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Biography

Review

Review by bookpagedev

In this meticulously researched biography, Michael Lydon presents a thorough, appreciative appraisal of Ray Charles’s music even as he lays bare the singer’s monumental defects of character. Born in 1930 to a mother too young and sick to take care of him and abandoned by his father, Ray Charles Robinson learned early to live by his wits. When he was seven, he lost his sight. He spent the next eight years far from home at the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind. Here he developed his astounding musical talent and the resolve to do something with it.

From the beginning of his career, Charles (he dropped the Robinson in 1948) was a melting pot of musical styles — loving and performing every pop sound from big band to jazz to country. Lydon has amassed and arranged so many details about Charles and his milieu that reading the book is very much like watching a fine documentary. Often the power of the writing pulls us into the action. We stand quietly at the back of the studio as Charles wades excitedly into a recording session; or we sprawl exhausted on the band bus at night as it barrels and rattles through the anonymous American countryside. Besides exploring such high points as Charles’s breakthrough at Atlantic Records, his involvement in civil rights, and his popularizing of country music, Lydon also invites us to share in the everyday tedium and pettiness of the maestro’s performing life.

In spite of his reverence for the music, Lydon pulls no punches in depicting Charles’s cold-hearted treatment of band members and his indifference to his wives, lovers, and the children they bore him. Charles’s voracious appetite for women, Lydon shows, was rivaled only by his ultimately quenched passion for hard drugs. This engaging text is accompanied by photographs, bibliography, discography, index, and extensive source notes. Edward Morris is a Nashville-based journalist.

In this meticulously researched biography, Michael Lydon presents a thorough, appreciative appraisal of Ray Charles's music even as he lays bare the singer's monumental defects of character. Born in 1930 to a mother too young and sick to take care of him and abandoned by…

History

Dancing with death

Review by bookpagedev

In the 1994 military/political intervention in Haiti, Bob Shacochis spent some 18 months on the ground — most often with U.S. Special Forces (Green Berets). At first thought, this relatively minor incident might seem an eccentric choice for the acclaimed fiction writer’s first major work of reportage between hard covers, but The Immaculate Invasion, if perhaps 100 pages too long, gradually gains power as an unusually vivid, troubling look at human brutality, the limitations of military force, and an abiding despair less Haitian than central to the human condition.

In narrative terms, very little happens in The Immaculate Invasion even as various agencies cloud the air with acronyms. During a demonstration in support of the returning President Aristide, Shacochis is caught on the edge of massacre, while on another occasion, he is in danger of being killed by American soldiers; several cruel murders occur offstage.

As in his acclaimed short stories set in the Caribbean, Shacochis memorably evokes humid nights, lush foliage, lovely arcs of beach, terrifying rains and death-dealing floods.

But the main theme is American misreading or, possibly, intentional mishandling of dangerous local intrigues. In the familiar tradition of battlefield writing, the writer’s sympathies lie with the common man — in this case, the uncommonly well-trained, confident Green Berets. They are misunderstood and ill-supplied by the leaders of conventional American forces, officers frequently shown as arrogant martinets or dimwit careerists.

What most readers will admire in The Immaculate Invasion is not political analysis but novelistic evocation of people and events. Shacochis is at his best, his most valuable, when his rare gifts bring to life a myriad of individuals who know that existence is a dance with death.

In the 1994 military/political intervention in Haiti, Bob Shacochis spent some 18 months on the ground -- most often with U.S. Special Forces (Green Berets). At first thought, this relatively minor incident might seem an eccentric choice for the acclaimed fiction writer's first major work…

Fiction

A child at any cost

Review by bookpagedev

Imagine that you are a world-renowned supermodel with enough money to buy almost anything your heart desires. Diamonds? A Lear jet? An island getaway? The answer is far more down-to-earth for Bailey Williams, who wants nothing more desperately than a child — and she is willing to pay almost her last dollar to get one any way that she can. That’s how her search for a scientist who can produce an out-of-womb baby begins. It’s also the starting point for Charles Wilson to spin an age-old morality tale set against the backdrop of futuristic medical developments. Bailey hires Ross Channing, a Los Angeles bail bondsman who lives in a far different world than Bailey is accustomed to, but that juxtaposition gives Wilson the right mixture of ingredients for his latest medical thriller. Ross finds the scientist for Bailey, and that leads both of them on a trail of excitement, expectation, and danger that will link them for the rest of their lives. The story takes Bailey and Ross from the jet-set world of Los Angeles to the casino-covered shores of South Mississippi, where they find danger instead of the tranquillity of newborn life.

With Embryo, Charles Wilson jumps into the ranks of the best storytellers on the market today. His extensive knowledge of the medical field brings a believability to his novel’s cutting-edge technology and futuristic expectations that no other writer in the field can deliver. Back that up with his fast-paced plot and taut dialogue, and you have a book that’s worth staying up at night to read.

