Early Reviewers: Free advance copies of books

Description: Meet Lucy Valentine; sassy, fabulously original…and psychic

Lucy hails from a long line of matchmakers known as Valentine INC. According to family legend, the Valentines have been blessed by Cupid with the ability to help couples find true love. Trouble is Lucy’s powers were zapped away by an electrical surge and now all she can find are lost objects.

But what good is that in the matchmaking world?

Lucy is about to find out when she tries to solve a murder and winds up falling into a romance of her own.

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Description: A madcap contemporary murder mystery set in Hollywood, featuring Valentino, the film archivist and amateur sleuth Estleman introduced in 2008's Frames . All Valentino wants to do is renovate the decrepit old movie palace he's bought as his new home, but murder . . . and the rocky road of romance. . . bring him into another unsolved Hollywood mystery. This time, he is on the case of a mysterious letter sent long ago by Greta Garbo... which is being used in a sinister blackmail plot that may have resulted in a murder. Valentino soon finds himself in a quandary. This letter must be something worth dying for. If only he could just see the choice item without the LAPD getting involved. Life shouldn't be so complicated for a film archivist.

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Description: In this magical Southern novel sparkling with humor, heart, eccentric charm, and wisdom, a young girl loses one mother and finds many others in the storybook city of Savannah, Georgia.

"CeeCee Honeycutt is a sweet, perceptive girl with a troubled family, and this story of the summer that transforms her life is rich with hard truths and charm. This book unfolds like a lush southern garden, blooming with vivid characters, beauty, and surprises."
—Kim Edwards, bestselling author of The Memory Keeper's Daughter

"Saving CeeCee Honecutt is an absolutely delightful debut novel packed full of Southern charm, strong women, wacky humor, and good old-fashioned heart. From the moment you first step into young CeeCee's unique world, you'll never want to leave."
—Kristin Hannah, bestselling author of True Colors and Winter Garden

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Description: John Barron was once a top detective in the Los Angeles Police Department’s elite 5-2 Squad. A deadly shootout with fellow officers changed his world forever.

Taking a new identity, he fled the country he loved and as Nicholas Marten became a landscape architect in the north of England determined to put a life of violence behind him forever. Then suddenly he found himself in Spain ensnared in a massive global conspiracy where he saved the life of John Henry Harris, the president of the United States. Not long afterward the president came calling again.

Sent to the West African country of Equatorial Guinea to gain information on alleged collusion between a U.S. oil company and mercenaries hired to protect its workers, Marten is caught up in a bloody civil war between rebellious tribesmen and a merciless dictator. Soon he meets a priest who has clandestine photographs that show the mercenaries supplying arms to the rebels. In a blink the priest is captured by army troops and Marten flees for his life, determined to find the photographs and turn them over to the president before they are made public and ignite a global firestorm of protest and propaganda. But others are close on his heels. Among them; Conor White, a highly decorated former SAS commando turned elite killer; Sy Wirth, the arrogant president of the oil company; the alluring and dangerous oil company board member, Anne Tidrow; and, quietly, operatives of the CIA.

Murder, suspense, and deceit shadow Marten every inch of the way as his harrowing journey takes him to Berlin, to the Portuguese Riviera, and finally to the always-mysterious Lisbon. At stake is the struggle for control of an ocean of oil, and with it the constantly shifting line between good and evil, love and hate, law and politics. Its cost, thousands of human lives. Its cause, a top secret agreement called The Hadrian Memorandum.

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Description: Emotional, issue-led fiction perfect for all fans of The Memory Keeper’s Daughter and Jodi Picoult

Tragedy came as if so often does: a teenage party, emotions running high, followed by a horrific car crash. A girl is left dead and a boy is forced to leave his home town, with a secret that he will carry with him forever… Years later, when Summer's mother disappears one summer, she is left with her father who is going slowly crazy. Obsessed with an accident from years ago, he slowly descends into mental illness. And as he becomes more disorientated, he reveals small fragments of a secret that has been hidden since his youth, a secret that changes everything. Summer supports her father as much as she can but eventually realises that she has to escape. She finds refuge with her great-aunt, Stella. Feisty, fun-loving, and dying of cancer, Stella holds parts of the family secret. Slowly, things fall into place for Summer - or at least so she thinks… This is a story of the importance of family, of the damage a lie can do, and of how nothing is ever what it seems.

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Description: The new Recluce fantasy novel from the bestselling writer!

Arms-Commander takes place ten years after the end of The Chaos Balance and tells the story of the legendary Saryn. The keep of Westwind, in the cold mountainous heights called the Roof of the World, is facing attack by the adjoining land of Gallos. Arthanos, son and heir to the ailing Prefect of Gallos, wishes to destroy Westwind because the idea of a land where women rule is total anathema to him.


Saryn, Arms-Commander of Westwind, is dispatched to a neighboring land, Lornth, to seek support against the Gallosians. In the background, the trading council of Suthya is secretly and informally allied with Gallos against Westwind and begins to bribe lord-holders in Lornth to foment rebellion and civil war. They hope to create such turmoil in Lornth that the weakened land will fall to Suthya. But Zeldyan, regent of Lornth, has problems in her family. To secure Zeldyan’s aid, Saryn must pledge her personal support—and any Westwind guard forces she can raise—to the defense of Zeldyan and her son. The fate of four lands, including Westwind, rests on Saryn’s actions.

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Description: After Hazen Wood kidnaps twelve-year-old Gemma Sullivan, the two embark upon a cross-country journey that tests the limits of Gemma's endurance. In scenes of physical and sexual violence, Hazen tries to destroy the young girl's will. When she does manage to escape he drags her back and threatens to have her arrested for the violent acts he performs. It is only Gemma's resilience and fertile imagination that protects her from the worst of the trauma she suffers. And, in the end, it is the healing power of unconditional love that gives Gemma the courage to speak out against her abuser at last and claim the life she deserves.

Praise for Gemma:
"Tilly achieves moments of raw beauty and genuine fierceness." —Booklist
"Successfully captures Gemma's wounded voice. The story is told from the point of view of both Gemma and her captor, and Tilly is equally proficient at conjuring up a revolting and consummate villian as she is his innocent victim." —Kirkus Reviews
"This is a shocking novel—shockingly convincing, shockingly authentic, shockingly well-written. the narrative moves between the viewpoints of a twelve-year-old girl and her middle-aged kidnapper, as Gemma is raped, beaten and humiliated repeatedly. Her story is driven by a tough, vernacular prose that cannot fail to touch the reader. Read this book and Gemma will touch you...You'll never forget her." —John Lawton
"Never had I read a book on this subject that so effectively captures both the psychology of the abusive relationship along with the social systems that work both to help and hinder the victim."—Susan Sarandon

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Description: In the latest captivating and enchanting novel from international bestseller Keyes, the lives of seven neighbors become entangled when a spirit pays a visit to their Dublin town house intent on changing one of their lives.

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Description: In this spectacular new novel, Barbara O’Neal delivers a generous helping of the best in life–family, food, and love–in the story of a woman’s search for the one thing worth more than anything.

At thirty-seven, Tessa Harlow is still working her way down her list of goals to “fall in love and have a family.” A self-described rolling stone, Tessa leads hiking tours for adventurous vacationers–it’s a job that’s taken her around the world but never a step closer to home. Then a freak injury during a trip already marred by tragedy forces her to begin her greatest adventure of all.

Located high in the New Mexico mountains, Las Ladronas has become a magnet for the very wealthy and very hip, but once upon a time it was the setting of a childhood trauma Tessa can only half remember. Now, as she rediscovers both her old hometown and her past, Tessa is drawn to search-and-rescue worker Vince Grasso. The handsome widower isn’t her type. No more inclined to settle down than Tessa, Vince is the father of three, including an eight-year-old girl as lost as Tessa herself. But Tessa and Vince are both drawn to the town’s most beloved eatery–100 Breakfasts–and to each other. For Tessa, the restaurant is not only the key to the mystery that has haunted her life but a chance to find the home and the family she’s never known.

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Description: The Wives of Henry Oades is a sweeping debut novel based on a widely publicized but little-known story. In the late 1800s, Henry Oades emigrates with his wife and children to
New Zealand. One night while he's away from home, his family is kidnapped by native Maoris and presumed dead. Grief-stricken, Henry accepts a job opportunity in California, where, several years later, he remarries...only for his first wife and children to show up soon after, alive and having finally escaped from captivity. Narrated primarily by the two wives, Johanna Moran's powerful imagining of what happens when Henry and the two Mrs. Oadeses face persecution for bigamy explores the intricacies of marriage, the construction of family, themes of guilt, grief, and the courage of two remarkable women in a page-turning drama.

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Description: Love in Tennessee is a fictional memoir of the author’s growing up in small town in East Tennessee. From earliest memory he dreams of the larger world outside, especially the glowing, beckoning lights of New York, but the lessons he learned, essentially in the varieties of love – its sorrows, dramas, and ennoblements – he learned in his long lost hometown. He felt the first stirrings of sexuality while crawling as a baby among the silken legs of women. He found out the intoxicating pleasure of exchanging views of hidden parts of the anatomy with a young neighborhood girl before either were six in his dilapidated backyard barn. In fact, the first chapter of the book, Secrets of the Barn, introduces much of the erotic that follows in the book. Subsequent chapters show others in the town coping with love and its complexities while the narrator’s journey continues. In this way, the patchwork narrative resembles Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio. The final part of the work, after a culmination of observations and first hand experiences, the narrator is hit with a thunderbolt when he finds his first true love. The inevitable ending of that adventure is preordained, but devastating and complete.

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Description: There are two entries for this title. This one is for US residents only. CA residents, look for the other entry to request.

“This book is wonderful. It took me right in, dropped me into a strange new world, and kept me captivated from first to last page. James Thompson has done a masterful job with Snow Angels!”
—Michael Connelly (New York Times-bestselling author of THE SCARECROW)

SNOW ANGELS is a chilling and resonant debut from author James Thompson.

The first thriller in a new series featuring Inspector Kari Vaara, the haunted, hardened detective who must delve into Finland's dark, violent underbelly.

Kaamos: Just before Christmas, the bleakest time of the year in Lapland. The unrelenting darkness and extreme cold above the Arctic Circle drive everyone just a little insane...perhaps enough to kill.

A beautiful Somali immigrant is found dead in a snowfield, her body gruesomely mutilated, a racial slur carved into her chest. Heading the murder investigation is Inspector Kari Vaara, the lead detective of the small-town police force. The vicious killing may have been a hate crime, a sex crime - or one and the same. Vaara knows he must keep this potentially explosive case out of the national headlines or it will send shock waves across Finland, an insular nation afraid to face its own xenophobia.

The demands of the investigation begin to take their toll on Vaara and his marriage. His young American wife, Kate, newly pregnant with their first child, is struggling to adapt to both the unforgiving Arctic climate and the Finnish culture of silence and isolation. Meanwhile Vaara himself, haunted by his rough childhood and a failed first marriage, discovers that the past keeps biting at his heels: he suspects that the rich man for whom his ex-wife left him years ago may be the killer.

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Description: Set in 18th century London, this very fine and atmospheric work of historical fiction from first-time novelist Borodale tells the mesmerizing story of Agnes Trussel, a pregnant and homeless 17 year old who becomes apprentice to a fireworks maker.

"Jane Borodale has a way with words that had me smelling the foul streets of 18th-century London and tasting the strange powders that went into making John Blacklock's fireworks. The story of the apprentice Agnes learning from the master Blacklock is reminiscent of The Girl with the Pearl Earring."
—Anne Easter Smith, author of A Rose for the Crown and The King's Grace

"Jane Borodale's captivating debut novel carried me back to a world where even strong young women had few options. Agnes Trussel is sure to become one of 21st-century literature’s most enduring characters."
– Brunonia Barry, New York Times bestselling author of The Lace Reader

"Jane Borodale's first novel contains a wondrous and utterly believable world built by the subtle accretion of precise detail. Young Agnes Trussel is a clever and innocent heroine. I found myself cheering when, by the end, she — and the very novel that contains her story — burst into new and luminous life."
—Lauren Groff, New York Times bestselling author of The Monsters of Templeton

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Description: In the heart of Medici Florence, part-time model and full-time prostitute Luciana Vetra stumbles across a deadly secret when she is asked to pose for the central figure of Flora in Sandro Botticelli's famous Primavera.

A novel that is Dan Brown meets Sarah Dunant, The Botticelli Secret is a masterful concoction of intelligent and lucid mystery, historical intrigue, and romantic adventure.

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Description: 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

Strange things are happening on the remote and snowbound archipelago of St. Hauda’s Land. Unusual winged creatures flit around the icy bogland, albino animals hide themselves in the snow-glazed woods, and Ida Maclaird is slowly turning into glass. Ida is an outsider in these parts, a mainlander who has visited the islands only once before. Yet during that one fateful visit the glass transformation began to take hold, and now she has returned in search of a cure.

Midas Crook is a young loner who has lived on the islands his entire life. When he meets Ida, something about her sad, defiant spirit pierces his emotional defenses. As Midas helps Ida come to terms with her affliction, she gradually unpicks the knots of his heart. Love must be paid in precious hours and, as the glass encroaches, time is slipping away fast. Will they find a way to stave off the spread of the glass?

The Girl with Glass Feet is a dazzlingly imaginative and magical first novel, a love story to treasure.

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Description: The How to Survive a Robot Uprising of Christmas: a dynamically illustrated, futuristic case for the scientific possibility that Santa Claus really exists.

We all know Santa Claus: fat, jolly, omniscient, swift. Lives in a nice home in the Arctic, with the missus and a pack of elves.

Well, forget what you know. Santa Claus is from Greenpoint, Brooklyn, as it turns out, and he’s not as fat as he used to be. Here’s something else you didn’t know: he’s been dabbling in some futuristic technology, and has found myriad ways to make his job possible. How can Santa know who’s been naughty and nice? Simple: implant listening devices into your ornaments. How can he make it to every house Christmas Eve? That’s nothing a little cloning and some wormholes can’t solve. And he has plenty of other tactics: quantum entanglement, organ replacement, drug-induced hibernation, and unmanned aerial vehicles, to name just a few.

In this fantastically illustrated, affectionate, and hilarious book, Gregory Mone uses science and technology to overturn the assumption that Santa can’t be real. Drawing on the work of accomplished scientists and researchers, Mone gives us a whole new portrait of this remarkable man and the miracles he makes happen every year. With imaginative artwork and an eye-catching package, this book makes an outstanding Christmas gift for just about anyone.

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Description: Paulo Coelho: A Warrior’s Life

Paulo Coelho is a worldwide phenomenon. At a time when he is coming up to the fantastic achievement of 100 million copies sold worldwide across all his books, his fans will be delighted with the first ever official biography of Paulo, an in-depth look at his life and work, and what makes him the much-loved author he is today.
Paulo's first official biographer, Fernando Morais, provides an exhaustive look at Paulo's fascinating and varied life, taking several years to research his subject, and interviewing everyone who knows Paulo. He weaves together the strands of Paulo's life, revealing the man behind the world-famous writer.

Paulo Coelho was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in August 1947. Before he became internationally known and a worldwide bestseller, he had to overcome many obstacles. As a teenager, he was subjected to the brutality of electric shock treatment in the psychiatric hospital where his parents, who took his rebelliousness as a sign of madness, interned him three times. As a member of the esoteric underworld, he was put in prison for alleged subversive activities against the Brazilian dictatorship and subjected to physical torture.

Later, Paulo joined forces with rock star Raul Seixas and together they composed songs that revolutionized Brazilian rock music. Hippie, journalist, rock star, actor, playwright, theatre director and producer of television programs, this whirlwind life came to an end in 1982, during a trip to Europe. In Dachau and later in Amsterdam, Paulo had a mystical meeting with "J", his new mentor, who persuaded him to walk the Road to Santiago de Compostela, a medieval pilgrim's route between France and Spain.

In 1986 Paulo walked the Road to Santiago, and it was there that he reconverted to Christianity and found again the faith bequeathed to him by the Jesuit fathers of his school years. He would later describe this experience in his first book, The Pilgrimage. The following year, The Alchemist, established his worldwide reputation. The novel has already achieved the status of a universally admired modern classic. Now, for the first time, discover the true story of the man behind some of the world's most loved books.

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Description: " at 7:48 a.m. on a Tuesday, I am showered, cleaned, shaved, pruned, fed, and deodorized, wearing a pressed shirt and shiny shoes, in a cab on my way to the San Francisco waterfront I'm far from home, going to an unfamiliar place, and performing for strangers, three stressful facts that mean anything can happen "

In this hilarious and highly practical book, author and professional speaker Scott Berkun reveals the techniques behind what great communicators do, and shows how anyone can learn to use them well. For managers and teachers-and anyone else who talks and expects someone to listen-Confessions of a Public Speaker provides an insider's perspective on how to effectively present ideas to anyone. It's a unique, entertaining, and instructional romp through the embarrassments and triumphs Scott has experienced over 15 years of speaking to crowds of all sizes.

With lively lessons and surprising confessions, you'll get new insights into the art of persuasion-as well as teaching, learning, and performance-directly from a master of the trade.

Highlights include:
Berkun's hard-won and simple philosophy, culled from years of lectures, teaching courses, and hours of appearances on NPR, MSNBC, and CNBC

Practical advice, including how to work a tough room, the science of not boring people, how to survive the attack of the butterflies, and what to do when things go wrong

The inside scoop on who earns $30,000 for a one-hour lecture and why

The worst-and funniest-disaster stories you've ever heard (plus countermoves you can use)

Filled with humorous and illuminating stories of thrilling performances and real-life disasters, Confessions of a Public Speaker is inspirational, devastatingly honest, and a blast to read.

Please see a book trailer featuring Scott Berkun here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKFfvR...

Advance Praise
"A fresh, fun, memorable take on the most critical thing: what we say. Highly recommended." -Chris Anderson, Editor in Chief, Wired

"Loved it! Anyone who speaks for a living-including teachers-will greatly benefit from this book." -Garr Reynolds, author of Presentation Zen

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Description: The ideas of John Maynard Keynes inspired the New Deal and helped rebuild world economies after World War II —and were later dismissed as “depression economics.” Then came the great meltdown of 2008. Market forces that the world relied on suddenly failed to self-correct—and Keynes’s doctrine of corrective action in an imperfect world became more relevant than ever.

Keynes was not a traditional economist: He was a polemicist, iconoclastic public intellectual, peer of the realm, and political operative, as well as an openly homosexual Bohemian who befriended Virginia Woolf and E. M. Forster. In Keynes, noted historian Peter Clarke provides a timely and masterful accounting of Keynes’s life and work, bringing his genius and skepticism alive for an era fraught with economic difficulties that he surely would have relished solving.

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Description: Captivated by a chance meeting with a falconer’s peregrine as a child, the indelible memory leads the author to flying a peregrine falcon of her own and discovering that the journey is not as much about training the falcon as what it is the falcon has to teach her. Exploring themes of predator and prey, finding tribe, forgiveness and femininity, Lift asks universal questions through the unique perspective of a woman chasing her heart in the wake of a wayward falcon.

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Description: The compelling and authoritative story of the financial destruction of Iceland—a saga that mirrors, in microcosm, the forces that caused the global economic crisis.

The economic crisis that emerged in America in 2008 unleashed a veritable epidemic of ill health around the world. However it was Iceland, whose population of three hundred thousand had the world’s highest GDP per capita and counted itself the happiest of countries, that caught the worst cold. It has nearly killed them.

No story from the economic crisis of 2008 is more evocative than I celand’s. The names may be unfamiliar—Johanesson, Bjoergolfsson, Oddsson—but their exuberance, greed, and miscalculation have many counterparts on our shores. And however traumatic the collapse of individual companies may be in the United States, in Iceland’s case an entire country melted down. All the wealth accumulated in the previous decade—during which a new breed of Icelanders had dared to believe they could compete economically on an international level, during which Reykjavik became the Capital of Cool—disappeared practically overnight. Iceland’s story shows how closely the world economy is interconnected: The default on subprime mortgages in the U .S. led to the collapse of Lehman Brothers, which led directly to the run on Iceland’s banks, which forced local authorities in Britain to switch off the heating in their classrooms.

With panache and color, Roger Boyes tells the inside story of the bankrupting of I celand: how it happened, the human dramas—from politicians to financiers to fishermen—that continue to swirl around it, and the lessons we can not ignore. Published on the first anniversary of its collapse, Meltdown Iceland is a cautionary tale for our times, an authoritative and compelling account of the financial destruction of a tiny country whose saga should resonate for us all.

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Description: An intimate, behind-the-scenes chronicle of America’s most sacred ground.

“Along Eisenhower Drive, as far as the eye could see, the grave markers formed into bone-white brigades, climbed from the flats of the Potomac River, and scattered over the green Virginia hills in perfect order. They reached Arlington’s highest point, where they encircled an old cream-colored mansion with thick columns and a commanding view of the cemetery, the river, and the city beyond. The mansion’s flag, just lowered to half-staff, signaled that it was time to start another day of funerals, which would add more than twenty new conscripts to Arlington’s army of the dead.”

So does Robert Poole describe a day like so many others in the long and storied history of Arlington National Cemetery. Created towards the end of our greatest national crucible, the Civil War, its story—as revealed in On Hallowed Ground—reflects much of America’s own over the past century and a half. The mansion at its heart, and the rolling land on which it sits, had been the family plantation of Robert E. Lee before he joined the Confederacy; strategic to the defense of Washington, it became a Union headquarters, a haven for freedmen, and a burial ground for indigent soldiers before Secretary of War Edwin Stanton made it the latest in the newly established national cemetery system. It would become our nation’s most honored resting place.

No other country makes the effort the United States does to recover and pay tribute to its war dead—an effort Poole reveals in poignant details from the aftermaths of the Civil War, Spanish-American War, World Wars I and II, Korea, Vietnam, and the conflicts in the Gulf and Afghanistan today. Every tombstone at Arlington tells a story: from Private William Christman, the first soldier buried at Arlington on May 13, 1864, to Union General Montgomery Meigs, whose idea Arlington was; from Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge, the first casualty of powered flight, to Audie Murphy, America’s most decorated soldier; from the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, so lovingly tended today, to John F. Kennedy’s eternal flame; from scientists and slaves to jurists and generals and tens of thousands of ordinary citizen-warriors, among the more than 300,000 interred on Arlington’s 624 acres. Their sagas, and the rites and rituals that have evolved at Arlington—the horse-drawn caissons, marble headstones, playing of taps, and rifle salutes—speak to us all.

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Description: A vivid portrait of a woman finding her place in the glamorous world of Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s—perfect for readers of high-flying memoirs such as Pattie Boyd’s Wonderful Tonight.

Fashion icon, Broadway and Hollywood insider, mob mistress, confidante to notorious gang members of both Crips and Bloods, wife, mother, award-winning journalist, Léon Bing has not followed the typical path through life. From her formative relationship with her mother to her days as a star model to her sisterly relationship with Mama Cass Elliot and ultimate reinvention as the author of the bestselling gang exposé, Do or Die, Swans and Pistols details Bing’s always exciting and sometimes dangerous life. In a series of riveting stories of unconventionality, Bing wrestles with the themes of mothers, daughters, and reinvention—a concept inseparable from the experience of her early adult life in the 1960s and the city she called home.

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Description: The rise, fall, and legacy of the inspirational United Farm Workers movement, and the untold story of iconic community organizer Cesar Chavez.

