Booklist awards a starred review to BITTER WATERS

Bitter Waters: America's Forgotten Mission to the Dead Sea (starred review)
David Haward Bain (Author)
Booklist
Aug 2011. 384 p. Overlook, hardcover, $30.00. (9781590203521)

The 1840s were a decade of global exploration for the U.S. Navy, whose officers charted the seven seas, plus the Dead Sea. Strangely true, a naval expedition to the Holy Land in 1848 is the tale Bain tells. The idea for it germinated in the mind of Lieutenant William Lynch, who nurtured unrealized ambitions for command, a fascination with travel literature, and aspirations to the writing life. His mission approved, out he went, launching his crew in two rowboats onto the Sea of Galilee and thence down the River Jordan into the Dead Sea. Transported by Roman ruins, Crusader battlements, reputed sites of Jesus’ ministry, and remnants of God’s wrath against Sodom and Gomorrah, Lynch in his journals and published account exulted in the region’s religious nimbus as much as in applying his men to their ostensible cartographic
purpose.
Integrating those aspects of the adventure and Lynch’s wary relations with Bedouin tribes, Bain produces an engrossing narrative of the expedition that richly positions the mission’s incidents within Lynch’s Western perspective on the Near East. Wonderfully realized, Bain’s account will enthrall seekers of history off the beaten path.

"It’s high time Ellory takes his rightful place on crime fiction’s A-list."

We love the entire R.J. Ellory ouvre, but we're especially thrilled to see Booklist award a glowing (and starred!) review to his upcoming thriller A SIMPLE ACT OF VIOLENCE. Stay tuned for information on his U.S. appearances!

BOOKLIST
Issue: May 1, 2011
A Simple Act of Violence (starred review) Ellory, R. J. (Author)
Jun 2011. 464 p. Overlook, hardcover, $24.95. (9781590203187).

Ellory (author of Strand magazine’s Thriller of the Year winner, A Quiet Belief in Angels, 2009) is back with an amazing new novel. It’s not only a mystery with enough plot twists to keep the most jaded fan of the genre guessing, it’s also a high-speed car chase of a thriller. The bones of the book are structured around the well-reported CIA/Reagan/Bush complicity in skimming money from the cocaine trade to build the infamous drugs-for-guns bridge that supported contra intervention in Nicaragua.

Launching from a seeming “simple act of violence,” Ellory lures the reader into a Machiavellian tapestry of international proportions. The premise is deceptively simple: two Washington, D.C., beat cops are assigned to a series of murder cases that appear to be the usual and customary work of a psychopathic serial killer. However, the further they get into the case, the stranger the possibilities become. Many writers who attempt to construct a novel with levels of geopolitical intrigue found here wind up producing a string of lame polemics or, even worse, a conspiracy-theory rant. It’s a tribute to Ellory’s mastery of his craft to note that he avoids these pitfalls completely.

This is a superbly entertaining book and one that will endure in the reader’s thoughts long after the last page turns. After several fine novels, it’s high time Ellory takes his rightful place on crime fiction’s A-list.

Booklist (and Tom Wolfe!) on WHO SHOT THE WATER BUFFALO

Next month, we're excited to introduce WHO SHOT THE WATER BUFFALO, the debut novel from Ken Babbs. Tom Wolfe is a fan, and so is Booklist--this week has been extra-exciting on the Water Buffalo front! Check out what they've got to say.

"Former U.S. Marine Captain Ken Babbs was a pilot who climbed from the SAMissile-killing skies over Vietnam to the LSDippy hippie highs of Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters ... and lived. I know, because I saw him afterward. This book is Babbs, Part One." -Tom Wolfe


BOOKLIST
Issue: March 15, 2011
Who Shot the Water Buffalo?
Babbs, Ken (Author)
Mar 2011. 320 p. Overlook, hardcover, $25.95. (9781590204443).

Babbs sings us an ode to a marine helicopter squadron serving in Vietnam prior to the outbreak of war, when the U.S. was acting as an “advisor.” With pop-cultural quotes and allusions liberally sprinkled amid staccato prose, this first novel may feel to some a cross between Joseph Heller and Hunter S. Thompson.

Part buddy movie, part simple observation, and part existential musing, the novel lets readers see and feel the world it creates as it follows Texan Tom Huckelbee and Ohioan Mike Cochran from flight school through their time in Vietnam. Huckelbee strives to remain sane through Cochran’s unpredictable actions, a grinding schedule of sorties, R and R breaks, base politics, and the loss of flight-school friends. The strain of their circumstances builds to the final, most dangerous mission they fly. Babbs, a U.S. Marine whose service included piloting helicopters in Vietnam, brings eyewitness truth to the table as he pays homage to his fellow marines while showing how valor and duty can be embodied quite differently among one company of men.
— Arlen Bensen

Booklist praises DELIVERANCE FROM EVIL

We just got in finished copies of Frances Hill's new novel of the Salem witch trials, DELIVERANCE FROM EVIL, and they look absolutely fantastic. Thrilled to see the book getting some pre-publication praise as well! Deliverance from Evil will be on sale March 3.

