watch for the next big name in positive motivation. Highly Recommended.
Emma Jean Lazarus Fell Out Of A Tree
Lauren Tarshis
Dial Books For Young Readers
9780803731646 $16.99 us.penguingroup.com
Franci McMahon
Reviewer
Imagine closing a book, feeling as though you have lived other lives. Lauren Tarshis takes the reader on a journey into hearts and minds you will never forget. When Emma Jean Lazarus Fell Out of A Tree, changes in her life had prepared the ground. She stood up to face the changes.
Emma Jean is brilliant, scientific, a logical thinker who analyzes everything, but somehow her feelings are not part of the equation. Emotions are messy. In spite of her stoicism you find yourself loving Emma Jean. The girl Colleen, who she is placed at odds with, is in every way except one, her opposite. They are both kind. Colleen is not logical and cares too much what people think.
"Colleen Pomerantz had this idea---a faded, crumpled, smudged idea---that being nice counted for something, even in the seventh grade."
The viewpoint changes between the girls works very well to show the characters in depth. Tarshis is unusually deft in keeping these view point switches clear and in character in this first novel. The voice of the narrator is never heard, everything comes through dialog and action.
The popular, self centered, manipulative Laura, has made life miserable for Colleen. Emma Jean explains to Colleen;
"Chimps are very much like humans. In their communities, certain individuals become dominant. These individuals are known as alpha chimps. They achieve dominance through intimidation. They bare their teeth and beat their chests and achieve control of the group because the others feel threatened."
"That's very interesting, Emma Jean. But why are you telling me this?"
"Because you think Laura Gilroy is the alpha chimp."
This novel transcends age categories. I would recommend this book not
only for this age group but anyone who loves a good story and needs to
learn how to face the alpha chimps in our society.
To the End of the Earth: A History of the Crypto-Jews of New Mexico
Stanley M. Hordes
Columbia University Press
61 West 62nd Street, New York, NY 10023-7015
023112936X $39.50 www.columbiaedu/cu/cup 1-800-944-8648
Dr. Fred Reiss
Reviewer
Shortly after the city of Grenada, the last Muslim stronghold on Spanish soil, fell on January 2, 1492, Fernando and Isabella, under pressure from the powerful Catholic Church, ordered the Spanish Jewish community to convert or leave the country within four months. Although they had more than 800 years of peaceful coexistence with their neighbors, the edict from the monarchy left no choice but for Jews to decide between giving up the religion of their ancestors, and permanently leaving their country. Some felt that it was better to continue living as Jews, even if it meant giving up everything, and starting over elsewhere. The exiles left Spain by August 2, the same day that Columbus set sail from Spain on a voyage that lead to his "discovery of America". Other Jews believed that converting to Catholicism was a small price to pay to remain in the country of their families and associates, to maintain their livelihoods and to keep their lifestyles. They converted and followed the tenants of their new faith. However, an unexpected group emerged from these conversions. They were the ones who converted, but secretly lived their lives as Jews. These secret or crypto-Jews avowed Catholicism in public, but clandestinely followed the dietary laws, prepared for and rested on the Sabbath Day, conducted services, and observed the Jewish holidays.
Author Stanley M. Hordes would have us believe that practicing these illegal rituals and observances can be kept as family secrets for more than 500 years, even though, as time passed, the practitioners didn't know why they followed strange customs. Researcher and folklorist Judith S. Neulander argues that crypto-Jews are an illusion.
The book, To the End of the Earth: A History of the Crypto-Jews of New Mexico, covers, in detail, the time from the expulsion to the twenty-first century. About half of Spain's Jews chose to leave and half chose to stay. Most of the exiles fled across the border to Portugal, while others left for Western Europe, Morocco, and lands under the control of the Ottoman Empire. The families who converted, and at least nominally followed Christianity, were assimilated within a few generations. The crypto-Jews practiced the faith of their fathers at great personal risk since Judaism was banned from the country. They were persecuted by the Holy Office of the Inquisition for religious relapse. When found guilty, the punishment ranged from atonement and penitence to death by fire in a public auto de fe.
The Jews who migrated to Portugal only postponed their fate. Within four years King Manoel I issued his own edict of expulsion. However, he recognized the value of having a middle class in his country, so he closed the ports, ordered the Jews gathered in one place, and baptized them en masse. The Jews remained in Portugal, and because of their already strong religious beliefs, many became crypto-Jews. In the end, the fate of the crypto-Jews of Portugal was no better than those remaining in Spain, since Portuguese ancestry and crypto-Judaism were virtually synonymous to the clergy of the Holy Office of the Inquisition in New Spain during most of the sixteenth and first half of the seventeenth centuries.
Hordes tells us about some of the secret Jews who joined in the westward expeditions of these two countries. Sometime during the early sixteenth century, Spain founded Mexico City and Lima. Not long after, the Holy Office of the Inquisition established tribunals there, providing motivation for conversos to migrate away from these metropolitan centers; eventually leading to the founding of a settlement in what is now New Mexico. Using documents from the Inquisition, along with migration, trade, and settlement patterns of the emigrants, Hordes informs us that Hernando Alonso, who accompanied explorer Pánfilo de Narváez in his expedition against Cortes, was one of the first individuals required to do penance by the Inquisition in Mexico for the crime of judaizante, practicing Judaism, in 1528. Hordes believes that such things as the rise of a converso middle class, which threatened the Old Christians, and the Protestant Reformation created a new spirit of church vigilance that spilled over into the New World.
To the End of the Earth: A History of the Crypto-Jews of New Mexico is a scholarly book in which history and cultural identity theories are intertwined. To obtain information on crypto-Jews, the author performed detective-like investigations to ferret out details of a group of people who wanted to remain anonymous. To make matters worse, the Pueblo Indian Revolt of 1680, which drove out the Europeans from New Spain for thirteen years, led to the destruction of nearly all the pertinent documents. Yet, Hordes ably constructs the activities of important and wealthy individuals who helped shaped the character of New Spain. He tells us of the power struggle between the clergy and the civil government, and the involvement of the conversos in the colony, particularly through crypto-Jew Juan de Oñate, Governor of the first permanent European settlement in New Mexico, called San Gabriel del Yunque, which he founded in 1598.
After the establishment of San Gabriel del Yunque, Hordes focuses his attention on New Mexican conversos and their activities. Examining records from the Mexican Inquisition's concern for limpieza de sangre (blood purity), immigration and birth records, endogamous marriage patterns, and typical Jewish professions, he is able to shed a great deal of light on who most likely was a New Mexican crypto-Jew. By deduction and inference, Hordes relates the origins of many crypto-Jewish families and their histories in the New Mexico, as well as recounts the inquisitorial persecutions of a number of them, including Bernardo López de Mendizábal and Doña Teresa de Aguilera Y Roche, during the 1660s.
His research informs us that crypto-Jews played a continuous role in the life of New Mexico up to its conquest by the United States in 1846. For example, after the reconquest of New Mexico from the Pueblo Indians, there was a new spirit of cooperation between the Spanish church and the Viceroyalty of New Spain, particularly because both sides perceived the very real threat of attack from the nomadic Indian tribes of the southwest, such as the Apache, Comanche, and Navajo nations. Yet, understanding such thing as who the crypto-Jews were, what role they played between the church and state, and how they interacted with the Indians during this period are rendered more difficult because of the lull in New Mexican inquisitional activities. However, Hordes makes great strides in coming to some tentative answers by examining the lives of descendents of the pre-revolt conversos who returned to New Mexico, and the ancestors of nine interviewees who, in the late twentieth century, either asserted or demonstrated that they are crypto-Jews. He concludes that there is overlap between the two groups as shown in mercantile occupations, inventory records, and fragmentary remarks in church documents.
With the conquest of New Mexico by the United States, all legal barriers to practicing Judaism were gone, and so the absence of records, once again, becomes a barrier to deciding if crypto-Jews exist today, and if so, who are they? Hordes asserts that one would not expect a family that shows latent traces of Jewish practices after 500 years, to abandon its core-Christian beliefs. Yet, might not this family give up Catholicism, a religion that caused them a great deal of anguish, for Protestantism after the American conquest? To find the answers, he searches records of conversion, looking for Jewish biblical first names among the converted. He examines records of circumcision, the observations of nineteenth century southwestern writer, Mary Austin, who noted the presence of conversos in her midst, and the assimilation of Hispano communities in to the Anglo-American culture. Hordes concludes that there are Christian people of Spanish descent who observe Jewish customs and ceremonies at the dawn of the twenty-first century, and that they are descendents of fifteenth century Jews who were forcibly converted to Catholicism.
He spends two chapters telling of the research path that led from hypothesis to conclusion, and within them acknowledges the dissident voice of Judith Neulander, who argues that crypto-Jews do not exist. Indeed, she maintains that this notion is based on unfounded beliefs about the cultural past. She dismisses the Jewish-like customs celebrated by members of the Hispano community, and that others conclude are suggestive of crypto-Judaism, as irrelevant or attributable to other causes.
In one example, she asserts that observing the religious dietary laws was neither practiced nor valued by the Jewish exiles in 1492; rather the method of killing animals similar to the way the Jewish dietary laws require was a common practice among Hispanos in New Mexico. She states that Jews drain the blood of animals to avoid consuming it, while Hispanos drain the blood in order to consume it. As a second example, the crypto-Jews of New Mexico use a four-sided gambling top, called a pon y saca (put and take), which Jews will immediately associate with the game of dreidle, played during the holiday of Chanukah. Neulander points to authorities who call the game a universal cultural phenomenon. The same argument is raised about the use by present-day crypt-Jews of a six-pointed Star of David and Hebrew letters associated with the World-to-Come on headstones found in New Mexican cemeteries. Finally, in an argument that raises Neulander's ire, Hordes draws on biology, and notes a possible connection between pemphigus vulgaris, a rare autoimmune skin disease of European Jews and the Hispano community. In a 2006 paper, Neulander questions the whole concept of an ethnic disease.
