.webp)
.webp)
Top reviews:
Did you know that the first union in the comic book industry to ratify a contract—Comic Book Workers United—only did so in 2023 over seven decades after the first group of comic workers attempted to organize? The long winding labor struggles of the industry are just one of the underexplored areas of comics history that Standal addresses in this essay collection. Another is the proto-feminism of Little Lulu the curly-haired character created by Marge Buell who “impishly fought against anything she deemed unfair particularly boys’ treatment of girls” first in the pages of the Saturday Evening Post and then as a cartoon character on the silver screen. Standal writes about Héctor Oesterheld the celebrated Argentinian author of The Eternaut whose political activity led to him being disappeared by his own government in 1977 and David Mazzucchelli the illustrator of celebrated 1980s runs of Batman and Daredevil who turned away from the big publishers at the height of his success to make and publish more personal stories for far less money. The book’s longest essay is a fascinating study of how three of the comics world’s most successful creators—Charles Schulz Jim Davis and Bill Watterson—navigated the hazards of stewarding characters popular enough to be turned into merchandisable products. “Calvin and Hobbes has remained a crown jewel despite Watterson ending the strip almost three decades ago” writes Standal in his plainspoken prose. “More impressive this popularity manifested even though there [haven’t] been balloons animated specials or toys to keep the characters in the public eye.” The effect of the book is a bit like if Mike Davis wrote a history of comics approaching the field through the lens of economic power structures. For those who only think of comics in terms of DC and Marvel superheroes Standal’s essays offer insight into the myriad systemic difficulties faced by artists attempting to make a living.
Read more...
In the 1850s and 1860s young Emma Thompson travels with her parents across the western United States and into the Utah Territory where they fall under the sway of a self-declared prophet known as Joseph Morris who’s left Mormonism to found his own sect known as the Morrisites. Hailed as the “Lord of the Earth” and the Messiah Morris encourages his followers to abandon their vocations and prepare for the imminent physical return of Jesus. His boasts draw the attention of the territorial government which dispatches Deputy Marshal Robert Burton to restore order. In a bloody skirmish later known as the Morrisite War Burton’s men besiege the Morrisites’ fort. A cannonball strikes Emma’s friend Mary Christofferson shattering her chin. Emma watches in horror as a man she identifies as Burton fires upon Joseph Morris and Isabella Bowman killing them instantly. Outraged by this apparent miscarriage of justice Emma awaits the day their killer will be apprehended. After the war ends still in her teens Emma marries a soldier named George Waldron—although as his lies and gambling debts accumulate she’ll come to wonder if that’s actually his real name. When George is jailed for horse theft Emma meets personally with a general and secures his release. When their marriage flounders Emma divorces George and marries Nels Just for reasons more pragmatic than romantic.
Just’s narrative is drawn from the journals of Emma Just a blood relation and memories shared orally with her daughter Agnes. At times in the journals Emma alludes only vaguely to events of which we have no further knowledge; reading between the gaps in the text Just has attempted to reconstruct what might have taken place based on informed speculation. (While the real George was arrested for horse theft how he escaped the jail remains a mystery; the answer Just offers is both persuasive and lends the fictional Emma some much-needed agency.) Where Just excels is in portraying the minutiae of daily life in the West during this era: the drying of stirring spoons the making of soap and candles from tallow the price of cows the effects of frost on crops and gardens. He skillfully renders Emma’s relationship with George; her naïveté and youthful eagerness to be seduced by a man of low character may remind readers of the title character in Sigrid Undset’s Kristin Lavransdatter (1929) who also acquires wisdom in a failed marriage. In one of the book’s more compelling scenes Emma slightly crazed by isolation on the frontier attempts to drown her sons in a river to save them from being murdered by Native Americans. Psychologically the scene is perhaps the most believable moment in the book: small wonder that it’s taken from the real Emma’s diaries. The love of literature displayed by Emma’s sons—who without formal schooling grow up reading classic novels—sounds a plangent note for the vanished mass literacy of a previous century.
