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.

HANDLE WITH CARE, by Jodi Picoult

Things break all the time.
Day breaks, waves break, voices break.
Promises break.
Hearts break.
Every expectant parent will tell you that they don’t want a perfect baby, just a healthy one. Charlotte and Sean O’Keefe would have asked for a healthy baby, too, if they’d been given the choice. Instead, their lives are made up of sleepless nights, mounting bills, the pitying stares of “luckier” parents, and maybe worst of all, the what-ifs. What if their child had been born healthy? But it’s all worth it because Willow is, well, funny as it seems, perfect. She’s smart as a whip, on her way to being as pretty as her mother, kind, brave, and for a five-year-old an unexpectedly deep source of wisdom. Willow is Willow, in sickness and in health.

Everything changes, though, after a series of events forces Charlotte and her husband to confront the most serious what-ifs of all. What if Charlotte should have known earlier of Willow’s illness? What if things could have been different? What if their beloved Willow had never been born? To do Willow justice, Charlotte must ask herself these questions and one more. What constitutes a valuable life?

Emotionally riveting and profoundly moving, Handle with Care brings us into the heart of a family bound by an incredible burden, a desperate will to keep their ties from breaking, and, ultimately, a powerful capacity for love. Written with the grace and wisdom she’s become famous for, beloved #1 New York Times bestselling author Jodi Picoult offers us an unforgettable novel about the fragility of life and the lengths we will go to protect it.

SONATA FOR MIRIAM, by Linda Olsson

Journeying from New Zealand to Poland and on to Sweden, composer Adam Anker uncovers the truth about his parents’ fate during World War II and struggles to come to terms with the consequences of a life-altering choice he had made twenty years earlier. By the author of Astrid & Veronika. Original.

THE LOST CITY OF Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon, BY David Grann

Interweaves the story of British explorer Percy Fawcett, who vanished during a 1925 expedition into the Amazon to find an ancient civilization, with the author’s own adventure-filled quest into the uncharted wilderness to uncover the mysteries surrounding Fawcett’s final journey and the secrets of what really lies deep in the Amazon jungle. 125,000 first printing.

FOOL, by Christopher Moore

In 1288, as King Lear watches his kingdom descend into chaos, the king’s fool, Pocket, and Pocket’s apprentice, Drool, take it upon themselves to restore order amidst the mayhem, and in the process make a surprising discovery about their own heritage.

The author of A Dirty Job, Bloodsucking Fiends, and numerous additional best-sellers applies his satirical wit and offbeat storytelling style to a wacky new adventure set in an inventive universe. 250,000 first printing.

AFTER YOU’VE GONE, by Jeffrey Lent

An epic novel of the first half of the twentieth century takes the reader to a Nova Scotian fishing town where young Henry Dorn chafes against family expectations of becoming a fisherman to find a life for himself in the wider world of New York City. By the author of In the Fall and Lost Nation.
Reader’s Guide available. 35,000 first printing.

WILD SORROW, by Sandi Ault

Fans of the late Tony Hillerman will embrace Ault’s outstanding third mystery to feature Jamaica Wild, a resource agent for the Bureau of Land Management in Taos, N.M. (after 2008’s Wild Inferno). When Jamaica seeks shelter during a blizzard in Pueblo Pea at the abandoned San Pedro de Arbus Indian School forher injured horse, Rooster, and her wolf companion, Mountain, she stumbles on a terrifying sight—the frozen corpse of Cassie Morgan, a strangled Anglo woman from whose neck hangs a sign in red crayon that reads “I am not an Indian.” Though Jamaica is horrified to learn that Cassie was a former school matron “remembered for depriving, humiliating, and beating the Indian children,” she continues to help the FBI investigation into what is deemed a hate crime. Outraged by Jamaica’s interference, the twisted killer targets both Jamaica and Mountain. Ault’s wildlife expertise and knowledge of Tanoah culture enhance a poignant plot.

THE SECOND BOOK OF THE TAO, by Stephen Mitchell

Draws on the teachings of Lao-tzu’s disciple Chuang-tzu and Confucius’s grandson Tzu-ssu to present a non-denominational guide to pursuing an authentic life, in a guide for modern readers that is complemented by the author’s accessible commentary. 75,000 first printing.

SLEEPWALKING IN DAYLIGHT, by Elizabeth Flock

This powerful, provocative story follows the parallel paths of a mother, who wants to feel something, and her teenaged daughter, who needs to feel absolutely nothing, as they each indulge in desperate, furtive escapism.

THE MANUAL OF DETECTION, by Jedediah Berry

An unlikely sleuth anchors an unlikely investigation in Berry’s fantastical melding of Kafka, Hitchcock and The Man Who Was Thursday.For 20 years Charles Unwin has toiled as a clerk to Detective Travis T. Sivart. Now he’s been plucked from his assignment shadowing a mysterious young woman in a plaid skirt and catapulted to the rank of detective himself. His queasy meeting with his Watcher, Edward Lamech, ends with his discovery that Lamech is dead, with every indication that Unwin is his killer. Partly to dispel the gathering clouds of suspicion, partly to fend off the jeers of his new colleagues, but mostly because he doesn’t know what else to do, Unwin throws himself manfully into the investigation of Enoch Hoffmann, the magician who’s recently resurfaced eight years after pulling off his greatest criminal coup: the theft of November 12th, a theft so audacious and comprehensive that everyone in the city went to bed on the 11th and didn’t wake up until the 13th. Making time with suspects like femme fatale Cleopatra Greenwood and apparent walk-ons like Municipal Museum attendant Edwin Moore—who know without exception more than he does about the theft of The Oldest Murdered Man and the Three Deaths of Colonel Baker—he sees that buried in the archives of the cases Detective Sivart solved all those years ago, there are “mysteries that have been passed off as solutions.” Armed with the ever-helpful Manual of Detection, he realizes that in order to capture Hoffmann, whose “true goal is the destruction of the boundary between thecity’s rational mind and the violent delirium of its lunatic dreams,” he must become a dream detective. It’s a task no less daunting for readers who are batted back and forth between Unwin’s madly symbolic dreams and a waking reality that seems equally preposterous.Though its nonsense logic eventually lags behind its breakneck pace, Berry’s debut is a boldly inventive deconstruction of Cartesian metaphysics, the criminal-justice system and the well-oiled detective story. Copyright Kirkus 2008 Kirkus

