Publishers Weekly articles from December 2000

Publishers Weekly archives from December 2000

Chapters Realigns as Takeover Battle Continues.(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... Book retailer in war of words with would-be owner, Trilogy APPROXIMATELY ONE WEEK after receiving an unsolicited takeover bid from Trilogy Retail Enterprises (News, Dec. 4), Chapters Inc. announced a major restructuring that it said will...

Y.S. Chi to Join Random House.(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... Y.S. Chi, who has held a number of executive positions in his nine years at Ingram, will join Random House next month as executive v-p and chief operating officer for Random House North America, a newly created position. In addition, Chi has...

AAP Sales Report.(book sales)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
December 18, 2000... With three notable exceptions, October was a poor month for most publishing categories, according to the AAP's monthly sales estimates. The three standout segments were children's hardcover, where sales were ahead 51.1% over October 1999;...

Crown Books Continues Turnaround Efforts.(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... CREDIT AND CAPITAL concerns, as well as ongoing problems with its inventory management systems, hover over Crown Books as the bookstore chain tries to return to profitability after emerging from bankruptcy one year ago (News, Nov. 22, 1999)....

Ulistein, Heyne In Merger.(Wilhelm Heyne Verlag and Econ-Ullstein-List)(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... What is being described as "the biggest German merger in years," the takeover of Germany's largest privately owned book publisher, paperback giant Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, by the Econ-Ullstein-List group, will create the country's number two...

Judge Rules on Motions in ABA Suit Against Chains.(American Booksellers Association )(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... THE LEGAL SKIRMISHING between the American Booksellers Association and Barnes & Noble and the Borders Group is begining to heat up as the April 9 trial date in the association's antitrust lawsuit against the two chains draws closer. In a...

Nelson to Raise Prices Across the Board.(Thomas Nelson Publishers)(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... SAYING HE "HOPES TO redefine the current pricing structure in the CBA market," Michael Hyatt, executive v-p of Thomas Nelson Publishers, announced last week that beginning in May the company will increase the retail prices on its frontlist...

Areheart Promoted Gets Own Crown Imprint.(Shaye Areheart)(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... SHAYE AREHEART, AN executive editor at Harmony Books since 1992, has been appointed v-p/editorial director. In addition, she will become editorial director of Shaye Areheart Books, a newly created Harmony Books imprint devoted to contemporary...

Big Hyperion Deal for 'CEO' Author.(Jeffrey J. Fox)(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... Mary Ellen O'Neill at Hyperion has laid out a very substantial sum (believed to be over six figures) to retain best-selling business author Jeffrey J. Fox (How to Become CEO). It was a three-book deal, negotiated by agent Doris S. Michaels,...

Rightscenter Offers New Deal.(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... Rightscenter.com, the online rights trading service, has announced a new set of publishing tools that can help the operations of various publisher departments, such as rights and permissions, sales, marketing and publicity. The package,...

French Prizewinner to Random.('In Those Arms')(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... A novel that won France's Prix Femina, and caused a stir there when it failed to take the Goncourt, too, has been bought by senior editor Joy de Menu for hard/soft at Random House. In Those Arms by Camille Laurens has sold more than 100,000...

Two-Book Buy for Rural Carpenter.(William Gay)(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... William Gay, a 57-year-old carpenter from Tennessee whose fiction has won several awards, and whose second novel, Provinces of Night, is due out later this month, has a new two-book deal with Amy Scheibe at Doubleday for another novel, Cut...

Laurie Chittenden.(buys maritime history book)(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... Dutton editor Laurie Chittenden preempted, for a substantial six figures, one of those pieces of maritime history that are all the rage, written by a previous Dutton editor-in-chief. He is Charles Corn, and the book is The Drums of Quallah...

Morgan Entrekin.(two-book contract to Lawrence Norfolk)(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... Morgan Entrekin at Grove Atlantic bought two books by British author Lawrence Norfolk (Lemprierre's Dictionary), whom he describes as "one of the most talented and interesting writers in the English language today." The first is In the Shape...