Read more...
“This isn’t just a story about Houdini’s death” writes surgeon and forensic historical medical researcher Gillespie at the beginning of her book. “It’s a story about how truth disappears—and why sometimes it takes science to bring it back.” In these pages the author provides a brief biography of magician Harry Houdini from his birth as Ehrich Weiss in 1874 to his transformation into a performer to his world renown as an escape artist to his death in 1926. “By the time Ehrich reinvented himself as Harry Houdini” Gillespie writes “the boy who once felt powerless had learned that control could be seized through skill spectacle and the mastery of perception.” The ironic circumstances of his death have been chronicled and dramatized dozens of times in the ensuing century: A young McGill student impressed by the performer’s frequent stage stunt of easily absorbing punches to his midriff caught Houdini by surprise and punched him in the stomach. The student didn’t know that Houdini was recovering from an operation for a ruptured appendix (some documents hold that the incident occurred before the operation) and the punch killed the magician several days later on October 31 1926. By her own admission Gillespie comes to this seemingly settled story as an outsider. “Houdini wasn’t on my radar” she confesses. “I wasn’t a magician or a collector or even particularly curious about escapes.” Rather the author is a forensic medical investigator and the settled story didn’t sit well with her. She examined Houdini’s death certificate and noticed that the doctor’s handwriting didn’t match what was on the document and just like that the search for what really happened to Houdini was on.
Gillespie’s enthusiasm is very infectious and her compelling text includes a wealth of engaging medical speculation. She notes for instance that Houdini’s second toes on both feet were longer than the big toes a rare anatomical quirk called Morton’s toe that may have aided in some of his escapes. Equally fascinating (although considerably more revolting) is the author’s examination of Dr. Max Thorek whose experiments transplanting monkey testes into humans caught Houdini’s attention and resulted in correspondence visits and possibly (Gillespie posits) an operation in June of 1922. “Thorek worked with scalpels Houdini with shackles” she writes “but both were in the business of defying limits.” Was a clandestine operation involving monkey glands somehow connected with—or even ultimately responsible for—Houdini’s death? “If I wanted to understand what really happened” Gillespie concludes “I needed to talk to the best Houdini experts.” These interviews with experts are as lively and colorful as everything else in the book and the rundown of possible persons of interest regarding Houdini’s death—from his wife Beatrice to his corrosively jealous brother Leopold to his half brother Hermann—gives the narrative the tension and momentum of a whodunit. Running through the more strictly biographical portions of the book are the kinds of gritty detailed assessments only a medical professional could make detailing the severe pain and damage Houdini incurred in many of his escapes and so skillfully concealed from his adoring audiences. It all adds up to a quirky irresistible search for hidden medical truth.
Read more...
Gladiator Eleanor “Ellie” Skinner triumphs in one more battle to the death in the arena. The reigning powers (called the Thral) of Draconia demand she fight in one grizzly battle a year; her other option is becoming a mother and Ellie has no interest in raising a child. In Draconia the men rule—they possess undefined magic powers that are stripped away from baby girls as soon as they’re born. Now at 35 with a wooden arm to replace the one she lost in battle sometime during her 17 years in the arena Ellie is the oldest undefeated gladiator in Draconia. Her best friend Rosalind “Roz” Butcher is unwillingly the second-oldest gladiator (unable to have a baby Roz was forced into the arena). Ellie is horrified to realize she herself has become pregnant after one night’s indiscretion. Roz has heard rumors of an old woman who lives by the ocean beyond Draconia who still has her magic; perhaps she can help Ellie get rid of the baby. But first she and Roz must escape from the city. They trek through the grimy sewers of Draconia where the women pick up a teenager named Sam who has his own reasons for wanting to escape. The narrative combines raw graphic violence with edgy humor and unexpected poignancy. Composed in contemporary lingo loaded with expletives the story also throws around occasional antiquated terminology just for fun—Ellie refers to the fetus she’s carrying as the “homunculus.” It won’t take readers long to begin to connect the not-so-subtle similarities between Draconia’s undergirding philosophy with the political and social rhetoric of today. This is not a novel for the squeamish but readers comfortable with the blood gore and rough language have plenty of satisfying adventure in store for them.
