New books guide.

We read hundreds of book reviews each month to select the works to include in each issue. We seek a balance among three categories: highly-rated books that received many reviews, highly-rated books that received less comprehensive coverage, and lower-rated books that were widely reviewed and well publicized.

The collective wisdom of critics

Each critic offers an individual perspective. We quote and summarize the reviews studied to provide an informed, balanced critique and to make sure that unique insights do not get missed. We apply a rating to a book from each review we study--those ratings are assessed to provide a final rating.

Spoiler-free book descriptions

We hereby pledge not to reveal the ending or revelatory plot points when discussing a fictional work.

APPLYING RATINGS TO WORKS OF ART IS FRUSTRATINGLY REDUCTIONIST

It is also helpful in navigating through myriad choices. As with any rating system, it is solely a guide--a summing up of several informed perspectives. There is no substitute for reading the book yourself and forming your own opinion.

literary

FICTION

EXCELLENT

Returning to Earth

By Jim Harrison

Reflecting on life and death.

In this sequel to True North (FAIR/GOOD Sept/Oct 2004), four narrators reflect on their interrelated histories. The story centers on Donald, part-Chippewa and part-Finnish, who is afflicted with ALS. As death approaches, he dictates his memoir; his wife, Cynthia, transcribes it and inserts her own thoughts. The second part of the novel belongs to "K," an unrelated nephew figure and perpetual student who is in love with Donald and Cynthia's daughter Clare--and with Cynthia herself. Donald's brother-in-law, David, suffering from depression and family guilt, reveals tragic events from the family's past in the third section. In the final part, Cynthia tries to find a path through her grief while coming to terms with the family's dark history.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Grove Press. 280 pages. $24. ISBN: 0802118380

Cleveland Plain Dealer EXCELLENT/CLASSIC

"Harrison has crafted something remarkable, a set of interlocking stories set in a complex, evolving geography--an artistic achievement worthy of Faulkner.... Returning to Earth, an important work by a major writer, is, at its core, about death, about final reckonings and resolutions." DANIEL DYER

San Diego Union-Tribune EXCELLENT/CLASSIC

"This could almost be Hemingway, in some of the Michigan stories, but it's even more stripped than Hemingway.... [The novel] is both familiar and strange, rooted and rootless, endlessly dark and occasionally hilarious." BART THURBER

Seattle Times EXCELLENT

"Harrison's trademark prose, lyric and fluid, seamlessly melds perceptions, memories and dreams to capture his characters' inner lives.... Harrison's fiction has always displayed an unsentimental respect for Native American history, custom and belief." TIM MCNULTY

Minneapolis Star Tribune GOOD/EXCELLENT

"Returning to Earth is a much slower, more meditative book [than True North], its plot mostly shucked in favor of the characters' restless turning over of the heavy stones of love and death.... Harrison has a gift for creating richly detailed female characters--honest, bright, sensually clear if momentarily befuddled by life or, in this case, by the death of the love of her life at 45." JIM LENFESTEY

San Francisco Chronicle GOOD/EXCELLENT

"What sustains Returning to Earth is Harrison's evident love of the place--the novel's principal setting, Michigan's Upper Peninsula--and of the characters he has put into it.... Harrison is not always at top form in this novel, but when he is, you feel the hurt." CHARLES MATTHEWS

CRITICAL SUMMARY

Jim Harrison, best known for Legends of the Fall, evokes both Hemingway and Faulkner in his most recent novel. The novel's prose is spare and strong, but the characters and their secrets, slowly revealed through four interlocking first-person narratives, are rich and complex. Set 30 years after True North (which should be read first), Returning to Earth is anchored in the death of Donald, who appeared as a teenager in the earlier work. Some critics felt that Returning to Earth didn't quite measure up to Harrison's ability, but most praised the new novel as "a prodigious achievement" (San Diego Union-Tribune).

WHAT CAME FIRST

TRUE NORTH | JIM HARRISON (2004): David Burkett's ancestors have been pillaging the pine forests of Michigan's Upper Peninsula since the 1860s: his own alcoholic father had inherited his family's rapacious tendencies and acquired a penchant for young girls. Between his teenage years and middle age, David tries to make sense of his family's sins. Critics were frustrated with the novel's structure, complaining that Harrison reveals key events too early and allows the story to founder.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

GOOD/EXCELLENT

The Bastard of Istanbul

By Elif Shafak

A nation in denial.

In her second novel published in English, Turkish author Elif Shafak examines the effects of censorship on individuals, families, and nations. Teenager Asya Kazanci listens to Johnny Cash, reads Sartre, and lives with her eccentric family in Istanbul. Born out of wedlock to the Westernized Zeliha, Asya knows nothing about her father and, consequently, feels as if she doesn't completely know herself. Meanwhile, her Uncle Mustafa's Armenian-American stepdaughter Armanoush has become obsessed with the murder of 1.5 million Armenians by Turkish authorities in 1915. Armanoush travels to Istanbul to learn more of the genocide, but she finds that history has been rewritten. As each girl struggles to define herself, worlds collide, old secrets emerge, and lives change forever.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Viking. 368 pages. $24.95. ISBN: 0670038342

Chicago Tribune EXCELLENT

"It's as much family history as national history that drives this vital and entertaining novel. And it's the powerful and idiosyncratic characters--beginning with teenage Zeliha in a miniskirt and tight-fitting blouse, and pregnant out of wedlock, on her way to get an abortion in an Istanbul summer rainstorm--who drive the family history." ALAN CHEUSE

Newsday EXCELLENT

"[Shafak] is so intent on illuminating the tragedy of the Armenian genocide and the injustice and psychic harm wrought by its denial that she does slip into soapbox mode now and then. Because of her skill and intensity, however, such authorial intervention ... doesn't detract from the reader's appreciation for her complex characters and many-faceted plot." DONNA SEAMAN

St. Louis Post-Dispatch EXCELLENT

"Shafak writes powerfully of war (cultural and familial), of peace and of the meaning of moral fortitude. She possesses a steady hand when it comes to creating strong female characters, and her vivid descriptions of the charms of Istanbul serve to lure the traveler better than any pitch from a tour company." PATRICIA CORRIGAN

San Francisco Chronicle GOOD/EXCELLENT

"Shafak dives into the genocide itself, with the story of Armanoush's relative Hovhannes Stamboulian, an intellectual and children's book writer abducted and killed by the Turkish authorities, but she is uncertain in such foreign territory (a disease that creeps into Bastard's American sequences as well), and the subplot is a rare misstep in this otherwise assured novel." SAUL AUSTERLITZ

Los Angeles Times FAIR/GOOD

"It is an odd, not always successful hybrid: a serious novel of ideas with characters that at times seem borrowed from a sitcom soundstage and a plot founded in dark family secrets unearthed in high soap-operatic fashion.... She stuffs more into this novel than her often hastily sketched characters can carry." BEN EHRENREICH

NY Times Book Review FAIR

"In this new book, she has taken on a subject of deep moral consequence. But is the work worthy of its subject? ... When the novel's skeleton finally dances out of its flimsy closet, it's clear that although Shafak may be a writer of moral compunction she has yet to become--in English, at any rate--a good novelist." LORRAINE ADAMS

CRITICAL SUMMARY

Reviewers opined differently about the success of The Bastard of Istanbul. Most praised the novel's oddball characters and magical realism as a counterbalance to the horrors of violence and war; others felt that such irreverent portrayals gave the darker subject matter a cartoonish aspect. All agreed that Elif Shafak's clear prose and lush descriptions allow Istanbul to emerge as a character in its own right. In an example of life imitating art, Shafak was charged, though acquitted, with "denigrating Turkishness"--a violation of the Turkish penal code--for her in-depth account of the mass murder of the Armenians. If not uniformly praised, Shafak's defiant novel is a brave, complex study of how the past can completely overshadow the future.

GOOD/EXCELLENT

The Crimson Portrait

By Jody Shields

Reconstructing faces--and love.

During World War I, an English estate belonging to bereaved war widow Catherine becomes a makeshift hospital, where wounded soldiers are treated for their disfiguring facial injuries. The chief surgeon, Dr. McCleary, collaborates with an Armenian-born dental surgeon, Dr. Kazanjian, to repair the patients' ruined faces. When they reach the limits of medicine's power, they collaborate with an artist, American Anna Coleman, to construct realistic masks, which will hide the scars and allow the disfigured soldiers to interact with the outside world. Catherine is drawn to one of the wounded soldiers, Julian, who reminds her of her dead husband--and devises a way to convince herself that he is, indeed, him.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Little, Brown. 304 pages. $23.99. ISBN: 0316785288

San Francisco Chronicle EXCELLENT

"[T]he author vividly shows how the viciousness of war can deal a fate that almost equals death: the complete transformation of a man's most identifiable physical trait and the public humiliation that often accompanies the alteration.... [Her] lilting, intelligent prose shows what lengths one will go to relieve the hollow feeling of grief." STEPHEN J. LYONS

USA Today EXCELLENT

"There's nothing uplifting in this novel, but that shouldn't keep readers away. It's beautifully presented and, as in Shields' first novel ... shimmers with her wonderfully descriptive and poetic style." CAROL MEMMOTT

Washington Post EXCELLENT

"The Crimson Portrait is not really a hospital drama (of which we have plenty anyway) but more a meditation on healing (of which we have far too little).... Without a false line, she's managed to write beautifully about what, on the surface, seems too hideous to contemplate." RON CHARLES

Seattle Times GOOD/EXCELLENT

"The book falters occasionally when its prose becomes overwritten and overwrought.... [S]he writes intelligent, credible dialogue and provides fascinating medical details--graphic but not repellant." ADAM WOOG

New York Times POOR/FAIR

"The results aren't as interesting as the raw material; the inevitable movie will probably be even less so.... [One scene] makes M. Night Shyamalan look like a master of restraint." LAUREN COLLINS

CRITICAL SUMMARY

Jody Shields constructed her first novel, The Fig Eater (2000), around the imagined murder of Freud's famous patient Dora. Similarly, two historical figures (Anna Coleman Ladd and Dr. Varaztad Kazanjian) provide the kernel of her absorbing new novel. Most critics loved this literary exploration of grief despite its unhurried plot; they praised the novel's fascinating subject, its engaging characters, and its beautiful use of language. In sharp contrast, The New York Times criticized "pat similes," "stilted sexual subplots," and "mixed metaphors ... so random as to bring to mind those kits for creating refrigerator poetry." Still, even this negative review grudgingly acknowledged that "this is potentially fascinating stuff" and commended Shields's effort. For most of her fans, The Crimson Portrait will provide an engrossing read.

GOOD/EXCELLENT

Kockroach

By Tyler Knox

The Metamorphosis in reverse.

Upending Franz Kafka's famous story about Gregor Samsa's transformation into an insect, Kockroach tells the tale of Jerry Blatta. Formerly a faceless member of New York City's cockroach population, Blatta wakes up in a seedy Times Square hotel to find that he has metamorphosed into a man. With the aid of Mickey "Mite" Pimelia, a diminutive crook, he adjusts to life on two legs, dons a suit and wing tips, becomes a gangster, and soon hustles up the ladder of success in mid-20th-century Manhattan. Though Blatta proves himself to be a survivor in this comic noir novel, he still can't let go of his fear that, someday, he'll be squashed underfoot.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

William Morrow. 368 pages. $23.95. ISBN: 0061143332

Seattle Times EXCELLENT

"Literary fiction is not often this wildly fun.... Knox shifts voices and perspective, from hard-boiled to modern-hip, dropping allusions to people as varied as Richard Nixon and the Ramones. You can tell when an author is having a good time, and Knox has a ball." MARK LINDQUIST

USA Today EXCELLENT

"Knox handles the noir stuff well. But the novel gets its originality, its humor and its kick from the way Knox applies Blatta's insect past to his human present." DEIRDRE DONAHUE

Washington Post EXCELLENT

"Kockroach, as Knox refers to his hero, is one of the oddest innocents ever to creep through American literature, but his coping follows the usual course: helping us see the strangeness of ordinary life by looking at it with fresh eyes (though now he's limited to two lenses, instead of 4,000)." RON CHARLES

Dallas Morning News GOOD/EXCELLENT

"Kockroach actually is neither seriously intentioned enough to be literary nor dark enough for true noir. Instead, it is a light pastiche, a tongue-in-cheek borrowing from so many sources that the result is a level of self-conscious singularity almost despite itself." JOHN GAMINO

New York Times GOOD

"In the end Knox has less in common with Kafka than with sharp young comic novelists like Chris Bachelder and Lydia Millet who work in the wide shadow of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, George Saunders's stories and 'The Simpsons.' They write fluid, fast prose and strive to capture the sheer absurdity of ordinary American life in Technicolor plots and high-concept conceits." MATT WEILAND

Los Angeles Times FAIR

"This book has a heavy-handed gimmick to overcome--namely, the inversion of Kafka's conceit--and it does manage to do so. The problems are elsewhere--chiefly, that Kockroach/Blatta is a blank, with no personality or emotional depth, which makes his evolution difficult to care about." BENJAMIN WEISSMAN

CRITICAL SUMMARY

Tyler Knox (a pseudonym for crime novelist William Lashner) creates something wholly original from a wide range of sources: Kafka's famous short story, Jerzy Kosinzky's Being There, the acclaimed 1970s film Midnight Cowboy, and a heavy dose of entomological research. What could have simply been a clever idea becomes a thoughtful, humorous inquiry into the adaptability of cockroaches and people. A few critics find some inconsistency in characterization, specifically with Mikey "Mite," as well as anachronisms in a book set in the 1950s. Otherwise they are won over by this clever novel in which intelligence and emotion trump mere cleverness.

