Features archive | BookPage

Welcome to the all-new BookPage.com!

by Trisha Ping

Dear BookPage.com readers,

You may have noticed that our site looks a little bit different. We've given BookPage.com a new look (just like we did for The Book Case a few weeks ago), and we hope it makes it even easier to discover your next great book.

In addition to the full print edition and web exclusive content we've been sharing for some time, we've added a few new features:

• Revamped reader profiles let you save reviews of books you want to read later, email them to a friend or post your favorites to Facebook or Twitter.

• Our new author pages put all the reviews and interviews we have written about your favorite author over the past 20 years in one place.

• A redesigned archive page lets you easily browse past issues.

Over the next month (OK, probably the next few months!) we'll be working out some kinks and formatting issues, so we hope you'll hang in there, enjoy what's new and tell your friends.

Trisha Ping

BookPage Web Editor

Dear BookPage.com readers,

You may have noticed that our site looks a little bit different. We've given BookPage.com a new look (just like we did for The Book Case a few weeks ago),…

Children's & YA, Middle Grade, Picture Book

Books in space

Feature by MiChelle Jones

by MiChelle Jones

Some of the authors and illustrators of the books timed to mark the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing are longtime space fans. They faithfully monitored the Apollo 11 mission and documented the adventures of Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Mike Collins in treasured scrapbooks. Now, a new generation will be inspired to follow dreams of traveling back to the moon or even to Mars, or perhaps designing the equipment and procedures for those missions.
Mission, possible

It was a close race, but Jerry Stone’s One Small Step: Celebrating the First Men on the Moon wins honors for best cover. A round hologram shows an astronaut climbing down a ladder, stepping on the moon, moving closer and finally standing front-and-center holding a flag. The rest of the book, presented as an Apollo program scrapbook kept by the grandson of a Mission Control employee (and son of a present-day NASA scientist), is equally fascinating. Scores of photographs—of things like the Apollo 11 crew eating breakfast, a Saturn V rocket under construction—some of which lift to reveal more information—fill the book and wonderful two-page spreads document the in-space experience, the crew’s return to Earth, etc. Other nice touches include a mission diagram of orbits, docking and undocking maneuvers; minibooks of countdown checklists and mission menus; removable facsimiles of VIP and press passes for the Apollo 11 launch; and a hologram showing the rocket lifting off the pad.

There are lots of similarities between One Small Step and Alan Dyer’s Mission to the Moon, including a show-stopping cover—this one features an embossed image of an Apollo 11 astronaut on the lunar surface. A mix of images and short blocks of text (much more inviting and accessible than long passages) cover the men, machines and other aspects of the Apollo program in well-designed spreads. Factor in the enclosed double-sided poster and truly spectacular DVD of authentic NASA footage, and this book is sure to please children and adults.

Junior version
Andrew Chaikin was a space-obsessed 12-year-old the first time he met Apollo 12 astronaut Alan Bean, and there’s a photo on the back flap of Mission Control, This Is Apollo: The Story of the First Voyages to the Moon to prove it. Chaikin, writing with wife Victoria Kohl, covers the same wide territory he so expertly presented in A Man on the Moon, here in a version for junior space fans. There are plenty of photographs of activities on the ground and in space, informative sidebars (waste management gets glorious treatment, as it does in many of the space books published this year) and colorful graphics to appeal to young minds.

In addition to original paintings of his colleagues and their missions, Bean contributes personal reminiscences about them, as well as details about the paintings themselves. For example, he stages the scenes with small models he makes himself, uses crushed soil to add texture and sometimes even grinds up small pieces of mission patches, flags and NASA emblems from his spacesuits into the paint. For budding artists or those otherwise intrigued by the paintings, consider Painting Apollo: First Artist on Another World (Smithsonian Books), which includes 107 of Bean’s paintings and is the companion volume to an exhibition at the National Air & Space Museum July 16 through January 2010.

Fly me to the moon
Buzz Aldrin flew on the Apollo mission just before Alan Bean’s. He teams up again with painter (and pilot) Wendell Minor for Look to the Stars, the follow-up to 2005’s Reaching for the Moon. It’s a quick trip through aviation history sprinkled with personal insights and recollections from Aldrin. He tells us, for example, that crewmate Armstrong took along a piece of fabric from the Wright Brothers’ plane to the moon. (He doesn’t mention that aviation pioneer Charles Lindbergh was in the viewing stand for Apollo 11’s launch, seated next to Apollo 13’s Jim Lovell. But, hey, Aldrin was obviously too busy that day to notice.) The timeline at the end of the book is packed with information and looks like a cool 1950s mobile.

One Giant Leap takes its title from the famous words spoken by Armstrong when he became the first man to step on the moon. Written by Robert Burleigh, the book skips the launch and starts when the lunar lander separates from the command service module and heads off toward the moon. Mike Wimmer’s paintings capture the stark beauty of outer space—and his likenesses of the astronauts are astounding.

Brian Floca offers a completely different view of the Apollo 11 mission in Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11. Reading Chaikin’s A Man on the Moon inspired Floca to write (and, of course, illustrate) his own project. His paintings are bright and airy, perfect for suggesting the sensation of floating in space, but equally effective portraying Mission Control, liftoff and star-studded space vistas. Floca's images are paired with lyrical text that turns the technical achievement of the moon landing into a poetic—and thrilling—adventure. Author and/or illustrator of more than two dozen children's books, including the Sibert Honor-winning Lightship, Floca reaches new heights in Moonshot.

Cool, daddy, cool
If you’ve not yet seen the world via M. Sasek’s series of children’s travel books, here’s the perfect excuse to do so: This is the Way to the Moon is the latest of the series to be re-released. Originally published in 1963, the book is a colorful time capsule from the hip world of Cape Canaveral during the era of “Right Stuff” astronauts. Sasek’s simple, stylish drawings show off the clothes, cars and buildings of the day—including a beautiful rendering of a two-story hotel favored by the Mercury 7 astronauts, complete with pool, splashy sign and geometric wrought-iron railing. Sasek also wrote the accompanying text, which is tinged with the sarcasm of a late 1950s animated feature. Halfway through This is the Way to the Moon, he makes an easy transition into more technical drawings of rockets—really missiles at this point in the space program—and explanatory copy.

Tomi Ungerer’s Moon Man is another oldie but goodie re-released this year. Rockets don’t appear until nearly the end of this tale about the man in the moon catching a ride on a falling star to satisfy his curiosity about the fun-loving earthlings he spies each night. After causing a series of events familiar to fans of the 1951 version of The Day the Earth Stood Still, the moon man visits a tinkerer-scientist and catches a ride back to his orb. Ungerer’s lush colorful illustrations add to the poignancy of the story.

Memoir

Memoir

Behind the Book: Hemingway classic restored

Feature by Seán Hemingway

by Seán Hemingway

On July 14, 2009, the 45th anniversary of the book’s publication, a restored edition of A Moveable Feast was published by Scribner. Seán Hemingway, a writer and editor who is Ernest Hemingway’s grandson, introduced and edited the new volume. Here, Seán Hemingway talks about this project and his grandfather's legacy.

“If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.”

Most people do not realize that the title of Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast was not chosen by my grandfather or that significant revisions to his final manuscript were made after his death in 1961. People do not realize this because the book was presented as completed in 1960. However, it was never finished in Hemingway’s eyes and it is clear that he worked on it practically until his death.

