Publishers Weekly articles from July 2005

Publishers Weekly archives from July 2005

The discount conundrum: practice moves units, but costs sales.(Foreword)
July 25, 2005... By heavily discounting Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, U.S. retailers and e-tailers forfeited some $70 million in sales on July 16, when Scholastic reported that 6.9 million copies of the record-shattering book were sold. Bookstores,...

Karp gets Warner imprint.(Brief Article)
July 25, 2005... Former Random House editor-in-chief Jonathan Karp has landed at Time Warner Books as publisher and editor-in-chief of Warner Twelve, an imprint that will debut in spring 2007. Karp will report to Warner Books publisher Jamie Raab, who said...

BEA to L.A. in 2008.(Brief Article)
July 25, 2005... BookExpo America will return to the Los Angeles convention center in 2008, the site of the 2003 meeting. Before the trip to California, BEA will make stops in Washington, D.C., next year and back to New York in 2007.

MBI buys Voyageur.(Brief Article)
July 25, 2005... MBI Publishing has acquired Voyageur Press in a deal that will add travel and nature titles to MBI's core transportation and hobby lines. Voyageur will become an imprint of MBI, and Voyageur's six distribution clients will be added to MBI's...

Pricing Harry by the numbers.(Foreword)(Brief Article)
July 25, 2005... $29.99: List price of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince hardcover $20.97: Sale price of Half-Blood Prince on Scholastic Web site $16.99: Discounted price of Half-Blood Prince on Amazon $14.99: Price of used copy of Half-Blood...

Grounds for publishing.(Foreword)(The risks that publishing companies take when they decide to publish a ficitonal work from a recognized public figure)
July 25, 2005... An interesting first novel appeared in PW's office this week by an author named Richard A. Clarke. If that name sounds familiar, it is, but from another, less literary context: Clarke was the special adviser to the president on...

Wiley's '05 acquisitions.(Brief Article)
July 25, 2005... John Wiley paid $11 million for Sybex Inc., the company said in its yearend filing. The computer book publisher had 2004 revenue of more than $10 million. The deal was completed May 31. Among other Wiley purchases in fiscal 2005, the company...

Rush convicted.(Brief Article)
July 25, 2005... Paul Rush, founder and former president of now-defunct audiobook retailer Earful of Books Inc., was convicted earlier this month on 17 counts of fraud and money laundering. The conviction stemmed from attempts by Rush to keep Earful of Books...

Potter a boon for ... HarperCollins?(Chamber of Revenue)
July 25, 2005... Forget Jo Rowling, there's a far more unlikely player who can make out deposit slips now that Harry Potter has raked in the sales: HarperCollins. The book's success has had many beneficiaries, from UPS to Running Press, whose...

Mixed Courier third quarter.(Brief Article)
July 25, 2005... Third-quarter sales in Courier Corp.'s publishing group, which consists of Dover Publications and Research & Education Association, fell 4%, to $9.9 million, partially offsetting a 8% increase, to $50.6 million, in the company's manufacturing...

Trudy in the black.(Brief Article)
July 25, 2005... After several years of losses, children's book publisher Trudy Corp. generated earnings of $266,744 in the fiscal year ended March 31. The company had a net loss of $1.7 million in fiscal 2004. Revenue in fiscal '05 jumped 67%, to $6.3...

Globalization has its critics, but Curtis Brown's Holly Frederick isn't one of them.(Hollywood reader: this week: three deals and a stripper)(Brief Article)
July 25, 2005... * Globalization has its critics, but Curtis Brown's Holly Frederick isn't one of them. Frederick is closing the deal on Wei Hui's Shanghai Baby (Atria, 2001), a sort of Chinese Bright Lights, Big City. Though Hui lives in the U.S., the novel...

The O.C. cools off with John Green's YA novel, Looking for Alaska (Dutton, Mar.).(Hollywood reader: this week: three deals and a stripper)(Paramount has started work on two young adult movie adaptations)(Brief Article)
July 25, 2005... * The O.C. cools off with John Green's YA novel, Looking for Alaska (Dutton, Mar.). The O.C. creator Josh Schwartz will adapt and direct for Paramount. The Alaska in the title refers not to the 49th state but to smoldering teen vixen Alaska...

