Skip to main content

Editorial Content for Innocents and Others

Contributors

Reviewer (text)

Harvey Freedenberg

Dana Spiotta is one of those writers whose work seems inseparable from the zeitgeist. Whether she's writing about a ’60s-era radical's perilous life decades later in EAT THE DOCUMENT, or the music business in STONE ARABIA, both her subject matter and style hum with the electricity of contemporaneity. Her new novel, INNOCENTS AND OTHERS, the story of two female filmmakers and their lifelong friendship, is no exception. Read More

Teaser

INNOCENTS AND OTHERS is about two best friends who grow up in LA in the ’80s and become filmmakers. Meadow and Carrie have everything in common --- except their views on sex, power, movie-making and morality. Their lives collide with Jelly, a loner whose most intimate experience is on the phone. Jelly is older, erotic and mysterious. She cold calls powerful men and seduces them not through sex but through listening. She invites them to reveal themselves, and they do.

Promo

INNOCENTS AND OTHERS is about two best friends who grow up in LA in the ’80s and become filmmakers. Meadow and Carrie have everything in common --- except their views on sex, power, movie-making and morality. Their lives collide with Jelly, a loner whose most intimate experience is on the phone. Jelly is older, erotic and mysterious. She cold calls powerful men and seduces them not through sex but through listening. She invites them to reveal themselves, and they do.

About the Book

From “a major, unnervingly intelligent writer” (Joy Williams)…“rich, funny, learned, and tonally fresh” (Jeffrey Eugenides), comes a novel about aspiration, film, work and love.

Dana Spiotta’s new novel is about two women, best friends, who grow up in LA in the '80s and become filmmakers. Meadow and Carrie have everything in common --- except their views on sex, power, movie-making and morality. Their lives collide with Jelly, a loner whose most intimate experience is on the phone. Jelly is older, erotic and mysterious. She cold calls powerful men and seduces them not through sex but through listening. She invites them to reveal themselves, and they do.

Spiotta is “a wonderfully gifted writer with an uncanny feel for the absurdities and sadnesses of contemporary life, and an unerring ear for how people talk and try to cope today” (The New York Times). INNOCENTS AND OTHERS is her greatest novel --- wise, artful and beautiful.

Audiobook available, narrated by January LaVoy

Editorial Content for Pimp

Book

Contributors

Reviewer (text)

Tom Callahan and Joe Hartlaub

- Click here to read Joe Hartlaub's review.

 

Review #1 by Tom Callahan

Imagine if the greatest hard-boiled and noir publishing house in the world brought together two of the greatest hard-boiled and noir writers in the world to work on a series. That is exactly what happened 10 years ago when Hard Case Crime brought together Ken Bruen and Jason Starr to work on a novel called BUST. Two more installments, SLIDE and THE MAX, followed. Read More

Teaser

Ruined and on the lam, former drug kingpin Max Fisher stumbles upon the biggest discovery of his crooked life: a designer drug called PIMP that could put him back on top. Meanwhile, a certain femme fatale from his past is pursuing a comeback dream of her own, setting herself up in Hollywood as producer of a series based on her and Max’s life story. But even in La-La Land, happy endings are hard to come by, especially with both the cops and your enemies in the drug trade coming after you.

Promo

Ruined and on the lam, former drug kingpin Max Fisher stumbles upon the biggest discovery of his crooked life: a designer drug called PIMP that could put him back on top. Meanwhile, a certain femme fatale from his past is pursuing a comeback dream of her own, setting herself up in Hollywood as producer of a series based on her and Max’s life story. But even in La-La Land, happy endings are hard to come by, especially with both the cops and your enemies in the drug trade coming after you.

About the Book

Ruined and on the lam, former drug kingpin Max Fisher stumbles upon the biggest discovery of his crooked life: a designer drug called PIMP that could put him back on top. Meanwhile, a certain femme fatale from his past is pursuing a comeback dream of her own, setting herself up in Hollywood as producer of a series based on her and Max’s life story. But even in La-La Land, happy endings are hard to come by, especially with both the cops and your enemies in the drug trade coming after you.