Hordes argues in favor of 500 years of the cultural transmission of symbols and practices through families on both sides of the Atlantic. Neulander disputes this, saying that use of these symbols appeared in the Hispano community with the growth of Hispano Protestantism in the early twentieth century. Although personal recollections can be faulty and the historical record sparse, Hordes builds a compelling case that can not be easily dismissed. But the jury is out and more research needs to be done. Perhaps some new answers will emerge from the up coming 17th annual conference on Crypto-Judaism, which will be held in Albuquerque, NM, this August. In the meantime, it's nice to believe.
Acceptance
Susan Coll
Sarah Crichton Books
c/o Farrar, Straus and Giroux
19 Union Square West, New York, 10003
0374237190 $23.00
Mike Frechette
Reviewer
For any American family with college-bound children, Susan Coll's new novel, Acceptance, should be required reading. With this book, Coll has given her readers a witty and occasionally grave satire of the hysteria that surrounds a part of one's life that is supposed to be rewarding and enjoyable – the college application process. She depicts this process as yet another mechanism for competition in upper middle-class American society, a way that parents can turn their children into trophies to be measured and boasted about at the local country club. In fact, it is the book's parents – not the students – who fuel this competitive drive. According to the novel, this increasing competition among parents means "that more kids [apply] to more schools…making it harder for everyone to get in, ramping up the general climate of hysteria" (32). In other words, the students and parents of Coll's book are caught in a vicious cycle of hysterical competition that can only be broken when they stop competing with one another, a resolution that seems very obvious. However, this competitive drive virtually characterizes America's wealthy suburbs and is not easily relinquished by its inhabitants, a social reality which provides the premise for Coll's biting, laugh-out-loud new novel.
The book has a mostly linear structure that traces three high school students from a wealthy D.C. suburb through the entirety of the college application process, from campus tours in April of their junior year to the notification letters they finally receive in March of their senior year. The main character, dubbed "AP Harry" by the community, is aptly named for the number of advanced placement classes he has taken over the years in an effort to matriculate at Harvard. At first, this young, suit-wearing Republican is difficult to understand since his mother, Grace, is a reasonably well-adjusted graduate of the University of Maryland who conducts malaria research and tries to steer clear of her overbearing, competitive neighbors. However, the reader soon learns that Harry's parents are divorced, his father being a volatile lunatic who has constantly pressured Harry over the years to pursue a Harvard acceptance. Harry's next-door neighbor, Taylor Rockefeller, starts out as your typical jaded teenager until she, oddly enough, begins stealing the neighborhood mail and mutilating herself to ease her adolescent angst. And Maya, their athletic Indian neighbor, is forced to deal with parents who try to buy her way into the University of Chicago with generous donations and believe she has a learning disability because of her average SAT scores.
In an alternating plot line, the novel follows Olivia Sheraton, an admissions officer at Yates College, a small liberal arts school in upstate New York. The book actually begins here, with AP Harry, Maya, and Taylor all coincidentally bumping into each other during the campus tour. The previously unknown school has been attracting a better applicant pool as of late due to a printing error in a recent college ranking, which mistakenly listed it as one of the top 50 liberal arts colleges in America. Having a subplot that centers around an admissions officer is smart on Coll's part because it allows the reader to explore the other side of the college application process. Behind the doors of the college admissions office, Coll reminds us of what most educated people already know – that college admissions is not purely meritocratic but also rife with privilege and nepotism.
In regards to Olivia, her life is just as fraught with anxiety and frustration as the ambitious students whose files she is reviewing. Now in her late thirties, Olivia has already lived through a divorce with an older man and has seen her dreams of law school thwarted, only to land a position as an admissions representative in dismal upstate New York through her sister-in-law. At Yates, she has followed the same self-defeating pattern, having an affair with a married man who ends up abandoning her at the novel's end. One of the few bright spots in her life at Yates is the possibility of soon becoming Dean of Admissions, as the former dean has taken an extended leave due to mental health issues. With encouragement from the school president, Olivia assumes the role of interim dean and begins vying to make this role permanent.
Although Coll's novel deals with college acceptance specifically, it is also a novel about acceptance in general, making it a great read for a broader audience than just those currently involved in the college application process. For instance, AP Harry is not just reaching for Harvard, but also he is yearning for acceptance from an absent father who has consistently and deliberately extolled the value of such an education. Maya, in the end, chooses one school over another, not for herself but to please her parents. And Olivia, who is twenty years older than these insecure adolescents, is still striving for a certain type of acceptance – professional promotion. Even the parents use whatever means necessary – surname, children's accomplishments – to gain social acceptance amongst each other. For example, Taylor's mother, Nina, uses their last name to give the impression that they are "real" Rockefellers, descended from a long line of wealth and class (137).
Coll's novel is certainly not destined to be a defining literary classic of the twenty-first century, but it does intelligently take aim at an ugly aspect of American society – the pervasive need for acceptance of all kinds – academic, familial, professional, and social. The text is not overreaching, and she treats the subject with exactly the tone and elevation it warrants – biting humor and Hornby-esque wit peppered with instances of warmness and seriousness. The book's ending perfectly exemplifies this terrific balance. In a tender moment, Harry, Taylor, and Maya are burning college catalogues and other pieces of junk mail when Harry notices a Washington Post article that concerns the grand opening of a new Wal-Mart. According to the article, there were eight-thousand applications for 525 jobs, which Harry deduces is even a lower acceptance rate than Harvard. The reader cannot help but chuckle with laughter at such an ending while also taking Coll's serious point that the acceptance game is not played just among the upper-middle class; it is a fierce competition that pervades all rungs of American society.
Shake Hands with the Devil
Lt. Gen. Romeo Dallaire
Carroll & Graf Publishers
245 West17th Street 11th Floor New York, NY 10011
9780786715103 $16.95
Nathaniel Jimenez
Reviewer
Ever since the Holocaust occurred during WWII, the world has pledged to never again let such a horrific event occur. The fact of the matter is that since that time, numerous of other genocides have occurred. The question that begs is where is the support of the world who so forcefully pledged to never again let such an act occur? Romeo Dallaire, the author of Shake Hands with the Devil, talks about his first hand experiences as the UN Force Commander of the UN mission to Rwanda. He discusses how the mission was destined for failure from the start.
The situation that Dallaire was placed in was by no means an easy one. He was put in the middle of a country with two groups of people who had been at each other's throats for quite some time. There was a very shaky and unstable ceasefire in place and he was told to help further negotiate the two sides to a peace treaty. Dallaire was given little to no supplies and his request for man power was greatly reduced to well below the bare minimum for such a mission.
Throughout the book Dallaire goes in to detail to describe the struggles that he faced to keep the UN mission working and somewhat effective. He goes on to show the cruelty that humans are capable of. The biggest point that Dallaire gets at is how the world just stood by and watch as around 800,000 Rwandans were murdered in about 100 days.
Shake Hands with the Devil is a good book that not only shows the cruelty of humans, but also the failure of humanity in the world. This book says that, if given the proper force to conduct a legitimate mission, it is possible to stop genocides from occurring. This book is a very eye opening book as to how hard some people try to save others and how others try just as hard to stop them from helping the helpless. This book goes to show that the effectiveness of a UN mission depends on the resources put into it. If given the proper resources, future UN missions could accomplish their goals in a timely and life saving manner. This book reads rather well, however at times the military lingo became a little confusing and it was hard to tell who was on what side.
Flight of the Sparrows
Laura Baumbach
Aspen Mountain Press
1601680058 $6.99
Rocky Reichman
Reviewer
Exquisite writing and good description dominate this book. Baumbach creates strong characters, with interesting personalities that any reader can relate to. The story is fluid. The words flow together well, melding to make an inspiring story. Flight of the Sparrows has a plot thick with intrigue, adventure and unexpected twists. The author easily melts character analysis together with action-packed prose.
But the most fascinating trait to attribute to Baumbach's writing is her vocabulary. She has perfect knowledge of the meanings of words and semantics of language. Her lexicon is bigger than the average writer. It almost reaches to heights as awe-inspiring as Michael Chabon's use of the English language. Like every book, criticisms abound. No matter how well a story is crafted, there are always holes. Holes in the ship that have to be plugged up quickly to keep the vessel afloat. Sporadic actions and frequent verbiage contribute to a lack of interest readers may encounter once past the first few chapters of the story. Characters are dropped and added too often (nothing to be ashamed of: even Christopher Paolini, best-selling author of Eragon, has received the same criticism). Too often, the writer explains the obvious to the reader.
The book has a very good overall theme. It is mixed with action and love, a pair of emotions rarely hammered together. Baumbach is as much of a teacher as she is a writer. Her book includes good lessons about things readers can relate to. Things people encounter in everyday life in the real world. Flight of the Sparrows has an interesting beginning and a heartwarming end. It's lively and lovely—both at the same time. Most important of all, however, is Baumbach's uncanny ability to write a rare kind of story. To write a book that is both a literary gem and a blockbuster novel.
Bad Girls Club
Judy Gregerson
Blooming Tree Press
PO Box 140934, Austin, TX 78714
1933831014 $17.95
Terrilyn Fleming
Reviewer
Bad Girls Club by Judy Gregerson is a relevant and important young adult novel for the 21st century. From abusive parents who have locked their children in dog crates to the neglectful vegan couple who starved their four month old by only feeding it soy milk and apple juice, parental abuse and abandonment of their charges has taken a prominent place in our country's psyche. Gregerson's novel gives vivid life to this extreme abuse and parental abandonment. Whether young adults who read the book are themselves abused, or if they know someone who is neglected or abused, after reading Bad Girls Club they will have a better understanding of how to recognize signs of abuse and where to begin to offer help.
