Isabel Gillies: ‘A Year and Six Seconds’

Isabel Gillies wrote the bestselling memoir Happens Every Day after her first husband left her for another woman. Happiness, of course, truly is the best revenge, and her latest, A Year and Six Seconds, is proof that new love can come along faster than you expect.

Gillies took a break from a busy writing schedule to share her thoughts on love, loss and remarriage.

Read more new and notable nonfiction titles for August at Kirkus.

It took courage to write Happens Every Day while you were still licking your wounds over the loss of your first marriage. Why did you ...

Read the full post >

Michael Sims: ‘The Story of Charlotte's Web’

E.B. White is one of the most beloved American authors of all time, best-known for his children’s classic Charlotte’s Web. Author Michael Sims has undertaken the task of delving into and revealing important facts from White’s past in The Story of Charlotte’s Web. Here, we talk to Sims about the iconic author and his classic book.

Read more biographies about writers at Kirkus.

What inspired you about White that you undertook a biography?

Originally I had the idea that I would write a sort of natural history of some of my favorite children’s animal ...

Read the full post >

Meds, Minnesota and the Amazon: Ann Patchett’s ‘State of Wonder’

Ann Patchett is the winner of the Orange Prize, whose books include a memoir, Truth & Beauty, chronicling her friendship with the late writer Lucy Grealy, as well as such bestselling novels as Bel Canto and The Patron Saint of Liars.

Her latest novel, State of Wonder, is equal parts medical thriller and adventure story as former surgeon Marina Singh is wrested from her comfortable life as a Minnesota pharmaceuticals researcher to undertake a mission in the perilous wilds of the Amazon. As Marina struggles to find her strong-willed former professor, Dr. Annick Swenson, her dangerous new surroundings teach her enduring ...

Read the full post >

2010 Best Books: Fun with Problems, by Robert Stone

Though he won the National Book Award for his 1974 classic, Dog Soldiers, Robert Stone has hardly rested on past accomplishments. His latest standout is a collection of stories peopled with bleak but fascinating characters. Creating Michelangelo Antonioni-like human wastelands are a Stone hallmark, a cinematic comparison the author would scarcely shrink from. “To tell you the truth, I think some of these stories might be effective films if done a certain way,” he says. Whether his players pine for lost love or grow introspective examining the unexpected nastiness of great success, Stone's writing marries longing and frustration better ...

Read the full post >

2010 Best Books: Bound, by Antonya Nelson

In her triumphant return to long fiction, Antonya Nelson’s embattled characters traverse the landscape of Wichita, Kansas, in the aftermath of the infamous BTK murders, a time the author has firsthand experience with. “His [Dennis Rader’s] first victims lived across from my elementary school, just three doors down from a friend,” says Nelson. “And the children who survived, who were not home when BTK killed their mother, father, little brother and little sister, attended the junior high where I was enrolled. I remember watching the news that night in January, at age 13, seeing the house and the ...

Read the full post >

Saving the Chiru

Chiru, small, sheep-like animals in Tibet, have a unique plight—they cannot be shorn to use their luxurious wool, but must be slaughtered instead. In this arresting picture book, The Chiru of High Tibet, Jacqueline Briggs Martin and illustrator Linda Wingerter handle this delicate topic with much care. Their lyrical text and ethereal illustrations chronicle the work of conservationist George Schaller, the first of several men whose heroism saved the species from poaching. Here, Martin talks about the bravery at the heart of this story.

How did you first learn of the chiru? And did you immediately realize that you ...

Read the full post >

2010 Children's Best: The Memory Bank, by Carolyn Coman

When Newbery Honor author Carolyn Coman (What Jamie Saw, 1995) first conceived of lovable Hope Scroggins with her collaborator, Rob Shepperson, both realized early on that the waif was a character sure to resonate with young readers. What child can’t relate to a girl whose parents are so abhorrent that they simply abandon her little sister? Hope’s response—sleeping as much as possible—brings her to the attention of the Dahl-esque World Wide Memory Bank. “From the moment we entered the Bank, we were goners,” they say. “Everything about it—the Dream Vault, the Memory Receptor, Sorters, Retrospectors ...

Read the full post >