Early Praise for BETWEEN THE SHEETS by Lesley McDowell

Just releasing is a new book the explores the literary liasons of nine women writers: Between the Sheets. Author and critic Lesley McDowell explores nine famous literary liaisons of the twentieth century and examines the extent to which each woman was prepared to put artistic ambition before personal happiness, and how dependent on their male writing partners these women felt themselves to be. Here's a sampling of early opinion:

"A fresh and revealing look at the mating habits of literary giants. Author Lesley McDowell examines the famously explosive love affairs of great women writers and finds that there was purpose to their passion and method to their madness. Where others see victims, she sees pioneers who were blazing their own literary, emotional, and sexual trails. We feel as if we are meeting Sylvia Plath, Anais Nin, Simone de Beauvoir, and their “sisters” for the very first time." -Deborah Davis, author of Strapless: John Singer Sargent and the Fall of Madame X and Gilded

"Lesley McDowell's Between the Sheets brings humor as well as empathy to a scrutiny of women writers' love affairs. Her implicit interest is the source of aesthetic passion, and in her study of Katherine Mansfield, Anais Nin, Simone de Beauvoir, Martha Gellhorn, Sylvia Plath and others, she comes to sometimes surprising insights." -Linda Wagner-Martin, author of Sylvia Plath: A Biography and Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald: An American Woman's Story

“Critic, novelist and literary journalist McDowell (The Picnic) takes a scholarly but fascinating look at the love lives of women writers, revealing how writers like Anais Nin, Simone de Beauvoir and Sylvia Plath were affected by their romantic liaisons…Would they have become writers without their entanglements with these men? And was success in their art ultimately worth the heartbreak? This stirring account lets their devotees decide.” – Publishers Weekly
“McDowell culls her information from diaries, letters, and journals, which, in all, makes for a thorough but accessible reading. The information being imparted is not revelatory, but the subtle, argumentative slant of the text is laudable for its elevation of women commonly stereotyped as victims who lived passive lives in relation to the men they loved. Anyone interested in some crisp, literary gossip should take a look at this book.” – Feminist Review

Cover Girl: SUSAN BOYLE Profiled in People Magazine

People Magazine takes a look at Susan Boyle this week, in a cover story that focuses on her struggles with newfound fame.

For a more in-depth examination of Susan Boyle'e life and extraordinary rise to stardom, Alice Montgomery's new biography Susan Boyle: Dreams Can Come True is essential reading. In the first biography of the inspiring singing star, Montgomery tells the rags to riches story of Susan's humble upbringing to her amazing performances on Britain's Got Talent and her recent trips to America.

New in Paperback: Charles McCarry's THE BETTER ANGELS

New in paperback this month is Charles McCarry's The Better Angels, the prophetic thriller that is not only one of McCarry's best, but a novel of Washington politics that many say is unsurpassed. Written over thirty years ago at the height of the Cold War, McCarry's foresight and crisp language produced a masterpiece perhaps more applicable to the world today as it was when first written.

The Better Angels is now part of the Overlook's collection of Charles McCarry in new trade paperback editions. Charles McCarry established an international reputation as a novelist with the publication of his worldwide bestseller, The Tears of Autumn, in 1975, and is the author of nine other critically acclaimed novels including The Miernik Dossier, The Secret Lovers, The Last Supper, and Christopher's Ghosts.

"Charles McCarry is the greatest espionage writer that America has ever produced His plots are complex and compelling, wheels within wheels joy rides that race from one corner of the globe to another, populated by three-dimensional characters who have brains and hearts. The clarity and beauty of his prose separates McCarry from everyone else, and his insider's view of the CIA adds unparalleled authenticity to every one of his novels." -Otto Penzler, owner of The Mysterious Bookshop

Dave Zeltserman, author of THE CARETAKER OF LORNE FIELD, Profiled in The Boston Globe

Dave Zeltserman, author of the forthcoming The Caretaker of Lorne Field, is profiled in today's Boston Globe: "Robert B. Parker had been the face of Boston crime fiction for nearly four decades when he died on Jan. 18. There is no replacing a writer who built a larger-than-life persona and cut a unique swath with his best-selling Spenser novels. But who are the new faces to watch? Who stands poised to possibly follow in Parker’s footsteps and make their mark with hard-boiled protagonists and gritty stories drawn from the streets of our fair city? Here are a few likely suspects:

Dave Zeltserman worked for 25 years as a software engineer at companies like Digital and Lucent before he got his big break as a writer of crime fiction. And it happened just in the nick of time, because Zeltserman was prepared to abandon his dream of being a novelist.

