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by Angela Leeper

Valedictorian status or high test scores no longer open doors to the country’s top universities. And striking that subtle balance among academic achievement, extracurriculars and the dreaded college essay can be tricky. That’s why Oyster Bay High School on Long Island, whose diverse student body represents a range of cultures and socioeconomic levels, was lucky to have “guidance guru” Gwyeth Smith Jr., simply known as Smitty.

In Acceptance: A Legendary Guidance Counselor Helps Seven Kids Find the Right Colleges—and Find Themselves, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David L. Marcus follows Oyster Bay’s class of 2008 as it prepares for college admissions. Focusing on several of Smitty’s special “projects” for the year—including an African-American girl with an overloaded schedule and limited financial resources, a popular jock who can’t focus on school work with all of the chaos at home, a free-spirited artist and a would-be engineer with a helicopter mother—Marcus’ engaging and inspiring narration reveals the mounting challenges teens face today and the resiliency that often exceeds their years.

Although he once flunked out of college and passed through three campuses before earning his bachelor’s degree, Smitty knows after nearly four decades of counseling that the secret to admissions success is not seeing college as a destination, but the beginning of a journey. The encouragement he gives his seniors on finding the right college—look beyond status and pressure from home and into one’s own character and passions—is timeless advice. For any student scouting the same path, and parents who want to help rather than hinder the search, Acceptance offers an eye-opening, behind-the-scenes look at the college admissions process.

Fiction

Fiction

Adventures in the garden of life

Review by bookpagedev

by Carla Jean Whitley

Lila Nova needs some beauty in her life. After an ugly divorce and a move to a lonely, characterless studio apartment, Lila wanders into a New York City market and begins to transform her barren home with a tropical plant—a bird of paradise. Lila’s impulse buy becomes a source of therapy, a relief from a life filled with so much that’s ugly: the divorce, a cutthroat advertising career and a boss who’s a pervert.

With her newfound love of plants fresh on her mind, Lila encounters a Laundromat filled with tropical flowers, so lush and verdant that it feels more like a greenhouse than a place to clean your clothes. The curious owner, Armand, teaches Lila about the mythical nine plants of desire. Each plant is a key to the things people most desire—fortune, immortality, love and so on—and that’s something Armand has learned first-hand. He owns the plants and credits them with his quirky Laundromat’s success. But when his plants are stolen, Lila takes a chance and travels to Mexico with Armand, prepared to unearth the mythical nine plants—and herself.

First-time novelist Margot Berwin’s descriptions are as luxurious as the tropical plants themselves in Hothouse Flower and the Nine Plants of Desire. When she describes a character, Berwin writes in such sensuous detail as to bring the person to life, as though you hold not a page but a stage with live actors.

That’s to be expected from a woman who has written scintillating essays for Nerve.com, a saucy website dedicated to sex and culture. But while the characters in Hothouse Flower find plenty of reasons to sweat in paradise, it’s Berwin’s very real love of plants that focuses the novel. Berwin combines her gardening knowledge with adept storytelling to weave together a tale of romance, adventure and intrigue that will enchant readers, green thumbed or not.

Carla Jean Whitley writes from Birmingham, Alabama, where she has never grown more than potted herbs and ferns.

Biography

Biography

A larger-than-life African adventure

Review by bookpagedev

by Maude McDaniel

Everything about Africa seems outsized—the landscape, the beauty, the dangers, the passions. Wildflower, the story of some of the greatest African nature films and, more especially of those who made them, is outsized as well. The “wildflower,” Joan Root, herself beautiful as a Hollywood heroine, helped produce ground-breaking documentaries like The Year of the Wildebeest and Mysterious Castles of Clay (a 1978 Oscar nominee) in the 1970s. She was extraordinarily sensitive to the destructive times she lived in and uniquely gifted in her quiet ability to do everything possible to reverse, or at least, restrict the damage.

