THORN: Great escapes on the way

By Patti Thorn, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published May 23, 2008 at 3 p.m.

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It occurred to me that the world is divided into two camps: those who will read every word of today's political books story and those who will head straight to their computers to fire off a nasty e-mail.

OK. OK. Before those of you in the latter category get yourselves all in a knot telling me you're sick of politics and want escape in your reading, take a deep breath. I haven't forgotten you.

And neither have publishers. Talk about getting away from it all: This summer, publishers are offering diversions that will take you from Renaissance Florence to modern-day Montana - and a million stops in between.

We'll see the usual slew of thrillers and mysteries, and most of them don't take place in Washington, D.C. In addition, you'll find offerings from high-profile authors such as David Sedaris, Salman Rushdie, David Guterson, Andre Dubus III and Ethan Canin.

Colorado readers also can look to their own backyard for some of the season's most promising reads. Several books garnering early buzz are written by authors with state ties.

So forget that angry e-mail. It will only waste valuable reading time. Here's a closer look at what's on the way.

JUNE

Let's start with the hometown angle. This isn't boosterism. It's simply recognizing the real possibility that these will be breakout books.

Jessica Brody lives in L.A., but the young author grew up in Franktown and her family still lives in Colorado. Her novel, The Fidelity Files, already has achieved a certain amount of success - it will be published in France, Germany and the Czech Republic, in addition to the U.S., and St. Martin's has snapped up the rights to a sequel.

In other words, expect a big push from the publisher for her story of a Los Angeles woman leading a double life: By day, Brody's protagonist is an investment banker, by night, a woman hired to tempt men, in order to test their fidelity to their mates.

If her novel falls on the chick-lit end of the literary spectrum, David Wroblewski's The Story of Edgar Sawtelle occupies the more serious side. This fat novel by the Westminster author has been earning raves weeks before its publication, including off-the- charts praise from Stephen King and Richard Russo. It's a coming-of-age story of a mute boy, whose family trains and breeds dogs, who faces unexpected challenges when his father dies.

Wroblewski's publisher, like Brody's, is expecting big things. The author heads out on a 16-city book tour beginning in June.

Those are the big books to watch for on the local front. Nationally, readers can keep their eyes open for Joyce Carol Oates' My Sister, My Love: The Intimate Story of Skyler Rampike. Oates tells the story of 19-year-old Skyler Rampike, whose 6-year-old sister, a skating champion, was murdered a decade earlier. The sensational crime plagues the family as it sparks unwelcome attention from the tabloid media.

Hoping to overcome mixed reviews on his last outing (East of the Mountains), David Guterson offers The Other. It's a tale of two boys - one born into wealth, the other from a blue-collar family - whose lives intertwine when one enlists the other to help him disappear.

And speaking of disappearing, we haven't heard from Ethan Canin since his 2001 novel, Carry Me Across the Water. Canin breaks his silence with America America, a story about a working-class boy who becomes an aide to a New York senator, only to become embroiled in an ethical and romantic dilemma.

Another much-anticipated novel: Andre Dubus III's The Garden of Last Days. The new book by the author of the acclaimed House of Sand and Fog is based on the real-life visit of the 9/11 hijackers to a Florida strip club - a subject bound to pique reader curiosity.

If that topic is too close to current issues for comfort, pick up Salman Rushdie's The Enchantress of Florence. Based on seven years of research, the novel is set in Renaissance Florence and revolves around a beautiful, mysterious woman: "believed to possess powers of enchantment and sorcery," according to press material.

June also offers enough thrillers and mysteries to keep you on the edge of your lounge chair - far too many to summarize. We'll see stories from Jeffery Deaver (The Broken Window); Alan Furst (The Spies of Warsaw); Robert B. Parker (Resolution); Lee Child (Nothing to Lose), Clive Cussler (The Plague Ship), John Connolly (The Reapers), Steve Martini (Shadow of Power), Tananarive Due (Blood Colony) and Ruth Rendell (Not in the Flesh).