MY ABANDONMENT, by Peter Rock

Does Father know best? His teenage daughter is forced to wonder after they’re evicted from their city-park cave in this harrowing fifth novel from Rock (Writing/Reed Coll.; The Bewildered, 2005, etc.).Caroline and Father had lived in the spacious park in Portland, Ore., for four years, Caroline tells us via her journal. After Caroline’s mother’s death, Father and Caroline were temporarily separated, but when Caroline was nine Father removed her secretly from her foster parents in Idaho. They have made a stable home for themselves in a Portland park. Father is scrupulous about housekeeping. He supervises her education; dictionaries and encyclopedias do the rest. Caroline has taught herself about the forest. She knows where the morels are. She can climb trees and smell animals. Though Father is strict, he allows her to roam. (He’s a vet, a recovering alcoholic and a Thoreauvian idealist; we don’t know more than that.)The 13-year-old will look back on these as happy years; no friends, true, but she has her talisman Randy, a plastic horse. For his little autodidact, Rockhas found just the right voice: forthright, with a singular purity. As a result, we care enormously about her fate. Everything changes for the pair when ajogger discovers their hideaway. Armed cops break it up. Father and Caroline are put in the custody of separate social workers. Once they find no evidenceof abuse, they settle the pair on a horse farm; Father is to do chores, while Caroline will go to a regular school. No, decides Father. “Regular won’t fityou.” They steal away, back to Portland, living on the streets despite the newly assertive Caroline’s protests. Father makes dumb mistakes and becomes increasingly paranoid, though his devotion to Caroline is constant. Away from the city again, in the mountains, Father will make his dumbest mistake, leading to catastrophe. Caroline’s intuition, keener than his own, might have saved them.A moving evocation of life on the fringes, sparking many questions about our regulated society. Copyright Kirkus 2009

AMONG THE MAD, by Jacqueline Winspear

Having witnessed a suicide on a busy London street, Maisie Dobbs learns that she has been mentioned in a threatening letter to the prime minister and is subsequently recruited by Scotland Yard, while her assistant, Billy, watches his wife slip further into depression. By the author of An Incomplete Revenge.
100,000 first printing.

EAT THIS, NOT THAT! SUPERMARKET SURVIVAL GUIDE, by Dave Zinczenko

Offers advice on how to make informed choices while grocery shopping, along with nutritional information on weight loss and improved health.

MAX, by James Patterson

When millions of fish start dying off the coast of Hawaii and something is destroying hundreds of ships, the government enlists the Flock–a band of genetically modified children who can fly–to help get to the bottom of the disaster before it is too late.When millions of fish start dying off the coast of Hawaii and something is destroying hundreds of ships, the government enlists the Flock–a band of genetically modified children who can fly–to investigate the problem.

CORSAIR, by Clive Cussler

Hired by the CIA to track down the U.S. Secretary of State in the aftermath of a suspicious plane crash in Libya, Juan Cabrillo uncovers a sinister plot by Libya’s new foreign minister, a scheme with links to a 200-year-old naval battle and centuries-old Islamic scrolls.

KINDLY ONES, by Jonathan Littell

Hiding his past as a Nazi officer while living the life of an entrepreneur and family man in northern France, Dr. Max Aue remembers horrifying graphic acts of violence he committed during World War II, including contributions to the Battle of Stalingrad and the final days of the Nazi regime in Berlin.

PATHS OF GLORY, by Jeffrey Archer

A tale inspired by the life of teacher George Mallory follows his brilliant education and service in World War I before he died during an attempt to summit Mt. Everest, in a fictionalized account that invites readers to decide if he achieved his goal.

 

PEAKS AND VALLEYS, by Spencer Johnson

Making Good And Bad Times Work For You — At Work And In Life Peaks and Valleys is a story of a young man who lives unhappily in a valley until he meets an old man who lives on a peak, and it changes his work and life forever.

Initially, the young man does not realize he is talking with one of the most peaceful and successful people in the world. However, through a series of conversations and experiences that occur up on peaks and down in valleys, the young man comes to make some startling discoveries.

Eventually, he comes to understand how he can use the old man’s remarkable principles and practical tools in good and bad times and becomes more calm and successful himself.

Now you can take a similar journey through the story and use what you find to your advantage in your own work and life.

HOPE FOR TODAY BIBLE, by Joel Osteen

SPECIAL FEATURES INCLUDE:

• Book Introductions — Joel and Victoria offer historical facts and information to enhance your understanding of each book of the Bible.
• HOPENOTES — brief inspirational insights on scripture and how they apply to your everyday living.
• Hope for Today devotionals — encouraging insights from Joel and Victoria that focus on the principles and promises of God.
• Topical Scriptures — a special section with verses to pray over during critical moments of your life.
• The Blessing — Joel and Victoria’s prayer for you that both proclaims and claims the promises of the Bible.
• This Is My Bible Pledge — our declaration that His Word is full of divine truths and abundant promises for your future.

HUNTED, by P.C. Cast

With ancient evil loose in the world, Zoey’s very existence is on shaky ground and so when a seductive force is revealed to her, she must find the strength to reveal the truth or lose everything that matters, including her soul.

 

EXECUTION DOCK, by Anne Perry

Thames River Police Superintendent Inspector William Monk and his team are pursuing Jericho Phillips, a child pornographer who runs a sex ring from inside an old ship, and when the body of a thirteen-year-old boy washes ashore and is revealed to be one of Phillips’ victims, the need to find, arrest, and convict him gains new urgency.

SECOND CHANCES, by Gary Stromberg

The author of The Harder They Fall provides a collection of seventeen inspirational interviews with some of the world’s most successful people in recovery, including a former White House Deputy Chief of Staff, a celebrity chef, and the former president of CBS Records. Original.

THE SCENT OF SAKE, by Joyce Lebra (paperback)

Determined to build a dynasty from her family’s traditional sake brewery, Rie faces dual challenges in the form of the industry’s male-driven culture and her womanizing husband’s demands that the children he sired with geishas are accepted as his heirs. Original.

 

NUDGE, by Richard H. Thaler (paperback)

Offering a groundbreaking study of the application of the science of choice, a guide that uses colorful examples from all aspects of life demonstrates howit is possible to design environments that make it more likely for us to act in our own interests. Reprint.

 

TOY MONSTER: THE BIG, BAD WORLD OF MATTEL, by Jerry Oppenheimer

Now, in this intriguing and entertaining exposé, New York Times bestselling author Jerry Oppenheimer places the world’s largest toy company under a journalistic microscope, uncovering the dark side of toy land, and exploring Mattel’s oddball corporate culture and eccentric, often bizarre, cast of characters.

