Author Karen Russell on vampires, addiction and literary tattoos

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Karen Russell's new short story collection is titled 'Vampires in the Lemon Grove.'

Karen Russell's fiendishly titled new short-story collection, Vampires in the Lemon Grove, follows her Pulitzer Prize-nominated debut novel, Swamplandia!, and her first collection, St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, published when she was 25. Hailed as a "Young Lion" by the New York Public Library and named to The New Yorker's "20 Under 40" list of authors, Russell confessed to Bookish that her real ambition is to make the "85 Writers Who Are Still Lucid at 85" list.

The stories in Vampires are full of war, recovery from addiction, women who've turned into silkworms and, yes, bloodsuckers (but they've gone clean). Here, Russell reveals how "mucking around in the swampy mangrove forest" near her childhood home in Miami and reading everything from Jack London to The Grapes of Wrath shaped her as a writer of "magical thinking" fiction. By the way, she's over swamps: She tells us her next novel will be set in a dustbowl "wasteland."

Bookish: Which author or book most profoundly shaped you as a writer? Is there one writer you're guided by as a pole star?

Karen Russell: I always get tongue-tied when I have to choose a single book or author. As a younger reader, I loved Jack London, Ray Bradbury, Tolkien, the Narnia books, A Wrinkle in Time. I remember reading books like The Grapes of Wrath and The Heart is a Lonely Hunter on long car trips, probably understanding only every third word--exactly what I gleaned from those classics is hard for me to pinpoint now in retrospect, but I do remember feeling that my "real" life was my reading life--a secret life, an interior world made in collaboration with these authors, impenetrable to any outside observer. Traveling to Ray Bradbury's Martian cities felt much more memorable than my trips to buy Keds at the Dadeland Mall in Miami.

And, Flannery O'Connor's wickedly wise sensibility is a terrific pole star.

Bookish: In the title story of your new collection, Vampires in the Lemon Grove, Clyde and Magreb are two vampires who have sworn off the red stuff and who soothe their "throbbing fangs" with the juice of lemons. Are we all just vampires in the lemon grove, suppressing our desires?

KR: Ha! Well, I do think there's something to that "noble truth" business…. I think part of the power of the figure of the monster (and of the vampire in particular) is that we can all recognize and relate to the horror of compulsion, of enslavement to craving--the living death of addiction, loneliness and thirst. Even if you don't think of yourself as a vampire in recovery, I'd guess that you have some experience with an ungovernable desire. And I think those lemons were my silly way of representing the bitter relief of a temporary fix for an endless longing.

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Bookish: Your story, "Reeling for Empire," is about a group of women in turn-of-the-century Japan who are imprisoned in a silk factory and literally turned into silkworms. How did you come up with the idea of women being forced to grow silk in their bellies?

KR: It's hard for me to reconstruct exactly where that nightmare picture came from. I had been reading David Graeber's Debt, one section of which discusses female debt slavery; and John Tresch's The Romantic Machine, which got me thinking about man-machine hybrids. Then, I became fascinated with Meiji-era Japan, a period when the entire country was undergoing a violent metamorphosis from isolated feudalism to its modern form. Model mills imported Western-style technologies, and female workers left their home villages and towns to work as silk and cotton reelers.

I do remember looking at pictures of silkworms and thinking how frightening it would be to have one's selfhood erased by white fur, to become converted from an individual--a human woman with a unique history--into part of the factory machinery.

In this story, Kitsune's silk thread is a greeny-black manifestation of her grief, her regret. I often feel that certain emotions have an almost physical weight, like a rock in the gut. So, it wasn't such a stretch to imagine a memory or an emotion silking through these women's bodies and stiffening into the thread.

Bookish: Many have called your writing "magical realism," but that term can seem lighthearted--there is a death in nearly every story in "Vampires." How do you describe your work?

KR: I think that I am actually getting worse at describing my work. Less and less do I feel like I have the right distance from these recent stories to know exactly how to categorize them. I do agree that "magical realism" might not be quite the right term, since it suggests to me a hard and fast distinction between the "real" world and "magical" zones, a line that is continually effaced in the fiction I best love (Juan Rulfo's Pedro Paramo, Calvino, Borges, Kafka, Kelly Link, Kevin Brockmeier, etc). In my experience, there is no single, fixed reality--the present moment is always slippery, always filtered through one's own dreams and terrors. Which can imbue even the most "mundane" Tuesday train ride with a supernatural tinge.

Maybe what I'm writing is "magical-thinking" fiction--so many of my characters are lost in some kind of profound blind spot. They struggle to decipher their role in the disasters that befall them, or the mysteries unfolding in their own backyards. In Swamplandia!, for example, Ava desperately needs the Bird Man to be a Charon-figure, an adult guide to the underworld. Beverly in The New Veterans badly wants to be a healer, to feel that she is doing something selfless and noble--to be a powerful agent in Sergeant Zeiger's recovery. And that desire colors her perception of every interaction that she has with him, down to the feeling of the soldier's skin under her hands.

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Bookish: Like Ava in your first novel, Swamplandia!, many of your characters are kids struggling with growing up. How was your development as a writer affected by your own childhood?

KR: I think that a South Florida childhood is great training for a fiction writer. In some ways, you could say that Florida is a magical-realist state--impossible, bizarre things happen everyday. The Miami Seaquarium, with its killer whales and circus dolphins, is a block away from the canned pineapples on special at the Publix grocery store.

And, childhood continues to fascinate me--the passage from childhood to adulthood is such a private, intensely felt, halting and painful and exciting journey. (Even though, like the distinction between fantasy/reality, I think the childhood/adulthood binary is pretty bogus--what adult do you know who does not still have all of her ages rattling inside of her at once, Russian-nested-doll style?). I'm not sure if I can give you an honest and succinct reason here for why I keep returning to that threshold in fiction. I do think that a Miami childhood is one-of-a-kind: So many of my friends and neighbors were first- or second-generation immigrants, and I often felt that we were all navigating a new world together. I was also an anxious kid, a loner, and I spent hours mucking around in the swampy mangrove forest near our house, or riding my bike through the Everglades Lite that is Matheson Hammock, a man-made lagoon near Biscayne Bay in urban Miami.

Miami's weird and watery settings are all well-suited to stories about adolescence, I think. You really couldn't ask for a better landscape to stage a coming-of-age story. I think the central drama of a lot of my fiction revolves around "seeing"--a character, often a child, trying to reconcile contradictions between what they are being told and what they are learning to be true-trying to get their bearings in some swampy subjective territory.

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Bookish: You were named to the National Book Foundation's "5 Under 35" and the New Yorker's "20 Under 40" lists. Is the book world obsessed with youth, like other spheres? What other category of writer would you like to be included in?

KR: You know, those lists really put one in mind of one's own mortality. I'm hoping to make the "85 Writers Who Are Still Lucid at 85" list. I think it's excellent that the National Book Foundation and the New Yorker want to support younger writers--that support came at a crucial time for me, when I was in my mid-20s and wrestling with Swamplandia! One of the things I love about the book world, especially as I gallop into my 30s, is that an author's age matters so much less than it does in other industries. We've got at least that leg up on catwalk models and pro athletes.

I do wish that these lists and awards would drop the age cut-offs, which can feel pretty arbitrary. Authors begin their careers at every age. Ben Fountain was a debut author in his late 40s, and a debut novelist at 50. Robin Black published her phenomenal debut story collection, If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This, in her late 40s, after raising three kids.

Bookish: In your story "The New Veterans," a masseuse working with traumatized soldiers accesses a soldier's pain through the vibrant tattoo on his back. If you got a literary tattoo, what would it be?

KR: My best friends and I just barely avoided getting matching e.e. cummings tattoos in high school. Speaking of age, I think I may have aged out of the possibility of getting a fabulous literary tattoo. Although, I love stories about tattoos--"The Illustrated Man" and "Parker's Back." If Odilon Redon, channeling Poe, had some mobile time-traveling tattoo shop and you could get one of his landscapes on your back, I would go there.

Bookish: Are you working on another novel? Can you give us any hints about what we have to look forward to in your next book?

KR: In my honeymoon phase of writing this new book, I was blabbing about it to strangers on the Megabus, but now I've grown slit-eyed and wary--wary of the jinx. So, it's probably safest not to say too much. It's set during the Dust Bowl drought. I'm trying for a wasteland with some colorful personalities.

--

This article originally appeared on Bookish.com.

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Best-selling writer Clive Cussler by the numbers

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Clive Cussler is back on the list with 'The Striker.' Check out his career by the numbers. (Photo: Photos By Leanna)

Clive Cussler has been writing for four decadesHis new novel, 'The Striker,' hits the best-seller listHe'll be publishing four novels this year

Thrill king Clive Cussler has been crafting best sellers for 40 years.Boiling with international intrigue, fiendish villains and action above and below the sea, his biggest hits include Raise the Titanic!, Valhalla Rising and the non-fiction The Sea Hunters. Cussler's most famous hero is Dirk Pitt, "a combination (of) James Bond and Jacques Cousteau," as one reviewer put it. This week, Cussler's The Striker (written with Justin Scott), about a young detective in 1902, enters USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list at No. 11. Cussler by the numbers:

1965: Year the Korean War vet started writing.

