Publishers Weekly articles from July 2008

Publishers Weekly archives from July 2008

An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination: A Memoir.(Pick of the week: A Mother's Story)(Brief article)(Book review)
July 7, 2008... * An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination: A Memoir Elizabeth McCracken. Little, Brown, $19.99 (192p) ISBN 978-0-316-02767-0 In this stunning memoir of the death in utero of her first child only days before his birth, McCracken has...

Corporate shuffle.(Foreword)
July 7, 2008... As Heidi Klum has taught us, thanks to Project Runway, in fashion you're either in or you're out. In 2008, it feels rather the same way in publishing. This year has seen a reality TV-like changing of the guard at the major houses, with a flurry...

Court dismisses agent's lawsuit.(Barbara Bauer)(Brief article)
July 7, 2008... New Jersey literary agent Barbara Bauer sued 19 bloggers and Web sites, claiming they ruined her reputation, but a Superior Court judge dismissed the defamation-of-character lawsuit, ruling that federal law immunizes interactive Internet...

ABFFE gets victory in Indiana.(American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression)(Brief article)
July 7, 2008... The American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression won last week when an Indiana federal judge dismissed a state law requiring retailers to register "sexually explicit" material. ABFFE had joined the Media Coalition to challenge the...

Visions of Cody's.(Foreword)
July 7, 2008... It's heartening that there is some good news in the independent bookstore world--or at least indications that all is not lost. Consider: the lively demonstration at BEA of the ABA's IndieBound program, which suggests that going global is so...

Changes at Shakespeare & Co. Branch.(Brief article)
July 7, 2008... The Shakespeare & Co. Bookseller location on East 23rd Street in Manhattan will stop selling trade books and turn its ground-floor and basement retail space over to DaVinci Artists Supply. The store, near Baruch College and the School of Visual...

Simply Audiobooks offers RH titles DRM-free.(Random House, digital rights management)(Brief article)
July 7, 2008... Toronto audiobook retailer Simply Audiobooks will make more than 5,000 Random House audiobook titles available for purchase and download in a DRM-free format. The downloads can be played on a wide variety of MP3 players, thanks to the lack of...

Chicken Soup going in-house, getting new distribution.(Brief article)
July 7, 2008... Chicken Soup for the Soul, LLC, which is under new management as of April, is going with a new distributor. Simon & Schuster will handle sales of its new titles into the trade. Health Communications Inc., which had been publishing and...

Melodrama publishing makes a mark.(Urban Fiction)
July 7, 2008... Urban fiction publisher Crystal Lacey Winslow started out wanting to become a writer and ended up a publisher (and sometimes agent). In the late 1990s, Winslow was working as a legal assistant but her passion was writing. In 2000 she wrote and...

Philip Wallace, Ingram Book Company.(GALLEY TALK)(Dumbfounded )(Brief article)(Book review)
July 7, 2008... I am always on the lookout for quirky coming-of-age memoirs in the tradition of Augusten Burroughs or David Sedaris, so I could not resist Matt Rothschild's Dumbfounded [Crown, Aug.]. Rothschild grew up in a luxury Manhattan penthouse raised by...

Eldredge leaving Thomas Nelson for Doubleday.(John Eldredge, Doubleday Religious Publishing)(Brief article)
July 7, 2008... Bestselling Christian author John Eldredge has moved houses. The founder of Ransomed Heart Ministries, who been publishing with Thomas Nelson, signed a two-book deal with Doubleday Religious Publishing. Aside from a forthcoming companion DVD to...

Knopf takes the bacon.(DEALS)(Alfred A. Knopf Inc.)(Brief article)
July 7, 2008... Sonny Mehta has acquired the next work by de Kooning authors Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan, to be a biography of artist Francis Bacon; Clare Conville at Conville and Walsh sold North American rights. Stevens and Swan will have full access to...

