The Ruins
By Scott Smith
Knopf
“This place no good,” the Mexican taxi driver says to the six young tourists as he drops them at a jungle trailhead. “No good you go this place.” And yet they don’t listen. A German, a Greek and four Americans just out of college are vacationing in Cancun when they decide to follow a hand-drawn map into the jungle in search of an archaeological dig. Instead, they find a hill covered with red flowers and a village full of Mayans with bows and arrows. Sounds dicey, but this is a horror novel, and the twist that turns an innocent day-trip into an extended nightmare is not the Mayans (although they are part of the problem) but a far more surreal and insidious villain. We won’t spoil your fun by telling you what it is, but we will say that it’s so strange that it often becomes laughable, which is good because you’ll want something to take the edge off the dreadful surprises these kids endure. The book is a bit long, but only because Smith juxtaposes, very effectively, the horror of the advancing threat and horrors the traumatized tourists visit upon each other and upon themselves. It’s a good summer read.
The Messenger
By Daniel Silva
Putnam
Silva’s ninth novel begins with a bomb and missile attack on a papal audience in St. Peter’s Square, which leaves more than 700 dead and the Basilica in flames. The US government secretly asks Israeli intelligence experts, including Silva’s hero, Gabriel Allon, to find and kill the terrorist behind it. Allon’s plan: Using a lost painting by Vincent van Gogh as bait (it’s a great subplot), he’ll plant a spy in the entourage of the terrorist’s patron, a Saudi billionaire, and wait for the target to show himself. This setup is bold and provocative as Silva’s smart but world-weary characters discuss the politics of violence and Saudi Arabia’s ties to global terrorism and to the US. The second half of the book seems rushed, and isn’t so easy to swallow. The spy (a beautiful art curator with no experience in espionage) is trained too easily, the terrorist appears too quickly and surveillance by Allon’s agents is so sloppy that the bad guys know what they’re doing almost as soon as we do.
Cross Country
By Robert Sullivan
Bloomsbury
Having lived in Pennsylvania for many years, we know, and indeed have set foot in, the town of Bellefonte, not Bellafonte or Bellafante, as Sullivan alternately calls it here. We’d hold this little glitch against him if it weren’t for the fact that we’ve taken a few road trips ourselves, and know how loopy he must have been when he crossed the town line. He had driven Interstate 80 across Pennsylvania, and before that on the Ohio turnpike, and before that on other highways over several days all the way from Oregon, with his wife beside him clutching a TripTik, his kids sagging in the back seat and his so-tired-of-driving heart full of gratitude just because they were all still alive. This is the book to read if you’re mourning the road trip you can’t afford this summer. Sullivan (“Rats”) is funny and congenial, and he writes his travelogue in short sections that make your snack breaks and pit stops easy to plan. A veteran of many cross-country road trips (with varying combinations of children and possessions in tow), he’s a great guide to the scenery outside the car and the melodrama within. Enjoy.
A Sudden Country
By Karen Fisher
Random House
New in paperback is Fisher’s stirring novel about a family’s journey on the Oregon Trail in 1847. Lucy and Israel Mitchell set out from Iowa with five children, two wagons and a marriage that is civil but without passion or accord: Lucy does not want to go west, but Israel insists on it. They join with other families and take on guides, one of whom is James MacLaren, a former fur trader whose Indian wife abandoned him just before his children died of smallpox. The love affair that ensues between Lucy and the sorrowful MacLaren is unlikely and overwrought, but Fisher’s novel is sensuous in so many other, better ways as it follows the wagons through a wild and beautiful country that is destined to change forever. This novel was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and won several other honors. Critics loved it. One called it “an instant classic,” another said it was “a grand, mesmerizing novel,” and others compared it to Charles Frazier’s bestselling novel Cold Mountain. New & Notable said the book was “history brought to life.”
In 1990, Amy Chen (陳怡美) was beginning third grade in Calhoun County, Texas, as the youngest of six and the only one in her family of Taiwanese immigrants to be born in the US. She recalls, “my father gave me a stack of typed manuscript pages and a pen and asked me to find typos, missing punctuation, and extra spaces.” The manuscript was for an English-learning book to be sold in Taiwan. “I was copy editing as a child,” she says. Now a 42-year-old freelance writer in Santa Barbara, California, Amy Chen has only recently realized that her father, Chen Po-jung (陳伯榕), who
For anyone on board the train looking out the window, it must have been a strange sight. The same foreigner stood outside waving at them four different times within ten minutes, three times on the left and once on the right, his face getting redder and sweatier each time. At this unique location, it’s actually possible to beat the train up the mountain on foot, though only with extreme effort. For the average hiker, the Dulishan Trail is still a great place to get some exercise and see the train — at least once — as it makes its way
When nature calls, Masana Izawa has followed the same routine for more than 50 years: heading out to the woods in Japan, dropping his pants and doing as bears do. “We survive by eating other living things. But you can give faeces back to nature so that organisms in the soil can decompose them,” the 74-year-old said. “This means you are giving life back. What could be a more sublime act?” “Fundo-shi” (“poop-soil master”) Izawa is something of a celebrity in Japan, publishing books, delivering lectures and appearing in a documentary. People flock to his “Poopland” and centuries-old wooden “Fundo-an” (“poop-soil house”) in
Each week, whenever she has time off from her marketing job, Ida Jia can be found at Shanghai Disneyland queuing for hours to spend a few minutes with Linabell, a fluffy pink fox with big blue eyes. The 29-year-old does not go empty handed, bringing pink fox soft toys dressed in ornate custom-made outfits to show the life-sized character, as well as handmade presents as gifts. Linabell, which made its debut in Shanghai in 2021, is helping Disney benefit from a rapidly growing market in China for merchandise related to toys, games, comics and anime, which remained popular with teenagers and young
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