Books of the Week

 

YA/ Contemporary/ Problem
The Rag and Bone Shop
Cormier, Robert
Delacorte 0385729626 October 2001

In a knock your socks off story, Cormier in great form for his last novel, follows the hours in the life of twelve year old Jason following the death of his 7 year old friend. The police bring in an expert interrogator who specializes in manipulating the setting to elicit confessions. Will he uncover the real truth?

YA/ Fantasy/ Humorous Fantasy/ A Bestiary/ Uncommon Common Animals
The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents
Pratchett, Terry
HarperCollins 0060012331 November 2001

Some towns on Discworld are rescued from the depredations of a plague of rats by a stupid looking rat piper and his bedraggled talking cat Maurice. Little do the inhabitants know that the rats, the cat, and the piper are all in the scam together. When the troupe arrives in the village of Bad Blintz they discover a rich looking town on food rationing due to the so called depredations of rats. But when Hamnpork, Dangerous Beans, Darktan, and the other talking rats explore they discover a shortage of rats and an abundance of traps and poisons. Keith, the stupid looking boy, is befriended by story telling Malicia Grim, the mayor’s daughter. Together, rats, cat, and kids uncover an insidious plot and rooms full of stockpiled food and rats in cages. Will they be able to save Bad Blintz and live happily ever after?

 

YA/Science Fiction/
Science Fiction/ Hard Science
Marco’s Millions
Sleator, William
Dutton 0525464417

This prequel to The Boxes is full of adventure and science concepts, illuminating what happens in The Boxes. Marco goes through a portal in the basement into another world where he captures a box that affects time. In this other world time and gravity are different than in ours so a journey of a few days takes him missing from home for several years. This is Sleator at his finest making scientific concepts real and personal while creating characters that will long stay in one’s memory.

General Fiction/ YA/Coming of Age
No Lack of Lonesome
Gonzales, Albino
Farolito 0-9679855-2-4 0967984424 (PO Box 60003, Grand Junction. CO, 81506)

A young boy receives lessons from his grandmother during a walk in New Mexico in this lyrically poetic tale. Readers who liked Coelho's The Alchemist and Anaya's Bless Me Ultima will find No Lack of Lonesome and its unique thoughtful style appealing.

For other books by independent publishers go to the Indies Page.

Science Fiction/ More than Human/ Immortality
Passage
Willis, Connie
Bantam 0553111248

Psychologist Joanna Lander, when avoiding Mr. Mandrake best-selling author of books about near death experiences (NDE), does serious research into what people actually experience during an NDE. Teaming up with Dr. Richard Wright, a neurologist who has concocted a procedure to simulate an NDE, she discovers that few of his subjects should actually be in the study so she decides to become a test subject herself. Her experience takes her through a passage toward a bright light that turns out to be a deck on the Titanic. As Joanna moves back and forth from the Titanic to Mercy Hospital she and Dr. Wright try to make sense of the entire experience. Meanwhile her best friend is endangered in the Emergency Room when people come in who have gone homicidal on a new drug and her young friend, a little girl who has had several NDE and is an expert on disasters faces near certain death. Willis is one of the best writers of our time. Passage, as in the very best of science fiction, takes science that has not happened yet and asks "what if?"

 

 

Fantasy/Sword and Sorcery/Quest
The Rover
Odom, Mel
Tor 0312878826

Wick Lamplighter, a dweller (member of a race of small people who love hearth and home much as do hobbits), and a Third Level Librarian in the Vault of All Known Knowledge is plunged into a life of adventure when he is shanghaied onto a pirate vessel after delivering a package. His blissfully wasted hours of adventure reading pay off in a big way enabling him to save the pirate vessel from an obscure mythological Embyr and endearing him to the crew but when goblins attack he turns himself over to them to save his crewmates becoming a slave. Saved from the gladiatorial ring when purchased by a master their, his knowledge leads them to treasure and then to a dragon encounter. It is lovely to have a librarian hero and even though the story is somewhat formulaic it is fun.

