The Indianapolis Star from Indianapolis, Indiana • Page 52

C6 THE INDIANAPOLIS STAR SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 1995 NONFICTION Best Sellers Perceptions Of Deception Mm wiiirwu ik 1 Jj Ji II di FICTION Author Publisher Price 1. The Horse Whisperer Nicholas Evans Delacorte $23.95 2. Morning, Noon and Night Sidney Sheldon Morrow $24 3. Is for Lawless Sue Grafton Holt $24 4. Coming Home Rosamunde Pilcher St.

Martin's $25.95 5. Beach Music Pat Conroy DoubledayTalese $27.50 6. From Potter's Field 1 Patricia Cornwell Scribners $24 7. A Place Called Freedom Ken Follett Crown $25 8. The Celestine Prophecy James Redfield Warner $17.95 9.

Come to Grief Dick Francis Putnam $23.95 tO. Memnoch the Devil Anne Rice Knopf $25 11. Dead Man's Walk Larry McMurtry Simon Schuster $26 12. The Rainmaker John Grisham Doubleday $25.95 13. Lightning Danielle Steel Delacorte $24.95 NONFICTION Author Publisher Price 1.

My American Journey Colin Powell with Joseph E. Persico Random House NA 2. Men Are from Mars, Women Are From Venus John Gray HarperCollins $23 3. My Point and I Do Have One Ellen DeGeneres Bantam $19.95 4. The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success Deepak Chopra New World Library $12.95 5.

A Good Walk Spoiled John Feinstein Little, Brown $23.95 6. New Passages Gail Sheehy Random House $25 7. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil John Berendt Random House $23 8. How to Argue and Win Every Time Gerry Spence St. Martin's $22.95 9.

Stop Aging Now Jean Carper HarperCollins $21 10. To Renew America Newt Gingrich HarperCollins $24 Sources: Publisher's Weekly and Knight-Ridder Newspapers Hoaxes! Dupes, Dodges Other Dastardly Deceptions 4r4r4r Gordon Stein anCj Mane J. MacNee. Pages: 239. Price: $13.95.

Publisher: Visible Ink Press. An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural JL--JL-1A Author: James Randi. 7 Pages: 302. Price: $24.95. Publisher St.

Martin's Press. Star ratings: 4 excellent 3 good, 2 lair. 1 poor. By Rich Gotshall STAFF WRITER his is not a hoax. Nor are the books.

Two new works. published within weeks of each other, explore a wide variety of hoaxes, frauds and claims of the scientific, pseudo-scientific, supernatural and just plain weird. One is more readable, the other more useful. But both are Interesting and fun to read. The more readable book is Hoaxes! In a series of vignettes, the authors explore a variety of topics, from Bigfoot to UFOs to ersatz Beatles who toured the Great Plains in the early '60s.

The authors make it clear, though, what constitutes a hoax. There has to be deliberate deception. Misinterpretation, no matter how outlandish and widely disseminated, is not a hoax because there was no Intention of deceiving. A hoax, on the other hand, is planned. But a successful hoax must be at least a little believable, the authors contend.

"Hitler could have escaped from his bunker on April 30, 1945. Jack the Ripper might have been a doctor who routinely executed witnesses to a royal scandal. The boy King Tut might have cursed all who crashed his kingly catacomb. Then again, maybe not." The authors conclude: "Most Eur. -4 vft not only what it Isn't (a forecast for today) but what it was in Nostradamus' times (a political or religious commentary).

The appendices examine two widely known areas of paranormal claims King Tut's "curse" and 49 end-of-the-world prophecies that failed. Randi keeps his sense of humor, though. For instance, in the tit '-'4 Visible Ink Press section on failed prophecies, he writes about 18th-century mystict I spiritualist and "supreme egocentric" Emanuel Swedenborg. "Ever willing to be the center of attention for one reason or another. (Swedenborg) decided after one of his frequent consultations with angels that 1757 was the terml- nating date of the world.

"To his chagrin, he was not taken too seriously by anyone, including the angels." ESSAYS MYSTERY Family's sins resurface after death in the tub 1 1 1 lj.i ij.ij.m ii.ji i 1 1 jjimBiil i. ii jttf hoaxes work because somebody somewhere is ready and willing to believe the less than believable." The authors start with two classic hoaxes the Cardiff Giant (a large stone figure of a human that was supposed to be a fossilized man) and Piltdown Man (supposedly an ancient skull of a man with the jawbone resembling an ape, "clearly" the missing link in human evolution). From there, the authors go on to examine all manner of incidents and phenomena, such as the Loch Ness monster, unidentified flying objects, the shroud of Turin, the kidnapping of evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson and the "singing" duo Mill! Vanilll. The entries are written in an interesting manner, sometimes with an almost breezy style. But the authors don't make fun of the victims.

