Publishers Weekly articles from May 1996

Publishers Weekly archives from May 1996

Charges wipe out profits at major book chains. (four largest bookstore chains in the US report a combined operating loss of $217 million for fiscal 1996)(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... Total loss of $217 million on $4.2 billion revenues EXTRAORDINARY charges related to everything from changes in accounting to goodwill provisions for closing down under-performing stores caused the nation's four largest bookstore chains to...

Taylors to close; Planet Music leaves Houston. (Taylors Bookstores is closing its last three stores in Jun 1996, Borders Inc is closing its two Planet Music stores in Houston, TX)(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... TAYLORS BOOKSTORES, which once operated 10 stores in and around Dallas, Tex., is closing its last three stores in June. Any remaining financial assets and about 30 staff members are being transferred to Taylors' affiliated technical-books...

Harrison, retiring from Random, reflects on children's market. (Random House chairman Gerald Harrison)
May 27, 1996... GERALD HARRISON, who is retiring June 1 as chairman of the Random House juvenile and merchandise group, said the biggest change in children's publishing he has seen in his 26 years at the company is the "sheer size of the market." Growth both...

DK to start own sales force. (DK Publishing to end its six-year sales and distribution contract with Houghton-Mifflin as of Dec 31, 1996)(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... EFFECTIVE DECEMBER 31, 1996, DK Publishing will establish its own sales force, thereby ending lts six.year sales and distribution agreement with Houghton Mifflin. John Sargent, CEO of DK Publishing, said he hopes to hire a person within the...

Court ruling awaited on Communications Decency Act.
May 27, 1996... AFTER WEEKS OF testimony before a panel of three federal judges in Philadelphia, the coalition of publishers, free speech activists and Internet users made closing arguments in their suit to overturn the indecency provisions in the...

S&S forms new illustrated books imprint. (Simon and Schuster forms new illustrated books division, Simon and Schuster Editions)(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... SIMON & SCHUSTER, which tends to shun the formation of imprints, has made an exception with the creation of Simon & Schuster Editions. The new imprint, housed within the S&S.trade division, will focus on publishing illustrated books, with its...

Sendak signs multiple media deal with Sony.(Maurice Sendak signs to work on three Sony Corp. division projects for films, merchandising and interactive entertainment)(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... THE NOTION OF AUTHOR as multimedia entrepreneur continues to gain adherents. The latest to broaden his business base is Maurice Sendak, who has signed an agreement with Sony Corporation of America to develop projects for three of its groups....

Harlequin set to improve lagging unit sales.(plans advertising campaign)(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... ALTHOUGH SALES AT Harlequin rose 2% in 1995, to C$484.8 million (News, March 18), unit sales were down 6.3% to 176.5 million. Improving unit sales is a top priority for management, Harlequin parent company Torstar said in its annual report....

NBN sales top $19 million in 1995.(National Book Network)(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... TRIMMING ITS ROSTER to about 60 publishers, switching from commissioned reps to an in-house sales force and focusing on specific categories helped National Book Network boost sales 29% to $19.1 million in 1995. NBN is now concentrating on such...

Lacy quits as head of Ingram Micro. (Linwood Lacy)(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... LINWOOD (Chip) Lacy is departing as head of Ingram Micro over what both he and Ingram Industries chairman Martha Ingram called "irreconcilable differences" about the approach to the company's pending public stock offering. Lacy, who had been...

Lomax wins U.K.'s $37K NCR award.(Eric Lomax wins NCR Book Award)(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... IT TOOK 77-YEAR-OLD Eric Lomax nearly 50 years to write The Railway Man (Cape/Norton), this year's winner of the NCR Book Award, Britain's major nonfiction prize. Lomax was awarded 25,000 pounds ($37,500) in addition to the 2,500 pounds ($3750)...

Hard-selling the East - as only Jovan Milenkovic can do it.(Eastern European literary agent)
May 27, 1996... FEW OVERSEAS AGENTS CAN produce more impressive client lists. Serbian-born Jovan Milenkovic is the East European connection for logos as prestigious as Knopf, as big as HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster, for Bantam and Pocket and Ballantine,...

Behind the bestsellers.
May 27, 1996... THE RUNAWAY AUTHOR With John Grisham, the issue was never whether he would land at #1 after his first week on sale with The Runaway fury; the question was what the rate of sale would be for his latest blockbuster. And the results are in: the...

