PW profiles Charles Todd: the mother and son mystery writing team

Masters of psychologically complex detective stories set in the aftermath of WWI, the mother-son team of Caroline and Charles Todd, who write under the name Charles Todd, have a new series featuring a female detective set in the same period.

Children's Book Reviews: 6/22/2009

Reviewed this week: new books from Kenneth Oppel, Rebecca Stead and Paul Griffin, plus PW's review of the sequel to The Hunger Games, Catching Fire.

Fiction Book Reviews: 6/22/2009

Reviewed this week, new books from Irvine Welsh, Dan Fesperman, Larry McMurtry, Terry Goodkind, Teri Woods and more. Plus, Joshua Gaylord debuts with a novel set in an elite Manhattan prep school, Nancy Grace tries fiction, Evie Wyld sets her startling novel Down Under and there's a lot of kicking going on in Katie Kitamura's The Longshot.

A Wake Up Call to the West: PW talks with Alex Dryden

Alex Dryden is the pseudonym of a British journalist who lived in Russia for more than 15 years. Red to Black is his first novel, a thriller that offers a sobering view of Putin's Russia.

Web Exclusive Reviews: 6/22/2009

Four Daily News sports reporters turn in the definitive story of Roger Clemens and drugs in baseball; Miles Kington presents a lively epistolary meta-nonfiction collection about dying; Sam Pocker catches retailers gone wild; and smallpox eradicator D.A. Henderson chronicles his showdown with the disease. Plus: fiction from Jane Porter, Sarah Prineas's second Magic Thief novel, and Alex Flinn's Gossip Girl makeover of "Sleeping Beauty."

Hippocrene Launches Arabic Dictionary iPhone App

New York independent Hippocrene Books, which has been publishing foreign language dictionaries for 35 years, has launched an iPhone app, HippArabic. It is based on the house’s bestselling Arabic Dictionary & Phrasebook and has more than 4,000 entries.

Galley Talk: 'Shiver' by Maggie Stiefvater

Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater is the love story of Sam and Grace, told in chapters that alternate between their points of view. Sam, a werewolf, rescues a young Grace from a wolf attack. Werewolves in Stiefvater’s world respond to the cold—they are wolves in winter, humans in summer, and each year they are human for a shorter period of time, until they remain wolves permanently. So Sam and Grace are on a deadline.

Go, Girls! Trina Robbins Brings Back The Brinkley Girls

In a new collection of work by Nell Brinkley from Fantagraphics, beautiful girls travel the world in fabulous dresses, rescue and then marry their men, and generally have a lot of gorgeous fun. Between 1913 and 1940, Nell Brinkley’s characters, a.k.a. the Brinkley Girls, were everything your average American girl wanted to be. Brinkley zestily described this every-girl as, “Frank and strong, and happy and good, just a girl—an American girl such as many of you know."

Books About Comics: The Kurtzman Legacy

The Art of Harvey Kurtzman: The Mad Genius of Comics (Abrams ComicArts, $40) begins with startling, sweeping statements of its subject’s importance not just to comics, but to American culture as a whole. Time critic Richard Corliss asserts that "almost all American satire today follows a formula that Harvey Kurtzman thought up." In his introduction, Harry Shearer declares that without Kurtzman there would be no Saturday Night Live or Simpsons.

June Comics Bestsellers

Jeffy Kinney’s Wimpy Kid: Last Straw rules the roost but Stephen King’s Dark Tower: Treachery; IDW’s Star Trek: Countdown and Marvel Zombies 3 all make the Top Ten.

Kidjutsu: A Kid-Safe Site for Webcomics

The internet is full of great comics created specifically for children, but young readers don’t have any way to find them. After all, there is no children’s room on the internet. But Brian Leung is hoping to solve that problem with Kidjutsu, a site that collects kid-friendly webcomics and displays them using an easy-to-use online comics viewer.

New Graphic Novel, Film from Melvin Van Peebles

Acclaimed film director, actor, playwright and composer, Melvin Van Peebles, director of the groundbreaking 1971 black film Sweet Sweetback’s Badass Song, is teaming up with Brooklyn indie Akashic Books to publish, Confessions of a Ex-Doofus-Itchyfooted Mutha, a graphic novel created by Van Peebles and the odd-named artist Caktus Tree…? that was also the basis for a new film that Van Peebles will screen this summer.

Comics Briefly

Taschen Readies $1,000 Apollo 11 Book

Famously edgy illustrated book publisher Taschen is about to release its biggest project since GOAT, the $5,000 homage to Muhammad Ali it published in 2004. Next month, Norman Mailer, MoonFire: The Epic Journey of Apollo 11 will go on sale for $1,000.

Desert Noir: Crossers by Philip Caputo

At first glance, this multifarious book skirts country familiar to readers of McCarthy or McMurtry, but Caputo's west supersedes elemental cowboys and lone justice with the malaise of post-9/11 America and the violence of the Mexican desert—as gruesome as in Iraq—frothing with moral ambiguity and fraught with complicity.

Allworth Press: Helping Artists Live in the Real World

Writers and artists don't always have their heads in the clouds—sometimes they need real world advice. At least that's the premise on which Tad Crawford founded Allworth Press in 1989. From its inaugural title, Legal Guide for the Visual Artist, Crawford explained, “I wanted to create a company to give practical advice to the creative professional.

Finder Ties Comic To Novel

Late last year, bestselling thriller writer Joseph Finder was walking around Bouchercon, the World Mystery Convention, and ran into “a couple of guys” from DC Comics. He had just finished Vanished, a novel coming out this August featuring a young alienated teenager who is creating his own comic book.

Children's Book Reviews: Week of 6/15/2009

This week's reviews include a picture book debut from swimmer and Olympian Michael Phelps; new novels from Sharon Draper, Jamila Gavin and Phyllis Reynolds Naylor; and a round-up of science-themed titles just in time for summer exploration and experimentation.

Galley Talk

Nothing about Ian MacKenzie's City of Strangers (Penguin, July) tips the reader that this complex and riveting work is a first novel by an author not yet 30. MacKenzie's ideas suggest experience and depth. The central character is a writer in his mid-30s who is not quite estranged from an older half-brother; he's also not nearly over his ex-wife and struggling with the impending death of his on...

Fiction Book Reviews: 6/15/2009

Reviewed this week, new novels by Faye Kellerman, Victor LaValle, Kathy Reichs, J.A. Jance and Sophie Kinsella. Plus, a hapless couple courts trouble in upstate New York in Nancy Maruo's off-beat debut, Dixie Cash cranks out another fun chicken-fried cowgirl-power crime novel, and Luanne Rice maintains her status as a tear-jerking force of nature.