BOOKLIST
Issue: February 15, 2011
Deliverance from Evil.
Hill, Frances (Author)
Mar 2011. 320 p. Overlook, hardcover, $25.95. (9781590204702).
Historian Hill utilizes her extensive research on the Salem Witch Trials to bone-chilling effect in this riveting tale of a town spiraling out of control. Hill’s four previous nonfiction books documented the infamous witch hunt and its aftermath, enabling her to lend a sense of immediacy and authenticity to the gripping narrative by stocking it with characters ripped directly out of the pages of history. She knows enough about the real-life perpetrators and victims to build a convincing fictional scenario around them.
The tension ratchets up, and the hysteria mounts after what initially begins as an innocent game becomes something much more sinister. As the Salem community loses control of its collective senses, no one, not even innocent clergyman Reverend George Burroughs, is above suspicion. Astute readers will pick up on alarming parallels to be drawn between the past and the present day.

Susan Hill is "once again at the top of her game"

We've been thrilled about the great buzz around Susan Hill's new thriller, THE SHADOWS IN THE STREET. In fact, we've already done a roundup post of some of the great praise for this latest Simon Serrallier mystery (click here to read it all, including a great review from Marilyn Stasio in the New York Times!).

But we had to share this starred review from Booklist. Our favorite part--"This is a hugely satisfying, highly entertaining, masterfully written book in which Hill is once again at the top of her game." Wonderful to hear! And don't forget that Deb's Book Blog is giving away all FIVE of Susan's Simon Serrallier mysteries--go here to enter!

Hill once again shines with a book that’s part taut suspense thriller, part classic British procedural, and part modern morality tale with an overlay that is at once heartwarming and terrible. DCS Simon Serrailler has taken some much-needed time off after solving a high-profile, high-pressure case. But he’s called back to work when two local prostitutes are brutally murdered, and his team of detectives is struggling to find a single useful clue to the killer’s identity. But the murders aren’t the only issue Simon has to worry about—his sister, Cat, is still trying to deal with her husband’s tragic death, his father is thinking of heading off to America, and his nephew is showing signs of preteen rebellion. Still, it’s the murders that must be Simon’s top priority, but he continues to hit brick walls at every turn. Fearing he may never solve the case, Simon is nearly ready to give up when the killer reveals himself in a near-tragic event that hits all too close to home. This is a hugely satisfying, highly entertaining, masterfully written book in which Hill is once again at the top of her game. — Emily Melton

Booklist praises Andre Schwarz-Bart's THE MORNING STAR

Booklist's Oct. 1 issue has this review of the posthumous novel THE MORNING STAR, by Andre Schwarz-Bart, No. 1 bestselling author of the classic THE LAST OF THE JUST.

Check out their issue for more fantastic reviews, but the fantastic review of The Morning Star is below.

Acclaimed French novelist and Holocaust survivor Schwarz-Bart’s last novel, discovered after his death, begins in the year 3000, after the earth has been obliterated by a nuclear war. One survivor uncovers chests filled with manuscripts that document a human massacre occurring one thousand years earlier. The central narrative shifts to the Polish village of Podhoretz, and chronicles the life of Haim Shuster, descendent of the town’s fabled rabbi who is rumored to have hosted the prophet Elijah. Sensitive and inquisitive Haim possesses a gift that links him, in music and religion, to his lineage. When Nazi troops enter 1939 Poland, Haim’s family is cruelly separated, leaving him to care for his three young brothers. While Haim becomes increasingly disillusioned with God and humanity, he struggles to survive in the Warsaw Ghetto and, subsequently, Auschwitz. Years later, Haim, much older and expecting a child of his own, struggles to reconcile the horrors of the Holocaust with the weight of his oscillating spirit. Schwarz-Bart’s tale is a delicate, necessary portrait, wavering between faith and disbelief, reconciliation and doubt.

Booklist gives SMOGTOWN a Starred Review

The September 1 issue of Booklist offers a rave starred review of Smogtown: The Long-Burning History of Pollution in Los Angeles, by Chip Jacobs and William J. Kelly:

"Remember those great 1950s horror movies, when some superpowerful creature menaced a city while the citizens panicked, law enforcement officials bumbled, politicians pontificated, and plucky scientists worked at a fever pitch to find something, anything, to kill the monster? That’s pretty much the feel of this remarkably entertaining and informative chronicle of the birth and—so far—inexorable evolution of smog. On July 8, 1943, smog attacked Los Angeles without warning (well, not much warning). People didn’t know what to make of this gray mist that blanketed the city, and when it didn’t go away (or went away and then came back), the citizenry began to react in strange ways: there were rumors, for example, that this smelly cloud was some sort of chemical attack by the Japanese—less than a year after Pearl Harbor, this claim didn’t sound so silly. By 1947, when it looked like smog was here to stay, the governor of California created the country’s first smog agency. The following year, a documentary about smog was released in theaters, animated by some guy named Walt Disney, and a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter was writing investigative pieces about the stinky mist. Later, smog helped launch Ralph Nader’s crusading career, and today it’s a central theme in the environmentalism movement. This book is just amazing, a gripping story well told, with the requisite plucky scientists (including Arie Haagen-Smit, a Dutch biochemist who was “the Elvis of his field”), hapless politicians, and a nebulous biochemical villain who just will not be stopped."