Word: bookings
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Democratic lawmakers plan to ask the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct to investigate Gingrich's book arrangement. After Gingrich's election last week, Wright sent the new whip a copy of Reflections of a Public Man with a pungent inscription: "For Newt, who likes books too." When asked how Gingrich, in his new leadership role, would deal with Wright, Gingrich replied, "Politely...
...current author, he will respond with some name the general public would never recognize. To the obsessive fan, the big story is rarely the arrival of a new Elmore Leonard or Ed McBain or Dick Francis -- although, as it happens, each of those established commercial writers has a new book out at the moment, all of middling quality. The main event is more likely to be, say, a new Simon Brett or Stuart M. Kaminsky, a new Jonathan Valin or Michael Allegretto. These less heralded figures often produce a prose more intense and flavorful, a sense of scene more convincing...
...newcomer of the year thus far is John Collee, a British physician and writer of TV medical scripts. In A Paper Mask (Arbor House; 232 pages; $16.95), his second book, the premise is that most emergency-room orderlies fancy themselves able, by practical experience, to diagnose and treat patients, and that one of them decides to give it a try. This antihero, who assumes the name and hospital residency of an acquaintance who is killed in an accident before he can report for duty, makes some disastrous mistakes -- but such is the imposing aura of his purported professional credentials that...
...travel agents offering extraordinary discounts. In Illinois, Scott Walker and his mother started World Travel Vacation Brokers in their garage, mailing flyers to consumers around the country that promised Hawaiian vacations for just $29. Gullible customers who called in their orders received a voucher entitling them to book a trip through the agency, but at a cost of several hundred dollars more. By the time FTC investigators took the company to court, the outfit had taken in more than $6 million...
Accidents usually accelerate John Irving's antic plots and keep his readers tuned for what happens next. A Prayer for Owen Meany takes a somewhat different approach. Framed by the myth of victim as redeemer, the book removes guesswork without reducing expectations. One knows going in that the mischievous author is staging a kind of "Gospel According to Charlie Brown." But anyone familiar with Irving's mastery of narrative technique, his dark humor and moral resolve also knows his fiction is cute like...