Fiction goes to the Dogs

Editorial Review: A postmodern Mary Shelley, taking the parable of Frankenstein's monster several giant steps farther, might have written this fable of a novel about a tragic race of monster dogs--in this case, genetically and biomechanically engineered dogs (of several major breeds). Created by a German mad scientist in the 19th century, the monster dogs possess human intelligence, speak human language, have prosthetic humanlike hands and walk upright on hind legs. The dogs' descendants arrive in New York City in the year 2008, still acting like Victorian-era aristocrats. Most important, the monster dogs suffer humanlike frailties and, ultimately, real suffering more serious and affecting than the subject matter might at first glance suggest.

Editorial Review: The key to a beautiful woman's tragic death is locked in a dog's broken heart.

P.I. Rachel Alexander is stepping into a dead woman's life. Hired by the young t'ai chi teacher's grieving parents, Rachel is determined to find out why their apparently happy daughter jumped from the window of her Greenwich Village martial arts studio. Wearing Lisa's clothes, studying with her mentor, meeting her friends, provoking her enemies, Rachel soon learns that even with her pit bull, Dashiell, at her side, the path to enlightenment is a dangerous place to be.

With the answer Rachel seeks as difficult to fathom as a Zen riddle, yet as close by as the victim's sad-eyed Akita, one truth begins to unfold: Lisa never would have abandoned her dog without a cruel push. . . .

Editorial Review: With the poetic acuity that renders his work timeless, Booker Prize-winning author John Berger brings us a 24-hour chronicle of homelessness. Beside a highway, in a wasteland furnished with smashed trucks and broken washing machines, lives a vagrant community of once-hopeful individuals, now abandoned by the twentieth century.

King, our narrator, is the guardian of a homeless couple, stealing meat from the butcher and sharing the warmth of his flesh. His canine sensibility affords him both amnesty from human hardship and rare insight into his companions' lives.  Through his senses we see--clearly and unsentimentally--the dignity and strength that can survive within chaos and pain.

Editorial Review: It takes a heavenly dog to make a hell of a match--

Right before her untimely death, Lydia Keane made one terrible mistake--she had an affair with her best friend Amy's husband. Barred from the afterlife until she makes amends, Lydia has been ordered back to Earth for one final mission: to find Amy a new husband. But there is just one small catch: Lydia must rely on her smarts rather than her centerfold body--because she has been reincarnated as a mangy stray dog!

Although Lydia was always an expert matchmaker, she never had to play Cupid while trapped in the body of a furry mutt. But if she wants a chance to rest in peace, Lydia must figure out a way to find Amy the most handsome bachelor in town--and pray that woman's best friend can spot true love.

Editorial Review: A powerful executive receives a quirky lesson in life when he wakes up one morning to discover that he has become a dog and must learn to survive in a strange and unfamiliar world.

Editorial Review: Normally Holly winter wouldn't be caught dead in a place like Puppy Luv -- a mall pet shop that's no doubt an outlet for the puppy mill industry and a hotbed of forged papers, broken promises and mistreated animals.  But a hot tip on a malamute pup suddenly has Holly charging to the rescue and panting to put the owner out of business.  Trouble is, she's not the only one who has a bone to pick with Diane Sweet.  in a matter of hours the puupy love proprietess is gruesomely murdered.

When Holly links the killing with the disappearance of another malamute -- an adorable live wire named Missy -- she digs up startling evidence that soon leads her into the fiercely competitive and deadly underworld of dog breeding.  A place where her biggest fears are realized.  And where her animal instincts are all that can save her.

Editorial Review: Christopher John Francis Boone knows all the countries of the world and their capitals and every prime number up to 7,057. He relates well to animals but has no understanding of human emotions. He cannot stand to be touched. And he detests the color yellow.

This improbable story of Christopher's quest to investigate the suspicious death of a neighborhood dog makes for one of the most captivating, unusual, and widely heralded novels in recent years.

Editorial Review: The bestsellling author of A Year in Provence and Hotel Pastis now surveys his territory from a differnt vantage point: the all-fours perspective of his dog, Boy--"a dog whose personality is made up of equal parts Boswell and Dr. Johnson, Mencken and A. A. Milne" (Chicago Sun-Times). Enhanced by 59 splendidly whimsical drawings by Edward Koren.