Destiny is a 17-year-old emotionally abused girl who has unwillingly taken on the parenting role for her five-year-old sister, Cassidy. Their mentally unstable mother is guilty of emotional and physical abuse of the girls. But perhaps more distressing is the father's impotence in halting his enabling behavior rendering him the worse parent as he abandons all emotional support for his daughters. As the mentally healthy parent, the father has a duty to protect his children, but instead, he participates in, and even encourages, the secrecy that surrounds abusive families.
Gregerson aptly builds character through Destiny's thoughts. The more her mother abuses her, the more fiercely Destiny clings to her. This is an ironic outcome of abuse that Gregerson is masterful at presenting in a thorough and realistic way. Throughout the novel, the mystery of "what happened at Crater Lake" is revealed in a slow strip tease seamlessly integrated into the story. Gregerson's craft is flawless!
This well-researched novel does not waste time on what the mother's mental illness is or how the father spends his time when he isn't at the house. Instead, the entire story is told from Destiny's point of view and set almost entirely within her house that becomes a suffocating character in its own right. Destiny's increasing anxiety attacks are exacerbated by her duty to protect and teach Cassidy how to avoid their mother's outbursts, Destiny's need to parent their mother, and the fact that it is summer vacation so Destiny has limited contact with her peer group or other potentially supportive adults.
Gregerson shows how difficult it was for Destiny to divorce herself from her abusive situation and finally have enough self-worth to accept help from her friend and her grandmother. An important element of the story speaks to those readers who have a friend who may be in an abusive situation and how important it is to continue to try to help the abused teen, even if the friend trying to help is continually rebuffed. Gregerson includes relevant websites in the end papers of her novel.
Bad Girls Club is as riveting as Dave Pelzer's A Child Called It books, but is far better at exploring the psychological reasons why the abused remain so loyal to their abusers. This is definitely a novel all young adults should read!
Judy Gregerson is also the author of SAVE ME! A Young Woman's Journey Through Schizophrenia to Health.
Andrew's Bookshelf
The Painted Man
Kenneth Floyd
SpeculativeFictionReview
0978523210 $14.95 www.speculativefictionreview.com
Ken Floyd's novel "The Painted Man" combines the best of a good action-adventure story with the pitfalls of casual editing. Set in Baghdad in April 2003 as the Americans were beginning their search for WMD's, Floyd's interesting book pursues the idea that WMD's did exist, and that Saddam had developed a plan in order to pass them to various insurgent groups should he be deposed.
Floyd's cast of characters includes the CIA, the President, and various regular army and Special Forces sorts in a race against time to find where and who has the key to Saddam's WMD's. A good read, Floyd is to be commended on an interesting and entertaining initial literary effort, and here's hoping that with closer attention to technical details, he'll write another.
Scatterlings of Africa
Peter Davies
Literally Publishing Ltd
0955440904 $ 18.99 www.literallypublishing.com
This is Peter Davies "break-out effort," and what a good book indeed ! A soldier in the Rhodesian Army during their civil war, Davies uses his own experiences in describing fighting the ‘terrs' during this ugly and misunderstood conflict. This is an excellent example of historical fiction in which the author uses his knowledge and expertise in a specific subject to give the reader an accurate and interesting window into a little-known, yet important war in our time.
As a Rhodesian soldier, Davies understood the stakes for which he was fighting, as well as the horrific and personal losses to his family, friends, and property if he lost. His Rhodesian characters Lt Ron Cartwright, Angie, and Mark -, as well as Comrade Gadziwa and Comrade Weiner on the insurgent side- reflect this determination and understanding of the stakes for which they were fighting. Not for the politically-correct or faint-of-heart, Davies provides a depth and understanding of the characters that is unusual in a novel, but through his twelve years as a Rhodesian soldier, he brings an unusual expertise to the subject matter. Well written and well edited, the reader will anxiously await the author's next Rhodesian-based book.
For the Good of the Many
Gary Carter
PublishAmerica, LLLP
PO Box 151, Frederick, MD 21705-0151
1424128515 $ 24.95 www.publishamerica.com
Author Gary Carter attempts to blend the Marine Corps, Vietnam, lost-and-regained love, politics, and national security in an audacious first novel, and he comes close to putting it all together.
Protagonist Jason McBride finally makes it through boot camp at Camp Pendleton and is immediately shipped off to Vietnam. As a FNG, he and his fellow Marines are quickly captured. McBride helps engineer their escape from a POW camp, and it's the relationships built here that lay the basis for the underlying story; that the successful post-war McBride is a threat to the president of the United States, who seeks to frame him in a manipulated assassination attempt. McBride reaches back to the knowledge and strengths learned in his Marine and Vietnam days in order to defeat the shadowy government forces arrayed against him.
This has the ability to be a first-rate novel, and with additional character development, tightening up plot details, and attention to technical issues, the author will surely have a superlative second novel.
Love Leaves No One Behind
Claudia Pemberton
iUniverse, Inc.
2021 Pine Lake Road, #100, Lincoln, NE 68512
0595414028 $17.95 iuniverse.com
First-time author Claudia Pemberton has written a credible and interesting crime novel, set in the Alabama mountain background of a retiring Army Ranger and the lady he learns to love. As heroine Mykayla Mitchell leaves her hometown for a new job in California, she is devastated by the death of her beloved grandmother, Granny Mae. A chance set of circumstances leads her to meet Army Ranger Jesse Daulton, and it is their budding relationship, intertwined amongst the horror of a serial killer, that makes her book so interesting. Pemberton's deft writing combines violence - patriotism - sexual tension - love- and some old-fashioned Alabama backwoods wisdom in her well-written novel.
"Ted Hughes(1930-98), Poet Laureate from 1984, was among the most important translators in the English tradition".
So writes Daniel Weissbort in his introduction to this book. Weissbort whose own expertise in translation is widely acknowledged and who was co-founder of the magazine, Modern Poetry in Translation in 1965, is ideally placed to assess Hughes's translations. He writes that "Hughes's approach to the translation of poetry suggests a belief in the intrinsic ability of poetry to cross language frontiers, provided the translator does not impose himself overmuch. The act of translation required not only intense listening but also a high degree of self-discipline". He is surely right, too, when he says that Hughes's involvement in translation was related to his own needs as a writer and that, since Hughes undertook translation projects throughout his life, these provide valuable clues to his development and are, in fact, "an integral part of his oeuvre".
Hughes may not have taken any part in the academic debates about the different approaches to translation (described by Weissbort as "'foreignisation' as against 'domestication' or naturalising translation") but, as a poet, he had very definite views about his own approach. He favoured translations which were "literal though not literal in a strict or pedantic sense", and he valued "the very oddity and struggling dumbness of word for word version [which is] what makes our imagination jump". He was also acutely sensitive to the 'voice' of the poets whose work he chose to translate. As with Yehuda Amichi, on whose poems he worked with Assia Guttman, he strove to "preserve above all [...] the tone and cadence" of the poet's voice speaking in English.
With translations such as that of the fifteenth century poem 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight', Hughes relied on his own attunement to the language of the poet which, as he said, he immediately recognized as akin to his own Yorkshire dialect. So, in this particular case, his translation has a vibrancy which Hughes believed had largely been lost in the earliest translations due to the adoption in England of metrical forms "based on French and Italian models". In later translations of Classical and Neo-Classical work are certainly not literal translations but Weissbort sees them as being a development of Hughes's literalistic approach and since the works in this book are arranged in chronological order it is possible to see this development and to see all these translations as they fit into Hughes's work as a whole.
The number, variety and quality of translations in this selection is remarkable, ranging from the invented language of Orghast, through Classical Greek, Middle English, Renaissance, Tibetan and Hebrew texts, to the wide range of modern European works. Weissbort provides a brief introduction to each section and quotes from relevant correspondence between Hughes and poets, theatre directors and other translators. He also includes extracts from several editorials which Hughes wrote for Modern Poetry in Translation, and one long, previously unpublished, essay on translation. In this essay, Hughes expressed many of his views on poetry in translation, referred to work which influenced his own approach, and described the translation boom which took place in England in the sixties and early seventies due, to a large extent, to his own work with Modern Poetry in Translation and in setting up the first Poetry International Festival in 1967.
In Appendices, too, Weissbort provides brief examples of alternative translations to Hughes's versions and of works which Hughes used as cribs, such as Evans-Wentz's translation of the Bardo Thodol, Amichai's own English translation of his own work, and word for word translations provided by others at Hughes's request.
There is much in Ted Hughes Selected Translations which is unpublished elsewhere, or has been published only in part. It is not a complete selection but a substantial and enjoyable one none-the-less, and there are surprises and delights here which any poetry lover will appreciate. Altogether, it is an important and valuable book for anyone interested in Ted Hughes's work and/or the art and craft of poetry translation in general.
Chapter Titles:
Bardo Tholdol (The Tibetan Book of the Dead)[1960]
Homer [1961]
Mario de Sa Carneiro [1962/3]
Heder Macedo [1962/3]
Ferenc Juhasz [1965/6]
Yves Bonnefoy [1967]
Paul Eluard [1960s?]
Yehuda Amichai [from 1968]
Seneca [1967/8]
Orghast [1971]
Georges Schehade [1974]
Janos Pilinszky [175-7]
Marin Sorescu [1987]
Camillo Pennati [1990?]
