Saturday, September 20, 2003
CALL # Fiction Fante
AUTHOR Fante, John, 1909-
TITLE Ask the dust / John Fante ; preface by Charles Bukowski
IMPRINT Santa Barbara : Black Sparrow Press, 1980
ISBN 0876854439
Amazon.com
This book is another sterling recommendation from the Saltzman workshop. The under-appreciated Fante's second outing details the adventures of his alterego, Arturo Bandini, as the struggling young writer tackles Los Angeles in the late 1930s. And take it from personal experience, tackling L.A. as a destitute young scribe some decades later isn't much different. In other words: Fante gets it right and sets it down in his Chianti-steak-and-potatoes style, with prose both simple and rich. This Black Sparrow edition has a bonus: Charles Bukowski's great preface on how Fante stacks up against writers that were at once more famous--and far more anemic.
Book Description
Fiction. John Fante was born in Colorado in 1909 and began writing in 1929. He published numerous short stories, novels and screenplays in the following decades. ASK THE DUST, a coming-of-age novel set in Los Angeles, was first published in 1939. Says Charles Bukowski, in the preface to ASK THE DUST, of his first encounter with Fante's work, "Then one day I pulled a book down and opened it, and there it was. I stood for a moment, reading. Then like a man who had found gold in the city dump, I carried the book to a table. The lines rolled easily across the page, there was a flow. Each line had its own energy and was followed by another like it. The very substance of each line gave the page a form, a feeling of something carved into it. And here, at last, was a man who was not afraid of emotion. The humour and the pain were intermixed with a superb simplicity ... that book was a wild and enormous miracle to me." John Fante died in 1983.
AUTHOR Scottoline, Lisa.
TITLE Dead ringer [sound recording] / by Lisa Scottoline.
EDITION Unabridged.
IMPRINT Frederick, MD : Recorded Books, p2003.
DESCRIPT 10 sound discs ( 11 hr.) : digital, stereo. ; 4 3/4 in.
110000.
FORMAT CD.
NOTE Performed by Barbara Rosenblat.
Compact discs.
SUBJECT Rosato & Associates (Imaginary organization) -- Fiction.
Identity (Psychology) -- Fiction.
Identity (Psychology) -- Fiction.
Philadelphia (Pa.) -- Fiction.
False personation -- Fiction.
Women lawyers -- Fiction.
Mystery fiction.
Legal stories.
Audiobooks.
Books on CD.
ALT AUTHOR Rosenblat, Barbara, Narrator.
ISBN 1402556179.
"Philadelphia lawyer Bennie Rosato has her eye focused firmly on the bottom line, especially since she has three dedicated young associates and a very pregnant secretary on her payroll, and she takes a professional risk, charging into a class action lawsuit that could make - or break - her career. Never mind that she's never handled anything like this before. Having won nearly every civil and criminal case she's ever tried, the brillant and unconventional Bennie has the guts, and she'll do what it takes to succeed. Even if that means wearing pantyhose and putting herself on a curse diet." "Then her wallet goes missing. And Bennie's life goes crazy." "It's not just that one of her associates has dyed her hair pink. Or that another's old-world Italian mother gives Bennie the evil eye. But someone posing as the outspoken, blue-eyed, blond attorney is wreaking havoc around town, apparently determined to destroy everything Bennie loves. Only one person can pull off this double deception - Bennie's identical twin sister, Alice Connelly. But as far as Bennie knows, Alice left Philly long ago and never looked back." "When events escalate into murder, the maverick lawyer realizes that the stakes are far greater then she feared. But Bennie Rosato refuses to be anyone's victim. To find the killer, she'll plunge headfirst into a life-and-death investigation that will bring her face-to-face with evil darker yet more familiar than anything before."--BOOK JACKET.
AUTHOR Donnelly, Deborah.
TITLE Veiled threats / Deborah Donnelly.
IMPRINT New York, NY : Dell Pub., c2002.
DESCRIPT 324 p. ; : 18 cm.
NOTE "A Dell book."
SUBJECT Weddings -- Fiction.
Mystery fiction. Romance
ISBN 0440237033. $5.99
Book Description
She thought she was planning a wedding.
What she got was ... Veiled Threats.
A wedding to die for....
