Spanish author Mendoza wins 2016 Cervantes literature prize

MADRID (AP) -- Spanish novelist Eduardo Mendoza has won the 2016 Cervantes Prize, the Spanish-speaking world’s highest literary honor, for bringing a “new narrative style to Spanish fiction.”Education and Culture Minister Inigo Mendez de Vigo announced the prize Wednesday, saying that beginning with Mendoza’s 1975 novel, “La Verdad Sobre el Caso Savolta (The Truth about the Savolta Case),” the author had reinvented Spanish fiction. He said Mendoza’s books are “full of subtlety and irony.”Several

Dec. 1, 2016

'Napoleon's Last Island,' by Thomas Keneally

“Napoleon's Last Island” By Thomas KeneallyAtria Books (423 pages, $30) Australian Thomas Keneally, author of “Schindler’s List” and 2013’s brilliant “The Daughters of Mars,” is one of the finest living English-language writers. His sprawling new novel tries to do what he has done well so many times -- set real and fictional characters in a real time and place and use their story to illuminate the era. This time, he has chosen a titan -- Napoleon -- and set him in a miniature world, the remote A

Nov. 30, 2016

Lead-up to day of infamy

“Countdown to Pearl Harbor: The Twelve Days to the Attack” By Steve TwomeySimon & Schuster (416 pages, $30) As Hollywood regularly reminds us, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on Dec. 7, 1941, was an act of duplicity so monstrous that President Franklin D. Roosevelt called it a “day which will live in infamy.”Japanese warplanes appeared without warning early that Sunday, sinking or disabling 16 US battleships, cruisers and other warships. The sneak attack killed more than 2,400 Amer

Nov. 30, 2016

‘The Lion in the Living Room’ explores why we love cats

“The Lion in the Living Room: How House Cats Tamed Us and Took Over the World”By Abigail TuckerSimon & Schuster (237 pages, $26)I read much of Abigail Tucker's “The Lion in the Living Room,” appropriately, with a cat on my lap. And though I sat quietly, she did not: sometimes perching on the arm of my chair, staring vaguely but fixedly into space while her tail blocked the pages; sometimes jumping out of my lap and noisily racing around the room for no apparent reason; sometimes launching into a

Nov. 30, 2016

Coll Thrush’s ‘Indigenous London’ spins history’s lens

“Indigenous London: Native Travelers at the Heart of Empire” By Coll ThrushYale University Press (328 pages, $38)Vancouver-based scholar and author Coll Thrush cleverly spins history's lens with “Indigenous London: Native Travelers at the Heart of Empire.”Thrush, author of the 2008 volume “Native Seattle,” is clear about his aim for both books.By showing us how Inuit, Ojibwe, Maori, Salish and other peoples interacted with and viewed the seat of the former British Empire, Thrush hopes to “indige

Nov. 30, 2016

Megyn Kelly's memoir revisits controversies with Roger Ailes and Donald Trump

“Settle for More” By Megyn KellyHarper (352 pages, $18) This was supposed to be the Year of the Woman. Instead, 2016 has shaped up to be the Year of Powerful Men and the Women They Demeaned, Harassed or Worse. The charges against Bill Cosby, the fall of Fox’s Roger Ailes and the rise of President-elect Donald Trump all contributed to that distinction.It's no surprise, then, that Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly’s new book, “Settle for More,” gives a behind-the-scenes look at her dealings with two of

Nov. 30, 2016

Tragedy, hope and a little magic mix in 'Faithful'

“Faithful” By Alice HoffmanSimon & Schuster (272 pages, $26) Shelby is that girl in high school -- the smart one who seems popular and happy when basking in the reflected glow of her best friend, with whom she has glided through life without a care.It all changes in their senior year, when Shelby’s beautiful, bossy friend Helene bullies Shelby into driving to a boy’s house one cold winter night. He wants to break up with Helene, and she wants to get revenge by throwing a brick through his window

Nov. 16, 2016

How electric guitar came to dominate music world

“Play It Loud” By Brad Tolinski and Alan di PernaDoubleday (379 pages, $26.95) The scream of the electric guitar was the dominant soundtrack of the 20th century.First developed to provide louder rhythm backup for big bands of the Swing Era, the electric guitar then killed the big bands, feasted on their corpses and looked for its next victim.Like Brando slouching against a jukebox in “The Wild One” -- a movie that came out just as the electric guitar was taking over the music world -- it’s an in

Nov. 16, 2016

Charming stories of English village life in 'Notwithstanding'