LOrenzo de'Medici [1992/3]
Ovid [1994]
Frank Wedekind [1995]
Aeschylus [1995]
Federico Garcia Lorka [1996]
Anonymous (The Pearl Poet) [1997]
Abdulah Sidran [1998]
Jean Racine [1998]
Euripides [1998]
Alexander Pushkin [1999]
Red Princess: A Revolutionary Life
Sofka Zinovieff
Granta
978186207919 9 29.95 Brit. pounds
Mrs Skipworth, an old lady immersed in her books in rural Cornwall, fostering stray animals and walking Bodmin Moor in old gum-boots and scruffy clothes. And Princess Sophie (Sophka) Dolgorouky, a child attended by nursemaids, footmen and private tutors, playmate of the Tsarevich, and heiress to some of the greatest wealth in Russia.
Two pictures which could not be more different, but this same woman was the grandmother of the author of this book. Her life was full of contrasts and her granddaughter's biography tells an absorbing story of a woman who did not just survive the huge political, social and military upheavals through which she lived, but who tackled every situation with exceptional determination, zest and courage.
Sofka Skipworth (nee Dalgorouky) seems to have inherited her individuality and her determination from her remarkable family, especially from her mother (the author's great grandmother) who rejected the usual roles expected of aristocratic women of her generation in Russia and chose a career and a path through life which was unusual for any woman at that time. In the early years of the twentieth century, Sofka's mother enrolled at medical school and qualified as a surgeon; she drove her own car and was the only woman driver in a motor rally in 1912; she was one of the first women in Russia to qualify for a pilot's licence and she became a bomber pilot in 1916; she was awarded two St George Crosses for bravery; and she scandalized everyone by taking numerous lovers. This was the inheritance of her daughter (the subject of this biography), who displayed a similar free-thinking attitude to life and love.
Princess Sofka Dolgorouky's maternal grandfather was Alexei Brobinsky, who was a direct descendent of Catherine the Great, Empress of All the Russias, and her lover, Gregory Orlov. Her paternal grandfather also traced his origins back to Catherine's court, and to a favourite of Catherine's consort, Potemkin. This exceptionally beautiful woman, known as la Belle Greque, had been sold as a courtesan by her impoverished mother in Constantinople. Her aristocratic lover is reputed to have lost her at cards to a Polish Count Potocki, who married her. When she became a favourite of Potemkin's, the Empress gave her a pair of diamond earrrings, but Potemkin "topped this" by giving her the fine estate of Miskhor on the Black Sea which still belonged to the family and in which Sofka lived for some time as a child before the Russian Revolution.
In Red Princess, Sofka Zinovieff tells her grandmother's story from her journals, letters and other papers, and from interviews with family and others who knew her. Some of the most interesting parts of this book are accounts of the author's own travels to find places and people her grandmother knew. The palaces, the servants, the riches, all are gone: but people remember her grandmother and her grandmother's family; and, for many of them, the name Dolgorouky still warrants respect and conjures strangely nostalgic memories of pre-revolutionary Russia. The Dolgorouky Mansion inherited from La Belle Greque has become a Medical Therapeutic Centre, but a local woman remembered the family well and was delighted to share memories and photographs. In other places, people were similarly helpful, especially one elderly woman who had been a lifelong friend of her grandmother's ever since their internment together during the Second World War as British passport holders in Germany.
Sofka Dolgorouky left Russia for England on the same ship as the Dowager Empress of Russia, whose son, the Tzar, together with his wife and children, had already been shot by the Bolsheviks. She lived from then on in England and Europe. She was schooled briefly at a private girls' school in London where she became friends with Margaret Douglas-Hamilton, and later she worked for the Douglas-Hamiltons before marrying a Russian Prince, Leo Zinovieff, by whom she had two children. She divorced Zinovieff to marry Grey Skipworth, who was the love of her life and by whom she had a third child. For a time, Sofka worked as a private secretary to Lawrence Olivier and his first wife Jill Esmond, and she and Grey lived a bohemian life in Chelsea, but life never ran smoothly for long. Wartime widowhood, internment at Vittel in Germany, hardship and poverty followed. Sofka never conformed to what other, more conventional people, expected of her. She chose her own way of life, was a somewhat careless mother, and lived according to her own standards. Her concern for Jewish prisoners during her internment led her to take risks which she thought inadequate but which later led to her being recognized by the Holocaust Remembrance institute for her efforts. After the war, she became a Communist (hence the title of this book) but the more she saw of modern Russia, working as a tour-guide and translator, the more she lost faith in Communism.
In her later years, Sofka and her companion Jack King, looking for a place in which they could afford to live, moved to Bodmin and settled into a quiet rural life punctuated by the visits of relatives and friends. Her granddaughter writes that Sofka eventually established real friendships with some of her grandchildren, but they had to earn it. Once earned, the rewards were great: memorable letters, inspirational reading lists and, in the author's own case, the bequest of a beautiful old diary in which Sofka had recorded some of the most fascinating parts of her life. It was this diary which eventually led Sofka Zinovieff to write her grandmother's biography, and it is clear that researching and writing it has been eye-opening and sometimes difficult experience, but the results are worth it. This is a well written, interesting and absorbing book about an exceptional woman.
Ann Skea
Reviewer
Bethany's Bookshelf
The House of the Faun
Carolyn Doggett Smith
iUniverse
2021 Pine Lake Road, Suite 100, Lincoln, NE 68512
0595405193, $19.95 www.iuniverse.com
The House of the Faun is a passionate tale of forbidden love set within ancient Pompeii. Thirteen-year-old Ariana works as a kitchen slave for the House of the Vettii. The illegitimate daughter of the master of the house, she must cope with the jealousy of his wife and the ardor of her half-brother Marcus. When she is sent to the House of the Faun to serve as a maid, she falls in love with the master's son Gaius, yet what chance does the love of a slave girl and a government official's son have? Meanwhile, Marcus' envy remains a brooding threat. Rich in drama and historical detail, The House of the Faun is a romance to be savored page by page.
The Way It Was Growing Up In Wartime Holland
Sid Baron
Exxel Publishing Company
323 Telegraph Rd., Bellingham, WA 98226
0978558200, $12.95 www.sidbaron.com
The Way It Was Growing Up In Wartime Holland is the true-life story of author Sid Baron's adolescence in Holland during the Second World War. Growing up in an era when German collaborators terrorized the populace, he learned to keep secrets that could literally mean life or death, and even witnessed a B-17 fighter get shot out of the sky (decades later he was able to meet the sole survivor of that plane). A fascinating, unabashedly honest chronicle of what it was like to live through dark days in Holland's modern history, and subsequently emigrate to America. Highly recommended.
Next Friend
Anne Southworth
Next Friend Press
12699 Cedar Road, Cleveland Heights, OH 44106-3332
9780974793719, $15.00
Next Friend: The Journal of a Foster Parent is the true-life memoir of librarian, lawyer, and foster parent Anne Southworth, recounting how she and her husband took in the willful, argumentative orphan Nikki (not her real name) at age sixteen, cared for her, and prepared her for high school graduation. Their relationship with Nikki was rocky at first, marked by arguments, and requiring therapy. Yet patience and persistence were instrumental to building strong family bonds. A special challenge lay in encouraging Nikki to interact with her biological grandmother and sister. Next Friend is far more than a foster parent story; it is a journey of laughter, tears, and transformation. Highly recommended.
The Call Girl Actress
Erica Black
McKenna Publishing Group
425 Poa Place, San Luis Obispo, CA 93405
193217222X, $20.00 www.mckennapubgrp.com
"The Call Girl Actress: Confessions Of A Lesbian Escort" is the personal and candid memoir of Erica Black. Before retiring from her profession, Erica was an upscale, high-end, and much sought after call girl who functioned as a personal escort for men of means, authority, and power. She provided these men with a fantasy fulfillment of their sex lives with her female beauty, wit, charm, humor, and articulate intelligence. What these men did not realize and never knew was that Erica was also a lesbian. Indeed, Erica was a virgin when she had intercourse with her first client. Exceptionally well written and highly recommended reading, "The Call Girl Actress" is a compelling, informative, eye-witness introduction into the underground world and life of an expensive and successful prostitute whose performance as a provider of heterosexual fantasies for a price was flawless.
Susan Bethany
Reviewer
Buhle's Bookshelf
Long Shadows of War
Eugene Grecu
Trafford Publishing
6E-2333 Government Street, 2nd floor, Victoria, BC V8T 4P4 Canada
1412099862, $27.75 www.trafford.com 1-888-232-4444
Written by Romanian-born physician Eugene Grecu, Long Shadows of War is a novel set in Romania during the dark days of World War II, followed by Communist oppression so severe it sparks resistance, and later, defection. Based heavily upon the author's personal experiences growing up in Romania as well as the stories of survivors and other resources, Long Shadows of War is a fast-paced saga of human clashes, suffering, love, loss, guilt, and the rekindling of hope within the spirit. An intensely personal narrative that comes alive with feeling, immersing the reader in history itself.
Excited Light
Lynn Voedisch
iUniverse, Inc.
2021 Pine Lake Road, #100, Lincoln, NE 68512
0595421733, $14.95 www.iuniverse.com
The debut novel of journalist Lynn Voedisch, Excited Light is the story of a ten-year-old boy's spiritual journey through contact with a higher power. Living with his alcoholic single mother, he confides his secrets to his toy duck, Dudley - and Dudley answers him. When his mother gets caught in a whirlwind romance with a nightclubbing lover that brings her dangerously close to death, Alex, guided by Dudley, steps forward to help set her free from her terrible addiction. A serious-minded yet heartwarming spiritual story.
