The Man With The Dancing Eyes

The Man With The Dancing Eyes by Sophie Dahl

Chef and cookbook author Sophie Dahl began her career as a model. Her first book, published in 2003 was an illustrated novella called "The Man With The Dancing Eyes", which was a Times bestselling book. It was illustrated by British artist Annie Morris. It is a "magical, bittersweet, and utterly charming" romance with end pages filled with Morris's colorful drawings of birds.

Lockdown

Lockdown by Laurie R. King

This is an unusual novel for Laurie King in format and in content. The book is mostly short chapters from a single day at Guadalupe Middle School on the Central Coast area of California. These chapter titles have a time of day and a character's name, starting with "12:13 a.m. Brendan." The book has a dozen characters who are tracked throughout the book in this manner. These include the school principal, her husband, the school janitor, the school coach, the local police sergeant, and six of the students. The combination of a chronological sequence and 12 points of view made getting engaged in the story slow for me. This chronological approach is broken up with longer chapters that provide background information for several of the main characters.
In the Acknowledgements section at the end of the story the author says that the novel is built out of short stories written as long as 20 years ago that originally had no apparent connecting theme. That theme seems to be how we can heal and grow from tragedy as a community.