1973: Year debut novel The Mediterranean Caper, starring Dirk Pitt, saw print

81: Cussler's age

'The Striker' debuted on USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list at No. 11.

55: Number of books he's written

4: Number of new novels to be published in 2013

608: Weeks spent on USA TODAY Best-Selling Books list since October 1993 launch

44: Number of titles to hit list

8/23/2001: Date Valhalla Rising made its debut as No. 1

34: Years since Cussler formed the non-profit National Underwater Marine Agency (NUMA), dedicated to preserving maritime and naval history

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Host of teen supernatural books bound for big screen

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The movie adaptation of 'The Host' by Stephenie Meyer comes out March 29.

Here come 'The Host,' 'Mortal Instruments,' 'Vampire Academy' ...Does having built-in teen readers guarantee box-office success?But "it's worth even a chance of creating a franchise like 'Twilight,' " says IMDb managing editor

Unleash the Twi-hards and may the odds be ever in your favor: With the success of young-adult book-to-movie adaptations such as Twilight and The Hunger Games, a swarm of similar teen supernatural novels is headed for the big screen.

Beautiful Creatures, based on Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl's four-part series, kicked off the trend in February.

The Host, based on an adult best seller by Twilight creator Stephenie Meyer but likely to attract teen viewers with its young cast, arrives March 29. Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, adapted from young-adult author Cassandra Clare's popular series, hits screens Aug. 23.

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And that's only the beginning. Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead, Divergent by Veronica Roth and Legend by Marie Lu are all in the pipeline.

But does having a host of teen readers guarantee a box-office hit?

The movie adaptation of 'Beautiful Creatures' by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl was released in February.

"There's no rigid formula that works, or else they'd be minting them, printing these movies out every two weeks. It's really difficult to predict the next big thing," says Keith Simanton, managing editor of IMDb. "But it's worth even a chance of creating a franchise like Twilight."

IMDb tracks the popularity of its movie and actor pages. Before Twilight was even being promoted, Simanton says, there was buzz building around star Robert Pattinson.

This time around, there's no defined "it" factor to predict success. Beautiful Creatures grossed a disappointing $19 million, despite a large social media and advertising campaign. The following week, however, the books sold better than they ever have, claiming four of the top 10 spots on USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list.

"It's imperative to have that core base fans to spread the word," Simanton says. "But even that is sometimes not enough. What was missing with Beautiful Creatures? Could have been the casting. The trailer."

Clare, whose novel Clockwork Princess arrives Tuesday, has her own theory on why all the current teen novels are movie-ready.

"When you write for teens, you know you have to grab their attention quickly," she says. "YA (young-adult) novels are plot-propelled. That makes them cinematic."

Contributing: Bob Minzesheimer

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Books: New and noteworthy

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'Lean In' by Sheryl Sandberg (Photo: None None)

Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg on how women can succeed'Wool,' a self-published e-book hit, is released in printA graphic designer's illustrated memoir

We scope out the hottest books on sale the week of March 10.

1. Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead by Sheryl Sandberg (Knopf, non-fiction, on sale March 11)
What it's about: The chief operating officer of Facebook explores how women can succeed in the corporate world.
The buzz: Sandberg, former vice president of Google, notes that 30 years after women became half of college graduates, few hold leadership positions in business and politics.

2. Wool by Hugh Howey (Simon & Schuster, fiction, on sale March 12)
What it's about: Science fiction set in a damaged world where a community lives under strict regulations in a giant underground silo.
The buzz: Originally a self-published series of short stories that sold more than 400,000 e-books, Wool is now being released in hardcover and paperback; Ridley Scott's production company bought the film rights.

3. Mumbai New York Scranton by Tamara Shopsin (Scribner, non-fiction, on sale March 12)
What it's about: Illustrated debut memoir by a graphic designer who recounts a year she and her husband split between living in India, New York and Pennsylvania.
The buzz: Gabrielle Hamilton (Blood, Bones and Butter) says, "Shopsin writes like she illustrates — wry and succinct, with judiciously placed punch."

4. Battle Ready by Mark L. Donald and Scott Mactavish (St. Martin's, non-fiction, on sale March 12)
What it's about: Memoir of a Navy SEAL who was one of the most decorated combat veterans of the Afghan and Iraq wars.
The buzz: Howard Wasdin (SEAL Team Six) calls Donald "a true American hero," whose memoir is a "well-written journey from training to combat recovery."

5. Son of a Gambling Man: My Journey from a Casino Family to the Governor's Mansion by Bob Miller (Thomas Dunne, non-fiction, on sale March 12)
What it's about: Memoir by a former Nevada governor whose tough-guy father operated on both sides of the law.
The buzz: Bill Clinton writes in a foreword, "Bob's journey could only have happened in Nevada."

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Books about the power of alone time

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'Playing With Water' is a good alone time book.

Our world is a relentlessly social one: We are plugging in, signing on and checking in, it seems, at all times. With the marvels of digital life so close at hand, it's easy to lose sight of solitude's benefits. So, it's more crucial than ever to make time for peace and privacy. From Susain Cain's Quiet to Thoreau's Walden, these books reveal the many ways alone time can enrich.

1. Solitude by Anthony Storr

British psychiatrist Anthony Storr challenges the established notion that love and friendship are the "only source of human happiness." Pointing to several figures throughout history--from Beethoven and Beatrix Potter to Ann Sexton--whose greatest achievements came about in moments of solitude, he argues that taking alone time can lead to an enhanced understanding of oneself, as well as bouts of superior creativity.

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2. Quiet by Susan Cain

In her recent bestseller Quiet (now out in paperback), Susan Cain introduces readers to the inner lives of introverts (people for whom alone time is the norm). Drawing on her own experience as an introvert in the high-octane world of corporate law, she argues that our culture's bias towards outspokenness and charisma leads us to overlook shy people and often miss out on their acumen and potential.

3. Walden and Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau

A classic of solitary literature if there ever was one, "Walden" is the story of Henry David Thoreau's two-year retreat in rural Massachusetts, where he went to live as simply and "deliberately" as he could. Holed up in a spartan cabin and subsisting solely off the land, he chronicles his rugged education in self-reliance and his meditations on God, nature and society. The experience leaves him with an irrefutable sense of self-sufficiency and a deep appreciation for aloneness. As he puts it, "I never found a companion so companionable as solitude."

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4. Celebrating Time Alone by Lionel Fisher

Six years of living alone on an island in the Pacific Northwest showed freelance writer Lionel Fisher both the bliss and treachery of extensive solitude. Fisher shares wisdom from his own experience and those of others, exploring the perils of alienation and the ways in which extensive alone time can bring happiness. "What is tragic, and so wasteful of the sanctity of life," he writes on his website, "is that we seek our happiness, our fulfillment, our answers, our very identity in others when first we must find it in ourselves."

5. Playing with Water by James Hamilton-Paterson

In "Playing With Water," renowned British travel writer and novelist James Hamilton-Paterson describes his life on a remote island in the Philippines. With little to do beyond spearing his own fish, he looks back on his life thus far, observes the graces and pitfalls of island culture, and comes to discover the tenacity of his own self-reliance.

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This article was originally posted on Bookish.com.

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Book Buzz: 'Fifty Shades' casting, Katy Perry memoir

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Will Emma Watson star as Anastasia Steele? (Photo: Joel Ryan AP)

Here's a look at what's buzzing in the book world today:

Emma Watson in 'Fifty Shades': Could Emma Watson be the actress to bring Anastasia Steele to life? Hackers have leaked several documents which note that Watson is attached to star in the upcoming film adaption of E.L. James' Fifty Shades of Grey.

Geithner book: Former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is writing a book that will be a "behind-the-scenes account of the American response to the global financial crisis," to be published in 2014.

Man Asian prize: Malaysian novelist Tan Tan Eng has won the Man Asian prize for his book The Garden of Evening Mists, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker prize and is about memory and forgetting.

Pope book race: Publishers are already cashing in on this week's news of the new Pope. Two books about Pope Francis has been set for an April 30 release: Pray for Me: The Life and Spiritual Vision of Pope Francis, First Pope From the Americas by Robert Moynihan which was announced yesterday, and Francis, Pope of a New World by Andrea Tornielli, announced today.

Long-lost Stevenson essay:The Strand Magazine has published a long-lost essay from Robert Louis Stevenson, author of Treasure Island and Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde, in which he says he was often bored by the fiction written in his life.

Katy Perry book: Could the pop star be writing a memoir? British tabloids have reported that Perry signed a book deal for $3 million, but her rep has denied the news. Last month, ex-husband Russell Brand said that he was writing a second memoir that would touch on his 14-month marriage to the singer.

NYC Teen Author Festival: Six venues in New York City will host the fifth annual NYC Teen Author Festival next week, in which more than 90 authors have signed on to participate. The celebration includes a one-day event called the NYC Big Read.