A generation of Americans came of age boycotting grapes, swept up in a movement that vanquished California’s most powerful industry and accomplished the unthinkable: dignity and contracts for farm workers. Four decades later, Cesar Chavez’s likeness graces postage stamps, and dozens of schools and streets have been renamed in his honor. But the real story of Chavez’s farm workers’ movement—both its historic triumphs and its tragic disintegration—has remained buried beneath the hagiography.

Drawing on a rich trove of original documents, tapes, and interviews, Miriam Pawel chronicles the rise of the UFW during the heady days of civil rights struggles, the antiwar movement, and student activism in the 1960s and ’70s. From the fields, the churches, and the classrooms, hundreds were drawn to la causa by the charismatic Chavez, a brilliant risk-taker who mobilized popular support for a noble cause. But as Miriam Pawel shows, the UFW was ripped apart by the same man who built it, as Chavez proved unable to make the transition from movement icon to union leader. Pawel traces the lives of several key members of the crusade, using their stories to weave together a powerful portrait of a movement and the people who made it.

A tour de force of reporting and a spellbinding narrative, The Union of Their Dreams explores an important and untold chapter in the history of labor, civil rights, and immigration in modern America.

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Description: That chill running down your spine —

  is it just the melting snow?
The thirteen stories in The Snow Cow tell of love and death, terror and
joy, mixing ancient myths with modern legends. They are stories to be shared
in the firelight after a long day’s skiing.

• The skier who leaves tracks on inaccessible mountain faces – is he dead
  or alive?
• 
  Your chalet girl – could she be a mass murderer?
• 
  A woman on her wedding night, a promise made to the devil – how can she
  escape?

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Description: A bank robbery and illegal weapons lead Kamil Pasha to uncover a plan to massacre an entire valley.

December 1888. Vera Arti carries The Communist Manifesto in Armenian through Istanbul’s streets, unaware of the men following her. When the police discover a shipload of guns and the Imperial Ottoman Bank is blown up, suspicion falls on a socialist commune Arti’s friends organized in the eastern mountains. Special Prosecutor Kamil Pasha is called in to investigate. He soon encounters his most ruthless adversary to date: Vahid, head of a special branch of the secret police, who has convinced the sultan that the commune is leading a secessionist movement and should be destroyed—along with surrounding villages. Kamil must stop the massacre, but he finds himself on the wrong side of the law, framed for murder and accused of treason, his family and the woman he loves threatened.

Exploring the dark obsessions of the most powerful and dangerous men of the dying Ottoman Empire, The Winter Thief also reflects the mad idealism of those turbulent times.

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Description: Family Britain continues David Kynaston’s groundbreaking series, telling as never before the story of Britain from VE Day in 1945 to the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979.

As in his highly acclaimed Austerity Britain, David Kynaston invokes an astonishing array of vivid, intimate and unselfconscious voices to drive his narrative of 1950s Britain. The keen-eyed Nella Last shops assiduously at Barrow Market as rationing gradually gives way to relative abundance; housewife Judy Haines, relishing the detail of suburban life, brings up her children in Chingford; the self-absorbed civil servant Henry St John perfects the art of grumbling. Well-known figures are encountered on the way, such as Doris Lessing (joining and later leaving the Communist Party), John Arlott (sticking up on Any Questions? for the rights of homosexuals), and comic-strip hero Roy of the Rovers (making his goal-scoring debut for Melchester).

In this colorful, unfolding tapestry, great national events—the Tories’ return to power, the death of George VI , the coronation of Queen Elizabeth, the Suez Crisis—jostle alongside everything that gave Britain in the 1950s its distinctive flavor: Butlin’s holiday camps, Hancock’s Half-Hour, Ekco television sets, Davy Crockett, skiffle, and teddy boys. Deeply researched, David Kynaston’s Family Britain offers an unrivaled take on British society as it started to move away from the painful hardships of the 1940s toward domestic ease and affluence.

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Description: Bestseller Deeanne Gist Teams Up for Riveting Romantic Suspense

When novelists Deeanne Gist and J. Mark Bertrand first met in a Houston critique group, they never expected where friendship would take them. She wrote romance; he wrote crime novels. But growing respect for each others' work culminated in the decision to try blending their talents into this wonderfully engaging story merging romance and mystery.

Rylee Monroe walks dogs in old money Charleston, a part of the city recently targeted by a daring thief. Logan Woods works the crime beat for the local paper but dreams of a life as a nonfiction writer. When the string of robberies takes a strange twist, Logan sees the making of a once-in-a-lifetime book that seems to circle around this charming, eye-catching dogwalker. But pursuing the truth means ignoring that he seems to be falling for her. And what is she hiding in her past that could crack the story wide open?

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Description: Lily was married for just days before her husband was sent abroad to fight in WWII. Now, he and the other soldiers are returning, and the small town of Toccoa, Georgia plans a big celebration. But a handsome and kind Italian immigrant, responsible for the elaborate fireworks display the town commissioned captures Lily's heart and soul. Torn between duty to society and her husband, and a poor, passionate man who might be her only true love—Lily must choose between a love she never knew and a commitment she'd already made.

Poignant and elegant, FIREWORKS OVER TOCCOA is a mosaic of all the emotions that only love can make possible.

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Description: With no means to support herself, Ellie Kilmer agrees to work as a housekeeper for the young widower who lives on Dillon Island, hopeful she can obtain a proper reference. But Jackson Smith quickly realizes that Ellie's presence may solve his own problems—both the rearing of his young boys and the scandal that surrounds his first marriage.
When a marriage of convenience is offered, Ellie is initially humiliated. Though she is past the age most women marry, she has more pride than to agree to his outlandish suggestion. Yet what options does she have? To marry would mean a home and stability. So despite the rumors circling Jackson and his first wife, Ellie accepts this unlikely proposal.

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Description: A vivid, moving, and unprecedented biographical saga of John the Baptist.

Traditionally, John the Baptist is seen as little more than an opening act—“the voice crying in the wilderness”—in the great Christian drama. In presenting the epic of John’s life, novelist Brooks Hansen draws on an extraordinary array of inspirations, from the works of Caravaggio, Bach, and Oscar Wilde to the histories of Josephus, the canonical gospels, the Gnostic gospels, and the sacred texts of those followers of John who never accepted Jesus as Messiah: the Mandeans.

Gripping as literary historical fiction, and fascinating as a diligent exploration of ancient and modern sources, this book brings to eye-opening life the richly textured world—populated by the magnificently sordid, calculating, and reckless Herods, their families, and their courts—into which both John and Jesus were born. John the Baptizer is a captivating tapestry of power and dissent, ambition and self-sacrifice, worldly and otherworldly desire, faith, and doubt.

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Description: This enchanting tale plumbs the depths of life’s unexpected changes – love and heartache, unlikely friendships and surprising rivals, and that special bond between mothers and daughters – with equal doses of giggle-inducing wit and gut-wrenching poignancy. Every woman, no matter her age or life experience, can relate to Alice Hirsh’s story. This book is a great reminder that although life it not a fairy tale, in good time we all find a small piece of our own ‘happily ever after.’

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Description: Walk-in closet full of designer everything? Check. Private Caribbean island? Check. Connection to the aristocracy? Working on it. Cunning, malicious stalker? Double check.

Welcome to the world of the Kents, a charismatic, ambitious, and fabulously wealthy English family with two sisters – Emily is as strong and sparkling as Claudia is delicate and wounded – who must somehow put their differences aside to keep an unknown enemy from bringing them down.

Click on the link below to read the first
chapter http://us.macmillan.com/richagain

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Description: The debut novel and launch of an intriguing new fantasy series from a writer to watch. An epic fantasy, a coming-of-age tale, a story about families and the ties—-and the secrets—-that bind, Servant of a Dark God is all those things.

“Brown’s first novel, the opener in a new fantasy series, creates an elaborate new world with a rich and deep spiritual and political background … this well-wrought tale of families in conflict against both politics and religion represents a welcome addition to large-scale fantasy.”
—Library Journal Starred Review

“A smart setting and a great story.” —Brandon Sanderson

“Thoroughly engrossing from the first page to the last...A writer with remarkable depth and power. I haven’t seen a debut novel this good in years!” —David Farland

“A complex and intricate world, filled with all the permutations of human good and evil … Neither heroes nor villains are quite what they seem at first.” —L.E. Modesitt

Servant of a Dark God introduces an elaborate new world, a strange and dark system of magic, and a compelling cast of characters and monsters

The novel opens up with the young protagonist Talen living a seemingly ordinary existence with his family in a small village. At first, rumors of a dark and twisted magic—wrought by people beloved for years and thought of as family—are heard from neighboring villages. Then Talen, sent on a mission to outside cities, runs into age-old conflicts and rivalries and the surprising beginnings of a possible war, one to include everyone around him and stretch to the almost mythical lands beyond the seas.

If only humans were the only ones involved in the ominous developments. For an ancient and terrible force has awakened and begun to stalk the land and gather souls. Many have been in denial on the forces existing underneath everyday life, and a witch hunt begins among the villages. No one is certain of friend or enemy, those untouched by magic and those tainted by it.

Dark days are ahead as Talen and those close to him must come to terms with a wild and unwieldy magic—one that can exact a great price if used wrongly—as well as the many strange and unpredictable elements being revealed in the world around them.

Talen’s peaceful village life becomes a thing of the past, as he begins to see the true sides of the world and people around him, even his own family. He must reevaluate his definitions of good and evil and come to terms with who he is and what kind of stand he will make if forced to take sides in the coming events.

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Description: It is the middle of the twentieth century, and in a home economics program at a prominent university, real babies are being used to teach mothering skills to young women. For a young man raised in these unlikely circumstances, finding real love and learning to trust will prove to be the work of a lifetime. In this captivating novel, bestselling author Lisa Grunwald gives us the sweeping tale of an irresistible hero and the many women who love him.

From his earliest days as a “practice baby” through his adult adventures in 1960s New York City, Disney’s Burbank studios, and the delirious world of the Beatles’ London, Henry remains handsome, charming, universally adored—and never entirely accessible to the many women he conquers but can never entirely trust.

Filled with unforgettable characters, settings, and action, The Irresistible Henry House portrays the cultural tumult of the mid-twentieth century even as it explores the inner tumult of a young man trying to transcend a damaged childhood. For it is not until Henry House comes face-to-face with the real truths of his past that he finds a chance for real love.

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Description: Believing herself guilty of a crime, Olivia Keene flees her home, eventually stumbling upon a grand estate where an elaborate celebration is in progress. But all is not as joyous as it seems.

Lord Bradley has just learned a terrible secret, which, if exposed, will change his life forever. When he glimpses a figure on the grounds, he fears a spy or thief has overheard his devastating news. He is stunned to discover the intruder is a scrap of a woman with her throat badly injured. Fearing she will spread his secret, he gives the girl a post and confines her to his estate. As Olivia and Lord Bradley's secrets catch up with them, will their hidden pasts ruin their hope of finding love?

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

Bandy Dorner, home from Vietnam, awakes with his car mired in a canal, his cabin reduced to ashes, and his pregnant wife preparing to leave town with her lover. Within moments, a cop lies bleeding on the road.

Eighteen years later, Bandy is released from prison. His parents are gone, but on the derelict family ranch, Bandy faces a different reunion. Tracy, his now teenaged son, has come to claim the father he’s never known. Iona, Bandy’s ex-wife, has returned on the heels of her son. All three are damaged, hardened, haunted. But warily, desperately, they move in a slow dance around each other, trying to piece back together a family that never was; trying to discover if they belong together at all.

With unflinching honesty and restrained beauty, Brian Hart explores the possibilities and limitations of his characters as they struggle toward a shared future. Like a traditional Greek tragedy, suffused with the mud, ice, and rock of the raw Idaho landscape, Then Came the Evening is tautly plotted and emotionally complex—a stunning debut.

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Description: Love, in its many forms and complexities, weaves through this collection by Amy Bloom, the New York Times bestselling author of Away. Bloom's astonishing and astute new work of interconnected stories illuminates the mysteries of passion, family, and friendship.

Propelled by Bloom's dazzling prose, unmistakable voice, and generous wit, Where the God of Love Hangs Out takes us to the margins and the centers of real people's lives, exploring the changes that love and loss create. A young woman is haunted by her roommate's murder; a man and his daughter-in-law confess their sins in the unlikeliest of places. In one quartet of interlocking stories, two middle-aged friends, married to others, find themselves surprisingly drawn to each other, risking all while never underestimating the cost. In another linked set of stories, we follow mother and son for thirty years as their small and uncertain family becomes an irresistible tribe.

Insightful, sensuous, and heartbreaking, these stories of passion and disappointment, life and death, capture deep human truths. As The New Yorker has said, "Amy Bloom gets more meaning into individual sentences than most authors manage in whole books."

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Description: What is the secret to finding hope in hard times?

When Suzan Colón was laid off from her dream job at a magazine during the economic downturn of 2008, she needed to cut her budget way, way back, and that meant home cooking. Her mother suggested, “Why don’t you look in Nana’s recipe folder?” In the basement, Suzan found the tattered treasure, full of handwritten and meticulously typed recipes, peppered with her grandmother Matilda’s commentary in the margins. Reading it, Suzan realized she had found something more than a collection of recipes—she had found the key to her family’s survival through hard times.

Suzan began re-creating Matilda’s “sturdy food” recipes for baked pork chops and beef stew, and Aunt Nettie’s clam chowder made with clams dug up by Suzan’s grandfather Charlie in Long Island Sound. And she began uncovering the stories of her resilient family’s past. Taking inspiration from stylish, indomitable Matilda, who was the sole support of her family as a teenager during the Great Depression (and who always answered “How are you?” with “Fabulous, never better!”), and from dashing, twice-widowed Charlie, Suzan starts to approach her own crisis with a sense of wonder and gratitude. It turns out that the gift to survive and thrive through hard times had been bred in her bones all along.

Cherries in Winter is an irresistible gem of a book. It's Tuesday's With Morrie meets Tender at the Bone. It makes you want to cook, it makes you want to know your own family’s stories, and, above all, it makes you feel rich no matter what.

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Description: Description:
When you face a difficult situation or a tough fight, it helps to have a wise coach and an understanding friend in your corner. Family lawyer Marjorie Just, author of Divorce Decisions: Practical Ways to Protect Yourself, Your Career, Your Children and Your Wallet, offers both to anyone going through a divorce or termination of a domestic partnership.

During her more than 15 years in practice, the author has seen it all, from the most acrimonious courtroom battles to the most amicable settlements––and everything in between.But what makes this book so authentic is that the author has been through it herself.

“After watching my clients go through the pain and upheaval of divorce, I went through it myself, and made many of the same mistakes they did. Even though I should have known better,” says Marjorie Just of the Maryland-based firm, Offit Kurman.

Ms. Just explains that the decision to divorce is just the beginning of a series of important decisions for you and your family. Making these decisions with forethought and deliberation can help you avoid the pitfalls. Ms. Just offers legal insight and practical guidance.

“This is a useful and informative book. … Having the knowledge gleaned from a reading of this book equips that person with the tools necessary to navigate the often dangerous waters of separation and divorce. … The author has, with this book, provided a useful service and considerable help to an ever-increasing number of people.”
––Aaron Satloff, MD, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, U. of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, Distinguished Life Fellow, American Psychiatric Association

Divorce Decisions provides a guidebook to the process including:

* Choosing a divorce process: negotiation or litigation, mediation or collaborative practice.
* Selecting a lawyer or representative.
* Minimizing emotional trauma for yourself and your children
* Saving money on legal fees
* Keeping the costs and the process from spiraling out of control
* Forming a support system
* How modern technology can play a role in divorce
* Preventing this from happening again.

"Reliable guidance about locating the skillful, reasonable lawyer who will aim toward durable long term solutions that benefit all members of the post-divorce family rather than the gladiator who fights without regard to financial, relational, and emotional costs is hard to find––or rather, has been hard to find, until Marjorie Just wrote this book."
—Pauline H. Tesler, Certified Specialist in Family Law, San Francisco, CA
Co-Author, Collaborative Divorce: The Revolutionary New Way to Restructure Your Family, Resolve Legal Issues, and Move on with Your Life and Co-Founder and first President, International Academy of Collaborative Professionals

About The Author:
MARJORIE JUST is a principal in the law firm of Offit/Kurman: Attorneys at Law, in Bethesda, Maryland, where she practices Family Law. She is a litigator, a mediator, and a Collaborative lawyer. Marjorie Just obtained undergraduate degree from Duke University and her JD from the George Washington University School of Law where she was a member of the Journal of International Law and Economics. She was admitted to the Maryland Bar in 1994 and the District of Columbia Bar in 1995; and is a member of the Family Law Sections of the District of Columbia Bar, the Maryland State Bar Association and the Bar Association of Montgomery County, Maryland. Ms. Just is a founding member of the Collaborative Divorce Association and the Maryland Collaborative Practice Council. She acts as a court-appointed mediator in family law cases, and she volunteers as a Family Law Mentor for the DC Bar Law Firm Pro Bono Program. This is her first book.

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Description: A true story of espionage with a plot worthy of John le Carré.

With the declaration of war in 1939, dashing young publisher, Tom Burns, left his business for the Ministry of Information, the propaganda arm of the British secret services, and found himself in Madrid as press attaché at the British embassy. Spurred on by his deep love of Spain, he threw himself into the propaganda war against the Nazis, who broadcast freely to the Spanish press. Spain was officially “nonbelligerent” during the war. But nonbelligerent doesn’t mean unimportant: Spain held Gibraltar, and so controlled the western Mediterranean. Germany desperately wanted Gibraltar and the Mediterranean for itself, and it was the responsibility of Tom Burns and the rest of the British Ministry of Information to do everything in their power to keep that from happening.

Executing that simple objective became complicated as Burns found he was making enemies in England, not least among them Kim Philby and members of MI 6. In Papa Spy, Jimmy Burns tells the extraordinary story of how his father overcame the odds, helped carry out the decoy plot called “The Man Who Never Was,” arranged what turned out to be actor Leslie Howard’s fatal propaganda trip to Portugal and Spain, and remained true to his faith while loyally serving his country.

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Description: RULES FOR MY UNBORN SON is a collection of traditional, humorous, and urbane fatherly advice for boys. From the sartorial ("If you are tempted to wear a cowboy hat, resist") to the practical ("Keep a copy of your letters. It makes it easier for your biographer") to even a couple of sure-fire hangover cures ("There is no better remedy than a dip in the ocean"), the book of rules and accompanying quotations is quite simply an instruction manual for becoming a Good Man - industrious, thoughtful, charming, and of course, well-dressed.

Hip and witty with a decidedly traditionalist flavor, RULES FOR MY UNBORN SON is meant to evoke simpler times when Father knew best and a suitable answer to "Why?" was "Because I said so."

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Description: The basics of The Five-Minute Miracle came to Tara Springett, a psychotherapist, in meditation one day. The system is a pleasurable self-help method that is designed to overcome all sorts of psychological problems, as well as easing chronic pain and tiredness. The method only takes five minutes each day and is so simple that it can be used by anyone, anywhere, even by children.

A synthesis of Tibetan Buddhist principles and humanistic psychology, the core of the practice is to make contact with our Higher Consciousness (in whatever form we perceive it) and receive a healing symbol to overcome our problems. This symbol will be visualized (or sensed) in our heart, radiating loving light to ourselves and to everyone who is involved in the problem. It's a system that can be used over and over again — for a new problem, ask for a new symbol. This system, which the author calls Higher Consciousness Healing, has brought extremely impressive and reliable results — within days or a few weeks of beginning the practice — to hundreds of individuals and families. Now everyone can learn and practice these principles through this extraordinary and miraculous book.

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Description: From the personal finance correspondent for public radio’s Marketplace Money, a new plan for a new economic reality—the philosophy and practice of living frugally.

As a once-in-a-lifetime downturn deepens, our go-go economy has become an uh-oh economy. But as trusted finance reporter Chris Farrell explains, there’s a silver lining to this cloud: It is accelerating a trend already under way in America toward what he calls the New Frugality—a fresh way of thinking about how, what, and why we consume. In today’s economy, a “sustainable” lifestyle isn’t just one that’s good for the planet—it’s one that is based around core values and one that sustains your bank balance as well.

In this friendly, approachable book, Farrell explains both the theory and the practice of living frugally. Frugality, he reminds us, does not mean old-fashioned penny-pinching. It means spending your money on quality rather than quantity—buying the best you can afford but the least you need. Drawing on his expertise as a financial reporter and his years of conversations with his public radio listeners, he provides down-to-earth, practical advice for every aspect of your financial life, including:

• how to always maintain a “margin of safety” in your spending

• the frugal home: renting vs. owning

• the two best ways to save for college

• wise debt vs. foolish debt

• why giving your money away can be “newly frugal”

The New Frugality amounts to a paradigm shift in the way we spend and save. The good news is, a frugal lifestyle is one of less waste, lower environmental impact, greater peace of mind, and, over the long run, deeper satisfaction.

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Description: The eye-opening and headline-generating UK bestseller that shows how one single factor—the gap between its richest and poorest members—can determine the health and well-being of a society.

“This is a book with a big idea, big enough to change political thinking…In half a page [The Spirit Level] tells you more about the pain of inequality than any play or novel could.”
—Sunday Times (UK )

It is well established that in rich societies the poor have shorter lives and suffer more from almost every social problem. Now a groundbreaking book, based on thirty years’ research, takes an important step past this idea. The Spirit Level shows that there is one common factor that links the healthiest and happiest societies: the degree of equality among their members. Not wealth; not resources; not culture, climate, diet, or system of government. Furthermore, more-unequal societies are bad for almost everyone within them—the well-off as well as the poor.

The remarkable data assembled in The Spirit Level reveals striking differences, not only among the nations of the first world but even within America’s fifty states. Almost every modern social problem—ill-health, violence, lack of community life, teen pregnancy, mental illness—is more likely to occur in a less-equal society. This is why America, by most measures the richest country on earth, has per capita shorter average lifespan, more cases of mental illness, more obesity, and more of its citizens in prison than any other developed nation.

Wilkinson and Pickett lay bare the contradiction between material success and social failure in today’s world, but they do not simply provide a diagnosis of our woes. They offer readers a way toward a new political outlook, shifting from self-interested consumerism to a friendlier, more sustainable society. The Spirit Level is pioneering in its research, powerful in its revelations, and inspiring in its conclusion: Armed with this new understanding of why communities prosper, we have the tools to revitalize our politics and help all our fellow citizens, from the bottom of the ladder to the top.

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Description: A compelling portrait of the life, work, and meaning of one of the greatest artists of all time.

Toward the end of his long life, Tiziano Vecelli—known to the world ever since as Titian (circa 1488– 1576)—was at work on a number of paintings that he kept in his studio, never quite completing them, as though wanting to endlessly postpone the moment of closure. Produced with his fingers as much as with the brush, Titian’s last paintings are imbued with a unique rawness and immediacy without precedent in the history of Western art. As if to further cloud their meaning, after the outbreak of plague that took his life, Titian’s studio was looted and many canvases were taken; what happened to them is not known.

But what did Titian, who had experienced as much in the way of material success and critical acclaim as any artist before or since, mean by these works? Titian: The Last Days is a quest through the great artist’s life and work toward the physical and spiritual landscape of his last paintings. Vividly re-creating the atmosphere of sixteenth-century Venice and Europe, Mark Hudson chronicles Titian’s relationships with his own mentors (Bellini and Giorgione), rivals, and patrons—among them popes, kings, and emperors— as well as his troubled dealings with his own family. Paralleling this narrative is Hudson’s personal journey through Titian’s life and career, exploring the relentless formal development that led to the breakthroughs of his last days, and the mystery behind his missing paintings.

