Booklist articles from January 2005

Booklist archives from January 2005

Special this issue.(100 Years)(Editorial)
January 1, 2005... Last September, we began celebrating our 100th anniversary in these pages, and we continue in the new year, with more features looking back at the century of books we've reviewed and with what we hope you'll agree is a stylish new design. We...

Top of the List: 2004 Editors' Choice.(Brief Article)(Bibliography)
January 1, 2005... Adult Fiction The Plot against America, by Philip Roth (Houghton) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Adult Nonfiction John James Audubon: The Making of an American, by Richard Rhodes (Knopf) Youth Fiction Ida B, by Katherine Hannigan...

Ehrlich, Gretel. The Future of Ice: a Journey into Cold.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Ehrlich, Gretel. The Future of Ice: A Journey into Cold. Pantheon, $25 (0-375-42251-X). What does the current melting of the Arctic ice cap mean for the future of life on Earth? Ehrlich, veteran nature writer and lover of cold places,...

In Search of Hannah Crafts: Critical Essays on the Bondwoman's Narrative.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... In Search of Hannah Crafts: Critical Essays on The Bondwoman's Narrative. Ed. by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Hollis Robbins. Basic/Civitas, $27.50 (0-465-02714-8). Twenty-two authorities on African American history examine the first novel...

Wald, Elijah. Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Wald, Elijah. Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues. HarperCollins/Amistad, $24.95 (0-06-052423-5). Wald argues that, like many other 1930s bluesmen, Robert Johnson (1911?-38) was following a well-blazed trail...

Chernow, Ron. Alexander Hamilton.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Chernow, Ron. Alexander Hamilton. Penguin, $35 (1-59420-009-2). As Chernow's comprehensive and superbly written biography makes clear, Hamilton was at least as influential as any of our Founding Fathers in shaping our national institutions...

Connor, James A. Kepler's Witch: an Astronomer's Discovery of Cosmic Order amid Religious War, Political Intrigue, and the Heresy Trial of His Mother.(Brief Article)(Book Review)(Brief Review)
January 1, 2005... Connor, James A. Kepler's Witch: An Astronomer's Discovery of Cosmic Order amid Religious War, Political Intrigue, and the Heresy Trial of His Mother. HarperSanFrancisco, $24.95 (0-06-052255-0). In this compelling narrative, Connor probes...

Ellis, Joseph J. His Excellency: George Washington.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Ellis, Joseph J. His Excellency: George Washington. Knopf, $26.95 (1-4000-4031-0). The author of the best-selling, award-winning American Sphinx (1997), about Thomas Jefferson, and Founding Fathers (2000), about the Revolutionary...

Gill, Gillian. Nightingales: the Extraordinary Upbringing and Curious Life of Miss Florence Nightingale.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Gill, Gillian. Nightingales: The Extraordinary Upbringing and Curious Life of Miss Florence Nightingale. Ballantine, $27.95 (0-343-45187-2). Informing careful scholarship with imaginative insight, Gill brings to life the perplexing...

Parini, Jay. One Matchless Time: a Life of William Faulkner.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Parini, Jay. One Matchless Time: A Life of William Faulkner. HarperCollins, $29.95 (0-06-621072-0). Parini, biographer of Frost and Steinbeck, offers a fresh, discerning, and provocative biography of Nobel Prize winner Faulkner, drawing on...

Rhodes, Richard. John James Audubon: the Making of an American.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Rhodes, Richard. John James Audubon: The Making of an American. Knopf, $30 (0-375-41412-6). Rhodes evinces a remarkable grasp of the world in which Audubon--whom he vividly portrays as a man of passion, endurance, and vision--forged his...

Sugden, John. Nelson: A Dream of Glory, 1758-1797.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Sugden, John. Nelson: A Dream of Glory, 1758-1797. Holt, $35 (0-8050-7757-X). In this exacting, definitive biography, Sugden captures Nelson's humanity, including the string-pulling that elevated his career, his amours in several ports,...

Waller, Douglas. A Question of Loyalty: Gen. Billy Mitchell and the Court-Martial That Gripped the Nation.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Waller, Douglas. A Question of Loyalty: Gen. Billy Mitchell and the Court-Martial That Gripped the Nation. HarperCollins, $26.95 (0-06-050547-8). In September 1925, army flying ace Billy Mitchell accused the War and Navy Departments of...

