Publishers Weekly articles from November 1999

Publishers Weekly archives from November 1999

French Plan to Sell Grolier.(Lagardere Groupe S.A. to sell Grolier Inc.)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... Deal for American property may come by end of year FRANCE'S LAGARDERE GROUP confirms that its prime American property, Grolier Inc., is up for sale. The story was first reported by a subscription bulletin, La Lettre de l'Expansion, which...

September Store Sales Fall 3%.(bookstore sales)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
November 29, 1999... Bookstore sales fell 2.8% in September to $1.2 billion, according to preliminary estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau. The September decline follows a 3.3% drop in bookstore sales in August. For the first nine months of the year, bookstore...

Galassi Named FSG Publisher.(Jonathan Galassi; Farrar, Straus & Giroux)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... Jonathan Galassi, who joined Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 1986, has been named publisher of the house, taking over one of the roles held by Roger Straus, who will remain active in his remaining dual roles as president and CEO. Galassi was...

ABA Adds Chains' Subsidiaries to Lawsuit.(American Booksellers Association)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... THE JUDGE OVERSEEING the American Booksellers Association antitrust lawsuit against Borders and Barnes & Noble has granted a request by the ABA to file an amended complaint that will include both companies' online and mail-order subsidiaries....

Scholastic Files Suit in Harry Potter Copyright Dispute.(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... IN AN EFFORT TO PROTECT its lucrative Harry Potter franchise, Scholastic filed a lawsuit last week against author Nancy Stouffer, who claims that J.K. Rowling's Potter titles infringe on her copyrights and trademark. The Scholastic suit, also...

Sales Jump, but Online Efforts Result in Loss.(Borders Group financial results)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
November 29, 1999... TOTAL REVENUES AT Borders Group rose 17.5% to $656.3 million for the third quarter ended October 24. The sales gain includes a 24.5% jump in superstore sales to $434.9 million, a 5.2% increase in sales at Walden to $197 million and a 193%...

New Canadian Wholesaler Given Green Light by Competition Bureau.(Pegasus Wholesale Inc)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... Pegasus Wholesale Inc., Canada's newest national wholesaler and distributor, which is 82% owned by Chapters Inc., has announced that Industry Canada's Corn petition Bureau has confirmed that its creation does not contravene the Competition...

STM Publishers Debut DOI Linking Service.(STM Development Co.)(Digital Object Identifier)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... IN THE LATEST STEP toward the likely future of scholarly electronic publishing, 12 academic publishers in conjunction with the International Digital Object Identifier foundation have joined together to launch an online reference linking...

Menne to Ullstein.(Lothar Menne)(Ullstein Verlag)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... Lothar Menne, a leading buyer of English-language rights for Germany's Heyne, then for Hoffmann & Campe in Hamburg, and most recently for Heyne again, has been appointed publisher of Ullstein Verlag in Munich and Berlin. He joins a rapidly...

Blue Mountain Arts Makes Card Purchase.(Paper Expeditions)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... BLUE MOUNTAIN ARTS Publishing Co. has acquired Paper Expeditions, a Utah-based card company that will add two new card lines, Elephantz and Lady-Bugs, to Blue Mountain, as well as three new stationery lines. Blue Mountain will relaunch the...

Direct Marketing Guru: Publishers Must Use Web to Find New Markets.(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... THE PUBLISHING CONSULTING FIRM Market Partners International addressed ways publishers should use the new kinds of marketing in its second Publishing Trends conference, "Publishing Direct: Connecting to the Consumer," last week in New York...

Golden Books Gets Help from Pokemon.(Golden Books Family Entertainment Inc. financial results)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... GOLDEN BOOKS REPORTED that total revenues fell 18.5% in the quarter ended September 25, to $42.4 million, although the company trimmed its net loss to $9.3 million from $18.8 million in last year's third quarter. Sales in its book group fell...

Sales, Losses Increase at Audiohighway.(audiohighway.com)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... AUDIOHIGHWAY.COM REPORTED that sales jumped by nearly 700% in the third quarter ended September 30, hitting $613,000. The net loss in the period rose to $2.8 million from $2.3 million. Company president Nathan Schuloff noted that a more...