Based on exclusive interviews and an exhaustive review of public and private records, Toy Monster exposes Mattel’s take-no-prisoners, shark- infested corporate style. Throughout this scrupulously reported, unauthorized portrait, you’ll discover how dangerous toys are actually nothing new to Mattel, and why its fearsomely litigious approach within the brutal toy business has helped their products dominate over potential rivals such as Bratz.

But this is only part of the story. Along the way, you’ll also become familiar with the larger-than-life personalities that have shaped Mattel’s eccentricworld. There’s cofounder Ruth Handler, a “one-woman sales- merchandising-promotion-administrative force, a sort of industrial Orson Welles,” who becomes awhite-collar criminal. There’s Jack Ryan, the “Father of Barbie,” whose second of five wives calls him “a full-blown seventies-style swinger into wife-swapping and sundry sexual pursuits as a way of life.” And don’t forget CEO Robert Eckert, who came from the worlds of processed cheese and hot dogs to lead Mattel-only to get grilled by the U.S. Congress, and the world press, in the lead-paint-and-dangerous-magnets cause célèbre.

The phenomenal Barbie brand’s 50th anniversary arrives in 2009, hot on the heels of the China Toy Terror recall scandal that has tarnished Mattel’s image in the hearts and minds of millions of people worldwide. Toy Monster takes you inside the scandals that have been a part of this company, and shows you whytoday’s toy business isn’t always fun and games.

DON’T LOOK TWICE, by Andrew Gross

After a drive-by shooting in Greenwich, Connecticut, nearly kills him, detective Ty Hauck follows the trail to a sinister gambling scheme at an upstate casino, but when Annie Fletcher, a young restauranteer in the midst of rebuilding her life, witnesses something she shouldn’t have, Hauck is caught in a deadly maze of cover-up and corruption. 200,000 first printing.

PICKING COTTON, by Jennifer Thompson-Cannino

An account for which the authors received 2008’s Soros Justice Media Fellowship traces the story of a rape survivor and the man she mistakenly identified as her attacker, describing the unlikely friendship they forged after DNA evidence proved his innocence and their shared subsequent advocacy for judicial reform.

COMEDY AT THE EDGE, by Richard Zoglin

A lighthearted survey of stand-up comedy in the 1970s draws on meticulous interviews to cite the contributions of celebrity comics, from George Carlin andRichard Pryor to Robin Williams and Andy Kaufman, in an account that also evaluates the roles played by such comedy clubs as Catch a Rising Star, the Improv, and the Comedy Store. Reprint. 30,000 first printing.

LUSH LIFE, by Richard Price (paperback)

So, what do you do?” Whenever people asked him, Eric Cash used to have a dozen answers. Artist, actor, screenwriter . . . But now he’s thirty-five years old and he’s still living on the Lower East Side, still in the restaurant business, still serving the people he wanted to be. What does Eric do? He manages.Not like Ike Marcus. Ike was young, good-looking, people liked him. Ask him what he did, he wouldn’t say tending bar. He was going places—until two streetkids stepped up to him and Eric one night and pulled a gun. At least, that’s Eric’s version.

In Lush Life, Richard Price tears the shiny veneer off the “new” New York to show us the hidden cracks, the underground networks of control and violence beneath the glamour. Lush Life is an Xray of the street in the age of no broken windows and “quality of life” squads, from a writer whose “tough, gritty brand of social realism . . . reads like a movie in prose” (Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times).

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE, by Vikas Swarup (paperback)

Vikas Swarup’s spectacular debut novel opens in a jail cell in Mumbai, India, where Ram Mohammad Thomas is being held after correctly answering all twelvequestions on India’s biggest quiz show, Who Will Win a Billion? It is hard to believe that a poor orphan who has never read a newspaper or gone to school could win such a contest. But through a series of exhilarating tales Ram explains to his lawyer how episodes in his life gave him the answer to each question.

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.

THREE CUPS OF TEA YOUNG READERS EDITION, by Greg Mortenson

A middle-grade adapted version of the New York Times bestseller about humanitarianism and providing Muslim children around the world with an education is enhanced with photos, maps, illustrations, and a special afterword by the author’s daughter who worked with him as an advocate for the Pennies for Peace program. Simultaneous.

LISTEN TO THE WIND, by Greg Morenson

Tells the true story of a man who became lost and delirious after an unsuccessful trek to the top of K2, was saved by the locals of a remote Himalayan village, and kept his vow to return one day to build them a new school as a gesture of sincere appreciation and gratitude for what they did for him in his time of need.

And, as always…the original book, a continued bestseller at our store…

THREE CUPS OF TEA, by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin

Traces how the author, having been rescued and resuscitated by Himalayan villagers after a failed attempt to climb K2, worked to build schools that would particularly benefit the young girls who were forbidden an education by Taliban restrictions, an endeavor for which his life has been repeatedly threatened. Reader’s Guide available. Reprint. 100,000 first printing.

LITTLE BEE, by Chrsi Cleave

The Somerset Maugham Award-winning author of Incendiary presents a tale of a precarious friendship between an illegal Nigerian refugee and a recent widow from suburban London, a story told from the alternating and disparate perspectives of both women. 75,000 first printing.

WE DON’T WANT TO TELL YOU TOO MUCH ABOUT THIS BOOK.
It is a truly special story and we don’t want to spoil it. Nevertheless, you need to know something, so we will just say
this:

It is extremely funny, but the African beach scene is horrific. The story starts there, but the book doesn’t.
And it’s what happens afterward that is most important. Once you have read it, you’ll want to tell everyone about it. When
you do, please don’t tell them what happens either. The magic is in how it unfolds.

VERY VALENTINE, by Adriana Trigiani

When a failing custom wedding shoe business in Greenwich Village falls unexpectedly into her lap, apprentice Valentine Roncalli is challenged to bring her family’s old-world craftsmanship into the twenty-first century, an endeavor that is further complicated by personal responsibilities and her budding romance with a chef. 200,000 first printing.

DROOD, by Dan Simmons

On June 9, 1865, while traveling by train to London with his secret mistress, 53-year-old Charles Dickens–at the height of his powers and popularity, the most famous and successful novelist in the world and perhaps in the history of the world–hurtled into a disaster that changed his life forever.