'Devil Wears Prada' sequel: Check out the book cover for Revenge Wears Prada, the sequel to Lauren Weisberger's 2003 best seller that inspired the 2006 movie starring Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway.

Want more Book Buzz? Follow @USATODAYBooks and @lindsdee on Twitter.

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Cassandra Clare has teen fiction down like 'Clockwork'

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There's no "magic formula" for a successful YA book, says Cassandra Clare. Here, Lily Collins and Jamie Campbell Bower star in a scene from the movie adaptation of her book 'The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones.' (Photo: Rafy Screen Gems)

'Clockwork Princess,' the third in Clare's Infernal Devices trilogy, to be released TuesdayHer first movie adaptation, 'City of Bones,' is due in August, with more optioned for big screenClare plans another series for middle school readers, written with 'Spiderwick Chronicles' co-author Holly Black

With more than 22 millioncopies in print worldwide of her two fantasy series, The Mortal Instruments and The Infernal Devices,author Cassandra Clare might be considered an expert on fiction that appeals to teens.

Clare, 39, whose final book in the Devices trilogy, Clockwork Princess, will be released Tuesday, says "there's no magic formula."

But what she's doing — imagining a secret society of young demon hunters, known as Shadowhunters, in a world of vampires, werewolves and warlocks — is working like magic both in bookstores and Hollywood.

The film adaptation of the first book in Clare's first series, The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, starring Lily Collins and Jamie Campbell Bower, will hit theaters Aug. 23.

Cassandra Clare has written multiple series and is working on film projects. (Photo: Theo Black)

Her second series, The Infernal Devices, a prequel to the first, also has been optioned for a possible series of films. (The title refers to an army of automatons out to destroy the Shadowhunters.)

And if that's not enough, Clare and Holly Black (co-author of The Spiderwick Chronicles) are collaborating on another series, Magisterium, aimed at middle schoolers and set in a world of dark magicians where child apprentices train to be warriors. The Iron Trail, the first of five books, is to be released in September 2014. It too has been optioned, and Clare has been signed to write her first screenplay.

Clare, a former writer for The Hollywood Reporter who lives in Amherst, Mass., says there's no simple explanation for her popularity, but she suggests that it has to do with her characters, often strong females, "whom my readers can relate to."

She says that "readers may suspend their disbelief when it comes to the fantasy and the magic, but they need to believe in the characters — teenagers who have some of the same concerns that they do."

Romance is a big part of both series. The first is set in contemporary New York; the second is set mostly in Victorian England.

She likes to mix "the real and the unreal, the famous and the forgotten" in her fiction. For example, in Clockwork Princess, an aesthetic werewolf named WoolseyScott lives in London at No. 16 Cheyne Walk, which, in real life, was once shared by writer Algernon Charles Swinburne and poet/painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

Like Scott, she notes, Swinburne and Rossetti were members of "the aesthetic movement," which valued aesthetics in arts over political or social themes, but they were not werewolves — or, as she puts it, "proved not to be werewolves."

'Clockwork Princess' will be released March 19.

Clare cites several factors that explain why fantasy fiction aimed at teens has become so popular on page and screen:

- In a technological age "filled with computers and gadgets, readers yearn for some magic."

- As a genre, young-adult fiction is "genre-busting." Adult fiction, she says, tends to be labeled "either romance or sci-fi or historical fiction or literature. They're in different sections of bookstores. But YA novels, whether it's Twilight or The Hunger Games, combine all or most of those elements." Clare says her own series are a "combination of urban fantasy, adventure and romance."

- The generation of readers who grew up on Harry Potter, "the first big teen sensation, feel connected by what they read. They want to share their experiences, usually online …. I think you find a big overlap between kids who are into fantasy and sci-fi and kids who build their own online communities."

Clare isn't revealing much about Clockwork Princess but promises to resolve the series' love triangle involving heroine Tessa Gray, who's engaged to one boy but drawn to another, in "a way that no one has predicted yet."

As for her Instruments series' sixth and final book, City of Heavenly Fire, to be released a year from now, she says to expect "a hard-fought battle and a lot of epic romance."

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James Patterson interview with longtime editor Michael Pietsch

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James Patterson talks with his editor about Amex Cross, writing, favorite books and more. (Photo: Deborah Feingold)

As any thriller fan knows, James Patterson is a megalith of fiction writing: His crime and suspense thrillers, love stories, nonfiction, middle-grade and young adult novels have all been No. 1 bestsellers--and he writes a dozen books a year. His marquee character Alex Cross, who was brought to life on the big screen by Tyler Perry last fall, is on a new, deadly chase in Alex Cross, Run. Patterson sat down with his longtime editor and publisher, Michael Pietsch (who has given Patterson "scars from the beatings," according to the author), to talk about Cross' surprising beginnings as a woman, what interests Patterson more than murders, the author's future plans to pen a "bodice-ripper" and writing in a "white heat."

Michael Pietsch: Jim, can you take us back to the moment when the character Alex Cross first appeared in your mind?

James Patterson: The weird thing about it, when I first started with Alex, it was a woman. The first 60 70 pages, it was "Alexis," and it wasn't "Cross." There was something about creating an African-American character in a woman that just felt a little too daunting for me. And I changed to "Alex," and the rest is mystery (laughs).

JP: Oh, yeah. She was a detective.

MP: And she was an African-American woman?

JP: Yeah, it was the same basic thing: She was going to get involved in the same kind of murder case.

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MP: Where did this idea of an African-American woman who was a police detective come from?

JP: I think part of it was that I had written an earlier book, The Midnight Club, which dealt with a handicapped man in a different way. He just doesn't act as though he's a victim. And it struck me that, especially at that time, and especially in the movies, African-American men in particular were just being stereotyped as these hoodlums--the people with boom-boxes on their shoulders, etcetera, etcetera. And I didn't feel that was representative of African Americans, and so I wanted to write a character who was the opposite of all the stereotypes.

So: well-educated, responsible, taking care of his family, a good dad, conscientious, solves problems with his head rather than his fists or a gun--although that's evolved. He's become fairly good with his fists, but a thinker. But, different from the stereotypes that certainly were prevalent when the Cross series started.

MP: Did you grow up reading detective and police novels? Was this a form that you'd always loved?

JP: I was always a good student, but I didn't read that much until I was 18 and I was working my way through college. But I never read detective novels. I started out in graduate school writing a more serious book. Right around that time I read The Day of the Jackal and The Exorcist. I hadn't read a lot of commercial fiction, and I liked them.

It seemed to me that I could write commercial fiction. I wasn't sure whether I could, or whether I wanted to write serious fiction at that point. So I said, "Let me try something else," and I wrote a mystery--but I didn't know much about it. The first one, The Thomas Berryman Number, won an Edgar Best First Mystery, after it was turned down by 30 publishers (laughs). But I think part of the reason that it won the award and that it was a good book is that I didn't know anything about detective stories.

MP: Your major theme seems to be the police detective investigating murders. You have the Women's Murder Club novels, the Alex Cross novels, the Michael Bennett novels and now a new series called "Private," all based mostly on a murder being investigated.

JP: What I find most interesting in those books is not the murders. I always try to make sure that they hook you and they keep surprising you. But I think [the murders are] useful. I just find the characters interesting and different. You know, Alex and his family and what's going to happen with them, and how he's relating to them, I find compelling.

Michael Bennett is growing faster than any of the others as a character. I think the voice is getting better, and the way he relates to his family and the way he relates to his very strained situation in that he is a father with 10 adopted children and also a New York City cop. And that has to be one of the most unique situations in all of crime fiction.

Now, the Women's Murder Club is, I think, very distinctive because it's four women in different fields: a police detective, a medical examiner, a newspaper writer and an assistant district attorney, who are all best friends, which is credible. It might be a little bit of a stretch that they'd be friends with a journalist, because the question would be, "Can we shut her up?"

But there's always something that drives these things: the frustration that people have with most of the institutions in our society--government, police work, etc.--to set up an investigative company that's so much better than the FBI or your police department, or Mossad. They're just better because they can afford to pay better people and get better technology. And that, to me, is a cool thing to work with.

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MP: I read that you write nearly 365 days a year. Is that true?

JP: Pretty much. Somebody said you're lucky if you find something you like to do, and it's a miracle if somebody will pay you to do it. I love to tell stories. It's a delight for me. I am very devoted--I really enjoy my wife and my son. So that's a big part of my life. I run around the golf course very early in the morning, for an hour and a half, which is a little bit of exercise. You just go and chase the silly little ball for an hour plus. Most of the rest of the day is writing and storytelling, which I love. Not a lot of socializing.

MP: How do you feel when you put pencil down at the end of a day of writing?

JP: Depressed! (Laughs.) I messed up again.

MP: Do you feel exhilarated?

JP: It really depends on the day. I think that's true of all writers. If it's a good day, you're flying. And if it's not such a good day…. The only thing now that's different than what I faced earlier, and what a lot of young writers face, is I'm very confident that I will solve the problem at some point. Whereas, when most of us start out, unless we're unbelievably arrogant, we're not sure.

MP: Are you always working on many different novels at once?

