Dear Burning Questions,
I would really like to know if we will see a new book from Dorothy Allison any time soon. I loved Bastard Out of Carolina and I would like to see something new from her.

Jennifer Durand
Fairfax, Virginia

Allison's acclaimed story collection, Trash, is being reissued this month by Plume, with a new introduction and a never-before-published story. We asked Allison's editor, Carole DeSanti, how the new Plume edition came about. "Trash was the first Dorothy Allison work I encountered, back in the early 1980s when I was a young editor, and like many readers I was awed by Allison's honesty and the resonance and strength of her voice," explained DeSanti, Plume's vice president and editor at large. "When the collection became available, I jumped at the chance to put it back into print on the Plume list, which we timed to coincide with the happy event of Bastard's 10-year anniversary. We look forward to publishing Dorothy Allison's next novel as well, when it's ready—but I'm superstitious enough not to want to put a date on that."

GROWING UP

Dear Burning Questions,
I was wondering what my favorite teen author, Christopher Pike, is up to. Is he still writing? And also, I've been searching for the title of a book I read as a teen, but can't remember much about it other than the main character was named Stormy and was a ghost in need of fixing a problem before he could leave earth. Any ideas?

Mary Stanton
Tupelo, Mississippi

It appears your favorite writer of young adult fiction has grown up right along with you. With at least 40 young adult suspense/fantasy/horror titles to his credit—and another 25 titles in his Spooksville Series for preteens— Pike turned to adult horror in the 1990s with the publication of The Season of Passage and The Cold One.

According to Pike's publicist at Tor, his next book, The Blind Mirror, is scheduled for release in May 2003. At the center of the story is David, 28, an artist recovering from a bad breakup. (But then, who isn't?) Things turn spooky when David discovers the mysterious and beautiful Sienna half buried on a California beach.

Born Kevin McFadden in Brooklyn in 1954, Pike moved with his family to California, where he still lives. When he was in high school, eight of his friends died from suicide, accidents and illness. His realization of how fragile life can be manifests itself in his horror stories, which he says examine human vulnerability and our fear of death.

Although we were able to conjure up some of Pike's demons, we couldn't demystify your ghostly childhood memory. Maybe a BQ reader can supply the answer to your haunting question.

CAT'S GOT HER TONGUE

Dear Burning Questions,
We have been reading a sci-fi series, The Sholan Alliance, by Lisanne Norman. The series began with Turning Point and the fifth book was Stronghold Rising. Her sixth book was to be called Between Darkness and Light. It was to be out in April two years ago, but was not. Miss Norman is an English writer. Can you let us know what happened to her and her books?

Kativa Conroy
Ebro, Florida

Maybe Miss Norman decided to take a catnap. All we know for sure is that her new book, Between Darkness and Light, will go on sale January 7 from Daw Books. And to clear things up, this is actually the seventh title in the Sholan Alliance series, which started in 1993 with Turning Point and continued with Fortune's Wheel, Fire Margins, Razor's Edge, Dark Nadir and Stronghold Rising. A former teacher, Norman studied the behavior of cats large and small to help create the Sholan, the cat-like species who team with human colonists to fight against evil Valtegan invaders.

WORTH READING

This year's finalists for the National Book Awards didn't include some of the choices we might have expected (The Lovely Bones, Middlesex), but there are many fine selections, nonetheless, for anyone trying to find a proverbial "good book." Winners will be announced after BookPage goes to press:

Fiction
Big If, Mark Costello (Norton)
Three Junes, Julia Glass (Pantheon)
You Are Not a Stranger Here, Adam Haslett (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday)
Gorgeous Lies, Martha McPhee (Harcourt)
The Heaven of Mercury, Brad Watson (Norton)

Nonfiction
Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Robert Caro (Knopf)
When Smoke Ran Like Water: Tales of Environmental Deception and the Battle Against Pollution, Devra Davis (Basic)
Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science, Atul Gawande (Metropolitan)
The Last American Man, Elizabeth Gilbert (Viking)
Mapping Human History: Discovering the Past Through Our Genes, Steve Olson (Houghton Mifflin)

THE CORRECTIONS

The October Burning Questions column misstated the title of the first novel by Savannah native William C. Harris, Jr. The correct title is Delirium of the Brave.

COULDN'T KEEP IT TO OURSELVES

Dear Burning Questions,
Could you please please please tell me if Wally Lamb is working on another book? I am desperate to find out. I asked once before with no reply, so I thought I would try again.

Maureen A. Socha
Carmel Clay Public Library
Carmel, Indiana

It seems the sought-after Wally Lamb has been spending some time behind bars. Lamb, author of the Oprah Book Club novel She's Come Undone, is editing a new collection to be released in February by ReganBooks. Couldn't Keep It To Myself: Testimonies From Our Imprisoned Sisters presents stories by members of Lamb's writing class for women prisoners. Lamb contributes an introduction in which he "describes the incredible process by which these women found their true voices, and how they challenged him as a teacher and as a fellow writer."

As to his progress on another novel, Lamb had this to say: "I'm hard at work on the new novel, which I hope to complete in the next couple of years. The novel spans three generations of a family, and there's a women's prison at the center of the story."