Wendy Wolf.(buys Nathaniel Philbrick proposal)(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... Viking Penguin's Wendy Wolf responded within 24 hours to a new proposal by National Book Award winner Nathaniel Philbrick (In the Heart of the Sea). She bought North American rights in a book about an American naval expedition in 1838-1842...

Kyung Cho.(agent sells two-book package to Pantheon)(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... New agent Kyung Cho at the Henry Dunow agency made her first sale there on behalf of a former classmate at the Iowa Writer's Workshop, young Kevin Brockmeier, 26. She sold a story collection and a novel in a two-book world rights package to...

Harcourt Turns In Solid Farewell Performance.(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... HARCOURT GENERAL, which expects its acquisition by Reed Elsevier to be completed in the first quarter of 2001, reported that earnings from continuing operations for the year ended October 31, 2000, jumped 51.9% to $182.8 million on a sales...

Mighty Words Adopts B2B Focus.(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... THE ONLINE PUBLISHING company MightyWords.com has refocused its business model to emphasize sales through affiliated Web sites, while still offering content directly to consumers. Under this new strategy, called "The Mighty Network,"...

Gemstar Has 'Simple' Biz Plan.(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... WHILE MOST OF the companies in the E-publishing world are looking for ways to make money, Gemstar's e-book business model is "simple," Peter Boylan, co-president and chief operating officer of the company, told analysts at this month's UBS...

People.(News Briefs)(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... PENGUIN BOOKS Jane von Mehren was named editor-in-chief. She will continue as associate publisher. Among the titles she has worked on are the National Book Award finalist Places Left Unfinished at the Time of Creation by John Phillip Santos....

MediaBay Sees Improvement.(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... MEDIABAY BEGAN TO see some signs that its efforts to better focus its operations on fewer SKUs (News, Sept. 4) was working in the third quarter ended September 30, 2000. In the quarter, MediaBay reported cash flow of $46,000 compared to...

Growing U.S. Presence At London Fair.(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... BOTH IN TERMS of registered exhibitors and the number of agents booked into its Rights Center, the London Book Fair that runs from March 25 to 27, 2001, is already ahead of last year's figures. According to Helen Shiers, the fair's...

Indie Press Offers 'Survivor' Expose.(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... AFTER A $500,000 deal with St. Martin's Press to coauthor a book with Richard Hatch of Survivor fame went sour (Hot Deals, Oct. 2), investigative reporter Peter Lance persevered and last week published a "tell-all" book about the TV series...

New Head for Spring Arbor.(Stephen W. Arthur)(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... Stephen W. Arthur, executive v-p and general manager of Ingram's Publishers Resources Inc. division, has been named president of Spring Arbor, Ingram's Christian distribution unit. Arthur will move to Spring Arbor January 1 and will report to...

Lightning, Xlibris Team Up.(alliance)(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... LOOKING TO IMPROVE its sales through retail outlets, self-publishing print-on-demand services provider Xlibris announced an alliance with Lightning Source, Ingram's POD service, to provide better access to book-selling accounts. Roland...

Fiction's Final Shows.(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... Two veteran bestselling authors make PW's final weekly list for 2000 (we skip the December 25 issue, so the rest of the holiday sales period will be reflected in the January 1, 2001, issue). Ken Follett hits the list in the #6 spot with Code...

A World Almanac First.(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... According to publisher Ken Park, The World Almanac 2001 will be the first of these annuals published since 1868 that went to press without recording the president-elect. Each year, the Almanac goes to press after the November national...

Holiday Sales Countdown.(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... How's holiday business in the crucial weeks leading up to Christmas? Judging by unit sales of the top bestsellers only, it's clear that so far there are much fewer BIG unit bestsellers than in 1999 and 1998. Checking the hardcover numbers at...

New 'PW' Midwest Correspondent.(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... BRAD ZELLAR has been named PW's Midwest correspondent, effective immediately. Zellar is a Minneapolis writer with 20 years of retail experience in the book business. In addition, Zellar is a contributing writer for the alternative weekly...