JP: In terms of outlining, I'll go on little streaks. I just went on a streak and I did four outlines in about five weeks. The reason that I will do outlines in a white heat is that I'm letting stuff flow through my system. I'll go back and read one over and add to it, and subtract and let it percolate a bit. I'm to the point now where I've put down five or six or seven potential storylines.

MP: One thing I've noticed that, for me, connects all the novels, is a real sense of your characters' working lives, how the work that they do helps them understand who they are and what matters in the world, and how the job feels to them day by day, how hard it can be sometimes. And how work life intersects with family life.

JP: That's pretty much where I'm at in terms of most of the characters that I'm interested in. I read an awful lot of novels where it's the lone wolf who goes home and drinks and smokes him or herself to sleep. And I think that certainly happens. I think it happens more in detective fiction than it happens in the real world, based on the cops and the FBI people that I've met and socialize with. I think their family life is a little bit more connected.

BOOKISH: Essential reads: James Patterson

MP: You've written some amazingly moving love stories. After a long track of writing suspense novels and thrillers, were you surprised when a love story came to you?

JP: No, I wasn't surprised. It's a kind of story that I like to read occasionally. And I felt that I could write one because one of the hallmarks of what I do is a lot of twists and turns and a fair amount of emotion--more than you'll find in most mysteries or thrillers. So I did feel like I could write a love story--not the so-called "bodice…" whatever they call those….

MP: "Bodice-rippers" is the typical term.

JP: (Laughs.) I've read one or two, but I don't quite get that genre. I don't know that I could write that. But a more human love story, I thought I could. But the interesting thing is, I brought the story into Little, Brown just when I was starting to consider doing more than one book in a year. I brought in Suzanne'sDiary for Nicholas. It was just that idea, and a book called Beach House.

And the man that ran the company actually started to cry when I told him the story for Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas. And then he said, "I don't think I want to do the book, though, because that's not your genre." (Laughs.) I always felt that was most publishers' point of view: You're a mystery writer. You're a sports writer, or whatever. I always felt that what people look for in my books is that you will turn the pages when you read them. So whatever it is, if it's going to be a love story, it will be a page-turning love story. At any rate, the powers that be did let me write the books.

The love stories are harder to write for me. Sundays at Tiffany's, I wrote with another writer. I wrote like nine to 11 drafts of that book. They're just harder, especially if you set the bar at "You must keep turning the pages." Because, usually, not enough happens in those books to keep me keep turning the pages. (Laughs.)

MP: I've been your editor for more than a decade now. And I'm still here.

JP: Yes. And I still have many of the scars from the beatings.

MP: After all these books, is it hard for you to get editorial notes, to have someone suggest to you to change a plot line, or a character? Or to say that something's not working?

JP: No. I really prefer that editorial letters come in the form of, "Here are the big issues." I think some editorial letters are just like, "Here are 300 things." And it's kind of overwhelming and you get this feeling that all of these things are equal and this is hopeless. As opposed to, "Now here the big issues"--and then a lot of little things. But, no, I like to get them. I trust your instincts. I think you understand what my strengths and weaknesses are. I don't think you really try to get me to do things that I might not be able to do. Every once in a while, we disagree. And I curse at you, and you curse at me. No, you don't curse back, which disappoints me a little (laughter).

MP: You manage to do a huge amount of reading for pleasure. You're always telling me about books you've read. Do you read fiction and nonfiction?

JP: In the last two years, I've cut way back. Between the adult and the young adult stuff, it really has gone over the top a little. But I'll still do 30 to 40 books a year, so it's still a fair amount of reading. Back and forth between nonfiction and fiction. I usually have three or four things that are open on my desk, on my bed, on audiobook in the car.

MP: You're passionate about getting books that kids find exciting into their hands. Besides writing your own novels for them, do you have other ideas about how parents can encourage their kids to read?

JP: Parents and grandparents have to understand that it's their job--not the schools' job--to find books for their kids. They don't realize that they have to find books for their kids. One of the reasons it's so important early on, until the kids reach a certain proficiency with reading, is a simple-minded thing, but common sense: The more kids read, the better readers they become.

So with our son Jack, he did very well in school, and he was a good reader, but he just didn't read much. So my wife and I said, "This summer, you're going to read. You're going to read every day. You don't have to mow the lawn, but you do have to read." The first summer, he said, "Do I have to?" And we said, "Yeah, you do have to, but we're going to go out with you and we're going to find a bunch of books." So we got Percy Jackson and A Wrinkle in Time and one of the Warrior Series books. And, well, my own Maximum Ride, and he read every day, or pretty much every day.

And, at the end of the summer, his reading ability had quadrupled. He was so much better. And he had read half a dozen books that he loved--a big deal. There are millions of kids in this country who have never read a book they loved. Never, ever, not one. That's a disaster. But parents: it's not so hard to find the books. That's why I started a site called www.ReadKiddoRead.com.

James Patterson with his son Jack in 2011 in Palm Springs, Fla. Patterson has established www.ReadKiddoRead.com. (Photo: Sue Solie Patterson)

MP: Is it true that you go and see a movie every day of your life as well as golfing?

JP: (Laughs.) No, that would be an overstatement. But I will go a couple of times a week. When I quit my day job, and I was just writing, I would go out to the movies in the afternoon. There used to be a couple of movie theaters in the area; I was living in New York City at the time. And that was my way of just getting away for a little while, clearing my mind before I would come back and write some more.

MP: Do you have a favorite book-to-movie experience where you thought both the book and the movie were really good?

JP: Sure. Silence of the Lambs. And the new Cross movie. Alex Cross just took his first trip to Hollywood in many years, and it was quite a ride. Tyler Perry, Matthew Fox, Ed Burns and the rest of the cast did a great job, and movie audiences gave the film unanimous "A" ratings to CinemaScore on their way out of the theater. As for what's next for Alex in Hollywood… only Hollywood knows!

MP: Is there something in your future that you're working towards? Do you have a goal or a set of goals?

JP: You want to keep the series fresh, and I will stop a series if I'm not interested in the next book. You've been warned.

The kid stuff, I find very stimulating because I think it's a good thing to do. And there's a lot of room there for the imagination. Middle School, the Worst Years of my Life, which is very funny and illustrated--it's a different kind of book for me. I wouldn't be surprised if that's my breakout book, one that just keeps selling and selling. It's unusual because it's funny, but it's also a very affecting story. And I have another series, which has to do with a little kid who wants to be a standup comedian. And that's another book that is very funny, but it's very touching and very unexpected in terms of where it goes.

You know, getting these movies not just off the ground, but made as good movies, is challenging, especially Witch and Wizard, where I'm really involved in the whole thing, soup to nuts. So that's a challenge. There are books coming up. There's one book, I won't mention the title, but coming with the writer David Ellis, who I've enjoyed. We did a book called Guilty Wives, and we're starting another book. And it's just one of those books where I think the outline is really, really cool and different. So that's particularly exciting to me, when you get a story and the outline is great, or the way it's developing is really exciting, which doesn't always happen. But when it does, it's, it's very cool.

--

This article originally appeared on Bookish.com.

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The Wizard of Oz, still behind the curtain, lives on

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'The Marvelous Land of Oz' by L. Frank Baum, introduction by Mitchell Kapner

New Oz movie gives birth to new books and reissues'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz' in new editions with new illustrationsThe art from the movie 'Oz The Great and Powerful' is celebrated

We're off to see the Wizard. Again. Yep, skipping down that yellow brick road.

Little could L. Frank Baum have known that when his Wonderful Wizard of Oz was published in 1900 that more than a century later millions would still be making the pilgrimage to the Emerald City. In books. In movies. In merchandise.?

Baum's classic about a little girl who went on a magical journey attempting to make her way home to Kansas was followed by a popular musical in 1902, which Baum adapted from his original. Its place in history was sealed in 1939 with the Judy Garland movie, The Wizard of Oz, ever since a staple in American pop culture. Throw in an additional 17 Oz novels from Baum, and you've got a legend.

And now Disney's movie, Oz The Great and Powerful, starring James Franco as a small-town magician who arrives in an enchanted land in a prequel to the original story, opens March 8. It has spawned a flurry of Oz books, from reissues of old standards from Baum's collection to a coffee-table book celebrating the art of the new movie.

- Disney Press is reissuing the classic The Wonderful Wizard of Oz with a new introduction by Franco. "The Wizard is a showman, and I suppose that is what I am as an actor," Franco writes. "So the Wizard's journey is actually very similar to my own, even though he traverses the strange world of Oz while I work in the stranger world of Hollywood." Baum's The Marvelous Land of Oz (1904) is also being re-released by Disney Press.

- Disney Press also published several titles tied to the new movie, including Oz The Great and Powerful Movie Storybook;World of Reading: The Land of Oz and The Art of Oz The Great and Powerful written by the film's Executive Producer Grant Curtis.

- Artist/illustrator Michael Sieben re-imagines the Land of Oz in a contemporary style with a re-issue of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz from Harper Design.