Born in 1936 to a white Kenyan settler, Joan grew up “in the arms of the wild.” (As a baby, she was kidnapped by a big red monkey who surrendered her for a banana.) After finishing school in Switzerland, she returned to Kenya to help her parents run a photo-safari business, where she met and married Alan Root, a free spirit whose daredevil dominance complemented Joan’s overly controlled inner depths.

Mark Seal’s empathetic account, expanded from an article in Vanity Fair, sees her as one of the world’s two “greatest wildlife filmmakers” of their time. The other was her husband, whom she enabled in all ways, good and bad. With Alan’s spark and physical hubris shepherded by Joan’s astounding ability to plan and participate in the filming without turning a hair, they produced film after film.

For 28 years they appeared to have the perfect marriage, except for the occasional dalliance on Alan’s part. Joan’s ability to live with this seems outsized too, but she put herself heart and soul into protecting the precious ecosystem in Kenya against the depredations of an international flower business.

Joan put her safety into the hands of a young local, which turned out to be a mistake. Shot to death by assailants who invaded her property, she died at the age of 69. This absorbing biography will assure her place in the list of individuals who deserve appreciation for their willingness to put themselves on the line (and in the line of fire) for the natural world and its treasures.

Maude McDaniel writes from Maryland.

Fiction

Fiction

Women behaving badly

Review by bookpagedev

by Jillian Quint

At the start of the fifth novel by PEN/Faulkner Award-winner Kate Christensen, successful New York therapist Josie finds herself flirting with a man who is significantly younger—and decidedly not her husband. She drinks wine, throws her head back in hysterics and, as she watches herself deftly play out the calculations of seduction, becomes increasingly convinced that something in her life must change: she must leave her passionless marriage despite fears that it will traumatize her family.

In a surprisingly comic turn of events, however, Josie’s decision barely fazes her academic husband and adopted daughter Wendy, a resentful and perpetually bored preteen who Christensen crafts with wickedly clever punch. After all, as Wendy puts it: “Parents split up. It happens to everyone.”

Josie is prepared to move out of her apartment and rebuild her life when she calls her college friend Raquel, a Los Angeles rock star who is being vilified by the press for stealing a much younger man away from his pregnant girlfriend. Raquel suggests they sneak away to Mexico City to regroup, and Josie, despite her best efforts at responsibility, can’t see a reason not to. Once there, the pair embarks on a journey of renewed friendship and sexual awakening, as well as substance abuse, paparazzi avoidance and other forms of “trouble” few 40-year-old women encounter. Josie takes up with a local artist and Raquel balances the line between self-discovery and self-destruction.

Trouble is a smart and sexy look at the way libido plays into the female midlife crisis, and many of Christensen’s observations in the novel’s first half sparkle with acerbic wit. She loses steam, however, as the women traipse through Mexico City, and readers may find themselves wishing Josie had stayed in Manhattan to hash it out with her cruelly bemused husband. Still, it’s refreshing to read about middle-aged women who are given not only agency, but also vivacity and desire.

Jillian Quint is an Assistant Editor at the Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc.

Memoir

Memoir

Two kids who changed R&B

Review by bookpagedev

by Edward Morris

It is no exaggeration to say that Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller reshaped American culture with their songs—tunes such as “Black Denim Trousers and Motorcycle Boots,” “Charlie Brown,” “Poison Ivy,” “Jailhouse Rock,” “Kansas City,” “Searchin’” and the Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton/Elvis Presley hit that serves as the book’s title, “Hound Dog.”

Individually—and before either had reached his teens—these two Jewish white boys, Leiber from Baltimore and Stoller from Queens, New York, developed a passion for rootsy, hard-bitten black music. After they joined forces in 1950, they found themselves creating the kind of songs that transcended race, an effort that would eventually earn them a place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Leiber and Stoller tell their story in alternating segments ranging from a paragraph to a few pages. While this might seem to be a disjointed approach, it actually works quite well since the personalities and voices of the two men are so distinct. Stoller, who still writes music for Leiber’s lyrics, emerges as the more restrained and domesticated of the two. Early on, Leiber was drawn to fast cars and easy women, a combination that once led to tragedy when he crashed his Jaguar on a slick mountain road, killing one of the two call girls riding with him. Stoller and his wife narrowly averted tragedy themselves in 1956 when the ship on which they were returning to New York, the Andrea Doria, sank off the coast of Nantucket.