New series, publisher for Yancey.(DEALS)(Rick Yancey)(Brief article)
July 7, 2008... Within 24 hours of submission, David Gale at Simon & Schuster Children's made a preemptive offer for world rights to a new YA series by The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp author Rick Yancey; a day later, a three-book deal was in place...

Morbid auction.(DEALS)('Morbid Curiosity Cures the Blues')(Brief article)
July 7, 2008... Anna de Vries at Scribner won an auction for Morbid Curiosity Cures the Blues, the best writings from the 10-year-run of the now-defunct cult nonfiction magazine Morbid Curiosity; Hannah Brown Gordon at Foundry sold North American rights in her...

Debut preempt.(DEALS)(publication of Debra Grubb's Daughter of Kura)(Brief article)
July 7, 2008... Touchstone senior editor Trish Grader preempted North American rights to Debra Grubb's first novel, Daughter of Kura, in a two-book deal with Ann Rittenberg. Set during the first stirrings of religious thought among homo erectus in Africa...

Carillo to Kensington.(DEALS)(Charlie Carillo)(Brief article)
July 7, 2008... Gary Goldstein at Kensington bought two new novels by Charlie Carillo via Anne Edelstein, who sold world English rights. The first, Your Mother Will Kill Us When She Finds Out, follows a divorced veteran tabloid journalist and his son as they...

Restaurant romances.(DEALS)(Brief article)
July 7, 2008... Rose Hilliard at St. Martin's Press preempted world rights to four books by editor-turned-author Louisa Edwards via Deidre Knight. Set amid the New York restaurant scene, the first book in the series is called Can't Stand the Heat and is slated...

Calendar: July 13-19.(Brief article)(Calendar)
July 7, 2008... 7/13 Jackie Collins calls J.J. Salem's Tan Lines (St. Martin's) "A really great beach read." He dedicates his debut novel to Rona Jaffe, Harold Robbins, Sidney Sheldon and Jacqueline Susann. 7/14 PW called Lisa Gardner's 10th...

Books, comics, films from Angel Gate.(Indie Publishing)
July 7, 2008... Angel Gate CEO Debbie Bishop brings together a lot of skills in the service of her company. A screenwriter, producer, novelist and graphic designer, Bishop launched Angel Gate in 2003; since then the Los Angeles publishing house has released...

Berkshire Publishing goes to China.(Global Markets)
July 7, 2008... Founded a decade ago by Karen Christensen and her husband, David Levinson, as a reference book packager, Berkshire Publishing Group in Great Barrington, Mass., transitioned into a trade and professional publishing house in 2004. But even before...

Tan, Rosada to S&S children's.(People)(Katrina Tan, Taryn Rosada, Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing)(Brief article)
July 7, 2008... Katrina Tan and Taryn Rosada have both joined Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing. Tan, who previously worked for both Disney and DK, has been named demand planner for Aladdin and Pulse in the children's supply chain. Rosada has been named a...

Smith up at Beaufort.(People)(Erin C. Smith, Beaufort Books)(Brief article)
July 7, 2008... Erin C. Smith has been promoted to publicity manager at Beaufort Books. Smith joined the New York City-based indie publisher last year and, before that, worked for Midpoint Trade Books.

Kochman up at Abrams.(People)(Harry N. Abrams Inc.'s Charles Kochman)(Brief article)
July 7, 2008... Charles Kochman has been promoted to executive editor at Harry N. Abrams. Kochman joined HNA in 2005 from DC Comics/Mad Magazine.

Weireter up at Harvard Common Press.(People)(Megan Weireter)(Brief article)
July 7, 2008... Megan Weireter has been promoted from special sales manager to account and custom sales director at Harvard Common Press. Weireter has been at the press for six years; she started as a publicity intern.

Hubbard up at Morrow.(People)(William Morrow and Company Inc.'s Peter Hubbard)(Brief article)
July 7, 2008... Peter Hubbard has been promoted to editor at Morrow. Hubbard has been at the HarperCollins imprint for four years, acquiring for both Harper Perennial and Avon.