When love is in the air, Carnegie Kincaid is not far behind. A wedding planner who works out of her Seattle houseboat, Carnegie makes magic — usually — with fractious families, brimming brides, and cantankerous caterers to give loving couples the wedding they’ve always wanted. So why is her dream job turning into a perfect nightmare?
It started when Carnegie agreed to plan the wedding of one of Seattle’s most prominent families — who happen to be going through a high-stakes, headline-grabbing legal war. Before she can get her bride-to-be into just the right dress, a murder and a kidnapping plunge Carnegie into a mystery of extortion and violence.
With a shadowy figure stalking her, a rich lawyer wooing her, and an annoying reporter pursuing her, Carnegie is putting all wedding plans on hold. In an explosion of sheer terror, she must hunt down a killer — till death do her part....
SEQUELS- DIED TO MATCH, MAY THE BEST MAN DIE
AUTHOR Rowland, Laura Joh.
TITLE The dragon king's palace / Laura Joh Rowland.
EDITION 1st ed.
IMPRINT New York : St. Martin's Minotaur, 2003.
DESCRIPT 340 p. ; 24 cm.
SUBJECT Sano, Ichiro (Fictitious character) -- Fiction.
Japan -- History -- Genroku period, 1688-1704 -- Fiction.
Kidnapping -- Fiction.
Samurai -- Fiction.
Historical fiction.
Mystery fiction.
ISBN 0312282664.
Book Description
On a whim of the shogun’s mother, a procession has left the sweltering heat of Edo, bound for the cooler climate of Mount Fuji. Among her traveling companions are Reiko, the beautiful wife of Sano Ichir_, the shogun’s Most Honorable Investigator of Events, Situations, and People; Reiko’s friend Midori, nine months pregnant; and Lady Yanagisawa, the deranged wife of the shogun’s powerful second-in-command. None of them look forward to the trip. But their troubles have only begun when their procession is stopped suddenly on a deserted road. The entire retinue is viciously slaughtered and the four women are bound and taken away, imprisoned by a mysterious kidnapper.
Sano now finds himself faced with the most important case of his career. The shogun demands quick action, and under the threat of death, Sano is forced to work with his bitter enemies---Chamberlain Yanagisawa and Police Commissioner Hoshina.
The women are in imminent danger, and the delivery of a ransom note only complicates matters---forcing both Sano and Reiko to take desperate measures. Once again, Laura Joh Rowland’s dazzling combination of history and storytelling draws us into a sumptuous and treacherous world.
AUTHOR Harris, Joanne, 1964-
TITLE Coastliners : a novel / by Joanne Harris.
EDITION 1st ed.
IMPRINT New York : William Morrow/HarperCollinsPublishers, 2002.
DESCRIPT 350 p. ; 24 cm.
SUBJECT Fishing villages -- Fiction.
Islands -- Fiction.
France -- Fiction.
Love stories.
ISBN 0060198125.
Book Description
Joanne Harris writes fiction that engages every one of the senses: reviewers called Chocolat "delectable" and Five Quarters of the Orange "sweet and powerful." In her new novel, she takes readers to a tiny French island where you can almost taste the salt on your lips.
The island, called Le Devin, is shaped somewhat like a sleeping woman. At her head is the village of Les Salants, while the more prosperous village of La Houssinière lies at her feet. You could walk between the towns in an hour, but they could not feel further apart, for between them lie years of animosity.
The townspeople of Les Salants say that if you kiss the feet of their patron saint and spit three times, something you've lost will come back to you. And so Madeleine, who grew up on the island, returns after an absence of ten years spent in Paris. She is haunted by this place, and has never been able to feel at home anywhere else.
But when she arrives, she will find that her father -- who once built fishing boats that fueled the town's livelihood -- has become even more silent than ever, withdrawing almost completely into an interior world. And his decline seems reflected in the town itself, for when the only beach in Les Salants washed away, all tourism drifted back to La Houssinière.
Madeleine herself has been adrift for a long time, yet almost against her will she soon finds herself united with the village's other lost souls is a struggle for survival and salvation.