The title, of course, is wonderful. In many ways Mary Hemingway, my grandfather’s widow and my godmother, did a fine job editing the book, but she made changes to the text that we know the author did not want and passed them off as his own. The Restored Edition of A Moveable Feast is based on my grandfather’s last manuscript with his notations and emendations. Even without a final chapter, it is, I believe, a truer representation of the book that he intended to publish.

My favorite title that Hemingway considered for the book is "How Different It Was When You Were There."

Some years ago, my uncle Patrick Hemingway suggested I re-examine the original manuscripts for A Moveable Feast. He always suspected that Mary Hemingway had purposefully deleted parts of the book about his mother, Pauline, downplaying her role as another Mrs. Ernest Hemingway. In a sense, he was right, as readers of the Restored Edition will see, but it is more complicated than that. For example, the order of the chapters was changed and, perhaps most significantly, only part of an ending was re-crafted from one that Hemingway had considered, but decided not to use.

In Paris in the 1920s, Ezra Pound had told Hemingway that writing your memoirs meant you were at the end. Hemingway preferred to write fiction since it allowed a writer of his talents to craft more perfect stories out of his experience and invention. Although Hemingway avowed many times that he would only write about himself as a last resort, he experimented with memoir throughout his life. There is, of course, Green Hills of Africa, which holds a special place among his works for me as the account of my grandfather and grandmother’s safari in East Africa. What distinguishes A Moveable Feast though, and what is more characteristic of memoir, is the significant length of time between what happens in the book and when the author wrote it. My favorite title that Hemingway considered for the book is “How Different It Was When You Were There.” I think that this was a humorous jab—and the humor in Hemingway’s writing is undervalued—at the volumes of writing that had already been published on that historic time in Paris by people who were not there. Our perception is very different in media res and we feel this in Hemingway’s vignettes, which are personal, idiosyncratic recollections, intimate and emotive.

Despite the author’s own comments in the book about the difficulty of the writing process and the need for revisions, many of his first drafts are remarkably clean, poignant testaments to his continued abilities as a writer later in life.

It was thrilling for me to work directly with my grandfather’s manuscripts. Readers of the Restored Edition can share in that excitement since a selection of the actual manuscript pages have been reproduced in the book. Hemingway wrote his first drafts in longhand, and you do not have to be a handwriting analyst from the FBI to appreciate his bold, fluid penmanship. Despite the author’s own comments in the book about the difficulty of the writing process and the need for revisions, many of his first drafts are remarkably clean, poignant testaments to his continued abilities as a writer later in life.

The Restored Edition includes a section with 10 chapters that Hemingway wrote for the book but decided not to include, acting “by the old rule that how good a book is should be judged by the man who writes it by the excellence of the material that he eliminates.” These sketches were not finished to the author’s satisfaction, and in several cases it was necessary for me to transcribe them from his handwritten drafts. The additional sketches cover a wide range of experiences that extend beyond the chronological parameters of the book. The final sketch finishes with a particularly moving reflection on the very end of Hemingway’s life—a wrenchingly honest self-appraisal by an embattled genius who sees his faculties slipping away from him. This material was understandably much too raw for Mary Hemingway to include in the first posthumous edition, but knowing what we do—some 50 years later—about the depression and paranoia Hemingway faced in later life, it is a profound, humanizing endnote to Ernest Hemingway, the man who has become an iconic legendary figure.

Author photo © Collette C. Hemingway

In a behind the book essay, editor and writer Seán Hemingway talks about his grandfather's legacy and the restored edition of A MOVEABLE FEAST, which he edited and introduced.

Mystery

Mystery

The best mystery and thriller debuts of the summer

Feature by Bruce Tierney

by Bruce Tierney

When you launch your search for a chilling suspense novel to read on vacation, why limit yourself to the tried-and-true favorites? Many new authors are trying their hands at whodunits this season, and I’ve found four whose debuts are great candidates for your summer reading list.

You have to love a story that sets its entire tone in the first sentence: “The shovel has to meet certain requirements.” And, in a mystery novel at least, where there is a shovel, can a burial be far behind? With his debut novel, Bad Things Happen, author Harry Dolan has channeled the great noir mystery novelists like James M. Cain and Jim Thompson. He has crafted a sly and suspense-filled tale set in the environs of a mystery periodical, Gray Streets. The stories in Gray Streets follow a simple formula: plans go wrong, bad things happen, people die. But then real life for our protagonist David Loogan starts to look a lot like a plot for a story in Gray Streets when he gets roped into helping his boss dispose of a corpse. And quickly, plans go wrong, bad things happen, people die. And let me say this: the characters in Bad Things Happen are masters at telling lies. There are layers upon layers of deceit, several murders, a veritable Pike’s Place worth of red herrings and a convoluted storyline guaranteed to intrigue. Oh, and if you can guess the culprit(s), you’re better at this than I am!

Escaping the past
By most measures, it would be difficult to like a character, who, by page 13, has shot and killed his longtime friend and mentor simply to save his own skin. Still, even if you don’t exactly like Paul Dark, you cannot help but be drawn into his machinations as he desperately tries to cover his tracks and distance himself from treason charges in Jeremy Duns’ cracking debut thriller, Free Agent. The tale begins in the closing days of WWII, when Dark was a young secret agent tasked with the clandestine execution of Nazi war criminals. Seduced by a comely young Georgian (that’s Georgia as in “Back in the USSR,” not as in “Georgia on My Mind”) nurse, Dark is recruited as a double agent for Mother Russia. Fast-forward 20 some years: a KGB officer, eager to defect to the West, has a piece of valuable information to trade for asylum—the identity of the British double agent embedded all those years ago. Dark must go into cleanup mode, and fast. All the players seem to have agendas within agendas, leaving the reader to wonder just who is playing whom, and how, and why. A diabolically clever novel that will keep you guessing until the final moments.

Be careful what you wish for
It is easy to look at the lives of others and think, if I could be like them (or have their stuff or date their girlfriend), then I would be happy. For Jay Porter, the protagonist of Attica Locke’s debut thriller Black Water Rising, the pie-in-the-sky dream was to be a lawyer, no easy feat for a young black activist in the 1970s. He has pulled it off, but it isn’t bringing him the recognition and financial security he had hoped for. His clients are “B-list” at best: his major case at the moment involves a young escort allegedly injured while plying her trade in a moving car, resulting in an epic denouement featuring a crash into a phone pole. It is not the sort of case of which dreams (or careers) are made. It scarcely matters, though, because Porter’s life is about to take a turn he could not have anticipated in a hundred years: he saves a drowning woman, and in doing so, unwittingly becoming a pawn in a deadly game involving a warring union, some good-old-boy oilmen, and the power elite of Houston. Locke could easily be compared to T. Coraghessan Boyle, Walter Mosley or Dennis Lehane: for one thing, she is in their class as a wordsmith, but more than that, she locks into a tumultuous period of American history, reflecting the social class structures and their attendant injustices through the eyes of her protagonist. Black Water Rising is an excellent book by any measure, but as a debut, it is nothing short of astonishing.

