Weekend book picks: 'Canada,' 'Craig Claiborne'

Weekend book picks: 'Canada,' 'Craig Claiborne'

Canada
By Richard Ford; Ecco, 420 pp., $27.99; fiction

In 1960, when Dell Parsons was 15, his father, a retired Air Force captain, and his mother, a teacher, robbed a North Dakota bank. They got away with $2,500, but not for long. No one, including their twin son and daughter at home in Great Falls, Mont., thought them capable of such ruinous stupidity. That may sound like an implausible premise for a novel. But part of the magic of Richard Ford's Canada is how his narrator, Dell, telling the story 50 years later, convinces readers otherwise .

USA TODAY says **** out of four. "A triumph of voice … heartbreaking."

The Man Who Changedthe Way We Eat:Craig Claiborne ebbbbband the American Food Renaissance
By Thomas McNamee; Free Press, 291 pp., $27; non-fiction

This new biography of the late, legendary New York Times food critic Craig Claiborne explores how he "changed the way we eat" â€" but also draws back the curtain on his unhappy personal life.

USA TODAY says *** out of four. "McNamee has done his homework, offering up a full portrait of Claiborne, whose life was not all crème fraiche."

As the Crow Flies
By Craig Johnson; Vik ing, 308 pp., $25.95; fiction

In the latest in Craig Johnson's Walt Longmire series, the Wyoming sheriff and his friend Henry Standing Bear witness a young Crow woman fall to her death from a cliff on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation. Longmire butts heads with the new tribal police chief as the investigation heats up.

USA TODAY says ***½ out of four. "Superb … a top-notch tale of complex emotions and misguided treachery."

The Stonecutter
By Camilla Läckberg; Pegasus, 489 pp., $25.95; fiction

Swedish novelist Camilla Läckberg continues to make a name in America. In The Stonecutter, she weaves together two stories: one the contemporary investigation of the murder of a young girl in the coastal town of Fjällbacka; the other set a century ago of a wealthy young woman forced to marry a stonecutter following their torrid affair.

USA TODAY says ***½ out of four. "Equal parts atmospheric and suspenseful. … (Lackberg has) incomparable storytelling skills."

The Presidents Club:Inside the World's Most Exclusive Fraternity
By Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy, Simon Schuster, 527 pp., $32.50; non-fiction

Time magazine's Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy bring "brilliant investigative work" to their study of the Oval Office, uncovering a powerful secret fraternity in which ex-presidents stay in the game by counseling their inexperienced successors.

USA TODAY says ***½ out of four. "A lucid and well-written glimpse into the modern presidency and its self-sustainin g shadow organization."