'Twister' spawns tornado of titles. (screenplay of popular film is published and other books about tornadoes are published)(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... A Crichton screenplay, but, alas, no novel FROM THE BEGINNING, the subject seemed to me inherently visual, and therefore should be a script, not a book." In that introduction to his screenplay Twister, just published by Ballantine, Michael...

Random House's buying spree. (publisher signs book contracts with popular authors and celebrities)(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... WHEN EXECUTIVE EDITOR Kate Medina of Random House says, "When good writers become available, we're always interested," it might be the understatement of the year. Since February the publisher has gone on something of a buying spree, signing a...

Art by Orson: a publishing find. (sketchbook with drawings by Orson Welles to be published in 1996)(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... EACH YEAR in late spring the French resort of St. Tropez celebrates "Les Bravades," a festival commemorating its patron saint and protector. In 1956 Orson Welles witnessed the pageantry and created a sketchbook of drawings capturing it. That...

Feeding the tube. (PBS acquired rights to Neil Baldwin's biography 'Man Ray: American Artist;' HBO optioned 'White Rabbit;' Citadel optioned 'Angel' and 'With This Ring')(Rights)(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... TV, fighting to hold its own against competing attractions, should find ammunition in some of the books lined up for the coming season. From Neil Baldwin, executive director of the National Book Foundation, The American Masters Series, seen...

Four from small house. (New Horizon Press has sold the television rights to four of its books including 'Chameleon' and 'Chased')(Rights)(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... Reinhold's book is one of four placed for television by New Horizon Press, which publishes 12 titles a year, all nonfiction. Another is Chameleon by Dorothy Proctor and Fred Rosen, about Proctor's conversion from street criminal to...

Wrapping it up. (details about several books that are being optioned for television production are given)(Rights)(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... An entire column could be devoted to books in prospect for TV. A few more items: Hearst has taken an option on Elena of the Stars by C.P. Rosenthal (Wyatt/St. Martin's), described as a lyrical story of a young girl, her grandfather and a...

Shrinking Satan. (TriStar optioned the rights to Andrew Neiderman's book 'The Dark' before it was published by Pocket Books)(Rights)(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... Another publishing contract has been preceded by a film deal. Andrew Neiderman showed the manuscript of The Dark to producer Andrew Gaty, who took it to Deric Washburn, screenwriter on The Deer Hunter. Together, they pitched the story to the...

QVC pitches for books: already successful with cookbooks, the cable home-shopping network aims to expand its printed-word franchise.(Book Selling)
May 27, 1996... Already successful with cookbooks, the cable home-shopping network aims to expand its printed-word franchise IT WAS THE KIND of appearance QVC hopes to stage much more often in the future. On Sunday, May 5, Senator Bill Bradley (D.-N.J.),...

Diane's Books expands. (the Greenwich, CT, bookstore expanded from 1,000 to 1,600 sq. ft. on Mar 1, 1996; it was the second expansion in 5 1/2 years)(Book Selling)(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... FOR THE SECOND TIME in its five and a half years, Diane's Books of Greenwich (Conn.) has taken over the store next door. On March 1, the store officially gained 600 square feet, bringing the total to 1600. The first expansion, in 1993, took the...

A Barnes & Noble to grow in Brooklyn. (the bookstore chain plans to open a superstore in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, N.Y.)(Book Selling)(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... BARNES & NOBLE, the national bookstore chain with roots in Manhattan, is planning to open only its second superstore in one of the other four boroughs of New York City (the first was in Queens). The store will be in a new building in Brooklyn's...

The pick of the ABA: larger than ever, the sidelines section is only one spot for finding new products. (American Booksellers Association trade show)
May 27, 1996... Larger than ever, the sidelines section is only one spot for finding new products THE GOOD AND BAD NEWS this year for sidelines at ABA is the section's location: we're in the better of the two exhibition halls, but in the worst space in that...

Checking out ABA's expanded religion scene. (1996 American Booksellers Association trade show)
May 27, 1996... More exhibitors in both East and North Halls, plus panels, lectures, etc. LAST YEAR MARKED A milestone for religion at ABA with the creation of the Religious/Spirituality/Inspirational section. An early sell-out affirmed the wisdom of that...

Words, not planes, transport some voyagers.(Category Closeup: Travel)
May 27, 1996... Call it what you will--armchair travel, travel literature, literary travel, travelogue--booksellers are extremely pleased with how well this genre is selling. These days, it seems that a guidebook is not enough for the modern traveler; and for...