GOOD/EXCELLENT

Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name

By Vendela Vida

Searching for identity.

The death of Clarissa Iverton's father is followed by her discovery that another man's name is on her birth certificate--and then the revelation that her fiance (whom she's known since childhood) is in on the secret. Instead of her father's name, she sees the words Eero Valkeap. Clarissa, 28, whose mother disappeared when she was a teenager, leaves New York and travels to Finnish Lapland, the land of the reindeer and the indigenous Sami people--where her mother lived in her 20s--to find her biological father, understand her origins, and reconcile her past with her present and future.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Ecco. 226 pages. $23.95. ISBN: 0060828374

New York Times EXCELLENT

"[D]ark whimsy suffuses the whole book and accounts for much of its peculiarly biting charm.... The poignancy lingering behind the wit is in some ways reminiscent of Anne Tyler, so expert in probing the hedgehog heart of an eccentricity that looks charming from the outside." MADISON SMARTT BELL

Seattle Post-Intelligencer EXCELLENT

"Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name has the grip and pace of a thriller, all but demanding to be read straight through in one sitting, but Vida's second novel also manages to plumb a host of profound questions during its relentless drama.... The narrative races toward its startling climax and then its tad-too-neat denouement, one of Vida's only missteps in her dark and unsettling novel that has the hallucinogenic quality of a remembered dream." JOHN MARSHALL

Hartford Courant GOOD/EXCELLENT

"Although [And Now You Can Go and Let the Northern Lights] have similar characters and outlines, Let the Northern Lights is a sharper and more probing study of identity and obligation than Vida's debut. It is also more heavily plotted, which leads to some too-easy coincidences." ANDREA WALKER

Miami Herald GOOD/EXCELLENT

"Vida is a subtle, skilled writer, and much of what happens in her spare but emotionally vivid novels occurs just beyond the reader's view.... This book is much darker than her first, but it is as alive and fascinating as the brilliant atmospheric phenomenon of its title." CONNIE OGLE

New York Observer GOOD/EXCELLENT

"Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name is spare, linear and solemn.... Harsh, cold landscapes blanketed in snow and Laplanders speaking broken English are a perfect match for Ms. Vida's economical, though not humorless, prose." RUTH DAVIS KONIGSBERG

New Yorker GOOD

"Vida gives the icy landscape an eerie, forbidding beauty, and her writing has moments of great emotional acuity.... The ending, which intimates that one's problems may be easily shed, along with one's past, [seems] both hurried and unearned."

CRITICAL SUMMARY

Vendela Vida, coeditor of The Believer magazine and author of 2003's And Now You Can Go, has written a memorable--and powerful--novel. Bleak, spare, and intense, it wrestles with issues of identity, family, and obligation. Vida's stripped-down prose earns her admiration and comparisons to Joan Didion (The New York Times, The Hartford Courant), and critics praise her vivid evocation of the harsh northern landscape. Clarissa's quest is heartbreaking, but light touches of humor provide some relief. The novel's ending will satisfy most readers, although two reviewers found it predictable.

GOOD/EXCELLENT

Mothers and Sons

Stories

By Colm Toibin

Mum's the word.

In these nine stories set in contemporary Ireland, Colm Toibin explores love, loss, alienation, and betrayal in the emotionally charged relationships between mothers and sons. "The Use of Reason" follows a professional thief as his loose-lipped, drunken mother threatens his livelihood. "A Priest in the Family" features a woman's unexpected reaction to the news that her son, a Catholic priest, has been accused of molesting children. A cash-strapped widow risks destroying her son's dreams as she struggles to turn her fortunes around in "The Name of the Game." And in the novella "A Long Winter," a young man searches for his missing mother in the frozen Pyrenees.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Scribner. 288 pages. $24. ISBN: 1416534652

Montreal Gazette EXCELLENT

"So flawless and unshowy is the language in Mothers and Sons that only on reflection does it sink in how varied the tone is among these stories. Yes, they're nearly all melancholic, but every shade in the rainbow of melancholy is represented, and the perspective shifts from mother to son to omniscient with no discernible change in authority." IAN MCGILLIS

NY Times Book Review EXCELLENT

"This is not ... a collection to share with your loved ones on the second Sunday in May. It is, however, a book to be offered to anyone who savors some of the most accomplished and nuanced soundings contemporary fiction has to offer; the opening portrait of the robber and his mother sets the tone for what is really a stunning series of variations on a theme." PICO IYER

Toronto Globe and Mail EXCELLENT

"In these fictions, Colm Toibin manages to combine emotional indeterminacies with sharp dialogue and strong storytelling in a way that makes Mothers and Sons a deeply satisfying and memorable read." EMMA DONOGHUE

London Times (UK) GOOD/EXCELLENT

"'The Name of the Game' at least has elements of hope, or, if not hope, possibility. Few of the other stories have so much as a breath of either and therein lies my chief complaint, not at the writing, which is stark, but appropriately so, but at the starkness of a world view that finds few redeeming features in the complex business of being alive." SALLEY VICKERS

Minneapolis Star Tribune GOOD/EXCELLENT

"An intense, sometimes gorgeous, often downbeat collection of thematically linked stories.... Many stories are plot-heavy, so the lack of clear resolution becomes frustrating. In some cases, this ambiguity sparks thought, while in others it seems merely unsatisfying." CLAUDE PECK

Observer (UK) GOOD/EXCELLENT

"Writing in simple language about complex issues has always been his strength. Although the book is full of death and illness, bereavement and hardship, all of it is expressed with such understatement that it is a surprise just how affecting each story turns out to be." KILLIAN FOX

Guardian (UK) GOOD

"There are some excellent stories in Mothers and Sons and moments of lovely concision and insight, but Toibin at times seems uncomfortable within the confines of the shorter form, unsure how to use limitations as strengths.... It may simply be that the longer canvas suits him best." PATRICK NESS

CRITICAL SUMMARY

In his first short-fiction collection, Colm Toibin takes a compelling look at the ties that bind. There are no Hollywood happy endings here, and some readers may find the lack of resolution exasperating, even depressing. Still, critics praised Toibin's graceful, unadorned prose and deft handling of difficult subjects like alcoholism and pedophilia. His incisive style made the stories and characters all the more moving. Some reviewers claimed the stories were uneven, and there was no consensus as to which tale was the strongest.

ALSO BY THE AUTHOR

THE MASTER (2004): Short-listed for the 2004 Booker Prize, this fictional biography of Henry James captures the interior life of the writer with subtlety and empathy. Alternately humorous and heartbreaking, Toibin's novel may inspire you to dust off that copy of The Portrait of a Lady. (EXCELLENT Sept/Oct 2004)

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

GOOD/EXCELLENT

Nature Girl

By Carl Hiaasen

Another Floridian frenzy.

Honey Santana, the "queen of lost causes," is not in the mood for dinnertime telemarketing calls, and her bipolar psyche tells her to teach her latest caller a lesson. She convinces him to partake in a Floridian kayaking ecotour on an aptly named Everglades island, Dismal Key. In true Carl Hiaasen fashion, a bevy of quirky characters--including Honey's dope-dealing ex, a half-blooded Seminole, the telemarketer's two-bit tabloid celebrity girlfriend, and others--collide during a turbocharged adventure in the Everglades. Honey's agenda of righting wrongs, teaching manners, and addressing greed for the sake of creating a better world for her precocious adolescent son, Fry, wreaks tropical havoc with hilariously tragic outcomes.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Knopf. 306 pages. $25.95. ISBN: 0307262995

Boston Globe EXCELLENT

"As depicted by the deft pen of Carl Hiaasen, ecoterrorism is not only justified, it's hilarious.... Although at times this is a gentler book than his previous outings, with more slapstick and less undiluted acid satire, the breakneck narrative still makes things mighty rough for the selfish and the ecosinning." CLEA SIMON

Miami Herald EXCELLENT

"Sometimes the craziest among us speak the truest truth. Nature Girl is a morality tale for our time, told in a disarmingly hilarious but piercingly righteous style." SAM HARRISON

Oregonian GOOD/EXCELLENT

"If the characters seem a little more cardboard this time out, and if when they all end up on an island together it seems a bit too preordained, that hardly matters. This is Hiaasen's 11th two-word-title novel and predictability is part of the appeal--this is escapist beach reading and not intended for heavy lifting." CHARLES R. CROSS

Washington Post GOOD/EXCELLENT

"There probably will never be another book, by Hiaasen or anyone else, as hilarious and wicked as Native Tongue, and that may be just as well; humans can probably stand just a limited amount of uncontrollable mirth. Nature Girl will only make you smile and laugh out loud three or four times. But that's enough." CAROLYN SEE

Los Angeles Times FAIR/GOOD

"A Hiaasen novel is populated with characters improbable anywhere but in Florida and who careen into and away from each other at dizzying speed.... On the other hand, it does play amusingly enough against the types and conventions of crime fiction to satisfy readers who find their sedentary recreation in that genre." TIM RUTTEN

Milwaukee Jrnl Sentinel FAIR

"Please, Uncle Carl, bring back the magic, your unique mastery of the weirdness spawned by the rape of Florida. We read your books for their satirical brilliance, not for a recap of the yo-yos next door." ADAM DUNN

CRITICAL SUMMARY

Carl Hiaasen doesn't like developers intruding on his Floridian home front, and his outlandish and entertaining novels illustrate his resentment. He permeates his tales with humor to make his cause palatable, a method that has attracted a faithful, almost cultlike following. Die-hard Hiaasen fans will devour his colorful and shameless characters and exotic settings even if his latest installment spurs a feeling of deja vu (a la Native Tongue and Sick Puppy). Detractors cite cardboard characters and a predictable plot. Those tiring of Hiaasen's political, do-no-harm peeve may still revel in his spicy humor and inventive caricatures--but perhaps hope for a new direction in future novels.

GOOD/EXCELLENT

The Rising Tide

A Novel of World War II

By Jeff Shaara

War novelist examines the Greatest Generation.

This first installment of a planned trilogy on World War II opens in 1942 with United States troops set to battle Germany's Afrika Korps, led by Erwin Rommel--the infamous "Desert Fox"--in the sands of North Africa. Jeff Shaara recounts those engagements--in all the chaos, brutality, and heroism of full-scale warfare--in part through the experiences of two soldiers, Private Jack Logan, a tank gunner, and Sergeant Jesse Adams, a paratrooper. Eisenhower, Patton, Montgomery, Churchill, Roosevelt, and others make appearances as well. They make tactical decisions that help determine America's fate in The Good War as the surging Allies move from Africa to Italy and plan for an invasion of Normandy.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Ballantine. 576 pages. $27.95. ISBN: 034546141X

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette EXCELLENT

"A readable, often exciting and occasionally moving account of America's entry into the war against Nazi Germany, from the U.S. invasion of North Africa in November 1942 through the attack on Sicily and the first phase of the assault on the Italian mainland in September 1943.... The indelible panorama Shaara paints all around them draws us into the horror and heroism of war." PETER B. KING

Columbus Dispatch GOOD/EXCELLENT

"The history is solid, and the characters have more flesh than, say, any created by John Grisham. Shaara has a solid franchise going, and those who have read and liked his and his father's previous efforts will watch with curiosity to see how the kid handles D-Day." MICHAEL ARACE

Ft. Worth Star Telegram GOOD

"In a sense, The Rising Tide is more docudrama than novel: Although the tale has its moments of close-up blood, smoke, sweat and fears (particularly in its paratrooper episodes), for the most part there is a certain distance to the telling.... [The novel] probably will not satisfy all readers of war tales, but with its clear prose, maps and wealth of detail, it is likely to appeal to those who like their military history with a dollop of fictional drama." ALAN COCHRUM

Dallas Morning News GOOD

"Although rich in specific details and demonstrated knowledge of the arms and accoutrements of combat, the overall history of the war is often reduced to a sort of Cliff 's Notes summary, avoiding complexities that might cloud issues.... Historians will squirm because of [Shaara's] tendency to skim and generalize, but those who want a rip-roaring, patriotically affirming and G-rated dramatization of The Good War will be immensely satisfied." CLAY REYNOLDS

Rocky Mountain News GOOD

"The pace never flags, and readers are seldom lost in detail.... Rather than being analyzed, principal figures are described in terms of familiar cliches." REX BURNS

CRITICAL SUMMARY

The prolific Jeff Shaara, son of late novelist Michael Shaara, has published sprawling fictionalized accounts of the American Revolution (a trilogy), World War I, the Mexican War, and the Civil War. Gods and Generals (1996) and The Last Full Measure (1998) were, respectively, the prequel and sequel to his father's 1974 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Killer Angels. Although Shaara's relentless pacing draws readers to Rising Tide, critics point to the sacrifices that make the book so compelling. They cite, for example, some flimsy characters and an occasional lack of historical depth (Rex Burns deems the novel "a good yarn that will make readers feel as if they're reading the History Channel"). Still, any history buff keen on a fast-paced read about the Greatest Generation will enjoy The Rising Tide.

