STAR ISLAND, by Carl Hiaasen

The career of singer Cheryl Bunterman (aka Cherry Pye), who debuted with Jailbait Records at age 15, is foundering due to her lack of talent and indiscriminate appetite for drugs, booze, and sex in this outrageous, offbeat novel from Hiaasen (Nature Girl). Clueless celebrities and criminal paparazzi provide the perfect match and the perfect metaphor for contemporary public culture. And you never know which sentences are going to end with a back flip.

FOUR FISH, by Paul Greenberg

A seafood journalist who has written for National Geographic traces the history of bass, cod, salmon and tuna fishing while assessing the critical state of today’s commercial fishing industry, citing the roles of over- fishing and fish farming while recommending specific protections.

“If you’ve ever ordered salmon, if you’ve ever slurped a bowl of chowder, if you’ve ever sat down for sushi, Paul Greenberg’s friendly and thoughtful book will lure you in, surprise you, probably shock you, and certainly make you think. Revelatory and colorful, Four Fish provides a ringside seat for one of the biggest culinary events of the day: the unfolding human drama of constructing a science-fiction future for our seafood that might actually work, while also reviving the natural majesty and abundance of the seas. Read this book—you will stand before the fish case at your local market or monger, and order you next restaurant dinner from the ocean, with vastly more knowledge and wisdom than you possessed before.”—Trevor Corson, bestselling author of the Secret Life of Lobsters and the Story of Sushi: An Unlikely Saga of Raw Fish and Rice

THE SISTERS FROM HARDSCRABBLE BAY, by Beverly Jensen

A sequence of tales chronicling the early 20th-century lives of New Brunswick sisters Idella and Avis Hillock includes “Gone,” an account of their mother’s heartbreaking childbirth crisis and the Pushcart Prize- nominated “Wake,” in which they attend their wild father’s funeral. (This is our store’s summer pick!!! Rich characters…multiple settings…though a collection of short stories, you will think you are reading a novel.)

New York Times quote: “Jensen died of cancer in 2003, before any of her stories made it into print. In fact, it’s not clear she intended for them to be published, which may explain their remarkable intimacy and unflinching honesty.”

RED HOOK ROAD, by Ayelet Waldman

Set on the coast of Maine over the course of four summers, Red Hook Road tells the story of two families, the Tetherlys and the Copakens, and of the ways in which their lives are unraveled and stitched together by misfortune, by good intentions and failure, and by love and calamity.

A marriage collapses under the strain of a daughter’s death; two bereaved siblings find comfort in one another; and an adopted young girl breathes new life into her family with her prodigious talent for the violin. As she
writes with obvious affection for these unforgettable characters, Ayelet Waldman skillfully interweaves life’s finer pleasures—music and literature—with the more mundane joys of living. Within these resonant pages, a vase filled with wildflowers or a cold beer on a hot summer day serve as constant reminders that it’s often the little things that make life so precious.

REMEDIES, by Kate Ledger (paperback)

“An immediately gripping, expertly woven tale of pain and healing. Ledger is a brilliant writer.” -Elin Hilderbrand

Sinon and Emily Bear look like a couple who have it all. Simon is a respected doctor; Emily shines as a public relations expert who spins away her corporate clients’ mistakes. Yet as their 13-year-old daughter’s troubled summer reveals, all is not perfect inside this home.

Simon has stumbled upon an obscure drug that may revolutionize the treatment of pain. In his excitement, he barely notices that Emily is seeking relief from the family’s tragic past. And neither fully realizes how much danger their daughter is in. Soon, everything they have will be on the brink of collapse, and there will be no masking the symptoms or hiding the truth any more.

THIS MUST BE THE PLACE, by Kate Racculia

A sudden death, a never-mailed postcard, and a longburied secret set the stage for a luminous and heartbreakingly real novel about lost souls finding one another

The Darby-Jones boardinghouse in Ruby Falls, New York, is home to Mona Jones and her daughter, Oneida, two loners and self-declared outcasts who have formed a perfectly insular family unit: the two of them and the four eclectic boarders living in their house. But their small, quiet life is upended when Arthur Rook shows up in the middle of a nervous breakdown, devastated by the death of his wife, carrying a pink shoe box containing all his wife’s mementos and keepsakes, and holding a postcard from sixteen years ago, addressed to Mona but never sent. Slowly the contents of the box begin to fit together to tell a story—one of a powerful friendship, a lost love, and a secret that, if revealed, could change everything that Mona, Oneida, and Arthur know to be true. Or maybe the stories the box tells and the truths it brings to life will teach everyone about love—how deeply it runs, how strong it makes us, and how even when all seems lost, how tightly it brings us together. With emotional accuracy and great energy, This Must Be the Place introduces memorable, charming characters that refuse to be forgotten. 

THE DOCTOR AND THE DIVA, by Adrienne McDonnell

Building a successful career by helping couples to conceive, an early 20th- century obstetrician makes a risky decision after meeting a talented opera singer whose infertility issues prompt her to leave her husband and pursue a career abroad. A first novel.

A breathtaking novel of romantic obsession, longing and one woman’s choice between motherhood and her operatic calling.

THE GOOD PSYCHOLOGIST, A NOVEL, by Noam Shpancer

“Noam Shpancer portrays the oft-hidden world of psychotherapy with unparalleled authenticity, compassion, and wit… An astonishing debut.”—Jonathan Kellerman

Noam Shpancer’s stunning debut novel opens as a psychologist reluctantly takes on a new client—an exotic dancer whose severe anxiety is keeping her from the stage. The psychologist, a solitary professional who also teaches a lively night class, helps the client confront her fears. But as treatment unfolds, her struggles and secrets begin to radiate onto his life, upsetting the precarious balance in his unresolved relationship with Nina, a married former colleague with whom he has a child—a child he has never met. As the shell of his detachment begins to crack, he suddenly finds himself too deeply involved, the boundary lines between professional and personal, between help and harm, blurring dangerously. With its wonderfully distinctive narrative voice, rich with humor and humanity, The Good Psychologist leads the reader on a journey into the heart of the therapy process and beyond, examining some of the fundamental questions of the soul: to move or be still; to defy or obey; to let go or hold on.

IN THE HEART OF THE CANYON, by Elisabeth Hyde (paperback)

From the author of The Abortionist’s Daughter, a gripping new novel about a rafting trip through the Grand Canyon that changes the lives of everyone on board.

Meet Peter, twenty-seven, single, and looking for a quick hookup; Evelyn, a fifty-year-old Harvard professor; and Ruth and Lloyd, river veterans in their seventies. There’s Mitchell, an overeager history buff with no qualms about upstaging the guides with his knowledge. There’s Jill from Salt Lake City, wanting desperately to spark some sense of adventure in her staid Mormon family; and seventeen-year-old Amy, so woefully overweight that she can barely fit into a pup tent, let alone into a life jacket.

Guiding them all is JT Maroney, who loves the river with all his heart and who, having made 124 previous trips down the Colorado, thinks he has seen everything. But on their first night, a stray dog wanders into their campsite, upsetting the tentative equilibrium of this makeshift family. Over the next thirteen days, as various decisions are second-guessed and sometimes regretted, both passengers and guides find that sometimes the most daunting adventures on a Colorado River trip have nothing to do with white-water rapids, and everything to do with reconfiguring the rocky canyons of the heart.

WHERE MEN WIN GLORY, by Jon Krakauer (paperback)

Traces the controversial story of NFL player and army soldier Pat Tillman, describing the military’s efforts to hide the truth about his death by friendly fire, in an account that draws on Tillman’s journals and letters as well as interviews with family members and fellow soldiers. Reprint. A best-selling book.

TELLING TIMES, by Nadine Gordimer

Few writers have been so much at the center of historical events as Nadine Gordimer. Telling Times, the first comprehensive collection of her nonfiction, bears insightful witness to the forces that have shaped the last half century. It includes reports from Soweto during the 1976 uprising, Zimbabwe at the dawn of independence, and Africa at the start of the AIDS pandemic, as well as illuminating portraits of Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, and many others. Committed first and foremost to art, Gordimer appraises the legacies of hallowed writers like Tolstoy, Proust, and Conrad, and engages vigorously with contemporaries like Achebe, Said, and Soyinka. No other writer has so consistently evoked the feel of Africa– its landscapes, cities, and people–through a remarkable range of travel writing from Tanzania, Egypt, and along the Congo River. Telling Times is an extraordinary summation from a writer whose enduring courage and commitment to human freedom have made her a moral compass of her time.

MEMORY WALL, by Anthony Doerr

In multiple O. Henry Prize–winner Doerr’s latest (after Four Seasons in Rome), the presence and persistence of memory thematically binds stories set apart by vast distances of time and space. The title story finds a South African woman at the end of her life, taking part in a procedure that records her memories on cassettes; meanwhile, a pair of thieves rifles through the recordings, hoping to discover a secret her husband took to his grave. Bookending the collection is “Afterword,” about a woman in her final days whose seizures take her back to her youth in a Nazi-era Hamburg orphanage. In between are a couple of domestic stories, one about a village’s impending erasure by flood, and another about a teenage orphan adapting to life with her grandfather. Doerr has an incredible sense of language and a skill for crafting beautiful phrases and apt metaphors, but he doesn’t always connect with his characters, a shortcoming most obvious in the first-person pieces. For the bulk of the collection, though, Doerr’s prose brings home the weight of his troubling thesis, that “every hour… an infinite number of memories disappear, whole glowing atlases dragged into graves.” PW Review

ICE COLD, by Tess Gerritsen

In Tess Gerritsen’s latest chiller, Ice Cold, pathologist Maura Isles is out of her Beantown element, half a country away in rural Wyoming. Attending a medical conference, she hooks up with an old college classmate and, on a whim, embarks on an impromptu trip into the mountains with a group of his friends. Their GPS prompts them to take a wrong turn, and they wind up getting stuck on a snowy road, basically miles from nowhere, as night is closing in. In the valley below, they spot a small gathering of houses, and make their way toward it. There, in a scene reminiscent of a Stephen King novel, they find the village has been hastily abandoned: cars still parked in the garages, half-eaten meals on the kitchen tables, but not a soul in sight. And there is no help on the horizon, to say the least. Stir in a bizarre polygamous religious cult, an unhealthy amount of toxic waste, a bent cop or two, a feral wolf-boy and a violently libertarian rancher, and you have a convolutedly compelling storyline, a seamless melding of an Old West tale and a thoroughly modern thriller.

SIZZLING SIXTEEN, by Janet Evanovich

Does the legacy of her Uncle Pip’s lucky bottle really bring Stephanie Plum good fortune? You be the judge. Worth celebrating, not for the tangled story, but for gems like Lula’s four ways of managing stress: “There’s drugs, there’s alcohol, there’s sex, and there’s doughnuts.” Kirkus Review

COMING SOON…IN PAPERBACK!
(call and reserve your copy now!)

HALF BROKE HORSES, by Jeannette Walls (September 9)

JULIET NAKED, by Nick Hornby (September 7)

TRAVELING WITH POMEGRANATES, by Sue Monk Kidd, and Ann Kidd Taylor (September 7)

WOLF HALL, by Hilary Mantel (August 31)

STONES INTO SCHOOLS, by Greg Mortenson (October 26)

THE HELP, by Kathryn Stockett (January 4, 2011)

HARDCOVER

WORK SONG, by Ivan Doig

Doig affectionately revisits Morris “Morrie” Morgan from the much-heralded The Whistling Season. Now, 10 years later, in 1919, Morrie lands in Butte, Mont., beholding the area’s natural beauty that “made a person look twice.” Scoring a job is a top priority, as is getting more face time with Grace Faraday, the alluring widow who runs the boardinghouse where he stays. Things, naturally, are complicated, as the fiendishly bookish Morrie is on the run from Chicago gangsters who feel they’ve been duped after he scored a windfall from a fixed sports wager. The local “shysters” at the duplicitous Anaconda Copper Mining Company, meanwhile, find Morrie’s sudden interest in Butte highly suspicious as they try to bully Grace into selling her property. Morrie lands what might be an ideal job working at the public library with ex cattle rancher Samuel Sandison, though our sturdy narrator must choose sides when the mining company ups the ante. Drama ebbs and flows as Morrie yields to the plight of union leader Jared Evans, and Morrie and Samuel come to terms with sins from their pasts. Charismatic dialogue and charming, homespun characterization make Doig’s latest another surefire winner. PW Review

THE SISTERS FROM HARDSCRABBLE BAY, by Beverly Jensen

A sequence of tales chronicling the early 20th-century lives of New Brunswick sisters Idella and Avis Hillock includes “Gone,” an account of their mother’s heartbreaking childbirth crisis and the Pushcart Prize-nominated “Wake,” in which they attend their wild father’s funeral.

Beverly Jensen died of cancer at the age of forty-nine without publishing her work. Since her death, her fiction has been championed by a dedicated group of supporters, including Stephen King and Joyce Carol Oates.

THE LAST STAND, by Nathaniel Philbrick

Philbrick here takes on an oft-told tale, replete with its dashing, flawed main character, its historically doomed, noble Native chief, and a battlefield strewn with American corpses. While off his usual stride with a surfeit of unnecessary detail, bestselling author and National Book Award winner Philbrick (In the Heart of the Sea; The Mayflower) writes a lively narrative that brushes away the cobwebs of mythology to reveal the context and realities of Custer’s unexpected 1876 defeat at the hands of his Indian enemies under Sitting Bull, and the character of each leader. Judicious in his assessments of events and intentions, Philbrick offers a rounded history of one of the worst defeats in American military history, a story enhanced by his minute examination of the battle’s terrain and interviews with descendants in both camps. Distinctively, too, he takes no sides. In his compelling history, Philbrick underscores the pyrrhic nature of Sitting Bull’s victory it was followed by federal action to move his tribe to a reservation. 32 pages of b&w photos, 18 pages of color photos, 18 maps. PW Review

THE PARTICULAR SADNESS OF LEMON CAKE, by Aimee Bender

Discovering in childhood a supernatural ability to taste the emotions of others in their cooking, Rose Edelstein grows up to regard food as a curse when it reveals everyone’s secret realities. By the Pushcart-winning author of An Invisible Sign of My Own.

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake is a luminous tale about the enormous difficulty of loving someone fully when you know too much about them. It is heartbreaking and funny, wise and sad, and confirms Aimee Bender’s place as “a writer who makes you grateful for the very existence of language.”

THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET’S NEST, by Stieg Larsson

Lisbeth Salander-the heart of Larsson’s two previous novels-is under close supervision in the intensive care unit of a Swedish city hospital. She’s fighting for her life in more ways than one: when she’s well enough, she’ll stand trial for three murders. With the help of her friend, journalist Mikael Blomkvist, she will have to prove her innocence, and to identify the corrupt politicians who have allowed the vulnerable, like herself, to suffer abuse. And, on her own, she will plot her revenge-against the man who tried to kill her and the government institutions that very nearly destroyed her life.

Once upon a time, she was a victim. Now Lisbeth Salander is ready to fight back.

SO COLD THE RIVER, by Michael Koryta

In this explosive thriller from Koryta (Envy the Night), failed filmmaker Eric Shaw is eking out a living making family home videos when a client offers him big bucks to travel to the resort town of West Baden, Ind., the childhood home of her father-in-law, Campbell Bradford, to shoot a video history of his life. Almost immediately, things go weird. Eric uncovers evidence of another Campbell Bradford, a petty tyrant who lived a generation before the other and terrorized the locals. The older Campbell begins appearing in horrific visions to Eric after he sips the peculiar mineral water that made West Baden famous. Koryta spins a spellbinding tale of an unholy lust for power that reaches from beyond the grave and suspends disbelief through the believable interactions of fully developed characters. A cataclysmic finale will put readers in mind of some of the best recent works of supernatural horror, among which this book ranks. PW Review

INNOCENT, by Scott Turow

The sequel to the genre-defining, landmark bestseller Presumed Innocent, INNOCENT continues the story of Rusty Sabich and Tommy Molto who are, once again, twenty years later, pitted against each other in a riveting psychological match after the mysterious death of Rusty’s wife.

BACKSEAT SAINTS, by Joshilyn Jackson

BACKSEAT SAINTS will dazzle readers with a fresh and heartwrenching portrayal of the lengths a mother will go to right the wrongs she’s created, and how far a daughter will go to escape the demands of forgiveness. With the seed of a minor character from her popular best-seller, GODS IN ALABAMA, Jackson has built a whole new story full of her trademark sly wit, endearingly off-kilter characters, and utterly riveting plot twists.

BONHOEFFER, by Eric Metaxas

A definitive, deeply moving narrative, Bonhoeffer is a story of moral courage in the face of the monstrous evil that was Nazism.

After discovering the fire of true faith in a Harlem church, Bonhoeffer returned to Germany and became one of the first to speak out against Hitler. As a double-agent, he joined the plot to assassinate the Fuhrer, and was hanged in Flossenberg concentration camp at age 39. Since his death, Bonhoeffer has grown to be one of the most fascinating, complex figures of the 20th century.

Bonhoeffer presents a profoundly orthodox Christian theologian whose faith led him to boldly confront the greatest evil of the 20th century, and uncovers never-before-revealed facts, including the story of his passionate romance.

THE COOKBOOK COLLECTOR, by Allegra Goodman
(July Publication. pre-order now.)