Read more...
In 1974 the 21-year-old author motivated by the early death of his father from a heart attack embarked on an ambitious attempt to answer two deceptively simple questions: How does one determine the optimal human diet and what diet would one discover with that method? Spitz clarifies early on that he’s neither a physician nor a dietitian but a “writer and self-taught student of nutrition” who approaches his vast subject with the zeal of a dedicated researcher. Beginning with humanity’s ancestral diet of fruits shoots nuts and seeds he traces the development of nutritional science from 18th-century chemistry through modern molecular biology. Along the way he introduces readers to figures such as Antoine Lavoisier whose work helped launch the chemical revolution and 19th-century researchers who sought to unravel the mysteries of protein metabolism carbohydrates vitamins and mineral absorption. He devotes entire chapters to the scientific community’s awakening to vitamins minerals essential amino acids and deficiency diseases. Along the way Spitz recounts animal experiments epidemiological surveys and wartime observations. The book also examines food policy from a deeply political perspective digging into the United Nations’ first forays into food policy after World War II. Spitz discusses the work of such researchers as Denis Burkitt and Michael Greger examining the specifics of what foods and medicines may affect diseases from diabetes to Parkinson’s. The evidence builds toward a central conclusion that nutritional science overwhelmingly supports a whole-food plant-based diet. As Spitz writes “When people eat a steady diet of meat dairy eggs and processed foods they set themselves up for a lifetime of chronic degenerative diseases.” Extensive appendices covering vitamin B12 vitamin D fatty acids sodium food additives genetically modified foods and other topics round out Spitz’s lengthy work.
The book succeeds in introducing readers to an enormous body of research. Rather than a conventional diet manual with meal plans and practical advice Spitz produces something closer to a history of nutritional science and metabolism offering plenty to admire. Spitz has clearly immersed himself in an impressive breadth of information and sometimes his playful asides help lighten the highly technical material. (“Ahhh…but now I’m getting ahead of myself” he jokes at one point.) But it’s not always clear whether Spitz is writing a textbook-style history or a persuasive layperson’s argument for a plant-based diet. Lengthy discussions of biochemical pathways metabolic cycles chemical formulas and historical experiments (including some rather gruesome ones involving animals) leave the book feeling more like a graduate-level survey course than a guide for general readers. Although his attention to detail demonstrates an impressive command of his subject his broader arguments can feel frustratingly distant. Spitz’s ultimate case for a plant-based diet is persuasive by the end and his synthesis of decades of research creates a compelling rationale for emphasizing whole-plant foods. But readers drawn in by the subtitle’s promise of a layperson’s guide may find themselves somewhat frustrated.Read more...
Apples carrots bread chicken cereal granola bars milk peanut butter potatoes and rice: These are the only 10 foods that Zillah Scriven will eat. Her extreme pickiness is one of several attributes that make the 23-year-old Zillah feel like a child. She’s also only five feet tall and still lives at home with her mother Paula whose obsession with safety causes her to indulge her daughter’s dietary restrictions much to the chagrin of nutritionists and Zillah’s absent father. Zillah is slowly working her way through college—her fear of using public bathrooms limits how many classes she can take per day—but she’s hoping to land an internship and move in with her boyfriend Cliff. One day while sitting in her bedroom Zillah hears a sentiment spoken in the next apartment that closely matches her own: “My life revolves around fear and the fear keeps me stuck here at home.…I want my adult life to begin.” She realizes that she’s listening to a neighbor’s conversation with her therapist. Zillah begins to regularly eavesdrop on these therapy sessions soon learning that the stranger is an agoraphobe who hasn’t left her apartment in months. Zillah begins to recognize that she shares several anxious tendencies with this woman and even wonders aloud about seeing a therapist herself although Paula quickly shuts down the idea: It’s “called ‘being an adult’ and you don’t need to pay some therapist to do it for you.” When Zillah unexpectedly befriends her mysterious neighbor—a woman named Lise—she begins to explore the reasons for her own diet and how they’ve been keeping her from living the life she wants.
