Animals have a better understanding; it seems, of how to treat our Mother Earth. We must help them! Courtesy of Happy Life Nursery and Gardens, and our bookstore, you may enter a raffle to receive a $100 gift certificate.

Between April 1 and April 22, if you spend $25 at our store, your name will be entered into our Earth Day Raffle. We will draw the winner at 6:00PM on Earth Day!! Loren and Sue Boyett, owners of the independent nursery, Happy Life Gardens on 37th Street (9 years now!) will be our partners in this raffle. Have you seen their beautiful and spacious gardens? Looking for pots and garden sculpture? One-of-a-kind for sure…with lots of personal help and ideas!!

Yes, it is time again, our 3rd year… to commemorate Shakespeare’s death with an added twist…a discount and a flower…Perfect!!

Every year on April 23rd, Barcelona erupts in a celebration of chivalry and romance, Book & Lover’s Day. It all began in the Middle Ages with an annual Festival of Roses to honor St. George, Patron Saint of Catalonia, who as a brave and Roman soldier allegedly slew a dragon about to devour a beautiful young princess. According to legend, a rosebush sprouted from the blood of the dragon and the soldier plucked its most perfect blossoms to give to the princess as a remembrance. In 1923, the Rose Festival merged with International Book Day, established to celebrate the lives of Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don Quixote, a founding classic of Western Literature, and William Shakespeare, both of whom died on April 23rd in 1616. Now, bookstalls and flower stands sprout up along the Rambla, a two-mile stretch connecting the city with the Mediterranean Sea. Thousands of Barcelonans crowd the streets to enjoy a festive atmosphere of readings, music, literature, and dance.

An Open Book LLC is delighted to honor this springtime celebration of culture, beauty, literature, and love. Stop by the store on Book & Lover’s Day to receive 20% off the book of your choice. Complimentary flowers will be available with the purchase of any book, from Cottonwood Florist….while supplies last.

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.

There are so many of you who are committed to the treasure of the written word ~ our thanks for your support and enthusiasm for your independent, neighborhood bookstore!!

SHENANIGANS is hosting an evening of “connecting and romance” on March 12, from 6:00PM to 10:00PM. Dinner for two for $25, with a choice of two entrees, salad bar and dessert.

970-515-5622

Our MARVELOUS MONDAY series is moving ahead as if it breathes on its own!! More than 50 guests came to our March event with Kay Sandmeier-Broderius. Look for photos in a special email coming in May!

Marvelous Mondays

Don’t forget to call and reserve your PLACE for our April event with Carol Ann Kates. We will be sampling Carol’s delicious line of gourmet food products!

We will have a reservation only/free of charge book talk with Sandra Dallas from 5:00 to 7:00PM on April 24th. Complimentary refreshments will be served…and we now have over half of our seating already gone!! So call now…330-7879.

Then, from 7 to 7:30 Sandra will stay for an open signing of her new book, PRAYERS FOR SALE. The book will be available that evening, but you can reserve your copy now, and come and get it when it makes its debut ~ April 14th!!

• Our annual Earth Day gift certificate drawing, in conjunction with Happy Life Nursery.
• National Poetry Month
• Easter ~ April 12th (our Easter books are out and ready for your baskets!)
• Our 3rd Annual Book and Lovers Day, on April 23.

…A class on Crime Scene Investigation & Police Procedures is being taught by our loyal customer Laura Manuel. Laura holds a Ph.D. in Criminal Justice, worked for the Greeley Police Department for 19 years, and now teaches at Front Range Community College.

March 21, Saturday… in Broomfield. Questions? Email Laura at adelies@comcast.net

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.