Carey, Jacqueline
Kushiel’s chosen
Tor, 2002
isbn 0312872399
27.95
sequel to Kushiels Dart
Following hard on the heels of Carey's spectacular debut novel, "Kushiel's Dart, " comes this powerful, erotic sequel. To save all she holds dear, Phedre will travel from the sun-drenched villas of La Serenissima to the wilds of old Hellas, and will discover a conspiracy dreadful enough to make the earth tremble.
PW Review-After Carey's boldly imaginative fantasy debut, Kushiel's Dart (2001), in which the dauntless Phdre n Delaunay used intelligence and sexual skill to triumph in politics and war in a Renaissance-like world, Phdre, elevated to the peerage and resuming her anguisette duties, returns for further fabulous, if at times redundant, adventures, determined to rest on something other than her laurels. While the first novel told a coming-of-age story, the sequel covers only a relatively brief period, though it has enough plot lines and melodrama for six heroines. The action first focuses on the recapture of Phdre's evil nemesis, the dominating Melisande Shahrizai, who has escaped from prison and death. Alas, the initially fascinating Melisande turns into a tiresome harridan. Later plot twists include everything from a journey to the Venetian La Serenissima to imprisonment at Melisande's hands in a mountainous jail on a lonely island. For opulence, a costume ball rivals that of Broadway's Phantom of the Opera. Carey is adept at bringing both her exotic settings and vast cast of characters fully to life. The dream of every man and not a few women, Phdre is too much to handle for all but her faithful Joscelin, the Cassiline monk who defied his vows to remain her loving companion. Phdre's first outing deservedly won her a host of followers, but wordiness and needless complexity combine to make this hefty novel less of a stellar achievement than its predecessor. (Apr. 16)Forecast: A push that includes national print advertising, regional author appearances and targeting to romance readers will bring back the faithful, but if too many of them are disappointed, Carey might do well to give her heroine a rest and apply her considerable talents to fresh challenges.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
Spencer, James
The Pilots
GP Putnam’s, 2003
0399149732
WWII pilots stories
James Spencer flew B-24 bombers over New Guinea, Borneo, and the Philippines in 1944 and 1945, and it was only decades later that he began to write about it, combining the literal truth as he remembered it with imagination based on all that he'd seen and heard. The extraordinary result is The Pilots, a novel-in-stories about a group of young men, their comrades and girl-friends, as they evolve in often unpredictable ways: Blake Hurlingame and Steve Larkin, boyhood friends who take different paths into fighters and bombers; Doc, the flight surgeon, battling combat fatigue; Courtenay, the captain whose arrogant bluster masks hidden demons; and Addie, the woman who will leave her mark on them all. These are stories alive with the senses, filled with the smell of hot oil and burnt rubber; the sight of green jungle and backlit clouds like vast sculptured monuments; the feeling of a plane warming up, trembling like a bird eager to be in flight. Several excerpts have already appeared in magazines; now the entire work itself makes a wholly impressive debut.
Jake Halpern
Braving Home-dispatches from the Underwater Town,
Lava-Side Inn (Jack Thompson) Royal Gardens Subdivision, and other
extreme locales
Houghton Mifflin, 2003
0618155481 $23.00
Publishers Weekly Rev-Halpern tours America's highways to report on stubborn stalwarts who defy eviction notices and cling to home despite floods, lava, fire and hurricanes. "Most of my destinations were afflicted by seasonal disasters, and I figured... I could hit each place in its fiercest, most defining hour." In Halpern's first week as a New Republic fact-checker, he pitched a story about "a burning town that nobody wanted to leave" and visited Centralia, Pa., where coal mines had been on fire for 40 years. Looking for similar leads, the peripatetic 20-something assembled article ideas and maps into a massive binder and left his job to embark on a journey to "the nation's most punishing landscapes." After a week with 72-year-old Thad Knight, the only inhabitant of a ruined town in the middle of a North Carolina floodplain, Halpern headed for Whittier, Alaska (pop. 182), a 14-story "indoor city" accessible via North America's longest vehicular tunnel. Running a Hawaiian bed and breakfast surrounded by molten lava is healthy hermit Jack Thompson: "I never imagined I was going to end up like this-I mean, living on an erupting volcano." The roll call of rugged individualists includes "the last of the Malibu hillbillies" and a Louisiana hurricane survivor. Halpern's flair for description enables readers to easily visualize the environs of these hardscrabble homekeepers, making the 12 b&w photos almost superfluous. Halpern has carved a creative niche for himself as the New Millennium's skewed answer to the late Charles Kuralt. This is perceptive writing that illuminates the human condition.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
AUTHOR Shaw, Karl.
