by Stephen L. Carter
REVIEWED BY JONATHAN DURBIN
THRILLER
Carter's third novel, set between 1952 and 1972, is a fast-paced political thriller involving murder, underground militants and a conspiracy that extends all the way to the White House. Eddie Wesley, a brash young African-American writer, literally stumbles across evidence of a secret plot when he finds the body of prominent lawyer Philmont Castle in a Harlem park. Afraid he'll be implicated if he tells police, Wesley investigates the killing himself, finding clues about the existence of a shadowy group (the Palace Council) who may have been involved in his sister Junie's disappearance as well. The mystery deepens when it's revealed that Junie has gone underground—she's joined a violent resistance group called the Agony, which makes her wanted by real-life luminaries including Richard Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover (who threatens Wesley with trumped-up charges of treason to get him to cooperate in their search: "Espionage, Mr. Wesley. What we electrocuted the Rosenbergs for"). Despite the author's two-dimensional portrayals of the famous types—and a loose interpretation of 20th-century history—readers will enjoy the novel's plot twists and the characters' various betrayals. In this story, no one can be trusted.
by Catherine O'Flynn
REVIEWED BY VICK BOUGHTON
FICTION
Kate Meaney is a 10-year-old amateur detective who tails suspicious types at the Green Oaks Mall near her home in Birmingham, England. One day in 1984, she vanishes. Twenty years later, Kurt, a Green Oaks security guard, realizes he may have been the last to see Kate and begins searching for her in the now vast, slightly sinister mall. Last year's winner of Britain's Costa Award for best first novel, O'Flynn gives readers a ghost story and satire of consumer culture. At once moving and wickedly funny, it's one dazzling debut.
by Jennifer Traig
REVIEWED BY MICHELLE GREEN
MEMOIR
A physician's child who drew an aneurysm when her second-grade art teacher asked the class to depict the scariest thing imaginable, Traig blossomed into a chronic worrier. In a feather-light memoir based on her rich history of hypochondria, she touches on the indignities of sigmoidoscopy (like sitting "on a scimitar"); imagined illnesses in other cultures; and most amusingly, the "reassurance routines" crucial to the worried well. As Traig recuperates from breast-reduction surgery, her mom asks brightly, "Do you want to perform 'Is My Nipple Falling Off?' this morning or will it be 'Bruise or Blood Clot?'" A bit much for civilians, perhaps, but fellow sufferers will find it a stitch.
OPRAH FAVE QUANTUM WELLNESS
Kathy Freston's bestseller says you can improve your health and your environment at the same time.
WHAT IS "QUANTUM" WELLNESS?
It's making tiny changes that affect your health and the global well-being in a big way. Like cutting out animal products: you're decreasing your chance of getting cancer, but you're also helping the animals by not eating them.
IS YOUR 21-DAY CLEANSE, WHICH OPRAH TRIED, FOR WEIGHT LOSS?
It's about awareness, but you can lose from 3 to 10 lbs. I didn't ask if Oprah lost weight. She did it to become a more conscious eater.
HOW HAS VEGANISM CHANGED YOU?
I haven't had a cold in years. I do miss cheese—but not enough to eat it!
Asked to write a children's book while pregnant with second daughter, Grier, now 2 (big sis Rowan is 5), Shields, 43, found she had plenty of material.
WHAT'S WELCOME TO YOUR WORLD, BABY ABOUT?
The birth of a new sibling. My daughter Rowan says so many humorous one-liners that I write down, she basically wrote the book. I gave the big sister her voice—a perky, kind of brassy 5-year-old.
HOW DID ROWAN FEEL ABOUT GRIER'S ARRIVAL?
I involved her, so she was excited.
DO THEY GET ALONG?
Sometimes you have to run in and break it up, but it's amazing how innate their love is.
IS YOUR HOUSE AS GIRLY AS THE ILLUSTRATIONS?
We have so much princess paraphernalia that it would blow your mind.
In a new biography, Christopher Andersen looks back at the tragically shortened lives of Christopher Reeve and his wife, Dana. Among the surprises:
• Christopher was so afraid of marriage that he was seeing a psychiatrist—and the couple were about to break up—when Dana discovered she was pregnant with son Will, now 16.
• Believing this was not "the kind of life he would want to live," Reeve's mother, Barbara, initially suggested that doctors should take him off life support following the riding accident that left him paralyzed.
• Christopher was so set on regaining his ability to walk that when a new drug that could have helped ended up putting him into potentially fatal anaphylactic shock, he asked to try it again.
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!
