Topshelf

In JUMP AT THE SUN (Morrow, $24.95), returning novelist Kim McLarin paints a bold and intricate portrait of Grace, a young woman struggling to escape the pain and mistakes of the women in her family. Grace is deeply worried that she is about to relive the mistakes of her mother Mattie. Mattie lived a life that she was not proud of, but is also unable to leave behind. McLarin deftly explores how insecurities and inadequacies of mothers help form, and all too often mar the identity of their children. In the same fearless voice she has brought to her past novels, McLarin shows how Grace is forced to struggle with the same race and gender issues that plagued Mattie and her own mother Rae, and how Grace may very well pass the same burden on to her own daughter in a story that spans three generations.

In CONSIDERING GENIUS (Basic Civitas, $26), Stanley Crouch pulls no punches in this first full-length book on jazz in which he writes of his lifelong passion for America's great music through essays pulled from 15 of his most influential and controversial writings (two pieces are new). Not surprisingly, his highly personal and "loquacious" writing elevates the music to heights unattained since the great writing of his mentors Ralph Ellison and Albert Murray. The first, autobiographical essay reflects on his life in jazz as a drummer, a promoter, a critic, and most of all a lover of this quintessentially American art form. And the closing essay, about a young Italian saxophonist, expresses undaunted optimism for the worldwide vibrancy of jazz. Throughout, Crouch's work reminds us not only of why he is one of the world's most important living jazz critics, but also why jazz remains an elemental component of our cultural identity.

COPYRIGHT 2006 Johnson Publishing Co.
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning