Great expectations

Novelist Matthew Pearl, who lives in Cambridge, has made a career out of asking "What if?" about the lives of literary luminaries. His strategy has resonated with readers around the world. Pearl's first two historical thrillers, "The Dante Club" and "The Poe Shadow," have been translated into more than 30 languages. This week marks the publication of his third novel, "The Last Dickens" (Random House).

When Charles Dickens died, in 1870, at the age of 58, he left behind the first six of 12 installments planned for "The Mystery of Edwin Drood." In Pearl's hands, those facts are transformed into a murder mystery with the fate of Dickens's struggling American publisher hanging in the balance.

The Maine Festival of the Book, now in its third year, brings together writers from across the state and beyond. An evening with David Sedaris is sold out, but the rest of the festival, which takes place April 2-5 in Portland, is free. There will be panel discussions with biographers of Ted Turner and Madame Clicquot as well as Portland novelists Lisa Carey, Andrew McNabb, and Lewis Robinson.

A talk by Kim Wilson, author of "In the Garden With Jane Austen" (Jones), is well timed for mud season and dreams of spring. Wilson's book offers advice on how to re-create a garden from Austen's era. It celebrates gardens described in Austen's novels and the ones she visited for her own enjoyment.

Neil Miller, who teaches journalism at Tufts University, came up with the idea for his new book - "Kartchner Caverns: How Two Cavers Discovered and Saved One of the Wonders of the Natural World" (University of Arizona) - while on vacation in Arizona shortly after 9/11.

In an e-mail, Miller explained his enchantment with the caves, some 50 miles from Tucson: They "were incredibly beautiful, so pure, untouched, but what really drew me to the subject was the background story - how a couple of young cavers, just out of the University of Arizona, discovered these caves purely by chance, kept them secret for 14 years (so they wouldn't be looted and destroyed), and devoted their lives to preserving them. It seemed like an old-fashioned story about the triumph of idealism and altruism, with two real-life heroes."

Tucson residents Gary Tenen and Randy Tufts were in their 20s in 1974, when they discovered the 2.4-mile-long series of caves with stalactites and stalagmites over 100,000 years old. The state of Arizona spent $28 million to prepare and protect the caves before opening Kartchner Caverns State Park in 1999.

"Family Properties: Race, Real Estate, and the Exploitation of Black Urban America," by Beryl Satter (Metropolitan)

"Eyes on the Horizon: Serving on the Front Lines of National Security," by General Richard B. Myers (Simon & Schuster)

"Wintergirls," by Laurie Halse Anderson (Viking)

Kathryn Fabiani of RJ Julia Booksellers, in Madison, Conn., recommends the novel "Apologize, Apologize!," by Elizabeth Kelly (Twelve): "This is the outrageous story of the Flanagans, a wealthy and highly dysfunctional family who live on Martha's Vineyard. Elizabeth Kelly is a wonderful, wonderful writer, and she has produced a novel that is an exquisite combination of humor and sadness and loss and recovery. I picked this book up on a whim and I will probably never forget it."

Jan Gardner can be reached at JanLGardner@yahoo.com.