Fighting crime in a sleepy Amish town
I almost didn’t read Linda Castillo’s debut suspense novel, Sworn to Silence—a novel about an Amish cop in Ohio, penned by a former romance novelist, for heaven’s sake—until I happened to glance at the back cover, where I found exceptionally complimentary blurbs from Alex Kava, Lisa Scottoline and C.J. Box, three writers I admire greatly. I’m afraid I am as much a sucker for a good blurb as the next guy, so I decided to give the book a try. Painter’s Mill police chief Kate Burkholder is a “lapsed” Amish woman living outside the enclave, shunned by the Amish community for having embraced modern ways. She is a good choice for police chief, however, with strong law enforcement skills and an insider’s knowledge of the Amish language and people. When a series of murders rock sleepy Painter’s Mill, they strongly resemble four unsolved rape/murders of 16 years before, even down to details—which were suppressed in the original case. But that cannot be, for that killer is long dead—Kate knows that for a fact. Or does she? Kate will have to dredge up (literally) a skeleton from her distant past if she is to have any hope of solving the current batch of murders, and keeping the perpetrator from killing again. With high suspense, just a bit of romance and a very clever villain, Sworn to Silence is a rare example of a book that can be judged by its (back) cover.

Get to know BookPage.com

Feature by Trisha Ping

by Trisha Ping

You want free books. We want you to explore our site. This scavenger hunt makes everyone happy! In celebration of the relaunch of BookPage.com, we’re giving you the chance to win one of several prizes guaranteed to delight any book lover. The grand prize? One book, per week, for a year. Our runner up will receive a book lover’s gift basket, and the third-place winner gets 10 free books.

Ready to play? All you have to do is answer our questionnaire (it opens in a new window). Browse the site, find the answers, submit the quiz and voilá—you could be a winner. Good luck!

You want free books. We want you to explore our site. This scavenger hunt makes everyone happy! In celebration of the relaunch of BookPage.com, we're giving you the chance to win one of several prizes guaranteed to delight any book lover. The grand prize? One…

Crafts, Hobbies & Home

Crafts, Hobbies & Home

Time for a fresh start

Feature by Alison Hood

by Alison Hood

Your holiday wish list is a mere memory: it's resolution time (yes, another list). So, grab your paper and pencil and crack open any of the following books for minty-fresh, unusual perspectives on retooling your inner and outer worlds.

Dream It. List it. Do It!: How to Live a Bigger & Bolder Life, by journalist Lia Steakley and the editors of 43Things.com, is list-mania at its most entertaining. Based on the popular social networking site, it features themed lists and short "I did it!" stories drawn from site users. There's inspiration for jotting down your own list and jump-starting your life: you may be emboldened to "ride naked on horseback" or, barring that, simply to "clean out your briefcase." Even if you are allergic to list-making, this is a fun book with 43 intriguing and practical goals—from "Develop Supernatural Powers" to "Be More Organized"—and the often wacky suggestions to help you achieve them. Dream It. List It. also gives 10 simple rules for using lists effectively, such as "document your progress." So plant that rooftop garden and reach for the stars.

Feeling adventuresome? Then pick up Keri Smith's How to Be an Explorer of the World: Portable Life Museum. This is an interactive field guide to exploring alleys, sidewalks, neighborhoods, your local library, mountaintops, kitchen cabinets or the garbage dump—wherever your life adventures lead. Smith (Wreck This Journal), an illustrator, offers a uniquely melded artistic cum scientific approach to observing, analyzing and documenting minutia—of ourselves and our manmade and natural worlds. His 59 quirky "explorations" invite readers to be curious; to investigate cracks, smells and splotches; wander aimlessly; and celebrate trees. Full of kicky photomontages and Smith's wobbly line drawings, this field journal can lead readers into brave new worlds.

Women and girls
There are bracing antidotes within the collected essays and aphorisms of Note to Self: 30 Women on Hardship, Humiliation, Heartbreak, and Overcoming It All. This comforting book is the brainchild of editor Andrea Buchanan, who "curates famous quotes . . . snippets of phone conversation, ideas." In her touching introduction, Buchanan relates that all of her collected sayings had a backstory that might offer "joy and comfort and [an] occasional laugh." Thus this book was born, with well-told stories solicited from a diverse group of women, many of them famous. The essays address the "Big Three" of the book's title, along with "Life's Constant Complexities." Each ends with a Post-it-sized "note to self" summarizing the tale's core message. From an actress' humiliation on "Jeopardy," and a housewife's compassionate adoption of a family victimized by Hurricane Katrina, to an activist's grief over her son's tragic death, these stories hold wisdom bites to soothe and heal.

A Year in High Heels: The Girl's Guide to Everything from Jane Austen to the A-list is London fashion writer Camilla Morton's (How to Walk in High Heels) latest literary bling. While this follow-up doesn't exactly fall flat, it does stumble: intending to be a monthly calendar of to-do's for girly fabulousness, it is instead a strangely arranged encyclopedia of historical and cultural trivia with oddly clashing suggestions (January mandates include both detox and imbibing hot toddies!), which might induce migraines in the most determined fashionista. Each chapter opens a new month with an insouciant postcard from fashion pioneers such as Giorgio Armani and Manolo Blahnik, and features a "Muse of the Month" (e.g., Coco Chanel), a "Page Turner" (recommended reading) and a "Foot Note" (short history of a shoe style). Shoehorned in between are quips from Cleopatra, tips on moonwalking and letter-writing. Much of the history and dates to note are geared toward Brits (St. George's birthday), with the occasional sop thrown across the Pond (Mae West's birthday). However, there are universal lessons, such as how to job-hunt (wear heels) and how to be a collector (inherit money). This is a dizzy, often entertaining read—if perused with slightly raised (and well-plucked) eyebrows.

You, you, you
Doctors Michael Roizen and Mehmet Oz present a new book in their YOU series (You: Staying Young; You: On a Diet, etc.), namely, You: Being Beautiful: The Owner's Manual to Inner and Outer Beauty. You: Being Beautiful has the authors' signature (if slightly juvenile) humor, and is a holistic approach to well-being that addresses looking, feeling and being beautiful. "Beauty," they say, ". . . is health." That said, this is not a beauty guide to supermodel makeup tricks; it is a roadmap to beauty via healthy physical and mental habits, starting with a "You-Q" test to measure inner and outer beauty. The narrative is peppered with self-evaluation exercises, informative sidebars and healing tools. Part one leads readers matter-of-factly through the biology of tip-top skin, hair, teeth, finger, toes and figure. Part two focuses on body-mind sensations: energy levels, pain management, mind maladies and work-money issues. The shift here from physical feelings to emotional is slightly clumsy, but serves the book's holistic vision. Part three tackles the biology of love, sexuality and happiness, wrapping up with the "Be-YOU-tiful Plan" to elevate gorgeousness, and an appendix on how to find a good plastic surgeon (just in case).

Something to think about
If your house is crammed with stuff, chances are your cranium is cluttered, too. Organizational guru Peter Walsh returns to clutter-bust your mind in Enough Already! Clearing Mental Clutter to Become the Best You, coming in March. "If you have ever tripped and fallen on your own belongings," he says, "then imagine what the clutter in your head is doing to you." Walsh constantly sees that lack of clear vision causes chaos in relationships, careers, finances, health and spirits, and he preaches using imagination to create a vision of your desired life, to identify and clear obstacles and to realize that vision. Walsh includes a wealth of commonsense discussion; systematic support material, such as "you are not alone" stories; self-evaluation quizzes to pinpoint life goals and obstacles; and action-oriented checklists and tips. Often, we know what we don't want in our lives, but cannot focus on that which we do. Clear space, Walsh advises, for "if you don't clear room to walk, you'll never find the path to your dreams."

