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through the jungle foliage. "Brain the size of a walnut," he muttered to himself. "But he follows orders, like a good Nazi."
    With a sigh, Weldon poked a bony finger at the floral design on one of the ceramic pots atop his desk. The plants were all plastic, beautiful fakes. The pot's curved surface turned milky, then steadied into a three-dimensional image of Tarantula's corporate organization chart.
    Tapping a few more places here and there among the flower pots, Weldon got the display to show the distribution of stockholders in Tarantula. Although he himself was the largest individual stockholder, he only owned twelve percent of the company. There were others out there, selling out to the Sicilians.
    It was a complicated situation. Tarantula was supposedly an independent corporation. But Synthoil Inc. owned a majority of the stock, and Tarantula was in fact controlled by that Houston-based corporation. Yet sizable chunks of stock were owned by other companies, too, such as Mozarella Bank & Trust—an obvious Mafia front.
    The old man shook his head tiredly. The stockholders meeting coming up this November will determine the fate of the corporation, and I'm not even sure who the hell owns the company!

Reader's Report

    Title: Midway Diary

    Author: Ron Clanker (Capt., U.S.N., [Ret.])

    Category: WWII historical fiction

    Reader: Elizabeth Jane Rose

    Synopsis: Tells the story of the Battle of Midway from the point of view of a young navy officer serving aboard a U.S. ship. He is in love with a Japanese-American woman who lives in Hawaii, which causes no end of troubles because we are at war with Japan at the time. I don't know much about WWII (I was an English major, of course), but his writing is vivid and there's not too much blood and machismo. The novel is really very romantic and sensitive in spite of all the war stuff.

    Recommendation: Should be considered seriously by the editorial board.

FOUR

    After two hours, Carl finally began to understand the way the editorial board worked, although it didn't seem to make any sense.
    He had thought, from the little Lori had told him, that the purpose of the meeting was to decide which books Bunker would publish, out of all the manuscripts the editors had received since the last meeting. One by one, each editor seated around the conference table described a book manuscript that he or she believed should be published. The editor usually started with the author's name and a brief listing of the author's previous books. Then the editor spoke glowingly of the book's subject matter: "This one is hot !" was a typical remark. "A diet that allows you to eat all the chocolate you want!"
    Not a word was said about the quality of the writing, nor of the ideas or philosophies the writers were writing about. The editors talked about each manuscript's category (whatever that was) and the author's track record. Are they talking about writers or racehorses? Carl wondered. After the first hour he decided that the editors viewed their writers as horses. Or worse.
    That much he understood. But what followed confused Carl, at first. For no matter how enthusiastically a book was described by the editor presenting it, the rest of the editors seemed to go right to work to destroy it.
    "His last two novels were duds," one of the other editors would say.
    Or, "I can just picture the sales force trying to sell that in the Middle West."
    "He's out of his category; he doesn't have a track record with mysteries."
    "It's just another diet book. Even if it does work it'll get lost on the shelves."
    Slowly it dawned on Carl that the real purpose of the editorial board meeting was not to decide which books Bunker would publish. It was to decide which they would not publish. He felt like a child watching a great aerial battle in which every plane in the sky would inevitably, inexorably, be shot down.
    Except for the Sheldon Stoker horror novel, which everyone agreed was so terrible that it would sell millions