Heralded as “a modern day Jane Austen” by USA Today, National Book Award finalist and New York Times bestselling author Allegra Goodman has compelled and delighted hundreds of thousands of readers. Now, in her most ambitious work yet, Goodman weaves together the worlds of Silicon Valley and rare book collecting in a delicious novel about appetite, temptation, and fulfillment.

Emily and Jessamine Bach are opposites in every way: Twenty-eight-year-old Emily is the CEO of Veritech, twenty-three-year-old Jess is an environmental activist and graduate student in philosophy. Pragmatic Emily is making a fortune in Silicon Valley, romantic Jess works in an antiquarian bookstore. Emily is rational and driven, while Jess is dreamy and whimsical. Emily’s boyfriend, Jonathan, is fantastically successful. Jess’s boyfriends, not so much-as her employer George points out in what he hopes is a completely disinterested way.

Bicoastal, surprising, rich in ideas and characters, The Cookbook Collector is a novel about getting and spending, and about the substitutions we make when we can’t find what we’re looking for: reading cookbooks instead of cooking, speculating instead of creating, collecting instead of living. But above all it is about holding on to what is real in a virtual world: love that stays.

LUCY, by Laurence Gonzales
(July publication, pre-order now)

An explosive, daring novel that suggests what might happen when a young girl is discovered to be the result of the experimental breeding of human and ape.

Lucy, the fourteen-year-old daughter of a primatologist, a girl who has had only apes as playmates, is rescued from the jungles of the Congo during a civil war uprising and brought to live in the suburbs of Chicago. The stunning revelation of who-and what-she is sets in motion her fight for survival and for her very right to exist.

Here is a novel that has as its underpinnings the moral, ethical, and philosophical issues of cutting-edge biotechnology, genetic engineering, and cloning, and that masterfully explores what it means to be human.

Thoroughly well-written, grounded in science and a sorrowful sense of human nature, this book is utterly memorable.

LOWCOUNTRY SUMMER, by Dorothea Benton Frank

This remarkable writer revisits some of her most unforgettable characters in
this enchanting new story sure to make you laugh and cry. Return with her to
Tall Pines Plantation in this long-awaited sequel to her beloved bestseller
Plantation…

When Caroline Wimbley Levine returned to Tall Pines Plantation, she never expected to make peace with long-buried truths about herself and her family. The Queen of Tall Pines, her late mother, was a force of nature, but now she is gone, leaving Caroline and the rest of the family uncertain of who will take her place.

In the lush South Carolina countryside, old hurts, betrayals, and dark secrets will surface, and a new generation will rise along the banks of the mighty Edisto River.

Wonderfully evocative, infused with humor and poignancy, and rich with the lyrical cadences of the South, Lowcountry Summer is vintage Dorothea Benton Frank, a deeply moving novel you’ll want to savor and share.

RED HOOK ROAD, by Ayelet Waldman
(July publication, pre-order now.)

Two families living on the Maine coast find their way through grief together after a tragic accident takes the lives of a young, newly-married couple, which results in a broken marriage, a bonding between bereaved siblings, and healing in the form of an adopted girl’s prodigious violin talent.

As lyrical as a sonata, Ayelet Waldman’s follow-up novel to Love and Other Impossible Pursuits explores the aftermath of a family tragedy.

STILL A BIG SELLER…STILL IN HARDCOVER…THIS TITLE IS SCHEDULED FOR PAPERBACK IN JANUARY, 2011!

THE HELP, by Kathryn Stockett

Set in Stockett’s native Jackson, MS, in the early 1960s, this first novel adopts the complicated theme of blacks and whites living in a segregated South. A century after the Emancipation Proclamation, black maids raised white children and ran households but were paid poorly, often had to use separate toilets from the family, and watched the children they cared for commit bigotry. In Stockett’s narrative, Miss Skeeter, a young white woman, is a naive, aspiring writer who wants to create a series of interviews with local black maids. Even if they’re published anonymously, the risk is great; still, Aibileen and Minny agree to participate. Tension pervades the novel as its events are told by these three memorable women. Is this an easy book to read? No, but it is surely worth reading. It may even stir things up as readers in Jackson and beyond question their own discrimination and intolerance in the past and present. LJ Review

HITCH 22, By Christopher Hitchens

Over the course of his 60 years, Christopher Hitchens has been a citizen of both the United States and the United Kingdom. He has been both a socialist opposed to the war in Vietnam and a supporter of the U.S. war against Islamic extremism in Iraq. He has been both a foreign correspondent in some of the world’s most dangerous places and a legendary bon vivant with an unquenchable thirst for alcohol and literature. He is a fervent atheist, raised as a Christian, by a mother whose Jewish heritage was not revealed to him until her suicide.

In other words, Christopher Hitchens contains multitudes. He sees all sides of an argument. And he believes the personal is political.

This is the story of his life, lived large.

THE INVISIBLE BRIDGE, by Julie Orringer

A novel set in 1937 Europe tells the story of three Hungarian Jewish brothers bound by history and love, of a marriage tested by disaster, of a Jewish family’s struggle against annihilation by the Nazis, and of the dangerous power of art in the time of war.

Julie Orringer’s astonishing first novel-eagerly awaited since the publication of her heralded best-selling short-story collection, How to Breathe Underwater (”Fiercely beautiful”-The New York Times)-is a grand love story and an epic tale of three brothers whose lives are torn apart by war.

WAR, by Sebastian Junger

In his breakout bestseller, The Perfect Storm, Sebastian Junger created “a wild ride that brilliantly captures the awesome power of the raging sea and the often futile attempts of humans to withstand it” (Los Angeles Times Book Review). Now, Junger turns his brilliant and empathetic eye to the reality of combat–the fear, the honor, and the trust among men in an extreme situation whose survival depends on their absolute commitment to one another. His on-the-ground account follows a single platoon through a 15-month tour of duty in the most dangerous outpost in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley. Through the experiences of these young men at war, he shows what it means to fight, to serve, and to face down mortal danger on a daily basis.

UNBOUND, by Dean King

In October 1934, the Chinese Communist Army found itself facing annihilation, surrounded by hundreds of thousands of Nationalist soldiers. Rather than surrender, 86,000 Communists embarked on an epic flight to safety. Only thirty were women. Their trek would eventually cover 4,000 miles over 370 days. Under enemy fire they crossed highland awamps, climbed Tibetan peaks, scrambled over chain bridges, and trudged through the sands of the western deserts. Fewer than 10,000 of them would survive, but remarkably all of the women would live to tell the tale.

Unbound is an amazing story of love, friendship, and survival written by a new master of adventure narrative.

GIRL IN TRANSLATION, by Jean Kwok

Emigrating with her mother from Hong Kong to Brooklyn, Kimberly Chang begins a secret double life as an exceptional schoolgirl during the day and sweatshop worker at night, an existence also marked by a first crush and the pressure to save her family from poverty. A first novel.

Introducing a fresh, exciting Chinese-American voice, an inspiring debut about an immigrant girl forced to choose between two worlds and two futures.

THE SPY, by Clive Cussler

Investigating a disputed ruling that a brilliant pre-World War I battleship gun designer committed suicide, chief investigator Isaac Bell of the legendary Van Dorn Detective Agency discovers that an elusive spy with ties to a top-secret project has been staging the killings of America’s leading technological minds.

Detective Isaac Bell, hero of The Chase and The Wrecker, returns in the remarkable new adventure from the #1 New York Times-bestselling author.

THE HAND THAT FIRST HELD MINE, by Maggie O’Farrell

Fifty years after an unconventional reporter of genteel origins becomes a single mother, present-day London painter Elina navigates the first weeks of motherhood upon surviving a dangerous labor and learns that her life is disconcertingly linked to the woman from the past.

A spell-binding novel of two women connected across fifty years by art, love, betrayals, secrets, and motherhood. By the author of The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox

THE LION, by Nelson DeMille

In this eagerly awaited follow-up to The Lion’s Game, John Corey, former NYPD Homicide detective and special agent for the Anti-Terrorist Task Force, is back. And, unfortunately for Corey, so is Asad Khalil, the notorious Libyan terrorist otherwise known as “The Lion.” Last we heard from him, Khali had claimed to be defecting to the US only to unleash the most horrific reign of terrorism ever to occur on American soil. While Corey and his partner, FBI agent Kate Mayfield, chased him across the country, Khalil methodically eliminated his victims one by one and then disappeared without a trace.

Now, years later, Khalil has returned to America to make good on his threats and take care of unfinished business. “The Lion” is a killing machine once again loose in America with a mission of revenge, and John Corey will stop at nothing to achieve his own goal — to find and kill Khahil.

THE IMPERFECTIONISTS, by Tom Rachman

Preoccupied by personal challenges while running a struggling English-language newspaper in Rome, an obituary writer confronts mortality, an eccentric publisher obsesses over his basset hound and other staff members uncover the paper’s founding by an impulsive millionaire. A first novel.

61 HOURS, by Lee Child

In a latest work by the Anthony Award-winning author of the best-selling Gone Tomorrow, Reacher arrives accidentally in a small South Dakota town, where during a dangerous winter storm he is enlisted to protect a lone witness who local police hope can help convict a brutal crime ring.

A MEASURELESS PERIL, by Richard Snow

Former longtime American Heritage editor Snow (Coney Island: A Postcard Journey to the City of Fire, 1983, etc.) examines the Atlantic theater of World War II, where his father fought. The Pacific is often considered the primary locale for the naval battles of WWII, but the effort in the Atlantic, centered on protecting supply lines between the United States and Europe, was no less vital. Snow uses the experiences of his father, a Navy man who had served in the Atlantic, as a jumping-off point to tell the wider story of what would be known as the Battle of the Atlantic (1939-1945), in which Allied ships were pitted against hard-to-track German submarines. The Atlantic war began in earnest after a German U-boat torpedoed and sunk a British passenger ship in 1939. The author shows how the situation complicated the United States’ then-neutral stance in the war. Soon Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt began corresponding, leading to a deal in which the United States sold destroyers to the British, bypassing the antiwar Congress. In December 1941, Hitler ordered German U-boats to attack American ships, bringing the States fully into the Atlantic war. It proved to be a grueling, drawn-out affair, the longest continuous campaign of World War II. Churchill called the struggle against the German U-boats “the only thing that ever really frightened [him] during the war.” Snow looks at several important figures in the campaign, and he writes at length about Karl Doenitz, the commander of the German submarine fleet, whose strategic thinking about the use of submarines specifically, using U-boats to focus on attacking merchant ships transformed naval warfare. The author also uses letters and recollections of his father, providing a palpable sense of the daily activity of an enlisted man in the Atlantic war. An accomplished historian with a welcome personal touch. Kirkus Review

THE PASSAGE, by Justin Cronin

Fans of vampire fiction who are bored by the endless hordes of sensitive, misunderstood Byronesque bloodsuckers will revel in Cronin’s engrossingly horrific account of a post-apocalyptic America overrun by the gruesome reality behind the wish-fulfillment fantasies. When a secret project to create a super-soldier backfires, a virus leads to a plague of vampiric revenants that wipes out most of the population. One of the few bands of survivors is the Colony, a FEMA-established island of safety bunkered behind massive banks of lights that repel the “virals,” or “dracs” but a small group realizes that the aging technological defenses will soon fail. When members of the Colony find a young girl, Amy, living outside their enclave, they realize that Amy shares the virals’ agelessness, but not the virals’ mindless hunger, and they embark on a search to find answers to her condition. PEN/Hemingway Award winner Cronin (The Summer Guest) uses a number of tropes that may be overly familiar to genre fans, but he manages to engage the reader with a sweeping epic style. The first of a proposed trilogy, it’s already under development by director Ripley Scott and the subject of much publicity buzz. PW Review

(the following title is now new…but is a popular title in the store right now!!)

WHERE THE RIVERS RUN NORTH, by Sam Morton

Experience the untamed beauty of early America in Where the Rivers Run North, a new historical novel from Sam Morton. Morton’s extensively researched fiction carries the reader through three eras in the history of Abraska, or what is now southern Montana and northern Wyoming. From the days when Native American tribes dominated the landscape to the hardships of fledgling pioneer life to times of fast-paced modern development, Where the Rivers Run North introduces a shifting cast of characters as intriguing as they are diverse. One thread runs throughout–the figure of the horse, whether running wild on the plains or competing on the racetrack.

THE SCENT OF RAIN AND LIGHTNING, by Nancy Pickard

Pretty young schoolteacher Jody Linder doesn’t stray too far from small-town Rose, KS, returning to teach at her own high school. Jody is emotionally fragile, yet she’s stubborn enough to live in the same house where her father was murdered 23 years earlier-the same night her mother vanished, also presumed dead. Raised by her grandparents and her uncles, Jody’s believed their side of the story all her life. Town drunk Billy Crosby was convicted-wrongfully perhaps-of the murder. The bombshell that Billy is being released from prison opens up Jody’s personal floodgates. She suddenly realizes how little she knows about her town and her family’s motives. New revelations begin a thaw in Jody’s heart and unleash in her a new determination to find the real killer. Verdict Stylistically similar with flashbacks, a determined young heroine, and a snappy twist, this novel is a worthy successor to the author’s much-acclaimed The Virgin of Small Plains. Pickard’s superb storytelling transports the reader into the characters’ world, making all too real their dilemmas, their choices, and their willingness to believe the unlikely. LJ Review

OPERATION MINCEMEAT, by Ben MacIntyre

The exciting story of the ingenious British ruse that distracted the Nazis from the Allied Sicilian invasion. Although the invasion finally took place July 10, 1943, allowing the Allied forces an initial foothold into the German “Fortress Europe,” the trick that kept the Nazis from fortifying Sicily took place months before. The dead body of a British major, “William Martin,” had been hauled in on April 30 by fishermen off the port of Huelva, Spain, a pro-German outpost, his briefcase full of top-secret letters by British officers detailing the invasions of Greece and Sardinia and sure to land in the eager hands of the Germans. In fact, the body was a plant, a suicide victim actually named Glyndwr Michael. He had been plucked from a morgue in London, kept on ice for a few months, dressed in a well-used British Navy uniform, stocked with identification, fake official letters and correspondence from his father and fiancée “Pam,” and slipped into the Spanish waters by a British submarine. London Times writer at large Macintyre (Agent Zigzag: A True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love, and Betrayal, 2007, etc.) skillfully unravels this crazy, brilliant plan by degrees. The “corkscrew minds” at British Navy Intelligence, headed by John Godfrey and his assistant, Ian Fleming (yes, of James Bond fame), put forth the germ of the idea, which was then developed to its fantastic implementation by RAF flight officer Charles Cholmondeley and Lt. Commander Ewen Montagu, first under the code name “Trojan Horse,” then the more prosaic “Operation Mincemeat.” The author’s chronicle of how the last two intelligence officers lovingly created an entire personality for “Major Martin” makes for priceless reading. Astoundingly, as Winston Churchill noted exultantly, the Nazis swallowed the bait “rod, line and sinker. “Macintyre spins a terrific yarn, full of details gleaned from painstaking detective work. Kirkus Review

MY NAME IS MARY SUTTER, by Robin Oliveira

Despite her skill as a midwife, Mary Sutter cannot overcome the obstacle that bars her from further medical training: her gender. The Civil War changes everything. After her brother enlists in the Union Army, Mary follows him from Albany to Washington, DC, to volunteer as a nurse. She ends up at the ramshackle Union Hotel, crowded with recruits dying of disease, where Dr. William Stipp reluctantly agrees to hire her. As Union losses mount, her work becomes essential. But she relents to her mother’s pleas to return home to help her twin sister through childbirth. After failing to save her sister, Mary returns to the front, where she eventually performs surgery in partnership with Stipp, whose admiration for her skill deepens to love before new family concerns carry her home again. VERDICT Oliveira deftly depicts the chaotic aftermath of battles and develops her own characters while incorporating military and political leaders of the time. The historic details enrich the narrative without overshadowing Mary’s struggles. This well-written and compelling debut will engage all readers of historical fiction, especially those interested in the Civil War. LJ Review

THE DEVIL’S STAR, by Jo Nesbo

As a serial killer terrorizes Oslo, Inspector Harry Hole (Nemesis, 2009, etc.) is battling even more fearsome demons. When copywriter Camilla Loen is shot to death, her index finger removed and a star-shaped red diamond tucked beneath her eyelid, Chief Inspector Bjarne Moller has the bright idea of pairing his heir-apparent, Inspector Tom Waaler, with barely functional alcoholic Harry, who’s spent most of the previous month on unofficial leave drowning his grief over his late colleague, Officer Ellen Gjeltsen. But Harry doesn’t just dislike and distrust Waaler; he’s convinced that Waaler is Prince, the mob’s inside man who murdered Ellen. So the salt-and-pepper rapport between Harry and Waaler is more like arsenic-and-cyanide. Even pulling Harry off the case so that he can investigate the disappearance of producer Wilhelm Barli’s wife turns sour because a parcel containing her severed middle finger swiftly makes it clear that singer/actress Lisbeth Barli has become another victim of the Courier Killer. The exhaustingly wide-ranging case poses three crucial questions. What pattern underlies the Courier Killer’s choice of victims and modus operandi? When the police arrest an innocent suspect, can Harry protect him long enough to get the goods on the real killer? And how can he possibly neutralize the hydra-headed Waaler, who grows more dangerous the more he’s thwarted? Not all the answers are equally interesting, but even readers new to this white-hot series will be impressed by Nesbo’s generous plotting and his insight into dark places in the human soul. Kirkus Review

SLOW DEATH BY RUBBER DUCK, by Rick Smith

The rubber ducky on the cover of this book is full of toxic chemicals that can find their way into your body. Writing in plain language for general readers, with a sense of humor and a hopeful tone in the face of scary statistics, two prominent Canadian environmentalists explain research that points to the conclusion that common chemicals in everyday household items, from toothpaste to children’s toys, can negatively impact our health. In the tradition of Super Size Me, the authors ingested and inhaled compounds found in the home and in household products, at ordinary household levels, over a two-year period, and used blood tests and urine samples to measure chemical levels in their own bodies. Their interviews with chemical companies and government regulators expose attitudes underlying the problem. The authors draw on scientists and community organizers to offer practical suggestions to help readers protect themselves and their families, such as getting rid of plastic shower curtains, non-stick pans, and stain repellants. The book includes a list of organizations, web sites, and databases further reading. Rick Smith is executive director of Environmental Defence Canada. Bruce Lourie, an environmental thinker in Canada, is president of the Ivey Foundation. Annotation

PLAN B 4.0, by Lester Brown (paperback)

As fossil fuel prices rise, oil insecurity deepens, and concerns about climate change cast a shadow over the future of coal, a new energy economy is emerging. Wind, solar, and geothermal energy are replacing oil, coal, and natural gas, at a pace and on a scale we could not have imagined even a year ago. For the first time since the Industrial Revolution, we have begun investing in energy sources that can last forever. Plan B 4.0 explores both the nature of this transition to a new energy economy and how it will affect our daily lives.

