Book News
Crichton’s legacy: two more books.
Michael Crichton, the best-selling author of technological thrillers such as “The Andromeda Strain” and “Jurassic Park” who died of cancer in November, left behind at least one finished novel and about one-third of a second. Both will be released over the next year and a half, his publisher said.
HarperCollins will release “Pirate Latitudes,” an adventure story set in Jamaica in the 17th century, on Nov. 24. The company also plans to publish a technological thriller in fall 2010, a novel that Crichton was working on when he died.
The new novel, discovered by Crichton’s assistant in the writer’s computer files after his death, features a pirate named Hunter and the governor of Jamaica, and their plan to raid a Spanish treasure galleon.
The novel represents a departure from Crichton’s longtime fictional preoccupation with the moral and social ramifications of science and technology. But “Pirate Latitudes” also harks back to the kind of historical yarn that Crichton wrote in “The Great Train Robbery,” first published in 1975.
Although the author left many electronic files that have not been sifted through, the publishers have said they have no plans to take Crichton’s name and create a franchise in the way that ghostwriters have continued to publish books under Robert Ludlum’s name.
nytimes.com
First Lines
Darling Jim, by Christian Moerk, $25
Long after the house had been disinfected for new occupants and the bodies rested safely in the ground, people still didn’t come near it. “Cursed,” whispered the neighborhood gossips and nodded meaningfully. “Deadly, a haunted house!” cried the children, but they only ever mustered up the courage to take a step or two into the front yard before losing heart.
Because what Desmond the mailman had been the first to see inside had been unnatural strange.
Everybody liked Desmond, even if he might have been a little too nosy for his own good. He was also a slave to ritual, always noticing if anybody’s grass needed tending or whether the paint on the flagpole had begun to chip. Taken together with his guilt of having seen details without understanding their true meaning, these otherwise sociable qualities cost him his sanity.
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4. 7th Heaven, by James Patterson
5. Watchmen, by Alan Moore and David Lloyd
6. Three Cups of Tea, by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
7. Eat This, Not That! by David Zinczenko
8. Firefly Lane, by Kristin Hannah
9. Nauti Intentions, by Lora Leigh
10. Unaccustomed Earth, by Jhumpa Lahiri
Publishers Weekly