Editorial Content for In Europe's Shadow: Two Cold Wars and a Thirty-Year Journey Through Romania and Beyond

Contributors

Reviewer (text)

Melanie Reynolds

Robert D. Kaplan is uniquely suited to write about the history (especially during the last 30-plus years) of the country of Romania. Approaching the end of his service with the Israel Defense Forces in 1981, he had little idea of his next plan, position or career path. During his time in Israel, he had become fascinated with places of worship, whether they were Jewish, Christian or Muslim; while he had written about them for a number of publications, his writing income was minimal. Read More

Teaser

Robert Kaplan first visited Romania in the 1970s, when he was a young journalist and the country was a bleak Communist backwater. It was one of the darkest corners of Europe, but few Westerners were paying attention. What ensued was a lifelong obsession with a critical, often overlooked country --- a country that, today, is key to understanding the current threat that Russia poses to Europe. Through the lens of one country, Kaplan examines larger questions of geography, imperialism, the role of fate in international relations, the Cold War, the Holocaust and more.

Promo

Robert Kaplan first visited Romania in the 1970s, when he was a young journalist and the country was a bleak Communist backwater. It was one of the darkest corners of Europe, but few Westerners were paying attention. What ensued was a lifelong obsession with a critical, often overlooked country --- a country that, today, is key to understanding the current threat that Russia poses to Europe. Through the lens of one country, Kaplan examines larger questions of geography, imperialism, the role of fate in international relations, the Cold War, the Holocaust and more.

About the Book

From the New York Times bestselling author Robert D. Kaplan, named one of the world’s Top 100 Global Thinkers by Foreign Policy magazine, comes a riveting journey through one of Europe’s frontier countries --- and a potent examination of the forces that will determine Europe’s fate in the postmodern age.

Robert Kaplan first visited Romania in the 1970s, when he was a young journalist and the country was a bleak Communist backwater. It was one of the darkest corners of Europe, but few Westerners were paying attention. What ensued was a lifelong obsession with a critical, often overlooked country --- a country that, today, is key to understanding the current threat that Russia poses to Europe. IN EUROPE'S SHADOW is a vivid blend of memoir, travelogue, journalism and history, a masterly work 30 years in the making --- the story of a journalist coming of age, and a country struggling to do the same. Through the lens of one country, Kaplan examines larger questions of geography, imperialism, the role of fate in international relations, the Cold War, the Holocaust and more.

Here Kaplan illuminates the fusion of the Latin West and the Greek East that created Romania, the country that gave rise to Ion Antonescu, Hitler’s chief foreign accomplice during World War II, and the country that was home to the most brutal strain of Communism under Nicolae Ceaușescu. Romania past and present are rendered in cinematic prose: the ashen faces of citizens waiting in bread lines in Cold War–era Bucharest; the Bărăgan Steppe, laid bare by centuries of foreign invasion; the grim labor camps of the Black Sea Canal; the majestic Gothic church spires of Transylvania and Maramureş. Kaplan finds himself in dialogue with the great thinkers of the past, and with the Romanians of today, the philosophers, priests and politicians --- those who struggle to keep the flame of humanism alive in the era of a resurgent Russia.

Upon his return to Romania in 2013 and 2014, Kaplan found the country transformed yet again --- now a traveler’s destination shaped by Western tastes, yet still emerging from the long shadows of Hitler and Stalin. IN EUROPE'S SHADOW is the story of an ideological and geographic frontier --- and the book you must read in order to truly understand the crisis with Russia, and within Europe itself.

Audiobook available, narrated by J. Paul Boehmer

Editorial Content for The Watcher in the Wall

Contributors

Reviewer (text)

Joe Hartlaub

I believe in the existence of evil. Oh, there’s good, but you have to work at it just a bit to find it. Evil finds you, even when you’re not looking for it, or as the result of some action, whether it be careless cruelty or a deliberate act. It ripples, forward and outward, and where it stops... Sometimes it doesn’t. Read More

Teaser

Kirk Stevens and Carla Windermere of the joint BCA-FBI violent crime task force have handled shocking cases before, but this one is different. Stevens’ daughter, Andrea, is distraught over a classmate’s suicide, but what the two investigators find is even more disturbing --- an online suicide club of unhappy teenagers, presided over by an anonymous presence who seems to be spurring them on. It soon becomes apparent that the classmate wasn’t the first victim --- and won’t be the last, either, unless they can hunt down this psychopath once and for all.