Skein of the Crime, by Maggie Sefton

The newest installment in the series, with knitting patterns and recipes included!

Fall has come to Fort Connor, Colorado, and the cool air has inspired the knitters at the House of Lambspun to start on their hats and mittens. It’s also brought an influx of students to the university town-and into the shop for knitting classes. Kelly Flynn is happy to teach them the tricks of the trade-until one of them is found dead on the river trail near Kelly’s house. Compelled to investigate, Kelly finds herself following a path that twists more easily than the yarn with which she knits. Knowing the killer could be close, Kelly must work fast to unravel the skein of this crime.

THE SHALLOWS, by Nicholas Carr

“Is Google making us stupid?” Carr, who posed that question on a famed Atlantic Monthly cover, here says yes: as use of the Internet reroutes our neural pathways, we are forfeiting our subtlety and ability to concentrate. Bound to kick up some controversy. LJ Review

PAPERBACK

THE QUICKENING, by Michelle Hoover

With the coming of the Great Depression to the upper Midwest, two farmer’s wives are pitted against one another, exposing the dark secrets they hide and triggering a series of events that will unravel their friendship–and their families. A first novel. Original.

HALFWAY TO HEAVEN, by Mark Obmascik

A middle-aged former journalist sets out to summit all 54 of Colorado’s 14,000-foot-plus peaks. Obmascik (The Big Year: A Tale of Man, Nature, and Fowl Obsession, 2004), who led the Denver Post’s Pulitzer Prize winning coverage of the Columbine massacre before turning to nature writing, proves an engaging, convivial host as he leads us up the slopes of the Rockies accompanied by a parade of colorful climbing partners. The author often conquered several adjoining peaks on the same expedition, and each climb introduces us to a different companion, each with a unique back story. The partners were the result of a demand from Obmascik’s wife Merrill that her neophyte mountaineer would never climb alone. At one point, she filled the role of climbing partner herself, only to discover a few feet from the summit of Snowmass Mountain that she was afraid of heights. The author’s desperate quest for hiking companions took him through friends, neighbors, old college buddies and his reluctant teenage son. Through the Internet, he joined forces on other mountains with a Boeing engineer who climbed in shorts, another who chain-smoked Marlboros, a 70-year-old with two artificial hips and the legendary Erik Weihenmayer, the only blind man ever to summit Mount Everest. Obmascik encountered mountain goats, several hungry marmots (who ate his climbing poles), two gnarly old gold miners and even a few lovelorn females. Throughout, the author maintains a breezy narrative style, a keen eye for nature’s beauty and a self-deprecating tone that makes his marathon journey fly by. His story and those of many of the free spirits he meets along the way vividly demonstrate the thrill of taking the road less traveled. Highly readable, entertaining and educational. Kirkus Review

THE COLOR OF LIGHTNING, by Paulette Jiles

In 1863, as the War Between the States creeps inevitably toward its bloody conclusion, former Kentucky slave Britt Johnson ventures west into unknown territory with his wife, Mary, and their three children, searching for a life and a future. But their dreams are abruptly shattered by a brutal Indian raid upon the Johnsons’ settlement while Britt is away establishing a business. Returning to find his friends and neighbors slain or captured, his eldest son dead, his beloved and severely damaged Mary enslaved, and his remaining children absorbed into an alien society that will never relinquish its hold on them, the heartsick freedman vows not to rest until his family is whole again.

A soaring work of the imagination based on oral histories of the post-Civil War years in North Texas, Paulette Jiles’s The Color of Lightning is at once an intimate look into the hearts and hopes of tragically flawed human beings and a courageous reexamination of a dark American history.

CHEF, by Jasprett Singh

Kirpal Singh reminisces on his life as a Sikh cook in the military camp at the foot of the Siachen Glacier in Kashmir and how his friendship with Irem, a Pakistani woman arrested for entering Kashmir illegally, made him question the tumultuous conflict between India and Pakistan.

An award-winning debut novel-a lyrical journey into memory, and into the depths of a conflicted region, for fans of Michael Ondaatje, John Banville, and Rohinton Mistry.

THE CASTAWAYS, by Erin Hilderbrand

Greg and Tess MacAvoy are one of four prominent Nantucket couples who count each other as best friends. As pillars of their close-knit community, the MacAvoys, Kapenashes, Drakes, and Wheelers are important to their friends and neighbors, and especially to each other. But just before the beginning of another idyllic summer, Greg and Tess are killed when their boat capsizes during an anniversary sail. As the warm weather approaches and the island mourns their loss, nothing can prepare the MacAvoy’s closest friends for what will be revealed.

Once again, Hilderbrand masterfully weaves an intense tale of love and loyalty set against the backdrop of endless summer island life.

THE HOST, by Stephenie Meyer

Melanie Stryder refuses to fade away. The earth has been invaded by a species that take over the minds of human hosts while leaving their bodies intact. Wanderer, the invading “soul” who has been given Melanie’s body, didn’t expect to find its former tenant refusing to relinquish possession of her mind.

As Melanie fills Wanderer’s thoughts with visions of Jared, a human who still lives in hiding, Wanderer begins to yearn for a man she’s never met. Reluctant allies, Wanderer and Melanie set off to search for the man they both love.

Featuring one of the most unusual love triangles in literature, THE HOST is a riveting and unforgettable novel about the persistence of love and the essence of what it means to be human.

RUMOR HAS IT, by Jill Mancell

Londoner Tilly Cole discovers the perils of smalltown life in Mansell’s perfectly executed exemplar of fluff. After her live-in boyfriend “does a runner,” Tilly ditches London for Roxborough and a job as assistant to interior designer Max Dineen. Much of the town’s gossip centers on handsome ladies’ man Jack Lucas, and despite his almost irresistible charm, Tilly resolves not to be the latest notch on his bedpost. Meanwhile, gossip threatens to wreck Tilly’s friend Erin when she’s targeted by a jealous former friend and gets Max’s ex-wife, Hollywood soap-opera star Kaye Dineen, hounded back to England. At the center, Tilly and Jack get into tangles, literally and figuratively, as they bounce toward their happy ending. While witty dialogue and wry observations keep the pace brisk, Mansell (Miranda’s Big Mistake) still
manages to tug at the heart. PW Review

APRIL & OLIVER, by Tess Callahan

In this memorable debut, Callahan offers a uniquely funereal love story that focuses on a stagnant friendship-turned-untenable romance between unlikely life-long friends. To deal with the death of her immediate family, as well as the scars of childhood abuse, April assumes the role of the jaded wild child; Oliver, her once-inseparable childhood companion, has become her polar opposite, an engaged law student poised for success. Estranged during Oliver’s college years, the two reconnect with troubling results. Callahan’s descriptions are vivid, and often paired with charming flashbacks to more innocent times, providing stark contrast to the tumultuous course of April and Oliver’s young-adult lives. Callahan’s narrative takes some supporting-character detours from the principles’ love-hate relationship, including an abusive boyfriend; a manipulative and dangerous family friend, and April’s strong-but-slipping Nana. Callahan’s poetic style and grasp of emotion gives proper weight to April’s loss and Oliver’s secrets, and is sure to engage, sadden, and enthrall readers, especially in a bittersweet, somewhat surprising finale. PW Review

SUMMER’S CHILD, By Diane Chamberlain

Twenty years after 11-year-old Daria Cato found a baby abandoned on a beach in Kill Devil Hills, N.C., she is still very much a part of the child’s life. Daria’s parent’s had adopted the infant, but now they are dead and she has accepted responsibility for Shelly–who has grown into a beautiful, slightly handicapped young woman. Without consulting Daria, Shelly contacts Rory Taylor, host of TV’s True Life Stories, to ask his help in finding her birth mother. Rory has a personal interest in Shelly’s story since he’d been one of the many teenagers hanging out on the beach the summer the baby was found. Daria, meanwhile, has been keeping to herself the crush she’s had on Rory for years–along with Shelly’s true story. Here, as in previous offerings, Chamberlain (Breaking the Silence) creates a captivating tale populated with haunting characters. PW Review

WITH THE OLD BREED, By E.B. Sledge

In The Wall Street Journal, Victor Davis Hanson named With the Old Breed one of the top five books on epic twentieth-century battles. Studs Terkel interviewed the author for his definitive oral history, The Good War. Now E. B. Sledge’s acclaimed first-person account of fighting at Peleliu and Okinawa returns to thrill, edify, and inspire a new generation.

An Alabama boy steeped in American history and enamored of such heroes as George Washington and Daniel Boone, Eugene B. Sledge became part of the war’s famous 1st Marine Division-3d Battalion, 5th Marines. Even after intense training, he was shocked to be thrown into the battle of Peleliu, where “the world was a nightmare of flashes, explosions, and snapping bullets.” By the time Sledge hit the hell of Okinawa, he was a combat vet, still filled with fear but no longer with panic.

Based on notes Sledge secretly kept in a copy of the New Testament, With the Old Breed captures with utter simplicity and searing honesty the experience of a soldier in the fierce Pacific Theater. Here is what saved, threatened, and changed his life. Here, too, is the story of how he learned to hate and kill-and came to love-his fellow man.

HALF THE SKY, by Nicholas Kristof

“Half the Sky is a call to arms, a call for help, a call for contributions, but also a call for volunteers. It asks us to open our eyes to this enormous humanitarian issue. It does 80 with exquisitely crafted prose and sensationally interesting material…I really do think this is one of the most important books I have ever reviewed.”—Carolyn See, The Washington Post

From the first married couple to win a Pulitzer Prize for journalism, here is a passionate call to arms against the oppression of women around the globe—”the central moral challenge” of our time. Through inspiring stories of extraordinary women, Kristof and WuDunn show that the most effective way to fight global poverty is to unleash the potential of women. They also offer an uplifting do-it-yourself tool kit for those who want to help.

“Superb…As Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring once catalyzed us to save our birds and better steward our earth, Half the Sky stands to become a classic, spurring us to spare impoverished women these terrors, and elevate them to turn around the future of their nations.”—Susan Ager,

The Plain Dealer “I read Half the Sky in one sitting, staying up until 3 a. m. to do so. It is brilliant and inspirational, and I want to shout about it from the rooftops and mountains.”—Greg Mortanson, author of Three Cups of Tea.

THE BLACK SWAN, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

A black swan is a highly improbable event with three principal characteristics: It is unpredictable; it carries a massive impact; and, after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random, and more predictable, than it was. The astonishing success of Google was a black swan; so was 9/11. For Nassim Nicholas Taleb, black swans underlie almost everything about our world, from the rise of religions to events in our own personal lives.

Why do we not acknowledge the phenomenon of black swans until after they occur? Part of the answer, according to Taleb, is that humans are hardwired to learn specifics when they should be focused on generalities. We concentrate on things we already know and time and time again fail to take into consideration what we don’t know. We are, therefore, unable to truly estimate opportunities, too vulnerable to the impulse to simplify, narrate, and categorize, and not open enough to rewarding those who can imagine the “impossible.”

For years, Taleb has studied how we fool ourselves into thinking we know more than we actually do. We restrict our thinking to the irrelevant and inconsequential, while large events continue to surprise us and shape our world. Now, in this revelatory book, Taleb explains everything we know about what we don’t know. He offers surprisingly simple tricks for dealing with black swans and benefiting from them. Elegant, startling, and universal in its applications The Black Swan will change the way you look at the world. Taleb is a vastly entertaining writer, with wit, irreverence, and unusual stories to tell. He has a polymathic command of subjects ranging from cognitive science to business to probability theory. The Black Swan is a landmark book-itself a black swan.

HISTORY

MATTERHORN, by Karl Marlantes

Intense, powerful, and compelling, Matterhorn is an epic war novel in the tradition of Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead and James Jones’s The Thin Red Line. It is the timeless story of a young Marine lieutenant, Waino Mellas, and his comrades in Bravo Company, who are dropped into the mountain jungle of Vietnam as boys and forced to fight their way into manhood. Standing in their way are not merely the North Vietnamese but also monsoon rain and mud, leeches and tigers, disease and malnutrition. Almost as daunting, it turns out, are the obstacles they discover between each other: racial tension, competing ambitions, and duplicitous superior officers. But when the company finds itself surrounded and outnumbered by a massive enemy regiment, the Marines are thrust into the raw and all-consuming terror of combat. The experience will change them forever.

Written by a highly decorated Marine veteran over the course of thirty years, Matterhorn is a spellbinding and unforgettable novel that brings to life an entire world—both its horrors and its thrills—and seems destined to become a classic of combat literature.

THE PACIFIC, by Hugh Ambrose

A companion to the HBO miniseries focuses on the real-life stories of five U.S. armed servicemen who fought the key battles against Japan during World War II, from Bataan and Midway to Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

UNBOUND, by Dean King

In October 1934, the Chinese Communist Army found itself facing annihilation, surrounded by hundreds of thousands of Nationalist soldiers. Rather than surrender, 86,000 Communists embarked on an epic flight to safety. Only thirty were women. Their trek would eventually cover 4,000 miles over 370 days. Under enemy fire they crossed highland swamps, climbed
Tibetan peaks, scrambled over chain bridges, and trudged through the sands of the western deserts. Fewer than 10,000 of them would survive, but remarkably all of the women would live to tell the tale.

Unbound is an amazing story of love, friendship, and survival written by a new master of adventure narrative.

FICTION

THE OTHER FAMILY, by Joanne Trollope (Paperback)

After Richie Rossiter, a pianist and songwriter, dies suddenly, his companion, Chrissie, with whom he had three daughters, and the wife he left behind, with whom he had a son, are left to deal with each other and the unexpected terms of his will.

From the superb storyteller and quintessential women’s fiction author, a new story about two families who must confront each other over an inheritance.

A SPANISH LOVER, by Joanna Trollope (Paperback)

Stepping away from her usual provinces and into more cosmopolitan territory, Trollope (The Choir; The Rector’s Wife) delivers an insightful and thoroughly engrossing story of 39-year-old twin sisters whose lives and fortunes change dramatically over the course of a year. Lizzy has four kids, a rambling house in a charming English town, a wonderful husband and
a flourishing gallery/antique shop business. Frances, her twin, tends to her small travel firm, is single and has always been Lizzie’s quiet supporter and soul mate. On a business trip through southern Spain, the reticent Frances falls for an urbane, married Spaniard and is suddenly too involved in her own blossoming affairs (business and love) to play cheerleader for her sister. While Frances’s life is lifting off, Lizzie and her husband run into devastating financial problems. Lizzie loses her beloved home, takes a dull office job to help make ends meet and is
consumed with jealousy at her sister’s new life. As Frances comes into her own, her life serves as a touchstone for the other characters, who begin to measure their gumption and personal happiness against hers. Caught up in all of this are the twins’ parents, Barbara and William, as well as a woman who, through her longstanding affair with William, has become a kind of aunt and confessor to the twins. With sparkling dialogue, Trollope brings all of her characters, adults and children, to full life while managing to bestow unforgettable glimpses of Spain in all its melancholy and magnificence. She makes her readers want to drop everything in order to keep on reading. BOMC selection; paperback rights to Berkley; author tour. (Feb.) FYI: A Spanish Lover was a #1 bestseller in England in both hardcover and paperback.

SOLAR, by Ian McEwan

In McEwan’s latest, a Nobel prize-winning physicist gets slashed by the media after he says that most physicists are men because of differences between male and female brains. Just as McEwan himself got slashed by the media when he said last summer that Islamism was out to create a society he found morally offensive. Bound to be controversial.

