Books in brief
FICTION
The Book of Illumination: A Novel from the Ghost Files by Mary Ann Winkowski and Maureen Foley; Three Rivers Press/Crown Publishing, 308 pages ($14)
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Start with a freelance bookbinder who happens to be able to see ghosts, add one mysteriously missing illuminated manuscript and you have a novel that checks off the boxes of several cultural blockbusters, from “The Da Vinci Code” to TV’s “Ghost Whisperer.” The links to the latter are no coincidence— Winkowski is the real psychic medium who works as an adviser to the show.
Here’s the funny part—this genuinely engaging novel doesn’t need the tie-ins. Even without the double-barreled title and psychic Winkowski’s professional expertise, the story of single mom Speranza “Anza” O’Malley is absorbing from the first page. Shake your head once over the fact that O’Malley is a professional bookbinder, which seems more unlikely than her matter-of-fact interactions with ghosts, and dive right in. A priceless illuminated manuscript in a deceased man’s collection is stolen. Two angry medieval Irish monks who are attached to the manuscript and a troubled ghostly butler are unexpectedly solid characters.
But it’s Anza herself, with her stalled-career envy and her complicated but reliable relationship with her 5- year-old son’s father, who forms the solid core of this page-turner.
Winkowski and Foley are already working on a sequel, with O’Malley meeting the ghosts of the 1907 Block Island sea disaster. Even without otherworldly input, it seems a safe prediction that those who fall under the spell of “The Book of Illumination” will want more about O’Malley and her friends, both living and in spirit.
—Anne Neville
YOUNG ADULT
Lips Touch Three Times by Laini Taylor, with illustrations by Jim Di Bartolo; Arthur A. Levine Books/Scholastic, 266 pages ($17.99) Ages 12 and up.
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This dazzling original work, rich with allusions to mythology and folklore and nominated for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, tells three stories. “Goblin Fruit,” inspired by Christina Rossetti’s poem “Goblin Market,” is a cautionary tale of an outsider from a family of Gypsy origin (with “an intimate understanding of how to turn an animal into a meal”), who is irresistibly drawn to a beautiful new boy at school despite a whirl of warnings, of swan feathers and a pearl-handled knife, from beyond the grave. “Spicy Little Curses Such as These” is an exotic riff, set in India during British rule, on the classic fairy-tale motif of a baby cursed at birth. Beautiful Anamique grows up willingly mute, warned of the curse that the sound of her voice will kill everyone in earshot, until she falls in love with a soldier. This fascinating story was inspired by Hindu concepts of reincarnation and the idea that Hell is a place of purification all must pass through. “Hatchling,” the most complex story, takes the word “druj” from the Zoroastrian faith and creates a terrifying parallel universe ruled by a “druj” queen, who keeps little girls as pets until they are old enough to bear children. In this terrifying story, drujs can “wear humans” for their own purposes, “for fighting and rutting and dancing and other such things” and then leave them, tormented souls who “are ever afterward tormented by nightmares.” The striking illustrations are by the author’s husband.
—Jean Westmoore
SUSPENSE
Rizzo’s War by Lou Manfredo; Minotaur, 290 pages ($24.99)
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Lou Manfredo’s debut explores the gritty, unkind streets of Brooklyn in an authentically detailed police procedural honed by the author’s more than 25 years in Brooklyn’s criminal justice system.
Comparable to the late Ed McBain’s brilliant “87th Precinct” procedurals, “Rizzo’s War” takes a harder- edge approach, putting the reader on the street with two cops.
Detective Sgt. Joe Rizzo has just a few years left before retirement and he could easily be the perennial slacker. When we first meet Rizzo, he does indeed seem to be avoiding taking a case. But this is Rizzo’s way of following a cop’s instincts, of knowing that investigations aren’t lineal and of tying up all the loose ends and the small clues. These are things he wants to teach new detective Mike McQueen, who soon learns that Rizzo may be one of the most perceptive detectives he knows.
After solving a series of small crimes, Rizzo and McQueen are assigned to find the teenage daughter of a Brooklyn councilman. Rizzo immediately notices that this is not a simple runaway case and that the councilman is more interested in what his daughter may have taken from his home than in finding his child.
“Rizzo’s War” briskly moves through the streets and private homes to shady government practices as Manfredo’s novel resonates with authenticity.
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