Did Dickens begin living a dark double life after the accident? Were his nightly forays into the worst slums of London and his deepening obsession with corpses, crypts, murder, opium dens, the use of lime pits to dissolve bodies, and a hidden subterranean London mere research . . . or something more terrifying?

Just as he did in The Terror, Dan Simmons draws impeccably from history to create a gloriously engaging and terrifying narrative. Based on the historical details of Charles Dickens’s life and narrated by Wilkie Collins (Dickens’s friend, frequent collaborator, and Salieri-style secret rival), DROOD explores the still-unsolved mysteries of the famous author’s last years and may provide the key to Dickens’s final, unfinished work: The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Chilling, haunting, and utterly original, DROOD is Dan Simmons at his powerful best.

THE ASSOCIATE, by John Grisham

Promising law school graduate Kyle McAvoy harbors a secret that falls into the hands of some unscrupulous characters who blackmail him into taking a job with a prestigious law firm, where he participates in a scheme that can land him in prison or get him killed.

 

THE HELP, by Kathryn Stockett

Limited and persecuted by racial divides in 1962 Jackson, Mississippi, three women, including an African-American maid, her sassy and chronically unemployed friend, and a recently graduated white woman, team up for a clandestine project against a backdrop of the budding civil rights era. 100,000 first printing.

WHAT I DID FOR LOVE, by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

The Romance Writers of America Favorite Book of the Year Award-winning writer of such works as Natural Born Charmer and Match Me If You Can presents a latest modern fairy tale that pits a hapless heroine against a series of whimsical challenges. 250,000 first printing. When actress Georgie York’s film career hits rock bottom along with her marriage, the paparazzi has a field day with her misfortune, which is only complicated by the reappearance of her sexy, unscrupulous former costar, Bramwell Shepard.

SNARK, by David Denby

A New Yorker film critic and author of American Sucker evaluates the cultural consequences of snide and sarcastic language that has become pervasive in today’s political, entertainment, and other public arenas, in an assessment that cites the importance of developing true wit instead of insult-based forms of communication. 150,000 first printing.

THE LAST STAND OF FOX COMPANY, by Bob Drury

Offers the story of the courageous mission of 234 Marines of Fox Company who found themselves surrounded and greatly outnumbered by 100,000 Chinese soldiers near Chosin Reservoir, the incredible steps they took to fend them off for five nights, and the major losses they suffered in their desperate struggle before finally being relieved.

THE YANKEE YEARS, by, Joe Torre

The former Yankees manager provides a thought-provoking and candid behind-the-scenes study of the Yankees organization, from top to bottom, detailing the challenges of working for a team in which executives and the media question every decision, managing a clubhouse of superstars, and the issues confronting modern baseball. 250,000 first printing.

MULTIPLE BLESSINGS, by Jon Gosselin

Three years after giving birth to twin daughters, Kate and Jon Gosselin became pregnant again–with sextuplets. Kate’s candid and emotionally-charged book chronicles the exhausting challenges she and Jon faced from the time the babies were conceived through the first two years of their lives, and the faith it took to get through each day.

UNCOMMON, FINDING YOUR OWN PATH TO SIGNIFICANCE, by Tony Dungy

Reflecting on what it takes to achieve significance, the Super Bowl-winning coach and best-selling author of Quiet Strength shares lessons he learned from his remarkable parents, his athletic and coaching career, his mentors, and his journey with God.

A LONG TIME COMING, by Evan Thomas

In this book, a compelling narrative by Evan Thomas, Newsweek shares the inside stories from one of the most exciting elections in recent history, illuminating the personalities and events that influenced the outcome, and taking stock of the key players and key issues for the new administration. This will be an absorbing read for anyone interested in American politics.

THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS 2009, by Barack Obama

 

 

 

 

THE INAUGURATION OF BARACK OBAMA, edited by Mary Hagar

 

 

FOOD MATTERS, by Mark Bittman

The “Minimalist” columnist and author of How to Cook Everything outlines an eating plan that is comprised of environmentally responsible choices, in a guide that shares insight into the risks associated with livestock production. 125,000 first printing.

 

Levittown: Two Families, One Tycoon, and the Fight for Civil Rights in America’s Legendary Suburb, by David Kushner

Describes how the entrepreneurial Levitt family constructed affordable community homes that were only available to white buyers, recounting how the Wechslers, a white Jewish communist family, secretly arranged for a black family to purchase a house next door, an arrangement that resulted in an explosive response and influential integration practices. 40,000 first printing.

THE GAMBLE, by Thomas Ricks

Draws on extensive interviews with top officers in Iraq to document the war as it has unfolded in recent years, placing a focus on the unorthodox strategies of General David Petraeus, from his work with foreign advisors to the ways in which his officers disagreed with key decisions. 250,000 first printing.

WHILE MY SISTER SLEEPS, by Barbara Delinsky

When her sister Robin suffers a massive heart attack that leaves her in a coma from which she may never wake up, Molly Snow and her family struggle to cope with the tragedy as their relationships are put to the ultimate test and Molly is forced to make some tough decisions, as she makes some surprising discoveries about the sister she thought she knew. 200,000 first printing.

HEART AND SOUL, by Maeve Binchy

Given the difficult task of building an underfunded clinic in an Irish community caught between the past and present, Dr. Clara Casey finds her task complicated by two difficult adult daughters, the unwanted attentions of her ex-husband, her colorful and diverse staff, and the demanding, often difficult patients they serve. 350,000 first printing.

ANIMALS MAKE US HUMAN, by Temple Grandin

Drawing on the latest scientific research and her own work with animals, the author discusses the emotional needs of animals and how to fulfill them, challenging common myths about animal emotions, mental stimulation, and emotional well-being.

 

BORDEAUX, by Paul Torday

Taking an unexpected detour on the way home from work, Wilberforce, a wealthy, self-contained young man, is drawn into an unexpected new world thanks to an encounter with Francis Black, an eccentric and enigmatic wine merchant, who introduces Wilberforce to fine wines, new friends, and his new wife, but he soon discovers that his new life comes at a price.

SING THEM HOME, by Stephanie Kallos

When their mother vanishes in the midst of a tornado in 1978, her three children are forced to deal with the sudden loss in their own ways, but when their father dies decades later and they are reunited, the three must delve into their history in order to come to terms with the tragedy that has always haunted them.

THE SECOND OPINION, by Michael Palmer

Possessing a brilliant mind for medicine in spite of her inability to comprehend the interpersonal conflicts and money-driven dynamics of traditional medicine, Asperger’s patient and doctor Thea Sperelakis is baffled when her siblings refuse care to their hit-and-run victim father, whom Thea gradually realizes was deliberately targeted. 250,000 first printing.