HOUSE RULES, by Jodi Picoult

Unable to express himself socially but possessing a savant-like knack for investigating crimes, a teenage boy with Asperger’s Syndrome is wrongly accused of killing his tutor when the police mistake his autistic tics for guilty behavior.

MEN AND DOGS, by Katie Crouch

After the loss of her business and her husband sets her adrift, Hannah Legare is compelled to try to solve the mystery behind her father’s disappearance when she was 11, an endeavor that hinges on her ability to unlock secrets long held by her brother and ex-boyfriend. By the best-selling author of Girls in Trucks.

IMPERFECT BIRDS, by Anne Lamott

Rosie Ferguson is seventeen and ready to enjoy the summer before her senior year of high school. She’s intelligent-she aced AP physics; athletic-a former state-ranked tennis doubles champion; and beautiful. She is, in short, everything her mother, Elizabeth, hoped she could be. The family’s move to Landsdale, with stepfather James in tow, hadn’t been as bumpy as
Elizabeth feared.

But as the school year draws to a close, there are disturbing signs that the life Rosie claims to be leading is a sham, and that Elizabeth’s hopes for her daughter to remain immune from the pull of the darker impulses of drugs and alcohol are dashed. Slowly and against their will, Elizabeth and James are forced to confront the fact that Rosie has been lying to them-and that her deceptions will have profound consequences.

This is Anne Lamott’s most honest and heartrending novel yet, exploring our human quest for connection and salvation as it reveals the traps that can befall all of us.

THE ALOHA QUILT, by Jennifer Chiaverini

In this latest entry to the bestselling Elm Creek Quilts series, quilting queen Bonnie Markham explores Hawaii and learns about the islands’ quilting traditions while setting up a tropical quilt camp. Weary from a difficult divorce battle, Bonnie leaves beloved Elm Creek Manor and takes up her friend’s invitation to start the camp; once in Hawaii, she gets to work on
hiring staff and making her version of a Hawaiian quilt. When her mean-spirited ex-husband-to-be demands half her share in Elm Creek as part of the settlement, Bonnie takes drastic measures to protect the estate and her friends. Still, the big changes are hard to take, and Bonnie’s not sure she can follow through. With homey details and a strong sense of the
connections that bind women, friends, and families, Chiaverini (Circle of Quilters) lovingly crafts her tale about a woman stitching together a new life and a new project. Series fans will enjoy this latest entry, and those new to the quilting bee should have no problem finding their groove.

SAVING CEECEE HONEYCUTT, by Beth Hoffman

Relegated to the care of an eccentric great-aunt after her mentally unbalanced mother’s accidental death, 12-year-old CeeCee is quickly surrounded by the strong women and cultural elements of her new Savannah community. A first novel.

Steel Magnolias meets The Help in this Southern debut novel sparkling with humor, heart, and feminine wisdom

MEMOIR

CLAIMING GROUND, by Laura Bell

After college, a Kentucky girl spends a summer in Wyoming to find herself and regroup. Thirty years later, she’s still there. In this memoir, Bell vividly depicts her life out West, starting with her first job herding sheep—an occupation usually done by men. She goes on to write about her life as a ranch hand, masseuse, housewife, stepmother, and forest ranger,
mixing work experiences with touching and poignant accounts of family and friends. She also describes the Wyoming landscape in brilliant detail, revealing her love for the place. In reliving some of the sadder moments of her life, Bell uses a simple writing style that strengthens this memoir while giving it a raw poignancy to which anyone can relate. VERDICT An
award-winning author for her short pieces, Bell here turns in satisfying reading for ranching enthusiasts, memoir fanatics, and anyone who likes to get lost in stories about rural life and nature’s beauty.

COOKING

IN THE GREEN KITCHEN, by Alice Waters

Waters, restaurateur and chef extraordinaire, showcases basic cooking techniques every cook can and should master along with recipes using each method in this slim and attractive book. Derived from a Slow Food Nation event she helped organize, where notable chefs and foodies provided demonstrations on foundational procedures, Waters highlights a set of techniques that are universal to all cuisines. She covers the most basic of the basics, from stocking the pantry and washing lettuce to boiling pasta and wilting greens. In typical Waters fashion, recipes showcase just a few simple ingredients, allowing the natural flavors of the food to shine. Since dishes were chosen to highlight process, the result is a somewhat eclectic grouping of recipes, including pesto; spaghettini with garlic, parsley, and olive oil; dirty rice; Irish soda bread; and apple galette. She also covers peeling tomatoes, skinning peppers, roasting vegetables, and roasting and carving chicken. Throughout are color photographs of demonstrators from the event including Lidia Bastianich, Traci Des Jardins, Dan Barber, and David Chang, among others. Ideal for the cooking novice, this gem of a book captures the expertise of world-class chefs in an accessible, straightforward manner.

MYSTERY OF THE MONTH!!!

THE DEVIL’S STAR, by Jo Nesbo

As a serial killer terrorizes Oslo, Inspector Harry Hole (Nemesis, 2009, etc.) is battling even more fearsome demons.When copywriter Camilla Loen is shot to death, her index finger removed and a star-shaped red diamond tucked beneath her eyelid, Chief Inspector Bjarne Møller has the bright idea of pairing his heir-apparent, Inspector Tom Waaler, with barely functional alcoholic Harry, who’s spent most of the previous month on unofficial leave drowning his grief over his late colleague, Officer Ellen Gjeltsen. But Harry doesn’t just dislike and distrust Waaler; he’s convinced that Waaler is Prince, the mob’s inside man who murdered Ellen. So the salt-and-pepper rapport between Harry and Waaler is more like arsenic-and-cyanide. Even pulling Harry off the case so that he can investigate the disappearance of producer Wilhelm Barli’s wife turns sour because a parcel containing her severed middle finger swiftly makes it
clear that singer/actress Lisbeth Barli has become another victim of the Courier Killer. The exhaustingly wide-ranging case poses three crucial questions. What pattern underlies the Courier Killer’s choice of victims and modus operandi? When the police arrest an innocent suspect, can Harry protect him long enough to get the goods on the real killer? And how can he
possibly neutralize the hydra-headed Waaler, who grows more dangerous the more he’s thwarted?Not all the answers are equally interesting, but even readers new to this white-hot series will be impressed by Nesbø’s generous plotting and his insight into dark places in the human soul.

BOOK CLUB HITS! (Paperback)

LITTLE BEE, by Chris Cleave

Cleave’s much-praised second novel has an unforgettable central character—a 16-year-old Nigerian orphan named Little Bee. After escaping from a mass slaughter in her village, Little Bee encounters a married couple on the beach, a crossing of paths that changes the lives of everyone involved. The couple, Andrew and Sarah, are journalists from England who are trying to
rekindle their marriage with a holiday. What transpires between them and Little Bee on the beach is one of the novel’s many horrifying yet oddly transportive events. When Little Bee enters England covertly, she ends up in an immigration center but soon runs away, pinning her hopes on tracking down Andrew and Sarah. And find them she does, in the suburbs of London,
where a new chapter in Little Bee’s life soon unfolds—one that draws upon the horrible events back home even as it offers strange possibilities for the future. Courageous, resourceful and smart, Little Bee makes for a first-class narrator. Her impressions of European culture bring humor to a novel of many moods. Cleave, who writes for the Guardian, clearly has a broad
understanding of international politics and a deep sympathy for immigrants and exiles, both of which he brings to bear on this compelling narrative. His skills as a novelist have earned him comparisons to master storytellers such as Ian McEwan and John Banville, and Little Bee makes it easy to see why.

THE SCHOOL OF ESSENTIAL INGREDIENTS, by Erica Bauermeister

Gathering at Lillian’s Restaurant for a weekly cooking class, a young mother struggles with the growing demands of her family, an Italian kitchen designer works to adapt to life in America and a widower mourns the loss of his wife to breast cancer. Reprint. A best-selling novel.

A “heartbreakingly delicious” national bestseller about a chef, her students, and the evocative lessons that food teaches about life.

FICTION

UNION ATLANTIC, by Adam Haslett

A property rights battle between young banker Doug Fanning and retired teacher Charlotte Graves is marked by Charlotte’s bank-president brother, Charlotte’s tenacious grip on sanity and a troubled high school senior. By the Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-finalist author of You Are Not a Stranger Here.

THE POSTMISTRESS, by Sarah Blake

The stories of a small Cape Cod postmistress and an American radio reporter stationed in London collide on the eve of the United States’s entrance into World War II, a meeting that is shaped by a broken promise to deliver a letter.

Those who carry the truth sometimes bear a terrible weight.

SECRETS OF EDEN, by Chris Bohjalian

Haunted by the final words of a newly baptized congregation member who was subsequently murdered by her husband, the Reverend Stephen Drew abandons his pulpit to spend time with an author who writes best-selling books about angels. By the best-selling author of Midwives. 150,000 first printing.

Secrets of Eden is both a haunting literary thriller and a deeply evocative testament to the inner complexities that mark all of our lives.  Once again Chris Bohjalian has given us a riveting page-turner in which nothing is precisely what it seems.  As one character remarks, “Believe no one.  Trust no one.  Assume all of our stories are suspect.

HOUSE RULES, by Jodi Picoult

Unable to express himself socially but possessing a savant-like knack for investigating crimes, a teenage boy with Asperger’s Syndrome is wrongly accused of killing his tutor when the police mistake his autistic tics for guilty behavior. By the author of My Sister’s Keeper. 1.5 million first printi

WINTER GARDEN, by Kristin Hannah

Reunited when their beloved father falls ill, sisters Meredith and Nina find themselves under the shadow of their disapproving mother, whose painful history is hidden behind her rendition of a Russian fairy tale told to the sisters in childhood. 150,000 first printing.

Can a woman ever really know herself if she doesn’t know her mother?
From the author of the smash-hit bestseller Firefly Lane and True Colors comes a powerful, heartbreaking novel that illuminates the intricate mother-daughter bond and explores the enduring links between the present and the past.

MAJOR PETTIGREW’S LAST STAND, by Helen Simonson

Forced to confront the realities of life in the 21st century when he falls in love with widowed Pakistani descendant Mrs. Ali, a retired Major Pettigrew finds the relationship challenged by local prejudices that view Mrs. Ali, a Cambridge native, as a perpetual foreigner. 75,000 first printing.

MAKING TOAST, by Roger Rosenblatt

The National Book Critics Circle Award-finalist author of Children of War describes how, after his adult daughter’s sudden death, he and his wife moved in with their son-in-law and three grandchildren, quickly becoming reaccustomed to the world of small children and helping the family grieve and get on with life. 50,000 first printing.An

BONE FIRE, by Mark Spragg

While Wyoming sheriff Crane Carlson struggles with a meth-influenced murder, his wife’s addictions and his own manifestation of a genetic disease, octogenarian Einar Gilkyson takes stock of his life and reluctantly accepts help from his college dropout granddaughter. By the award-winning author of An Unfinished Life.

CLAIMING GROUND, by Laura Bell

An elegant, deep-running chronicle of Bell’s 30 years living in the mountain West. It begins as an encomium of place the Lewis Ranch in northwestern Wyoming, up in the Bighorn Mountains, where the author took a job herding sheep, far indeed from her native Kentucky. She was fresh out of college, clueless but lucky to stumble into these parts, and she found herself a young woman among old male sheepherders “tender alcoholics, muttering derelicts, societal rejects, and I had found a certain delicious comfort in their company.” When she could get it, that is, for the job was full of silence and space, tending to a knot of a thousand sheep, “a luminous, drifting mass that spills in rivulets through gulley and rises up hillsides, conforming intricately to the imperfect shape of earth.” If the “bare-bones immensity of Wyoming can make you feel like a sacrifice left on a slab for the gods to pick clean,” all the better when it revealed its beauties, which Bell tenders with restrained grace. A few years later she was herding cattle and falling in love and marrying the wrong man, though her love of land and kin, particularly her parents and stepdaughters drawn in intricate, emotionally charged portraits helps get her through. She closes with a crushing death in the family, recounted with scalding vulnerability and sadness: “When I think the ash of every sorrow has burned cold, I’m mistaken.” The episode speaks volumes about fragility, impermanence and transformation. Slowly she made her way back to solid ground, in the same landscape she started with, and it can only be hoped that the next 30 years find her in the same state of raptness, but with an earned measure of serenity. A work of descriptive virtuosity and a hard, honest pull through rough emotional terrain an exemplary memoir .Author tour to Boulder, Colo., Montana, New York, Portland, Ore., Salt Lake City, San Francisco, Seattle, Wyoming. Agent: Nancy Stauffer/Nancy Stauffer Associates Copyright Kirkus

THE DREAM OF PERPETUAL MOTION, by Dexter Palmer

With his only companions being his insane lover and her cryogenically frozen father, greeting card writer Harold Winslow must come to terms with the madness of a genius inventor and his quest to create a perpetual motion machine, in a story set in a fantastical future where nearly anything is possible. An enchanting first novel with elements of steampunk and alternate history, loosely constructed around the plot of Shakespeare’s THE TEMPEST. It’s a powerful story!

ANGELOLOGY, by Danielle Trussoni

Critically acclaimed memoirist Trussoni (Falling Through The Earth, 2006) breaks into the fiction market in a big way with an epic fantasy that combines a rich mythology with some Da Vinci Code–style treasure-hunting. The contest between good and evil is waged not in the heavens but here on Earth, between warring factions of biblical scholars and heavenly hosts. The unusual central character is Sister Evangeline, a 23-year-old nun at St. Rose Convent outside New York City. In the course of her work, she stumbles across a mislaid correspondence between philanthropist Abigail Rockefeller and the convent’s founding abbess concerning an astonishing 1943 discovery in the mountains of Greece. Simultaneously, the book introduces Percival Grigori, a critically ill, once-winged member of one of the most powerful families in an ancient race of beings born of a union between fallen angels and human beings: the Nephilim. These parasitic creatures, the “giants” referred to in the sixth chapter of Genesis, have engaged in spiritual warfare for generations with the Society of Angelologists, a group that included Evangeline’s parents. “It has been one continuous struggle from the very beginning,” says one of Evangeline’s comrades-in-arms. “St. Thomas Aquinas believed that the dark angels fell within twenty seconds of creation—their evil nature cracked the perfection of the universe almost instantly, leaving a terrible fissure between good and evil.” As Evangeline and Grigori are drawn into conflict over control of a powerful artifact, the lyre of the mythical Orpheus, Trussoni constructs a marathon narrative arc, ending the volume with a satisfying, if startling, transformation. A film adaptation and a sequel are already waiting in the wings. An ambitious adventure story with enough literary heft and religious fervor to satisfy anyone able to embrace its imaginative conceits and Byzantine plot. Copyright Kirkus

THE MAN FROM BEIJING, by Henning Mankell

In the aftermath of the 2006 massacre of 19 people in a Swedish village, Judge Birgitta Roslin, a granddaughter of two of the victims, discovers the 19th-century diary of a gang leader that reveals the case’s eerie connections to the abuse of Chinese slave workers. By the award-winning author of the Kurt Wallander mysteries.

NONFICTION

THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS, by Rebecca Skloot

A dense, absorbing investigation into the medical community’s exploitation of a dying woman and her family’s struggle to salvage truth and dignity decades later.In a well-paced, vibrant narrative, Popular Science contributor and Culture Dish blogger Skloot (Creative Writing/Univ. of Memphis) demonstrates that for every human cell put under a microscope, a complex life story is inexorably attached, to which doctors, researchers and laboratories have often been woefully insensitive and unaccountable. In 1951, Henrietta Lacks, an African-American mother of five, was diagnosed with what proved to be a fatal form of cervical cancer. At Johns Hopkins, the doctors harvested cells from her cervix without her permission and distributed them to labs around the globe, where they were multiplied and used for a diverse array of treatments. Known as HeLa cells, they became one of the world’s most ubiquitous sources for medical research of everything from hormones, steroids and vitamins to gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, even the polio vaccine all without the knowledge, must less consent, of the Lacks family. Skloot spent a decade interviewing every relative of Lacks she could find, excavating difficult memories and long-simmering outrage that had lay dormant since their loved one’s sorrowful demise. Equal parts intimate biography and brutal clinical reportage, Skloot’s graceful narrative adeptly navigates the wrenching Lack family recollections and the sobering, overarching realities of poverty and pre civil-rights racism. The author’s style is matched by a methodical scientific rigor and manifest expertise in the field.Skloot’s meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and Petri dish politics.

ANIMAL FACTORY: The Looming Threat of Industrial Pig, Dairy, and Poultry Farms to Humans and the Environment, by David Kirby

By the New York Times bestselling author of Evidence of Harm: a dramatic exposé of factory farms and the dangerous public health crisis created by some of the most powerfulEric Schlosser’s classic Fast Food Nation revealed how our meat is bred, raised, and brought to market. Now, in Animal Factory, bestselling journalist David Kirby takes the next step, exposing the devastating health and environmental impact of large-scale factory farms.
 
In this thoroughly researched book, Kirby follows three American families and communities—one in North Carolina, one in Illinois, and one in Washington state—whose lives are utterly changed by immense neighboring animal farms. Weaving complex science, politics, business, and the lives of everyday people, Kirby accompanies a fisherman who fights to preserve his family’s life and home; watches as a Midwestern community pushes back against a local farmer with grand ambitions; and interviews an unlikely activist, who takes on a powerful alliance of corporate and political entities when her home is covered with toxic soot and her water supply is compromised by runoff from lagoons of animal waste.
Written with power, insight, and narrative momentum, Animal Factory documents a crisis that has reached a critical juncture in the history of human health and our larger global environment.

