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Galley Talk: Frances Richey's The Warrior
I don't normally read much poetry, but Frances Richey's The Warrior: A Mother's Story of a Son at War [Viking, Apr.], a memoir in verse, was riveting. Richey conveys in a strong and honest way the feelings that ring so true to me and other mothers of soldiers. My son is a Green Beret and has deployed to Iraq three times.
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Galley Talk: Knockemstill
Joe Foster, buyer, Maria's Bookshop, Durango, Colo. Donald Ray Pollock's Knockemstiff [Doubleday, Mar.] is a beautifully written but undeniably disturbing exploration of the missing soul of a small Ohio town. The violence, ignorance, boredom, desperation and substance-induced, self-destructive behavior of each character should appeal to those literary Tom Waits—loving hipsters who are so ...
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Galley Talk
Joe Foster, buyer, Maria's Bookshop, Durango, Colo. Donald Ray Pollock's Knockemstiff [Doubleday, Mar.] is a beautifully written but undeniably disturbing exploration of the missing soul of a small Ohio town. The violence, ignorance, boredom, desperation and substance-induced, self-destructive behavior of each character should appeal to those literary Tom Waits—loving hipsters who are so ...
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Galley Talk: The Cure for Modern Life by Lisa Tucker
I was excited about Lisa Tucker's new novel, The Cure for Modern Life [Atria, Mar. 25], because I loved her last novel, Once Upon a Day. This is her best novel yet, with captivating characters, a progressively intricate plot and unexpected twists that grabbed me and did not let me go. The hip, funny and cynical protagonist, Matthew Connelly, who works for a pharmaceutical company and undergoes...
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Galley Talk: The Outlaw Demon Wails
Peggy Hailey, BookPeople, Austin, Tex. One of the spring titles I was most looking forward to reading was Kim Harrison's The Outlaw Demon Wails [Eos, Feb. 26]. My Harper rep got me hooked a couple of years back, and I've been enjoying Rachel Morgan's adventures ever since—each title inspired by a Clint Eastwood movie (The Good, the Bad and the Undead; For a Few Demons More.
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Galley Talk: Gardens of Water
Gardens of Water (Random House, Feb.) starts with fascinating detail, as a family prepares for their son's rite of passage ceremony. First-time novelist Alan Drew takes you just outside of Istanbul, where a massive earthquake hits shortly after the ceremony and changes the lives of several neighbors forever.
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Galley Talk
Eli Gottleib's Now You See Him (HarperCollins, Feb.) is an unsettling but brilliant debut novel. Nick Framingham's childhood best friend, Rob Castor, is an acclaimed author who murders his girlfriend and commits suicide. Examining his own life, Nick sinks into a morass with seemingly no escape. Nick's tribulations perfectly portray the vicissitudes that can destroy the fragility of human existe...
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Galley Talk: Final Curtain
I tend to read a lot of hard-boiled dark crime fiction, so R.T. Jordan's Final Curtain [Kensington, Feb.] is the perfect alternative as a lighter look at crime. Final Curtain really exemplifies the best in the cozy genre. It's likable series heroine, Polly Pepper, is an iconic superstar from TV whose career provides her with a multitude of opportunities to get involved in crimes.
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Galley Talk: The Monster of Templeton
Lauren Groff is a writer to pay attention to as she has a grasp of language, dialogue and character that is so rare in a first-time novelist. In The Monster of Templeton (Hyperion, Feb. 5), Wilhelmina Cooper, a grad student in archeology returns to her home in upstate New York after attempting to kill the wife of the professor with whom she is having an affair.
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Galley Talk: The Accident Man
Tom Cain's excellent, unusual thriller, The Accident Man (Feb. 4, Viking), is built around whether Princess Diana's death was an accident or a conspiracy. As an “accident man,” ex-soldier Samuel Carver gets a phone call describing a person who is scum of the earth, like a slave-trafficker.
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Galley Talk
Lauri Barwick, A Whale of a Tale Children's Bookshoppe, Irvine, Calif. When the galley of Tunnels by Roderick Gordon and Brian Williams (Scholastic/Chicken House, Jan.) arrived at the store, the eerie cover caught my eye and made me want to read it. Already a bestseller in the U.K., Tunnels is sure to captivate readers 10 and up, especially boys looking for a fresh, adventure-filled story.
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Galley Talk: About My Life and the Kept Woman
There's something essentially naked about novelist John Rechy. I mean more than the cliché that he writes the “naked truth” about marginal people living outside polite society, a theme struck yet again in About My Life and the Kept Woman [Grove, Feb.]. Nor does that refer to the blunt sexuality that grinds away at the lives fleetingly recollected in this beautiful first memoir.
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Galley Talk: Winter in Madrid
Barbara Peters, The Poisoned Pen, Scottsdale, Ariz. It is the gift of a novelist like British lawyer C.J. Sansom to illuminate present uncertainties, conflicts and moral dilemmas by touring similar landscapes in the past in Winter in Madrid (Viking, Jan. 24). It's 1940 in Spain, the Civil War is over, and Madrid lies ruined, its people starving, while the Germans shoulder through Europe.
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Galley Talk: Memoirs of a Beautiful Boy
Michael Barnard, Rakestraw Books, Danville, Calif. Readers of the memoir have seen it all over the past few years: alcoholism, sexual abuse, eating disorders, narcissistic parents. Into this crowded exercise in mass therapy screams comes Robert Leleux's account of the years following the break-up of his parents' marriage, Memoirs of a Beautiful Boy (St.
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Galley Talk
Peter Robinson’s Banks and Cabbot mysteries are some of the best in the genre; he’s one of a handful of top-ranking writers of British mysteries, along with Ruth Rendell, Reginald Hill, Ian Rankin and Elizabeth George—I must simply drop everything the moment I get my hands on their newest books.
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Galley Talk
The plot of Arturo Pérez-Reverte's The Painter of Battles (Random, Jan.) seems simple enough: famous war photographer Andres Faulques turns to painting to capture the essence of the art of war. He suddenly finds that his past has come to life when a visitor arrives at his doorstep saying, “Do you remember me? I'm going to kill you.
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Galley Talk: Last Night At The Lobster
Rick Simonson, buyer, Elliott Bay Book Company, Seattle, Wash. When we're all still able to enjoy such a mild transition into the fall season, it takes a certain resolve to reach for a book set in December, with a cover throwing the chill of a dark, snowy night at you. But what's inside Stewart O'Nan's Last Night at the Lobster (Viking, Nov.
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Galley Talk: The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps
Peggy Hailey, buyer, BookPeople, Austin, Tex. I love pulp fiction. Yeah, that's right, I love square-jawed tough guys, devilish dames and trouble with a capital T. When I got my hands on the massive galley of The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps [edited by Otto Penzler, Nov.], my eyes lit up like the rep had just shown me the Maltese Falcon.
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Galley Talk
Well received in the U.K., The Black Book of Secrets by F.E. Higgins [Feiwel & Friends, Oct.] will find an equally receptive audience here, I’m sure. Fun for everyone, it will especially appeal to the guys and will be a good choice to hook reluctant readers in upper elementary/middle school.
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Galley Talk
Keri Holmes, owner, the Kaleidoscope, Hampton, Iowa Joe Hill seriously interferes with my sleep. He kept me up until 2:30 a.m. reading Heart-Shaped Box. Now, just when I think I've recovered, comes his short story collection 20th Century Ghosts (HarperCollins, Oct.). As Christopher Golden says in the intro, “I wasn't likely to run across [these stories] casually,” so this collection...
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