Sheldon Marsh is a half-Jewish, hearing-impaired baseball pitcher living in Youngstown, Ohio. Sheldon has a wonderful relationship with his movie-obsessive mother -- who always offers him a film title for relating to life's 'up and down' situations and life circumstances. But life is generally pretty dull and uninspired in the rust-belt decay of Youngstown. And even worse, Sheldon's wife Eleanor with whom he has a rather rocky relationship. Then Sheldon comes up with a novel idea -- exchange wives, kids, and even dogs with his friend and fellow baseball team player Thomas. That way Sheldon will have a new life! "Swap" by Sam Moffie is an original novel showcasing the humor and the unexpected consequences of our choices in life. Of special note is Moffie's quite evident gift for dialogue and his knack of crafting the twists and turns of the story line so as to hook and keep the reader's rapt (and sometimes gleeful) attention from first page to last. An ideal addition to community library fiction collections, "Swap" is a very highly recommended and entertaining read.
Wolf Dawson
Charlsie Russell
Loblolly Writer's House
PO Box 7438, Gulfport, Mississippi, 39506-7438
0976982412, $14.95 www.loblollywritershouse.com
"Wolf Dawson" by Charlsie Russell is a compelling and superbly crafted novel that takes for its subject the impact the aftermath of the American Civil War had on the lives of some of the people and community of Natchez, Mississippi. Some ten years after the Confederate Army reported Jeff Dawson had been killed in action, the once dirt-poor young man unexpectedly returns a man of enough wealth to by White Oak Glen, the once opulent home of a pre-war aristocratic family. We also encounter Juliet Seaton, a young woman struggle to hold on to the remains of her family farm against the excesses of the post-war Federal occupation. A struggle complicated by a drunken brother and the importunities of needy relatives. And if that weren't enough, there is a marauding wolf slaughtering precious livestock. Other complications are the suspicions of her brother that the man calling himself Jeff Dawson is an imposter, a neighbor hell-bent on avenging his sister who died in childbirth after being raped by a Seaton man, and the local folklore that Jeff Dawson's grandfather (who was part Creek Indian) was a shape-shifter who could turn into a wolf. That old belief led to the lynching of the grandfather and the expectation by some that perhaps Jeff is conducting a vendetta against the vigilantes responsible. When Seaton livestock and some Natchez prostitutes are murdered, Jeff and Juliet (who have a compelling attraction for each other) must somehow find out the killer and heal old community wounds. "Wolf Dawson" is an original and very highly recommended addition to any personal or community library reading list or historical fiction collection.
Willis M. Buhle
Reviewer
Burroughs' Bookshelf
Cinco de Mayo
Donald W. Miles
iUniverse, Inc.
2021 Pine Lake Road, Suite 100, Lincoln, NE 68512
0595392415, $20.95 www.iuniverse.com
Award-winning radio journalist Donald W. Miles presents Cinco de Mayo: What Is Everybody Celebrating?, a historical account of the events that sparked the annual Cinco de Mayo holiday in Mexico. Nearly 150 years ago, when the emperor of France ordered his generals to take over Mexico and use it as a "base" to help the Confederates in the American Civil War against the Union Army, Mexico fought back. On May 5th, 1862, Mexico won a decisive battle against French forces, preserving its independence and preventing foreign interference in the American Civil War, yet it would take Mexico another five years to expel the last of the French soldiers from its borders. Cinco de Mayo chronicles the war between Mexico and France in plain terms, accessible to readers of all backgrounds; notes and an index round out this excellent historical primer especially recommended for public library collections.
Regenerative Refrain
Michael Howard
iUniverse, Inc.
2021 Pine Lake Road, #100, Lincoln, NE 68512
0595412068, $17.95 www.iuniverse.com
The poetry of Michael Howard comprising "Regenerative Refrain: Poetry For The Traveler In All Of Us" is a body of impressive work that offers introspection, entertainment, and humor as it takes for its themes love, life, and simply living out our personal adventures as we travel through our days experiences and observations. Highly recommended and thoroughly enjoyable reading, the poems and their lessons here presented are simple, elegant and succinct. 'What Do You Surround Yourself With': Maybe the introvert has a lot to say/but does not know if it is prudent to express it./Maybe the extrovert has nothing to say,/but he says it anyway.//The former is hidden in books,/the latter is broadcast with electricity./90 percent of the latter are crooks./Choose the former for long-lasting felicity.
Hooked On A Horn
Gene Hull
Trafford Publishing
2333 Government Street, Suite 6E, Victoria, BC, Canada, V8T 4P4
1412067219, $22.00 www.trafford.com 1-888-232-4444
"Hooked On A Horn: Memoirs Of A Recovered Musician" is the autobiography of Gene Hull who first became interest in music when, at the age of ten, was taken by his parents to a live stage show where he saw the Benny Goodman Orchestra perform. This is the personal story of a professional musician who lived and played through the era of the big bands, the emergence of the music and social issues of the 60s, 70s, and 80s. Gene Hull combine humor and a keen observation to reveal to the reader what a life on the road, encountering such music greats as Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Elvis "Presley, Dave Brubeck, Vic Damone, Leonard Berstein, and such eminent entertainers and actors as Katherine Hepburn and Woody Allen was really like. "Hooked On A Horn" is very highly recommended and entertaining reading (enhanced with an accompanying music CD) that will have a special appeal to students of 20th Century American music, and those who appreciate an engaging memoir (with something of an ironic twist) of a man who lived through interesting times
He Called Her Lilie
Thomas L. Chiu
Chaucer Press Books
100 West 57th Street, New York, NY 10019
1884092020, $14.95 www.richardaltschuler.com
Thomas L. Chiu's second published volume of short stories, "He Called Her Lilie" continues to document him as an impressive talent able to deftly craft original, entertaining, and thoughtful fiction that captures the reader's total attention with each carefully scripted and succinctly presented tale. The 51 stories comprising this simply outstanding and very highly recommended 186-page anthology range from the title piece 'He Called her Lilie', to such two page gems as 'The Jewels', 'Pizza', and 'A Magnificent Gift' to longer five page tales like 'The Candle', 'The Drowning', and 'Last Strawberries of Autumn'. Populated by memorable characters, surprises, and hallmarked by Chiu's especially articulate and distinctive literary voice. "He Called her Lilie" is a superb example of what the short story format can achieve.
John Burroughs
Reviewer
Carson's Bookshelf
Kriegsgefangenen #250208 "My War"
Jack T. Sneesby
Vantage Press, Inc.
419 Park Ave. South, New York, NY 10016
0533154480, $15.00 1-212-736-1767
World War II veteran Jack T. Sneesby presents Kriegsgefangenen #250208 "My War", a riveting memoir of the cost of putting one's life on the line to defend one's country. Sneesby tells of the rigorous tests he underwent to prove himself worthy of service, combat, his capture by the Germans and survival as a prisoner of war. A tale of the human will to press on and endure, Kriegsgefangenen #250208 "My War" is especially noteworthy for its insight into the nature of fear - distinguishing dread (an emotion Sneesby felt often while in service, though he refused to lose control to it) from terror or panic (which Sneesby loosely defines as out-of-control fear), not to mention the practical realities of life in a foxhole. "One learns to adapt. Never move too far from the only safe place. One can move about at night, visit with friends in neighboring foxholes. However, it is easy to get disoriented at night. And when sleepers are suddenly awakened at night by strange noises they are apt to act out of instinct and ask questions later." Highly recommended.
Rupert: Just Being Me
Rupert Boneham & Lester Thomas Shane
LifePress
c/o Sams Technical Publishing
9850 E. 30th St., Indianapolis, IN 46229
079061331X, $14.95
Rupert: Just Being Me is the memoir of celebrity figure Rupert Boneham, founder of the Rupert's Kids organization to provide mentoring and educational programming to troubled youth, as told to author Lester Thomas Shane. Chapters tell of the shock of learning the woman he had lived with had legally and surreptitiously become his common-law wife - then divorced him and used the courts to drain him of money; the founding of the Rupert's Kids organization; his television debut; the difficulty of letting go of metaphorical demons and ghosts; and much more. A handful of color photographs and numerous black-and-white photographs illustrate this one-of-a-kind behind-the-scenes memoir of a truly charitable man.
Crack! and Thump
Captain Charles Scheffel with Barry Basden
Camroc Press, LLC
PO Box 801, Llano, TX 78643
0975450360, $20.00 www.camrocpress.com
Crack! and Thump With a Combat Infantry Officer in World War II is a stark memoir of an American combat infantry officer surviving the terror, fatigue and strain of the European Theater of World War II. From brutal battles under fire to the liberation of France, witnessing French revenge on those of its own people who collaborated with the Nazis, and having to take cold-blooded killers prisoner while their victims called for their immediate execution, and much more, Crack! and Thump brings the war experience to unforgettable life. A bluntly honest account, neither glorifying nor undermining America's role in turning back a horrific worldwide threat, and a welcome addition to military memoir shelves.
Heart of a Mule
Dick Schafrath
Gray & Company Publishers
1588 E. 40th St., Cleveland, OH 44103
159851024X, $24.95 www.grayco.com
Heart of a Mule: The Dick Schafrath Stories is the autobiography covering seventy years of a truly remarkable man's life. Dick Schafrath tells of his childhood on an Ohio farm with no plumbing, plowing behind a pair of mules; winning national football championships; serving four terms in the Ohio senate; being the first person to ever canoe across Lake Erie; returning to Ohio State to finish his undergraduate degree after fifty years had passed; and much more. Told in a friendly, conversational tone, these varied stories are sure to delight and inspire, as they convey a rich life marked by rising to challenges. Highly recommended.
