Publishers Weekly articles from April 2006

Publishers Weekly archives from April 2006

Documenting the value of marketing: author investment yields larger payoff.(Foreword)
April 24, 2006... Publishing is full of conventional wisdom but woefully lacking in data to support many of its theories. In the professional services field (management consulting, training), the general rule is that if you publish a book, you will get more...

Watrous Globe Pequot President.(Scott Watrous )(Brief article)
April 24, 2006... Scott Watrous has been appointed president of Globe Pequot Press. Watrous, who starts May 8, has been publisher and COO of Adams Media Publishers since 2001. Before joining Adams, Watrous spent 14 years in sales at Random House. Watrous...

Team to head Adams.(appointment of executives)(Brief article)
April 24, 2006... With the departure of Scott Watrous, Adams announced that a three-person executive team with lead the company. Gary Krebs will continue to direct the publishing program as executive publishing director; Karen Cooper will remain head of...

Callanan new Bowker Prez.(Brief article)
April 24, 2006... Annie Callanan has been named president and CEO of Bowker, replacing Michael Cairns, who resigned in January. Callanan has served as an executive at several major business-to-business companies, and most recently was executive v-p of the life...

Hold the leftovers.
April 24, 2006... In case you haven't noticed, we're living in a very politically charged moment. Not only are President Bush's performance ratings at an all-time low just as midterm elections are coming up, but you know something serious is going on when even...

George Lucas launches first book.(Brief article)
April 24, 2006... Star Wars creator George Lucas, through his George Lucas Books imprint, will release his first title next month. Cinema by the Bay by Sheerly Avni is a coffee-table book celebrating films produced by studios in the San Francisco Bay area....

Grammy-winning R&B star John Legend (Ordinary People) cozies up to Marie-Elena John, debut author of Unburnable (Amistad).(Brief article)
April 24, 2006... Grammy-winning R&B star John Legend (Ordinary People) cozies up to Marie-Elena John, debut author of Unburnable (Amistad) at a party for her book held in Harlem. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Avalon publishing positioned for better 2006.(Looking Ahead)
April 24, 2006... The extension of its distribution agreement and a 15% increase in sales in the first quarter--capped by its best month ever in March--is making it easier for Avalon Publishing Group head Charlie Winton to put 2005 behind him. Although sales...

Books-a-million by the numbers.(Foreword)(Brief article)
April 24, 2006... 1: Number of superstores in 1987 157: Number of superstores in 2001 173: Number of superstores in 2005 47: Number of traditional stores in 2001 32: Number of traditional stores in 2005 2,800: Full-time employees in 2001...

Emcee Diane Sawyer talks with Turkish novelist and dissident Rakhim Esenov and his translator, Erika Daily.(Brief article)
April 24, 2006... Emcee Diane Sawyer (l.) talks with Turkish novelist and dissident Rakhim Esenov (r.) and his translator, Erika Daily, at the PEN Literary Gala last week in New York City, where Esenov was awarded the 2006 PEN Freedom to Write Award. ...

Drew to retire.(Brief article)
April 24, 2006... Lisa Drew will retire as head of Lisa Drew Books June 30. Drew, who held top spots at Doubleday and Morrow, started her imprint at Macmillan/Scribner in 1993 and continued it at Simon & Schuster. The list of writers she has worked with...

E-book sales hit $11.9 million.(Brief article)
April 24, 2006... The International Digital Publishing Forum reported last week that e-book sales from 18 companies totaled $11.9 million in 2005. The number of unit sales was just under 1.7 million, and 5,242 e-book titles were published. Results are not...

Mark Finn, floor manager, Book People, Austin, Tex.(GALLEY TALK)(Brief article)
April 24, 2006... Paul Malmont's debut novel, The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril (S&S), is ostensibly about the authors who wrote the lurid, sensationalistic pulps of the 1930s, but what makes it so compelling is the way in which it's written. Malmont celebrates...