So excuse him if he seems like a man in a hurry - he wrote last year’s “Pariah’’ in six weeks - rather than pausing to savor his success.

Zeltserman broke through two years ago with “Small Crimes’’ and quickly followed it up with “Pariah’’ and his new novel, “Killer,’’ out in the United States in May (Serpent’s Tail has published all three). Before that, while he managed to get a couple of books published, he had to weather constant rebuffs from publishers who told him his work was too dark. “I was about to quit writing for good, because I was frustrated as hell,’’ says Zeltserman, 50, of Needham.

Kudos are flowing his way these days. The Washington Post compared Zeltserman to pulp-master James M. Cain, author of such classics as “Double Indemnity.’’ National Public Radio chose “Small Crimes,’’ which revolves around a corrupt ex-cop in Vermont released after serving time in prison for stabbing a district attorney, as one of the top five crime and mystery novels of 2008, calling it “a thing of sordid beauty.’’ Globe reviewer Ed Siegel lauded “Pariah,’’ one of whose characters is a Whitey Bulger-like mobster, as “darkly enjoyable,’’ adding that Zeltserman’s “smooth, lively writing’’ makes him “a fine addition to the local literary scene.’’

You ain’t seen nothing yet, according to Zeltserman: “I have a bunch of books coming out that are actually better than the books that are being published.’’ Though his reputation is for writing rough stuff about tough guys, don’t assume Zeltserman is either. “I’m not a gritty type of guy,’’ he says. “Writers are not necessarily what they write.’’

It's Break-Up Night for the Poets of IT'S NOT YOU, IT'S ME on February 25 at KGB Bar in NYC

Join Jerry Williams and a stellar cast of heartbroken poets for evening of poetry at KGB Bar in Manhattan, Thursday, February 25, at 7pm.

It's Not You, It's Me editor Jerry Williams will be joined by Peter Covino, Martha Rhodes, and Linda Gregg for poetry readings, storytelling, and non-stop entertainment!

Jerry Williams teaches creative writing at Marymount Manhattan College, and has two collections of poetry Casino of the Sun (2003, Carnegie Mellon University Press) and Admission (2010, Carnegie Mellon University Press). His poetry and nonfiction have appeared in American Poetry Review, Tin House, Pleiades among others. He currently lives in New York City.

Linda Gregg is the author of seven poetry collections: Too Bright to See; Alma; The Sacraments of Desire; Chosen by the Lion; Things and Flesh; In the Middle Distance; and All of it Singing: New and Collected Poems. In 2006 she received the PEN/Voelcker Award in Poetry for her career achievement. She live in New York City.

Peter Covino is an Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Rhode Island. Winner of the 2007 PEN America/Osterweil Award for Emerging Poets, he is the author of Cut Off the Ears of Winter as well as the chapbook Straight Boyfriend. Recent poems have appeared in The Paris Review, Colorado Review, Gulf Coast, and others. He is the founding editor of Barrow Street.

Martha Rhodes is the author of three collections of poetry: At the Gate, Perfect Disappearance, and Mother Quiet. She teaches at Sarah Lawrence College, and in the M.F.A. program at Warren Wilson College. She is also the founding editor and director of Four Way Books.

Emily Herbert's LADY GAGA: BEHIND THE FAME On Sale March 9

In little over a year Lady Gaga has rocketed from struggling as a performer in New York to the glamorous life of a worldwide phenomenon. From her outrageous outfits to elaborate live shows and out-spoken politics, her life is one grand performance. In Lady Gaga: Behind the Fame - on sale March 9 -Emily Herbert goes behind the costumes and the gossip to find out how Stefani Germanotta, the self-confessed “weird-girl” in school transformed herself into the most talked about pop figure of the new decade.

Well-researched and filled with 32 color photos documenting Gaga from her gogo dancer days to the release of her second album, The Fame Monster, Lady Gaga is an essential source for anyone wanting to get the behind the scenes scoop on this fascinating performer. Both an inspiring story of self-actualization and a comment on today’s celebrity obsessed culture, Gaga’s tale, whether she’s beloved or reviled, is one of pop history in the making.