Imagine that you are a world-renowned supermodel with enough money to buy almost anything your heart desires. Diamonds? A Lear jet? An island getaway? The answer is far more down-to-earth for Bailey Williams, who wants nothing more desperately than a child -- and she is…

Science Fiction & FantasyFantasy

Supernatural seduction

Review by bookpagedev

When a novel deals on an intellectual level with matters spiritual or supernatural, the urge to try and figure out what the author may be trying to tell us becomes irresistible. I may be wildly wrong, but I feel sure that Ann Arensberg intends some sort of meaning or message in her third novel, Incubus, but I’ll be, uh, damned if I know what it is.

Not that ambiguity in this arena keeps Incubus from being a successful novel. It is satisfying and creepily entertaining from its whisper-of-danger beginning to its thunderous War-in-Heaven-style end.

The story is narrated by Cora Whitman, recounting events of three years earlier, the summer of 1974, when she "spent three months in the underworld." Cora, in her fifties, is the wife of Henry Lieber, rector of an Episcopal church in Dry Falls, Maine. Henry is a clergyman rapidly running out of, if not faith, then enthusiasm for it. Cora is a materialist who maintains, "It was only the prospect of an afterlife that made Death fearsome." Strange things begin to occur. In the middle of April, Dry Falls is hit by a heat wave that, accompanied by a drought, continues through the summer. But only the inhabitants of Dry Falls, as if they were "living under some kind of climatic glass bell," experience the bizarre weather, which goes unnoticed everywhere else.

Then some schoolgirls, messing about in a graveyard at night, are frightened (and enthralled) by some sort of bogeyman. Henry and the other men of the town lose their sex drive. A large, menacing black dog is seen lurking about. Cora sees "signs of disturbance in the reproductive cycle" that indicate that "something in our neighborhood was hostile to females of all species."

Still more eerie: Women have nightmares of being oppressed by a vague but loathsome weight on their bodies during sleep. Things then go beyond the dream stage. Evidence of nocturnal sexual assault of the schoolgirls is found, and then Henry and others witness such an assault — rape, apparently by a demon, an incubus, of a sleeping woman who appears to be in stupefied ecstasy.

What are we to make of this abominable activity, which is real and actual, not some sort of mass hallucination? For an epigraph the author uses the eighth-century Irish prayer known as "St. Patrick’s Breastplate," then precedes each section of her book with a line from it — "Christ before us," "Christ behind us," "Christ within us," "Christ beneath us," and so forth — as if to signal that great faith must be used to protect against great evil.

But what great faith? Henry’s is fading, and there are indications that he is trading his doctrinal belief in the supernatural for a fascination with the supernatural’s current disgusting manifestations.

Cora has no faith. She is completely convinced that the planet has been invaded by something, but whatever it is, it either nullifies the claims of Christianity or is beyond Christianity’s universe.

And yet, at the end, there is a terrifying clash between what seems to be Earth and Hell in which Henry, in his church and for the moment refrocked, puts himself at eternal risk to protect the townspeople from a sort of supernatural Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Well, it is entirely captivating, and to expect a Charles Williams-style allegory is probably pointless. With it all I can pick only two superficial nits.

One is that, unlike their Roman Catholic and Methodist clerical brethren, Episcopal priests normally are not assigned to churches by their bishops, as Henry is here, but are chosen ("called") by a committee of the parish, typically after lengthy internecine wrangling.

The other is that it stretches credulity to maintain that no one outside Dry Falls would notice a three-month abnormality in the weather and reproductive cycle. But then, I suppose, we’re not dealing with logic but with the demonic. And demons, like extraterrestrial aliens, presumably prefer to conduct their depredations in secret. Where is Kevin McCarthy when we need him?

When a novel deals on an intellectual level with matters spiritual or supernatural, the urge to try and figure out what the author may be trying to tell us becomes irresistible. I may be wildly wrong, but I feel sure that Ann Arensberg intends some…

LifestylesHealth & Fitness

Get into the zone

Review by bookpagedev

For the past 60 years, the consensus has been that the only proven way to reverse the aging process is to restrict calories, but Barry Sears’s new book, The Anti-Aging Zone, adds another dimension to the equation restricting calories does not mean a bread-and-water diet for the rest of your life. The book is well worth the reading, and not only by graying Boomers. It’s for anyone who wants to live longer and better. Sears gives insight into how hormones control the aging process and how a few simple lifestyle changes can alter that process. His anti-aging Zone Diet helps turn back the clock and restore strength and stamina, improve sexual performance and fertility, revitalize and maintain mental function, and decrease the risk of heart disease, stroke, and diabetes. As an aid to understanding terminology, Sears includes a glossary, sample Zone meals, and recipes. Sears believes that there is definitely a proven drug to reverse the aging process, and that drug is food in the form of his Zone Diet.