Kinn brings Zillah to life with an idiosyncratic narrative voice capturing the revulsion and neuroses that dominate her life. Here for instance Zillah describes the horror of eating a strawberry: “I imagine the slippery spatter and viscera in my mouth. Invading my throat. Choking me. Leaving a taste I won’t be able to get rid of…My stomach tightens like I’ve drunk from a cup of dirty paintbrush water. It flows through me turning me to brackish yuck.” Kinn is a clinical psychologist and takes pains to accurately portray the condition known as ARFID (avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder) as well as the treatment strategy ERP (exposure and response prevention therapy) which uses lighthearted activities and games to help patients confront their problems. The novel often feels like an enactment of such therapy placing readers convincingly in the position of Zillah in order to move them toward a state of understanding and catharsis. The book explores the protagonist’s realization that her intense pickiness isn’t pickiness at all but a peculiar regimen forced upon her—the result of a family history that she knows nothing about. Although the book lacks some of the sharpness that one might expect in a literary novel the reading experience is nonetheless transformative.
Read more...
Rosalind knows all too well what happens when patriarchs let their vanity spoil their stewardship of their families’ fortunes. Her own father’s disappearance left her nothing but a pile of bad debts. Although marrying Devon Winterbourne son of the Duke of Casselmaine would have secured her future Rosalind chose the road less traveled earning her keep by helping the genteel women of Regency London solve domestic problems large and small. Since she’s remained on good terms with Winterbourne she’s not surprised when he wants her to meet his intended Clara Kinsdale. But Winterbourne has a greater surprise: He wants Rosalind to visit Clara’s home in Bath. Having frittered away most of the Kinsdale fortune Clara’s father Sir Anthony hopes to put his family back on sound financial footing by running his thoroughbred Kinsdale’s Pride in the Somersetshire Sweepstakes with the help of Mrs. Lynn a dodgy Bath widow. The city’s racing pundits rate the mare as closer to the glue factory than the finish line so Winterbourne is counting on Rosalind’s insight and her experience with feckless fathers to figure out what’s really going on. Wilde’s feisty heroine does not disappoint. Rosalind is a delight as are her colorful companions; it’s a shame that Alice Littlefield and Amelia McGowan are consigned such small roles in this adventure. A minor note: Wilde could occasionally use some editing. “Principle officer” is an easy mistake to decode but repeatedly calling a parterre a “pied-à-terre” is confusing.
Read more...
Mia’s got a brand-new diary—and a dream: joining Greenpeace “to save the baby seals.” But her mom is dating her algebra teacher her crush barely knows she exists and her dad’s just informed her that she must move to Genovia to learn to be a princess. It’s been decades since the 2000 release of The Princess Diaries and the 2001 Disney film adaptation and the story’s late 1990s setting shines through. Illustrator Crandall depicts the fashions the landline phones and the chunky desktop PCs—with no social media or celebrity gossip blogs in sight. Yet the fairy tale doesn’t feel dated—or no more so than any story wherein the protagonist discovers she’s the hereditary princess of a small European country. The full-color manga-influenced art depicts an abbreviated version of Mia’s torments as her Grandmère attempts to mold her into a stylized femme ideal of a princess. Mia’s best friend Lilly Moscovitz wholly disapproves of her new aesthetic on social and political grounds. Mia takes the opportunity to befriend classmate Tina Hakim Baba (one of the few characters who isn’t white). She also grows much closer to Lilly’s brother Michael who “knows HTML” and “looks really good without a shirt.” This graphic novel adds nothing new but still solidly communicates the charm and humor of the original.
