REVIEWED BY MOIRA BAILEY
NOVEL
Meloy returns to the family she created in her 2003 novel Liars and Saints—the Santerres, a Catholic clan scarred by infidelity, disappointment and misguided love. This stand-on-its-own story centers on Abby, an uprooted daughter of divorce whose search for belonging has led her to a California college where she mourns the loss of her father. After her 33-year-old uncle Jamie—her mother's younger brother—arrives to console her, they become intimate both psychologically and physically. Their affair inspires Abby to write a novel built from suspected Santerre secrets. Others in this extended family—aimless heiresses, Jesuit apprentices—cross emotional borders as well, with mostly rocky results. Meloy creates characters whose internal dialogues and dilemmas make them seem fully human. Many moments shortcut to the quick: Abby's regret at attending a "stupid party" the night her father died; a mother's rush of love in kissing "the strange roughness" of her son's bearded cheek; an elderly parent "paralyzed with sadness" at his children's lack of success. These moments ensure that the Santerres stay with you: Theirs is a universal need to feel part of something bigger, something that—however flawed—can bend without breaking.
By Roger Rosenblatt
REVIEWED BY JONATHAN DURBIN
NOVEL
Once-famous author and dyed-in-the-wool curmudgeon Harry March lives on an island in the Hamptons, all alone save for his talking, evangelical dog Hector and a statue of his ex-wife. Harry hates himself and the Hamptons, but his real problem is his neighbor Silas Lapham, the atrociously wealthy heir to an asparagus-tongs fortune who's building a 36,000-sq.-ft. home next door. Harry vents his anger via notes: "Neither should a [house] stand as a temple to individual glory," he writes. "Even Gatsby's house was not that." This first novel from Rosenblatt (a former columnist for Time, which, like PEOPLE, is owned by Time Warner) is a hysterically funny class-comedy—the sort of deeply humorous stuff that makes you wonder what would happen if Don DeLillo did stand-up or whether Rosenblatt is secretly British. It will entertain anyone who has ever encountered someone they've disliked on sight, with plenty of sad truths about the in-crowd included.
By Karenna Gore Schiff
REVIEWED BY MICHELLE GREEN
NONFICTION
Schiff, who is the oldest child of Al and Tipper Gore, chronicles the lives of nine American heroines in Lighting the Way. These are women you probably haven't heard of: Ida Wells-Barnett, who was born into slavery and became a crusading journalist; Alice Hamilton, a physician who fought to protect workers against industrial poisons; and Virginia Durr, a white woman who battled segregation in her native Alabama in the 1950s. Schiff places her characters in historical context and has an eye for the telling moment. In the Wells-Barnett profile, she quotes a vituperative reply to one of her subject's pseudonymous editorials in a black newspaper about lynchings in Memphis. Assuming that the author is a man, a rival white newspaper declares, "The fact that a black scoundrel is allowed to live and utter such loathsome and repulsive calumnies is a volume of evidence as to the wonderful patience of Southern whites." These are stories worth telling, and Schiff does them proud.
THE NUMBER by Lee Eisenberg The author, a baby boomer nearing retirement, narrates his quirky report on the quality of your second life and how much money you'll really need to enjoy it.
THE BIG OYSTER by Mark Kurlansky, read by Tom Stechschulte Yes, oysters—but really a fascinating history of the mollusk's role in N.Y.C.'s development.
THE SWEET POTATO QUEENS' WEDDING PLANNER/DIVORCE GUIDE by Jill Connor Browne The author narrates her insouciant guide to matrimony, from sniffing out a groom to finessing the split.
MANHUNT by James L. Swanson This taut historical account of the tense search for Lincoln's killer, actor John Wilkes Booth, is thrillingly narrated by another actor —Richard Thomas.
Tom Perkins
When venture capitalist Perkins, 73, decided to try his hand at a novel, he turned to the prolific Steel, with whom he remains close after their 1999 breakup. "I wouldn't have done this book without Danielle," he says. Here, her tips that helped him write the frothy Sex and the Single Zillionaire.
• Tell a good story that's emotionally satisfying
• Let characters take on lives of their own
• Then, rewrite
>• Ida Wells-Barnett, journalist
• Mother Jones, union organizer
• Alice Hamilton, workplace-safety pioneer
• Frances Perkins, FDR's Labor Secretary
• Virginia Durr, anti-segregationist
• Septima Clark, teacher
• Dolores Huerta, farm-worker organizer
• Helen Rodriguez-Trias, public health pioneer
• Gretchen Buchenholz, child-welfare activist
FREE BASEBALL by Sue Corbett The author of 12 Again, published in 2002, PEOPLE contributor Corbett has published a new novel for readers ages 10 and up—this one, about Felix, an 11-year-old in Florida who embarks on a quest for his baseball-star dad still in Cuba.
HOW TO SLEEP WITH A MOVIE STAR by Kristin Harmel The debut novel from Harmel, also a PEOPLE contributor, is a light read whose Bridget Jones-esque plot involves a celebrity-magazine reporter who becomes embroiled in a romantic misadventure involving, yes, a sensitive, handsome celeb.
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!