Moving from Titian’s hometown in the Dolomites to the greatest churches and palaces of the age, to Venice then and now, Titian: The Last Days is an original and compelling study of one of Europe’s greatest artists.

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Description: The fourth in the widely acclaimed, laugh-out-loud Trash’n’Treasures Series by the husband-and-wife writing team New York Times bestselling author Max Allan Collins and mystery writer Barbara Collins.
Brandy Borne’s life in the small Mississippi River town of Serenity continues to be anything but serene. Living with her bipolar mom, Vivian, is challenging enough, but getting sucked into her plan to organizing a citywide antiques bazaar is positively daunting—especially with morning sickness.
Vivian persuades a ninety-year-old Russian widow to donate her priceless Faberge egg. The egg turns out to be not quite as expected, but this is the least of everyone’s worries when murder enters the mix. Vivian and Brandy slip into detective mode, and (with moral support from Sushi, the spoiled Shih Tzu) once again uncover a killer in their kooky, clumsy, and loveable style.

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Description: New York Times bestselling author Joanna Fluke never fails to satisfy readers’ appetite for intriguing culinary mysteries—and delicious recipes. In the latest installment of her Hannah Swensen mystery Series, the beloved baker and sleuth may have bitten off more than she can chew.
It’s June in Lake Eden, Minnesota, and for Hannah Swensen that means bridal showers galore, plus a massive fundraising event in need of confections. Hannah almost flips when her business partner, Lisa, suggests setting up an apple turnover stand. But, pushover that she is, she places her faith in Lisa’s mother-in-law’s recipe and agrees to be a magician’s assistant in the fundraiser’s talent show.
Dozens of pastries and one hideous purple dress later, Hannah has to admit that stepping out of her comfort zone has been fun as well as profitable. The only snag is the show’s host, community college professor Bradford Ramsey. Hannah and her youngest sister Michelle each had unfortunate relationships with Ramsey, and when the cad is discovered backstage—dead as a doornail with a turnover in his hand—it’s up to Hannah to uncover a killer who’s flakier than puff pastry, and far more dangerous.

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Description: Description:
In this extraordinary drama-in-dialogue, Naguib Mahfouz reveals his love for all of Egypt’s extensive history—and his deep knowledge of it. In Before the Throne, he summons nearly sixty of Egypt’s rulers to the afterlife Court of Osiris, from a king who unified Egypt for the first time, around 3000 BC, to a president assassinated by religious extremists in 1981.

He includes names as familiar as the pharaoh Ramesses II and as obscure as the medieval vizier Qaraqush. Defending their behavior before the divine tribunal, those who acted for the nation’s good are honored with immortality, but those who failed to protect it leave the gilded hall of eternal justice with a very different verdict.

Full of Mahfouz’s unique insight into his country’s timeless qualities, this controversial work skillfully traces five thousand years of Egypt’s past as it flows into the present, through the mind of its most acclaimed author.


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About The Authors:
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ was born in 1911 in the crowded Cairo district of Gamaliya. He studied philosophy at Cairo University, then worked in various government ministries until his retirement in 1971. His first three published novels were Khufu's Wisdom (1939), Rhadopis of Nubia (1943), and Thebes at War (1944), all of which are set in ancient Egypt. These political and philosophical critiques disguised as historical romances show the unmistakable signs of a burgeoning literary genius. He went on to write more than 35 other novel-length works, plus hundreds of short stories and numerous cinema plots and scenarios, many of which have been made into successful films. Naguib Mahfouz was awarded the Nobel prize for literature in 1988. In 2006, he died at the age of 95.

RAYMOND STOCK, with a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from the University of Pennsylvania, is writing a biography of Naguib Mahfouz. He is the translator of numerous works by Mahfouz, most recently Dreams of Departure (AUC Press, 2007).

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Description: In his New York Times bestselling novel Something on the Side, Carl Weber introduced readers to the scandalous world of the Big Girls Book Club. In this fast-paced follow-up to the smash hit, the BGBC has a new chapter in Richmond, Virginia…but the biggest drama isn’t between the pages, it’s between the members themselves.
Welcome to the Big Girls Book Club, where only one rule applies: Members must be at least a size 14. Sisters and original BGBC members Isis and Egypt have left New York for Richmond, where Isis is happily married and living in the lap of luxury. Her sister Egypt has moved in to get away from her past, which isn’t easy when her ex is Isis’ husband, Rashid. Then Isis asks Egypt to make a giant sacrifice—to become a surrogate and carry her and Rashid’s baby…
New BGBC member Loraine Farrow is one of Richmond’s most successful women, but she has a secret she believes could ruin her. Jerome is Loraine’s personal secretary and the only male member of BGBC. He’s openly gay and never had a problem with it, until Loraine asks him to do a favor that will change his life.

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Description: Instead of running away to the circus, Chris Mitchell fled to Disney World® in search of some desperately needed magic but his journey through manufactured happiness bared the truth behind the costumes and of finding his own magic within.
Once upon a time, Chris Mitchell was living the dream, until his fairy-tale life came to a dramatic halt: he got fired, his girlfriend left him for his best friend, and his brother called to tell him their mother had lymphoma. Chris wanted a serious break from reality, so he fled to the “happiest place on Earth”… Disney World®, and began working as a photographer. During his year in the Mouse’s army, life became far stranger than any animated fiction.
Cast member Confidential: A Disneyfied Memoir is one of the few books to tell about the real Disney World® from an insider’s perspective. Originally based on his popular blog (www.disneydiaries.blogspot.com), Chris Mitchell’s personal adventures reveal the backstage world of the Magic Kingdom®, along with a colorful cast of memorable characters.
Every eccentric Cast Member has a common goal: to “preserve the magic” for Disney’s ® guests even as they seek it on a personal level for themselves.

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Description: Nine years after Friendship Cake, Lynne Hinton returns with a heartwarming story that celebrates the close and lifelong bonds among women. As the holiday season draws near, the four ladies of Hope Springs, North Carolina, have come up with an idea for a cake cookbook. They're hoping the project will raise the spirits of one of their group, Margaret Peele, whose cancer has returned.

All Margaret wants for Christmas is to visit the Texas town where her mother grew up, and to see Charlotte Stewart, the young pastor who recently left Hope Springs to run a battered women's shelter in New Mexico. So Louise Fisher, Beatrice Newgarden, and Jessie Jenkins hatch a plan to take Margaret to meet Charlotte in Texas. In doing so, they give Margaret the best Christmas gift of all - their friendship.

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Description: Miss Marple meets Jessica Fletcher—but with a New Orleans style all her own—Barbara Colley’s intrepid sixty-something sleuth, Charlotte LaRue, cleans up crime while running her Maid for a Day service. And this time, a movie shoot provides the perfect backdrop for murder.
When a big Hollywood studio wants to use Bitsy Duhe’s gorgeous Victorian home for a movie shoot, she agrees, but only if Charlotte LaRue agrees to take care of her place during the shoot. The cast includes one of Hollywood’s hottest ingénues, Angel Martinique—but as Charlotte quickly discovers, Angel is no saint—in fact, she’s a complete diva.
On the shoot, tensions run high, especially when Angel’s friend Gavin is found dead in the star’s dressing room. Charlotte senses there’s more to Angel’s story than meets the eye. But a little digging into her past turns up a lot more dirt than she bargained for—enough to put Charlotte in a killer’s crosshairs if she doesn’t watch her step.

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Description: Delving deeper into the genre-spanning territory explored in Interfictions, the Interstitial Arts Foundation’s first groundbreaking anthology, Interfictions 2 showcases twenty-one original and innovative writers. It includes contributions from authors from six countries, including the United States, Poland, Norway, Australia, France, and Great Britain.

Newcomers such as Alaya Dawn Johnson, Theodora Goss, and Alan DeNiro rub shoulders with established visionaries such as Jeffrey Ford (The Drowned Life), Brian Francis Slattery (Liberation), Nin Andrews (The Book of Orgasms), and M. Rickert (Map of Dreams).

Colleen Mondor, of the well-known blog Chasing Ray, interviews the editors for the afterword.

Henry Jenkins, ex-director of MIT’s Comparative Media Studies program and now a member of USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and School of Cinematic Arts, provides a fantastic introduction sure to set readers’ imaginations alight.

Interfictions 2 is here and ready to be read, discussed, taught, blogged, taken apart, and re-interpreted.

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Description: After watching a tv program about Otzi, a 5,000-year-old "Ice Man", Kit's friend Ike becomes convinced that Kit's destiny is to become the next ice man - a source of information for future generations. Together they obtain artifacts they think will accurately reflect life in the early twenty-first century and plan their journey to a nearby mountain. Kit gets tattoos similar to Otzi's, writes a manifesto and tries to come to terms with making the ultimate sacrifice. As he grows more and more agitated and isolated, his family and friends suspect that something is terribly wrong, but before they can discover the true severity of the situation, Kit and Ike set off on what could be their last journey. (Teen fiction)

"A stark and fascinating portrait of a paranoid and delusional teenager…Denman deftly gets into the head of a mentally unwell teenager while telling a coherent, engaging story." - Publishers Weekly

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Description: The fifth in Sara Rosett’s delightful, warm-hearted cozy mystery series has Ellie Avery—mom, military wife, part-time professional organizer, and sleuth—investigate a Southern family reunion with a murderous edge.
Ellie is barely surviving her husband’s boisterous Southern family reunion when she receives a phone call that puts her “crisis” in perspective. Her husband Mitch’s squadron commander, Colonel Pershall, has been murdered. And when the Colonel’s widow and Ellie’s good friend, Denise, is named prime suspect, Ellie must use her detective prowess to find the real killer.
The next afternoon another tragic death jars the otherwise sleepy town of Warm River, Georgia. Mitch’s cousin, Jake, collapses and dies during his morning jog. It looks like a heart attack, until clues surface that reveal sinister motives. If the Warm Springs killer has his way, the small town’s string of deaths is not yet over, and the next target will be a vital member of Ellie’s new Southern home…

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Description: The best holiday traditions are meant to be broken.,

It's only December 1, and Vanessa Clayton has been dreading Christmas since she spotted tinseled trees at her local mall in September. Thankfully, she and her husband, JT, can't afford to drag their twin boys across the country to New England for the annual celebration at her stuffy sister-in-law Patience's home. Not that Vanessa has prepared a proper Christmas for her family in years, and she has less time than ever since she agreed to consult on the script of a local play. Her older sister, Thea, is no help — she'd rather make art and flirt with surfers than babysit her nine-year-old nephews. Then Patience drops a holiday stress bomb: Her family will come to California instead.

In between "baking" cinnamon rolls for the school potluck and overbearing Patience testing her patience, Vanessa can't stop thinking about the difficult but charming playwright at work. Meanwhile, Patience's teenage daughter, Libby, obsesses over a college boy she has met by the pool, and Thea searches desperately for the meaning of Christmas — for her latest installation, of course. As their holiday plans go comically awry, these four women discover the true spirit of the season is hidden in every festive surprise

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Description: Description:
After a failed study mission in France, Abd al-Rahman returns home to Iraq to launch an existentialist movement akin to that of his hero. Convinced that it falls upon him to introduce his country’s intellectuals to Sartre’s thought, he feels especially qualified by his physical resemblance to the philosopher (except for the crossed eyes) and by his marriage to Germaine, who he claims is the great man’s cousin. Meanwhile, his wealth and family prestige guarantee him an idle life spent in drinking, debauchery, and frequenting a well-known nightclub.

But is his suicide an act of philosophical despair, or a reaction to his friend’s affair with Germaine? A biographer chosen by his presumed friends narrates the story of a somewhat bewildered young man who—like other members of his generation—was searching for a meaning to his life.

This parody of the abuses and extravagances of pseudo-philosophers in the Baghdad of the sixties throws into relief the Iraqi intellectual and cultural life of the time and the reversal of fortune of some of Iraq’s wealthy and powerful families.


About The Authors:
ALI BADER, born in Baghdad in 1964, studied philosophy and French literature and worked as a war correspondent covering the Middle East. He is the author of nine novels, many of which have won awards. He now lives in Amman, Jordan.

AIDA BAMIA is professor of Arabic language and literature at the University of Florida in Gainesville. She is the editor of Al-‘Arabiyya, the journal of the American Association of Teachers of Arabic, and the author of The Graying of the Raven: Cultural and Sociopolitical Significance of Algerian Folk Poetry (AUC Press 2001).

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Description: Following her successful debut Peach Blossom Pavilion, Mingmei Yip’s much-anticipated second novel is an evocative and sensual portrayal of a Chinese woman torn between the east and the west.
At age twenty, Ming Neng tells her mother that she wants to be a Buddhist nun. She will not be dissuaded—especially upon meeting her mentor, Yi Kong, and feeling enchanted by the nun’s beauty, talent, exquisite art collection, and mysterious background.
At thirty, after studying art in Paris, Ming Neng enters a retreat to test her karma as a nun. A fire breaks out and a young American doctor saves Ming Neng’s life. Ming Neng finds herself charmed and soon yields her body to him. Caught between her long-held spiritual quest and newfound desires, Ming Neng must find a way to her heart’s true calling.

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

From the moment she's struck by lightning as a baby, it is clear Mary Anning is marked for greatness. On the windswept, fossil-strewn beaches of the English coast, she learns that she has "the eye" - and finds what no one else can see. When Mary uncovers an unusual fossilized skeleton in the cliffs near her home, she sets the religious fathers on edge, the townspeople to vicious gossip, and the scientific world alight.

Luckily, Mary finds an unlikely champion in prickly Elizabeth Philpot, a recent exile from London, who also loves scouring the beaches. Their relationship strikes a delicate balance between fierce loyalty, mutual appreciation, and barely suppressed envy.

Remarkable Creatures is a stunning novel of how one woman's gift transcends class and social prejudice to lead to some of the most important discoveries of the nineteenth century. Above all, it is a revealing portrait of the intricate and resilient nature of female friendship.

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Description: On the surface, Lena Spencer appears to have it all. She and her wealthy husband Randall have two wonderful children, and they live a life of luxury. In reality, however, Lena finds that happiness is elusive. Randall is emotionally distant, her son has developed a drug habit, and her daughter is disgusted by her mother's "overbearing behavior." When Randall decides that he's had enough of marriage counseling, he offers his wife an ultimatum: "Be grateful for all I've done for you or leave." Lena, realizing that money can't solve her problems and that her husband is no longer the man she married, decides to choose the latter.

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Description: An astonishing, hotly anticipated new novel from the great literary fantasist and creator of Thursday Next, Jasper Fforde.

It's our world, but not as we know it. Entire cities lie buried beneath overgrown fields and forests. Technology from another time peppers the landscape, and there is evidence of great upheaval.

As long as anyone can remember, society has been ruled by a Colortocracy. From the underground feedpipes that keep the municipal park green to the healing hues viewed to cure illness to a social hierarchy based upon one's limited color perception, society is dominated by colour. In this world, you are what you can see.

Young Eddie Russett has no ambition to be anything other than a loyal drone of the Collective. But everything changes when he moves with his father, a respected swatchman, to East Carmine. There, he falls in love with a Grey named Jane who opens his eyes to the painful truth behind his seemingly perfect, rigidly controlled society.

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Description: Part Tarantino-style operetta, part soap opera, Ottavio Cappellani's hilarious novel takes place in a twenty-first-century Sicily rife with moody aristocrats, vain politicians, inept gangsters, shabby theater actors, and high-tech assassins. Balding, fortyish Alfio Turrisi is a mid-level Mafioso with deep pockets. He's in love with Betty, the spoiled daughter of a rival mobster. Alfio and Betty would seem to be the Romeo and Juliet of this novel... until we meet another pair of star-crossed lovers: the gay theater director Tino Cagnotto and his bored and sexy youngamore, Bobo.

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Description: There are two entries for this title. This one is for CA residents only. US residents, look for the other entry to request.

The first thriller in a new series featuring Inspector Kari Vaara, the haunted, hardened detective who must delve into Finland's dark, violent underbelly.

Kaamos: Just before Christmas, the bleakest time of the year in Lapland. The unrelenting darkness and extreme cold above the Arctic Circle drive everyone just a little insane...perhaps enough to kill.

A beautiful Somali immigrant is found dead in a snowfield, her body gruesomely mutilated, a racial slur carved into her chest. Heading the murder investigation is Inspector Kari Vaara, the lead detective of the small-town police force. The vicious killing may have been a hate crime, a sex crime - or one and the same. Vaara knows he must keep this potentially explosive case out of the national headlines or it will send shock waves across Finland, an insular nation afraid to face its own xenophobia.

The demands of the investigation begin to take their toll on Vaara and his marriage. His young American wife, Kate, newly pregnant with their first child, is struggling to adapt to both the unforgiving Arctic climate and the Finnish culture of silence and isolation. Meanwhile Vaara himself, haunted by his rough childhood and a failed first marriage, discovers that the past keeps biting at his heels: he suspects that the rich man for whom his ex-wife left him years ago may be the killer.

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Description: What happens when the popular girl becomes a social misfit?

Regina Afton used to be a member of the Fearsome Fivesome. And just like the other members of this all girl clique, she was both feared and revered by the students at Halowell High. Now a vicious rumor has Regina frozen out of her former circle. Each day the bullying becomes more vicious and only Regina knows the terrifying truth. Out of desperation she befriends Michael a fellow misfit— that even Regina used to shun.Regina tries to make amends for her past while threats from the now Fearsome Foursome threatens to break them both.

visit stmartins.com/somegirlsare to read the first chapter
Courtney Summers is also the author of Cracked Up To Be, nominated for the 2010 Best Books for Young Adults award by YALSA

"Cracked Up To Be...is an excellent and intense debut novel...This is a captivating and powerful novel that is difficult to put down."—Teen Book Review

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Description: Holly Barrett first saw Jack Dane early one morning — tall, tan, and so heartbreakingly handsome he took her breath away. He also seemed like the last person to disrupt her quiet, uneventful days with her sensitive daughter, Katy. But the charming, enigmatic Englishman has blown into her small Cape Cod town like a brisk summer wind off the bay.

Jack sweeps Holly off her feet, and is soon touching the lives of everyone she deeply cares about. But is he the considerate, concerned gentleman he appears to be — or is there a very different creature lurking below the surface? Has a monster entered her life . . . and how far will Holly have to go to save the person she loves more than anyone else in the world?

Brooke Morgan's dazzling debut is a novel of unrelenting suspense that immediately rockets her into the upper echelons alongside Joy Fielding, Tana French, Mary Higgins Clark, and other masters of everyday terror.

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Description: Chester “Chet” Patterson, the protagonist-narrator of Kermit Moyer’s novel, is an Army brat who grows up in the 1950s and comes of age in the 1960s. He has a high-strung knock-out of a mother who may be drinking her way into alcoholism, an Army-officer father he both resents and admires, and a younger sister whose high-school popularity he can only envy. Moving every two or three years, Chester is a perennial “new kid” as well as a bookish and movie-besotted romantic who at the age of 13 falls in love, he thinks, with his own first cousin, Frenchie, a 17-year-old “older woman.” Each chapter is a discrete story that chronicles a pivotal moment in Chester’s life, taking him a little deeper into himself as well as a little farther into the century, in settings that vary from the Far East to the Wild West and during a time that includes the birth of rock & roll, the Civil Rights movement, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

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Description: In this lyrical, exuberant follow-up to her acclaimed 2007 novel, The Bastard of Istanbul, Turkish author Elif Shafak unfolds two tantalizing parallel narratives - one contemporary and the other set in the thirteenth century.

Ella Rubinstein is forty years old and unhappily married when she takes a job as a reader for a literary agent. Her first assignment is to read and report on Sweet Blasphemy, a novel written by a man named Aziz Zahara. Ella is mesmerized by his tale of Shams's search for Rumi and dervish's role in transforming the successful but unhappy cleric into a committed mystic, passionate poet, and advocate of love. She is also taken with Shams's lessons, or rules, that offer insight into an ancient philosophy based on the unity of all people and religions, and the presence of love in each and every one of us. As she reads on, she realizes that Rumi's story mirrors her own and that Zahara - like Shams - has come to set her free.

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Description: A beautifully written, compulsively readable debut that deals with the aftermath of a shocking act of violence that leaves two young sisters with nothing but each other—in the tradition of White Oleander, this haunting novel is a testament to the power of family and the ties that bind us together, even as they threaten to tear us apart

Mama was “no macaroni-necklace-wearing kind of mother.” She was a lipstick and perfume-wearing mother, a flirt whose estranged husband still hungered for her. After Mama threw him out, she warned the girls to never let Daddy in the house, an admonition that tears at ten-year-old Lulu whenever she thinks about the day she opened the door for her drunken father, and watched as he killed her mother, stabbed her five-year-old sister Merry and tried to take his own life.

Effectively orphaned by their mother’s death and father’s imprisonment, Lulu and Merry, unwanted by family members and abandoned to a terrifying group home, spend their young lives carrying more than just the visible scars from the tragedy. Even as their plan to be taken in by a well-to-do foster family succeeds, they come to learn they’ll never really belong anywhere or to anyone—that all they have to hold onto is each other.

As they grow into women, Lulu holds fast to her anger, denies her father’s existence and forces Merry into a web of lies about his death that eventually ensnares her own husband and daughters. Merry, certain their safety rests on placating her needy father, dutifully visits him, seeking his approval and love at the expense of her own relationships. As they strive to carve lives of their own, the specter of their father, unrepentant and manipulative even from behind bars, haunts them. And when they learn he’s about to be paroled, the house of cards they’ve built their lives on teeters on the brink of collapse.

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Description: In her debut collection, New York Times best-selling author Holly Black returns to the world of Tithe in two darkly exquisite new tales. Then Black takes readers on a tour of a faerie market and introduces a girl poisonous to the touch and another who challenges the devil to a competitive eating match. These stories have been published in anthologies such as 21 Proms, The Faery Reel, and The Restless Dead, and have been reprinted in many “Best of ” anthologies. The Poison Eaters is Holly Black’s much-anticipated first collection, and her ability to stare into the void—and to find humanity and humor there—will speak to young adult and adult readers alike.

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Description: Charlie Baker is a neurotic but charming 50-year-old workaholic CEO of a major Chicago ad agency who seems to have it all: an impressive house in an upscale suburb, an equally impressive salary, the requisite pretty wife and accomplished son. All of this comes crashing down when Charlie is unceremoniously fired. In an instant, his life is transformed from corporate titan to just another out of work American.

For Charlie—an admitted workaholic—a world without a job is a strange world indeed. Rather then tell his family, every morning Charlie leaves home to spend his days at an outplacement firm, where he meets a cast of equally desperate corporate misfits. As Charlie reluctantly embarks on a journey of self-discovery, he finds out what happens when his work life is lost and his real life begins.

Humorous, poignant, and honest, The Pursuit of Other Interests offers a glimpse into the lives, hearts, and minds of the 21st-century American family.

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Description: Psychiatrist Andrew Marlowe has a perfectly ordered life—solitary, perhaps, but full of devotion to his profession and the painting hobby he loves. This order is destroyed when renowned painter Robert Oliver attacks a canvas in the National Gallery of Art and becomes his patient. In response, Marlowe finds himself going beyond his own legal and ethical boundaries to understand the secret that torments this genius, a journey that will lead him into the lives of the women closest to Robert Oliver and toward a tragedy at the heart of French Impressionism.