For the past 60 years, the consensus has been that the only proven way to reverse the aging process is to restrict calories, but Barry Sears's new book, The Anti-Aging Zone, adds another dimension to the equation restricting calories does not mean a bread-and-water diet…

LifestylesCrafts, Hobbies & Home

Gardening, from fertile imaginations

Review by bookpagedev

What is it about garden anthologies and garden writers that interests both beginner and experienced gardeners alike? It can’t be the focus on the finished product the garden because any gardener will assure you that the garden is never finished. More than likely, it’s the process of gardening itself that fascinates, and Jane Garmey’s The Writer in the Garden is a good example of that process.

It’s been said of gardeners that they trust only the wisdom of those who have dirt under their fingernails; obvious hands-on experience and the tell-tale signs of battle are recognizable and admirable. We even reward the effort by hanging on every word recounting frustrating skirmishes or glorious victories. To us, the words of Cynthia Kling make perfect sense: People who don’t really understand gardening think of it as a patrician and benign hobby. That couldn’t be further from the truth. To serious gardeners, it’s blood sport. Keeping individual entries brief and easy to read in one sitting, editor Jane Garmey draws from some 56 writers who have practiced the living art of gardening. Of course, there are the usual jottings of Vita Sackville-West, Russell Page, Gertrude Jekyll, and Christopher Lloyd, but who would have thought that M.F.K. Fisher would have anything to say about roses? Or that Edith Wharton would care to contemplate Italian gardens? The musings in Christopher Lloyd’s "Hurrah for Vulgarity"  and Henry Mitchell’s "On the Defiance of Gardeners"  ask us to think about gardening and gardeners in a new way, but by the time we get to Patricia Thorpe’s "The Day of the Living Dead,"  we recognize familiar territory. There’s no doubt whatsoever when we read the words of Ken Druse:  "If it’s rare we want it. If it’s tiny and impossible to grow, we’ve got to have it. If it’s brown and looks dead, and has black flowers, we’ll kill for it."

There are a few more months to go before another growing season begins, and wise gardeners will gather strength from this brief respite they know they’re going to need it. The Writer in the Garden is one anthology that will put you in the mood for what’s coming.

Pat Regel lives in Nashville.

What is it about garden anthologies and garden writers that interests both beginner and experienced gardeners alike? It can't be the focus on the finished product the garden because any gardener will assure you that the garden is never finished. More than likely, it's the…

Best of 2016

Feature by bookpagedev

As 2016 draws to a close, it’s time to stand up and cheer for your favorite book! We’re willing to guarantee that our list of 50 titles, which ranges across genres, includes something for everyone. 

1. News of the World by Paulette Jiles 

2. Swing Time by Zadie Smith 

3. When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi 

4. The Mothers by Brit Bennett 

5. Commonwealth by Ann Patchett 

6. My Name Is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout 

7. Miss Jane by Brad Watson 

8. The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead 

9. Evicted by Matthew Desmond 

10. Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi 

11. Truevine by Beth Macy 

12. Loner by Teddy Wayne 

13. The Nix by Nathan Hill 

14. I’m Supposed to Protect You from All This by Nadja Spiegelman 

15. A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles 

16. Innocents and Others by Dana Spiotta 

17. The Girls by Emma Cline 

18. Barkskins by Annie Proulx 

19. Sleeping Giants by Sylvain Neuvel 

20. The Last Painting of Sara de Vos by Dominic Smith 

21. Mr. Splitfoot by Samantha Hunt 

22. Work Like Any Other by Virginia Reeves 

23. The Fortunes by Peter Ho Davies 

24. American Heiress by Jeffrey Toobin 

25. Imagine Me Gone by Adam Haslett 

26. Seven Brief Lessons on Physics by Carlo Rovelli 

27. The Nest by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney 

28. Pond by Claire-Louise Bennett 

29. The Fortress by Danielle Trussoni 

30. The Summer Before the War by Helen Simonson 

31. The Wonder by Emma Donoghue 

32. American Housewife by Helen Ellis 

33. The Vegetarian by Han Kang 

34. To the Bright Edge of the World by Eowyn Ivey 

35. Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue 

36. Patient H.M. by Luke Dittrich 

37. Mad Enchantment by Ross King 

38. The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben 

39. Today Will Be Different by Maria Semple 

40. Dodgers by Bill Beverly 

41. A Great Reckoning by Louise Penny 

42. The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko by Scott Stambach 

43. When in French by Lauren Collins 

44. Lab Girl by Hope Jahren 

45. The Lonely City by Olivia Laing 

46. Mercury by Margot Livesey 

47. Hero of the Empire by Candice Millard 

48. My Father, the Pornographer by Chris Offutt 

49. Will & I by Clay Byars 

50. The Portable Veblen by Elizabeth McKenzie 

This article was originally published in the December 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

As 2016 draws to a close, it's time to stand up and cheer for your favorite book! We're willing to guarantee that our list of 50 titles, which ranges across genres, includes something for everyone.
NonfictionFictionMemoir

The Hold List: Books to warm you from inside out

Feature by bookpagedev

If your primary tactic for surviving the winter is to drag a big blanket into a cozy chair and hibernate with the most inspiring books you can find, then these five reads, selected in partnership with Vintage Books, are for you.