Michael J. Carson
Reviewer
Christy's Bookshelf
Recipe for Trouble
Jackie Griffey
Five Star/Thomson Gale
295 Kennedy Memorial Drive, Waterville, ME 04901
159414530X $25.95 1-800-223-1244
Pine County Sheriff Cas Larkin is concerned when local celebrity Mattie Carrington's kitchen explodes several minutes after she and her sister Katie leave home. Mattie and Katie are cousins of Miss Mayme and Miss Minnie Anderson, the two sisters who run their small town's floral shop. However, Cas's instincts kick into high gear when he learns that Mattie has had several accidents in the near past and had planned to be home the day of the explosion. When Mattie leases a lakeside cabin in their county to finish a cookbook she is writing, Cas makes it a point to keep check on her. During one of his visits, he finds Mattie unconscious and takes her to the hospital, where the doctor discloses she has been poisoned. All eyes point to Miss Minnie, the last person to visit Mattie, but Cas has other suspicions.
Fans of this series will feel as if they are spending time with old friends and new readers will quickly fall under the spell of all the warm characters in this sequel to The Nelson Scandal, from Cas's wife Connie, the perpetual matchmaker, to Miss Mayme and Miss Minnie and several others. Griffey enfolds the reader in an engaging mystery that takes place in a charming locale, with spine-tingling suspense, a demented killer, and more than a few charismatic characters, including a psychic and faith healer.
Secrets Dark and Deep
Anne White
Hilliard and Harris
1591331986 $28.95 (hc) $16.95 (pb) www.hilliardandharris.com
As mayor of Lake George, a small resort town, Loren Graham tends to become overly involved in local investigations, much to the chagrin of Sheriff's Investigator Jim Thompson who has warned her to keep out of matters involving law enforcement. But when a stranger stumbles across a skeleton and insists on showing Loren, Loren finds herself drawn into the murder of a young college student 25 years earlier.
Travel writer Millicent Halstead has moved back to Lake George, where she once lived with her husband, poet Carl Durocher, rumored to have had an intimate relationship with the murdered young woman. It's bad enough that Millicent keeps imposing on Loren's time, which distracts her from mending her tense relationship with boyfriend Don Morrison, but someone is stalking the neighborhood while local bat expert Arthur Blake's reclusive mother keeps disappearing. Although Loren tries to stay below Thompson's radar during the ongoing murder investigation, she keeps being pulled back in by those who knew the young woman. When Loren inadvertently learns the identity of the killer, she becomes targeted for murder.
Secrets Dark and Deep is exceptional; so skillfully written, the reader gets lost in the flow and it ends all too soon. The story moves at a fast pace, nicely building suspense until a climatic, nail-biting ending. As part of the Lake George Mystery series, past and future books ensure a building relationship with likeable Loren Graham and her cozy resort town. White delivers a colorful cast of characters readers will not easily forget and a galvanizing plot that guarantees edge-of-the-seat involvement.
Shadows in the White City
Robert W. Walker
HarperCollins Publishers
10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022-5299
0060739967 $6.99 www.harpercollins.com 1-800-242-7737
Chicago is hosting the World's Fair in the year 1893 but there is trouble afoot. A killer dubbed the Phantom of the Fair is on the loose, garroting his victims to near-decapitation and burning their bodies. Inspector Alastair Ransom has his sights set on a young man named Waldo Denton but Denton is exonerated by Ransom's archenemy, Police Chief Nathan Kohler. When Denton disappears, with Ransom's help, evidence proves he was the Phantom. But another killer quickly steps in to fill the Phantom's shoes, this one more vicious and brutal than the Phantom.
Named the Leather Apron because the killer literally butchers victims, Ransom's investigation leads him to the underbelly of Chicago, desperate to put an end to this manic murderer who preys on the homeless. What Ransom learns shocks even this skilled detective. With the help of Dr. Jane Francis, aka Dr. James Phineas Tewes, and a group of homeless children, along with primitive forensics, Ransom trails the Leather Apron to tunnels beneath the World's Fair, where a bloody battle has already begun.
Robert W. Walker delivers an outstanding historical mystery, with compelling characters and a shocking resolution. Dialogue and narrative magically transcend the reader to the true realism of Chicago of the late 1800s, skillfully highlighting unfolding historical events and the roles women played in medicine and society as well as the plight of the homeless. This twisting mystery provides plenty of gut-wrenching suspense embedded in an electrifying plot that refuses to allow the reader to put the book aside. Inspector Alastair Ransom is a unique character, a man of great depth and principles who lives by his own rules, and who can easily carry this invigorating series forward.
Christy Tillery French
Reviewer
Debra's Bookshelf
The Book of Fate
Brad Meltzer
Warner Books, Inc.
c/o Grand Central Publishing
237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017-0010
044661212X $7.99 www.amazon.com 1-800-759-0190
Eight years before the action of Brad Meltzer's The Book of Fate begins there had been an assassination attempt. President Leland Manning wasn't hurt, but a member of his staff, Ron Boyle, was killed, and Manning's aide, Wes Holloway, was shot in the face and permanently disfigured. The shooting stole more than Wes's face: he is haunted by guilt for having seated Boyle in the presidential limousine that day. And Wes, once sure he was destined for greater things, has stopped taking chances. Years after Manning lost the White House, Wes is still fetching the former President his coffee. But the cocoon Wes has built around himself is shattered during a trip to Malaysia. A chance encounter in the President's hotel forces Wes to confront his ghosts, and to figure out what really happened the day he and Boyle were shot. The conspiracy he ultimately uncovers reaches all the way to Manning's inner circle and tests Wes's loyalty to the former President, a man he has looked up to as a father figure.
Meltzer tells his story from multiple perspectives, Wes's, principally, but also, for example, those of Nico Hadrian, the madman who shot Wes and Boyle, and "The Roman," the dramatically named ringleader of the dramatically named group of conspirators--"The Three"--who used Nico as their pawn. The book has some things going for it. The glimpse it provides into life in the White House inner circle is interesting. (Meltzer had access to former Presidents Bush and Clinton in preparing his manuscript, and credits his conversations with them for some of his favorite details in the book.) And Nico's macabre drive across country holds its own fascination.
On the negative side, Meltzer's plot is confusing, and Wes and his cronies unravel the arcane clues they uncover a bit too quickly. And while Wes is a likeable enough character he is not so compelling that we invest our emotions in his story. Wes is defined largely by his attachment to Manning, who has, we are told, treated Wes like family, but readers aren't given evidence of this special treatment from the President in the text, so it is difficult to credit. The book's title has very little to do with the story, and Meltzer's foray into Dan Brownish territory--Freemasonry and cryptic symbols--isn't necessary to the plot.
In the end The Book of Fate is decidedly...okay. If you're looking for a page-turner you might want to grab the latest Ken Follett instead.
Other People's Money
Neil Forsyth, with Elliot Castro
Sidgwick & Jackson
Pan Macmilla
20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
028307051X $25.78
Elliot Castro, the "audacious fraudster" of this book's subtitle, was finally caught in 2005. His criminal career had lasted some six years, beginning when he stole his first credit card at the age of sixteen. That first theft landed Elliot almost immediately in the back of his first police cruiser, but the experience didn't sour Elliot on a life of crime. He pocketed and profited from many more cards before graduating to a more sophisticated brand of fraud, one that allowed him access to other people's money without the dirty work of swiping wallets. Aided by a photographic memory and a genius for finance, Elliot supported himself for years by scamming credit card companies. He lived as a fugitive, constantly worrying about suspicious clerks, ready to run at a moment's notice, and mindful always of detail: Which credit cards and whose names was he using in which establishments? Which banks asked which security questions? But Elliot lived, ostensibly, very well: he spent money obsessively, at the finest restaurants and the best hotels, the poshest shops, amassing designer clothes and gold-plated Rolexes and more cash than even he could spend. But in the end, not surprisingly, this proved to be an empty sort of existence, and finally one he couldn't sustain.
Other People's Money tells the story of Elliot Castro's childhood and career in crime. Neil Forsyth, a freelance journalist, wrote the book "with" Elliot, which apparently means that he wrote the book from interviews he conducted with Elliot (and a few others). But, interestingly, almost all of the book is told from Elliot's perspective, in the first person--and very engagingly--so that it is easy to forget that Forsyth stood as an intermediary between Elliot and the page, sharpening the con man's sentences into a very readable narrative. Forsyth writes from his own perspective only a few times, in a handful of chapters in which he describes, for example, his first meeting with Elliot, or his meeting with Elliot's mother Jane. These chapters, however, are less interesting than those detailing Elliot's experiences. Forsyth's first-person approach to telling Elliot's story is very effective, though I would have liked an explanatory note about the collaborative process, because it is somewhat jarring to read the story in Elliot's voice while knowing that Forsyth is the book's principal author.
Elliot may not be a completely likable character. He stole hundreds of thousands of dollars, after all, with little remorse, and dedicated himself to accumulating material goods and to ostentatious display. But Forsyth's book renders Elliot's crimes at least comprehensible. Elliot grew up alienated, in part because he was so much smarter than his classmates, and various events conspired to convince him that deception and wealth were avenues to gaining respect. There were other problems, presumably a compulsive shopping addiction among them, and one leaves the book thinking that Elliot may be more sick than immoral.
Elliot did not find happiness in his crimes for long, at any rate. They landed him in jail more than once and ruined his relationships, particularly with his immediate family. And while getting away with fraud was exhilarating in the beginning, in the end it didn't satisfy. Without denying that he had taken pleasure in his crimes, Elliot paints a bleak picture of life as a master criminal:
"I lived amongst my lies every moment I was awake and then they would rule my sleep. Every sentence I spoke for over four years had been calculated and examined before it left my lips. It didn't matter if I was in a bar, a courtroom, or a jail cell, I was controlled by the need to protect my lies and myself."