“Notwithstanding”By Louis de BernieresVintage (372 pages, $16)“Notwithstanding,” the new collection of 22 short stories from Louis de Bernieres, is utterly charming. And, no, that’s not damning with faint praise.Charming is a quaint, old-fashioned word, and this is a quaint book, originally released in England in 2009, that captures the quirky characters in an old-fashioned English village, called, of course, “Notwithstanding.”But while the stories in this collection are sweet, there’s no treacl

Nov. 16, 2016

Short, masterful take on Hitchcock's life and works

“Alfred Hitchcock: A Brief Life” By Peter AckroydDoubleday (276 pages, $26.95)There are days when an 800-page biography of some fascinating person is just what we want to dive into. And then, there are days when we feel less ambitious; when we want to immerse ourselves in someone’s life, but can't quite summon the intestinal fortitude to crack the spine of a doorstop. Behold that very useful literary form: the short biography.The celebrated British biographer Peter Ackroyd has written a handful

Nov. 16, 2016

In ‘Mister Monkey,’ solo voices create harmony

“Mister Monkey” By Francine ProseHarper (285 pages, $26.99) Francine Prose’s “Mister Monkey,” a novel about a very bad musical, leaves you with the feeling you have after watching a really good musical: exhilarated, lightened, maybe even humming. Its characters dance around each other, tangoing and twirling, voices chiming out in solo after solo -- until it all comes together in a moment of perfect harmony. You read it with the uncanny feeling that you aren’t alone; that there’s an audience read

Nov. 9, 2016

A journalist takes on China in ‘Boat Rocker’

“The Boat Rocker” By Ha JinPantheon (240 pages, $25.95)“You’re like a little turtle attempting to rock a boat shared by two huge countries.”Hence the title of Ha Jin’s “The Boat Rocker,” in which the so-called turtle is 36-year-old Feng Danlin, a journalist working on Long Island for a small Chinese news agency that’s trying to speak truth to power back home in Beijing.Easier said than done, which is why Feng is being lectured by a Chinese consul, making clear that if Feng continues rocking the

Nov. 9, 2016

James Buchanan resonates in current climate

“Enough Said” By Mark ThompsonSt. Martin’s (342 pages, $27.99)“Worst. President. Ever” By Robert StraussLyons (257 pages, $26.95)The United States of America is a place made of words.In the European imagination, the New World presented a blank slate upon which to write. (Indigenous peoples saw, and see, things differently, of course.) Without a common language, history, culture or racial identity, Americans had to create a new nation rhetorically as much as politically. From the Declaration of I

Nov. 9, 2016

In ‘Truevine,’ complex tale of racial exploitation, dogged reporting

"Truevine: Two Brothers, a Kidnapping, and a Mother’s Quest: A True Story of the Jim Crow South” By Beth MacyLittle, Brown and Company (432 pages, $28) Beth Macy started hearing the stories back in 1989 -- as soon as she moved to Virginia to write feature stories for the Roanoke Times. Stories about the two black albino brothers kidnapped from the tobacco fields and sold into the circus. Warnings from parents issued as they dropped the kids off at the fair.“You stick together, or you might get s

Nov. 3, 2016

Jean Kennedy Smith writes of childhood in famous political family

“The Nine of Us”By Jean Kennedy SmithHarper (272 pages, $29.99)Jean Kennedy Smith takes comfort in memory in her new book, “The Nine of Us: Growing Up Kennedy.” Now 88, the last of her parents’ children alive, the former ambassador to Ireland is entitled to tell the story of her storied family any way she likes. After all, she was there.One might wish that she was, well, a little more “there” -- or, perhaps, more revealing -- but such is the difference between “memoir” and “history.”Smith doesn’

Nov. 3, 2016

Al Capone bio suffers from acceptance of relatives' stories as fact

“Capone” By Deirdre BairNan A. Talese/Doubleday (395 pages, $30)Go into any souvenir store on a touristy Chicago street and behold the man: Al Capone. His visage will adorn T-shirts, refrigerator magnets, coffee cups and countless tacky tchotchkes people buy to commemorate their visit to the city where the world’s most famous gangster made his name. Even worse: Go into enough Chicago-area restaurants or bars, and it may surprise you how many are decorated with framed pictures of the ruthless kil

Nov. 3, 2016

Accepting award, Murakami warns against excluding outsiders

TOKYO (AP) - Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami warned against excluding outsiders and rewriting history as he accepted the Hans Christian Andersen Literature Award.Murakami spoke Sunday in Odense, Denmark, the birthplace of Andersen, the 19th-century fairy-tale writer. His speech, titled “The Meaning of Shadows,” cited Andersen’s dark fantasy “The Shadow,” a story about a scholar who loses his shadow but is eventually taken over by it and killed.“No matter how high a wall we build to keep intrud

Nov. 1, 2016