The Daily Oklahoman from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma • 230

SUNDAY, JULY 23, 2000 9 THE SUNDAY OKLAHOMAN DESTI NATIONS Books BEST SELLERS REVIEW REVIEW best-sellers to Publishers Current according Tragic loss affects close-knit family Experiences teaches one about living Weekly. FACTION 1. The House on Hope Street Danielle Steel 2. Omerta Mario Puzo 3. Riptide Catherine Coulter 4.

Heartbreaker Julie Garwood 5. Hot Six Janet Evanovich 6. Cradle and All James Patterson 7. Before I Say Goodbye Mary Higgins Clark "The House On Hope Street" By Danielle Steel Dell Publishing, $19.95 "Safekeeping" is an unconventional novel, told by a female through a collection of separate but related memories. The book is constructed in three parts.

Park One, titled "Before," captures the memories of experiences encountered by an adult examining her life after her third husband's death, and looking back on her youth, the DANIELLE Steel's 49th novel is just 231 pages but it chronicles well a family's devastating loss and joyous recovery. As always, Steel's main characters are beautiful, well bred, successful and smart. Jack and Liz Sutherland, who share a law practice, have five happy well-adjusted children, an exceptional housekeeper and a blissful marriage. But it all falls apart on Christmas morning when Jack's 10-minute errand to pick up papers in his office ends in a needless, unpredictable tragedy. A stunned Liz is left to pick up the pieces of her children's lives and continue with a busy, successful law firm.

Then her life takes another spin when a THt diving accident sends her eldest son to the hospital. The handsome treating physician, Bill Webster, is the epitome of decency, and he's single. He soon finds himself attracted to Liz as he observes her caring concern for her injured son. Their friendship grows but Liz is faced with working through the grief that shrouds her life and the lives of her children. No easy task, but not insurmountable.

The ending one reason the author's books are so appealing is so romantic BsREXHBJEN victories as well as the defeats. Part Two, "Mortality," deals with her ma "Safekeeping" By AJjigail Thomas Knopf, $22 it makes us all believe the knight in shining armor will one day come riding up on his white horse. Peggy Gandy REVIEW Uriefs Books will endure British officials expose Nazi spy "A Gathering of Spies" By John AJtman Putnam, $24.95 While driving in the country recently, I noticed the countless horses in pastures. "Those who said the automobile would drive horses to extinction were wrong," I said to myself. Likewise, those who say literature via computer will maie books disappear are mistaken.

Evidence is seen in the buying frenzy over "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire." Millions of copies were sold in the first few hours after the book came out. Look, too, at how John Grisharn's novels are gobbled up as soon as they come off the presses. Books have portability. Try taking a computer to bed or to the beach or on a crowded airliner. Just the feel of a book in one's hand provides a sense of security.

It can be read while waiting in a car pool or for a doctor or while television is on. Daniel J. Boorstin, former librarian of Congress, said, "A book is magical; it transcends time and space." Poet Amy Lowell said, "For books are more turation, her kids, her parents, her sister and her second husband. Part Three, "Here and Now," focuses on the narrator's present, her third husband and the sum of all her experiences and the lessons learned from them. The novel is written in fragments of memories that hold special meaning for the narrator.

What can we humans leave to someone when we go? Memories. What we discover, after all, is that we must live with our memories of ourselves as well as others, our relationship to others. Therefore, we must make every memory count for something. Thomas underscores trie importance of living life to its fullest, but not to its extreme. She accomplishes this by focusing on the senses seeing, feeling, smelling, hearing and tasting.

She also avoids using a single proper name of any person throughout the novel; that way the reader is forced to assess the experience rather than the individual encountering it. "Safekeeping" is a woman's book written by a woman, about a woman, for women. Most readers will find themselves in many of the experiences. Paul Lehman Katarina Heinrich is a Nazi sleeper agent placed in America in 1932. Now, 11 years later, the role she assumed as wife of a Princeton professor is about to pay off.