As for nonfiction, David Sedaris is the summer's big draw. Sedaris' latest went through several title changes before Little, Brown settled on the eye-catching, if not exactly soothing, When You Are Engulfed in Flames. Look for Sedaris' trademark sardonic take on his unorthodox life.

Black Hawk Down author Mark Bowden again focuses on a tense fight - but this time, the battle takes place on the football field instead of the streets of Somalia. Bowden offers The Best Game Ever: Colts vs. Giants, 1958, and the Birth of the Modern NFL.

Meanwhile, Mark Kurlansky moves on from the land of short titles - his previous books include Cod and Salt - to a title that's impossible to say in one breath. The Last Fish Tale: The Fate of the Atlantic and Survival in Gloucester, America's Oldest Fishing Port and Most Original Town explores what overfishing, climate change and pollution have wrought on one stalwart fishing town.

JULY

Among this month's big-hitters in suspense is James Lee Burke, whose new Dave Robicheaux story, Swan Peak, is set in Montana. The publisher doesn't offer many details - and probably doesn't have to. Burke's fans will be salivating regardless of any plot outlines.

Like Burke, who often is lauded for taking the thriller genre into more literary territory, Stephen L. Carter offers a literary crime novel. Palace Council is set in the '50s and '60s and revolves around a murder, a suicide and a disappearance that sparks a young writer's 20-year search for the truth.

If murder and mayhem isn't your cup of tea, Ron McClarty is back after the success of his debut novel, The Memory of Running. His new novel, Art in America, is the tale of a failed writer who is offered a position as playwright-in-residence at the Creedmore Historical Society. If the society's name has a familar ring to it, it's no coincidence. The book takes place in Colorado; could McLarty be riffing on Creede?

Switching to nonfiction, Larry McMurtry writes about his passion of collecting and selling rare books in Books: A Memoir.

And champion of the underdog Barbara Ehrenreich casts her eye on "the cruelest decade in memory," with This Land is Their Land. The author details an America, according to the publisher, in which "the moneyed elite can buy congressmen," while "many in the working class can barely buy lunch."

AUGUST

Add George Pelacanos to the thriller stars of the summer. His novel, The Turnaround, revolves around one summer day in 1972 that changed six boys' lives forever.

Generally, though, the crime wave wanes by August, as do the number of fiction offerings in general. Not to worry, a few nonfiction heavy-hitters step up to bat.

In a political vein (you didn't really think we could avoid the topic altogether, did you?), Thomas Frank, author of the groundbreaking look at modern politics, What's the Matter With Kansas?, brings us The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule. Given the title and Frank's liberal bent, don't expect an air kiss to conservatism.

And another well-known Thomas, Thomas Friedman, takes on global warming with Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution - and How It Can Renew America.

Getting away from current events, novelist Haruki Murakami takes an unexpected turn with What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, a slim memoir about his passion for running, and the insights he finds while doing so.

And, finally, Paul Theroux recounts his 28,000-mile journey on trains, "rattletrap" buses and "illicit" taxis as he makes his way through eastern Europe, central Asia, Southeast Asia, Japan and Siberia.

So you see, there are scores of ways to escape the political brouhaha that will descend on Denver this summer. And might I also suggest that, come August, those weary of politics stay away from downtown, turn off CNN, pull down the shades, board up the door and stock up on snacks?

Hey, I'm always thinking of your needs.

thornp@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5419

CITY OF THE SUN, by David Levien (Doubleday, $24.95): When a 12-year-old is abducted, his parents call in an ex-cop with parental despair of his own. As two fathers share their heartache, Levien ratchets up the suspense.

THE FINDER, by Colin Harrison (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $25): After seeing two of her employees gruesomely murdered, a young Chinese woman realizes that she was the real target. She goes on the run in this dark, propulsively driven tale revolving around corrupt Shanghai investors.