'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz' by L. Frank Baum, illustrated by Michael Sieben

- Baum's stories are also refashioned in a new collection from 47North, Oz Re-imagined: New Tales from the Emerald City and Beyond, which includes stories about a grown-up and bitter Dorothy, winged monkeys with wings too small to fly and a stuffed Toto. It's edited by John Joseph Adams and Douglas Cohen.

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THE LAST LINE OF DEFENSE: The New Fight for American Liberty

Mar 15, 2013

Ken Cuccinelli with Brian J. Gottstein
Crown Forum
ISBN 978-0770437091
259 pages
$25

Reviewed by Steven Ginsberg

Ken Cuccinelli, Virginia's attorney general, Republican candidate for governor and tea party hero, is a man under siege - and that's just the way he likes it.

He has become the target of ridicule from pundits on the right - in February, for instance, Joe Scarborough called him "certifiable when it comes to mainstream political thought." He is being challenged in his own state, where a pair of Northern Virginia business leaders recently berated him for being out of touch. Things have gotten so bad that Republican Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling has refused to endorse Cuccinelli, even though deciding not to launch an independent bid against him.

A good bit of Cuccinelli's predicament comes from the release of his book, "The Last Line of Defense," an extended attack on what he sees as the criminal overreach of the Obama administration - a group he unsubtly describes in the title of Chapter 1 as "The Biggest Set of Lawbreakers in America." Moderate Republicans worry that "The Last Line of Defense" will place Cuccinelli out of the mainstream, while handing Democrats endless fodder to use against him. It's never a good sign when your opponents hold a press conference, as Democrats in Richmond did, to take turns reading aloud from your book.

But Cuccinelli, who rose to prominence with his opposition to a 2002 plan to raise regional taxes to fund transportation projects, has always drawn his energy by standing up for what he believes, no matter the consequence. He was tea party long before the tea party existed. And in "Last Line," he makes clear that he aims to be tea party well after the tea party, too.

Cuccinelli writes that the Obama administration has sought to "exercise control over the American people that it didn't have the authority to exercise, and in the process it trampled the sovereignty of the states, violated federal law, ignored federal courts and violated the Constitution to achieve its goals of redistributing wealth, concentrating power in Washington, and rewarding its political allies."

"Last Line" is not a particularly welcoming book. Those who don't embrace Cuccinelli's point of view are dismissed as naive or, as he puts it, "asleep." It reads a little like talk radio sounds - loud, one-sided and at wit's end. It is more a justification for what Cuccinelli has done than an invitation to join the cause.

Cuccinelli takes on the Federal Communications Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency and other parts of the government, but the heart of his case and the bulk of his book are dedicated to his greatest defeat - his failed attempt to stop President Obama's healthcare plan from becoming law. He makes clear that this is a fight he has not abandoned at a time when many of his fellow conservatives have moved on.

As Florida Gov. Rick Scott, an equally fervent critic of the Affordable Care Act, put it in late February: "It doesn't matter what I believe. The Supreme Court made its decision. We had an election in the fall and the public made their decision. Now the president's healthcare law is the law." For Cuccinelli, what he believes is all that matters, and in this regard he repeatedly seeks to place himself in line with the Founding Fathers. "Patrick Henry's hard-fought effort is a lesson for everyone who fights for principles," he writes of the early Virginian's opposition to the original Constitution. "The lesson is that we don't always win on the first round, but that doesn't mean we go home and stop trying."

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DOING TIME FOR PEACE: Resistance, Family, and Community

Mar 15, 2013

Rosalie G. Riegle
Vanderbilt Univ
ISBN 978-0826518729
387 pages
$29.95

Reviewed by Colman McCarthy

Much of the public reveres the better-known peacemakers who broke what they saw as unjust laws and suffered imprisonment: Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, William Lloyd Garrison, Eugene Debs, Norman Thomas, Henry David Thoreau, Joan Baez. But what about the lesser-knowns: Arthur Laffin, Liz McAlister, Robert Ellsberg, Bruce Friedrich, Claire and Scott Schaeffer-Duffy, Paul Magno, Kathy Kelly, Frank Cordaro, John Dear, Bill and Sue Frankel-Streit?

In varying stretches, all did hard time for protesting or resisting the military policies of the U.S. government, the one that King called in 1967 "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today." They saw their government, not themselves, as violators of laws, moral and international.

They are among the 75 dissenters interviewed in recent years by Rosalie G. Riegle, an author of two books on the Catholic Worker movement and an oral historian on the faculty at Michigan's Saginaw Valley State University from 1969 to 2003. "Today," she writes, "one hears little about the resisters' arrests and trials in mainstream media. Unlike newspapers and television of the Vietnam era, which reported dramatic stories of draft file burnings and the resultant trials, contemporary media seem bored with nonviolent actions, so the voices have been muted." Deftly and doggedly, Riegle brings to life the passions, morals and courage of the dissenters and the often severe price they paid, for themselves and their families. Many are worthy of full biographies of their own. In due time, let's hope.

Colman McCarthy can be reached at bookworld@washpost.com.

Copyright 2013 Washington Post Writers Group

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YOUNG TITAN: The Making of Winston Churchill

Mar 15, 2013

Michael Shelden
Simon & Schuster
ISBN 978-1451609912
383 pages
$30

Reviewed by Jonathan Yardley

In July 1903 Winston Churchill, who was then 28 years old, dined in London with Beatrice and Sidney Webb, the ardently leftist social reformers. Afterward Beatrice wrote in her diary: "First impression: Restless, almost intolerably so, without capacity for sustained and unexcited labour, egotistical, bumptious, shallow-minded and reactionary, but with a certain personal magnetism, great pluck and some originality, not of intellect but of character. ... Talked exclusively about himself. ... No notion of scientific research. .. But his pluck, courage, resourcefulness and great tradition may carry him far."

Considering that this judgment was formed in the course of only a single evening, it was remarkably astute and, as later events made resoundingly clear, prophetic. To be sure even by his 25th birthday Churchill already had made his mark through "the adventures of a storybook character - fighting with the Bengal Lancers on the Indian frontier; scouting for rebels with the Spanish army in Cuba; traveling along the Nile to take part in what was to prove the last great cavalry charge of the British Army in the nineteenth century; and, most dramatic of all, surviving capture by the Boers in South Africa, and then making his escape across hundreds of miles of unfriendly territory." Yes, he had done all that, but now he was merely a Tory backbencher in Parliament, almost obscenely ambitious politically but with not much to show for his efforts beyond a reasonably well-known name and a considerable body of well-placed people whose opinions of him ranged from admiration to contempt, with any number of stops in between.

As another older woman told the man who became Churchill's private secretary, "The first time you meet Winston, you see all his faults, and the rest of your life you spend in discovering his virtues." That remark could (though it doesn't) serve as epigraph for "Young Titan," Michael Shelden's perceptive and entertaining account of Churchill's life between the ages of 25 and 40. Sheldon is an American professor of English at Indiana State University who, between 1995 and 2007, served as a feature writer for the Daily Telegraph in London. Before taking on that assignment he had published well-regarded biographies of George Orwell and Graham Greene, the latter not merely a solid biography but an unsparing portrait of Greene's dark side, "the debauched connoisseur of brothels, the impassioned adulterer, the spy, the deceiver, the enemy of order."

Winston Churchill harbored no such demons - he was if anything a "romantic at heart," especially where women were concerned - but he was a spectacularly complicated man whose early career proves the wisdom of the quotation from Ralph Waldo Emerson that Shelden does use as epigraph: "The force of character is cumulative." In the years from 1900 to 1915 (he was born in November 1874), Churchill was very much a work in progress. He achieved a great deal, held several important posts in the British government, married the great love of his life after unsuccessfully courting other women, then closed out these years of apprenticeship with a disastrous military failure that seemed to destroy his hopes for a brilliant future.

He had, indeed, to undergo fully a quarter-century before he was at last called to the prime ministership and the greatness that awaited him there. This is a twice-told tale, though none the less stirring for its familiarity. But the years about which Shelden writes have their own importance and their own color, and they tend to get lost in conventional Churchill biographies, particularly the overwrought ones (William Manchester does come to mind) that zero in on the heroic World War II years. As Shelden writes: "History likes winners, and the image of the older, victorious Churchill has long overshadowed the story of the eager younger man who soared to prominence only to find he had overreached, and who left office with his reputation in tatters. Yet in many ways the early period is the most colorful of his career and the key to his character. It was an exhilarating time full of high drama, political intrigue, personal courage, and grave miscalculations," at the end of which he was in "a state of shock" from which it took him years to recover.

Churchill came from an aristocratic family through which ran decidedly blue blood but not an inordinate amount of money, especially by contrast with others in the elevated circles in which he moved. His ambition may have been fueled by a desire to compensate for the disappointments in his father Randolph's life, which began boldly but ended in failure and premature death, but he was also spurred on by the energy and determination imparted to him by his American-born mother, Jennie. He seems to have known almost ab ovo that he was destined for politics and, upon his return from his military adventures, threw himself into it with characteristic gusto.