GOOD/EXCELLENT

You Suck

A Love Story

By Christopher Moore

Vampire love.

In Bloodsucking Friends (1995), Jody awakes under a dumpster to find herself a vampire. She soon finds herself sleeping with 19- year-old Tommy Flood, a San Francisco Safeway clerk and would-be writer. In You Suck, Jody--out of love but perhaps also a little loneliness--transforms Tommy into a vampire, too. Unfortunately, Tommy is clueless not only in the ways of teenage love but also in the mores of vampire life. Enter a host of loonies--including a dyed-blue Las Vegas hooker, a gay policeman, a homeless alcoholic, a Goth teenager, a shaven cat--and an 800-year-old vampire that doesn't want Tommy among his ranks.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Morrow. 336 pages. $21.95. ISBN: 0060590297

New York Times EXCELLENT

"[Moore] also manages, despite figures like a blue-painted prostitute who prompts visions of sex with a Smurf, to keep the book's eccentricity in check and its screwball antics from becoming insufferable. As with his best work, there's a fundamental sweetness beneath the antics." JANET MASLIN

Seattle Post-Intelligencer EXCELLENT

"[T]he sort of madcap mania that has brought Moore his legions of fans, as well as comparisons with such other distinctive writers as Kurt Vonnegut, Dave Barry, Tom Robbins, Carl Hiassen and (believe it or not) Jonathan Swift." JOHN MARSHALL

Denver Post GOOD/EXCELLENT

"You Suck is the literary equivalent of a Marx Brothers film: If readers don't go into it expecting great revelations and remember to say the magic words (it's OK to read for fun), they'll finish this offering with a smile on their faces--and the inability to not smirk the next time they pick up a vampire-related novel or catch Bela Lugosi on the late, late show." DORMAN T. SHINDLER

Entertainment Weekly GOOD/EXCELLENT

"Moore nestles comfortably into his patented formula: imperfect-but-lovable protagonist; evil-but-hubristic antagonist; snappy, self-referential dialogue; blockbuster action sequence.... No matter how kicky the writing, there's only so much one can take of a character who's so awfully pleased with herself." WHITNEY PASTOREK

Rocky Mountain News GOOD/EXCELLENT

"There are pretenders, but Moore is the only author who has mastered the combination of horror and humor, doing for horror what Carl Hiaasen does for crime novels." MARK GRAHAM

CRITICAL SUMMARY

Critics agree that, with enough back-story to understand the characters and their culture, this sequel to Bloodsucking Friends is a successful stand-alone novel. Filled with humor and terror, wacky adventure and lovable (mostly) characters drawn from the author's own odd-job experiences, You Suck won over critics with its witty dialogue and fast action. Reviewers especially praised the character of Abby Normal, a minion whose hilarious voice carries the narrative. If not exactly deep reading and at times somewhat formulaic, You Suck is "fun, fun, funny and just a little gross--what more could anyone ask?" (Rocky Mountain News)

GOOD/EXCELLENT

Zoli

By Colum McCann

A woman's rise and fall.

In 1930s Czechoslovakia, after 6-year-old Zoli (a character loosely based on Romany poet Bronislawa "Papusza" Wajs) and her grandfather witness Fascist troops destroying their Gypsy tribe, they flee to a clan of Romany harpists. Zoli breaks traditional law and learns to read and write, marries at 14, and starts to transcribe her tribe's oral culture. She also discovers her beautiful voice. After the war, in a Communist bloc determined to embrace the downtrodden, others discover her musical gift. But as Zoli becomes famous, she also becomes an unwitting spokesperson for the propagandist revolution that encourages Romany assimilation. Once her people hear her message, they will banish her for life--and Zoli will, once again, have to find her own way.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Random House. 333 pages. $24.95. ISBN: 1400063728

Boston Globe EXCELLENT/CLASSIC

"Soaring and stumbling over decades of mid-century Eastern Europe, Zoli is a riveting novel, those buried harps the metaphor for the entire story.... And because the novel traces Zoli's journey--through history, across borders, from precocious girl to legendary and then infamous woman--it also gives us a tapestry of an entire culture, one shrouded and then marginalized into near extinction." GAIL CALDWELL

Christian Science Monitor EXCELLENT

"McCann takes a reader inside the often marginalized culture in a way that his journalist character, who is seeking information on Zoli in the present day, never achieves.... The most riveting portions of the novel are those narrated by Zoli herself." YVONNE ZIPP

San Francisco Chronicle EXCELLENT

"[McCann's] prose is just plain gorgeous, even when depicting the simplest of circumstances.... Given the history of his own country, perhaps it is not so surprising it takes an Irishman to tell a very powerful story about community, assimilation and the pain of exile, as well as the joy and anguish of being different." JUNE SAWYERS

Seattle Times EXCELLENT

"Zoli becomes a flash point for her tribe while raising an important question: In a world driven by conformity and (more lately) consumerism, how can the outsider survive?... McCann's story feels like an important reminder of one dimension that has been gladly left behind: the soul-deadening totalitarianism that snuff s out dissent and difference with the force of its bureauccracy." ELLEN EMRY HELTZEL

New York Times POOR/FAIR

"It is the characters that fall short. To a greater or lesser extent they seem little more than his ideas about them, and the roles he has them play." RICHARD EDER

CRITICAL SUMMARY

Zoli, Colum McCann's fourth novel, astounded critics with its sheer range of vision. While painting detailed strokes of the political tumult of the mid- to late-20th century, from the Nazis to the Communists to the fall of the Berlin Wall, Zoli also personalizes the plights of individuals through different narrators, including an elderly Zoli. Vivid details, a gripping story, and fine prose complement this rare glimpse into an exiled culture. Only the New York Times critic described the characters as mouthpieces; all others praised Zoli as an exceptional, provocative read.

ALSO BY THE AUTHOR

THE SIDE OF BRIGHTNESS (1998): In early 1900s Manhattan, Treefrog, a homeless man, and Nathan Walker, a black man who digs the city's subway tunnels, in turn narrate their tales of friendship, love, tragedy, and survival.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

GOOD

Blind Submission

By Debra Ginsberg

Slushpile shenanigans.

Angel Robinson thinks she's found her dream job. At the prestigious Bay Area Lucy Fiamma Literary Agency, Angel discovers a knack for finding the gems among the piles of manuscripts she diligently carts home each night--a skill that her cantankerous, eccentric, and Machiavellian boss takes full advantage of. Then Angel receives a haunting series of anonymous e-mail submissions (entitled, cheekily, Blind Submission), whose story bears a frightening resemblance to that of Angel's own life. Such eerie insight into her life--and her suspicions as to who is behind it--are a little too close to home for Angel's comfort.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Shaye Areheart. 328 pages. $23.95. ISBN: 0307346048

San Diego Union-Tribune EXCELLENT

"The author's insider knowledge provides one of the chief delights of this book: Nobody has ever written a literary agency with the authority Ginsberg brings to this one.... Entering Lucy's domain is a surreal experience." KATY YOCOM

Washington Post EXCELLENT

"Anyone who longs to become a professional writer would do well to read this novel because even as it stretches the boundaries of disbelief, you remember that--on the contrary--Blind Submission is right on the money." CAROLYN SEE

USA Today GOOD/EXCELLENT

"[A] cleverly told, genre-bending tale that combines intrigue, romance, a touch of mystery and strong female characters.... Book lovers will enjoy Ginsberg's dead-on look at the publishing industry." CAROL MEMMOTT

San Francisco Chronicle GOOD

"Blind Submission isn't the best book I've ever read, but it may be the most cinematic. From its spunky opening sentence ... to its here's-how-everyone-turned-out codas, Debra Ginsberg's first novel gives the impression of having been written with an eventual movie version sharply in mind." SARAH SAFFIAN

Los Angeles Times POOR/FAIR

"[The book's] mass-market attributes are strangely at odds with and likely to deter the tweedy reader who might otherwise look favorably upon a book that takes place in a literary agency, a setting conspicuously lacking the allure of fashion, film and Upper East Side society, the glamorous and moneyed milieus in which such tales usually unfold.... Instead of the razor-sharp and shadow-subtle observations and characterizations that distinguish successful satire, Blind Submission is all travesty and caricature, a portrait obscured by its own broad strokes." JENNY SHANK

Rocky Mountain News POOR/FAIR

"The prose is cliche-ridden and on the level of a drugstore romance novel; the characters one-dimensional; the sex scenes execrable; and many of the plot twists convenient or unbelievable." JENNY SHANK

CRITICAL SUMMARY

For her first turn as a novelist, Debra Ginsberg, author of three acclaimed memoirs (Waiting; Raising Blaze; About My Sisters) turns a satirical eye on the publishing industry. The parallels between Lauren Weisberger's blockbuster The Devil Wears Prada (2003) and Blind Submission are a well-worn path of inquiry in critical circles. Most reviewers agree, however, that this expose of the publishing industry is, very appropriately, a better-written affair than the fashion-industry version. The majority of reviewers are thrilled by this backstage look at the good, the bad, and the ugly in book publishing, though a few note a weak central character and a "trashy" plot (Rocky Mountain News). Overall, fervent readers willing to wallow may enjoy this insider's view of the publishing business.

GOOD

The Book of Dave

By Will Self

Mirrored cultures, present and future.

When London cabbie Dave Rudman's beautiful wife leaves him and takes their only child, Dave falls into an abyss of alcohol, bitterness, and self-pity. Inspired by his plight, he pens an angry, misogynist, and philosophical treatise that describes his trade's knowledge of London and captures his own moral anxieties. Hoping that his son will one day discover the text, he buries Th e Book of Dave in his ex-wife's garden. Five hundred years later on the island of Ham (Hampshire), dystopian survivors of an apocalyptic flood uncover the text. They then create a deity of Dave and follow his bitter advice--including the separation of the sexes--word for word.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Bloomsbury. 496 pages. $24.95. ISBN: 1596911239

Minneapolis Star Tribune EXCELLENT

"The Book of Dave is his most bodacious, coruscating and savage attack yet on a consumption-addled society whose soul is made of breakable plastic.... [I]t is a perversely exhilarating read." BRIGITTE FRASE

Seattle Times GOOD/EXCELLENT

"The evolution of the Book of Dave is intercut with its application in the future, and the result is occasionally hilarious and always smart and imaginative. Though his prose can be undisciplined, Self's energy and ideas pick up the slack and make this a remarkably sharp book about the many ways people can go terribly wrong." MARK LINDQUIST

Washington Post GOOD/EXCELLENT

"The good news is that, while The Book of Dave is sometimes as aggressively off-putting as Self's five previous novels, it's also a richer, more engaging enterprise.... With ingenious symmetry, Self's alternating chapters show how shakily new civilizations are built atop the bones and ghosts of the past, never really progressing, each caught up in its own 'centrifugal strivings.'" DONNA RIFKIND

Los Angeles Times GOOD

"[S]omething odd happens about halfway through Dave's story line. We begin to empathize with him.... Any reader who has gaily gone along with the redemptive undercurrent of Dave's story will want to jab the author in the eye by the end of the novel." REGINA MARLER

NY Times Book Review POOR/FAIR

"In a short what-if story, a powerful or hilarious premise can often suffice; but in a novel, especially one nearly 500 pages long, these deficiencies are laid bare once the novelty of the original premise fades.... [W]e're ultimately left with a pair of grotesque worlds, facing each other like two mirrors, but reflecting nothing." NATHANIEL RICH

CRITICAL SUMMARY

Will Self 's previous fiction, including The Quantity Theory of Insanity, captured modern English society's ills. The Book of Dave, a best seller in the UK, is a similarly imaginative, vitriolic, and what-if criticism of modern culture. Despite its compelling themes, reviewers differed in opinion about the novel's success. While the Minneapolis Star Tribune called it an "utterly enthralling and laser-sharp nightmare of our present and future," others criticized the caricatured males and difficult dialogue in the alternating chapters on Ham. ("Arpee-English," a phonetic cockney, goes something like this: "Iss tyme, Runti, Carl cooed, tym fer yer slorta, yeah?") If the novel is sometimes rough going and a not-too-pretty picture of society, the parallels between Dave's modern London and the cruder Ham culture could not be scarier.

GOOD

Please, Mr. Einstein

By Jean-Claude Carriere

Translated by John Brownjohn

Conversations with Albert.

