PUBLICITY FLASHES: (NEW RELEASES FEATURED ON TV AND RADIO)
THE WORDY SHIPMATES, by Sarah Vowell
A cultural profile of Puritan life covers a wide range of topics, from their covenant communities and deep-rooted ideologies to their beliefs about church and state and their perspectives on other faiths, in an account that also evaluates their legacy in today’s world.
125,000 first printing.
A MOST WANTED MAN, by John Le Carre
Smuggled into Hamburg, Issa, a young Russian man carrying a large amount of cash and claiming to be a devout Muslim, forms an unlikely alliance with Annabel, an idealistic young German civil rights lawyer, and Tommy Brue, a sixty-year-old scion of a failing British bank, as they become victims of rival intelligence operations in the War on Terror.
300,000 first printing.
KILL BIN LADEN, by Dalton Fury
A firsthand account of the Battle of Tora Bora and the Delta Force operations outlines the experiences of its elite team of secret counter-terrorist members, tracing their high-stakes siege against bin Laden within his cave sanctuary inside the Spin Ghar Mountain range.
75,000 first printing.
IF NOT NOW, WHEN? by Jack Jacobs
A recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor looks back on his own military service, including the events in Vietnam that led to his award, describes the personal code of honor with which he has lived his life, and offers a candid assessment of the current global situation, military service, and the nature and necessity of sacrifice.
A MEMBER OF THE FAMILY, by Cesar Millan
The host of Dog Whisperer with Cesar Millan presents the ultimate guidebook to living with and caring for a healthy, happy dog, answering frequently asked questions about how to select the right dog, introduce a new pet to the family, set the rules of the house, fulfill all a dog’s needs, communicate, and manage a dog with “issues.”
750,000 first printing.
GRACE, by Richard Paul Evans
Presents an inspirational tale of hope, love, and faith set during the holiday season of 1962, as portrayed in the lost innocence of a young girl running away from her abusive stepfather and a boy determined to protect her.
CHEF JEFF COOKS, by Jeff Henderson
An award-winning chef and host of the new reality cooking show The Chef Jeff Project traces his rise from a prison inmate and dishwasher to the first African-American Chef de Cuisine at Caesar’s Palace and executive chef at Café Bellagio, in a volume that shares 150 recipes inspired by his cultural heritage. 125,000 first printing.
PAULA DEEN’S MY FIRST COOKBOOK, by Paula Deen
Easy-to-follow recipes, safety tips, and lessons on good manners are compiled in this colorful cookbook with detailed steps, informative illustrations, family photos, and fun anecdotes for aspiring young chefs.
400,000 first printing.
MICHELLE, by Liza Mundy
A lively, intimate portrait of Michelle Obama looks at the life of the woman who could become the nation’s first African-American First Lady, from her youth on the south side of Chicago, to her education at Princeton and Harvard Law School, to her relationship with Barack Obama, to her views on the political life and the issues of today. 100,000 first printing.
THE INTELLECTUAL DEVOTIONAL MODERN CULTURE, by David Kidder
A latest installment in the best-selling series shares a year’s worth of daily secular readings on culture from the Enlightenment to today, in a volume that covers a wide range of topics from art and literature to consumer products and sports.
300,000 first printing.
THE DOMINO BOOK OF DECORATING, by Conde Nast
The editors of Domino magazine present a guide to furnishing and decorating every room of a home, in a reference that demonstrates strategic layouts and includes insider shopping tips.
150,000 first printing.
GIVE ME LIBERTY, by Naomi Wolf (paperback)
A refresher manifesto on the virtues and vulnerable core values of democracy by the feminist political commentator and author of The End of America and The Beauty Myth reveals how everyday citizens can understand and use democracy for the betterment of society.
Original. 100,000 first printing.
EXTREME MEASURES, by Vince Flynn
Having led a prestigious military and intelligence career, Hank Casey, a protégé of counter-terrorism operative Mitch Rapp, struggles with the ethics and challenges of his job when the government inexplicably turns against him. By the author of Act of Treason.
750,000 first printing.
THE LONGEST TRIP HOME, by John Grogan
Grogan follows up Marley & Me with a hilarious and touching memoir of his childhood in suburban Detroit.
HARRY S. TRUMAN, by Robert Dallek
The plainspoken man from Missouri who never expected to be president yet rose to become one of the greatest leaders of the twentieth century, Harry S. Truman clashed with Southerners over civil rights, with organized labor over the right to strike, and with General Douglas MacArthur over the conduct of the Korean War. He personified Thomas Jefferson’s observation that the presidency is a “splendid misery,” but it was during his tenure that the United States truly came of age.Traces the thirty-third president’s unlikely rise to power and his role in bringing America into the nuclear age, covering his perspectives on civil rights, his clashes with Douglas MacArthur over the conduct of the Korean War, and his reelection in 1948.