Whitaker, Robert. The Mapmaker's Wife: a True Tale of Love, Murder, and Survival in the Amazon.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Whitaker, Robert. The Mapmaker's Wife: A True Tale of Love, Murder, and Survival in the Amazon. Basic, $25 (0-7382-0808-6). In a story taut with intellectual controversy, romantic passion, and harrowing danger, Whitaker re-creates the life...

Barry, John M. The Great Influenza: the Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Barry, John M. The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History. Viking, $29.95 (0-670-89473-7). American medicine's heroic effort to prevent and stem the 1918 influenza pandemic, while politicians, from President...

Dary, David. The Oregon Trail: an American Saga.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Dary, David. The Oregon Trail: An American Saga. Knopf, $35 (0-375-41399-5). Tracing the routes and topography of the Oregon Trail, Dary integrates the attraction Oregon and the West held for mountain men, missionaries, Mormons, and...

Fischer, David Hackett. Washington's Crossing.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Fischer, David Hackett. Washington's Crossing. Oxford, $30 (0-19-517034-2). This outstanding analytical narrative examines how the American colonists, at the nadir of their rebellion, reversed their fortunes in a short, sharp campaign....

Fuller, Alexandra. Scribbling the Cat: Travels with an African Soldier.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Fuller, Alexandra. Scribbling the Cat: Travels with an African Soldier. Penguin, $24.95 (1-59420-016-5). Fuller, whose powerful memoir Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight (2001) told the story of her family's life before and during the...

Jeffreys, Diarmuid. Aspirin: the Remarkable Story of a Wonder Drug.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Jeffreys, Diarmuid. Aspirin: The Remarkable Story of a Wonder Drug. Bloomsbury, $25.95 (1-58234-386-1). In 1899, the marriage of medicine and commerce produced its earliest offspring when the German Bayer company labeled acetylsalicylic...

Lax, Eric. The Mold in Dr. Florey's Coat: the Story of Penicillin and the Modern Age of Medical Miracles.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Lax, Eric. The Mold in Dr. Florey's Coat: The Story of Penicillin and the Modern Age of Medical Miracles. Holt/John Macrae, $25 (0-8050-6790-6). Lax delves into the lives of the colorful scientists who played significant roles in arguably...

Passages to Freedom: the Underground Railroad in History and Memory.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Passages to Freedom: The Underground Railroad in History and Memory. Ed. by David W. Blight. Smithsonian, $39.95 (1-58834-157-7). Academics write with respect for the history of the Underground Railroad and with caution about the mythology...

Porter, Roy. Flesh in the Age of Reason.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Porter, Roy. Flesh in the Age of Reason. Norton, $29.95 (0-393-05075-0). In this posthumously published masterpiece, a gifted social historian illuminates the cultural genealogy linking today's idolaters of the body to their surprising...

Thomson, David. The Whole Equation: a History of Hollywood.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Thomson, David. The Whole Equation: A History of Hollywood. Knopf, $27.95 (0-375-40016-8). Peeling back the layers, goring sacred cows, correcting misconceptions, and revealing truth rather than reprinting legends, Thomson offers history,...

Webb, James. Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Webb, James. Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America. Broadway, $25.95 (0-7679-1688-3). Webb tells the robust and passionate story of how the Scots-Irish combination of individualism, egalitarianism, and personal honor came to...

Wheatcroft, Andrew. Infidels: A History of the Conflict between Christendom and Islam.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Wheatcroft, Andrew. Infidels: A History of the Conflict between Islam and Christendom. Random, $27.95 (1-4000-6230-6). In the roar of skyscrapers collapsing in New York and in the thunder of fusillades in Afghanistan and Iraq, a leading...

Fleming, Thomas. The Morality of Everyday Life: Rediscovering an Ancient Alternative to the Liberal Tradition.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Fleming, Thomas. The Morality of Everyday Life: Rediscovering an Ancient Alternative to the Liberal Tradition. Univ. of Missouri, $44.95 (0-8262-1509-2). Modern liberals and conservatives judge what is ethical by criteria of universality,...

Milosz, Czeslaw. Second Space.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Milosz, Czeslaw. Second Space. Tr. by Czeslaw Milosz and Robert Hass. Ecco, $23.95 (0-06-074566-5). In his final collection, the late Polish Nobel laureate is concerned with faith and disbelief, sin and redemption, death and...