Sourcebooks Is Telling Stories.
December 18, 2000... After 13 years of nonfiction, Sourcebooks moves into fiction with a Brit and a plan There are some universal landmarks in life: graduations, weddings, birthdays. It wasn't planned, yet somehow it seems fitting that a list of what not to...

Move Over, Martha -- Here Comes Martha.(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... With her short, blonde hair and pinstriped apron, she may not look much like the other Martha, but Martha Storey, cofounder with her husband, John Storey, of 17-year-old Storey Communications in North Adams, Mass., and author of 500 Treasured...

Redeemable Holiday Sales.(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... 'Tis the season for booksellers to cash in on the popularity of Book Sense gift certificates Celebrating their second holiday seas on this year, Book Sense gift certificates are thriving thanks to a recent redesign and a growing...

Whose Dark Materials?(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... The culmination of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy raises theological questions Back in April l996, readers of all ages eagerly embraced the U.S. publication of The Golden Compass (Knopf), the first novel in His Dark...

Ian Falconer.(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... The story of Olivia (Atheneum/Schwartz, Oct.) begins with a real-life Olivia: Ian Falconer's three-year-old niece. At least, that's how old she was when Falconer started doodling pictures of a pig to give her as a Christmas present. "I...

Patricia McCormick.(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... Patricia McCormick's first novel, Cut (Front Street, Oct.), about adolescent girls in a psychiatric hospital, is so convincing and so compassionate that many readers will assume that McCormick is either a therapist or was, like her...

Christopher Bing.(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... For as long as I can remember, there were three things I wanted to do," says Christopher Bing. "I wanted to draw, I wanted a crack at Everest and K2, and I wanted to fly jets." One out of three isn't bad. Bing, whose illustrated...

Rita Murphy.(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... One could say that prior to the publication of her first YA novel, Night Flying (Delacorte, Nov.), Rita Murphy was a closeted writer. "I actually wrote the first draft of Night Flying in a closet," Murphy recalls. "I used to write late at...

Eloise McGraw 1915-2000.(Brief Article)(Obituary)
December 18, 2000... Eloise Jarvis McGraw, author of more than 20 books for young readers, died on November 30. She was 84. McGraw's writing career spanned more than 50 years, and she was three times awarded Newbery Honors, for her last book, The Moorchild...

Holiday Windows.(Laura McGee Kvasnosky paints windows with scenes from her book 'Zelda and Ivy One Christmas' on bookstore windownsw)(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... Laura McGee Kvasnosky, author/illustrator of the Zelda and Ivy books, visited Red Balloon Bookshop in St. Paul, Minn., last month, where she painted the store's windows with scenes from her latest book, Zelda and Ivy One Christmas. Kvasnosky...

Vista Looks at the 21st Century.
December 18, 2000... Conference unveils Author2Reader, defines challenges of the digital era The chief executive of Vista Computer Services, which develops a wide range of publishing systems software, predicted that within five years, 50% of all publishing...

U.K. E-Publishing Revs Up Slowly.(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... Next year looks to be a decisive one for e-publishing in the U.K. So far, U.K. publishers have lagged behind their U.S. counterparts, but this looks set to change as some of the major players prepare cautiously to take the plunge. Random...

WHISPERS IN THE DARK and THE GREATEST.(Review)
December 18, 2000... WALTER MOSLEY. iPublish (see www.ipublish.com for a list of online retailers), each $2 (25p) Mosley's (the Easy Rawlins mysteries; Blue Light) first e-book offerings are science fiction stories. Both concern the power welling up inside...

LANDSLIDE.(Review)
December 18, 2000... VIVIAN LEIBER. Mightywords (www.mightywords.com), $5.95 (88p) In the third of the Lipstick Chronicles, Leiber's series of e-romance charmers, Carole Titus, hotshot saleswoman for Allheart.com, is swept off her feet by Mitch Evans, a...

TURTLE ISLAND DREAMING: A Novel of Sanctuary.(Review)
December 18, 2000... THOMPSON SAYER CROCKETT. IPublish (see www.ipublish.com for a list of online retailers) $9.95 (255p) In a contemporary myth that melds elements of Alice in Wonderland, Homer's Odyssey and The Wizard of Oz, first-lime author Crockett...