When a young student wanders into an apartment in an unnamed central European city, there is no telling what might happen. Her watch stops working, she meets Isaac Newton in a waiting room, and an assistant whisks her to a meeting with Albert Einstein. Even Einstein does not fully understand why he is (or where he is) in the present, though he happily converses, in layman's terms, on the key concepts that have kept him in our consciousness more than half a century after his death. Pressed to answer for the ethical implications of his theories (the bomb, for one), he has no answers. But who wouldn't be charmed by an Einstein who admits to wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with his likeness?

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Harcourt. 185 pages. $22. ISBN: 0151014221

NY Times Book Review EXCELLENT

"Jean-Claude Carriere comes with some serious mojo as a thinker and writer.... In its uncounted hours of conversation, Please, Mr. Einstein touches down lightly and charmingly on some of the thorniest philosophical consequences of Einstein's genius and, by extension, the scientific preoccupations of the 20th century--the nature of reality, the fate of causality, the comprehensibility of nature, the limits of the mind." DENNIS OVERBYE

Philadelphia Inquirer EXCELLENT

"If you can rattle off the principles of string theory from memory, if you consider yourself one of the 'people like us' Einstein wrote about--heck, if you even know who Niels Bohr was--this book might be too simple a discussion of Einstein's life for you. But, as a work of fiction, Please, Mr. Einstein is an accessible, entertaining and thought-provoking read." JEN A. MILLER

San Francisco Chronicle EXCELLENT

"This book is not merely Quantum Physics for Dummies, nor is it one of those You Are There productions of the sort that Steve Allen used to televise.... Fearless in questioning, famous yet humble, Carriere's Einstein is a character the reader comes to love." REAGAN UPSHAW

Times [UK] GOOD

"The most urgent questions that our youthful Everywoman has are profound moral ones: was Einstein able to predict the military uses to which his theory would be put; does he consider himself responsible for Hiroshima and Nagasaki? ... In Carriere's story, apparently, undecidability and doubt have leached out of science and into ethics." LISA JARDINE

Independent on Sunday [UK] POOR

"It probably goes without saying that Einstein did a better job of explaining his theories in his own popular science book, Relativity.... The imposition of Carriere's words on Einstein is a strange form of ghostwriting, in which the subject's authentic words are replaced by a fantasy, a phantasm, reanimated for no discernible purpose." SCARLETT THOMAS

CRITICAL SUMMARY

Best known for his work on the French films Belle du Jour and the Academy Award-winning social satire The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, screenwriter, actor, and author Jean-Claude Carriere deftly examines the influence of Albert Einstein and his work on today's society. Reviewers, some of whom came to the slim volume with few expectations, find themselves drawn not only to Carriere's lucid explanations for some of Einstein's most difficult concepts, but to Einstein himself. The author renders him as a humble, kind, self-effacing soul who views with continuing curiosity a world always teetering on the brink of annihilation. British critics, however, were less impressed. The Independent even suggested that die-hard physics buffs should read Einstein's writings instead.

GOOD

Skylight Confessions

By Alice Hoffman

A multigenerational saga.

No sooner has 17-year-old Arlyn Singer buried her father than she decides that the next man who walks through her door will be the one for her. That night, fate brings her Yale student John Moody, son of a famed architect. They spend the weekend in passion, and when he returns to Yale, she follows. They're soon married, living in John's father's famous Glass Slipper house, and mismatched in every way. When tragedy strikes Arlyn and John must carry on, the story turns to their dysfunctional children--and the secrets, ghosts, and puzzles that continue to haunt all of their lives.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Little, Brown. 272 pages. $24.99. ISBN: 0316058785

Baltimore Sun EXCELLENT

"Skylight Confessions, about the magic of love and the perils of fate, may be the saddest book she's ever written, but it is also one of her very best.... [Arlie's] ephemeral self is what fuels the tale--she is a fairy-tale creature, to be sure, and yet she is also obviously a flesh-and-blood woman with deep and compelling desires." VICTORIA A. BROWNWORTH

Cleveland Plain Dealer GOOD/EXCELLENT

"The spare realism of Arlie's illness, surely informed by the author's own cancer, diagnosed in 1998, is harrowing but never descends into disease-of-the-month voyeurism as so many novels targeted to women do.... Hoffman has shelved the potions and bizarre powers and delivered a haunting meditation on the curse of bottomless grief, a wickedly hard spell to break." ANDREA SIMAKIS

Los Angeles Times GOOD/EXCELLENT

"It is a fairy tale imbued with the intense emotional undercurrents of adolescence and haunted by loss and failures of love.... In a novel like Skylight Confessions, which is sometimes heavy-handed, sometimes sappy, she gives us the heartbreak of a dying young mother and her love for her son, the solace of the green days of May, and the possibilities of art and of love winning out." JANE CIABATTARI

Minneapolis Star Tribune GOOD/EXCELLENT

"[E]ven when the plot sounds like leavings from a soap opera, Hoffman saves the day with her control of the story and her signature fairy dust. Improbably, somewhere in this tangle of sorrow and blighted relationships, she finds the magic of human connection." ELLEN EMRY HELTZEL

Wall Street Journal FAIR

"The book has enough intellectual trappings to flatter readers into thinking that they are getting some mental nourishment, but in essence it is pure romance novel and nothing more.... [T]hose who feel that one of literature's tasks is to challenge such fantasies are likely to wonder at the gap between Alice Hoffman's high reputation and the thin literary skills on display in her latest work." BROOKE ALLEN

USA Today POOR

"It doesn't help that Hoffman has assembled a collection of characters who make you want to run screaming from the room.... There are lots of heavy-handed metaphors about glass houses and people in Connecticut who have wings and can fly (don't ask) and fathers who don't know how to love." JOCELYN MCCLURG

CRITICAL SUMMARY

Fans of Alice Hoffman's 17 novels (The Ice Queen; Practical Magic; Turtle Moon) will find familiar elements here: fairy-tale plotting, emotional intensity, a naturalistic magic realism, a timeless setting, and superb storytelling. More tragic than her previous novels, Skylight Confessions--about fate, love, grief, forgiveness, and redemption--had some critics weeping, despite what others called the novel's overly maudlin tone. While Arlyn's illness adds depth to what might have been escapist fiction, critics disagree over whether the novel is one of Hoffman's finest. But if, as USA Today claims, it is merely "a romance novel for college graduates," it's one that readers will likely enjoy.

POOR

Killing Johnny Fry

A Sexistential Novel

Walter Mosley

Obsessing over sex in middle age.

When Cordell Carmel, 45, walks in on his girlfriend Joelle engaging in--well, let's call it kinky--sex with, unfortunately, a better endowed white man named Johnny Fry, Cordell leaves quietly, unseen. Haunted by the sight of Joelle and Johnny together, he determines to change his mundane life and find fulfillment in wanton sex with beautiful women. Cordell also vows to kill Johnny--but not without first purchasing a porn video starring the mysterious Sisypha, engaging in amazing sex with Joelle (and then Lucy, Sasha, and Monica), ruminating on the rules of sex, and embarking on a new chapter in life.

Bloomsbury. 288 pages. $23.95. ISBN: 159691226X

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

NY Times Book Review FAIR/GOOD

"Killing Johnny Fry is a frankly pornographic novel, and I mean that as a compliment.... The problem with this novel isn't that it's graphic or that Mosley uses the standard set-ups of pornography--the horny neighbor, the girl picked up on the street. The problem is that it's silly." CHARLES TAYLOR

Cleveland Plain Dealer 1/2 POOR

"I sometimes thought Mosley intended the book to be an ironic commentary on various racial and cultural stereotypes or even a takeoff on Camus--the existential anti-hero as sexual fool--but the tone remains earnest throughout. It's been obvious for 25 books and almost 20 years that Walter Mosley is a fine writer. But not here." JOHN REPP

Los Angeles Times 1/2 POOR

"The existential themes of dread, boredom and absurdity come to the fore, but only because the sex scenes become less and less interesting and less and less emotional, if more and more outrageous.... The novel ends up as neither erotica nor philosophy." DIANA WAGMAN

New York Observer 1/2 POOR

"The sex scenes pop up, so to speak, with numbing regularity and require an endurance that would be impressive in a 17-year-old, probably chemically induced in a 30-year-old and just plain unseemly in someone Cordell's age. Even more embarrassing than our hero's heroic potency are his flashes of insight." ADAM BEGLEY

CRITICAL SUMMARY

Walter Mosley's fans should not despair; Easy Rawlins will return. Until then, critics and readers must contend with Killing Johnny Fry, an unfortunate blip in an esteemed author's career. Although Cordell expresses homicidal intent--which could have driven the novel--Killing centers on his sexual counters. Highly pornographic, the repeated sex becomes tedious; thin on plot, the novel falls into cliched, outlandish scenes. And, despite its subtitle--drawn, in part, from Camus's essay, "The Myth of Sisyphus"--it offers little in the way of deeper philosophical insight. At the end, Cordell says, "I try to tell myself that there's always time for redemption." For Mosley, too.

CITED BY THE CRITICS

VOX | NICHOLSON BAKER (1992):

Looking for some literary erotica? Don't forget Baker's book-length phone-sex conversation. And there's also his The Fermata (1994), where a 35-year-old old office temp learns how to stop time and devotes his days to "freezing" and undressing women, replacing music cassette tapes in people's cars with pornography he's recorded--and so on.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

BOOKMARKS SELECTION

CLASSIC

The Aeneid

By Virgil; translated by Robert Fagles

Still a classic.

The story hasn't changed in more than 2,000 years: Aeneas and his men--run out of Troy after the wily Greeks, bearing the gift of a wooden horse, have sacked the city--set sail for Italy. Boy meets girl (in this case, Dido, a Phoenician princess); girl falls in love; boy leaves to fulfill his destiny as the father of the Roman people; and girl spectacularly commits suicide atop a blazing pyre. Virgil's tale never lacks for adventure, violence, strong characters, passionate relationships, meddling from the gods, and even a visit to the underworld. Virgil, and now Robert Fagles, have given us an epic--and a translation--for the ages.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Viking. 496 pages. $40. ISBN: 0670038039

Los Angeles Times CLASSIC

"I'm here to report that [Fagles's translation] is magnificent..... One must say more: This work, this miraculous beast of a text, is so enjoyable that you will hardly know you are reading an ancient masterpiece." THOMAS CAHILL

Richmond Times Dispatch CLASSIC

"From Greek, Fagles turns now to Latin, and his new rendering of Virgil's Aeneid is quite possibly the best English version since John Dryden's 300 years ago." RON SMITH

San Diego Union-Tribune CLASSIC

"Robert Fagles' new translation of The Aeneid presents a vigorous, passionate Virgil, and a heroic Aeneas, who guides his flock of followers from the fall of Troy in Asia Minor through the Mediterranean to adventures in Carthage, landing in Italy and fierce battles with the indigenous peoples.... Although he loses some of the magic of Virgil's brilliant economy of language, his techniques seem appropriate to a 21st century in which an attempt has been made to renew the toga film as a genre." PAGE DUBOIS

New York Times EXCELLENT/CLASSIC

"The triumph is ultimately literary, of course, and also collective--since it belongs in part to those white-haired translators who have brought such well-seasoned judgments to a timeless tale. Theirs is the prevailing army, among whose ranks Robert Fagles emerges as a new and noble standard-bearer." BRAD LEITHAUSER

Philadelphia Inquirer EXCELLENT/CLASSIC

"If Fagles' translation is not obviously greater than Fitzgerald's or Mandelbaum's, his edition is: well over 100 pages of supplementary material, including a long, excellent historical introduction by Bernard Knox, notes, and an extensive glossary. Anyone who has not read Virgil's poem since college (and felt guiltily that they should) will want to get this splendid version." GREGORY FEELEY

CRITICAL SUMMARY

The difference between an adequate translation and a great one can be difficult to discern. With this new version of Virgil's famous epic, Robert Fagles, Princeton emeritus professor of comparative literature and the acclaimed translator of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, solidifies his reputation as the leader in a field that doesn't always reward panache. Updated for a modern audience with "an almost cinematic style," writes Page Dubois, Fagles's translation is more accessible than other, more academic ones. It has user-friendly maps, notes, a glossary, a historical introduction, and type that's easy to read. The Aeneid will remain fresh for generations fortunate enough to be guided by Fagles's talents.

GOOD/EXCELLENT

Paula Spencer

By Roddy Doyle

Recovery, one day at a time.

