Dream House

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Kem Nunn

Heart Attacks is California's last secret spot - the premier mysto surf haunt, the stuff of rumor and legend. The rumors say you must cross Indian land to get there. They tell of hostile locals and shark-infested waters where waves in excess of thirty feet break a mile from shore. For down-and-out photographer Jack Fletcher, the chance to shoot these waves in the company of surfing legend Drew Harmon offers the promise of new beginnings. But Drew is not alone in the northern reaches of the state. His young wife, Kendra, lives there with him. Obsessed with the unsolved murder of a local girl, Kendra has embarked upon a quest of her own, a search for truth - however dark that truth may prove to be. The Dogs of Winter is a portrait of two men and an appealing yet troubled young woman set against an unforgettable background of stark and violent beauty.

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Laurie Boyle Crompton

"Rory has a secret: she's the vandal who paints graffiti lions all over her town. When Hayes, a former screwup on the path to recovery, catches her in the act, Rory is sure she's busted. Instead he makes her a deal: if she tells him about her graffiti, he won't turn her in. As the two grow closer, the police efforts to find the vandal ramp up, and Rory is forced to confront a secret she still can't bring herself to face"--

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Daniel Birnbaum, Amanda Sharp, Jörg Heiser

The internationally acclaimed work of the American video and installation artist. American video and installation artist Doug Aitken (b.1968) exploded onto the international art scene with his multi-screen work electric earth, which captivated audiences at the Venice and Whitney biennales in 1999. This work focused on the bizarre nocturnal experiences of a young man exploring the edges of Los Angeles, presenting dream-like sequences that rearrange the linear flow of narrative into a series of unforgettable, disjointed photographic tableaux. Like much of his work, it contrasts the high-tech speed of contemporary daily life with the monotony of the urban landscape. In other works he has explored the eerie, desterted atmosphere of Jonestown, Guyana, the site of the notorious mass suicide of religious cultists (monsoon, 1997); a remote diamond-mining region of Namibia, closed to outsiders since 1908 (diamond sea, 1997); and the collective dreams of India's Bollywood film industry (into the sun, 1999). Portraying some of contemporary art's most beautiful imagery, Aitken's installations encircle the viewer, creating a suspended, hyperreal portrait of contemporary life. In the survey, curator and critic Daniel Birnbaum sets Aitken's art within the context of contemporary philosophy and the work of other recent artists who have explored expanded notions of time and space. In the Interview, Frieze publisher and critic Amanda Sharp discusses the artist's working methods, while in the Focus section critic Jörg Heiser looks at Aitken's i am in you (2000), a five-screen work centring on the imaginative experiences of a young girl. For his Artist's Choice Aitken has selected a short story by Jorge Luis Borges, whose description of altered realities through the distortions of mirrors and memory echoes the artist's own interests. Artist's Writings include Aitken's retelling of an unusual story he once heard from strangers, which served as the basis for subsequent video work.

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Ruth Rendell

Two things interest Stanley Manning: crossword puzzles, and the substantial sum his wife Vera stands to inherit when his mother-in-law dies. Otherwise, life at 61 Lanchester Road is a living hell. For Mrs. Kinaway lives with them now—and she will stop at nothing to tear their marriage apart. One afternoon, Stanley sets aside his crossword puzzles and changes all their lives forever... In One Across, Two Down, master crime writer Ruth Rendell describes a man whose strained sanity and stained reputation transform him from a witless loser into a killer afraid of his own shadow. Mischievously plotted, smart, maddeningly entertaining, One Across, Two Down is a dark delight—classic Rendell.