AMERICANS IN PARIS: Life & Death Under Nazi Occupation, by Charles Glass

In Americans in Paris, tales of adventure, intrigue, passion, deceit, and survival unfold season by season, from the spring of 1940 to liberation in the summer of 1944, as renowned journalist Charles Glass tells the story of a remarkable cast of expatriates and their struggles in Nazi Paris. Before the Second World War began, approximately thirty thousand Americans lived in Paris, and when war broke out in 1939 almost five thousand remained. As citizens of a neutral nation, the Americans in Paris believed they had little to fear. They were wrong. Glass’s discovery of letters, diaries, war documents, and police files reveals as never before how Americans were trapped in a web of intrigue, collaboration, and courage.

CITIZENS OF LONDON: The Americans Who Stood With Britain in Its Darkest, Finest Hour, by Lynne Olson

How the initially fragile Anglo-American alliance was forged in the perilous days of World War II.In early 1941, Britain was perilously close to being forced to surrender to Germany. Submarines were sinking hundreds of thousands of tons of merchant shipping each month, creating dangerous shortages of food and materiel necessary to fight the war, yet Franklin Roosevelt held back from authorizing U.S. military convoys to accompany ships. Former Baltimore Sun White House correspondent Olson (Troublesome Young Men: The Rebels Who Brought Churchill to Power and Helped Save England, 2007, etc.) re-creates the dramatic interplay of personalities and world politics, from the relationship between Winston Churchill (who understood that America was Britain’s lifeline) and FDR (who feared precipitating war with Germany and was suspicious of British imperialist motives), to the successful efforts of a small group of Americans living in London who played a vital behind-the-scenes role in bringing the two leaders together and forming an important alliance. These included Ambassador John Gilbert Winant, a former Republican governor who was nonetheless an ardent New Dealer; Edward R. Murrow, whose live broadcasts brought the reality of German terror bombings home to Americans; Averill Harriman, FDR’s special emissary who served as lend-lease coordinator and coached the prime minister on how to deal with the president; and Harry Hopkins, FDR’s closest advisor. Though many mingled with Britain’s “rich and powerful,” Murrow relished reporting about the “front-line” troops in the “Battle of London,” the “firemen, wardens, doctors, nurses, clergymen, telephone repairmen, and other workers who nightly risked their lives to aid the wounded, retrieve the dead, and bring their battered city back to life.” After Pearl Harbor, strains in the alliance emerged regarding the conduct of the war, with Dwight Eisenhower playing a crucial on-the-scene role in integrating the U.S.-British military command.A nuanced history that captures the intensity of life in a period when victory was not a foregone conclusion.

CHASING THE WHITE DOG: An Amateur Outlaw’s Adventures in Moonshine, by Mac Watman

Chronicles the origins of moonshine while revealing its hold in the modern world, providing coverage of everything from the late-18th-century whiskey tax and Prohibition to the present day’s illegal microdistillery trade and the recent operation to make moonshining a federal crime.

LUNCH IN PARIS, A Love Story with Recipes, by Elizabeth Bard

Documents how the author fell in love and discovered the excellence of French cuisine during a life-changing lunch, recounting her decision to leave her fast-paced New York life to build a life abroad marked by bustling marketplaces, bad-tempered butchers and decadent chocolate shops.

WILLIE MAYS, The Life, The Legend, by James S. Hirsch

In a biography authorized by the baseball great himself, the best-selling author of Hurricane: The Miraculous Journey of Rubin Carter offers a gripping account of Willie Mays’s life, drawn from interviews with the icon, as well as friends, family members and teammates.

Mystery/Suspense

BLACKOUT, by Connie Willis

Three history researchers, all time travelers from the future, find themselves trapped in England during World War II when they discover that the portals to their own times have disappeared. Setting her first novel since 1991’s Passage in the same near-future as The Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog, the award-winning author brings an intimacy to her narrative that increases the tension of her characters. VERDICT Willis is a consummate storyteller whose immersive style hooks readers from the start; her latest work, which is being published in two parts (the second volume is scheduled for November), should appeal to a wide readership and be a particular draw for her devoted followers. LJ Reviews

THE DEVIL’S STAR, by Jo Nesbo

As a serial killer terrorizes Oslo, Inspector Harry Hole (Nemesis, 2009, etc.) is battling even more fearsome demons.When copywriter Camilla Loen is shot to death, her index finger removed and a star-shaped red diamond tucked beneath her eyelid, Chief Inspector Bjarne Møller has the bright idea of pairing his heir-apparent, Inspector Tom Waaler, with barely functional alcoholic Harry, who’s spent most of the previous month on unofficial leave drowning his grief over his late colleague, Officer Ellen Gjeltsen. But Harry doesn’t just dislike and distrust Waaler; he’s convinced that Waaler is Prince, the mob’s inside man who murdered Ellen. So the salt-and-pepper rapport between Harry and Waaler is more like arsenic-and-cyanide. Even pulling Harry off the case so that he can investigate the disappearance of producer Wilhelm Barli’s wife turns sour because a parcel containing her severed middle finger swiftly makes it clear that singer/actress Lisbeth Barli has become another victim of the Courier Killer. The exhaustingly wide-ranging case poses three crucial questions. What pattern underlies the Courier Killer’s choice of victims and modus operandi? When the police arrest an innocent suspect, can Harry protect him long enough to get the goods on the real killer? And how can he possibly neutralize the hydra-headed Waaler, who grows more dangerous the more he’s thwarted?Not all the answers are equally interesting, but even readers new to this white-hot series will be impressed by Nesbø’s generous plotting and his insight into dark places in the human soul.

FALSE MERMAID, by Erin Hart

Convinced that her brother-in-law was responsible for her sister’s murder, Nora returns to Minnesota when her brother-in-law prepares to marry again; while her sometime partner, Cormac, confronts the return of his estranged father. By the Agatha Award-nominated author of Haunted Ground.

A chilling new suspense novel from Erin Hart that brilliantly combines forensics, archaeology, and history with Irish myth and mystery.

NO MERCY, by Lori Armstrong

A war-hardened daughter returns home to find small-town South Dakota life as perilous as her tour of Iraq.The Army grants medical leave to sharpshooter Mercy Gunderson, but she just misses her father’s passing. And that’s not the only chip on this tough gal’s shoulder. Her flaky sister Hope is on the latest in a string of good-for-nothing boyfriends, her surly nephew is determined to get into trouble and people keep going and getting themselves killed on her land. When cocky acting sheriff Dawson, the successor to Mercy’s father, refuses to get involved, she has no other choice than to lead her own informal investigation. The more she finds out, the more trouble she gets into, as she uncovers a group of Native-American teens from the local reservation whose silence seems to be her biggest clue. She knows she must be on the right path when people start turning up dead, but her search heats up as it becomes increasingly clear that she’s next on the list. Things get more personal as Mercy has to face her past in order to get the help she needs. The more determined she is that she won’t let herself and her family down, the more deeply she gets invested in her hometown.Something for everyone in this tale of two cultures in collision. The mystery is mostly solid, the climax suitably complex, and there’s enough blood and guts for those so inclined.

SILENCER, by James W. Hall

Verdict Thorn is among the most likable heroes in crime fiction. There is a fair amount of action that fans expect, but the story really revolves around Hall’s outstanding characterization of Thorn, Rusty, and Sugarman. Sure to please fans of the series, this is another winner.

We have carried these top 10, and they all continue to sell…even though it is 2010! Wonder which titles will grace the “top 10″ for this year?

FICTION

BOTH WAYS IS THE ONLY WAY I WANT IT, by Maile Meloy

Eleven unforgettable new stories demonstrate the emotional power and the clean, assured style that have earned Meloy praise from critics and devotion from readers. Propelled by a terrific instinct for storytelling, and concerned with the convolutions of modern love and the importance of place, this collection is about the battlefields and fields of victory that exist in seemingly harmless spaces, in kitchens and living rooms and cars. Set mostly in the American West, the stories feature small-town lawyers, ranchers, doctors, parents, and children, and explore the moral quandaries of love, family, and friendship. A ranch hand falls for a recent law school graduate who appears unexpectedly and reluctantly in his remote Montana town. A young father opens his door to find his dead grandmother standing on the front step. Two women weigh love and betrayal during an early snow. Throughout the book, Meloy examines the tensions between having and wanting, as her characters try to keep hold of opposing forces in their lives: innocence and experience, risk and stability, fidelity and desire.

CHRONIC CITY, by Jonathan Lethem

Exchanging rapturous love letters with a fiance who is trapped on the Space Station, former child star Chase Insteadman apathetically attends social engagements before marijuana-smoking pop critic Perkus Tooth introduces him to a side of Manhattan that causes Chase to question everything he believes. By the MacArthur Fellowship-recipient author of The Fortress of Solitude.

A GATE AT THE STAIRS, by Lorrie Moore

As the United States begins gearing up for war in the Middle East, twenty-year-old Tassie Keltjin, the Midwestern daughter of a gentleman hill farmer - his “Keltjipotatoes” are justifiably famous - has come to a university town as a college student, her brain on fire with Chaucer, Sylvia Plath, Simone de Beauvoir.
Between semesters, she takes a job as a part-time nanny. The family she works for seems both mysterious and glamorous to her, and although Tassie had once found children boring, she comes to care for, and to protect, their newly adopted little girl as her own.

As the year unfolds and she is drawn deeper into each of these lives, her own life hack home becomes ever more alien to her: her parents are frailer; her brother, aimless
and lost in high school, contemplates joining the military. Tassie finds herself becoming more and more the stranger she felt herself to be, and as life and love unravel dramatically, even shockingly, she is forever changed.

HALF BROKE HORSES, by Jeannette Walls

The author offers a novel based on the life of her grandmother, Lily Casey Smith, who learned to break horses in childhood, journeyed 500 miles on a pony as a teen to become a teacher, and ran a vast ranch in Arizona with her husband while raising two children, including Rosemary Smith Walls, portrayed in the author’s acclaimed The Glass Castle.

A SHORT HISTORY OF WOMEN, by Kate Walbert

Kate Walbert’s A Short History of Women is a portrayal of the complicated legacies of mothers and daughters, chronicling five generations of women from the close of the nineteenth century through the early years of the twenty-first.
The novel opens in England in 1914 at the deathbed of Dorothy Townsend, a suffragette who starves herself for the cause. Her choice echoes in the stories of her descendants interwoven throughout: a brilliant daughter who tries to escape the burden of her mother’s infamy by immigrating to America just after World War I to begin a career in science; a niece who chooses a conventional path - marriage, children, suburban domesticity - only to find herself disillusioned with her husband of fifty years and engaged in heartbreaking and futile antiwar protests; a great-granddaughter who wryly articulates the free-floating anxiety of the times while getting drunk on a children’s playdate in post-gin Manhattan. In a kaleidoscope of voices and with a richness of imagery, emotion, and wit, Walbert portrays the ways in which successive generations of women have responded to what the Victorians called “The Woman Question.”

Nonfiction

THE AGE OF WONDER, by Richard Holmes

The author of a number of biographies, British author Holmes presents a series of stories which collectively provide an account of the second scientific revolution, which produced a new vision–Romantic science–in 18th-century Britain. Included are chapters on botanist Joseph Banks (1743-1820), astronomers William Hershel (1738-1822) and his sister Caroline (1750-1848), 18th-century balloonists, chemist Humphry Davy (1778-1829), and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) and the soul. The text also contains an alphabetically-organized list of key individuals in 18th-century science, a thematically grouped bibliography, and some 70 b&w and color reproductions.

THE GOOD SOLDIERS, by David Finkel

It was the last-chance moment of the war. In January 2007, President George W. Bush announced a new strategy for Iraq. He called it the surge. “Many listening tonight will ask why this effort will succeed when previous operations to secure Baghdad did not. Well, here are the differences,” he told a skeptical nation. Among those listening were the young, optimistic army infantry soldiers of the 2-16, the battalion nicknamed the Rangers. About to head to a vicious area of Baghdad, they decided the difference would be them.

Fifteen months later, the soldiers returned home forever changed. Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporter David Finkel was with them in Bagdad, and almost every grueling step of the way.

What was the true story of the surge? And was it really a success? Those are the questions he grapples with in his remarkable report from the front lines. Combining the action of Mark Bowden’s Black Hawk Down with the literary brio of Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, The Good Soldiers is an unforgettable work of reportage. And in telling the story of these good soldiers, the heroes and the ruined, David Finkel has also produced an eternal tale—not just of the Iraq War, but of all wars, for all time.

LIT, by Mary Karr

The best-selling author of The Liar’s Club reveals a new piece of her life during which, shortly after giving birth to a child she adored, she drank herself into the same numbness that nearly devoured her charismatic but troubled mother, reaching the brink of suicide before a surprising spiritual awakening led her to sobriety. 100,000 first printing. An expert on early Christianity reveals the historical Paul, not as the founder of a new Christian religion, but as a devout Jew who believed Jesus was the Christ who would unite Jews and Gentiles and fulfill God’s universal plan for humanity. 25,000 first printing.

LORDS OF FINANCE, by Liaquat Ahamed

It is commonly believed that the Great Depression that began in 1929 resulted from a confluence of events beyond any one person’s or government’s control. In fact, as Liaquat Ahamed reveals, it was the decisions made by a small number of central bankers that were the primary cause of that economic meltdown, the effects of which set the stage for World War II and reverberated for decades. As yet another period of economic turmoil makes headlines today, Lords of Finance is a potent reminder of the enormous impact that the decisions of central bankers can have, their fallibility, and the terrible human consequences that can result when they are wrong.

RAYMOND CARVER, A WRITER’S LIFE, by Carol Sklenicka

The product of the author’s decades-long cross-country search of archives and her extensive interviews with Carver’s relatives, friends and colleagues, an informative memoir provides the definitive story of an iconic literary figure, whose tales focused on ordinary people and their troubles brought on by poverty, drunkenness and embittered marriages.

Raymond Carver was the most beloved American short-story writer of the late twentieth century. Two decades after his death, this definitive biography tells the story of Carver’s uncanny ambition, legendary life, and enduring work.

STONES INTO SCHOOLS, BY GREG MORTENSON


From the author of the #1 bestseller Three Cups of Tea, the continuing story of this determined humanitarian’s efforts to promote peace through education

In this dramatic first-person narrative, Greg Mortenson picks up where Three Cups of Tea left off in 2003, recounting his relentless, ongoing efforts to establish schools for girls in Afghanistan; his extensive work in Azad Kashmir and Pakistan after a massive earthquake hit the region in 2005; and the unique ways he has built relationships with Islamic clerics, militia commanders, and tribal leaders even as he was dodging shootouts with feuding Afghan warlords and surviving an eight-day armed abduction by the Taliban. He shares for the first time his broader vision to promote peace through education and literacy, as well as touching on military matters, Islam, and women-all woven together with the many rich personal stories of the people who have been involved in this remarkable two-decade humanitarian effort.

Since the 2006 publication of Three Cups of Tea, Mortenson has traveled across the U.S. and the world to share his vision with hundreds of thousands of people. He has met with heads of state, top military officials, and leading politicians who all seek his advice and insight. The continued phenomenal success of Three Cups of Tea proves that there is an eager and committed audience for Mortenson’s work and message.

Greg Mortenson is the recipient of Pakistan’s highest civil award (The Star of Pakistan) for his sixteen years work to promote education and peace. The cofounder of the Central Asia Institute and Pennies For Peace, he lives in Montana with his family.

THE LACUNA, BY BARBARA KINGSOLVER


Harrison William Shepherd, a highly observant writer, is caught between two worlds–in Mexico, working for communists Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and Leon Trotsky, and later in America, where he his caught up in the patriotism of World War II–in a gripping story about identity and the power of words by the best-selling author of The Poisonwood Bible.

IMPACT, BY DOUGLAS PRESTON


Wyman Ford, hero of Tyrannosaur Canyon and Blasphemy, returns in Preston’s latest thriller, where the stakes involve not only the salvation of the world but also the solar system. A young woman in Maine sees a meteorite streak through the sky and decides to find the crater. A scientist working on Mars data finds something so startling that he is murdered to keep the information secret. And Ford heads to Cambodia to investigate the source of a new gemstone on the market that has radioactive properties. When he arrives, he realizes that the mine is an exit hole. How can a meteorite travel through the earth? VERDICT Preston has done it again. The thriller elements mix well with the science aspects of the story, and the author makes even the hard-to-grasp concepts easy to understand. Most readers will consume this in one sitting; not to be missed. LJ Review

HALF BROKE HORSES, BY JEANNETTE WALLS

The author offers a novel based on the life of her grandmother, Lily Casey Smith, who learned to break horses in childhood, journeyed 500 miles on a pony as a teen to become a teacher, and ran a vast ranch in Arizona with her husband while raising two children, including Rosemary Smith Walls, portrayed in the author’s acclaimed The Glass Castle.