Ten years after Roddy Doyle enthralled readers with his candid portrayal of domestic violence and substance abuse in The Woman Who Walked Into Doors (1996), he revisits working-class Dublin housewife Paula Spencer. Over a decade has passed since Paula's murderous husband was gunned down by police during a crime spree, but she still grapples with the aftermath of her abusive marriage, her alcoholism, and the effect these have had on her family. Sober now for just over four months, Paula struggles with guilt and temptation while trying desperately to reconnect with her four grown children and lead a "normal" life.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Viking. 281 pages. $24.95. ISBN: 0670038164

Christian Science Monitor EXCELLENT

"By exchanging first-person narrative for third-person, Doyle ... forgoes the literary flash in favor of precisely observed moments. Like the first book, though, the sequel still unfolds primarily through dialogue and interior monologue." YVONNE ZIPP

Independent (UK) EXCELLENT

"Paula is a triumphantly original character, and her gently anarchic sense of humour, her ruthless honesty and the bursting sense of fun that permeates the book scotch any hint of sentimentalism. Doyle, meanwhile, constructs his set-pieces and orders the narrative with a craft so unobtrusively elegant and clever that it demands a second reading." TIM MARTIN

Scotsman (UK) EXCELLENT

"Doyle movingly shows us both how difficult and how provisional healing a hard-knocked life can be. It's a disciplined piece of writing, full of humour and immense empathy." DAVID ROBINSON

USA Today EXCELLENT

"It's a testament to Roddy Doyle's restrained, dryly funny writing that you walk away from his novel Paula Spencer rooting for the tattered yet doggedly optimistic husk of a woman trying to stay sober.... Doyle, with his spare, sparse prose, is never preachy or didactic." DONNA FREYDKIN

Washington Post EXCELLENT

"If Paula Spencer doesn't quite reach the heights or plumb the depths that the earlier book did, it's only because the first novel was richer by design, encompassing through flashbacks the whole of Paula's life, and more inherently dramatic, since it centered on the appalling violence inflicted on its narrator.... Lest this sound like faint praise, let me add that reading Paula Spencer is pure, undiluted pleasure." JAMES HYNES

Boston Globe FAIR/GOOD

"The labyrinths of Paula's inner narrative, so meticulously rendered in her first story, here feel abbreviated and grimly laconic--a shorthand that seems more of an authorial failing than a character revelation.... Still, there are elements of Paula Spencer to be applauded." GAIL CALDWELL

Milwaukee Jrnl Sentinel FAIR

"While Doyle uses free indirect narration in Paula Spencer, rather than the first-person narrator we met in The Woman Who Walked Into Doors, this technique nevertheless fails to give his story the texture and depth it needs and deserves.... There are stretches of almost pure dialogue that are terrific ... but between these diamonds, a reader spends far too much time in the rough on a forced march through Paula's monotonous staccato sentences." MIKE FISCHER

CRITICAL SUMMARY

Roddy Doyle, winner of the 1993 Booker Prize for Paddy Clark Ha Ha Ha, takes an unsentimental look at the quest for redemption in Paula Spencer. British reviewers applauded Doyle's unflinching depiction of a troubled but ultimately hopeful woman. American reviewers admired Paula's spirit and sense of humor, but raised questions about some of Doyle's technical choices: his short, repetitive sentences, for example, and his decision to narrate Paula's story in the third person. Paula Spencer is a portrait rather than a page-turner, and critics who enjoyed the intense, powerful The Woman Who Walked Into Doors found the transition awkward. Most agreed, however, that it was not necessary to have read the earlier work to appreciate this understated, entertaining novel.

GOOD/EXCELLENT

Arlington Park

By Rachel Cusk

Suburban ennui.

All is not well in Rachel Cusk's upper-class, London suburb. While the husbands remain complacent with their material success, the wives manage their husbands and kids, care for their homes, make it to work (some, at least)--and question the morality of their existence. Taking place over the course of a single, rainy day, Arlington Park delves deep inside these young mothers' unfulfilled lives. Juliet, boiling over with anger, views all men as murderers of women; Amanda, despite her perfect house, feels totally inadequate; Maisie resents her children. Meanwhile, Christine, from working-class roots, spends the day preparing for a dinner party. Despite Arlington Park's placid finish, its women live imperfect, ordinary, even desperate lives.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 256 pages. $23. ISBN: 0374100802

Denver Post EXCELLENT

"In the progression of an ordinary day, there is a sense of great activity but little forward movement.... Arlington Park is a remarkable, though quiet, work. Cusk illuminates ordinary lives, presumably the kind of lives that most of us lead." ROBIN VIDIMOS

Los Angeles Times EXCELLENT

"Given the precedents, I think it is inevitable that we take these lives to typify a certain sort of English life in the early 21st century, and, if we are to believe Cusk, the news is not good.... Cusk's glory is her style, cold and hard and devastatingly specific, empathetic but not sympathetic." JANE SMILEY

Newsday EXCELLENT

"What makes the book brilliant is Cusk's fearlessness about her subject matter: The way these women pass the hours could be seen as dull or depressing or petty.... Cusk's most pointed reference is found in the brassy, bossy person of Christine, who, like Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, is spending her day getting ready for a dinner party she's hosting that evening." CLAIRE DEDERER

San Francisco Chronicle EXCELLENT

"Is it a beautifully written book? Yes. Is it an angry book? Yes.... The strength of Arlington Park is that while depicting the sadness of these very human and likable mothers, Cusk doesn't patronize or pity them." VENDELA VIDA

Cleveland Plain Dealer GOOD/EXCELLENT

"No one is better than Cusk at giving form to the murky, emotional complexity of motherhood ... In Arlington Park, bastion of privilege, children are routinely ignored, shouted at and manhandled. Family life, Cusk knows, is a tumultuous proposition." TRICIA SPRINGSTUBB

Rocky Mountain News GOOD/EXCELLENT

"The microscopic detail of daily life offered here could be excruciating for some readers, but for anyone who enjoys an original and imaginative writing style and wry observations of the way people live, it's well worth the read." JESSICA SLATER

NY Times Book Review FAIR

"Cusk's many female characters are far too similar, and you wish she'd stuck with one.... The book eventually becomes one long postpartum gripe, though neither humane nor funny enough to be enjoyable as social satire." LUCY ELLMANN

CRITICAL SUMMARY

Few modern writers portray class anxiety and domestic discontent better than Rachel Cusk (Saving Agnes; A Life's Work GOOD/EXCELLENT Nov/Dec 2002; In the Fold GOOD/EXCELLENT Jan/Feb 2006). The premise of Arlington Park--surviving a single day of 21st-century suburban life, where minutes pass by meaninglessly--is nothing new. Critics agree, however, that Cusk's sharp, candid eye almost perfectly captures the frustration and ennui often associated with motherhood and wifehood. Rather than mocking her characters, Cusk takes seriously their failures to forge meaningful connections (outside of clothes, food, and decor), but she writes with a beautiful wit and a light touch. While Arlington Park explores a depressing subject, it's an enlightening read, even as it offers an all-too-realistic portrait of suburban life.

AN INSPIRATION

MRS. DALLOWAY | VIRGINIA WOOLF (1925): As Clarissa Dalloway prepares for a party she is hosting one evening in post-World War I England, nothing, yet everything--including disturbing memories and regrets--happens.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

GOOD/EXCELLENT

House of Meetings

By Martin Amis

Life in a time of darkness.

"If what they say is true, and my country is dying, then I think I may be able to tell them why." So begins the epistolary confession of a Russian expatriate to his American stepdaughter as he returns to the motherland as a tourist. The unnamed narrator, now an 80-something American exile, recalls his life in all its violence and glorified brutality as he tours Norlag, the Stalinist labor camp where he was imprisoned for nearly a decade. The ghosts of his past--his idealistic brother Lev, interned at the same gulag, and Lev's Jewish wife Zoya, the narrator's first love--are joined by the ghosts of the narrator's lost humanity and the shame of an entire nation.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Knopf. 256 pages. $23. ISBN: 1400044553

Sunday Times (UK) EXCELLENT

"He has written a slender, moving novel, streaked with dark comedy, which investigates how Stalinism exacted a price from its subjects, a price which was 'to be paid not by the spoonful or the shovelful, but by the dayful, the yearful, the lifeful.'" ROBERT MACFARLANE

Miami Herald EXCELLENT

"House of Meetings may be his bleakest book yet.... Though pared to the bone in terms of Amis' usual explosive literary flourishes, it is a consistently gripping, concise epic of human atrocity." CONNIE OGLE

New York Times EXCELLENT

"House of Meetings is a powerful, unrelenting and deeply affecting performance.... [The narrator's] monologue will become a meditation not only on his own experiences, but also on the fate of Russia and the profound differences between the East and the West, between those fully initiated into the dark side of history and those still innocent of those horrors." MICHIKO KAKUTANI

London Times (UK) GOOD/EXCELLENT

"In House of Meetings there is a chilly distance created between the narrator and the horror show he is describing. As such, it's a bit like being guided through a series of museum exhibitions depicting a vortex of hell." DOUGLAS KENNEDY

NY Times Book Review GOOD

"Through his singularly unlikable narrator, Amis attempts to impart to readers (as he has done before) his revulsion at the depredations of Soviet Communism and, latterly, post-Soviet history.... Fortified by an arsenal of new details, he has revisited his magnificent obsession with systematized inhumanity." LIESL SCHILLINGER

Washington Post GOOD

"House of Meetings ... is a slender book, on the same scale as the nonfictional Koba, and quite imperfect as a novel. But it is vivid and even scarifying, more than some mere noble acknowledgement of mass suffering, a suffering that Western intellectuals so often excused." THOMAS MALLON

Boston Globe FAIR/GOOD

"After Lev and his brother leave the camps, the book staggers on for another 100 pages, but the purpose of Amis's visit to this alien human landscape grows hazy, and the book ultimately fizzles, trapped under the weight of its historical memory, and the scale of its intentions.... Amis has never lost his remarkable gift for description, or his crisp command of dialogue, but the enormity of the camps overwhelms even him." SAUL AUSTERLITZ

CRITICAL SUMMARY

Martin Amis has long been frustrated by the lack of outrage at the atrocities committed by the Stalinist regime, which he equates with the Third Reich. (He explored Soviet Communism in 2002's Koba the Dread.) Building on extensive research, Amis attempts to bring the era to light in this ambitious tale of one man's life, in his own words, as a representation of the suffering of millions. Most reviewers found the story engrossing, but, according to the Boston Globe, "Amis has taken on more than he can handle." Other critics felt that the voice of the didactic English novelist intruded too much into the narrative, and some complained that the narrator himself was unlikable. However, Amis fans will be pleased with this harrowing account of life under the Gulag.

CITED BY THE CRITICS

THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO 1918-1956 | ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYN (1969): * NOBEL PRIZE. This classic book, based on the eyewitness testimonies of the author and more than 200 other prisoners, is still considered the last word on the Soviet system of forced labor and concentration camps.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

GULAG A History | ANNE APPLEBAUM (2003): * PULITZER PRIZE. This fascinating, full-scale history of the Gulag traces the institution, growth, and collapse of the centralized system of slave labor that became the backbone of the Soviet economy. Applebaum examines the lives of the prisoners as well as the long-lasting psychological effects on an entire nation. (EXCELLENT July/Aug 2003)

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

GOOD

Sacred Games

By Vikram Chandra

India, 21st-century.

In present-day Mumbai, shanty towns exist side by side with modern high rises; capitalism runs rampant; and mobsters rule the city's affairs. In this environment operates Sartaj Singh, a divorced Sikh police inspector at odds with mobster Ganesh Gaitonde, who has become rich by breaking every law in the land. But things aren't as black and white as they seem. Sartaj isn't beneath police violence and bribes; Ganesh, by contrast, remains loyal to the truth. Then Sartaj receives a tip concerning Ganesh's whereabouts. As Ganesh recounts his life story to Sartaj from inside a bunker, tales about crime and corruption, Bollywood films, Indian intelligence, religion, and life's meaning emerge.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

HarperCollins. 928 pages. $27.95. ISBN: 0061130354

San Antonio Exp-News EXCELLENT/CLASSIC

"It is a terrific, brilliant, earthmover of a book, Crime and Punishment crossed with The Godfather, with some Sopranos-inspired irony thrown in to boot, and it has understandably made Chandra quite a bit famous back in India.... The question remains how it will be received here--and it's not an idle one." JOHN FREEMAN

Los Angeles Times GOOD/EXCELLENT

"One of the coolest things about Sacred Games is the crash course it offers in 21st century Indian society and especially the life of Mumbai.... Chandra loses control of the story now and then, as if he put a thread down for a little too long and everything had a different feel when he picked it up again." SUSAN SALTER REYNOLDS

Newsday GOOD/EXCELLENT

"Where Gaitonde is a character straight out of The Godfather, Sartaj is the kind of detective that haunted old film noir: cynical, world-weary, not above accepting a bribe or roughing up a suspect, but often too disgusted to be bothered.... Chandra's storytelling powers never flag ... but at 900 pages, one does begin to question the sheer mountain of information in Sacred Games." TOM BEER

San Francisco Chronicle GOOD/EXCELLENT

"The violence is bone-crunching.... Sacred Games is also a cocky experiment with the conventions of a thriller, breaking every rule a film director tells Gaitonde is needed for a successful formula film." SANDIP ROY

NY Times Book Review GOOD

"The appeal of Sacred Games lies in its mix of several commercially reliable formulas (the thriller, the mob saga, the police procedural) along with considerable helpings of sex and violence plus enough genre-bending twists to keep pulp aficionados off balance and intrigued.... Those who like their tales of potential apocalypse served up lean and bloody may find Sacred Games a little too well done." PAUL GRAY

Washington Post 1/2 POOR

"It is almost inconceivable to me that American readers will rush to buy this novel, much less keep on reading it after, say, the first 50 pages, yet HarperCollins is so convinced they will that it is betting the house on Sacred Games.... It masquerades as tough-minded about all the bloody, sordid business with which it is preoccupied, but its heart is little more than sentimental mush." JONATHAN YARDLEY

CRITICAL SUMMARY

To critics, Sacred Games seems nearly as bewilderingly complex as Mumbai itself. A Dickensesque thriller, the lengthy melodrama covers almost every imaginable topic--from religious nationalism to politics, castes, the seedy underworld, Bollywood, love, death, nuclear bombs, and the shimmering promise of capitalism. Although the novel focuses on two likeable men, Ganesh and Sartaj (who first appeared in Chandra's 1997 story collection, Love and Longing in Bombay), it meanders into the backstories and lives of dozens of other characters, creating a complicated--and somewhat alienating--web of subplots. Interesting if not succinct, Sacred Games forms "a colorful and textured tapestry of modern Indian life" for readers with ample patience (Newsday).