Correction.(Correction notice)
April 24, 2006... The New York Times Book Review will name the best fiction work since 1980 in its May 21 issue, not May 22, as reported in Sara Nelson's April 17 column. The Herald Tribune survey was done in 1965, not 1950.

Sterling gets tube plug with DIY.(Chanelling)
April 24, 2006... The book publishing/cable television connection continues to yield new partnerships. Following last week's agreement between TFH Publications and Animal Planet, Sterling Publishing has inked a deal with the DIY Network to publish a line of...

Children's bestsellers.(Brief article)
April 24, 2006... In our Facts and Figures 2005 issue (Mar. 27), a few publishers were left off our list of children's bestsellers. Love You Forever by Robert Munsch (Firefly) sold 435,124 copies in 2005, placing it as #19 in paperback backlist. And Poetry...

Building a buzz for 'Elephants'.(Marketing)(Brief article)
April 24, 2006... A vigorous marketing campaign aimed at independent booksellers is paying off for Algonquin, whose forthcoming novel Water for Elephants has sparked pre-pub buzz that some are comparing to the anticipation generated by Cold Mountain and The...

Roosevelt and the court.(Deals)(Brief article)
April 24, 2006... NYU Law School professor Noah Feldman will write his next book, presently untitled, on a quartet of Supreme Court justices whose legal theories and influence on Franklin Roosevelt had a great impact on American society during the Great...

Free lunch expose.(Deals)(Brief article)
April 24, 2006... Adrian Zackheim, publisher of Penguin's Portfolio imprint, has signed up the next book by Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter David Cay Johnston, titled Free Lunch: Who Is Getting Rich Off Government and Sticking You with the Bill. The book will...

Memoir deals.(Deals)(Brief article)
April 24, 2006... Harmony's John Glusman has acquired world rights to Andrew Pham's The Eaves of Heaven, which tells the story of Pham's father, who witnessed the demise of his ancestors' feudal world in Vietnam, the collapse of the French Indochina empire,...

Calendar: April 30-May 6.(Foreword)
April 24, 2006... 4/30 Four-time Oscar nominee Agnes Moorehead died on this date in 1974. Charles Tranberg's new I Love the Illusion (BearManor Media) is the first flail-length biography of TV's Endora. 5/1 First Second, Holtzbrinck's highly...

Expat's debut.(Deals)(Brief article)
April 24, 2006... Twenty-nine-year-old Tod Wodicka has just sold U.S. rights to his untitled novel to Pantheon's Dan Frank; Zoe Pagnamenta at PFD NY handled the deal on behalf of Kevin Conroy Scott at Conville & Walsh. The novel's narrator is a 63-year-old...

WWJD?(Deals)(What Would Jack Do? )(Brief article)
April 24, 2006... Paul Slovak, who oversees the Jack Kerouac publishing program at Viking, has acquired world English rights to What Would Jack Do? by John Leland, a New York Times reporter and author of Hip: The History. The book will be a critical...

James L. Swanson, the New York Times bestselling author of Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer.(The Briefing)(Brief article)
April 24, 2006... James L. Swanson, the New York Times bestselling author of Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer, has sold two new, untitled books, one on the weeks following Lincoln's assassination and another on the Civil War period, to Henry...

Yankee legend Yogi Berra has sold a new book, Team Player, about the value and virtue of being a team player both on the field and off, in the face of society's increasing resistance to this precept, to John Wiley's Stephen Power.(The Briefing)(Brief article)
April 24, 2006... Yankee legend Yogi Berra has sold a new book, Team Player, about the value and virtue of being a team player both on the field and off, in the face of society's increasing resistance to this precept, to John Wiley's Stephen Power; agent...

Crown's Heather Jackson has acquired world rights to entrepreneur Tim Ferriss's Drug Dealing for Fun and Profit.(The Briefing)(Brief article)
April 24, 2006... Crown's Heather Jackson has acquired world rights to entrepreneur Tim Ferriss's Drug Dealing for Fun and Profit, a new take on the evergreen work-life and career-trap problems we all face, based on his popular Princeton lectures of the same...

