New England Regional Roundup

Book News from NEBA

Good SportsFortunately the Curse of the Bambino d sn't apply to books, because three new releases are hoping to win the literary equivalent of the World Series. In October, Houghton Mifflin will publish sports writer Glenn Stout and Richard A. Johnson's photo-laden look at the home team, Red Sox Century. According to editor Susan Canavan, "This is bigger than just a gift book. There's a lot of revelatory stuff. The authors have been working on it for 15 years and have gone back to primary source material." Opening day for Red Sox Century will be the NEBA convention. "We're going to have a prominent display and a banner," said Canavan, "and we'll be raffling books."

In This Article: Good Sports It's a Mystery Picture This Capital Musings Meaty Cooking Tall Tales At Sea

Johnson, curator of the Sports Museum of New England, has a book of his own from Northeastern University Press in November, A Century of Boston Sports, with a foreword by Bill Littlefield and essays by Glenn Stout. Associate director Jill Bahcall remarked that "the two books actually do complement each other. We're both going into the NEBA Holiday Catalogue, and wherever possible, we're hooking up with signings locally."

Rounding out the trio is coach Daniel J. Boyne's account of The Red Rose Crew (Hyperion), the first all-women's crew team. In 1975, the eight women rowers won the silver medal at the World Rowing Championships; the following year they took home the gold in the first Olympics with women's rowing. Boyne, who will sign at NEBA, explained, "I got interested in the team when I interviewed [team member] Gail Pierson. She talked about '75 as a pivotal time for women's rowing and women's athletics."

It's a MysteryThe real mystery may not be the one that Vermont detective Lt. J Gunther solves in Archer Mayor's 11th book in the series, The Marble Mask (Oct.), but how many careers one man can have. Before he turned to writing full-time, Mayor was "a journalist, an editor, a researcher for Time-Life Books, a lab technician for Paris Match and a theater photographer," said Warner Books associate publicist Jonathan Hahn. Even today writing isn't enough for Mayor. Last year he was elected constable in Newfane, Vt., where he's also captain of the volunteer fire department. Hahn believes that both jobs contribute to Mayor's novels: "That's why his fiction comes off so amazingly real. He g s out and scouts scenes in which to put his characters." Mayor will sign at NEBA.

Picture ThisIf a picture is worth a thousand words, then Robert Frost's New England (Nov.), with color photographs by Betsy and Tom Melvin, should be valued at nearly a million. University Press of New England, which plans to celebrate its 30th anniversary at the show, will feature the Melvins' book at its booth. "The Melvins' book," commented publicist Barbara Briggs, "is part of our continuing regional push. We feel we do

Regional splendor (Univ. Press of New England).

regional books very well, and we want to keep it up."
While the Melvins depict dunes of snow, in Land of the Commonwealth (Oct.) photographer Richard Cheek shoots shorelines and forests in Massachusetts's 1.1 million acres of conserved land. With a foreword by John Updike, this is the first book from the 109-year-old Trustees of Reservations conservation group. The University of Massachusetts Press is distributing it and plans to feature it at NEBA and place it in the NEBA Holiday Catalogue. While many of UMP's books are scholarly in tone, director Bruce Wilcox said, "We certainly think part of our mandate is to do books that celebrate our state."

Capital MusingsBefore settling on the word "musings" to describe historian Thomas H. O'Connor's Boston A to Z, Harvard University Press marketing director Paul Adams noted that "it's not a travel guide, and it's not a history." In mini-essays, ranging from Abigail Adams to the Zoo, O'Connor offers his personal view of the Athens of America. While the October release may seem like a departure for HUP, Adams pointed out that it is actually part of what he called "an informal series on cities," which includes books on London and Cairo. O'Connor will sign at the show, and the publisher will give away books at its booth.

Meaty CookingThe working title for Christopher Schlesinger and John Willoughby's latest collaboration from Morrow, How to Cook Meat (Oct.), was "Admit it, you want to eat meat," said Schlesinger, chef-owner of East Coast Grill in Cambridge, Mass. "This wasn't a reaction against vegetarianism. The way it started was everybody telling everybody that we eat way too much meat. So then we started cutting out the junk meat, like hamburgers, and treasuring the meats we do eat." To get more flavor out of leaner cuts, Willoughby and Schlesinger experimented with cooking techniques for beef, lamb, veal and pork, until they came up with tasty recipes for the most cholesterol-conscious carnivores.

