NOBODY CRIES AT BINGO

By: Dumont, Dawn

he uptown girls are headed downtown as Serena and Jenny take on their new fabulous roles as rock-star model girlfriends of New York's hottest band, The Raves. Meanwhile, Dan is too busy drowning his sorrows in empty bottles to notice a mysterious French beauty who has a penchant for dirty, Jim Morrison-wannabe lead singers. Blair takes residence at the Plaza to think about her future. Will she become a gun-toting international spy or Manhattan's snobbiest society hostess? Decisions are so difficult! Sounds like everyone needs a day off at the spa. And Senior Spa Day promises to serve up further doses of scandal for New York's busiest private-school vixens. TitlePeek

HUNGER JOURNEY


By: De Vries, Maggie

"First, that is a lie. You are not trying to take a train to Germany. Second, your papers are false. Do you think you can trump up false papers and just walk onto one of our trains?" (Hunger Journeys) It's World War Two in Amsterdam. Lena leaves her starving family to travel by train with her friend Sofie to Almelo, a town close to the German border, in search of food. It's a risky plan. The girls have false papers and are quickly pulled off the train by German soldiers. Only by fluke do they get back on again'with the help of Albert, one of the soldiers. After Lena discovers that the train had also been used to transport Jews to concentration camps, she fears her new friendship with the well-meaning Albert may lead her into more danger. Sofie, too, befriends a soldier, a relationship that quickly turns serious and has unfortunate consequences for both girls. TitlePeek

TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY


By: Le Carre, John

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is not only le Carre's masterpiece, not only perhaps the greatest spy novel ever written, but it is also a great work of serious fiction. Few works of fiction examine so many types of betrayal: of country, of friends, of lovers, of ideals. In none of the espionage master's other works are so many layers of meaning revealed, all inseparable from a highly entertaining cat-and-mouse adventure yarn. The story of supposedly retired spy George Smiley's efforts to ferret out a mole within British intelligence has almost mythic dimensions. Michael Jayston, who plays Peter Gwillam, Smiley's legman, in the television adaptation of the novel, delivers a perfect reading, creating distinctive voices for the dozens of characters, and offering a marvelous rendition of Alec Guinness's distinctive drone as Smiley. Highly recommended. TitlePeek

THE HOLY MAN'S JOURNEY


By: Trott, Susan

"Being nice is good luck," explains Anna, a spirited Irish healer, to her five-year-old son. "Why didn't I come up with that in all these years?" laughs Joe, a 73-year-old holy man with advanced heart disease. Like last year's fable, The Holy Man, this sequel charms by not taking the holy man role too seriously. "People are holy, every last one of them," Joe announces as he leaves his mountain hermitage in an undisclosed land. Dying and determined to deliver a healing lesson to Chen, his own teacher, Joe journeys to Chen's lavish "Universe-city" accompanied by Anna, his chosen successor. Along the way, the kind but inexperienced Anna is treated to life lessons. She listens as Joe helps a bitter, unfulfilled cab driver find his true calling; she watches incredulously as Joe disarms a knife-wielding thief with openhearted generosity; she learns, as Joe defuses a fight between two taxi drivers whose vehicles collided, that taking the blame in a situation "even if you didn't do it, smoothes the knottiest situation spectacularly and immediately." Finally, grappling with her dislike of Chen, whom she condemns as self-aggrandizing and greedy, Anna comes to grasp Joe's ultimate message of loving tolerance and self-knowledge. Some of the lessons sound like Psychotherapy 101 ("my theory about obsessive collecting is that it is repressed creativity"). Yet, Trott is as wily as her sweet-spirited holy man, using her no-pressure storytelling style to lull readers into unexpected moments of wit and illumination. Dutch rights sold to Uitgeverij Bzztoh. TitlePeek

TILT


By: Cumyn, Alan

Stan is an intense sixteen-year-old loner who desperately wants to make the junior varsity basketball team. And it seems that he may be about to do so, until he's blindsided by the unexpected attentions of Janine Igwash. Suddenly Stan is no longer thinking about jump shots. Instead he is obsessed with Janine's spiky hair, her milky white shoulders and the mysterious little tattoo at the base of her neck, not to mention the heat of her breath, her dark eyes, wide hips and . . . Then Stan's father arrives on the scene with Stan's four-year-old half brother, and things become truly insane.Tilt is a wonderfully droll and insightful story about a sensitive, intelligent and gently funny young man living through an impossibly absurd time of life. This book is a rare achievement ? a witty, sexy compulsively readable work of high literary quality. TitlePeek