TITLE Royal Babylon : the alarming history of European royalty / Karl
Shaw.
IMPRINT New York : Broadway Books, 2001.
DESCRIPT ix, 325 p. ; 21 cm.
NOTE Originally published: London : Virgin Pub., [U.K.] 1999.
BIBLIOG. Includes bibliographical references.
SUBJECT Royal houses -- Europe.
Europe -- Kings and rulers -- Biography.
Monarchy -- History.
Courts and courtiers.
ISBN 0767907558.
Publishers Weekly Review-Anyone who loves scandal, particularly the juicy dish on royalty, will inhale this gossipy account by British writer Shaw (The Mammoth Book of Tasteless Lists). In a style reminiscent of low-end tabloids, the author presents a litany of negative and sometimes disgusting details about the personal lives of the men and women who ruled Britain, Germany, Russia, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Poland and Austria. Leaving the late 20th century mostly behind (his only mention of Charles and Diana is in the introduction), the author concentrates instead on royal misbehavior back to the 1700s. Entertaining overall, many entries are indisputably not for the faint of heart, such as the truly gross story of Russia's Peter the Great ("`Great' was generally a recognition of power or brute strength, no matter how they lived, how many people they had killed or how repulsive they were"), described by Shaw as a "paranoid sadist." This tsar was an alcoholic who tortured people for fun and once forced an attendant to bite into the flesh of a corpse. This chronicle is replete with royal sexual activities, including those of the Bourbons of France, whom Shaw credits with possessing "extraordinary appetites." Irony is Shaw's strong suit, which lends a great deal of humor to often humorless anecdotes. For example, he notes that Spain's King Philip IV fathered 30 illegitimate children "but being a good Catholic always felt bad about it" and forced his wife to have sexual relations three times daily. Like Michael Farquhar's A Treasury of Royal Scandals (see review below), this irreverent and amusing expos of royal indiscretions will appeal especially to those who like their history "lite." Illus. not seen by PW.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
AUTHOR Fante, John, 1909-
TITLE Ask the dust / John Fante ; preface by Charles Bukowski
IMPRINT Santa Barbara : Black Sparrow Press, 1980
ISBN 0876854439
Amazon.com
This book is another sterling recommendation from the Saltzman workshop. The under-appreciated Fante's second outing details the adventures of his alterego, Arturo Bandini, as the struggling young writer tackles Los Angeles in the late 1930s. And take it from personal experience, tackling L.A. as a destitute young scribe some decades later isn't much different. In other words: Fante gets it right and sets it down in his Chianti-steak-and-potatoes style, with prose both simple and rich. This Black Sparrow edition has a bonus: Charles Bukowski's great preface on how Fante stacks up against writers that were at once more famous--and far more anemic.
Book Description
Fiction. John Fante was born in Colorado in 1909 and began writing in 1929. He published numerous short stories, novels and screenplays in the following decades. ASK THE DUST, a coming-of-age novel set in Los Angeles, was first published in 1939. Says Charles Bukowski, in the preface to ASK THE DUST, of his first encounter with Fante's work, "Then one day I pulled a book down and opened it, and there it was. I stood for a moment, reading. Then like a man who had found gold in the city dump, I carried the book to a table. The lines rolled easily across the page, there was a flow. Each line had its own energy and was followed by another like it. The very substance of each line gave the page a form, a feeling of something carved into it. And here, at last, was a man who was not afraid of emotion. The humour and the pain were intermixed with a superb simplicity ... that book was a wild and enormous miracle to me." John Fante died in 1983.
AUTHOR Scottoline, Lisa.
TITLE Dead ringer [sound recording] / by Lisa Scottoline.
EDITION Unabridged.
IMPRINT Frederick, MD : Recorded Books, p2003.
DESCRIPT 10 sound discs ( 11 hr.) : digital, stereo. ; 4 3/4 in.
110000.
FORMAT CD.
NOTE Performed by Barbara Rosenblat.
Compact discs.
SUBJECT Rosato & Associates (Imaginary organization) -- Fiction.
