Beginning in the summer of 1979, 29 black children were snatched off the streets of Atlanta one by one and murdered over an agonizing two-year period. In her debut novel Jones, who grew up in Atlanta during that time, paints a portrait of what it's like to come of age in a city where children are an endangered species. This isn't a crime tale, though: The murders are just the backdrop for a largely anecdotal story of childhood. The killings are mentioned only tangentially, lost amid the many familiar tableaux of youth: girls negotiating for a parental chaperone or learning how to properly apply Vaseline to bring out the eyes.
Jones has an eloquent voice when it comes to describing seemingly autobiographical details about the tense community. In one chilling episode kids dicker over who must sit in the empty chair of a missing classmate who is feared dead. In another a stressed-out dad turns up in the classroom to give his son a public beating. Leaving Atlanta has plenty of passion, if not much plot. (Warner, $23.95)
Bottom Line: Promising debut
By Sean Hannity
Sean Hannity was so happy. Growing up in a second-generation Irish-American family, he absorbed his family's conservative values. Then the liberals came along and ruined everything.
Like Bill O'Reilly, whom he follows nightly on Fox News Channel, political observer Hannity isn't subtle. But he makes for an amusing tour guide of an imaginary Museum of Modern Left-Wing Lunacy, filled with absurd examples of political correctness: the Boulder Public Library that deemed a display of the American flag offensive but exhibited brightly colored sculptures of sex organs; Florida politicians who objected to children reciting the Declaration of Independence because minorities and women were discriminated against when it was written; and that favorite conservative piñatà, Alec Baldwin, who said that the 2000 election mess was as bad for democracy as Sept. 11 was for business.
Hannity is as angry as a Baldwin when it comes to discussing the Sept. 11 attacks, which he thinks the Clinton Administration could have prevented. His outrage is entertaining, though, whether you're nodding your head or rolling your eyes. (HarperCollins, $25.95)
Bottom Line: Flag-waving fun
By Adam Haslett
Disregard the title. The characters in Haslett's harrowing first collection of stories are all estranged from the world, struggling to make connections. Most suffer from mental illness; all are drowning in despair.
Selected for Today's book club, Stranger will turn readers accustomed to Katie Couric's chirpy cheer into blubbering wrecks. The stories echo with loss, even in basic descriptions. (A wooden chest is "about the size of a child's coffin.") The writing is extraordinarily moving, never maudlin. (Doubleday, $21.95)
Bottom Line: A brilliant collection—read it and weep
By Perri O'Shaughnessy
Page-turner of the week
Can't a lawyer get a little justice around here? Sure, South Lake Tahoe attorney Nina Reilly left some very sensitive notes in her Bronco overnight, and now that they've been stolen, three of her cases are threatening to fall apart. But she's working hard to protect the cop who could lose custody of his kids, the Laotian couple who are mortally afraid of the people who burned down their business and the pair of young women who seem to have witnessed a murder. Except that the purloined information keeps getting to the wrong people, causing Reilly's clients so much grief that they decide to make her feel their pain in court.
The sisters O'Shaughnessy—Pamela and Mary, who write under the pen name Perri—need to put themselves on a plot diet: Three different stories are too much for the reader's plate. But the resolution of Reilly's malpractice hearing has all the wham-bang legal pyrotechnics of a John Grisham tale. After eight novels Reilly has become both more open—her relationship with her investigator Paul van Wagoner has finally ripened—and more tender as she wonders about the issues in her life. Here's to a lawyer with as much heart as brains. (Delacorte, $24.95)
Bottom Line: A winning case
Carl Hiaasen
Roy is the new kid in school. He has the usual trouble making friends and avoiding the class bully. But since this school is located smack in the middle of Hiaasen's Florida suburbs, Roy also has hassles with baby alligators lurking in port-o-Johns, venomous snakes with sparkly blue tails and the trigger-happy construction supervisor of a local pancake chain whose expansion threatens a family of endangered owls.
Hiaasen, as any mystery fan knows, is the frenetic prankster behind such comic capers as Striptease. This is his first book for young adults, and he makes the transition smoothly, though without quite enough verve. With a simplified plot, less cynical heroes and zero cussing or sex, Hoot is almost square—like The Hardy Boys with better jokes. There is plenty of suspense and subversive humor to engage youngsters, plus worthy lessons about personal and civic responsibility. Still, sophisticated kids—and certainly adults—should seek out the unadulterated pleasures of Hiaasen's grownup novels. (Knopf, $15.95)
Bottom Line: Clever kid caper
- Contributors:
- Neil Graves,
- Todd Seavey,
- Dan Jewel,
- Ron Givens,
- Daniel Radosh.
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!