Read more...
It’s the Sunday before Tess Lowell’s second wedding but the painstaking planning for her union to practically perfect state Senate hopeful Warren Ashley didn’t prepare her for the drama that’s about to unfold over a week at her family’s Cape Cod estate. Because unbeknownst to Tess her troublemaking brother Sebastian invited her ex-husband Peter Hyun to the festivities. Peter a working-class artist doesn’t relish the thought of re-entering Tess’ WASPy world but five years after she divorced him while he was in treatment for alcoholism he can’t resist the idea of finally getting closure. Even more tempting is the thought of showing up at the wedding with Maynard “Mitch” Mitchell on his arm. When Peter meets the handsome young aspiring writer at a dinner party they hit it off right away. Mitch agrees to attend the wedding as Peter’s fake boyfriend in the hope of getting some juicy material for his next project. But when Peter and Mitch are drawn into Tess’ orbit the tension among all three of them threatens to boil over. Fans of the Hollywood classic will recognize the original in broad strokes here—the privileged daughter of a well-to-do family the handsome ex-husband she can’t quite shake the bumbling but charming writer thrown into their midst—but readers hoping for the screwball humor and crackling dialogue of the original may be disappointed. Stoddard’s decision to connect the central love triangle on all sides is inspired and Peter and Mitch’s bisexuality add welcome depth. But the text is overstuffed with characters and padded with unnecessary plot points that slow everything down.
Read more...
Clara Cowan and Seb Bonami meet in London when they’re both at the beginning of their adult lives. Clara dreams of being a director and is already hard at work making films with her obnoxious actor boyfriend. Seb has tried music modeling and acting but none of them feel like a calling to him. It takes the two of them some time to end up together but when they do their love affair is big and passionate. But as time goes by their often-dramatic partnership begins to show cracks. Although Clara has always known that she’s meant to work in film Seb is not quite sure what his purpose is. Clara pushes him to keep going but he can’t help but feel that none of it matters to him—in fact he’d much rather quit and start a family if only Clara would agree. When Clara casts him in her biggest film yet their clashing personalities and desires lead to a breakup so explosive that there’s no chance of reconciliation…except that because of their shared friends they keep running into each other. Palmer creates an expansive love story that spans years and holds lots of surprises. The unique structure is a standout—each chapter is told by a different person in Clara and Seb’s life whether a friend a parent a barista or a random passenger on the bus. Palmer doesn’t flinch putting Clara and Seb through the wringer as they endure losses and betrayals that make it hard to believe they’ll ever find their way back to each other. For readers who like romances with plenty of angst and torment this is a satisfying read.
Read more...
Seventeen-year-old Aria Lendell has always been a hopeless romantic and inveterate daydreamer. But ever since something terrible happened to her identical twin Cady her imagination has lost its spark. Aria suddenly starts having lucid dreams at midnight; the fantastical settings offer a reprieve from reality. She shares the dreamworld with Strat Madigan who attends St. Swithun’s a boys’ prep school in nearby Sacramento. The white-presenting pair’s encounters at midnight in daydreams and in real life lead to the return of memories complicating things even more. Aria and Strat realize they must have gotten memory erasures from Aracen Exradere. While this elective surgery is common for adults it’s permitted for minors only in exceptional circumstances. Why and how did Aria and Strat erase each other—especially when their memories are the stuff of fairy tales? And why is the normally surefire ArEx procedure failing? As they piece together the puzzle they confront the old and present versions of themselves. Using vividly descriptive prose Bourne explores relationships particularly the gaps between expectation and reality. Both leads have frequently capitulated to what others needed them to be at the expense of their real selves. Now that they have a second chance at love they learn to embrace truth in all its messiness and manage relationships new and old romantic and familial. The plot unravels slowly with allusions and teases but the story maintains a fast pace.
Read more...