Ranging from American museums to the coast of Normandy, from the late nineteenth century to the late twentieth, from young love to last love, THE SWAN THIEVES is a story of obsession, the losses of history, and the power of art to preserve human hope.

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Description: He was going to lose the house and everything in it.

The rare pleasure of a bath, the copper pots hanging above the kitchen island, his family-again he would

lose his family. He stood inside the house and took stock. Everything in it had been taken for granted. How had that happened again? He had promised himself not to take anything for granted and now he couldn't recall the moment that promise had given way to the everyday.

Tim Farnsworth is a handsome, healthy man, aging with the grace of a matinee idol. His wife Jane still loves him, and for all its quiet trials, their marriage is still stronger than most. Despite long hours at the office, he remains passionate about his work, and his partnership at a prestigious Manhattan law firm means that the work he does is important. And, even as his daughter Becka retreats behind her guitar, her dreadlocks and her puppy fat, he offers her every one of a father's honest lies about her being the most beautiful girl in the world.

He loves his wife, his family, his work, his home. He loves his kitchen. And then one day he stands up and walks out. And keeps walking.

THE UNNAMED is a dazzling novel about a marriage and a family and the unseen forces of nature and desire that seem to threaten them both. It is the heartbreaking story of a life taken for granted and what happens when that life is abruptly and irrevocably taken away.

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Description: The compelling and passionate new novel from the author of As Meat Loves Salt.

1672. A generation after the Civil War, England is still struggling to return to normal after the bloody conflict which turned neighbours and families against each other.

In the village of Spadboro, Jonathan Dymond, a cider maker who lives with his parents, has so far enjoyed a quiet and harmonious life. But the death of his uncle leads Jonathan to secrets – in both his family and his village – which have lain dormant since the war.

When Jonathan discovers his dying uncle's letter to his father, hinting at inheritance and revenge, he goes to stay with his now widowed aunt, under the pretence of pressing her apples, to try to unravel the mystery wrapped around his family. His aunt, however, is hostile and reluctant to speak of the past, and Jonathan’s investigations will eventually unleash obsessions and madness that threaten the lives and happiness of Jonathan and all those he holds dear.

The Wilding is a powerful novel of family secrets, casual violence, explosive passions and love at the end of its tether.

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Description: Description:
In 1982 a young American historian arrives in Zimbabwe filled with idealism and enthusiasm for the benevolent new Prime Minister Robert Mugabe and the postcolonial new beginning for that country. His historic research leads him to an apparent murder case, unresolved since the days of the bush war. As he draws – or is lead – or yet mislead – closer to an answer, he becomes involved with a local woman through whom he soon finds himself in the inner circle of the new ruling class.

Once the euphoria starts dissipating he encounters increasingly menacing instances of corruption and repression, including threats to himself to abandon his investigation. With every new revelation a new layer of decay is exposed and with that, his idealism retreats. In the process, the meaning of the novel’s title, taken from Mugabe’s conciliatory rhetoric at the beginning, gradually comes to mean: we are all trapped and compromised into the moral tangle and the destruction into which all the promise has degenerated. An extremely accomplished and compelling novel that deftly employs the instruments of a detective thriller.


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About The Author:
JAMES KILGORE was born in Oregon and grew up in California. He graduated from the University of California Santa Barbara in 1969. Living in the politically colatile San Francisco Bay area in the early 1970s, he ran afowl of the law. As a fugitive he lived in the United States, Zimbabwe, Australia and finally South Africa, where he was arrested in November 2002. He was extradited to the United States where he served six and a half years in prison. 'We Are All Zimbabweans Now', his first novel and first publication under his real name, was written during his years of incarceration. He is married with two children.

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Description: Savannah Reid, a plus-sized amateur sleuth, is on the trail of a shady weight loss therapist in the latest of the beloved Series that wins raves with both culinary cozy fans and P.I. aficionados.
Countless weight-challenged folks have flocked to Dr. Robert Wellman’s clinics to try his popular hypnosis techniques, but most have only lighter wallets to show for it. Still, Dr. Wellman seems to have the perfect life, until his wife Maria is found dead at the bottom of a cliff—and it’s clear she didn’t go down without a fight.
Savannah is happy to help Detective Sergeant Dirk Coulter investigate Maria’s untimely death. And since Dr. Wellman appears to be the only suspect, she’s sure it’s an open-and-shut case… but appearances can be deceptive, and pound for pound, this is shaping up to be her toughest case ever.

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Description: 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

Meredith and Nina Whitson are as different as sisters can be. One stayed at home to raise her children and manage the family apple orchard; the other followed a dream and traveled the world to become a famous photojournalist. But when their beloved father falls ill, Meredith and Nina find themselves together again, standing alongside their cold, disapproving mother, Anya, who even now, offers no comfort to her daughters. As children, the only connection between them was the Russian fairy tale Anya sometimes told the girls at night. On his deathbed, their father extracts a promise from the women in his life: the fairy tale will be told one last time—and all the way to the end. Thus begins an unexpected journey into the truth of Anya’s life in war-torn Leningrad, more than five decades ago. Alternating between the past and present, Meredith and Nina will finally hear the singular, harrowing story of their mother’s life, and what they learn is a secret so terrible and terrifying that it will shake the very foundation of their family and change who they believe they are.

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Description: From Lisa Jackson, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Malice, Lost Souls, and Shiver, comes a riveting thriller—her most intense to date—that goes behind the doors of an exclusive academy where the student body is disappearing one by one…
Julia “Jules” Farentino knows that her teenaged half-sister, Shaylee, has been having problems lately. But when she learns of her mother’s plan to send Shay to an elite boarding school in southern Oregon, she’s skeptical. The Academy is remote, secluded institution with a other schools fail, when one of its students went missing six months ago and has never surfaced. The further Jules digs into the school’s history, the more concerned she becomes.
On impulse, Jules applies for a teaching job at the Academy, and once there, her suspicions grow. Another student disappears, and two more commit suicide in strange circumstances…or were they murdered? Something sinister is lurking beneath the Academy’s serene façade. And uncovering the truth will mean confronting a powerful force of evil that’s willing to kill, again and again…
Gripping, fast-paced and with a shocking twist that will leave readers gasping, Without Mercy is Lisa Jackson at her brilliant best.

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Description: Acclaimed Civil War expert Clint Johnson’s scorching, thrilling, and only account of how an undercover team of Confederate officers tried to set fire to New York City on Friday, November 25, 1864… and nearly succeeded.
The only book to accurately depict Confederate officers’ plan to set fire to New York City in 1864. More than 130 years before 9/11, a group from the South planned to attack on Northern soil…and had they succeeded, would have completely changed the map of North America as we know it. With Wall Street, the New York Clearing House, import and export businesses, and docks all devastated, the former financial capital would have taken decades to rebuild.
Respected author Clint Johnson recreates with frightening detail how theses ardent young Confederate soldiers—along with prominent members of New York City society—a vivid portrait of the lives and the minds of key individuals in the Civil War.

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Description: In the spirit of Jon Krakauers’s Into the Wild, Dane Metz’s monumental and death-defying trek across the perilous Alaskan Arctic is an awe-inspiring account of sheer survival.
Driven by his calling to explore the Arctic wilderness, Dave Metz packed up his two beloved Airedale dogs, sled, fifty pounds of food, and set out on a 600-mile adventure across the Gates of Alaska national park, into one of the world’s most remote and least-traveled regions. More people have landed on the moon than have completed the daring four-month-long journey Dave Metz made across the barren, inhospitable terrain.
Metz’s world-class trek is a monumental achievement in wilderness exploration. Many nature enthusiasts share his passion for the great outdoors, but few have the survival skills and sheer will to withstand frigid nights at -20°F, isolation from human comforts, and the inevitable abject exhaustion and despair. “I don’t look back now… I move forward or starve.”
Crossing the Gates of Alaska is Metz’s candid and stunning firsthand account of his astonishing physical, mental, and spiritual feat. Along with 16 breathtaking color photos, Dave shares this epic story of survival and the personal struggles of finding the right balance between living in the real world and living free…

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Description: Based on principles from the Human Performance Institute, renowned consultant to billion-dollar corporations, Energy Every Day shows how managing energy, not time, is vital to sustained high performance. You’ll be more productive and satisfied by integrating physical activity into your routine, tweaking eating habits, and applying key tactics.

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Description: Each year millions of people venture into the world’s beautiful but unpredictable wilderness, and thousands of them encounter unexpected natural dangers and disasters. Outdoor Survival Guide provides the most practical information and everything readers need to create a sensible survival plan and be prepared for any hazardous situation.

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Description: Parenting the Children of Now is the first book of its kind that addresses the needs of parents of Indigo and Crystal children. It teaches parents how to mine for their own truth, understand their purpose in life, stop sabotaging their own and their children's lives, discover their passion, and live their truth. Each chapter offers insightful ideas and strategies, and ends with exercises for parents to do for their own development and another set of exercises to do with their children.

Unless parents are comfortable with who they are, they can't help their children be who they are meant to be — gifted beings with a message for humanity and the future of our world. This helpful book is one that parents will turn to again and again as they face struggles with their children, learn to live life to its fullest, and take pleasure in the life they are creating with their children with Dr. Meg's help.

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Description: Twelve years ago, renowned physician and author Dr. William Sears was diagnosed with cancer. He, like so many people, wanted-and needed-to take control of his health. Dr. Sears created a comprehensive, science based, head-to-toe program for living a long, fit life-and it worked. Now at the peak of health, Dr. Sears shares his program in PRIME-TIME HEALTH. This engaging and deeply informative book will motivate readers to make crucial behavior and lifestyle changes. Dr. Sears explores how to keep each body system healthy and delay those usual age-related changes.

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Description: A gripping account of the environmental crusade to save the world’s most endangered species and landscapes—the last best hope for preserving our natural home

Scientists worldwide are warning of the looming extinction of thousands of species, from tigers and polar bears to rare flowers, birds, and insects. If the destruction continues, a third of all plants and animals could disappear by 2050—and with them earth’s life-support ecosystems that provide our food, water, medicine, and natural defenses against climate change.

Now Caroline Fraser offers the first definitive account of a visionary campaign to confront this crisis: rewilding. Breathtaking in scope and ambition, rewilding aims to save species by restoring habitats, reviving migration corridors, and brokering peace between people and predators. Traveling with wildlife biologists and conservationists, Fraser reports on the vast projects that are turning Europe’s former Iron Curtain into a greenbelt, creating trans-frontier Peace Parks to renew elephant routes throughout Africa, and linking protected areas from the Yukon to Mexico and beyond.

An inspiring story of scientific discovery and grassroots action, Rewilding the World offers hope for a richer, wilder future.

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Description: Childhood memories from differing perspectives

Milbank and Mitchell, dissimilar in size and separated by more than two hundred miles, have more in common than might appear at first glance. Elsewhere in the country, they would be considered small towns, but in South Dakota, they are urban population centers. In the first half of the twentieth century, when many more South Dakotans lived on farms and ranches than do today, towns such as Milbank and Mitchell formed hubs for commerce, social activities, and culture.

Eric Fowler and Sheila Delaney looked at their communities from different viewpoints, but their childhood and young adult memories of South Dakota share common themes of life away from the farm. Fowler dealt with the hardships of a low-income, single-parent family in Milbank. Delaney experienced the wealth and occasional grandeur of Mitchell's social elite. Both found respite and youthful joy in mid-century South Dakota urban life. Despite the differences in Fowler and Delaney's circumstances, these two contrasting memoirs bring forth commonalities in the authors' early experiences of small-town life, even while they followed differing paths to adulthood.

Award-winning author and editor Molly P. Rozum is associate professor at Doane College in Crete, Nebraska. She provides the introduction for this book, drawing the two stories together.

Reader's Guide available at www.sdshspress.com

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Description: Our planet, our home, is in crisis plain and simple and this collection of quotes, poems, essays, and prayers will inspire all to actively reverse the man-made cause of global warming, stem the tide of environmental destruction, and reconnect to the good earth.

Short essays of topical interest introduce each of the eight sections of this book, and the 250 voices inside, most of them contemporary, begin to harmonize together as they seem to call out for their own canonical structure — one bounded by the ancient elements: Earth, Air, Fire, Water. This collection of voices is like a "green book of devotional hours," reminiscent of the Books of Hours medieval people used to hold in their palms. It was called "a cathedral in your hands." And like that medieval book, The Green Devotional reminds us that we are connected to something broader and wiser than ourselves.

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Description: From the author of The Healing Powers of Vinegar comes a complete guide to chocolate and its unique powers for improving health and well-being.
In recent years, modern science has confirmed what ancient civilizations believed—that chocolate, as well as being one of nature’s most versatile foods, has an abundance of medical benefits and can fight and prevent common ailments and diseases.
In this fascinating book, renowned health expert Cal Orey draws on the latest research to unwrap some surprising chocolate facts. Rich in mood-enhancing ingredients and potent antioxidants, chocolate can help boost the immune system, lower the risk of heart disease, cancer, and diabetes, plus relieve a host of ailments including depression, fatigue, pain, and PMS, and even rev up your sex life. The Healing Power of Chocolate includes dozens of health-boosting recipes, beauty treatments and home remedies that combat everything from acne to anxiety, all made with this delicious wonder food.

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Description: In the tradition of Dian Fossey and Jane Goodall, one of the only books on orangutans—on the brink of extinction—and the people who study, care for, and protect them.
The Intimate Ape is the first book to explore the current knowledge and the status of orangutans, a species threatened with extinction in their last refuge, the rain forests of Borneo and Sumatra.
Written with infectious personal passion, The Intimate Ape takes readers into orangutan’s natural habitats and discovers the complex natures of these great apes, and the dedication of the humans who care for them. Each chapter is a direct portal into the lives of individual orangutans through experiences and comments from the world’s leading orangutan scientists and conservationists. Most of the scientists were personally interviewed by author Shawn Thompson.
With never-before-published material—along with firsthand descriptions and a dramatic narrative—no other book about orangutans has the same breadth and scope in terms of the people interviewed and portrayed, and the places visited.

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Description: Full Description
What technologies do we need to solve the complex environmental, economic, social, and political challenges facing us today? As this thought-provoking book reveals, one tool for enacting change is already at our fingertips: the global network.

Consider the private domains of companies, governments, and institutions along with the public Internet: we have an immense communications network that connects billions of people in ways we never thought possible. In this book, author Sarah Sorensen clearly demonstrates why this network is the best sustainable technology available to help us tackle a wide range of problems.

If each of us represents a node on this network, then it's time we realize the potential we hold. The Sustainable Network is a call to action, urging individuals, governments, markets, and organizations to put the power of this network to good use.

* Discover how the sustainable network connects us all, with examples of how it's already effecting change
* Understand how this network magnifies the impact of even the smallest change and newest idea
* Explore the role that various market and political forces play
* Learn how the network can be improved to better address environmental, economic, and social conditions
* Get practical advice that you or your business can follow now

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sarah Sorensen is currently the Sr. Manager of Corporate Communications at Juniper Networks. She has spearheaded Juniper's Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives and worked on the company's corporate sustainable program, while managing Juniper's business announcements, crisis communications, public sector outreach and overall corporate message consistency across all business units. She has developed and written dozens of white papers, byline articles, and presentations on and about the networking and security industries. A graduate of UCLA (1996) where she majored in English and was a member of UCLA's Division 1 women's soccer team, she has focused her efforts in marketing, communications, and public relations for both start-ups and Fortune 500 companies.

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Description: To mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Words Without Borders and Open Letter produced this gorgeous anthology of fiction, essays, and poems about both life behind the Iron Curtain and the change, optimism, and confusion that went along with the end of Communism. This collection includes both new voices (Dan Sociu, Uwe Tellkamp, Dorota Maslowska) along with contemporary masters (Ryszard Kapuscinski, Vladimir Sorokin, Victor Pelevin), and also contains a great introduction by novelist and translator Keith Gessen.

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Description: The guru of extreme tourism sets out to face his worst fears in Africa, India, Mexico City, and—most terrifying of all—at Disney World

In the widely-acclaimed Smile When You’re Lying, Chuck Thompson laid bare the travel industry’s dirtiest secrets. Now he’s out to discover if some of the world’s most ill-reputed destinations live up to their bad raps, while confronting a few of his own travel anxieties in the process. Whether he’s traveling across the Congo with a former bodyguard from notorious dictator Joseph Mobutu’s retinue or diving into the heart of India’s monsoon season, To Hellholes and Back delivers Thompson’s trademark combination of hilarious stories and wildly provocative opinions, as well as some surprising observations about America’s evolving place in the world.

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Description: Ethnic bias against Middle Eastern Jews within Israel has far-reaching implications for the whole region.

Middle Eastern Jews from Egypt, Morocco, Iraq, Yemen, and other Arab or Muslim lands—“Mizrahis”—make up nearly half of Israel’s population. Yet European or “Ashkenazi” Jews have historically disparaged them for looking like Arabs, speaking Arabic, and bringing with them what was viewed as a “backward” Middle Eastern culture. Journalist Rachel Shabi, who was born in Israel to Iraqi Jews and grew up in England, returned to investigate the subtle discrimination and tense relations that still exist between Mizrahi and Ashkenazi Jews in Israel. She combines historical research, her own family’s story, and the heartfelt oral history of several other Mizrahis to make We Look Like the Enemy a stunning, unforgettable book.

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Description: Biblical Strategies to Help Parents Guide Teen Boys Successfully Into Manhood

What Your Son Isn't Telling You provides a rare look at the secret lives of teen boys—a world characterized by loneliness and peer fear; one in which measuring up as a man means conforming to a code of always being a tough guy, never showing weakness, and never expressing true feelings. Too many boys feel the constant pressure to prove themselves in classrooms, on playing fields, and especially among their friends. Deep inside they hunger for family support and connection—and long to be accepted by their peers. Each chapter of this must-read book is packed with real-life stories and emails from teen boys that will give parents a new understanding of what their sons aren't telling them.

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Description: Energy: It's a problem that never goes away (despite our best efforts as a nation to ignore it). Why has there been so much talk and so little action? In Who Turned Out the Lights? Scott Bittle and Jean Johnson offer a much-needed reality check: The "Drill, Baby, Drill" versus "Every Day Is Earth Day" battle is not solving our problems, and the finger-pointing is just holding us up.

Sorting through the political posturing and confusing techno-speak, they provide a fair-minded, "let's skip the jargon" explanation of the choices we face. And chapters such as "It's All Right Now (In Fact, It's a Gas)" prove that, while the problem is serious, getting a grip on it doesn't have to be. In the end, the authors present options from the right, left, and center but take just one position: The country must change the way it gets and uses energy, and the first step is to understand the choices.
In Bittle and Johnson's own words, "We’re taking the long view. We don’t know whether Congress will pass climate legislation this fall or whether there will be an agreement in Copenhagen. We don’t know what the price of gas will be next summer. What we do know is that no matter what happens in the next year or two, the United States faces an energy challenge that will take decades to solve. Tackling the problem will depend on countless decisions made in city halls and state legislatures, in corporate boardrooms and community zoning departments – not to mention what we do in our own personal lives. We believe it’s worth taking a little time to get the basics down."

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Description: In Women’s Home Workout Bible, fitness expert Brad Schoenfeld makes sense of home-based workouts. The full-color book features 12 four-week programs for conditioning, sculpting, and core stability, plus three levels of fat-burning cardio workouts. It also has consumer tips for products and space guidelines for making the most of any home gym.

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Description: In Your Business and Your Life, Dr. McCallister covers four important areas that many professionals struggle with daily:

* Time and Efficiency
* Burnout
* Management
* Marketing

More than a how-to guide, Your Business and Your Life addresses the main struggle most successful professionals’ face: The balance act between a successful professional life and a successful business life.

Is it possible to have both?

Absolutely – and Your Business Your Life will show you the way.

Dr.McCallister illustrates how to achieve both happiness in work and home by offering unique insight and day-to-day strategies. Teaching you how to find the light of new opportunities during the darkness of disasters – you will begin to experience and learn all the things you never dreamed possible.

Start living your dreams - Get your copy of Your Business and Your Life today!

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Description: Jóvenes pensando el Mediterráneo / Des jeunes pensant la Méditerraneé / Young researchers thinking the Mediterranean

La Càtedra UNESCO del Diàleg Intercultural a la Mediterrània de la Universitat Rovira i Virgili ha posat la preocupació pels joves investigadors mediterranis en el centre dels seus objectius. Per això, junt amb altres organitzacions com JISER, IDAES, IEMed i amb la col·laboració indispensable de l’AECI, va convocar la PRIMERA TROBADA DE JOVES INVESTIGADORS DE LA MEDITERRÀNIA, que va tenir lloc a Tarragona els 3 i 4 de maig de 2007.

Aquesta primera experiència va posar de manifest la necessitat dels investigadors en for- mació de l’àrea euromediterrània d’establir nexes de relació humana i científica, i de la necessitat de crear una plataforma estable que vehiculés els problemes i les ambicions d’aquest ampli col·lectiu. D’aquí va sorgir l’Associació Xarxa Euromed de Joves Investigadors i la convocatòria de la Segona Trobada de Joves Investigadors Mediterranis 2009.

En català, castellà, francès i anglès.

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Description: La internacionalització de les universitats en aquest moment històric que vivim no és un objectiu per si mateix: és la conseqüència lògica, ineludible, del procés d’harmonització de les titulacions a Europa. Les IV Jornades d’Innovació Docent a la URV han significat una important reflexió sobre aquest tema i la relació amb la imprescindible renovació de les metodologies educatives en el marc del procés de convergència a l’EEES. Posem a disposició de tota la comunitat universitària i a altres persones interessades el recull de les aportacions presentades en aquestes Jornades, per estendre la reflexió i impulsar les actituds proactives del professorat.

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Description: Estamos asistiendo a un amplio debate acerca de la utilitdad de las tecnologías de la información y la comunicación (TIC) como herramientas pedagógicas. Se suceden experiencias e investigaciones que intentan aplicar estas herramientas a la enseñanza, aunque muchas veces se cae en el error de olvidar que el acto didáctico responde a un binomio en el que también debe tenerse en cuenta el aprendizaje. Sólo considerando este binomio se contribuirá a la mejora de la calidad educativa.

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Description: "Bury me standing. I must be buried standing."
Powers, the follow-up to John Olson's Shade ("a must-read for those who enjoy Ted Dekker and Frank Peretti" -Publisher's Weekly), introduces a sheltered Gypsy girl named Mariutza. Her grandfather utters a mysterious last request before dying in her arms after being shot by 10 cloaked men. Those same men disappear before her eyes and Mariutza realizes that survival depends on finding Jaazaniah, a Prophet her grandfather often spoke of.

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Description: More than a year has passed since Saddam Hussein’s regime was toppled, and Iraq’s health care system is tumbling into crisis. With the war still raging and thousands of Iraqi doctors fleeing the country in fear for their lives, the U.S.’s Balad Air Base is becoming a last refuge for nearby Iraqi families seeking care for their children.

Coppola: A Pediatric Surgeon in Iraq is the fierce, true-life account of Dr. Chris Coppola’s two deployments in Operation Iraqi Freedom as an Air Force pediatric surgeon. Dr. Coppola is to Iraq what Tim O’Brien was for Vietnam, revealing the scope of the larger story in the clarity and intimacy of the details. Propelling the reader through nerve-racking scenes inside a military trauma hospital, this exhilarating story reveals how one man’s absolute commitment to U.S. soldiers and uncommon devotion to Iraqi families has made a difference.