Elizabeth Dyssegaard at Smithsonian Books has acquired two new books by Jake Page, The Natural History of Dogs and Uprising.(The Briefing)(Brief article)
April 24, 2006... Elizabeth Dyssegaard at Smithsonian Books has acquired two new books by Jake Page, The Natural History of Dogs and Uprising: The Story of the First American Revolution--the Pueblo Revolt of 1680; Joe Regal at Regal Literary sold North...

Twin-lit.(Brief article)
April 24, 2006... Legendary Siamese twins Chang and Eng have inspired such novels as Darin Strauss's Chang and Eng (Dutton, 2000) and Mark Slouka's God's Fool (Knopf, 2002). This summer brings a twin-lit revival, with three more fictional tales of literally...

Manga work pulled from libraries.(Censorship)(Manga: 60 Years of Japanese Comics)
April 24, 2006... Prompted by a single complaint, the San Bernardino, Calif., county board of supervisors has ordered the removal of all 13 copies of Manga: 60 Years of Japanese Comics from county libraries. The reference work is by Paul Gravett, a U.K....

Mendelson, falk up at HM.(People)(Brief article)
April 24, 2006... John Mendelson has been promoted from national accounts manager to director of field sales at Houghton Mifflin. In the new position Falk will work out of the publisher's Boston office. David Falk, based in New York, has been bumped up to...

Braman to Morrow.(People)(Brief article)
April 24, 2006... Marjorie Braman is shifting within HarperCollins, moving from v-p and executive editor of the house's flagship imprint to William Morrow (keeping the same title). Continuing to work with her current roster of authors, Braman will now focus on...

Chieffetz up at RH.(appointment of Julia Chieffetz at Random House Publishing Group)(Brief article)
April 24, 2006... Julia Chieffetz has been promoted from associate editor to editor at Random House Publishing Group. Chieffetz, who's been with the publisher for four years, has worked on such titles as Steve Almond's Not That You Asked and Shelley Lewis's...

A book fair sprouts in Brooklyn.('Making Reading Sexy')
April 24, 2006... In the city that never sleeps, are there enough readers to justify another major book fair? New York City is already host to next week's PEN World Voices Festival as well as the New York Times's Great Read in the Park, the New Yorker Festival...

McGrath to Riverhead.(appointment of Sarah McGrath )(Brief article)
April 24, 2006... Sarah McGrath has been named v-p and executive editor of Penguin's Riverhead imprint. Most recently a senior editor at Scribner, where she worked since 1998, McGrath will report directly to Riverhead v-p and publisher Geoff Kloske; she starts...

Promos, additions at trident.(appointment of Kimberly Whalen, Claire Roberts)(Brief article)
April 24, 2006... Kimberly Whalen has been promoted from managing director of foreign rights to full-time literary agent at Trident Media Group. Also up at the agency is Claire Roberts, promoted from associate director of foreign rights to managing director of...

Making waves of grief.(Hollywood Reader)(Brief article)
April 24, 2006... In his upcoming novel The Killing Sea, to be published by Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing this December, Richard Lewis tackles the 2004 Asian tsunami. Fox 2000 has just picked up the book's film rights in a preemptive deal for Scott...

Playing doctor.(Hollywood Reader)(Brief article)
April 24, 2006... Although it's a condemned medical practice now, psychosurgery was all the rage in post-WWII America, thanks to Dr. Walter Freeman. As Jack El-Hai details in The Lobotomist: A Maverick Medical Genius and His Tragic Quest to Rid the World of...

Actress Lili Taylor (The Notorious Bettie Page) has optioned the rights to Lisa Shea's Hula (Norton, 1994) and written a rough draft of an adaptation.(Brief article)
April 24, 2006... Actress Lili Taylor (The Notorious Bettie Page) has optioned the rights to Lisa Shea's Hula (Norton, 1994) and written a rough draft of an adaptation. Set in the early 1960s, Shea's debut novel addresses the budding sexuality of two young...

