Inside this month's issue of BookPage

August 2004
In This Issue

FIRST PERSON
August BookPage interviews:

Jeffrey Deaver: Suspense author takes a new direction

The image of the twin towers toppling in flames slapped most of us abruptly into the present. For Deaver, the tragedy sent him in the opposite direction. Welcome to Garden of Beasts, Deaver's 19th novel and the biggest departure yet for the master of the ticking-bomb thriller. Set in the foreboding milieu of pre-World War II Berlin, the book has all the trademark roller-coaster plot twists and double blindsides as Deaver's addictive Lincoln Rhyme series. There is one chilling difference, however: these horrors really happened.

Roya Hakakian: Surviving the Iranian revolution

It is perhaps the direst disaster that can befall a writer: the loss of his or her cherished books, diaries, notebooks, the ultimate evidence of the writer's existence, wiped out. It means the severing of crucial personal relationships, perhaps not yet articulated or even fully comprehended, from the words and writers of the past. It means a re-creation, in the purest sense, of the individual. And yet this immolation sometimes works the phoenix trick. This blow struck Roya Hakakian when she was 17, the youngest in a once-prosperous Jewish family in Iran on the verge of revolution. Looking back on that frightening era more than 20 years later, she captures her experiences in a haunting memoir.

Meet J.A. Jance

Philip D. Hearn explores Hurricane Camille, 35 years later

New mystery writer Michael Simon explores the darker side of sunny Austin, Texas

Meet Marc Brown

Acclaimed author Carolyn Mackler is a voice for teens

FEATURES

SPOTLIGHT: Celebrate the Olympic Games' return to Greece

Well Read: Lan Samantha Chang's Inheritance follows sisters in love with the same man

Are your kids driving you crazy? Parenting help

Back to School: Be prepared with these new books

Books on crafts and hobbies to keep you busy

Health: Medical advice for you and your family

Winners of the GRITS contest

First Person: Imagining the lives of real people

FICTION

Strange But True by John Searles

Skinny Dip by Carl Hiaasen