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Description: Far from the gleaming monuments of Washington D.C., NRI operative, Danielle Laidlaw leads an expedition into the heart of the Amazon, in search of a legendary Mayan city rumored to be hidden within the tangled rain forest. Assisted by a renowned university professor and protected by an ex-CIA mercenary named Hawker, her team sets out with the truth concealed from them—that they are replacements for a group that vanished weeks before and that the treasure they’re seeking is no mere artifact, but a find that could transform the very world. Shadowed by a ruthless billionaire who wants their prize, threatened by a violent indigenous tribe and stalked by an unseen enemy that leaves only battered corpses in its wake, their one hope for survival rests in learning the truth: the connection linking the deadly reality of the Mayan legend; the nomadic tribe that haunts them; and the chilling secret buried deep beneath the ancient ruins.

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Description: Paris, 1815. Napoleon has just surrendered at Waterloo and is on his way to the island of St. Helena to begin his exile. Meanwhile, Daniel Connor, a young medical student from Edinburgh, has just arrived in Paris to study anatomy at the Jardin des Plantes–only to realize that his letters of introduction and a gift of precious coral specimens, on which his tenure with the legendary Dr. Cuvier depends, have been stolen by the beautiful woman with whom he shared a stagecoach.

In the fervor and tumult of post revolutionary Paris, nothing is quite as it seems. In trying to recover his lost valuables, Daniel discovers that his beautiful adversary is in fact a philosopher-thief who lives in a shadowy world of outlaws and émigrés. Daniel’s fall into this underworld is also a flight, for as he falls in love with the mysterious coral thief and she draws him into an audacious plot that will leave him with a future very different from the one he has envisioned for himself, Daniel discovers a radical theory of evolution and mutability that irrevocably changes his conception of the world in which he lives.

The Coral Thief, as riveting and beautifully rendered as Ghostwalk, Rebecca Stott’s first novel, is a provocative and tantalizing mix of history, philosophy, and suspense. It conjures up vividly both the feats of Napoleon and the accomplishments of those working without fame or glory to change our ideas of who we are and the world in which we live.

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Description: Emily Dane doesn’t want to give up city life to move with her aunt to a ranch in barren, uncivilized South Texas. Then she meets ranch foreman Diego Marcelo and finds her resolve slipping. Diego is attracted to pretty, vivacious Emmy, but the boss’s son starts to court her, so Diego grudgingly steps aside. When Emmy’s family and Diego’s boss are overdue returning from a cattle drive, Diego sets out to find them—and Emmy insists on going along. Can Diego overcome his jealousy before he loses Emmy forever? And will Emmy ever be able to give up her frills and petticoats for boots and spurs?

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Description: British satirist Will Self spins four interconnected stories into a brilliantly insightful commentary on human foibles and resilience.

Will Self’s remarkable new stories center on the disease and decay that target the largest of human organs: the liver. Set in locales as toxic as a London drinking club and mundane as a clinic in an ultraorderly Swiss city, the stories distill the hard lives of their subjects whether alcoholic, drug addict, or cancer patient. I n “Fois Humane,” set at the Plantation Club, it’s always a Tuesday afternoon in midwinter, and the shivering denizens of this dusty realm spend their days observing its proprietor as he force-feeds the barman vodkaspiked beer. Joyce Beddoes, protagonist of “Leberknödel,” has terminal liver cancer and is on her way to be euthanized in Zurich when, miraculously, her disease goes into remission. In “Prometheus” a young copywriter at London’s most cutting edge ad agency has his liver nibbled by a griffon thrice daily, but he’s always in the pink the following morning and ready to make that killer pitch. If blood and bile flow through liverish London, the two arteries meet in “Birdy Num Num,” where “career junky” Billy Chobham performs little services for the customers who gather to wait for the Man, while in his blood a virus pullulates. A moving portrayal of egos, appetites and addictions, Liver is an extraordinary achievement.

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Description: Left at the altar, her old job filled by someone else, all Kristy O’Neal wants is for life to return to normal. But working as a seasonal park ranger at Shiloh National Military Park alongside Ace Kennedy, the man who stole her job, may be more than Kristy can handle—especially when she realizes she’s falling for him. But Kristy doesn’t believe in true love anymore. With the history of her beloved park and his own ancestors in his arsenal, Ace begins the battle to prove to Kristy that true love does exist . . .before he loses her forever.

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Description: With Matchless, Gregory Maguire has reinvented the Hans Christian Andersen classic The Little Match Girl for a new time and new audiences. Originally asked by National Public Radio to write an original story with a Christmas theme, the New York Times bestselling author of Wicked and A Lion Among Men was once again inspired by the fairy tales we all loved in childhood—and he composed a poignant and enchanting tale of transcendence. A lovely and beautifully illustrated gift, Matchless places Andersen’s pitiful waif in the august company of Maguire’s previously re-imagined Snow White (Mirror, Mirror), Cinderella (Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister), and, of course, the Wicked Witch and other denizens of Oz.

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Description: The odyssey of Eva Perón—the Argentine first lady made famous in the play and the movie Evita— was as remarkable in death as it was in life. A few years after she succumbed to cervical cancer, her specially preserved body was taken by the military dictatorship that succeeded her deposed husband Juan. Hidden for sixteen years in Italy in a crypt under a false name, she was eventually exhumed and returned to Buenos Aires to be buried in an underground tomb said to be secure enough to withstand a nuclear attack.

Or was she?

When San Francisco private eye August Riordan engages in a flirtation with a beautiful university student from Buenos Aires, he witnesses her death in a tragic shooting and is drawn into mad hunt for Evita’s remains. He needs all of his wits, his network of friends and associates, and an unexpected legacy from the dead father he has never known to help him survive the deadly intrigue between powerful Argentine movers and shakers, ex-military men, and a mysterious woman named Isis who is expert in ancient techniques of mummification.

The fifth novel in the August Riordan series, The Big Wake-Up plunges everyman PI Riordan and his sidekick Chris Duckworth into their most terrifying and anguishing case ever.

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Description: How far would you go to protect your family?

Ann Brooks never thought she’d have to answer that question. Then she found her limits tested by a crisis no one could prevent. Now, as her neighborhood descends into panic, she must make tough choices to protect everyone she loves from a threat she cannot even see. In this chillingly urgent novel, Carla Buckley confronts us with the terrifying decisions we are forced to make when ordinary life changes overnight.

A year ago, Ann and Peter Brooks were just another unhappily married couple trying–and failing–to keep their relationship together while they raised two young daughters. Now the world around them is about to be shaken as Peter, a university researcher, comes to a startling realization: A virulent pandemic has made the terrible leap across the ocean to America’s heartland.

And it is killing fifty out of every hundred people it touches.

As their town goes into lockdown, Peter is forced to return home–with his beautiful graduate assistant. But the Brookses’ safe suburban world is no longer the refuge it once was. Food grows scarce, and neighbor turns against neighbor in grocery stores and at gas pumps. And then a winter storm strikes, and the community is left huddling in the dark.

Trapped inside the house she once called home, Ann Brooks must make life-or-death decisions in an environment where opening a door to a neighbor could threaten all the things she holds dear.

Carla Buckley’s poignant debut raises important questions to which there are no easy answers, in an emotionally riveting tale of one family facing unimaginable stress.

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Description: The first modern biography of the greatest traitor—and one of the most colorful characters—in American history.

Patriot, traitor, general, spy: James Wilkinson was a consummate contradiction. Brilliant and precocious, at age twenty he was both the youngest general in the revolutionary Continental Army, and privy to the Conway cabal to oust Washington from command. He was Benedict Arnold’s aide, but the first to reveal Arnold’s infamous treachery. By thirty-eight, he was the senior general in the United States army—and had turned traitor himself.

Wilkinson’s audacious career as Agent 13 in the Spanish secret service while in command of American forces is all the more remarkable because it was anything but hidden. Though he betrayed America’s strategic secrets, sought to keep the new country from expanding beyond the Mississippi, and almost delivered Lewis and Clark’s expedition into Spanish hands, four presidents—Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison—turned a blind eye to his treachery. They gambled that Wilkinson—by turns charming and ruthless—would never betray the army itself and use it to overthrow our nascent democracy—a fate every other democracy in the Western hemisphere endured. The crucial test came in 1806, when at the last minute Wilkinson turned the army against Aaron Burr and foiled his conspiracy to break up the U nion.

A superb writer and superlative storyteller, Andro Linklater captures with brio Wilkinson’s charismatic ability to live a double life in public view. His saga shows, more clearly than any other, how fragile the young republic was and how its strength grew from the risks its leaders faced and the challenges they had to overcome.

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Description: An encyclopedia of linguistic biographies: the witty, illustrated stories of the Earl of Sandwich, Charles Boycott, and other historical figures better known as words than people.

Eponymous, adj. Giving one’s name to a person, place, or thing.

Anonymous, adj. Anonymous.

Anonyponymous, adj. Anonymous and eponymous.

The Earl of Sandwich, fond of salted beef and paired slices of toast, found a novel way to eat them all together. Etienne de Silhouette, a former French finance minister, was so notoriously cheap that his name became a byword for chintzy practices—such as substituting a darkened outline for a proper painted portrait. Both bequeathed their names to the language, but neither man is remembered.

In this clever and funny book, John Bemelmans Marciano illuminates the lives of these anonyponymous persons. A kind of encyclopedia of linguistic biographies, the book is arranged alphabetically, giving the stories of everyone from Abu “algorithm” Al-Khwarizmi to Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin. Along with them you'll find the likes of Harry Shrapnel, Joseph-Ignace Guillotine, and many other people whose vernacular legacies have long outlived their memory.

Accented by amusing line portraits and short etymological essays on subjects like “superhero eponyms,” Anonyponymous is both a compendium of trivia and a window into the fascinating world of etymology. Carefully curated and unfailingly witty, this book is both a fantastic gift for language lovers and a true pleasure to read.

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Description: An irresistible literary treat: a memoir of the social and sexual lives of New York City’s cultural and intellectual in-crowd in the tumultuous 1970s, from acclaimed author Edmund White.

In the New York of the 1970s, in the wake of Stonewall and in the midst of economic collapse, you might find the likes of Jasper Johns and William Burroughs at the next cocktail party, and you were as likely to be caught arguing Marx at the New York City Ballet as cruising for sex in the warehouses and parked trucks along the Hudson. This is the New York that Edmund White portrays in City Boy: a place of enormous intrigue and artistic tumult. Combining the no-holds-barred confession and yearning of A Boy’s Own Story with the easy erudition and sense of place of The Flaneur, this is the story of White’s years in 1970s New York, bouncing from intellectual encounters with Susan Sontag and Harold Brodkey to erotic entanglements downtown to the burgeoning gay scene of artists and writers. It’s a moving, candid, brilliant portrait of a time and place, full of encounters with famous names and cultural icons.

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Description: A bold new account of explorer Henry Hudson and the discovery that changed the course of history.

The year 2009 marks the four-hundredth anniversary of Henry Hudson’s discovery of the majestic river that bears his name. Just in time for this milestone, Douglas Hunter, sailor, scholar, and storyteller, has written the first book-length history of the 1609 adventure that put New York on the map.

Hudson was commissioned by the mighty Dutch East India Company to find a northeastern passage over Russia to the lucrative ports of China. But the inscrutable Hudson, defying his orders, turned his ship around and instead headed west—far west—to the largely unexplored coastline between Spanish Florida and the Grand Banks.

Once there, Hudson began a seemingly aimless cruise—perhaps to conduct an espionage mission for his native England—but eventually dropped anchor off Coney Island. Hudson and his crew were the first Europeans to visit New York in more than eighty years, and soon went off the map into unexplored waters.

Hudson’s discoveries reshaped the history of the new world, and laid the foundation for New York to become a global capital. Hunter has shed new light on this rogue voyage with unprecedented research. Painstakingly reconstructing the course of the Half Moon from logbooks and diaries, Hunter offers an entirely new timeline of Hudson’s passage based on innovative forensic navigation, as well as original insights into his motivations.

Half Moon offers a rich narrative of adventure and exploration, filled with international intrigue, backstage business drama, and Hudson’s own unstoppable urge to discover. This brisk tale re-creates the espionage, economics, and politics that drove men to the edge of the known world and beyond.

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Description: According to Deborah Burnes, body care and eco-consciousness need not be mutually exclusive. In Part I of this timely book, she explains the historical roots of the search for beauty, and how it has led to a $60 billion cosmetics industry that misleads and confuses consumers on everything from product effectiveness to toxicity. In Part II, Burnes details options for buying natural and organic products in a range of budgets, with each graded on a "good," "better," or "best" scale in terms of chemical content and overall health impact. Part III discusses the positive effects chemical-free products have on overall health, and how those effects are expressed in the appearance of our skin. Part IV contains a wealth of facts, tips, and shortcuts to help consumers experience living green and enhancing personal beauty.

Written in an engaging style but based in science, Look Great, Live Green offers a fresh perspective on living an eco-friendly, body-friendly, beauty-friendly lifestyle.

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Description: The riveting history of a beautiful queen, a shocking murder, a papal trial—and a reign as triumphant as any in the Middle Ages.

On March 15, 1348, Joanna I, Queen of Naples, stood trial for her life before the Pope and his court in Avignon. She was twenty-two years old. Her cousin and husband, Prince Andrew of Hungary, had recently been murdered, and Joanna was the chief suspect. Determined to defend herself—Joanna won her acquittal against enormous odds. Returning to Naples, she ruled over one of Europe’s most prestigious courts for more than thirty years—until she was herself murdered.

As courageous as Eleanor of Aquitaine, as astute and determined as Elizabeth I of England, Joanna was the only female monarch in her time to rule in her own name. She was notorious: The taint of her husband’s death never quite left her. But she was also widely admired: Dedicated to the welfare of her subjects and realm, she reduced crime, built hospitals and churches, and encouraged the licensing of women physicians. While a procession of the most important artists and writers of her day found patronage at her glittering court, the turmoil of her times swirled around her: war, plague, intrigue, and the treachery that would, ultimately, bring her down.

As she did in her acclaimed Four Queens, Nancy Goldstone takes us back to the turbulent and colorful Middle Ages, and with skill and passion brings fully to life one of history’s most remarkable women. Her research is impeccable, her eye for detail unerring, and in The Lady Queen she paints a captivating portrait of medieval royalty in all its incandescent complexity.

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Description: For language buffs and lexicographers, copy editors and proofreaders, and anyone who appreciates the connection between language and culture—the illuminating story of “proper English.”

In its long history, the English language has had many lawmakers—those who have tried to regulate, or otherwise organize, the way we speak. The Lexicographer’s Dilemma offers the first narrative history of these endeavors, showing clearly that what we now regard as the only “correct” way to speak emerged out of specific historical and social conditions over the course of centuries.

As literary historian Jack Lynch has discovered, every rule has a human history, and the characters peopling his narrative are as interesting for their obsession as for their erudition. The struggle between prescriptivists, who prescribe a correct approach, and descriptivists, who analyze how language works, is at the heart of Lynch’s story. From the sharp-tongued satirist Jonathan Swift, who called for a governmentsponsored academy to issue rulings on the language, and the polymath Samuel Johnson, who put dictionaries on a new footing, to John Horne Tooke, the crackpot linguist whose bizarre theories continue to baffle scholars; Joseph Priestley, whose political radicalism prompted riots; and the ever-crotchety Noah Webster, whose goal was to Americanize the English language—Lynch brings to life a varied cast as illuminating as it is entertaining.

Grammatical “rules” or “laws” are not like the law of gravity, or laws against theft or murder—they’re more like rules of etiquette, made by fallible people and subject to change. Charting the evolution of English, Jack Lynch puts today’s debates—whether about Ebonics in the schools or split infinitives in the New York Times—in a rich historical context, and makes us appreciate anew the hard-won standards we now enjoy.

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Description: For readers of Beautiful Boy and Hurry Down Sunshine, a deeply personal and moving account of two lost children separated by two centuries.

While researching her next book, Julie Myerson finds herself in a graveyard, looking for traces of a young woman who died nearly two centuries before. As a child in Regency England, Mary Yelloly painted an exquisite album of watercolors that uniquely reflected the world in which she lived. But Mary died at the age of twenty-one, and when Julie comes across this album, she is haunted by the potential never realized. She is also reminded of her own child.

Only days earlier, Julie and her husband locked their eldest son out of the family home. He is just seventeen. After a happy childhood, he had discovered drugs, and it had taken only a matter of months for the boy to completely lose his way and propel his family into daily chaos. Julie—whose emotionally fragile relationship with her own father had left her determined to love her children better—had to accept that she was powerless to bring him back.

Honest, warm, and profoundly moving, this is the parallel story of a girl and a boy separated by centuries. The circumstances are very different, but the questions remain terrifyingly the same. What happens when a child disappears from a family? What will survive of any of us in memory or in history? And how is a mother to cope when love is not enough?

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Description: A celebration of the history of small, independent retail and the story of how mom & pop stores across the country still thrive on attentive customer service and renewed community support for local businesses.

Business journalist Robert Spector grew up working in his family’s butcher shop in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, where he learned invaluable lessons about the independent retail business—and about life. Mom & pop stores have always brought people together, fostering a sense of neighborhood identity and camaraderie, and are the glue that connects people in big cities and small towns alike.

Long fascinated by the “direct connection” people feel as merchants and customers when they do business in neighborhood shops, and responding to the growing “buy local” movement across the country, Spector sets out to discover the state, and the state of mind, of independent retailing in America. From a specialty soda pop shop in Los Angeles to a florist shop in Dayton, Ohio, from a bakery in Chicago to a bookstore in Bellingham, Washington, mom & pop store owners shared their stories with him, revealing the spirit and tenacity of the small business owner, dealing with frustration and defeat as well as triumph and success. Spector also interweaves the history of independent retailing. The Mom & Pop Store reflects the story of this country, for it embraces and cross-references every ethnic group and virtually every element of our society.

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Description: After a long absence, novelist CJ Baxter returns to his hometown of Adelia in Upstate New York for his grandfather's funeral. Facing a messy divorce and doubting his talent as a writer, CJ is forced to confront secrets that have tormented him since childhood. To complicate matters, his brother Graham is running for a Senate seat, and the family is intent on keeping their most damaging secret in the family, for fear the truth, were it found out, would ruin Graham's chances at winning. But with CJ airing their dirty laundry in his books, the family is forced to deal with him. They decide on a familiar method for handling the problem: a hunting trip, and just the setting for an accident to happen. CJ must find a way to avoid being killed while exposing their toxic family secret, regardless of Graham's lofty ambitions. More important, CJ must come to terms with the newfound faith that compelled him to return to Adelia in the first place.

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Description: At the heart of this vibrant saga is a vast ship, the Ibis. Her destiny is a tumultuous voyage across the Indian Ocean shortly before the outbreak of the Opium Wars in China. In a time of colonial upheaval, fate has thrown together a diverse cast of Indians and Westerners on board, from a bankrupt raja to a widowed tribeswoman, from a mulatto American freedman to a free-spirited French orphan. As their old family ties are washed away, they come to view themselves as ship-brothers. The vast sweep of this historical adventure spans the lush poppy fields of the Ganges, the rolling high seas, and the exotic backstreets of Canton.

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Description: Mark Mills’s bestselling novels Amagansett and The Savage Garden have won him widespread acclaim for his singular brand of suspense. Weaving a haunting and atmospheric historical backdrop with a tense plot of murder and an unforgettable love story, he delivers another riveting tale in The Information Officer.

Summer 1942: Malta, a small windswept island in the Mediterranean, has become the most bombed patch of earth on the planet, worse even than London during the Blitz. The Maltese, a fiercely independent people, withstand the relentless Axis air raids.

Max Chadwick is the British officer charged with manipulating the news on Malta to bolster the population’s fragile esprit de corps. This is all, besides a few broken-down fighter planes, that stands in the face of Nazi occupation and perhaps even victory—for Malta is the stepping-stone the Germans need between Europe and North Africa.

When Max learns of the brutal murder of a young island woman—along with evidence that the crime was committed by a British officer—he knows that the Maltese loyalty to the war effort could be instantly shattered. As the clock ticks down toward all-out invasion, Max must investigate the murder—beyond the gaze of his superiors, friends, and even the woman he loves.

Filled with remarkably poignant and atmospheric details of life under siege, and indelible characters who live and breathe, The Information Officer is a taut, transporting thriller—an enthralling novel told with exceptional skill and style.

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Description: Smart, socially gifted, and chronically impatient, Adam and Cynthia Morey are so perfect for each other that united they become a kind of fortress against the world. In their hurry to start a new life, they marry young and have two children before Cynthia reaches the age of twenty-five. Adam is a rising star in the world of private equity and becomes his boss’s protégé. With a beautiful home in the upper-class precincts of Manhattan, gorgeous children, and plenty of money, they are, by any reasonable standard, successful.
But the Moreys’ standards are not the same as other people’s. The future in which they have always believed for themselves and their children—a life of almost boundless privilege, in which any desire can be acted upon and any ambition made real—is still out there, but it is not arriving fast enough to suit them. As Cynthia, at home with the kids day after identical day, begins to drift, Adam is confronted with a choice that will test how much he is willing to risk to ensure his family’s happiness and to recapture the sense that the only acceptable life is one of infinite possibility.

The Privileges is an odyssey of a couple touched by fortune, changed by time, and guided above all else by their epic love for each other. Lyrical, provocative, and brilliantly imagined, this is a timely meditation on wealth, family, and what it means to leave the world richer than you found it.

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Description: A new novel about faith, family, and finding the courage to do the right thing from the author of Love and Biology at the Center of the Universe.

Police officer Jessica Villareal has always played by the book and tried to do the right thing. But now, she finds herself approaching midlife divorced, estranged from her daughter, alone, and unhappy. And she’s wondering if she ever made a right choice in her life.

But then Jess discovers a girl and her father living off the radar in the Oregon woods, avoiding the comforts—and curses—of modern life. Her colleagues on the force are determined to uproot and separate them, but Jess knows the damage of losing those you love. She recognizes her chance to make a difference by doing something she’s never dared. Because even though she’s used to playing by the rules, there are times when they need to be broken…

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Description: Singing God's Work tells the story of Choir founder and director, Allen Bailey, and the journey that led to his founding this sensational international singing group. Raised in a rat-infested tenement of Harlem, Allen Bailey grew up learning from and working with legends in the fields of entertainment, sports, politics and social activism, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Percy Sutton, Basil Paterson, Chief Justice Arthur Goldberg, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar,

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Description: Herman Rosenblat was a two-time Oprah guest. She called his tale of a girl tossing apples to him over the fence of a concentration camp when he was a boy the "greatest love story we've ever told." But when the story was labelled a hoax, a firestorm of criticism erupted and Rosenblat's memoir was cancelled. A new book, "The Apple" takes a look at the story behind the story.

Why was a a Holocaust "hoax" such hight stakes? Is it ever okay for a survivor to recast personal history? What are the perils of fabricating a memoir?

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Description: You are about to travel to Edgecombe St. Mary, a small village in the English countryside filled with rolling hills, thatched cottages, and a cast of characters both hilariously original and as familiar as the members of your own family. Among them is Major Ernest Pettigrew (retired), the unlikely hero of Helen Simonson's wondrous debut. Wry, courtly, opinionated, and completely endearing, Major Pettigrew is one of the most indelible characters in contemporary fiction, and from the very first page of this remarkable novel he will steal your heart.