In fact, they go to lengths to show the contemporary contexts that led people to believe what they did. An Encyclopedia of Claims Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural The second book, An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural, is In dictionary form. This format limits the length the author has for any given entry. His style is straightforward, at times almost clinical. It is clear James Randi takes his subject seriously.

He defines terms along the way, such as coven (group of witches), familiar (a demon), and runes (a form of Anglo-Saxon sticklike writings). He also gives brief descriptions of famous spiritualists and aficionados of the occult, such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini. On some subjects, though, the author explores the topic in depth. For instance, in discussing the so-called prophecies of Nostradamus, a 16th-century mystic, the author takes readers through one of his predictions line by line to show No simple issue Characteristically, Berry refuses to call the issue simple or to present his meditation as the final answer. "Sometimes we must choose between two evils, and I don't recommend turning away from anybody in that predicament," he writes.

Moreover, he sends this message to those who make stopping abortion a cause by itself: "If we cannot justify violence to unborn human beings, then how can we Justify violence to those who are born, or to the world that they are born into?" You can't dismiss this spokesman for the endangered 1 percent. He continues to challenge any of the rest of us who care to pay attention. Hats off to Counterpoint, a new and earnest publishing venture, for Joining In that hard and risky work. Star Wire Services Reservation Blues Sherman Alexie, Atlantic Monthly Press, $21, 306 pages. In this imaginative first novel, Sherman Alexie, a young Spokane Coeur d'Alene Indian, elucidates the fractured hopes and bountiful dreams of a group of ragtag Indians whose aspirations lure them to life off the reservation only to have their collective Indian soul yank them back home.

Alexie has bound up the sorrow, wisdom and humor of life on "the rez" in a package that is not neat but exquisite fun to open. I Familiar themes resound in latest Berry collection ilr. WiNNUft Of THt 1994 EoiiAll AWftRD Bbst-Mysteiiy Novsl, TheSculptrets Counterpoint SOCIAL CRITIC: Wendell Berry considers abortion, environmentalists and health care in Another Turn of the Crank. "The 'liberals' believe Just as irrationally that a merely competitive economy, growing always larger in scale and controlled by fewer and fewer people, can be corrected by extending government charity to the inevitable victims: the dispossessed, the unrepresented, and the unemployed. "No agrarian or community member could look kindly upon or wish to serve either point of view." Does anyone care? Who cares what an agrarian thinks, given that roughly 1 percent of the United States population now lives on the farm? Berry's reply Is best summed up in the essay Conserving Communities, a patiently argued Jeremiad against "a world that the supranational corporations, and the governments and educational systems that serve them, will control entirely for their own convenience." This would be a postagrlcul-tural world.

Berry adds, and "you cannot have a postagricultural world that is not also postdemo-cratic, postreligious, postnatural In other words, posthuman." The five pieces In this collection sound familiar Berry themes, such as the need for local communities, the deadliness of centralization. The Scold's Bridle JL Author: Minette Wal- ters. Pages: 326. Price: $21.95. Publisher: St.

Martin's Press. Star ratings: 4 excellent 3 good, 2 fair, 1 poor. By David Richards SPECIAL WRITER Today a mean-spirited, critical person might be called a nag or motormouth. Not so back in medieval England. Then an irritated husband with a cross spouse simply snapped a metal contraption called a scold's bridle over her head and there was peace and quiet.

In The Scold's Bridle, the reader needn't go past the first page to witness a scene of death involving such a bridle. The demise of Mathilda Gilles- pie shocks the English village of Fontwell In Dorset and sets local tongues on fire. The wealthy woman Is found in her bath with a scold's bridle over her head. The bridle is an Instrument of punishment: an Iron frame to enclose the head, having a sharp metal bit which entered the mouth and restrained the tongue. A hated victim In this case It was decorated with flowers and symbolic nettles.

There were incisions in Mathilda's wrists and she bled to death In the bathtub. What happened to her? Enter Sarah Blakeney, who Is Mathilda's physician and about the only person In the village who befriended the old lady, who was hated by her neighbors for her snobbery and called "the rudest woman whom they had ever met." To her amazement, Dr. Blakeney finds that she Is the beneficiary of Mathilda's will to the tune of three-quarters of a million pounds. She meets the furious opposition of Mathilda's daughter and granddaughter. The term "dysfunctional" could well describe Mathilda's relatives.