COMMITTED, BY ELIZABETH GILBERT

The author of the best-selling Eat, Pray, Love chronicles how the U.S. government gave her and her Brazilian-born lover, Felipe, an ultimatum–marry or Felipe cannot enter the country again–and how she tackled her fears of marriage by trying to discover through historical research, interviews and personal reflection what this stubbornly enduring old institution actually is.

REMARKABLE CREATURES, BY TRACY CHEVALIER


Marked for greatness after being struck by lightning in infancy, Mary Anning discovers a fossilized skeleton near her 19th-century home that triggers attacks on her character and upheavals throughout the religious, scientific and academic communities. By the best-selling author of Girl with a Pearl Earring.

A voyage of discoveries, a meeting of two remarkable women, and extraordinary time and place enrich bestselling author Tracy Chevalier’s enthralling new novel.

THE UNNAMED, BY JOSHUA FERRIS


In Ferris’s remarkable second novel (after Then We Came to the End), a life of privilege comes to ruin as a result of a strange and mysterious illness. Attorney Tim Farnsworth thought he had recovered from a disorder that compels him to walk to the point of exhaustion. But now his walking disease has returned and shows no sign of going into remission. His wife, Jane, supportive beyond measure, does everything she can to keep Tim safe during his walks, including making routine midnight trips to pick him up. As the disorder takes increasing control over their lives, however, the sacrifices they make for each other drive them further apart. Ferris manages to inject a bizarre whimsy into a devastatingly sad story, with each of Tim’s outings revealing a new aspect of his marriage. The novel’s circular aspects, with would-be happy endings spiraling back into chaos and then descending further, integrate Ferris’s themes of family, sickness, and the uncertain division between body and mind into a vastly satisfying and original book. PW Review

THEN CAME THE EVENING, BY BRIAN HART


Eighteen years after being sent to prison for a violent crime, Vietnam veteran Bandy Dorner is finally released and is soon visited by the wife who cheated on him and his teenage son, prompting the three of them to explore whether they belong together as a family.

A riveting, psychologically rich family drama set in the American West, from a writer who has been compared to Cormac McCarthy.

A FAIR MAIDEN, BY JOYCE CAROL OATES


Sixteen-year-old Katya Spivak is out for a walk on the gracious streets of Bayhead Harbor with her two summer babysitting charges when she’s approached by silver-haired, elegant Marcus Kidder. At first his interest in her seems harmless, even pleasant; like his name, a sort of gentle joke. His beautiful home, the children’s books he’s written, his classical music, the marvelous art in his study, his lavish presents to her — Mr. Kidder’s life couldn’t be more different from Katya’s drab working-class existence back home in South Jersey, or more enticing. But by degrees, almost imperceptibly, something changes, and posing for Mr. Kidder’s new painting isn’t the lighthearted endeavor it once was. What does he really want from her? And how far will he go to get it?

In the tradition of Oates’s classic story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” A Fair Maiden is an unsettling, ambiguous tale of desire and control.

NOAH’S COMPASS, BY ANNE TYLER


Preparing to retire early from an unfulfilling teaching job that supplanted his dream of becoming a philosopher, Liam Pennywell struggles to remember missing memories of the night before he awoke in the hospital with a head injury, an effort that leads to unexpected discoveries. By the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Breathing Lessons.

From the incomparable Anne Tyler, a wise, gently humorous, and deeply compassionate novel about a schoolteacher, who has been forced to retire at sixty-one, coming to terms with the final phase of his life.

THE PRODIGAL WIFE, BY MARCIA WILLETT


Having achieved success as a television presenter of gardening programs, Jolyon is visited by the recently widowed mother who abandoned him, Maria, but he finds it difficult to trust her and forgive the hurt she inflicted.

Deservedly compared to her countrywomen, Binchy and Pilcher, Willett is an equally gifted storyteller.

DEATH BY THE BOOK, BY LENNY BARTULIN


After crabby businessman Hammond Kasprowicz hires secondhand bookstore owner Jack Susko to find as many copies of an obscure poet’s works as possible, Jack is happy to make some extra cash, but is baffled when Hammond burns every copy he finds–and soon, other things begin to disappear.

THE RED DOOR, BY CHARLES TODD


Investigating the death of a Lancaster woman in the summer of 1920, Scotland Yard Detective Ian Rutledge links her demise to the disappearance of a man who was wrongly believed to have gone to serve in World War I, a case that is challenged by internal dogma. By the best-selling author of A Matter of Justice.

THE SWAN THIEVES, BY ELIZABETH KOSTOVA


His ordered life thrown into disarray when he begins treating an unstable genius artist who has recently attacked a canvas at the National Gallery of Art, psychiatrist and art hobbyist Andrew Marlowe struggles to understand the secret that torments the artist and discovers a tragedy at the heart of French Impressionism.

THE GIRL NEXT DOOR, BY ELIZABETH NOBLE


The tenants in a New York City co-op learn about friendship and the meaning of home through a multigenerational relationship, an extramarital infatuation, a love triangle and a lonely dream about belonging. By the author of The Reading Group.

ALICE I HAVE BEEN, BY MELANIE BENJAMIN


Octogenarian Alice, who as a child inspired Lewis Carroll’s famous Wonderland character, looks back on a life marked by an implacable mother, her halcyon days in Oxford, and the sons who went off to war.

Few works of literature are as universally beloved as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Now, in this spellbinding historical novel, we meet the young girl whose bright spirit sent her on an unforgettable trip down the rabbit hole–and the grown woman whose story is no less enthralling.

THE GIRL WITH GLASS FEET, BY ALI SHAW


After a visit to a remote, snowbound archipelago where unusual winged creatures flit about, Ida Maclaird begins to turn into glass, and she must get help from Midas Crook, a young loner and native to the islands, if she is to stop the transformation.

An inventive and richly visual novel about young lovers on a quest to find a cure for a magical ailment, perfect for readers of Alice Hoffman.

AN IRISH COUNTRY GIRL, BY PATRICK TAYLOR


The author of An Irish Country Doctor offers a story of the early life of his beloved character Kinky Kincaid, who was once known as Maureen O’Hanlon, a farmer’s daughter growing up in the hills and glens of 1920s County Cork, Ireland, who had a gift for seeing fairies, spirits and the dreaded Banshee.

SUMMERTIME, BY J.M. COETZEE


Researching a late South African writer, a young English biographer interviews five people whose accounts describe a reserved and bookish young man who had trouble making connections. By the Nobel Prize-winning author of Waiting for the Barbarians.

Shortlisted for the 2009 Man Booker Prize

A brilliant new work of fiction from the Nobel Prize-winning author of Disgrace and Diary of a Bad Year

THE BRIGHTEST STAR IN THE SKY, BY MARIAN KEYES


Marian Keyes’s inimitable blend of rollicking humor, effervescent prose, and stories that deal with real-life issues have captivated readers around the globe. She is one of the bestselling authors of women’s fiction in the English-speaking world. Her new novel will delight fans of Candace Bushnell’s darkly comic sensibility and Sophie Kinsella’s fast-paced action. The Brightest Star in the Sky follows seven neighbors whose lives become entangled when a sassy and prescient spirit pays a visit to their Dublin townhouse with the intent of changing at least one of their lives.

AFTER YOU’VE GONE, BY JEFFREY LENT


A widower, suddenly bereft, finds an unexpected future when he goes to Amsterdam looking for his past in Lent’s intricate and rewarding fourth novel. Henry Dorn is an upright college professor whose relatively tranquil existence is upended when his wife and son are killed in a car accident in the 1920s. As the novel follows Henry in flashbacks to before and after the crash, we get a closeup view of the loss of innocence of a person and a world. Henry’s relationship with his son, a morphine-addicted WWI veteran, had grown deeply fraught, while glimpses of Henry’s childhood in Nova Scotia reveal a hardscrabble fishing family torn apart. After the accident, Henry travels to Amsterdam to research his family history, and an unexpected affair kicks off a period of indulgence on a continent whose need for postwar recovery matches his own psychic wounds. At times, the dialogue can feel wooden, but the narrative’s course back and forth through time and across the Atlantic creates an aura of mystery and tension that’s amplified by Lent’s vivid depiction of the era. It’s a nice contrast to the aimless youngsters often associated with the lost generation canon.

THE WETTEST COUNTY IN THE WORLD, BY MATT BONDURANT


Based on the true story of Matt Bondurant’s grandfather and two granduncles, The Wettest County in the World is a gripping tale of brotherhood, greed, and murder. The Bondurant Boys were a notorious gang of roughnecks and moonshiners who ran liquor through Franklin County, Virginia, during Prohibition and in the years after. Forrest, the eldest brother, is fierce, mythically indestructible, and the consummate businessman; Howard, the middle brother, is an ox of a man besieged by the horrors he witnessed in the Great War; and Jack, the youngest, has a taste for luxury and a dream to get out of Franklin. Driven and haunted, these men forge a business, fall in love, and struggle to stay afloat as they watch their family die, their father’s business fail, and the world they know crumble beneath the Depression and drought.

THROUGH THE HEART, BY KATE MORGENROTH


From the bestselling author of They Did It with Love, a chance meeting ignites romance and results in murder

Nora and Timothy have lives that are worlds apart. Nora lives in a small Kansas town, living paycheck to paycheck, working in a coffee shop. Timothy lives in Manhattan, responsible to no one and nothing except managing his family’s millions. When these two meet, it seems like the beginning of a fairy tale. Except Nora is not your typical damsel in distress, Timothy does not quite fit the role of a gallant prince, and fairy tales don’t include a dead body.

As Nora and Timothy take turns telling their sides of the story, the reader is caught in the net of their love, and the chilling murder that results. With big questions of love, fidelity, filial responsibility and the role of fate, Through the Heart is a page-turning love story with a jaw dropping twist readers won’t soon forget.

EATING ANIMALS, BY JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER


The award-winning author of Everything Is Illuminated exposes common misconceptions about how animals are slaughtered and processed for food, drawing on sources from popular culture to national tradition to reveal how the meat industry misrepresents its practices.

THE FULL PLATE DIET, BY STUART SEALE M.D.


A diet book supported by research and augmented by full-color photos centers its approach around such high-fiber foods as vegetables, fruits and whole grains.

ANGEL OF DEATH ROW, BY ANDREA D. LYON


Dubbed the “Angel of Death Row” by the Chicago Tribune, Lyon was the first woman to serve as lead attorney in a death penalty case. Throughout her career, she has defended those accused of heinous acts and argued that, no matter their guilt or innocence, they deserved a change at redemption.
Now, for the first time, Lyon shares her story, from her early work as a Legal Aid attorney to her founding of the Center for Justice in Capital Cases. Full of courtroom drama, tragedy, and redemption, Angel of Death Row is a remarkable inside look at what drives Lyon to defend those who seem indefensible—and to win.

HOW TO SAVE YOUR OWN LIFE, BY MICHAEL GATES GILL


The brain tumor survivor and author of How Starbucks Saved My Life shares lessons for surviving unanticipated life challenges, from taking leaps of faith and overcoming pride to treating others with respect and minimizing one’s reliance on technology.

YOU ON A DIET, BY MICHAEL ROIZEN M.D.


The former health expert for The Oprah Winfrey Show and star of The Dr. Oz Show joins his coauthor to present a revised edition of their popular diet book, updated with discussions of the latest fads and new tips and tricks for getting fit and healthy–and staying that way.

Publishers have certainly waited until the fall season, to bring out their best and brightest new releases. Mel and I just returned from our regional Indie trade show in Denver this past week. We will have a wonderful list of great holiday titles, as well as “just released” titles in our next email.

Also, the Indie Holiday catalog will be at the store soon…stop by for your free copy…and…THANK YOU, THANK YOU FOR YOUR CONTINUED SUPPORT!!

Just a few of what our customers are reading…some brand new, some definitely “notable!!”

SOUTH OF BROAD, by Pat Conroy



The beloved best-selling author returns with a sprawling tale set mostlyin Charleston, South Carolina, where, after his brother’s suicide, Leopold Bloom King struggles along with the rest of his family until he beginsto gather an intimate circle of friends, whose ties endure for two decades until a final, unexpected test of friendship rears its ugly head in San Francisco. 750,000 first printing.




THATOLD CAPE MAGIC, by Richard Russo



A change of pace from Pulitzer-winning author Russo (Bridge of Sighs, 2007, etc.).In contrast to his acclaimed novels about dying towns in the Northeast, the author’s slapstick satire of academia (Straight Man, 1997) previously seemed like an anomaly. Now it has a companion of sorts, thoughRusso can’t seem to decide whether his protagonist is comic or tragic. Maybe both. The son of two professors who were unhappy with each other andtheir lot in life, Jack Griffin vowed not to follow in their footsteps, instead becoming a hack screenwriter in Los Angeles. Then he leaves that career to become a cinema professor and moves back East with his wife Joy. Most of the novel takes place during two weddings a year apart: one on Cape Cod, where Jack had endured annual summer vacations and convinced Joy to spend their honeymoon; the other in Maine, where Joy had wanted to honeymoon. Plenty of flashbacks concerning the families of each spouse seem on the surface to present very different models for marriage, and thereis an account of the year between the weddings that shows their relationship changing significantly. It isn’t enough that Jack feels trapped by his familial past; he carries his parents’ ashes in his trunk, can’t bear to scatter them and carries on conversations with his late mother that eventually become audible. Will Jack and Joy be able to sustain their marriage? Will their daughter succumb to the fate of her parents, just as Jackand Joy have? Observes Jack, “Late middle age, he was coming to understand, was a time of life when everything was predictable and yet somehow you failed to see any of it coming.” Readable, as always with this agreeable and gifted author. First printing of 200,000. Kirkus Review




ZEITOUN, by Dave Eggers



“In Zeitoun, what Dave Eggers has found in the Katrina mud is the full-fleshed story of a single family, and in telling that story he hits largertargets with more punch than those who have already attacked the thematic and historic giants of this disaster. It’s the stuff of great narrative nonfiction…imagine Charles Dickens, his sentimentality in check but his journalistic eyes wide open, roaming New Orleans after it was buried by Hurricane Katrina. 50 years from now, when people want to know what happened to this once-great city during a shameful episode of our history, they will still be talking about a family named Zeitoun.” New York Times Book Review, written by Timothy Egan.



SPEAKING OF TIMOTHY EGAN…




THE BIG BURN, by Timothy Egan



The epic forest fire of 1910 and how it kept massive business interests from strangling the nascent American conservation movement. New York Times columnist and National Book Award winner Egan (The Worst Hard Times: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl, 2005, etc.) dissects the nation’s worst-ever forest fire and its aftermath. Erupting over two August days in the tinder-dry Bitterroot Mountains along the Idaho-Montana border, it consumed three million woodland acres, wiped out several railroad-junction towns and killed nearly 100 people, most ofthem temporary fire fighters and the U.S. Forest Service rangers who hadhired them. Egan focuses his probing tale on two men, Theodore Rooseveltand Gifford Pinchot, who had met two decades before, finding they had wealthy families and a deep love of the outdoors in common. A third, SierraClub founder John Muir, was a mentor and inspiration to both, but later broke away due to differences of opinion on policy matters. In the author’s accounting, the idea of conservation, as now generally accepted, was essentially launched from the relationship between Roosevelt and Pinchot. Roosevelt proved crucial in many endeavors. He set aside, as Egan writes,”an area roughly the size of France” as public-domain national forest inthe West and appointed Pinchot as founding director of the Forest Service, which was then an agency with no authority that faced nearly total public antipathy, including that of the powerful timber and railroad barons.The “Big Burn,” however, during which undermanned ranks of rangers were dying in the last line of defense, drastically changed public sentiment. Essential for any Green bookshelf.




THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE, by Stieg Larsson



Tangled but worthy follow-up to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2008), also starring journo extraordinaire Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander, the Lara Crofts of the land of the midnight sun. That’s not quite right: Lisbeth is really a Baltic MacGyver with a highly developed sense of outrage, a sociopathic bent and brand-new breast implants, to say nothing of a well-stuffed bankbook. The late Larsson’s sequel does not absolutely require knowledge of its predecessor, but it helps, given the convoluted back story and the allusive, sometimes loopy structure of the present book. In all events, Lisbeth bears her trademark dragon tattoo still, but her wasp is gone, for a curious reason: “The wasp was too conspicuous and it made her too easy remember and identify. Salander did not want to be remembered or identified.” She cuts a fine figure all the same on the beachat Grenada, where she falls into a sticky skein of intrigue involving the usual suspects: self-righteous crusaders, bored Club Med types and somevery nasty characters on both sides of what used to be called the Iron Curtain. So sticky is the plot, in fact, that Lisbeth finds herself accused of committing murder. It’s a predicament that the utterly self-reliant but unworldly hacker (when we catch up with her, she’s reading a mathematics treatise picked up during one of her frequent visits to university bookshops) needs Blomkvist’s help to get out of. Some of the traditional elements of the espionage thriller turn up in Larsson’s pages, while othersare turned on their head—sometimes literally, at least where the romantic bits come in. Still, while endlessly complex, the plot has the requisite chases, cliffhangers and bloodshed. Not to mention Fermat’s theorem.Fans of postmodern mystery will revel in Larsson’s latest.



Stieg Larsson, who lived in Sweden, was the editor in chief of the magazine Expo and a leading expert on antidemocratic right-wing extremist and Nazi organizations. He died in 2004, shortly after delivering the manuscripts for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played withFire, and the third novel in the series.