Comics: The future of publishing.(Foreword)(Brief article)
July 7, 2008... PW's Calvin Reid organized a presentation on comics and graphic novels for about 100 grad students in the Columbia University publishing program. Pictured (l. to r.) are Del Rey's AU Kokmen; PW editors Reid and Heidi MacDonald; retailer Alex...

Industry stocks.(Market Watch)
July 7, 2008... The companies on the Publishers Weekly Stock Index could not escape the impact of the weak economy--only two of the 16 stocks on the PWSI posted gains in the first half of 2008. Marvel. which benefited from a strong response to Iron Man. had a...

Hardcover bestsellers/fiction.
July 7, 2008... USA Today reported that Janet Evanovich was "sporting a brace on her right hand" after finishing a six-day tour. No wonder--more than 2,000 fans showed up at her first stop, at Connecticut's Foxwoods Casino, and she had at least 1,000 fans at...

Hardcover bestsellers/nonfiction.
July 7, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] "Most of Hugh's and my travel arguments have to do with pace. I'm a fast walker, but he has longer legs and likes to maintain a good twenty-foot lead.... When asked about my latest vacation, the answer is always the...

Paperback bestsellers/mass market.
July 7, 2008... "Bestseller Silva's superlative seventh novel to feature Gabriel Allon, the legendary but wayward son of Israeli Intelligence, puts Silva squarely atop the spy thriller heap.... While you don't have to have read the earlier books in the series,...

Paperback bestsellers/trade.
July 7, 2008... "Mackenzie, I am neither male nor female, even though both genders are derived from my nature. If I choose to appear to you as a man or a woman, it's because I love you. For me to appear to you as a woman and suggest that you call me Papa is...

Comics bestsellers.
July 7, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Viz Media's blockbuster Naruto franchise, the story of a young ninja in training, returns to the list this month with three volumes in the top 10. Volume 28 (at #10) marks the passage of two years in Naruto's life,...

Clint Greenleaf & Meg La Borde: betting, and winning, on indie publishing.(50 UNDER 40)
July 7, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] You might call Clint Greenleaf, president and CEO of Greenleaf Book Group, a betting man. In March, he was sitting in the Fox News studio in Austin, Tex., serving as a commentator on the Fox Business Network's...

Not too cute for words: craft, humor, manga and the tale of two sisters.(Independent Publishing)(Aranzi Aronzo)
July 7, 2008... Two sisters in Japan, working under the name Aranzi Aronzo, have taken the craft and DIY world by storm--a really cute storm. Now they're doing the same to five-year-old Vertical Inc., a New York City-based publisher of genre books translated...

E-book university: digital books thrive on campus and at university presses.(TECHNOLOGY)
July 7, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Universities may be the most likely footholds for the growth of new digital reading practices, as a just-released survey conducted by the digital content management company Ebrary in Palo Alto, Calif., suggests, and...

On sale in August.
July 7, 2008... Midnight bookstore parties across the country on August 2 will hail the 3.2 million-copy first printing for the final novel in Stephenie Meyer's young adult Twilight Saga. On the adult side, new titles from Ron Suskind and Thomas Frank arrive...

Home on the range.(Author Profile)(Biography)
July 7, 2008... Annie Proulx's new book, Fine Just the Way It Is (Scribner, Sept.), is the third collection in the Wyoming Stories, "the last," Proulx says emphatically. And when Annie Proulx says it, you believe her. She wants to write about something...

San Diego Monster-Con has the San Diego Comic-Con become too big and successful for its own good?
July 7, 2008... The San Diego Comic Convention has long been the preeminent event of the comic book industry, an annual pop-culture phenomenon that attracts more than 100,000 fans and grows larger and more prominent in the general culture every year. Much of...