HOT SELLERS THIS WEEK:
THE LUCKY ONE, by Nicholas Sparks
Coming into the possession of a photograph of a smiling woman he has never met, a man experiences a chain of fortuitous events that causes him to regard the photograph as a lucky charm, a belief that prompts a heartfelt search for the woman.
THE STORY OF EDGAR SAWTELLE, by David Wroblewski
(AN OPEN BOOK LLC AND OTHER INDEPENDENT BOOKSTORES RECOMMENDED THIS BOOK, IN OUR EMAILS AND IN OUR STORES…BACK IN JUNE. NOW, OPRAH MADE THIS WONDERFUL, INTRIGUING BOOK HER LATEST BOOK CLUB SELECTION!! DAVID LIVES IN WESTMINSTER, COLORADO…THIS IS HIS DEBUT NOVEL, AFTER SPENDING A DECADE TO WRITE EDGAR’S STORY! Yea to David!!)
A tale reminiscent of “Hamlet” that also celebrates the alliance between humans and dogs follows speech-disabled Wisconsin youth Edgar, who bonds with three yearling canines and struggles to prove that his sinister uncle is responsible for his father’s death. A tale reminiscent of “Hamlet” that also celebrates the alliance between humans and dogs follows speech-disabled Wisconsin youth Edgar, who bonds with three yearling canines and struggles to prove that his sinister uncle is responsible for his father’s death.
THE GIVEN DAY, by Dennis Lehane
An epic tale set at the end of World War I follows the experiences of a family whose lives mirror the political unrest of an America caught between its well-patterned past and an unpredictable future. By the author of Mystic River.
400,000 first printing.
HOT, FLAT AND CROWDED, by Thomas L. Friedman
Proposes an ambitious national strategy to address key issues in climate change and energy shortages, identifying the factors that have contributed to current circumstances while outlining an American-led revolution of clean technology solutions.
PIECES OF MY HEART, by Robert J. Wagner
An intimate tell-all of the life of the Hollywood icon describes his relationships with such contemporaries as Clark Gable, Frank Sinatra, and Elizabeth Taylor; remembers his two marriages to Natalie Wood; and shares his observations about the transformations in Hollywood throughout the past half-century.
150,000 first printing.
AMERICAN WIFE, by Curtis Sittenfeld
When her husband is elected president of the United States, Alice Blackwell finds her new life as first lady increasingly tumultuous as she recalls her early life, her courtship and marriage, and the crisis that nearly destroyed their relationship and reflects on the privileges and difficulties of her position as her private beliefs conflict with her public responsibilities.
100,000 first printing.
BAD MONEY, by Kevin Phillips
Noted political commentator Phillips (American Theocracy ) presents a compelling economic and historical analysis of the decline of the United States as a superpower. In fact, he has accurately predicted many of today’s political and economic conditions, such as the bursting of the housing bubble, the reduction of oil supplies, the devaluation of the U.S. dollar, and the decreased role of the dollar in world trade. Phillips attributes the country’s present financial chaos to politicians’ shortsightedness and financiers’ irresponsible decisions. He also addresses the related topics of financial schemes, such as the creation of new financial products from debt and credit, and financialization, a term Phillips uses to describe America’s movement from manufacturing to financial services. Despite his pessimism, Phillips gives the reader hope by drawing parallels with other periods in history and showing that catastrophic downturns are often cyclic and may even be expected once a superpower has reached a pinnacle (as with the global domination of the Dutch and the British in eras past). Because this book skillfully explains complex issues relevant to the American public, it is recommended for both academic and public libraries.
GOODNIGHT BUSH, by Eric Origen
A parody of “Goodnight Moon” offers a satirical recap of the Bush administration as it says goodnight to the ballot box, the Constitution, detainees, allies, Mardi Gras, and failures everywhere.
DRILL HERE, DRILL NOW, PAY LESS, by Newt Gingrich
A handbook for slashing gas prices and solving our energy crisis.
“INDIES” RECOMMEND:
SERENA, by Ron Rash
Traveling to the mountains of 1929 North Carolina to forge a timber business with her new husband, Serena Pemberton champions her mastery of harsh natural and working conditions but turns murderous when she learns she cannot bear children.
25,000 first printing.
