Set in the Manhattan of 1894, Cohen's first novel might as well have taken place at the turn of the 21st century. The hero, opera singer Mario Alfieri, has a rabid fan base—he's the Victorian equivalent of Bono—with an "endless crush of people that surrounds him always: smiling, weeping, fawning; ready to sell themselves at a moment's notice." His young wife, Clara, has a dark past that could fill a week of Jerry Springer shows.
Cohen can't match the historical richness of Caleb Carr's The Alienist (which shares this milieu), but the supersoapy melodrama—will the couple be shunned by society?—keeps readers engaged. Normally, to see this much backstabbing you'd have to watch Survivor. (St. Martin's, $24.95)
Bottom Line: Serviceable antique
By Danielle Steel
There must be a catalog company somewhere that supplies cardboard characters to overextended authors. How else to explain the cast of clichés in Steel's 54th novel? First there's Cooper Winslow, an aging movie star whose profligate spending forces him to rent out parts of his Bel Air estate. His tenants, two newly single men, are nursing love hangovers, as is the rich do-gooder doctor who falls for Cooper and changes his life.
Limp dialogue and insights such as, "She didn't need Coop, she just loved him. She wasn't even emotionally dependent on him," sabotage this effort. You can just imagine Steel playing with her paper dolls, pairing them off for the obligatory happy ending. (Delacorte, $26.95)
Bottom Line: Cottage cheese
By Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus
Whip-smart, responsible and utterly devoted to kids—what's not to love about a nanny like that? The possibility that she might write a fictional satire like this one, that's what. Mining from their combined eight years as child-care providers for a series of Manhattan families in the 1990s, McLaughlin, 28, and Kraus, 27, have produced a hilarious, scathing tale of upper-crust child-rearing practices that must have their former employers squirming.
The novel's heroine, a 21-year-old simply called Nanny, is hired to care part time for Grayer X, an under-loved 4-year-old. In addition to shepherding Grayer from French lessons to music appreciation class and preparing coquilles St. Jacques for his supper, Nanny soon finds herself organizing his stay-at-home mom's frantic social schedule and wondering what to do once she discovers that Mr. X, a master-of-the-universe type, is having an affair.
The Xes are too one-dimensionally awful to seem real, but the authors manage a poignant, nuanced portrayal of Grayer, a sweetly funny boy so hungry for his father's presence that he carries Mr. X's tattered business card with him everywhere. It is for Grayer that Nanny stays (until Mrs. X tires of her and shows her the door). And it is for Grayer's alter egos in New York City and elsewhere that the parents who probably won't read this book really should. (St. Martin's, $24.95)
Bottom Line: Nanny knows best
By Suzanne Finnamore
In lieu of a lullaby the pregnant protagonist gives her baby a play-by-play of her life. The semiautobiographical Chronicles is an insightful journey through a pregnancy, charting all the hormonal lurches that come with the territory. Some of Finnamore's observations seem self-indulgent: Having a child, the main character laments, will turn her and her husband from sports-car owners into "utility-vehicle people, driveway parkers." But she also tweaks the pressures faced by yuppie parents. Passing by a BabyGap, she writes, "I heard the evil siren song" of the tiny togs, the $95 sweaters, and "went inside, helpless and a little disgusted." In the end Finnamore celebrates motherhood for one very basic reason: "You are," the narrator tells the person growing inside her, "the closest I will ever come to magic." (Grove Press, $22)
Bottom Line: This mom delivers
By Cindy Eppes
When Kayla and her family move to her parents' rural hometown of Rosalita, Texas, tensions seem to kick up from the dust. The teen can't figure out why—until she notices that the boy next door looks just like her dad. The half siblings yearn for explanations, but as Kayla remarks, "The adults we should have been able to depend on were too caught by their own gluey traps to help us." What starts as a simple coming-of-age tale soon grows into a complex tug-of-war. Told by first-time author Eppes with an evocative sense of place (a road is described as "a closed zipper connecting the gray fabric of brush country"), Kayla's story forms a novel as poetic as it is piercing. (Washington Square Press, $24)
Bottom Line: Provocative family feud
By Stephen King
When Stephen King is on his game, he is a wonder to behold. In this collection of 14 stories he can take a vague feeling that aches deep in your bones and capture it in a single sentence with all the clarity of Maine winter air.
Everything's Eventual includes something for every type of King fan: The stories range from the highbrow (four works originally published in The New Yorker) to the traditional (the "all-out screamers," as King puts it, featuring plenty of blood and terror) to the fantastic (a new chapter for the sprawling Dark Tower epic). King's e-book Riding the Bullet also sees print here for the first time.
It's an eclectic but finely balanced group. There are some pieces that could even be called uplifting, and one ("1408," in which a mundane hotel room contains such pure, concentrated evil that it drives nearly all who enter it to suicide) that provides an almost perfect glimpse into madness. Anyone who appreciates a good yarn, especially those for whom a little King goes a long way, should give Everything's Eventual a turn. (Scribner, $28)
Bottom Line: It's the real King
By Brooke and Jean Ellison
Their story is slated to be told in a TV movie directed by Christopher Reeve. In this slim volume Brooke Ellison and her mother, Jean, offer their own account of how Brooke, who was paralyzed from the neck down in a 1990 car crash at age 11, became the first ventilator-dependent quadriplegic to graduate from Harvard, class of 2000. Jean acted as Brooke's physical and emotional anchor, leaving her husband and two other kids behind in Stony Brook, N.Y., to share a dorm room with Brooke. The chapters alternate between the two voices. Remarkably, the Ellisons, who now tour the U.S. as motivational speakers, never sound bitter—and never gave up. (Hyperion, $22.95)
Bottom Line: In an Ivy League of their own
By Chuck Logan
Page-turner of the week
Former undercover cop Phil Broker guides three city slickers on a dangerous hunting trip. When they are caught in a storm, Broker leads them to safety, but one of them, writer Hank Sommers, is injured in the process and winds up in a coma. Broker thinks he smells foul play and compiles a long list of suspects. What follows doesn't seem plausible: Heroes and villains are indistinguishable at times, and even a 400-lb. ostrich plays a pivotal role. Yet Sommers's struggle to regain consciousness—and name his attacker—holds the story together. It's an agonized visit to the netherworld between dream and reality, life and death. (HarperCollins, $24.95)
Bottom Line: A compelling trip from hell
- Contributors:
- Julie K.L. Dam,
- Amy Waldman,
- Kim Hubbard,
- Jennifer Wulff,
- Scott Nybakken,
- Joseph V. Tirella,
- Cathy Burke.
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!