Not one for the kids.(Hollywood reader: this week: three deals and a stripper)(Brief Article)
July 25, 2005... * Not one for the kids is Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper (Gotham, Dec.) by Diablo Cody, a blunt and funny memoir about getting naked for strangers in the glamour-deficient city of Minneapolis. Cody moved to Minnesota...

Norton to donate $600,000.(W.W. Norton)(Brief Article)
July 25, 2005... W.W. Norton will donate a total of $600,000 from the proceeds of its 9/11 Commission Report to three organizations that the publisher said can help carry out the report's recommendations. The The 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT Center for...

BAM buyback.(Books-A-Million)(Brief Article)
July 25, 2005... Books-A-Million reported last week that it will acquire 57,223 of its shares at $10 per share. The buyback is the result of a Dutch auction announced earlier this month for which Books-A-Million said it was prepared to acquire up to four...

Georgie Lewis, marketing specialist, Powells.com.(Galley Talk)(Brief Article)(Column)
July 25, 2005... I'm really enjoying The Ape in the Corner Office, coming from Crown in September. The subtitle, Understanding the Office Beast in All of Us, made me think it would be an intriguing read, and it was better than I expected. It's about animal...

Book promo hitched to group wedding.(Marketing)
July 25, 2005... Plenty of authors support their novels with signings and appearances, but how many stage a group wedding to dramatize the themes of their work? Maryann Reid is doing just that to raise the visibility of her third novel, Marry Your Baby Daddy,...

Van Straaten promoted.(Tracy van Straaten)(Brief Article)
July 25, 2005... Tracy van Straaten has been promoted to v-p, executive director of publicity, at Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing group. She had been director of publicity.

Rights Unlimited hire.(Brief Article)
July 25, 2005... Alicia Brooks, who was most recently an editor at Picador and St. Martin's Press, has joined the agency as a literary agent. Brooks's appointment will heighten the agency's focus on domestic projects.

Faran to chair Beacon.(Ellen Faran)(Brief Article)
July 25, 2005... Ellen Faran, director of MIT Press, has been named chair of Beacon Press's board of advisers, effective July 25. She succeeds John Ryden, who will remain on the board.

Marvel's Quesada's new deals.(People)(Brief Article)
July 25, 2005... Marvel Enterprises has extended the contract of Joe Quesada, editor-in-chief of its Marvel Comics division. Quesada has also been named chief creative officer for publishing.

Sessalee as agent (it's no fairy tale).(Sessalee Hensley)(Brief Article)
July 25, 2005... It is a truth universally acknowledged that publishers usually try to make an entree to Sessalee Hensley, not the other way around. But when the B&N buyer talks, publishers listen. And so when Hensley tipped off a rep for S&S's Touchstone...

Buffing Buffy.(deals)(Brief Article)
July 25, 2005... In recent weeks there's been an unlikely visitor to some of the high-powered New York agencies. Sarah Michelle Gellar, of Buffy and The Grudge fame, is making the rounds. Does she have a book to sell? Amazingly, no. (Could she be the only...

Genre-bending nonfiction author Hannah Holmes--she combined memoir, humor and science in her previous books--has sold A Mid-Sized and Immodest Mammal to Stephanie Higgs at Random, via Michelle Tessler.(The Briefing)(Brief Article)
July 25, 2005... Genre-bending nonfiction author Hannah Holmes--she combined memoir, humor and science in her previous books--has sold A Mid-Sized and Immodest Mammal to Stephanie Higgs at Random, via Michelle Tessler. "Hannah puts the human animal (and...

Some of the first dispatches ever sent from Nagasaki, written by the late George Weller and profiled in an earlier column (June 27), have been sold to Luke Dempsey at Crown by Henry Dunow.(The Briefing)(Brief Article)
July 25, 2005... Some of the first dispatches ever sent from Nagasaki, written by the late George Weller and profiled in an earlier column (June 27), have been sold to Luke Dempsey at Crown by Henry Dunow. The Chicago journalist got into the city after the...

Time editor Christopher John Farley sold his bio of Bob Marley to Amistad's Dawn Davis.(The Briefing)(Brief Article)
July 25, 2005... Time editor Christopher John Farley sold his bio of Bob Marley to Amistad's Dawn Davis. Caron Knauer agented; pub date is May '06, 25th anniversary of the singer's death....