The Stars Are Fire
By Anita Shreve

Shreve’s novel draws inspiration from Maine’s history and follows a young woman as she comes into her own after a devastating fire in 1947. The disaster destroys over a quarter of a million acres and ushers in a new life for Grace Holland, whose husband goes missing during the fire. Now effectively a widow with children to raise by herself, Grace begins to build something new from the ashes. As she slowly realizes how stifling her marriage was, she tentatively opens herself up to a new life and new love. Shreve captures the joy of self-discovery in this stunning novel.

Lab Girl
By Hope Jahren

Laugh, cry and fall madly in love with the world around you while reading paleobiologist Jahren’s bestselling memoir, an entertaining, spirited look into the world of plant researchers. Whether she’s sharing the challenges of being a female scientist or the unique relationship she has with her lab partner, Jahren displays an effervescent, clear-eyed delight in her subjects, and never more so than in her insights into the natural world. Even if science and nature books aren’t your cuppa, Jahren’s descriptive writing style makes this an enjoyable reading experience for just about anyone.

Magic Hours 
By Tom Bissell

Take a break from wintry binge-watching with this updated edition of celebrated cultural critic Bissell’s 2012 collection of essays on the act of creating. The 18 passionate essays are an aerobic dance between highbrow and lowbrow, exploring our culture through its creations, whether it’s a sitcom, a documentary on the Iraq War, the cult classic film The Room, David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest or a movie made in Bissell’s hometown in northern Michigan. There’s so much to enjoy here, but it’s a particular pleasure to read his gleeful takedown of how-to books, especially those that will (supposedly) tell you how to write.

Swimming in the Sink
By Lynne Cox

In a straightforward, candid style, Cox shares a comeback tale that’ll have you flipping the pages like you’re reading a thriller instead of an inspiring sports memoir. Legendary open-water swimmer Cox has a unique ability to acclimatize to extreme cold (jealous, much?), which has allowed her to swim the Bering Strait, among other frigid waters. But after the deaths of her parents, Cox was diagnosed with broken heart syndrome, which seemed to mark the end of her swimming life. But behold the power of mindfulness and positivity, because Cox learns to swim again—beginning in her sink.

Nobody’s Fool
By Richard Russo

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Russo knows a little something about the human heart, and hope blooms like your most stubborn houseplant in this folksy, poignant tale set in the blue-collar town of North Bath, New York. Centering on down-on-his-luck, 60-year-old Donald “Sully” Sullivan (his knee is bad, he drinks a little too much), it’s a perfect balance of little tragedies and dark comic relief. Once you’ve gotten well acquainted with the town’s wonderful characters—as well as you might any neighbor in a small town—you can pick up Everybody’s Fool, which returns to Sully’s world, 10 years later, for another old-fashioned tale.

 

This article was originally published in the January 2019 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

If your primary tactic for surviving the winter is to drag a big blanket into a cozy chair and hibernate with the most inspiring books you can find, then these five reads, selected in partnership with Vintage Books, are for you.

Meet the Author: J.R. Krause

Feature by bookpagedev

A boy and a dragon find friendship and learn to face their fears in author and illustrator J.R. Krause’s new picture book, Dragon Night. Krause is an award-winning animator and designer who has worked on many TV shows, including “The Simpsons” and  “Futurama.” He lives in Southern California with his family.

 

A boy and a dragon find friendship and learn to face their fears in author and illustrator J.R. Krause’s new picture book, Dragon Night. Krause is an award-winning animator and designer who has worked on many TV shows, including “The Simpsons” and  “Futurama.” He lives in…

Science Fiction & FantasyFictionChildren's & YAWorld FictionMiddle Grade

The Hold List: February 2019

Feature by bookpagedev

All of our crushes are fictional characters. But what if we actually had the opportunity to date one of our imaginary loves? Just how good (or bad!) would that first date be? The editors have some thoughts.

Hagrid from the Harry Potter series
By J.K. Rowling

There are so many characters from Rowling’s world who’d be great on a date: Sirius Black, Hermione once she’s 30 (if Ron’s OK with it), either of the Weasley twins. But if I want to feel fancy, I’m taking Hagrid. Sure, his beard is out of control, and he’ll probably smell strongly of damp wool, but he gives the best hugs, and you know he’ll try really hard to make it a nice evening. He’ll get dressed up in his best suit, I’ll bring the (oversize, low-priced) bottle of wine, and he’ll show me his favorite clearing in the forest to watch the moon rise. I fully expect the date to be ruined by whatever magical creature is hidden away in his breast pocket, but that’s just fine with me.