Rich, Adrienne. The School among the Ruins: Poems, 2000-2004.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Rich, Adrienne. The School among the Ruins: Poems, 2000-2004. Norton, $22.95 (0-393-05983-9). Rich, a clarion poet of conscience, gets the fractured timbre of our times just right in a collection of vigorous lyric poems about cell phones...

Tufariello, Catherine. Keeping My Name.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Tufariello, Catherine. Keeping My Name. Texas Tech Univ., $19.95 (0-89672-529-4). In immaculate, subtly musical meter and rhyme, Tufariello conjures scenes of the city, modern history, marriage and family, love in the Italian Renaissance,...

Fortey, Richard. Earth: an Intimate History.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Fortey, Richard. Earth: An Intimate History. Knopf, $30 (0-375-40626-3). The Alps, the Scottish Highlands, Newfoundland, the Deccan Traps of India--these are among Fortey's destinations as he explains the theory of plate tectonics, showing...

Kaku, Michio. Parallel Worlds: a Journey through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Kaku, Michio. Parallel Worlds: A Journey through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos. Doubleday, $27.50 (0-385-50986-3). This is a riveting popular treatment of the string revolution in physics written by a pioneering...

Tennant, Alan. On the Wing: to the Edge of the Earth with the Peregrine Falcon.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Tennant, Alan. On the Wing: To the Edge of the Earth with the Peregrine Falcon. Knopf, $25 (0-375-41551-3). Renegade naturalist Tennant tells the wildly dramatic story of his risky and revelatory adventures tracking migrating peregrine...

Ackerman, Diane. An Alchemy of Mind: the Marvel and Mystery of the Brain.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Ackerman, Diane. An Alchemy of Mind: The Marvel and Mystery of the Brain. Scribner, $25 (0-7432-4672-1). Naturalist and poet Ackerman brings her signature blend of acute observation, deep thought, erudition, and playful and enrapturing...

Mintz, Steven. Huck's Raft: a History of American Childhood.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Mintz, Steven. Huck's Raft: A History of American Childhood. Harvard, $29.95 (0-674-01508-8). In this thoroughly engrossing book, Mintz uses Huck Finn's raft as the image of the ideal childhood, filled with adventure and exploration. But...

Underhill, Paco. Call of the Mall: the Geography of Shopping.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Underhill, Paco. Call of the Mall: The Geography of Shopping. Simon & Schuster, $25.95 (0-7432-3591-6). Self-styled "retail anthropologist" Underhill, the author of Why We Buy, turns his attention here to where we buy. Under his...

Amidon, Stephen. Human Capital.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Amidon, Stephen. Human Capital. Farrar, $25 (0-374-17350-8). Within a complex narrative taut with suspense, Amidon offers a rip-roaring portrait of contemporary class warfare. The author has an unerring instinct for portraying the peculiar...

Atkinson, Kate. Case Histories.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Atkinson, Kate. Case Histories. Little, Brown, $23.95 (0-316-74040-3). Atkinson artfully exploits the conventions of the detective novel while also sending them up in a page-turner that succeeds in being both brainy and thoroughly...

Banks, Russell. The Darling.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Banks, Russell. The Darling. HarperCollins, $25.95 (0-06-019735-8). Banks continues his inquiry into the complex legacy of slavery in this gripping and unpredictable tale of a 1960s American radical, Hannah Musgrave, who surfaces in...

Bell, Madison Smartt. The Stone That the Builder Refused.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Bell, Madison Smartt. The Stone That the Builder Refused. Pantheon, $29.95 (0-375-42282-X). Bell concludes his magnificent, profoundly affecting trilogy of powerfully imagined and historically precise novels about Toussaint Louverture and...

Hannah Coulter.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Berry, Wendell. Hannah Coulter. Shoemaker & Hoard, $25 (1-59376-036-1). Berry's heartbreaking yet affirmative novel, told in the voice of the wife of the protagonist of his first novel, Nathan Coulter (1960; rev., 1985), is the homely epic...

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Clarke, Susanna. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. Bloomsbury, $27.95 (1-58234-416-7). This first novel set in early-nineteenth-century England, about the currently moribund state of magic in the kingdom, is itself magical--an exceptionally...

The Bride from Odessa.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Cozarinsky, Edgardo. The Bride from Odessa. Tr. by Nick Caistor. Farrar, $20 (0-374-11673-3). This Argentine-born writer, now a long-time resident of Paris, injects his collection of short stories with a decided worldliness as he works out...