Although Victorian-era space pirate adventure sounds like an oxymoron, the characterization perfectly describes Philip Reeves Larklight, which is to be published by Bloomsbury USA Children's Books this October--and is Warner Bros.' latest film option.(Brief article)
April 24, 2006... Although Victorian-era space pirate adventure sounds like an oxymoron, the characterization perfectly describes Philip Reeves Larklight, which is to be published by Bloomsbury USA Children's Books this October--and is Warner Bros.' latest...

Correction.(People)
April 24, 2006... In last week's announcement about James C. Clark and Linda Bay moving up at Penguin, their titles were misidentified. Clark has been named senior v-p, distribution, for Penguin Group, and Bay is now v-p, order fulfillment.

Hardcover bestseller/fiction.
April 24, 2006... After four printings, Oakdale Confidential has 130,000 copies in print. In an innovative coordination among Pocket Books, Televest Daytime Programs Inc. and CBS, Oakdale has been incorporated into the story line of As the World Turns. The...

Hardcover bestseller/nonfiction.
April 24, 2006... Tyler Perry's clearly got the golden touch: his 2005 film, Diary of a Mad Black Woman, grossed more than $50 million and his second, Madea's Family Reunion, opened in February to a $30-million first weekend. (A true triple threat, Perry...

Paperback bestsellers/mass market.
April 24, 2006... How hot is Anchor's mass market edition of The Da Vinci Code? Consider these numbers: for the week ending April 15, the top three chains (B&N, Borders and Walden) sold 33,405 copies of Brown's juggernaut, while the second-place titles racked...

Paperback bestsellers/trade.
April 24, 2006... "Renowned curator Jacques Sauniere staggered through the vaulted archway of the museum's Grand Gallery." SOUND FAMILIAR? IT SHOULD--IT'S THE OPENING SENTENCE OF THE BOOK THAT'S ON THREE OF OUR BESTSELLER LISTS. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]...

Children's series and tie-ins bestsellers.
April 24, 2006... This week Mary Pope Osborne heads out on the second half of her spring tour, and she's bringing along her sister, Natalie Pope Boyce, co-author of the Magic Tree House research guides. One of their stops will be a Barnes & Noble in...

Rediscovering America: in Mayflower, National Book Award winner Nathaniel Philbrick sheds light on a dark chapter in American history.(Author profile)(Biography)
April 24, 2006... Nathaniel Philbrick arrived on the literary scene with the National Book Award-winner In the Heart of the Sea the way he arrived on the island of Nantucket. No one knew for sure if he had staying power. "The locals on Nantucket wait three to...

Cool, Inc.: business books get hip, but all the news is not so hot.(Industry overview)(Cover story)
April 24, 2006... When planning his semiannual visit to New York this year, my 11-year-old nephew told me there was only one place in the city he really wanted to go. I rolled out my guesses: the Empire State Building? Ellis Island? The Bronx Zoo? No, no and...

On sale in fall 2006.(Politics Meets Prose)
April 24, 2006... This fall, as the midterm election season heats up, former CIA director George Tenet, attorney general John Ashcroft, Illinois Democrat Barack Obama and rebel broadcaster Amy Goodman are poised to do their civic duty. Ready for a little...

Hand-selling to the masses.(Bookseller Profile)(Susan Novotny)
April 24, 2006... Bookseller Susan Novotny stops in front of a mirror in a dimly lit corner of the studio, combs her reddish brown hair, then asks whether she should go on with or without her blue jacket. Moments later, wearing the jacket, she sits in front of...

Coming Out.(Brief article)(Book review)
April 24, 2006... Coming Out DANIELLE STEEL. Delacorte, $20 (208p) ISBN 978-0-385-33832-5 In her 67th novel (following May's The House) bestselling author Steel (more than 530 million copies sold) fashions a plot around a single event: an invitation to a...