Selected writings for armchair journeys.(Category Closeup: Travel)(Bibliography)
May 27, 1996... As noted in the preceding article, armchair travel can be a difficult genre to pinpoint: opinions differ not only about its definition, but about its parameters as well. Following are a few of this year's titles that demonstrate the genre's...

Reference materials take on new directions. (travel reference guides) (includes article on publishers' marketing strategies)(Category Closeup: Travel)
May 27, 1996... The world of maps, atlases and language guides must keep pace with today's savvy travelers There is no frigate like a book," said homebody Emily Dickinson, "to take us lands away." Judging from publishers' lists of late and the sheer number...

James Carroll: a memoir of fathers and sons.(Interview)
May 27, 1996... FOR CLOSE TO two hours one morning midway through Holy Week, the Boston writer James Carroll tells PW of the uncommon circumstances that transformed him from a politically concerned Catholic priest during the 1960s into the bestselling author...

The Children of Henry VIII.(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... Alison Weir. Ballantine, $25 (400p) ISBN 0-345-39118-7 The tragedy of four accidental rivals to a throne, three of them children--by different mothers--of a much-married despot, seems to lose none of its drama by frequent retelling. Along...

Sahara Unveiled: A Journey Across the Desert.(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... William Langewiesche. Pantheon, $24 (320p) ISBN 0-679-42982-4 Besides evoking the Sahara's power, majesty, emptiness, heat, beauty and terrors and describing its ecology and meteorology, Langewiesche (Cutting for Sign) adds details that may...

Goin' to the Chapel: Dreams of Love, Realities of Marriage.(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... Charlotte Mayerson. Basic, $20 (208p) ISBN 0-465-04180-9 Writer and editor Mayerson here explores the differences between ideas about what marriage will be like and the real experiences of it as described by the 100 women she interviewed for...

Quest for Perfection: The Drive to Breed Better Human Beings.(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... Gina Maranto. Scribner, $25 (316p) ISBN 0-684-80029-2 In a provocative, richly informative report, freelance science writer Maranto combines a tough-minded, unsentimental look at the infertility industry with a historical survey of attempts...

Walking on Walnuts.(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... Nancy Ring. Bantam, $21.95 (352p) ISBN 0-553-09664-8 Painter/pastry chef Ring establishes herself as a talented writer in her memoir of the miseries she has endured in Manhattan's (anonymous) restaurant kitchens, juxtaposed against the trials...

Fascism: A History.(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... Roger Eatwell. Viking, $32.95 (432p) ISBN 0-713-99147-X Eatwell is an astute observer of fascism's insidious appeal to workers and intellectuals alike. Far from being a mere opportunistic tool of reaction or a nihilistic movement lacking a...

Vertigo: A Memoir.(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... Louise DeSalvo. Dutton, $22.95 (288p) ISBN 0-525-93908-3 DeSalvo (Conceived with Malice) frankly, and wisely, states that her memories of how she grew from a working-class, Italian American child in Hoboken to become a Virginia WooIf scholar...

The Dog with the Chip in His Neck: Essays from NPR and Elsewhere.(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... Essays from NPR and Elsewhere Andrei Codrescu. St. Martin's, $22.95 (288p) ISBN 0-312-14316-8 The pieces in this latest collection from Codrescu, writer (The Muse Is Always Half-Dressed in New Orleans) and commentator for National Public...

Orion's Legacy: A Cultural History of Man as Hunter.(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... A Cultural History of Man as Hunter Charles Bergman. Dutton, $25.95 (368p) ISBN 0-525-93851-6 Hunting, "one of the chief defining images of manhood," shapes the modern male psyche, justifying images of masculinity biologically rooted in...

The Chain Gang: One Newspaper vs. the Gannett Empire.(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... Richard McCord. Univ. of Missouri, $24.95 (304p) ISBN 0-8262-1064-3 McCord has battled the Gannett newspaper giant twice and lived to tell about it in this fascinating book. Frustrated with big-city life, McCord and his then-wife light out...

William Glackens.(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... William H. Gerdts, with an essay by Jorge H. Santis. Abbeville, $85 (288p) ISBN 1-55859-868-5 Glackens (1870-1938) was a leading American impressionist, a great realist figurative painter and a witty chronicler of urban life; all these...