The Dew Breaker.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Danticat, Edwidge. The Dew Breaker. Knopf, $22 (1-4000-4114-7). In her fourth work of hard-hitting yet lyrical fiction, Danticat presents stunning short stories that dramatize Haiti's crushing history of despotic tyranny and violence, and...

Birds without Wings.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... De Bernieres, Louis. Birds without Wings. Knopf, $25.95 (1-4000-4341-7). Using a village in southwest Turkey as a microcosm, the author of Corelli's Mandolin (1995) offers an impressive view of this region during the early twentieth...

Four Souls.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Erdrich, Louise. Four Souls. HarperCollins, $22.95 (0-06-620975-7). In this small but incredibly rich chapter in Erdrich's ongoing Native American saga, the decimation of Ojibwe land continues unabated; however, the implacable Fleur...

The Tarnished Eye.(Book Review)(Brief Review)
January 1, 2005... Guest, Judith. The Tarnished Eye. Scribner, $24 (0-7432-5736-7). The author of Ordinary People (1976) writes a thriller based on actual events, constructing a swift plot and paying attention to character development, depth, and...

War Trash.(Book Review)(Brief Review)
January 1, 2005... Jin, Ha. War Trash. Pantheon, $25 (0-375-42276-5). Ha Jin revisits a forgotten facet of the Korean War through the keen eyes of Yu Yuan, a book-loving and English-speaking Chinese POW in an American-run camp in which prisoners undertake...

The Devil You Know.(Book Review)(Brief Review)
January 1, 2005... Johnson, Wayne. The Devil You Know. Crown/Shaye Areheart, $23 (0-609-60964-5). Johnson surrounds a mythic, Deliverance-like confrontation with evil (yes, we're back in the canoes) with a subtly realistic coming-of-age story about a...

The Swallows of Kabul.(Book Review)(Brief Review)
January 1, 2005... Khadra, Yasmina. The Swallows of Kabul. Tr. by John Cullen. Doubleday/ Nan A. Talese, 518.95 (0-385-51001-2). In Kabul under the Taliban, a part-time jailer and the scion of a business family paupered by the revolution, each caught in a...

Resistance.(Book Review)(Brief Review)
January 1, 2005... Lopez, Barry. Resistance. Knopf, $18 (1-4000-4220-8). In Lopez's latest innovative work of fiction, far-flung ex-pat writers and artists urgently recount the intense experiences that inspired them to express their resistance to war,...

The Facts behind the Helsinki Roccamatios.(Book Review)(Brief Review)
January 1, 2005... Martel, Yann. The Facts behind the Helsinki Roccamatios. Harcourt, $23.95 (0-15-101090-0). This collection of short stories by the author of the Booker Prize-winning novel Life of Pi (2002) is a multidimensional meditation on being and...

Runaway.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Munro, Mice. Runaway. Knopf, $24 (1-4000-4281-X). In her latest remarkable short-story collection, Munro impresses with the ease and completeness with which she brings the world as a character into the frame, and her characteristic and...

Murray, Paul. An Evening of Long Goodbyes.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Murray, Paul. An Evening of Long Goodbyes. Random, $24.95 (1-4000-6116-4). In this very funny and uhimately very moving first novel, indolent Irish aristocrat Charles Hythloday is forced to do the unthinkable--give up his love of gimlets...

Naipaul, V. S. Magic Seeds.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Naipaul, V. S. Magic Seeds. Knopf, $25 (0-375-40736-7). In the sequel to Halfa Life (2000), the Nobel laureate reintroduces underground revolutionary Willie Chandran, an Indian, in a brilliant and elaborately constructed novel about...

Ozick, Cynthia. Heir to the Glimmering World.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Ozick, Cynthia. Heir to the Glimmering World. Houghton, $25 (0-618-47049-2). Ozick brings together an unusual Jewish German family who find refuge from the Nazis in the Bronx, the dissolute heir to an A. A. Milne-like children's author,...

Robinson, Marilynne. Gilead.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Robinson, Marilynne. Gilead. Farrar, $23 (0-374-15389-2). The author of Housekeeping (1980) once again astonishes readers with her gorgeous prose and profound moral and spiritual inquiries as her contemplative protagonist, Reverend John...

Roth, Philip. The Plot against America.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Roth, Philip. The Plot against America. Houghton, $26 (0-618-50928-3). Roth steps boldly into the realm of alternate history, imagining what would happen if aviation hero Charles Lindbergh were elected president over FDR in 1940. This...

