Edited by Eric B. Martin
These are not your typical campfire yarns involving ghosts or a Freddy Kruegeresque maniac but 17 near-death nightmares of people in the great outdoors. "Come quick, I'm being eaten!" screams one woman after a black bear gnashes its teeth into her skull. Other unlucky souls have their lungs clog climbing the Himalayas, ride a shipwreck to the bottom of a whirlpool or freeze to death in the Yukon. And for anyone who finds camp grub inedible, consider the desperate diet of the 19th-century Donner party while crossing the Sierra Nevada. Hint: There were a few vacant places around the fire—and plenty of left-overs. (Chronicle Books, $15.95)
Bottom Line: Frightful tales of things that go bump—and much worse—in the night
by Tom Robbins
The latest book by enduring hippie oracle Tom Robbins is as much rant as novel. The narrative swirls around a misanthropic idealist and CIA dropout named Switters, who lusts after his 16-year-old stepsister in Seattle, eats a parrot, is cursed by a Peruvian shaman, discovers the lost prophecy of the Virgin of Fátima in the Syrian desert and has sex with a nun—in other words, typical Rob-bins mania. Though his love of wordplay is entertaining, the author and his alter ego too often become enraptured with the wheeze of their own "verbal bagpipes" (to use a phrase from the book) as they assail the evils of today's culture, from college football to corporate totalitarianism. The result? The cartoonish pleasures of the plot are drowned by the din. (Bantam, $27.50)
Bottom Line: Philosophical screwball comedy
by Shirley MacLaine
Early in her 500-mile pilgrimage along Spain's Santiago de Compostela Camino in 1994, MacLaine began to hallucinate and see huge metal screws. "I didn't know if that meant I had a screw loose," she writes. Walking some 20 miles a day, subsisting on yogurt and fruit, dogged by curs, mosquitoes and the press, little wonder the otherworldly 66-year-old entertainer had visions so strange she found "it took an act of control not to roll my eyes at myself! " Her previously recounted past lives (as a suicide in Atlantis and an Indian princess) were lively enough; this time she witnesses the origin of the universe and meets the kindred soul who was both Charlemagne and Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, with whom she had an affair before his 1986 assassination. By turns fearful, vain and hostile, MacLaine makes her eccentricity endearing, even if you scoff at how the spirit moves her. (Pocket, $24.95)
Bottom Line: For believers only
by Diana Diamond
Beach book of the week
Okay, prepare to groan: "Angela lay beside him, a frost of sweat covering her breasts, her flat stomach heaving with her heavy breath. 'Incredible,' Walter gasped. She smiled. 'You're the one who's incredible.' " Phew. Now that you've got that woeful opening scene out of the way, you can begin to enjoy The Trophy Wife, which goes on to become a gripping page-turner. Walter Childs, a narcissistic banker at the top of his game, is on the verge of dumping his wife, Emily, for Angela Hilliard—a Harvard grad whose rising prospects are rivaled only by her plunging necklines—when Emily is kidnapped. The suspects are numerous, if a tad clichéd. (Is the culprit Emily's tennis coach-cum-gigolo? Walter's rival for the bank presidency? The honest cop who keeps bungling the case? Walter himself?) Yet the pseudonymous Diamond keeps us guessing and switching allegiances—sympathizing with Walter even as we urge Emily to escape and reap revenge—right up to the climactic end. (St. Martin's, $23.95)
Bottom Line: A summer beach-bag stuffer
>THE WATER NYMPH Michele Jaffe The dashing Earl of Sandal tries to prove he's innocent of treason; Sophie Champion, dressed as a man, probes a mysterious death. Both protagonists of this romance suspect the other of murder. (Pocket, $22.95)
ANA IMAGINED Perrin Ireland The lives of two women intersect when a Boston writer, traumatized by a rape, writes about a struggling poet in Bosnia whom she has seen on TV. (Graywolf Press, $22.95)
>Mary Lou Retton
Being perennially pleasant has its pitfalls. "The smile actually gets on some people's nerves," confesses Mary Lou Retton, 32, who nonetheless finds it impossible not to flash her Wheaties-fortified pearly whites. "Every day, people come up to me and ask, 'Why are you so happy?' " Easy. "The smile comes from deep inside," Retton says. "Sure, I get down like everybody else, but that has nothing to do with whether I'm truly happy." The first American ever to win an Olympic gold medal in gymnastics (she also nabbed two silver and two bronze in 1984), she spells out her optimistic philosophy in Mary Lou Retton's Gateways to Happiness—7 Ways to a More Peaceful, More Prosperous, More Satisfying Life. Even six months pregnant and on a grueling book tour, Retton remains perky. "Hi, hi!" she calls to fans at a book signing outside Atlanta. People have pressed her for years to write her memoirs. "I just wasn't ready until now," says Retton, who retired at 18 and has two children, Shayla, 5, and McKenna, 3, with husband Shannon Kelley, 34, a Houston financial analyst. Not surprisingly, high on her list of hints for happiness is a good laugh. "Everyone needs that in life," she says. Grinning.
- Contributors:
- Curtis Rist,
- Harry Bauld,
- Paula Chin,
- Anne-Marie O'Neill,
- Gail Cameron Wescott.
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!