Elizabeth Abbott, author of SUGAR: A BITTERSWEET HISTORY, Interviewed in Library Journal

Elizabeth Abbott's forthcoming Sugar: A Bittersweet History has been selected a Spring 2010 "Editor's Pick" by Library Journal: "Little girls may be a mixture of “sugar and spice and everything nice” (I'll leave that debate for another piece!), but when it comes to global cause and effect, sugar leaves all other ingredients behind—and it's hard to find anything “nice” about it. In her latest book, Canadian scholar Elizabeth Abbott (research associate, Trinity Coll., Univ. of Toronto) traces the sugar that runs in history's veins.

A descendant of Antigua sugar producers, Abbott tells LJ that this “was the book of my heart,” recalling that it took “years to figure out what sort of book it would be.” When I suggest what it is, she accepts that it's “a sweeping narrative that links and contextualizes the stories of individuals, systems, and movements, while grounded in solid scholarship.”

Abbott ranges across oceans, following sugar from its native South Asia through Arab trade routes to Mediterranean countries and from thence to the colonized Caribbean, where such was the sweet tooth and hunger for profit of the Dutch and the French that they sacrificed temperate colonies (think New Amsterdam and Canada) to maintain claim to sugar-producing islands in the tropics. A few score years later, and Abbott is leading us through the St. Louis World's Fair of 1904, showing us such popular introductions as ice cream parlors, soda pop, Jell-O treats, and penny candy, not to mention the wonders of sugar combined with cocoa or the ongoing commodification of special occasions and holidays into candy fests.

Abbott's book is personal, owing both to her own expressions of response to what sugar has done and to her character sketches of men and women caught up in sugar's web. “I wanted…to bring my characters alive on the page,” she says, “and convey the complexities and nuances of the world they inhabit.” Her readers will witness sugar's crucial contribution first to the fatal geometry of the slave trade and thereafter to environmental damage greater than from any other single crop on Earth.

And what of Haiti, where Abbott lived for some years? As a slave colony spun out of sugar, Haiti satisfied half of the world demand, but its early 19th-century independence brought that to an end. I ask Abbott her thoughts about the country after the earthquake. “Haiti is in such a state of devastation, with so little left to repair,” she says, “that the reconstruction process can be really imaginative and wide-ranging. This may be—should be!—the time to consider reestablishing the sugarcane culture that was once centered in Léogane, the epicenter of the earthquake. Sugarcane grown for refinement into ethanol to replace or supplement costly imported oil would employ thousands of Haitians and help the nation toward self-sufficiency in fueling itself.”

Abbott quotes food historian Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat, who noted, “So many tears were shed for sugar that by rights it ought to have lost its sweetness.” Sugar and Sugar both will give readers a lift, and, ultimately, both offer hope."—Margaret Heilbrun

Billy Lombardo, author of THE MAN WITH TWO ARMS, Profiled in New City

Billy Lombardo, author of The Man With Two Arms, is profiled by Tom Lynch in Chicago's New City weekly newspaper: "Billy Lombardo strolls into The Breakfast Club on Hubbard Street fifteen minutes late, having missed his stop as he took the train into the city from his home in Forest Park. He was writing, he says, finally making progress on something new, and he wasn’t paying attention. The author, though in his forties, exudes a childlike whimsy when he laughs at his mistake—he’s apologetic, but he wears an excited, goofball sort of grin that’s apology enough. He has a lot to smile about.

Lombardo’s first novel, The Man With Two Arms, was just released by Overlook Press, a baseball book about a father who teaches his son to throw with both his left and right arms; the son becomes Major League Baseball’s first superstar ambidextrous pitcher.

Danny Granville spent almost every waking hour of his Chicago childhood learning to throw a baseball with either arm, under the strict tutelage of his father, Henry. He becomes a sort of pitching machine—a superman freak who’s capable of throwing the ball perfectly with either arm, a tremendous and unheard of asset in baseball. He works his way through the Cubs organization and quickly finds himself in the majors. Danny’s described as having the right arm of Seaver and the left arm of Koufax. Pressures follow—the spotlight, the fans, the media. While Lombardo gives Danny much more than just baseball—he loves to paint as well—he seems to throw at him much more than anyone could handle. The Man With Two Arms isn’t simply a baseball book; it’s about family, about the unique, incomparable relationship between a father and son, about survival and competition itself.

The idea started to take shape in 2003, after Lombardo was on vacation with his family in Florida, and his son, 10 at the time, started throwing a baseball around lefty with some surprising success.