The Immigration Mystique: America's False Conscience.(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... Chilton Williamson Jr. Basic, $22 (224p) ISBN 0-465-03286-9 An "immigration mystique" purveyed since the pre-WWI era by politicians of both parties promotes high-sounding but flawed justifications for large-scale immigration to our shores,...

Turmoil to Turning Points: Building Hope for Children in Crisis Placements.(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... Richard Kagan. Norton, $30 (256p) ISBN 0-393-70218-9 Rebecca, nine years old, is terrified of being sent home from a state-run hospital to the father who has repeatedly abused her sexually. Three-year-old Robbie was placed in a foster home...

The Book of the Spider.(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... Paul Hillyard. Random, $24 (208p) ISBN 0-679-40881-9 Like a cunningly designed web, Hillyard's survey and appreciation of the world's most despised, yet most beloved, creepycrawlies will ensnare readers from arachnophobes to arachnophiles....

Charles Rennie Mackintosh.(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... Edited by Wendy Kaplan. Abbeville, $60 (384p) ISBN 1-55859-791-3 The essays and illustrations in this handsome volume, published in conjunction with an international retrospective, detail all aspects of Mackintosh's (1868-1928) art. Part of...

Reflections of a radical moderate.(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... Elliott Richardson. Pantheon, $24 (304p) ISBN 0-679-42820-8 A self-described centrist, Richardson, with a long career in public service, including a stint as Nixon's attorney general, argues here that the moderate tradition combined with...

In My Father's Garden: A Daughter's Search for a Spiritual Life.(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... Kim Chernin. Algonquin, $17.95 (196p) ISBN 1-56512-100-7 For most of her life, Chernin (Crossing the Border, 1995), a psychoanalyst now in her mid-50s, has considered herself her "mother's daughter--stormy, revolutionary." But, she declares...

Fire on Earth: In Search of the Doomsday Asteroid.(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... John and Mary Gribbin. St. Martin's, $23.95 (256p) ISBN 0-312-14335-4 A crater discovered in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula in 1978, and intensively investigated in 1990, may provide the "smoking gun" confirming that the extinction of the...

Against the Tide: An Intellectual History of Free Trade.(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... Douglas A. Irwin. Princeton Univ., $29.95 (274p) ISBN 0-691-01138-9 Few economic debates have raised more emotion over the last two centuries than that between the champions of free trade and the advocates of protectionism. Irwin chronicles...

Fireships.(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... David Drake. Ace, $19.95 (336p) ISBN 0-441-00329-X In the far future, the human inhabitants of Venus are menaced by a tyrannical government on Earth. Much as Elizabethan England was menaced bv Spain, in fact, for this novel concludes a trilogy...

The Home Team.(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... RuthAnn and Rebecca Lobo. Kodansha (FSG, dist.), $19 (192p) ISBN 1-56836-140-8 RuthAnn played basketball in college, became a teacher, married history teacher Dennis Lobo and taught her three children that "they could be anything they...

Kinds of Minds: Toward an Understanding of Consciousness.(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... Daniel C. Dennett. Basic, $20 (192p) ISBN 0-465-07350-6 Dennett (Darwin's Dangerous Idea), director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University, avers that language is the "slingshot" that has "launched [humans] far beyond all...

Science on Trial: The Clash of Medical Evidence and the Law in the Breast Implant Case.(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... Marcia Angell, M.D. Norton, $27.50 (288p) ISBN 0-393-03973-0 Angell, executive editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, explores here a preposterous situation: an industrial giant, Dow Corning, forced into Chapter 11 bankruptcy by...

Lika Mutal.(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... Photography by David Finn, text by Gabriella De Ferrari and Dena Merriam. Abrams, $85 (188p) ISBN 0-8109-6320-5 Born in Holland in 1939, Mutal moved to South America in 1964, studied sculpture in Peru and began to carve powerful abstractions...

In the Weather of the Heart: A Memoir of a Shattered Marriage and a Reckoning with Recovery.(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... Valerie Monroe. Doubleday, $22.50 (240p) ISBN 0-385-47103-3 In 1981, Monroe, a freelance writer, married talented designer Keith, a commitment she was more eager to make than he was. Four years later, Keith's twin brother, Brian, a cocaine...

The Contemporary Print: From Pre-Pop to Postmodern.(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... Susan Tallman. Thames & Hudson, $50 (304p) ISBN 0-500-23684-4 Concentrating on North America and Europe, Tallman, who has written extensively on contemporary art, surveys the history of printmaking from the revival that began in the late 1950s...

