Even those not inclined toward essays will find Dagoberto Gilb's GRITOS (Grove Press) irresistible. A grito is a heartfelt outpouring—"the '¡Viva!' at a wedding or political rally"—and Gilb writes as though he were pouring out his heart at the kitchen table over a cup of coffee and a smoke. The prose, ranging from cockfighting to the challenges of being a Mexican American construction-worker-turned-writer, is tenaciously honest, and the pugnacious intelligence behind the swagger makes this collection resonate. Reviewed by Mike Shea
COLD SPRINGS (Bantam Books) is San Antonian Rick Riordan's busman's holiday from his award-winning Tres Navarre series. Chadwick rounds up troubled teens and delivers them to Cold Springs—a Texas wilderness school with a tough-love approach to behavior modification. His most recent runaway is hiding a troubled past that's mysteriously linked to his own, leading to pure, grade-AAA suspense that is the stuff of summer blockbusters. Reviewed by Mike Shea
With his second novel, THE COFFEE TRADER (Random House), Edgar award-winner David Liss performs literary alchemy to transform an unheralded event—the introduction of coffee to the seventeenth-century European commodities exchange—into a fourteen-karat-gold thriller. Trader Miguel Lienzo has lost everything but his nerve after some overly adventurous plays in the sugar market. Deep in debt to his unforgiving confreres in Amsterdam's merchant community, he devises a desperate scheme to create a monopoly on the exotic new bean. He's just one scoundrel among many, however, and his machinations threaten to bring him closer to ruin than market domination. And, as befits a man with nothing to lose, he flirts with his sister-in-law. Remarkably original and executed with nary a misstep, The Coffee Trader is a potent and satisfying brew indeed. Reviewed by Mike Shea
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