Lansing State Journal from Lansing, Michigan • Page 50

6D bl-I BEST-SELLERS Source Publisher Weekly ook MASS MARKET 1. "The Collectors" by David Baldacci 2. "Act of Treason" by Vince Flynn 3. "74 Seaside Avenue" by Debbie Macomber 4. "Killer Dreams" by Iris Johansen 5.

"Innocent in Death" by J.D. Robb HARDCOVER NONFICTION 1. "The Age of Turbulence" by A. Greenspan 2. "If I Did If by the Goldman Family 3.

"The Secret" by Rhonda Byrne 4. "Louder Than Words" by Jenny McCarthy 5. "Power to the People" by Laura Ingraham HARDCOVER FICTION 1 "You've Been Warned" by James Patterson, Howard Roughan 2. "A Thousand Splendid Suns" by Khaled Hosseini 3. "Dead Heat" by D.

Francis, F. Francis 4. "Making Money" by Terry Pratchett 5. "The Bone Garden" byT. Gerritsen Lansing State journal www.lsj.com SUNDAY SEPT.

30, 2007 Of Local Interest 'The State of Black Michigan, 1967-2007' Edited by Joe T. Darden, Curtis Stokes and Richard W. Thomas (Michigan State University Press, $39.95) Authors take break from series (and score) TsX 1967 7 is a professor of history at MSU. He has conducted workshops on race relations for more than 30 years. LOCAL APPEARANCE There will be a talk and signing with the editors at 7:30 p.m.

Wednesday at Schuler Books Music in the Meridian Mall. Info: 349-8840 or www.schulerbooks.com. ABOUT 'BLACK MICHIGAN' From the publisher's Web site: "The State of Black Michigan" investigates how, since 1967, Michigan's black population has changed, how its interactions with the white community have altered, and, most important, how policymakers can act to further narrow the "equality gap" that continues to persist. ABOUT THE EDITORS Darden is a professor of geography at Michigan State University and former dean of Urban Affairs Programs, He is also a former Fulbright Scholar. Stokes is a professor in James Madison College and director of African American and African Studies at MSU.

He also serves as series editor of the Black American and Diaspora Studies book series for Michigan State University Press. Thomas Two talented mystery writers have produced distinctive, entertaining, standalone crime novels, taking a break from their popular series. Each author showcases a conflicted central character who deals with young adults; both are involved in highly unusual, deadly situations. "Night Work" by Steve Hamilton (St. Martin's Press, $23.95) is a break-jf away thriller Looking back at 'The Outsiders S.E.

Hinton reflects on the beloved teen novel, 40 years later Jtffc If tZt-0 iiuui mc author of the acclaimed Alex McK-night series. Set in the Hudson Valley area of New York instead of Michigan's RAY WALSH BOOKS faywaWvoy3ger net Inside The Outsiders': Writer S.E. Hinton, best known for her young adult novel "The Outsiders," responds to a question during an interview. Associated Press in Tulsa that included Ponyboy as a minor character. Other novels, also in and around Tulsa, include "Tex," "Rumble Fish" and "Taming the Star Runner." This is now Hinton has been married since 1970 to her college sweetheart, mathematician and computer scientist David Inhofe, and they have a son, Nick, now in his 20s.

According to Viking, a division of Penguin Group USA, "The Outsiders" has sold more than 13 million copies and still sells more than 500,000 a year. Even Hinton says her book is dated in some ways), but if standard reading at Will Rogers, including in the classroom of Kim Piper, a ninth-grade English teacher. "There's a lot of poverty at Will Rogers, a lot of broken families," Piper says. "So kids here can especially identify with Ponyboy and his group. It's what kids that age are thinking about, when they feel kind of isolated from everybody else." "(The Outsiders' is) an extremely outrageous and amazing book," says one ninth-grader at Will Rogers, Esteban Rivero.

"It talks about how youngsters live and how they can get all caught up in their friends and cliques. This book has taught me so many things about life." HlLLEL ITALIE Associated Press Tulsa, is a broad clash of neighborhoods you can tell apart by how the grass grows, bright and trim in the richer sections, pale and shaggy in the poorer spots. Tulsa native S.E. Hinton, a cult figure for 40 years since the publication of "The Outsiders," knows the difference between the wild and the well-kept lawn. Her million-selling book not only helped establish the young adult novel but remains a classic story of gangs at knife's edge.

She's come a long way Once a teen sensation who wrote her most famous book while still in high school, Hinton is now 59, a dry-witted woman. As a child, she dreamed of writing a book she wanted to read, a novel that told the truth about how kids think. Forty years later, a lot of young people still think she succeeded. Hinton recently sat and chatted in the library of Will Rogers High School in Tulsa, the very room where she worked on parts of her novel. "I was exhilarated," she recalls about that time.

"I remember the buzz, the feeling like you're burning up." As a student, Hinton once received a in creative writ ferent. We realized there was a real market for books such as 'The says Ron Beuhl, a longtime friend of Hinton's who worked with her in the 1970s when he was a publisher at Dell and specialized in young adult paperbacks. For Hinton, fame at any speed was too sudden. She suffered from writer's block, needing three years to complete her next novel, "That Was Then, This Is Now," another story of street life "I could picture hundreds and hundreds of boys living on the wrong sides of cities, boys with black eyes who jumped at their own shadows," Hinton wrote in the novel. "Hundreds of boys who maybe watched sunsets and looked at stars and ached for something better." Tulsa has changed in many ways since Hinton's childhood.