—Cat, Deputy Editor

Nino from the Neapolitan Quartet
By Elena Ferrante

Ah, Nino Sarratore. What shy girl hasn’t had their own Nino Sarratore—the brilliant, somewhat pretentious boy you know would love you if you ever worked up the courage to talk to him. However, with the benefit of having read the rest of Ferrante’s brilliant Neapolitan novels, I know what lurks behind Nino’s appealing exterior. And ladies, he’s not worth any of our time. So this Valentine’s Day, I’ll take one for the team. I’ll go on a date with Nino and let him talk at me and think that I’m falling for his “more brilliant than you” act. And then, after I’ve gained his trust and made him think he’s gained a new acolyte-admirer, I’ll stomp on his heart on behalf of bookish girls everywhere.

—Savanna, Editorial Assistant

Leonard from The Marriage Plot
By Jeffrey Eugenides

Listen, I know he’s trouble. But I am in love with Leonard Bankhead. I love his brilliance, his passion, his intensity and his dark and terrible understanding of the world. If Leonard met me, he would realize that we were meant to be together. No one understands him like I do. Leonard and I are going to a dive bar, we’re getting shots of whiskey, and I don’t care what my mother says about it. We’ll talk about our favorite books and how messed up everything is. We’ll get into a heated argument about if reality television has any worth (it does, and I will introduce him to “Vanderpump Rules,” which he will admit to loving). Later, his career on track, he’ll name a type of algae after the color of my eyes: mud.

—Lily, Associate Editor

Matsu from The Samurai’s Garden
By Gail Tsukiyama

For intelligence and thoughtfulness, I’d turn to the devoted gardener from Tsukiyama’s tender, melancholy second novel, set in 1937. In this story about gracefully weathering loneliness and sorrow, Matsu tends his exquisite garden and frequently journeys to a leper colony, where he continues to care for his beloved. But readers only ever see Matsu through the eyes of Chinese student Stephen, and this gentle man deserves to rise above his secondary-character status. He’s such a classic kind of man that I’d love to see his reaction to a contemporary art museum some summer afternoon. Assuming that I’ve learned to speak Japanese for the date, it would be nice to walk silently through a gallery and debrief afterward. 

—Cat, Deputy Editor

Lilliet from The Queen of the Night
By Alexander Chee

James Bond, Holly Golightly, Jay Gatsby—how much fun would it be to go on a first date (but probably not a second) with one of fiction’s most notorious partiers? For glitz, glamour, scandal and an all-around epic night on the town, it would be hard to beat a visit to 19th-century Paris for a decadent costume party with soprano Lilliet Berne. In Chee’s second novel, Lilliet is a woman of many secrets—too many for a long-term relationship—and drama swirls around her to an improbable degree. But dressed in a fabulous costume and swathed in dazzling jewels—and with the possibility of dramatic escapes and scheming aristocrats—an evening spent with this rags-to-riches diva would be quite an adventure.

—Hilli, Assistant Editor

 

This article was originally published in the February 2019 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

All of our crushes are fictional characters. But what if we actually had the opportunity to date one of our imaginary loves? Just how good (or bad!) would that first date be? The editors have some thoughts.

Hagrid from the Harry…

Fiction

We remember

Feature by bookpagedev

Four historical fiction authors explore and celebrate American womanhood.

Elizabeth Letts, author of Finding Dorothy

In writing Finding Dorothy, I had to imagine what would it have been like to meet Judy Garland in person, as my heroine, Maud Baum, did on the set of The Wizard of Oz in 1939. To write about someone so beloved, so well-known, at first seemed a bit daunting. Luckily, I had a secret source.  As it happens, my mother met Judy Garland—not just once, but twice. As a little girl, she visited MGM, and watched up close as Judy Garland rehearsed scenes from The Harvey Girls. Years later, working as a waitress on Nantucket, she encountered Judy again. Every night for a week, Judy and her glamorous entourage came in for lobster dinners while my mom, totally star-struck, carried plates and refilled drinks. On the last night, Judy took note of the shy waitress and beckoned her over, offering her autograph, scribbled on a cocktail napkin. 

My mother never forgot those two encounters. She described a Judy Garland who in person was lovely, gracious and fully larger than life. We now understand the high emotional price female movie stars often paid to succeed in a man’s world, and with Judy Garland it’s hard to untangle her incredible legacy from her often tragic life. But in writing Judy, I kept in mind the real flesh-and-blood person my mother encountered. This is the young woman I’ve portrayed in Finding Dorothy—courageous and tough, young and vulnerable, and of course, utterly dazzling.

Margaret Verble, author of Cherokee America

A woman named Cherokee America Rogers inspired my novel, Cherokee America. I’ve been able to locate only one picture of her. In it, her eyes look worried. Her lips are full, but not smiling. Her hair is pulled back into an untidy bun, and her jacket is buttoned up over a blouse and secured at the collar by a large cameo. She’s not looking at the camera, but her hands are folded in front of her. If she sat for this picture as a portrait to last through the ages, she should’ve had a better photographer.  