Elliot offers what seems to be a very honest self-portrait in this book, depicting his failings as both a criminal and a human being. For a smart thief, for starters, he made a great many stupid mistakes, sometimes eluding law enforcement only because of the latter's ineptitude. More poignantly, Elliot recognizes that his bid for acceptance through wealth--buying rounds of drinks and hosting parties and showing off his taste through conspicuous consumption--bought only temporary friends, and that he was frequently viewed as pathetic and vulgar despite his riches. So in the end, flawed as he is and now that he's going straight, you can't help feeling a bit sorry for Elliot, and impressed with his honesty in portraying himself like this. You'll leave the book impressed, too, with Forsyth's ability to shape Elliot's story into so compelling a narrative.
Debra Hamel
Reviewer
Eric's Bookshelf
Cracker & Camper Van Beethoven
MVD Visual
PO Box 280, Oaks, PA 19456
$19.95 www.mvdvisual.com www.pitchatent.com
In the 1980s the band Camper Van Beethoven was one of those bands that was often without a genre playing music that came before the indie rock explosion and the roots rock craze, but that would fit into either. By the dawn of the 90s the band had disbanded and singer/guitarist David Lowery formed the roots-influenced rock band Cracker. With hits like "Euro-Trash Girl," "Teen Angst (What the World Needs Now)," and "Low" the band became a hit on the Modern Rock radio charts while the line-up remained unstable. Lowery used time between recording and touring to produce acts like Joan Osborne and Counting Crows. This DVD documents a two-day festival that featured reunited line-ups of Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker as well as solo sets from Camper members Johnny Hickman and Victor Krummenacher.
Leonard Cohen: Under Review 1934-1977
Sexy Intellectual
PO Box 230, New Malden, Surrey, KT3 6YY, UK
$19.95 www.chromedreams.co.uk
This 90-minute documentary features rare interviews and photographs combined with interviews with former producers, band mates and critics such as Robert Christgau to review the work of Leonard Cohen as he moved from poetry and fiction writing to songwriting. Each of Cohen's early works is taken individually and reviewed by the panel members adding insights into his life and work.
Tim Buckley: My Fleeting House
MVD Visual
PO Box 280, Oaks, PA 19456
$19.95 www.mvdvisual.com
Tim Buckley is somewhat of a cult artist who is sometimes lost in the shuffle, but, thanks in part to the attention garnered by his son, Jeff Buckley, is gaining the opportunity for his music to reach a new audience. Buckley recorded nine albums in his brief career that spanned 1967 to 1974 when he died from a heroin overdose. Never content to rest on the critical praise from the last album, Buckley moved his music from folk to progressive jazz while maintaining the acoustic twelve string underpinnings and folk lyricism. This new documentary provides us with rare performances from a variety of late-60s/early-70s television shows as well as rare interview clips. This serves as a great introduction to Buckley's work through critical interviews with band mates, producers and co-writers.
Born In the Honey: The Pinetop Perkins Story
Vizztone
At age 93 blues pianist Pinetop Perkins is still rocking with the best of them. "Born in the Honey" provides a comprehensive look at Perkins life from growing up in the Mississippi Delta to migrating North and becoming a sideman for such legends as Sonny Boy Williamson, Earl Hooker and Muddy Waters. Starting his solo career at age 83 Perkins began to revel in the spotlight and continues to this day. Not only is this the story of Pinetop Perkins, it also serves as an overview of the migration north many African-Americans embarked on in the 1930s and 1940s. It is a fascinating story and one more than worthy of the DVD treatment. Also packaged with the DVD is a CD containing 9 live tracks and one rare studio track.
Eric Banister
Reviewer
Gary's Bookshelf
The Blonde Theory
Kristin Harmel
5 Spot
Hachette Book Group USA
1271 Avenue of the Americas, New York NY 10020
9780446697590 $13.99 www.5-Spot.com
The novel has a lot to say about the world of dating. Harper is a great attorney who has just had her boyfriend walk out on her at the beginning of the book. She begins to evaluate herself and why she can't keep a man. She and her girlfriends come up with the blonde theory that if you play dumb men will love you. What she finds is very different from what she had expected. She goes on a series of dates and plays the role of a dumb blonde and gets a taste of what life is really all about. There is one special man though but she finds that even he, when she is really herself is not all that he seems. I loved the interplay of Harper's girlfriends and what she learns about dating and herself. The author memorable characters with a writing style that is easy to read and created.
Fresh Disasters
Stuart Woods
Putnam
375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014
9780399154102 $25.95 www.penguin.com
Stuart Woods is one of the best thrill writers and once again he shows why with this one. This Stone Barrington story has three plotlines that are intertwined and race along. A witness in a big case needs Stone's help, a woman Stone meets becomes a victim and a sick artist makes Stone his target. I love how Woods unfolds his tense situations with characters you've read before. At the center is Stone who is a delightful person with a fresh approach to doing things. Woods books are always a treat.
Orbit
John J. Nance
Pocket Star
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020
9780743476621 $7.99 www.simonsays.com
The author in his intro mentions that he told Charles Gibson on "Good Morning America" that this is his best book ever. I agree and I see why. Nance usually tells the crisis novel that involves pilots and seat of the pants flying sequences but this novel has a lot more. His character Kip Dawson is just a regular guy who sells pharmaceuticals for a living. He wins a contest to fly into space on a commercial spaceflight and finds that he has to do more than be a passenger. He has to take full command of the ship because the pilot has been killed when the craft collided with space debris. But that is only part of what makes the novel so different. It is that Nance gives us an insight into the character through his thoughts and writings on the computer. He feels he is doomed. I won't say how it ends. I will say it moves along very quickly and would make a great movie.
The Smallest Schoolhouse
Regina N. Lewis
Illustrated by P. M, Moore
CyPress Publications P.O.Box 2636, Tallahassee, Florida 32316-2636
0977695832 $12.95 www.cypress-starpublications.com
This sequel to "The Smallest Toy Store" has the same magical feel and delves into another thought provoking subject for all ages to enjoy. The team of Lewis and Moore once again work together to tell their story through prose and art.
Nemesis Rising
Glenda Finkelstein
Book Surge
North Charleston South Carolina
1419609270 $14.99 www.glendas-books.com
Finkelstein has a knack for telling stories with interesting characters and tense situations. This time though she does something else. She incorporates religion and does it very well. Unlike other authors who hit you with their message, Finkelstein make it part of the story and makes it interesting. She has written a tale that moves along very quickly with many conflicts that drive the book to its end. Her writing makes the reader feel that the Neptune space station is up and running.
The Blue Zone
Andrew Gross
William Morrow & Company
c/o HarperCollins Publishers
10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022-5299
9780061143403 $25.95 www.harpercollins.com 1-800-242-7737
I've read the collaborations with James Patterson and am happy to say that this solo venture by Gross hits a home run. His story is a fast paced read that should thrill fans of Patterson. The tale is about the worst scenario of the witness protection program classified as "the blue zone" when the protected witness is either dead or cannot be found by law enforcement officials. The characters are believable while the novel has a rapid pace that flows along to its final shattering conclusion.
Walking on Glass
Alma Fullerton
Harper Tempest
10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022-5299
The author has written a novel in the poetic form. It is a very interesting way to tell the story but it works very well. I was fascinated at how quickly the story unfolded. This is a YA novel but it is a very dark tale of a family and what happens when one of the members attempts suicide. The author shows the effects on all members and friends and how they deal with it. There are several things I would have liked the writer to have told a little earlier: the age of the main character, his or her sex, and a name.
Hot Stuff
Janet Evanovich and Leanne Banks
St Martin's Press
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
9780312941468 $6.99 www.stmartins.com
I loved this one and hope to see more of Cate Madigan. She is working her way through school and just wants a quiet existence. She finds that her life is nothing like she would like to have, because her cross dressing roommate has everyone after him. A dog shows up with instructions that she is to care for it. The situations are hilarious as the story unfolds and the authors will have you turning the pages to laugh at all the oddball situations.
The Rookie
Becker and Moutafis
Baby Shark Publications
Jacksonville. Florida
976512505 $7.95 www.gregmoutafis.com
This is a comic book that has a lot of adult themes. Yeah, there are super heroes, bad guys too, but it is the writing that makes this one so much better. The authors have put a new slant onto the cops and robbers genre
Plum Lovin
Janet Evanovich
St Martin's Press
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
9780312306342 $16.95 www.stmartins.com
Stephanie Plum is back. This time Plum has her hands full with several offbeat characters. Along again is her wisecracking grandmother and the other dingy sidekicks from her other novels. I love how this author comes up with many new funny situations that make you laugh out loud.
Brides Behaving Badly
Bev West and Jason Bergund
Warner Books
Hachette Book Group USA
237 Park Avenue, New York NY 10169
9780446699167 $12.99 www.HachetteBookGroupUSA.com
These are moments those involved would like to forget, because they are so embarrassing but for those of us who are on the outside, these pictures with captions are very funny. This is a laugh out loud book that is a great gag gift.
The Wicked Word
Philip Lee McCall II
Mythis Studios Inc
9781411689893 $19.95 www.mythixstudios.com www.philipmccallii.com
Through the use of poetry the author takes the reader on another excursion into the dark realm of horror filled with vampires, werewolves, exorcism, and a lot of other creepy things guaranteed to make you lose sleep. Some of the outstanding poems to look for are "Tea With a Dragon," "Jennifer Jones," "The Fair." Also make note of the very eye catchy cover.