Nancy Culpepper: Stories.(Brief article)(Book review)
April 24, 2006... Nancy Culpepper: Stories BOBBLE ANN MASON. Random, $22.95 (240p) ISBN 0-375-50718-3 A somber, slow-going drama in stories by award-winning author Mason (An Atomic Romance) follows a Kentucky farm family's quiet changes over the decades....

Tomorrow They Will Kiss.(Brief article)(Book review)
April 24, 2006... Tomorrow They Will Kiss EDUARDO SANTIAGO. Little, Brown/ Back Bay, $13.95 paper (320p) ISBN 0-316-01412-5 Scandal catches to the Cuban emigre community in America circa 1967 in this fresh, relevant first novel by TV writer Santiago. The...

Necessary Lies.(Brief article)(Book review)
April 24, 2006... Necessary Lies KERRY NEVILLE BAKKEN. BkMk Press at the Univ. of Missouri-Kansas City, $15.95 paper (202p) ISBN 1-886157-56-1 Death, birth and the complications of both are the threads running through Bakken's debut story collection. In...

Girls Most Likely.(Brief article)(Book review)
April 24, 2006... Girls Most Likely SHEILA WILLIAMS. Random/One World, $13.95 paper (304p) ISBN 0-34546476-1 Williams (On the Right Side of a Dream) delights in this chronicle of the evolving friendships among four African-American women from fifth grade...

Brethren: An Epic Adventure of the Knights Templar.(Brief article)(Book review)
April 24, 2006... Brethren: An Epic Adventure of the Knights Templar ROBYN YOUNG. Dutton, $25.95 (480p) ISBN 0-525-94975-5 Debut novelist Young climbs aboard the Templar bandwagon, but sets the bar high in this initial installment of a trilogy on the...

Taken.(Brief article)(Book review)
April 24, 2006... Taken CHRIS JORDAN. Mira, $21.95 (352p) ISBN 0-7783-2293-9 When caterer Kate Bickford's 11-year-old son, Tomas, vanishes after his Little League game in Fairfax, Conn., she races home, hoping to find him. Instead, she discovers a mother's...

Showdown.(Brief article)(Book review)
April 24, 2006... Showdown TILLY BAGSHAWE. Warner, $24.95 (480p) ISBN 0-446-57689-1 The Horse Whisperer and National Velvet meet Jackie Collins behind the barn in this libidinous fly-on-the-stall peek at horse racing and California real estate chicanery,...

Alentejo Blue.(Brief article)(Book review)
April 24, 2006... Alentejo Blue MONICA ALI. Scribner, $24 (240p) ISBN 0-7432-9303-7 Ali's 2003 debut, Brick Lane, was a brilliant family saga told largely from within a Bangladeshi woman's apartment on London's ramshackle East End. Ali, who was born in...

PW talks to Victoria Lustbader: a debut 20 years in the making: a former editor and the spouse of megaseller Eric Van Lustbader takes the plunge with Hidden (Reviews, March 13).(Q&A)(Interview)
April 24, 2006... Hidden is your first novel, and yet it feels so accomplished. I'm not a kid. I wanted to write since I was a teenager, and I had the idea for the book over 20 years ago, when I retired from the publishing business. I was thinking...

The Art of Detection.(Brief article)(Book review)
April 24, 2006... The Art of Detection LAURIE A. KING. Bantam, $24 (368p) ISBN 0-553-80453-7 Bestseller King (The Game) meshes her two best-known series--contemporary police procedurals set in San Francisco featuring Kate Martinelli of the SFPD and the...

A Garden of Vipers.(Brief article)(Book review)
April 24, 2006... A Garden of Vipers JACK KERLEY. Dutton, $24.95 (320p) ISBN 0-525-94952-6 Carson Ryder and Harry Nautilus, homicide detectives on the Mobile, Ala., police force, hit the ground running in Kerley's appealing third suspense novel (after The...