Or maybe not. She was an Indian who dressed as a Victorian. That alone makes her interesting. She was also the widowed mother of several children and ran a large farm. I bet she was uneasy every day, and far too busy to be neat. While researching, I discovered her male relatives—a chief, a governor, generations of warriors and soldier—made it into several history books. But the only words about her were less than a page accompanying that picture. The writer, “Dub” West, describes her as “a small woman . . . who could take care of herself in any matter,” “shrewd,” “legendary” and “a dominant figure.” He also says that because she was “ever going about taking care of the sick” with “almost magic results,” she was universally affectionately called “Aunt Check.” Who would want a woman like that lost to history? Not me.

Stephanie Marie Thornton, author of American Princess

As a history teacher, it boggles my mind to think that Alice Roosevelt, the eldest daughter of Theodore Roosevelt, lived a whopping 96 years and witnessed the administrations of 18 presidents ranging from mustachioed Chester Arthur all the way to peanut-farmer Jimmy Carter. Coming of age at the turn of the 20th century, Alice hosted her debut ball at the White House during her father’s presidency, influenced events like the veto of the League of Nations and enjoyed an open invitation to the executive mansion even after JFK’s administration. She rubbed elbows with Eleanor Roosevelt, Richard Nixon and even Jackie Kennedy! A woman with this sort of Washington insider access is a novelist’s dream, but even more appealing to me was Alice’s rapier wit, which kept everyone in the Capitol on their toes. 

Alice, a self-proclaimed hedonist, made me laugh out loud to discover that she kept a needlepoint pillow that read, “If you can’t say something good about someone, sit right here by me.” I adored bringing her colorful character to life in scenes of American Princess, especially her early days when she shocked everyone—including her father—by bringing a snake to parties in her handbag. However, older Alice is exactly the tough sort of woman I hope to be 30 years from now—willing to speak her mind and take no prisoners!

Alan Brennert, author of Daughter of Moloka'i

Why do I write historical novels from a woman’s perspective? It’s often the history itself that dictates what voice to use to tell a particular story. Early in my research for Moloka'i (2003), I learned that those with leprosy weren’t just taken from their homes and exiled to Moloka'i—their newborn babies were taken away, too, to prevent them from becoming infected. Many parents never saw their children again. I knew that my protagonist had to be a girl, taken from her family, who would grow up, marry and have her baby taken away. There seemed no more compelling way to frame the whole tragic story, which continues in Daughter of Moloka'i.

Honolulu (2009) sprang from my desire to write about the so-called “glamour days” of Honolulu, the 1920s, but told against the backdrop of the hardscrabble lives of immigrants that made up Hawai'i’s workforce. Then I read about the “Hotel of Sorrows,” from which neighbors could hear the sobbing of women. These were Asian picture brides who were shown photographs of “rich young men in Hawai'i” seeking wives—but after crossing an ocean, discovered that their husbands-to-be were decades older and poor laborers on plantations. These women’s lives formed the sad but perfect prism through which to view Hawai'i’s glamour days.

In my books, I try to tell the truth of these often unexamined lives. But I can’t say I choose these women; more like they choose me.

Four historical fiction authors explore and celebrate American womanhood.

NonfictionFictionAudioMemoir

The art of audiobooks

Feature by bookpagedev

Three authors and two audiobooks readers share a peek behind the curtain for Audiobook Month.

Lisa SeeLisa See on crafting dialogue for The Island of Sea Women

Writing is a solitary activity, and much of what I do is completely in my head. It’s for this reason that I often speak the words as I’m writing. (This, more than anything else, is a good reason that I have an office in my home, where my mutterings about the sea, women, love and tragedy are heard only by the four walls that surround me.) Once the first draft is done, I read all the following drafts aloud. I want to hear how certain phrases sound, listen to the pacing and rhythms of the plot and get a sense of the pattern of each character’s voice.

When I get to my final draft, my sister Clara comes over, and we sit at my kitchen table and act out the entire book. This is especially helpful when there are several people in a scene. The divers in The Island of Sea Women meet in a special stone structure built right on the beach, where they change clothes, warm up by the fire, eat and trade stories. In real life and in my novel, these women love to banter. Clara and I play out these scenes—sometimes improvising new lines, sometimes deepening a joke or, conversely, a sad story. My belief in getting to the truth of how my characters speak not only improves the novel but also makes for a fabulous audiobook.

Scott BrickScott Brick on becoming the new reader of the Jack Reacher series

Learning I’d been approved to narrate the Jack Reacher series after longtime narrator Dick Hill’s retirement left me lightheaded, as I’ve been a fan of Lee Child’s work for years. When Dick got in touch to give his full support, I was positively gobsmacked. I am hugely indebted to him for the massive body of work he’s left behind, and while I may be the narrator blessed to walk beside Reacher on his future adventures, Dick will always walk with us in spirit.