Leiber and Stoller recall, sometimes with glee, sometimes annoyance, rubbing shoulders with many of the most prominent figures in show business, including Presley, Peggy Lee, producer Phil Spector, actor Ben Gazzara and novelist Norman Mailer (who on one occasion tried to choke Leiber). All in all, theirs is a rich slice of life for both music fans and cultural historians.

“Thanks to Elvis and a host of other white boys,” says Leiber, “rhythm & blues . . . morphed into rock and roll. . . . Unconsciously, we were the avant-garde of a movement that we didn’t even know was a movement or had an avant-garde.”

Edward Morris reviews from Nashville.

Business & Finance

Business & Finance

For better or worse . . .

Review by bookpagedev

by Stephanie Swilley

If family financial disputes are ruining your romance, then pick up a copy of The Family CFO: The Couples Business Plan for Love and Money. Financial experts Mary Claire Allvine and Christine Larson have created a clear and direct process to take the emotional turmoil out of money matters. First, convene a Board of Directors to define the family’s goals, appoint a Cash Manager to handle day-to-day operations and name an Investment Manager to deal with debt and retirement planning. From there, the authors outline a five-step plan to take you through the process of financial decision-making. A lot of number crunching is required, but don’t be discouraged the book provides worksheets and tools. A rational approach to money problem-solving is worth the effort, and it just might keep you out of marriage counseling.

Business & Finance

Business & Finance

Tough love, tough work

Review by bookpagedev

by Stephanie Swilley

In The Total Money Makeover best-selling author and radio talk show host Dave Ramsey provides tough but achievable goals for the “fiscally flabby.” The first five chapters are a wade through Ramsey’s typical rants against denial (things can’t be that bad, can they?) and his biggest enemy debt. Then readers are introduced to his “baby step” program. Step one is socking away $1,000 cash for the inevitable rainy day, while step two involves a “debt snowball” that pays off the smallest debt first for a quick morale booster. Everything but the house must be paid off before putting away more emergency cash and investing for retirement. The next steps are starting an education fund and turbocharging your mortgage payments. Ramsey admits his plan is ambitious; he expects the first two steps to take at least two years. Waiting this long to start investing may not be a great idea, and his opposition to debt is sometimes unrealistic. However, dozens of followers share stories in the book of how Ramsey’s no-nonsense plan has worked for them. His tough-love approach is perfect for cutting through excuses and may be just the push you need to whip your personal balance sheet into shape.

In The Total Money Makeover best-selling author and radio talk show host Dave Ramsey provides tough but achievable goals for the "fiscally flabby." The first five chapters are a wade through Ramsey's typical rants against denial (things can't be that bad, can they?) and his…

Science Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy

Science Fiction & Fantasy Science Fiction

Setting sail on a thrilling adventure

Review by bookpagedev

by Jedediah Berry

Maybe some of this will sound familiar: a young boy separated from his family, gifted with a power that may save the world from a great evil; a young noblewoman betrothed to a foreign king against her will; a dangerous artifact of magnificent and mysterious power; intelligent talking animals; wizards, princes and spies engaged in a shadowy war that may doom or rescue hundreds of thousands of lives. . . .

Make no mistake, the raw material of Robert V.S. Redick’s debut novel, the first of a planned trilogy, has been incorporated into countless fantasy novels. But this makes only more remarkable the fact that, page by page, The Red Wolf Conspiracy feels so vibrant, fresh and exciting.

The effect is due partly to Redick’s knack for tackling the scale of the story charted in this book. The Chathrand is a 600-year-old ship the size of a city, bound for the territory of its nation’s ancient enemy on a mission of peace. And among the hundreds of passengers aboard the ship are agents of various powers, each with its own agenda, some who wish to see the peace secured, some who would profit from a new war.