Viking's Pamela Dorman has bought from Meg Ruley Moon Pies and Movie Stars by Amy Wallen.(The Briefing)(Brief Article)
July 25, 2005... Viking's Pamela Dorman has bought from Meg Ruley Moon Pies and Movie Stars by Amy Wallen, Southern humor that's described as containing trace elements of The Sweet Potato Queens and Lorna Landvik....

Ann Godoff goes culinary; she's bought a memoir-slash-cookbook from Kim Witherspoon.(The Briefing)(Brief Article)
July 25, 2005... Ann Godoff goes culinary; she's bought a memoir-slash-cookbook from Kim Witherspoon called Blood, Bones and Butter: A French Culinary Education off the New Jersey Turnpike by restaurateur Gabrielle Hamilton, in what may be the subtitle of the...

Cantor to Berkley.(Jackie Cantor)(Brief Article)
July 25, 2005... Jackie Cantor, most recently v-p and executive editor at the Bantam Dell Publishing Group, will join Berkley August i as executive editor, acquiring fiction and nonfiction.

New assoc. pub at Cool Springs.(Brief Article)
July 25, 2005... Cindy Games has been named to head the Thomas Nelson division as associate publisher. Games has been a Cool Spring consultant since 2000.

Pentecost new Dickinson Prez.(Jim Pentecost)(Brief Article)
July 25, 2005... Jim Pentecost has joined Dickinson Press as president and CEO. Before moving to the book manufacturer, Pentecost had headed Vertis, a national printer of advertising products.

Two join Unbridled Books.(People)(Brief Article)
July 25, 2005... Alaine Borgias has joined Unbridled Books as publicity and marketing assistant. She has been with Village Books in Bellingham, Wash., where she will be based. Cary Johnson has been named sales director, working out of Nashville, Tenn. In...

Purpose-driven interference? What happens when a powerhouse author demands changes in a book another writer is doing for the same publisher?(Pulling Rank)
July 25, 2005... In this case, Greg Stielstra says his book has effectively been taken hostage by megaselling pastor-author Rick Warren. Stielstra, senior marketing director at HarperCollins's Zondervan division, said HarperBusiness was to have released...

Calendar: July 31-Aug. 6.(Foreword)(Calendar)
July 25, 2005... 7/31 J.K. Rowling turns 40 the way everyone wants to turn 40: with a net worth estimated at $1 billion. (And that was before the release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.) 8/1 Last entry date in Anne Frank's 1944 diary....

Scholastic to build on '05 gains.(Results)(Brief Article)
July 25, 2005... Scholastic's focus in fiscal 2006 will remain on expanding margins while growing revenue, company chairman Dick Robinson told analysts in a conference call discussing the publisher's results for the year ended May 31. The company's operating...

Talking manga with Neil Gaiman.(Foreword)(Brief Article)(Interview)
July 25, 2005... One of the biggest stories to come out of this year's Comic-Con convention is Tokyopop's plan to publish a manga version of Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean's forthcoming fantasy film Mirrormask. PW talked with Gaiman about the project. Why...

Hardcover bestsellers/fiction.
July 25, 2005... Check out www. patterson-pageturner.org for details about Patterson's plans to award $75,000 each year to individuals, libraries, bookstores and/or schools "who find original and effective ways to promote the excitement of books and reading."...

Hardcover bestsellers/nonfiction.
July 25, 2005... "Columbus accidentally ran into America but thought he had discovered part of India. I actually found India and thought many of the people I met there were Americans. Some had actually taken American names, and others were doing great...

Paperback bestsellers/mass market.
July 25, 2005... Pocket is doing lots of advertising on talk radio to sell its 215,000 copies in print. PW's review noted, "Whether the novel is taken as a grownup boy's book or a modern thriller, readers will be caught in the whirlwind of action and find...

Paperback bestsellers/trade.
July 25, 2005... The Kite Runner boasts two million copies in sales and 40 consecutive weeks in the #1 slot. First printing back in April 2004 was 65,000 copies. Riverhead reports that on July 16, Harry Potter's laydown date, the book had a 25% sales increase...

Children's series and tie-ins bestsellers.
July 25, 2005... Eoin Colfer spent his entire childhood being tortured by his four brothers. For years he plotted about how he was going to get back at them, and thanks to Artemis Fowl, he hit on the perfect solution. The goblins in his books are named...

La creme de la creme: what makes a cookbook a classic?(Cover Story)
July 25, 2005... More than 59,000 titles pop up on an Amazon "cooking" search; Nach Waxman's Kitchen Arts & Letters store in New York boasts more than 13,000 food-related titles; Bonnie Slotnick Books, a purveyor of used cookbooks in Greenwich Village, stocks...