Simultaneously he was courting numerous beauties, the most celebrated of whom was the actress Ethel Barrymore, to whom he proposed marriage as indeed he did to others. Not until Clementine Hozier accepted him in 1908 did he achieve the marriage he had so passionately longed for, and of course it proved to be one of the great marriages of the 20th century.

He entered politics as a Conservative but broke with the party over free trade, which he strongly supported but also saw as "a big issue to drive his career forward." In May 1904, he took his seat in Parliament with the Liberals, who didn't know quite what to do with him but finally made him undersecretary in the Colonial Office, from which he attempted "to make the imperial system work without resorting to the crude methods of violence and coercion." He had some success in this - Sheldon says his service was "enlightened and farsighted" - but then and thereafter he was a ferocious defender of the British Empire, the "dismemberment" of which he fought right up to his death in 1965 at the age of 90.

From the Colonial Office he marched steadily upward: president of the Board of Trade in 1908, secretary of the Home Office two years later, then First Lord of the Admiralty in 1911. He was "no expert on naval tactics," but he "did know a lot about fighting and understood a basic truth that others often overlooked," namely that "the only punch worth throwing was a knockout punch." The Royal Navy possessed "more than five hundred ships and 130,000 men," making it "the strongest naval force in the world," but Churchill understood that it faced a daunting threat from an increasingly aggressive Germany. His efforts to beef it up were impressive, but early in World War I he over-reached himself, launching an attack on Turkey, Germany's ally, in the Dardanelles that resulted in catastrophic defeat at Gallipoli in March and April of 1915. He was removed from office in disgrace.

"Now forty, he suddenly looked older than his years," Shelden writes. "He walked with a more pronounced stoop, and his eyes grew dull. ... 'I had to watch the casting away of great opportunities,' he would recall, 'and the feeble execution of plans which I had launched, and in which I heartily believed. One dwelt in a sort of cataleptic trance, unable to intervene, yet bound by the result.'" He soldiered on, though, rejoining the Conservative Party in 1925 when the Liberals fell into decline; his "boyish innocence and earnestness" were gradually replaced by a "harder, much less exuberant character" who turned out to be the man Britain needed in those terrible years from 1940 to 1945. If the child is father to the man, in this instance the dashing but erratic young man was father to the great old man.

Jonathan Yardley can be reached at yardleyj@washpost.com.

Copyright 2013 Washington Post Writers Group

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THE GUILTY ONE

Mar 15, 2013

Lisa Ballantyne
Morrow
ISBN 978-0062195517
453 pages
$14.99

Reviewed by Kathy Blumenstock

Kids killing other kids: The horror always jolts us because we remember childhood games and giggled secrets, not murder, yet the ugly presence of bullying paints a different reality. In Scottish author Lisa Ballantyne's harrowing first novel, 8-year-old Ben Stokes is the victim, his broken body found at a local playground in suburban London. Ben's 11-year-old neighbor and occasional playmate Sebastian Croll is accused of the crime.

Daniel Hunter, Sebastian's lawyer, has represented gun-toting teens, streetwise juveniles who steal for drugs. He's accustomed to youthful punks but is uncertain how to deal with a small boy for a client, especially one so lacking in emotion over a fresh tragedy: "Daniel glanced at Sebastian and tried to remember being eleven years old. He remembered being shy to meet adults' eyes. He remembered nettle stings and being badly dressed. ... But Sebastian was confident and articulate. A spark in the boy's eyes suggested he was enjoying being questioned, despite the detective's harshness."

The boy's nervous mother and aggressive father, whose business travels limit contact with his son, predictably deny Sebastian's involvement. Daniel hopes forensic evidence will clear the child. Yet he is chilled by Sebastian's macabre interest in the corpse.

When Sebastian's father replaces Daniel with a more experienced lawyer, Daniel's pride is wounded, but he's distracted by a deathbed letter from the woman who raised him. He has been estranged for years from Minnie, the compassionate farmwoman who took him in after his drug-addicted mother was unable to keep him. Although Daniel had grown to love Minnie during his transition from unhappy tween to responsible young man, he had cut off contact after learning of an unsettling deception. Ignoring her explanation that the lie was meant to shield him, Daniel created a new life, walling off his youthful memories.

Now her final communication stirs recollections of the farm where an elderly goat, a dog-pound refugee, a small flock of chickens and an angry boy all flourished under Minnie's tending. She coped with tragedies by fostering a succession of children, all of them girls until Daniel arrived.

Daniel's youth unfolds in flashback chapters that alternate with Sebastian's present-day plight. His past flows into empathy for Sebastian, whose refusal to cooperate with his father's choice of lawyer brings Daniel back to the case. The boy seems to suggest that his father may have committed domestic abuse. As the trial approaches, the media vilify the child, circumstantial evidence and witness accounts pile up, and Daniel ponders the wisdom of allowing the boy to testify.

Although well-drawn and realistic, the characters in "The Guilty One" are not especially likable, other than the absent Minnie, whose genuine kindness to all creatures resonates and sharply contrasts with the casual cruelty of others. Readers may see the novel's final twist coming, even if Daniel does not. At more than 450 pages, "The Guilty One" takes the long route to delivering its disturbing story, and some judicious editing could have pared the tale without affecting its punch. But Ballantyne's crisp, reflective writing carries the tale and promises future enjoyment, especially if applied to topics not quite so grim.

Kathy Blumenstock is a Washington, D.C., writer.

Copyright 2013 Washington Post Writers Group

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AL CAPP: A Life to the Contrary

Mar 15, 2013

Michael Schumacher and Denis Kitchen
Bloomsbury
ISBN 978-1608196234
305 pages
$30

Reviewed by Dennis Drabelle

In the 1960s, two of the greatest American comic strips lost their way. Chester Gould's "Dick Tracy" bogged down in, of all places, the moon, which supported a race of pale humanoids with little antennas on their foreheads. Junior Tracy even married one of the creatures, whose preposterousness became clear at the end of the decade, when American astronauts learned firsthand that the moon is a lifeless wasteland.

The malady that plagued Al Capp's "Li'l Abner" was earthbound. A cartoonist who had poured his joie de vivre and satirical wit into a new hybrid - a strip serving equal doses of laughter and adventure - suddenly lost his touch. Enraged by anti-Vietnam-War protesters, Capp turned heavy-handed and strident, and "Li'l Abner" degenerated into a vehicle for settling scores. At the same time, the cartoonist went through a personal crisis that transformed him into a sexual predator.

Denis Kitchen has a long history with "Li'l Abner": His Kitchen Sink Press is best known for handsomely republishing the strip in multiple volumes. With his co-biographer, Michael Schumacher, Kitchen has ably sketched the life of its creator, a double-whammy entertainer - artist and writer - whose 43-years-long masterpiece holds a secure place among the few American comic strips that deserve to be called "art."

Launched in 1934, the strip was set in Dogpatch, a hillbilly hamlet somewhere in the mountainous South, where hunky young Abner Yokum did his best to elude the voluptuous, marriage-minded Daisy Mae Scragg, who managed to chase him and keep her dignity intact. Dozens of vivid supporting characters ducked into and out of this pursuit-avoidance routine - pipe-smoking Mammy Yokum; pig-loving Moonbeam McSwine; Marryin' Sam, famous for his cut-rate ceremonies; the Civil War antihero Jubilation T. Cornpone; hard-luck Joe Btfsplk, who lived under a perpetual dark cloud; and many others. Equally memorable were the phrases and institutions Capp contributed to the American playbook: "double-whammy," "going bananas," "oh, happy day," "as any fool kin plainly see," Sadie Hawkins Day, the frigid communist country of Lower Slobbovia.

Born Alfred Caplin, the son of Jewish-Lithuanian immigrants, in 1909, Capp came to resemble the Jewish moguls of Hollywood in wanting to fit in as an American so badly that he ended up helping to form the country's sense of self. Capp also brought another pang to the drawing table. At the age of 9, he had been run over by a trolley in Boston, and "his left leg was amputated well above the knee." It doesn't take a shrink to connect the idealized specimens in "Li'l Abner" - not just Daisy Mae, Moonbeam McSwine, Stupefyin' Jones and Appasionata Von Climax, but also Abner and Tiny Yokum, who are often glimpsed shirtless or taking a bath - as projections of the physical integrity denied their creator.

Amid all the satire and pulchritude and inventiveness, Capp was second to none in stringing the reader along. In 1943, for example, the public was kept tantalized for weeks by a character named "One-Fault Jones." As Dogpatchers followed him around, crossing out faults that his actions proved not to be the "one," he courted Daisy Mae, who finally married him, dashing any hope that she might snag Lil Abner. Then, in two glorious days' worth of panels, Capp resolved both plot points. Jones' one fault was that he was a multiple marrier, a bigamist, which meant that his union with Daisy Mae was null and void (and unconsummated).

Schumacher and Kitchen take pains to explain why Capp finally broke down and had Abner and Daisy Mae tie the knot in 1952. At the time, psychologists and Congress were blaming comics for corrupting American youth, and Capp felt he had to throw them a bone. Later, he admitted that his capitulation had not only been cowardly but an artistic mistake.

