Tim Powers's Book "The Bible Repairman"

The name of Tim Powers has been a secret talisman for a select group of readers for decades. His ardent fans have used that byline as an unfailing compass pointing to contemporary urban fantasies of surpassing elegance, thrills, cleverness, and emotional heft, such as his Fault Lines trilogy orDeclare. But Powers has also worked in a historical or steampunk vein, and it is this mode that launched his name into wider spheres of public attention with the adaptation of his novel On Stranger Tides as the latest installment of Johnny Depp's Pirates of the Caribbean series.

New readers wishing to become familiar with the Powers magic could do no better than to pick up his latest superb short-story collection, The Bible Repairman. Here, in potent, distilled form, you will find Powers's trademarked secret histories, heroically damaged (or damagedly heroic) losers, creepy supernatural phenomena, and macabre humor.

James Tiptree advised writers to start readers off "in the dark and a mile underground," and that's the tactic Powers often employs. His narratives, despite a surface transparency of action, frequently involve an occult layer that pulls the reader in like quicksand. This is true with the title piece. Transfixed, we watch a middle-aged Latino man performing a series of obscure and eerie and grotesque actions. Gradually we learn that he is a kind of self-taught street-level brujo, about to be called upon the make the supreme sacrifice of his career.

The next tale, "Soul in a Bottle," opens with seemingly greater normality, as we follow a shabby used-book dealer on his daily rounds. But mystery soon intervenes in the form of a strange young woman. And even after her uncanny nature is explained, much suspense remains in how our hero will or won't accommodate her wishes. The melancholy outcome is quietly tragic without being melodramatic.

"The Hour of Babel" proves Powers is just as adept at science fiction as he is at fantasy. Reminiscent in tone of Heinlein's existentially upsetting "-- All You Zombies --", the story blends time travel with horror to make a superior interstitial hybrid.

In "Parallel Lives," two elderly twins, one dead, one living, play a cat-and-mouse game that evokes comparisons to the mordant creations of Shirley Jackson or Robert Bloch. Fritz Leiber, the grand old man of California contemporary fantasies, will surely come to mind in the cat-centric "A Journey of Only Two Paces." And rounding out the collection is a pendant to Powers's novel The Stress of Her Regard, which centered around the Romantics: Byron, Shelley, and crew. Here, with "A Time to Cast Away Stones," minor hanger-on Edward John Trelawny must contend with ancient forces unwisely summoned up in the Greek mountains.

Powers's subtle and beautiful prose is never flaunted, but always works in the service of his stories, which are marvels of ellipsis and concision. He captures venues and characters with just the right amount of description, and never belabors the events in his stories, always preferring to hold back when possible and let the reader's imagination supply the special effects and motivations. Powers's worldview is one where miracles exist just below the surface of the quotidian, revealed through random trapdoors. But open the wrong door, and you might receive a curse just as easily as a blessing. Contact with the gods can blind as well as enlighten.

The Review of Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap began its fifty-nine-year (and counting) run in London's West End on this day in 1952. In her autobiography, Christie tells the story of steeling herself to attend and even speak at the tenth-anniversary publicity party for the London production, despite her "miserable, horrible, inevitable shyness." She arrived unaccompanied and a half hour beforehand as requested, only to be told by an usher, "No admission yet, madam. Another twenty minutes before anyone is allowed to go in." Until rescued, Christie "wandered miserably round the corridors of the Savoy, trying to get up my courage to go back."

Christie's most famous unwanted publicity, and longest-running mystery, came decades earlier. In December 1926 she suddenly disappeared, her car found abandoned with its lights still on near her Berkshire home, her packed suitcase and driver's license inside. Though only thirty-five, Christie was already famous and an heir apparent to Conan Doyle. The mystery had made headlines for a week and foiled all attempts at solution -- tracker dogs, spotter planes, underwater divers, civilian search (one searcher being the other heir apparent, Dorothy Sayers) -- when Conan Doyle himself took action, or rather brought in a psychic to do so. Upon putting one of Mrs. Christie's gloves to his forehead, the psychic expressed optimism: "There is trouble connected with this article. The person who owns it is half dazed and half purposeful. She is not dead, as many think. She is alive. You will hear of her, I think, next Wednesday." He further indicated an impression of water.

And all this was true, or as provable as anything ever was about the bizarre case. Distraught over her husband's announcement that he was in love with another woman, Christie had found her way to a luxury spa called the Harrogate Hydropathic Hotel. Here, by design or confusion, she registered as Teresa Neele -- Nancy Neele being the name of her husband's girlfriend. The husband later reported that Christie was extremely ill, with a three-year memory loss; the Happy Hydro Boys reported her dancing the Charleston to "Yes, We Have No Bananas." Conan Doyle, a determined believer in such psychics, reported his consultant to be correct on all counts: Christie was found alive and near water (Harrogate is a spa town), as reported to a relieved nation in the Wednesday papers.

White Truffles in Winter by N.M. Kelby

White Truffles in Winter imagines the world of the remarkable French chef Auguste Escoffier (1846-1935), who changed how we eat through his legendary restaurants at the Savoy and the Ritz. A man of contradictions—kind yet imperious, food-obsessed yet rarely hungry—Escoffier was also torn between two women: the famous, beautiful, and reckless actress Sarah Bernhardt and his wife, the independent and sublime poet Delphine Daffis, who refused ever to leave Monte Carlo. In the last year of Escoffier’s life, in the middle of writing his memoirs, he has returned to Delphine, who requests a dish in her name as he has honored Bernhardt, Queen Victoria, and many others.