The narrative perspective shifts deftly among a dozen characters, from young Pazel, who suffers the indignities of a ship’s tarboy while trying to locate his lost family, to Nilus Rotheby Rose, the half-mad captain of the Chathrand, who believes his path to glory lies in a secret pact with the emperor. Even the fears and stratagems of an "awakened" stowaway rat are presented with sympathy and depth. What emerges is a living tapestry, always in danger of being rent by the conspiracy at the novel’s heart.

And what a conspiracy it is, portrayed by Redick with a delirious love of the genre that is nothing less than infectious. When Sandor Ott, the emperor’s spymaster, declares to his associates: "Rose will captain that ship, and we shall sail with her. The game’s begun, lads. We’ll play it to the last round," all but the most jaded of readers will be eager to watch that game unfold.

Jedediah Berry is the author of a novel, The Manual of Detection

Fiction, Historical Fiction

Fiction Historical Fiction

Words can never hurt me?

Review by bookpagedev

by Thane Tierney

Not since Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich has an author captured the crushing sense of foreboding that hung over Uncle Joe’s Soviet state with the clear-eyed acuity that imbues every page of Robert Littell’s The Stalin Epigram. It’s almost like being dropped onto the surface of an alien planet, this strange world of pre-war Stalinist Russia, where poets’ words are read not only by the masses but also by the nation’s leaders, where a cutting couplet can draw real blood.

Littell, best known for Cold War thrillers such as The Company and The Sisters, proves himself to be both a gentleman and a scholar in his latest novel, a spellbinding and painstakingly researched account of poet Osip Mandelstam’s most famous work, "The Stalin Epigram," often referred to as his "sixteen-line death sentence."

Spun out in an interlocking web of narratives, including those of the poet, his wife, Stalin’s bodyguard, an Olympic weightlifter and others, the book paints a vivid, three-dimensional portrait of the emotional, political and physical carnage wrought by Mandelstam’s literary Molotov cocktail. And yet, The Stalin Epigram is also a love story, set against a richly nuanced historical backdrop in the grand tradition of Doctor Zhivago (written by Mandelstam’s friend Boris Pasternak, who plays a recurring role in this novel). But it’s a quintessentially Russian love story, which virtually guarantees that the rose’s thorn will outlive its petals.

In the words of Mandelstam’s wife, Nadezhda, "What I am recounting does not originate in the lobe of the brain where memory resides. It comes directly from the mind’s eye. . . . When, on occasion, I recall these awful events, they have the odor of earth at a freshly dug grave."

But even in the horrors of the Gulag, the rockiest of soils and the harshest of environments, the triumphant spirit of the poet’s tenderness can not, will not, be eradicated: "I kiss your eyes, I kiss the tears that spill from them should this letter by some miracle reach you. Still dancing." Bravo, comrade.

Thane Tierney, a longtime fan of the Dynamo Moscow hockey team, lives in Los Angeles.

Not since Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich has an author captured the crushing sense of foreboding that hung over Uncle Joe's Soviet state with the clear-eyed acuity that imbues every page of Robert Littell's The Stalin Epigram. It's almost like…

Biography

Biography

For better or worse, near or far

Review by bookpagedev

by Rebecca Steinitz

In this era of Twitter and texting, it’s hard to imagine the marital experience of John and Abigail Adams. Separated frequently by John’s political activity–for as long as five years, when he was advancing American interests in Europe during the Revolution–they communicated only by letter. The post was erratic, to the point that they often had no idea of each other’s circumstances for months at a time. Luckily, their bond was strong–probably both cause and effect of their copious correspondence. In Abigail & John: Portrait of a Marriage historian Edith B. Gelles becomes the latest to plumb this by now well-known epistolary archive.