"Al Capp: A Life to the Contrary" has every virtue but a sense of humor, but the ample excerpts from the strip itself make up for that. The co-authors are to be commended for not flinching from the grimness of Capp's last years - the decline of the strip, which he ended in 1977; his assaults of young women he met while on speaking tours; his gasping death from emphysema in 1979. But he had a noble side that shouldn't be forgotten. One of his causes was to visit hospitalized soldiers who were fellow amputees. To lift their spirits, Capp would put aside the prosthetic leg he normally wore and which gave him an awkward gait, and strap on one that allowed him to walk smoothly, even though it hurt like hell. That repeated sacrifice at least partially compensates for the bad behavior of Many-Faults Capp.

Dennis Drabelle is a contributing editor of The Washington Post Book World. His email address is drabelled@washpost.com.

Copyright 2013 Washington Post Writers Group

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STICKS AND STONES: Defeating the Culture of Bullying and Rediscovering the Power of Character and Empathy

Mar 15, 2013

Emily Bazelon
Random House
ISBN 978-0812992809
386 pages
$27

Reviewed by Vinca LaFleur

In researching her book "Sticks and Stones," Emily Bazelon was struck by how many of the adults she interviewed "could access, with riveting clarity, a memory of childhood bullying." Whether they had been victims, bullies or bystanders didn't seem to matter. "These early experiences of cruelty were transformative," she writes, "no matter which role you played in the memory reel."

Bullying isn't new. But our attempts to respond to it are, as Bazelon explains in her richly detailed, thought-provoking book. Scholarship on bullying has its roots in the 1970s, when Swedish psychologist Dan Olweus developed what became the gold standard for prevention programs in schools. Yet it wasn't until 1999, when Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris opened fire on their Columbine classmates, that the United States began tackling the issue in a serious way.

Today, however, the challenge has been complicated by kids' access to new technologies, which have given rise to virtual tormentors, Cyberbullies and "Facebook thugs." Whether or not the Internet has made bullying more frequent, it has made it more pernicious and pervasive. Malicious gossip that once was limited to the hallways or the bathroom walls now spreads like wildfire through "the constant connectivity of cellphones and laptops." Harsh words hastily exchanged online can hit harder than when delivered face-to-face. Kids can't get away from bullies who pop up on the screens in their bedrooms. Emotional violence in the virtual world can inflict real pain.

Young girls, who tend to be greater users of social media, are especially at risk. As Bazelon describes, when the Pew Research Center asked 12- and 13-year-old girls, "Have you had a bad experience online that made you nervous about going to school the next day?," more than 25 percent said yes. The vicious online exchanges reprinted in "Sticks and Stones" could turn this 21st-century mom into a Luddite. Combine that with the headline-grabbing tragedies of young bullying victims who turn to suicide, and parents of adolescents can be forgiven for obsessing about the tech-toting teen barbarians at the gate.

Yet "Sticks and Stones" is not intended to fuel parental hysteria. Rather than bemoan the bullying epidemic, Bazelon reassures us that none exists - or at least that the statistics haven't really changed since the 1970s. To deal effectively with bullying, she asserts, we should "choose the response that fits the facts, not our less rational fears."

True bullying is characterized by repeated acts of physical or verbal aggression in which a physically stronger or more popular child wields that power over a weaker one. Conflict among equals and random acts of meanness don't qualify. This doesn't mean that what kids call "drama" is pleasant to live through. But the vast majority of young people never get involved in the oppressive brutality of bullying, and broadcasting that fact could in fact be helpful in combating the problem. As Bazelon points out, "When kids understand that concerted cruelty is the exception and not the rule, they respond: bullying drops, and students become more active about reporting it."

A law school graduate and journalist, Bazelon makes her case through the lens of three teenagers' experiences: A 13-year-old girl whose persecution began over a hairdo and escalated to the point that she changed schools; an eighth-grade boy who sued his school for failing to protect him against anti-gay harassment; and a female high school student who faced criminal charges in connection with the suicide of another teen who had been bullied before her death. Comprehensive in her reporting and balanced in her conclusions, Bazelon extracts from these stories useful lessons for young people, parents and principals alike.

Most enlightening and disturbing, however, is her discussion of social networking sites like Formspring and Facebook. These platforms can be potent conduits for cruelty; a 2011 survey by the Pew Center found that 15 percent of teens "said they'd been harassed on a social networking site in the last twelve months." Twenty million kids are Facebook users; and as Bazelon persuasively describes, Facebook could easily devote more resources to tackling online bullying, helping schools to do the same, and enforcing its own policies.

I was impressed, for example, by the influence Facebook holds over young users; 94 percent of objectionable Facebook users under 18 never caused a problem again after receiving just one official warning that "content they posted prompted an abuse report the site had investigated and confirmed." Yet Bazelon reports that the Facebook employees who review harassment complaints spend only a few seconds per case, and with 2 million abuse reports of all kinds pouring in every week, many seem to slip through the cracks. There's no hotline to get immediate relief from anti-social networking.

Bazelon concludes by urging parents to rethink the balance between how we let our kids spend their time and the way we supervise them: "If you wouldn't let your kids out at night alone, why would you give them unfettered access to every corner of the Internet?" In-person contact and communication are the cornerstones of healthy relationships. In an age where our kids can have 5,000 "friends," they need to learn what it really means to be one.

Vinca LaFleur is a partner at West Wing Writers.

Copyright 2013 Washington Post Writers Group

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TESTED BY ZION: The Bush Administration and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Mar 15, 2013

Elliott Abrams
Cambridge Univ
ISBN 978-1107031197
339 pages
$29.99

Reviewed by Glenn Kessler

Sometimes the most revealing administration memoirs are not written by the key principals. Elliott Abrams, a deputy national security advisor under President George W. Bush, merits just seven references in Condoleezza Rice's memoir, one reference in Bush's book and none in Vice President Richard Cheney's account of administration policymaking. Yet Abrams had a front-row seat - and played a critical role - in nearly all eight years of the Bush administration's efforts to forge peace between the Israelis and Palestinians.

Less burdened by the need to burnish his own image and still seething at what he believes was a misguided lunge at peacemaking glory in the final months of Bush's presidency, Abrams exposes tensions, mishaps and personality conflicts that had previously been glossed over in earlier accounts. In particular, he writes of sharp divisions between Rice and Israeli officials that mirror the current conflicts between Israel and the Obama administration.

Some of the details - including excerpts from diplomatic texts - may be too much for some readers, but "Tested by Zion" will be catnip for anyone interested in diplomatic history or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Abrams' account of the difficult choices faced by the administration - and the policy decisions it made - will fuel endless debate for generations of students studying international affairs.

Abrams is a controversial figure in Washington. Initially an aide to Democrats such as Sens. Henry "Scoop" Jackson and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Abrams is one of the original "neoconservatives" who emerged during the Reagan administration. In 1991, as part of the Iran-Contra affair, he pleaded guilty to two counts of withholding information from Congress. President George H.W. Bush later pardoned him.

For some readers, this background might call into question the accuracy of his memoir. Abrams does not disguise his fiercely pro-Israel perspective, but he carefully documents his account, making clear when he personally witnessed events and when he is relying on secondhand information or making assumptions about a person's motivations.

He also is open and introspective about administration errors, such as the failure to anticipate the victory of the Hamas militant group in 2006 Palestinian legislative elections. That in turn led to the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip - which Israel had vacated - and led to a split among the Palestinians that hobbles peace efforts to this day.

Though Abrams was part of the National Security Council staff from the start of Bush's presidency, he did not fully take charge of the Israeli-Palestinian portfolio until after Bush's seminal June 2002 speech on the conflict. In that speech, the president declared that "a Palestinian state will never be created by terror," but by reform, and he called on Palestinians to reject Yasser Arafat as their leader. Bush's speech blindsided the State Department and sent shock waves across Europe and the Middle East, where Arafat was still regarded as a peacemaker despite encouraging the deadly wave of militia attacks known as the second intifada.

Indeed, Abrams casts Rice's decision to put him charge of Middle East policy after Bush's speech as a signal that "Rice was staking out a position: closer to Cheney and Bush and farther from [Secretary of State Colin L.] Powell and State," which had preferred to keep dealing with Arafat. Abrams believed that progress was made not by demanding concessions from Israel but by hugging the Jewish state as closely as possible - and that every day that Arafat remained in power was a defeat for the president's policy. He tasked himself to remain true to the vision of Bush's speech.

Abrams' book is a reminder of how dysfunctional the policymaking process was during the Bush administration, when disputes were never resolved but simply deferred for another battle. In 2004, when the administration was considering whether to back Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to exit Gaza, Abrams writes of the "nonsense" repeatedly spouted by the State Department spokesman on the administration's position. He then approvingly quotes from a Washington Post article I wrote on the administration's policy. That article, based on NSC and Israeli briefings that I had requested, contained on-the-record statements from a White House official. The day it appeared, a senior State Department official called me to say top officials there were "freaking out" over it. In other words, rather than hold an interagency meeting to settle policy, senior officials communicated with each other through the newspaper.