Old Filth.(Brief article)(Book review)
April 24, 2006... Old Filth JANE GARDAM. Europa, $14.95 paper (292p) ISBN 1-933372-13-3 British novelist Gardam has twice won the Whitbread and was shortlisted for the Man Booker. This, her 15th novel, was shortlisted in Britain for the Orange Prize; it...

Cellophane.(Brief article)(Book review)
April 24, 2006... * Cellophane MARIE ARANA. Dial, $24 (384p) ISBN 0-385-33664-0 Arana, author of American Chica and editor of Washington Post Book World, revisits her native Peru with a tale as bawdy, raucous and dense as the jungle whose presence...

The Last Anniversary.(Brief article)(Book review)
April 24, 2006... * The Last Anniversary DANE MORIARTY. Harper, $14.95 paper (400p) ISBN 0-06-089068-1 Moriarty (Three Wishes) presents a stunner several shades darker than typical chick lit, about a family and the outsider who inherits a house on...

Piece of My Heart.(Brief article)(Book review)
April 24, 2006... Piece of My Heart PETER, ROBINSON. Morrow, $24.95 (352p) ISBN 0-06-054435-X Det. Insp. Alan Banks investigates the apparently motiveless murder of Nicholas Barber, a rock journalist from London visiting a small town near Banks's...

Baby Proof.(Brief article)(Book review)
April 24, 2006... Baby Proof EMILY GIFFIN. St. Martin's, $23.95 (352p) ISBN 0-312-34864-9 The bestselling author of Something Borrowed and Something Blue now tells the story of what happens after the "I do"s. As a successful editor at a Manhattan...

Literacy and Longing in L.A.(Brief article)(Book review)
April 24, 2006... Literacy and Longing in L.A. JENNIFER KAUFMAN AND KAREN MACK. Delacorte, $22 (352p) ISBN 0-385-34017-6 Kaufman, a former L.A. Times staff writer, and Mack, a former attorney and Golden Globe Award-winning film and TV producer, check in...

Blue Light in the Sky and Other Stories.(Brief article)(Book review)
April 24, 2006... Blue Light in the Sky and Other Stories CAN XUE, TRANS. FROM THE MANDARIN BY KAREN GERNANT AND CHEN ZAPING. New Directions, $14.95 paper (192p) ISBN 0-8112-1648-9 Can Xue (Dialogues in Paradise) is a Chinese writer in her 50s whose pen...

Copycat.(Brief article)(Book review)
April 24, 2006... Copycat ERICA SPINDLER. Mira, $21.95 (400p) ISBN 0-7783-2312-9 The Sleeping Angel Killer provides the chilling focus to Spindler's 12th bloodcurdling romantic thriller (after Killer Takes All). Kitt Lundgren and Mary Catherine "M.C."...

The Book of the Dead.(Brief article)(Book review)
April 24, 2006... The Book of the Dead DOUGLAS PRESTON AND LINCOLN CHILD. Warner, $25.95 (464p) ISBN 0-446-57698-0 Bestsellers Preston and Child have come up with another gripping, action-packed page-turner in this concluding volume to a trilogy pitting...

The Book of Loss.(Brief article)(Book review)
April 24, 2006... The Book of Loss JULITH JEDAMUS. St. Martin's, $23.95 (256p) ISBN 0-312-34907-6 Told in the style of the classical Japanese women's diaries from the Heian era (794-1185 C.E.) Jedamus's first book is a melodramatic court romance. The...

A Boy of Good Breeding.(Brief article)(Book review)
April 24, 2006... A Boy of Good Breeding MIRIAM TOEWS. Counterpoint, $14 paper (237p) ISBN 1-58243-340-2 In the tradition of Lake Wobegon, Toews (A Complicated Kindness) gives us Algren, Manitoba, a town noteworthy because, with 1,500 colorful residents...

Hard.(Brief article)(Book review)
April 24, 2006... Hard WAYNE HOFFMAN. Carroll & Graf, $14.95 paper (345p) ISBN 0-7867-1660-6 Sexual politics--both public and private--play out against the cityscape of mid-1990s Manhattan in Hoffman's absorbing year-in-the-life of a group of gay men....