But my first question to him was an obvious one, at least to me. A Bridgeport kid from a blue-collar family—how the hell did he decide his hero in his novel should be with the Cubs? Isn’t that some sort of sacrilege? Lombardo laughs. “My affiliation is with the Sox, for sure,” he says. “My son, who is more of a baseball guy, he’s nuts about the Sox, so I had some explaining to do when I decided to go with the Cubs. It was gonna be Sox, in the book, originally. But I’m dealing with a tool box that’s not quite packed yet. I don’t have the greatest tools in that yet. When I started writing the book all I had was a fucking mallet and a jeweler’s screwdriver, that’s about it.”

Then it comes out. “I didn’t know how to deal with the Sox winning the World Series. Before 2005, I was thinking Sox all the way [for the book], but then they won the Series, and I was like, I just couldn’t brush over the fact that they had won the Series. I didn’t know how to do that. But it doesn’t hurt that there are more Cubs fans in the world, too.”

After I admit I’m a Cubs fan, with only a modest amount of shame, Lombardo offers: “I also knew the Cubs weren’t going to ruin it by winning the World Series.”

The Man With Two Arms necessarily includes some intricate baseball passages, descriptions of on-the-field face-offs between pitcher and batter, the strains of the minors, training regimens. You wouldn’t know it from the book, but when he started writing, Lombardo didn’t know baseball all that well. “My understanding of baseball was really limited,” he says. “I only knew what my son knew about baseball. My son’s introduced me to it.”

He didn’t even play as a kid. “I played softball. So with this book, it wasn’t me dipping into my own life as much as I did with my other books. I didn’t go to many Sox games. My dad wasn’t a baseball fan. My friends—we played softball. I didn’t even know kids who played baseball.”

By now, Lombardo’s a baseball nut, and he has a legitimate concern that the book will alienate some readers who don’t share his passion for the sport. “It’s still a concern. It looks like a baseball book,” he says. “With How to Hold a Woman, I was just as fearful that that would appear to be a woman’s book, as I’m afraid this would appear to be a man’s book, you know? That’s why there’s so much more in there. I originally thought it was going to be a baseball novel, but I don’t think it’s a baseball novel anymore.”

Baseball, more than other sports, has this inherent ability to create sweeping sentimental narratives. This may be helped by Hollywood—think “Field of Dreams” or “The Natural”—but that’s not the sport’s fault. There’s a history, it’s a sport that’s taken personally; fathers play catch with their sons, sons learn from their fathers. America is offended—outraged!—when players take performance-enhancing drugs, yet shrug when athletes in other sports indulge as well. Baseball lends itself to melodrama.

“What’s really interesting,” Lombardo says, “is that I didn’t have that with my dad at all. He wasn’t a sports guy. He certainly participated in our lives in other ways, but our childhoods were less chaperoned than my own children’s. The first game I went to with my stepson, Carlton Fisk hit a fly ball into the stands. I had sandals on—it’s ridiculous to go to a baseball game with sandals on, I didn’t even know how to go to baseball games—and the ball ended up under my foot. I just remember him looking at that ball the whole game, and that was my first experience with father-son baseball, that was part of the joy of that thing.”

The Man With Two Arms and How to Hold a Woman have more in common than one would think—they’re both about families, about relationships between parents and children, between married couples, and how families struggle to overcome crisis."

“

Starred Review in PW for Robert Coover's NOIR

Publishers Weekly awards a star for Robert Coover's new novel, Noir: "Metafiction lustily mates with hardboiled mystery in this hilarious homage to Raymond Chandler and company. A sexy widow with plenty to hide hires private eye Philip M. Noir to look into her husband’s mysterious death. Noir slips on his gumshoes and lacy underwear and hits the mean streets, where he encounters the Creep, Fingers, Rats, Snark, and an elusive fat man named Fat Agnes. He even meets people who “live in a different world. It was called daytime.” Prolific postmodernist Coover (The Public Burning) adds his dazzling two bits to the deconstructionist turf Paul Auster prowled in the New York Trilogy. “There’s a mystery here, but you’re a street dick, not a metaphysician,” the second-person narrative explains. Like Thomas Pynchon in 2009’s Inherent Vice, Coover pops off laughs on every page: “Her brother is in it somewhere and he is said also to be wearing women’s underpants and a bra.... Is he your double? No, you don’t have a bra.” And don’t forget, Chandler was really funny, too."