Far from being normal, as would appear from their middle-class schooling and fine old homes, they have satanic skeletons in their closets. Their lives are full of evil secrets and half-forgotten aberrations of childhood. The murdered woman was Another Turn of the Crank -r-A JL Author: Wendell Berry. pages: 122. Price: $18.

Publisher: Counterpoint. Star ratings: 4 excellent, 3 good. 2 fair. 1 poor. By Dan Carpenter STAFF WRITER ou can put Wendell Berry in the best tradition of American social critics, which means you can't put him in a box.

You can't call him a liberal because of his environmental concern. He chides environmentalists for treating nature as a thing apart from people. You can't call him a conservative for opposing abortion. He is pro-life In a sense that's too broad to suit right-wing politics. You can't place the Kentucky poetessayistfarmer within the confines of today's public debate because he speaks for a part of society that's excluded at the peril of us all from that debate.

"The 'conservatives' believe that an economy that favors Its richest and most powerful participants will yet somehow serve the best interests of everybody," Berry says in his latest collection of essays, Another Turn of the Crank. From The Shore Jennifer Ackerman, Viking, 190 pages, $21. Jennifer Ackerman, who came to the small seashore community of Lewes, to start a family and write a book, found the tug of the ocean irresistible. "In the sea-molded curves and wide open space is release from harsh lines and comers, medicine for cramped places," she writes in Notes From the Shore. Serene and loving, Ackerman's deeply personal take on the world around her constitutes nature writing at its best.

V7 the tragedy of human alienation from the wild world and the inadequacy of organized religion to the task of restoring wholeness. Berry applies his humble, heretical thinking to many current topics, including health care and global trade agreements. But clearly his most provocative arguments have to do with abortion. He opposes the intentional killing of a human fetus for the same reason he opposes child abuse, forest destruction and strip mining: It abrogates the individual's responsibility for other life. "It Is wrong to assume that sex carries us into a personal privacy that separates us from everything else.

On the contrary, sex Joins us to the world. If it doesn't carry us Into love for what It binds us to, then It carries us into disrespect, damage, and loneliness." Dashboards David Holland, Phaidon PressChronicle Books, 224 pages, $39.95 Dashboards is a homage to classic cars by an English enthusiast and restorer, David Holland. The book covers 52 automobiles. Antique cars, with their dashboards of polished wood, leather and metal, have long held a fascination for collectors and admirers. If the white leather dash of a 1938 Mercedes-Benz 540K showed the influence of industrial design, the lemon yellow dash of a 1955 Corvette had to be a precursor of pop art.

St. Martin's Press raped by her uncle at age 13, and he continued to abuse her for 12 years. Her uncle, not her hus- band, was the father of Joanna, her only daughter. When Joanna was a child, Mathilda would put the painful bridle on her daughter's head as a kind of penance. Dr.

Blakeney, who Is investigated by the police as a possible murder suspect, has a troubled life herself. Her husband, a quirky artist, refers one of his girlfriends to her for an abortion! Dr. Blakeney Immediately demands a divorce. Strength and weakness It's the development of the plot, through long English-style conversations, that is the strength of this mystery novel. The reader never knows which way the au- thor will turn.

It is also a weak- ness because the reader's mind has to be coaxed through the complicated dialogue, Instead of dancing lightly with pleasure on the 1 surface of the words. Author Minette Walters, who lives In Hampshire, England, has written two other novels which have received best mystery and crime book awards for 1992 and 1994. She combines all the elements of the old-fashioned British mystery a small village, a well-meaning amateur detective and a corpse. She has created a fine stew of characters and suspense. It is a dark drama with as many layers as a rich chocolate torte.

David R. Richards is. a writer who lives in Zionsville. Fast Glance Green Frances Sherwood; Farrar, Straus Giroux; $22; 419 pages. Frances Sherwood's acclaimed first novel, Vindication, was a fictional biography of Mary Wollstonecraft, a blast into the 18th century.

Now, in Green, Sherwood revs up her storytelling machine to blaze over the 1950s. This time her heroine is a friendless, gawky Mormon-Armenian teen-ager named Zoe McLaren growing up in Northern California. Right from the start, we're on her side, relying on her narrative to navigate the waters of her wobbly, unpredictable life..