The Major leads a quiet life valuing the proper things that Englishmen have lived by for generations: honor, duty, decorum, and a properly brewed cup of tea. But then his brother's death sparks an unexpected friendship with Mrs. Jasmina Ali, the Pakistani shopkeeper from the village. Drawn together by their shared love of literature and the loss of their respective spouses, the Major and Mrs. Ali soon find their friendship blossoming into something more. But village society insists on embracing him as the quintessential local and her as the permanent foreigner. Can their relationship survive the risks one takes when pursuing happiness in the face of culture and tradition?

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Description: George Young never thought of himself as a detective, but that’s pretty much his vocation—an attorney at a top insurance firm, it’s his job to pin down suspicious claims. Mrs. Corbett, the rich, eccentric wife of the firm’s founder, wants to know the true about her son Roger’s violent death. George’s investigation leads him to Roger’s mistress, a cagey Czech hand model named Eliska, whose motives for latching on to Roger may have gotten him killed.

Set against a volatile and vividly drawn Manhattan, Risk is prime Colin Harrison.

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Description: Set in Kuwait during the ominous years between the two Gulf Wars, Small Kingdoms traces the intersecting lives of five people—rich and poor, native and foreigner, Muslim, Christian, and non-believer—when they discover that a teenaged Indian housemaid is being brutally abused by her employer.
Tensions are high. Just miles away in Iraq, Saddam Hussein is threatening a second invasion of this tiny desert kingdom, which he destroyed six years before, in 1990. Even without a war on the horizon, rescuing a maid employed in a private home is a sticky matter in this rigid, class-conscious society, where the rich protect their own; and any intervention involves great personal risk.
Emmanuella, an impoverished cook from India, risks losing her job and thus her ability to support her family back home. Kit, the young wife of an American businessman in the Gulf, could face grave damage to her marriage. Mufeeda, an upper-class Kuwaiti woman, must buck the powerful status quo of her family and her class, as well as her own history.
And there’s Hanaan, a rebellious young Arab woman who may have as much to lose as the desperate maid. Having fallen in love with Theo, an American doctor working in the country, she has already faced violent retribution from her family. How much more violence lies ahead she doesn’t know. Stubborn, charismatic, and dismissive of her society’s strict codes of behavior for unmarried women, she will step forward to help the captive maid.
An Upstairs/Downstairs of the Arab world, Small Kingdoms tells the intimate story of ordinary people facing an extraordinary test in the face of another war.

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Description: Ron L. Deal, the leading Christian remarriage authority, and David H. Olson, a seasoned marriage and family expert, give couples hope that they can have strong healthy marriages. Their advice grows out of Olson's National Survey of Couples Creating Stepfamilies, the largest study of its kind ever conducted. As couples work through the chapters in The Remarriage Checkup in conjunction with an online Couple Checkup, they'll discover ways to improve all aspects of their marriage and build on its strengths.

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Description: Grace Hawkes has not spoken to her previously tight-knit family since her mother's sudden death five years ago. Well, most of the family was tight-knit— her father walked out on them when she was 13 and she and her two brothers and sister bonded together even closer with their mother as a result.

She's been doing her best to live her new life apart from them, but when their estranged father has a stroke and summons them, Grace suddenly realizes she's done the same thing he had done...abandoned those who need her most.

And need her they do, for inside the hospital walls, a strange war is unfolding between the pseudo-kindly woman who is their father's second wife and the rest of the original Hawkes clan. Upon reconnecting with her brother and sisters, Grace will find a part of herself she thought was lost forever. As they unravel the manipulative deception of the second Mrs. Hawkes, Grace will finally be able to stand up for her family— and to remember what a family is, even after all these years.

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Description: When 19 year old Jo decides to leave school, her parents’ home, and everything she holds dear, she’s left with nothing to guide her and no way to get where she’s going. But due to the kindness of strangers, finds her way to Cass’s Roadside Café, a side-of-the-road dinner in the middle-of-nowhere.
And on one extraordinary, windy day in 1977, she meets an old woman who, informed she only has a few weeks to live, tells everyone exactly what she thinks of them—and then doesn’t die; a water-witcher who has had to come to terms with his unusual talent; a hippie that travels wherever the wind takes him; a friendly trucker; and a cast of local characters whose pasts’ have taught them invaluable lessons, and whose stories’ give Jo the strength and courage to depart on her own journey, once again.

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Description: From the award-winning author of the Blessed Trinity trilogy comes the second in a powerful Series dealing with contemporary themes in a Christian setting.

Gabrielle Mercedes Booker could dance before she learned to walk, it’s what she was put on this earth to do. But when she’s practically orphaned after the death of her mother and her Aunt Cee reluctantly takes her in, she doesn’t get a chance to pursue her dreams to dance professionally. Settling for much less, Gabrielle tried to make a life for herself but can’t get over the feeling that there’s a void in her life.

Everything changes for Gabrielle when she attends Pastor Landis’s church and gives her life to Christ. She joins the church’s dance ministry and her life soars. She also meets Zachary Wayne Morgan, a doctor who becomes romantically interested in her. Soon murmurs of her past life begin to circulate, threatening to derail her status in the dance ministry as well as many of the relationships she’s formed in church. Will Gabrielle have to pay for her sins even after she’s been saved?

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Description: Sinuously constructed in four interlocking parts, Invisible opens in New York City in the spring of 1967 when twenty-year-old Adam Walker, an aspiring poet and studen at Columbia University meets the enigmatic Frenchman Rudolf Born, and his silent and seductive girlfriend Margot. Before long, Walker finds himself caught in a perverse triangle that leads to a sudden, shocking act of violence that will alter the course of his life.

Three different narrators tell the story, as it travels in time from 1967 to 2007 and moves from New York to Paris and to a remote Caribbean island in a story of unbridled sexual hunger and a relentless quest for justice.

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Description: LAPD Detective Harry Bosch is off the chain in
the fastest, fiercest, and highest-stakes case of his life.

Fortune Liquors is a small shop in a tough South
L.A. neighborhood, a store Bosch has known for years. The murder of John Li,
the store's owner, hits Bosch hard, and he promises Li's family that he'll find
the killer.

The world Bosch steps into next is unknown
territory. He brings in a detective from the Asian Gang Unit for help with
translation—not just of languages but also of the cultural norms and
expectations that guided Li's life. He uncovers a link to a Hong Kong triad, a
lethal and far-reaching crime ring that follows many immigrants to their new
lives in the U.S.

And instantly his world explodes. The one good
thing in Bosch's life, the person he holds most dear, is taken from him and
Bosch travels to Hong Kong in an all-or-nothing bid to regain what he's lost.
In a place known as Nine Dragons, as the city's Hungry Ghosts festival burns
around him, Bosch puts aside everything he knows and risks everything he has in
a desperate bid to outmatch the triad's ferocity

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Description: An international bestseller, Volpi's Season of Ash is a literary thriller that examines the "big ideas" of the latter half of the twentieth century through the lives of three women. It opens with the Chernobyl catastrophe and winds its way through the fall of Communism, the influence of the IMF, and the Genome Project. A bit like Richard Powers's books, Season of Ash is stuffed with ideas, but is also a gripping page-turner.

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Description: In the bestselling tradition of Kate Jacobs’ The Friday Night Knitting Club comes a wonderfully assured women’s fiction debut, brimming with warmth and wit, about starting over and crafting the life you really want.

Sydney Webster’s comfortable New England life comes crashing down when her husband dies suddenly, leaving her penniless and evicted. She had no idea about his huge gambling debts, and is getting no sympathy from her hurt and angry twenty-something daughter. With nowhere to turn, Sydney takes shelter at a college friend’s B&B in Cedar Key, Florida, where she begins to form a plan.

As Syd turns her talent at spinning wool and knitting into a retail venture, other doors begin to open. She steps into the embrace of a community rich with love, laughter, friendship… and secrets. Soon she faces a choice: spin a safety net, or spin forward and never look back. Entertaining and heartwarming, this superb debut will win readers over with its real-life challenges and quirky and compelling characters.

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Description: When two nineteenth-century Oxford students—Victor Frankenstein, a serious researcher, and the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley—form an unlikely friendship, the result is a tour de force that could only come from one of the world's most accomplished and prolific authors.
This haunting and atmospheric novel opens with a heated discussion, as Shelley challenges the conventionally religious Frankenstein to consider his atheistic notions of creation and life. Afterward, these concepts become an obsession for the young scientist. As Victor begins conducting anatomical experiments to reanimate the dead, he at first uses corpses supplied by the coroner. But these specimens prove imperfect for Victor's purposes. Moving his makeshift laboratory to a deserted pottery factory in Limehouse, he makes contact with the Doomsday men—the resurrectionists—whose grisly methods put Frankenstein in great danger as he works feverishly to bring life to the terrifying creature that will bear his name for eternity.

Filled with literary lights of the day such as Bysshe Shelley, Godwin, Lord Byron, and Mary Shelley herself, and penned in period-perfect prose, The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein is sure to become a classic of the twenty-first century.

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Description: Patrick Rush is a single father, devoted to his young son but haunted by the loss of his wife, when he joins a local writing group. In the candlelit studio where the circle meets, he finds one writer's work far more powerful than the others—a young woman named Angela, who writes about a girl stalked by a killer named the Sandman. But Angela's stories may be more autobiography than tall tale: soon the members of the group are being hunted by a shadowy figure resembling the Sandman, and the line between fiction and real life beings to dissolve. When his own son is taken, Patrick is forced to chase down the Sandman for himself and to discover the ending to his own terrifying story.

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Description: THE RETURN is a captivating novel of family, love, and betrayal set against a backdrop of civil war, flamenco, and fiery Spanish passion. Sonia, a young woman visiting Spain from England, knows nothing of Granada's shocking past, but ordering a simple cup of coffee in a quiet café will lead her into the extraordinary tale of a family's fight to survive the horror of the Spanish Civil War. Seventy years earlier, in the Ramírez family's café, Concha and Pablo's children relish an atmosphere of hope. Antonio is a serious young teacher, Ignacio a flamboyant matador, and Emilio a skilled musician. Their sister, Mercedes, is a spirited girl whose sole passion is dancing, until she meets Javier and an obsessive love affair begins. But Spain is a country in turmoil. In the heat of civil war, everyone must take a side and choose whether to submit, to fight, or to attempt escape.

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Description: Deception–the lies we tell ourselves and the lies we tell others –is the subject of The True Deceiver, Tove Jansson’s most unnerving and unpredictable novel. Here Jansson takes a darker look at the subjects that animate the best of her work: solitude and community, art and life, love and hate.

All winter long the snow has been falling on the village. The sun rises late in the day, and once it does, there is little to do but trade tales. This year the talk of the town is all about Katri Kling and Anna Aemelin. Katri is a yellow-eyed outcast who lives in a room with her simple teenaged brother and a dog she never bothered to name. She has no use for the daily dishonesties that smooth social life, but she can see to the rational core of any problem. Anna, an elderly children’s book illustrator, is a respected and easygoing, if aloof, member of society. She lives alone in her family mansion, venturing out come springtime to paint exquisitely detailed paintings of the forest floor (to which her young fans insist she add adorable pink bunnies). When Anna needs someone to help around the house, Katri eagerly volunteers. It’s not long before she and her brother have moved into the mansion and taken charge of just about every aspect of Anna’s life and livelihood. As the season becomes increasingly oppressive, the two women find themselves engaged in a confrontation that will gradually strip away their cherished illusions.

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Description: The Congo beckons to young Amanda Brown in 1958, as she follows her missionary calling to the mysterious "dark continent" far from her South Carolina home. But her enthusiasm cannot cushion her from the shock of a very foreign culture—where competing missionaries are as plentiful as flies, and oppressive European overlords are busy stripping the land of its most valuable resource: diamonds.

Little by little, Amanda is drawn into the lives of the villagers in tiny Belle Vue—and she is touched by the plight of the local witch doctor, a man known as Their Death, who has been forced to take a second job as a yardman to support his two wives. But when First Wife stumbles upon an impossibly enormous uncut gem, events are set in motion that threaten to devastate the lives of these people Amanda has come to admire and love—events that could lead to nothing less than murder.

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Description: When Josh's mother dies in a phobia-induced car crash, she leaves two questions for her grieving family: how did a snake get into her car and how do you mourn with no faith to guide you?



Twelve-year-old Josh is left alone to find the answers. His father is building a time machine. His four-year-old brother's closest friend is a plastic Power Ranger. His psychiatrist offers nothing more than a blank journal and platitudes.



Isolated by grief in a home where every day is pajama day, Josh makes death his research project. He tests the mourning practices of religions he doesn't believe in. He tries to mend his little brother's shattered heart. He observes, records and waits - for his life to feel normal, for his mother's death to make sense, for his father to come out of the basement.



His observations, recorded in a series of journal entries, are funny, smart, insightful - and heartbreaking. His conclusions about the nature of love, loss, grief and the space-time continuum are nothing less than life-changing. (For ages 9-12)

From Kirkus Reviews:
"In this impressive debut novel, Josh keeps a journal to chart his feelings and thoughts, allowing readers to follow his journey from sadness to acceptance and the eventual return of cohesion in his family. Given the subject matter, the story is never maudlin, and Josh's voice rings natural and true. An elegantly crafted volume of lasting power."

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Description: Winnie and Wolf is the story of the extraordinary friendship between Winifred Wagner and Adolf Hitler in the Years between the First and Second World Wars. The girl who would become Winifred Wagner was raised in an orphanage and married to the gay son of composer Richard Wagner. As heiress to the country's most august cultural legacy, she grew up surrounded by philosophers and composers. In 1923, the Wagners met the man who would be their hero and hope for the future: a wild-eyed Viennese opera fanatic named Adolf Hitler. Almost immediately Winnie and Wolf struck up an intimate friendship.

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Description: Despite their isolated location on the edge of the Great Plains, the Black HIlls have become an important tourist destination over the past one hundred years. Suzanne Julin examines the early development of this phenomenon and the influences—political, local, and national—that helped create a prosperous tourist industry in the region between the 1880s and the start of World War II.

Public policy and state and federal government actions promoted the Black Hills as the vanguard of both the mountain West and the Wild West and developed a national park, two national monuments, the largest state park in the country, and the iconic Mount Rushmore as methods to direct tourist traffic to the region. Julin argues that these promotional efforts affected more than just tourism; they helped form or change local trends and issues and established the identity of the region.

A Marvelous Hundred Square Miles addresses the concerted efforts of governmental, quasi-governmental, and private groups to develop the tourist industry in the early twentieth century. While this book is specifically about the Black Hills, its larger themes pertain to the development of tourism as one of the most important industries in the modern United States.

Suzanne Julin is an award-winning author born and raised in South Dakota.

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Description: From Josephine Baker to Shonda Rhimes, from Arthur Ashe to President Barack Obama, this completely revised and updated volume explores and celebrates African-American accomplishments in every field.

African Americans have overcome overwhelming odds to become leaders in politics, education, science and medicine, law, military, sports, and business. In compiling this superb resource book, Joan Potter has mined old documents, records, letters, family histories, and government files to showcase 450 incredible accomplishments by African Americans. From colonial times to present day, explore the lives’ of Harriet Tubman, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, Alexander Twilight, Doctor Daniel Hale Williams, Condoleezza Rice, Hal Jackson, and many more.

Updated to include a wealth of new and revised information, and illustrated with stunning photographs, this volume is one to cherish and to share for generations. African American Firsts is a testament to African Americans’ talent, ambition, creativity, and courage.

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Description: Based on Thompson's popular blog, www.badassoftheweek.com, this book offers a relentless onslaught of the toughest warlords, vikings, samurai, pirates, gunfighters, and military commanders to every live. The badasses populating the pages of Badass are the most savagely awesome historical figures to ever strap on a pair of chain mail gauntlets and run screaming into battle. Author Ben Thompson—considered by many to be the Internet’s foremost expert on badassitude—has gathered together a rogues’ gallery of butt-stomping rogues, from Julius Caesar and Genghis Kahn to Blackbeard, George S. Patton, and Bruce Lee. Their bone-breaking exploits are illustrated by top artist from the fields of gaming, comics, and cards—including World of Warcraft designer James Ryman and Thomas Denmark, illustrator for the collectible card game Magic: The Gathering. This is not your boring high school history—this is tough, manly, unrelentingly Badass!

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Description: What do Tetra aquarium supplies, Elector-Nite sensors, and Nissha touch panels have in common? They are typical "hidden champions," medium-sized, unknown companies (with annual revenues under $4 billion) that have quietly, under the radar, become world market leaders in their respective industries. Hermann Simon has been studying these hidden champions for over 20 years, and in this sequel to his worldwide bestseller, Hidden Champions, he explores the dramatic impact of globalization on these companies and their outstanding international success. Going deep inside more than a thousand hidden champions around the world, Simon reveals the common patterns, behaviors, and approaches that make these companies successful, and, in many cases, able to sustain world market leadership for generations, despite intense competition, financial pressures, and constantly evolving market dynamics. In the tradition of In Search of Excellence, Built to Last, and Good to Great, Simon identifies the factors in business operations, customer service and marketing, innovation, human resources management, organizational design, leadership, and strategy that separate these outstanding performers from the rest of the pack – and from the large corporations of the day.

This book:

Offers best practices of the world’s most successful "hidden" companies as well as lessons that can be applied in any type of organization, large or small.

Showcases unusual companies (from Tetra aquarium supplies to Petzl headlamps) that provide an alternative to the well-known multinationals that are struggling in the current financial crisis.

Considers the impact of globalization and information/communication technologies on the prospects of smaller companies.

In 2005, Simon, the author, was voted Germany’s second most influential management thinker behind the legendary Peter Drucker; he consults and speaks to business audiences around the world.

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Description:

This book shows both recent graduates and experienced veterans how to find hidden work opportunities, sell themselves effectively to employers, network, and create effective marketing tools beyond the traditional resume or CV.

Does it seem really hard to find work in the current market? Do you wonder why you get negative or no responses to your job applications? If the answer to any or all of these questions is yes, this book is for you. The book explains how:

• the route to getting work has changed


• you can find hidden work opportunities


• to create effective marketing tools for yourself

• Checklists


• Quizzes (and answers)


• Sample résumés, letters, and more!

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Description: Chile peppers are hot — in every sense of the word. They add culinary fire to thousands of dishes from a variety of cuisines and inspire near-fanatical devotion in those who have succumbed to their incendiary charms. In this comprehensive book, world chile experts Dave DeWitt and Paul W. Bosland have assembled all the information that anyone with an interest in chile peppers could ever hope to find. Detailed profiles of the 100 most popular chile varieties include information on how to grow chiles; how to diagnose and remedy problems, pests, and diseases; and post-harvest processing and preservation. The book culminates in 85 mouth-watering recipes that make brilliant use of both the characteristic heat of chile peppers and of their more subtle flavor qualities.

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Description: Updated to coincide with the long anticipated release of the Farrelly Brothers’ movie The Three Stooges—the ultimate chronicle of the funniest comedy team in the history of American film.

The Three Stooges were a trio of knock-around comics in vaudeville who went on to become TV and movie legends. The Three Stooges Scrapbook is the most comprehensive account of these adored “knuckleheads.”

Initially the Three Stooges were little more than a trio for humorist Ted Healy, until 1933 when they struck out on their own. They were immediately signed to a contract and became an instant sensation.

Dour-faced Moe Howard with sugar-bowl haircut, his bald, chubby brother Curly, and frizzy-haired Larry poked, slapped, ear-yanked, and nose-twisted their way into the hearts of America… and into film history. The nearly 200 two-reel comedies, made between 1933 and 1958 have been translated into over 25 languages, entertained nearly six generations of fans, and are seen somewhere in the world every single day.

The Three Stooges Scrapbook is a historical overview of their half century in show business, including biographies of every Stooge, a complete listing of each and every short subject, feature, and TV appearance. Originally published in 1982 (now on its 17th printing), the never-out-of-print scrapbook is loaded with over 500 priceless photographs, making it the definitive book about the most admired slapstick team of all time.

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Description: The study points to a heavy workload having strong repercussions on the well-being of the family. Modern men are faced with an “invisible dilemma” which emerges when they try to reconcile their work with their family obligations. These men are dissatisfied with how they manage their time. They want more time for themselves, for their partners and for their families, but they are unable to find it in their current circumstances. Work is seen as a continuous pressure which requires their presence and commitment and which makes these men more and more dependent on their jobs. The reality is that these men, and particularly those who occupy management positions, spend a lot of time working and their jobs end up making inroads into their private lives and colonizing the family ambit. It also seems that for many of these men work continues to be their number one priority and is more important than the family.

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Description: L’objectiu d’aquest llibre és tractar d’entendre de forma senzilla les raons que han fet possible l’èxit dels vins del Priorat. Les condicions físiques d’aquesta comarca són úniques: la deforestació i l’erosió dels vessants han fet més difícil la vida dels ceps, i com a resultat produeixen un escàs però concentrat most. Malgrat aquestes condicions adverses, el treball de la gent del Priorat i la mateixa història de la comarca han aconseguit que aquests mostos concentrats i ben madurats, conreats en costers amb poc sòl fèrtil, minso i en condicions difícils, es converteixin en uns vins de forta personalitat i qualitat.

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Description: El llibre Els estrangerismes del català és un manual que dóna compte de la presència dels manlleus en català (i, indirectament, també en altres llengües). S’hi analitzen diversos aspectes lingüístics, com l’adaptació gràfica, la possible traducció, el plural o els derivats; però també els aspectes socials, com ara per què una llengua té estrangerismes, per quines vies penetren, etc. L’objectiu és donar una visió àmplia del fenomen dels estrangerismes, especialment en el cas català. Encara que el llibre és fonamentalment útil per a estudis universitaris, també és una obra de divulgació referida a un dels camps més controvertits del vocabulari; per tant, també és d’interès per a qualsevol persona que vulgui aprofundir en els seus coneixements sobre la llengua catalana.

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Description: Guittone d’Arezzo fou sens dubte un dels autors més rellevants de la generació de poetes italians immediatament anterior a Dante Alighieri, aquella que, a la Toscana dels municipis, recollia amb forta personalitat tant el llegat de la lírica trobadoresca provençal com el de la recent experiència de l’escola siciliana.

Quan Guittone tenia uns trenta-cinc anys d’edat, experimentà una crisi espiritual i s’uní a la congregació dels frati gaudenti. Aquest fet condicionà la seva heterogènia producció, solcada per intenses contradiccions i diversament inspirada per la política, la religió i l’amor.

Al costat de la seva important poesia de tema religiós, la seva etapa «anterior», de tipus amorós, reflecteix, com poques, les esquerdes i tensions, ètiques i estètiques, d’un món líric periclitat, que sovint expressa amb trets irònics i fins i tot sarcàstics.

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Description: Double Cross continues the story of Taylor Pasbury, a former Secret Service agent turned security professional in the first novel Forsaken ("highly readable...Taylor is a character worth another visit." BookPage)
In Double Cross, Taylor discovers the body of a former client's top assistant and all the evidence points to embezzlement and suicide. So why doesn't Taylor believe this case is as it seems. Enter her mother who walked out on Taylor and her dad when Taylor was nine and you have family dynamics playing a role in what is increasingly looking like a murder.

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Description: Necessary As Blood is the latest entry in Deborah Crombie’s New York Times Notable, Edgar®, Agatha, and Macavity Awards-nominated mystery series featuring Scotland Yard detectives Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James. A Texan frequently compared to the masters of British crime fiction—including P.D. James, Martha Grimes, Barbara Vine, and fellow American Elizabeth George—Crombie dazzles once more with Necessary As Blood—a relentlessly suspenseful tale of a vanished mother, a murdered father, and a helpless, endangered child.