Saucy seafood bites back at life
Lady-killer crustacean, Pepe the King Prawn, dispenses spicy sagacity in It's Hard Out Here for a Shrimp: Life, Love, and Living Large. If you're a Muppets fan (and you know you are), or if you need smooth talk on love, work and the social scene, Pepe's your go-to guy—um, prawn. A salute from fellow Muppet Kermit the Frog launches this raconteur's manifesto of living "La Vida Pepe" with chapters covering parties, love and money, family and friends, work, politics, therapy, style and stress. There's a slightly wicked how-to here for every eventuality, from using the perfect pickup line on "the womens" ("Is it me, or are you hot in here?") to coping with annoyances, like trips to the post office ("If you can't do the time, don't wait in line"). My favorite Pepe-ism extols meditation: "A deep spiritual experience or an excuse to take a nap. Either way you win, okay.

Dream It. List it. Do It!: How…

Fiction, Women's Fiction

Fiction Women's Fiction

Novels to feed the hungry heart

Feature by Joanna Brichetto

by Joanna Brichetto

Who doesn't like food and love, together or apart? Together, they are magic, and whether it began with Chocolat or Like Water for Chocolate, "foodie fiction" is hot. Three new choices are showcased below: all centered on a female character at or near 40, all tending toward the literary rather than strictly romance or chick lit. Each one is a sensual exploration of foods simple and complex, homey and exotic, and above all, slow. Slow food allows time for the invocation of vivid and luxuriant metaphors (a food is said to be something else: a particular feeling, wet autumn leaves, a magnolia petal, a lover's lower lip, the smell of a mahogany desk and so on). Some descriptions are so inventive they verge on outright cross-sensory synesthesia. And be forewarned—each of these novels will make you very, very hungry.

A pinch of humor

Nancy Spiller's Entertaining Disasters is aptly titled. The double entendre captures the plight of the unnamed narrator to a tee. A freelance food writer, she makes it her business, literally, to orchestrate exquisite dinner parties and record every detail for newspaper and magazine articles. Unfortunately, her journalistic output belongs not under "Style" or "Living" or "Food," but firmly under "Fiction." She makes it all up. Why? Because, without exception, every dinner party she has actually sponsored was an unmitigated disaster from start to finish. As a result, her social anxieties have escalated into party paralysis. So, for 10 years she has conducted only imaginary gatherings: sparkling dinner parties peopled by an anonymous and utterly fictitious roster of L.A.'s most beautiful.

Until now. Suddenly, her editor, who has no inkling of her secret, invites himself to her next soiree. Since he's a busy man, the first available date is five months off, which gives our narrator nearly half a year to obsess about one dinner party. Her borderline stream-of-consciousness, tangential terror splits into fascinating diversions about food and food history, and ultimately, about herself. Her past gradually emerges, pulled from silence by a smell, a taste, a touch or a memory of a particular ingredient. Now, at midlife, she is ready to examine the list of her own ingredients: who she is and what she wants.

A dash of romance

The central character of The Lost Recipe for Happiness, by Barbara O'Neal, is also starting over. Elena Alvarez arrives in Aspen poised for the professional opportunity of a lifetime: her own kitchen in an upscale, new restaurant. Poised, that is, with a broken body, a broken family and a string of broken relationships behind her. Thirty-seven, unmarried with no children, she is deservedly proud of her decades of slow, hard work up the kitchen ladder from slave to sous to chef.

Elena has been rebuilding her life since she was a teenager, when a horrific accident killed her boyfriend and several family members. Elena alone survived—albeit with horrific injuries—and she remains haunted by her past. So much so, perhaps, that she is in danger of missing a different opportunity: the possibility of true love. The unlikely candidate is Julian Liswood, who is not only a four-time-divorced hotshot film director, but her new boss, as well. The story alternates between third-person viewpoints of these two, and as the intricacies of each is revealed, the plot thickens quicker than a béchamel sauce. A nice touch is the bit of magic realism O'Neal (aka novelist Barbara Samuel) throws into the mix, giving Elena a bit of ghostly guidance and a sixth sense that serves her well.

Mix with friendship

In The School of Essential Ingredients, by Erica Bauermeister, eight people are brought together in a monthly cooking class with an intuitive and slightly mysterious chef, Lillian. With the exception of one couple, all are strangers to one another and to a certain degree, to themselves. Lillian's slow but startling method of instruction spills over into their inner lives, gently nudging each to explore what needs to be examined. Along the way, of course, they cook. True to Lillian's style, they cook without written recipes, guided by senses, memory and instinct.

Perhaps the most satisfying character study is the glimpse of Lillian's own genesis as a chef, and her earliest attempts in the kitchen. As a damaged child, she begins with little more than sheer will. With patient, methodical, focused experimentation (and a little help from a Wise Woman archetype), she begins what can be described as a journey of faith. Transforming basic ingredients into new works becomes a type of spirituality, a religion. With it, she saves her own mother, finds her own calling and masters her profession. Delicious.

Joanna Brichetto is trying to slow down.

YA, YA Fiction

YA Fiction YA

Looking for a perfect book club book? Impossible!

Feature by Nancy Werlin

by Nancy Werlin

It’s 9 p.m. on the first Sunday night of the month. Around a living room, my book club has polished off the pound cake that Christina, this month’s hostess, topped with lemon curd. We’ve also just concluded a spirited discussion of Charlotte Bronte’s Villette, even though one of us got bogged down in the middle (“Can I just say it’s not Jane Eyre?”) and another one of us never even got started.

That’s okay. As a club, we’ve been meeting in one configuration or another for years, and we’re casual. Not finishing the book has never been a reason not to enjoy the meal and the gossip, and we don’t even mind when the non-reader joins the conversation with an opinion based on the back cover copy.

But now begins the dangerous part of the meeting. What are we going to read next?

Amy has brought her entire bedside book pile for us to look at, but Michelle is feeling more like nonfiction. Anne recommends another classic, but Jayne disagrees. Libby says we should read John Updike, who died recently. Sarah has a terrific novel in mind that sounds like it would be great for discussion, only she can’t remember what it was called. Christina has only one request: can the book be short?

I love book club, and I love my book club friends. We’ve been with each other through thick and thin. They celebrate every one of my book publications with me, but I won’t let the club actually read and discuss one of my books.

And yet I have to confess that, secretly, I believe my most recent novel, Impossible, is the perfect book club book, possibly even the rare one that that our club will sometimes encounter, the book that manages to seduce everybody into doing the reading and participating excitedly in the discussion. In my book club fantasy of discussing Impossible, our conversation focuses first on the plot and characters and themes, but then widens into a discussion of our own experiences of being women and lovers and mothers and daughters.

Lucy Scarborough, the main character of Impossible, is a daughter in transition into becoming a woman, a lover, a mother—an adult. Her transition is urgent: she is racing the clock of her own accidental pregnancy in an attempt to make a shirt without needle or seam, find an acre of land between salt water and sea strand, and plow the land with a goat’s horn and a single grain of corn.

You might recognize those lines. I had been haunted by the ballad "Scarborough Fair" for almost as long as my book club existed. I had known for years that I wanted to write a novel about the story that, to my mind, lurked behind and between the ballad’s lyrics, a story that would force me to think hard about the primary question the song poses: What is true love?

But for many years, I did not sit down to write this story. I did not have the courage until a time in my life when the central question about love took on an extreme and personal urgency.

Then I wrote in a passion. I wove in family, mystery, danger, a faerie curse, and the history of the Child ballad "Scarborough Fair, or, The Elfin Knight." And as I wrote, I discovered that the story pivots on the meaning of love in all its many aspects, and that true love was wider than romantic love. It includes all the other love and help that we need in our lives. The love of parents and family. The love of friends.

