Publishers Weekly articles from June 2010

Publishers Weekly archives from June 2010

Price cuts roil the market for digital readers: reductions will lead to fewer, or more, devices.(Foreword)
June 28, 2010... What a difference six months can make when you're trying to sell a digital reading device. Anyone attending the Consumer Electronics Show last January saw a small flood of e-readers from a slew of Kindle-like e-ink devices to futuristic color...

Value channel not for the faint of heart.(Dollar Days)
June 28, 2010... The last year has brought good news and bad news for children's book publishers targeting the value end of the business. On the one hand, sales in the value channel--composed of dollar stores, regional discounters, and other off-price...

Penguin realigns international.(Brief article)
June 28, 2010... Penguin has realigned its international sales team, putting a major emphasis on Spanish-language territories. A new inter national sales team now reports to Barbara O'Shea, president of nontrade sales, and includes special markets. The company...

Investor group to buy Alloy.(Brief article)
June 28, 2010... Alloy Inc., whose products aimed at young adults and over include the Gossip Girl and Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants book series, has agreed to be acquired by an investor group led by ZelnickMedia in a deal valued at $126.5 million. The...

Hawkins back at Hyperion.(Deals)(Brief article)
June 28, 2010... Ari Lewin at Disney-Hyperion bought North American rights to Rachel Hawkins's second YA novel, Rebel Belle, in a three-book, and new series, deal. Lewin had acquired Hawkins's debut YA Hex Hall trilogy, which Disney published in March. The new...

M.J. moves to Atria.(DEALS)(Brief article)
June 28, 2010... M.J. Rose is moving her reincarnation series from Mira to Atria. The first book in the series, 2007's The Reincarnationist, was Rose's ninth novel and the first of three books Mira published in the line. (PW called The Reincarnationist a "Da...

Akashic goes Unger.(Deals)(Brief article)
June 28, 2010... Andrea Montejo, at Ident Literary, sold world rights to David Unger's The Price of Escape to Johnny Temple at Akashic Books. Unger, who was born in Guatemala and teaches at City College of New York, has written a number of novels, including...

SMP re-ups with Hannah.(Deals)(St. Martin's Press)(Brief article)
June 28, 2010... St. Martin's Press has signed bestseller Kristin Hannah to a major deal, acquiring North American rights to four more novels by the author. Andrea Cirillo at the Jane Rotrosen Agency brokered the deal with editor Jennifer Enderfin. SMP published...

Dystel closes two.(Deals)(Brief article)
June 28, 2010... Jane Dystel, at Dystel & Goderich, just closed two Deals, selling a memoir and a book about hoarding. In the first deal, Dystel sold North American rights to Mardi Link's Bootstrapper. Jordan Pavlin at Knopf acquired the memoir, in which...

Viacom loses Google copyright suit.(Brief article)
June 28, 2010... A New York court last week rejected Viacom's $1 billion copyright infringement suit against Google over its YouTube service, granting Google's motion for summary judgment. The court found that YouTube does qualify for protection from the...

Sterling renews Hearst pact.(Brief article)
June 28, 2010... Hearst Magazines and Sterling Publishing have renewed their trademark licensing agreement granting Sterling the rights to create and publish books under the Hearst Books imprint. Under the deal, Sterling has produced lifestyle and cookbooks...

No 'Jinx' for Lackberg.(Selling Abroad)
June 28, 2010... Swedish bestselling mystery author Camilla Lackberg has just been published in the U.S. with Pegasus Books releasing The Ice Princess (story, page 10) earlier this month; she hit the May bestsellers list in France in the top spot with The Jinx....

International bestsellers.(Foreword)(List)
June 28, 2010... International Bestsellers France Fiction Nonfiction (1) L'Oiseau de mauvais augure Le crepuscule d'une idole The Jinx The Dawn of an Idol Camilla Lackberg ...

Pegasus hopes 'Ice Princess' will heat up in U.S.(Swedish Thriller)
June 28, 2010... All seven thrillers written by Camilla Lackberg have hit the bestsellers list in her native Sweden, and most have landed at the top or near the top spot in other European countries, with The Jinx #1 in France in May and #4 in Spain. New York...