In the year 3989 Sook Joo begins her teen years living at an orphanage with her grandfather Ryu a village surgeon and master practitioner of Orikido an ancient form of martial arts that uses traditional techniques and locally fabricated steel weapons. When the gentle peace of the orphanage is broken by a group of “Slängers”—a notorious gang of enforcers for the underworld boss Quan—Ryu is killed defending his home. Sook Joo is separated from her pseudo-sibling Futotta and sent to live with her Uncle Hai himself a degenerate who allows Sook Joo to be raped to pay off a debt. She’s then kidnapped by a human trafficking ring and selected by the mysterious Cho who will deliver her to her ultimate fate: to be interred aboard a nightmare ship where passenger-slaves are made to fight each other often to the death. Though she did nothing to deserve such a punishment Sook Joo is well equipped to survive it given her experience in Orikido and as she fights to stay alive she plots her revenge against the powerful sinister forces led by Quan. Cooke and Ryan’s gripping novel takes place in a world not entirely different from our own despite being set nearly 2000 years in the future. The setting is an intriguing reality in which 21st-century technology (and its imagined advances) mingles effectively with the old-world ways of life concerning loyalty honor and martial arts. The combat scenes are well drawn especially when the opponents are mismatched: “Sook Joo kicked her in the groin threw a sharp punch to her nose and again cast her to the ground. Tòa half-blinded with blood and tears leapt up and took a series of wild swings. She’d clearly had no training. She was a farm girl or street orphan nothing more.” While Cooke and Ryan may not be breaking new ground they’ve delivered an entertaining action-packed revenge tale.
Read more...
Ashlyn Banner would prefer to be left alone but newcomer Aiden Clark pesters her relentlessly. They’re stuck doing a semesterlong project together and Aiden also pressures Ashlyn to join an optional field trip to Savannah Georgia where they along with a few classmates tour a house that’s rumored to be haunted. Ashlyn at first tells herself she’s having visual and auditory hallucinations but she discovers that the others perceive the same inexplicable phenomena she does. The teens realize that far from being a prank for a reaction video the terrors they experience show up in the real world. Ashlyn’s sensitive hearing—she wears earplugs to muffle sounds—allows her to sense the presence of phantoms before the others. Eager to restore balance to their waking lives the teens who largely present white (other than twins who are cued Latine) gather data and make plans. This print edition of entries from a WEBTOON comic features anime-inspired art with bold lines and movement but the characters are rendered with seemingly random inconsistencies and ambiguities and some backgrounds feel unfinished. The character development is light and Aiden’s borderline stalker-ish behavior is never addressed. The creepy phantoms and high action offer horror fans a fast-paced adventure. Future installments may flesh out some of the scattered plot elements.
Read more...
Wayne author of six previous novels returns with an ingenious dissection of marriage masculinity and privilege propelled by a gimlet-eyed wit. The opening scene—a Manhattan fundraiser where tuxedoed men “like inflatable penguins” mingle over wagyu sliders with their “spectral hollow-cheeked wives”—establishes both the novel’s milieu and the lopsided dynamic between Steven a 45-year-old writer living off a long-ago bestseller and his high-powered wife Lucy who bankrolls their life. His mortification is complete when he accidentally streams a phone notification to his writing class in which his wife confirms she’s paid his monthly stipend. Wayne excels at these micro-humiliations exposing the psychic toll of dependency and artistic drift. But he also has fun sending up contemporary pieties such as a school production of Hansel and Gretel retooled into a “generative dialogue” about loneliness. Instead of pushing the witch into the oven Gretel asks her why she is “not practicing kindness.” After the sudden death of the family’s nanny the novel’s tempo shifts into something more sinister and unnerving. Steven persuades his wife to recruit a young Norwegian au pair Astrid who exerts a Mary Poppins–like charm on the children sidelining Lucy’s position in the household. Meanwhile Steven’s creative paralysis gives way to an erotic fixation that Astrid reciprocates despite their 21-year age gap. Wayne is alert to cliche but complicates it by making Astrid less fantasy than catalyst drawing out a buried childhood narrative that revives Steven’s writing even as it scrambles his judgment. The novel’s back half pivots into a thriller culminating in a death and a trial that transforms private disgrace into public spectacle. If the resolution seems fanciful it also sharpens Wayne’s point: In a culture hungry for confession even failure can be repackaged as art.
