Books by Anonymous and Complete Book Reviews
N. J. Dawood, Author, Anonymous, Author, N. J. Dawood, Translator Viking Books $29.95 (640p) ISBN 978-0-670-80088-9
Within British writer Feinstein's ( The Border ) 10th novel several intriguing stories struggle to emerge--but none quite succeeds. Fifteen years into an essentially dead marriage, Nell Bolton learns that husband Brian, whose occupation she neither...
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Pharrell Williams. Putnam, $19.99 (32p) ISBN 978-0-399-17643-2
Williams's hit song, a radio fixture since its 2013 release on the soundtrack to the film Despicable Me 2, is recast as a picture book, its earwormy lyrics paired with photos of a multicultural crew of children staged with costumes, cardboard props,
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Robert Byrd, Author, Anonymous, Author, Robert Byrd, Retold by Dutton Books $16.99 (40p) ISBN 978-0-525-45971-2
When Finn MacCoul, the larger-than-life hero of Celtic lore, needs help defeating a foe, there's only one place to turn: his wife. This evocative picture book amalgam of MacCoul tales whisks young readers to big adventure in days of old. Though...
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Terri Blackstock, Author, Anonymous, Author Thomas Nelson Publishers $9.99 (144p) ISBN 978-0-8499-1651-9
This anonymous novella attempts to teach a lesson about evangelism by telling the story of Sam, a middle-aged advertising executive who is also a Milquetoast Christian. One night, the Holy Spirit gives Sam the ability to hear the inmost thoughts of...
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Anonymous, Author . Brassey's $29.95 (394p) ISBN 978-1-57488-552-1
Here "a senior U.S. civil servant with two decades of experience in the U.S. intelligence community's work on Afghanistan and South Asia" argues that the U.S. was unprepared for September 11 because "our own naïveté and...
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Anonymous, Author . Warner $24.95 (291p) ISBN 978-0-446-57725-0
In this entertaining memoir, a 28-year-old British university grad gravitates to London to find a proper job, gets discouraged by temp office work and turns to the lucrative world of the sex trade, where she is asked how she does on her A-levels̵
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Anonymous, Author Michael O'Mara Books $13.95 (384p) ISBN 978-1-84317-303-8
This satirical supernatural thriller, the sequel to The Book with No Name, spotlights the Bourbon Kid, Santa Mondega's most prolific killer. When the Kid was just JD, a good-natured teen, he rescued his Halloween date, 15-year-old Beth Lansbury,
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Anonymous. Simon & Schuster, $17.99 (288p) ISBN 978-1-4424-7223-5
This harrowing cautionary tale (in the vein of 2012’s Lucy in the Sky) demonstrates the inability of family and friends to rescue a loved one from the disease that has become her “best friend,” as an athletic high school sophomore with a healthy...
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Anonymous, Author, Tucker Shaw, With , as told to Tucker Shaw. Simon Pulse $8.99 (272p) ISBN 978-0-689-87075-0
The 17-year-old heroine of Shaw's (Flavor of the Week
) rather flimsy novel primarily relays the story of her star-studded summer through "personal diary software," supplemented by e-mail and instant messages. Among her heroes is Darcy...
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Bunmi Laditan. Scribner, $19.99 (256 pages) ISBN 978-1-4767-3371-5
Thanks to large Twitter and Facebook followings, Laditan outed herself as the mind behind The Hon-est Toddler to write a compilation of the cheeky child's musings on ideal parenting methods. Far from being a basic parenting guide, or really any kind
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Anonymous, Author, Ma-Ling Lee, Author, Christa Bourg, With , with Christa Bourg. Scribner $24 (224p) ISBN 978-0-7432-8975-7
In a businesslike, astute and self-empowering look at the sex business, New Jersey brothel owner Lee shares her hard-won secrets of success. A Korean orphan, born “in the mid-1970s,” Lee was adopted at age six (to the tune of $100,000,...
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Anonymous, Author, Xinran Xue, Author, Josee Masse, Author . Barefoot $16.99 (32p) ISBN 978-1-84686-047-8
This book shares its name with a London-based organization dedicated to promoting greater understanding of Chinese life and culture among adoptive families in the West. The text, credited to an anonymous adoptive mother, takes the form of a series...