Story is metaphor, of course.

And so, I think I will be brave and ask my club, one month soon, to read my book, Impossible, with me. Because just now, as I write, I have realized that what I really want is to share a little more of my heart with them, my friends, my book club. And I hope that the discussion we’ll have after that will show me a little more of theirs.

National Book Award finalist and Edgar Award-winning author Nancy Werlin reads with her book club in Peabody, Massachusetts. You can watch a trailer for Impossible on her website.

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IMPOSSIBLE CONTEST
Win copies of Impossible to read with your book club! It's easy:
1.) Create a book club profile on our site if you haven't already—must include a photo or image.
2.) Write a review of any book you've read as a club before September 1.
That's it! Winner will be randomly drawn from among the eligible entries on September 7, 2009.

Children's & YA, Middle Grade, Picture Book

Children's & YA Picture Book Middle Grade

Following Honest Abe on his journey into history

Feature by Ellen Trachtenberg

by Ellen Trachtenberg

Did you notice how frequently Abraham Lincoln's image was conjured during the recent presidential election? The symmetry between the early political careers of the 16th and 44th U.S. presidents seems to have captured the imaginations of many. Adding to the fascination is an important milestone: February 12 marks the 200th anniversary of Lincoln's birth. Children's book publishers have responded in kind, and the season brings an impressive display of new titles that chart the course of Lincoln's life in its entirety, from lighthearted looks at pivotal moments from his youth to painterly representations of his famous speeches. There are rare glimpses of Lincoln as a family man and an engrossing new spin on biography that revisits the aftermath of the president's assassination. Taken as a whole, this collection is an invaluable and multifaceted lesson in American history for young readers.

What might have been
Abe Lincoln Crosses a Creek: A Tall, Thin Tale takes place "on the other side of yesterday, before computers or cars, in the year 1816" as seven-year-old Abe sets out with his good friend, Austin Gollaher, on a partridge-finding expedition down by Knob Creek. Problem is, the boys must cross the raging waters to get close enough to the birds. This proves to be a nearly impossible task, but determined to brave the danger, Abe shows his mettle. The results are nearly disastrous and if Austin wasn't close by—well, let's just say that the course of American history might have been drastically altered. Author Deborah Hopkinson (a BookPage contributor) and illustrator John Hendrix have created a delightful, folksy tale that depicts Lincoln before political aspiration took root. Clever intervention from the storytellers provides a playful yet profound "what if" factor. The final pages depict President Lincoln wistfully remembering his childhood friend while Hopkinson provides the following wisdom: "Let's remember Austin Gollaher, who, one day long ago, when no one else was there to see, saved Abe Lincoln's life. And without Abraham Lincoln, where would we be?"

United by a cause
From Nikki Giovanni and illustrator Bryan Collier, the acclaimed duo that brought us Rosa (winner of the Coretta Scott King Award and a Caldecott Honor book), comes Lincoln and Douglass: An American Friendship. Here readers are treated to a glimpse of Lincoln in his formative years through the stirring combination of Giovanni's prose and Collier's celebrated collage depictions. This time, we're shown the ethical parallels between the future president and his longtime ally, Frederick Douglass. When Lincoln was a newly elected congressman, Douglass paid him a visit, and "A friendship flowered based on mutual values, a love of good food, and the ability to laugh even in the worst of times." Adamantly principled on the topic of slavery, both men devoted their public lives to the cause of abolition. The Civil War cast a pall over the festivities that accompanied Lincoln's inauguration as president, but there was one guest that Lincoln insisted on seeing at the White House that evening, despite the rules that prohibited Negroes from entering. When Douglass finally arrives, the men gaze over the balcony and renew their shared commitment to freedom for all people.

A new birth of freedom
Two new books exemplify Lincoln's impact by incorporating his own words into the narrative. In What Lincoln Said, author Sarah L. Thomson uses direct quotes from pivotal moments in Honest Abe's life. Illustrator James E. Ransome presents a more jovial, less stern depiction than we're accustomed to seeing. The story ends with the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation on New Year's Day in 1863 as Lincoln humbly states, "If ever my name goes into history, it will be for this act . . . and my whole soul is in it."

Destined to be a classic, Abe's Honest Words by Doreen Rappaport (author of the Caldecott Honor book, Martin's Big Words), features divine, luminous illustrations by Kadir Nelson (known best for Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom, also a Caldecott Honor book and Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award winner). Rappaport's own prose is coupled with Lincoln's thoughts on the importance of reading and education, the horrors of slavery, the challenges of being a young and unknown politician, and, of course, the iconic speech delivered on a Gettysburg battlefield.

Family matters
Beloved author Rosemary Wells shines a light on a personal dimension of Lincoln's life in Lincoln and His Boys. This is history as seen through the eyes of his young sons, Willie and Tad, who, after Lincoln is elected president, accompany him on the 12-day train ride (unfathomable to us now) from Illinois to Washington, D.C. They gleefully interrupt cabinet meetings and pray with their parents to heal the soldiers as the war escalates. The boys persistently ask questions of their adoring "Papa-day," trying to make sense of events as they unfold. Illustrations by P.J. Lynch are warm and vivid, capturing the genuine bond between a famous father and his sons.

The Lincolns: A Scrapbook Look at Abraham and Mary takes readers ever deeper into the lives of Lincoln, his family and his country. Author Candace Fleming has painstakingly compiled rare photographs (including the only known photo of Abraham with both Willie and Tad), insights into the Lincolns' marriage, accounts of White House mischief by their sons, biographical information about the president's cabinet, humorous anecdotes about stovepipe hats and three tales about Mary that you won't want to miss. This is the type of book that will invite readers to examine and re-examine its pages. Each time they do, they'll be rewarded with more captivating details.

Extra, extra: A special edition tells Lincoln's story
Books about Abraham Lincoln are plentiful this year, but one of the most impressive tributes comes in the form of Lincoln Shot: A President's Life Remembered by Barry Denenberg, featuring enthralling artwork by Christopher Bing. The format is eye-catching: a special edition of a newspaper, dated April 14, 1866, marking the one-year anniversary of Lincoln's death. From the very first page, readers get the sense that they're examining privileged archival documents. The headline reads "President Dies at 7:22, Nation Mourns Fallen Leader." The search for assassin John Wilkes Booth and his conspirators is recounted. After the villains' apprehension and execution, all told with riveting specifics, the paper turns to Lincoln's life, from boyhood hardships in the Indiana wilderness, to spelling bee triumphs, through his early career as a lawyer and romance at age 30 with a charming socialite named Mary Todd. Lincoln's entire political career is offered for inspection and the Civil War is fascinatingly detailed. In fact, though the book is only 40 pages long, there's hardly a moment of Lincoln's life that's missed. With its mimicry of a 19th-century newspaper, complete with archival photography, authentic typesetting and period advertisements, this type of alternative biography is sure to capture the imagination of both ready and reluctant readers. When the story ends with Lincoln's assassination, only five days after the Union victory, we come away with new perspectives on a most famous historical figure and the era he represented, all derived from the unique learning experience that this book provides.

Ellen Trachtenberg is the author of The Best Children's Literature: A Parent's Guide.

Forget perfection

Feature by Deanna Larson

by Deanna Larson

A long overdue anti-perfectionist trend is overtaking the fitness world. Being overweight isn't always unhealthy. You can think yourself thin—and you don't need to spend hours in the gym. Feel like crying with relief over your stack of New Year's resolutions? Read on.