A very graphic interview: in this comics Q&A, Laura Hudson interviews bestselling fantasy novelist Terry Brooks about Dark Wraith of Shannara, a manga adaptation of his prose Shannara series. Art is by Edwin David.(Comics Q & A)(Interview)
July 7, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] How did Dark Wraith of Shannara come about? [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] You know, I've resisted doing much with my books in other formats for many, many years. There've been a number of times when I could've...

Lulu in Marrakech.(Brief article)(Book review)
July 7, 2008... Lulu in Marrakech Diane Johnson. Dutton, $25.95 (336p)ISBN 978-0-525-95037-0 Fans of Johnson's NBA finalist Le Divorce will know what to expect: a fish-out-of-water story about a clash of cultures. Still, the tone and scope of this...

By Chance.(Brief article)(Book review)
July 7, 2008... By Chance Martin Corrick. Random, $25 (240p) ISBN 978-0-375-50813-4 Corrick follows his promising debut (The Navigation Log) with another intricate novel where readers must work to detect the story within a sparse yet elegant...

The Common Bond.(Brief article)(Book review)
July 7, 2008... The Common Bond Donigan Merritt. Other Press, $25.95 (392p) ISBN 978-1-59051-306-4 Merritt goes to the Aloha State for his insightful latest foray into domestic upheaval. Morgan Cary is a one-hit wonder novelist and former Kona...

To Catch the Lightning.(Brief article)(Book review)
July 7, 2008... To Catch the Lightning Alan Cheuse. Sourcebooks, $25.95 (512p) ISBN 978-1-4022-1404-2 Longtime NPR commentator Cheuse returns with his ambitious if not entirely successful ninth book, a novel based on the life of Edward Curtis, the...

The Love Child's Revenge.(Brief article)(Book review)
July 7, 2008... The Love-Child's Revenge Nicole Bailey-Williams. Broadway, $12.95 paper (272p) ISBN 978-0-7679-1911-1 Revenge is the game plan for Peach Harrison, an ambitious and ruthless television journalist in Bailey-Williams's intense drama...

Farraday Road.(Brief article)(Book review)
July 7, 2008... Farraday Road Ace Collins. Zondervan, $15.99 (352p) ISBN 978-0-310-27952-5 This suspense novel from Collins, author of more than 60 books, packs a wallop in the foothills of the Ozarks, although the lightning-fast pace, despite many...

Exit Music.(Brief article)(Book review)
July 7, 2008... Exit Music Ian Rankin. Little, Brown, $24.99 (432p) ISBN 978-0-316-05758-5 Insp. John Rebus has just 10 days to solve the apparently motiveless murder of Alexander Todorov, an expatriate Russian poet, before he reaches 60 and mandatory...

Accelerate the personal: PW talks with Chuck Klosterman: in Downtown Owl, the pop-culture critic and Esquire columnist tries his hand at fiction by examining a small town in North Dakota (Reviews, May 5).(Q&A)(publishers weekly)(Interview)
July 7, 2008... You've published only nonfiction thus far. Why fiction now? Nonfiction is reactive. You respond to what others have done or said. With my novel, I wanted to write a reality that I could create. I must admit I was a little cavalier about...

American Wife.(Brief article)(Book review)
July 7, 2008... American Wife Curtis Sittenfeld. Random, $26 (576p) ISBN 978-1-4000-6475-5 Sittenfeld tracks, in her uneven third novel, the life of bookish, naive Alice Lindgren and the trajectory that lands her in the White House as first lady....

Tsar.(Brief article)(Book review)
July 7, 2008... Tsar Ted Bell. Atria, $26.95 (544p) ISBN 978-14165-5040-2 In bestseller Bell's rousing fifth thriller (after Spy), Alex Hawke fights the leaders of a new and invigorated Russia, where Vladimir Putin has been locked up in a lethal...

The Laughter of Dead Kings.(Brief article)(Book review)
July 7, 2008... The Laughter of Dead Kings Elizabeth Peters. Morrow, $25.95 (336p) ISBN 978-0-06-124624-1 Fans of bestseller Peters's Vicky Bliss series will welcome her solid sixth suspense novel to feature the plucky art historian, last seen in...

