FICTION · GENERAL
Lynne Tillman
Also known as: Lynn Tillman
Lynne Tillman (New York, NY) is the author of five novels, two collections of short stories, one collection of essays and two nonfiction books. She has collaborated often with artists and writes regularly on culture. Her novels include American Genius, A Comedy (2006), No Lease on Life (1997) which was a New York Times Notable Book of 1998 and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, Cast in Doubt (1992), Motion Sickness (1991), and Haunted Houses (1995). Absence Makes the Heart (1990) and The Broad Picture (1997) are both collections of Tillman's essays that were published in literary and art periodicals. She is the Fiction Editor at Fence Magazine, Associate Professor and Writer-in-Residence in the Department of English at the University at Albany, and a recent recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship.
Most acclaimed
Bookstore
For twenty years, from 1977 to 1997, Books & Co. was one of the premier independent bookstores in the country. Stocking a wide range of quality fiction and nonfiction, Books & Co. was the kind of bookstore writers and readers dream about: a place where reading was an adventure, where interesting works would always be available, where writers would congregate to share ideas and discuss their writing. Its closing, in a rent dispute with the Whitney Museum of Art, caused a media sensation as readers and book lovers decried the end of a cultural icon. In Bookstore, Lynne Tillman tells the story of this legendary store and its determined founder, Jeannette Watson, with help from the voices of Brendan Gill, Roy Blount Jr., Fran Lebowitz, Calvin Trillin, Susan Sontag, Paul Auster, Simon Schama, Lyn Chase, Susan Cheever, Leila Hadley, J.D. McClatchy, Richard Howard, and many more. And the story goes beyond the walls of the store itself to explore the state of publishing and bookselling in a time when the very landscape of the book world has shifted radically. A fascinating account of business, books, and writerly aspiration, Bookstore is a vital window into a world so many have fantasized about.
Haunted houses
Scare-master Robert San Souci serves up ten chilling tales about untraditional haunted houses: a mansion full of pirate treasure, a ghost trapped in a mysterious dollhouse, a boy whose vacation house comes complete with people-eating spiders, and many more. But beware because not all of the protagonists in these stories get out alive. From School Library Journal Gr 4-8–These 10 spooky stories include a classic Halloween scare: visitors get their admission fee of $25 back if they make it to the top floor of a haunted house–but can they? In another, the primary occupant of a dollhouse is a ghost of a child who needs help moving from one consciousness to another. San Souci also writes about an abandoned teahouse with ghosts, a Ouija board that foretells a confusing yet doomed future, and a mother's spirit who is searching for her missing son. The stories are well paced and satisfyingly startling. While some are better written than others, this book won't stay on the shelves for long. Murphy and Revoy's black-and-white illustrations heighten the fright factor, making San Souci's collection even more riveting.Patty Saldenberg, George Jackson Academy, New York City © Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. From Booklist Featuring 10 tales of houses haunted by things that growl, smother, lurk, slither, or go bump in both night and day, San Souci’s latest collection has a scare factor somewhere between eerie and creepy. Some familiar summer-camp stories get multicultural augmentation, including “La Casa de las Muertas” and “Chimera House,” starring Little D from inner-city Detroit, while others involve a demon in the teahouse, spiders and dust creatures that take over the world, and a dollhouse looking for new “inhabitants.” For a nice change of pace, there are even a couple of ghost stories with happy endings. As often happens in a collection, the quality of the stories varies, but there are no clunkers, and the best are outright skin-pricklers. Offer this to those who already know San Souci’s work or who want follow-ups for Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark series, should it somehow stay on the shelf long enough to want company. Grades 4-6. --Cindy Welch
The Daughter
Geli Littler has protected her dangerous secret since she was eighteen, but as the Nazi Party begins to reappear in Germany, an investigative journalist threatens to reveal the fact that she is the daughter of Adolf Hitler.