Gary Roen
Reviewer
Gloria's Bookshelf
Circle of Assassins
Steven Rigolosi
Ransom Note Press
P.O.B. 419, Ridgewood NJ 07451
0977378748 $13.95 www.ransomnotepress.com 201-835-2790
Circle of Assassins is the second in a series entitled Tales from the Back Page, which has as its starting off point the stories behind ads placed on what is called The Bulletin Board on the back page of a local newspaper, The Clarion, a fictional community paper published on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The first in the series was entitled Who Gets the Apartment? and revolves around four strangers, each conned into renting a luxury penthouse apartment. Of course, the person offering to rent did not own the apartment in question, and the story dealt with how each one resolved the situation. This time around, there are five strangers involved, and in a tale reminiscent of Strangers on a Train, they each agree to kill someone chosen by another member of the "Circle," and in return have a stranger murder a victim of his/her choice, no one member knowing the identity of any other. [The ad is headed "Revenge is Sweet," and is marked "For Entertainment Purposes Only."] It would seem a perfect way to avoid having any physical evidence coming back to point at the one who has selected the victim, and to have a valid alibi as well, since that person would in fact have had nothing to do with the actual deed. Intr iguing premise indeed.
One participant ruminates: "Since I decided to go through with this, I've been doing a lot of thinking about what might drive other people to these acts of desperation. Is your tale one of sordid trailer park lust and jealousy? Maybe you were spurned by someone, and this is your way of getting his or her attention once and for all? Were you jilted by a lover, betrayed by a friend, or robbed by a business associate? Did a bully in your childhood pick on you, or does a bully in your adult life push you around now? Did someone take advantage of your good nature, hurt your children, or mistreat your parents? Do you have a rival or competitor whose elimination will lead to your progress, advancement, or wealth? Do you have hostilities towards people of specific races, genders, sexualities, or ethnicities?" And it's a fascinating postulate: which of us, reading that ad and that proposition, might not at least hesitate, just for a second, and consider it? The author provides an interesting take on the supposition that "murder is something that happens to someone else." We are told, and shown, that "someone may be plotting your murder as you read the book." Then everything takes a startling turn.
I have to admit I had to jump back and forth with some regularity as the book explores the minds of those on both ends of this equation to figure out who is the intended victim of which Circle member, the p.o.v. being put forth, and so forth, which was a bit disconcerting. This was perhaps the author's intent and designed to keep the reader off balance. Be that as it may, ultimately it was the unexpected twists and turns that kept me hooked.
There are two more planned Tales From the Back Page, and I look forward to reading them.
Good Night, My Darling
Inger Frimansson
A Caravel Book from Pleasure Boat Studio
201 W. 89th St., NY, NY 10064
1929355372 $16.00 www.pleasureboatstudio.com 888-810-5308
This novel was the second by this author to receive the Swedish Academy of Mystery Authors Award for Best Swedish Crime Novel, making her the only female crime author ever to receive this award twice. Hailed as a startling psychological thriller, it has now been brought to American readers in a translation by Laura Wideburg.
The author's style is immediately compelling. Early in the novel, the protagonist, Justine, is going through her stepmother's room after both her parents have died and her stepmother institutionalized following a stroke: "She wiped down the dresser when she was in the mood to take care of things. She cleaned the mirror with window cleaner and she moved the hairbrush and the tiny perfume bottles around. Once she picked up Flora's hair brush and held it to the window, staring at the gray strands of hair. She bit herself hard inside one cheek and quickly ripped away one of the strands. Then she went to the balcony and set it on fire. It burned with a pungent odor, rolled itself up, and disappeared." Justine has lived here most of her life, in a house by a lake in Sweden, and now finds herself reflecting on those who had victimized her throughout her life and determines to exact revenge.
This is a dark, one might even say morbid, tale, and Justine an intriguing character from whom one cannot take one's 'eyes' away. The chapters alternate p.o.v. between Justine and other characters who have affected her life, at times confusingly. In addition, I found the writing less than smooth, which I presume is a function of the translation as much as anything else, and the non-linear approach a bit disconcerting. That said, the setting is very well evoked – one can almost feel the cold and the snow of Sweden, and the novel is gripping, racing along as it progressed despite my earlier problems with the writing. Justine is one scary gal!
Covet
Tara Moss
Dorchester Publishing
200 Madison Ave., NY, NY 10016
0843958480 $7.99 www.dorchesterpub.com 800-481-9191
In her third thriller, after Fetish and Split, Tara Moss has brought back Makedde ["Mak"] Vanderwall, a model and psychology student from Vancouver, B.C., and has brought that protagonist back to Sydney, Australia [where the author makes her home]. When she was on assignment in that city in Fetish, she became the target of a man dubbed the Stiletto killer, who was responsible for the death of her best friend, in the course of which she met and fell in love with Andy Flynn, the detective assigned to investigate the serial murders and who was her rescuer. In Covet, she has returned to Sydney to testify at the trial for murder of the sadist who had kidnapped and tortured Mak, and is reunited with Andy.
The book opens with a chilling prologue describing a completely unrelated murder, committed in a frighteningly detached manner, introducing the reader to the macabre world of Tara Moss' creation. And the reader soon becomes horrifyingly aware of how this new killer is connected with the main story line and the serial killer at its center. I hesitate to give any more of the plot for fear of giving away any spoilers, but suffice it to say that the book is page-turning and suspenseful, and thoroughly enjoyable.
Mak's plans after obtaining her Ph.D. include practicing as a clinical forensic psychologist, and one can look forward to future books depicting her in that profession. Having missed this author's earlier books featuring this complex and sympathetic protagonist, I look forward to following her in novels yet to come. The word 'spinetingling' has been used often before, but it perfectly describes Covet. Yet the book is much more than that – Tara Moss tells a helluva good story. Recommended.
Bad Luck and Trouble
Lee Child
Delacorte Press
c/o Bantam Dell
1745 Broadway, NY, NY 10019
0385340559 $26.00 www.bantamdell.com 800-726-0600
The startling opening pages of Bad Luck and Trouble, the new Jack Reacher book by Lee Child, has a man with two broken legs being loaded onto a helicopter and very shortly thereafter being dropped to his death from a height of 3,000 feet to the California desert floor.
Jack Reacher, 6' 5", 250 lbs., thirteen years in the military and ex-MP, the enigmatic protagonist of this series, is contacted by a former colleague, Frances Neagley, now working for a private security provider. It appears that the dead man was someone they both knew and had worked with, also a former M.P. and a part of Reacher's Special Investigations Unit. Reacher's reaction to the news of his death: "You don't throw my friends out of helicopters and live to tell the tale." The unit's old catchphrase is revitalized: "You do not mess with the special investigators," and it becomes a mantra.
Opening a new Jack Reacher book is like seeing an old and treasured albeit somewhat scary friend; I started reading Bad Luck and Trouble with a smile on my face in happy anticipation, and the author did not disappoint. This is Reacher as we know and love him, and at his best. The book is wonderfully well-written and –plotted, and tho I saw one plot twist coming from a long way off it was no less enjoyable for that. I could not put this book down – well, I could, but I really didn't want to. Highly recommended.
The Dead Place
Stephen Booth
Bantam Books
1745 Broadway, NY, NY 10029
0385339062 $25.00 www.bantamdell.com 800-726-0600
The newest book in this deservedly popular series by Stephen Booth, just published in the US, brings back Detective Constable Ben Cooper and his partner, Detective Sergeant Diane Fry. While Fry is investigating creepy phone calls received by the police from an obviously deranged person speaking through a voice changer and referring to deaths which have not yet taken place, in addition to the disappearance of a young woman from a car park, Cooper is trying to identify, with the help of a forensic artist who has done a facial reconstruction, a woman whose body has been found lying in a wooded area apparently more than a year after her death. The anonymous phone caller is obsessed with death, and the subject permeates every corner of this book. Part of one phone call: "I can smell it right now, can't you? …It's the scent of death." And indeed death in all its aspects becomes palpable – to the police and the reader in turn, the thanatologist who volunteers to assist the police as a consultant only enhancing the effect. Diane muses: "…there must be many ways of shutting out the sight of death passing by, or pretending it didn't exist." But the caller, again, insists: "To most people, death is a dirty secret, a thing of shame, the last taboo. To me, it's completion, the perfect conclusion." On the ot her hand, Ben "knew that he'd have to face up to his own death some time. Like most people, he'd always thought he could avoid it forever. And perhaps he'd read too many stories in which people didn't die. Instead, they passed away, breathed their last, or were no more. In polite conversation, death was skated over rapidly, like thin ice." Cryptic clues are contained in the phone calls, which exhort the police and tells them that all they have to do is find "the dead place." It becomes a race against time as the police attempt to discover the identity of the caller, and of his next victim.
A psychological thriller of the first order, The Dead Place is filled with atmospheric detail and a complex plot. Fry and Cooper are wonderfully drawn characters with whom the reader becomes more involved with each new novel by Mr. Booth. The next book in the series will be Scared to Death, due out soon, I believe, in the UK, and in the US in 2008, giving his many fans, this reader included, something to look forward to.
Gloria Feit
Reviewer
Gorden's Bookshelf
The Last Templar
Raymond Khoury
Signet
New American Library a division of Penguin Putman Inc.
375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014
0451219953 $9.99
Khoury has done a good job of picking over historical facts to create an illusion of a millennium old conspiracy filled with violence and intrigue. The mystery isn't as intense as in other books but the violence of fanatics is there. Khoury doesn't break new ground with 'The Last Templar' but he does bring a readable variation on the theme.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has an opening for an exhibit of Vatican treasures. Four horsemen dressed as knights ride into the museum killing and stealing some of the artifacts. Archeologist Kim Chaykin is there with her mother and