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Anonymous, Author, Philip Boehm, Translator , trans. from the German by Philip Boehm. Metropolitan $23 (261p) ISBN 978-0-8050-7540-3
Anonymous, then a 34-year-old journalist, started this eight-week diary in April 1945, when the Russians were invading Berlin and the city's mostly female population was heading to its cellars to wait out the bombing. Anyone who was able looted...
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Anonymous, Author, Beatrice Sparks, Editor, Dathan Sheranian, Foreword by Avon Books $6.99 (256p) ISBN 978-0-380-77315-2
Presented as a diary edited by the woman who prepared Go Ask Alice for publication, this book is soberly dedicated ""to every kid who thinks AIDS can't happen to him or her"" and includes an earnest foreword by one of Nancy's doctors (""I worry...
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Anonymous, Author, Matt Tavares, Illustrator , illus. by Matt Tavares. Candlewick $16 (32p) ISBN 978-0-7636-1585-7
What Tavares's (Zachary's Ball) monochrome art for this famous poem may lack in seasonal palette, it more than makes up for in authenticity. The artist pays homage to the original text, incorporating the spellings and phrasings of 1823, the...
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Anonymous, Author, Harold Wright, Translator, Anonymous, Other Overlook Press $14.95 (94p) ISBN 978-0-87951-214-9
Compiled during the eighth century, the Manyoshu is a sweeping anthology of 4516 poems on a range of subjects from the bawdy to the heroic. Wright, a scholar of Oriental poetry, has drawn from it 136 lyrical love poems written by royalty and...
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Anonymous, Author, Gerald Schumacher, Foreword by Zenith Press $24.95 (255p) ISBN 978-0-7603-2252-9
In April 2002, Special Forces Team 2085 of the Virginia National Guard were ""ripped from their lives"" and deployed to Afghanistan to aid in the hunt for the remnants of al Qaeda and their Taliban allies. Over the course of their six-month tour,...
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James Jennings, Author, Alice Miller, Author, Anonymous, Author Anchor Books $10.95 (189p) ISBN 978-0-385-41596-5
When it was first published in 1919 in Vienna and in 1921 in England, this diary kept by a Viennese schoolgirl from the age of 11 to the age of 14 caused a sizable stir regarding its authenticity and its references to sexuality. Contemporary...
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John R, Author, Anonymous, Author, John Rosengren, Author Hazelden $14.95 (121p) ISBN 978-1-59285-038-9
The author, a chemical dependency counselor, is a member of Alcoholics Anonymous with more than 20 years of sobriety. He has targeted this guide specifically toward teenagers and young adults in recovery from alcohol and drug addiction, with the...
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Joe Klein, Author, Anonymous, Author, James Jennings, Joint Author Random House Inc $24 (0p) ISBN 978-0-679-44859-4
The circumstances behind this crackling, highly perceptive study of a presidential campaign that remarkably resembles Bill Clinton's are bizarre. We are assured that not even its publisher, Harold Evans, who signed the book, or its editor knows the...
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Tony Fairman, Author, Anonymous, Author, Tony Fairman, Retold by Puffin Books $4.99 (192p) ISBN 978-0-14-036889-5
In a starred review, PW said, ``Even the most reluctant readers will not fail to be intrigued'' by these 13 ``alluring'' works and Asare's ``evocative'' sketches. Ages 10-up. (May)
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Gail E. Haley, Author, Anonymous, Author, Gail E. Haley, Illustrator Dutton Books $14.99 (32p) ISBN 978-0-525-45311-6
""Since that time, people have had to hunt for their meat, plant their vegetables, and work in this world."" Although this may sound startlingly like the banishment of a certain First Couple, ""two bad boys"" are to blame for this human condition,...
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Graham Percy, Author, Anonymous, Author, Graham Percy, Retold by Candlewick Press (MA) $14.95 (32p) ISBN 978-1-56402-008-6
Softly shaded colored-pencil illustrations highlight this familiar tale of virtue rewarded, in which a resourceful red hen saves the day when a ``bold bad fox and four bad little foxes'' plot to hijack her and her housemates onto their dinner table.
