Book reviews

2008

July 28, 2008
book

Page-Turner, Eye-Opener in One: Stephen Carter Maps Black Elite

Holly Nadler
Book reviews

PALACE COUNCIL By Stephen L. Carter. Knopf, New York, N.Y. July 2008. 528 pages. $26.95 hardcover.

There are some thrillers — The Big Sleep and The Maltese Falcon come to mind — where the plot is never going to make much sense, but for the reader to bog down on this point is to miss a jolly good ride. Stephen L. Carter’s new novel, Palace Council, is just the sort of book that keeps you turning pages — all 500-plus of them — until the clock blinks 3:28 a.m. in digital pixels and you force yourself to turn out the light.

July 24, 2008

Book: As Vineyard as Eileen’s Apple Pies

Matthew Kramer
Book reviews

Connie Toteanu has a special talent. From the age of seven, Miss Toteanu has been entering pies into the Martha’s Vineyard Agricultural Fair. According to the new children’s book Connie, Vineyard Pie Girl, by Chilmarker Don Davis, “Over the years she won many ribbons — some blue.”

July 10, 2008
book cover

Recalling Chilmark Regular, Paul Moore

Phyllis Meras
Book reviews

THE BISHOP’S DAUGHTER: A Memoir. By Honor Moore. Illustrated. W.W. Norton & Co. Inc. 354 pages. $25.95 hardcover.

In the 1970s, the late Episcopal Bishop Paul Moore Jr. was a Chilmark seasonal visitor. He came to the Island after the death of his first wife, Jenny McKean, and his marriage to Brenda Hughes Eagle who had a Chilmark home. Now his eldest daughter by his first marriage has written a memoir about her own life and the life of her illustrious father.

July 7, 2008

Naturalist Calls Island Life Book Eye-Opening Resource

By MATT PELIKAN
Book reviews

ISLAND LIFE: A CATALOG OF THE BIODIVERSITY ON AND AROUND MARTHA’S VINEYARD. By Allan R. Keith and Stephen A. Spongberg. Published in cooperation with the Marine Biological Laboratories, Woods Hole, Mass. 2008.

July 3, 2008
boat

Through the Lens of Louisa Gould

Tom Dunlop
Book reviews

WOODEN BOATS OF MARTHA’S VINEYARD: The Photography of Louisa Gould. Text and photographs by Louisa Gould. Flat Hammock Press, 2008. 64 pages. $19.95, softcover.

July 3, 2008
Linda Fairstein

She Can Stand the Killer Heat

Holly Nadler
Book reviews

KILLER HEAT. By Linda Fairstein. Doubleday, 2008. 384 pages. $26 hardcover.

Killer Heat, like any good title, is a play on words. It refers to death by New York oven — the baking August temperatures that send the rich to the Hamptons or the Vineyard, and the poor to their fire escapes for a breath of nighttime air. Killer Heat is also a reference to an actual killer or killers and to the heat, slang for law, that hunts ’em down and brings ’em to justice.

Pages