 

Fantasy/ Magical Realism
Murder at Witches' Bluff
Ravenwolf, Silver
Llewellyn 1567187277

Cold Springs, Pennsylvania was the sight of a horrible massacre of witches some two-hundred years in the past. Descendents of both the witches and their slayers still live in town but many are dismayed when Siren McKay, acquitted of murder in New York City, returns to the town to start a hypnotherapy business. Discredited fire chief, Tanner Thorn sometimes seems to be her only friend. As unexplained fires crop up, so do mysterious murders, and lots of relatives. Ravenwolf, a witch herself, illuminates a little known community while taking the reader on an entertaining read.

 

 

Science Fiction/ Aliens
Wheelers
Stewart, Ian and Jack Cohen
Warner 044652560x

Prudence Ondingo's enormous discovery in Sphinx changed Egyptology but her academic advisor took the credit and she ended up as a treasure hunter travelling the solar system. When she discovers wheeled artifacts on a moon of Jupiter she is thrust into the limelight but accused of fraud. When her sister is arrested her four-year old nephew Moses is abducted. Moses is very reminiscent of Ender and Bean from Orson Scott Card's Ender Wiggins series. He is intelligent, resilient, and ruthless. He also has an uncanny ability to communicate with animals. When a monk discovers a comet flung straight for Earth, the world must find and discover a way to communicate with aliens so powerful they can move moons to save the Earth from total annihilation.
Judicious editing could have made this an outstanding book. Wonderful ideas, hard to put down most of the way through, it unfortunately goes on way too long making it less than it could have been. All the same, it is a good read with fascinating aliens and some interesting ideas.

 

YA/ Short Stories/ Contemporary
Crazy Loco
Rice, David
Dial 0803725981

Terrific tales of Chicano life in small town Texas. An authentic voice resonating in stories that reverberate with truth, pain, and humor.

YA/ Contemporary/ Humorous
Princess in the Spotlight
Cabot, Meg
HarperCollins 0060294663

In this delicious sequel to the Princes Diaries, Mia's adventures continue but now she has a secret admirer and a possible date that may be totally messed up when her grandmother decides to stage a wedding for Mia's mother and her Algebra teacher after Mia announces their pregnancy on national TV. A real hoot!

YA/ Mystery/ Historical
The Demon in the Teahouse
Hoobler, Dorothy and Thomas
Philomel Books 0399234993

Fourteen-year-old Seikei, the adopted son of a Samurai judge, goes undercover in a tea house to try to find a serial killer who is targeting Geishas. This page turning mystery will not only appeal to the teen readers it was published for but also to adults who are captivated by the Judge Dee mysteries of Robert Van Gulik and Laura Joh Rowland's samurai series. It also ties in nicely with Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur S. Golden.

YA/ Non-Fiction/ Memoir
Nerves Out Loud
Musgrave, Susan ed.
Dog House Books/ Annick Press 1550376926

Seven women writers tell of transformative experiences during their teen years. Gritty and edgy, no punches are pulled when the experiences of girls dealing with sexual identity, eating disorders, substance abuse, and sexual abuse are eloquently told.

Crime/ Detection/ Ex-cop
Death of a Hired Man
Wright, Eric
St. Martin's Minotaur 0312268769

When a plaid shirt clad body is found dead in a hand hewn log cabin, Larch River police Sergeant Wilkie is sure that it is the owner, retired Toronto cop Mel Pickett. But the Pickett shows up and works to solve the mystery of who murdered the hired man who has been living in his cabin. Following the clues it looks like either someone killed Norbert Thompson for his savings or else they were really after Pickett and mistook him for the retired cop. Thank goodness for St. Martin's and their Minotaur imprint. Mystery readers would be lost without the steady stream of their dependably satisfying reads.