More Attention for Jid Lee's TO KILL A TIGER: A MEMOIR OF KOREA

Jid Lee's To Kill a Tiger continues to draw attention from critics and reviewers:

"Spanning five generations, this memoir explores the author's upbringing and the sociopolitical climate of Korea during the last century through the anecdotes and interpretations of her family. The tales come mainly from her father as told to her mother. (Fathers, we learn, would only discuss such matters with their sons and sometimes their wives, but never with their "unworthy" daughters). Historical lessons such as these are strewn throughout the text, interspersed with details from Lee's day-to-day life as a child and teenager and anecdotes told to her by her family members (although most are the author's own). These are all enhanced by the inclusion of black and white photographs of her family and community placed in nearly every chapter. . . What I applaud is this: It is a story of a tough, feminist kid who goes through hell and emerges victorious against everyone's expectations. Lee triumphantly gives patriarchy the finger and fulfills her dreams, giving women everywhere--and especially those languishing in a sexist society more oppressive than that of Western culture--hope for everything they wish to accomplish." -Natalia Real, Feminist Review

"The political sundering of Korea by no means was a simple split. To Kill a Tiger is by author Jid Lee's words, not just a memoir of herself, but a memoir of Korea, torn apart by the last six decades of a harsh standoff that started with a vicious war. Looking towards the beginning of the conflict, she focuses on the social change of the time, where in spite of the harsh conflict, people still wanted nothing more out of the world than to simply survive and live their lives. Discussing everything from the Japanese occupation in the first half of the twentieth century and forward, To Kill a Tiger is a fascinating and informative read that should not be ignored." - Midwest Book Review

IT'S NOT YOU, IT'S ME Book Launch Covered in The Huffington Post

Alex Palmer of The Huffington Post reports on the Anti-Valentine's Day Party/Book Launch for It's Not You, It's Me last night in Brooklyn: "A bad breakup can do a lot for one's creativity. On Thursday, Jonathan Ames emceed an Anti-Valentine's Day evening of stories, poetry and music celebrating heartbreak and the joy of emotional pain.

Ames opened the show, which took place at the powerHouse Arena in Brooklyn, with a rollicking story about his own pre-pubescent heartbreak. The author of eight books and creator of HBO's Bored to Death incorporated a male corset, an elevated testicle and tree-humping into the tale of his love and loss of a middle school girlfriend. "She had everything you look for in a girl--blonde, dismissive, arrogant," said Ames.

Following his story, Ames introduced Jerry Williams, poet and editor of the collection It's Not You, It's Me: The Poetry of Breakup, which was the focus of the evening. Williams read selections of his own work from the book, which also includes contributors such as Kim Addonizio, Denis Johnson and Mark Strand. After reading a pair of raw poems, Williams joked, "I've gotta find something funny here."

He did hit a few funny notes in relating a story about he and Ames taking a road trip across the southwest years ago (the two have been friends for 20 years), as Williams was working up the courage to break up with the girl he had been seeing at the time. Following the pattern of most of the stories that evening, the tale ended in humiliation as the poet somehow ended up with a case of diaper rash and had to call his soon-to-be-ex for pharmacological tips.

"Most great art comes from pain because it's boring, for the most part, to write about a great experience," Ames said over email prior to the event. "Also, people need to read about pain. They don't want to be alone with it. They don't mind being alone with pleasure, but they need to know from fiction, poetry, film, music, what-have-you, that they're not alone with being in pain, lessens it somehow.

Poet Donna Masini demonstrated this point as she took the microphone after Williams. "I want everybody who has ever written a poem, story, letter or piece in a journal about a breakup to raise their hand," she asked to a full show of hands. "Okay, the playing field is leveled," she said, commenting on the Coliseum-like layout of the powerHouse's event space. Masini read a selection of descriptive poems, incorporating images of a rabbit being swallowed by a snake and the desire for both the "juice and the flesh" of a grapefruit.

Following the readings, Ames entertained the audience as the final act--the band Lunker, fronted by Williams--got set up. He made some discursive (and mildly intoxicated) closing comments that were both hilarious and introspective. A line of Masini's poetry got him thinking about how ephemeral relationships are, especially in New York.

"Love and relationships have changed so much--my parents have been together nearly 60 years, but that's so different from my experience," said Ames. "You have these brief but incredible loves."