Abigail & John begins with Abigail Smith’s decision to marry John Adams, tracks back to the colonial origins of their families and ends with John’s death in 1826, eight years after Abigail’s demise drew 54 years of marriage to a close. In between, Gelles covers familiar moments such as Abigail’s exhortation to "Remember the Ladies!" and John’s longstanding feud and eventual reconciliation with Thomas Jefferson, but the marital bond’s strength and fruitfulness is her primary interest.

Gelles offers the marriage as a model of shared endeavor and mutual support, and her depiction is largely persuasive. Their letters reveal how each was intimately involved in the activities and decisions of the other, even across miles and oceans, and how domestic events influenced political decisions, as well as vice versa.

Despite the book’s double focus, Gelles, who has written two academic books about Abigail, betrays an evident preference for the wife. Abigail comes off as a paragon, and John sometimes suffers in comparison, though Gelles takes pains to explain away his shortcomings, albeit not always convincingly. Although the book itself suffers from occasionally plodding prose, it presents an engaging portrait of an exemplary marriage.

In this era of Twitter and texting, it's hard to imagine the marital experience of John and Abigail Adams. Separated frequently by John's political activity--for as long as five years, when he was advancing American interests in Europe during the Revolution--they communicated only by letter.…

Fiction

Fiction

Searching for family secrets

Review by bookpagedev

by Deborah Donovan

Michael Malone is a prolific writer who has won awards ranging from an Emmy to an Edgar; he favors robust casts of characters and sprawling, intricate plots–and he continues in that vein with his 10th novel, The Four Corners of the Sky.

Annie Peregrine’s father Jack drops her off with his sister Sam on Annie’s seventh birthday, gives her his airplane, a Piper Warrior named King of the Sky, and then disappears. Now, on her 26th birthday, Annie travels from Annapolis, where she’s an ace flyer and instructor, to Emerald, North Carolina, where Sam still lives with Clark Goode, her longtime friend and housemate. Sam and Clark have raised Annie like a daughter, with only the rare, cryptic phone call or postcard from Jack over the years.

Out of the blue, Jack calls on Annie’s birthday, tells her he’s "dying in St. Louis," and pleads with her to fly the King of the Sky there to meet him. Annie does just that–setting in motion a bizarre cat-and-mouse chase involving an intriguing cast of characters including con-men, the Mafia, a Cuban refugee who effortlessly spouts Shakespeare, various FBI operatives and Annie’s soon-to-be-ex-husband, a pilot with a tendency toward adultery.

As Annie, Sam and Clark have suspected all along, Jack is more than just a "capricious" dad. He’s been charged with 11 felonies, and has three outstanding warrants, the latest for absconding with a hugely valuable gold- and jewel-encrusted statue smuggled out of Cuba. But despite his shortcomings, Jack is her father, and Annie will do whatever she can to keep him out of jail. She follows him from St. Louis (where he eludes some Mafia thugs by exiting through his hotel bathroom vent) to Miami (where he hides from the FBI in the Golden Day rest home) to Key West (where Annie finally discovers the identity of her mother).

Each of Malone’s characters is larger than life, and someone readers would love to encounter in the real world. Intricate relationships reveal themselves as Malone offers sporadic glimpses into the past to illuminate Annie’s murky background. Malone’s latest brims with humor and pathos–it’s an engaging, multifaceted saga touting the power of love and family to overcome all, even a lifetime of apparent neglect.

Deborah Donovan writes from La Veta, Colorado.

Michael Malone is a prolific writer who has won awards ranging from an Emmy to an Edgar; he favors robust casts of characters and sprawling, intricate plots--and he continues in that vein with his 10th novel, The Four Corners of the Sky.

…

Children's & YA, Middle Grade

Children's & YA Middle Grade

A spooky cure for writer’s block

Review by bookpagedev

by Sharon Verbeten

Best-selling author Ignatius B. Grumply is in a pickle–in more ways than one. He hasn’t started the children’s book he’s been contracted to write, and he needs a quiet place to do so.