Count calories, sure, but keep weight off with different thinking. Dr. Judith S. Beck uses the power of the mind to push dieters to lose once and for all in The Complete Beck Diet for Life: The Five-Stage Program for Permanent Weight Loss. Daughter of pioneering cognitive therapy founder Aaron Beck and director of the Beck Institute of Cognitive Therapy, Beck (The Beck Diet Solution) is a diet coach who helps dieters feel in control and remain motivated while losing at a steady rate and still eating favorite foods. The "getting ready to lose" section is a mental and emotional workout, followed by beginner and maintenance phases of her "Think Thin Program." Each section includes "In Session with Dr. Beck" counseling scenarios, food plans and sidebars like "Reality Check" and "Success Skills." Beck knows you'll make mistakes, or even decide that enjoying a few more calories is a fair exchange for a few extra pounds. But her mantra is: you will turn mistakes into opportunity, you will maintain your weight loss. Sample daily menus, recipes for healthy meals and snacks, a bibliography and plenty of charts and graphs for amateur scientists and left-brainers round out this authoritative guide to getting off the diet-go-round.

Fitness through the years
Weight creep as we age isn't a given. Orthopedic surgeon Vonda Wright, director of PRIMA (the Performance and Research Initiative for Masters Athletes), believes that a sedentary lifestyle rather than biology accelerates the "aging" process. Fitness After 40: How to Stay Strong at Any Age is an approach to post-midlife fitness through the F.A.C.E. system of flexibility, aerobic exercise, "carrying" load-bearing exercise and achieving equilibrium and balance. Illustrated exercises, chapters on healing and avoiding injury when exercising as well as hydration and good nutrition are about as dry as a physical therapy pamphlet, but reiterating the basics will doubtless ensure you don't become "merely a bad sequel to your 20-year-old self."

It's not you, it's your genes
If you want to be a size zero, "choose your parents well," says Dr. Linda Bacon in Health at Every Size: The Surprising Truth About Your Weight . Bacon—a therapist and recovering "weight obsessive" with an ironic name who holds a doctorate in physiology and specializes in eating disorders and body image—looks at the disconnect between modern food processing, diet culture and the actual science behind the "moral imperative" to lose weight. She disproves the assumption that being fat equals being unhealthy and deconstructs food and fat politics. There are plenty of thin people among McDonald's regular customers, according to Bacon, who explores why diet and exercise programs often don't work, and offers practical advice on how to recast the "weight problem" by helping the vulnerable respect their bodies and souls, taking care of real hungers and changing taste in the process. The best way to lose is to give up the fight and turn control over to your body, according to the book. "You will find that biology is much more powerful than willpower," Bacon writes. "Body weight might be a marker for an imprudent lifestyle in some people but its role in determining health . . . is grossly exaggerated."

Motivation in pictures
That's a "fattitude" heartily endorsed by comic-strip creator Carol Lay in her intriguing graphic memoir, The Big Skinny: How I Changed My Fattitude. The L.A. based writer and creator of the WayLay comic strip that has appeared in The San Francisco Examiner, L.A. Weekly and Salon.com, is a "born eater." After learning unhealthy eating—and dieting—habits from her parents, Lay spent her college years in denim maxi dresses, gorging on home-baked bread and fake cookie dough, followed by addiction to amphetamine-based weight-loss pills. She starts the action with a comic strip featuring a hostess greeting her recent self with "You've lost so much weight! You look great! How did you do it?" "I count calories and exercise every day," she answers, followed by a trio of wordless panels showing the hostess dumbfounded for seconds on end. Her seriocomic weighty adventures have a fresh Californian vibe while communicating slightly self-righteous weight-loss tips, but before you hate this cool chick for her steely self-control, she draws a panel about the dangers of emotional binging after a breakup. On a holiday. Or imagines how the Devil would tempt her in the so-Hollywood "Day in the Diet" fantasy strip, which features George Clooney arriving unannounced with hot sausage biscuits, hash browns and a double chocolate chip "crappicino" from Mickey D's. Handwritten calorie charts (her recommended plan only provides about 1,350 calories, a bit low for healthy weight loss), eating plans and recipes and lists of "dodgy foods" round out this quirky but useful motivational tool for achieving thinner peace.

No time? No problem!
Weak-willed? Time-strapped? Get The 90-Second Fitness Solution: The Most Time-Efficient Workout Ever for a Healthier, Stronger, Younger You. New York trainer Pete Cerqua probably got sick of clients moaning about their desire for defined tank-top arms without having a minute to do a thing about it. His brilliant 15-minute-per-week workout promises to beat cardio at shedding pounds and reduce bodies by a half-dress size without changing food choices. His simple illustrated exercises, which only require resolve, a wall and a floor, are done in 90-second reps using pauses and holding weights in key positions rather than slow movements. Busting myths up and down the fitness spectrum, Cerqua advocates four simple secrets to success: short workouts, simplified eating, fewer supplements and a stress-proof life to eliminate time-consuming symptoms, not to mention life-altering illness. Bright, clean and breezy with its "Ask Pete" sidebars, real-life 90-Second Success Stories, speed reader's synopses, lightning-fast gourmet recipes and oversized exercise scorecards, this is the trend-setting fitness guide for the rest of us.

Count calories, sure,…

Business & Finance, Crafts, Hobbies & Home

Crafts, Hobbies & Home Business & Finance

Less can be more, in the world of work

Feature by Linda M. Castellitto

by Linda M. Castellitto

Now's the time to usher in the new year—and perhaps a new approach to your career. If you've resolved in 2009 to work smarter, be more productive, follow your dreams or find more fun in the daily 9-to-5, this quartet of books will come in handy.

Back to basics
Is your life overscheduled and overrun by clutter, whether piles of paper on your desk or way too many commitments on your calendar? Leo Babauta has the solution. In The Power of Less: The Fine Art of Limiting Yourself to the Essential. . . in Business and in Life he has created "a how-to manual on how to simplify and focus on the essential. How to do less while accomplishing more." Babauta isn't just paying lip service to the importance of learning to focus on what's important. Over the last few years, he's accomplished quite a list of goals (running two marathons, doubling his income, eliminating his debt, writing this book) while parenting six children. His secret lies in his ability to focus on one thing at a time rather than trying to juggle too many things at once. In the book, Babauta offers targeted suggestions for slowly but surely finding focus (and thus, greater efficiency). A 30-day challenge provides a kick-start, and simplification strategies and tips abound.

Control is key
David Allen's Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, published in 2001, sold a million copies and significantly increased demand for Allen's Getting Things Done, or GTD, seminars, delivered at companies and government agencies worldwide. Not surprisingly, he found time to write another book: Making It All Work: Winning at the Game of Work and the Business of Life. This time around, he offers "new and deeper perspectives about why [the GTD] information works as well as it does and how universally it can be applied." The first few chapters explain the GTD concept and set up Allen's plan for Making It All Work. Perspective is important to this process, and the author skillfully frames the various levels of perspective as distances, which range from 50,000 feet (career, purpose, lifestyle) to 10,000 feet (current projects) to "runway" (daily actions, like managing email). The author says adhering to his principles will enable you to "quickly gain coherence and reorient yourself for the next round when you're faced with disruption"—a useful skill to have in a recession, for sure.

