Paper pregnancy

Who uses it: Adoptive parents
What it means: The time between filing paperwork and getting a referral for adoption
How you can use it: When expecting something to bear fruit.

I'm headed to New York City this morning for a reunion with two of my best friends from college, Eileen Consey-Heywood and Carla Forbes-Kelly. (I feel a little underdressed since I don't have a hyphenated last name, but I suppose I could hyphenate my two first names, the way Mary-Chapin Carpenter does.) The weather is gorgeous, and we're supposed to go to a baseball game tonight (Yankees? Mets? I'd better figure it out before I get there).

Anna called this morning to report a rare celebrity-sighting in central Maine, so check out her blog for details. Today's term is courtesy of her, since both the Bragdons and the Lechners are currently having paper pregnancies.

What I Read This Week

Joseph Wambaugh, Hollywood Station. I read this book in manuscript; Amazon says it'll be available in late November, but Sarah Weinman said she thought it wasn't due until January of next year. It's a massive, episodic look at the post-reform era Los Angeles Police Department, and should be another big bestseller.

Christopher Fowler, Ten-Second Staircase. Detectives Bryant and May, the old men who run London's Peculiar Crimes Unit, investigate a series of murders that seem to have been committed by a ghostly highwayman. This fourth entry is just as much fun as the first, and I feel rewarded for sticking with the series.

Keith Donahue, The Stolen Child. Even Amazon's shipping boxes have ads for this book, but for once, the book is just as good as promised. Eight-year-old Henry Day runs away to the woods, where a band of fairies seizes him. Their leader changes places with him and returns to Henry's family to live out his own stolen life, while Henry, now called Aniday, remains trapped in a permanent childhood. This is a beautiful, sad book about identity, aging and love.

Susan Kandel, Sam Spade in the Green Room. Susan Kandel really hits her stride with the third book in her Cece Caruso series. Cece is a biographer of crime writers, and each book's mystery models itself roughly on the subject of the book Cece's writing. This time around, she's serving as consultant to a movie based on her biography of Dashiell Hammett, and becomes involved in a mystery that includes murder, stolen identities, blackmail, and long-kept secrets. Cece is a wisecracking heroine, but I never feel that Kandel treats the crimes in her books too lightly.