Previews, Reviews, and Collection Development
Tomorrow marks the publication of Helene Wecker’s The Golem and the Jinni, an engrossing and atmospheric new novel from HarperCollins. I had the pleasure of interviewing Helene on camera a few months back, and clips of that interview are now available. Impressively, Wecker combines creatures from two different folk traditions—the golem, made of clay and [...]
Bryson, Bill. One Summer: America, 1927. Doubleday. Oct. 2013. 448p. ISBN 9780767919401. $27.95. CD: Random Audio. HISTORY The Iowa-born, England-based Bryson, whose works range broadly from language to science to genial travelog, here returns home to America and a truly focused treatment of a single important year (and season, if we are to believe the [...]
Forna, Aminatta. The Hired Man. Atlantic Monthly. Oct. 2013. 304p. ISBN 9780802121912. $24; ebk. 9780802193100. LITERARY Named one of Africa’s most promising new writers by Vanity Fair, Commonwealth Writer’s Prize winner Forna wrote affectingly about war-scarred Africa in her two previous novels and her memoir of her father, The Devil That Danced on the Water. [...]
Boyd, William. James Bond: The New Mission. Harper: HarperCollins. Oct. 2013. 336p. ISBN 9780062223128. $26.99. lrg. prnt. THRILLER Boyd has twice won the Costa/Whitbread Award and typically produces best sellers, and here’s another neat feather in his cap: he’s the third author invited by Ian Fleming Publications Ltd. to write an official James Bond novel, [...]
Ackroyd, Peter. Tudors: The History of England from Henry VIII to Elizabeth I. Thomas Dunne Bks: St. Martin’s. Oct. 2013. 512p. ISBN 9781250003621. $30; ebk. ISBN 9781250037596. HISTORY Ackroyd, who is responsible for books like London: The Biography, offers the second in his “History of England” series. His skills as a novelist will doubtless come [...]
Despite the anxiety, was there really any doubt that the Pulitzer Prize board would pick a fiction winner this year? Not after the hugely negative response to last year’s decision to forgoan award, which had people challenging the Pulitzer process itself. What really rankled was the idea that somehow contemporary fiction did not measure up. Now here comes [...]
Lullabies, skate punks, video games, black Southern roots. The fierce cat within, the fierce journey without. All-powerful queens and time-eating spiders. All in language brightly accessible or twistingly different. That’s what I found with colleague Annalisa Pesek when we went hunting for spring poetry publications, beyond what we are able to review in the magazine, [...]
Basbanes, Nicholas A. On Paper: The Everything of Its Two-Thousand-Year History. Knopf. Oct. 2013. 448p. ISBN 9780307266422. $35. HISTORY Having given us a much-loved trilogy of books about books—A Gentle Madness, Patience and Fortitude, and A Splendor of Letters—Basbanes has written a thoroughgoing chronicle about the stuff books are traditionally made of: paper. He starts [...]
Dalglish, David. A Dance of Cloaks. Orbit: Hachette. Oct. 2013. 480p. ISBN 9780316242394. pap. $16. FANTASY The self-published Dalglish, who’s made a mint as author of four series set in the world of Dezrel, leaps to big-time traditional publishing with this dark and moody work, part of the “Shadowdance” trilogy. Son and heir apparent of [...]
Berns, Gregory. How Dogs Love Us: A Neuroscientist and His Adopted Mutt Decode the Canine Brain. New Harvest. Oct. 2013. 272p. ISBN 9780544114517. $25. PETS/DOGS Distinguished Professor of Neuroeconomics at Emory University, Berns has used imaging technology for many years to learn how the human brain works. Acquiring Callie, a gentle terrier mix, made him [...]
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