CHOSEN FOREVER, by Susan Richards
Charismatic, albeit meandering memoir about the author’s discovery of love and self-acceptance while on a book tour.The book was Chosen by a Horse (2006), an account of Richards’s relationship with an abused mare named “Lay Me Down” that finally got this reclusive animal lover and writing teacher into print after years of trying. The tour plucked her from isolation in upstate New York for what became a life-altering journey through small-town bookstores across the Northeast. Richards reconnected with friends and relatives she’d cut off during years of anxiety and low self-esteem, encounters that prompted her to examine the memories surrounding each of them and to grapple with her past. Bolstered by positive reviews and feedback from readers, her confidence grew. She was able to develop relationships and chat with strangers at her readings; she could even, when a self-assured older gentleman crossed her path, overcome her wariness of intimacy. Richards had experienced previous disappointments and was going through menopause, so theirs was not precisely a fairy-tale romance, even though she makes frequent use of the word “fate” when describing it. Self-conscious, cautious and analytical during the process of falling in love, the author fought feelings of being swept away. She shares all of this quite openly with readers in candid, if somewhat undirected prose that explores her fears, her past and her passions. Anxiety often takes the front seat in her narrative, which chronicles a struggle toward self-approval after a lifetime of feeling unwanted. Richards admits to being shy in person, but she’s clearly comfortable in the memoir format, which tends to foster an occasionally excessive amount of self-psychoanalysis. (She’s equally at ease talking about her “baggage” or her pets.) Fortunately, her charming, self-effacing humor keeps the tone light even when she’s examining darker feelings. Engaging writing by an honest self-explorer. Kirkus Review
TESTIMONY, by Anita Shreve
Recounting a student sex scandal at a prestigious Vermont private academy, this explosive novel from Shreve (Body Surfing ) is more transfixing than a multicar pileup on the interstate. Told from the perspectives of the students involved, the school administrator, the parents, and numerous bystanders, the story keeps unraveling as it slingshots back and forth in time. At each revelation, readers keep hoping that things will turn out differently, that there will be survivors, despite the carnage before their eyes. Yet that one night can never be undone: “A single action can cause a life to veer off in a direction it was never meant to go.” Shreve arrows in on many targets-underage drinking, instant exposure via the Internet, familial expectations, youthful insecurities, and peer pressure, among them-as she flawlessly weaves a tale that is mesmerizing, hypnotic, and compulsive. No one walks away unscathed, and that includes the reader.
Highly recommended.
THE HERETIC’S DAUGHTER, by Kathleen Kent
A witchcraft accusation in their Salem, Massachusetts, home further complicates the challenging relationship between Martha Carrier and her equally willful daughter, Sarah, who are forced to stand together against the escalating hysteria and superstition of the trials that are threatening Martha’s life. A first novel.
HOME, by Marilynne Robinson
A companion volume to Robinson’s luminous, Pulitzer-winning novel Gilead (2004).The focus here shifts from John Ames, Gilead’s memorable protagonist, to his lifelong best friend Robert Boughton. A widowed, increasingly frail and distracted former Presbyterian minister, Boughton has eight children scattered across the country. The story unfolds after
two of them come home to Gilead, Iowa: Glory, the unmarried youngest, who has resigned her teaching job so she can care for Robert; and ne’er-do-well Jack, who for 20 years has repeatedly broken his father’s indulgent heart with his irresponsible, sometimes criminal behavior and-worse-his absence. “Why did he leave? Where had he gone? Those questions had hung in the air,” Glory thinks, “while everyone tried to ignore them, had tried to act as if their own lives were of sufficient interest.” Robinson builds subtle sequences of questions and answers, hesitant attempts at bonding and sorrowful revelations articulated among the three reunited Boughtons as they edge toward, then shy away from accusation and confrontation, feeling their way toward the possibility of forgiveness and healing. This is an inordinately quiet novel, and the patience with which even its most arresting effects are calculated and achieved requires an equal patience on the reader’s part. There is, as there is in the life of every family, considerable repetition. It’s necessary, as Robinson shows us the complexity and richness of Glory’s stoical, though scarcely saintly resilience, of Jack’s arduous progression toward genuine maturity, and of their father’s seemingly naïve, in fact almost visionary forbearance. The result is a compassionate envisioning of singularity and commonality reminiscent of the most soulful and moving work of Willa Cather, William Maxwell and James Agee.Comes astonishingly close to matching its amazing predecessor in beauty and power. Kirkus Review
228 Full Color Pages, 30 Ranches ~ Compelling stories
