 |
|
|
|
|
| Today's Featured Reviews |
|
|  | Hilderbrand, Elin A SUMMER AFFAIR
May 12, 2008 - An accomplished glassblower, Claire Danner Crispin set aside her work to raise her children. Indeed, for most of her life Claire has followed the rules and been a reliable friend, wife and mother. All that changes when she is asked to co-chair Nantucket's annual Summer Gala to benefit the children's programs on the island. 
|
| | Theroux, Paul GHOST TRAIN TO THE EASTERN STAR
May 12, 2008 - Travel writer and novelist Theroux (The Elephanta Suite, 2007, etc.) offers an elegiac retracing of roads and railroads taken across the vastness of Eurasia. Rejoining his 1975 travelogue The Great Railway Bazaar, Theroux takes to the chemin de fer from London to Kyoto four decades older and, it seems, more inclined to the better things in life
|
| Current Issue: Fiction |
|
 | Ames, Jonathan THE ALCOHOLIC
May 15, 2008 - Ames (Wake Up, Sir!, 2004, etc.) has distinguished himself as both a novelist and an essayist/journalist with a confessional intimacy and self-deprecating humor that sometimes blurs the line between memoir and fiction. He has found his artistic |
| Beatty, Paul SLUMBERLAND
May 15, 2008 - If that sounds preposterous, it is—gloriously so. Helped by a mysterious call from a Berlin bar called Slumberland and by the near-simultaneous arrival from Germany of a man-on-chicken sex film scored by someone who can only be the Schwa, DJ Darky |
| Gardam, Jane THE PEOPLE ON PRIVILEGE HILL
May 15, 2008 - The author corrals a variety of surprising characters, especially the old and the late middle-aged. The ancient dodderers of the title story include Old Filth himself (from Gardam's 2004 novel of the same name), a guest at a party for a prospective |
| Kushner, Rachel TELEX FROM CUBA
May 15, 2008 - In 1950s Cuba, employees of the vast, powerful United Fruit Company enjoy luxuries galore in their exclusive island communities while poverty and unrest stirs around them. Growing up on United Fruit property, Everly Lederer and K.C. Stites |
| Ma Jian BEIJING COMA
May 15, 2008 - Dai Wei, a student at Beijing University, is active in the pro-democracy protest movement that met violent reprisals in the 1989 catastrophe in Tiananmen Square. Dai Wei is shot in the head, rendered comatose, given token medical treatment, then |
| O'Flynn, Catherine WHAT WAS LOST
May 15, 2008 - The story begins in O'Flynn's hometown, Birmingham, England, in 1984. The heroine is Kate Meaney, ten-year-old private eye. Kate's interest in detective work is rooted in a fondness for film noir she shares with her father. When he dies, her amateur |
| Tearne, Roma MOSQUITO
May 15, 2008 - For years Sri Lankan native Theo Samarajeeva has been celebrated in England and beyond. His novel Tiger Lily brought the struggle of the separatist Tamil Tigers to world attention. Before its publication, few in the West knew there was a war of |
| Current Issue: Nonfiction |
|
| Dolnick, Edward THE FORGER'S SPELL
May 15, 2008 - Veteran science journalist Dolnick (The Rescue Artist: The True Story of Art, Thieves, and the Hunt for a Missing Masterpiece, 2005, etc.) brings his expertise in art theft, criminal psychology and military history to a scintillating portrait of |
| Maraniss, David ROME 1960
May 15, 2008 - Washington Post editor and Pulitzer-winner Maraniss (Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero, 2006, etc.) has a talent for condensing sprawling events into comprehensible episodes. In this instance, those episodes take place on and |
| Pollack, Kenneth M. A PATH OUT OF THE DESERT
May 15, 2008 - Oil is our overwhelming interest in the area, the author states bluntly. Western economies are addicted to it, price increases provoke recessions (including the present one) and exhortations to reduce our dependence on foreign oil are mindless |
| Current Issue: Children's |
|
| Berne, Jennifer MANFISH
May 15, 2008 - This moving tribute to the great nautical observer and filmmaker is shot through with an authentically childlike sense of adventure and the thrill of discovery. Curious about the world, and especially the oceans, from his earliest years, Cousteau |
| Bond, Michael PADDINGTON HERE AND NOW
May 15, 2008 - In the past 50 years, very little has changed for the residents of 32 Windsor Gardens. They still live with a bear from Darkest Peru who happens to go by the name of Paddington. Moreover, Paddington is just as curious and prone to getting himself |
| Chamberlain, Margaret PLEASE DON'T TEASE TOOTSIE
May 15, 2008 - Tootsie's angry eyebrows on the cover say it all: Don't mess with the cat. It's best, alliteratively or otherwise, not to "provoke Poochie," "madden Mutley" or "disturb Dixie," either. Bitsy, a hidden bunny in an endpaper-sea of flowers, is not to |
| Donaldson, Julia TYRANNOSAURUS DRIP
