Thank you all for making our Day with Greg Mortenson, February 10, 2010 a true success! Our store was able to give Greg and The Central Asia Institute a check for $3500. YOU all gave so much…and then, on our special book signing…Greg gave BACK so much. Will we ever forget the quality time he gave to all of us…the delicious and intimate VIP luncheon, some of our bookstore friends attended…and then, the grand event at Butler Hancock, where more than three thousand supporters stood and cheered when Greg took the stage!!?? This was the first event in our county for Greg’s cause, and Greg told me that he would be back. He truly seemed to have had a good time…especially with the small group meetings in Eaton, and at the end of his day, with students in Greeley.

Of course, we have all 4 of his books, and will continue to have our “penny cup” on the counter. Please, please…if Greg’s message resonated with you…your heart, your “intuitive spirit”…then go to his website and make a donation. I have a monthly amount that I donate…such an easy way to educate so many.

www.threecupsoftea.com

Click to view all of my photos from Greg’s day in Greeley!

Put MARCH 8 on your calendars. A 20% for our club members, as well as a $5 charge, as a light meal will always be available from 5:00 until 5:30PM, with our discussion beginning at 5:30, and lasting until 6:30. Call or stop by for your copy and to reserve your favorite chair.

Our first book will be:

THE WORLD WITHOUT US, by Alan Weisman

If human beings disappeared instantaneously from the Earth, what would happen? How would the planet reclaim its surface? What creatures would emerge from the dark and swarm? How would our treasured structures–our tunnels, our bridges, our homes, our monuments–survive the unmitigated impact of a planet without our intervention? In his revelatory, bestselling account, Alan Weisman draws on every field of science to present an environmental assessment like no other, the most affecting portrait yet of humankind’s place on this planet.

Time magazine’s #1 Non-fiction book of 2007.

Reading “The Secret Garden” at age 10 opened up the wonderful world of words and imagination for Gail Anderson, who is currently a Supervisor at the Lincoln Park Library of the High Plains Library District. She has taught community college classes in Ohio, Montana and Washington, as well as worked in libraries in Montana and Colorado. Gail earned her MLIS degree from the University of Washington in 2005. Prior to moving to Colorado in 2006, she lived in Montana for seven years where she was a reference librarian. Since moving to Colorado, Gail enjoys the close proximity of her Colorado family, the myriad days filled with sunshine and the never ending list of books waiting for a good read (although none can quite compare to Colin and Mary’s garden adventures!).

WHITER THAN SNOW, by Sandra Dallas

From the best-selling author of Prayers for Sale comes the story of devastating avalanche that traps nine children walking home from school in 1920, and the life-changing effects the disaster has on the people who live in the small Colorado town where it occurs.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

On January 9th, beginning at 9:00AM we will sell tickets to our two book-signing events on Wednesday, Feb. 10th.

Remember, that we have room for 40 people at the first event, from 8:00AM until 8:30AM, and then our second event that begins on 8:45AM until 9:15AM.

Greg will sign books (please bring a maximum of 3) and a light breakfast will be served in the back of the store.

Tickets are $50. The entire amount will be a tax-deductible contribution to his Central Asia Institute.

Margie’s Java Joint will be outside serving coffee to everyone who is waiting. If you are not able to purchase a ticket, don’t forget that he will be at UNC (University of Northern Colorado) later that day. (Details below.)

*** You must already be in my customer loyalty program to purchase a ticket.

All of Greg’s books will be available for purchase now, and through Greg’s visit. Plan on buying early… quantity could disappear quickly!

A maximum of 2 tickets, free of charge, will be available to the public on January 26.

You must go to the UNC Information/ticket office, located on the main floor of the University Center. They are open 7 days a week, 8:00AM until 10:00PM.

For more information, please call tickets at UNC: 970-351-4849

STONES INTO SCHOOLS, BY GREG MORTENSON

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.