Child is a master choreographer of both brutality and necessity, from the ruthlessness of Reacher’s opponents to his commitment to doing only what he must to settle the scales. Having been a fight choreographer myself for stage and screen, I recognize the rhythm in Reacher’s battles, from the moment they begin until the moment when he recognizes—and exploits—a vital weakness. I was absolutely thrilled when I showed up to narrate my first Reacher novel, Past Tense, because reading those fight scenes aloud was like pulling on the most comfortable sweatshirt I’ve ever worn. Reacher proves himself to be a man of great resilience and optimism but also a man who will end any fight if necessary.

There’s another Reacher adventure coming in just a few months, and as I did last time, I will show up in the studio wearing jeans that’ve been pressed beneath a mattress and carrying only a travel toothbrush, and I will treasure each and every moment.

Stephanie LandStephanie Land on narrating her own memoir, Maid

When I sat down in a cramped studio to record the audiobook for Maid, it’d been over half a year since I’d read the book in its entirety. There were still several long months until publication, and the anticipation of what people would think of my story as a single mom on every type of government assistance program made me jumpy with nervousness. Not only was it my first book, but it also was the first piece I’d written that was longer than 20 pages. Imposter syndrome was high.

The recording process took a couple of weeks. I learned a lot about every noise my mouth and stomach make. I strained to not slip up on words, often holding my breath. I thankfully found no typos. On the day I read the chapter in which my daughter and I experience a devastating loss, I struggled to keep my voice even.

But something beautiful happened as I read this story, my story, this episode of my life that was so vulnerable and raw and scary to put out there. I’d read a paragraph or two, or sometimes an entire chapter, and think, Wow, this is actually really good! As writers, we sit with these stories, we bear down and go through dozens of rounds of edits until the sight of the title makes us cringe. Reading it out loud with such intensity and purpose made me grow confident in my story’s power to possibly change the world a little bit.

Julia WhelanJulia Whelan on narrating Linda Holmes’ novel, Evvie Drake Starts Over

I’ve been a fan of Linda’s for about a decade and lucky enough to call her a friend for a few years. Her “Monkey See” column at NPR was reliably delightful, funny and unexpectedly wise. So when, after we came to know each other personally, she sent me the novel she’d just finished, I’ll admit to being nervous. What if her journalistic voice only worked in, well, journalism? But five pages in, I laughed. Ten pages in, I texted her a blisteringly brilliant sentence she’d written. Twenty pages in, I texted her, I HAVE TO NARRATE THIS. 

This book is about the absence of things that should be there: grief, mothers, even sexual attraction to a person who, in all other respects, might be your soul mate. We, as readers, want to bring these things back, to right what seems to be a narrative wrong. But Linda so ably shows us that sometimes—sorry, but it’s true—things are just missing. The trick in life is to figure out which absent things you actually want and then go get them. 

Like her pop-culture writing that I fell in love with all those years ago, Evvie Drake Starts Over is delightful, funny and unexpectedly wise, and I treasure the three days I had in the booth with it. I began missing Evvie and Dean as soon as I started recording the end credits. Linda was there for much of the recording process, and at the end, I walked out and looked at her and sighed. “I’m going to miss them,” I said. She nodded and replied, “I’m going to miss them, too.”

Patti Callahan HenryPatti Callahan Henry on her friendship with Joshilyn Jackson, narrator of The Favorite Daughter

When I write a book, I rarely imagine my character’s voices. I see them; I feel them; I know their pains and wants. And I do hear them, but not in any kind of audible way, more in an intuitive sense of what they would say and how they would say it. But if I had imagined Colleen Donohue’s voice, I would have chosen my friend Joshilyn Jackson’s audible narration. To have her read the audio version is simply more than serendipitous; it feels meant-to-be.

Joshilyn and I met when our first books came out a million years ago. I mean, 15 years ago. We first crossed paths when we were both speaking at a theater in Perry, Georgia. I had rarely, if ever, been on a large stage to speak, and was quite nervous. Joshilyn, on the other hand, seemed to command the stage, to hold the audience in the palm of her hand. I was in awe. When she later told me that she’d majored in theater, it comforted me a bit, but not enough to feel good about my own performance that afternoon.

Through the years, through moves and life and children and slumps and highs, we’ve walked alongside each other in this journey of both life and writing. And now, Joshilyn is alongside me in a way I never imagined: Her beautiful storytelling voice animates my character, Colleen Donohue.

I am thrilled. Colleen is spunky, witty and kind—just like Joshilyn.

 

See photo by Patricia Williams / Land photo by Nicol Biesek / Henry photo by Beth Hontzas

Three authors and two audiobooks readers share a peek behind the curtain for Audiobook Month.

Science Fiction & FantasyFictionSpeculative FictionComing of Age

8 new voices to discover

Feature by bookpagedev

It’s tough out there for a debut author, but these eight newcomers get nothing but love from us.