Leslie Reiner, Inkwood Books, Tampa, Fla.(Galley Talk)(Brief article)(Book review)
June 28, 2010... Jim Powell's The Breaking of Eggs (Penguin, July) is the story of curmudgeonly Feliks Zhukovski, Polish by birth, Communist (make that "leftist") at heart, who, at age 61, finds that just about everything he has based his life on is crumbling....

Hardcover bestsellers/fiction.
June 28, 2010... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Once called "the Oprah of thrillers" for his promotion of those books and authors on his TV and radio shows, Glenn Beck decided to try his hand at the genre. And it's working: with 775,000 copies in print, The Overton...

Hardcover bestsellers/nonfiction.
June 28, 2010... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] With more than 200,000 copies in print, Junger's War has attracted considerable media attention--including Restrepo, a film based on the book, written by Junger and photographed by Tim Hetherington, which won the Grand...

Paperback bestsellers/mass market.
June 28, 2010... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] "Some grew to suspect there was another reason for such a grand survey of all the lands.... Whispers and rumors began calling the result of this great survey the Doomsday Book. These last were closer to the truth than...

Paperback bestsellers/trade.
June 28, 2010... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Who was it who said there's no accounting for taste? With the movie version of Eat, Pray, Love due in August starring Julia Roberts, consider these divergent opinions from Web site readers. "i just cannot believe that...

Children's series and tie-ins bestsellers.
June 28, 2010... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Stephenie Meyer's most recent Twilight book, The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner: An Eclipse Novella, pubbed on June 5, just before the movie premiere of Eclipse, book three in her saga. The actress who plays Bree in...

Audio bestsellers/fiction.
June 28, 2010... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] From PW's review of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest: "Simon Vance isn't about to change anything that worked so well in his previous renditions of the first two-thirds of the Millennium trilogy. But as the late...

Audio bestsellers/nonfiction.
June 28, 2010... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] "To put it in the most basic terms, if someone is overweight, it came from thinking 'fat thoughts,' whether that person was aware of it or not. A person cannot think 'thin thoughts' and befit. It completely defies the...

Big mouth buzz: a group of outspoken booksellers sets the early tone for selected titles.(Retail Nation)
June 28, 2010... Even though he admits to occasionally having to plow through novels that don't appeal to him, Bill Cusumano, the adult book buyer for Nicola's Books in Ann Arbor, Mich., relishes reading future releases from the major houses long before many of...

Flying starts: spotlighting four novelists and one illustrator who had their debuts this spring.(Children's Books)
June 28, 2010... LAUREN OLIVER Lauren Oliver may have just published Before I Fall (Harper, Mar.), but she's been writing for as long as she can remember--"every day since I was about five," she says. "I've had dozens of books in various stages of completion,...

Why I write.(First Fiction)
June 28, 2010... An army base is a strange place. An army base in a time of war, especially after 4,000 men pack up their duffel bags, put on their uniforms, and leave their wives and children for an entire year. In You Know When the Men Are Gone, I attempt to...

Startups for spring.(First Fiction)
June 28, 2010... As usual, we begin our seasonal listings by highlighting 10 promising debut novels. Among the intriguing protagonists: a drug dealer's sibling home from a prison stretch, a Catholic priest questioning his professional path, a young woman--er,...

Fall 2010 hardcovers.
June 28, 2010... Let's think about the fall when, hopefully, the oil leak in the Gulf is capped, the sound of vuvuzelas is a distant memory, and booksellers and--buyers are enthralled by Paul Roberts's book-length profile of Exxon or Jane Leavy's vivid evocation...

The Wake of Forgiveness.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 28, 2010... * The Wake of Forgiveness Bruce Machart. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $26 (320p) ISBN 978-0-15-101443-9 Machart's bleak, accomplished debut opens in 1895 as a landowning Texas family faces both sides of life's spectrum: the birth of a fourth...

Salvation City.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 28, 2010... Salvation City Sigrid Nunez. Riverhead, $25.95 (288p) ISBN 978-1-59448-766-8 The intellectually rigorous and grimly prophetic latest from Nunez (The Last of Her Kind) initially resembles any number of coming-of-age yarns, except that most...

My Hollywood.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 28, 2010... * My Hollywood Mona Simpson. Knopf, $26.95 (384p) ISBN 978-0-307-27352-9 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In her first novel since Off Keck Road (2000), Simpson tells a blistering story of fractured love and flailing parents. Claire, a composer...