HORSE SOLDIERS, by Doug Stanton
Describes the secret mission of a small band of U.S. soldiers who battled against Taliban forces on horseback and capturedthe Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif, a critical location for further campaigns.From the New York Times-bestselling author of In Harm’s Way comes a true- life story of American soldiers overcoming great odds to achieve a stunning military victory.

SHANGHAI GIRLS, by Lisa See
Forced to leave Shanghai when their father sells them to California suitors, sisters May and Pearl struggle to adapt to life in 1930s Los Angeles while still bound to old customs, as they face discrimination and confront a life-altering secret. For readers of the phenomenal bestsellers Snow Flower and the Secret Fan and Peony in Love-a stunning new novel from Lisa See about two sisters who leave Shanghai to find new lives in 1930s Los Angeles

RESILIENCE, by Elizabeth Edwards
The author recounts some of the difficulties she has faced, including the death of her son, cancer, and her husband’s public affair, and shares how she has managed to adapt and survive.

 
 

THE GIRLS FROM AMES, by Jeffrey Zaslow
Looks at the lives, bonds, and experiences of a group of female friends from Ames, Iowa.

From the coauthor of the million-copy bestseller The Last Lecture comes a moving tribute to female friendships, with the inspiring story of eleven girls and the ten women they became.

THIS IS WATER: SOME THOUGHTS DELIVERED ON A SIGNIFICANT OCCASION, ABOUT LIVING A COMPASSIONATE LIFE, by David Foster Wallace
Only once did David Foster Wallace give a public talk on his views on life, during a commencement address given in 2005 at Kenyon College. The speech is reprinted for the first time in book form in THIS IS WATER. How does one keep from going through their comfortable, prosperous adult life unconsciously? How do we get ourselves out of the foreground of our thoughts and achieve compassion? The speech captures Wallace’s electric intellect as well as his grace in attention to others. After his death, it became a treasured piece of writing reprinted in The Wall Street Journal and the London Times, commented on endlessly in blogs, and emailed from friend to friend.

GONE TOMORROW, by Lee Child
Witnessing a suicide on a Manhattan subway, Jack Reacher finds himself targeted by the federal government and Al Qaeda forhis knowledge of a dangerous secret, a situation that leads to a dangerous chase through the streets of New York City.

BROOKLYN, by Colm Toibin
Leaving her home in post-World War II Ireland to work as a bookkeeper in Brooklyn, Eilis Lacey reluctantly parts with her sister and fragile mother and discovers a new romance in America with a charming blond Italian man before devastating news threatens her happiness. Hauntingly beautiful and heartbreaking, Colm Tóibín’s sixth novel, Brooklyn, is set in Brooklyn and Ireland in the early 1950s, when one young woman crosses the ocean to make a new life for herself.

WICKED PREY, by John Sandford
Lucas Davenport deals with security concerns during preparation for the Republican National Convention, as a criminal from his past targets his fourteen-year-old daughter.

 
 

THE SWEETNESS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PIE, by Alan Bradley
Eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce, an aspiring chemist with a passion for poison, begins her adventure when a dead bird is found on the doorstep of her family’s mansion in the summer of 1950, thus propelling her into a mystery that involves an investigation into a man’s murder where her father is the main suspect. Original.

THE UNIT, by Ninni Holmqvist
One day in early spring, Dorrit Weger is checked into the Second Reserve Bank Unit for biological material. She is promised a nicely furnished apartment inside the Unit, where she will make new friends, enjoy the state of the art recreation facilities, and live the few remaining days of her life in comfort with people who are just like her. Here, women over the age
of fifty and men over sixty-single, childless, and without jobs in progressive industries-are sequestered for their final few years; they are considered outsiders. In the Unit they are expected to contribute themselves for drug and psychological testing, and ultimately donate their organs, little by little, until the final donation. Despite the ruthless nature of this practice, the ethos of this near-future society and the Unit is to take care of others, and Dorrit finds herself living under very pleasant conditions: well-housed, well-fed, and well-attended. She is resigned to her fate and discovers her days there to be rather consoling and peaceful. But when she meets a man inside the Unit and falls in love, the extraordinary becomes a reality and life suddenly turns unbearable. Dorrit is faced with compliance or escape, and… well, then what?

THE UNIT is a gripping exploration of a society in the throes of an experiment, in which the “dispensable” ones are convinced under gentle coercion of the importance of sacrificing for the “necessary” ones. Ninni Holmqvist has created a debut novel of humor, sorrow, and rage about love, the close bonds of friendship, and about a cynical, utilitarian way of thinking disguised as care.

B IS FOR BEER, by Tom Robbins

The newest work of fiction from the author of Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, which inspired the film of the same name, is described as “A Children’s Book for Grown-Ups.” 100,000 first printing. Original. The story of an adventurous kindergartner named Gracie, her distracted parents, and a magical alien from another world relates how each one is affected by beer.

DUNE ROAD, by Jane Green
A single mom working for a famously reclusive author in a tony Connecticut beach town stumbles on a secret that many of the eccentric and moneyed locals would love to get their hands on. A sparkling new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Beach House.

THE MEMORY COLLECTOR, by Meg Gardiner
The second novel in the Jo Beckett series features the forensic psychiatrist trying to decipher the memories and cryptic statements of a patient with anterograde amnesia who holds the key to preventing a biological attack on San Francisco. 50,000 first printing.

STRANGERS, by Anita Bookner
Resigned to bachelorhood in his London flat, retiree Paul Sturgis unexpectedly finds himself in two relationships, including one with a separated woman he met on a holiday trip to Venice and another with an ex-girlfriend, a situation that causeshim to reevaluate his perspectives. Man Booker Prize-winning author Anita Brookner-called “one of the finest novelists of her generation” by The New York Times-returns with an exquisite novel about a man, three women, and a vibrant decision

A SHORT HISTORY OF WOMEN, by Kate Walbert
Inspired by a suffragist ancestor who starved herself to promote the integration of Cambridge University, Evie refuses to marry and Dorothy defies a ban on photographing the bodies of her dead Iraq War soldier sons, a choice that embarrasses Dorothy’s daughters.

National Book Award finalist Kate Walbert’s A Short History of Women is a profoundly moving portrayal of the complicated legacies of mothers and daughters, chronicling five generations of women from the close of the nineteenth century through the early years of the twenty-first.

RELENTLESS, by Dean Koontz
Unable to let go of a poor review of his latest best-seller, novelist Cubby Greenwich endeavors to track down the reclusive critic only to trigger a terrifying chain of events that reveal the critic’s sociopath tendencies as well as the violent nature of the critic’s mother. 500,000 first printing.

PYGMY, by Chuck Palahniuk
Pygmy–a young adult from a totalitarian state, disguised as an exchange student–plans a terrorist attack and depicts U.S. Midwestern life through the eyes of a hateful, indoctrinated little killer, in this double-edged satire of American xenophobia by the best-selling author of Fight Club.

ROAD DOGS, by Elmore Leonard
A latest work by the author of Get Shortyand LaBrava unites Cuban con man Cundo Rey and gentleman bank robber Jack Foley in a scheme that is marked by the women in their lives and a beautiful psychic. 200,000 first printing. Original.

 
 

THE LANGUAGE OF BEES: A MARY RUSSELL NOVEL
Returning home after seven months abroad, Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes are met with a problem concerning one of Holmes’s beehives and the reappearance of his estranged son, Damien, who needs their help in finding his missing wife and daughter.

Laurie R. King is the New York Times bestselling author of nine Mary Russell mysteries, five contemporary novels featuring Kate Martinelli, and the acclaimed novels A Darker Place, Folly, Keeping Watch, and Touchstone. She is one of only two novelists to win the Best First Crime Novel awards on both sides of the Atlantic. She lives in northern California where she
is at work on her Russell and Holmes mystery.

THE DARK HORSE, by Craig Johnson
The Sheriff of Absaroka County, Wyo., follows a hunch to free an allegedly self-made widow.Though his jail is housing confessed killer Mary Barsad, Walt Longmire has a feeling the horse-loving lady is innocent. Prescription drugs found in her system have left her with little appetite and even less ability to focus on the here and now. Posing as an insurance adjuster, Walt goes to the Powder River country to sniff around. His welcome is less than warm. On the night of the murder, Wade Barsad’s ranch house and barn were destroyed by fire, along with his wife’s prize cutting horses-all except for Wahoo Sue, Mary’s favorite, whom Barsad claimed to have taken out and shot. The long list of people happy to see Wade dead includes his hired hand Hershel Vanskike, whose hopes of fortune rest in an antique rifle, and just about everybody else in a three-county area. When Walt rents a room in Absalom, only a Guatemalan bartender and her half-Cheyenne son Benjamin are willing to talk to him. Though he tries to keep a low profile, Walt gets pushed into fighting Cliff Cly, king of the local Friday nightfights. It turns out that Barsad was in the witness protection program and had a lot more enemies than the locals he’d antagonized. After a trip with Hershel and Benjamin to Twentymile Butte shows Cly in a new light, only a meeting with Wahoo Sue saves Walt from death.Walt’s fifth (Another Man’s Moccasins, 2008, etc.) is stunningly descriptive and compulsively readable.

THE SIGNAL, by Ron Carlson

Their relationship troubled, Mack and his wife backpack through the woods of Wyoming to say goodbye, but instead receive asignal from a beacon that has fallen from the sky that leads them to an even darker place. A beautifully written and suspenseful tale of love and peril by an award-winning

THE CITY & THE CITY, by China Mieville
When the body of a murdered woman is found in the extraordinary, decaying city of Beszel, somewhere at the edge of Europe,it looks like a routine case for Inspector Tyador Borlú of the Extreme Crime Squad. But as he probes, the evidence begins to point to conspiracies far stranger, and more deadly, than anything he could have imagined. Soon his work puts himand those he cares for in danger.

Borlú must travel to the only metropolis on Earth as strange as his own, across a border like no other. It is a journey as psychic as it is physical, a shift in perception, a seeing of the unseen, a journey to Beszel’s equal, rival, and intimate neighbor, the rich and vibrant city of Ul Qoma.

With shades of Kafka and Philip K. Dick, Raymond Chandler and 1984, The City & The City is a murder mystery taken to dazzling metaphysical and artistic heights.

THE WALKING PEOPLE, by Mary Beth Keane
Greta Cahill never believed she would leave her village in the west of Ireland until she found herself on a ship bound for New York, along with her sister Johanna and a boy named Michael Ward. Labeled a “softheaded goose” by her family, Greta discovers that in America she can fall in love, raise her own family, and earn a living. Though she longs to return and show her family what she has made of herself, her decision to spare her children knowledge of a secret in her past forces her to keep her life in New York separate from the life she once loved in Ireland, and tears her apart from the people she is closest to. Even fifty years later, when the Ireland of her memory bears little resemblance to that of present day, she fears that it is still possible to lose all when she discovers that her children-with the best of intentions- have conspired to unite the worlds she’s so carefully kept separate for decades. A beautifully old-fashioned novel, The Walking People is a debut of remarkable range and power.

WANTING, by Richard Flanagan
“Richard Flanagan has now written five great novels including the stunning, highly praised Gould’s Book of Fish. His latest is a simple tale based in history, in which Flanagan takes three sensational events, well-known to Victorian England, and imagines how they were played out by the iconic characters involved: Sir John Franklin, governor of the penal colony of Van Diemen’s Land and later a doomed Arctic explorer; Charles Dickens; and Mathinna, a beautiful, charismatic aboriginal child adopted by the Franklins in an infamous experiment. Wanting is about desire, and about lack, and the very real tragedy of colonization. How Flanagan brings these events and themes to life is genius.”

THE STORY SISTERS, by Alice Hoffman
The author of The Third Angel incorporates family drama and erotic longing in this coming of age story of three sisters who create a magical world on their street to escape a tragedy that has changed them forever.

 
 

MY FATHER’S TEARS, by John Updike
A collection of short fiction from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author includes tales set in his native Pennsylvania, the New England suburbs, and foreign countries, all depicting different facets of the American experience from the Depression through the aftermath of 9/11.

CRAZY FOR THE STORM, by Norman Ollestad
A personal account set against a backdrop of southern California’s surf culture in the late 1970s describes the author’s struggles with constant fear in the face of his father’s thrill-seeking personality, his forced participation in dangerous ski and surf sports, and his efforts to survive a plane crash that killed his father and stranded him in the Gabriel Mountains. 300,000 first printing.

REAGAN’S SECRET WAR, by Martin Anderson
Describes the former President’s intent from his first days in office to win the Cold War, based on classified documents archived in the Ronald Regan Presidential Library, including minutes from Security Council meetings and secret letters sent to world leaders.

 
 

MARTHA STEWART’S CUPCAKES, by Martha Stewart
Features recipes for cupcakes, from classics such as devil’s food to surprises like peanut butter and jelly, as well as frostings, fillings, toppings, and a wide selection of decorating and embellishment ideas, including stencil templates, and an equipment glossary. Original.

THE CHEATER, by Nancy Taylor Rosenberg
Investigating a web site providing alibis for cheating spouses, Lily Forrester is again on the trail of a vicious criminal, and teams up with an FBI agent tracking a murderer who targets unfaithful husbands. Nancy Taylor Rosenberg has constantlybeen praised for her intense, dramatic suspense, breathing real life and trouble into her action-packed thrillers. Her fourteen years in law enforcement have always given her novels great authenticity, often pulling inspiration from the very cases she has worked. Now comes The Cheater.

A RELIABLE WIFE, by Robert Goolrick
“Set in a land where long winters drive residents to unthinkable acts, this is the story of a wealthy Wisconsin foundry owner gets more than he bargains for when he orders a mail-order bride. Determined to quickly change from new bride to wealthy widow, his wife is as surprised as the reader to discover the sexual intensity of this quiet man. Many secrets. Many lies. Very sensual.” –Beth Golay, Watermark Books

THE COLOR OF LIGHTNING, by Paulette Jiles
“The savage struggle for land and dominion between Native American tribes and Western settlers is brought to life in this riveting novel set in North Texas after the Civil War. Rich in historical background and told in beautiful prose, this is a great novel for book groups.” –Sheila Daley, Barrett Bookstore

PRAYERS FOR SALE, by Sandra Dallas
In her charming new novel, Dallas (The Persian Pickle Club ; Tallgrass ; etc.) offers up the unconventional friendship between Hennie Comfort, a natural storyteller entering the twilight of her life, and Nit Spindle, a nave young newlywed, forged in the isolated mining town of Middle Swan, Colo., in 1936. When the two meet, Hennie recognizes her younger self in Nit, and she’s immediately struck with a desire to nurture and guide Nit, who is lonely and adrift in her new hometown and her brand-new marriage. As Hennie regales Nit with stories and advice, the two become inseparable and pass several seasons huddled around their quilting with the other women of Middle Swan. Even though Hennie maintains an air of c’est la vie as she unravels her life story, Nit and the reader soon realize there are tragedies and secrets hidden behind Hennie’s tranquil demeanor. This satisfying novel will immediately draw readers into Hennie and Nit’s lives, and the unexpected twists will keep them hooked through to the bittersweet denouement. PW Review

THROUGH BLACK SPRUCE, by Joseph Boyden
Maintaining a bedside vigil for her comatose uncle, Annie Bird remembers a painful search for her missing model sister; while her uncle Will, a legendary Cree bush pilot, ruminates on a tragic betrayal that cost him his family. By the author of Three Day Road.
Maintaining a bedside vigil for her comatose uncle, Annie Bird remembers a painful search for her missing model sister; while her uncle Will, a legendary Cree bush pilot, ruminates on a tragic betrayal that cost him his family. By the author of Three Day Road.

HALFWAY TO HEAVEN, by Mark Obmascik
The author of The Big Year recounts his haphazard effort to scale Colorado’s fifty-four mountain peaks above 14,000 feet, a dangerous quest marked by an endless search for ideal hiking partners among a selection of eccentric candidates and his exploration of the culture and history influencing “Fourteeners” pursuits.

WOODS BURNER, by John Pipkin
Woodsburner springs from a little-known event in the life of one of America’s most iconic figures, Henry David Thoreau. On April 30, 1844, a year before he built his cabin on Walden Pond, Thoreau accidentally started a forest fire that destroyed three hundred acres of the Concord woods—an event that altered the landscape of American thought in a single day.
Against the background of Thoreau’s fire, Pipkin’s ambitious debut penetrates the mind of the young philosopher while also painting a panorama of the young nation at a formative moment. Pipkin’s Thoreau is a lost soul, plagued by indecision, resigned to a career designing pencils for his father’s factory while dreaming of better things. On the day of the fire, his path will intersect with three very different local citizens, each of whom also harbors a secret dream. Oddmund Hus, a lovable Norwegian farmhand, pines for the wife of his brutal employer. Elliott Calvert, a prosperous bookseller, is also a hilariously inept aspiring playwright. And Caleb Dowdy preaches fire and brimstone to his congregation through an opium haze. Each of their lives, like Thoreau’s, is changed forever by the fire.
Like Geraldine Brooks’s March and Colm Tóibín’s The Master, Woodsburner illuminates America’s literary and cultural past with insight, wit, and deep affection for its unforgettable characters, as it brings to vivid life the complex man whose writings have inspired generations.