Olga Slavinikova's 2017, Winner of the Russian Book Prize, Previewed in Booklist

Booklist offers a preview of 2017, a new novel by Olga Slavinikova, coming to bookstores in March 2010: "Strange things are happening in the rugged Riphean Mountains in this rambunctious novel of Russian society 100 years after the revolution, winner of the Russian Booker Prize. Slavnikova’s imaginary mountains, which resemble the Urals where she grew up, harbor mischievous spirits protecting deep veins of rubies that attract two unlikely rock hounds, the impervious professor Anfilogov and his humble, steeltoothed conspirator, Kolyan. As Slavnikova’s high-strung, stubbornly romantic narrator, Krylov, a down and-out historian turned gem cutter, sees them off at the train station, he falls in love with a stranger. Their affair is so clandestine they don’t know each other’s names or why they’re being followed. As Anfilogov and Kolyan dig for gemstones in a catastrophically poisoned landscape, Krylov’s ferocious ex-wife, Tamara, one of Russia’s new capitalists, faces a spectacular takedown, while a new, bizarrely theatrical civil war breaks out. Wildly elaborate descriptions, rampant anomalies, Krylov’s brooding, and a provocative mix of mystery and satire prove demanding. But Slavnikova’s characters are magnetizing, and her crystal clear vision of a world in which “commercial infinities” choke off humanism and art is salubriously caustic."— Donna Seaman

IT'S NOT YOU, IT'S ME: A Collection of Break-Up Poetry Celebrated at Anti-Valentine's Day Party Tonight

A new poetry anthology, It's Not You, It's Me, edited by Jerry Williams, will be celebrated tonight at a very special Anti-Valentine's Day Party at powerhouse arena in Brooklyn. This collection covers it all: breaking up, cheating, loneliness, all things heart-wrenching. In a heartbreaking introduction, Williams chronicles his own failed relationships and explains how he gathered up the particular poems used in this book. It's Not You, It's Me features such top-shelf contributors as National Book Award finalist Kim Addonizio, bestselling author Denis Johnson, former poet laureate Mark Strand, Edward Hirsch, Maxine Kumin, and David Lehman.

Tonight's event, hosted by Jonathan Ames, is a round-robin reading of humorous, wise, bitter, and uplifting breakup-inspired poetry from this new anthology. On hand will be editor Jerry Williams, Bob Hicok, Donna Masini, and Mark Halliday to read and discuss their love lives and their work. See you there!

Barnaby Rogerson's THE LAST CRUSADERS Praised in ForeWord Magazine

Coming next month is Barnaby Rogerson's The Last Crusaders: The Hundred Year Battle for the Center of the World, a new study of the late Crusades. Here's a glowing notice from ForeWord Magazine: "The world of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was shaped by two powerful forces: religion and gunpowder—a devastating combination. In The Last Crusaders Barnaby Rogerson paints a vivid canvas, sweeping in scope and full of memorable detail, of the hundred-and-fifty-year struggle between the Hapsburg and Ottoman Empires for control of the Mediterranean.

The period from 1450 to 1590 changed the face of world history. It saw the creation of the first great nation states—Spain, Portugal, Austria, Turkey, and the countries of North Africa. The boundaries drawn then remain national, cultural, linguistic, and religious boundaries today. The author’s purpose is to explain the “last great tectonic shift” in the balance of power in the Old World. “We should all hear these stories at least once,” he writes, “if we are to have any understanding of our modern age.” Readers will indeed be struck by the similarities to our own day. Like the atom bombing of Hiroshima, the destruction of Constantinople by Turkish artillery in 1453 sent a shock wave around the world (the Turks’ biggest gun could throw a 1200 lb. granite ball over a mile) and launched a ruinously expensive arms race. Cannons were the ICBMs of their day and there ensued a race among the great nations to forge as many as possible. Skilled weapons makers (many of them Jews expelled from Spain in 1493) were in high demand and often willing to work for the highest bidder. And, like uranium today, sources of saltpeter, an ingredient of gunpowder, were bitterly fought over. Terror, too, became a legitimate weapon of war. No captive city escaped savage pillaging and rape. Both sides routinely practiced impaling, dismemberment, flaying alive, enslavement or forced conversion of whole populations.