Song of the Crow.(Brief article)(Book review)
April 24, 2006... Song of the Crow LAYNE MAHEU. Unbridled Books, $23.95 (240p) ISBN 1-932961-18-6 In a surprising take on the tale of Noah's ark and the flood, Maheu's beguiling debut unfolds from the perspective of a crow. The crow-narrator (named "I...

The Cantor's Daughter: Stories.(Brief article)(Book review)
April 24, 2006... The Cantor's Daughter: Stories SCOTT NADELSON. Hawthorne Books & Literary Arts (hawthornebooks.com), $15.95 paper (264p) ISBN 0-976631-12-1 The most authentic pieces in Nadelson's collection of eight careful stories about suburban New...

Toly's Ghost.(Brief article)(Book review)
April 24, 2006... Toly's Ghost B.S. LEVY. Think Fast Ink (1010 Lake St., Suite 103, Oak Park, Ill. 60301), $35 (673p) ISBN 0-9642107-6-2 Levy is an avid gearhead who writes auto racing history thinly disguised as fiction. This is the fourth novel in his...

People Like Us.(Brief article)(Book review)
April 24, 2006... People Like Us JAVIER VALDES, TRANS. FROM THE SPANISH BY STEPHEN LYTLE. Atria, $13 paper (256p) ISBN 0-7432-8646-4 Mexican dentist-turned-author makes his English-language debut with six unremarkable forays into horror, erotic thriller...

Duchess of Aquitaine: A Novel of Eleanor.(Brief article)(Book review)
April 24, 2006... Duchess of Aquitaine: A Novel of Eleanor MARGARET BALL. St. Martin's, $34.95 (384p) ISBN 978-0-312-20533-1 Already queenly at 15, Eleanor is heiress to Aquitaine and Poitou in her own right and therefore outright prey to any vassal or...

The Girl.(Brief article)(Book review)
April 24, 2006... The Girl MERIDEL LE SUEUR. West End, $13.95 paper (188p) ISBN 0-9753486-5-5 This novel of trenchant social realism from Le Sueur (1900-1996) packs fresh punch in this revised edition. A young woman off the farm--and known only as...

Great Sky Woman.(Brief article)(Book review)
April 24, 2006... Great Sky Woman STEVEN BARNES. Random/One World, $24.95 (368p) ISBN 0-345-45900-8 Hugo Award-nominee Barnes embellishes his 20th novel with folklore, spiritualism and impressive atmospheric detail. In prehistory, the Ibandi people thrive...

Gucci Gucci Coo.(Brief article)(Book review)
April 24, 2006... Gucci Gucci Coo. SUE MARGOLIS. Bantam/Delta, $12 paper (352p) ISBN 0-385-33899-6 How do starlets walk into the delivery room pregnant and walk out in size 0 jeans without a shred of evidence that the adorable bundles in their arms...

The Husband.(Brief article)(Book review)
April 24, 2006... The Husband DEAN KOONTZ. Bantam, $27 (416p) ISBN 0-553-80479-9 Koontz (Forever Odd) is likely to have himself another bestseller in this pulse-pounding thriller with echoes of Hitchcock and Cornell Woolrich. One morning, Southern...

Vanishing Point.(Brief article)(Book review)
April 24, 2006... Vanishing Point MARCIA MULLER. Mysterious, $24.95 (336p) ISBN 0-89296-805-2 MWA Grand Master Muller's richly layered 24th mystery to feature San Francisco PI Sharon McCone (after 2004's The Dangerous Hour) reminds us how much McCone has...

Iron Ties.(Brief article)(Book review)
April 24, 2006... * Iron Ties ANN PARKER. Poisoned Pen, $24.95 (384p) ISBN 1-59058-262-4 Set in the summer of 1880, Parker's outstanding second Silver Rush mystery (after 2003's Silver Lies) finds her heroine, Inez Stannert, corset-deep in the intrigues...