APOLOGIZE APOLOGIZE, by Elizabeth Kelly
Coming of age on Martha’s Vineyard surrounded by a wildly dysfunctional family including his philandering father, incorrigible brother, and radical activist mother, Collie grapples for a sense of belonging in the face of a painful loss. A first novel.

 

ETTA, by Gerald Kolpan
Imagines the life Etta Place, once a Philadelphia debutante named Lorinda whose father’s death left her orphaned and bankrupt, may have lived after joining forces with Butch Cassidy’s notorious gang and beginning her legendary romance with the Sundance Kid in an adventure that crisscrosses America at the dawn of the twentieth century.

COMFORT FOOD, by Kate Jacobs (paperback)
Tiring of playing the hostess as her fiftieth birthday approaches, celebrity chef Augusta Simpson endeavors to distance herself from her overly dependent loved ones and receives assistance from handsome fellow chef Oliver in her efforts to launch an on-air cooking class. Reprint.

KILLING FOR COAL, by Thomas Andrews
A bold and original perspective on the 1914 Ludlow Massacre looks at the brutal clash between members of the United Mine Workers of America, a state militia with ties to Colorado’s industrial barons, and guards employed by the Rockefeller family and illuminates the causes and consequences of the militancy that erupted in colliers’ strikes over the course of nearly half a century.

DARLING JIM, by Christian Moerk
“Will a diary found in the dead-letter bin solve the mystery behind three dead women discovered in a locked house? Set in a small Irish village, Darling Jim is a dark, erotic, and bloody tale. Shivers.” –Becky Milner, Vintage Books

 

A FORTUNATE AGE, by Joanna Smith Rakoff
Like The Group, Mary McCarthy’s classic tale about coming of age in New York, Joanna Smith Rakoff ’s richly drawn and immensely satisfying first novel details the lives of a group of Oberlin graduates whose ambitions and friendships threaten to unravel as they chase their dreams, shed their youth, and build their lives in Brooklyn during the late 1990s and the turn of the twenty-first century.

LIFE WITHOUT SUMMER, by Lynne Griffin
A tale told in alternating voices follows the experiences of bereaved mother Tessa who is swept up by an increasingly bleak search for answers after her beloved four-year-old daughter is killed in a hit-and-run accident, and her grief counselor, Celia, whose efforts to help Tessa are marked by painful family memories. A first novel.

THE FORGOTTEN GARDEN, by Kate Morton
From the internationally bestselling author of The House at Riverton, an unforgettable new novel that transports the reader from the back alleys of poverty of pre-World War I London to the shores of colonial Australia where so many made a fresh start, and back to the windswept coast of Cornwall, England, past and present.

A tiny girl is abandoned on a ship headed for Australia in 1913. She arrives completely alone with nothing but a small suitcase containing a few clothes and a single book — a beautiful volume of fairy tales. She is taken in by the dockmaster and his wife and raised as their own. On her twenty-first birthday they tell her the truth, and with her sense of self shattered and with very little to go on, “Nell” sets out on a journey to England to try to trace her story, to fi nd her real identity. Her quest leads her to Blackhurst Manor on the Cornish coast and the secrets of the doomed Mountrachet family. But it is not until her granddaughter, Cassandra, takes up the search after Nell’s death that all the pieces of the puzzle are assembled. At Cliff Cottage, on the grounds of Blackhurst Manor, Cassandra discovers the forgotten garden of the book’s title and is able to unlock the secrets of the beautiful book of fairy tales.

This is a novel of outer and inner journeys and an homage to the power of storytelling. The Forgotten Garden is filled with unforgettable characters who weave their way through its spellbinding plot to astounding effect.

Morton’s novels are #1 bestsellers in England and Australia and are published in more than twenty languages. Her first novel, The House at Riverton, was a New York Times bestseller.

PICKING COTTON: OUT MEMOIR OF IN JUSTICE AND REDEMPTION, by Jennifer Thompson-Cannino and Ronald Cotton, with Erin Torneo
“A black man is accused of a terrible crime by a white woman and spends years in prison before being exonerated by DNA evidence. Then, the previously incarcerated man and the victim become friends, team up, and set out on a mission to rescue others falsely accused. No novel tells a story this important or heartrending. Read it!” –Deal Safrit, Literary Book Post

TERMINAL FREEZE, by Lincoln Child
When a scientific expedition discovers what appears to be a giant cat frozen in a glacial ice cave in the Alaskan wilderness above the Arctic Circle, the media conglomerate sponsoring the trip makes plans to thaw out the creature on live television, unaware that the creature is an ancient killing machine that may not be dead. 250,000 first printing.

MURDER IN THE LATIN QUARTER, by Cara Black
Postcolonial politics and global commerce ignite the murder of a Haitian academic in Paris’s bohemian Left Bank.Still recovering from the death of her fiancé (Murder in the Rue de Paradis, 2008), Aimée Leduc wants nothing more than to help partner René Friant land a fat contract for Leduc Detective to handle Aérospatiale’s computer security. But she’s distracted by Mireille, an illegal immigrant from Haiti who claims to be Aimée’s half sister, born of a liaison between Jean-Claude Leduc and her mother, Edwige, more than a year before Edwige’s murder by Duvalier’s tonton macoutes. A note from Mireille leads to Professor Azacca Benot’s office in the Latin Quarter’s Ecole Normale Supérieure, where Aimée finds his body, minus an ear, inside a circle of salt. His file has disappeared—a file sought with equal urgency by Madame Léonie Obin of the Haitian trade delegation and her radical nephew Edouard, who stand on opposite sides in Haiti’s negotiations with Hydrolis, their French water supplier. Aimée’s search for Mireille becomes all the more pressing when Darquin, the night watchman at Benot’s Osteologique Anatomie Comparée lab, is pushed to his death into traffic, and Huby, Benoit’s research assistant, is thrown from a window, leaving Aimée frantic at the thought of losing the sister she never knew she had.Black at her peak, with rich historical background and a vivid sense of place supporting her compelling narrative. Copyright Kirkus 2008

HOME SAFE, by Elizabeth Berg
After the death of her husband, Helen Ames is shocked to discover that her husband spent the couple’s retirement savings before he died, but what Helen’s husband did with their money turns out to be provocative and revelatory, leading Helen and her twenty-seven-year-old daughter Tessa to embark on new adventures.

ALL THE LIVING, by C.E. Morgan
Moving to a remote tobacco farm that her lover inherited when the rest of his family was killed in a terrible accident, a young woman in 1984 Kentucky struggles with their isolated life, her lover’s grief, and a budding friendship with a dynamic young preacher.

 

THE BELIEVERS, by Zoe Heller
When a radical lawyer’s stroke reveals cracks in his forty-year marriage to his wife, their three children struggle with their own life challenges; from Rosa, who is pressured to commit to orthodox Judaism; to Karla, who is tempted away from an unhappy marriage; to Lenny, who battles drug addiction. 75,000 first printing.

THE LAST DICKENS, by Matthew Pearl
In his most enthralling novel yet, the critically acclaimed author Matthew Pearl reopens one of literary history’s greatest mysteries. The Last Dickens is a tale filled with the dazzling twists and turns, the unerring period details, and the meticulous research that thrilled readers of the bestsellers The Dante Club and The Poe Shadow.

Boston, 1870. When news of Charles Dickens’s untimely death reaches the office of his struggling American publisher, Fields & Osgood, partner James Osgood sends his trusted clerk Daniel Sand to await the arrival of Dickens’s unfinished novel. But when Daniel’s body is discovered by the docks and the manuscript is nowhere to be found, Osgood must embark on a transatlantic quest to unearth the novel that he hopes will save his venerable business and reveal Daniel’s killer.

Danger and intrigue abound on the journey to England, for which Osgood has chosen Rebecca Sand, Daniel’s older sister, to assist him. As they attempt to uncover Dickens’s final mystery, Osgood and Rebecca find themselves racing the clock through a dangerous web of literary lions and drug dealers, sadistic thugs and blue bloods, and competing members of Dickens’s inner circle. They soon realize that understanding Dickens’s lost ending is a matter of life and death, and the hidden key to stopping a murderous mastermind.

THE LOST QUILTER, by Jennifer Chiaverini
A continuation of The Runaway Quilt finds master quilter Sylvia Compson investigating her ancestry and discovering unexpected connections to a runaway slave and quilter who traveled the Underground Railroad to Elm Creek Farm before she was captured and returned to Virginia.

BONEMAN’S DAUGHTERS, by Ted Dekker
When his estranged daughter’s life is taken by a serial killer, who killed six other young women by breaking their bones and leaving them to die, intelligence officer Ryan Evans inadvertently becomes a suspect in the murders of all seven girls.

 

GIVE ME BACK MY LEGIONS, by Harry Turtledove
While a politician battles on the Roman frontier to subdue barbarian invaders, a Cherusci prince practices the arts of Roman war and policy in order to bring vital information back to Germany, in a tale inspired by the historic Battle of the Teutoberg Forest.

THE SERVANTS’ QUARTERS, by Lynn Freed
Haunted by the events of World War II, young Cressida lives in terror of George Harding, a severely disfigured soldier who recovers in the family’s stately African home, a situation that binds them when George saves Cressida’s family from financial ruin and establishes them in his estate’s servants’ quarters.

THE SERVANTS’ QUARTERS, a complex and sophisticated love story, evokes a vanishing world of privilege with a Pygmalion twist.

WORMWOOD, by Susan Wittig Albert
Murders past and present with a Shaker link intersect in alarming ways in Albert’s engaging 17th China Bayles puzzler (after 2008’s Nightshade). Recent painful events help prompt China, who runs an herb shop and tearoom in Pecan Springs, Tex., to visit her herbalist friend Martha Edmond at Kentucky’s Mount Zion Shaker Village, whose board president, Rachel Hart, wants to turn the quaint Shaker museum center into an upscale spa, contrary to the spirit of the original believers. Martha asks China to investigate
recent disturbing events, including vandalism, the suicide of a thieving gift shop manager and, according to financial director Allie Chatham, Rachel’s embezzlement of funds. When Allie’s later found dead in Zion’s pool, where a Shaker woman drowned in 1912, Martha and China suspect murder. Shaker-inspired recipes, excerpts from a fictional Shaker journal, insights into the Shaker religion and plenty of herbal lore enhance another winner from this dependable veteran.

ECLIPSE, by Richard North Patterson
Placing his career on the line to defend a charismatic African freedom fighter who has been charged with murder by the autocratic ruler of Luandia’s brutal government, California lawyer Damon Pierce finds his own life at stake as well as that of his client. 350,000 first printing.

LONG LOST, by Harlan Coben
Contacted by a woman with whom he had an affair years earlier, Myron Bolitar learns how she has been wrongfully accused of murdering her ex-husband, a situation that is further complicated by a long-hidden family secret.

 

THE HORNET’S STING, by Mark Ryan
In 1940, Thomas Sneum, a 22-year-old pilot in the Danish Air Arm, refused to stand by while the Germans took over his homeland. He gathered data about Nazi radar installations, using a camera and German contacts. Then he and a fellow pilot pieced back together a disassembled Hornet Moth biplane they had found and flew it to England to share their information. The Hornet lacked the range to make it all the way, requiring Sneum to climb out of the plane onto the wing in midair to refuel. Sneum was eventually recruited by the British and provided valuable information during the war despite the many obstacles in his way, including being jailed as a suspected double agent. Using original documents and hundreds of hours of interviews with Sneum (who died in 2007), Ryan’s book is the first to chronicle the journey of the audacious Dane whose real-life exploits include all the key elements of any good spy story: sex, danger, and intrigue. In fact, Ken Follet’s The Hornet’s Sting was based on this World War II episode, but the real account is more exciting than fiction: readers will find the book hard to put down. LJ Review

78: The Boston Red Sox, a Historic Game, and a Divided City, by Bill Reynolds
The thrilling inside story behind a crucial chapter in Red Sox lore and a turbulent time in a troubled city.

George Steinbrenner called it the greatest game in the history of American sports. On a bright October day in 1978, the Boston Red Sox met the New York Yankees for an epic playoff game that would send one team to the World Series, and render the other cursed for almost a quarter of a century.

In this book, award-winning sports columnist Bill Reynolds masterfully tells the story of the team and the players at this pivotal moment. This cultural history takes readers through the social issues that divided Boston that summer, and masterfully depicts their influence on one game beyond the realm of sports.

ADVENTURES WITH ARI, by Kathryn Miles
At last, a canine memoir that is unique and irresistible; more reminiscent of Ted Kerasote’s Merle’s Door: Lessons from a Freethinking Dog than John Grogan’s Marley & Me, this book goes beyond telling the familiar story of a dog and its owner. Allowing her shelter puppy Ari (labeled a husky and Jindo mix) to be her “green” guide, Miles (writing, Unity Coll.) and her husband cast Ari’s leash aside and learn to see the world through the eyes of a shy puppy as they explore the outdoors surrounding their Maine town. Lest any reader think Miles an irresponsible dog owner, much to her credit she read extensively and set ground rules for acceptable canine behavior both in and out of the home. A sizable chapter-by-chapter bibliography is included. Written in a clear and vivid prose style, this is strongly recommended for all public libraries.—LJ Review

ALWAYS LOOKING UP, by Michael J. Fox
The Hollywood celebrity and author of the best-selling Lucky Man shares the personal philosophy that has helped him to get through some of the darkest times in his life, discusses the course of his battle with Parkinson’s, and reveals how he endeavors to find happiness in everyday gifts.

CURIOSITIES OF LITERATURE, by John Sutherland
A miscellany of facts and trivia celebrates some of the more bizarre events in literature, in a volume that reveals such lore asthe commonalities shared by twelve percent of all Booker Prize winners, the original title of 1984, and the beneficial role of the Harry Potter tales in reducing childhood accidents.

DECIPHERING THE COSMIC NUMBER: The Strange Friendship of Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Jung, by Arthur Miller
Odd, often difficult but mostly engrossing account of Carl Jung’s treatment of physicist Wolfgang Pauli and their search for symbols that reveal universal secrets. A founder of quantum physics, Pauli (1900–58) sought help in 1932 while at the height of his powers but tormented by personal failures. Jung (1875–1961) was a brilliant Swiss physician who sought to understand the workings of the mind. Initially impressed by Freud’s theories, in which sex played a central role, Jung later rejected them, concluding that all humans share a collective unconscious revealed through dreams, art, mythology and religion. Dreams play a central role in Jungian analysis, so readers will encounter dozens as Miller (Empire of the Stars: Friendship, Obsession and Betrayal in the Quest for Black Holes, 2005, etc.) recounts two years of Pauli’s therapy followed by 25 years of correspondence. Jung confidently explained that each dream revealed how Pauli’s inner desires and frustrations emerged through images shared by everyone in our collective unconscious. Pauli accepted this, and readers will have to accept Jung’s assertion that his interpretation of dreams was scientifically correct. Jung felt the therapy succeeded; Pauli’s colleagues noted a modest improvement in his caustic personality and moderation of his heavy drinking. There’s no doubt the experience left Pauli fascinated with metaphysics, dreams and mystical exotica, including astrology, psychic phenomena and numerology. Readers will get an obviously learned yet somewhat heavy dose of both quantum physics and Jungian philosophy. Miller draws no line between Pauli’s physics (proven by experiments) and Jung’s theories (proven by assertions), and he repeats uncritically the pair’s delight at various anecdotes, coincidences and juxtapositions of numbers that enthusiasts claim unveil cosmic truths. Readers who persevere may find this intense mixture of science and psychoanalysis to their liking. Copyright Kirkus 2009

ESSENTIAL PLEASURES: A NEW ANTHOLOGY OF POEMS TO READ ALOUD, by Robert Pinsky
A book-and-audio set features poems that emphasize the attentive, intuitive, and reflective process of listening to poetry, in a collection that organizes traditional and classic works under such themes as “Short Lines, Frequent Rhymes” and “Odes, Complaints, and Celebrations.

FINDING OZ, by Evan Schwartz
A groundbreaking new look at an American icon—THE WIZARD OF OZ FINDING OZ tells the remarkable tale behind one of the world’s most enduring and and best-loved stories. Offering profound new insights into the true origins and meaning behind L. Frank Baum’s 1900 masterwork, it delves into the personal turmoil and spiritual transformation that fueled Baum’s fantastical parable of the American Dream.

REAL SOLUTIONS FOR BUSY MOMS, by Kathy Ireland
A down-to-earth guide by the supermodel and clothing designer counsels overwhelmed moms on how to balance the many challenges of parenting today, in a resource that covers such topics as providing a nurturing home, scheduling personal time, and internet safety.

RISING SON: METS, YANKEES, AND MY JOURNEY TO THE BIG LEAGUES, by Willie Randolph
An all-star baseball player and former New York Mets manager describes his Brooklyn childhood, the family and friends who influenced his career, and his hard-won efforts to become a big-league coach.

 

UNTIL IT HURTS: AMERICA’S OBSESSION WITH YOUTH SPORTS AND HOW IT HARMS OUR KIDS, by Mark Hyman
A provocative assessment of the damaging nature of ultracompetitive youth sports considers the consequences of high-pressure athletics on children and their families, in a report that traces the author’s investigations into prestigious youth athletic clubs and associations throughout the country.