Against this background, we meet the great figures of the age: the intellectual Prince Henry the Navigator; the cunning and ruthless Ferdinand of Spain; the chivalrous Charles V; and the legendary sultans, Mehmet the Conqueror and Suleyman the Magnificent. The minor actors are equally compelling—secret agents, pirate captains, and turncoats and traitors of every stripe. In colorful vignettes, we rub shoulders with Turkish Janissaries, Genoese mercenaries, Portuguese explorers, Moroccan corsairs, and galley slaves. The author is especially good at narrating in gripping, and often grisly, detail the great sieges and battles that punctuated this struggle. The book is furnished with excellent maps, a useful chronological chart, numerous illustrations, and a very full bibliography. The writing is engaging and vivid, never pedantic. Any history buff will find this book a pleasure." - Bruce Macbain

SUSAN BOYLE: DREAMS CAN COME TRUE On Sale Today!

The first biography of singing sensation Susan Boyle is now available in bookstores and online booksellers! Susan Boyle: Dreams Can Come True, by Alice Montgomery, chronicles Susan’s amazing rags to riches story.

After stunning judges Piers Morgan and Simon Cowell on "Britain’s Got Talent" and becoming an overnight household name less than a year ago, Susan gave hope to the world that dreams actually can come true — with the help of reality TV. Her album I Dreamed a Dream is the biggest female debut album of all time and has already sold up to 8 million copies.

Susan Boyle: Dreams Can Come True is essential reading for Susan Boyle fans, and an inspirational story of someone who dared to dream!

"Alice Montgomery's Susan Boyle: Dreams Come True touches on Boyle's childhood, and summarizes the time between the audition - her voice combined with her frumpy appearance made tryout a must-see on You Tube - through her performance on NBC's Today Show in November. . . It's nice to read about Boyle's Cinderella story." - Associated Press

Deirdre O'Connell Discusses THE BALLAD OF BLIND TOM on Georgia Public Radio

Our friends at "Cover to Cover," the literary show on Georgia Public Radio have posted their recent segment on Blind Tom Wiggins, featuring an interview with author Deirdre O'Connell. The Ballad of Blind Tom, Slave Pianist is a riveting biography of America's lost musical genius.

"Cover to Cover's" Myriam Levy notes: "In The Ballad of Blind Tom, Australian author Deirdre O’ Connell describes her subject as “The most famous black performer of the Civil War generation.” Was he a naive genius or a freak? Was he a gifted, original American composer or a mere mimic of the reigning piano styles of the day? O’Connell wades through 50 years of press clips and testimony searching for the answer to the question, “Who was Blind Tom?”

He was born a slave in Columbus, Georgia. Despite his autistic condition, he made his guardians piles of money, perhaps, by today’s standard, millions of dollars, of which he and his family saw almost none. It would be story of overpowering sadness had Blind Tom not been so full of life. He took great delight in playing piano up to 12 hours a day, never regarding it as work even in the midst of a staggering itinerary. (In 1999, the pianist John Davis recorded a selection of his songs, John Davis Plays Blind Tom.)

Full of wit and wild anecdotes, The Ballad of Blind Tom has an astonishing cast of characters. It is Deirdre O’Connell’s first book, and she spent a good deal of time in Georgia conducting research. She has also made documentaries for the Jimi Hendrix Estate and the United Nations Environment Program and has worked in news at SBS Australia."

LADY GAGA: BEHIND THE FAME On Sale March 3

The rumors are true: Overlook Press is publishing the first biography of the world’s favorite pop star. Lady Gaga: Behind the Fame, by Emily Herbert, will be published on March 3, 2010.

Carolyn Kellogg of The Los Angeles Times reports on the news for Jacket Copy: "Was it the crazy headgear? The cage-like dresses? The sculptural hairdos? The multiple Grammy Awards?

Something got the attention of the Overlook Press, which has announced it will publish the first (if unauthorized) biography of Lady Gaga. The book "Lady Gaga: Behind the Fame" will tell the story of 23-year-old Stefani Germanotta, Catholic school girl turned go-go dancer.

Due to hit shelves early next month, the book will be 288 pages, 32 of which will be devoted to photos. The news release states that this "inspiring story" will be an "intimate look into the music, fashion, art and life of the first Lady of pop." Don't tell Madonna. Or Beyonce. Or any other contenders for pop's first Lady.

The Overlook Press has published many biographies, focusing on creative types as diverse as William Faulkner, Ewan McGregor, Virginia Wolfe and British singing phenomenon Susan Boyle.