Read more...
It begins when Mike newly demoted from investigator sees flames half a mile away and rushes into a burning house where he’s too late to rescue Jenna Malloy or her husband gym owner Brian. The only survivor is a baby girl Mike finds in the arms of a neighbor Karen Kershaw. Waldo County Sheriff’s Deputy Chet Bessel’s reaction to the tragedy tells Mike the deaths won’t be widely mourned. They’re not the only ones that won’t. Soon afterward the discovery of Axl Deming’s body on the railroad tracks suggests that whoever killed the presumed rapist and murderer of teenager Emily Crockett is bent on vigilante justice. Since the victims are “two of the most hated people in Maine—three if you count Jenna Malloy” suspects would seem to be everywhere. Mike repeatedly warned off the case because he’s no longer an investigator can’t resist focusing on Karen Kershaw who fled the scene while he was questioning her and Edward Gudgeon a scallop diver who frequented the same bar as Axl and his ex-con brother Shayn. Mike’s on the right track but his quest will take a twisty route through many more ambushes confrontations brushes with fellow law officers who end up suspending him and threats to his wife EMT Stacey Stevens and their newborn son Charles. Doiron tightens this web with an insistent mastery that will keep most readers from noticing just how far-reaching it is until they’ve gained the end and can take some deep cleansing breaths.
Read more...
Inviting along readers who are willing to plunge (in imagination) over six miles into crushing ocean depths to “perhaps encounter species no human has ever seen” Sullivan recalls her 2019 dive aboard the privately owned two-person submersible Limiting Factor into the Challenger Deep the deepest point on Earth located in the Mariana Trench. Along the way she draws comparisons to her three space shuttle missions. Though the plunge had the ostensible purpose of refining depth measurements at the Deep’s bottom what comes through most clearly is not what she actually did or saw but her heady excitement to be going where (she notes) only seven others had gone before. Co-author and illustrator Rosen’s cartoon images and schematics combine with a selection of expedition and stock photographs of sea life and scuba divers plus depth charts to fill in most of the gaps. Along with a personal career summary from Sullivan (who narrates) and acute comments about design differences between shuttles and submersibles in terms of the environments in which each is designed to work the authors add background introductions to the submersible its attendant ship and undersea exploration in general. Better yet they enticingly point out to the budding explorers in the audience how much of the ocean and what’s in it even now remains to be discovered. So: “Dive in!”
Read more...
Marie Jones may have recently solved a murder case on the reality show Sex Island as her “sexy alter ego” Luella van Horn but now she’s back in New York City. Broke alone and stuck in midtown Manhattan in the August heat she’s moving out of an apartment she can’t afford and desperate for a break. But then she gets a case—a man named Mark Fontaine wants Luella to prove that his wife Caitlin is having an affair. And so Marie transforms into Luella again complete with a blonde wig (no fake teeth needed this time since she got veneers with the money she earned from her last case) and travels to Murder Island a private island off the coast of New York City. Owned by a few ultrarich families the island is mostly isolated with just one ferry a day. Luella poses as Mark’s cousin and tries to befriend Caitlin in hopes she’ll let something slip—but then the man Luella suspects of being Caitlin’s secret lover is found dead. Luella doesn’t know who she can trust on an island full of eccentric billionaires. She finds herself drawn into their dysfunction and discovers a secret (and very weird) underground sex cult way too much smooth jazz and people who may not be what they seem. Firestone creates a wild wacky world for Luella that’s somehow even funnier than the one in her first book Murder on Sex Island (2025). Although Luella is delightfully strange on her own the story gets even more enjoyable when she joins up with a ragtag group of new crime-solving friends including a raunchy ferry captain and a determined librarian. The world of the wealthy island elite creates a perfectly over-the-top backdrop upon which Luella can unleash her unique brand of detective work. Let’s hope there’s a third Luella adventure coming soon.