The Legacy of Tiananmen: China in Disarray.(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... James Miles. Univ. of Michigan, $29.95 (380p) ISBN 0-472-10731-3 Miles spent eight years in Beijing, arriving in 1986 with UPI and staying on as the bureau chief of the BBC. It has been a tenure defined by the decline of the old guard and by...

The Pleasure Police.(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... David Shaw. Doubleday, $23 (320p) ISBN 0-385-47568-3 If you like to drink, eat, smoke and have sex without the "pleasure police" intruding on your fun, this is the book for you. In a reasoned and provocative look at America's new...

A Boy Named Phyllis: A Suburban Memoir.(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... Frank DeCaro. Viking, $22.95 (224p) ISBN 0-670-86718-7 Peppered with one-liners and pop-cultural references ranging from a mention of the TV series H.R. Pufnstuf to one of the film The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, DeCaro's...

The Fire Inside: Firefighters Talk about Their Lives.(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... Steve Delsohn. HarperCollins, $24 (288p) ISBN 0-06-017665-2 Firefighters around the country, interviewed by Delsohn, coauthor of Out of Bounds, here present their stories in their own words. The author takes us through fire academies with the...

Please Kill Me: The Uncensored History of Punk.(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain. Grove, $23 (383p) ISBN 0-8021-1588-8 As its sensationalist title suggests, this stresses the sex, drugs, morbidity and celebrity culture of punk at the expense of the music. Starting out with the electroshock...

A New Name for Peace: International Environmentalism, Sustainable Development, and Democracy.(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... Philip Shabecoff. Univ. Press of New England, $24.95 (320p) ISBN 0-87451-688-9 The new name for peace is Pax Gaia and it is predicated on the need for cooperation to preserve shared air, water and resources. In 1990, while finishing his...

Inside Star Trek.(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... Herbert E Solow and Robert H. Justman. Pocket, $30 (512p) ISBN 0-671-89628-8 As told by Solow, Star Treks co-producer, and Justman, the executive in charge of production, this is arguably the definitive history of the TV show. After Solow...

Nightline: History in the Making and the Making of Television.(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... Ted Koppel and Kyle Gibson. Times Books, $25 (432p) ISBN 0-8129-2478-9 When the Iranians occupied the American embassy in Tehran in November 1979, ABC News went on the air every night with a program called America Held Hostage. For years ABC...

Hit and Run: How Jon Peters and Peter Guber Took Sony for a Ride in Hollywood.(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... Nancy Griffin and Kim Masters. Simon & Schuster, $25 (416p) ISBN 0-684-80931-1 This is basically the story of two boys who never grew up, but ended up running Sony-owned Columbia Pictures into the ground. Peters, whom the Los Angeles Times...

The Joy of Keeping Score: How Scoring the GAme Has Influenced and Enhanced the History of Baseball.(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... Paul Dickson. Walker, $17.95 (160p) ISBN 0-8027-1307-6 Scorekeeping in baseball was inaugurated nationally in 1863 by Henry Chadwick, who also invented the box score. Dickson (Baseball's Greatest Quotations) here teaches the rudiments of...

Hard Left: Straight Talk About the Wrongs of the Right.(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... Tavis Smiley. Anchor, $17.95 ISBN 0-385-48404-6 Smiley, a liberal black TV and nationally syndicated radio commentator, comes out swinging at the Republicans and their "Contract on America" in this partisan, thoughtful political statement....

Sacrament.(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... Clive Barker. HarperCollins, $25 (464p) ISBN 0-06-017949-X A giant of horror strides toward mainstream fiction in this awesome but skewed novel. Not that Barker (Everville, etc.) has forsaken the fantastic and outre; but here, the premier...

The Last Time I Saw Mother.(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... Arlene l. Chai. Fawcett Columbine, $21 (432p) ISBN 0-449-91068-7 The central story in this interesting but uneven debut novel by Filipina author Chai concerns a woman who discovers the truth about her parentage. Caridad, a Filipino woman...

Dr. Neruda's Cure for Evil.(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... Ralael Yglesias. warner, $24.95(704p) ISBN 0-446-52005-5 Yglesias (Fearless; Only Children) shows great respect for the attention span of readers in an ambitious therapeutic morality tale that explores the banality of evil. In the first of...

