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Jim Higgins

‘Coldest War’ heats up alternative history in fantasy trilogy

Jim Higgins Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Last updated Saturday, August 11, 2012 - 9:35pm

“THE COLDEST WAR.” By Ian Tregillis. Tor. $25.99.

With “The Coldest War,” Ian Tregillis continues an impressive fantasy/alternative-history trilogy he began with “Bitter Seeds.” The first novel, set in Britain’s darkest hours of World War II, pitted British warlocks, calling on dark otherworldly forces, against young Nazi Ubermenschen, whose X-men-like superpowers (invisibility, flamethrowing) are fueled by battery power fed directly into their brains.

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Christopher Moore novel on Impressionists paints them extra blue

Jim Higgins Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Last updated Sunday, April 15, 2012 - 7:22am

"SACRE BLEU: A COMEDY D'ART." By Christopher Moore. William Morrow. $26.99.

Christopher Moore's new novel blends diligently researched art history smoothly with his fevered, fiendish imagination. So smoothly, in fact, that you must never, EVER give this book to a docent who gives museum tours.

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Lauren Fox's 'Friends' a sharp portrait of female friendship

Jim Higgins Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Last updated Sunday, February 19, 2012 - 8:35am

FRIENDS LIKE US. By Lauren Fox. Knopf. 288 pages. $24.95.

As I read Lauren Fox's new novel, I dog-eared the pages with witty lines, or impressively bitter ones, or ones that made me laugh.

Please forgive me, Alfred A. Knopf, for what I've done to your book. I hadn't intended to make origami out of it.

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Black history told in images, essays

Jim Higgins Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Last updated Sunday, January 29, 2012 - 4:48pm

"LIFE UPON THESE SHORES: LOOKING AT AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY 1513-2008." By Henry Louis Gates Jr. Knopf. $50.

222The great strength of "Life Upon These Shores" is the "abundance of images" that Gates, the editor-curator, and his team of associates have woven into this book. with more than 700 photos, maps, illustrations, posters and cartoons.

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'Pigeon English' speaks childhood fluently

Jim Higgins Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Last updated Sunday, August 21, 2011 - 4:02pm

"PIGEON ENGLISH." By Stephen Kelman. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. $24.

Like "Room," whose author Emma Donoghue provided an enthusiastic blurb, and Mark Haddon's "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time," to which it is occasionally compared, Stephen Kelman's "Pigeon English" is a novel for adults told in the remarkable voice of a child. All three virtuosic novels are worth reading if only to enjoy the spell those voices create.

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Tom Waits opens up in book of interviews

Jim Higgins Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Last updated Sunday, August 21, 2011 - 4:18pm

"TOM WAITS ON TOM WAITS: INTERVIEWS AND ENCOUNTERS." Edited by Paul Maher Jr. Chicago Review Press. $19.95.

In "Tom Waits on Tom Waits: Interviews and Encounters," editor Paul Maher Jr. has compiled more than 50 interviews from singer-songwriter Tom Waits to "illustrate his creative progression through the years." Maher has organized them chronologically around Waits' albums, beginning with "Closing Time" (1973).

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