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Description: “This book is not just beautiful and intelligent, but also painfully — even wincingly — funny. It is rare that I literally laugh out loud while I'm reading, but Rhoda Janzen's voice — singular, deadpan, sharp-witted and honest — slayed me, with audible results. I have a list already of about fourteen friends who need to read this book. I will insist that they read it. Because simply put, this the most delightful memoir I've read in ages.”—Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love

A hilarious and moving memoir—in the spirit of Anne Lamott and Nora Ephron—about a woman who returns home to her close-knit Mennonite family after a personal crisis

Not long after Rhoda Janzen turned forty, her world turned upside down. It was bad enough that her brilliant husband of fifteen years left her for Bob, a guy he met on Gay.com, but that same week a car accident left her with serious injuries. What was a gal to do? Rhoda packed her bags and went home. This wasn’t just any home, though. This was a Mennonite home. While Rhoda had long ventured out on her own spiritual path, the conservative community welcomed her back with open arms and offbeat advice. (Rhoda’s good-natured mother suggested she date her first cousin—he owned a tractor, see.) It is in this safe place that Rhoda can come to terms with her failed marriage; her desire, as a young woman, to leave her sheltered world behind; and the choices that both freed and entrapped her.

Written with wry humor and huge personality—and tackling faith, love, family, and aging—Mennonite in a Little Black Dress is an immensely moving memoir of healing, certain to touch anyone who has ever had to look homeward in order to move ahead.

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Description: After her boyfriend is killed in a van in which she was also a passenger, Katie Miller finds herself suffering from depression and anxiety attacks. What—or who—will deliver Katie from the bondage of her fears? Freeman Bontrager has been attracted to Katie for years. Now that she’s home, can he break through her emotional scars long enough to reach her heart? When a mysterious package brings Katie out of her despair, hope looms, until the “gift” must be returned to its rightful owners. Will Katie find the courage to really live—and love—again?

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Description: Little Molly Messenger is kidnapped on a sunny June morning. Three days later she’s returned, apparently unharmed. Molly’s mother, Chris, is so grateful to have her daughter back that she’s willing to overlook the odd circumstances. A few days later, the brakes go out on Chris’s car. An accident? Maybe. Except that it turns out that Chris, the IT manager at a large Chicago bank, may have misappropriated three million dollars. Not convinced that his daughter is safe, Molly’s father hires PI Georgia Davis to follow the money and investigate Chris’s death.

Doubleback reunites PI Georgia Davis with video producer Ellie Foreman. The two women track leads from Northern Wisconsin to an Arizona border town, where illegal immigrants, smuggled drugs, and an independent contractor called Delton Security come into play. Georgia and Ellie go to great lengths to find the truth, and Georgia discovers that you can cross a line, but sometimes you have to double back.

This is the sequel to the acclaimed EASY INNOCENCE, which introduced PI Georgia Davis. In DOUBLEBACK, Hellmann pairs Davis with Ellie Foreman, the protagonist of her first four novels.

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Description: In 1954, in the cookhouse of a logging and sawmill settlement in northern New Hampshire, an anxious twelve-year-old boy mistakes the local constable’s girlfriend for a bear. Both the twelve-year-old and his father become fugitives, forced to run from Coos County–to Boston, to southern Vermont, to Toronto–pursued by the implacable constable. Their lone protector is a fiercely libertarian logger, once a river driver, who befriends them.

In a story spanning five decades, Last Night in Twisted River–John Irving’s twelfth novel–depicts the recent half-century in the United States as “a living replica of Coos County, where lethal hatreds were generally permitted to run their course.” From the novel’s taut opening sentence–“The young Canadian, who could not have been more than fifteen, had hesitated too long”–to its elegiac final chapter, Last Night in Twisted River is written with the historical authenticity and emotional authority of The Cider House Rules and A Prayer for Owen Meany. It is also as violent and disturbing a story as John Irving’s breakthrough bestseller, The World According to Garp.

What further distinguishes Last Night in Twisted River is the author’s unmistakable voice–the inimitable voice of an accomplished storyteller. Near the end of this moving novel, John Irving writes: “We don’t always have a choice how we get to know one another. Sometimes, people fall into our lives cleanly–as if out of the sky, or as if there were a direct flight from Heaven to Earth–the same sudden way we lose people, who once seemed they would always be part of our lives.”

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Description: One of A merica’s foremost language experts presents an annotated edition of A mbrose Bierce’s classic catalog of correct speech.

In 1893, Ambrose Bierce declared “I am for preserving the ancient, primitive distinction between right and wrong.” In Write it Right, originally published in 1909, Bierce turned this considerable zeal on the English language. The result revealed that the satirical author of The Devil’s Dictionary had a keen ear for the vernacular—and that he hated it. This slim volume of his three hundred or so reviled words and expressions contains many we use today with no hesitation at all. (Of “electrocution” he says, “To one having even an elementary knowledge of Latin grammar this word is no less than disgusting, and the thing meant by it is felt to be altogether too good for the word’s inventor.”) Jan Freeman, acclaimed author of the weekly column “The Word” for the Boston Globe, annotates Bierce’s rulings with style, humor, and in-depth research, revealing what Bierce got right—and what he didn’t—and giving insight into how the language has changed over the past century. Write it Right, with its incisive wit and insight into the history of American English, is the perfect gift for word curmudgeons everywhere.

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Description: Bound Galley of CRITTERS with special excerpts from the series' previous six titles. Mayberry meets Mitford in these funny, heartwarming, family-friendly novels set in a fictitious Georgia town. Written by a revolving group of authors including NYT bestseller Smith, Patti Callahan Henry, Sabrina Jeffries, Sharon Sala, Anne Bishop, and others. Coming soon: a spin-off mystery series by Mossy Creek veteran CAROLYN MCSPARREN

Springtime brings thoughts of love to people all over the world, and Creekites are no exception. Although love to Creekites isn’t necessarily romantic. Take, for example, how they feel about their pets. Dogs, cats, birds, and fish take center stage as we once again see how the Southern half lives. Your favorites are back and in just as much trouble as ever. Amos and Ida are still circling each other’s wagons. Sandy Crane has a little Faith. Jayne Reynolds emerges from widowhood to take a long lingering look at Mossy Creek’s Bubba Rice. Ed Bailey and his beloved dog Possum, Lil Ida Hamilton, Peggy Caldwell and others will make you laugh and cry at human and animal antics. Cat heists. Fish ponds. Bird nappings. Don’t miss the fun with Critters of Mossy Creek!

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Description: Game warden Mike Bowditch returns home to his cabin one sweltering summer night to find on his answering machine an alarming voice from the past: his father Jack, a volatile, hard-drinking poacher. The next day, Mike learns that police have begun an all-out search for the man who killed a timber company exec and a beloved local cop the night before—and his father is their prime suspect. Jack has escaped from police custody, and only Mike believes that his tormented father might not be guilty.

Now, alienated from the woman he loves, shunned by colleagues who have no sympathy for the suspected cop-killer, Mike must come to terms with his tortured past. He knows firsthand Jack’s brutality, but is the man capable of murder? Desperate and alone, he strikes up an uneasy alliance with a retired warden pilot, and together the two men journey deep into the Maine wilderness in search of a runaway fugitive. But the only way for Mike to save his father is to find the real killer—which could mean putting everyone he loves in the line of fire.

THE POACHER’S SON is a sterling debut of literary suspense. Taut and engrossing, it represents the first in a series featuring Mike Bowditch.

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Description: A sharp-witted knockdown of America’s love affair with positive thinking and an urgent call for a new commitment to realism

Americans are a “positive” people—cheerful, optimistic, and upbeat: this is our reputation as well as our self-image. But more than a temperament, being positive, we are told, is the key to success and prosperity.

In this utterly original take on the American frame of mind, Barbara Ehrenreich traces the strange career of our sunny outlook from its origins as a marginal nineteenth-century healing technique to its enshrinement as a dominant, almost mandatory, cultural attitude. Evangelical mega-churches preach the good news that you only have to want something to get it, because God wants to “prosper” you. The medical profession prescribes positive thinking for its presumed health benefits. Academia has made room for new departments of “positive psychology” and the “science of happiness.” Nowhere, though, has bright-siding taken firmer root than within the business community, where, as Ehrenreich shows, the refusal even to consider negative outcomes—like mortgage defaults—contributed directly to the current economic crisis.

With the mythbusting powers for which she is acclaimed, Ehrenreich exposes the downside of America’s penchant for positive thinking: On a personal level, it leads to self-blame and a morbid preoccupation with stamping out “negative” thoughts. On a national level, it’s brought us an era of irrational optimism resulting in disaster. This is Ehrenreich at her provocative best—poking holes in conventional wisdom and faux science, and ending with a call for existential clarity and courage.

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Description: THIN THREADS® Stories is a book series that embraces the best of the human spirit - the heart and instinct in each of us that leads us toward becoming who we were meant to be. These Thin Thread stories are a collection of moments, events or decisions told in personal story form, each showing how the course of our lives can be redirected for the better. The stories encapsulate our human desire to tell our own stories and to read and relate to others through their stories.

The Advance reading copy of THIN THREADS: Real Stories of Life Changing Moments (The Classic edition) contains general stories from a variety of categories. The 272 page book contains 50 heart-warming, original stories. www.ThinThreads.com

About the Author:
Stacey Krone Battat is a family education workshop facilitator and former broadcast journalist. She has always loved to hear people’s personal stories. “I love the idea of people connecting to each other in the most fragile times, like now. I want people to be inspired by other’s real life experiences and have something positive come out of that moment,” says Stacey. Stacey lives in Woodbridge, CT, and regularly conducts inspirational workshops.

http://www.kiwipublishing.com/content...

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Description: Three years after the Revolution, Tehran looks like a boneyard. Shahed has returned from California to his homeland to face the ghost of his father, to find out who betrayed him as a child, to recover something that might make him feel alive. Witnessing the brutalities of militant fundamentalists, he wishes his exuberant hustler of a father were alive again to kick the mullahs and their vicious crusade out of Iran.

Shahed conjures up his life as a twelve-year-old, superimposing on the grim streets the bizarre exploits of his lusty father and his crazy cohorts in the days of the Shah. He sees again his long-suffering mother, Uncle E the opium addict, the massive butcher, Taj the idiot . . . and most vividly of all the seductress Houri, tantalizing nymph of his childhood fantasies.

Now he must weigh the past, its dreams and crimes, excitement and betrayal, against the desolation of the present.

Mehrdad Balali combines a gripping father-son rivalry with a stark contrast of Iran under the Shah, and in the troubled years following the Revolution. Islamic culture unfolds through details of family relations, feasts and rites, circumcision, women’s roles and the vibrancy of everyday life for the poor in a country with thousands of years of history.

Houri brings alive an alien milieu few Americans understand—the subjection of an entire country to the horrors of religious fundamentalist rule. Yet it portrays a universal story older than nations: that of the bitter struggle and harsh love between father and son.

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Description: Sugarless offers a ruefully entertaining take on the simultaneous struggles of coming out, coming-of-age, and coming-to-Jesus.

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Description: Award-winning journalist Susan Marks uses real-life conflicts to show how the battle for water is being fought every day everywhere. She draws on interviews with water experts, research from universities and think tanks, and studies from national and international governmental organizations.Here’s the story about what’s happening to America’s shrinking water supply: the problems, the players, the complexities, and the possible solutions.

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Description: Three academics on the trail of a reclusive German author; a New York reporter on his first Mexican assignment; a widowed philosopher; a police detective in love with an elusive older woman—these are among the searchers drawn to the border city of Santa Teresa, where over the course of a decade hundreds of women have disappeared.

In the words of The Washington Post, "With 2666, Roberto Bolaño joins the ambitious overachievers of the twentieth-century novel, those like Proust, Musil, Joyce, Gaddis, Pynchon, Fuentes, and Vollmann, who push the novel far past its conventional size and scope to encompass an entire era, deploying encyclopedic knowledge and stylistic verve to offer a grand, if sometimes idiosyncratic, summation of their culture and the novelist's place in it. Bolaño has joined the immortals."

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Description: From the award-winning, national bestselling author of A Different Kind of Blues, Getting Some of Her Own, and When You Dance With the Devil comes a compelling, unforgettable page-turner of a woman’s journey to believing in herself.

Leticia Langley is used to fighting for what she wants, that’s how she wound up being the first in her family to graduate from college. So what if she’s never had a date? All that’s about to change when she gets herself a job as a food columnist—and treats herself to a makeover that will transform her life.

With her hot weave and a dazzling new wardrobe that shows off her curves, Leticia’s career and her social life are quickly on the rise. Especially when Max Baldwin, a handsome fellow columnist, takes some interest in her. Even as their relationship develops, Leticia realizes that to have the kind of life she wants, she’ll have to let down her guard, and let love in.

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Description: Marilyn Brant’s fiction debut is a wonderfully imaginative novel with a sly twist, as one woman finds love—and herself—with a little help from Jane Austen.

It begins in sophomore English class— just as Ellie Barnett’s teacher is assigning Pride and Prejudice— from nowhere comes a quiet “tsk” of displeasure. The target: Sam Blaine, the cute bad boy who’s been teasing Ellie for years. Entirely unbidden, as Jane Austen might say, the author’s ghost has taken up residence in Ellie’s mind.

Jane’s sensible, witty advice guides Ellie through the hell of adolescence and beyond. Years and boyfriends come and go—sometimes a little too quickly, sometimes not nearly fast enough—but Jane’s counsel is constant, and on the subject of Sam, quite insistent. Stay away, Jane demands. He is your Mr. Wickham. But is Jane’s advice foolproof or does even she have a little to learn about love?

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Description: From the acclaimed bestselling author of The Piano Shop on the Left Bank, a historical novel about Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau, the son of Sacagawea, and his intriguing sojourn as a young man in 1820s Paris.

Born in 1805 on the Lewis and Clark expedition, Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau was the son of the expedition's translators, Sacagawea and Toussaint Charbonneau. Across the Endless River compellingly portrays this mixed-blood child's mysterious boyhood along the Missouri among the Mandan tribe and his youth as William Clark's ward in St. Louis. The novel becomes a haunting exploration of identity and passion as eighteen-year-old Baptiste is invited to cross the Atlantic in 1823 with young Duke Paul of Württemberg.

During their travels throughout Europe, Paul introduces Baptiste to a world he never imagined. Gradually, Baptiste senses the limitations of life as an outsider. His passionate affair with Paul's older cousin helps him understand the richness of his heritage and the need to fashion his own future. But it is Maura, the beautiful and independent daughter of a French-Irish wine merchant Baptiste meets in Paris, who most influences his ultimate decision to return to the frontier.

Rich in the details of life in both frontier America and the European court, Across the Endless River is a captivating novel about a man at the intersection of cultures, languages, and customs.

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Description: Have you ever wanted to change the world for the better?

In the heartwarming new novel Angel Lane, author Sheila Roberts presents three small-town shop owners and best friends who set their sites on doing just that. But their aspiration to “keep the heart in Heart Lake” by asking their neighbors to commit one random act of kindness every day leads them to some pretty wild situations, and shows one woman that love can grow from the most unexpected places.

Ripe with irresistible humor, friendship, and even recipes inspired by the story, Angel Lane is a story which teaches the important of kindness, friendship, and taking a chance on love.

Visit stmartins.com/SheilaRoberts and sign up to receive “A VERY HOLLY CHRISTMAS,” the never-before-released story FREE via e-mail.

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Description: A laugh out loud look into the lives of one of American family from a truly unique perspective—the family dog, Bo—the #1 doggie blogger, a.k.a. the Tucker Max of dogs.

Bo Hoefinger is not your everyday, run-of-the-mill author; he’s a mixed-bred shelter dog with an attitude. His popular blog, www.boknowsonline.com receives over 1000,000 page views per month, and his unique voice brings this memoir to life.

Bad to the Bone focuses on how he—and two seemingly normal people—wreak havoc on an unsuspecting world while creating a lifelong bond in the process. All the stories are true and will leave dog lovers laughing out loud.

Featuring humorous sidebars, lists, and text boxes from Bo’s diary, Bad to the Bone offers a touching and humorous narrative about the intensely loving and rich relationship between owner and dog.

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Description: What do you do when there's a bear in your backyard? A big black bear shows up one moonlit night and creates a ruckus, breaking into the shed where the grain is kept for the geese and then raiding the bird feeders. The bear is causing problems at other homes in the neighborhood, too, getting into the compost and eating dog food that was left out overnight. The neighbors propose all sorts of solutions to get rid of the bear, but the young boy among them knows what is best— a bear belongs in the woods. He and his family come up with a clever solution for keeping the bear safe and happy, away from people. Bear-ly There reminds us that an occasional glimpse of a bear through the trees or at the far side of a meadow is much, much better than having one in the backyard — for us and the bear.

Rebekah Raye is an artist beloved for her bird and animal paintings and sculpture. Her warm, expressive work is derived from her affinity with the natural world around her studio and home in East Blue Hill, Maine, where she had a bear visitor not too long ago...

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Description: Covering two periods, from World War II to the establishment of the State of Israel, this historical novel follows the lives of two men – a father, Jochanan, and his son, Benhazar.

Benhazar learns the significance of his father’s presence in the Colony and uncovers a trail of puzzling events with seemingly supernatural overtones. When his father dies under suspicious circumstances in a fire that guts a Jerusalem apartment, the son sets out to piece together
the fragments of his father’s shadowy past.

Many of the events in this fascinating and suspenseful novel are based on actual historical events disclosed for the very first time.

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Description: In the second in Peggy Webb’s rollicking mystery series filled with Southern-fried wit and lovably eccentric characters, Callie Valentine and her incomparable Basset hound, Elvis, must uncover a murderer who’s leaving residents of the King’s hometown all shook up…

With her ex-hunk’s burnin’ love tempting her at every turn—and her basset hound (who thinks he’s the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll) plotting to give remedial voice lessons to impersonators descending on Tupelo for the annual Elvis Festival—beauty shop entrepreneur Callie Valentine Jones has her hands full. Taking a breather from hairdos and mayhem, she throws a garden party for the out-of-towners (catered by cousin Lovie of course, with plenty of recipes that feature vodka).

But when one wannabe-Elvis falls dead in Callie’s gardenias and Lovie becomes the prime suspect, the cousins set out to see which sequined jumpsuit hides the heart of a killer.

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Description: Everything Flows is the last novel by Vasily Grossman, written after the Soviet authorities suppressed his extraordinary epic of besieged Stalingrad, and the besieged modern soul, Life and Fate. The central story is simple yet moving: Ivan Grigoryevich, the hero, is released after thirty years in the Soviet camps and has to struggle to find a place for himself in an unfamiliar world. This story, however, provides only the bare bones of a work written with prophetic urgency and in the shadow of death. Interspersing Ivan’s story with a variety of other stories and essays and even a miniature play, Grossman writes boldly and uncompromisingly about Russian history and the “Russian soul,” about Lenin and Stalin, about Moscow prisons in 1937, and about the fate of women in the Gulag, and in the play he subtly dramatizes the pressures that force people to compromise with an evil regime. His chapter about the least-known act of genocide of the last century–the Terror Famine that led to the deaths of around five million Ukrainian peasants in 1932—33–is unbearably lucid, comparable in its power only to the last cantos of Dante’s Inferno.

In this last book, Grossman is a man set free–from the silence imposed on him by Soviet censors, from the conventions of fiction. The result is a novel like no other, a testament of unequaled conviction to the horrors of oppression and the elation of liberty.

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Description: The prequel to the New York Times bestseller The Elegance of the Hedgehog.

In the heart of Paris, in the posh building made famous in The Elegance of the Hedgehog, the greatest food critic in the world is dying. Revered by some and reviled by many, Monsieur Pierre Arthens has been lording it over the world’s most esteemed chefs for years. But now, during these, his final hours, his mind has turned to simpler things. He is desperately searching for that singular flavor, that sublime something once sampled, never forgotten, the Flavor par excellence.

Thus begins a charming voyage that traces the career of Monsieur Arthens from childhood to maturity across a celebration of all manner of culinary delights. Alternating with the voice of the supercilious Arthens is a chorus belonging to his acquaintances and familiars—relatives, lovers, a would-be protégé, even a cat. Each will have his or her say about Monsieur Arthens, a man who has inspired only extreme emotions in people. Here, as in The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Muriel Barbery’s story celebrates life’s simple pleasures and sublime moments while condemning the arrogance and vulgarity of power. Read by Norman Dietz, Barbara Caruso, Eliza Foss, Jean Brassard, Pete Larkin, Heather Corrigan, and Paula Parker.

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Description: Home is a brilliantly imagined retelling of the prodigal son parable, set at the same moment and in the same Iowa town as her award-winning earlier novel, Gilead. The Reverend Boughton's hell-raising son, Jack, has come home after twenty years away. Now an alcoholic, he is perpetually at odds with his traditionalist father, though he remains his most beloved child. Home is a luminous and healing book about families and faith from one of America's most beloved and acclaimed authors.

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Description: In Frankly My Dear, I’m Dead, readers first met the unforgettable Delilah Dickinson and her literary travel agency. In the second book of this witty and original series, award-winning writer Livia Washburn takes her incorrigible sleuth to Mark Twain country, where murder is brewing on the mighty Mississippi.

After a lively tour through the Old South of Gone with the Wind, Delilah Dickinson is ready for a leisure steamboat trip down the Mississippi. But when one of her passengers winds up dead, Delilah has to get to the bottom of this downright ornery mystery.

Pretty soon Delilah’s list of suspects is longer than the Mississippi is wide…not to mention she’s taken quite a shine to Mark Twain himself—or rather, to the handsome actor putting on a one-man show aboard the riverboat. But things are never what they seem when Delilah’s at the helm, and pretty soon one murder has turned into two, and the killer’s next step may be truly explosive…

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Description: Trussell Jones has a big problem. He is crazy in love with a beautiful girl named Ellen. The problem? He has no car. His stepmother, Loretta, who believes that she is spiritually connected to Queen Victoria, won't let him drive. Furthermore, she is afraid Trussell is trying to kill her and arms herself with a rigid set of rules and a .38. Trussell's problems mount as he is pursued by armed, redneck motorcycle hoods, while his buddies, stumbling through their own lives as well as Trussell's, draw on visions of St. Francis and Jimmy Durante to pull off their best prank of all on Trussell. Meanwhile, Trussell overcomes his fear of contacting the girl of his dreams and begins a budding romance with a walking date to their elementary school playground. Just another heartwarming tale of a boy in love with a girl? Hardly. This quirky, laughable coming-of-age story is set in Columbus, Georgia in the 1950s. It will take you on a road trip of hits, near misses, twists, and sudden turns that will set you on your ear. Its irreverent protagonist discovers that the road to adulthood is paved with gain and loss, humor and heartache.

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Description: A Bilingual New York Review Books Original

Vivant Denon’s No Tomorrow is one of the masterpieces of eighteenth-century French libertine literature, a book to set beside Laclos’s Les Liaisons dangereuses, except that where Laclos’s icy novel is one of hellish depravity, Denon’s ravishing novella is a paradisal diversion. This tale of seduction is itself a seduction, with a plot that could be said to slowly unveil itself before arriving at last at an unexpected consummation. Summoned by Madame de T–– to her country house, the young hero of the novella is taken on a tour of the grounds, only the beginning of a night that not only will be full of unanticipated delights but will give rise to unforeseen, perhaps unanswerable, questions. Lydia Davis’s definitive translation of Denon’s slim masterpiece is accompanied by the French text. Peter Brooks, Professor of Comparative Literature at Yale University, provides an introduction that explores the mysteries of No Tomorrow’s original publication and the subtleties of Denon’s ethics of love.