Harcourt Forms Four Groups.(Harcourt General Inc.)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... HARCOURT GENERAL has restructured its Harcourt Inc. publishing subsidiary, creating fourth operating group. Under the reorganization, Harcourt has divided its education groups into two units--K-12 Education and Higher Education--and renamed...

Augsburg Cuts Staff by 10%.(Augsburg Fortress)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... AUGSBURG FORTRESS, the publishing house of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), laid off 34 employees, or about 10% of its staff, earlier this month as part of its effort to cut $3 million in annual operating expenses. In...

Hats as Statement.(African-American photography book)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... That's what African-American photographer Michael Cunningham and journalist Craig Marberry set out to explore in Crowns: Portraits of Black Women in Church Hats, which, very unusually for a photo-essay book, was the subject of a recent...

More Beautiful Minds.(Sylvia Nasar's new book)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... A book called Beautiful Mind, a brilliant, harrowing account of the madness that descended upon John Forbes Nash, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, won a National Book Critics Circle award and glowing reviews last year. Now its author, former...

Dinosaur Time-Again.(British Broadcasting Company's new dinosaur book)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... A spectacular new documentary called Walking with Dinosaurs was shown by the BBC to wide acclaim in England last month, and will be repeated here on the Discovery Channel next April. Meanwhile, as you might expect, a series of books will be...

Day Trader Chuckles.(Andy Borwitz's new book)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... The recent phenomenon of day trading by online geeks has been taken pretty seriously so far-too seriously for the irreverently inclined Andy Borwitz, a screenwriter and sometime New Yorker contributor, who recently showed some notes for a...

Change of Pace.(Denis Hamill's new book)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... It's sometimes a good idea for a writer to shift gears, and that's what Denis Hamill has done in a new book due out from Pocket Books next spring. The tough journalist, who usually pens dark thrillers, has turned to a romance set in Ireland...

Good Times Bring Growth for Clarkson Potter.(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... A STRONG ECONOMY USUALLY means good times for illustrated book publishers, and that has been the case for Clarkson Potter, the lifestyle imprint of the Crown Publishing Group. "We're hoping for a record year," Lauren Shakely, senior v-p and...

Black Web Site Supports Titles With Discussion.(African American Literature Book Club)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... If you're a writer, reader or book marketer looking for a Web site that attracts a wide demographic of black readers, then point your browser to the African American Literature Book Club (www.aalbc.com) for a passionate discussion of books by...

Kot Joins Viking.(Rick Kot)(Viking Penguin)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... RICK KOT, who most recently served as executive editor at Little, Brown, will join Viking Penguin in a similar position after the first of the year. He will report to Susan Petersen Kennedy and Glare Ferraro, chairman and president,...

Shambhala Moves to Mainstream.(Shambhala Publications Inc.)(Brief Article)(Company Profile)
November 29, 1999... SHAMBHALA PUBLICATIONS, one of the largest publishers of Buddhist books in the West, is celebrating its 30th birthday with growing sales--along with plans to broaden the list and launch a series of millennial conferences that will debut in...

Religion Publishers Urged to Build Brand Identity.(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... THE EVANGELICAL CHRISTIAN Publishers Association held its annual Fall Seminar November 6--10 in Rancho Mirage, Calif. According to Doug Ross, CEO and president of ECPA, the seminar was "the largest we have ever had and certainly the most...

'PW' Staff Changes.(Publishers Weekly)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... PUBLISHERS WEEKLY has some changes to announce in the Forecasts department, and a new editor for its weekly Interviews feature. In view of the imminent departure of Paul Gediman, Sarah F. Gold has joined the magazine as an editor in...

Frank Taylor Dead at 83.(Brief Article)(Obituary)
November 29, 1999... FRANK E. TAYLOR, whose long publishing career included posts, often senior ones, at Reynal & Hitchcock, Random House, Dell, Avon and McGraw-Hill, died in Key West, Fla., November 16 after a long battle with cancer. He was 83. Taylor...

A Topping Timeline.(Michael Crichton's Timeline)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... Michael Crichton's latest bestseller, Timeline, hits the top of the PW chart after just a few days on sale. Knopf's first printing was 1.5 million copies. On most other national lists, it takes the #3 or #4 slot, right after the...