Hangman.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 28, 2010... Hangman Faye Kellerman. Morrow, $25.99 (432p) ISBN 978-0-06170-256-3 Kellerman once again mixes mystery and soap opera in her 19th novel featuring Lt. Peter Decker of the LAPD and his wife, Rina Lazarus (after Blindman's Bluff). Terry...

Captive Queen.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 28, 2010... Captive Queen Alison Weir. Ballantine, $26 (512p) ISBN 978-0-345-51187-4 Weir (Innocent Traitor) captures the perspective of the subject of her bestselling biography, Eleanor of Aquitaine, the medieval duchess who wielded power across...

The Vigilantes.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 28, 2010... The Vigilantes W.E.B. Griffin and William E. Butterworth IV. Putnam, $26.95 (352p) ISBN 978-0-399-15663-2 Griffin's plodding 10th police thriller in his Badge of Honor series (after The Traffickers), co-authored with son Butterworth, adds...

The Blasphemer.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 28, 2010... * The Blasphemer Nigel Farndale. Crown, $25.99 (384p) ISBN 978-0-307-71703-0 In British author Farndale's elegant meditation on morality (among many other topics), Daniel Kennedy, a biologist specializing in worms, is convinced that the...

Original Sins.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 28, 2010... Original Sins Peg Kingman. Norton, $25.95 (416p) ISBN 978-0-393-06547-3 Though the era of American slavery is widely viewed with repugnance today, it's easy to forget the vehemence and eloquence with which slaveholding was condemned by...

Tough Customer.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 28, 2010... Tough Customer Sandra Brown. Simon & Schuster, $26.99 (400p) ISBN 978-1-4165-6310-5 Introduced in 2009's Smash Cut, Atlanta PI Dodge Hanley makes this entertaining, if slightly talky romantic thriller from bestseller Brown a must-read...

Cure.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 28, 2010... Cure Robin Cook. Putnam, $26.95 (416p) ISBN 978-0-399-15662-5 Organized crime, international espionage, and kidnapping only mildly enliven Cook's methodical ninth medical thriller featuring husband-and-wife medical examiners Laurie...

Displaced Persons.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 28, 2010... Displaced Persons Ghita Schwarz. Morrow, $25.99 (345p) ISBN 978-0-06-188190-9 A group of Polish Jews rebuilds their lives after the Holocaust in this moving debut. Recently liberated, Pavel Mandl befriends a woman, Fela, and the young...

You Were Wrong.(Book review)
June 28, 2010... You Were Wrong Matthew Sharpe. Bloomsbury, $14 paper (192p) ISBN 918-1-60819-187-1 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Karl Floor is having a lousy day. Coming home from work, the 26-year-old math teacher gets jumped by two of his students, and then...

Broken.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 28, 2010... Broken Karin Fossum, trans. from the Norwegian by Charlotte Barslund. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $25 (272p) ISBN 978-0-15-101366-1 In an odd departure from her Inspector Sejer series, Norwegian crime novelist Fossum (The Water's Edge) tells...

Moscow Sting.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 28, 2010... Moscow Sting Alex Dryden. Ecco, $24.99 (368p) ISBN 978-0-06-196684-2 British author Dryden's poignant portrayal of Anna Resnikov, a KGB colonel who forsook her country to marry a former MI6 agent, Finn, powers this intense sequel to his...

A Small Death in the Great Glen.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 28, 2010... A Small Death in the Great Glen A.D. Scott. Atria, $15 paper (320p) ISBN 9781-4391-5493-9 Set in 1956 in an isolated village in the Scottish Highlands, Scott's slow-paced debut centers on the death of eight-year-old Jamie Fraser, who's...

Leaving Before It's Over.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 28, 2010... Leaving Before It's Over Jean Reynolds Page. Avon, $14.99 paper (368p) ISBN 978-0-06-187692-9 Page (The Last Summer of Her Other Life) delivers an intimate if overbusy family drama of lost and rebuilt connections. Roy Vines has never...

