Throughout his remarkable career as a novelist and short-story writer, Trevor has remained astutely sensitive to the shifting storms and consequences of everyday life. In the opening story of this brilliant collection, a blind and widowed piano tuner—jealous and saddened by the happiness he knew in his previous marriage—can do nothing to stop his new wife from redescribing and reinterpreting his world. But the simple changes in the decor of a room, the color of a mountain, the manners of a friend matter less—as Trevor presents them—than the damage she un-wittingly does to the memories of a world his first wife lovingly gave him. The other stories in After Rain have a similar poignancy. Whether writing about an Irish Protestant's vision of a Catholic saint, the letter a wife intercepts from her husband's lover or a nasty divorce, Trevor masterfully details the rippling implications, proving that the most effective drama comes from the aftermath of events and not from the events themselves. In the title story a young woman escaping the heartbreak of love journeys to Italy and finds solace in a fresco depicting the Annunciation. Like the Old Masters, Trevor creates moments that are evocative and incandescent. His messages linger and hang in the air. (Viking, $22.95)
by Michael Novacek
Make no bones about it, dinos are dinero. Ask Steven Spielberg or any museum director with a roomful of Velociraptors. Although most of us know triceratops from T-Rex, we know precious little about fossil finders who, according to trailblazing paleontologist Roy Chapman Andrews, "hunt dinosaurs with whisk brooms" in faraway corners of the globe. Novacek's action-packed account of his pioneering road trips to the wasteland of Mongolia's Gobi desert should change all that.
In 1989, Novacek, provost of science at the American Museum of Natural History, led the first Western expedition in 60 years to the fossil-rich Gobi. Slow to hit pay dirt, his crew suffered through three summers of suffocating sandstorms, an armada of insects and rations of freeze-dried pork chops and warm beer with only 80 ancient turtle shells to show for their troubles.
Then in 1993 they stumbled on the mother of all animal graveyards in the sun-scorched Ukhaa Tolgod section of the Gobi. "A strange feeling started to take hold in me," writes Novacek, who theorizes that the animals were trapped by brief but catastrophic sandstorms. "A rush that made me shiver every time I saw yet another mammal skull or dinosaur skeleton sculpted in the rock." Among the hundreds of skeletons was a spectacular new species called Mononykus, a relative of present-day birds, whose larger brain case made it one of the Einsteins of dinosauria.
Novacek puts flesh on the bones with intriguing theories about a day in the life of a Cretaceous dino. Although the chapters on hard science can plod along, Novacek manages to deliver adventure and revelation in one book. (Anchor, $24.95)
by Robert Coles
A 9-year-old cheats on an arithmetic test. A girl barely old enough to take care of herself is now a mother. Bored high school students, destined for Ivy League colleges, busy themselves by getting high. For more than 30 years, Coles, a pediatrician, Harvard professor and psychologist, has studied how children respond to the challenges of life, and in The Moral Intelligence of Children he once again places responsibility for their successes and failures squarely on the adults who influence their behavior. Whether a baby throws a bottle on the floor or a teenager argues with a parent, children are constantly looking for guidance and interpretations of right and wrong behavior, argues the author. A moral education comes from such sources as parental modeling or even storytelling, and it, teaches children impulse control and a tolerance for frustration—an important source, according to Coles, of "self control, compassion and empathy." While an eloquent advocate for children, Coles also portrays the thorny consequences of parenting—where in some cases too much love leads to feelings of self-importance, and too little love to a lack of trust. Intelligent, accessible and compelling, The Moral Intelligence of Children effectively captures the challenge, for children and parents alike, of struggling with life's ironies and ambiguities. (Random House, $21)
by Shirley Jackson
Three decades after her death, Shirley Jackson is still widely admired for "The Lottery," her classic horror story of small-town evil. Reading Ordinary Day, one can't help thinking that, for Jackson herself, the true horror would be the knowledge that her previously unpublished or uncollected stories have been gathered in this volume—an event that feels less like publication than like indecent exposure. Many of these 54 stories seem to have been written less for art than for money; they appeared in such popular magazines as Charm, Woman's Home Companion and The Saturday Evening Post. There are pieces she wrote in college, fragments of fiction, sketches of domestic life.
Her son and daughter, who edited this edition, admit in their introduction that these tales are "not all charismatic heartstoppers on the level of 'The Lottery.' " But that disclaimer hardly prepares one for the clichés, the obvious ironies, the awkward writing, the predictable surprise endings, the paper-thin characters. Jackson fans will be dismayed; new readers will wonder why her reputation has survived for so long. Perhaps the book's most useful purpose may be to warn other writers to leave very clear instructions for their literary executors, or to burn every scrap they don't want published posthumously by their devoted and well-meaning heirs. (Bantam, $23.95)
by Fred Goodman
At the Newport Folk festival in the summer of 1965, folk god Bob Dylan ushered in American rock's new era when he plugged in an electric guitar and pummeled a horrified audience with the opening chords of "Maggie's Farm." With that Newport moment (and that summer's groundbreaking "Like a Rolling Stone"), Dylan helped broaden the audience for rock beyond cheesy AM radio hits and the latest British invasion band. Although the selling of records had always been about money, the fact that Dylan, America's premier folk artiste, turned up the volume would inspire a new generation of performers, as well as the dollar-hungry record labels, agents and promoters soon to court them. By 1975, Bruce Springsteen would notch rock's first certified platinum album, selling 1 million copies of Born to Run, and Peter Frampton would collect $250,000 for performing a single show at Philadelphia's JFK stadium. By 1990, David Geffen would sell his record company to MCA for $710 million.
