by Marion Winik
Winik isn't your typical soccer mom—if there is such a person. The thirtysomething widow of a gay man who died four years ago from AIDS, she writes for national magazines like Redbook and Parenting, does commentaries for NPR's All Things Considered and displays two photos of herself, topless, in her bedroom. But her experiences on the home front will definitely resonate. She admits to sending her boys (Vincie, 7, and Hayes, 9) to bed without brushing and flossing; she reconstructs in great detail the moment she lost the I'm-never-gonna-hit-my-kid battle; and she has completely accepted that dinner preparation often means emptying a can into a pot.
Occasionally Winik's recollections of life's everyday dramas seem calculated more to enlarge her page count than to enlighten readers. But her keen sense of humor and lack of self pity are refreshing, making this slender volume read like a letter from a friend who's making the best of a trying situation. (Pantheon, $22.95)
Bottom Line: A slice of wry
by Cheryl Benard
Page-turner of the week
Anything can happen in a frontier town like Peshawar, Pakistan, and in this exotic and mordantly amusing mystery, it often does. The intrigue begins when American businessman Micky Malone disappears from his hotel room. Both Iqbal, the detective brought in to investigate, and Malone's sister Julia, a foreign correspondent, fear the worst—especially after bodies begin showing up, accompanied by cryptic notes scribbled in blood.
First-time novelist Benard, a sociologist, deftly guides us through the myriad layers of Pakistani society, from pampered expatriates to fire-breathing fundamentalists. Racing to solve the crimes, her two sleuths dramatically discover the extent to which their own cultural biases color their perspective. With its tantalizing characters and keen social observations, Moghul Buffet offers readers a satisfying banquet. (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $22)
Bottom Line: Tasty
by Bret Lott
When you hear the handle creaking as a thriller winds down, you can't help remembering how smoothly it was cranked up; all it took was a dead body and some brave or foolish soul who asked too many questions.
In this case, the soul is Huger Dillard, a scrawny white teenager with wing-nut ears who's upset because his blind, beloved Uncle Leland is the prime murder suspect. Huger's ally is a beautiful deaf-mute black girl who is a computer whiz. The backdrop, a hunt club on the South Carolina coast, is ideal for spooky chase sequences—and a plum for greedy developers. Veteran novelist Lott knows how to paint a scene and animate his characters. The action is crisp and credible. But this is his first thriller, and all the plot's mysteries are explained in a series of wooden soliloquies by dying characters. Lott needs to squirt some oil on that handle. (Villard, $23)
Bottom Line: Just a little off target
by Mary Higgins Clark
The lonely middle-aged daughter of a Manhattan philanthropist disappears from a cruise ship in Hong Kong. Three years later, radio talk show psychologist Susan Chandler discusses the unsolved mystery on the air. Callers flood Chandler with tips, and she turns armchair detective. The suspects include a lawyer with a nasty gambling habit and a psychologist who wrote about his wife's disappearance four years earlier.
This is the setup for Clark's 19th book, a thriller with few thrills. The biggest surprise is how such cliché-ridden writing got past its editors. Clark's characters—who actually say things like "I wish he'd learned to smell the flowers"—all talk and think suspiciously alike, whether they're tough-guy cops or classy Fifth Avenue types. But You Belong to Me's best howler comes when Chandler, who has been bound, gagged and wrapped up in a giant plastic bag by the killer, tells him, "You need help, a lot of help." So does this book. (Simon & Schuster, $25)
Bottom Line: Deadly bore
The Life and Death of an American Factory
by Bill Bamberger and Cathy N. Davidson
Though it was a ripple compared to massive layoffs at IBM and AT&T, 203 people lost their jobs when the 111-year-old White Furniture Company in North Carolina shut down in 1993. Tracing the individual toll of such events is this book's noble aim, but Closing doesn't fully deliver. Since Davidson assembled the story from interviews months after the layoffs, it lacks the immediacy of on-scene reporting. More effective are such stark photographs as Bamberger's shot of an ashen-faced White employee signing severance papers. (Double Take/Norton, $27.50)
Bottom Line: Sobering
>HOLDING OUT Anne O. Faulk In a witty update of Aristophanes's comedy Lysistrata, America's women go on strike sexually until their men impeach an abusive U.S. Supreme Court justice. (Simon & Schuster, $23)
HEALING ANXIETY WITH HERBS Harold H. Bloomfield, M.D. More than 65 million Americans suffer from anxiety-related problems. The author of Hypericum & Depression shows how herbs can allay the angst. (HarperCollins, $23)
YANKEE STADIUM: 75 YEARS OF DRAMA, GLAMOR AND GLORY Ray Robinson and Christopher Jennison Check it out: The House That Ruth Built may soon become The Stadium Steinbrenner Tore Down. (Penguin Studio, $29.95)
- Contributors:
- Deborah J. Waldman,
- Pam Lambert,
- Adam Begley,
- Mark Bautz,
- Alex Tresniowski.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