Contenders for bestsellerdom? Publishers serve up fresh entrees.(Kitchen Contenders)
July 25, 2005... This season, there's no lack of cookbooks vying for a spot on the cook's kitchen (or library) shelf. Some are of the traditional kind, gamely slugging it out with standard-bearers; others are seeking novelty status. Or perhaps not so novel,...

The minimalist thinks big. Bittman's Best.(Mark Bittman)
July 25, 2005... In a cookbook market dominated by professional chefs, especially ones with Food Network shows, Mark Bittman is an anomaly--a journalist and a home cook with no formal culinary training. His forthcoming title, The Best Recipes in the World, is...

Maverick Fabulist: Kelly Link, rising star, goes her own way.(Biography)
July 25, 2005... In 2004, just as Kelly Link was finishing up Magic for Beginners, her second collection of short fiction, three New York publishing houses lobbied hard for the book. But Link turned them all down. "As much as I liked the editors who offered,...

Not Me.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 25, 2005... Not Me MICHAEL LAVIGNE. Random, $24.95 (320p) ISBN 1-4000-6311-6 Buried beneath ill-advised metaphors (a revelatory journal "was glued to my fingers, like when you touch something really cold, like an ice cube or a metal pole...") and a...

Comrades in Miami.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 25, 2005... Comrades in Miami JOSE LATOUR. Grove, $23 (352p) ISBN 0-8021-1810-0 What was it like to be a top Cuban intelligence officer during the 1990s? Latour, a Cuban living in Toronto, creates a surprisingly active agenda for Col. Victoria...

Mission to America.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 25, 2005... * Mission to America WALTER KIRN. Doubleday, $23.95 (320p) ISBN 0-385-50764-X Various co-existing Americas get a bitter, resonant jibing from Kirn (Thumbsucker) in his latest fiction of decadent culture on the skids. Founded in the 19th...

The Color of Law.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 25, 2005... The Color of Law MARK GIMENEZ. Doubleday, $24.95 (480p) ISBN 0-385-51673-8 A Scott Fenney, the hotshot young Dallas attorney of Gimenez's debut, has a beautiful house, an idle, social-climbing wife and a spoiled daughter; his most...

Flashback.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 25, 2005... * Flashback GARY BRAVER. Forge, $25.95 (400p) ISBN 0-765-30251-9 "So many dreams--it's hard to pick out the right one," reads the epigraph from E.B. White for Braver's exceptional medical thriller, a timely story about how the human brain...

Shalimar the Clown.(Book Review)
July 25, 2005... * Shalimar the Clown SALMAN RUSHDIE. Random, $25.95 (416p) ISBN 0-679-46335-6 The focus of this novel is extremism. It tells the tale of two Kashmiri villages whose inhabitants gradually get caught up in communal violence. As we know...

What Do You Do All Day?(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 25, 2005... What Do You Do All Day? AMY SCHEIBE. St. Martin's, $21.95 (320p) ISBN 0-312-34303-5 Scheibe's hilarious debut is rife with wry observations from one overwhelmed mother of two, Jennifer Bradley. Jennifer's life goes awry when her husband,...

Wickett's Remedy.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 25, 2005... Wickett's Remedy MYLA GOLDBERG. Doubleday, $24.95 (336p) ISBN 0-385-51324-0 The author of the bestselling Bee Season returns with an accomplished but peculiarly tensionless historical novel that follows the shifting fortunes of a young...

Immoral.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 25, 2005... Immoral BRIAN FREEMAN. St. Martin's/Minotaur, $22.95 (352p) ISBN 0-312-34042-7 A Harlan Coban--esque murder/psychological suspense structure and some uninspired writing ("He saw urgency written in her face") add up to a mildly...

Conversations with the Fat Girl.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 25, 2005... Conversations with the Fat Girl LIZA PALMER. Warner/5 Spot, $12.95 paper (314p) ISBN 0-446-69395-2 Palmer debuts with the latest sprightly entry in the ever-expanding category of light romantic comedies starring plus-sized heroines....

The Myth of You and Me.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 25, 2005... The Myth of You and Me LEAH STEWART. Shaye Areheart, $22 (288p) ISBN 1-4000-9806-8 Stewart peers into the complicated heart of friendship in a moving second novel (after 2000's Body of a Girl). Ever since a cataclysmic falling out with...