SLIPPING INTO DARKNESS: My Survival in America's Most Violent Ghetto... a true story.(Review)
December 18, 2000... M. RUTLEDGE McCALL. Ebookson the Net (www.ebooksonthe.net) $22.50 (288p) How could a white man expect to be welcomed into the explosive world of South Central L.A.? It took investigative journalist McCall, himself a former juvenile...

Distributors See Growth Potential.(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... Cite new product, backlist titles, new promotions and low returns for graphic novels There's one big problem with comics in bookstores, said Robert Boyd of LPC, which distributes graphic novels from Marvel, Tokyo Pop, Oni Press, its own...

D.C.'s Comics Christmas List.(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... Pointing to hard- and softcover graphic novel collections released in time for holiday shopping, Rich Johnson, director of trade book sales at DC Comics and its Vertigo Wildstorm and America's Best Comics imprints, is looking for the...

Transmetropolitan's Warren Ellis.(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... In 1997, after making his name with whip-smart storylines for the superhero titles X-Men and Stormwatch, Warren Ellis joined forces with artist Darick Robertson and created the award-winning Transmetropolitan series. As deliciously perverse...

D.I.Y. Works for Sim's 'Cerebus'.(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... There's do-it-yourself, and then there's longtime indie self-publisher Dave Sim -- the Kitchener, Ontario, cartoonist who's been writing, drawing (along with single-named collaborator and background artist Gerhard) and publishing a new issue...

Nerdy Books Defines a Brand-New Niche -- Convenience.(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... Not just for Nerds, Dummies or Idiots, these handy references give readers what they need Just when you think that computer publishing has been permanently broken into niches of novice, intermediate, advanced and programmers, along comes...

Mind Your P's and E's.
December 18, 2000... Publishers and retailers are taking a variety of approaches to the thorny issue of print vs. electronic reference titles IT'S HARD TO IMAGINE A GENERAL BOOKSTORE without a reference section. Traditionally, dictionaries, almanacs, atlases...

Fred Harris The Yellow Dog Democrats' Club.
December 18, 2000... In his 1977 memoir, Potomac Fever, former Oklahoma senator Fred Harris wrote that "people should, like snakes, shed their skin every now and then." Harris proceeded to do just that. After retiring from the Senate in 1974 and being defeated in...

HUNTING SEASON.(Review)(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... P.T. DEUTERMANN. St. Martin's, $24.95 (402p) ISBN 0-312-26979-X * Partaction novel, part spy thriller, this explosive tour de force follows the adventures of aging superspy Edwin Kreiss, retired under a cloud, who sets Agency blood...

LOOSE ENDS.(Review)(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... NEAL BOWERS. Random, $22.95 (224p) ISBN 0-375-50499-0 Bowers's previous book, Words for the Taking: The Hunt for a Plagiarist, chronicled his attempts to track down a man named David Jones who plagiarized a number of Bowers's poems and...

OBSERVATORY MANSIONS.(Review)(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... EDWARD CAREY. Crown, $23 (368p) ISBN 0-609-60680-8 * Playwright and freelance illustrator Carey's impressive first novel is so steeped in grotesque oddity, warped values and dysfunction that it makes David Lynch's work seem sunny and...

QUILL.(Review)(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... NEAL DRINNAN. St. Martin's, $22.95 (240p) ISBN 0-312-26989-7 As prickly and treacherous as its title, Australian author Drinnan's latest (after Pussy's Bow) piles on the melodrama in a sassy tale of spite, deceit and jealous love Down...

LOVE, ETC.(Review)(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... JULIAN BARNES. Knopf, $23 (240p) ISBN 0-375-41161-5 The ever-brilliant Barnes concocts a mordant sexual comedy for his latest novel, taking over the later lives of three characters he introduced in the earlier Talking It Over. Straight,...

CONFESSIONS OF A SHOPAHOLIC.(Review)(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... SOPHIE KINSELLA. Delta, $10.95 paper (368p) ISBN 0-385-33548-2 Add this aptly titled piffle to the ranks of pink-covered girl-centric fiction that has come sailing out of England over the last two years. At age 25, Rebecca Bloomwood has...