May 15, 2008 - With scansion firmly in hand, Donaldson pens a rhymed tale of dino-heroism perfectly complemented by Roberts's comical cartoon scenes of toothy carnivores and trumpet-mouthed vegetarians. Foraging contentedly along the river ("And they hooted, 'Up |
| Drummond, Allan TIN LIZZIE
May 15, 2008 - Bolstered by teeming galleries of cars old and new, Drummond both pays tribute to Henry Ford's Model T (a century old this year) and issues a challenge to readers. Young Eliza recalls her auto-mechanic grandpa's constant refrain—"You gotta have |
| Foreman, Jack SAY HELLO
May 15, 2008 - A beautiful pairing of son's sparse rhyming text with father's simple drawings says it all in this poignant debut about including others and making friends. A small, lonely dog pokes into garbage cans and hopefully watches a beloved cat with her |
| Halam, Ann SNAKEHEAD
May 15, 2008 - The classic myth of Perseus and Andromeda gets a stylish makeover. As in the original, headstrong Perseus, son of Zeus, saves the princess Andromeda from being sacrificed and his mortal mother Danae from forced marriage to evil King Polydectes by |
| Jarrow, Gail ROBERT H. JACKSON
May 15, 2008 - Jarrow's engrossing biography should bring Robert H. Jackson some well-deserved attention. Ample detail about his childhood years provides insight into his later character. An excellent speaker, a law career seemed perfect, but Jackson couldn't |
| Kadohata, Cynthia OUTSIDE BEAUTY
May 15, 2008 - Shelby, 13, and her three sisters adore their beautiful, narcissistic mother, Helen Kimura, who supports them on the proceeds of her symbiotic relationships with men. Each girl has a different father, so after their mother suffers a serious car |
| Krull, Kathleen FARTISTE
May 15, 2008 - Filling an unconscionable gap in the education of American youth, this rhymed account introduces Joseph Pujol, a 19th- to early 20th-century vaudeville performer who created uncontrolled hysteria from Marseilles to Paris thanks to an ability to fart |
| Li Cunxin DANCING TO FREEDOM
May 15, 2008 - Born into extreme poverty in Mao's China, the author was able, through happenstance, determination and yes, talent, to achieve an amazing career as a ballet dancer in the West. He previously told his story in Mao's Last Dancer (2003), written for |
| McNamee, Eoin CITY OF TIME
May 15, 2008 - Strange occurrences alert the two main characters from The Navigator (2007) that their enemies, the Harsh, are active and messing with time. Together with the inventive Dr. Diamond, they travel to the City of Time to find a fix for the problem and |
| Qamar, Amjed BENEATH MY MOTHER'S FEET
May 15, 2008 - Fourteen-year-old Nazia is a good Muslim girl. She lives in Karachi and keeps busy attending school, helping with her younger siblings and preparing for an arranged marriage, when her father is injured. Nazia doesn't know it at first, but everything |
| Scott, Michael THE MAGICIAN
May 15, 2008 - The headlong magical adventure begun in The Alchemyst (2007) shifts from California to Paris. There the gifted but untrained twins Josh and Sophie meet a further array of immortal friends and foes—"human, inhuman, and abhuman"—from history and |
| Turner, Pamela S. Life on Earth--and Beyond
May 15, 2008 - Astrobiologists can't travel to extraterrestrial locations for their research—yet—so they make do with extreme environments on Earth. To learn how life might survive on Mars and beyond, NASA scientist Chris McKay travels to remote areas—Antarctica, |
| Willems, Mo I WILL SURPRISE MY FRIEND!
May 15, 2008 - Emergent readers (and their grown-ups) will celebrate the publication of the fifth and sixth volumes of the Elephant & Piggie series, stories of friendship and good intentions told entirely through easy-to-read speech bubbles. The newest episodes |
| Wynne Jones, Diana HOUSE OF MANY WAYS
May 15, 2008 - Snark and affection abound in a colorful world filled with unfortunately dyed laundry, enormous kobold-built cuckoo clocks and horrifying cooking experiments. This third book in the Howl's Moving Castle (1986, etc.) series introduces Charmain, a |
|
|
|
|
| Online Exclusive
|
| Books to Remember
May 01, 2008 - Books to Remember has been an annual tradition at The New York Public Library for more than 50 years. Each year, a small group of librarians comb through hundreds of book reviews and consider hundreds of new titles in the categories of fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Selection criteria include literary excellence, uniqueness of concept and command of subject matter. The goal: Choose 25 adult titles that offer informative or transformative reading experiences. In the spring, the Books to Remember committee formally presents its top 25 at an event held at the library.
|
|
|
| Coming Soon |
| BOOKS SCHEDULED FOR REVIEW
Click here for the hourly-updated list of the books scheduled for review in one of the upcoming issues of Kirkus Reviews.
|
|
|
|
|
.gif?JSESSIONID=JMJ8Lt1Q9VljLZLJ712CvMvcQ93t502Q1XRTVVny62hTmXdgNjmQ!1297554503)
