New This Week: Lionheart by Sharon Kay Penman

Those who love to start into a new year with a book substantial enough to do some damage when dropped on their foot will enjoy Sharon Kay Penman’s critically acclaimed Lionheart, which came out in paperback on January 1st from Ballantine.

It’s 1189 and the newly crowned Richard II, son of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, sets off from England to the Holy Land and the Crusades.

Penman’s skill

Holiday Gift Guide: Cakepops Holidays by Bakerella

Bakerella is Angie Dudley, the popular and adventurous blogger whose confections have formed a revolution. It’s possible that she didn’t invent them, but she certainly has done more than her share to not only bring them to the masses, but also to push the very boundaries of cake on a stick.

More than 800,000 copies of her first book about cakepops are in print. High time then to follow up with a

Holiday Gift Guide: Scaredy Squirrel Prepares for Christmas written and illustrated by Melanie Watt

The holidays are a veritable hotbed of hazards. As the publisher of Scaredy Squirrel Prepares for Christmas (KidsCan) tells us, it’s the season for “worrying, planning, decorating, wrapping, entertaining, caroling and, worst of all, fruitcake!”

Fortunately, in order to help out with all the frightening possibilities, beloved Scaredy Squirrel has compiled a “Safety Guide for Scaredies” in what I

Holiday Gift Guide: A Shtinky Little Christmas by Patrick McDonnell

Those who love Patrick McDonnell’s “Mutts” comic strip featuring Earl the Dog and Mooch the cat will get a kick out of A Shtinky Little Christmas (Andrews McMeel).

Earl and Mooch find a lost kitten in a garbage can, name it Shtinky Pudding and try to give it shelter. Comic-style hijinx ensues, but there’s a happy ending and, on the way there, we are given one of the best take away lines in a

Holiday Gift Guide: The Judge and the Lady by Marlyn Horsdal

Author, editor and one-time publisher, Marlyn Horsdal, pulls a page out of British Columbian history for her latest novel, The Judge and the Lady (Touchwood).



It is 1870 and beautiful Eleanor Wentworth arrives in the coastal city of Victoria from London just in time to lower her expectations. How can the fledgling city at the edge of frontier ever find its place in society? Though her first

Holiday Gift Guide: A Year of Writing Dangerously by Barbara Abercrombie

The idea behind A Year of Writing Dangerously (New World Library) is to provide, as the subtitle says, “365 Days of Inspiration & Encouragement.” And it does.

Every day, seasoned author Barbara Abercrombie offers a single page that contains a relevant quote plus an essay, anecdote or even a question or thoughts, all about writing and all intended to get your juices flowing. As Abercrombie writes

Holiday Gift Guide: One Dish at a Time by Valerie Bertinelli

Though the title is an obvious nod to the 1970s sitcom she starred in, Valerie Bertinelli’s One Dish at a Time (Rodale) would stand on its own in a cookbook competition, though it’s true Bertinelli’s celebrity status is what will get the book attention.

Since most of the actress’s earliest fans are now of an age to have children of their own, it seems possible that this book will be a popular

Holiday Gift Guide: True Blood: Eats, Drinks, and Bites from Bon Temps by Gianna Sobol and Alan Ball

True Blood: Eats, Drinks, and Bites from Bon Temps (Chronicle Books) represents the ultimate creative full circle. What is now an immensely popular television series began as the Southern Vampire Mystery Series by Charlaine Harris. The first book in the series, Dead Until Dark, debuted in 2001. Then came True Blood the television series in 2008. And now, four years later, we have the -- wait for

Fiction: Enchantments by Kathryn Harrison

For a very long time, the prominent figures of Russian history have been left pretty much alone by fictionists. Then came 2012.Earlier this year, I wrote about The Winter Palace by Eva Strachniak. That book is a fictionalized account of the sexually charged life of Catherine the Great. Now international bestseller Kathryn Harrison (While They Slept, The Kiss) brings us a searing historical novel

Fiction: I Hate You, Kelly Donahue by Mark Svartz

On his first day of work at his new job (“New job has free coffee. I like it.”) Mark lays eyes on Kelly Donahue and vows to “PHYSICALLY DEFEAT HER IN A PHYSICAL FIGHT TO THE DEATH. PHYSICALLY” Mark spends the next eight months pressing, stalking and planning the demise of his co-worker, Kelly Donahue.I Hate You, Kelly Donahue (Adams Media) has been created to look just like a spiral-bound