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Anonymous, Author . HarperCollins/Ecco $25.95 (352p) ISBN 978-0-06-052819-5
The author of this gripping account, whose identity, for obvious reasons, must remain secret, has some shocking revelations to make regarding innocuous-sounding Islamic groups that she says serve as fronts for Hamas, Palestine Islamic Jihad and even
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Anonymous. S&S/Simon Pulse, $17.99 (288p) ISBN 978-1-4424-5185-8
More sensational than thought-provoking, this diary of a teenage drug addict traces a 16-year-old girl’s downward spiral, beginning with her introduction to alcohol and marijuana and moving on to pretty much every other drug on the market. Driving...
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Hugh Sinclair. Berrett-Koehler, $27.95 (192p) ISBN 978-1-60994-518-3
In this arresting exposé of the microfinance industry, economist and consultant Sinclair argues that while the idea of ending world poverty via small, low-cost loans to the poor (to allow them to start profitable businesses) is a noble one, it has...
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Anonymous. Amazon Publishing/New Harvest, $25 (304p) ISBN 978-0-547-94207-0
This trivial behind-the-scenes look at a talent show takes jabs at American Idol. Project Icon has lost its star judge, the snarky Nigel Crowther, and after many mishaps replaces the show’s judges with Joey Lovecraft, “the devil” on the panel, with...
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Rod Dreher. Regan Arts, $26.95 (320p) ISBN 978-1-941393-32-1
After Dreher's sister's untimely death, Dreher (The Little Way of Ruthie Leming) returns with his wife and children to live in the Louisiana parish where he was born. He hopes to reconnect with his family, but they regard him as different and...
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Anonymous. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, $18 (144p) ISBN 978-0-374-17555-9
An anonymous author reveals a lifetime of secrets in this unforgettable memoir as she tells the story of her relationship with her father, who raped her over the course of her childhood, until the author was 21. The result is one of the most frank...
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Anonymous. McClelland & Stewart, $26 (336p) ISBN 978-0-7710-0169-7
According to the publisher, the author of this entertaining conspiracy thriller is a former journalist “whose identity is being kept secret in order to protect the ideas that inspired this novel.” Shortly before the 2016 election, Grace Elliott, the
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Anonymous. Simon Pulse, $19.99 (384p) ISBN 978-1-5344-3308-3
The latest novel in the Anonymous Diaries series, all written and produced in the style of Go Ask Alice, is a stark reminder that even when things are bad, they can always get worse. Bailey, 17, lost her mother two years earlier in a horrific car...
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Anonymous. Twelve, $29.95 (260p) ISBN 978-1-5387-1846-9
The anonymous White House official whose September 2018 New York Times op-ed revealed a "resistance" inside the Trump administration returns with a brisk, page-turning critique of the president. The author portrays a "broken" White House devoid of "p
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Ben Kirby, Thomas Nelson, $18.99 trade paper (256p) ISBN 978-0-7852-3883-6
Ben Kirby, the once-anonymous author behind the PreachersNSneakers Instagram handle, which is dedicated to chronicling the extravagance of celebrity pastors’ lifestyles, raises worthy questions about the church’s entanglement in “capitalism,...
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Anonymous. Entangled Amara, $16.99 trade paper (560p) ISBN 978-1-64937-199-7
This spicy collection of historical erotica from the anonymous author of Aphrodite in Bloom offers 10 taboo-breaking shorts set across 1870s Europe. It opens in Paris with “A Neighboring Hand,” in which an old school chum coaches American heiress...
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Olivia Muenter. Quirk, $24.99 (336p) ISBN 978-1-68369-401-4
Bad on Paper podcaster Muenter’s wildly entertaining first novel sounds the murky depths of social media fame. From the moment Evie Davis was born, she’s been prominently featured on her family’s YouTube channel. With her zealous mother, Erin,...
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Ransom Riggs. Dutton, $21.99 (336p) ISBN 978-0-593-53093-1
Riggs departs the Miss Peregrine universe to launch a fresh fantasy adventure grounded in contemporary Los Angeles. After his mother’s death five years ago, Leopold Berry’s grief-fueled obsession with the kitschy fantasy TV show Sunderworld began...
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