Recipes for Success.(cookbooks`)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... Emeril, Julia and Jacques are all stirring up the numbers right below the top 15 nonfiction hardcover sellers, boding very well for even bigger sales during the holiday rush. The three best selling chefs--we all know them by their first...

The Hinges of Fortune.(good sales for 'Desire of the Everlasting Hills: The World Before and After Jesus')(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... Thomas Cahill's third book in his Hinges of History series, Desire of the Everlasting Hills: The World Before and After Jesus, seems to be following in the bestselling footsteps of How the Irish Saved Civilization and The Gifts of the Jews....

A Father's Pride.(publication of 'Galileo's Daughter')(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... Dava Sobel scores another hit for Walker & Co. with Galileo's Daughter. Rave reviews, including a starred one in PW, got the buzz going so quickly that the publisher jumped pub date by three weeks. Walker has 135,600 copies in print after...

Internationally Speaking.(international best-sellers)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... A quick look at current bestseller charts outside the U.S. reveals that Isabel Allende's Daughter of Fortune is among the top 10 in more countries than any other book, fiction or notification. It is the #1 bestseller in Germany and Italy, #2...

No Mystery to Laura Lippman's Leap.(hardcover editions planned for Lippman's mysteries)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... The award-winner will get first hardcover release with upcoming fifth book In her October 26 review of Laura Lippman's new novel, In Big Trouble, the Village Voice's Elizabeth Pincus said, "There's a pulpy little thrill in finding the...

te Neues Rushes Out Buena Vista Social Club Appreciation.(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... Tiny New York-based art book publisher te Neues is tagging onto the Cuban music revival prompted by the hit documentary film Buena Vista Social Club. It has just signed up and will crash-release for March a $24.95 horizontal-format...

Lyons Roars with WWII/Adventure Reprints.(Lyons Press publishes repirnts of 'We Die Alone' and other World War II novels)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... Browsing on Broadway one day, Lyons Press president Tony Lyons spotted a beat-up old copy of We Die Alone, British historian David Howarth's 1955 account of Norwegian Jan Baalsrud's amazing attempt at Nazi resistance (and escape by reinderr...

Tupac Shakur Lives on in Poetry.(Pocket Books publishes 'The Rose That Grew from Concrete')(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... Pocket Books and its MTV Books imprint are looking to replicate pop singer Jewel's star-driven success with the November publication of The Rose That Grew from Concrete, a collection of poetry by the slain, enormously popular rapper Tupac...

Roll Over, Shake and Sign Here.(marketing campaign for 'Unforgettable Mutts: Pure of Heart Not of Breed')(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... In the dog-eat-dog world of book marketing, New Sage Press of Troutdale, Ore., has hit upon a new twist in in-store appearances and autographings. To promote its latest title, Unforgettable Mutts: Pure of Heart Not of Breed, the publisher has...

Stores Join the Clubs.(San Francisco Chronicle's new Chronicle Book Club forms alliances with bookstores and BayTV and launches Web site)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... SF Chronicle's book club extends the newspaper-bookstore franchise with cable TV and a Web site The latest twist in the newspaper book club explosion is the San Francisco Chronicle's new Chronicle Book Club, launched in conjunction with...

Bookends Born from Ashes of Independent.(John Alberti of Windstone Editions launches campaign to help independent bookstores)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... After learning that his local independent bookstore was closing, John Alberti, president of the collectibles company Windstone Editions, was so upset that he pledged a portion of his company's profits to regional independent booksellers...

German Online Bookselling Wars.(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... Book sales online in Germany are proportionally several years behind those in the U.S. but are growing fast and in many ways resemble the rough-and-tumble world of U.S. online bookselling, although with a few twists. In 1998, online book...

Just Add Water.(Creativity for Kids launches aromatherapy products for children)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... Creativity for Kids, in Cleveland, Ohio, always finds intriguing new ways to keep small hands and growing brains busy. In addition to such upbeat new products for the slightly older schoolage child as Create Your Own Phabulous Photo Album and...

Hill Street Launches New Crossword Line.(Hill Street Press)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... In one short year, Hill Street Press has scored an unusually fast start with a predominantly literary, Southern-oriented title list. As the small house, based in Athens, Ga., begins its second year, it hopes to expand its national impact with...