New Today: The Winter Palace by Eva Strachniak

In The Winter Palace (Bantam) Polish-born author Eva Strachniak (Necessary Lies) tells the story of Russia’s Catherine the Great from the perspective of an almost-invisible Polish servant.Despite the fact that Catherine the Great is one of the most interesting -- and arguably controversial -- of Europe’s 18th century monarchs, I’ve never before encountered a work of fiction about her life before

Holiday Gift Guide: Bless This Mouse by Lois Lowry

When, for one reason or another, you read extensively in children’s literature, you develop an eye or, perhaps, an ear. There are stories that entertain or teach or merely amuse. A very few do all of those things at once, and they do them in such a way that you know you are encountering a story for the ages. Instant classic is the way that is quite often put, implying a story that will be read

Holiday Gift Guide: The Country Cooking of Italy by Colman Andrews

Someone who has a complete collection of Italian cookbooks will obviously require The Country Cooking of Italy (Chronicle) in order to make it more complete. A beautiful book meant to be cooked from and shared, coffee table-style, and with a pedigree that will make aficionados demand it.Author Colman Andrews is something of an American foodie blue blood. Andrews was a co-founder of Saveur

Holiday Gift Guide: Sinfully Vegan by Lois Dieterly

At a glance, the words “sinful” and “vegan” have no business showing up together in a sentence, never mind the title of a book. But Sinfully Vegan (Da Capo Longlife) puts a lie to all of that, filling a whole book with delicious and completely vegan desserts. Who would have thought that was even possible?Ironically named author Lois Dieterly says that she enthusiastically embraced a vegan

Holiday Gift Guide: Silence by Becca Fitzpatrick

It’s encouraging to me as a human to see the large numbers of really good authors of young adult and children’s books getting a lot of attention and drawing ever-increasing armies of new readers. I’d be hard pressed this holiday to choose a single must-have book to buy in the place where a Twilight or a Harry Potter book used to go. Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games books are contenders, of course.

Holiday Gift Guide: Piece of Cake! by Camilla V. Saulsbury

Here’s the scenario: you’ve been invited to a holiday dinner and it was requested you bring some type of dessert. You really would like to make a cake, but every time you think about all those bowls and all that mixing, you sit back down and start thinking about buying something rustic enough to pass off as your own. Then guilt sets in, and it all begins again.It was times like these that I

Fiction: Jane Austen Made Me Do It: Original Stories Inspired by Literature’s Most Astute Observer of the Human Heart edited by Laurel Ann Natt

If we are at the zenith of Jane Austen-inspired hysteria, then Jane Austen Made Me Do It (Ballantine) is its nadir. Not the mania or madness of the Austen-inspired zombie stories popular late in the last decade or even the gentle Austen-solved mystery stories more recently come to the fore. Jane Austen Made Me Do It is Austen as applied right now.The publication of Jane Austen Made Me Do It is

Fiction: Lost Memory of Skin by Russell Banks

In a 2003 interview with January Magazine, Russell Banks explained why his characters manage to live and breathe as sharply as they do:Again, it goes back to: how does the writer view the universe? How do you view human beings? It's the case, I think, that no one is simply one thing or the other -- except for those few beings who are out of their minds, in a literal and ongoing way. But most

Biography: Recipes for Life: My Memories by Linda Evans

I hadn’t thought about Linda Evans in a long time. Maybe a lot of people haven’t. According to IMdB, aside from a couple of forgettable television movies in the mid-to-late 1990s, she really hasn’t done very much in a while. Which gets you to thinking: maybe there’s more to life than what you read on IMdB.The record gets set entirely straight in Recipes for Life: My Memories (Vanguard) a

Art & Culture: Learn World Calligraphy by Margaret Shepherd

If you’ve ever thought you’d like to learn -- or learn more about -- calligraphy this is your book and Margaret Shepherd is your perfect guide. The author of 14 books on the topic, she is also the person responsible for the classic in the field, Learn Calligraphy. Shepherd is the source on this topic. As a result, CBS Sunday Morning, Oprah Magazine, Vogue and many others have interviewed her on