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Written by Jeff Francis
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“Simon Says: A True Story of Boys, Guns and Murder” by Kathryn Eastburn
De Carpo Press, 294 pages, $25
In “Simon Says: A True Story of Boys, Guns and Murder,” journalist Kathryn Eastburn turns her news coverage into a full-length nonfiction book that, commendably, never seems to collapse under its own detail.
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Written by Jeff Francis
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“A Fraction of the Whole” by Steve Toltz
Spiegel & Grau, 530 pages, $25
To enthusiastic purveyors of contemporary literature, the debut novel is … well, a novel thing.
Remove the unfortunate-but-true factor of acclaimed authors coasting on their brand and what do you have? A novel with virtually nothing to recommend it other than what’s on the pages, ideas that may have been rolling around in the writer’s head since childhood. In a literary world that can be choked with hype, a debut novel brings a do-or-die excitement.
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Written by Jeff Francis
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“Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death” by Deborah Blum
Penguin Press, 384 pages, $26
The time following the American Civil War and the beginning of World
War I was a period with a power to tease the imagination like no other.
This is primarily so because of a pervasive and seemingly credible
interest in spooks.
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Written by Jeff Francis
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“Like you’d understand, anyway” by Jim Shepard
Knopf, 211 pages, $23
In 2004, I interviewed Jim Shepard over
the phone about “Project X,” his novel about a Columbine-like plot.
Shepard was probably the best writer
I ever interviewed. He didn’t treat me like some perfunctory annoyance
with whom he couldn’t wait to be rid of like Joyce Carol Oates or
Clive Cussler, and he wasn’t in the midst of a whirlwind book tour
in which interviews were so common that the answers were stock. See
Amy Tan.
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Written by Jeff Francis
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... and anyone who thinks that’s bad should get
decked.
“Dangerous Laughter: 13 stories”
by Steven Millhauser
Knopf, 244 pages, $24
Even avid readers are unfamiliar with Steven Millhauser.
For the uninitiated (virtually everyone), Millhauser began his career in 1972 with the brilliant novel “Edwin Mullhouse.” Since then, he has written four novels (including 1997’s
“Martin Dressler,” which won the Pulitzer Prize) and five collections of short stories. One story, “Eisenheim the Illusionist,” became the 2006 film “The Illusionist.”
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