Previews, Reviews, and Collection Development
Atwood, Margaret. Maddaddam. Doubleday. Sept. 2013. 416. ISBN 9780385528788. $27.95; ebk. ISBN 9780385537834. CD/downloadable: Random Audio. DYSTOPIAN FICTION In this wrap-up to the magisterial trilogy begun with Oryx & Crake and continued with The Year of the Flood, the waterless flood has indeed descended, wiping out most of humanity. Ren and Toby have rescued poor [...]
Brandman, Michael. Robert B. Parker’s Damned If You Do. Putnam. Sept. 2013. 304p. ISBN 9780399159503. $26.95. CRIME An award-winning producer who collaborated with Robert B. Parker on the television movie adaptations of Parker’s Spenser titles (for A&E) and Jesse Stone titles (for CBS), three of which featured his original screenplays, Brandman seems like the right [...]
Bacon, John U. Fourth and Long: The Fight for the Soul of College Football. S. & S. Sept. 2013. 336p. ISBN 9781476706436. $26.99; ebk. ISBN 9781476706443. SPORTS College football is currently beset with scandal and sanctions, so one can be forgiven for expecting this report from Bacon to be a downer. And, indeed, drawing on [...]
Katzen, Mollie. The Heart of the Plate: Vegetarian Recipes for a New Generation. Houghton Harcourt. Sept. 2013. 608p. ISBN 9780547571591. $34.99. COOKERY Katzen made history with the Moosewood Cookbook, one of the biggest cookbook best sellers of all time and among the first vegetarian cookbooks to make waves (my copy is in tatters). Since Moosewood [...]
A woman with alternate lives. A former Indian army captain’s troubled past. A frozen man reanimated. A therapist haunted by renascent memories of a cult. Women who embrace that sparkly engagement ring—or not. Very rich Asians. A creepy young killer. A poet who has loved and lost, owing to war. An actress aching for a [...]
Barnes, Julian. Levels of Life. Knopf. Sept. 2013. 144p. ISBN 9780385350778. $22.95; ebk. ISBN 9780385350785. MEMOIR Not a conventional memoir—did you really expect something so mundane from the multi-award-winning author of Flaubert’s Parrot and The Sense of an Ending?—this book aims to “put together two things that have not been put together before, and the [...]
Bodden, Marlen Suyapa. The Wedding Gift. St. Martin’s. Sept. 2013. 320p. ISBN 9781250026385. $25.99; ebk. ISBN 9781250026125. CD: Macmillan Audio. LITERARY/HISTORICAL Not every debut author sells thousands of copies of her self-published novel online before it’s snapped up by a major publisher, and not every debut author gets blurbed by Tom Wolfe and Henry Louis [...]
Brown, Sandra. Deadline. Grand Central. Sept. 2013. 300p. ISBN 9781455501519. $28. CD: Hachette Audio. SUSPENSE War-weary journalist Dawson Scott needs the distraction of the case dropped into his lap by an FBI contact; former U.S. Marine Jeremy Wesson, son of terrorists who have been on the FBI’s Most Wanted list for decades, is missing and [...]
Baker, Nicholson. Traveling Sprinkler. Blue Rider: Penguin Group (USA). Sept. 2013. 288p. ISBN 9780399160967. $26.95. LITERARY Baker’s The Anthologist, in which Paul Chowder tries valiantly to get started on a collection of formal verse, won best-book nods from a half-dozen venues. This new novel again features the hapless Chowder, here eager to jump-start his life [...]
Bacevich, Andrew. Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country. Metropolitan: Holt. Sept. 2013. 224p. ISBN 9780805082968. $26; ebk. ISBN 9780805096033. POLITICAL SCIENCE A Brown professor of history and international relations who served as an officer in the U.S. Army for 23 years, Bacevich argues that there is a tremendous divide between [...]
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