"Is it safe?" This chilling query from the 1976 film Marathon Man takes on new meaning after September 11 in books that address the issue of security at home and abroad. Former NYPD commissioner Howard Safir defines 21st-century law enforcement in Security (Thomas Dunne); Global Disorder (Carroll & Graf) looks at dangers to and safety measures for Western democracies; and Fixing Intelligence (Yale UP) casts a critical eye on the U.S. intelligence community and suggests reforms. Meanwhile, McGraw-Hill/Osborne's Homeland Security & the Hidden Threat of Cyberterrorism worries about protecting the country's computer infrastructure.
Several spring titles suggest that terrorism's reign continues, from The House of War (Modern Library) and War Against the West (Continuum) to Avoiding Armageddon (Basic). On a more personal level, Brassey's examines the motivations of radical Islam's most famous American adherent, John Walker Lindh, in Walker's Calling, while The Man Who Knew (ReganBooks) presents the story of John O'Neill, the FBI agent who repeatedly warned the U.S. government of a terrorist attack (and who perished on September 11 in his first days as security chief of the Twin Towers). The question remains, however, whether these titles will draw a significant readership—one that, already overwhelmed by the world's instability, might just desire escapism instead.
There's No Place Like Home
Those who were mesmerized by Running with Scissors can continue their fascination with Augustin Burroughs's weird life in Dry (St. Martin's). More domestic dysfunction rules in Virginia Holman's Rescuing Patty Hearst (S&S), in which an eight-year-old Holman remembers the craziness wrought by her mother's psychotic breakdown. In The Nearly Departed (Little, Brown), Brenda Cullerton thought her family was pretty strange while she was growing up, but realized that was nothing compared to their behavior in old age.
Tattle Tales
If it's not Diana's butler telling secrets, it's yet another person "in service." George Jacobs, Frank Sinatra's valet and confidant for 15 years, recounts incidents, scandals and romances in Mister S (HarperEntertainment). Popular biographer J. Randy Taraborrelli turns his sights on Princess Grace and Prince Rainier in Once Upon a Time (Warner), and finds that their fairy-tale life wasn't so happily ever after. Star-struck Steven Cojocaru, the Today Show's fashion correspondent, just can't wait to talk about all the celebs he's rubbed elbows with in Red Carpet Diaries (Ballantine), so maybe it's safer to reveal your own secrets, as do thespians Sian Phillips (FSG), Olympia Dukakis (Harper), Efrem Zimbalist Jr. (Limelight) and Richard Chamberlain (Regan).
Look Who's Back!
Many familiar names return to the fiction fold after several years' absence. Literary heavyweight Günter Grass returns with Crabwalk (Harcourt), based on a little-known chapter in European history. In other historical fiction, Thomas Keneally examines a priest's conscience in WWII—era Sydney in Office ofInnocence (Doubleday/Talese); The Color (FSG) by Rose Tremain resurrects love and greed during New Zealand's 19th-century gold rush; and David Liss reimagines 1659 Amsterdam in The Coffee Trader (Random House).
Readers interested in contemporary American milieus might consider Sheri Holman's (The Dress Lodger) focus on excess, Mammoth Cheese (Atlantic Monthly), and Pulitzer Prize—winning Jane Smiley's Good Faith (Knopf), which taps into '80s greed. Booker Prize winner Margaret Atwood sees a future devastated by ecological and scientific disaster in Oryx and Crake (Doubleday/Talese) and Scott Spencer considers the disastrous consequences of an adulterous, interracial affair in A Ship Made of Paper (Ecco). Look for more upside-down logic from Tom Robbins (Villa Incognito, Bantam) and more magical realism from Alice Hoffman (The Probable Future, Doubleday). Realism of a more naturalistic kind can be found in Gail Godwin's Evenings at Five (Ballantine), in which a wife reflects on the unexpected death of her husband.
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