1812.(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... David Nevin. Forge, $24.95 (444p) ISBN 0-312-85510-9 Ten bestselling authors have contributed blurbs to Nevin's second novel (after the bestselling Dream West, 1983)--among them fellow historical novelists Gary Jennings, James Michener and...

Hope's Cadillac.(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... Patricia Page. Norton, $25 (264p) ISBN 0-393-03974-9 The plot of Page's first novel is predictable: woman "has" to marry at 18; husband tires of her aimlessness; he leaves for another woman; he gets custody of the kids on trumped-up grounds;...

Abandoned Heart.(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... Richard Parrish. Dutton, $23.95 (368p) ISBN 0-525-94161-4 At first, it looks like the system is working, when 16-year-old former junkie Donna Alvarez becomes foster child to Kate O'Dwyer, who has recently relocated to Scottsdale, Ariz., with...

Paper Wings.(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... Marly Swick. HarperCollins, $21 (288p) ISBN 0-06-017434-X Set against the background of the Kennedy years, Swick's haunting first novel captures the elusive emotional interplay between mothers and daughters and the dynamics of a family slowly...

Here, Kitty, Kitty.(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... Winifred Elze. St. Martin's/Wyatt, $21.95 (288p) ISBN 0-312-14353-2 A plucky cat and her human companions stumble upon some Pleistocene Era beasties in Elze's clever, entertaining second novel (after The Changeling Garden), in which woolly...

This Nervous Breakdown Is Driving Me Crazy.(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... Annie Reiner. Dove, $19.95 (192p) ISBN 0-7871-0707-7 Reiner's (The Smallest Mouse in Town) first book for adults is a cleverly conceived collection of absurdist tales, in which characters find themselves suddenly plunged into fantastic,...

Malice Prepense.(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... Kate Wilhelm. St. Martin's, $24.95 (368p) ISBN 0-312-14364-8 Wilhelm doesn't fool around: she writes clean, clear prose about real people in sometimes loopy legal situations. Returning from The Best Defense (1994), Eugene, Ore., lawyer...

What's It All About?: A Novel of Life, Love, and Key Lime Pie.(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... William Van Wert. Simon & Schuster, $20 (240p) ISBN 0-684-81872-8 Virtually plotless, this deliberately folksy novel, with its compact 5 1/2 x 6 1/2 format, aspires to be a chapbook of wizened aphorisms and homey truths. Hiram Walker, 79,...

East Justice.(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... Melanie Braverman. Permanent, $22 (133p) ISBN 1-877946-72-9 As if precisely wielding a tiny size-12 needle, Braverman has stitched a densely patterned coming-of-age quilt. In an old house on five unmowed Iowa acres, 30ish narrator Grace...

Simple Simon.(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... Ryne Douglas Pearson. Morrow, $24 (288p) ISBN 0-688-14296-6 A Cray computer dedicated to generating thrillers couldn't come up with a slicker product than the one Pearson (Capitol Punishment) has fashioned here. Every element seems calculated...

A Gathering of Saints.(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... Christopher Hyde. Pocket, $24 (432p) ISBN 0-671-87580-9 A maniacal serial killer known as Queer Jack stalks London during the dark days of the Blitz, engaging the pursuit not only of Scotland Yard but of a highly placed German spy known as...

The Darkening Leaf.(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... Caroline Stickland. St. Martin's, $21.95 (288p) ISBN 0-312-14308-7 Fans of Stickland's four earlier novels--one of which, The Standing Hills (1986), was nominated for several historical fiction awards--will be mesmerized by her new gothic...

In the Flesh.(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... Ane Schmidt, trans. by Anne Born. Overlook (Penguin USA, dist.), $17.95 (120p) ISBN 0-87951-655-0 Immersing herself in French literature, the narrator of this portentous bit of would-be erotica complains: "I can see the art in it all right,...

Bad Intensions.
May 27, 1996... Norman Partridge, introduction by Joe R. Lansdale. Subterranean (P.O. Box 190106, Burton, Mich., 48519; 810-230-8547), $40 (300p) ISBN 0-9649800-0-X The 15 stories of horror and dark suspense in Patridge's second collection (after Slippin'...

Dirty Bird Blues.(Brief Article)
May 27, 1996... Clarence Major. Mercury (Consortium, dist.), $21.95 (256p) ISBN 1-56279-083-8 In postwar Chicago, an African American man crawls in through a stranger's window from the fire escape, in the process getting a belly full of buckshot. But the...