Kennedys are popular topic in new books

Associated Press Writer

Three new books will get the attention of readers intrigued by the Kennedy family.

One profiles President John F. Kennedy, another is about first lady Jacqueline Kennedy, and a third examines patriarch Joseph P. Kennedy and his four sons.

But there are also several new books that are not even remotely about people named Kennedy. Among them are novels by Anne Rice, V.S. Naipaul and Isabel Allende; and nonfiction, including a history of London, one author's trek through Alaska, and another's "adventures of a roving gourmand."

In "Jack: A Life Like No Other" (Random House), Geoffrey Perret taps into recently released documents -- personal diaries, White House tapes, family correspondence -- to profile JFK. Topics include the first lady's plan to divorce him and become a Hollywood actress; JFK's health problems and extramarital exploits; his plan to withdraw from Vietnam, and his premonition about his early death.

The first lady's role in the Kennedy administration is explored in "Mrs. Kennedy: The Missing History of the Kennedy Years" (Free Press) by Barbara Leaming. Also examined is their very public marriage, a long-troubled one of "appalling cruelty and deep love." Sources include eyewitness testimony, Secret Service accounts, declassified documents, White House log books and Jacqueline Kennedy's letters.

The logical follow-up to Laurence Leamer's 1994 book "The Kennedy Women" is his "The Kennedy Men: 1901-1963" (Morrow), the first of two planned volumes. The saga starts in 1901 Boston, where Joseph P. Kennedy was a 12-year-old hat delivery boy, and ends in 1963 with JFK's assassination. The book traces the senior Kennedy's relationship with his four sons: Joe Jr., Jack, Bobby and Ted. Material is drawn from hundreds of interviews and various documents, including JFK secretary Evelyn Lincoln's private papers, Oval Office tapes, and letters by JFK's physicians.

Rice's "The Vampire Chronicles" continue in "Blood and Gold" (Knopf), which marks the return of golden-haired vampire Marius and reveals the secrets of his 2,000-year existence. A senator in Imperial Rome, Marius was kidnapped by the Druids and made a "blood god" and protector of the king and queen of the vampires. The story follows him through Constantine's reign and into the Dark Ages and the Renaissance, where Marius becomes a painter and lives among mortals.

"Half a Life" (Knopf), Naipaul's first novel in seven years, follows the plight of Willie Chandran, whose father, a Brahmin, married a woman of lower caste. Willie, trying to flee from the problems of a mixed birth, heads for 1950s London and assumes a new identity. His struggle to become a writer puts him on the brink of exhaustion, but he is rescued -- for the time being -- by a woman's love.

"Portrait in Sepia" (HarperCollins) completes Allende's trilogy about a Chilean family and stars Aurora del Valle, granddaughter of Eliza Sommers from "Daughter of Fortune." It begins in late 19th-century San Francisco, where Aurora is raised at first by her Chinese grandfather and then by her wealthy and ambitious grandmother. In Chile, the adult Aurora meets her other grandmother, and the mysteries of Aurora's long-forgotten past become clearer.

Why does Peter Ackroyd, author of "London" (Doubleday), call his book a biography and not a history? Because, he says, he considers the city an organic being with its own laws of change and growth. In 800 pages, Ackroyd covers his hometown's past 1,000 years, from the time of the Druids to the eve of the 21st century, exploring London's various aspects -- its criminals, food, theater, natural beauty, underground, social outcasts, unexplained phenomena -- throughout the years.

In his book, author Peter Jenkins goes "Looking for Alaska" (St. Martin's) -- which shouldn't be hard to find, since it is the biggest state. The author of "A Walk Across America" (1979) chronicles his 18-month stay in Alaska and his treks to nearly every corner of the state. His travels take him 20,000-plus miles, in bush planes and kayaks, on snow machines, or strapped into snowshoes, on his quest for the people and things that define the Last Frontier.

"The Raw and the Cooked" (Grove) is a collection of "roving gourmand" Jim Harrison's food writings that appeared in magazines during the 1980s and 1990s. Highlights include the story of Hollywood's John Huston and Orson Welles simultaneously faking illness to avoid picking up the check at a Paris restaurant; Harrison's attempt to cook pasta on a frigid mountaintop in New Mexico, and a salute to the humble meatball.

Danielle Steel's 53rd novel, "The Kiss" (Delacorte) tells the tale of long-distance friends involved in unhappy marriages. Their platonic meeting in London turns into romance, then into tragedy when a traffic crash leaves both in critical condition. Their long recoveries in the same hospital give them a chance to contemplate their futures.

Comic fantasy fans familiar with the first 24 "Xanth" novels will surely want to explore Piers Anthony's latest in the series, "Swell Foop" (Tor). Xanth -- which looks very much like Florida -- and Earth are in trouble: Their gravitational fields may unravel because the controlling force, Demon Earth, has disappeared. Rumor says he was kidnapped by a second Demon. Locating the Swell Foop, a powerful weapon, is mankind's only hope for defeating the Demon who did the dastardly deed.