NIGHT AND DAY, by Robert B. Parker

Investigating allegations of lewd conduct on the part of the local junior high principal, police chief Jesse Stone finds efforts to bring the woman to justice thwarted by a high-powered attorney, a case that is further complicated by the activities of a twisted voyeur. 300,000 first printing.

RUN FOR YOUR LIFE, by James Patterson

Investigating a series of brutal killings by an assailant who calls himself the Teacher and targets wealthy and arrogant victims, detective Mike Bennett finds himself racing against time to save New York from a deadly plot, in a case that is further complicated when Mike’s ten children simultaneously contract the flu.

FOOL, by Christopher Moore

In 1288, as King Lear watches his kingdom descend into chaos, the king’s fool, Pocket, and Pocket’s apprentice, Drool, take it upon themselves to restore order amidst the mayhem, and in the process make a surprising discovery about their own heritage.

The author of A Dirty Job, Bloodsucking Fiends, and numerous additional best-sellers applies his satirical wit and offbeat storytelling style to a wacky new adventure set in an inventive universe. 250,000 first printing.

A SLOBBERING LOVE AFFAIR, by Bernard Goldberg

Describes how the media went beyond reporting on the 2008 presidential campaign to actively supporting Barack Obama, discussing how they suppressed the Jeremiah Wright incident, attacked Joe the Plumber, and insulted Sarah Palin.

 

THE NEXT 100 YEARS, by George Friedman

The founder of one of the world’s leading private intelligence companies offers a thought-provoking analysis of current trends and events, as well as historical and geopolitical patterns, to speculate about the changes that will unfold over the course of the next century. 50,000 first printing.

 

THE SURVIVORS CLUB, by Ben Sherwood

Draws on stories about survivors of accidents, crime, and serious illness to investigate why some people succumb to life-threatening hardships while others rally, discussing such topics as the science of luck and emergency room probability rates.

 

GETTING NAKED AGAIN, by Judith Sills

A guide for newly single women from the baby-boomer generation shares practical advice for reentering the dating scene and pursuing intimate relationships, in a resource that is complemented by personal anecdotes. By the author of Excess Baggage.

 

SOFTCOVER

 

THE ELEGANCE OF THE HEDGEHOG, by Muriel Barbery

The second novel (but first to be published in the United States) from France-based author Barbery teaches philosophical lessons by shrewdly exposing rich secret lives hidden beneath conventional exteriors. Rnée Michel has been the concierge at an apartment building in Paris for 27 years. Uneducated, widowed, ugly, short and plump, she looks like any other French apartment-house janitor, but Mme Michel is by no means what she seems. A “proletarian autodidact,” she has broad cultural appetites—for the writings of Marx and Kant, the novels of Tolstoy, the films of Ozu and Wenders. She ponders philosophical questions and holds scathing opinions about some of the wealthy tenants of the apartments she maintains, but she
is careful to keep her intelligence concealed, having learned from her sister’s experience the dangers of using her mind in defiance of her class. Similarly, 12-year-old Paloma Josse, daughter of one of the well-connected tenant families, shields her erudition, philosophical inclinations, criticism—and also her dreams of suicide. But when a new Japanese tenant, Kakuro Ozu, moves in, everything changes for both females. He detects their intelligence and invites them into his cultured life. Curious and deeply
fulfilling friendships blossom among the three, offering Paloma and Renée freedom from the mental prisons confining them.With its refined taste and political perspective, this is an elegant, light-spirited and very European adult fable. Kirkus Review

THE FLORIST’S DAUGHTER, by Patricia Hampl

During the long farewell of her mother’s dying, Patricia Hampl revisits her midwestern girlhood.Daughter of a debonair Czech father, whose floral work gave him entrée to St. Paul society, and a distrustful Irishwoman with an uncanny ability to tell a tale,Hampl remained, primarily and passionately, a daughter well into adulthood. She traces the arc of faithfulness and struggle that comes with that role—from the postwar years past the turbulent sixties. At the heart of The Florist’s Daughter is the humble passion of people who struggled out of the Depression into a better chance, not only for themselves but for the common good.Widely recognized as one of our most masterly memoirists, Patricia Hampl has written an extraordinary memoir that is her most intimate, yet most universal, work to date.This transporting work will resonate with readers of Francine du Plessix Gray’s Them: A Memoir of Parents and JeannetteWall’s The Glass Castle.

OLIVE KITTERIDGE, by Elizabeth Strout

At times stern, at other times patient, at times perceptive, at other times in sad denial, Olive Kitteridge, a retired schoolteacher, deplores the changes in her little town of Crosby, Maine, and in the world at large, but she doesn’t always recognize the changes in those around her: a lounge musician haunted by a past romance; a former student who has lost the will to live; Olive’s own adult child, who feels tyrannized by her irrational sensitivities; and her husband, Henry, who finds his loyalty to his marriage both a blessing and a curse.

As the townspeople grapple with their problems, mild and dire, Olive is brought to a deeper understanding of herself and her life–sometimes painfully, but always with ruthless honesty. Olive Kitteridge offers profound insights into the human condition–its conflicts, its tragedies and joys, and the endurance it requires.

PEOPLE OF THE BOOK, by Geraldine Brooks

Offered a coveted job to analyze and conserve a priceless Sarajevo Haggadah, Australian rare-book expert Hanna Heath discovers a series of tiny artifacts in the volume’s ancient binding that reveal its historically significant origins. By the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of March. Reprint.

STILL ALICE, by Lisa Genova

Still Alice is a compelling debut novel about a 50-year-old woman’s sudden descent into early onset Alzheimer’s disease, written by first-time author Lisa Genova, who holds a Ph. D in neuroscience from Harvard University.

Alice Howland, happily married with three grown children and a house on the Cape, is a celebrated Harvard professor at the height of her career when she notices a forgetfulness creeping into her life. As confusion starts to cloud her thinking and her memory begins to fail her, she receives a devastating diagnosis: early onset Alzheimer’s disease. Fiercely independent, Alice struggles to maintain her lifestyle and live in the moment, even as her sense of self is being stripped away. In turns heartbreaking, inspiring and terrifying, Still Alice captures in remarkable detail what’s it’s like to literally lose your mind…

Reminiscent of A Beautiful Mind, Ordinary People and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, Still Alice packs a powerful emotional punch and marks the arrival of a strong new voice in fiction.