A Stranger Like You.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 28, 2010... * A Stranger Like You Elizabeth Brundage. Viking, $25.95 (256p) ISBN 978-0-670-02200-7 Hollywood goes Hollyweird in this intense, provocative thriller about power, war, and the portrayal of women in film from Brundage (Somebody Else's...

The Last Lie.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 28, 2010... The Last Lie Stephen White. Dutton, $26.95 (416p) ISBN 978-0-525-95177-3 In White's winning 18th Alan Gregory thriller (after The Siege), the Boulder, Colo., psychologist gets off on the wrong foot with his new neighbor, TV-star lawyer...

Search.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 28, 2010... Search Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens. St. Martin's/Dunne, $25.99 (352p) ISBN 978-0-312-37744-1 This fine archeological quest novel from the Reeves-Stevens duo (Icefire) smoothly blends a fast-moving fantasy plot with a solid...

The Jewel of St. Petersburg.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 28, 2010... The Jewel of St. Petersburg Kate Furnivall. Berkley, $15 paper (432p) ISBN 978-0-425-23423-5 Beginning in the lead-up to the Bolshevik uprising, Furnivall's sure-to-please prequel to her successful The Russian Concubine centers on...

Poison.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 28, 2010... Poison Sara Poole. St. Martin's Griffin, $14.99 paper (400p) ISBN 978-0-312-60983-2 The pseudonymous Poole makes a promising debut with this fast-moving historical thriller. In 15th-century Italy, Francesca Giordano is the daughter of...

Sick City.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 28, 2010... * Sick City Tony O'Neill. Harper Perennial, $13.99 paper (384p) ISBN 978-0-06-178974-8 O'Neill (Down and Out on Murder Mile) delivers a Hollywood thriller that's equal parts acerbic social commentary a la Burroughs's Naked Lunch and...

The Homecoming Party.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 28, 2010... The Homecoming Party Carmine Abate, trans, from the Italian by Antony Shugaar. Europa (Penguin, dist.), $15 paper (192p) ISBN 978-1-933372-83-9 Abate's atmospheric tale (after Between Two Seas) concerns a Calabrian farming family whose...

Dancing Backward.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 28, 2010... Dancing Backward Salley Vickers. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $25 (256p) ISBN 978-0-374-22316-8 Leaving her grown sons in Britain, recently widowed Violet Hetherington takes a six-day transatlantic cruise to New York to look up an old friend...

Waxed.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 28, 2010... Waxed Robert Rave. St. Martin's Griffin, $14.99 paper (320p) ISBN 978-0-312-54437-9 Intoxicating and irreverent, Rave's lowdown on an upscale Manhattan waxing salon owned by obsessive compulsive Carolina Impresario exposes the secrets of...

An Inconvenient Elephant.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 28, 2010... An Inconvenient Elephant Judy Reene Singer. Harper, $13.99 paper (352p) ISBN 978-0-06-171377-4 In this big-hearted sequel, Singer (Still Life with Elephant) channels her compassion for animals through strong-willed Neelie Sterling, who's...

PW talks with Zoe Ferraris: unveiling Islam today.(Q&A)(Interview)
June 28, 2010... In City of Veils (Reviews, June 14), Zoe Ferraris, who lived in Jeddah as the American wife of a Palestinian Bedouin, explores the interpersonal problems of men and women in Saudi Arabia's traditional culture. How has your presentation of...

Galley galleys.('A Battle Won', 'Pirates of the Levant', and 'Gentleman Captain')(Book review)
June 28, 2010... A selection of nautical novels to keep you occupied until the sun is over the yardarm. A Battle Won S. Thomas Russell. Putnam, $26.95 (464p) ISBN 978-0-399-15689-2 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] This overlong sequel to Russell's 18th-century...

Shadow Play.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 28, 2010... Shadow Play Rajorshi Chakraborti. Minotaur, $24.99 (304p) ISBN 978-0-312-64234-1 Chakraborti (Or the Day Seizes You) alternates chapters from two books--the first a memoir by one Raj Chakraborti, the second a work of magic realism by...

Judgment and Wrath.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 28, 2010... Judgment and Wrath Matt Hilton. Morrow, $24.99 (352p) ISBN 978-0-06-171813-7 At the start of Hilton's uneven second thriller featuring ex-Special Forces warrior Joe Hunter and his PI partner, Jared "Rink" Rington (after Dead Men's Dust), a...

