Texas Pages

It's a literary feast this week! Dine slowly, and savor.
* The Whole Truth, by David Baldacci (Grand Central Publishing, $26.99). "Global thriller" featuring a showdown between a defense-contractor "perception manager," an operative of a secret multinational intelligence agency and an ambitious journalist who just got her biggest break: to interview the sole survivor of a massacre that left the entire world stunned.
* The House at Riverton, by Kate Morton (Atria, $24.95). Debut novel focusing on a family and their crumbling English country estate in the years surrounding World War I, an age when Edwardian civility, shaken by war, unravels into the roaring Twenties.
* Quicksand, by Iris Johansen (St. Martin's Press, $26.95). This 12th installment in best-seller Johansen's saga featuring forensic sculptor Eve Duncan (after Stalemate) is also a sequel of sorts to Pandora's Daughter, which chronicled the life of Megan Blair, an Atlanta physician with burgeoning psychic abilities.
* Santa Fe Dead, by Stuart Woods (Putnam, $25.95). Thriller starring Ed Eagle, the take-no-prisoners attorney from Santa Fe Rules and Short Straw.
* So Brave, Young and Handsome, by Leif Enger (Atlantic Monthly Press, $24). Leif Enger's highly anticipated second novel (his first was Peace Like a River) tells the story of outlaw Glendon Hale's quest to right his past, as seen through the eyes of his unlikely companion Monte Becket.

This lovely quote was tucked inside the Vintage/Anchor Books fall catalog.

"To carry a book in your pocket or in your bag, particularly in times of sadness, is to be in possession of another world, a world that can bring you happiness." -- From Other Colors, by Orhan Pamuk

Amen, brother.

The folks at Penguin recently sent copies of their retro-sexy new releases of Ian Fleming's James Bond books.

Which led to an enjoyable discussion between your books editor and a cubicle neighbor about the pleasures of re-reading Ian Fleming, until you get to the parts with the horridly outdated racial stereotypes.

But the books are iconic, to say the least. And now they have their own museum exhibition.

(And if you can't afford the plane ticket to London, you can always just buy the stamps. I'm not saying I have done this; how pathetic would it be to order a set of stamps that showed book jackets from half a century ago? But, um, er, a source close to me indicates that it is possible to have the set delivered to you direct from England, and that they are pretty cool, as such things go.)

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, rage, rage against the dying of the light.

According to the Academy of American Poets, this is the most popular poem clicked on by Texas readers.