Her husband is sent to Los Alamos, N.M., to work on a new weapon. Katarina reactivates herself but has no way to get her top secret information back to Germany except to take it herself. Her only contact is a fellow agent in England. What she doesn't know is that this agent and others have been, "turned" as part of Operation Double Cross. She has now been identified and the British are expecting her.

than books, they are the life, the very heart and core of ages past, the reason why men lived and worked and died, the essence and quintessence of their lives." Pseudo-pundits often make dire predictions that a certain thing is going to fade away because of some new development. Radio, how- She eludes, or rather kills, most of her pursuers as she tries to rendezvous with a submarine. But in a subplot, Harry Winterbo-tham, working for MI-5 as part of Double Cross, has a wife in Dachau and his own plan to use Katarina to help free his wife. Airman, a first-time novelist, has written a thriller, sometimes; predictable, sometimes graphically bloody, but mostly a well written debut. John Harrington 8.

The Brethren John Grisham 9. The Indwelling Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins 10. Liar's Game Eric Jerome Dickey NONFICTION 1 Who Moved My Cheese? Spencer Johnson 2. Body for Life Bill Phillips and Michael D'Orso 3. The Day John Died Christopher Andersen 4.

Flags of Our Fathers James Bradley with Ron Powers 5. Tuesdays with Morrie Mitch Albom 6. Ten Things I Wish I'd Known-Before I Went Out into the Real World Maria Shriver 7. It's Not About the Bike Lance Armstrong with Sally Jenkins 8. Relationship Rescue Phillip C.

McGraw 9. In a Sunburned Country Bill Bryson 1 0. Simple Abundance Sarah Ban Breathnach LOCALLY Current best-selling books at Waldenbooks in Heritage Park Mall, 6801 Reno, Midwest City, are: HARDBACK ever, didn't disappear with the advent of tele-vision; likewise, movies didn't go away. Newspapers, too, are viewed by some as a dying institution, but papers fill an unusual DEIMIMIE HALL REVIEWS Book gives history new outlook role. They have space to give news in deptn.

(One 30-minute television newscast minus the fluff and commercials has only enough content to fill half a newspaper page.) Newspapers can be read at one's convenience, saved, clipped and framed the list goes on. No, books are not fading away and neither are newspapers. You just wait and see! Entries wanted Oklahoma Center for the Book is seeking entries for its 12th annual Oklahoma Book Award, which will be given March 10. Books entered must have been published between Jan. 1 and Dec.

31, 2000. Judges will consider entries in these categories: fiction, non-fiction, childrenyoung adult, poetry and designillustration. Books may be entered in more than one category. For more information, call 522-3575. Novel "Be the One" by April Smith.

Knopf, $24. Cassidy Sanderson's father taught her to play baseball and to Have you ever wondered what ever happened to Beethoven's ear trumpets? Have you ever been struck with curiosity over the whereabouts of Jesse James' stickpin? Have you ever awakened in the middle of the night asking yourself where Galileo's middle finger resides? Probably not. But wouldn't it be interesting anyway to know those little tidbits of information and amaze your friends at parties? Now you can, with the help of Harvey Rach-lin's enchanting and informative book. Rachlin is the author of 11 books, including "Lucy's Bones, Sacred Stones, and Einstein's Brain." (Are you seeing a pattern here?) He is the primary consultant to the History Channel's weekly series "History's Lost and Found." His curiosity and enthusiasm for the subject matter permeates all who watch the History Channel or read his books. It's a fun ride through history, looking at objects not as objects in and of themselves, but as a memento of history, a glimpse into the time from which it came and the people whose lives it affected.

Take, for instance, Thomas Edison's original "Jumbo's Hide, Elvis's Ride, and the Tooth of Buddha" By Harvey Rachlin Henry Holt, $25 tinfoil phonograph. I Edison was trying to make improvements on the telegraph and telephone. After some tinkering with his contraption, ita worked and history was made. The public inter- est and the fad faded, however, and the graph was lost in time, But it was the progenitor of a new technology that launched the sound-iS; recording age. These stories and so many more are within, the pages.