A DREAM OF WOLVES.(Review)(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... MICHAEL C. WHITE. HarperCollins/Cliff Street, $24 (406p) ISBN 0-06-019432-4 * White (A Brother's Blood; The Blind A Side of the Heart) skillfully swirls gut-wrenching self-discovery and mystery in his newest fictional offering. Part-time...

THE COURAGE TREE.(Review)(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... DIANE CHAMBERLAIN. Mira, $22.95 (384p) ISBN 1-55166-799-1 A race against time to find a sick child lost in the West Virginia wilderness keeps pages turning in this suspenseful family drama by former psychotherapist Chamberlain (Breaking...

SPEAKING WITH THE ANGEL.(Review)(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... EDITED BY NICK HORNBY. Riverhead, $12 paper (272p) ISBN 0-57322-858-3 * A virtual who's who of the latest literary guard, this anthology bristles with the crackly talent and confidence of both the newly and the already fabulous. Included...

INTRIGUED.(Review)(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... BERTRICE SMALL. Kensington/Brava, $14 paper (416p) ISBN 1-57566-640-5 The latest installment in Small's popular historical-romance series, Skye's Legacy, has been chosen as the launch book for Kensington's new erotic romance imprint. It...

ISLAND: The Complete Stories.(Review)(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... ALISTAIR MACLEOD. Norton, $25.95 (434p) ISBN 0-393-05035-1 * Collected in one edition for the first time, the 16 short stories of Canadian writer MacLeod (No Great Misehief) span 30 years of his career and brilliantly evoke the lives of...

BUFFALO GORDON.(Review)(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... J.P. SINCLAIR LEWIS. Forge, $25.95 (528p) ISBN 0-3 12-87376-X Western writers have long acknowledged the need for a first-class historical novel about the heroic exploits of the all-black Ninth Cavalry Regiment. Unfortunately, Lewis's...

ECLIPSE.(Review)(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... JOHN BANVILLE. Knopf, $23 (224p) ISBN 0-375-41129-1 * Irish author Banville (The Book of Evidence; The Untouchable) is one of the most seductive writers currently at work. His books are so intensely imagined and freshly observed, with a...

MARLOWE IN THE SOUTH SEAS.(Review)(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... PHILIP WAGNER. Iconoclast/Cove View (1675 Amazon Rd., Mohegan Lake, N.Y. 10547-1804), $11.95 paper (120p) ISBN 0-931896-20-7 Wagner's first novel has the feel of one of those road movies from the '70s--a lot of motion, but not much...

IN THE COUNTRY OF THE YOUNG.(Review)(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... DANIEL STERN. Southern Methodist Univ., $19.95 (224p) ISBN 0-87074-457-7 * From a business lunch at a New York restaurant to a tourist's experience at a French market, from the beginning of an affair in an Italian villa to the end of a...

STILL OF THE NIGHT.(Review)(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... MEAGAN MCKINNEY. Kensington, $23 (320p) ISBN 1-57566-615-4 Stella St. Vallier, the heroine of this lurid novel of romantic suspense, is part traditional Southern belle, part liberated feminist and all woman. She and her ancient great-aunt...

XCiTes.(Review)
December 18, 2000... EDITED BY GEORGIA DE CHAMBERET. Flamingo (Trafalgar Square, dist.), $14.95 paper (263p) ISBN 0-00-655191-2 The brief offerings in this collection of new French writing reveal some deep fissures in the ruling bourgeoisie: hostility...

TEMPLE.(Review)(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... MATTHEW J. REILLY. St. Martirz's/Dunne, $24.95 (416p) ISBN 0-312-26659-6 As aggressive as an avalanche--and often with the same grace--Reilly's second pulp-fiction adventure hurtles into the Peruvian jungle, where competing factions...

JUST FRIENDS.(Review)(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... ROBYN SISMAN. Ballantine, $23.95 (400p) ISBN 0-345-44228-8 As she did in her previous novel, Perfect Strangers, published in Britain but not here, Sisman in her new novel focuses on singles life and the quest of 30-somethings for Mr. or...