FAIR/GOOD

The Castle in the Forest

By Norman Mailer

The devil wears lederhosen.

Only after Alois Hitler beds his daughter, Klara, and makes possible the birth of Adolf, does the devil (called the Maestro) become interested in team Hitler. The Maestro dispatches Dieter, a mid-level devil masquerading as an SS officer, to the Hitler homestead, where it becomes clear early on that Adi is like none of the other neighborhood boys. He delights in watching beehives gassed and burned and becomes preternaturally obsessed with power. In scenes both operatic and chilling--even though Adolf's legacy has long been written and Mailer stops his story shortly after Adi's 14th birthday--Mailer renders the portrait of the dictator as a young man with seeming ease.

Random House. 496 pages. $27.95. ISBN: 0394536495

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

NY Times Book Review EXCELLENT

"This remarkable novel about the young Adolf Hitler, his family and their shifting circumstances, is Mailer's most perfect apprehension of the absolutely alien. No wonder it is narrated by a devil. Mailer doesn't inhabit these historical figures so much as possess them." LEE SIEGEL

Chicago Sun-Times GOOD

"Mailer turns out to be a far better storyteller than he is a muser on the nature of evil. You can forgive most of his out-of-this-world setup when the stuff on the ground--plotting, characters and action--are this engagingly drawn." JOHN BARRON

Entertainment Weekly GOOD

"Mailer has an inclusive vision of evil, one that embraces nurture, nature, and supernatural demonic forces, all of which come together in that perfect storm over the spick-and-span Hitler home.... Mailer paints an icy and convincing portrait of the dictator as a young sociopath, both prissy and sadistic, simultaneously sentimental and stupendously cruel." JENNIFER REESE

Los Angeles Times FAIR/GOOD

"[On] the whole, though intriguing, this is an odd book--a sort of narrative parade, in which one event simply follows another without the heightened trajectory that we expect of a novel. Ending The Castle in the Forest as he does, with Hitler still a teenager, Mailer seems only to have prepared the material, not to have fully examined it." RON HANSEN

Houston Chronicle POOR/FAIR

"A fresh vision is what The Castle in the Forest lacks. Mailer has skimmed the vast lore of Hitler's life and times--the novel has a six-page bibliography--and come up with a story that seems to blame the monstrousness of the future Fuhrer on incest, toilet training and the devil." CHARLES MATTHEWS

Rocky Mountain News POOR/FAIR

"That [Mailer] doesn't always know how to arrange the bizarre contents of his fevered imagination into striking prose structured by clear goals and intentions is a burden readers have to bear if they wish to enjoy the titillation he offers.... The real problem with this book is that it does little to cast a light into the shadowed life of Hitler." DUANE DAVIS

Washington Post POOR/FAIR

"The Castle in the Forest is a baffling, meandering, self-indulgent curio of a book--at moments brilliantly insightful and fascinating but more often prompting jaw-dropping incredulity.... The tone is arch and pompous; the dialogue throughout reads as if badly translated from rudimentary German." WILLIAM BOYD

CRITICAL SUMMARY

After tackling Marilyn Monroe, Jesus Christ (The Gospel According to the Son), Lee Harvey Oswald, Picasso, Muhammad Ali, and others, Norman Mailer claimed that an insistent muse led him to the story of Hitler's childhood. His first book in 10 years received mix reviews. Supporters opined that no matter how distasteful his subject, Mailer still exerts a powerful, mesmerizing hold on his readers. Detractors, however, cited a clumsy Freudian hypothesis (Hitler as possibly the off spring of father-daughter incest); too many distractions by the minion devil; undeveloped female characters; and a strange lack of psychological insight into Hitler's evil. Nonetheless, even they agree that Mailer is a master prose stylist whose eccentricity never fails to engage--on some level.

MAILER'S MASTERPIECE

THE EXECUTIONER'S SONG (1979): * PULITZER PRIZE. In this "true life novel," Mailer relates the backstory and trial of murderer Gary Gilmore, who in 1977 became the first man executed in the United States since the reinstatement of the death penalty.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

crime

FICTION

EXCELLENT

Limitations

By Scott Turow

A questionable case--and conscience.

This novel was originally published in serialized form in New York Times Magazine. George Mason, who appeared in Personal Injuries (1999), is facing another personal and professional crisis. A former criminal defense attorney and now an appellate judge in Kindle County, Illinois, Mason must cast the deciding vote on a grisly case: whether to overturn the conviction of four men who, as youths, raped a teenage girl. While the statute of limitations has expired, the evidence--a videotape of the perpetrators' gang rape--is irrefutable. Th e case evokes buried feelings of guilt over Mason's own behavior while in college, and his wife's cancer and threatening e-mails only complicate matters.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Picador. 208 pages. $13. ISBN: 0312426453

Chicago Sun-Times EXCELLENT

"I found this leanness attractive and effective and the best thing that's happened to Turow as a writer and as a storyteller. This story doesn't waste time and yet characters seem full and round and human; the leanness also permits the novel's connections to work as a skeleton to which he attaches muscle and gristle--discarding any fat." RANDY MICHAEL SIGNOR

Chicago Tribune EXCELLENT

"It's a quieter book than some of Turow's previous best-selling intelligent legal thrillers, any one of which makes a John Grisham novel seem like mighty thin gruel. But it remains an engrossing work of fiction." ALAN CHEUSE

Los Angeles Times EXCELLENT

"Turow, who still practices law, knows how smart lawyers think, and Limitations, like his previous seven novels, is a primer on the legal mind at work.... Things proceed quite briskly until [the end], however, and the moral questions that Turow posits are mercifully not resolved as neatly." MARC WEINGARTEN

Palm Beach Post EXCELLENT

"Turow's formula is a good one. He tells you enough of the backstory of his lawyers, judges and other legal types so you care what happens to them as fate and the felonious-at-heart plot against them." PAUL LOMARTIRE

San Antonio Exp-News EXCELLENT

"In the appearance vs. reality world of mystery/suspense novels, readers easily will spot the 'who' midway through Scott Turow's new novel, Limitations. What will stun readers at the end is the 'why.'" DAVID HENDRICKS

St. Louis Post-Dispatch EXCELLENT

"For once, the judicious Judge Mason must muck about in the ugliness of life (including the memory of his own sexual misadventure as a collegian) instead of passing judgment on it from above. But that makes this terse and well-written book sound abstract and preachy, and it's neither." HARRY LEVINS

CRITICAL SUMMARY

Limitations offers an inside view of Kindle County's Court of Appeals while posing a moral and professional dilemma in its central character. Critics agree that best-selling novelist Scott Turow is at the top of his form here. Most commented on the novel's leanness, which surprised them since it did nothing to detract from the suspenseful plot and three-dimensional characters (many from Turow's previous legal thrillers). The only point of disagreement centered on the concluding chapter--but readers will be hard pressed to find a better inquiry into the limits of law, love, memory, and human behavior.

GOOD/EXCELLENT

Find Me

A Mallory Novel

By Carol O'Connell

On the road again.

Kathy Mallory is not your average NYPD homicide detective. Abandoned as a child, she has become an increasingly unstable adult. In the ninth book in the series (after 2004's Winter House), a dead body is found in Mallory's apartment, she walks off the job, and she heads west to search for the father she never knew. On the road she meets a caravan of grieving parents tracking a serial killer who abducts children and dumps their bodies along the legendary Route 66. Mallory, with her partner Detective Sergeant Riker on her heels, suddenly finds herself caught in a game of cat and mouse with a cold-blooded murderer. But is Mallory the cat or the mouse?

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Putnam. 352 pages. $24.95. ISBN: 0399153950

Milwaukee Jrnl Sentinel EXCELLENT

"A mystery novel with perfectly placed layers of meaning that course through issues like redemption, discovery and revenge, Find Me is yet another example of the spot-on talents of one of America's finest, but too often overlooked, writers of mysteries.... O'Connell's deft novels are never just simply exercises in entertaining storytelling, they are in-depth character studies, mostly of Mallory herself, whose strange past continues to be revealed, book by book." DORMAN T. SHINDLER

New York Daily News EXCELLENT

"Find Me, the ninth title in her series featuring Kathy Mallory, is an open invitation to fans of complex, compelling thrillers to join the stone-cold cop as she again hunts her prey.... [It] isn't a brute-force thriller. It's intelligent, honed and taunting." SHERRYL CONNELLY

New York Times GOOD/EXCELLENT

"The author has pared and fine-tuned what was once a cumbersome style so that it is now as clean, lean and forceful as the series's heroine, whose spooky beauty and daunting manner make an indelible impression wherever she goes.... Most of Find Me makes it a terrific find: a tightly wrapped, expert combination of suspense, mystery and show-stopping character." JANET MASLIN

Orlando Sentinel GOOD/EXCELLENT

"Carol O'Connell's ninth novel in the Kathy Mallory series is a powerful story that would justify a spreadsheet to keep abreast of all the twists and turns.... Find Me becomes a breathtaking experience." ANN HELLMUTH

CRITICAL SUMMARY

Critics applauded Carol O'Connell's latest installment in the Kathy Mallory series, which contains a riveting plot and compelling characters--especially the mysterious, unpredictable Mallory. O'Connell is a skillful writer who deserves a wider readership, and Find Me may bring her just that. While a few reviewers found some of the details of Mallory's past redundant (since they had been covered in previous books), others felt that the background information made Find Me suitable for readers meeting Mallory for the first time. "The new book is entirely accessible and self-contained," the New York Times pointed out. "Read the others if you like, but start with this one." Readers who take a chance will be rewarded with a gripping, suspenseful joyride through the heart of rural America.

FIRST IN THE SERIES

MALLORY'S ORACLE (1994): When Detective Louis Markowitz, the man who rescued Mallory from the streets of New York City, is found dead and lying next to the latest victim of a serial killer who targets wealthy, elderly women, Mallory takes justice into her own hands.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

GOOD/EXCELLENT

The Hidden Assassins

By Robert Wilson

Disorder in Spain.

A mutilated, faceless, scalped, and handless body of a male appears in the city dump. The violence escalates when a bomb destroys a mosque, an apartment building, and a preschool. Fueled by public pressure, Seville homicide detective Jefe Javier Falcon, who last appeared in The Vanished Hands and The Blind Man of Seville, starts to investigate the complex motives behind these acts of terror. Are Islamist terrorists at work? Or, perhaps, Christian fundamentalists who hate Muslims? As more victims emerge, Falcon starts to realize that the violence has run far wider than anyone has realized--and may even cross Spain's borders.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Harcourt. 453 pages. $25. ISBN: 0151012393

Washington Post EXCELLENT

"By eschewing frenetic suspense for painstaking groundwork, [Wilson] allows the reader enough room to breathe and, most important, to care about main and supporting players such as a judge fighting for his political life, a crusading reporter with shifting loyalties and police officers at times overmatched by the weight of investigation." SARAH WEINMAN

Boston Globe GOOD/EXCELLENT

"Falcon, like the reader, is deeply and appropriately disturbed by the horrors that humans inflict on each other, and the grotesque nature of the crimes underlines his humanity. In fact, while The Hidden Assassins may be the most gruesome of the Falcon books, it is also the warmest." CLEA SIMON

Cleveland Plain Dealer GOOD/EXCELLENT

"Falcon is smart and relentless and thoroughly decent, which makes him a capable, if less than captivating, guide through the complicated tangle of motives and suspects.... The Hidden Assassins is smart and challenging, a mystery that demonstrates the flexibility of a genre that is too often constrained by convention and stereotypes." JAMES F. SWEENEY

USA Today GOOD/EXCELLENT

"American readers may be bewildered at first by the unexplained references to Spanish politics or bureaucratic infighting between the CNI and CGI. Think CIA and FBI.... The Hidden Assassins is a complicated, disturbing novel for complicated, disturbing times." BOB MINZESHEIMER

Los Angeles Times FAIR/GOOD

"Wilson likes to weave a certain amount of his principal characters' often dark personal histories into his stories, which means his novels are never models of narrative efficiency. Sometimes, these subplots resonate interestingly with the main one; sometimes, they are underdeveloped distractions." RICHARD SCHICKEL

CRITICAL SUMMARY

About terrorism, religious zealotry, and good old-fashioned human foibles like greed, The Hidden Assassins mixes the personal with the political. With a complex plot and many--perhaps too many--subplots, the mystery offers nuanced insights into crime, culture, psychology, religion, history, and personal relationships. Rich in settings, details, and characters--particularly the intelligent and sensitive Falcon--the book nonetheless gets caught up in itself. Some characters are mere spouters of politics; much of the violence is gratuitous; and the philosophizing "interrupt[s] the smooth flow of fantasy" (Los Angeles Times). Then again, with themes as heavy as terrorism, readers shouldn't expect a feel-good novel.

