The Texas Book Festival is celebrating 15 years of excellence in gathering outstanding authors in Austin each year to read, discuss and meet with audiences. This year is no different. Here is a sampling of some reviews of major authors who will appear at the Festival this weekend, Oct. 16-17.
NONFICTION
Released: Oct. 20, 2010
"An impressively rendered, nightmare-inducing account."
NONFICTION
Released: Oct. 12, 2010
"An educational, briskly written pseudo-textbook aimed at readers outside university classrooms."
CHILDREN'S
Released: Sept. 21, 2010
"Readers, of course! (Fantasy/horror/short stories. 14 & up)"
Forget vampires vs. werewolves; the hottest feud is between fans of the fiercely magical horses and the shambling, brain-eating undead.
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NONFICTION
Released: Aug. 17, 2010
"Despite some repetition of detail among the essays, each is a standalone gem."
FICTION
Released: June 8, 2010
"Another ambitious change of pace from talented and visionary Egan, who reinvents the novel for the 21st century while affirming its historic values."
"Time's a goon," as the action moves from the late 1970s to the early 2020s while the characters wonder what happened to their youthful selves and ideals.
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FICTION
Released: June 8, 2010
"The young girl as heroine and role model is a nice touch. Otherwise a pretty ordinary production, with little that hasn't been seen before."
Literary author Cronin (
Mary and O'Neil, 2001, etc.) turns in an apocalyptic thriller in the spirit of Stephen King or Michael Crichton.
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CHILDREN'S
Released: June 1, 2010
"A beautiful and engaging debut novel. (author's note, tortilla recipe, glossary) (Fiction. 8-12)"
Twelve-year-old Izzy Roybal, who loves writing stories, is reluctant to spend the summer in a small village in the New Mexican desert, where she was born.
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CHILDREN'S
Released: May 1, 2010
"Clarkson's evocative illustrations bathe each scene in a soft light that accentuates the warmth of the family's love. (author's note) (Picture book/biography. 5-10)"
A grandmother's life story centers this welcome depiction of a contemporary Choctaw family.
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CHILDREN'S
Released: April 1, 2010
"It's hard to choose; both are winners. (Picture book. 3-6)"
With two boys at a toy chest, one clutching a shark and the other a train, thus begins the most unlikeliest of competitions.
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NONFICTION
Released: Oct. 1, 2001
"The pleasures here are in the slow accretion of detail--albeit too many details on occasion--and awareness that allows O'Neill to create an abiding image of a two places during a moment in history."
An unwieldy family memoir that also yields some choice scenes, centering on a brace of grandfathers interned for suspected enemy sympathies, from novelist O'Neill (
This Is the Life, 1991).
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