Identity (Psychology) -- Fiction.
Identity (Psychology) -- Fiction.
Philadelphia (Pa.) -- Fiction.
False personation -- Fiction.
Women lawyers -- Fiction.
Mystery fiction.
Legal stories.
Audiobooks.
Books on CD.
ALT AUTHOR Rosenblat, Barbara, Narrator.
ISBN 1402556179.
"Philadelphia lawyer Bennie Rosato has her eye focused firmly on the bottom line, especially since she has three dedicated young associates and a very pregnant secretary on her payroll, and she takes a professional risk, charging into a class action lawsuit that could make - or break - her career. Never mind that she's never handled anything like this before. Having won nearly every civil and criminal case she's ever tried, the brillant and unconventional Bennie has the guts, and she'll do what it takes to succeed. Even if that means wearing pantyhose and putting herself on a curse diet." "Then her wallet goes missing. And Bennie's life goes crazy." "It's not just that one of her associates has dyed her hair pink. Or that another's old-world Italian mother gives Bennie the evil eye. But someone posing as the outspoken, blue-eyed, blond attorney is wreaking havoc around town, apparently determined to destroy everything Bennie loves. Only one person can pull off this double deception - Bennie's identical twin sister, Alice Connelly. But as far as Bennie knows, Alice left Philly long ago and never looked back." "When events escalate into murder, the maverick lawyer realizes that the stakes are far greater then she feared. But Bennie Rosato refuses to be anyone's victim. To find the killer, she'll plunge headfirst into a life-and-death investigation that will bring her face-to-face with evil darker yet more familiar than anything before."--BOOK JACKET.
AUTHOR Donnelly, Deborah.
TITLE Veiled threats / Deborah Donnelly.
IMPRINT New York, NY : Dell Pub., c2002.
DESCRIPT 324 p. ; : 18 cm.
NOTE "A Dell book."
SUBJECT Weddings -- Fiction.
Mystery fiction. Romance
ISBN 0440237033. $5.99
Book Description
She thought she was planning a wedding.
What she got was ... Veiled Threats.
A wedding to die for....
When love is in the air, Carnegie Kincaid is not far behind. A wedding planner who works out of her Seattle houseboat, Carnegie makes magic — usually — with fractious families, brimming brides, and cantankerous caterers to give loving couples the wedding they’ve always wanted. So why is her dream job turning into a perfect nightmare?
It started when Carnegie agreed to plan the wedding of one of Seattle’s most prominent families — who happen to be going through a high-stakes, headline-grabbing legal war. Before she can get her bride-to-be into just the right dress, a murder and a kidnapping plunge Carnegie into a mystery of extortion and violence.
With a shadowy figure stalking her, a rich lawyer wooing her, and an annoying reporter pursuing her, Carnegie is putting all wedding plans on hold. In an explosion of sheer terror, she must hunt down a killer — till death do her part....
SEQUELS- DIED TO MATCH, MAY THE BEST MAN DIE
AUTHOR Rowland, Laura Joh.
TITLE The dragon king's palace / Laura Joh Rowland.
EDITION 1st ed.
IMPRINT New York : St. Martin's Minotaur, 2003.
DESCRIPT 340 p. ; 24 cm.
SUBJECT Sano, Ichiro (Fictitious character) -- Fiction.
Japan -- History -- Genroku period, 1688-1704 -- Fiction.
Kidnapping -- Fiction.
Samurai -- Fiction.
Historical fiction.
Mystery fiction.
ISBN 0312282664.
Book Description
On a whim of the shogun’s mother, a procession has left the sweltering heat of Edo, bound for the cooler climate of Mount Fuji. Among her traveling companions are Reiko, the beautiful wife of Sano Ichir_, the shogun’s Most Honorable Investigator of Events, Situations, and People; Reiko’s friend Midori, nine months pregnant; and Lady Yanagisawa, the deranged wife of the shogun’s powerful second-in-command. None of them look forward to the trip. But their troubles have only begun when their procession is stopped suddenly on a deserted road. The entire retinue is viciously slaughtered and the four women are bound and taken away, imprisoned by a mysterious kidnapper.
Sano now finds himself faced with the most important case of his career. The shogun demands quick action, and under the threat of death, Sano is forced to work with his bitter enemies---Chamberlain Yanagisawa and Police Commissioner Hoshina.