Like a cook who refuses to follow a recipe slavishly, Kelby improvises with the basic ingredients of Escoffier's life to create a delectable dish of her own. She's occasionally heavy-handed with her seasonings -- adding too many over-sweetened sentences like "Only food can speak what the heart feels" -- but this is generally counterbalanced by the tart freshness of her characters, chief among them her version of the chef himself.

How does one define the complexity of love on a single plate? N. M. Kelby brings us the sensuality of food and love amid a world on the verge of war in this work that shimmers with beauty and longing.N. M. Kelby is the critically acclaimed author of In the Company of Angels, Whale Season, White Truffles in Winter, and the Florida Book Award winner A Travel Guide for Reckless Hearts, among others. She lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Van Gogh Is Writen By Gregory White Smith and Steven Naifeh

Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith galvanized readers with their astonishing Jackson Pollock: An American Saga, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for biography, a book acclaimed for its miraculous research and overwhelming narrative power. Now Naifeh and Smith have written another tour de force—an exquisitely detailed, compellingly readable, and ultimately heartbreaking portrait of creative genius Vincent van Gogh.

Working with the full cooperation of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, Naifeh and Smith have accessed a wealth of previously untapped materials. While drawing liberally from the artist’s famously eloquent letters, they have also delved into hundreds of unpublished family correspondences, illuminating with poignancy the wanderings of Van Gogh’s troubled, restless soul. Naifeh and Smith bring a crucial understanding to the larger-than-life mythology of this great artist—his early struggles to find his place in the world; his intense relationship with his brother Theo; his impetus for turning to brush and canvas; and his move to Provence, where in a brief burst of incandescent productivity he painted some of the best-loved works in Western art.

The authors also shed new light on many unexplored aspects of Van Gogh’s inner world: his deep immersion in literature and art; his erratic and tumultuous romantic life; and his bouts of depression and mental illness.

Vincent van Gogh created some of the best loved - and most expensive - works of art ever made, from the earlyThePotato Eaters to his late masterpiecesSunflowers andThe Starry Night. He had worked as an art dealer, a missionary and as a teacher in England, and only in his late twenties did he begin a life that would be fundamental in shaping modern art. But when he died in Auvers-sur-Oise in 1890 at the age of thirty-seven he was largely unknown.Written with the cooperation of the Van Gogh Museum, Pulitzer-winning authors Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith recreate his extraordinary life, and the inside of his troubled mind, like never before - and they put forward an explosive new theory challenging the widespread belief that Van Goghtook his own life. Drawing for the first time on all of his (and his family's) extensive letters, which offer exquisite glimpses into his thoughts and feelings, this is the definitive portrait of one of the world's cultural giants.

The Sleeping Army Writen By Francesca Simon

The Sleeping Army is the latest offering from Francesca Simon, a prolific and award-winning children’s author who is most famous for her impish anti-hero Horrid Henry ( Horrid Henry and the Abominable Snowman won the Children’s Book of the Year Award in 2008 at the British Book Awards). She has also written many books for younger children and early readers.
This novel aims at a slightly older audience and features reluctant heroine Freya, who lives in a familiar-yet-different England. In a parallel world where Christianity is an ‘exotic religious cult’ that died out ‘by the end of the 34th century’, the gods of Norse mythology are worshipped – or, by most, ignored, since secularism increasingly holds sway.
Simon has fun with household names: while KitKats escape unscathed, BBC Radio 4’s Thought for the Day comes from the Archpriest of York and Richard Dawkins has penned The Gods Delusion.
When Freya, bored in the British Museum, blows a ceremonial horn, she inadvertently transports herself to Asgard, land of the gods, alongside four chess pieces from another exhibit that miraculously come to life (the book is based on the Lewis chessmen).
Once there, she discovers that the gods are in desperate need of help – the goddess Idunn, guardian of the apples which grant immortality, has been kidnapped by Loki the trickster and given to a giant. Contrary to the myth, Idunn never returned and the gods are dying. (The myth itself was a political move worthy of Alistair Campbell on the gods’ part!)
However, the gods are unconvinced by Freya as their champion, and she herself candidly admits that the extent of her ‘spirit of adventure is trying a new vegetable’. So follows a rollicking adventure, in which Freya has to recover Idunn or become an ivory chess piece herself.
The plot takes in many of the Norse characters and myths, including the pitiable Hel, who rules the land of the dead and, despite her fearsome decomposing appearance, yearns for prettiness like any young girl.
Possibly because it’s aimed at a slightly younger audience, I didn’t feel the story had as much depth as it could have done, but it is chockfull of humour and you can’t help but feel sympathy for its characters – loyal Alfi, bullied by the gods, and the palsied, fallible gods themselves, who can’t remember their own spells and bicker about who used to get the most sacrifices.
And when all’s said and done, how can anyone resist a book with a character called Snot?
Tell us about any children’s books that you have found entertaining and educational in equal measure in the comments.
The Sleeping Army, published on 20 October 2011 by Profile Books Ltd, is available from Amazon for £6.19 in a beautiful hardcover edition or £4.49 for the Kindle version.
Francesca Simon is launching the book at the Edinburgh International Book Festival on Saturday 22nd October at an event which will feature readings and themed activities for children aged nine and up.