Dec. 2002

PUPPET CHILD, A NOVEL BY TALIA CARNER, NAMED IN THE TOP 10 FAVORITE FIRST NOVELS 2002 !
 

BookBrowse.com, a popular books excerpts and reviews website, has named PUPPET CHILD among the top 10 favorite first novels 2002 -- alongside titles such as "The Lovely Bones" by Alice Sebold.
 

In her review of PUPPET CHILD, Davina Morgan-Witts, BookBrowse editor, writes:
 

"This is a stunning book -- both gripping and thought provoking. Carner writes with ease and impact that belies the fact that this is her first published novel. She, and it, deserve a wide audience, no, not a wide audience, a huge audience."

PUPPET CHILD is a family legal drama set on Long Island about a courageous mother fighting the justice system to save her daughter. Few, if any, novels in recent years have dealt with the treacherous morass our legal system has become for children caught up in the nightmare of domestic sexual abuse. In PUPPET CHILD, the fate of a little girl unfolds against a backdrop of the theatrics of New York family court, a system fueled by a corrupted political machine that must placate the ever-changing demands of interest groups while kowtowing to media pressure.
 

Moving away from account of abuse to the tale of a valiant mother's taking matters into her own hands, Carner created a remarkable cast of characters and a stunning plot woven with subplots that have been praised as "masterful." Independent reviewers and published authors have hailed PUPPET CHILD as "taut and suspenseful," "fantastic," "grips the reader hook, line and sinker," and "a gut wrenching story" that "will leave you breathless."

PUPPET CHILD [260 pages] was released in November 2002 in simultaneous hardcover [$23.95; ISBN 1-58961-018-0] and paperback [$13.95; ISBN 1-930252-98-6] editions. Both editions contain a Reading Group Guide.