Florida horse country provides the backdrop for a thriller as tightly wound as its heroine. Every night trust-fund baby and disgraced-sheriff's-detective-turned-horse-trainer Elena Estes replays the past in her mind. Fingering her stash of Vicodin pills, she weighs whether to swallow one and ease the pain caused by the incident that ended her law enforcement career or down 30 and end everything. Just one thing keeps her going: "The horses were a connection to my life," she says, "and every hour I spent with them was a reprieve."
Enter Molly Seabright, a precocious 12-year-old with a missing sister. Soon Elena is knee-deep in manure, murder and money as she runs afoul of an oddball cast of characters who make Jerry Springer's kookiest guests look like extras from Leave It to Beaver. Hoag, the author of 10 bestsellers, has created a winning central figure in Elena, whose solid horse—and people—sense make her a reassuring and reliable guide. (Bantam, $26.95)
Bottom Line: Great ride
By Jeffrey Eugenides
Holden Caulfield thought he had issues. For Cal Stephanides, the passage into manhood is even more distressing because he lived as a girl named Callie until age 14. "Some people inherit houses," Cal says. "I got a recessive gene on my fifth chromosome and some very rare family jewels indeed."
In this daring and inventive second novel from the author of 1993's The Virgin Suicides, Cal recounts the twists of fate and quirks of biology that made him a hermaphrodite. An epic with shades of myth and tragedy begins when a brother and sister flee the Turkish invasion of Asia Minor in the 1920s and arrive in America as husband and wife. They are Cal's grandparents.
It's sensational stuff, but Eugenides brings a sophisticated touch, taking his time with an intricate 400 pages or so of bizarre family history building up to Callie's discovery of her condition. The conclusion, though, feels rushed: When Callie runs away from home and eventually returns as Cal, family members react as though their daughter were trying out a shocking new hair color. Still, this feast of a novel is thrilling in the scope of its imagination and surprising in its tenderness. Cal is one of recent fiction's most endearing characters. (Farrar Straus Giroux, $27)
Bottom Line: A gender-bending jewel
By Peter Jennings and Todd Brewster
There's more to America than Disneyland and value meals. But how to define it? In a follow-up to 1998's book and TV special The Century, ABC anchor Peter Jennings and senior editorial producer Todd Brewster take a coast-to-coast journey to find the answer. Unfortunately they get lost along the way. Heavy on verbiage but short on heart, this cumbersome tome reads like an eighth-grade textbook. Tedious essays about the history of taxes and potato chip marketing are surrounded by photos worthy of a Best Western brochure. We get only a glimpse of real examples of American spirit like 285-lb. Anna "Tonka" Tate, who plays pro women's football, and Janet Snosnicki, a teenage lesbian who proudly brought her girlfriend to the prom. These are the people who make America the home of the brave. (Hyperion, $50)
Bottom Line: Misguided trip
By Nicholas Sparks
Page-turner of the week
Ladies and gentlemen, start your tear ducts for the latest celluloid-ready weeper from Nicholas Sparks, author of Message in a Bottle and A Walk to Remember. Sparks doesn't stray far from his bittersweet, lost-love formula here. Southern belle Adrienne Willis is abandoned by her husband and left to care for three kids.
She heads to Rodanthe, N.C., for a few days to look after a friend's inn and her own broken heart. There she meets Paul Flanner, a handsome plastic surgeon toting his own emotional baggage. Together they take baby steps toward healing as their romance blooms. But when a hurricane begins crashing up the coast, you know that heartbreak is coming, with it. Predictable? Schmaltzy? Of course, but you'll cry in spite of yourself. (Warner, $22.95)
Bottom Line: Worth spending a night with
By Lee Smith
In 1965, 12 classmates at a fictitious Virginia women's college floated down the Mississippi on a raft. In 1999 four of "the girls" reunite on a luxury steamboat to retrace their journey, but with a more somber mission: to scatter the ashes of glamorous Baby, the instigator of the original trip.
Sounds like a floating Big Chill for the HRT set, but Smith delivers a nimble narrative that loops back and forth from the present to the 1960s, when southern girls were expected to bag a husband along with a B.A. Sprinkled throughout are such gems as "There are no grown-ups—this is the big, dirty secret that no one ever tells you." Best of all is Smith's mischievous humor. A scene in which a couple discuss recovering from prostate surgery—over dinner with strangers—is by itself worth the cover price. (Algonquin, $24.95)
Bottom Line: Delightful cruise
By Jennifer Crusie
Art, orgasms, identities, affection. If it can be faked, the characters in Crusie's snappy new novel will do it. Davy Dempsey is a con man trying (not quite hard enough) to avoid following in his shiftless father's footsteps. Tilda Goodnight is a brilliant painter whose dad turned her into an unwilling forger. Obviously Davy and Tilda will wind up together, but first they must deal with such wacky extras as a straitlaced single mom who spends several nights a week performing as a sex goddess at her gay ex-husband's nightclub. Crusie has a gift for concocting nutty scenarios and witty one-liners, though the gags lose their fizz as the book goes on. (St. Martin's, $24.95)
Bottom Line: A few genuine laughs
Edited by Otto Penzler and Thomas H. Cook
The title is something of a misnomer: The crime writing is solely from one year—2001—and only from magazines. Despite such limitations, though, the 17 articles chosen by Penzler, a mystery bookstore owner, and Cook, a first-rate (but undersung) thriller writer, are compelling.
Subjects range from an undercover drug agent in Mexico to a mentally retarded murderer sweating out a death sentence in Texas to O.J. Simpson trying to find peace in Florida. And, of course, 2001 was the year of the greatest crime of our time—9/11. If the editors go ahead with their laudable plan for more volumes in coming years, let's hope they find a way to include photos. Getting only the text of these excellent magazine stories is like listening to a stereo with only one speaker. (Vintage, $15)
Bottom Line: Arresting reading
- Contributors:
- Amy Waldman,
- Michelle Vellucci,
- Jennifer Wulff,
- Maggie Haberman,
- Bella Stander,
- Debby Waldman,
- Joe Treen.
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!