Radiant Daughter.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 28, 2010... Radiant Daughter Patricia Grossman. Northwestern Univ./TriQuarterly, $29.95 (272p) ISBN 978-0-8101-5199-4 Grossman (Brian in Three Seasons) pursues the erratic coming-of-age of the gifted daughter of a family of second-generation Czech...

Million Little Mistakes.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 28, 2010... Million Little Mistakes Heather McElhatton. Harper, $14.99 paper (512p) ISBN 978-0-06-113326-8 For those who fondly remember the childhood joy of choose-your-own-adventure novels, McElhatton's second Do-Over book (after Pretty Little...

The Last Estate.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 28, 2010... The Last Estate Conor Bowman. Permanent, $26 (168p) ISBN 978-1-57962-203-9 This trite romance never finds its footing. In 1920 Provence, Christian Aragon dreams of seeing the world, but more often of his geography teacher, Miss Pleyben,...

Damage Control.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 28, 2010... Damage Control Amy J. Fetzer. Brava, $14 paper (416p) ISBN 978-0-7582-3139-0 An ex-marine and an NSA operative heat up the Arctic Circle in Fetzer's serviceable latest (after Fight Fire with Fire). Sharing stage center are former Marine...

The Blessings of the Animals.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 28, 2010... The Blessings of the Animals Katrina Kittle. Harper Perennial, $14.99 paper (400p) ISBN 978-0-06-190607-7 Beginning with the end of Cami Anderson's marriage, Kittle (The Kindness of Strangers) wades through heartache and tragedy yet...

She's Gone Country.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 28, 2010... She's Gone Country Jane Porter. Five Spot, $13.99 paper (384p) ISBN 978-0-446-50941-1 Porter (Easy on the Eyes) injects some western flavor in this story of starting over and romance in the over-30 set. After ex-supermodel Shey Darcy's...

Passionate Pleasures.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 28, 2010... Passionate Pleasures Bertrice Small. NAL, $15 paper (304p) ISBN 978-0-451-22700-3 In Small's so-so latest installment to the Pleasures series (after Dangerous Pleasures), small town librarian Kathryn St. John is approaching 50, happy to be...

Resurrection in May.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 28, 2010... Resurrection in May Lisa Samson. Thomas Nelson, $14.99 paper (320p) ISBN 978-1-59554-544-2 Samson (The Passion of Mary-Margaret) goes after the big enchilada of theodicy--why a good God would permit evil--in this tale of a mildly dissolute...

Masquerade.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 28, 2010... Masquerade Nancy Moser. Bethany House, $14.99 paper (368p) ISBN 978-0-7642-0751-8 Moser writes inspirational fiction with a strong, historically accurate foundation in this new offering, set in 1885 in New York City. Twin protagonists...

Fly Away Home.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 28, 2010... Fly Away Home Jennifer Weiner. Atria, $26.99 (400p) ISBN 978-0-7432-9427-0 Weiner (Best Friends Forever) weaves a forgettable family drama with three weakly connected storylines: mother Sylvie Woodruff long ago sacrificed herself to become...

Sharks in the Rivers.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 28, 2010... Sharks in the Rivers Ada Limon. Milkweed (PGW, dist.), $16 (96p) ISBN 978-1-57131-438-3 Vigor, intensity, and informality mark the volatile free verse of this third collection from Limon (this big fake world), who pays homage at once to...

Maggot.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 28, 2010... Maggot Paul Muldoon. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $24 (144p) ISBN 978-0-374-20032-9 Raised in Northern Ireland and long resident in New Jersey, Muldoon (Horse Latitudes) remains one of very few poets who commands broad and deep respect on...

The Eternal City.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 28, 2010... * The Eternal City Kathleen Graber. Princeton, $35 (96p) ISBN 978-0-691-14609-6 cloth $16 ISBN 978-0-691-14610-2 paper Graber is one of the most interesting, slippery and philosophical new poets to come along in a while. This, her second...

La Vita Nuova.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 28, 2010... La Vita Nuova Dante Alighieri, trans, from the Italian by David Slavitt. Harvard Univ., $18.95 (156p) ISBN 978-0-674-05093-8 Before he wrote the Inferno and the Paradiso, Dante Alighieri wrote some of the world's most famous sonnets,...

