December Publications

Prolific environmental writer Gene Logsdon tells the inspirational story of a man who singlehandedly reclaims an Ohio farm from strip-mined land in this plainspoken short narrative, accompanied by Gregory Spaid's eloquent black and white photos and a foreword by Wendell Berry. Inspired by a true story, The Man Who Created Paradise: A Fable looks like a handsomely illustrated gift book, but it is also something more ambitious: an implicit call to readers to create their own small sustainable spaces. (Ohio Univ. Press, $20 70p ISBN 0-8214-1407-0)

Rambling, old-fashioned and thoroughly endearing, Paul Scott Malone's first novel, This House of Women, follows the adventures of Hannah Hayward, who arrives in the small east Texas town of Karankawa in 1942, pregnant and nearly penniless. A warmhearted older couple and a crippled aspiring writer are her first friends, and on the basis of their affection, she goes on to make a decent life for herself. Over the next 40 years, she becomes the linchpin of an unorthodox family, eventually moving across the state to a hill country ranch. Short story writer Malone (In an Arid Land) tackles the novel form with warmth and integrity. (Texas Tech, $27.95 392p ISBN 0-89672-458-1)

Awkwardly patterned after Orwell's Animal Farm, The Zoo, a dystopian second novel by Richard Kalich (appearing 15 years after his first, the well-received Nihilesthete), puts half-baked socioeconomic rants into the mouths of animal characters. Headed by Wise Old Owl, a triumvirate of revolutionaries put Animal World on trial, casting any animals who develop "inner lives," or human-type thinking, into the dreaded Zoo. Muddled and meandering, this menagerie will test readers' patience. (AmErica House [www.publishamerica.com], $19.95 180p ISBN 1-58851-513-3)

The story of a great fourth-century B.C. king is retold in the present tense in Thomas Sundell's novel A Bloodline of Kings: A Novel of Philip of Macedon. King Philippos engages in mortal struggles with enemies and family amid the epic Hellenic rivalries, seeking safety for his people in a time of constant unrest. Six maps, one chart, one table. (Crow Woods [mywebpage.netscape.com/crowwoods1/], $28.50 496p ISBN 0-9665871-8-9)