Spragg, Mark. An Unfinished Life.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Spragg, Mark. An Unfinished Life. Knopf, $23 (1-4000-4201-1). Returning to the high-country horse ranches of Wyoming, scene of his stellar first novel, The Fruit of Stone, Spragg tells a riveting tale of hard-won friendship, old wounds and...

Stevenson, Jane. The Empress of the Last Days.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Stevenson, Jane. The Empress of the Last Days. Houghton, $25 (0-618-14914-7). This concluding volume of a trilogy that reimagines the life of Elizabeth of Bohemia, sister of England's Charles I and a lively figure in seventeenth-century...

Toibin, Colm. The Master.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Toibin, Colm. The Master. Scribner, $25 (0-7432-5040-0). This distinguished Irish novelist generously offers a fictional depiction of the last two decades of the life of Henry James, the great god of American letters. A marvelously...

Trevor, William. A Bit on the Side.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Trevor, William. A Bit on the Side. Viking, $24.95 (0-670-03343-X). The dozen stories in the latest collection by a beloved and critically esteemed Irish writer only confirm that he remains, after all these years and books, at the top of...

Ward, Liza. Outside Valentine.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Ward, Liza. Outside Valentine. Holt, $23 (0-8050-7598-4). This stunning first novel cuts between historic teenage spree killers Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate in 1957-58, and Lowell Bowman, who was orphaned by their rampage, in...

Williams, Joy. Honored Guest.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Williams, Joy. Honored Guest. Knopf, $23 (0-679-44647-8). Williams channels her electrifying and compassionate vision of a damaged, off-kilter world into a dozen canny tales of loners and misfits, abused animals, and children who suffer as...

Almond, Steve. Candyfreak: a Journey through the Chocolate Underbelly of America.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Almond, Steve. Candyfreak: A Journey through the Chocolate Underbelly of America. Algonquin, $21.95 (1-56512-421-9). Almond elevates what could have been dry reportage into a riotously funny memoir about his obsession with candy, which...

Conlon-McIvor, Maura. FBI Girl: How I Learned to Crack My Father's Code.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Conlon-McIvor, Maura. FBI Girl: How I Learned to Crack My Father's Code. Warner, $23 (0-446-53310-6). In this touching, frank memoir, always true to a child's viewpoint, the author remembers growing up with her taciturn father, an FBI...

Cox, Lynne. Swimming to Antarctica: Tales of a Long-Distance Swimmer.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Cox, Lynne. Swimming to Antarctica: Tales of a Long-Distance Swimmer. Knopf, $24.95 (0-375-41507-6). Cox, who swam the English Channel at 15, writes about her subsequent swims across some of the world's most perilous waters. An...

Satrapi, Marjane. Persepolis 2: the Story of a Return.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Satrapi, Marjane. Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return. Tr. by Anjali Singh. Pantheon, $17.95 (0-375-42288-9). Satrapi continues her memoir-in-comics about growing up in revolutionary Iran. Once again, the bold-lined artwork illustrates one...

Shen, Fan. Gang of One: Memoirs of a Red Guard.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Shen, Fan. Gang of One: Memoirs of a Red Guard. Univ. of Nebraska, $24.95 (0-8032-4308-1). In this irony-laden memoir, a former Red Guard grows up swimming against the tides of the Cultural Revolution. Teens will strongly identify with...

Silverstein, Ken. The Radioactive Boy Scout: the True Story of a Boy and His Backyard Nuclear Reactor.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Silverstein, Ken. The Radioactive Boy Scout: The True Story of a Boy and His Backyard Nuclear Reactor. Random, $22.95 (0-375-50351-X). In the early 1990s, Detroit-area teenager David Hahn tried to build a nuclear reactor in his backyard....

Smith, Alison. Name All the Animals.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Smith, Alison. Name All the Animals. Scribner, $24 (0-7432-5522-4). When Smith was 15, her beloved older brother died suddenly. In a poignant, ultimately hopeful memoir that reads like fiction, Smith describes her own and her parents'...

Traig, Jennifer. Devil in the Details: Scenes from an Obsessive Girlhood.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Traig, Jennifer. Devil in the Details: Scenes from an Obsessive Girlhood. Little, Brown, $22.95 (0-316-15877-1). When Traig hit puberty, she developed a form of hyper-religious, obsessive-compulsive disorder. She describes her affliction...