The Art of Description: World into Word.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 28, 2010... * The Art of Description: World into Word Mark Doty. Graywolf, $12 (152p) ISSN 978-1-55597-563-0 "To use words at all is to use them figuratively," says Doty in his writing guide, part of Graywolf's "The Art of..." series. As both a...

A Tonalist.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 28, 2010... A Tonalist Laura Moriarty. Nightboat (UPNE, dist.), $14.95 (150p) ISBN 978-0-9822645-6-0 The California Tonalist painters of the early 20th century were arguably the first modern artists to capture West Coast light and space. Moriarty's...

Wings Without Birds.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 28, 2010... Wings Without Birds Brian Henry. Salt (Ingram, dist.), $15.95 (80p) ISBN 978-1-84471748-4 The prolific and versatile Henry (Quarantine) comes home, quite literally, in this new collection, whose stand-alone poems address the frustrations...

Winter's Journey.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 28, 2010... Winter's Journey Stephen Dobyns. Copper Canyon (Consortium, dist.), $15 (80p) ISBN 978-1-55659-305-8 Dobyns is well known for his mystery novels, and, in poetry circles, for talky, curmudgeonly poems that can be funny, deeply cynical, and...

Knock Knock.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 28, 2010... Knock Knock Heather Hartley. Carnegie Mellon, $15.95 (80p) ISBN 978-088-74851-9-0 Hartley's first book is full of appetite and steeped in European culture--it will make you want to book a one-way ticket to Paris or Naples. Hartley is...

Roman Games.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 28, 2010... Roman Games Bruce Macbain. Poisoned Pen, $24.95 (274p) ISBN 978-1-59058-775-1; $14.95 paper ISBN 978-1-59058-777-5 Pliny the Younger turns sleuth in Macbain's less than successful debut, a whodunit set during the turbulent reign of the...

Danse Macabre.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 28, 2010... Danse Macabre Gerald Elias. Minotaur, $24.99 (304p) ISBN 978-0-312-54189-7 The murder of a virtuoso violinist and a death sentence for a possibly innocent man launch Elias's deft follow-up to Devil's Trill (2009). Blind and cranky Daniel...

Entanglement.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 28, 2010... * Entanglement Zygmunt Miloszewski, trans, from the Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones. Bitter Lemon, $14.95 paper (254p) ISBN 978-1-904738-44-2 Miloszewski takes an engaging look at modern Polish society in this stellar first in a new...

The Hanging Tree: A Starvation Lake Mystery.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 28, 2010... The Hanging Tree: A Starvation Lake Mystery Bryan Gruley. Touchstone, $15 paper (336p) ISBN 978-1-4165-6364-8 When the body of Gracie McBride is discovered hanging in a tree on the outskirts of Starvation Lake, Mich., journalist Gus...

Roast Mortem.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 28, 2010... Roast Mortem Cleo Coyle. Berkley Prime Crime, $24.95 (368p) ISBN 978-0-425-23459-4 The pseudonymous Coyle's strong 11th coffeehouse mystery (after 2009's Holiday Grind) pays tribute to New York City firefighters. Clare Cosi, the head...

Dead in the Dregs: A Babe Stern Mystery.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 28, 2010... Dead in the Dregs: A Babe Stern Mystery Peter Lewis. Counterpoint (PGW, dist.), $25 (288p) ISBN 9784-58243-610-4; $14.95 paper ISBN 978-1-58243-548-0 Restaurateur and wine connoisseur Lewis brings his insider's expertise to this...

The Man with the Baltic Stare: An inspector O Novel.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 28, 2010... * The Man with the Baltic Stare: An inspector O Novel James Church. Minotaur, $24.99 (288p) ISBN 978-0-312-37292-7 Church, the pseudonym of a former U.S. intelligence officer with many years experience in Asia, audaciously sets his fourth...

A Bad Day's Work: A Lilly Hawkins Mystery.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 28, 2010... A Bad Day's Work: A Lilly Hawkins Mystery Nora McFarland. Touchstone, $14.99 paper (288p) ISBN 978-1-4391-5548-8 McFarland's less than assured debut introduces TV camerawoman Lilly Hawkins, who knows her job at KJAY in Bakersfield, Calif.,...