AUGUST 1996

Haven't heard from your favorite author in a while? Curious to know if another book is on the way? Send us a note (email and snail mail address below) and we'll see what we can find out for you. Each month the BookPage Burning Questions staff goes to the ends of the Earth and back again to find the answers to our readers' most burning questions. The answers are printed each month, both online as well as in our print edition. Go ahead, try to stump us!

Burning Questions Update

We need a vacation. We had hoped to snag a trip to the Olympics, but alas, our bank, a large sponsor of the Games, didn't call up with the excellent seats and gracious accomodations we assumed they would be providing gratis. Perhaps they know we don't balance our checkbook very often. The best offer we received was for an empty apartment with no cable and tickets to the volleyball prelims, so we decided simply to sit at home in front of our giant TV, really close up, and pretend to be stuck in Atlanta traffic on a dieselacious bus.

We digress. The questions, the burning questions! We get so many questions, and so many about Jean "Clan of the Cave Bear" Auel. No, she is not dead (we had a flurry of inquiry about that), and no, her new book isn't due until she's good and ready. Assume at least a year from now.

And Diana Gabaldon. Everybody who has read her three novels featuring a strappin' Scot and a heroine caught between the twentieth and the eighteenth centuries wants to know when the next book is coming. That would be Drums of Autumn, coming in January 1997.

Now, on to some of the more obscure queries recently received. Our teeth ache from all the sleuthing weÕve been doing. You folks on the Internet wear us out.

Up the Nile with Pauline

Dear Burning Questions:
Do you know if or when a new book by Pauline Gedge will be out? I just love her novels on ancient Egypt. I had heard that one was due out last October but nothing showed up.
Lyn Stager
via the Internet

Lady of the Reeds did appear last October -- did you read that one? As the publisher, Soho Press, tells us: "An unforgettable heroine, Thu, the intelligent and insatiably ambitious young villager from the Upper Nile, becomes the favored concubine of Ramses III. She is determined her life will matter, even if it means slaying a god." We promised to make no more Hillary Clinton jokes in this column.

The paperback edition is due in October.

Gedge, who lives in Alberta, Canada, is currently working on another Egyptian novel due to be published in the U.S. sometime after its release in Canada this year, though an American pub date is to come.

A missing heifer, red

Dear Burning Questions:
I have searched for a book called The Red Heifer that I read as a girl in the mid 1950s, but I can't find it now. I don't know the author. Do you have any suggestions?
Linda Hindmarch
Kennewick, Washington

The Red Heifer, by Frank Dalby Davison, was published in 1934 by Coward McCann but is now out of print. As far as we know, there are no plans for a new edition. You're best bet would be to check your local library. If they don't have a copy, they might be able to locate one.

And D'J is short for . . . ?

Dear Burning Questions:
Who the heck is Breece D'J Pancake? What did he write and where did he come from? I have an affinity for southern literature and was curious about this enigmatic figure.
Tipsy Winkle
Oil Trough, Arkansas

OK, Tipsy, you can't fool us. We know there's an Oil Trough, Arkansas. We checked it on our AAA map and everything. It's right near Possum Grape.

Mr. D'J Pancake is indeed an enigmatic writer whose mordant, spare short stories make Ray Carver look like Rosamunde Pilcher. Born in West Virginia, he died a suicide. His only book, The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake, is still in print from Henry Holt. Highly recommended for those who have too much sunshine in their lives.

Readers with insight into his unusual name are invited to help us out with information. We think D'J Pancake sounds mighty Frenchified.

And is that Ms. or Mr. Tipsy Winkle?

Le cool jazz

Dear Burning Questions:
I've read that a biography of the late trumpet player Chet Baker is going to be published by Knopf. Can you tell me when?
Dennis Brooks
Greenville, South Carolina

You heard right. Knopf will indeed publish a biography of Chet Baker sometime in 1998. James Gavin is the author.

John Welter, king of the silly-yet-poignant novel title

Dear Burning Questions:
I read a really cute book last summer called The Night of the Avenging Blowfish (Algonquin Books) by John Welter. I liked it because it was silly yet poignant, and I wonder if he has any more books in the works?
Joyce Prue
Cincinnati, Ohio
via the Internet

Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill will release John WelterÕs third novel, I Want to Buy a Vowel: A Novel of Illegal Alienation, in October. Until then, you might want to take a look at Begin to Exit Here (Algonquin Books), published in 1992.

Thrillers, cookbooks, whatever you need

Dear Burning Questions:
I read a thriller by Susan Sloan a year or two ago called Guilt by Association (Warner Books). It was excellent, and I'm wondering if she is working on another novel.
Dee Sypherd
via the Internet

Warner recently received the manuscript for Sloan's next thriller, which means that it will be published in early 1997. Sloan has also collaborated on a cookbook which will appear in early 1997.

Henry Roth

Dear Burning Questions:
When will part three of Henry Roth's Mercy of a Rude Stream (St. MartinÕs Press hardcover, Picador paperback) be released? Also, how is he doing? He is one of my favorite authors.
Savannah Anderson
Cedar Valley, Utah

Sadly, Roth died last October. Part three, From Bondage, was published in June (St. MartinÕs Press). Part four will be published in fall 1997.

Amigos, we love to hear from you.

Write us with your BQs: Burning Questions, 2501 21st Ave. South, Suite 5, Nashville, TN 37212. Or better yet, e-mail us at Burning_Questions@bookpage.com.

Alas, we regret that personal replies are not possible.

©1996, ProMotion, inc.

www@bookpage.com