Book 5 is on its way…in May 2002.
http://www.cnn.com/2001/SHOWBIZ/books/06/15/peopleandplaces.auel.ap/index.html
Stand by for “The Shelters of Stone”.
It’s been 12 long years since “The Plains of Passage” was published, I’m ecstatic!
How 'bout you?
I’ve always been more of a Bearenstein Bears sort of man. The only jews in the forest.
Wow. I wonder if Penthouse is going to be publishing exerpts of “The Shelters of Stone,” considering that each book after “Clan of the Cave Bear” was increasingly smutty.
Not that I minded, of course. 
Hmmmm…considering how terrible the books after Clan of the Cave Bear were I kind of hoped Jean Auel had died and no more would be produced.
Oh well, hopefully she came up with something more interesting this time than graphic descriptions of wooly mammoth sex.
Perhaps this time Ayla invents a sub-orbital space vehicle and a working form of Communism.
Thanks for the information. While I totally dug the first two books I faltered after that but I have a friend who is a complete and total fan of the series and will be happy to know that this new book is in the works to publishing.
Thanks again. 
Wasn’t the series supposed to be like 10 volumes long? Or am I misremembering something?
Whole-heartedly seconded! The first book was pretty good, but it RAPIDLY descended into pure BS soon thereafter… so Ayla was the first person to domesticate an animal, figure out where babies came from, figure out how to start fire by banging the rocks together, etc., etc., etc… please!
I probably WILL read it, but I’m a sucker for unfinished business…
And, most importantly, she gave the first blow job in history.
FIVE!
The Clan of the Cave Bear
The Mammoth Hunters
The Plains of Passage
WHAT DID I MISS?
The Shelters of Stone
IS GREAT NEWS.
BUT WHAT DID I MISS?
Valley of the Horses is number 2
Thanks.
Wait… didn’t Jondalar get a BJ from that chick who’s grandmother decided that she had to lose her virginity to him while he was on his way to the valley to meet Ayla?
Been a while since I read the book, but I seem to recall that…
I don’t think it was that chick, but I do think there was at least one who gave him a bj before Ayla.
As for the 5th book? It’s been so long since the last one came out that I’m having a hard time caring. I suppose I’ll read it eventually, but I’ll probably wait until my library gets a copy.
It’s been almost ten years since I read that book (it was The Mammoth Hunters, right?) but I recall that Ayla wanted to go down on him because he was the prehistoric king of cunnilingus. He couldn’t imagine how she could give more pleasure with her mouth than with the rest of her body, but she insisted.
Or something like that. Don’t make me hunt down those books like a mammoth and re-read them, please.
I know, the series should be renamed “Sex and the Single Cavegirl”.
And yes, books 2-4 get very soap operatic, and enough with the Pleasures already…I got the point way back in the Valley.
But…I have recently reread the series and thoroughly enjoyed it. I admire Ayla’s spirit and once you get past the endless sex scenes, Jean Auel wrote a fairly entertaining story.
I’m just glad the series is continuing…
I was (I think) a freshman when VoH came out, and I used to skip over the Pleistocene details and reread all the sex. Several times.
I just reread the four books (Hey, I’m a teacher, and when there’s Sustained Silent Reading in class, you read, too.) and I skipped over the sex scenes and reread a lot of the Pleistocene details.
There’s something very wrong here.
I haven’t read any of the books in the series since the Plains of Passage came out in paperback. I can’t remember how the whole story goes, but I’ll probably buy the new book (when it comes out in paperback) anyway.
If it was significantly less than 12 years between releases, I would probably be more excited.