Amanda Lee Koe, author of Delayed Rays of a Star

The book: This century-spanning work charts the rise and fall of three of the most famous women of 20th-­century cinema: Marlene Dietrich, Anna Mae Wong and Leni Riefenstahl.

The author: At 25, Amanda Lee Koe became the youngest-ever winner of the Singapore Literature Prize for her story collection Ministry of Moral Panic. She is the fiction editor of Esquire Singapore and the editor of the National Museum of Singapore’s film journal, Cinémathèque Quarterly.

For fans of: Novels that place art within the context of history, like The Last Painting of Sara de Vos by Dominic Smith. 

Read it for: Prose to get lost in, plus a heartfelt tribute to cinema history and the complicated lives of notable women.

Kira Jane Buxton, author of Hollow Kingdom

The book: A foul-mouthed, Cheetos-loving crow named S.T. goes on an adventure to save humanity from doom.

The author: Kira Jane Buxton has been previous published in the New York Times, McSweeney’s and more. She lives in Seattle, Washington, with a menagerie: three cats, a dog, two crows and plenty of hummingbirds.

For fans of: All creatures great and small, as well as funny fantasy authors like Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett and David Wong.

Read it for: A totally fresh take on the apocalypse, peppered with hilarious philosophical discourse and a fascinating, imaginative animal world.

Elizabeth Macneal, author of The Doll Factory

The book: An intricate web unfolds in 1851 London, where an aspiring artist is stalked by a creepy taxidermist.

The author: Scotland-born Elizabeth Macneal is a potter based in East London. She won the Caledonia Novel Award for this debut.

For fans of: Victorian gothic fiction, Jessie Burton, Sarah Waters and Imogen Hermes Gowar.

Read it for: A darkly beautiful exploration of the razor’s edge between creation and destruction.

Tope Folarin, author of A Particular Kind of Black Man

The book: The son of Nigerian parents—including a mother who shows signs of mental illness—grows up in a very white Utah in the late 1980s and early ’90s.

The author: A Nigerian-American author based in Washington, D.C., Tope Folarin won the 2013 Caine Prize for African Writing and was recently named to the Africa39 list of the most promising African writers under 40.

For fans of: Coming-of-age immigrant stories, Imbolo Mbue, Nicole Dennis-Benn and Zinzi Clemmons.

Read it for: Acrobatics in structure and pacing, meditations on memory, layers upon layers to unravel and a sharp perspective of the social structures in white and black communities.

Sarah Elaine Smith, author of Marilou Is Everywhere

The book: In northern Appalachia, a 14-year-old girl tries to escape a bleak life by slipping into the place left behind by an affluent teen who has gone missing.

The author: Sarah Elaine Smith holds two MFAs: fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and poetry from the Michener Center for Writers.

For fans of: Novels that delicately balance the brutal and the beautiful, like Julie Buntin’s Marlena.

Read it for: A mesmerizing blend of dream and reality, wrapped in a palpable love of language and plenty of suspense.

Natalie Daniels, author of Too Close

The book: Connie has found a new friend in fellow mom Ness. But jump forward in time, and Connie has been institutionalized for a crime, and her disturbing story sounds strangely familiar to her psychiatrist. Is Ness at the heart of this tale of madness and toxicity?

The author: Natalie Daniels is a pseudonym for London-based actor and screenwriter Clara Salaman.

For fans of: Provocative, well-written thrillers by Laura Lippman and Alison Gaylin.

Read it for: Entertaining thrills and a perceptive exploration of the way women’s relationships are portrayed in fiction.

Chanelle Benz, author of The Gone Dead

The book: A multiracial woman returns to her childhood home in Greendale, Mississippi, to reckon with weary prejudices and the truth of her father’s death.

The author: Chanelle Benz’s 2017 story collection, The Man Who Shot Out My Eye Is Dead, was long-listed for the 2018 PEN/Robert Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction. Benz lives in Memphis and teaches at Rhodes College.

For fans of: Complicated family stories, wonderful casts of characters, Stephanie Powell Watts, Jesmyn Ward and Celeste Ng.

Read it for: An actor’s ear for dialogue, flawless directorial vision and the many sprawling, tension-building perspectives of the American South.

Zach Powers, author of First Cosmic Velocity 

The book: It’s 1964, and the space race is in full swing. The Soviet launch program seems to be a success, but it’s a ruse. Instead, the program relies on twins: The cosmonaut twin perishes, while the living twin survives on Earth, assuming the life of their deceased sibling.

The author: Zach Powers is the author of Gravity Changes, an award-winning short story collection. He lives in Arlington, Virginia, and works with the Writer’s Center in Maryland.

For fans of: Original alternate histories and juicy tales of Soviet secrets.

Read it for: The psychological burden placed on the twins who are selected to survive.

It’s tough out there for a debut author, but these eight newcomers get nothing but love from us.

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