Sukey's Favorite

Returning to Earth
By Jim Harrison
Blackstone Audio, $24.95
8 hours unabridged
ISBN 9780786166770

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"I'm forty-five and it seems I'm to leave the Earth early but these things happen to people." That's Donald's calm take on dying too young, "falling apart in many directions," of a horribly aggressive case of Lou Gehrig's disease. Half Chippewa, half Finn, "a foot in both worlds," but firm in his Chippewa beliefs, strong in his connection to the earth and all its creatures, Donald is the center of Returning to Earth, Jim Harrison's gracefully moving ninth novel, set in his home ground of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Living a good life and dying a good death are big themes but Harrison comes at these subjects with a unique storytelling subtlety. Four separate narrators, each performed by a different reader, move the story forward and back in time. Donald begins, talking of his life while dictating never-shared memories of his wild forebears to his wife, Cynthia. Then Cynthia and two others, her older brother and his stepson follow. They all loved Donald profoundly and are profoundly affected by his dignity in dying.

Nowhere to hide in Gardner's latest thriller

REVIEWS BY SUKEY HOWARD

Annabelle Granger, now 32, opened the Boston Herald one morning and saw her name. Hers, she read, was one of six mummified bodies found in a grisly underground chamber on the grounds of a former Boston mental hospital. A silver locket identified one of the young, abducted girls as Annabelle. Weird, more than weird, a horrific coincidence? Annabelle (if that's really her name) had been on the run for 25 years and had never known why. When she was seven her father began their endless moves and identity changes, insisting on careful anonymity and even more careful security. Now, with her father dead, she lives a solitary, guarded life in a fifth-floor Boston walkup, her dog her only friend. That's what you get for openers in Lisa Gardner's latest thriller-diller, Hide, ably read by Maggi-Meg Reed who keeps the emotional pitch high and the pace fast. Two top-notch Boston cops, who share an intertwined past, on are the scene, working as hard as they can to break a case that's as cold as they come. Then Annabelle walks into their offices and the case heats up as this spine-tingler barrels on to its inevitable climax.


Intelligence test

Spunky, spirited, never-sylph-like heroines, armed with an endless supply of witty one-liners and wrapped in that unique combo of chutzpah and heart natural to native New Yorkers, are Susan Isaacs' specialty. And Katie Schottland, the star of Isaac's latest, Past Perfect, is certainly no exception. A devoted mother of 10-year-old Nicky and loving wife of an unflappable pathologist at the Bronx Zoo, Katie writes "Spy Guys," a successful TV espionage series. Years before she'd worked as an analyst for the CIA, but was fired without explanation. That CIA link, and her decade-plus of agonizing over why she was the spy left out in the cold, leads smart, fast-talking Katie into a real espionage adventure of her own, one she can't write her way out of. It all starts with an out-of-the-blue phone call from Lisa, a ditzy former Agency colleague who promises to reveal why Katie was canned in return for help with a "matter of national importance." And this matter just might involve three not-so-nice East Germans the Intelligence boys relocated to the U.S. when the Wall came down. But Lisa never calls again and our heroine can't let sleeping spies lie. A fun caper, read with the perfect bubbly bravado by Randye Kaye.


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