Former Rolling Stone editor Goodman has written an engaging account of the battling egos and financial excesses behind the growing business of rock and roll. Perhaps big money didn't spoil the music, Goodman argues, but it certainly corrupted numerous artists, record execs, producers and club owners. After reading Mansion, you still won't be happy paying $15.98 for that new CD, but at least you'll understand where the money is going. (Times Books, $25)
by Diane K. Shah
Page-Turner of the Week
WHAT'S BLACK AND WHITE AND RED all over? Try hard-driving African-American cop Todd Robbie, his equally ambitious (and Caucasian) patrol partner Brenden Harlow and the rest of the LAPD, who are decidedly embarrassed by the success of a brazen serial killer preying on female ATM customers in this seductive chiller.
When initial investigative efforts dead-end, the gutsy Harlow agrees to decoy duty. But her assignment quickly turns even more treacherous than she has anticipated—the slayer starts stalking her.
As the devious, double-barreled plot amply demonstrates, Shah, who previously wrote Chief: My Life in the LAPD with Daryl Gates, can make you hold your breath until the last page. But beyond that, what distinguishes her tale is its informed, unflinching look at the men, and especially the women, who walk the thin blue line. (Simon & Schuster, $23)
>WIVES ALIVE
Goldie, Diane, Bette—call your agents! Olivia Goldsmith, whose 1991 novel First Wives Club was made into a hit movie, signed a $4 million, two-book contract with HarperCollins, a deal that calls for a sequel to Wives titled Date Rage. "What is more universal than women outraged by bad marriages?" asks Goldsmith, 42. "The answer is women outraged by terrible dating behavior."
ASH CASH
Fame came late to Frank McCourt, but at least it brought fortune with it. The 66-year-old author of Angela's Ashes has sold the film rights to his first book—about his impoverished Irish childhood—for a sum in the high six figures. McCourt also demanded, and landed, co-screenwriting credit. "It's my life, my book," he says. "I will stick up for my end."
SERIAL CHILLER A six-book series about evil doings in a fictional New Hampshire town? Although it sounds like a Stephen King project, The Black-stone Chronicles is the creation of horror writer John Saul, who is also hoping to mimic King's success. The first of six monthly installments became a bestseller, while ABC-TV signed a seven-figure deal with Saul to make a 1998 miniseries.
SUDDENLY SEYMOUR
It's the literary equivalent of Haley's comet—new work by J.D. Salinger. The legendary recluse, who last published fiction in 1963, will be coming out with Hapworth 16, 1924, a hush-hush book set to be issued next month by Orchises Press. As for the rarely seen Salinger, now 78, don't expect him to turn up on Oprah.
>Lilian Jackson Braun
THE CATS WHO STARTED A CAREER
IT BEGAN, OF COURSE, WITH A MYSTERY and a cat. Lilian Jackson Braun was a features editor at the Detroit Free Press in 1961 when her beloved 2-year-old Siamese, Koko, died in a suspicious fall from a 10th floor window. Haunted by the notion that the cat had been pushed by an eccentric neighbor, Braun wrote several short stories that featured feline plots and sold them to Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. In 1966 she published The Cat Who Could Read Backwards, the first in her popular series of mystery novels. "Cats and mysteries just go together," says Braun, whose 20th novel in the series, The Cat Who Tailed a Thief, recently hit shelves. "There's something mysterious about cats, they're unpredictable, they're intelligent, they're independent. And of course, they're fun." The books—which feature Siamese cats Koko and Yum Yum helping their two-legged housemate, journalist Qwill Qwilleran, solve murders—have sold more than 9 million copies and cause readers to write Braun about their own felines. "People love to talk about their cats," says Braun, who lives in Tryon, N.C., with her second husband, retired actor Earl Bettinger. The books, however, are more often inspired by her own two Siamese, Koko (the Third) and Pitti Sing. "Every day they give me an idea," says Braun of the cats, whose incessant wildlife-watching prompted the title The Cat Who Sang to the Birds, due next winter. And Braun—who declines to give her age but considering her 18 years as an advertising copywriter, 30 years at the Free Press and dozen or so since she retired to write novels full-time, is likely about 80—can't wait to wrap that book up and get on to the next. Says the author: "I tell people that psychologically I'm 35, physically I'm about 55, and chronological age I don't believe in."
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