The women are in imminent danger, and the delivery of a ransom note only complicates matters---forcing both Sano and Reiko to take desperate measures. Once again, Laura Joh Rowland’s dazzling combination of history and storytelling draws us into a sumptuous and treacherous world.
AUTHOR Harris, Joanne, 1964-
TITLE Coastliners : a novel / by Joanne Harris.
EDITION 1st ed.
IMPRINT New York : William Morrow/HarperCollinsPublishers, 2002.
DESCRIPT 350 p. ; 24 cm.
SUBJECT Fishing villages -- Fiction.
Islands -- Fiction.
France -- Fiction.
Love stories.
ISBN 0060198125.
Book Description
Joanne Harris writes fiction that engages every one of the senses: reviewers called Chocolat "delectable" and Five Quarters of the Orange "sweet and powerful." In her new novel, she takes readers to a tiny French island where you can almost taste the salt on your lips.
The island, called Le Devin, is shaped somewhat like a sleeping woman. At her head is the village of Les Salants, while the more prosperous village of La Houssinière lies at her feet. You could walk between the towns in an hour, but they could not feel further apart, for between them lie years of animosity.
The townspeople of Les Salants say that if you kiss the feet of their patron saint and spit three times, something you've lost will come back to you. And so Madeleine, who grew up on the island, returns after an absence of ten years spent in Paris. She is haunted by this place, and has never been able to feel at home anywhere else.
But when she arrives, she will find that her father -- who once built fishing boats that fueled the town's livelihood -- has become even more silent than ever, withdrawing almost completely into an interior world. And his decline seems reflected in the town itself, for when the only beach in Les Salants washed away, all tourism drifted back to La Houssinière.
Madeleine herself has been adrift for a long time, yet almost against her will she soon finds herself united with the village's other lost souls is a struggle for survival and salvation.
Carey, Jacqueline
Kushiel’s chosen
Tor, 2002
isbn 0312872399
27.95
sequel to Kushiels Dart
Following hard on the heels of Carey's spectacular debut novel, "Kushiel's Dart, " comes this powerful, erotic sequel. To save all she holds dear, Phedre will travel from the sun-drenched villas of La Serenissima to the wilds of old Hellas, and will discover a conspiracy dreadful enough to make the earth tremble.
PW Review-After Carey's boldly imaginative fantasy debut, Kushiel's Dart (2001), in which the dauntless Phdre n Delaunay used intelligence and sexual skill to triumph in politics and war in a Renaissance-like world, Phdre, elevated to the peerage and resuming her anguisette duties, returns for further fabulous, if at times redundant, adventures, determined to rest on something other than her laurels. While the first novel told a coming-of-age story, the sequel covers only a relatively brief period, though it has enough plot lines and melodrama for six heroines. The action first focuses on the recapture of Phdre's evil nemesis, the dominating Melisande Shahrizai, who has escaped from prison and death. Alas, the initially fascinating Melisande turns into a tiresome harridan. Later plot twists include everything from a journey to the Venetian La Serenissima to imprisonment at Melisande's hands in a mountainous jail on a lonely island. For opulence, a costume ball rivals that of Broadway's Phantom of the Opera. Carey is adept at bringing both her exotic settings and vast cast of characters fully to life. The dream of every man and not a few women, Phdre is too much to handle for all but her faithful Joscelin, the Cassiline monk who defied his vows to remain her loving companion. Phdre's first outing deservedly won her a host of followers, but wordiness and needless complexity combine to make this hefty novel less of a stellar achievement than its predecessor. (Apr. 16)Forecast: A push that includes national print advertising, regional author appearances and targeting to romance readers will bring back the faithful, but if too many of them are disappointed, Carey might do well to give her heroine a rest and apply her considerable talents to fresh challenges.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
Spencer, James
The Pilots
GP Putnam’s, 2003
0399149732
WWII pilots stories
James Spencer flew B-24 bombers over New Guinea, Borneo, and the Philippines in 1944 and 1945, and it was only decades later that he began to write about it, combining the literal truth as he remembered it with imagination based on all that he'd seen and heard. The extraordinary result is The Pilots, a novel-in-stories about a group of young men, their comrades and girl-friends, as they evolve in often unpredictable ways: Blake Hurlingame and Steve Larkin, boyhood friends who take different paths into fighters and bombers; Doc, the flight surgeon, battling combat fatigue; Courtenay, the captain whose arrogant bluster masks hidden demons; and Addie, the woman who will leave her mark on them all. These are stories alive with the senses, filled with the smell of hot oil and burnt rubber; the sight of green jungle and backlit clouds like vast sculptured monuments; the feeling of a plane warming up, trembling like a bird eager to be in flight. Several excerpts have already appeared in magazines; now the entire work itself makes a wholly impressive debut.