A Secret Bestseller.(illustrator Donna Green)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... Largely outside of bookstores, Donna Green's books sell in the millions Donna Green spends most days at her easel, secluded on her farm in the South Shore town of Marshfield, Mass. Here she does what she loves most: create paintings for...

The 'Crocodile' Files.(good reviews help sales of 'I, Crocodile')(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... Not since Bernard Waber's Lyle has a crocodile inspired the kind of kudos I, Crocodile (HarperCollins/di Capua) by Fred Marcellino is currently receiving. The first book both written and illustrated by Caldecott Honor-winner Marcellino (Puss...

Goodnight Moon Comes to TV.('Goodnight Moon and Other Tales' to be broadcast on HBO)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... Next month HBO will present Goodnight Moon and Other Tales, a series or popular children's stories adapted for television. The special combines animation with live action segments, and features, such stories as Margaret Wise Brown's classic,...

Lyrick Makes First Book Donations.(Lyrick Studios)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... Last month Lyrick Studios, publishers of Barney and Wishbone, donated 45,000 Barney books to First Book, the Washington, D.C.-based literacy organization that provides books to disadvantaged children. The donation was announced at the...

The Brain Quest Bus Keeps on Rolling.(Workman Publishing Company Inc. promotional tour for Brain Quest titles)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... This past summer, Workman launched an unusual tour to promote its Brain Quest line. The company commissioned a neon-bright yellow bus to travel the country, alerting parents and kids to its revamped collection of Brain Quest titles. Last...

Small but Sturdy.(independent publishing companies)(Industry Overview)(Statistical Data Included)
November 29, 1999... Independent publishers' growth reflect sound business practices and innovation The fifth annual listing of Publishers Weekly's fast-growing independent publishing companies is shorter than in some previous years, but the quality of the...

Stranger Than Fiction.(author Daniel Stern)
November 29, 1999... It is a beautiful, 80-degree November day in Austin, Tex. Encamped on the west flank of the capital grounds is a veritable caravansary of large white tents, through which flows a boisterous stream of book buyers, dealers, writers, fans and...

WITH YOUR CROOKED HEART.(Review)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... HELEN DUNMORE. Grove/Atlantic Monthly, $24 (256p) ISBN 0-87113-773-9 * In sharp, elegant prose, Dunmore's latest novel explores "the roots that the past puts down in the present," and finds that it is impossible to escape the...

MUMMY'S LEGS.(Review)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... KATE BINGHAM. Simon & Schuster, $20 (224p) ISBN 0-684-86470-3 The title of British poet Bingham's spare, quietly affecting debut novel quotes the nurse at the London hospital where the 10-year-old protagonist's mother is taken following a...

THE BOOK OF REVELATION.(Review)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... RUPERT THOMSON. Knopf, $23 (272p) ISBN 0-375-40927-0 Thomson, a brilliant Londoner, certainly never writes the same book twice. Air and Fire was a wonderfully ambient tropical adventure, Soft a devastating contemporary London thriller....

THE CHIVALRY OF CRIME.(Review)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... DESMOND BARRY. Little, Brown, $24.95 (480p) ISBN 0-316-12038-3 A Welsh immigrant with a fascination for tales of the Old West, debut novelist Barry offers a detailed, well-researched and dynamic retelling of the stories of Jesse James and...

THE VISION OF EMMA BLAU.(Review)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... URSULA HEGI. Simon & Schuster, $25 (432p) ISBN 0-684-82997-5 * Much as she did in Stones from the River, Hegi creates a social world in microcosm, and, following her characters for almost a century, fashions a saga of hidden loves and...

KNICK KNACK PADDY WHACK.(Review)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... ARDAL O'HANLON. Holt, $23 ISBN 0-8050-6300-7 O'Hanlon is one of those marvelously multitalented actor/writers who seem to abound in the British Isles. His accomplished first novel is charged with the kind of vernacular ebullience, full of...

REAP.(Review)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... ERIC RICKSTAD. Viking, $23.95 (272p) ISBN 0-670-88517-7 By turns bucolic and eerie, this engaging backwoods bildungsroman set in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom probes the mysteries of growing, as plants, people and situations twist...

SLAB RAT.(Review)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... TED HELLER. Scribner, $23 (336p) ISBN 0-684-86496-7 A satirical look at the glitzy world of New York magazine publishing by a young insider, Heller's debut novel charts the progress of Zachary (Zack) Post, an overqualified underachiever...