Fantasy/ Epic
The Ring of Five Dragons
Lustbader, Eric Van
Tor 0312872356

Annon, the son of the ruling V'orrn Regent on the planet Kundala, escapes during a palace coup with Giyan, his father's Kundalan mistress. The V'ornn, whose blood runs turquoise, are conquerors who have been subjugating and destroying other worlds for so long they no longer remember their own. On Kundala, their reign of technological terror has resulted in many of the Kundalan people turning away from their religion and its benign magic to a darker form of magic. Giyan, who has raised Annon, has her own secrets that are revealed when she takes Annon to the abbey where her sister Bartta is in charge. Annon is mortally wounded on the journey but Giyan gets him to Bartta's where they perform a rite that transfers him into the body of a Kundalan girl who is dying of a fever. Now called Riane, the formerly racist and sexist Annon must learn to live as a Kundalan female while he tries to determine how to wrest control of the planet away from the usurpers who slew his father and fulfill a prophecy that will save the planet from total destruction. Readers who are not disuaded by lengthy fantasy epics will find some new takes in the genre in this fascinating blend of alien culture, technology, and religion.

Crime/ Amateur Detective
Bone Island Mambo: An Alex Rutledge Mystery
Corcoran, Tom
St. Martin's Minotaur 0312242816

Photographer Alex Rutledge is pulled into a murder investigation when photographing, for his own purposes, locations on Key West that will soon be disappearing under a developers new construction. Not wanting to jeopardize his occasional gig as a crime scene reporter or his relationship with lover Teresa's police media liaison job, he digs around on his own becoming a suspect.

 

YA/ Fantasy/ Time Travel
YA/ Historical
Bennett, Cherie and Jeff Gottesfeld
Anne Frank and Me
0399233296

Nicole, who is more interested in Jack than in school and her Anne Frank assignment, is flung back in time to the holocaust when the sound of gunshots echoes through a school field trip to a travelling Anne Frank exhibition. Living, as a Jew, in Paris during the holocaust, she experiences persecution, starvation, and fear. Teen Comments

Fantasy/Fairy Tales/Familiar
Block, Francesca Lia
The Rose and the Beast
0060281308

Gritty fairy tales re-told in Block's unique California style. Teen Comments.

YA/ Contemporary/
YA/ Short Stories
Brooks, Bruce
All That Remains
Atheneum 0689833512

Three novels about the aftermath of death. Two cousins and their aunt’s partner scheme to grant her wish for cremation even though state law has decreed that Aids victims must be burried in a sequestered area. A nephew’s promise to his dying uncle leads to a new relationship with his cousin who figure skates instead of playing hockey, plays jazz and blues instead of punk, and uses an acoustic guitar rather than an electric one. A girl makes up a golf foursome but plays with the ashes of her dad in her backpack.

Fantasy/ Magical Realism
The Haunting of Hip Hop
Berry, Bertice
Doubleday 0385498454

Freedom, the hottest hip hop producer in the country is drawn to an abandoned house in Harlem that is reputedly haunted. As his lawyer, the sassy Ava, negotiates with Charles over the purchase of the house, ghosts who live in the house fight to be heard. A rhythmic and lyrical new-agey African-American tale blending contemporary life with spirituality in a magically realistic tale.

 

YA/ Historical/ Adventure
Down The Yukon
Hobbs, Will
HarperCollins 0688174728

Just when Jason's life looks close to perfect, he and his brothers lose their lumber mill to a devious fight promoter. When Jamie, the love of his life returns to Dawson with news of a race down the Yukon, the two set out on an adventure of a lifetime. Hobbs is in peak form in this exciting sequel to Jason's Gold that stands alone.

 

YA/ Short Stories
Love & Sex
Cart, Michael, ed.
Simon & Schuster 0689832036

Garth Nix’s electrifying tale of a biker who can summon lightning is particularly memorable in a collection that spans the breadth of teen sexuality. Abstinence, crushes, gender identity, and homosexuality are all tackled by leading YA authors.


©2001 Diana Tixier Herald