Found in the pages of Bookmarks Magazine, November/December 2009 issue

Here are the books I’ve added to my wish list after perusing the latest issue of Bookmarks.

Without Reservations: The Travels of an Independent Woman by Alice Steinbach: Steinbach always prided herself on being an independent woman. But independence does not always go hand in hand with knowing oneself. This was the dilemma Steinbach faced as she traveled through Europe without hesitation. The characters she encounters, the places she stays, and the person she becomes make for the adventure of a lifetime.

Good Things I Wish You by A. Manette Ansay: Jeanette Hochmann of Miami is a 42-year-old single parent writing a book about Clara Wieck Schumann, the wife of 19th-century composer Robert Schumann and a gifted pianist in her own right. What fascinates Jeanette, and has stumped historians for years, is Clara’s inexplicable attachment to her husband’s handsome young protege, Johannes Brahms. Were the pair simply friends, as they claimed? Or was the Schumanns’ marriage devastated by a secret love affair? And is it ever truly possible for a man and a woman to maintain a meaningful, but platonic, relationship? With the help of a charismatic doctor, Jeanette delves further into Clara’s past and discovers unsettling parallels to her own troubled life.

The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker: Paul Chowder, a middle-aged, down-on-his-luck poet, is struggling to write the introduction to a new anthology. While he has long since given up writing in rhyme, he prefers writers who do – in fact, the collection giving him so much trouble is called Only Rhyme. As in most Baker novels, small actions and thoughts dominate. Although he can’t quite seem to finish the introduction, Chowder is happy to opine about various poets (rhyming and not – from Tennyson and Longfellow to Merwin and Bishop), the vicissitudes of his love life, and various other minutiae from his particular, frustrated poetic point of view.

Bad Things Happen by Harry Dolan: Arriving in Ann Arbor, Michigan, mysterious stranger David Loogan soon begins working for Gray Streets, a literary crime fiction magazine. He soon agrees to help the magazine’s owner, Tom Kristoll, bury the body of a man Kristoll claims he killed in self-defense – partly out of guilt over the affair Loogan is carrying on with Kristoll’s beautiful wife. After Kristoll plummets to his own death from his office window and the body they’d buried together is discovered, Loogan becomes Detective Elizabeth Waishkey’s main suspect. But the writers and editors of Gray Streets keep turning up dead – and Loogan finds himself on the run, searching for answers of his own.