NO DEFENSE.(Review)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... KATE WILHELM. St Martin's Minotaur, $24.95 (384p) ISBN 0-312-20953-3 The murder case against young widow Lara Jessup appears airtight after her wealthy, much older, and terminally ill husband Vinny is shot on a twisting Oregon mountain...

GEORGE BUSH, DARK PRINCE OF LOVE.(Review)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... LYDIA MILLET. Scribner, $10 paper (160p) ISBN 0-684-86274-3 The 41st president's gaffes are milked for all they're worth in Millet's (Omnivores) coy political satire. In four sections, one per presidential year, Rosemary--the brainy,...

MOTH SMOKE.(Review)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... MOHSIN HAMID. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $24 (288p) ISBN 0-374-21354-2 Hamid subjects contemporary Pakistan to fierce scrutiny in his first novel, tracing the downward spiral of Darashikoh "Daru" Shezad, a young man whose uneasy status on...

S.: A Novel About the Balkans.(Review)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... SLAVENKA DRAKULIC. Viking, $22.95 (208p) ISBN 0-670-89097-9 S. lies in the Karolinska Hospital in Sweden, where she has just given birth to a baby boy. She refuses to nurse him. Maj, in the next bed, is worried and shocked, but she is not...

A HOUSE DIVIDED.(Review)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... CATHERINE COOKSON. Simon & Schuster, $24 (368p) ISBN 0-684-87121-1 Cookson may have died in 1998, but readers are not yet compelled to bid her a final good-bye. If this posthumous offering, with its repetitive plotting and murky prose,...

THE ATTORNEY.(Review)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... STEVE MARTINI. Putnam, $25.95 (448p) ISBN 0-399-14536-2 The tireless Paul Madriani, Martini's popular lawyer/sleuth (The Judge; Compelling Evidence), barely has a chance to hang a shingle in San Diego--where he has moved to be closer to...

MR. SPACEMAN.(Review)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... ROBERT OLEN BUTLER. Grove/Atlantic Monthly, $24 (224p) ISBN 0-8021-1660-4 * An alien with a heart of gold beams up 12 people on a casino-bound bus on the eve of the millennium in a last-ditch effort to understand humanity before making...

THE TACKETTS.(Review)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... LYN NOFZIGER. Jameson, $10.95 paper (2l4p) ISBN 0-915463-85-7 With a nod to Louis L'Amour, Nofziger serves up simple fun in his fifth spoof of the Old West (Tackett and the Indian, etc.) as a herd of B-movie characters shoot up the...

BEHOLD A PALE HORSE.(Review)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... FRANKLIN ALLEN LEIB. Forge, $23.95 (304p) ISBN 0-312-89064-8 Plunging inexorably toward apocalypse, this expertly layered thriller by the author of The House of Pain darkly foreshadows the forthcoming 2000 presidential elections....

DO UNTO OTHERS.(Review)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... KRISTIN LATTANY. Ballantine/One World, $24 (272p) ISBN 0-345-40708-3 "Be careful what you wish for" is the lesson learned by a proud, hard-working, beautician in Lattany's (Kinfolk) latest novel. Zenobia Lawson, 49, owns her own hair...

TAKING HEART.(Review)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... CAROL DOUMANI. Wave Publishing (Box 688, Venice, Calif 90294; 310-306-0699), $25 (400p) ISBN 0-9642359-1-9 In her fourth novel to be published by the company she founded in 1994, Doumani (Indiscretions) provides a well-meaning, strong...

THE DARK OF SUMMER.(Review)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... ERIC LINKLATER. Canongate (Interlink, dist.), $11.95 paper (288p) ISBN 0-86241-894-1 Originally published in the U.K. in 1957, this spiritually sensitive novel of wartime regret spans many years, culminating in a strangely hatched...

January Publications.(Review)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... "Find Leonie's boy." The last words of wealthy Scottish patriarch Howie Gates send his daughter Helen on a search for her long-dead sister's illegitimate son. Set in rural Scotland and Edinburgh in 1936, Elisabeth McNeill's Money Troubles...

December Publications.(Review)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... An all-star lineup of writers--including Mike Royko, Studs Terkel and Kurt Vonnegut--weigh in on The Man with the Golden Arm as part of this 50th anniversary critical edition of Nelson Algren's classic novel of a down-and-out WWII veteran,...