Entrepreneurial excitement
Donny Deutsch's CNBC television show "The Big Idea" profiled entrepreneurs who've achieved the American Dream of having, well, a big idea, and working hard to make it a reality. In the show's companion book, The Big Idea: How to Make Your Entrepreneurial Dreams Come True, from the "Aha Moment" to Your First Million, written with Catherine Whitney, Deutsch's energy and enthusiasm are infectious. The Big Idea is a fine mix of advice gleaned from his own experiences running an ad agency, plus stories of successful idea-implementers who have appeared on his TV show. Those profiled include the founders of Subway, Spanx and Sam Adams, plus proprietors of lesser-known companies like the Ugly Talent Agency, which fills the need for regular-looking folks on movie sets and in magazines. This book will serve as a useful how-to manual for would-be entrepreneurs, and provide "If they can do it, so can I!" inspiration.

Cubicle-bound creativity
Unlike most career-related books, Who Took All the Paperclips? Fun Things to Do with Office Supplies When the Boss Isn't Looking supports—nay, encourages—pilfering office supplies. Author Rachel Rifat advocates using those Post-its and paperclips to make crafts that will perk up a boring cubicle. Rifat opens her compendium of crafts with "Matchstick Incense: When nature calls and the whole office doesn't need to know!" and includes step-by-step instructions for a beaded privacy curtain and a pillow made from bubble-wrap, among other projects. Quirky illustrations and funny captions add to the book's appeal, as does the author's explanation of why she left her own corporate job: "she decided she could not stand to see another manager wearing a Hawaiian shirt and shorts at a beer bust." It's hard to argue with that.

Linda M. Castellitto makes Post-it origami in North Carolina.

Fiction

Fiction

Take a journey around the world in stories

Feature by Harvey Freedenberg

by Harvey Freedenberg

From Mexico, to the former Soviet Union, to England, Japan and the United States, the reach of the short story spans the globe. These five collections, some by established authors and others by writers just beginning to make their mark, offer a generous introduction to the richness of modern short fiction.

Chilly slices of modern life
Ali Smith, author of the critically praised novel The Accidental, has observed, "Stories can change lives if we're not careful." In The First Person and Other Stories, her fourth collection, she offers her unsettling take on contemporary life.

Smith's book is most notable for its air of experimentation. The story that opens the collection, "True Short Story," begins with a writer in a café, observing two men and imagining the story of their relationship before halting the exercise. ("I stopped making them up. It felt a bit wrong to.") It concludes with a series of pithy observations on the nature of the short form from writers as diverse as Ernest Hemingway and Alice Munro.

Smith's style is terse and edgy, almost daring the reader to settle in. In most of these stories, the characters are nameless, and it's only possible to know their setting because of a passing allusion to London or some feature of British life.

One of the more startling tales is "The Child," in which a woman discovers a baby abandoned in her grocery store shopping cart. When she takes the child with her, it begins spouting conservative political dogma, soon laced with racist and sexist jokes. The First Person and Other Stories won't appeal to everyone's taste, but those who like their stories provocative and enigmatic are likely to find it a satisfying work.

Weird, wonderful and wild
Although he's unknown to the American audience, Yasutaka Tsutsui has captured awards in his native Japan for his science fiction. His collection, Salmonella Men on Planet Porno, translated by Andrew Driver, contains several examples in that genre, but it also sparkles with biting pieces of social and political satire that reveal a formidable talent.

Tsutsui excels at creating protagonists living in worlds uncomfortably recognizable as our own and yet decidedly dystopian. In "Rumours of Me," a young man suddenly begins to hear and read news stories about the most mundane aspects of his daily life. "Anything can become big news if the media report it," a newspaper editor tells him, bringing to mind the short-lived obsession with "Joe the Plumber" in last fall's presidential campaign. "Commuter Army" is a brilliant satire on the insanity of war, imagining platoons of soldiers who board the train each morning like office workers, the fortunate survivors returning home the same evening. "Hello, Hello, Hello" features a meddlesome "Household Economy Consultant" whose bizarre counsel sheds a revealing light on modern capitalism and our consumer culture.

The title story, the longest in the collection, is a complex exploration of human sexuality and evolutionary biology that plays out in the context of a space adventure. Throughout this wildly varied assortment of tales, Tsutsui's voice is witty and quirky, seducing us to suspend our disbelief for even the most fanciful narrative.

Riding the waves
Whether as a force for life or one of destruction, water in all its forms is the unifying theme in writer and artist Peter Selgin's powerful collection, Drowning Lessons. Selgin is never heavy-handed in his use of metaphor, and it's rewarding to trace the skill with which he employs it in many of these 13 stories.

In the opening tale, "Swimming," an elderly man disgruntled with the state of his marriage offers swimming lessons to an attractive younger woman. "Our Cups Are Bottomless" features a man in a coffee shop in a dying mill town, contemplating the suicide notes he's written as the town's two rivers rise in a raging downpour.

The most dramatic story in Drowning Lessons is "The Sea Cure." In it, two brothers take a trip to Mexico. Lewis becomes ill after drinking the local water, and Clarke meets a mysterious woman he believes will help secure medical treatment for Lewis, whose condition becomes more desperate with each page, until the story reaches its haunting climax. The collection concludes with the alternately hilarious and touching "My Search for Red and Gray Wide-Striped Pajamas." Its narrator suffers from mysterious fainting spells while wandering New York City seeking a pair of pajamas like the ones worn by his late father, his search a metaphor for the attempt to find his way in the world.

Coming to America
When a young writer's first two stories are published in the New Yorker and the Atlantic, it's a safe bet she's on the fast track to recognition in the world of literary fiction. In One More Year, Sana Krasikov, born in Ukraine and now living in New York, demonstrates why the early notice she's achieved is well-deserved.

Krasikov's fiction focuses on her fellow immigrants. Unlike the affluent Bengalis depicted in the stories of another young star of contemporary short fiction, Jhumpa Lahiri, however, her characters are struggling to plant their feet firmly on the first rung of the ladder of success in America. Most of the stories are set in Westchester County, New York, but it's hardly the country club and cocktail party world of John Cheever.

In stories like "Companion," "Asal" and "Maia in Yonkers," women from the former Soviet Union find themselves in low-end personal care jobs. Maia's son sums up her plight when he berates her, "Every year you say 'It's one more year, one more year!' " and his blunt indictment sums up the predicament of most of Krasikov's characters. Representative is Anya, the protagonist of "Better Half," 22 years old, married for a few months and working as a waitress, who observes that "trying to escape your tedious fate only led you back to it."

Their task won't be easy, but at the end of this consistently strong collection we're left with a feeling that the determination by Krasikov's characters to establish themselves in a new land will be rewarded.

Living and loving in Mexico
Carlos Fuentes, perhaps Mexico's most distinguished living writer, offers a rich collection of stories in Happy Families. Taking his ironic title from Tolstoy's legendary observation, Fuentes exposes the dark corners of his characters' emotional lives with a piercing light.

Fuentes' prose is lush, almost poetic, as presented in this translation by the distinguished translator Edith Grossman. Indeed, after each story there is a free verse "chorus," many of them illuminating some troubling aspect of modern Mexican life.