How will its Lady Gaga bio compare?

All I know is I hope it comes in a sparkly, lightning-bolt cage."

Tim Mackintosh Smith's YEMEN Explores the History and Culture of a Troubled Nation

Arguably the most fascinating and least known country in the Arab world, Yemen is once again in today's headlines as it struggles with a secessionist movement in the south and faces international pressure to crack down on a resurgent al Qaeda.

In Tim Mackintosh-Smith's Yemen:The Unknown Arabia, originally published by Overlook in 2001 and now available in paperback, Tim Mackintosh-Smith explores the history and culture of this country. Writing with an intimacy and depth of knowledge gained through thirteen years among the Yemenis, Mackintosh Smith is a companion of the best sort: erudite, witty and eccentric. Crossing mountain, desert, ocean and three millennia of history, he portrays a land where men chew leaves and camels live on fish; where men wear pinstriped lounge-suit jackets on top, skirts below, and wicked curved daggers in the middle; a city that seems to have been baked, not built, of iced gingerbread. In this book, Yemen is a part of Arabia, but it is like no place else on Earth.

The Poets of IT'S NOT YOU, IT'S ME Read and Sign Books on February 11 in New York

Join author Jerry Williams and host Jonathan Ames to celebrate the launch of It's Not You, It's Me: The Poetry of Breakup on Thursday, February 11, 7pm, at the powerhouse Arena in Brooklyn.

Jonathan Ames emcees a round-robin reading of humorous, wise, bitter, and uplifting breakup-inspired poetry from this new anthology. Editor Jerry Williams and several contributing poets will be on hand to read and discuss their love lives and their work at this very special Anti-Valentine's Party!

Therapeutic and transformative, edgy yet sincere, enlightening, wide-ranging, female and male, gay and straight, innocent and guilty, It's Not You, It's Me: The Poetry of Breakup incorporates work from an abundance of perspectives in order to explore the exquisite pain of heartbreak. Such top-shelf contributors as National Book Award finalist Kim Addonizio, bestselling author Denis Johnson, former poet laureate Mark Strand, Edward Hirsch, Maxine Kumin, David Lehman, and many others proudly offer up their wisdom on the various pains (and humors) of heartbreak. In this stunning collection, readers will not find false hope, but the real hope of genuine sympathy in love, hate, fury, and recuperation.

Billy Lombardo's THE MAN WITH TWO ARMS in Chicago Magazine

Billy Lombardo's The Man with Two Arms is reviewed by Steven Yaccino in Chicago Magazine: "In 2005, Billy Lombardo published his first book of short stories, fictionalized versions of his Bridgeport childhood, called Logic of a Rose: Chicago Stories. He hit a prolific stride last year with two more collections (How to Hold a Woman and Meanwhile, Roxy Mourns), all the while finishing an MFA at Warren Wilson College in North Carolina, teaching English at the Latin School of Chicago in Lincoln Park, running the national student literary magazine Polyphony H.S., and writing his first novel, The Man with Two Arms.

The novel, which comes out in February (Overlook Press; $24.95), tells the story of Danny Granville, whose obsessive father molds him into an all-star ambidextrous pitcher for the Chicago Cubs—with a mystical curve ball thrown into an otherwise Roy Hobbs-like narrative. Ten agents rejected the book before an editor at Overlook found Logic of a Rose at Strand Bookstore in Manhattan and, after reading it in one night, e-mailed Lombardo. He sent The Man with Two Arms, and Overlook made an offer the next day.

“It feels like it’s pouring,” Lombardo says of his success, though he’s skeptical about keeping up his current pace. “These books are the product of the last five to seven years. There’s always a little bit of fear, like, Am I going to have the time again?”

BEST OF PUNCH CARTOONS in Bloomsbury Review

The Best of PUNCH Cartoons, edited by Helen Walasek, is reviewed in the Bloomsbury Review: "Dry, with a twist may he a cliche, hut it perfectly describes this compendium of humor from the venerable English magazine, dating from 1841 to 1992. Boasting more than 2,000 illustrations, The Best of PUNCH Cartoons is a sampling of what made the English tick and laugh. Helen Walasek, formerly curator of the PUNCH archives, assembled this collection and provides helpful commentary as well as the occasional useful historical context. Perhaps more smiles than guffaws, this is humor for folks with a fondness for the literary."