But gangs are still a problem, school and police officials agree, and the weapons a lot deadlier than the switchblades carried by the teens in Hinton's book. "We have a significant gang presence and a set of issues we have to deal with, but that's part of what resonates with the kids about her book," says Will Rogers principal Kevin Burr. "We try to get Vision Center at meijer Upper Peninsula, Hamilton's "Work" introduces Joe Trumbull, a juvenile probation officer. Trumbull, a jazz-loving boxing enthusiast, is trying to escape from bad memories his fiancee was strangled to death two years earlier. He goes out on a successful blind date with Marlene, whose body is discovered the next day.

Trumbull tries to figure out the identity of the killer and becomes a prime suspect when another victim surfaces. His efforts take him away from the gritty, well-described streets of Kingston N.Y.; as he seeks answers, he realizes that he's being stalked by a clever psychopath. Hamilton has carefully created a dark, brooding thriller with a powerful conclusion, but his loyal fans would probably prefer another stronger, excellent Alex McKnight novel. "No Time for Goodbye" by Canadian journalist and mystery writer Linwood Barclay (Bantam Books, $22) deals with assorted problems that face Terry Archer, a mild-mannered Connecticut high school English teacher; his wife, Cynthia; and their daughter, Grace. Twenty-five years earlier, Cynthia's parents and brother disappeared in a mystery that's never been solved.

Now Cynthia has appeared on a crime re-enactment TV program in hope of finding some answers. Instead, she gets a weird psychic, a strange car in the neighborhood and unusual phone calls; someone breaks into their house, stealing nothing but leaving a remarkable item. Cynthia and Terry decide to hire a private investigator who has unsettling results. Soon, there are more unanswered questions and the body count rises. Barclay, who's written four books starring journalist Zack Walker, adds his usual touch of dark humor.

While a few of the unexpected plot twists are not entirely credible, it's still an engrossing, captivating contemporary thriller. Ray Walsh, owner of East Lansing's Curious Book Shop, has reviewed crime novels and noir the kids to understand that they're not that different from each other or from kids who ing, but she is now an honored alumna of Will Rogers, her picture displayed be his way home from the movies. Her novel is known to millions, but Hinton's original audience was herself. She had long felt that popular culture offered nothing to remind of her own life, not such novels as "The Catcher in the Rye" (Holden Caufield needs a "good spanking," she says with a laugh), not the movies or even rock 'n' rollers like Elvis Presley, a favorite of the greasers. She started at age 15 and spent a year and a half working on the book.

Hinton didn't even think of publishing the book until the mother of one of her friends read the manuscript and liked it enough to contact an agent based in New York. Viking signed her up and suggested she call herself S.E. in print, so male critics wouldn't be turned off by a woman writer. Overcoming cliches "The Outsiders" was published in 1967 but greeted more as a curiosity than a breakthrough. "Can sincerity overcome cliches?" began a brief New York Times review by Thomas Fleming.

"In this book by a now 17-year-old author, it almost does the trick." "It was overemotional, over the top, melodramatic," Hinton acknowledges. "But its vices were its virtues, because kids feel that way." Hinton's first royalty check was $10, she says, and at one point "The Outsiders" was in danger of going out of print. But librarians and teachers made it a best seller, and a landmark, a turning point in how literature was presented to students. "Before "The textbooks were used for English classes. I remember going to American Library Association conferences and they were clamoring for something dif- Fall for our frames grew up in a different era." 1 tSi.

I hind a glass case. Hinton rarely goes to the high school, tea I On her own y3 but students apparently still like her books enough to steal them, accord Forty years ago, the battles were fought between the upper class "socs" (pro-n ing to librarian Carrie Fleharty. "I can't keep them on the shelves," she says with a laugh. "The wtth lens purchase (all Rx frames included!) and the lower class "greasers," gangs so bitter that they entered the school through separate doors. Susan Eloise Hinton, daughter of a salesman and a factory worker, was neither a "greaser" nor a "soc," but more at home with the greasers, who lived in her neighborhood.

She had been writing stories for much of her life, including a couple of "pretty bad" novels before getting started on "The Outsiders," inspired after a friend of hers was beaten up on kids keep taking them out and 'forgetting' to bring them back." A tale of two gangs "The Outsiders" is the raw, but hopeful story of rival gangs that features narrator Pony-boy Curtis, the bookish greaser who can quote Robert Frost; macho Dallas Winston, blue eyes "blazing ice, cold with a hatred of the whole and little Johnny Cade, a "dark puppy that has been kicked too thrillers regularly since 1987. many times. rtitc ortcTi Attention: HEMORRHOID 0 Includes: V. 1 We offer a simple, NON-SURGICAL treatment for symptomatic internal hemorrhoids. Eye Exam or $30 instant savings with current prescription Rx Eyeglasses Rx Sunglasses (or a clear 2nd pair) Choose from any frame up to $80, any available prescription, vT1" and plastic single vision scratch-resistant lenses.

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