Grumply’s writer’s block is resolved–or so he thinks–when he rents a creaky 32 1/2-room Victorian mansion on Old Cemetery Road in Ghastly, Illinois. But an uninvited and unwelcome houseguest (young pretentious boy) makes Grumply alternately grumpy and uppity. Throw in a playful ghost (single invisible female); a demanding, yet rather accommodating, publisher (Paige Turner); and an overbearing real estate agent (Anita Sale) and the Klise sisters have crafted a delightfully fun, frolicsome and fast-paced read. Told in a series of letters back and forth among the key players, Dying to Meet You sets up playful tension against a spooky backdrop–it’s the perfect ambience for the ghost stories Grumply allegedly pens (it’s been 20 years since his last installment, but who’s counting?)

The book reads like a diary, laden with hilarious exchanges, faux newspaper pages, the young boy’s handwritten notes and crafty sketches and omniscient observations by the ghost (Olive C. Spence). Punny names abound (including librarian M. Balm and attorney E. Gadds), an addition sure to be enjoyed by the target audience.

Even reluctant readers can embrace the easy-to-read format and lighthearted ghost story–which shows some shades of Lemony Snicket-esque whimsy.

But will Grumply continue to be grumpy? Can the cohabitants of 43 Old Cemetery Road live in peace? Will Olive’s chicken paprikash be a dinner success? And, perhaps most importantly, does the 13th entry in the Ghost Tamer series ever get written? The award-winning Klise sisters have dubbed Dying to Meet You as Book One in an intended series–so future adventures and mayhem in the manse can be eagerly anticipated . . . if readers dare!

Former children’s librarian Sharon Verbeten lives in a house inhabited only by the squeals of an active two-year-old in De Pere, Wisconsin.

Best-selling author Ignatius B. Grumply is in a pickle--in more ways than one. He hasn't started the children's book he's been contracted to write, and he needs a quiet place to do so.

Grumply's writer's block is resolved--or so he thinks--when…

Fiction

Fiction

From best friends to ‘frenemies’

Review by bookpagedev

by Carla Jean Whitley

After spending college in her best friend’s shadow, Wendy Murman has emerged into adulthood as the more successful of the pair. She’s an editor at an important political magazine and married to a great guy. True, she can’t seem to get pregnant. And OK, she’s never been a great beauty. But she’s happy—until the tables turn.

In the span of a week, Wendy’s best friend, Daphne Uberoff, flips from threatening suicide because of her distress over a married lover to falling in love with an available, age-appropriate lawyer Wendy almost instantly dislikes.

When things start going well for Daphne, Wendy becomes argumentative, quickly growing frustrated with her husband for the little things (the fact that she has to walk the Doberman Pinscher while he visits his father in the hospital) and the big (her inability to conceive). As she becomes even more obsessed with fertility, her resentment toward friends—especially those with kids or newfound happiness—grows and grows. “Envy was a bulldozer emotion,” Wendy says—and in Wendy’s case, envy invites comparison and critique of her social circle.

In I’m So Happy for You, Lucinda Rosenfeld turns her attention from the romantic dilemmas of her past work to the dark side of female friendships. The book retains the humorous and often satirical tone of Rosenfeld’s novels, What She Saw. . . and Why She Went Home, while building on the female friendship articles she’s penned for the New York Times Magazine.

I’m So Happy for You is an amusing and chilling look at the less frequently explored one-upmanship of some female friendships. And while Wendy’s psychotic behavior pushes people away, Rosenfeld will only draw fans closer with this masterful cautionary tale.

Carla Jean Whitley writes from Birmingham, Alabama, where she’s fortunate to have lots of friends and few “frenemies”—that she’s aware of, at least.

bookpagedev

Finding the right school

Adventures in the garden of life

A larger-than-life African adventure

Women behaving badly

Two kids who changed R&B

For better or worse . . .

Tough love, tough work

Setting sail on a thrilling adventure

Words can never hurt me?

For better or worse, near or far

Searching for family secrets

A spooky cure for writer’s block

From best friends to ‘frenemies’

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