And Our Critics Commend

Mademoiselle: Conversations With Nadia Boulanger, Bruno Monsaingeon, translated by Robyn Marsack (Carcanet). While “the public at large may not have known her all that well,” Boulanger’s one-woman school in Paris “made a decisive impact on several generations of important 20th-Century composers.” This is “a poignant testament to an extraordinary, and extraordinarily influential, mind” (Martin Bernheimer).

Martina, Martina Navratilova with George Vecsey (Knopf). “Much more than the superficial story of how a star is born, (the book) . . . is a bittersweet tale of a teen-age immigrant to the New World who found that the streets really are paved with gold--and of her nervy, enduring struggle to make sense of it all” (Karen Stabiner).

Previn, Helen Drees Ruttencutter (Marek/St. Martin’s). “It is about music, and it will make you rejoice that Previn is coming to Los Angeles” (Lawrence Morton).

When the Bough Breaks, Jonathan Kellerman (Atheneum). An ex-child psychologist is asked to solve a “categorically nasty double murder,” witnessed only by a 7-year-old girl. A highly readable mystery “of a superior level . . . (with a) rip-roaring, pell-mell pace” (Mary Dryden).

Under Gemini: A Prose Memoir and Selected Poetry, Miklos Radnoti; translated by Kenneth McRobbie, Zita McRobbie and Jascha Kessler. “These poems, written immediately before and during the mass execution of the entire labor camp (in World War II Germany), of which Radnoti was a part, form a tremendous affirmation of the desire for transcendence and the humility that is a part of all human beings” (Kenneth Funsten).

Graves in Academe, Susan Kenney (Viking). When Roz Howard accepts a professorship at a small Maine college, she finds the place in turmoil: the faculty battling the administration, students battling over the existence of fraternities. Out of the turmoil emerges a string of murders, and Howard becomes the sleuth. “Far-fetched fun, especially for those who still have their dogeared Norton’s Anthology handy” (Elaine Kendall).