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"  Thieves of Manhattan, by Adam Langer  From the first page, you&amp;#039;re rooting for Ian Minot, an aspiring author whose life is anything but extraordinary. He works in a caf\u00E9 by day and writes at night. The only extraordinary element in his life is his exotic Russian girlfriend, Anya Petrescu. Then Ian he meets Jed Roth, an ex-book publisher who prods Ian on a literary journey that changes his life or, as others may see it, a journey that foreshadows his life.\u2014Tina Janczura Stanton, Chicago  With quirky literary references that make you want to add to your personal library, Adam Langer artfully weaves a clever tale. Ian Minot, a writer who is struggling with his creativity in a world that no longer values art for the sake of art, finds himself living within his own novel. When he is offered a way into the exclusive and often ostentatious world of published authors, Ian willingly compromises his standards for a chance at the life he always wanted. But when he realizes that he is involved in a plot that is in the hands of another author, he must outsmart his manipulator.\u2014Kristen Teraila, Chevy Chase, MD &amp;quot;Sometimes fiction lies,&amp;quot; says one of the villains in Thieves of Manhattan. A kind of metafiction with subtle literary allusions delightful to any aspiring writer, the book begins as an insider&amp;#039;s timely, comedic expos\u00E9 of the financial and corresponding literary demise of today&amp;#039;s publishing industry. The fascinating world created by Langer comprises vividly realized characters, including authors with made-up life stories, an embittered ex-editor with an unpublished adventure novel, and the narrator, a struggling, young short-story writer with an abundance of rejection letters and a tempting, lucrative offer. Yet after the promising plotline allows Langer to offer brilliant advice on the craft of writing and the flaws to avoid\u2014shallow characterization, unbelievable human behavior, and abrupt endings\u2014the final third of the novel ironically succumbs to those exact mistakes. In the end, then, for all the novel&amp;#039;s astute diagnoses and prescriptions for the current state of literature, it is merely a disappointing symptom of fiction&amp;#039;s slow, bitter death.\u2014Andrea Bianchi, Glen Ellyn, IL  Dear Money, by Martha McPhee  India Palmer is an established author living a Manhattan lifestyle beyond her means. She covets the things her wealthy friends have, including fancy schools and classes for children, and indulges in decadent purchases that her bank account can&amp;#039;t sustain. Thus financially overextended, India succumbs to a proposition by the dashing Win Johns to become a mortgage-bond trader and embraces the lifestyle with ease, even humbling a female coworker in a hamburger-eating contest. While India&amp;#039;s character appeal is lacking, her journey into a newfound career offers insight into the crazy world of mortgage-backed securities and CMOs that caused the recent financial crisis.\u2014Nancy De Sa, New York City Witnessing India&amp;#039;s stunningly quick ascent to bond trader extraordinaire, one wonders if and when the thread will be pulled that will unravel her silky new existence. This tightrope-walking jaunt leaves the reader breathless and ultimately stunned by the most unlikely turn of events.\u2014Tracy Angeles, Parker, CO McPhee undoubtedly possesses firsthand knowledge of the volatility of success in the publishing industry\u2014the primary subject of the fairly engaging first half of Dear Money\u2014for she seems to have used her own career as a template for the novel&amp;#039;s narrator. But if this protagonist, a semi-popular novelist with a consuming gluttony for greenbacks, is intended as a cautionary tale for Americans living beyond their means, the attempt at moralizing fails. After all, what reader would want to recognize herself in so unlikable a character? India Palmer is willful, pompous, dishonest, and generally unkind. And her persistent bleating about not keeping up with her wealthy New York City friends evokes little compassion, for her idea of &amp;quot;poor&amp;quot; matches most Americans&amp;#039; definition of &amp;quot;rich&amp;quot;: sending children to an elite private school, wearing designer garments, and enjoying myriad vacations. That this greedy woman would turn to a more lucrative profession than writing seems inevitable; that Wall Street titans would mentor her as a sort of Pygmalion project to shape her into a bond trader seems preposterous. Set in the confusing world of the stock market before the recent global financial crisis, the latter half of this novel will likely lose the reader&amp;#039;s interest, led astray by McPhee&amp;#039;s seemingly tenuous understanding of, and passion for, the subject matter. At times, she unloads brick-like paragraphs of financial jargon as if lifted from dry, impenetrable textbooks; at other times, she employs a series of analogies while managing only partially to demystify complex financial transactions. &amp;quot;I still don&amp;#039;t know what a bond is,&amp;quot; one character confesses toward the end of the story, and many readers may likely concur\u2014and likely not care. The inability to make us care\u2014whether about the mind-numbing particulars of a doomed industry or the headstrong, often predictable impulses of a whiny woman\u2014far overshadows the welcome contributions of McPhee&amp;#039;s often lyrical Virginia Woolf\u00AC-like sentences.\u2014Andrea Bianchi, Glen Ellyn, IL Full disclosure: I judged this book by its cover copy and dismissed it as ridiculous. A starving artist has her life changed when a billionaire literally drops from the sky, offering to teach her the secrets of bond trading? Two words: Puh leeze. But from page one, I was not only hooked but blown away. McPhee exploits the myth of &amp;quot;keeping up with the Joneses&amp;quot; to great effect here; when India Palmer takes &amp;quot;Win&amp;quot; Johns up on his offer, her success comes at a cost to just about everyone, and she is more than happy to climb their foreclosures and bankruptcies to personal success and fulfillment. Funny, biting, and painfully timely, Dear Money assesses the true costs of growing &amp;quot;too big to fail.&amp;quot;\u2014Heather Seggel, Ukiah, CA  According to the back cover, this is a novel based on the author&amp;#039;s own experiences. While in the novel the husband&amp;#039;s name is Theodor Larson, son of Swedish immigrants, the novelists&amp;#039; real-life husband is named Mark Svenvold. The similarities to the author&amp;#039;s real life continue from there. There is no need to make too many changes to the story, because the story she is telling is the one we all live everyday\u2014wanting what our neighbors have, sacrificing everything to get it.\u2014Barbara Taylor Aitken, Carmel, IN This satire is the answer to the &amp;quot;what if&amp;quot; that many artists won&amp;#039;t admit to wondering: What if I just decided to replace my idealism, creativity, and integrity with a &amp;quot;real job&amp;quot; and lots of money? While the subject matter is intriguing, our protagonist is hard to care about, and the text reads less like a plot and more like a list of items from your bratty friend&amp;#039;s bridal registry.\u2014Ginger Pennington, Santa Monica, CA The one thing McPhee does a very good job at is describing the selfish attitudes of the many people who got America into the economic crisis we are now facing. If this novel is not meant to be entirely satirical, it&amp;#039;s past its prime and should have been published in the 1990s, before America learned the truth about the India Palmers of the world.\u2014Elaine Koontz, Greensburg, PA  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/culture/books/reviews/a11247/elles-lettres-july-450132/>