The Sacred Book of the Werewolf.(Brief article)(Book review)
July 7, 2008... The Sacred Book of the Werewolf Victor Pelevin, trans, from the Russian by Andrew Bromfield. Viking, $25.95 (336p) ISBN 978-0-670-01988-5 Russian novelist Pelevin's chaotic latest examines contemporary Russia as viewed through the eyes...

The Shape of Mercy.(Brief article)(Book review)
July 7, 2008... * The Shape of Mercy Susan Meissner. WaterBrook, $13.99 paper (320p) ISBN 978-1-4000-7456-3 Meissner's newest novel is potentially life-changing, the kind of inspirational fiction that prompts readers to call up old friends, lost...

Guernica.(Brief article)(Book review)
July 7, 2008... Guernica Dave Boling. Bloomsbury, $26 (384p) ISBN 978-1-59691-563-3 Examining the Spanish Civil War and the town that was famously firebombed by the Germans on the eve of WWII, this multigenerational family saga begins with the three...

Takeover.(Brief article)(Book review)
July 7, 2008... Takeover Lisa Black. Morrow, $24.95 (352p) ISBN 9780-06-154445-3 When high-level executive Mark Ludlow is discovered beaten to death in front of his house early one morning, forensic scientist Theresa MacLean and her fiance, homicide...

White Nights.(Brief article)(Book review)
July 7, 2008... White Nights Ann Cleeves. St. Martin's Minotaur/Dunne, $24.95 (400p) ISBN 978-0-312-38433-3 In Dagger-winner Cleeves's uneven second installment in her Shetland Island quartet (after Raven Black), Insp. Jimmy Perez sees a stranger...

The Given Day.(Book review)
July 7, 2008... * The Given Day Dennis Lehane. Morrow, $27.95 (720p) ISBN 978-0-688-16318-1 In a splendid flowering of the talent previously demonstrated in his crime fiction (Gone, Baby, Gone; Mystic River), Lehane combines 20th-century American...

The Desert Contract.(Brief article)(Book review)
July 7, 2008... The Desert Contract John Lathrop. Scribner, $25 (320p) ISBN 9781-4165-6793-6 Those concerned about America's dependence on Saudi Arabia as an ally in the Middle East will find nothing of comfort in Lathrop's debut, a somewhat drawn-out...

The Killing Circle.(Brief article)(Book review)
July 7, 2008... * The Killing Circle Andrew Pyper. St. Martin's Minotaur/Dunne, $24.95 (320p) ISBN 978-0-312-38476-0 In this extraordinary thriller from Canadian author Pyper (The Wildfire Season), Patrick Rush, a lowly TV critic for a Toronto...

The Heretic Queen.(Brief article)(Book review)
July 7, 2008... The Heretic Queen Michelle Moran. Crown, $24.95 (400p) ISBN 978-0-307-38175-0 The intricacies of the ancient Egyptian court are brought to life in Moran's fascinating tale of a princess's rise to power. Nefertari, niece of the famed...

Settlement.(Brief article)(Book review)
July 7, 2008... Settlement Christoph Hein, trans. from the German by Philip Boehm. Metropolitan, $26 (320p) ISBN 978-0-8050-7768-1 Starting off as a refugee in Guldenberg, Germany, was tough enough, but for Bernhard Haber, whose family--led by his...

Between Here and April.(Brief article)(Book review)
July 7, 2008... * Between Here and April Deborah Copaken Kogan. Algonquin, $23.95 (288p) ISBN 978-1-56512-562-9 How could a mother kill her children? This breathtaking first novel from photojournalist Kogan (Shutterbabe) attempts a heart-wrenching...

The Night Villa.(Brief article)(Book review)
July 7, 2008... The Night Villa Carol Goodman. Ballantine, $14 paper (416p) ISBN 978-0-345-47960-0 In this complex and lyrical literary thriller from Goodman (The Sonnet Lover), University of Texas classics professor Sophie Chase, after barely...