Fan-Tan.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 25, 2005... * Fan-Tan MARLON BRANDO AND DONALD CAMMELL, EDITED AND WITH AN AFTERWORD BY DAVID THOMSON. Knopf, $23.95 (256p) ISBN 1-4000-4471-5 In 1979, Brando proposed to film director Cammell (Performance) that they collaborate on a China Seas...

Lies.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 25, 2005... Lies WILLIAM HOFFMAN. River City (www.rivercitypublishing.com), $23.95 (252p) ISBN 1-57966-063-0 In Hoffman's lyrical 14th novel, "threatening shapes of memory... swirl in the darkness" of one man's worried mind. Wayland Garnett is a...

The Third Brother.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 25, 2005... The Third Brother NICK MCDONELL. Grove, $24 (288p) ISBN 0-8021-1802-X McDonell's first novel, published when he was 17, was an acclaimed 300,000-copy bestseller--a daunting achievement for this emotionally intricate but iffy sophomore...

26a.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 25, 2005... * 26a DIANA EVANS. Morrow, $23.95 (240p) ISBN 0-06-082091-8 From the very beginning of Evan's first novel (winner of Britain's inaugural Orange Award for New Writers), readers know they're in for something rich and strange. Two small...

The Double Eagle.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 25, 2005... The Double Eagle JAMES TWINING. HarperCollins, $24.95 (400p) ISBN 0-06-076209-8 Making his thriller debut after a career as a London entrepreneur, Twining consciously deals in cliches: 007-ish bad guys, contrived plot mechanisms and...

Captain of the Sleepers.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 25, 2005... Captain of the Sleepers MAYRA MONTERO; TRANS. BY EDITH GROSSMAN. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $22 (192p) ISBN 0-374-11882-5 The yearnings of adolescence clash with adult passions romantic and political in a sensuous, languid novel by Montero...

Half Broken Things.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 25, 2005... * Half Broken Things MORAG JOSS. Delacorte, $22 (320p) ISBN 0-385-33940-2 British author Joss's brilliantly conceived, finely executed novel, which captured the CWA's Silver Dagger Award, offers psychological suspense of the highest...

Karoo Boy.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 25, 2005... Karoo Boy TROY BLACKLAWS. Harcourt, $13 paper (208p) ISBN 0-15-603065-9 Death divides a Cape Town family in Blacklaws's evocative but frustrating debut. The story, set in 1976 but narrated in a terse, foreboding and sometimes baffling...

Infidelities: Stories of War and Lust.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 25, 2005... Infidelities: Stories of War and Lust JOSIP NOVAKOVICH. Harper Perennial, $12.95 paper (256p) ISBN 0-06-058399-1 Croatian-born author Novakovich infuses this 11-story collection (April Fool's Day; Yolk) with a strong sense that God never...

The Hidden Diary of Marie Antoinette.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 25, 2005... The Hidden Diary of Marie Antoinette CAROLLY ERICKSON. St. Martin's, $24.95 (352p) ISBN 0-312-33708-6 Historian Erickson (Bloody Mary; To the Scaffold; etc.) makes her first foray into fiction with this invented journal kept by the...

Captain of the Translators: PW talks with Edith Grossman.(Interview)
July 25, 2005... Mayra Montero's Captain of the Sleepers (see review, p. 42) may at first seem an unlikely project for someone who gets the first call from Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and whose Quixote recently took its place among major versions of the novel....

Gullboy: The Inconceivable Life of Franco Parjarito Zanpa.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 25, 2005... Gullboy: The Inconceivable Life of Franco Parjarito Zanpa WADE RUBENSTEIN. Counterpoint, $24.95 (400p) ISBN 1-58243-330-5 More than a few writers have used New York's Coney Island as backdrop, but none have created a hybrid of decay and...

The Understudy.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 25, 2005... The Understudy DAVID NICHOLLS. Villard, $23.95 (368p) ISBN 1-4000-6182-2 Nicholls's second novel (after A Question of Attraction) focuses on Stephen C. McQueen, a 32-year-old actor forlornly hoping for his big break. With an 11-year...