Read more...
Who knew that as an omniscient narrator puts it “the world’s first roller coaster was invented almost entirely by mistake”? We learn that it was the work of a bear who wanted “a quick and easy way to get from the stillness of home…to the calm of his beehives.” The Honey Runner as Bear dubs his creation—a wooden cart on an elevated track—is faster and steeper than he’d like it to be but it attracts the attention of an assortment of animals who clamor to ride it. The Honey Runner becomes a sensation and Bear has no choice but to add more carts to satisfy the curious. The humor in this “different strokes” story stems from Bear’s cluelessness regarding his invention’s appeal. “Why would anyone want to be jostled around like that?” he wonders. He has a brainstorm: Surely if he builds a steeper slope riders will be turned off? Bentley gives the bulbous-snouted inventor a hilariously skeptical expression throughout the book’s digital art created with a sun-kissed woodsy palette. The best gag is saved for last: In search of a peaceful life Bear leaves the Honey Runner behind for a spot beside a waterfall which readers won’t fail to observe would make a fantastic waterslide. (It does.)
Read more...
Following the death of the grandmother who raised her following her mother’s murder and her father’s incarceration 10 years ago Gabrielle Thorn leaves Allentown Pennsylvania. She’s back in Starling living with her maternal aunt’s family which includes twin teen cousins she’s never met. Aunt Maggie urges her to hide her true identity so she’s now going by Ryan Shipley to distance herself from her notorious father Gabriel Thorn known as the Starling Slayer. Gabrielle also invents a backstory about having been in Switzerland at boarding school. The townspeople are vengeful and still deeply scarred by what happened; one of her classmates even hosts a popular podcast and runs an online forum about the case. Despite Gabrielle’s careful lies living among people traumatized by her father’s crimes inevitably gets complicated. While the story’s premise never feels completely believable readers will appreciate the banter-filled romantic tug of war Gabrielle has with two boys at her new school. The nightmarish details of her memories of her strange father a talented artist with an avid interest in birds are meted out in a gradual reveal that ratchets up the tension and although it’s obvious there will be a twist it’s effectively executed. Major characters read white.
Read more...
The audacity of It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World—the 1963 feature film featuring an all-star cast of comic actors—has been obscured by time. The initial idea conceived by husband-and-wife screenwriters William and Tania Rose and producer-director Stanley Kramer was a comedy on a grand scale: a four-hour two-intermission epic featuring every significant comedy figure then alive. As Curtis writes in his prologue the film was meant to be “the comedy to end all comedies…the Ben-Hur of slapstick the Gone With the Wind of frantic chase adventures.” Though shrunk down somewhat from its initial design the movie succeeded in its aim marking the apotheosis of the slapstick genre just before cinematic comedy turned toward the new ironic mode exemplified by Dr. Strangelove (released the next year). With this definitive history the author tells the unlikely story of how such a monumental project came to be. Readers will meet Kramer an unlikely choice to helm such a movie given his reputation for the dramatic “message picture” as well as the remarkable Tania Rose who served in Britain’s Ministry of Information during the Second World War and was the perfect writing partner for her depression-prone husband Bill. Their quest to juggle the greatest comedy cast of all time proved as madcap and messy as anything that made it on screen. “All together I find them a little indigestible” quipped cast member Terry-Thomas of his co-stars. “One at a time they’re delicious.” In addition to the production of the film Curtis covers among other topics the film’s controversial editing—United Artists cut the movie down against Kramer’s wishes—and its premiere at Hollywood’s brand-new Cinerama Dome on the same day as the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Rich in detail and behind-the-scenes color the book offers a look at the making of a singular movie and a film industry caught in the midst of a generational transition.
Read more...