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Description: From the bestselling author of Tuscan Holiday, The Friends We Keep, and The Summer of Us comes a heartfelt novel about family, love, and promises kept and broken—a poignant rewarding read, perfect for the holiday season.

Every year the Rowans gather at their family farmhouse in rural Maine for Christmas holidays. This year, Becca Rowan has driven north from Boston with one thought in mind—reclaiming the daughter she gave up when she was a frightened teenager. Raised by Becca’s older brother and his wife, Rain Rowan has no idea she was adopted.

But Becca is unprepared for the depth of her family’s reaction to her announcement. Her brother is angry and fearful, her sister reveals long-buried resentments, and her parents are torn between concern and guilt. As the family neighbor, Alex, draws her deeper into an unexpected friendship, Becca begins to challenge her own beliefs and preconceptions.

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Description: New York Times bestselling author Joanne Fluke gives her readers a special holiday treat—an all-new Hannah Swenson holiday mystery with recipes for a complete Christmas dinner, from soup to nuts!

Hannah Swenson’s bakery in Lake Eden, Minnesota is at its busiest during the holidays. Orders are high, and Hannah’s busy as can be and loving it. She also gets a kick out of “Lunatic Larry Jaeger’s Crazy Elf Christmas Tree Lot,” a kitschy carnival taking place smack-dab in the middle of the village green.

But when Larry is found dead as a doornail in his own office, it turns out that quite a few people had a reason to wish him ill. With so many suspects to investigate and the twelve days of Christmas ticking away, Hannah’s running out of time to nab a murderous Scrooge who doesn’t want her to see the New Year.

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Description: Random Magic. It's a lot like our world, only...completely different.

When absent-minded Professor Random misplaces the main character from Alice in Wonderland, young Henry Witherspoon must book-jump to fetch Alice before chaos theory kicks in and the world vanishes.

Along the way he meets Winnie Flapjack, a wit-cracking doodle witch with nothing to her name but a magic feather and a plan. Such as it is.

Henry and Winnie brave the Dark Queen, whatwolves, pirates, Strüths, and fluttersmoths, Priscilla and Charybdis, obnoxiously cheerful vampires, Baron Samedi, a nine-dimensional cat, and one perpetually inebriated Muse to rescue Alice and save the world by tea time.

Watch the book trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImIzIx...

Pre-release reviews: Brilliant! Roald Dahl meets Hayao Miyazaki - Alice in Wonderland meets Monty Python! - In [the] line of Pratchett or Adams - A delightful chase to locate Alice - Great dialogue - LOVED it - It's Lewis Carroll and Roald Dahl and Monty Python and...it all works!

Quirky escape for children and parents - Extremely creative - Keeps building into funny, twisted nonsense! - An original spin on mythology, folklore, and fairy tales - The right director could have a field day with this - Phenomenal concept, outstanding dialogue - More engaging story than Harry Potter - Thoroughly enchanting - Madly in love with this story.

Zany, off-the-wall laugh riot - Inventive and fun - Vastly entertaining - Tomorrow's classic, today - Sly dialogue...exquisite punning - Fun dialogue banter, constantly turning words on their head to make sense of the non-sensical. And the imagination involved in the scenery and the wild characters strewn throughout Henry's journey are top notch, if perhaps drug induced - Amazing gift for dialogue, especially comedic dialogue - Extremely creative - It would take a master like Hayao Miyazaki to bring it to life properly - Wildly and wonderfully imaginative - Hilarious - Lots of fun!

Recommended for: Anyone with a sweet tooth for the eerily fantastic, book lovers, people who read in the bathtub, snuggled up in a favorite comfy chair, on trains, in tea rooms and under trees.

Other folks who might love this book: Britcom addicts, closet romantics, deep thinkers who need a little light reading, and fun folks who just love a wild story, a philosophical angle or a good laugh.

But also recommended for: Anyone who's had a rough day and longs for the great escape, anyone who's ever read and loved Alice in Wonderland, everyone who believes in everyday magic (or the other kind), smart folks, kind folks, and folks who prefer their — rather offbeat — humor black as coal.

Reader welcome note: Please feel free to visit the author's official site at SashaSoren.com to preview excerpts, take a quick quiz to find out which character is most like you, have a random excerpt read to you, or to have your tarot cards read for free.

Thank you for your visit, and, if you win a book, thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts in a review. Good luck to everyone, and happy reading!

Random Magic...do you believe?

August 2009 review:

Random Magic is cute and quirky. I love the 'no guts, no glory' attitude of young Winnie Flapjack.

Winnie is determined to see Henry through on his quest to find Alice — no matter the obstacles. And those obstacles are many — but funny.

Winnie and Henry's adventure is non-stop — they move from one challenge to the next with their goal firmly in mind.

Each challenge is met and overcome by Winnie using a little magic, a little daring and common sense — well, common for the world she lives in.

I really enjoyed this world Ms. Soren created and all of the characters that occupy this world. I think Random Magic would make a wonderful family movie.

I give Random Magic 4 out of 5 stars. :)

- Michelle G., Michelle's Book Blog

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Description: Salt is an utterly compelling fantasy adventure, the work of a master storyteller at the peak of his powers.

When his father Tarl is captured and enslaved to work in Deep Salt, Hari vows to rescue him. This is a forbidding task: no one returns from Deep Salt. But Hari was born and raised in Blood Burrow. He's tough and smart—and he has a secret gift: he can communicate with animals.

The beautiful Pearl, born into the privileged world of the ruling class known as Company, has learned forbidden things from her mysteriously gifted maid Tealeaf. Now her father has promised her in marriage to the powerful and ambitious Ottmar. But Pearl will never submit to a subordinate life, so she and Tealeaf must flee.

When their paths cross, Hari and Pearl realize that together they must discover the secrets of Deep Salt. Their long journey through the badlands becomes far more than a quest to save Tarl—their world is on the brink of unspeakable terror.
(Teen fiction)

Maurice Gee is one of New Zealand's finest writers, with more than forty books for adults and young adults and a number of prestigious awards to his credit. Salt is the first volume of The Salt Trilogy. Orca will publish Gool in Fall 2010 and Blood Burrow in Spring 2011.

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Description: Essence® bestselling author Daaimah S. Poole—one of Dafina’s youngest hottest and strongest talents—burns up the pages with a sizzling story of friendship gone wrong.

Nicole and Kia have been friends since elementary school. Nothing can break up their friendship—until Kia’s new boyfriend convinces her to sue Nicole’s sick mom after a car accident. Now Kia has money, a flashy home in Florida, and one furious ex-friend out to grab some of the good life fot herself. And when wealthy businessman Derrick starts burning up her sheets, she sees a future as sparkling as the engagement ring she’s expecting.

Then Kia turns up broke, with a new baby in tow…and news that Derrick isn’t the man he seems. Between lies, lust and betrayal, Nicole must decide who to trust and what she really wants.

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Description: What s the best way for traveling musicians to schlep their instruments to a wedding in a faraway village? Why, in an old baby carriage, of course! But when the mischievous carriage takes off by itself and rolls from village to village, oy vey, oy vey, only a sweet klezmer song can save the day.
Join the Klezmer Bunch on a bumpy journey all the way to the wedding ceremony and sing along with the happy bride and groom. A wedding like this has never been seen
A yidl mit fiddle and violin. The relatives drank vodka Till their beards dropped. And the in-laws gobbled goose and pastrami Till their bellies popped. Amalia Hoffman captures the spirit and soul of klezmer with charming and whimsical illustrations where the music is playfully intertwined with every detail of village life.

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Description: Marika Vecera is a young war reporter who hears the news that her hero, famous war correspondent Robert Lewis, has committed suicide. As she begins working on his biography she gets word from a missionary who claims to have seen Lewis alive. Astounded, Marika heads to Papua New Guinea to uncover the truth. Encountering the dangers of the jungle and native mythology, Marika's search for Lewis becomes an unforgettable journey into the depths of the human soul.

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Description: Set in a Danish seaside town, the novel tells the story of a powerful bond between a neglected brother and sister and their agonizing separation. The sister fantasizes about escaping to Siberia, but that dream seems ever more remote as her brother becomes a young man and disappears into the Nazi resistence movement. Petterson traces the separate struggles of brother and sister with empathy, insight, and pathos.

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Description: Global warming: it's one of the hottest scientific and political issues of today. And yet we've all found ourselves asking . . .

- It's freezing outside—where's global warming now?
- Climate is always changing—how do we know this isn't just a cycle?
- Why should Christians care about global warming when we know the world won't end that way?

For all the talk about climate change, there's still a great deal of debate about what it all means, especially among Christians. A CLIMATE FOR CHANGE offers straightforward answers to these questions, without the spin. This book untangles the complex science and tackles many long-held misconceptions about global warming. Authored by a climate scientist and a pastor, A CLIMATE FOR CHANGE boldly explores the role our Christian faith can play in guiding our opinions on this important global issue.

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Description: In the shadow of the fallen Old Man of the Mountain, on a lonely stretch of mountain road, two men lay dead. A spasm of violence that took only a few minutes to play out leaves a community divided and searching for answers.
Bad Blood is the riveting account of the long-standing feud between Franconia, New Hampshire, police officer Bruce McKay, 48, and Liko Kenney, 24. In May 2007, Kenney shot and killed Officer McKay, following a dramatic chase that began with a routine traffic stop. Kenney, cousin of ski legend Bode Miller, was then shot and killed by a shadowy passerby. Almost immediately, the tragic incident revealed deep tensions within this otherwise quiet community in the White Mountains with charges that Kenney was a hell-raiser and mentally unstable and counter-charges that Officer McKay was a rogue cop who dispensed justice as a way to settle personal scores. Striving to get at the truth of the story, the author uncovers a complicated mix of personalities and motivations. Local and statewide interests clash while regional and national media— and even YouTube viewers— supply ready stereotypes to fit their agendas. Amid larger questions of the meaning of individual freedom we are, ultimately, helpless witnesses to an inevitable clash of characters.

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Description: “To Be a Mensch addresses a central problem of our times: what is good character, and why should we care about it? We can all see the decline in honest, concern for others, idealism, responsibility for the community and the drive to have a life that makes the world a better place

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Description: Father Williams explores the most common obstacles that prevent people from trusting God, including personal betrayals, unfulfilled expectations, and seemingly unanswered prayers. He then explains what is reasonable to expect from God and offers practical tips for ways to grow in trust.

Williams is becoming a revered voice in the Christian community for his insightful writings on issues that really matter to Christians. In this new book, Father Williams will help readers understand, not only how to trust God in spite of doubts and confusion, but to truly know God can be trusted.

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Description: In his new book, Chris McNab (co-author of Tools of Violence) tackles the history of law enforcement in America, with particular focus on gun violence. According to McNab, 39 police officers were killed by gunfire in 2008, a 75% reduction from 1973 when 156 officers were shot. McNab shows how increasing professionalism combined with the adaptation of military tactics has helped reduce the police mortality rate.

Deadly Force begins with the colorful history of the Wild West, where law enforcers and outlaws were often indistinguishable. McNab then describes the era of mass immigration during the late 19th and early 20th centuries where the mortality rate for police officers
was even higher than that of the 1970s. He next tackles the era of gangland violence brought on by prohibition and the Great Depression. From there he moves into the era of protests and psychopaths that terrorized urban areas in the 60s and 70s. He then describes the era of turf and drugs marked by the infamous drive-by shootings of the 80s. In a closing chapter, he gives a fair and sane assessment of the Sean Bell shooting, balancing the public outrage at the officers’ use of force against ineffectualness of handguns in deadly force engagements.

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Description: For the believing Jew today, no less than for those in the past, the study of the weekly portion is a religious experience. For this reason it is customary to consider the section along with its traditional commentaries. It is important to know not only what the Torah meant when it was written, but also what it has meant within Judaism since then. It is also important for intellectual honesty to distinguish between the two. Moderns also have the advantage of using the results of linguistic studies and comparative studies of other ancient texts as well as archaeological finds to help us understand the text.

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Description: Since birth, Holy has entered extraordinary worlds of consciousness through the portal of lucid dreams. While there, she conducts souls to the other side and to the light, teaches, guides, and heals. She enters those non-ordinary realities not just to explore them, but to work on behalf of the human community.

In Fringe Dweller on the Night Shift, she eloquently recounts her psychic and spiritual work with the troubled dead, the newly dead or those about to die – especially children – to provide emergency relief. She also brings back messages from the world beyond this one, by offering each and every one of us inspiration and ideas for honoring our feelings and connecting to the divine expression of all that is.

Fringe Dweller on the Night Shift combines cosmic adventure with down-to-earth practical information – part art, part memoir, part philosophy, part guidance, this book is a work of the heart

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Description: Living with debt is an inevitable part of modern life. Just about everyone has debt in one form or another - a mortgage, an outstanding credit card balance, a car financing deal, a student loan - and many other types. So if we can't get rid of debt we need at least to learn how to handle it so that we can control it, before it controls us. In this book we look at a series of case studies and how people got into trouble with debt. They weren't stupid or irresponsible. Their problems arose because circumstances changed. Some changes could have been foreseen, others not - but they were things that could happen to anybody at any time - to you or me. This book will show you: How, if you take the right action at the right time, you can get matters straight. How to borrow in a way that will minimise the risk of getting into difficulties, and how to do it at the lowest cost. How, if the worst happens and you get into a complete financial mess, you can get out of it with the least long term damage.

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Description: This riveting, fast-paced biography traces Amihai Paglin’s rise through the ranks of the IZL, and describes in detail the military operations that ultimately led to the British evacuation from Palestine. Packed with first-person interviews with those who made this history, and meticulously researched in the archives of the period, here is the full story of the bombing of the King David Hotel, the conquest of Jaffa, and more, told from the perspective of an insider.

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Description: Nicole Williams is the tell-it-like-it-is career expert who you wish could fight your work battles for you. But with her ingenious approach-taking the tactics used to land a man and applying them to your career-you'll be able to handle any work situation and come out on top. Here, Nicole introduces twenty tried-and-true dating rules such as "Don't Give Away the Milk for Free" and "Don't Waste the Pretty" and reveals how they can be applied just as effectively in the office. Other strategies include:

· Keep It Brief

· Don't Bash Your Ex

· Have Others Sing Your Praises

· Play Hard to Get

· Keep the Fire Alive

· Be Willing to Walk Away


Among other topics, Nicole dishes on how much to reveal at work as well as what to put up with from your boss (and, more importantly, what not to). She tackles everything from having the money talk to leaving them wanting more on a job interview. And sprinkled throughout GIRL ON TOP is fashion advice ("Top Ten Commandments of Style") and checklists to determine if you need to get a life.

Nicole's keen insight and candid advice will teach you how to recognize the good guys from the bad, win the kudos of those who matter, and create the career of your dreams.

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Description: During the year following his daughter s sudden death as a young adult, Dr. Chaim Licht observed the traditional Jewish mourning practices, yet found that he still had questions about the meaning of his family s experience. As a scholar of Jewish literature, he turned to the literature of the Aggada to explore the responses of the sages to similar situations.He combed the Ma asei Hakhamim, stories of the sages in the aggadic literature, for stories of parental bereavement, and analyzed the responses of the bereaved parents as well as the consolation that was offered to them by others. This collection of stories and Dr. Licht s analyses form a rich and detailed portrait of the traditional views of the Jewish sages on the meaning of and the proper reaction to the death of a child. In the Grip of Bereavement An Analysis of Ten Aggadic legends on Bereavement in The World of The Sages.

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Description: The Book of Numbers, the fourth out of five- volume set to be published contains an English translation of Targum Onkelos, Commentary, Appendix, Onkelos Highlights, Beyond the Text and translation of the Haphtarot from the Aramaic Targumim with Introduction

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Description: A baby girl is born in the middle of the Second World War, and survives in a miraculous way thanks to the determination of her mother and the good-heartedness of simple people.

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Description: This book provides an overview of the broad scope of epidemiological research conducted in a wide range of mental health domains up
to the most recent Israel World Mental Health Survey. Among the many topics, it covers specific disorders; mental health problems of specific populations, such as the Arab sector, immigrants and Holocaust survivors; as well as service delivery.

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Description: Uniquely insightful and entertaining tips to a healthy Jewish marriage, sprinkled with humor and Torah anecdotes

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Description: Caught up in a terrifying war, facing choices of life and death, two Iraqi sisters take us into the hidden world of women’s lives under U.S. occupation. Through their powerful story of love and betrayal, interwoven with the stories of a Palestinian American women’s rights activist and a U.S. soldier, journalist Christina Asquith explores one of the great untold sagas of the Iraq war: the attempt to bring women’s rights to Iraq, and the consequences for all those involved.

On the heels of the invasion, twenty-two-year-old Zia accepts a job inside the U.S. headquarters in Baghdad, trusting that democracy will shield her burgeoning romance with an American contractor from the disapproval of her fellow Iraqis. But as resistance to the U.S. occupation intensifies, Zia and her sister, Nunu, a university student, are targeted by Islamic insurgents and find themselves trapped between their hopes for a new country and the violent reality of a misguided war.

Asquith sets their struggle against the broader U.S. efforts to bring women’s rights to Iraq, weaving the sisters’ story with those of Manal, a Palestinian American women’s rights activist, and Heather, a U.S. army reservist, who work together to found Iraq’s first women’s center. After one of their female colleagues is gunned down on a highway, Manal and Heather must decide whether they can keep fighting for Iraqi women if it means risking their own lives.

In Sisters in War, Christina Asquith introduces the reader to four women who dare to stand up for their rights in the most desperate circumstances. With compassion and grace, she vividly reveals the plight of women living and serving in Iraq and offers us a vision of how women’s rights and Islam might be reconciled.

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Description: In 2006, New York magazine and ABC’s Nightline both featured stories dealing with rabbis who had abused children entrusted to them. Then, at the start of 2007, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency published a five-part series on sexual abuse by rabbis who led congregations, taught religious studies, and ran youth groups. The series soon was picked up by Jewish newspapers nationwide. Despite this spate of media coverage, there has been a dearth of scholarly material investigating sexual abuse within the Jewish clergy.

Bringing together fifteen practicing rabbis, educators, pastoral counselors, sociologists, mental health professionals, and legal advocates for abuse victims, each of whom offer insights into different facets of the problem, Tempest in the Temple offers an open discussion of some of the most deeply rooted fears in the Jewish community.

“Tempest is a testament to how we can protect our children and make our Jewish communities the safe and nurturing places we want them to be.”—Esther Giller, President and Director of the Sidran Institute, Baltimore

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Description: It’s a tough economy for job-seekers, and it can be even more nerve-racking for women trying to juggle career and family. Women are used to being told that once we get off the career track, we can’t get back on. In The Comeback, Emma Gilbey Keller proves that this isn’t true: More and more, companies today are looking at the value of hiring returning mothers. In this encouraging book, Keller tells the stories of seven very different women from a variety of professions who sought to strike a balance between demanding careers and budding families. A new afterword looks at the personal balancing act of First Lady Michelle Obama. All of these women have complicated stories, filled with the choices, decisions, and trade-offs that all mothers face.

An absorbing blend of story, insight, advice, and inspiration, The Comeback offers a positive message to mothers overwhelmed by the ever-shifting work-versus-home debate.

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Description: Often we find it difficult to concentrate on the prayers we recite, due partly to a lack of understanding of the biblical poetry in the tefillot. This book aims to unlock the mystery of the various psalms which comprise the tefillah.

The book begins with an introduction to prayer, Tehillim, and biblical poetry. Then, after an overview of the structure of the morning service, each chapter examines either a prayer adapted from a psalm or the entire psalm and explains the reason it was chosen as part of the liturgy. “Let the words of my mouth praise God and all mankind will bless the holy name of God for eternity” (Psalm 145:21).

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Description: What would you do for the love of a good book? In THE MAN WHO LOVED BOOKS TOO MUCH: The true story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession, journalist Allison Hoover Bartlett shares a story of true book obsession, following John Charles Gilkey, the unrepentant book thief that steals for love of books, and Ken Sanders, the self-appointed “bibliodick” and lifelong rare book collector determined to catch him.

Join Barlett in a world of fanatical book lust that follows both of these eccentric characters with a mixture of suspense, insight, and humor. Amid all the debates about the value and popularity of e-books right now, THE MAN WHO LOVED BOOKS TOO MUCH proves why for some people, you can’t put a price on the love of a physical book. As A.S.W. Rosenbach, a 20th Century book dealer once said, “I have known men to hazard their fortunes, go long journeys halfway about the world, forget friendships, even lie, cheat, and steal, all for the gain of a book.”

“As a rule I approach unsolicited galleys with the same degree of delight that I reserve for root canals. This book surprised me. I read the first paragraph and was drawn in, not so much by the subject matter as by the author's cozy, quiet style, evocative of the work of Dava Sobel and Janet Malcolm. I found the narrative compelling, and I loved the inside stories about old books.”
–Erik Larson, bestselling author of The Devil and the White City

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Description: What if our beliefs were not what divided us, but what pulled us together?

In Have a Little Faith, Mitch Albom offers a beautifully written story of a remarkable eight-year journey between two worlds—two men, two faiths, two communities—that will inspire readers everywhere.

Albom’s first nonfiction book since Tuesdays with Morrie, Have a Little Faith begins with an unusual request: an eighty-two-year-old rabbi from Albom’s old hometown asks him to deliver his eulogy.

Feeling unworthy, Albom insists on understanding the man better, which throws him back into a world of faith he’d left years ago. Meanwhile, closer to his current home, Albom becomes involved with a Detroit pastor—a reformed drug dealer and convict—who preaches to the poor and homeless in a decaying church with a hole in its roof.

Moving between their worlds, Christian and Jewish, African-American and white, impoverished and well-to-do, Albom observes how these very different men employ faith similarly in fighting for survival: the older, suburban rabbi embracing it as death approaches; the younger, inner-city pastor relying on it to keep himself and his church afloat.

As America struggles with hard times and people turn more to their beliefs, Albom and the two men of God explore issues that perplex modern man: how to endure when difficult things happen; what heaven is; intermarriage; forgiveness; doubting God; and the importance of faith in trying times. Although the texts, prayers, and histories are different, Albom begins to recognize a striking unity between the two worlds—and indeed, between beliefs everywhere.

In the end, as the rabbi nears death and a harsh winter threatens the pastor’s wobbly church, Albom sadly fulfills the rabbi’s last request and writes the eulogy. And he finally understands what both men had been teaching all along: the profound comfort of believing in something bigger than yourself.

Have a Little Faith is a book about a life’s purpose; about losing belief and finding it again; about the divine spark inside us all. It is one man’s journey, but it is everyone’s story.

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Description: An enthralling story, told by the most famous woman no one knows. For the millions in each generation who fall under the spell of Lewis Carroll's beloved heroine comes a novel that explores the life that existed beyond the looking glass.

In this remarkable novel, a feather in the winds of literary history is ensnared as a woman reminisces about a lifetime spent trying to escape Wonderland.

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Description: Jack Christie
The year: 1914
The place: Sarajevo
The mission: the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand
Jack Christie and his best friend, Angus, find themselves at the center of a momentous event that will shape history for decades to come. Their dilemma: Should they intervene? Their problem: Can they survive? Join Jack on a dangerous chase from the dockyards of England to the rain-sodden trenches of the First World War. Will he escape the evil authorities who believe in the mysterious Vigil Imperative?

FIRST IN AN EXCITING NEW SERIES

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