Arts & Entertainment

A VER

Beach Books

Our annual summer reading roundup.

Gail Zimmerman
Arts & Entertainment Editor

NONFICTION ...

FICTION ...

The Book of Dahlia
by Elisa Albert (Free Press; $23): With the
edgy humor and fearlessness of her collec-
tion of stories How This Night is Different,
the author writes about a 29-year-old
woman who learns she has terminal brain
cancer.

Red Sea

by Emily Benedek (St. Martin's $24.95): In a
heart-stopping novel with a familiar premise,
four airplanes are blown out of the sky by
Islamic terrorists, and an Israeli expert in
counter-terror operations is called in to inves-
tigate and help stop an even bigger attack.

The Ghost War

by Alex Berenson ( G.P. Putnam's Sons;
$24.95): The winner of the 2007 Edgar
Award for best first novel for The Faithful
Spy, the author returns to the suspense
thriller genre and the character John Wells,
the only American CIA agent to penetrate
Al Qaida, as he faces a new round of deadly
threats around the world.

The Most Beautiful Monday in 1961

by Ruth Brin (Lerner Publications; $14;
paperback): The 86-year-old first-time nov-
elist, founder and editor of the Jewish
literary magazine Identity, writes of six 40-
something Jewish friends who meet on the
Mississippi River for a cabin-cruiser outing
as they explore the issues of
contemporary
life.

is*.unviraie

America America

by Ethan Canin (Random House; $27): The
author, who serves on the faculty of the
Iowa Writers' Workshop and resides in Iowa,
California and northern Michigan, revisits
his signature theme — character and its
impact on history and fate — in a sweeping
novel set in the world of 1970s politics and
today, in which a young man from a small
town becomes witness to public and private
greatness, crimes and tragedies, immoral-
ity and nobility.

Sex, Sleep, Eat, Drink, Dream:
A Day in the Life of Your Body

by Jennifer Ackerman (Houghton Mifflin;
$25): With a naturalist's eye for detail and a
poet's soul, the author, weaving pieces of her
own life with that of Everyman's — and taking
us from the arousal of the senses when we
awaken to the reverie of sleep and dreams
— shows the importance of synchronizing
our actions with our biological rhythms in a
new and original way of looking at how the
body works.

The Secret Scroll

Predictably Irrational

by Ronald Cutler (Beaufort Books; $24.95):
In this thriller/historical mystery/love story
set in Jerusalem, debut novelist Cutler, a
former radio entrepreneur, introduces Josh
Cohan, an American archaeologist who dis-
covers an ancient scroll that may have been
written by Jesus; an ancient violent cult will
stop at nothing to put their hands on it.

by Dan Ariely (Harper; $25.95): The author,
an MIT behavioral economist, explains how
expectations, emotions, social norms and
other invisible, seemingly illogical forces
skew our reasoning abilities and how to
break through these systematic patterns
of thought to make better decisions in our
everyday lives.

Maynard & Jennk

The Dream: A Memoir

by Rudolph Delson (Houghton Mifflin; $$24):
In this debut novel that's been optioned for
a film, the author gives us a pair of flawed
New York lovers and an astonishing 35 nar-
rators who aid in illuminating and skewering
much of what is true and horrifying about
our times.

by Harry Bernstein (Ballantine; $24): The
98-year-old author continues the family
saga he began in The Invisible Wall, telling of
his British-Jewish family's arrival in America
after impoverished years in a Lancashire,
England, mill town; here, he writes of learn-
ing about difficult family secrets in Chicago,
the Depression years, moving to New York
City with his mother and later, as a young
man, falling deeply in love and beginning
what would become a 67-year-long loving
marriage.

FICTION on page B10

The Sistine Secrets: Michelangelo's
Forbidden Messages in the Heart of
the Vatican

by Roy Doliner and Benjamin Blech
(HarperOne; $26.95): A Vatican docent
(Doliner) and a rabbi (Blech) tell the story of
how the great artist — part of a movement
of interfaith freethinkers and Kabbalists in
Renaissance Florence — embedded messages
of brotherhood, tolerance and free-thinking in
his frescoes in the Sistine Chapel to encour-
age "fellow travelers" to challenge the repres-
sive Roman Catholic Church of the time.

Sit, Ubu, Si
by Gary David Goldberg (Harmony Books;
$23.95): The creator of TV series Family
Ties, Spin City and Brooklyn Bridge tells the
tale of his journey from penniless student to
media hotshot with humor and warmth as
he shares insights and stories in a memoir
combining his life in show business with per-
sonal success — a more-than 40-year loving
relationship with his wife and as the father of
two Ivy League-educated daughters.

A Voyage Long and Strange:
Rediscovering the New World

by Tony Horwitz (Henry Holt; $27.50): The
best-selling author of Confederates in the Attic
takes readers along on his journey to discover
the forgotten and often neglected first chapter
of America's founding by Europeans, from
Columbus' landing in the New World in 1492
— weighing anchor in August 1492, one day
after the last vessels carrying Jews from Spain
had been ordered to depart — to the arrival of
English colonists at Jamestown in 1620.

NONFICTION on page B12