ALSO BY THE AUTHOR

A SMALL DEATH IN LISBON (1999): * GOLD DAGGER AWARD. In 1941, the SS convinces a Berlin industrialist to go to neutral Portugal and smuggle tungsten to the Nazis. In 1999, a teenage girl from a prominent family is murdered. These events are, of course, somehow connected.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

GOOD/EXCELLENT

The Shadow Catchers

By Thomas Lakeman

Disappearing children.

FBI Special Agent Michael Yeager has a dark history behind him, including a child kidnapping case that went awry in Philadelphia. Suspended and ashamed, Yeager retreats to the small town of San Cristobal, Nevada. Despite his attempt to start life anew, he soon becomes involved in a child's "accidental" death ... and then a murder ... and then another girl's disappearance. The police first suspect him, but when he clears his name, Yeager, bound by his tormented conscience, starts to track the path of "the shadow catcher," a serial killer.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

St. Martin's Minotaur. 321 pages. $23.95. ISBN: 0312347995

South FL Sun-Sentinel EXCELLENT

"The Shadow Catchers is pitch perfect noir, filled with dark corners, even in the sunlight. Lakeman knows how to apply touches of the western novel--Michael is the epitome of the high plains drifter--horror and the hard-boiled mystery in this rousing debut.... The realistic characters are worth caring about." OLINE H. COGDILL

Washington Post GOOD/EXCELLENT

"There's little new here, but the novel works because Lakeman relates his nightmare with skill, confidence and a sharp eye for detail--he believes in his dark tale enough to make us buy it, too.... State-of-the-art violence may not be your idea of fun, but if it is, The Shadow Catchers is an engrossing read." PATRICK ANDERSON

Gumshoe Review GOOD

"I'm torn between hoping Lakeman continues with the character and fearing that this promising new talent will get locked into one story and one voice, because his debut with The Shadow Catchers offers the hope that he may have what it takes to become more than the author of a good book, which this certainly is, but an author who will get better and better as his own story unfolds." ERNEST LILLEY

Boston Globe FAIR/GOOD

"Too many grisly murders, too many suspects, too many plot kinks and switcheroos. Instead of 'Aha!' at the end, it's 'Huh?'" HALLIE EPHRON

CRITICAL SUMMARY

If his debut novel is representative of books to come, Thomas Lakeman, a professor at the University of South Alabama, shows great promise as a new voice in crime fiction. While The Shadow Catchers offers no earth-shattering story line, critics agree that Lakeman brings intelligence, wit, suspense, and excellent detail, dialogue, and characterization to his story. Even though it's about justice and redemption, The Shadow Catchers may trouble some readers with its extreme darkness and violence. Other readers, like Hallie Ephron, found the novel confusing, if well written. But consensus has it: Lakeman is a writer to watch.

GOOD/EXCELLENT

The Shape Shifter

By Tony Hillerman

Identity and murder.

American tribal policemen Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee return for their 19th adventure (after 2004's Skeleton Man). Though Leaphorn has officially retired from the tribal police force, a picture of a Navajo rug cut from the magazine Luxury Living reminds him of a similar rug, one commemorating the Navajo Nation's "Long Walk" home, which was supposedly destroyed, along with one of the FBI's most wanted, years earlier. If the valuable rug survived, wonders Leaphorn, could the criminal have as well? With some help from Chee and his new bride, Leaphorn searches for a killer who can seemingly disappear at will and turn himself into someone else.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

HarperCollins. 288 pages. $25.95. ISBN: 0060563451

Cleveland Plain Dealer EXCELLENT

"After a few sluggish novels, it's great to see Tony Hillerman return to top form with The Shape Shifter.... The book is filled with fascinating Indian lore and the plot gallops to its satisfying conclusion." MICHELE ROSS

Los Angeles Times EXCELLENT

"Hillerman, a student of history, a former journalist and teacher, is deeply taken with the Southwest's intriguing mix of modern and traditional cultures. The vivid exploration of these interests through the characters and the setting of The Shape Shifter make this another of his books likely to cross over from the mystery genre to find wide general popularity." IRENE WANNER

NY Times Book Review EXCELLENT

"Like all the great storytellers, from Homer on down, Tony Hillerman knows that every dark and twisted tale of murder can be traced back to its mythic origins.... Hillerman's lyrical novel is as much about recovering these lost legends--and the existential purpose they offer an aging hero in recoil from 'the retirement world'--as it is about bringing a criminal to justice." MARILYN STASIO

Orlando Sentinel EXCELLENT

"Tony Hillerman's leisurely style of storytelling again examines the transformation myth of Navajo lore, where witches escape danger by reinventing themselves. Once again with The Shape Shifter, the old master opens the doors to an ancient culture while blending it with a chilling story of modern evil." ANN HELLMUTH

Washington Post EXCELLENT

"The gentle style of this laconic author and his even more laconic Leaphorn are immensely appealing, as are his insights into Navajo behavior, such as a reluctance to interrupt when anyone is speaking.... For readers bent on the whodunit aspect, the title offers a whopping clue, but The Shape Shifter has more to offer than mystery." PHILIPPA STOCKLEY

Ft. Worth Star-Telegram GOOD/EXCELLENT

"Aside from a shift backward in time at the start of Chapter 2, it's a simple, linear story that plays out predictably, albeit with a tiny flourish of surprise at the end.... If there's a problem with Shape Shifter, it's that it's too much of the Hillerman genre."

Entertainment Weekly FAIR/GOOD

"Hillerman's tale of an ancient rug and a killer believed to be long dead is nicely colored with background about Native American mythology, but his plot is a tad on the slow side." CLARK COLLIS

CRITICAL SUMMARY

Fans of the Leaphorn/Chee mysteries will delight in seeing how the characters have evolved. Leaphorn is retired and Chee recently married, and though both are showing signs of age, they are no less willing (or able) to tackle some heady crimes. Blending Navajo legend with good old-fashioned suspense, Hillerman also offers a treatise on the meaning of life. He uses the central image of shifting shapes--the fluidity of identity--to fuel Leaphorn's inner monologue about fitting in neither here nor there. Careful readers may solve the mystery before Leaphorn, but the wonder of this novel lies in the way in which Leaphorn reaches the, perhaps, inevitable conclusion.

FAIR

Hannibal Rising

By Thomas Harris

One cannibal's beginnings.

In Hannibal Lecter, Thomas Harris created the one of the 20th century's most memorable and maniacal villains. Hannibal Rising (after 1988's Silence of the Lambs and 1999's Hannibal) reaches back to Lecter's early years to uncover the roots of his singular evil. The story starts during World War II, when eight-year-old Hannibal watches his family home destroyed in Lithuania, and sees something even more gruesome happen to his sister. As he seeks to redress this wrong, Hannibal falls in love with his Japanese aunt (the source of Lecter's highly refined aesthetic sense), goes to medical school, and, one imagines, picks up helpful tips on pairing food with wine.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Delacorte. 336 pages. $27.95. ISBN: 0385339410

Boston Globe GOOD

"While Harris has explained, in gripping detail, Hannibal Lecter's mysterious origins, perhaps Lecter is a more frightening character in Silence of the Lambs, where his childhood traumas, his dark closet of memories remained tightly shut." CHUCK LEDDY

Charlotte Observer GOOD

"What is peculiar is that, as opposed to the earlier (and superior) Lecter novels, the violence is now committed in righteous indignation. Lecter is no longer the psycho who delivered to readers a delicious shudder--he's an avenging angel, and there is something dispiriting about that." SAM SHAPIRO

Dallas Morning News FAIR/GOOD

"Mr. Harris' prose has begun to feel more and more like a screenplay between two covers. The police procedural detail that made Red Dragon so sticky has melted away, leaving behind snappy dialogue, cartoonishly drawn characters and a penchant for sentence fragments." JOHN FREEMAN

NY Times Book Review FAIR/GOOD

"What this young-cannibal story describes is a process by which desire is reduced to mere appetite; and it suggests, provocatively, that the function of taste is simply to make that desire-free appetite a little more interesting. That's a sad thought. And I can't help wondering whether Hannibal Lecter is interesting enough for Thomas Harris anymore." TERRENCE RAFFERTY

Denver Post FAIR

"Harris seems to want us to feel sorry for Hannibal, to ask ourselves what we would do under similar circumstances. If that is indeed what he is up to, it is a valiant effort--but no cigar." TOM WALKER

Philadelphia Inquirer FAIR

"With each succeeding book ... the tone and setting have grown increasingly effete and European. The further [Lecter] moves from his pulpy roots ... the less interesting he becomes." DAVID HILTBRAND

New York Times 1/2 POOR

"Its sadism is subdued (though still sickening), and its young Hannibal sounds nothing like the older one. The reader who begins with this new book will have no idea why any of the older ones are well regarded." JANET MASLIN

CRITICAL SUMMARY

After the runaway success of Red Dragon (1981) and The Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal profoundly disappointed both literary and film critics, not to mention fans of the series. Harris returns with Hannibal Rising, to mixed acclaim. A sense of bafflement pervades the negative reviews, with critics puzzled by how a talent like Thomas Harris could turn out what they perceive to be a glorified screenplay (the film version of Hannibal Rising was released in early 2007) written purely to cannibalize the reputation of the series. Reviewers who look past the marketing blitz find something of value in this prequel--not enough to wholly recommend it, but not enough to discredit it either. One thing both sides agree upon: Hannibal works better as a background character. It seems that the more we know about evil, the less frightening it becomes.

BOOKMARKS SELECTION

EXCELLENT

The Naming of the Dead

By Ian Rankin

Will Rebus ever retire?

As world leaders gather at the G8 summit in Scotland in July 2005, antiestablishment Detective Inspector John Rebus, grumpier than usual, is staying away from the demonstrations, police activity, and general raucousness accompanying the G8 meeting and London suicide bombings. Then, a suspicious death and four murders suggest that a serial killer is on the prowl, and Rebus, sidelined from the summit, along with his friend and colleague Detective Sergeant Siobahn Clark, get drawn into the investigation. Unfortunately, Rebus is rumored to retire in a year, and few are excited to once again witness him clash with the world around him.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Orion. 432 pages. $24.95. ISBN: 0752868586

Globe and Mail [Toronto] EXCELLENT/CLASSIC

"With civic bravery comparable to that of Norman Mailer at his best, but with skills in plotting, pacing and creating dialogue superior to just about anyone writing in English today, Rankin refuses to allow journalists and pundits the last word on what those who marched that day were actually up against in the quest to create an egalitarian society globally." T. F. RIGELHOF

Birmingham Post [UK] EXCELLENT

"This is Rankin's most ambitious book for several years and is flawlessly executed as he manages to juggle plot strands and characters with wonderful dexterity. If Rebus is to retire, as is rumoured, his colleague Detective Sergeant Siobahn Clarke is now supremely qualified to step into the old grouch's boots." MIKE RIPLEY

Coventry ET [UK] EXCELLENT

"What follows is an examination by author Rankin of the nature of power. From the tiniest reciprocal favour between two people to the demands of global power-broking. And drinking and smoking his way through the thick of it is Rebus." PAUL ALLEN

Independent [UK] EXCELLENT

"It's page-turning, complicated crime, with some fine vignettes containing the only convincing pathos in the book. It feels as if written on the hoof by someone running round with a microphone, collecting soundbites of humour, fury and moral angst--like Dickens on speed, highly enjoyable, but ultimately breathless." FRANCES FYFIELD

Irish Times EXCELLENT

"[A]thriller which combines the page-turning appeal of a modern police procedural with the moral complexity of a political drama.... [Siobhan Clarke is] a strong yet vulnerable character." JOHN BOYNE

Sunday Telegraph [UK] EXCELLENT

"With Rebus books, the criticism is all relative. This is still the best crime novel you'll read this year." AILEEN REID

CRITICAL SUMMARY

Critics fear that The Naming of the Dead, Ian Rankin's 16th Inspector Rebus novel, may be the last we see of Rebus. After all, he's aged in real time and, now 60, probably deserves to retire. Set against the violent but fascinating G8 summit meeting in Edinburgh, the police procedural continues to unearth Rebus's psyche while exploring political themes and issues of power and personal responsibility. Because of its crossover appeal, compelling subplots, and moral complexity, many reviewers cite Naming of the Dead as perhaps the best in the series. Siobahn Clark comes into her own after her mother is attacked during the demonstrations, leading some to believe that when Rebus finally retires, she'll step into his shoes. Time will tell.