IN FIDELITY.(Review)(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... M.J. ROSE. Pocket, $13.95 paper (368p) ISBN 0-7434-0645-1 Rose made headlines and the talk shows after her Internet self-published first novel, Lip Service, became a bestseller on Amazoncom and elsewhere, and the first self-published...

GIRLFRIEND 44.(Review)(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... MARK BARROWCLIFFE. St. Martin's, $24.95 (384p) 0-312-26166-7 "You are not perfect," explains the lad-dish, caddish Harry Chesshyre to his 43rd girlfriend, Emily, in the break-up letter that opens this Machiavellian relationship comedy....

THE FUNERAL PARTY.(Review)(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... LUDMILA ULITSKAYA, TRANS. FROM THE RUSSIAN BY CATHY PORTER. Schocken, $18.95 (160p) ISBN 0-8052-4185-X The oddly matched protagonists in this award-winning Russian author's lively American debut are connected through their love for the...

In the Wild.(Review)(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... In Flight of the Storks, French novelist Jean-Christophe Granges second novel to be translated into English, a young, aimless academic tracks a flock of migrating storks across Europe and Africa in hopes of discovering the truth behind the...

DEATH OF A DUSTMAN: A Hamish Macbeth Mystery.(Review)(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... M.C. BEATON. Mysterious, $22.95 ISBN 0-89296-631-9 That the prolific Beaton seems to be writing for television in her 16th Hamish Macbeth mystery (after Death of an Addict) may be no surprise, given that the same U.K. company that brought...

OVER THE SHOULDER.(Review)(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... LEONARD CHANG. HaperCollins/Ecco, $25 (320p) ISBN 0-06-019839-7 Despite the bang with which it starts, this is no action thriller rocketing along; instead it's a tortuous journey of discovery by its Korean-American protagonist and...

PARADISE INTERRUPTED.(Review)(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... PENNY MICKELBURY. Simon Schuster, $23 (286p) ISBN 0-684-85991-2 The protagonist in this fourth book in Mickelbury's series of atmospheric mysteries (The Step Between, etc.) is Carole Ann Gibson, an African-American criminal defense...

SHERLOCK HOLMES: The Missing Years: The Adventures of the Great Detective in India and Tibet.(Review)(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... JAMYANG NORBU. Bloomsbury USA (St. Martin's, dist.), $23.95 ISBN 1-58234-132-X "I travelled for two years in Tibet, therefore, and amused myself by visiting Lhasa and spending some days with the head Lama." So says Holmes to Watson in...

DOG ISLAND.(Review)(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... MIKE STEWART. Putnam $23.95 (336p) ISBN 0-399-14645-8 After his well-received first mystery, Sins of the Brother (1999), Stewart scores big again with this second Tom McInnes thriller. McInnes, Mobile, Ala., lawyer and righter of wrongs,...

ON NIGHT'S SHORE.(Review)(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... RANDALL SILVIS. St. Martin's Minotaur/Dunne, $24.95 (352p) ISBN 0-312-26201-9 In 1840, when the poorhouse is the largest building on Manhattan island, a nice]y drawn Edgar Allan Poe investigates the murder of shopgirl Mary Rogers in this...

January Publications.(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... In a departure from her Eclaire series, Sophie Dunbar unleashes Frank and Ava Bernstein on the L.A. "celebrity cartel" in Fashion Victims. With wit, incision and gusto, the husband-and-wife team uncovers clues to a series of murders that...

ORDINARY HORROR.(Review)(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... DAVID SEARGY. Viking, $24.95 (224p) ISBN 0-670-89476-1 Those in search of subtle literary horror need look no farther than this fine debut novel. Frank Delabano is a quiet, elderly man living alone in the great flatness of an aging...

THE LAST HOT TIME.(Review)(Brief Article)
December 18, 2000... JOHN M. FORD. Tor/Doherty, $22.95 (224p) ISBN 0-312-85545-1 * Brilliant is as brilliant does, and Ford's first excursion into enigmatic, offbeat speculative fiction in seven years bids fair to win him yet another World Fantasy Award, as...