In its 16 stories, Happy Families covers the subject of love in all its complexity. We meet a long-married couple raking over the dying coals of their relationship ("Conjugal Ties (1)"), a priest who's fathered an illegitimate daughter and lives with her in an isolated mountain village at the base of a volcano ("The Father's Servant") and a mother desperate to rescue her son from a life of street crime ("The Mariachi's Mother"). Fuentes is a keen student of human behavior, and if his Mexican historic and cultural references occasionally may be puzzling to non-Mexican readers, the emotions on display are universal. In "The Discomfiting Brother," the story of an impoverished man who returns to the home of his prosperous brother after more than 30 years, the former notes, "Life consists in our getting used to the fact that everything will be badly for us." That solemn observation serves as a fitting benediction to this collection by an acknowledged literary master.

Harvey Freedenberg writes from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Business & Finance

Business & Finance

Bouncing back

Feature by Susan Rucci

by Susan Rucci

What a difference a year can make, especially if you have a 401k or other investments in the stock market. Now that the Wall Street bubble has burst, what's an individual investor to do? A new batch of books sets out to prove that even in bad economic times, you can turn your stock portfolio, bank account or retirement fund around and rebound financially.

Taming the Bear
Two of the best books are part of Wiley's Little Book, Big Profits series that focuses on all things financial, from investment strategies to long-term economic trends. My favorite is The Little Book That Saves Your Assets: What the Rich Do to Stay Wealthy in Up and Down Markets by David M. Darst, a managing director at Morgan Stanley. Darst says to thrive financially today you must practice asset allocation, compiling a financial portfolio with assets that make money when the economy is doing well, but also including assets that make money when the economy slows down. He says it's the approach the wealthy use to maintain their lifestyle even in tough economic times. Darst writes in a reader-friendly manner, often using football analogies to make a point. One of his strongest chapters is called "Building Your House," which compares a financial portfolio to a person's home. He writes that much like a house, a portfolio should reflect an investor's personality and should be "built" to have a mixture of assets that are functioning (steady and reliable, like bonds) and fun (riskier, but with a potentially bigger payoff, like stocks). In another compelling chapter called "The Road Less Traveled That You Should Take," Darst rightly argues that most people no longer have any choice but to be actively engaged in managing their financial portfolio because the days of a guaranteed pension are gone forever. Now all the responsibility rests on the individual.

Another recent book in the series is also well edited and on point. The Little Book of Bull Moves in Bear Markets: How to Keep Your Portfolio Up When the Market Is Down, by investment advisor Peter Schiff, is a playbook on how to preserve wealth even as the economy falters. After a brief history lesson on the U.S. stock market, Schiff outlines an investment plan that taps into the larger and financially stronger global economy. He particularly likes the money-making opportunities in the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China). All have seen their economies boom thanks to manufacturing; Schiff is particularly fond of China. Besides the BRIC bloc, Schiff likes Canada, Australia and New Zealand as good wealth-building opportunities through investments in raw materials, oil and minerals. He also recommends investing in precious metals such as gold (either in physical gold or in mining stocks). He closes out his book with a provocative look at the 2008 presidential election and argues that the American investor would be wise to wait until at least 2012 before re-investing in the market. Schiff wrote the bestseller Crash Proof, which accurately predicted the current Wall Street turmoil, so his words are particularly valuable now.

Think globally
Another book that urges a more global approach to your financial portfolio is Game Over: How You Can Prosper in a Shattered Economy by Stephen Leeb. The book went to print just as the Dow began its tumble last fall. Leeb's premise is fairly depressing; he argues that the economy will take years to recover from inflation, the weakening dollar and, most importantly, runaway national debt. He spends more than half the book discussing resource shortages like oil and water (the latter being the more interesting read of the two) and emerging alternative energies. Leeb urges investors to create portfolios that are inflation-proof and to invest in industries that produce high rates of return in spite of high inflation. Like other authors featured here, he urges investment in gold through exchange-traded funds or individual gold companies. Another interesting nugget from Leeb: he says the last thing any investor should do is turn investments into cash. He contends that money in a checking or savings account will not earn nearly the amount of interest needed to compensate for the decline in its value because of inflation.

The Jubak Picks: 50 Stocks That Will Rebuild Your Wealth and Safeguard Your Future sums up the latest strategies of Jim Jubak, senior markets editor for the website MSN Money, where more than a million investors click on his monthly "Jubak Journal" for financial advice. Jubak asserts that investing in the right macro trends will make you money, and he includes specific, detailed stock picks for each of his suggestions. He says the best investments right now can be found outside the U.S., particularly in China and India; in food (which he calls the new oil), through agriculture and food-commodity stocks; and in technology. Jubak ends his book with a chapter titled "50 best stocks in the world." Exxon, precious metals companies and search engine Google are among those that make the list.

The Ten Roads to Riches: The Way the Wealthy Got There (And How You Can Too!) by Forbes columnist Ken Fischer might be the most fun-to-read book in this group because it delves into one of Americans' favorite topics: how the rich get rich. Fischer knows that road well; he's a self-made billionaire who's on the Forbes 400 list and owns a firm that manages $45 billion in assets. Fischer says there are 10 ways to acquire wealth a lot faster than the idealized "work hard, save your money" mantra. The richest road is also the most obvious and the one most people take—starting your own business. But there are other ways, including managing other people's money, owning real estate and even turning celebrity into wealth. Fischer points out that boxer George Foreman retired from the sport completely broke. An indoor grill bearing his name changed his financial status and now Foreman is not only a household name (at least in the kitchen) but also worth millions. Single women, and maybe some single men as well, will be amused and perhaps inspired by the chapter which outlines marriage as another way to acquire wealth. My, how times have changed. Fischer says you should forget about marrying a millionaire—now you need to marry a billionaire to acquire true wealth.

Most of these books rely on the premise that the reader has money to invest and time to wait out the investment payoffs. What they don't address are the day-to-day financial struggles so many people are facing as jobs vanish and the economy spirals downward. The need for help in those areas should create a bull market in financial advice books as the new year progresses.

This will be another tough year in the housing market, with foreclosures expected to remain at their highest numbers in more than a decade. Two recent books offer timely advice for those facing difficult choices about their homes.

Putting your house in order
How to Sell a House Fast in a Slow Real Estate Market by William Bronchick and Ray Cooper is a smart, fairly fast read on what to do to get your house sold quickly. Some suggestions are obvious: invest in paint, new rugs and curb appeal. Other advice is simply interesting, like knowing the supply quotient for your neighborhood (divide the number of homes for sale by the number of closings in the last 30 days). If you have the time and/or live in the home, the authors recommend you do the selling yourself—you'll get to pocket a real estate agent's three to six percent commission. And there are good ideas about what to do if several months have passed and your home still hasn't sold (try the round-robin strategy, which involves holding an open house over a two-day period and then taking bids from all prospective buyers).

If you're facing foreclosure, pick up a copy of Stop Foreclosure Now, by attorney and mortgage expert Lloyd Segal. Lloyd self-published Stop Foreclosure Now in 2007 with considerable success; AMACOM recently issued a paperback edition. For less than $20, the book is a wealth of information on the foreclosure process, walking the reader through every detail. Early on, Segal advises the reader not to panic because foreclosure is a lengthy process that can take anywhere from three months (in nonjudicial foreclosures) to two years to complete. He urges homeowners to use that time to figure out whether it's better to try to keep the property or lose it. There's a lengthy section on refinancing as well as a chapter devoted to members of the military on active duty who are legally protected from foreclosure and may actually be entitled to a lower interest rate. Foreclosure is complicated and while Segal argues that a homeowner can handle the process, the wiser move still seems to be hiring an attorney to help you navigate the system.

Susan Rucci is a TV news producer who writes from Washington, D.C.

All Features