It isn't a history book, per se; more of a fact-filled field trip to a museum. That's what makes it so enjoyable. It's simply aS fun book that you can read at the airport, or rni the bathroom or at night when you wake up with a cold sweat and wonder what on earthy happened to the truce flag that ended World War; I. w-w Jonathan Shipley love baseball, and she played with a pro women's team. Now she's a scout for the Los Angeles Dodgers organization, the only female on a highly competitive circuit.

She finds a good prospect in the Dominican Republic, becomes embroiled in organized crime, drugs and voodoo. She is victimized by a blackmailer, falls in love with a lowlife, consorts with cops and nurtures her player through the system. All of which creates a rare summer novel with a unisex appeal, Cassidy Sanderson is one tough heroine, though she has definite female flaws, Author Smith writes in a style that suits her heroine, with a macho April Smith: Author of "Be the One" Poetry teaches a tragic lesson punch and a line drive plot, and romance standing by in the bullpen but not interfering with the game. Ann DeFrange "The Cherokee Lottery: A Sequence of Poems" By William Jay Smith Curbstone, $13.95 steries Mys "The Hard Detective" by H.R.F. Keating.

St. Martin's Mino OK EE I.OTT ERY Many of the poems are spired by artworks "TheSS Choctaw Stick-Ball Game" by' George Catlin in 1834 and Search for the Purebloods" by Charles Banks Wilson in 1983. Historic figures appear in au-i thentic episodes Gon. Win-s field Scott and the Cherokee1 Going Snake and so much be-4 trayal; tho death of tho Semi-f nolo Osceola, tho bizarre fx-m neral of the Pushmataha, tho sanity- suspect mind of Sequoyah fromgS which sprang an alphabet, falo Bill and Sitting Bull travel-: ing together to Europe. Smith makes mighty images.

History can teach us what happened. Pootry can help usSS understand what it must havejfi felt like when it happened. 1. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire J.K. Rowling 2.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets J.K. Rowling 3. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban J.K. Rowling 4. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone J.K.

Rowling 5. Riptide Catherine Coulter PAPERBACK 1. Tears of the Moon Nora Roberts 2. Perfect Storm Sebastian Jungor 3. Ashes to Ashes Taml Hoag 4.

Hannibal Thomas Harris 5. Secret Love Slophanio Laurons We all know the story of the forced removal of the Five Civilized Tribes to Oklahoma. We know it's not a nice story, with many cruel and tragic implications. Smith presents the narrative as poetry, shaping history into metered lines and rhymes and free verse, spicing it with emotion, dressing it in language that speaks eloquently through a variety of voices Indians, soldiers, observers. "When the Cherokees refused to leave, the state set up a lottery to rid them of their land: a clumsy wooden wheel sat poised above great black numbers painted on bright squares woodpecker red and watermelon green, wild azalea orange and morning glory blue taur, $25.95 Detective Inspector Harriet Martens tries to live up to her nickname "the hard detective" so everyone will know a woman police commander can be as tough as any man.

When someone begins killing her officers in a grim parody on the book of Exodus eye for eye, tooth for tooth Harriot and some co-workers think the murders may bo retribution for her recent crackdown on crime, As more deaths occur, the fear grows that the killer may have chosen Harriot as the final victim. "Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder" by Joanne Fluke. Kensington, $20 Hannah Swonsen's talents for baking and amateur sleuthing make hor small town Minnesota cookie shop a busy place in the first of a now mystery series, Hannah is getting ready for the morning rush to tho Cookie Jar when she cliscovors tho milkman has boon shot to death in his truck behind her shop, The more her customers nslc about the murdor, tho more Hannah knows sho has to help solve it, Interspersed with some delicious-sounding cookie recipos, this mystery is light reading but hoavy on tho cnlorios, Kay Dyer sequence of poems by William Jay Smith In Smith's hands, it a or ml lesson. to designate the farms that now were up for Ann DeFrange.li.