LUSH LIFE, by Richard Price (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $24.99): Price's blistering dialogue highlights a story that begins when three young adults are allegedly confronted by brazen assailants and one is killed. Conflicting accounts of the event arise as Price zeroes in on his real subject: the clashing cultures of Manhattan's Lower East Side.

MUDBOUND, by Hillary Jordan (Algonquin, $21.95): Set in the Jim Crow South during 1946, Jordan's debut revolves around a woman's struggle to raise her children on a rustic farm and the complexities that occur when two young war veterans return to town, battling war demons and refusing to play by the old Southern rules they had left behind.

OLIVE KITTERIDGE, by Elizabeth Strout (Random House, $24.95): Strout's impressive series of 13 narratives tell the story of a stubborn and painfully honest woman grappling to find a sense of self.

OUR STORY BEGINS, by Tobias Wolff (Knopf, $26.95): A collection of new and previously published work that demonstrates why Wolff is considered the modern-day master of the short story.

THE SOMNAMBULIST, by Jonathan Barnes (William Morrow, $23.95): In Victorian England, a stage magician and sometime-detective joins police to investigate two murders and thwart a cataclysmic attack on London. An 8-foot-tall mute joins the quest as Barnes spins a wildly inventive tale.

UNACCUSTOMED EARTH, by Jhumpa Lahiri (Knopf, $25): These quietly powerful stories revolve around the lives of Bengali immigrants to the United States and their American children.

THE ASSIST: HOOPS, HOPE AND THE GAME OF THEIR LIVES, by Neil Swidey (PublicAffairs, $26): An account of how inner-city basketball players at Boston's Charlestown High School outdistance daily challenges with the help of a coach who cared.

BEAUTIFUL BOY: A FATHER'S JOURNEY THROUGH HIS SON'S METH ADDICTION, by David Sheff (Houghton Mifflin, $24): A brutally honest and intimate view of the author's son's methamphetamine addiction and its impact on the family.

THE GEOGRAPHY OF BLISS: ONE GRUMP'S SEARCH FOR THE HAPPIEST PLACES IN THE WORLD, by Eric Weiner (Twelve Books, $25.99): A war-weary National Public Radio correspondent travels the world for a year to learn where people are happiest, providing an answer that is at once simple and more complex than you might expect.

THE FORTUNE COOKIE CHRONICLES: ADVENTURES IN THE WORLD OF CHINESE FOOD, by Jennifer 8 Lee (Twelve Books, $24.99): A New York Times reporter investigates everything you ever wanted to know about Chinese food, revealing wonderful facts and anecdotes - including the idea that fortune cookies probably originated with the Japanese. And not in Japan, but Los Angeles.

THE LAST FLIGHT OF THE SCARLET MACAW: ONE WOMAN'S FIGHT TO SAVE THE WORLD'S MOST BEAUTIFUL BIRD, by Bruce Barcott (Random House, $26): The suspenseful account of an eccentric American woman's fight against a Canadian power company, whose plan to build a dam in Belize would doom the country's remaining 200 scarlet macaws.

THE MAN WHO LOVED CHINA: THE FANTASTIC STORY OF THE ECCENTRIC SCIENTIST WHO UNLOCKED THE MYSTERIES OF THE MIDDLE KINGDOM, by Simon Winchester (HarperCollins, $27.95). The story of Joseph Needham, a British biochemist whose groundbreaking research, written in 24 volumes, proved that hundreds of inventions long considered products of the West had, in fact, been used in China long before they were ever seen in Europe.

THE SUM OF OUR DAYS, by Isabel Allende (HarperCollins, $26.95): A sequel to Allende's memoir about her daughter, Paula, that picks up the story 13 years later, detailing the chock-full lives of Allende's family and friends.

THIS REPUBLIC OF SUFFERING: DEATH AND THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR, by Drew Gilpin Faust (Knopf, $27.95): As riveting as it is morbid, this is an exploration of the huge losses suffered during the Civil War and the nation's multifaceted response to those deaths - everything from the physical challenges to dealing with bodies to the catastrophe's effect on religious beliefs.

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