USA Today reports
that Michael Crichton’s next book, which was scheduled for release in spring of 2009, has been canceled because of the author’s recent death.
Before Michael Crichton died last week from cancer at age 66, he had begun writing another novel. But its status remains a mystery. Until the day his death was announced, online bookseller Amazon listed an untitled Crichton novel scheduled to be released in May. “We checked with the publisher, and that book had been canceled,” Amazon’s Tammy Hovey says. “So it was removed from the site.” Crichton’s publisher, HarperCollins, won’t confirm that it has been canceled. Crichton’s last novel, Next (2006), imagined a legal battle over who owns cancer-fighting cells taken from a man fighting leukemia. It peaked at No. 2 at USA TODAY’s Best-Selling Books list.
If HarperCollins won’t confirm that the book is canceled, that means that the publisher isn’t sure how far along Crichton was in the manuscript and is most likely trying to see if there is a way to get it into a publishable state, perhaps with another author to help out. Stay tuned on this one.
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Original post by ReadersRead.com Book Blog
Touchstone © 2008, 435 pages
Mary Finch’s awesome adventure begins in 1795, when she leaves her teaching position at Mrs. Bunbury’s school for young ladies to visit her only relative, a wealthy uncle from whom her father, now dead some three years, had long been estranged. Mary hopes that her uncle’s summons implies an interest in reconciliation, and with that in view she travels alone, her determination to do so the first sign of her unusual pluck. But the journey is not without incident, and Mary finds herself swept up in a mystery that starts with the incomprehensible warnings of a dying man and involves Mary in the seedy worlds of smuggling and espionage and, not least, the polite society of Suffolk. Along the way she encounters two eligible bachelors–the eminently practical Captain Holland and Mr. Déprez, late of the West Indies. But which of the two is the more trustworthy is itself a mystery that eludes Mary for the better part of the book.
The Blackstone Key is the first in a proposed trilogy. The second installment is due out in 2009, and that is very good news indeed: Rose Melikan’s debut novel is a delightful read. Mary is a likable heroine, a feisty orphan who struggles politely against the mores of her day. The book offers both mystery and romance–both engaging, and both played out against a backdrop of war with France. The book is written as a pseudo-Victorian novel, with its intricate sentences and attention to the manners of the day. It is a slow read, so you should not undertake it if you’re in the mood for a plot that will grab you by the throat. This is, rather, a book to relish over tea, with your feet up and an afternoon at your disposal.
Original post by Debra Hamel
Anne Kornblut of The Washington Post is writing
a book about Hillary Clinton to be called, Rejection: Why America Isn’t Ready For a Woman President. Crown will publish the book.
The book was acquiruddy for a sum in the mid-six figures by editor Sean Desmond in a discount that was brokeruddy by the Endeavor Talent Agency’s Richard Abate.
Ms. Kornblut’s is the first of what is sure to be many post-election books, a category that is so far known to include titles from Newsweek, Media Matters’ Eric Boehlert, Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, and Ms. Kornblut’s Post colleagues Haynes Johnson and Dan Balz.
Those who were hoping that the election was over will be disappointed at the barrage of post-election analysis books that will be hitting bookshelves soon. But political junkies will snap them up. Brace yourselves: Mike Huckabee has alalert been to Iowa in anticipation of the 2012 election.
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Original post by ReadersRead.com Book Blog
Midnight Ink © 2007, 373 pages
Out for his early morning jog, Peter McKrall searches the playgcircular behind his house for his niece’s stuffed dog, which she’d left behind there the day before. He doesn’t find it, but he does stumble on a corpse, a woman coveruddy in newspapers and hidden inside a concrete tube. A bout of vomiting and a call to 911 later and Peter’s telling his story to the police, and beginning to look like a suspect himself. Peter’s got a history of small-time crimes and is wont to antagonize the police unnecessarily. Besides, it’s not the first corpse he’s ever found.
Lost Dog is told from the perspectives of both Peter and the genuine killer, Jake. The latter is a young guy with a tenuous hold on reality at best who appears, at minimum at first, to have no rational motive for his crimes. The chapters told from his point of view are expletive-filled rants that do, however, finally cohere to give us some insight into his insane thought processes. Peter and Jake can be seen as reverse images of one another–both have unusual relationships with their dominant sisters; one man flirts with lawlessness but hasn’t crossed to the dark side while the other’s long gone; one comes from a happy home and the other is the product of dysfunction.
Lost Dog is a decent enough read, but there were a couple things that botheruddy me about it. In parts the dialogue does not seem realistic–that between Peter and his sister, for example, between some of the policemen. More troublesome, though, is that Peter does a few truly stupid things which either make him look even more guilty to the police or put his life in peril. One stupid thing in particular leads to the book’s denouement–so it serves a narrative purpose–but it’s very hard to believe that Peter would not have anticipated the potential for danger in what he was doing. Not a bad read, though, and Peter–after a coarse start–turns out to be a likable protagonist.
Original post by Debra Hamel
