Sandford, John. Certain Prey (1999) G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 339 pages, $24.95 hardcover ISBN 0 399 14496 X In his latest Lucas Davenport thriller John Sandford does something different: he focuses on the villain as much as on the hero. And what a villain it is: Clara Rinker, the best hit woman (or hit […]
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Brumberg, Joan Jacobs. The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls Random House, 1997Hardcover, 267 pagesISBN 0-679-40297-7 Joan Jacobs Brumberg teaches in the fields of history, human development, and women’s studies at Cornell University. In this cultural and historical study, she describes how growing up female has changed over the last century and how, in
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Woods, Stuart. Orchid Beach (1998)HarperCollins, 325 pages, $25.00 hardcover ISBN 0-06-019181-3 Finally, a new book by Stuart Woods that doesn’t feature philandering superhero Stone Barrington. In fact, the protagonist of Woods’s latest novel is a woman, 37-year-old Holly Barker. After 20 years in the army, Barker retires when a male superior whom she and another
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Winchester, Simon. The Professor and the Madman HarperCollins, 1998Hardcover, 242 pagesISBN 0-06-017596-6 Recommended Compilation of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), begun in 1857, required more than 70 years and the help of hundreds of volunteers who submitted examples of the usage of individual words. The editor of the project was Professor James Murray, a scholarly former
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Stark, Richard. The Hunter (1962); rpt. as Point Blank Allison & Busby, 154 pages, $13.95 hardcover ISBN 0 85031 591 3 {Richard Stark is a pseudonym Donald E. Westlake used for a series of stark noir thrillers featuring the character Parker.} As Parker walks across the George Washington Bridge into Manhattan at the
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O’Connell, Carol. Shell Game (1999)G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 374 pages, $24.95 hardcover ISBN 0 399 14495-1 After a break for Judas Child, Carol O’Connell returns to her series character, NYPD detective Kathleen Mallory, in Shell Game. When an elderly magician dies horribly in what appears to be a botched magic act, only Mallory suspects murder.
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Cheever, Susan. Note Found in a Bottle: My Life as a Drinker Simon & Schuster, 1999Hardcover, 192 pagesISBN 0-684-80432-8 Recommended My grandmother Cheever taught me how to embroider, how to say the Lord’s Prayer, and how to make a perfect dry martini. She showed me how to tilt the gin bottle into the tumbler with the
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Heilbrun, Carolyn G. Writing a Woman’s Life (1988) W.W. Norton & Company, 144 pages, $14.95 hardcover ISBN 0-393-02601-9 In the “Introduction,” feminist scholar Carolyn Heilbrun explains the topic of her book: There are four ways to write a woman’s life: the woman herself may tell it, in what she chooses to call an autobiography; she
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Jessop, Violet. Titanic Survivor edited and annotated by John Maxtone-GrahamSheridan House, 1997Hardcover, 238 pagesISBN 1-57409-035-6 Violet Jessop went to sea as a stewardess on an ocean liner in 1908. She continued as a stewardess through the glory days when a transatlantic ship crossing was as much a society event as a mode of transportation. She retired
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Cross, Amanda. The James Joyce Murder (1967) Ballantine Books, 197 pages, $5.99 paperback ISBN 0-345-34686-6 Spending the summer at a house in the Berkshires editing letters between James Joyce and his publisher promises to be a peaceful refuge from the city for Kate Fansler. Caring for her young nephew Leo is only a
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