Williams, Buzz. Spare Parts: a Marine Reservist's Journey from Campus to Combat in 38 Days.(Book Review)(Brief Review)
January 1, 2005... Williams, Buzz. Spare Parts: A Marine Reservist's Journey from Campus to Combat in 38 Days. Gotham, $26 (1-592-40054-X). Williams describes the day-to-day rigors of boot camp, the trials of his Gulf War tour of duty, and the particulars of...

Cook, Lorna J. Departures.(Book Review)(Brief Review)
January 1, 2005... Cook, Lorna J. Departures. St. Martin's, $22.95 (0-312-32128-7). Like all the members in their unsettled family, teen siblings Suzen and Evan dream of escaping their small midwestern town. Cook's understated, pitch-perfect prose captures...

Fischer, Jackie Moyer. An Egg on Three Sticks.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Fischer, Jackie Moyer. An Egg on Three Sticks. St. Martin's/Griffin, paper, $12.95 (0-312-31775-1). In this unforgettable debut, 13-year-old Abby recounts her mother's heartbreaking descent into mental illness. With acutely observed...

Hallowell, Janis. The Annunciation of Francesca Dunn.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Hallowell, Janis. The Annunciation of Francesca Dunn. Morrow, $23.95 (0-06-055919-5). Colorado teen Francesca draws a cult following after a homeless man envisions her as the Virgin Mary. Alternating viewpoints tell the swiftly moving...

Halpin, Brendan. Donorboy.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Halpin, Brendan. Donorboy. Villard, $22.95 (1-4000-6277-2). After 14-year-old Rosalind loses both of her lesbian parents in a car accident, she is placed in the custody of her sperm-donor father. Halpin writes in voices that are funny,...

Marillier, Juliet. Foxmask.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Marillier, Juliet. Foxmask. Tor, $27.95 (0-765-30674-3). This sweeping Dark Ages fantasy, a sequel to the rousing Walfskin (2003), follows 18-year-old Thorvald to remote northern British isles in a suspenseful, romantic page-turner steeped...

Nicholls, David. A Question of Attraction.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Nicholls, David. A Question of Attraction. Villard, $23.95 (1-4000-6181-4). A sublime coming-of-age comedy, Nicholls' first novel centers around British scholarship student Brian through his struggles to mix with his posh peers, and...

Picoult, Jodi. My Sister's Keeper.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Picoult, Jodi. My Sister's Keeper. Atria, $25 (0-7434-5452-9). Teen Anna sues her parents for the rights to her own body when she is asked to donate a kidney to her sister. This spellbinding story will draw a wide range of readers with its...

Shepard, Jim. Project X.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Shepard, Jim. Project X. Knopf, $20 (1-4000-4071-)0. Shepard boldly addresses the volatile subject of teen violence in this unflinching response to school shootings. With candor, sympathy, and occasional humor, Shepard tells the story of...

Seigel, Andrea. Like the Red Panda.(Brief Article)(Young Adult Review)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Seigel, Andrea. Like the Red Panda. Harcourt, $23 (0-15-101039-0). Bleak, chillingly plausible, and sure to be controversial, this debut novel explores suburban ennui and teen suicide in the voice of Princeton-bound high-school senior...

Bolden, Tonya. Wake Up Our Souls: A Celebration of Black American Artists.(Brief Article)(Young Adult Review)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Bolden, Tonya. Wake Up Our Souls. illus. Abrams, $24.95 (0-8109-4809-5). Gr. 6-12. Published in conjunction with the Smithsonian American Art Museum, this elegant, concise volume introduces a selection of African American visual artists....

Constable, Kate. The Singer of All Songs.(Brief Article)(Young Adult Review)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Constable, Kate. The Singer of All Songs. Scholastic/Arthur A. Levine, $16.95 (0-439-55478-0). Gr. 7-10. In Constable's lush introduction to a world where song powers magic, a novice ice-priestess breaks free from a cloistered existence...

Curtis, Christopher Paul. Bucking the Sarge.(Brief Article)(Young Adult Review)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Curtis, Christopher Paul. Bucking the Sarge. Random/Wendy Lamb, $15.95 (0-385-32307-7). Gr. 7-10. Farce, failure, and heartbreak tell the truth in this novel about smart, desperate Luther, 15, who hates his rich, corrupt mom and finds a...