Jake Halpern
Braving Home-dispatches from the Underwater Town,
Lava-Side Inn (Jack Thompson) Royal Gardens Subdivision, and other
extreme locales
Houghton Mifflin, 2003
0618155481 $23.00
Publishers Weekly Rev-Halpern tours America's highways to report on stubborn stalwarts who defy eviction notices and cling to home despite floods, lava, fire and hurricanes. "Most of my destinations were afflicted by seasonal disasters, and I figured... I could hit each place in its fiercest, most defining hour." In Halpern's first week as a New Republic fact-checker, he pitched a story about "a burning town that nobody wanted to leave" and visited Centralia, Pa., where coal mines had been on fire for 40 years. Looking for similar leads, the peripatetic 20-something assembled article ideas and maps into a massive binder and left his job to embark on a journey to "the nation's most punishing landscapes." After a week with 72-year-old Thad Knight, the only inhabitant of a ruined town in the middle of a North Carolina floodplain, Halpern headed for Whittier, Alaska (pop. 182), a 14-story "indoor city" accessible via North America's longest vehicular tunnel. Running a Hawaiian bed and breakfast surrounded by molten lava is healthy hermit Jack Thompson: "I never imagined I was going to end up like this-I mean, living on an erupting volcano." The roll call of rugged individualists includes "the last of the Malibu hillbillies" and a Louisiana hurricane survivor. Halpern's flair for description enables readers to easily visualize the environs of these hardscrabble homekeepers, making the 12 b&w photos almost superfluous. Halpern has carved a creative niche for himself as the New Millennium's skewed answer to the late Charles Kuralt. This is perceptive writing that illuminates the human condition.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
AUTHOR Shaw, Karl.
TITLE Royal Babylon : the alarming history of European royalty / Karl
Shaw.
IMPRINT New York : Broadway Books, 2001.
DESCRIPT ix, 325 p. ; 21 cm.
NOTE Originally published: London : Virgin Pub., [U.K.] 1999.
BIBLIOG. Includes bibliographical references.
SUBJECT Royal houses -- Europe.
Europe -- Kings and rulers -- Biography.
Monarchy -- History.
Courts and courtiers.
ISBN 0767907558.
Publishers Weekly Review-Anyone who loves scandal, particularly the juicy dish on royalty, will inhale this gossipy account by British writer Shaw (The Mammoth Book of Tasteless Lists). In a style reminiscent of low-end tabloids, the author presents a litany of negative and sometimes disgusting details about the personal lives of the men and women who ruled Britain, Germany, Russia, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Poland and Austria. Leaving the late 20th century mostly behind (his only mention of Charles and Diana is in the introduction), the author concentrates instead on royal misbehavior back to the 1700s. Entertaining overall, many entries are indisputably not for the faint of heart, such as the truly gross story of Russia's Peter the Great ("`Great' was generally a recognition of power or brute strength, no matter how they lived, how many people they had killed or how repulsive they were"), described by Shaw as a "paranoid sadist." This tsar was an alcoholic who tortured people for fun and once forced an attendant to bite into the flesh of a corpse. This chronicle is replete with royal sexual activities, including those of the Bourbons of France, whom Shaw credits with possessing "extraordinary appetites." Irony is Shaw's strong suit, which lends a great deal of humor to often humorless anecdotes. For example, he notes that Spain's King Philip IV fathered 30 illegitimate children "but being a good Catholic always felt bad about it" and forced his wife to have sexual relations three times daily. Like Michael Farquhar's A Treasury of Royal Scandals (see review below), this irreverent and amusing expos of royal indiscretions will appeal especially to those who like their history "lite." Illus. not seen by PW.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