START OF THE SERIES

KNOTS AND CROSSES (1987): A serial killer haunts the streets of Edinburgh, and Inspector Rebus is on the case. He doesn't yet realize that there's a connection between the murders and a series of anonymous letters he has been receiving--and that he may soon be a target.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

EXCELLENT

Hollywood Station

By Joseph Wambaugh

It's LA, and it's changed.

Joseph Wambaugh set The New Centurions (1971) and The Onion Field (1973) in 1970s Los Angeles, but things have changed quite a bit since then. In his first novel in a decade, Wambaugh returns to the LAPD--this time to an understaffed office at Hollywood Station, where cops mix with drugged-out lowlifes, prostitutes, and gullible tourists along the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The 68-year-old sergeant, nicknamed "the Oracle," keeps an eye on his own strange squad--a new, lactating mother; a college dropout; and two 30-something surfer dudes, among others--as they get caught up in the Hollywood underworld of Russian mobsters, druggies, crooks, and murderers.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Little, Brown. 352 pages. $24.99. ISBN: 0316066141

Chicago Sun-Times EXCELLENT

"Hollywood Station is somewhat unusual for a mystery novel in that it doesn't have much of a plot.... Wambaugh has his finger on the pulse of today's police force in a way that most other authors simply can't match, and that makes his work a delight to read." DAVID J. MONTGOMERY

Los Angeles Times EXCELLENT

"In the hands of a lesser writer, Fausto and Budgie would remain battling stereotypes, but Wambaugh gives their relationship both a sharpness and arc that are genuinely moving, as are the stories of the other women assigned to the station.... [W]orthy of comparison to the best writing of McBain and Westlake." PAULA L. WOODS

Milwaukee Jrnl Sentinel EXCELLENT

"While writers like James Ellroy focus on one period of Los Angeles' decay, Wambaugh has been able to stay current with the devolution of the city and its infamous police force, along with trends in music, street jargon, demographics, the techniques of crooks and, of course, drugs.... Wambaugh may not have invented the cop novel, but he perfected it." ADAM DUNN

Orlando Sentinel EXCELLENT

"Wambaugh introduces a collection of characters that grows on the reader with each turn of the page.... Hollywood Station sparkles with intelligent, witty writing, black humor, unforgettable characters and a classic ending." ANN HELLMUTH

Philadelphia Inquirer EXCELLENT

"His cops, as well as his criminals, are realistic characters, not the one-dimensional heroes and villains we see in so many bad crime novels, movies and TV programs.... Even after a 10-year break, Wambaugh can still write an enlightening and entertaining novel." PAUL DAVIS

Wall Street Journal GOOD/EXCELLENT

"Mr. Wambaugh manages to find a dramatic arc by portraying Hollywood's underworld: a ragtag collection of Russian mobsters, Latino hoods, cross-dressing prostitutes and meth-addicted lowlifes. Woven throughout are vignettes involving his patrol cops and detectives." DAN HORAN

CRITICAL SUMMARY

Joseph Wambaugh, a retired veteran of the LAPD, transformed the police procedural genre in the 1970s with his flawed, gritty cops. For Hollywood Station, he gleaned more than 50 stories from police and detectives to keep the novel up-to-date with the 21st century. Critics were extremely impressed with Wambaugh's ability to create characters--hipper, more modern, more diverse--to fit a politically, socially, and demographically different, post-Rodney King LA. The characters and their relationships, rather than the plot, take center stage, but the smart writing, action, dark humor, and penetrating expose of LA's subculture will keep fans turning the pages.

ALSO BY THE AUTHOR

THE NEW CENTURIONS (1971): The story follows three Los Angeles police officers--beat cops--from training through their next five years on the force in the early 1960s, including their experience of the Watts Riots. It's not a story of cases, but of the people and their motivations. Gritty--and recommended.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

sf

FICTION

EXCELLENT

Scar Night

By Alan Campbell

High-octane fantasy.

The city of Deepgate hangs suspended by a complex network of chains over the abyss, the realm of the angel-god Lord Ulcis. The city's dead are offered in tribute to Ulcis, who marshals his strength to overthrow his mother, the goddess Ayen. The effort to save Deepgate hinges on Dill, a young winged angel and the last of his kind (one of his ancestors, a fallen angel, created the abyss when he crashed to earth). Dill trains to become a warrior and to save the city by journeying into the abyss. To be continued in the author's planned trilogy ...

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Spectra. 432 pages. $22. ISBN: 0553384163

Agony Column EXCELLENT

"Scar Night reads like the other heavyweight fantasy trilogy, and my favorite bar none, Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast.... The scenario here is dark, grimy and deeply disturbing, more horror story set in the surreal than a fantasy-version of yesteryear's conflict." RICK KLEFFEL

Guardian EXCELLENT

"For a first novel, Scar Night is indecently good, despite occasional slickness and a slight loss of control over the dialogue towards the end. And if Campbell owes heavy debts to Mervyn Peake and John Milton, well, there are worse influences to choose; and the debt is not so heavy that he can be accused of lacking a voice of his own." JON COURTENAY GRIMWOOD

Sci Fi Weekly EXCELLENT

"This debut novel from a writer whose previous notoriety stems from his contributions to the video game Grand Theft Auto inaugurates a series to be known as The Deepgate Codex, and while the first volume reaches a very satisfying conclusion, it leaves its many protagonists all in an open-ended state--at least the ones who survive the various cataclysms herein." PAUL DI FILIPPO

Strange Horizons GOOD/EXCELLENT

"[Campbell's] prose is vivid and evocative; Deepgate in particular is lovingly depicted, in passages which are as aural and tactile as they are visual.... The characters, although sometimes a little too familiar or stereotyped ... are solidly realised and believable, largely as a result of Campbell's ear for dialogue." FINN DEMPSTER

CRITICAL SUMMARY

Scottish author Alan Campbell was previously a software designer best known for bringing to life the controversial Grand Theft Auto series. Scar Night, more than a decade in the making and the opening salvo in The Deepgate Codex trilogy, has tongues wagging in sci-fi/fantasy circles. Th e novel evokes comparisons to the work of Mervyn Peake (Gormenghast), George R. R. Martin (A Song of Ice and Fire), China Mieville (Perdido Street Station), and even John Milton and Charles Dickens. Campbell's debut is well worth reading for its vividly rendered settings, alluring characters, and complex philosophical issues that will carry the final two volumes to their inevitably explosive conclusions.

CITED BY THE CRITICS

GORMENGHAST TRILOGY | MERVYN PEAKE: The first book in this gothic fantasy trilogy, Titus Groan, was published in 1946. Gormenghast is a large, sprawling castle; the trilogy tells the story of Titus's rise to power (a role he may not accept). There is no magic here, nor any other beings than humans--some have deemed it a "fantasy of manners."

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

GOOD/EXCELLENT

Next

By Michael Crichton

Will blondes go extinct?

"This novel is fiction, except for the parts that aren't," writes Michael Crichton. Drawing from some of the most controversial topics in medicine and genetics today, he interweaves a set of horrific, loosely related tales of high-stakes intrigue centered on the biotechnology industry and its ethics. Stem cells, transgenic creatures, debates on the future of certain physical traits, the end of drug addiction (but at what cost?), billion-dollar lawsuits over discarded cancerous tissue--it's all here. The topics are ripped from the headlines. Crichton summarizes his policy recommendations in an author's note at the end and supplements the text with a lengthy bibliography of further reading in genetics.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

HarperCollins. 431 pages. $27.95. ISBN: 0060872985

Dallas Morning News EXCELLENT

"In his latest work of fiction, Mr. Crichton has embraced the subject of genetic technology, and the results are as entertaining as anything he has written since Jurassic Park.... He takes the novelist's liberties with a lot of his material but also polishes the ideas with the sheen that only an imaginative writer can bestow." ALAN CHEUSE

USA Today EXCELLENT

"If you didn't care for Crichton's last two techno-novels--Prey and State of Fear--it's time to kiss and make up. He's in top form with Next, writing with a lighter touch that complements the absurd but not so far-fetched utilizations of gene technologies he cooks up." CAROL MEMMOTT

Philadelphia Inquirer GOOD/EXCELLENT

"With stem cells, embryonic research, and predicted miracle cures so much in the news, the topic is great fodder for headlines. As Next proves, in the hands of the right author, it can provide fine material for fiction as well. Crichton is one of the few writers with the brains and the chutzpah to pull it off, and he has done so in spectacular fashion." DAVID J. MONTGOMERY

Los Angeles Times GOOD

"Next is a novel about the implications of genetic research, legal and illegal, well-meaning and tainted by commercialism--a subject that requires all of Crichton's ingenuity to be stuffed into 400 or so pages along with all the sex, violence and skulduggery that the genre demands.... As entertaining as Next can be, it's too monochromatic a picture of fecklessness and corruption to stand in credibly for the real world of genetic research." MICHAEL HARRIS

Wall Street Journal FAIR/GOOD

"In Next, Mr. Crichton conjures so many characters, all of them unsympathetic (and deliciously vivid), that he hardly has space to construct a plot at all. The book is in effect a collection of short horror stories from the biotechnology industry, some of which come together only at the end, and rather uncomfortably if at all." MATT RIDLEY

Washington Post FAIR/GOOD

"Among his points are that genes should not be patented, that we need clear guidelines for the use of human tissues and that we should avoid bans on research.... All this is fine, and maybe the occasional reader will be inspired to do serious follow-up research, but my guess is that the vast majority will just come for the freak show." PATRICK ANDERSON

CRITICAL SUMMARY

Following State of Fear (GOOD Mar/Apr 2005), Michael Crichton's controversial statement on global warming, the high priest of the techno-thriller has done it again. He captures readers' imaginations with cutting-edge research and edge-of-your seat plotting. Each of the scenarios, from a chimp masquerading as a boy to a parrot injected with human genes, is at least possible, if not always plausible. The usual complaints arise--shallow characters, Hollywood story lines (or no story lines), some less-than-subtle sermonizing--but Crichton's loyal fans and perhaps some new ones will be drawn to the novel's premise. Even naysayers begrudgingly admit that Crichton knows how to tell a story. More than a dozen best sellers and another irresistible, timely idea suggest that they're probably right.

BOOKMARKS SELECTION

EXCELLENT

The Privilege of the Sword

By Ellen Kushner

Gender and expectation.

In a world of swords but no sorcerers, a protracted dispute between the Mad Duke Tremontaine of Riverside and his impoverished sister changes the life of her daughter, Katherine Talbert. At 15, Katherine is sent from the country to live with her wealthy uncle in the city, an arrangement aimed at settling the conflict. Instead of wearing pretty clothes and attending balls, she's required to dress in men's clothing and learn swordsman ship. She navigates the labyrinthine underbelly of Riverside while absorbing lessons about gender, class, and privilege--and even defends the honor of a damsel in distress. The novel narrates Katherine's development from a naive teen to an adult sword fighter with a sophisticated understanding of how this fascinating world works.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Bantam. 400 pages. $14. ISBN: 0553382683

Green Man Review EXCELLENT/CLASSIC

"[N]ot just a study in class, but a dissection of our whole way of thinking, even in a supposedly post-feminist world, about men and women and what their appropriate roles are.... If Swordspoint is a perfect gem, The Privilege of the Sword is the gem in its full setting: elegant, wicked, funny, intelligent, and fluent." ROBERT M. TILENDIS

Bookslut EXCELLENT

"[A] ripping good yarn that is chock full of engrossing and subversive undercurrents.... The only failure of Sword is both a curse and a blessing. The story doesn't feel 100 percent complete when read in isolation." ADRIENNE MARTINI

Magazine of Fantasy & SF EXCELLENT

"There's a lot in this book about the lives of women in a society that treats women as either chattel or, well, chattel, really--but Kushner never sermonizes.... It might give some people something to think about if they're not so engrossed in the what-happens-next that makes this book such a delight." MICHELLE WEST

Strange Horizons EXCELLENT

"Katherine's story, and the stories of those around her, concern privilege: who has it, who doesn't have it, and the consequences it brings.... The Privilege of the Sword, for all its serious underpinnings, is a delight to read, with colorful, well-defined characters and a droll sense of humor." YOON HA LEE

Sci Fi Weekly GOOD/EXCELLENT

"Is The Privilege of the Sword as good as Swordspoint? The answer is: Pretty damned close!... The Privilege of the Sword has a couple of weak points, in its rather rushed climax and a conclusion that is both fairytale-ish and a tad ambiguous." CYNTHIA WARD

CRITICAL SUMMARY

Ellen Kushner, host of public radio's Sound & Spirit, won the 1991 World Fantasy A