Abrams' most complex relationship is with Rice. On the one hand, he admired her work ethic, describing himself as "dazzled by her efficiency, lightning intelligence, and charm." But the book really comes alive when he finds himself increasingly disillusioned by her approach to the conflict after she became an extraordinarily powerful secretary of state.

Abrams chose to remain at the White House in the second term, mistakenly believing that the power would reside there, as it had in Bush's first four years. He had not counted on Bush's willingness to give Rice free rein - or on what he describes as a sharp break between Rice and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert after the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war. Relations became so tense between Olmert and Rice that, according to Abrams, when Olmert told Bush he admired her efforts to convene a peace conference in Annapolis in 2007, Bush replied, "No, you don't, she pisses you off." As Abrams put it, "Jaws seemed to hang open" among the Israeli and U.S. officials.

Abrams remained deeply skeptical of Rice's efforts to forge a peace deal, believing it marked a return to the failed policies of the Clinton administration: "The peace process was like Tinkerbelle, in that if we all just believed in it firmly enough it really would survive." He wrote memo after memo for National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, decrying her approach, but Hadley repeatedly deferred to Rice. One suspects that, after a while, Abrams increasingly wrote his memos more for future diplomatic historians to peruse when they are declassified than to influence policy.

Rice's efforts came to naught, as Abrams had predicted. The process has become even more stillborn under the Obama administration, when an early effort to pressure Israel to halt settlement expansion backfired spectacularly. Abrams has been a sharp critic of Obama's policies, but ironically one of his key recommendations is that the president "should organize the White House staff to keep the key decisions in his own hands."

By all accounts, Obama is the most controlling foreign-policy president in recent history, keeping the State Department under his thumb in ways that Abrams could only have dreamed of.

Glenn Kessler, a former diplomatic correspondent who writes The Fact Checker column for The Washington Post, is the author of "The Confidante: Condoleezza Rice and the Creation of the Bush Legacy." His email address is kesslerg@washpost.com.

Copyright 2013 Washington Post Writers Group

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COOLIDGE

Mar 15, 2013

Amity Shlaes
Harper
ISBN 978-0061967559
565 pages
$35

Reviewed by Jeff Shesol

In 1997, the anti-tax evangelist Grover Norquist launched a campaign he called the Ronald Reagan Legacy Project, with the aim of putting the name of the former president on virtually anything that could not raise its voice in protest: airports, expressways, federal buildings. Reagan, for his part, had started a legacy project of his own as president. Calvin Coolidge - long absent from the political consciousness and long dismissed by historians as blinkered and benighted - was a Reagan favorite. He and other conservatives looked to Coolidge as a kind of proto-Reagan, a patron saint of parsimony and limited government. Reagan moved Coolidge's portrait into the Cabinet Room, cited Coolidge in his speeches, and inspired a wave of revisionist histories that sought to install Coolidge in the presidential pantheon.

That project, lately, has been picking up steam, and a new biography by Amity Shlaes should provide a full head of it. Shlaes, the author of a recent polemic about the Great Depression, "The Forgotten Man," runs the Four Percent Growth project at the George W. Bush Center, but "Coolidge," her monument to the 30th president, is less an economist's brief or historian's appraisal than a Puritan's parable. What Coolidge's aide C. Bascom Slemp said of his president could also be said of Shlaes: that his fervor for budget-cutting was "based on the stern judgment of the moralist."

This is apparent from the book's opening sentence: "Debt," Shlaes intones, "takes its toll." She begins by telling the story of a great-grand uncle of Calvin Coolidge: a Vermont farmer named Oliver Coolidge, who spent some time in debtor's prison in 1849. There is no evidence that this remote episode had any particular meaning for Calvin Coolidge. But for Shlaes it is an opportunity to inveigh against the evils of debt, and two pages later she brings her point home like a blunt instrument: "There have been times," she writes, "when the American people, like Oliver Coolidge, lost heart, feeling themselves locked in a prison of their own making. There have been times when debt pinned down the United States as it once pinned down Oliver." Lest even this appear too oblique, Shlaes suggests that Calvin Coolidge's "perseverance ... may well help Americans now turn a curse to a blessing or, at the very least, find the heart to continue their own persevering."

This is history-as-therapy, or biography-as-advocacy. Either way, it is a questionable use for the substantial research that Shlaes has done into a president who deserves a richer portrayal than he typically gets; even in his own time, Coolidge lent himself to easy caricature as a tight-lipped, taciturn New Englander. Shlaes has an eye for detail, and her portrait of Coolidge is not without nuance. But she is ultimately intent on a different kind of caricature: Coolidge as role model. This is the sort of biography that just comes right out and says it: Its subject is a "hero." Not just a hero, but "a rare kind of hero: a minimalist president, an economic general of budgeting and tax cuts. Economic heroism," Shlaes adds, perhaps sensing resistance, "is subtler than other forms of heroism and therefore harder to appreciate."

Not for Shlaes. One must search far and wide in the literature to find anywhere such a romanticization of the act of cutting federal outlays. This reveals itself in passages that would make even Paul Ryan blush, passages tinged with the stilted sort of eroticism one sees in Ayn Rand novels: "Together," Shlaes writes, "the new president and his budget director [Herbert M. Lord] cut, and then cut again. ... Even when he and Lord thought they could not cut more, they still cut." Shlaes describes the flurry of tax-cutting that Coolidge undertook with his treasury secretary, the financier Andrew Mellon, in similarly breathless terms: The cuts they proposed in late 1925 were "like so many Christmas tree ornaments for the coming season: estate taxes and gift taxes, as well as taxes on cars, mahjongg sets, yacht use, and brokers were all coming down, as well as taxes on both cigars and cigar holders." (In fairness to Shlaes, sometimes a cigar tax cut is just a cigar tax cut.)

In Shlaes' rendering, the apparent drivers of the economic growth of the 1920s just happen to align with the priorities of present-day Republicans: tax cuts, budget cuts, deregulation, a deference to business as the instrument of the public interest. These were the policies, Shlaes insists, that made the '20s roar - that made the economy boom, "a glorious surplus" arise, and tax revenues spike. "By lowering rates on the wealthy," Shlaes tells us, "the Treasury had actually collected more from them." Again, lest you miss the talking point: "People understood now that lowering taxes might often be the better move." Most important, Coolidge - who in 1925 famously declared that "the chief business of the American people is business" - had freed the private sector from its constraints. Shlaes, stirred to lyricism, writes that "commerce could do anything and touch any place now that it was, finally, aloft."

Shlaes omits other drivers of that decade's economic growth, chief among them the explosion of consumer credit - in a word, debt - that allowed many Americans to enjoy, for a time, lifestyles well above what they could afford. Up to that point, it had taken cash, and not a small amount of it, to buy something like a car; by 1926, however, three quarters of all car buyers were doing so on credit, prompting them to reach for bigger, better-equipped, more expensive ones.

The ease of obtaining credit fueled the creation of a consumer culture. Newly sophisticated advertising techniques encouraged the feeling that these modern conveniences - electric mixers, blenders, dishwashers, refrigerators - were a new and distinctly American kind of entitlement, manifest destiny on an installment plan. Silent Cal, for all his moralizing against debt, was silent on this; so, too, is his biographer.

Here and elsewhere, Shlaes ignores or obscures the rot at the base of the Coolidge prosperity, the overheating of sectors like autos and housing, the irresponsibility of the banking system, the persistence of poverty, and the tolerance of vast disparities in wealth and income. One need not have been a radical redistributionist to be concerned that during a decade in which corporate profits rose by 63 percent, factory workers saw only a 9 percent increase in wages. Their purchasing power, and especially that of farmers, was far too weak to lift the economy when the bottom fell out. Indeed, the surge of speculation on Wall Street toward the end of the 1920s was not so much a cause, but a symptom, of deeper, structural dysfunctions in the U.S. economy. These were exposed, but were not created, by the stock market collapse of 1929.

Shlaes' contention is that the Great Crash would have come and gone had it not been for Herbert Hoover, Franklin Roosevelt, their addiction to spending, and their mania for government action. If Coolidge "fell short," Shlaes allows, it was by failing to foresee "the extent to which succeeding presidents and Congresses would diverge from precedent when it came to economic policy." In other words, Coolidge's only mistake was in trusting his successors not to screw everything up.

For all its energetic prose and vivid detail, "Coolidge," at its core, is a reductive, relentlessly didactic exercise. There is nothing wrong with looking to history for lessons; but it is another thing entirely to eschew its complexities, ignore its self-contradictions, and render it, instead, as a morality play - one in which, according to the medieval formula, man begins in uncorrupted virtue (the Founding era), falls into temptation (Wilsonian adventurism and indebtedness), repents (enter Coolidge and Mellon) and is saved. It is a cycle that we mortals are doomed to repeat (substitute for the preceding parentheticals the Coolidge Prosperity, the New Deal and the Ryan budget), but surely we, like Coolidge, will persevere.

Jeff Shesol, a former speechwriter for President Bill Clinton, is the author of "Supreme Power: Franklin Roosevelt vs. the Supreme Court" and a partner at West Wing Writers.

Copyright 2013 Washington Post Writers Group

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