THE NATION GUIDE TO THE NATION, by Richard Llingeman

An eclectic reference furnishes a coast-to-coast lifestyle guide aimed at left-of-center shops, cultural institutions, gathering places, and more, including activist groups, eco-friendly products, press watchdogs, liberal media, blogs, restaurants, writers’ colonies, bookstores, art advocacy groups, public policy institutes, think tanks, and more. Original. 40,000 first printing.

THE PIANO TEACHER, by Janice Lee

Ten years after World War II causes the demise of a love affair between an Englishman and a Eurasian socialite, Claire Pendleton is hired by the wealthy Chen family as a piano instructor, falls in love with the Englishman, and is seduced by the social life of Hong Kong’s expatriate community. 100,000 first printing.

A DEADLY MISUNDERSTANDING, by Mark Siljander

Former Congressman and Deputy Ambassador to the United Nations Mark D. Siljander takes us on an eye-opening journey of personal, religious, and political discovery. In the 1980s, Siljander was a newly minted Reagan Republican from Michigan who joined Congress in the same generation as Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay, ready to remake the world. A staunch member of the Religious Right, he once walked out of the National Prayer Breakfast when a speaker quoted from the Qur’an.

But after losing reelection, Siljander dove into the Bible to look for the passage in which the Bible says it is our job as Christians to convert others in order to save them from eternal damnation. He couldn’t find it; in fact, he couldn’t even find a passage saying that Jesus set out to form a new religion. This discovery was the first step on a spiritual and political journey that started with an in-depth linguistic study of the Bible and led to the discovery that Christianity and Islam share many base words and concepts. In his role as ambassador to the United Nations Siljander began sharing his insights on the connections between Islam and Christianity, with surprising results.

A Deadly Misunderstanding recounts Siljander’s amazing discoveries as he travels to some of the most remote and hostile places in the world—deep into Libya, Sudan, Pakistan, and India—forging deep ties with both heads of state and religious leaders. What he has learned could radically shift the contemporary religious landscape and help heal the rift between Islam and the West. No Christian or Muslim will be unaffected after reading this book.

THREE CUPS OF TEA, by Greg Mortenson

(THE YOUNG READER’S EDITION)

A middle-grade adapted version of the New York Times bestseller about humanitarianism and providing Muslim children around the world with an education is enhanced with photos, maps, illustrations, and a special afterword by the author’s daughter who worked with him as an advocate for the Pennies for Peace program. Simultaneous.

SUZE ORMAN’S 2009 ACTION PLAN, by Suze Orman

Provides advice and tactics for managing personal finances during the economic crisis, covering such topics as credit, retirement investing, saving, spending, real estate, paying for college, and job loss.

CHARLES DARWIN ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES, by Charles Darin

The classic book that changed the course of scientific inquiry, introduced the theory of evolution, and exploded some of humankind’s most enduring myths comes to life in a new, handsomely illustrated edition that features more than 350 illustrations and photographs, many in color, accompanied by excerpts from the author’s diaries, letters, and other writings.

THE BOOK OF UNHOLY MISCHIEF, by Elle Newmark

Taking a job as a chef’s apprentice at the palace of the doge, late-fifteenth-century Venice street orphan Luciano becomes increasingly suspicious about his master’s shadowy past and learns about an ancient book containing a dangerous power. 250,000 first printing.

TEARS OF THE DESERT, by Halima Bashir

A Sudanese doctor speaks out about the horrors of the civil war between black Africans and the Arab-led Sudanese government as she describes her outrage over the treatment of female prisoners of the Arab government, the retaliation she faced after speaking out, and her personal struggle for survival, in a harrowing memoir of courage, family, and hope. 75,000 first printing.

FOOD MATTERS, by Mark Bittman

Cookbook author Bittman (How to Cook Everything) offers this no-nonsense volume loaded with compelling information about how the food we eat is doing damage to the environment, what changes to make and why. Authors have covered this topic before (Michael Pollan, for example, in The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food), but Bittman takes a practical turn by concluding with 77 recipes that make earth-friendly eating doable and appealing. His collection of reliable recipes even includes such meat dishes as Thai beef salad, which isn’t meat-heavy, but rather has “just the right balance of meat to greens.” There are also such staples as super-simple mixed rice; “chicken not pie”; and modern bouillabaisse. Bittman decries consumption of “over-refined carbohydrates,” but doesn’t leave off without some sweets, including chocolate semolina pudding and nutty oatmeal cookies—suggesting, as the whole book does, that a diet in synch with the needs of the earth doesn’t result in a sense of utter deprivation.

SING THEM HOME, by Stephanie Kallos

When their mother vanishes in the midst of a tornado in 1978, her three children are forced to deal with the sudden loss in their own ways, but when their father dies decades later and they are reunited, the three must delve into their history in order to come to terms with the tragedy that has always haunted them. By the author of Broken for You.

THE NATION GUIDE TO THE NATION, by Richard Lingeman

An eclectic reference furnishes a coast-to-coast lifestyle guide aimed at left-of-center shops, cultural institutions, gathering places, and more, including activist groups, eco-friendly products, press watchdogs, liberal media, blogs, restaurants, writers’ colonies, bookstores, art advocacy groups, public policy institutes, think tanks, and more. Original. 40,000 first printing.

TRAITOR TO HIS CLASS, by H.W. Brands

A sweeping biography of the life and political career of Franklin Delano Roosevelt draws on archival materials, public speeches, interviews with family and colleagues, and personal correspondence to examine FDR’s political leadership in a dark time of Depression and war, his championship of the poor, his revolutionary New Deal legislation, and his legacy for the future. 125,000 first printing.

BEYOND BELIEF, by Josh Hamilton

The outfielder for the Texas Ranger, and the 2008 World Series homerun derby, relates the drug and alcohol abuse that derailed his baseball career and led to his estrangement from friends and family, and describes his spiritual journey back from addiction.

 

DAEMON, by Daniel Suarez

Originally self-published, Suarez’s riveting debut would be a perfect gift for a favorite computer geek or anyone who appreciates thrills, chills and cyber suspense. Gaming genius Matthew Sobol, the 34-year-old head of CyberStorm Entertainment, has just died of brain cancer, but death doesn’t stop him from initiating an all-out Internet war against humanity. When the authorities investigate Sobol’s mansion in Thousand Oaks, Calif., they find themselves under attack from his empty house, aided by an unmanned Hummer that tears into the cops with staggering ferocity. Sobol’s weapon is a daemon, a kind of computer process that not only has taken over many of the world’s computer systems but also enlists the help of superintelligent human henchmen willing to carry out his diabolical plan. Complicated jargon abounds, but most complexities are reasonably explained. A final twist that runs counter to expectations will leave readers anxiously awaiting the promised sequel.

