But over the decades in the Senate, Kennedy accumulated a substantial body of work. Now, as the senator faces his own mortality with the diagnosis of a brain tumor, the staff of the Boston Globe has crafted Last Lion: The Fall and Rise of Ted Kennedy.

In his review, Minneapolis Star Tribune writer Tim O’Brien rattles off a list of scandals, enough scandals to keep the tabloids in business for years. The drinking and carousing, the academic misdeeds, and more:

“Last Lion explores all of these incidents, and it doesn’t give Kennedy a hometown discount. Chappaquiddick (the one-word incident that revolved around the death of Mary Jo Kopechne), the writers say, was ‘a failure of princely indulgence, assuming he could do anything and have others clean up, or something closer to the opposite — the faltering of a grief-stricken and damaged psyche, unable to confront his responsibilities.’ ”

The Globe staff, which probably knows Kennedy better than anyone else could, provides a unique view of the Massachusetts senator, the liberal’s liberal who has forged unlikely alliances and deep friendships with the likes of conservative Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah.

No doubt political junkies will love it.

Read more HERE.

Publisher DoubleDay has this to say: “With an unforgettable cast of characters and villains—from Baxter Tate, a drug-addled trust fund kid and possible rapist, to Dale, a pretty but seemingly quiet former math teacher who shares Kyle’s “cubicle” at the law firm, to two of the most powerful and fiercely competitive defense contractors in the country—and featuring all the twists and turns that have made John Grisham the most popular storyteller in the world, The Associate is vintage Grisham.”

If this all sounds familiar, rest assured it’s a new cast of characters and a different town, with all-new chase sequences (just a guess here).

For a sneak peek, CLICK HERE.

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee explains his military ancestors this way: “The McCains, bred to fight as Highland Scots of the Clan McDonald, arrived in the New World shortly after American gained her independence, when Hugh McCain settled his wife and six children in Caswell County, North Carolina, and built his estate, Lenox Castle.”

To see more about John McCain’s Faith of My Fathers, CLICK HERE.

Also tying together the stories — novellas, actually — is the poetry of Walt Whitman, which is woven through the book.

The book is ambitious not only in structure but in writing style. Like a musical virtuoso so familiar with his instrument that he has to increase the degree of difficulty to remain amused, the Cincinnati native writes each section of the book in a different genre — gothic ghost story, noir thriller, and science fiction.

To learn more about Specimen Days, CLICK HERE.

Frannie is a middle school-age girl living in the black section of a never-named urban city center in the winter of 1970. She has an older brother, Sean, who is deaf, and a mother who has suffered several miscarriages. One day, a new boy — a white boy — comes to her school as a transfer student. He’s quiet, has long hair and is named Jesus. No one is quite sure what to make of him, or the fact that he as a black father, or that he stands up to the class bully.

The title comes from an Emily Dickinson poem that Frannie and her class read and try to explain one day:

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune — without the words,
And never stops at all …

To learn more about Feathers and author Jacqueline Woodson, CLICK HERE.

To see more, CLICK HERE.

Grafton and her husband of 20-plus years, Steven Humphrey, live part of the year in Southern California, where they met, but the author has made it clear she’s not a Hollywood kind of girl. She had enough of that in the 1970s and ’80s when she made her living writing screenplays for film and television. (Her television movie, Walking through Fire (1979), earned her a Christopher Award.)

To learn more about this book and author, CLICK HERE.

Writer Chuck Bowen is the producer of this mini exploration, sponsored by the Ohio Center for the Book, which has sponsored several other books and authors with Ohio connections. In the future, look for a blog from Chuck, who was well-qualified for this assignment, as he and his wife are in the process of potty training their daughter. We’ll ask about their daughter’s favorite song.

To visit the SideTrip, CLICK HERE.

Those of you, parents and grandparents, may remember being enchanted as youngsters by Disney’s animated “Cinderella” – all right, boys maybe not so much. The story is familiar. Downtrodden maiden meets charming prince, he falls for her, she flees the scene as the clock strikes 12. He sets out to find her.

Heard it all before? Probably not as told by Cynthia Rylant, and probably not with the exquisite renderings of artist Mary Blair, who created the vision for Walt Disney’s Cinderella.

Even the cover suggests something a little different is afoot. A tiny dot of an eye and puff of blush on a maiden’s face suggest a hurried, harried state as curtains billow in her wake.

Rylant is a gifted and prolific storyteller, whose words are crafted with economy and intelligence. Come see for yourself.

Click here to discover more about the author and Cinderella

“It’s what heaven must be,” Uncle says to me. “With clouds, like soft blankets, saying, ‘Come on in and get warm. Stay a while and be a wind flyer too.’”

To discover more about Angela Johnson and “Wind Flyers,” CLICK HERE