Tall TalesDavid Macaulay gives new meaning to a "big book" with his oversized look at dams, tunnels, bridges, skyscrapers and domes in Building Big (Oct.). A tie-in to the eponymous PBS series, which he will host, Building Big explores how large structures are made. Houghton Mifflin children's publicist Stephanie McLaughlin noted,

Solve the crime; row the boat (Warner, Hyperion).

"Macaulay started doing research on the project at least two years ago, and he literally traveled around the world." Like his bestselling The Way Things Work, this book is designed to appeal to children and adults. "Macaulay encourages readers to look at their world a new way and ask questions about the world around them," McLaughlin added.
At SeaDead isn't necessarily gone, as Boston author Lisa Carey (The Mermaids Singing) demonstrates in her second novel, In the Country of the Young (Nov.). Set on an island reminiscent of Nantucket, but off the coast of Maine, the book weaves together the story of the ghost of an Irish emigrant girl, who died there in 1848, and the lonely island artist she haunts in the 1990s. Morrow assistant editor Kelly Notaras called this tale, inspired by the Irish potato famine, "one of my favorite books. Carey, who is Irish American, went back to Ireland for five years, and wrote it when she was there."
--Judith Rosen

The First Fiction Scene A publisher's debut and a gripping tale of murder (Hot House Press; Pocket). Hot House Press in Cohasset, Mass., is a brand-new enterprise established by David Replogle, formerly among the top executive ranks at Merriam-Webster and Houghton Mifflin. Its first release is a trade paperback, Brimfield (Sept.) by Michael Fortuna, who lives in Scituate, Mass. As anyone in thrall to antiques knows, Brimfield is the extremely popular Massachusetts flea market where, three times a year, hundreds of dealers sell millions of items to hundreds of thousands of collectors and other dealers. "Brimfield is essentially a love story developed against the background of the market itself," Replogle tells PW. "It also involves deceit and robbery and a lot of characters with very individual personalities." Nearby Boston is the location for Kinship Theory (Little, Brown, Feb.) by Hester Kaplan, who resides in Providence, R.I. The kinship in question involves a mother who has agreed to bear a child for her own infertile daughter. "It's a serious novel about a complicated relationship," says L-B senior editor Sarah Burnes. "Having grown up in Boston, Hester's setting really feels like the city to me." Marblehead, on Boston's far north shore, provides some of the grounding for Deviant Ways (Pocket Books, Oct.) by Chris Mooney, who also lives north of Boston. This first novel concerns a detective, formerly with the FBI, whose wife was earlier murdered by a psychopath and who now becomes involved with another gruesome crime in which an entire family has been butchered. In Cambridge, where Harvard lurks, a ghost story/psychological thriller by Sean Desmond plays out. Adams Fall (St. Martin's/ Thomas Dunne, Oct.) finds a Harvard senior living at Adams House under so much stress that his mind begins to slip. Desmond, who lives in New York City, attended Harvard and was a resident of Adams House himself. Cambridge is also home to Ursula Gant, one of two women at the heart of Almost Strangers (S&S, Oct.) by Delsa Winer. "She's a very bookish person," says Winer, "and Cambridge seems to harbor bookish women." Ursula, who has a lover named Daniel, finds her life entwined with Daniel's wife Cissy in a plot that involves a catastrophic plane crash in which both women are victims. Winer, who lives in Lincoln, Mass., adds, "The book is about women reconstructing themselves, finding freedom from the control exercised by a husband or a mother." The death of her dearest friend sends Anna to Martha's Vineyard in Eternal Journey (Warner, Oct.) by Carol Hutton of Boca Raton, Fla. There, a stranger guides her through the anguish as spiritual events convince Anna that even death can't defeat true friendship. Death strikes again when an 11-year-old's twin brother drowns on Martha's Vineyard in Stay (Zoland paper, Oct.) by Mary Sullivan. Emily, the surviving twin, assumes a self-imposed silence that lingers until the truth behind her brother's death is revealed. Sullivan lives in Cambridge, where she is the coordinator for PEN New England. --Robert Dahlin Top