NEMESIS, by Jo Nesbo

When a bank teller is shot during a holdup at the start of Norwegian bestseller Nesb’s beautifully executed heist drama, Oslo Insp. Harry Hole investigates, along with Beate Lnn, a young detective with the ability to remember every face she’s ever seen. Meanwhile, Harry receives a call from Anna Bethsen, a woman he hasn’t seen in years. After he meets Anna, recovering alcoholic Harry awakens the next morning with a hangover and the news that Anna is dead, apparently by her own hand. While Harry quietly looks into Anna’s death, he and Beate uncover ties in their bank robbery case to one of Norway’s most notorious bank robbers, who’s currently in prison. The deeper Harry digs, the clearer it becomes that Anna’s death is linked to the robbery. Expertly weaving plot lines from Hole’s last outing to feature the inspector, The Redbreast (2007), Nesb delivers a lush crime saga that will leave U.S. readers clamoring for the next installment.

THE LAST STAND OF FOX COMPANY, by Bob Drury

Offers the story of the courageous mission of 234 Marines of Fox Company who found themselves surrounded and greatly outnumbered by 100,000 Chinese soldiers near Chosin Reservoir in North Korea, the incredible steps they took to fend them off for five nights, and the major losses they suffered in their desperate struggle before finally being relieved.

LUCKY BILLY, by John Vernon

The author of The Last Canyon draws on historical records to create a fresh, nuanced fictional portrait of the violent life and times of outlaw Billy the Kid, focusing on his role in the Lincoln County War, the murder of his employer John Tunstall, and the revenge killings that followed.

THE LITTLE GIANT OF ABERDEEN COUNTY, by Tiffany Baker

Baker’s bang-up debut mixes the exuberant eccentricities of John Irving’s Garp , Anne Tyler’s relationship savvy and the plangent voice of Margaret Atwood. In an upstate New York backwater, Truly, massive from birth, has a bleak existence with her depressed father and her china-doll–like sister, Serena Jane. Truly grows at an astonishing rate—her girth the result of a pituitary gland problem—and after her father dies when Truly is 12, Truly is sloughed off to the Dyersons, a hapless farming family. Her outsize kindness surfaces as she befriends the Dyersons’ outcast daughter, Amelia, and later leaves her beloved Dyerson farm to take care of Serena Jane’s husband and son after Serena Jane leaves them. Haunting the margins of Truly’s story is that of Tabitha Dyerson, a rumored witch whose secrets afford a breathtaking role reversal for Truly. It’s got all the earmarks of a hit—infectious and lovable narrator, a dash of magic, an impressive sweep and a heartrending but not treacly family drama. It’ll be a shame if this doesn’t race up the bestseller lists. PW Review

SHADOW COUNTRY, by Peter Matthiessen

A reworking of the author’s trilogy chronicles the legacy of E.J. Watson, a notorious desperado gunned down by his neighbors along the lawless nineteenth-century frontier of the Florida Everglades.

 

THE VIRGIN QUEEN’S DAUGHTER, by Ella March Chase

A historical novel based on long-standing rumors that Elizabeth I, the Virgin Queen, had given birth to an illegitimate child follows young Elinor de Lacy–the purported daughter of Elizabeth and her married guardian, Thomas Seymour–who is sent to become a lady-in-waiting to the queen, unprepared for the glitter or the viciousness of the court. 25,000 first printing.

AGINCOURT, by Bernard Cornwell

A tale inspired by the legendary battle of Agincourt finds the “band of brothers” rallying against disease, hunger, and formidable weather around longbowman Nicholas Hook, who in spite of his outlaw status fights for his country and the woman he loves. 200,000 first printing.

THE INDEPENDENCE OF MISS MARY BENNETT, by Colleen McCullough

The best-selling author of The Thorn Birds presents a sequel to Pride and Prejudice that finds the willful third Bennett sister setting out in her late thirties in pursuit of adventure while her sisters worry about her at home. 100,000 first printing.

JEFFREY GOTTIMER’S LITTLE TEAL BOOK OF TRUST, by Jeffrey Gottimer

How to Earn It, Grow It, and Keep It to Become a Trusted Advisor in Sales, Business and Life

 

 

THE LANDSCAPE OF HOME, by Julie Moir Messery

Making the most of your home outside!!

 

 

THREE WEEKS TO SAY GOODBYE, by C.J. Box

Delighted when they finally achieve their dream of adopting a baby, Jack and Melissa are devastated when their daughter Angelina’s teenage birth father and her grandfather, a powerful Denver judge, set out to put aside the adoption and, realizing that there is something sinister about their motivations, risk everything to protect their child. 100,000 first printing.

BEAT THE REAPER, by Josh Bazell

The carefully orchestrated life of Manhattan emergency room doctor and witness-protection program participant Peter Brown unravels in the course of a high-stakes day that begins with a mugging, an elevator encounter with a sexy pharmaceutical rep, and a new patient who knows him from his previous existence.

TINKERS, by Paul Harding

Elderly New Englander on his deathbed finds his thoughts drifting back to the father who abandoned the family when he was 12. His organs failing and his mind wandering, retired antique-clock repairman George Washington Crosby prepares to leave this world surrounded by loving family in the house he built himself. In a parallel narrative, his father Howard, a traveling peddler, sells cleaning supplies and sundries to dirt-poor farm wives in 1920s Massachusetts. Barely eking out enough to support his increasingly bitter wife Kathleen and four children, Howard has the heart of a poet and prefers nature walks to selling soap. His quiet desperation is complicated by regular epileptic seizures that leave him bloody and dazed, sometimes miles from home. A violent fit in his home results in him badly biting young George, prompting Kathleen to take steps to send her husband to a state-run mental hospital. He flees, leaving George to grow up into a meticulous, practical man who stashes cash in safety-deposit boxes, most likely as a reaction to his own penniless youth. Debut author Harding (Creative Writing/Harvard Univ.) employs diary entries, stream-of-consciousness musings and excerpts from clock-repair manuals to tell both men’s stories. Short on dialogue and filled with lovely Whitmanesque descriptions of the natural world, this slim novel gives shape to the extraordinary variety in the thoughts of otherwise ordinary men. An evocative meditation on the nonlinear nature of a life. Copyright Kirkus 2008

