Dear Burning Questions,

I've loved all of Barbara Kingsolver's novels and have been awaiting a new fiction release. Do you know if she is currently working on a new novel?

Tara McDaniel
Norman, Oklahoma

Our readers love Barbara Kingsolver—we know because we receive plenty of Burning Questions about the author. Though we can't tell you whether she is working on another novel, we can tell you that her first "full-length nonfiction narrative" will be published in May.

In Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (HarperCollins), co-written with Kingsolver's husband, Steven L. Hopp, and daughter Camille Kingsolver, she chronicles her family's journey from typical supermarket consumers to a life based on their own farm, making a valiant effort to reduce their food miles to next to nothing. Here she mixes her concern for the environment, expressed in novels like Prodigal Summer, with her characteristic mastery of language and situations. Kingsolver says, "[t]his book tells the story of how our family was changed by our first year of deliberately eating food produced from the same place where we worked, went to school, loved our neighbors, drank the water, and breathed the air."

LIFE OF O'REILLY

Dear Burning Questions,

I'm trying to find out about Victor O'Reilly. After his three books, I can't find anything else. He has had such a fascinating life—I'm hoping he will soon be publishing again. Can you find him?

Janet Pallavicini
Surprise, Arizona

Surprise! We found O'Reilly, who had plenty to share with BQ. "My writing career was interrupted for two reasons," he says. For one thing, he had "something of a falling out" with his publishers, therefore his contract was not renewed. Then, divorce and an ensuing custody battle consumed a lot of his time and energy and deposited O'Reilly and his two children—Irish citizens all—in the U.S. just in time for 9/11. "Within months," he says, "I was carrying out an assignment for the vice chief of the Army which, in turn, led to my writing some major reports on the armor issue for U.S. Rep. Jim Saxton, a longtime friend who had picked my brain on terrorism issues years earlier."

You may remember that O'Reilly's books, the last of which was 1997's Devil's Footprint, feature protagonist Hugo Fitzduane, an Irish counterterrorism expert. O'Reilly says he was "acutely conscious that fact and fiction, where my life was concerned, were getting somewhat intermingled" as his assignments gained him access to the Pentagon and the military-industrial-political complex. He adds, "unfortunately, all my worst fears have been realized in Iraq."

Now that the kids are doing well and O'Reilly has settled near Winchester, Virginia, he's returning to fiction. He's submitted the fourth Hugo Fitzduane book for publication and says he has two other manuscripts, including one called Satan's Smile, in the works. In the meantime, you can read his blog at www.warpeacepeople.blogspot.com or visit his website at www.victororeilly.com.

SECOND ACT

Dear Burning Questions,

Just finished the novel by Susan Fletcher, Eve Green. She won the Whitbread Award for Best First Novel for this book. Is she working on another book, and if so, when will it be published?

Carol Williams
Brentwood, Tennessee

Think back to 2004, and a big fat novel that caused a sensation: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. Generating buzz and ringing up high sales figures, it was a shoe-in for the U.K.'s Whitbread Award for Best First Novel—until Susan Fletcher's lyrical story of a girl's coming of age in Wales won over the judges. That's a hard act to follow, especially for such a young author (Fletcher is 28), but she's making the attempt in August with Oystercatchers (Norton). The novel charts a complicated relationship between sisters. After a lifetime of resenting her sister Amy, Moira is forced to reconcile her feelings when an injury leaves Amy in a coma.

FORD BIOGRAPHY

After the death of Gerald Ford, Holt moved up the publication date for a new biography of the former president. Douglas Brinkley's Gerald R. Ford, to be released February 6, is part of the American Presidents series of brief biographies for the general reader. Gerald R. Ford draws on Brinkley's exclusive interviews with the former president, as well as previously unpublished correspondence between Ford and Richard Nixon.

BARR NONE

Dear Burning Questions,

For the first time since 1993, I've had to survive an entire year without a new book from Nevada Barr. I know that Ms. Barr had a home in New Orleans, and I'm worried that Hurricane Katrina might have swept my favorite author and her precious manuscripts out to sea. Is Nevada OK, and will we be hearing more from Anna Pigeon?

Sarah Kobos
Tulsa, Oklahoma

Nevada Barr turned out an Anna Pigeon mystery every year from 1993 to 2005, come hell or high water. But it was extremely high water that brought her best-selling streak to a screeching halt when Hurricane Katrina flooded Barr's New Orleans home. "Katrina sort of blew our heroine out of the water," she tells readers on her website (nevadabarr.com). Barr's agent, Dominick Abel, tells BQ, "Yes, of course, Nevada was affected by Katrina. But her home is restored and she is back there and at work. She still plans to deliver a new Anna Pigeon," as yet untitled, to Putnam for publication in 2008.

The upcoming novel will be set in Isle Royale National Park in Lake Superior, where Barr herself once worked as a park ranger. The author is doing research for the book this winter at a long-term wolf study project on the remote island near the Canadian border. "If I do not actually freeze to death, or get murdered by biologists tired of hearing me whine about the cold, the book should be interesting," she advises her Pigeon-starved readers.

WINNER'S CIRCLE

BQ for You

Congratulations to Connie Spivack of Weehawken, NJ, who won three books recently reviewed in BookPage for answering the BQ for You question in the November issue. Watch this space for more chances to win in future issues.