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Nonfiction Soaring notes and a miracle WAKING THE SPIRIT A Musician’s Journey Healing Body, Mind, and Soul By Andrew Schulman 312 pp. Picador Reviewed by Sue Ellis Waking the Spirit is professional musician Andrew Schulman’s touching account of expanding his repertoire into the theater of healing. He plays his guitar to stimulate the will to live in people who are gravely ill.  He begins with his own near-death experience, a devastating event brought on by complications of anaphylactic shock following surgery. After three days in ICU, his wife, Wendy, has a sudden inspiration – perhaps music can revive him. She chooses Bach’s St. Matthew Passion , a favorite of Schulman’s, and thanks to earbud cords and an iPod, the soaring notes work a miracle, a fact witnessed by a young doctor in the Surgical Intensive Care Unit. Here’s an excerpt: By early evening, Dr. Eiref told Wendy, with cautious optimism, that I was “out of the woods.” The medical charts, my SICU progress notes report woul...

Fiction Stalked woman, transgender cop, dead bodies THE SORBONNE AFFAIR A Hugo Marston Novel By Mark Pryor 270 pp. Seventh Street Books Reviewed by Eric Petersen Mark Pryor is back with the seventh entry in his popular Hugo Marston mystery series. (Other books in the series are also reviewed on this site.) The middle-aged Hugo Marston, head of security at the U.S. Embassy in Paris, is not your typical diplomat. Though he’s a big, tough, pistol-packing Texan, (the author is an Englishman who lives in Texas) he possesses a formidable intellect, impeccable manners, and a passion for collecting rare books. He speaks fluent French and adores Paris and the French people.  Before he took the job at the embassy, he was a criminal profiler for the FBI. Though far from a social butterfly, he does have some friends in Paris. His best friend, Tom Green, is a fat, foulmouthed, ill-mannered semiretired CIA agent who refers to himself as a “freelance spook.”  Then there’s Camille Lerens, a t...

Fiction Like a polar strip mall SOUTH POLE STATION By Ashley Shelby 356 pp. Picador Reviewed by Marty Carlock Odd questions arose as I read this novel. Is it a farce? A love story? A true reflection of life among Polies? Has Ashley Shelby herself spent a sojourn at the bottom of the earth? Do they really call themselves Polies? And then, is this a polemic about political meddling in science? About global warming? And whose side is Shelby on? Part of the problem is the shifting tone of the book. There’s humor: the Polies are an irreverent, wise-acre bunch – there’s tragedy: the heroine has a secret mission to bury her dead brother’s ashes at 90˚ south – there’s sex: though the Polies hook up readily, they have rules about who’s taken and who’s not – there’s sociological study of interactions in a closely packed group; there’s unapologetic drinking; there’s scientific speculation; there’s politics of the nastiest kind. Regarding Question Number 4, Shelby says in her afterword that her mi...

Nonfiction If you could lick my heart BEDLAMS DOOR: True Tales of Madness and Hope By Mark Rubinstein, M.D. 242 pp. Thunder Lake Press Reviewed by David E. Hoekenga, M.D. This collection of stories from Doctor Rubinstein’s practice of psychiatry is truly far stranger than fiction. For example, the one entitled “The Man of Means” tells of a man in a soiled and threadbare suit hanging out outside the Regency Hotel. He carries a gold-plated cigarette case and matching gold-plated lighter. His elegant briefcase is filled with a few million dollars in Monopoly money. Rubenstein diagnoses this man as “paranoid with delusions of grandeur.” One of the admirable parts of this book is that the author includes an afterword with a follow up on each client. Several psychiatrists in New York have seen the Man of Means, but none can track down his past. Rubinstein writes, “I fell in love with psychiatry because each patient – though sharing human commonalities – has a unique personal story.” Another ...

Fiction Kidnapping, betrayal, and a Power Ranger IDYLL FEARS A Thomas Lynch Novel By Stephanie Gayle 320 pp. Seventh Street Books Reviewed by Eric Petersen Mystery writer Stephanie Gayle is back with the second entry in her series of Thomas Lynch mysteries featuring a hero cop protagonist with a refreshing, intriguing twist. The first book, Idyll Threats , is also reviewed on this site. After spending fifteen years as an NYPD detective, Thomas Lynch traded the mean streets of New York City for the quiet, sleepy, affluent, aptly named New England town of Idyll, Connecticut, where he’s become the new chief of police. He left the NYPD after the tragic death of his partner Rick, gunned down by a drug dealer in the line of duty. Lynch and Rick were more than partners, they were best friends, and Rick’s friendship meant the world to him. Rick was the only cop who knew Lynch’s secret – a secret that hangs over his head like the sword of Damocles, threatening to drop at any moment and derail h...

Fiction Joyful in New York THEY MAY NOT MEAN TO, BUT THEY DO By Cathleen Schine 290 pp. Picador Reviewed by Marty Carlock Joy Bergman is a New Yorker and never intends to be anything else. She never intends to leave the apartment where she and her husband Aaron have lived so long. No matter what her children think. No matter how difficult it gets. And it is difficult. She cares for her husband Aaron, who is all but bedridden, sometimes lucid and charming and sometimes demented. She has a PhD, works three days a week as curator of a tiny museum of New York Jewish memorabilia. Her friends, her children all urge her to put Aaron in a nursing home, or at least get help.  “I know you all think he should probably go to a place,” she said, “but he would be miserable. He needs landmarks, needs familiar things, needs his schedule.   “What about what you need –” they all asked. “But what she needed was so obvious. She needed Aaron.” Their son Daniel, wife Cora and two precocious pre-tee...

Nonfiction Looking for the next epidemic PANDEMIC: Tracking Contagions, from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond By Sonia Shah 288 pp. Picador Reviewed by Lynne M. Hinkey From the bubonic plague to HIV/AIDS, contagious diseases have loomed large in human history, and influenced human evolution, behavior, and culture. They intrigue us in the way a train wreck does, leaving us wondering how it could happen and fearful lest it happen to us. But, surprisingly, most of us have very little understanding of how these diseases start, spread, or even factual information on how great – or small – a threat any one of these might be to us. We tend to overreact to distant, vague threats, like Ebola, but brush off as inconsequential the more familiar and likely threat of Lyme disease.  Pandemic explores the human health, economic, social, and even that specific psychological phenomenon of potentially deadly infectious disease. Using the well-documented and understood mechanisms of cholera’s spread as a...

Nonfiction The richest and unluckiest KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI By David Grann 291 pp. Doubleday Reviewed by Jack Shakely The Osage were the tallest of all the Indian people, standing well over six feet on average, and perhaps the fittest. When the artist George Catlin first spied them in 1835 in their original home in the Missouri Valley, he proclaimed them “ the finest example of physical beauty, Indian or white, I have ever seen.” Shunted aside to a rocky reservation in what is now eastern Oklahoma, the Osage found that they were sitting on one of the largest oil reserves ever discovered. By the beginning of World War One, the Osage were the richest people in America. Also the unluckiest. This is a tale of treachery of whites against the Osage so profound that it stuns the imagination. Almost every judge, every sheriff, every deputy and most of the bankers in Osage County, Oklahoma, in the 1920s were in on the take. If we didn’t have grap...