Here Comes Trouble is by far Mr. Moore's best book...[his] coming of age as a working-class malcontent is...something to behold. It's the story of a big lunk who learns to yoke his big mouth to a sense of purpose. It persuades you to take Mr. Moore seriously, and it belongs on a shelf with memoirs by, and books about, nonconformists like Mother Jones, Abbie Hoffman, Phil Ochs, Rachel Carson, Harvey Pekar and even Thomas Paine.
The author of the acclaimed The Lost Continent now steers us through the quirks and byways of the English language. We learn why island, freight, and colonel are spelled in such unphonetic ways, why four has a u in it but forty doesn't, plus bizarre and enlightening facts about some of the patriarchs of this peculiar language.
Kidd's debut novel, The Secret Life of Bees (2000), is a bona fide publishing success story: it was on the New York Times paperback best-seller list for 81 weeks. Her follow-up, while quite different in plot, shares some themes with its predecessor. Forty-three-year old Jessie Sullivan is pulled out of her staid life in Atlanta with her husband and daughter, back to her childhood home on Egret Island after her mother, Nelle, cuts off one of her own fingers. Jessie has been uneasy with the island since her beloved father died when she was nine in a boating accident, a tragedy Jessie has always felt partially responsible for.
Kate Blackwell is one of the richest women in the world. She is an enigma, a woman surrounded by unanswered questions. Her father was a diamond prospector who struck it rich, her mother the daughter of a crooked Afrikaaner merchant. On her ninetieth birthday ghosts haunt Kate's thoughts.
Martin Misunderstood tells the story of Martin Reed, an average man who wonders how he has wound up with such an abysmally empty existence. Working as a senior accountant at Southern Toilet Supply and still living with his nagging mother, his sole source of excitement is the crime novels he cherishes.