A SINGLE THREAD, by Marie Bostwick

Bostwick makes a seamless transition from historical fiction to the contemporary scene in this buoyant novel about the value of friendship among women. When Evelyn Dixon’s marriage ends, she leaves Texas and drives north until New Bern, Conn., captures her heart. There she pursues a dream of opening a quilt shop, and with little money and a lot of determination, she turns a derelict building into a haven for the crafty set. But three women who show up for quilting class end up learning about more than stitching and batting. Chilly, wealthy Abigail Burgess; her angry 19-year-old niece, Liza; and recently laid-off Margot Matthews all have different reasons for being there, but when Evelyn, having just learned she has breast cancer, breaks down, the trio unites to support her. Evelyn’s illness and recovery are the catalysts that force the others to re-examine their own lives, while hints of a possible romance for Evelyn add a complementary thread to the friendship, community and illness story lines. Bostwick’s polished style and command of plot make this story of bonding and sisterhood a tantalizing book club contender. PW Review

LOG HOMES MADE EASY, by Jim Cooper

Contracting and building your own log home.

 

 

 

A PLACE OF MY OWN, by Michael Pollan

By the author of Omnivore’s Dilemma Botany of Desire, and In Defense of Food. Originally pub. 1997. Pollan tells the inspiring, insightful, and often hilarious story of his quest to realize a room of his own – a small, wooden hut in the forest, a “shelter for daydreams: - built with his own admittedly unhandy hands. Inspired in equal parts by Thoreau and Mr. Blandings, A Place of My Own not only explores the history and meaning of all human buildings, it also demonstrates architecture’s unique power to give our bodies, minds, and dreams a home in the world – now with a new preface.

DREAMING GREEN, by Lisa Sharkey

A style-lover’s guide to fashionable but eco-friendly decorating showcases a series of urban, suburban, and rural homes that are beautiful, livable, and environmentally friendly and that represent an array of sizes, shapes, and styles, accompanied by an extensive resource section for readers planning their own “green” home. 20,000 first printing.

YOUR ECO-FRIENDLY HOME, by Sid Davis

Buying, Building, or Remodeling Green

 

 

 

CRAFTING LOG HOMES SOLAR STYLE, by Rex Ewig

This revision of Logs, Wind and Sun is coming out when interest in renewable energy is keen. Rex, author of other books on alternative energy, and wife LaVonne recount their log-home construction odyssey. The best section is tucked at the end—there are definitions and descriptions of different energy sources, with pros and cons clearly listed, along with the associated costs and equipment required. This alone makes the book valuable, even if you are not inspired to tromp out to the wilderness to build a log cabin. “A hands-on guide to building solar-powered log homes, complete with how-to illustrations and photos, plus profiles of log home owners from across the United States. Topics includes log home construction, solar and wind energy, home heating options, pumping water, costs to consider, and Web resources”–LJ Review

THE BIG BOOK OF INTERIORS, by Agata Losantos

Features more than 600 different design ideas covering each room in the house. This work contains chapters that are divided by location in the home. Each section opens with text describing the decorating challenges to that part of the house, followed by color design ideas showcasing different solutions to outfit each size room.

EAT, DRINK…AND BE MINDFUL, by Susan Albers

Psychologist and author Albers expands on themes introduced in Eating Mindfully with this workbook for devotees of her conscientious approach to health and weight loss. Her philosophy involves becoming aware of eating patterns and the emotions one associates with food, encouraging readers to discover the how and why of their everyday diet in order to gain greater self-control. Arguing that the mind and the mouth are equally important to consumption, Albers encourages readers to set goals, keep diaries and pay attention to what they eat in detail with a variety of tables and exercises: meditating on a piece of chocolate; describing what tastes draw you; focusing on the here and now. PW Review

THE ADOPTED DOG BIBLE, by Petfinder.com

An all-encompassing guide for owners of rescued and shelter dogs with special needs provides recommendations for such concerns as pursuing veterinary care with minimal records, introducing optimal-nutrition diets, and rehabilitative training. Original. 40,000 first printing.

PUBLISHED IN MAY…BUT WORTH REPEATING!!!

THE PLAGUE OF DOVES, by Louise Erdrich

Unaware of a violent event that marked the beginning of her mixed ancestry, ambitious young Evelina Harp, a part-Ojibwe, part-white girl prone to falling hopelessly in love, learns disturbing truths from her gifted storyteller grandfather, while a sentimental judge weighs the legacy of a century-old crime as reflected by his own love life. By the author of The Painted Drum. 125,000 first printing.

PUBLISHED IN APRIL, 2008…BUT WORTH REPEATING!!

UNACCUSTOMED EARTH, by Jhumpa Lahiri

Exploring the secrets and complexities lying at the heart of family life and relationships, a collection of eight stories includes the title work, about a young mother in a new city whose father tends her garden while hiding a secret love affair, as well as “Hema and Kaushik,” “Only Goodness,” and “A Choice of Accommodations,” among others. 300,000 first printing.

WORTH LOOKING AT AGAIN…pub. 2005

HOW SOCCER EXPLAINS THE WORLD, by Franklin Foe

Casting soccer as a metaphor representative of today’s world issues, an analysis of the sport’s reflection of history as well as its modern influence identifies commonalities between tribalism and globalization, explaining how such factors as terrorism, poverty, racism, and religion contribute to how the game is played today. Reader’s Guide available. Reprint. 50,000 first printing.

COMING IN FEBRUARY…RESERVE YOU COPY NOW!!

THE HELP, by Kathryn Stockett

What perfect timing for this optimistic, uplifting debut novel (and maiden publication of Amy Einhorn’s new imprint) set during the nascent civil rights movement in Jackson, Miss., where black women were trusted to raise white children but not to polish the household silver. Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan is just home from college in 1962, and, anxious to become a writer, is advised to hone her chops by writing “about what disturbs you.” The budding social activist begins to collect the stories of the black women on whom the country club sets relies—and mistrusts—enlisting the help of Aibileen, a maid who’s raised 17 children, and Aibileen’s best friend Minny, who’s found herself unemployed more than a few times after mouthing off to her white employers. The book Skeeter puts together based on their stories is scathing and shocking, bringing pride and hope to the black community, while giving Skeeter the courage to break down her personal boundaries and pursue her dreams. Assured and layered, full of heart and history, this one has bestseller written all over it. PW Review