Baum on Books

“Back Lash,” Chris Knopf’s new thriller, is nicely named because the protagonist-hero, Sam Acquillo, gets hit with a strong backward force that propels him into the past. Sam’s a cabinet maker in the Hamptons, but he used to be the head of an international research and development tech firm, and a professional boxer, whose winnings put him through MIT. Before that he was a kid living in the Bronx. Sam knows a lot about cars so another meaning of the title “Back Lash” applies — the jarring play

Author Marian Thurm's latest novel, "The Good Life," crafts a suspenseful story of how the lives of a wealthy couple from the Upper East Side of Manhattan descends into chaos. Book critic Joan Baum has this review. Marian Thurm’s The Good Life is one of those novels that mimic everyday existence so closely, the way people talk, how they behave, that it’s uncanny, and particularly so here because of the way the author slowly but compellingly develops a horrific tragedy that evolves out o f

Before I Forget is a memoir co-written by Dan Gasby and his wife, Sag Harbor restaurateur and former supermodel B. Smith. Smith has early-onset Alzheimer’s. The book is a testament to their devotion to each other and their struggle to manage a devastating disease.

It’s likely the award-winning literary fiction writer Simon Van Booy knows that the words “genius” and “genial” are related. They derive from the same Latin root that means beget or generate, and by the 18th century were used to denote sympathy and friendliness as well as intellectual or creative superiority. All these qualities figure — “ingeniously,” you might say — in Van Booy’s latest short story collection called Tales of Accidental Genius . There are seven in all, including a last extended

A friend was looking at the title of a book I was reading - Weapons of Mass Destruction : “Is that about what I think it is?” Well, “yes,” I said, and “no.” The book is about American troops in Iraq in 2004. But no, because the book is not an analysis or partisan tract, but a novel. And a novel with two unusual features: It’s a story about a young marine named Billy Sinclair- a well-respected sharpshooter in his unit who’s haunted by the recent suicide back home in Montana of his lifelong friend

Charles Dubow’s new novel, Girl in the Moonlight , like his debut novel, Indiscretion , is admittedly a tribute to The Great Gatsby . And, like Dubow’s earlier book, a compelling story about obsession and love. For Gatsby, who comes from the demimonde, Daisy Buchanan is the incarnation of the golden girl, her voice “full of money.” For Dubow’s upper-class narrator Wylie Rose, however, the siren-goddess who claims his heart, mind, body, and soul attracts him for reasons other than money, which

Cop Job is the latest installment of the Sam Aquillo Hamptons Mysteries. The series is the creation of author Chris Knopf, who lives and works in Connecticut and Long Island. In Cop Job, Sam Aquillo scours the East End of Long Island for clues to solve the brutal murder of a good friend. Book critic Joan Baum has this review: You’re 59 and still “attractive” and “vibrant,” a woman on the make tells him. But Sam Aquillo, ex-CEO corporate engineer, ex-professional boxer, ex-husband, freelance wood