Nothing is Quite Forgotten in Brooklyn.(Brief article)(Book review)
July 7, 2008... Nothing Is Quite Forgotten in Brooklyn Alice Mattison. Harper Perennial, $14.95 paper (320p) ISBN 978-0-06-143055-8 Mattison's latest combines a dark comedy of manners with even darker midlife family suspense. Constance "Con" Tepper...

Holding Pattern: Stories.(Brief article)(Book review)
July 7, 2008... Holding Pattern: Stories Jeffery Renard Allen. Graywolf, $16 paper (256p) ISBN 978-1-55597-509-8 Allen melds gritty urban life and magical realism in his first collection (after the novel Rails Under My Back). At times, the...

The Sun's Bride.(Brief article)(Book review)
July 7, 2008... The Sun's Bride Gillian Bradshaw. Severn, $28.95 (240p) ISBN 978-0-7278-6641-7 At the start of Bradshaw's rousing adventure novel set in 246 B.C., the galley Atalanta, "just out of the naval shipyard of the island republic of Rhodes,"...

The Mirror in the Well.(Brief article)(Book review)
July 7, 2008... The Mirror in the Well Micheline Aharonian Marcom. Dalkey Archive, $12.95 paper (152p) ISBN 978-1-56478-511-4 Marcom's three previous (and provocative) novels earned her much critical acclaim, but none shucks the reader like her...

A Matter of Revenge: A John Apparite Novel.(Brief article)(Book review)
July 7, 2008... A Matter of Revenge: A John Apparite Novel I. Michael Koontz. Five Star, $25.95 (303p) ISBN 978-1-59414-674-9 Koontz's lumbering second Cold War thriller to feature master spy John Apparite (after 2006's Under Cloak of Darkness) veers...

Fresh Kills.(Brief article)(Book review)
July 7, 2008... * Fresh Kills Bill Loehfelm. Putnam, $24.95 (336p) ISBN 978-0-399-15531-4 Superb prose and psychological insights distinguish Loehfelm's debut. Because Staten Island bartender John Sanders Jr. was regularly physically abused as a child...

The Crow Road.(Brief article)(Book review)
July 7, 2008... The Crow Road Iain Banks. MacAdam/Cage, $25 (500p) ISBN 978-1-59692-306-5; $14 paper ISBN 978-1-59692-307-2 When Prentice McHoan, the irrepressible hero of Banks's wily novel whose loves include drink, cars, girls and history, returns...

Demons in the Spring.(Brief article)(Book review)
July 7, 2008... * Demons in the Spring Joe Meno. Akashic, $24.95 (300p) ISBN 978-1-933354-47-7 Spanning worlds, generations, cultures and environments, each of Meno's short stories in this stellar collection explores depression, loneliness and...

Burn Out.(Brief article)(Book review)
July 7, 2008... Burn Out Marcia Muller. Grand Central, $24.99 (304p) ISBN 978-0-446-58107-3 After the travails of The Ever-Running Man (2007), Sharon McCone retreats to her high desert ranch near Yosemite in MWA Grand Master Muller's fine 26th novel...

Oscar Wilde and a Game Called Murder.(Brief article)(Book review)
July 7, 2008... * Oscar Wilde and a Game Called Murder Gyles Brandreth. Touchstone, $14 paper (416p) ISBN 978-1-4165-3484-6 In British author Brandreth's impressive second Oscar Wilde mystery (after 2007's Oscar Wilde and a Death of No Importance),...

Black Ship: A Daisy Dalrymple Mystery.(Brief article)(Book review)
July 7, 2008... Black Ship: A Daisy Dalrymple Mystery Carola Dunn. St. Martin's Minotaur, $24.95 (288p) ISBN 978-0-312-36307-9 At the start of Dunn's diverting 17th Daisy Dalrymple 1920s mystery (after 2007's The Bloody Tower), Daisy and her Scotland...

Cat in a Sapphire Slipper: A Midnight Louie Mystery.(Brief article)(Book review)
July 7, 2008... Cat in a Sapphire Slipper: A Midnight Louie Mystery Carole Nelson Douglas. Forge, $24.95 (400p) ISBN 978-0-7653-1861-9 The fur-flying 20th entry in Douglas's cat whodunit series (Cat in a Red Hot Rage, etc.) reveals that magician...

Rainstone Fall.(Brief article)(Book review)
July 7, 2008... Rainstone Fall Peter Helton. Soho Constable, $25 (276p) ISBN 978-1-56947-525-6 PI and painter Chris Honeysett combs the English spa town of Bath at the insistence of a mysterious caller, who claims to have kidnapped a 15-year-old boy,...

Toros & Torsos.(Brief article)(Book review)
July 7, 2008... Toros & Torsos Craig McDonald. Bleak House (www.bleakhousebooks.com), $24.95 (408p) ISBN 978-1-60648-000-7; $14.95 paper ISBN 978-1- 60648-001-4 Spanning the years from 1935 to 1959, Edgar-finalist McDonald's second novel to...

Working Stiff: A Sofie Metropolis Novel.(Brief article)(Book review)
July 7, 2008... Working Stiff: A Sofie Metropolis Novel Tori Carrington. Forge, $24.95 (352p) ISBN 978-0-7653-1744-5 In Carrington's entertaining fourth Sofie Metropolis novel (after 2007's Foul Play), the Queens Greek-American PI is on the hunt for...

D.C. Noir 2: The Classics.(Brief article)(Book review)
July 7, 2008... D.C. Noir 2: The Classics Edited by George Pelecanos. Akashic, $15.95 paper (300p) ISBN 978-1-933354-58-3 By broadly interpreting what constitutes noir, Pelecanos has been able to include writers as diverse as Langston Hughes and Ward...

Night Kill.(Brief article)(Book review)
July 7, 2008... Night Kill Ann Littlewood. Poisoned Pen, $24.95 (238p) ISBN 978-1-59058-504-7 Littlewood, a former zookeeper, knows a great deal about animal management and goes to some lengths to work her knowledge into her debut, but unfortunately,...

Pandemonium.(Brief article)(Book review)
July 7, 2008... * Pandemonium Daryl Gregory. Del Rey, $13 paper (304p) ISBN 978-0-345-50116-5 Believable characters, a multilayered plot and smooth prose define Gregory's darkly ambitious debut novel. In this fascinating alternative time line,...

Cretaceous Dawn.(Brief article)(Book review)
July 7, 2008... Cretaceous Dawn L.M. Graziano and M.S.A. Graziano. Leapfrog (www.leapfrogpress.com), $15.95 paper (290p) ISBN 978-0-9728984-9-2 The Grazianos, sibling scientists, combine speculation and science in a compulsively page-turning...

Misspent Youth.(Brief article)(Book review)
July 7, 2008... Misspent Youth Peter F. Hamilton. Del Rey, $26 (416p) ISBN 978-0-345-46164-3 British space opera author Hamilton (The Dreaming Void) isn't quite up to his usual standards in this cautionary tale about tinkering with the human body....

Odd Girl Out.(Brief article)(Book review)
July 7, 2008... Odd Girl Out Timothy Zahn. Tor, $24.95 (384p) ISBN 978-0-7653-1733-9 Mysterious deaths, encounters with oddly named aliens, chases and shootouts form a skeleton of a story that never quite gets fleshed out in Zahn's weak third Frank...

Last Argument of Kings: The First Law, Book Three.(Brief article)(Book review)
July 7, 2008... Last Argument of Kings: The First Law, Book Three Joe Abercrombie. Pyr, $15 paper (640p) ISBN 978-1-59102-690-7 The sword & sorcery trilogy that began with The Blade Itself (2007) and Before They Are Hanged (2008) comes to a violent,...