THE REEVE'S TALE.(Review)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... MARGARET FRAZER. Berkley Prime Crime, $21.95 (288p) ISBN 0-425-17232-5 * Here's the latest excellent installment in Frazer's superbly researched medieval mystery series featuring Dame Frevisse, a nun of the order of St. Frideswide, who,...

MURDER ON THE LUSITANIA.(Review)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... CONRAD ALLEN. St. Martin's Minotaur, $23.95 (272p) ISBN 0-312-24114-3 Allen kicks off a projected series of mysteries set on famous ocean liners with this well-crafted high society whodunit. Suave, smart and handsome, George Porter...

JACK, THE LADY KILLER.(Review)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... H.R.F. KEATING. Poisoned Pen (6962 E. First Ave., #103, Scottsdale, Ariz. 85251), $14.95 paper (160p) ISBN 1-890208-24-8 Prolific British mystery-maker Keating returns to the India of his well-received Inspector Ghote novels, but this...

THE HIRELING'S TALE.(Review)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... Jo BANNISTER. St. Martin's Minotaur, $23.95 (320p) ISBN 0-312-24400-2 Bannister deftly examines the dedication and determination of three types of hirelings -- a prostitute, an assassin and a British police officer -- in this eighth,...

IRRECONCILABLE DIFFERENCES.(Review)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... EDITED BY LIA MATERA. HarperCollins, $24 (384p) ISBN 0-06-019225-9 Although this anthology contains 20 original short stories, most of which are very good, it's worth the asking price just for Joyce Carol Oates's entry, "Tusk." There, a...

CHANGE OF COMMAND.(Review)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... ELIZABETH MOON. Baen, $21 (320p) ISBN 0-671-57840-5 Continuing her epic, intergalactic series set in the distant future (Rules of Engagement, etc.), Moon's latest novel follows the tumultuous romance of Esmay Suiza and offworlder Barin...

THE TRUTHSAYER'S APPRENTICE.(Review)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... DEBORAH CHRISTIAN. Tor, $27.95 (384p) ISBN 0-312-87269-0; paper $15.95-86516-3 Launching her new Loregiver fantasy series, this role-playing walkabout leaves Christian's earlier Mainline setting for a Tolkien-derivative northern universe...

THE USHERS.(Review)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... EDWARD LEE. Obsidian (37800 38th Ave. S., Auburn, Wash. 98001; 253-874-5721), $16 paper (33Op) ISBN 1-891480-03-0 Over the past decade Lee (Area 52) has built a cult following in the small press for hardcore horror fiction that pushes the...

December Publications.(Review)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... Chatty and informative, Dragonholder: The Life and Dreams (So Far) of Anne McCaffrey by the fantasist's son, Todd McCaffrey, recounts the career and family life of the author of the Pern series. Though not a traditional, analytical biography,...

SOMETHING WICKED.(Review)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... JENNIFER ROWE. Ballantine, $5.99 (304p) ISBN 0-345-42795-5 The quaint Australian mountain village of Oakdale is rocked by news of the apparent suicide of celebrity denizen Adam Quinn. Local police, aided by Sydney detectives Tessa Vance...

ACTS OF HONOR.(Review)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... VICKI HINZE. St Martin's, $5.99 (384p) ISBN 0-312-97273-3 A lengthy stint as an Air Force wife has provided Hinze (Shades of Gray; Duplicity) with plenty of fuel for her edgy military-themed romances. Her latest romantic thriller centers...

SEDUCED BY A SCOUNDREL.(Review)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... BARBARA DAWSON SMITH. St. Martin's $6.50 (320p) ISBN 0-312-97272-5 After her father's violent death, it's up to Lady Alicia Pemberton to care for her dotty mother and profligate brother, all the while struggling to make ends meet in...

SEARCHING FOR SARAH.(Review)(Brief Article)
November 29, 1999... LYNN ERICKSON. Jove, $5.99 (352p) ISBN 0-515-12699-3 An anonymous tip sends deputy D.A. Jake Savelle in pursuit of a witness in the Denver hotel-room murder of presidential hopeful Scott Taylor. Jake knows about Scott's sexually addictive...