Promo

Kirk Stevens and Carla Windermere of the joint BCA-FBI violent crime task force have handled shocking cases before, but this one is different. Stevens’ daughter, Andrea, is distraught over a classmate’s suicide, but what the two investigators find is even more disturbing --- an online suicide club of unhappy teenagers, presided over by an anonymous presence who seems to be spurring them on. It soon becomes apparent that the classmate wasn’t the first victim --- and won’t be the last, either, unless they can hunt down this psychopath once and for all.

About the Book

A heart-pounding new Stevens and Windermere thriller from the award-winning author of THE STOLEN ONES and THE PROFESSIONALS
 
Kirk Stevens and Carla Windermere of the joint BCA-FBI violent crime task force have handled shocking cases before, but this one is different. Stevens’s daughter, Andrea, is distraught over a classmate’s suicide, but what the two investigators find is even more disturbing --- an online suicide club of unhappy teenagers, presided over by an anonymous presence who seems to be spurring them on. Soon, it becomes apparent that the classmate wasn’t the first victim --- and won’t be the last, either, unless they can hunt down this psychopath once and for all.

Audiobook available, narrated by Edoardo Ballerini

Spring Fling 2016

Spring is finally here, and with it comes warmer weather, blooming flowers...and the chance to win some great new YA books! From now through Monday, May 2nd at noon ET, readers will have the chance to win one of our five Teenreads.com Spring Fling prize packages, which includes one copy of each of our featured books and a signature Teenreads.com tote bag. 

If you are not enjoying a book, are you more likely to stop reading it if you haven’t paid for it? Please check as many as apply.

March 17, 2016, 556 voters

March 2016

In paperback titles this month, we have THE BLACK CROW CONSPIRACY, the third book in Christopher Edge's Penelope Tredwell Mysteries series in which Penelope finds herself on the hunt for stolen Crown Jewels; BILLY SURE, KID ENTREPRENEUR IS A SPY!, Luke Sharp's sixth book about everyone's favorite young CEO, set in spy school; and ON A BEAM OF LIGHT, a beautiful journey through the mind of Albert Einstein from Jennifer Berne with illustrations by Vladimir Radunsky.

March 17, 2016

This Bookreporter.com Special Newsletter spotlights a book that we know people will be talking about this spring. Read more about it, and enter our Spring Preview Contest by Friday, March 18th at 11:59am ET for a chance to win one of five copies of ON FIRE: The 7 Choices to Ignite a Radically Inspired Life by John O'Leary, which is now available. Please note that each contest is only open for 24 hours, so you will need to act quickly!

Far From True: Book Two of the Promise Falls Trilogy by Linwood Barclay

March 2016

FAR FROM TRUE
is the second book in Linwood Barclay’s Promise Falls trilogy. After reading BROKEN PROMISE, the first installment, there were a number of loose threads that I was looking forward to getting wrapped up. They were, except for the significance of the number 23, but not before a few new scenarios unfolded. The book opens with a scene at the local drive-in movie theater. It is supposed to be closed the following week but explodes ahead of schedule, killing four and injuring many more. Though all eyes point to the wrecking company, the kicker is that they had nothing to do with it. So you start to wonder if this was a random act, or who might’ve wanted who dead and why. With Linwood Barclay, it’s always the latter. And from there, the story rolls on.

All Things Cease to Appear by Elizabeth Brundage

March 2016

Years ago, I read THE DOCTOR’S WIFE by Elizabeth Brundage. If I was picking Bets On titles back then, it would have been one. Elizabeth is an author who takes her time writing, thus time passes between her books. Picking up ALL THINGS CEASE TO APPEAR reminded me of why I like her work; it’s not just the story, it’s her talent as a wordsmith. This is not a skim-and-digest book, but rather one in which the pace builds slowly while you are surrounded by writing that is both lush and descriptive. I read Elizabeth’s work more slowly than I do many others. I find myself wrapped up in the descriptions and writing, both of which are deep and full of nuances.