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Sound advice to beat the end-of-summer blahs
REVIEWS BY SUKEY HOWARD
Marilu Henner's Total Health Makeover is a good place to start. Marilu, who struggled with weight and health issues for years, wants to share her philosophy and practical program so that you can achieve the fit body, boundless energy, and positive attitude that will give you added zest for life. To that end, she offers her flexible "ten-step B.E.S.T. life plan," the acronym standing for Balance, Energy, Stamina, Toxin-Free.
By Marilu Henner HarperAudio, $12, 90 minutes ISBN 0694519278
By Dan Millman Time Warner AudioBooks, $17.98, 3 hours ISBN 1570425868
By Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat Simon & Schuster Audio, $18, 3 hours ISBN 0671579037
By Gail Sheehy Audio Renaissance, $24.95, 6 hours ISBN 1559274573
On the fiction front Evan Tanner, the oddball, insomniac operative of Lawrence Block's popular series, has been off the scene for 25 years or, to be more accurate, he's been in a deep freeze. How and why and what brought about the melt-down will all be revealed by the man himself in Tanner on Ice. It takes Tanner a bit to acclimate himself to the present -- after all, when he cooled off Nixon was President and computers were rare. But he's soon back in the thick of the action, this time called on to check out the climate -- non-meteorological, that is -- in Myanmar. This leads to adventures and misadventures with bad policemen and good revolutionaries, a beautiful woman and a shady Englishman. I like the way Block writes and the way he reads; he has a wry take on the world that's enhanced by his New York tones and nonchalant delivery.
By Lawrence Block Penguin Audiobooks, $17.95, 3 hours ISBN 0140867732
By James Lee Burke Simon & Schuster Audio, $25, 4.5 hours ISBN 0671581066
By Richard Price BDD Audio, $25, 6 hours ISBN 0553478796
An alternative church that's taken on big-time cult proportions, a kidnapped 15-year-old girl, a smart FBI agent on the skids -- put all this in the hands of Kyle "Rising Phoenix" Mills and you have Storming Heaven, a humdinger of a thriller, read by Joe Grifasi. FBI man Mark Beamon has been told to play it straight -- not play his hunches. But the solution to this case and a young woman's life hang on Beamon's hunches, and though it may be his ruin, he's got to play them again.
By Kyle Mills HarperAudio, $18, 3 hours ISBN 0694519715
"Old Blue Eyes" as he was and will always be . . . If you're pining to hear one more for my baby from the guy who did it his way, listen to Frankie's own words and his friends' fond remembrances in Sinatra: A Tribute.
BDD Audio, $16.99, 2 hours ISBN 0553525867
Sukey Howard reports on spoken word audio each month.
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A little sprucing up of mind and body can go a long way to revive spirits as summer fades away. So try these audios on for size, and if the advice fits, wear it well.
Spirit-enhancing advice comes from Dan Millman, who believes that we can all enjoy "a life well lived." And we can do it by following "The Twelve Gateways to Personal Growth" he outlines in Everyday Enlightenment. Spiritual practices begin in the here and now, in the everyday, as the title proclaims, and Millman urges you to start on the path to enlightenment by discovering your self-worth, then building one step at a time. As he says, "If existence is something like a cosmic joke, enlightenment may be getting the punch line."
Finding the spiritual in the everyday is equally important to Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat. The extraordinary array of short readings they have collected in Spiritual Literacy are taken from a wide variety of sources, some obvious, some unlikely, but all celebrating the spiritual meaning that can be found in everyday activities, relationships, sights, and sounds. In her preface to this audio presentation, Mary Ann Brussat explains how "spiritual literacy" can enable you to start on a journey to wholeness, becoming vital, awake, and aware.
"Passages," those critical points in our progression through life, have long fascinated Gail Sheehy. Her previous "passage" books helped women understand and cope with the changes that time inevitably imposes. Now, in Understanding Men's Passages, Ms. Sheehy turns her keen gaze on the male species and offers the same kind of compassionate advice and guidelines to men in middle life that she gave to women. Mid-life, she claims, is the right time for men to reinvent themselves, a time of self-discovery and realization. Ms. Sheehy's open, witty, and solidly researched counsel, based on hundreds of interviews, may do more than just rev up your spirits -- it may change the way you spend the next decades of your life.
Author James Lee Burke and reader Will Patton are always a dynamite duo, and they live up to expectations in Sunset Limited, Burke's new, moody mystery novel. Cajun detective Dave Robicheaux is front and center, as concerned with past injustices as he is with current quotidian crimes. So, when the daughter of a local union organizer who was literally crucified on a barn wall returns to the parish, you know that this long-unsolved murder will be a focus of attention again. At least it will be for Robicheaux, whose observation that "the vested interest of government and criminals and respectable citizens was often the same" becomes all too real and all too dangerous.
Brenda Martin, a small white woman, bruised, shock-strained, tells police that she was carjacked near the projects by a black man -- then adds that her four-year-old boy was asleep in the back seat. Visions of Susan Smith come to mind, but the complex story that unfolds in Freedomland is a far, fascinating cry from Smith's sad circumstances. Author Richard Price sets his new novel in Dempsey, New Jersey, the town he so powerfully evoked in Clockers. As media madness pushes race relations from tense to incendiary, two Dempsey natives, a dedicated black detective and a street-smart white reporter, try to get into Brenda's mind and soul and try to get at the truth. Price has written his most compelling novel yet, and Joe Morton's finely tuned performance intensifies its emotional intensity.