'The Tenth Circle' is 'lucky 13' for best-selling novelist

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The trajectory of a writer's career is fascinating to watch, especially when it seems to climb ever higher into the stratosphere of popularity.

Jodi Picoult has certainly reached that point after a dozen novels. The New Hampshire writer's 13th offering has just debuted at the second spot on The New York Times' best-seller list below only "The Da Vinci Code." It is Picoult's loftiest debut ever. "The Tenth Circle" (Atria Books, 387 pages, $26) follows the best-sellerdom of "My Sister's Keeper," Picoult's breakthrough title, and "Vanishing Acts."

Picoult has won a great following for her inventive plots, her probing looks at the murky areas of life and their dilemmas. Her latest novel is no exception, as it examines what happens to a quiet-spoken comic book artist and stay-at-home dad whose daughter is the victim of a date-rape that causes all sorts of repercussions.

"I wanted to write a book," Picoult has explained, "that included a character who speaks through his art, and not his words."

"The Tenth Circle" even includes an appropriate innovation -- the unfolding chapters of a graphic novel supposedly drawn by the novel's hero but actually the work of Dustin Weaver, a 27-year-old graphic artist who is a native of Alaska.

Huge crowds have greeted Picoult on her current book tour, further evidence that the graduate of Princeton and Harvard has arrived in the firmament of literary stars.

"This is lucky 13 and it feels like the culmination of a lot of hard work," Picoult said earlier this week from Los Angeles. "I knew when I wrote it that this book had some of the best writing I've ever done and was groundbreaking in terms of layout and the incorporation of a graphic novel. It's really exciting to see that readers agree."

Jodi Picoult discusses "The Tenth Circle" at 7:30 p.m. Monday at The Elliott Bay Book Co., 206-624-6600. Also: 7 p.m. Tuesday at Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park, 206-366-3333.

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