I'll Go to Bed at Noon.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 25, 2005... I'll Go to Bed at Noon GERARD WOODWARD. Norton, $14.95 paper (448p) ISBN 0-393-32800-7 Meet the Joneses--a suburban London family you could never keep up with at the pub. Excessive drinking is a way of life for several of them, including...

Joplin's Ghost.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 25, 2005... * Joplin's Ghost TANANARIVE DUE. Atria, $25 (480p) ISBN 0-7434-4903-7 The rumor of a ghost at the Scott Joplin House in St. Louis, Mo., inspired this contemplative supernatural novel, in which a young girl becomes haunted by the specter...

Billie Morgan.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 25, 2005... Billie Morgan JOOLZ DENBY. Serpent's Tail, $15 paper (288p) ISBN 1-85242-865-1 Billie Morgan, a 46-year-old gift shop owner, reminisces about her reckless past and the bloody secret that crippled her with its "dirty stain of regret" in...

Troubleshooter.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 25, 2005... Trouble Shooter GREGG HURWITZ. Morrow, $24.95 (320p) ISBN 0-06-073141-9 U.S. Marshal Tim Rackley, nicknamed "Troubleshooter" because he's usually in trouble and he shoots a lot of people, is back on the job after breaking up a...

A Wild Ride Up the Cupboards.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 25, 2005... A Wild Ride Up the Cupboards ANN BAUER. Scribner, $24 (288p) ISBN 0-7432-6949-7 Bauer's nuanced debut chronicles a mother's struggle with her child's mysterious, undiagnosed illness and the once-passionate marriage that doesn't survive...

Million Dollar Dilemma: Tales of a Modern-Day Midas.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 25, 2005... Million Dollar Dilemma: Tales of a Modern-Day Midas JUDY BAER. Steeple Hill, $12.95 paper (320p) ISBN 0-373-78548-8 When Cassia Carr's office mates take up a collection to buy a joint lottery ticket, Cassia, a Scripture-spouting pastor's...

The Goat Bridge.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 25, 2005... The Goat Bridge T.M. MCNALLY. Univ. of Michigan, $24 (320p) ISBN 0-472-11511-1 McNally's taut, richly textured and assured third novel follows Stephen Brings, a burnt-out American photographer who is reeling from the unexplained...

Love with Noodles: An Amorous Widower's Tale.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 25, 2005... Love with Noodles: An Amorous Widower's Tale HARRY I. FREUND. Carroll & Graf, $25 (320p) ISBN 0-7867-1589-8 Freund's debut novel, set amongst the Park Avenue Jewish social set, skates by on a breeze of light social comedy. Two years...

The Wedding Day.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 25, 2005... The Wedding Day CATHERINE ALLIOTT. Ballantine, $13.95 paper (432p) ISBN 0-345-46282-3 Somewhat barmy Londoner Anni O'Harran--urged by her physician fiance, David Palmer, to vacation at his elderly aunt's empty Cornwall home--sets off on...

Hobson's Island.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 25, 2005... Hobson's Island STEFAN THEMERSON. Dalkey Archive, $13.95 paper (196p) ISBN 1-56478417-7 A small refuge against modernity gets overtaken by history in this meditative fable of ideas. The legacy of an eccentric American billionaire who...

To the Tower Born.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 25, 2005... To the Tower Born ROBIN MAXWELL. Morrow, $24.95 (320p) ISBN 0-06-058051-8 Anglophile Maxwell (The Wild Irish) fictionalizes another curious episode from English history with her spirited, colorful fifth novel, about the unexplained...

How to Kill a Rock Star.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 25, 2005... How to Kill a Rock Star TIFFANIE DEBARTOLO. Sourcebook Landmark, $17 paper (352p) ISBN 14022-0521-X DeBartolo looks into the love affair between an aspiring rock journalist and a "spirited maverick" musician in her clunky, earnest...

Watercolor Women Opaque Men.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 25, 2005... Watercolor Women Opaque Men ANA CASTILLO. Curbstone, $15 paper (280p) ISBN 1-931896-20-8 An epic in verse, the story of Castillo's chicana Everywoman--referred to alternately as "She" and "Ella"--begins life in the rough-and-tumble world...

The Hounds of Winter.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 25, 2005... The Hounds of Winter JAMES MAGNUSON. Univ. of Texas, $21.95 (274p) ISBN 0-292-70990-0 As brooding and lethal as a Wisconsin winter storm, this taut thriller puts small-town relations into frightening relief. College senior Maya Neisen...